The Project Gutenberg Ebook The PG Complete Works of Gilbert Parker #127 in our series by Gilbert Parker Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers***** Title: The Project Gutenberg Complete Works of Gilbert Parker Author: Gilbert Parker Release Date: Aug, 2004 [EBook #6300] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on December 19, 2002] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMPLETE WORKS OF PARKER *** This eBook was produced by David Widger CONTENTS: The Judgment House Pierre and His People Romany of the Snows Northern Lights Mrs. Falchion Cumner & South Sea Folk Valmond Came to Pontiac The Trail of the Sword Translation of a Savage Pomp of the Lavilettes At Sign of the Eagle The Trespasser March of White Guard Seats of the Mighty Battle Of The Strong Lane Had No Turning Parables Of A Province The Right Of Way Michel And Angele John Enderby Sorrow On The Sea Donovan Pasha &c The Weavers Embers (Poetry) A Lover's Diary(Poetry) The Money Master The World For Sale Never Know Your Luck Wild Youth No Defense Carnac's Folly THE JUDGMENT HOUSE by Gilbert Parker The "Judgment House" etext was produced by Juli Rew (juliana@ucar.edu) NOTE Except where references to characters well-known to all the world occur in these pages, this book does not present a picture of public or private individuals living or dead. It is not in any sense a historical novel. It is in conception and portraiture a work of the imagination. "Strangers come to the outer wall-- (Why do the sleepers stir?) Strangers enter the Judgment House-- (Why do the sleepers sigh?) Slow they rise in their judgment seats, Sieve and measure the naked souls, Then with a blessing return to sleep. (Quiet the Judgment House.) Lone and sick are the vagrant souls-- (When shall the world come home?)" "Let them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far, God must judge the couple: leave them as they are-- Whichever one's the guiltless, to his glory, And whichever one the guilt's with, to my story! "Once more. Will the wronger, at this last of all, Dare to say, 'I did wrong,' rising in his fall? No? Let go, then! Both the fighters to their places! While I count three, step you back as many paces!" "And the Sibyl, you know. I saw her with my own eyes at Cumae, hanging in a jar; and when the boys asked her, 'What would you, Sibyl?' she answered, 'I would die.'" "So is Pheidippides happy for ever,--the noble strong man Who would race like a God, bear the face of a God, whom a God loved so well: He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to tell Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began So to end gloriously--once to shout, thereafter to be mute: 'Athens is saved!' Pheidippides dies in the shout for his meed." "Oh, never star Was lost here, but it rose afar." THE JUDGMENT HOUSE BOOK I CHAPTER I THE JASMINE FLOWER The music throbbed in a voice of singular and delicate power; the air was resonant with melody, love and pain. The meanest Italian in the gallery far up beneath the ceiling, the most exalted of the land in the boxes and the stalls, leaned indulgently forward, to be swept by this sweet storm of song. They yielded themselves utterly to the power of the triumphant debutante who was making "Manassa" the musical feast of the year, renewing to Covent Garden a reputation which recent lack of enterprise had somewhat forfeited. Yet, apparently, not all the vast audience were hypnotized by the unknown and unheralded singer, whose stage name was Al'mah. At the moment of the opera's supreme appeal the eyes of three people at least were not in the thraldom of the singer. Seated at the end of the first row of the stalls was a fair, slim, graciously attired man of about thirty, who, turning in his seat so that nearly the whole house was in his circle of vision, stroked his golden moustache, and ran his eyes over the thousands of faces with a smile of pride and satisfaction which in a less handsome man would have been almost a leer. His name was Adrian Fellowes. Either the opera and the singer had no charms for Adrian Fellowes, or else he had heard both so often that, without doing violence to his musical sense, he could afford to study the effect of this wonderful effort upon the mob of London, mastered by the radiant being on the stage. Very sleek, handsome, and material he looked; of happy colour, and, apparently, with a mind and soul in which no conflicts ever raged--to the advantage of his attractive exterior. Only at the summit of the applause did he turn to the stage again. Then it was with the gloating look of the gambler who swings from the roulette-table with the winnings of a great coup, cynical joy in his eyes that he has beaten the Bank, conquered the dark spirit which has tricked him so often. Now the cold-blue eyes caught, for a second, the dark-brown eyes of the Celtic singer, which laughed at him gaily, victoriously, eagerly, and then again drank in the light and the joy of the myriad faces before her. In a box opposite the royal box were two people, a man and a very young woman, who also in the crise of the opera were not looking at the stage. The eyes of the man, sitting well back--purposely, so that he might see her without marked observation--were fixed upon the rose-tinted, delicate features of the girl in a joyous blue silk gown, which was so perfect a contrast to the golden hair and wonderful colour of her face. Her eyes were fixed upon her lap, the lids half closed, as though in reverie, yet with that perspicuous and reflective look which showed her conscious of all that was passing round her--even the effect of her own pose. Her name was Jasmine Grenfel. She was not oblivious of the music. Her heart beat faster because of it; and a temperament adjustable to every mood and turn of human feeling was answering to the poignancy of the opera; yet her youth, child-likeness, and natural spontaneity were controlled by an elate consciousness. She was responsive to the passionate harmony; but she was also acutely sensitive to the bold yet deferential appeal to her emotions of the dark, distinguished, bearded man at her side, with the brown eyes and the Grecian profile, whose years spent in the Foreign Office and at embassies on the Continent had given him a tact and an insinuating address peculiarly alluring to her sex. She was well aware of Ian Stafford's ambitions, and had come to the point where she delighted in them, and had thought of sharing in them, "for weal or for woe"; but she would probably have resented the suggestion that his comparative poverty was weighed against her natural inclinations and his real and honest passion. For she had her ambitions, too; and when she had scanned the royal box that night, she had felt that something only little less than a diadem would really satisfy her. Then it was that she had turned meditatively towards another occupant of her box, who sat beside her pretty stepmother--a big, bronzed, clean-shaven, strong-faced man of about the same age as Ian Stafford of the Foreign Office, who had brought him that night at her request. Ian had called him, "my South African nabob," in tribute to the millions he had made with Cecil Rhodes and others at Kimberley and on the Rand. At first sight of the forceful and rather ungainly form she had inwardly contrasted it with the figure of Ian Stafford and that other spring-time figure of a man at the end of the first row in the stalls, towards which the prima donna had flashed one trusting, happy glance, and with which she herself had been familiar since her childhood. The contrast had not been wholly to the advantage of the nabob; though, to be sure, he was simply arrayed--as if, indeed, he were not worth a thousand a year. Certainly he had about him a sense of power, but his occasional laugh was too vigorous for one whose own great sense of humour was conveyed by an infectious, rippling murmur delightful to hear. Rudyard Byng was worth three millions of pounds, and that she interested him was evident by the sudden arrest of his look and his movements when introduced to her. Ian Stafford had noted this look; but he had seen many another man look at Jasmine Grenfel with just as much natural and unbidden interest, and he shrugged the shoulders of his mind; for the millions alone would not influence her, that was sure. Had she not a comfortable fortune of her own? Besides, Byng was not the kind of man to capture Jasmine's fastidious sense and nature. So much had happened between Jasmine and himself, so deep an understanding had grown up between them, that it only remained to bring her to the last court of inquiry and get reply to a vital question--already put in a thousand ways and answered to his perfect satisfaction. Indeed, there was between Jasmine and himself the equivalent of a betrothal. He had asked her to marry him, and she had not said no; but she had bargained for time to "prepare"; that she should have another year in which to be gay in a gay world and, in her own words, "walk the primrose path of pleasure untrammelled and alone, save for my dear friend Mrs. Grundy." Since that moment he had been quite sure that all was well. And now the year was nearly up, and she had not changed; had, indeed, grown more confiding and delicately dependent in manner towards him, though seeing him but seldom alone. As Ian Stafford looked at her now, he kept saying to himself, "So exquisite and so clever, what will she not be at thirty! So well poised, and yet so sweetly child-like dear dresden-china Jasmine." That was what she looked like--a lovely thing of the time of Boucher in dresden china. At last, as though conscious of what was going on in his mind, she slowly turned her drooping eyes towards him, and, over her shoulder, as he quickly leaned forward, she said in a low voice which the others could not hear: "I am too young, and not clever enough to understand all the music means--is that what you are thinking?" He shook his head in negation, and his dark-brown eyes commanded hers, but still deferentially, as he said: "You know of what I was thinking. You will be forever young, but yours was always--will always be--the wisdom of the wise. I'd like to have been as clever at twenty-two." "How trying that you should know my age so exactly--it darkens the future," she rejoined with a soft little laugh; then, suddenly, a cloud passed over her face. It weighed down her eyelids, and she gazed before her into space with a strange, perplexed, and timorous anxiety. What did she see? Nothing that was light and joyous, for her small sensuous lips drew closer, and the fan she held in her lap slipped from her fingers to the floor. This aroused her, and Stafford, as he returned the fan to her, said into a face again alive to the present: "You look as though you were trying to summon the sable spirits of a sombre future." Her fine pink-white shoulders lifted a little and, once more quite self-possessed, she rejoined, lightly, "I have a chameleon mind; it chimes with every mood and circumstance." Suddenly her eyes rested on Rudyard Byng, and something in the rough power of the head arrested her attention, and the thought flashed through her mind: "How wonderful to have got so much at thirty-three! Three millions at thirty-three--and millions beget millions!" . . . Power--millions meant power; millions made ready the stage for the display and use of every gift, gave the opportunity for the full occupation of all personal qualities, made a setting for the jewel of life and beauty, which reflected, intensified every ray of merit. Power--that was it. Her own grandfather had had power. He had made his fortune, a great one too, by patents which exploited the vanity of mankind, and, as though to prove his cynical contempt for his fellow-creatures, had then invented a quick-firing gun which nearly every nation in the world adopted. First, he had got power by a fortune which represented the shallowness and gullibility of human nature, then had exploited the serious gift which had always been his, the native genius which had devised the gun when he was yet a boy. He had died at last with the smile on his lips which had followed his remark, quoted in every great newspaper of two continents, that: "The world wants to be fooled, so I fooled it; it wants to be stunned, so I stunned it. My fooling will last as long as my gun; and both have paid me well. But they all love being fooled best." Old Draygon Grenfel's fortune had been divided among his three sons and herself, for she had been her grandfather's favourite, and she was the only grandchild to whom he had left more than a small reminder of his existence. As a child her intelligence was so keen, her perception so acute, she realized him so well, that he had said she was the only one of his blood who had anything of himself in character or personality, and he predicted--too often in her presence--that she "would give the world a start or two when she had the chance." His intellectual contempt for his eldest son, her father, was reproduced in her with no prompting on his part; and, without her own mother from the age of three, Jasmine had grown up self-willed and imperious, yet with too much intelligence to carry her will and power too far. Infinite adaptability had been the result of a desire to please and charm; behind which lay an unlimited determination to get her own way and bend other wills to hers. The two wills she had not yet bent as she pleased were those of her stepmother and of Ian Stafford--one, because she was jealous and obstinate, and the other because he had an adequate self-respect and an ambition of his own to have his way in a world which would not give save at the point of the sword. Come of as good family as there was in England, and the grandson of a duke, he still was eager for power, determined to get on, ingenious in searching for that opportunity which even the most distinguished talent must have, if it is to soar high above the capable average. That chance, the predestined alluring opening had not yet come; but his eyes were wide open, and he was ready for the spring--nerved the more to do so by the thought that Jasmine would appreciate his success above all others, even from the standpoint of intellectual appreciation, all emotions excluded. How did it come that Jasmine was so worldly wise, and yet so marvellously the insouciant child? He followed her slow, reflective glance at Byng, and the impression of force and natural power of the millionaire struck him now, as it had often done. As though summoned by them both, Byng turned his face and, catching Jasmine's eyes, smiled and leaned forward. "I haven't got over that great outburst of singing yet," he said, with a little jerk of the head towards the stage, where, for the moment, minor characters were in possession, preparing the path for the last rush of song by which Al'mah, the new prima donna, would bring her first night to a complete triumph. With face turned full towards her, something of the power of his head seemed to evaporate swiftly. It was honest, alert, and almost brutally simple--the face of a pioneer. The forehead was broad and strong, and the chin was square and determined; but the full, dark-blue eyes had in them shadows of rashness and recklessness, the mouth was somewhat self-indulgent and indolent; though the hands clasping both knees were combined of strength, activity, and also a little of grace. "I never had much chance to hear great singers before I went to South Africa," he added, reflectively, "and this swallows me like a storm on the high veld--all lightning and thunder and flood. I've missed a lot in my time." With a look which made his pulses gallop, Jasmine leaned over and whispered--for the prima donna was beginning to sing again: "There's nothing you have missed in your race that you cannot ride back and collect. It is those who haven't run a race who cannot ride back. You have won; and it is all waiting for you." Again her eyes beamed upon him, and a new sensation came to him--the kind of thing he felt once when he was sixteen, and the vicar's daughter had suddenly held him up for quite a week, while all his natural occupations were neglected, and the spirit of sport was humiliated and abashed. Also he had caroused in his time--who was there in those first days at Kimberley and on the Rand who did not carouse, when life was so hard, luck so uncertain, and food so bad; when men got so dead beat, with no homes anywhere--only shake-downs and the Tents of Shem? Once he had had a native woman summoned to be his slave, to keep his home; but that was a business which had revolted him, and he had never repeated the experiment. Then, there had been an adventuress, a wandering, foreign princess who had fooled him and half a dozen of his friends to the top of their bent; but a thousand times he had preferred other sorts of pleasures--cards, horses, and the bright outlook which came with the clinking glass after the strenuous day. Jasmine seemed to divine it all as she looked at him--his primitive, almost Edenic sincerity; his natural indolence and native force: a nature that would not stir until greatly roused, but then, with an unyielding persistence and concentrated force, would range on to its goal, making up for a slow-moving intellect by sheer will, vision and a gallant heart. Al'mah was singing again, and Byng leaned forward eagerly. There was a rustle in the audience, a movement to a listening position, then a tense waiting and attention. As Jasmine composed herself she said in a low voice to Ian Stafford, whose well-proportioned character, personality, and refinement of culture were in such marked contrast to the personality of the other: "They live hard lives in those new lands. He has wasted much of himself." "Three millions at thirty-three means spending a deal of one thing to get another," Ian answered a little grimly. "Hush! Oh, Ian, listen!" she added in a whisper. Once more Al'mah rose to mastery over the audience. The bold and generous orchestration, the exceptional chorus, the fine and brilliant tenor, had made a broad path for her last and supreme effort. The audience had long since given up their critical sense, they were ready to be carried into captivity again, and the surrender was instant and complete. Now, not an eye was turned away from the singer. Even the Corinthian gallant at the end of the first row of stalls gave himself up to feasting on her and her success, and the characters in the opera were as electrified as the audience. For a whole seven minutes this voice seemed to be the only thing in the world, transposing all thoughts, emotions, all elements of life into terms of melody. Then, at last, with a crash of sweetness, the voice broke over them all in crystals of sound and floated away into a world of bright dreams. An instant's silence which followed was broken by a tempest of applause. Again, again, and again it was renewed. The subordinate singers were quickly disposed of before the curtain, then Al'mah received her memorable tribute. How many times she came and went she never knew; but at last the curtain, rising, showed her well up the stage beside a table where two huge candles flared. The storm of applause breaking forth once more, the grateful singer raised her arms and spread them out impulsively in gratitude and dramatic abandon. As she did so, the loose, flowing sleeve of her robe caught the flame of a candle, and in an instant she was in a cloud of fire. The wild applause turned suddenly to notes of terror as, with a sharp cry, she stumbled forward to the middle of the stage. For one stark moment no one stirred, then suddenly a man with an opera-cloak on his arm was seen to spring across a space of many feet between a box on the level of the stage and the stage itself. He crashed into the footlights, but recovered himself and ran forward. In an instant he had enveloped the agonized figure of the singer and had crushed out the flames with swift, strong movements. Then lifting the now unconscious artist in his great arms, he strode off with her behind the scenes. "Well done, Byng! Well done, Ruddy Byng!" cried a strong voice from the audience; and a cheer went up. In a moment Byng returned and came down the stage. "She is not seriously hurt," he said simply to the audience. "We were just in time." Presently, as he entered the Grenfel box again, deafening applause broke forth. "We were just in time," said Ian Stafford, with an admiring, teasing laugh, as he gripped Byng's arm. "'We'--well, it was a royal business," said Jasmine, standing close to him and looking up into his eyes with that ingratiating softness which had deluded many another man; "but do you realize that it was my cloak you took?" she added, whimsically. "Well, I'm glad it was," Byng answered, boyishly. "You'll have to wear my overcoat home." "I certainly will," she answered. "Come--the giant's robe." People were crowding upon their box. "Let's get out of this," Byng said, as he took his coat from the hook on the wall. As they left the box the girl's white-haired, prematurely aged father whispered in the pretty stepmother's ear: "Jasmine'll marry that nabob--you'll see." The stepmother shrugged a shoulder. "Jasmine is in love with Ian Stafford," she said, decisively. "But she'll marry Rudyard Byng," was the stubborn reply. CHAPTER II THE UNDERGROUND WORLD "What's that you say--Jameson--what?" Rudyard Byng paused with the lighted match at the end of his cigar, and stared at a man who was reading from a tape-machine, which gave the club the world's news from minute to minute. "Dr. Jameson's riding on Johannesburg with eight hundred men. He started from Pitsani two days ago. And Cronje with his burghers are out after him." The flaming match burned Byng's fingers. He threw it into the fireplace, and stood transfixed for a moment, his face hot with feeling, then he burst out: "But--God! they're not ready at Johannesburg. The burghers'll catch him at Doornkop or somewhere, and--" He paused, overcome. His eyes suffused. His hands went out in a gesture of despair. "Jameson's jumped too soon," he muttered. "He's lost the game for them." The other eyed him quizzically. "Perhaps he'll get in yet. He surely planned the thing with due regard for every chance. Johannesburg--" "Johannesburg isn't ready, Stafford. I know. That Jameson and the Rand should coincide was the only chance. And they'll not coincide now. It might have been--it was to have been--a revolution at Johannesburg, with Dr. Jim to step in at the right minute. It's only a filibustering business now, and Oom Paul will catch the filibuster, as sure as guns. 'Gad, it makes me sick!" "Europe will like it--much," remarked Ian Stafford, cynically, offering Byng a lighted match. Byng grumbled out an oath, then fixed his clear, strong look on Stafford. "It's almost enough to make Germany and France forget 1870 and fall into each other's arms," he answered. "But that's your business, you Foreign Office people's business. It's the fellows out there, friends of mine, so many of them, I'm thinking of. It's the British kids that can't be taught in their mother-tongue, and the men who pay all the taxes and can't become citizens. It's the justice you can only buy; it's the foot of Kruger on the necks of the subjects of his suzerain; it's eating dirt as Englishmen have never had to eat it anywhere in the range of the Seven Seas. And when they catch Dr. Jim, it'll be ten times worse. Yes, it'll be at Doornkop, unless-- But, no, they'll track him, trap him, get him now. Johannesburg wasn't ready. Only yesterday I had a cable that--" he stopped short . . . "but they weren't ready. They hadn't guns enough, or something; and Englishmen aren't good conspirators, not by a damned sight! Now it'll be the old Majuba game all over again. You'll see." "It certainly will set things back. Your last state will be worse than your first," remarked Stafford. Rudyard Byng drained off a glass of brandy and water at a gulp almost, as Stafford watched him with inward adverse comment, for he never touched wine or spirits save at meal-time, and the between-meal swizzle revolted his Eesthetic sense. Byng put down the glass very slowly, gazing straight before him for a moment without speaking. Then he looked round. There was no one very near, though curious faces were turned in his direction, as the grim news of the Raid was passed from mouth to mouth. He came up close to Stafford and touched his chest with a firm forefinger. "Every egg in the basket is broken, Stafford. I'm sure of that. Dr. Jim'll never get in now; and there'll be no oeufs a la coque for breakfast. But there's an omelette to be got out of the mess, if the chef doesn't turn up his nose too high. After all, what has brought things to this pass? Why, mean, low tyranny and injustice. Why, just a narrow, jealous race-hatred which makes helots of British men. Simple farmers, the sentimental newspapers call them--simple Machiavellis in veldschoen!" * Stafford nodded assent. "But England is a very conventional chef," he replied. "She likes the eggs for her omelette broken in the orthodox way." "She's not so particular where the eggs come from, is she?" Stafford smiled as he answered: "There'll be a good many people in England who won't sleep to-night some because they want Jameson to get in; some because they don't; but most because they're thinking of the millions of British money locked up in the Rand, with Kruger standing over it with a sjambak, which he'll use. Last night at the opera we had a fine example of presence of mind, when a lady burst into flames on the stage. That spirited South African prima donna, the Transvaal, is in flames. I wonder if she really will be saved, and who will save her, and--" A light, like the sun, broke over the gloomy and rather haggard face of Rudyard Byng, and humour shot up into his eyes. He gave a low, generous laugh, as he said with a twinkle: "And whether he does it at some expense to himself--with his own overcoat, or with some one else's cloak. Is that what you want to say?" All at once the personal element, so powerful in most of us--even in moments when interests are in existence so great that they should obliterate all others--came to the surface. For a moment it almost made Byng forget the crisis which had come to a land where he had done all that was worth doing, so far in his life; which had burned itself into his very soul; which drew him, sleeping or waking, into its arms of memory and longing. He had read only one paper that morning, and it--the latest attempt at sensational journalism--had so made him blush at the flattering references to himself in relation to the incident at the opera, that he had opened no other. He had left his chambers to avoid the telegrams and notes of congratulation which were arriving in great numbers. He had gone for his morning ride in Battersea Park instead of the Row to escape observation; had afterwards spent two hours at the house he was building in Park Lane; had then come to the club, where he had encountered Ian Stafford and had heard the news which overwhelmed him. "Well, an opera cloak did the work better than an overcoat would have done," Stafford answered, laughing. "It was a flash of real genius to think of it. You did think it all out in the second, didn't you?" Stafford looked at him curiously, for he wondered if the choice of a soft cloak which could more easily be wrapped round the burning woman than an overcoat was accidental, or whether it was the product of a mind of unusual decision. Byng puffed out a great cloud of smoke and laughed again quietly as he replied: "Well, I've had a good deal of lion and rhinoceros shooting in my time, and I've had to make up my mind pretty quick now and then; so I suppose it gets to be a habit. You don't stop to think when the trouble's on you; you think as you go. If I'd stopped to think, I'd have funked the whole thing, I suppose--jumping from that box onto the stage, and grabbing a lady in my arms, all in the open, as it were. But that wouldn't have been the natural man. The natural man that's in most of us, even when we're not very clever, does things right. It's when the conventional man comes in and says, Let us consider, that we go wrong. By Jingo, Al'mah was as near having her beauty spoiled as any woman ever was; but she's only got a few nasty burns on the arm and has singed her hair a little." "You've seen her to-day, then?" Stafford looked at him with some curiosity, for the event was one likely to rouse a man's interest in a woman. Al'mah was unmarried, so far as the world knew, and a man of Byng's kind, if not generally inflammable, was very likely to be swept off his feet by some unusual woman in some unusual circumstance. Stafford had never seen Rudyard Byng talk to any woman but Jasmine for more than five minutes at a time, though hundreds of eager and avaricious eyes had singled him out for attention; and, as it seemed absurd that any one should build a palace in Park Lane to live in by himself, the glances sent in his direction from many quarters had not been without hopefulness. And there need not have been, and there was not, any loss of dignity on the part of match-making mothers in angling for him, for his family was quite good enough; his origin was not obscure, and his upbringing was adequate. His external ruggedness was partly natural; but it was also got from the bitter rough life he had lived for so many years in South Africa before he had fallen on his feet at Kimberley and Johannesburg. As for "strange women," during the time that had passed since his retum to England there had never been any sign of loose living. So, to Stafford's mind, Byng was the more likely to be swept away on a sudden flood that would bear him out to the sea of matrimony. He had put his question out of curiosity, and he had not to wait for a reply. It came frankly and instantly: "Why, I was at Al'mah's house in Bruton Street at eight o'clock this morning--with the milkman and the newsboy; and you wouldn't believe it, but I saw her, too. She'd been up since six o'clock, she said. Couldn't sleep for excitement and pain, but looking like a pansy blossom all the same, rigged out as pretty as could be in her boudoir, and a nurse doing the needful. It's an odd dark kind of beauty she has, with those full lips and the heavy eyebrows. Well, it was a bull in a china-shop, as you might judge--and thank you kindly, Mr. Byng, with such a jolly laugh, and ever and ever and ever so grateful and so wonderfully--thoughtful, I think, was the word, as though one had planned it all. And wouldn't I stay to breakfast? And not a bit stagey or actressy, and rather what you call an uncut diamond--a gem in her way, but not fine beur, not exactly. A touch of the karoo, or the prairie, or the salt-bush plains in her, but a good chap altogether; and I'm glad I was in it last night with her. I laughed a lot at breakfast--why yes, I stayed to breakfast. Laugh before breakfast and cry before supper, that's the proverb, isn't it? And I'm crying, all right, and there's weeping down on the Rand too." As he spoke Stafford made inward comment on the story being told to him, so patently true and honest in every particular. It was rather contradictory and unreasonable, however, to hear this big, shy, rugged fellow taking exception, however delicately and by inference only, to the lack of high refinement, to the want of fine fleur, in Al'mah's personality. It did not occur to him that Byng was the kind of man who would be comparing Jasmine's quite wonderful delicacy, perfumed grace, and exquisite adaptability with the somewhat coarser beauty and genius of the singer. It seemed natural that Byng should turn to a personality more in keeping with his own, more likely to make him perfectly at ease mentally and physically. Stafford judged Jasmine by his own conversations with her, when he was so acutely alive to the fact that she was the most naturally brilliant woman he had ever known or met; and had capacities for culture and attainment, as she had gifts of discernment and skill in thought, in marked contrast to the best of the ladies of their world. To him she had naturally shown only the one side of her nature--she adapted herself to him as she did to every one else; she had put him always at an advantage, and, in doing so, herself as well. Full of dangerous coquetry he knew her to be--she had been so from a child; and though this was culpable in a way, he and most others had made more than due allowance, because mother-care and loving surveillance had been withdrawn so soon. For years she had been the spoiled darling of her father and brothers until her father married again; and then it had been too late to control her. The wonder was that she had turned out so well, that she had been so studious, so determined, so capable. Was it because she had unusual brain and insight into human nature, and had been wise and practical enough to see that there was a point where restraint must be applied, and so had kept herself free from blame or deserved opprobrium, if not entirely from criticism? In the day when girls were not in the present sense emancipated, she had the savoir faire and the poise of a married woman of thirty. Yet she was delicate, fresh, and flower-like, and very amusing, in a way which delighted men; and she did not antagonize women. Stafford had ruled Byng out of consideration where she was concerned. He had not heard her father's remark of the night before, "Jasmine will marry that nabob--you'll see." He was, however, recalled to the strange possibilities of life by a note which was handed to Byng as they stood before the club-room fire. He could not help but see--he knew the envelope, and no other handwriting was like Jasmine's, that long, graceful, sliding hand. Byng turned it over before opening it. "Hello," he said, "I'm caught. It's a woman's hand. I wonder how she knew I was here." Mentally Stafford shrugged his shoulders as he said to himself: "If Jasmine wanted to know where he was, she'd find out. I wonder--I wonder." He watched Byng, over whose face passed a pleased smile. "Why," Byng said, almost eagerly, "it's from Miss Grenfel--wants me to go and tell her about Jameson and the Raid." He paused for an instant, and his face clouded again. "The first thing I must do is to send cables to Johannesburg. Perhaps there are some waiting for me at my rooms. I'll go and see. I don't know why I didn't get news sooner. I generally get word before the Government. There's something wrong somewhere. Somebody has had me." "If I were you I'd go to our friend first. When I'm told to go at once, I go. She wouldn't like cablegrams and other things coming between you and her command--even when Dr. Jim's riding out of Matabeleland on the Rand for to free the slaves." Stafford's words were playful, but there was, almost unknown to himself, a strange little note of discontent and irony behind. Byng laughed. "But I'll be able to tell her more, perhaps, if I go to my rooms first." "You are going to see her, then?" "Certainly. There's nothing to do till we get news of Jameson at bay in a conga or balled up at a kopje." Thrusting the delicately perfumed letter in his pocket, he nodded, and was gone. "I was going to see her myself," thought Stafford, "but that settles it. It will be easier to go where duty calls instead, since Byng takes my place. Why, she told me to come to-day at this very hour," he added, suddenly, and paused in his walk towards the door. "But I want no triangular tea-parties," he continued to reflect.... "Well, there'll be work to do at the Foreign Office, that's sure. France, Austria, Russia can spit out their venom now and look to their mobilization. And won't Kaiser William throw up his cap if Dr. Jim gets caught! What a mess it will be! Well--well--well!" He sighed, and went on his way brooding darkly; for he knew that this was the beginning of a great trial for England and all British people. CHAPTER III A DAUGHTER OF TYRE "Monsieur voleur!" Jasmine looked at him again, as she had done the night before at the opera, standing quite confidentially close to him, her hand resting in his big palm like a pad of rose-leaves; while a delicate perfume greeted his senses. Byng beamed down on her, mystified and eager, yet by no means impatient, since the situation was one wholly agreeable to him, and he had been called robber in his time with greater violence and with a different voice. Now he merely shook his head in humorous protest, and gave her an indulgent look of inquiry. Somehow he felt quite at home with her; while yet he was abashed by so much delicacy and beauty and bloom. "Why, what else are you but a robber?" she added, withdrawing her hand rather quickly from the too frank friendliness of his grasp. "You ran off with my opera-cloak last night, and a very pretty and expensive one it was." "Expensive isn't the word," he rejoined; "it was unpurchasable." She preened herself a little at the phrase. "I returned your overcoat this morning--before breakfast; and I didn't even receive a note of thanks for it. I might properly have kept it till my opera cloak came back." "It's never coming back," he answered; "and as for my overcoat, I didn't know it had been returned. I was out all the morning." "In the Row?" she asked, with an undertone of meaning. "Well, not exactly. I was out looking for your cloak." "Without breakfast?" she urged with a whimsical glance. "Well, I got breakfast while I was looking." "And while you were indulging material tastes, the cloak hid itself--or went out and hanged itself?" He settled himself comfortably in the huge chair which seemed made especially for him. With a rare sense for details she had had this very chair brought from the library beyond, where her stepmother, in full view, was writing letters. He laughed at her words--a deep, round chuckle it was. "It didn't exactly hang itself; it lay over the back of a Chesterfield where I could see it and breakfast too." "A Chesterfield in a breakfast-room! That's more like the furniture of a boudoir." "Well, it was a boudoir." He blushed a little in spite of himself. "Ah!... Al'mah's? Well, she owed you a breakfast, at least, didn't she?" "Not so good a breakfast as I got." "That is putting rather a low price on her life," she rejoined; and a little smile of triumph gathered at her pink lips; lips a little like those Nelson loved not wisely yet not too well, if love is worth while at all. "T didn't see where you were leading me," he gasped, helplessly. "I give up. I can't talk in your way." "What is my way?" she pleaded with a little wave of laughter in her eyes. "Why, no frontal attacks--only flank movements, and getting round the kopjes, with an ambush in a drift here and there." "That sounds like Paul Kruger or General Joubert," she cried in mock dismay. "Isn't that what they are doing with Dr. Jameson, perhaps?" His face clouded. Storm gathered slowly in his eyes, a grimness suddenly settled in his strong jaw. "Yes," he answered, presently, "that's what they will be doing; and if I'm not mistaken they'll catch Jameson just as you caught me just now. They'll catch him at Doornkop or thereabouts, if I know myself--and Oom Paul." Her face flushed prettily with excitement. "I want to hear all about this empire-making, or losing, affair; but there are other things to be settled first. There's my opera-cloak and the breakfast in the prima donna's boudoir, and--" "But, how did you know it was Al'mah?" he asked blankly. "Why, where else would my cloak be?" she inquired with a little laugh. "Not at the costumier's or the cleaner's so soon. But, all this horrid flippancy aside, do you really think I should have talked like this, or been so exigent about the cloak, if I hadn't known everything; if I hadn't been to see Al'mah, and spent an hour with her and knew that she was recovering from that dreadful shock very quickly? But could you think me so inhuman and unwomanly as not to have asked about her?" "I wouldn't be in a position to investigate much when you were talking--not critically," he replied, boldly. "I would only be thinking that everything you said was all right. It wouldn't occur to me to--" She half closed her eyes, looking at him with languishing humour. "Now you must please remember that I am quite young, and may have my head turned, and--" "It wouldn't alter my mind about you if you turned your head," he broke in, gallantly, with a desperate attempt to take advantage of an opportunity, and try his hand at a game entirely new to him. There was an instant's pause, in which she looked at him with what was half-assumed, half-natural shyness. His attempt to play with words was so full of nature, and had behind it such apparent admiration, that the unspoiled part of her was suddenly made self-conscious, however agreeably so. Then she said to him: "I won't say you were brave last night--that doesn't touch the situation. It wasn't bravery, of course; it was splendid presence of mind which could only come to a man with great decision of character. I don't think the newspapers put it at all in the right way. It wasn't like saving a child from the top of a burning building, was it?" "There was nothing in it at all where I was concerned," he replied. "I've been living a life for fifteen years where you had to move quick--by instinct, as it were. There's no virtue in it. I was just a little quicker than a thousand other men present, and I was nearer to the stage." "Not nearer than my father or Mr. Stafford." "They had a bigger shock than I had, I suppose. They got struck numb for a second. I'm a coarser kind. I have seen lots of sickening things; and I suppose they don't stun me. We get callous, I fancy, we veld-rangers and adventurers." "You seem sensitive enough to fine emotions," she said, almost shyly." You were completely absorbed, carried away, by Al'mah's singing last night. There wasn't a throb of music that escaped you, I should think." "Well, that's primary instinct. Music is for the most savage natures. The boor that couldn't appreciate the Taj Mahal, or the sculpture of Michael Angelo, might be swept off his feet by the music of a master, though he couldn't understand its story. Besides, I've carried a banjo and a cornet to the ends of the earth with me. I saved my life with the cornet once. A lion got inside my zareba in Rhodesia. I hadn't my gun within reach, but I'd been playing the cornet, and just as he was crouching I blew a blast from it--one of those jarring discords of Wagner in the "Gotterdammerung"--and he turned tail and got away into the bush with a howl. Hearing gets to be the most acute of all the senses with the pioneer. If you've ever been really dying of thirst, and have reached water again, its sounds become wonderful to you ever after that--the trickle of a creek, the wash of a wave on the shore, the drip on a tin roof, the drop over a fall, the swish of a rainstorm. It's the same with birds and trees. And trees all make different sounds--that's the shape of the leaves. It's all music, too." Her breath came quickly with pleasure at the imagination and observation of his words. "So it wasn't strange that you should be ravished by Al'mah's singing last night was it?" She looked at him keenly. "Isn't it curious that such a marvellous gift should be given to a woman who in other respects--" she paused. "Yes, I know what you mean. She's so untrained in lots of ways. That's what I was saying to Stafford a little while ago. They live in a world of their own, the stage people. There's always a kind of irresponsibility. The habit of letting themselves go in their art, I suppose, makes them, in real life, throw things down so hard when they don't like them. Living at high pressure is an art like music. It alters the whole equilibrium, I suppose. A woman like Al'mah would commit suicide, or kill a man, without realizing the true significance of it all." "Were you thinking that when you breakfasted with her?" "Yes, when she was laughing and jesting--and when she kissed me good-bye." "When--she--kissed you--good-bye?" Jasmine drew back, then half-glanced towards her stepmother in the other room. She was only twenty-two, and though her emancipation had been accomplished in its way somewhat in advance of her generation, it had its origin in a very early period of her life, when she had been allowed to read books of verse--Shelley, Byron, Shakespeare, Verlaine, Rossetti, Swinburne, and many others--unchallenged and unguided. The understanding of things, reserved for "the wise and prudent," had been at first vaguely and then definitely conveyed to her by slow but subtle means--an apprehension from instinct, not from knowledge. There had never been a shock to her mind. The knowledge of things had grown imperceptibly, and most of life's ugly meanings were known--at a great distance, to be sure, but still known. Yet there came a sudden half-angry feeling when she heard Rudyard Byng say, so loosely, that Al'Mah had kissed him. Was it possible, then, that a man, that any man, thought she might hear such things without resentment; that any man thought her to know so much of life that it did not matter what was said? Did her outward appearance, then, bear such false evidence? He did not understand quite, yet he saw that she misunderstood, and he handled the situation with a tact which seemed hardly to belong to a man of his training and calibre. "She thought no more of kissing me," he continued, presently, in a calm voice--"a man she had seen only once before, and was not likely to see again, than would a child of five. It meant nothing more to her than kissing Fanato on the stage. It was pure impulse. She forgot it as soon as it was done. It was her way of showing gratitude. Somewhat unconventional, wasn't it? But then, she is a little Irish, a little Spanish, and the rest Saxon; and she is all artist and bohemian." Jasmine's face cleared, and her equilibrium was instantly restored. She was glad she had misunderstood. Yet Al'mah had not kissed her when she left, while expressing gratitude, too. There was a difference. She turned the subject, saying: "Of course, she insists on sending me a new cloak, and keeping the other as a memento. It was rather badly singed, wasn't it?" "It did its work well, and it deserves an honoured home. Do you know that even as I flung the cloak round her, in the excitement of the moment I 'sensed,' as my young nephew says, the perfume you use." He lifted his hand, conscious that his fingers still carried some of that delicate perfume which her fingers left there as they lay in his palm when she greeted him on his entrance. "It was like an incense from the cloak, as it blanketed the flames. Strange, wasn't it, that the undersense should be conscious of that little thing, while the over-sense was adding a sensational postscript to the opera?" She smiled in a pleased way. "Do you like the perfume? I really use very little of it." "It's like no other. It starts a kind of cloud of ideas floating. I don't know how to describe it. I imagine myself--" She interrupted, laughing merrily. "My brother says it always makes him angry, and Ian Stafford calls it 'The Wild Tincture of Time'--frivolously and sillily says that it comes from a bank whereon the 'wild thyme' grows! But now, I want to ask you many questions. We have been mentally dancing, while down beyond the Limpopo--" His demeanour instantly changed, and she noted the look cf power and purpose coming into the rather boyish and good-natured, the rash and yet determined, face. It was not quite handsome. The features were not regular, the forehead was perhaps a little too low, and the hair grew very thick, and would have been a vast mane if it had not been kept fairly close by his valet. This valet was Krool, a half-caste-- Hottentot and Boer--whom he had rescued from Lobengula in the Matabele war, and who had in his day been ship-steward, barber, cook, guide, and native recruiter. Krool had attached himself to Byng, and he would not be shaken off even when his master came home to England. Looking at her visitor with a new sense of observation alive in her, Jasmine saw the inherent native drowsiness of the nature, the love of sleep and good living, the healthy primary desires, the striving, adventurous, yet, in one sense, unambitious soul. The very cleft in the chin, like the alluring dimple of a child's cheek, enlarged and hardened, was suggestive of animal beauty, with its parallel suggestion of indolence. Yet, somehow, too ample as he was both in fact and by suggestion to the imagination there was an apparent underlying force, a capacity to do huge things when once roused. He had been roused in his short day. The life into which he had been thrown with men of vaster ambition and much more selfish ends than his own, had stirred him to prodigies of activity in those strenuous, wonderful, electric days when gold and diamonds changed the hard-bitten, wearied prospector, who had doggedly delved till he had forced open the hand of the Spirit of the Earth and caught the treasure that flowed forth, into a millionaire, into a conqueror, with the world at his feet. He had been of those who, for many a night and many a year, eating food scarce fit for Kaffirs, had, in poverty and grim endeavour, seen the sun rise and fall over the Magaliesberg range, hope alive in the morning and dead at night. He had faced the devilish storms which swept the high veld with lightning and the thunderstone, striking men dead as they fled for shelter to the boulders of some barren, mocking kopje; and he had had the occasional wild nights of carousal, when the miseries and robberies of life and time and the ceaseless weariness and hope deferred, were forgotten. It was all there in his face--the pioneer endeavour, the reckless effort, the gambler's anxiety, the self-indulgence, the crude passions, with a far-off, vague idealism, the selfish outlook, and yet great breadth of feeling, with narrowness of individual purpose. The rough life, the sordid struggle, had left their mark, and this easy, coaxing, comfortable life of London had not covered it up--not yet. He still belonged to other--and higher--spheres. There was a great contrast between him and Ian Stafford. Ian was handsome, exquisitely refined, lean and graceful of figure, with a mind which saw the end of your sentences from the first word, with a skill of speech like a Damascus blade, with knowledge of a half-dozen languages. Ian had an allusiveness of conversation which made human intercourse a perpetual entertainment, and Jasmine's intercourse with him a delight which lingered after his going until his coming again. The contrast was prodigious--and perplexing, for Rudyard Byng had qualities which compelled her interest. She sighed as she reflected. "I suppose you can't get three millions all to yourself with your own hands without missing a good deal and getting a good deal you could do without," she said to herself, as he wonderingly interjected the exclamation: "Now, what do you know of the Limpopo? I'll venture there isn't another woman in England who even knows the name." "I always had a thirst for travel, and I've read endless books of travel and adventure," she replied. "I'd have been an explorer, or a Cecil Rhodes, if I had been a man." "Can you ride?" he asked, looking wonderingly at her tiny hand, her slight figure, her delicate face with its almost impossible pink and white. "Oh, man of little faith!" she rejoined. "I can't remember when I didn't ride. First a Shetland pony, and now at last I've reached Zambesi--such a wicked dear." "Zambesi--why Zambesi? One would think you were South African." She enjoyed his mystification. Then she grew serious and her eyes softened. "I had a friend--a girl, older than I. She married. Well, he's an earl now, the Earl of Tynemouth, but he was the elder son then, and wild for sport. They went on their honeymoon to shoot in Africa, and they visited the falls of the Zambesi. She, my friend, was standing on the edge of the chasm--perhaps you know it--not far from Livingstone's tree, between the streams. It was October, and the river was low. She put up her big parasol. A gust of wind suddenly caught it, and instead of letting the thing fly, she hung on, and was nearly swept into the chasm. A man with them pulled her back in time--but she hung on to that red parasol. Only when it was all over did she realize what had really happened. Well, when she came back to England, as a kind of thank-offering she gave me her father's best hunter. That was like her, too; she could always make other people generous. He is a beautiful Satan, and I rechristened him Zambesi. I wanted the red parasol, too, but Alice Tynemouth wouldn't give it to me." "So she gave it to the man who pulled her back. Why not?" "How do you know she did that?" "Well, it hangs in an honoured place in Stafford's chambers. I conjecture right, do I?" Her eyes darkened slowly, and a swift-passing shadow covered her faintly smiling lips; but she only said, "You see he was entitled to it, wasn't he?" To herself, however, she whispered, "Neither of them--neither ever told me that." At that moment the door opened, and a footman came forward to Rudyard Byng. "If you please, sir, your servant says, will you see him. There is news from South Africa." Byng rose, but Jasmine intervened. "No, tell him to come here," she said to the footman. "Mayn't he?" she asked. Byng nodded, and remained standing. He seemed suddenly lost to her presence, and with head dropped forward looked into space, engrossed, intense. Jasmine studied him as an artist would study a picture, and decided that he had elements of the unusual, and was a distinct personality. Though rugged, he was not uncouth, and there was nothing of the nouveau riche about him. He did not wear a ring or scarf-pin, his watch-chain was simple and inconspicuous enough for a school-boy--and he was worth three million pounds, with a palace building in Park Lane and a feudal castle in Wales leased for a period of years. There was nothing greatly striking in his carriage; indeed, he did not make enough of his height and bulk; but his eye was strong and clear, his head was powerful, and his quick smile was very winning. Yet--yet, he was not the type of man who, to her mind should have made three millions at thirty-three. It did not seem to her that he was really representative of the great fortune-builders--she had her grandfather and others closely in mind. She had seen many captains of industry and finance in her grandfather's house, men mostly silent, deliberate and taciturn, and showing in their manner and persons the accumulated habits of patience, force, ceaseless aggression and domination. Was it only luck which had given Rudyard Byng those three millions? It could not be just that alone. She remembered her grandfather used to say that luck was a powerful ingredient in the successful career of every man, but that the man was on the spot to take the luck, knew when to take it, and how to use it. "The lucky man is the man that sits up watching for the windfall while other men are sleeping"--that was the way he had put it. So Rudyard Byng, if lucky, had also been of those who had grown haggard with watching, working and waiting; but not a hair of his head had whitened, and if he looked older than he was, still he was young enough to marry the youngest debutante in England and the prettiest and best-born. He certainly had inherent breeding. His family had a long pedigree, and every man could not be as distinguished-looking as Ian Stafford--as Ian Stafford, who, however, had not three millions of pounds; who had not yet made his name and might never do so. She flushed with anger at herself that she should be so disloyal to Ian, for whom she had pictured a brilliant future--ambassador at Paris or Berlin, or, if he chose, Foreign Minister in Whitehall--Ian, gracious, diligent, wonderfully trained, waiting, watching for his luck and ready to take it; and to carry success, when it came, like a prince of princelier days. Ian gratified every sense in her, met every demand of an exacting nature, satisfied her unusually critical instinct, and was, in effect, her affianced husband. Yet it was so hard to wait for luck, for place, for power, for the environment where she could do great things, could fill that radiant place which her cynical and melodramatic but powerful and sympathetic grandfather had prefigured for her. She had been the apple of that old man's eye, and he had filled her brain--purposely--with ambitious ideas. He had done it when she was very young, because he had not long to stay; and he had overcoloured the pictures in order that the impression should be vivid and indelible when he was gone. He had meant to bless, for, to his mind, to shine, to do big things, to achieve notoriety, to attain power, "to make the band play when you come," was the true philosophy of life. And as this philosophy, successful in his case, was accompanied by habits of life which would bear the closest inspection by the dean and chapter, it was a difficult one to meet by argument or admonition. He had taught his grandchild as successfully as he had built the structure of his success. He had made material things the basis of life's philosophy and purpose; and if she was not wholly materialistic, it was because she had drunk deep, for one so young, at the fountains of art, poetry, sculpture and history. For the last she had a passion which was represented by books of biography without number, and all the standard historians were to be found in her bedroom and her boudoir. Yet, too, when she had opportunity--when Lady Tynemouth brought them to her--she read the newest and most daring productions of a school of French novelists and dramatists who saw the world with eyes morally astigmatic and out of focus. Once she had remarked to Alice Tynemouth: "You say I dress well, yet it isn't I. It's my dressmaker. I choose the over-coloured thing three times out of five--it used to be more than that. Instinctively I want to blaze. It is the same in everything. I need to be kept down, but, alas! I have my own way in everything. I wish I hadn't, for my own good. Yet I can't brook being ruled." To this Alice had replied: "A really selfish husband--not a difficult thing to find--would soon keep you down sufficiently. Then you'd choose the over-coloured thing not more than two times, perhaps one time, out of five. Your orientalism is only undisciplined self-will. A little cruelty would give you a better sense of proportion in colour--and everything else. You have orientalism, but little or no orientation." Here, now, standing before the fire, was that possible husband who, no doubt, was selfish, and had capacities for cruelty which would give her greater proportion--and sense of colour. In Byng's palace, with three millions behind her--she herself had only the tenth of one million--she could settle down into an exquisitely ordered, beautiful, perfect life where the world would come as to a court, and-- Suddenly she shuddered, for these thoughts were sordid, humiliating, and degrading. They were unbidden, but still they came. They came from some dark fountain within herself. She really wanted--her idealistic self wanted--to be all that she knew she looked, a flower in life and thought. But, oh, it was hard, hard for her to be what she wished! Why should it be so hard for her? She was roused by a voice. "Cronje!" it said in a deep, slow, ragged note. Byng's half-caste valet, Krool, sombre of face, small, lean, ominous, was standing in the doorway. "Cronje! . . . Well?" rejoined Byng, quietly, yet with a kind of smother in the tone. Krool stretched out a long, skinny, open hand, and slowly closed the fingers up tight with a gesture suggestive of a trap closing upon a crushed captive. "Where?" Byng asked, huskily. "Doornkop," was the reply; and Jasmine, watching closely, fascinated by Krool's taciturnity, revolted by his immobile face, thought she saw in his eyes a glint of malicious and furtive joy. A dark premonition suddenly flashed into her mind that this creature would one day, somehow, do her harm; that he was her foe, her primal foe, without present or past cause for which she was responsible; but still a foe--one of those antipathies foreordained, one of those evil influences which exist somewhere in the universe against every individual life. "Doornkop--what did I say!" Byng exclaimed to Jasmine. "I knew they'd put the double-and-twist on him at Doornkop, or some such place; and they've done it--Kruger and Joubert. Englishmen aren't slim enough to be conspirators. Dr. Jim was going it blind, trusting to good luck, gambling with the Almighty. It's bury me deep now. It's Paul Kruger licking his chops over the savoury mess. 'Oh, isn't it a pretty dish to set before the king!' What else, Krool?" "Nothing, Baas." "Nothing more in the cables?" "No, Baas." "That will do, Krool. Wait. Go to Mr. Whalen. Say I want him to bring a stenographer and all the Partners--he'll understand--to me at ten to-night." "Yes, Baas." Krool bowed slowly. As he raised his head his eyes caught those of Jasmine. For an instant they regarded each other steadily, then the man's eyes dropped, and a faint flush passed over his face. The look had its revelation which neither ever forgot. A quiver of fear passed through Jasmine, and was followed by a sense of self-protection and a hardening of her will, as against some possible danger. As Krool left the room he said to himself: "The Baas speaks her for his vrouw. But the Baas will go back quick to the Vaal--p'r'aps." Then an evil smile passed over his face, as he thought of the fall of the Rooinek--of Dr. Jim in Oom Paul's clutches. He opened and shut his fingers again with a malignant cruelty. Standing before the fire, Byng said to Jasmine meditatively, with that old ironic humour which was always part of him: "'Fee, fo, fi, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.'" Her face contracted with pain. "They will take Dr. Jim's life?" she asked, solemnly. "It's hard to tell. It isn't him alone. There's lots of others that we both know." "Yes, yes, of course. It's terrible, terrible," she whispered. "It's more terrible than it looks, even now. It's a black day for England. She doesn't know yet how black it is. I see it, though; I see it. It's as plain as an open book. Well, there's work to do, and I must be about it. I'm off to the Colonial Office. No time to lose. It's a job that has no eight-hours shift." Now the real man was alive. He was transformed. The face was set and quiet. He looked concentrated will and power as he stood with his hands clasped behind him, his shoulders thrown back, his eyes alight with fire and determination. To herself Jasmine seemed to be moving in the centre of great events, having her fingers upon the levers which work behind the scenes of the world's vast schemes, standing by the secret machinery of government. "How I wish I could help you," she said, softly, coming nearer to him, a warm light in her liquid blue eyes, her exquisite face flushing with excitement, her hands clasped in front of her. As Byng looked at her, it seemed to him that sweet honesty and high-heartedness had never had so fine a setting; that never had there been in the world such an epitome of talent, beauty and sincerity. He had suddenly capitulated, he who had ridden unscathed so long. If he had dared he would have taken her in his arms there and then; but he had known her only for a day. He had been always told that a woman must be wooed and won, and to woo took time. It was not a task he understood, but suddenly it came to him that he was prepared to do it; that he must be patient and watch and serve, and, as he used to do, perhaps, be elate in the morning and depressed at night, till the day of triumph came and his luck was made manifest. "But you can help me, yes, you can help me as no one else can," he said almost hoarsely, and his hands moved a little towards her. "You must show me how," she said, scarce above a whisper, and she drew back slightly, for this look in his eyes told its own story. "When may I come again?" he asked. "I want so much to hear everything about South Africa. Won't you come to-morrow at six?" she asked. "Certainly, to-morrow at six," he answered, eagerly, "and thank you." His honest look of admiration enveloped her as her hand was again lost in his strong, generous palm, and lay there for a moment thrilling him.... He turned at the door and looked back, and the smile she gave seemed the most delightful thing he had ever seen. "She is a flower, a jasmine-flower," he said, happily, as he made his way into the street. When he had gone she fled to her bedroom. Standing before the mirror, she looked at herself long, laughing feverishly. Then suddenly she turned and threw herself upon the bed, bursting into a passion of tears. Sobs shook her. "Oh, Ian," she said, raisig her head at last, "oh, Ian, Ian, I hate myself!" Down in the library her stepmother was saying to her father, "You are right, Jasmine will marry the nabob." "I am sorry for Ian Stafford," was the response. "Men get over such things," came the quietly cynical reply. "Jasmine takes a lot of getting over," answered Jasmine's father. "She has got the brains of all the family, the beauty her family never had--the genius of my father, and the wilfulness, and--" He paused, for, after all, he was not talking to the mother of his child. "Yes, all of it, dear child," was the enigmatical reply. "I wish--Nelly, I do wish that--" "Yes, I know what you wish, Cuthbert, but it's no good. I'm not of any use to her. She will work out her own destiny alone--as her grandfather did." "God knows I hope not! A man can carry it off, but a woman--" Slow and almost stupid as he was, he knew that her inheritance from her grandfather's nature was a perilous gift. CHAPTER IV THE PARTNERS MEET England was more stunned than shocked. The dark significance, the evil consequences destined to flow from the Jameson Raid had not yet reached the general mind. There was something gallant and romantic in this wild invasion: a few hundred men, with no commissariat and insufficient clothing, with enough ammunition and guns for only the merest flurry of battle, doing this unbelievable gamble with Fate--challenging a republic of fighting men with well-stocked arsenals and capable artillery, with ample sources of supply, with command of railways and communications. It was certainly magnificent; but it was magnificent folly. It did not take England long to decide that point; and not even the Laureate's paean in the organ of the aristocracy and upper middle class could evoke any outburst of feeling. There was plenty of admiration for the pluck and boldness, for the careless indifference with which the raiders risked their lives; for the romantic side of the dash from Pitsani to the Rand; but the thing was so palpably impossible, as it was carried out, that there was not a knowing mind in the Islands which would not have echoed Rhodes' words, "Jameson has upset the apple-cart." Rudyard Byng did not visit Jasmine the next evening at six o'clock. His world was all in chaos, and he had not closed his eyes to sleep since he had left her. At ten o'clock at night, as he had arranged, "The Partners" and himself met at his chambers, around which had gathered a crowd of reporters and curious idlers; and from that time till the grey dawn he and they had sat in conference. He had spent two hours at the Colonial Office after he left Jasmine, and now all night he kneaded the dough of a new policy with his companions in finance and misfortune. There was Wallstein, the fairest, ablest, and richest financier of them all, with a marvellous head for figures and invaluable and commanding at the council-board, by virtue of his clear brain and his power to co-ordinate all the elements of the most confusing financial problems. Others had by luck and persistence made money--the basis of their fortunes; but Wallstein had showed them how to save those fortunes and make them grow; had enabled them to compete successfully with the games of other great financiers in the world's stock-markets. Wallstein was short and stout, with a big blue eye and an unwrinkled forehead; prematurely aged from lack of exercise and the exciting air of the high veld; from planning and scheming while others slept; from an inherent physical weakness due to the fact that he was one of twin sons, to his brother being given great physical strength, to himself a powerful brain for finance and a frail if ample body. Wallstein knew little and cared less about politics; yet he saw the use of politics in finance, and he did not stick his head into the sand as some of his colleagues did when political activities hampered their operations. In Johannesburg he had kept aloof from the struggle with Oom Paul, not from lack of will, but because he had no stomach for daily intrigue and guerrilla warfare and subterranean workings; and he was convinced that only a great and bloody struggle would end the contest for progress and equal rights for all white men on the Rand. His inquiries had been bent towards so disposing the financial operations, so bulwarking the mining industry by sagacious designs, that, when the worst came, they all would be able to weather the storm. He had done his work better than his colleagues knew, or indeed even himself knew. Probably only Fleming the Scotsman--another of the Partners--with a somewhat dour exterior, an indomitable will, and a caution which compelled him to make good every step of the way before him, and so cultivate a long sight financially and politically, understood how extraordinary Wallstein's work had been--only Fleming, and Rudyard Byng, who knew better than any and all. There was also De Lancy Scovel, who had become a biggish figure in the Rand world because he had been a kind of financial valet to Wallstein and Byng, and, it was said, had been a real unofficial valet to Rhodes, being an authority on cooking, and on brewing a punch, and a master of commissariat in the long marches which Rhodes made in the days when he trekked into Rhodesia. It was indeed said that he had made his first ten thousand pounds out of two trips which Rhodes made en route to Lobengula, and had added to this amount on the principle of compound multiplication when the Matabele war came; for here again he had a collateral interest in the commissariat. Rhodes, with a supreme carelessness in regard to money, with an indifference to details which left his mind free for the working of a few main ideas, had no idea how many cheques he gave on the spur of the moment to De Lancy Scovel in this month or in that, in this year or in that, for this thing or for that--cheques written very often on the backs of envelopes, on the white margin of a newspaper, on the fly-leaf of a book or a blank telegraph form. The Master Man was so stirred by half-contemptuous humour at the sycophancy and snobbery of his vain slave, who could make a salad out of anything edible, that, caring little what men were, so long as they did his work for him, he once wrote a cheque for two thousand pounds on the starched cuff of his henchman's "biled shirt" at a dinner prepared for his birthday. So it was that, with the marrow-bones thrown to him, De Lancy Scovel came to a point where he could follow Wallstein's and Rhodes' lead financially, being privy to their plans, through eavesdropping on the conferences of his chiefs. It came as a surprise to his superiors that one day's chance discovery showed De Lancy Scovel to be worth fifty thousand pounds; and from that time on they used him for many a purpose in which it was expedient their own hands should not appear. They felt confident that a man who could so carefully and secretly build up his own fortune had a gift which could be used to advantage. A man who could be so subterranean in his own affairs would no doubt be equally secluded in their business. Selfishness would make him silent. And so it was that "the dude" of the camp and the kraal, the factotum, who in his time had brushed Rhodes' clothes when he brushed his own, after the Kaffir servant had messed them about, came to be a millionaire and one of the Partners. For him South Africa had no charms. He was happy in London, or at his country-seat in Leicestershire, where he followed the hounds with a temerity which was at base vanity; where he gave the county the best food to be got outside St. Petersburg or Paris; where his so-called bachelor establishment was cared for by a coarse, gray-haired housekeeper who, the initiated said, was De Lancy's South African wife, with a rooted objection to being a lady or "moving in social circles"; whose pleasure lay in managing this big household under De Lancy's guidance. There were those who said they had seen her brush a speck of dust from De Lancy's coat-collar, as she emerged from her morning interview with him; and others who said they had seen her hidden in the shrubbery listening to the rather flaccid conversation of her splendid poodle of a master. There were others who had climbed to success in their own way, some by happy accident, some by a force which disregarded anything in their way, and some by sheer honest rough merit, through which the soul of the true pioneer shone. There was also Barry Whalen, who had been educated as a doctor, and, with a rare Irish sense of adaptability and amazing Celtic cleverness, had also become a mining engineer, in the days when the Transvaal was emerging from its pioneer obscurity into the golden light of mining prosperity. Abrupt, obstinately honest, and sincere; always protesting against this and against that, always the critic of authority, whether the authority was friend or foe; always smothering his own views in the moment when the test of loyalty came; always with a voice like a young bull and a heart which would have suited a Goliath, there was no one but trusted Barry, none that had not hurried to him in a difficulty; not because he was so wise, but because he was so true. He would never have made money, in spite of the fact that his prescience, his mining sense, his diagnosis of the case of a mine, as Byng called it, had been a great source of wealth to others, had it not been for Wallstein and Byng. Wallstein had in him a curious gentleness and human sympathy, little in keeping with the view held of him by that section of the British press which would willingly have seen England at the mercy of Paul Kruger--for England's good, for her soul's welfare as it were, for her needed chastisement. He was spoken of as a cruel, tyrannical, greedy German Jew, whose soul was in his own pocket and his hand in the pockets of the world. In truth he was none of these things, save that he was of German birth, and of as good and honest German origin as George of Hanover and his descendants, if not so distinguished. Wallstein's eye was an eye of kindness, save in the vision of business; then it saw without emotion to the advantage of the country where he had made his money, and to the perpetual advantage of England, to whom he gave an honourable and philanthropic citizenship. His charities were not of the spectacular kind; but many a poor and worthy, and often unworthy, unfortunate was sheltered through bad days and heavy weather of life by the immediate personal care of "the Jew Mining Magnate, who didn't care a damn what happened to England so long as his own nest was well lined!" It was Wallstein who took heed of the fact that, as he became rich, Barry Whalen remained poor; and it was he who took note that Barry had a daughter who might any day be left penniless with frail health and no protector; and taking heed and note, it was he made all the Partners unite in taking some financial risks and responsibilities for Barry, when two new mines were opened--to Barry's large profit. It was characteristic of Barry, however, that, if they had not disguised their action by financial devices, and by making him a Partner, because he was needed professionally and intellectually and for other business reasons, nicely phrased to please his Celtic vanity, he would have rejected the means to the fortune which came to him. It was a far smaller fortune than any of the others had; but it was sufficient for him and for his child. So it was that Barry became one of the Partners, and said things that every one else would hesitate to say, but were glad to hear said. Others of the group were of varying degrees of ability and interest and importance. One or two were poltroons in body and mind, with only a real instinct for money-making and a capacity for constructive individualism. Of them the most conspicuous was Clifford Melville, whose name was originally Joseph Sobieski, with habitat Poland, whose small part in this veracious tale belongs elsewhere. Each had his place, and all were influenced by the great schemes of Rhodes and their reflection in the purposes and actions of Wallstein. Wallstein was inspired by the dreams and daring purposes of Empire which had driven Rhodes from Table Mountain to the kraal of Lobengula and far beyond; until, at last, the flag he had learned to love had been triumphantly trailed from the Cape to Cairo. Now in the great crisis, Wallstein, of them all, was the most self-possessed, save Rudyard Byng. Some of the others were paralyzed. They could only whine out execrations on the man who had dared something; who, if he had succeeded, would have been hailed as the great leader of a Revolution, not the scorned and humiliated captain of a filibustering expedition. A triumphant rebellion or raid is always a revolution in the archives of a nation. These men were of a class who run for cover before a battle begins, and can never be kept in the fighting-line except with the bayonet in the small of their backs. Others were irritable and strenuous, bitter in their denunciations of the Johannesburg conspirators, who had bungled their side of the business and who had certainly shown no rashness. At any rate, whatever the merits of their case, no one in England accused the Johannesburgers of foolhardy courage or impassioned daring. They were so busy in trying to induce Jameson to go back that they had no time to go forward themselves. It was not that they lost their heads, their hearts were the disappearing factors. At this gloomy meeting in his house, Byng did not join either of the two sections who represented the more extreme views and the unpolitical minds. There was a small section, of which he was one, who were not cleverer financially than their friends, but who had political sense and intuition; and these, to their credit, were more concerned, at this dark moment, for the political and national consequences of the Raid, than for the certain set-back to the mining and financial enterprises of the Rand. A few of the richest of them were the most hopeless politically--ever ready to sacrifice principle for an extra dividend of a quarter per cent.; and, in their inmost souls, ready to bow the knee to Oom Paul and his unwholesome, undemocratic, and corrupt government, if only the dividends moved on and up. Byng was not a great genius, and he had never given his natural political talent its full chance; but his soul was bigger than his pocket. He had a passionate love for the land--for England--which had given him birth; and he had a decent pride in her honour and good name. So it was that he had almost savagely challenged some of the sordid deliberations of this stern conference. In a full-blooded and manly appeal he begged them "to get on higher ground." If he could but have heard it, it would have cheered the heart of the broken and discredited pioneer of Empire at Capetown, who had received his death-warrant, to take effect within five years, in the little cottage at Muizenberg by the sea; as great a soul in posse as ever came from the womb of the English mother; who said as he sat and watched the tide flow in and out, and his own tide of life ebbed, "Life is a three days' trip to the sea-shore: one day in going, one day in settling down, and one day in packing up again." Byng had one or two colleagues who, under his inspiration, also took the larger view, and who looked ahead to the consequences yet to flow from the fiasco at Doornkop, which became a tragedy. What would happen to the conspirators of Johannesburg? What would happen to Jameson and Willoughby and Bobby White and Raleigh Grey? Who was to go to South Africa to help in holding things together, and to prevent the worst happening, if possible? At this point they had arrived when they saw-- . . . The dull dank morn stare in, Like a dim drowned face with oozy eyes. A more miserable morning seldom had broken, even in England. "I will go. I must go," remarked Byng at last, though there was a strange sinking of the heart as he said it. Even yet the perfume of Jasmine's cloak stole to his senses to intoxicate them. But it was his duty to offer to go; and he felt that he could do good by going, and that he was needed at Johannesburg. He, more than all of them, had been in open conflict with Oom Paul in the the past, had fought him the most vigorously, and yet for him the old veldschoen Boer had some regard and much respect, in so far as he could respect a Rooinek at all. "I will go," Byng repeated, and looked round the table at haggard faces, at ashen faces, at the faces of men who had smoked to quiet their nerves, or drunk hard all night to keep up their courage. How many times they had done the same in olden days, when the millions were not yet arrived, and their only luxury was companionship and champagne--or something less expensive. As Byng spoke, Krool entered the room with a great coffee-pot and a dozen small white bowls. He heard Byng's words, and for a moment his dark eyes glowed with a look of evil satisfaction. But his immobile face showed nothing, and he moved like a spirit among them his lean hand putting a bowl before each person, like a servitor of Death passing the hemlock-brew. At his entrance there was instant silence, for, secret as their conference must be, this half-caste, this Hottentot-Boer, must hear nothing and know nothing. Not one of them but resented his being Byng's servant. Not one but felt him a danger at any time, and particularly now. Once Barry Whalen, the most outwardly brusque and apparently frank of them all, had urged Byng to give Krool up, but without avail; and now Barry eyed the half-caste with a resentful determination. He knew that Krool had heard Byng's words, for he was sitting opposite the double doors, and had seen the malicious eyes light up. Instantly, however, that light vanished. They all might have been wooden men, and Krool but a wooden servitor, so mechanical and concentrated were his actions. He seemed to look at nobody; but some of them shrank a little as he leaned over and poured the brown, steaming liquid and the hot milk into the bowls. Only once did the factotum look at anybody directly, and that was at Byng just as he was about to leave the room. Then Barry Whalen saw him glance searchingly at his master's face in a mirror, and again that baleful light leaped up in his eyes. When he had left the room, Barry Whalen said, impulsively: "Byng, it's all damn foolery your keeping that fellow about you. It's dangerous, 'specially now." "Coffee's good, isn't it? Think there's poison in it?" Byug asked with a contemptuous little laugh. "Sugar--what?" He pushed the great bowl of sugar over the polished table towards Barry. "Oh, he makes you comfortable enough, but--" "But he makes you uncomfortable, Barry? Well, we're bound to get on one another's nerves one way or another in this world when the east wind blows; and if it isn't the east wind, it's some other wind. We're living on a planet which has to take the swipes of the universe, because it has permitted that corrupt, quarrelsome, and pernicious beast, man, to populate the hemispheres. Krool is staying on with me, Barry." "We're in heavy seas, and we don't want any wreckers on the shore," was the moody and nervously indignant reply. "Well, Krool's in the heavy seas, all right, too--with me." Barry Whalen persisted. "We're in for complications, Byng. England has to take a hand in the game now with a vengeance. We don't want any spies. He's more Boer than native." "There'll be nothing Krool can get worth spying for. If we keep our mouths shut to the outside world, we'll not need fear any spies. I'm not afraid of Krool. We'll not be sold by him. Though some one inside will sell us perhaps--as the Johannesburg game was sold by some one inside." There was a painful silence, and more than one man looked at his fellows furtively. "We will do nothing that will not bear the light of day, and then we need not fear any spying," continued Byng. "If we have secret meetings and intentions which we don't make public, it is only what governments themselves have; and we keep them quiet to prevent any one taking advantage of us; but our actions are justfiable. I'm going to do nothing I'm ashamed of; and when it's necessary, or when and if it seems right to do so, I'll put all my cards on the table. But when I do, I'll see that it's a full hand--if I can." There was a silence for a moment after he had ended, then some one said: "You think it's best that you should go? You want to go to Johannesburg?" "I didn't say anything about wanting to go. I said I'd go because one of us--or two of us--ought to go. There's plenty to do here; but if I can be any more use out there, why, Wallstein can stay here, and--" He got no further, for Wallstein, to whom he had just referred, and who had been sitting strangely impassive, with his eyes approvingly fixed on Byng, half rose from his chair and fell forward, his thick, white hands sprawling on the mahogany table, his fat, pale face striking the polished wood with a thud. In an instant they were all on their feet and at his side. Barry Whalen lifted up his head and drew him back into the chair, then three of them lifted him upon a sofa. Barry's hand felt the breast of the prostrate figure, and Byng's fingers sought his wrist. For a moment there was a dreadful silence, and then Byng and Whalen looked at each other and nodded. "Brandy!" said Byng, peremptorily. "He's not dead?" whispered some one. "Brandy--quick," urged Byng, and, lifting up the head a little, he presently caught the glass from Whalen's hand and poured some brandy slowly between the bluish lips. "Some one ring for Krool," he added. A moment later Krool entered. "The doctor--my doctor and his own--and a couple of nurses," Byng said, sharply, and Krool nodded and vanished. "Perhaps it's only a slight heart-attack, but it's best to be on the safe side." "Anyhow, it shows that Wallstein needs to let up for a while," whispered Fleming. "It means that some one must do Wallstein's work here," said Barry Whalen. "It means that Byng stays in London," he added, as Krool entered the room again with a rug to cover Wallstein. Barry saw Krool's eyes droop before his words, and he was sure that the servant had reasons for wishing his master to go to South Africa. The others present, however, only saw a silent, magically adept figure stooping over the sick man, adjusting the body to greater ease, arranging skilfully the cushion under the head, loosening and removing the collar and the boots, and taking possession of the room, as though he himself were the doctor; while Byng looked on with satisfaction. "Useful person, eh?" he said, meaningly, in an undertone to Barry Whalen. "I don't think he's at home in England," rejoined Barry, as meaningly and very stubbornly: "He won't like your not going to South Africa." "Am I not going to South Africa?" Byng asked, mechanically, and looking reflectively at Krool. "Wallstein's a sick man, Byng. You can't leave London. You're the only real politician among us. Some one else must go to Johannesburg." "You--Barry?" "You know I can't, Byng--there's my girl. Besides, I don't carry enough weight, anyhow, and you know that too." Byng remembered Whalen's girl--stricken down with consumption a few months before. He caught Whalen's arm in a grip of friendship. "All right, dear old man," he said, kindly. "Fleming shall go, and I'll stay. Yes, I'll stay here, and do Wallstein's work." He was still mechanically watching Krool attend to the sick man, and he was suddenly conscious of an arrest of all motion in the half-caste's lithe frame. Then Krool turned, and their eyes met. Had he drawn Krool's eyes to his--the master-mind influencing the subservient intelligence? "Krool wants to go to South Africa," he said to himself with a strange, new sensation which he did not understand, though it was not quite a doubt. He reassured himself. "Well, it's natural he should. It's his home.... But Fleming must go to Johannesburg. I'm needed most here." There was gratitude in his heart that Fate had decreed it so. He was conscious of the perfume from Jasmine's cloak searching his senses, even in this hour when these things that mattered--the things of Fate--were so enormously awry. CHAPTER V A WOMAN TELLS HER STORY "Soon he will speak you. Wait here, madame." Krool passed almost stealthily out. Al'mah looked round the rather formal sitting-room, with its somewhat incongruous furnishing--leopard-skins from Bechuanaland; lion-skins from Matabeleland; silver-mounted tusks of elephants from Eastern Cape Colony and Portuguese East Africa; statues and statuettes of classical subjects; two or three Holbeins, a Rembrandt, and an El Greco on the walls; a piano, a banjo, and a cornet; and, in the corner, a little roulette-table. It was a strange medley, in keeping, perhaps, with the incongruously furnished mind of the master of it all; it was expressive of tastes and habits not yet settled and consistent. Al'mah's eyes had taken it all in rather wistfully, while she had waited for Krool's return from his master; but the wistfulness was due to personal trouble, for her eyes were clouded and her motions languid. But when she saw the banjo, the cornet, and the roulette-table, a deep little laugh rose to her full red lips. "How like a subaltern, or a colonial civil servant!" she said to herself. She reflected a moment, then pursued the thought further: "But there must be bigness in him, as well as presence of mind and depth of heart--yes, I'm sure his nature is deep." She remembered the quick, protecting hands which had wrapped her round with Jasmine Grenfel's cloak, and the great arms in which she had rested, the danger over. "There can't be much wrong with a nature like his, though Adrian hates him so. But, of course, Adrian would. Besides, Adrian will never get over the drop in the mining-stock which ruined him--Rudyard Byng's mine.... It's natural for Adrian to hate him, I suppose," she added with a heavy sigh. Mentally she took to comparing this room with Adrian Fellowes' sitting-room overlooking the Thames Embankment, where everything was in perfect taste and order, where all was modulated, harmonious, soigne and artistic. Yet, somehow, the handsome chambers which hung over the muddy river with its wonderful lights and shades, its mists and radiance, its ghostly softness and greyness, lacked in something that roused imagination, that stirred her senses here--the vital being in her. It was power, force, experience, adventure. They were all here. She knew the signs: the varied interests, the primary emotions, music, art, hunting, prospecting, fighting, gambling. They were mixed with the solid achievement of talent and force in the business of life. Here was a model of a new mining-drill, with a picture of the stamps working in the Work-and-Wonder mine, together with a model of the Kaffir compound at Kimberley, with the busy, teeming life behind the wire boundaries. Thus near was Byng to the ways of a child, she thought, thus near to the everlasting intelligence and the busy soul of a constructive and creative Deity--if there was a Deity. Despite the frequent laughter on her tongue and in her eyes, she doubted bitterly at times that there was a Deity. For how should happen the awful tragedies which encompassed men and peoples, if there was a Deity. No benign Deity could allow His own created humanity to be crushed in bleeding masses, like the grapes trampled in the vats of a vineyard. Whole cities swallowed up by earthquake; islands swept of their people by a tidal wave; a vast ship pierced by an iceberg and going down with its thousand souls; provinces spread with the vile elements of a plague which carpeted the land with dead; mines flooded by water or devastated by fire; the little new-born babe left without the rightful breast to feed it; the mother and her large family suddenly deprived of the breadwinner; old men who had lived like saints, giving their all to their own and to the world, driven to the degradation of the poorhouse in the end--ah, if one did not smile, one would die of weeping, she thought. Al'mah had smiled her way through the world; with a quick word of sympathy for any who were hurt by the blows of life or time; with an open hand for the poor and miserable,--now that she could afford it--and hiding her own troubles behind mirth and bonhommie; for her humour, as her voice, was deep and strong like that of a man. It was sometimes too pronounced, however, Adrian Fellowes had said; and Adrian was an acute observer, who took great pride in her. Was it not to Adrian she had looked first for approval the night of her triumph at Covent Garden--why, that was only a few days ago, and it seemed a hundred days, so much had happened since. It was Adrian's handsome face which had told her then of the completeness of her triumph. The half-caste valet entered again. "Here come, madame," he said with something very near a smile; for he liked this woman, and his dark, sensual soul would have approved of his master liking her. "Soon the Baas, madame," he said as he placed a chair for her, and with the gliding footstep of a native left the room. "Sunny creature!" she remarked aloud, with a little laugh, and looked round. Instantly her face lighted with interest. Here was nothing of that admired disorder, that medley of incongruous things which marked the room she had just left; but perfect order, precision, and balance of arrangement, the most peaceful equipoise. There was a great carved oak-table near to sun-lit windows, and on it were little regiments of things, carefully arranged--baskets with papers in elastic bands; classified and inscribed reference-books, scales, clips, pencils; and in one clear space, with a bunch of violets before it, the photograph of a woman in a splendid silver frame--a woman of seventy or so, obviously Rudyard Byng's mother. Al'mah's eyes softened. Here was insight into a nature of which the world knew so little. She looked further. Everywhere were signs of disciplined hours and careful hands--cabinets with initialed drawers, shelves filled with books. There is no more impressive and revealing moment with man or woman than when you stand in a room empty of their actual presence, but having, in every inch of it, the pervasive influences of the absent personality. A strange, almost solemn quietness stole over Al'mah's senses. She had been admitted to the inner court, not of the man's house, but of his life. Her eyes travelled on with the gratified reflection that she had been admitted here. Above the books were rows of sketches--rows of sketches! Suddenly, as her eyes rested on them, she turned pale and got to her feet. They were all sketches of the veld, high and low; of natives; of bits of Dutch architecture; of the stoep with its Boer farmer and his vrouw; of a kopje with a dozen horses or a herd of cattle grazing; of a spruit, or a Kaffir's kraal; of oxen leaning against the disselboom of a cape-wagon; of a herd of steinboks, or a little colony of meerkats in the karoo. Her hand went to her heart with a gesture of pain, and a little cry of misery escaped her lips. Now there was a quick footstep, and Byng entered with a cordial smile and an outstretched hand. "Well, this is a friendly way to begin the New Year," he said, cheerily, taking her hand. "You certainly are none the worse for our little unrehearsed drama the other night. I see by the papers that you have been repeating your triumph. Please sit down. Do you mind my having a little toast while we talk? I always have my petit dejeuner here; and I'm late this morning." "You look very tired," she said as she sat down. Krool here entered with a tray, placing it on a small table by the big desk. He was about to pour out the tea, but Byng waved him away. "Send this note at once by hand," he said, handing him an envelope. It was addressed to Jasmine Grenfel. "Yes, I'm tired--rather," he added to his guest with a sudden weariness of manner. "I've had no sleep for three nights--working all the time, every hour; and in this air of London, which doesn't feed you, one needs plenty of sleep. You can't play with yourself here as you can on the high veld, where an hour or two of sleep a day will do. On-saddle and off-saddle, in-span and outspan, plenty to eat and a little sleep; and the air does the rest. It has been a worrying time." "The Jameson Raid--and all the rest?" "Particularly all the rest. I feel easier in my mind about Dr. Jim and the others. England will demand--so I understand," he added with a careful look at her, as though he had said too much--"the right to try Jameson and his filibusters from Matabeleland here in England; but it's different with the Jo'burgers. They will be arrested--" "They have been arrested," she intervened. "Oh, is it announced?" he asked without surprise. "It was placarded an hour ago," she replied, heavily. "Well, I fancied it would be," he remarked. "They'll have a close squeak. The sympathy of the world is with Kruger--so far." "That is what I have come about," she said, with an involuntary and shrinking glance at the sketches on the walls. "What you have come about?" he said, putting down his cup of tea and looking at her intently." How are you concerned? Where do you come in?" "There is a man--he has been arrested with the others; with Farrar, Phillips, Hammond, and the rest--" "Oh, that's bad! A relative, or--" "Not a relative, exactly," she replied in a tone of irony. Rising, she went over to the wall and touched one of the water-colour sketches. "How did you come by these?" she asked. "Blantyre's sketches? Well, it's all I ever got for all Blantyre owed me, and they're not bad. They're lifted out of the life. That's why I bought them. Also because I liked to think I got something out of Blantyre; and that he would wish I hadn't. He could paint a bit-- don't you think so?" "He could paint a bit--always," she replied. A silence followed. Her back was turned to him, her face was towards the pictures. Presently he spoke, with a little deferential anxiety in the tone. "Are you interested in Blantyre?" he asked, cautiously. Getting up, he came over to her. "He has been arrested--as I said--with the others." "No, you did not say so. So they let Blantyre into the game, did they?" he asked almost musingly; then, as if recalling what she had said, he added: "Do you mind telling me exactly what is your interest in Blantyre?" She looked at him straight in the eyes. For a face naturally so full of humour, hers was strangely dark with stormy feeling now. "Yes, I will tell you as much as I can--enough for you to understand," she answered. He drew up a chair to the fire, and she sat down. He nodded at her encouragingly. Presently she spoke. "Well, at twenty-one I was studying hard, and he was painting--" "Blantyre?" She inclined her head. "He was full of dreams--beautiful, I thought them; and he was ambitious. Also he could talk quite marvellously." "Yes, Blantyre could talk--once," Byng intervened, gently. "We were married secretly." Byng made a gesture of amazement, and his face became shocked and grave. "Married! Married! You were married to Blantyre?" "At a registry office in Chelsea. One month, only one month it was, and then he went away to Madeira to paint--'a big commission,' he said; and he would send for me as soon as he could get money in hand--certainly in a couple of months. He had taken most of my half-year's income--I had been left four hundred a year by my mother." Byng muttered a malediction under his breath and leaned towards her sympathetically. With an effort she continued. "From Madeira he wrote to tell me he was going on to South Africa, and would not be home for a year. From South Africa he wrote saying he was not coming back; that I could divorce him if I liked. The proof, he said, would be easy; or I needn't divorce him unless I liked, since no one knew we were married." For an instant there was absolute silence, and she sat with her fingers pressed tight to her eyes. At last she went on, her face turned away from the great kindly blue eyes bent upon her, from the face flushed with honourable human sympathy. "I went into the country, where I stayed for nearly three years, till--till I could bear it no longer; and then I began to study and sing again." "What were you doing in the country?" he asked in a low voice. "There was my baby," she replied, her hands clasping and unclasping in pain. "There was my little Nydia." "A child--she is living?" he asked gently. "No, she died two years ago," was the answer in a voice which tried to be firm. "Does Blantyre know?" "He knew she was born, nothing more." "We were married secretly." "And after all he has done, and left undone, you want to try and save him now?" He was thinking that she still loved the man. "That offscouring!" he said to himself. "Well, women beat all! He treats her like a Patagonian; leaves her to drift with his child not yet born; rakes the hutches of the towns and the kraals of the veld for women--always women, black or white, it didn't matter; and yet, by gad, she wants him back!" She seemed to understand what was passing in his mind. Rising, with a bitter laugh which he long remembered, she looked at him for a moment in silence, then she spoke, her voice shaking with scorn: "You think it is love for him that prompts me now?" Her eyes blazed, but there was a contemptuous laugh at her lips, and she nervously pulled at the tails of her sable muff. "You are wrong--absolutely. I would rather bury myself in the mud of the Thames than let him touch me. Oh, I know what his life must have been--the life of him that you know! With him it would either be the sewer or the sycamore-tree of Zaccheus; either the little upper chamber among the saints or eating husks with the swine. I realize him now. He was easily susceptible to good and evil, to the clean and the unclean; and he might have been kept in order by some one who would give a life to building up his character; but his nature was rickety, and he has gone down and not up." "Then why try to save him? Let Oom Paul have him. He'll do no more harm, if--" "Wait a minute," she urged. "You are a great man"--she came close to him--"and you ought to understand what I mean, without my saying it. I want to save him for his own sake, not for mine--to give him a chance. While there's life there's hope. To go as he is, with the mud up to his lips--ah, can't you see! He is the father of my dead child. I like to feel that he may make some thing of his life and of himself yet. That's why I haven't tried to divorce him, and--" "If you ever want to do so--" he interrupted, meaningly. "Yes, I know. I have always been sure that nothing could be quite so easy; but I waited, on the chance of something getting hold of him which would lift him out of himself, give him something to think of so much greater than himself, some cause, perhaps--" "He had you and your unborn child," he intervened. "Me--!" She laughed bitterly. "I don't think men would ever be better because of me. I've never seen that. I've seen them show the worst of human nature because of me--and it wasn't inspiring. I've not met many men who weren't on the low levels." "He hasn't stood his trial for the Johannesburg conspiracy yet. How do you propose to help him? He is in real danger of his life." She laughed coldly, and looked at him with keen, searching eyes. "You ask that, you who know that in the armory of life there's one all-powerful weapon?" He nodded his head whimsically. "Money? Well, whatever other weapons you have, you must have that, I admit. And in the Transvaal--" "Then here," she said, handing him an envelope--"here is what may help." He took it hesitatingly. "I warn you," he remarked, "that if money is to be used at all, it must be a great deal. Kruger will put up the price to the full capacity of the victim." "I suppose this victim has nothing," she ventured, quietly. "Nothing but what the others give him, I should think. It may be a very costly business, even if it is possible, and you--" "I have twenty thousand pounds," she said. "Earned by your voice?" he asked, kindly. "Every penny of it." "Well, I wouldn't waste it on Blantyre, if I were you. No, by Heaven, you shall not do it, even if it can be done! It is too horrible." "I owe it to myself to do it. After all, he is still my husband. I have let it be so; and while it is so, and while"--her eyes looked away, her face suffused slightly, her lips tightened--"while things are as they are, I am bound--bound by something, I don't know what, but it is not love, and it is not friendship--to come to his rescue. There will be legal expenses--" Byng frowned. "Yes, but the others wouldn't see him in a hole--yet I'm not sure, either, Blantyre being Blantyre. In any case, I'm ready to do anything you wish." She smiled gratefully. "Did you ever know any one to do a favor who wasn't asked to repeat it--paying one debt by contracting another, finding a creditor who will trust, and trading on his trust? Yet I'd rather owe you two debts than most men one." She held out her hand to him. "Well, it doesn't do to mope--'The merry heart goes all the day, the sad one tires in a mile-a.' And I am out for all day. Please wish me a happy new year." He took her hand in both of his. "I wish you to go through this year as you ended the last--in a blaze of glory." "Yes, really a blaze if not of glory," she said, with bright tears, yet laughing, too, a big warm humour shining in her strong face with the dark brown eyes and the thick, heavy eyebrows under a low, broad forehead like his own. They were indeed strangely alike in many ways both of mind and body. "They say we end the year as we begin it," he said, cheerily. "You proved to Destiny that you were entitled to all she could give in the old year, and you shall have the best that's to be had in 1897. You are a woman in a million, and--" "May I come and breakfast with you some morning?" she asked, gaily. "Well, if ever I'm thought worthy of that honour, don't hesitate. As the Spanish say, It is all yours." He waved a hand to the surroundings. "No, it is all yours," she said, reflectively, her eyes slowly roaming about her. "It is all you. I'm glad to have been here, to be as near as this to your real life. Real life is so comforting after the mock kind so many of us live; which singers and actors live anyhow." She looked round the room again. "I feel--I don't know why it is, but I feel that when I'm in trouble I shall always want to come to this room. Yes, and I will surely come; for I know there's much trouble in store for me. You must let me come. You are the only man I would go to like this, and you can't think what it means to me--to feel that I'm not misunderstood, and that it seems absolutely right to come. That's because any woman could trust you--as I do. Good-bye." In another moment she had gone, and he stood beside the table with the envelope she had left with him. Presently he opened it, and unfolded the cheque which was in it. Then he gave an exclamation of astonishment. "Seven thousand pounds!" he exclaimed. "That's a better estimate of Krugerism than I thought she had. It'll take much more than that, though, if it's done at all; but she certainly has sense. It's seven thousand times too much for Blantyre," he added, with an exclamation of disgust. "Blantyre--that outsider!" Then he fell to thinking of all she had told him. "Poor girl--poor girl!" he said aloud. "But she must not come here, just the same. She doesn't see that it's not the thing, just because she thinks I'm a Sir Galahad--me!" He glanced at the picture of his mother, and nodded toward it tenderly. "So did she always. I might have turned Kurd and robbed caravans, or become a Turk and kept concubines, and she'd never have seen that it was so. But Al'mah mustn't come here any more, for her own sake.... I'd find it hard to explain if ever, by any chance--" He fell to thinking of Jasmine, and looked at the clock. It was only ten, and he would not see Jasmine till six; but if he had gone to South Africa he would not have seen her at all! Fate and Wallstein had been kind. Presently, as he went to the hall to put on his coat and hat to go out, he met Barry Whalen. Barry looked at him curiously; then, as though satisfied, he said: "Early morning visitor, eh? I just met her coming away. Card of thanks for kind services au theatre, eh?" "Well, it isn't any business of yours what it is, Barry," came the reply in tones which congealed. "No, perhaps not," answered his visitor, testily, for he had had a night of much excitement, and, after all, this was no way to speak to a friend, to a partner who had followed his lead always. Friendship should be allowed some latitude, and he had said hundreds of things less carefully to Byng in the past. The past--he was suddenly conscious that Byng had changed within the past few days, and that he seemed to have put restraint on himself. Well, he would get back at him just the same for the snub. "It's none of my business," he retorted, "but it's a good deal of Adrian Fellowes' business--" "What is a good deal of Adrian Fellowes' business?" "Al'mah coming to your rooms. Fellowes is her man. Going to marry her, I suppose," he added, cynically. Byng's jaw set and his eyes became cold. "Still, I'd suggest your minding your own business, Barry. Your tongue will get you into trouble some day.... You've seen Wallstein this morning--and Fleming?" Barry replied sullenly, and the day's pressing work began, with the wires busy under the seas. CHAPTER VI WITHIN THE POWER-HOUSE At a few moments before six o'clock Byng was shown into Jasmine's sitting-room. As he entered, the man who sat at the end of the front row of stalls the first night of "Manassa" rose to his feet. It was Adrian Fellowes, slim, well groomed, with the colour of an apple in his cheeks, and his gold-brown hair waving harmoniously over his unintellectual head. "But, Adrian, you are the most selfish man I've ever known," Jasmine was saying as Byng entered. Either Jasmine did not hear the servant announce Byng, or she pretended not to do so, and the words were said so distinctly that Byng heard them as he came forward. "Well, he is selfish," she added to Byng, as she shook hands. "I've known him since I was a child, and he has always had the best of everything and given nothing for it." Turning again to Fellowes, she continued: "Yes, it's true. The golden apples just fall into your hands." "Well, I wish I had the apples, since you give me the reputation," Fellowes replied, and, shaking hands with Byng, who gave him an enveloping look and a friendly greeting, he left the room. "Such a boy--Adrian," Jasmine said, as they sat down. "Boy--he looks thirty or more!" remarked Byng in a dry tone. "He is just thirty. I call him a boy because he is so young in most things that matter to people. He is the most sumptuous person--entirely a luxury. Did you ever see such colouring--like a woman's! But selfish, as I said, and useful, too, is Adrian. Yes, he really is very useful. He would be a private secretary beyond price to any one who needed such an article. He has tact--as you saw--and would make a wonderful master of ceremonies, a splendid comptroller of the household and equerry and lord-chamberlain in one. There, if ever you want such a person, or if--" She paused. As she did so she was sharply conscious of the contrast between her visitor and Ian Stafford in outward appearance. Byng's clothes were made by good hands, but they were made by tailors who knew their man was not particular, and that he would not "try on." The result was a looseness and carelessness of good things--giving him, in a way, the look of shambling power. Yet in spite of the tie a little crooked, and the trousers a little too large and too short, he had touches of that distinction which power gives. His large hands with the square-pointed fingers had obtrusive veins, but they were not common. "Certainly," he intervened, smiling indulgently; "if ever I want a comptroller, or an equerry, or a lord-chamberlain, I'll remember 'Adrian.' In these days one can never tell. There's the Sahara. It hasn't been exploited yet. It has no emperor." "I like you in this mood," she said, eagerly. "You seem on the surface so tremendously practical and sensible. You frighten me a little, and I like to hear you touch things off with raillery. But, seriously, if you can ever put anything in that boy's way, please do so. He has had bad luck--in your own Rand mine. He lost nearly everything in that, speculating, and--" Byng's face grew serious again. "But he shouldn't have speculated; he should have invested. It wants brains, good fortune, daring and wealth to speculate. But I will remember him, if you say so. I don't like to think that he has been hurt in any enterprise of mine. I'll keep him in mind. Make him one of my secretaries perhaps." Then Barry Whalen's gossip suddenly came to his mind, and he added: "Fellowes will want to get married some day. That face and manner will lead him into ways from which there's only one outlet." "Matrimony?" She laughed. "Oh dear, no, Adrian is much too selfish to marry." "I thought that selfishness was one of the elements of successful marriages. I've been told so." A curious look stole into her eyes. All at once she wondered if his words had any hidden meaning, and she felt angrily self-conscious; but she instantly put the reflection away, for if ever any man travelled by the straight Roman road of speech and thought, it was he. He had only been dealing in somewhat obvious worldly wisdom. "You ought not to give encouragement to such ideas by repeating them," she rejoined with raillery. "This is an age of telepathy and suggestion, and the more silent we are the safer we are. Now, please, tell me everything--of the inside, I mean--about Cecil Rhodes and the Raiders. Is Rhodes overwhelmed? And Mr. Chamberlain--you have seen him? The papers say you have spent many hours at the Colonial Office. I suppose you were with him at six o'clock last evening, instead of being here with me, as you promised." He shook his head. "Rhodes? The bigger a man is the greater the crash when he falls; and no big man falls alone." She nodded. "There's the sense of power, too, which made everything vibrate with energy, which gave a sense of great empty places filled--of that power withdrawn and collapsed. Even the bad great man gone leaves a sense of desolation behind. Power--power, that is the thing of all," she said, her eyes shining and her small fingers interlacing with eager vitality: "power to set waves of influence in motion which stir the waters on distant shores. That seems to me the most wonderful thing." Her vitality, her own sense of power, seemed almost incongruous. She was so delicately made, so much the dresden-china shepherdess, that intensity seemed out of relation to her nature. Yet the tiny hands playing before her with natural gestures like those of a child had, too, a decision and a firmness in keeping with the perfectly modelled head and the courageous poise of the body. There was something regnant in her, while, too, there was something sumptuous and sensuous and physically thrilling to the senses. To-day she was dressed in an exquisite blue gown, devoid of all decoration save a little chinchilla fur, which only added to its softness and richness. She wore no jewelry whatever except a sapphire brooch, and her hair shone and waved like gossamer in the sun. "Well, I don't know," he rejoined, admiration unbounded in his eyes for the picture she was of maidenly charm and womanly beauty, "I should say that goodness was a more wonderful thing. But power is the most common ambition, and only a handful of the hundreds of millions get it in any large way. I used to feel it tremendously when I first heard the stamps pounding the quartz in the mills on the Rand. You never heard that sound? In the clear height of that plateau the air reverberates greatly; and there's nothing on earth which so much gives a sense of power--power that crushes--as the stamps of a great mine pounding away night and day. There they go, thundering on, till it seems to you that some unearthly power is hammering the world into shape. You get up and go to the window and look out into the night. There's the deep blue sky--blue like nothing you ever saw in any other sky, and the stars so bright and big, and so near, that you feel you could reach up and pluck one with your hand; and just over the little hill are the lights of the stamp-mills, the smoke and the mad red flare, the roar of great hammers as they crush, crush, crush; while the vibration of the earth makes you feel that you are living in a world of Titans." "And when it all stops?" she asked, almost breathlessly. "When the stamps pound no more, and the power is withdrawn? It is empty and desolate--and frightening?" "It is anything you like. If all the mills all at once, with the thousands of stamps on the Rand reef, were to stop suddenly, and the smoke and the red flare were to die, it would be frightening in more ways than one. But I see what you mean. There might be a sense of peace, but the minds and bodies which had been vibrating with the stir of power would feel that the soul had gone out of things, and they would dwindle too." "If Rhodes should fall, if the stamps on the Rand should cease--?" He got to his feet. "Either is possible, maybe probable; and I don't want to think of it. As you say, there'd be a ghastly sense of emptiness and a deadly kind of peace." He smiled bitterly. She rose now also, and fingering some flowers in a vase, arranging them afresh, said: "Well, this Jameson Raid, if it is proved that Cecil Rhodes is mixed up in it, will it injure you greatly--I mean your practical interests?" He stood musing for a moment. "It's difficult to say at this distance. One must be on the spot to make a proper estimate. Anything may happen." She was evidently anxious to ask him a question, but hesitated. At last she ventured, and her breath came a little shorter as she spoke. "I suppose you wish you were in South Africa now. You could do so much to straighten things out, to prevent the worst. The papers say you have a political mind--the statesman's intelligence, the Times said. That letter you wrote, that speech you made at the Chamber of Commerce dinner--" She watched him, dreading what his answer might be. There was silence for a moment, then he answered: "Fleming is going to South Africa, not myself. I stay here to do Wallstein's work. I was going, but Wallstein was taken ill suddenly. So I stay--I stay." She sank down in her chair, going a little pale from excitement. The whiteness of her skin gave a delicate beauty to the faint rose of her cheeks--that rose-pink which never was to fade entirely from her face while life was left to her. "If it had been necessary, when would you have gone?" she asked. "At once. Fleming goes to-morrow," he added. She looked slowly up at him. "Wallstein is a new name for a special Providence," she murmured, and the colour came back to her face. "We need you here. We--" Suddenly a thought flashed into his mind and suffused his face. He was conscious of that perfume which clung to whatever she touched. It stole to his senses and intoxicated them. He looked at her with enamoured eyes. He had the heart of a boy, the impulsiveness of a nature which had been unschooled in women's ways. Weaknesses in other directions had taught him much, but experiences with her sex had been few. The designs of other women had been patent to him, and he had been invincible to all attack; but here was a girl who, with her friendly little fortune and her beauty, could marry with no difficulty; who, he had heard, could pick and choose, and had so far rejected all comers; and who, if she had shown preference at all, had shown it for a poor man like Ian Stafford. She had courage and simplicity and a downright mind; that was clear. And she was capable. She had a love for big things, for the things that mattered. Every word she had ever said to him had understanding, not of the world alone, and of life, but of himself, Rudyard Byng. She grasped exactly what he would say, and made him say things he would never have thought of saying to any one else. She drew him out, made the most of him, made him think. Other women only tried to make him feel. If he had had a girl like this beside him during the last ten years, how many wasted hours would have been saved, how many bottles of champagne would not have been opened, how many wild nights would have been spent differently! Too good, too fine for him--yes, a hundred times, but he would try to make it up to her, if such a girl as this could endure him. He was not handsome, he was not clever, so he said to himself, but he had a little power. That he had to some degree rough power, of course, but power; and she loved power, force. Had she not said so, shown it, but a moment before? Was it possible that she was really interested in him, perhaps because he was different from the average Englishman and not of a general pattern? She was a woman of brains, of great individuality, and his own individuality might influence her. It was too good to be true; but there had ever been something of the gambler in him, and he had always plunged. If he ever had a conviction he acted on it instantly, staked everything, when that conviction got into his inner being. It was not, perhaps, a good way, and it had failed often enough; but it was his way, and he had done according to the light and the impulse that were in him. He had no diplomacy, he had only purpose. He came over to her. "If I had gone to South Africa would you have remembered my name for a month?" he asked with determination and meaning. "My friends never suffer lunar eclipse," she answered, gaily. "Dear sir, I am called Hold-Fast. My friends are century-flowers and are always blooming." "You count me among your friends?" "I hope so. You will let me make all England envious of me, won't you? I never did you any harm, and I do want to have a hero in my tiny circle." "A hero--you mean me? Well, I begin to think I have some courage when I ask you to let me inside your 'tiny' circle. I suppose most people would think it audacity, not courage." "You seem not to be aware what an important person you are--how almost sensationally important. Why, I am only a pebble on a shore like yours, a little unknown slip of a girl who babbles, and babbles in vain." She got to her feet now. "Oh, but believe me, believe me," she said, with sweet and sudden earnestness, "I am prouder than I can say that you will let me be a friend of yours! I like men who have done things, who do things. My grandfather did big, world-wide things, and--" "Yes, I know; I met your grandfather once. He was a big man, big as can be. He had the world by the ear always." "He spoiled me for the commonplace," she replied. "If I had lived in Pizarro's time, I'd have gone to Peru with him, the splendid robber." He answered with the eager frankness and humour of a boy. "If you mean to be a friend of mine, there are those who will think that in one way you have fulfilled your ambition, for they say I've spoiled the Peruvians, too." "I like you when you say things like that," she murmured. "If you said them often--" She looked at him archly, and her eyes brimmed with amusement and excitement. Suddenly he caught both her hands in his and his eyes burned. "Will you--" He paused. His courage forsook him. Boldness had its limit. He feared a repulse which could never be overcome. "Will you, and all of you here, come down to my place in Wales next week?" he blundered out. She was glad he had faltered. It was too bewildering. She dared not yet face the question she had seen he was about to ask. Power--yes, he could give her that; but power was the craving of an ambitious soul. There were other things. There was the desire of the heart, the longing which came with music and the whispering trees and the bright stars, the girlish dreams of ardent love and the garlands of youth and joy--and Ian Stafford. Suddenly she drew herself together. She was conscious that the servant was entering the room with a letter. "The messenger is waiting," the servant said. With an apology she opened the note slowly as Byng turned to the fire. She read the page with a strange, tense look, closing her eyes at last with a slight sense of dizziness. Then she said to the servant: "Tell the messenger to wait. I will write an answer." "I am sure we shall be glad to go to you in Wales next week," she added, turning to Byng again. "But won't you be far away from the centre of things in Wales?" "I've had the telegraph and a private telephone wire to London put in. I shall be as near the centre as though I lived in Grosvenor Square; and there are always special trains." "Special trains--oh, but it's wonderful to have power to do things like that! When do you go down?" she asked. "To-morrow morning." She smiled radiantly. She saw that he was angry with himself for his cowardice just now, and she tried to restore him. "Please, will you telephone me when you arrive at your castle? I should like the experience of telephoning by private wire to Wales." He brightened. "Certainly, if you really wish it. I shall arrive at ten to-morrow night, and I'll telephone you at eleven." "Splendid--splendid! I'll be alone in my room then. I've got a telephone instrument there, and so we could say good-night." "So we can say good-night," he repeated in a low voice, and he held out his hand in good-bye. When he had gone, with a new, great hope in his heart, she sat down and tremblingly re-opened the note she had received a moment before. "I am going abroad" it read--"to Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg. I think I've got my chance at last. I want to see you before I go--this evening, Jasmine. May I?" It was signed "Ian." "Fate is stronger than we are," she murmured; "and Fate is not kind to you, Ian," she added, wearily, a wan look coming into her face. "Mio destino," she said at last--"mio destino!" But who was her destiny--which of the two who loved her? BOOK II CHAPTER VII THREE YEARS LATER "Extra speshul--extra speshul--all about Kruger an' his guns!" The shrill, acrid cry rang down St. James's Street, and a newsboy with a bunch of pink papers under his arm shot hither and thither on the pavement, offering his sensational wares to all he met. "Extra speshul--extra speshul--all about the war wot's comin'--all about Kruger's guns!" From an open window on the second floor of a building in the street a man's head was thrust out, listening. "The war wot's comin'!" he repeated, with a bitter sort of smile. "And all about Kruger's guns. So it is coming, is it, Johnny Bull; and you do know all about his guns, do you? If it is, and you do know, then a shattering big thing is coming, and you know quite a lot, Johnny Bull." He hummed to himself an impromptu refrain to an impromptu tune: "Then you know quite a lot, Johnny Bull, Johnny Bull, Then you know quite a lot, Johnny Bull!" Stepping out of the French window upon a balcony now, he looked down the street. The newsboy was almost below. He whistled, and the lad looked up. In response to a beckoning finger the gutter-snipe took the doorway and the staircase at a bound. Like all his kind, he was a good judge of character, and one glance had assured him that he was speeding upon a visit of profit. Half a postman's knock--a sharp, insistent stroke--and he entered, his thin weasel-like face thrust forward, his eyes glittering. The fire in such eyes is always cold, for hunger is poor fuel to the native flame of life. "Extra speshul, m'lord--all about Kruger's guns." He held out the paper to the figure that darkened the window, and he pronounced the g in Kruger soft, as in Scrooge. The hand that took the paper deftly slipped a shilling into the cold, skinny palm. At its first touch the face of the paper-vender fell, for it was the same size as a halfpenny; but even before the swift fingers had had a chance to feel the coin, or the glance went down, the face regained its confidence, for the eyes looking at him were generous. He had looked at so many faces in his brief day that he was an expert observer. "Thank y' kindly," he said; then, as the fingers made assurance of the fortune which had come to him, "Ow, thank ye werry much, y'r gryce," he added. Something alert and determined in the face of the boy struck the giver of the coin as he opened the paper to glance at its contents, and he paused to scan him more closely. He saw the hunger in the lad's eyes as they swept over the breakfast-table, still heavy with uneaten breakfast--bacon, nearly the whole of an omelette, and rolls, toast, marmalade and honey. "Wait a second," he said, as the boy turned toward the door. "Yes, y'r gryce." "Had your breakfast?" "I has me brekfist w'en I sells me pypers." The lad hugged the remaining papers closer under his arms, and kept his face turned resolutely away from the inviting table. His host correctly interpreted the action. "Poor little devil--grit, pure grit!" he said under his breath. "How many papers have you got left?" he asked. The lad counted like lightning. "Ten," he answered. "I'll soon get 'em off now. Luck's wiv me dis mornin'." The ghost of a smile lighted his face. "I'll take them all," the other said, handing over a second shilling. The lad fumbled for change and the fumbling was due to honest agitation. He was not used to this kind of treatment. "No, that's all right," the other interposed. "But they're only a h'ypenny," urged the lad, for his natural cupidity had given way to a certain fine faculty not too common in any grade of human society. "Well, I'm buying them at a penny this morning. I've got some friends who'll be glad to give a penny to know all about Kruger's guns." He too softened the g in Kruger in consideration of his visitor's idiosyncrasies. "You won't be mykin' anythink on them, y'r gryce," said the lad with a humour which opened the doors of Ian Stafford's heart wide; for to him heaven itself would be insupportable if it had no humorists. "I'll get at them in other ways," Stafford rejoined. "I'll get my profit, never fear. Now what about breakfast? You've sold all your papers, you know." "I'm fair ready for it, y'r gryce," was the reply, and now the lad's glance went eagerly towards the door, for the tension of labour was relaxed, and hunger was scraping hard at his vitals. "Well, sit down--this breakfast isn't cold yet.... But, no, you'd better have a wash-up first, if you can wait," Stafford added, and rang a bell. "Wot, 'ere--brekfist wiv y'r gryce 'ere?" "Well, I've had mine"--Stafford made a slight grimace--" and there's plenty left for you, if you don't mind eating after me." "I dusted me clothes dis mornin'," said the boy, with an attempt to justify his decision to eat this noble breakfast. "An' I washed me 'ends--but pypers is muck," he added. A moment later he was in the fingers of Gleg the valet in the bath-room, and Stafford set to work to make the breakfast piping hot again. It was an easy task, as heaters were inseparable from his bachelor meals, and, though this was only the second breakfast he had eaten since his return to England after three years' absence, everything was in order. For Gleg was still more the child of habit--and decorous habit--than himself. It was not the first time that Gleg had had to deal with his master's philanthropic activities. Much as he disapproved of them, he could discriminate; and there was that about the newsboy which somehow disarmed him. He went so far as to heap the plate of the lad, and would have poured the coffee too, but that his master took the pot from his hand and with a nod and a smile dismissed him; and his master's smile was worth a good deal to Gleg. It was an exacting if well-paid service, for Ian Stafford was the most particular man in Europe, and he had grown excessively so during the past three years, which, as Gleg observed, had brought great, if quiet, changes in him. He had grown more studious, more watchful, more exclusive in his daily life, and ladies of all kinds he had banished from direct personal share in his life. There were no more little tea-parties and dejeuners chez lui, duly chaperoned by some gracious cousin or aunt--for there was no embassy in Europe where he had not relatives. "'Ipped--a bit 'ipped. 'E 'as found 'em out, the 'uzzies," Gleg had observed; for he had decided that the general cause of the change in his master was Woman, though he did not know the particular woman who had 'ipped him. As the lad ate his wonderful breakfast, in which nearly half a pot of marmalade and enough butter for three ordinary people figured, Stafford read the papers attentively, to give his guest a fair chance at the food and to overcome his self-consciousness. He got an occasional glance at the trencherman, however, as he changed the sheets, stepped across the room to get a cigarette, or poked the small fire--for, late September as it was, a sudden cold week of rain had come and gone, leaving the air raw; and a fire was welcome. At last, when he realized that the activities of the table were decreasing, he put down his paper. "Is it all right?" he asked. "Is the coffee hot?" "I ain't never 'ad a meal like that, y'r gryce, not never any time," the boy answered, with a new sort of fire in his eyes. "Was there enough?" "I've left some," answered his guest, looking at the jar of marmalade and half a slice of toast. "I likes the coffee hot--tykes y'r longer to drink it," he added. Ian Stafford chuckled. He was getting more than the worth of his money. He had nibbled at his own breakfast, with the perturbations of a crossing from Flushing still in his system, and its equilibrium not fully restored; and yet, with the waste of his own meal and the neglect of his own appetite, he had given a great and happy half-hour to a waif of humanity. As he looked at the boy he wondered how many thousands there were like him within rifle-shot from where he sat, and he thought each of them would thank whatever gods they knew for such a neglected meal. The words from the scare-column of the paper he held smote his sight: "War Inevitable--Transvaal Bristling with Guns and Loaded to the Nozzle with War Stores--Milner and Kruger No Nearer a Settlement-- Sullen and Contemptuous Treatment of British Outlander." . . . And so on. And if war came, if England must do this ugly thing, fulfil her bitter and terrible task, then what about such as this young outlander here, this outcast from home and goodly toil and civilized conditions, this sickly froth of the muddy and dolorous stream of lower England? So much withdrawn from the sources of the possible relief, so much less with which to deal with their miseries--perhaps hundreds of millions, mopped up by the parched and unproductive soil of battle and disease and loss. He glanced at the paper again. "Britons Hold Your Own," was the heading of the chief article. "Yes, we must hold our own," he said, aloud, with a sigh. "If it comes, we must see it through; but the breakfasts will be fewer. It works down one way or another--it all works down to this poor little devil and his kind." "Now, what's your name?" he asked. "Jigger," was the reply. "What else?" "Nothin', y'r gryce." "Jigger--what?" "It's the only nyme I got," was the reply. "What's your father's or your mother's name?" "I ain't got none. I only got a sister." "What's her name?" "Lou," he answered." That's her real name. But she got a fancy name yistiddy. She was took on at the opera yistiddy, to sing with a hunderd uvver girls on the styge. She's Lulu Luckingham now." "Oh--Luckingham!" said Stafford, with a smile, for this was a name of his own family, and of much account in circles he frequented. "And who gave her that name? Who were her godfathers and godmothers?" "I dunno, y'r gryce. There wasn't no religion in it. They said she'd have to be called somefink, and so they called her that. Lou was always plenty for 'er till she went there yistiddy." "What did she do before yesterday?" "Sold flowers w'en she could get 'em to sell. 'Twas when she couldn't sell her flowers that she piped up sort of dead wild--for she 'adn't 'ad nothin' to eat, an' she was fair crusty. It was then a gentleman, 'e 'eard 'er singin' hot, an' he says, 'That's good enough for a start,' 'e says, 'an' you come wiv me,' he says. 'Not much,' Lou says, 'not if I knows it. I seed your kind frequent.' But 'e stuck to it, an' says, 'It's stryght, an' a lydy will come for you to-morrer, if you'll be 'ere on this spot, or tell me w'ere you can be found.' An' Lou says, says she, 'You buy my flowers, so's I kin git me bread-baskit full, an' then I'll think it over.' An' he bought 'er flowers, an' give 'er five bob. An' Lou paid rent for both of us wiv that, an' 'ad brekfist; an' sure enough the lydy come next dy an' took her off. She's in the opery now, an' she'll 'ave 'er brekfist reg'lar. I seed the lydy meself. Her picture 's on the 'oardings--" Suddenly he stopped. "W'y, that's 'er--that's 'er!" he said, pointing to the mantel-piece. Stafford followed the finger and the glance. It was Al'mah's portrait in the costume she had worn over three years ago, the night when Rudyard Byng had rescued her from the flames. He had bought it then. It had been unpacked again by Gleg, and put in the place it had occupied for a day or two before he had gone out of England to do his country's work--and to face the bitterest disillusion of his life; to meet the heaviest blow his pride and his heart had ever known. "So that's the lady, is it?" he said, musingly, to the boy, who nodded assent. "Go and have a good look at it," urged Stafford. The boy did so. "It's 'er--done up for the opery," he declared. "Well, Lulu Luckingham is all right, then. That lady will be good to her." "Right. As soon as I seed her, I whispers to Lou 'You keep close to that there wall,' I sez. 'There's a chimbey in it, an' you'll never be cold,' I says to Lou." Stafford laughed softly at the illustration. Many a time the lad snuggled up to a wall which had a warm chimney, and he had got his figure of speech from real life. "Well, what's to become of you?" Stafford asked. "Me--I'll be level wiv me rent to-day," he answered, turning over the two shillings and some coppers in his pocket; "an' Lou and me's got a fair start." Stafford got up, came over, and laid a hand on the boy's shoulder. "I'm going to give you a sovereign," he said--"twenty shillings, for your fair start; and I want you to come to me here next Sunday-week to breakfast, and tell me what you've done with it." "Me--y'r gryce!" A look of fright almost came into the lad's face. "Twenty bob--me!" The sovereign was already in his hand, and now his face suffused. He seemed anxious to get away, and looked round for his cap. He couldn't do here what he wanted to do. He felt that he must burst. "Now, off you go. And you be here at nine o'clock on Sunday-week with the papers, and tell me what you've done." "Gawd--my Gawd!" said the lad, huskily. The next minute he was out in the hall, and the door was shut behind him. A moment later, hearing a whoop, Stafford went to the window and, looking down, he saw his late visitor turning a cart-wheel under the nose of a policeman, and then, with another whoop, shooting down into the Mall, making Lambeth way. With a smile he turned from the window. "Well, we shall see," he said. "Perhaps it will be my one lucky speculation. Who knows--who knows!" His eye caught the portrait of Al'mah on the mantelpiece. He went over and stood looking at it musingly. "You were a good girl," he said, aloud. "At any rate, you wouldn't pretend. You'd gamble with your immortal soul, but you wouldn't sell it--not for three millions, not for a hundred times three millions. Or is it that you are all alike, you women? Isn't there one of you that can be absolutely true? Isn't there one that won't smirch her soul and kill the faith of those that love her for some moment's excitement, for gold to gratify a vanity, or to have a wider sweep to her skirts? Vain, vain, vain--and dishonourable, essentially dishonourable. There might be tragedies, but there wouldn't be many intrigues if women weren't so dishonourable--the secret orchard rather than the open highway and robbery under arms.... Whew, what a world!" He walked up and down the room for a moment, his eyes looking straight before him; then he stopped short. "I suppose it's natural that, coming back to England, I should begin to unpack a lot of old memories, empty out the box-room, and come across some useless and discarded things. I'll settle down presently; but it's a thoroughly useless business turning over old stock. The wise man pitches it all into the junk-shop, and cuts his losses." He picked up the Morning Post and glanced down the middle page--the social column first--with the half-amused reflection that he hadn't done it for years, and that here were the same old names reappearing, with the same brief chronicles. Here, too, were new names, some of them, if not most of them, of a foreign turn to their syllables--New York, Melbourne, Buenos Ayres, Johannesburg. His lip curled a little with almost playful scorn. At St. Petersburg, Vienna, and elsewhere he had been vaguely conscious of these social changes; but they did not come within the ambit of his daily life, and so it had not mattered. And there was no reason why it should matter now. His England was a land the original elements of which would not change, had not changed; for the old small inner circle had not been invaded, was still impervious to the wash of wealth and snobbery and push. That refuge had its sequestered glades, if perchance it was unilluminating and rather heavily decorous; so that he could let the climbers, the toadies, the gold-spillers, and the bribers have the middle of the road. It did not matter so much that London was changing fast. The old clock on the tower of St. James's would still give the time to his step as he went to and from the Foreign Office, and there were quiet places like Kensington Gardens where the bounding person would never think to stray. Indeed, they never strayed; they only rushed and pushed where their spreading tails could be seen by the multitude. They never got farther west than Rotten Row, which was in possession of three classes of people--those who sat in Parliament, those who had seats on the Stock Exchange, and those who could not sit their horses. Three years had not done it all, but it had done a good deal; and he was more keenly alive to the changes and developments which had begun long before he left and had increased vastly since. Wealth was more and more the master of England--new-made wealth; and some of it was too ostentatious and too pretentious to condone, much less indulge. All at once his eye, roaming down the columns, came upon the following announcement: "Mr. and Mrs. Rudyard Byng have returned to town from Scotland for a few days, before proceeding to Wales, where they are presently to receive at Glencader Castle the Duke and Duchess of Sheffield, the Prince and Princess of Cleaves, M. Santon, the French Foreign Minister, the Slavonian Ambassador, the Earl and Countess of Tynemouth, and Mr. Tudor Tempest." "'And Mr. Tudor Tempest,'" Ian repeated to himself. "Well, she would. She would pay that much tribute to her own genius. Four-fifths to the claims of the body and the social nervous system, and one-fifth to the desire of the soul. Tempest is a literary genius by what he has done, and she is a genius by nature, and with so much left undone. The Slavonian Ambassador--him, and the French Foreign Minister! That looks like a useful combination at this moment--at this moment. She has a gift for combinations, a wonderful skill, a still more wonderful perception--and a remarkable unscrupulousness. She's the naturally ablest woman I have ever known; but she wants to take short-cuts to a worldly Elysium, and it can't be done, not even with three times three millions--and three millions was her price." Suddenly he got up and went over to a table where were several dispatch-boxes. Opening one, he drew forth from the bottom, where he had placed it nearly three years ago, a letter. He looked at the long, sliding handwriting, so graceful and fine, he caught the perfume which had intoxicated Rudyard Byng, and, stooping down, he sniffed the dispatch-box. He nodded. "She's pervasive in everything," he murmured. He turned over several other packets of letters in the box. "I apologize," he said, ironically, to these letters. "I ought to have banished her long ago, but, to tell you the truth, I didn't realize how much she'd influence everything--even in a box." He laughed cynically, and slowly opened the one letter which had meant so much to him. There was no show of agitation. His eye was calm; only his mouth showed any feeling or made any comment. It was a little supercilious and scornful. Sitting down by the table, he spread the letter out, and read it with great deliberation. It was the first time he had looked at it since he received it in Vienna and had placed it in the dispatch-box. "Dear Ian," it ran, "our year of probation--that is the word isn't it?--is up; and I have decided that our ways must lie apart. I am going to marry Rudyard Byng next month. He is very kind and very strong, and not too ragingly clever. You know I should chafe at being reminded daily of my own stupidity by a very clever man. You and I have had so many good hours together, there has been such confidence between us, that no other friendship can ever be the same; and I shall always want to go to you, and ask your advice, and learn to be wise. You will not turn a cold shoulder on me, will you? I think you yourself realized that my wish to wait a year before giving a final answer was proof that I really had not that in my heart which would justify me in saying what you wished me to say. Oh yes, you knew; and the last day when you bade me good-bye you almost said as much! I was so young, so unschooled, when you first asked me, and I did not know my own mind; but I know it now, and so I go to Rudyard Byng for better or for worse--" He suddently stopped reading, sat back in his char, and laughed sardonically. "For richer, for poorer'--now to have launched out on the first phrase, and to have jibbed at the second was distinctly stupid. The quotation could only have been carried off with audacity of the ripest kind. 'For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part, amen--' That was the way to have done it, if it was to be done at all. Her cleverness forsook her when she wrote that letter. 'Our year of probation'--she called it that. Dear, dear, what a poor prevaricator the best prevaricator is! She was sworn to me, bound to me, wanted a year in which to have her fling before she settled down, and she threw me over--like that." He did not read the rest of the letter, but got up, went over to the fire, threw it in, and watched it burn. "I ought to have done so when I received it," he said, almost kindly now. "A thing like that ought never to be kept a minute. It's a terrible confession, damning evidence, a self-made exposure, and to keep it is too brutal, too hard on the woman. If anything had happened to me and it had been read, 'Not all the King's horses nor all the King's men could put Humpty Dumpty together again.'" Then he recalled the brief letter he had written her in reply. Unlike him, she had not kept his answer, when it came into her hands, but, tearing it up into fifty fragments, had thrown it into the waste- basket, and paced her room in shame, anger and humiliation. Finally, she had taken the waste-basket and emptied it into the flames. She had watched the tiny fragments burn in a fire not hotter than that in her own eyes, which presently were washed by a flood of bitter tears and passionate and unavailing protest. For hours she had sobbed, and when she went out into the world the next day, it was with his every word ringing in her ears, as they had rung ever since: the sceptic comment at every feast, the ironical laughter behind every door, the whispered detraction in every loud accent of praise. "Dear Jasmine," his letter had run, "it is kind of you to tell me of your intended marriage before it occurs, for in these distant lands news either travels slowly or does not reach one at all. I am fortunate in having my information from the very fountain of first knowledge. You have seen and done much in the past year; and the end of it all is more fitting than the most meticulous artist could desire or conceive. You will adorn the new sphere into which you enter. You are of those who do not need training or experience: you are a genius, whose chief characteristic is adaptability. Some people, to whom nature and Providence have not been generous live up to things; to you it is given to live down to them; and no one can do it so well. We have had good times together--happy conversations and some cheerful and entertaining dreams and purposes. We have made the most of opportunity, each in his and her own way. But, my dear Jasmine, don't ever think that you will need to come to me for advice and to learn to be wise. I know of no one from whom I could learn, from whom I have learned, so I much. I am deeply your debtor for revelations which never could have come to me without your help. There is a wonderful future before you, whose variety let Time, not me, attempt to reveal. I shall watch your going on"--(he did not say goings on)--"your Alpine course, with clear memories of things and hours dearer to me than all the world, and with which I would not have parted for the mines of the Rand. I lose them now for nothing--and less than nothing. I shall be abroad for some years, and, meanwhile, a new planet will swim into the universe of matrimony. I shall see the light shining, but its heavenly orbit will not be within my calculations. Other astronomers will watch, and some no doubt will pray, and I shall read in the annals the bright story of the flower that was turned into a star! "Always yours sincerely, IAN STAFFORD." From the filmy ashes of her letter to him Stafford now turned away to his writing-table. There he sat for a while and answered several notes, among them one to Alice Mayhew, now the Countess of Tynemouth, whose red parasol still hung above the mantel-piece, a relic of the Zambesi--and of other things. Periodically Lady Tynemouth's letters had come to him while he was abroad, and from her, in much detail, he had been informed of the rise of Mrs. Byng, of her great future, her "delicious" toilettes, her great entertainments for charity, her successful attempts to gather round her the great figures in the political and diplomatic world; and her partial rejection of Byng's old mining and financial confreres and their belongings. It had all culminated in a visit of royalty to their place in Suffolk, from which she had emerged radiantly and delicately aggressive, and sweeping a wider circle with her social scythe. Ian had read it all unperturbed. It was just what he knew she could and would do; and he foresaw for Byng, if he wanted it, a peerage in the not distant future. Alice Tynemouth was no gossip, and she was not malicious. She had a good, if wayward, heart, was full of sentiment, and was a constant and helpful friend. He, therefore, accepted her invitation now to spend the next week-end with her and her husband; and then, with letters to two young nephews in his pocket, he prepared to sally forth to buy them presents, and to get some sweets for the children of a poor invalid cousin to whom for years he had been a generous friend. For children he had a profound love, and if he had married, he would not have been content with a childless home--with a childless home like that of Rudyard Byng. That news also had come to him from Alice Tynemouth, who honestly lamented that Jasmine Byng had no "balance-wheel," which was the safety and the anchor of women "like her and me," Lady Tynemouth's letter had said. Three millions then--and how much more now?--and big houses, and no children. It was an empty business, or so it seemed to him, who had come of a large and agreeably quarrelsome and clever family, with whom life had been checkered but never dull. He took up his hat and stick, and went towards the door. His eyes caught Al'mah's photograph as he passed. "It was all done that night at the opera," he said. "Jasmine made up her mind then to marry him, . . . I wonder what the end will be.... Sad little, bad little girl.... The mess of pottage at the last? Quien sabe!" CHAPTER VIII "HE SHALL NOT TREAT ME SO" The air of the late September morning smote Stafford's cheeks pleasantly, and his spirits rose as he walked up St. James's Street. His step quickened imperceptibly to himself, and he nodded to or shook hands with half a dozen people before he reached Piccadilly. Here he completed the purchases for his school-boy nephews, and then he went to a sweet-shop in Regent Street to get chocolates for his young relatives. As he entered the place he was suddenly brought to a standstill, for not two dozen yards away at a counter was Jasmine Byng. She did not see him enter, and he had time to note what matrimony, and the three years and the three million pounds, had done to her. She was radiant and exquisite, a little paler, a little more complete, but increasingly graceful and perfectly appointed. Her dress was of dark green, of a most delicate shade, and with the clinging softness and texture of velvet. She wore a jacket of the same material, and a single brilliant ornament at her throat relieved the simplicity. In the hat, too, one big solitary emerald shone against the lighter green. She was talking now with animation and amusement to the shop-girl who was supplying her with sweets, and every attendant was watching her with interest and pleasure. Stafford reflected that this was always her way: wherever she went she attracted attention, drew interest, magnetized the onlooker. Nothing had changed in her. nothing of charm and beauty and eloquence,--how eloquent she had always been!--of esprit, had gone from her; nothing. Presently she turned her face full toward him, still not seeing him, half hidden as he was behind some piled-up tables in the centre of the shop. Nothing changed? Yes, instantly he was aware of a change, in the eyes, at the mouth. An elusive, vague, distant kind of disturbance--he could not say trouble--had stolen into her eyes, had taken possession of the corners of the mouth; and he was conscious of something exotic, self-indulgent, and "emancipated." She had always been self-indulgent and selfish, and, in a wilful, innocent way, emancipated, in the old days; but here was a different, a fuller, a more daring expression of these qualities.... Ah, he had it now! That elusive something was a lurking recklessness, which, perhaps, was not bold enough yet to leap into full exercise, or even to recognize itself. So this was she to whom he had given the best of which he had been capable--not a very noble or priceless best, he was willing to acknowledge, but a kind of guarantee of the future, the nucleus of fuller things. As he looked at her now his heart did not beat faster, his pulses did not quicken, his eye did not soften, he did not even wish himself away. Love was as dead as last year's leaves--so dead that no spirit of resentment, or humiliation, or pain of heart was in his breast at this sight of her again. On the contrary, he was conscious of a perfect mastery of himself, of being easily superior to the situation. Love was dead; youth was dead; the desire that beats in the veins of the young was dead; his disillusion and disappointment and contempt for one woman had not driven him, as it so often does, to other women--to that wild waste which leaves behind it a barren and ill-natured soil exhausted of its power, of its generous and native health. There was a strange apathy in his senses, an emotional stillness, as it were, the atrophy of all the passionate elements of his nature. But because of this he was the better poised, the more evenly balanced, the more perceptive. His eyes were not blurred or dimmed by any stress of emotion, his mind worked in a cool quiet, and his forward tread had leisurely decision and grace. He had sunk one part of himself far below the level of activity or sensation, while new resolves, new powers of mind, new designs were set in motion to make his career a real and striking success. He had the most friendly ear and the full confidence of the Prime Minister, who was also Foreign Secretary--he had got that far; and now, if one of his great international schemes could but be completed, an ambassadorship would be his reward, and one of first-class importance. The three years had done much for him in a worldly way, wonderfully much. As he looked at the woman who had shaken his life to the centre--not by her rejection of him, but by the fashion of it, the utter selfishness and cold-blooded calculation of it, he knew that love's fires were out, and that he could meet her without the agitation of a single nerve. He despised her, but he could make allowance for her. He knew the strain that was in her, got from her brilliant and rather plangent grandfather. He knew the temptation of a vast fortune, the power that it would bring--and the notoriety, too, again an inheritance from her grandfather. He was not without magnanimity, and he could the more easily exercise it because his pulses of emotion were still. She was by nature the most brilliantly endowed woman he had ever met, the most naturally perceptive and artistic, albeit there was a touch of gorgeousness to the inherent artistry which time, training and experience would have chastened. Would have chastened? Was it not, then, chastened? Looking at her now, he knew that it was not. It was still there, he felt; but how much else was also there--of charm, of elusiveness, of wit, of mental adroitness, of joyous eagerness to discover a new thought or a new thing! She was a creature of rare splendour, variety and vanity. Why should he deny himself the pleasure of her society? His intellectual side would always be stimulated by her, she would always "incite him to mental riot," as she had often said. Time had flown, love had flown, and passion was dead; but friendship stayed. Yes, friendship stayed--in spite of all. Her conduct had made him blush for her, had covered him with shame, but she was a woman, and therefore weak--he had come to that now. She was on a lower plateau of honour, and therefore she must be--not forgiven--that was too banal; but she must be accepted as she was. And, after all, there could be no more deception; for opportunity and occasion no longer existed. He would go and speak to her now. At that moment he was aware that she had caught sight of him, and that she was startled. She had not known of his return to England, and she was suddenly overwhelmed by confusion. The words of the letter he had written her when she had thrown him over rushed through her brain now, and hurt her as much as they did the first day they had been received. She became a little pale, and turned as though to find some other egress from the shop. There being none, there was but one course, and that was to go out as though she had not seen him. He had not even been moved at all at seeing her; but with her it was different. She was disturbed--in her vanity? In her peace? In her pride? In her senses? In her heart? In any, or each, or all? But she was disturbed: her equilibrium was shaken. He had scorched her soul by that letter to her, so gently cold, so incisive, so subtly cruel, so deadly in its irony, so final--so final. She was ashamed, and no one else in the world but Ian Stafford could so have shamed her. Power had been given to her, the power of great riches--the three millions had been really four--and everything and everybody, almost, was deferential towards her. Had it brought her happiness, or content, or joy? It had brought her excitement--much of that--and elation, and opportunity to do a thousand things, and to fatigue herself in a thousand ways; but had it brought happiness? If it had, the face of this man who was once so much to her, and whom she had flung into outer darkness, was sufficient to cast a cloud over it. She felt herself grow suddenly weak, but she determined to go out of the place without appearing to see him. He was conscious of it all, saw it out of a corner of his eye, and as she started forward, he turned, deliberately walked towards her, and, with a cheerful smile, held out his hand. "Now, what good fortune!" he said, spiritedly. "Life plays no tricks, practices no deception this time. In a book she'd have made us meet on a grand staircase or at a court ball." As he said this, he shook her hand warmly, and again and again, as would be fitting with old friends. He had determined to be master of the situation, and to turn the moment to the credit of his account--not hers; and it was easy to do it, for love was dead, and the memory of love atrophied. Colour came back to her face. Confusion was dispelled, a quick and grateful animation took possession of her, to be replaced an instant after by the disconcerting reflection that there was in his face or manner not the faintest sign of emotion or embarrassment. From his attitude they might have been good friends who had not met for some time; nothing more. "Yes, what a place to meet!" she said. "It really ought to have been at a green-grocer's, and the apotheosis of the commonplace would have been celebrated. But when did you return? How long do you remain in England?" Ah, the sense of relief to feel that he was not reproaching her for anything, not impeaching her by an injured tone and manner, which so many other men had assumed with infinitely less right or cause than he! "I came back thirty-six hours ago, and I stay at the will of the master-mind," he answered. The old whimsical look came into her face, the old sudden flash which always lighted her eyes when a daring phrase was born in her mind, and she instantly retorted: "The master-mind--how self-centred you are!" Whatever had happened, certainly the old touch of intellectual diablerie was still hers, and he laughed good-humoredly. Yes, she might be this or that, she might be false or true, she might be one who had sold herself for mammon, and had not paid tribute to the one great natural principle of being, to give life to the world, man and woman perpetuating man and woman; but she was stimulating and delightful without effort. "And what are you doing these days?" he asked. "One never hears of you now." This was cruel, but she knew that he was "inciting her to riot," and she replied: "That's because you are so secluded--in your kindergarten for misfit statesmen. Abandon knowledge, all ye who enter there!" It was the old flint and steel, but the sparks were not bright enough to light the tinder of emotion. She knew it, for he was cool and buoyant and really unconcerned, and she was feverish--and determined. "You still make life worth living," he answered, gaily. "It is not an occupation I would choose," she replied. "It is sure to make one a host of enemies." "So many of us make our careers by accident," he rejoined. "Certainly I made mine not by design," she replied instantly; and there was an undercurrent of meaning in it which he was not slow to notice; but he disregarded her first attempt to justify, however vaguely, her murderous treatment of him. "But your career is not yet begun," he remarked. Her eyes flashed--was it anger, or pique, or hurt, or merely the fire of intellectual combat? "I am married," she said, defiantly, in direct retort. "That is not a career--it is casual exploration in a dark continent," he rejoined. "Come and say that to my husband," she replied, boldly. Suddenly a thought lighted her eyes. "Are you by any chance free to-morrow night to dine with us--quite, quite en famille' Rudyard will be glad to see you--and hear you," she added, teasingly. He was amused. He felt how much he had really piqued her and provoked her by showing her so plainly that she had lost every vestige of the ancient power over him; and he saw no reason why he should not spend an evening where she sparkled. "I am free, and will come with pleasure," he replied. "That is delightful," she rejoined, "and please bring a box of bons mots with you. But you will come, then--?" She was going to add, "Ian," but she paused. "Yes, I'll come--Jasmine," he answered, coolly, having read her hesitation aright. She flushed, was embarrassed and piqued, but with a smile and a nod she left him. In her carriage, however, her breath came quick and fast, her tiny hand clenched, her face flushed, and there was a devastating fire in her eyes. "He shall not treat me so. He shall show some feeling. He shall--he shall--he shall!" she gasped, angrily. CHAPTER IX THE APPIAN WAY "Cape to Cairo be damned!" The words were almost spat out. The man to whom they were addressed slowly drew himself up from a half-recumbent position in his desk-chair, from which he had been dreamily talking into the ceiling, as it were, while his visitor leaned against a row of bookshelves and beat the floor impatiently with his foot. At the rude exclamation, Byng straightened himself, and looked fixedly at his visitor. He had been dreaming out loud again the dream which Rhodes had chanted in the ears of all those who shared with him the pioneer enterprises of South Africa. The outburst which had broken in on his monologue was so unexpected that for a moment he could scarcely realize the situation. It was not often, in these strenuous and perilous days--and for himself less often than ever before, so had London and London life worked upon him--that he, or those who shared with him the vast financial responsibilities of the Rand, indulged in dreams or prophecies; and he resented the contemptuous phrase just uttered, and the tone of the speaker even more. Byng's blank amazement served only to incense his visitor further. "Yes, be damned to it, Byng!" he continued. "I'm sick of the British Empire and the All Red, and the 'immense future.' What I want is the present. It's about big enough for you and me and the rest of us. I want to hold our own in Johannesburg. I want to pull thirty-five millions a year out of the eighty miles of reef, and get enough native labour to do it. I want to run the Rand like a business concern, with Kruger gone to Holland; and Leyds gone to blazes. That's what I want to see, Mr. Invincible Rudyard Byng." The reply to this tirade was deliberate and murderously bitter. "That's what you want to see, is it, Mr. Blasphemous Barry Whalen? Well, you can want it with a little less blither and a little more manners." A hard and ugly look was now come into the big clean-shaven face which had become sleeker with good living, and yet had indefinably coarsened in the three years gone since the Jameson raid; and a gloomy anger looked out of the deep-blue eyes as he slowly went on: "It doesn't matter what you want--not a great deal, if the others agree generally on what ought to be done; and I don't know that it matters much in any case. What have you come to see me about?" "I know I'm not welcome here, Byng. It isn't the same as it used to be. It isn't--" Byng jerked quickly to his feet and lunged forward as though he would do his visitor violence; but he got hold of himself in time, and, with a sudden and whimsical toss of the head, characteristic of him, he burst into a laugh. "Well, I've been stung by a good many kinds of flies in my time, and I oughtn't to mind, I suppose," he growled.... "Oh, well, there," he broke off; "you say you're not welcome here? If you really feel that, you'd better try to see me at my chambers--or at the office in London Wall. It can't be pleasant inhaling air that chills or stifles you. You take my advice, Barry, and save yourself annoyance. But let me say in passing that you are as welcome here as anywhere, neither more nor less. You are as welcome as you were in the days when we trekked from the Veal to Pietersburg and on into Bechuanaland, and both slept in the cape-wagon under one blanket. I don't think any more of you than I did then, and I don't think any less, and I don't want to see you any more or any fewer. But, Barry"--his voice changed, grew warmer, kinder--" circumstances are circumstances. The daily lives of all of us are shaped differently--yours as well as mine--here in this pudding-faced civilization and in the iron conventions of London town; and we must adapt ourselves accordingly. We used to flop down on our Louis Quinze furniture on the Vaal with our muddy boots on--in our front drawing-room. We don't do it in Thamesfontein, my noble buccaneer--not even in Barry Whalen's mansion in Ladbroke Square, where Barry Whalen, Esq., puts his silk hat on the hall table, and-- and, 'If you please, sir, your bath is ready'! . . . Don't be an idiot-child, Barry, and don't spoil my best sentences when I let myself go. I don't do it often these days--not since Jameson spilt the milk and the can went trundling down the area. It's little time we get for dreaming, these sodden days, but it's only dreams that do the world's work and our own work in the end. It's dreams that do it, Barry; it's dreams that drive us on, that make us see beyond the present and the stupefying, deadening grind of the day. So it'll be Cape to Cairo in good time, dear lad, and no damnation, if you please.... Why, what's got into you? And again, what have you come to see me about, anyhow? You knew we were to meet at dinner at Wallstein's to-night. Is there anything that's skulking at our heels to hurt us?" The scowl on Barry Whalen's dissipated face cleared a little. He came over, rested both hands on the table and leaned forward as he spoke, Byng resuming his seat meanwhile. Barry's voice was a little thick with excitement, but he weighed his words too. "Byng, I wanted you to know beforehand what Fleming intends to bring up to-night--a nice kind of reunion, isn't it, with war ahead as sure as guns, and the danger of everything going to smash, in spite of Milner and Jo?" A set look came into Byng's face. He caught the lapels of his big, loose, double-breasted jacket, and spread his feet a little, till he looked as though squaring himself to resist attack. "Go on with your story," he interposed. "What is Fleming going to say--or bring up, you call it?" "He's going to say that some one is betraying us--all we do that's of any importance and most we say that counts--to Kruger and Leyds. He's going to say that the traitor is some one inside our circle." Byng started, and his hands clutched at the chairback, then he became quiet and watchful. "And whom does Fleming--or you--suspect?" he asked, with lowering eyelids and a slumbering malice in his eyes. Barry straightened himself and looked Byng rather hesitatingly in the face; then he said, slowly: "I don't know much about Fleming's suspicions. Mine, though, are at least three years old, and you know them. "Krool?" "Krool--for sure." "What would be Krool's object in betraying us, even if he knew all we say and do?" "Blood is thicker than water, Byng, and double pay to a poor man is a consideration." "Krool would do nothing that injured me, Barry. I know men. What sort of thing has been given away to Brother Boer?" Barry took from his pocket a paper and passed it over. Byng scanned it very carefully and slowly, and his face darkened as he read; for there were certain things set down of which only he and Wallstein and one or two others knew; which only he and one high in authority in England knew, besides Wallstein. His face slowly reddened with anger. London life, and its excitements multiplied by his wife and not avoided by himself, had worn on him, had affected his once sunny and even temper, had given him greater bulk, with a touch of flabbiness under the chin and at the neck, and had slackened the firmness of the muscles. Presently he got up, went over to a table, and helped himself to brandy and soda, motioning to Barry to do the same. There were two or three minutes' silence, and then he said: "There's something wrong, certainly, but it isn't Krool. No, it isn't Krool." "Nevertheless, if you're wise you'll ship him back beyond the Vaal, my friend." "It isn't Krool. I'll stake my life on that. He's as true to me as I am to myself; and, anyhow, there are things in this Krool couldn't know." He tossed the paper into the fire and watched it burn. He had talked over many, if not all, of these things with Jasmine, and with no one else; but Jasmine would not gossip. He had never known her to do so. Indeed, she had counselled extreme caution so often to himself that she would, in any case, be innocent of having babbled. But certainly there had been leakage--there had been leakage regarding most critical affairs. They were momentous enough to cause him to say reflectively now, as he watched the paper burn: "You might as well carry dynamite in your pocket as that." "You don't mind my coming to see you?" Barry asked, in an anxious tone. He could not afford to antagonize Byng; in any case, his heart was against doing so; though, like an Irishman, he had risked everything by his maladroit and ill-mannered attack a little while ago. "I wanted to warn you, so's you could be ready when Fleming jumped in," Barry continued. "No; I'm much obliged, Barry," was Byng's reply, in a voice where trouble was well marked, however. "Wait a minute," he continued, as his visitor prepared to leave. "Go into the other room"--he pointed. "Glue your ear to the door first, then to the wall, and tell me if you can hear anything--any word I say." Barry did as he was bidden. Presently Byng spoke in a tone rather louder than in ordinary conversation to an imaginary interlocutor for some minutes. Then Barry Whalen came back into the room. "Well?" Byng asked. "Heard anything?" "Not a word--scarcely a murmur." "Quite so. The walls are thick, and those big mahogany doors fit like a glove. Nothing could leak through. Let's try the other door, leading into the hall." They went over to it. "You see, here's an inside baize-door as well. There's not room for a person to stand between the two. I'll go out now, and you stay. Talk fairly loud." The test produced the same result. "Maybe I talk in my sleep," remarked Byng, with a troubled, ironical laugh. Suddenly there shot into Barry Whalen's mind a thought which startled him, which brought the colour to his face with a rush. For years he had suspected Krool, had considered him a danger. For years he had regarded Byng as culpable, for keeping as his servant one whom the Partners all believed to be a spy; but now another, a terrible thought came to him, too terrible to put into words--even in his own mind. There were two other people besides Krool who were very close to Byng. There was Mrs. Byng for one; there was also Adrian Fellowes, who had been for a long time a kind of handy-man of the great house, doing the hundred things which only a private secretary, who was also a kind of master-of-ceremonies and lord-in-waiting, as it were, could do. Yes, there was Adrian Fellowes, the private secretary; and there was Mrs. Byng, who knew so much of what her husband knew! And the private secretary and the wife necessarily saw much of each other. What came to Barry's mind now stunned him, and he mumbled out some words of good-bye with an almost hang-dog look to his face; for he had a chivalrous heart and mind, and he was not prone to be malicious. "We'll meet at eight, then?" said Byng, taking out his watch. "It's a quarter past seven now. Don't fuss, Barry. We'll nose out the spy, whoever he is, or wherever to be found. But we won't find him here, I think--not here, my friend." Suddenly Barry Whalen turned at the door. "Oh, let's go back to the veld and the Rand!" he burst out, passionately. "This is no place for us, Byng--not for either of us. You are getting flabby, and I'm spoiling my temper and my manners. Let's get out of this infernal jack-pot. Let's go where we'll be in the thick of the broiling when it comes. You've got a political head, and you've done more than any one else could do to put things right and keep them right; but it's no good. Nothing'll be got except where the red runs. And the red will run, in spite of all Jo or Milner or you can do. And when it comes, you and I will be sick if we're not there--yes, even you with your millions, Byng." With moist eyes Byng grasped the hand of the rough-hewn comrade of the veld, and shook it warmly. "England has got on your nerves, Barry," he said, gently." But we're all right in London. The key-board of the big instrument is here." "But the organ is out there, Byng, and it's the organ that makes the music, not the keys. We're all going to pieces here, every one of us. I see it. Herr Gott, I see it plain enough! We're in the wrong shop. We're not buying or selling; we're being sold. Baas--big Baas, let's go where there's room to sling a stone; where we can see what's going on round us; where there's the long sight and the strong sight; where you can sell or get sold in the open, not in the alleyways; where you can have a run for your money." Byng smiled benevolently. Yet something was stirring his senses strangely. The smell of the karoo was in his nostrils. "You're not ending up as you began, Barry," he replied. "You started off like an Israelite on the make, and you're winding up like Moody and Sankey." "Well, I'm right now in the wind-up. I'm no better, I'm no worse, than the rest of our fellows, but I'm Irish--I can see. The Celt can always see, even if he can't act. And I see dark days coming for this old land. England is wallowing. It's all guzzle and feed and finery, and nobody cares a copper about anything that matters--" "About Cape to Cairo, eh?" "Byng, that was one of my idiocies. But you think over what I say, just the same. I'm right. We're rotten cotton stuff now in these isles. We've got fatty degeneration of the heart, and in all the rest of the organs too." Again Byng shook him by the hand warmly. "Well, Wallstein will give us a fat dinner to-night, and you can moralize with lime-light effects after the foie gras, Barry." Closing the door slowly behind his friend, whom he had passed into the hands of the dark-browed Krool, Byng turned again to his desk. As he did so he caught sight of his face in the mirror over the mantel-piece. A shadow swept over it; his lips tightened. "Barry was right," he murmured, scrutinizing himself. "I've degenerated. We've all degenerated. What's the matter, anyhow? What is the matter? I've got everything--everything--everything." Hearing the door open behind him, he turned to see Jasmine in evening dress smiling at him. She held up a pink finger in reproof. "Naughty boy," she said. "What's this I hear--that you have thrown me over--me--to go and dine with the Wallstein! It's nonsense! You can't go. Ian Stafford is coming to dine, as I told you." His eyes beamed protectingly, affectionately, and yet, somehow, a little anxiously, on her "But I must go, Jasmine. It's the first time we've all been together since the Raid, and it's good we should be in the full circle once again. There's work to do--more than ever there was. There's a storm coming up on the veld, a real jagged lightning business, and men will get hurt, hosts beyond recovery. We must commune together, all of us. If there's the communion of saints, there's also the communion of sinners. Fleming is back, and Wolff is back, and Melville and Reuter and Hungerford are back, but only for a few days, and we all must meet and map things out. I forgot about the dinner. As soon as I remembered it I left a note on your dressing-table." With sudden emotion he drew her to him, and buried his face in her soft golden hair. "My darling, my little jasmine-flower," he whispered, softly, "I hate leaving you, but--" "But it's impossible, Ruddy, my man. How can I send Ian Stafford away? It's too late to put him off." "There's no need to put him off or to send him away--such old friends as you are. Why shouldn't he dine with you a deux? I'm the only person that's got anything to say about that." She expressed no surprise, she really felt none. He had forgotten that, coming up from Scotland, he had told her of this dinner with his friends, and at the moment she asked Ian Stafford to dine she had forgotten it also; but she remembered it immediately afterwards, and she had said nothing, done nothing. As Byng spoke, however, a curious expression emerged from the far depths of her eyes--emerged, and was instantly gone again to the obscurity whence it came. She had foreseen that he would insist on Stafford dining with her; but, while showing no surprise--and no perplexity--there was a touch of demureness in her expression as she answered: "I don't want to seem too conventional, but--" "There should be a little latitude in all social rules," he rejoined. "What nonsense! You are prudish, Jasmine. Allow yourself some latitude." "Latitude, not license," she returned. Having deftly laid on him the responsibility for this evening's episode, this excursion into the dangerous fields of past memory and sentiment and perjured faith, she closed the book of her own debit and credit with a smile of satisfaction. "Let me look at you," he said, standing her off from him. Holding her hand, he turned her round like a child to be inspected. "Well, you're a dream," he added, as she released herself and swept into a curtsey, coquetting with her eyes as she did so. "You're wonderful in blue--a flower in the azure," he added. "I seem to remember that gown before--years ago--" She uttered an exclamation of horror. "Good gracious, you wild and ruthless ruffian! A gown--this gown--years ago! My bonny boy, do you think I wear my gowns for years?" "I wear my suits for years. Some I've had seven years. I've got a frock-coat I bought for my brother Jim's wedding, ten years ago, and it looks all right--a little small now, but otherwise 'most as good as new." "What a lamb, what a babe, you are, Ruddy! Like none that ever lived. Why, no woman wears her gowns two seasons, and some of them rather hate wearing them two times." "Then what do they do with them--after the two times?" "Well, for a while, perhaps, they keep them to look at and gloat over, if they like them; then, perhaps, they give them away to their poor cousins or their particular friends--" "Their particular friends--?" "Why, every woman has some friends poorer than herself who love her very much, and she is good to them. Or there's the Mart--" "Wait. What's 'the Mart'?" "The place where ladies can get rid of fine clothes at a wicked discount." "And what becomes of them then?" "They are bought by ladies less fortunate." "Ladies who wear them?" "Why, what else would they do? Wear them--of course, dear child." Byng made a gesture of disgust. "Well, I call it sickening. To me there's something so personal and intimate about clothes. I think I could kill any woman that I saw wearing clothes of yours--of yours." She laughed mockingly. "My beloved, you've seen them often enough, but you haven't known they were mine; that's all." "I didn't recognize them, because no one could wear your clothes like you. It would be a caricature. That's a fact, Jasmine." She reached up and swept his cheek with a kiss. "What a darling you are, little big man! Yet you never make very definite remarks about my clothes." He put his hands on his hips and looked her up and down approvingly. "Because I only see a general effect, but I always remember colour. Tell me, have you ever sold your clothes to the Mart, or whatever the miserable coffin-shop is called?" "Well, not directly." "What do you mean by 'not directly'?" "Well, I didn't sell them, but they were sold for me." She hesitated, then went on hurriedly. "Adrian Fellowes knew of a very sad case--a girl in the opera who had had misfortune, illness, and bad luck; and he suggested it. He said he didn't like to ask for a cheque, because we were always giving, but selling my old wardrobe would be a sort of lucky find--that's what he called it." Byng nodded, with a half-frown, however. "That was ingenious of Fellowes, and thoughtful, too. Now, what does a gown cost, one like that you have on?" "This--let me see. Why, fifty pounds, perhaps. It's not a ball gown, of course." He laughed mockingly. "Why, 'of course,' And what does a ball gown cost--perhaps?" There was a cynical kind of humour in his eye. "Anything from fifty to a hundred and fifty--maybe," she replied, with a little burst of merriment. "And how much did you get for the garments you had worn twice, and then seen them suddenly grow aged in their extreme youth?" "Ruddy, do not be nasty--or scornful. I've always worn my gowns more than twice--some of them a great many times, except when I detested them. And anyhow, the premature death of a gown is very, very good for trade. That influences many ladies, of course." He burst out laughing, but there was a satirical note in the gaiety, or something still harsher. "'We deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us,'" he answered. "It's all such a hollow make-believe." "What is?" She gazed at him inquiringly, for this mood was new to her. She was vaguely conscious of some sort of change in him--not exactly toward her, but a change, nevertheless. "The life we rich people lead is a hollow make-believe, Jasmine," he said, with sudden earnestness. "I don't know what's the matter, but we're not getting out of life all we ought to get; and we're not putting into it all we ought to put in. There's a sense of emptiness--of famine somewhere." He caught the reflection of his face in the glass again, and his brow contracted. "We get sordid and sodden, and we lose the proportions of life. I wanted Dick Wilberforce to do something with me the other day, and he declined. 'Why, my dear fellow,' I said, 'you know you want to do it?' 'Of course I do,' he answered, 'but I can't afford that kind of thing, and you know it.' Well, I did know it, but I had forgotten. I was only thinking of what I myself could afford to do. I was setting up my own financial standard, and was forgetting the other fellows who hadn't my standard. What's the result? We drift apart, Wilberforce and I--well, I mean Wilberforce as a type. We drift into sets of people who can afford to do certain things, and we leave such a lot of people behind that we ought to have clung to, and that we would have clung to, if we hadn't been so much thinking of ourselves, or been so soddenly selfish." A rippling laugh rang through the room. "Boanerges--oh, Boanerges Byng! 'Owever can you be so heloquent!" Jasmine put both hands on his shoulders and looked up at him with that look which had fascinated him--and so many others--in their day. The perfume which had intoxicated him in the first days of his love of her, and steeped his senses in the sap of youth and Eden, smote them again, here on the verge of the desert before him. He suddenly caught her in his arms and pressed her to him almost roughly. "You exquisite siren--you siren of all time," he said, with a note of joy in which there was, too, a stark cry of the soul. He held her face back from him.... "If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers, Jasmine. Perhaps you did--who knows! And now you come down through the centuries purified by Time, to be my jasmine-flower." His lip trembled a little. There was a strange melancholy in his eyes, belying the passion and rapture of his words. In all their days together she had never seen him in this mood. She had heard him storm about things at times, had watched his big impulses working; had drawn the thunder from his clouds; but there was something moving in him now which she had never seen before. Perhaps it was only a passing phase, even a moment's mood, but it made a strange impression on her. It was remembered by them both long after, when life had scattered its vicissitudes before their stumbling feet and they had passed through flood and fire. She drew back and looked at him steadily, reflectively, and with an element of surprise in her searching look. She had never thought him gifted with perception or insight, though he had eloquence and an eye for broad effects. She had thought him curiously ignorant of human nature, born to be deceived, full of child-like illusions, never understanding the real facts of life, save in the way of business--and politics. Women he never seemed by a single phrase or word to understand, and yet now he startled her with a sudden revelation and insight of which she had not thought him capable. "If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers. Perhaps you did--who knows! . . . And now you come down through the centuries purified by Time--" The words slowly repeated themselves in her brain. Many and many a time she had imagined herself as having lived centuries ago, and again and again in her sleep these imaginings had reflected themselves in wild dreams of her far past--once as a priestess of Isis, once as a Slavonian queen, once as a peasant in Syria, and many times as a courtezan of Alexandria or Athens--many times as that: one of the gifted, beautiful, wonderful women whose houses were the centres of culture, influence, and power. She had imagined herself, against her will, as one of these women, such as Cleopatra, for whom the world were well lost; and who, at last, having squeezed the orange dry, but while yet the sun was coming towards noon, in scorn of Life and Time had left the precincts of the cheerful day without a lingering look.... Often and often such dreams, to her anger and confusion, had haunted her, even before she was married; and she had been alternately humiliated and fascinated by them. Years ago she had told Ian Stafford of one of the dreams of a past life--that she was a slave in Athens who saved her people by singing to the Tyrant; and Ian had made her sing to him, in a voice quite in keeping with her personality, delicate and fine and wonderfully high in its range, bird-like in its quality, with trills like a lark--a little meretricious but captivating. He had also written for her two verses which were as sharp and clear in her mind as the letter he wrote when she had thrown him over so dishonourably: "Your voice I knew, its cadences and trill; It stilled the tumult and the overthrow When Athens trembled to the people's will; I knew it--'twas a thousand years ago. "I see the fountains, and the gardens where You sang the fury from the Satrap's brow; I feel the quiver of the raptured air I heard you in the Athenian grove--I hear you now." As the words flashed into her mind now she looked at her husband steadfastly. Were there, then, some unexplored regions in his nature, where things dwelt, of which she had no glimmering of knowledge? Did he understand more of women than she thought? Could she then really talk to him of a thousand things of the mind which she had ever ruled out of any commerce between them, one half of her being never opened up to his sight? Not that he was deficient in intellect, but, to her thought, his was a purely objective mind; or was it objective because it had not been trained or developed subjectively? Had she ever really tried to find a region in his big nature where the fine allusiveness and subjectivity of the human mind could have free life and untrammelled exercise, could gambol in green fields of imagination and adventure upon strange seas of discovery? A shiver of pain, of remorse, went through her frame now, as he held her at arm's length and looked at her.... Had she started right? Had she ever given their natures a chance to discover each other? Warmth and passion and youth and excitement and variety--oh, infinite variety there had been!--but had the start been a fair one, had she, with a whole mind and a full soul of desire, gone to him first and last? What had been the governing influence in their marriage where she was concerned? Three years of constant motion, and never an hour's peace; three years of agitated waters, and never in all that time three days alone together. What was there to show for the three years? That for which he had longed with a great longing had been denied him; for he had come of a large family, and had the simple primitive mind and heart. Even in his faults he had ever been primitively simple and obvious. She had been energetic, helping great charities, aiding in philanthropic enterprises, with more than a little shrewdness preventing him from being robbed right and left by adventurers of all descriptions; and yet--and yet it was all so general, so soulless, her activity in good causes. Was there a single afflicted person, one forlorn soul whom she had directly and personally helped, or sheltered from the storm for a moment, one bereaved being whose eyes she had dried by her own direct personal sympathy? Was it this which had been more or less vaguely working in his mind a little while before when she had noticed a change in him; or was it that he was disappointed that they were two and no more--always two, and no more? Was it that which was working in his mind, and making him say hard things about their own two commendable selves? "If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers.... And now you come down through the centuries purlfied by Time, to be my jasmine-flower"-- She did not break the silence for some time, but at last she said: "And what were you a thousand years ago, my man?" He drew a hot hand across a troubled brow. "I? I was the Satrap whose fury you soothed away, or I was the Antony you lured from fighting Caesar." It was as though he had read those lines written by Ian Stafford long ago. Again that perfume of hers caught his senses, and his look softened wonderfully. A certain unconscious but underlying discontent appeared to vanish from his eyes, and he said, abruptly: "I have it--I have it. This dress is like the one you wore the first night that we met. It's the same kind of stuff, it's just the same colour and the same style. Why, I see it all as plain as can be--there at the opera. And you wore blue the day I tried to propose to you and couldn't, and asked you down to Wales instead. Lord, how I funked it!" He laughed, happily almost. "Yes, you wore blue the first time we met--like this." "It was the same skirt, and a different bodice, of course both those first times," she answered. Then she stepped back and daintily smoothed out the gown she was wearing, smiling at him as she did that day three years ago. She had put on this particular gown, remembering that Ian Stafford had said charming things about that other blue gown just before he bade her good-bye three years ago. That was why she wore blue this night--to recall to Ian what it appeared he had forgotten. And presently she would dine alone with Ian in her husband's house--and with her husband's blessing. Pique and pride were in her heart, and she meant Ian Stafford to remember. No man was adamantine; at least she had never met one--not one, neither bishop nor octogenarian. "Come, Ruddy, you must dress, or you'll be late," she continued, lightly, touching his cheek with her fingers; "and you'll come down and apologize, and put me right with Ian Stafford, won't you?" "Certainly. I won't be five minutes. I'll--" There was a tap at the door and a footman, entering, announced that Mr. Stafford was in the drawing-room. "Show him into my sitting-room," she said. "The drawing-room, indeed," she added to her husband--"it is so big, and I am so small. I feel sometimes as though I wanted to live in a tiny, tiny house." Her words brought a strange light to his eyes. Suddenly he caught her arm. "Jasmine," he said, hurriedly, "let us have a good talk over things--over everything. I want to see if we can't get more out of life than we do. There's something wrong. What is it? I don't know; but perhaps we could find out if we put our heads together--eh?" There was a strange, troubled longing in his look. She nodded and smiled. "Certainly--to-night when you get back," she said. "We'll open the machine and find what's wrong with it." She laughed, and so did he. As she went down the staircase she mused to herself and there was a shadow in her eyes and over her face. "Poor Ruddy! Poor Ruddy!" she said. Once again before she entered the sitting-room, as she turned and looked back, she said: "Poor boy . . . Yet he knew about a thousand years ago!" she added with a nervous little laugh, and with an air of sprightly eagerness she entered to Ian Stafford. CHAPTER X AN ARROW FINDS A BREAST As he entered the new sphere of Jasmine's influence, charm, and existence, Ian Stafford's mind became flooded by new impressions. He was not easily moved by vastness or splendour. His ducal grandfather's houses were palaces, the estates were a fair slice of two counties, and many of his relatives had sumptuous homes stored with priceless legacies of art. He had approached the great house which Byng had built for himself with some trepidation; for though Byng came of people whose names counted for a good deal in the north of England, still, in newly acquired fortunes made suddenly in new lands there was something that coarsened taste--an unmodulated, if not a garish, elegance which "hit you in the eye," as he had put it to himself. He asked himself why Byng had not been content to buy one of the great mansions which could always be had in London for a price, where time had softened all the outlines, had given that subdued harmony in architecture which only belongs to age. Byng could not buy with any money those wonderful Adam's mantels, over-mantels and ceilings which had a glory quite their own. There must, therefore, be an air of newness in the new mansion, which was too much in keeping with the new money, the gold as yet not worn smooth by handling, the staring, brand-new sovereigns looking like impostors. As he came upon the great house, however, in the soft light of evening, he was conscious of no violence done to his artistic sense. It was a big building, severely simple in design, yet with the rich grace, spacious solidity, and decorative relief of an Italian palace: compact, generous, traditionally genuine and wonderfully proportionate. "Egad, Byng, you had a good architect--and good sense!" he said to himself. "It's the real thing; and he did it before Jasmine came on the scene too." The outside of the house was Byng's, but the inside would, in the essentials, of course, be hers; and he would see what he would see. When the door opened, it came to him instantly that the inside and outside were in harmony. How complete was that harmony remained to be seen, but an apparently unstudied and delightful reticence was noticeable at once. The newness had been rubbed off the gold somehow, and the old furniture--Italian, Spanish--which relieved the spaciousness of the entrance gave an air of Time and Time's eloquence to this three-year-old product of modern architectural skill. As he passed on, he had more than a glimpse of the ball-room, which maintained the dignity and the refined beauty of the staircase and the hallways; and only in the insistent audacity and intemperate colouring of some Rubens pictures did he find anything of that inherent tendency to exaggeration and Oriental magnificence behind the really delicate artistic faculties possessed by Jasmine. The drawing-room was charming. It was not quite perfect, however. It was too manifestly and studiously arranged, and it had the finnicking exactness of the favourite gallery of some connoisseur. For its nobility of form, its deft and wise softness of colouring, its half-smothered Italian joyousness of design in ceiling and cornice, the arrangement of choice and exquisite furniture was too careful, too much like the stage. He smiled at the sight of it, for he saw and knew that Jasmine had had his playful criticism of her occasionally flamboyant taste in mind, and that she had over-revised, as it were. She had, like a literary artist, polished and refined and stippled the effect, till something of personal touch had gone, and there remained classic elegance without the sting of life and the idiosyncrasy of its creator's imperfections. No, the drawing-room would not quite do, though it was near the perfect thing. His judgment was not yet complete, however. When he was shown into Jasmine's sitting-room his breath came a little quicker, for here would be the real test; and curiosity was stirring greatly in him. Yes, here was the woman herself, wilful, original, delightful, with a flower-like delicacy joined to a determined and gorgeous audacity. Luxury was heaped on luxury, in soft lights from Indian lamps and lanterns, in the great divan, the deep lounge, the piled-up cushions, the piano littered with incongruous if artistic bijouterie; but everywhere, everywhere, books in those appealing bindings and with that paper so dear to every lover of literature. Instinctively he picked them up one by one, and most of them were affectionately marked by marginal notes of criticism, approval, or reference; and all showing the eager, ardent mind of one who loved books. He noticed, however, that most of the books he had seen before, and some of them he had read with her in the days which were gone forever. Indeed, in one of them he found some of his own pencilled marginal notes, beneath which she had written her insistent opinions, sometimes with amazing point. There were few new books, and they were mostly novels; and it was borne in on him that not many of these annotated books belonged to the past three years. The millions had come, the power and the place; but something had gone with their coming. He was turning over the pages of a volume of Browning when she entered; and she had an instant to note the grace and manly dignity of his figure, the poise of the intellectual head--the type of a perfect, well-bred animal, with the accomplishment of a man of purpose and executive design. A little frown of trouble came to her forehead, but she drove it away with a merry laugh, as he turned at the rustle of her skirts and came forward. He noted her blue dress, he guessed the reason she had put it on; and he made an inward comment of scorn. It was the same blue, and it was near the same style of the dress she wore the last time he saw her. She watched to see whether it made any impression on him, and was piqued to observe that he who had in that far past always swept her with an admiring, discriminating, and deferential glance, now only gave her deference of a courteous but perfunctory kind. It made the note to all she said and did that evening--the daring, the brilliance, the light allusion to past scenes and happenings, the skilful comment on the present, the joyous dominance of a position made supreme by beauty and by gold; behind which were anger and bitterness, and wild and desperate revolt. For, if love was dead in him, and respect, and all that makes man's association with woman worth while, humiliation and the sting of punishment and penalty were alive in her, flaying her spirit, rousing that mad streak which was in her grandfather, who had had many a combat, the outcome of wild elements of passion in him. She was not happy; she had never been happy since she married Rudyard Byng; yet she had said to herself so often that she might have been at peace, in a sense, had it not been for the letter which Ian Stafford had written her, when she turned from him to the man she married. The passionate resolve to compel him to reproach himself in soul for his merciless, if subtle, indictment of her to bring him to the old place where he had knelt in spirit so long ago--ah, it was so long!--came to her. Self-indulgent and pitifully mean as she had been, still this man had influenced her more than any other in the world--in that region where the best of herself lay, the place to which her eyes had turned always when she wanted a consoling hour. He belonged to her realm of the imagination, of thought, of insight, of intellectual passions and the desires of the soul. Far above any physical attraction Ian had ever possessed for her was the deep conviction that he gave her mind what no one else gave it, that he was the being who knew the song her spirit sang.... He should not go forever from her and with so cynical a completeness. He should return; he should not triumph in his self-righteousness, be a living reproach to her always by his careless indifference to everything that had ever been between them. If he treated her so because of what she had done to him, with what savagery might not she be treated, if all that had happened in the last three years were open as a book before him! Her husband--she had not thought of that. So much had happened in the past three years; there had been so much adulation and worship and daring assault upon her heart--or emotions--from quarters of unusual distinction, that the finest sense of her was blunted, and true proportions were lost. Rudyard ought never to have made that five months' visit to South Africa a year before, leaving her alone to make the fight against the forces round her. Those five months had brought a change in her, had made her indignant at times against Rudyard. "Why did he go to South Africa? Why did he not take me with him? Why did he leave me here alone?" she had asked herself. She did not realize that there would have been no fighting at all, that all the forces contending against her purity and devotion would never have gathered at her feet and washed against the shores of her resolution, if she had loved Rudyard Byng when she married him as she might have loved him, ought to have loved him. The faithful love unconsciously announces its fidelity, and men instinctively are aware of it, and leave it unassailed. It is the imperfect love which subtly invites the siege, which makes the call upon human interest, selfishness, or sympathy, so often without intended unscrupulousness at first. She had escaped the suspicion, if not the censure, of the world--or so she thought; and in the main she was right. But she was now embarked on an enterprise which never would have been begun, if she had not gambled with her heart and soul three years ago; if she had not dragged away the veil from her inner self, putting her at the mercy of one who could say, "I know you--what you are." Just before they went to the dining-room Byng came in and cheerily greeted Stafford, apologizing for having forgotten his engagement to dine with Wallstein. "But you and Jasmine will have much to talk about," he said--"such old friends as you are; and fond of books and art and music and all that kind of thing.... Glad to see you looking so well, Stafford," he continued. "They say you are the coming man. Well, au revoir. I hope Jasmine will give you a good dinner." Presently he was gone--in a heavy movement of good-nature and magnanimity. "Changed--greatly changed, and not for the better," said Ian Stafford to himself." This life has told on him. The bronze of the veld has vanished, and other things are disappearing." At the table with the lights and the flowers and the exquisite appointments, with appetite flattered and tempted by a dinner of rare simplicity and perfect cooking, Jasmine was radiant, amusing, and stimulating in her old way. She had never seemed to him so much a mistress of delicate satire and allusiveness. He rose to the combat with an alacrity made more agile by considerable abstinence, for clever women were few, and real talk was the rarest occurrence in his life, save with men in his own profession chiefly. But later, in her sitting-room, after the coffee had come, there was a change, and the transition was made with much skill and sensitiveness. Into Jasmine's voice there came another and more reflective note, and the drift of the conversation changed. Books brought the new current; and soon she had him moving almost unconsciously among old scenes, recalling old contests of ideas, and venturing on bold reproductions of past intellectual ideals. But though they were in this dangerous field of the past, he did not once betray a sign of feeling, not even when, poring over Coventry Patmore's poems, her hand touched his, and she read the lines which they had read together so long ago, with no thought of any significance to themselves: "With all my will, but much against my heart, We two now part. My very Dear, Our solace is the sad road lies so clear. . . Go thou to East, I West. We will not say There's any hope, it is so far away. . ." He read the verses with a smile of quiet enjoyment, saying, when he had finished: "A really moving and intimate piece of work. I wonder what their story was--a hopeless love, of course. An affaire--an 'episode'--London ladies now call such things." "You find London has changed much since you went away--in three years only?" she asked. "Three years--why, it's an eternity, or a minute, as you are obliged to live it. In penal servitude it is centuries, in the Appian Way of pleasure it is a sunrise moment. Actual time has nothing to do with the clock." She looked up to the little gold-lacquered clock on the mantel-piece. "See, it is going to strike," she said. As she spoke, the little silver hammer softly struck. "That is the clock-time, but what time is it really--for you, for instance?" "In Elysium there is no time," he murmured with a gallantry so intentionally obvious and artificial that her pulses beat with anger. "It is wonderful, then, how you managed the dinner-hour so exactly. You did not miss it by a fraction." "It is only when you enter Elysium that there is no time. It was eight o'clock when I arrived--by the world's time. Since then I have been dead to time--and the world." "You do not suggest that you are in heaven?" she asked, ironically. "Nothing so extreme as that. All extremes are violent." "Ah, the middle place--then you are in purgatory?" "But what should you be doing in purgatory? Or have you only come with a drop of water to cool the tongue of Dives?" His voice trailed along so coolly that it incensed her further. "Certainly Dives' tongue is blistering," she said with great effort to still the raging tumult within her. "Yet I would not cool it if I could." Suddenly the anger seemed to die out of her, and she looked at him as she did in the days before Rudyard Byng came across her path--eagerly, childishly, eloquently, inquiringly. He was the one man who satisfied the intellectual and temperamental side of her; and he had taught her more than any one else in the world. She realized that she had "Tossed him violently like a ball into a far country," and that she had not now a vestige of power over him--either of his senses or his mind; that he was master of the situation. But was it so that there was a man whose senses could not be touched when all else failed? She was very woman, eager for the power which she had lost, and power was hard to get--by what devious ways had she travelled to find it! As they leaned over a book of coloured prints of Gainsborough, Romney, and Vandyke, her soft, warm breast touched his arm and shoulder, a strand of her cobweb, golden hair swept his cheek, and a sigh came from her lips, so like those of that lass who caught and held her Nelson to the end, and died at last in poverty, friendless, homeless, and alone. Did he fancy that he heard a word breathing through her sigh--his name, Ian? For one instant the wild, cynical desire came over him to turn and clasp her in his arms, to press those lips which never but once he had kissed, and that was when she had plighted her secret troth to him, and had broken it for three million pounds. Why not? She was a woman, she was beautiful, she was a siren who had lured him and used him and tossed him by. Why not? All her art was now used, the art of the born coquette which had been exquisitely cultivated since she was a child, to bring him back to her feet--to the feet of the wife of Rudyard Byng. Why not? For an instant he had the dark impulse to treat her as she deserved, and take a kiss "as long as my exile, as sweet as my revenge"; but then the bitter memory came that this was the woman to whom he had given the best of which he was capable and the promise of that other best which time and love and life truly lived might accomplish; and the wild thing died in him. The fever fled, and his senses became as cold as the statue of Andromeda on the pedestal at his hand. He looked at her. He did not for the moment realize that she was in reality only a girl, a child in so much; wilful, capricious, unregulated in some ways, with the hereditary taint of a distorted moral sense, and yet able, intuitive and wise, in so many aspects of life and conversation. Looking, he determined that she should never have that absolution which any outward or inward renewal of devotion would give her. Scorn was too deep--that arrogant, cruel, adventitious attribute of the sinner who has not committed the same sin as the person he despises-- "Sweet is the refuge of scorn." His scorn was too sweet; and for the relish of it on his tongue, the price must be paid one way or another. The sin of broken faith she had sinned had been the fruit of a great temptation, meaning more to a woman, a hundred times, than to a man. For a man there is always present the chance of winning a vast fortune and the power that it brings; but it can seldom come to a woman except through marriage. It ill became him to be self-righteous, for his life had not been impeccable-- "The shaft of slander shot Missed only the right blot!" Something of this came to him suddenly now as she drew away from him with a sense of humiliation, and a tear came unbidden to her eye. She wiped the tear away, hastily, as there came a slight tapping at the door, and Krool entered, his glance enveloping them both in one lightning survey--like the instinct of the dweller in wild places of the earth, who feels danger where all is most quiet, and ever scans the veld or bush with the involuntary vigilance belonging to the life. His look rested on Jasmine for a moment before he spoke, and Stafford inwardly observed that here was an enemy to the young wife whose hatred was deep. He was conscious, too, that Jasmine realized the antipathy. Indeed, she had done so from the first days she had seen Krool, and had endeavoured, without success, to induce Byng to send the man back to South Africa, and to leave him there last year when he went again to Johannesburg. It was the only thing in which Byng had proved invulnerable, and Krool had remained a menace which she vaguely felt and tried to conquer, which, in vain, Adrian Fellowes had endeavoured to remove. For in the years in which Fellowes had been Byng's secretary his relations with Krool seemed amiable and he had made light of Jasmine's prejudices. "The butler is out and they come me," Krool said. "Mr. Stafford's servant is here. There is a girl for to see him, if he will let. The boy, Jigger, his name. Something happens." Stafford frowned, then turned to Jasmine. He told her who Jigger was, and of the incident the day before, adding that he had no idea of the reason for the visit; but it must be important, or nothing would have induced his servant to fetch the girl. "I will come," he said to Krool, but Jasmine's curiosity was roused. "Won't you see her here?" she asked. Stafford nodded assent, and presently Krool showed the girl into the room. For an instant she stood embarrassed and confused, then she addressed herself to Stafford. "I'm Lou--Jigger's sister," she said, with white lips. "I come to ask if you'd go to him. 'E's been hurt bad--knocked down by a fire-engine, and the doctor says 'e can't live. 'E made yer a promise, and 'e wanted me to tell yer that 'e meant to keep it; but if so be as you'd come, and wouldn't mind a-comin', 'e'd tell yer himself. 'E made that free becos 'e had brekfis wiv ye. 'E's all right--the best as ever--the top best." Suddenly the tears flooded her eyes and streamed down her pale cheeks. "Oh, 'e was the best--my Gawd, 'e was the best! If it 'd make 'im die happy, you'd come, y'r gryce, wouldn't y'r?" Child of the slums as she was, she was exceedingly comely and was simply and respectably dressed. Her eyes were big and brown like Stafford's; her face was a delicate oval, and her hair was a deep black, waving freely over a strong, broad forehead. It was her speech that betrayed her; otherwise she was little like the flower-girl that Adrian Fellowes had introduced to Al'mah, who had got her a place in the chorus of the opera and had also given her personal care and friendly help. "Where is he? In the hospital?" Stafford asked. "It was just beside our own 'ome it 'appened. We got two rooms now, Jigger and me. 'E was took in there. The doctor come, but 'e says it ain't no use. 'E didn't seem to care much, and 'e didn't give no 'ope, not even when I said I'd give him all me wages for a year." Jasmine was beside her now, wiping her tears and holding her hand, her impulsive nature stirred, her heart throbbing with desire to help. Suddenly she remembered what Rudyard had said up-stairs three hours ago, that there wasn't a single person in the world to whom they had done an act which was truly and purely personal during the past three years: and she had a tremulous desire to help this crude, mothering, passionately pitiful girl. "What will you do?" Jasmine said to Stafford. "I will go at once. Tell my servant to have up a cab," he said to Krool, who stood outside the door. "Truly, 'e will be glad," the girl exclaimed. "'E told me about the suvring, and Sunday-week for brekfis," she murmured. "You'll never miss the time, y'r gryce. Gawd knows you'll not miss it--an' 'e ain't got much left." "I will go, too--if you will let me," said Jasmine to Stafford. "You must let me go. I want to help--so much." "No, you must not come," he replied. "I will pick up a surgeon in Harley Street, and we'll see if it is as hopeless as she says. But you must not come to-night. To-morrow, certainly, to-morrow, if you will. Perhaps you can do some good then. I will let you know." He held out his hand to say good-bye, as the girl passed out with Jasmine's kiss on her cheek and a comforting assurance of help. Jasmine did not press her request. First there was the fact that Rudyard did not know, and might strongly disapprove; and secondly, somehow, she had got nearer to Stafford in the last few minutes than in all the previous hours since they had met again. Nowhere, by all her art, had she herself touched him, or opened up in his nature one tiny stream of feeling; but this girl's story and this piteous incident had softened him, had broken down the barriers which had checked and baffled her. There was something almost gentle in his smile as he said good-bye, and she thought she detected warmth in the clasp of his hand. Left alone, she sat in the silence, pondering as she had not pondered in the past three years. These few days in town, out of the season, were sandwiched between social functions from which their lives were never free. They had ever passed from event to event like minor royalties with endless little ceremonies and hospitalities; and there had been so little time to meditate--had there even been the wish? The house was very still, and the far-off, muffled rumble of omnibuses and cabs gave a background of dignity to this interior peace and luxurious quiet. For long she sat unmoving--nearly two hours--alone with her inmost thoughts. Then she went to the little piano in the corner where stood the statue of Andromeda, and began to play softly. Her fingers crept over the keys, playing snatches of things she knew years before, improvising soft, passionate little movements. She took no note of time. At last the clock struck twelve, and still she sat there playing. Then she began to sing a song which Alice Tynemouth had written and set to music two years before. It was simply yet passionately written, and the wail of anguished disappointment, of wasted chances was in it-- "Once in the twilight of the Austrian hills, A word came to me, beautiful and good; If I had spoken it, that message of the stars, Love would have filled thy blood: Love would have sent thee pulsing to my arms, Thy heart a nestling bird; A moment fled--it passed: I seek in vain For that forgotten word." In the last notes the voice rose in passionate pain, and died away into an aching silence. She leaned her arms on the piano in front of her and laid her forehead on them. "When will it all end--what will become of me!" she cried in pain that strangled her heart. "I am so bad--so bad. I was doomed from the beginning. I always felt it so--always, even when things were brightest. I am the child of black Destiny. For me--there is nothing, nothing, for me. The straight path was before me, and I would not walk in it." With a gesture of despair, and a sudden faintness, she got up and went over to the tray of spirits and liqueurs which had been brought in with the coffee. Pouring out a liqueur-glass of brandy, she was about to drink it, when her ear became attracted by a noise without, a curious stumbling, shuffling sound. She put down the glass, went to the door that opened into the hall, and looked out and down. One light was still burning below, and she could see distinctly. A man was clumsily, heavily, ascending the staircase, holding on to the balustrade. He was singing to himself, breaking into the maudlin harmony with an occasional laugh-- "For this is the way we do it on the veld, When the band begins to play; With one bottle on the table and one below the belt, When the band begins to play--" It was Rudyard, and he was drunk--almost helplessly drunk. A cry of pain rose to her lips, but her trembling hand stopped it. With a shudder she turned back to her sitting-room. Throwing herself on the divan where she had sat with Ian Stafford, she buried her face in her arms. The hours went by. CHAPTER XI IN WALES, WHERE JIGGER PLAYS HIS PART "Really, the unnecessary violence with which people take their own lives, or the lives of others, is amazing. They did it better in olden days in Italy and the East. No waste or anything--all scientifically measured." With a confident and satisfied smile Mr. Mappin, the celebrated surgeon, looked round the little group of which he was the centre at Glencader, Rudyard Byng's castle in Wales. Rudyard blinked at him for a moment with ironical amusement, then remarked: "When you want to die, does it matter much whether you kill yourself with a bludgeon or a pin, take gas from a tap or cyanide of potassium, jump in front of a railway train or use the revolting razor? You are dead neither less nor more, and the shock to the world is the same. It's only the housemaid or the undertaker that notices any difference. I knew a man at Vleifontein who killed himself by jumping into the machinery of a mill. It gave a lot of trouble to all concerned. That was what he wanted--to end his own life and exasperate the foreman." "Rudyard, what a horrible tale!" exclaimed his wife, turning again to the surgeon, eagerly. "It is most interesting, and I see what you mean. It is, that if we only really knew, we could take our own lives or other people's with such ease and skill that it would be hard to detect it?" The surgeon nodded. "Exactly, Mrs. Byng. I don't say that the expert couldn't find what the cause of death was, if suspicion was aroused; but it could be managed so that 'heart failure' or some such silly verdict would be given, because there was no sign of violence, or of injury artificially inflicted." "It is fortunate the world doesn't know these ways to euthanasia," interposed Stafford. "I fancy that murders would be more numerous than suicides, however. Suicide enthusiasts would still pursue their melodramatic indulgences--disfiguring themselves unnecessarily." Adrian Fellowes, the amiable, ever-present secretary and "chamberlain" of Rudyard's household, as Jasmine teasingly called him, whose handsome, unintellectual face had lighted with amusement at the conversation, now interposed. "Couldn't you give us some idea how it can be done, this smooth passage of the Styx?" he asked. "We'll promise not to use it." The surgeon looked round the little group reflectively. His eyes passed from Adrian to Jasmine, who stood beside him, to Byng, and to Ian Stafford, and stimulated by their interest, he gave a pleased smile of gratified vanity. He was young, and had only within the past three years got to the top of the tree at a bound, by a certain successful operation in royal circles. Drawing out of his pocket a small case, he took from it a needle and held it up. "Now that doesn't look very dangerous, does it?" he asked. "Yet a firm pressure of its point could take a life, and there would be little possibility of finding how the ghastly trick was done except by the aroused expert." "If you will allow me," he said, taking Jasmine's hand and poising the needle above her palm. "Now, one tiny thrust of this steel point, which has been dipped in a certain acid, would kill Mrs. Byng as surely as though she had been shot through the heart. Yet it would leave scarcely the faintest sign. No blood, no wound, just a tiny pin-prick, as it were; and who would be the wiser? Imagine an average coroner's jury and the average examination of the village doctor, who would die rather than expose his ignorance, and therefore gives 'heart failure' as the cause of death." Jasmine withdrew her hand with a shudder. "Please, I don't like being so near the point," she said. "Woman-like," interjected Byng ironically. "How does it happen you carry this murdering asp about with you, Mr. Mappin?" asked Stafford. The surgeon smiled. "For an experiment to-morrow. Don't start. I have a favorite collie which must die. I am testing the poison with the minimum. If it kills the dog it will kill two men." He was about to put the needle back into the case when Adrian Fellowes held out a hand for it. "Let me look at it," he said. Turning the needle over in his palm, he examined it carefully. "So near and yet so far," he remarked. "There are a good many people who would pay a high price for the little risk and the dead certainty. You wouldn't, perhaps, tell us what the poison is, Mr. Mappin? We are all very reliable people here, who have no enemies, and who want to keep their friends alive. We should then be a little syndicate of five, holding a great secret, and saving numberless lives every day by not giving the thing away. We should all be entitled to monuments in Parliament Square." The surgeon restored the needle to the case. "I think one monument will be sufficient," he said. "Immortality by syndicate is too modern, and this is an ancient art." He tapped the case." Turkey and the Mongol lands have kept the old cult going. In England, it's only for the dog!" He laughed freely but noiselessly at his own joke. This talk had followed the news brought by Krool to the Baas, that the sub-manager of the great mine, whose chimneys could be seen from the hill behind the house, had thrown himself down the shaft and been smashed to a pulp. None of them except Byng had known him, and the dark news had brought no personal shock. They had all gathered in the library, after paying an afternoon visit to Jigger, who had been brought down from London in a special carriage, and was housed near the servants' quarters with a nurse. On the night of Jigger's accident Ian Stafford on his way from Jasmine's house had caught Mr. Mappin, and the surgeon had operated at once, saving the lad's life. As it was necessary to move him in any case, it was almost as easy, and no more dangerous, to bring him to Glencader than to take him to a London hospital. Under the surgeon's instructions Jasmine had arranged it all, and Jigger had travelled like royalty from Paddington into Wales, and there had captured the household, as he had captured Stafford at breakfast in St. James's Street. Thinking that perhaps this was only a whim of Jasmine's, and merely done because it gave a new interest to a restless temperament, Stafford had at first rejected the proposal. When, however, the surgeon said that if the journey was successfully made, the after-results would be all to the good, Stafford had assented, and had allowed himself to be included in the house-party at Glencader. It was a triumph for Jasmine, for otherwise Stafford would not have gone. Whether she would have insisted on Jigger going to Glencader if it had not meant that Ian would go also, it would be hard to say. Her motives were not unmixed, though there had been a real impulse to do all she could. In any case, she had lessened the distance between Ian and herself, and that gave her wilful mind a rather painful pleasure. Also, the responsibility for Jigger's well-being, together with her duties as hostess, had prevented her from dwelling on that scene in the silent house at midnight which had shocked her so--her husband reeling up the staircase, singing a ribald song. The fullest significance of this incident had not yet come home to her. She had fought against dwelling on it, and she was glad that every moment since they had come to Glencader had been full; that Rudyard had been much away with the shooters, and occupied in trying to settle a struggle between the miners and the proprietors of the mine itself, of whom he was one. Still, things that Rudyard had said before he left the house to dine with Wallstein, leaving her with Stafford, persistently recurred to her mind. "What's the matter?" had been Rudyard's troubled cry. "We've got everything--everything, and yet--!" Her eyes were not opened. She had had a shock, but it had not stirred the inner, smothered life; there had been no real revelation. She was agitated and disturbed--no more. She did not see that the man she had married to love and to cherish was slowly changing--was the change only a slow one now?--before her eyes; losing that brave freshness which had so appealed to London when he first came back to civilization. Something had been subtracted from his personality which left it poorer, something had been added which made it less appealing. Something had given way in him. There had been a subsidence of moral energy, and force had inwardly declined, though to all outward seeming he had played a powerful and notable part in the history of the last three years, gaining influence in many directions, without suffering excessive notoriety. On the day Rudyard married Jasmine he would have cut off his hand rather than imagine that he would enter his wife's room helpless from drink and singing a song which belonged to loose nights on the Limpopo and the Vaal. As the little group drew back, their curiosity satisfied, Mr. Mappin, putting the case carefully into his pocket again, said to Jasmine: "The boy is going on so well that I am not needed longer. Mr. Wharton, my locum tenens, will give him every care." "When did you think of going?" Jasmine asked him, as they all moved on towards the hall, where the other guests were assembled. "To-morrow morning early, if I may. No night travel for me, if I can help it." "I am glad you are not going to-night," she answered, graciously. "Al'mah is arriving this afternoon, and she sings for us this evening. Is it not thrilling?" There was a general murmur of pleasure, vaguely joined by Adrian Fellowes, who glanced quickly round the little group, and met an enigmatical glance from Byng's eye. Byng was remembering what Barry Whalen had told him three years ago, and he wondered if Jasmine was cognizant of it all. He thought not; for otherwise she would scarcely bring Al'mah to Glencader and play Fellowes' game for him. Jasmine, in fact, had not heard. Days before she had wondered that Adrian had tried to discourage her invitation to Al'mah. While it was an invitation, it was also an engagement, on terms which would have been adequate for Patti in her best days. It would, if repeated a few times, reimburse Al'mah for the sums she had placed in Byng's hands at the time of the Raid, and also, later still, to buy the life of her husband from Oom Paul. It had been insufficient, not because of the value of the article for sale, but because of the rapacity of the vender. She had paid half the cruel balance demanded; Byng and his friends had paid the rest without her knowledge; and her husband had been set free. Byng had only seen Al'mah twice since the day when she first came to his rooms, and not at all during the past two years, save at the opera, where she tightened the cords of captivity to her gifts around her admirers. Al'mah had never met Mrs. Byng since the day after that first production of "Manassa," when Rudyard rescued her, though she had seen her at the opera again and again. She cared nothing for society or for social patronage or approval, and the life that Jasmine led had no charms for her. The only interest she had in it was that it suited Adrian from every standpoint. He loved the splendid social environment of which Jasmine was the centre, and his services were well rewarded. When she received Jasmine's proposal to sing at Glencader she had hesitated to accept it, for society had no charms for her; but at length three considerations induced her to do so. She wanted to see Rudyard Byng, for South Africa and its shadow was ever present with her; and she dreaded she knew not what. Blantyre was still her husband, and he might return--and return still less a man than when he deserted her those sad long years ago. Also, she wanted to see Jigger, because of his sister Lou, whose friendless beauty, so primitively set, whose transparent honesty appealed to her quick, generous impulses. Last of all she wanted to see Adrian in the surroundings and influences where his days had been constantly spent during the past three years. Never before had she had the curiosity to do so. Adrian had, however, deftly but clearly tried to dissuade her from coming to Glencader, and his reasons were so new and unconvincing that, for the first time,--she had a nature of strange trustfulness once her faith was given--a vague suspicion concerning Adrian perplexed and troubled her. His letter had arrived some hours after Jasmine's, and then her answer was immediate--she would accept. Adrian heard of the acceptance first through Jasmine, to whom he had spoken of his long "acquaintance" with the great singer. From Byng's look, as they moved towards the hall, Adrian gathered that rumour had reached a quarter where he had much at stake; but it did not occur to him that this would be to his disadvantage. Byng was a man of the world. Besides, he had his own reasons for feeling no particular fear where Byng was concerned. His glance ran from Byng's face to that of Jasmine; but, though her eyes met his, there was nothing behind her glance which had to do with Al'mah. In the great hall whose windows looked out on a lovely, sunny valley still as green as summer, the rest of the house-party were gathered, and Jigger's visitors were at once surrounded. Among the visitors were Alice, Countess of Tynemouth, also the Slavonian ambassador, whose extremely pale face, stooping shoulders, and bald head with the hair carefully brushed over from each side in a vain attempt to cover the baldness, made him seem older than he really was. Count Landrassy had lived his life in many capitals up to the limit of his vitality, and was still covetous of notice from the sex who had, in a checkered career, given him much pleasure, and had provided him with far more anxiety. But he was almost uncannily able and astute, as every man found who entered the arena of diplomacy to treat with him or circumvent him. Suavity, with an attendant mordant wit, and a mastery of tactics unfamiliar to the minds and capacities of Englishmen, made him a great factor in the wide world of haute politique; but it also drew upon him a wealth of secret hatred and outward attention. His follies were lashed by the tongues of virtue and of slander; but his abilities gave him a commanding place in the arena of international politics. As Byng and his party approached, the eyes of the ambassador and of Lady Tynemouth were directed towards Ian Stafford. The glance of the former was ironical and a little sardonic. He had lately been deeply engaged in checkmating the singularly skilful and cleverly devised negotiations by which England was to gain a powerful advantage in Europe, the full significance of which even he had not yet pierced. This he knew, but what he apprehended with the instinct of an almost scientific sense became unduly important to his mind. The author of the profoundly planned international scheme was this young man, who had already made the chancelleries of Europe sit up and look about them in dismay; for its activities were like those of underground wires; and every area of diplomacy, the nearest, the most remote, was mined and primed, so that each embassy played its part with almost startling effect. Tibet and Persia were not too far, and France was not too near to prevent the incalculably smooth working of a striking and far-reaching political move. It was the kind of thing that England's Prime Minister, with his extraordinary frankness, with his equally extraordinary secretiveness, insight and immobility, delighted in; and Slavonia and its ambassador knew, as an American high in place had colloquially said, "that they were up against a proposition which would take some moving." The scheme had taken some moving. But it had not yet succeeded; and if M. Mennaval, the ambassador of Moravia, influenced by Count Landrassy, pursued his present tactics on behalf of his government, Ian Stafford's coup would never be made, and he would have to rise to fame in diplomacy by slower processes. It was the daily business of the Slavonian ambassador to see that M. Mennaval of Moravia was not captured either by tactics, by smooth words, or all those arts which lay beneath the outward simplicity of Ian Stafford and of those who worked with him. With England on the verge of war, the outcome of the negotiations was a matter of vital importance. It might mean the very question of England's existence as an empire. England in a conflict with South Africa, the hour long desired by more than one country, in which she would be occupied to the limit of her capacity, with resources taxed to the utmost, army inadequate, and military affairs in confusion, would come, and with it the opportunity to bring the Titan to her knees. This diplomatic scheme of Ian Stafford, however, would prevent the worst in any case, and even in the disasters of war, would be working out advantages which, after the war was done, would give England many friends and fewer enemies, give her treaties and new territory, and set her higher than she was now by a political metre. Count Landrassy had thought at first, when Ian Stafford came to Glencader, that this meeting had been purposely arranged; but through Byng's frankness and ingenuous explanations he saw that he was mistaken. The two subtle and combating diplomats had not yet conversed save in a general way by the smoking-room fire. Lady Tynemouth's eyes fell on Ian with a different meaning. His coming to Glencader had been a surprise to her. He had accepted an invitation to visit her in another week, and she had only come to know later of the chance meeting of Ian and Jasmine in London, and the subsequent accident to Jigger which had brought Ian down to Wales. The man who had saved her life on her wedding journey, and whose walls were still garish with the red parasol which had nearly been her death, had a place quite his own in her consideration. She had, of course, known of his old infatuation for Jasmine, though she did not know all; and she knew also that he had put Jasmine out of his life completely when she married Byng; which was not a source of regret to her. She had written him about Jasmine, again and again,--of what she did and what the world said--and his replies had been as casual and as careless as the most jealous woman could desire; though she was not consciously jealous, and, of course, had no right to be. She saw no harm in having a man as a friend on a basis of intimacy which drew the line at any possibility of divorce-court proceedings. Inside this line she frankly insisted on latitude, and Tynemouth gave it to her without thought or anxiety. He was too fond of outdoor life, of racing and hunting and shooting and polo and travel, to have his eye unnerved by any such foolishness as jealousy. "Play the game--play the game, Alice, and so will I, and the rest of the world be hanged!" was what Tynemouth had said to his wife; and it would not have occurred to him to suspect Stafford, or to read one of his letters to Lady Tynemouth. He had no literary gifts; in truth, he had no "culture," and he looked upon his wife's and Stafford's interest in literature and art as a game of mystery he had never learned. Inconsequent he thought it in his secret mind, but played by nice, clever, possible, "livable" people; and, therefore, not to be pooh-poohed openly or kicked out of the way. Besides, it "gave Alice something to do, and prevented her from being lonely--and all that kind of thing." Thus it was that Lady Tynemouth, who had played the game all round according to her lights, and thought no harm of what she did, or of her weakness for Ian Stafford--of her open and rather gushing friendship for him--had an almost honest dislike to seeing him brought into close relations again with the woman who had dishonourably treated him. Perhaps she wanted his friendship wholly for herself; but that selfish consideration did not overshadow the feeling that Jasmine had cheated at cards, as it were; and that Ian ought not to be compelled to play with her again. "But men, even the strongest, are so weak," she had said to Tynemouth concerning it, and he had said in reply, "And the weakest are so strong--sometimes." At which she had pulled his shoulder, and had said with a delighted laugh, "Tynie, if you say clever things like that I'll fall in love with you." To which he had replied: "Now, don't take advantage of a moment's aberration, Alice; and for Heaven's sake don't fall in love wiv me" (he made a v of a th, like Jigger). "I couldn't go to Uganda if you did." To which she had responded, "Dear me, are you going to Uganda?" and was told with a nod that next month he would be gone. This conversation had occurred on the day of their arrival at Glencader; and henceforth Alice had forcibly monopolized Stafford whenever and wherever possible. So far, it had not been difficult, because Jasmine had, not ostentatiously, avoided being often with Stafford. It seemed to Jasmine that she must not see much of him alone. Still there was some new cause to provoke his interest and draw him to herself. The Jigger episode had done much, had altered the latitudes of their association, but the perihelion of their natures was still far off; and she was apprehensive, watchful, and anxious. This afternoon, however, she felt that she must talk with him. Waiting and watching were a new discipline for her, and she was not yet the child of self-denial. Fate, if there be such a thing, favoured her, however, for as they drew near to the fireplace where the ambassador and Alice Tynemouth and her husband stood, Krool entered, came forward to Byng, and spoke in a low tone to him. A minute afterward, Byng said to them all: "Well, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid we can't carry out our plans for the afternoon. There's trouble again at the mine, and I am needed, or they think I am. So I must go there--and alone, I'm sorry to say; not with you all, as I had hoped. Jasmine, you must plan the afternoon. The carriages are ready. There's the Glen o' Smiling, well worth seeing, and the Murderer's Leap, and Lover's Land--something for all tastes," he added, with a dry note to his voice. "Take care of yourself, Ruddy man," Jasmine said, as he left them hurriedly, with an affectionate pinch of her arm. "I don't like these mining troubles," she added to the others, and proceeded to arrange the afternoon. She did it so deftly that she and Ian and Adrian Fellowes were the only ones left behind out of a party of twelve. She had found it impossible to go on any of the excursions, because she must stay and welcome Al'mah. She meant to drive to the station herself, she said. Adrian stayed behind because he must superintend the arrangements of the ball-room for the evening, or so he said; and Ian Stafford stayed because he had letters to write--ostensibly; for he actually meant to go and sit with Jigger, and to send a code message to the Prime Minister, from whom he had had inquiries that morning. When the others had gone, the three stood for a moment silent in the hall, then Adrian said to Jasmine, "Will you give me a moment in the ball-room about those arrangements?" Jasmine glanced out of the corner of her eye at Ian. He showed no sign that he wanted her to remain. A shadow crossed her face, but she laughingly asked him if he would come also. "If you don't mind--!" he said, shaking his head in negation; but he walked with them part of the way to the ball-room, and left them at the corridor leading to his own little sitting-room. A few minutes later, as Jasmine stood alone at a window looking down into the great stone quadrangle, she saw him crossing toward the servants' quarters. "He is going to Jigger," she said, her heart beating faster. "Oh, but he is 'the best ever,'" she added, repeating Lou's words--"the best ever!" Her eye brightened with intention. She ran down the corridor, and presently made her way to the housekeeper's room. CHAPTER XII THE KEY IN THE LOCK A quarter of an hour later Jasmine softly opened the door of the room where Jigger lay, and looked in. The nurse stood at the foot of the bed, listening to talk between Jigger and Ian, the like of which she had never heard. She was smiling, for Jigger was original, to say the least of it, and he had a strange, innocent, yet wise philosophy. Ian sat with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped, leaning towards the gallant little sufferer, talking like a boy to a boy, and getting revelations of life of which he had never even dreamed. Jasmine entered with a little tray in one hand, bearing a bowl of delicate broth, while under an arm was a puzzle-box, which was one of the relics of a certain house-party in which a great many smart people played at the simple life, and sought to find a new sensation in making believe they were the village rector's brood of innocents. She was dressed in a gown almost as simple in make as that of the nurse, but of exquisite material--the soft green velvet which she had worn when she met Ian in the sweetshop in Regent Street. Her hair was a perfect gold, wavy and glistening and prettily fine, and her eyes were shining--so blue, so deep, so alluring. The boy saw her first, and his eyes grew bigger with welcome and interest. "It's her--me lydy," he said with a happy gasp, for she seemed to him like a being from another sphere. When she came near him the faint, delicious perfume exhaling from her garments was like those flower-gardens and scented fields to which he had once been sent for a holiday by some philanthropic society. Ian rose as the nurse came forward quickly to relieve Jasmine of the tray and the box. His first glance was enigmatical--almost suspicious--then, as he saw the radiance in her face and the burden she carried, a new light came into his eyes. In this episode of Jigger she had shown all that gentle charm, sympathy, and human feeling which he had once believed belonged so much to her. It seemed to him in the old days that at heart she was simple, generous, and capable of the best feelings of woman, and of living up to them; and there began to grow at the back of his mind now the thought that she had been carried away by a great temptation--the glitter and show of power and all that gold can buy, and a large circle for the skirts of woman's pride and vanity. If she had married him instead of Byng, they would now be living in a small house in Curzon Street, or some such fashionable quarter, with just enough to enable them to keep their end up with people who had five thousand a year--with no box at the opera, or house in the country, or any of the great luxuries, and with a thriving nursery which would be a promise of future expense--if she had married him! . . . A kinder, gentler spirit was suddenly awake in him, and he did not despise her quite so much. On her part, she saw him coming nearer, as, standing in the door of a cottage in a valley, one sees trailing over the distant hills, with the light behind, a welcome and beloved figure with face turned towards the home in the green glade. A smile came to his lips, as suspicion stole away ashamed, and he said: "This will not do. Jigger will be spoiled. We shall have to see Mr. Mappin about it." As she yielded to him the puzzle-box, which she had refused to the nurse, she said: "And pray who sets the example? I am a very imitative person. Besides, I asked Mr. Mappin about the broth, so it's all right; and Jigger will want the puzzle-box when you are not here," she added, quizzically. "Diversion or continuity?" he asked, with a laugh, as she held the bowl of soup to Jigger's lips. At this point the nurse had discreetly left the room. "Continuity, of course," she replied. "All diplomatists are puzzles, some without solution." "Who said I was a diplomatist?" he asked, lightly. "Don't think that I'm guilty of the slander," she rejoined. "It was the Moravian ambassador who first suggested that what you were by profession you were by nature." Jasmine felt Ian hold his breath for a moment, then he said in a low tone, "M. Mennaval--you know him well?" She did not look towards him, but she was conscious that he was eying her intently. She put aside the bowl, and began to adjust Jigger's pillow with deft fingers, while the lad watched her with a worship worth any money to one attacked by ennui and stale with purchased pleasures. "I know him well--yes, quite well," she replied. "He comes sometimes of an afternoon, and if he had more time--or if I had--he would no doubt come oftener. But time is the most valuable thing I have, and I have less of it than anything else." "A diminishing capital, too," he returned with a laugh; while his mind was suddenly alert to an idea which had flown into his vision, though its full significance did not possess him yet. "The Moravian ambassador is not very busy," he added with an undertone of meaning. "Perhaps; but I am," she answered with like meaning, and looked him in the eyes, steadily, serenely, determinedly. All at once there had opened out before her a great possibility. Both from the Count Landrassy and from the Moravian ambassador she had had hints of some deep, international scheme of which Ian Stafford was the engineer-in-chief, though she did not know definitely what it was. Both ambassadors had paid their court to her, each in a different way, and M. Mennaval would have been as pertinacious as he was vain and somewhat weak (albeit secretive, too, with the feminine instinct so strong in him) if she had not checked him at all points. From what Count Landrassy had said, it would appear that Ian Stafford's future hung in the balance--dependent upon the success of his great diplomatic scheme. Could she help Ian? Could she help him? Had the time come when she could pay her debt, the price of ransom from the captivity in which he held her true and secret character? It had been vaguely in her mind before; but now, standing beside Jigger's bed, with the lad's feverish hand in hers, there spread out before her a vision of a lien lifted, of an ugly debt redeemed, of freedom from this man's scorn. If she could do some great service for him, would not that wipe out the unsettled claim? If she could help to give him success, would not that, in the end, be more to him than herself? For she would soon fade, the dust would soon gather over her perished youth and beauty; but his success would live on, ever freshening in his sight, rising through long years to a great height, and remaining fixed and exalted. With a great belief she believed in him and what he could do. He was a Sisyphus who could and would roll the-huge stone to the top of the hill--and ever with easier power. The old touch of romance and imagination which had been the governing forces of her grandfather's life, the passion of an idea, however essentially false and meretricious and perilous to all that was worth while keeping in life, set her pulses beating now. As a child her pulses used to beat so when she had planned with her good-for-nothing brother some small escapade looming immense in the horizon of her enjoyment. She had ever distorted or inflamed the facts of life by an overheated fancy, by the spirit of romance, by a gift--or curse--of imagination, which had given her also dark visions of a miserable end, of a clouded and piteous close to her brief journey. "I am doomed--doomed," had been her agonized cry that day before Ian Stafford went away three years ago, and the echo of that cry was often in her heart, waking and sleeping. It had come upon her the night when Rudyard reeled, intoxicated, up the staircase. She had the penalties of her temperament shadowing her footsteps always, dimming the radiance which broke forth for long periods, and made her so rare and wonderful a figure in her world. She was so young, and so exquisite, that Fate seemed harsh and cruel in darkening her vision, making pitfalls for her feet. Could she help him? Had her moment come when she could force him to smother his scorn and wait at her door for bounty? She would make the effort to know. "But, yes, I am very busy," she repeated. "I have little interest in Moravia--which is fortunate; for I could not find the time to study it." "If you had interest in Moravia, you would find the time with little difficulty," he answered, lightly, yet thinking ironically that he himself had given much time and study to Moravia, and so far had not got much return out of it. Moravia was the crux of his diplomacy. Everything depended on it; but Landrassy, the Slavonian ambassador, had checkmated him at every move towards the final victory. "It is not a study I would undertake con amore," she said, smiling down at Jigger, who watched her with sharp yet docile eyes. Then, suddenly turning towards him again, she said: "But you are interested in Moravia--do you find it worth the time?" "Did Count Landrassy tell you that?" he asked. "And also the ambassador for Moravia; but only in the vaguest and least consequential way," she replied. She regarded him steadfastly. "It is only just now--is it a kind of telepathy'--that I seem to get a message from what we used to call the power-house, that you are deeply interested in Moravia and Slavonia. Little things which have been said seem to have new meaning now, and I feel"--she smiled significantly--"that I am standing on the brink of some great happening, and only a big secret, like a cloud, prevents me from seeing it, realizing it. Is it so?" she added, in a low voice. He regarded her intently. His look held hers. It would seem as though he tried to read the depths of her soul; as though he was asking if what had once proved so false could in the end prove true; for it came to him with sudden force, with sure conviction, that she could help him as no one else could; that at this critical moment, when he was trembling between success and failure, her secret influence might be the one reinforcement necessary to conduct him to victory. Greater and better men than himself had used women to further their vast purposes; could one despise any human agency, so long as it was not dishonourable, in the carrying out of great schemes? It was for Britain--for her ultimate good, for the honour and glory of the Empire, for the betterment of the position of all men of his race in all the world, their prestige, their prosperity, their patriotism; and no agency should be despised. He knew so well what powers of intrigue had been used against him, by the embassy of Slavonia and those of other countries. His own methods had been simple and direct; only the scheme itself being intricate, complicated, and reaching further than any diplomatist, except his own Prime Minister, had dreamed. If carried, it would recast the international position in the Orient, necessitating new adjustments in Europe, with cession of territory and gifts for gifts in the way of commercial treaties and the settlement of outstanding difficulties. His key, if it could be made to turn in the lock, would open the door to possibilities of prodigious consequence. He had been three years at work, and the end must come soon. The crisis was near. A game can only be played for a given time, then it works itself out, and a new one must take its place. His top was spinning hard, but already the force of the gyration was failing, and he must presently make his exit with what the Prime Minister called his Patent, or turn the key in the lock and enter upon his kingdom. In three months--in two months--in one month--it might be too late, for war was coming; and war would destroy his plans, if they were not furfilled now. Everything must be done before war came, or be forever abandoned. This beautiful being before him could help him. She had brains, she was skilful, inventive, supple, ardent, yet intellectually discreet. She had as much as told him that the ambassador of Moravia had paid her the compliment of admiring her with some ardour. It would not grieve him to see her make a fool and a tool of the impressionable yet adroit diplomatist, whose vanity was matched by his unreliability, and who had a passion for philandering--unlike Count Landrassy, who had no inclination to philander, who carried his citadels by direct attack in great force. Yes, Jasmine could help him, and, as in the dead years when it seemed that she would be the courier star of his existence, they understood each other without words. "It is so," he said at last, in a low voice, his eyes still regarding her with almost painful intensity. "Do you trust me--now--again?" she asked, a tremor in her voice and her small hand clasping ever and ever tighter the fingers of the lad, whose eyes watched her with such dog-like adoration. A mournful smile stole to his lips--and stayed. "Come where we can be quiet and I will tell you all," he said. "You can help me, maybe." "I will help you," she said, firmly, as the nurse entered the room again and, approaching the bed, said, "I think he ought to sleep now"; and forthwith proceeded to make Jigger comfortable. When Stafford bade Jigger good-bye, the lad said: "I wish I could 'ear the singing to-night, y'r gryce. I mean the primmer donner. Lou says she's a fair wonder." "We will open your window," Jasmine said, gently. "The ball-room is just across the quadrangle, and you will be able to hear perfectly." "Thank you, me lydy," he answered, gratefully, and his eyes closed. "Come," said Jasmine to Stafford. "I will take you where we can talk undisturbed." They passed out, and both were silent as they threaded the corridors and hallways; but in Jasmine's face was a light of exaltation and of secret triumph. "We must give Jigger a good start in life," she said, softly, as they entered her sitting-room. Jigger had broken down many barriers between her and the man who, a week ago, had been eternities distant from her. "He's worth a lot of thought," Ian answered, as the pleasant room enveloped him, and they seated themselves on a big couch before the fire. Again there was a long silence; then, not looking at her, but gazing into the fire, Ian Stafford slowly unfolded the wide and wonderful enterprise of diplomacy in which his genius was employed. She listened with strained attention, but without moving. Her eyes were fixed on his face, and once, as the proposed meaning of the scheme was made dear by the turn of one illuminating phrase, she gave a low exclamation of wonder and delight. That was all until, at last, turning to her as though from some vision that had chained him, he saw the glow in her eyes, the profound interest, which was like the passion of a spirit moved to heroic undertaking. Once again it was as in the years gone by--he trusted her, in spite of himself; in spite of himself he had now given his very life into her hands, was making her privy to great designs which belonged to the inner chambers of the chancelleries of Europe. Almost timorously, as it seemed, she put out her hand and touched his shoulder. "It is wonderful--wonderful," she said. "I can, I will help you. Will let you let me win back your trust--Ian?" "I want your help, Jasmine," he replied, and stood up. "It is the last turn of the wheel. It may be life or death to me professionally." "It shall be life," she said, softly. He turned slowly from her and went towards the door. "Shall we not go for a walk," she intervened--"before I drive to the station for Al'mah?" He nodded, and a moment afterward they were passing along the corridors. Suddenly, as they passed a window, Ian stopped. "I thought Mr. Mappin went with the others to the Glen?" he said. "He did," was the reply. "Who is that leaving his room?" he continued, as she followed his glance across the quadrangle. "Surely, it's Fellowes," he added. "Yes, it looked like Mr. Fellowes," she said, with a slight frown of wonder. CHAPTER XIII "I WILL NOT SING" "I will not sing--it's no use, I will not." Al'mah's eyes were vivid with anger, and her lips, so much the resort of humour, were set in determination. Her words came with low vehemence. Adrian Fellowes' hand nervously appealed to her. His voice was coaxing and gentle. "Al'mah, must I tell Mrs. Byng that?" he asked. "There are a hundred people in the ball-room. Some of them have driven thirty miles to hear you. Besides, you are bound in honour to keep your engagement." "I am bound to keep nothing that I don't wish to keep--you understand!" she replied, with a passionate gesture. "I am free to do what I please with my voice and with myself. I will leave here in the morning. I sang before dinner. That pays my board and a little over," she added, with bitterness. "I prefer to be a paying guest. Mrs. Byng shall not be my paying hostess." Fellowes shrugged his shoulders, but his lips twitched with excitement. "I don't know what has come over you, Al'mah," he said helplessly and with an anxiety he could not disguise. "You can't do that kind of thing. It isn't fair, it isn't straight business; from a social standpoint, it isn't well-bred." "Well-bred!" she retorted with a scornful laugh and a look of angry disdain. "You once said I had the manners of Madame Sans Gene, the washer-woman--a sickly joke, it was. Are you going to be my guide in manners? Does breeding only consist in having clothes made in Savile Row and eating strawberries out of season at a pound a basket?" "I get my clothes from the Stores now, as you can see," he said, in a desperate attempt to be humorous, for she was in a dangerous mood. Only once before had he seen her so, and he could feel the air charged with catastrophe. "And I'm eating humble pie in season now at nothing a dish," he added. "I really am; and it gives me shocking indigestion." Her face relaxed a little, for she could seldom resist any touch of humour, but the stubborn and wilful light in her eyes remained. "That sounds like last year's pantomime," she said, sharply, and, with a jerk of her shoulders, turned away. "For God's sake wait a minute, Al'mah!" he urged, desperately. "What has upset you? What has happened? Before dinner you were yourself; now--" he threw up his hands in despair--"Ah, my dearest, my star--" She turned upon him savagely, and it seemed as though a storm of passion would break upon him; but all at once she changed, came up close to him, and looked him steadily in the eyes. "I do not think I trust you," she said, quite quietly. His eyes could not meet hers fairly. He felt them shrinking from her inquisition. "You have always trusted me till now. What has happened?" he asked, apprehensively and with husky voice. "Nothing has happened," she replied in a low, steady voice. "Nothing. But I seem to realize you to-night. It came to me suddenly, at dinner, as I listened to you, as I saw you talk--I had never before seen you in surroundings like these. But I realized you then: I had a revelation. You need not ask me what it was. I do not know quite. I cannot tell. It is all vague, but it is startling, and it has gone through my heart like a knife. I tell you this, and I tell you quite calmly, that if you prove to be what, for the first time, I have a vision you are, I shall never look upon your face again if I can help it. If I come to know that you are false in nature and in act, that all you have said to me is not true, that you have degraded me--Oh," she fiercely added, breaking off and speaking with infinite anger and scorn--"it was only love, honest and true, however mistaken, which could make what has been between us endurable in my eyes! What I have thought was true love, and its true passion, helped me to forget the degradation and the secret shame--only the absolute honesty of that love could make me forget. But suppose I find it only imitation; suppose I see that it is only selfishness, only horrible, ugly self-indulgence; suppose you are a man who plays with a human soul! If I find that to be so, I tell you I shall hate you; and I shall hate myself; but I shall hate you more--a thousand times more." She paused with agony and appealing, with confusion and vague horror in her face. Her look was direct and absorbing, her eyes like wells of sullen fire. "Al'mah," he replied with fluttered eagerness, "let us talk of this later--not now--later. I will answer anything--everything. I can and I will prove to you that this is only a mad idea of yours, that--" "No, no, no, not mad," she interrupted. "There is no madness in it. I had a premonition before I came. It was like a cloud on my soul. It left me when we met here, when I heard your voice again; and for a moment I was happy. That was why I sang before dinner that song of Lassen's, 'Thine Eyes So Blue and Tender.' But it has come back. Something deep within me says, 'He is not true.' Something whispers, 'He is false by nature; it is not in him to be true to anything or anybody.'" He made an effort to carry off the situation lightly. With a great sense of humour, she had also an infinite capacity for taking things seriously--with an almost sensational gravity. Yet she had always responded to his cheerful raillery when he had declined to be tragical. He essayed the old way now. "This is just absurd, old girl;"--she shrank--"you really are mad. Your home is Colney Hatch or thereabouts. Why, I'm just what I always was to you--your constant slave, your everlasting lover, and your friend. I'll talk it all over with you later. It's impossible now. They're ready for you in the ball-room. The accompanist is waiting. Do, do, do be reasonable. I will see you--afterwards--late." A determined poignant look came into her eyes. She drew still farther away from him. "You will not, you shall not, see me 'afterwards--late.' No, no, no; I will trust my instinct now. I am natural, I am true, I hide nothing. I take my courage in both hands. I do not hide my head in the sands. I have given, because I chose to give, and I made and make no presences to myself. I answer to myself, and I do not play false with the world or with you. Whatever I am the world can know, for I deceive no one, and I have no fears. But you--oh, why, why is it I feel now, suddenly, that you have the strain of the coward in you! Why it comes to me now I do not know; but it is here"--she pressed her hand tremblingly to her heart--"and I will not act as though it wasn't here. I'm not of this world." She waved a hand towards the ball-room. "I am not of the world that lives in terror of itself. Mine is a world apart, where one acts and lives and sings the passion and sorrows and joys of others--all unreal, unreal. The one chance of happiness we artists have is not to act in our own lives, but to be true--real and true. For one's own life as well as one's work to be all grease-paint--no, no, no. I have hid all that has been between us, because of things that have nothing to do with fear or courage, and for your sake; but I haven't acted, or pretended. I have not flaunted my private life, my wretched sin--" "The sin of an angel--" She shrank from the blatant insincerity of the words, and still more from the tone. Why had it not all seemed insincere before? "But I was true in all I did, and I believed you were," she continued. "And you don't believe it now?" "To-night I do not. What I shall feel to-morrow I cannot tell. Maybe I shall go blind again, for women are never two days alike in their minds or bodies." She threw up her hands with a despairing helplessness. "But we shall not meet till to-morrow, and then I go back to London. I am going to my room now. You may tell Mrs. Byng that I am not well enough to sing--and indeed I am not well," she added, huskily. "I am sick at heart with I don't know what; but I am wretched and angry and dangerous--and bad." Her eyes fastened his with a fateful bitterness and gloom. "Where is Mr. Byng?" she added, sharply. "Why was he not at dinner?" He hailed the change of idea gladly. He spoke quickly, eagerly. "He was kept at the mine. There's trouble--a strike. He was needed. He has great influence with the men, and the masters, too. You heard Mrs. Byng say why he had not returned." "No; I was thinking of other things. But I wanted--I want to see him. When will he be back?" "At any moment, I should think. But, Al'mah, no matter what you feel about me, you must keep your engagement to sing here. The people in there, a hundred of the best people of the county--" "The best people of the county--such abject snobbery!" she retorted, sharply. "Do you think that would influence me? You ought to know me well enough--but that's just it, you do not know me. I realize it at last. Listen now. I will not sing to-night, and you will go and tell Mrs. Byng so." Once again she turned away, but her exit was arrested by another voice, a pleasant voice, which said: "But just one minute, please. Mr. Fellowes is quite right.... Fellowes, won't you go and say that Madame Al'mah will be there in five minutes?" It was Ian Stafford. He had come at Jasmine's request to bring Al'mah, and he had overheard her last words. He saw that there had been a scene, and conceived that it was the kind of quarrel which could be better arranged by a third disinterested person. After a moment's hesitation, with an anxious yet hopeful look, Fellowes disappeared, Al'mah's brown eyes following him with dark inquisition. Presently she looked at Ian Stafford with a flash of malice. Did this elegant and diplomatic person think that all he had to do was to speak, and she would succumb to his blandishment? He should see. He smiled, and courteously motioned her to a chair. "You said to Mr. Fellowes that I should sing in five minutes," she remarked maliciously and stubbornly, but she moved forward to the chair, nevertheless. "Yes, but there is no reason why we should not sit for three out of the five minutes. Energy should be conserved in a tiring world." "I have some energy to spare--the overflow," she returned with a protesting flash of the eyes, as, however, she slowly seated herself. "We call it power and magnetism in your case," he answered in that low, soothing voice which had helped to quiet storms in more than one chancellerie of Europe. . . . "What are you going to sing to-night?" he added. "I am not going to sing," she answered, nervously. "You heard what I said to Mr. Fellowes." "I was an unwilling eavesdropper; I heard your last words. But surely you would not be so unoriginal, so cliche, as to say the same thing to me that you said to Mr. Fellowes!" His smile was winning and his humour came from a deep well. On the instant she knew it to be real, and his easy confidence, his assumption of dominancy had its advantage. "I'll say it in a different way to you, but it will be the same thing. I shall not sing to-night," she retorted, obstinately. "Then a hundred people will go hungry to bed," he rejoined. "Hunger is a dreadful thing--and there are only three minutes left out of the five," he added, looking at his watch. "I am not the baker or the butler," she replied with a smile, but her firm lips did not soften. He changed his tactics with adroitness. If he failed now, it would be final. He thought he knew where she might be really vulnerable. "Byng will be disappointed and surprised when he hears of the famine that the prima donna has left behind her. Byng is one of the best that ever was. He is trying to do his fellow-creatures a good turn down there at the mine. He never did any harm that I ever heard of--and this is his house, and these are his guests. He would, I'll stake my life, do Al'mah a good turn if he could, even if it cost him something quite big. He is that kind of a man. He would be hurt to know that you had let the best people of the county be parched, when you could give them drink." "You said they were hungry a moment ago," she rejoined, her resolution slowly breaking under the one influence which could have softened her. "They would be both hungry and thirsty," he urged. "But, between ourselves, would you like Byng to come home from a hard day's work, as it were, and feel that things had gone wrong here while he was away on humanity's business? Just try to imagine him having done you a service--" "He has done me more than one service," she interjected. "You know it as well as I do. You were there at the opera, three years ago, when he saved me from the flames, and since then--" Stafford looked at his watch again with a smile. "Besides, there's a far more important reason why you should sing to-night. I promised some one who's been hurt badly, and who never heard you sing, that he should hear you to-night. He is lying there now, and--" "Jigger?" she asked, a new light in her eyes, something fleeing from her face and leaving a strange softness behind it. "Quite so," he replied. "That's a lad really worth singing for. He's an original, if ever there was one. He worships you for what you have done for his sister, Lou. I'd undergo almost any humiliation not to disappoint Jigger. Byng would probably get over his disappointment--he'd only feel that he hadn't been used fairly, and he's used to that; but Jigger wouldn't sleep to-night, and it's essential that he should. Think of how much happiness and how much pain you can give, just by trilling a simple little song with your little voice oh, madame la cantatrice?" Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She brushed them away hastily. "I've been upset and angry and disturbed--and I don't know what," she said, abruptly. "One of my black moods was on me. They only come once in a blue moon; but they almost kill me when they do." . . . She stopped and looked at him steadily for a moment, the tears still in her eyes. "You are very understanding and gentle--and sensible," she added, with brusque frankness and cordiality. "Yes, I will sing for Rudyard Byng and for Jigger; and a little too for a very clever diplomatist." She gave a spasmodic laugh. "Only half a minute left," he rejoined with gay raillery. "I said you'd sing to them in five minutes, and you must. This way." He offered her his arm, she took it, and in cheerful silence he hurried her to the ball-room. Before her first song he showed her the window which looked across to that out of which Jigger gazed with trembling eagerness. The blinds and curtains were up at these windows, and Jigger could see her as she sang. Never in all her wonderful career had Al'mah sung so well--with so much feeling and an artist's genius--not even that night of all when she made her debut. The misery, the gloom, the bitterness of the past hour had stirred every fibre of her being, and her voice told with thrilling power the story of a soul. Once after an outburst of applause from the brilliant audience, there came a tiny echo of it from across the courtyard. It was Jigger, enraptured by a vision of heaven and the sounds of it. Al'mah turned towards the window with a shining face, and waved a kiss out of the light and glory where she was, to the sufferer in the darkness. Then, after a whispered word to the accompanist she began singing Gounod's memorable song, "There is a Green Hill Far Away." It was not what the audience expected; it was in strangest contrast to all that had gone before; it brought a hush like a benediction upon the great chamber. Her voice seemed to ache with the plaintive depth of the song, and the soft night filled its soul with melody. A wonderful and deep solemnity was suddenly diffused upon the assembly of world-worn people, to most of whom the things that mattered were those which gave them diversion. They were wont to swim with the tide of indolence, extravagance, self-seeking, and sordid pleasure now flowing through the hardy isles, from which had come much of the strength of the Old World and the vision and spirit of the New World. Why had she chosen this song? Because, all at once, as she thought of Jigger lying there in the dark room, she had a vision of her own child lying near to death in the grasp of pneumonia five years ago; and the misery of that time swept over her--its rebellion, its hideous fear, its bitter loneliness. She recalled how a woman, once a great singer, now grown old in years as in sorrow, had sung this very song to her then, in the hour of her direst apprehension. She sang it now to her own dead child, and to Jigger. When she ceased, there was not a sound save of some woman gently sobbing. Others were vainly trying to choke back their tears. Presently, as Al'mah stood still in the hush which was infinitely more grateful to her than any applause, she saw Krool advancing hurriedly up the centre aisle. He was drawn and haggard, and his eyes were sunken and wild. Turning at the platform, he said in a strange, hollow voice: "At the mine--an accident. The Baas he go down to save--he not come up." With a cry Jasmine staggered to her feet. Ian Stafford was beside her in an instant. "The Baas--the Baas!" said Krool, insistently, painfully. "I have the horses--come." CHAPTER XIV THE BAAS There had been an explosion in the Glencader Mine, and twenty men had been imprisoned in the stark solitude of the underground world. Or was it that they lay dead in that vast womb of mother-earth which takes all men of all time as they go, and absorbs them into her fruitful body, to produce other men who will in due days return to the same great mother to rest and be still? It mattered little whether malevolence had planned the outrage in the mine, or whether accident alone had been responsible; the results were the same. Wailing, woebegone women wrung their hands, and haggard, determined men stood by with bowed heads, ready to offer their lives to save those other lives far down below, if so be it were possible. The night was serene and quiet, clear and cold, with glimmering stars and no moon, and the wide circle of the hills was drowsy with night and darkness. All was at peace in the outer circle, but at the centre was travail and storm and outrage and death. What nature had made beautiful, man had made ugly by energy and all the harsh necessities of progress. In the very heart of this exquisite and picturesque country-side the ugly, grim life of the miner had established itself, and had then turned an unlovely field of industrial activity into a cock-pit of struggle between capital and labour. First, discontent, fed by paid agitators and scarcely steadied by responsible and level-headed labour agents and leaders; then active disturbance and threatening; then partial strike, then minor outrages, then some foolishness on the part of manager or man, and now tragedy darkening the field, adding bitterness profound to the discontent and strife. Rudyard Byng had arrived on the scene in the later stages of the struggle, when a general strike with all its attendant miseries, its dangers and provocations, was hovering. Many men in his own mine in South Africa had come from this very district, and he was known to be the most popular of all the capitalists on the Rand. His generosity to the sick and poor of the Glencader Mine had been great, and he had given them a hospital and a club with adequate endowment. Also, he had been known to take part in the rough sports of the miners, and had afterwards sat and drunk beer with them--as much as any, and carying it better than any. If there was any one who could stay the strike and bring about a settlement it was he; and it is probable he would have stayed it, had it not been for a collision between a government official and a miners' leader. Things had grown worse, until the day of catastrophe, when Byng had been sent for by the leaders of both parties to the quarrel. He had laboured hours after hour in the midst of grave unrest and threats of violence, for some of the men had taken to drinking heavily--but without success. Still he had stayed on, going here and there, mostly among the men themselves, talking to them in little groups, arguing simply with them, patiently dealing with facts and figures, quietly showing them the economic injustice which lay behind their full demands, and suggesting compromises. He was received with good feeling, but in the workers' view it was "class against class--labour against capital, the man against the master." In their view Byng represented class, capital and master, not man; his interests were not identical with theirs; and though some were disposed to cheer him, the majority said he was "as good a sort as that sort can be," but shrugged their shoulders and remained obstinate. The most that he did during the long afternoon and evening was to prevent the worst; until, as he sat eating a slice of ham in a miner's kitchen, there came the explosion: the accident or crime--which, like the lances in an angry tumour, let out the fury, enmity, and rebellion, and gave human nature its chance again. The shock of the explosion had been heard at Glencader, but nothing was thought of it, as there had been much blasting in the district for days. "There's twenty men below," said the grimy manager who had brought the news to Byng. Together they sped towards the mine, little groups running beside them, muttering those dark sayings which, either as curses or laments, are painful comments on the relations of life on the lower levels with life on the higher plateaux. Among the volunteers to go below, Byng was of the first, and against the appeal of the mine-manager, and of others who tried to dissuade him, he took his place with two miners with the words: "I know this pit better than most; and I'd rather be down there knowing the worst, than waiting to learn it up here. I'm going; so lower away, lads." He had disappeared, and for a long time there was no sign; but at last there came to the surface three of the imprisoned miners and two dead bodies, and these were followed by others still alive; but Byng did not come up. He remained below, leading the search, the first in the places of danger and exploration, the last to retreat from any peril of falling timbers or from fresh explosion. Twelve of the twenty men were rescued. Six were dead, and their bodies were brought to the surface and to the arms of women whose breadwinners were gone; whose husbands or sons or brothers had been struck out into darkness without time to strip themselves of the impedimenta of the soul. Two were left below, and these were brothers who had married but three months before. They were strong, buoyant men of twenty-five, with life just begun, and home still welcome and alluring--warm-faced, bonny women to meet them at the door, and lay the cloth, and comfort their beds, and cheer them away to work in the morning. These four lovers had been the target for the good-natured and half-affectionate scoffing of the whole field; for the twins, Jabez and Jacob, were as alike as two peas, and their wives were cousins, and were of a type in mind, body, and estate. These twin toilers were left below, with Rudyard Byng forcing his way to the place where they had worked. With him was one other miner of great courage and knowledge, who had gone with other rescue parties in other catastrophes. It was this man who was carried to the surface when another small explosion occurred. He brought the terrible news that Byng, the rescuer of so many, was himself caught by falling timbers and imprisoned near a spot where Jabez and Jacob Holyhoke were entombed. Word had gone to Glencader, and within an hour and a half Jasmine, Al'mah, Stafford, Lord Tynemouth, the Slavonian Ambassador, Adrian Fellowes, Mr. Tudor Tempest and others were at the pit's mouth, stricken by the same tragedy which had made so many widows and orphans that night. Already two attempts had been made to descend, but they had not been successful. Now came forward a burly and dour-looking miner, called Brengyn, who had been down before, and had been in command. His look was forbidding, but his face was that of a man on whom you could rely; and his eyes had a dogged, indomitable expression. Behind him were a dozen men, sullen and haggard, their faces showing nothing of that pity in their hearts which drove them to risk all to save the lives of their fellow-workers. Was it all pity and humanity? Was there also something of that perdurable cohesion of class against class; the powerful if often unlovely unity of faction, the shoulder-to-shoulder combination of war; the tribal fanaticism which makes brave men out of unpromising material? Maybe something of this element entered into the heroism which had been displayed; but whatever the impulse or the motive, the act and the end were the same--men's lives were in peril, and they were risking their own to rescue them. When Jasmine and her friends arrived, Ian Stafford addressed himself to the groups of men at the pit's mouth, asking for news. Seeing Brengyn approach Jasmine, he hurried over, recognizing in the stalwart miner a leader of men. "It's a chance in a thousand," he heard Brengyn say to Jasmine, whose white face showed no trace of tears, and who held herself with courage. There was something akin in the expression of her face and that of other groups of women, silent, rigid and bitter, who stood apart, some with children's hands clasped in theirs, facing the worst with regnant resolution. All had that horrible quietness of despair so much more poignant than tears and wailing. Their faces showed the weariness of labour and an ill-nourished daily life, but there was the same look in them as in Jasmine's. There was no class in this communion of suffering and danger. "Not one chance in a thousand," Brengyn added, heavily. "I know where they are, but--" "You think they are--dead?" Jasmine asked in a hollow voice. "I think, alive or dead, it's all against them as goes down to bring them out. It's more lives to be wasted." Stafford heard, and he stepped forward. "If there's a chance in a thousand, it's good enough for a try," he said. "If you were there, Mr. Byng would take the chance in the thousand for you." Brengyn looked Stafford up and down slowly. "What is it you've got to say?" he asked, gloomily. "I am going down, if there's anybody will lead," Stafford replied. "I was brought up in a mining country. I know as much as most of you about mines, and I'll make one to follow you, if you'll lead--you've been down, I know." Brengyn's face changed. "Mr. Byng isn't our class, he's with capital," he said, "but he's a man. He went down to help save men of my class, and to any of us he's worth the risk. But how many of his own class is taking it on?" "I, for one," said Lord Tynemouth, stepping forward. "I--I," answered three other men of the house-party. Al'mah, who was standing just below Jasmine, had her eyes fixed on Adrian Fellowes, and when Brengyn called for volunteers, her heart almost stood still in suspense. Would Adrian volunteer? Brengyn's look rested on Adrian for an instant, but Adrian's eyes dropped. Brengyn had said one chance in a thousand, and Adrian said to himself that he had never been lucky--never in all his life. At games of chance he had always lost. Adrian was for the sure thing always. Al'mah's face flushed with anger and shame at the thing she saw, and a weakness came over her, as though the springs of life had been suddenly emptied. Brengyn once again fastened the group from Glencader with his eyes. "There's a gentleman in danger," he said, grimly, again. "How many gentlemen volunteer to go down--ay, there's five!" he added, as Stafford and Tynemouth and the others once again responded. Jasmine saw, but at first did not fully realize what was happening. But presently she understood that there was one near, owing everything to her husband, who had not volunteered to help to save him--on the thousandth chance. She was stunned and stricken. "Oh, for God's sake, go!" she said, brokenly, but not looking at Adrian Fellowes, and with a heart torn by misery and shame. Brengyn turned to the men behind him, the dark, determined toilers who sustained the immortal spirit of courage and humanity on thirty shillings a week and nine hours' work a day. "Who's for it, mates?" he asked, roughly. "Who's going wi' me?" Every man answered hoarsely, "Ay," and every hand went up. Brengyn's back was on Fellowes, Al'mah, and Jasmine now. There was that which filled the cup of trembling for Al'mah in the way he nodded to the men. "Right, lads," he said with a stern joy in his voice. "But there's only one of you can go, and I'll pick him. Here, Jim," he added to a small, wiry fellow not more than five feet four in height--"here, Jim Gawley, you're comin' wi' me, an' that's all o' you as can come. No, no," he added, as there was loud muttering and dissent. "Jim's got no missis, nor mother, and he's tough as leather and can squeeze in small places, and he's all right, too, in tight corners." Now he turned to Stafford and Tynemouth and the others. "You'll come wi' me," he said to Stafford--" if you want. It's a bad look-out, but we'll have a try. You'll do what I say?" he sharply asked Stafford, whose face was set. "You know the place," Stafford answered. "I'll do what you say." "My word goes?" "Right. Your word goes. Let's get on." Jasmine took a step forward with a smothered cry, but Alice Tynemouth laid a hand on her arm. "He'll bring Rudyard back, if it can be done," she whispered. Stafford did not turn round. He said something in an undertone to Tynemouth, and then, without a glance behind, strode away beside Brengyn and Jim Gawley to the pit's mouth. Adrian Fellowes stepped up to Tynemouth. "What do you think the chances are?" he asked in a low tone. "Go to--bed!" was the gruff reply of the irate peer, to whom cowardice was the worst crime on earth, and who was enraged at being left behind. Also he was furious because so many working-men had responded to Brengyn's call for volunteers and Adrian Fellowes had shown the white feather. In the obvious appeal to the comparative courage of class his own class had suffered. "Or go and talk to the women," he added to Fellowes. "Make 'em comfortable. You've got a gift that way." Turning on his heel, Lord Tynemouth hastened to the mouth of the pit and watched the preparations for the descent. Never was night so still; never was a sky so deeply blue, nor stars so bright and serene. It was as though Peace had made its habitation on the wooded hills, and a second summer had come upon the land, though wintertime was near. Nature seemed brooding, and the generous odour of ripened harvests came over the uplands to the watchers in the valley. All was dark and quiet in the sky and on the hills; but in the valley were twinkling lights and the stir and murmur of troubled life--that sinister muttering of angry and sullen men which has struck terror to the hearts of so many helpless victims of revolution, when it has been the mutterings of thousands and not of a few rough, discontented toilers. As Al'mah sat near to the entrance of the mine, wrapped in a warm cloak, and apart from the others who watched and waited also, she seemed to realize the agony of the problem which was being worked out in these labour-centres where, between capital and the work of men's hands, there was so apparent a gulf of disproportionate return. The stillness of the night was broken now by the hoarse calls of the men, now by the wailing of women, and Al'mah's eyes kept turning to those places where lights were shining, which, as she knew, were houses of death or pain. For hours she and Jasmine and Lady Tynemouth had gone from cottage to cottage where the dead and wounded were, and had left everywhere gifts, and the promises of gifts, in the attempt to soften the cruelty of the blow to those whose whole life depended on the weekly wage. Help and the pledge of help had lightened many a dark corner that night; and an unexplainable antipathy which had suddenly grown up in Al'mah's mind against Jasmine after her arrival at Glencader was dissipated as the hours wore on. Pale of face, but courageous and solicitous, Jasmine, accompanied by Al'mah, moved among the dead and dying and the bitter and bereaved living, with a gentle smile and a soft word or touch of the hand. Men near to death, or suffering torture, looked gratefully at her or tried to smile; and more than once Mr. Mappin, whose hands were kept busy and whose skill saved more than a handful of lives that night, looked at her in wonder. Jasmine already had a reputation in the great social world for being of a vain lightness, having nothing of that devotion to good works which Mr. Mappin had seen so often on those high levels where the rich and the aristocratic lived. There was, then, more than beauty and wit and great social gift, gaiety and charm, in this delicate personality? Yes, there was something good and sound in her, after all. Her husband's life was in infinite danger,--had not Brengyn said that his chances were only one in a thousand?--death stared her savagely in the face; yet she bore herself as calmly as those women who could not afford the luxury of tears or the self-indulgence of a despairing indolence; to whom tragedy was but a whip of scorpions to drive them into action. How well they all behaved, these society butterflies-- Jasmine, Lady Tynemouth, and the others! But what a wonderful motherliness and impulsive sympathy steadied by common sense did Al'mah the singing-woman show! Her instinct was infallible, her knowledge of how these poor people felt was intuitive, and her great-heartedness was to be seen in every motion, heard in every tone of her voice. If she had not had this work of charity to do, she felt she would have gone shrieking through the valley, as, this very midnight, she had seen a girl with streaming hair and bare breast go crying through the streets, and on up the hills to the deep woods, insane with grief and woe. Her head throbbed. She felt as though she also could tear the coverings from her own bosom to let out the fever which was there; for in her life she had loved two men who had trampled on her self-respect, had shattered all her pride of life, had made her ashamed to look the world in the face. Blantyre, her husband, had been despicable and cruel, a liar and a deserter; and to-night she had seen the man to whom she had given all that was left of her heart and faith disgrace himself and his class before the world by a cowardice which no woman could forgive. Adrian Fellowes had gone back to Glencader to do necessary things, to prepare the household for any emergency; and she was grateful for the respite. If she had been thrown with him in the desperate mood of the moment, she would have lost her self-control. Happily, fate had taken him away for a few hours; and who could tell what might not happen in a few hours? Meanwhile, there was humanity's work to be done. About four o'clock in the morning, when she came out from a cottage where she had assisted Mr. Mappin in a painful and dangerous operation, she stood for a moment in reverie, looking up at the hills, whose peace had been shrilly broken a few hours before by that distracted waif of the world, fleeing from the pain of life. An ample star of rare brilliancy came stealing up over the trees against the sky-line, twinkling and brimming with light. "No," she said, as though in reply to an inner voice, "there's nothing for me--nothing. I have missed it all." Her hands clasped her breast in pain, and she threw her face upwards. But the light of the star caught her eyes, and her hands ceased to tremble. A strange quietness stole over her. "My child, my lost beloved child," she whispered. Her eyes swam with tears now, the lines of pain at her mouth relaxed, the dark look in her eyes stole away. She watched the star with sorrowful eyes. "How much misery does it see!" she said. Suddenly, she thought of Rudyard Byng. "He saved my life," she murmured. "I owe him--ah, Adrian might have paid the debt!" she cried, in pain. "If he had only been a man to-night--" At that moment there came a loud noise up the valley from the pit's mouth--a great shouting. An instant later two figures ran past her. One was Jasmine, the other was a heavy-footed miner. Gathering her cloak around her Al'mah sped after them. A huddled group at the pit's mouth, and men and women running toward it; a sharp voice of command, and the crowd falling back, making way for men who carried limp bodies past; then suddenly, out of wild murmurs and calls, a cry of victory like the call of a muezzin from the tower of a mosque--a resonant monotony, in which a dominant principle cries. A Welsh preaching hillman, carried away by the triumph of the moment, gave the great tragedy the bugle-note of human joy and pride. Ian Stafford and Brengyn and Jim Gawley had conquered. The limp bodies carried past Al'mah were not dead. They were living, breathing men whom fresh air and a surgeon's aid would soon restore. Two of them were the young men with the bonny wives who now with murmured endearments grasped their cold hands. Behind these two was carried Rudyard Byng, who could command the less certain concentration of a heart. The men whom Rudyard had gone to save could control a greater wealth, a more precious thing than anything he had. The boundaries of the interests of these workers were limited, but their souls were commingled with other souls bound to them by the formalities; and every minute of their days, every atom of their forces, were moving round one light, the light upon the hearthstone. These men were carried ahead of Byng now, as though by the ritual of nature taking their rightful place in life's procession before him. Something of what the working-women felt possessed Jasmine, but it was an impulse born of the moment, a flood of feeling begotten by the tragedy. It had in it more of remorse than aught else; it was, in part, the agitation of a soul surprised into revelation. Yet there was, too, a strange, deep, undefined pity welling up in her heart,--pity for Rudyard, and because of what she did not say directly even to her own soul. But pity was there, with also a sense of inevitableness, of the continuance of things which she was too weak to alter. Like the two women of the people ahead, she held Rudyard's hand, as she walked beside him, till he was carried into the manager's office near by. She was conscious that on the other side of Rudyard was a tall figure that staggered and swayed as it moved on, and that two dark eyes were turned towards her ever and anon. Into those eyes she had looked but once since the rescue, but all that was necessary of gratitude was said in that one glance: "You have saved Rudyard--you, Ian," it said. With Al'mah it was different. In the light of the open door of the manager's office, she looked into Ian Stafford's face. "He saved my life, you remember," she said; "and you have saved his. I love you." "I love you!" Greatness of heart was speaking, not a woman's emotions. The love she meant was of the sort which brings no darkness in its train. Men and women can speak of it without casting down their eyes or feeling a flush in their cheeks. To him came also the two women whose husbands, Jacob and Jabez, were restored to them. "Man, we luv ye," one said, and the other laid a hand on his breast and nodded assent, adding, "Ay, we luv ye." That was all; but greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend--and for his enemies, maybe. Enemies these two rescued men were in one sense--young socialists--enemies to the present social order, with faces set against the capitalist and the aristocrat and the landlord; yet in the crisis of life dipping their hands in the same dish, drinking from the same cup, moved by the same sense of elementary justice, pity, courage, and love. "Man, we luv ye!" And the women turned away to their own--to their capital, which in the slump of Fate had suffered no loss. It was theirs, complete and paying large dividends. To the crowd, Brengyn, with gruff sincerity, said, loudly: "Jim Gawley, he done as I knowed he'd do. He done his best, and he done it prime. We couldn't ha' got on wi'out him. But first there was Mr. Byng as had sense and knowledge more than any; an' he couldn't be denied; an' there was Mr. Stafford--him--" pointing to Ian, who, with misty eyes, was watching the women go back to their men. "He done his bit better nor any of us. And Mr. Byng and Jacob and Jabez, they can thank their stars that Mr. Stafford done his bit. Jim's all right an' I done my duty, I hope, but these two that ain't of us, they done more--Mr. Byng and Mr. Stafford. Here's three cheers, lads--no, this ain't a time for cheerin'; but ye all ha' got hands." His hand caught Ian's with the grip of that brotherhood which is as old as Adam, and the hand of miner after miner did the same. The strike was over--at a price too big for human calculation; but it might have been bigger still. Outside the open door of the manager's office Stafford watched and waited till he saw Rudyard, with a little laugh, get slowly to his feet and stretch his limbs heavily. Then he turned away gloomily to the darkness of the hills. In his soul there was a depression as deep as in that of the singing-woman. "Al'mah had her debt to pay, and I shall have mine," he said, wearily. BOOK III CHAPTER XV THE WORLD WELL LOST People were in London in September and October who seldom arrived before November. War was coming. Hundreds of families whose men were in the army came to be within touch of the War Office and Aldershot, and the capital of the Empire was overrun by intriguers, harmless and otherwise. There were ladies who hoped to influence officers in high command in favour of their husbands, brothers, or sons; subalterns of title who wished to be upon the staff of some famous general; colonels of character and courage and scant ability, craving commands; high-placed folk connected with great industrial, shipping, or commercial firms, who were used by these firms to get "their share" of contracts and other things which might be going; and patriotic amateurs who sought to make themselves notorious through some civilian auxiliary to war organization, like a voluntary field hospital or a home of convalescence. But men, too, of the real right sort, longing for chance of work in their profession of arms; ready for anything, good for anything, brave to a miracle: and these made themselves fit by hard riding or walking or rowing, or in some school of physical culture, that they might take a war job on, if, and when, it was going. Among all these Ian Stafford moved with an undercurrent of agitation and anxiety unseen in his face, step, motion, or gesture. For days he was never near the Foreign Office, and then for days he was there almost continuously; yet there was scarcely a day when he did not see Jasmine. Also there were few days in the week when Jasmine did not see M. Mennaval, the ambassador for Moravia--not always at her own house, but where the ambassador chanced to be of an evening, at a fashionable restaurant, or at some notable function. This situation had not been difficult to establish; and, once established, meetings between the lady and monsieur were arranged with that skill which belongs to woman and to diplomacy. Once or twice at the beginning Jasmine's chance question concerning the ambassador's engagements made M. Mennaval keen to give information as to his goings and comings. Thus if they met naturally, it was also so constantly that people gossiped; but at first, certainly, not to Jasmine's grave disadvantage, for M. Mennaval was thought to be less dangerous than impressionable. In that, however, he was somewhat maligned, for his penchant for beautiful and "select" ladies had capacities of development almost unguessed. Previously Jasmine had never shown him any marked preference; and when, at first, he met her in town on her return from Wales he was no more than watchfully courteous and admiring. When, however, he found her in a receptive mood, and evidently taking pleasure in his society, his vanity expanded greatly. He at once became possessed by an absorbing interest in the woman who, of all others in London, had gifts which were not merely physical, but of a kind that stimulate the mind and rouse those sensibilities so easily dulled by dull and material people. Jasmine had her material side; but there was in her the very triumph of the imaginative also; and through it the material became alive, buoyant and magnetic. Without that magnetic power which belonged to the sensuous part of her she would not have gained control of M. Mennaval's mind, for it was keen, suspicious, almost abnormally acute; and, while lacking real power, it protected itself against the power of others by assembled and well-disciplined adroitness and evasions. Very soon, however, Jasmine's sensitive beauty, which in her desire to intoxicate him became voluptuousness, enveloped his brain in a mist of rainbow reflections. Under her deft questions and suggestions he allowed her to see the springs of his own diplomacy and the machinery inside the Moravian administration. She caught glimpses of its ambitions, its unscrupulous use of its position in international relations, to gain advantage for itself, even by a dexterity which might easily bear another name, and by sudden disregard of international attachments not unlike treachery. Rudyard was too busy to notice the more than cavalier attitude of M. Mennaval; and if he had noticed it, there would have been no intervention. Of late a lesion of his higher moral sense made him strangely insensitive to obvious things. He had an inborn chivalry, but the finest, truest chivalry was not his--that which carefully protects a woman from temptation, by keeping her unostentatiously away from it; which remembers that vanity and the need for admiration drive women into pitfalls out of which they climb again maimed for life, if they climb at all. He trusted Jasmine absolutely, while there was, at the same time, a great unrest in his heart and life--an unrest which the accident at the Glencader Mine, his own share in a great rescue, and her gratitude for his safety did little to remove. It produced no more than a passing effect upon Jasmine or upon himself. The very convention of making light of bravery and danger, which has its value, was in their case an evil, preventing them from facing the inner meaning of it all. If they had been less rich, if their house had been small, if their acquaintances had been fewer, if . . . It was not by such incidents that they were to be awakened, and with the wild desire to make Stafford grateful to her, and owe her his success, the tragedy yonder must, in the case of Jasmine, have been obscured and robbed of its force. At Glencader Jasmine had not got beyond desire to satisfy a vanity, which was as deep in her as life itself. It was to regain her hold upon a man who had once acknowledged her power and, in a sense, had bowed to her will. But that had changed, and, down beneath all her vanity and wilfulness, there was now a dangerous regard and passion for him which, under happy circumstances, might have transformed her life--and his. Now it all served to twist her soul and darken her footsteps. On every hand she was engaged in a game of dissimulation, made the more dangerous by the thread of sincerity and desire running through it all. Sometimes she started aghast at the deepening intrigue gathering in her path; at the deterioration in her husband; and at the hollow nature of her home life; but the excitement of the game she was playing, the ardour of the chase, was in her veins, and her inherited spirit of great daring kept her gay with vitality and intellectual adventure. Day after day she had strengthened the cords by which she was drawing Ian to her; and in the confidence begotten of her services to him, of her influence upon M. Mennaval and the progress of her efforts, a new intimacy, different from any they had ever known, grew and thrived. Ian scarcely knew how powerful had become the feeling between them. He only realized that delight which comes from working with another for a cherished cause, the goal of one's life, which has such deeper significance when the partner in the struggle is a woman. They both experienced that most seductive of all influences, a secret knowledge and a pact of mutual silence and purpose. "You trust me now?" Jasmine asked at last one day, when she had been able to assure Ian that the end was very near, that M. Mennaval had turned his face from Slavonia, and had carried his government with him--almost. In the heir-apparent to the throne of Moravia, whose influence with the Moravian Prime Minister was considerable, there still remained one obdurate element; but Ian's triumph only lacked the removal of this one obstructive factor, and thereafter England would be secure from foreign attack, if war came in South Africa. In that case Ian's career might culminate at the head of the Foreign Office itself, or as representative of the throne in India, if he chose that splendid sphere. "You do trust me, Ian?" Jasmine repeated, with a wistfulness as near reality as her own deceived soul could permit. With a sincerity as deep as one can have who embarks on enterprises in which one regrets the means in contemplation of the end, Ian replied: "Yes, yes, I trust you, Jasmine, as I used to do when I was twenty and you were five. You have brought back the boy in me. All the dreams of youth are in my heart again, all the glow of the distant sky of hope. I feel as though I lived upon a hill-top, under some greenwood tree, and--" "And 'sported with Amaryllis in the shade,'" she broke in with a little laugh of triumph, her eyes brighter than he had ever seen them. They were glowing with a fire of excitement which was like a fever devouring the spirit, with little dark, flying banners of fate or tragedy behind. Strange that he caught the inner meaning of it as he looked into her eyes now. In the depths of those eyes, where long ago he had drowned his spirit, it was as though he saw an army of reckless battalions marching to a great battle; but behind all were the black wings of vultures--pinions of sorrow following the gay brigades. Even as he gazed at her, something ominous and threatening caught his heart, and, with the end of his great enterprise in sight, a black premonition smothered him. But with a smile he said: "Well, it does look as though we are near the end of the journey." "And 'journeys end in lovers' meeting,'" she whispered softly, lowered her eyes, and then raised them again to his. The light in them blinded him. Had he not always loved her--before any one came, before Rudyard came, before the world knew her? All that he had ever felt in the vanished days rushed upon him with intolerable force. Through his life-work, through his ambition, through helping him as no one else could have done at the time of crisis, she had reached the farthest confines of his nature. She had woven, thread by thread, the magic carpet of that secret companionship by which the best as the worst of souls are sometimes carried into a land enchanted--for a brief moment, before Fate stoops down and hangs a veil of plague over the scene of beauty, passion, and madness. Her eyes, full of liquid fire, met his. They half closed as her body swayed slightly towards him. With a cry, almost rough in its intensity, he caught her in his arms and buried his face in the soft harvest of her hair. "Jasmine--Jasmine, my love!" he murmured. Suddenly she broke from him. "Oh no--oh no, Ian! The work is not done. I can't take my pay before I have earned it--such pay--such pay." He caught her hands and held them fast. "Nothing can alter what is. It stands. Whatever the end, whatever happens to the thing I want to do, I--" He drew her closer. "You say this before we know what Moravia will do; you--oh, Ian, tell me it is not simply gratitude, and because I tried to help you; not only because--" He interrupted her with a passionate gesture. "It belonged at first to what you were doing for me. Now it is by itself, that which, for good or ill, was to be between you and me--the foreordained thing." She drew back her head with a laugh of vanity and pride and bursting joy. "Ah, it doesn't matter now!" she said. "It doesn't matter." He looked at her questioningly. "Nothing matters now," she repeated, less enigmatically. She stretched her arms up joyously, radiantly. "The world well lost!" she cried. Her reckless mood possessed him also. They breathed that air which intoxicates, before it turns heavy with calamity and stifles the whole being; by which none ever thrived, though many have sought nourishment in daring draughts of it. "The world well lost!" he repeated; and his lips sought hers. Her determined patience had triumphed. Hour by hour, by being that to his plans, to his work of life, which no one else could be, she had won back what she had lost when the Rand had emptied into her lap its millions, at the bidding of her material soul. With infinite tact and skill she had accomplished her will. The man she had lost was hers again. What it must mean, what it must do, what price must be paid for this which her spirit willed had never yet been estimated. But her will had been supreme, and she took all out of the moment which was possible to mortal pleasure. Like the Columbus, however, who plants his flag upon the cliffs of a new land, and then, leaving his vast prize unharvested, retreats upon the sea by which he came, so Ian suddenly realized that here was no abiding-place for his love. It was no home for his faith, for those joys which the sane take gladly, when it is right to take them, and the mad long for and die for when their madness becomes unbearable. A cloud suddenly passed over him, darkened his eyes, made his bones like water. For, whatever might come, he knew in his heart of hearts that the "old paths" were the only paths which he could tread in peace--or tread at all without the ruin of all he had slowly builded. Jasmine, however, did not see his look or realize the sudden physical change which passed over him, leaving him cold and numbed; for a servant now entered with a note. Seeing the handwriting on the envelope, with an exclamation of excitement and surprise, Jasmine tore the letter open. One glance was sufficient. "Moravia is ours--ours, Ian!" she cried, and thrust the letter into his hands. "Dearest lady," it ran, "the Crown has intervened successfully. The Heir Apparent has been set aside. The understanding may now be ratified. May I dine with you to-night? "Yours, M. "P.S.--You are the first to know, but I have also sent a note to our young friend, Ian Stafford. Mais, he cannot say, 'Alone I did it.' "M." "Thank God--thank God, for England!" said Ian solemnly, the greater thing in him deeply stirred. "Now let war come, if it must; for we can do our work without interference." "Thank God," he repeated, fervently, and the light in his eyes was clearer and burned brighter than the fire which had filled them during the past few moments. Then he clasped her in his arms again. As Ian drove swiftly in a hansom to the Foreign Office, his brain putting in array and reviewing the acts which must flow from this international agreement now made possible, the note Mennaval had written Jasmine flashed before his eyes: "Dearest lady.... May I dine with you to-night? . . . M." His face flushed. There was something exceedingly familiar--more in the tone of the words than the words themselves--which irritated and humiliated him. What she had done for him apparently warranted this intimate, self-assured tone on the part of Mennaval, the philanderer. His pride smarted. His rose of triumph had its thorns. A letter from Mennaval was at the Foreign Office awaiting him. He carried it to the Prime Minister, who read it with grave satisfaction. "It is just in time, Stafford," he remarked. "You ran it close. We will clinch it instantly. Let us have the code." As the Prime Minister turned over the pages of the code, he said, dryly: "I hear from Pretoria, through Mr. Byng, that President Kruger may send the ultimatum tomorrow. I fear he will have the laugh on us, for ours is not ready. We have to make sure of this thing first.... I wonder how Landrassy will take it." He chuckled deeply. "Landrassy made a good fight, but you made a better one, Stafford. I shouldn't wonder if you got on in diplomacy," he added, with quizzical humour.... "Ah, here is the code! Now to clinch it all before Oom Paul's challenge arrives." CHAPTER XVI THE COMING OF THE BAAS "The Baas--where the Baas?" Barry Whalen turned with an angry snort to the figure in the doorway. "Here's the sweet Krool again," he said. "Here's the faithful, loyal offspring of the Vaal and the karoo, the bulwark of the Baas.... For God's sake smile for once in your life!" he growled with an oath, and, snatching up a glass of whiskey and water, threw the contents at the half-caste. Krool did not stir, and some of the liquid caught him in the face. Slowly he drew out an old yellow handkerchief and wiped his cheeks, his eyes fixed with a kind of impersonal scrutiny on Barry Whalen and the scene before him. The night was well forward, and an air of recklessness and dissipation pervaded this splendid room in De Lancy Scovel's house. The air was thick with tobacco-smoke, trays were scattered about, laden with stubs of cigars and ashes, and empty and half-filled glasses were everywhere. Some of the party had already gone, their gaming instinct satisfied for the night, their pockets lighter than when they came; and the tables where they had sat were in a state of disorder more suggestive of a "dive" than of the house of one who lived in Grosvenor Square. No servant came to clear away the things. It was a rule of the establishment that at midnight the household went to bed, and the host and his guests looked after themselves thereafter. The friends of De Lancy Scovel called him "Cupid," because of his cherubic face, but he was more gnome than cherub at heart. Having come into his fortune by being a henchman to abler men than himself, he was almost over-zealous to retain it, knowing that he could never get it again; yet he was hospitable with the income he had to spend. He was the Beau Brummel of that coterie which laid the foundation of prosperity on the Rand; and his house was a marvel of order and crude elegance--save when he had his roulette and poker parties, and then it was the shambles of murdered niceties. Once or twice a week his friends met here; and it was not mendaciously said that small fortunes were lost and won within these walls "between drinks." The critical nature of things on the Rand did not lessen the gaming or the late hours, the theatrical entertainments and social functions at which Al'mah or another sang at a fabulous fee; or from which a dancer took away a pocketful of gold--partly fee. Only a few of all the group, great and small, kept a quiet pace and cherished their nerves against possible crisis or disaster; and these were consumed by inward anxiety, because all the others looked to them for a lead, for policy, for the wise act and the manoevre that would win. Rudyard Byng was the one person who seemed equally compacted of both elements. He was a powerful figure in the financial inner circle; but he was one of those who frequented De Lancy Scovel's house; and he had, in his own house, a roulette-table and a card-room like a banqueting-hall. Wallstein, Wolff, Barry Whalen, Fleming, Hungerford, Reuter, and the others of the inner circle he laughed at in a good-natured way for coddling themselves, and called them--not without some truth--valetudinarians. Indeed, the hard life of the Rand in the early days, with the bad liqueur and the high veld air, had brought to most of the Partners inner physical troubles of some kind; and their general abstention was not quite voluntary moral purpose. Of them all, except De Lancy Scovel, Rudyard was most free from any real disease or physical weakness which could call for the care of a doctor. With a powerful constitution, he had kept his general health fairly, though strange fits of depression had consumed him of late, and the old strong spring and resilience seemed going, if not gone, from his mind and body. He was not that powerful virile animal of the day when he caught Al'mah in his arms and carried her off the stage at Covent Garden. He was vaguely conscious of the great change in him, and Barry Whalen, who, with all his faults, would have gone to the gallows for him, was ever vividly conscious of it, and helplessly resented the change. At the time of the Jameson Raid Rudyard Byng had gripped the situation with skill, decision, and immense resource, giving as much help to the government of the day as to his colleagues and all British folk on the Rand. But another raid was nearing, a raid upon British territory this time. The Rand would be the centre of a great war; and Rudyard Byng was not the man he had been, in spite of his show of valour and vigour at the Glencader Mine. Indeed, that incident had shown a certain physical degeneracy--he had been too slow in recovering from the few bad hours spent in the death-trap. The government at Whitehall still consulted him, still relied upon his knowledge and his natural tact; but secret as his conferences were with the authorities, they were not so secret that criticism was not viciously at work. Women jealous of Jasmine, financiers envious of Rudyard, Imperial politicians resentful of his influence, did their best to present him in the worst light possible. It was more than whispered that he sat too long over his wine, and that his desire for fiery liquid at other than meal-times was not in keeping with the English climate, but belonged to lands of drier weather and more absorptive air. "What damned waste!" was De Lancy Scovel's attempt at wit as Krool dried his face and put the yellow handkerchief back into his pocket. The others laughed idly and bethought themselves of their own glasses, and the croupier again set the ball spinning and drew their eyes. "Faites vos jeux!" the croupier called, monotonously, and the jingle of coins followed. "The Baas--where the Baas?" came again the harsh voice from the doorway. "Gone--went an hour ago," said De Lancy Scovel, coming forward. "What is it, Krool?" "The Baas--" "The Baas!" mocked Barry Whalen, swinging round again. "The Baas is gone to find a rope to tie Oom Paul to a tree, as Oom Paul tied you at Lichtenburg." Slowly Krool's eyes went round the room, and then settled on Barry Whalen's face with owl-like gravity. "What the Baas does goes good," he said. "When the Baas ties, Alles zal recht kom." He turned away now with impudent slowness, then suddenly twisted his body round and made a grimace of animal-hatred at Barry Whalen, his teeth showing like those of a wolf. "The Baas will live long as he want," he added, "but Oom Paul will have your heart--and plenty more," he added, malevolently, and moved into the darkness without, closing the door behind him. A shudder passed through the circle, for the uncanny face and the weird utterance had the strange reality of fate. A gloom fell on the gamblers suddenly, and they slowly drew into a group, looking half furtively at one another. The wheel turned on the roulette-table, the ball clattered. "Rien ne va plus!" called the croupier; but no coins had fallen on the green cloth, and the wheel stopped spinning for the night, as though by common consent. "Krool will murder you some day, Barry," said Fleming, with irritation. "What's the sense in saying things like that to a servant?" "How long ago did Rudyard leave?" asked De Lancy Scovel, curiously. "I didn't see him go. He didn't say good-night to me. Did he to you--to any of you?" "Yes, he said to me he was going," rejoined Barry Whalen. "And to me," said Melville, the Pole, who in the early days on the Rand had been a caterer. His name then had been Joseph Sobieski, but this not fitting well with the English language, he had searched the directory of London till he found the impeachably English combination of Clifford Melville. He had then cut his hair and put himself into the hands of a tailor in Conduit Street, and they had turned him into--what he was. "Yes, Byng thed good-night to me--deah old boy," he repeated. "'I'm so damned thleepy, and I have to be up early in the morning,' he thed to me." "Byng's example's good enough. I'm off," said Fleming, stretching up his arms and yawning. "Byng ought to get up earlier in the morning--much earlier," interposed De Lancy Scovel, with a meaning note in his voice. "Why?" growled out Barry Whalen. "He'd see the Outlander early-bird after the young domestic worm," was the slow reply. For a moment a curious silence fell upon the group. It was as though some one had heard what had been said--some one who ought not to have heard. That is exactly what had happened. Rudyard had not gone home. He had started to do so; but, remembering that he had told Krool to come at twelve o'clock if any cables arrived, that he might go himself to the cable-office, if necessary, and reply, he passed from the hallway into a little room off the card-room, where there was a sofa, and threw himself down to rest and think. He knew that the crisis in South Africa must come within a few hours; that Oom Paul would present an ultimatum before the British government was ready to act; and that preparations must be made on the morrow to meet all chances and consequences. Preparations there had been, but conditions altered from day to day, and what had been arranged yesterday morning required modification this evening. He was not heedless of his responsibilities because he was at the gaming-table; but these were days when he could not bear to be alone. Yet he could not find pleasure in the dinner-parties arranged by Jasmine, though he liked to be with her--liked so much to be with her, and yet wondered how it was he was not happy when he was beside her. This night, however, he had especially wished to be alone with her, to dine with her a deux, and he had been disappointed to find that she had arranged a little dinner and a theatre-party. With a sigh he had begged her to arrange her party without him, and, in unusual depression, he had joined "the gang," as Jasmine called it, at De Lancy Scovel's house. Here he moved in a kind of gloom, and had a feeling as though he were walking among pitfalls. A dread seemed to descend upon him and deaden his natural buoyancy. At dinner he was fitful in conversation, yet inclined to be critical of the talk around him. Upon those who talked excitedly of war and its consequences, with perverse spirit he fell like a sledge-hammer, and proved their information or judgment wrong. Then, again, he became amiable and almost sentimental in his attitude toward them all, gripping the hands of two or three with a warmth which more than surprised them. It was as though he was subconsciously aware of some great impending change. It may be there whispered through the clouded space that lies between the dwelling-house of Fate and the place where a man's soul lives the voice of that Other Self, which every man has, warning him of darkness, or red ruin, or a heartbreak coming on. However that may be, he had played a good deal during the evening, had drunk more than enough brandy and soda, had then grown suddenly heavy-hearted and inert. At last he had said good-night, and had fallen asleep in the little dark room adjoining the card-room. Was it that Other Self which is allowed to come to us as our trouble or our doom approaches, who called sharply in his ear as De Lancy Scovel said, "Byng ought to get up earlier in the morning--much earlier." Rudyard wakened upon the words without stirring--just a wide opening of the eyes and a moveless body. He listened with, as it were, a new sense of hearing, so acute, so clear, that it was as though his friends talked loudly in his very ears. "He'd see the Outlander early-bird after the young domestic worm." His heart beat so loud that it seemed his friends must hear it, in the moment's silence following these suggestive words. "Here, there's enough of this," said Barry Whalen, sharply, upon the stillness. "It's nobody's business, anyhow. Let's look after ourselves, and we'll have enough to do, or I don't know any of us." "But it's no good pretending," said Fleming. "There isn't one of us but 'd put ourselves out a great deal for Byng. It isn't human nature to sit still and do naught, and say naught, when things aren't going right for him in the place where things matter most. "Can't he see? Doesn't he see--anything?" asked a little wizened lawyer, irritably, one who had never been married, the solicitor of three of their great companies. "See--of course he doesn't see. If he saw, there'd be hell--at least," replied Barry Whalen, scornfully. "He's as blind as a bat," sighed Fleming. "He got into the wrong garden and picked the wrong flower--wrong for him," said another voice. "A passion-flower, not the flower her name is," added De Lancy Scovel, with a reflective cynicism. "They they there's no doubt about it--she's throwing herself away. Ruddy isn't in it, deah old boy, so they they," interposed Clifford Melville, alias Joseph Sobieski of Posen." Diplomathy is all very well, but thith kind of diplomathy is not good for the thoul." He laughed as only one of his kidney can laugh. Upon the laugh there came a hoarse growl of anger. Barry Whalen was standing above Mr. Clifford Melville with rage in every fibre, threat in every muscle. "Shut up--curse you, Sobieski! It's for us, for any and every one, to cut the throats of anybody that says a word against her. We've all got to stand together. Byng forever, is our cry, and Byng's wife is Byng--before the world. We've got to help him--got to help him, I say." "Well, you've got to tell him first. He's got to know it first," interposed Fleming; "and it's not a job I'm taking on. When Byng's asleep he takes a lot of waking, and he's asleep in this thing." "And the world's too wide awake," remarked De Lancy Scovel, acidly. "One way or another Byng's got to be waked. It's only him can put it right." No one spoke for a moment, for all saw that Barry Whalen was about to say something important, coming forward to the table impulsively for the purpose, when a noise from the darkened room beyond fell upon the silence. De Lancy Scovel heard, Fleming heard, others heard, and turned towards the little room. Sobieski touched Barry Whalen's arm, and they all stood waiting while a hand slowly opened wide the door of the little room, and, white with a mastered agitation, Byng appeared. For a moment he looked them all full in the face, yet as though he did not see them; and then, without a word, as they stepped aside to make way for him, he passed down the room to the outer hallway. At the door he turned and looked at them again. Scorn, anger, pride, impregnated with a sense of horror, were in his face. His white lips opened to speak, but closed again, and, turning, he stepped out of their sight. No one followed. They knew their man. "My God, how he hates us!" said Barry Whalen, and sank into a chair at the table, with his head between his hands. The cheeks of the little wizened lawyer glistened with tears, and De Lancy Scovel threw open a window and leaned out, looking into the night remorsefully. CHAPTER XVII IS THERE NO HELP FOR THESE THINGS? Slowly, heavily, like one drugged, Rudyard Byng made his way through the streets, oblivious of all around him. His brain was like some engine pounding at high pressure, while all his body was cold and lethargic. His anger at those he left behind was almost madness, his humiliation was unlike anything he had ever known. In one sense he was not a man of the world. All his thoughts and moods and habits had been essentially primitive, even in the high social and civilized surroundings of his youth; and when he went to South Africa, it was to come into his own--the large, simple, rough, adventurous life. His powerful and determined mind was confined in its scope to the big essential things. It had a rare political adroitness, but it had little intellectual subtlety. It had had no preparation for the situation now upon him, and its accustomed capacity was suddenly paralyzed. Like some huge ship staggered by the sea, it took its punishment with heavy, sullen endurance. Socially he had never, as it were, seen through a ladder; and Jasmine's almost uncanny brilliance of repartee and skill in the delicate contest of the mind had ever been a wonder to him, though less so of late than earlier in their married life. Perhaps this was because his senses were more used to it, more blunted; or was it because something had gone from her--that freshness of mind and body, that resilience of temper and spirit, without which all talk is travail and weariness? He had never thought it out, though he was dimly conscious of some great loss--of the light gone from the evening sky. Yes, it was always in the evening that he had most longed to see "his girl"; when the day's work was done; when the political and financial stress had subsided; or when he had abstracted himself from it all and turned his face towards home. For the big place in Park Lane had really been home to him, chiefly because, or alone because, Jasmine had made it what it was; because in every room, in every corner, was the product of her taste and design. It had been home because it was associated with her. But of late ever since his five months' visit to South Africa without her the year before--there had come a change, at first almost imperceptible, then broadening and deepening. At first it had vexed and surprised him; but at length it had become a feeling natural to, and in keeping with, a scheme of life in which they saw little of each other, because they saw so much of other people. His primitive soul had rebelled against it at first, not bitterly, but confusedly; because he knew that he did not know why it was; and he thought that if he had patience he would come to understand it in time. But the understanding did not come, and on that ominous, prophetic day before they went to Glencader, the day when Ian Stafford had dined with Jasmine alone after their meeting in Regent Street, there had been a wild, aching protest against it all. Not against Jasmine--he did not blame her; he only realized that she was different from what he had thought she was; that they were both different from what they had been; and that--the light had gone from the evening sky. But from first to last he had always trusted her. It had never crossed his mind, when she "made up" to men in her brilliant, provoking, intoxicating way, that there was any lack of loyalty to him. It simply never crossed his mind. She was his wife, his girl, his flower which he had plucked; and there it was, for the universe to see, for the universe to heed as a matter of course. For himself, since he had married her, he had never thought of another woman for an instant, except either to admire or to criticize her; and his criticism was, as Jasmine had said, "infantile." The sum of it was, he was married to the woman of his choice, she was married to the man of her choice; and there it was, there it was, a great, eternal, settled fact. It was not a thing for speculation or doubt or reconsideration. Always, when he had been troubled of late years, his mind had involuntarily flown to South Africa, as a bird flies to its nest in the distant trees for safety, from the spoiler or from the storm. And now, as he paced the streets with heavy, almost blundering tread,--so did the weight of slander drag him down--his thoughts suddenly saw a picture which had gone deep down into his soul in far-off days. It was after a struggle with Lobengula, when blood had been shed and lives lost, and the backbone of barbarism had been broken south of the Zambesi for ever and ever and ever. He had buried two companions in arms whom he had loved in that way which only those know who face danger on the plain, by the river, in the mountain, or on the open road together. After they had been laid to rest in the valley where the great baboons came down to watch the simple cortege pass, where a stray lion stole across the path leading to the grave, he had gone on alone to a spot in the Matoppos, since made famous and sacred. Where John Cecil Rhodes sleeps on that high plateau of convex hollow stone, with the great natural pillars standing round like sentinels, and all the rugged unfinished hills tumbling away to an unpeopled silence, he came that time to rest his sorrowing soul. The woods, the wild animal life, had been left behind, and only a peaceful middle world between God and man greeted his stern eyes. Now, here in London, at that corner where the lonely white statue stands by Londonderry House, as he moved in a dream of pain, with vast weights like giant manacles hampering every footstep, inwardly raging that into his sweet garden of home the vile elements of slander had been thrown, yet with a terrible and vague fear that something had gone terribly wrong with him, that far-off day spent at the Matoppos flashed upon his sight. Through streets upon streets he had walked, far, far out of his way, subconsciously giving himself time to recover before he reached his home; until the green quiet of Hyde Park, the soft depths of its empty spaces, the companionable and commendable trees, greeted his senses. Then, here, suddenly there swam before his eyes the bright sky over those scarred and jagged hills beyond the Matoppos, purple and grey, and red and amethyst and gold, and his soul's sight went out over the interminable distance of loneliness and desolation which only ended where the world began again, the world of fighting men. He saw once more that tumbled waste of primeval creation, like a crazed sea agitated by some Horror underneath, and suddenly transfixed in its plunging turmoil--a frozen concrete sorrow, with all active pain gone. He heard the loud echo of his feet upon that hollow plateau of rock, with convex skin of stone laid upon convex skin, and then suddenly the solid rock which gave no echo under his tread, where Rhodes lies buried. He saw all at once, in the shining horizon at different points, black, angry, marauding storms arise and roar and burst: while all the time above his head there was nothing but sweet sunshine, into which the mists of the distant storms drifted, and rainbows formed above him. Upon those hollow rocks the bellow of the storms was like the rumbling of the wheels of a million gun-carriages; and yet high overhead there were only the bright sun and faint drops of rain falling like mystic pearls. And then followed--he could hear it again, so plainly, as his eyes now sought the friendly shades of the beeches and the elms yonder in Hyde Park!--upon the air made denser by the storm, the call of a lonely bird from one side of the valley. The note was deep and strong and clear, like the bell-bird of the Australian salt-bush plains beyond the Darling River, and it rang out across the valley, as though a soul desired its mate; and then was still. A moment, and there came across the valley from the other side, stealing deep sweetness from the hollow rocks, the answer of the bird which had heard her master's call. Answering, she called too, the viens ici of kindred things; and they came nearer and nearer and nearer, until at last their two voices were one. In that wild space there had been worked out one of the great wonders of creation, and under the dim lamps of Park Lane, in his black, shocked mood, Rudyard recalled it all by no will of his own. Upon his eye and brain the picture had been registered, and in its appointed time, with an automatic suggestion of which he was ignorant and innocent, it came to play its part and to transform him. The thought of it all was like a cool hand laid upon his burning brow. It gave him a glimpse of the morning of life. The light was gone from the evening sky: but was it gone forever? As he entered his house now he saw upon a Spanish table in the big hall a solitary bunch of white roses--a touch of simplicity in an area of fine artifice. Regarding it a moment, black thoughts receded, and choosing a flower from the vase he went slowly up the stairs to Jasmine's room. He would give her this rose as the symbol of his faith and belief in her, and then tell her frankly what he had heard at De Lancy Scovel's house. For the moment it did not occur to him that she might not be at home. It gave him a shock when he opened the door and found her room empty. On her bed, like a mesh of white clouds, lay the soft linen and lace and the delicate clothes of the night; and by the bed were her tiny blue slippers to match the blue dressing-gown. Some gracious things for morning wear hung over a chair; an open book with a little cluster of violets and a tiny mirror lay upon a table beside a sofa; a footstool was placed at a considered angle for her well-known seat on the sofa where the soft-blue lamp-shade threw the light upon her book; and a little desk with dresden-china inkstand and penholder had little pockets of ribbon-tied letters and bills--even business had an air of taste where Jasmine was. And there on a table beside her bed was a large silver-framed photograph of himself turned at an angle toward the pillow where she would lay her head. How tender and delicate and innocent it all was! He looked round the room with new eyes, as though seeing everything for the first time. There was another photograph of himself on her dressing-table. It had no companion there; but on another table near were many photographs; four of women, the rest of men: celebrities, old friends like Ian Stafford--and M. Mennaval. His face hardened. De Lancy Scovel's black slander swept through his veins like fire again, his heart came up in his throat, his fingers clinched. Presently, as he stood with clouded face and mist in his eyes, Jasmine's maid entered, and, surprised at seeing him, retreated again, but her eyes fastened for a moment strangely on the white rose he held in his hand. Her glance drew his own attention to it again. Going over to the gracious and luxurious bed, with its blue silk canopy, he laid the white rose on her pillow. Somehow it was more like an offering to the dead than a lover's tribute to the living. His eyes were fogged, his lips were set. But all he was then in mind and body and soul he laid with the rose on her pillow. As he left the rose there, his eyes wandered slowly over this retreat of rest and sleep: white robe-de-nuit, blue silk canopy, blue slippers, blue dressing-gown--all blue, the colour in which he had first seen her. Slowly he turned away at last and went to his own room. But the picture followed him. It kept shining in his eyes. Krool's face suddenly darkened it. "You not ring, Baas," Krool said. Without a word Rudyard waved him away, a sudden and unaccountable fury in his mind. Why did the sight of Krool vex him so? "Come back," he said, angrily, before the door of the bedroom closed. Krool returned. "Weren't there any cables? Why didn't you come to Mr. Scovel's at midnight, as I told you?" "Baas, I was there at midnight, but they all say you come home, Baas. There the cable--two." He pointed to the dressing-table. Byng snatched them, tore them open, read them. One had the single word, "Tomorrow." The other said, "Prepare." The code had been abandoned. Tragedy needs few words. They meant that to-morrow Kruger's ultimatum would be delivered and that the worst must be faced. He glanced at the cables in silence, while Krool watched him narrowly, covertly, with a depth of purpose which made his face uncanny. "That will do, Krool; wake me at seven," he said, quietly, but with suppressed malice in his tone. Why was it that at that moment he could, with joy, have taken Krool by the neck and throttled him? All the bitterness, anger and rage that he had felt an hour ago concentrated themselves upon Krool--without reason, without cause. Or was it that his deeper Other Self had whispered something to his mind about Krool--something terrible and malign? In this new mood he made up his mind that he would not see Jasmine till the morning. How late she was! It was one o'clock, and yet this was not the season. She had not gone to a ball, nor were these the months of late parties. As he tossed in his bed and his head turned restlessly on his pillow, Krool's face kept coming before him, and it was the last thing he saw, ominous and strange, before he fell into a heavy but troubled sleep. Perhaps the most troubled moment of the night came an hour after he went to bed. Then it was that a face bent over him for a minute, a fair face, with little lines contracting the ripe lips, which were redder than usual, with eyes full of a fevered brightness. But how harmonious and sweetly ordered was the golden hair above! Nothing was gone from its lustre, nothing robbed it of its splendour. It lay upon her forehead like a crown. In its richness it seemed a little too heavy for the tired face beneath, almost too imperial for so slight and delicate a figure. Rudyard stirred in his sleep, murmuring as she leaned over him; and his head fell away from her hand as she stretched out her fingers with a sudden air of pity--of hopelessness, as it might seem from her look. His face restlessly turned to the wall--a vexed, stormy, anxious face and head, scarred by the whip of that overlord more cruel and tyrannous than Time, the Miserable Mind. She drew back with a little shudder. "Poor Ruddy!" she said, as she had said that evening when Ian Stafford came to her after the estranging and scornful years, and she had watched Rudyard leave her--to her fate and to her folly. "Poor Ruddy!" With a sudden frenzied motion of her hands she caught her breath, as though some pain had seized her. Her eyes almost closed with the shame that reached out from her heart, as though to draw the veil of her eyelids over the murdered thing before her--murdered hope, slaughtered peace: the peace of that home they had watched burn slowly before their eyes in the years which the locust had eaten. Which the locust had eaten--yes, it was that. More than once she had heard Rudyard tell of a day on the veld when the farmer surveyed his abundant fields with joy, with the gay sun flaunting it above; and suddenly there came a white cloud out of the west, which made a weird humming, a sinister sound. It came with shining scales glistening in the light and settled on the land acre upon acre, morgen upon morgen; and when it rose again the fields, ready for the harvest, were like a desert--the fields which the locust had eaten. So had the years been, in which Fortune had poured gold and opportunity and unlimited choice into her lap. She had used them all; but she had forgotten to look for the Single Secret, which, like a key, unlocks all doors in the House of Happiness. "Poor Ruddy!" she said, but even as she said it for the second time a kind of anger seemed to seize her. "Oh, you fool--you fool!" she whispered, fiercely. "What did you know of women! Why didn't you make me be good? Why didn't you master me--the steel on the wrist--the steel on the wrist!" With a little burst of misery and futile rage she went from the room, her footsteps uneven, her head bent. One of the open letters she carried dropped from her hand onto the floor of the hall outside. She did not notice it. But as she passed inside her door a shadowy figure at the end of the hall watched her, saw the letter drop, and moved stealthily forward towards it. It was Krool. How heavy her head was! Her worshipping maid, near dead with fatigue, watched her furtively, but avoided the eyes in the mirror which had a half-angry look, a look at once disturbed and elated, reckless and pitiful. Lablanche was no reader of souls, but there was something here beyond the usual, and she moved and worked with unusual circumspection and lightness of touch. Presently she began to unloose the coils of golden hair; but Jasmine stopped her with a gesture of weariness. "No, don't," she said. "I can't stand your touch tonight, Lablanche. I'll do the rest myself. My head aches so. Good-night." "I will be so light with it, madame," Lablanche said, protestingly. "No, no. Please go. But the morning, quite early." "The hour, madame?" "When the letters come, as soon as the letters come, Lablanche--the first post. Wake me then." She watched the door close, then turned to the mirror in front of her and looked at herself with eyes in which brooded a hundred thoughts and feelings: thoughts contradictory, feelings opposed, imaginings conflicting, reflections that changed with each moment; and all under the spell of a passion which had become in the last few hours the most powerful influence her life had ever known. Right or wrong, and it was wrong, horribly wrong; wise or unwise, and how could the wrong be wise! she knew she was under a spell more tyrannous than death, demanding more sacrifices than the gods of Hellas. Self-indulgent she had been, reckless and wilful and terribly modern, taking sweets where she found them. She had tried to squeeze the orange dry, in the vain belief that Wealth and Beauty can take what they want, when they want it, and that happiness will come by purchase; only to find one day that the thing you have bought, like a slave that revolts, stabs you in your sleep, and you wake with wide-eyed agony only to die, or to live--with the light gone from the evening sky. Suddenly, with the letters in her hand with which she had entered the room, she saw the white rose on her pillow. Slowly she got up from the dressing-table and went over to the bed in a hushed kind of way. With a strange, inquiring, half-shrinking look she regarded the flower. One white rose. It was not there when she left. It had been brought from the hall below, from the great bunch on the Spanish table. Those white roses, this white rose, had come from one who, selfish as he was, knew how to flatter a woman's vanity. From that delicate tribute of flattery and knowledge Rudyard had taken this flowering stem and brought it to her pillow. It was all too malevolently cynical. Her face contracted in pain and shame. She had a soul to which she had never given its chance. It had never bloomed. Her abnormal wilfulness, her insane love of pleasure, her hereditary impulses, had been exercised at the expense of the great thing in her, the soul so capable of memorable and beautiful deeds. As she looked at the flower, a sense of the path by which she had come, of what she had left behind, of what was yet to chance, shuddered into her heart. That a flower given by Adrian Fellowes should be laid upon her pillow by her husband, by Rudyard Byng, was too ghastly or too devilishly humorous for words; and both aspects of the thing came to her. Her face became white, and almost mechanically she put the letters she held on a writing-table near; then coming to the bed again she looked at the rose with a kind of horror. Suddenly, however, she caught it up, and bursting into a laugh which was shrill and bitter she threw it across the room. Still laughing hysterically, with her golden hair streaming about her head, folding her round like a veil which reached almost to her ankles, she came back to the chair at the dressing-table and sat down. Slowly drawing the wonderful soft web of hair over her shoulders, she began to weave it into one wide strand, which grew and grew in length till it was like a great rope of spun gold. Inch by inch, foot by foot it grew, until at last it lay coiled in her lap like a golden serpent, with a kind of tension which gave it life, such as Medusa's hair must have known as the serpent-life entered into it. There is--or was--in Florence a statue of Medusa, seated, in her fingers a strand of her hair, which is beginning to coil and bend and twist before her horror-stricken eyes; and this statue flashed before Jasmine's eyes as she looked at the loose ends of gold falling beyond the blue ribbon with which she had tied the shining rope. With the mad laughter of a few moments before still upon her lips, she held the flying threads in her hand, and so strained was her mind that it would not have caused her surprise if they had wound round her fingers or given forth forked tongues. She laughed again--a low and discordant laugh it was now. "Such imaginings--I think I must be mad," she murmured. Then she leaned her elbows on the dressing-table and looked at herself in the glass. "Am I not mad?" she asked herself again. Then there stole across her face a strange, far-away look, bringing a fresh touch of beauty to it, and flooding it for a moment with that imaginative look which had been her charm as a girl, a look of far-seeing and wonder and strange light. "I wonder--if I had had a mother!" she said, wistfully, her chin in her hand. "If my mother had lived, what would I have been?" She reached out to a small table near, and took from it a miniature at which she looked with painful longing. "My dear, my very dear, you were so sweet, so good," she said. "Am I your daughter, your own daughter--me? Ah, sweetheart mother, come back to me! For God's sake come--now. Speak to me if you can. Are you so very far away? Whisper--only whisper, and I shall hear. "Oh, she would, she would, if she could!" her voice wailed, softly. "She would if she could, I know. I was her youngest child, her only little girl. But there is no coming back. And maybe there is no going forth; only a blackness at the last, when all stops--all stops, for ever and ever and ever, amen! . . .Amen--so be it. Ah, I even can't believe in that! I can't even believe in God and Heaven and the hereafter. I am a pagan, with a pagan's heart and a pagan's ways." She shuddered again and closed her eyes for a moment. "Ruddy had a glimpse, one glimpse, that day, the day that Ian came back. Ruddy said to me that day, 'If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers.' . . . And it is true--by all the gods of all the worlds, it is true. Pleasure, beauty, is all I ever cared for--pleasure, beauty, and the Jasmine-flower. And Ian--and Ian, yes, Ian! I think I had soul enough for one true thing, even if I was not true." She buried her face in her hands for a moment, as though to hide a great burning. "But, oh, I wonder if I did ever love Ian, even! I wonder.... Not then, not then when I deserted him and married Rudyard, but now--now? Do--do I love him even now, as we were to-day with his arms round me, or is it only beauty and pleasure and--me? . . . Are they really happy who believe in God and live like--like her?" She gazed at her mother's portrait again. "Yes, she was happy, but only for a moment, and then she was gone--so soon. And I shall never see her, I who never saw her with eyes that recall.... And if I could see her, would I? I am a pagan--would I try to be like her, if I could? I never really prayed, because I never truly felt there was a God that was not all space, and that was all soul and understanding. And what is to come of it, or what will become of me? . . . I can't go back, and going on is madness. Yes, yes, it is madness, I know--madness and badness--and dust at the end of it all. Beauty gone, pleasure gone.... I do not even love pleasure now as I did. It has lost its flavour; and I do not even love beauty as I did. How well I know it! I used to climb hills to see a sunset; I used to walk miles to find the wood anemones and the wild violets; I used to worship a pretty child . . . a pretty child!" She shrank back in her chair and pondered darkly. "A pretty child.... Other people's pretty children, and music and art and trees and the sea, and the colours of the hills, and the eyes of wild animals . . and a pretty child. I wonder, I wonder if--" But she got no farther with that thought. "I shall hate everything on earth if it goes from me, the beauty of things; and I feel that it is going. The freshness of sense has gone, somehow. I am not stirred as I used to be, not by the same things. If I lose that sense I shall kill myself. Perhaps that would be the easiest way now. Just the overdose of--" She took a little phial from the drawer of the dressing-table. "Just the tiny overdose and 'good-bye, my lover, good-bye.'" Again that hard little laugh of bitterness broke from her. "Or that needle Mr. Mappin had at Glencader. A thrust of the point, and in an instant gone, and no one to know, no one to discover, no one to add blame to blame, to pile shame upon shame. Just blackness--blackness all at once, and no light or anything any more. The fruit all gone from the trees, the garden all withered, the bower all ruined, the children all dead--the pretty children all dead forever, the pretty children that never were born, that never lived in Jasmine's garden." As there had come to Rudyard premonition of evil, so to-night, in the hour of triumph, when, beyond peradventure, she had got for Ian Stafford what would make his career great, what through him gave England security in her hour of truth, there came now to her something of the real significance of it all. She had got what she wanted. Her pride had been appeased, her vanity satisfied, her intellect flattered, her skill approved, and Ian was hers. But the cost? Words from Swinburne's threnody on Baudelaire came to her mind. How often she had quoted them for their sheer pagan beauty! It was the kind of beauty which most appealed to her, which responded to the element of fatalism in her, the sense of doom always with her since she was a child, in spite of her gaiety, her wit, and her native eloquence. She had never been happy, she had never had a real illusion, never aught save the passion of living, the desire to conquer unrest: "And now, no sacred staff shall break in blossom, No choral salutation lure to light The spirit sick with perfume and sweet night, And Love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom. There is no help for these things, none to mend and none to mar Not all our songs, oh, friend, can make Death clear or make Life durable But still with rose and ivy and wild vine, And with wild song about this dust of thine, At least I fill a place where white dreams dwell, And wreathe an unseen shrine." "'And Love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom. . . . There is no help for these things, none to mend and none to mar....'" A sob rose in her throat. "Oh, the beauty of it, the beauty and the misery and the despair of it!" she murmured. Slowly she wound and wound the coil of golden hair about her neck, drawing it tighter, fold on fold, tighter and tighter. "This would be the easiest way--this," she whispered. "By my own hair! Beauty would have its victim then. No one would kiss it any more, because it killed a woman. . . . No one would kiss it any more." She felt the touch of Ian Stafford's lips upon it, she felt his face buried in it. Her own face suffused, then Adrian Fellowes' white rose, which Rudyard had laid upon her pillow, caught her eye where it lay on the floor. With a cry as of a hurt animal she ran to her bed, crawled into it, and huddled down in the darkness, shivering and afraid. Something had discovered her to herself for the first time. Was it her own soul? Had her Other Self, waking from sleep in the eternal spaces, bethought itself and come to whisper and warn and help? Or was it Penalty, or Nemesis, or that Destiny which will have its toll for all it gives of beauty, or pleasure, or pride, or place, or pageantry? "Love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom"-- The words kept ringing in her ears. They soothed her at last into a sleep which brought no peace, no rest or repose. CHAPTER XVIII LANDRASSY'S LAST STROKE Midnight--one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock. Big Ben boomed the hours, and from St. James's Palace came the stroke of the quarters, lighter, quicker, almost pensive in tone. From St. James's Street below came no sounds at last. The clatter of the hoofs of horses had ceased, the rumble of drays carrying their night freights, the shouts of the newsboys making sensation out of rumours made in a newspaper office, had died away. Peace came, and a silver moon gave forth a soft light, which embalmed the old thoroughfare, and added a tenderness to its workaday dignity. In only one window was there a light at three o'clock. It was the window of Ian Stafford's sitting-room. He had not left the Foreign Office till nearly ten o'clock, then had had a light supper at his club, had written letters there, and after a long walk up and down the Mall had, with reluctant feet, gone to his chambers. The work which for years he had striven to do for England had been accomplished. The Great Understanding was complete. In the words of the secretary of the American Embassy, "Mennaval had delivered the goods," and an arrangement had been arrived at, completed this very night, which would leave England free to face her coming trial in South Africa without fear of trouble on the flank or in the rear. The key was turned in the lock, and that lock had been the original device and design of Ian Stafford. He had done a great work for civilization and humanity; he had made improbable, if not impossible, a European war. The Kaiser knew it, Franz Joseph knew it, the Czar knew it; the White House knew it, and its master nodded with satisfaction, for John Bull was waking up--"getting a move on." America might have her own family quarrel with John Bull, but when it was John Bull versus the world, not even James G. Blaine would have been prepared to see the old lion too deeply wounded. Even Landrassy, ambassador of Slavonia, had smiled grimly when he met Ian Stafford on the steps of the Moravian Embassy. He was artist enough to appreciate a well-played game, and, in any case, he had had done all that mortal man could in the way of intrigue and tact and device. He had worked the international press as well as it had ever been worked; he had distilled poison here and rosewater there; he had again and again baffled the British Foreign Office, again and again cut the ground from under Ian Stafford's feet; and if he could have staved off the pact, the secret international pact, by one more day, he would have gained the victory for himself, for his country, for the alliance behind him. One day, but one day, and the world would never have heard of Ian Stafford. England would then have approached her conflict with the cup of trembling at her lips, and there would be a new disposition of power in Europe, a new dominating force in the diplomacy and the relations of the peoples of the world. It was Landrassy's own last battle-field of wit and scheming, of intellect and ambition. If he failed in this, his sun would set soon. He was too old to carry on much longer. He could not afford to wait. He was at the end of his career, and he had meant this victory to be the crown of his long services to Slavonia and the world. But to him was opposed a man who was at the beginning of his career, who needed this victory to give him such a start as few men get in that field of retarded rewards, diplomacy. It had been a man at the end of the journey, and a man at the beginning, measuring skill, playing as desperate a game as was ever played. If Landrassy won--Europe a red battle-field, England at bay; if Ian Stafford won--Europe at peace, England secure. Ambition and patriotism intermingled, and only He who made human nature knew how much was pure patriotism and how much pure ambition. It was a great stake. On this day of days to Stafford destiny hung shivering, each hour that passed was throbbing with unparalleled anxiety, each minute of it was to be the drum-beat of a funeral march or the note of a Te Deum. Not more uncertain was the roulette-wheel spinning in De Lancy Scovel's house than the wheel of diplomacy which Ian Stafford had set spinning. Rouge et noire--it was no more, no less. But Ian had won; England had won. Black had been beaten. Landrassy bowed suavely to Ian as they met outside Mennaval's door in the early evening of this day when the business was accomplished, the former coming out, the latter going in. "Well, Stafford," Landrassy said in smooth tones and with a jerk of the head backward, "the tables are deserted, the croupier is going home. But perhaps you have not come to play?" Ian smiled lightly. "I've come to get my winnings--as you say," he retorted. Landrassy seemed to meditate pensively. "Ah yes, ah yes, but I'm not sure that Mennaval hasn't bolted with the bank and your winnings, too!" His meaning was clear--and hateful. Before Ian had a chance to reply, Landrassy added in a low, confidential voice, saturated with sardonic suggestion, "To tell you the truth, I had ceased to reckon with women in diplomacy. I thought it was dropped with the Second Empire; but you have started a new dispensation--evidemment, evidemment. Still Mennaval goes home with your winnings. Eh bien, we have to pay for our game! Allons gai!" Before Ian could reply--and what was there to say to insult couched in such highly diplomatic language?--Landrassy had stepped sedately away, swinging his gold-headed cane and humming to himself. "Duelling had its merits," Ian said to himself, as soon as he had recovered from the first effect of the soft, savage insolence. "There is no way to deal with our Landrassys except to beat them, as I have done, in the business of life." He tossed his head with a little pardonable pride, as it were, to soothe his heart, and then went in to Mennaval. There, in the arrangements to be made with Moravia he forgot the galling incident; and for hours afterward it was set aside. When, however, he left his club, his supper over, after scribbling letters which he put in his pocket absent-mindedly, and having completed his work at the Foreign Office, it came back to his mind with sudden and scorching force. Landrassy's insult to Jasmine rankled as nothing had ever rankled in his mind before, not even that letter which she had written him so long ago announcing her intended marriage to Byng. He was fresh from the first triumph of his life: he ought to be singing with joy, shouting to the four corners of the universe his pride, walking on air, finding the world a good, kind place made especially for him--his oyster to open, his nut which he had cracked; yet here he was fresh from the applause of his chief, with a strange heaviness at his heart, a gloom upon his mind. Victory in his great fight--and love; he had them both and so he said to himself as he opened the door of his rooms and entered upon their comfort and quiet. He had love, and he had success; and the one had helped to give him the other, helped in a way which was wonderful, and so brilliantly skilful and delicate. As he poured out a glass of water, however, the thought stung him that the nature of the success and its value depended on the nature of the love and its value. As the love was, so was the success, no higher, no different, since the one, in some deep way, begot the other. Yes, it was certain that the thing could not have been done at this time without Jasmine, and if not at this time, then the chances were a thousand to one that it never could be done at any time; for Britain's enemies would be on her back while she would have to fight in South Africa. The result of that would mean a shattered, humiliated land, with a people in pawn to the will of a rising power across the northern sea. That it had been prevented just in the nick of time was due to Jasmine, his fate, the power that must beat in his veins till the end of all things. Yet what was the end to be? To-day he had buried his face in her wonderful cloud of hair and had kissed her; and with it, almost on the instant, had come the end of his great struggle for England and himself; and for that he was willing to pay any price that time and Nemesis might demand--any price save one. As he thought of that one price his lips tightened, his brow clouded, his eyes half closed with shame. Rudyard Byng was his friend, whose bread he had eaten, whom he had known since they were boys at school. He remembered acutely Rudyard's words to him that fateful night when he had dined with Jasmine alone--"You will have much to talk about, to say to each other, such old friends as you are." He recalled how Rudyard had left them, trusting them, happy in the thought that Jasmine would have a pleasant evening with the old friend who had first introduced him to her, and that the old friend would enjoy his eager hospitality. Rudyard had blown his friend's trumpet wherever men would listen to him; had proclaimed Stafford as the coming man: and this was what he had done to Rudyard! This was what he had done; but what did he propose to do? What of the future? To go on in miserable intrigue, twisting the nature, making demands upon life out of all those usual ways in which walk love and companionship--paths that lead through gardens of poppies, maybe, but finding grey wilderness at the end? Never, never the right to take the loved one by the hand before all the world and say: "We two are one, and the reckoning of the world must be made with both." Never to have the right to stand together in pride before the wide-eyed many and say: "See what you choose to see, say what you choose to say, do what you choose to do, we do not care." The open sharing of worldly success; the inner joys which the world may not see--these things could not be for Jasmine and for him. Yet he loved her. Every fibre in his being thrilled to the thought of her. But as his passion beat like wild music in his veins, a blindness suddenly stole into his sight, and in deep agitation he got up, opened the window, and looked out into the night. For long he stood gazing into the quiet street, and watched a daughter of the night, with dilatory steps and neglected mien, go up towards the more frequented quarter of Piccadilly. Life was grim in so much of it, futile in more, feeble at the best, foolish in the light of a single generation or a single century or a thousand years. It was only reasonable in the vast proportions of eternity. It had only little sips of happiness to give, not long draughts of joy. Who drank deep, long draughts--who of all the men and women he had ever known? Who had had the primrose path without the rain of fire, the cinders beneath the feet, the gins and the nets spread for them? Yet might it not be that here and there people were permanently happy? And had things been different, might not he and Jasmine have been of the radiant few? He desired her above all things; he was willing to sacrifice all--all for her, if need be; and yet there was that which he could not, would not face. All or nothing--all or nothing. If he must drink of the cup of sorrow and passion mixed, then it would be from the full cup. With a stifled exclamation he sat down and began to write. Again and again he stopped to think, his face lined and worn and old; then he wrote on and on. Ambition, hope, youth, the Foreign Office, the chancelleries of Europe, the perils of impending war, were all forgotten, or sunk into the dusky streams of subconsciousness. One thought dominated him. He was playing the game that has baffled all men, the game of eluding destiny; and, like all men, he must break his heart in the playing. "Jasmine," he wrote, "this letter, this first real letter of love which I have ever written you, will tell you how great that love is. It will tell you, too, what it means to me, and what I see before us. To-day I surrendered to you all of me that would be worth your keeping, if it was so that you might take and keep it. When I kissed you, I set the seal upon my eternal offering to you. You have given me success. It is for that I thank you with all my soul, but it is not for that I love you. Love flows from other fountains than gratitude. It rises from the well which has its springs at the beginning of the world, where those beings lived who loved before there were any gods at all, or any faiths, or any truths save the truth of being. "But it is because what I feel belongs to something in me deeper than I have ever known that, since we parted a few hours ago, I see all in a new light. You have brought to me what perhaps could only have come as it did--through fire and cloud and storm. I did not will it so, indeed, I did not wish it so, as you know; but it came in spite of all. And I shall speak to you of it as to my own soul. I want no illusions, no self-deception, no pretense to be added to my debt to you. With wide-open eyes I want to look at it. I know that this love of mine for you is my fate, the first and the last passion of my soul. And to have known it with all its misery,--for misery there must be; misery, Jasmine, there is--to have known it, to have felt it, the great overwhelming thing, goes far to compensate for all the loss it so terribly exposes. It has brought me, too, the fruit of life's ambition. With the full revelation of all that I feel for you came that which gives me place in the world, confers on me the right to open doors which otherwise were closed to me. You have done this for me, but what have I done for you? One thing at least is forced upon me, which I must do now while I have the sight to see and the mind to understand. "I cannot go on with things as they are. I cannot face Rudyard and give myself to hourly deception. I think that yesterday, a month ago, I could have done so, but not now. I cannot walk the path which will be paved with things revolting to us both. My love for you, damnable as it would seem in the world's eyes, prevents it. It is not small enough to be sustained or made secure in its furfilment by the devices of intrigue. And I know that if it is so with me, it must be a thousand times so with you. Your beauty would fade and pass under the stress and meanness of it; your heart would reproach me even when you smiled; you would learn to hate me even when you were resting upon my hungry heart. You would learn to loathe the day when you said, Let me help you. Yet, Jasmine, I know that you are mine; that you were mine long ago, even when you did not know, and were captured by opportunity to do what, with me, you felt you could not do. You were captured by it; but it has not proved what it promised. You have not made the best of the power into which you came, and you could not do so, because the spring from which all the enriching waters of married life flow was dry. Poor Jasmine--poor illusion of a wild young heart which reached out for the golden city of the mirage! "But now.... Two ways spread out, and only two, and one of these two I must take--for your sake. There is the third way, but I will not take it--for your sake and for my own. I will not walk in it ever. Already my feet are burned by the fiery path, already I am choked by the smoke and the ashes. No. I cannot atone for what has been, but I can try and gather up the chances that are left. "You must come with me away--away, to start life afresh, somewhere, somehow; or I must go alone on some enterprise from which I shall not return. You cannot bear what is, but, together, having braved the world, we could look into each other's eyes without shrinking, knowing that we had been at least true to each other, true at the last to the thing that binds us, taking what Fate gave without repining, because we had faced all that the world could do against us. It would mean that I should leave diplomacy forever, give up all that so far has possessed me in the business of life; but I should not lament. I have done the one big thing I wanted to do, I have cut a swath in the field. I have made some principalities and powers reckon with me. It may be I have done all I was meant to do in doing that--it may be. In any case, the thing I did would stand as an accomplished work--it would represent one definite and original thing; one piece of work in design all my own, in accomplishment as much yours as mine.... To go then--together--with only the one big violence to the conventions of the world, and take the law into our own hands? Rudyard, who understands Life's violence, would understand that; what he could never understand would be perpetual artifice, unseemly secretiveness. He himself would have been a great filibuster in the olden days; he would have carried off the wives and daughters of the chiefs and kings he conquered; but he would never have stolen into the secret garden at night and filched with the hand of the sneak-thief--never. "To go with me--away, and start afresh. There will be always work to do, always suffering humanity to be helped. We should help because we would have suffered, we should try to set right the one great mistake you made in not coming to me and so furfilling the old promise. To set that error right, even though it be by wronging Rudyard by one great stroke--that is better than hourly wronging him now with no surcease of that wrong. No, no, this cannot go on. You could not have it so. I seem to feel that you are writing to me now, telling me to begone forever, saying that you had given me gifts--success and love; and now to go and leave you in peace. "Peace, Jasmine, it is that we cry for, pray for, adjure the heavens for in the end. And all this vast, passionate love of mine is the strife of the soul for peace, for fruition. "That peace we may have in another way: that I should go forever, now, before the terrible bond of habit has done its work, and bound us in chains that never fall, that even remain when love is dead and gone, binding the cold cadre to the living pain. To go now, with something accomplished, and turn my back forever on the world, with one last effort to do the impossible thing for some great cause, and fail and be lost forever--do you not understand? Face it, Jasmine, and try to see it in its true light.... I have a friend, John Caxton--you know him. He is going to the Antarctic to find the futile thing, but the necessary thing so far as the knowledge of the world is concerned. With him, then, that long quiet and in the far white spaces to find peace--forever. "You? . . . Ah, Jasmine, habit, the habit of enduring me, is not fixed, and in my exit there would be the agony of the moment, and then the comforting knowledge that I had done my best to set things right. Perhaps it is the one way to set things right; the fairest to you, the kindest, and that which has in it most love. The knowledge of a great love ended--yours and mine--would help you to give what you can give with fuller soul. And, maybe, to be happy with Rudyard at the last! Maybe, to be happy with him, without this wonderful throbbing pulse of being, but with quiet, and to get a measure of what is due to you in the scheme of things. Destiny gives us in life so much and no more: to some a great deal in a little time, to others a little over a great deal of time, but never the full cup and the shining sky over long years. One's share small it must be, but one's share! And it may be, in what has come to-day, in the hour of my triumph, in the business of life, in the one hour of revealing love, it may be I have had my share.... And if that is so, then peace should be my goal, and peace I can have yonder in the snows. No one would guess that it was not accident, and I should feel sure that I had stopped in time to save you from the worst. But it must be the one or the other. "The third way I cannot, will not, take, nor would you take it willingly. It would sear your heart and spirit, it would spoil all that makes you what you are. Jasmine, once for all I am your lover and your friend. I give you love and I give you friendship--whatever comes; always that, always friendship. Tempus fugit sed amicitia est. "In my veins is a river of fire, and my heart is wrenched with pain; but in my soul is that which binds me to you, together or apart, in life, in death.... Good-night.... Good-morrow. "Your Man, "IAN. "P.S.--I will come for your reply at eleven to-morrow. "IAN." He folded the letter slowly and placed it in an envelope which was lying loose on the desk with the letters he had written at the Trafalgar Club, and had forgotten to post. When he had put the letter inside the envelope and stamped it, he saw that the envelope was one carrying the mark of the Club. By accident he had brought it with the letters written there. He hesitated a moment, then refrained from opening the letter again, and presently went out into the night and posted all his letters. CHAPTER XIX TO-MORROW . . . PREPARE! Krool did not sleep. What he read in a letter he had found in a hallway, what he knew of those dark events in South Africa, now to culminate in a bitter war, and what, with the mysterious psychic instinct of race, he divined darkly and powerfully, all kept his eyes unsleeping and his mind disordered. More than any one, he knew of the inner story of the Baas' vrouw during the past week and years; also he had knowledge of what was soon to empty out upon the groaning earth the entrails of South Africa; but how he knew was not to be discovered. Even Rudyard, who thought he read him like a book, only lived on the outer boundaries of his character. Their alliance was only the durable alliance of those who have seen Death at their door, and together have driven him back. Barry Whalen had regarded Krool as a spy; all Britishers who came and went in the path to Rudyard's door had their doubts or their dislike of him; and to every servant of the household he was a dark and isolated figure. He never interfered with the acts of his fellow-servants, except in so far as those acts affected his master's comfort; and he paid no attention to their words except where they affected himself. "When you think it's a ghost, it's only Krool wanderin' w'ere he ain't got no business," was the angry remark of the upper-housemaid, whom his sudden appearance had startled in a dim passage one day. "Lor'! what a turn you give me, Mr. Krool, spookin' about where there's no call for you to be," she had said to him, and below stairs she had enlarged upon his enormities greatly. "And Mrs. Byng, she not like him better as we do," was the comment of Lablanche, the lady's maid. "A snake in the grass--that is what Madame think." Slowly the night passed for Krool. His disturbed brain was like some dark wood through which flew songless birds with wings of night; through which sped the furtive dwellers of the grass and the earth-covert. The real and the imaginative crowded the dark purlieus. He was the victim of his blood, his beginnings off there beyond the Vaal, where the veld was swept by the lightning and the storm, the home of wild dreams, and of a loneliness terrible and strange, to which the man who once had tasted its awful pleasures returned and returned again, until he was, at the last, part of its loneliness, its woeful agitations and its reposeless quiet. It was not possible for him to think or be like pure white people, to do as they did. He was a child of the kopje, the spruit, and the dun veld, where men dwelt with weird beings which were not men--presences that whispered, telling them of things to come, blowing the warnings of Destiny across the waste, over thousands and thousands of miles. Such as he always became apart and lonely because of this companionship of silence and the unseen. More and more they withdrew themselves, unwittingly and painfully, from the understanding and companionship of the usual matter-of-fact, commonplace, sensible people--the settler, the emigrant, and the British man. Sinister they became, but with the helplessness of those in whom the under-spirit of life has been working, estranging them, even against their will, from the rest of the world. So Krool, estranged, lonely, even in the heart of friendly, pushing, jostling London, still was haunted by presences which whispered to him, not with the old clearness of bygone days, but with confused utterances and clouded meaning; and yet sufficient in dark suggestion for him to know that ill happenings were at hand, and that he would be in the midst of them, an instrument of Fate. All night strange shapes trooped past his clouded eyes, and more than once, in a half-dream, he called out to his master to help him as he was helped long ago when that master rescued him from death. Long before the rest of the house was stirring, Krool wandered hither and thither through the luxurious rooms, vainly endeavouring to occupy himself with his master's clothes, boots, and belongings. At last he stole into Byng's room and, stooping, laid something on the floor; then reclaiming the two cables which Rudyard had read, crumpled up, and thrown away, he crept stealthily from the room. His face had a sombre and forbidding pleasure as he read by the early morning light the discarded messages with their thunderous warnings--"To-morrow . . . Prepare!" He knew their meaning well enough. "To-morrow" was here, and it would bring the challenge from Oom Paul to try the might of England against the iron courage of those to whom the Vierkleur was the symbol of sovereignty from sea to sea and the ruin of the Rooinek. "Prepare!" He knew vastly more than those responsible men in position or in high office, who should know a thousand times as much more. He knew so much that was useful--to Oom Paul; but what he knew he did not himself convey, though it reached those who welcomed it eagerly and grimly. All that he knew, another also near to the Baas also knew, and knew it before Krool; and reaped the reward of knowing. Krool did not himself need to betray the Baas direct; and, with the reasoning of the native in him, he found it possible to let another be the means and the messenger of betrayal. So he soothed his conscience. A little time before they had all gone to Glencader, however, he had discovered something concerning this agent of Paul Kruger in the heart of the Outlander camp, whom he employed, which had roused in him the worst passions of an outcast mind. Since then there had been no trafficking with the traitor--the double traitor, whom he was now plotting to destroy, not because he was a traitor to his country, but because he was a traitor to the Baas. In his evil way, he loved his master as a Caliban might love an Apollo. That his devotion took forms abnormal and savage in their nature was due to his origin and his blood. That he plotted to secure the betrayal of the Baas' country and the Outlander interest, while he would have given his life for the Baas, was but the twisted sense of a perverted soul. He had one obsession now--to destroy Adrian Fellowes, his agent for Paul Kruger in the secret places of British policy and in the house of the Partners, as it were. But how should it be done? What should be the means? On the very day in which Oom Paul would send his ultimatum, the means came to his hand. "Prepare!" the cable to the Baas had read. The Baas would be prepared for the thunderbolt to be hurled from Pretoria; but he would have no preparation for the thunderbolt which would fall at his feet this day in this house, where white roses welcomed the visitor at the door-way and the beauty of Titians and Botticellis and Rubens' and Goyas greeted him in the luxuriant chambers. There would be no preparation for that war which rages most violently at a fireside and in the human heart. CHAPTER XX THE FURNACE DOOR It was past nine o'clock when Rudyard wakened. It was nearly ten before he turned to leave his room for breakfast. As he did so he stooped and picked up an open letter lying on the floor near the door. His brain was dazed and still surging with the terrible thoughts which had agonized him the night before. He was as in a dream, and was only vaguely conscious of the fugitive letter. He was wondering whether he would go at once to Jasmine or wait until he had finished breakfast. Opening the door of his room, he saw the maid entering to Jasmine with a gown over her arm. No, he would not go to her till she was alone, till she was dressed and alone. Then he would tell her all, and take her in his arms, and talk with her--talk as he had never talked before. Slowly, heavily, he went to his study, where his breakfast was always eaten. As he sat down he opened, with uninterested inquiry, the letter he had picked up inside the door of his room. As he did so he vaguely wondered why Krool had overlooked it as he passed in and out. Perhaps Krool had dropped it. His eyes fell on the opening words. . . His face turned ashen white. A harsh cry broke from him. At eleven o'clock to the minute Ian Stafford entered Byng's mansion and was being taken to Jasmine's sitting-room, when Rudyard appeared on the staircase, and with a peremptory gesture waved the servant away. Ian was suddenly conscious of a terrible change in Rudyard's appearance. His face was haggard and his warm colour had given place to a strange blackish tinge which seemed to underlie the pallor--the deathly look to be found in the faces of those stricken with a mortal disease. All strength and power seemed to have gone from the face, leaving it tragic with uncontrolled suffering. Panic emotion was uppermost, while desperate and reckless purpose was in his eyes. The balance was gone from the general character and his natural force was like some great gun loose from its fastenings on the deck of a sea-stricken ship. He was no longer the stalwart Outlander who had done such great work in South Africa and had such power in political London and in international finance. The demoralization which had stealthily gone on for a number of years was now suddenly a debacle of will and body. Of the superb physical coolness and intrepid mind with which he had sprung upon the stage of Covent Garden Opera House to rescue Al'mah nothing seemed left; or, if it did remain, it was shocked out of its bearings. His eyes were almost glassy as he looked at Ian Stafford, and animal-like hatred was the dominating note of his face and carriage. "Come with me, Stafford: I want to speak to you," he said, hoarsely. "You've arrived when I wanted you--at the exact time." "Yes, I said I would come at eleven," responded Stafford, mechanically. "Jasmine expects me at eleven." "In here," Byng said, pointing to a little morning-room. As Stafford entered, he saw Krool's face, malign and sombre, show in a doorway of the hall. Was he mistaken in thinking that Krool flashed a look of secret triumph and yet of obscure warning? Warning? There was trouble, strange and dreadful trouble, here; and the wrenching thought had swept into his brain that he was the cause of it all, that he was to be the spring and centre of dreadful happenings. He was conscious of something else purely objective as he entered the room--of music, the music of a gay light opera being played in the adjoining room, from which this little morning-room was separated only by Indian bead-curtains. He saw idle sunlight play upon these beads, as he sat down at the table to which Rudyard motioned him. He was also subconsciously aware who it was that played the piano beyond there with such pleasant skill. Many a time thereafter, in the days to come, he would be awakened in the night by the sound of that music, a love-song from the light opera "A Lady of London," which had just caught the ears of the people in the street. Of one thing he was sure: the end of things had come--the end of all things that life meant to him had come. Rudyard knew! Rudyard, sitting there at the other side of the table and leaning toward him with a face where, in control of all else, were hate and panic emotion--he knew. The music in the next room was soft, persistent and searching. As Ian waited for Rudyard to speak he was conscious that even the words of the silly, futile love-song: "Not like the roses shall our love be, dear Never shall its lovely petals fade, Singing, it will flourish till the world's last year Happy as the song-birds in the glade." Through it all now came Rudyard's voice. "I have a letter here," the voice said, and he saw Rudyard slowly take it from his pocket. "I want you to read it, and when you have read it, I want you to tell me what you think of the man who wrote it." He threw a letter down on the table--a square white envelope with the crest of the Trafalgar Club upon it. It lay face downward, waiting for his hand. So it had come. His letter to Jasmine which told all--Rudyard had read it. And here was the end of everything--the roses faded before they had bloomed an hour. It was not for them to flourish "till the world's last year." His hand reached out for the letter. With eyes almost blind he raised it, and slowly and mechanically took the document of tragedy from the envelope. Why should Rudyard insist on his reading it? It was a devilish revenge, which he could not resent. But time--he must have time; therefore he would do Rudyard's bidding, and read this thing he had written, look at it with eyes in which Penalty was gathering its mists. So this was the end of it all--friendship gone with the man before him; shame come to the woman he loved; misery to every one; a home-life shattered; and from the souls of three people peace banished for evermore. He opened out the pages with a slowness that seemed almost apathy, while the man opposite clinched his hands on the table spasmodically. Still the music from the other room with cheap, flippant sensuousness stole through the burdened air: "Singing, it will flourish till the world's last year--" He looked at the writing vaguely, blindly. Why should this be exacted of him, this futile penalty? Then all at once his sight cleared; for this handwriting was not his--this letter was not his; these wild, passionate phrases--this terrible suggestiveness of meaning, these references to the past, this appeal for further hours of love together, this abjectly tender appeal to Jasmine that she would wear one of his white roses when he saw her the next day--would she not see him between eleven and twelve o'clock?--all these words were not his. They were written by the man who was playing the piano in the next room; by the man who had come and gone in this house like one who had the right to do so; who had, as it were, fed from Rudyard Byng's hand; who lived on what Byng paid him; who had been trusted with the innermost life of the household and the life and the business of the master of it. The letter was signed, Adrian. His own face blanched like the face of the man before him. He had braced himself to face the consequences of his own letter to the woman he loved, and he was face to face with the consequences of another man's letter to the same woman, to the woman who had two lovers. He was face to face with Rudyard's tragedy, and with his own.... She, Jasmine, to whom he had given all, for whom he had been ready to give up all--career, fame, existence--was true to none, unfaithful to all, caring for none, but pretending to care for all three--and for how many others? He choked back a cry. "Well--well?" came the husband's voice across the table. "There's one thing to do, and I mean to do it." He waved a hand towards the music-room. "He's in the next room there. I mean to kill him--to kill him--now. I wanted you to know why, to know all, you, Stafford, my old friend and hers. And I'm going to do it now. Listen to him there!" His words came brokenly and scarce above a whisper, but they were ghastly in their determination, in their loathing, their blind fury. He was gone mad, all the animal in him alive, the brain tossing on a sea of disorder. "Now!" he said, suddenly, and, rising, he pushed back his chair. "Give that to me." He reached out his hand for the letter, but his confused senses were suddenly arrested by the look in Ian Stafford's face, a look so strange, so poignant, so insistent, that he paused. Words could not have checked his blind haste like that look. In the interval which followed, the music from the other room struck upon the ears of both, with exasperating insistence: "Not like the roses shall our love be, dear--" Stafford made no motion to return the letter. He caught and held Rudyard's eyes. "You ask me to tell you what I think of the man who wrote this letter," he said, thickly and slowly, for he was like one paralyzed, regaining his speech with blanching effort: "Byng, I think what you think--all you think; but I would not do what you want to do." As he had read the letter the whole horror of the situation burst upon him. Jasmine had deceived her husband when she turned to himself, and that was to be understood--to be understood, if not to be pardoned. A woman might marry, thinking she cared, and all too soon, sometimes before the second day had dawned, learn that shrinking and repugnance which not even habit can modify or obscure. A girl might be mistaken, with her heart and nature undeveloped, and with that closer intimate life with another of another sex still untried. With the transition from maidenhood to wifehood, fateful beyond all transitions, yet unmade, she might be mistaken once; as so many have been in the revelations of first intimacy; but not twice, not the second time. It was not possible to be mistaken in so vital a thing twice. This was merely a wilful, miserable degeneracy. Rudyard had been wronged--terribly wronged--by himself, by Jasmine; but he had loved Jasmine since she was a child, before Rudyard came--in truth, he all but possessed her when Rudyard came; and there was some explanation, if no excuse, for that betrayal; but this other, it was incredible, it was monstrous. It was incredible but yet it was true. Thoughts that overturned all his past, that made a melee of his life, rushed and whirled through his mind as he read the letter with assumed deliberation when he saw what it was. He read slowly that he might make up his mind how to act, what to say and do in this crisis. To do--what? Jasmine had betrayed him long ago when she had thrown him over for Rudyard, and now she had betrayed him again after she had married Rudyard, and betrayed Rudyard, too; and for whom this second betrayal? His heart seemed to shrink to nothingness. This business dated far beyond yesterday. The letter furnished that sure evidence. What to do? Like lightning his mind was made up. What to do? Ah, but one thing to do--only one thing to do--save her at any cost, somehow save her! Whatever she was, whatever she had done, however she had spoiled his life and destroyed forever his faith, yet he too had betrayed this broken man before him, with the look in his eyes of an animal at bay, ready to do the last irretrievable thing. Even as her shameless treatment of himself smote him; lowered him to that dust which is ground from the heels of merciless humanity--even as it sickened his soul beyond recovery in this world, up from the lowest depths of his being there came the indestructible thing. It was the thing that never dies, the love that defies injury, shame, crime, deceit, and desertion, and lives pityingly on, knowing all, enduring all, desiring no touch, no communion, yet prevailing--the indestructible thing. He knew now in a flash what he had to do. He must save her. He saw that Rudyard was armed, and that the end might come at any moment. There was in the wronged husband's eyes the wild, reckless, unseeing thing which disregards consequences, which would rush blindly on the throne of God itself to snatch its vengeance. He spoke again: and just in time. "I think what you think, Byng, but I would not do what you want to do. I would do something else." His voice was strangely quiet, but it had a sharp insistence which caused Rudyard to turn back mechanically to the seat he had just left. Stafford saw the instant's advantage which, if he did not pursue, all would be lost. With a great effort he simulated intense anger and indignation. "Sit down, Byng," he said, with a gesture of authority. He leaned over the table, holding the other's eyes, the letter in one clinched hand. "Kill him--," he said, and pointed to the other room, from which came the maddening iteration of the jingling song--"you would kill him for his hellish insolence, for this infamous attempt to lead your wife astray, but what good will it do to kill him?" "Not him alone, but her too," came the savage, uncontrolled voice from the uncontrolled savagery of the soul. Suddenly a great fear shot up in Stafford's heart. His breath came in sharp, breaking gasps. Had he--had he killed Jasmine? "You have not--not her?" "No--not yet." The lips of the avenger suddenly ceased twitching, and they shut with ominous certainty. An iron look came into Stafford's face. He had his chance now. One word, one defense only! It would do all, or all would be lost--sunk in a sea of tragedy. Diplomacy had taught him the gift of control of face and gesture, of meaning in tone and word. He made an effort greater than he had ever put forward in life. He affected an enormous and scornful surprise. "You think--you dare to think that she--that Jasmine--" "Think, you say! The letter--that letter--" "This letter--this letter, Byng--are you a fool? This letter, this preposterous thing from the universal philanderer, the effeminate erotic! It is what it is, and it is no more. Jasmine--you know her. Indiscreet--yes; always indiscreet in her way, in her own way, and always daring. A coquette always. She has coquetted all her life; she cannot help it. She doesn't even know it. She led him on from sheer wilfulness. What did it matter to her that he was of no account! She led him on, to be at her feet like the rest, like bigger and better men--like us all. Was there ever a time when she did not want to master us? She has coquetted since--ah, you do not know as I do, her old friend! She has coquetted since she was a little child. Coquetted, and no more. We have all been her slaves--yes, long before you came--all of us. Look at Mennaval! She--" With a distracted gesture Byng interrupted. "The world believes the worst. Last night, by accident, I heard at De Lancy Scovel's house that she and Mennaval--and now this--!" But into the rage, the desperation in the wild eyes, was now creeping an eager look--not of hope, but such a look as might be in eyes that were striving to see through darkness, looking for a glimmer of day in the black hush of morning before the dawn. It was pitiful to see the strong man tossing on the flood of disordered understanding, a willing castaway, yet stretching out a hand to be saved. "Oh, last night, Mennaval, you say, and to-day--this!" Stafford held up the letter. "This means nothing against her, except indiscretion, and indiscretion which would have been nothing if the man had not been what he is. He is of the slime. He does not matter, except that he has dared--!" "He has dared, by God--!" All Byng's rage came back, the lacerated pride, the offended manhood, the self-esteem which had been spattered by the mud of slander, by the cynical defense, or the pitying solicitude of his friends--of De Lancy Scovel, Barry Whalen, Sobieski the Polish Jew, Fleming, Wolff, and the rest. The pity of these for him--for Rudyard Byng, because the flower in his garden, his Jasmine-flower, was swept by the blast of calumny! He sprang from his chair with an ugly oath. But Stafford stepped in front of him. "Sit down, Byng, or damn yourself forever. If she is innocent--and she is--do you think she would ever live with you again, after you had dragged her name into the dust of the criminal courts and through the reek of the ha'penny press? Do you think Jasmine would ever forgive you for suspecting her? If you want to drive her from you forever, then kill him, and go and tell her that you suspect her. I know her--I have known her all her life, long before you came. I care what becomes of her. She has many who care what becomes of her--her father, her brother, many men, and many women who have seen her grow up without a mother. They understand her, they believe in her, because they have known her over all the years. They know her better than you. Perhaps they care for her-- perhaps any one of them cares for her far more than you do." Now there came a new look into the big, staring eyes. Byng was as one fascinated; light was breaking in on his rage, his besmirched pride, his vengeance; hope was stealing tremblingly into his face. "She was more to me than all the world--than twenty worlds. She--" He hesitated, then his voice broke and his body suddenly shook violently, as tears rose in the far, deep wells of feeling and tried to reach the fevered eyes. He leaned his head in his big, awkward hands. Stafford saw the way of escape for Jasmine slowly open out, and went on quickly. "You have neglected her "--Rudyard's head came up in angry protest--"not wilfully; but you have neglected her. You have been too easy. You should lead, not follow, where a woman is concerned. All women are indiscreet, all are a little dishonourable on opportunity; but not in the big way, only in the small, contemptible way, according to our code. We men are dishonourable in the big way where they are concerned. You have neglected her, Byng, because you have not said, 'This way, Jasmine. Come with me. I want you; and you must came, and come now.' She wanted your society, wanted you all the time; but while you did not have her on the leash she went playing--playing. That is it, and that is all. And now, if you want to keep her, if you want her to live on with you, I warn you not to tell her you know of the insult this letter contains, nor ever say what would make her think you suspected her. If you do, you will bid good-bye to her forever. She has bold blood in her veins, rash blood. Her grandfather--" "I know--I know." The tone was credulous, understanding now. Hope stole into the distorted face. "She would resent your suspicion. She, then, would do the mad thing, not you. She would be as frenzied as you were a moment ago; and she would not listen to reason. If you dared to hint outside in the world, that you believed her guilty, there are some of her old friends who would feel like doing to you what you want to do to that libertine in there, to Al'mah's lover--" "Good God, Stafford--wait!" "I don't mean Barry Whalen, Fleming, De Lancy Scovel, and the rest. They are not her old friends, and they weren't yours once--that breed; but the others who are the best, of whom you come, over there in Herefordshire, in Dorset, in Westmorland, where your and her people lived, and mine. You have been too long among the Outlanders, Byng. Come back, and bring Jasmine with you. And as for this letter--" Byng reached out his hand for it. "No, it contains an insult to your wife. If you get it into your hands, you will read it again, and then you will do some foolish thing, for you have lost grip of yourself. Here is the only place for such stuff--an outburst of sensuality!" He threw the letter suddenly into the fire. Rudyard sprang to his feet as though to reclaim it, but stood still bewildered, as he saw Stafford push it farther into the coals. Silent, they watched shrivel such evidence as brings ruin upon men and women in courts of law. "Leave the whole thing--leave Fellowes to me," Stafford said, after a slight pause. "I will deal with him. He shall leave the country to-night. I will see to that. He shall go for three years at least. Do not see him. You will not contain yourself, and for your own chance of happiness with the woman you love, you must do nothing, nothing at all now." "He has keys, papers--" "I will see to that; I will see to everything. Now go, at once. There is enough for you to do. The war, Oom Paul's war, will be on us to day. Do you hear, Byng--to-day! And you have work to do for this your native country and for South Africa, your adopted country. England and the Transvaal will be at each other's throat before night. You have work to do. Do it. You are needed. Go, and leave this wretched business in my hands. I will deal with Fellowes--adequately." The rage had faded from Byng's fevered eyes, and now there was a moisture in them, a look of incalculable relief. To believe in Jasmine, that was everything to him. He had not seen her yet, not since he left the white rose on her pillow last night--Adrian Fellowes' tribute; and after he had read the letter, he had had no wish to see her till he had had his will and done away with Fellowes forever. Then he would see her--for the last time: and she should die, too,--with himself. That had been his purpose. Now all was changed. He would not see her now, not till Fellowes was gone forever. Then he would come again, and say no word which would let her think he knew what Fellowes had written. Yes, Stafford was right. She must not know, and they must start again, begin life again together, a new understanding in his heart, new purposes in their existence. In these few minutes Stafford had taught him much, had showed him where he had been wrong, had revealed to him Jasmine's nature as he never really understood it. At the door, as Stafford helped him on with a light overcoat, he took a revolver from his pocket. "That's the proof of what I meant to do," he said; "and this is proof of what I mean to do," he added, as he handed over the revolver and Stafford's fingers grasped it with a nervous force which he misinterpreted. "Ah yes," he exclaimed, sadly, "you don't quite trust me yet--not quite, Stafford; and I don't wonder; but it's all right.... You've been a good, good friend to us both," he added. "I wish Jasmine might know how good a friend you've been. But never mind. We'll pay the debt sometime, somehow, she and I. When shall I see you again?" At that moment a clear voice rang out cheerily in the distance. "Rudyard--where are you, Ruddy?" it called. A light broke over Byng's haggard face. "Not yet?" he asked Stafford. "No, not yet," was the reply, and Byng was pushed through the open door into the street. "Ruddy--where are you, Ruddy?" sang the voice like a morning song. Then there was silence, save for the music in the room beyond the little room where the two men had sat a few moments ago. The music was still poured forth, but the tune was changed. Now it was "Pagliacci"--that wonderful passage where the injured husband pours out his soul in agony. Stafford closed the doors of the little room where he and Byng had sat, and stood an instant listening to the music. He shuddered as the passionate notes swept over his senses. In this music was the note of the character of the man who played--sensuous emotion, sensual delight. There are men who by nature are as the daughters of the night, primary prostitutes, with no minds, no moral sense; only a sensuous organization which has a gift of shallow beauty, while the life is never deep enough for tears nor high enough for real joy. In Stafford's pocket was the revolver which Byng had given him. He took it out, and as he did so, a flush swept over his face, and every nerve of his body tingled. "That way out?" he thought. "How easy--and how selfish.... If one's life only concerned oneself.... But it's only partly one's own from first to last." . . . Then his thoughts turned again to the man who was playing "Pagliacci." "I have a greater right to do it than Byng, and I'd have a greater joy in doing it; but whatever he is, it is not all his fault." Again he shuddered. "No man makes love like that to a woman unless she lets him, . . . until she lets him." Then he looked at the fire where the cruel testimony had shrivelled into smoke. "If it had been read to a jury . . . Ah, my God! How many he must have written her like that ... How often...." With an effort he pulled himself together. "What does it matter now! All things have come to an end for me. There is only one way. My letter to her showed it. But this must be settled first. Then to see her for the last time, to make her understand...." He went to the beaded curtain, raised it, and stepped into the flood of warm sunlight. The voluptuous, agonizing music came in a wave over him. Tragedy, poignant misery, rang through every note, swelled in a stream which drowned the senses. This man-devil could play, Stafford remarked, cynically, to himself. "A moment--Fellowes," he said, sharply. The music frayed into a discord and stopped. CHAPTER XXI THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE There was that in Stafford's tone which made Fellowes turn with a start. It was to this room that Fellowes had begged Jasmine to come this morning, in the letter which Krool had so carefully placed for his master to find, after having read it himself with minute scrutiny. It was in this room they had met so often in those days when Rudyard was in South Africa, and where music had been the medium of an intimacy which had nothing for its warrant save eternal vanity and curiosity, the evil genius of the race of women. Here it was that Krool's antipathy to Jasmine and fierce hatred of Fellowes had been nurtured. Krool had haunted the room, desiring the end of it all; but he had been disarmed by a smiling kindness on Jasmine's part, which shook his purpose again and again. It had all been a problem which Krool's furtive mind failed to master. If he went to the Baas with his suspicions, the chance was that he would be flayed with a sjambok and turned into the streets; if he warned Jasmine, the same thing might happen, or worse. But fate had at last played into his hands, on the very day that Oom Paul had challenged destiny, when all things were ready for the ruin of the hated English. Fate had sent him through the hallway between Jasmine's and Rudyard's rooms in the moment when Jasmine had dropped Fellowes' letter; and he had seen it fall. He knew not what it was, but it might be of importance, for he had seen Fellowes' handwriting on an envelope among those waiting for Jasmine's return home. In a far dark corner he had waited till he saw Lablanche enter her mistress' room hurriedly, without observing the letter. Then he caught it up and stole away to the library, where he read it with malevolent eyes. He had left this fateful letter where Rudyard would see it when he rose in the morning. All had worked out as he had planned, and now, with his ear against the door which led from the music-room, he strained to hear what passed between Stafford and Fellowes. "Well, what is it?" asked Fellowes, with an attempt to be casual, though there was that in Stafford's face which gave him anxiety, he knew not why. He had expected Jasmine, and, instead, here was Stafford, who had been so much with her of late; who, with Mennaval, had occupied so much of her time that she had scarcely spoken to him, and, when she did so, it was with a detachment which excluded him from intimate consideration. His face wore a mechanical smile, as his pale blue eyes met the dark intensity of Stafford's. But slowly the peach-bloom of his cheeks faded and his long, tapering fingers played nervously with the leather-trimming of the piano-stool. "Anything I can do for you, Stafford?" he added, with attempted nonchalance. "There is nothing you can do for me," was the meaning reply, "but there is something you can do advantageously for yourself, if you will think it worth while." "Most of us are ready to do ourselves good turns. What am I to do?" "You will wish to avoid it, and yet you will do yourself a good turn in not avoiding it." "Is that the way you talk in diplomatic circles--cryptic, they call it, don't they?" Stafford's chin hardened, and a look of repulsion and disdain crossed over his face. "It is more cryptic, I confess, than the letter which will cause you to do yourself a good turn." Now Fellowes' face turned white. "What letter?" he asked, in a sharp, querulous voice. "The letter you wrote Mrs. Byng from the Trafalgar Club yesterday." Fellowes made a feint, an attempt at bravado. "What business is it of yours, anyhow? What rights have you got in Mrs. Byng's letters?" "Only what I get from a higher authority." "Are you in sweet spiritual partnership with the Trinity?" "The higher authority I mean is Mr. Byng. Let us have no tricks with words, you fool." Fellowes made an ineffective attempt at self-possession. "What the devil . . . why should I listen to you?" There was a peevish stubbornness in the tone. "Why should you listen to me? Well, because I have saved your life. That should be sufficient reason for you to listen." "Damnation--speak out, if you've got anything to say! I don't see what you mean, and you are damned officious. Yes, that's it--damned officious." The peevishness was becoming insolent recklessness. Slowly Stafford drew from his pocket the revolver Rudyard had given him. As Fellowes caught sight of the glittering steel he fell back against the piano-stool, making a clatter, his face livid. Stafford's lips curled with contempt. "Don't squirm so, Fellowes. I'm not going to use it. But Mr. Byng had it, and he was going to use it. He was on his way to do it when I appeared. I stopped him . . . I will tell you how. I endeavoured to make him believe that she was absolutely innocent, that you had only been an insufferably insolent, presumptuous, and lecherous cad--which is true. I said that, though you deserved shooting, it would only bring scandal to Rudyard Byng's honourable wife, who had been insulted by the lover of Al'mah and the would-be betrayer of an honest girl--of Jigger's sister.... Yes, you may well start. I know of what stuff you are, how you had the soul and body of one of the most credulous and wonderful women in the world in your hands, and you went scavenging. From Al'mah to the flower-girl! . . . I think I should like to kill you myself for what you tried to do to Jigger's sister; and if it wasn't here"--he handled the little steel weapon with an eager fondness--" I think I'd do it. You are a pest." Cowed, shivering, abject, Fellowes nervously fell back. His body crashed upon the keys of the piano, producing a hideous discord. Startled, he sprang aside and with trembling hands made gestures of appeal. "Don't--don't! Can't you see I'm willing! What is it you want me to do? I'll do it. Put it away.... Oh, my God--Oh!" His bloodless lips were drawn over his teeth in a grimace of terror. With an exclamation of contempt Stafford put the weapon back into his pocket again. "Pull yourself together," he said. "Your life is safe for the moment; but I can say no more than that. After I had proved the lady's innocence--you understand, after I had proved the lady's innocence to him--" "Yes, I understand," came the hoarse reply. "After that, I said I would deal with you; that he could not be trusted to do so. I said that you would leave England within twenty-four hours, and that you would not return within three years. That was my pledge. You are prepared to fulfil it?" "To leave England! It is impossible--" "Perhaps to leave it permanently, and not by the English Channel, either, might be worse," was the cold, savage reply. "Mr. Byng made his terms." Fellowes shivered. "What am I to do out of England--but, yes, I'll go, I'll go," he added, as he saw the look in Stafford's face and thought of the revolver so near to Stafford's hand. "Yes, of course you will go," was the stern retort. "You will go, just as I say." "What shall I do abroad?" wailed the weak voice. "What you have always done here, I suppose--live on others," was the crushing reply. "The venue will be changed, but you won't change, not you. If I were you, I'd try and not meet Jigger before you go. He doesn't know quite what it is, but he knows enough to make him reckless." Fellowes moved towards the door in a stumbling kind of way. "I have some things up-stairs," he said. "They will be sent after you to your chambers. Give me the keys to the desk in the secretary's room." "I'll go myself, and--" "You will leave this house at once, and everything will be sent after you--everything. Have no fear. I will send them myself, and your letters and private papers will not be read.... You feel you can rely on me for that--eh?" "Yes . . . I'll go now . . . abroad . . . where?" "Where you please outside the United Kingdom." Fellowes passed heavily out through the other room, where his letter had been read by Stafford, where his fate had been decided. He put on his overcoat nervously and went to the outer door. Stafford came up to him again. "You understand, there must be no attempt to communicate here.... You will observe this?" Fellowes nodded. "Yes, I will.... Good-night," he added, absently. "Good-day," answered Stafford, mechanically. The outer door shut, and Stafford turned again to the little room where so much had happened which must change so many lives, bring so many tears, divert so many streams of life. How still the house seemed now! It had lost all its charm and homelikeness. He felt stifled. Yet there was the warm sun streaming through the doorway of the music-room, making the beaded curtains shine like gold. As he stood in the doorway of the little morning-room, looking in with bitter reflection and dreading beyond words what now must come--his meeting with Jasmine, the story he must tell her, and the exposure of a truth so naked that his nature revolted from it, he heard a footstep behind him. It was Krool. Stafford looked at the saturnine face and wondered how much he knew; but there was no glimmer of revelation in Krool's impassive look. The eyes were always painful in their deep animal-like glow, and they seemed more than usually intense this morning; that was all. "Will you present my compliments to Mrs. Byng, and say--" Krool, with a gesture, stopped him. "Mrs. Byng is come now," he said, making a gesture towards the staircase. Then he stole away towards the servants' quarters of the house. His work had been well done, of its kind, and he could now await consequences. Stafford turned to the staircase and saw--in blue, in the old sentimental blue--Jasmine slowly descending, a strange look of apprehension in her face. Immediately after calling out for Rudyard a little while before, she had discovered the loss of Adrian Fellowes' letter. Hours before this she had read and re-read Ian's letter, that document of pain and purpose, of tragical, inglorious, fatal purpose. She was suddenly conscious of an air of impending catastrophe about her now. Or was it that the catastrophe had come? She had not asked for Adrian Fellowes' letter, for if any servant had found it, and had not returned it, it was useless asking; and if Rudyard had found it--if Rudyard had found it . . . ! Where was Rudyard? Why had he not come to her, Why had he not eaten the breakfast which still lay untouched on the table of his study? Where was Rudyard? Ian's eyes looked straight into hers as she came down the staircase, and there was that in them which paralyzed her. But she made an effort to ignore the apprehension which filled her soul. "Good-morning. Am I so very late?" she said, gaily, to him, though there was a hollow note in her voice. "You are just in time," he answered in an even tone which told nothing. "Dear me, what a gloomy face! What has happened? What is it? There seems to be a Cassandra atmosphere about the place--and so early in the day, too." "It is full noon--and past," he said, with acute meaning, as her daintily shod feet met the floor of the hallway and glided towards him. How often he had admired that pretty flitting of her feet! As he looked at her he was conscious, with a new force, of the wonder of that hair on a little head as queenly as ever was given to the modern world. And her face, albeit pale, and with a strange tremulousness in it now, was like that of some fairy dame painted by Greuze. All last night's agony was gone from the rare blue eyes, whose lashes drooped so ravishingly betimes, though that droop was not there as she looked at Ian now. She beat a foot nervously on the floor. "What is it--why this Euripidean air in my simple home? There's something wrong, I see. What is it? Come, what is it, Ian?" Hesitatingly she laid a hand upon his arm, but there was no loving-kindness in his look. The arms which yesterday--only yesterday--had clasped her passionately and hungrily to his breast now hung inert at his side. His eyes were strange and hard. "Will you come in here," he said, in an arid voice, and held wide the door of the room where he and Rudyard had settled the first chapter of the future and closed the book of the past. She entered with hesitating step. Then he shut the door with an accentuated softness, and came to the table where he had sat with Rudyard. Mechanically she took the seat which Rudyard had occupied, and looked at him across the table with a dread conviction stealing over her face, robbing it of every vestige of its heavenly colour, giving her eyes a staring and solicitous look. "Well, what is it? Can't you speak and have it over?" she asked, with desperate impatience. "Fellowes' letter to you--Rudyard found it," he said, abruptly. She fell back as though she had been struck, then recovered herself. "You read it?" she gasped. "Rudyard made me read it. I came in when he was just about to kill Fellowes." She gave a short, sharp cry, which with a spasm of determination her fingers stopped. "Kill him--why?" she asked in a weak voice, looking down at her trembling hands which lay clasped on the table before her. "The letter--Fellowes' letter to you." "I dropped it last night," she said, in a voice grown strangely impersonal and colourless. "I dropped it in Rudyard's room, I suppose." She seemed not to have any idea of excluding the terrible facts, but to be speaking as it were to herself and of something not vital, though her whole person was transformed into an agony which congealed the lifeblood. Her voice sounded tuneless and ragged. "He read it--Rudyard read a letter which was not addressed to him! He read a letter addressed to me--he read my letter.... It gave me no chance." "No chance--?" A bitter indignation was added to the cheerless discord of her tones. "Yes, I had a chance, a last chance--if he had not read the letter. But now, there is no chance.... You read it, too. You read the letter which was addressed to me. No matter what it was--my letter, you read it." "Rudyard said to me in his terrible agitation, 'Read that letter, and then tell me what you think of the man who wrote it.' . . . I thought it was the letter I wrote to you, the letter I posted to you last night. I thought it was my letter to you." Her eyes had a sudden absent look. It was as though she were speaking in a trance. "I answered that letter--your letter. I answered it this morning. Here is the answer . . . here." She laid a letter on the table before him, then drew it back again into her lap. "Now it does not matter. But it gives me no chance...." There was a world of despair and remorse in her voice. Her face was wan and strained. "No chance, no chance," she whispered. "Rudyard did not kill him?" she asked, slowly and cheerlessly, after a moment, as though repeating a lesson. "Why?" "I stopped him. I prevented him." "You prevented him--why?" Her eyes had a look of unutterable confusion and trouble. "Why did you prevent it--you?" "That would have hurt you--the scandal, the grimy press, the world." Her voice was tuneless, and yet it had a strange, piteous poignancy. "It would have hurt me--yes. Why did you not want to hurt me?" He did not answer. His hands had gone into his pockets, as though to steady their wild nervousness, and one had grasped the little weapon of steel which Rudyard had given him. It produced some strange, malignant effect on his mind. Everything seemed to stop in him, and he was suddenly possessed by a spirit which carried him into that same region where Rudyard had been. It was the region of the abnormal. In it one moves in a dream, majestically unresponsive to all outward things, numb, unconcerned, disregarding all except one's own agony, which seems to neutralize the universe and reduce all life's problems to one formula of solution. "What did you say to him that stopped him?" she asked in a whisper of awed and dreadful interest, as, after an earthquake, a survivor would speak in the stillness of dead and unburied millions. "I said the one thing to say," he answered after a moment, involuntarily laying the pistol on the table before him--doing it, as it were, without conscious knowledge. It fascinated Jasmine, the ugly, deadly little vehicle of oblivion. Her eyes fastened on it, and for an instant stared at it transfixed; then she recovered herself and spoke again. "What was the one thing to say?" she whispered. "That you were innocent--absolutely, that--" Suddenly she burst into wild laughter--shrill, acrid, cheerless, hysterical, her face turned upward, her hands clasped under her chin, her body shaking with what was not laughter, but the terrifying agitation of a broken organism. He waited till she had recovered somewhat, and then he repeated his words. "I said that you were innocent absolutely; that Fellowes' letter was the insolence and madness of a voluptuary, that you had only been wilful and indiscreet, and that--" In a low, mechanical tone from which was absent any agitation, he told her all he had said to Rudyard, and what Rudyard had said to him. Every word had been burned into his brain, and nearly every word was now repeated, while she sat silent, looking at her hands clasped on the table before her. When he came to the point where Rudyard went from the house, leaving Stafford to deal with Fellowes, she burst again into laughter, mocking, wilful, painful. "You were left to set things right, to be the lord high executioner--you, Ian!" How strange his name sounded on her lips now--foreign, distant, revealing the nature of the situation more vividly than all the words which had been said, than all that had been done. "Rudyard did not think of killing you, I suppose," she went on, presently, with a bitter motion of the lips, and a sardonic note creeping into the voice. "No, I thought of that," he answered, quietly, "as you know." His eyes sought the weapon on the table involuntarily. "That would have been easy enough," he added. "I was not thinking of myself, or of Fellowes, but only of you--and Rudyard." "Only of me--and Rudyard," she repeated with drooping eyes, which suddenly became alive again with feeling and passion and wildness. "Wasn't it rather late for that?" The words stung him beyond endurance. He rose and leaned across the table towards her. "At least I recognized what I had done, what you had done, and I tried to face it. I did not disguise it. My letter to you proves that. But nevertheless I was true to you. I did not deceive you--ever. I loved you--ah, I loved you as few women have been loved! . . . But you, you might have made a mistake where Rudyard was concerned, made the mistake once, but if you wronged him, you wronged me infinitely more. I was ready to give up all, throw all my life, my career, to the winds, and prove myself loyal to that which was more than all; or I was willing to eliminate myself from the scene forever. I was willing to pay the price--any price--just to stand by what was the biggest thing in my life. But you were true to nothing--to nothing--to nobody." "If one is untrue--once, why be true at all ever?" she said with an aching laugh, through which tears ran, though none dropped from her eyes. "If one is untrue to one, why not to a thousand?" Again a mocking laugh burst from her. "Don't you see? One kiss, a wrong? Why not, then, a thousand kisses! The wrong came in the moment that the one kiss was given. It is the one that kills, not the thousand after." There came to her mind again--and now with what sardonic force--Rudyard's words that day before they went to Glencader: "If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers." "And so it is all understood between you and Rudyard," she added, mechanically. "That is what you have arranged for me--that I go on living as before with Rudyard, while I am not to know from him anything has happened; but to accept what has been arranged for me, and to be repentant and good and live in sackcloth. It has been arranged, has it, that Rudyard is to believe in me?" "That has not been arranged." "It has been arranged that I am to live with him as before, and that he is to pretend to love me as before, and--" "He does love you as before. He has never changed. He believed in you, was so pitifully eager to believe in you even when the letter--" "Where is the letter?" He pointed to the fire. "Who put it in the fire?" she asked. "You?" He inclined his head. "Ah yes, always so clever! A burst of indignation at his daring to suspect me even for an instant, and with a flourish into the fire, the evidence. Here is yours--your letter. Would you like to put it into the fire also?" she asked, and drew his letter from the folds of her dress. "But, no, no, no--" She suddenly sprang to her feet, and her eyes had a look of agonized agitation. "When I have learned every word by heart, I will burn it myself--for your sake." Her voice grew softer, something less discordant came into it. "You will never understand. You could never understand me, or that letter of Adrian Fellowes to me, and that he could dare to write me such a letter. You could never understand it. But I understand you. I understand your letter. It came while I was--while I was broken. It healed me, Ian. Last night I wanted to kill myself. Never mind why. You would not understand. You are too good to understand. All night I was in torture, and then this letter of yours--it was a revelation. I did not think that a man lived like you, so true, so kind, so mad. And so I wrote you a letter, ah, a letter from my soul! and then came down to this--the end of all. The end of everything--forever." "No, the beginning if you will have it so.... Rudyard loves you . . ." She gave a cry of agony. "For God's sake--oh, for God's sake, hush! . . . You think that now I could . . ." "Begin again with new purpose." "Purpose! Oh, you fool! You fool! You fool--you who are so wise sometimes! You want me to begin again with Rudyard: and you do not want me to begin again--with you?" He was silent, and he looked her in the eyes steadily. "You do not want me to begin again with you, because you believe me--because you believed the worst from that letter, from Adrian Fellowes' letter.... You believed, yet you hypnotized Rudyard into not believing. But did you, after all? Was it not that he loves me, and that he wanted to be deceived, wanted to be forced to do what he has done? I know him better than you. But you are right, he would have spoken to me about it if you had not warned him." "Then begin again--" "You do not want me any more." The voice had an anguish like the cry of the tragic music in "Elektra." "You do not want what you wanted yesterday--for us together to face it all, Ian. You do not want it? You hate me." His face was disturbed by emotion, and he did not speak for a moment. In that moment she became transformed. With a sudden tragic motion she caught the pistol from the table and raised it, but he wrenched it from her hand. "Do you think that would mend anything?" he asked, with a new pity in his heart for her." That would only hurt those who have been hurt enough already. Be a little magnanimous. Do not be selfish. Give others a chance." "You were going to do it as an act of unselfishness," she moaned. "You were going to die in order to mend it all. Did you think of me in that? Did you think I would or could consent to that? You believed in me, of course, when you wrote it. But did you think that was magnanimous--when you had got a woman's love, then to kill yourself in order to cure her? Oh, how little you know! . . . But you do not want me now. You do not believe in me now. You abhor me. Yet if that letter had not fallen into Rudyard's hands we might perhaps have now been on our way to begin life again together. Does that look as though there was some one else that mattered--that mattered?" He held himself together with all his power and will. "There is one way, and only one way," he said, firmly. "Rudyard loves you. Begin again with him." His voice became lower. "You know the emptiness of your home. There is a way to make some recompense to him. You can pay your debt. Give him what he wants so much. It would be a link. It would bind you. A child . . ." "Oh, how you loathe me!" she said, shudderingly. "Yesterday--and now . . . No, no, no," she added, " I will not, cannot live with Rudyard. I cannot wrench myself from one world into another like that. I will not live with him any more.... There--listen." Outside the newsboys were calling: "Extra speshul! Extra speshul! All about the war! War declared! Extra speshul!" "War! That will separate many," she added. "It will separate Rudyard and me.... No, no, there will be no more scandal.... But it is the way of escape--the war." "The way of escape for us all, perhaps," he answered, with a light of determination in his eyes. "Good-bye," he added, after a slight pause. "There is nothing more to say." He turned to go, but he did not hold out his hand, nor even look at her. "Tell me," she said, in a strange, cold tone, "tell me, did Adrian Fellowes--did he protect me? Did he stand up for me? Did he defend me?" "He was concerned only for himself," Ian answered, hesitatingly. Her face hardened. Pitiful, haggard lines had come into it in the last half-hour, and they deepened still more. "He did not say one word to put me right?" Ian shook his head in negation. "What did you expect?" he said. She sank into a chair, and a strange cruelty came into her eyes, something so hard that it looked grotesque in the beautiful setting of her pain-worn, exquisite face. So utter was her dejection that he came back from the door and bent over her. "Jasmine," he said, gently, "we have to start again, you and I--in different paths. They will never meet. But at the end of the road--peace. Peace the best thing of all. Let us try and find it, Jasmine." "He did not try to protect me. He did not defend me," she kept saying to herself, and was only half conscious of what Ian said to her. He touched her shoulder. "Nothing can set things right between you and me, Jasmine," he added, unsteadily, "but there's Rudyard--you must help him through. He heard scandal about Mennaval last night at De Lancy Scovel's. He didn't believe it. It rests with you to give it all the lie.... Good-bye." In a moment he was gone. As the door closed she sprang to her feet. "Ian--Ian--come back," she cried. "Ian, one word--one word." But the door did not open again. For a moment she stood like one transfixed, staring at the place whence he had vanished, then, with a moan, she sank in a heap on the floor, and rocked to and fro like one demented. Once the door opened quietly, and Krool's face showed, sinister and furtive, but she did not see it, and the door closed again softly. At last the paroxysms passed, and a haggard face looked out into the world of life and being with eyes which were drowned in misery. "He did not defend me--the coward!" she murmured; then she rose with a sudden effort, swayed, steadied herself, and arranged her hair in the mirror over the mantelpiece. "The low coward!" she said again. "But before he leaves . . . before he leaves England . . . " As she turned to go from the room, Rudyard's portrait on the wall met her eyes. "I can't go on, Rudyard," she said to it. "I know that now." Out in the streets, which Ian Stafford travelled with hasty steps, the newsboys were calling: "War declared! All about the war!" "That is the way out for me," Stafford said, aloud, as he hastened on. "That opens up the road.... I'm still an artillery officer." He directed his swift steps toward Pall Mall and the War Office. CHAPTER XXII IN WHICH FELLOWES GOES A JOURNEY Kruger's ultimatum, expected though it was, shook England as nothing had done since the Indian mutiny, but the tremour of national excitement presently gave way to a quiet, deep determination. An almost Oriental luxury had gone far to weaken the fibre of that strong and opulent middle-class who had been the backbone of England, the entrenched Philistines. The value of birth as a moral asset which had a national duty and a national influence, and the value of money which had a social responsibility and a communal use, were unrealized by the many nouveaux riches who frequented the fashionable purlieus; who gave vast parties where display and extravagance were the principal feature; who ostentatiously offered large sums to public objects. Men who had made their money where copper or gold or oil or wool or silver or cattle or railways made commercial kings, supported schemes for the public welfare brought them by fine ladies, largely because the ladies were fine; and they gave substantial sums--upon occasion--for these fine ladies' fine causes. Rich men, or reputed rich men, whose wives never appeared, who were kept in secluded quarters in Bloomsbury or Maida Vale, gave dinners at the Savoy or the Carlton which the scrapings of the aristocracy attended; but these gave no dinners in return. To get money to do things, no matter how,--or little matter how; to be in the swim, and that swim all too rapidly washing out the real people--that was the almost universal ambition. But still the real people, however few or many, in the time of trouble came quietly into the necessary and appointed places with the automatic precision of the disciplined friend of the state and of humanity; and behind them were folk of the humbler sort, the lower middle- class, the labouring-man. Of these were the landpoor peer, with his sense of responsibility cultivated by daily life and duty in his county, on the one hand; the professional man of all professions, the little merchant, the sailor, the clerk and artisan, the digger and delver, on the other; and, in between, those people in the shires who had not yet come to be material and gross, who had old-fashioned ideas of the duty of the citizen and the Christian. In the day of darkness these came and laid what they had at the foot of the altar of sacrifice. This at least the war did: it served as a sieve to sift the people, and it served as the solvent of many a life-problem. Ian Stafford was among the first to whom it offered "the way out," who went to it for the solution of their own set problem. Suddenly, as he stood with Jasmine in the little room where so many lives were tossed into the crucible of Fate that morning, the newsboy's voice shouting, "War declared!" had told him the path he must tread. He had astonished the War Office by his request to be sent to the Front with his old arm, the artillery, and he was himself astonished by the instant assent that was given. And now on this October day he was on his way to do two things--to see whether Adrian Fellowes was keeping his promise, and to visit Jigger and his sister. There had not been a week since the days at Glencader when he had not gone to the sordid quarters in the Mile End Road to see Jigger, and to hear from him how his sister was doing at the opera, until two days before, when he had learned from Lou herself what she had suffered at the hands of Adrian Fellowes. That problem would now be settled forever; but there remained the question of Jigger, and that must be settled, whatever the other grave problems facing him. Jigger must be cared for, must be placed in a position where he could have his start in life. Somehow Jigger was associated with all the movements of his life now, and was taken as part of the problem. What to do? He thought of it as he went eastward, and it did not seem easy to settle it. Jigger himself, however, cut the Gordian knot. When he was told that Stafford was going to South Africa, and that it was a question as to what he--Jigger--should now do, in what sphere of life his abnormally "cute" mind must run, he answered, instantly. "I'm goin' wiv y'r gryce," he said. "That's it--stryght. I'm goin' out there wiv you." Ian shook his head and smiled sadly. "I'm afraid that's not for you, Jigger. No, think again." "Ain't there work in Souf Afriker--maybe not in the army itself, y'r gryce? Couldn't I have me chanct out there? Lou's all right now, I bet; an' I could go as easy as can be." "Yes, Lou will be all right now," remarked Stafford, with a reflective irony. "I ain't got no stiddy job here, and there's work in Souf Afriker, ain't they? Couldn't I get a job holdin' horses, or carryin' a flag, or cleanin' the guns, or nippin' letters about--couldn't I, y'r gryce? I'm only askin' to go wiv you, to work, same as ever I did before I was run over. Ain't I goin' wiv you, y'r gryce?" With a sudden resolve Stafford laid a hand on his shoulder. "Yes, you are going 'wiv' me, Jigger. You just are, horse, foot, and artillery. There'll be a job somewhere. I'll get you something to do, or--" "Or bust, y'r gryce?" So the problem lessened, and Ian's face cleared a little. If all the difficulties perplexing his life would only clear like that! The babe and the suckling had found the way so simple, so natural; and it was a comforting way, for he had a deep and tender regard for this quaint, clever waif who had drifted across his path. To-morrow he would come and fetch Jigger: and Jigger's face followed him into the coming dusk, radiant and hopeful and full of life--of life that mattered. Jigger would go out to "Souf Afriker" with all his life before him, but he, Ian Stafford, would go with all his life behind him, all mile-stones passed except one. So, brooding, he walked till he came to an underground station, and there took a train to Charing Cross. Here he was only a little distance away from the Embankment, where was to be found Adrian Fellowes; and with bent head he made his way among the motley crowd in front of the station, scarcely noticing any one, yet resenting the jostle and the crush. Suddenly in the crowd in front of him he saw Krool stealing along with a wide-awake hat well down over his eyes. Presently the sinister figure was lost in the confusion. It did not occur to him that perhaps Krool might be making for the same destination as himself; but the sight of the man threw his mind into an eddy of torturing thoughts. The flare of light, white and ghastly, at Charing Cross was shining on a moving mass of people, so many of whom were ghastly also--derelicts of humanity, ruins of womanhood, casuals, adventurers, scavengers of life, prowlers who lived upon chance, upon cards, upon theft, upon women, upon libertines who waited in these precincts for some foolish and innocent woman whom they could entrap. Among them moved also the thousand other good citizens bent upon catching trains or wending their way home from work; but in the garish, cruel light, all, even the good, looked evil in a way, and furtive and unstable. To-night, the crowd were far more restless than usual, far more irritating in their purposeless movements. People sauntered, jerked themselves forward, moved in and out, as it were, intent on going everywhere and nowhere; and the excitement possessing them, the agitation in the air, made them seem still more exasperating, and bewildering. Newsboys with shrill voices rasped the air with invitations to buy, and everywhere eager, nervous hands held out their half-pennies for the flimsy sensational rags. Presently a girl jostled Stafford, then apologized with an endearing word which brought a sick sensation to his brain; but he only shook his head gravely at her. After all, she had a hard trade and it led nowhere--nowhere. "Coming home with me, darling?" she added in response to his meditative look. Anything that was not actual rebuff was invitation to her blunted sense. "Coming home with me--?" Home! A wave of black cynicism, of sardonic mirth passed through Stafford's brain. Home--where the business of this poor wayfarer's existence was carried on, where the shopkeeper sold her wares in the inner sanctuary! Home.... He shook the girl's hand from his elbow and hastened on. Yet why should he be angered with her, he said to himself. It was not moral elevation which had made him rough with her, but only that word Home she used.... The dire mockery of it burned his mind like a corrosive acid. He had had no home since his father died years ago,--his mother had died when he was very young--and his eldest brother had taken possession of the family mansions, placing them in the control of his foreign wife, who sat in his mother's chair and in her place at table. He had wished so often in the past for a home of his own, where he could gather round him young faces and lose himself in promoting the interests of those for whom he had become forever responsible. He had longed for the Englishman's castle, for his own little realm of interest where he could be supreme; and now it was never to be. The idea gained in sacred importance as it receded forever from all possibility. In far-off days it had been associated with a vision in blue, with a face like a dresden-china shepherdess and hair like Aphrodite's. Laughter and wit and raillery had been part of the picture; and long evenings in the winter-time, when they two would read the books they both loved, and maybe talk awhile of world events in which his work had place; in which his gifts were found, shaping, influencing, producing. The garden, the orchard--he loved orchards--the hedges of flowering ivy and lilacs; and the fine grey and chestnut horses driven by his hand or hers through country lanes; the smell of the fallen leaves in the autumn evenings; or the sting of the bracing January wind across the moors or where the woodcock awaited its spoiler. All these had been in the vision. It was all over now. He had seen an image, it had vanished, and he was in the desert alone. A band was playing "The Banks o' Garry Owen," and the tramp of marching men came to his ears. The crowd surged round him, pushed him, forced him forward, carried him on, till the marching men came near, were alongside of him--a battalion of Volunteers, going to the war to see "Kruger's farmers bite the dust!"--a six months' excursion, as they thought. Then the crowd, as it cheered jostled him against the wall of the shops, and presently he found himself forced down Buckingham Street. It was where he wished to go in order to reach Adrian Fellowes' apartments. He did not notice, as he was practically thrown into the street, that Krool was almost beside him. The street was not well lighted, and he looked neither to right nor left. He was thinking hard of what he would say to Adrian Fellowes, if, and when, he saw him. But not far behind him was a figure that stole along in the darker shadows of the houses, keeping at some distance. The same figure followed him furtively till he came into that part of the Embankment where Adrian Fellowes' chambers were; then it fell behind a little, for here the lights were brighter. It hung in the shadow of a door-way and watched him as he approached the door of the big building where Adrian Fellowes lived. Presently, as he came nearer, Stafford saw a hansom standing before the door. Something made him pause for a moment, and when, in the pause, the figure of a woman emerged from the entrance and hastily got into the hansom, he drew back into the darkness of a doorway, as the man did who was now shadowing him; and he waited till it turned round and rolled swiftly away. Then he moved forward again. When not far from the entrance, however, another cab--a four-wheeler--discharged its occupant at a point nearer to the building than where he waited. It was a woman. She paid the cabman, who touched his hat with quick and grateful emphasis, and, wheeling his old crock round, clattered away. The woman glanced along the empty street swiftly, and then hurried to the doorway which opened to Adrian Fellowes' chambers. Instantly Stafford recognized her. It was Jasmine, dressed in black and heavily veiled. He could not mistake the figure--there was none other like it; or the turn of her head--there was only one such head in all England. She entered the building quickly. There was nothing to do but wait until she came out again. No passion stirred in him, no jealousy, no anger. It was all dead. He knew why she had come; or he thought he knew. She would tell the man who had said no word in defense of her, done nothing to protect her, who let the worst be believed, without one protest of her innocence, what she thought of him. She was foolish to go to him, but women do mad things, and they must not be expected to do the obviously sensible thing when the crisis of their lives has come. Stafford understood it all. One thing he was certain Jasmine did not know--the intimacy between Fellowes and Al'mah. He himself had been tempted to speak of it in their terrible interview that morning; but he had refrained. The ignominy, the shame, the humiliation of that would have been beyond her endurance. He understood; but he shrank at the thought of the nature of the interview which she must have, at the thought of the meeting at all. He would have some time to wait, no doubt, and he made himself easy in the doorway, where his glance could command the entrance she had used. He mechanically took out a cigar-case, but after looking at the cigars for a moment put them away again with a sigh. Smoking would not soothe him. He had passed beyond the artificial. His waiting suddenly ended. It seemed hardly three minutes after Jasmine's entrance when she appeared in the doorway again, and, after a hasty glance up and down the street, sped away as swiftly as she could, and, at the corner, turned up sharply towards the Strand. Her movements had been agitated, and, as she hurried on, she thrust her head down into her muff as a woman would who faced a blinding rain. The interview had been indeed short. Perhaps Fellowes had already gone abroad. He would soon find out. He mounted the deserted staircase quickly and knocked at Fellowes' door. There was no reply. There was a light, however, and he knocked again. Still there was no answer. He tried the handle of the door. It turned, the door gave, and he entered. There was no sound. He knocked at an inner door. There was no reply, yet a light showed in the room. He turned the handle. Entering the room, he stood still and looked round. It seemed empty, but there were signs of packing, of things gathered together hastily. Then, with a strange sudden sense of a presence in the room, he looked round again. There in a far corner of the large room was a couch, and on it lay a figure--Adrian Fellowes, straight and still--and sleeping. Stafford went over. "Fellowes," he said, sharply. There was no reply. He leaned over and touched a shoulder. "Fellowes!" he exclaimed again, but something in the touch made him look closely at the face half turned to the wall. Then he knew. Adrian Fellowes was dead. Horror came upon Stafford, but no cry escaped him. He stooped once more and closely looked at the body, but without touching it. There was no sign of violence, no blood, no disfigurement, no distortion, only a look of sleep--a pale, motionless sleep. But the body was warm yet. He realized that as his hand had touched the shoulder. The man could only have been dead a little while. Only a little while: and in that little while Jasmine had left the house with agitated footsteps. "He did not die by his own hand," Stafford said aloud. He rang the bell loudly. No one answered. He rang and rang again, and then a lazy porter came. CHAPTER XXIII "MORE WAS LOST AT MOHACKSFIELD" Eastminster House was ablaze. A large dinner had been fixed for this October evening, and only just before half-past eight Jasmine entered the drawing-room to receive her guests. She had completely forgotten the dinner till very late in the afternoon, when she observed preparations for which she had given instructions the day before. She was about to leave the house upon the mission which had drawn her footsteps in the same direction as those of Ian Stafford, when the butler came to her for information upon some details. These she gave with an instant decision which was part of her equipment, and then, when the butler had gone, she left the house on foot to take a cab at the corner of Piccadilly. When she returned home, the tables in the dining-room were decorated, the great rooms were already lighted, and the red carpet was being laid down at the door. The footmen looked up with surprise as she came up the steps, and their eyes followed her as she ascended the staircase with marked deliberation. "Well, that's style for you," said the first footman. "Takin' an airin' on shanks' hosses." "And a quarter of an hour left to put on the tirara," sniggered the second footman. "The lot is asked for eight-thirty." "Swells, the bunch, windin' up with the brother of an Emperor--'struth!" "I'll bet the Emperor's brother ain't above takin' a tip about shares on the Rand, me boy." "I'll bet none of 'em ain't. That's why they come--not forgetting th' grub and the fizz." "What price a title for the Byng Baas one of these days! They like tips down there where the old Markis rumbles through his beard--and a lot of hands to be greased. And grease it costs a lot, political grease does. But what price a title--Sir Rudyard Byng, Bart., wot oh!" "Try another shelf higher up, and it's more like it. Wot a head for a coronet 'ers! W'y--" But the voice of the butler recalled them from the fields of imagination, and they went with lordly leisure upon the business of the household. Socially this was to be the day of Jasmine's greatest triumph. One of the British royal family was, with the member of another great reigning family, honouring her table--though the ladies of neither were to be present; and this had been a drop of chagrin in her cup. She had been unaware of the gossip there had been of late,--though it was unlikely the great ladies would have known of it--and she would have been slow to believe what Ian had told her this day, that men had talked lightly of her at De Lancy Scovel's house. Her eyes had been shut; her wilful nature had not been sensitive to the quality of the social air about her. People came--almost "everybody" came--to her house, and would come, of course, until there was some open scandal; until her husband intervened. Yet everybody did not come. The royal princesses had not found it convenient to come; and this may have meant nothing, or very much indeed. To Jasmine, however, as she hastily robed herself for dinner, her mind working with lightning swiftness, it did not matter at all; if all the kings and queens of all the world had promised to come and had not come, it would have meant nothing to her this night of nights. In her eyes there was the look of one who has seen some horrible thing, though she gave her orders with coherence and decision as usual, and with great deftness she assisted her maid in the hasty toilette. Her face was very pale, save for one or two hectic spots which took the place of the nectarine bloom so seldom absent from her cheeks, and in its place was a new, shining, strange look like a most delicate film--the transfiguring kind of look which great joy or great pain gives. Coming up the staircase from the street, she had seen Krool enter her husband's room more hastily than usual, and had heard him greeted sharply--something that sounded strange to her ears, for Rudyard was uniformly kind to Krool. Never had Rudyard's voice sounded as it did now. Of course it was her imagination, but it was like a voice which came from some desolate place, distant, arid and alien. That was not the voice in which he had wooed her on the day when they heard of Jameson's Raid. That was not the voice which had spoken to her in broken tones of love on the day Ian first dined with her after her marriage--that fateful, desperate day. This was a voice which had a cheerless, fretful note, a savage something in it. Presently they two would meet, and she knew how it would be--an outward semblance, a superficial amenity and confidence before their guests; the smile of intimacy, when there was no intimacy, and never, never, could be again; only acting, only make-believe, only the artifice of deceit. Yet when she was dressed--in pure white, with only a string of pearls, the smallest she had, round her neck--she was like that white flower which had been placed on her pillow last night. Turning to leave the bedroom she caught sight of her face and figure again in the big mirror, and she seemed to herself like some other woman. There was that strange, distant look of agony in her eyes, that transfiguring look in the face; there was the figure somehow gone slimmer in these few hours; and there was a frail appearance which did not belong to her. As she was about to leave the room to descend the stairs, there came a knock at the door. A bunch of white violets was handed in, with a pencilled note in Rudyard's handwriting. White violets--white violets! The note read, "Wear these to-night, Jasmine." White violets--how strange that he should send them! These they send for the young, the innocent, and the dead. Rudyard had sent them to her--from how far away! He was there just across the hallway, and yet he might have been in Bolivia, so far as their real life was concerned. She was under no illusion. This day, and perhaps a few, a very few others, must be lived under the same roof, in order that they could separate without scandal; but things could never go on as in the past. She had realized that the night before, when still that chance of which she had spoken to Stafford was hers; when she had wound the coil of her wonderful hair round her throat, and had imagined that self-destruction which has tempted so many of more spiritual make than herself. It was melodramatic, emotional, theatrical, maybe; but the emotional, the theatrical, the egotistic mortal has his or her tragedy, which is just as real as that which comes to those of more spiritual vein, just as real as that which comes to the more classical victim of fate. Jasmine had the deep defects of her qualities. Her suffering was not the less acute because it found its way out with impassioned demonstration. There was, however, no melodrama in the quiet trembling with which she took the white violets, the symbol of love and death. She was sure that Rudyard was not aware of their significance and meaning, but that did not modify the effect upon her. Her trouble just now was too deep for tears, too bitter for words, too terrible for aught save numb endurance. Nothing seemed to matter in a sense, and yet the little routine of life meant so much in its iron insistence. The habits of convention are so powerful that life's great issues are often obscured by them. Going to her final doom a woman would stop to give the last careful touch to her hair--the mechanical obedience to long habit. It is not vanity, not littleness, but habit; never shown with subtler irony than in the case of Madame de Langrois, who, pacing the path to her execution at Lille, stooped, picked up a pin from the ground, and fastened it in her gown--the tyranny of habit. Outside her own room Jasmine paused for a moment and looked at the closed door of Rudyard's room. Only a step--and yet she was kept apart from him by a shadow so black, so overwhelming, that she could not penetrate it. It smothered her sight. No, no, that little step could not be taken; there was a gulf between them which could not be bridged. There was nothing to say to Rudyard except what could be said upon the surface, before all the world, as it were; things which must be said through an atmosphere of artificial sounds, which would give no response to the agonized cries of the sentient soul. She could make believe before the world, but not alone with Rudyard. She shrank within herself at the idea of being alone with him. As she went down-stairs a scene in a room on the Thames Embankment, from which she had come a half hour ago, passed before her vision. It was as though it had been imprinted on the film of her eye and must stay there forever. When would the world know that Adrian Fellowes lay dead in the room on the Embankment? And when they knew it, what would they say? They would ask how he died--the world would ask how he died. The Law would ask how he died. How had he died? Who killed him? Or did he die by his own hand? Had Adrian Fellowes, the rank materialist, the bon viveur, the man-luxury, the courage to kill himself by his own hand? If not, who killed him? She shuddered. They might say that she killed him. She had seen no one on the staircase as she had gone up, but she had dimly seen another figure outside in the terrace as she came out, and there was the cabman who drove her to the place. That was all. Now, entering the great drawing-room of her own house she shuddered as though from an icy chill. The scene there on the Embankment--her own bitter anger, her frozen hatred; then the dead man with his face turned to the wall; the stillness, the clock ticking, her own cold voice speaking to him, calling; then the terrified scrutiny, the touch of the wrist, the realization, the moment's awful horror, the silence which grew more profound, the sudden paralysis of body and will.... And then--music, strange, soft, mysterious music coming from somewhere inside the room, music familiar and yet unnatural, a song she had heard once before, a pathetic folk-song of eastern Europe, "More Was Lost at Mohacksfield." It was a tale of love and loss and tragedy and despair. Startled and overcome, she had swayed, and would have fallen, but that with an effort of the will she had caught at the table and saved herself. With the music still creeping in unutterable melancholy through the room, she had fled, closing the door behind her very softly as though not to disturb the sleeper. It had followed her down the staircase and into the street, the weird, unnatural music. It was only when she had entered a cab in the Strand that she realized exactly what the music was. She remembered that Fellowes had bought a music-box which could be timed to play at will--even days ahead, and he had evidently set the box to play at this hour. It did so, a strange, grim commentary on the stark thing lying on the couch, nerveless as though it had been dead a thousand years. It had ceased to play before Stafford entered the room, but, strangely enough, it began again as he said over the dead body, "He did not die by his own hand." Standing before the fireplace in the drawing-room, awaiting the first guest, Jasmine said to herself: "No, no, he had not the courage to kill himself." Some one had killed him. Who was it? Who killed him--Rudyard--Ian--who? But how? There was no sign of violence. That much she had seen. He lay like one asleep. Who was it killed him? "Lady Tynemouth." Back to the world from purgatory again. The butler's voice broke the spell, and Lady Tynemouth took her friend in her arms and kissed her. "So handsome you look, my darling--and all in white. White violets, too. Dear, dear, how sweet, and oh, how triste! But I suppose it's chic. Certainly, it is stunning. And so simple. Just the weeny, teeny string of pearls, like a young under-secretary's wife, to show what she might do if she had a fair chance. Oh, you clever, wonderful Jasmine!" "My dressmaker says I have no real taste in colours, so I compromised," was Jasmine's reply, with a really good imitation of a smile. As she babbled on, Lady Tynemouth had been eyeing her friend with swift inquiry, for she had never seen Jasmine look as she did to-night, so ethereal, so tragically ethereal, with dark lines under the eyes, the curious transparency of the skin, and the feverish brightness and far-awayness of the look. She was about to say something in comment, but other guests entered, and it was impossible. She watched, however, from a little distance, while talking gaily to other guests; she watched at the dinner-table, as Jasmine, seated between her two royalties, talked with gaiety, with pretty irony, with respectful badinage; and no one could be so daring with such ceremonious respect at the same time as she. Yet through it all Lady Tynemouth saw her glance many times with a strange, strained inquiry at Rudyard, seated far away opposite her; at another big, round table. "There's something wrong here," Lady Tynemouth said to herself, and wondered why Ian Stafford was not present. Mennaval was there, eagerly seeking glances. These Jasmine gave with a smiling openness and apparent good-fellowship, which were not in the least compromising. Lady Tynemouth saw Mennaval's vain efforts, and laughed to herself, and presently she even laughed with her neighbour about them. "What an infant it is!" she said to her table companion. "Jasmine Byng doesn't care a snap of her finger about Mennaval." "Does she care a snap for anybody?" asked the other. Then he added, with a kind of query in the question apart from the question itself: "Where is the great man--where's Stafford to-night?" "Counting his winnings, I suppose." Lady Tynemouth's face grew soft. "He has done great things for so young a man. What a distance he has gone since he pulled me and my red umbrella back from the Zambesi Falls!" Then proceeded a gay conversation, in which Lady Tynemouth was quite happy. When she could talk of Ian Stafford she was really enjoying herself. In her eyes he was the perfect man, whom other women tried to spoil, and whom, she flattered herself, she kept sound and unspoiled by her frank platonic affection. "Our host seems a bit abstracted to-night," said her table companion after a long discussion about what Stafford had done and what he still might do. "The war--it means so much to him," said Lady Tynemouth. Yet she had seen the note of abstraction too, and it had made her wonder what was happening in this household. The other demurred. "But I imagine he has been prepared for the war for some time. He didn't seem excessively worried about it before dinner, yet he seemed upset too, so pale and anxious-looking." "I'll make her talk, make her tell me what it is, if there is anything," said Lady Tynemouth to herself. "I'll ask myself to stay with her for a couple of days." Superficial as Lady Tynemouth seemed to many, she had real sincerity, and she was a friend in need to her friends. She loved Jasmine as much as she could love any woman, and she said now, as she looked at Jasmine's face, so alert, so full of raillery, yet with such an undertone of misery: "She looks as if she needed a friend." After dinner she contrived to get her arm through that of her hostess, and gave it an endearing pressure. "May I come to you for a few days, Jasmine?" she asked. "I was going to ask if you would have me," answered Jasmine, with a queer little smile. "Rudyard will be up to his ears for a few days, and that's a chance for you and me to do some shopping, and some other things together, isn't it?" She was thinking of appearances, of the best way to separate from Rudyard for a little while, till the longer separation could be arranged without scandal. Ian Stafford had said that things could go on in this house as before, that Rudyard would never hint to her what he knew, or rather what the letter had told him or left untold: but that was impossible. Whatever Rudyard was willing to do, there was that which she could not do. Twenty-four hours had accomplished a complete revolution in her attitude towards life and in her sense of things. Just for these immediate days to come, when the tragedy of Fellowes' death would be made a sensation of the hour, there must be temporary expedients; and Lady Tynemouth had suggested one which had its great advantages. She could not bear to remain in Rudyard's house; and in his heart of hearts Rudyard would wish the same, even if he believed her innocent; but if she must stay for appearance' sake, then it would be good to have Lady Tynemouth with her. Rudyard would be grateful for time to get his balance again. This bunch of violets was the impulse of a big, magnanimous nature; but it would be followed by the inevitable reaction, which would be the real test and trial. Love and forgiveness--what had she to do with either! She did not wish forgiveness because of Adrian Fellowes. No heart had been involved in that episode. It had in one sense meant nothing to her. She loved another man, and she did not wish forgiveness of him either. No, no, the whole situation was impossible. She could not stay here. For his own sake Rudyard would not, ought not, to wish her to stay. What might the next few days bring forth? Who had killed Adrian Fellowes? He was not man enough to take his own life--who had killed him? Was it her husband, after all? He had said to Ian Stafford that he would do nothing, but, with the maggot of revenge and jealousy in their brains, men could not be trusted from one moment to another. The white violets? Even they might be only the impulse of the moment, one of those acts of madness of jealous and revengeful people. Men had kissed their wives and then killed them--fondled them, and then strangled them. Rudyard might have made up his mind since morning to kill Fellowes, and kill herself, also. Fellowes was gone, and now might come her turn. White violets were the flowers of death, and the first flowers he had ever given her were purple violets, the flowers of life and love. If Rudyard had killed Adrian Fellowes, there would be an end to everything. If he was suspected, and if the law stretched out its hand of steel to clutch him--what an ignominious end to it all; what a mean finish to life, to opportunity, to everything worth doing! And she would have been the cause of everything. The thought scorched her soul. Yet she talked on gaily to her guests until the men returned from their cigars; as though Penalty and Nemesis were outside even the range of her imagination; as though she could not hear the snap of the handcuffs on Rudyard's--or Ian's--wrists. Before and after dinner only a few words had passed between her and Rudyard, and that was with people round them. It was as though they spoke through some neutralizing medium, in which all real personal relation was lost. Now Rudyard came to her, however, and in a matter-of-fact voice said: "I suppose Al'mah will be here. You haven't heard to the contrary, I hope? These great singers are so whimsical." There was no time for Jasmine to answer, for through one of the far entrances of the drawing-room Al'mah entered. Her manner was composed--if possible more composed than usual, and she looked around her calmly. At that moment a servant handed Byng a letter. It contained only a few words, and it ran: "DEAR BYNG,--Fellowes is gone. I found him dead in his rooms. An inquest will be held to-morrow. There are no signs of violence; neither of suicide or anything else. If you want me, I shall be at my rooms after ten o'clock to-night. I have got all his papers." Yours ever, "IAN STAFFORD." Jasmine watched Rudyard closely as he read. A strange look passed over his face, but his hand was steady as he put the note in his pocket. She then saw him look searchingly at Al'mah as he went forward to greet her. On the instant Rudyard had made up his mind what to do. It was clear that Al'mah did not know that Fellowes was dead, or she would not be here; for he knew of their relations, though he had never told Jasmine. Jasmine did not suspect the truth, or Al'mah would not be where she was; and Fellowes would never have written to Jasmine the letter for which he had paid with his life. Al'mah was gently appreciative of the welcome she received from both Byng and Jasmine, and she prepared to sing. "Yes, I think I am in good voice," she said to Jasmine, presently. Then Rudyard went, giving his wife's arm a little familiar touch as he passed, and said: "Remember, we must have some patriotic things tonight. I'm sure Al'mah will feel so, too. Something really patriotic and stirring. We shall need it--yes we shall need cheering very badly before we've done. We're not going to have a walk-over in South Africa. Cheering up is what we want, and we must have it." Again he cast a queer, inquiring look at Al'mah, to which he got no response, and to himself he said, grimly: "Well, it's better she should not know it--here." His mind was in a maze. He moved as in a dream. He was pale, but he had an air of determination. Once he staggered with dizziness, then he righted himself and smiled at some one near. That some one winked at his neighbour. "It's true, then, what we hear about him," the neighbour said, and suggestively raised fingers to his mouth. Al'mah sang as perhaps she had seldom sung. There was in her voice an abandon and tragic intensity, a wonderful resonance and power, which captured her hearers as they had never been captured before. First she sang a love-song, then a song of parting. Afterwards came a lyric of country, which stirred her audience deeply. It was a challenge to every patriot to play his part for home and country. It was an appeal to the spirit of sacrifice; it was an inspiration and an invocation. Men's eyes grew moist. And now another, a final song, a combination of all--of love, and loss and parting and ruin, and war and patriotism and destiny. With the first low notes of it Jasmine rose slowly from her seat, like one in a dream, and stood staring blindly at Al'mah. The great voice swelled out in a passion of agony, then sank away into a note of despair that gripped the heart. "But more was lost at Mohacksfield--" Jasmine had stood transfixed while the first words were sung, then, as the last line was reached, staring straight in front of her, as though she saw again the body of Adrian Fellowes in the room by the river, she gave a cry, which sounded half laughter and half torture, and fell heavily on the polished floor. Rudyard ran forward and lifted her in his arms. Lady Tynemouth was beside him in an instant. "Yes, that's right--you come," he said to her, and he carried the limp body up-stairs, the white violets in her dress crushed against his breast. "Poor child--the war, of course; it means so much to them." Thus, a kindly dowager, as she followed the Royalties down-stairs. CHAPTER XXIV ONE WHO CAME SEARCHING "A lady to see you, sir." "A lady? What should we be doing with ladies here, Gleg?" "I'm sure I have no use for them, sir," replied Gleg, sourly. He was in no good humour. That very morning he had been told that his master was going to South Africa, and that he would not be needed there, but that he should remain in England, drawing his usual pay. Instead of receiving this statement with gratitude, Gleg had sniffed in a manner which, in any one else, would have been impertinence; and he had not even offered thanks. "Well, what do you think she wants? She looks respectable?" "I don't know about that, sir. It's her ladyship, sir." "It's what 'ladyship,' Gleg?" "Her ladyship, sir--Lady Tynemouth." Stafford looked at Gleg meditatively for a minute, and then said quietly: "Let me see, you have been with me sixteen years, Gleg. You've forgotten me often enough in that time, but you've never forgotten yourself before. Come to me to-morrow at noon.... I shall allow you a small pension. Show her ladyship in." Gone waxen in face, Gleg crept out of the room. "Seven-and-six a week, I suppose," he said to himself as he went down the stairs. "Seven-and-six for a bit of bonhommy." With great consideration he brought Lady Tynemouth up, and shut the door with that stillness which might be reverence, or something at its antipodes. Lady Tynemouth smiled cheerily at Ian as she held out her hand. "Gleg disapproves of me very greatly. He thinks I am no better than I ought to be." "I am sure you are," answered Stafford, drily. "Well, if you don't know, Ian, who does? I've put my head in the lion's mouth before, just like this, and the lion hasn't snapped once," she rejoined, settling herself cozily in a great, green leather-chair. "Nobody would believe it; but there it is. The world couldn't think that you could be so careless of your opportunities, or that I would pay for the candle without burning it." "On the contrary, I think they would believe anything you told them." She laughed happily. "Wouldn't you like to call me Alice, 'same as ever,' in the days of long ago? It would make me feel at home after Gleg's icy welcome." He smiled, looked down at her with admiration, and quoted some lines of Swinburne, alive with cynicism: "And the worst and the best of this is, That neither is most to blame If she has forgotten my kisses, And I have forgotten her name." Lady Tynemouth made a plaintive gesture. "I should probably be able to endure the bleak present, if there had been any kisses in the sunny past," she rejoined, with mock pathos. "That's the worst of our friendship, Ian. I'm quite sure the world thinks I'm one of your spent flames, and there never was any fire, not so big as the point of a needle, was there? It's that which hurts so now, little Ian Stafford--not so much fire as would burn on the point of a needle." "'On the point of a needle,'" Ian repeated, half-abstractedly. He went over to his writing-desk, and, opening a blotter, regarded it meditatively for an instant. As he did so she tapped the floor impatiently with her umbrella, and looked at him curiously, but with a little quirk of humour at the corners of her mouth. "The point of a needle might carry enough fire to burn up a good deal," he said, reflectively. Then he added, slowly: "Do you remember Mr. Mappin and his poisoned needle at Glencader?" "Yes, of course. That was a day of tragedy, when you and Rudyard Byng won a hundred Royal Humane Society medals, and we all felt like martyrs and heroes. I had the most creepy dreams afterwards. One night it was awful. I was being tortured with Mr. Mappin's needle horribly by--guess whom? By that half-caste Krool, and I waked up with a little scream, to find Tynie busy pinching me. I had been making such a wurra-wurra, as he called it." "Well, it is a startling idea that there's poison powerful enough to make a needle-point dipped in it deadly." "I don't believe it a bit, but--" Pausing, she flicked a speck of fluff from her black dress--she was all in black, with only a stole of pure white about her shoulders. "But tell me," she added, presently--"for it's one of the reasons why I'm here now--what happened at the inquest to-day? The evening papers are not out, and you were there, of course, and gave evidence, I suppose. Was it very trying? I'm sure it was, for I've never seen you look so pale. You are positively haggard, Ian. You don't mind that from an old friend, do you? You look terribly ill, just when you should look so well." "Why should I look so well?" He gazed at her steadily. Had she any glimmering of the real situation? She was staying now in Byng's house, and two days had gone since the world had gone wrong; since Jasmine had sunk to the floor unconscious as Al'mah sang, "More was lost at Mohacksfield." "Why should you look so well? Because you are the coming man, they say. It makes me so proud to be your friend--even your neglected, if not quite discarded, friend. Every one says you have done such splendid work for England, and that now you can have anything you want. The ball is at your feet. Dear man, you ought to look like a morning-glory, and not as you do. Tell me, Ian, are you ill, or is it only the reaction after all you've done?" "No doubt it's the reaction," he replied. "I know you didn't like Adrian Fellowes much," she remarked, watching him closely. "He behaved shockingly at the Glencader Mine affair--shockingly. Tynie was for pitching him out of the house, and taking the consequences; but, all the same, a sudden death like that all alone must have been dreadful. Please tell me, what was the verdict?" "Heart failure was the verdict; with regret for a promising life cut short, and sympathy with the relatives." "I never heard that he had heart trouble," was the meditative response. "But--well, of course, it was heart failure. When the heart stops beating, there's heart failure. What a silly verdict!" "It sounded rather worse than silly," was Ian's comment. "Did--did they cut him up, to see if he'd taken morphia, or an overdose of laudanum or veronal or something? I had a friend who died of taking quantities of veronal while you were abroad so long--a South American, she was." He nodded. "It was all quite in order. There were no signs of poison, they said, but the heart had had a shock of some kind. There had been what they called lesion, and all that kind of thing, and not sufficient strength for recovery." "I suppose Mr. Mappin wasn't present?" she asked, curiously. "I know it is silly in a way, but don't you remember how interested Mr. Fellowes was in that needle? Was Mr. Mappin there?" "There was no reason why he should be there." "What witnesses were called?" "Myself and the porter of Fellowes' apartments, his banker, his doctor--" "And Al'mah?" she asked, obliquely. He did not reply at once, but regarded her inquiringly. "You needn't be afraid to speak about Al'mah," she continued. "I saw something queer at Glencader. Then I asked Tynie, and he told me that--well, all about her and Adrian Fellowes. Was Al'mah there? Did she give evidence?" "She was there to be called, if necessary," he responded, "but the coroner was very good about it. After the autopsy the authorities said evidence was unnecessary, and--" "You arranged that, probably?" "Yes; it was not difficult. They were so stupid--and so kind." She smoothed out the folds of her dress reflectively, then got up as if with sudden determination, and came near to him. Her face was pale now, and her eyes were greatly troubled. "Ian," she said, in a low voice, "I don't believe that Adrian Fellowes died a natural death, and I don't believe that he killed himself. He would not have that kind of courage, even in insanity. He could never go insane. He could never care enough about anything to do so. He--did--not--kill--himself. There, I am sure of it. And he did not die a natural death, either." "Who killed him?" Ian asked, his face becoming more drawn, but his eyes remaining steady and quiet. She put her hand to her eyes for a moment. "Oh, it all seems so horrible! I've tried to shake it off, and not to think my thoughts, and I came to you to get fresh confidence; but as soon as I saw your face I knew I couldn't have it. I know you are upset too, perhaps not by the same thoughts, but through the same people." "Tell me all you think or know. Be quite frank," he said, heavily. "I will tell you why later. It is essential that you should be wholly frank with me." "As I have always been. I can't be anything else. Anyhow, I owe you so much that you have the right to ask me what you will.... There it is, the fatal thing," she added. Her eyes were raised to the red umbrella which had nearly carried her over into the cauldron of the Zambesi Falls. "No, it is the world that owes me a heavy debt," he responded, gallantly. "I was merely selfish in saving you." Her eyes filled with tears, which she brushed away with a little laugh. "Ah, how I wish it was that! I am just mean enough to want you to want me, while I didn't want you. That's the woman, and that's all women, and there's no getting away from it. But still I would rather you had saved me than any one else who wasn't bound, like Tynie, to do so." "Well, it did seem absurd that you should risk so much to keep a sixpenny umbrella," he rejoined, drily. "How we play on the surface while there's so much that is wearing our hearts out underneath," she responded, wearily. "Listen, Ian, you know what I mean. Whoever killed Adrian Fellowes, or didn't, I am sure that Jasmine saw him dead. Three nights ago when she fainted and went ill to bed, I stayed with her, slept in the same room, in the bed beside hers. The opiate the doctor gave her was not strong enough, and two or three times she half waked, and--and it was very painful. It made my heart ache, for I knew it wasn't all dreams. I am sure she saw Adrian Fellowes lying dead in his room.... Ian, it is awful, but for some reason she hated him, and she saw him lying dead. If any one knows the truth, you know. Jasmine cares for you--no, no, don't mind my saying it. She didn't care a fig for Mennaval, or any of the others, but she does care for you--cares for you. She oughtn't to, but she does, and she should have married you long ago before Rudyard Byng came. Please don't think I am interfering, Ian. I am not. You never had a better friend than I am. But there's something ghastly wrong. Rudyard is looking like a giant that's had blood-letting, and he never goes near Jasmine, except when some one is with her. It's a bad sign when two people must have some third person about to insulate their self-consciousness and prevent those fatal moments when they have to be just their own selves, and have it out." "You think there's been trouble between them?" His voice was quite steady, his manner composed. "I don't think quite that. But there is trouble in that palace. Rudyard is going to South Africa." "Well, that is not unnatural. I should expect him to do so. I am going to South Africa also." For a moment she looked at him without speaking, and her face slowly paled. "You are going to the Front--you?" "Yes--'Back to the army again, sergeant, back to the army again.' I was a gunner, you know, and not a bad one, either, if I do say it." "You are going to throw up a great career to go to the Front? When you have got your foot at the top of the ladder, you climb down?" Her voice was choking a little. He made a little whimsical gesture. "There's another ladder to climb. I'll have a try at it, and do my duty to my country, too. I'll have a double-barrelled claim on her, if possible." "I know that you are going because you will not stay when Rudyard goes," she rejoined, almost irritably. "What a quixotic idea! Really you are too impossible and wrong-headed." He turned an earnest look upon her. "No, I give you my word, I am not going because Rudyard is going. I didn't know he was going till you told me. I got permission to go three hours after Kruger's message came." "You are only feckless--only feckless, as the Scotch say," she rejoined with testy sadness. "Well, since everybody is going, I am going too. I am going with a hospital-ship." "Well, that would pay off a lot of old debts to the Almighty," he replied, in kindly taunt. "I haven't been worse than most women, Ian," she replied. "Women haven't been taught to do things, to pay off their debts. Men run up bills and pay them off, and run them up again and again and pay them off; but we, while we run up bills, our ways of paying them off are so few, and so uninteresting." Suddenly she took from her pocket a letter. "Here is a letter for you," she said. "It was lying on Jasmine's table the night she was taken ill. I don't know why I did it, but I suppose I took it up so that Rudyard should not see it; and then I didn't say anything to Jasmine about it at once. She said nothing, either; but to-day I told her I'd seen the letter addressed to you, and had posted it. I said it to see how she would take it. She only nodded, and said nothing at first. Then after a while she whispered, 'Thank you, my dear,' but in such a queer tone. Ian, she meant you to have the letter, and here it is." She put it into his hands. He remembered it. It was the letter which Jasmine had laid on the table before him at that last interview when the world stood still. After a moment's hesitation he put it in his pocket. "If she wished me to have it--" he said in a low voice. "If not, why, then, did she write it? Didn't she say she was glad I posted it?" A moment followed, in which neither spoke. Lady Tynemouth's eyes were turned to the window; Stafford stood looking into the fire. "Tynie is sure to go to South Africa with his Yeomanry," she continued at last. "He'll be back in England next week. I can be of use out there, too. I suppose you think I'm useless because I've never had to do anything, but you are quite wrong. It's in me. If I'd been driven to work when I was a girl, if I'd been a labourer's daughter, I'd have made hats--or cream-cheeses. I'm not really such a fool as you've always thought me, Ian; at any rate, not in the way you've thought me." His look was gentle, as he gazed into her eyes. "I've never thought you anything but a very sensible and alluring woman, who is only wilfully foolish at times," he said. "You do dangerous things." "But you never knew me to do a really wrong thing, and if you haven't, no one has." Suddenly her face clouded and her lips trembled. "But I am a good friend, and I love my friends. So it all hurts. Ian, I'm most upset. There's something behind Adrian Fellowes' death that I don't understand. I'm sure he didn't kill himself; but I'm also sure that some one did kill him." Her eyes sought his with an effort and with apprehension, but with persistency too. "I don't care what the jury said--I know I'm right." "But it doesn't matter now," he answered, calmly. "He will be buried to-morrow, and there's an end of it all. It will not even be the usual nine days' wonder. I'd forget it, if I were you." "I can't easily forget it while you remember it," she rejoined, meaningly. "I don't know why or how it affects you, but it does affect you, and that's why I feel it; that's why it haunts me." Gleg appeared. "A gentleman to see you, sir," he said, and handed Ian a card. "Where is he?" "In the dining-room, sir." "Very good. I will see him in a moment." When they were alone again, Lady Tynemouth held out her hand. "When do you start for South Africa?" she asked. "In three days. I join my battery in Natal." "You will hear from me when I get to Durban," she said, with a shy, inquiring glance. "You are really going?" "I mean to organize a hospital-ship and go." "Where will you get the money?" "From some social climber," she replied, cynically. His hand was on the door-knob, and she laid her own on it gently. "You are ill, Ian," she said. "I have never seen you look as you do now." "I shall be better before long," he answered. "I never saw you look so well." "That's because I am going to do some work at last," she rejoined. "Work at last. I'll blunder a bit, but I'll try a great deal, and perhaps I'll do some good.... And I'll be there to nurse you if you get fever or anything," she added, laughing nervously--"you and Tynie." When she was gone he stood looking at the card in his hand, with his mind seeing something far beyond. Presently he rang for Gleg. "Show Mr. Mappin in," he said. CHAPTER XXV WHEREIN THE LOST IS FOUND In a moment the great surgeon was seated, looking reflectively round him. Soon, however, he said brusquely, "I hope your friend Jigger is going on all right?" "Yes, yes, thanks to you." "No, no, Mr. Stafford, thanks to you and Mrs. Byng chiefly. It was care and nursing that did it. If I could have hospitals like Glencader and hospital nurses like Mrs. Byng and Al'mah and yourself, I'd have few regrets at the end of the year. That was an exciting time at Glencader." Stafford nodded, but said nothing. Presently, after some reference to the disaster at the mine at Glencader and to Stafford's and Byng's bravery, Mr. Mappin said. "I was shocked to hear of Mr. Fellowes' death. I was out of town when it happened--a bad case at Leeds; but I returned early this morning." He paused, inquiringly but Ian said nothing, and he continued, "I have seen the body." "You were not at the inquest, I think," Ian remarked, casually. "No, I was not in time for that, but I got permission to view the body." "And the verdict--you approve?" "Heart failure--yes." Mr. Mappin's lip curled. "Of course. But he had no heart trouble. His heart wasn't even weak. His life showed that." "His life showed--?" Ian's eyebrows went up. "He was very much in society, and there's nothing more strenuous than that. His heart was all right. Something made it fail, and I have been considering what it was." "Are you suggesting that his death was not natural?" "Quite artificial, quite artificial, I should say." Ian took a cigarette, and lighted it slowly. "According to your theory, he must have committed suicide. But how? Not by an effort of the will, as they do in the East, I suppose?" Mr. Mappin sat up stiffly in his chair. "Do you remember my showing you all at Glencader a needle which had on its point enough poison to kill a man?" "And leave no trace--yes." "Do you remember that you all looked at it with interest, and that Mr. Fellowes examined it more attentively than any one else?" "I remember." "Well, I was going to kill a collie with it next day." "A favourite collie grown old, rheumatic--yes, I remember." "Well, the experiment failed." "The collie wasn't killed by the poison?" "No, not by the poison, Mr. Stafford." "So your theory didn't work except on paper." "I think it worked, but not with the collie." There was a pause, while Stafford looked composedly at his visitor, and then he said: "Why didn't it work with the collie?" "It never had its chance." "Some mistake, some hitch?" "No mistake, no hitch; but the wrong needle." "The wrong needle! I should not say that carelessness was a habit with you." Stafford's voice was civil and sympathetic. "Confidence breeds carelessness," was Mr. Mappin's enigmatical retort. "You were over-confident then?" "Quite clearly so. I thought that Glencader was beyond reproach." There was a slight pause, and then Stafford, flicking away some cigarette ashes, continued the catechism. "What particular form of reproach do you apply to Glencader?" "Thieving." "That sounds reprehensible--and rude." "If you were not beyond reproach, it would be rude, Mr. Stafford." Stafford chafed at the rather superior air of the expert, whose habit of bedside authority was apt to creep into his social conversation; but, while he longed to give him a shrewd thrust, he forbore. It was hard to tell how much he might have to do to prevent the man from making mischief. The compliment had been smug, and smugness irritated Stafford. "Well, thanks for your testimonial," he said, presently, and then he determined to cut short the tardy revelation, and prick the bubble of mystery which the great man was so slowly blowing. "I take it that you think some one at Glencader stole your needle, and so saved your collie's life," he said. "That is what I mean," responded Mr. Mappin, a little discomposed that his elaborate synthesis should be so sharply brought to an end. There was almost a grisly raillery in Stafford's reply. "Now, the collie--were you sufficiently a fatalist to let him live, or did you prepare another needle, or do it in the humdrum way?" "I let the collie live." "Hoping to find the needle again?" asked Stafford, with a smile. "Perhaps to hear of it again." "Hello, that is rather startling! And you have done so? "I think so. Yes, I may say that." "Now how do you suppose you lost that needle?" "It was taken from my pocket-case, and another substituted. "Returning good for evil. Could you not see the difference in the needles?" "There is not, necessarily, difference in needles. The substitute was the same size and shape, and I was not suspicious." "And what form does your suspicion take now?" The great man became rather portentously solemn--he himself would have said "becomingly grave." "My conviction is that Mr. Fellowes took my needle." Stafford fixed the other with his gaze. "And killed himself with it?" Mr. Mappin frowned. "Of that I cannot be sure, of course." "Could you not tell by examining the body?" "Not absolutely from a superficial examination." "You did not think a scientific examination necessary?" "Yes, perhaps; but the official inquest is over, the expert analysis or examination is finished by the authorities, and the superficial proofs, while convincing enough to me, are not complete and final; and so, there you are." Stafford got and held his visitor's eyes, and with slow emphasis said: "You think that Fellowes committed suicide with your needle?" "No, I didn't say that." "Then I fear my intelligence must be failing rapidly. You said--" "I said I was not sure that he killed himself. I am sure that he was killed by my needle; but I am not sure that he killed himself. Motive and all that kind of thing would come in there." "Ah--and all that kind of thing! Why should you discard motive for his killing himself?" "I did not say I discarded motive, but I think Mr. Fellowes the last man in the world likely to kill himself." "Why, then, do you think he stole the needle?" "Not to kill himself." Stafford turned his head away a little. "Come now; this is too tall. You are going pretty far in suggesting that Fellowes took your needle to kill some one else." "Perhaps. But motive might not be so far to seek." "What motive in this case?" Stafford's eyes narrowed a little with the inquiry. "Well, a woman, perhaps." "You know of some one, who--" "No. I am only assuming from Mr. Fellowes' somewhat material nature that there must be a woman or so." "Or so--why 'or so?'" Stafford pressed him into a corner. "There comes the motive--one too many, when one may be suspicious, or jealous, or revengeful, or impossible." "Did you see any mark of the needle on the body?" "I think so. But that would not do more than suggest further delicate, detailed, and final examination." "You have no trace of the needle itself?" "None. But surely that isn't strange. If he had killed himself, the needle would probably have been found. If he did not kill himself, but yet was killed by it, there is nothing strange in its not being recovered." Stafford took on the gravity of a dry-as-dust judge. "I suppose that to prove the case it would be necessary to produce the needle, as your theory and your invention are rather new." "For complete proof the needle would be necessary, though not indispensable." Stafford was silent for an instant, then he said: "You have had a look for the little instrument of passage?" "I was rather late for that, I fear." "Still, by chance, the needle might have been picked up. However, it would look foolish to advertise for a needle which had traces of atric acid on it, wouldn't it?" Mr. Mappin looked at Stafford quite coolly, and then, ignoring the question, said, deliberately: "You discovered the body, I hear. You didn't by any chance find the needle, I suppose?" Stafford returned his look with a cool stare. "Not by any chance," he said, enigmatically. He had suddenly decided on a line of action which would turn this astute egoist from his half-indicated purpose. Whatever the means of Fellowes' death, by whomsoever caused, or by no one, further inquiry could only result in revelations hurtful to some one. As Mr. Mappin had surmised, there was more than one woman,--there may have been a dozen, of course--but chance might just pitch on the one whom investigation would injure most. If this expert was quieted, and Fellowes was safely bestowed in his grave, the tragic incident would be lost quickly in the general excitement and agitation of the nation. The war-drum would drown any small human cries of suspicion or outraged innocence. Suppose some one did kill Adrian Fellowes? He deserved to die, and justice was satisfied, even if the law was marauded. There were at least four people who might have killed Fellowes without much remorse. There was Rudyard, there was Jasmine, there was Lou the erstwhile flower-girl--and himself. It was necessary that Mappin, however, should be silenced, and sent about his business. Stafford suddenly came over to the table near to his visitor, and with an assumed air of cold indignation, though with a little natural irritability behind all, said "Mr. Mappin, I assume that you have not gone elsewhere with your suspicions?" The other shook his head in negation. "Very well, I should strongly advise you, for your own reputation as an expert and a man of science, not to attempt the rather cliche occupation of trying to rival Sherlock Holmes. Your suspicions may have some distant justification, but only a man of infinite skill, tact, and knowledge, with an almost abnormal gift for tracing elusive clues and, when finding them, making them fit in with fact--only a man like yourself, a genius at the job, could get anything out of it. You are not prepared to give the time, and you could only succeed in causing pain and annoyance beyond calculation. Just imagine a Scotland Yard detective with such a delicate business to do. We have no Hamards here, no French geniuses who can reconstruct crimes by a kind of special sense. Can you not see the average detective blundering about with his ostentatious display of the obvious; his mind, which never traced a motive in its existence, trying to elucidate a clue? Well, it is the business of the Law to detect and punish crime. Let the Law do it in its own way, find its own clues, solve the mysteries given it to solve. Why should you complicate things? The official fellows could never do what you could do, if you were a detective. They haven't the brains or initiative or knowledge. And since you are not a detective, and can't devote yourself to this most delicate problem, if there be any problem at all, I would suggest--I imitate your own rudeness--that you mind your own business." He smiled, and looked down at his visitor with inscrutable eyes. At the last words Mr. Mappin flushed and looked consequential; but under the influence of a smile, so winning that many a chancellerie of Europe had lost its irritation over some skilful diplomatic stroke made by its possessor, he emerged from his atmosphere of offended dignity and feebly returned the smile. "You are at once complimentary and scathing, Mr. Stafford," he said; "but I do recognize the force of what you say. Scotland Yard is beneath contempt. I know of cases--but I will not detain you with them now. They bungle their work terribly at Scotland Yard. A detective should be a man of imagination, of initiative, of deep knowledge of human nature. In the presence of a mystery he should be ready to find motives, to construct them and put them into play, as though they were real--work till a clue was found. Then, if none is found, find another motive and work on that. The French do it. They are marvels. Hamard is a genius, as you say. He imagines, he constructs, he pursues, he squeezes out every drop of juice in the orange.... You see, I agree with you on the whole, but this tragedy disturbed me, and I thought that I had a real clue. I still believe I have, but cui bono?" "Cui bono indeed, if it is bungled. If you could do it all yourself, good. But that is impossible. The world wants your skill to save life, not to destroy it. Fellowes is dead--does it matter so infinitely, whether by his own hand or that of another?" "No, I frankly say I don't think it does matter infinitely. His type is no addition to the happiness of the world." They looked at each other meaningly, and Mappin responded once again to Stafford's winning smile. It pleased him prodigiously to feel Stafford lay a firm hand on his arm and say: "Can you, perhaps, dine with me to-night at the Travellers' Club? It makes life worth while to talk to men like you who do really big things." "I shall be delighted to come for your own reasons," answered the great man, beaming, and adjusting his cuffs carefully. "Good, good. It is capital to find you free." Again Stafford caught the surgeon's arm with a friendly little grip. Suddenly, however, Mr. Mappin became aware that Stafford had turned desperately white and worn. He had noticed this spent condition when he first came in, but his eyes now rediscovered it. He regarded Stafford with concern. "Mr. Stafford," he said, "I am sure you do not realize how much below par you are.... You have been under great strain--I know, we all know, how hard you have worked lately. Through you, England launches her ship of war without fear of complications; but it has told on you heavily. Nothing is got without paying for it. You need rest, and you need change." "Quite so--rest and change. I am going to have both now," said Stafford with a smile, which was forced and wan. "You need a tonic also, and you must allow me to give you one," was the brusque professional response. With quick movement he went over to Stafford's writing-table, and threw open the cover of the blotter. In a flash Stafford was beside him, and laid a hand upon the blotter, saying with a smile, of the kind which had so far done its work-- "No, no, my friend, I will not take a tonic. It's only a good sleep I want; and I'll get that to-night. But I give my word, if I'm not all right to-morrow, if I don't sleep, I'll send to you and take your tonic gladly." "You promise?" "I promise, my dear Mappin." The great man beamed again: and he really was solicitous for his new-found friend. "Very well, very well--Stafford," he replied. "It shall be as you say. Good-bye, or, rather, au revoir!" "A la bonne heure!" was the hearty response, as the door opened for the great surgeon's exit. When the door was shut again, and Stafford was alone, he staggered over to the writing-desk. Opening the blotter, he took something up carefully and looked at it with a sardonic smile. "You did your work quite well," he said, reflectively. It was such a needle as he had seen at Glencader in Mr. Mappin's hand. He had picked it up in Adrian Fellowes' room. "I wonder who used you," he said in a hard voice. "I wonder who used you so well. Was it--was it Jasmine?" With a trembling gesture he sat down, put the needle in a drawer, locked it, and turned round to the fire again. "Was it Jasmine?" he repeated, and he took from his pocket the letter which Lady Tynemouth had given him. For a moment he looked at it unopened--at the beautiful, smooth handwriting so familiar to his eyes; then he slowly broke the seal, and took out the closely written pages. CHAPTER XXVI JASMINE'S LETTER "Ian, oh, Ian, what strange and dreadful things you have written to me!" Jasmine's letter ran--the letter which she told him she had written on that morning when all was lost. "Do you realize what you have said, and, saying it, have you thought of all it means to me? You have tried to think of what is best, I know, but have you thought of me? When I read your letter first, a flood of fire seemed to run through my veins; then I became as though I had been dipped in ether, and all the winds of an arctic sea were blowing over me. "To go with you now, far away from the world in which we live and in which you work, to begin life again, as you say--how sweet and terrible and glad it would be! But I know, oh, I know myself and I know you! I am like one who has lived forever. I am not good, and I am not foolish, I am only mad; and the madness in me urges me to that visionary world where you and I could live and work and wander, and be content with all that would be given us--joy, seeing, understanding, revealing, doing. "But Ian, it is only a visionary world, that world of which you speak. It does not exist. The overmastering love, the desire for you that is in me, makes for me the picture as it is in your mind; but down beneath all, the woman in me, the everlasting woman, is sure there is no such world. "Listen, dear child--I call you that, for though I am only twenty-five I seem as aged as the Sphinx, and, like the Sphinx that begets mockery, so my soul, which seems to have looked out over unnumbered centuries, mocks at this world which you would make for you and me. Listen, Ian. It is not a real world, and I should not--and that is the pitiful, miserable part of it--I should not make you happy, if I were in that world with you. To my dire regret I know it. Suddenly you have roused in me what I can honestly say I have never felt before--strange, reckless, hungry feelings. I am like some young dweller of the jungle which, cut off from its kind tries, with a passion that eats and eats and eats away his very flesh to get back to its kind, to his mate, to that other wild child of nature which waits for the one appeasement of primeval desire. "Ian, I must tell you the whole truth about myself as I understand it. I am a hopeless, painful contradiction; I have always been so. I have always wanted to be good, but something has always driven me where the flowers have a poisonous sweetness, where the heart grows bad. I want to cry to you, Ian, to help me to be good; and yet something drives me on to want to share with you the fruit which turns to dust and ashes in the long end. And behind all that again, some tiny little grain of honour in me says that I must not ask you to help me; says that I ought never to look into your eyes again, never touch your hand, nor see you any more; and from the little grain of honour comes the solemn whisper, 'Do not ruin him; do not spoil his life.' "Your letter has torn my heart, so that it can never again be as it was before, and because there is some big, noble thing in you, some little, not ignoble thing is born in me. Ian, you could never know the anguished desire I have to be with you always, but, if I keep sane at all, I will not go--no, I will not go with you, unless the madness carries me away. It would kill you. I know, because I have lived so many thousands of years. My spirit and my body might be satisfied, the glory in having you all my own would be so great; but there would be no joy for you. To men like you, work is as the breath of life. You must always be fighting for something, always climbing higher, because you see some big thing to do which is so far above you. "Yes, men like you get their chance sooner or later, because you work, and are ready to take the gifts of Fate when they appear and before they pass. You will be always for climbing, if some woman does not drag you back. That woman may be a wife, or it may be a loving and living ghost of a wife like me. Ian, I could not bear to see what would come at last--the disappointment in your face the look of hope gone from your eyes; your struggle to climb, and the struggle of no avail. Sisyphus had never such a task as you would have on the hill of life, if I left all behind here and went with you. You would try to hide it; but I would see you growing older hourly before my eyes. You would smile--I wonder if you know what sort of wonderful, alluring thing your smile is, Ian?--and that smile would drive me to kill myself, and so hurt you still more. And so it is always an everlasting circle of penalty and pain when you take the laws of life you get in the mountains in your hands and break them in pieces on the rocks in the valleys, and make new individual laws out of harmony with the general necessity. "Isn't it strange, Ian, that I who can do wrong so easily still know so well and value so well what is right? It is my mother in me and my grandfather in me, both of them fighting for possession. Let me empty out my heart before you, because I know--I do not know why, but I do know, as I write--that some dark cloud lowers, gathers round us, in which we shall be lost, shall miss the touch of hand and never see each other's face again. I know it, oh so surely! I did not really love you years ago, before I married Rudyard; I did not love you when I married him; I did not love him, I could not really love any one. My heart was broken up in a thousand pieces to give away in little bits to all who came. But I cared for you more than I cared for any one else--so much more; because you were so able and powerful, and were meant to do such big things; and I had just enough intelligence to want to understand you; to feel what you were thinking, to grasp its meaning, however dimly. Yet I have no real intellect. I am only quick and rather clever--sharp, as Jigger would say, and with some cunning, too. I have made so many people believe that I am brilliant. When I think and talk and write, I only give out in a new light what others like you have taught me; give out a loaf where you gave me a crumb; blow a drop of water into a bushel of bubbles. No, I did not love you, in the big way, in those old days, and maybe it is not love I feel for you now; but it is a great and wonderful thing, so different from the feeling I once had. It is very powerful, and it is also very cruel, because it smothers me in one moment, and in the next it makes me want to fly to you, heedless of consequences. "And what might those consequences be, Ian, and shall I let you face them? The real world, your world, England, Europe, would have no more use for all your skill and knowledge and power, because there would be a woman in the way. People who would want to be your helpers, and to follow you, would turn away when they saw you coming; or else they would say the superficial things which are worse than blows in the face to a man who wants to feel that men look to him to help solve the problems perplexing the world. While it may not be love I feel for you, whatever it is, it makes me a little just and unselfish now. I will not--unless a spring-time madness drives me to it to-day--I will not go with you. "As for the other solution you offer, deceiving the world as to your purposes, to go far away upon some wild mission, and to die! "Ah, no, you must not cheat the world so; you must not cheat yourself so! And how cruel it would be to me! Whatever I deserve--and in leaving you to marry Rudyard I deserved heavy punishment--still I do not deserve the torture which would follow me to the last day of my life if, because of me, you sacrificed that which is not yours alone, but which belongs to all the world. I loathe myself when I think of the old wrong that I did you; but no leper woman could look upon herself with such horror as I should upon myself, if, for the new wrong I have done you, you were to take your own life. "These are so many words, and perhaps they will not read to you as real. That is perhaps because I am only shallow at the best; am only, as you once called me, 'a little burst of eloquence.' But even I can suffer, and I believe that even I can love. You say you cannot go on as things are; that I must go with you or you must die; and yet you do not wish me to go with you. You have said that, too. But do you not wonder what would become of me, if either of these alternatives is followed? A little while ago I could deceive Rudyard, and put myself in pretty clothes with a smile, and enjoy my breakfast with him and look in his face boldly, and enjoy the clothes, and the world and the gay things that are in it, perhaps because I had no real moral sense. Isn't it strange that out of the thing which the world would condemn as most immoral, as the very degradation of the heart and soul and body, there should spring up a new sense that is moral--perhaps the first true glimmering of it? Oh, dear love of my life, comrade of my soul, something has come to me which I never had before, and for that, whatever comes, my lifelong gratitude must be yours! What I now feel could never have come except through fire and tears, as you yourself say, and I know so well that the fire is at my feet, and the tears--I wept them all last night, when I too wanted to die. "You are coming at eleven to-day, Ian--at eleven. It is now eight. I will try and send this letter to reach you before you leave your rooms. If not, I will give it to you when you come--at eleven. Why did you not say noon--noon--twelve of the clock? The end and the beginning! Why did you not say noon, Ian? The light is at its zenith at noon, at twelve; and the world is dark at twelve--at midnight. Twelve at noon; twelve at night; the light and the dark--which will it be for us, Ian? Night or noon? I wonder, oh, I wonder if, when I see you I shall have the strength to say, 'Yes, go, and come again no more.' Or whether, in spite of everything, I shall wildly say, 'Let us go away together.' Such is the kind of woman that I am. And you--dear lover, tell me truly what kind of man are you? "Your JASMINE." He read the letter slowly, and he stopped again and again as though to steady himself. His face became strained and white, and once he poured brandy and drank it off as though it were water. When he had finished the letter he went heavily over to the fire and dropped it in. He watched it burn, until only the flimsy carbon was left. "If I had not gone till noon," he said aloud, in a nerveless voice--"if I had not gone till noon . . . Fellowes--did she--or was it Byng?" He was so occupied with his thoughts that he was not at first conscious that some one was knocking. "Come in," he called out at last. The door opened and Rudyard Byng entered. "I am going to South Africa, Stafford," he said, heavily. "I hear that you are going, too; and I have come to see whether we cannot go out together." CHAPTER XXVII KROOL "A message from Mr. Byng to say that he may be a little late, but he says will you go on without him? He will come as soon as possible." The footman, having delivered himself, turned to withdraw, but Barry Whalen called him back, saying, "Is Mr. Krool in the house?" The footman replied in the affirmative. "Did you wish to see him, sir?" he asked. "Not at present. A little later perhaps," answered Barry, with a glance round the group, who eyed him curiously. At a word the footman withdrew. As the door closed, little black, oily Sobieski dit Melville said with an attempt at a joke, "Is 'Mr.' Krool to be called into consultation?" "Don't be so damned funny, Melville," answered Barry. "I didn't ask the question for nothing." "These aren't days when anybody guesses much," remarked Fleming. "And I'd like to know from Mr. Kruger, who knows a lot of things, and doesn't gas, whether he means the mines to be safe." They all looked inquiringly at Wallstein, who in the storms which rocked them all kept his nerve and his countenance with a power almost benign. His large, limpid eye looked little like that belonging to an eagle of finance, as he had been called. "It looked for a while as though they'd be left alone," said Wallstein, leaning heavily on the table," but I'm not so sure now." He glanced at Barry Whalen significantly, and the latter surveyed the group enigmatically. "There's something evidently waiting to be said," remarked Wolff, the silent Partner in more senses than one. "What's the use of waiting?" Two or three of those present looked at Ian Stafford, who, standing by the window, seemed oblivious of them all. Byng had requested him to be present, with a view to asking his advice concerning some international aspect of the situation, and especially in regard to Holland and Germany. The group had welcomed the suggestion eagerly, for on this side of the question they were not so well equipped as on others. But when it came to the discussion of inner local policy there seemed hesitation in speaking freely before him. Wallstein, however, gave a reassuring nod and said, meaningly: "We took up careful strategical positions, but our camp has been overlooked from a kopje higher than ours." "We have been the victims of treachery for years," burst out Fleming, with anger. "Nearly everything we've done here, nearly everything the Government has done here, has been known to Kruger--ever since the Raid." "I think it could have been stopped," said the once Sobieski, with an ugly grimace, and an attempt at an accent which would suit his new name. "Byng's to blame. We ought to have put down our feet from the start. We're Byng-ridden." "Keep a civil tongue, Israel," snarled Barry Whalen. "You know nothing about it, and that is the state in which you most shine--in your natural state of ignorance, like the heathen in his blindness. But before Byng comes I'd better give you all some information I've got." "Isn't it for Byng to hear?" asked Fleming. "Very much so; but it's for you all to decide what's to be done. Perhaps Mr. Stafford can help us in the matter, as he has been with Byng very lately." Wallstein looked inquiringly towards Stafford. The group nodded appreciatively, and Stafford came forward to the table, but without seating himself. "Certainly you may command me," he said. "What is the mystery?" In short and abrupt sentences Barry Whalen, with an occasional interjection and explanation from Wallstein, told of the years of leakage in regard to their plans, of moves circumvented by information which could only have been got by treacherous means either in South Africa or in London. "We didn't know for sure which it was," said Barry, "but the proof has come at last. One of Kruger's understrappers from Holland was successfully tapped, and we've got proof that the trouble was here in London, here in this house where we sit--Byng's home." There was a stark silence, in which more than one nodded significantly, and looked round furtively to see how the others took the news. "Here is absolute proof. There were two in it here--Adrian Fellowes and Krool." "Adrian Fellowes!" It was Ian Stafford's voice, insistent and inquiring. "Here is the proof, as I say." Barry Whalen leaned forward and pushed a paper over on the table, to which were attached two or three smaller papers and some cablegrams. "Look at them. Take a good look at them and see how we've been done--done brown. The hand that dipped in the same dish, as it were, has handed out misfortune to us by the bucketful. We've been carted in the house of a friend." The group, all standing, leaned over, as Barry Whalen showed them the papers, one by one, then passed them round for examination. "It's deadly," said Fleming. "Men have had their throats cut or been hanged for less. I wouldn't mind a hand in it myself." "We warned Byng years ago," interposed Barry, "but it was no use. And we've paid for it par and premium." "What can be done to Krool?" asked Fleming. "Nothing particular--here," said Barry Whalen, ominously. "Let's have the dog in," urged one of the group. "Without Byng's permission?" interjected Wallstein. There was a silence. The last time any of them, except Wallstein, had seen Byng, was on the evening when he had overheard the slanders concerning Jasmine, and none had pleasant anticipation of this meeting with him now. They recalled his departure when Barry Whalen had said, "God, how he hates us." He was not likely to hate them less, when they proved that Fellowes and Krool had betrayed him and them all. They had a wholesome fear of him in more senses than one, because, during the past few years, while Wallstein's health was bad, Byng's position had become more powerful financially, and he could ruin any one of them, if he chose. A man like Byng in "going large" might do the Samson business. Besides, he had grown strangely uncertain in his temper of late, and, as Barry Whalen had said, "It isn't good to trouble a wounded bull in the ring." They had him on the hip in one way through the exposure of Krool, but they were all more or less dependent on his financial movements. They were all enraged at Byng because he had disregarded all warnings regarding Krool; but what could they do? Instinctively they turned now to Stafford, whose reputation for brains and diplomacy was so great and whose friendship with Byng was so close. Stafford had come to-day for two reasons: to do what he could to help Byng--for the last time; and to say to Byng that they could not travel together to South Africa. To make the long journey with him was beyond his endurance. He must put the world between Rudyard and himself; he must efface all companionship. With this last act, begotten of the blind confidence Rudyard had in him, their intercourse must cease forever. This would be easy enough in South Africa. Once at the Front, it was as sure as anything on earth that they would never meet again. It was torture to meet him, and the day of the inquest, when Byng had come to his rooms after his interview with Lady Tynemouth and Mr. Mappin, he had been tried beyond endurance. "Shall we have Krool in without Byng's permission? Is it wise?" asked Wallstein again. He looked at Stafford, and Stafford instantly replied: "It would be well to see Krool, I think. Your action could then be decided by Krool's attitude and what he says." Barry Whalen rang the bell, and the footman came. After a brief waiting Krool entered the room with irritating deliberation and closed the door behind him. He looked at no one, but stood contemplating space with a composure which made Barry Whalen almost jump from his seat in rage. "Come a little closer," said Wallstein in a soothing voice, but so Wallstein would have spoken to a man he was about to disembowel. Krool came nearer, and now he looked round at them all slowly and inquiringly. As no one spoke for a moment he shrugged his shoulders. "If you shrug your shoulders again, damn you, I'll sjambok you here as Kruger did at Vleifontein," said Barry Whalen in a low, angry voice. "You've been too long without the sjambok." "This is not the Vaal, it is Englan'," answered Krool, huskily. "The Law--here!" "Zo you stink ze law of England would help you--eh?" asked Sobieski, with a cruel leer, relapsing into his natural vernacular. "I mean what I say, Krool," interposed Barry Whalen, fiercely, motioning Sobieski to silence. "I will sjambok you till you can't move, here in England, here in this house, if you shrug your shoulders again, or lift an eyebrow, or do one damned impudent thing." He got up and rang a bell. A footman appeared. "There is a rhinoceros-hide whip, on the wall of Mr. Byng's study. Bring it here," he said, quietly, but with suppressed passion. "Don't be crazy, Whalen," said Wallstein, but with no great force, for he would richly have enjoyed seeing the spy and traitor under the whip. Stafford regarded the scene with detached, yet deep and melancholy interest. While they waited, Krool seemed to shrink a little; but as he watched like some animal at bay, Stafford noticed that his face became venomous and paler, and some sinister intention showed in his eyes. The whip was brought and laid upon the table beside Barry Whalen, and the footman disappeared, looking curiously at the group and at Krool. Barry Whalen's fingers closed on the whip, and now a look of fear crept over Krool's face. If there was one thing calculated to stir with fear the Hottentot blood in him, it was the sight of the sjambok. He had native tendencies and predispositions out of proportion to the native blood in him--maybe because he had ever been treated more like a native than a white man by his Boer masters in the past. As Stafford viewed the scene, it suddenly came home to him how strange was this occurrence in Park Lane. It was medieval, it belonged to some land unslaked of barbarism. He realized all at once how little these men around him represented the land in which they were living, and how much they were part of the far-off land which was now in the throes of war. To these men this was in one sense an alien country. Through the dulled noises of London there came to their ears the click of the wheels of a cape-wagon, the crack of the Kaffir's whip, the creak of the disselboom. They followed the spoor of a company of elephants in the East country, they watched through the November mist the blesbok flying across the veld, a herd of quaggas taking cover with the rheebok, or a cloud of locusts sailing out of the sun to devastate the green lands. Through the smoky smell of London there came to them the scent of the wattle, the stinging odour of ten thousand cattle, the reek of a native kraal, the sharp sweetness of orange groves, the aromatic air of the karoo, laden with the breath of a thousand wild herbs. Through the drizzle of the autumn rain they heard the wild thunderbolt tear the trees from earthly moorings. In their eyes was the livid lightning that searched in spasms of anger for its prey, while there swept over the brown, aching veld the flood which filled the spruits, which made the rivers seas, and ploughed fresh channels through the soil. The luxury of this room, with its shining mahogany tables, its tapestried walls, its rare fireplace and massive overmantel brought from Italy, its exquisite stained-glass windows, was only part of a play they were acting; it was not their real life. And now there was not one of them that saw anything incongruous in the whip of rhinoceros-hide lying on the table, or clinched in Barry Whalen's hand. On the contrary, it gave them a sense of supreme naturalness. They had lived in a land where the sjambok was the symbol of progress. It represented the forward movement of civilization in the wilderness. It was the vierkleur of the pioneer, without which the long train of capewagons, with the oxen in longer coils of effort, would never have advanced; without which the Kaffir and the Hottentot would have sacrificed every act of civilization. It prevented crime, it punished crime, it took the place of the bowie-knife and the derringer of that other civilization beyond the Mississippi; it was the lock to the door in the wild places, the open sesame to the territories where native chiefs ruled communal tribes by playing tyrant to the commune. It was the rod of Aaron staying the plague of barbarism. It was the sceptre of the veldt. It drew blood, it ate human flesh, it secured order where there was no law, and it did the work of prison and penitentiary. It was the symbol of authority in the wilderness. It was race. Stafford was the only man present who saw anything incongruous in the scene, and yet his travels in the East his year in Persia, Tibet and Afghanistan, had made him understand things not revealed to the wise and prudent of European domains. With Krool before them, who was of the veld and the karoo, whose natural habitat was but a cross between a krall and the stoep of a dopper's home, these men were instantly transported to the land where their hearts were in spite of all, though the flesh-pots of the West End of London had turned them into by-paths for a while. The skin had been scratched by Krool's insolence and the knowledge of his treachery, and the Tartar showed--the sjambok his scimitar. In spite of himself, Stafford was affected by it all. He understood. This was not London; the scene had shifted to Potchefstroom or Middleburg, and Krool was transformed too. The sjambok had, like a wizard's wand, as it were, lifted him away from England to spaces where he watched from the grey rock of a kopje for the glint of an assegai or the red of a Rooinek's tunic: and he had done both in his day. "We've got you at last, Krool," said Wallstein. "We have been some time at it, but it's a long lane that has no turning, and we have you--" "Like that--like that, jackal!" interjected Barry Whalen, opening and shutting his lean fingers with a gesture of savage possession. "What?" asked Krool, with a malevolent thrust forward of his head. "What?" "You betrayed us to Kruger," answered Wallstein, holding the papers. "We have here the proof at last." "You betrayed England and her secrets, and yet you think that the English law would protect you against this," said Barry Whalen, harshly, handling the sjambok. "What I betray?" Krool asked again. "What I tell?" With great deliberation Wallstein explained. "Where proof?" Krool asked, doggedly. "We have just enough to hang you," said Wallstein, grimly, and lifted and showed the papers Barry Whalen had brought. An insolent smile crossed Krool's face. "You find out too late. That Fellowes is dead. So much you get, but the work is done. It not matter now. It is all done--altogether. Oom Paul speaks now, and everything is his--from the Cape to the Zambesi, everything his. It is too late. What can to do?" Suddenly ferocity showed in his face. "It come at last. It is the end of the English both sides the Vaal. They will go down like wild hogs into the sea with Joubert and Botha behind them. It is the day of Oom Paul and Christ. The God of Israel gives to his own the tents of the Rooineks." In spite of the fierce passion of the man, who had suddenly disclosed a side of his nature hitherto hidden--the savage piety of the copper Boer impregnated with stereotyped missionary phrasing, Ian Stafford almost laughed outright. In the presence of Jews like Sobieski it seemed so droll that this half-caste should talk about the God of Israel, and link Oom Paul's name with that of Christ the great liberator as partners in triumph. In all the years Krool had been in England he had never been inside a place of worship or given any sign of that fanaticism which, all at once, he made manifest. He had seemed a pagan to all of his class, had acted as a pagan. Barry Whalen, as well as Ian Stafford, saw the humour of the situation, while they were both confounded by the courageous malice of the traitor. It came to Barry's mind at the moment, as it came to Ian Stafford's, that Krool had some card to play which would, to his mind, serve him well; and, by instinct, both found the right clue. Barry's anger became uneasiness, and Stafford's interest turned to anxiety. There was an instant's pause after Krool's words, and then Wolff the silent, gone wild, caught the sjambok from the hands of Barry Whalen. He made a movement towards Krool, who again suddenly shrank, as he would not have shrunk from a weapon of steel. "Wait a minute," cried Fleming, seizing the arm of his friend. "One minute. There's something more." Turning to Wallstein, he said, "If Krool consents to leave England at once for South Africa, let him go. Is it agreed? He must either be dealt with adequately, or get out. Is it agreed?" "I do what I like," said Krool, with a snarl, in which his teeth showed glassily against his drawn lips. "No one make me do what I not want." "The Baas--you have forgotten him," said Wallstein. A look combined of cunning, fear and servility crossed Krool's face, but he said, morosely: "The Baas--I will do what I like." There was a singular defiance and meaning in his tone, and the moment seemed critical, for Barry Whalen's face was distorted with fury. Stafford suddenly stooped and whispered a word in Wallstein's ear, and then said: "Gentlemen, if you will allow me, I should like a few words with Krool before Mr. Byng comes. I think perhaps Krool will see the best course to pursue when we have talked together. In one sense it is none of my business, in another sense it is everybody's business. A few minutes, if you please, gentlemen." There was something almost authoritative in his tone. "For Byng's sake--his wife--you understand," was all Stafford had said under his breath, but it was an illumination to Wallstein, who whispered to Stafford. "Yes, that's it. Krool holds some card, and he'll play it now." By his glance and by his word of assent, Wallstein set the cue for the rest, and they all got up and went slowly into the other room. Barry Whalen was about to take the sjambok, but Stafford laid his hand upon it, and Barry and he exchanged a look of understanding. "Stafford's a little bit of us in a way," said Barry in a whisper to Wallstein as they left the room. "He knows, too, what a sjambok's worth in Krool's eyes." When the two were left alone, Stafford slowly seated himself, and his fingers played idly with the sjambok. "You say you will do what you like, in spite of the Baas?" he asked, in a low, even tone. "If the Baas hurt me, I will hurt. If anybody hurt me, I will hurt." "You will hurt the Baas, eh? I thought he saved your life on the Limpopo." A flush stole across Krool's face, and when it passed again he was paler than before. "I have save the Baas," he answered, sullenly. "From what?" "From you." With a powerful effort, Stafford controlled himself. He dreaded what was now to be said, but he felt inevitably what it was. "How--from me?" "If that Fellowes' letter come into his hands first, yours would not matter. She would not go with you." Stafford had far greater difficulty in staying his hand than had Barry Whalen, for the sjambok seemed the only reply to the dark suggestion. He realized how, like the ostrich, he had thrust his head into the sand, imagining that no one knew what was between himself and Jasmine. Yet here was one who knew, here was one who had, for whatever purpose, precipitated a crisis with Fellowes to prevent a crisis with himself. Suddenly Stafford thought of an awful possibility. He fastened the gloomy eyes of the man before him, that he might be able to see any stir of emotion, and said: "It did not come out as you expected?" "Altogether--yes." "You wished to part Mr. and Mrs. Byng. That did not happen." "The Baas is going to South Africa." "And Mr. Fellowes?" "He went like I expec'." "He died--heart failure, eh?" A look of contempt, malevolence, and secret reflection came into Krool's face. "He was kill," he said. "Who killed him?" Krool was about to shrug his shoulders, but his glance fell on the sjambok, and he made an ugly gesture with his lean fingers. "There was yourself. He had hurt you--you went to him.... Good! There was the Baas, he went to him. The dead man had hurt him.... Good!" Stafford interrupted him by an exclamation. "What's that you say--the Baas went to Mr. Fellowes?" "As I tell the vrouw, Mrs. Byng, when she say me go from the house to-day--I say I will go when the Baas send me." "The Baas went to Mr. Fellowes--when?" "Two hours before you go, and one hour before the vrouw, she go." Like some animal looking out of a jungle, so Krool's eyes glowed from beneath his heavy eyebrows, as he drawled out the words. "The Baas went--you saw him?" "With my own eyes." "How long was he there?" "Ten minutes." "Mrs. Byng--you saw her go in?" "And also come out." "And me--you followed me--you saw me, also?" "I saw all that come, all that go in to him." With a swift mind Stafford saw his advantage--the one chance, the one card he could play, the one move he could make in checkmate, if, and when, necessary. "So you saw all that came and went. And you came and went yourself!" His eyes were hard and bright as he held Krool's, and there was a sinister smile on his lips. "You know I come and go--you say me that?" said Krool, with a sudden look of vague fear and surprise. He had not foreseen this. "You accuse yourself. You saw this person and that go out, and you think to hold them in your dirty clutches; but you had more reason than any for killing Mr. Fellowes." "What?" asked Krool, furtively. "You hated him because he was a traitor like yourself. You hated him because he had hurt the Baas." "That is true altogether, but--" "You need not explain. If any one killed Mr. Fellowes, why not you? You came and went from his rooms, too." Krool's face was now yellowish pale. "Not me . . . it was not me." "You would run a worse chance than any one. Your character would damn you--a partner with him in crime. What jury in the world but would convict you on your own evidence? Besides, you knew--" He paused to deliver a blow on the barest chance. It was an insidious challenge which, if it failed, might do more harm to others, might do great harm, but he plunged. "You knew about the needle." Krool was cowed and silent. On a venture Stafford had struck straight home. "You knew that Mr. Fellowes had stolen the needle from Mr. Mappin at Glencader," he added. "How you know that?" asked Krool, in a husky, ragged voice. "I saw him steal it--and you?" "No. He tell me." "What did he mean to do with it?" A look came into Krool's eyes, malevolent and barbaric. "Not to kill himself," he reflected. "There is always some one a man or a woman want kill." There was a hideous commonplaceness in the tone which struck a chill to Stafford's heart. "No doubt there is always some one you want to kill. Now listen, Krool. You think you've got a hold over me--over Mrs. Byng. You threaten. Well, I have passed through the fire of the coroner's inquest. I have nothing to fear. You have. I saw you in the street as you watched. You came behind me--" He remembered now the footsteps that paused when he did, the figure behind his in the dark, as he watched for Jasmine to come out from Fellowes' rooms, and he determined to plunge once more. "I recognized you, and I saw you in the Strand just before that. I did not speak at the inquest, because I wanted no scandal. If I had spoken, you would have been arrested. Whatever happened your chances were worse than those of any one. You can't frighten me, or my friends in there, or the Baas, or Mrs. Byng. Look after your own skin. You are the vile scum of the earth,"--he determined to take a strong line now, since he had made a powerful impression on the creature before him--"and you will do what the Baas likes, not what you like. He saved your life. Bad as you are, the Baas is your Baas for ever and ever, and what he wants to do with you he will do. When his eyes look into yours, you will think the lightning speaks. You are his slave. If he hates you, you will die; if he curses you, you will wither." He played upon the superstitious element, the native strain again. It was deeper in Krool than anything else. "Do you think you can defy them?" Stafford went on, jerking a finger towards the other room. "They are from the veld. They will have you as sure as the crack of a whip. This is England, but they are from the veld. On the veld you know what they would do to you. If you speak against the Baas, it is bad for you; if you speak against the Baas' vrouw it will be ten times worse. Do you hear?" There was a strange silence, in which Stafford could feel Krool's soul struggling in the dark, as it were--a struggle as of black spirits in the grey dawn. "I wait the Baas speak," Krool said at last, with a shiver. There was no time for Stafford to answer. Wallstein entered the room hurriedly. "Byng has come. He has been told about him," he said in French to Stafford, and jerking his head towards Krool. Stafford rose. "It's all right," he answered in the same language. "I think things will be safe now. He has a wholesome fear of the Baas." He turned to Krool. "If you say to the Baas what you have said to me about Mr. Fellowes or about the Baas's vrouw, you will have a bad time. You will think that wild hawks are picking out your vitals. If you have sense, you will do what I tell you." Krool's eyes were on the door through which Wallstein had come. His gaze was fixed and tortured. Stafford had suddenly roused in him some strange superstitious element. He was like a creature of a lower order awaiting the approach of the controlling power. It was, however, the door behind him which opened, and he gave a start of surprise and terror. He knew who it was. He did not turn round, but his head bent forward, as though he would take a blow from behind, and his eyes almost closed. Stafford saw with a curious meticulousness the long eyelashes touch the grey cheek. "There's no fight in him now," he said to Byng in French. "He was getting nasty, but I've got him in order. He knows too much. Remember that, Byng." Byng's look was as that of a man who had passed through some chamber of torture, but the flabbiness had gone suddenly from his face, and even from his figure, though heavy lines had gathered round the mouth and scarred the forehead. He looked worn and much thinner, but there was a look in his eyes which Stafford had never seen there--a new look of deeper seeing, of revelation, of realization. With all his ability and force, Byng had been always much of a boy, so little at one with the hidden things--the springs of human conduct, the contradictions of human nature, the worst in the best of us, the forces that emerge without warning in all human beings, to send them on untoward courses and at sharp tangents to all the habits of their existence and their character. In a real sense he had been very primitive, very objective in all he thought and said and did. With imagination, and a sensitive organization out of keeping with his immense physique, it was still only a visualizing sense which he had, only a thing that belongs to races such as those of which Krool had come. A few days of continuous suffering begotten by a cataclysm, which had rent asunder walls of life enclosing vistas he had never before seen; these had transformed him. Pain had given him dignity of a savage kind, a grim quiet which belonged to conflict and betokened grimmer purpose. In the eyes was the darkness of the well of despair; but at his lips was iron resolution. In reply to Stafford he said quietly: "All right, I understand. I know how to deal with Krool." As Stafford withdrew, Byng came slowly down the room till he stood at the end of the table opposite to Krool. Standing there, he looked at the Boer with hard eyes. "I know all, Krool," he said. "You sold me and my country--you tried to sell me and my country to Oom Paul. You dog, that I snatched from the tiger death, not once but twice." "It is no good. I am a Hottentot. I am for the Boer, for Oom Paul. I would have die for you, but--" "But when the chance came to betray the thing I cared for more than I would twenty lives--my country--you tried to sell me and all who worked with me." "It would be same to you if the English go from the Vaal," said the half-caste, huskily, not looking into the eyes fixed on him. "But it matter to me that the Boer keep all for himself what he got for himself. I am half Boer. That is why." "You defend it--tell me, you defend it?" There was that in the voice, some terrible thing, which drew Krool's eyes in spite of himself, and he met a look of fire and wrath. "I tell why. If it was bad, it was bad. But I tell why, that is all. If it is not good, it is bad, and hell is for the bad; but I tell why." "You got money from Oom Paul for the man--Fellowes?" It was hard for him to utter the name. Krool nodded. "Every year--much?" Again Krool nodded. "And for yourself--how much?" "Nothing for myself; no money, Baas." "Only Oom Paul's love!" Krool nodded again. "But Oom Paul flayed you at Vleifontein; tied you up and skinned you with a sjambok.... That didn't matter, eh? And you went on loving him. I never touched you in all the years. I gave you your life twice. I gave you good money. I kept you in luxury--you that fed in the cattle-kraal; you that had mealies to eat and a shred of biltong when you could steal it; you that ate a steinbok raw on the Vaal, you were so wild for meat . . . I took you out of that, and gave you this." He waved an arm round the room, and went on: "You come in and go out of my room, you sleep in the same cart with me, you eat out of the same dish on trek, and yet you do the Judas trick. Slim--god of gods, how slim! You are the snake that crawls in the slime. It's the native in you, I suppose.... But see, I mean to do to you as Oom Paul did. It's the only thing you understand. It's the way to make you straight and true, my sweet Krool." Still keeping his eyes fixed on Krool's eyes, his hand reached out and slowly took the sjambok from the table. He ran the cruel thing through his fingers as does a prison expert the cat-o'-nine-tails before laying on the lashes of penalty. Into Krool's eyes a terror crept which never had been there in the old days on the veld when Oom Paul had flayed him. This was not the veld, and he was no longer the veld-dweller with skin like the rhinoceros, all leather and bone and endurance. And this was not Oom Paul, but one whom he had betrayed, whose wife he had sought to ruin, whose subordinate he had turned into a traitor. Oom Paul had been a mere savage master; but here was a master whose very tongue could excoriate him like Oom Paul's sjambok; whom, at bottom, he loved in his way as he had never loved anything; whom he had betrayed, not realizing the hideous nature of his deed; having argued that it was against England his treachery was directed, and that was a virtue in his eyes; not seeing what direct injury could come to Byng through it. He had not seen, he had not understood, he was still uncivilized; he had only in his veins the morality of the native, and he had tried to ruin his master's wife for his master's sake; and when he had finished with Fellowes as a traitor, he was ready to ruin his confederate--to kill him--perhaps did kill him! "It's the only way to deal with you, Hottentot dog!" The look in Krool's eyes only increased Byng's lust of punishment. What else was there to do? Without terrible scandal there was no other way to punish the traitor, but if there had been another way he would still have done this. This Krool understood; behind every command the Baas had ever given him this thing lay--the sjambok, the natural engine of authority. Suddenly Byng said with a voice of almost guttural anger: "You dropped that letter on my bedroom floor--that letter, you understand? . . . Speak." "I did it, Baas." Byng was transformed. Slowly he laid down the sjambok, and as slowly took off his coat, his eyes meanwhile fastening those of the wretched man before him. Then he took up the sjambok again. "You know what I am going to do with you?" "Yes, Baas." It never occurred to Byng that Krool would resist; it did not occur to Krool that he could resist. Byng was the Baas, who at that moment was the Power immeasurable. There was only one thing to do--to obey. "You were told to leave my house by Mrs. Byng, and you did not go." "She was not my Baas." "You would have done her harm, if you could?" "So, Baas." With a low cry Byng ran forward, the sjambok swung through the air, and the terrible whip descended on the crouching half-caste. Krool gave one cry and fell back a little, but he made no attempt to resist. Suddenly Byng went to a window and threw it open. "You can jump from there or take the sjambok. Which?" he said with a passion not that of a man wholly sane. "Which?" Krool's wild, sullen, trembling look sought the window, but he had no heart for that enterprise--thirty feet to the pavement below. "The sjambok, Baas," he said. Once again Byng moved forward on him, and once again Krool's cry rang out, but not so loud. It was like that of an animal in torture. In the next room, Wallstein and Stafford and the others heard it, and understood. Whispering together they listened, and Stafford shrank away to the far side of the room; but more than one face showed pleasure in the sound of the whip and the moaning. It went on and on. Barry Whalen, however, was possessed of a kind of fear, and presently his face became troubled. This punishment was terrible. Byng might kill the man, and all would be as bad as could be. Stafford came to him. "You had better go in," he said. "We ought to intervene. If you don't, I will. Listen...." It was a strange sound to hear in this heart of civilization. It belonged to the barbaric places of the earth, where there was no law, where every pioneer was his own cadi. With set face Barry Whalen entered the room. Byng paused for an instant and looked at him with burning, glazed eyes that scarcely realized him. "Open that door," he said, presently, and Barry Whalen opened the door which led into the big hall. "Open all down to the street," Byng said, and Barry Whalen went forward quickly. Like some wild beast Krool crouched and stumbled and moaned as he ran down the staircase, through the outer hall, while a servant with scared face saw Byng rain savage blows upon the hated figure. On the pavement outside the house, Krool staggered, stumbled, and fell down; but he slowly gathered himself up, and turned to the doorway, where Byng stood panting with the sjambok in his hand. "Baas!--Baas!" Krool said with livid face, and then he crept painfully away along the street wall. A policeman crossed the road with a questioning frown and the apparent purpose of causing trouble, but Barry Whalen whispered in his ear, and told him to call that evening and he would hear all about it. Meanwhile a five-pound note in a quick palm was a guarantee of good faith. Presently a half-dozen people began to gather near the door, but the benevolent policeman moved them on. At the top of the staircase Jasmine met her husband. She shivered as he came up towards her. "Will you come to me when you have finished your business?" she said, and she took the sjambok gently from his hand. He scarcely realized her. He was in a dream; but he smiled at her, and nodded, and passed on to where the others awaited him. CHAPTER XXVIII "THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM" Slowly Jasmine returned to her boudoir. Laying the sjambok on the table among the books in delicate bindings and the bowls of flowers, she stood and looked at it with confused senses for a long time. At last a wan smile stole to her lips, but it did not reach her eyes. They remained absorbed and searching, and were made painfully sad by the wide, dark lines under them. Her fair skin was fairer than ever, but it was delicately faded, giving her a look of pensiveness, while yet there was that in her carriage and at her mouth which suggested strength and will and new forces at work in her. She carried her head, weighted by its splendour of golden hair, as an Eastern woman carries a goulah of water. There was something pathetic yet self-reliant in the whole figure. The passion slumbering in the eyes, however, might at any moment burst forth in some wild relinquishment of control and self-restraint. "He did what I should have liked to do," she said aloud. "We are not so different, after all. He is primitive at bottom, and so am I. He gets carried away by his emotions, and so do I." She took up the whip, examined it, felt its weight, and drew it with a swift jerk through the air. "I did not even shrink when Krool came stumbling down the stairs, with this cutting his flesh," she said to herself. "Somehow it all seemed natural and right. What has come to me? Are all my finer senses dead? Am I just one of the crude human things who lived a million years ago, and who lives again as crude as those; with only the outer things changed? Then I wore the skins of wild animals, and now I do the same, just the same; with what we call more taste perhaps, because we have ceased to see the beauty in the natural thing." She touched the little band of grey fur at the sleeve of her clinging velvet gown. "Just a little distance away--that is all." Suddenly a light flashed up in her eyes, and her face flushed as though some one had angered her. She seized the whip again. "Yes, I could have seen him whipped to death before my eyes--the coward, the abject coward. He did not speak for me; he did not defend me; he did not deny. He let Ian think--death was too kind to him. How dared he hurt me so! . . . Death is so easy a way out, but he would not have taken it. No, no, no, it was not suicide; some one killed him. He could never have taken his own life--never. He had not the courage.... No; he died of poison or was strangled. Who did it? Who did it? Was it Rudyard? Was it. . . ? Oh, it wears me out--thinking, thinking, thinking!" She sat down and buried her face in her hands. "I am doomed--doomed," she moaned. "I was doomed from the start. It must always have been so, whatever I did. I would do it again, whatever I did; I know I would do it again, being what I was. It was in my veins, in my blood from the start, from the very first days of my life." All at once there flashed through her mind again, as on that night so many centuries ago, when she had slept the last sleep of her life as it was, Swinburne's lines on Baudelaire: "There is no help for these things, none to mend and none to mar; Not all our songs, oh, friend, can make death clear Or make life durable...." "'There is no help for these things,'" she repeated with a sigh which seemed to tear her heart in twain. "All gone--all. What is there left to do? If death could make it better for any one, how easy! But everything would be known--somehow the world would know, and every one would suffer more. Not now--no, not now. I must live on, but not here. I must go away. I must find a place to go where Rudyard will not come. There is no place so far but it is not far enough. I am twenty-five, and all is over--all is done for me. I have nothing that I want to keep, there is nothing that I want to do except to go--to go and to be alone. Alone, always alone now. It is either that, or be Jezebel, or--" The door opened, and the servant brought a card to her. "His Excellency, the Moravian ambassador," the footman said. "Monsieur Mennaval?" she asked, mechanically, as though scarcely realizing what he had said. "Yes, ma'am, Mr. Mennaval." "Please say I am indisposed, and am sorry I cannot receive him to-day," she said. "Very good, ma'am." The footman turned to go, then came back. "Shall I tell the maid you want her?" he asked, respectfully. "No, why should you?" she asked. "I thought you looked a bit queer, ma'am," he responded, hastily. "I beg your pardon, ma'am." She rewarded him with a smile. "Thank you, James, I think I should like her after all. Ask her to come at once." When he had gone she leaned back and shut her eyes. For a moment she was perfectly motionless, then she sat up again and looked at the card in her hand. "M. Mennaval--M. Mennaval," she said, with a note so cynical that it betrayed more than her previous emotion, to such a point of despair her mind had come. M. Mennaval had played his part, had done his service, had called out from her every resource of coquetry and lure; and with wonderful art she had cajoled him till he had yielded to influence, and Ian had turned the key in the international lock. M. Mennaval had been used with great skill to help the man who was now gone from her forever, whom perhaps she would never see again; and who wanted never to see her again, never in all time or space. M. Mennaval had played his game for his own desire, and he had lost; but what had she gained where M. Mennaval had lost? She had gained that which now Ian despised, which he would willingly, so far as she was concerned, reject with contempt.... And yet, and yet, while Ian lived he must still be grateful to her that, by whatever means, she had helped him to do what meant so much to England. Yes, he could not wholly dismiss her from his mind; he must still say, "This she did for me--this thing, in itself not commendable, she did for me; and I took it for my country." Her eyes were open, and her garden had been invaded by those revolutionaries of life and time, Nemesis, Penalty, Remorse. They marauded every sacred and secret corner of her mind and soul. They came with whips to scourge her. Nothing was private to her inner self now. Everything was arrayed against her. All life doubled backwards on her, blocking her path. M. Mennaval--what did she care for him! Yet here he was at her door asking payment for the merchandise he had sold to her: his judgment, his reputation as a diplomatist, his freedom, the respect of the world--for how could the world respect a man at whom it laughed, a man who had hoped to be given the key to a secret door in a secret garden! As Jasmine sat looking at the card, the footman entered again with a note. "His Excellency's compliments," he said, and withdrew. She opened the letter hesitatingly, held it in her hand for a moment without reading it, then, with an impulsive effort, did so. When she had finished, she gave a cry of anger and struck her tiny clinched hand upon her knee. The note ran: "Chere amie, you have so much indisposition in these days. It is all too vexing to your friends. The world will be surprised, if you allow a migraine to come between us. Indeed, it will be shocked. The world understands always so imperfectly, and I have no gift of explanation. Of course, I know the war has upset many, but I thought you could not be upset so easily--no, it cannot be the war; so I must try and think what it is. If I cannot think by tomorrow at five o'clock, I will call again to ask you. Perhaps the migraine will be better. But, if you will that migraine to be far away, it will fly, and then I shall be near. Is it not so? You will tell me to-morrow at five, will you not, belle amie? "A toi, M. M." The words scorched her eyes. They angered her, scourged her. One of life's Revolutionaries was insolently ravaging the secret place where her pride dwelt. Pride--what pride had she now? Where was the room for pride or vanity? . . . And all the time she saw the face of a dead man down by the river--a face now beneath the sod. It flashed before her eyes at moments when she least could bear it, to agitate her soul. M. Mennaval--how dare he write to her so! "Chere amie" and "A toi"--how strange the words looked now, how repulsive and strange! It did not seem possible that once before he had written such words to her. But never before had these epithets or others been accompanied by such meaning as his other words conveyed. "I will not see him to-morrow. I will not see him ever again, if I can help it," she said bitterly, and trembling with agitation. "I shall go where I shall not be found. I will go to-night." The door opened. Her maid entered. "You wanted me, madame?" asked the girl, in some excitement and very pale. "Yes, what is the matter? Why so agitated?" Jasmine asked. The maid's eyes were on the sjambok. She pointed to it. "It was that, madame. We are all agitated. It was terrible. One had never seen anything like that before in one's life, madame--never. It was like the days--yes, of slavery. It was like the galleys of Toulon in the old days. It was--" "There, don't be so eloquent, Lablanche. What do you know of the galleys of Toulon or the days of slavery?" "Madame, I have heard, I have read, I--" "Yes, but did you love Krool so?" The girl straightened herself with dramatic indignation. "Madame, that man, that creature, that toad--!" "Then why so exercised? Were you so pained at his punishment? Were all the household so pained?" "Every one hated him, madame," said the girl, with energy. "Then let me hear no more of this impudent nonsense," Jasmine said, with decision. "Oh, madame, to speak to me like this!" Tears were ready to do needful service. "Do you wish to remain with me, Lablanche?" "Ah, madame, but yes--" "Then my head aches, and I don't want you to make it worse.... And, see, Lablanche, there is that grey walking-suit; also the mauve dressing-gown, made by Loison; take them, if you can make them fit you; and be good." "Madame, how kind--ah, no one is like you, madame--!" "Well, we shall see about that quite soon. Put out at once every gown of mine for me to see, and have trunks ready to pack immediately; but only three trunks, not more." "Madame is going away?" "Do as I say, Lablanche. We go to-night. The grey gown and the mauve dressing-gown that Loison made, you will look well in them. Quick, now, please." In a flutter Lablanche left the room, her eyes gleaming. She had had her mind on the grey suit for some time, but the mauve dressing-gown as well--it was too good to be true. She almost ran into Lady Tynemouth's arms as the door opened. With a swift apology she sped away, after closing the door upon the visitor. Jasmine rose and embraced her friend, and Lady Tynemouth subsided into a chair with a sigh. "My dear Jasmine, you look so frail," she said. "A short time ago I feared you were going to blossom into too ripe fruit, now you look almost a little pinched. But it quite becomes you, mignonne--quite. You have dark lines under your eyes, and that transparency of skin-- it is quite too fetching. Are you glad to see me?" "I would have seen no one to-day, no one, except you or Rudyard." "Love and duty," said Lady Tynemouth, laughing, yet acutely alive to the something so terribly wrong, of which she had spoken to Ian Stafford. "Why is it my duty to see you, Alice?" asked Jasmine, with the dry glint in her tone which had made her conversation so pleasing to men. "You clever girl, how you turn the tables on me," her friend replied, and then, seeing the sjambok on the table, took it up. "What is this formidable instrument? Are you flagellating the saints?" "Not the saints, Alice." "You don't mean to say you are going to scourge yourself?" Then they both smiled--and both immediately sighed. Lady Tynemouth's sympathy was deeply roused for Jasmine, and she meant to try and win her confidence and to help her in her trouble, if she could; but she was full of something else at this particular moment, and she was not completely conscious of the agony before her. "Have you been using this sjambok on Mennaval?" she asked with an attempt at lightness. "I saw him leaving as I came in. He looked rather dejected--or stormy, I don't quite know which." "Does it matter which? I didn't see Mennaval today." "Then no wonder he looked dejected and stormy. But what is the history of this instrument of torture?" she asked, holding up the sjambok again. "Krool." "Krool! Jasmine, you surely don't mean to say that you--" "Not I--it was Rudyard. Krool was insolent--a half-caste, you know." "Krool--why, yes, it was he I saw being helped into a cab by a policeman just down there in Piccadilly. You don't mean that Rudyard--" She pushed the sjambok away from her. "Yes--terribly." "Then I suppose the insolence was terrible enough to justify it." "Quite, I think." Jasmine's voice was calm. "But of course it is not usual--in these parts." "Rudyard is not usual in these parts, or Krool either. It was a touch of the Vaal." Lady Tynemouth gave a little shudder. "I hope it won't become fashionable. We are altogether too sensational nowadays. But, seriously, Jasmine, you are not well. You must do something. You must have a change." "I am going to do something--to have a change." "That's good. Where are you going, dear?" "South.... And how are you getting on with your hospital-ship?" Lady Tynemouth threw up her hands. "Jasmine, I'm in despair. I had set my heart upon it. I thought I could do it easily, and I haven't done it, after trying as hard as can be. Everything has gone wrong, and now Tynie cables I mustn't go to South Africa. Fancy a husband forbidding a wife to come to him." "Well, perhaps it's better than a husband forbidding his wife to leave him." "Jasmine, I believe you would joke if you were dying." "I am dying." There was that in the tone of Jasmine's voice which gave her friend a start. She eyed her suddenly with a great anxiety. "And I'm not jesting," Jasmine added, with a forced smile. "But tell me what has gone wrong with all your plans. You don't mind what Tynemouth says. Of course you will do as you like." "Of course; but still Tynie has never 'issued instructions' before, and if there was any time I ought to humour him it is now. He's so intense about the war! But I can't explain everything on paper to him, so I've written to say I'm going to South Africa to explain, and that I'll come back by the next boat, if my reasons are not convincing." In other circumstances Jasmine would have laughed. "He will find you convincing," she said, meaningly. "I said if he found my reasons convincing." "You will be the only reason to him." "My dear Jasmine, you are really becoming sentimental. Tynie would blush to discover himself being silly over me. We get on so well because we left our emotions behind us when we married." "Yours, I know, you left on the Zambesi," said Jasmine, deliberately. A dull fire came into Lady Tynemouth's eyes, and for an instant there was danger of Jasmine losing a friend she much needed; but Lady Tynemouth had a big heart, and she knew that her friend was in a mood when anything was possible, or everything impossible. So she only smiled, and said, easily: "Dearest Jasmine, that umbrella episode which made me love Ian Stafford for ever and ever without even amen came after I was married, and so your pin doesn't prick, not a weeny bit. No, it isn't Tynie that makes me sad. It's the Climbers who won't pay." "The Climbers? You want money for--" "Yes, the hospital-ship; and I thought they'd jump at it; but they've all been jumping in other directions. I asked the Steuvenfeldts, the Boulters, the Felix Fowles, the Brutons, the Sheltons, and that fellow Mackerel, who has so much money he doesn't know what to do with it and twenty others; and Mackerel was the only one who would give me anything at all large. He gave me ten thousand pounds. But I want fifty--fifty, my beloved. I'm simply broken-hearted. It would do so much good, and I could manage the thing so well, and I could get other splendid people to help me to manage it--there's Effie Lyndhall and Mary Meacham. The Mackerel wanted to come along, too, but I told him he could come out and fetch us back--that there mustn't be any scandal while the war was on. I laugh, my dear, but I could cry my eyes out. I want something to do--I've always wanted something to do. I've always been sick of an idle life, but I wouldn't do a hundred things I might have done. This thing I can do, however, and, if I did it, some of my debt to the world would be paid. It seems to me that these last fifteen years in England have been awful. We are all restless; we all have been going, going--nowhere; we have all been doing, doing--nothing; we have all been thinking, thinking, thinking--of ourselves. And I've been a playbody like the rest; I've gone with the Climbers because they could do things for me; I've wanted more and more of everything--more gadding, more pleasure, more excitement. It's been like a brass-band playing all the time, my life this past ten years. I'm sick of it. It's only some big thing that can take me out of it. I've got to make some great plunge, or in a few years more I'll be a middle-aged peeress with nothing left but a double chin, a tongue for gossip, and a string of pearls. There must be a bouleversement of things as they are, or good-bye to everything except emptiness. Don't you see, Jasmine, dearest?" "Yes yes, I see." Jasmine got up, went to her desk, opened a drawer, took out a book, and began to write hastily. "Go on," she said as she wrote; "I can hear what you are saying." "But are you really interested?" "Even Tynemouth would find you interesting and convincing. Go on." "I haven't anything more to say, except that nothing lies between me and flagellation and the sack cloth,"--she toyed with the sjambok--"except the Climbers; and they have failed me. They won't play--or pay." Jasmine rose from the desk and came forward with a paper in her hand. "No, they have not failed you, Alice," she said, gently. "The Climbers seldom really disappoint you. The thing is, you must know how to talk to them, to say the right thing, the flattering, the tactful, and the nice sentimental thing,--they mostly have middle-class sentimentality--and then you get what you want. As you do now. There...." She placed in her friend's hand a long, narrow slip of paper. Lady Tynemouth looked astonished, gazed hard at the paper, then sprang to her feet, pale and agitated. "Jasmine--you--this--sixty thousand pounds!" she cried. "A cheque for sixty thousand pounds--Jasmine!" There was a strange brilliance in Jasmine's eyes, a hectic flush on her cheek. "It must not be cashed for forty-eight hours; but after that the money will be there." Lady Tynemouth caught Jasmine's shoulders in her trembling yet strong fingers, and looked into the wild eyes with searching inquiry and solicitude. "But, Jasmine, it isn't possible. Will Rudyard--can you afford it?" "That will not be Rudyard's money which you will get. It will be all my own." "But you yourself are not rich. Sixty thousand pounds--why?" "It is because it is a sacrifice to me that I give it; because it is my own; because it is two-thirds of what I possess. And if all is needed before we have finished, then all shall go." Alice Tynemouth still held the shoulders, still gazed into the eyes which burned and shone, which seemed to look beyond this room into some world of the soul or imagination. "Jasmine, you are not crazy, are you?" she asked, excitedly. "You will not repent of this? It is not a sudden impulse?" "Yes, it is a sudden impulse; it came to me all at once. But when it came I knew it was the right thing, the only thing to do. I will not repent of it. Have no fear. It is final. It is sure. It means that, like you, I have found a rope to drag myself out of this stream which sweeps me on to the rapids." "Jasmine, do you mean that you will--that you are coming, too?" "Yes, I am going with you. We will do it together. You shall lead, and I shall help. I have a gift for organization. My grandfather? he--" "All the world knows that. If you have anything of his gift, we shall not fail. We shall feel that we are doing something for our country--and, oh, so much for ourselves! And we shall be near our men. Tynie and Ruddy Byng will be out there, and we shall be ready for anything if necessary. But Rudyard, will he approve?" She held up the cheque. Jasmine made a passionate gesture. "There are times when we must do what something in us tells us to do, no matter what the consequences. I am myself. I am not a slave. If I take my own way in the pleasures of life, why should I not take it in the duties and the business of life?" Her eyes took on a look of abstraction, and her small hand closed on the large, capable hand of her friend. "Isn't work the secret of life? My grandfather used to say it was. Always, always, he used to say to me, 'Do something, Jasmine. Find a work to do, and do it. Make the world look at you, not for what you seem to be, but for what you do. Work cures nearly every illness and nearly every trouble'--that is what he said. And I must work or go mad. I tell you I must work, Alice. We will work together out there where great battles will be fought." A sob caught her in the throat, and Alice Tynemouth wrapped her round with tender arms. "It will do you good, darling," she said, softly." It will help you through--through it all, whatever it is." For an instant Jasmine felt that she must empty out her heart; tell the inner tale of her struggle; but the instant of weakness passed as suddenly as it came, and she only said--repeating Alice Tynemouth's words: "Yes, through it all, through it all, whatever it is." Then she added: "I want to do something big. I can, I can. I want to get out of this into the open world. I want to fight. I want to balance things somehow--inside myself...." All at once she became very quiet. "But we must do business like business people. This money: there must be a small committee of business men, who--" Alice Tynemouth finished the sentence for her. "Who are not Climbers?" "Yes. But the whole organization must be done by ourselves--all the practical, unfinancial work. The committee will only be like careful trustees." There was a new light in Jasmine's eyes. She felt for the moment that life did not end in a cul de sac. She knew that now she had found a way for Rudyard and herself to separate without disgrace, without humiliation to him. She could see a few steps ahead. When she gave Lablanche instructions to put out her clothes a little while before, she did not know what she was going to do; but now she knew. She knew how she could make it easier for Rudyard when the inevitable hour came,--and it was here--which should see the end of their life together. He need not now sacrifice himself so much for her sake. She wanted to be alone, and, as if divining her thought, Lady Tynemouth embraced her, and a moment later there was no sound in the room save the ticking of the clock and the crackle of the fire. How silent it was! The world seemed very far away. Peace seemed to have taken possession of the place, and Jasmine's stillness as she sat by the fire staring into the embers was a part of it. So lost was she that she was not conscious of an opening door and of a footstep. She was roused by a low voice. "Jasmine!" She did not start. It was as though there had come a call, for which she had waited long, and she appeared to respond slowly to it, as one would to a summons to the scaffold. There was no outward agitation now, there was only a cold stillness which seemed little to belong to the dainty figure which had ever been more like a decoration than a living utility in the scheme of things. The crisis had come which she had dreaded yet invited--that talk which they two must have before they went their different ways. She had never looked Rudyard in the eyes direct since the day when Adrian Fellowes died. They had met, but never quite alone; always with some one present, either the servants or some other. Now they were face to face. On Rudyard's lips was a faint smile, but it lacked the old bonhomie which was part of his natural equipment; and there were still sharp, haggard traces of the agitation which had accompanied the expulsion of Krool. For an instant the idea possessed her that she would tell him everything there was to tell, and face the consequences, no matter what they might be. It was not in her nature to do things by halves, and since catastrophe was come, her will was to drink the whole cup to the dregs. She did not want to spare herself. Behind it all lay something of that terrible wilfulness which had controlled her life so far. It was the unlovely soul of a great pride. She did not want to be forgiven for anything. She did not want to be condoned. There was a spirit of defiance which refused to accept favours, preferring punishment to the pity or the pardon which stooped to make it easier for her. It was a dangerous pride, and in the mood of it she might throw away everything, with an abandonment and recklessness only known to such passionate natures. The mood came on her all at once as she stood and looked at Rudyard. She read, or she thought she read in his eyes, in his smile, the superior spirit condescending to magnanimity, to compassion; and her whole nature was instantly up in arms. She almost longed on the instant to strip herself bare, as it were, and let him see her as she really was, or as, in her despair, she thought she really was. The mood in which she had talked to Lady Tynemouth was gone, and in its place a spirit of revolt was at work. A certain sullenness which Rudyard and no one else had ever seen came into her eyes, and her lips became white with an ominous determination. She forgot him and all that he would suffer if she told him the whole truth; and the whole truth would, in her passion, become far more than the truth: she was again the egoist, the centre of the universe. What happened to her was the only thing which mattered in all the world. So it had ever been; and her beauty and her wit and her youth and the habit of being spoiled had made it all possible, without those rebuffs and that confusion which fate provides sooner or later for the egoist. "Well," she said, sharply, "say what you wish to say. You have wanted to say it badly. I am ready." He was stunned by what seemed to him the anger and the repugnance in her tone. "You remember you asked me to come, Jasmine, when you took the sjambok from me." He nodded towards the table where it lay, then went forward and picked it up, his face hardening as he did so. Like a pendulum her mood swung back. By accident he had said the one thing which could have moved her, changed her at the moment. The savage side of him appealed to her. What he lacked in brilliance and the lighter gifts of raillery and eloquence and mental give-and-take, he had balanced by his natural forces--from the power-house, as she had called it long ago. Pity, solicitude, the forced smile, magnanimity, she did not want in this black mood. They would have made her cruelly audacious, and her temper would have known no license; but now, suddenly, she had a vision of him as he stamped down the staircase, his coat off, laying the sjambok on the shoulders of the man who had injured her so, who hated her so, and had done so over all the years. It appealed to her. In her heart of hearts she was sure he had done it directly or indirectly for her sake; and that was infinitely more to her than that he should stoop from the heights to pick her up. He was what he was because Heaven had made him so; and she was what she was because Heaven had forgotten to make her otherwise; and he could not know or understand how she came to do things that he would not do. But she could know and understand why his hand fell on Krool like that of Cain on Abel. She softened, changed at once. "Yes, I remember," she said. "I've been upset. Krool was insolent, and I ordered him to go. He would not." "I've been a fool to keep him all these years. I didn't know what he was--a traitor, the slimmest of the slim, a real Hottentot-Boer. I was pigheaded about him, because he seemed to care so much about me. That counts for much with the most of us." "Alice Tynemouth saw a policeman help him into a cab in Piccadilly and take him away. Will there be trouble?" A grim look crossed his face. "I think not," he responded. "There are reasons. He has been stealing information for years, and sending it to Kruger, he and--" He stopped short, and into his face came a look of sullen reticence. "Yes, he and--and some one else? Who else?" Her face was white. She had a sudden intuition. He met her eyes. "Adrian Fellowes--what Fellowes knew, Krool knew, and one way or another, by one means or another, Fellowes knew a great deal." The knowledge of Adrian Fellowes' treachery and its full significance had hardly come home to him, even when he punished Krool, so shaken was he by the fact that the half-caste had been false to him. Afterwards, however, as the Partners all talked together up-stairs, the enormity of the dead man's crime had fastened on him, and his brain had been stunned by the terrible thought that directly or indirectly Jasmine had abetted the crime. Things he had talked over with her, and with no one else, had got to Kruger's knowledge, as the information from South Africa showed. She had at least been indiscreet, had talked to Fellowes with some freedom or he could not have known what he did. But directly, knowingly abetted Fellowes? Of course, she had not done that; but her foolish confidences had abetted treachery, had wronged him, had helped to destroy his plans, had injured England. He had savagely punished Krool for insolence to her and for his treachery, but a new feeling had grown up in him in the last half-hour. Under the open taunts of his colleagues, a deep resentment had taken possession of him that his work, so hard to do, so important and critical, should have been circumvented by the indiscretions of his wife. Upon her now this announcement came with crushing force. Adrian Fellowes had gained from her--she knew it all too well now--that which had injured her husband; from which, at any rate, he ought to have been immune. Her face flushed with a resentment far greater than that of Rudyard's, and it was heightened by a humiliation which overwhelmed her. She had been but a tool in every sense, she, Jasmine Byng, one who ruled, had been used like a--she could not form the comparison in her mind--by a dependent, a hanger-on of her husband's bounty; and it was through her, originally, that he had been given a real chance in life by Rudyard. "I am sorry," she said, calmly, as soon as she could get her voice. "I was the means of your employing him." "That did not matter," he said, rather nervously. "There was no harm in that, unless you knew his character before he came to me." "You think I did?" "I cannot think so. It would have been too ruthless--too wicked." She saw his suffering, and it touched her. "Of course I did not know that he could do such a thing--so shameless. He was a low coward. He did not deserve decent burial," she added. "He had good fortune to die as he did." "How did he die?" Rudyard asked her, with a face so unlike what it had always been, so changed by agitation, that it scarcely seemed his. His eyes were fixed on hers. She met them resolutely. Did he ask her in order to see if she had any suspicion of himself? Had he done it? If he had, there would be some mitigation of her suffering. Or was it Ian Stafford who had done it? One or the other--but which? "He died without being made to suffer," she said. "Most people who do wrong have to suffer." "But they live on," he said, bitterly. "That is no great advantage unless you want to live," she replied. "Do you know how he died?" she added, after a moment, with sharp scrutiny. He shook his head and returned her scrutiny with added poignancy. "It does not matter. He ceases to do any more harm. He did enough." "Yes, quite enough," she said, with a withered look, and going over to her writing-table, stood looking at him questioningly. He did not speak again, however. Presently she said, very quietly, "I am going away." "I do not understand." "I am going to work." "I understand still less." She took from the writing-table her cheque-book, and handed it to him. He looked at it, and read the counterfoil of the cheque she had given to Alice Tynemouth. He was bewildered. "What does this mean?" he asked. "It is for a hospital-ship." "Sixty thousand pounds! Why, it is nearly all you have." "It is two-thirds of what I have." "Why--in God's name, why?" "To buy my freedom," she answered, bitterly. "From what?" "From you." He staggered back and leaned heavily against a bookcase. "Freedom from me!" he exclaimed, hoarsely. He had had terribly bitter and revengeful feelings during the last hour, but all at once his real self emerged, the thing that was deepest in him. "Freedom from me? Has it come to that?" "Yes, absolutely. Do you remember the day you first said to me that something was wrong with it all,--the day that Ian Stafford dined after his return from abroad? Well, it has been all wrong--cruelly wrong. We haven't made the best of things together, when everything was with us to do so. I have spoiled it all. It hasn't been what you expected." "Nor what you expected?" he asked, sharply. "Nor what I expected; but you are not to blame for that." Suddenly all he had ever felt for her swept through his being, and sullenness fled away. "You have ceased to love me, then.... See, that is the one thing that matters, Jasmine. All else disappears beside that. Do you love me? Do you love me still? Do you love me, Jasmine? Answer that." He looked like the ghost of his old dead self, pleading to be recognized. His misery oppressed her. "What does one know of one's self in the midst of all this--of everything that has nothing to do with love?" she asked. What she might have said in the dark mood which was coming on her again it is hard to say, but from beneath the window of the room which looked on Park Lane, there came the voice of a street-minstrel, singing to a travelling piano, played by sympathetic fingers, the song: "She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, And lovers around her are sighing--" The simple pathos of the song had nothing to do with her own experience or her own case, but the flood of it swept through her veins like tears. She sank into a chair and listened for a moment with eyes shining, then she sprang up in an agitation which made her tremble and her face go white. "No, no, no, Rudyard, I do not love you," she said, swiftly. "And because I do not love you, I will not stay. I never loved you, never truly loved you at any time. I never knew myself--that is all that I can say. I never was awake till now. I never was wholly awake till I saw you driving Krool into the street with the sjambok." She flung up her hands. "For God's sake, let me be truthful at last. I don't want to hurt you--I have hurt you enough, but I do not love you; and I must go. I am going with Alice Tynemouth. We are going together to do something. Maybe I shall learn what will make life possible." He reached out his arms towards her with a sudden tenderness. "No, no, no, do not touch me," she cried. "Do not come near me. I must be alone now, and from now on and on.... You do not understand, but I must be alone. I must work it out alone, whatever it is." She got up with a quick energy, and went over to the writing-table again. "It may take every penny I have got, but I shall do it, because it is the thing I feel I must do." "You have millions, Jasmine," he said, in a low, appealing voice. She looked at him almost fiercely again. "No, I have what is my own, my very own, and no more," she responded, bitterly. "You will do your work, and I will do mine. You will stay here. There will be no scandal, because I shall be going with Alice Tynemouth, and the world will not misunderstand." "There will be no scandal, because I am going, too," he said, firmly. "No, no, you cannot, must not, go," she urged. "I am going to South Africa in two days," he replied. "Stafford was going with me, but he cannot go for a week or so. He will help you, I am sure, with forming your committee and arranging, if you will insist on doing this thing. He is still up-stairs there with the rest of them. I will get him down now, I--" "Ian Stafford is here--in this house?" she asked, with staring eyes. What inconceivable irony it all was! She could have shrieked with that laughter which is more painful far than tears. "Yes, he is up-stairs. I made him come and help us--he knows the international game. He will help you, too. He is a good friend--you will know how good some day." She went white and leaned against the table. "No, I shall not need him," she said. "We have formed our committee." "But when I am gone, he can advise you, he can--" "Oh--oh!" she murmured, and swayed forward, fainting. He caught her and lowered her gently into a chair. "You are only mad," he whispered to ears which heard not as he bent over her. "You will be sane some day." BOOK IV CHAPTER XXIX THE MENACE OF THE MOUNTAIN Far away, sharply cutting the ether, rise the great sterile peaks and ridges. Here a stark, bare wall like a prison which shuts in a city of men forbidden the blithe world of sun and song and freedom; yonder, a giant of a lost world stretched out in stony ease, sleeping on, while over his grey quiet, generations of men pass. First came savage, warring, brown races alien to each other; then following, white races with faces tanned and burnt by the sun, and smothered in unkempt beard and hair--men restless and coarse and brave, and with ancient sins upon them; but with the Bible in their hands and the language of the prophets on their lips; with iron will, with hatred as deep as their race-love is strong; they with their cattle and their herds, and the clacking wagons carrying homes and fortunes, whose women were housewives and warriors too. Coming after these, men of fairer aspect, adventurous, self-willed, intent to make cities in the wilderness; to win open spaces for their kinsmen, who had no room to swing the hammer in the workshops of their far-off northern island homes; or who, having room, stood helpless before the furnaces where the fires had left only the ashes of past energies. Up there, these mountains which, like Marathon, look on the sea. But lower the gaze from the austere hills, slowly to the plains below. First the grey of the mountains, turning to brown, then the bare bronze rock giving way to a tumbled wilderness of boulders, where lizards lie in the sun, where the meerkat startles the gazelle. Then the bronze merging into a green so deep and strong that it resembles a blanket spread upon the uplands, but broken by kopjes, shelterless and lonely, rising here and there like watch-towers. After that, below and still below, the flat and staring plain, through which runs an ugly rift turning and twisting like a snake, and moving on and on, till lost in the arc of other hills away to the east and the south: a river in the waste, but still only a muddy current stealing between banks baked and sterile, a sinister stream, giving life to the veld, as some gloomy giver of good gifts would pay a debt of atonement. On certain Dark Days of 1899-1900, if you had watched these turgid waters flow by, your eyes would have seen tinges of red like blood; and following the stain of red, gashed lifeless things, which had been torn from the ranks of sentient beings. Whereupon, lifting your eyes from the river, you would have seen the answer to your question--masses of men mounted and unmounted, who moved, or halted, or stood like an animal with a thousand legs controlled by one mind. Or again you would have observed those myriad masses plunging across the veld, still in cohering masses, which shook and broke and scattered, regathering again, as though drawn by a magnet, but leaving stark remnants in their wake. Great columns of troops which had crossed the river and pushed on into a zone of fierce fire, turn and struggle back again across the stream; other thousands of men, who had not crossed, succour their wounded, and retreat steadily, bitterly to places of safety, the victims of blunders from which come the bloody punishment of valour. Beyond the grey mountains were British men and women waiting for succour from forces which poured death in upon them from the malevolent kopjes, for relief from the ravages of disease and hunger. They waited in a straggling town of the open plain circled by threatening hills, where the threat became a blow, and the blow was multiplied a million times. Gaunt, fighting men sought to appease the craving of starvation by the boiled carcasses of old horses; in caves and dug-outs, feeble women, with undying courage, kept alive the flickering fires of life in their children; and they smiled to cheer the tireless, emaciated warriors who went out to meet death, or with a superior yet careful courage stayed to receive or escape it. When night came, across the hills and far away in the deep blue, white shaking streams of light poured upward, telling the besieged forces over there at Lordkop that rescue would come, that it was moving on to the mountain. How many times had this light in the sky flashed the same grave pledge in the mystic code of the heliograph, "We are gaining ground--we will reach you soon." How many times, however, had the message also been, "Not yet--but soon." Men died in this great camp from wounds and from fever, and others went mad almost from sheer despair; yet whenever the Master Player called, they sprang to their places with a new-born belief that he who had been so successful in so many long-past battles would be right in the end with his old rightness, though he had been wrong so often on the Dreitval. Others there were who were sick of the world and wished "to be well out of it"--as they said to themselves. Some had been cruelly injured, and desire of life was dead in them; others had given injury, and remorse had slain peace. Others still there were who, having done evil all their lives, knew that they could not retrace their steps, and yet shrank from a continuance of the old bad things. Some indeed, in the red futile sacrifice, had found what they came to find; but some still were left whose recklessness did not avail. Comrades fell beside them, but, unscathed, they went on fighting. Injured men were carried in hundreds to the hospitals, but no wounds brought them low. Bullets were sprayed around them, but none did its work for them. Shells burst near, yet no savage shard mutilated their bodies. Of these was Ian Stafford. Three times he had been in the fore-front of the fight where Death came sweeping down the veld like rain, but It passed him by. Horses and men fell round his guns, yet he remained uninjured. He was patient. If Death would not hasten to meet him, he would wait. Meanwhile, he would work while he could, but with no thought beyond the day, no vision of the morrow. He was one of the machines of war. He was close to his General, he was the beloved of his men, still he was the man with no future; though he studied the campaign with that thoroughness which had marked his last years in diplomacy. He was much among his own wounded, much with others who were comforted by his solicitude, by the courage of his eye, and the grasp of his firm, friendly hand. It was at what the soldiers called the Stay Awhile Hospital that he came in living touch again with the life he had left behind. He knew that Rudyard Byng had come to South Africa; but he knew no more. He knew that Jasmine had, with Lady Tynemouth, purchased a ship and turned it into a hospital at a day's notice; but as to whether these two had really come to South Africa, and harboured at the Cape, or Durban, he had no knowledge. He never looked at the English newspapers which arrived at Dreitval River. He was done with that old world in which he once worked; he was concerned only for this narrow field where an Empire's fate was being solved. Night, the dearest friend of the soldier, had settled on the veld. A thousand fires were burning, and there were no sounds save the murmuring voices of myriads of men, and the stamp of hoofs where the Cavalry and Mounted Infantry horses were picketed. Food and fire, the priceless comfort of a blanket on the ground, and a saddle or kit for a pillow gave men compensation for all the hardships and dangers of the day; and they gave little thought to the morrow. The soldier lives in the present. His rifle, his horse, his boots, his blanket, the commissariat, a dry bit of ground to sleep on--these are the things which occupy his mind. His heroism is incidental, the commonplace impulse of the moment. He does things because they are there to do, not because some great passion, some exaltation, seizes him. His is the real simple life. So it suddenly seemed to Stafford as he left his tent, after he had himself inspected every man and every horse in his battery that lived through the day of death, and made his way towards the Stay Awhile Hospital. "This is the true thing," he said to himself as he gazed at the wide camp. He turned his face here and there in the starlight, and saw human life that but now was moving in the crash of great guns, the shrieking of men terribly wounded, the agony of mutilated horses, the bursting of shells, the hissing scream of the pom-pom, and the discordant cries of men fighting an impossible fight. "There is no pretense here," he reflected. "It is life reduced down to the bare elements. There is no room for the superficial thing. It's all business. It's all stark human nature." At that moment his eye caught one of those white messages of the sky flashing the old bitter promise, "We shall reach you soon." He forgot himself, and a great spirit welled up in him. "Soon!" The light in the sky shot its message over the hills. That was it--the present, not the past. Here was work, the one thing left to do. "And it has to be done," he said aloud, as he walked on swiftly, a spring to his footstep. Presently he mounted and rode away across the veld. Buried in his thoughts, he was only subconsciously aware of what he saw until, after near an hour's riding, he pulled rein at the door of the Stay Awhile Hospital, which was some miles in the rear of the main force. As he entered, a woman in a nurse's garb passed him swiftly. He scarcely looked at her; he was only conscious that she was in great haste. Her eyes seemed looking at some inner, hidden thing, and, though they glanced at him, appeared not to see him or to realize more than that some one was passing. But suddenly, to both, after they had passed, there came an arrest of attention. There was a consciousness, which had nothing to do with the sight of the eyes, that a familiar presence had gone by. Each turned quickly, and their eyes came back from regarding the things of the imagination, and saw each other face to face. The nurse gave an exclamation of pleasure and ran forward. Stafford held out a hand. It seemed to him, as he did it, that it stretched across a great black gulf and found another hand in the darkness beyond. "Al'mah!" he said, in a voice of protest as of companionship. Of all those he had left behind, this was the one being whom to meet was not disturbing. He wished to encounter no one of that inner circle of his tragic friendship; but he realized that Al'mah had had her tragedy too, and that her suffering could not be less than his own. The same dark factor had shadowed the lives of both. Adrian Fellowes had injured them both through the same woman, had shaken, if not shattered, the fabric of their lives. However much they two were blameworthy, they had been sincere, they had been honourable in their dishonour, they had been "falsely true." They were derelicts of life, with the comradeship of despair as a link between them. "Al'mah," he said again, gently. Then, with a bitter humour, he added, "You here--I thought you were a prima donna!" The flicker of a smile crossed her odd, fine, strong face. "This is grand opera," she said. "It is the Nibelungen Ring of England." "To end in the Twilight of the Gods?" he rejoined with a hopeless kind of smile. They turned to the outer door of the hospital and stepped into the night. For a moment they stood looking at the great camp far away to right and left, and to the lone mountains yonder, where the Boer commandoes held the passes and trained their merciless armament upon all approaches. Then he said at last: "Why have you come here? You had your work in England." "What is my work?" she asked. "To heal the wounded," he answered. "I am trying to do that," she replied. "You are trying to heal bodies, but it is a bigger, greater thing to heal the wounded mind." "I am trying to do that too. It is harder than the other." "Whose minds are you trying to heal?" he questioned, gently. "'Physician heal thyself' was the old command, wasn't it? But that is harder still." "Must one always be a saint to do a saintly thing?" he asked. "I am not clever," she replied, "and I can't make phrases. But must one always be a sinner to do a wicked thing? Can't a saint do a wicked thing, and a sinner do a good thing without being called the one or the other?" "I don't think you need apologize for not being able to make phrases. I suppose you'd say there is neither absolute saintliness nor absolute wickedness, but that life is helplessly composite of both, and that black really may be white. You know the old phrase, 'Killing no murder.'" She seemed to stiffen, and her lips set tightly for a minute; then, as though by a great effort, she laughed bitterly. "Murder isn't always killing," she replied. "Don't you remember the protest in Macbeth, 'Time was, when the brains were out the man would die'?" Then, with a little quick gesture towards the camp, she added, "When you think of to-day, doesn't it seem that the brains are out, and yet that the man still lives? I'm not a soldier, and this awful slaughter may be the most wonderful tactics, but it's all beyond my little mind." "Your littleness is not original enough to attract notice," he replied with kindly irony. "There is almost an epidemic of it. Let us hope we shall have an antidote soon." There was a sudden cry from inside the hospital. Al'mah shut her eyes for a moment, clinched her fingers, and became very pale; then she recovered herself, and turned her face towards the door, as though waiting for some one to come out. "What is the matter?" he asked. "Some bad case?" "Yes--very bad," she replied. "One you've been attending?" "Yes." "What arm--the artillery?" he asked with sudden interest. "Yes, the artillery." He turned towards the door of the hospital again. "One of my men? What battery? Do you know?" "Not yours--Schiller's." "Schiller's! A Boer?" She nodded. "A Boer spy, caught by Boer bullets as he was going back." "When was that?" "This morning early." "The little business at Wortmann's Drift?" She nodded. "Yes, there." "I don't quite understand. Was he in our lines--a Boer spy?" "Yes. But he wore British uniform, he spoke English. He was an Englishman once." Suddenly she came up close to him, and looked into his face steadily. "I will tell you all," she said scarce above a whisper. "He came to spy, but he came also to see his wife. She had written to ask him not to join the Boers, as he said he meant to do; or, if he had, to leave them and join his own people. He came, but not to join his fellow-countrymen. He came to get money from his wife; and he came to spy." An illuminating thought shot into Stafford's mind. He remembered something that Byng once told him. "His wife is a nurse?" he asked in a low tone. "She is a nurse." "She knew, then, that he was a spy?" he asked. "Yes, she knew. I suppose she ought to be tried by court-martial. She did not expose him. She gave him a chance to escape. But he was shot as he tried to reach the Boer lines." "And was brought back here to his wife--to you! Did he let them"--he nodded towards the hospital--"know he was your husband?" When she spoke again her voice showed strain, but it did not tremble. "Of course. He would not spare me. He never did. It was always like that." He caught her hand in his. "You have courage enough for a hundred," he said. "I have suffered enough for a hundred," she responded. Again that sharp cry rang out, and again she turned anxiously towards the door. "I came to South Africa on the chance of helping him in some way," she replied. "It came to me that he might need me." "You paid the price of his life once to Kruger--after the Raid, I've heard," he said. "Yes, I owed him that, and as much more as was possible," she responded with a dark, pained look. "His life is in danger--an operation?" he questioned. "Yes. There is one chance; but they could not give him an anaesthetic, and they would not let me stay with him. They forced me away--out here." She appeared to listen again. "That was his voice--that crying," she added presently. "Wouldn't it be better he should go? If he recovers there would only be--" "Oh yes, to be tried as a spy--a renegade Englishman! But he would rather live in spite of that, if it was only for an hour." "To love life so much as that--a spy!" Stafford reflected. "Not so much love of life as fear of--" She stopped short. "To fear--silence and peace!" he remarked darkly, with a shrug of his shoulders. Then he added: "Tell me, if he does not die, and if--if he is pardoned by any chance, do you mean to live with him again?" A bitter laugh broke from her. "How do I know? What does any woman know what she will do until the situation is before her! She may mean to do one thing and do the complete opposite. She may mean to hate, and will end by loving. She may mean to kiss and will end by killing. She may kiss and kill too all in one moment, and still not be inconsistent. She would have the logic of a woman. How do I know what I would do--what I will do!" The door of the hospital opened. A surgeon came out, and seeing Al'mah, moved towards the two. Stafford went forward hurriedly, but Al'mah stood like one transfixed. There was a whispered word, and then Stafford came back to her. "You will not need to do anything," he said. "He is gone--like that!" she whispered in an awed voice. "Death, death--so many die!" She shuddered. Stafford passed her arm through his, and drew her towards the door of the hospital. A half-hour later Stafford emerged again from the hospital, his head bent in thought. He rode slowly back to his battery, unconscious of the stir of life round him, of the shimmering white messages to the besieged town beyond the hills. He was thinking of the tragedy of the woman he had left tearless and composed beside the bedside of the man who had so vilely used her. He was reflecting how her life, and his own, and the lives of at least three others, were so tangled together that what twisted the existence of one disturbed all. In one sense the woman he had just left in the hospital was nothing to him, and yet now she seemed to be the only living person to whom he was drawn. He remembered the story he had once heard in Vienna of a man and a woman who both had suffered betrayal, who both had no longer a single illusion left, who had no love for each other at all, in whom indeed love was dead--a mangled murdered thing; and yet who went away to Corfu together, and there at length found a pathway out of despair in the depths of the sea. Between these two there had never been even the faint shadow of romance or passion; but in the terrible mystery of pain and humiliation, they had drawn together to help each other, through a breach of all social law, in pity of each other. He apprehended the real meaning of the story when Vienna was alive with it, but he understood far, far better now. A pity as deep as any feeling he had ever known had come to him as he stood with Al'mah beside the bed of her dead renegade man; and it seemed to him that they two also might well bury themselves in the desert together, and minister to each other's despair. It was only the swift thought of a moment, which faded even as it saw the light; but it had its origin in that last flickering sense of human companionship which dies in the atmosphere of despair. "Every man must live his dark hours alone," a broken-down actor once said to Stafford as he tried to cheer him when the last thing he cared for had been taken from him--his old, faded, misshapen wife; when no faces sent warm glances to him across the garish lights. "It is no use," this Roscius had said, "every man must live his dark hours alone." That very evening, after the battle of the Dreitval, Jigger, Stafford's trumpeter, had said a thing to him which had struck a chord that rang in empty chambers of his being. He had found Jigger sitting disconsolate beside a gun, which was yet grimy and piteous with the blood of men who had served it, and he asked the lad what his trouble was. In reply Jigger had said, "When it 'it 'm 'e curled up like a bit o' shaving. An' when I done what I could 'e says, 'It's a speshul for one now, an' it's lonely goin',' 'e says. When I give 'im a drink 'e says, 'It 'd do me more good later, little 'un'; an' 'e never said no more except, 'One at a time is the order--only one.'" Not even his supper had lifted the cloud from Jigger's face, and Stafford had left the lad trying to compose a letter to the mother of the dead man, who had been an especial favourite with the trumpeter from the slums. Stafford was roused from his reflections by the grinding, rumbling sound of a train. He turned his face towards the railway line. "A troop-train--more food for the dragons," he said to himself. He could not see the train itself, but he could see the head-light of the locomotive, and he could hear its travail as it climbed slowly the last incline to the camp. "Who comes there!" he said aloud, and in his mind there swept a premonition that the old life was finding him out, that its invisible forces were converging upon him. But did it matter? He knew in his soul that he was now doing the right thing, that he had come out in the open where all the archers of penalty had a fair target for their arrows. He wished to be "Free among the dead that are wounded and that lie in the grave and are out of remembrance;" but he would do no more to make it so than tens of thousands of other men were doing on these battle-fields. "Who comes there!" he said again, his eyes upon the white, round light in the distance, and he stood still to try and make out the black, winding, groaning thing. Presently he heard quick footsteps. A small, alert figure stopped short, a small, abrupt hand saluted. "The General Commanding 'as sent for you, sir." It was trumpeter Jigger of the Artillery. "Are you the General's orderly, then?" asked Stafford quizzically. "The orderly's gone w'ere 'e thought 'e'd find you, and I've come w'ere I know'd you'd be, sir." "Where did he think he'd find me?" "Wiv the 'osses, sir." A look of gratification crossed Stafford's face. He was well known in the army as one who looked after his horses and his men. "And what made you think I was at the hospital, Jigger?" "Becos you'd been to the 'osses, sir." "Did you tell the General's orderly that?" "No, your gryce--no, sir," he added quickly, and a flush of self-reproach came to his face, for he prided himself on being a real disciplinarian, a disciple of the correct thing. "I thought I'd like 'im to see our 'osses, an' 'ow you done 'em, an' I'd find you as quick as 'e could, wiv a bit to the good p'r'aps." Stafford smiled. "Off you go, then. Find that orderly. Say, Colonel Stafford's compliments to the General Commanding and he will report himself at once. See that you get it straight, trumpeter." Jigger would rather die than not get it straight, and his salute made that quite plain. "It's made a man of him, anyhow," Stafford said to himself, as he watched the swiftly disappearing figure. "He's as straight as a nail, body and mind--poor little devil.... How far away it all seems!" A quarter of an hour later he was standing beside the troop-train which he had seen labouring to its goal. It was carrying the old regiment of the General Officer Commanding, who had sent Stafford to its Colonel with an important message. As the two officers stood together watching the troops detrain and make order out of the chaos of baggage and equipment, Stafford's attention was drawn to a woman some little distance away, giving directions about her impedimenta. "Who is the lady?" he asked, while in his mind was a sensible stir of recognition. "Ah, there's something like the real thing!" his companion replied. "She is doing a capital bit of work. She and Lady Tynemouth have got a hospital-ship down at Durban. She's come to link it up better with the camp. It's Rudyard Byng's wife. They're both at it out here." "Who comes there!" Stafford had exclaimed a moment before with a sense of premonition. Jasmine had come. He drew back in the shadow as she turned round towards them. "To the Stay Awhile--right!" he heard a private say in response to her directions. He saw her face, but not clearly. He had glimpse of a Jasmine not so daintily pretty as of old, not so much of a dresden-china shepherdess; but with the face of a woman who, watching the world with understanding eyes, and living with an understanding heart, had taken on something of the mysterious depths of the Life behind life. It was only a glimpse he had, but it was enough. It was more than enough. "Where is Byng?" he asked his fellow-officer. "He's been up there with Tain's Brigade for a fortnight. He was in Kimberley, but got out before the investment, went to Cape Town, and came round here--to be near his wife, I suppose." "He is soldiering, then?" "He was a Colonel in the Rand Rifles once. He's with the South African Horse now in command of the regiment attached to Tain. Tain's out of your beat--away on the right flank there." Presently Stafford saw Jasmine look in their direction; then, on seeing Stafford's companion, came forward hastily. The Colonel left Stafford and went to meet her. A moment afterwards, she turned and looked at Stafford. Her face was now deadly pale, but it showed no agitation. She was in the light of an electric lamp, and he was in the shadow. For one second only she gazed at him, then she turned and moved away to the cape-cart awaiting her. The Colonel saw her in, then returned to Stafford. "Why didn't you come and be introduced?" the Colonel asked. "I told her who you were." "Hospital-ships are not in my line," Stafford answered casually. "Women and war don't go together." "She's a nurse, she's not a woman," was the paradoxical reply. "She knows Byng is here?" "I suppose so. It looks like a clever bit of strategy--junction of forces. There's a lot of women at home would like the chance she has--at a little less cost." "What is the cost?" "Well, that ship didn't cost less than a hundred thousand pounds." "Is that all?" The Colonel looked at Stafford in surprise: but Stafford was not thinking of the coin. CHAPTER XXX "AND NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET!" As the cape-cart conveying Jasmine to the hospital moved away from the station, she settled down into the seat beside the driver with the helplessness of one who had received a numbing blow. Her body swayed as though she would faint, and her eyes closed, and stayed closed for so long a time, that Corporal Shorter, who drove the rough little pair of Argentines, said to her sympathetically: "It's all right, ma'am. We'll be there in a jiffy. Don't give way." This friendly solicitude had immediate effect. Jasmine sat up, and thereafter held herself as though she was in her yellow salon yonder in London. "Thank you," she replied serenely to Corporal Shorter. "It was a long, tiring journey, and I let myself go for a moment." "A good night's rest'll do you a lot of good, ma'am," he ventured. Then he added, "Beggin' pardon, ain't you Mrs. Colonel Rudyard Byng?" She turned and looked at the man inquiringly. "Yes, I am Mrs. Byng." "Thank you, ma'am. Now how did I know? Why," he chuckled, "I saw a big B on your hand-bag, and I knew you was from the hospital-ship--they told me that at the Stay Awhile; and the rest was easy, ma'am. I had a mate along o' your barge. He was one of them the Boers got at Talana Hill. They chipped his head-piece nicely--just like the 4.7's flay the kopjes up there. My mate's been writing to me about you. We're a long way from home, Joey and me, and a bit o' kindness is a bit of all right to us." "Where is your home?" Jasmine asked, her fatigue and oppression lifting. He chuckled as though it were a joke, while he answered: "Australia onct and first. My mate, Joey Clynes, him that's on your ship, we was both born up beyond Bendigo. When we cut loose from the paternal leash, so to speak, we had a bit of boundary-riding, rabbit-killing, shearing and sun-downing--all no good, year by year. Then we had a bit o' luck and found a mob of warrigals--horses run wild, you know. We stalked 'em for days in the droughttime to a water-course, and got 'em, and coaxed 'em along till the floods come; then we sold 'em, and with the hard tin shipped for to see the world. So it was as of old. And by and by we found ourselves down here, same as all the rest, puttin' in a bit o' time for the Flag." Jasmine turned on him one of those smiles which had made her so many friends in the past--a smile none the less alluring because it had lost that erstime flavour of artifice and lure which, however hidden, had been part of its power. Now it was accompanied by no slight drooping of the eyelids. It brightened a look which was direct and natural. "It's a good thing to have lived in the wide distant spaces of the world," she responded. "A man couldn't easily be mean or small where life is so simple and so large." His face flushed with pleasure. She was so easy to get on with, he said to himself; and she certainly had a wonderfully kind smile. But he felt too that she needed greater wisdom, and he was ready to give it--a friendly characteristic of the big open spaces "where life is so simple and so large." "Well, that might be so 'long o' some continents," he remarked, "but it wasn't so where Joey Clynes and me was nourished, so to speak. I tripped up on a good many mean things from Bendigo to Thargomindah and back around. The back-blocks has its tricks as well as the towns, as you would see if you come across a stock-rider with a cheque to be broke in his hand. I've seen six months' wages go bung in a day with a stock-rider on the gentle jupe. But again, peradventure, I've seen a man that had lost ten thousand sheep tramp fifty miles in a blazing sun with a basket of lambs on his back, savin' them two switherin' little papillions worth nothin' at all, at the risk of his own life--just as mates have done here on this salamanderin' veld; same as Colonel Byng did to-day along o' Wortmann's Drift." Jasmine had been trying to ask a question concerning her husband ever since the man had mentioned his name, and had not been able to do so. She had never spoken of him directly to any one since she had left England; had never heard from him; had written him no word; was, so far as the outer acts of life were concerned, as distant from him as Corporal Shorter was from his native Bendigo. She had been busy as she had never before been in her life, in a big, comprehensive, useful way. It had seemed to her in England, as she carried through the negotiations for the Valoria, fitted it out for the service it was to render, directed its administration over the heads of the committee appointed, for form's sake, to assist Lady Tynemouth and herself, that the spirit of her grandfather was over her, watching her, inspiring her. This had become almost an obsession with her. Her grandfather had had belief in her, delight in her; and now the innumerable talks she had had with him, as to the way he had done things, gave her confidence and a key to what she had to do. It was the first real work; for what she did for Ian Stafford in diplomacy was only playing upon the weakness of human nature with a skilled intelligence, with an instinctive knowledge of men and a capacity for managing them. The first real pride she had ever felt soothed her angry soul. Her grandfather had been more in her mind than any one else--than either Rudyard or Ian Stafford. Towards both of these her mind had slowly and almost unconsciously changed, and she wished to think about neither. There had been a revolution in her nature, and all her tragic experience, her emotions, and her faculties, had been shaken into a crucible where the fire of pain and revolt burned on and on and on. From the crucible there had come as yet no precipitation of life's elements, and she scarcely knew what was in her heart. She tried to smother every thought concerning the past. She did not seek to find her bearings, or to realize in what country of the senses and the emotions she was travelling. One thing was present, however, at times, and when it rushed over her in its fulness, it shook her as the wind shakes the leaf on a tree--a sense of indignation, of anger, or resentment. Against whom? Against all. Against Rudyard, against Ian Stafford; but most of all, a thousand times most against a dead man, who had been swept out of life, leaving behind a memory which could sting murderously. Now, when she heard of Rudyard's bravery at Wortmann's Drift, a curious thrill of excitement ran through her veins, or it would be truer to say that a sensation new and strange vibrated in her blood. She had heard many tales of valour in this war, and more than one hero of the Victoria Cross had been in her charge at Durban; but as a child's heart might beat faster at the first words of a wonderful story, so she felt a faint suffocation in the throat and her brooding eyes took on a brighter, a more objective look, as she heard the tale of Wortmann's Drift. "Tell me about it," she said, yet turned her head away from her eager historian. Corporal Shorter's words were addressed to the smallest pink ear he had ever seen except on a baby, but he was only dimly conscious of that. He was full of a man's pride in a man's deed. "Well, it was like this," he recited. "Gunter's horse bolted--Dick Gunter's in the South African Horse same as Colonel Byng--his lot. Old Gunter's horse gits away with him into the wide open. I s'pose there'd been a hunderd Boers firing at the runaway for three minutes, and at last off comes Gunter. He don't stir for a minute or more, then we see him pick himself up a bit quick, but settle back again. And while we was lookin' and tossin' pennies like as to his chances out there, a grey New Zealand mare nips out across the veld stretchin' every string. We knowed her all right, that grey mare--a regular Mrs. Mephisto, w'ich belongs to Colonel Byng. Do the Boojers fire at him? Don't they! We could see the spots of dust where the bullets struck, spittin', spittin', spittin', and Lord knows how many hunderd more there was that didn't hit the ground. An' the grey mare gets there. As cool as a granadillar, down drops Colonel Byng beside old Gunter; down goes the grey mare--Colonel Byng had taught her that trick, like the Roosian Cossack hosses. Then up on her rolls old Gunter, an' up goes Colonel Byng, and the grey mare switchin' her bobtail, as if she was havin' a bit of mealies in the middle o' the day. But when they was both on, then the band begun to play. Men was fightin' of course, but it looked as if the whole smash stopped to see what the end would be. It was a real pretty race, an' the grey mare takin' it as free as if she was carryin' a little bit of a pipkin like me instead of twenty-six stone. She's a flower, that grey mare! Once she stumbled, an' we knowed it wasn't an ant-bear's hole she'd found in the veld, and that she'd been hurt. But they know, them hosses, that they must do as their Baases do; and they fight right on. She come home with the two all right. She switched round a corner and over a nose of land where that crossfire couldn't hit the lot; an' there was the three of 'em at 'ome for a cup o' tea. Why, ma'am, that done the army as much good to-day, that little go-to-the-devil, you mud-suckers! as though we'd got Schuster's Hill. 'Twas what we needed--an' we got it. It took our eyes off the nasty little fact that half of a regiment was down, an' the other half with their job not done as it was ordered. It made the S.A.'s and the Lynchesters and the Gessex lot laugh. Old Gunter's all right. He's in the Stay Awhile now. You'll be sure to see him. And Colonel Byng's all right, too, except a little bit o' splinter--" "A bit of splinter--" Her voice was almost peremptory. "A chip off his wrist like, but he wasn't thinkin' of that when he got back. He was thinkin' of the grey mare; and she was hit in three places, but not to mention. One bullet cut through her ear and through Colonel Byng's hat as he stooped over her neck; but the luck was with them. They was born to do a longer trek together. A little bit of the same thing in both of 'em, so to speak. The grey mare has a temper like a hunderd wildcats, and Colonel Byng can let himself go too, as you perhaps know, ma'am. We've seen him let loose sometimes when there was shirkers about, but he's all right inside his vest. And he's a good feeder. His men get their tucker all right. He knows when to shut his eyes. He's got a way to make his bunch--and they're the hardest-bit bunch in the army--do anything he wants 'em to. He's as hard himself as ever is, but he's all right underneath the epidermotis." All at once there flashed before Jasmine's eyes the picture of Rudyard driving Krool out of the house in Park Lane with a sjambok. She heard again the thud of the rhinoceros-whip on the cringing back of the Boer; she heard the moan of the victim as he stumbled across the threshold into the street; and again she felt that sense of suffocation, that excitement which the child feels on the brink of a wonderful romance, the once-upon-a-time moment. They were nearing the hospital. The driver silently pointed to it. He saw that he had made an impression, and he was content with it. He smiled to himself. "Is Colonel Byng in the camp?" she asked. "He's over--'way over, miles and miles, on the left wing with Kearey's brigade now. But old Gunter's here, and you're sure to see Colonel Byng soon--well, I should think." She had no wish to see Colonel Byng soon. Three days would suffice to do what she wished here, and then she would return to Durban to her work there--to Alice Tynemouth, whose friendship and wonderful tactfulness had helped her in indefinable ways, as a more obvious sympathy never could have done. She would have resented one word which would have suggested that a tragedy was slowly crushing out her life. Never a woman in the world was more alone. She worked and smiled with eyes growing sadder, yet with a force hardening in her which gave her face a character it never had before. Work had come at the right moment to save her from the wild consequences of a nature maddened by a series of misfortunes and penalties, for which there had been no warning and no preparation. She was not ready for a renewal of the past. Only a few minutes before she had been brought face to face with Ian Stafford, had seen him look at her out of the shadow there at the station, as though she was an infinite distance away from him; and she had realized with overwhelming force how changed her world was. Ian Stafford, who but a few short months ago had held her in his arms and whispered unforgettable things, now looked at her as one looks at the image of a forgotten thing. She recalled his last words to her that awful day when Rudyard had read the fatal letter, and the world had fallen: "Nothing can set things right between you and me, Jasmine," he had said. "But there is Rudyard. You must help him through. He heard scandal about Mennaval last night at De Lancy Scovel's. He didn't believe it. It rests with you to give it all the lie. Good-bye." That had been the end--the black, bitter end. Since then Ian had never spoken a word to her, nor she to him; but he had stood there in the shadow at the station like a ghost, reproachful, unresponsive, indifferent. She recalled now the day when, after three years' parting, she had left him cool, indifferent, and self-contained in the doorway of the sweet-shop in Regent Street; how she had entered her carriage, had clinched her hands, and cried with wilful passion: "He shall not treat me so. He shall show some feeling. He shall! He shall!" Here was indifference again, but of another land. Hers was not a woman's vanity, in fury at being despised. Vanity, maybe, was still there, but so slight that it made no contrast to the proud turmoil of a nature which had been humiliated beyond endurance; which, for its mistakes, had received accruing penalties as precise as though they had been catalogued; which had waked to find that a whole lifetime had been an error; and that it had no anchor in any set of principles or impelling habits. And over all there hung the shadow of a man's death, with its black suspicion. When Ian Stafford looked at her from the shadow of the railway-station, the question had flashed into his mind, Did she kill him? Around Adrian Fellowes' death there hung a cloud of mystery which threw a sinister shadow on the path of three people. In the middle of the night, Jasmine started from her sleep with the mystery of the man's death torturing her, and with the shuddering question, Which? on her fevered lips. Was it her husband--was it Ian Stafford? As he galloped over the veld, or sat with his pipe beside the camp-fire, Rudyard Byng was also drawn into the frigid gloom of the ugly thought, and his mind asked the question, Did she kill him? It was as though each who had suffered from the man in life was destined to be menaced by his shade, till it should be exorcised by that person who had taken the useless life, saying, "It was I; I did it!" As Jasmine entered the hospital, it seemed to her excited imagination as though she was entering a House of Judgment: as though here in a court of everlasting equity she would meet those who had played their vital parts in her life. What if Rudyard was here! What if in these few days while she was to be here he was to cross her path! What would she say? What would she do? What could be said or done? Bitterness and resentment and dark suspicion were in her mind--and in his. Her pride was less wilful and tempestuous than on the day when she drove him from her; when he said things which flayed her soul, and left her body as though it had been beaten with rods. Her bitterness, her resentment had its origin in the fact that he did not understand--and yet in his crude big way he had really understood better than Ian Stafford. She felt that Rudyard despised her now a thousand times more than ever he had hinted at in that last stifling scene in Park Lane; and her spirit rebelled against it. She would rather that he had believed everything against her, and had made an open scandal, because then she could have paid any debt due to him by the penalty most cruel a woman can bear. But pity, concession, the condescension of a superior morality, were impossible to her proud mind. As for Ian Stafford, he had left her stripped bare of one single garment of self-respect. His very kindness, his chivalry in defending her; his inflexible determination that all should be over between them forever, that she should be prevailed upon to be to Rudyard more than she had ever been--it all drove her into a deeper isolation. This isolation would have been her destruction but that something bigger than herself, a passion to do things, lifted to idealism a mind which in the past had grown materialistic, which, in gaining wit and mental skill, had missed the meaning of things, the elemental sense. Corporal Shorter's tale of Rudyard's heroism had stirred her; but she could not have said quite what her feeling was with regard to it. She only knew vaguely that she was glad of it in a more personal than impersonal way. When she shook hands with the cheerful non-com. at the door of the hospital, she gave him a piece of gold which he was loth to accept till she said: "But take it as a souvenir of Colonel Byng's little ride with 'Old Gunter.'" With a laugh, he took it then, and replied, "I'll not smoke it, I'll not eat it, and I'll not drink it. I'll wear it for luck and God-bless-you!" CHAPTER XXXI THE GREY HORSE AND ITS RIDER It was almost midnight. The camp was sleeping. The forces of destruction lay torpid in the starry shadow of the night. There was no moon, but the stars gave a light that relieved the gloom. They were so near to the eye that it might seem a lancer could pick them from their nests of blue. The Southern Cross hung like a sign of hope to guide men to a new Messiah. In vain Jasmine had tried to sleep. The day had been too much for her. All that happened in the past four years went rushing past, and she saw herself in scenes which were so tormenting in their reality that once she cried out as in a nightmare. As she did so, she was answered by a choking cry of pain like her own, and, waking, she started up from her couch with poignant apprehension; but presently she realized that it was the cry of some wounded patient in the ward not far from the room where she lay. It roused her, however, from the half wakefulness which had been excoriated by burning memories, and, hurriedly rising, she opened wide the window and looked out into the night. The air was sharp, but it soothed her hot face and brow, and the wild pulses in her wrists presently beat less vehemently. She put a firm hand on herself, as she was wont to do in these days, when there was no time for brooding on her own troubles, and when, with the duties she had taken upon herself, it would be criminal to indulge in self-pity. Looking out of the window now into the quiet night, the watch-fires dotting the plain had a fascination for her greater than the wonder of the southern sky and its plaque of indigo sprinkled with silver dust and diamonds. Those fires were the bulletins of the night, telling that around each of them men were sleeping, or thinking of other scenes, or wondering whether the fight to-morrow would be their last fight, and if so, what then? They were to the army like the candle in the home of the cottager. Those little groups of men sleeping around their fires were like a family, where men grow to serve each other as brother serves brother, knowing each other's foibles, but preserving each other's honour for the family's pride, risking life to save each other. As Jasmine gazed into the gloom, spattered with a delicate radiance which did not pierce the shadows, but only made lively the darkness, she was suddenly conscious of the dull regular thud of horses' hoofs upon the veld. Troops of Mounted Infantry were evidently moving to take up a new position at the bidding of the Master Player. The sound was like the rub-a-dub of muffled hammers. The thought forced itself on her mind that here were men secretly hastening to take part in the grim lottery of life and death, from which some, and maybe many, would draw the black ticket of doom, and so pass from the game before the game was won. The rumbling roll of hoofs grew distinct. Now they seemed to be almost upon her, and presently they emerged into view from the right, where their progress had been hidden by the hospital-building. When they reached the hospital there came a soft command and, as the troop passed, every face was turned towards the building. It was men full of life and the interest of the great game paying passing homage to their helpless comrades in this place of healing. As they rode past, a few of the troopers had a glimpse of the figure dimly outlined at the window. Some made kindly jests, cheffing each other--"Your fancy, old sly-boots? Arranged it all, eh? Watch me, Lizzie, as I pass, and wave your lily-white hand!" But others pressed their lips tightly, for visions of a woman somewhere waiting and watching flashed before their eyes; while others still had only the quiet consciousness of the natural man, that a woman looks at them; and where women are few and most of them are angels,--the battle-field has no shelter for any other--such looks have deep significance. The troop went by steadily, softly and slowly. After they had all gone past, two horsemen detached from the troop came after. Presently one of them separated from his companion and rode on. The other came towards the hospital at a quick trot, drew bridle very near Jasmine's window, slid to the ground, said a soft word to his charger, patted its neck, and, turning, made for the door of the hospital. For a moment Jasmine stood looking out, greatly moved, she scarcely knew why, by this little incident of the night, and then suddenly the starlight seemed to draw round the patient animal standing at attention, as it were. Then she saw it was a grey horse. Its owner, as Corporal Shorter predicted, had come to see "Old Gunter," ere he went upon another expedition of duty. Its owner was Rudyard Byng. That was why so strange a coldness, as of apprehension or anxiety, had passed through Jasmine when the rider had come towards her out of the night. Her husband was here. If she called, he would come. If she stretched out her hand, she could touch him. If she opened a door, she would be in his presence. If he opened the door behind her, he could-- She stepped back hastily into the room, and drew her night-robe closely about her with sudden flushing of the face. If he should enter her room--she felt in the darkness for her dressing-gown. It was not on the chair beside her bed. She moved hastily, and blundered against a table. She felt for the foot of the bed. The dressing-gown was not there. Her brain was on fire. Where was her dressing-gown? She tried to button the night-dress over her palpitating breast, but abandoned it to throw back her head and gather her golden hair away from her shoulders and breast. All this in the dark, in the safe dusk of her own room.... Where was her dressing-gown? Where was her maid? Why should she be at such a disadvantage! She reached for the table again and found a match-box. She would strike a light, and find her dressing-gown. Then she abruptly remembered that she had no dressing-gown with her; that she had travelled with one single bag--little more than a hand-bag--and it contained only the emergency equipment of a nurse. She had brought no dressing-gown; only the light outer rain-proof coat which should serve a double purpose. She had forgotten for a moment that she was not in her own house, that she was an army-woman, living a soldier's life. She felt her way to the wall, found the rain-proof coat, and, with trembling fingers, put it on. As she did so a wave of weakness passed over her, and she swayed as though she would fall; but she put a hand on herself and fought her growing agitation. She turned towards the bed, but stopped abruptly, because she heard footsteps in the hall outside--footsteps she knew, footsteps which for years had travelled towards her, day and night, with eagerness; the quick, urgent footsteps of a man of decision, of impulse, of determination. It was Rudyard's footsteps outside her door, Rudyard's voice speaking to some one; then Rudyard's footsteps pausing; and afterwards a dead silence. She felt his presence; she imagined his hand upon her door. With a little smothered gasp, she made a move forward as though to lock the door; then she remembered that it had no lock. With strained and startled eyes, she kept her gaze turned on the door, expecting to see it open before her. Her heart beat so hard she could hear it pounding against her breast, and her temples were throbbing. The silence was horrible to her. Her agitation culminated. She could bear it no longer. Blindly she ran to another door which led into the sitting-room of the matron, used for many purposes--the hold-all of the odds and ends of the hospital life; where surgeons consulted, officers waited, and army authorities congregated for the business of the hospital. She found the door, opened it and entered hastily. One light was burning--a lamp with a green shade. She shut the door behind her quickly and leaned against it, closing her eyes with a sense of relief. Presently some movement in the room startled her. She opened her eyes. A figure stood between the green lamp and the farther door. It was her husband. Her senses had deceived her. His footsteps had not stopped before her bedroom-door. She had not heard the handle of the door of her bedroom turn, but the handle of the door of this room. The silence which had frightened her had followed his entrance here. She hastily drew the coat about her. The white linen of her night-dress showed. She thrust it back, and instinctively drew behind the table, as though to hide her bare ankles. He had started back at seeing her, but had instantly recovered himself. "Well, Jasmine," he said quietly, "we've met in a queer place." All at once her hot agitation left her, and she became cold and still. She was in a maelstrom of feeling a minute before, though she could not have said what the feeling meant; now she was dominated by a haunting sense of injury, roused by resentment, not against him, but against everything and everybody, himself included. All the work of the last few months seemed suddenly undone--to go for nothing. Just as a drunkard in his pledge made reformation, which has done its work for a period, feels a sudden maddening desire to indulge his passion for drink, and plunges into a debauch,--the last maddening degradation before his final triumph,--so Jasmine felt now the restrictions and self-control of the past few months fall away from her. She emerged from it all the same woman who had flung her married life, her man, and her old world to the winds on the day that Krool had been driven into the street. Like Krool, she too had gone out into the unknown--into a strange land where "the Baas" had no habitation. Rudyard's words seemed to madden her, and there was a look of scrutiny and inquiry in his eyes which she saw--and saw nothing else there. There was the inquisition in his look which had been there in their last interview when he had said as plainly as man could say, "What did it mean--that letter from Adrian Fellowes?" It was all there in his eyes now--that hateful inquiry, the piercing scrutiny of a judge in the Judgment House, and there came also into her eyes, as though in consequence, a look of scrutiny too. "Did you kill Adrian Fellowes? Was it you?" her disordered mind asked. She had mistaken the look in his eyes. It was the same look as the look in hers, and in spite of all the months that had gone, both asked the same question as in the hour when they last parted. The dead man stood between them, as he had never stood in life--of infinitely more importance than he had ever been in life. He had never come between Rudyard and herself in the old life in any vital sense, not in any sense that finally mattered. He had only been an incident; not part of real life, but part of a general wastage of character; not a disintegrating factor in itself. Ah, no, not Adrian Fellowes, not him! It enraged her that Rudyard should think the dead man had had any sway over her. It was a needless degradation, against which she revolted now. "Why have you come here--to this room?" she asked coldly. As a boy flushes when he has been asked a disconcerting question which angers him or challenges his innocence, so Rudyard's face suffused; but the flush faded as quickly as it came. His eyes then looked at her steadily, the whites of them so white because of his bronzed face and forehead, the glance firmer by far than in his old days in London. There was none of that unmanageable emotion in his features, the panic excitement, the savage disorder which were there on the day when Adrian Fellowes' letter brought the crisis to their lives; none of the barbaric storm which drove Krool down the staircase under the sjambok. Here was force and iron strength, though the man seemed older, his thick hair streaked with grey, while there was a deep fissure between the eyebrows. The months had hardened him physically, had freed him from all superfluous flesh; and the flabbiness had wholly gone from his cheeks and chin. There was no sign of a luxurious life about him. He was merely the business-like soldier with work to do. His khaki fitted him as only uniform can fit a man with a physique without defect. He carried in his hand a short whip of rhinoceros-hide, and as he placed his hands upon his hips and looked at Jasmine meditatively, before he answered her question, she recalled the scene with Krool. Her eyes were fascinated by the whip in his hand. It seemed to her, all at once, as though she was to be the victim of his wrath, and that the whip would presently fall upon her shoulders, as he drove her out into the veld. But his eyes drew hers to his own presently, and even while he spoke to her now, the illusion of the sjambok remained, and she imagined his voice to be intermingling with the dull thud of the whip on her shoulders. "I came to see one of my troop who was wounded at Wortmann's Drift," he answered her. "Old Gunter," she said mechanically. "Old Gunter, if you like," he returned, surprised. "How did you know?" "The world gossips still," she rejoined bitterly. "Well, I came to see Gunter." "On the grey mare," she said again like one in a dream. "On the grey mare. I did not know that you were here, and--" "If you had known I was here, you would not have come?" she asked with a querulous ring to her voice. "No, I should not have come if I had known, unless people in the camp were aware that I knew. Then I should have felt it necessary to come." "Why?" She knew; but she wanted him to say. "That the army should not talk and wonder. If you were here, it is obvious that I should visit you." "The army might as well wonder first as last," she rejoined. "That must come." "I don't know anything that must come in this world," he replied. "We don't control ourselves, and must lies in the inner Mystery where we cannot enter. I had only to deal with the present. I could not come to the General and go again, knowing that you were here, without seeing you. We ought to do our work here without unnecessary cross-firing from our friends. There's enough of that from our foes." "What right had you to enter my room?" she rejoined stubbornly. "I am not in your room. Something--call it anything you like--made us meet on this neutral ground." "You might have waited till morning," she replied perversely. "In the morning I shall be far from here. Before daybreak I shall be fighting. War waits for no one--not even for you," he added, with more sarcasm than he intended. Her feelings were becoming chaos again. He was going into battle. Bygone memories wakened, and the first days of their lives together came rushing upon her; but her old wild spirit was up in arms too against the irony of his last words, "Not even for you." Added to this was the rushing remembrance that South Africa had been the medium of all her trouble. If Rudyard had not gone to South Africa, that one five months a year and more ago, when she was left alone, restless, craving for amusement and excitement and--she was going to say romance, but there was no romance in those sordid hours of pleasure-making, when she plucked the fruit as it lay to her hand--ah, if only Rudyard had not gone to South Africa then! That five months held no romance. She had never known but one romance, and it was over and done. The floods had washed it away. "You are right. War does not wait even for me," she exclaimed. "It came to meet me, to destroy me, when I was not armed. It came in the night as you have come, and found me helpless as I am now." Suddenly she clasped her hands and wrung them, then threw them above her head in a gesture of despair. "Why didn't God or Destiny, or whatever it is, stop you from coming here! There is nothing between us worth keeping, and there can never be. There is a black sea between us. I never want to see you any more." In her agitation the coat had fallen away from her white night- dress, and her breast showed behind the parted folds of the linen. Involuntarily his eyes saw. What memories passed through him were too vague to record; but a heavy sigh escaped him, followed, however, by a cloud which gathered on his brow. The shadow of a man's death thrust itself between them. This war might have never been, had it not been for the treachery of the man who had been false to everything and every being that had come his way. Indirectly this vast struggle in which thousands of lives were being lost had come through his wife's disloyalty, however unintentional, or in whatever degree. Whenever he thought of it, his pulses beat faster with indignation, and a deep resentment possessed him. It was a resentment whose origin was not a mere personal wrong to him, but the betrayal of all that invaded his honour and the honour of his country. The map was dead--so much. He had paid a price--too small. And Jasmine, as she looked at her husband now, was, oppressed by the same shadow--the inescapable thing. That was what she meant when she said, "There is a black sea between us." What came to her mind when she saw his glance fall on her breast, she could not have told. But a sudden flame of anger consumed her. The passion of the body was dead in her--atrophied. She was as one through whose veins had passed an icy fluid which stilled all the senses of desire, but never had her mind been so passionate, so alive. In the months lately gone, there had been times when her mind was in a paroxysm of rebellion and resentment and remorse; but in this red corner of the universe, from which the usual world was shut out, from which all domestic existence, all social organization, habit or the amenities of social intercourse were excluded, she had been able to restore her equilibrium. Yet now here, all at once, there was an invasion of this world of rigid, narrow organization, where there was no play; where all men's acts were part of a deadly mortal issue; where the human being was only part of a scheme which allowed nothing of the flexible adaptations of the life of peace, the life of cities, of houses: here was the sudden interposition of a purely personal life, of domestic being--of sex. She was conscious of no reasoning, of no mental protest which could be put into words: she was only conscious of emotions which now shook her with their power, now left her starkly cold, her brain muffled, or again aflame with a suffering as intense as that of Procrustes on his bed of iron. This it was that seized her now. The glance of his eyes at her bared breast roused her. She knew not why, except that there was an indefinable craving for a self respect which had been violated by herself and others; except that she longed for the thing which she felt he would not give her. The look in his eye offered her nothing of that. That she mistook what really was in his eyes was not material, though he was thinking of days when he believed he had discovered the secret of life--a woman whose life was beautiful; diffusing beauty, contentment, inspiration and peace. She did not know that his look was the wistful look backward, with no look forward; and that alone. She was living a life where new faculties of her nature were being exercised or brought into active being; she was absorbed by it all; it was part of her scheme for restoring herself, for getting surcease of anguish; but here, all at once, every entrenchment was overrun, the rigidity of the unit was made chaos, and she was tossed by the Spirit of Confusion upon a stormy sea of feeling. "Will you not go?" she asked in a voice of suppressed passion. "Have you no consideration? It is past midnight." His anger flamed, but he forced back the words upon his lips, and said with a bitter smile: "Day and night are the same to me always now. What else should be in war? I am going." He looked at the watch at his wrist. "It is half-past one o'clock. At five our work begins--not an eight-hour day. We have twenty-four-hour days here sometimes. This one may be shorter. You never can tell. It may be a one-hour day--or less." Suddenly he came towards her with hands outstretched. "Dear wife--Jasmine--" he exclaimed. Pity, memory, a great magnanimity carried him off his feet for a moment, and all that had happened seemed as nothing beside this fact that they might never see each other again; and peace appeared to him the one thing needful after all. The hatred and conflict of the world seemed of small significance beside the hovering presence of an enemy stronger than Time. She was still in a passion of rebellion against the inevitable--that old impatience and unrealized vanity which had helped to destroy her past. She shrank back in blind misunderstanding from him, for she scarcely heard his words. She mistook what he meant. She was bewildered, distraught. "No, no--coward!" she cried. He stopped short as though he had been shot. His face turned white. Then, with an oath, he went swiftly to the window which opened to the floor and passed through it into the night. An instant later he was on his horse. A moment of dumb confusion succeeded, then she realized her madness, and the thing as it really was. Running to the window, she leaned out. She called, but only the grey mare's galloping came back to her awe-struck ears. With a cry like that of an animal in pain, she sank on her knees on the floor, her face turned towards the stars. "Oh, my God, help me!" she moaned. At least here was no longer the cry of doom. CHAPTER XXXII THE WORLD'S FOUNDLING At last day came. Jasmine was crossing the hallway of the hospital on her way to the dining-room when there came from the doorway of a ward a figure in a nurse's dress. It startled her by some familiar motion. Presently the face turned in her direction, but without seeing her. Jasmine recognized her then. She went forward quickly and touched the nurse's arm. "Al'mah--it is Al'mah?" she said. Al'mah's face turned paler, and she swayed slightly, then she recovered herself. "Oh, it is you, Mrs. Byng!" she said, almost dazedly. After an instant's hesitation she held out a hand. "It's a queer place for it to happen," she added. Jasmine noticed the hesitation and wondered at the words. She searched the other's face. What did Al'mah's look mean? It seemed composite of paralyzing surprise, of anxiety, of apprehension. Was there not also a look of aversion? "Everything seems to come all at once," Al'mah continued, as though in explanation. Jasmine had no inkling as to what the meaning of the words was; and, with something of her old desire to conquer those who were alien to her, she smiled winningly. "Yes, things concentrate in life," she rejoined. "I've noticed that," was the reply. "Fate seems to scatter, and then to gather in all at once, as though we were all feather-toys on strings." After a moment, as Al'mah regarded her with vague wonder, though now she smiled too, and the anxiety, apprehension, and pain went from her face, Jasmine said: "Why did you come here? You had a world to work for in England." "I had a world to forget in England," Al'mah replied. Then she added suddenly, "I could not sing any longer." "Your voice--what happened to it?" Jasmine asked. "One doesn't sing with one's voice only. The music is far behind the voice." They had been standing in the middle of the hallway. Suddenly Al'mah caught at Jasmine's sleeve. "Will you come with me?" she said. She led the way into a room which was almost gay with veld everlastings, pictures from illustrated papers, small flags of the navy and the colonies, the Boer Vierkleur and the Union Jack. "I like to have things cheerful here," Al'mah said almost gaily. "Sometimes I have four or five convalescents in here, and they like a little gaiety. I sing them things from comic operas--Offenbach, Sullivan, and the rest; and if they are very sentimentally inclined I sing them good old-fashioned love-songs full of the musician's tricks. How people adore illusions! I've had here an old Natal sergeant, over sixty, and he was as cracked as could be about songs belonging to the time when we don't know that it's all illusion, and that there's no such thing as Love, nor ever was; but only a kind of mirage of the mind, a sort of phantasy that seizes us, in which we do crazy things, and sometimes, if the phantasy is strong enough, we do awful things. But still the illusions remain in spite of everything, as they did with the old sergeant. I've heard the most painful stories here from men before they died, of women that were false, and injuries done, many, many years ago; and they couldn't see that it wasn't real at all, but just phantasy." "All the world's mad," responded Jasmine wearily, as Al'mah paused. Al'mah nodded. "So I laugh a good deal, and try to be cheerful, and it does more good than being too sympathetic. Sympathy gets to be mere snivelling very often. I've smiled and laughed a great deal out here; and they say it's useful. The surgeons say it, and the men say it too sometimes." "Are you known as Nurse Grattan?" Jasmine asked with sudden remembrance. "Yes, Grattan was my mother's name. I am Nurse Grattan here." "So many have whispered good things of you. A Scottish Rifleman said to me a week ago, 'Ech, she's aye see cheery!' What a wonderful thing it is to make a whole army laugh. Coming up here three officers spoke of you, and told of humorous things you had said. It's all quite honest, too. It's a reputation made out of new cloth. No one knows who you are?" Al'mah flushed. "I don't know quite who I am myself. I think sometimes I'm the world's foundling." Suddenly a cloud passed over her face again, and her strong whimsical features became drawn. "I seem almost to lose my identity at times; and then it is I try most to laugh and be cheerful. If I didn't perhaps I should lose my identity altogether. Do you ever feel that?" "No; I often wish I could." Al'mah regarded her steadfastly. "Why did you come here?" she asked. "You had the world at your feet; and there was plenty to do in London. Was it for the same reason that brought me here? Was it something you wanted to forget there, some one you wanted to help here?" Jasmine saw the hovering passion in the eyes fixed on her, and wondered what this woman had to say which could be of any import to herself; yet she felt there was something drawing nearer which would make her shrink. "No," Jasmine answered, "I did not come to forget, but to try and remember that one belongs to the world, to the work of the world, to the whole people, and not to one of the people; not to one man, or to one family, or to one's self. That's all." Al'mah's face was now very haggard, but her eyes were burning. "I do not believe you," she said straightly. "You are one of those that have had a phantasy. I had one first fifteen years ago, and it passed, yet it pursued me till yesterday--till yesterday evening. Now it's gone; that phantasy is gone forever. Come and see what it was." She pointed to the door of another room. There was something strangely compelling in her tone, in her movements. Jasmine followed her, fascinated by the situation, by the look in the woman's face. The door opened upon darkness, but Jasmine stepped inside, with Almah's fingers clutching her sleeve. For a moment nothing was visible; then, Jasmine saw, dimly, a coffin on two chairs. "That was the first man I ever loved--my husband," Al'mah said quietly, pointing at the coffin. "There was another, but you took him from me--you and others." Jasmine gave a little cry which she smothered with her hand; and she drew back involuntarily towards the light of the hallway. The smell of disinfectants almost suffocated her. A cloud of mystery and indefinable horror seemed to envelop her; then a light flooded through her brain. It was like a stream of fire. But with a voice strangely calm, she said, "You mean Adrian Fellowes?" Al'mah's face was in the shadow, but her voice was full of storm. "You took him from me, but you were only one," she said sharply and painfully. "I found it out at last. I suspected first at Glencader. Then at last I knew. It was an angry, contemptuous letter from you. I had opened it. I understood. When everything was clear, when there was no doubt, when I knew he had tried to hurt little Jigger's sister, when he had made up his mind to go abroad, then, I killed him. Then--I killed him." Jasmine's cheek was white as Al'mah's apron; but she did not shrink. She came a step nearer, and peered into Al'mah's face, as though to read her inmost mind, as though to see if what she said was really true. She saw not a quiver of agitation, not the faintest horror of memory; only the reflective look of accomplished purpose. "You--are you insane?" Jasmine exclaimed in a whisper. "Do you know what you have said?" Al'mah smoothed her apron softly. "Perfectly. I do not think I am insane. I seem not to be. One cannot do insane things here. This is the place of the iron rule. Here we cure madness--the madness of war and other madnesses." "You had loved him, yet you killed him!" "You would have killed him though you did not love him. Yes, of course--I know that. Your love was better placed; but it was like a little bird caught by the hawk in the upper air--its flight was only a little one before the hawk found it. Yes, you would have killed Adrian, as I did if you had had the courage. You wanted to do it, but I did it. Do you remember when I sang for you on the evening of that day he died? I sang, 'More Was Lost at Mohacksfield.' As soon as I saw your face that evening I felt you knew all. You had been to his rooms and found him dead. I was sure of that. You remember how La Tosca killed Scarpia? You remember how she felt? I felt so--just like that. I never hesitated. I knew what I wanted to do, and I did it." "How did you kill him?" Jasmine asked in that matter-of-fact way which comes at those times when the senses are numbed by tragedy. "You remember the needle--Mr. Mappin's needle? I knew Adrian had it. He showed it to me. He could not keep the secret. He was too weak. The needle was in his pocket-book--to kill me with some day perhaps. He certainly had not the courage to kill himself.... I went to see him. He was dressing. The pocket-book lay on the table. As I said, he had showed it to me. While he was busy I abstracted the needle. He talked of his journey abroad. He lied--nothing but lies, about himself, about everything. When he had said enough,--lying was easier to him than anything else--I told him the truth. Then he went wild. He caught hold of me as if to strangle me.... He did not realize the needlepoint when it caught him. If he did, it must have seemed to him only the prick of a pin.... But in a few minutes it was all over. He died quite peacefully. But it was not very easy getting him on the sofa. He looked sleeping as he lay there. You saw. He would never lie any more to women, to you or to me or any other. It is a good thing to stop a plague, and the simplest way is the best. He was handsome, and his music was very deceiving. It was almost good of its kind, and it was part of him. When I look back I find only misery. Two wicked men hurt me. They spoiled my life, first one and then another; and I went from bad to worse. At least he"--she pointed to the other room--"he had some courage at the very last. He fought, he braved death. The other--you remember the Glencader Mine. Your husband and Ian Stafford went down, and Lord Tynemouth was ready to go, but Adrian would not go. Then it was I began to hate him. That was the beginning. What happened had to be. I was to kill him; and I did. It avenged me, and it avenged your husband. I was glad of that, for Rudyard Byng had done so much for me: not alone that he saved me at the opera, you remember, but other good things. I did his work for him with Adrian." "Have you no fear--of me?" Jasmine asked. "Fear of--you? Why?" "I might hate you--I might tell." Al'mah made a swift gesture of protest. "Do not say foolish things. You would rather die than tell. You should be grateful to me. Some one had to kill him. There was Rudyard Byng, Ian Stafford, or yourself. It fell to me. I did your work. You will not tell; but it would not matter if you did. Nothing would happen--nothing at all. Think it out, and you will see why." Jasmine shuddered violently. Her body was as cold as ice. "Yes, I know. What are you going to do after the war?" "Back to Covent Garden perhaps; or perhaps there will be no 'after the war.' It may all end here. Who knows--who cares!" Jasmine came close to her. For an instant a flood of revulsion had overpowered her; but now it was all gone. "We pay for all the wrong we do. We pay for all the good we get"--once Ian Stafford had said that, and it rang in her ears now. Al'mah would pay, and would pay here--here in this world. Meanwhile, Al'mah was a woman who, like herself, had suffered. "Let me be your friend; let me help you," Jasmine said, and she took both of Almah's hands in her own. Somehow Jasmine's own heart had grown larger, fuller, and kinder all at once. Until lately she had never ached to help the world or any human being in all her life; there had never been any of the divine pity which finds its employ in sacrifice. She had been kind, she had been generous, she had in the past few months given service unstinted; but it was more as her own cure for her own ills than yearning compassion for all those who were distressed "in mind, body, or estate." But since last evening, in the glimmer of the stars, when Rudyard went from her with bitter anger on his lips, and a contempt which threw her far behind him,--since that hour, when, in her helplessness, she had sunk to the ground with an appeal to Something outside herself, her heart had greatly softened. Once before she had appealed to the Invisible--that night before her catastrophe, when she wound her wonderful hair round her throat and drew it tighter and tighter, and had cried out to the beloved mother she had never known. But her inborn, her cultivated, her almost invincible egoism, had not even then been scattered by the bitter helplessness of her life. That cry last night was a cry to the Something behind all. Only in the last few hours--why, she knew not--her heart had found a new sense. She felt her soul's eyes looking beyond herself. The Something that made her raise her eyes to the stars, which seemed a pervading power, a brooding tenderness and solicitude, had drawn her mind away into the mind of humanity. Her own misery now at last enabled her to see, however dimly, the woes of others; and it did not matter whether the woes were penalties or undeserved chastisement; the new-born pity of her soul made no choice and sought no difference. As the singing-woman's hands lay in hers, a flush slowly spread over Al'mah's face, and behind the direct power of her eyes there came a light which made them aglow with understanding. "I always thought you selfish--almost meanly selfish," Al'mah said presently. "I thought you didn't know any real life, any real suffering--only the surface, only disappointment at not having your own happiness; but now I see that was all a mask. You understand why I did what I did?" "I understand." "I suppose there would be thousands who would gladly see me in prison and on the scaffold--if they knew--" Pain travelled across Jasmine's face. She looked Al'mah in the eyes with a look of reproof and command. "Never, never again speak of that to me or to any living soul," she said. "I will try to forget it; you must put it behind you." . . . Suddenly she pointed to the other room where Al'mah's husband lay dead. "When is he to be buried?" she asked. "In an hour." A change came over Al'mah's face again, and she stood looking dazedly at the door of the room, behind which the dead man lay. "I cannot realize it. It does not seem real," she said. "It was all so many centuries ago, when I was young and glad." Jasmine admonished her gently and drew her away. A few moments later an officer approached them from one of the wards. At that moment the footsteps of the three were arrested by the booming of artillery. It seemed as though all the guns of both armies were at work. The officer's eyes blazed, and he turned to the two women with an impassioned gesture. "Byng and the S.A.'s have done their trick," he said. "If they hadn't, that wouldn't be going on. It was to follow--a general assault--if Byng pulled it off. Old Blunderbuss has done it this time. His combination's working all right--thanks to Byng's lot." As he hurried on he was too excited to see Jasmine's agitation. "Wait!" Jasmine exclaimed, as he went quickly down the hallway. But her voice was scarcely above a whisper, and he did not hear. She wanted to ask him if Rudyard was safe. She did not realize that he could not know. But the thunder of artillery told her that Rudyard had had his fighting at daybreak, as he had said. CHAPTER XXXIII "ALAMACHTIG!" When Rudyard flung himself on the grey mare outside Jasmine's window at the Stay Awhile Hospital, and touched her flank with his heel, his heart was heavy with passion, his face hard with humiliation and defeat. He had held out the hand of reconciliation, and she had met it with scorn. He had smothered his resentment, and let the light of peace in upon their troubles, and she had ruthlessly drawn a black curtain between them. He was going upon as dangerous a task as could be set a soldier, from which he might never return, and she had not even said a God-be-with-you--she who had lain in his bosom, been so near, so dear, so cherished: "For Time and Change estrange, estrange-- And, now they have looked and seen us, Oh, we that were dear, we are all too near, With the thick of the world between us!" How odd it seemed that two beings who had been all in all to each other, who in the prime of their love would have died of protesting shame, if they had been told that they would change towards each other, should come to a day when they would be less to each other than strangers, less and colder and farther off! It is because some cannot bear this desecration of ideals, this intolerable loss of life's assets, that they cling on and on, long after respect and love have gone, after hope is dead. There had been times in the past few months when such thoughts as these vaguely possessed Rudyard's mind; but he could never, would never, feel that all was over, that the book of Jasmine's life was closed to him; not even when his whole nature was up in arms against the injury she had done him. But now, as the grey mare reached out to achieve the ground his troopers had covered before him, his brain was in a storm of feeling. After all, what harm had he done her, that he should be treated so? Was he the sinner? Why should he make the eternal concession? Why should he be made to seem the one needing forgiveness? He did not know why. But at the bottom of everything lay a something--a yearning--which would not be overwhelmed. In spite of wrong and injury, it would live on and on; and neither Time nor crime, nor anything mortal could obliterate it from his heart's oracles. The hoofs of the grey mare fell like the soft thud of a hammer in the sand, regular and precise. Presently the sound and the motion lulled his senses. The rage and humiliation grew less, his face cooled. His head, which had been bent, lifted and his face turned upwards to the stars. The influence of an African night was on him. None that has not felt it can understand it so cold, so sweet, so full of sleep, so stirring with an underlife. Many have known the breath of the pampas beyond the Amazon; the soft pungency of the wattle blown across the salt-bush plains of Australia; the friendly exhilaration of the prairie or the chaparral; the living, loving loneliness of the desert; but yonder on the veld is a life of the night which possesses all the others have, and something of its own besides; something which gets into the bones and makes for forgetfulness of the world. It lifts a man away from the fret of life, and sets his feet on the heights where lies repose. The peace of the stars crept softly into Rudyard's heart as he galloped gently on to overtake his men. His pulses beat slowly once again, his mind regained its poise. He regretted the oath he uttered, as he left Jasmine; he asked himself if, after all, everything was over and done. How good the night suddenly seemed! No, it was not all over--unless, unless, indeed, in this fight coming on with the daybreak, Fate should settle it all by doing with him as it had done with so many thousands of others in this war. But even then, would it be all over? He was a primitive man, and he raised his face once more to the heavens. He was no longer the ample millionaire, sitting among the flesh-pots; he was a lean, simple soldier eating his biscuit as though it were the product of the chef of the Cafe Voisin; he was the fighter sleeping in a blanket in the open; he was a patriot after his kind; he was the friend of his race and the lover of one woman. Now he drew rein. His regiment was just ahead. Daybreak was not far off, and they were near the enemy's position. In a little while, if they were not surprised, they would complete a movement, take a hill, turn the flank of the foe, and, if designed supports came up, have the Boers at a deadly disadvantage. Not far off to the left of him and his mounted infantry there were coming on for this purpose two batteries of artillery and three thousand infantry--Leary's brigade, which had not been in the action the day before at Wortmann's Drift. But all depended on what he was able to do, what he and his hard-bitten South Africans could accomplish. Well, he had no doubt. War was part chance, part common sense, part the pluck and luck of the devil. He had ever been a gambler in the way of taking chances; he had always possessed ballast even when the London life had enervated, had depressed him; and to men of his stamp pluck is a commonplace: it belongs as eyes and hands and feet belong. Dawn was not far away, and before daybreak he must have the hill which was the key to the whole position, which commanded the left flank of the foe. An hour or so after he got it, if the artillery and infantry did their portion, a great day's work would be done for England; and the way to the relief of the garrison beyond the mountains would be open. The chance to do this thing was the reward he received for his gallant and very useful fight at Wortmann's Drift twenty-four hours before. It would not do to fail in justifying the choice of the Master Player, who had had enough bad luck in the campaign so far. The first of his force to salute him in the darkness was his next in command, Barry Whalen. They had been together in the old Rand Rifles, and had, in the words of the Kaffir, been as near as the flea to the blanket, since the day when Rudyard discovered that Barry Whalen was on the same ship bound for the seat of war. They were not youngsters, either of them; but they had the spring of youth in them, and a deep basis of strength and force; and they knew the veld and the veld people. There was no trick of the veldschoen copper for which they were not ready; and for any device of Kruger's lambs they were prepared to go one better. As Barry Whalen had said, "They'll have to get up early in the morning if they want to catch us." This morning the Boers would not get up early enough; for Rudyard's command had already reached the position from which they could do their work with good chances in their favour; and there had been no sign of life from the Boer trenches in the dusk--naught of what chanced at Magersfontein. Not a shot had been fired, and there would certainly have been firing if the Boer had known; for he could not allow the Rooinek to get to the point where his own position would be threatened or commanded. When Kruger's men did discover the truth, there would be fighting as stiff as had been seen in this struggle for half a continent. "Is it all right?" whispered Rudyard, as Barry VVhalen drew up by him. "Not a sound from them--not a sign." "Their trenches should not be more than a few hundred yards on, eh?" "Their nearest trenches are about that. We are just on the left of Hetmeyer's Kopje." "Good. Let Glossop occupy the kopje with his squadrons, while we take the trenches. If we can force them back on their second line of trenches, and keep them there till our supports come up, we shall be all right." "When shall we begin, sir?" asked Barry. "Give orders to dismount now. Get the horses in the lee of the kopje, and we'll see what Brother Boer thinks of us after breakfast." Rudyard took out a repeating-watch, and held it in his closed palm. As it struck, he noted the time. His words were abrupt but composed. "Ten minutes more and we shall have the first streak of dawn. Then move. We shall be on them before they know it." Barry Whalen made to leave, then turned back. Rudyard understood. They clasped hands. It was the grip of men who knew each other--knew each other's faults and weaknesses, yet trusted with a trust which neither disaster nor death could destroy. "My girl--if anything happens to me," Barry said. "You may be sure--as if she were my own," was Rudyard's reply. "If I go down, find my wife at the Stay Awhile Hospital. Tell her that the day I married her was the happiest day of my life, and that what I said then I thought at the last. Everything else is straightened out--and I'll not forget your girl, Barry. She shall be as my own if things should happen that way." "God bless you, old man," whispered Barry. "Goodbye." Then he recovered himself and saluted. "Is that all, sir?" "Au revoir, Barry," came the answer; then a formal return of the salute. "That is all," he added brusquely. They moved forward to the regiment, and the word to dismount was given softly. When the forces crept forward again, it was as infantrymen, moving five paces apart, and feeling their way up to the Boer trenches. Dawn. The faintest light on the horizon, as it were a soft, grey glimmer showing through a dark curtain. It rises and spreads slowly, till the curtain of night becomes the veil of morning, white and kind. Then the living world begins to move. Presently the face of the sun shines through the veil, and men's bodies grow warm with active being, and the world stirs with busy life. On the veld, with the first delicate glow, the head of a meerkat, or a springbok, is raised above the gray-brown grass; herds of cattle move uneasily. Then a bird takes flight across the whitening air, another, and then another; the meerkat sits up and begs breakfast of the sun; lizards creep out upon the stones; a snake slides along obscenely foraging. Presently man and beast and all wild things are afoot or a-wing, as though the world was new-created; as though there had never been any mornings before, and this was not the monotonous repetition of a million mornings, when all things living begin the world afresh. But nowhere seems the world so young and fresh and glad as on the sun-warmed veld. Nowhere do the wild roses seem so pure, or are the aloes so jaunty and so gay. The smell of the karoo bush is sweeter than attar, and the bog-myrtle and mimosa, where they shelter a house or fringe a river, have a look of Arcady. It is a world where any mysterious thing may happen--a world of five thousand years ago--the air so light, so sweetly searching and vibrating, that Ariel would seem of the picture, and gleaming hosts of mailed men, or vast colonies of green-clad archers moving to virgin woods might belong. Something frightens the timid spirit of a springbok, and his flight through the grass is like a phrase of music on a wilful adventure; a bird hears the sighing of the breeze in the mimosa leaves or the swaying shrubs, and in disdain of such slight performance flings out a song which makes the air drunken with sweetness. A world of light, of commendable trees, of grey grass flecked with flowers, of life having the supreme sense of a freedom which has known no check. It is a life which cities have not spoiled, and where man is still in touch with the primeval friends of man; where the wildest beast and the newest babe of a woman have something in common. Drink your fill of the sweet intoxicating air with eyes shut till the lungs are full and the heart beats with new fulness; then open them upon the wide sunrise and scan the veld so full of gracious odour. Is it not good and glad? And now face the hills rising nobly away there to the left, the memorable and friendly hills. Is it not-- Upon the morning has crept suddenly a black cloud, although the sun is shining brilliantly. A moment before the dawn all was at peace on the veld and among the kopjes, and only the contented sighing of men and beasts broke the silence, or so it seemed; but with the glimmer of light along the horizon came a change so violent that all the circle of vision was in a quiver of trouble. Affrighted birds, in fluttering bewilderment, swept and circled aimlessly through the air with strange, half-human cries; the jackal and the meerkat, the springbok and the rheebok, trembled where they stood, with heads uplifted, vaguely trying to realize the Thing which was breaking the peace of their world; useless horses which had been turned out of the armies of Boers and British galloped and stumbled and plunged into space in alarm; for they knew what was darkening the morning. They had suffered the madness of battle, and they realized it at its native first value. There was a battle forward on the left flank of the Boer Army. Behind Hetmeyer's Kopje were the horses of the men whom Rudyard Byng had brought to take a position and hold it till support came and this flank of the Farmer's Army was turned; but the men themselves were at work on the kopjes--the grim work of dislodging the voortrekker people from the places where they burrowed like conies among the rocks. Just before dawn broke Byng's men were rushing the outer trenches. These they cleared with the wild cries of warriors whose blood was in a tempest. Bayonets dripped red, rifles were fired at hand-to-hand range, men clubbed their guns and fought as men fought in the days when the only fighting was man to man, or one man to many men. Here every "Boojer" and Rooinek was a champion. The Boer fell back because he was forced back by men who were men of the veld like himself; and the Briton pressed forward because he would not be denied; because he was sick of reverses; of going forward and falling back; of taking a position with staggering loss and then abandoning it; of gaining a victory and then not following it up; of having the foe in the hollow of the hand and hesitating to close it with a death-grip; of promising relief to besieged men, and marking time when you had gained a foothold, instead of gaining a foothold farther on. Byng's men were mostly South-Africans born, who had lived and worked below the Zambesi all their lives; or else those whose blood was in a fever at the thought that a colony over which the British flag flew should be trod by the feet of an invader, who had had his own liberty and independence secured by that flag, but who refused to white men the status given to "niggers" in civilized states. These fighters under Byng had had their fill of tactics and strategy which led nowhere forward; and at Wortmann's Drift the day before they had done a big thing for the army with a handful of men. They could ride like Cossacks, they could shoot like William Tell, and they had a mind to be the swivel by which the army of Queen Victoria should swing from almost perpetual disaster, in large and small degree, to victory. From the first trenches on and on to the second trenches higher up! But here the Boer in his burrow with his mauser rifle roaring, and his heart fierce with hatred and anger at the surprise, laid down to the bloody work with an ugly determination to punish remorselessly his fellow-citizens of the veld and the others. It was a fire which only bullet-proof men could stand, and these were but breasts of flesh and muscle, though the will was iron. Up, up, and up, struggled these men of the indomitable will. Step by step, while man after man fell wounded or dead, they pushed forward, taking what cover was possible; firing as steadily as at Aldershot; never wasting shots, keeping the eye vigilant for the black slouch hat above the rocks, which told that a Boer's head was beneath it, and might be caught by a lightning shot. Step by step, man by man, troop by troop, they came nearer to the hedges of stone behind which an inveterate foe with grim joy saw a soldier fall to his soft-nosed bullet; while far down behind these men of a forlorn hope there was hurrying up artillery which would presently throw its lyddite and its shrapnel on the top of the hill up where hundreds of Boers held, as they thought, an impregnable position. At last with rushes which cost them almost as dearly in proportion as the rush at Balaclava cost the Light Brigade, Byng's men reached the top, mad with the passion of battle, vengeful in spirit because of the comrades they had lost; and the trenches emptied before them. As they were forsaken, men fought hand to hand and as savagely as ever men fought in the days of Rustum. In one corner, the hottest that the day saw, Rudyard and Barry Whalen and a scattered handful of men threw themselves upon a greatly larger number of the enemy. For a moment a man here and there fought for his life against two or three of the foe. Of these were Rudyard and Barry Whalen. The khaki of the former was shot through in several places, he had been slashed in the cheek by a bullet, and a bullet had also passed through the muscle of his left forearm; but he was scarcely conscious of it. It seemed as though Fate would let no harm befall him; but, in the very moment, when on another part of the ridge his men were waving their hats in victory, three Boers sprang up before him, ragged and grim and old, but with the fire of fanaticism and race-hatred in their eyes. One of them he accounted for, another he wounded, but the wounded voortrekker--a giant of near seven feet clubbed his rifle, and drove at him. Rudyard shot at close quarters again, but his pistol missed fire. Just as the rifle of his giant foe swung above him, Byng realized that the third Boer was levelling a rifle directly at his breast. His eyes involuntarily closed as though to draw the curtain of life itself, but, as he did so, he heard a cry--the wild, hoarse cry of a voice he knew so well. "Baas! Baas!" it called. Then two shots came simultaneously, and the clubbed rifle brought him to the ground. "Baas! Baas!" The voice followed him, as he passed into unconsciousness. Barry Whalen had seen Rudyard's danger, but had been unable to do anything. His hands were more than full, his life in danger; but in the instant that he had secured his own safety, he heard the cry of "Baas! Baas!" Then he saw the levelled rifle fall from the hands of the Boer who had aimed at Byng, and its owner collapse in a heap. As Rudyard fell beneath the clubbed rifle he heard the cry, "Baas! Baas!" again, and saw an unkempt figure darting among the rocks. His own pistol brought down the old Boer who had felled Byng, and then he realized who it was had cried out, "Baas!" The last time he had heard that voice was in Park Lane, when Byng, with sjambok, drove a half-caste valet into the street. It was the voice of Krool. And Krool was now bending over Rudyard's body, raising his head and still murmuring, "Baas--Baas!" Krool's rifle had saved Rudyard from death by killing one of his own fellow-fighters. Much as Barry Whalen loathed the man, this act showed that Krool's love for the master who had sjamboked him was stronger than death. Barry, himself bleeding from slight wounds, stooped over his unconscious friend with a great anxiety. "No, it is nothing," Krool said, with his hand on Rudyard's breast. "The left arm, it is hurt, the head not get all the blow. Alamachtig, it is good! The Baas--it is right with the Baas." Barry Whalen sighed with relief. He set about to restore Rudyard, as Krool prepared a bandage for the broken head. Down in the valley the artillery was at work. Lyddite and shrapnel and machine-guns were playing upon the top of the ridge above them, and the infantry--Humphrey's and Blagdon's men--were hurrying up the slope which Byng's pioneers had cleared, and now held. From this position the enemy could be driven from their main position on the summit, because they could be swept now by artillery fire from a point as high as their own. "A good day's work, old man," said Barry Whalen to the still unconscious figure. "You've done the trick for the Lady at Windsor this time. It's a great sight better business than playing baccarat at DeLancy Scovel's." Cheering came from everywhere, cries of victory filled the air. As he looked down the valley Barry could see the horses they had left behind being brought, under cover of the artillery and infantry fire, to the hill they had taken. The grey mare would be among them. But Rudyard would not want the grey mare yet awhile. An ambulance-cart was the thing for him. Barry would have given much for a flask of brandy. A tablespoonful would bring Rudyard back. A surgeon was not needed, however. Krool's hands had knowledge. Barry remembered the day when Wallstein was taken ill in Rudyard's house, and how Krool acted with the skill of a Westminster sawbones. Suddenly a bugle-call sounded, loud and clear and very near them. Byng had heard that bugle call again and again in this engagement, and once he had seen the trumpeter above the trenches, sounding the advance before more than a half-dozen men had reached the defences of the Boers. The same trumpeter was now running towards them. He had been known in London as Jigger. In South Africa he was familiarly called Little Jingo. His face was white as he leaned over Barry Whalen to look at Rudyard, but suddenly the blood came back to his cheek. "He wants brandy," Jigger said. "Well, go and get it," said Barry sharply. "I've got it here," was the reply; and he produced a flask. "Well, I'm damned!" said Barry. "You'll have a gun next, and fire it too!" "A 4.7," returned Jigger impudently. As the flask was at Rudyard's lips, Barry Whalen said to Krool, "What do you stay here as--deserter or prisoner? It's got to be one or the other." "Prisoner," answered Krool. Then he added, "See--the Baas." Rudyard's eyes were open. "Prisoner--who is a prisoner?" he asked feebly. "Me, Baas," whispered Krool, leaning over him. "He saved your life, Colonel," interposed Barry Whalen. "I thought it was the brandy," said Jigger with a grin. CHAPTER XXXIV "THE ALPINE FELLOW" To all who fought in the war a change of some sort had come. Those who emerged from it to return to England or her far Dominions, or to stay in the land of the veld, of the kranz and the kloof and the spruit, were never the same again. Something came which, to a degree, transformed them, as the salts of the water and the air permeate the skin and give the blood new life. None escaped the salt of the air of conflict. The smooth-faced young subaltern who but now had all his life before him, realized the change when he was swept by the leaden spray of death on Spion Kop, and received in his face of summer warmth, or in his young exultant heart, the quietus to all his hopes, impulses and desires. The young find no solace or recompense in the philosophy of those who regard life as a thing greatly over-estimated. Many a private grown hard of flesh and tense of muscle, with his scant rations and meagre covering in the cold nights, with his long marches and fruitless risks and futile fightings, when he is shot down, has little consolation, save in the fact that the thing he and his comrades and the regiment and the army set out to do is done. If he has to do so, he gives his life with a stony sense of loss which has none of the composure of those who have solace in thinking that what they leave behind has a constantly decreasing value. And here and there some simple soul, more gifted than his comrades, may touch off the meaning of it all, as it appears to those who hold their lives in their hands for a nation's sake, by a stroke of mordant comment. So it was with that chess-playing private from New Zealand of whom Barry Whalen told Ian Stafford. He told it a few days after Rudyard Byng had won that fight at Hetmeyer's Kopje, which had enabled the Master Player to turn the flank of the Boers, though there was yet grim frontal work to do against machines of Death, carefully hidden and masked on the long hillsides, which would take staggering toll of Britain's manhood. "From behind Otago there in New Zealand, he came," began Barry, "as fine a fella of thirty-three as ever you saw. Just come, because he heard old Britain callin'. Down he drops the stock-whip, away he shoves the plough, up he takes his little balance from the bank, sticks his chess-box in his pocket, says 'so-long' to his girl, and treks across the world, just to do his whack for the land that gave him and all his that went before him the key to civilization, and how to be happy though alive.... He was the real thing, the ne plus ultra, the I-stand-alone. The other fellas thought him the best of the best. He was what my father used to call 'a wide man.' He was in and out of a fight with a quirk at the corner of his mouth, as much as to say, 'I've got the hang of this, and it's different from what I thought; but that doesn't mean it hasn't got to be done, and done in style. It's the has-to-be.' And when they got him where he breathes, he fished out the little ivory pawn and put it on a stone at his head, to let it tell his fellow-countrymen how he looked at it--that he was just a pawn in the great game. The game had to be played, and won, and the winner had to sacrifice his pawns. He was one of the sacrifices. Well, I'd like a tombstone the same as that fella from New Zealand, if I could win it as fair, and see as far." Stafford raised his head with a smile of admiration. "Like the ancients, like the Oriental Emperors to-day, he left his message. An Alexander, with not one world conquered." "I'm none so sure of that," was Barry's response. "A man that could put such a hand on himself as he did has conquered a world. He didn't want to go, but he went as so many have gone hereabouts. He wanted to stay, but he went against his will, and--and I wish that the grub-hunters, and tuft-hunters, and the blind greedy majority in England could get hold of what he got hold of. Then life 'd be a different thing in Thamesfontein and the little green islands." "You were meant for a Savonarola or a St. Francis, my bold grenadier," said Stafford with a friendly nod. "I was meant for anything that comes my way, and to do everything that was hard enough." Stafford waved a hand. "Isn't this hard enough--a handful of guns and fifteen hundred men lost in a day, and nothing done that you can put in an envelope and send 'to the old folks at 'ome?'" "Well, that's all over, Colonel. Byng has turned the tide by turning the Boer flank. I'm glad he's got that much out of his big shindy. It'll do him more good than his millions. He was oozing away like a fat old pine-tree in London town. He's got all his balsam in his bones now. I bet he'll get more out of this thing than anybody, more that's worth having. He doesn't want honours or promotion; he wants what 'd make his wife sorry to be a widow; and he's getting it." "Let us hope that his wife won't be put to the test," responded Stafford evenly. Barry looked at him a little obliquely. "She came pretty near it when we took Hetmeyer's Kopje." "Is he all right again?" Stafford asked; then added quickly, "I've had so much to do since the Hetmeyer business that I have not seen Byng." Barry spoke very carefully and slowly. "He's over at Brinkwort's Farm for a while. He didn't want to go to the hospital, and the house at the Farm is good enough for anybody. Anyhow, you get away from the smell of disinfectants and the business of the hospital. It's a snigger little place is Brinkwort's Farm. There's an orchard of peaches and oranges, and there are pomegranate hedges, and plenty of nice flowers in the garden, and a stoep made for candidates for Stellenbosch--as comfortable as the room of a Rand director." "Mrs. Byng is with him?" asked Stafford, his eyes turned towards Brinkwort's Farm miles away. He could see the trees, the kameel-thorn, the blue-gums, the orange and peach trees surrounding it, a clump or cloud of green in the veld. "No, Mrs. Byng's not with him," was the reply. Stafford stirred uneasily, a frown gathered, his eyes took on a look of sombre melancholy. "Ah," he said at length, "she has returned to Durban, then?" "No. She got a chill the night of the Hetmeyer coup, and she's in bed at the hospital." Stafford controlled himself. "Is it a bad chill?" he asked heavily. "Is she dangerously ill?" His voice seemed to thicken. "She was; but she's not so bad that a little attention from a friend would make her worse. She never much liked me; but I went just the same, and took her some veld-roses." "You saw her?" Stafford's voice was very low. "Yes, for a minute. She's as thin as she once wasn't," Barry answered, "but twice as beautiful. Her eyes are as big as stars, and she can smile still, but it's a new one--a war-smile, I expect. Everything gets a turn of its own at the Front." "She was upset and anxious about Byng, I suppose?" Stafford asked, with his head turned away from this faithfulest of friends, who would have died for the man now sitting on the stoep of Brinkwort's house, looking into the bloom of the garden. "Naturally," was the reply. Barry Whalen thought carefully of what he should say, because the instinct of the friend who loved his friend had told him that, since the night at De Lancy Scovel's house when the name of Mennaval had been linked so hatefully with that of Byng's wife, there had been a cloud over Rudyard's life; and that Rudyard and Jasmine were not the same as of yore. "Naturally she was upset," he repeated. "She made Al'mah go and nurse Byng." "Al'mah," repeated Stafford mechanically. "Al'mah!" His mind rushed back to that night at the opera, when Rudyard had sprung from the box to the stage and had rescued Al'mah from the flames. The world had widened since then. Al'mah and Jasmine had been under the same roof but now; and Al'mah was nursing Jasmine's husband--surely life was merely farce and tragedy. At this moment an orderly delivered a message to Barry Whalen. He rose to go, but turned back to Stafford again. "She'd be glad to see you, I'm certain," he said. "You never can tell what a turn sickness will take in camp, and she's looking pretty frail. We all ought to stand by Byng and whatever belongs to Byng. No need to say that to you; but you've got a lot of work and responsibility, and in the rush you mightn't realize that she's more ill than the chill makes her. I hope you won't mind my saying so in my stupid way." Stafford rose and grasped his hand, and a light of wonderful friendliness and comradeship shone in his eyes. "Beau chevalier! Beau chevalier!" was all he said, and impulsive Barry Whalen went away blinking; for hard as iron as he was physically, and a fighter of courage, his temperament got into his eyes or at his lips very easily. Stafford looked after him admiringly. "Lucky the man who has such a friend," he said aloud--"Sans peur et sans reproche! He could not betray a "--the waving of wings above him caught his eye--"he could not betray an aasvogel." His look followed the bird of prey, the servitor of carrion death, as it flew down the wind. He had absorbed the salt of tears and valour. He had been enveloped in the Will that makes all wills as one, the will of a common purpose; and it had changed his attitude towards his troubles, towards his past, towards his future. What Barry had said to him, and especially the tale of the New Zealander, had revealed the change which had taken place. The War had purged his mind, cleared his vision. When he left England he was immersed in egoism, submerged by his own miseries. He had isolated himself in a lazaretto of self-reproach and resentment. The universe was tottering because a woman had played him false. Because of this obsession of self, he was eager to be done with it all, to pay a price which he might have paid, had it been possible to meet Rudyard pistol or sword in hand, and die as many such a man has done, without trying to save his own life or to take the life of another. That he could not do. Rudyard did not know the truth, had not the faintest knowledge that Jasmine had been more to himself than an old and dear friend. To pay the price in any other way than by eliminating himself from the equation was to smirch her name, be the ruin of a home, and destroy all hope for the future. It had seemed to him that there was no other way than to disappear honourably through one of the hundred gates which the war would open to him--to go where Death ambushed the reckless or the brave, and take the stroke meant for him, on a field of honour all too kind to himself and soothing to those good friends who would mourn his going, those who hoped for him the now unattainable things. In a spirit of stoic despair he had come to the seat of war. He had invited Destiny to sweep him up in her reaping, by placing himself in the ambit of her scythe; but the sharp reaping-hook had passed him by. The innumerable exits were there in the wall of life and none had opened to him; but since the evening when he saw Jasmine at the railway station, there had been an opening of doors in his soul hitherto hidden. Beyond these doors he saw glimpses of a new world--not like the one he had lived in, not so green, so various, or tumultuous, but it had the lure of that peace, not sterile or somnolent, which summons the burdened life, or the soul with a vocation, to the hood of a monk--a busy self-forgetfulness. Looking after Barry Whalen's retreating figure he saw this new, grave world opening out before him; and as the vision floated before his eyes, Barry's appeal that he should visit Jasmine at the hospital came to him. Jasmine suffered. He recalled Barry's words: "She's as thin as she once wasn't, but twice as beautiful. Her eyes are as big as stars, and she can smile still, but it's a new one--a war-smile, I expect. Everything gets a turn of its own at the Front." Jasmine suffered in body. He knew that she suffered in mind also. To go to her? Was that his duty? Was it his desire? Did his heart cry out for it either in pity--or in love? In love? Slowly a warm flood of feeling passed through him. It was dimly borne in on him, as he gazed at the hospital in the distance, that this thing called Love, which seizes upon our innermost selves, which takes up residence in the inner sanctuary, may not be dislodged. It stays on when the darkness comes, reigning in the gloom. Even betrayal, injury, tyranny, do not drive it forth. It continues. No longer is the curtain drawn aside for tribute, for appeal, or for adoration, but It remains until the last footfall dies in the temple, and the portals ate closed forever. For Stafford the curtain was drawn before the shrine; but love was behind the curtain still. He would not go to her as Barry had asked. There in Brinkwort's house in the covert of peaches and pomegranates was the man and the only man who should, who must, bring new bloom to her cheek. Her suffering would carry her to Rudyard at the last, unless it might be that one or the other of them had taken Adrian Fellowes' life. If either had done that, there could be no reunion. He did not know what Al'mah had told Jasmine, the thing which had cleared Jasmine's vision, and made possible a path which should lead from the hospital to the house among the orchard-trees at Brinkwort's Farm. No, he would not, could not go to Jasmine--unless, it might be, she was dying. A sudden, sharp anxiety possessed him. If, as Barry Whalen suggested, one of those ugly turns should come, which illnesses take in camp, and she should die without a friend near her, without Rudyard by her side! He mounted his horse, and rode towards the hospital. His inquiries at the hospital relieved his mind. "If there is no turn for the worse, no complications, she will go on all right, and will be convalescent in a few days," the medicine-man had said. He gave instructions for a message to be sent to him if there was any change for the worse. His first impulse, to tell them not to let her know he had inquired, he set aside. There must not be subterfuge or secrecy any longer. Let Destiny take her course. As he left the hospital, he heard a wounded Boer prisoner say to a Tommy who had fought with him on opposite sides in the same engagement, "Alles zal recht kom!" All will come right, was the English of it. Out of the agony of conflict would all come right--for Boer, for Briton, for Rudyard, for Jasmine, for himself, for Al'mah? As he entered his tent again, he was handed his mail, which had just arrived. The first letter he touched had the postmark of Durban. The address on the envelope was in the handwriting of Lady Tynemouth. He almost shrank from opening it, because of the tragedy which had come to the husband of the woman who had been his faithful friend over so many years. At an engagement a month before, Tynemouth had been blinded by shrapnel, and had been sent to Durban. To the two letters he had written there had come no answer until now; and he felt that this reply would be a plaint against Fate, a rebellion against the future restraint and trial and responsibility which would be put upon the wife, who was so much of the irresponsible world. After a moment, however, he muttered a reproach against his own darkness of spirit and his lack of faith in her womanliness, and opened the envelope. It was not the letter he had imagined and feared. It began by thanking him for his own letter, and then it plunged into the heart of her trouble: ".... Tynie is blind. He will never see again. But his face seems to me quite beautiful. It shines, Ian: beauty comes from within. Poor old Tynie, who would have thought that the world he loved couldn't make that light in his face! I never saw it there--did you? It is just giving up one's self to the Inevitable. I suppose we mostly are giving up ourselves to Ourselves, thinking always of our own pleasure and profit and pride, never being content, pushing on and on...., Ian, I'm not going to push on any more. I've done with the Climbers. There's too much of the Climbers in us all--not social climbing, I mean, but wanting to get somewhere that has something for us, out in the big material world. When I look at Tynie--he's lying there so peaceful--you might think it is a prison he is in. It isn't. He's set free into a world where he had never been. He's set free in a world of light that never blinds us. If he'd lived to be a hundred with the sight of his eyes, he'd never have known that there's a world that belongs to Allah,--I love that word, it sounds so great and yet so friendly, so gentler than the name by which we call the First One in our language and our religion--and that world is inside ourselves.... Tynie is always thinking of other people now, wondering what they are doing and how they are doing it. He was talking about you a little while ago, and so admiringly. It brought the tears to my eyes. Oh, I am so glad, Ian, that our friendship has always been so much on the surface, so 'void of offence'--is that the phrase? I can look at it without wincing; and I am glad. It never was a thing of importance to you, for I am not important, and there was no weight of life in it or in me. But even the butterfly has its uses, and maybe I was meant to play a little part in your big life. I like to think it was so. Sometimes a bright day gets a little more interest from the drone of the locust or the glow of a butterfly's wings. I'm not sure that the locust's droning and the bright flutter of the butterfly's wings are not the way Nature has of fastening the soul to the meaning of it all. I wonder if you ever heard the lines--foolish they read, but they are not: "'All summer long there was one little butterfly, Flying ahead of me, Wings red and yellow, a pretty little fellow, Flying ahead of me. One little butterfly, one little butterfly, What can his message be?-- All summer long, there was one little butterfly Flying ahead of me.' "It may be so that the poet meant the butterfly to mean the joy of things, the hope of things, the love of things flying ahead to draw us on and on into the sunlight and up the steeps, and over the higher hills. "Ian, I would like to be such a butterfly in your eyes at this moment; perhaps the insignificant means of making you see the near thing to do, and by doing it get a step on towards the Far Thing. You used always to think of the Far Thing. Ah, what ambition you had when I first knew you on the Zambesi, when the old red umbrella, but for you, would have carried me over into the mist and the thunder! Well, you have lost that ambition. I know why you came out here. No one ever told me. The thing behind the words in your letter tells me plainer than words. The last time I saw you in London--do you remember when it was? It was the day that Rudyard Byng drove Krool into Park Lane with the sjambok. Well, that last time, when I met you in the hall as we were both leaving a house of trouble, I felt the truth. Do you remember the day I went to see you when Mr. Mappin came? I felt the truth then more. I often wondered how I could ever help you in the old days. That was an ambition of mine. But I had no brains--no brains like Jasmine's and many another woman; and I was never able to do anything. But now I feel as I never felt anything before in my life. I feel that my time and my chance have come. I feel like a prophetess, like Miriam,--or was it Deborah?--and that I must wind the horn of warning as you walk on the edge of the precipice. "Ian, it's only little souls who do the work that should be left to Allah, and I don't believe that you can take the reins out of Allah's hands,--He lets you do it, of course, if you insist, for a wilful child must be taught his lesson--without getting smashed up at a sharp corner that you haven't learnt to turn. Ian, there's work for you to do. Even Tynie thinks that he can do some work still. He sees he can, as he never did before; and he talks of you as a man who can do anything if you will. He says that if England wanted a strong man before the war she will want a stronger man afterwards to pick up the pieces, and put them all together again. He says that after we win, reconstruction in South Africa will be a work as big as was ever given to a man, because, if it should fail, 'down will go the whole Imperial show'--that's Tynie's phrase. And he says, why shouldn't you do it here, or why shouldn't you be the man who will guide it all in England? You found the key to England's isolation, to her foreign problem,--I'm quoting Tynie--which meant that the other nations keep hands off in this fight; well, why shouldn't you find another key, that to the future of this Empire? You got European peace for England, and now the problem is how to make this Empire a real thing. Tynie says this, not me. His command of English is better than mine, but neither of us would make a good private secretary, if we had to write letters with words of over two syllables. I've told you what Tynie says, but he doesn't know at all what I know; he doesn't see the danger I see, doesn't realize the mad thing in your brain, the sad thing weighing down your heart--and hers. "Ian, I feel it on my own heart, and I want it lifted away. Your letter has only one word in it really. That word is Finis. I say, it must not, shall not, be Finis. Look at the escapes you have had in this war. Is not that enough to prove that you have a long way to go yet, and that you have to 'make good' the veld as you trek. To outspan now would be a crime. It would spoil a great life, it would darken memory--even mine, Ian. I must speak the truth. I want you, we all want you, to be the big man you are at heart. Do not be a Lassalle. It is too small. If one must be a slave, then let it be to something greater than one's self, higher--toweringly unattainably higher. Believe me, neither the girl you love nor any woman on earth is entitled to hold in slavery the energies and the mind and hopes of a man who can do big things--or any man at all. "Ian, Tynie and I have our trials, but we are going to live them down. At first Tynie wanted to die, but he soon said he would see it through--blind at forty. You have had your trials, you have them still; but every gift of man is yours, and every opportunity. Will you not live it all out to the end? Allah knows the exit He wants for us, and He must resent our breaking a way out of the prison of our own making. "You've no idea how this life of work with Jasmine has brought things home to me--and to Jasmine too. When I see the multitude of broken and maimed victims of war, well, I feel like Jeremiah; but I feel sad too that these poor fellows and those they love must suffer in order to teach us our lesson--us and England. Dear old friend, great man, I am going to quote a verse Tynie read to me last night--oh, how strange that seems! Yet it was so in a sense, he did read to me. Tynie made me say the words from the book, but he read into them all that they were, he that never drew a literary breath. It was a poem Jasmine quoted to him a fortnight ago--Browning's 'Grammarian,' and he stopped me at these words: "'Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights: Wait ye the warning? Our low life was the level's and the night's; He's for the morning.' "Tynie stopped me there, and said, 'That's Stafford. He's the Alpine fellow!' . . ." A few sentences more and then the letter ended on a note of courage, solicitude and friendship. And at the very last she said: "It isn't always easy to find the key to things, but you will find it, not because you are so clever, but because at heart you are so good.... We both send our love, and don't forget that England hasn't had a tenth of her share of Ian Stafford...." Then there followed a postscript which ran: "I always used to say, 'When my ship comes home,' I'd have this or that. Well, here is the ship--mine and Jasmine's, and it has come Home for me, and for Jasmine, too, I hope." Stafford looked out over the veld. He saw the light of the sun, the joy of summer, the flowers, the buoyant hills, where all the guns were silent now; he saw a blesbok in the distance leaping to join its fellows of a herd which had strayed across the fields of war; he felt that stir of vibrant life in the air which only the new lands know; and he raised his head with the light of resolve growing in his eyes. "Don't forget that England hasn't had a tenth of her share of Ian Stafford," Alice Tynemouth had said. Looking round, he saw men whose sufferings were no doubt as great as his own or greater; but they were living on for others' sakes. Despair retreated before a woman's insight. "The Alpine fellow" wanted to live now. CHAPTER XXXV AT BRINKWORT'S FARM "What are you doing here, Krool?" The face of the half-caste had grown more furtive than it was in the London days, and as he looked at Stafford now, it had a malignant expression which showed through the mask of his outward self-control. "I am prisoner," Krool answered thickly. "When--where?" Stafford inquired, his eye holding the other's. "At Hetmeyer's Kopje." "But what are you--a prisoner--doing here at Brinkwort's Farm?" "I was hurt. They take me hospital, but the Baas, he send for me." "They let you come without a guard ?" "No--not. They are outside"--Krool jerked a finger towards the rear of the house--"with the biltong and the dop." "You are a liar, Krool. There may be biltong, but there is no dop." "What matters!" Krool's face had a leer. He looked impudently at Stafford, and Stafford read the meaning behind the unveiled insolence: Krool knew what no one else but Jasmine and himself knew with absolute certainty. Krool was in his own country, more than half a savage, with the lust of war in his blood, with memories of a day in Park Lane when the sjambok had done its ugly work, and Ian Stafford had, as Krool believed, placed it in the hands of the Baas. It might be that this dark spirit, this Nibelung of the tragedy of the House of Byng, would even yet, when the way was open to a reconstructed life for Jasmine and Rudyard, bring catastrophe. The thought sickened him, and then black anger took possession of him. The look he cast on the bent figure before him in the threadbare frock-coat which had been taken from the back of some dead Boer, with the corded breeches stuck in boots too large for him, and the khaki hat which some vanished Tommy would never wear again, was resolute and vengeful. Krool must not stay at Brinkwort's Farm. He must be removed. If the Caliban told Rudyard what he knew, there could be but one end to it all; and Jasmine's life, if not ruined, must ever be, even at the best, lived under the cover of magnanimity and compassion. That would break her spirit, would take from her the radiance of temperament which alone could make life tolerable to her or to others who might live with her under the same roof. Anxiety possessed him, and he swiftly devised means to be rid of Krool before harm could be done. He was certain harm was meant--there was a look of semi-insanity in Krool's eyes. Krool must be put out of the way before he could speak with the Baas.... But how? With a great effort Stafford controlled himself. Krool must be got rid of at once, must be sent back to the prisoners' quarters and kept there. He must not see Byng now. In a few more hours the army would move on, leaving the prisoners behind, and Rudyard would presently move on with the army. This was Byng's last day at Brinkwort's Farm, to which he himself had come to-day lest Rudyard should take note of his neglect, and their fellow-officers should remark that the old friendship had grown cold, and perhaps begin to guess at the reason why. "You say the Baas sent for you?" he asked presently. "Yes." "To sjambok you again?" Krool made a gesture of contempt. "I save the Baas at Hetmeyer's Kopje. I kill Piet Graaf to do it." There was a look of assurance in the eyes of the mongrel, which sent a wave of coldness through Stafford's veins and gave him fresh anxiety. He was in despair. He knew Byng's great, generous nature, and he dreaded the inconsistency which such men show--forgiving and forgetting when the iron penalty should continue and the chains of punishment remain. He determined to know the worst. "Traitor all round!" he said presently with contempt. "You saved the Baas by killing Piet Graaf--have you told the Baas that? Has any one told the Baas that? The sjambok is the Baas' cure for the traitor, and sometimes it kills to cure. Do you think that the Baas would want his life through the killing of Piet Graaf by his friend Krool, the slim one from the slime?" As a sudden tempest twists and bends a tree, contorts it, bows its branches to the dust, transforms it from a thing of beauty to a hag of Walpurgis, so Stafford's words transformed Krool. A passion of rage possessed him. He looked like one of the creatures that waited on Wotan in the nether places. He essayed to speak, but at first could not. His body bent forward, and his fingers spread out in a spasm of hatred, then clinched with the stroke of a hammer on his knees, and again opened and shut in a gesture of loathsome cruelty. At length he spoke, and Stafford listened intently, for now Caliban was off his guard, and he knew the worst that was meant. "Ah, you speak of traitor--you! The sjambok for the traitor, eh? The sjambok--fifty strokes, a hunderd strokes--a t'ousand! Krool--Krool is a traitor, and the sjambok for him. What did he do? What did Krool do? He help Oom Paul against the Rooinek--against the Philistine. He help the chosen against the children of Hell. "What did Krool do? He tell Oom Paul how the thieves would to come in the night to sold him like sheep to a butcher, how the t'ousand wolves would swarm upon the sheepfold, and there would be no homes for the voortrekker and his vrouw, how the Outlander would sit on our stoeps and pick the peaches from our gardens. And he tell him other things good for him to hear." Stafford was conscious of the smell of orchard blossoms blown through the open window, of the odour of the pomegranate in the hedge; but his eyes were fascinated by the crouching passion of the figure before him and the dissonance of the low, unhuman voice. There was no pause in the broken, turgid torrent, which was like a muddy flood pouring over the boulders of a rapid. "Who the traitor is? Is it the man that tries to save his homeland from the wolf and the worm? I kill Piet Graaf to save the Baas. The Baas an' I, we understand--on the Limpopo we make the unie. He is the Baas, and I am his slave. All else nothing is. I kill all the people of the Baas' country, but I die for the Baas. The Baas kill me if he will it. So it was set down in the bond on the Limpopo. If the Baas strike, he strike; if he kill, he kill. It is in the bond, it is set down. All else go. Piet Graaf, he go. Oom Paul, he go. Joubert, Cronje, Botha, they all go, if the Baas speak. It is written so. On the Limpopo it is written. All must go, if the Baas speak--one, two, three, a t'ousand. Else the bond is water, and the spirits come in the night, and take you to the million years of torment. It is nothing to die--pain! But only the Baas is kill me. It is written so. Only the Baas can hurt me. Not you, nor all the verdomde Rooineks out there"--he pointed to the vast camp out on the veld--"nor the Baas' vrouw. Do I not know all about the Baas' vrouw! She cannot hurt me.. ." He spat on the ground. "Who is the traitor? Is it Krool? Did Krool steal from the Baas? Krool is the Baas' slave; it is only the friend of the Baas that steal from him--only him is traitor. I kill Piet Graaf to save the Baas. No one kills you to save the Baas! I saw you with your arms round the Baas' vrouw. So I go tell the Baas all. If he kill me--it is the Baas. It is written." He spat on the ground again, and his eyes grown red with his passion glowered on Stafford like those of some animal of the jungle. Stafford's face was white, and every nerve in his body seemed suddenly to be wrenched by the hand of torture. What right had he to resent this abominable tirade, this loathsome charge by such a beast? Yet he would have shot where he stood the fellow who had spoken so of "the Baas' vrouw," if it had not come to him with sudden conviction that the end was not to be this way. Ever since he had read Alice Tynemouth's letter a new spirit had been working in him. He must do nothing rash. There was enough stain on his hands now without the added stain of blood. But he must act; he must prevent Krool from telling the Baas. Yonder at the hospital was Jasmine, and she and her man must come together here in this peaceful covert before Rudyard went forward with the army. It must be so. Two sentries were beyond the doorway. He stepped quickly to the stoep and summoned them. They came. Krool watched with eyes that, at first, did not understand. Stafford gave an order. "Take the prisoner to the guard. They will at once march him back to the prisoners' camp." Now Krool understood, and he made as if to spring on Stafford, but a pistol suddenly faced him, and he knew well that what Stafford would not do in cold blood, he would do in the exercise of his duty and as a soldier before these Rooinek privates. He stood still; he made no resistance. But suddenly his voice rang out in a guttural cry--"Baas!" In an instant a hand was clapped on his mouth, and his own dirty neckcloth provided a gag. The storm was over. The native blood in him acknowledged the logic of superior force, and he walked out quietly between the sentries. Stafford's move was regular from a military point of view. He was justified in disposing of a dangerous and recalcitrant prisoner. He could find a sufficient explanation if he was challenged. As he turned round from the doorway through which Krool had disappeared, he saw Al'mah, who had entered from another room during the incident. A light came to Stafford's face. They two derelicts of life had much in common--the communion of sinners who had been so much sinned against. "I heard his last words about you and--her," she said in a low voice. "Where is Byng?" he asked anxiously. "In the kloof near by. He will be back presently." "Thank God!" Al'mah's face was anxious. "I don't know what you are going to say to him, or why you have come," she said, "but--" "I have come to congratulate him on his recovery." "I understand. I want to say some things to you. You should know them before you see him. There is the matter of Adrian Fellowes." "What about Adrian Fellowes?" Stafford asked evenly, yet he felt his heart give a bound and his brain throb. "Does it matter to you now? At the inquest you were--concerned." "I am more concerned now," he rejoined huskily. He suddenly held out a hand to her with a smile of rare friendliness. There came over him again the feeling he had at the hospital when they talked together last, that whatever might come of all the tragedy and sorrow around them they two must face irretrievable loss. She hesitated a moment, and then as she took his outstretched hand she said, "Yes, I will take it while I can." Her eyes went slowly round the room as though looking for something--some point where they might rest and gather courage maybe, then they steadied to his firmly. "You knew Adrian Fellowes did not die a natural death--I saw that at the inquest." "Yes, I knew." "It was a poisoned needle." "I know. I found the needle." "Ah! I threw it down afterwards. I forgot about it." Slowly the colour left Stafford's face, as the light of revelation broke in upon his brain. Why had he never suspected her? His brain was buzzing with sounds which came from inner voices--voices of old thoughts and imaginings, like little beings in a dark forest hovering on the march of the discoverer. She was speaking, but her voice seemed to come through a clouded medium from a great distance to him. "He had hurt me more than any other--than my husband or her. I did it. I would do it again.... I had been good to him.... I had suffered, I wanted something for all I had lost, and he was . . ." Her voice trailed away into nothing, then rose again presently. "I am not sorry. Perhaps you wonder at that. But no, I do not hate myself for it--only for all that went before it. I will pay, if I have to pay, in my own way.... Thousands of women die who are killed by hands that carry no weapon. They die of misery and shame and regret.... This one man died because ..." He did not hear, or if he heard he did not realize what she was saying now. One thought was ringing through his mind like bells pealing. The gulf of horrible suspicion between Rudyard and Jasmine was closed. So long as it yawned, so long as there was between them the accounting for Adrian Fellowes' death, they might have come together, but there would always have been a black shadow between--the shadow that hangs over the scaffold. "They should know the truth," he said almost peremptorily. "They both know," she rejoined calmly. "I told him this evening. On the day I saw you at the hospital, I told her." There was silence for a moment, and then he said: "She must come here before he joins his regiment." "I saw her last night at the hospital," Al'mah answered. "She was better. She was preparing to go to Durban. I did not ask her if she was coming, but I was sure she was not. So, just now, before you came, I sent a message to her. It will bring her.... It does not matter what a woman like me does." "What did you say to her?" "I wrote, 'If you wish to see him before the end, come quickly.' She will think he is dying." "If she resents the subterfuge?" "Risks must be taken. If he goes without their meeting--who can tell! Now is the time--now. I want to see it. It must be." He reached out both hands and took hers, while she grew pale. Her eyes had a strange childishly frightened look. "You are a good woman, Al'mah," he said. A quivering, ironical laugh burst from her lips. Then, suddenly, her eyes were suffused. "The world would call it the New Goodness then," she replied in a voice which told how deep was the well of misery in her being. "It is as old as Allah," he replied. "Or as old as Cain?" she responded, then added quickly, "Hush! He is coming." An instant afterwards she was outside among the peach trees, and Rudyard and Stafford faced each other in the room she had just left. As Al'mah stood looking into the quivering light upon the veld, her fingers thrust among the blossoms of a tree which bent over her, she heard horses' hoofs, and presently there came round the corner of the house two mounted soldiers who had brought Krool to Brinkwort's Farm. Their prisoner was secured to a stirrup-leather, and the neckcloth was still binding his mouth. As they passed, Krool turned towards the house, eyes showing like flames under the khaki trooper's hat, which added fresh incongruity to the frock-coat and the huge top-boots. The guard were now returning to their post at the door-way. "What has happened?" she asked, with a gesture towards the departing Krool. "A bit o' lip to Colonel Stafford, ma'am," answered one of the guard. "He's got a tongue like a tanner's vat, that goozer. Wants a lump o' lead in 'is baskit 'e does." "'E done a good turn at Hetmeyer's Kopje," added the Second. "If it hadn't been for 'im the S.A.'s would have had a new Colonel"--he jerked his head towards the house, from which came the murmur of men's voices talking earnestly. "Whatever 'e done it for, it was slim, you can stake a tidy lot on that, ma'am," interjected the First. "He's the bottom o' the sink, this half-caste Boojer is." The Second continued: "If I 'ad my way 'e'd be put in front at the next push-up, just where the mausers of his pals would get 'im. 'E's done a lot o' bitin' in 'is time--let 'im bite the dust now, I sez. I'm fair sick of treatin' that lot as if they was square fighters. Why, 'e'd fire on a nurse or an ambulanche, that tyke would." "There's lots like him in yonder," urged the First, as a hand was jerked forward towards the hills, "and we're goin' to get 'em this time--goin' to get 'em on the shovel. Their schanses and their kranzes and their ant-bear dugouts ain't goin' to help them this mop-up. We're goin' to get the tongue in the hole o' the buckle this time. It's over the hills and far away, and the Come-in-Elizas won't stop us. When the howitzers with their nice little balls of lyddite physic get opening their bouquets to-morrow--" "Who says to-morrow?" demanded the Second. "I says to-morrow. I know. I got ears, and 'im that 'as ears to 'ear let 'im 'ear--that's what the Scripture saith. I was brought up on the off side of a vicarage." He laughed eagerly at his own joke, chuckling till his comrade followed up with a sharp challenge. "I bet you never heard nothin' but your own bleatin's--not about wot the next move is, and w'en it is." The First made quick retort. "Then you lose your bet, for I 'eard Colonel Byng get 'is orders larst night--w'en you was sleepin' at your post, Willy. By to-morrow this time you'll see the whole outfit at it. You'll see the little billows of white rolling over the hills--that's shrapnel. You'll hear the rippin', zippin', zimmin' thing in the air wot makes you sick; for you don't know who it's goin' to 'it. That's shells. You'll hear a thousand blankets being shook--that's mausers and others. You'll see regiments marching out o' step, an' every man on his own, which is not how we started this war, not much. And where there's a bit o' rock, you say, 'Ere's a friend, and you get behind it like a man. And w'en there's nothing to get behind, you get in front, and take your chances, and you get there--right there, over the trenches, over the bloomin' Amalakites, over the hills and far away, where they want the relief they're goin' to get, or I'm a pansy blossom." "Well, to-morrow can't come quick enough for me," answered the Second. He straightened out his shoulders and eyed the hills in front of him with a calculating air, as though he were planning the tactics of the fight to come. "We'll all be in it--even you, ma'am," insinuated the First to Al'mah with a friendly nod. "But I'd ruther 'ave my job nor yours. I've done a bit o' nursin'--there was Bob Critchett that got a splinter o' shell in 'is 'ead, and there was Sergeant Hoyle and others. But it gits me where I squeak that kind o' thing do." Suddenly they brought their rifles to the salute, as a footstep sounded smartly on the stoep. It was Stafford coming from the house. He acknowledged the salute mechanically. His eyes were fastened on the distance. They had a rapt, shining look, and he walked like one in a pleasant dream. A moment afterwards he mounted his horse with the lightness of a boy, and galloped away. He had not seen Al'mah as he passed. In her fingers was crushed a bunch of orange blossoms. A heavy sigh broke from her lips. She turned to go within, and, as she did so, saw Rudyard Byng looking from the doorway towards the hospital where Jasmine was. "Will she come?" Al'mah asked herself, and mechanically she wiped the stain of the blossoms from her fingers. CHAPTER XXXVI SPRINGS OF HEALING Dusk had almost come, yet Jasmine had not arrived at Brinkwort's Farm, the urgency of Al'mah's message notwithstanding. As things stood, it was a matter of life and death; and to Al'mah's mind humanity alone should have sent Jasmine at once to her husband's side. Something of her old prejudice against Jasmine rose up again. Perhaps behind it all was involuntary envy of an invitation to happiness so freely laid at Jasmine's feet, but withheld from herself by Fate. Never had the chance to be happy or the obvious inducement to be good ever been hers. She herself had nothing, and Jasmine still had a chance for all to which she had no right. Her heart beat harder at the thought of it. She was of those who get their happiness first in making others happy--as she would have done with Blantyre, if she had had a chance; as even she tried to do with the man whom she had sent to his account with the firmness and fury of an ancient Greek. The maternal, the protective sense was big in her, and indirectly it had governed her life. It had sent her to South Africa--to protect the wretch who had done his best to destroy her; it had made her content at times as she did her nurse's work in what dreadful circumstances! It was the source of her revolt at Jasmine's conduct and character. But was it also that, far beneath her criticism of Jasmine, which was, after all, so little in comparison with the new-found affection she really had for her, there lay a kinship, a sympathy, a soul's rapprochement with Rudyard, which might, in happier circumstances, have become a mating such as the world knew in its youth? Was that also in part the cause of her anxiety for Rudyard, and of her sharp disapproval of Jasmine? Did she want to see Rudyard happy, no matter at what cost to Jasmine? Was it the everlasting feminine in her which would make a woman sacrifice herself for a man, if need be, in order that he might be happy? Was it the ancient tyrannical soul in her which would make a thousand women sacrifice themselves for the man she herself set above all others? But she was of those who do not know what they are, or what they think and feel, till some explosion forces open the doors of their souls and they look upon a new life over a heap of ruins. She sat in the gathering dusk, waiting, while hope slowly waned. Rudyard also, on the veranda, paced weakly, almost stumblingly, up and down, his face also turning towards the Stay Awhile Hospital. At length, with a heavy sigh, he entered the house and sat down in a great arm-chair, from which old Brinkwort the Boer had laid down the law for his people. Where was Jasmine? Why did she not hasten to Brinkwort's Farm? A Staff Officer from the General Commanding had called to congratulate Jasmine on her recovery, and to give fresh instructions which would link her work at Durban effectively with the army as it now moved on to the relief of the town beyond the hills. Al'mah's note had arrived while the officer was with Jasmine, and it was held back until he left. It was then forgotten by the attendant on duty, and it lay for three hours undelivered. Then when it was given to her, no mention was made of the delay. When the Staff Officer left her, he had said to himself that hers was one of the most alluring and fascinating faces he had ever seen; and he, like Stafford, though in another sphere--that of the Secret Intelligence Department--had travelled far and wide in the world. Perfectly beautiful he did not call her, though her face was as near that rarity as any he had known. He would only have called a woman beautiful who was tall, and she was almost petite; but that was because he himself was over-tall, and her smallness seemed to be properly classed with those who were pretty, not the handsome or the beautiful. But there was something in her face that haunted him--a wistful, appealing delicacy, which yet was associated with an instant readiness of intellect, with a perspicuous judgment and a gift of organization. And she had eyes of blue which were "meant to drown those who hadn't life-belts," as he said. In one way or another he put all this to his fellow officers, and said that the existence of two such patriots as Byng and Jasmine in one family was unusual. "Pretty fairly self-possessed, I should say," said Rigby, the youngest officer present at mess. "Her husband under repair at Brinkwort's Farm, in the care of the blue-ribbon nurse of the army, who makes a fellow well if he looks at her, and she studying organization at the Stay Awhile with a staff-officer." The reply of the Staff Officer was quick and cutting enough for any officers' mess. "I see by the latest papers from England, that Balfour says we'll muddle through this war somehow," he said. "He must have known you, Rigby. With the courage of the damned you carry a fearsome lot of impedimenta, and you muddle quite adequately. The lady you have traduced has herself been seriously ill, and that is why she is not at Brinkwort's Farm. What a malicious mind you've got! Byng would think so." "If Rigby had been in your place to-day," interposed a gruff major, "the lady would surely have had a relapse. Convalescence is no time for teaching the rudiments of human intercourse." Pale and angry, Rigby, who was half Scotch and correspondingly self-satisfied, rejoined stubbornly: "I know what I know. They haven't met since she came up from Durban. Sandlip told me that--" The Staff Officer broke the sentence. "What Sandlip told you is what Nancy woutd tell Polly and Polly would tell the cook--and then Rigby would know. But statement number one is an Ananiasism, for Byng saw his wife at the hospital the night before Hetmeyer's Kopje. I can't tell what they said, though, nor what was the colour of the lady's pegnoir, for I am neither Nancy nor Polly nor the cook--nor Rigby." With a maddened gesture Rigby got to his feet, but a man at his side pulled him down. "Sit still, Baby Bunting, or you'll not get over the hills to-morrow," he said, and he offered Rigby a cigar from Rigby's own cigar-case, cutting off the end, handing it to him and lighting a match. "Gun out of action: record the error of the day," piped the thin precise voice of the Colonel from the head of the table. A chorus of quiet laughter met the Colonel's joke, founded on the technical fact that the variation in the firing of a gun, due to any number of causes, though apparently firing under the same conditions, is carted officially "the error of the day" in Admiralty reports. "Here the incident closed," as the newspapers say, but Rigby the tactless and the petty had shown that there was rumour concerning the relations of Byng and his wife, which Jasmine, at least, imagined did not exist. When Jasmine read the note Al'mah had sent her, a flush stole slowly over her face, and then faded, leaving a whiteness, behind which was the emanation, not of fear, but of agitation and of shock. It meant that Rudyard was dying, and that she must go to him. That she must go to him? Was that the thought in her mind--that she must go to him? If she wished to see him again before he went! That midnight, when he was on his way to Hetmeyer's Kopje, he had flung from her room into the night, and ridden away angrily on his grey horse, not hearing her voice faintly calling after him. Now, did she want to see him--the last time before he rode away again forever, on that white horse called Death? A shudder passed through her. "Ruddy! Poor Ruddy!" she said, and she did not remember that those were the pitying, fateful words she used on the day when Ian Stafford dined with her alone after Rudyard made his bitter protest against the life they lived. "We have everything--everything," he had said, "and yet--" Now, however, there was an anguished sob in her voice. With the thought of seeing him, her fingers tremblingly sought the fine-spun strands of hair which ever lay a little loose from the wonder of its great coiled abundance, and then felt her throat, as though to adjust the simple linen collar she wore, making exquisite contrast to the soft simplicity of her dark-blue gown. She found the attendant who had given her the letter, and asked if the messenger was waiting, and was only then informed that he had been gone three hours or more. Three hours or more! It might be that Rudyard was gone forever without hearing what she had to say, or knowing whether she desired reconciliation and peace. She at once gave orders for a cape-cart to take her over to Brinkwort's Farm. The attendant respectfully said that he must have orders. She hastened to the officer in charge of the hospital, and explained. His sympathy translated itself into instant action. Fortunately there was a cart at the door. In a moment she was ready, and the cart sped away into the night across the veld. She had noticed nothing as she mounted the cart--neither the driver nor the horses; but, as they hurried on, she was roused by a familiar voice saying, "'E done it all right at Hetmeyer's Kopje--done it brown. First Wortmann's Drift, and then Hetmeyer's Kopje, and he'll be over the hills and through the Boers and into Lordkop with the rest of the hold-me-backs." She recognized him--the first person who had spoken to her of her husband on her arrival, the cheerful Corporal Shorter, who had told her of Wortmann's Drift and the saving of "Old Gunter." She touched his arm gently. "I am glad it is you," she said in a low tone. "Not so glad as I am," he answered. "It's a purple shame that you should ha' been took sick when he was mowed down, and that some one else should be healin' 'is gapin' wounds besides 'is lawful wife, and 'er a rifle-shot away! It's a fair shame, that's wot it is. But all's well as ends well, and you're together at the finish." She shrank from his last words. Her heart seemed to contract; it hurt her as though it was being crushed in a vise. She was used to that pain now. She had felt it--ah, how many times since the night she found Adrian Fellowes' white rose on her pillow, laid there by the man she had sworn at the altar to love, honor, and obey! Her head drooped. "At the finish"--how strange and new and terrible it was! The world stood still for her. "You'll go together to Lordkop, I expeck," she heard her companion's voice say, and at first she did not realize its meaning; then slowly it came to her. "At the finish" in his words meant the raising of the siege of Lordkop, it meant rescue, victory, restoration. He had not said that Rudyard was dead, that the Book of Rudyard and Jasmine was closed forever. Her mind was in chaos, her senses in confusion. She seemed like one in a vague shifting, agonizing dream. She was unconscious of what her friendly Corporal was saying. She only answered him mechanically now and then; and he, seeing that she was distraught, talked on in a comforting kind of way, telling her anecdotes of Rudyard, as they were told in that part of the army to which he belonged. What was she going to do when she arrived? What could she do if Rudyard was dead? If Rudyard was still alive, she would make him understand that she was not the Jasmine of the days "before the flood"--before that storm came which uprooted all that ever was in her life except the old, often anguished, longing to be good, and the power which swept her into bye and forbidden paths. If he was gone, deaf to her voice and to any mortal sound, then--there rushed into her vision the figure of Ian Stafford, but she put that from her with a trembling determination. That was done forever. She was as sure of it as she was sure of anything in the world. Ian had not forgiven her, would never forgive her. He despised her, rejected her, abhorred her. Ian had saved her from the result of Rudyard's rash retaliation and fury, and had then repulsed her, bidden her stand off from him with a magnanimity and a chivalry which had humiliated her. He had protected her from the shame of an open tragedy, and then had shut the door in her face. Rudyard, with the same evidence as Ian held,--the same letter as proof--he, whatever he believed or thought, he had forgiven her. Only a few nights ago, that night before the fight at Hetmeyer's Kopje, he had opened his arms to her and called her his wife. In Rudyard was some great good thing, something which could not die, which must live on. She sat up straight in the seat of the cart, her hands clinched. No, no, no, Rudyard was not dead, and he should not die. It mattered not what Al'mah had written, she must have her chance to prove herself; his big soul must have its chance to run a long course, must not be cut off at the moment when so much had been done; when there was so much to do. Ian should see that she was not "just a little burst of eloquence," as he had called her, not just a strumpet, as he thought her; but a woman now, beyond eloquence, far distant from the poppy-fields of pleasure. She was young enough for it to be a virtue in her to avoid the poppy-fields. She was not twenty-six years of age, and to have learned the truth at twenty-six, and still not to have been wholly destroyed by the lies of life, was something which might be turned to good account. She was sharply roused, almost shocked out of her distraction. Bright lights appeared suddenly in front of her, and she heard the voice of her Corporal saying: "We're here, ma'am, where old Brinkwort built a hospital for one, and that one's yours, Mrs. Byng." He clucked to his horses and they slackened. All at once the lights seemed to grow larger, and from the garden of Brinkwort's house came the sharp voice of a soldier saying: "Halt! Who goes there?" "A friend," was the Corporal's reply. "Advance, friend, and give the countersign," was brusquely returned. A moment afterwards Jasmine was in the sweet-smelling garden, and the lights of the house were flaring out upon her. She heard at the same time the voices of the sentry and of Corporal Shorter in low tones of badinage, and she frowned. It was cruel that at the door of the dead or the dying there should be such levity. All at once a figure came between her and the light. Instinctively she knew it was Al'mah. "Al'mah! Al'mah!" she said painfully, and in a voice scarce above a whisper. The figure of the singing-woman bent over her protectingly, as it might almost seem, and her hands were caught in a warm clasp. "Am I in time?" Jasmine asked, and the words came from her in gasps. Al'mah had no repentance for her deception. She saw an agitation which seemed to her deeper and more real than any emotion ever shown by Jasmine, not excepting the tragical night at the Glencader Mine and the morning of the first meeting at the Stay Awhile Hospital. The butterfly had become a thrush that sang with a heart in its throat. She gathered Jasmine's eyes to her own. It seemed as though she never would answer. To herself she even said, why should she hurry, since all was well, since she had brought the two together living, who had been dead to each other these months past, and, more than all, had been of the angry dead? A little more pain and regret could do no harm, but only good. Besides, now that she was face to face with the result of her own deception, she had a sudden fear that it might go wrong. She had no remorse for the act, but only a faint apprehension of the possible consequences. Suppose that in the shock of discovery Jasmine should throw everything to the winds, and lose herself in arrant egotism once more! Suppose--no, she would suppose nothing. She must believe that all she had done was for the best. She felt how cold were the small delicate hands in her own strong warm fingers, she saw the frightened appeal of the exquisite haunting eyes, and all at once realized the cause of that agitation--the fear that death had come without understanding, that the door had been forever shut against the answering voices. "You are in time," she said gently, encouragingly, and she tightened the grasp of her hands. As the volts of an electric shock quivering through a body are suddenly withdrawn, and the rigidity becomes a ghastly inertness, so Jasmine's hands, and all her body, seemed released. She felt as though she must fall, but she reasserted her strength, and slowly regained her balance, withdrawing her hands from those of Al'mah. "He is alive--he is alive--he is alive," she kept repeating to herself like one in a dream. Then she added hastily, with an effort to bear herself with courage: "Where is he? Take me." Al'mah motioned, and in a moment they were inside the house. A sense of something good and comforting came over Jasmine. Here was an old, old room furnished in heavy and simple Dutch style, just as old Elias Brinkwort had left it. It had the grave and heavy hospitableness of a picture of Teniers or Jan Steen. It had the sense of home, the welcome of the cradle and the patriarch's chair. These were both here as they were when Elias Brinkwort and his people went out to join the Boer army in the hills, knowing that the verdomde Rooinek would not loot his house or ravage his belongings. To Jasmine's eyes, it brought a new strange sense, as though all at once doors had been opened up to new sensations of life. Almost mechanically, yet with a curious vividness and permanency of vision, her eyes drifted from the patriarch's chair to the cradle in the corner; and that picture would remain with her till she could see no more at all. Unbidden and unconscious there came upon her lips a faint smile, and then a door in front of her was opened, and she was inside another room--not a bedroom as she had expected, but a room where the Dutch simplicity and homely sincerity had been invaded by something English and military. This she felt before her eyes fell on a man standing beside a table, fully dressed. Though shaken and worn, it was a figure which had no affinity with death. As she started back Al'mah closed the door behind her, and she found herself facing Rudyard, looking into his eyes. Al'mah had miscalculated. She did not realize Jasmine as she really was--like one in a darkened room who leans out to the light and sun. The old life, the old impetuous egoism, the long years of self were not yet gone from a character composite of impulse, vanity and intensity. This had been too daring an experiment with one of her nature, which had within the last few months become as strangely, insistently, even fanatically honest, as it had been elusive in the past. In spite of a tremulous effort to govern herself and see the situation as it really was--an effort of one who desired her good to bring her and Rudyard together, the ruse itself became magnified to monstrous proportions, and her spirit suddenly revolted. She felt that she had been inveigled; that what should have been her own voluntary act of expiation and submission, had been forced upon her, and pride, ever her most secret enemy, took possession of her. "I have been tricked," she said, with eyes aflame and her body trembling. "You have trapped me here!" There was scorn and indignation in her voice. He did not move, but his eyes were intent upon hers and persistently held them. He had been near to death, and his vision had been more fully cleared than hers. He knew that this was the end of all or the beginning of all things for them both; and though anger suddenly leaped at the bottom of his heart, he kept it in restraint, the primitive thing of which he had had enough. "I did not trick you, Jasmine," he answered, in a low voice. "The letter was sent without my knowledge or permission. Al'mah thought she was doing us both a good turn. I never deceived you--never. I should not have sent for you in any case. I heard you were ill and I tried to get up and go to you; but it was not possible. Besides, they would not let me. I wanted to go to you again, because, somehow, I felt that midnight meeting in the hospital was a mistake; that it ended as you would not really wish it to end." Again, with wonderful intuition for a man who knew so little of women, as he thought, he had said the one thing which could have cooled the anger that drowned the overwhelming gratitude she felt at his being alive--overwhelming, in spite of the fact that her old mad temperament had flooded it for the moment. He would have gone to her--that was what he had said. In spite of her conduct that midnight, when he was on his way to Hetmeyer's Kopje, he would have come again to her! How, indeed, he must have loved her; or how magnanimous, how impossibly magnanimous, he was! How thin and worn he was, and how large the eyes were in the face grown hollow with suffering! There were liberal streaks of grey also at his temples, and she noted there was one strand all white just in the centre of his thick hair. A swift revulsion of feeling in her making for peace was, however, sharply arrested by the look in his eyes. It had all the sombreness of reproach--of immitigable reproach. Could she face that look now and through the years to come? It were easier to live alone to the end with her own remorse, drinking the cup that would not empty, on and on, than to live with that look in his eyes. She turned her head away from him. Her glance suddenly caught a sjambok lying along two nails on the wall. His eyes followed hers, and in the minds of both was the scene when Rudyard drove Krool into the street under just such a whip of rhinoceros-hide. Something of the old spirit worked in her in spite of all. Idiosyncrasy may not be cauterized, temperament must assert itself, or the personality dies. Was he to be her master--was that the end of it all? She had placed herself so completely in his power by her wilful waywardness and errors. Free from blame, she would have been ruler over him; now she must be his slave! "Why did you not use it on me?" she asked, in a voice almost like a cry, though it had a ring of bitter irony. "Why don't you use it now? Don't you want to?" "You were always so small and beautiful," he answered, slowly. "A twenty-stamp mill to crush a bee!" Again resentment rose in her, despite the far-off sense of joy she had in hearing him play with words. She could forgive almost anything for that--and yet she was real and had not merely the dilettante soul. But why should he talk as though she was a fly and he an eagle? Yet there was admiration in his eyes and in his words. She was angry with herself--and with him. She was in chaos again. "You treat me like a child, you condescend--" "Oh, for God's sake--for God's sake!" he interrupted, with a sudden storm in his face; but suddenly, as though by a great mastery of the will, he conquered himself, and his face cleared. "You must sit down, Jasmine," he said, hurriedly. "You look tired. You haven't got over your illness yet." He hastily stepped aside to get her a chair, but, as he took hold of it, he stumbled and swayed in weakness, born of an excitement far greater than her own; for he was thinking of the happiness of two people, not of the happiness of one; and he realized how critical was this hour. He had a grasp of the bigger things, and his talk with Stafford of a few hours ago was in his mind--a talk which, in its brevity, still had had the limitlessness of revelation. He had made a promise to one of the best friends that man--or woman--ever had, as he thought; and he would keep it. So he said to himself. Stafford understood Jasmine, and Stafford had insisted that he be not deceived by some revolt on the part of Jasmine, which would be the outcome of her own humiliation, of her own anger with herself for all the trouble she had caused. So he said to himself. As he staggered with the chair she impulsively ran to aid him. "Rudyard," she exclaimed, with concern, "you must not do that. You have not the strength. It is silly of you to be up at all. I wonder at Al'mah and the doctor!" She pushed him to a big arm-chair beside the table and gently pressed him down into the seat. He was very weak, and his hand trembled on the chair-arm. She reached out, as if to take it; but, as though the act was too forward, her fingers slipped to his wrist instead, and she felt his pulse with the gravity of a doctor. Despite his weakness a look of laughter crept into his eyes and stayed there. He had read the little incident truly. Presently, seeing the whiteness of his face but not the look in his eyes, she turned to the table, and pouring out a glass of water from a pitcher there, held it to his lips. "Here, Rudyard," she said, soothingly, "drink this. You are faint. You shouldn't have got up simply because I was coming." As he leaned back to drink from the glass she caught the gentle humour of his look, begotten of the incident of a moment before. There was no reproach in the strong, clear eyes of blue which even wounds and illness had not faced--only humour, only a hovering joy, only a good-fellowship, and the look of home. She suddenly thought of the room from which she had just come, and it seemed, not fantastically to her, that the look in his eyes belonged to the other room where were the patriarch's chair and the baby's cradle. There was no offending magnanimity, no lofty compassion in his blameless eyes, but a human something which took no account of the years that the locust had eaten, the old mad, bad years, the wrong and the shame of them. There was only the look she had seen the day he first visited her in her own home, when he had played with words she had used in the way she adored, and would adore till she died; when he had said, in reply to her remark that he would turn her head, that it wouldn't make any difference to his point of view if she did turn her head! Suddenly it was all as if that day had come back, although his then giant physical strength had gone; although he had been mangled in the power-house of which they had spoken that day. Come to think of it, she too had been working in the "power-house" and had been mangled also; for she was but a thread of what she was then, but a wisp of golden straw to the sheaf of the then young golden wheat. All at once, in answer to the humour in his eyes, to the playful bright look, the tragedy and the passion which had flown out from her old self like the flame that flares out of an opened furnace-door, sank back again, the door closed, and all her senses were cooled as by a gentle wind. Her eyes met his, and the invitation in them was like the call of the thirsty harvester in the sunburnt field. With an abandon, as startling as it was real and true to her nature, she sank down to the floor and buried her face in her hands at his feet. She sobbed deeply, softly. With an exclamation of gladness and welcome he bent over her and drew her close to him, and his hands soothed her trembling shoulders. "Peace is the best thing of all, Jasmine," he whispered. "Peace." They were the last words that Ian had addressed to her. It did not make her shrink now that both had said to her the same thing, for both knew her, each in his own way, better than she had ever known herself; and each had taught her in his own way, but by what different means! All at once, with a start, she caught Rudyard's arm with a little spasmodic grasp. "I did not kill Adrian Fellowes," she said, like a child eager to be absolved from a false imputation. She looked up at him simply, bravely. "Neither did I," he answered gravely, and the look in his eyes did not change. She noted that. "I know. It was--" She paused. What right had she to tell! "Yes, we both know who did it," he added. "Al'mah told me." She hid her head in her hands again, while he hung over her wisely waiting and watching. Presently she raised her head, but her swimming eyes did not seek his. They did not get so high. After one swift glance towards his own, they dropped to where his heart might be, and her voice trembled as she said: "Long ago Alice Tynemouth said I ought to marry a man who would master me. She said I needed a heavy hand over me--and the shackles on my wrists." She had forgotten that these phrases were her own; that she had used them concerning herself the night before the tragedy. "I think she was right," she added. "I had never been mastered, and I was all childish wilfulness and vanity. I was never worth while. You took me too seriously, and vanity did the rest." "You always had genius," he urged, gently, "and you were so beautiful." She shook her head mournfully. "I was only an imitation always--only a dresden-china imitation of the real thing I might have been, if I had been taken right in time. I got wrong so early. Everything I said or did was mostly imitation. It was made up of other people's acts and words. I could never forget anything I'd ever heard; it drowned any real thing in me. I never emerged--never was myself." "You were a genius," he repeated again. "That's what genius does. It takes all that ever was and makes it new." She made a quick spasmodic protest of her hand. She could not bear to have him praise her. She wanted to tell him all that had ever been, all that she ought to be sorry for, was sorry for now almost beyond endurance. She wanted to strip her soul bare before him; but she caught the look of home in his eyes, she was at his knees at peace, and what he thought of her meant so much just now--in this one hour, for this one hour. She had had such hard travelling, and here was a rest-place on the road. He saw that her soul was up in battle again, but he took her arms, and held them gently, controlling her agitation. Presently, with a great sigh, her forehead drooped upon his hands. They were in a vast theatre of war, and they were part of it; but for the moment sheer waste of spirit and weariness of soul made peace in a turbulent heart. "It's her real self--at last," he kept saying to himself, "She had to have her chance, and she has got it." Outside in a dark corner of the veranda, Al'mah was in reverie. She knew from the silence within that all was well. The deep peace of the night, the thing that was happening in the house, gave her a moment's surcease from her own problem, her own arid loneliness. Her mind went back to the night when she had first sung "Manassa" at Covent Garden. The music shimmered in her brain. She essayed to hum some phrases of the opera which she had always loved, but her voice had no resonance or vibration. It trailed away into a whisper. "I can't sing any more. What shall I do when the war ends? Or is it that I am to end here with the war?" she whispered to herself.... Again reverie deepened. Her mind delivered itself up to an obsession. "No, I am not sorry I killed him," she said firmly after a long time, "If a price must be paid, I will pay it." Buried in her thoughts, she was scarcely conscious of voices near by. At last they became insistent to her ears, They were the voices of sentries off duty--the two who had talked to her earlier in the evening, after Ian Stafford had left. "This ain't half bad, this night ain't," said one. "There's a lot o' space in a night out here." "I'd like to be 'longside o' some one I know out by 'Ampstead 'Eath," rejoined the other. "I got a girl in Camden Town," said the First victoriously. "I got kids--somewheres, I expect," rejoined the Second with a flourish of pride and self-assertion. "Oh, a donah's enough for me!" returned the First. "You'll come to the other when you don't look for it neither," declared his friend in a voice of fatality. "You ain't the only fool in the world, mate, of course. But 'struth, I like this business better. You've got a good taste in your mouth in the morning 'ere." "Well, I'll meet you on 'Ampstead 'Eath when the war is over, son," challenged the Second. "I ain't 'opin' and I ain't prophesyin' none this heat," was the quiet reply. "We've got a bit o' hell in front of us yet. I'll talk to you when we're in Lordkop." "I'll talk to your girl in Camden Town, if you 'appen to don't," was the railing reply. "She couldn't stand it not but the once," was the retort; and then they struck each other with their fists in rough play, and laughed, and said good-night in the vernacular. CHAPTER XXXVII UNDER THE GUN They had left him for dead in a dreadful circle of mangled gunners who had fallen back to cover in a donga, from a fire so stark that it seemed the hillside itself was discharging myriad bolts of death, as a waterwheel throws off its spray. No enemy had been visible, but far away in front--that front which must be taken--there hung over the ridge of the hills veils of smoke like lace. Hideous sounds tortured the air--crackling, snapping, spitting sounds like the laughter of animals with steel throats. Never was ill work better done than when, on that radiant veld, the sky one vast turquoise vault, beneath which quivered a shimmer of quicksilver light, the pom-poms, the maulers, and the shrapnel of Kruger's men mowed down Stafford and his battery, showered them, drowned them in a storm of lead. "Alamachtig," said a Rustenburg dopper who, at the end of the day, fell into the hands of the English, "it was like cutting alfalfa with a sickle! Down they tumbled, horses and men, mashed like mealies in the millstones. A damn lot of good horses was killed this time. The lead-grinders can't pick the men and leave the horses. It was a verdomde waste of good horses. The Rooinek eats from a bloody basin this day." Alamachtig! At the moment Ian Stafford fell the battle was well launched. The air was shrieking with the misery of mutilated men and horses and the ghoulish laughter of pom-poms. When he went down it seemed to him that human anger had reached its fullest expression. Officers and men alike were in a fury of determination and vengeance. He had seen no fear, no apprehension anywhere, only a defiant anger which acted swiftly, coolly. An officer stepped over the lacerated, shattered body of a comrade of his mess with the abstracted impassiveness of one who finds his way over a puddle in the road; and here were puddles too--puddles of blood. A gunner lifted away the corpse of his nearest friend from the trail and strained and wrenched at his gun with the intense concentration of one who kneads dough in a trough. The sobbing agony of those whom Stafford had led rose up from the ground around him, and voices cried to be put out of pain and torture. These begrimed men around him, with jackets torn by bullets, with bandaged head stained with blood or dragging leg which left a track of blood behind, were not the men who last night were chatting round the camp-fires and making bets as to where the attack would begin to-day. Stafford was cool enough, however. It was as though an icy liquid had been poured into his veins. He thought more clearly than he had ever done, even in those critical moments of his past when cool thinking was indispensable. He saw the mistake that had been made in giving his battery work which might have been avoided, and with the same result to the battle; but he also saw the way out of it, and he gave orders accordingly. When the horses were lashed to a gallop to take up the new position, which, if they reached, would give them shelter against this fiendish rain of lead, and also enable them to enfilade the foe at advantage, something suddenly brought confusion to his senses, and the clear thinking stopped. His being seemed to expand suddenly to an enormity of chaos and then as suddenly to shrink, dwindle, and fall back into a smother--as though, in falling, blankets were drawn roughly over his head and a thousand others were shaken in the air around him. And both were real in their own way. The thousand blankets flapping in the air were the machine guns of the foe following his battery into a zone of less dreadful fire, and the blankets that smothered him were wrappings of unconsciousness which save us from the direst agonies of body and mind. The last thing he saw, as his eyes, with a final effort of power, sought to escape from this sudden confusion, was a herd of springboks flinging themselves about in the circle of fire, caught in the struggle of the two armies, and, like wild birds in a hurricane, plunging here and there in flight and futile motion. As unconsciousness enwrapped him the vision of these distraught denizens of the veld was before his eyes. Somehow, in a lightning transformation, he became one with them and was mingled with them. Time passed. When his eyes opened again, slowly, heavily, the same vision was before him--the negative left on the film of his sight by his last conscious glance at the world. He raised himself on his elbow and looked out over the veld. The springboks were still distractedly tossing here and there, but the army to which he belonged had moved on. It was now on its way up the hill lying between them and the Besieged City. He was dimly conscious of this, for the fight round him had ceased, the storm had gone forward. There was noise, great noise, but he was outside of it, in a kind of valley of awful inactivity. All round him was the debris of a world in which he had once lived and moved and worked. How many years--or centuries--was it since he had been in that harvest of death? There was no anomaly. It was not that time had passed; it was that his soul had made so far a journey. In his sleep among the guns and the piteous, mutilated dead, he had gone a pilgrimage to a Distant Place and had been told the secret of the world. Yet when he first waked, it was not in his mind--only that confusion out of which he had passed to nothingness with the vision of the distracted springboks. Suddenly a torturing thirst came, and it waked him fully to the reality of it all. He was lying in his own blood, in the swath which the battle had cut. His work was done. This came to him slowly, as the sun clears away the mists of morning. Something--Some One--had reached out and touched him on the shoulder, had summoned him. When he left Brinkwort's Farm yesterday, it was with the desire to live, to do large things. He and Rudyard had clasped hands, and Rudyard had made a promise to him, which gave him hope that the broken roof-tree would be mended, the shattered walls of home restored. It had seemed to him then that his own mistake was not irreparable, and that the way was open to peace, if not to happiness. When he first came to this war he had said, "I will do this," and, "I will do that," and he had thought it possible to do it in his own time and because he willed it. He had put himself deliberately in the way of the Scythe, and had thrown himself into its arc of death. To have his own way by tricking Destiny into giving him release and absolution without penalty--that had been his course. In the hour when he had ceased to desire exit by breaking through the wall and not by the predestined door, the reply of Destiny to him had been: "It is not for you to choose." He had wished to drink the cup of release, had reached out to take it, but presently had ceased to wish to drink it. Then Destiny had said: "Here is the dish--drink it." He closed his eyes to shut out the staring light, and he wished in a vague way that he might shut out the sounds of the battle--the everlasting boom and clatter, the tearing reverberations. But he smiled too, for he realized that his being where he was alone meant that the army had moved on over that last hill; and that there would soon be the Relief for which England prayed. There was that to the good; and he had taken part in it all. His battery, a fragment of what it had been when it galloped out to do its work in the early morning, had had its glorious share in the great day's work. He had had the most critical and dangerous task of this memorable day. He had been on the left flank of the main body, and his battery had suddenly faced a terrific fire from concealed riflemen who had not hitherto shown life at this point. His promptness alone had saved the battery from annihilation. His swift orders secured the gallant withdrawal of the battery into a zone of comparative safety and renewed activity, while he was left with this one abandoned gun and his slain men and fellow-officers. But somehow it all suddenly became small and distant and insignificant to his senses. He did not despise the work, for it had to be done. It was big to those who lived, but in the long movement of time it was small, distant, and subordinate. If only the thirst did not torture him, if only the sounds of the battle were less loud in his ears! It was so long since he waked from that long sleep, and the world was so full of noises, the air so arid, and the light of the sun so fierce. Darkness would be peace. He longed for darkness. He thought of the spring that came from the rocks in the glen behind the house, where he was born in Derbyshire. He saw himself stooping down, kneeling to drink, his face, his eyes buried in the water, as he gulped down the good stream. Then all at once it was no longer the spring from the rock in which he laved his face and freshened his parched throat; a cool cheek touched his own, lips of tender freshness swept his brow, silken hair with a faint perfume of flowers brushed his temples, his head rested on a breast softer than any pillow he had ever known. "Jasmine!" he whispered, with parched lips and closed eyes. "Jasmine--water," he pleaded, and sank away again intothat dream from which he had but just wakened. It had not been all a vision. Water was here at his tongue, his head was pillowed on a woman's breast, lips touched his forehead. But it was not Jasmine's breast; it was not Jasmine's hand which held the nozzle of the water-bag to his parched lips. Through the zone of fire a woman and a young surgeon had made their way from the attending ambulance that hovered on the edge of battle to this corner of death in the great battle-field. It mattered not to the enemy, who still remained in the segment of the circle where they first fought, whether it was man or woman who crossed this zone of fire. No heed could be given now to Red Cross work, to ambulance, nurse, or surgeon. There would come a time for that, but not yet. Here were two races in a life-and-death grip; and there could be no give and take for the wounded or the dead until the issue of the day was closed. The woman who had come through the zone of fire was Al'mah. She had no right to be where she was. As a nurse her place was not the battle-field; but she had had a premonition of Stafford's tragedy, and in the night had concealed herself in the blankets of an ambulance and had been carried across the veld to that outer circle of battle where wait those who gather up the wreckage, who provide the salvage of war. When she was discovered there was no other course but to allow her to remain; and so it was that as the battle moved on she made her way to where the wounded and dead lay. A sorely wounded officer, able with the help of a slightly injured gunner to get out of the furnace of fire, had brought word of Stafford's death but with the instinct of those to whom there come whisperings, visions of things, Al'mah felt she must go and find the man with whose fate, in a way, her own had been linked; who, like herself, had been a derelict upon the sea of life; the grip of whose hand, the look of whose eyes the last time she saw him, told her that as a brother loves so he loved her. Hundreds saw the two make their way across the veld, across the lead-swept plain; but such things in the hour of battle are commonplaces; they are taken as part of the awful game. Neither mauser nor shrapnel nor maxim brought them down as they made their way to the abandoned gun beside which Stafford lay. Yet only one reached Stafford's side, where he was stretched among his dead comrades. The surgeon stayed his course at three-quarters of the distance to care for a gunner whose mutilations were robbed of half their horror by a courage and a humour which brought quick tears to Al'mah's eyes. With both legs gone the stricken fellow asked first for a match to light his cutty pipe and then remarked: "The saint's own luck that there it was with the stem unbroke to give me aise whin I wanted it! "Shure, I thought I was dead," he added as the surgeon stooped over him, "till I waked up and give meself the lie, and got a grip o' me pipe, glory be!" With great difficulty Al'mah dragged Stafford under the horseless gun, left behind when the battery moved on. Both forces had thought that nothing could live in that gray-brown veld, and no effort at first was made to rescue or take it. By every law of probability Al'mah and the young surgeon ought to be lying dead with the others who had died, some with as many as twenty bullet wounds in their bodies, while the gunner, who had served this gun to the last and then, alone, had stood at attention till the lead swept him down, had thirty wounds to his credit for England's sake. Under the gun there was some shade, for she threw over it a piece of tarpaulin and some ragged, blood-stained jackets lying near--jackets of men whose wounds their comrades had tried hastily to help when the scythe of war cut them down. There was shade now, but there was not safety, for the ground was spurting dust where bullets struck, and even bodies of dead men were dishonoured by the insult of new wounds and mutilations. Al'mah thought nothing of safety, but only of this life which was ebbing away beside her. She saw that a surgeon could do nothing, that the hurt was internal and mortal; but she wished him not to die until she had spoken with him once again and told him all there was to tell--all that had happened after he left Brinkwort's Farm yesterday. She looked at the drawn and blanched face and asked herself if that look of pain and mortal trouble was the precursor of happiness and peace. As she bathed the forehead of the wounded man, it suddenly came to her that here was the only tragedy connected with Stafford's going: his work was cut short, his usefulness ended, his hand was fallen from the lever that lifted things. She looked away from the blanched face to the field of battle, towards the sky above it. Circling above were the vile aasvogels, the loathsome birds which followed the track of war, watching, waiting till they could swoop upon the flesh blistering in the sun. Instinctively she drew nearer to the body of the dying man, as though to protect it from the evil flying things. She forced between his lips a little more water. "God make it easy!" she said. A bullet struck a wheel beside her, and with a ricochet passed through the flesh of her forearm. A strange look came into her eyes, suffusing them. Was her work done also? Was she here to find the solution of all her own problems--like Stafford--like Stafford? Stooping, she reverently kissed the bloodless cheek. A kind of exaltation possessed her. There was no fear at all. She had a feeling that he would need her on the journey he was about to take, and there was no one else who could help him now. Who else was there beside herself--and Jigger? Where was Jigger? What had become of Jigger? He would surely have been with Stafford if he had not been hurt or killed. It was not like Jigger to be absent when Stafford needed him. She looked out from under the gun, as though expecting to find him coming--to see him somewhere on this stricken plain. As she did so she saw the young surgeon, who had stayed to help the wounded gunner, stumbling and lurching towards the gun, hands clasping his side, and head thrust forward in an attitude of tense expectation, as though there was a goal which must be reached. An instant later she was outside hastening towards him. A bullet spat at her feet, another cut the skirt of her dress, but all she saw was the shambling figure of the man who, but a few minutes before, was so flexible and alert with life, eager to relieve the wounds of those who had fallen. Now he also was in dire need. She had almost reached him when, with a stiff jerk sideways and an angular artion of the figure, he came to the ground like a log, ungainly and rigid. "They got me! I'm hit--twice," he said, with grey lips; with eyes that stared at her and through her to something beyond; but he spoke in an abrupt, professional, commonplace tone. "Shrapnel and mauler," he added, his hands protecting the place where the shrapnel had found him. His staring blue eyes took on a dull cloud, and his whole figure seemed to sink and shrink away. As though realizing and resisting, if not resenting this dissolution of his forces, his voice rang out querulously, and his head made dogmatic emphasis. "They oughtn't to have done it," the petulant voice insisted. "I wasn't fighting." Suddenly the voice trailed away, and all emphasis, accent, and articulation passed from the sentient figure. Yet his lips moved once again. "Ninety-nine Adelphi Terrace--first floor," he said mechanically, and said no more. As mechanically as he had spoken, Al'mah repeated the last words. "Ninety-nine Adelphi Terrace, first floor," she said slowly. They were chambers next to those where Adrian Fellowes had lived and died. She shuddered. "So he was not married," she said reflectively, as she left the lifeless body and went back to the gun where Stafford lay. Her arm through which the bullet had passed was painful, but she took no heed of it. Why should she? Hundreds, maybe thousands, were being killed off there in the hills. She saw nothing except the debris of Ian Stafford's life drifting out to the shoreless sea. He lived still, but remained unconscious, and she did not relax her vigil. As she watched and waited the words of the young surgeon kept ringing in her ears, a monotonous discord, "Ninety-nine Adelphi Terrace--first floor!" Behind it all was the music of the song she had sung at Rudyard Byng's house the evening of the day Adrian Fellowes had died--"More was lost at Mohacksfield." The stupefaction that comes with tragedy crept over her. As the victim of an earthquake sits down amid vast ruins, where the dead lie unnumbered, speechless, and heedless, so she sat and watched the face of the man beside her, and was not conscious that the fire of the armies was slackening, that bullets no longer spattered the veld or struck the gun where she sat; that the battle had been carried over the hills. In time help would come, so she must wait. At least she had kept Stafford alive. So far her journey through Hades had been justified. He would have died had it not been for the water and brandy she had forced between his lips, for the shade in which he lay beneath the gun. In the end they would come and gather the dead and wounded. When the battle was over they would come, or, maybe, before it was over. But through how many hours had there been the sickening monotony of artillery and rifle-fire, the bruit of angry metal, in which the roar of angrier men was no more than a discord in the guttural harmony. Her senses became almost deadened under the strain. Her cheeks grew thinner, her eyes took on a fixed look. She seemed like one in a dream. She was only conscious in an isolated kind of way. Louder than all the noises of the clanging day was the beating of her heart. Her very body seemed to throb, the pulses in her temples were like hammers hurting her brain. At last she was roused by the sound of horses' hoofs. So the service-corps were coming at last to take up the wounded and bury the dead. There were so many dead, so few wounded! The galloping came nearer and nearer. It was now as loud as thunder almost. It stopped short. She gave a sigh of relief. Her vigil was ended. Stafford was still alive. There was yet a chance for him to know that friends were with him at the last, and also what had happened at Brinkwort's Farm after he had left yesterday. She leaned out to see her rescuers. A cry broke from her. Here was one man frantically hitching a pair of artillery-horses to the gun and swearing fiercely in the Taal as he did so. The last time she had seen that khaki hat, long, threadbare frock-coat, huge Hessian boots and red neckcloth was at Brinkwort's Farm. The last time she had seen that malevolent face was when its owner was marched away from Brinkwort's Farm yesterday. It was Krool. An instant later she had dragged Stafford out from beneath the gun, for it was clear that the madman intended to ride off with it. When Krool saw her first he was fastening the last hook of the traces with swift, trained fingers. He stood dumfounded for a moment. The superstitious, half-mystical thing in him came trembling to his eyes; then he saw Stafford's body, and he realized the situation. A look of savage hatred came into his face, and he made a step forward with sudden impulse, as though he would spring upon Stafford. His hand was upon a knife at his belt. But the horses plunged and strained, and he saw in the near distance a troop of cavalry. With an obscene malediction at the body, he sprang upon a horse. A sjambok swung, and with a snort, which was half a groan, the trained horses sprang forward. "The Rooinek's gun for Oom Paul!" he shouted back over his shoulder. Most prisoners would have been content to escape and save their skins, but a more primitive spirit lived in Krool. Escape was not enough for him. Since he had been foiled at Brinkwort's Farm and could not reach Rudyard Byng; since he would be shot the instant he was caught after his escape--if he was caught--he would do something to gall the pride of the verdomde English. The gun which the Boers had not dared to issue forth and take, which the British could not rescue without heavy loss while the battle was at its height--he would ride it over the hills into the Boers' camp. There was something so grotesque in the figure of the half-caste, with his copper-coat flying behind him as the horses galloped away, that a wan smile came to Al'mah's lips. With Stafford at her feet in the staring sun she yet could not take her eyes from the man, the horses, and the gun. And not Al'mah alone shaded and strained eyes to follow the tumbling, bouncing gun. Rifles, maxims, and pom-poms opened fire upon it. It sank into a hollow and was partially lost to sight; it rose again and jerked forward, the dust rising behind it like surf. It swayed and swung, as the horses wildly took the incline of the hills, Krool's sjambok swinging above them; it struggled with the forces that dragged it higher and higher up, as though it were human and understood that it was a British gun being carried into the Boer lines. At first a battery of the Boers, fighting a rear-guard action, had also fired on it, but the gunners saw quickly that a single British gun was not likely to take up an advance position and attack alone, and their fire died away. Thinking only that some daring Boer was doing the thing with a thousand odds against him, they roared approval as the gun came nearer and nearer. Though the British poured a terrific fire after the flying battery of one gun, there was something so splendid in the episode; the horses were behaving so gallantly,--horses of one of their own batteries daringly taken by Krool under the noses of the force--that there was scarcely a man who was not glad when, at last, the gun made a sudden turn at a kopje, and was lost to sight within the Boer lines, leaving behind it a little cloud of dust. Tommy Atkins had his uproarious joke about it, but there was one man who breathed a sigh of relief when he heard of it. That was Barry Whalen. He had every reason to be glad that Krool was out of the way, and that Rudyard Byng would see him no more. Sitting beside the still unconscious Ian Stafford on the veld, Al'mah's reflections were much the same as those of Barry Whalen. With the flight of Krool and the gun came the end of Al'mah's vigil. The troop of cavalry which galloped out to her was followed by the Red Cross wagons. CHAPTER XXXVIII "PHEIDIPPIDES" At dawn, when the veld breathes odours of a kind pungency and fragrance, which only those know who have made it their bed and friend, the end came to the man who had lain under the gun. "Pheidippides!" the dying Stafford said, with a grim touch of the humour which had ever been his. He was thinking of the Greek runner who brought the news of victory to Athens and fell dead as he told it. It almost seemed from the look on Stafford's face that, in very truth, he was laying aside the impedimenta of the long march and the battle, to carry the news to that army of the brave in Walhalla who had died for England before they knew that victory was hers. "Pheidippides," he repeated, and Rudyard Byng, whose eyes were so much upon the door, watching and waiting for some one to come, pressed his hand and said: "You know the best, Stafford. So many didn't. They had to go before they knew." "I have my luck," Stafford replied, but yet there was a wistful look in his face. His eyes slowly closed, and he lay so motionless that Al'mah and Rudyard thought he had gone. He scarcely seemed to notice when Al'mah took the hand that Rudyard had held, and the latter, with quick, noiseless steps, left the room. What Rudyard had been watching and waiting for was come. Jasmine was at the door. His message had brought her in time. "Is it dangerous?" she asked, with a face where tragedy had written self-control. "As bad as can be," he answered. "Go in and speak to him, Jasmine. It will help him." He opened the door softly. As Jasmine entered, Al'mah with a glance of pity and friendship at the face upon the bed, passed into another room. There was a cry in Jasmine's heart, but it did not reach her lips. She stole to the bed and laid her fingers upon the hand lying white and still upon the coverlet. At once the eyes of the dying man opened. This was a touch that would reach to the farthest borders of his being--would bring him back from the Immortal Gates. Through the mist of his senses he saw her. He half raised himself. She pillowed his head on her breast. He smiled. A light transfigured his face. "All's well," he said, with a long sigh, and his body sank slowly down. "Ian! Ian!" she cried, but she knew that he could not hear. CHAPTER XXXIX "THE ROAD IS CLEAR" The Army had moved on over the hills, into the valley of death and glory, across the parched veld to the town of Lordkop, where an emaciated, ragged garrison had kept faith with all the heroes from Caractacus to Nelson. Courageous legions had found their way to the petty dorp, with its corrugated iron roofs, its dug-outs, its improvised forts, its fever hospitals, its Treasure House of Britain, where she guarded the jewels of her honour. The menace of the hills had passed, heroes had welcomed heroes and drunk the cup of triumph; but far back in the valleys beyond the hills from which the army had come, there were those who must drink the cup of trembling, the wine of loss. As the trumpets of victory attended the steps of those remnants of brigades which met the remnants of a glorious garrison in the streets of Lordkop, drums of mourning conducted the steps of those who came to bury the dust of one who had called himself Pheidippides as he left the Day Path and took the Night Road. Gun-carriage and reversed arms and bay charger, faithful comrades with bent heads, the voice of victory over the grave--"I am the resurrection and the life"--the volleys of honour, the proud salut of the brave to the vanished brave, the quivering farewells of the few who turn away from the fresh-piled earth with their hearts dragging behind--all had been; and all had gone. Evening descended upon the veld with a golden radiance which soothed like prayer. By the open window at the foot of a bed in the Stay Awhile Hospital a woman gazed into the saffron splendour with an intentness which seemed to make all her body listen. Both melancholy and purpose marked the attitude of the figure. A voice from the bed at the foot of which she stood drew her gaze away from the sunset sky to meet the bright, troubled eyes. "What is it, Jigger?" the woman asked gently, and she looked to see that the framework which kept the bedclothes from a shattered leg was properly in its place. "'E done a lot for me," was the reply. "A lot 'e done, and I dunno how I'll git along now." There was great hopelessness in the tone. "He told me you would always have enough to help you get on, Jigger. He thought of all that." "'Ere, oh, 'ere it ain't that," the lad said in a sudden passion of protest, the tears standing in his eyes. "It ain't that! Wot's money, when your friend wot give it ain't 'ere! I never done nothing for 'im--that's wot I feel. Nothing at all for 'im." "You are wrong," was the soft reply. "He told me only a few days ago that you were like a loaf of bread in the cupboard--good for all the time." The tears left the wide blue eyes. "Did 'e say that--did 'e?" he asked, and when she nodded and smiled, he added, "'E's 'appy now, ain't 'e?" His look questioned her eagerly. For an instant she turned and gazed at the sunset, and her eyes took on a strange mystical glow. A colour came to her face, as though from strong flush of feeling, then she turned to him again, and answered steadily: "Yes, he is happy now." "How do you know?" the lad asked with awe in his face, for he believed in her utterly. Then, without waiting for her to answer, he added: "Is it, you hear him say so, as I hear you singin' in my sleep sometimes--singin', singin', as you did at Glencader, that first time I ever 'eerd you? Is it the same as me in my sleep?" "Yes, it is like that--just like that," she answered, taking his hand, and holding it with a motherly tenderness. "Ain't you never goin' to sing again?" he added. She was silent, looking at him almost abstractedly. "This war'll be over pretty soon now," he continued, "and we'll all have to go back to work." "Isn't this work?" Al'mah asked with a smile, which had in it something of her old whimsical self. "It ain't play, and it ain't work," he answered with a sage frown of intellectual effort." It's a cut above 'em both--that's my fancy." "It would seem like that," was the response. "What are you going to do when you get back to England?" she inquired. "I thought I'd ask you that," he replied anxiously. "Couldn't I be a scene-shifter or somefink at the opery w'ere you sing?" "I'm going to sing again, am I?" she asked. "You'd have to be busy," he protested admiringly. "Yes, I'll have to be busy," she replied, her voice ringing a little, "and we'll have to find a way of being busy together." "His gryce'd like that," he responded. She turned her face slowly to the evening sky, where grey clouds became silver and piled up to a summit of light. She was silent for a long time. "If work won't cure, nothing will," she said in a voice scarce above a whisper. Her body trembled a little, and her eyes closed, as though to shut out something that pained her sight. "I wish you'd sing somethin'--same as you did that night at Glencader, about the green hill far away," whispered the little trumpeter from the bed. She looked at him for a moment meditatively, then shook her head, and turned again to the light in the evening sky. "P'raps she's makin' up a new song," Jigger said to himself. On a kopje overlooking the place where Ian Stafford had been laid to sleep to the call of the trumpets, two people sat watching the sun go down. Never in the years that had gone had there been such silence between them as they sat together. Words had been the clouds in which the lightning of their thoughts had been lost; they had been the disguises in which the truth of things masqueraded. They had not dared to be silent, lest the truth should stalk naked before them. Silence would have revealed their unhappiness; they would not have dared to look closely and deeply into each other's face, lest revelation should force them to say, "It has been a mistake; let us end it." So they had talked and talked and acted, and yet had done nothing and been nothing. Now they were silent, because they had tossed into the abyss of Time the cup of trembling, and had drunk of the chalice of peace. Over the grave into which, this day, they had thrown the rock-roses and sprigs of the karoo bush, they had, in silence, made pledges to each other, that life's disguises should be no more for them; that the door should be wide open between the chambers where their souls dwelt, each in its own pension of being, with its own individual sense, but with the same light, warmth, and nutriment, and with the free confidence which exempts life from its confessions. There should be no hidden things any more. There was a smile on the man's face as he looked out over the valley. With this day had come triumph for the flag he loved, for the land where he was born, and also the beginning of peace for the land where he had worked, where he had won his great fortune. He had helped to make this land what it was, and in battle he had helped to save it from disaster. But there had come another victory--the victory of Home. The coincidence of all the vital values had come in one day, almost in one hour. Smiling, he laid his hand upon the delicate fingers of the woman beside him, as they rested on her knee. She turned and looked at him with an understanding which is the beginning of all happiness; and a colour came to her cheeks such as he had not seen there for more days than he could count. Her smile answered his own, but her eyes had a sadness which would never wholly leave them. When he had first seen those eyes he had thought them the most honest he had ever known. Looking at them now, with confidence restored, he thought again as he did that night at the opera the year of the Raid. "It's all before us still, Jasmine," he said with a ring of purpose and a great gentleness in his tone. Her hand trembled, the shadows deepened in her eyes, but determination gathered at her lips. Some deep-cherished, deferred resolve reasserted itself. "But I cannot--I cannot go on until you know all, Rudyard, and then you may not wish to go on," she said. Her voice shook, and the colour went from her lips. "I must be honest now--at last, about everything. I want to tell you--" He got to his feet. Stooping, he raised her, and looked her squarely in the eyes. "Tell me nothing, Jasmine," he said. Then he added in a voice of finality, "There is nothing to tell." Holding both her hands tight in one of his own, he put his fingers on her lips. "A fresh start for a long race--the road is clear," he said firmly. Looking into his eyes, she knew that he read her life and soul, that in his deep primitive way he understood her as she had been and as she was, and yet was content to go on. Her head drooped upon his breast. A trumpet-call rang out piercingly sweet across the valley. It echoed and echoed away among the hills. He raised his head to listen. Pride, vision and power were in his eyes. "It's all before us still, Jasmine," he said again. Her fingers tightened on his. THE END GLOSSARY: AASVOGEL Vulture. ALFALFA Lucerne. BILTONG Strips of dried meat. DISSELBOOM The single shaft of an ox-wagon. DONGA A gulley or deep fissure in the soil. DOPPER A dissenter from the Dutch Reformed Church, but generally applied to Dutchmen in South Africa. DORP Settlement or town. KAROO The highlands of the interior of South Africa. KOPJE A rounded hillock. KLOOF A gap or pass in mountains. KRAAL Native hut; also a walled inclosure for cattle. KRANZES Rocky precipices. MEERKAT A species of ichneumon. ROOINEK Literally, "red-neck"; term applied to British soldiers by the Boers. SCHANSES Intrenchments (or fissures on hills). SJAMBOK A stick or whip made from hippopotamus or rhinoceros hide. SPRUIT A small stream. STOEP Veranda of a Dutch house. TAAL South African Dutch. TREK To move from place to place with belongings. VELD An open grassy plain. VELDSCHOEN Rough untanned leather shoes. VERDOMDE Damned. VIERKLEUR The national flag (four colours) of the late South African Republics. VOORTREKKER Pioneer. VROUW Wife. PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE TALES OF THE FAR NORTH By Gilbert Parker Volume 1. CONTENTS Volume 1. THE PATROL OF THE CYPRESS HILLS GOD'S GARRISON A HAZARD OF THE NORTH Volume 2. A PRAIRIE VAGABOND SHE OF THE TRIPLE CHEVRON THREE OUTLAWS Volume 3. SHON MCGANN'S TOBOGAN RIDE PERE CHAMPAGNE THE SCARLET HUNTER THE STONE Volume 4. THE TALL MASTER THE CRIMSON FLAG THE FLOOD IN PIPI VALLEY Volume 5. ANTOINE AND ANGELIQUE THE CIPHER A TRAGEDY OF NOBODIES A SANCTUARY OF THE PLAINS GENERAL INTRODUCTION With each volume of this subscription edition (1912) there is a special introduction, setting forth, in so far as seemed possible, the relation of each work to myself, to its companion works, and to the scheme of my literary life. Only one or two things, therefore, need be said here, as I wish God-speed to this edition, which, I trust, may help to make old friends warmer friends and new friends more understanding. Most of the novels and most of the short stories were suggested by incidents or characters which I had known, had heard of intimately, or, as in the case of the historical novels, had discovered in the works of historians. In no case are the main characters drawn absolutely from life; they are not portraits; and the proof of that is that no one has ever been able to identify, absolutely, any single character in these books. Indeed, it would be impossible for me to restrict myself to actual portraiture. It is trite to say that photography is not art, and photography has no charm for the artist, or the humanitarian indeed, in the portrayal of life. At its best it is only an exhibition of outer formal characteristics, idiosyncrasies, and contours. Freedom is the first essential of the artistic mind. As will be noticed in the introductions and original notes to several of these volumes, it is stated that they possess anachronisms; that they are not portraits of people living or dead, and that they only assume to be in harmony with the spirit of men and times and things. Perhaps in the first few pages of 'The Right of Way' portraiture is more nearly reached than in any other of these books, but it was only the nucleus, if I may say so, of a larger development which the original Charley Steele never attained. In the novel he grew to represent infinitely more than the original ever represented in his short life. That would not be strange when it is remembered that the germ of The 'Right of Way' was growing in my mind over a long period of years, and it must necessarily have developed into a larger conception than the original character could have suggested. The same may be said of the chief characters in 'The Weavers'. The story of the two brothers--David Claridge and Lord Eglington--in that book was brewing in my mind for quite fifteen years, and the main incidents and characters of other novels in this edition had the same slow growth. My forthcoming novel, called 'The Judgment House', had been in my mind for nearly twenty years and only emerged when it was full grown, as it were; when I was so familiar with the characters that they seemed as real in all ways as though they were absolute people and incidents of one's own experience. Little more need be said. In outward form the publishers have made this edition beautiful. I should be ill-content if there was not also an element of beauty in the work of the author. To my mind truth alone is not sufficient. Every work of art, no matter how primitive in conception, how tragic or how painful, or even how grotesque in design --like the gargoyles on Notre Dame must have, too, the elements of beauty--that which lures and holds, the durable and delightful thing. I have a hope that these books of mine, as faithful to life as I could make them, have also been touched here and there by the staff of beauty. Otherwise their day will be short indeed; and I should wish for them a day a little longer at least than my day and span. I launch the ship. May it visit many a port! May its freight never lie neglected on the quays! INTRODUCTION So far as my literary work is concerned 'Pierre and His People' may be likened to a new city built upon the ashes of an old one. Let me explain. While I was in Australia I began a series of short stories and sketches of life in Canada which I called 'Pike Pole Sketches on the Madawaska'. A very few of them were published in Australia, and I brought with me to England in 1889 about twenty of them to make into a volume. I told Archibald Forbes, the great war correspondent, of my wish for publication, and asked him if he would mind reading the sketches and stories before I approached a publisher. He immediately consented, and one day I brought him the little brown bag containing the tales. A few days afterwards there came an invitation to lunch, and I went to Clarence Gate, Regent's Park, to learn what Archibald Forbes thought of my tales. We were quite merry at luncheon, and after luncheon, which for him was a glass of milk and a biscuit, Forbes said to me, "Those stories, Parker--you have the best collection of titles I have ever known." He paused. I understood. To his mind the tales did not live up to their titles. He hastily added, "But I am going to give you a letter of introduction to Macmillan. I may be wrong." My reply was: "You need not give me a letter to Macmillan unless I write and ask you for it." I took my little brown bag and went back to my comfortable rooms in an old-fashioned square. I sat down before the fire on this bleak winter's night with a couple of years' work on my knee. One by one I glanced through the stories and in some cases read them carefully, and one by one I put them in the fire, and watched them burn. I was heavy at heart, but I felt that Forbes was right, and my own instinct told me that my ideas were better than my performance--and Forbes was right. Nothing was left of the tales; not a shred of paper, not a scrap of writing. They had all gone up the chimney in smoke. There was no self-pity. I had a grim kind of feeling regarding the thing, but I had no regrets, and I have never had any regrets since. I have forgotten most of the titles, and indeed all the stories except one. But Forbes and I were right; of that I am sure. The next day after the arson I walked for hours where London was busiest. The shop windows fascinated me; they always did; but that day I seemed, subconsciously, to be looking for something. At last I found it. It was a second-hand shop in Covent Garden. In the window there was the uniform of an officer of the time of Wellington, and beside it--the leather coat and fur cap of a trapper of the Hudson's Bay Company! At that window I commenced to build again upon the ashes of last night's fire. Pretty Pierre, the French half-breed, or rather the original of him as I knew him when a child, looked out of the window at me. So I went home, and sitting in front of the fire which had received my manuscript the night before, with a pad upon my knee, I began to write 'The Patrol of the Cypress Hills' which opens 'Pierre and His People'. The next day was Sunday. I went to service at the Foundling Hospital in Bloomsbury, and while listening superficially to the sermon I was also reading the psalms. I came upon these words, "Free among the Dead like unto them that are wounded and lie in the grave, that are out of remembrance," and this text, which I used in the story 'The Patrol of the Cypress Hills', became, in a sense, the text for all the stories which came after. It seemed to suggest the lives and the end of the lives of the workers of the pioneer world. So it was that Pierre and His People chiefly concerned those who had been wounded by Fate, and had suffered the robberies of life and time while they did their work in the wide places. It may be that my readers have found what I tried, instinctively, to convey in the pioneer life I portrayed--"The soul of goodness in things evil." Such, on the whole, my observation had found in life, and the original of Pierre, with all his mistakes, misdemeanours, and even crimes, was such an one as I would have gone to in trouble or in hour of need, knowing that his face would never be turned from me. These stories made their place at once. The 'Patrol of the Cypress Hills' was published first in 'The Independent' of New York and in 'Macmillan's Magazine' in England. Mr. Bliss Carman, then editor of 'The Independent', eagerly published several of them--'She of the Triple Chevron' and others. Mr. Carman's sympathy and insight were a great help to me in those early days. The then editor of 'Macmillan's Magazine', Mr. Mowbray Morris, was not, I think, quite so sure of the merits of the Pierre stories. He published them, but he was a little credulous regarding them, and he did not pat me on the back by any means. There was one, however, who made the best that is in 'Pierre and His People' possible; this was the unforgettable W. E. Henley, editor of The 'National Observer'. One day at a sitting I wrote a short story called 'Antoine and Angelique', and sent it to him almost before the ink was dry. The reply came by return of post: "It is almost, or quite, as good as can be. Send me another." So forthwith I sent him 'God's Garrison', and it was quickly followed by 'The Three Outlaws', 'The Tall Master', 'The Flood', 'The Cipher', 'A Prairie Vagabond', and several others. At length came 'The Stone', which brought a telegram of congratulation, and finally 'The Crimson Flag'. The acknowledgment of that was a postcard containing these all too-flattering words: "Bravo, Balzac!" Henley would print what no other editor would print; he gave a man his chance to do the boldest thing that was in him, and I can truthfully say that the doors which he threw open gave freedom to an imagination and an individuality of conception, for which I can never be sufficiently grateful. These stories and others which appeared in 'The National Observer', in 'Macmillan's', in 'The English Illustrated Magazine' and others made many friends; so that when the book at length came out it was received with generous praise, though not without some criticism. It made its place, however, at once, and later appeared another series, called 'An Adventurer of the North', or, as it is called in this edition, 'A Romany of the Snows'. Through all the twenty stories of this second volume the character of Pierre moved; and by the time the last was written there was scarcely an important magazine in the English-speaking world which had not printed one or more of them. Whatever may be thought of the stories themselves, or of the manner in which the life of the Far North was portrayed, of one thing I am sure: Pierre was true to the life--to his race, to his environment, to the conditions of pioneer life through which he moved. When the book first came out there was some criticism from Canada itself, but that criticism has long since died away, and it never was determined. Plays have been founded on the 'Pierre' series, and one in particular, 'Pierre of the Plains', had a considerable success, with Mr. Edgar Selwyn, the adapter, in the main part. I do not know whether, if I were to begin again, I should have written all the Pierre stories in quite the same way. Perhaps it is just as well that I am not able to begin again. The stories made their own place in their own way, and that there is still a steady demand for 'Pierre and His People' and 'A Romany of the Snows' seems evidence that the editor of an important magazine in New York who declined to recommend them for publication to his firm (and later published several of the same series) was wrong, when he said that the tales "seemed not to be salient." Things that are not "salient" do not endure. It is twenty years since 'Pierre and His People' was produced--and it still endures. For this I cannot but be deeply grateful. In any case, what 'Pierre' did was to open up a field which had not been opened before, but which other authors have exploited since with success and distinction. 'Pierre' was the pioneer of the Far North in fiction; that much may be said; and for the rest, Time is the test, and Time will have its way with me as with the rest. NOTE It is possible that a Note on the country portrayed in these stories may be in keeping. Until 1870, the Hudson's Bay Company--first granted its charter by King Charles II--practically ruled that vast region stretching from the fiftieth parallel of latitude to the Arctic Ocean--a handful of adventurous men entrenched in forts and posts, yet trading with, and mostly peacefully conquering, many savage tribes. Once the sole master of the North, the H. B. C. (as it is familiarly called) is reverenced by the Indians and half-breeds as much as, if not more than, the Government established at Ottawa. It has had its forts within the Arctic Circle; it has successfully exploited a country larger than the United States. The Red River Valley, the Saskatchewan Valley, and British Columbia, are now belted by a great railway, and given to the plough; but in the far north life is much the same as it was a hundred years ago. There the trapper, clerk, trader, and factor are cast in the mould of another century, though possessing the acuter energies of this. The 'voyageur' and 'courier de bois' still exist, though, generally, under less picturesque names. The bare story of the hardy and wonderful career of the adventurers trading in Hudson's Bay,--of whom Prince Rupert was once chiefest,--and the life of the prairies, may be found in histories and books of travel; but their romances, the near narratives of individual lives, have waited the telling. In this book I have tried to feel my way towards the heart of that life--worthy of being loved by all British men, for it has given honest graves to gallant fellows of our breeding. Imperfectly, of course, I have done it; but there is much more to be told. When I started Pretty Pierre on his travels, I did not know--nor did he --how far or wide his adventurers and experiences would run. They have, however, extended from Quebec in the east to British Columbia in the west, and from the Cypress Hills in the south to the Coppermine River in the north. With a less adventurous man we had had fewer happenings. His faults were not of his race, that is, French and Indian,--nor were his virtues; they belong to all peoples. But the expression of these is affected by the country itself. Pierre passes through this series of stories, connecting them, as he himself connects two races, and here and there links the past of the Hudson's Bay Company with more modern life and Canadian energy pushing northward. Here is something of romance "pure and simple," but also traditions and character, which are the single property of this austere but not cheerless heritage of our race. All of the tales have appeared in magazines and journals--namely, 'The National Observer', 'Macmillan's', 'The National Review', and 'The English Illustrated'; and 'The Independent of New York'. By the courtesy of the proprietors of these I am permitted to republish. G. P. HARPENDEN, HERTFORDSHIRE, July, 1892. BOOK 1. THE PATROL OF THE CYPRESS HILLS GOD'S GARRISON A HAZARD OF THE NORTH THE PATROL OF THE CYPRESS HILLS "He's too ha'sh," said old Alexander Windsor, as he shut the creaking door of the store after a vanishing figure, and turned to the big iron stove with outstretched hands; hands that were cold both summer and winter. He was of lean and frigid make. "Sergeant Fones is too ha'sh," he repeated, as he pulled out the damper and cleared away the ashes with the iron poker. Pretty Pierre blew a quick, straight column of cigarette smoke into the air, tilted his chair back, and said: "I do not know what you mean by 'ha'sh,' but he is the devil. Eh, well, there was more than one devil made sometime in the North West." He laughed softly. "That gives you a chance in history, Pretty Pierre," said a voice from behind a pile of woollen goods and buffalo skins in the centre of the floor. The owner of the voice then walked to the window. He scratched some frost from the pane and looked out to where the trooper in dog-skin coat, gauntlets and cap, was mounting his broncho. The old man came and stood near the young man,--the owner of the voice,--and said again: "He's too ha'sh." "Harsh you mean, father," added the other. "Yes, harsh you mean, Old Brown Windsor,--quite harsh," said Pierre. Alexander Windsor, storekeeper and general dealer, was sometimes called "Old Brown Windsor" and sometimes "Old Aleck," to distinguish him from his son, who was known as "Young Aleck." As the old man walked back again to the stove to warm his hands, Young Aleck continued: "He does his duty, that's all. If he doesn't wear kid gloves while at it, it's his choice. He doesn't go beyond his duty. You can bank on that. It would be hard to exceed that way out here." "True, Young Aleck, so true; but then he wears gloves of iron, of ice. That is not good. Sometime the glove will be too hard and cold on a man's shoulder, and then!--Well, I should like to be there," said Pierre, showing his white teeth. Old Aleck shivered, and held his fingers where the stove was red hot. The young man did not hear this speech; from the window he was watching Sergeant Fones as he rode towards the Big Divide. Presently he said: "He's going towards Humphrey's place. I--" He stopped, bent his brows, caught one corner of his slight moustache between his teeth, and did not stir a muscle until the Sergeant had passed over the Divide. Old Aleck was meanwhile dilating upon his theme before a passive listener. But Pierre was only passive outwardly. Besides hearkening to the father's complaints he was closely watching the son. Pierre was clever, and a good actor. He had learned the power of reserve and outward immobility. The Indian in him helped him there. He had heard what Young Aleck had just muttered; but to the man of the cold fingers he said: "You keep good whisky in spite of the law and the iron glove, Old Aleck." To the young man: "And you can drink it so free, eh, Young Aleck?" The half-breed looked out of the corners of his eyes at the young man, but he did not raise the peak of his fur cap in doing so, and his glances askance were not seen. Young Aleck had been writing something with his finger-nail on the frost of the pane, over and over again. When Pierre spoke to him thus he scratched out the word he had written, with what seemed unnecessary force. But in one corner it remained: "Mab--" Pierre added: "That is what they say at Humphrey's ranch." "Who says that at Humphrey's?--Pierre, you lie!" was the sharp and threatening reply. The significance of this last statement had been often attested on the prairies by the piercing emphasis of a six- chambered revolver. It was evident that Young Aleck was in earnest. Pierre's eyes glowed in the shadow, but he idly replied: "I do not remember quite who said it. Well, 'mon ami,' perhaps I lie; perhaps. Sometimes we dream things, and these dreams are true. You call it a lie--'bien!' Sergeant Fones, he dreams perhaps Old Aleck sells whisky against the law to men you call whisky runners, sometimes to Indians and half-breeds--halfbreeds like Pretty Pierre. That was a dream of Sergeant Fones; but you see he believes it true. It is good sport, eh? Will you not take--what is it?--a silent partner? Yes; a silent partner, Old Aleck. Pretty Pierre has spare time, a little, to make money for his friends and for himself, eh?" When did not Pierre have time to spare? He was a gambler. Unlike the majority of half-breeds, he had a pronounced French manner, nonchalant and debonair. The Indian in him gave him coolness and nerve. His cheeks had a tinge of delicate red under their whiteness, like those of a woman. That was why he was called Pretty Pierre. The country had, however, felt a kind of weird menace in the name. It was used to snakes whose rattle gave notice of approach or signal of danger. But Pretty Pierre was like the death- adder, small and beautiful, silent and deadly. At one time he had made a secret of his trade, or thought he was doing so. In those days he was often to be seen at David Humphrey's home, and often in talk with Mab Humphrey; but it was there one night that the man who was ha'sh gave him his true character, with much candour and no comment. Afterwards Pierre was not seen at Humphrey's ranch. Men prophesied that he would have revenge some day on Sergeant Fones; but he did not show anything on which this opinion could be based. He took no umbrage at being called Pretty Pierre the gambler. But for all that he was possessed of a devil. Young Aleck had inherited some money through his dead mother from his grandfather, a Hudson's Bay factor. He had been in the East for some years, and when he came back he brought his "little pile" and an impressionable heart with him. The former Pretty Pierre and his friends set about to win; the latter, Mab Humphrey won without the trying. Yet Mab gave Young Aleck as much as he gave her. More. Because her love sprang from a simple, earnest, and uncontaminated life. Her purity and affection were being played against Pierre's designs and Young Aleck's weakness. With Aleck cards and liquor went together. Pierre seldom drank. But what of Sergeant Fones? If the man that knew him best--the Commandant--had been asked for his history, the reply would have been: "Five years in the Service, rigid disciplinarian, best non-commissioned officer on the Patrol of the Cypress Hills." That was all the Commandant knew. A soldier-policeman's life on the frontier is rough, solitary, and severe. Active duty and responsibility are all that make it endurable. To few is it fascinating. A free and thoughtful nature would, however, find much in it, in spite of great hardships, to give interest and even pleasure. The sense of breadth and vastness, and the inspiration of pure air could be a very gospel of strength, beauty, and courage, to such an one--for a time. But was Sergeant Fones such an one? The Commandant's scornful reply to a question of the kind would have been: "He is the best soldier on the Patrol." And so with hard gallops here and there after the refugees of crime or misfortune, or both, who fled before them like deer among the passes of the hills, and, like deer at bay, often fought like demons to the death; with border watchings, and protection and care and vigilance of the Indians; with hurried marches at sunrise, the thermometer at fifty degrees below zero often in winter, and open camps beneath the stars, and no camp at all, as often as not, winter and summer; with rough barrack fun and parade and drill and guard of prisoners; and with chances now and then to pay homage to a woman's face, the Mounted Force grew full of the Spirit of the West and became brown, valiant, and hardy, with wind and weather. Perhaps some of them longed to touch, oftener than they did, the hands of children, and to consider more the faces of women,--for hearts are hearts even under a belted coat of red on the Fiftieth Parallel,--but men of nerve do not blazon their feelings. No one would have accused Sergeant Fones of having a heart. Men of keen discernment would have seen in him the little Bismarck of the Mounted Police. His name carried farther on the Cypress Hills Patrol than any other; and yet his officers could never say that he exceeded his duty or enlarged upon the orders he received. He had no sympathy with crime. Others of the force might wink at it; but his mind appeared to sit severely upright upon the cold platform of Penalty, in beholding breaches of the statutes. He would not have rained upon the unjust as the just if he had had the directing of the heavens. As Private Gellatly put it: "Sergeant Fones has the fear o' God in his heart, and the law of the land across his saddle, and the newest breech-loading at that!" He was part of the great machine of Order, the servant of Justice, the sentinel in the vestibule of Martial Law. His interpretation of duty worked upward as downward. Officers and privates were acted on by the force known as Sergeant Fones. Some people, like Old Brown Windsor, spoke hardly and openly of this force. There were three people who never did--Pretty Pierre, Young Aleck, and Mab Humphrey. Pierre hated him; Young Aleck admired in him a quality lying dormant in himself--decision; Mab Humphrey spoke unkindly of no one. Besides--but no! What was Sergeant Fones's country? No one knew. Where had he come from? No one asked him more than once. He could talk French with Pierre, --a kind of French that sometimes made the undertone of red in the Frenchman's cheeks darker. He had been heard to speak German to a German prisoner, and once, when a gang of Italians were making trouble on a line of railway under construction, he arrested the leader, and, in a few swift, sharp words in the language of the rioters, settled the business. He had no accent that betrayed his nationality. He had been recommended for a commission. The officer in command had hinted that the Sergeant might get a Christmas present. The officer had further said: "And if it was something that both you and the Patrol would be the better for, you couldn't object, Sergeant." But the Sergeant only saluted, looking steadily into the eyes of the officer. That was his reply. Private Gellatly, standing without, heard Sergeant Fones say, as he passed into the open air, and slowly bared his forehead to the winter sun: "Exactly." And Private Gellatly cried, with revolt in his voice, "Divils me own, the word that a't to have been full o' joy was like the clip of a rifle- breech." Justice in a new country is administered with promptitude and vigour, or else not administered at all. Where an officer of the Mounted Police- Soldiery has all the powers of a magistrate, the law's delay and the insolence of office have little space in which to work. One of the commonest slips of virtue in the Canadian West was selling whisky contrary to the law of prohibition which prevailed. Whisky runners were land smugglers. Old Brown Windsor had, somehow, got the reputation of being connected with the whisky runners; not a very respectable business, and thought to be dangerous. Whisky runners were inclined to resent intrusion on their privacy with a touch of that biting inhospitableness which a moonlighter of Kentucky uses toward an inquisitive, unsympathetic marshal. On the Cypress Hills Patrol, however, the erring servants of Bacchus were having a hard time of it. Vigilance never slept there in the days of which these lines bear record. Old Brown Windsor had, in words, freely espoused the cause of the sinful. To the careless spectator it seemed a charitable siding with the suffering; a proof that the old man's heart was not so cold as his hands. Sergeant Fones thought differently, and his mission had just been to warn the store-keeper that there was menacing evidence gathering against him, and that his friendship with Golden Feather, the Indian Chief, had better cease at once. Sergeant Fones had a way of putting things. Old Brown Windsor endeavoured for a moment to be sarcastic. This was the brief dialogue in the domain of sarcasm: "I s'pose you just lit round in a friendly sort of way, hopin' that I'd kenoodle with you later." "Exactly." There was an unpleasant click to the word. The old man's hands got colder. He had nothing more to say. Before leaving, the Sergeant said something quietly and quickly to Young Aleck. Pierre observed, but could not hear. Young Aleck was uneasy; Pierre was perplexed. The Sergeant turned at the door, and said in French: "What are your chances for a Merry Christmas at Pardon's Drive, Pretty Pierre?" Pierre answered nothing. He shrugged his shoulders, and as the door closed, muttered, "Il est le diable." And he meant it. What should Sergeant Fones know of that intended meeting at Pardon's Drive on Christmas Day? And if he knew, what then? It was not against the law to play euchre. Still it perplexed Pierre. Before the Windsors, father and son, however, he was, as we have seen, playfully cool. After quitting Old Brown Windsor's store, Sergeant Fones urged his stout broncho to a quicker pace than usual. The broncho was, like himself, wasteful of neither action nor affection. The Sergeant had caught him wild and independent, had brought him in, broken him, and taught him obedience. They understood each other; perhaps they loved each other. But about that even Private Gellatly had views in common with the general sentiment as to the character of Sergeant Fones. The private remarked once on this point "Sarpints alive! the heels of the one and the law of the other is the love of them. They'll weather together like the Divil and Death." The Sergeant was brooding; that was not like him. He was hesitating; that was less like him. He turned his broncho round as if to cross the Big Divide and to go back to Windsor's store; but he changed his mind again, and rode on toward David Humphrey's ranch. He sat as if he had been born in the saddle. His was a face for the artist, strong and clear, and having a dominant expression of force. The eyes were deepset and watchful. A kind of disdain might be traced in the curve of the short upper lip, to which the moustache was clipped close--a good fit, like his coat. The disdain was more marked this morning. The first part of his ride had been seen by Young Aleck, the second part by Mab Humphrey. Her first thought on seeing him was one of apprehension for Young Aleck and those of Young Aleck's name. She knew that people spoke of her lover as a ne'er-do-weel; and that they associated his name freely with that of Pretty Pierre and his gang. She had a dread of Pierre, and, only the night before, she had determined to make one last great effort to save Aleck, and if he would not be saved--strange that, thinking it all over again, as she watched the figure on horseback coming nearer, her mind should swerve to what she had heard of Sergeant Fones's expected promotion. Then she fell to wondering if anyone had ever given him a real Christmas present; if he had any friends at all; if life meant anything more to him than carrying the law of the land across his saddle. Again he suddenly came to her in a new thought, free from apprehension, and as the champion of her cause to defeat the half-breed and his gang, and save Aleck from present danger or future perils. She was such a woman as prairies nurture; in spirit broad and thoughtful and full of energy; not so deep as the mountain woman, not so imaginative, but with more persistency, more daring. Youth to her was a warmth, a glory. She hated excess and lawlessness, but she could understand it. She felt sometimes as if she must go far away into the unpeopled spaces, and shriek out her soul to the stars from the fulness of too much life. She supposed men had feelings of that kind too, but that they fell to playing cards and drinking instead of crying to the stars. Still, she preferred her way. Once, Sergeant Fones, on leaving the house, said grimly after his fashion: "Not Mab but Ariadne--excuse a soldier's bluntness..... Good-bye!" and with a brusque salute he had ridden away. What he meant she did not know and could not ask. The thought instantly came to her mind: Not Sergeant Fones; but who? She wondered if Ariadne was born on the prairie. What knew she of the girl who helped Theseus, her lover, to slay the Minotaur? What guessed she of the Slopes of Naxos? How old was Ariadne? Twenty? For that was Mab's age. Was Ariadne beautiful? She ran her fingers loosely through her short brown hair, waving softly about her Greek-shaped head, and reasoned that Ariadne must have been presentable, or Sergeant Fones would not have made the comparison. She hoped Ariadne could ride well, for she could. But how white the world looked this morning, and how proud and brilliant the sky! Nothing in the plane of vision but waves of snow stretching to the Cypress Hills; far to the left a solitary house, with its tin roof flashing back the sun, and to the right the Big Divide. It was an old- fashioned winter, not one in which bare ground and sharp winds make life outdoors inhospitable. Snow is hospitable-clean, impacted snow; restful and silent. But there was one spot in the area of white, on which Mab's eyes were fixed now, with something different in them from what had been there. Again it was a memory with which Sergeant Fones was associated. One day in the summer just past she had watched him and his company put away to rest under the cool sod, where many another lay in silent company, a prairie wanderer, some outcast from a better life gone by. Afterwards, in her home, she saw the Sergeant stand at the window, looking out towards the spot where the waves in the sea of grass were more regular and greener than elsewhere, and were surmounted by a high cross. She said to him--for she of all was never shy of his stern ways: "Why is the grass always greenest there, Sergeant Fones?" He knew what she meant, and slowly said: "It is the Barracks of the Free." She had no views of life save those of duty and work and natural joy and loving a ne'er-do-weel, and she said: "I do not understand that." And the Sergeant replied: "'Free among the Dead like unto them that are wounded and lie in the grave, who are out of remembrance.'" But Mab said again: "I do not understand that either." The Sergeant did not at once reply. He stepped to the door and gave a short command to some one without, and in a moment his company was mounted in line; handsome, dashing fellows; one the son of an English nobleman, one the brother of an eminent Canadian politician, one related to a celebrated English dramatist. He ran his eye along the line, then turned to Mab, raised his cap with machine-like precision, and said: "No, I suppose you do not understand that. Keep Aleck Windsor from Pretty Pierre and his gang. Good-bye." Then he mounted and rode away. Every other man in the company looked back to where the girl stood in the doorway; he did not. Private Gellatly said, with a shake of the head, as she was lost to view: "Devils bestir me, what a widdy she'll make!" It was understood that Aleck Windsor and Mab Humphrey were to be married on the coming New Year's Day. What connection was there between the words of Sergeant Fones and those of Private Gellatly? None, perhaps. Mab thought upon that day as she looked out, this December morning, and saw Sergeant Fones dismounting at the door. David Humphrey, who was outside, offered to put up the Sergeant's horse; but he said: "No, if you'll hold him just a moment, Mr. Humphrey, I'll ask for a drink of something warm, and move on. Miss Humphrey is inside, I suppose?" "She'll give you a drink of the best to be had on your patrol, Sergeant," was the laughing reply. "Thanks for that, but tea or coffee is good enough for me," said the Sergeant. Entering, the coffee was soon in the hand of the hardy soldier. Once he paused in his drinking and scanned Mab's face closely. Most people would have said the Sergeant had an affair of the law in hand, and was searching the face of a criminal; but most people are not good at interpretation. Mab was speaking to the chore-girl at the same time and did not see the look. If she could have defined her thoughts when she, in turn, glanced into the Sergeant's face, a moment afterwards, she would have said, "Austerity fills this man. Isolation marks him for its own." In the eyes were only purpose, decision, and command. Was that the look that had been fixed upon her face a moment ago? It must have been. His features had not changed a breath. Mab began their talk. "They say you are to get a Christmas present of promotion, Sergeant Fones." "I have not seen it gazetted," he answered enigmatically. "You and your friends will be glad of it." "I like the service." "You will have more freedom with a commission." He made no reply, but rose and walked to the window, and looked out across the snow, drawing on his gauntlets as he did so. She saw that he was looking where the grass in summer was the greenest! He turned and said: "I am going to barracks now. I suppose Young Aleck will be in quarters here on Christmas Day, Miss Mab?" "I think so," and she blushed. "Did he say he would be here?" "Yes." "Exactly." He looked toward the coffee. Then: "Thank you.....Good-bye." "Sergeant?" "Miss Humphrey!" "Will you not come to us on Christmas Day?" His eyelids closed swiftly and opened again. "I shall be on duty." "And promoted?" "Perhaps." "And merry and happy?"--she smiled to herself to think of Sergeant Fones being merry and happy. "Exactly." The word suited him. He paused a moment with his fingers on the latch, and turned round as if to speak; pulled off his gauntlet, and then as quickly put it on again. Had he meant to offer his hand in good-bye? He had never been seen to take the hand of anyone except with the might of the law visible in steel. He opened the door with the right hand, but turned round as he stepped out, so that the left held it while he faced the warmth of the room and the face of the girl. The door closed. Mounted, and having said good-bye to Mr. Humphrey, he turned towards the house, raised his cap with soldierly brusqueness, and rode away in the direction of the barracks. The girl did not watch him. She was thinking of Young Aleck, and of Christmas Day, now near. The Sergeant did not look back. Meantime the party at Windsor's store was broken up. Pretty Pierre and Young Aleck had talked together, and the old man had heard his son say: "Remember, Pierre, it is for the last time." Then they talked after this fashion: "Ah, I know, 'mon ami;' for the last time! 'Eh, bien,' you will spend Christmas Day with us too--no? You surely will not leave us on the day of good fortune? Where better can you take your pleasure for the last time? One day is not enough for farewell. Two, three; that is the magic number. You will, eh? no? Well, well, you will come to-morrow--and--eh, 'mon ami,' where do you go the next day? Oh, 'pardon,' I forgot, you spend the Christmas Day--I know. And the day of the New Year? Ah, Young Aleck, that is what they say--the devil for the devil's luck. So." "Stop that, Pierre." There was fierceness in the tone. "I spend the Christmas Day where you don't, and as I like, and the rest doesn't concern you. I drink with you, I play with you--'bien!' As you say yourself, 'bien,' isn't that enough?" "'Pardon!' We will not quarrel. No; we spend not the Christmas Day after the same fashion, quite. Then, to-morrow at Pardon's Drive! Adieu!" Pretty Pierre went out of one door, a malediction between his white teeth, and Aleck went out of another door with a malediction upon his gloomy lips. But both maledictions were levelled at the same person. Poor Aleck. "Poor Aleck!" That is the way we sometimes think of a good nature gone awry; one that has learned to say cruel maledictions to itself, and against which demons hurl their deadly maledictions too. Alas, for the ne'er-do-weel! That night a stalwart figure passed from David Humphrey's door, carrying with him the warm atmosphere of a good woman's love. The chilly outer air of the world seemed not to touch him, Love's curtains were drawn so close. Had one stood within "the Hunter's Room," as it was called, a little while before, one would have seen a man's head bowed before a woman, and her hand smoothing back the hair from the handsome brow where dissipation had drawn some deep lines. Presently the hand raised the head until the eyes of the woman looked full into the eyes of the man. "You will not go to Pardon's Drive again, will you, Aleck?" "Never again after Christmas Day, Mab. But I must go to-morrow. I have given my word." "I know. To meet Pretty Pierre and all the rest, and for what? Oh, Aleck, isn't the suspicion about your father enough, but you must put this on me as well?" "My father must suffer for his wrong-doing if he does wrong, and I for mine." There was a moment's silence. He bowed his head again. "And I have done wrong to us both. Forgive me, Mab." She leaned over and caressed his hair. "I forgive you, Aleck." A thousand new thoughts were thrilling through him. Yet this man had given his word to do that for which he must ask forgiveness of the woman he loved. But to Pretty Pierre, forgiven or unforgiven, he would keep his word. She understood it better than most of those who read this brief record can. Every sphere has its code of honour and duty peculiar to itself. "You will come to me on Christmas morning, Aleck?" "I will come on Christmas morning." "And no more after that of Pretty Pierre?" "And no more of Pretty Pierre." She trusted him; but neither could reckon with unknown forces. Sergeant Fones, sitting in the barracks in talk with Private Gellatly, said at that moment in a swift silence, "Exactly." Pretty Pierre, at Pardon's Drive, drinking a glass of brandy at that moment, said to the ceiling: "No more of Pretty Pierre after to-morrow night, monsieur! Bien! If it is for the last time, then it is for the last time. So....so." He smiled. His teeth were amazingly white. The stalwart figure strode on under the stars, the white night a lens for visions of days of rejoicing to come. All evil was far from him. The dolorous tide rolled back in this hour from his life, and he revelled in the light of a new day. "When I've played my last card to-morrow night with Pretty Pierre, I'll begin the world again," he whispered. And Sergeant Fones in the barracks said just then, in response to a further remark of Private Gellatly,--"Exactly." Young Aleck fell to singing: "Out from your vineland come Into the prairies wild; Here will we make our home, Father, mother, and child; Come, my love, to our home, Father, mother, and child, Father, mother, and--" He fell to thinking again--"and child--and child,"--it was in his ears and in his heart. But Pretty Pierre was singing softly to himself in the room at Pardon's Drive: "Three good friends with the wine at night Vive la compagnie! Two good friends when the sun grows bright Vive la compagnie! Vive la, vive la, vive l'amour! Vive la, vive la, vive l'amour! Three good friends, two good friends Vive la compagnie!" What did it mean? Private Gellatly was cousin to Idaho Jack, and Idaho Jack disliked Pretty Pierre, though he had been one of the gang. The cousins had seen each other lately, and Private Gellatly had had a talk with the man who was ha'sh. It may be that others besides Pierre had an idea of what it meant. In the house at Pardon's Drive the next night sat eight men, of whom three were Pretty Pierre, Young Aleck, and Idaho Jack. Young Aleck's face was flushed with bad liquor and the worse excitement of play. This was one of the unreckoned forces. Was this the man that sang the tender song under the stars last night? Pretty Pierre's face was less pretty than usual; the cheeks were pallid, the eyes were hard and cold. Once he looked at his partner as if to say, "Not yet." Idaho Jack saw the look; he glanced at his watch; it was eleven o'clock. At that moment the door opened, and Sergeant Fones entered. All started to their feet, most with curses on their lips; but Sergeant Fones never seemed to hear anything that could make a feature of his face alter. Pierre's hand was on his hip, as if feeling for something. Sergeant Fones saw that; but he walked to where Aleck stood, with his unplayed cards still in his hand, and, laying a hand on his shoulder, said, "Come with me." "Why should I go with you?"--this with a drunken man's bravado. "You are my prisoner." Pierre stepped forward. "What is his crime?" he exclaimed. "How does that concern you, Pretty Pierre?" "He is my friend." "Is he your friend, Aleck?" What was there in the eyes of Sergeant Fones that forced the reply,-- "To-night, yes; to-morrow, no." "Exactly. It is near to-morrow; come." Aleck was led towards the door. Once more Pierre's hand went to his hip; but he was looking at the prisoner, not at the Sergeant. The Sergeant saw, and his fingers were at his belt. He opened the door. Aleck passed out. He followed. Two horses were tied to a post. With difficulty Aleck was mounted. Once on the way his brain began slowly to clear, but he grew painfully cold. It was a bitter night. How bitter it might have been for the ne'er-do-weel let the words of Idaho Jack, spoken in a long hour's talk next day with Old Brown Windsor, show. "Pretty Pierre, after the two were gone, said, with a shiver of curses,--'Another hour and it would have been done, and no one to blame. He was ready for trouble. His money was nearly finished. A little quarrel easily made, the door would open, and he would pass out. His horse would be gone, he could not come back; he would walk. The air is cold, quite, quite cold; and the snow is a soft bed. He would sleep well and sound, having seen Pretty Pierre for the last time. And now--' The rest was French and furtive." From that hour Idaho Jack and Pretty Pierre parted company. Riding from Pardon's Drive, Young Aleck noticed at last that they were not going towards the barracks. He said: "Why do you arrest me?" The Sergeant replied: "You will know that soon enough. You are now going to your own home. Tomorrow you will keep your word and go to David Humphrey's place; the next day I will come for you. Which do you choose: to ride with me to-night to the barracks and know why you are arrested, or go, unknowing, as I bid you, and keep your word with the girl?" Through Aleck's fevered brain, there ran the words of the song he sang before-- "Out from your vineland come Into the prairies wild; Here will we make our home, Father, mother, and child." He could have but one answer. At the door of his home the Sergeant left him with the words, "Remember you are on parole." Aleck noticed as the Sergeant rode away that the face of the sky had changed, and slight gusts of wind had come up. At any other time his mind would have dwelt upon the fact. It did not do so now. Christmas Day came. People said that the fiercest night, since the blizzard day of 1863, had been passed. But the morning was clear and beautiful. The sun came up like a great flower expanding. First the yellow, then the purple, then the red, and then a mighty shield of roses. The world was a blanket of drift, and down, and glistening silver. Mab Humphrey greeted her lover with such a smile as only springs to a thankful woman's lips. He had given his word and had kept it; and the path of the future seemed surer. He was a prisoner on parole; still that did not depress him. Plans for coming days were talked of, and the laughter of many voices filled the house. The ne'er-do-weel was clothed and in his right mind. In the Hunter's Room the noblest trophy was the heart of a repentant prodigal. In the barracks that morning a gazetted notice was posted, announcing, with such technical language as is the custom, that Sergeant Fones was promoted to be a lieutenant in the Mounted Police Force of the North West Territory. When the officer in command sent for him he could not be found. But he was found that morning; and when Private Gellatly, with a warm hand, touching the glove of "iron and ice" that, indeed, now said: "Sergeant Fones, you are promoted, God help you!" he gave no sign. Motionless, stern, erect, he sat there upon his horse, beside a stunted larch tree. The broncho seemed to understand, for he did not stir, and had not done so for hours;--they could tell that. The bridle rein was still in the frigid fingers, and a smile was upon the face. A smile upon the face of Sergeant Fones! Perhaps he smiled that he was going to the Barracks of the Free-- "Free among the Dead like unto them that are wounded and lie in the grave, that are out of remembrance." In the wild night he had lost his way, though but a few miles from the barracks. He had done his duty rigidly in that sphere of life where he had lived so much alone among his many comrades. Had he exceeded his duty once in arresting Young Aleck? When, the next day, Sergeant Fones lay in the barracks, over him the flag for which he had sworn to do honest service, and his promotion papers in his quiet hand, the two who loved each other stood beside him for many a throbbing minute. And one said to herself, silently: "I felt sometimes" --but no more words did she say even to herself. Old Aleck came in, and walked to where the Sergeant slept, wrapped close in that white frosted coverlet which man wears but once. He stood for a moment silent, his fingers numbly clasped. Private Gellatly spoke softly: "Angels betide me, it's little we knew the great of him till he wint away; the pride, and the law--and the love of him." In the tragedy that faced them this Christmas morning one at least had seen "the love of him." Perhaps the broncho had known it before. Old Aleck laid a palm upon the hand he had never touched when it had life. "He's--too--ha'sh," he said slowly. Private Gellatly looked up wonderingly. But the old man's eyes were wet. GOD'S GARRISON Twenty years ago there was trouble at Fort o' God. "Out of this place we get betwixt the suns," said Gyng the Factor. "No help that falls abaft tomorrow could save us. Food dwindles, and ammunition's nearly gone, and they'll have the cold steel in our scalp-locks if we stay. We'll creep along the Devil's Causeway, then through the Red Horn Woods, and so across the plains to Rupert House. Whip in the dogs, Baptiste, and be ready all of you at midnight." "And Grah the Idiot--what of him"? asked Pretty Pierre. "He'll have to take his chance. If he can travel with us, so much the better for him"; and the Factor shrugged his shoulders. "If not, so much the worse, eh"? returned Pretty Pierre. "Work the sum out to suit yourself. We've got our necks to save. God'll have to help the Idiot if we can't." "You hear, Grah Hamon, Idiot," said Pierre an hour afterwards, "we're going to leave Fort o' God and make for Rupert House. You've a dragging leg, you're gone in the savvy, you have to balance yourself with your hands as you waddle along, and you slobber when you talk; but you've got to cut away with us quick across the Beaver Plains, and Christ'll have to help you if we can't. That's what the Factor says, and that's how the case stands, Idiot--'bien?'" "Grah want pipe--bubble--bubble--wind blow," muttered the daft one. Pretty Pierre bent over and said slowly: "If you stay here, Grah, the Indian get your scalp; if you go, the snow is deep and the frost is like a badger's tooth, and you can't be carried." "Oh, Oh!--my mother dead--poor Annie--by God, Grah want pipe--poor Grah sleep in snow-bubble, bubble--Oh, Oh!--the long wind, fly away." Pretty Pierre watched the great head of the Idiot as it swung heavily on his shoulders, and then said: "'Mais,' like that, so!" and turned away. When the party were about to sally forth on their perilous path to safety, Gyng stood and cried angrily: "Well, why hasn't some one bundled up that moth-eaten Caliban? Curse it all, must I do everything myself?" "But you see," said Pierre, "the Caliban stays at Fort o' God." "You've got a Christian heart in you, so help me, Heaven!" replied the other. "No, sir, we give him a chance,--and his Maker too for that matter, to show what He's willing to do for His misfits." Pretty Pierre rejoined, "Well, I have thought. The game is all against Grah if he go; but there are two who stay at Fort o' God." And that is how, when the Factor and his half-breeds and trappers stole away in silence towards the Devil's Causeway, Pierre and the Idiot remained behind. And that is why the flag of the H. B. C. still flew above Fort o' God in the New Year's sun just twenty years ago to-day. The Hudson's Bay Company had never done a worse day's work than when they promoted Gyng to be chief factor. He loathed the heathen and he showed his loathing. He had a heart harder than iron, a speech that bruised worse than the hoof of an angry moose. And when at last he drove away a band of wandering Sioux, foodless, from the stores, siege and ambush took the place of prayer, and a nasty portion fell to Fort o' God. For the Indians found a great cache of buffalo meat, and, having sent the women and children south with the old men, gave constant and biting assurances to Gyng that the heathen hath his hour, even though he be a dog which is refused those scraps from the white man's table which give life in the hour of need. Besides all else, there was in the Fort the thing which the gods made last to humble the pride of men--there was rum. And the morning after Gyng and his men had departed, because it was a day when frost was master of the sun, and men grew wild for action, since to stand still was to face indignant Death, they, who camped without, prepared to make a sally upon the wooden gates. Pierre saw their intent, and hid in the ground some pemmican and all the scanty rum. Then he looked at his powder and shot, and saw that there was little left. If he spent it on the besiegers, how should they fare for beast and fowl in hungry days? And for his rifle he had but a brace of bullets. He rolled these in his hand, looking upon them with a grim smile. And the Idiot, seeing, rose and sidled towards him, and said: "Poor Grah want pipe-- bubble--bubble." Then a light of childish cunning came into his eyes, and he touched the bullets blunderingly, and continued: "Plenty, plenty b'longs Grah--give poor Grah pipe--plenty, plenty, give you these." And Pretty Pierre after a moment replied: "So that's it, Grah?--you've got bullets stowed away? Well, I must have them. It's a one-sided game in which you get the tricks; but here's the pipe, Idiot--my only pipe for your dribbling mouth--my last good comrade. Now show me the bullets. Take me to them, daft one, quick." A little later the Idiot sat inside the store, wrapped in loose furs, and blowing bubbles; while Pretty Pierre, with many handfuls of bullets by him, waited for the attack. "Eh," he said, as he watched from a loophole, "Gyng and the others have got safely past the Causeway, and the rest is possible. Well, it hurts an idiot as much to die, perhaps, as a half-breed or a factor. It is good to stay here. If we fight, and go out swift like Grah's bubbles, it is the game. If we starve and sleep as did Grah's mother, then it also is the game. It is great to have all the chances against and then to win. We shall see." With a sharp relish in his eye he watched the enemy coming slowly forward. Yet he talked almost idly to himself: "I have a thought of so long ago. A woman--she was a mother, and it was on the Madawaska River, and she said: 'Sometimes I think a devil was your father, an angel sometimes. You were begot in an hour between a fighting and a mass: between blood and heaven. And when you were born you made no cry. They said that was a sign of evil. You refused the breast, and drank only of the milk of wild cattle. In baptism you flung your hand before your face that the water might not touch, nor the priest's finger make a cross upon the water. And they said it were better if you had been born an idiot than with an evil spirit; and that your hand would be against the loins that bore you. But Pierre, ah Pierre, you love your mother, do you not?'" . . . And he standing now, his eye closed with the gate-chink in front of Fort o' God, said quietly: "She was of the race that hated these--my mother; and she died of a wound they gave her at the Tete Blanche Hill. Well, for that you die now, Yellow Arm, if this gun has a bullet cold enough." A bullet pinged through the sharp air, as the Indians swarmed towards the gate, and Yellow Arm, the chief, fell. The besiegers paused; and then, as if at the command of the fallen man, they drew back, bearing him to the camp, where they sat down and mourned. Pierre watched them for a time; and, seeing that they made no further move, retired into the store, where the Idiot muttered and was happy after his kind. "Grah got pipe--blow away--blow away to Annie--pretty soon." "Yes, Grah, there's chance enough that you'll blow away to Annie pretty soon," remarked the other. "Grah have white eagles--fly, fly on the wind--oh, oh, bubble, bubble!" and he sent the filmy globes floating from the pipe that a camp of river- drivers had given the half-breed winters before. Pierre stood and looked at the wandering eyes, behind which were the torturings of an immense and confused intelligence; a life that fell deformed before the weight of too much brain, so that all tottered from the womb into the gutters of foolishness, and the tongue mumbled of chaos when it should have told marvellous things. And the half-breed, the thought of this coming upon him, said: "Well, I think the matters of hell have fallen across the things of heaven, and there is storm. If for one moment he could think clear, it would be great." He bethought him of a certain chant, taught him by a medicine man in childhood, which, sung to the waving of a torch in a place of darkness, caused evil spirits to pass from those possessed, and good spirits to reign in their stead. And he raised the Idiot to his feet, and brought him, maundering, to a room where no light was. He kneeled before him with a lighted torch of bear's fat and the tendons of the deer, and waving it gently to and fro, sang the ancient rune, until the eye of the Idiot, following the torch at a tangent as it waved, suddenly became fixed upon the flame, when it ceased to move. And the words of the chant ran through Grah's ears, and pierced to the remote parts of his being; and a sickening trouble came upon his face, and the lips ceased to drip, and were caught up in twinges of pain. . . . The chant rolled on: "Go forth, go forth upon them, thou, the Scarlet Hunter! Drive them forth into the wilds, drive them crying forth! Enter in, O enter in, and lie upon the couch of peace, the couch of peace within my wigwam, thou the wise one! Behold, I call to thee!" And Pierre, looking upon the Idiot, saw his face glow, and his eye stream steadily to the light, and he said, "What is it that you see, Grah?-- speak!" All pitifulness and struggle had gone from the Idiot's face, and a strong calm fell upon it, and the voice of a man that God had created spoke slowly: "There is an end of blood. The great chief Yellow Arm is fallen. He goeth to the plains where his wife will mourn upon his knees, and his children cry, because he that gathered food is gone, and the pots are empty on the fire. And they who follow him shall fight no more. Two shall live through bitter days, and when the leaves shall shine in the sun again, there shall good things befal. But one shall go upon a long journey with the singing birds in the path of the white eagle. He shall travel, and not cease until he reach the place where fools, and children, and they into whom a devil entered through the gates of birth, find the mothers who bore them. But the other goeth at a different time--" At this point the light in Pretty Pierre's hand flickered and went out, and through the darkness there came a voice, the voice of an idiot, that whimpered: "Grah want pipe--Annie, Annie dead." The angel of wisdom was gone, and chaos spluttered on the lolling lips again; the Idiot sat feeling for the pipe that he had dropped. And never again through the days that came and went could Pierre, by any conjuring, or any swaying torch, make the fool into a man again. The devils of confusion were returned forever. But there had been one glimpse of the god. And it was as the Idiot had said when he saw with the eyes of that god: no more blood was shed. The garrison of this fort held it unmolested. The besiegers knew not that two men only stayed within the walls; and because the chief begged to be taken south to die, they left the place surrounded by its moats of ice and its trenches of famine; and they came not back. But other foes more deadly than the angry heathen came, and they were called Hunger and Loneliness. The one destroyeth the body and the other the brain. But Grah was not lonely, nor did he hunger. He blew his bubbles, and muttered of a wind whereon a useless thing--a film of water, a butterfly, or a fool--might ride beyond the reach of spirit, or man, or heathen. His flesh remained the same, and grew not less; but that of Pierre wasted, and his eye grew darker with suffering. For man is only man, and hunger is a cruel thing. To give one's food to feed a fool, and to search the silent plains in vain for any living thing to kill, is a matter for angels to do and bear, and not mere mortals. But this man had a strength of his own like to his code of living, which was his own and not another's. And at last, when spring leaped gaily forth from the grey cloak of winter, and men of the H. B. C. came to relieve Fort o' God, and entered at its gates, a gaunt man, leaning on his rifle, greeted them standing like a warrior, though his body was like that of one who had lain in the grave. He answered to the name of Pierre without pride, but like a man and not as a sick woman. And huddled on the floor beside him was an idiot fondling a pipe, with a shred of pemmican at his lips. As if in irony of man's sacrifice, the All Hail and the Master of Things permitted the fool to fulfil his own prophecy, and die of a sudden sickness in the coming-on of summer. But he of God's Garrison that remained repented not of his deed. Such men have no repentance, neither of good nor evil. A HAZARD OF THE NORTH Nobody except Gregory Thorne and myself knows the history of the Man and Woman, who lived on the Height of Land, just where Dog Ear River falls into Marigold Lake. This portion of the Height of Land is a lonely country. The sun marches over it distantly, and the man of the East-- the braggart--calls it outcast; but animals love it; and the shades of the long-gone trapper and 'voyageur' saunter without mourning through its fastnesses. When you are in doubt, trust God's dumb creatures--and the happy dead who whisper pleasant promptings to us, and whose knowledge is mighty. Besides, the Man and Woman lived there, and Gregory Thorne says that they could recover a lost paradise. But Gregory Thorne is an insolent youth. The names of these people were John and Audrey Malbrouck; the Man was known to the makers of backwoods history as Captain John. Gregory says about that--but no, not yet!--let his first meeting with the Man and the Woman be described in his own words, unusual and flippant as they sometimes are; for though he is a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a brother of a Right Honourable, he has conceived it his duty to emancipate himself in the matter of style in language; and he has succeeded. "It was autumn," he said, "all colours; beautiful and nippy on the Height of Land; wild ducks, the which no man could number, and bear's meat abroad in the world. I was alone. I had hunted all day, leaving my mark now and then as I journeyed, with a cache of slaughter here, and a blazed hickory there. I was hungry as a circus tiger--did you ever eat slippery elm bark?--yes, I was as bad as that. I guessed from what I had been told, that the Malbrouck show must be hereaway somewhere. I smelled the lake miles off--oh, you could too if you were half the animal I am; I followed my nose and the slippery-elm between my teeth, and came at a double-quick suddenly on the fair domain. There the two sat in front of the house like turtle-doves, and as silent as a middy after his first kiss. Much as I ached to get my tooth into something filling, I wished that I had 'em under my pencil, with that royal sun making a rainbow of the lake, the woods all scarlet and gold, and that mist of purple--eh, you've seen it?--and they sitting there monarchs of it all, like that duffer of a king who had operas played for his solitary benefit. But I hadn't a pencil and I had a hunger, and I said 'How!' like any other Injin--insolent, wasn't it? Then the Man rose, and he said I was welcome, and she smiled an approving but not very immediate smile, and she kept her seat,--she kept her seat, my boy,--and that was the first thing that set me thinking. She didn't seem to be conscious that there was before her one of the latest representatives from Belgravia, not she! But when I took an honest look at her face, I understood. I'm glad that I had my hat in my hand, polite as any Frenchman on the threshold of a blanchisserie: for I learned very soon that the Woman had been in Belgravia too, and knew far more than I did about what was what. When she did rise to array the supper table, it struck me that if Josephine Beauharnais had been like her, she might have kept her hold on Napoleon, and saved his fortunes; made Europe France; and France the world. I could not understand it. Jimmy Haldane had said to me when I was asking for Malbrouck's place on the compass,--'Don't put on any side with them, my Greg, or you'll take a day off for penitence.' They were both tall and good to look at, even if he was a bit rugged, with neck all wire and muscle, and had big knuckles. But she had hands like those in a picture of Velasquez, with a warm whiteness and educated--that's it, educated hands. "She wasn't young, but she seemed so. Her eyes looked up and out at you earnestly, yet not inquisitively, and more occupied with something in her mind, than with what was before her. In short, she was a lady; not one by virtue of a visit to the gods that rule o'er Buckingham Palace, but by the claims of good breeding and long descent. She puzzled me, eluded me --she reminded me of someone; but who? Someone I liked, because I felt a thrill of admiration whenever I looked at her--but it was no use, I couldn't remember. I soon found myself talking to her according to St. James--the palace, you know--and at once I entered a bet with my beloved aunt, the dowager--who never refuses to take my offer, though she seldom wins, and she's ten thousand miles away, and has to take my word for it-- that I should find out the history of this Man and Woman before another Christmas morning, which wasn't more than two months off. You know whether or not I won it, my son." I had frequently hinted to Gregory that I was old enough to be his father, and that in calling me his son, his language was misplaced; and I repeated it at that moment. He nodded good-humouredly, and continued: "I was born insolent, my s--my ancestor. Well, after I had cleared a space at the supper table, and had, with permission, lighted my pipe, I began to talk. . . Oh yes, I did give them a chance occasionally; don't interrupt. . . . I gossiped about England, France, the universe. From the brief comments they made I saw they knew all about it, and understood my social argot, all but a few words--is there anything peculiar about any of my words? After having exhausted Europe and Asia I discussed America; talked about Quebec, the folklore of the French Canadians, the 'voyageurs' from old Maisonneuve down. All the history I knew I rallied, and was suddenly bowled out. For Malbrouck followed my trail from the time I began to talk, and in ten minutes he had proved me to be a baby in knowledge, an emaciated baby; he eliminated me from the equation. He first tripped me on the training of naval cadets; then on the Crimea; then on the taking of Quebec; then on the Franco-Prussian War; then, with a sudden round-up, on India. I had been trusting to vague outlines of history; I felt when he began to talk that I was dealing with a man who not only knew history, but had lived it. He talked in the fewest but directest words, and waxed eloquent in a blunt and colossal way. But seeing his wife's eyes fixed on him intently, he suddenly pulled up, and no more did I get from him on the subject. He stopped so suddenly that in order to help over the awkwardness, though I'm not really sure there was any, I began to hum a song to myself. Now, upon my soul, I didn't think what I was humming; it was some subterranean association of things, I suppose--but that doesn't matter here. I only state it to clear myself of any unnecessary insolence. These were the words I was maundering with this noble voice of mine: "'The news I bring, fair Lady, Will make your tears run down Put off your rose-red dress so fine And doff your satin gown! Monsieur Malbrouck is dead, alas! And buried, too, for aye; I saw four officers who bore His mighty corse away. ............. We saw above the laurels, His soul fly forth amain. And each one fell upon his face And then rose up again. And so we sang the glories, For which great Malbrouck bled; Mironton, Mironton, Mirontaine, Great Malbrouck, he is dead.' "I felt the silence grow peculiar, uncomfortable. I looked up. Mrs. Malbrouck was rising to her feet with a look in her face that would make angels sorry--a startled, sorrowful thing that comes from a sleeping pain. What an ass I was! Why, the Man's name was Malbrouck; her name was Malbrouck--awful insolence! But surely there was something in the story of the song itself that had moved her. As I afterward knew, that was it. Malbrouck sat still and unmoved, though I thought I saw something stern and masterful in his face as he turned to me; but again instantly his eyes were bent on his wife with a comforting and affectionate expression. She disappeared into the house. Hoping to make it appear that I hadn't noticed anything, I dropped my voice a little and went on, intending, however, to stop at the end of the verse: "'Malbrouck has gone a-fighting, Mironton, Mironton, Mirontaine!' "I ended there; because Malbrouck's heavy hand was laid on my shoulder, and he said: 'If you please, not that song.' "I suspect I acted like an idiot. I stammered out apologies, went down on my litanies, figuratively speaking, and was all the same confident that my excuses were making bad infernally worse. But somehow the old chap had taken a liking to me.--No, of course you couldn't understand that. Not that he was so old, you know; but he had the way of retired royalty about him, as if he had lived life up to the hilt, and was all pulse and granite. Then he began to talk in his quiet way about hunting and fishing; about stalking in the Highlands and tiger-hunting in India; and wound up with some wonderful stuff about moose-hunting, the sport of Canada. This made me itch like sin, just to get my fingers on a trigger, with a full moose-yard in view. I can feel it now--the bound in the blood as I caught at Malbrouck's arm and said: 'By George, I must kill moose; that's sport for Vikings, and I was meant to be a Viking--or a gladiator.' Malbrouck at once replied that he would give me some moose- hunting in December if I would come up to Marigold Lake. I couldn't exactly reply on the instant, because, you see, there wasn't much chance for board and lodging thereabouts, unless--but he went on to say that I should make his house my 'public,'perhaps he didn't say it quite in those terms, that he and his wife would be glad to have me. With a couple of Indians we could go north-west, where the moose-yards were, and have some sport both exciting and prodigious. Well, I'm a muff, I know, but I didn't refuse that. Besides, I began to see the safe side of the bet I had made with my aunt, the dowager, and I was more than pleased with what had come to pass so far. Lucky for you, too, you yarn-spinner, that the thing did develop so, or you wouldn't be getting fame and shekels out of the results of my story. "Well, I got one thing out of the night's experience; and it was that the Malbroucks were no plebs., that they had had their day where plates are blue and gold and the spoons are solid coin. But what had sent them up here among the moose, the Indians, and the conies--whatever THEY are? How should I get at it? Insolence, you say? Yes, that. I should come up here in December, and I should mulct my aunt in the price of a new breech-loader. But I found out nothing the next morning, and I left with a paternal benediction from Malbrouck, and a smile from his wife that sent my blood tingling as it hadn't tingled since a certain season in London, which began with my tuneful lyre sounding hopeful numbers and ended with it hanging on the willows. "When I thought it all over, as I trudged back on yesterday's track, I concluded that I had told them all my history from my youth up until now, and had got nothing from them in return. I had exhausted my family records, bit by bit, like a curate in his first parish; and had gone so far as to testify that one of my ancestors had been banished to Australia for political crimes. Distinctly they had me at an advantage, though, to be sure, I had betrayed Mrs. Malbrouck into something more than a suspicion of emotion. "When I got back to my old camp, I could find out nothing from the other fellows; but Jacques Pontiac told me that his old mate, Pretty Pierre, who in recent days had fallen from grace, knew something of these people that no one else guessed, because he had let them a part of his house in the parish of St. Genevieve in Quebec, years before. Pierre had testified to one fact, that a child--a girl--had been born to Mrs. Malbrouck in his house, but all further knowledge he had withheld. Pretty Pierre was off in the Rocky Mountains practising his profession --chiefly poker--and was not available for information. What did I, Gregory Thorne, want of the information anyway? That's the point, my son. Judging from after-developments I suppose it was what the foolish call occult sympathy. Well, where was that girl-child? Jacques Pontiac didn't know. Nobody knew. And I couldn't get rid of Mrs. Malbrouck's face; it haunted me; the broad brow, deep eyes, and high-bred sweetness --all beautifully animal. Don't laugh: I find astonishing likenesses between the perfectly human and the perfectly animal. Did you never see how beautiful and modest the faces of deer are; how chic and sensitive is the manner of a hound; nor the keen, warm look in the eye of a well-bred mare? Why, I'd rather be a good horse of blood and temper than half the fellows I know. You are not an animal lover as I am; yes, even when I shoot them or fight them I admire them, just as I'd admire a swordsman who, in 'quart,' would give me death by the wonderful upper thrust. It's all a battle; all a game of love and slaughter, my son, and both go together. "Well, as I say, her face followed me. Watch how the thing developed. By the prairie-track I went over to Fort Desire, near the Rockies, almost immediately after this, to see about buying a ranch with my old chum at Trinity, Polly Cliffshawe--Polydore, you know. Whom should I meet in a hut on the ranch but Jacques's friend, Pretty Pierre. This was luck; but he was not like Jacques Pontiac, he was secretive as a Buddhist deity. He had a good many of the characteristics that go to a fashionable diplomatist: clever, wicked, cool, and in speech doing the vanishing trick just when you wanted him. But my star of fortune was with me. One day Silverbottle, an Indian, being in a murderous humour, put a bullet in Pretty Pierre's leg, and would have added another, only I stopped it suddenly. While in his bed he told me what he knew of the Malbroucks. "This is the fashion of it. John and Audrey Malbrouck had come to Quebec in the year 1865, and sojourned in the parish of St. Genevieve, in the house of the mother of Pretty Pierre. Of an inquiring turn of mind, the French half-breed desired to know concerning the history of these English people, who, being poor, were yet gentle, and spoke French with a grace and accent which was to the French-Canadian patois as Shakespeare's English is to that of Seven Dials. Pierre's methods of inquisitiveness were not strictly dishonest. He did not open letters, he did not besiege dispatch-boxes, he did not ask impudent questions; he watched and listened. In his own way he found out that the man had been a soldier in the ranks, and that he had served in India. They were most attached to the child, whose name was Marguerite. One day a visitor, a lady, came to them. She seemed to be the cause of much unhappiness to Mrs. Malbrouck. And Pierre was alert enough to discover that this distinguished-looking person desired to take the child away with her. To this the young mother would not consent, and the visitor departed with some chillingly-polite phrases, part English, part French, beyond the exact comprehension of Pierre, and leaving the father and mother and little Marguerite happy. Then, however, these people seemed to become suddenly poorer, and Malbrouck began farming in a humble, but not entirely successful way. The energy of the man was prodigious; but his luck was sardonic. Floods destroyed his first crops, prices ran low, debt accumulated, foreclosure of mortgage occurred, and Malbrouck and the wife and child went west. "Five years later, Pretty Pierre saw them again at Marigold Lake: Malbrouck as agent for the Hudson's Bay Company--still poor, but contented. It was at this period that the former visitor again appeared, clothed in purple and fine linen, and, strange as it may seem, succeeded in carrying off the little child, leaving the father and mother broken, but still devoted to each other. "Pretty Pierre closed his narration with these words: ''Bien,' that Malbrouck, he is great. I have not much love of men, but he--well, if he say,--"See, Pierre, I go to the home of the white bear and the winter that never ends; perhaps we come back, perhaps we die; but there will be sport for men--" 'voila!' I would go. To know one strong man in this world is good. Perhaps, some time I will go to him--yes, Pierre, the gambler, will go to him, and say: It is good for the wild dog that he live near the lion. And the child, she was beautiful; she had a light heart and a sweet way.'" It was with this slight knowledge that Gregory Thorne set out on his journey over the great Canadian prairie to Marigold Lake, for his December moose-hunt. Gregory has since told me that, as he travelled with Jacques Pontiac across the Height of Land to his destination, he had uncomfortable feelings; presentiments, peculiar reflections of the past, and melancholy --a thing far from habitual with him. Insolence is all very well, but you cannot apply it to indefinite thoughts; it isn't effective with vague presentiments. And when Gregory's insolence was taken away from him, he was very like other mortals; virtue had gone out of him; his brown cheek and frank eye had lost something of their charm. It was these unusual broodings that worried him; he waked up suddenly one night calling, "Margaret! Margaret!" like any childlike lover. And that did not please him. He believed in things that, as he said himself, "he could get between his fingers;" he had little sympathy with morbid sentimentalities. But there was an English Margaret in his life; and he, like many another childlike man, had fallen in love, and with her--very much in love indeed; and a star had crossed his love to a degree that greatly shocked him and pleased the girl's relatives. She was the granddaughter of a certain haughty dame of high degree, who regarded icily this poorest of younger sons, and held her darling aloof. Gregory, very like a blunt unreasoning lover, sought to carry the redoubt by wild assault; and was overwhelmingly routed. The young lady, though finding some avowed pleasure in his company, accompanied by brilliant misunderstanding of his advances and full-front speeches, had never given him enough encouragement to warrant his playing young Lochinvar in Park Lane; and his cup became full when, at the close of the season, she was whisked off to the seclusion of a country-seat, whose walls to him were impregnable. His defeat was then, and afterwards, complete. He pluckily replied to the derision of his relatives with multiplied derision, demanded his inheritance, got his traps together, bought a fur coat, and straightway sailed the wintry seas to Canada. His experiences had not soured his temper. He believed that every dog has his day, and that Fate was very malicious; that it brought down the proud, and rewarded the patient; that it took up its abode in marble halls, and was the mocker at the feast. All this had reference, of course, to the time when he should--rich as any nabob--return to London, and be victorious over his enemy in Park Lane. It was singular that he believed this thing would occur; but he did. He had not yet made his fortune, but he had been successful in the game of buying and selling lands, and luck seemed to dog his path. He was fearless, and he had a keen eye for all the points of every game--every game but love. Yet he was born to succeed in that game too. For though his theory was, that everything should be treated with impertinence before you could get a proper view of it, he was markedly respectful to people. Few could resist him; his impudence of ideas was so pleasantly mixed with delicately suggested admiration of those to whom he talked. It was impossible that John Malbrouck and his wife could have received him other than they did; his was the eloquent, conquering spirit. II. By the time he reached Lake Marigold he had shaken off all those hovering fancies of the woods, which, after all, might only have been the whisperings of those friendly and far-seeing spirits who liked the lad as he journeyed through their lonely pleasure-grounds. John Malbrouck greeted him with quiet cordiality, and Mrs. Malbrouck smiled upon him with a different smile from that with which she had speeded him a month before; there was in it a new light of knowledge, and Gregory could not understand it. It struck him as singular that the lady should be dressed in finer garments than she wore when he last saw her; though certainly her purple became her. She wore it as if born to it; and with an air more sedately courteous than he had ever seen, save at one house in Park Lane. Had this rustle of fine trappings been made for him? No; the woman had a mind above such snobbishness, he thought. He suffered for a moment the pang of a cynical idea; but the eyes of Mrs. Malbrouck were on him and he knew that he was as nothing before her. Her eyes--how they were fixed upon him! Only two women had looked so truthfully at him before: his dead mother and--Margaret. And Margaret--why, how strangely now at this instant came the thought that she was like his Margaret! Wonder sprang to his eyes. At that moment a door opened and a girl entered the room--a girl lissome, sweet-faced, well-bred of manner, who came slowly towards them. "My daughter, Mr. Thorne," the mother briefly remarked. There was no surprise in the girl's face, only an even reserve of pleasure, as she held out her hand and said: "Mr. Gregory Thorne and I are old enemies." Gregory Thorne's nerve forsook him for an instant. He knew now the reason of his vague presentiments in the woods; he understood why, one night, when he had been more childlike than usual in his memory of the one woman who could make life joyous for him, the voice of a voyageur, not Jacques's nor that of any one in camp, sang: "My dear love, she waits for me, None other my world is adorning; My true love I come to thee, My dear, the white star of the morning. Eagles spread out your wings, Behold where the red dawn is breaking! Hark, 'tis my darling sings, The flowers, the song-birds awaking; See, where she comes to me, My love, ah, my dear love!" And here she was. He raised her hand to his lips, and said: "Miss Carley, you have your enemy at an advantage." "Miss Carley in Park Lane, Margaret Malbrouck here in my old home," she replied. There ran swiftly through the young man's brain the brief story that Pretty Pierre had told him. This, then, was the child who had been carried away, and who, years after, had made captive his heart in London town! Well, one thing was clear, the girl's mother here seemed inclined to be kinder to him than was the guardian grandmother--if she was the grandmother--because they had their first talk undisturbed, it may be encouraged; amiable mothers do such deeds at times. "And now pray, Mr. Thorne," she continued, "may I ask how came you here in my father's house after having treated me so cavalierly in London?-- not even sending a P.P.C. when you vanished from your worshippers in Vanity Fair." "As for my being here, it is simply a case of blind fate; as for my friends, the only one I wanted to be sorry for my going was behind earthworks which I could not scale in order to leave my card, or--or anything else of more importance; and being left as it were to the inclemency of a winter world, I fled from--" She interrupted him. "What! the conqueror, you, flying from your Moscow?" He felt rather helpless under her gay raillery; but he said: "Well, I didn't burn my kremlin behind me." "Your kremlin?" "My ships, then: they--they are just the same," he earnestly pleaded. Foolish youth, to attempt to take such a heart by surprise and storm! "That is very interesting," she said, "but hardly wise. To make fortunes and be happy in new countries, one should forget the old ones. Meditation is the enemy of action." "There's one meditation could make me conquer the North Pole, if I could but grasp it definitely." "Grasp the North Pole? That would be awkward for your friends and gratifying to your enemies, if one may believe science and history. But, perhaps, you are in earnest after all, poor fellow! for my father tells me you are going over the hills and far away to the moose-yards. How valiant you are, and how quickly you grasp the essentials of fortune- making!" "Miss Malbrouck, I am in earnest, and I've always been in earnest in one thing at least. I came out here to make money, and I've made some, and shall make more; but just now the moose are as brands for the burning, and I have a gun sulky for want of exercise." "What an eloquent warrior-temper! And to whom are your deeds of valour to be dedicated? Before whom do you intend to lay your trophies of the chase?" "Before the most provoking but worshipful lady that I know." "Who is the sylvan maid? What princess of the glade has now the homage of your impressionable heart, Mr. Thorne?" And Gregory Thorne, his native insolence standing him in no stead, said very humbly: "You are that sylvan maid, that princess--ah, is this fair to me, is it fair, I ask you?" "You really mean that about the trophies"? she replied. "And shall you return like the mighty khans, with captive tigers and lions, led by stalwart slaves, in your train, or shall they be captive moose or grizzlies?" "Grizzlies are not possible here," he said, with cheerful seriousness, "but the moose is possible, and more, if you would be kinder--Margaret." "Your supper, see, is ready," she said. "I venture to hope your appetite has not suffered because of long absence from your friends." He could only dumbly answer by a protesting motion of the hand, and his smile was not remarkably buoyant. The next morning they started on their moose-hunt. Gregory Thorne was cast down when he crossed the threshold into the winter morning without hand-clasp or god-speed from Margaret Malbrouck; but Mrs. Malbrouck was there, and Gregory, looking into her eyes, thought how good a thing it would be for him, if some such face looked benignly out on him every morning, before he ventured forth into the deceitful day. But what was the use of wishing! Margaret evidently did not care. And though the air was clear and the sun shone brightly, he felt there was a cheerless wind blowing on him; a wind that chilled him; and he hummed to himself bitterly a song of the voyageurs: "O, O, the winter wind, the North wind, My snow-bird, where art thou gone? O, O, the wailing wind the night wind, The cold nest; I am alone. O, O, my snow-bird! "O, O, the waving sky, the white sky, My snow-bird thou fliest far; O, O, the eagle's cry, the wild cry, My lost love, my lonely star. O, O, my snow-bird!" He was about to start briskly forward to join Malbrouck and his Indians, who were already on their way, when he heard his name called, and, turning, he saw Margaret in the doorway, her fingers held to the tips of her ears, as yet unused to the frost. He ran back to where she stood, and held out his hand. "I was afraid," he bluntly said, "that you wouldn't forsake your morning sleep to say good-bye to me." "It isn't always the custom, is it," she replied, "for ladies to send the very early hunter away with a tally-ho? But since you have the grace to be afraid of anything, I can excuse myself to myself for fleeing the pleasantest dreams to speed you on your warlike path." At this he brightened very much, but she, as if repenting she had given him so much pleasure, added: "I wanted to say good-bye to my father, you know; and--" she paused. "And"? he added. "And to tell him that you have fond relatives in the old land who would mourn your early taking off; and, therefore, to beg him, for their sakes, to keep you safe from any outrageous moose that mightn't know how the world needed you." "But there you are mistaken," he said; "I haven't anyone who would really care, worse luck! except the dowager; and she, perhaps, would be consoled to know that I had died in battle,--even with a moose,--and was clear of the possibility of hanging another lost reputation on the family tree, to say nothing of suspension from any other kind of tree. But, if it should be the other way; if I should see your father in the path of an outrageous moose--what then?" "My father is a hunter born," she responded; "he is a great man," she proudly added. "Of course, of course," he replied. "Good-bye. I'll take him your love.--Good-bye!" and he turned away. "Good-bye," she gaily replied; and yet, one looking closely would have seen that this stalwart fellow was pleasant to her eyes, and as she closed the door to his hand waving farewell to her from the pines, she said, reflecting on his words: "You'll take him my love, will you? But, Master Gregory, you carry a freight of which you do not know the measure; and, perhaps, you never shall, though you are very brave and honest, and not so impudent as you used to be,--and I'm not so sure that I like you so much better for that either, Monsieur Gregory." Then she went and laid her cheek against her mother's, and said: "They've gone away for big game, mother dear; what shall be our quarry?" "My child," the mother replied, "the story of our lives since last you were with me is my only quarry. I want to know from your own lips all that you have been in that life which once was mine also, but far away from me now, even though you come from it, bringing its memories without its messages." "Dear, do you think that life there was so sweet to me? It meant as little to your daughter as to you. She was always a child of the wild woods. What rustle of pretty gowns is pleasant as the silken shiver of the maple leaves in summer at this door? The happiest time in that life was when we got away to Holwood or Marchurst, with the balls and calls all over." Mrs. Malbrouck smoothed her daughter's hand gently and smiled approvingly. "But that old life of yours, mother; what was it? You said that you would tell me some day. Tell me now. Grandmother was fond of me--poor grandmother! But she would never tell me anything. How I longed to be back with you!.... Sometimes you came to me in my sleep, and called to me to come with you; and then again, when I was gay in the sunshine, you came, and only smiled but never beckoned; though your eyes seemed to me very sad, and I wondered if mine would not also become sad through looking in them so--are they sad, mother?" And she laughed up brightly into her mother's face. "No, dear; they are like the stars. You ask me for my part in that life. I will tell you soon, but not now. Be patient. Do you not tire of this lonely life? Are you truly not anxious to return to--" "'To the husks that the swine did eat?' No, no, no; for, see: I was born for a free, strong life; the prairie or the wild wood, or else to live in some far castle in Welsh mountains, where I should never hear the voice of the social Thou must!--oh, what a must! never to be quite free or natural. To be the slave of the code. I was born--I know not how! but so longing for the sky, and space, and endless woods. I think I never saw an animal but I loved it, nor ever lounged the mornings out at Holwood but I wished it were a hut on the mountain side, and you and father with me." Here she whispered, in a kind of awe: "And yet to think that Holwood is now mine, and that I am mistress there, and that I must go back to it--if only you would go back with me.... ah, dear, isn't it your duty to go back with me"? she added, hesitatingly. Audrey Malbrouck drew her daughter hungrily to her bosom, and said: "Yes, dear, I will go back, if it chances that you need me; but your father and I have lived the best days of our lives here, and we are content. But, my Margaret, there is another to be thought of too, is there not? And in that case is my duty then so clear?" The girl's hand closed on her mother's, and she knew her heart had been truly read. III. The hunters pursued their way, swinging grandly along on their snow- shoes, as they made for the Wild Hawk Woods. It would seem as if Malbrouck was testing Gregory's strength and stride, for the march that day was a long and hard one. He was equal to the test, and even Big Moccasin, the chief, grunted sound approval. But every day brought out new capacities for endurance and larger resources; so that Malbrouck, who had known the clash of civilisation with barbarian battle, and deeds both dour and doughty, and who loved a man of might, regarded this youth with increasing favour. By simple processes he drew from Gregory his aims and ambitions, and found the real courage and power behind the front of irony--the language of manhood and culture which was crusted by free and easy idioms. Now and then they saw moose-tracks, but they were some days out before they came to a moose-yard--a spot hoof-beaten by the moose; his home, from which he strays, and to which he returns at times like a repentant prodigal. Now the sport began. The dog-trains were put out of view, and Big Moccasin and another Indian went off immediately to explore the country round about. A few hours, and word was brought that there was a small herd feeding not far away. Together they crept stealthily within range of the cattle. Gregory Thorne's blood leaped as he saw the noble quarry, with their wide-spread horns, sniffing the air, in which they had detected something unusual. Their leader, a colossal beast, stamped with his forefoot, and threw back his head with a snort. "The first shot belongs to you, Mr. Thorne," said Malbrouck. "In the shoulder, you know. You have him in good line. I'll take the heifer." Gregory showed all the coolness of an old hunter, though his lips twitched slightly with excitement. He took a short but steady aim, and fired. The beast plunged forward and then fell on his knees. The others broke away. Malbrouck fired and killed a heifer, and then all ran in pursuit as the moose made for the woods. Gregory, in the pride of his first slaughter, sprang away towards the wounded leader, which, sunk to the earth, was shaking its great horns to and fro. When at close range, he raised his gun to fire again, but the moose rose suddenly, and with a wild bellowing sound rushed at Gregory, who knew full well that a straight stroke from those hoofs would end his moose-hunting days. He fired, but to no effect. He could not, like a toreador, jump aside, for those mighty horns would sweep too wide a space. He dropped on his knees swiftly, and as the great antlers almost touched him, and he could feel the roaring breath of the mad creature in his face, he slipped a cartridge in, and fired as he swung round; but at that instant a dark body bore him down. He was aware of grasping those sweeping horns, conscious of a blow which tore the flesh from his chest; and then his knife--how came it in his hand?--with the instinct of the true hunter. He plunged it once, twice, past a foaming mouth, into that firm body, and then both fell together; each having fought valiantly after his kind. Gregory dragged himself from beneath the still heaving body, and stretched to his feet; but a blindness came, and the next knowledge he had was of brandy being poured slowly between his teeth, and of a voice coming through endless distances: "A fighter, a born fighter," it said. "The pluck of Lucifer--good boy!" Then the voice left those humming spaces of infinity, and said: "Tilt him this way a little, Big Moccasin. There, press firmly, so. Now the band steady--together--tighter--now the withes--a little higher up--cut them here." There was a slight pause, and then: "There, that's as good as an army surgeon could do it. He'll be as sound as a bell in two weeks. Eh, well, how do you feel now? Better? That's right! Like to be on your feet, would you? Wait. Here, a sup of this. There you are. . . . Well?" "Well," said the young man, faintly, "he was a beauty." Malbrouck looked at him a moment, thoughtfully, and then said: "Yes, he was a beauty." "I want a dozen more like him, and then I shall be able to drop 'em as neat as, you do." "H'm! the order is large. I'm afraid we shall have to fill it at some other time;" and Malbrouck smiled a little grimly. "What! only one moose to take back to the Height of Land, to--" something in the eye of the other stopped him. "To? Yes, to"? and now the eye had a suggestion of humour. "To show I'm not a tenderfoot." "Yes, to show you're not a tenderfoot. I fancy that will be hardly necessary. Oh, you will be up, eh? Well!" "Well, I'm a tottering imbecile. What's the matter with my legs?--my prophetic soul, it hurts! Oh, I see; that's where the old warrior's hoof caught me sideways. Now, I'll tell you what, I'm going to have another moose to take back to Marigold Lake." "Oh?" "Yes. I'm going to take back a young, live moose." "A significant ambition. For what?--a sacrifice to the gods you have offended in your classic existence?" "Both. A peace-offering, and a sacrifice to--a goddess." "Young man," said the other, the light of a smile playing on his lips, "'Prosperity be thy page!' Big Moccasin, what of this young live moose?" The Indian shook his head doubtfully. "But I tell you I shall have that live moose, if I have to stay here to see it grow." And Malbrouck liked his pluck, and wished him good luck. And the good luck came. They travelled back slowly to the Height of Land, making a circuit. For a week they saw no more moose; but meanwhile Gregory's hurt quickly healed. They had now left only eight days in which to get back to Dog Ear River and Marigold Lake. If the young moose was to come it must come soon. It came soon. They chanced upon a moose-yard, and while the Indians were beating the woods, Malbrouck and Gregory watched. Soon a cow and a young moose came swinging down to the embankment. Malbrouck whispered: "Now if you must have your live moose, here's a lasso. I'll bring down the cow. The young one's horns are not large. Remember, no pulling. I'll do that. Keep your broken chest and bad arm safe. Now!" Down came the cow with a plunge into the yard-dead. The lasso, too, was over the horns of the calf, and in an instant Malbrouck was swinging away with it over the snow. It was making for the trees--exactly what Malbrouck desired. He deftly threw the rope round a sapling, but not too taut, lest the moose's horns should be injured. The plucky animal now turned on him. He sprang behind a tree, and at that instant he heard the thud of hoofs behind him. He turned to see a huge bull-moose bounding towards him. He was between two fires, and quite unarmed. Those hoofs had murder in them. But at the instant a rifle shot rang out, and he only caught the forward rush of the antlers as the beast fell. The young moose now had ceased its struggles, and came forward to the dead bull with that hollow sound of mourning peculiar to its kind. Though it afterwards struggled once or twice to be free, it became docile and was easily taught, when its anger and fear were over. And Gregory Thorne had his live moose. He had also, by that splendid shot, achieved with one arm, saved Malbrouck from peril, perhaps from death. They drew up before the house at Marigold Lake on the afternoon of the day before Christmas, a triumphal procession. The moose was driven, a peaceful captive with a wreath of cedar leaves around its neck--the humourous conception of Gregory Thorne. Malbrouck had announced their coming by a blast from his horn, and Margaret was standing in the doorway wrapped in furs, which may have come originally from Hudson's Bay, but which had been deftly re-manufactured in Regent Street. Astonishment, pleasure, beamed in her eyes. She clapped her hands gaily, and cried: "Welcome, welcome, merry-men all!" She kissed her father; she called to her mother to come and see; then she said to Gregory, with arch raillery, as she held out her hand: "Oh, companion of hunters, comest thou like Jacques in Arden from dropping the trustful tear upon the prey of others, or bringest thou quarry of thine own? Art thou a warrior sated with spoil, master of the sports, spectator of the fight, Prince, or Pistol? Answer, what art thou?" And he, with a touch of his old insolence, though with something of irony too, for he had hoped for a different fashion of greeting, said: "All, lady, all! The Olympian all! The player of many parts. I am Touchstone, Jacques, and yet Orlando too." "And yet Orlando too, my daughter," said Malbrouck, gravely. "He saved your father from the hoofs of a moose bent on sacrifice. Had your father his eye, his nerve, his power to shoot with one arm a bull moose at long range, so!--he would not refuse to be called a great hunter, but wear the title gladly." Margaret Malbrouck's face became anxious instantly. "He saved you from danger--from injury, father"? she slowly said, and looked earnestly at Gregory; "but why to shoot with one arm only?" "Because in a fight of his own with a moose--a hand-to-hand fight--he had a bad moment with the hoofs of the beast." And this young man, who had a reputation for insolence, blushed, so that the paleness which the girl now noticed in his face was banished; and to turn the subject he interposed: "Here is the live moose that I said I should bring. Now say that he's a beauty, please. Your father and I--" But Malbrouck interrupted: "He lassoed it with his one arm, Margaret. He was determined to do it himself, because, being a superstitious gentleman, as well as a hunter, he had some foolish notion that this capture would propitiate a goddess whom he imagined required offerings of the kind." "It is the privilege of the gods to be merciful," she said. "This peace- offering should propitiate the angriest, cruellest goddess in the universe; and for one who was neither angry nor really cruel--well, she should be satisfied.... altogether satisfied," she added, as she put her cheek against the warm fur of the captive's neck, and let it feel her hand with its lips. There was silence for a minute, and then with his old gay spirit all returned, and as if to give an air not too serious to the situation, Gregory, remembering his Euripides, said: ". . . . . . . .let the steer bleed, And the rich altars, as they pay their vows, Breathe incense to the gods: for me, I rise To better life, and grateful own the blessing." "A pagan thought for a Christmas Eve," she said to him, with her fingers feeling for the folds of silken flesh in the throat of the moose; "but wounded men must be humoured. And, mother dear, here are our Argonauts returned; and--and now I think I will go." With a quick kiss on her father's cheek--not so quick but he caught the tear that ran through her happy smile--she vanished into the house. That night there was gladness in this home. Mirth sprang to the lips of the men like foam on a beaker of wine, so that the evening ran towards midnight swiftly. All the tale of the hunt was given by Malbrouck to joyful ears; for the mother lived again her youth in the sunrise of this romance which was being sped before her eyes; and the father, knowing that in this world there is nothing so good as courage, nothing so base as the shifting eye, looked on the young man, and was satisfied, and told his story well;--told it as a brave man would tell it, bluntly as to deeds done, warmly as to the pleasures of good sport, directly as to all. In the eye of the young man there had come the glance of larger life, of a new-developed manhood. When he felt that dun body crashing on him, and his life closing with its strength, and ran the good knife home, there flashed through his mind how much life meant to the dying, how much it ought to mean to the living; and then this girl, this Margaret, swam before his eyes--and he had been graver since. He knew, as truly as if she had told him, that she could never mate with any man who was a loiterer on God's highway, who could live life without some sincerity in his aims. It all came to him again in this room, so austere in its appointments, yet so gracious, so full of the spirit of humanity without a note of ennui, or the rust of careless deeds. As this thought grew he looked at the face of the girl, then at the faces of the father and mother, and the memory of his boast came back--that he would win the stake he laid, to know the story of John and Audrey Malbrouck before this coming Christmas morning. With a faint smile at his own past insolent self, he glanced at the clock. It was eleven. "I have lost my bet," he unconsciously said aloud. He was roused by John Malbrouck remarking: "Yes, you have lost your bet? Well, what was it"? The youth, the childlike quality in him," flushed his face deeply, and then, with a sudden burst of frankness, he said: "I did not know that I had spoken. As for the bet, I deserve to be thrashed for ever having made it; but, duffer as I am, I want you to know that I'm something worse than duffer. The first time I met you I made a bet that I should know your history before Christmas Day. I haven't a word to say for myself. I'm contemptible. I beg your pardon; for your history is none of my business. I was really interested; that's all; but your lives, I believe it, as if it was in the Bible, have been great-- yes, that's the word! and I'm a better chap for having known you, though, perhaps, I've known you all along, because, you see, I've--I've been friends with your daughter--and-well, really I haven't anything else to say, except that I hope you'll forgive me, and let me know you always." Malbrouck regarded him for a moment with a grave smile, and then looked toward his wife. Both turned their glances quickly upon Margaret, whose eyes were on the fire. The look upon her face was very gentle; something new and beautiful had come to reign there. A moment, and Malbrouck spoke: "You did what was youthful and curious, but not wrong; and you shall not lose your hazard. I--" "No, do not tell me," Gregory interrupted; "only let me be pardoned." "As I said, lad, you shall not lose your hazard. I will tell you the brief tale of two lives." "But, I beg of you! For the instant I forgot. I have more to confess." And Gregory told them in substance what Pretty Pierre had disclosed to him in the Rocky Mountains. When he had finished, Malbrouck said: "My tale then is briefer still: I was a common soldier, English and humble by my mother, French and noble through my father--noble, but poor. In Burmah, at an outbreak among the natives, I rescued my colonel from immediate and horrible death, though he died in my arms from the injuries he received. His daughter too, it was my fortune, through God's Providence, to save from great danger. She became my wife. You remember that song you sang the day we first met you? "It brought her father back to mind painfully. When we came to England her people--her mother--would not receive me. For myself I did not care; for my wife, that was another matter. She loved me and preferred to go with me anywhere; to a new country, preferably. We came to Canada. "We were forgotten in England. Time moves so fast, even if the records in red-books stand. Our daughter went to her grandmother to be brought up and educated in England--though it was a sore trial to us both--that she might fill nobly that place in life for which she is destined. With all she learned she did not forget us. We were happy save in her absence. We are happy now; not because she is mistress of Holwood and Marchurst--for her grandmother and another is dead--but because such as she is our daughter, and--" He said no more. Margaret was beside him, and her fingers were on his lips. Gregory came to his feet suddenly, and with a troubled face. "Mistress of Holwood and Marchurst!" he said; and his mind ran over his own great deficiencies, and the list of eligible and anxious suitors that Park Lane could muster. He had never thought of her in the light of a great heiress. But he looked down at her as she knelt at her father's knee, her eyes upturned to his, and the tide of his fear retreated; for he saw in them the same look she had given him when she leaned her cheek against the moose's neck that afternoon. When the clock struck twelve upon a moment's pleasant silence, John Malbrouck said to Gregory Thorne: "Yes, you have won your Christmas hazard, my boy." But a softer voice than his whispered: "Are you--content--Gregory?" The Spirits of Christmas-tide, whose paths lie north as well as south, smiled as they wrote his answer on their tablets; for they knew, as the man said, that he would always be content, and--which is more in the sight of angels--that the woman would be content also. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Awkward for your friends and gratifying to your enemies Carrying with him the warm atmosphere of a good woman's love Freedom is the first essential of the artistic mind I was born insolent Knowing that his face would never be turned from me Likenesses between the perfectly human and the perfectly animal Longed to touch, oftener than they did, the hands of children Meditation is the enemy of action My excuses were making bad infernally worse Nothing so good as courage, nothing so base as the shifting eye She wasn't young, but she seemed so The Barracks of the Free The gods made last to humble the pride of men--there was rum The soul of goodness in things evil Time is the test, and Time will have its way with me Where I should never hear the voice of the social Thou must PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE TALES OF THE FAR NORTH By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. A PRAIRIE VAGABOND SHE OF THE TRIPLE CHEVRON THREE OUTLAWS A PRAIRIE VAGABOND Little Hammer was not a success. He was a disappointment to the missionaries; the officials of the Hudson's Bay Company said he was "no good;" the Mounted Police kept an eye on him; the Crees and Blackfeet would have nothing to do with him; and the half-breeds were profane regarding him. But Little Hammer was oblivious to any depreciation of his merits, and would not be suppressed. He loved the Hudson's Bay Company's Post at Yellow Quill with an unwavering love; he ranged the half-breed hospitality of Red Deer River, regardless of it being thrown at him as he in turn threw it at his dog; he saluted Sergeant Gellatly with a familiar How! whenever he saw him; he borrowed tabac of the half- breed women, and, strange to say, paid it back--with other tabac got by daily petition, until his prayer was granted, at the H. B. C. Post. He knew neither shame nor defeat, but where women were concerned he kept his word, and was singularly humble. It was a woman that induced him to be baptised. The day after the ceremony he begged "the loan of a dollar for the love of God" from the missionary; and being refused, straightway, and for the only time it was known of him, delivered a rumbling torrent of half-breed profanity, mixed with the unusual oaths of the barracks. Then he walked away with great humility. There was no swagger about Little Hammer. He was simply unquenchable and continuous. He sometimes got drunk; but on such occasions he sat down, or lay down, in the most convenient place, and, like Caesar beside Pompey's statue, wrapped his mantle about his face and forgot the world. He was a vagabond Indian, abandoned yet self-contained, outcast yet gregarious. No social ostracism unnerved him, no threats of the H. B. C. officials moved him; and when in the winter of 187_ he was driven from one place to another, starving and homeless, and came at last emaciated and nearly dead to the Post at Yellow Quill, he asked for food and shelter as if it were his right, and not as a mendicant. One night, shortly after his reception and restoration, he was sitting in the store silently smoking the Company's tabac. Sergeant Gellatly entered. Little Hammer rose, offered his hand, and muttered, "How!" The Sergeant thrust his hand aside, and said sharply: "Whin I take y'r hand, Little Hammer, it'll be to put a grip an y'r wrists that'll stay there till y'are in quarters out of which y'll come nayther winter nor summer. Put that in y'r pipe and smoke it, y' scamp!" Little Hammer had a bad time at the Post that night. Lounging half- breeds reviled him; the H. B. C. officials rebuked him; and travellers who were coming and going shared in the derision, as foolish people do where one is brow-beaten by many. At last a trapper entered, whom seeing, Little Hammer drew his blanket up about his head. The trapper sat down very near Little Hammer, and began to smoke. He laid his plug- tabac and his knife on the counter beside him. Little Hammer reached over and took the knife, putting it swiftly within his blanket. The trapper saw the act, and, turning sharply on the Indian, called him a thief. Little Hammer chuckled strangely and said nothing; but his eyes peered sharply above the blanket. A laugh went round the store. In an instant the trapper, with a loud oath, caught at the Indian's throat; but as the blanket dropped back he gave a startled cry. There was the flash of a knife, and he fell back dead. Little Hammer stood above him, smiling, for a moment, and then, turning to Sergeant Gellatly, held out his arms silently for the handcuffs. The next day two men were lost on the prairies. One was Sergeant Gellatly; the other was Little Hammer. The horses they rode travelled so close that the leg of the Indian crowded the leg of the white man; and the wilder the storm grew, the closer still they rode. A 'poudre' day, with its steely air and fatal frost, was an ill thing in the world; but these entangling blasts, these wild curtains of snow, were desolating even unto death. The sun above was smothered; the earth beneath was trackless; the compass stood for loss all round. What could Sergeant Gellatly expect, riding with a murderer on his left hand: a heathen that had sent a knife through the heart of one of the lords of the North? What should the gods do but frown, or the elements be at, but howling on their path? What should one hope for but that vengeance should be taken out of the hands of mortals, and be delivered to the angry spirits? But if the gods were angry at the Indian, why should Sergeant Gellatly only sway to and fro, and now laugh recklessly, and now fall sleepily forward on the neck of his horse; while the Indian rode straight, and neither wavered nor wandered in mind, but at last slipped from his horse and walked beside the other? It was at this moment that the soldier heard, "Sergeant Gellatly, Sergeant Gellatly," called through the blast; and he thought it came from the skies, or from some other world. "Me darlin'," he said, "have y' come to me?" But the voice called again: "Sergeant Gellatly, keep awake! keep awake! You sleep, you die; that's it. Holy. Yes. How!" Then he knew that it was Little Hammer calling in his ear, and shaking him; that the Indian was dragging him from his horse . . . his revolver, where was it? he had forgotten . . . he nodded . . . nodded. But Little Hammer said: "Walk, hell! you walk, yes;" and Little Hammer struck him again and again; but one arm of the Indian was under his shoulder and around him, and the voice was anxious and kind. Slowly it came to him that Little Hammer was keeping him alive against the will of the spirits--but why should they strike him instead of the Indian? Was there any sun in the world? Had there ever been? or fire or heat anywhere, or anything but wind and snow in all God's universe? . . . Yes, there were bells ringing--soft bells of a village church; and there was incense burning--most sweet it was! and the coals in the censer--how beautiful, how comforting! He laughed with joy again, and he forgot how cold, how maliciously cold, he had been; he forgot how dreadful that hour was before he became warm; when he was pierced by myriad needles through the body, and there was an incredible aching at his heart. And yet something kept thundering on his body, and a harsh voice shrieked at him, and there were many lights dancing over his shut eyes; and then curtains of darkness were dropped, and centuries of oblivion came; and then--then his eyes opened to a comforting silence, and some one was putting brandy between his teeth, and after a time he heard a voice say: "'Bien,' you see he was a murderer, but he save his captor. 'Voila,' such a heathen! But you will, all the same, bring him to justice--you call it that? But we shall see." Then some one replied, and the words passed through an outer web of darkness and an inner haze of dreams. "The feet of Little Hammer were like wood on the floor when you brought the two in, Pretty Pierre--and lucky for them you found them. . . . The thing would read right in a book, but it's not according to the run of things up here, not by a damned sight!" "Private Bradshaw," said the first voice again, "you do not know Little Hammer, nor that story of him. You wait for the trial. I have something to say. You think Little Hammer care for the prison, the rope?--Ah, when a man wait five years to kill--so! and it is done, he is glad sometimes when it is all over. Sergeant Gellatly there will wish he went to sleep forever in the snow, if Little Hammer come to the rope. Yes, I think." And Sergeant Gellatly's brain was so numbed that he did not grasp the meaning of the words, though he said them over and over again. . . . Was he dead? No, for his body was beating, beating . . . well, it didn't matter . . . nothing mattered . . . he was sinking to forgetfulness . . . sinking. So, for hours, for weeks--it might have been for years--and then he woke, clear and knowing, to "the unnatural, intolerable day"--it was that to him, with Little Hammer in prison. It was March when his memory and vigour vanished; it was May when he grasped the full remembrance of himself, and of that fight for life on the prairie: of the hands that smote him that he should not sleep; of Little Hammer the slayer, who had driven death back discomfited, and brought his captor safe to where his own captivity and punishment awaited him. When Sergeant Gellatly appeared in court at the trial he refused to bear witness against Little Hammer. "D' ye think--does wan av y' think--that I'll speak a word agin the man--haythen or no haythen--that pulled me out of me tomb and put me betune the barrack quilts? Here's the stripes aff me arm, and to gaol I'll go; but for what wint before I clapt the iron on his wrists, good or avil, divil a word will I say. An' here's me left hand, and there's me right fut, and an eye of me too, that I'd part with, for the cause of him that's done a trick that your honour wouldn't do-- an' no shame to y' aither--an' y'd been where Little Hammer was with me." His honour did not reply immediately, but he looked meditatively at Little Hammer before he said quietly,--"Perhaps not, perhaps not." And Little Hammer, thinking he was expected to speak, drew his blanket up closely about him and grunted, "How!" Pretty Pierre, the notorious half-breed, was then called. He kissed the Book, making the sign of the Cross swiftly as he did so, and unheeding the ironical, if hesitating, laughter in the court. Then he said: "'Bien,' I will tell you the story-the whole truth. I was in the Stony Plains. Little Hammer was 'good Injin' then. . . . Yes, sacre! it is a fool who smiles at that. I have kissed the Book. Dam! . . . He would be chief soon when old Two Tails die. He was proud, then, Little Hammer. He go not to the Post for drink; he sell not next year's furs for this year's rations; he shoot straight." Here Little Hammer stood up and said: "There is too much talk. Let me be. It is all done. The sun is set--I care not--I have killed him;" and then he drew his blanket about his face and sat down. But Pierre continued: "Yes, you killed him-quick, after five years--that is so; but you will not speak to say why. Then, I will speak. The Injins say Little Hammer will be great man; he will bring the tribes together; and all the time Little Hammer was strong and silent and wise. Then Brigley the trapper--well, he was a thief and coward. He come to Little Hammer and say, 'I am hungry and tired.' Little Hammer give him food and sleep. He go away. 'Bien,' he come back and say,--'It is far to go; I have no horse.' So Little Hammer give him a horse too. Then he come back once again in the night when Little Hammer was away, and before morning he go; but when Little Hammer return, there lay his bride--only an Injin girl, but his bride-dead! You see? Eh? No? Well, the Captain at the Post he says it was the same as Lucrece.--I say it was like hell. It is not much to kill or to die--that is in the game; but that other, 'mon Dieu!' Little Hammer, you see how he hide his head: not because he kill the Tarquin, that Brigley, but because he is a poor 'vaurien' now, and he once was happy and had a wife. . . . What would you do, judge honourable? . . . Little Hammer, I shake your hand--so--How!" But Little Hammer made no reply. The judge sentenced Little Hammer to one month in gaol. He might have made it one thousand months--it would have been the same; for when, on the last morning of that month, they opened the door to set him free, he was gone. That is, the Little Hammer whom the high gods knew was gone; though an ill-nourished, self-strangled body was upright by the wall. The vagabond had paid his penalty, but desired no more of earth. Upon the door was scratched the one word: How! SHE OF THE TRIPLE CHEVRON Between Archangel's Rise and Pardon's Drive there was but one house. It was a tavern, and it was known as Galbraith's Place. There was no man in the Western Territories to whom it was not familiar. There was no traveller who crossed the lonely waste but was glad of it, and would go twenty miles out of his way to rest a night on a corn-husk bed which Jen Galbraith's hands had filled, to eat a meal that she had prepared, and to hear Peter Galbraith's tales of early days on the plains, when buffalo were like clouds on the horizon, when Indians were many and hostile, and when men called the great western prairie a wedge of the American desert. It was night on the prairie. Jen Galbraith stood in the doorway of the tavern sitting-room and watched a mighty beacon of flame rising before her, a hundred yards away. Every night this beacon made a circle of light on the prairie, and Galbraith's Place was in the centre of the circle. Summer and winter it burned from dusk to daylight. No hand fed it but that of Nature. It never failed; it was a cruse that was never empty. Upon Jen Galbraith it had a weird influence. It grew to be to her a kind of spiritual companion, though, perhaps, she would not so have named it. This flaming gas, bubbling up from the depths of the earth on the lonely plains, was to her a mysterious presence grateful to her; the receiver of her thoughts, the daily necessity in her life. It filled her too with a kind of awe; for, when it burned, she seemed not herself alone, but another self of her whom she could not quite understand. Yet she was no mere dreamer. Upon her practical strength of body and mind had come that rugged poetical sense, which touches all who live the life of mountain and prairie. She showed it in her speech; it had a measured cadence. She expressed it in her body; it had a free and rhythmic movement. And not Jen alone, but many another dweller on the prairie, looked upon it with a superstitious reverence akin to worship. A blizzard could not quench it. A gale of wind only fed its strength. A rain-storm made a mist about it, in which it was enshrined like a god. Peter Galbraith could not fully understand his daughter's fascination for this Prairie Star, as the North-West people called it. It was not without its natural influence upon him; but he regarded it most as a comfortable advertisement, and he lamented every day that this never- failing gas well was not near a large population, and he still its owner. He was one of that large family in the earth who would turn the best things in their lives into merchandise. As it was, it brought much grist to his mill; for he was not averse to the exercise of the insinuating pleasures of euchre and poker in his tavern; and the hospitality which ranchmen, cowboys, and travellers sought at his hand was often prolonged, and also remunerative to him. Pretty Pierre, who had his patrol as gamester defined, made semi-annual visits to Galbraith's Place. It occurred generally after the rounding-up and branding seasons, when the cowboys and ranchmen were "flush" with money. It was generally conceded that Monsieur Pierre would have made an early excursion to a place where none is ever "ordered up," if he had not been free with the money which he so plentifully won. Card-playing was to him a science and a passion. He loved to win for winning's sake. After that, money, as he himself put it, was only fit to be spent for the good of the country, and that men should earn more. Since he put his philosophy into instant and generous practice, active and deadly prejudice against him did not have lengthened life. The Mounted Police, or as they are more poetically called, the Riders of the Plains, watched Galbraith's Place, not from any apprehension of violent events, but because Galbraith was suspected of infringing the prevailing law of Prohibition, and because for some years it had been a tradition and a custom to keep an eye on Pierre. As Jen Galbraith stood in the doorway looking abstractedly at the beacon, her fingers smoothing her snowy apron the while, she was thinking thus to herself: "Perhaps father is right. If that Prairie Star were only at Vancouver or Winnipeg instead of here, our Val could be something, more than a prairie-rider. He'd have been different, if father hadn't started this tavern business. Not that our Val is bad. He isn't; but if he had money he could buy a ranch,--or something." Our Val, as Jen and her father called him, was a lad of twenty-two, one year younger than Jen. He was prairie-rider, cattle-dealer, scout, cowboy, happy-go-lucky vagrant,--a splendid Bohemian of the plains. As Jen said, he was not bad; but he had a fiery, wandering spirit, touched withal by the sunniest humour. He had never known any curb but Jen's love and care. That had kept him within bounds so far. All men of the prairie spoke well of him. The great new lands have codes and standards of morals quite their own. One enthusiastic admirer of this youth said, in Jen's hearing, "He's a Christian--Val Galbraith!" That was the western way of announcing a man as having great civic and social virtues. Perhaps the respect for Val Galbraith was deepened by the fact that there was no broncho or cayuse that he could not tame to the saddle. Jen turned her face from the flame and looked away from the oasis of warmth it made, to where the light shaded away into darkness, a darkness that was unbroken for many a score of miles to the north and west. She sighed deeply and drew herself up with an aggressive motion as though she was freeing herself of something. So she was. She was trying to shake off a feeling of oppression. Ten minutes ago the gaslighted house behind her had seemed like a prison. She felt that she must have air, space, and freedom. She would have liked a long ride on the buffalo-track. That, she felt, would clear her mind. She was no romantic creature out of her sphere, no exotic. She was country-born and bred, and her blood had been charged by a prairie instinct passing through three generations. She was part of this life. Her mind was free and strong, and her body was free and healthy. While that freedom and health was genial, it revolted against what was gross or irregular. She loved horses and dogs, she liked to take a gun and ride away to the Poplar Hills in search of game, she found pleasure in visiting the Indian Reservation, and talking to Sun-in-the- North, the only good Indian chief she knew, or that anyone else on the prairies knew. She loved all that was strong and untamed, all that was panting with wild and glowing life. Splendidly developed, softly sinewy, warmly bountiful, yet without the least physical over-luxuriance or suggestiveness, Jen, with her tawny hair and dark-brown eyes, was a growth of unrestrained, unconventional, and eloquent life. Like Nature around her, glowing and fresh, yet glowing and hardy. There was, however, just a strain of pensiveness in her, partly owing to the fact that there were no women near her, that she had, virtually, lived her life as a woman alone. As she thus looked into the undefined horizon two things were happening: a traveller was approaching Galbraith's Place from a point in that horizon; and in the house behind her someone was singing. The traveller sat erect upon his horse. He had not the free and lazy seat of the ordinary prairie-rider. It was a cavalry seat, and a military manner. He belonged to that handful of men who patrol a frontier of near a thousand miles, and are the security of peace in three hundred thousand miles of territory--the Riders of the Plains, the North-West Mounted Police. This Rider of the Plains was Sergeant Thomas Gellatly, familiarly known as Sergeant Tom. Far away as he was he could see that a woman was standing in the tavern door. He guessed who it was, and his blood quickened at the guessing. But reining his horse on the furthest edge of the lighted circle, he said, debatingly: "I've little time enough to get to the Rise, and the order was to go through, hand the information to Inspector Jules, and be back within forty-eight hours. Is it flesh and blood they think I am? Me that's just come back from a journey of a hundred miles, and sent off again like this with but a taste of sleep and little food, and Corporal Byng sittin' there at Fort Desire with a pipe in his mouth and the fat on his back like a porpoise. It's famished I am with hunger, and thirty miles yet to do; and she, standin' there with a six months' welcome in her eye. . . . It's in the interest of Justice if I halt at Galbraith's Place for half-an-hour, bedad! The blackguard hid away there at Soldier's Knee will be arrested all the sooner; for horse and man will be able the better to travel. I'm glad it's not me that has to take him whoever he is. It's little I like leadin' a fellow- creature towards the gallows, or puttin' a bullet into him if he won't come. . . . Now what will we do, Larry, me boy? "this to the broncho--"Go on without bite or sup, me achin' behind and empty before, and you laggin' in the legs, or stay here for the slice of an hour and get some heart into us? Stay here is it, me boy? then lave go me fut with your teeth and push on to the Prairie Star there." So saying, Sergeant Tom, whose language in soliloquy, or when excited, was more marked by a brogue than at other times, rode away towards Galbraith's Place. In the tavern at that moment, Pretty Pierrre was sitting on the bar- counter, where temperance drinks were professedly sold, singing to himself. His dress was singularly neat, if coarse, and his slouch hat was worn with an air of jauntiness according well with his slight make and almost girlish delicacy of complexion. He was puffing a cigarette, in the breaks of the song. Peter Galbraith, tall, gaunt, and sombre- looking, sat with his chair tilted back against the wall, rather nervously pulling at the strips of bark of which the yielding chair-seat was made. He may or may not have been listening to the song which had run through several verses. Where it had come from, no one knew; no one cared to know. The number of its verses were legion. Pierre had a sweet voice, of a peculiarly penetrating quality; still it was low and well- modulated, like the colour in his cheeks, which gave him his name. These were the words he was singing as Sergeant Tom rode towards the tavern: "The hot blood leaps in his quivering breast Voila! 'Tis his enemies near! There's a chasm deep on the mountain crest Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear! They follow him close and they follow him fast, And he flies like a mountain deer; Then a mad, wild leap and he's safe at last! Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear! A cry and a leap and the danger's past Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!" At the close of the verse, Galbraith said: "I don't like that song. I--I don't like it. You're not a father, Pierre." "No, I am not a father. I have some virtue of that. I have spared the world something, Pete Galbraith." "You have the Devil's luck; your sins never get YOU into trouble." A curious fire flashed in the half-breed's eyes, and he said, quietly: "Yes, I have great luck; but I have my little troubles at times--at times." "They're different, though, from this trouble of Val's." There was something like a fog in the old man's throat. "Yes, Val was quite foolish, you see. If he had killed a white man-- Pretty Pierre, for instance--well, there would have been a show of arrest, but he could escape. It was an Injin. The Government cherish the Injin much in these days. The redskin must be protected. It must be shown that at Ottawa there is justice. That is droll--quite. Eh, bien! Val will not try to escape. He waits too long-near twenty-four hours. Then, it is as you see. . . . You have not told her?" He nodded towards the door of the sittingroom. "Nothing. It'll come on Jen soon enough if he doesn't get away, and bad enough if he does, and can't come back to us. She's fond of him--as fond of him as a mother. Always was wiser than our Val or me, Jen was. More sense than a judge, and proud but not too proud, Pierre--not too proud. She knows the right thing to do, like the Scriptures; and she does it too. . . . Where did you say he was hid?" "In the Hollow at Soldier's Knee. He stayed too long at Moose Horn. Injins carried the news on to Fort Desire. When Val started south for the Border other Injins followed, and when a halt was made at Soldier's Knee they pushed across country over to Fort Desire. You see, Val's horse give out. I rode with him so far. My horse too was broke up. What was to be done? Well, I knew a ranchman not far from Soldier's Knee. I told Val to sleep, and I would go on and get the ranchman to send him a horse, while I come on to you. Then he could push on to the Border. I saw the ranchman, and he swore to send a horse to Val to-night. He will keep his word. He knows Val. That was at noon to- day, and I am here, you see, and you know all. The danger? Ah, my friend,--the Police Barracks at Archangel's Rise! If word is sent down there from Fort Desire before Val passes, they will have out a big patrol, and his chances,--well, you know them, the Riders of the Plains. But Val, I think will have luck, and get into Montana before they can stop him. I hope; yes." "If I could do anything, Pierre! Can't we--" The half-breed interrupted: "No, we can't do anything, Galbraith. I have done all. The ranchman knows me. He will keep his word, by the Great Heaven!" It would seem as if Pierre had reasons for relying on the ranchman other than ordinary prairie courtesy to law-breakers. "Pierre, tell me the whole story over, slow and plain. It don't seem nateral to think of it; but if you go over it again, perhaps I can get the thing more reas'nable in my mind. No, it ain't nateral to me, Pierre--our Val running away." The old man leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. "Eh, well, it was an Injin. So much. It was in self-defence--a little, but of course to prove that. There is the difficulty. You see, they were all drinking, and the Injin--he was a chief---proposed--he proposed that Val should sell him his sister, Jen Galbraith, to be the chief's squaw. He would give him a cayuse. Val's blood came up quick--quite quick. You know Val. He said between his teeth: 'Look out, Snow Devil, you Injin dog, or I'll have your heart. Do you think a white girl is like a redskin woman, to be sold as you sell your wives and daughters to the squaw-men and white loafers, you reptile?' Then the Injin said an ugly word about Val's sister, and Val shot him dead like lightning.... Yes, that is good to swear, Galbraith. You are not the only one that curses the law in this world. It is not Justice that fills the gaols, but Law." The old man rose and walked up and down the room in a shuffling kind of way. His best days were done, the spring of his life was gone, and the step was that of a man who had little more of activity and force with which to turn the halting wheels of life. His face was not altogether good, yet it was not evil. There was a sinister droop to the eyelids, a suggestion of cruelty about the mouth; but there was more of good-nature and passive strength than either in the general expression. One could see that some genial influence had dominated what was inherently cruel and sinister in him. Still the sinister predisposition was there. "He can't never come here, Pierre, can he"? he asked, despairingly. "No, he can't come here, Galbraith. And look: if the Riders of the Plains should stop here to-night, or to-morrow, you will be cool--cool, eh?" "Yes, I will be quite cool, Pierre." Then he seemed to think of something else and looked up half-curiously, half-inquiringly at the half-breed. Pierre saw this. He whistled quietly to himself for a little, and then called the old man over to where he sat. Leaning slightly forward he made his reply to the look that had been bent upon him. He touched Galbraith's breast lightly with his delicate fingers, and said: "I have not much love for the world, Pete Galbraith, and not much love for men and women altogether; they are fools--nearly all. Some men--you know-- treat me well. They drink with me--much. They would make life a hell for me if I was poor--shoot me, perhaps, quick!--if--if I didn't shoot first. They would wipe me with their feet. They would spoil Pretty Pierre." This he said with a grim kind of humour and scorn, refined in its suppressed force. Fastidious as he was in appearance, Pierre was not vain. He had been created with a sense of refinement that reduced the grossness of his life; but he did not trade on it; he simply accepted it and lived it naturally after his kind. He was not good at heart, and he never pretended to be so. He continued: "No, I have not much love; but Val, well, I think of him some. His tongue is straight; he makes no lies. His heart is fire; his arms are strong; he has no fear. He does not love Pierre; but he does not pretend to love him. He does not think of me like the rest. So much the more when his trouble comes I help him. I help him to the death if he needs me. To make him my friend--that is good. Eh? Perhaps. You see, Galbraith?" The old man nodded thoughtfully, and after a little pause said: "I have killed Injins myself;" and he made a motion of his head backward, suggestive of the past. With a shrug of his shoulders the other replied "Yes, so have I-- sometimes. But the government was different then, and there were no Riders of the Plains." His white teeth showed menacingly under his slight moustache. Then there was another pause. Pierre was watching the other. "What's that you're doing, Galbraith?" "Rubbin' laudanum on my gums for this toothache. Have to use it for nuralgy, too." Galbraith put the little vial back in his waistcoat pocket, and presently said: "What will you have to drink, Pretty Pierre?" That was his way of showing gratitude. "I am reform. I will take coffee, if Jen Galbraith will make some. Too much broke glass inside is not good. Yes." Galbraith went into the sitting-room to ask Jen to make the coffee. Pierre, still sitting on the bar-counter, sang to himself a verse of a rough-and-ready, satirical prairie ballad: "The Riders of the Plains, my boys, are twenty thousand strong Oh, Lordy, don't they make the prairies howl! 'Tis their lot to smile on virtue and to collar what is wrong, And to intercept the happy flowin' bowl. They've a notion, that in glory, when we wicked ones have chains They will all be major-generals--and that! They're a lovely band of pilgrims are the Riders of the Plains Will some sinner please to pass around the hat?" As he reached the last two lines of the verse the door opened and Sergeant Tom entered. Pretty Pierre did not stop singing. His eyes simply grew a little brighter, his cheek flushed ever so slightly, and there was an increase of vigour in the closing notes. Sergeant Tom smiled a little grimly, then he nodded and said: "Been at it ever since, Pretty Pierre? You were singing the same song on the same spot when I passed here six months ago." "Eh, Sergeant Tom, it is you? What brings you so far from your straw-bed at Fort Desire?" From underneath his hat-brim Pierre scanned the face of the trooper closely. "Business. Not to smile on virtue, but to collar what is wrong. I guess you ought to be ready by this time to go into quarters, Pierre. You've had a long innings." "Not yet, Sergeant Tom, though I love the Irish, and your company would make me happy. But I am so innocent, and the world--it cannot spare me yet. But I think you come to smile on virtue, all the same, Sergeant Tom. She is beautiful is Jen Galbraith. Ah, that makes your eye bright --so! You Riders of the Plains, you do two things at one time. You make this hour someone happy, and that hour someone unhappy. In one hand the soft glove of kindness, in the other, voila! the cold glove of steel. We cannot all be great like that, Sergeant Tom." "Not great, but clever. Voila, the Pretty Pierre! In one hand he holds the soft paper, the pictures that deceive--kings, queens, and knaves; in the other, pictures in gold and silver--money won from the pockets of fools. And so, as you say, 'bien,' and we each have our way, bedad!" Sergeant Tom noticed that the half-breed's eyes nearly closed, as if to hide the malevolence that was in them. He would not have been surprised to see a pistol drawn. But he was quite fearless, and if it was not his duty to provoke a difficulty, his fighting nature would not shrink from giving as good as he got. Besides, so far as that nature permitted, he hated Pretty Pierre. He knew the ruin that this gambler had caused here and there in the West, and he was glad that Fort Desire, at any rate, knew him less than it did formerly. Just then Peter Galbraith entered with the coffee, followed by Jen. When the old man saw his visitor he stood still with sudden fear; but catching a warning look from the eye of the half-breed, he made an effort to be steady, and said: "Well, Jen, if it isn't Sergeant Tom! And what brings you down here, Sergeant Tom? After some scalawag that's broke the law?" Sergeant Tom had not noticed the blanched anxiety in the father's face; for his eyes were seeking those of the daughter. He answered the question as he advanced towards Jen: "Yes and no, Galbraith; I'm only takin' orders to those who will be after some scalawag by daylight in the mornin', or before. The hand of a traveller to you, Miss Jen." Her eyes replied to his in one language; her lips spoke another. "And who is the law-breaker, Sergeant Tom"? she said, as she took his hand. Galbraith's eyes strained towards the soldier till the reply came: "And I don't know that; not wan o' me. I'd ridden in to Fort Desire from another duty, a matter of a hundred miles, whin the major says to me, 'There's murder been done at Moose Horn. Take these orders down to Archangel's Rise, and deliver them and be back here within forty-eight hours.' And here I am on the way, and, if I wasn't ready to drop for want of a bite and sup, I'd be movin' away from here to the south at this moment." Galbraith was trembling with excitement. Pierre warned him by a look, and almost immediately afterward gave him a reassuring nod, as if an important and favourable idea had occurred to him. Jen, looking at the Sergeant's handsome face, said: "It's six months to a day since you were here, Sergeant Tom." "What an almanac you are, Miss!" Pretty Pierre sipping his coffee here interrupted musingly: "But her almanac is not always so reliable. So I think. When was I here last, Ma'm'selle?" With something like menace in her eyes Jen replied: "You were here six months ago to-day, when you won thirty dollars from our Val; and then again, just thirty days after that." "Ah, so! You remember with a difference." A moment after, Sergeant Tom being occupied in talking to Jen, Pierre whispered to Peter Galbraith: "His horse--then the laudanum!" Galbraith was puzzled for a moment, but soon nodded significantly, and the sinister droop to his eyes became more marked. He turned to the Sergeant and said, "Your horse must be fed as well as yourself, Sergeant Tom. I'll look after the beast, and Jen will take care of you. There's some fresh coffee, isn't there, Jen?" Jen nodded an affirmative. Galbraith knew that the Sergeant would trust no one to feed his horse but himself, and the offer therefore was made with design. Sergeant Tom replied instantly: "No, I'll do it if someone will show me the grass pile." Pierre slipped quietly from the counter, and said, "I know the way, Galbraith. I will show." Jen turned to the sitting-room, and Sergeant Tom moved to the tavern door, followed by Pierre, who, as he passed Galbraith, touched the old man's waistcoat pocket, and said: "Thirty drops in the coffee." Then he passed out, singing softly: "And he sleepeth so well, and he sleepeth so long The fight it was hard, my dear; And his foes were many and swift and strong Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!" There was danger ahead for Sergeant Thomas Gellatly. Galbraith followed his daughter to the sitting-room. She went to the kitchen and brought bread, and cold venison, and prairie fowl, and stewed dried apples--the stay and luxury of all rural Canadian homes. The coffee-pot was then placed on the table. Then the old man said: "Better give him some of that old cheese, Jen, hadn't you? It's in the cellar." He wanted to be rid of her for a few moments. "S'pose I had," and Jen vanished. Now was Galbraith's chance. He took the vial of laudanum from his pocket, and opened the coffee-pot. It was half full. This would not suit. Someone else--Jen--might drink the coffee also! Yet it had to be done. Sergeant Tom should not go on. Inspector Jules and his Riders of the Plains must not be put upon the track of Val. Twelve hours would make all the difference. Pour out a cup of coffee?--Yes, of course, that would do. It was poured out quickly, and then thirty drops of laudanum were carefully counted into it. Hark, they are coming back!--Just in time. Sergeant Tom and Pierre enter from outside, and then Jen from the kitchen. Galbraith is pouring another cup of coffee as they enter, and he says: "Just to be sociable I'm goin' to have a cup of coffee with you, Sergeant Tom. How you Riders of the Plains get waited on hand and foot!" Did some warning flash through Sergeant Tom's mind or body, some mental. shock or some physical chill? For he distinctly shivered, though he was not cold. He seemed suddenly oppressed with a sense of danger. But his eyes fell on Jen, and the hesitation, for which he did not then try to account, passed. Jen, clear-faced and true, invited him to sit and eat, and he, starting half-abstractedly, responded to her "Draw nigh, Sergeant Tom," and sat down. Commonplace as the words were, they thrilled him, for he thought of a table of his own in a home of his own, and the same words spoken everyday, but without the "Sergeant,"--simply "Tom." He ate heartily and sipped his coffee slowly, talking meanwhile to Jen and Galbraith. Pretty Pierre watched them all. Presently the gambler said: "Let us go and have our game of euchre, Galbraith. Ma'm'selle can well take care of Sergeant Tom." Galbraith drank the rest of his coffee, rose, and passed with Pierre into the bar-room. Then the halfbreed said to him, "You were careful--thirty drops?" "Yes, thirty drops." The latent cruelty of the old man's nature was awake. "That is right. It is sleep; not death. He will sleep so sound for half a day, perhaps eighteen hours, and then!--Val will have a long start." In the sitting-room Sergeant Tom was saying: "Where is your brother, Miss Galbraith?" He had no idea that the order in his pocket was for the arrest of that brother. He merely asked the question to start the talk. He and Jen had met but five or six times; but the impression left on the minds of both was pleasant--ineradicable. Yet, as Sergeant Tom often asked himself during the past six months, why should he think of her? The life he led was one of severe endurance, and harshness, and austerity. Into it there could not possibly enter anything of home. He was but a noncommissioned officer of the Mounted Police, and beyond that he had nothing. Ireland had not been kind to him. He had left her inhospitable shores, and after years of absence he had but a couple of hundred dollars laid up--enough to purchase his discharge and something over, but nothing with which to start a home. Ranching required capital. No, it couldn't be thought of; and yet he had thought of it, try as he would not to do so. And she? There was that about this man who had lived life on two continents, in whose blood ran the warm and chivalrous Celtic fire, which appealed to her. His physical manhood was noble, if rugged; his disposition genial and free, if schooled, but not entirely, to that reserve which his occupation made necessary--a reserve he would have been more careful to maintain, in speaking of his mission a short time back in the bar-room, if Jen had not been there. She called out the frankest part of him; she opened the doors of his nature; she attracted confidence as the sun does the sunflower. To his question she replied: "I do not know where our Val is. He went on a hunting expedition up north. We never can tell about him, when he will turn up or where he will be to-morrow. He may walk in any minute. We never feel uneasy. He always has such luck, and comes out safe and sound wherever he is. Father says Val's a hustler, and that nothing can keep in the road with him. But he's a little wild--a little. Still, we don't hector him, Sergeant Tom; hectoring never does any good, does it?" "No, hectoring never does any good. And as for the wildness, if the heart of him's right, why that's easy out of him whin he's older. It's a fine lad I thought him, the time I saw him here. It's his freedom I wish I had--me that has to travel all day and part of the night, and thin part of the day and all night back again, and thin a day of sleep and the same thing over again. And that's the life of me, sayin' nothin' of the frost and the blizzards, and no home to go to, and no one to have a meal for me like this whin I turn up." And the sergeant wound up with, "Whooroo! there's a speech for you, Miss!" and laughed good-humouredly. For all that, there was in his eyes an appeal that went straight to Jen's heart. But, woman-like, she would not open the way for him to say anything more definite just yet. She turned the subject. And yet again, woman-like, she knew it would lead to the same conclusion: "You must go to-night?" "Yes, I must." "Nothing--nothing would keep you?" "Nothing. Duty is duty, much as I'd like to stay, and you givin' me the bid. But my orders were strict. You don't know what discipline means, perhaps. It means obeyin' commands if you die for it; and my commands were to take a letter to Inspector Jules at Archangel's Rise to-night. It's a matter of murder or the like, and duty must be done, and me that sleepy, not forgettin' your presence, as ever a man was and looked the world in the face." He drank the rest of the coffee and mechanically set the cup down, his eyes closing heavily as he did so. He made an effort, however, and pulled himself together. His eyes opened, and he looked at Jen steadily for a moment. Then he leaned over and touched her hand gently with his fingers,--Pierre's glove of kindness,--and said: "It's in my heart to want to stay; but a sight of you I'll have on my way back. But I must go on now, though I'm that drowsy I could lie down here and never stir again." Jen said to herself: "Poor fellow, poor fellow, how tired he is! I wish"--but she withdrew her hand. He put his hand to his head, and said, absently: "It's my duty and it's orders, and . . . what was I sayin'? The disgrace of me if, if . . . bedad! the sleep's on me; I'm awake, but I can't open my eyes. . . . If the orders of me--and a good meal . . . and the disgrace . . . to do me duty-looked the world in the face--" During this speech he staggered to his feet, Jen watching him anxiously the while. No suspicion of the cause of his trouble crossed her mind. She set it down to extreme natural exhaustion. Presently feeling the sofa behind him, he dropped upon it, and, falling back, began to breathe heavily. But even in this physical stupefaction he made an effort to reassert himself, to draw himself back from the coming unconsciousness. His eyes opened, but they were blind with sleep; and as if in a dream, he said: "My duty . . . disgrace . . . a long sleep . . . Jen, dearest"--how she started then!--"it must be done . . . my Jen!" and he said no more. But these few words had opened up a world for her--a new-created world on the instant. Her life was illuminated. She felt the fulness of a great thought suffusing her face. A beautiful dream was upon her. It had come to her out of his sleep. But with its splendid advent there came the other thing that always is born with woman's love--an almost pathetic care of the being loved. In the deep love of women the maternal and protective sense works in the parallels of mutual regard. In her life now it sprang full-statured in action; love of him, care of him; his honour her honour; his life her life. He must not sleep like this if it was his duty to go on. Yet how utterly worn he must be! She had seen men brought in from fighting prairie fires for three days without sleep; had watched them drop on their beds, and lie like logs for thirty-six hours. This sleep of her lover was, therefore, not so strange to her. but it was perilous to the performance of his duty. "Poor Sergeant Tom," she said. "Poor Tom," she added; and then, with a great flutter at the heart at last, "My Tom!" Yes, she said that; but she said it to the beacon, to the Prairie Star, burning outside brighter, it seemed to her, than it had ever done be fore. Then she sat down and watched him for many minutes, thinking at the end of each that she would wake him. But the minutes passed, his breathing grew heavier, and he did not stir. The Prairie Star made quivering and luminous curtains of red for the windows, and Jen's mind was quivering in vivid waves of feeling just the same. It seemed to her as if she was looking at life now through an atmosphere charged with some rare, refining essence, and that in it she stood exultingly. Perhaps she did not define it so; but that which we define she felt. And happy are they who feel it, and, feeling it, do not lose it in this world, and have the hope of carrying it into the next. After a time she rose, went over to him and touched his shoulder. It seemed strange to her to do this thing. She drew back timidly from the pleasant shock of a new experience. Then she remembered that he ought to be on his way, and she shook him gently, then, with all her strength, and called to him quietly all the time, as if her low tones ought to wake him, if nothing else could. But he lay in a deep and stolid slumber. It was no use. She went to her seat and sat down to think. As she did so, her father entered the room. "Did you call, Jen"? he said; and turned to the sofa. "I was calling to Sergeant Tom. He's asleep there; dead-gone, father. I can't wake him." "Why should you wake him? He is tired." The sinister lines in Galbraith's face had deepened greatly in the last hour. He went over and looked closely at the Sergeant, followed languidly by Pierre, who casually touched the pulse of the sleeping man, and said as casually: "Eh, he sleep well; his pulse is like a baby; he was tired, much. He has had no sleep for one, two, three nights, perhaps; and a good meal, it makes him comfortable, and so you see!" Then he touched lightly the triple chevron on Sergeant Tom's arm, and said: "Eh, a man does much work for that. And then, to be moral and the friend of the law all the time!" Pierre here shrugged his shoulders. "It is easier to be wicked and free, and spend when one is rich, and starve when one is poor, than to be a sergeant and wear the triple chevron. But the sleep will do him good just the same, Jen Galbraith." "He said that he must go to Archangel's Rise tonight, and be back at Fort Desire to-morrow night." "Well, that's nothing to us, Jen," replied Galbraith, roughly. "He's got his own business to look after. He and his tribe are none too good to us and our tribe. He'd have your old father up to-morrow for selling a tired traveller a glass of brandy; and worse than that, ay, a great sight worse than that, mind you, Jen." Jen did not notice, or, at least, did not heed, the excited emphasis on the last words. She thought that perhaps her father had been set against the Sergeant by Pierre. "There, that'll do, father," she said. "It's easy to bark at a dead lion. Sergeant Tom's asleep, and you say things that you wouldn't say if he was awake. He never did us any harm, and you know that's true, father." Galbraith was about to reply with anger; but he changed his mind and walked into the bar-room, followed by Pierre. In Jen's mind a scheme had been hurriedly and clearly formed; and with her, to form it was to put it into execution. She went to Sergeant Tom, opened his coat, felt in the inside pocket, and drew forth an official envelope. It was addressed to Inspector Jules at Archangel's Rise. She put it back and buttoned up the coat again. Then she said, with her hands firmly clenching at her side,--"I'll do it." She went into the adjoining room and got a quilt, which she threw over him, and a pillow, which she put under his head. Then she took his cap and the cloak which he had thrown over a chair, as if to carry them away. But another thought occurred to her, for she looked towards the bar-room and put them down again. She glanced out of the window and saw that her father and Pierre had gone to lessen the volume of gas which was feeding the flame. This, she knew, meant that her father would go to bed when he came back to the house; and this suited her purpose. She waited till they had entered the bar-room again, and then she went to them, and said: "I guess he's asleep for all night. Best leave him where he is. I'm going. Good-night." When she got back to the sitting-room she said to herself: "How old father's looking! He seems broken up to-day. He isn't what he used to be." She turned once more to look at Sergeant Tom, then she went to her room. A little later Peter Galbraith and Pretty Pierre went to the sitting- room, and the old man drew from the Sergeant's pocket the envelope which Jen had seen. Pierre took it from him. "No, Pete Galbraith. Do not be a fool. Suppose you steal that paper. Sergeant Tom will miss it. He will understand. He will guess about the drug, then you will be in trouble. Val will be safe now. This Rider of the Plains will sleep long enough for that. There, I put the paper back. He sleeps like a log. No one can suspect the drug, and it is all as we like. No, we will not steal; that is wrong--quite wrong"--here Pretty Pierre showed his teeth. "We will go to bed. Come!" Jen heard them ascend the stairs. She waited a half-hour, then she stole into Val's bedroom, and when she emerged again she had a bundle of clothes across her arm. A few minutes more and she walked into the sitting-room dressed in Val's clothes, and with her hair closely wound on the top of her head. The house was still. The Prairie Star made the room light enough for her purpose. She took Sergeant Tom's cap and cloak and put them on. She drew the envelope from his pocket and put it in her bosom--she showed the woman there, though for the rest of this night she was to be a Rider of the Plains, She of the Triple Chevron. She went towards the door, hesitated, drew back, then paused, stooped down quickly, tenderly touched the soldier's brow with her lips, and said: "I'll do it for you. You shall not be disgraced--Tom." III This was at half-past ten o'clock. At two o'clock a jaded and blown horse stood before the door of the barracks at Archangel's Rise. Its rider, muffled to the chin, was knocking, and at the same time pulling his cap down closely over his head. "Thank God the night is dusky," he said. We have heard that voice before. The hat and cloak are those of Sergeant Tom, but the voice is that of Jen Galbraith. There is some danger in this act; danger for her lover, contempt for herself if she is discovered. Presently the door opens and a corporal appears. "Who's there? Oh," he added, as he caught sight of the familiar uniform; "where from?" "From Fort Desire. Important orders to Inspector Jules. Require fresh horse to return with; must leave mine here. Have to go back at once." "I say," said the corporal, taking the papers--"what's your name?" "Gellatly--Sergeant Gellatly." "Say, Sergeant Gellatly, this isn't accordin' to Hoyle--come in the night and go in the night and not stay long enough to have a swear at the Gover'ment. Why, you're comin' in, aren't you? You're comin' across the door-mat for a cup of coffee and a warm while the horse is gettin' ready, aren't you, Sergeant--Sergeant Gellatly, Sergeant Gellatly? I've heard of you, but--yes; I will hurry. Here, Waugh, this to Inspector Jules! If you won't step in and won't drink and will be unsociable, sergeant, why, come on and you shall have a horse as good as the one you've brought. I'm Corporal Galna." Jen led the exhausted horse to the stables. Fortunately there was no lantern used, and therefore little chance for the garrulous corporal to study the face of his companion, even if he wished to do so. The risk was considerable; but Jen Galbraith was fired by that spirit of self- sacrifice which has held a world rocking to destruction on a balancing point of safety. The horse was quickly saddled, Jen meanwhile remaining silent. While she was mounting, Corporal Galna drew and struck a match to light his pipe. He held it up for a moment as though to see the face of Sergeant Gellatly. Jen had just given a good-night, and the horse the word and a touch of the spur at the instant. Her face, that is, such of it as could be seen above the cloak and under the cap, was full in the light. Enough was seen, however, to call forth, in addition to Corporal Galna's good- night, the exclamation," Well, I'm blowed!" As Jen vanished into the night a moment after, she heard a voice calling --not Corporal Galna's--"Sergeant Gellatly, Sergeant Gellatly!" She supposed it was Inspector Jules, but she would not turn back now. Her work was done. A half-hour later Corporal Galna confided to Private Waugh that Sergeant Gellatly was too damned pretty for the force--wondered if they called him Beauty at Fort Desire--couldn't call him Pretty Gellatly, for there was Pretty Pierre who had right of possession to that title--would like to ask him what soap he used for his complexion--'twasn't this yellow bar- soap of the barracks, which wouldn't lather, he'd bet his ultimate dollar. Waugh, who had sometime seen Sergeant Gellatly, entered into a disputation on the point. He said that "Sergeant Tom was good-looking, a regular Irish thoroughbred; but he wasn't pretty, not much!--guessed Corporal Galna had nightmare, and finally, as the interest in the theme increased in fervour, announced that Sergeant Tom could loosen the teeth of, and knock the spots off, any man among the Riders, from Archangel's Rise to the Cypress Hills. Pretty--not much--thoroughbred all over!" And Corporal Galna replied, sarcastically,--"That he might be able for spot dispersion of such a kind, but he had two as pretty spots on his cheek, and as white and touch-no-tobacco teeth as any female ever had." Private Waugh declared then that Corporal Galna would be saying Sergeant Gellatly wasn't a man at all, and wore earrings, and put his hair into papers; and when he could find no further enlargement of sarcasm, consigned the Corporal to a fiery place of future torment reserved for lunatics. At this critical juncture Waugh was ordered to proceed to Inspector Jules. A few minutes after, he was riding away toward Soldier's Knee, with the Inspector and another private, to capture Val Galbraith, the slayer of Snow Devil, while four other troopers also started off in different directions. IV It was six o'clock when Jen drew rein in the yard at Galbraith's Place. Through the dank humours of the darkest time of the night she had watched the first grey streaks of dawn appear. She had caught her breath with fear at the thought that, by some accident, she might not get back before seven o'clock, the hour when her father rose. She trembled also at the supposition of Sergeant Tom awaking and finding his papers gone. But her fearfulness and excitement was not that of weakness, rather that of a finely nervous nature, having strong elements of imagination, and, therefore, great capacities for suffering as for joy; but yet elastic, vigorous, and possessing unusual powers of endurance. Such natures rebuild as fast as they are exhausted. In the devitalising time preceding the dawn she had felt a sudden faintness come over her for a moment; but her will surmounted it, and, when she saw the ruddy streaks of pink and red glorify the horizon, she felt a sudden exaltation of physical strength. She was a child of the light, she loved the warm flame of the sun, the white gleam of the moon. Holding in her horse to give him a five minutes' rest, she rose in her saddle and looked round. She was alone in her circle of vision, she and her horse. The long hillocks of prairie rolled away like the sea to the flushed morning, and the far-off Cypress Hills broke the monotonous skyline of the south. Already the air was dissipated of its choking weight, and the vast solitude was filling with that sense of freedom which night seems to shut in as with four walls, and day to widen gloriously. Tears sprang to her eyes from a sudden rush of feeling; but her lips were smiling. The world was so different from what it was yesterday. Something had quickened her into a glowing life. Then she urged the horse on, and never halted till she reached home. She unsaddled the animal that had shared with her the hardship of the long, hard ride, hobbled it, and entered the house quickly. No one was stirring. Sergeant Tom was still asleep. This she saw, as she hurriedly passed in and laid the cap and cloak where she had found them. Then, once again, she touched the brow of the sleeper with her lips, and went to her room to divest herself of Val's clothes. The thing had been done without anyone knowing of her absence. But she was frightened as she looked into the mirror. She was haggard, and her eyes were bloodshot. Eight hours or nearly in the saddle, at ten miles an hour, had told on her severely; as well it might. Even a prairie-born woman, however, understands the art and use of grooming better than a man. Warm water quickly heated at the gas, with a little acetic acid in it, used generally for her scouring,--and then cold water with oatmeal flour, took away in part the dulness and the lines in the flesh. But the eyes! Jen remembered the vial of tincture of myrrh left by a young Englishman a year ago, and used by him for refreshing his eyes after a drinking bout. She got it, tried the tincture, and saw and felt an immediate benefit. Then she made a cup of strong green tea, and in ten minutes was like herself again. Now for the horse. She went quickly out where she could not be seen from the windows of the house, and gave him a rubbing down till he was quite dry. Then she gave him a little water and some feed. The horse was really the touchstone of discovery. But Jen trusted in her star. If the worst came she would tell the tale. It must be told anyway to Sergeant Tom--but that was different now. Even if the thing became known it would only be a thing to be teased about by her father and others, and she could stop that. Poor girl, as though that was the worst that was to come from her act! Sergeant Tom slept deeply and soundly. He had not stirred. His breathing was unnaturally heavy, Jen thought, but, no suspicion of foul play came to her mind yet. Why should it? She gave herself up to a sweet and simple sense of pride in the deed she had done for him, disturbed but slightly by the chances of discovery, and the remembrance of the match that showed her face at Archangel's Rise. Her hands touched the flaxen hair of the soldier, and her eyes grew luminous. One night had stirred all her soul to its depths. A new woman had been born in her. Val was dear to her--her brother Val; but she realised now that another had come who would occupy a place that neither father, nor brother, nor any other could fill. Yet it was a most weird set of tragic circumstances. This man before her had been set to do a task which might deprive her brother of his life, certainly of his freedom; that would disgrace him; her father had done a great wrong too, had put in danger the life of the man she loved, to save his son; she herself in doing this deed for her lover had placed her brother in jeopardy, had crossed swords with her father's purposes, had done the one thing that stood between that father's son and safety; Pretty Pierre, whom she hated and despised, and thought to be the enemy of her brother and of her home, had proved himself a friend; and behind it all was the brother's crime committed to avenge an insult to her name. But such is life. Men and women are unwittingly their own executioners, and the executioners of those they love. V An hour passed, and then Galbraith and Pierre appeared. Jen noticed that her father went over to Sergeant Tom and rather anxiously felt his pulse. Once in the night the old man had come down and done the same thing. Pierre said something in an undertone. Did they think he was ill? That was Jon's thought. She watched them closely; but the half-breed knew that she was watching, and the two said nothing more to each other. But Pierre said, in a careless way: "It is good he have that sleep. He was played out, quite." Jon replied, a secret triumph at her heart: "But what about his orders, the papers he was to carry to Archangel's Rise? What about his being back at Fort Desire in the time given him?" "It is not much matter about the papers. The poor devil that Inspector Jules would arrest--well, he will get off, perhaps, but that does no one harm. Eh, Galbraith? The law is sometimes unkind. And as for obeying orders, why, the prairie is wide, it is a hard ride, horses go wrong; --a little tale of trouble to Inspector Jules, another at Fort Desire, and who is to know except Pete Galbraith, Jen Galbraith, and Pierre? Poor Sergeant Tom. It was good he sleep so." Jen felt there was irony behind the smooth words of the gambler. He had a habit of saying things, as they express it in that country, between his teeth. That signifies what is animal-like and cruel. Galbraith stood silent during Pierre's remarks, but, when he had finished, said: "Yes, it's all right if he doesn't sleep too long; but there's the trouble--too long!" Pierre frowned a warning, and then added, with unconcern: "I remember when you sleep thirty hours, Galbraith--after the prairie fire, three years ago, eh!" "Well, that's so; that's so as you say it. We'll let him sleep till noon, or longer--or longer, won't we, Pierre?" "Yes, till noon is good, or longer." "But he shall not sleep longer if I can wake him," said Jen. "You do not think of the trouble all this sleeping may make for him." "But then--but then, there is the trouble he will make for others, if he wakes. Think. A poor devil trying to escape the law!" "But we have nothing to do with that, and justice is justice, Pierre." "Eh, well, perhaps, perhaps!" Galbraith was silent. Jen felt that so far as Sergeant Tom's papers were concerned he was safe; but she felt also that by noon he ought to be on his way back to Fort Desire--after she had told him what she had done. She was anxious for his honour. That her lover shall appear well before the world, is a thing deep in the heart of every woman. It is a pride for which she will deny herself, even of the presence of that lover. "Till noon," Jen said, "and then he must go." VI Jen watched to see if her father or Pierre would notice that the horse was changed, had been travelled during the night, or that it was a different one altogether. As the morning wore away she saw that they did not notice the fact. This ignorance was perhaps owing largely to the appearance of several ranchmen from near the American border. They spent their time in the bar-room, and when they left it was nearly noon. Still Sergeant Tom slept. Jen now went to him and tried to wake him. She lifted him to a sitting position, but his head fell on her shoulder. Disheartened, she laid him down again. But now at last an undefined suspicion began to take possession of her. It made her uneasy; it filled her with a vague sense of alarm. Was this sleep natural? She remembered that, when her father and others had slept so long after the prairie fire, she had waked them once to give them drink and a little food, and they did not breathe so heavily as he was doing. Yet what could be done? What was the matter? There was not a doctor nearer than a hundred miles. She thought of bleeding,--the old-fashioned remedy still used on the prairies--but she decided to wait a little. Somehow she felt that she would receive no help from her father or Pierre. Had they anything to do with this sleep? Was it connected with the papers? No, not that, for they had not sought to take them, and had not made any remark about their being gone. This showed their unconcern on that point. She could not fathom the mystery, but the suspicion of something irregular deepened. Her father could have no reason for injuring Sergeant Tom; but Pretty Pierre--that was another matter. Yet she remembered too that her father had appeared the more anxious of the two about the Sergeant's sleep. She recalled that he said: "Yes, it's all right, if he doesn't sleep too long." But Pierre could play a part, she knew, and could involve others in trouble, and escape himself. He was a man with a reputation for occasional wickednesses of a naked, decided type. She knew that he was possessed of a devil, of a very reserved devil, but liable to bold action on occasions. She knew that he valued the chances of life or death no more than he valued the thousand and one other chances of small importance, which occur in daily experience. It was his creed that one doesn't go till the game is done and all the cards are played. He had a stoic indifference to events. He might be capable of poisoning--poisoning! ah, that thought! of poisoning Sergeant Tom for some cause. But her father? The two seemed to act alike in the matter. Could her father approve of any harm happening to Tom? She thought of the meal he had eaten, of the coffee he had drunk. The coffee-was that the key? But she said to herself that she was foolish, that her love had made her so. No, it could not be. But a fear grew upon her, strive as she would against it. She waited silently and watched, and twice or thrice made ineffectual efforts to rouse him. Her father came in once. He showed anxiety; that was unmistakable, but was it the anxiety of guilt of any kind? She said nothing. At five o'clock matters abruptly came to a climax. Jen was in the kitchen, but, hearing footsteps in the sitting-room, she opened the door quietly. Her father was bending over Sergeant Tom, and Pierre was speaking: "No, no, Galbraith, it is all right. You are a fool. It could not kill him." "Kill him--kill him," she repeated gaspingly to herself. "You see he was exhausted; he may sleep for hours yet. Yes, he is safe, I think." "But Jen, she suspects something, she--" "Hush!" said Pretty Pierre. He saw her standing near. She had glided forward and stood with flashing eyes turned, now upon the one, and now upon the other. Finally they rested on Galbraith. "Tell me what you have done to him; what you and Pretty Pierre have done to him. You have some secret. I will know." She leaned forward, something of the tigress in the poise of her body. "I tell you, I will know." Her voice was low, and vibrated with fierceness and determination. Her eyes glowed, and her nostrils trembled with disdain and indignation. As they drew back,--the old man sullenly, the gambler with a slight gesture of impatience,--she came a step nearer to them and waited, the cords of her shapely throat swelling with excitement. A moment so, and then she said in a tone that suggested menace, determination: "You have poisoned him. Tell me the truth. Do you hear, father--the truth, or I will hate you. I will make you repent it till you die." "But--" Pierre began. She interrupted him. "Do not speak, Pretty Pierre. You are a devil. You will lie. Father--!" She waited. "What difference does it make to you, Jen?" "What difference--what difference to me? That you should be a murderer?" "But that is not so, that is a dream of yours, Ma'm'selle," said Pierre. She turned to her father again. "Father, will you tell the truth to me? I warn you it will be better for you both." The old man's brow was sullen, and his lips were twitching nervously. "You care more for him than you do for your own flesh and blood, Jen. There's nothing to get mad about like that. I'll tell you when he's gone. . . . Let's--let's wake him," he added, nervously. He stooped down and lifted the sleeping man to a sitting posture. Pierre assisted him. Jen saw that the half-breed believed Sergeant Tom could be wakened, and her fear diminished slightly, if her indignation did not. They lifted the soldier to his feet. Pierre pressed the point of a pin deep into his arm. Jen started forward, woman-like, to check the action, but drew back, for she saw heroic measures might be necessary to bring him to consciousness. But, nevertheless, her anger broke bounds, and she said: "Cowards--cowards! What spite made you do this?" "Damnation, Jen," said the father, "you'll hector me till I make you sorry. What's this Irish policeman to you? What's he beside your own flesh and blood, I say again." "Why does my own flesh and blood do such wicked tricks to an Irish soldier? Why does it give poison to an Irish soldier?" "Poison, Jen? You needn't speak so ghost-like. It was only a dose of laudanum; not enough to kill him. Ask Pierre." Inwardly she believed him, and said a Thank-God to herself, but to the half-breed she remarked: "Yes, ask Pierre--you are behind all this! It is some evil scheme of yours. Why did you do it? Tell the truth for once." Her eyes swam angrily with Pierre's. Pierre was complacent; he admired her wild attacks. He smiled, and replied: "My dear, it was a whim of mine; but you need not tell him, all the same, when he wakes. You see this is your father's house, though the whim is mine. But look: he is waking-the pin is good. Some cold water, quick!" The cold water was brought and dashed into the face of the soldier. He showed signs of returning consciousness. The effect of the laudanum had been intensified by the thoroughly exhausted condition of the body. But the man was perfectly healthy, and this helped to resist the danger of a fatal result. Pierre kept up an intermittent speech. "Yes, it was a mere whim of mine. Eh, he will think he has been an ass to sleep so long, and on duty, and orders to carry to Archangel's Rise!" Here he showed his teeth again, white and regular like a dog's. That was the impression they gave, his lips were so red, and the contrast was so great. One almost expected to find that the roof of his mouth was black, like that of a well-bred hound; but there is no evidence available on the point. "There, that is good," he said. "Now set him down, Pete Galbraith. Yes--so, so! Sergeant Tom, ah, you will wake well, soon. Now the eyes a little wider. Good. Eh, Sergeant Tom, what is the matter? It is breakfast time--quite." Sergeant Tom's eyes opened slowly and looked dazedly before him for a minute. Then they fell on Pierre. At first there was no recognition, then they became consciously clearer. "Pretty Pierre, you here in the barracks!" he said. He put his hand to his head, then rubbed his eyes roughly and looked up again. This time he saw Jen and her father. His bewilderment increased. Then he added: "What is the matter? Have I been asleep? What--!" He remembered. He staggered to his feet and felt his pockets quickly and anxiously for his letter. It was gone. "The letter!" he said. "My orders! Who has robbed me? Faith, I remember. I could not keep awake after I drank the coffee. My papers are gone, I tell you, Galbraith," he said, fiercely. Then he turned to Jen: "You are not in this, Jen. Tell me." She was silent for a moment, then was about to answer, when he turned to the gambler and said: "You are at the bottom of this. Give me my papers." But Pierre and Galbraith were as dumbfounded as the Sergeant himself to know that the letter was gone. They were stunned beyond speech when Jen said, flushing: "No, Sergeant Tom, I am the thief. When I could not wake you, I took the letter from your pocket and carried it to Inspector Jules last night,--or, rather, Sergeant Gellatly carried them. I wore his cap and cloak and passed for him." "You carried that letter to Inspector Jules last night, Jen"? said the soldier, all his heart in his voice. Jen saw her father blanch, his mouth open blankly, and his lips refuse to utter the words on them. For the first time she comprehended some danger to him, to herself--to Val! "Father, father," she said,--" what is it?" Pierre shrugged his shoulders and rejoined: "Eh, the devil! Such mistakes of women. They are fools--all." The old man put out a shaking hand and caught his daughter's arm. His look was of mingled wonder and despair, as he said, in a gasping whisper, "You carried that letter to Archangel's Rise?" "Yes," she answered, faltering now; "Sergeant Tom had said how important it was, you remember. That it was his duty to take it to Inspector Jules, and be back within forty-eight hours. He fell asleep. I could not wake him. I thought, what if he were my brother--our Val. So, when you and Pretty Pierre went to bed, I put on Val's clothes, took Sergeant Tom's cloak and hat, carried the orders to Jules, and was back here by six o'clock this morning." Sergeant Tom's eyes told his tale of gratitude. He made a step towards her; but the old man, with a strange ferocity, motioned him back, saying, "Go away from this house. Go quick. Go now, I tell you, or by God,-- I'll--" Here Pretty Pierre touched his arm. Sergeant Tom drew back, not because he feared but as if to get a mental perspective of the situation. Galbraith again said to his daughter,-- "Jen, you carried them papers? You! for him--for the Law!" Then he turned from her, and with hand clenched and teeth set spoke to the soldier: "Haven't you heard enough? Curse you, why don't you go?" Sergeant Tom replied coolly: "Not so fast, Galbraith. There's some mystery in all this. There's my sleep to be accounted for yet. You had some reason, some"--he caught the eyes of Pierre. He paused. A light began to dawn on his mind, and he looked at Jen, who stood rigidly pale, her eyes fixed fearfully, anxiously, upon him. She too was beginning to frame in her mind a possible horror; the thing that had so changed her father, the cause for drugging the soldier. There was a silence in which Pierre first, and then all, detected the sound of horses' hoofs. Pierre went to the door and looked out. He turned round again, and shrugged his shoulders with an expression of helplessness. But as he saw Jen was about to speak, and Sergeant Tom to move towards the door, he put up his hand to stay them both, and said: "A little--wait!" Then all were silent. Jen's fingers nervously clasped and unclasped, and her eyes were strained towards the door. Sergeant Tom stood watching her pityingly; the old man's head was bowed. The sound of galloping grew plainer. It stopped. An instant and then three horsemen appeared before the door. One was Inspector Jules, one was Private Waugh, and the other between them was--let Jen tell who he was. With an agonised cry she rushed from the house and threw herself against the saddle, and with her arms about the prisoner, cried: "Oh, Val, Val, it was you! It was you they were after. It was you that--oh no, no, no! My poor Val, and I can't tell you--I can't tell you!" Great as was her grief and self-reproach, she felt it would be cruel to tell him the part she had taken in placing him in this position. She hated herself, but why deepen his misery? His face was pale, but it had its old, open, fearless look, which dissipation had not greatly marred. His eyelids quivered, but he smiled, and touching her with his steel- bound hands, gently said: "Never mind, Jen. It isn't so bad. You see it was this way: Snow Devil said something about someone that belonged to me, that cares more about me than I deserve. Well, he died sudden, and I was there at the time. That's all. I was trying with the help of Pretty Pierre to get out of the country"--and he waved his hand towards the half-breed. "With Pretty Pierre--Pierre"? she said. "Yes, he isn't all gambler. But they were too quick for me, and here I am. Jules is a hustler on the march. But he said he'd stop here and let me see you and dad as we go up to Fort Desire, and--there, don't mind, Sis--don't mind it so!" Her sobs had ceased, but she clung to him as if she could never let him go. Her father stood near her, all the lines in his face deepened into bitterness. To him Val said: "Why, dad, what's the matter? Your hand is shaky. Don't you get this thing eatin' at your heart. "It isn't worth it. That Injin would have died if you'd been in my place, I guess. Between you and me, I expect to give Jules the slip before we get there." And he laughed at the Inspector, who laughed a little austerely too, and in his heart wished that it was anyone else he had as a prisoner than Val Galbraith, who was a favourite with the Riders of the Plains. Sergeant Tom had been standing in the doorway regarding this scene, and working out in his mind the complications that had led to it. At this point he came forward, and Inspector Jules said to him, after a curt salutation: "You were in a hurry last night, Sergeant Gellatly. You don't seem so pushed for time now. Usual thing. When a man seems over-zealous--drink, cards, or women behind it. But your taste is good, even if, under present circumstances"--He stopped, for he saw a threatening look in the eyes of the other, and that other said: "We won't discuss that matter, Inspector, if you please. I'm going on to Fort Desire now. I couldn't have seen you if I'd wanted to last night." "That's nonsense. If you had waited one minute longer at the barracks you could have done so. I called to you as you were leaving, but you didn't turn back." "No. I didn't hear you." All were listening to this conversation, and none more curiously than Private Waugh. Many a time in days to come he pictured the scene for the benefit of his comrades. Pretty Pierre, leaning against the hitching- post near the bar-room, said languidly: "But, Inspector, he speaks the truth--quite: that is a virtue of the Riders of the Plains." Val had his eyes on the half-breed, and a look of understanding passed between them. While Val and his father and sister were saying their farewells in few words, but with homely demonstrations, Sergeant Tom brought his horse round and mounted it. Inspector Jules gave the word to move on. As they started, Gellatly, who fell behind the others slightly, leaned down and whispered: "Forgive me, Jen. You did a noble act for me, and the life of me would prove to you that I'm grateful. It's sorry, sorry I am. But I'll do what I can for Val, as sure as the heart's in me. Good-bye, Jen." She looked up with a faint hope in her eyes. "Goodbye!" she said. "I believe you . . . Good-bye!" In a few minutes there was only a cloud of dust on the prairie to tell where the Law and its quarry were. And of those left behind, one was a broken-spirited old man with sorrow melting away the sinister look in his face; one, a girl hovering between the tempest of bitterness and a storm of self-reproach; and one a half-breed gambler, who again sat on the bar- counter smoking a cigarette and singing to himself, as indolently as if he were not in the presence of a painful drama of life, perhaps a tragedy. But was the song so pointless to the occasion, after all, and was the man so abstracted and indifferent as he seemed? For thus the song ran: "Oh, the bird in a cage and the bird on a tree Voila! 'tis a different fear! The maiden weeps and she bends the knee Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear! But the bird in a cage has a friend in the tree, And the maiden she dries her tear: And the night is dark and no moon you see Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear! When the doors are open the bird is free Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!" VII These words kept ringing in Jen's ears as she stood again in the doorway that night with her face turned to the beacon. How different it seemed now! When she saw it last night it was a cheerful spirit of light--a something suggesting comfort, companionship, aspiration, a friend to the traveller, and a mysterious, but delightful, association. In the morning when she returned from that fortunate, yet most unfortunate, ride, it was still burning, but its warm flame was exhausted in the glow of the life- giving sun; the dream and delight of the night robbed of its glamour by the garish morning; like her own body, its task done, sinking before the unrelieved scrutiny of the day. To-night it burned with a different radiance. It came in fiery palpitations from the earth. It made a sound that was now like the moan of pine trees, now like the rumble of far-off artillery. The slight wind that blew spread the topmost crest of flame into strands of ruddy hair, and, looking at it, Jen saw herself rocked to and fro by tumultuous emotions, yet fuller of strength and larger of life than ever she had been. Her hot veins beat with determination, with a love which she drove back by another, cherished now more than it had ever been, because danger threatened the boy to whom she had been as a mother. In twenty-four hours she had grown to the full stature of love and suffering. There were shadows that betrayed less roundness to her face; there were lines that told of weariness; but in her eyes there was a glowing light of hope. She raised her face to the stars and unconsciously paraphrasing Pierre's song said: "Oh, the God that dost save us, hear!" A hand touched her arm, and a voice said, huskily, "Jen, I wanted to save him and--and not let you know of it; that's all. You're not keepin' a grudge agin me, my girl?" She did not move nor turn her head. "I've no grudge, father; but--if-- if you had told me, 'twouldn't be on my mind that I had made it worse for Val." The kindness in the voice reassured him, and he ventured to say: "I didn't think you'd be carin' for one of the Riders of the Plains, Jen." Then the old man trembled lest she should resent his words. She seemed about to do so, but the flush faded from her brow, and she said, simply: "I care for Val most, father. But he didn't know he was getting Val into trouble." She suddenly quivered as a wave of emotion passed through her; and she said, with a sob in her voice: "Oh, it's all scrub country, father, and no paths, and--and I wish I had a mother!" The old man sat down in the doorway and bowed his grey head in his arms. Then, after a moment, he whispered: "She's been dead twenty-two years, Jen. The day Val was born she went away. I'd a-been a better man if she'd a-lived, Jen; and a better father." This was an unusual demonstration between these two. She watched him sadly for a moment, and then, leaning over and touching him gently on the shoulder, said: "It's worse for you than it is for me, father. Don't feel so bad. Perhaps we shall save him yet." He caught a gleam of hope in her words: "Mebbe, Jen, mebbe!" and he raised his face to the light. This ritual of affection was crude and unadorned; but it was real. They sat there for half-an-hour, silent. Then a figure came out of the shadows behind the house and stood before them. It was Pierre. "I go to-morrow morning, Galbraith," he said. The old man nodded, but did not reply. "I go to Fort Desire," the gambler added. Jen faced him. "What do you go there for, Pretty Pierre?" "It is my whim. Besides, there is Val. He might want a horse some dark night." "Pierre, do you mean that?" "As much as Sergeant Tom means what he says. Every man has his friends. Pretty Pierre has a fancy for Val Galbraith--a little. It suits him to go to Fort Desire. Jen Galbraith, you make a grand ride last night. You do a bold thing--all for a man. We shall see what he will do for you. And if he does nothing--ah! you can trust the tongue of Pretty Pierre. He will wish he could die, instead of--Eh, bien, good-night!" He moved away. Jen followed him. She held out her hand. It was the first time she had ever done so to this man. "I believe you," she said. "I believe that you mean well to our Val. I am sorry that I called you a devil." He smiled. "Ma'm'selle, that is nothing. You spoke true. But devils have their friends--and their whims. So you see, good-night." "Mebbe it will come out all right, Jen--mebbe!" said the old man. But Jen did not reply. She was thinking hard, her eyes upon the Prairie Star. Living life to the hilt greatly illumines the outlook of the mind. She was beginning to understand that evil is not absolute, and that good is often an occasion more than a condition. There was a long silence again. At last the old man rose to go and reduce the volume of flame for the night; but Jen stopped him. "No, father, let it burn all it can to-night. It's comforting." "Mebbe so--mebbe!" he said. A faint refrain came to them from within the house: "When doors are open the bird is free Oh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!" VIII It was a lovely morning. The prairie billowed away endlessly to the south, and heaved away in vastness to the north; and the fresh, sharp air sent the blood beating through the veins. In the bar-room some early traveller was talking to Peter Galbraith. A wandering band of Indians was camped about a mile away, the only sign of humanity in the waste. Jen sat in the doorway culling dried apples. Though tragedies occur in lives of the humble, they must still do the dull and ordinary task. They cannot stop to cherish morbidness, to feed upon their sorrow; they must care for themselves and labour for others. And well is it for them that it is so. The Indian camp brings unpleasant memories to Jen's mind. She knows it belongs to old Sun-in-the-North, and that he will not come to see her now, nor could she, or would she, go to him. Between her and that race there can never again be kindly communion. And now she sees, for the first time, two horsemen riding slowly in the track from Fort Desire towards Galbraith's Place. She notices that one sits upright, and one seems leaning forward on his horse's neck. She shades her eyes with her hand, but she cannot distinguish who they are. But she has seen men tied to their horses ride as that man is riding, when stricken with fever, bruised by falling timber, lacerated by a grizzly, wounded by a bullet, or crushed by a herd of buffaloes. She remembered at that moment the time that a horse had struck Val with its forefeet, and torn the flesh from his chest, and how he had been brought home tied to a broncho's back. The thought of this drove her into the house, to have Val's bed prepared for the sufferer, whoever he was. Almost unconsciously she put on the little table beside the bed a bunch of everlasting prairie flowers, and shaded the light to the point of quiet and comfort. Then she went outside again. The travellers now were not far away. She recognised the upright rider. It was Pretty Pierre. The other--she could not tell. She called to her father. She had a fear which she did not care to face alone. "See, see, father," she said, "Pretty Pierre and--and can it be Val?" For the moment she seemed unable to stir. But the old man shook his head, and said: "No, Jen, it can't be. It ain't Val." Then another thought possessed her. Her lips trembled, and, throwing her head back as does a deer when it starts to shake off its pursuers by flight, she ran swiftly towards the riders. The traveller standing beside Galbraith said: "That man is hurt, wounded probably. I didn't expect to have a patient in the middle of the plains. I'm a doctor. Perhaps I can be of use here?" When a hundred yards away Jen recognised the recumbent rider. A thousand thoughts flashed through her brain. What had happened? Why was he dressed in civilian's clothes? A moment, and she was at his horse's head. Another, and her warm hand clasped the pale, moist, and wrinkled one which hung by the horse's neck. His coat at the shoulder was stained with blood, and there was a handkerchief about his head. This--this was Sergeant Tom Gellatly! She looked up at Pierre, an agony of inquiry in her eyes, and pointing mutely to the wounded man. Pierre spoke with a tone of seriousness not common to his voice: "You see, Jen Galbraith, it was brave. Sergeant Tom one day resigns the Mounted Police. He leaves the Riders of the Plains. That is not easy to understand, for he is in much favour with the officers. But he buys himself out, and there is the end of the Sergeant and his triple chevron. That is one day. That night, two men on a ferry are crossing the Saskatchewan at Fort Desire. They are fired at from the shore behind. One man is hit twice. But they get across, cut the ferry loose, mount horses, and ride away together. The man that was hit--yes, Sergeant Tom. The other that was not hit was Val Galbraith." Jen gave a cry of mingled joy and pain, and said, with Tom Gellatly's cold hand clasped to her bosom: "Val, our Val, is free, is safe." "Yes, Val is free and safe-quite. The Riders of the Plains could not cross the river. It was too high. And so Tom Gellatly and Val got away. Val rides straight for the American border, and the other rides here." They were now near the house, but Jen said, eagerly: "Go on. Tell me all." "I knew what had happened soon, and I rode away, too, and last night I found Tom Gellatly lying beside his horse on the prairie. I have brought him here to you. You two are even now, Jen Galbraith." They were at the tavern door. The traveller and Pierre lifted, down the wounded and unconscious man, and brought him and laid him on Val Galbraith's bed. The traveller examined the wounds in the shoulder and the head, and said: "The head is all right. If I can get the bullet out of the shoulder he'll be safe enough--in time." The surgery was skilful but rude, for proper instruments were not at hand; and in a few hours he, whom we shall still call Sergeant Tom, lay quietly sleeping, the pallor gone from his face and the feeling of death from his hand. It was near midnight when he waked. Jen was sitting beside him. He looked round and saw her. Her face was touched with the light that shone from the Prairie Star. "Jen," he said, and held out his hand. She turned from the window and stood beside his bed. She took his outstretched hand. "You are better, Sergeant Tom"? she said, gently. "Yes, I'm better; but it's not Sergeant Tom I am any longer, Jen." "I forgot that." "I owed you a great debt, Jen. I couldn't remain one of the Riders of the Plains and try to pay it. I left them. Then I tried to save Val, and I did. I knew how to do it without getting anyone else into trouble. It is well to know the trick of a lock and the hour that guard is changed. I had left, but I relieved guard that night just the same. It was a new man on watch. It's only a minute I had; for the regular relief watch was almost at my heels. I got Val out just in time. They discovered us, and we had a run for it. Pretty Pierre has told you. That's right. Val is safe now--" In a low strained voice, interrupting him, she said, "Did Val leave you wounded so on the prairie?" "Don't let that ate at your heart. No, he didn't. I hurried him off, and he didn't know how bad I was hit. But I--I've paid my debt, haven't I, Jen?" With eyes that could not see for tears, she touched pityingly, lovingly, the wounds on his head and shoulder, and said: "These pay a greater debt than you ever owed me. You risked your life for me--yes, for me. You have given up everything to do it. I can't pay you the great difference. No, never!" "Yes--yes, you can, if you will, Jen. It's as aisy! If you'll say what I say, I'll give you quit of that difference, as you call it, forever and ever." "First, tell me. Is Val quite, quite safe?" "Yes, he's safe over the border by this time; and to tell you the truth, the Riders of the Plains wouldn't be dyin' to arrest him again if he was in Canada, which he isn't. It's little they wanted to fire at us, I know, when we were crossin' the river, but it had to be done, you see, and us within sight. Will you say what I ask you, Jen?" She did not speak, but pressed his hand ever so slightly. "Tom Gellatly, I promise," he said. "Tom Gellatly, I promise--" "To give you as much--" "To give you as much--" "Love--" There was a pause, and then she falteringly said, "Love--" "As you give to me-" "As you give to me--" "And I'll take you poor as you are--" "And I'll take you poor as you are--" "To be my husband as long as you live--" "To be my husband as long as you live--" "So help me, God." "So help me, God." She stooped with dropping tears, and he kissed her once. Then what was girl in her timidly drew back, while what was woman in her, and therefore maternal, yearned over the sufferer. They had not seen the figure of an old man at the door. They did not hear him enter. They only knew of Peter Galbraith's presence when he said: "Mebbe--mebbe I might say Amen!" THREE OUTLAWS The missionary at Fort Anne of the H. B. C. was violently in earnest. Before he piously followed the latest and most amply endowed batch of settlers, who had in turn preceded the new railway to the Fort, the word scandal had no place in the vocabulary of the citizens. The H. B. C. had never imported it into the Chinook language, the common meeting-ground of all the tribes of the North; and the British men and native-born, who made the Fort their home, or place of sojourn, had never found need for its use. Justice was so quickly distributed, men were so open in their conduct, good and bad, that none looked askance, nor put their actions in ambush, nor studied innuendo. But this was not according to the new dispensation--that is, the dispensation which shrewdly followed the settlers, who as shrewdly preceded the railway. And, the dispensation and the missionary were known also as the Reverend Ezra Badgley, who, on his own declaration, in times past had "a call" to preach, and in the far East had served as local preacher, then probationer, then went on circuit, and now was missionary in a district of which the choice did credit to his astuteness, and gave room for his piety and for his holy rage against the Philistines. He loved a word for righteous mouthing, and in a moment of inspiration pagan and scandal came to him. Upon these two words he stamped, through them he perspired mightily, and with them he clenched his stubby fingers--such fingers as dug trenches, or snatched lewdly at soft flesh, in days of barbarian battle. To him all men were Pagans who loved not the sound of his voice, nor wrestled with him in prayer before the Lord, nor fed him with rich food, nor gave him much strong green tea to drink. But these men were of opaque stuff, and were not dismayed, and they called him St. Anthony, and with a prophetic and deadly patience waited. The time came when the missionary shook his denouncing finger mostly at Pretty Pierre, who carefully nursed his silent wrath until the occasion should arrive for a delicate revenge which hath its hour with every man, if, hating, he knows how to bide the will of Fate. The hour came. A girl had been found dying on the roadside beyond the Fort by the drunken doctor of the place and Pierre. Pierre was with her when she died. "An' who's to bury her, the poor colleen"? said Shon McGann afterwards. Pierre musingly replied: "She is a Protestant. There is but one man." After many pertinent and vigorous remarks, Shon added, "A Pagan is it, he calls you, Pierre, you that's had the holy water on y'r forehead, and the cross on the water, and that knows the book o' the Mass like the cards in a pack? Sinner y' are, and so are we all, God save us! say I; and weavin' the stripes for our backs He may be, and little I'd think of Him failin' in that: but Pagan--faith, it's black should be the white of the eyes of that preachin' sneak, and a rattle of teeth in his throat--divils go round me!" The half-breed, still musing, replied: "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth--is that it, Shon?" "Nivir a word truer by song or by book, and stand by the text, say I. For Papist I am, and Papist are you; and the imps from below in y'r fingers whip poker is the game; and outlaws as they call us both--you for what it doesn't concern me, and I for a wild night in ould Donegal--but Pagan, wurra! whin shall it be, Pierre?" "When shall it to be?" "True for you. The teeth in his throat and a lump to his eye, and what more be the will o' God. Fightin' there'll be, av coorse; but by you I'll stand, and sorra inch will I give, if they'll do it with sticks or with guns, and not with the blisterin' tongue that's lied of me and me frinds--for frind I call you, Pierre, that loved me little in days gone by. And proud I am not of you, nor you of me; but we've tasted the bitter of avil days together, and divils surround me, if I don't go down with you or come up with you, whichever it be! For there's dirt, as I say on their tongues, and over their shoulder they look at you, and not with an eye full front." Pierre was cool, even pensive. His lips parted slightly once or twice, and showed a row of white, malicious teeth. For the rest, he looked as if he were politely interested but not moved by the excitement of the other. He slowly rolled a cigarette and replied: "He says it is a scandal that I live at Fort Anne. Well, I was here before he came, and I shall be here after he goes--yes. A scandal--tsh! what is that? You know the word 'Raca' of the Book? Well, there shall be more 'Raca; soon --perhaps. No, there shall not be fighting as you think, Shon; but--" here Pierre rose, came over, and spread his fingers lightly on Shon's breast "but this thing is between this man and me, Shon McGann, and you shall see a great matter. Perhaps there will be blood, perhaps not-- perhaps only an end." And the half-breed looked up at the Irishman from under his dark brows so covertly and meaningly that Shon saw visions of a trouble as silent as a plague, as resistless as a great flood. This noiseless vengeance was not after his own heart. He almost shivered as the delicate fingers drummed on his breast. "Angels begird me, Pretty Pierre, but it's little I'd like you for enemy o' mine; for I know that you'd wait for y'r foe with death in y'r hand, and pity far from y'r heart; and y'd smile as you pulled the black-cap on y'r head, and laugh as you drew the life out of him, God knows how! Arrah, give me, sez I, the crack of a stick, the bite of a gun, or the clip of a sabre's edge, with a shout in y'r mouth the while!" Though Pierre still listened lazily, there was a wicked fire in his eyes. His words now came from his teeth with cutting precision. "I have a great thought tonight, Shon McGann. I will tell you when we meet again. But, my friend, one must not be too rash--no, not too brutal. Even the sabre should fall at the right time, and then swift and still. Noise is not battle. Well, 'au revoir!' To-morrow I shall tell you many things." He caught Shon's hand quickly, as quickly dropped it, and went out indolently singing a favourite song,--"Voici le sabre de mon Pere!" It was dark. Pretty Pierre stood still, and thought for a while. At last he spoke aloud: "Well, I shall do it, now I have him--so!" And he opened and shut his hand swiftly and firmly. He moved on, avoiding the more habited parts of the place, and by a roundabout came to a house standing very close to the bank of the river. He went softly to the door and listened. Light shone through the curtain of a window. He went to the window and looked beneath the curtain. Then he came back to the door, opened it very gently, stepped inside, and closed it behind him. A man seated at a table, eating, rose; a man on whom greed had set its mark--greed of the flesh, greed of men's praise, greed of money. His frame was thick-set, his body was heavily nourished, his eye was shifty but intelligent; and a close observer would have seen something elusive, something furtive and sinister, in his face. His lips were greasy with meat as he stood up, and a fear sprang to his face, so that its fat looked sickly. But he said hoarsely, and with an attempt at being brave --"How dare you enter my house with out knocking? What do you want?" The half-breed waved a hand protestingly towards him. "Pardon!" he said. "Be seated, and finish your meal. Do you know me?" "Yes, I know you." "Well, as I said, do not stop your meal. I have come to speak with you very quietly about a scandal--a scandal, you understand. This is Sunday night, a good time to talk of such things." Pierre seated himself at the table, opposite the man. But the man replied: "I have nothing to say to you. You are--" The half-breed interrupted: "Yes, I know, a Pagan fattening--" here he smiled, and looked at his thin hands--"fattening for the shambles of the damned, as you have said from the pulpit, Reverend Ezra Badgley. But you will permit me--a sinner as you say--to speak to you like this while you sit down and eat. I regret to disturb you, but you will sit, eh?" Pierre's tone was smooth and low, almost deferential, and his eyes, wide open now, and hot with some hidden purpose, were fixed compellingly on the man. The missionary sat, and, having recovered slightly, fumbled with a knife and fork. A napkin was still beneath his greasy chin. He did not take it away. Pierre then spoke slowly: "Yes, it is a scandal concerning a sinner--and a Pagan. . . . Will you permit me to light a cigarette? Thank you . . . . You have said many harsh things about me: well, as you see, I am amiable. I lived at Fort Anne before you came. They call me Pretty Pierre. Why is my cheek so? Because I drink no wine; I eat not much. Pardon, pork like that on your plate--no! no! I do not take green tea as there in your cup; I do not love women, one or many. Again, pardon, I say." The other drew his brows together with an attempt at pious frowning and indignation; but there was a cold, sneering smile now turned upon him, and it changed the frown to anxiety, and made his lips twitch, and the food he had eaten grow heavy within him. "I come to the scandal slowly. The woman? She was a young girl travelling from the far East, to search for a man who had--spoiled her. She was found by me and another. Ah, you start so! . . . Will you not listen? . . . Well, she died to-night." Here the missionary gasped, and caught with both hands at the table. "But before she died she gave two things into my hands: a packet of letters--a man is a fool to write such letters--and a small bottle of poison--laudanum, old-fashioned but sure. The letters were from the man at Fort Anne--the man, you hear! The other was for her death, if he would not take her to his arms again. Women are mad when they love. And so she came to Fort Anne, but not in time. The scandal is great, because the man is holy--sit down!" The half-breed said the last two words sharply, but not loudly. They both sat down slowly again, looking each other in the eyes. Then Pierre drew from his pocket a small bottle and a packet of letters, and held them before him. "I have this to say: there are citizens of Fort Anne who stand for justice more than law; who have no love for the ways of St. Anthony. There is a Pagan, too, an outlaw, who knows when it is time to give blow for blow with the holy man. Well, we understand each other, 'hein?'" The elusive, sinister look in the missionary's face was etched in strong lines now. A dogged sullenness hung about his lips. He noticed that one hand only of Pretty Pierre was occupied with the relics of the dead girl; the other was free to act suddenly on a hip pocket. "What do you want me to do"? he said, not whiningly, for beneath the selfish flesh and shallow outworks there were the elements of a warrior--all pulpy now, but they were there. "This," was the reply: "for you to make one more outlaw at Fort Anne by drinking what is in this bottle--sit down, quick, by God!" He placed the bottle within reach of the other. "Then you shall have these letters; and there is the fire. After? Well, you will have a great sleep, the good people will find you, they will bury you, weeping much, and no one knows here but me. Refuse that, and there is the other, the Law--ah, the poor girl was so very young!--and the wild Justice which is sometimes quicker than Law. Well? well?" The missionary sat as if paralysed, his face all grey, his eyes fixed on the half-breed. "Are you man or devil"? he groaned at length. With a slight, fantastic gesture Pierre replied: "It was said that a devil entered into me at birth, but that was mere scandal--'peut-etre.' You shall think as you will." There was silence. The sullenness about the missionary's lips became charged with a contempt more animal than human. The Reverend Ezra Badgley knew that the man before him was absolute in his determination, and that the Pagans of Fort Anne would show him little mercy, while his flock would leave him to his fate. He looked at the bottle. The silence grew, so that the ticking of the watch in the missionary's pocket could be heard plainly, having for its background of sound the continuous swish of the river. Pretty Pierre's eyes were never taken off the other, whose gaze, again, was fixed upon the bottle with a terrible fascination. An hour, two hours, passed. The fire burned lower. It was midnight; and now the watch no longer ticked; it had fulfilled its day's work. The missionary shuddered slightly at this. He looked up to see the resolute gloom of the half-breed's eyes, and that sneering smile, fixed upon him still. Then he turned once more to the bottle. . . . His heavy hand moved slowly towards it. His stubby fingers perspired and showed sickly in the light. . . . They closed about the bottle. Then suddenly he raised it, and drained it at a draught. He sighed once heavily and as if a great inward pain was over. Rising he took the letters silently pushed towards him, and dropped them into the fire. He went to the window, raised it, and threw the bottle into the river. The cork was left: Pierre pointed to it. He took it up with a strange smile and thrust it into the coals. Then he sat down by the table, leaning his arms upon it, his eyes staring painfully before him, and the forgotten napkin still about his neck. Soon the eyes closed, and, with a moan on his lips, his head dropped forward on his arms. . . . Pierre rose, and, looking at the figure soon to be breathless as the baked meats about it, said: "'Bien,' he was not all coward. No." Then he turned and went out into the night. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Delicate revenge which hath its hour with every man Good is often an occasion more than a condition He does not love Pierre; but he does not pretend to love him It is not Justice that fills the gaols, but Law It is not much to kill or to die--that is in the game Men and women are unwittingly their own executioners Noise is not battle She was beginning to understand that evil is not absolute The Government cherish the Injin much in these days PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE TALES OF THE FAR NORTH By Gilbert Parker Volume 3. SHON MCGANN'S TOBOGAN RIDE PERE CHAMPAGNE THE SCARLET HUNTER THE STONE SHON McGANN'S TOBOGAN RIDE "Oh, it's down the long side of Farcalladen Rise, With the knees pressing hard to the saddle, my men; With the sparks from the hoofs giving light to the eyes, And our hearts beating hard as we rode to the glen! "And it's back with the ring of the chain and the spur, And it's back with the sun on the hill and the moor, And it's back is the thought sets my pulses astir! But I'll never go back to Farcalladen more." Shon McGann was lying on a pile of buffalo robes in a mountain hut,--an Australian would call it a humpey,--singing thus to himself with his pipe between his teeth. In the room, besides Shon, were Pretty Pierre, Jo Gordineer, the Hon. Just Trafford, called by his companions simply "The Honourable," and Prince Levis, the owner of the establishment. Not that Monsieur Levis, the French Canadian, was really a Prince. The name was given to him with a humorous cynicism peculiar to the Rockies. We have little to do with Prince Levis here; but since he may appear elsewhere, this explanation is made. Jo Gordineer had been telling The Honourable about the ghost of Guidon Mountain, and Pretty Pierre was collaborating with their host in the preparation of what, in the presence of the Law--that is of the North- West Mounted Police--was called ginger-tea, in consideration of the prohibition statute. Shon McGann had been left to himself--an unusual thing; for everyone had a shot at Shon when opportunity occurred; and never a bull's-eye could they make on him. His wit was like the shield of a certain personage of mythology. He had wandered on from verse to verse of the song with one eye on the collaborators and an ear open to The Honourable's polite exclamations of wonder. Jo had, however, come to the end of his weird tale--for weird it certainly was, told at the foot of Guidon Mountain itself, and in a region of vast solitudes--the pair of chemists were approaching "the supreme union of unctuous elements," as The Honourable put it, and in the silence that fell for a moment there crept the words of the singer: "And it's down the long side of Farcalladen Rise, And it's swift as an arrow and straight as a spear--" Jo Gordineer interrupted. "Say, Shon, when'll you be through that tobogan ride of yours? Aint there any end to it?" But Shon was looking with both eyes now at the collaborators, and he sang softly on: "And it's keen as the frost when the summer-time dies, That we rode to the glen and with never a fear." Then he added: "The end's cut off, Joey, me boy; but what's a tobogan ride, annyway?" "Listen to that, Pierre. I'll be eternally shivered if he knows what a tobogan ride is!" "Hot shivers it'll be for you, Joey, me boy, and no quinine over the bar aither," said Shon. "Tell him what a tobogan ride is, Pierre." And Pretty Pierre said: "Eh, well, I will tell you. It is like-no, you have the word precise, Joseph. Eh? What?" Pierre then added something in French. Shon did not understand it, but he saw The Honourable smile, so with a gentle kind of contempt he went on singing: "And it's hey for the hedge, and it's hey for the wall! And it's over the stream with an echoing cry; And there's three fled for ever from old Donegal, And there's two that have shown how bold Irishmen die." The Honourable then said, "What is that all about, Shon? I never heard the song before." "No more you did. And I wish I could see the lad that wrote that song, livin' or dead. If one of ye's will tell me about your tobogan rides, I'll unfold about Farcalladen Rise." Prince Levis passed the liquor. Pretty Pierre, seated on a candle-box, with a glass in his delicate fingers, said: "Eh, well, the Honourable has much language. He can speak, precise--this would be better with a little lemon, just a little,--the Honourable, he, perhaps, will tell. Eh?" Pretty Pierre was showing his white teeth. At this stage in his career, he did not love the Honourable. The Honourable understood that, but he made clear to Shon's mind what toboganing is. And Shon, on his part, with fresh and hearty voice, touched here and there by a plaintive modulation, told about that ride on Farcalladen Rise; a tale of broken laws, and fight and fighting, and death and exile; and never a word of hatred in it all. "And the writer of the song, who was he"? asked the Honourable. "A gentleman after God's own heart. Heaven rest his soul, if he's dead, which I'm thinkin' is so, and give him the luck of the world if he's livin', say I. But it's little I know what's come to him. In the heart of Australia I saw him last; and mates we were together after gold. And little gold did we get but what was in the heart of him. And we parted one day, I carryin' the song that he wrote for me of Farcalladen Rise, and the memory of him; and him givin' me the word,'I'll not forget you, Shon, me boy, whatever comes; remember that. And a short pull of the Three-Star together for the partin' salute,' says he. And the Three-Star in one sup each we took, as solemn as the Mass, and he went away towards Cloncurry and I to the coast; and that's the last that I saw of him, now three years gone. And here I am, and I wish I was with him wherever he is." "What was his name"? said the Honourable. "Lawless." The fingers of the Honourable trembled on his cigar. "Very interesting, Shon," he said, as he rose, puffing hard till his face was in a cloud of smoke. "You had many adventures together, I suppose," he continued. "Adventures we had and sufferin' bewhiles, and fun, too, to the neck and flowin' over." "You'll spin us a long yarn about them another night, Shon"? said the Honourable. "I'll do it now--a yarn as long as the lies of the Government; and proud of the chance." "Not to-night, Shon" (there was a kind of huskiness in the voice of the Honourable); "it's time to turn in. We've a long tramp over the glacier to-morrow, and we must start at sunrise." The Honourable was in command of the party, though Jo Gordineer was the guide, and all were, for the moment, miners, making for the little Goshen Field over in Pipi Valley.--At least Pretty Pierre said he was a miner. No one thought of disputing the authority of the Honourable, and they all rose. In a few minutes there was silence in the hut, save for the oracular breathing of Prince Levis and the sparks from the fire. But the Honourable did not sleep well; he lay and watched the fire through most of the night. The day was clear, glowing, decisive. Not a cloud in the curve of azure, not a shiver of wind down the canon, not a frown in Nature, if we except the lowering shadows from the shoulders of the giants of the range. Crowning the shadows was a splendid helmet of light, rich with the dyes of the morning; the pines were touched with a brilliant if austere warmth. The pride of lofty lineage and severe isolation was regnant over all. And up through the splendour, and the shadows, and the loneliness, and the austere warmth, must our travellers go. Must go? Scarcely that, but the Honourable had made up his mind to cross the glacier and none sought to dissuade him from his choice; the more so, because there was something of danger in the business. Pretty Pierre had merely shrugged his shoulders at the suggestion, and had said: "'Nom de Dieu,' the higher we go the faster we live, that is something." "Sometimes we live ourselves to death too quickly. In my schooldays I watched a mouse in a jar of oxygen do that;" said the Honourable. "That is the best way to die," remarked the halfbreed--"much." Jo Gordineer had been over the path before. He was confident of the way, and proud of his office of guide. "Climb Mont Blanc, if you will," said the Honourable, "but leave me these white bastions of the Selkirks." Even so. They have not seen the snowy hills of God who have yet to look upon the Rocky Mountains, absolute, stupendous, sublimely grave. Jo Gordineer and Pretty Pierre strode on together. They being well away from the other two, the Honourable turned and said to Shon: "What was the name of the man who wrote that song of yours, again, Shon?" "Lawless." "Yes, but his first name?" "Duke--Duke Lawless." There was a pause, in which the other seemed to be intently studying the glacier above them. Then he said: "What was he like?--in appearance, I mean." "A trifle more than your six feet, about your colour of hair and eyes, and with a trick of smilin' that would melt the heart of an exciseman, and O'Connell's own at a joke, barrin' a time or two that he got hold of a pile of papers from the ould country. By the grave of St. Shon! thin he was as dry of fun as a piece of blotting paper. And he said at last, before he was aisy and free again, 'Shon,' says he, 'it's better to burn your ships behind ye, isn't it?' "And I, havin' thought of a glen in ould Ireland that I'll never see again, nor any that's in it, said: 'Not, only burn them to the water's edge, Duke Lawless, but swear to your own soul that they never lived but in the dreams of the night.' "'You're right there, Shon,' says he, and after that no luck was bad enough to cloud the gay heart of him, and bad enough it was sometimes." "And why do you fear that he is not alive?" "Because I met an old mate of mine one day on the Frazer, and he said that Lawless had never come to Cloncurry; and a hard, hard road it was to travel." Jo Gordineer was calling to them, and there the conversation ended. In a few minutes the four stood on the edge of the glacier. Each man had a long hickory stick which served as alpenstock, a bag hung at his side, and tied to his back was his gold-pan, the hollow side in, of course. Shon's was tied a little lower down than the others. They passed up this solid river of ice, this giant power at endless strife with the high hills, up towards its head. The Honourable was the first to reach the point of vantage, and to look down upon the vast and wandering fissures, the frigid bulwarks, the great fortresses of ice, the ceaseless snows, the aisles of this mountain sanctuary through which Nature's splendid anthems rolled. Shon was a short distance below, with his hand over his eyes, sweeping the semi-circle of glory. Suddenly there was a sharp cry from Pierre: "Mon Dieu! Look!" Shon McGann had fallen on a smooth pavement of ice. The gold-pan was beneath him, and down the glacier he was whirled-whirled, for Shon had thrust his heels in the snow and ice, and the gold-pan performed a series of circles as it sped down the incline. His fingers clutched the ice and snow, but they only left a red mark of blood behind. Must he go the whole course of that frozen slide, plump into the wild depths below? "'Mon Dieu!--mon Dieu!'" said Pretty Pierre, piteously. The face of the Honourable was set and tense. Jo Gordineer's hand clutched his throat as if he choked. Still Shon sped. It was a matter of seconds only. The tragedy crowded to the awful end. But, no. There was a tilt in the glacier, and the gold-pan, suddenly swirling, again swung to the outer edge, and shot over. As if hurled from a catapult, the Irishman was ejected from the white monster's back. He fell on a wide shelf of ice, covered with light snow, through which he was tunnelled, and dropped on another ledge below, near the path by which he and his companions had ascended. "Shied from the finish, by God!" said Jo Gordineer. "'Le pauvre Shon!'" added Pretty Pierre. The Honourable was making his way down, his brain haunted by the words, "He'll never go back to Farcalladen more." But Jo was right. For Shon McGann was alive. He lay breathless, helpless, for a moment; then he sat up and scanned his lacerated fingers: he looked up the path by which he had come; he looked down the path he seemed destined to go; he started to scratch his head, but paused in the act, by reason of his fingers. Then he said: "It's my mother wouldn't know me from a can of cold meat if I hadn't stopped at this station; but wurrawurra, what a car it was to come in!" He examined his tattered clothes and bare elbows; then he unbuckled the gold-pan, and no easy task was it with his ragged fingers. "'Twas not for deep minin' I brought ye," he said to the pan, "nor for scrapin' the clothes from me back." Just then the Honourable came up. "Shon, my man . . . alive, thank God! How is it with you?" "I'm hardly worth the lookin' at. I wouldn't turn my back to ye for a ransom." "It's enough that you're here at all." "Ah, 'voila!' this Irishman!" said Pretty Pierre, as his light fingers touched Shon's bruised arm gently. This from Pretty Pierre! There was that in the voice which went to Shon's heart. Who could have guessed that this outlaw of the North would ever show a sign of sympathy or friendship for anybody? But it goes to prove that you can never be exact in your estimate of character. Jo Gordineer only said jestingly: "Say, now, what are you doing, Shon, bringing us down here, when we might be well into the Valley by this time?" "That in your face and the hair aff your head," said Shon; "it's little you know a tobogan ride when you see one. I'll take my share of the grog, by the same token." The Honourable uncorked his flask. Shon threw back his head with a laugh. "For it's rest when the gallop is over, me men! And it's here's to the lads that have ridden their last; And it's here's--" But Shon had fainted with the flask in his hand and this snatch of a song on his lips. They reached shelter that night. Had it not been for the accident, they would have got to their destination in the Valley; but here they were twelve miles from it. Whether this was fortunate or unfortunate may be seen later. Comfortably bestowed in this mountain tavern, after they had toasted and eaten their venison and lit their pipes, they drew about the fire. Besides the four, there was a figure that lay sleeping in a corner on a pile of pine branches, wrapped in a bearskin robe. Whoever it was slept soundly. "And what was it like--the gold-pan flyer--the tobogan ride, Shon?" remarked Jo Gordineer. "What was it like?--what was it like"? replied Shon. "Sure, I couldn't see what it was like for the stars that were hittin' me in the eyes. There wasn't any world at all. I was ridin' on a streak of lightnin', and nivir a rubber for the wheels; and my fingers makin' stripes of blood on the snow; and now the stars that were hittin' me were white, and thin they were red, and sometimes blue--" "The Stars and Stripes," inconsiderately remarked Jo Gordineer. "And there wasn't any beginning to things, nor any end of them; and whin I struck the snow and cut down the core of it like a cat through a glass, I was willin' to say with the Prophet of Ireland--" "Are you going to pass the liniment, Pretty Pierre?" It was Jo Gordineer said that. What the Prophet of Israel did say--Israel and Ireland were identical to Shon--was never told. Shon's bubbling sarcasm was full-stopped by the beneficent savour that, rising now from the hands of the four, silenced all irrelevant speech. It was a function of importance. It was not simply necessary to say How! or Here's reformation! or I look towards you! As if by a common instinct, the Honourable, Jo Gordineer, and Pretty Pierre, turned towards Shon and lifted their glasses. Jo Gordineer was going to say: "Here's a safe foot in the stirrups to you," but he changed his mind and drank in silence. Shon's eye had been blazing with fun, but it took on, all at once, a misty twinkle. None of them had quite bargained for this. The feeling had come like a wave of soft lightning, and had passed through them. Did it come from the Irishman himself? Was it his own nature acting through those who called him "partner"? Pretty Pierre got up and kicked savagely at the wood in the big fireplace. He ostentatiously and needlessly put another log of Norfolk- pine upon the fire. The Honourable gaily suggested a song. "Sing us 'Avec les Braves Sauvages,' Pierre," said Jo Gordineer. But Pierre waved his fingers towards Shon: "Shon, his song--he did not finish--on the glacier. It is good we hear all. 'Hein?'" And so Shon sang: "Oh it's down the long side of Farcalladen Rise." The sleeper on the pine branches stirred nervously, as if the song were coming through a dream to him. At the third verse he started up, and an eager, sun-burned face peered from the half-darkness at the singer. The Honourable was sitting in the shadow, with his back to the new actor in the scene. "For it's rest when the gallop is over, my men I And it's here's to the lads that have ridden their last! And it's here's--" Shon paused. One of those strange lapses of memory came to him which come at times to most of us concerning familiar things. He could get no further than he did on the mountain side. He passed his hand over his forehead, stupidly:--"Saints forgive me; but it's gone from me, and sorra the one can I get it; me that had it by heart, and the lad that wrote it far away. Death in the world, but I'll try it again! "For it's rest when the gallop is over, my men! And it's here's to the lads that have ridden their last! And it's here's--" Again he paused. But from the half-darkness there came a voice, a clear baritone: "And here's to the lasses we leave in the glen, With a smile for the future, a sigh for the past." At the last words the figure strode down into the firelight. "Shon, old friend, don't you know me?" Shon had started to his feet at the first note of the voice, and stood as if spellbound. There was no shaking of hands. Both men held each other hard by the shoulders, and stood so for a moment looking steadily eye to eye. Then Shon said: "Duke Lawless, there's parallels of latitude and parallels of longitude, but who knows the tomb of ould Brian Borhoime?" Which was his way of saying, "How come you here"? Duke Lawless turned to the others before he replied. His eyes fell on the Honourable. With a start and a step backward, and with a peculiar angry dryness in his voice, he said: "Just Trafford!" "Yes," replied the Honourable, smiling, "I have found you." "Found me! And why have you sought me? Me, Duke Lawless? I should have thought--" The Honourable interrupted: "To tell you that you are Sir Duke Lawless." "That? You sought me to tell me that?" "I did." "You are sure? And for naught else?" "As I live, Duke." The eyes fixed on the Honourable were searching. Sir Duke hesitated, then held out his hand. In a swift but cordial silence it was taken. Nothing more could be said then. It is only in plays where gentlemen freely discuss family affairs before a curious public. Pretty Pierre was busy with a decoction. Jo Gordineer was his associate. Shon had drawn back, and was apparently examining the indentations on his gold-pan. "Shon, old fellow, come here," said Sir Duke Lawless. But Shon had received a shock. "It's little I knew Sir Duke Lawless--" he said. "It's little you needed to know then, or need to know now, Shon, my friend. I'm Duke Lawless to you here and henceforth, as ever I was then, on the wallaby track." And Shon believed him. The glasses were ready. "I'll give the toast," said the Honourable with a gentle gravity. "To Shon McGann and his Tobogan Ride!" "I'll drink to the first half of it with all my heart," said Sir Duke. "It's all I know about." "Amen to that divorce," rejoined Shon. "But were it not for the Tobogan Ride we shouldn't have stopped here," said the Honourable; "and where would this meeting have been?" "That alters the case," Sir Duke remarked. "I take back the 'Amen,'" said Shon. II Whatever claims Shon had upon the companionship of Sir Duke Lawless, he knew there were other claims that were more pressing. After the toast was finished, with an emphasised assumption of weariness, and a hint of a long yarn on the morrow, he picked up his blanket and started for the room where all were to sleep. The real reason of this early departure was clear to Pretty Pierre at once, and in due time it dawned upon Jo Gordineer. The two Englishmen, left alone, sat for a few moments silent and smoking hard. Then the Honourable rose, got his knapsack, and took out a small number of papers, which he handed to Sir Duke, saying, "By slow postal service to Sir Duke Lawless. Residence, somewhere on one of five continents." An envelope bearing a woman's writing was the first thing that met Sir Duke's eye. He stared, took it out, turned it over, looked curiously at the Honourable for a moment, and then began to break the seal. "Wait, Duke. Do not read that. We have something to say to each other first." Sir Duke laid the letter down. "You have some explanation to make," he said. "It was so long ago; mightn't it be better to go over the story again?" "Perhaps." "Then it is best you should tell it. I am on my defence, you know." Sir Duke leaned back, and a frown gathered on his forehead. Strikingly out of place on his fresh face it seemed. Looking quickly from the fire to the face of the Honourable and back again earnestly, as if the full force of what was required came to him, he said: "We shall get the perspective better if we put the tale in the third person. Duke Lawless was the heir to the title and estates of Trafford Court. Next in succession to him was Just Trafford, his cousin. Lawless had an income sufficient for a man of moderate tastes. Trafford had not quite that, but he had his profession of the law. At college they had been fast friends, but afterwards had drifted apart, through no cause save difference of pursuits and circumstances. Friends they still were and likely to be so always. One summer, when on a visit to his uncle, Admiral Sir Clavel Lawless, at Trafford Court, where a party of people had been invited for a month, Duke Lawless fell in love with Miss Emily Dorset. She did him the honour to prefer him to any other man--at least, he thought so. Her income, however, was limited like his own. The engagement was not announced, for Lawless wished to make a home before he took a wife. He inclined to ranching in Canada, or a planter's life in Queensland. The eight or ten thousand pounds necessary was not, however, easy to get for the start, and he hadn't the least notion of discounting the future, by asking the admiral's help. Besides, he knew his uncle did not wish him to marry unless he married a woman plus a fortune. While things were in this uncertain state, Just Trafford arrived on a visit to Trafford Court. The meeting of the old friends was cordial. Immediately on Trafford's arrival, however, the current of events changed. Things occurred which brought disaster. It was noticeable that Miss Emily Dorset began to see a deal more of Admiral Lawless and Just Trafford, and a deal less of the younger Lawless. One day Duke Lawless came back to the house unexpectedly, his horse having knocked up on the road. On entering the library he saw what turned the course of his life." Sir Duke here paused, sighed, shook the ashes out of his pipe with a grave and expressive anxiety which did not properly belong to the action, and remained for a moment, both arms on his knees, silent, and looking at the fire. Then he continued: "Just Trafford sat beside Emily Dorset in an attitude of--say, affectionate consideration. She had been weeping, and her whole manner suggested very touching confidences. They both rose on the entrance of Lawless; but neither tried to say a word. What could they say? Lawless apologised, took a book from the table which he had not come for, and left." Again Sir Duke paused. "The book was an illustrated Much Ado About Nothing," said the Honourable. "A few hours after, Lawless had an interview with Emily Dorset. He demanded, with a good deal of feeling, perhaps,--for he was romantic enough to love the girl,--an explanation. He would have asked it of Trafford first if he had seen him. She said Lawless should trust her; that she had no explanation at that moment to give. If he waited--but Lawless asked her if she cared for him at all, if she wished or intended to marry him? She replied lightly, 'Perhaps, when you become Sir Duke Lawless.' Then Lawless accused her of heartlessness, and of encouraging both his uncle and Just Trafford. She amusingly said, 'Perhaps she had, but it really didn't matter, did it?' For reply, Lawless said her interest in the whole family seemed active and impartial. He bade her not vex herself at all about him, and not to wait until he became Sir Duke Lawless, but to give preference to seniority and begin with the title at once; which he has reason since to believe that she did. What he said to her he has been sorry for, not because he thinks it was undeserved, but because he has never been able since to rouse himself to anger on the subject, nor to hate the girl and Just Trafford as he ought. Of the dead he is silent altogether. He never sought an explanation from Just Trafford, for he left that night for London, and in two days was on his way to Australia. The day he left, however, he received a note from his banker saying that L8000 had been placed to his credit by Admiral Lawless. Feeling the indignity of what he believed was the cause of the gift, Lawless neither acknowledged it nor used it, not any penny of it. Five years have gone since then, and Lawless has wandered over two continents, a self-created exile. He has learned much that he didn't learn at Oxford; and not the least of all, that the world is not so bad as is claimed for it, that it isn't worth while hating and cherishing hate, that evil is half-accidental, half-natural, and that hard work in the face of nature is the thing to pull a man together and strengthen him for his place in the universe. Having burned his ships behind him, that is the way Lawless feels. And the story is told." Just Trafford sat looking musingly but imperturbably at Sir Duke for a minute; then he said: "That is your interpretation of the story, but not the story. Let us turn the medal over now. And, first, let Trafford say that he has the permission of Emily Dorset--" Sir Duke interrupted: "Of her who was Emily Dorset." "Of Miss Emily Dorset, to tell what she did not tell that day five years ago. After this other reading of the tale has been rendered, her letter and those documents are there for fuller testimony. Just Trafford's part in the drama begins, of course, with the library scene. Now Duke Lawless had never known Trafford's half-brother, Hall Vincent. Hall was born in India, and had lived there most of his life. He was in the Indian Police, and had married a clever, beautiful, but impossible kind of girl, against the wishes of her parents. The marriage was not a very happy one. This was partly owing to the quick Lawless and Trafford blood, partly to the wife's wilfulness. Hall thought that things might go better if he came to England to live. On their way from Madras to Colombo he had some words with his wife one day about the way she arranged her hair, but nothing serious. This was shortly after tiffin. That evening they entered the harbour at Colombo; and Hall going to his cabin to seek his wife, could not find her; but in her stead was her hair, arranged carefully in flowing waves on the pillow, where through the voyage her head had lain. That she had cut it off and laid it there was plain; but she could not be found, nor was she ever found. The large porthole was open; this was the only clue. But we need not go further into that. Hall Vincent came home to England. He told his brother the story as it has been told to you, and then left for South America, a broken-spirited man. The wife's family came on to England also. They did not meet Hall Vincent; but one day Just Trafford met at a country seat in Devon, for the first time, the wife's sister. She had not known of the relationship between Hall Vincent and the Traffords; and on a memorable afternoon he told her the full story of the married life and the final disaster, as Hall had told it to him." Sir Duke sprang to his feet. "You mean, Just, that--" "I mean that Emily Dorset was the sister of Hall Vincent's wife." Sir Duke's brown fingers clasped and unclasped nervously. He was about to speak, but the Honourable said: "That is only half the story--wait. "Emily Dorset would have told Lawless all in due time, but women don't like to be bullied ever so little, and that, and the unhappiness of the thing, kept her silent in her short interview with Lawless. She could not have guessed that Lawless would go as he did. Now, the secret of her diplomacy with the uncle--diplomacy is the best word to use--was Duke Lawless's advancement. She knew how he had set his heart on the ranching or planting life. She would have married him without a penny, but she felt his pride in that particular, and respected it. So, like a clever girl, she determined to make the old chap give Lawless a cheque on his possible future. Perhaps, as things progressed, the same old chap got an absurd notion in his head about marrying her to Just Trafford, but that was meanwhile all the better for Lawless. The very day that Emily Dorset and Just Trafford succeeded in melting Admiral Lawless's heart to the tune of eight thousand, was the day that Duke Lawless doubted his friend and challenged the loyalty of the girl he loved." Sir Duke's eyes filled. "Great Heaven! Just--" he said. "Be quiet for a little. You see she had taken Trafford into her scheme against his will, for he was never good at mysteries and theatricals, and he saw the danger. But the cause was a good one, and he joined the sweet conspiracy, with what result these five years bear witness. Admiral Lawless has been dead a year and a half, his wife a year. For he married out of anger with Duke Lawless; but he did not marry Emily Dorset, nor did he beget a child." "In Australia I saw a paragraph speaking of a visit made by him and Lady Lawless to a hospital, and I thought--" "You thought he had married Emily Dorset and--well, you had better read that letter now." Sir Duke's face was flushing with remorse and pain. He drew his hand quickly across his eyes. "And you've given up London, your profession, everything, just to hunt for me, to tell me this--you who would have profited by my eternal absence! What a beast and ass I've been!" "Not at all; only a bit poetical and hasty, which is not unnatural in the Lawless blood. I should have been wild myself, maybe, if I had been in your position; only I shouldn't have left England, and I should have taken the papers regularly and have asked the other fellow to explain. The other fellow didn't like the little conspiracy. Women, however, seem to find that kind of thing a moral necessity. By the way, I wish when you go back you'd send me out my hunting traps. I've made up my mind to--oh, quite so--read the letter--I forgot!" Sir Duke opened the letter and read it, putting it away from him now and then as if it hurt him, and taking it up a moment after to continue the reading. The Honourable watched him. At last Sir Duke rose. "Just--" "Yes? Go on." "Do you think she would have me now?" "Don't know. Your outfit is not so beautiful as it used to be." "Don't chaff me." "Don't be so funereal, then." Under the Honourable's matter of fact air Sir Duke's face began to clear. "Tell me, do you think she still cares for me?" "Well, I don't know. She's rich now--got the grandmother's stocking. Then there's Pedley, of the Scots Guards; he has been doing loyal service for a couple of years. What does the letter say?" "It only tells the truth, as you have told it to me, but from her standpoint; not a word that says anything but beautiful reproach and general kindness. That is all." "Quite so. You see it was all four years ago, and Pedley--" But the Honourable paused. He had punished his friend enough. He stepped forward and laid his hand on Sir Duke's shoulder. "Duke, you want to pick up the threads where they were dropped. You dropped them. Ask me nothing about the ends that Emily Dorset held. I conspire no more. But go you and learn your fate. If one remembers, why should the other forget?" Sir Duke's light heart and eager faith came back with a rush. "I'll start for England at once. I'll know the worst or the best of it before three months are out." The Honourable's slow placidity turned. "Three months.--Yes, you may do it in that time. Better go from Victoria to San Francisco and then overland. You'll not forget about my hunting traps, and--oh, certainly, Gordineer; come in." "Say," said Gordineer. "I don't want to disturb the meeting, but Shon's in chancery somehow; breathing like a white pine, and thrashing about! He's red-hot with fever." Before he had time to say more, Sir Duke seized the candle and entered the room. Shon was moving uneasily and suppressing the groans that shook him. "Shon, old friend, what is it?" "It's the pain here, Lawless," laying his hand on his chest. After a moment Sir Duke said, "Pneumonia!" From that instant thoughts of himself were sunk in the care and thought of the man who in the heart of Queensland had been mate and friend and brother to him. He did not start for England the next day, nor for many a day. Pretty Pierre and Jo Gordineer and his party carried Sir Duke's letters over into the Pipi Valley, from where they could be sent on to the coast. Pierre came back in a few days to see how Shon was, and expressed his determination of staying to help Sir Duke, if need be. Shon hovered between life and death. It was not alone the pneumonia that racked his system so; there was also the shock he had received in his flight down the glacier. In his delirium he seemed to be always with Lawless: "'For it's down the long side of Farcalladen Rise'--It's share and share even, Lawless, and ye'll ate the rest of it, or I'll lave ye--Did ye say ye'd found water--Lawless--water!--Sure you're drinkin' none yourself-- I'll sing it again for you then--'And it's back with the ring of the chain and the spur'--'But burn all your ships behind you'--'I'll never go back to Farcalladen more!'" Sir Duke's fingers had a trick of kindness, a suggestion of comfort, a sense of healing, that made his simple remedies do more than natural duty. He was doctor, nurse,--sleepless nurse,--and careful apothecary. And when at last the danger was past and he could relax watching, he would not go, and he did not go, till they could all travel to the Pipi Valley. In the blue shadows of the firs they stand as we take our leave of one of them. The Honourable and Sir Duke have had their last words, and Sir Duke has said he will remember about the hunting traps. They understand each other. There is sunshine in the face of all--a kind of Indian summer sunshine, infused with the sadness of a coming winter; and theirs is the winter of parting. Yet it is all done quietly. "We'll meet again, Shon," said Sir Duke, "and you'll remember your promise to write to me." "I'll keep my promise, and I hope the news that'll please you best is what you'll send us first from England. And if you should go to ould Donegal--I've no words for me thoughts at all!" "I know them. Don't try to say them. We've not had the luck together, all kinds and all weathers, for nothing." Sir Duke's eyes smiled a good-bye into the smiling eyes of Shon. They were much alike, these two, whose stations were so far apart. Yet somewhere, in generations gone, their ancestors may have toiled, feasted, or governed, in the same social hemisphere; and here in the mountains life was levelled to one degree again. Sir Duke looked round. The pines were crowding up elate and warm towards the peaks of the white silence. The river was brawling over a broken pathway of boulders at their feet; round the edge of a mighty mountain crept a mule train; a far-off glacier glistened harshly in the lucid morning, yet not harshly either, but with the rugged form of a vast antiquity, from which these scarred and grimly austere hills had grown. Here Nature was filled with a sense of triumphant mastery--the mastery of ageless experience. And down the great piles there blew a wind of stirring life, of the composure of great strength, and touched the four, and the man that mounted now was turned to go. A quick good-bye from him to all; a God-speed-you from the Honourable; a wave of the hand between the rider and Shon, and Sir Duke Lawless was gone. "You had better cook the last of that bear this morning, Pierre," said the Honourable. And their life went on. ........................ It was eight months after that, sitting in their hut after a day's successful mining, the Honourable handed Shon a newspaper to read. A paragraph was marked. It concerned the marriage of Miss Emily Dorset and Sir Duke Lawless. And while Shon read, the Honourable called into the tent: "Have you any lemons for the whisky, Pierre?" A satisfactory reply being returned, the Honourable proceeded: "We'll begin with the bottle of Pommery, which I've been saving months for this." The royal-flush toast of the evening belonged to Shon. "God bless him! To the day when we see him again!" And all of them saw that day. PERE CHAMPAGNE "Is it that we stand at the top of the hill and the end of the travel has come, Pierre? Why don't you spake?" "We stand at the top of the hill, and it is the end." "And Lonely Valley is at our feet and Whiteface Mountain beyond?" "One at our feet, and the other beyond, Shon McGann." "It's the sight of my eyes I wish I had in the light of the sun this mornin'. Tell me, what is't you see?" "I see the trees on the foot-hills, and all the branches shine with frost. There is a path--so wide!--between two groves of pines. On Whiteface Mountain lies a glacier-field . . . and all is still." . . . "The voice of you is far-away-like, Pierre--it shivers as a hawk cries. It's the wind, the wind, maybe." "There's not a breath of life from hill or valley." "But I feel it in my face." "It is not the breath of life you feel." "Did you not hear voices coming athwart the wind? . . . Can you see the people at the mines?" "I have told you what I see." "You told me of the pine-trees, and the glacier, and the snow--" "And that is all." "But in the Valley, in the Valley, where all the miners are?" "I cannot see them." "For love of heaven, don't tell me that the dark is fallin' on your eyes too." "No, Shon, I am not growing blind." "Will you not tell me what gives the ache to your words?" "I see in the Valley--snow . . . snow." "It's a laugh you have at me in your cheek, whin I'd give years of my ill-spent life to watch the chimney smoke come curlin' up slow through the sharp air in the Valley there below." "There is no chimney and there is no smoke in all the Valley." "Before God, if you're a man, you'll put your hand on my arm and tell me what trouble quakes your speech." "Shon McGann, it is for you to make the sign of the Cross . . . there, while I put my hand on your shoulder--so!" "Your hand is heavy, Pierre." "This is the sight of the eyes that see. In the Valley there is snow; in the snow of all that was, there is one poppet-head of the mine that was called St. Gabriel . . . upon the poppet-head there is the figure of a woman." "Ah!" "She does not move--" "She will never move?" "She will never move." "The breath o' my body hurts me. . . . There is death in the Valley, Pierre?" "There is death." "It was an avalanche--that path between the pines?" "And a great storm after." "Blessed be God that I cannot behold that thing this day! . . . And the woman, Pierre, the woman aloft?" "She went to watch for someone coming, and as she watched, the avalanche came--and she moves not." "Do we know that woman?" "Who can tell?" "What was it you whispered soft to yourself, then, Pierre?" "I whispered no word." "There, don't you hear it, soft and sighin'? . . . Nathalie!" "'Mon Dieu!' It is not of the world." "It's facin' the poppet-head where she stands I'd be." "Your face is turned towards her." "Where is the sun?" "The sun stands still above her head." "With the bitter over, and the avil past, come rest for her and all that lie there." "Eh, 'bien,' the game is done!" "If we stay here we shall die also." "If we go we die, perhaps." . . . "Don't spake it. We will go, and we will return when the breath of summer comes from the South." "It shall be so." "Hush! Did you not hear--?" "I did not hear. I only see an eagle, and it flies towards Whiteface Mountain." And Shon McGann and Pretty Pierre turned back from the end of their quest--from a mighty grave behind to a lonely waste before; and though one was snow-blind, and the other knew that on him fell the chiefer weight of a great misfortune, for he must provide food and fire and be as a mother to his comrade--they had courage; without which, men are as the standing straw in an unreaped field in winter; but having become like the hooded pine, that keepeth green in frost, and hath the bounding blood in all its icy branches. And whence they came and wherefore was as thus: A French Canadian once lived in Lonely Valley. One day great fortune came to him, because it was given him to discover the mine St. Gabriel. And he said to the woman who loved him, "I will go with mules and much gold, that I have hewn and washed and gathered, to a village in the East where my father and my mother are. They are poor, but I will make them rich; and then I will return to Lonely Valley, and a priest shall come with me, and we will dwell here at Whiteface Mountain, where men are men and not children." And the woman blessed him, and prayed for him, and let him go. He travelled far through passes of the mountains, and came at last where new cities lay upon the plains, and where men were full of evil and of lust of gold. And he was free of hand and light of heart; and at a place called Diamond City false friends came about him, and gave him champagne wine to drink, and struck him down and robbed him, leaving him for dead. And he was found, and his wounds were all healed: all save one, and that was in the brain. Men called him mad. He wandered through the land, preaching to men to drink no wine, and to shun the sight of gold. And they laughed at him, and called him Pere Champagne. But one day much gold was found at a place called Reef o' Angel; and jointly with the gold came a plague which scars the face and rots the body; and Indians died by hundreds and white men by scores; and Pere Champagne, of all who were not stricken down, feared nothing, and did not flee, but went among the sick and dying, and did those deeds which gold cannot buy, and prayed those prayers which were never sold. And who can count how high the prayers of the feckless go! When none was found to bury the dead, he gave them place himself beneath the prairie earth,--consecrated only by the tears of a fool,--and for extreme unction he had but this: "God be merciful to me, a sinner!" Now it happily chanced that Pierre and Shon McGann, who travelled westward, came upon this desperate battle-field, and saw how Pere Champagne dared the elements of scourge and death; and they paused and laboured with him--to save where saving was granted of Heaven, and to bury when the Reaper reaped and would not stay his hand. At last the plague ceased, because winter stretched its wings out swiftly o'er the plains from frigid ranges in the West. And then Pere Champagne fell ill again. And this last great sickness cured his madness: and he remembered whence he had come, and what befell him at Diamond City so many moons ago. And he prayed them, when he knew his time was come, that they would go to Lonely Valley and tell his story to the woman whom he loved; and say that he was going to a strange but pleasant Land, and that there he would await her coming. He begged them that they would go at once, that she might know, and not strain her eyes to blindness, and be sick at heart because he came not. And he told them her name, and drew the coverlet up about his head and seemed to sleep; but he waked between the day and dark, and gently cried: "The snow is heavy on the mountain . . . and the Valley is below. . . . 'Gardez, mon Pere!' . . . Ah, Nathalie!" And they buried him between the dark and dawn. Though winds were fierce, and travel full of peril, they kept their word, and passed along wide steppes of snow, until they entered passes of the mountains, and again into the plains; and at last one 'poudre' day, when frost was shaking like shreds of faintest silver through the air, Shon McGann's sight fled. But he would not turn back--a promise to a dying man was sacred, and he could follow if he could not lead; and there was still some pemmican, and there were martens in the woods, and wandering deer that good spirits hunted into the way of the needy; and Pierre's finger along the gun was sure. Pierre did not tell Shon that for many days they travelled woods where no sunshine entered; where no trail had ever been, nor foot of man had trod: that they had lost their way. Nor did he make his comrade know that one night he sat and played a game of solitaire to see if they would ever reach the place called Lonely Valley. Before the cards were dealt, he made a sign upon his breast and forehead. Three times he played, and three times he counted victory; and before three suns had come and gone, they climbed a hill that perched over Lonely Valley. And of what they saw and their hearts felt we know. And when they turned their faces eastward they were as men who go to meet a final and a conquering enemy; but they had kept their honour with the man upon whose grave-tree Shon McGann had carved beneath his name these words: "A Brother of Aaron." Upon a lonely trail they wandered, the spirits of lost travellers hungering in their wake--spirits that mumbled in cedar thickets, and whimpered down the flumes of snow. And Pierre, who knew that evil things are exorcised by mighty conjuring, sang loudly, from a throat made thin by forced fasting, a song with which his mother sought to drive away the devils of dreams that flaunted on his pillow when a child: it was the song of the Scarlet Hunter. And the charm sufficed; for suddenly of a cheerless morning they came upon a trapper's hut in the wilderness, where their sufferings ceased, and the sight of Shon's eyes came back. When strength returned also, they journeyed to an Indian village, where a priest laboured. Him they besought; and when spring came they set forth to Lonely Valley again that the woman and the smothered dead--if it might chance so--should be put away into peaceful graves. But thither coming they only saw a grey and churlish river; and the poppet-head of the mine of St. Gabriel, and she who had knelt thereon, were vanished into solitudes, where only God's cohorts have the rights of burial. . . . But the priest prayed humbly for their so swiftly summoned souls. THE SCARLET HUNTER "News out of Egypt!" said the Honourable Just Trafford. "If this is true, it gives a pretty finish to the season. You think it possible, Pierre? It is every man's talk that there isn't a herd of buffaloes in the whole country; but this-eh?" Pierre did not seem disposed to answer. He had been watching a man's face for some time; but his eyes were now idly following the smoke of his cigarette as it floated away to the ceiling in fading circles. He seemed to take no interest in Trafford's remarks, nor in the tale that Shangi the Indian had told them; though Shangi and his tale were both sufficiently uncommon to justify attention. Shon McGann was more impressionable. His eyes swam; his feet shifted nervously with enjoyment; he glanced frequently at his gun in the corner of the hut; he had watched Trafford's face with some anxiety, and accepted the result of the tale with delight. Now his look was occupied with Pierre. Pierre was a pretty good authority in all matters concerning the prairies and the North. He also had an instinct for detecting veracity, having practised on both sides of the equation. Trafford became impatient, and at last the half-breed, conscious that he had tried the temper of his chief so far as was safe, lifted his eyes, and, resting them casually on the Indian, replied: "Yes, I know the place. . . . No, I have not been there, but I was told-ah, it was long ago! There is a great valley between hills, the Kimash Hills, the hills of the Mighty Men. The woods are deep and dark; there is but one trail through them, and it is old. On the highest hill is a vast mound. In that mound are the forefathers of a nation that is gone. Yes, as you say, they are dead, and there is none of them alive in the valley--which is called the White Valley--where the buffalo are. The valley is green in summer, and the snow is not deep in winter; the noses of the buffalo can find the tender grass. The Injin speaks the truth, perhaps. But of the number of buffaloes, one must see. The eye of the red man multiplies." Trafford looked at Pierre closely. "You seem to know the place very well. It is a long way north where--ah yes, you said you had never been there; you were told. Who told you?" The half-breed raised his eyebrows slightly as he replied: "I can remember a long time, and my mother, she spoke much and sang many songs at the campfires." Then he puffed his cigarette so that the smoke clouded his face for a moment, and went on,--"I think there may be buffaloes." "It's along the barrel of me gun I wish I was lookin' at thim now," said McGann. "'Tiens,' you will go"? inquired Pierre of Trafford. "To have a shot at the only herd of wild buffaloes on the continent! Of course I'll go. I'd go to the North Pole for that. Sport and novelty I came here to see; buffalo-hunting I did not expect. I'm in luck, that's all. We'll start to-morrow morning, if we can get ready, and Shangi here will lead us; eh, Pierre?" The half-breed again was not polite. Instead of replying he sang almost below his breath the words of a song unfamiliar to his companions, though the Indian's eyes showed a flash of understanding. These were the words: "They ride away with a waking wind, away, away! With laughing lip and with jocund mind at break of day. A rattle of hoofs and a snatch of song, they ride, they ride! The plains are wide and the path is long,--so long, so wide!" Just Trafford appeared ready to deal with this insolence, for the half- breed was after all a servant of his, a paid retainer. He waited, however. Shon saw the difficulty, and at once volunteered a reply. "It's aisy enough to get away in the mornin', but it's a question how far we'll be able to go with the horses. The year is late; but there's dogs beyand, I suppose, and bedad, there y' are!" The Indian spoke slowly: "It is far off. There is no colour yet in the leaf of the larch. The river-hen still swims northward. It is good that we go. There is much buffalo in the White Valley." Again Trafford looked towards his follower, and again the half-breed, as if he were making an effort to remember, sang abstractedly: "They follow, they follow a lonely trail, by day, by night, By distant sun, and by fire-fly pale, and northern light. The ride to the Hills of the Mighty Men, so swift they go! Where buffalo feed in the wilding glen in sun and snow." "Pierre," said Trafford, sharply, "I want an answer to my question." "'Mais, pardon,' I was thinking . . . well, we can ride until the deep snows come, then we can walk; and Shangi, he can get the dogs, maybe, one team of dogs." "But," was the reply, "one team of dogs will not be enough. We'll bring meat and hides, you know, as well as pemmican. We won't cache any carcases up there. What would be the use? We shall have to be back in the Pipi Valley by the spring-time." "Well," said the half-breed with a cold decision, "one team of dogs will be enough; and we will not cache, and we shall be back in the Pipi Valley before the spring, perhaps." But this last word was spoken under his breath. And now the Indian spoke, with his deep voice and dignified manner: "Brothers, it is as I have said, the trail is lonely and the woods are deep and dark. Since the time when the world was young, no white man hath been there save one, and behold sickness fell on him; the grave is his end. It is a pleasant land, for the gods have blessed it to the Indian forever. No heathen shall possess it. But you shall see the White Valley and the buffalo. Shangi will lead, because you have been merciful to him, and have given him to sleep in your wigwam, and to eat of your wild meat. There are dogs in the forest. I have spoken." Trafford was impressed, and annoyed too. He thought too much sentiment was being squandered on a very practical and sportive thing. He disliked functions; speech-making was to him a matter for prayer and fasting. The Indian's address was therefore more or less gratuitous, and he hastened to remark: "Thank you, Shangi; that's very good, and you've put it poetically. You've turned a shooting-excursion into a mediaeval romance. But we'll get down to business now, if you please, and make the romance a fact, beautiful enough to send to the 'Times' or the New York 'Call'. Let's see, how would they put it in the Call?--'Extraordinary Discovery --Herd of buffaloes found in the far North by an Englishman and his Franco-Irish Party--Sport for the gods--Exodus of 'brules' to White Valley!'--and so on, screeching to the end." Shon laughed heartily. "The fun of the world is in the thing," he said; "and a day it would be for a notch on a stick and a rasp of gin in the throat. And if I get the sight of me eye on a buffalo-ruck, it's down on me knees I'll go, and not for prayin' aither. Here's both hands up for a start in the mornin'!" Long before noon next day they were well on their way. Trafford could not understand why Pierre was so reserved, and, when speaking, so ironical. It was noticeable that the half-breed watched the Indian closely, that he always rode behind him, that he never drank out of the same cup. The leader set this down to the natural uncertainty of Pierre's disposition. He had grown to like Pierre, as the latter had come in course to respect him. Each was a man of value after his kind. Each also had recognised in the other qualities of force and knowledge having their generation in experiences which had become individuality, subterranean and acute, under a cold surface. It was the mutual recognition of these equivalents that led the two men to mutual trust, only occasionally disturbed, as has been shown; though one was regarded as the most fastidious man of his set in London, the fairest-minded of friends, the most comfortable of companions; while the other was an outlaw, a half-heathen, a lover of but one thing in this world, the joyous god of Chance. Pierre was essentially a gamester. He would have extracted satisfaction out of a death-sentence which was contingent on the trumping of an ace. His only honour was the honour of the game. Now, with all the swelling prairie sloping to the clear horizon, and the breath of a large life in their nostrils, these two men were caught up suddenly, as it were, by the throbbing soul of the North, so that the subterranean life in them awoke and startled them. Trafford conceived that tobacco was the charm with which to exorcise the spirits of the past. Pierre let the game of sensations go on, knowing that they pay themselves out in time. His scheme was the wiser. The other found that fast riding and smoking were not sufficient. He became surrounded by the ghosts of yesterdays; and at length he gave up striving with them, and let them storm upon him, until a line of pain cut deeply across his forehead, and bitterly and unconsciously he cried aloud,--"Hester, ah, Hester!" But having spoken, the spell was broken, and he was aware of the beat of hoofs beside him, and Shangi the Indian looking at him with a half smile. Something in the look thrilled him; it was fantastic, masterful. He wondered that he had not noticed this singular influence before. After all, he was only a savage with cleaner buckskin than his race usually wore. Yet that glow, that power in the face--was he Piegan, Blackfoot, Cree, Blood? Whatever he was, this man had heard the words which broke so painfully from him. He saw the Indian frame her name upon his lips, and then came the words, "Hester--Hester Orval!" He turned sternly, and said, "Who are you? What do you know of Hester Orval?" The Indian shook his head gravely, and replied, "You spoke her name, my brother." "I spoke one word of her name. You have spoken two." "One does not know what one speaks. There are words which are as sounds, and words which are as feelings. Those come to the brain through the ear; these to the soul through sign, which is more than sound. The Indian hath knowledge, even as the white man; and because his heart is open, the trees whisper to him; he reads the language of the grass and the wind, and is taught by the song of the bird, the screech of the hawk, the bark of the fox. And so he comes to know the heart of the man who hath sickness, and calls upon someone, even though it be a weak woman, to cure his sickness; who is bowed low as beside a grave, and would stand upright. Are not my words wise? As the thoughts of a child that dreams, as the face of the blind, the eye of the beast, or the anxious hand of the poor, are they not simple, and to be understood?" Just Trafford made no reply. But behind, Pierre was singing in the plaintive measure of a chant: "A hunter rideth the herd abreast, The Scarlet Hunter from out of the West, Whose arrows with points of flame are drest, Who loveth the beast of the field the best, The child and the young bird out of the nest, They ride to the hunt no more, no more!" They travelled beyond all bounds of civilisation; beyond the northernmost Indian villages, until the features of the landscape became more rugged and solemn, and at last they paused at a place which the Indian called Misty Mountain, and where, disappearing for an hour, he returned with a team of Eskimo dogs, keen, quick-tempered, and enduring. They had all now recovered from the disturbing sentiments of the first portion of the journey; life was at full tide; the spirit of the hunter was on them. At length one night they camped in a vast pine grove wrapped in coverlets of snow and silent as death. Here again Pierre became moody and alert and took no part in the careless chat at the camp-fire led by Shon McGann. The man brooded and looked mysterious. Mystery was not pleasing to Trafford. He had his own secrets, but in the ordinary affairs of life he preferred simplicity. In one of the silences that fell between Shon's attempts to give hilarity to the occasion, there came a rumbling far-off sound, a sound that increased in volume till the earth beneath them responded gently to the vibration. Trafford looked up inquiringly at Pierre, and then at the Indian, who, after a moment, said slowly: "Above us are the hills of the Mighty Men, beneath us is the White Valley. It is the tramp of buffalo that we hear. A storm is coming, and they go to shelter in the mountains." The information had come somewhat suddenly, and McGann was the first to recover from the pleasant shock: "It's divil a wink of sleep I'll get this night, with the thought of them below there ripe for slaughter, and the tumble of fight in their beards." Pierre, with a meaning glance from his half-closed eyes, added: "But it is the old saying of the prairies that you do not shout dinner till you have your knife in the loaf. Your knife is not yet in the loaf, Shon McGann." The boom of the trampling ceased, and now there was a stirring in the snow-clad tree tops, and a sound as if all the birds of the North were flying overhead. The weather began to moan and the boles of the pines to quake. And then there came war,--a trouble out of the north, a wave of the breath of God to show inconsequent man that he who seeks to live by slaughter hath slaughter for his master. They hung over the fire while the forest cracked round them, and the flame smarted with the flying snow. And now the trees, as if the elements were closing in on them, began to break close by, and one lurched forward towards them. Trafford, to avoid its stroke, stepped quickly aside right into the line of another which he did not see. Pierre sprang forward and swung him clear, but was himself struck senseless by an outreaching branch. As if satisfied with this achievement, the storm began to subside. When Pierre recovered consciousness Trafford clasped his hand and said,-- "You've a sharp eye, a quick thought, and a deft arm, comrade." "Ah, it was in the game. It is good play to assist your partner," the half-breed replied sententiously. Through all, the Indian had remained stoical. But McGann, who swore by Trafford--as he had once sworn by another of the Trafford race--had his heart on his lips, and said: "There's a swate little cherub that sits up aloft, Who cares for the soul of poor Jack!" It was long after midnight ere they settled down again, with the wreck of the forest round them. Only the Indian slept; the others were alert and restless. They were up at daybreak, and on their way before sunrise, filled with desire for prey. They had not travelled far before they emerged upon a plateau. Around them were the hills of the Mighty Men-- austere, majestic; at their feet was a vast valley on which the light newly-fallen snow had not hidden all the grass. Lonely and lofty, it was a world waiting chastely to be peopled! And now it was peopled, for there came from a cleft of the hills an army of buffaloes lounging slowly down the waste, with tossing manes and hoofs stirring the snow into a feathery scud. The eyes of Trafford and McGann swam; Pierre's face was troubled, and strangely enough he made the sign of the cross. At that instant Trafford saw smoke issuing from a spot on the mountain opposite. He turned to the Indian: "Someone lives there"? he said. "It is the home of the dead, but life is also there." "White man, or Indian?" But no reply came. The Indian pointed instead to the buffalo rumbling down the valley. Trafford forgot the smoke, forgot everything except that splendid quarry. Shon was excited. "Sarpints alive," he said, "look at the troops of thim! Is it standin' here we are with our tongues in our cheeks, whin there's bastes to be killed, and mate to be got, and the call to war on the ground below! Clap spurs with your heels, sez I, and down the side of the turf together and give 'em the teeth of our guns!" The Irishman dashed down the slope. In an instant, all followed, or at least Trafford thought all followed, swinging their guns across their saddles to be ready for this excellent foray. But while Pierre rode hard, it was at first without the fret of battle in him, and he smiled strangely, for he knew that the Indian had disappeared as they rode down the slope, though how and why he could not tell. There ran through his head tales chanted at camp-fires when he was not yet in stature so high as the loins that bore him. They rode hard, and yet they came no nearer to that flying herd straining on with white streaming breath and the surf of snow rising to their quarters. Mile upon mile, and yet they could not ride these monsters down! Now Pierre was leading. There was a kind of fury in his face, and he seemed at last to gain on them. But as the herd veered close to a wall of stalwart pines, a horseman issued from the trees and joined the cattle. The horseman was in scarlet from head to foot; and with his coming the herd went faster, and ever faster, until they vanished into the mountain-side; and they who pursued drew in their trembling horses and stared at each other with wonder in their faces. "In God's name what does it mean"? Trafford cried. "Is it a trick of the eye or the hand of the devil"? added Shon. "In the name of God we shall know perhaps. If it is the hand of the devil it is not good for us," remarked Pierre. "Who was the man in scarlet who came from the woods"? asked Trafford of the half-breed. "'Voila,' it is strange! There is an old story among the Indians! My mother told many tales of the place and sang of it, as I sang to you. The legend was this:--In the hills of the North which no white man, nor no Injin of this time hath seen, the forefathers of the red men sleep; but some day they will wake again and go forth and possess all the land; and the buffalo are for them when that time shall come, that they may have the fruits of the chase, and that it be as it was of old, when the cattle were as clouds on the horizon. And it was ordained that one of these mighty men who had never been vanquished in fight, nor done an evil thing, and was the greatest of all the chiefs, should live and not die, but be as a sentinel, as a lion watching, and preserve the White Valley in peace until his brethren waked and came into their own again. And him they called the Scarlet Hunter; and to this hour the red men pray to him when they lose their way upon the plains, or Death draws aside the curtains of the wigwam to call them forth." "Repeat the verses you sang, Pierre," said Trafford. The half-breed did so. When he came to the words, "Who loveth the beast of the field the best," the Englishman looked round. "Where is Shangi"? he asked. McGann shook his head in astonishment and negation. Pierre explained: "On the mountain-side where we ride down he is not seen--he vanish . . . 'mon Dieu,' look!" On the slope of the mountain stood the Scarlet Hunter with drawn bow. From it an arrow flew over their heads with a sorrowful twang, and fell where the smoke rose among the pines; then the mystic figure disappeared. McGann shuddered, and drew himself together. "It is the place of spirits," he said; "and it's little I like it, God knows; but I'll follow that Scarlet Hunter, or red devil, or whatever he is, till I drop, if the Honourable gives the word. For flesh and blood I'm not afraid of; and the other we come to, whether we will or not, one day." But Trafford said: "No, we'll let it stand where it is for the present. Something has played our eyes false, or we're brought here to do work different from buffalo-hunting. Where that arrow fell among the smoke we must go first. Then, as I read the riddle, we travel back the way we came. There are points in connection with the Pipi Valley superior to the hills of the Mighty Men." They rode away across the glade, and through a grove of pines upon a hill, till they stood before a log but with parchment windows. Trafford knocked, but there was no response. He opened the door and entered. He saw a figure rise painfully from a couch in a corner,--the figure of a woman young and beautiful, but wan and worn. She seemed dazed and inert with suffering, and spoke mournfully: "It is too late. Not you, nor any of your race, nor anything on earth can save him. He is dead--dead now." At the first sound of her voice Trafford started. He drew near to her, as pale as she was, and wonder and pity were in his face. "Hester," he said, "Hester Orval!" She stared at him like one that had been awakened from an evil dream, then tottered towards him with the cry,--"Just, Just, have you come to save me? O Just!" His distress was sad to see, for it was held in deep repression, but he said calmly and with protecting gentleness: "Yes, I have come to save you. Hester, how is it you are here in this strange place--you?" She sobbed so that at first she could not answer; but at last she cried: "O Just, he is dead . . . in there, in there! . . . Last night, it was last night; and he prayed that I might go with him. But I could not die unforgiven, and I was right, for you have come out of the world to help me, and to save me." "Yes, to help you and to save you,--if I can," he added in a whisper to himself, for he was full of foreboding. He was of the earth, earthy, and things that had chanced to him this day were beyond the natural and healthy movements of his mind. He had gone forth to slay, and had been foiled by shadows; he had come with a tragic, if beautiful, memory haunting him, and that memory had clothed itself in flesh and stood before him, pitiful, solitary,--a woman. He had scorned all legend and superstition, and here both were made manifest to him. He had thought of this woman as one who was of this world no more, and here she mourned before him and bade him go and look upon her dead, upon the man who had wronged him, into whom, as he once declared, the soul of a cur had entered,--and now what could he say? He had carried in his heart the infinite something that is to men the utmost fulness of life, which, losing, they must carry lead upon their shoulders where they thought the gods had given pinions. McGann and Pierre were nervous. This conjunction of unusual things was easier to the intelligences of the dead than the quick. The outer air was perhaps less charged with the unnatural, and with a glance towards the room where death was quartered, they left the hut. Trafford was alone with the woman through whom his life had been turned awry. He looked at her searchingly; and as he looked the mere man in him asserted itself for a moment. She was dressed in coarse garments; it struck him that her grief had a touch of commonness about it; there was something imperfect in the dramatic setting. His recent experiences had had a kind of grandeur about them; it was not thus that he had remembered her in the hour when he had called upon her in the plains, and the Indian had heard his cry. He felt, and was ashamed in feeling, that there was a grim humour in the situation. The fantastic, the melodramatic, the emotional, were huddled here in too marked a prominence; it all seemed, for an instant, like the tale of a woman's first novel. But immediately again there was roused in him the latent force of loyalty to himself and therefore to her; the story of her past, so far as he knew it, flashed before him, and his eyes grew hot. He remembered the time he had last seen her in an English country-house among a gay party in which royalty smiled, and the subject was content beneath the smile. But there was one rebellious subject, and her name was Hester Orval. She was a wilful girl who had lived life selfishly within the lines of that decorous yet pleasant convention to which she was born. She was beautiful,--she knew that, and royalty had graciously admitted it. She was warm-thoughted, and possessed the fatal strain of the artistic temperament. She was not sure that she had a heart; and many others, not of her sex, after varying and enthusiastic study of the matter, were not more confident than she. But it had come at last that she had listened with pensive pleasure to Trafford's tale of love; and because to be worshipped by a man high in all men's, and in most women's, esteem, ministered delicately to her sweet egotism, and because she was proud of him, she gave him her hand in promise, and her cheek in privilege, but denied him--though he knew this not--her heart and the service of her life. But he was content to wait patiently for that service, and he wholly trusted her, for there was in him some fine spirit of the antique world. There had come to Falkenstowe, this country-house and her father's home, a man who bore a knightly name, but who had no knightly heart; and he told Ulysses' tales, and covered a hazardous and cloudy past with that fascinating colour which makes evil appear to be good, so that he roused in her the pulse of art, which she believed was soul and life, and her allegiance swerved. And when her mother pleaded with her, and when her father said stern things, and even royalty, with uncommon use, rebuked her gently, her heart grew hard; and almost on the eve of her wedding-day she fled with her lover, and married him, and together they sailed away over the seas. The world was shocked and clamorous for a matter of nine days, and then it forgot this foolish and awkward circumstance; but Just Trafford never forgot it. He remembered all vividly until the hour, a year later, when London journals announced that Hester Orval and her husband had gone down with a vessel wrecked upon the Alaskan and Canadian coast. And there new regret began, and his knowledge of her ended. But she and her husband had not been drowned; with a sailor they had reached the shore in safety. They had travelled inland from the coast through the great mountains by unknown paths, and as they travelled, the sailor died; and they came at last through innumerable hardships to the Kimash Hills, the hills of the Mighty Men, and there they stayed. It was not an evil land; it had neither deadly cold in winter nor wanton heat in summer. But they never saw a human face, and everything was lonely and spectral. For a time they strove to go eastwards or southwards but the mountains were impassable, and in the north and west there was no hope. Though the buffalo swept by them in the valley they could not slay them, and they lived on forest fruits until in time the man sickened. The woman nursed him faithfully, but still he failed; and when she could go forth no more for food, some unseen dweller of the woods brought buffalo meat, and prairie fowl, and water from the spring, and laid them beside her door. She had seen the mounds upon the hill, the wide couches of the sleepers, and she remembered the things done in the days when God seemed nearer to the sons of men than now; and she said that a spirit had done this thing, and trembled and was thankful. But the man weakened and knew that he should die, and one night when the pain was sharp upon him he prayed bitterly that he might pass, or that help might come to snatch him from the grave. And as they sobbed together, a form entered at the door,-- a form clothed in scarlet,--and he bade them tell the tale of their lives as they would some time tell it unto heaven. And when the tale was told he said that succour should come to them from the south by the hand of the Scarlet Hunter, that the nation sleeping there should no more be disturbed by their moaning. And then he had gone forth, and with his going there was a storm such as that in which the man had died, the storm that had assailed the hunters in the forest yesterday. This was the second part of Hester Orval's life as she told it to Just Trafford. And he, looking into her eyes, knew that she had suffered, and that she had sounded her husband's unworthiness. Then he turned from her and went into the room where the dead man lay. And there all hardness passed from him, and he understood that in the great going forth man reckons to the full with the deeds done in that brief pilgrimage called life; and that in the bitter journey which this one took across the dread spaces between Here and There, he had repented of his sins, because they, and they only, went with him in mocking company; the good having gone first to plead where evil is a debtor and hath a prison. And the woman came and stood beside Trafford, and whispered, "At first--and at the last--he was kind." But he urged her gently from the room: "Go away," he said; "go away. We cannot judge him. Leave me alone with him." They buried him upon the hill-side, far from the mounds where the Mighty Men waited for their summons to go forth and be the lords of the North again. At night they buried him when the moon was at its full; and he had the fragrant pines for his bed, and the warm darkness to cover him; and though he is to those others resting there a heathen and an alien, it may be that he sleeps peacefully. When Trafford questioned Hester Orval more deeply of her life there, the unearthly look quickened in her eyes, and she said: "Oh, nothing, nothing is real here, but suffering; perhaps it is all a dream, but it has changed me, changed me. To hear the tread of the flying herds, to see no being save him, the Scarlet Hunter, to hear the voices calling in the night! . . . Hush! There, do you not hear them? It is midnight-- listen!" He listened, and Pierre and Shon McGann looked at each other apprehensively, while Shon's fingers felt hurriedly along the beads of a rosary which he did not hold. Yes, they heard it, a deep sonorous sound: "Is the daybreak come?" "It is still the night," came the reply as of one clear voice. And then there floated through the hills more softly: "We sleep--we sleep!" And the sounds echoed through the valley--"Sleep --sleep!" Yet though these things were full of awe, the spirit of the place held them there, and the fever of the hunter descended on them hotly. In the morning they went forth, and rode into the White Valley where the buffalo were feeding, and sought to steal upon them; but the shots from their guns only awoke the hills, and none were slain. And though they rode swiftly, the wide surf of snow was ever between them and the chase, and their striving availed nothing. Day after day they followed that flying column, and night after night they heard the sleepers call from the hills. The desire of the thing wasted them, and they forgot to eat and ceased to talk among themselves. But one day Shon McGann, muttering aves as he rode, gained on the cattle, until once again the Scarlet Hunter came forth from a cleft of the mountains, and drove the herd forward with swifter feet. But the Irishman had learned the power in this thing, and had taught Trafford, who knew not those availing prayers, and with these sacred conjurations on their lips they gained on the cattle length by length, though the Scarlet Hunter rode abreast of the thundering horde. Within easy range, Trafford swung his gun shoulder-wards to fire, but at that instant a cloud of snow rose up between him and his quarry so that they all were blinded. And when they came into the clear sun again the buffalo were gone; but flaming arrows from some unseen hunter's bow came singing over their heads towards the south; and they obeyed the sign, and went back to where Hester wore her life out with anxiety for them, because she knew the hopelessness of their quest. Women are nearer to the heart of things. And now she begged Trafford to go southwards before winter froze the plains impassably, and the snow made tombs of the valleys. Thereupon he gave the word to go, and said that he had done wrong--for now the spell was falling from him. But she, seeing his regret, said: "Ah, Just, it could not have been different. The passion of it was on you as it was on us, as if to teach us that hunger for happiness is robbery, and that the covetous desire of man is not the will of the gods. The herds are for the Mighty Men when they awake, not for the stranger and the Philistine." "You have grown wise, Hester," he replied. "No, I am sick in brain and body; but it may be that in such sickness there is wisdom." "Ah," he said, "it has turned my head, I think. Once I laughed at all such fanciful things as these. This Scarlet Hunter, how many times have you seen him?" "But once." "What were his looks?" "A face pale and strong, with noble eyes; and in his voice there was something strange." Trafford thought of Shangi, the Indian,--where had he gone? He had disappeared as suddenly as he had come to their camp in the South. As they sat silent in the growing night, the door opened and the Scarlet Hunter stood before them. "There is food," he said, "on the threshold-- food for those who go upon a far journey to the South in the morning. Unhappy are they who seek for gold at the rainbow's foot, who chase the fire-fly in the night, who follow the herds in the White Valley. Wise are they who anger not the gods, and who fly before the rising storm. There is a path from the valley for the strangers, the path by which they came; and when the sun stares forth again upon the world, the way shall be open, and there shall be safety for you until your travel ends in the quick world whither you go. You were foolish; now you are wise. It is time to depart; seek not to return, that we may have peace and you safety. When the world cometh to her spring again we shall meet." Then he turned and was gone, with Trafford's voice ringing after him,--" Shangi! Shangi!" They ran out swiftly, but he had vanished. In the valley where the moonlight fell in icy coldness a herd of cattle was moving, and their breath rose like the spray from sea-beaten rocks, and the sound of their breathing was borne upwards to the watchers. At daybreak they rode down into the valley. All was still. Not a trace of life remained; not a hoofmark in the snow, nor a bruised blade of grass. And when they climbed to the plateau and looked back, it seemed to Trafford and his companions, as it seemed in after years, that this thing had been all a fantasy. But Hester's face was beside them, and it told of strange and unsubstantial things. The shadows of the middle world were upon her. And yet again when they turned at the last there was no token. It was a northern valley, with sun and snow, and cold blue shadows, and the high hills,--that was all. Then Hester said: "O Just, I do not know if this is life or death--and yet it must be death, for after death there is forgiveness to those who repent, and your face is forgiving and kind." And he--for he saw that she needed much human help and comfort--gently laid his hand on hers and replied: "Hester, this is life, a new life for both of us. Whatever has been was a dream; whatever is now"--and he folded her hand in his--"is real; and there is no such thing as forgiveness to be spoken of between us. There shall be happiness for us yet, please God!" "I want to go to Falkenstowe. Will--will my mother forgive me?" "Mothers always forgive, Hester, else half the world had slain itself in shame." And then she smiled for the first time since he had seen her. This was in the shadows of the scented pines; and a new life breathed upon her, as it breathed upon them all, and they knew that the fever of the White Valley had passed away from them forever. After many hardships they came in safety to the regions of the south country again; and the tale they told, though doubted by the race of pale-faces, was believed by the heathen; because there was none among them but, as he cradled at his mother's breasts, and from his youth up, had heard the legend of the Scarlet Hunter. For the romance of that journey, it concerned only the man and woman to whom it was as wine and meat to the starving. Is not love more than legend, and a human heart than all the beasts of the field or any joy of slaughter? THE STONE The Stone hung on a jutting crag of Purple Hill. On one side of it, far beneath, lay the village, huddled together as if, through being close compacted, its handful of humanity should not be a mere dust in the balance beside Nature's portentousness. Yet if one stood beside The Stone, and looked down, the flimsy wooden huts looked like a barrier at the end of a great flume. For the hill hollowed and narrowed from The Stone to the village, as if giants had made this concave path by trundling boulders to that point like a funnel where the miners' houses now formed a cul-de-sac. On the other side of the crag was a valley also; but it was lonely and untenanted; and at one flank of The Stone were serried legions of trees. The Stone was a mighty and wonderful thing. Looked at from the village direct, it had nothing but the sky for a background. At times, also, it appeared to rest on nothing; and many declared that they could see clean between it and the oval floor of the crag on which it rested. That was generally in the evening, when the sun was setting behind it. Then the light coiled round its base, between it and its pedestal, thus making it appear to hover above the hill-point, or, planet-like, to be just settling on it. At other times, when the light was perfectly clear and not too strong, and the village side of the crag was brighter than the other, more accurate relations of The Stone to its pedestal could be discovered. Then one would say that it balanced on a tiny base, a toe of granite. But if one looked long, especially in the summer, when the air throbbed, it evidently rocked upon that toe; if steadily, and very long, he grew tremulous, perhaps afraid. Once, a woman who was about to become a mother went mad, because she thought The Stone would hurtle down the hill at her great moment and destroy her and her child. Indians would not live either on the village side of The Stone or in the valley beyond. They had a legend that, some day, one, whom they called The Man Who Sleeps, would rise from his hidden couch in the mountains, and, being angry that any dared to cumber his playground, would hurl The Stone upon them that dwelt at Purple Hill. But white men pay little heed to Indian legends. At one time or another every person who had come to the village visited The Stone. Colossal as it was, the real base on which its weight rested was actually very small: the view from the village had not been all deceitful. It is possible, indeed, that at one time it had really rocked, and that the rocking had worn for it a shallow cup, or socket, in which it poised. The first man who came to Purple Valley prospecting had often stopped his work and looked at The Stone in a half-fear that it would spring upon him unawares. And yet he had as often laughed at himself for doing so, since, as he said, it must have been there hundreds of thousands of years. Strangers, when they came to the village, went to sleep somewhat timidly the first night of their stay, and not infrequently left their beds to go and look at The Stone, as it hung there ominously in the light of the moon; or listened towards it if it was dark. When the moon rose late, and The Stone chanced to be directly in front of it, a black sphere seemed to be rolling into the light to blot it out. But none who lived in the village looked upon The Stone in quite the same fashion as did that first man who had come to the valley. He had seen it through three changing seasons, with no human being near him, and only occasionally a shy, wandering elk, or a cloud of wild ducks whirring down the pass, to share his companionship with it. Once he had waked in the early morning, and, possessed of a strange feeling, had gone out to look a The Stone. There, perched upon it, was an eagle; and though he said to himself that an eagle's weight was to The Stone as a feather upon the world, he kept his face turned towards it all day; for all day the eagle stayed. He was a man of great stature and immense strength. The thews of his limbs stood out like soft unbreakable steel. Yet, as if to cast derision on his strength and great proportions, God or Fate turned his bread to ashes, gave failure into his hands where he hugely grasped at fortune, and hung him about with misery. He discovered gold, but others gathered it. It was his daughter that went mad, and gave birth to a dead child in fearsome thought of The Stone. Once, when he had gone over the hills to another mining field, and had been prevented from coming back by unexpected and heavy snows, his wife was taken ill, and died alone of starvation, because none in the village remembered of her and her needs. Again, one wild night, long after, his only son was taken from his bed and lynched for a crime that was none of his, as was discovered by his murderers next day. Then they killed horribly the real criminal, and offered the father such satisfaction as they could. They said that any one of them was ready there to be killed by him; and they threw a weapon at his feet. At this he stood looking upon them for a moment, his great breast heaving, and his eyes glowering; but presently he reached out his arms, and taking two of them by the throat, brought their heads together heavily, breaking their skulls; and, with a cry in his throat like a wounded animal, left them, and entered the village no more. But it became known that he had built a rude but on Purple Hill, and that he had been seen standing beside The Stone or sitting among the boulders below it, with his face bent upon the village. Those who had come near to him said that he had greatly changed; that his hair and beard had grown long and strong, and, in effect, that he looked like some rugged fragment of an antique world. The time came when they associated The Man with The Stone: they grew to speak of him simply as The Man. There was something natural and apt in the association. Then they avoided these two singular dwellers on the height. What had happened to The Man when he lived in the village became almost as great a legend as the Indian fable concerning The Stone. In the minds of the people one seemed as old as the other. Women who knew the awful disasters which had befallen The Man brooded at times most timidly, regarding him as they did at first--and even still--The Stone. Women who carried life unborn about with them had a strange dread of both The Stone and The Man. Time passed on, and the feeling grew that The Man's grief must be a terrible thing, since he lived alone with The Stone and God. But this did not prevent the men of the village from digging gold, drinking liquor, and doing many kinds of evil. One day, again, they did an unjust and cruel thing. They took Pierre, the gambler, whom they had at first sought to vanquish at his own art, and, possessed suddenly of the high duty of citizenship, carried him to the edge of a hill and dropped him over, thinking thereby to give him a quick death, while the vultures would provide him a tomb. But Pierre was not killed, though to his grave--unprepared as yet--he would bear an arm which should never be lifted higher than his shoulder. When he waked from the crashing gloom which succeeded the fall, he was in the presence of a being whose appearance was awesome and massive--an outlawed god: whose hair and beard were white, whose eye was piercing, absorbing, painful, in the long perspective of its woe. This being sat with his great hand clasped to the side of his head. The beginning of his look was the village, and--though the vision seemed infinite--the village was the end of it too. Pierre, looking through the doorway beside which he lay, drew in his breath sharply, for it seemed at first as if The Man was an unnatural fancy, and not a thing. Behind The Man was The Stone, which was not more motionless nor more full of age than this its comrade. Indeed, The Stone seemed more a thing of life as it poised above the hill: The Man was sculptured rock. His white hair was chiselled on his broad brow, his face was a solemn pathos petrified, his lips were curled with an iron contempt, an incalculable anger. The sun went down, and darkness gathered about The Man. Pierre reached out his hand, and drank the water and ate the coarse bread that had been put near him. He guessed that trees or protruding ledges had broken his fall, and that he had been rescued and brought here. As he lay thinking, The Man entered the doorway, stooping much to do so. With flints he lighted a wick which hung from a wooden bowl of bear's oil; then kneeling, held it above his head, and looked at Pierre. And Pierre, who had never feared anyone, shrank from the look in The Man's eyes. But when the other saw that Pierre was awake, a distant kindness came upon his face, and he nodded gravely; but he did not speak. Presently a great tremor as of pain shook all his limbs, and he set the candle on the ground, and with his stalwart hands arranged afresh the bandages about Pierre's injured arm and leg. Pierre spoke at last. "You are The Man"? he said. The other bowed his head. "You saved me from those devils in the valley?" A look of impregnable hardness came into The Man's face, but he pressed Pierre's hand for answer; and though the pressure was meant to be gentle, Pierre winced painfully. The candle spluttered, and the hut filled with a sickly smoke. The Man brought some bear skins and covered the sufferer, for, the season being autumn, the night was cold. Pierre, who had thus spent his first sane and conscious hour in many days, fell asleep. What time it was when he waked he was not sure, but it was to hear a metallic click-click come to him through the clear air of night. It was a pleasant noise as of steel and rock: the work of some lonely stone-cutter of the hills. The sound reached him with strange, increasing distinctness. Was this Titan that had saved him sculpturing some figure from the metal hill? Click-click! it vibrated as regularly as the keen pulse of a watch. He lay and wondered for a long time, but fell asleep again; and the steely iteration went on in his dreams. In the morning The Man came to him, and cared for his hurts, and gave him food; but still would speak no word. He was gone nearly all day in the hills; yet when evening came he sought the place where Pierre had seen him the night before, and the same weird scene was re-enacted. And again in the night the clicking sound went on; and every night it was renewed. Pierre grew stronger, and could, with difficulty, stand upon his feet. One night he crept out, and made his way softly, slowly towards the sound. He saw The Man kneeling beside The Stone, he saw a hammer rise and fall upon a chisel; and the chisel was at the base of The Stone. The hammer rose and fell with perfect but dreadful precision. Pierre turned and looked towards the village below, whose lights were burning like a bunch of fire-flies in the gloom. Again he looked at The Stone and The Man. Then the thing came to him sharply. The Man was chiselling away the socket of The Stone, bringing it to that point of balance where the touch of a finger, the wing of a bird, or the whistle of a north-west wind, would send it down upon the offending and unsuspecting village. The thought held him paralysed. The Man had nursed his revenge long past the thought of its probability by the people beneath. He had at first sat and watched the village, hated, and mused dreadfully upon the thing he had determined to do. Then he had worked a little, afterwards more, and now, lastly, since he had seen what they had done to Pierre, with the hot but firm eagerness of an avenging giant. Pierre had done some sad deeds in his time, and had tasted some sweet revenges, but nothing like to this had ever entered his brain. In that village were men who--as they thought--had cast him to a death fit only for a coward or a cur. Well, here was the most exquisite retaliation. Though his hand should not be in the thing, he could still be the cynical and approving spectator. But yet: had all those people hovering about those lights below done harm to him? He thought there were a few--and they were women--who would not have followed his tumbril to his death with cries of execration. The rest would have done so,--most of them did so, not because he was a criminal, but because he was a victim, and because human nature as it is thirsts inordinately at times for blood and sacrifice--a living strain of the old barbaric instinct. He remembered that most of these people were concerned in having injured The Man. The few good women there had vile husbands; the few pardonable men had hateful wives: the village of Purple Hill was an ill affair. He thought: now doubtfully, now savagely, now with irony. The hammer and steel clicked on. He looked at the lights of the village again. Suddenly there came to his mind the words of a great man who sought to save a city manifold centuries ago. He was not sure that he wished to save this village; but there was a grim, almost grotesque, fitness in the thing that he now intended. He spoke out clearly through the night: "'Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten righteous shall be found there.'" The hammer stopped. There was a silence, in which the pines sighed lightly. Then, as if speaking was a labour, The Man replied in a deep, harsh voice: "I will not spare it for ten's sake." Again there was a silence, in which Pierre felt his maimed body bend beneath him; but presently the voice said,--"Now!" At this the moon swung from behind a cloud. The Man stood behind The Stone. His arm was raised to it. There was a moment's pause--it seemed like years to Pierre; a wind came softly crying out of the west, the moon hurried into the dark, and then a monster sprang from its pedestal upon Purple Hill, and, with a sound of thunder and an awful speed, raced upon the village below. The boulders of the hillside crumbled after it. And Pierre saw the lights go out. The moon shone out again for an instant, and Pierre saw that The Man stood where The Stone had been; but when he reached the place The Man was gone. Forever! ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: At first--and at the last--he was kind Courage; without which, men are as the standing straw Evil is half-accidental, half-natural Fascinating colour which makes evil appear to be good Had the luck together, all kinds and all weathers Hunger for happiness is robbery If one remembers, why should the other forget Instinct for detecting veracity, having practised on both sides Mothers always forgive The higher we go the faster we live The Injin speaks the truth, perhaps--eye of red man multipies The world is not so bad as is claimed for it Whatever has been was a dream; whatever is now is real You do not shout dinner till you have your knife in the loaf PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE TALES OF THE FAR NORTH By Gilbert Parker Volume 4. THE TALL MASTER THE CRIMSON FLAG THE FLOOD IN PIPI VALLEY THE TALL MASTER The story has been so much tossed about in the mouths of Indians, and half-breeds, and men of the Hudson's Bay Company, that you are pretty sure to hear only an apocryphal version of the thing as you now travel in the North. But Pretty Pierre was at Fort Luke when the battle occurred, and, before and after, he sifted the business thoroughly. For he had a philosophical turn, and this may be said of him, that he never lied except to save another from danger. In this matter he was cool and impartial from first to last, and evil as his reputation was in many ways there were those who believed and trusted him. Himself, as he travelled here and there through the North, had heard of the Tall Master. Yet he had never met anyone who had seen him; for the Master had dwelt, it was said, chiefly among the strange tribes of the Far-Off Metal River whose faces were almost white, and who held themselves aloof from the southern races. The tales lost nothing by being retold, even when the historians were the men of the H. B. C.;---Pierre knew what accomplished liars may be found among that Company of Adventurers trading in Hudson's Bay, and how their art had been none too delicately engrafted by his own people. But he was, as became him, open to conviction, especially when, journeying to Fort Luke, he heard what John Hybar, the Chief Factor-- a man of uncommon quality--had to say. Hybar had once lived long among those Indians of the Bright Stone, and had seen many rare things among them. He knew their legends of the White Valley and the Hills of the Mighty Men, and how their distinctive character had imposed itself on the whole Indian race of the North, so that there was none but believed, even though vaguely, in a pleasant land not south but Arcticwards; and Pierre himself, with Shon McGann and Just Trafford, had once had a strange experience in the Kimash Hills. He did not share the opinion of Lazenby, the Company's clerk at Fort Luke, who said, when the matter was talked of before him, that it was all hanky-panky,--which was evidence that he had lived in London town, before his anxious relatives, sending him forth under the delusive flag of adventure and wild life, imprisoned him in the Arctic regions with the H. B. C. Lazenby admired Pierre; said he was good stuff, and voted him amusing, with an ingenious emphasis of heathen oaths; but advised him, as only an insolent young scoundrel can, to forswear securing, by the seductive game of poker or euchre, larger interest on his capital than the H. B. C.; whose record, he insisted, should never be rivalled by any single man in any single lifetime. Then he incidentally remarked that he would like to empty the Company's cash-box once--only once;--thus reconciling the preacher and the sinner, as many another has done. Lazenby's morals were not bad, however. He was simply fond of making them appear terrible; even when in London he was more idle than wicked. He gravely suggested at last, as a kind of climax, that he and Pierre should go out on the pad together. This was a mere stroke of pleasantry on his part, because, the most he could loot in that far North were furs and caches of buffalo meat; and a man's capacity and use for them were limited. Even Pierre's especial faculty and art seemed valueless so far Polewards; but he had his beat throughout the land, and he kept it like a perfect patrolman. He had not been at Fort Luke for years, and he would not be there again for more years; but it was certain that he would go on reappearing till he vanished utterly. At the end of the first week of this visit at Fort Luke, so completely had he conquered the place, that he had won from the Chief Factor the year's purchases of skins, the stores, and the Fort itself; and every stitch of clothing owned by Lazenby: so that, if he had insisted on the redemption of the debts, the H. B. C. and Lazenby had been naked and hungry in the wilderness. But Pierre was not a hard creditor. He instantly and nonchalantly said that the Fort would be useless to him, and handed it back again with all therein, on a most humorously constructed ninety-nine years' lease; while Lazenby was left in pawn. Yet Lazenby's mind was not at certain ease; he had a wholesome respect for Pierre's singularities, and dreaded being suddenly called upon to pay his debt before he could get his new clothes made, maybe, in the presence of Wind Driver, chief of the Golden Dogs, and his demure and charming daughter, Wine Face, who looked upon him with the eye of affection--a matter fully, but not ostentatiously, appreciated by Lazenby. If he could have entirely forgotten a pretty girl in South Kensington, who, at her parents' bidding, turned her shoulder on him, he would have married Wine Face; and so he told Pierre. But the half-breed had only a sardonic sympathy for such weakness. Things changed at once when Shon McGann arrived. He should have come before, according to a promise given Pierre, but there were reasons for the delay; and these Shon elaborated in his finely picturesque style. He said that he had lost his way after he left the Wapiti Woods, and should never have found it again, had it not been for a strange being who came upon him and took him to the camp of the White Hand Indians, and cared for him there, and sent him safely on his way again to Fort Luke. "Sorra wan did I ever see like him," said Shon, with a face that was divil this minute and saint the next; pale in the cheek, and black in the eye, and grizzled hair flowin' long at his neck and lyin' like snakes on his shoulders; and whin his fingers closed on yours, bedad! they didn't seem human at all, for they clamped you so cold and strong." "'For they clamped you so cold and strong,'" replied Pierre, mockingly, yet greatly interested, as one could see by the upward range of his eye towards Shon. "Well, what more?" "Well, squeeze the acid from y'r voice, Pierre; for there's things that better become you: and listen to me, for I've news for all here at the Fort, before I've done, which'll open y'r eyes with a jerk." "With a wonderful jerk, hold! let us prepare, messieurs, to be waked with an Irish jerk!" and Pierre pensively trifled with the fringe on Shon's buckskin jacket, which was whisked from his fingers with smothered anger. For a few moments he was silent; but the eager looks of the Chief Factor and Lazenby encouraged him to continue. Besides, it was only Pierre's way--provoking Shon was the piquant sauce of his life. "Lyin' awake I was," continued Shon, "in the middle of the night, not bein' able to sleep for a pain in a shoulder I'd strained, whin I heard a thing that drew me up standin'. It was the sound of a child laughin'; so wonderful and bright, and at the very door of me tent it seemed. Then it faded away till it was only a breath, lovely, and idle, and swingin'. I wint to the door and looked out. There was nothin' there, av coorse." "And why 'av coorse'"? rejoined Pierre. The Chief Factor was intent on what Shon was saying, while Lazenby drummed his fingers on the table, his nose in the air. "Divils me darlin', but ye know as well as I, that there's things in the world neither for havin' nor handlin'. And that's wan of thim, says I to meself. . . . I wint back and lay down, and I heard the voice singin' now and comin' nearer and nearer, and growin' louder and louder, and then there came with it a patter of feet, till it was as a thousand children were dancin' by me door. I was shy enough, I'll own; but I pulled aside the curtain of the tent to see again: and there was nothin' beyand for the eye. But the singin' was goin' past and recedin' as before, till it died away along the waves of prairie grass. I wint back and give Grey Nose, my Injin bed-fellow, a lift wid me fut. 'Come out of that,' says I, 'and tell me if dead or alive I am.' He got up, and there was the noise soft and grand again, but with it now the voices of men, the flip of birds' wings and the sighin' of tree tops, and behind all that the long wash of a sea like none I ever heard. . . . 'Well,' says I to the Injin grinnin' before me, 'what's that, in the name o' Moses?' 'That,' says he, laughin' slow in me face, 'is the Tall Master--him that brought you to the camp.' Thin I remimbered all the things that's been said of him, and I knew it was music I'd been hearin' and not children's voices nor anythin' else at all. "'Come with me,' says Grey Nose; and he took me to the door of a big tent standin' alone from the rest. "'Wait a minute,' says he, and he put his hand on the tent curtain; and at that there was a crash, as a million gold hammers were fallin' on silver drums. And we both stood still; for it seemed an army, with swords wranglin' and bridle-chains rattlin', was marchin' down on us. There was the divil's own uproar, as a battle was comin' on; and a long line of spears clashed. But just then there whistled through the larrup of sound a clear voice callin', gentle and coaxin', yet commandin' too; and the spears dropped, and the pounding of horsehoofs ceased, and then the army marched away; far away; iver so far away, into--" "Into Heaven!" flippantly interjected Lazenby. "Into Heaven, say I, and be choked to you! for there's no other place for it; and I'll stand by that, till I go there myself, and know the truth o' the thing." Pierre here spoke. "Heaven gave you a fine trick with words, Shon McGann. I sometimes think Irishmen have gifts for only two things--words and women. . . . 'Bien,' what then?" Shon was determined not to be angered. The occasion was too big. "Well, Grey Nose lifted the curtain and wint in. In a minute he comes out. 'You can go in,' says he. So in I wint, the Injin not comin', and there in the middle of the tint stood the Tall Master, alone. He had his fiddle to his chin, and the bow hoverin' above it. He looked at me for a long time along the thing; then, all at once, from one string I heard the child laughin' that pleasant and distant, though the bow seemed not to be touchin'. Soon it thinned till it was the shadow of a laugh, and I didn't know whin it stopped, he smilin' down at the fiddle bewhiles. Then he said without lookin' at me,--'It is the spirit of the White Valley and the Hills of the Mighty Men; of which all men shall know, for the North will come to her spring again one day soon, at the remaking of the world. They thought the song would never be found again, but I have given it a home here.' And he bent and kissed the strings. After, he turned sharply as if he'd been spoken to, and looked at someone beside him; someone that I couldn't see. A cloud dropped upon his face, he caught the fiddle hungrily to his breast, and came limpin' over to me-- for there was somethin' wrong with his fut--and lookin' down his hook- nose at me, says he,--'I've a word for them at Fort Luke, where you're goin', and you'd better be gone at once; and I'll put you on your way. There's to be a great battle. The White Hands have an ancient feud with the Golden Dogs, and they have come from where the soft Chinook wind ranges the Peace River, to fight until no man of all the Golden Dogs be left, or till they themselves be destroyed. It is the same north and south,' he wint on; 'I have seen it all in Italy, in Greece, in--' but here he stopped and smiled strangely. After a minute he wint on: 'The White Hands have no quarrel with the Englishmen of the Fort, and I would warn them, for Englishmen were once kind to me--and warn also the Golden Dogs. So come with me at once,' says he. And I did. And he walked with me till mornin', carryin' the fiddle under his arm, but wrapped in a beautiful velvet cloth, havin' on it grand figures like the arms of a king or queen. And just at the first whisk of sun he turned me into a trail and give me good-bye, sayin' that maybe he'd follow me soon, and, at any rate, he'd be there at the battle. Well, divils betide me! I got off the track again; and lost a day; but here I am; and there's me story to take or lave as you will." Shon paused and began to fumble with the cards on the table before him, looking the while at the others. The Chief Factor was the first to speak. "I don't doubt but he told you true about the White Hands and the Golden Dogs," he said; "for there's been war and bad blood between them beyond the memory of man--at least since the time that the Mighty Men lived, from which these date their history. But there's nothing to be done to-night; for if we tell old Wind Driver, there'll be no sleeping at the Fort. So we'll let the thing stand." "You believe all this poppy-cock, Chief"? said Lazenby to the Factor, but laughing in Shon's face the while. The Factor gravely replied: "I knew of the Tall Master years ago on the Far-Off Metal River; and though I never saw him I can believe these things--and more. You do not know this world through and through, Lazenby; you have much to learn." Pierre said nothing. He took the cards from Shon and passed them to and fro in his hand. Mechanically he dealt them out, and as mechanically they took them up and in silence began to play. The next day there was commotion and excitement at Fort Luke. The Golden Dogs were making preparations for the battle. Pow-wow followed pow-wow, and paint and feathers followed all. The H. B. C. people had little to do but look to their guns and house everything within the walls of the Fort. At night, Shon, Pierre, and Lazenby were seated about the table in the common-room, the cards lying dealt before them, waiting for the Factor to come. Presently the door opened and the Factor entered, followed by another. Shon and Pierre sprang to their feet. "The Tall Master," said Shon with a kind of awe; and then stood still. Their towering visitor slowly unloosed something he carried very carefully and closely beneath his arm, and laid it on the table, dropping his compass-like fingers softly on it. He bowed gravely to each, yet the bow seemed grotesque, his body was so ungainly. With the eyes of all drawn to him absolutely, he spoke in a low sonorous tone: "I have followed the traveller fast"--his hand lifted gently towards Shon--"for there are weighty concerns abroad, and I have things to say and do before I go again to my people--and beyond. . . . I have hungered for the face of a white man these many years, and his was the first I saw;"-- again he tossed a long finger towards the Irishman--"and it brought back many things. I remember. . . . " He paused, then sat down; and they all did the same. He looked at them one by one with distant kindness. "I remember," he continued, and his strangely articulated fingers folded about the thing on the table beside him, "when"--here the cards caught his eye. His face underwent a change. An eager fantastic look shot from his eye, "when I gambled this away at Lucca,"--his hand drew the bundle closer to him--"but I won it back again--at a price!" he gloomily added, glancing sideways as to someone at his elbow. He remained, eyes hanging upon space for a moment, then he recollected himself and continued: "I became wiser; I never risked it again; but I loved the game always. I was a gamester from the start--the artist is always so when he is greatest,--like nature herself. And once, years after, I played with a mother for her child--and mine. And yet once again at Parma with"--here he paused, throwing that sharp sidelong glance--"with the greatest gamester, for the infinite secret of Art: and I won it; but I paid the price! . . . I should like to play now." He reached his hand, drew up five cards, and ran his eye through them. "Play!" he said. "The hand is good--very good. . . . Once when I played with the Princess--but it is no matter; and Tuscany is far away! . . . Play!" he repeated. Pierre instantly picked up the cards, with an air of cool satisfaction. He had either found the perfect gamester or the perfect liar. He knew the remedy for either. The Chief Factor did not move. Shon and Lazenby followed Pierre's action. By their positions Lazenby became his partner. They played in silence for a minute, the Tall Master taking all. "Napoleon was a wonderful player, but he lost with me," he said slowly as he played a card upon three others and took them. Lazenby was so taken back by this remark that, presently, he trumped his partner's ace, and was rewarded by a talon-like look from the Tall Master's eye; but it was immediately followed by one of saturnine amusement. They played on silently. "Ah, you are a wonderful player!" he presently said to Pierre, with a look of keen scrutiny. "Come, I will play with you--for values--the first time in seventy-five years; then, no more!" Lazenby and Shon drew away beside the Chief Factor. The two played. Meanwhile Lazenby said to Shon: "The man's mad. He talks about Napoleon as if he'd known him--as if it wasn't three-fourths of a century ago. Does he think we're all born idiots? Why, he's not over sixty years old now. But where the deuce did he come from with that Italian face? And the funniest part of it is, he reminds me of someone. Did you notice how he limped--the awkward beggar!" Lazenby had unconsciously lifted his voice, and presently the Tall Master turned and said to him: "I ran a nail into my foot at Leyden seventy-odd years ago." "He's the devil himself," rejoined Lazenby, and he did not lower his voice. "Many with angelic gifts are children of His Dark Majesty," said the Tall Master, slowly; and though he appeared closely occupied with the game, a look of vague sadness came into his face. For a half-hour they played in silence, the slight, delicate-featured half-breed, and the mysterious man who had for so long been a thing of wonder in the North, a weird influence among the Indians. There was a strange, cold fierceness in the Tall Master's face. He now staked his precious bundle against the one thing Pierre prized--the gold watch received years ago for a deed of heroism on the Chaudiere. The half-breed had always spoken of it as amusing, but Shon at least knew that to Pierre it was worth his right hand. Both men drew breath slowly, and their eyes were hard. The stillness became painful; all were possessed by the grim spirit of Chance. . . . The Tall Master won. He came to his feet, his shambling body drawn together to a height. Pierre rose also. Their looks clinched. Pierre stretched out his hand. "You are my master at this," he said. The other smiled sadly. "I have played for the last time. I have not forgotten how to win. If I had lost, uncommon things had happened. This,"--he laid his hand on the bundle and gently undid it,--"is my oldest friend, since the warm days at Parma . . . all dead . . . all dead." Out of the velvet wrapping, broidered with royal and ducal arms, and rounded by a wreath of violets--which the Chief Factor looked at closely--he drew his violin. He lifted it reverently to his lips. "My good Garnerius!" he said. "Three masters played you, but I am chief of them all. They had the classic soul, but I the romantic heart--'les grandes caprices.'" His head lifted higher. "I am the master artist of the world. I have found the core of Nature. Here in the North is the wonderful soul of things. Beyond this, far beyond, where the foolish think is only inviolate ice, is the first song of the Ages in a very pleasant land. I am the lost Master, and I shall return, I shall return . . . but not yet . . . not yet." He fetched the instrument to his chin with a noble pride. The ugliness of his face was almost beautiful now. The Chief Factor's look was fastened on him with bewilderment; he was trying to remember something: his mind went feeling, he knew not why, for a certain day, a quarter of a century before, when he unpacked a box of books and papers from England. Most of them were still in the Fort. The association of this man with these things fretted him. The Tall Master swung his bow upward, but at that instant there came a knock, and, in response to a call, Wind Driver and Wine Face entered. Wine Face was certainly a beautiful girl; and Lazenby might well have been pardoned for throwing in his fate with such a heathen, if he despaired of ever seeing England again. The Tall Master did not turn towards these. The Indians sat gracefully on a bearskin before the fire. The eyes of the girl were cast shyly upon the Man as he stood there unlike an ordinary man; in his face a fine hardness and the cold light of the North. He suddenly tipped his bow upward and brought it down with a most delicate crash upon the strings. Then softly, slowly, he passed into a weird fantasy. The Indians sat breathless. Upon them it acted more impressively than the others: besides, the player's eye was searching them now; he was playing into their very bodies. And they responded with some swift shocks of recognition crossing their faces. Suddenly the old Indian sprang up. He thrust his arms out, and made, as if unconsciously, some fantastic yet solemn motions. The player smiled in a far-off fashion, and presently ran the bow upon the strings in an exquisite cry; and then a beautiful avalanche of sound slid from a distance, growing nearer and nearer, till it swept through the room, and imbedded all in its sweetness. At this the old Indian threw himself forward at the player's feet. "It is the song of the White Weaver, the maker of the world--the music from the Hills of the Mighty Men. . . . I knew it--I knew it--but never like that. . . . It was lost to the world; the wild cry of the lofty stars. . . ." His face was wet. The girl too had risen. She came forward as if in a dream and reverently touched the arm of the musician, who paused now, and was looking at them from under his long eyelashes. She said whisperingly: "Are you a spirit? Do you come from the Hills of the Mighty Men?" He answered gravely: "I am no spirit. But I have journeyed in the Hills of the Mighty Men and along their ancient hunting-grounds. This that I have played is the ancient music of the world--the music of Jubal and his comrades. It comes humming from the Poles; it rides laughing down the planets; it trembles through the snow; it gives joy to the bones of the wind. . . . And I am the voice of it," he added; and he drew up his loose unmanageable body till it looked enormous, firm, and dominant. The girl's fingers ran softly over to his breast. "I will follow you," she said, "when you go again to the Happy Valleys." Down from his brow there swept a faint hue of colour, and, for a breath, his eyes closed tenderly with hers. But he straightway gathered back his look again, his body shrank, not rudely, from her fingers, and he absently said: "I am old-in years the father of the world. It is a man's life gone since, at Genoa, she laid her fingers on my breast like that. . . . These things can be no more . . . until the North hath its summer again; and I stand young--the Master--upon the summits of my renown." The girl drew slowly back. Lazenby was muttering under his breath now; he was overwhelmed by this change in Wine Face. He had been impressed to awe by the Tall Master's music, but he was piqued, and determined not to give in easily. He said sneeringly that Maskelyne and Cooke in music had come to life, and suggested a snake-dance. The Tall Master heard these things, and immediately he turned to Lazenby with an angry look on his face. His brows hung heavily over the dull fire of his eyes; his hair itself seemed like Medusa's, just quivering into savage life; the fingers spread out white and claw-like upon the strings as he curved his violin to his chin, whereof it became, as it were, a piece. The bow shot out and down upon the instrument with a great clangour. There eddied into a vast arena of sound the prodigious elements of war. Torture rose from those four immeasurable chords; destruction was afoot upon them; a dreadful dance of death supervened. Through the Chief Factor's mind there flashed--though mechanically, and only to be remembered afterwards--the words of a schoolday poem. It shuttled in and out of the music: "Wheel the wild dance, While lightnings glance, And thunders rattle loud; And call the brave to bloody grave, To sleep without a shroud." The face of the player grew old and drawn. The skin was wrinkled, but shone, the hair spread white, the nose almost met the chin, the mouth was all malice. It was old age with vast power: conquest volleyed from the fingers. Shon McGann whispered aves, aching with the sound; the Chief Factor shuddered to his feet; Lazenby winced and drew back to the wall, putting his hand before his face as though the sounds were striking him; the old Indian covered his head with his arms upon the floor. Wine Face knelt, her face all grey, her fingers lacing and interlacing with pain. Only Pierre sat with masterful stillness, his eyes never moving from the face of the player; his arms folded; his feet firmly wedded to the floor. The sound became strangely distressing. It shocked the flesh and angered the nerves. Upon Lazenby it acted singularly. He cowered from it, but presently, with a look of madness in his eyes, rushed forward, arms outstretched, as though to seize this intolerable minstrel. There was a sudden pause in the playing; then the room quaked with noise, buffeting Lazenby into stillness. The sounds changed instantly again, and music of an engaging sweetness and delight fell about them as in silver drops--an enchanting lyric of love. Its exquisite tenderness subdued Lazenby, who, but now, had a heart for slaughter. He dropped on his knees, threw his head into his arms, and sobbed hard. The Tall Master's fingers crept caressingly along one of those heavenly veins of sound, his bow poising softly over it. The farthest star seemed singing. At dawn the next day the Golden Dogs were gathered for war before the Fort. Immediately after the sun rose, the foe were seen gliding darkly out of the horizon. From another direction came two travellers. These also saw the White Hands bearing upon the Fort, and hurried forward. They reached the gates of the Fort in good time, and were welcomed. One was a chief trader from a fort in the west. He was an old man, and had been many years in the service of the H. B. C.; and, like Lazenby, had spent his early days in London, a connoisseur in all its pleasures; the other was a voyageur. They had posted on quickly to bring news of this crusade of the White Hands. The hostile Indians came steadily to within a few hundred yards of the Golden Dogs. Then they sent a brave to say that they had no quarrel with the people of the Fort; and that if the Golden Dogs came on they would battle with them alone; since the time had come for "one to be as both," as their Medicine Men had declared since the days of the Great Race. And this signified that one should destroy the other. At this all the Golden Dogs ranged into line. The sun shone brightly, the long hedge of pine woods in the distance caught the colour of the sky, the flowers of the plains showed handsomely as a carpet of war. The bodies of the fighters glistened. You could see the rise and fall of their bare, strenuous chests. They stood as their forefathers in battle, almost naked, with crested head, gleaming axe, scalp-knife, and bows and arrows. At first there was the threatening rustle of preparation; then a great stillness came and stayed for a moment; after which, all at once, there sped through the air a big shout of battle, and the innumerable twang of flying arrows; and the opposing hosts ran upon each other. Pierre and Shon McGann, watching from the Fort, cried out with excitement. "Divils me darlin'!" called Shon, "are we gluin' our eyes to a chink in the wall, whin the tangle of battle goes on beyand? Bedad, I'll not stand it! Look at them twistin' the neck o' war! Open the gates, open the gates say I, and let us have play with our guns." "Hush! 'Mon Dieu!'" interrupted Pierre. "Look! The Tall Master!" None at the Fort had seen the Tall Master since the night before. Now he was covering the space between the walls and the battle, his hair streaming behind him. When he came near to the vortex of fight he raised his violin to his chin, and instantly a piercingly sweet call penetrated the wild uproar. The Call filled it, drained through it, wrapped it, overcame it; so that it sank away at last like the outwash of an exhausted tide: the weft of battle stayed unfinished in the loom. Then from the Indian lodges came the women and children. They drew near to the unearthly luxury of that Call, now lifting with an unbounded joy. Battleaxes fell to the ground; the warriors quieted even where they stood locked with their foes. The Tall Master now drew away from them, facing the north and west. That ineffable Call drew them after him with grave joy; and they brought their dead and wounded along. The women and children glided in among the men and followed also. Presently one girl ran away from the rest and came close into the great leader's footsteps. At that instant, Lazenby, from the wall of the Fort, cried out madly, sprang down, opened the gates, and rushed towards the girl, crying: "Wine Face! Wine Face!" She did not look behind. But he came close to her and caught her by the waist. "Come back! Come back! O my love, come back!" he urged; but she pushed him gently from her. "Hush! Hush!" she said. "We are going to the Happy Valleys. Don't you hear him calling"? . . . And Lazenby fell back. The Tall Master was now playing a wonderful thing, half dance, half carnival; but with that Call still beating through it. They were passing the Fort at an angle. All within issued forth to see. Suddenly the old trader who had come that morning started forward with a cry; then stood still. He caught the Factor's arm; but he seemed unable to speak yet; his face was troubled, his eyes were hard upon the player. The procession passed the empty lodges, leaving the ground strewn with their weapons, and not one of their number stayed behind. They passed away towards the high hills of the north-west-beautiful austere barriers. Still the trader gazed, and was pale, and trembled. They watched long. The throng of pilgrims grew a vague mass; no longer an army of individuals; and the music came floating back with distant charm. At last the old man found voice. "My God, it is--" The Factor touched his arm, interrupting him, and drew a picture from his pocket--one but just now taken from that musty pile of books, received so many years before. He showed it to the old man. "Yes, yes," said the other, "that is he. . . . And the world buried him forty years ago!" Pierre, standing near, added with soft irony: "There are strange things in the world. He is the gamester of the world. 'Mais' a grand comrade also." The music came waving back upon them delicately but the pilgrims were fading from view. Soon the watchers were alone with the glowing day. THE CRIMSON FLAG Talk and think as one would, The Woman was striking to see; with marvellous flaxen hair and a joyous violet eye. She was all pulse and dash; but she was as much less beautiful than the manager's wife as Tom Liffey was as nothing beside the manager himself; and one would care little to name the two women in the same breath if the end had been different. When The Woman came to Little Goshen there were others of her class there, but they were of a commoner sort and degree. She was the queen of a lawless court, though she never, from first to last, spoke to one of those others who were her people; neither did she hold commerce with any of the ordinary miners, save Pretty Pierre, but he was more gambler than miner,--and he went, when the matter was all over, and told her some things that stripped her soul naked before her eyes. Pierre had a wonderful tongue. It was only the gentlemen-diggers--and there were many of them at Little Goshen--who called upon her when the lights were low; and then there was a good deal of muffled mirth in the white house among the pines. The rougher miners made no quarrel with this, for the gentlemen-diggers were popular enough, they were merely sarcastic and humorous, and said things which, coming to The Woman's ears, made her very merry; for she herself had an abundant wit, and had spent wild hours with clever men. She did not resent the playful insolence that sent a dozen miners to her house in the dead of night with a crimson flag, which they quietly screwed to her roof; and paint, with which they deftly put a wide stripe of scarlet round the cornice, and another round the basement. In the morning, when she saw what had been done, she would not have the paint removed nor the flag taken down; for, she said, the stripes looked very well, and the other would show that she was always at home. Now, the notable thing was that Heldon, the manager, was in The Woman's house on the night this was done. Tom Liffey, the lumpish guide and trapper, saw him go in; and, days afterwards, he said to Pierre: "Divils me own, but this is a bad hour for Heldon's wife--she with a face like a princess and eyes like the fear o' God. Nivir a wan did I see like her, since I came out of Erin with a clatter of hoofs behoind me and a squall on the sea before. There's wimmin there wid cheeks like roses and buthermilk, and a touch that'd make y'r heart pound on y'r ribs; but none that's grander than Heldon's wife. To lave her for that other, standin' hip-high in her shame, is temptin' the fires of Heaven, that basted the sinners o' Sodom." Pierre, pausing between the whiffs of a cigarette, said: "So? But you know more of catching foxes in winter, and climbing mountains in summer, and the grip of the arm of an Injin girl, than of these things. You are young, quite young in the world, Tom Liffey." "Young I may be with a glint o' grey at me temples from a night o' trouble beyand in the hills; but I'm the man, an' the only man, that's climbed to the glacier-top--God's Playground, as they call it: and nivir a dirty trick have I done to Injin girl or any other; and be damned to you there!" "Sometimes I think you are as foolish as Shon McGann," compassionately replied the half-breed. "You have almighty virtue, and you did that brave trick of the glacier; but great men have fallen. You are not dead yet. Still, as you say, Heldon's wife is noble to see. She is grave and cold, and speaks little; but there is something in her which is not of the meek of the earth. Some women say nothing, and suffer and forgive, and take such as Heldon back to their bosoms; but there are others--I remember a woman--bien, it is no matter, it was long ago; but they two are as if born of one mother; and what comes of this will be mad play--mad play." "Av coorse his wife may not get to know of it, and--" "Not get to know it! 'Tsh, you are a child--" "Faith, I'll say what I think, and that in y'r face! Maybe he'll tire of the handsome rip--for handsome she is, like a yellow lily growin' out o' mud--and go back to his lawful wife, that believes he's at the mines, when he's drinkin' and colloguin' wid a fly-away." Pierre slowly wheeled till he had the Irishman straight in his eye. Then he said in a low, cutting tone: "I suppose your heart aches for the beautiful lady, eh?" Here he screwed his slight forefinger into Tom's breast; then he added sharply: "'Nom de Dieu,' but you make me angry! You talk too much. Such men get into trouble. And keep down the riot of that heart of yours, Tom Liffey, or you'll walk on the edge of knives one day. And now take an inch of whisky and ease the anxious soul. 'Voila!'" After a moment he added: "Women work these things out for themselves." Then the two left the hut, and amiably strolled together to the centre of the village, where they parted. It was as Pierre had said: the woman would work the thing out for herself. Later that evening Heldon's wife stood cloaked and veiled in the shadows of the pines, facing the house with The Crimson Flag. Her eyes shifted ever from the door to the flag, which was stirred by the light breeze. Once or twice she shivered as with cold, but she instantly stilled again, and watched. It was midnight. Here and there beyond in the village a light showed, and straggling voices floated faintly towards her. For a long time no sound came from the house. But at last she heard a laugh. At that she drew something from her pocket, and held it firmly in her hand. Once she turned and looked at another house far up on the hill, where lights were burning. It was Heldon's house--her home. A sharp sound as of anguish and anger escaped her; then she fastened her eyes on the door in front of her. At that moment Tom Liffey was standing with his hands on his hips looking at Heldon's home on the hill; and he said some rumbling words, then strode on down the road, and suddenly paused near the wife. He did not see her. He faced the door at which she was looking, and shook his fist at it. "A murrain on y'r sowl!" said he, "as there's plague in y'r body, and hell in the slide of y'r feet, like the trail of the red spider. And out o' that come ye, Heldon, for I know y're there. Out of that, ye beast! . . . But how can ye go back--you that's rolled in that sewer--to the loveliest woman that ever trod the neck o' the world! Damned y' are in every joint o' y'r frame, and damned is y'r sowl, I say, for bringing sorrow to her; and I hate you as much for that, as I could worship her was she not your wife and a lady o' blood, God save her!" Then shaking his fist once more, he swung away slowly down the road. During this the wife's teeth held together as though they were of a piece. She looked after Tom Liffey and smiled; but it was a dreadful smile. "He worships me, that common man--worships me," she said. "This man who was my husband has shamed me, left me. Well--" The door of the house opened; a man came out. His wife leaned a little forward, and something clicked ominously in her hand. But a voice came up the road towards them through the clear air--the voice of Tom Liffey. The husband paused to listen; the wife mechanically did the same. The husband remembered this afterwards: it was the key to, and the beginning of, a tragedy. These are the words the Irishman sang: "She was a queen, she stood up there before me, My blood went roarin' when she touched my hand; She kissed me on the lips, and then she swore me To die for her--and happy was the land." A new and singular look came into her face. It trans formed her. "That," she said in a whisper to herself--"that! He knows the way." As her husband turned towards his home, she turned also. He heard the rustle of garments, and he could just discern the cloaked figure in the shadows. He hurried on; the figure flitted ahead of him. A fear possessed him in spite of his will. He turned back. The figure stood still for a moment, then followed him. He braced himself, faced about, and walked towards it: it stopped and waited. He had not the courage. He went back again swiftly towards the house he had left. Again he looked behind him. The figure was standing, not far, in the pines. He wheeled suddenly towards the house, turned a key in the door, and entered. Then the wife went to that which had been her home: Heldon did not go thither until the first flush of morning. Pierre, returning from an all- night sitting at cards, met him, and saw the careworn look on his face. The half-breed smiled. He knew that the event was doubling on the man. When Heldon reached his house, he went to his wife's room. It was locked. Then he walked down to his mines with a miserable shame and anger at his heart. He did not pass The Crimson Flag. He went by another way. That evening, in the dusk, a woman knocked at Tom Liffey's door. He opened it. "Are you alone"? she said. "I am alone, lady." "I will come in," she added. "You will--come in"? he faltered. She drew near him, and reached out and gently caught his hand. "Ah!" he said, with a sound almost like a sob in its intensity, and the blood flushed to his hair. He stepped aside, and she entered. In the light of the candle her eye burned into his, but her face wore a shining coldness. She leaned towards him. "You said you could worship me," she whispered, "and you cursed him. Well--worship me--altogether--and that will curse him, as he has killed me." "Dear lady!" he said, in an awed, overwhelmed murmur; and he fell back to the wall. She came towards him. "Am I not beautiful"? she urged. She took his hand. His eye swam with hers. But his look was different from hers, though he could not know that. His was the madness of a man in a dream; hers was a painful thing. The Furies dwelt in her. She softly lifted his hand above his head, and whispered: "Swear." And she kissed him. Her lips were icy, though he did not think so. The blood tossed in his veins. He swore: but, doing so, he could not conceive all that would be required of him. He was hers, body and soul, and she had resolved on a grim thing. . . . In the darkness, they left the hut and passed into the woods, and slowly up through the hills. Heldon returned to his home that night to find it empty. There were no servants. There was no wife. Her cat and dog lay dead upon the hearthrug. Her clothing was cut into strips. Her wedding-dress was a charred heap on the fireplace. Her jewellery lay molten with it. Her portrait had been torn from its frame. An intolerable fear possessed him. Drops of sweat hung on his forehead and his hands. He fled towards the town. He bit his finger-nails till they bled as he passed the house in the pines. He lifted his arm as if the flappings of The Crimson Flag were blows in his face. At last he passed Tom Liffey's hut. He saw Pierre, coming from it. The look on the gambler's face was one, of gloomy wonder. His fingers trembled as he lighted a cigarette, and that was an unusual thing. The form of Heldon edged within the light. Pierre dropped the match and said to him,--"You are looking for your wife?" Heldon bowed his head. The other threw open the door of the hut. "Come in here," he said. They entered. Pierre pointed to a woman's hat on the table. "Do you know that"? he asked, huskily, for he was moved. But Heldon only nodded dazedly. Pierre continued: "I was to have met Tom Liffey here--to-night. He is not here. You hoped--I suppose--to see your wife in your--home. She is not there. He left a word on paper for me. I have torn it up. Writing is the enemy of man. But I know where he is gone. I know also where your wife has gone." Heldon's face was of a hateful paleness. . . . They passed out into the night. "Where are you going"? Heldon said. "To God's Playground, if we can get there." "To God's Playground? To the glacier-top? You are mad." "No, but he and she were mad. Come on." Then he whispered something, and Heldon gave a great cry, and they plunged into the woods. In the morning the people of Little Goshen, looking towards the glacier, saw a flag (they knew afterwards that it was crimson) flying on it. Near it were two human figures. A miner, looking through a field-glass, said that one figure was crouching by the flag-staff, and that it was a woman. The other figure near was a man. As the morning wore on, they saw upon a crag of ice below the sloping glacier two men looking upwards towards the flag. One of them seemed to shriek out, and threw up his hands, and made as if to rush forward; but the other drew him back. Heldon knew what revenge and disgrace may be at their worst. In vain he tried to reach God's Playground. Only one man knew the way, and he was dead upon it--with Heldon's wife: two shameless suicides. . . . When he came down from the mountain the hair upon his face was white, though that upon his head remained black as it had always been. And those frozen figures stayed there like statues with that other crimson flag: until, one day, a great-bodied wind swept out of the north, and, in pity, carried them down a bottomless fissure. But long before this happened, The Woman had fled from Little Goshen in the night, and her house was burned to the ground. THE FLOOD Wendling came to Fort Anne on the day that the Reverend Ezra Badgley and an unknown girl were buried. And that was a notable thing. The man had been found dead at his evening meal; the girl had died on the same day; and they were buried side by side. This caused much scandal, for the man was holy, and the girl, as many women said, was probably evil altogether. At the graves, when the minister's people saw what was being done, they piously protested; but the Factor, to whom Pierre had whispered a word, answered them gravely that the matter should go on: since none knew but the woman was as worthy of heaven as the man. Wendling chanced to stand beside Pretty Pierre. "Who knows!" he said aloud, looking hard at the graves, "who knows!.... She died before him, but the dead can strike." Pierre did not answer immediately, for the Factor was calling the earth down on both coffins; but after a moment he added: "Yes, the dead can strike." And then the eyes of the two men caught and stayed, and they knew that they had things to say to each other in the world. They became friends. And that, perhaps, was not greatly to Wendling's credit; for in the eyes of many Pierre was an outcast as an outlaw. Maybe some of the women disliked this friendship most; since Wendling was a handsome man, and Pierre was never known to seek them, good or bad; and they blamed him for the other's coldness, for his unconcerned yet respectful eye. "There's Nelly Nolan would dance after him to the world's end," said Shon McGann to Pierre one day; "and the Widdy Jerome herself, wid her flamin' cheeks and the wild fun in her eye, croons like a babe at the breast as he slides out his cash on the bar; and over on Gansonby's Flat there's--" "There's many a fool, 'voila,'" sharply interjected Pierre, as he pushed the needle through a button he was sewing on his coat. "Bedad, there's a pair of fools here, anyway, I say; for the women might die without lift at waist or brush of lip, and neither of ye'd say, 'Here's to the joy of us, goddess, me own!'" Pierre seemed to be intently watching the needlepoint as it pierced up the button-eye, and his reply was given with a slowness corresponding to the sedate passage of the needle. "Wendling, you think, cares nothing for women? Well, men who are like that cared once for one woman, and when that was over--But, pshaw! I will not talk. You are no thinker, Shon McGann. You blunder through the world. And you'll tremble as much to a woman's thumb in fifty years as now." "By the holy smoke," said Shon, "though I tremble at that, maybe, I'll not tremble, as Wendling, at nothing at all." Here Pierre looked up sharply, then dropped his eyes on his work again. Shon lapsed suddenly into a moodiness. "Yes," said Pierre, "as Wendling, at nothing at all? Well?" "Well, this, Pierre, for you that's a thinker from me that's none. I was walking with him in Red Glen yesterday. Sudden he took to shiverin', and snatched me by the arm, and a mad look shot out of his handsome face. 'Hush!' says he. I listened. There was a sound like the hard rattle of a creek over stones, and then another sound behind that. 'Come quick,' says he, the sweat standin' thick on him; and he ran me up the bank--for it was at the beginnin' of the Glen where the sides were low--and there we stood pantin' and starin' flat at each other. 'What's that? and what's got its hand on ye? for y' are cold as death, an' pinched in the face, an' you've bruised my arm,' said I. And he looked round him slow and breathed hard, then drew his fingers through the sweat on his cheek. 'I'm not well, and I thought I heard--you heard it; what was it like?' said he; and he peered close at me. 'Like water,' said I; 'a little creek near, and a flood comin' far off.' 'Yes, just that,' said he; 'it's some trick of wind in the place, but it makes a man foolish, and an inch of brandy would be the right thing.' I didn't say no to that. And on we came, and brandy we had with a wish in the eye of Nelly Nolan that'd warm the heart of a tomb. . . . And there's a cud for your chewin', Pierre. Think that by the neck and the tail, and the divil absolve ye." During this, Pierre had finished with the button. He had drawn on his coat and lifted his hat, and now lounged, trying the point of the needle with his forefinger. When Shon ended, he said with a sidelong glance: "But what did you think of all that, Shon?" "Think! There it was! What's the use of thinkin'? There's many a trick in the world with wind or with spirit, as I've seen often enough in ould Ireland, and it's not to be guessed by me." Here his voice got a little lower and a trifle solemn. "For, Pierre," spoke he, "there's what's more than life or death, and sorra wan can we tell what it is; but we'll know some day whin--" "When we've taken the leap at the Almighty Ditch," said Pierre, with a grave kind of lightness. "Yes, it is all strange. But even the Almighty Ditch is worth the doing: nearly everything is worth the doing; being young, growing old, fighting, loving--when youth is on--hating, eating, drinking, working, playing big games. All is worth it except two things." "And what are they, bedad?" "Thy neighbour's wife and murder. Those are horrible. They double on a man one time or another; always." Here, as in curiosity, Pierre pierced his finger with the needle, and watched the blood form in a little globule. Looking at it meditatively and sardonically, he said: "There is only one end to these. Blood for blood is a great matter; and I used to wonder if it would not be terrible for a man to see his death coming on him drop by drop, like that." He let the spot of blood fall to the floor. "But now I know that there is a punishment worse than that . . . 'mon Dieu!' worse than that," he added. Into Shon's face a strange look had suddenly come. "Yes, there's something worse than that, Pierre." "So, 'bien?'" Shon made the sacred gesture of his creed. "To be punished by the dead. And not see them--only hear them." And his eyes steadied firmly to the other's. Pierre was about to reply, but there came the sound of footsteps through the open door, and presently Wendling entered slowly. He was pale and worn, and his eyes looked out with a searching anxiousness. But that did not render him less comely. He had always dressed in black and white, and this now added to the easy and yet severe refinement of his person. His birth and breeding had occurred in places unfrequented by such as Shon and Pierre; but plains and wild life level all; and men are friends according to their taste and will, and by no other law. Hence these with Wendling. He stretched out his hand to each without a word. The hand- shake was unusual; he had little demonstration ever. Shon looked up surprised, but responded. Pierre followed with a swift, inquiring look; then, in the succeeding pause, he offered cigarettes. Wendling took one; and all, silent, sat down. The sun streamed intemperately through the doorway, making a broad ribbon of light straight across the floor to Wendling's feet. After lighting his cigarette, he looked into the sunlight for a moment, still not speaking. Shon meanwhile had started his pipe, and now, as if he found the silence awkward,--"It's a day for God's country, this," he said: "to make man a Christian for little or much, though he play with the Divil betunewhiles." Without looking at them, Wendling said, in a low voice: "It was just such a day, down there in Quebec, when It happened. You could hear the swill of the river, the water licking the piers, and the saws in the Big Mill and the Little Mill as they marched through the timber, flashing their teeth like bayonets. It's a wonderful sound on a hot, clear day--that wild, keen singing of the saws, like the cry of a live thing fighting and conquering. Up from the fresh-cut lumber in the yards there came a smell like the juice of apples, and the sawdust, as you thrust your hand into it, was as cool and soft as the leaves of a clove-flower in the dew. On these days the town was always still. It looked sleeping, and you saw the heat quivering up from the wooden walls and the roofs of cedar shingles as though the houses were breathing." Here he paused, still intent on the shaking sunshine. Then he turned to the others as if suddenly aware that he had been talking to them. Shon was about to speak, but Pierre threw a restraining glance, and, instead, they all looked through the doorway and beyond. In the settlement below they saw the effect that Wendling had described. The houses breathed. A grasshopper went clacking past, a dog at the door snapped up a fly; but there seemed no other life of day. Wendling nodded his head towards the distance. "It was quiet, like that. I stood and watched the mills and the yards, and listened to the saws, and looked at the great slide, and the logs on the river: and I said ever to myself that it was all mine-- all. Then I turned to a big house on the hillock beyond the cedars, whose windows were open, with a cool dusk lying behind them. More than all else, I loved to think I owned that house and what was in it. . . . She was a beautiful woman. And she used to sit in a room facing the mill--though the house fronted another way--thinking of me, I did not doubt, and working at some delicate needle-stuff. There never had been a sharp word between us, save when I quarrelled bitterly with her brother, and he left the mill and went away. But she got over that mostly, though the lad's name was, never mentioned between us. That day I was so hungry for the sight of her that I got my field-glass--used to watch my vessels and rafts making across the bay--and trained it on the window where I knew she sat. I thought, it would amuse her, too, when I went back at night, if I told her what she had been doing. I laughed to myself at the thought of it as I adjusted the glass. . . . I looked. . . . There was no more laughing. . . . I saw her, and in front of her a man, with his back half on me. I could not recognise him, though at the instant I thought he was something familiar. I failed to get his face at all. Hers I found indistinctly. But I saw him catch her playfully by the chin! After a little they rose. He put his arm about her and kissed her, and he ran his fingers through her hair. She had such fine golden hair--so light, and it lifted to every breath. Something got into my brain. I know now it was the maggot which sent Othello mad. The world in that hour was malicious, awful. . . . "After a time--it seemed ages, she and everything had receded so far-- I went . . . home. At the door I asked the servant who had been there. She hesitated, confused, and then said the young curate of the parish. I was very cool: for madness is a strange thing; you see everything with an intense aching clearness--that is the trouble. . . . She was more kind than common. I do not think I was unusual. I was playing a part well, my grandmother had Indian blood like yours, Pierre, and I was waiting. I was even nicely critical of her to myself. I balanced the mole on her neck against her general beauty; the curve of her instep, I decided, was a little too emphatic. I passed her backwards and forwards, weighing her at every point; but yet these two things were the only imperfections. I pronounced her an exceeding piece of art--and infamy. I was much interested to see how she could appear perfect in her soul. I encouraged her to talk. I saw with devilish irony that an angel spoke. And, to cap it all, she assumed the fascinating air of the mediator--for her brother; seeking a reconciliation between us. Her amazing art of person and mind so worked upon me that it became unendurable; it was so exquisite--and so shameless. I was sitting where the priest had sat that afternoon; and when she leaned towards me I caught her chin lightly and trailed my fingers through her hair as he had done: and that ended it, for I was cold, and my heart worked with horrible slowness. Just as a wave poises at its height before breaking upon the shore, it hung at every pulse-beat, and then seemed to fall over with a sickening thud. I arose, and acting still, spoke impatiently of her brother. Tears sprang to her eyes. Such divine dissimulation, I thought--too good for earth. She turned to leave the room, and I did not stay her. Yet we were together again that night. . . . I was only waiting." The cigarette had dropped from his fingers to the floor, and lay there smoking. Shon's face was fixed with anxiety; Pierre's eyes played gravely with the sunshine. Wendling drew a heavy breath, and then went on. "Again, next day, it was like this-the world draining the heat. . . . I watched from the Big Mill. I saw them again. He leaned over her chair and buried his face in her hair. The proof was absolute now. . . . I started away, going a roundabout, that I might not be seen. It took me some time. I was passing through a clump of cedar when I saw them making towards the trees skirting the river. Their backs were on me. Suddenly they diverted their steps--towards the great slide, shut off from water this last few months, and used as a quarry to deepen it. Some petrified things had been found in the rocks, but I did not think they were going to these. I saw them climb down the rocky steps; and presently they were lost to view. The gates of the slide could be opened by machinery from the Little Mill. A terrible, deliciously malignant thought came to me. I remember how the sunlight crept away from me and left me in the dark. I stole through that darkness to the Little Mill. I went to the machinery for opening the gates. Very gently I set it in motion, facing the slide as I did so. I could see it through the open sides of the mill. I smiled to think what the tiny creek, always creeping through a faint leak in the gates and falling with a granite rattle on the stones, would now become. I pushed the lever harder--harder. I saw the gates suddenly give, then fly open, and the river sprang roaring massively through them. I heard a shriek through the roar. I shuddered; and a horrible sickness came on me. . . . And as I turned from the machinery, I saw the young priest coming at me through a doorway! . . . It was not the priest and my wife that I had killed; but my wife and her brother. . . ." He threw his head back as though something clamped his throat. His voice roughened with misery. "The young priest buried them both, and people did not know the truth. They were even sorry for me. But I gave up the mills--all; and I became homeless . . . this." Now he looked up at the two men, and said: "I have told you because you know something, and because there will, I think, be an end soon." He got up and reached out a trembling hand for a cigarette. Pierre gave him one. "Will you walk with me"? he asked. Shon shook his head. "God forgive you," he replied, "I can't do it." But Wendling and Pierre left the hut together. They walked for an hour, scarcely speaking, and not considering where they went. At last Pierre mechanically turned to go down into Red Glen. Wendling stopped short, then, with a sighing laugh, strode on. "Shoo has told you what happened here"? he said. Pierre nodded. "And you know what came once when you walked with me.... The dead can strike," he added. Pierre sought his eye. "The minister and the girl buried together that day," he said, "were--" He stopped, for behind him he heard the sharp, cold trickle of water. Silent they walked on. It followed them. They could not get out of the Glen now until they had compassed its length--the walls were high. The sound grew. The men faced each other. "Good-bye," said Wendling; and he reached out his hand swiftly. But Pierre heard a mighty flood groaning on them, and he blinded as he stretched his arm in response. He caught at Wendling's shoulder, but felt him lifted and carried away, while he himself stood still in a screeching wind and heard impalpable water rushing over him. In a minute it was gone; and he stood alone in Red Glen. He gathered himself up and ran. Far down, where the Glen opened to the plain, he found Wendling. The hands were wrinkled; the face was cold; the body was wet: the man was drowned and dead. IN PIPI VALLEY "Divils me darlins, it's a memory I have of a time whin luck wasn't foldin' her arms round me, and not so far back aither, and I on the wallaby track hot-foot for the City o' Gold." Shon McGann said this in the course of a discussion on the prosperity of Pipi Valley. Pretty Pierre remarked nonchalantly in reply,--"The wallaby track--eh--what is that, Shon?" "It's a bit of a haythen y' are, Pierre. The wallaby track? That's the name in Australia for trampin' west through the plains of the Never-Never Country lookin' for the luck o' the world; as, bedad, it's meself that knows it, and no other, and not by book or tellin' either, but with the grip of thirst at me throat and a reef in me belt every hour to quiet the gnawin'." And Shon proceeded to light his pipe afresh. "But the City o' Gold-was there much wealth for you there, Shon?" Shon laughed, and said between the puffs of smoke, "Wealth for me, is it? Oh, mother o' Moses! wealth of work and the pride of livin' in the heart of us, and the grip of an honest hand betunewhiles; and what more do y' want, Pierre?" The Frenchman's drooping eyelids closed a little more, and he replied, meditatively: "Money? No, that is not Shon McGann. The good fellowship of thirst?--yes, a little. The grip of the honest hand, quite, and the clinch of an honest waist? Well, 'peut-etre.' "Of the waist which is not honest?--tsh! he is gay--and so!" The Irishman took his pipe from his mouth, and held it poised before him. He looked inquiringly and a little frowningly at the other for a moment, as if doubtful whether to resent the sneer that accompanied the words just spoken; but at last he good-humouredly said: "Blood o' me bones, but it's much I fear the honest waist hasn't always been me portion--Heaven forgive me!" "'Nom de pipe,' this Irishman!" replied Pierre. "He is gay; of good heart; he smiles, and the women are at his heels; he laughs, and they are on their knees--Such a fool he is!" Still Shon McGann laughed. "A fool I am, Pierre, or I'd be in ould Ireland at this minute, with a roof o' me own over me and the friends o' me youth round me, and brats on me knee, and the fear o' God in me heart." "'Mais,' Shon," mockingly rejoined the Frenchman, "this is not Ireland, but there is much like that to be done here. There is a roof, and there is that woman at Ward's Mistake, and the brats--eh, by and by?" Shon's face clouded. He hesitated, then replied sharply: "That woman, do y' say, Pierre, she that nursed me when the Honourable and meself were taken out o' Sandy Drift, more dead than livin'; she that brought me back to life as good as ever, barrin' this scar on me forehead and a stiffness at me elbow, and the Honourable as right as the sun, more luck to him! which he doesn't need at all, with the wind of fortune in his back and shiftin' neither to right nor left. --That woman! faith, y'd better not cut the words so sharp betune yer teeth, Pierre." "But I will say more--a little--just the same. She nursed you--well, that is good; but it is good also, I think, you pay her for that, and stop the rest. Women are fools, or else they are worse. This one? She is worse. Yes; you will take my advice, Shon McGann." The Irishman came to his feet with a spring, and his words were angry. "It doesn't come well from Pretty Pierre, the gambler, to be revilin' a woman; and I throw it in y'r face, though I've slept under the same blanket with ye, an' drunk out of the same cup on manny a tramp, that you lie dirty and black when ye spake ill--of my wife." This conversation had occurred in a quiet corner of the bar-room of the Saints' Repose. The first few sentences had not been heard by the others present; but Shon's last speech, delivered in a ringing tone, drew the miners to their feet, in expectation of seeing shots exchanged at once. The code required satisfaction, immediate and decisive. Shon was not armed, and some one thrust a pistol towards him; but he did not take it. Pierre rose, and coming slowly to him, laid a slender finger on his chest, and said: "So! I did not know that she was your wife. That is a surprise." The miners nodded assent. He continued: "Lucy Rives your wife! Hola, Shon McGann, that is such a joke." "It's no joke, but God's truth, and the lie is with you, Pierre." Murmurs of anticipation ran round the room; but the half-breed said: "There will be satisfaction altogether; but it is my whim to prove what I say first; then"--fondling his revolver--"then we shall settle. But, see: you will meet me here at ten o'clock to-night, and I will make it, I swear to you, so clear, that the woman is vile." The Irishman suddenly clutched the gambler, shook him like a dog, and threw him against the farther wall. Pierre's pistol was levelled from the instant Shon moved; but he did not use it. He rose on one knee after the violent fall, and pointing it at the other's head, said coolly: "I could kill you, my friend, so easy! But it is not my whim. Till ten o'clock is not long to wait, and then, just here, one of us shall die. Is it not so?" The Irishman did not flinch before the pistol. He said with low fierceness, "At ten o'clock, or now, or any time, or at any place, y'll find me ready to break the back of the lies y've spoken, or be broken meself. Lucy Rives is my wife, and she's true and straight as the sun in the sky. I'll be here at ten o'clock, and as ye say, Pierre, one of us makes the long reckoning for this." And he opened the door and went out. The half-breed moved to the bar, and, throwing down a handful of silver, said: "It is good we drink after so much heat. Come on, come on, comrades." The miners responded to the invitation. Their sympathy was mostly with Shon McGann; their admiration was about equally divided; for Pretty Pierre had the quality of courage in as active a degree as the Irishman, and they knew that some extraordinary motive, promising greater excitement, was behind the Frenchman's refusal to send a bullet through Shon's head a moment before. King Kinkley, the best shot in the Valley next to Pierre, had watched the unusual development of the incident with interest; and when his glass had been filled he said, thoughtfully: "This thing isn't according to Hoyle. There's never been any trouble just like it in the Valley before. What's that McGann said about the lady being his wife? If it's the case, where hev we been in the show? Where was we when the license was around? It isn't good citizenship, and I hev my doubts." Another miner, known as the Presbyterian, added: "There's some skulduggery in it, I guess. The lady has had as much protection as if she was the sister of every citizen of the place, just as much as Lady Jane here (Lady Jane, the daughter of the proprietor of the Saints' Repose, administered drinks), and she's played this stacked hand on us, has gone one better on the sly." "Pierre," said King Kinkley, "you're on the track of the secret, and appear to hev the advantage of the lady: blaze it--blaze it out." Pierre rejoined, "I know something; but it is good we wait until ten o'clock. Then I will show you all the cards in the pack. Yes, so, 'bien sur.'" And though there was some grumbling, Pierre had his way. The spirit of adventure and mutual interest had thrown the French half-breed, the Irishman, and the Hon. Just Trafford together on the cold side of the Canadian Rockies; and they had journeyed to this other side, where the warm breath from the Pacific passed to its congealing in the ranges. They had come to the Pipi field when it was languishing. From the moment of their coming its luck changed; it became prosperous. They conquered the Valley each after his kind. The Honourable--he was always called that--mastered its resources by a series of "great lucks," as Pierre termed it, had achieved a fortune, and made no enemies; and but two months before the day whose incidents are here recorded, had gone to the coast on business. Shon had won the reputation of being a "white man," to say nothing of his victories in the region of gallantry. He made no wealth; he only got that he might spend. Irishman-like he would barter the chances of fortune for the lilt of a voice or the clatter of a pretty foot. Pierre was different. "Women, ah, no!" he would say, "they make men fools or devils." His temptation lay not that way. When the three first came to the Pipi, Pierre was a miner, simply; but nearly all his life he had been something else, as many a devastated pocket on the east of the Rockies could bear witness; and his new career was alien to his soul. Temptation grew greatly on him at the Pipi, and in the days before he yielded to it he might have been seen at midnight in his but playing solitaire. Why he abstained at first from practising his real profession is accounted for in two ways: he had tasted some of the sweets of honest companionship with the Honourable and Shon, and then he had a memory of an ugly night at Pardon's Drive a year before, when he stood over his own brother's body, shot to death by accident in a gambling row having its origin with himself. These things had held him back for a time; but he was weaker than his ruling passion. The Pipi was a young and comparatively virgin field; the quarry was at his hand. He did not love money for its own sake; it was the game that enthralled him. He would have played his life against the treasury of a kingdom, and, winning it with loaded double sixes, have handed back the spoil as an unredeemable national debt. He fell at last, and in falling conquered the Pipi Valley; at the same time he was considered a fearless and liberal citizen, who could shoot as straight as he played well. He made an excursion to another field, however, at an opportune time, and it was during this interval that the accident to Shon and the Honourable had happened. He returned but a few hours before this quarrel with Shon occurred, and in the Saints' Repose, whither he had at once gone, he was told of the accident. While his informant related the incident and the romantic sequence of Shon's infatuation, the woman passed the tavern and was pointed out to Pierre. The half-breed had not much excitableness in his nature, but when he saw this beautiful woman with a touch of the Indian in her contour, his pale face flushed, and he showed his set teeth under his slight moustache. He watched her until she entered a shop, on the signboard of which was written--written since he had left a few months ago--Lucy Rives, Tobacconist. Shon had then entered the Saints' Repose; and we know the rest. A couple of hours after this nervous episode, Pierre might have been seen standing in the shadow of the pines not far from the house at Ward's Mistake, where, he had been told, Lucy Rives lived with an old Indian woman. He stood, scarcely moving, and smoking cigarettes, until the door opened. Shon came out and walked down the hillside to the town. Then Pierre went to the door, and without knocking, opened it, and entered. A woman started up from a seat where she was sewing, and turned towards him. As she did so, the work, Shon's coat, dropped from her hands, her face paled, and her eyes grew big with fear. She leaned against a chair for support--this man's presence had weakened her so. She stood silent, save for a slight moan that broke from her lips, as Pierre lighted a cigarette coolly, and then said to an old Indian woman who sat upon the floor braiding a basket: "Get up, Ikni, and go away." Ikni rose, came over, and peered into the face of the half-breed. Then she muttered: "I know you--I know you. The dead has come back again." She caught his arm with her bony fingers as if to satisfy herself that he was flesh and blood, and shaking her head dolefully, went from the room. When the door closed behind her there was silence, broken only by an exclamation from the man. The other drew her hand across her eyes, and dropped it with a motion of despair. Then Pierre said, sharply: "Bien?" "Francois," she replied, "you are alive!" "Yes, I am alive, Lucy." She shuddered, then grew still again and whispered: "Why did you let it be thought that you were drowned? Why? Oh, why"? she moaned. He raised his eyebrows slightly, and between the puffs of smoke, said: "Ah yes, my Lucy, why? It was so long ago. Let me see: so--so--ten years. Ten years is a long time to remember, eh?" He came towards her. She drew back; but her hand remained on the chair. He touched the plain gold ring on her finger, and said: "You still wear it. To think of that--so loyal for a woman! How she remembers, holy Mother! . . . But shall I not kiss you, yes, just once after eight years--my wife?" She breathed hard and drew back against the wall, dazed and frightened, and said: "No, no, do not come near me; do not speak to me--ah, please, stand back, for a moment--please!" He shrugged his shoulders slightly, and continued, with mock tenderness: "To think that things come round so! And here you have a home. But that is good. I am tired of much travel and life all alone. The prodigal goes not to the home, the home comes to the prodigal." He stretched up his arms as if with a feeling of content. "Do you--do you not know," she said, "that--that--" He interrupted her: "Do I not know, Lucy, that this is your home? Yes. But is it not all the same? I gave you a home ten years ago--to think, ten years ago! We quarrelled one night, and I left you. Next morning my boat was found below the White Cascade--yes, but that was so stale a trick! It was not worthy of Francois Rives. He would do it so much better now; but he was young then; just a boy, and foolish. Well, sit down, Lucy, it is a long story, and you have much to tell, how much--who knows?" She came slowly forward and said with a painful effort: "You did a great wrong, Francois. You have killed me. "Killed you, Lucy, my wife! Pardon! Never in those days did you look so charming as now--never. But the great surprise of seeing your husband, it has made you shy, quite shy. There will be much time now for you to change all that. It is quite pleasant to think on, Lucy. . . . You remember the song we used to sing on the Chaudiere at St. Antoine? See, I have not forgotten it-- "'Nos amants sont en guerre, Vole, mon coeur, vole.'" He hummed the lines over and over, watching through his half-shut eyes the torture he was inflicting. "Oh, Mother of God," she whispered, "have mercy! Can you not see, do you not know? I am not as you left me." "Yes, my wife, you are just the same; not an hour older. I am glad that you have come to me. But how they will envy Pretty Pierre!" "Envy--Pretty-Pierre," she repeated, in distress; "are you Pretty Pierre? Ah, I might have known, I might have known!" "Yes, and so! Is not Pretty Pierre as good a name as Francois Rives? Is it not as good as Shon McGann?" "Oh, I see it all, I see it all now!" she said mournfully. "It was with you he quarrelled, and about me. He would not tell me what it was. You know, then, that I am--that I am married--to him?" "Quite. I know all that; but it is no marriage." He rose to his feet slowly, dropping the cigarette from his lips as he did so. "Yes," he continued, "and I know that you prefer Shon McGann to Pretty Pierre." She spread out her hands appealingly. "But you are my wife, not his. Listen: do you know what I shall do? I will tell you in two hours. It is now eight o'clock. At ten o'clock Shon McGann will meet me at the Saints' Repose. Then you shall know.... Ah, it is a pity! Shon was my good friend, but this spoils all that. Wine--it has danger; cards--there is peril in that sport; women--they make trouble most of all." "O God," she piteously said, "what did I do? There was no sin in me. I was your faithful wife, though you were cruel to me. You left me, cheated me, brought this upon me. It is you that has done this wickedness, not I." She buried her face in her hands, falling on her knees beside the chair. He bent above her: "You loved the young avocat better, eight years ago." She sprang to her feet. "Ah, now I understand,' she said. "That was why you quarrelled with me; why you deserted me. You were not man enough to say what made you so much the--so wicked and hard, so--" "Be thankful, Lucy, that I did not kill you then," he interjected. "But it is a lie," she cried; "a lie!" She went to the door and called the Indian woman. "Ikni," she said. "He dares to say evil of Andre and me. Think--of Andre!" Ikni came to him, put her wrinkled face close to his, and said: "She was yours, only yours; but the spirits gave you a devil. Andre, oh, oh, Andre! The father of Andre was her father--ah, that makes your sulky eyes to open. Ikni knows how to speak. Ikni nursed them both. If you had waited you should have known. But you ran away like a wolf from a coal of fire; you shammed death like a fox; you come back like the snake to crawl into the house and strike with poison tooth, when you should be with the worms in the ground. But Ikni knows--you shall be struck with poison too, the Spirit of the Red Knife waits for you. Andre was her brother." He pushed her aside savagely: "Be still!" he said. "Get out-quick. 'Sacre'--quick!" When they were alone again he continued with no anger in his tone: "So, Andre the avocat and you--that, eh? Well, you see how much trouble has come; and now this other--a secret too. When were you married to Shon McGann?" "Last night," she bitterly replied; "a priest came over from the Indian village." "Last night," he musingly repeated. "Last night I lost two thousand dollars at the Little Goshen field. I did not play well last night; I was nervous. In ten years I had not lost so much at one game as I did last night. It was a punishment for playing too honest, or something; eh, what do you think, Lucy--or something, 'hein?'" She said nothing, but rocked her body to and fro. "Why did you not make known the marriage with Shon?" "He was to have told it to-night," she said. There was silence for a moment, then a thought flashed into his eyes, and he rejoined with a jarring laugh, "Well, I will play a game to-night, Lucy Rives; such a game that Pretty Pierre will never be forgotten in the Pipi Valley--a beautiful game, just for two. And the other who will play--the wife of Francois Rives shall see if she will wait; but she must be patient, more patient than her husband was ten years ago." "What will you do--tell me, what will you do?" "I will play a game of cards--just one magnificent game; and the cards shall settle it. All shall be quite fair, as when you and I played in the little house by the Chaudiere--at first, Lucy,--before I was a devil." Was this peculiar softness to his last tones assumed or real? She looked at him inquiringly; but he moved away to the window, and stood gazing down the hillside towards the town below. His eyes smarted. "I will die," she said to herself in whispers--"I will die." A minute passed, and then Pierre turned and said to her: "Lucy, he is coming up the hill. Listen. If you tell him that I have seen you, I will shoot him on sight, dead. You would save him, for a little, for an hour or two--or more? Well, do as I say; for these things must be according to the rules of the game, and I myself will tell him all at the Saints' Repose. He gave me the lie there, and I will tell him the truth before them all there. Will you do as I say?" She hesitated an instant, and then replied: "I will not tell him." "There is only one way, then," he continued. "You must go at once from here into the woods behind there, and not see him at all. Then at ten o'clock you will come to the Saints' Repose, if you choose, to know how the game has ended." She was trembling, moaning, no longer. A set look had come into her face; her eyes were steady and hard. She quietly replied: "Yes, I shall be there." He came to her, took her hand, and drew from her finger the wedding-ring which last night Shon McGann had placed there. She submitted passively. Then, with an upward wave of his fingers, he spoke in a mocking lightness, but without any of the malice which had first appeared in his tones, words from an old French song: "I say no more, my lady Mironton, Mironton, Mirontaine! I say no more, my lady, As nought more can be said." He opened the door, motioned to the Indian woman, and, in a few moments, the broken-hearted Lucy Rives and her companion were hidden in the pines; and Pretty Pierre also disappeared into the shadow of the woods as Shon McGann appeared on the crest of the hill. The Irishman walked slowly to the door, and pausing, said to himself: "I couldn't run the big risk, me darlin', without seein' you again, God help me! There's danger ahead which little I'd care for if it wasn't for you." Then he stepped inside the house--the place was silent; he called, but no one answered; he threw open the doors of the rooms, but they were empty; he went outside and called again, but no reply came, except the flutter of a night-hawk's wings and the cry of a whippoorwill. He went back into the house and sat down with his head between his hands. So, for a moment, and then he raised his head, and said with a sad smile: "Faith, Shon, me boy, this takes the life out of you! the empty house where she ought to be, and the smile of her so swate, and the hand of her that falls on y'r shoulder like a dove on the blessed altar-gone, and lavin' a chill on y'r heart like a touch of the dead. Sure, nivir a wan of me saw any that could stand wid her for goodness, barrin' the angel that kissed me good-bye with one foot in the stirrup an' the troopers behind me, now twelve years gone, in ould Donegal, and that I'll niver see again, she lyin' where the hate of the world will vex the heart of her no more, and the masses gone up for her soul. Twice, twice in y'r life, Shon McGann, has the cup of God's joy been at y'r lips, and is it both times that it's to spill?--Pretty Pierre shoots straight and sudden, and maybe it's aisy to see the end of it; but as the just God is above us, I'll give him the lie in his throat betimes for the word he said agin me darlin'. What's the avil thing that he has to say? What's the divil's proof he would bring? And where is she now? Where are you, Lucy? I know the proof I've got in me heart that the wreck of the world couldn't shake, while that light, born of Heaven, swims up to your eyes whin you look at me!" He rose to his feet again and walked to and fro; he went once more to the doors; he looked here and there through the growing dusk, but to no purpose. She had said that she would not go to her shop this night; but if not, then where could she have gone and Ikni, too? He felt there was more awry in his life than he cared to put into thought or speech. He picked up the sewing she had dropped and looked at it as one would regard a relic of the dead; he lifted her handkerchief, kissed it, and put it in his breast. He took a revolver from his pocket and examined it closely, looked round the room as though to fasten it in his memory, and then passed out, closing the door behind him. He walked down the hillside and went to her shop in the one street of the town, but she was not there, nor had the lad in charge seen her. Meanwhile, Pretty Pierre had made his way to the Saints' Repose, and was sitting among the miners indolently smoking. In vain he was asked to play cards. His one reply was, "No, pardon, no! I play one game only to-night, the biggest game ever played in Pipi Valley." In vain, also, was he asked to drink. He refused the hospitality, defying the danger that such lack of good-fellowship might bring forth. He hummed in patches to himself the words of a song that the 'brules' were wont to sing when they hunted the buffalo: "'Voila!' it is the sport to ride-- Ah, ah the brave hunter! To thrust the arrow in his hide, To send the bullet through his side 'Ici,' the buffalo, 'joli!' Ah, ah the buffalo!" He nodded here and there as men entered; but he did not stir from his seat. He smoked incessantly, and his eyes faced the door of the bar-room that entered upon the street. There was no doubt in the minds of any present that the promised excitement would occur. Shon McGann was as fearless as he was gay. And Pipi Valley remembered the day in which he had twice risked his life to save two women from a burning building--Lady Jane and another. And Lady Jane this evening was agitated, and once or twice furtively looked at something under the bar-counter; in fact, a close observer would have noticed anger or anxiety in the eyes of the daughter of Dick Waldron, the keeper of the Saints' Repose. Pierre would certainly have seen it had he been looking that way. An unusual influence was working upon the frequenters of the busy tavern. Planned, premeditated excitement was out of their line. Unexpectedness was the salt of their existence. This thing had an air of system not in accord with the suddenness of the Pipi mind. The half-breed was the only one entirely at his ease; he was languid and nonchalant; the long lashes of his half-shut eyelids gave his face a pensive look. At last King Kinkley walked over to him and said: "There's an almighty mysteriousness about this event which isn't joyful, Pretty Pierre. We want to see the muss cleared up, of course; we want Shon McGann to act like a high-toned citizen, and there's a general prejudice in favour of things bein' on the flat of your palm, as it were. Now this thing hangs fire, and there's a lack of animation about it, isn't there?" To this, Pretty Pierre replied: "What can I do? This is not like other things; one had to wait; great things take time. To shoot is easy; but to shoot is not all, as you shall see if you have a little patience. Ah, my friend, where there is a woman, things are different. I throw a glass in your face, we shoot, someone dies, and there it is quite plain of reason; you play a card which was dealt just now, I call you-- something, and the swiftest finger does the trick; but in such as this, one must wait for the sport." It was at this point that Shon McGann entered, looked round, nodded to all, and then came forward to the table where Pretty Pierre sat. As the other took out his watch, Shon said firmly but quietly: "Pierre, I gave you the lie to-day concerning me wife, and I'm here, as I said I'd be, to stand by the word I passed then." Pierre waved his fingers lightly towards the other, and slowly rose. Then he said in sharp tones: "Yes, Shon McGann, you gave me the lie. There is but one thing for that in Pipi Valley. You choked me; I would not take that from a saint of heaven; but there was another thing to do first. Well, I have done it; I said I would bring proofs--I have them." He paused, and now there might have been seen a shining moisture on his forehead, and his words came menacingly from between his teeth, while the room became breathlessly still, save that in the silence a sleeping dog sighed heavily: "Shon McGann," he added, "you are living with my wife." Twenty men drew in a sharp breath of excitement, and Shon came a step nearer the other, and said in a strange voice: "I--am--living--with-- your--wife?" "As I say, with my wife, Lucy Rives. Francois Rives was my name ten years ago. We quarrelled. I left her, and I never saw her again until to-night. You went to see her two hours ago. You did not find her. Why? She was gone because her husband, Pierre, told her to go. You want a proof? You shall have it. Here is the wedding-ring you gave her last night." He handed it over, and Shon saw inside it his own name and hers. "My God!" he said. "Did she know? Tell me she didn't know, Pierre?" "No, she did not know. I have truth to speak to night. I was jealous, mad, and foolish, and I left her. My boat was found upset. They believed I was drowned. 'Bien,' she waited until yesterday, and then she took you--but she was my wife; she is my wife--and so you see!" The Irishman was deadly pale. "It's an avil heart y' had in y' then, Pretty Pierre, and it's an avil day that brought this thing to pass, and there's only wan way to the end of it." "So, that is true. There is only one way," was the reply; "but what shall that way be? Someone must go: there must be no mistake. I have to propose. Here on this table we lay a revolver. We will give up these which we have in our pockets. Then we will play a game of euchre, and the winner of the game shall have the revolver. We will play for a life. That is fair, eh--that is fair"? he said to those around. King Kinkley, speaking for the rest, replied: "That's about fair. It gives both a chance, and leaves only two when it's over. While the woman lives, one of you is naturally in the way. Pierre left her in a way that isn't handsome; but a wife's a wife, and though Shon was all in the glum about the thing, and though the woman isn't to be blamed either, there's one too many of you, and there's got to be a vacation for somebody. Isn't that so?" The rest nodded assent. They had been so engaged that they did not see a woman enter the bar from behind, and crouch down beside Lady Jane, a woman whom the latter touched affectionately on the shoulder and whispered to once or twice, while she watched the preparations for the game. The two men sat down, Shon facing the bar and Pierre with his back to it. The game began, neither man showing a sign of nervousness, though Shon was very pale. The game was to finish for ten points. Men crowded about the tables silent but keenly excited; cigars were chewed instead of smoked, and liquor was left undrunk. At the first deal Pierre made a march, securing two. At the next Shon made a point, and at the next also a march. The half-breed was playing a straight game. He could have stacked the cards, but he did not do so; deft as he was he might have cheated even the vigilant eyes about him, but it was not so; he played as squarely as a novice. At the third, at the fourth, deal he made a march; at the fifth, sixth, and seventh deals, Shon made a march, a point, and a march. Both now had eight points. At the next deal both got a point, and both stood at nine! Now came the crucial play. During the progress of the game nothing had been heard save the sound of a knuckle on the table, the flip flip of the pasteboard, or the rasp of a heel on the floor. There was a set smile on Shon's face--a forgotten smile, for the rest of the face was stern and tragic. Pierre smoked cigarettes, pausing, while his opponent was shuffling and dealing, to light them. Behind the bar as the game proceeded the woman who knelt beside Lady Jane listened to every sound. Her eyes grew more agonised as the numbers, whispered to her by her companion, climbed to the fatal ten. The last deal was Shon's; there was that much to his advantage. As he slowly dealt, the woman--Lucy Rives--rose to her feet behind Lady Jane. So absorbed were all that none saw her. Her eyes passed from Pierre to Shon, and stayed. When the cards were dealt, with but one point for either to gain, and so win and save his life, there was a slight pause before the two took them up. They did not look at one another; but each glanced at the revolver, then at the men nearest them, and lastly, for an instant, at the cards themselves, with their pasteboard faces of life and death turned downward. As the players picked them up at last and spread them out fan- like, Lady Jane slipped something into the hand of Lucy Rives. Those who stood behind Shon McGann stared with anxious astonishment at his hand; it contained only nine and ten spots. It was easy to see the direction of the sympathy of Pipi Valley. The Irishman's face turned a slight shade paler, but he did not tremble or appear disturbed. Pierre played his biggest card and took the point. He coolly counted one, and said, "Game. I win." The crowd drew back. Both rose to their feet. In the painful silence the half-breed's hand was gently laid on the revolver. He lifted it, and paused slightly, his eyes fixed to the steady look in those of Shon McGann. He raised the revolver again, till it was level with Shon's forehead, till it was even with his hair! Then there was a shot, and someone fell--not Shon, but Pierre, saying, as they caught him, "Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! From behind!" Instantly there was another shot, and someone crashed against the bottles in the bar. The other factor in the game, the wife, had shot at Pierre, and then sent a bullet through her own lungs. Shon stood for a moment as if he was turned to stone, and then his head dropped in his arms upon the table. He had seen both shots fired, but could not speak in time. Pierre was severely but not dangerously wounded in the neck. But the woman--? They brought her out from behind the counter. She still breathed; but on her eyes was the film of coming death. She turned to where Shon sat. Her lips framed his name, but no voice came forth. Someone touched him on the shoulder. He looked up and caught her last glance. He came and stooped beside her; but she had died with that one glance from him, bringing a faint smile to her lips. And the smile stayed when the life of her had fled--fled through the cloud over her eyes, from the tide-beat of her pulse. It swept out from the smoke and reeking air into the open world, and beyond, into those untried paths where all must walk alone, and in what bitterness, known only to the Master of the World who sees these piteous things, and orders in what fashion distorted lives shall be made straight and wholesome in the Places of Readjustment. Shon stood silent above the dead body. One by one the miners went out quietly. Presently Pierre nodded towards the door, and King Kinkley and another lifted him and carried him towards it. Before they passed into the street he made them turn him so that he could see Shon. He waved his hand towards her that had been his wife, and said: "She should have shot but once and straight, Shon McGann, and then!--Eh, 'bien!'" The door closed, and Shon McGann was left alone with the dead. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Irishmen have gifts for only two things--words and women More idle than wicked Reconciling the preacher and the sinner, as many another has PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE TALES OF THE FAR NORTH By Gilbert Parker Volume 5. ANTOINE AND ANGELIQUE THE CIPHER A TRAGEDY OF NOBODIES A SANCTUARY OF THE PLAINS ANTOINE AND ANGELIQUE "The birds are going south, Antoine--see--and it is so early!" "Yes, Angelique, the winter will be long." There was a pause, and then: "Antoine, I heard a child cry in the night, and I could not sleep." "It was a devil-bird, my wife; it flies slowly, and the summer is dead." "Antoine, there was a rushing of wings by my bed before the morn was breaking." "The wild-geese know their way in the night, Angelique; but they flew by the house and not near thy bed." "The two black squirrels have gone from the hickory tree." "They have hidden away with the bears in the earth; for the frost comes, and it is the time of sleep." "A cold hand was knocking at my heart when I said my aves last night, my Antoine." "The heart of a woman feels many strange things: I cannot answer, my wife." "Let us go also southward, Antoine, before the great winds and the wild frost come." "I love thee, Angelique, but I cannot go." "Is not love greater than all?" "To keep a pledge is greater." "Yet if evil come?" "There is the mine." "None travels hither; who should find it?" He said to me, my wife: 'Antoine, will you stay and watch the mine until I come with the birds northward, again?' and I said: 'I will stay, and Angelique will stay; I will watch the mine.'" "This is for his riches, but for our peril, Antoine." "Who can say whither a woman's fancy goes? It is full of guessing. It is clouds and darkness to-day, and sunshine--so much--to-morrow. I cannot answer." "I have a fear; if my husband loved me--" "There is the mine," he interrupted firmly. "When my heart aches so--" "Angelique, there is the mine." "Ah, my Antoine!" And so these two stayed on the island of St. Jean, in Lake Superior, through the purple haze of autumn, into the white brilliancy of winter, guarding the Rose Tree Mine, which Falding the Englishman and his companions had prospected and declared to be their Ophir. But St. Jean was far from the ways of settlement, and there was little food and only one hut, and many things must be done for the Rose Tree Mine in the places where men sell their souls for money; and Antoine and Angelique, French peasants from the parish of Ste. Irene in Quebec, were left to guard the place of treasure, until, to the sound of the laughing spring, there should come many men and much machinery, and the sinking of shafts in the earth, and the making, of riches. But when Antoine and Angelique were left alone in the waste, and God began to draw the pale coverlet of frost slowly across land and water, and to surround St. Jean with a stubborn moat of ice, the heart of the woman felt some coming danger, and at last broke forth in words of timid warning. When she once had spoken she said no more, but stayed and builded the heaps of earth about the house, and filled every crevice against the inhospitable Spirit of Winds, and drew her world closer and closer within those two rooms where they should live through many months. The winter was harsh, but the hearts of the two were strong. They loved; and Love is the parent of endurance, the begetter of courage. And every day, because it seemed his duty, Antoine inspected the Rose Tree Mine; and every day also, because it seemed her duty, Angelique said many aves. And one prayer was much with her--for spring to come early that the child should not suffer: the child which the good God was to give to her and Antoine. In the first hours of each evening Antoine smoked, and Angelique sang the old songs which their ancestors learned in Normandy. One night Antoine's face was lighted with a fine fire as he talked of happy days in the parish of Ste. Irene; and with that romantic fervour of his race which the stern winters of Canada could not kill, he sang, 'A la Claire Fontaine,' the well-beloved song-child of the 'voyageurs'' hearts. And the wife smiled far away into the dancing flames--far away, because the fire retreated, retreated to the little church where they two were wed; and she did as most good women do--though exactly why, man the insufficient cannot declare--she wept a little through her smiles. But when the last verse came, both smiles and tears ceased. Antoine sang it with a fond monotony: "Would that each rose were growing Upon the rose-tree gay, And that the fatal rose-tree Deep in the ocean lay. 'I ya longtemps que je t'aime Jamais je ne t'oublierai." Angelique's heart grew suddenly heavy. From the rose-tree of the song her mind fled and shivered before the leafless rose-tree by the mine; and her old dread came back. Of course this was foolish of Angelique; of course the wise and great throw contumely on all such superstition; and knowing women will smile at each other meaningly, and with pity for a dull man-writer, and will whisper, "Of course, the child." But many things, your majesties, are hidden from your wisdom and your greatness, and are given to the simple --to babes, and the mothers of babes. It was upon this very night that Falding the Englishman sat with other men in a London tavern, talking joyously. "There's been the luck of Heaven," he said, "in the whole exploit. We'd been prospecting for months. As a sort of try in a back-water we rowed over one night to an island and pitched tents. Not a dozen yards from where we camped was a rose-tree-think of it, Belgard, a rose-tree on a rag-tag island of Lake Superior! 'There's luck in odd numbers, says Rory O'More.' 'There's luck here,' said I; and at it we went just beside the rose-tree. What's the result? Look at that prospectus: a company with a capital of two hundred thousand; the whole island in our hands in a week; and Antoine squatting on it now like Bonaparte on Elbe." "And what does Antoine get out of this"? said Belgard. "Forty dollars a month and his keep." "Why not write him off twenty shares to propitiate the gods--gifts unto the needy, eh!--a thousand-fold--what?" "Yes; it might be done, Belgard, if--" But someone just then proposed the toast, "The Rose Tree Mine!" and the souls of these men waxed proud and merry, for they had seen the investor's palm filled with gold, the maker of conquest. While Antoine was singing with his wife, they were holding revel within the sound of Bow Bells. And far into the night, through silent Cheapside, a rolling voice swelled through much laughter thus: "Gai Ion la, gai le rosier, Du joli mois de Mai." The next day there were heavy heads in London; but the next day, also, a man lay ill in the hut on the island of St. Jean. Antoine had sung his last song. He had waked in the night with a start of pain, and by the time the sun was halting at noon above the Rose Tree Mine, he had begun a journey, the record of which no man has ever truly told, neither its beginning nor its end; because that which is of the spirit refuseth to be interpreted by the flesh. Some signs there be, but they are brief and shadowy; the awe of It is hidden in the mind of him that goeth out lonely unto God. When the call goes forth, not wife nor child nor any other can hold the wayfarer back, though he may loiter for an instant on the brink. The poor medicaments which Angelique brings avail not; these soothing hands and healing tones, they pass through clouds of the middle place between heaven and earth to Antoine. It is only when the second midnight comes that, with conscious, but pensive and far-off, eyes, he says to her: "Angelique, my wife." For reply her lips pressed his cheek, and her fingers hungered for his neck. Then: "Is there pain now Antoine?" "There is no pain, Angelique." He closed his eyes slowly; her lips framed an ave. "The mine," he said, "the mine--until the spring." "Yes, Antoine, until the spring." "Have you candles--many candles, Angelique?" "There are many, my husband." "The ground is as iron; one cannot dig, and the water under the ice is cruel--is it not so, Angelique?" "No axe could break the ground, and the water is cruel," she said. "You will see my face until the winter is gone, my wife." She bowed her head, but smoothed his hand meanwhile, and her throat was quivering. He partly slept--his body slept, though his mind was feeling its way to wonderful things. But near the morning his eyes opened wide, and he said: "Someone calls out of the dark, Angelique." And she, with her hand on her heart, replied: "It is the cry of a dog, Antoine." "But there are footsteps at the door, my wife." "Nay, Antoine; it is the snow beating upon the window." "There is the sound of wings close by--dost thou not hear them, Angelique?" "Wings--wings," she falteringly said: "it is the hot blast through the chimney; the night is cold, Antoine." "The night is very cold," he said; and he trembled. . . "I hear, O my wife, I hear the voice of a little child . . . the voice is like thine, Angelique." And she, not knowing what to reply, said softly: "There is hope in the voice of a child;" and the mother stirred within her; and in the moment he knew also that the Spirits would give her the child in safety, that she should not be alone in the long winter. The sounds of the harsh night had ceased--the snapping of the leafless branches, the cracking of the earth, and the heaving of the rocks: the Spirits of the Frost had finished their work; and just as the grey forehead of dawn appeared beyond the cold hills, Antoine cried out gently: "Angelique . . . Ah, mon Capitaine . . . Jesu" . . . and then, no more. Night after night Angelique lighted candles in the place where Antoine smiled on in his frozen silence; and masses were said for his soul--the masses Love murmurs for its dead. The earth could not receive him; its bosom was adamant; but no decay could touch him; and she dwelt alone with this, that was her husband, until one beautiful, bitter day, when, with no eye save God's to see her, and no human comfort by her, she gave birth to a man-child. And yet that night she lighted the candles at the dead man's head and feet, dragging herself thither in the cold; and in her heart she said that the smile on Antoine's face was deeper than it had been before. In the early spring, when the earth painfully breathed away the frost that choked it, with her child for mourner, and herself for sexton and priest, she buried Antoine with maimed rites: but hers were the prayers of the poor, and of the pure in heart; and she did not fret because, in the hour that her comrade was put away into the dark, the world was laughing at the thought of coming summer. Before another sunrise, the owners of the island of St. Jean claimed what was theirs; and because that which had happened worked upon their hearts, they called the child St. Jean, and from that time forth they made him to enjoy the goodly fruits of the Rose Tree Mine. THE CIPHER Hilton was staying his horse by a spring at Guidon Hill when he first saw her. She was gathering may-apples; her apron was full of them. He noticed that she did not stir until he rode almost upon her. Then she started, first without looking round, as does an animal, dropping her head slightly to one side, though not exactly appearing to listen. Suddenly she wheeled on him, and her big eyes captured him. The look bewildered him. She was a creature of singular fascination. Her face was expressive. Her eyes had wonderful light. She looked happy, yet grave withal; it was the gravity of an uncommon earnestness. She gazed through everything, and beyond. She was young--eighteen or so. Hilton raised his hat, and courteously called a good-morning at her. She did not reply by any word, but nodded quaintly, and blinked seriously and yet blithely on him. He was preparing to dismount. As he did so he paused, astonished that she did not speak at all. Her face did not have a familiar language; its vocabulary was its own. He slid from his horse, and, throwing his arm over its neck as it stooped to the spring, looked at her more intently, but respectfully too. She did not yet stir, but there came into her face a slight inflection of confusion or perplexity. Again he raised his hat to her, and, smiling, wished her a good-morning. Even as he did so a thought sprung in him. Understanding gave place to wonder; he interpreted the unusual look in her face. Instantly he made a sign to her. To that her face responded with a wonderful speech--of relief and recognition. The corners of her apron dropped from her fingers, and the yellow may-apples fell about her feet. She did not notice this. She answered his sign with another, rapid, graceful, and meaning. He left his horse and advanced to her, holding out his hand simply--for he was a simple and honest man. Her response to this was spontaneous. The warmth of her fingers invaded him. Her eyes were full of questioning. He gave a hearty sign of admiration. She flushed with pleasure, but made a naive, protesting gesture. She was deaf and dumb. Hilton had once a sister who was a mute. He knew that amazing primal gesture-language of the silent race, whom God has sent like one-winged birds into the world. He had watched in his sister just such looks of absolute nature as flashed from this girl. They were comrades on the instant; he reverential, gentle, protective; she sanguine, candid, beautifully aboriginal in the freshness of her cipher-thoughts. She saw the world naked, with a naked eye. She was utterly natural. She was the maker of exquisite, vital gesture-speech. She glided out from among the may-apples and the long, silken grass, to charm his horse with her hand. As she started to do so, he hastened to prevent her, but, utterly surprised, he saw the horse whinny to her cheek, and arch his neck under her white palm--it was very white. Then the animal's chin sought her shoulder and stayed placid. He had never done so to anyone before save Hilton. Once, indeed, he had kicked a stableman to death. He lifted his head and caught with playful shaking lips at her ear. Hilton smiled; and so, as we said, their comradeship began. He was a new officer of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Guidon. She was the daughter of a ranchman. She had been educated by Father Corraine, the Jesuit missionary, Protestant though she was. He had learned the sign-language while assistant-priest in a Parisian chapel for mutes. He taught her this gesture-tongue, which she, taking, rendered divine; and, with this, she learned to read and write. Her name was Ida. Ida was faultless. Hilton was not; but no man is. To her, however, he was the best that man can be. He was unselfish and altogether honest, and that is much for a man. When Pierre came to know of their friendship he shook his head doubtfully. One day he was sitting on the hot side of a pine near his mountain hut, soaking in the sun. He saw them passing below him, along the edge of the hill across the ravine. He said to someone behind him in the shade, who was looking also," What will be the end of that, eh?" And the someone replied: "Faith, what the Serpent in the Wilderness couldn't cure." "You think he'll play with her?" "I think he'll do it without wishin' or willin', maybe. It'll be a case of kiss and ride away." There was silence. Soon Pierre pointed down again. She stood upon a green mound with a cool hedge of rock behind her, her feet on the margin of solid sunlight, her forehead bared. Her hair sprinkled round her as she gently threw back her head. Her face was full on Hilton. She was telling him something. Her gestures were rhythmical, and admirably balanced. Because they were continuous or only regularly broken, it was clear she was telling him a story. Hilton gravely, delightedly, nodded response now and then, or raised his eyebrows in fascinated surprise. Pierre, watching, was only aware of vague impressions--not any distinct outline of the tale. At last he guessed it as a perfect pastoral-birds, reaping, deer, winds, sundials, cattle, shepherds, hunting. To Hilton it was a new revelation. She was telling him things she had thought, she was recalling her life. Towards the last, she said in gesture: "You can forget the winter, but not the spring. You like to remember the spring. It is the beginning. When the daisy first peeps, when the tall young deer first stands upon its feet, when the first egg is seen in the oriole's nest, when the sap first sweats from the tree, when you first look into the eye of your friend--these you want to remember. . . ." She paused upon this gesture--a light touch upon the forehead, then the hands stretched out, palms upward, with coaxing fingers. She seemed lost in it. Her eyes rippled, her lips pressed slightly, a delicate wine crept through her cheek, and tenderness wimpled all. Her soft breast rose modestly to the cool texture of her dress. Hilton felt his blood bound joyfully; he had the wish of instant possession. But yet he could not stir, she held him so; for a change immediately passed upon her. She glided slowly from that almost statue-like repose into another gesture. Her eyes drew up from his, and looked away to plumbless distance, all glowing and childlike, and the new ciphers slowly said: "But the spring dies away. We can only see a thing born once. And it may be ours, yet not ours. I have sighted the perfect Sharon-flower, far up on Guidon, yet it was not mine; it was too distant; I could not reach it. I have seen the silver bullfinch floating along the canon. I called to it, and it came singing; and it was mine, yet I could not hear its song, and I let it go; it could not be happy so with me. . . . I stand at the gate of a great city, and see all, and feel the great shuttles of sounds, the roar and clack of wheels, the horses' hoofs striking the ground, the hammer of bells; all: and yet it is not mine; it is far, far away from me. It is one world, mine is another; and sometimes it is lonely, and the best things are not for me. But I have seen them, and it is pleasant to remember, and nothing can take from us the hour when things were born, when we saw the spring--nothing--never!" Her manner of speech, as this went on, became exquisite in fineness, slower, and more dream-like, until, with downward protesting motions of the hand, she said that "nothing--never!" Then a great sigh surged up her throat, her lips parted slightly, showing the warm moist whiteness of her teeth, her hands falling lightly, drew together and folded in front of her. She stood still. Pierre had watched this scene intently, his chin in his hands, his elbows on his knees. Presently he drew himself up, ran a finger meditatively along his lip, and said to himself: "It is perfect. She is carved from the core of nature. But this thing has danger for her. . . . 'bien!' . . . ah!" A change in the scene before him caused this last expression of surprise. Hilton, rousing from the enchanting pantomime, took a step towards her; but she raised her hand pleadingly, restrainingly, and he paused. With his eyes he asked her mutely why. She did not answer, but, all at once transformed into a thing of abundant sprightliness, ran down the hillside, tossing up her arms gaily. Yet her face was not all brilliance. Tears hung at her eyes. But Hilton did not see these. He did not run, but walked quickly, following her; and his face had a determined look. Immediately, a man rose up from behind a rock on the same side of the ravine, and shook clenched fists after the departing figures; then stood gesticulating angrily to himself, until, chancing to look up, he sighted Pierre, and straightway dived into the underbrush. Pierre rose to his feet, and said slowly: "Hilton, here may be trouble for you also. It is a tangled world." Towards evening Pierre sauntered to the house of Ida's father. Light of footstep, he came upon the girl suddenly. They had always been friends since the day when, at uncommon risk, he rescued her dog from a freshet on the Wild Moose River. She was sitting utterly still, her hands folded in her lap. He struck his foot smartly on the ground. She felt the vibration, and looked up. He doffed his hat, and she held out her hand. He smiled and took it, and, as it lay in his, looked at it for a moment musingly. She drew it back slowly. He was then thinking that it was the most intelligent hand he had ever seen. . . . He determined to play a bold and surprising game. He had learned from her the alphabet of the fingers--that is, how to spell words. He knew little gesture-language. He, therefore, spelled slowly: "Hawley is angry, because you love Hilton." The statement was so matter-of-fact, so sudden, that the girl had no chance. She flushed and then paled. She shook her head firmly, however, and her fingers slowly framed the reply: "You guess too much. Foolish things come to the idle." "I saw you this afternoon," he silently urged. Her fingers trembled slightly. "There was nothing to see." She knew he could not have read her gestures. "I was telling a story." "You ran from him--why?" His questioning was cruel that he might in the end be kind. "The child runs from its shadow, the bird from its nest, the fish jumps from the water--that is nothing." She had recovered somewhat. But he: "The shadow follows the child, the bird comes back to its nest, the fish cannot live beyond the water. But it is sad when the child, in running, rushes into darkness, and loses its shadow; when the nest falls from the tree; and the hawk catches the happy fish. . . . Hawley saw you also." Hawley, like Ida, was deaf and dumb. He lived over the mountains, but came often. It had been understood that, one day, she should marry him. It seemed fitting. She had said neither yes nor no. And now? A quick tremor of trouble trailed over her face, then it became very still. Her eyes were bent upon the ground steadily. Presently a bird hopped near, its head coquetting at her. She ran her hand gently along the grass towards it. The bird tripped on it. She lifted it to her chin, at which it pecked tenderly. Pierre watched her keenly-admiring, pitying. He wished to serve her. At last, with a kiss upon its head, she gave it a light toss into the air, and it soared, lark-like, straight up, and hanging over her head, sang the day into the evening. Her eyes followed it. She could feel that it was singing. She smiled and lifted a finger lightly towards it. Then she spelled to Pierre this: "It is singing to me. We imperfect things love each other." "And what about loving Hawley, then"? Pierre persisted. She did not reply, but a strange look came upon her, and in the pause Hilton came from the house and stood beside them. At this, Pierre lighted a cigarette, and with a good-natured nod to Hilton, walked away. Hilton stooped over her, pale and eager. "Ida," he gestured, "will you answer me now? Will you be my wife?" She drew herself together with a little shiver. "No," was her steady reply. She ruled her face into stillness, so that it showed nothing of what she felt. She came to her feet wearily, and drawing down a cool flowering branch of chestnut, pressed it to her cheek. "You do not love me"? he asked nervously. "I am going to marry Luke Hawley," was her slow answer. She spelled the words. She used no gesture to that. The fact looked terribly hard and inflexible so. Hilton was not a vain man, and he believed he was not loved. His heart crowded to his throat. "Please go away, now," she begged with an anxious gesture. While the hand was extended, he reached and brought it to his lips, then quickly kissed her on the forehead, and walked away. She stood trembling, and as the fingers of one hand hung at her side, they spelled mechanically these words: "It would spoil his life. I am only a mute--a dummy!" As she stood so, she felt the approach of someone. She did not turn instantly, but with the aboriginal instinct, listened, as it were, with her body; but presently faced about--to Hawley. He was red with anger. He had seen Hilton kiss her. He caught her smartly by the arm, but, awed by the great calmness of her face, dropped it, and fell into a fit of sullenness. She spoke to him: he did not reply. She touched his arm: he still was gloomy. All at once the full price of her sacrifice rushed upon her; and overpowered her. She had no help at her critical hour, not even from this man she had intended to bless. There came a swift revulsion, all passions stormed in her at once. Despair was the resultant of these forces. She swerved from him immediately, and ran hard towards the high-banked river! Hawley did not follow her at once: he did not guess her purpose. She had almost reached the leaping-place, when Pierre shot from the trees, and seized her. The impulse of this was so strong, that they slipped, and quivered on the precipitous edge: but Pierre righted then, and presently they were safe. Pierre held her hard by both wrists for a moment. Then, drawing her away, he loosed her, and spelled these words slowly: "I understand. But you are wrong. Hawley is not the man. You must come with me. It is foolish to die." The riot of her feelings, her momentary despair, were gone. It was even pleasant to be mastered by Pierre's firmness. She was passive. Mechanically she went with him. Hawley approached. She looked at Pierre. Then she turned on the other. "Yours is not the best love," she signed to him; "it does not trust; it is selfish." And she moved on. But, an hour later, Hilton caught her to his bosom, and kissed her full on the lips. . . . And his right to do so continues to this day. A TRAGEDY OF NOBODIES At Fort Latrobe sentiment was not of the most refined kind. Local customs were pronounced and crude in outline; language was often highly coloured, and action was occasionally accentuated by a pistol shot. For the first few months of its life the place was honoured by the presence of neither wife, nor sister, nor mother. Yet women lived there. When some men did bring wives and children, it was noticed that the girl Blanche was seldom seen in the streets. And, however it was, there grew among the men a faint respect for her. They did not talk of it to each other, but it existed. It was known that Blanche resented even the most casual notice from those men who had wives and homes. She gave the impression that she had a remnant of conscience. "Go home," she said to Harry Delong, who asked her to drink with him on New Year's Day. "Go home, and thank God that you've got a home--and a wife." After Jacques, the long-time friend of Pretty Pierre, came to Fort Latrobe, with his sulky eye and scrupulously neat attire, Blanche appeared to withdraw still more from public gaze, though no one saw any connection between these events. The girl also became fastidious in her dress, and lost all her former dash and smart aggression of manner. She shrank from the women of her class, for which, as might be expected, she was duly reviled. But the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, nor has it been written that a woman may not close her ears, and bury herself in darkness, and travel alone in the desert with her people--those ghosts of herself, whose name is legion, and whose slow white fingers mock more than the world dare at its worst. Suddenly, she was found behind the bar of Weir's Tavern at Cedar Point, the resort most frequented by Jacques. Word went about among the men that Blanche was taking a turn at religion, or, otherwise, reformation. Soldier Joe was something sceptical on this point from the fact that she had developed a very uncertain temper. This appeared especially noticeable in her treatment of Jacques. She made him the target for her sharpest sarcasm. Though a peculiar glow came to his eyes at times, he was never roused from his exasperating coolness. When her shafts were unusually direct and biting, and the temptation to resent was keen, he merely shrugged his shoulders, almost gently, and said: "Eh, such women!" Nevertheless, there were men at Fort Latrobe who prophesied trouble, for they knew there was a deep strain of malice in the French half-breed which could be the more deadly because of its rare use. He was not easily moved, he viewed life from the heights of a philosophy which could separate the petty from the prodigious. His reputation was not wholly disquieting; he was of the goats, he had sometimes been found with the sheep, he preferred to be numbered with the transgressors. Like Pierre, his one passion was gambling. There were legends that once or twice in his life he had had another passion, but that some Gorgon drew out his heartstrings painfully, one by one, and left him inhabited by a pale spirit now called Irony, now Indifference--under either name a fret and an anger to women. At last Blanche's attacks on Jacques called out anxious protests from men like rollicking Soldier Joe, who said to her one night, "Blanche, there's a devil in Jacques. Some day you'll startle him, and then he'll shoot you as cool as he empties the pockets of Freddy Tarlton over there." And Blanche replied: "When he does that, what will you do, Joe?" "Do? Do?" The man stroked his beard softly. "Why, give him ditto-- cold." "Well, then, there's nothing to row about, is there?" And Soldier Joe was not on the instant clever enough to answer her sophistry; but when she left him and he had thought awhile, he said, convincingly: "But where would you be then, Blanche? . . . That's the point." One thing was known and certain: Blanche was earning her living by honest, if not high-class, labour. Weir the tavern-keeper said she was "worth hundreds" to him. But she grew pale, her eyes became peculiarly brilliant, her voice took a lower key, and lost a kind of hoarseness it had in the past. Men came in at times merely to have a joke at her expense, having heard of her new life; but they failed to enjoy their own attempts at humour. Women of her class came also, some with half- uncertain jibes, some with a curious wistfulness, and a few with scornful oaths; but the jibes and oaths were only for a time. It became known that she had paid the coach fare of Miss Dido (as she was called) to the hospital at Wapiti, and had raised a subscription for her maintenance there, heading it herself with a liberal sum. Then the atmosphere round her became less trying; yet her temper remained changeable, and had it not been that she was good-looking and witty, her position might have been insecure. As it was, she ruled in a neutral territory where she was the only woman. One night, after an inclement remark to Jacques, in the card-room, Blanche came back to the bar, and not noticing that, while she was gone, Soldier Joe had entered and laid himself down on a bench in a corner, she threw her head passionately forward on her arms as they rested on the counter, and cried: "O my God! my God!" Soldier Joe lay still as if sleeping, and when Blanche was called away again he rose, stole out, went down to Freddy Tarlton's office, and offered to bet Freddy two to one that Blanche wouldn't live a year. Joe's experience of women was limited. He had in his mind the case of a girl who had accidentally smothered her child; and so he said: "Blanche has something on her mind that's killing her, Freddy. When trouble fixes on her sort it kills swift and sure. They've nothing to live for but life, and it isn't good enough, you see, for--for--" Joe paused to find out where his philosophy was taking him. Freddy Tarlton finished the sentence for him: "For an inner sorrow is a consuming fire." Fort Latrobe soon had an unexpected opportunity to study Soldier Joe's theory. One night Jacques did not appear at Weir's Tavern as he had engaged to do, and Soldier Joe and another went across the frozen river to his log-hut to seek him. They found him by a handful of fire, breathing heavily and nearly unconscious. One of the sudden and frequently fatal colds of the mountains had fastened on him, and he had begun a war for life. Joe started back at once for liquor and a doctor, leaving his comrade to watch by the sick man. He could not understand why Blanche should stagger and grow white when he told her; nor why she insisted on taking the liquor herself. He did not yet guess the truth. The next day all Fort Latrobe knew that Blanche was nursing Jacques, on what was thought to be his no-return journey. The doctor said it was a dangerous case, and he held out little hope. Nursing might bring him through, but the chance was very slight. Blanche only occasionally left the sick man's bedside to be relieved by Soldier Joe and Freddy Tarlton. It dawned on Joe at last, it had dawned on Freddy before, what Blanche meant by the heart-breaking words uttered that night in Weir's Tavern. Down through the crust of this woman's heart had gone something both joyful and painful. Whatever it was, it made Blanche a saving nurse, a good apothecary; for, one night the doctor pronounced Jacques out of danger, and said that a few days would bring him round if he was careful. Now, for the first time, Jacques fully comprehended all Blanche had done for him, though he had ceased to wonder at her changed attitude to him. Through his suffering and his delirium had come the understanding of it. When, after the crisis, the doctor turned away from the bed, Jacques looked steadily into Blanche's eyes, and she flushed, and wiped the wet from his brow with her handkerchief. He took the handkerchief from her fingers gently before Soldier Joe came over to the bed. The doctor had insisted that Blanche should go to Weir's Tavern and get the night's rest, needed so much, and Joe now pressed her to keep her promise. Jacques added an urging word, and after a time she started. Joe had forgotten to tell her that a new road had been made on the ice since she had crossed, and that the old road was dangerous. Wandering with her thoughts she did not notice the spruce bushes set up for signal, until she had stepped on a thin piece of ice. It bent beneath her. She slipped: there was a sudden sinking, a sharp cry, then another, piercing and hopeless--and it was the one word--"Jacques!" Then the night was silent as before. But someone had heard the cry. Freddy Tarlton was crossing the ice also, and that desolating Jacques! had reached his ears. When he found her he saw that she had been taken and the other left. But that other, asleep in his bed at the sacred moment when she parted, suddenly waked, and said to Soldier Joe: "Did you speak, Joe? Did you call me?" But Joe, who had been playing cards with himself, replied, "I haven't said a word." And Jacques then added: "Perhaps I dream--perhaps." On the advice of the doctor and Freddy Tarlton, the bad news was kept from Jacques. When she did not come the next day, Joe told him that she couldn't; that he ought to remember she had had no rest for weeks, and had earned a long rest. And Jacques said that was so. Weir began preparations for the funeral, but Freddy Tarlton took them out of his hands--Freddy Tarlton, who visited at the homes of Fort Latrobe. But he had the strength of his convictions such as they were. He began by riding thirty miles and back to ask the young clergyman at Purple Hill to come and bury Blanche. She'd reformed and been baptised, Freddy said with a sad sort of humour. And the clergyman, when he knew all, said that he would come. Freddy was hardly prepared for what occurred when he got back. Men were waiting for him, anxious to know if the clergyman was coming. They had raised a subscription to cover the cost of the funeral, and among them were men such as Harry Delong. "You fellows had better not mix yourselves up in this," said Freddy. But Harry Delong replied quickly: "I am going to see the thing through." And the others endorsed his words. When the clergyman came, and looked at the face of this Magdalene, he was struck by its comeliness and quiet. All else seemed to have been washed away. On her breast lay a knot of white roses--white roses in this winter desert. One man present, seeing the look of wonder in the clergyman's eyes, said quietly: "My--my wife sent them. She brought the plant from Quebec. It has just bloomed. She knows all about her." That man was Harry Delong. The keeper of his home understood the other homeless woman. When she knew of Blanche's death she said: "Poor girl, poor girl!" and then she had gently added, "Poor Jacques!" And Jacques, as he sat in a chair by the fire four days after the tragedy, did not know that the clergyman was reading over a grave on the hillside, words which are for the hearts of the quick as for the untenanted dead. To Jacques's inquiries after Blanche, Soldier Joe had made changing and vague replies. At last he said that she was ill; then, that she was very ill, and again, that she was better, almighty better--now. The third day following the funeral, Jacques insisted that he would go and see her. The doctor at length decided he should be taken to Weir's Tavern, where, they declared, they would tell him all. And they took him, and placed him by the fire in the card-room, a wasted figure, but fastidious in manner and scrupulously neat in person as of old. Then he asked for Blanche; but even now they had not the courage for it. The doctor nervously went out, as if to seek her; and Freddy Tarlton said, "Jacques, let us have a little game, just for quarters, you know. Eh?" The other replied without eagerness: "Voila, one game, then!" They drew him to the table, but he played listlessly. His eyes shifted ever to the door. Luck was against him. Finally he pushed over a silver piece, and said: "The last. My money is all gone. 'Bien!'" He lost that too. Just then the door opened, and a ranchman from Purple Hill entered. He looked carelessly round, and then said loudly: "Say, Joe, so you've buried Blanche, have you? Poor old girl!" There was a heavy silence. No one replied. Jacques started to his feet, gazed around searchingly, painfully, and presently gave a great gasp. His hands made a chafing motion in the air, and then blood showed on his lips and chin. He drew a handkerchief from his breast. "Pardon! . . . Pardon!" he faintly cried in apology, and put it to his mouth. Then he fell backwards in the arms of Soldier Joe, who wiped a moisture from the lifeless cheek as he laid the body on a bed. In a corner of the stained handkerchief they found the word, Blanche. A SANCTUARY OF THE PLAINS Father Corraine stood with his chin in his hand and one arm supporting the other, thinking deeply. His eyes were fixed on the northern horizon, along which the sun was casting oblique rays; for it was the beginning of the winter season. Where the prairie touched the sun it was responsive and radiant; but on either side of this red and golden tapestry there was a tawny glow and then a duskiness which, curving round to the north and east, became blue and cold--an impalpable but perceptible barrier rising from the earth, and shutting in Father Corraine like a prison wall. And this shadow crept stealthily on and invaded the whole circle, until, where the radiance had been, there was one continuous wall of gloom, rising are upon are to invasion of the zenith, and pierced only by some intrusive wandering stars. And still the priest stood there looking, until the darkness closed down on him with an almost tangible consistency. Then he appeared to remember himself, and turned away with a gentle remonstrance of his head, and entered the hut behind him. He lighted a lamp, looked at it doubtfully, blew it out, set it aside, and lighted a candle. This he set in the one window of the room which faced the north and west. He went to a door opening into the only other room in the hut, and with his hand on the latch looked thoughtfully and sorrowfully at something in the corner of the room where he stood. He was evidently debating upon some matter,--probably the removal of what was in the corner to the other room. If so, he finally decided to abandon the intention. He sat down in a chair, faced the candle, again dropped his chin upon his hand, and kept his eyes musingly on the light. He was silent and motionless a long time, then his lips moved, and he seemed to repeat something to himself in whispers. Presently he took a well-worn book from his pocket, and read aloud from it softly what seemed to be an office of his Church. His voice grew slightly louder as he continued, until, suddenly, there ran through the words a deep sigh which did not come from himself. He raised his head quickly, started to his feet, and turning round, looked at that something in the corner. It took the form of a human figure, which raised itself on an elbow and said: "Water--water--for the love of God!" Father Corraine stood painfully staring at the figure for a moment, and then the words broke from him "Not dead--not dead--wonderful!" Then he stepped quickly to a table, took therefrom a pannikin of water, and kneeling, held it to the lips of the gasping figure of a woman, throwing his arm round the shoulder, and supporting the head on his breast. Again he spoke "Alive--alive! Blessed be Heaven!" The hands of the woman seized the hand of the priest, which held the pannikin, and kissed it, saying faintly: "You are good to me. . . . But I must sleep--I must sleep--I am so tired; and I've--very far--to go --across the world." This was said very slowly, then the head thick with brown curls dropped again on the priest's breast, heavy with sleep. Father Corraine, flushing slightly at first, became now slightly pale, and his brow was a place of war between thankfulness and perplexity. But he said something prayerfully, then closed his lips firmly, and gently laid the figure down, where it was immediately clothed about with slumber. Then he rose, and standing with his eyes bent upon the sleeper and his fingers clasping each other tightly before him, said: "Poor girl! So, she is alive. And now what will come of it?" He shook his grey head in doubt, and immediately began to prepare some simple food and refreshment for the sufferer when she should awake. In the midst of doing so he paused and repeated the words, "And what will come of it?" Then he added: "There was no sign of pulse nor heart-beat when I found her. But life hides itself where man cannot reach it." Having finished his task, he sat down, drew the book of holy offices again from his bosom, and read it, whisperingly, for a time; then fell to musing, and, after a considerable time, knelt down as if in prayer. While he knelt, the girl, as if startled from her sleep by some inner shock, opened her eyes wide and looked at him, first with bewilderment, then with anxiety, then with wistful thankfulness. "Oh, I thought-- I thought when I awoke before that it was a woman. But it is the good Father Corraine--Corraine, yes, that was the name." The priest's clean-shaven face, long hair, and black cassock had, in her first moments of consciousness, deceived her. Now a sharp pain brought a moan to her lips; and this drew the priest's attention. He rose, and brought her some food and drink. "My daughter," he said, "you must take these." Something in her face touched his sensitive mind, and he said, solemnly: "You are alone with me and God, this hour. Be at peace. Eat." Her eyes swam with instant tears. "I know--I am alone--with God," she said. Again he gently urged the food upon her, and she took a little; but now and then she put her hand to her side as if in pain. And once, as she did so, she said: "I've far to go and the pain is bad. Did they take him away?" Father Corraine shook his head. "I do not know of whom you speak," he replied. "When I went to my door this morning I found you lying there. I brought you in, and, finding no sign of life in you, sent Featherfoot, my Indian, to Fort Cypress for a trooper to come; for I feared that there had been ill done to you, somehow. This border-side is but a rough country. It is not always safe for a woman to travel alone." The girl shuddered. "Father," she said "Father Corraine, I believe you are?" (Here the priest bowed his head.) "I wish to tell you all, so that if ever any evil did come to me, if I should die without doin' what's in my heart to do, you would know, and would tell him if you ever saw him, how I remembered, and kept rememberin' him always, till my heart got sick with waitin', and I came to find him far across the seas." "Tell me your tale, my child," he patiently said. Her eyes were on the candle in the window questioningly. "It is for the trooper--to guide him," the other remarked. "'Tis past time that he should be here. When you are able you can go with him to the Fort. You will be better cared for there, and will be among women." "The man--the man who was kind to me--I wish I knew of him," she said. "I am waiting for your story, my child. Speak of your trouble, whether it be of the mind and body, or of the soul." "You shall judge if it be of the soul," she answered. "I come from far away. I lived in old Donegal since the day that I was born there, and I had a lover, as brave and true a lad as ever trod the world. But sorrow came. One night at Farcalladen Rise there was a crack of arms and a clatter of fleeing hoofs, and he that I loved came to me and said a quick word of partin', and with a kiss--it's burnin' on my lips yet--askin' pardon, father, for speech of this to you--and he was gone, an outlaw, to Australia. For a time word came from him. Then I was taken ill and couldn't answer his letters, and a cousin of my own, who had tried to win my love, did a wicked thing. He wrote a letter to him and told him I was dyin', and that there was no use of farther words from him. And never again did word come to me from him. But I waited, my heart sick with longin' and full of hate for the memory of the man who, when struck with death, told me of the cruel deed he had done between us two." She paused, as she had to do several times during the recital, through weariness or pain; but, after a moment, proceeded. "One day, one beautiful day, when the flowers were like love to the eye, and the larks singin' overhead, and my thoughts goin' with them as they swam until they were lost in the sky, and every one of them a prayer for the lad livin' yet, as I hoped, somewhere in God's universe--there rode a gentleman down Farcalladen Rise. He stopped me as I walked, and said a kind good-day to me; and I knew when I looked into his face that he had word for me--the whisperin' of some angel, I suppose, and I said to him as though he had asked me for it, 'My name is Mary Callen, sir.' "At that he started, and the colour came quick to his face; and he said: 'I am Sir Duke Lawless. I come to look for Mary Callen's grave. Is there a Mary Callen dead, and a Mary Callen livin'? and did both of them love a man that went from Farcalladen Rise one wild night long ago?' "'There's but one Mary Callen,' said I, 'but the heart of me is dead, until I hear news that brings it to life again?' "'And no man calls you wife?' he asked. "'No man, Sir Duke Lawless,' answered I. 'And no man ever could, save him that used to write me of you from the heart of Australia; only there was no Sir to your name then.' "'I've come to that since,' said he. "'Oh, tell me,' I cried, with a quiverin' at my heart, 'tell me, is he livin'?' "And he replied: 'I left him in the Pipi Valley of the Rocky Mountains a year ago.' "'A year ago!' said I, sadly. "'I'm ashamed that I've been so long in comin' here,' replied he; 'but, of course, he didn't know that you were alive, and I had been parted from a lady for years--a lover's quarrel--and I had to choose between courtin' her again and marryin' her, or comin' to Farcalladen Rise at once. Well, I went to the altar first.' "'Oh, sir, you've come with the speed of the wind, for now that I've news of him, it is only yesterday that he went away, not years agone. But tell me, does he ever think of me?' I questioned. "'He thinks of you,' he said, 'as one for whom the masses for the dead are spoken; but while I knew him, first and last, the memory of you was with him.' "With that he got off his horse, and said: 'I'll walk with you to his father's home.' "'You'll not do that,' I replied; 'for it's level with the ground. God punish them that did it! And they're lyin' in the glen by the stream that he loved and galloped over many a time.' "'They are dead--they are dead, then,' said he, with his bridle swung loose on his arm and his hat off reverently. "'Gone home to Heaven together,' said I, 'one day and one hour, and a prayer on their lips for the lad; and I closin' their eyes at the last. And before they went they made me sit by them and sing a song that's common here with us; for manny and manny of the strength and pride of Farcalladen Rise have sailed the wide seas north and south, and otherwhere, and comin' back maybe and maybe not.' "'Hark,' he said, very gravely, 'and I'll tell you what it is, for I've heard him sing it, I know, in the worst days and the best days that ever we had, when luck was wicked and big against us and we starvin' on the wallaby track; or when we found the turn in the lane to brighter days.' "And then with me lookin' at him full in the eyes, gentleman though he was,--for comrade he had been with the man I loved,--he said to me there, so finely and kindly, it ought to have brought the dead back from their graves to hear, these words: "'You'll travel far and wide, dear, but you'll come back again, You'll come back to your father and your mother in the glen, Although we should be lyin' 'neath the heather grasses then You'll be comin' back, my darlin'!' "'You'll see the icebergs sailin' along the wintry foam, The white hair of the breakers, and the wild swans as they roam; But you'll not forget the rowan beside your father's home-- You'll be comin' back, my darlin'.'" Here the girl paused longer than usual, and the priest dropped his forehead in his hand sadly. "I've brought grief to your kind heart, father," she said. "No, no," he replied, "not sorrow at all; but I was born on the Liffey side, though it's forty years and more since I left it, and I'm an old man now. That song I knew well, and the truth and the heart of it too. . . . I am listening." "Well, together we went to the grave of the father and mother, and the place where the home had been, and for a long time he was silent, as though they who slept beneath the sod were his, and not another's; but at last he said: "'And what will you do? I don't quite know where he is, though; when last I heard from him and his comrades, they were in the Pipi Valley.' "My heart was full of joy; for though I saw how touched he was because of what he saw, it was all common to my sight, and I had grieved much, but had had little delight; and I said: "'There's only one thing to be done. He cannot come back here, and I must go to him--that is,' said I, 'if you think he cares for me still, --for my heart quakes at the thought that he might have changed.' "'I know his heart,' said he, 'and you'll find him, I doubt not, the same, though he buried you long ago in a lonely tomb,--the tomb of a sweet remembrance, where the flowers are everlastin'.' Then after more words he offered me money with which to go; but I said to him that the love that couldn't carry itself across the sea by the strength of the hands and the sweat of the brow was no love at all; and that the harder was the road to him the gladder I'd be, so that it didn't keep me too long, and brought me to him at last. "He looked me up and down very earnestly for a minute, and then he said: 'What is there under the roof of heaven like the love of an honest woman! It makes the world worth livin' in.' "'Yes,' said I, 'when love has hope, and a place to lay its head.' "'Take this,' said he--and he drew from his pocket his watch--'and carry it to him with the regard of Duke Lawless, and this for yourself'-- fetching from his pocket a revolver and putting it into my hands; 'for the prairies are but rough places after all, and it's better to be safe than--worried. . . . Never fear though but the prairies will bring back the finest of blooms to your cheek, if fair enough it is now, and flush his eye with pride of you; and God be with you both, if a sinner may say that, and breakin' no saint's prerogative.' And he mounted to ride away, havin' shaken my hand like a brother; but he turned again before he went, and said: 'Tell him and his comrades that I'll shoulder my gun and join them before the world is a year older, if I can. For that land is God's land, and its people are my people, and I care not who knows it, whatever here I be.' "I worked my way across the sea, and stayed awhile in the East earning money to carry me over the land and into the Pipi Valley. I joined a party of emigrants that were goin' westward, and travelled far with them. But they quarrelled and separated, I goin' with these that I liked best. One night though, I took my horse and left; for I knew there was evil in the heart of a man who sought me continually, and the thing drove me mad. I rode until my horse could stumble no farther, and then I took the saddle for a pillow and slept on the bare ground. And in the morning I got up and rode on, seein' no house nor human being for manny and manny a mile. When everything seemed hopeless I came suddenly upon a camp. But I saw that there was only one man there, and I should have turned back, but that I was worn and ill, and, moreover, I had ridden almost upon him. But he was kind. He shared his food with me, and asked me where I was goin'. I told him, and also that I had quarrelled with those of my party and had left them nothing more. He seemed to wonder that I was goin' to Pipi Valley; and when I had finished my tale he said: 'Well, I must tell you that I am not good company for you. I have a name that doesn't pass at par up here. To speak plain truth, troopers are looking for me, and --strange as it may be--for a crime which I didn't commit. That is the foolishness of the law. But for this I'm making for the American border, beyond which, treaty or no treaty, a man gets refuge.' "He was silent after that, lookin' at me thoughtfully the while, but in a way that told me I might trust him, evil though he called himself. At length he said: 'I know a good priest, Father Corraine, who has a cabin sixty miles or more from here, and I'll guide you to him, if so be you can trust a half-breed and a gambler, and one men call an outlaw. If not, I'm feared it'll go hard with you; for the Cypress Hills are not easy travel, as I've known this many a year. And should you want a name to call me, Pretty Pierre will do, though my godfathers and godmothers did different for me before they went to Heaven.' And nothing said he irreverently, father." Here the priest looked up and answered: "Yes, yes, I know him well--an evil man, and yet he has suffered too . . . Well, well, my daughter?" "At that he took his pistol from his pocket and handed it. 'Take that,' he said. 'It will make you safer with me, and I'll ride ahead of you, and we shall reach there by sundown, I hope.' "And I would not take his pistol, but, shamed a little, showed him the one Sir Duke Lawless gave me. 'That's right,' he said, 'and, maybe, it's better that I should carry mine, for, as I said, there are anxious gentlemen lookin' for me, who wish to give me a quiet but dreary home. And see,' he added, 'if they should come you will be safe, for they sit in the judgment seat, and the statutes hang at their saddles, and I'll say this for them, that a woman to them is as a saint of God out here where women and saints are few.' "I do not speak as he spoke, for his words had a turn of French; but I knew that, whatever he was, I should travel peaceably with him. Yet I saw that he would be runnin' the risk of his own safety for me, and I told him that I could not have him do it; but he talked me lightly down, and we started. We had gone but a little distance, when there galloped over a ridge upon us, two men of the party I had left, and one, I saw, was the man I hated; and I cried out and told Pretty Pierre. He wheeled his horse, and held his pistol by him. They said that I should come with them, and they told a dreadful lie--that I was a runaway wife; but Pierre answered them they lied. At this, one rode forward suddenly, and clutched me at my waist to drag me from my horse. At this, Pierre's pistol was thrust in his face, and Pierre bade him cease, which he did; but the other came down with a pistol showin', and Pierre, seein' they were determined, fired; and the man that clutched at me fell from his horse. Then the other drew off; and Pierre got down, and stooped, and felt the man's heart, and said to the other: 'Take your friend away, for he is dead; but drop that pistol of yours on the ground first.' And the man did so; and Pierre, as he looked at the dead man, added: 'Why did he make me kill him?' "Then the two tied the body to the horse, and the man rode away with it. We travelled on without speakin' for a long time, and then I heard him say absently: 'I am sick of that. When once you have played shuttlecock with human life, you have to play it to the end--that is the penalty. But a woman is a woman, and she must be protected.' Then afterward he turned and asked me if I had friends in Pipi Valley; and because what he had done for me had worked upon me, I told him of the man I was goin' to find. And he started in his saddle, and I could see by the way he twisted the mouth of his horse that I had stirred him." Here the priest interposed: "What is the name of the man in Pipi Valley to whom you are going?" And the girl replied: "Ah, father, have I not told you? It is Shon McGann--of Farcalladen Rise." At this, Father Corraine seemed suddenly troubled, and he looked strangely and sadly at her. But the girl's eyes were fastened on the candle in the window, as if she saw her story in it; and she continued: "A colour spread upon him, and then left him pale; and he said: 'To Shon McGann--you are going to him? Think of that--that!' For an instant I thought a horrible smile played upon his face, and I grew frightened, and said to him: 'You know him. You are not sorry that you are helping me? You and Shon McGann are not enemies?' "After a moment the smile that struck me with dread passed, and he said, as he drew himself up with a shake: 'Shon McGann and I were good friends- as good as ever shared a blanket or split a loaf, though he was free of any evil, and I failed of any good.... Well, there came a change. We parted. We could meet no more; but who could have guessed this thing? Yet, hear me--I am no enemy of Shon McGann, as let my deeds to you prove.' And he paused again, but added presently: 'It's better you should have come now than two years ago. "And I had a fear in my heart, and to this asked him why. 'Because then he was a friend of mine,' he said, 'and ill always comes to those who are such.' I was troubled at this, and asked him if Shon was in Pipi Valley yet. 'I do not know,' said he, 'for I've travelled long and far from there; still, while I do not wish to put doubt into your mind, I have a thought he may be gone. . . . He had a gay heart,' he continued, 'and we saw brave days together.' "And though I questioned him, he told me little more, but became silent, scannin' the plains as we rode; but once or twice he looked at me in a strange fashion, and passed his hand across his forehead, and a grey look came upon his face. I asked him if he was not well. 'Only a kind of fightin' within,' he said; 'such things soon pass, and it is well they do, or we should break to pieces.' "And I said again that I wished not to bring him into danger. And he replied that these matters were accordin' to Fate; that men like him must go on when once the die is cast, for they cannot turn back. It seemed to me a bitter creed, and I was sorry for him. Then for hours we kept an almost steady silence, and comin' at last to the top of a rise of land he pointed to a spot far off on the plains, and said that you, father, lived there; and that he would go with me still a little way, and then leave me. I urged him to go at once, but he would not, and we came down into the plains. He had not ridden far when he said sharply: "'The Riders of the Plains, those gentlemen who seek me, are there--see! Ride on or stay, which you please. If you go you will reach the priest, if you stay here where I shall leave you, you will see me taken perhaps, and it may be fightin' or death; but you will be safe with them. On the whole, it is best, perhaps, that you should ride away to the priest. They might not believe all that you told them, ridin' with me as you are.' "But I think a sudden madness again came upon me. Rememberin' what things were done by women for refugees in old Donegal, and that this man had risked his life for me, I swung my horse round nose and nose with his, and drew my revolver, and said that I should see whatever came to him. He prayed me not to do so wild a thing; but when I refused, and pushed on along with him, makin' at an angle for some wooded hills, I saw that a smile played upon his face. We had almost reached the edge of the wood when a bullet whistled by us. At that the smile passed and a strange look came upon him, and he said to me: "'This must end here. I think you guess I have no coward's blood; but I am sick to the teeth of fightin'. I do not wish to shock you, but I swear, unless you turn and ride away to the left towards the priest's house, I shall save those fellows further trouble by killin' myself here; and there,' said he, 'would be a pleasant place to die--at the feet of a woman who trusted you.' "I knew by the look in his eye he would keep his word. "'Oh, is this so?' I said. "'It is so,' he replied, 'and it shall be done quickly, for the courage to death is on me.' "'But if I go, you will still try to escape?' I said. And he answered that he would. Then I spoke a God-bless-you, at which he smiled and shook his head, and leanin' over, touched my hand, and spoke low: 'When you see Shon McGann, tell him what I did, and say that we are even now. Say also that you called Heaven to bless me.' Then we swung away from each other, and the troopers followed after him, but let me go my way; from which, I guessed, they saw I was a woman. And as I rode I heard shots, and turned to see; but my horse stumbled on a hole and we fell together, and when I waked, I saw that the poor beast's legs were broken. So I ended its misery, and made my way as best I could by the stars to your house; but I turned sick and fainted at the door, and knew no more until this hour. . . . You thought me dead, father?" The priest bowed his head, and said: "These are strange, sad things, my child; and they shall seem stranger to you when you hear all." "When I hear all! Ah, tell me, father, do you know Shon McGann? Can you take me to him?" "I know him, but I do not know where he is. He left the Pipi Valley eighteen months ago, and I never saw him afterwards; still I doubt not he is somewhere on the plains, and we shall find him--we shall find him, please Heaven." "Is he a good lad, father?" "He is brave, and he was always kind. He came to me before he left the valley--for he had trouble--and said to me: 'Father, I am going away, and to what place is far from me to know, but wherever it is, I'll live a life that's fit for men, and not like a loafer on God's world;' and he gave me money for masses to be said--for the dead." The girl put out her hand. "Hush! hush!" she said. "Let me think. Masses for the dead.... What dead? Not for me; he thought me dead long, long ago." "No; not for you," was the slow reply. She noticed his hesitation, and said: "Speak. I know that there is sorrow on him. Someone--someone--he loved?" "Someone he loved," was the reply. "And she died?" The priest bowed his head. "She was his wife--Shon's wife"? and Mary Callen could not hide from her words the hurt she felt. "I married her to him, but yet she was not his wife." There was a keen distress in the girl's voice. "Father, tell me, tell me what you mean." "Hush, and I will tell you all. He married her, thinking, and she thinking, that she was a widowed woman. But her husband came back. A terrible thing happened. The woman believing, at a painful time, that he who came back was about to take Shon's life, fired at him, and wounded him, and then killed herself." Mary Callen raised herself upon her elbow, and looked at the priest in piteous bewilderment. "It is dreadful," she said. . . . "Poor woman! . . . And he had forgotten--forgotten me. I was dead to him, and am dead to him now. There's nothing left but to draw the cold sheet of the grave over me. Better for me if I had never come--if I had never come, and instead were lyin' by his father and mother beneath the rowan." The priest took her wrist firmly in his. "These are not brave nor Christian words, from a brave and Christian girl. But I know that grief makes one's words wild. Shon McGann shall be found. In the days when I saw him most and best, he talked of you as an angel gone, and he had never sought another woman had he known that you lived. The Mounted Police, the Riders of the Plains, travel far and wide. But now, there has come from the farther West a new detachment to Fort Cypress, and they may be able to help us. But listen. There is something more. The man Pretty Pierre, did he not speak puzzling words concerning himself and Shon McGann? And did he not say to you at the last that they were even now? Well, can you not guess?" Mary Callen's bosom heaved painfully and her eyes stared so at the candle in the window that they seemed to grow one with the flame. At last a new look crept into them; a thought made the lids close quickly as though it burned them. When they opened again they were full of tears that shone in the shadow and dropped slowly on her cheeks and flowed on and on, quivering too in her throat. The priest said: "You understand, my child?" And she answered: "I understand. Pierre, the outlaw, was her husband." Father Corraine rose and sat beside the table, his book of offices open before him. At length he said: "There is much that might be spoken; for the Church has words for every hour of man's life, whatever it be; but there comes to me now a word to say, neither from prayer nor psalm, but from the songs of a country where good women are; where however poor the fireside, the loves beside it are born of the love of God, though the tongue be angry now and then, the foot stumble, and the hand quick at a blow." Then, with a soft, ringing voice, he repeated: "'New friends will clasp your hand, dear, new faces on you smile-- You'll bide with them and love them, but you'll long for us the while; For the word across the water, and the farewell by the stile-- For the true heart's here, my darlin'.'" Mary Callen's tears flowed afresh at first; but soon after the voice ceased she closed her eyes and her sobs stopped, and Father Corraine sat down and became lost in thought as he watched the candle. Then there went a word among the spirits watching that he was not thinking of the candle, or of them that the candle was to light on the way, nor even of this girl near him, but of a summer forty years gone when he was a goodly youth, with the red on his lip and the light in his eye, and before him, leaning on a stile, was a lass with-- " . . . cheeks like the dawn of day." And all the good world swam in circles, eddying ever inward until it streamed intensely and joyously through her eyes "blue as the fairy flax." And he had carried the remembrance of this away into the world with him, but had never gone back again. He had travelled beyond the seas to live among savages and wear out his life in self-denial; and now he had come to the evening of his life, a benignant figure in a lonely land. And as he sat here murmuring mechanically bits of an office, his heart and mind were with a sacred and distant past. Yet the spirits recorded both these things on their tablets, as though both were worthy of their remembrance. He did not know that he kept repeating two sentences over and over to himself: "'Quoniam ipse liberavit me de laqueo venantium et a verbo aspero. Quoniam angelis suis mandavit de te: ut custodiant te in omnibus viis tuis.'" These he said at first softly to himself, but unconsciously his voice became louder, so that the girl heard, and she said: "Father Corraine, what are those words? I do not understand them, but they sound comforting." And he, waking from his dream, changed the Latin into English, and said: "'For he hath delivered me from the snare of the hunter, and from the sharp sword. For he hath given his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.'" "The words are good," she said. He then told her he was going out, but that he should be within call, saying, at the same time, that someone would no doubt arrive from Fort Cypress soon: and he went from the house. Then the girl rose slowly, crept lamely to a chair and sat down. Outside, the priest paced up and down, stopping now and then, and listening as if for horses' hoofs. At last he walked some distance away from the house, deeply lost in thought, and he did not notice that a man came slowly, heavily, to the door of the hut, and opening it, entered. Mary Callen rose from her seat with a cry in which was timidity, pity, and something of horror; for it was Pretty Pierre. She recoiled, but seeing how he swayed with weakness, and that his clothes had blood upon them, she helped him to a chair. He looked up at her with an enigmatical smile, but he did not speak. "Oh," she whispered, "you are wounded!" He nodded; but still he did not speak. Then his lips moved dryly. She brought him water. He drank deeply, and a sigh of relief escaped him. "You got here safely," he now said. "I am glad of that--though you, too, are hurt." She briefly told him how, and then he said: "Well, I suppose you know all of me now?" "I know what happened in Pipi Valley," she said, timidly and wearily. "Father Corraine told me." "Where is he?" When she had answered him, he said: "And you are willing to speak with me still?" "You saved me," was her brief, convincing reply. "How did you escape? Did you fight?" "No," he said. "It is strange. I did not fight at all. As I said to you, I was sick of blood. These men were only doing their duty. I might have killed two or three of them, and have escaped, but to what good? When they shot my horse, my good Sacrament,--and put a bullet into this shoulder, I crawled away still, and led them a dance, and doubled on them; and here I am." "It is wonderful that they have not been here," she said. "Yes, it is wonderful; but be very sure they will be with that candle in the window. Why is it there?" She told him. He lifted his brows in stoic irony, and said: "Well, we shall have an army of them soon." He rose again to his feet. "I do not wish to die, and I always said that I would never go to prison. Do you understand?" "Yes," she replied. She went immediately to the window, took the candle from it, and put it behind an improvised shade. No sooner was this done than Father Corraine entered the room, and seeing the outlaw, said "You have come here, Pierre?" And his face showed wonder and anxiety. "I have come, mon pere, for sanctuary." "For sanctuary! But, my son, if I vex not Heaven by calling you so, why"--he saw Pierre stagger slightly. "But you are wounded." He put his arm round the other's shoulder, and supported him till he recovered himself. Then he set to work to bandage anew the wound, from which Pierre himself had not unskilfully extracted the bullet. While doing so, the outlaw said to him: "Father Corraine, I am hunted like a coyote for a crime I did not commit. But if I am arrested they will no doubt charge me with other things-- ancient things. Well, I have said that I should never be sent to gaol, and I never shall; but I do not wish to die at this moment, and I do not wish to fight. What is there left?" "How do you come here, Pierre?" He lifted his eyes heavily to Mary Callen, and she told Father Corraine what had been told her. When she had finished, Pierre added: "I am no coward, as you will witness; but as I said, neither gaol nor death do I wish. Well, if they should come here, and you said, Pierre is not here, even though I was in the next room, they would believe you, and they would not search. Well, I ask such sanctuary." The priest recoiled and raised his hand in protest. Then, after a moment, he said: "How do you deserve this? Do you know what you ask?" "Ah, oui, I know it is immense, and I deserve nothing: and in return I can offer nothing, not even that I will repent. And I have done no good in the world; but still perhaps I am worth the saving, as may be seen in the end. As for you, well, you will do a little wrong so that the end will be right. So?" The priest's eyes looked out long and sadly at the man from under his venerable brows, as though he would see through him and beyond him to that end; and at last he spoke in a low, firm voice: "Pierre, you have been a bad man; but sometimes you have been generous, and of a few good acts I know--" "No, not good," the other interrupted. "I ask this of your charity." "There is the law, and my conscience." "The law! the law!" and there was sharp satire in the half-breed's voice. "What has it done in the West? Think, 'mon pere!' Do you not know a hundred cases where the law has dealt foully? There was more justice before we had law. Law--" And he named over swiftly, scornfully, a score of names and incidents, to which Father Corraine listened intently. "But," said Pierre, gently, at last, "but for your conscience, m'sieu', that is greater than law. For you are a good man and a wise man; and you know that I shall pay my debts of every kind some sure day. That should satisfy your justice, but you are merciful for the moment, and you will spare until the time be come, until the corn is ripe in the ear. Why should I plead? It is foolish. Still, it is my whim, of which, perhaps, I shall be sorry tomorrow . . . Hark!" he added, and then shrugged his shoulders and smiled. There were sounds of hoof beats coming faintly to them. Father Corraine threw open the door of the other room of the hut, and said "Go in there--Pierre. We shall see . . . we shall see." The outlaw looked at the priest, as if hesitating; but, after, nodded meaningly to himself, and entered the room and shut the door. The priest stood listening. When the hoof-beats stopped, he opened the door, and went out. In the dark he could see that men were dismounting from their horses. He stood still and waited. Presently a trooper stepped forward and said warmly, yet brusquely, as became his office: "Father Corraine, we meet again!" The priest's face was overswept by many expressions, in which marvel and trouble were uppermost, while joy was in less distinctness. "Surely," he said, "it is Shon McGann." "Shon McGann, and no other.--I that laughed at the law for many a year, though never breaking it beyond repair,--took your advice, Father Corraine, and here I am, holding that law now as my bosom friend at the saddle's pommel. Corporal Shon McGann, at your service." They clasped hands, and the priest said: "You have come at my call from Fort Cypress?" "Yes. But not these others. They are after a man that's played ducks and drakes with the statutes--Heaven be merciful to him, I say. For there's naught I treasure against him; the will of God bein' in it all, with some doin' of the Devil, too, maybe." Pretty Pierre, standing with ear to the window of the dark room, heard all this, and he pressed his upper lip hard with his forefinger, as if something disturbed him. Shon continued. "I'm glad I wasn't sent after him as all these here know; for it's little I'd like to clap irons on his wrists, or whistle him to come to me with a Winchester or a Navy. So I'm here on my business, and they're here on theirs. Though we come together it's because we met each other hereaway. They've a thought that, maybe, Pretty Pierre has taken refuge with you. They'll little like to disturb you, I know. But with dead in your house, and you givin' the word of truth, which none other could fall from your lips, they'll go on their way to look elsewhere." The priest's face was pinched, and there was a wrench at his heart. He turned to the others. A trooper stepped forward. "Father Corraine," he said, "it is my duty to search your house; but not a foot will I stretch across your threshold if you say no, and give the word that the man is not with you." "Corporal McGann," said the priest, "the woman whom I thought was dead did not die, as you shall see. There is no need for inquiry. But she will go with you to Fort Cypress. As for the other, you say that Father Corraine's threshold is his own, and at his own command. His home is now a sanctuary--for the afflicted." He went towards the door. As he did so, Mary Callen, who had been listening inside the room with shaking frame and bursting heart, dropped on her knees beside the table, her head in her arms. The door opened. "See," said the priest, "a woman who is injured and suffering." "Ah," rejoined the trooper, "perhaps it is the woman who was riding with the half-breed. We found her dead horse." The priest nodded. Shon McGann looked at the crouching figure by the table pityingly. As he looked he was stirred, he knew not why. And she, though she did not look, knew that his gaze was on her; and all her will was spent in holding her eyes from his face, and from crying out to him. "And Pretty Pierre," said the trooper, "is not here with her?" There was an unfathomable sadness in the priest's eyes, as, with a slight motion of the hand towards the room, he said: "You see--he is not here." The trooper and his men immediately mounted; but one of them, young Tim Kearney, slid from his horse, and came and dropped on his knee in front of the priest. "It's many a day," he said, "since before God or man I bent a knee--more shame to me for that, and for mad days gone; but I care not who knows it, I want a word of blessin' from the man that's been out here like a saint in the wilderness, with a heart like the Son o' God." The priest looked at the man at first as if scarce comprehending this act so familiar to him, then he slowly stretched out his hand, said some words in benediction, and made the sacred gesture. But his face had a strange and absent look, and he held the hand poised, even when the man had risen and mounted his horse. One by one the troopers rode through the faint belt of light that stretched from the door, and were lost in the darkness, the thud of their horses' hoofs echoing behind them. But a change had come over Corporal Shon McGann. He looked at Father Corraine with concern and perplexity. He alone of those who were there had caught the unreal note in the proceedings. His eyes were bent on the darkness into which the men had gone, and his fingers toyed for an instant with his whistle; but he said a hard word of himself under his breath, and turned to meet Father Corraine's hand upon his arm. "Shon McGann," the priest said, "I have words to say to you concerning this poor girl," "You wish to have her taken to the Fort, I suppose? What was she doing with Pretty Pierre?" "I wish her taken to her home." "Where is her home, father?" And his eyes were cast with trouble on the girl, though he could assign no cause for that. "Her home, Shon,"--the priest's voice was very gentle--"her home was where they sing such words as these of a wanderer: "'You'll hear the wild birds singin' beneath a brighter sky,' The roof-tree of your home, dear, it will be grand and high; But you'll hunger for the hearthstone where a child you used to lie, You'll be comin' back, my darlin'."' During these words Shon's face ran white, then red; and now he stepped inside the door like one in a dream, and the girl's face was lifted to his as though he had called her. "Mary--Mary Callen!" he cried. His arms spread out, then dropped to his side, and he fell on his knees by the table facing her, and looked at her with love and horror warring in his face; for the remembrance that she had been with Pierre was like the hand of the grave upon him. Moving not at all, she looked at him, a numb despondency in her face. Suddenly Shon's look grew stern, and he was about to rise; but Father Corraine put a hand on his shoulder, and said: "Stay where you are, man--on your knees. There is your place just now. Be not so quick to judge, and remember your own sins before you charge others without knowledge. Listen now to me." And he spoke Mary Callen's tale as he knew it, and as she had given it to him, not forgetting to mention that she had been told the thing which had occurred in Pipi Valley. The heroic devotion of this woman, and Pretty Pierre's act of friendship to her, together with the swift panorama of his past across the seas, awoke the whole man in Shon, as the staunch life that he had lately led rendered it possible. There was a grave, kind look upon his face when he rose at the ending of the tale, and came to her, saying: "Mary, it is I who need forgiveness. Will you come now to the home you wanted"? and he stretched his arms to her. . . . An hour after, as the three sat there, the door of the other room opened, and Pretty Pierre came out silently, and was about to pass from the hut; but the priest put a hand on his arm, and said: "'Where do you go, Pierre?" Pierre shrugged his shoulder slightly: "I do not know. 'Mon Dieu!'--that I have put this upon you!--you that never spoke but the truth." "You have made my sin of no avail," the priest replied; and he motioned towards Shon McGann, who was now risen to his feet, Mary clinging to his arm. "Father Corraine," said Shon, "it is my duty to arrest this man; but I cannot do it, would not do it, if he came and offered his arms for the steel. I'll take the wrong of this now, sir, and such shame as there is in that falsehood on my shoulders. And she here and I, and this man too, I doubt not, will carry your sin--as you call it--to our graves, without shame." Father Corraine shook his head sadly, and made no reply, for his soul was heavy. He motioned them all to sit down. And they sat there by the light of a flickering candle, with the door bolted and a cassock hung across the window, lest by any chance this uncommon thing should be seen. But the priest remained in a shadowed corner, with a little book in his hand, and he was long on his knees. And when morning came they had neither slept nor changed the fashion of their watch, save for a moment now and then, when Pierre suffered from the pain of his wound, and silently passed up and down the little room. The morning was half gone when Shon McGann and Mary Callen stood beside their horses, ready to mount and go; for Mary had persisted that she could travel--joy makes such marvellous healing. When the moment of parting came, Pierre was not there. Mary whispered to her lover concerning this. The priest went to the door of the but and called him. He came out slowly. "Pierre," said Shon, "there's a word to be said between us that had best be spoken now, though it's not aisy. It's little you or I will care to meet again in this world. There's been credit given and debts paid by both of us since the hour when we first met; and it needs thinking to tell which is the debtor now, for deeds are hard to reckon; but, before God, I believe it's meself;" and he turned and looked fondly at Mary Callen. And Pierre replied: "Shon McGann, I make no reckoning close; but we will square all accounts here, as you say, and for the last time; for never again shall we meet, if it's within my will or doing. But I say I am the debtor; and if I pay not here, there will come a time!" and he caught his shoulder as it shrunk in pain of his wound. He tapped the wound lightly, and said with irony: "This is my note of hand for my debt, Shon McGann. Eh, bien!" Then he tossed his fingers indolently towards Shon, and turning his eyes slowly to Mary Callen, raised his hat in good-bye. She put out her hand impulsively to him, but Pierre, shaking his head, looked away. Shon put his hand gently on her arm. "No, no," he said in a whisper, "there can be no touch of hands between us." And Pierre, looking up, added: "C'est vrai. That is the truth. You go-- home. I got to hide. So--so." And he turned and went into the hut. The others set their faces northward, and Father Corraine walked beside Mary Callen's horse, talking quietly of their future life, and speaking, as he would never speak again, of days in that green land of their birth. At length, upon a dividing swell of the prairie, he paused to say farewell. Many times the two turned to see, and he was there, looking after them; his forehead bared to the clear inspiring wind, his grey hair blown back, his hands clasped. Before descending the trough of a great landwave, they turned for the last time, and saw him standing motionless, the one solitary being in all their wide horizon. But outside the line of vision there sat a man in a prairie hut, whose eyes travelled over the valley of blue sky stretching away beyond the morning, whose face was pale and cold. For hours he sat unmoving, and when, at last, someone gently touched him on the shoulder, he only shook his head, and went on thinking. He was busy with the grim ledger of his life. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: An inner sorrow is a consuming fire Philosophy which could separate the petty from the prodigious Remember your own sins before you charge others ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE": An inner sorrow is a consuming fire At first--and at the last--he was kind Awkward for your friends and gratifying to your enemies Carrying with him the warm atmosphere of a good woman's love Courage; without which, men are as the standing straw Delicate revenge which hath its hour with every man Evil is half-accidental, half-natural Fascinating colour which makes evil appear to be good Freedom is the first essential of the artistic mind Good is often an occasion more than a condition Had the luck together, all kinds and all weathers He does not love Pierre; but he does not pretend to love him Hunger for happiness is robbery I was born insolent If one remembers, why should the other forget Instinct for detecting veracity, having practised on both sides Irishmen have gifts for only two things--words and women It is not Justice that fills the gaols, but Law It is not much to kill or to die--that is in the game Knowing that his face would never be turned from me Likenesses between the perfectly human and the perfectly animal Longed to touch, oftener than they did, the hands of children Meditation is the enemy of action Men and women are unwittingly their own executioners More idle than wicked Mothers always forgive My excuses were making bad infernally worse Noise is not battle Nothing so good as courage, nothing so base as the shifting eye Philosophy which could separate the petty from the prodigious Reconciling the preacher and the sinner, as many another has Remember your own sins before you charge others She was beginning to understand that evil is not absolute She wasn't young, but she seemed so The soul of goodness in things evil The Injin speaks the truth, perhaps--eye of red man multipies The Government cherish the Injin much in these days The gods made last to humble the pride of men--there was rum The higher we go the faster we live The Barracks of the Free The world is not so bad as is claimed for it Time is the test, and Time will have its way with me Whatever has been was a dream; whatever is now is real Where I should never hear the voice of the social Thou must You do not shout dinner till you have your knife in the loaf A ROMANY OF THE SNOWS, Complete BEING A CONTINUATION OF THE PERSONAL HISTORIES OF "PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE" AND THE LAST EXISTING RECORDS OF PRETTY PIERRE By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS Volume 1. ACROSS THE JUMPING SANDHILLS A LOVELY BULLY THE FILIBUSTER THE GIFT OF THE SIMPLE KING Volume 2. MALACHI THE LAKE OF THE GREAT SLAVE THE RED PATROL THE GOING OF THE WHITE SWAN AT BAMBER'S BOOM Volume 3. THE BRIDGE HOUSE THE EPAULETTES THE HOUSE WITH THE BROKEN SHUTTER THE FINDING OF FINGALL THREE COMMANDMENTS IN THE VULGAR TONGUE Volume 4. LITTLE BABICHE AT POINT O' BUGLES THE SPOIL OF THE PUMA THE TRAIL OF THE SUN DOGS THE PILOT OF BELLE AMOUR Volume 5. THE CRUISE OF THE "NINETY-NINE" A ROMANY OF THE SNOWS THE PLUNDERER To SIR WILLIAM C. VAN HORNE. MY DEAR SIR WILLIAM, To the public it will seem fitting that these new tales of "Pierre and His People" should be inscribed to one whose notable career is inseparably associated with the life and development of the Far North. But there is a deeper and more personal significance in this dedication, for some of the stories were begotten in late gossip by your fireside; and furthermore, my little book is given a kind of distinction, in having on its fore-page the name of one well known as a connoisseur of art and a lover of literature. Believe me, DEAR SIR WILLIAM, Sincerely yours, GILBERT PARKER. 7 PARK PLACE. ST. JAMES'S. LONDON. S. W. INTRODUCTION It can hardly be said that there were two series of Pierre stories. There never was but one series, in fact. Pierre moved through all the thirty-nine stories of Pierre and His People and A Romany of the Snows without any thought on my part of putting him out of existence in one series and bringing him to life again in another. The publication of the stories was continuous, and at the time that Pierre and His People appeared several of those which came between the covers of A Romany of the Snows were passing through the pages of magazines in England and America. All of the thirty-nine stories might have appeared in one volume under the title of Pierre and His People, but they were published in two volumes with different titles in England, and in three volumes in America, simply because there was enough material for the two and the three volumes. In America The Adventurer of the North was broken up into two volumes at the urgent request of my then publishers, Messrs. Stone & Kimball, who had the gift of producing beautiful books, but perhaps had not the same gift of business. These two American volumes succeeding Pierre were published under the title of An Adventurer of the North and A Romany of the Snows respectively. Now, the latter title, A Romany of the Snows, was that which I originally chose for the volume published in England as An Adventurer of the North. I was persuaded to reject the title, A Romany of the Snows, by my English publisher, and I have never forgiven myself since for being so weak. If a publisher had the infallible instinct for these things he would not be a publisher-- he would be an author; and though an author may make mistakes like everybody else, the average of his hits will be far higher than the average of his misses in such things. The title, An Adventurer of the North, is to my mind cumbrous and rough, and difficult in the mouth. Compare it with some of the stories within the volume itself: for instance, The Going of the White Swan, A Lovely Bully, At Bamber's Boom, At Point o' Bugles, The Pilot of Belle Amour, The Spoil of the Puma, A Romany of the Snows, and The Finding of Fingall. There it was, however; I made the mistake and it sticks; but the book now will be published in this subscription edition under the title first chosen by me, A Romany of the Snows. It really does express what Pierre was. Perhaps some of the stories in A Romany of the Snows have not the sentimental simplicity of some of the earlier stories in Pierre and His People, which take hold where a deeper and better work might not seize the general public; but, reading these later stories after twenty years, I feel that I was moving on steadily to a larger, firmer command of my material, and was getting at closer grips with intimate human things. There is some proof of what I say in the fact that one of the stories in A Romany of the Snows, called The Going of the White Swan, appropriately enough published originally in Scribner's Magazine, has had an extraordinary popularity. It has been included in the programmes of reciters from the Murrumbidgee to the Vaal, from John O'Groat's to Land's End, and is now being published as a separate volume in England and America. It has been dramatised several times, and is more alive to-day than it was when it was published nearly twenty years ago. Almost the same may be said of The Three Commandments in the Vulgar Tongue. It has been said that, apart from the colour, form, and setting, the incidents of these Pierre stories might have occurred anywhere. That is true beyond a doubt, and it exactly represents my attitude of mind. Every human passion, every incident springing out of a human passion to-day, had its counterpart in the time of Amenhotep. The only difference is in the setting, is in the language or dialect which is the vehicle of expression, and in race and character, which are the media of human idiosyncrasy. There is nothing new in anything that one may write, except the outer and visible variation of race, character, and country, which reincarnates the everlasting human ego and its scena. The atmosphere of a story or novel is what temperament is to a man. Atmosphere cannot be created; it is not a matter of skill; it is a matter of personality, of the power of visualisation, of feeling for the thing which the mind sees. It has been said that my books possess atmosphere. This has often been said when criticism has been more or less acute upon other things; but I think that in all my experience there has never been a critic who has not credited my books with that quality; and I should say that Pierre and His People and A Romany of the Snows have an atmosphere in which the beings who make the stories live seem natural to their environment. It is this quality which gives vitality to the characters themselves. Had I not been able to create atmosphere which would have given naturalness to Pierre and his friends, some of the characters, and many of the incidents, would have seemed monstrosities --melodramatic episodes merely. The truth is, that while the episode, which is the first essential of a short story, was always in the very forefront of my imagination, the character or characters in the episode meant infinitely more to me. To my mind the episode was always the consequence of character. That almost seems a paradox; but apart from the phenomena of nature, as possible incidents in a book, the episodes which make what are called "human situations" are, in most instances, the sequence of character and are incidental to the law of the character set in motion. As I realise it now, subconsciously, my mind and imagination were controlled by this point of view in the days of the writing of Pierre and His People. In the life and adventures of Pierre and his people I came, as I think, to a certain command of my material, without losing real sympathy with the simple nature of things. Dexterity has its dangers, and one of its dangers is artificiality. It is very difficult to be skilful and to ring true. If I have not wholly succeeded in A Romany of the Snows, I think I have not wholly failed, as the continued appeal of a few of the stories would seem to show. ACROSS THE JUMPING SANDHILLS "Here now, Trader; aisy, aisy! Quicksands I've seen along the sayshore, and up to me half-ways I've been in wan, wid a double-and-twist in the rope to pull me out; but a suckin' sand in the open plain--aw, Trader, aw! the like o' that niver a bit saw I." So said Macavoy the giant, when the thing was talked of in his presence. "Well, I tell you it's true, and they're not three miles from Fort O'Glory. The Company's--[Hudson's Bay Company]--men don't talk about it --what's the use! Travellers are few that way, and you can't get the Indians within miles of them. Pretty Pierre knows all about them--better than anyone else almost. He'll stand by me in it--eh, Pierre?" Pierre, the half-breed gambler and adventurer, took no notice, and was silent for a time, intent on his cigarette; and in the pause Mowley the trapper said: "Pierre's gone back on you, Trader. P'r'aps ye haven't paid him for the last lie. I go one better, you stand by me--my treat --that's the game!" "Aw, the like o' that," added Macavoy reproachfully. "Aw, yer tongue to the roof o' yer mouth, Mowley. Liars all men may be, but that's wid wimmin or landlords. But, Pierre, aff another man's bat like that--aw, Mowley, fill your mouth wid the bowl o' yer pipe." Pierre now looked up at the three men, rolling another cigarette as he did so; but he seemed to be thinking of a distant matter. Meeting the three pairs of eyes fixed on him, his own held them for a moment musingly; then he lit his cigarette, and, half reclining on the bench where he sat, he began to speak, talking into the fire as it were. "I was at Guidon Hill, at the Company's post there. It was the fall of the year, when you feel that there is nothing so good as life, and the air drinks like wine. You think that sounds like a woman or a priest? Mais, no. The seasons are strange. In the spring I am lazy and sad; in the fall I am gay, I am for the big things to do. This matter was in the fall. I felt that I must move. Yet, what to do? There was the thing. Cards, of course. But that's only for times, not for all seasons. So I was like a wild dog on a chain. I had a good horse--Tophet, black as a coal, all raw bones and joint, and a reach like a moose. His legs worked like piston-rods. But, as I said, I did not know where to go or what to do. So we used to sit at the Post loafing: in the daytime watching the empty plains all panting for travellers, like a young bride waiting her husband for the first time." Macavoy regarded Pierre with delight. He had an unctuous spirit, and his heart was soft for women--so soft that he never had had one on his conscience, though he had brushed gay smiles off the lips of many. But that was an amiable weakness in a strong man. "Aw, Pierre," he said coaxingly, "kape it down; aisy, aisy. Me heart's goin' like a trip- hammer at thought av it; aw yis, aw yis, Pierre." "Well, it was like that to me--all sun and a sweet sting in the air. At night to sit and tell tales and such things; and perhaps a little brown brandy, a look at the stars, a half-hour with the cattle--the same old game. Of course, there was the wife of Hilton the factor--fine, always fine to see, but deaf and dumb. We were good friends, Ida and me. I had a hand in her wedding. Holy, I knew her when she was a little girl. We could talk together by signs. She was a good woman; she had never guessed at evil. She was quick, too, like a flash, to read and understand without words. A face was a book to her. "Eh bien. One afternoon we were all standing outside the Post, when we saw someone ride over the Long Divide. It was good for the eyes. I cannot tell quite how, but horse and rider were so sharp and clear-cut against the sky, that they looked very large and peculiar--there was something in the air to magnify. They stopped for a minute on the top of the Divide, and it seemed like a messenger out of the strange country at the farthest north--the place of legends. But, of course, it was only a traveller like ourselves, for in a half-hour she was with us. "Yes, it was a girl dressed as a man. She did not try to hide it; she dressed so for ease. She would make a man's heart leap in his mouth-- if he was like Macavoy, or the pious Mowley there." Pierre's last three words had a touch of irony, for he knew that the Trapper had a precious tongue for Scripture when a missionary passed that way, and a bad name with women to give it point. Mowley smiled sourly; but Macavoy laughed outright, and smacked his lips on his pipe-stem luxuriously. "Aw now, Pierre--all me little failin's--aw!" he protested. Pierre swung round on the bench, leaning upon the other elbow, and, cherishing his cigarette, presently continued: "She had come far and was tired to death, so stiff that she could hardly get from her horse; and the horse too was ready to drop. Handsome enough she looked, for all that, in man's clothes and a peaked cap, with a pistol in her belt. She wasn't big built--just a feathery kind of sapling--but she was set fair on her legs like a man, and a hand that was as good as I have seen, so strong, and like silk and iron with a horse. Well, what was the trouble?--for I saw there was trouble. Her eyes had a hunted look, and her nose breathed like a deer's in the chase. All at once, when she saw Hilton's wife, a cry came from her and she reached out her hands. What would women of that sort do? They were both of a kind. They got into each other's arms. After that there was nothing for us men but to wait. All women are the same, and Hilton's wife was like the rest. She must get the secret first; then the men should know. We had to wait an hour. Then Hilton's wife beckoned to us. We went inside. The girl was asleep. There was something in the touch of Hilton's wife like sleep itself--like music. It was her voice--that touch. She could not speak with her tongue, but her hands and face were words and music. Bien, there was the girl asleep, all clear of dust and stain; and that fine hand it lay loose on her breast, so quiet, so quiet. Enfin, the real story--for how she slept there does not matter--but it was good to see when we knew the story." The Trapper was laughing silently to himself to hear Pierre in this romantic mood. A woman's hand--it was the game for a boy, not an adventurer; for the Trapper's only creed was that women, like deer, were spoils for the hunter. Pierre's keen eye noted this, but he was above petty anger. He merely said: "If a man have an eye to see behind the face, he understands the foolish laugh of a man, or the hand of a good woman, and that is much. Hilton's wife told us all. She had rode two hundred miles from the south-west, and was making for Fort Micah, sixty miles farther north. For what? She had loved a man against the will of her people. There had been a feud, and Garrison--that was the lover's name--was the last on his own side. There was trouble at a Company's post, and Garrison shot a half-breed. Men say he was right to shoot him, for a woman's name must be safe up here. Besides, the half-breed drew first. Well, Garrison was tried, and must go to jail for a year. At the end of that time he would be free. The girl Janie knew the day. Word had come to her. She made everything ready. She knew her brothers were watching--her three brothers and two other men who had tried to get her love. She knew also that they five would carry on the feud against the one man. So one night she took the best horse on the ranch and started away towards Fort Micah. Alors, you know how she got to Guidon Hill after two days' hard riding--enough to kill a man, and over fifty yet to do. She was sure her brothers were on her track. But if she could get to Fort Micah, and be married to Garrison before they came; she wanted no more. "There were only two horses of use at Hilton's Post then; all the rest were away, or not fit for hard travel. There was my Tophet, and a lean chestnut, with a long propelling gait, and not an ounce of loose skin on him. There was but one way: the girl must get there. Allons, what is the good? What is life without these things? The girl loves the man: she must have him in spite of all. There was only Hilton and his wife and me at the Post, and Hilton was lame from a fall, and one arm in a sling. If the brothers followed, well, Hilton could not interfere-- he was a Company's man; but for myself, as I said, I was hungry for adventure, I had an ache in my blood for something. I was tingling to the toes, my heart was thumping in my throat. All the cords of my legs were straightening as if I was in the saddle. "She slept for three hours. I got the two horses saddled. Who could tell but she might need help? I had nothing to do; I knew the shortest way to Fort Micah, every foot--and then it is good to be ready for all things. I told Hilton's wife what I had done. She was glad. She made a gesture at me as to a brother, and then began to put things in a bag for us to carry. She had settled all how it was to be. She had told the girl. You see, a man may be--what is it they call me?--a plunderer, and yet a woman will trust him, comme ca!" "Aw yis, aw yis, Pierre; but she knew yer hand and yer tongue niver wint agin a woman, Pierre. Naw, niver a wan. Aw swate, swate, she was, wid a heart--a heart, Hilton's wife, aw yis!" Pierre waved Macavoy into silence. "The girl waked after three hours with a start. Her hand caught at her heart. 'Oh,' she said, still staring at us, 'I thought that they had come!' A little after she and Hilton's wife went to another room. All at once there was a sound of horses outside, and then a knock at the door, and four men come in. They were the girl's hunters. "It was hard to tell what to do all in a minute; but I saw at once the best thing was to act for all, and to get all the men inside the house. So I whispered to Hilton, and then pretended that I was a great man in the Company. I ordered Hilton to have the horses cared for, and, not giving the men time to speak, I fetched out the old brown brandy, wondering all the time what could be done. There was no sound from the other room, though I thought I heard a door open once. Hilton played the game well, and showed nothing when I ordered him about, and agreed word for word with me when I said no girl had come, laughing when they told why they were after her. More than one of them did not believe at first; but, pshaw, what have I been doing all my life to let such fellows doubt me? So the end of it was that I got them all inside the house. There was one bad thing--their horses were all fresh, as Hilton whispered to me. They had only rode them a few miles--they had stole or bought them at the first ranch to the west of the Post. I could not make up my mind what to do. But it was clear I must keep them quiet till something shaped. "They were all drinking brandy when Hilton's wife come into the room. Her face was, mon Dieu! so innocent, so childlike. She stared at the men; and then I told them she was deaf and dumb, and I told her why they had come. Voila, it was beautiful--like nothing you ever saw. She shook her head so innocent, and then told them like a child that they were wicked to chase a girl. I could have kissed her feet. Thunder, how she fooled them! She said, would they not search the house? She said all through me, on her fingers and by signs. And I told them at once. But she told me something else--that the girl had slipped out as the last man came in, had mounted the chestnut, and would wait for me by the iron spring, a quarter of a mile away. There was the danger that some one of the men knew the finger-talk, so she told me this in signs mixed up with other sentences. "Good! There was now but one thing--for me to get away. So I said, laughing, to one of the men. 'Come, and we will look after the horses, and the others can search the place with Hilton.' So we went out to where the horses were tied to the railing, and led them away to the corral. "Of course you will understand how I did it. I clapped a hand on his mouth, put a pistol at his head, and gagged and tied him. Then I got my Tophet, and away I went to the spring. The girl was waiting. There were few words. I gripped her hand, gave her another pistol, and then we got away on a fine moonlit trail. We had not gone a mile when I heard a faint yell far behind. My game had been found out. There was nothing to do but to ride for it now, and maybe to fight. But fighting was not good; for I might be killed, and then the girl would be caught just the same. We rode on--such a ride, the horses neck and neck, their hoofs pounding the prairie like drills, rawbone to rawbone, a hell-to-split gait. I knew they were after us, though I saw them but once on the crest of a Divide about three miles behind. Hour after hour like that, with ten minutes' rest now and then at a spring or to stretch our legs. We hardly spoke to each other; but, nom de Dieu! my heart was warm to this girl who had rode a hundred and fifty miles in twenty-four hours. Just before dawn, when I was beginning to think that we should easy win the race if the girl could but hold out, if it did not kill her, the chestnut struck a leg into the crack of the prairie, and horse and girl spilt on the ground together. She could hardly move, she was so weak, and her face was like death. I put a pistol to the chestnut's head, and ended it. The girl stooped and kissed the poor beast's neck, but spoke nothing. As I helped her on my Tophet I put my lips to the sleeve of her dress. Mother of Heaven! what could a man do--she was so dam' brave. "Dawn was just breaking oozy and grey at the swell of the prairie over the Jumping Sandhills. They lay quiet and shining in the green-brown plain; but I knew that there was a churn beneath which could set those swells of sand in motion, and make glory-to-God of an army. Who can tell what it is? A flood under the surface, a tidal river-what? No man knows. But they are sea monsters on the land. Every morning at sunrise they begin to eddy and roll--and who ever saw a stranger sight? Bien, I looked back. There were those four pirates coming on, about three miles away. What was there to do? The girl and myself on my blown horse were too much. Then a great idea come to me. I must reach and cross the Jumping Sandhills before sunrise. It was one deadly chance. "When we got to the edge of the sand they were almost a mile behind. I was all sick to my teeth as my poor Tophet stepped into the silt. Sacre, how I watched the dawn! Slow, slow, we dragged over that velvet powder. As we reached the farther side I could feel it was beginning to move. The sun was showing like the lid of an eye along the plain. I looked back. All four horsemen were in the sand, plunging on towards us. By the time we touched the brown-green prairie on the farther side the sand was rolling behind us. The girl had not looked back. She seemed too dazed. I jumped from the horse, and told her that she must push on alone to the Fort, that Tophet could not carry both, that I should be in no danger. She looked at me so deep--ah, I cannot tell how! then stooped and kissed me between the eyes--I have never forgot. I struck Tophet, and she was gone to her happiness; for before 'lights out!' she reached the Fort and her lover's arms. "But I stood looking back on the Jumping Sandhills. So, was there ever a sight like that--those hills gone like a smelting-floor, the sunrise spotting it with rose and yellow, and three horses and their riders fighting what cannot be fought?--What could I do? They would have got the girl and spoiled her life, if I had not led them across, and they would have killed me if they could. Only one cried out, and then but once, in a long shriek. But after, all three were quiet as they fought, until they were gone where no man could see, where none cries out so we can hear. The last thing I saw was a hand stretching up out of the sands." There was a long pause, painful to bear. The Trader sat with eyes fixed humbly as a dog's on Pierre. At last Macavoy said: "She kissed ye, Pierre, aw yis, she did that! Jist betune the eyes. Do yees iver see her now, Pierre?" But Pierre, looking at him, made no answer. A LOVELY BULLY He was seven feet and fat. He came to Fort O'Angel at Hudson's Bay, an immense slip of a lad, very much in the way, fond of horses, a wonderful hand at wrestling, pretending a horrible temper, threatening tragedies for all who differed from him, making the Fort quake with his rich roar, and playing the game of bully with a fine simplicity. In winter he fattened, in summer he sweated, at all times he ate eloquently. It was a picture to see him with the undercut of a haunch of deer or buffalo, or with a whole prairie-fowl on his plate, his eyes measuring it shrewdly, his coat and waistcoat open, and a clear space about him--for he needed room to stretch his mighty limbs, and his necessity was recognised by all. Occasionally he pretended to great ferocity, but scowl he ever so much, a laugh kept idling in his irregular bushy beard, which lifted about his face in the wind like a mane, or made a kind of underbrush through which his blunt fingers ran at hide-and-seek. He was Irish, and his name was Macavoy. In later days, when Fort O'Angel was invaded by settlers, he had his time of greatest importance. He had been useful to the Chief Trader at the Fort in the early days, and having the run of the Fort and the reach of his knife, was little likely to discontinue his adherence. But he ate and drank with all the dwellers at the Post, and abused all impartially. "Malcolm," said he to the Trader, "Malcolm, me glutton o' the H.B.C., that wants the Far North for your footstool--Malcolm, you villain, it's me grief that I know you, and me thumb to me nose in token. "Wiley and Hatchett, the principal settlers, he abused right and left, and said, "Wasn't there land in the East and West, that you steal the country God made for honest men--you robbers o' the wide world! Me tooth on the Book, and I tell you what, it's only me charity that kapes me from spoilin' ye. For a wink of me eye, an' away you'd go, leaving your tails behind you--and pass that shoulder of bear, you pirates, till I come to it sideways, like a hog to war." He was even less sympathetic with Bareback the chief and his braves. "Sons o' Anak y'are; here today and away to-morrow, like the clods of the valley--and that's your portion, Bareback. It's the word o' the Pentytook--in pieces you go, like a potter's vessel. Don't shrug your shoulders at me, Bareback, you pig, or you'll think that Ballzeboob's loose on the mat. But take a sup o' this whisky, while you swear wid your hand on your chest, 'Amin' to the words o' Tim Macavoy." Beside Macavoy, Pierre, the notorious, was a child in height. Up to the time of the half-breed's coming the Irishman had been the most outstanding man at Fort O'Angel, and was sure of a good-natured homage, acknowledged by him with a jovial tyranny. Pierre put a flea in his ear. He was pensively indifferent to him even in his most royal moments. He guessed the way to bring down the gusto and pride of this Goliath, but, for a purpose, he took his own time, nodding indolently to Macavoy when he met him, but avoiding talk with him. Among the Indian maidens Macavoy was like a king or khan; for they count much on bulk and beauty, and he answered to their standards--especially to Wonta's. It was a sight to see him of a summer day, sitting in the shade of a pine, his shirt open, showing his firm brawny chest, his arms bare, his face shining with perspiration, his big voice gurgling in his beard, his eyes rolling amiably upon the maidens as they passed or gathered near demurely, while he declaimed of mighty deeds in patois or Chinook to the braves. Pierre's humour was of the quietest, most subterranean kind. He knew that Macavoy had not an evil hair in his head; that vanity was his greatest weakness, and that through him there never would have been more half-breed population. There was a tradition that he had a wife somewhere--based upon wild words he had once said when under the influence of bad liquor; but he had roared his accuser the lie when the thing was imputed to him. At Fort Ste. Anne Pierre had known an old woman, by name of Kitty Whelan, whose character was all tatters. She had told him that many years agone she had had a broth of a lad for a husband; but because of a sharp word or two across the fire, and the toss of a handful of furniture, he had left her, and she had seen no more of him. "Tall, like a chimney he was," said she, "and a chest like a wall, so broad, and a voice like a huntsman's horn, though only a b'y, an' no hair an his face; an' little I know whether he is dead or alive; but dead belike, for he's sure to come rap agin' somethin' that'd kill him; for he, the darlin', was that aisy and gentle, he wouldn't pull his fightin' iron till he had death in his ribs." Pierre had drawn from her that the name of this man whom she had cajoled into a marriage (being herself twenty years older), and driven to deserting her afterwards, was Tim Macavoy. She had married Mr. Whelan on the assumption that Macavoy was dead. But Mr. Whelan had not the nerve to desert her, and so he departed this life, very loudly lamented by Mrs. Whelan, who had changed her name with no right to do so. With his going her mind dwelt greatly upon the virtues of her mighty vanished Tim: and ill would it be for Tim if she found him. Pierre had travelled to Fort O'Angel almost wholly because he had Tim Macavoy in his mind: in it Mrs. Whelan had only an incidental part; his plans journeyed beyond her and her lost consort. He was determined on an expedition to capture Fort Comfort, which had been abandoned by the great Company, and was now held by a great band of the Shunup Indians. Pierre had a taste for conquest for its own sake, though he had no personal ambition. The love of adventure was deep in him; he adored sport for its own sake; he had had a long range of experiences--some discreditable--and now he had determined on a new field for his talent. He would establish a kingdom, and resign it. In that case he must have a man to take his place. He chose Macavoy. First he must humble the giant to the earth, then make him into a great man again, with a new kind of courage. The undoing of Macavoy seemed a civic virtue. He had a long talk with Wonta, the Indian maiden most admired by Macavoy. Many a time the Irishman had cast an ogling, rolling eye on her, and had talked his loudest within her ear-shot, telling of splendid things he had done: making himself like another Samson as to the destruction of men, and a Hercules as to the slaying of cattle. Wonta had a sense of humour also, and when Pierre told her what was required of her, she laughed with a quick little gurgle, and showed as handsome a set of teeth as the half-breed's; which said much for her. She promised to do as he wished. So it chanced when Macavoy was at his favourite seat beneath the pine, talking to a gaping audience, Wonta and a number of Indian girls passed by. Pierre was leaning against a door smoking, not far away. Macavoy's voice became louder. "'Stand them up wan by wan,' says I, 'and give me a leg loose, and a fist free; and at that--'" "At that there was thunder and fire in the sky, and because the great Macavoy blew his breath over them they withered like the leaves," cried Wonta, laughing; but her laugh had an edge. Macavoy stopped short, open-mouthed, breathing hard in his great beard. He was astonished at Wonta's raillery; the more so when she presently snapped her fingers, and the other maidens, laughing, did the same. Some of the half-breeds snapped their fingers also in sympathy, and shrugged their shoulders. Wonta came up to him softly, patted him on the head, and said: "Like Macavoy there is nobody. He is a great brave. He is not afraid of a coyote, he has killed prairie-hens in numbers as pebbles by the lakes. He has a breast like a fat ox,"--here she touched the skin of his broad chest,--"and he will die if you do not fight him." Then she drew back, as though in humble dread, and glided away with the other maidens, Macavoy staring after her, with a blustering kind of shame in his face. The half-breeds laughed, and, one by one, they got up, and walked away also. Macavoy looked round: there was no one near save Pierre, whose eye rested on him lazily. Macavoy got to his feet, muttering. This was the first time in his experience at Fort O'Angel that he had been bluffed--and by a girl; one for whom he had a very soft place in his big heart. Pierre came slowly over to him. "I'd have it out with her," said he. "She called you a bully and a brag." "Out with her?" cried Macavoy. "How can ye have it out wid a woman?" "Fight her," said Pierre pensively. "Fight her? fight her? Holy smoke! How can you fight a woman?" "Why, what--do you--fight?" asked Pierre innocently. Macavoy grinned in a wild kind of fashion. "Faith, then, y'are a fool. Bring on the divil an' all his angels, say I, and I'll fight thim where I stand." Pierre ran his fingers down Macavoy's arm, and said "There's time enough for that. I'd begin with the five." "What five, then?" "Her half-breed lovers: Big Eye, One Toe, Jo-John, Saucy Boy, and Limber Legs." "Her lovers? Her lovers, is it? Is there truth on y'r tongue?" "Go to her father's tent at sunset, and you'll find one or all of them there." "Oh, is that it?" said the Irishman, opening and shutting his fists. "Then I'll carve their hearts out, an' ate thim wan by wan this night." "Come down to Wiley's," said Pierre; "there's better company there than here." Pierre had arranged many things, and had secured partners in his little scheme for humbling the braggart. He so worked on the other's good nature that by the time they reached the settler's place, Macavoy was stretching himself with a big pride. Seated at Wiley's table, with Hatchett and others near, and drink going about, someone drew the giant on to talk, and so deftly and with such apparent innocence did Pierre, by a word here and a nod there, encourage him, that presently he roared at Wiley and Hatchett: "Ye shameless buccaneers that push your way into the tracks of honest men, where the Company's been three hundred years by the will o' God-- if it wasn't for me, ye Jack Sheppards--" Wiley and Hatchett both got to their feet with pretended rage, saying he'd insulted them both, that he was all froth and brawn, and giving him the lie. Utterly taken aback, Macavoy could only stare, puffing in his beard, and drawing in his legs, which had been spread out at angles. He looked from Wiley to the impassive Pierre. "Buccaneers, you callus," Wiley went on; "well, we'll have no more of that, or there'll be trouble at Fort O'Angel." "Ah, sure y'are only jokin'," said Macavoy, "for I love ye, ye scoundrels. It's only me fun." "For fun like that you'll pay, ruffian!" said Hatchett, bringing down his fist on the table with a bang. Macavoy stood up. He looked confounded, but there was nothing of the coward in his face. "Oh, well," said he, "I'll be goin', for ye've got y'r teeth all raspin'." As he went the two men laughed after him mockingly. "Wind like a bag," said Hatchett. "Bone like a marrow-fat pea," added Wiley. Macavoy was at the door, but at that he turned. "If ye care to sail agin' that wind, an' gnaw on that bone, I'd not be sayin' you no." "Will to-night do--at sunset?" said Wiley. "Bedad, then, me b'ys, sunset'll do--an' not more than two at a time," he added softly, all the roar gone from his throat. Then he went out, followed by Pierre. Hatchett and Wiley looked at each other and laughed a little confusedly. "What's that he said?" muttered Wiley. "Not more than two at a time, was it?" "That was it. I don't know that it's what we bargained for, after all." He looked round on the other settlers present, who had been awed by the childlike, earnest note in Macavoy's last words. They shook their heads now a little sagely; they weren't so sure that Pierre's little game was so jovial as it had promised. Even Pierre had hardly looked for so much from his giant as yet. In a little while he had got Macavoy back to his old humour. "What was I made for but war!" said the Irishman, "an' by war to kape thim at peace, wherever I am." Soon he was sufficiently restored in spirits to go with Pierre to Bareback's lodge, where, sitting at the tent door, with idlers about, he smoked with the chief and his braves. Again Pierre worked upon him adroitly, and again he became loud in speech, and grandly patronising. "I've stood by ye like a father, ye loafers," he said, "an' I give you my word, ye howlin' rogues--" Here Bareback and a half-dozen braves came up suddenly from the ground, and the chief said fiercely: "You speak crooked things. We are no rogues. We will fight." Macavoy's face ran red to his hair. He scratched his head a little foolishly, and gathered himself up. "Sure, 'twas only me tasin', darlins," he said, "but I'll be comin' again, when y'are not so narvis." He turned to go away. Pierre made a sign to Bareback, and the Indian touched the giant on the arm. "Will you fight?" said he. "Not all o' ye at once," said Macavoy slowly, running his eye carefully along the half-dozen; "not more than three at a toime," he added with a simple sincerity, his voice again gone like the dove's. "At what time will it be convaynyint for ye?" he asked. "At sunset," said the chief, "before the Fort." Macavoy nodded and walked away with Pierre, whose glance of approval at the Indians did not make them thoroughly happy. To rouse the giant was not now so easy. He had already three engagements of violence for sunset. Pierre directed their steps by a roundabout to the Company's stores, and again there was a distinct improvement in the giant's spirits. Here at least he could be himself, he thought, here no one should say him nay. As if nerved by the idea, he plunged at once into boisterous raillery of the Chief Trader. "Oh, ho," he began, "me freebooter, me captain av the looters av the North!" The Trader snarled at him. "What d'ye mean, by such talk to me, sir? I've had enough-- we've all had enough--of your brag and bounce; for you're all sweat and swill-pipe, and I give you this for your chewing, that though by the Company's rules I can't go out and fight you, you may have your pick of my men for it. I'll take my pay for your insults in pounded flesh--Irish pemmican!" Macavoy's face became mottled with sudden rage. He roared, as, perhaps, he had never roared before: "Are ye all gone mad-mad-mad? I was jokin' wid ye, whin I called ye this or that. But by the swill o' me pipe, and the sweat o' me skin, I'll drink the blood o' yees, Trader, me darlin'. An' all I'll ask is, that ye mate me to-night whin the rest o' the pack is in front o' the Fort--but not more than four o' yees at a time--for little scrawney rats as y'are, too many o' yees wad be in me way." He wheeled and strode fiercely out. Pierre smiled gently. "He's a great bully that, isn't he, Trader? There'll be fun in front of the Fort to-night. For he's only bragging, of course--eh?" The Trader nodded with no great assurance, and then Pierre said as a parting word: "You'll be there, of course--only four av ye!" and hurried out after Macavoy, humming to himself-- "For the King said this, and the Queen said that, But he walked away with their army, O!" So far Pierre's plan had worked even better than he expected, though Macavoy's moods had not been altogether after his imaginings. He drew alongside the giant, who had suddenly grown quiet again. Macavoy turned and looked down at Pierre with the candour of a schoolboy, and his voice was very low: "It's a long time ago, I'm thinkin'," he said, "since I lost me frinds-- ages an' ages ago. For me frinds are me inimies now, an' that makes a man old. But I'll not say that it cripples his arm or humbles his back." He drew his arm up once or twice and shot it out straight into the air like a catapult. "It's all right," he added, very softly, "an', Half- breed, me b'y, if me frinds have turned inimies, why, I'm thinkin' me inimy has turned frind, for that I'm sure you were, an' this I'm certain y 'are. So here's the grip av me fist, an' y'll have it." Pierre remembered that disconcerting, iron grip of friendship for many a day. He laughed to himself to think how he was turning the braggart into a warrior. "Well," said Pierre, "what about those five at Wonta's tent?" "I'll be there whin the sun dips below the Little Red Hill," he said, as though his thoughts were far away, and he turned his face towards Wonta's tent. Presently he laughed out loud. "It's manny along day," he said, "since--" Then he changed his thoughts. "They've spoke sharp words in me teeth," he continued, "and they'll pay for it. Bounce! sweat! brag! wind! is it? There's dancin' beyant this night, me darlins!" "Are you sure you'll not run away when they come on?" said Pierre, a little ironically. "Is that the word av a frind?" replied Macavoy, a hand fumbling in his hair. "Did you never run away when faced?" Pierre asked pitilessly. "I never turned tail from a man, though, to be sure, it's been more talk than fight up here: Fort Ste. Anne's been but a graveyard for fun these years." "Eh, well," persisted Pierre, "but did you never turn tail from a slip of a woman?" The thing was said idly. Macavoy gathered his beard in his mouth, chewing it confusedly. "You've a keen tongue for a question," was his reply. "What for should anny man run from a woman?" "When the furniture flies, an' the woman knows more of the world in a day than the man does in a year; and the man's a hulking bit of an Irishman-- bien, then things are so and so!" Macavoy drew back dazed, his big legs trembling. "Come into the shade of these maples," said Pierre, "for the sun has set you quaking a little," and he put out his hand to take Macavoy's arm. The giant drew away from the hand, but walked on to the trees. His face seemed to have grown older by years on the moment. "What's this y'are sayin' to me?" he asked hoarsely. "What do you know av--av that woman?" "Malahide is a long way off," said Pierre, "but when one travels why shouldn't the other?" Macavoy made a helpless motion with his lumbering hand. "Mother o' saints," he said, "has it come to that, after all these years? Is she-- tell me where she is, me frind, and you'll niver want an arm to fight for ye, an' the half av a blanket, while I have wan!" "But you'll run as you did before, if I tell you, an' there'll be no fighting to-night, accordin' to the word you've given." "No fightin', did ye say? an' run away, is it? Then this in your eye, that if ye'll bring an army, I'll fight till the skin is in rags on me bones, whin it's only men that's before me; but woman--and that wan! Faith, I'd run, I'm thinkin', as I did, you know when--Don't tell me that she's here, man; arrah, don't say that!" There was something pitiful and childlike in the big man's voice, so much so that Pierre, calculating gamester as he was, and working upon him as he had been for many weeks, felt a sudden pity, and dropping his fingers on the other's arm, said: "No, Macavoy, my friend, she is not here; but she is at Fort Ste. Anne--or was when I left there." Macavoy groaned. "Does she know that I'm here?" he asked. "I think not. Fort Ste. Anne is far away, and she may not hear." "What--what is she doing?" "Keeping your memory and Mr. Whelan's green." Then Pierre told him somewhat bluntly what he knew of Mrs. Macavoy. "I'd rather face Ballzeboob himself than her," said Macavoy. "An' she's sure to find me." "Not if you do as I say." "An' what is it ye say, little man?" "Come away with me where she'll not find you." "An' where's that, Pierre darlin'?" "I'll tell you that when to-night's fighting's over. Have you a mind for Wonta?" he continued. "I've a mind for Wonta an' many another as fine, but I'm a married man," he said, "by priest an' by book; an' I can't forget that, though the woman's to me as the pit below." Pierre looked curiously at him. "You're a wonderful fool," he said, "but I'm not sure that I like you less for that. There was Shon M'Gann--but it is no matter." He sighed and continued: "When to-night is over, you shall have work and fun that you've been fattening for this many a year, and the woman'll not find you, be sure of that. Besides--" he whispered in Macavoy's ear. "Poor divil, poor divil, she'd always a throat for that; but it's a horrible death to die, I'm thinkin'." Macavoy's chin dropped on his breast. When the sun was falling below Little Red Hill, Macavoy came to Wonta's tent. Pierre was not far away. What occurred in the tent Pierre never quite knew, but presently he saw Wonta run out in a frightened way, followed by the five half-breeds, who carried themselves awkwardly. Behind them again, with head shaking from one side to the other, travelled Macavoy; and they all marched away towards the Fort. "Well," said Pierre to Wonta, "he is amusing, eh?--so big a coward, eh?" "No, no," she said, "you are wrong. He is no coward. He is a great brave. He spoke like a little child, but he said he would fight them all when--" "When their turn came," interposed Pierre, with a fine "bead" of humour in his voice; "well, you see he has much to do." He pointed towards the Fort, where people were gathering fast. The strange news had gone abroad, and the settlement, laughing joyously, came to see Macavoy swagger; they did not think there would be fighting. Those whom Macavoy had challenged were not so sure. When the giant reached the open space in front of the Fort, he looked slowly round him. A great change had come over him. His skin seemed drawn together more firmly, and running himself up finely to his full height, he looked no longer the lounging braggart. Pierre measured him with his eye, and chuckled to himself. Macavoy stripped himself of his coat and waistcoat, and rolled up his sleeves. His shirt was flying at the chest. He beckoned to Pierre. "Are you standin' me frind in this?" he said. "Now and after," said Pierre. His voice was very simple. "I never felt as I do since the day the coast-guardsmin dropped on me in Ireland far away, an' I drew blood an every wan o' them--fine beautiful b'ys they looked--stretchen' out on the ground wan by wan. D'ye know the double-an'-twist?" he suddenly added, "for it's a honey trick whin they gather in an you, an' you can't be layin' out wid yer fists. It plays the divil wid the spines av thim. Will ye have a drop av drink--cold water, man--near, an' a sponge betune whiles? For there's manny in the play--makin' up for lost time. Come on," he added to the two settlers, who stood not far away, "for ye began the trouble, an' we'll settle accordin' to a, b, c." Wiley and Hatchett were there. Responding to his call, they stepped forward, though they had now little relish for the matter. They were pale, but they stripped their coats and waistcoats, and Wiley stepped bravely in front of Macavoy. The giant looked down on him, arms folded. "I said two of you," he crooned, as if speaking to a woman. Hatchett stepped forward also. An instant after the settlers were lying on the ground at different angles, bruised and dismayed, and little likely to carry on the war. Macavoy took a pail of water from the ground, drank from it lightly, and waited. None other of his opponents stirred. "There's three Injins," he said, "three rid divils, that wants showin' the way to their happy huntin' grounds. . . . Sure, y'are comin', ain't you, me darlins?" he added coaxingly, and he stretched himself, as if to make ready. Bareback, the chief, now harangued the three Indians, and they stepped forth warily. They had determined on strategic wrestling, and not on the instant activity of fists. But their wiliness was useless, for Macavoy's double-and-twist came near to lessening the Indian population of Fort O'Angel. It only broke a leg and an arm, however. The Irishman came out of the tangle of battle with a wild kind of light in his eye, his beard all torn, and face battered. A shout of laughter, admiration and wonder went up from the crowd. There was a moment's pause, and then Macavoy, whose blood ran high, stood forth again. The Trader came to him. "Must this go on?" he said; "haven't you had your fill of it?" Had he touched Macavoy with a word of humour the matter might have ended there; but now the giant spoke loud, so all could hear. "Had me fill av it, Trader, me angel? I'm only gittin' the taste av it. An' ye'll plaze bring on yer men--four it was--for the feed av Irish pemmican." The Trader turned and swore at Pierre, who smiled enigmatically. Soon after, two of the best fighters of the Company's men stood forth. Macavoy shook his head. "Four, I said, an' four I'll have, or I'll ate the heads aff these." Shamed, the Trader sent forth two more. All on an instant the four made a rush on the giant; and there was a stiff minute after, in which it was not clear that he was happy. Blows rattled on him, and one or two he got on the head, just as he tossed a man spinning senseless across the grass, which sent him staggering backwards for a moment, sick and stunned. Pierre called over to him swiftly: "Remember Malahide!" This acted on him like a charm. There never was seen such a shattered bundle of men as came out from his hands a few minutes later. As for himself, he had but a rag or two on him, but stood unmindful of his state, and the fever of battle untameable on him. The women drew away. "Now, me babes o' the wood," he shouted, "that sit at the feet av the finest Injin woman in the North,--though she's no frind o' mine--and aren't fit to kiss her moccasin, come an wid you, till I have me fun wid your spines." But a shout went up, and the crowd pointed. There were the five half- breeds running away across the plains. The game was over. "Here's some clothes, man; for Heaven's sake put them on," said the Trader. Then the giant became conscious of his condition, and like a timid girl he hurried into the clothing. The crowd would have carried him on their shoulders, but he would have none of it. "I've only wan frind here," he said, "an' it's Pierre, an' to his shanty I go an' no other." "Come, mon ami," said Pierre, "for to-morrow we travel far." "And what for that?" said Macavoy. Pierre whispered in his ear: "To make you a king, my lovely bully." THE FILIBUSTER Pierre had determined to establish a kingdom, not for gain, but for conquest's sake. But because he knew that the thing would pall, he took with him Macavoy the giant, to make him king instead. But first he made Macavoy from a lovely bully, a bulk of good-natured brag, into a Hercules of fight; for, having made him insult--and be insulted by--near a score of men at Fort O'Angel, he also made him fight them by twos, threes, and fours, all on a summer's evening, and send them away broken. Macavoy would have hesitated to go with Pierre, were it not that he feared a woman. Not that he had wronged her; she had wronged him: she had married him. And the fear of one's own wife is the worst fear in the world. But though his heart went out to women, and his tongue was of the race that beguiles, he stood to his "lines" like a man, and people wondered. Even Wonta, the daughter of Foot-in-the-Sun, only bent him, she could not break him to her will. Pierre turned her shy coaxing into irony--that was on the day when all Fort O'Angel conspired to prove Macavoy a child and not a warrior. But when she saw what she had done, and that the giant was greater than his years of brag, she repented, and hung a dead coyote at Pierre's door as a sign of her contempt. Pierre watched Macavoy, sitting with a sponge of vinegar to his head, for he had had nasty joltings in his great fight. A little laugh came crinkling up to the half-breed's lips, but dissolved into silence. "We'll start in the morning," he said. Macavoy looked up. "Whin you plaze; but a word in your ear; are you sure she'll not follow us?" "She doesn't know. Fort Ste. Anne is in the south, and Fort Comfort, where we go, is far north." "But if she kem!" the big man persisted. "You will be a king; you can do as other kings have done," Pierre chuckled. The other shook his head. "Says Father Nolan to me, says he, "tis till death us do part, an' no man put asunder'; an' I'll stand by that, though I'd slice out the bist tin years av me life, if I niver saw her face again." "But the girl, Wonta--what a queen she'd make!" "Marry her yourself, and be king yourself, and be damned to you! For she, like the rest, laughed in me face, whin I told thim of the day whin I--" "That's nothing. She hung a dead coyote at my door. You don't know women. There'll be your breed and hers abroad in the land one day." Macavoy stretched to his feet--he was so tall that he could not stand upright in the room. He towered over Pierre, who blandly eyed him. "I've another word for your ear," he said darkly. "Keep clear av the likes o' that wid me. For I've swallowed a tribe av divils. It's fightin' you want. Well, I'll do it--I've an itch for the throats av men, but a fool I'll be no more wid wimin, white or red--that hell-cat that spoilt me life an' killed me child, or--" A sob clutched him in the throat. "You had a child, then?" asked Pierre gently. "An angel she was, wid hair like the sun, an' 'd melt the heart av an iron god: none like her above or below. But the mother, ah, the mother of her! One day whin she'd said a sharp word, wid another from me, an' the child clinging to her dress, she turned quick and struck it, meanin' to anger me. Not so hard the blow was, but it sent the darlin's head agin' the chimney-stone, and that was the end av it. For she took to her bed, an' agin' the crowin' o' the cock wan midnight, she gives a little cry an' snatched at me beard. 'Daddy,' says she, 'daddy, it hurts!' An' thin she floats away, wid a stitch av pain at her lips." Macavoy sat down now, his fingers fumbling in his beard. Pierre was uncomfortable. He could hear of battle, murder, and sudden death unmoved--it seemed to him in the game; but the tragedy of a child, a mere counter yet in the play of life--that was different. He slid a hand over the table, and caught Macavoy's arm. "Poor little waif!" he said. Macavoy gave the hand a grasp that turned Pierre sick, and asked: "Had ye iver a child av y'r own, Pierre-iver wan at all?" "Never," said Pierre dreamily, "and I've travelled far. A child--a child --is a wonderful thing. . . . Poor little waif!" They both sat silent for a moment. Pierre was about to rise, but Macavoy suddenly pinned him to his seat with this question: "Did y' iver have a wife, thin, Pierre?" Pierre turned pale. A sharp breath came through his teeth. He spoke slowly: "Yes, once." "And she died?" asked the other, awed. "We all have our day," he replied enigmatically, "and there are worse things than death. . . . Eh, well, mon ami, let us talk of other things. To-morrow we go to conquer. I know where I can get five men I want. I have ammunition and dogs." A few minutes afterwards Pierre was busy in the settlement. At the Fort he heard strange news. A new batch of settlers was coming from the south, and among them was an old Irishwoman who called herself now Mrs. Whelan, now Mrs. Macavoy. She talked much of the lad she was to find, one Tim Macavoy, whose fame Gossip had brought to her at last. She had clung on to the settlers, and they could not shake her off. "She was comin'," she said, "to her own darlin' b'y, from whom she'd been parted manny a year, believin' him dead, or Tom Whelan had nivir touched hand o' hers." The bearer of the news had but just arrived, and he told it only to the Chief Trader and Pierre. At a word from Pierre the man promised to hold his peace. Then Pierre went to Wonta's lodge. He found her with her father alone, her head at her knees. When she heard his voice she looked up sharply, and added a sharp word also. "Wait," he said; "women are such fools. You snapped your fingers in his face, and laughed at him. Bien, that is nothing. He has proved himself great. That is something. He will be greater still, if the other woman does not find him. She should die, but then some women have no sense." "The other woman!" said Wonta, starting to her feet; "who is the other woman?" Old Foot-in-the-Sun waked and sat up, but seeing that it was Pierre, dropped again to sleep. Pierre, he knew, was no peril to any woman. Besides, Wonta hated the half-breed, as he thought. Pierre told the girl the story of Macavoy's life; for he knew that she loved the man after her heathen fashion, and that she could be trusted. "I do not care for that," she said, when he had finished; "it is nothing. I would go with him. I should be his wife, the other should die. I would kill her, if she would fight me. I know the way of knives, or a rifle, or a pinch at the throat--she should die!" "Yes, but that will not do. Keep your hands free of her." Then he told her that they were going away. She said she would go also. He said no to that, but told her to wait and he would come back for her. Though she tried hard to follow them, they slipped away from the Fort in the moist gloom of the morning, the brown grass rustling, the prairie- hens fluttering, the osiers soughing as they passed, the Spirit of the North, ever hungry, drawing them on over the long Divides. They did not see each other's faces till dawn. They were guided by Pierre's voice; none knew his comrades. Besides Pierre and Macavoy, there were five half-breeds--Noel, Little Babiche, Corvette, Josh, and Jacques Parfaite. When they came to recognise each other, they shook hands, and marched on. In good time they reached that wonderful and pleasant country between the Barren Grounds and the Lake of Silver Shallows. To the north of it was Fort Comfort, which they had come to take. Macavoy's rich voice roared as of old, before his valour was questioned--and maintained--at Fort O'Angel. Pierre had diverted his mind from the woman who, at Fort O'Angel, was even now calling heaven and earth to witness that "Tim Macavoy was her Macavoy and no other, an' she'd find him--the divil and darlin', wid an arm like Broin Borhoime, an' a chest you could build a house on--if she walked till Doomsday!" Macavoy stood out grandly, his fat all gone to muscle, blowing through his beard, puffing his cheek, and ready with tale or song. But now that they were facing the business of their journey, his voice got soft and gentle, as it did before the Fort, when he grappled his foes two by two and three by three, and wrung them out. In his eyes there was the thing which counts as many men in any soldier's sight, when he leads in battle. As he said himself, he was made for war, like Malachi o' the Golden Collar. Pierre guessed that just now many of the Indians would be away for the summer hunt, and that the Fort would perhaps be held by only a few score of braves, who, however, would fight when they might easier play. He had no useless compunctions about bloodshed. A human life he held to be a trifle in the big sum of time, and that it was of little moment when a man went, if it seemed his hour. He lived up to his creed, for he had ever held his own life as a bird upon a housetop, which a chance stone might drop. He was glad afterwards that he had decided to fight, for there was one in Fort Comfort against whom he had an old grudge--the Indian, Young Eye, who, many years before, had been one to help in killing the good Father Halen, the priest who dropped the water on his forehead and set the cross on top of that, when he was at his mother's breasts. One by one the murderers had been killed, save this man. He had wandered north, lived on the Coppermine River for a long time, and at length had come down among the warring tribes at the Lake of Silver Shallows. Pierre was for direct attack. They crossed the lake in their canoes, at a point about five miles from the Fort, and, so far as they could tell, without being seen. Then ammunition went round, and they marched upon the Fort. Pierre eyed Macavoy--measured him, as it were, for what he was worth. The giant seemed happy. He was humming a tune softly through his beard. Suddenly Jose paused, dropped to the foot of a pine, and put his ear to it. Pierre understood. He had caught at the same thing. "There is a dance on," said Jose, "I can hear the drum." Pierre thought a minute. "We will reconnoitre," he said presently. "It is near night now," remarked Little Babiche. "I know something of these. When they have a great snake dance at night, strange things happen." Then he spoke in a low tone to Pierre. They halted in the bush, and Little Babiche went forward to spy upon the Fort. He came back just after sunset, reporting that the Indians were feasting. He had crept near, and had learned that the braves were expected back from the hunt that night, and that the feast was for their welcome. The Fort stood in an open space, with tall trees for a background. In front, here and there, were juniper and tamarac bushes. Pierre laid his plans immediately, and gave the word to move on. Their presence had not been discovered, and if they could but surprise the Indians the Fort might easily be theirs. They made a detour, and after an hour came upon the Fort from behind. Pierre himself went forward cautiously, leaving Macavoy in command. When he came again he said: "It's a fine sight, and the way is open. They are feasting and dancing. If we can enter without being seen, we are safe, except for food; we must trust for that. Come on." When they arrived at the margin of the woods a wonderful scene was before them. A volcanic hill rose up on one side, gloomy and stern, but the reflection of the fires reached it, and made its sides quiver--the rock itself seemed trembling. The sombre pines showed up, a wall all round, and in the open space, turreted with fantastic fires, the Indians swayed in and out with weird chanting, their bodies mostly naked, and painted in strange colours. The earth itself was still and sober. Scarce a star peeped forth. A purple velvet curtain seemed to hang all down the sky, though here and there the flame bronzed it. The Indian lodges were empty, save where a few children squatted at the openings. The seven stood still with wonder, till Pierre whispered to them to get to the ground and crawl close in by the walls of the Fort, following him. They did so, Macavoy breathing hard--too hard; for suddenly Pierre clapped a hand on his mouth. They were now near the Fort, and Pierre had seen an Indian come from the gate. The brave was within a few feet of them. He had almost passed them, for they were in the shadow, but Jose had burst a puffball with his hand, and the dust, flying up, made him sneeze. The Indian turned and saw them. With a low cry and the spring of a tiger Pierre was at his throat; and in another minute they were struggling on the ground. Pierre's hand never let go. His comrades did not stir; he had warned them to lie still. They saw the terrible game played out within arm's length of them. They heard Pierre say at last, as the struggles of the Indian ceased: "Beast! You had Father Halen's life. I have yours." There was one more wrench of the Indian's limbs, and then he lay still. They crawled nearer the gate, still hidden in the shadows and the grass. Presently they came to a clear space. Across this they must go, and enter the Fort before they were discovered. They got to their feet, and ran with wonderful swiftness, Pierre leading, to the gate. They had just reached it when there was a cry from the walls, on which two Indians were sitting. The Indians sprang down, seized their spears, and lunged at the seven as they entered. One spear caught Little Babiche in the arm as he swung aside, but with the butt of his musket Noel dropped him. The other Indian was promptly handled by Pierre himself. By this time Corvette and Jose had shut the gates, and the Fort was theirs--an easy conquest. The Indians were bound and gagged. The adventurers had done it all without drawing the attention of the howling crowd without. The matter was in its infancy, however. They had the place, but could they hold it? What food and water were there within? Perhaps they were hardly so safe besieged as besiegers. Yet there was no doubt on Pierre's part. He had enjoyed the adventure so far up to the hilt. An old promise had been kept, and an old wrong avenged. "What's to be done now?" said Macavoy. "There'll be hell's own racket; and they'll come on like a flood." "To wait," said Pierre, "and dam the flood as it comes. But not a bullet till I give the word. Take to the chinks. We'll have them soon." He was right: they came soon. Someone had found the dead body of Young Eye; then it was discovered that the gate was shut. A great shout went up. The Indians ran to their lodges for spears and hatchets, though the weapons of many were within the Fort, and soon they were about the place, shouting in impotent rage. They could not tell how many invaders were in the Fort; they suspected it was the Little Skins, their ancient enemies. But Young Eye, they saw, had not been scalped. This was brought to the old chief, and he called to his men to fall back. They had not seen one man of the invaders; all was silent and dark within the Fort; even the two torches which had been burning above the gate were down. At that moment, as if to add to the strangeness, a caribou came suddenly through the fires, and, passing not far from the bewildered Indians, plunged into the trees behind the Fort. The caribou is credited with great powers. It is thought to understand all that is said to it, and to be able to take the form of a spirit. No Indian will come near it till it is dead, and he that kills it out of season is supposed to bring down all manner of evil. So at this sight they cried out--the women falling to the ground with their faces in their arms--that the caribou had done this thing. For a moment they were all afraid. Besides, as a brave showed, there was no mark on the body of Young Eye. Pierre knew quite well that this was a bull caribou, travelling wildly till he found another herd. He would carry on the deception. "Wail for the dead, as your women do in Ireland. That will finish them," he said to Macavoy. The giant threw his voice up and out, so that it seemed to come from over the Fort to the Indians, weird and crying. Even the half-breeds standing by felt a light shock of unnatural excitement. The Indians without drew back slowly from the Fort, leaving a clear space between. Macavoy had uncanny tricks with his voice, and presently he changed the song into a shrill, wailing whistle, which went trembling about the place and then stopped suddenly. "Sure, that's a poor game, Pierre," he whispered; "an' I'd rather be pluggin' their hides wid bullets, or givin' the double-an'-twist. It's fightin' I come for, and not the trick av Mother Kilkevin." Pierre arranged a plan of campaign at once. Every man looked to his gun, the gates were slowly opened, and Macavoy stepped out. Pierre had thrown over the Irishman's shoulders the great skin of a musk-ox which he had found inside the stockade. He was a strange, immense figure, as he walked into the open space, and, folding his arms, looked round. In the shadow of the gate behind were Pierre and the halfbreeds, with guns cocked. Macavoy had lived so long in the north that he knew enough of all the languages to speak to this tribe. When he came out a murmur of wonder ran among the Indians. They had never seen anyone so tall, for they were not great of stature, and his huge beard and wild shock of hair were a wonderful sight. He remained silent, looking on them. At last the old chief spoke. "Who are you?" "I am a great chief from the Hills of the Mighty Men, come to be your king," was his reply. "He is your king," cried Pierre in a strange voice from the shadow of the gate, and he thrust out his gun-barrel, so that they could see it. The Indians now saw Pierre and the half-breeds in the gateway, and they had not so much awe. They came a little nearer, and the women stopped crying. A few of the braves half-raised their spears. Seeing this, Pierre instantly stepped forward to the giant. He looked a child in stature thereby. He spoke quickly and well in the Chinook language. "This is a mighty man from the Hills of the Mighty Men. He has come to rule over you, to give all other tribes into your hands; for he has strength like a thousand, and fears nothing of gods nor men. I have the blood of red men in me. It is I who have called this man from his distant home. I heard of your fighting and foolishness: also that warriors were to come from the south country to scatter your wives and children, and to make you slaves. I pitied you, and I have brought you a chief greater than any other. Throw your spears upon the ground, and all will be well; but raise one to throw, or one arrow, or axe, and there shall be death among you, so that as a people you shall die. The spirits are with us. . . . Well?" The Indians drew a little nearer, but they did not drop their spears, for the old chief forbade them. "We are no dogs nor cowards," he said, "though the spirits be with you, as we believe. We have seen strange things"--he pointed to Young Eye-- "and heard voices not of men; but we would see great things as well as strange. There are seven men of the Little Skins tribe within a lodge yonder. They were to die when our braves returned from the hunt, and for that we prepared the feast. But this mighty man, he shall fight them all at once, and if he kills them he shall be our king. In the name of my tribe I speak. And this other," pointing to Pierre, "he shall also fight with a strong man of our tribe, so that we shall know if you are all brave, and not as those who crawl at the knees of the mighty." This was more than Pierre had bargained for. Seven men at Macavoy, and Indians too, fighting for their lives, was a contract of weight. But Macavoy was blowing in his beard cheerfully enough. "Let me choose me ground," he said, "wid me back to the wall, an' I'll take thim as they come." Pierre instantly interpreted this to the Indians, and said for himself that he would welcome their strongest man at the point of a knife when he chose. The chief gave an order, and the Little Skins were brought. The fires still burned brightly, and the breathing of the pines, as a slight wind rose and stirred them, came softly over. The Indians stood off at the command of the chief. Macavoy drew back to the wall, dropped the musk-ox skin to the ground, and stripped himself to the waist. But in his waistband there was what none of these Indians had ever seen--a small revolver that barked ever so softly. In the hands of each Little Skin there was put a knife, and they were told their cheerful exercise. They came on cautiously, and then suddenly closed in, knives flashing. But Macavoy's little bulldog barked, and one dropped to the ground. The others fell back. The wounded man drew up, made a lunge at Macavoy, but missed him. As if ashamed, the other six came on again at a spring. But again the weapon did its work smartly, and one more came down. Now the giant put it away, ran in upon the five, and cut right and left. So sudden and massive was his rush that they had no chance. Three fell at his blows, and then he drew back swiftly to the wall. "Drop your knives," he said, as they cowered, "or I'll kill you all." They did so. He dropped his own. "Now come on, ye scuts!" he cried, and suddenly he reached and caught them, one with each arm, and wrestled with them, till he bent the one like a willow-rod, and dropped him with a broken back, while the other was at his mercy. Suddenly loosing him, he turned him towards the woods, and said: "Run, ye rid divil, run for y'r life!" A dozen spears were raised, but the rifles of Pierre's men came in between: the Indian reached cover and was gone. Of the six others, two had been killed, the rest were severely wounded, and Macavoy had not a scratch. Pierre smiled grimly. "You've been doing all the fighting, Macavoy," he said. "There's no bein' a king for nothin'," he replied, wiping blood from his beard. "It's my turn now, but keep your rifles ready, though I think there's no need." Pierre had but a short minute with the champion, for he was an expert with the knife. He carried away four fingers of the Indian's fighting hand, and that ended it; for the next instant the point was at the red man's throat. The Indian stood to take it like a man; but Pierre loved that kind of courage, and shot the knife into its sheath instead. The old chief kept his word, and after the spears were piled, he shook hands with Macavoy, as did his braves one by one, and they were all moved by the sincerity of his grasp: their arms were useless for some time after. They hailed as their ruler, King Macavoy I.; for men are like dogs--they worship him who beats them. The feasting and dancing went on till the hunters came back. Then there was a wild scene, but in the end all the hunters, satisfied, came to greet their new king. The king himself went to bed in the Fort that night, Pierre and his bodyguard--by name Noel, Little Babiche, Corvette, Jose, and Parfaite --its only occupants, singing joyfully: "Did yees iver hear tell o' Long Barney, That come from the groves o' Killarney? He wint for a king, oh, he wint for a king, But he niver keen back to Killarney Wid his crown, an' his soord, an' his army!" As a king Macavoy was a success, for the brag had gone from him. Like all his race he had faults as a subject, but the responsibility of ruling set him right. He found in the Fort an old sword and belt, left by some Hudson's Bay Company's man, and these he furbished up and wore. With Pierre's aid he drew up a simple constitution, which he carried in the crown of his cap, and he distributed beads and gaudy trappings as marks of honour. Nor did he forget the frequent pipe of peace, made possible to all by generous gifts of tobacco. Anyone can found a kingdom abaft the Barren Grounds with tobacco, beads, and red flannel. For very many weeks it was a happy kingdom. But presently Pierre yawned, and was ready to return. Three of the half-breeds were inclined to go with him. Jose and Little Babiche had formed alliances which held them there--besides, King Macavoy needed them. On the eve of Pierre's departure a notable thing occurred. A young brave had broken his leg in hunting, had been picked up by a band of another tribe, and carried south. He found himself at last at Fort O'Angel. There he had met Mrs. Whelan, and for presents of tobacco, and purple and fine linen, he had led her to her consort. That was how the king and Pierre met her in the yard of Fort Comfort one evening of early autumn. Pierre saw her first, and was for turning the King about and getting him away; but it was too late. Mrs. Whelan had seen him, and she called out at him: "Oh, Tim! me jool, me king, have I found ye, me imp'ror!" She ran at him, to throw her arms round him. He stepped back, the red of his face going white, and said, stretching out his hand, "Woman, y'are me wife, I know, whativer y' be; an' y've right to have shelter and bread av me; but me arms, an' me bed, are me own to kape or to give; and, by God, ye shall have nayther one nor the other! There's a ditch as wide as hell betune us." The Indians had gathered quickly; they filled the yard, and crowded the gate. The woman went wild, for she had been drinking. She ran at Macavoy and spat in his face, and called down such a curse on him as, whoever hears, be he one that's cursed or any other, shudders at till he dies. Then she fell in a fit at his feet. Macavoy turned to the Indians, stretched out his hands and tried to speak, but could not. He stooped down, picked up the woman, carried her into the Fort, and laid her on a bed of skins. "What will you do?" asked Pierre. "She is my wife," he answered firmly. "She lived with Whelan." "She must be cared for," was the reply. Pierre looked at him with a curious quietness. "I'll get liquor for her," he said presently. He started to go, but turned and felt the woman's pulse. "You would keep her?" he asked. "Bring the liquor." Macavoy reached for water, and dipping the sleeve of his shirt in it, wetted her face gently. Pierre brought the liquor, but he knew that the woman would die. He stayed with Macavoy beside her all the night. Towards morning her eyes opened, and she shivered greatly. "It's bither cold," she said. "You'll put more wood on the fire, Tim, for the babe must be kept warrum." She thought she was at Malahide. "Oh, wurra, wurra, but 'tis freezin'!" she said again. "Why d'ye kape the door opin whin the child's perishin'?" Macavoy sat looking at her, his trouble shaking him. "I'll shut the door meself, thin," she added; "for 'twas I that lift it opin, Tim." She started up, but gave a cry like a wailing wind, and fell back. "The door is shut," said Pierre. "But the child--the child!" said Macavoy, tears running down his face and beard. THE GIFT OF THE SIMPLE KING Once Macavoy the giant ruled a tribe of Northern people, achieving the dignity by the hands of Pierre, who called him King Macavoy. Then came a time when, tiring of his kingship, he journeyed south, leaving all behind, even his queen, Wonta, who, in her bed of cypresses and yarrow, came forth no more into the morning. About Fort Guidon they still gave him his title, and because of his guilelessness, sincerity, and generosity, Pierre called him "The Simple King." His seven feet and over shambled about, suggesting unjointed power, unshackled force. No one hated Macavoy, many loved him, he was welcome at the fire and the cooking-pot; yet it seemed shameful to have so much man useless-- such an engine of life, which might do great things, wasting fuel. Nobody thought much of that at Fort Guidon, except, perhaps, Pierre, who sometimes said, "My simple king, some day you shall have your great chance again; but not as a king--as a giant, a man--voila!" The day did not come immediately, but it came. When Ida, the deaf and dumb girl, married Hilton, of the H.B.C., every man at Fort Guidon, and some from posts beyond, sent her or brought her presents of one kind or another. Pierre's gift was a Mexican saddle. He was branding Ida's name on it with the broken blade of a case-knife when Macavoy entered on him, having just returned from a vagabond visit to Fort Ste. Anne. "Is it digging out or carvin' in y'are?" he asked, puffing into his beard. Pierre looked up contemptuously, but did not reply to the insinuation, for he never saw an insult unless he intended to avenge it; and he would not quarrel with Macavoy. "What are you going to give?" he asked. "Aw, give what to who, hop-o'-me-thumb?" Macavoy said, stretching himself out in the doorway, his legs in the sun, head in the shade. "You've been taking a walk in the country, then?" Pierre asked, though he knew. "To Fort Ste. Anne: a buryin', two christ'nin's, an' a weddin'; an' lashin's av grog an' swill-aw that, me button o' the North!" "La la! What a fool you are, my simple king! You've got the things end foremost. Turn your head to the open air, for I go to light a cigarette, and if you breathe this way, there will be a grand explode." "Aw, yer thumb in yer eye, Pierre! It's like a baby's, me breath is, milk and honey it is--aw yis; an' Father Corraine, that was doin' the trick for the love o' God, says he to me, 'Little Tim Macavoy,'--aw yis, little Tim Macavoy,--says he, 'when are you goin' to buckle to, for the love o' God?' says he. Ashamed I was, Pierre, that Father Corraine should spake to me like that, for I'd only a twig twisted at me hips to kape me trousies up, an' I thought 'twas that he had in his eye! 'Buckle to,' says I, 'Father Corraine? Buckle to, yer riv'rince?'--feelin' I was at the twigs the while. 'Ay, little Tim Macavoy,' he says, says he, 'you've bin 'atin' the husks av idleness long enough; when are you goin' to buckle to? You had a kingdom and ye guv it up,' says he; 'take a field, get a plough, and buckle to,' says he, 'an' turn back no more'-- like that, says Father Corraine; and I thinkin' all the time 'twas the want o' me belt he was drivin' at." Pierre looked at him a moment idly, then said: "Such a tom-fool! And where's that grand leather belt of yours, eh, my monarch?" A laugh shook through Macavoy's beard. "For the weddin' it wint: buckled the two up wid it for better or worse--an' purty they looked, they did, standin' there in me cinch, an' one hole left--aw yis, Pierre." "And what do you give to Ida?" Pierre asked, with a little emphasis of the branding-iron. Macavoy got to his feet. "Ida! Ida!" said he. "Is that saddle for Ida? Is it her and Hilton that's to ate aff one dish togither? That rose o' the valley, that bird wid a song in her face and none an her tongue. That daisy dot av a thing, steppin' through the world like a sprig o' glory. Aw, Pierre, thim two!--an' I've divil a scrap to give, good or bad. I've nothin' at all in the wide wurruld but the clothes an me back, an' thim hangin' on the underbrush!"--giving a little twist to the twigs. "An' many a meal an' many a dipper o' drink she's guv me, little smiles dancin' at her lips." He sat down in the doorway again, with his face turned towards Pierre, and the back of his head in the sun. He was a picture of perfect health, sumptuous, huge, a bull in beauty, the heart of a child looking out of his eyes, but a sort of despair, too, in his bearing. Pierre watched him with a furtive humour for a time, then he said languidly: "Never mind your clothes, give yourself." "Yer tongue in yer cheek, me spot o' vinegar. Give meself! What's that for? A purty weddin' gift, says I? Handy thing to have in the house! Use me for a clothes-horse, or shtand me in the garden for a fairy bower- aw yis, wid a hole in me face that'd ate thim out o' house and home!" Pierre drew a piece of brown paper towards him, and wrote on it with a burnt match. Presently he held it up. "Voila, my simple king, the thing for you to do: a grand gift, and to cost you nothing now. Come, read it out, and tell me what you think." Macavoy took the paper, and in a large, judicial way, read slowly: "On demand, for value received, I promise to pay to . . . IDA HILTON . . . or order, meself, Tim Macavoy, standin' seven foot three on me bare fut, wid interest at nothin' at all." Macavoy ended with a loud smack of the lips. "McGuire!" he said, and nothing more. McGuire was his strongest expression. In the most important moments of his career he had said it, and it sounded deep, strange, and more powerful than many usual oaths. A moment later he said again "McGuire!" Then he read the paper once more out loud. "What's that, me Frinchman?" he asked. "What Ballzeboob's tricks are y'at now?" Pierre was complacently eyeing his handiwork on the saddle. He now settled back with his shoulders to the wall, and said: "See, then, it's a little promissory note for a wedding-gift to Ida. When she says some day, 'Tim Macavoy, I want you to do this or that, or to go here or there, or to sell you or trade you, or use you for a clothes-horse, or a bridge over a canyon, or to hold up a house, or blow out a prairie-fire, or be my second husband,' you shall say, 'Here I am'; and you shall travel from Heaven to Halifax, but you shall come at the call of this promissory." Pierre's teeth glistened behind a smile as he spoke, and Macavoy broke into a roar of laughter. "Black's the white o' yer eye," he said at last, "an' a joke's a joke. Seven fut three I am, an' sound av wind an' limb--an' a weddin'-gift to that swate rose o' the valley! Aisy, aisy, Pierre. A bit o' foolin' 'twas ye put on the paper, but truth I'll make it, me cock o' the walk. That's me gift to her an' Hilton, an' no other. An' a dab wid red wax it shall have, an' what more be the word o' Freddy Tarlton the lawyer?" "You're a great man," said Pierre with a touch of gentle irony, for his natural malice had no play against the huge ex-king of his own making. With these big creatures--he had connived with several in his time--he had ever been superior, protective, making them to feel that they were as children beside him. He looked at Macavoy musingly, and said to himself: "Well, why not? If it is a joke, then it is a joke; if it is a thing to make the world stand still for a minute sometime, so much the better. He is all waste now. By the holy, he shall do it. It is amusing, and it may be great by and by." Presently Pierre said aloud: "Well, my Macavoy, what will you do? Send this good gift?" "Aw yis, Pierre; I shtand by that from the crown av me head to the sole av me fut sure. Face like a mornin' in May, and hands like the tunes of an organ, she has. Spakes wid a look av her eye and a twist av her purty lips an' swaying body, an' talkin' to you widout a word. Aw motion-- motion--motion; yis, that's it. An' I've seen her an tap av a hill wid the wind blowin' her hair free, and the yellow buds on the tree, and the grass green beneath her feet, the world smilin' betune her and the sun: pictures--pictures, aw yis! Promissory notice on demand is it anny toime? Seven fut three on me bare toes--but Father o' Sin! when she calls I come, yis." "On your oath, Macavoy?" asked Pierre; "by the book av the Mass?" Macavoy stood up straight till his head scraped the cobwebs between the rafters, the wild indignation of a child in his eye. "D'ye think I'm a thafe to stale me own word? Hut! I'll break ye in two, ye wisp o' straw, if ye doubt me word to a lady. There's me note av hand, and ye shall have me fist on it, in writin', at Freddy Tarlton's office, wid a blotch av red an' the Queen's head at the bottom. McGuire!" he said again, and paused, puffing his lips through his beard. Pierre looked at him a moment, then waving his fingers idly, said, "So, my straw-breaker! Then tomorrow morning at ten you will fetch your wedding-gift. But come so soon now to M'sieu' Tarlton's office, and we will have it all as you say, with the red seal and the turn of your fist --yes. Well, well, we travel far in the world, and sometimes we see strange things, and no two strange things are alike--no; there is only one Macavoy in the world, there was only one Shon McGann. Shon McGann was a fine fool, but he did something at last, truly yes: Tim Macavoy, perhaps, will do something at last on his own hook. Hey, I wonder!" He felt the muscles of Macavoy's arm musingly, and then laughed up in the giant's face. "Once I made you a king, my own, and you threw it all away; now I make you a slave, and we shall see what you will do. Come along, for M'sieu' Tarlton." Macavoy dropped a heavy hand on Pierre's shoulder. "'Tis hard to be a king, Pierre, but 'tis aisy to be a slave for the likes o' her. I'd kiss her dirty shoe sure!" As they passed through the door, Pierre said, "Dis done, perhaps, when all is done, she will sell you for old bones and rags. Then I will buy you, and I will burn your bones and the rags, and I will scatter to the four winds of the earth the ashes of a king, a slave, a fool, and an Irishman--truly!" "Bedad, ye'll have more earth in yer hands then, Pierre, than ye'll ever earn, and more heaven than ye'll ever shtand in." Half an hour later they were in Freddy Tarlton's office on the banks of the Little Big Swan, which tumbled past, swelled by the first rain of the early autumn. Freddy Tarlton, who had a gift of humour, entered into the spirit of the thing, and treated it seriously; but in vain did he protest that the large red seal with Her Majesty's head on it was unnecessary; Macavoy insisted, and wrote his name across it with a large indistinctness worthy of a king. Before the night was over everybody at Guidon Hill, save Hilton and Ida, knew what gift would come from Macavoy to the wedded pair. II The next morning was almost painfully beautiful, so delicate in its clearness, so exalted by the glory of the hills, so grand in the limitless stretch of the green-brown prairie north and south. It was a day for God's creatures to meet in, and speed away, and having flown round the boundaries of that spacious domain, to return again to the nest of home on the large plateau between the sea and the stars. Gathered about Ida's home was everybody who lived within a radius of a hundred miles. In the large front room all the presents were set: rich furs from the far north, cunningly carved bowls, rocking-chairs made by hand, knives, cooking utensils, a copy of Shakespeare in six volumes from the Protestant missionary who performed the ceremony, a nugget of gold from the Long Light River; and outside the door, a horse, Hilton's own present to his wife, on which was put Pierre's saddle, with its silver mounting and Ida's name branded deep on pommel and flap. When Macavoy arrived, a cheer went up, which was carried on waves of laughter into the house to Hilton and Ida, who even then were listening to the first words of the brief service which begins, "I charge you both if you do know any just cause or impediment--" and so on. They did not turn to see what it was, for just at that moment they themselves were the very centre of the universe. Ida being deaf and dumb, it was necessary to interpret to her the words of the service by signs, as the missionary read it, and this was done by Pierre himself, the half-breed Catholic, the man who had brought Hilton and Ida together, for he and Ida had been old friends. After Father Corraine had taught her the language of signs, Pierre had learned them from her, until at last his gestures had become as vital as her own. The delicate precision of his every movement, the suggestiveness of look and motion, were suited to a language which was nearer to the instincts of his own nature than word of mouth. All men did not trust Pierre, but all women did; with those he had a touch of Machiavelli, with these he had no sign of Mephistopheles, and few were the occasions in his life when he showed outward tenderness to either: which was equally effective. He had learnt, or knew by instinct, that exclusiveness as to men and indifference as to women are the greatest influences on both. As he stood there, slowly interpreting to Ida, by graceful allusive signs, the words of the service, one could not think that behind his impassive face there was any feeling for the man or for the woman. He had that disdainful smile which men acquire who are all their lives aloof from the hopes of the hearthstone and acknowledge no laws but their own. More than once the eyes of the girl filled with tears, as the pregnancy of some phrase in the service came home to her. Her face responded to Pierre's gestures, as do one's nerves to the delights of good music, and there was something so unique, so impressive in the ceremony, that the laughter which had greeted Macavoy passed away, and a dead silence; beginning from where the two stood, crept out until it covered all the prairie. Nothing was heard except Hilton's voice in strong tones saying, "I take thee to be my wedded wife," etc.; but when the last words of the service were said, and the newmade bride turned to her husband's embrace, and a little sound of joy broke from her lips, there was plenty of noise and laughter again, for Macavoy stood in the doorway, or rather outside it, stooping to look in upon the scene. Someone had lent him the cinch of a broncho and he had belted himself with it, no longer carrying his clothes about "on the underbrush." Hilton laughed and stretched out his hand. "Come in, King," he said, "come and wish us joy." Macavoy parted the crowd easily, forcing his way, and instantly was stooping before the pair--for he could not stand upright in the room. "Aw, now, Hilton, is it you, is it you, that's pluckin' the rose av the valley, snatchin' the stars out av the sky! aw, Hilton, the like o' that! Travel down I did yesterday from Fort Ste. Anne, and divil a word I knew till Pierre hit me in the eye wid it last night--and no time for a present, for a wedding-gift--no, aw no!" Just here Ida reached up and touched him on the shoulder. He smiled down on her, puffing and blowing in his beard, bursting to speak to her, yet knowing no word by signs to say; but he nodded his head at her, and he patted Hilton's shoulder, and he took their hands and joined them together, hers on top of Hilton's, and shook them in one of his own till she almost winced. Presently, with a look at Hilton, who nodded in reply, Ida lifted her cheek to Macavoy to kiss--Macavoy, the idle, ill- cared-for, boisterous giant. His face became red like that of a child caught in an awkward act, and with an absurd shyness he stooped and touched her cheek. Then he turned to Hilton, and blurted out, "Aw, the rose o' the valley, the pride o' the wide wurruld! aw, the bloom o' the hills! I'd have kissed her dirty shoe. McQuire!" A burst of laughter rolled out on the clear air of the prairie, and the hills seemed to stir with the pleasure of life. Then it was that Macavoy, following Hilton and Ida outside, suddenly stopped beside the horse, drew from his pocket the promissory note that Pierre had written, and said, "Yis, but all the weddin'-gifts aren't in. 'Tis nothin' I had to give-divil a cent in the wurruld, divil a pound av baccy, or a pot for the fire, or a bit av linin for the table; nothin' but meself and me dirty clothes, standin' seven fut three an me bare toes. What was I to do? There was only meself to give, so I give it free and hearty, and here it is wid the Queen's head an it, done in Mr. Tarlton's office. Ye'd better had had a dog, or a gun, or a ladder, or a horse, or a saddle, or a quart o' brown brandy; but such as it is I give it ye-- I give it to the rose o' the valley and the star o' the wide wurruld." In a loud voice he read the promissory note, and handed it to Ida. Men laughed till there were tears in their eyes, and a keg of whisky was opened; but somehow Ida did not laugh. She and Pierre had seen a serious side to Macavoy's gift: the childlike manliness in it. It went home to her woman's heart without a touch of ludicrousness, without a sound of laughter. III After a time the interest in this wedding-gift declined at Fort Guidon, and but three people remembered it with any singular distinctness--Ida, Pierre, and Macavoy. Pierre was interested, for in his primitive mind he knew that, however wild a promise, life is so wild in its events, there comes the hour for redemption of all I O U's. Meanwhile, weeks, months, and even a couple of years passed, Macavoy and Pierre coming and going, sometimes together, sometimes not, in all manner of words at war, in all manner of fact at peace. And Ida, out of the bounty of her nature, gave the two vagabonds a place at her fireside whenever they chose to come. Perhaps, where speech was not given, a gift of divination entered into her instead, and she valued what others found useless, and held aloof from what others found good. She had powers which had ever been the admiration of Guidon Hill. Birds and animals were her friends--she called them her kinsmen. A peculiar sympathy joined them; so that when, at last, she tamed a white wild duck, and made it do the duties of a carrier-pigeon, no one thought it strange. Up in the hills, beside the White Sun River, lived her sister and her sister's children; and, by and by, the duck carried messages back and forth, so that when, in the winter, Ida's health became delicate, she had comfort in the solicitude and cheerfulness of her sister, and the gaiety of the young birds of her nest, who sent Ida many a sprightly message and tales of their good vagrancy in the hills. In these days Pierre and Macavoy were little at the Post, save now and then to sit with Hilton beside the fire, waiting for spring and telling tales. Upon Hilton had settled that peaceful, abstracted expectancy which shows man at his best, as he waits for the time when, through the half-lights of his fatherhood, he shall see the broad fine dawn of motherhood spreading up the world-- which, all being said and done, is that place called Home. Something gentle came over him while he grew stouter in body and in all other ways made a larger figure among the people of the West. As Pierre said, whose wisdom was more to be trusted than his general morality, "It is strange that most men think not enough of themselves till a woman shows them how. But it is the great wonder that the woman does not despise him for it. Quel caractere! She has so often to show him his way like a babe, and yet she says to him, Mon grand homme! my master! my lord! Pshaw! I have often thought that women are half saints, half fools, and men half fools, half rogues. But Quelle vie!-- what life! without a woman you are half a man; with one you are bound to a single spot in the world, you are tied by the leg, your wing is clipped--you cannot have all. Quelle vie--what life!" To this Macavoy said: "Spit-spat! But what the devil good does all yer thinkin' do ye, Pierre? It's argufy here and argufy there, an' while yer at that, me an' the rest av us is squeezin' the fun out o' life. Aw, go 'long wid ye. Y'are only a bit o' hell and grammar, annyway. Wid all yer cuttin' and carvin' things to see the internals av thim, I'd do more to the call av a woman's finger than for all the logic and knowalogy y' ever chewed--an' there y'are, me little tailor o' jur'sprudince!" "To the finger call of Hilton's wife, eh?" Macavoy was not quite sure what Pierre's enigmatical tone meant. A wild light showed in his eyes, and his tongue blundered out: "Yis, Hilton's wife's finger, or a look av her eye, or nothin' at all. Aisy, aisy, ye wasp! Ye'd go stalkin' divils in hell for her yerself, so ye would. But the tongue av ye--but, it's gall to the tip." "Maybe, my king. But I'd go hunting because I wanted; you because you must. You're a slave to come and to go, with a Queen's seal on the promissory." Macavoy leaned back and roared. "Aw, that! The rose o' the valley--the joy o' the wurruld! S't, Pierre--" his voice grew softer on a sudden, as a fresh thought came to him--"did y' ever think that the child might be dumb like the mother?" This was a day in the early spring, when the snows were melting in the hills, and freshets were sweeping down the valleys far and near. That night a warm heavy rain came on, and in the morning every stream and river was swollen to twice its size. The mountains seemed to have stripped themselves of snow, and the vivid sun began at once to colour the foothills with green. As Pierre and Macavoy stood at their door, looking out upon the earth cleansing itself, Macavoy suddenly said: "Aw, look, look, Pierre--her white duck off to the nest on Champak Hill!" They both shaded their eyes with their hands. Circling round two or three times above the Post, the duck then stretched out its neck to the west, and floated away beyond Guidon Hill, and was hid from view. Pierre, without a word, began cleaning his rifle, while Macavoy smoked, and sat looking into the distance, surveying the sweet warmth and light. His face blossomed with colour, and the look of his eyes was that of an irresponsible child. Once or twice he smiled and puffed in his beard, but perhaps that was involuntary, or was, maybe, a vague reflection of his dreams, themselves most vague, for he was only soaking in sun and air and life. Within an hour they saw the wild duck-again passing the crest of Guidon, and they watched it sailing down to the Post, Pierre idly fondling the gun, Macavoy half roused from his dreams. But presently they were altogether roused, the gun was put away, and both were on their feet; for after the pigeon arrived there was a stir at the Post, and Hilton could be seen running from the store to his house, not far away. "Something's wrong there," said Pierre. "D'ye think 'twas the duck brought it?" asked Macavoy. Without a word Pierre started away towards the Post, Macavoy following. As they did so, a half-breed boy came from the house, hurrying towards them. Inside the house Hilton's wife lay in her bed, her great hour coming on before the time, because of ill news from beyond the Guidon. There was with her an old Frenchwoman, who herself, in her time, had brought many children into the world, whose heart brooded tenderly, if uncouthly, over the dumb girl. She it was who had handed to Hilton the paper the wild duck had brought, after Ida had read it and fallen in a faint on the floor. The message that had felled the young wife was brief and awful. A cloud- burst had fallen on Champak Hill, had torn part of it away, and a part of this part had swept down into the path that led to the little house, having been stopped by some falling trees and a great boulder. It blocked the only way to escape above, and beneath, the river was creeping up to sweep away the little house. So, there the mother and her children waited (the father was in the farthest north), facing death below and above. The wild duck had carried the tale in its terrible simplicity. The last words were, "There mayn't be any help for me and my sweet chicks, but I am still hoping, and you must send a man or many. But send soon, for we are cut off, and the end may come any hour." Macavoy and Pierre were soon at the Post, and knew from Hilton all there was to know. At once Pierre began to gather men, though what one or many could do none could say. Eight white men and three Indians watched the wild duck sailing away again from the bedroom window where Ida lay, to carry a word of comfort to Champak Hill. Before it went, Ida asked for Macavoy, and he was brought to her bedroom by Hilton. He saw a pale, almost unearthly, yet beautiful face, flushing and paling with a coming agony, looking up at him; and presently two trembling hands made those mystic signs which are the primal language of the soul. Hilton interpreted to him this: "I have sent for you. There is no man so big or strong as you in the north. I did not know that I should ever ask you to redeem the note. I want my gift, and I will give you your paper with the Queen's head on it. Those little lives, those pretty little dears, you will not see them die. If there is a way, any way, you will save them. Sometimes one man can do what twenty cannot. You were my wedding-gift: I claim you now." She paused, and then motioned to the nurse, who laid the piece of brown paper in Macavoy's hand. He held it for a moment as delicately as if it were a fragile bit of glass, something that his huge fingers might crush by touching. Then he reached over and laid it on the bed beside her and said, looking Hilton in the eyes, "Tell her, the slip av a saint she is, if the breakin' av me bones, or the lettin' av me blood's what'll set all right at Champak Hill, let her mind be aisy--aw yis!" Soon afterwards they were all on their way--all save Hilton, whose duty was beside this other danger, for the old nurse said that, "like as not," her life would hang upon the news from Champak Hill; and if ill came, his place was beside the speechless traveller on the Brink. In a few hours the rescuers stood on the top of Champak Hill, looking down. There stood the little house, as it were, between two dooms. Even Pierre's face became drawn and pale as he saw what a very few hours or minutes might do. Macavoy had spoken no word, had answered no question since they had left the Post. There was in his eye the large seriousness, the intentness which might be found in the face of a brave boy, who had not learned fear, and yet saw a vast ditch of danger at which he must leap. There was ever before him the face of the dumb wife; there was in his ears the sound of pain that had followed him from Hilton's house out into the brilliant day. The men stood helpless, and looked at each other. They could not say to the river that it must rise no farther, and they could not go to the house, nor let a rope down, and there was the crumbled moiety of the hill which blocked the way to the house: elsewhere it was sheer precipice without trees. There was no corner in these hills that Macavoy and Pierre did not know, and at last, when despair seemed to settle on the group, Macavoy, having spoken a low word to Pierre, said: "There's wan way, an' maybe I can an' maybe I can't, but I'm fit to try. I'll go up the river to an aisy p'int a mile above, get in, and drift down to a p'int below there, thin climb up and loose the stuff." Every man present knew the double danger: the swift headlong river, and the sudden rush of rocks and stones, which must be loosed on the side of the narrow ravine opposite the little house. Macavoy had nothing to say to the head-shakes of the others, and they did not try to dissuade him; for women and children were in the question, and there they were below beside the house, the children gathered round the mother, she waiting-- waiting. Macavoy, stripped to the waist, and carrying only a hatchet and a coil of rope tied round him, started away alone up the river. The others waited, now and again calling comfort to the woman below, though their words could not be heard. About half an hour passed, and then someone called out: "Here he comes!" Presently they could see the rough head and the bare shoulders of the giant in the wild churning stream. There was only one point where he could get a hold on the hillside--the jutting bole of a tree just beneath them, and beneath the dyke of rock and trees. It was a great moment. The current swayed him out, but he plunged forward, catching at the bole. His hand seized a small branch. It held him an instant, as he was swung round, then it snapt. But the other hand clenched the bole, and to a loud cheer, which Pierre prompted, Macavoy drew himself up. After that they could not see him. He alone was studying the situation. He found the key-rock to the dyked slide of earth. To loosen it was to divert the slide away, or partly away, from the little house. But it could not be loosened from above, if at all, and he himself would be in the path of the destroying hill. "Aisy, aisy, Tim Macavoy," he said to himself. "It's the woman and the darlins av her, an' the rose o' the valley down there at the Post!" A minute afterwards, having chopped down a hickory sapling, he began to pry at the boulder which held the mass. Presently a tree came crashing down, and a small rush of earth followed it, and the hearts of the men above and the woman and children below stood still for an instant. An hour passed as Macavoy toiled with a strange careful skill and a superhuman concentration. His body was all shining with sweat, and sweat dripped like water from his forehead. His eyes were on the keyrock and the pile, alert, measuring, intent. At last he paused. He looked round at the hills-down at the river, up at the sky-humanity was shut away from his sight. He was alone. A long hot breath broke from his pressed lips, stirring his big red beard. Then he gave a call, a long call that echoed through the hills weirdly and solemnly. It reached the ears of those above like a greeting from an outside world. They answered, "Right, Macavoy!" Years afterwards these men told how then there came in reply one word, ringing roundly through the hills--the note and symbol of a crisis, the fantastic cipher of a soul: "M'Guire!" There was a loud booming sound, the dyke was loosed, the ravine split into the swollen stream its choking mouthful of earth and rock; and a minute afterwards the path was clear to the top of Champak Hill. To it came the unharmed children and their mother, who, from the warm peak sent the wild duck "to the rose o' the valley," which, till the message came, was trembling on the stem of life. But Joy, that marvellous healer, kept it blooming with a little Eden bird nestling near, whose happy tongue was taught in after years to tell of the gift of the Simple King; who had redeemed, on demand, the promissory note for ever. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: A human life he held to be a trifle in the big sum of time Fear of one's own wife is the worst fear in the world He never saw an insult unless he intended to avenge it Liars all men may be, but that's wid wimmin or landlords Men are like dogs--they worship him who beats them She valued what others found useless Women are half saints, half fools A ROMANY OF THE SNOWS BEING A CONTINUATION OF THE PERSONAL HISTORIES OF "PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE" AND THE LAST EXISTING RECORDS OF PRETTY PIERRE By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. MALACHI THE LAKE OF THE GREAT SLAVE THE RED PATROL THE GOING OF THE WHITE SWAN AT BAMBER'S BOOM MALACHI "He'll swing just the same to-morrow. Exit Malachi!" said Freddy Tarlton gravely. The door suddenly opened on the group of gossips, and a man stepped inside and took the only vacant seat near the fire. He glanced at none, but stretched out his hands to the heat, looking at the coals with drooping introspective eyes. "Exit Malachi," he said presently in a soft ironical voice, but did not look up. "By the holy poker, Pierre, where did you spring from?" asked Tarlton genially. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and--" Pierre responded, with a little turn of his fingers. "And the wind doesn't tell where it's been, but that's no reason Pierre shouldn't," urged the other. Pierre shrugged his shoulders, but made no answer. "He was a tough," said a voice from the crowd. "To-morrow he'll get the breakfast he's paid for." Pierre turned and looked at the speaker with a cold inquisitive stare. "Mon Dieu!" he said presently, "here's this Gohawk playing preacher. What do you know of Malachi, Gohawk? What do any of you know about Malachi? A little of this, a little of that, a drink here, a game of euchre there, a ride after cattle, a hunt behind Guidon Hill!--But what is that? You have heard the cry of the eagle, you have seen him carry off a lamb, you have had a pot-shot at him, but what do you know of the eagle's nest? Mais non. "The lamb is one thing, the nest is another. You don't know the eagle till you've been there. And you, Gohawk, would not understand, if you saw the nest. Such cancan!" "Shut your mouth!" broke out Gohawk. "D'ye think I'm going to stand your--" Freddy Tarlton laid a hand on his arm. "Keep quiet, Gohawk. What good will it do?" Then he said, "Tell us about the nest, Pierre; they're hanging him for the lamb in the morning." "Who spoke for him at the trial?" Pierre asked. "I did," said Tarlton. "I spoke as well as I could, but the game was dead against him from the start. The sheriff was popular, and young; young--that was the thing; handsome too, and the women, of course! It was sure from the start; besides, Malachi would say nothing--didn't seem to care." "No, not to care," mused Pierre. "What did you say for him to the jury --I mean the devil of a thing to make them sit up and think, 'Poor Malachi!'--like that." "Best speech y'ever heard," Gohawk interjected; "just emptied the words out, split 'em like peas, by gol! till he got to one place right before the end. Then he pulled up sudden, and it got so quiet you could 'a heard a pin drop. 'Gen'lemen of the jury,' says Freddy Tarlton here-- gen'lemen, by gol! all that lot--Lagan and the rest! 'Gen'lemen of the jury,' he says, 'be you danged well sure that you're at one with God A'mighty in this; that you've got at the core of justice here; that you've got evidence to satisfy Him who you've all got to satisfy some day, or git out. Not evidence as to shootin', but evidence as to what that shootin' meant, an' whether it was meant to kill, an' what for. The case is like this, gen'lemen of the jury,' says Freddy Tarlton here. 'Two men are in a street alone. There's a shot, out comes everybody, and sees Fargo the sheriff laid along the ground, his mouth in the dust, and a full-up gun in his fingers. Not forty feet away stands Malachi with a gun smokin' in his fist. It seems to be the opinion that it was cussedness--just cussedness--that made Malachi turn the sheriff's boots to the sun. For Malachi was quarrelsome. I'll give you a quarter on that. And the sheriff was mettlesome, used to have high spirits, like as if he's lift himself over the fence with his bootstraps. So when Malachi come and saw the sheriff steppin' round in his paten' leathers, it give him the needle, and he got a bead on him--and away went Sheriff Fargo-- right away! That seems to be the sense of the public.' And he stops again, soft and quick, and looks the twelve in the eyes at once. 'But,' says Freddy Tarlton here, 'are you goin' to hang a man on the little you know? Or are you goin' to credit him with somethin' of what you don't know? You haint got the inside of this thing, and Malachi doesn't let you know it, and God keeps quiet. But be danged well sure that you've got the bulge on iniquity here; for gen'lemen with pistols out in the street is one thing, and sittin' weavin' a rope in a court-room for a man's neck is another thing,' says Freddy Tarlton here. 'My client has refused to say one word this or that way, but don't be sure that Some One that knows the inside of things won't speak for him in the end.' Then he turns and looks at Malachi, and Malachi was standin' still and steady like a tree, but his face was white, and sweat poured on his forehead. 'If God has no voice to be heard for my client in this court-room to-day, is there no one on earth--no man or woman--who can speak for one who won't speak for himself?' says Freddy Tarlton here. Then, by gol! for the first time Malachi opened. 'There's no one,' he says. 'The speakin' is all for the sheriff. But I spoke once, and the sheriff didn't answer.' Not a bit of beg-yer-pardon in it. It struck cold. 'I leave his case in the hands of twelve true men,' says Freddy Tarlton here, and he sits down." "So they said he must walk the air?" suggested Pierre. "Without leavin' their seats," someone added instantly. "So. But that speech of 'Freddy Tarlton here'?" "It was worth twelve drinks to me, no more, and nothing at all to Malachi," said Tarlton. "When I said I'd come to him to-night to cheer him up, he said he'd rather sleep. The missionary, too, he can make nothing of him. 'I don't need anyone here,' he says. 'I eat this off my own plate.' And that's the end of Malachi." "Because there was no one to speak for him--eh? Well, well." "If he'd said anything that'd justify the thing--make it a manslaughter business or a quarrel--then! But no, not a word, up or down, high or low. Exit Malachi!" rejoined Freddy Tarlton sorrowfully. "I wish he'd given me half a chance." "I wish I'd been there," said Pierre, taking a match from Gohawk, and lighting his cigarette. "To hear his speech?" asked Gohawk, nodding towards Tarlton. "To tell the truth about it all. T'sh, you bats, you sheep, what have you in your skulls? When a man will not speak, will not lie to gain a case for his lawyer--or save himself, there is something! Now, listen to me, and I will tell you the story of Malachi. Then you shall judge. "I never saw such a face as that girl had down there at Lachine in Quebec. I knew her when she was a child, and I knew Malachi when he was on the river with the rafts, the foreman of a gang. He had a look all open then as the sun--yes. Happy? Yes, as happy as a man ought to be. Well, the mother of the child died, and Malachi alone was left to take care of the little Norice. He left the river and went to work in the mills, so that he might be with the child; and when he got to be foreman there he used to bring her to the mill. He had a basket swung for her just inside the mill not far from him, right where she was in the shade; but if she stretched out her hand it would be in the sun. I've seen a hundred men turn to look at her where she swung, singing to herself, and then chuckle to themselves afterwards as they worked. "When Trevoor, the owner, come one day, and saw her, he swore, and was going to sack Malachi, but the child--that little Norice--leaned over the basket, and offered him an apple. He looked for a minute, then he reached up, took the apple, turned round, and went out of the mill without a word--so. Next month when he come he walked straight to her, and handed up to her a box of toys and a silver whistle. 'That's to call me when you want me,' he said, as he put the whistle to her lips, and then he put the gold string of it round her neck. She was a wise little thing, that Norice, and noticed things. I don't believe that Trevoor or Malachi ever knew how sweet was the smell of the fresh sawdust till she held it to their noses; and it was she that had the saws--all sizes-- start one after the other, making so strange a tune. She made up a little song about fairies and others to sing to that tune. And no one ever thought much about Indian Island, off beyond the sweating, baking piles of lumber, and the blistering logs and timbers in the bay, till she told stories about it. Sure enough, when you saw the shut doors and open windows of those empty houses, all white without in the sun and dark within, and not a human to be seen, you could believe almost anything. You can think how proud Malachi was. She used to get plenty of presents from the men who had no wives or children to care for--little silver and gold things as well as others. She was fond of them, but no, not vain. She loved the gold and silver for their own sake." Pierre paused. "I knew a youngster once," said Gohawk, "that--" Pierre waved his hand. "I am not through, M'sieu' Gohawk the talker. Years went on. Now she took care of the house of Malachi. She wore the whistle that Trevoor gave her. He kept saying to her still, 'If ever you need me, little Norice, blow it, and I will come.' He was droll, that M'sieu' Trevoor, at times. Well, she did not blow, but still he used to come every year, and always brought her something. One year he brought his nephew, a young fellow of about twenty-three. She did not whistle for him either, but he kept on coming. That was the beginning of 'Exit Malachi.' The man was clever and bad, the girl believing and good. He was young, but he knew how to win a woman's heart. When that is done, there is nothing more to do--she is yours for good or evil; and if a man, through a woman's love, makes her to sin, even his mother cannot be proud of him-no. But the man married Norice, and took her away to Madison, down in Wisconsin. Malachi was left alone--Malachi and Trevoor, for Trevoor felt towards her as a father. "Alors, sorrow come to the girl, for her husband began to play cards and to drink, and he lost much money. There was the trouble--the two together. They lived in a hotel. One day a lady missed a diamond necklace from her room. Norice had been with her the evening before. Norice come into her own room the next afternoon, and found detectives searching. In her own jewel-case, which was tucked away in the pocket of an old dress, was found the necklace. She was arrested. She said nothing--for she waited for her husband, who was out of town that day. He only come in time to see her in court next morning. She did not deny anything; she was quiet, like Malachi. The man played his part well. He had hid the necklace where he thought it would be safe, but when it was found, he let the wife take the blame--a little innocent thing. People were sorry for them both. She was sent to jail. Her father was away in the Rocky Mountains, and he did not hear; Trevoor was in Europe. The husband got a divorce, and was gone. Norice was in jail for over a year, and then she was set free, for her health went bad, and her mind was going, they thought. She did not know till she come out that she was divorced. Then she nearly died. But then Trevoor come." Freddy Tarlton's hands were cold with excitement, and his fingers trembled so he could hardly light a cigar. "Go on, go on, Pierre," he said huskily. "Trevoor said to her--he told me this himself--'Why did you not whistle for me, Norice? A word would have brought me from Europe.' 'No one could help me, no one at all,' she answered. Then Trevoor said, 'I know who did it, for he has robbed me too.' She sank in a heap on the floor. 'I could have borne it and anything for him, if he hadn't divorced me,' she said. Then they cleared her name before the world. But where was the man? No one knew. At last Malachi, in the Rocky Mountains, heard of her trouble, for Norice wrote to him, but told him not to do the man any harm, if he ever found him--ah, a woman, a woman! . . . But Malachi met the man one day at Guidon Hill, and shot him in the street." "Fargo the sheriff!" roared half-a-dozen voices. "Yes; he had changed his name, had come up here, and because he was clever and spent money, and had a pull on someone,--got it at cards perhaps,--he was made sheriff." "In God's name, why didn't Malachi speak?" said Tarlton; "why didn't he tell me this?" "Because he and I had our own plans. The one evidence he wanted was Norice. If she would come to him in his danger, and in spite of his killing the man, good. If not, then he would die. Well, I went to find her and fetch her. I found her. There was no way to send word, so we had to come on as fast as we could. We have come just in time." "Do you mean to say, Pierre, that she's here?" said Gohawk. Pierre waved his hand emphatically. "And so we came on with a pardon." Every man was on his feet, every man's tongue was loosed, and each ordered liquor for Pierre, and asked him where the girl was. Freddy Tarlton wrung his hand, and called a boy to go to his rooms and bring three bottles of wine, which he had kept for two years, to drink when he had won his first big case. Gohawk was importunate. "Where is the girl, Pierre?" he urged. "Such a fool as you are, Gohawk! She is with her father." A half-hour later, in a large sitting-room, Freddy Tarlton was making eloquent toasts over the wine. As they all stood drinking to Pierre, the door opened from the hall-way, and Malachi stood before them. At his shoulder was a face, wistful, worn, yet with a kind of happiness too; and the eyes had depths which any man might be glad to drown his heart in. Malachi stood still, not speaking, and an awe or awkwardness fell on the group at the table. But Norice stepped forward a little, and said: "May we come in?" In an instant Freddy Tarlton was by her side, and had her by the hand, her and her father, drawing them over. His ardent, admiring look gave Norice thought for many a day. And that night Pierre made an accurate prophecy. THE LAKE OF THE GREAT SLAVE When Tybalt the tale-gatherer asked why it was so called, Pierre said: "Because of the Great Slave;" and then paused. Tybalt did not hurry Pierre, knowing his whims. If he wished to tell, he would in his own time; if not, nothing could draw it from him. It was nearly an hour before Pierre, eased off from the puzzle he was solving with bits of paper and obliged Tybalt. He began as if they had been speaking the moment before: "They have said it is legend, but I know better. I have seen the records of the Company, and it is all there. I was at Fort O'Glory once, and in a box two hundred years old the factor and I found it. There were other papers, and some of them had large red seals, and a name scrawled along the end of the page." Pierre shook his head, as if in contented musing. He was a born story- teller. Tybalt was aching with interest, for he scented a thing of note. "How did any of those papers, signed with a scrawl, begin?" he asked. "'To our dearly-beloved,' or something like that," answered Pierre. "There were letters also. Two of them were full of harsh words, and these were signed with the scrawl." "What was that scrawl?" asked Tybalt. Pierre stooped to the sand, and wrote two words with his finger. "Like that," he answered. Tybalt looked intently for an instant, and then drew a long breath. "Charles Rex," he said, hardly above his breath. Pierre gave him a suggestive sidelong glance. "That name was droll, eh?" Tybalt's blood was tingling with the joy of discovery. "It is a great name," he said shortly. "The Slave was great--the Indians said so at the last." "But that was not the name of the Slave?" "Mais non. Who said so! Charles Rex--like that! was the man who wrote the letters." "To the Great Slave?" Pierre made a gesture of impatience. "Very sure." "Where are those letters now?" "With the Governor of the Company." Tybalt cut the tobacco for his pipe savagely. "You'd have liked one of those papers?" asked Pierre provokingly. "I'd give five hundred dollars for one," broke out Tybalt. Pierre lifted his eyebrows. "T'sh, what's the good of five hundred dollars up here? What would you do with a letter like that?" Tybalt laughed with a touch of irony, for Pierre was clearly "rubbing it in." "Perhaps for a book?" gently asked Pierre. "Yes, if you like." "It is a pity. But there is a way." "How?" "Put me in the book. Then--" "How does that touch the case?" Pierre shrugged a shoulder gently, for he thought Tybalt was unusually obtuse. Tybalt thought so himself before the episode ended. "Go on," he said, with clouded brow, but interested eye. Then, as if with sudden thought: "To whom were the letters addressed, Pierre?" "Wait!" was the reply. "One letter said: 'Good cousin, We are evermore glad to have thee and thy most excelling mistress near us. So, fail us not at our cheerful doings, yonder at Highgate.' Another--a year after-- said: 'Cousin, for the sweetening of our mind, get thee gone into some distant corner of our pasturage--the farthest doth please us most. We would not have thee on foreign ground, for we bear no ill-will to our brother princes, and yet we would not have thee near our garden of good loyal souls, for thou hast a rebel heart and a tongue of divers tunes. Thou lovest not the good old song of duty to thy prince. Obeying us, thy lady shall keep thine estates untouched; failing obedience, thou wilt make more than thy prince unhappy. Fare thee well.' That was the way of two letters," said Pierre. "How do you remember so?" Pierre shrugged a shoulder again. "It is easy with things like that." "But word for word?" "I learned it word for word." "Now for the story of the Lake--if you won't tell me the name of the man." "The name afterwards-perhaps. Well, he came to that farthest corner of the pasturage, to the Hudson's Bay country, two hundred years ago. What do you think? Was he so sick of all, that he would go so far he could never get back? Maybe those 'cheerful doings' at Highgate, eh? And the lady--who can tell?" Tybalt seized Pierre's arm. "You know more. Damnation, can't you see I'm on needles to hear? Was there anything in the letters about the lady? Anything more than you've told?" Pierre liked no man's hand on him. He glanced down at the eager fingers, and said coldly: "You are a great man; you can tell a story in many ways, but I in one way alone, and that is my way--mais oui!" "Very well, take your own time." "Bien. I got the story from two heads. If you hear a thing like that from Indians, you call it 'legend'; if from the Company's papers, you call it 'history.' Well, in this there is not much difference. The papers tell precise the facts; the legend gives the feeling, is more true. How can you judge the facts if you don't know the feeling? No! what is bad turns good sometimes, when you know the how, the feeling, the place. Well, this story of the Great Slave--eh? . . . There is a race of Indians in the far north who have hair so brown like yours, m'sieu', and eyes no darker. It is said they are of those that lived at the Pole, before the sea swamped the Isthmus, and swallowed up so many islands. So. In those days the fair race came to the south for the first time, that is, far below the Circle. They had their women with them. I have seen those of to-day: fine and tall, with breasts like apples, and a cheek to tempt a man like you, m'sieu'; no grease in the hair--no, M'sieu' Tybalt." Tybalt sat moveless under the obvious irony, but his eyes were fixed intently on Pierre, his mind ever travelling far ahead of the tale. "Alors: the 'good cousin' of Charles Rex, he made a journey with two men to the Far-off Metal River, and one day this tribe from the north come on his camp. It was summer, and they were camping in the Valley of the Young Moon, more sweet, they say, than any in the north. The Indians cornered them. There was a fight, and one of the Company's men was killed, and five of the other. But when the king of the people of the Pole saw that the great man was fair of face, he called for the fight to stop. "There was a big talk all by signs, and the king said for the great man to come and be one with them, for they liked his fair face--their forefathers were fair like him. He should have the noblest of their women for his wife, and be a prince among them. He would not go: so they drew away again and fought. A stone-axe brought the great man to the ground. He was stunned, not killed. Then the other man gave up, and said he would be one of them if they would take him. They would have killed him but for one of their women. She said that he should live to tell them tales of the south country and the strange people, when they came again to their camp-fires. So they let him live, and he was one of them. But the chief man, because he was stubborn and scorned them, and had killed the son of their king in the fight, they made a slave, and carried him north a captive, till they came to this lake--the Lake of the Great Slave. "In all ways they tried him, but he would not yield, neither to wear their dress nor to worship their gods. He was robbed of his clothes, of his gold-handled dagger, his belt of silk and silver, his carbine with rich chasing, and all, and he was among them almost naked,--it was summer, as I said, yet defying them. He was taller by a head than any of them, and his white skin rippled in the sun like soft steel." Tybalt was inclined to ask Pierre how he knew all this, but he held his peace. Pierre, as if divining his thoughts, continued: "You ask how I know these things. Very good: there are the legends, and there were the papers of the Company. The Indians tried every way, but it was no use; he would have nothing to say to them. At last they came to this lake. Now something great occurred. The woman who had been the wife of the king's dead son, her heart went out in love of the Great Slave; but he never looked at her. One day there were great sports, for it was the feast of the Red Star. The young men did feats of strength, here on this ground where we sit. The king's wife called out for the Great Slave to measure strength with them all. He would not stir. The king commanded him; still he would not, but stood among them silent and looking far away over their heads. At last, two young men of good height and bone threw arrows at his bare breast. The blood came in spots. Then he gave a cry through his beard, and was on them like a lion. He caught them, one in each arm, swung them from the ground, and brought their heads together with a crash, breaking their skulls, and dropped them at his feet. Catching up a long spear, he waited for the rest. But they did not come, for, with a loud voice, the king told them to fall back, and went and felt the bodies of the men. One of them was dead; the other was his second son--he would live. "'It is a great deed,' said the king, 'for these were no children, but strong men.' "Then again he offered the Great Slave women to marry, and fifty tents of deerskin for the making of a village. But the Great Slave said no, and asked to be sent back to Fort O'Glory. "The king refused. But that night, as he slept in his tent, the girl- widow came to him, waked him, and told him to follow her. He came forth, and she led him softly through the silent camp to that wood which we see over there. He told her she need not go on. Without a word, she reached over and kissed him on the breast. Then he understood. He told her that she could not come with him, for there was that lady in England--his wife, eh? But never mind, that will come. He was too great to save his life, or be free at the price. Some are born that way. They have their own commandments, and they keep them. "He told her that she must go back. She gave a little cry, and sank down at his feet, saying that her life would be in danger if she went back. "Then he told her to come, for it was in his mind to bring her to Fort O'Glory, where she could marry an Indian there. But now she would not go with him, and turned towards the village. A woman is a strange creature --yes, like that! He refused to go and leave her. She was in danger, and he would share it, whatever it might be. So, though she prayed him not, he went back with her; and when she saw that he would go in spite of all, she was glad: which is like a woman. "When he entered the tent again, he guessed her danger, for he stepped over the bodies of two dead men. She had killed them. As she turned at the door to go to her own tent, another woman faced her. It was the wife of the king, who had suspected, and had now found out. Who can tell what it was? Jealousy, perhaps. The Great Slave could tell, maybe, if he could speak, for a man always knows when a woman sets him high. Anyhow, that was the way it stood. In a moment the girl was marched back to her tent, and all the camp heard a wicked lie of the widow of the king's son. "To it there was an end after the way of their laws. "The woman should die by fire, and the man, as the king might will. So there was a great gathering in the place where we are, and the king sat against that big white stone, which is now as it was then. Silence was called, and they brought the girl-widow forth. The king spoke: "'Thou who hadst a prince for thy husband, didst go in the night to the tent of the slave who killed thy husband; whereby thou also becamest a slave, and didst shame the greatness which was given thee. Thou shalt die, as has been set in our laws.' "The girl-widow rose, and spoke. 'I did not know, O king, that he whom thou madest a slave slew my husband, the prince of our people, and thy son. That was not told me. But had I known it, still would I have set him free, for thy son was killed in fair battle, and this man deserves not slavery or torture. I did seek the tent of the Great Slave, and it was to set him free--no more. For that did I go, and, for the rest, my soul is open to the Spirit Who Sees. I have done naught, and never did, nor ever will, that might shame a king, or the daughter of a king, or the wife of a king, or a woman. If to set a great captive free is death for me, then am I ready. I will answer all pure women in the far Camp of the Great Fires without fear. There is no more, O king, that I may say, but this: she who dies by fire, being of noble blood, may choose who shall light the faggots--is it not so?' "Then the king replied: 'It is so. Such is our law.' "There was counselling between the king and his oldest men, and so long were they handling the matter backwards and forwards that it seemed she might go free. But the king's wife, seeing, came and spoke to the king and the others, crying out for the honour of her dead son; so that in a moment of anger they all cried out for death. "When the king said again to the girl that she must die by fire, she answered: 'It is as the gods will. But it is so, as I said, that I may choose who shall light the fires?' "The king answered yes, and asked her whom she chose. She pointed towards the Great Slave. And all, even the king and his councillors, wondered, for they knew little of the heart of women. What is a man with a matter like that? Nothing--nothing at all. They would have set this for punishment: that she should ask for it was beyond them. Yes, even the king's wife--it was beyond her. But the girl herself, see you, was it not this way?--If she died by the hand of him she loved, then it would be easy, for she could forget the pain, in the thought that his heart would ache for her, and that at the very last he might care, and she should see it. She was great in her way also--that girl, two hundred years ago. "Alors, they led her a little distance off,--there is the spot, where you see the ground heave a little, and the Great Slave was brought up. The king told him why the girl was to die. He went like stone, looking, looking at them. He knew that the girl's heart was like a little child's, and the shame and cruelty of the thing froze him silent for a minute, and the colour flew from his face to here and there on his body, as a flame on marble. The cords began to beat and throb in his neck and on his forehead, and his eyes gave out fire like flint on an arrow-head. "Then he began to talk. He could not say much, for he knew so little of their language. But it was 'No!' every other word. 'No--no--no--no!' the words ringing from his chest. 'She is good!' he said. 'The other- no!' and he made a motion with his hand. 'She must not die--no! Evil? It is a lie! I will kill each man that says it, one by one, if he dares come forth. She tried to save me--well?' Then he made them know that he was of high place in a far country, and that a man like him would not tell a lie. That pleased the king, for he was proud, and he saw that the Slave was of better stuff than himself. Besides, the king was a brave man, and he had strength, and more than once he had laid his hand on the chest of the other, as one might on a grand animal. Perhaps, even then, they might have spared the girl was it not for the queen. She would not hear of it. Then they tried the Great Slave, and he was found guilty. The queen sent him word to beg for pardon. So he stood out and spoke to the queen. She sat up straight, with pride in her eyes, for was it not a great prince, as she thought, asking? But a cloud fell on her face, for he begged the girl's life. Since there must be death, let him die, and die by fire in her place! It was then two women cried out: the poor girl for joy--not at the thought that her life would be saved, but because she thought the man loved her now, or he would not offer to die for her; and the queen for hate, because she thought the same. You can guess the rest: they were both to die, though the king was sorry for the man. "The king's speaker stood out and asked them if they had anything to say. The girl stepped forward, her face without any fear, but a kind of noble pride in it, and said: 'I am ready, O king.' "The Great Slave bowed his head, and was thinking much. They asked him again, and he waved his hand at them. The king spoke up in anger, and then he smiled and said: 'O king, I am not ready; if I die, I die.' Then he fell to thinking again. But once more the king spoke: 'Thou shalt surely die, but not by fire, nor now; nor till we have come to our great camp in our own country. There thou shalt die. But the woman shall die at the going down of the sun. She shall die by fire, and thou shalt light the faggots for the burning.' "The Great Slave said he would not do it, not though he should die a hundred deaths. Then the king said that it was the woman's right to choose who should start the fire, and he had given his word, which should not be broken. "When the Great Slave heard this he was wild for a little, and then he guessed altogether what was in the girl's mind. Was not this the true thing in her, the very truest? Mais oui! That was what she wished-- to die by his hand rather than by any other; and something troubled his breast, and a cloud came in his eyes, so that for a moment he could not see. He looked at the girl, so serious, eye to eye. Perhaps she understood. So, after a time, he got calm as the farthest light in the sky, his face shining among them all with a look none could read. He sat down, and wrote upon pieces of bark with a spear-point--those bits of bark I have seen also at Fort O'Glory. He pierced them through with dried strings of the slippery-elm tree, and with the king's consent gave them to the Company's man, who had become one of the people, telling him, if ever he was free, or could send them to the Company, he must do so. The man promised, and shame came upon him that he had let the other suffer alone; and he said he was willing to fight and die if the Great Slave gave the word. But he would not; and he urged that it was right for the man to save his life. For himself, no. It could never be; and if he must die, he must die. "You see, a great man must always live alone and die alone, when there are only such people about him. So, now that the letters were written, he sat upon the ground and thought, looking often towards the girl, who was placed apart, with guards near. The king sat thinking also. He could not guess why the Great Slave should give the letters now, since he was not yet to die, nor could the Company's man show a reason when the king asked him. So the king waited, and told the guards to see that the Great Slave did not kill himself. "But the queen wanted the death of the girl, and was glad beyond telling that the Slave must light the faggots. She was glad when she saw the young braves bring a long sapling from the forest, and, digging a hole, put it stoutly in the ground, and fetch wood, and heap it about. "The Great Slave noted that the bark of the sapling had not been stripped, and more than once he measured, with his eye, the space between the stake and the shores of the Lake: he did this most private, so that no one saw but the girl. "At last the time was come. The Lake was all rose and gold out there in the west, and the water so still so still. The cool, moist scent of the leaves and grass came out from the woods and up from the plain, and the world was so full of content that a man's heart could cry out, even as now, while we look--eh, is it not good? See the deer drinking on the other shore there!" Suddenly Pierre became silent, as if he had forgotten the story altogether. Tybalt was impatient, but he did not speak. He took a twig, and in the sand he wrote "Charles Rex." Pierre glanced down and saw it. "There was beating of the little drums," he continued, "and the crying of the king's speaker; and soon all was ready, and the people gathered at a distance, and the king and the queen, and the chief men nearer; and the girl was brought forth. "As they led her past the Great Slave, she looked into his eyes, and afterwards her heart was glad, for she knew that at the last he would be near her, and that his hand should light the fires. Two men tied her to the stake. Then the king's man cried out again, telling of her crime, and calling for her death. The Great Slave was brought near. No one knew that the palms of his hands had been rubbed in the sand for a purpose. When he was brought beside the stake, a torch was given him by his guards. He looked at the girl, and she smiled at him, and said: 'Good-bye. Forgive. I die not afraid, and happy.' "He did not answer, but stooped and lit the sticks here and there. All at once he snatched a burning stick, and it and the torch he thrust, like lightning, in the faces of his guards, blinding them. Then he sprang to the stake, and, with a huge pull, tore it from the ground, girl and all, and rushed to the shore of the Lake, with her tied so in his arms. "He had been so swift that, at first, no one stirred. He reached the shore, rushed into the water, dragging a boat out with one hand as he did so, and, putting the girl in, seized a paddle and was away with a start. A few strokes, and then he stopped, picked up a hatchet that was in the boat with many spears, and freed the girl. Then he paddled on, trusting, with a small hope, that through his great strength he could keep ahead till darkness came, and then, in the gloom, they might escape. The girl also seized an oar, and the canoe--the king's own canoe--came on like a swallow. "But the tribe was after them in fifty canoes, some coming straight along, some spreading out to close in later. It was no equal game, for these people were so quick and strong with the oars, and they were a hundred or more to two. There could be but one end. It was what the Great Slave had looked for: to fight till the last breath. He should fight for the woman who had risked all for him--just a common woman of the north, but it seemed good to lose his life for her; and she would be happy to die with him. "So they stood side by side when the spears and arrows fell round them, and they gave death and wounds for wounds in their own bodies. When, at last, the Indians climbed into the canoe, the Great Slave was dead of many wounds, and the woman, all gashed, lay with her lips to his wet, red cheek. She smiled as they dragged her away; and her soul hurried after his to the Camp of the Great Fires." It was long before Tybalt spoke, but at last he said: If I could but tell it as you have told it to me, Pierre!" Pierre answered: "Tell it with your tongue, and this shall be nothing to it, for what am I? What English have I, a gipsy of the snows? But do not write it, mais non! Writing wanders from the matter. The eyes, and the tongue, and the time, that is the thing. But in a book--it will sound all cold and thin. It is for the north, for the camp-fire, for the big talk before a man rolls into his blanket, and is at peace. No, no writing, monsieur. Speak it everywhere with your tongue." "And so I would, were my tongue as yours. Pierre, tell me more about the letters at Fort O'Glory. You know his name--what was it?" "You said five hundred dollars for one of those letters. Is it not?" "Yes." Tybalt had a new hope. "T'sh! What do I want of five hundred dollars! But, here, answer me a question: Was the lady--his wife, she that was left in England--a good woman? Answer me out of your own sense, and from my story. If you say right you shall have a letter--one that I have by me." Tybalt's heart leapt into his throat. After a little he said huskily: "She was a good woman--he believed her that, and so shall I." "You think he could not have been so great unless, eh? And that 'Charles Rex,' what of him?" "What good can it do to call him bad now?" Without a word, Pierre drew from a leather wallet a letter, and, by the light of the fast-setting sun, Tybalt read it, then read it again, and yet again. "Poor soul! poor lady!" he said. "Was ever such another letter written to any man? And it came too late; this, with the king's recall, came too late!" "So--so. He died out there where that wild duck flies--a Great Slave. Years after, the Company's man brought word of all." Tybalt was looking at the name on the outside of the letter. "How do they call that name?" asked Pierre. "It is like none I've seen --no." Tybalt shook his head sorrowfully, and did not answer. THE RED PATROL St. Augustine's, Canterbury, had given him its licentiate's hood, the Bishop of Rupert's Land had ordained him, and the North had swallowed him up. He had gone forth with surplice, stole, hood, a sermon-case, the prayer-book, and that other Book of all. Indian camps, trappers' huts, and Company's posts had given him hospitality, and had heard him with patience and consideration. At first he wore the surplice, stole, and hood, took the eastward position, and intoned the service, and no man said him nay, but watched him curiously and was sorrowful--he was so youthful, clear of eye, and bent on doing heroical things. But little by little there came a change. The hood was left behind at Fort O'Glory, where it provoked the derision of the Methodist missionary who followed him; the sermon-case stayed at Fort O'Battle; and at last the surplice itself was put by at the Company's post at Yellow Quill. He was too excited and in earnest at first to see the effect of his ministrations, but there came slowly over him the knowledge that he was talking into space. He felt something returning on him out of the air into which he talked, and buffeting him. It was the Spirit of the North, in which lives the terror, the large heart of things, the soul of the past. He awoke to his inadequacy, to the fact that all these men to whom he talked, listened, and only listened, and treated him with a gentleness which was almost pity--as one might a woman. He had talked doctrine, the Church, the sacraments, and at Fort O'Battle he faced definitely the futility of his work. What was to blame--the Church--religion--himself? It was at Fort O'Battle that he met Pierre, and heard a voice say over his shoulder, as he walked out into the icy dusk: "The voice of one crying in the wilderness . . . and he had sackcloth about his loins, and his food was locusts and wild honey." He turned to see Pierre, who in the large room of the Post had sat and watched him as he prayed and preached. He had remarked the keen, curious eye, the musing look, the habitual disdain at the lips. It had all touched him, confused him; and now he had a kind of anger. "You know it so well, why don't you preach yourself?" he said feverishly. "I have been preaching all my life," Pierre answered drily. "The devil's games: cards and law-breaking; and you sneer at men who try to bring lost sheep into the fold." "The fold of the Church--yes, I understand all that," Pierre answered. "I have heard you and the priests of my father's Church talk. Which is right? But as for me, I am a missionary. Cards, law-breaking--these are what I have done; but these are not what I have preached." "What have you preached?" asked the other, walking on into the fast- gathering night, beyond the Post and the Indian lodges, into the wastes where frost and silence lived. Pierre waved his hand towards space. "This," he said suggestively. "What's this?" asked the other fretfully. "The thing you feel round you here." "I feel the cold," was the petulant reply. "I feel the immense, the far off," said Pierre slowly. The other did not understand as yet. "You've learned big words," he said disdainfully. "No; big things," rejoined Pierre sharply--"a few." "Let me hear you preach them," half snarled Sherburne. "You will not like to hear them--no." "I'm not likely to think about them one way or another," was the contemptuous reply. Pierre's eyes half closed. The young, impetuous half-baked college man. To set his little knowledge against his own studious vagabondage! At that instant he determined to play a game and win; to turn this man into a vagabond also; to see John the Baptist become a Bedouin. He saw the doubt, the uncertainty, the shattered vanity in the youth's mind, the missionary's half retreat from his cause. A crisis was at hand. The youth was fretful with his great theme, instead of being severe upon himself. For days and days Pierre's presence had acted on Sherburne silently but forcibly. He had listened to the vagabond's philosophy, and knew that it was of a deeper--so much deeper--knowledge of life than he himself possessed, and he knew also that it was terribly true; he was not wise enough to see that it was only true in part. The influence had been insidious, delicate, cunning, and he himself was only "a voice crying in the wilderness," without the simple creed of that voice. He knew that the Methodist missionary was believed in more, if less liked, than himself. Pierre would work now with all the latent devilry of his nature to unseat the man from his saddle. "You have missed the great thing, alors, though you have been up here two years," he said. "You do not feel, you do not know. What good have you done? Who has got on his knees and changed his life because of you? Who has told his beads or longed for the Mass because of you? Tell me, who has ever said, 'You have showed me how to live'? Even the women, though they cry sometimes when you sing-song the prayers, go on just the same when the little 'bless-you' is over. Why? Most of them know a better thing than you tell them. Here is the truth: you are little--eh, so very little. You never lied--direct; you never stole the waters that are sweet; you never knew the big dreams that come with wine in the dead of night; you never swore at your own soul and heard it laugh back at you; you never put your face in the breast of a woman--do not look so wild at me!--you never had a child; you never saw the world and yourself through the doors of real life. You never have said, 'I am tired; I am sick of all; I have seen all.' You have never felt what came after-- understanding. Chut, your talk is for children--and missionaries. You are a prophet without a call, you are a leader without a man to lead, you are less than a child up here. For here the children feel a peace in their blood when the stars come out, and a joy in their brains when the dawn comes up and reaches a yellow hand to the Pole, and the west wind shouts at them. Holy Mother! we in the far north, we feel things, for all the great souls of the dead are up there at the Pole in the pleasant land, and we have seen the Scarlet Hunter and the Kimash Hills. You have seen nothing. You have only heard, and because, like a child, you have never sinned, you come and preach to us!" The night was folding down fast, all the stars were shooting out into their places, and in the north the white lights of the aurora were flying to and fro. Pierre had spoken with a slow force and precision, yet, as he went on, his eyes almost became fixed on those shifting flames, and a deep look came into them, as he was moved by his own eloquence. Never in his life had he made so long a speech at once. He paused, and then said suddenly: "Come, let us run." He broke into a long, sliding trot, and Sherburne did the same. With their arms gathered to their sides they ran for quite two miles without a word, until the heavy breathing of the clergyman brought Pierre up suddenly. "You do not run well," he said; "you do not run with the whole body. You know so little. Did you ever think how much such men as Jacques Parfaite know? The earth they read like a book, the sky like an animal's ways, and a man's face like--like the writing on the wall." "Like the writing on the wall," said Sherburne, musing; for, under the other's influence, his petulance was gone. He knew that he was not a part of this life, that he was ignorant of it; of, indeed, all that was vital in it and in men and women. "I think you began this too soon. You should have waited; then you might have done good. But here we are wiser than you. You have no message-- no real message--to give us; down in your heart you are not even sure of yourself." Sherburne sighed. "I'm of no use," he said. "I'll get out. I'm no good at all." Pierre's eyes glistened. He remembered how, the day before, this youth had said hot words about his card-playing; had called him--in effect-- a thief; had treated him as an inferior, as became one who was of St. Augustine's, Canterbury. "It is the great thing to be free," Pierre said, "that no man shall look for this or that of you. Just to do as far as you feel, as far as you are sure--that is the best. In this you are not sure--no. Hein, is it not?" Sherburne did not answer. Anger, distrust, wretchedness, the spirit of the alien, loneliness, were alive in him. The magnetism of this deep penetrating man, possessed of a devil, was on him, and in spite of every reasonable instinct he turned to him for companionship. "It's been a failure," he burst out, "and I'm sick of it--sick of it; but I can't give it up." Pierre said nothing. They had come to what seemed a vast semicircle of ice and snow, a huge amphitheatre in the plains. It was wonderful: a great round wall on which the northern lights played, into which the stars peered. It was open towards the north, and in one side was a fissure shaped like a Gothic arch. Pierre pointed to it, and they did not speak till they had passed through it. Like great seats the steppes of snow ranged round, and in the centre was a kind of plateau of ice, as it might seem a stage or an altar. To the north there was a great opening, the lost arc of the circle, through which the mystery of the Pole swept in and out, or brooded there where no man may question it. Pierre stood and looked. Time and again he had been here, and had asked the same question: Who had ever sat on those frozen benches and looked down at the drama on that stage below? Who played the parts? Was it a farce or a sacrifice? To him had been given the sorrow of imagination, and he wondered and wondered. Or did they come still--those strange people, whoever they were--and watch ghostly gladiators at their fatal sport? If they came, when was it? Perhaps they were there now unseen. In spite of himself he shuddered. Who was the keeper of the house? Through his mind there ran--pregnant to him for the first tine--a chanson of the Scarlet Hunter, the Red Patrol, who guarded the sleepers in the Kimash Hills against the time they should awake and possess the land once more: the friend of the lost, the lover of the vagabond, and of all who had no home: "Strangers come to the outer walls-- (Why do the sleepers stir?) Strangers enter the Judgment House-- (Why do the sleepers sigh?) Slow they rise in their judgment seats, Sieve and measure the naked souls, Then with a blessing return to sleep-- (Quiet the Judgment House.) Lone and sick are the vagrant souls-- (When shall the world come home?)" He reflected upon the words, and a feeling of awe came over him, for he had been in the White Valley and had seen the Scarlet Hunter. But there came at once also a sinister desire to play a game for this man's life- work here. He knew that the other was ready for any wild move; there was upon him the sense of failure and disgust; he was acted on by the magic of the night, the terrible delight of the scene, and that might be turned to advantage. He said: "Am I not right? There is something in the world greater than the creeds and the book of the Mass. To be free and to enjoy, that is the thing. Never before have you felt what you feel here now. And I will show you more. I will teach you how to know, I will lead you through all the north and make you to understand the big things of life. Then, when you have known, you can return if you will. But now--see: I will tell you what I will do. Here on this great platform we will play a game of cards. There is a man whose life I can ruin. If you win I promise to leave him safe; and to go out of the far north for ever, to go back to Quebec"--he had a kind of gaming fever in his veins. "If I win, you give up the Church, leaving behind the prayerbook, the Bible and all, coming with me to do what I shall tell you, for the passing of twelve moons. It is a great stake--will you play it? Come"--he leaned forward, looking into the other's face--"will you play it? They drew lots--those people in the Bible. We will draw lots, and see, eh?--and see?" "I accept the stake," said Sherburne, with a little gasp. Without a word they went upon that platform, shaped like an altar, and Pierre at once drew out a pack of cards, shuffling them with his mittened hands. Then he knelt down and said, as he laid out the cards one by one till there were thirty: "Whoever gets the ace of hearts first, wins-- hein?" Sherburne nodded and knelt also. The cards lay back upwards in three rows. For a moment neither stirred. The white, metallic stars saw it, the small crescent moon beheld it, and the deep wonder of night made it strange and dreadful. Once or twice Sherburne looked round as though he felt others present, and once Pierre looked out to the wide portals, as though he saw some one entering. But there was nothing to the eye-- nothing. Presently Pierre said: "Begin." The other drew a card, then Pierre drew one, then the other, then Pierre again; and so on. How slow the game was! Neither hurried, but both, kneeling, looked and looked at the card long before drawing and turning it over. The stake was weighty, and Pierre loved the game more than he cared about the stake. Sherburne cared nothing about the game, but all his soul seemed set upon the hazard. There was not a sound out of the night, nothing stirring but the Spirit of the North. Twenty, twenty-five cards were drawn, and then Pierre paused. "In a minute all will be settled," he said. "Will you go on, or will you pause?" But Sherburne had got the madness of chance in his veins now, and he said: "Quick, quick, go on!" Pierre drew, but the great card held back. Sherburne drew, then Pierre again. There were three left. Sherburne's face was as white as the snow around him. His mouth was open, and a little white cloud of frosted breath came out. His hand hungered for the card, drew back, then seized it. A moan broke from him. Then Pierre, with a little weird laugh, reached out and turned over the ace of hearts! They both stood up. Pierre put the cards in his pocket. "You have lost," he said. Sherburne threw back his head with a reckless laugh. The laugh seemed to echo and echo through the amphitheatre, and then from the frozen seats, the hillocks of ice and snow, there was a long, low sound, as of sorrow, and a voice came after: "Sleep--sleep! Blessed be the just and the keepers of vows." Sherburne stood shaking, as though he had seen a host of spirits. His eyes on the great seats of judgment, he said to Pierre: "See, see, how they sit there, grey and cold and awful!" But Pierre shook his head. "There is nothing," he said, "nothing;" yet he knew that Sherburne was looking upon the men of judgment of the Kimash Hills, the sleepers. He looked round, half fearfully, for if here were those great children of the ages, where was the keeper of the house, the Red Patrol? Even as he thought, a figure in scarlet with a noble face and a high pride of bearing stood before them, not far away. Sherburne clutched his arm. Then the Red Patrol, the Scarlet Hunter spoke: "Why have you sinned your sins and broken your vows within our house of judgment? Know ye not that in the new springtime of the world ye shall be outcast, because ye have called the sleepers to judgment before their time? But I am the hunter of the lost. Go you," he said to Sherburne, pointing, "where a sick man lies in a hut in the Shikam Valley. In his soul find thine own again." Then to Pierre: "For thee, thou shalt know the desert and the storm and the lonely hills; thou shalt neither seek nor find. Go, and return no more." The two men, Sherburne falteringly, stepped down and moved to the open plain. They turned at the great entrance and looked back. Where they had stood there rested on his long bow the Red Patrol. He raised it, and a flaming arrow flew through the sky towards the south. They followed its course, and when they looked back a little afterwards, the great judgment-house was empty, and the whole north was silent as the sleepers. At dawn they came to the hut in the Shikam Valley, and there they found a trapper dying. He had sinned greatly, and he could not die without someone to show him how, to tell him what to say to the angel of the cross-roads. Sherburne, kneeling by him, felt his own new soul moved by a holy fire, and, first praying for himself, he said to the sick man: "For if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Praying for both, his heart grew strong, and he heard the sick man say, ere he journeyed forth to the crossroads: "You have shown me the way. I have peace." "Speak for me in the Presence," said Sherburne softly. The dying man could not answer, but that moment, as he journeyed forth on the Far Trail, he held Sherburne's hand. THE GOING OF THE WHITE SWAN "Why don't she come back, father?" The man shook his head, his hand fumbled with the wolf-skin robe covering the child, and he made no reply. "She'd come if she knew I was hurted, wouldn't she?" The father nodded, and then turned restlessly toward the door, as though expecting someone. The look was troubled, and the pipe he held was not alight, though he made a pretence of smoking. "Suppose the wild cat had got me, she'd be sorry when she comes, wouldn't she?" There was no reply yet, save by gesture, the language of primitive man; but the big body shivered a little, and the uncouth hand felt for a place in the bed where the lad's knee made a lump under the robe. He felt the little heap tenderly, but the child winced. "S-sh, but that hurts! This wolf-skin's most too much on me, isn't it, father?" The man softly, yet awkwardly too, lifted the robe, folded it back, and slowly uncovered the knee. The leg was worn away almost to skin and bone, but the knee itself was swollen with inflammation. He bathed it with some water, mixed with vinegar and herbs, then drew down the deer- skin shirt at the child's shoulder, and did the same with it. Both shoulder and knee bore the marks of teeth--where a huge wild cat had made havoc--and the body had long red scratches. Presently the man shook his head sorrowfully, and covered up the small disfigured frame again, but this time with a tanned skin of the caribou. The flames of the huge wood fire dashed the walls and floor with a velvety red and black, and the large iron kettle, bought of the Company at Fort Sacrament, puffed out geysers of steam. The place was a low but with parchment windows and rough mud-mortar lumped between the logs. Skins hung along two sides, with bullet-holes and knife-holes showing: of the great grey wolf, the red puma, the bronze hill-lion, the beaver, the bear, and the sable; and in one corner was a huge pile of them. Bare of the usual comforts as the room was, it had a sort of refinement also, joined to an inexpressible loneliness; you could scarce have told how or why. "Father," said the boy, his face pinched with pain for a moment, "it hurts so all over, every once in a while." His fingers caressed the leg just below the knee. "Father," he suddenly added, "what does it mean when you hear a bird sing in the middle of the night?" The woodsman looked down anxiously into the boy's face. "It hasn't no meaning, Dominique. There ain't such a thing on the Labrador Heights as a bird singin' in the night. That's only in warm countries where there's nightingales. So--bien sur!" The boy had a wise, dreamy, speculative look. "Well, I guess it was a nightingale--it didn't sing like any I ever heard." The look of nervousness deepened in the woodsman's face. "What did it sing like, Dominique?" "So it made you shiver. You wanted it to go on, and yet you didn't want it. It was pretty, but you felt as if something was going to snap inside of you." "When did you hear it, my son?" "Twice last night--and--and I guess it was Sunday the other time. I don't know, for there hasn't been no Sunday up here since mother went away--has there?" "Mebbe not." The veins were beating like live cords in the man's throat and at his temples. "'Twas just the same as Father Corraine bein' here, when mother had Sunday, wasn't it?" The man made no reply, but a gloom drew down his forehead, and his lips doubled in as if he endured physical pain. He got to his feet and paced the floor. For weeks he had listened to the same kind of talk from this wounded, and, as he thought, dying son, and he was getting less and less able to bear it. The boy at nine years of age was, in manner of speech, the merest child, but his thoughts were sometimes large and wise. The only white child within a compass of three hundred miles or so; the lonely life of the hills and plains, so austere in winter, so melted to a sober joy in summer; listening to the talk of his elders at camp-fires and on the hunting-trail, when, even as an infant almost, he was swung in a blanket from a tree or was packed in the torch-crane of a canoe; and, more than all, the care of a good, loving--if passionate--little mother: all these had made him far wiser than his years. He had been hours upon hours each day alone with the birds, and squirrels, and wild animals, and something of the keen scent and instinct of the animal world had entered into his body and brain, so that he felt what he could not understand. He saw that he had worried his father, and it troubled him. He thought of something. "Daddy," he said, "let me have it." A smile struggled for life in the hunter's face, as he turned to the wall and took down the skin of a silver fox. He held it on his palm for a moment, looking at it in an interested, satisfied way, then he brought it over and put it into the child's hands; and the smile now shaped itself, as he saw an eager pale face buried in the soft fur. "Good! good!" he said involuntarily. "Bon! bon!" said the boy's voice from the fur, in the language of his mother, who added a strain of Indian blood to her French ancestry. The two sat there, the man half-kneeling on the low bed, and stroking the fur very gently. It could scarcely be thought that such pride should be spent on a little pelt by a mere backwoodsman and his nine-year-old son. One has seen a woman fingering a splendid necklace, her eyes fascinated by the bunch of warm, deep jewels--a light not of mere vanity, or hunger, or avarice in her face--only the love of the beautiful thing. But this was an animal's skin. Did they feel the animal underneath it yet, giving it beauty, life, glory? The silver-fox skin is the prize of the north, and this one was of the boy's own harvesting. While his father was away he saw the fox creeping by the hut. The joy of the hunter seized him, and guided his eye over the sights of his father's rifle, as he rested the barrel on the window- sill, and the animal was his! Now his finger ran into the hole made by the bullet, and he gave a little laugh of modest triumph. Minutes passed as they studied, felt, and admired the skin, the hunter proud of his son, the son alive with a primitive passion, which inflicts suffering to get the beautiful thing. Perhaps the tenderness as well as the wild passion of the animal gets into the hunter's blood, and tips his fingers at times with an exquisite kindness--as one has noted in a lion fondling her young, or in tigers as they sport upon the sands of the desert. This boy had seen his father shoot a splendid moose, and as it lay dying, drop down and kiss it in the neck for sheer love of its handsomeness. Death is no insult. It is the law of the primitive world--war, and love in war. They sat there for a long time, not speaking, each busy in his own way: the boy full of imaginings, strange, half-heathen, half-angelic feelings; the man roaming in that savage, romantic, superstitious atmosphere which belongs to the north, and to the north alone. At last the boy lay back on the pillow, his finger still in the bullet-hole of the pelt. His eyes closed, and he seemed about to fall asleep, but presently looked up and whispered: "I haven't said my prayers, have I?" The father shook his head in a sort of rude confusion. "I can pray out loud if I want to, can't I?" "Of course, Dominique." The man shrank a little. "I forget a good many times, but I know one all right, for I said it when the bird was singing. It isn't one out of the book Father Corraine sent mother by Pretty Pierre; it's one she taught me out of her own head. P'r'aps I'd better say it." "P'r'aps, if you want to." The voice was husky. The boy began: "O bon Jesu, who died to save us from our sins, and to lead us to Thy country, where there is no cold, nor hunger, nor thirst, and where no one is afraid, listen to Thy child. . . . When the great winds and rains come down from the hills, do not let the floods drown us, nor the woods cover us, nor the snow-slide bury us; and do not let the prairie-fires burn us. Keep wild beasts from killing us in our sleep, and give us good hearts that we may not kill them in anger." His finger twisted involuntarily into the bullet-hole in the pelt, and he paused a moment. "Keep us from getting lost, O gracious Saviour." Again there was a pause, his eyes opened wide, and he said: "Do you think mother's lost, father?" A heavy broken breath came from the father, and he replied haltingly: "Mebbe, mebbe so." Dominique's eyes closed again. "I'll make up some," he said slowly. "And if mother's lost, bring her back again to us, for everything's going wrong." Again he paused, then went on with the prayer as it had been taught him. "Teach us to hear Thee whenever Thou callest, and to see Thee when Thou visitest us, and let the blessed Mary and all the saints speak often to Thee for us. O Christ, hear us. Lord, have mercy upon us. Christ have mercy upon us. Amen." Making the sign of the cross, he lay back, and said "I'll go to sleep now, I guess." The man sat for a long time looking at the pale, shining face, at the blue veins showing painfully dark on the temples and forehead, at the firm little white hand, which was as brown as a butternut a few weeks before. The longer he sat, the deeper did his misery sink into his soul. His wife had gone, he knew not where, his child was wasting to death, and he had for his sorrows no inner consolation. He had ever had that touch of mystical imagination inseparable from the far north, yet he had none of that religious belief which swallowed up natural awe and turned it to the refining of life, and to the advantage of a man's soul. Now it was forced in upon him that his child was wiser than himself, wiser and safer. His life had been spent in the wastes, with rough deeds and rugged habits, and a youth of hardship, danger, and almost savage endurance, had given him a half-barbarian temperament, which could strike an angry blow at one moment and fondle to death at the next. When he married sweet Lucette Barbond his religion reached little farther than a belief in the Scarlet Hunter of the Kimash Hills and those voices that could be heard calling in the night, till their time of sleep be past, and they should rise and reconquer the north. Not even Father Corraine, whose ways were like those of his Master, could ever bring him to a more definite faith. His wife had at first striven with him, mourning yet loving. Sometimes the savage in him had broken out over the little creature, merely because barbaric tyranny was in him --torture followed by the passionate kiss. But how was she philosopher enough to understand the cause? When she fled from their hut one bitter day, as he roared some wild words at her, it was because her nerves had all been shaken from threatened death by wild beasts (of which he did not know), and his violence drove her mad. She had run out of the house, and on, and on, and on--and she had never come back. That was weeks ago, and there had been no word nor sign of her since. The man was now busy with it all, in a slow, cumbrous way. A nature more to be touched by things seen than by things told, his mind was being awakened in a massive kind of fashion. He was viewing this crisis of his life as one sees a human face in the wide searching light of a great fire. He was restless, but he held himself still by a strong effort, not wishing to disturb the sleeper. His eyes seemed to retreat farther and farther back under his shaggy brows. The great logs in the chimney burned brilliantly, and a brass crucifix over the child's head now and again reflected soft little flashes of light. This caught the hunter's eye. Presently there grew up in him a vague kind of hope that, somehow, this symbol would bring him luck--that was the way he put it to himself. He had felt this--and something more-- when Dominique prayed. Somehow, Dominique's prayer was the only one he had ever heard that had gone home to him, had opened up the big sluices of his nature, and let the light of God flood in. No, there was another: the one Lucette made on the day that they were married, when a wonderful timid reverence played through his hungry love for her. Hours passed. All at once, without any other motion or gesture, the boy's eyes opened wide with a strange, intense look. "Father," he said slowly, and in a kind of dream, "when you hear a sweet horn blow at night, is it the Scarlet Hunter calling?" "P'r'aps. Why, Dominique?" He made up his mind to humour the boy, though it gave him strange aching forebodings. He had seen grown men and women with these fancies--and they had died. "I heard one blowing just now, and the sounds seemed to wave over my head. Perhaps he's calling someone that's lost." "Mebbe." "And I heard a voice singing--it wasn't a bird tonight." "There was no voice, Dominique." "Yes, yes." There was something fine in the grave, courteous certainty of the lad. "I waked and you were sitting there thinking, and I shut my eyes again, and I heard the voice. I remember the tune and the words." "What were the words?" In spite of himself the hunter felt awed. "I've heard mother sing them, or something most like them: "Why does the fire no longer burn? (I am so lonely.) Why does the tent-door swing outward? (I have no home.) Oh, let me breathe hard in your face! (I am so lonely.) Oh, why do you shut your eyes to me? (I have no home.)" The boy paused. "Was that all, Dominique?" "No, not all." "Let us make friends with the stars; (I am so lonely.) Give me your hand, I will hold it. (I have no home.) Let us go hunting together. (I am so lonely.) We will sleep at God's camp to-night. (I have no home.)" Dominique did not sing, but recited the words with a sort of chanting inflection. "What does it mean when you hear a voice like that, father?" "I don't know. Who told--your mother--the song?" "Oh, I don't know. I suppose she just made them up--she and God. . . . There! There it is again? Don't you hear it--don't you hear it, daddy?" "No, Dominique, it's only the kettle singing." "A kettle isn't a voice. Daddy--" He paused a little, then went on, hesitatingly--"I saw a white swan fly through the door over your shoulder, when you came in to-night." "No, no, Dominique; it was a flurry of snow blowing over my shoulder." "But it looked at me with two shining eyes." "That was two stars shining through the door, my son." "How could there be snow flying and stars shining too, father?" "It was just drift-snow on a light wind, but the stars were shining above, Dominique." The man's voice was anxious and unconvincing, his eyes had a hungry, hunted look. The legend of the White Swan had to do with the passing of a human soul. The swan had come in--would it go out alone? He touched the boy's hand--it was hot with fever; he felt the pulse--it ran high; he watched the face--it had a glowing light. Something stirred within him, and passed like a wave to the farthest courses of his being. Through his misery he had touched the garment of the Master of Souls. As though a voice said to him there, "Someone hath touched me," he got to his feet, and, with a sudden blind humility, lit two candles, placed them on a shelf in a corner before a porcelain figure of the Virgin, as he had seen his wife do. Then he picked a small handful of fresh spruce twigs from a branch over the chimney, and laid them beside the candles. After a short pause he came slowly to the head of the boy's bed. Very solemnly he touched the foot of the Christ on the cross with the tips of his fingers, and brought them to his lips with an indescribable reverence. After a moment, standing with eyes fixed on the face of the crucified figure, he said, in a shaking voice: "Pardon, bon Jesu! Sauvez mon enfant! Ne me laissez pas seul!" The boy looked up with eyes again grown unnaturally heavy, and said: "Amen! . . . Bon Jesu ! . . . Encore! Encore, mon pere!" The boy slept. The father stood still by the bed for a time, but at last slowly turned and went toward the fire. Outside, two figures were approaching the hut--a man and a woman; yet at first glance the man might easily have been taken for a woman, because of the long black robe which he wore, and because his hair fell loose on his shoulders and his face was clean-shaven. "Have patience, my daughter," said the man. "Do not enter till I call you. But stand close to the door, if you will, and hear all." So saying he raised his hand as in a kind of benediction, passed to the door, and after tapping very softly, opened it, entered, and closed it behind him-not so quickly, however, but that the woman caught a glimpse of the father and the boy. In her eyes there was the divine look of motherhood. "Peace be to this house!" said the man gently as he stepped forward from the door. The father, startled, turned shrinkingly on him, as if he had seen a spirit. "M'sieu' le cure!" he said in French, with an accent much poorer than that of the priest, or even of his own son. He had learned French from his wife; he himself was English. The priest's quick eye had taken in the lighted candles at the little shrine, even as he saw the painfully changed aspect of the man. "The wife and child, Bagot?" he asked, looking round. "Ah, the boy!" he added, and going toward the bed, continued, presently, in a low voice: "Dominique is ill?" Bagot nodded, and then answered: "A wild-cat and then fever, Father Corraine." The priest felt the boy's pulse softly, then with a close personal look he spoke hardly above his breath, yet distinctly too: "Your wife, Bagot?" "She is not here, m'sieu'." The voice was low and gloomy. "Where is she, Bagot?" "I do not know, m'sieu'." "When did you see her last?" "Four weeks ago, m'sieu'." "That was September, this is October--winter. On the ranches they let their cattle loose upon the plains in winter, knowing not where they go, yet looking for them to return in the spring. But a woman--a woman and a wife--is different. . . . Bagot, you have been a rough, hard man, and you have been a stranger to your God, but I thought you loved your wife and child!" The hunter's hands clenched, and a wicked light flashed up into his eyes; but the calm, benignant gaze of the other cooled the tempest in his veins. The priest sat down on the couch where the child lay, and took the fevered hand in his very softly. "Stay where you are, Bagot," he said; "just there where you are, and tell me what your trouble is, and why your wife is not here. . . . Say all honestly--by the name of the Christ!" he added, lifting up a large iron crucifix that hung on his breast. Bagot sat down on a bench near the fireplace, the light playing on his bronzed, powerful face, his eyes shining beneath his heavy brows like two coals. After a moment he began: "I don't know how it started. I'd lost a lot of pelts--stolen they were, down on the Child o' Sin River. Well, she was hasty and nervous, like as not--she always was brisker and more sudden than I am. I--I laid my powder-horn and whisky-flask-up there!" He pointed to the little shrine of the Virgin, where now his candles were burning. The priest's grave eyes did not change expression at all, but looked out wisely, as though he understood everything before it was told. Bagot continued: "I didn't notice it, but she had put some flowers there. She said something with an edge, her face all snapping angry, threw the things down, and called me a heathen and a wicked heretic--and I don't say now but she'd a right to do it. But I let out then, for them stolen pelts were rasping me on the raw. I said something pretty rough, and made as if I was goin' to break her in two--just fetched up my hands, and went like this!--" With a singular simplicity he made a wild gesture with his hands, and an animal-like snarl came from his throat. Then he looked at the priest with the honest intensity of a boy. "Yes, that is what you did--what was it you said which was 'pretty rough'?" There was a slight hesitation, then came the reply: "I said there was enough powder spilt on the floor to kill all the priests in heaven." A fire suddenly shot up into Father Corraine's face, and his lips tightened for an instant, but presently he was as before, and he said: "How that will face you one day, Bagot! Go on. What else?" Sweat began to break out on Bagot's face, and he spoke as though he were carrying a heavy weight on his shoulders, low and brokenly. "Then I said, 'And if virgins has it so fine, why didn't you stay one?'" "Blasphemer!" said the priest in a stern, reproachful voice, his face turning a little pale, and he brought the crucifix to his lips. "To the mother of your child--shame! What more?" She threw up her hands to her ears with a wild cry, ran out of the house, down the hills, and away. I went to the door and watched her as long as I could see her, and waited for her to come back--but she never did. "I've hunted and hunted, but I can't find her." Then, with a sudden thought, "Do you know anything of her, m'sieu'?" The priest appeared not to hear the question. Turning for a moment toward the boy who now was in a deep sleep, he looked at him intently. Presently he spoke. "Ever since I married you and Lucette Barbond, you have stood in the way of her duty, Bagot. How well I remember that first day when you knelt before me! Was ever so sweet and good a girl--with her golden eyes and the look of summer in her face, and her heart all pure! Nothing had spoiled her--you cannot spoil such women--God is in their hearts. But you, what have you cared? One day you would fondle her, and the next you were a savage--and she, so gentle, so gentle all the time. Then, for her religion and the faith of her child--she has fought for it, prayed for it, suffered for it. You thought you had no need, for you had so much happiness, which you did not deserve--that was it. But she: with all a woman suffers, how can she bear life--and man--without God? No, it is not possible. And you thought you and your few superstitions were enough for her.--Ah, poor fool! She should worship you! So selfish, so small, for a man who knows in his heart how great God is.--You did not love her." "By the Heaven above, yes!" said Bagot, half starting to his feet. "Ah, 'by the Heaven above,' no! nor the child. For true love is unselfish and patient, and where it is the stronger, it cares for the weaker; but it was your wife who was unselfish, patient, and cared for you. Every time she said an ave she thought of you, and her every thanks to the good God had you therein. They know you well in heaven, Bagot-- through your wife. Did you ever pray--ever since I married you to her?" "Yes." "When?" "An hour or so ago." Once again the priest's eyes glanced towards the lighted candles. Presently he said: "You asked me if I had heard anything of your wife. Listen, and be patient while you listen. . . . Three weeks ago I was camping on the Sundust Plains, over against the Young Sky River. In the morning, as I was lighting a fire outside my tent, my young Cree Indian with me, I saw coming over the crest of a land-wave, from the very lips of the sunrise, as it were, a band of Indians. I could not quite make them out. I hoisted my little flag on the tent, and they hurried on to me. I did not know the tribe--they had come from near Hudson's Bay. They spoke Chinook, and I could understand them. Well, as they came near I saw that they had a woman with them." Bagot leaned forward, his body strained, every muscle tense. "A woman?" he said, as if breathing gave him sorrow--"my wife?" "Your wife." "Quick! Quick! Go on--oh, go on, m'sieu'--good father." "She fell at my feet, begging me to save her. . . . I waved her off." The sweat dropped from Bagot's forehead, a low growl broke from him, and he made such a motion as a lion might make at its prey. "You wouldn't--wouldn't save her--you coward!" He ground the words out. The priest raised his palm against the other's violence. "Hush! . . . She drew away, saying that God and man had deserted her. . . . We had breakfast, the chief and I. Afterwards, when the chief had eaten much and was in good humour, I asked him where he had got the woman. He said that he had found her on the plains she had lost her way. I told him then that I wanted to buy her. He said to me, 'What does a priest want of a woman?' I said that I wished to give her back to her husband. He said that he had found her, and she was his, and that he would marry her when they reached the great camp of the tribe. I was patient. It would not do to make him angry. I wrote down on a piece of bark the things that I would give him for her: an order on the Company at Fort o' Sin for shot, blankets, and beads. He said no." The priest paused. Bagot's face was all swimming with sweat, his body was rigid, but the veins of his neck knotted and twisted. "For the love of God, go on!" he said hoarsely. "Yes, 'for the love of God.' I have no money, I am poor, but the Company will always honour my orders, for I pay sometimes, by the help of Christ. Bien, I added some things to the list: a saddle, a rifle, and some flannel. But no, he would not. Once more I put many things down. It was a big bill-- it would keep me poor for five years.--To save your wife, John Bagot, you who drove her from your door, blaspheming, and railing at such as I. . . . I offered the things, and told him that was all that I could give. After a little he shook his head, and said that he must have the woman for his wife. I did not know what to add. I said--'She is white, and the white people will never rest till they have killed you all, if you do this thing. The Company will track you down.' Then he said, 'The whites must catch me and fight me before they kill me.' . . . What was there to do?" Bagot came near to the priest, bending over him savagely. "You let her stay with them--you with hands like a man!" "Hush!" was the calm, reproving answer. "I was one man, they were twenty." "Where was your God to help you, then?" "Her God and mine was with me." Bagot's eyes blazed. "Why didn't you offer rum--rum? They'd have done it for that--one--five--ten kegs of rum!" He swayed to and fro in his excitement, yet their voices hardly rose above a hoarse whisper all the time. "You forget," answered the priest, "that it is against the law, and that as a priest of my order, I am vowed to give no rum to an Indian." "A vow? A vow? Name of God! what is a vow beside a woman--my wife?" His misery and his rage were pitiful to see. "Perjure my soul? Offer rum? Break my vow in the face of the enemies of God's Church? What have you done for me that I should do this for you, John Bagot?" "Coward!" was the man's despairing cry, with a sudden threatening movement. "Christ Himself would have broke a vow to save her." The grave, kind eyes of the priest met the other's fierce gaze, and quieted the wild storm that was about to break. "Who am I that I should teach my Master?" he said solemnly. "What would you give Christ, Bagot, if He had saved her to you?" The man shook with grief, and tears rushed from his eyes, so suddenly and fully had a new emotion passed through him. "Give--give?" he cried; "I would give twenty years of my life!" The figure of the priest stretched up with a gentle grandeur. Holding out the iron crucifix, he said: "On your knees and swear it, John Bagot." There was something inspiring, commanding, in the voice and manner, and Bagot, with a new hope rushing through his veins, knelt and repeated his words. The priest turned to the door, and called, "Madame Lucette!" The boy, hearing, waked, and sat up in bed suddenly. "Mother! mother!" he cried, as the door flew open. The mother came to her husband's arms, laughing and weeping, and an instant afterwards was pouring out her love and anxiety over her child. Father Corraine now faced the man, and with a soft exaltation of voice and manner, said: "John Bagot, in the name of Christ, I demand twenty years of your life-- of love and obedience of God. I broke my vow, I perjured my soul, I bought your wife with ten kegs of rum!" The tall hunter dropped again to his knees, and caught the priest's hand to kiss it. "No, no--this!" the priest said, and laid his iron crucifix against the other's lips. Dominique's voice came clearly through the room: "Mother, I saw the white swan fly away through the door when you came in." "My dear, my dear," she said, "there was no white swan." But she clasped the boy to her breast protectingly, and whispered an ave. "Peace be to this house," said the voice of the priest. And there was peace: for the child lived, and the man has loved, and has kept his vow, even unto this day. For the visions of the boy, who can know the divers ways in which God speaks to the children of men? AT BAMBER'S BOOM His trouble came upon him when he was old. To the hour of its coming he had been of shrewd and humourous disposition. He had married late in life, and his wife had died, leaving him one child--a girl. She grew to womanhood, bringing him daily joy. She was beloved in the settlement; and there was no one at Bamber's Boom, in the valley of the Madawaska, but was startled and sorry when it turned out that Dugard, the river- boss, was married. He floated away down the river, with his rafts and drives of logs, leaving the girl sick and shamed. They knew she was sick at heart, because she grew pale and silent; they did not know for some months how shamed she was. Then it was that Mrs. Lauder, the sister of the Roman Catholic missionary, Father Halen, being a woman of notable character and kindness, visited her and begged her to tell all. Though the girl--Nora--was a Protestant, Mrs. Lauder did this: but it brought sore grief to her. At first she could hardly bear to look at the girl's face, it was so hopeless, so numb to the world: it had the indifference of despair. Rumour now became hateful fact. When the old man was told, he gave one great cry, then sat down, his hands pressed hard between his knees, his body trembling, his eyes staring before him. It was Father Halen who told him. He did it as man to man, and not as a priest, having travelled fifty miles for the purpose. "George Magor," said he, "it's bad, I know, but bear it--with the help of God. And be kind to the girl." The old man answered nothing. "My friend," the priest continued, "I hope you'll forgive me for telling you. I thought 'twould be better from me, than to have it thrown at you in the settlement. We've been friends one way and another, and my heart aches for you, and my prayers go with you." The old man raised his sunken eyes, all their keen humour gone, and spoke as though each word were dug from his heart. "Say no more, Father Halen." Then he reached out, caught the priest's hand in his gnarled fingers, and wrung it. The father never spoke a harsh word to the girl. Otherwise he seemed to harden into stone. When the Protestant missionary came, he would not see him. The child was born before the river-drivers came along again the next year with their rafts and logs. There was a feeling abroad that it would be ill for Dugard if he chanced to camp at Bamber's Boom. The look of the old man's face was ominous, and he was known to have an iron will. Dugard was a handsome man, half French, half Scotch, swarthy and admirably made. He was proud of his strength, and showily fearless in danger. For there were dangerous hours to the river life: when, for instance, a mass of logs became jammed at a rapids, and must be loosened; or a crib struck into the wrong channel, or, failing to enter a slide straight, came at a nasty angle to it, its timbers wrenched and tore apart, and its crew, with their great oars, were plumped into the busy current. He had been known to stand singly in some perilous spot when one log, the key to the jam, must be shifted to set free the great tumbled pile. He did everything with a dash. The handspike was waved and thrust into the best leverage, the long robust cry, "O-hee-hee-hoi!" rolled over the waters, there was a devil's jumble of logs, and he played a desperate game with them, tossing here, leaping there, balancing elsewhere, till, reaching the smooth rush of logs in the current, he ran across them to the shore as they spun beneath his feet. His gang of river-drivers, with their big drives of logs, came sweeping down one beautiful day of early summer, red-shifted, shouting, good- tempered. It was about this time that Pierre came to know Magor. It was the old man's duty to keep the booms of several great lumbering companies, and to watch the logs when the river-drivers were engaged elsewhere. Occasionally he took a place with the men, helping to make cribs and rafts. Dugard worked for one lumber company, Magor for others. Many in the settlement showed Dugard how much he was despised. Some warned him that Magor had said he would break him into pieces; it seemed possible that Dugard might have a bad hour with the people of Bamber's Boom. Dugard, though he swelled and strutted, showed by a furtive eye and a sinister watchfulness that he felt himself in an atmosphere of danger. But he spoke of his wickedness lightly as, "A slip--a little accident, mon ami." Pierre said to him one day: "Bien, Dugard, you are a bold man to come here again. Or is it that you think old men are cowards?" Dugard, blustering, laid his hand suddenly upon his case-knife. Pierre laughed softly, contemptuously, came over, and throwing out his perfectly formed but not robust chest in the fashion of Dugard, added: "Ho, ho, monsieur the butcher, take your time at that. There is too much blood in your carcass. You have quarrels plenty on your hands without this. Come, don't be a fool and a scoundrel too." Dugard grinned uneasily, and tried to turn the thing off as a joke, and Pierre, who laughed still a little more, said: "It would be amusing to see old Magor and Dugard fight. It would be--so equal." There was a keen edge to Pierre's tones, but Dugard dared not resent it. One day Magor and Dugard must meet. The square-timber of the two companies had got tangled at a certain point, and gangs from both must set them loose. They were camped some distance from each other. There was rivalry between them, and it was hinted that if any trouble came from the meeting of Magor and Dugard the gangs would pay off old scores with each other. Pierre wished to prevent this. It seemed to him that the two men should stand alone in the affair. He said as much here and there to members of both camps, for he was free of both: a tribute to his genius at poker. The girl, Nora, was apprehensive--for her father; she hated the other man now. Pierre was courteous to her, scrupulous in word and look, and fond of her child. He had always shown a gentleness to children, which seemed little compatible with his character; but for this young outlaw in the world he had something more. He even laboured carefully to turn the girl's father in its favour; but as yet to little purpose. He was thought ful of the girl too. He only went to the house when he knew her father was present, or when she was away. Once while he was there, Father Halen and his sister, Mrs. Lauder, came. They found Pierre with the child, rocking the cradle, and humming as he did so an old song of the coureurs de bois: "Out of the hills comes a little white deer, Poor little vaurien, o, ci, ci! Come to my home, to my home down here, Sister and brother and child o' me Poor little, poor little vaurien!" Pierre was alone, save for the old woman who had cared for the home since Nora's trouble came. The priest was anxious lest any harm should come from Dugard's presence at Bamber's Boom. He knew Pierre's doubtful reputation, but still he knew he could speak freely and would be answered honestly. "What will happen?" he abruptly asked. "What neither you nor I should try to prevent, m'sieu'," was Pierre's reply. "Magor will do the man injury?" "What would you have? Put the matter on your own hearthstone, eh? . . . Pardon, if I say these things bluntly." Pierre still lightly rocked the cradle with one foot. "But vengeance is in God's hands." "M'sieu'," said the half-breed, "vengeance also is man's, else why did we ten men from Fort Cypress track down the Indians who murdered your brother, the good priest, and kill them one by one?" Father Halen caught his sister as she swayed, and helped her to a chair, then turned a sad face on Pierre. "Were you--were you one of that ten?" he asked, overcome; and he held out his hand. The two river-driving camps joined at Mud Cat Point, where was the crush of great timber. The two men did not at first come face to face, but it was noticed by Pierre, who smoked on the bank while the others worked, that the old man watched his enemy closely. The work of undoing the great twist of logs was exciting, and they fell on each other with a great sound as they were pried off, and went sliding, grinding, into the water. At one spot they were piled together, massive and high. These were left to the last. It was here that the two met. Old Magor's face was quiet, if a little haggard; and his eyes looked out from under his shaggy brows piercingly. Dugard's manner was swaggering, and he swore horribly at his gang. Presently he stood at a point alone, working at an obstinate log. He was at the foot of an incline of timber, and he was not aware that Magor had suddenly appeared at the top of that incline. He heard his name called out sharply. Swinging round, he saw Magor thrusting a handspike under a huge timber, hanging at the top of the incline. He was standing in a hollow, a kind of trench. He was shaken with fear, for he saw the old man's design. He gave a cry and made as if to jump out of the way, but with a laugh Magor threw his whole weight on the handspike, the great timber slid swiftly down and crushed Dugard from his thighs to his feet, breaking his legs terribly. The old man called down at him: "A slip--a little accident, mon ami!" Then, shouldering his handspike, he made his way through the silent gangs to the shore, and so on homewards. Magor had done what he wished. Dugard would be a cripple for life; his beauty was all spoiled and broken: there was much to do to save his life. II Nora also about this time took to her bed with fever. Again and again Pierre rode thirty miles and back to get ice for her head. All were kind to her now. The vengeance upon Dugard seemed to have wiped out much of her shame in the eyes of Bamber's Boom. Such is the way of the world. He that has the last blow is in the eye of advantage. When Nora began to recover, the child fell ill also. In the sickness of the child the old man had a great temptation--far greater than that concerning Dugard. As the mother grew better the child became much worse. One night the doctor came, driving over from another settlement, and said that if the child got sleep till morning it would probably live, for the crisis had come. He left an opiate to procure the sleep, the same that had been given to the mother. If it did not sleep, it would die. Pierre was present at this time. All through the child's illness the old man's mind had been tossed to and fro. If the child died, the living stigma would be gone; there would be no reminder of his daughter's shame in the eyes of the world. They could go away from Bamber's Boom, and begin life again somewhere. But, then, there was the child itself which had crept into his heart,--he knew not how, and would not be driven out. He had never, till it was taken ill, even touched it, nor spoken to it. To destroy its life!--Well, would it not be better for the child to go out of all possible shame, into peace, the peace of the grave? This night he sat down beside the cradle, holding the bottle of medicine and a spoon in his hand. The hot, painful face of the child fascinated him. He looked from it to the bottle, and back, then again to the bottle. He started, and the sweat stood out on his forehead. For though the doctor had told him in words the proper dose, he had by mistake written on the label the same dose as for the mother! Here was the responsibility shifted in any case. More than once the old man uncorked the bottle, and once he dropped out the opiate in the spoon steadily; but the child opened its suffering eyes at him, its little wasted hand wandered over the coverlet, and he could not do it just then. But again the passion for its destruction came on him, because he heard his daughter moaning in the other room. He said to himself that she would be happier when it was gone. But as he stooped over the cradle, no longer hesitating, the door softly opened, and Pierre entered. The old man shuddered, and drew back from the cradle. Pierre saw the look of guilt in the old man's face, and his instinct told him what was happening. He took the bottle from the trembling hand, and looked at the label. "What is the proper dose?" he asked, seeing that a mistake had been made by the doctor. In a hoarse whisper Magor told him. "It may be too late," Pierre added. He knelt down, with light fingers opened the child's mouth, and poured the medicine in slowly. The old man stood for a time rigid, looking at them both. Then he came round to the other side of the cradle, and seated himself beside it, his eyes fixed on the child's face. For a long time they sat there. At last the old man said: "Will he die, Pierre?" "I am afraid so," answered Pierre painfully. "But we shall see." Then early teaching came to him, never to be entirely obliterated, and he added: "Has the child been baptised?" The old man shook his head. "'Will you do it?" asked Pierre hesitatingly. "I can't--I can't," was the reply. Pierre smiled a little ironically, as if at himself, got some water in a cup, came over, and said: "Remember, I'm a Papist!" A motion of the hand answered him. He dipped his fingers in the water, and dropped it ever so lightly on the child's forehead. "George Magor,"--it was the old man's name,--"I baptise thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." Then he drew the sign of the cross on the infant's forehead. Sitting down, he watched beside the child. After a little he heard a long choking sigh. Looking up, he saw tears slowly dropping from Magor's eyes. And to this day the child and the mother of the child are dear to the old man's heart. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Bad turns good sometimes, when you know the how How can you judge the facts if you don't know the feeling? Put the matter on your own hearthstone A ROMANY OF THE SNOWS BEING A CONTINUATION OF THE PERSONAL HISTORIES OF "PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE" AND THE LAST EXISTING RECORDS OF PRETTY PIERRE By Gilbert Parker Volume 3. THE BRIDGE HOUSE THE EPAULETTES THE HOUSE WITH THE BROKEN SHUTTER THE FINDING OF FINGALL THREE COMMANDMENTS IN THE VULGAR TONGUE THE BRIDGE HOUSE It stood on a wide wall between two small bridges. These were approaches to the big covered bridge spanning the main channel of the Madawaska River, and when swelled by the spring thaws and rains, the two flanking channels divided at the foundations of the house, and rustled away through the narrow paths of the small bridges to the rapids. You could stand at any window in the House and watch the ugly, rushing current, gorged with logs, come battering at the wall, jostle between the piers, and race on to the rocks and the dam and the slide beyond. You stepped from the front door upon the wall, which was a road between the bridges, and from the back door into the river itself. The House had once been a tavern. It looked a wayfarer, like its patrons the river-drivers, with whom it was most popular. You felt that it had no part in the career of the village on either side, but was like a rock in a channel, at which a swimmer caught or a vagrant fish loitered. Pierre knew the place, when, of a night in the springtime or early summer, throngs of river-drivers and their bosses sauntered at its doors, or hung over the railing of the wall, as they talked and smoked. The glory of the Bridge House suddenly declined. That was because Finley, the owner, a rich man, came to hate the place--his brother's blood stained the barroom floor. He would have destroyed the house but that John Rupert, the beggared gentleman came to him, and wished to rent it for a dwelling. Mr. Rupert was old, and had been miserably poor for many years, but he had a breeding and a manner superior to anyone at Bamber's Boom. He was too old for a labourer, he had no art or craftsmanship; his little money was gone in foolish speculations, and he was dependent on his granddaughter's slight earnings from music teaching and needlework. But he rented an acre of ground from Finley, and grew vegetables; he gathered driftwood from the river for his winter fire, and made up the accounts of the storekeeper occasionally. Yet it was merely keeping off starvation. He was not popular. He had no tongue for the meaningless village talk. People held him in a kind of awe, and yet they felt a mean satisfaction when they saw him shouldering driftwood, and piling it on the shore to be dragged away--the last resort of the poor, for which they blush. When Mr. Rupert asked for the House, Finley knew the chances were he would not get the rental; yet, because he was sorry for the old man, he gave it to him at a low rate. He closed up the bar-room, however, and it was never opened afterwards. So it was that Mr. Rupert and Judith, his granddaughter, came to live there. Judith was a blithe, lissome creature, who had never known comfort or riches: they were taken from her grandfather before she was born, and her father and mother both died when she was a little child. But she had been taught by her grandmother, when she lived, and by her grandfather, and she had felt the graces of refined life. Withal, she had a singular sympathy for the rude, strong life of the river. She was glad when they came to live at the Bridge House, and shamed too: glad because they could live apart from the other villagers; shamed because it exposed her to the curiosity of those who visited the House, thinking it was still a tavern. But that was only for a time. One night Jules Brydon, the young river-boss, camped with his men at Bamber's Boom. He was of parents Scotch and French, and the amalgamation of races in him made a striking product. He was cool and indomitable, yet hearty and joyous. It was exciting to watch him at the head of his men, breaking up a jam of logs, and it was a delight to hear him of an evening as he sang: "Have you heard the cry of the Long Lachine, When happy is the sun in the morning? The rapids long and the banks of green, As we ride away in the morning, On the froth of the Long Lachine?" One day, soon after they came, the dams and booms were opened above, and forests of logs came riding down to Bamber's Boom. The current was strong, and the logs came on swiftly. As Brydon's gang worked, they saw a man out upon a small raft of driftwood, which had been suddenly caught in the drive of logs, and was carried out towards the middle channel. The river-drivers laughed, for they failed to see that the man was old, and that he could not run across the rolling logs to the shore. The old man, evidently hopeless, laid down his pike-pole, folded his hands, and drifted with the logs. The river-drivers stopped laughing. They began to understand. Brydon saw a woman standing at a window of the House waving her arms, and there floated up the river the words, "Father! father!" He caught up a pikepole, and ran over that spinning floor of logs to the raft. The old man's face was white, but there was no fear in his eyes. "I cannot run the logs," he said at once; "I never did; I am too old, and I slip. It's no use. It is my granddaughter at that window. Tell her that I'll think of her to the last. . . . Good-bye!" Brydon was eyeing the logs. The old man's voice was husky; he could not cry out, but he waved his hand to the girl. "Oh, save him!" came from her faintly. Brydon's eyes were now on the covered bridge. Their raft was in the channel, coming straight between two piers. He measured his chances. He knew if he slipped, doing what he intended, that both might be drowned, and certainly Mr. Rupert; for the logs were close, and to drop among them was a bad business. If they once closed over there was an end of everything. "Keep quite still," he said, "and when I throw you catch." He took the slight figure in his arms, sprang out upon the slippery logs, and ran. A cheer went up from the men on the shore, and the people who were gathering on the bridges, too late to be of service. Besides, the bridge was closed, and there was only a small opening at the piers. For one of these piers Brydon was making. He ran hard. Once he slipped and nearly fell, but recovered. Then a floating tree suddenly lunged up and struck him, so that he dropped upon a knee; but again he was up, and strained for the pier. He was within a few feet of it as they came to the bridge. The people gave a cry of fear, for they saw that there was no chance of both making it; because, too, at the critical moment a space of clear water showed near the pier. But Brydon raised John Rupert up, balanced himself, and tossed him at the pier, where two river-drivers stood stretching out their arms. An instant afterwards the old man was with his granddaughter. But Brydon slipped and fell; the roots of a tree bore him down, and he was gone beneath the logs! There was a cry of horror from the watchers, then all was still. But below the bridge they saw an arm thrust up between the logs, and then another arm crowding them apart. Now a head and shoulders appeared. Luckily the piece of timber which Brydon grasped was square, and did not roll. In a moment he was standing on it. There was a wild shout of encouragement. He turned his battered, blood-stained face to the bridge for an instant, and, with a wave of the hand and a sharp look towards the rapids below, once more sprang out. It was a brave sight, for the logs were in a narrower channel and more riotous. He rubbed the blood out of his eyes that he might see his way. The rolling forest gave him no quarter, but he came on, rocking with weakness, to within a few rods of the shore. Then a half-dozen of his men ran out on the logs,--they were packed closely here,--caught him up, and brought him to dry ground. They took him to the Bridge House. He was hurt more than he or they thought. The old man and the girl met them at the door. Judith gave a little cry when she saw the blood and Brydon's bruised face. He lifted his head as though her eyes had drawn his, and, their looks meeting, he took his hat off. Her face flushed; she dropped her eyes. Her grandfather seized Brydon's big hand, and said some trembling words of thanks. The girl stepped inside, made a bed for him upon the sofa, and got him something to drink. She was very cool; she immediately asked Pierre to go for the young doctor who had lately come to the place, and made ready warm water with which she wiped Brydon's blood-stained face and hands, and then gave him some brandy. His comrades standing round watched her admiringly, she was so deft and delicate. Brydon, as if to be nursed and cared for was not manly, felt ashamed, and came up quickly to a sitting posture, saying, "Pshaw! I'm all right!" But he turned sick immediately, and Judith's arms caught his head and shoulders as he fell back. His face turned, and was pillowed on her bosom. At this she blushed, but a look of singular dignity came into her face. Those standing by were struck with a kind of awe; they were used mostly to the daughters of habitants and fifty-acre farmers. Her sensitive face spoke a wonderful language: a divine gratitude and thankfulness; and her eyes had a clear moisture which did not dim them. The situation was trying to the river-drivers--it was too refined; and they breathed more freely when they got outside and left the girl, her grandfather, Pierre, and the young doctor alone with the injured man. That was how the thing began. Pierre saw the conclusion of events from the start. The young doctor did not. From the hour when he bound up Brydon's head, Judith's fingers aiding him, he felt a spring in his blood new to him. When he came to know exactly what it meant, and acted, it was too late. He was much surprised that his advances were gently repulsed. He pressed them hard: that was a mistake. He had an idea, not uncommon in such cases, that he was conferring an honour. But he was very young. A gold medal in anatomy is likely to turn a lad's head at the start. He falls into the error that the ability to demonstrate the medulla oblongata should likewise suffice to convince the heart of a maid. Pierre enjoyed the situation; he knew life all round; he had boxed the compass of experience. He believed in Judith. The old man interested him: he was a wreck out of an unfamiliar life. "Well, you see," Pierre said to Brydon one day, as they sat on the high cross-beams of the little bridge, "you can't kill it in a man--what he was born. Look, as he piles up the driftwood over there. Broken down, eh? Yes, but then there is something--a manner, an eye. He piles the wood like champagne bottles. On the raft, you remember, he took off his hat to death. That's different altogether from us." He gave a sidelong glance at Brydon, and saw a troubled look. "Yes," Brydon said, "he is different; and so is she." "She is a lady," Pierre said, with slow emphasis. "She couldn't hide it if she tried. She plays the piano, and looks all silk in calico. Made for this?"--he waved his hand towards the Bridge House. "No, no! made for--" He paused, smiled enigmatically, and dropped a bit of wood on the swift current. Brydon frowned, then said: "Well, made for what, Pierre?" Pierre looked over Brydon's shoulder, towards a pretty cottage on the hillside. "Made for homes like that, not this," he said, and he nodded first towards the hillside, then to the Bridge House. (The cottage belonged to the young doctor.) A growl like an animal's came from Brydon, and he clinched the other's shoulder. Pierre glanced at the hand, then at Brydon's face, and said sharply: "Take it away." The hand dropped; but Brydon's face was hot, and his eyes were hard. Pierre continued: "But then women are strange. What you expect they will not--no. Riches?--it is nothing; houses like that on the hill, nothing. They have whims. The hut is as good as the house, with the kitchen in the open where the river welts and washes, and a man--the great man of the world to them--to play the little game of life with. . . . Pshaw! you are idle: move; you are thick in the head: think hard; you like the girl: speak." As he said this, there showed beneath them the front timbers of a small crib of logs with a crew of two men, making for the rapids and the slide below. Here was an adventure, for running the rapids with so slight a craft and small a crew was smart work. Pierre, measuring the distance, and with a "Look out, below!" swiftly let himself down by his arms as far as he could, and then dropped to the timbers, as lightly as if it were a matter of two feet instead of twelve. He waved a hand to Brydon, and the crib shot on. Brydon sat eyeing it abstractedly till it ran into the teeth of the rapids, the long oars of the three men rising and falling to the monotonous cry. The sun set out the men and the craft against the tall dark walls of the river in strong relief, and Brydon was carried away from what Pierre had been saying. He had a solid pleasure in watching, and he sat up with a call of delight when he saw the crib drive at the slide. Just glancing the edge, she shot through safely. His face blazed. "A pretty sight!" said a voice behind him. Without a word he swung round, and dropped, more heavily than Pierre, beside Judith. "It gets into our bones," he said. "Of course, though it ain't the same to you," he added, looking down at her over his shoulder. "You don't care for things so rough, mebbe?" "I love the river," she said quietly. "We're a rowdy lot, we river-drivers. We have to be. It's a rowdy business." "I never noticed that," she replied, gravely smiling. "When I was small I used to go to the river-drivers' camps with my brother, and they were always kind to us. They used to sing and play the fiddle, and joke; but I didn't think then that they were rowdy, and I don't now. They were never rough with us." "No one'd ever be rough with you," was the reply. "Oh yes," she said suddenly, and turned her head away. She was thinking of what the young doctor had said to her that morning; how like a foolish boy he had acted: upbraiding her, questioning her, saying unreasonable things, as young egoists always do. In years she was younger than he, but in wisdom much older: in all things more wise and just. He had not struck her, but with his reckless tongue he had cut her to the heart. "Oh yes," she repeated, and her eyes ran up to his face and over his great stalwart body; and then she leaned over the railing and looked into the water. "I'd break the man into pieces that was rough with you," he said between his teeth. "Would you?" she asked in a whisper. Then, not giving him a chance to reply, "We are very poor, you know, and some people are rough with the poor--and proud. I remember," she went on, simply, dreamily, and as if talking to herself, "the day when we first came to the Bridge House. I sat down on a box and looked at the furniture--it was so little--and cried. Coming here seemed the last of what grandfather used to be. I couldn't help it. He sat down too, and didn't say anything. He was very pale, and I saw that his eyes ached as he looked at me. Then I got angry with myself, and sprang up and went to work--and we get along pretty well." She paused and sighed; then, after a minute: "I love the river. I don't believe I could be happy away from it. I should like to live on it, and die on it, and be buried in it." His eyes were on her eagerly. But she looked so frail and dainty that his voice, to himself, sounded rude. Still, his hand blundered along the railing to hers, and covered it tenderly--for so big a hand. She drew her fingers away, but not very quickly. "Don't!" she said, "and--and someone is coming!" There were footsteps behind them. It was her grandfather, carrying a board fished from the river. He grasped the situation, and stood speechless with wonder. He had never thought of this. He was a gentleman, in spite of all, and this man was a common river-boss. Presently he drew himself up with an air. The heavy board was still in his arms. Brydon came over and took the board, looking him squarely in the eyes. "Mr. Rupert," he said, "I want to ask something." The old man nodded. "I helped you out of a bad scrape on the river?" Again the old man nodded. "Well, mebbe, I saved your life. For that I'm going to ask you to draw no more driftwood from the Madawaska--not a stick, now or ever." "It is the only way we can keep from freezing in winter." Mr. Rupert scarcely knew what he said. Brydon looked at Judith, who turned away, then answered: "I'll keep you from freezing, if you'll let me, you--and Judith." "Oh, please let us go into the house," Judith said hastily. She saw the young doctor driving towards them out of the covered bridge! When Brydon went to join his men far down the river he left a wife behind him at the Bridge House, where she and her grandfather were to stay until the next summer. Then there would be a journey from Bamber's Boom to a new home. In the late autumn he came, before he went away to the shanties in the backwoods, and again in the winter just before the babe was born. Then he went far up the river to Rice Lake and beyond, to bring down the drives of logs for his Company. June came, and then there was a sudden sorrow at the Bridge House. How great it was, Pierre's words as he stood at the door one evening will testify. He said to the young doctor: "Save the child, and you shall have back the I O U on your house." Which was also evidence that the young doctor had fallen into the habit of gambling. The young doctor looked hard at him. He had a selfish nature. "You can only do what you can do," he said. Pierre's eyes were sinister. "If you do not save it, one would guess why." The other started, flushed, was silent, and then said: "You think I'm a coward. We shall see. There is a way, but it may fail." And though he sucked the diphtheria poison from the child's throat, it died the next night. Still, the cottage that Pierre and Company had won was handed back with such good advice as only a worldwise adventurer can give. Of the child's death its father did not know. They were not certain where he was. But when the mother took to her bed again, the young doctor said it was best that Brydon should come. Pierre had time and inclination to go for him. But before he went he was taken to Judith's bedside. Pierre had seen life and death in many forms, but never anything quite like this: a delicate creature floating away upon a summer current travelling in those valleys which are neither of this life nor of that; but where you hear the echoes of both, and are visited by solicitous spirits. There was no pain in her face--she heard a little, familiar voice from high and pleasant hills, and she knew, so wise are the dying, that her husband was travelling after her, and that they would be all together soon. But she did not speak of that. For the knowledge born of such a time is locked up in the soul. Pierre was awe-stricken. Unconsciously he crossed himself. "Tell him to come quickly," she said, "if you find him,"--her fingers played with the coverlet,--"for I wish to comfort him. . . . Someone said that you were bad, Pierre. I do not believe it. You were sorry when my baby went away. I am--going away--too. But do not tell him that. Tell him I cannot walk about. I want him to carry me--to carry me. Will you?" Pierre put out his hand to hers creeping along the coverlet to him; but it was only instinct that guided him, for he could not see. He started on his journey with his hat pulled down over his eyes. One evening when the river was very high and it was said that Brydon's drives of logs would soon be down, a strange thing happened at the Bridge House. The young doctor had gone, whispering to Mr. Rupert that he would come back later. He went out on tiptoe, as from the presence of an angel. His selfishness had dropped away from him. The evening wore on, and in the little back room a woman's voice said: "Is it morning yet, father?" "It is still day. The sun has not set, my child." "I thought it had gone, it seemed so dark." "You have been asleep, Judith. You have come out of the dark." "No, I have come out into the darkness--into the world." "You will see better when you are quite awake." "I wish I could see the river, father. Will you go and look?" Then there was a silence. "Well?" she asked. "It is beautiful," he said, "and the sun is still bright." "You see as far as Indian Island?" "I can see the white comb of the reef beyond it, my dear." "And no one--is coming?" "There are men making for the shore, and the fires are burning, but no one is--coming this way. . . . He would come by the road, perhaps." "Oh no, by the river. Pierre has not found him. Can you see the Eddy?" "Yes. It is all quiet there; nothing but the logs tossing round it." "We used to sit there--he and I--by the big cedar tree. Everything was so cool and sweet. There was only the sound of the force-pump and the swallowing of the Eddy. They say that a woman was drowned there, and that you can see her face in the water, if you happen there at sunrise, weeping and smiling also: a picture in the water. . . . Do you think it true, father?" "Life is so strange, and who knows what is not life, my child?" "When baby was dying I held it over the water beneath that window, where the sunshine falls in the evening; and it looked down once before its spirit passed like a breath over my face. Maybe, its look will stay, for him to see when he comes. It was just below where you stand.... Father, can you see its face?" "No, Judith; nothing but the water and the sunshine." "Dear, carry me to the window." When this was done she suddenly leaned forward with shining eyes and anxious fingers. "My baby! My baby!" she said. She looked up the river, but her eyes were fading, she could not see far. "It is all a grey light," she said, "I cannot see well." Yet she smiled. "Lay me down again, father," she whispered. After a little she sank into a slumber. All at once she started up. "The river, the beautiful river!" she cried out gently. Then, at the last, "Oh, my dear, my dear!" And so she came out of the valley into the high hills. Later he was left alone with his dead. The young doctor and others had come and gone. He would watch till morning. He sat long beside her, numb to the world. At last he started, for he heard a low clear call behind the House. He went out quickly to the little platform, and saw through the dusk a man drawing himself up. It was Brydon. He caught the old man's shoulders convulsively. "How is she?" he asked. "Come in, my son," was the low reply. The old man saw a grief greater than his own. He led the husband to the room where the wife lay beautiful and still. "She is better, as you see," he said bravely. The hours went, and the two sat near the body, one on either side. They knew not what was going on in the world. As they mourned, Pierre and the young doctor sat silent in that cottage on the hillside. They were roused at last. There came up to Pierre's keen ears the sound of the river. "Let us go out," he said; "the river is flooding. You can hear the logs." They came out and watched. The river went swishing, swilling past, and the dull boom of the logs as they struck the piers of the bridge or some building on the shore came rolling to them. "The dams and booms have burst!" Pierre said. He pointed to the camps far up the river. By the light of the camp-fires there appeared a wide weltering flood of logs and debris. Pierre's eyes shifted to the Bridge House. In one room was a light. He stepped out and down, and the other followed. They had almost reached the shore, when Pierre cried out sharply: "What's that?" He pointed to an indistinct mass bearing down upon the Bridge House. It was a big shed that had been carried away, and, jammed between timbers, had not broken up. There was no time for warning. It came on swiftly, heavily. There was a strange, horrible, grinding sound, and then they saw the light of that one room move on, waving a little to and fro-on to the rapids, the cohorts of logs crowding hard after. Where the light was two men had started to their feet when the crash came. They felt the House move. "Run-save yourself!" cried the old man quietly. "We are lost!" The floor rocked. "Go," he said again. "I will stay with her." "She is mine," Brydon said; and he took her in his arms. "I will not go." They could hear the rapids below. The old man steadied himself in the deep water on the floor, and caught out yearningly at the cold hands. "Come close, come close," said Brydon. "Closer; put your arms round her." The old man did so. They were locked in each other's arms--dead and living. The old man spoke, with a piteous kind of joy: "We therefore commit her body to the deep--!" The three were never found. THE EPAULETTES Old Athabasca, chief of the Little Crees, sat at the door of his lodge, staring down into the valley where Fort Pentecost lay, and Mitawawa his daughter sat near him, fretfully pulling at the fringe of her fine buckskin jacket. She had reason to be troubled. Fyles the trader had put a great indignity upon Athabasca. A factor of twenty years before, in recognition of the chief's merits and in reward of his services, had presented him with a pair of epaulettes, left in the Fort by some officer in Her Majesty's service. A good, solid, honest pair of epaulettes, well fitted to stand the wear and tear of those high feasts and functions at which the chief paraded them upon his broad shoulders. They were the admiration of his own tribe, the wonder of others, the envy of many chiefs. It was said that Athabasca wore them creditably, and was no more immobile and grand-mannered than became a chief thus honoured above his kind. But the years went, and there came a man to Fort Pentecost who knew not Athabasca. He was young, and tall and strong, had a hot temper, knew naught of human nature, was possessed by a pride more masterful than his wisdom, and a courage stronger than his tact. He was ever for high- handedness, brooked no interference, and treated the Indians more as Company's serfs than as Company's friends and allies. Also, he had an eye for Mitawawa, and found favour in return, though to what depth it took a long time to show. The girl sat high in the minds and desires of the young braves, for she had beauty of a heathen kind, a deft and dainty finger for embroidered buckskin, a particular fortune with a bow and arrow, and the fleetest foot. There were mutterings because Fyles the white man came to sit often in Athabasca's lodge. He knew of this, but heeded not at all. At last Konto, a young brave who very accurately guessed at Fyles' intentions, stopped him one day on the Grey Horse Trail, and in a soft, indolent voice begged him to prove his regard in a fight without weapons, to the death, the survivor to give the other burial where he fell. Fyles was neither fool nor coward. It would have been foolish to run the risk of leaving Fort and people masterless for an Indian's whim; it would have been cowardly to do nothing. So he whipped out a revolver, and bade his rival march before him to the Fort; which Konto very calmly did, begging the favour of a bit of tobacco as he went. Fyles demanded of Athabasca that he should sit in judgment, and should at least banish Konto from his tribe, hinting the while that he might have to put a bullet into Konto's refractory head if the thing were not done. He said large things in the name of the H.B.C., and was surprised that Athabasca let them pass unmoved. But that chief, after long consideration, during which he drank Company's coffee and ate Company's pemmican, declared that he could do nothing: for Konto had made a fine offer, and a grand chance of a great fight had been missed. This was in the presence of several petty officers and Indians and woodsmen at the Fort. Fyles had vanity and a nasty temper. He swore a little, and with words of bluster went over and ripped the epaulettes from the chief's shoulders as a punishment, a mark of degradation. The chief said nothing. He got up, and reached out his hands as if to ask them back; and when Fyles refused, he went away, drawing his blanket high over his shoulders. It was wont before to lie loosely about him, to show his badges of captaincy and alliance. This was about the time that the Indians were making ready for the buffalo, and when their chief took to his lodge, and refused to leave it, they came to ask him why. And they were told. They were for making trouble, but the old chief said the quarrel was his own: he would settle it in his own way. He would not go to the hunt. Konto, he said, should take his place; and when his braves came back there should be great feasting, for then the matter would be ended. Half the course of the moon and more, and Athabasca came out of his lodge--the first time in the sunlight since the day of his disgrace. He and his daughter sat silent and watchful at the door. There had been no word between Fyles and Athabasca, no word between Mitawawa and Fyles. The Fort was well-nigh tenantless, for the half-breeds also had gone after buffalo, and only the trader, a clerk, and a half-breed cook were left. Mitawawa gave a little cry of impatience: she had held her peace so long that even her slow Indian nature could endure no more. "What will my father Athabasca do?" she asked. "With idleness the flesh grows soft, and the iron melts from the arm." "But when the thoughts are stone, the body is as that of the Mighty Men of the Kimash Hills. When the bow is long drawn, beware the arrow." "It is no answer," she said: "what will my father do?" "They were of gold," he answered, "that never grew rusty. My people were full of wonder when they stood before me, and the tribes had envy as they passed. It is a hundred moons and one red midsummer moon since the Great Company put them on my shoulders. They were light to carry, but it was as if I bore an army. No other chief was like me. That is all over. When the tribes pass they will laugh, and my people will scorn me if I do not come out to meet them with the yokes of gold." "But what will my father do?" she persisted. "I have had many thoughts, and at night I have called on the Spirits who rule. From the top of the Hill of Graves I have beaten the soft drum, and called, and sung the hymn which wakes the sleeping Spirits: and I know the way." "What is the way?" Her eyes filled with a kind of fear or trouble, and many times they shifted from the Fort to her father, and back again. The chief was silent. Then anger leapt into her face. "Why does my father fear to speak to his child?" she said. "I will speak plain. I love the man: but I love my father also." She stood up, and drew her blanket about her, one hand clasped proudly on her breast. "I cannot remember my mother; but I remember when I first looked down from my hammock in the pine tree, and saw my father sitting by the fire. It was in the evening like this, but darker, for the pines made great shadows. I cried out, and he came and took me down, and laid me between his knees, and fed me with bits of meat from the pot. He talked much to me, and his voice was finer than any other. There is no one like my father--Konto is nothing: but the voice of the white man, Fyles, had golden words that our braves do not know, and I listened. Konto did a brave thing. Fyles, because he was a great man of the Company, would not fight, and drove him like a dog. Then he made my father as a worm in the eyes of the world. I would give my life for Fyles the trader, but I would give more than my life to wipe out my father's shame, and to show that Konto of the Little Crees is no dog. I have been carried by the hands of the old men of my people, I have ridden the horses of the young men: their shame is my shame." The eyes of the chief had never lifted from the Fort: nor from his look could you have told that he heard his daughter's words. For a moment he was silent, then a deep fire came into his eyes, and his wide heavy brows drew up so that the frown of anger was gone. At last, as she waited, he arose, put out a hand and touched her forehead. "Mitawawa has spoken well," he said. "There will be an end. The yokes of gold are mine: an honour given cannot be taken away. He has stolen; he is a thief. He would not fight Konto: but I am a chief and he shall fight me. I am as great as many men--I have carried the golden yokes: we will fight for them. I thought long, for I was afraid my daughter loved the man more than her people: but now I will break him in pieces. Has Mitawawa seen him since the shameful day?" "He has come to the lodge, but I would not let him in unless he brought the epaulettes. He said he would bring them when Konto was punished. I begged of him as I never begged of my own father, but he was hard as the ironwood tree. I sent him away. Yet there is no tongue like his in the world; he is tall and beautiful, and has the face of a spirit." From the Fort Fyles watched the two. With a pair of field-glasses he could follow their actions, could almost read their faces. "There'll be a lot of sulking about those epaulettes, Mallory," he said at last, turning to his clerk. "Old Athabasca has a bee in his bonnet." "Wouldn't it be just as well to give 'em back, sir?" Mallory had been at Fort Pentecost a long time, and he understood Athabasca and his Indians. He was a solid, slow-thinking old fellow, but he had that wisdom of the north which can turn from dove to serpent and from serpent to lion in the moment. "Give 'em back, Mallory? I'll see him in Jericho first, unless he goes on his marrow-bones and kicks Konto out of the camp." "Very well, sir. But I think we'd better keep an eye open." "Eye open, be hanged! If he'd been going to riot he'd have done so before this. Besides, the girl--!" Mallory looked long and earnestly at his master, whose forehead was glued to the field-glass. His little eyes moved as if in debate, his slow jaws opened once or twice. At last he said: "I'd give the girl the go-by, Mr. Fyles, if I was you, unless I meant to marry her." Fyles suddenly swung round. "Keep your place, blast you, Mallory, and keep your morals too. One'd think you were a missionary." Then with a sudden burst of anger: "Damn it all, if my men don't stand by me against a pack of treacherous Indians, I'd better get out." "Your men will stand by you, sir: no fear. I've served three traders here, and my record is pretty clean, Mr. Fyles. But I'll say it to your face, whether you like it or not, that you're not as good a judge of the Injin as me, or even Duc the cook: and that's straight as I can say it, Mr. Fyles." Fyles paced up and down in anger--not speaking; but presently threw up the glass, and looked towards Athabasca's lodge. "They're gone," he said presently; "I'll go and see them to-morrow. The old fool must do what I want, or there'll be ructions." The moon was high over Fort Pentecost when Athabasca entered the silent yard. The dogs growled, but Indian dogs growl without reason, and no one heeds them. The old chief stood a moment looking at the windows, upon which slush-lights were throwing heavy shadows. He went to Fyles' window: no one was in the room. He went to another: Mallory and Duc were sitting at a table. Mallory had the epaulettes, looking at them and fingering the hooks by which Athabasca had fastened them on. Duc was laughing: he reached over for an epaulette, tossed it up, caught it and threw it down with a guffaw. Then the door opened, and Athabasca walked in, seized the epaulettes, and went swiftly out again. Just outside the door Mallory clapped a hand on one shoulder, and Duc caught at the epaulettes. Athabasca struggled wildly. All at once there was a cold white flash, and Duc came huddling to Mallory's feet. For a brief instant Mallory and the Indian fell apart, then Athabasca with a contemptuous fairness tossed his knife away, and ran in on his man. They closed; strained, swayed, became a tangled wrenching mass; and then Mallory was lifted high into the air, and came down with a broken back. Athabasca picked up the epaulettes, and hurried away, breathing hard, and hugging them to his bare red-stained breast. He had nearly reached the gate when he heard a cry. He did not turn, but a heavy stone caught him high in the shoulders, and he fell on his face and lay clutching the epaulettes in his outstretched hands. Fyles' own hands were yet lifted with the effort of throwing, when he heard the soft rush of footsteps, and someone came swiftly into his embrace. A pair of arms ran round his shoulders--lips closed with his-- something ice-cold and hard touched his neck--he saw a bright flash at his throat. In the morning Konto found Mitawawa sitting with wild eyes by her father's body. She had fastened the epaulettes on its shoulders. Fyles and his men made a grim triangle of death at the door of the Fort. THE HOUSE WITH THE BROKEN SHUTTER "He stands in the porch of the world-- (Why should the door be shut?) The grey wolf waits at his heel, (Why is the window barred?) Wild is the trail from the Kimash Hills, The blight has fallen on bush and tree, The choking earth has swallowed the streams, 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?)" Pierre stopped to listen. The voice singing was clear and soft, yet strong--a mezzo-soprano without any culture save that of practice and native taste. It had a singular charm--a sweet, fantastic sincerity. He stood still and fastened his eyes on the house, a few rods away. It stood on a knoll perching above Fort Ste. Anne. Years had passed since Pierre had visited the Fort, and he was now on his way to it again, after many wanderings. The house had stood here in the old days, and he remembered it very well, for against it John Marcey, the Company's man, was shot by Stroke Laforce, of the Riders of the Plains. Looking now, he saw that the shutter, which had been pulled off to bear the body away, was hanging there just as he had placed it, with seven of its slats broken and a dark stain in one corner. Something more of John Marcey than memory attached to that shutter. His eyes dwelt on it long he recalled the scene: a night with stars and no moon, a huge bonfire to light the Indians, at their dance, and Marcey, Laforce, and many others there, among whom was Lucille, the little daughter of Gyng the Factor. Marcey and Laforce were only boys then, neither yet twenty-three, and they were friendly rivals with the sweet little coquette, who gave her favors with a singular impartiality and justice. Once Marcey had given her a gold spoon. Laforce responded with a tiny, fretted silver basket. Laforce was delighted to see her carrying her basket, till she opened it and showed the spoon inside. There were many mock quarrels, in one of which Marcey sent her a letter by the Company's courier, covered with great seals, saying, "I return you the hairpin, the egg-shell, and the white wolf's tooth. Go to your Laforce, or whatever his ridiculous name may be." In this way the pretty game ran on, the little goldenhaired, golden- faced, golden-voiced child dancing so gayly in their hearts, but nestling in them too, after her wilful fashion, until the serious thing came--the tragedy. On the mad night when all ended, she was in the gayest, the most elf-like spirits. All went well until Marcey dug a hole in the ground, put a stone in it, and, burying it, said it was Laforce's heart. Then Laforce pretended to ventriloquise, and mocked Marcey's slight stutter. That was the beginning of the trouble, and Lucille, like any lady of the world, troubled at Laforce's unkindness, tried to smooth things over--tried very gravely. But the playful rivalry of many months changed its composition suddenly as through some delicate yet powerful chemical action, and the savage in both men broke out suddenly. Where motives and emotions are few they are the more vital, their action is the more violent. No one knew quite what the two young men said to each other, but presently, while the Indian dance was on, they drew to the side of the house, and had their duel out in the half-shadows, no one knowing, till the shots rang on the night, and John Marcey, without a cry, sprang into the air and fell face upwards, shot through the heart. They tried to take the child away, but she would not go; and when they carried Marcey on the shutter she followed close by, resisting her father's wishes and commands. And just before they made a prisoner of Laforce, she said to him very quietly--so like a woman she was--"I will give you back the basket, and the riding-whip, and the other things, and I will never forgive you--never--no, never!" Stroke Laforce had given himself up, had himself ridden to Winnipeg, a thousand miles, and told his story. Then the sergeant's stripes had been stripped from his arm, he had been tried, and on his own statement had got twelve years' imprisonment. Ten years had passed since then-- since Marcey was put away in his grave, since Pierre left Fort Ste. Anne, and he had not seen it or Lucille in all that time. But he knew that Gyng was dead, and that his widow and her child had gone south or east somewhere; of Laforce after his sentence he had never heard. He stood looking at the house from the shade of the solitary pine-tree near it, recalling every incident of that fatal night. He had the gift of looking at a thing in its true proportions, perhaps because he had little emotion and a strong brain, or perhaps because early in life his emotions were rationalised. Presently he heard the voice again: "He waits at the threshold stone-- (Why should the key-hole rust?) The eagle broods at his side, (Why should the blind be drawn?) Long has he watched, and far has he called The lonely sentinel of the North: "Who goes there?" to the wandering soul: Heavy of heart is the Red Patrol (Why should the key-hole rust?) The Scarlet Hunter is sick for home, (Why should the blind be drawn?)" Now he recognised the voice. Its golden timbre brought back a young girl's golden face and golden hair. It was summer, and the window with the broken shutter was open. He was about to go to it, when a door of the house opened, and a girl appeared. She was tall, with rich, yellow hair falling loosely about her head; she had a strong, finely cut chin and a broad brow, under which a pair of deep blue eyes shone-violet blue, rare and fine. She stood looking down at the Fort for a few moments, unaware of Pierre's presence. But presently she saw him leaning against the tree, and she started as from a spirit. "Monsieur!" she said--"Pierre!" and stepped forward again from the doorway. He came to her, and "Ah, p'tite Lucille," he said, "you remember me, eh? --and yet so many years ago!" "But you remember me," she answered, "and I have changed so much!" "It is the man who should remember, the woman may forget if she will." Pierre did not mean to pay a compliment; he was merely thinking. She made a little gesture of deprecation. "I was a child," she said. Pierre lifted a shoulder slightly. "What matter? It is sex that I mean. What difference to me--five, or forty, or ninety? It is all sex. It is only lovers, the hunters of fire-flies, that think of age--mais oui!" She had a way of looking at you before she spoke, as though she were trying to find what she actually thought. She was one after Pierre's own heart, and he knew it; but just here he wondered where all that ancient coquetry was gone, for there were no traces of it left; she was steady of eye, reposeful, rich in form and face, and yet not occupied with herself. He had only seen her for a minute or so, yet he was sure that what she was just now she was always, or nearly so, for the habits of a life leave their mark, and show through every phase of emotion and incident whether it be light or grave. "I think I understand you," she said. "I think I always did a little, from the time you stayed with Grah the idiot at Fort o' God, and fought the Indians when the others left. Only--men said bad things of you, and my father did not like you, and you spoke so little to me ever. Yet I mind how you used to sit and watch me, and I also mind when you rode the man down who stole my pony, and brought them both back." Pierre smiled--he was pleased at this. "Ah, my young friend," he said, "I do not forget that either, for though he had shaved my ear with a bullet, you would not have him handed over to the Riders of the Plains --such a tender heart!" Her eyes suddenly grew wide. She was childlike in her amazement, indeed, childlike in all ways, for she was very sincere. It was her great advantage to live where nothing was required of her but truth, she had not suffered that sickness, social artifice. "I never knew," she said, "that he had shot at you--never! You did not tell that." "There is a time for everything--the time for that was not till now." "What could I have done then?" "You might have left it to me. I am not so pious that I can't be merciful to the sinner. But this man--this Brickney--was a vile scoundrel always, and I wanted him locked up. I would have shot him myself, but I was tired of doing the duty of the law. Yes, yes," he added, as he saw her smile a little. "It is so. I have love for justice, even I, Pretty Pierre. Why not justice on myself? Ha! The law does not its duty. And maybe some day I shall have to do its work on myself. Some are coaxed out of life, some are kicked out, and some open the doors quietly for themselves, and go a-hunting Outside." "They used to talk as if one ought to fear you," she said, "but"--she looked him straight in the eyes--"but maybe that's because you've never hid any badness." "It is no matter, anyhow," he answered. "I live in the open, I walk in the open road, and I stand by what I do to the open law and the gospel. It is my whim--every man to his own saddle." "It is ten years," she said abruptly. "Ten years less five days," he answered as sententiously. "Come inside," she said quietly, and turned to the door. Without a word he turned also, but instead of going direct to the door came and touched the broken shutter and the dark stain on one corner with a delicate forefinger. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her on the doorstep, looking intently. He spoke as if to himself: "It has not been touched since then--no. It was hardly big enough for him, so his legs hung over. Ah, yes, ten years-- Abroad, John Marcey!" Then, as if still musing, he turned to the girl: "He had no father or mother--no one, of course; so that it wasn't so bad after all. If you've lived with the tongue in the last hole of the buckle as you've gone, what matter when you go! C'est egal --it is all the same." Her face had become pale as he spoke, but no muscle stirred; only her eyes filled with a deeper color, and her hand closed tightly on the door- jamb. "Come in, Pierre," she said, and entered. He followed her. "My mother is at the Fort," she added, "but she will be back soon." She placed two chairs not far from the open door. They sat, and Pierre slowly rolled a cigarette and lighted it. "How long have you lived here?" he asked presently. "It is seven years since we came first," she replied. "After that night they said the place was haunted, and no one would live in it, but when my father died my mother and I came for three years. Then we went east, and again came back, and here we have been." "The shutter?" Pierre asked. They needed few explanations--their minds were moving with the same thought. "I would not have it changed, and of course no one cared to touch it. So it has hung there." "As I placed it ten years ago," he said. They both became silent for a time, and at last he said: "Marcey had no one,--Sergeant Laforce a mother." "It killed his mother," she whispered, looking into the white sunlight. She was noting how it was flashed from the bark of the birch-trees near the Fort. "His mother died," she added again, quietly. "It killed her--the gaol for him!" "An eye for an eye," he responded. "Do you think that evens John Marcey's death?" she sighed. "As far as Marcey's concerned," he answered. "Laforce has his own reckoning besides." "It was not a murder," she urged. "It was a fair fight," he replied firmly, "and Laforce shot straight." He was trying to think why she lived here, why the broken shutter still hung there, why the matter had settled so deeply on her. He remembered the song she was singing, the legend of the Scarlet Hunter, the fabled Savior of the North. "Heavy of heart is the Red Patrol-- (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 her childhood into her womanhood. But he guessed her--she had imagination. "His mother died in my arms in Winnipeg," she said abruptly at last. "I'm glad I was some comfort to her. You see, it all came through me-- I was so young and spoiled and silly--John Marcey's death, her death, and his long years in prison. Even then I knew better than to set the one against the other. Must a child not be responsible? I was--I am!" "And so you punish yourself?" "It was terrible for me--even as a child. I said that I could never forgive, but when his mother died, blessing me, I did. Then there came something else." "You saw him, there amie?" "I saw him--so changed, so quiet, so much older--all grey at the temples. At first I lived here that I might get used to the thought of the thing --to learn to bear it; and afterwards that I might learn--" She paused, looking in half-doubt at Pierre. "It is safe; I am silent," he said. "That I might learn to bear--him," she continued. "Is he still--" Pierre paused. She spoke up quickly. "Oh no, he has been free two years." "Where is he now?" "I don't know." She waited for a minute, then said again, "I don't know. When he was free, he came to me, but I--I could not. He thought, too, that because he had been in gaol, that I wouldn't--be his wife. He didn't think enough of himself, he didn't urge anything. And I wasn't ready--no--no--no--how could I be! I didn't care so much about the gaol, but he had killed John Marcey. The gaol--what was that to me! There was no real shame in it unless he had done a mean thing. He had been wicked --not mean. Killing is awful, but not shameful. Think--the difference-- if he had been a thief!" Pierre nodded. "Then some one should have killed him!" he said. "Well, after?" "After--after--ah, he went away for a year. Then he came back; but no, I was always thinking of that night I walked behind John Marcey's body to the Fort. So he went away again, and we came here, and here we have lived." "He has not come here?" "No; once from the far north he sent me a letter by an Indian, saying that he was going with a half-breed to search for a hunting party, an English gentleman and two men who were lost. The name of one of the men was Brickney." Pierre stopped short in a long whiffing of smoke. "Holy!" he said, "that thief Brickney again. He would steal the broad road to hell if he could carry it. He once stole the quarters from a dead man's eyes. Mon Dieu! to save Brickney's life, the courage to do that--like sticking your face in the mire and eating!--But, pshaw!--go on, p'tite Lucille." "There is no more. I never heard again." "How long was that ago?" "Nine months or more." "Nothing has been heard of any of them?" "Nothing at all. The Englishman belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company, but they have heard nothing down here at Fort Ste. Anne." "If he saves the Company's man, that will make up the man he lost for them, eh--you think that, eh?" Pierre's eyes had a curious ironical light. "I do not care for the Company," she said. "John Marcey's life was his own." "Good!" he added quickly, and his eyes admired her. "That is the thing. Then, do not forget that Marcey took his life in his hands himself, that he would have killed Laforce if Laforce hadn't killed him." "I know, I know," she said, "but I should have felt the same if John Marcey had killed Stroke Laforce." "It is a pity to throw your life away," he ventured. He said this for a purpose. He did not think she was throwing it away. She was watching a little knot of horsemen coming over a swell of the prairie far off. She withdrew her eyes and fixed them on Pierre. "Do you throw your life away if you do what is the only thing you are told to do?" She placed her hand on her heart--that had been her one guide. Pierre got to his feet, came over, and touched her on the shoulder. "You have the great secret," he said quietly. "The thing may be all wrong to others, but if it's right to yourself--that's it--mais oui! If he comes," he added "if he comes back, think of him as well as Marcey. Marcey is sleeping--what does it matter? If he is awake, he has better times, for he was a man to make another world sociable. Think of Laforce, for he has his life to live, and he is a man to make this world sociable. 'The Scarlet Hunter is sick for home-- (Why should the door be shut?)'" Her eyes had been following the group of horsemen on the plains. She again fixed them on Pierre, and stood up. "It is a beautiful legend--that," she said. "But?--but?" he asked. She would not answer him. "You will come again," she said; "you will-- help me?" "Surely, p'tite Lucille, surely, I will come. But to help--ah, that would sound funny to the Missionary at the Fort and to others!" "You understand life," she said, "and I can speak to you." "It's more to you to understand you than to be good, eh?" "I guess it's more to any woman," she answered. They both passed out of the house. She turned towards the broken shutter. Then their eyes met. A sad little smile hovered at her lips. "What is the use?" she said, and her eyes fastened on the horsemen. He knew now that she would never shudder again at the sight of it, or at the remembrance of Marcey's death. "But he will come," was the reply to her, and her smile almost settled and stayed. They parted, and as he went down the hill he saw far over, coming up, a woman in black, who walked as if she carried a great weight. "Every shot that kills ricochets," he said to himself: "His mother dead--her mother like that!" He passed into the Fort, renewing acquaintances in the Company's store, and twenty minutes after he was one to greet the horsemen that Lucille had seen coming over the hills. They were five, and one had to be helped from his horse. It was Stroke Laforce, who had been found near dead at the Metal River by a party of men exploring in the north. He had rescued the Englishman and his party, but within a day of the finding the Englishman died, leaving him his watch, a ring, and a cheque on the H. B. C. at Winnipeg. He and the two survivors, one of whom was Brickney, started south. One night Brickney robbed him and made to get away, and on his seizing the thief he was wounded. Then the other man came to his help and shot Brickney: after that weeks of wandering, and at last rescue and Fort Ste. Anne. A half-hour after this Pierre left Laforce on the crest of the hill above the Fort, and did not turn to go down till he had seen the other pass within the house with the broken shutter. And later he saw a little bonfire on the hill. The next evening he came to the house again himself. Lucille rose to meet him. "'Why should the door be shut?"' he quoted smiling. "The door is open," she answered quickly and with a quiet joy. He turned to the motion of her hand, and saw Laforce asleep on a couch. Soon afterwards, as he passed from the house, he turned towards the window. The broken shutter was gone. He knew now the meaning of the bonfire the night before. THE FINDING OF FINGALL "Fingall! Fingall!--Oh, Fingall!" A grey mist was rising from the river, the sun was drinking it delightedly, the swift blue water showed underneath it, and the top of Whitefaced Mountain peaked the mist by a hand-length. The river brushed the banks like rustling silk, and the only other sound, very sharp and clear in the liquid monotone, was the crack of a woodpecker's beak on a hickory tree. It was a sweet, fresh autumn morning in Lonesome Valley. Before night the deer would bellow reply to the hunters' rifles, and the mountain-goat call to its unknown gods; but now there was only the wild duck skimming the river, and the high hilltop rising and fading into the mist, the ardent sun, and again that strange cry-- "Fingall!--Oh, Fingall! Fingall!" Two men, lounging at a fire on a ledge of the hills, raised their eyes to the mountain-side beyond and above them, and one said presently: "The second time. It's a woman's voice, Pierre." Pierre nodded, and abstractedly stirred the coals about with a twig. "Well, it is a pity--the poor Cynthie," he said at last. "It is a woman, then. You know her, Pierre--her story?" "Fingall! Fingall!--Oh, Fingall!" Pierre raised his head towards the sound; then after a moment, said: "I know Fingall." "And the woman? Tell me." "And the girl. Fingall was all fire and heart, and devil-may-care. She--she was not beautiful except in the eye, but that was like a flame of red and blue. Her hair, too--then--would trip her up, if it hung loose. That was all, except that she loved him too much. But women-- et puis, when a woman gets a man between her and the heaven above and the earth beneath, and there comes the great hunger, what is the good! A man cannot understand, but he can see, and he can fear. What is the good! To play with life, that is not much; but to play with a soul is more than a thousand lives. Look at Cynthie." He paused, and Lawless waited patiently. Presently Pierre continued: Fingall was gentil; he would take off his hat to a squaw. It made no difference what others did; he didn't think--it was like breathing to him. How can you tell the way things happen? Cynthie's father kept the tavern at St. Gabriel's Fork, over against the great saw-mill. Fingall was foreman of a gang in the lumberyard. Cynthie had a brother--Fenn. Fenn was as bad as they make, but she loved him, and Fingall knew it well, though he hated the young skunk. The girl's eyes were like two little fire-flies when Fingall was about. "He was a gentleman, though he had only half a name--Fingall--like that. I think he did not expect to stay; he seemed to be waiting for something --always when the mail come in he would be there; and afterwards you wouldn't see him for a time. So it seemed to me that he made up his mind to think nothing of Cynthie, and to say nothing." "Fingall! Fingall!--Oh, Fingall!" The strange, sweet, singing voice sounded nearer. "She's coming this way, Pierre," said Lawless. "I hope not to see her. What is the good!" "Well, let us have the rest of the story." "Her brother Fenn was in Fingall's gang. One day there was trouble. Fenn called Fingall a liar. The gang stopped piling; the usual thing did not come. Fingall told him to leave the yard, and they would settle some other time. That night a wicked thing happened. We were sitting in the bar-room when we heard two shots and then a fall. We ran into the other room; there was Fenn on the floor, dying. He lifted himself on his elbow, pointed at Fingall--and fell back. The father of the boy stood white and still a few feet away. There was no pistol showing--none at all. "The men closed in on Fingall. He did not stir--he seemed to be thinking of something else. He had a puzzled, sorrowful look. The men roared round him, but he waved them back for a moment, and looked first at the father, then at the son. I could not understand at first. Someone pulled a pistol out of Fingall's pocket and showed it. At that moment Cynthie came in. She gave a cry. By the holy! I do not want to hear a cry like that often. She fell on her knees beside the boy, and caught his head to her breast. Then with a wild look she asked who did it. They had just taken Fingall out into the bar-room. They did not tell her his name, for they knew that she loved him. "'Father,' she said all at once, 'have you killed the man that killed Fenn?' "The old man shook his head. There was a sick colour in his face. "'Then I will kill him,' she said. "She laid her brother's head down, and stood up. Someone put in her hand the pistol, and told her it was the same that had killed Fenn. She took it, and came with us. The old man stood still where he was; he was like stone. I looked at him for a minute and thought; then I turned round and went to the bar-room; and he followed. Just as I got inside the door, I saw the girl start back, and her hand drop, for she saw that it was Fingall; he was looking at her very strange. It was the rule to empty the gun into a man who had been sentenced; and already Fingall had heard his, 'God-have-mercy!' The girl was to do it. "Fingall said to her in a muffled voice, 'Fire--Cynthie!' "I guessed what she would do. In a kind of a dream she raised the pistol up--up--up, till I could see it was just out of range of his head, and she fired. One! two! three! four! five! Fingall never moved a muscle; but the bullets spotted the wall at the side of his head. She stopped after the five; but the arm was still held out, and her finger was on the trigger; she seemed to be all dazed. Only six chambers were in the gun, and of course one chamber was empty. Fenn had its bullet in his lungs, as we thought. So someone beside Cynthie touched her arm, pushing it down. But there was another shot, and this time, because of the push, the bullet lodged in Fingall's skull." Pierre paused now, and waved with his hand towards the mist which hung high up like a canopy between the hills. "But," said Lawless, not heeding the scene, "what about that sixth bullet?" "Holy, it is plain! Fingall did not fire the shot. His revolver was full, every chamber, when Cynthie first took it." "Who killed the lad?" "Can you not guess? There had been words between the father and the boy: both had fierce blood. The father, in a mad minute, fired; the boy wanted revenge on Fingall, and, to save his father, laid it on the other. The old man? Well, I do not know whether he was a coward, or stupid, or ashamed--he let Fingall take it." "Fingall took it to spare the girl, eh?" "For the girl. It wasn't good for her to know her father killed his own son." "What came after?" "The worst. That night the girl's father killed himself, and the two were buried in the same grave. Cynthie--" "Fingall! Fingall!--Oh, Fingall!" "You hear? Yes, like that all the time as she sat on the floor, her hair about her like a cloud, and the dead bodies in the next room. She thought she had killed Fingall, and she knew now that he was innocent. The two were buried. Then we told her that Fingall was not dead. She used to come and sit outside the door, and listen to his breathing, and ask if he ever spoke of her. What was the good of lying? If we said he did, she'd have come in to him, and that would do no good, for he wasn't right in his mind. By and by we told her he was getting well, and then she didn't come, but stayed at home, just saying his name over to herself. Alors, things take hold of a woman--it is strange! When Fingall was strong enough to go out, I went with him the first time. He was all thin and handsome as you can think, but he had no memory, and his eyes were like a child's. She saw him, and came out to meet him. What does a woman care for the world when she loves a man? Well, he just looked at her as if he'd never seen her before, and passed by without a sign, though afterwards a trouble came in his face. Three days later he was gone, no one knew where. That is two years ago. Ever since she has been looking for him." "Is she mad?" "Mad? Holy Mother! it is not good to have one thing in the head all the time! What do you think? So much all at once! And then--" "Hush, Pierre! There she is!" said Lawless, pointing to a ledge of rock not far away. The girl stood looking out across the valley, a weird, rapt look in her face, her hair falling loose, a staff like a shepherd's crook in one hand, the other hand over her eyes as she slowly looked from point to point of the horizon. The two watched her without speaking. Presently she saw them. She gazed at them for a minute, then descended to them. Lawless and Pierre rose, doffing their hats. She looked at both a moment, and her eyes settled on Pierre. Presently she held out her hand to him. "I knew you--yesterday," she said. Pierre returned the intensity of her gaze with one kind and strong. "So--so, Cynthie," he said; "sit down and eat." He dropped on a knee and drew a scone and some fish from the ashes. She sat facing them, and, taking from a bag at her side some wild fruits, ate slowly, saying nothing. Lawless noticed that her hair had become grey at her temples, though she was but one-and-twenty years old. Her face, brown as it was, shone with a white kind of light, which may, or may not, have come from the crucible of her eyes, where the tragedy of her life was fusing. Lawless could not bear to look long, for the fire that consumes a body and sets free a soul is not for the sight of the quick. At last she rose, her body steady, but her hands having that tremulous activity of her eyes. "Will you not stay, Cynthie?" asked Lawless very kindly. She came close to him, and, after searching his eyes, said with a smile that almost hurt him, "When I have found him, I will bring him to your camp-fire. Last night the Voice said that he waits for me where the mist rises from the river at daybreak, close to the home of the White Swan. Do you know where is the home of the White Swan? Before the frost comes and the red wolf cries, I must find him. Winter is the time of sleep. "I will give him honey and dried meat. I know where we shall live together. You never saw such roses! Hush! I have a place where we can hide." Suddenly her gaze became fixed and dream-like, and she said slowly: "In all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in the hour of death, and in the Day of Judgment, Good Lord, deliver us!" "Good Lord, deliver us!" repeated Lawless in a low voice. Without looking at them, she slowly turned away and passed up the hill-side, her eyes scanning the valley as before. "Good Lord, deliver us!" again said Lawless. "Where did she get it?" "From a book which Fingall left behind." They watched her till she rounded a cliff, and was gone; then they shouldered their kits and passed up the river on the trail of the wapiti. One month later, when a fine white surf of frost lay on the ground, and the sky was darkened often by the flight of the wild geese southward, they came upon a hut perched on a bluff, at the edge of a clump of pines. It was morning, and Whitefaced Mountain shone clear and high, without a touch of cloud or mist from its haunches to its crown. They knocked at the hut door, and, in answer to a voice, entered. The sunlight streamed in over a woman, lying upon a heap of dried flowers in a corner. A man was kneeling beside her. They came near, and saw that the woman was Cynthie. "Fingall!" broke out Pierre, and caught the kneeling man by the shoulder. At the sound of his voice the woman's eyes opened. "Fingall!--Oh, Fingall!" she said, and reached up a hand. Fingall stooped and caught her to his breast: "Cynthie! poor girl! Oh, my poor Cynthie!" he said. In his eyes, as in hers, was a sane light, and his voice, as hers, said indescribable things. Her head sank upon his shoulder, her eyes closed; she slept. Fingall laid her down with a sob in his throat; then he sat up and clutched Pierre's hand. "In the East, where the doctors cured me, I heard all," he said, pointing to her, "and I came to find her. I was just in time; I found her yesterday." "She knew you?" whispered Pierre. "Yes, but this fever came on." He turned and looked at her, and, kneeling, smoothed away the hair from the quiet face. "Poor girl!" he said; "poor girl!" "She will get well?" asked Pierre. "God grant it!" Fingall replied. "She is better--better." Lawless and Pierre softly turned and stole away, leaving the man alone with the woman he loved. The two stood in silence, looking upon the river beneath. Presently a voice crept through the stillness. "Fingall! Oh, Fingall!--Fingall!" It was the voice of a woman returning from the dead. THREE COMMANDMENTS IN THE VULGAR TONGUE I "Read on, Pierre," the sick man said, doubling the corner of the wolf- skin pillow so that it shaded his face from the candle. Pierre smiled to himself, thinking of the unusual nature of his occupation, raised an eyebrow as if to someone sitting at the other side of the fire,--though the room was empty save for the two--and went on reading: "Woe to the multitude of many people, which make a noise like the noise of the seas; and to the rushing of nations, that make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters! "The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind. "And behold at evening-tide trouble; and before the morning he is not. This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us." The sick man put up his hand, motioning for silence, and Pierre, leaving the Bible open, laid it at his side. Then he fell to studying the figure on the couch. The body, though reduced by a sudden illness, had an appearance of late youth, a firmness of mature manhood; but the hair was grey, the beard was grizzled, and the face was furrowed and seamed as though the man had lived a long, hard life. The body seemed thirty years old, the head sixty; the man's exact age was forty-five. His most singular characteristic was a fine, almost spiritual intelligence, which showed in the dewy brightness of the eye, in the lighted face, in the cadenced definiteness of his speech. One would have said, knowing nothing of him, that he was a hermit; but again, noting the firm, graceful outlines of his body, that he was a soldier. Within the past twenty-four hours he had had a fight for life with one of the terrible "colds" which, like an unstayed plague, close up the courses of the body, and carry a man out of the hurly-burly, without pause to say how much or how little he cares to go. Pierre, whose rude skill in medicine was got of hard experiences here and there, had helped him back into the world again, and was himself now a little astonished at acting as Scripture reader to a Protestant invalid. Still, the Bible was like his childhood itself, always with him in memory, and Old Testament history was as wine to his blood. The lofty tales sang in his veins: of primitive man, adventure, mysterious and exalted romance. For nearly an hour, with absorbing interest, he had read aloud from these ancient chronicles to Fawdor, who held this Post of the Hudson's Bay Company in the outer wilderness. Pierre had arrived at the Post three days before, to find a half-breed trapper and an Indian helpless before the sickness which was hurrying to close on John Fawdor's heart and clamp it in the vice of death. He had come just in time. He was now ready to learn, by what ways the future should show, why this man, of such unusual force and power, should have lived at a desolate post in Labrador for twenty-five years. "'This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us--'" Fawdor repeated the words slowly, and then said: "It is good to be out of the restless world. Do you know the secret of life, Pierre?" Pierre's fingers unconsciously dropped on the Bible at his side, drumming the leaves. His eyes wandered over Fawdor's face, and presently he answered, "To keep your own commandments." "The ten?" asked the sick man, pointing to the Bible. Pierre's fingers closed the book. "Not the ten, for they do not fit all; but one by one to make your own, and never to break--comme ca!" "The answer is well," returned Fawdor; "but what is the greatest commandment that a man can make for himself?" "Who can tell? What is the good of saying, 'Thou shalt keep holy the Sabbath day,' when a man lives where he does not know the days? What is the good of saying, 'Thou shalt not steal,' when a man has no heart to rob, and there is nothing to steal? But a man should have a heart, an eye for justice. It is good for him to make his commandments against that wherein he is a fool or has a devil. Justice,--that is the thing." "'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour'?" asked Fawdor softly. "Yes, like that. But a man must put it in his own words, and keep the law which he makes. Then life does not give a bad taste in the mouth." "What commandments have you made for yourself, Pierre?" The slumbering fire in Pierre's face leaped up. He felt for an instant as his father, a chevalier of France, might have felt if a peasant had presumed to finger the orders upon his breast. It touched his native pride, so little shown in anything else. But he knew the spirit behind the question, and the meaning justified the man. "Thou shalt think with the minds of twelve men, and the heart of one woman," he said, and paused. "Justice and mercy," murmured the voice from the bed. "Thou shalt keep the faith of food and blanket." Again Pierre paused. "And a man shall have no cause to fear his friend," said the voice again. The pause was longer this time, and Pierre's cold, handsome face took on a kind of softness before he said, "Remember the sorrow of thine own wife." "It is a good commandment," said the sick man, "to make all women safe whether they be true--or foolish." "The strong should be ashamed to prey upon the weak. Pshaw! such a sport ends in nothing. Man only is man's game." Suddenly Pierre added: "When you thought you were going to die, you gave me some papers and letters to take to Quebec. You will get well. Shall I give them back? Will you take them yourself?" Fawdor understood: Pierre wished to know his story. He reached out a hand, saying, "I will take them myself. You have not read them?" "No. I was not to read them till you died--bien?" He handed the packet over. "I will tell you the story," Fawdor said, turning over on his side, so that his eyes rested full on Pierre. He did not begin at once. An Esquimau dog, of the finest and yet wildest breed, which had been lying before the fire, stretched itself, opened its red eyes at the two men, and, slowly rising, went to the door and sniffed at the cracks. Then it turned, and began pacing restlessly around the room. Every little while it would stop, sniff the air, and go on again. Once or twice, also, as it passed the couch of the sick man, it paused, and at last it suddenly rose, rested two feet on the rude headboard of the couch, and pushed its nose against the invalid's head. There was something rarely savage and yet beautifully soft in the dog's face, scarred as it was by the whips of earlier owners. The sick man's hand went up and caressed the wolfish head. "Good dog, good Akim!" he said softly in French. "Thou dost know when a storm is on the way; thou dost know, too, when there is a storm in my heart." Even as he spoke a wind came crying round the house, and the parchment windows gave forth a soft booming sound. Outside, Nature was trembling lightly in all her nerves; belated herons, disturbed from the freshly frozen pool, swept away on tardy wings into the night and to the south; a herd of wolves, trooping by the hut, passed from a short, easy trot to a low, long gallop, devouring, yet fearful. It appeared as though the dumb earth were trying to speak, and the mighty effort gave it pain, from which came awe and terror to living things. So, inside the house, also, Pierre almost shrank from the unknown sorrow of this man beside him, who was about to disclose the story of his life. The solitary places do not make men glib of tongue; rather, spare of words. They whose tragedy lies in the capacity to suffer greatly, being given the woe of imagination, bring forth inner history as a mother gasps life into the world. "I was only a boy of twenty-one," Fawdor said from the pillow, as he watched the dog noiselessly travelling from corner to corner, "and I had been with the Company three years. They had said that I could rise fast; I had done so. I was ambitious; yet I find solace in thinking that I saw only one way to it,--by patience, industry, and much thinking. I read a great deal, and cared for what I read; but I observed also, that in dealing with men I might serve myself and the Company wisely. "One day the governor of the Company came from England, and with him a sweet lady, his young niece, and her brother. They arranged for a tour to the Great Lakes, and I was chosen to go with them in command of the boatmen. It appeared as if a great chance had come to me, and so said the factor at Lachine on the morning we set forth. The girl was as winsome as you can think; not of such wonderful beauty, but with a face that would be finer old than young; and a dainty trick of humour had she as well. The governor was a testy man; he could not bear to be crossed in a matter; yet, in spite of all, I did not think he had a wilful hardness. It was a long journey, and we were set to our wits to make it always interesting; but we did it somehow, for there were fishing and shooting, and adventure of one sort and another, and the lighter things, such as singing and the telling of tales, as the boatmen rowed the long river. "We talked of many things as we travelled, and I was glad to listen to the governor, for he had seen and read much. It was clear he liked to have us hang upon his tales and his grand speeches, which seemed a little large in the mouth; and his nephew, who had a mind for raillery, was now and again guilty of some witty impertinence; but this was hard to bring home to him, for he could assume a fine childlike look when he pleased, confusing to his accusers. Towards the last he grew bolder, and said many a biting thing to both the governor and myself, which more than once turned his sister's face pale with apprehension, for she had a nice sense of kindness. Whenever the talk was at all general, it was his delight to turn one against the other. Though I was wary, and the girl understood his game, at last he had his way. "I knew Shakespeare and the Bible very well, and, like most bookish young men, phrase and motto were much on my tongue, though not always given forth. One evening, as we drew to the camp-fire, a deer broke from the woods and ran straight through the little circle we were making, and disappeared in the bushes by the riverside. Someone ran for a rifle; but the governor forbade, adding, with an air, a phrase with philosophical point. I, proud of the chance to show I was not a mere backwoodsman at such a sport, capped his aphorism with a line from Shakespeare's Cymbeline. "'Tut, tut!' said the governor smartly; 'you haven't it well, Mr. Fawdor; it goes this way,' and he went on to set me right. His nephew at that stepped in, and, with a little disdainful laugh at me, made some galling gibe at my 'distinguished learning.' I might have known better than to let it pique me, but I spoke up again, though respectfully enough, that I was not wrong. It appeared to me all at once as if some principle were at stake, as if I were the champion of our Shakespeare; so will vanity delude us. "The governor--I can see it as if it were yesterday--seemed to go like ice, for he loved to be thought infallible in all such things as well as in great business affairs, and his nephew was there to give an edge to the matter. He said, curtly, that I would probably come on better in the world if I were more exact and less cock-a-hoop with myself. That stung me, for not only was the young lady looking on with a sort of superior pity, as I thought, but her brother was murmuring to her under his breath with a provoking smile. I saw no reason why I should be treated like a schoolboy. As far as my knowledge went it was as good as another man's, were he young or old, so I came in quickly with my reply. I said that his excellency should find me more cock-a-hoop with Shakespeare than with myself. 'Well, well,' he answered, with a severe look, 'our Company has need of great men for hard tasks.' To this I made no answer, for I got a warning look from the young lady,--a look which had a sort of reproach and command too. She knew the twists and turns of her uncle's temper, and how he was imperious and jealous in little things. The matter dropped for the time; but as the governor was going to his tent for the night, the young lady said to me hurriedly, 'My uncle is a man of great reading--and power, Mr. Fawdor. I would set it right with him, if I were you.' For the moment I was ashamed. You cannot guess how fine an eye she had, and how her voice stirred one! She said no more, but stepped inside her tent; and then I heard the brother say over my shoulder, 'Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud!' Afterwards, with a little laugh and a backward wave of the hand, as one might toss a greeting to a beggar, he was gone also, and I was left alone." Fawdor paused in his narrative. The dog had lain down by the fire again, but its red eyes were blinking at the door, and now and again it growled softly, and the long hair at its mouth seemed to shiver with feeling. Suddenly through the night there rang a loud, barking cry. The dog's mouth opened and closed in a noiseless snarl, showing its keen, long teeth, and a ridge of hair bristled on its back. But the two men made no sign or motion. The cry of wild cats was no new thing to them. Presently the other continued: "I sat by the fire and heard beasts howl like that, I listened to the river churning over the rapids below, and I felt all at once a loneliness that turned me sick. There were three people in a tent near me; I could even hear the governor's breathing; but I appeared to have no part in the life of any human being, as if I were a kind of outlaw of God and man. I was poor; I had no friends; I was at the mercy of this great Company; if I died, there was not a human being who, so far as I knew, would shed a tear. Well, you see I was only a boy, and I suppose it was the spirit of youth hungering for the huge, active world and the companionship of ambitious men. There is no one so lonely as the young dreamer on the brink of life. "I was lying by the fire. It was not a cold night, and I fell asleep at last without covering. I did not wake till morning, and then it was to find the governor's nephew building up the fire again. 'Those who are born great,' said he, 'are bound to rise.' But perhaps he saw that I had had a bad night, and felt that he had gone far enough, for he presently said, in a tone more to my liking, 'Take my advice, Mr. Fawdor; make it right with my uncle. It isn't such fast rising in the Company that you can afford to quarrel with its governor. I'd go on the other tack: don't be too honest.' I thanked him, and no more was said; but I liked him better, for I saw that he was one of those who take pleasure in dropping nettles more to see the weakness of human nature than from malice. "But my good fortune had got a twist, and it was not to be straightened that day; and because it was not straightened then it was not to be at all; for at five o'clock we came to the Post at Lachine, and here the governor and the others were to stop. During all the day I had waited for my chance to say a word of apology to his excellency, but it was no use; nothing seemed to help me, for he was busy with his papers and notes, and I also had to finish up my reports. The hours went by, and I saw my chances drift past. I knew that the governor held the thing against me, and not the less because he saw me more than once that day in speech with his niece. For she appeared anxious to cheer me, and indeed I think we might have become excellent friends had our ways run together. She could have bestowed her friendship on me without shame to herself, for I had come of an old family in Scotland, the Sheplaws of Canfire, which she knew, as did the governor also, was a more ancient family than their own. Yet her kindness that day worked me no good, and I went far to make it worse, since, under the spell of her gentleness, I looked at her far from distantly, and at the last, as she was getting from the boat, returned the pressure of her hand with much interest. I suppose something of the pride of that moment leaped up in my eye, for I saw the governor's face harden more and more, and the brother shrugged an ironical shoulder. I was too young to see or know that the chief thing in the girl's mind was regret that I had so hurt my chances; for she knew, as I saw only too well afterwards, that I might have been rewarded with a leaping promotion in honour of the success of the journey. But though the boatmen got a gift of money and tobacco and spirits, nothing came to me save the formal thanks of the governor, as he bowed me from his presence. "The nephew came with his sister to bid me farewell. There was little said between her and me, and it was a long, long time before she knew the end of that day's business. But the brother said, 'You've let, the chance go by, Mr. Fawdor. Better luck next time, eh? And,' he went on, 'I'd give a hundred editions the lie, but I'd read the text according to my chief officer. The words of a king are always wise while his head is on,' he declared further, and he drew from his scarf a pin of pearls and handed it to me. 'Will you wear that for me, Mr. Fawdor?' he asked; and I, who had thought him but a stripling with a saucy pride, grasped his hand and said a God-keep-you. It does me good now to think I said it. I did not see him or his sister again. "The next day was Sunday. About two o'clock I was sent for by the governor. When I got to the Post and was admitted to him, I saw that my misadventure was not over. 'Mr. Fawdor,' said he coldly, spreading out a map on the table before him, 'you will start at once for Fort Ungava, at Ungava Bay, in Labrador.' I felt my heart stand still for a moment, and then surge up and down, like a piston-rod under a sudden rush of steam. 'You will proceed now,' he went on, in his hard voice, 'as far as the village of Pont Croix. There you will find three Indians awaiting you. You will go on with them as far as Point St. Saviour and camp for the night, for if the Indians remain in the village they may get drunk. The next morning, at sunrise, you will move on. The Indians know the trail across Labrador to Fort Ungava. When you reach there, you will take command of the Post and remain till further orders. Your clothes are already at the village. I have had them packed, and you will find there also what is necessary for the journey. The factor at Ungava was there ten years; he has gone--to heaven.' "I cannot tell what it was held my tongue silent, that made me only bow my head in assent, and press my lips together. I knew I was pale as death, for as I turned to leave the room I caught sight of my face in a little mirror tacked on the door, and I hardly recognised myself. "'Good-day, Mr. Fawdor,' said the governor, handing me the map. 'There is some brandy in your stores; be careful that none of your Indians get it. If they try to desert, you know what to do.' With a gesture of dismissal he turned, and began to speak with the chief trader. "For me, I went from that room like a man condemned to die. Fort Ungava in Labrador,--a thousand miles away, over a barren, savage country, and in winter too; for it would be winter there immediately! It was an exile to Siberia, and far worse than Siberia; for there are many there to share the fellowship of misery, and I was likely to be the only white man at Fort Ungava. As I passed from the door of the Post the words of Shakespeare which had brought all this about sang in my ears." He ceased speaking, and sank back wearily among the skins of his couch. Out of the enveloping silence Pierre's voice came softly: "Thou shalt judge with the minds of twelve men, and the heart of one woman." II "The journey to the village of Pont Croix was that of a man walking over graves. Every step sent a pang to my heart,--a boy of twenty-one, grown old in a moment. It was not that I had gone a little lame from a hurt got on the expedition with the governor, but my whole life seemed suddenly lamed. Why did I go? Ah, you do not know how discipline gets into a man's bones, the pride, the indignant pride of obedience! At that hour I swore that I should myself be the governor of that Company one day,--the boast of loud-hearted youth. I had angry visions, I dreamed absurd dreams, but I did not think of disobeying. It was an unheard-of journey at such a time, but I swore that I would do it, that it should go into the records of the Company. "I reached the village, found the Indians, and at once moved on to the settlement where we were to stay that night. Then my knee began to pain me. I feared inflammation; so in the dead of night I walked back to the village, roused a trader of the Company, got some liniment and other trifles, and arrived again at St. Saviour's before dawn. My few clothes and necessaries came in the course of the morning, and by noon we were fairly started on the path to exile. "I remember that we came to a lofty point on the St. Lawrence just before we plunged into the woods, to see the great stream no more. I stood and looked back up the river towards the point where Lachine lay. All that went to make the life of a Company's man possible was there; and there, too, were those with whom I had tented and travelled for three long months,--eaten with them, cared for them, used for them all the woodcraft that I knew. I could not think that it would be a young man's lifetime before I set eyes on that scene again. Never from that day to this have I seen the broad, sweet river where I spent the three happiest years of my life. I can see now the tall shining heights of Quebec, the pretty wooded Island of Orleans, the winding channel, so deep, so strong. The sun was three-fourths of its way down in the west, and already the sky was taking on the deep red and purple of autumn. Somehow, the thing that struck me most in the scene was a bunch of pines, solemn and quiet, their tops burnished by the afternoon light. Tears would have been easy then. But my pride drove them back from my eyes to my angry heart. Besides, there were my Indians waiting, and the long journey lay before us. Then, perhaps because there was none nearer to make farewell to, or I know not why, I waved my hand towards the distant village of Lachine, and, with the sweet maid in my mind who had so gently parted from me yesterday, I cried, 'Good-bye, and God bless you.'" He paused. Pierre handed him a wooden cup, from which he drank, and then continued: "The journey went forward. You have seen the country. You know what it is: those bare ice-plains and rocky unfenced fields stretching to all points, the heaving wastes of treeless country, the harsh frozen lakes. God knows what insupportable horror would have settled on me in that pilgrimage had it not been for occasional glimpses of a gentler life--for the deer and caribou which crossed our path. Upon my soul, I was so full of gratitude and love at the sight that I could have thrown my arms round their necks and kissed them. I could not raise a gun at them. My Indians did that, and so inconstant is the human heart that I ate heartily of the meat. My Indians were almost less companionable to me than any animal would have been. Try as I would, I could not bring myself to like them, and I feared only too truly that they did not like me. Indeed, I soon saw that they meant to desert me,--kill me, perhaps, if they could, although I trusted in the wholesome and restraining fear which the Indian has of the great Company. I was not sure that they were guiding me aright, and I had to threaten death in case they tried to mislead me or desert me. My knee at times was painful, and cold, hunger, and incessant watchfulness wore on me vastly. Yet I did not yield to my miseries, for there entered into me then not only the spirit of endurance, but something of that sacred pride in suffering which was the merit of my Covenanting forefathers. "We were four months on that bitter travel, and I do not know how it could have been made at all, had it not been for the deer that I had heart to eat and none to kill. The days got shorter and shorter, and we were sometimes eighteen hours in absolute darkness. Thus you can imagine how slowly we went. Thank God, we could sleep, hid away in our fur bags, more often without a fire than with one,--mere mummies stretched out on a vast coverlet of white, with the peering, unfriendly sky above us; though it must be said that through all those many, many weeks no cloud perched in the zenith. When there was light there was sun, and the courage of it entered into our bones, helping to save us. You may think I have been made feeble-minded by my sufferings, but I tell you plainly that, in the closing days of our journey, I used to see a tall figure walking beside me, who, whenever I would have spoken to him, laid a warning finger on his lips; but when I would have fallen, he spoke to me, always in the same words. You have heard of him, the Scarlet Hunter of the Kimash Hills. It was he, the Sentinel of the North, the Lover of the Lost. So deep did his words go into my heart that they have remained with me to this hour." "I saw him once in the White Valley," Pierre said in a low voice. "What was it he said to you?" The other drew a long breath, and a smile rested on his lips. Then, slowly, as though liking to linger over them, he repeated the words of the Scarlet Hunter: "'O son of man, behold! If thou shouldest stumble on the nameless trail, The trail that no man rides, Lift up thy heart, Behold, O son of man, thou hast a helper near! "'O son of man, take heed! If thou shouldst fall upon the vacant plain, The plain that no man loves, Reach out thy hand, Take heed, O son of man, strength shall be given thee! "'O son of man, rejoice! If thou art blinded even at the door, The door of the Safe Tent, Sing in thy heart, Rejoice, O son of man, thy pilot leads thee home?' "I never seemed to be alone after that--call it what you will, fancy or delirium. My head was so light that it appeared to spin like a star, and my feet were so heavy that I dragged the whole earth after me. My Indians seldom spoke. I never let them drop behind me, for I did not trust their treacherous natures. But in the end, as it would seem, they also had but one thought, and that to reach Fort Ungava; for there was no food left, none at all. We saw no tribes of Indians and no Esquimaux, for we had not passed in their line of travel or settlement. "At last I used to dream that birds were singing near me,--a soft, delicate whirlwind of sound; and then bells all like muffled silver rang through the aching, sweet air. Bits of prayer and poetry I learned when a boy flashed through my mind; equations in algebra; the tingling scream of a great buzz-saw; the breath of a racer as he nears the post under the crying whip; my own voice dropping loud profanity, heard as a lad from a blind ferryman; the boom! boom! of a mass of logs as they struck a house on a flooding river and carried it away. . . . "One day we reached the end. It was near evening, and we came to the top of a wooded knoll. My eyes were dancing in my head with fatigue and weakness, but I could see below us, on the edge of the great bay, a large hut, Esquimau lodges and Indian tepees near it. It was the Fort, my cheerless prison-house." He paused. The dog had been watching him with its flaming eyes; now it gave a low growl, as though it understood, and pitied. In the interval of silence the storm without broke. The trees began to quake and cry, the light snow to beat upon the parchment windows, and the chimney to splutter and moan. Presently, out on the bay they could hear the young ice break and come scraping up the shore. Fawdor listened a while, and then went on, waving his hand to the door as he began: "Think! this, and like that always: the ungodly strife of nature, and my sick, disconsolate life." "Ever since?" asked Pierre. "All the time." "Why did you not go back?" "I was to wait for orders, and they never came." "You were a free man, not a slave." "The human heart has pride. At first, as when I left the governor at Lachine, I said, 'I will never speak, I will never ask nor bend the knee. He has the power to oppress; I can obey without whining, as fine a man as he.'" "Did you not hate?" "At first, as only a banished man can hate. I knew that if all had gone well I should be a man high up in the Company, and here I was, living like a dog in the porch of the world, sometimes without other food for months than frozen fish; and for two years I was in a place where we had no fire,--lived in a snow-house, with only blubber to eat. And so year after year, no word!" "The mail came once every year from the world?" "Yes, once a year the door of the outer life was opened. A ship came into the bay, and by that ship I sent out my reports. But no word came from the governor, and no request went from me. Once the captain of that ship took me by the shoulders, and said, 'Fawdor, man, this will drive you mad. Come away to England,--leave your half-breed in charge,--and ask the governor for a big promotion.' He did not understand. Of course I said I could not go. Then he turned on me, he was a good man,--and said, 'This will either make you madman or saint, Fawdor.' He drew a Bible from his pocket and handed it to me. 'I've used it twenty years,' he said, 'in evil and out of evil, and I've spiked it here and there; it's a chart for heavy seas, and may you find it so, my lad.' "I said little then; but when I saw the sails of his ship round a cape and vanish, all my pride and strength were broken up, and I came in a heap to the ground, weeping like a child. But the change did not come all at once. There were two things that kept me hard." "The girl?" "The girl, and another. But of the young lady after. I had a half-breed whose life I had saved. I was kind to him always; gave him as good to eat and drink as I had myself; divided my tobacco with him; loved him as only an exile can love a comrade. He conspired with the Indians to seize the Fort and stores, and kill me if I resisted. I found it out." "Thou shalt keep the faith of food and blanket," said Pierre. "What did you do with him?" "The fault was not his so much as of his race and his miserable past. I had loved him. I sent him away; and he never came back." "Thou shalt judge with the minds of twelve men, and the heart of one woman." "For the girl. There was the thing that clamped my heart. Never a message from her or her brother. Surely they knew, and yet never, thought I, a good word for me to the governor. They had forgotten the faith of food and blanket. And she--she must have seen that I could have worshipped her, had we been in the same way of life. Before the better days came to me I was hard against her, hard and rough at heart." "Remember the sorrow of thine own wife." Pierre's voice was gentle. "Truly, to think hardly of no woman should be always in a man's heart. But I have known only one woman of my race in twenty-five years!" "And as time went on?" "As time went on, and no word came, I ceased to look for it. But I followed that chart spiked with the captain's pencil, as he had done it in season and out of season, and by and by I ceased to look for any word. I even became reconciled to my life. The ambitious and aching cares of the world dropped from me, and I stood above all--alone in my suffering, yet not yielding. Loneliness is a terrible thing. Under it a man--" "Goes mad or becomes a saint--a saint!" Pierre's voice became reverent. Fawdor shook his head, smiling gently. "Ah no, no. But I began to understand the world, and I loved the north, the beautiful hard north." "But there is more?" "Yes, the end of it all. Three days before you came I got a packet of letters, not by the usual yearly mail. One announced that the governor was dead. Another--" "Another?" urged Pierre. --"was from Her. She said that her brother, on the day she wrote, had by chance come across my name in the Company's records, and found that I had been here a quarter of a century. It was the letter of a good woman. She said she thought the governor had forgotten that he had sent me here --as now I hope he had, for that would be one thing less for him to think of, when he set out on the journey where the only weight man carries is the packload of his sins. She also said that she had written to me twice after we parted at Lachine, but had never heard a word, and three years afterwards she had gone to India. The letters were lost, I suppose, on the way to me, somehow--who can tell? Then came another thing, so strange, that it seemed like the laughter of the angels at us. These were her words: 'And, dear Mr. Fawdor, you were both wrong in that quotation, as you no doubt discovered long ago.' Then she gave me the sentence as it is in Cymbeline. She was right, quite right. We were both wrong. Never till her letter came had I looked to see. How vain, how uncertain, and fallible, is man!" Pierre dropped his cigarette, and stared at Fawdor. "The knowledge of books is foolery," he said slowly. "Man is the only book of life. Go on." "There was another letter, from the brother, who was now high up in the Company, asking me to come to England, and saying that they wished to promote me far, and that he and his sister, with their families, would be glad to see me." "She was married then?" The rashness of the suggestion made Fawdor wave his hand impatiently. He would not reply to it. "I was struck down with all the news," he said. "I wandered like a child out into a mad storm. Illness came; then you, who have nursed me back to life. . . . And now I have told all." "Not all, bien sur. What will you do?" "I am out of the world; why tempt it all again? See how those twenty- five years were twisted by a boy's vanity and a man's tyranny!" "But what will you do?" persisted Pierre. "You should see the faces of women and children again. No man can live without that sight, even as a saint." Suddenly Fawdor's face was shot over with a storm of feeling. He lay very still, his thoughts busy with a new world which had been disclosed to him. "Youth hungers for the vanities," he said, "and the middle-aged for home." He took Pierre's hand. "I will go," he added. "A door will open somewhere for me." Then he turned his face to the wall. The storm had ceased, the wild dog huddled quietly on the hearth, and for hours the only sound was the crackling of the logs as Pierre stirred the fire. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Advantage to live where nothing was required of her but truth Don't be too honest Every shot that kills ricochets Not good to have one thing in the head all the time Remember the sorrow of thine own wife Secret of life: to keep your own commandments She had not suffered that sickness, social artifice Some people are rough with the poor--and proud They whose tragedy lies in the capacity to suffer greatly Think with the minds of twelve men, and the heart of one woman Youth hungers for the vanities A ROMANY OF THE SNOWS BEING A CONTINUATION OF THE PERSONAL HISTORIES OF "PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE" AND THE LAST EXISTING RECORDS OF PRETTY PIERRE By Gilbert Parker Volume 4. LITTLE BABICHE AT POINT O' BUGLES THE SPOIL OF THE PUMA THE TRAIL OF THE SUN DOGS THE PILOT OF BELLE AMOUR LITTLE BABICHE "No, no, m'sieu' the governor, they did not tell you right. I was with him, and I have known Little Babiche fifteen years--as long as I've known you. . . . It was against the time when down in your world there they have feastings, and in the churches the grand songs and many candles on the altars. Yes, Noel, that is the word--the day of the Great Birth. You shall hear how strange it all was--the thing, the time, the end of it." The governor of the great Company settled back in a chair, his powerful face seamed by years, his hair grey and thick still, his keen, steady eyes burning under shaggy brows. He had himself spent long solitary years in the wild fastnesses of the north. He fastened his dark eyes on Pierre, and said: "Monsieur Pierre, I shall be glad to hear. It was at the time of Noel--yes?" Pierre began: "You have seen it beautiful and cold in the north, but never so cold and beautiful as it was last year. The world was white with sun and ice, the frost never melting, the sun never warming--just a glitter, so lovely, so deadly. If only you could keep the heart warm, you were not afraid. But if once--just for a moment--the blood ran out from the heart and did not come in again, the frost clamped the doors shut, and there was an end of all. Ah, m'sieu', when the north clinches a man's heart in anger there is no pain like it--for a moment." "Yes, yes; and Little Babiche?" "For ten years he carried the mails along the route of Fort St. Mary, Fort O'Glory, Fort St. Saviour, and Fort Perseverance within the circle- just one mail once a year, but that was enough. There he was with his Esquimaux dogs on the trail, going and coming, with a laugh and a word for anyone that crossed his track. 'Good-day, Babiche' 'Good-day, m'sieu'.' 'How do you, Babiche?' 'Well, thank the Lord, m'sieu'.' 'Where to and where from, Babiche?' 'To the Great Fort by the old trail, from the Far-off River, m'sieu'.' 'Come safe along, Babiche.' 'Merci, m'sieu'; the good God travels north, m'sieu'.' 'Adieu, Babiche.' 'Adieu, m'sieu'.' That is about the way of the thing, year after year. Sometimes a night at a hut or a post, but mostly alone--alone, except for the dogs. He slept with them, and they slept on the mails--to guard: as though there should be highwaymen on the Prairie of the Ten Stars! But no, it was his way, m'sieu'. Now and again I crossed him on the trail, for have I not travelled to every corner of the north? We were not so great friends, for--well, Babiche is a man who says his aves, and never was a loafer, and there was no reason why he should have love for me; but we were good company when we met. I knew him when he was a boy down on the Chaudiere, and he always had a heart like a lion-and a woman. I had seen him fight, I had seen him suffer cold, and I had heard him sing. "Well, I was up last fall to Fort St. Saviour. Ho, how dull was it! Macgregor, the trader there, has brains like rubber. So I said, I will go down to Fort O'Glory. I knew someone would be there--it is nearer the world. So I started away with four dogs and plenty of jerked buffalo, and so much brown brandy as Macgregor could squeeze out of his eye! Never, never were there such days--the frost shaking like steel and silver as it powdered the sunlight, the white level of snow lifting and falling, and falling and lifting, the sky so great a travel away, the air which made you cry out with pain one minute and gave you joy the next. And all so wild, so lonely! Yet I have seen hanging in those plains cities all blue and red with millions of lights showing, and voices, voices everywhere, like the singing of soft masses. After a time in that cold up there you are no longer yourself--no. You move in a dream. "Eh bien, m'sieu', there came, I thought, a dream to me one evening--well, perhaps one afternoon, for the days are short--so short, the sun just coming over a little bend of sky, and sinking down like a big orange ball. I come out of a tumble of little hills, and there over on the plains I saw a sight! Ragged hills of ice were thrown up, as if they'd been heaved out by the breaking earth, jutting here and there like wedges--like the teeth of a world. Alors, on one crag, shaped as an anvil, I saw what struck me like a blow, and I felt the blood shoot out of my heart and leave it dry. I was for a minute like a pump with no water in its throat to work the piston and fetch the stream up. I got sick and numb. There on that anvil of snow and ice I saw a big white bear, one such as you shall see within the Arctic Circle, his long nose fetching out towards that bleeding sun in the sky, his white coat shining. But that was not the thing--there was another. At the feet of the bear was a body, and one clawed foot was on that body--of a man. So clear was the air, the red sun shining on the face as it was turned towards me, that I wonder I did not at once know whose it was. You cannot think, m'sieu', what that was like--no. But all at once I remembered the Chant of the Scarlet Hunter. I spoke it quick, and the blood came creeping back in here." He tapped his chest with his slight forefinger. "What was the chant?" asked the governor, who had scarce stirred a muscle since the tale began. Pierre made a little gesture of deprecation. "Ah, it is perhaps a thing of foolishness, as you may think--" "No, no. I have heard and seen in my day," urged the governor. "So? Good. Yes, I remember, you told me years ago, m'sieu'. . . . "The blinding Trail and Night and Cold are man's: mine is the trail that finds the Ancient Lodge. Morning and Night they travel with me; my camp is set by the pines, its fires are burning--are burning. The lost, they shall sit by my fires, and the fearful ones shall seek, and the sick shall abide. I am the Hunter, the Son of the North; I am thy lover where no man may love thee. With me thou shalt journey, and thine the Safe Tent. "As I said, the blood came back to my heart. I turned to my dogs, and gave them a cut with the whip to see if I dreamed. They sat back and snarled, and their wild red eyes, the same as mine, kept looking at the bear and the quiet man on the anvil of ice and snow. Tell me, can you think of anything like it?--the strange light, the white bear of the Pole, that has no friends at all except the shooting stars, the great ice plains, the quick night hurrying on, the silence--such silence as no man can think! I have seen trouble flying at me in a hundred ways, but this was different--yes. We come to the foot of the little hill. Still the bear not stir. As I went up, feeling for my knives and my gun, the dogs began to snarl with anger, and for one little step I shivered, for the thing seem not natural. I was about two hundred feet away from the bear when it turned slow round at me, lifting its foot from the body. The dogs all at once come huddling about me, and I dropped on my knee to take aim, but the bear stole away from the man and come moving down past us at an angle, making for the plain. I could see his deep shining eyes, and the steam roll from his nose in long puffs. Very slow and heavy, like as if he see no one and care for no one, he shambled down, and in a minute was gone behind a boulder. I ran on to the man--" The governor was leaning forward, looking intently, and said now: "It's like a wild dream--but the north--the north is near to the Strangest of All!" "I knelt down and lifted him up in my arms, all a great bundle of furs and wool, and I got my hand at last to his wrist. He was alive. It was Little Babiche! Part of his face was frozen stiff. I rubbed out the frost with snow, and then I forced some brandy into his mouth, good old H.B.C. brandy,--and began to call to him: 'Babiche! Babiche! Come back, Babiche! The wolf's at the pot, Babiche!' That's the way to call a hunter to his share of meat. I was afraid, for the sleep of cold is the sleep of death, and it is hard to call the soul back to this world. But I called, and kept calling, and got him on his feet, with my arm round him. I gave him more brandy; and at last I almost shrieked in his ear. Little by little I saw his face take on the look of waking life. It was like the dawn creeping over white hills and spreading into day. I said to myself: What a thing it will be if I can fetch him back! For I never knew one to come back after the sleep had settled on them. It is too comfortable--all pain gone, all trouble, the world forgot, just a kind weight in all the body, as you go sinking down, down to the valley, where the long hands of old comrades beckon to you, and their soft, high voices cry, 'Hello! hello-o!'" Pierre nodded his head towards the distance, and a musing smile divided his lips on his white teeth. Presently he folded a cigarette, and went on: "I had saved something to the last, as the great test, as the one thing to open his eyes wide, if they could be opened at all. Alors, there was no time to lose, for the wolf of Night was driving the red glow-worm down behind the world, and I knew that when darkness came altogether--darkness and night--there would be no help for him. Mon Dieu! how one sleeps in the night of the north, in the beautiful wide silence! . . . So, m'sieu', just when I thought it was the time, I called, 'Corinne! Corinne!' Then once again I said, 'P'tite Corinne! P'tite Corinne! Come home! come home! P'tite Corinne!' I could see the fight in the jail of sleep. But at last he killed his jailer; the doors in his brain flew open, and his mind came out through his wide eyes. But he was blind a little and dazed, though it was getting dark quick. I struck his back hard, and spoke loud from a song that we used to sing on the Chaudiere-- Babiche and all of us, years ago. Mon Dieu! how I remember those days-- "'Which is the way that the sun goes? The way that my little one come. Which is the good path over the hills? The path that leads to my little one's home-- To my little one's home, m'sieu', m'sieu'!' "That did it. 'Corinne, ma p'tite Corinne!' he said; but he did not look at me--only stretch out his hands. I caught them, and shook them, and shook him, and made him take a step forward; then I slap him on the back again, and said loud: 'Come, come, Babiche, don't you know me? See Babiche, the snow's no sleeping-bunk, and a polar bear's no good friend.' 'Corinne!' he went on, soft and slow. 'Ma p'tite Corinne!' He smiled to himself; and I said, 'Where've you been, Babiche? Lucky I found you, or you'd have been sleeping till the Great Mass.' Then he looked at me straight in the eyes, and something wild shot out of his. His hand stretched over and caught me by the shoulder, perhaps to steady himself, perhaps because he wanted to feel something human. Then he looked round slow-all round the plain, as if to find something. At that moment a little of the sun crept back, and looked up over the wall of ice, making a glow of yellow and red for a moment; and never, north or south, have I seen such beauty--so delicate, so awful. It was like a world that its Maker had built in a fit of joy, and then got tired of, and broke in pieces, and blew out all its fires, and left--ah yes--like that! And out in the distance I--I only saw a bear travelling eastwards." The governor said slowly: And I took My staff Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break My covenant which I had made with all the people. "Yes--like that." Pierre continued: "Babiche turned to me with a little laugh, which was a sob too. 'Where is it, Pierre?' said he. I knew he meant the bear. 'Gone to look for another man,' I said, with a gay look, for I saw that he was troubled. 'Come,' said he at once. As we went, he saw my dogs. He stopped short and shook a little, and tears came into his eyes. 'What is it, Babiche?' said I. He looked back towards the south. 'My dogs--Brandy-wine, Come-along, 'Poleon, and the rest--died one night all of an hour. One by one they crawl over to where I lay in my fur bag, and die there, huddling by me--and such cries--such cries! There was poison or something in the frozen fish I'd given them. I loved them every one; and then there was the mails, the year's mails--how should they be brought on? That was a bad thought, for I had never missed--never in ten years. There was one bunch of letters which the governor said to me was worth more than all the rest of the mails put together, and I was to bring it to Fort St. Saviour, or not show my face to him again. I leave the dogs there in the snow, and come on with the sled, carrying all the mails. Ah, the blessed saints, how heavy the sled got, and how lonely it was! Nothing to speak to--no one, no thing, day after day. At last I go to cry to the dogs, "Come-along! 'Poleon! Brandy-wine!"--like that! I think I see them there, but they never bark and they never snarl, and they never spring to the snap of the whip.... I was alone. Oh, my head! my head! If there was only something alive to look at, besides the wide white plain, and the bare hills of ice, and the sun-dogs in the sky! Now I was wild, next hour I was like a child, then I gnash my teeth like a wolf at the sun, and at last I got on my knees. The tears froze my eyelids shut, but I kept saying, "Ah, my great Friend, my Jesu, just something, something with the breath of life! Leave me not all alone!" and I got sleepier all the time. "'I was sinking, sinking, so quiet and easy, when all at once I felt something beside me; I could hear it breathing, but I could not open my eyes at first, for, as I say, the lashes were froze. Something touch me, smell me, and a nose was push against my chest. I put out my hand ver' soft and touch it. I had no fear, I was so glad I could have hug it, but I did not--I drew back my hand quiet and rub my eyes. In a little I can see. There stand the thing--a polar bear--not ten feet away, its red eyes shining. On my knees I spoke to it, talk to it, as I would to a man. It was like a great wild dog, fierce, yet kind, and I fed it with the fish which had been for Brandy-wine and the rest--but not to kill it! and it did not die. That night I lie down in my bag--no, I was not afraid! The bear lie beside me, between me and the sled. Ah, it was warm! Day after day we travel together, and camp together at night--ah, sweet Sainte Anne, how good it was, myself and the wild beast such friends, alone in the north! But to-day--a little while ago--something went wrong with me, and I got sick in the head, a swimming like a tide wash in and out. I fall down-asleep. When I wake I find you here beside me--that is all. The bear must have drag me here.'" Pierre stuck a splinter into the fire to light another cigarette, and paused as if expecting the governor to speak, but no word coming, he continued: "I had my arm around him while we talked and come slowly down the hill. Soon he stopped and said, 'This is the place.' It was a cave of ice, and we went in. Nothing was there to see except the sled. Babiche stopped short. It come to him now that his good comrade was gone. He turned, and looked out, and called, but there was only the empty night, the ice, and the stars. Then he come back, sat down on the sled, and the tears fall. . . . I lit my spirit-lamp, boiled coffee, got pemmican from my bag, and I tried to make him eat. No. He would only drink the coffee. At last he said to me, 'What day is this, Pierre?' 'It is the day of the Great Birth, Babiche,' I said. He made the sign of the cross, and was quiet, so quiet! but he smile to himself, and kept saying in a whisper: 'Ma p'tite Corinne! Ma p'tite Corinne!' The next day we come on safe, and in a week I was back at Fort St. Saviour with Babiche and all the mails, and that most wonderful letter of the governor's." "The letter was to tell a factor that his sick child in the hospital at Quebec was well," the governor responded quietly. "Who was 'Ma p'tite Corinne,' Pierre?" "His wife--in heaven; and his child--on the Chaudiere, m'sieu'. The child came and the mother went on the same day of the Great Birth. He has a soft heart--that Babiche!" "And the white bear--so strange a thing!" "M'sieu', who can tell? The world is young up here. When it was all young, man and beast were good comrades, maybe." "Ah, maybe. What shall be done with Little Babiche, Pierre?" "He will never be the same again on the old trail, m'sieu'!" There was silence for a long time, but at last the governor said, musing, almost tenderly, for he never had a child: "Ma p'tite Corinne!--Little Babiche shall live near his child, Pierre. I will see to that." Pierre said no word, but got up, took off his hat to the governor, and sat down again. AT POINT O' BUGLES "John York, John York, where art thou gone, John York?" "What's that, Pierre?" said Sir Duke Lawless, starting to his feet and peering round. "Hush!" was Pierre's reply. "Wait for the rest. . . . There!" "King of my heart, king of my heart, I am out on the trail of thy bugles." Sir Duke was about to speak, but Pierre lifted a hand in warning, and then through the still night there came the long cry of a bugle, rising, falling, strangely clear, echoing and echoing again, and dying away. A moment, and the call was repeated, with the same effect, and again a third time; then all was still, save for the flight of birds roused from the desire of night, and the long breath of some animal in the woods sinking back to sleep. Their camp was pitched on the south shore of Hudson's Bay, many leagues to the west of Rupert House, not far from the Moose River. Looking north was the wide expanse of the bay, dotted with sterile islands here and there; to the east were the barren steppes of Labrador, and all round them the calm, incisive air of a late September, when winter begins to shake out his frosty curtains and hang them on the cornice of the north, despite the high protests of the sun. The two adventurers had come together after years of separation, and Sir Duke had urged Pierre to fare away with him to Hudson's Bay, which he had never seen, although he had shares in the great Company, left him by his uncle the admiral. They were camped in a hollow, to the right a clump of hardy trees, with no great deal of foliage, but some stoutness; to the left a long finger of land running out into the water like a wedge, the most eastern point of the western shore of Hudson's Bay. It was high and bold, and, somehow, had a fine dignity and beauty. From it a path led away north to a great log-fort called King's House. Lawless saw Pierre half rise and turn his head, listening. Presently he, too, heard the sound-the soft crash of crisp grass under the feet. He raised himself to a sitting posture and waited. Presently a tall figure came out of the dusk into the light of their fire, and a long arm waved a greeting at them. Both Lawless and Pierre rose to their feet. The stranger was dressed in buckskin, he carried a rifle, and around his shoulder was a strong yellow cord, from which hung a bugle. "How!" he said, with a nod, and drew near the fire, stretching out his hands to the blaze. "How!" said Lawless and Pierre. After a moment Lawless drew from his blanket a flask of brandy, and without a word handed it over the fire. The fingers of the two men met in the flicker of flames, a sort of bond by fire, and the stranger raised the flask. "Chin-chin," he said, and drank, breathing a long sigh of satisfaction afterwards as he handed it back; but it was Pierre that took it, and again fingers touched in the bond of fire. Pierre passed the flask to Lawless, who lifted it. "Chin-chin," he said, drank, and gave the flask to Pierre again, who did as did the others, and said "Chin-chin" also. By that salutation of the east, given in the far north, Lawless knew that he had met one who had lighted fires where men are many and close to the mile as holes in a sieve. They all sat down, and tobacco went round, the stranger offering his, while the two others, with true hospitality, accepted. "We heard you over there--it was you?" said Lawless, nodding towards Point o' Bugles, and glancing at the bugle the other carried. "Yes, it was I," was the reply. "Someone always does it twice a year: on the 25th September and the 25th March. I've done it now without a break for ten years, until it has got to be a sort of religion with me, and the whole thing's as real as if King George and John York were talking. As I tramp to the point or swing away back, in summer barefooted, in winter on my snowshoes, to myself I seem to be John York on the trail of the king's bugles. I've thought so much about the whole thing, I've read so many of John York's letters--and how many times one of the King's!--that now I scarcely know which is the bare story, and which the bit's I've dreamed as I've tramped over the plains or sat in the quiet at King's House, spelling out little by little the man's life, from the cues I found in his journal, in the Company's papers, and in that one letter of the King's." Pierre's eyes were now more keen than those of Lawless: for years he had known vaguely of this legend of Point o' Bugles. "You know it all," he said--"begin at the beginning: how and when you first heard, how you got the real story, and never mind which is taken from the papers and which from your own mind--if it all fits in it is all true, for the lie never fits in right with the square truth. If you have the footprints and the handprints you can tell the whole man; if you have the horns of a deer you know it as if you had killed it, skinned it, and potted it." The stranger stretched himself before the fire, nodding at his hosts as he did so, and then began: "Well, a word about myself first," he said, "so you'll know just where you are. I was full up of life in London town and India, and that's a fact. I'd plenty of friends and little money, and my will wasn't equal to the task of keeping out of the hands of the Jews. I didn't know what to do, but I had to go somewhere, that was clear. Where? An accident decided it. I came across an old journal of my great-grandfather, John York,--my name's Dick Adderley,--and just as if a chain had been put round my leg and I'd been jerked over by the tipping of the world, I had to come to Hudson's Bay. John York's journal was a thing to sit up nights to read. It came back to England after he'd had his fill of Hudson's Bay and the earth beneath, and had gone, as he himself said on the last page of the journal, to follow the king's buglers in 'the land that is far off.' God and the devil were strong in old John York. I didn't lose much time after I'd read the journal. I went to Hudson's Bay house in London, got a place in the Company, by the help of the governor himself, and came out. I've learned the rest of the history of old John York--the part that never got to England; for here at King's House there's a holy tradition that the real John York belongs to it and to it alone." Adderley laughed a little. "King's House guards John York's memory, and it's as fresh and real here now as though he'd died yesterday; though it's forgotten in England, and by most who bear his name, and the present Prince of Wales maybe never heard of the roan who was a close friend of the Prince Regent, the First Gentleman of Europe." "That sounds sweet gossip," said Lawless, with a smile; "we're waiting." Adderley continued: "John York was an honest man, of wholesome sport, jovial, and never shirking with the wine, commendable in his appetite, of rollicking soul and proud temper, and a gay dog altogether--gay, but to be trusted, too, for he had a royal heart. In the coltish days of the Prince Regent he was a boon comrade, but never did he stoop to flattery, nor would he hedge when truth should be spoken, as ofttimes it was needed with the royal blade, for at times he would forget that a prince was yet a man, topped with the accident of a crown. Never prince had truer friend, and so in his best hours he thought, himself, and if he ever was just and showed his better part, it was to the bold country gentleman who never minced praise or blame, but said his say and devil take the end of it. In truth, the Prince was wilful, and once he did a thing which might have given a twist to the fate of England. Hot for the love of women, and with some dash of real romance in him too, else even as a prince he might have had shallower love and service,--he called John York one day and said: "'To-night at seven, Squire John, you'll stand with me while I put the seal on the Gates of Eden;' and, when the other did not guess his import, added: 'Sir Mark Selby is your neighbour--his daughter's for my arms to- night. You know her, handsome Sally Selby--she's for your prince, for good or ill.' "John York did not understand at first, for he could not think the Prince had anything in mind but some hot escapade of love. When Mistress Selby's name was mentioned his heart stood still, for she had been his choice, the dear apple of his eye, since she had bloomed towards womanhood. He had set all his hopes upon her, tarrying till she should have seen some little life before he asked her for his wife. He had her father's Godspeed to his wooing, for he was a man whom all men knew honest and generous as the sun, and only choleric with the mean thing. She, also, had given him good cause to think that he should one day take her to his home, a loved and honoured wife. His impulse, when her name passed the Prince's lips, was to draw his sword, for he would have called an emperor to account; but presently he saw the real meaning of the speech: that the Prince would marry her that night." Here the story-teller paused again, and Pierre said softly, inquiringly: "You began to speak in your own way, and you've come to another way--like going from an almanac to the Mass." The other smiled. "That's so. I've heard it told by old Shearton at King's House, who speaks as if he'd stepped out of Shakespeare, and somehow I seem to hear him talking, and I tell it as he told it last year to the governor of the Company. Besides, I've listened these seven years to his style." "It's a strange beginning--unwritten history of England," said Sir Duke musingly. "You shall hear stranger things yet," answered Adderley. "John York could hardly believe it at first, for the thought of such a thing never had place in his mind. Besides, the Prince knew how he had looked upon the lady, and he could not have thought his comrade would come in between him and his happiness. Perhaps it was the difficulty, adding spice to the affair, that sent the Prince to the appeal of private marriage to win the lady, and John York always held that he loved her truly then, the first and only real affection of his life. The lady--who can tell what won her over from the honest gentleman to the faithless prince? That soul of vanity which wraps about the real soul of every woman fell down at last before the highest office in the land, and the gifted bearer of the office. But the noble spirit in her brought him to offer marriage, when he might otherwise have offered, say, a barony. There is a record of that and more in John York's Memoirs which I will tell you, for they have settled in my mind like an old song, and I learned them long ago. I give you John York's words written by his own hands: "'I did not think when I beheld thee last, dearest flower of the world's garden, that I should see thee bloom in that wide field, rank with the sorrows of royal favour. How did my foolish eyes fill with tears when I watched thee, all rose and gold in thy cheeks and hair, the light falling on thee through the chapel window, putting thy pure palm into my prince's, swearing thy life away, selling the very blossoms of earth's orchards for the brier beauty of a hidden vineyard! I saw the flying glories of thy cheeks, the halcyon weather of thy smile, the delicate lifting of thy bosom, the dear gaiety of thy step, and, at that moment, I mourned for thy sake that thou wert not the dullest wench in the land, for then thou hadst been spared thy miseries, thou hadst been saved the torture-boot of a lost love and a disacknowledged wifedom. Yet I could not hide from me that thou wert happy at that great moment, when he swore to love and cherish thee, till death you parted. "Ah, George, my prince, my king, how wickedly thou didst break thy vows with both of us who loved thee well, through good and ill report--for they spake evil of thee, George; ay, the meanest of thy subjects spake lightly of their king--when with that sweet soul secretly hid away in the farthest corner of thy kingdom, thou soughtst divorce from thy later Caroline, whom thou, unfaithful, didst charge with infidelity. When, at last, thou didst turn again to the partner of thy youth, thy true wife in the eyes of God, it was too late. Thou didst promise me that thou wouldst never take another wife, never put our dear heart away, though she could not--after our miserable laws--bear thee princes. Thou didst break thy promise, yet she forgave thee, and I forgave thee, for well we knew that thou wouldst pay a heavy reckoning, and that in the hour when thou shouldst cry to us we might not come to thee; that in the days when age and sorrow and vast troubles should oppress thee, thou wouldst long for the true hearts who loved thee for thyself and not for aught thou wudst give, or aught that thou wert, save as a man. "'When thou didst proclaim thy purpose to take Caroline to wife, I pleaded with thee, I was wroth with thee. Thy one plea was succession. Succession! Succession! What were a hundred dynasties beside that precious life, eaten by shame and sorrow? It were easy for others, not thy children, to come after thee, to rule as well as thee, as must even now be the case, for thou hast no lawful child save that one in the loneliest corner of thy English vineyard--alack! alack! I warned thee George, I pleaded, and thou didst drive me out with words ill-suited to thy friend who loved thee. "'I did not fear thee, I would have forced thee to thy knees or made thee fight me, had not some good spirit cried to my heart that thou wert her husband, and that we both had loved thee. I dared not listen to the brutal thing thou hintedst at--that now I might fatten where I had hungered. Thou hadst to answer for the baseness of that thought to the King of kings, when thou wentest forth alone, no subject, courtier, friend, wife, or child to do thee service, journeying--not en prince, George; no, not en prince! but as a naked soul to God. "'Thou saidst to me: "Get thee gone, John York, where I shall no more see thee." And when I returned, "Wouldst thou have me leave thy country, sir?" thou answeredst: "Blow thy quarrelsome soul to the stars where my farthest bugle cries." Then I said: "I go, sir, till thou callest me again--and after; but not till thou hast honoured the child of thy honest wedlock; till thou hast secured thy wife to the end of her life against all manner of trouble save the shame of thy disloyalty." There was no more for me to do, for my deep love itself forbade my staying longer within reach of the noble deserted soul. And so I saw the chastened glory of her face no more, nor evermore beheld her perfectness.'" Adderley paused once more, and, after refilling his pipe in silence, continued: "That was the heart of the thing. His soul sickened of the rank world, as he called it, and he came out to the Hudson's Bay country, leaving his estates in care of his nephew, but taking many stores and great chests of clothes and a shipload of furniture, instruments of music, more than a thousand books, some good pictures, and great stores of wine. Here he came and stayed, an officer of the Company, building King's House, and filling it with all the fine things he had brought with him, making in this far north a little palace in the wilderness. Here he lived, his great heart growing greater in this wide sinewy world, King's House a place of pilgrimage for all the Company's men in the north; a noble gentleman in a sweet exile, loving what he could no more, what he did no more, see. "Twice a year he went to that point yonder and blew this bugle, no man knew why or wherefore, year in, year out, till 1817. Then there came a letter to him with great seals, which began: 'John York, John York, where art thou gone, John York?' There followed a score of sorrowful sentences, full of petulance, too, for it was as John York foretold, his prince longed for the 'true souls' whom he had cast off. But he called too late, for the neglected wife died from the shock of her prince's longing message to her, and when, by the same mail, John York knew that, he would not go back to England to the King. But twice every year he went to yonder point and spoke out the King's words to him: 'John York, John York, where art thou gone, John York?' and gave the words of his own letter in reply: 'King of my heart, king of my heart, I am out on the trail of thy bugles.' To this he added three calls of the bugle, as you have heard." Adderley handed the bugle to Lawless, who looked at it with deep interest and passed it on to Pierre. "When he died," Adderley continued, "he left the house, the fittings, and the stores to the officers of the Company who should be stationed there, with a sum of money yearly, provided that twice in twelve months the bugle should be blown as you have heard it, and those words called out." "Why did he do that?" asked Lawless, nodding towards the point. "Why do they swing the censers at the Mass?" interjected Pierre. "Man has signs for memories, and one man seeing another's sign will remember his own." "You stay because you like it--at King's House?" asked Lawless of Adderley. The other stretched himself lazily to the fire and, "I am at home," he said. "I have no cares. I had all there was of that other world; I've not had enough of this. You'll come with me to King's House to-morrow?" he added. To their quick assent he rejoined: "You'll never want to leave. You'll stay on." To this Lawless replied, shaking his head: "I have a wife and child in England." But Pierre did not reply. He lifted the bugle, mutely asking a question of Adderley, who as mutely replied, and then, with it in his hand, left the other two beside the fire. A few minutes later they heard, with three calls of the bugle from the point afterwards, Pierre's voice: "John York, John York, where art thou gone, John York?" Then came the reply: "King of my heart, king of my heart, I am out on the trail of thy bugles." THE SPOIL OF THE PUMA Just at the point where the Peace River first hugs the vast outpost hills of the Rockies, before it hurries timorously on, through an unexplored region, to Fort St. John, there stood a hut. It faced the west, and was built half-way up Clear Mountain. In winter it had snows above it and below it; in summer it had snow above it and a very fair stretch of trees and grass, while the river flowed on the same, winter and summer. It was a lonely country. Travelling north, you would have come to the Turnagain River; west, to the Frying Pan Mountains; south, to a goodly land. But from the hut you had no outlook towards the south; your eye came plump against a hard lofty hill, like a wall between heaven and earth. It is strange, too, that, when you are in the far north, you do not look towards the south until the north turns an iron hand upon you and refuses the hospitality of food and fire; your eyes are drawn towards the Pole by that charm--deadly and beautiful--for which men have given up three points of the compass, with their pleasures and ease, to seek a grave solitude, broken only by the beat of a musk-ox's hoofs, the long breath of the caribou, or the wild cry of the puma. Sir Duke Lawless had felt this charm, and had sworn that one day he would again leave his home in Devon and his house in Pont Street, and, finding Pierre, Shon M'Gann, and others of his old comrades, together they would travel into those austere yet pleasant wilds. He kept his word, found Shon M'Gann, and on an autumn day of a year not so long ago lounged in this hut on Clear Mountain. They had had three months of travel and sport, and were filled, but not sated, with the joy of the hunter. They were very comfortable, for their host, Pourcette, the French Canadian, had fire and meat in plenty, and, if silent, was attentive to their comfort--a little, black-bearded, grey-headed man, with heavy brows over small vigilant eyes, deft with his fingers, and an excellent sportsman, as could be told from the skins heaped in all the corners of the large hut. The skins were not those of mere foxes or martens or deer, but of mountain lions and grizzlies. There were besides many soft, tiger-like skins, which Sir Duke did not recognise. He kept looking at them, and at last went over and examined one. "What's this, Monsieur Pourcette?" he said, feeling it as it lay on the top of the pile. The little man pushed the log on the fireplace with his moccasined foot before he replied: "Of a puma, m'sieu'." Sir Duke smoothed it with his hand. "I didn't know there were pumas here." "Faith, Sir Duke--" Sir Duke Lawless turned on Shon quickly. "You're forgetting again, Shon. There's no 'Sir Dukes' between us. What you were to me years ago on the wally-by-track and the buffalo-trail, you are now, and I'm the same also: M'Gann and Lawless, and no other." "Well, then, Lawless, it's true enough as he says it, for I've seen more than wan skin brought in, though I niver clapped eye on the beast alive. There's few men go huntin' them av their own free will, not more than they do grizzlies; but, bedad, this French gintleman has either the luck o' the world, or the gift o' that man ye tould me of, that slew the wild boars in anciency. Look at that, now: there's thirty or forty puma- skins, and I'd take my oath there isn't another man in the country that's shot half that in his lifetime." Pourcette's eyes were on the skins, not on the men, and he did not appear to listen. He sat leaning forward, with a strange look on his face. Presently he got up, came over, and stroked the skins softly. A queer chuckling noise came from his throat. "It was good sport?" asked Lawless, feeling a new interest in him. "The grandest sport--but it is not so easy," answered the old man. "The grizzly comes on you bold and strong; you know your danger right away, and have it out. So. But the puma comes--God, how the puma comes!" He broke off, his eyes burning bright under his bushy brows and his body arranging itself into an attitude of expectation and alertness. "You have travelled far. The sun goes down. You build a fire and cook your meat, and then good tea and the tabac. It is ver' fine. You hear the loon crying on the water, or the last whistle of the heron up the pass. The lights in the sky come out and shine through a thin mist-- there is nothing like that mist, it is so fine and soft. Allons. You are sleepy. You bless the good God. You stretch pine branches, wrap in your blanket, and lie down to sleep. If it is winter and you have a friend, you lie close. It is all quiet. As you sleep, something comes. It slides along the ground on its belly, like a snake. It is a pity if you have not ears that feel--the whole body as ears. For there is a swift lunge, a snarl--ah, you should hear it! the thing has you by the throat, and there is an end!" The old man had acted all the scenes: a sidelong glance, a little gesture, a movement of the body, a quick, harsh breath--without emphatic excitement, yet with a reality and force that fascinated his two listeners. When he paused, Shon let go a long breath, and Lawless looked with keen inquiry at their entertainer. This almost unnatural, yet quiet, intensity had behind it something besides the mere spirit of the sportsman. Such exhibitions of feeling generally have an unusual personal interest to give them point and meaning. "Yes, that's wonderful, Pourcette," he said; "but that's when the puma has things its own way. How is it when these come off?" He stroked the soft furs under his hand. The man laughed, yet without a sound--the inward, stealthy laugh, as from a knowledge wicked in its very suggestiveness. His eyes ran from Lawless to Shon, and back again. He put his hand on his mouth, as though for silence, stole noiselessly over to the wall, took down his gun quietly, and turned round. Then he spoke softly: "To kill the puma, you must watch--always watch. You will see his yellow eyes sometimes in a tree: you must be ready before he springs. You will hear his breath at night as you pretend to sleep, and you wait till you see his foot steal out of the shadow--then you have him. From a mountain wall you watch in the morning, and, when you see him, you follow, and follow, and do not rest till you have found him. You must never miss fire, for he has great strength and a mad tooth. But when you have got him, he is worth all. You cannot eat the grizzly--he is too thick and coarse; but the puma--well, you had him from the pot to-night. Was he not good?" Lawless's brows ran up in surprise. Shon spoke quickly: "Heaven above!" he burst out. "Was it puma we had betune the teeth? And what's puma but an almighty cat? Sure, though, it wint as tinder as pullets, for all that--but I wish you hadn't tould us." The old man stood leaning on his gun, his chin on his hands, as they covered the muzzle, his eyes fixed on something in his memory, the vision of incidents he had lived or seen. Lawless went over to the fire and relit his pipe. Shon followed him. They both watched Pourcette. "D'ye think he's mad?" asked Shon in a whisper. Lawless shook his head: "Mad? No. But there's more in this puma-hunting than appears. How long has he lived here, did he say?" "Four years; and, durin' that time, yours and mine are the only white faces he has seen, except one." "Except one. Well, whose was the one? That might be interesting. Maybe there's a story in that." "Faith, Lawless, there's a story worth the hearin', I'm thinkin', to every white man in this country. For the three years I was in the mounted police, I could count a story for all the days o' the calendar --and not all o' them would make you happy to hear." Pourcette turned round to them. He seemed to be listening to Shon's words. Going to the wall, he hung up the rifle; then he came to the fire and stood holding out his hands to the blaze. He did not look in the least mad, but like a man who was dominated by some one thought, more or less weird. Short and slight, and a little bent, but more from habit --the habit of listening and watching--than from age, his face had a stern kind of earnestness and loneliness, and nothing at all of insanity. Presently Lawless went to a corner and from his kit drew forth a flask. The old man saw, and immediately brought out a wooden cup. There were two on the shelf, and Shon pointed to the other. Pourcette took no notice. Shon went over to get it, but Pourcette laid a hand on his arm: "Not that." "For ornamint!" said Shon, laughing, and then his eyes were arrested by a suit of buckskin and a cap of beaver, hanging on the wall. He turned them over, and then suddenly drew back his hand, for he saw in the back of the jacket a knife-slit. There was blood also on the buckskin. "Holy Mary!" he said, and retreated. Lawless had not noticed; he was pouring out the liquor. He had handed the cup first to Pourcette, who raised it towards a gun hung above the fireplace, and said something under his breath. "A dramatic little fellow," thought Lawless; "the spirit of his forefathers--a good deal of heart, a little of the poseur." Then hearing Shon's exclamation, he turned. "It's an ugly sight," said Shon, pointing to the jacket. They both looked at Pourcette, expecting him to speak. The old man reached to the coat, and, turning it so that the cut and the blood were hid, ran his hand down it caressingly. "Ah, poor Jo! poor Jo Gordineer!" he said; then he came over once more to the fire, sat down, and held out his hands to the fire, shaking his head. "For God's sake, Lawless, give me a drink!" said Shon. Their eyes met, and there was the same look in the faces of both. When Shon had drunk, he said: "So, that's what's come to our old friend, Jo: dead--killed or murdered--" "Don't speak so loud," said Lawless. "Let us get the story from him first." Years before, when Shon M'Gann and Pierre and Lawless had sojourned in the Pipi Valley, Jo Gordineer had been with them, as stupid and true a man as ever drew in his buckle in a hungry land, or let it out to munch corn and oil. When Lawless returned to find Shon and others of his companions, he had asked for Gordineer. But not Shon nor anyone else could tell aught of him; he had wandered north to outlying goldfields, and then had disappeared completely. But there, as it would seem, his coat and cap hung, and his rifle, dust-covered, kept guard over the fire. Shon went over to the coat, did as Pourcette had done, and said: "Is it gone y'are, Jo, wid your slow tongue and your big heart? Wan by wan the lads are off." Pourcette, without any warning, began speaking, but in a very quiet tone at first, as if unconscious of the others: "Poor Jo Gordineer! Yes, he is gone. He was my friend--so tall, and such a hunter! We were at the Ding Dong goldfields together. When luck went bad, I said to him: 'Come, we will go where there is plenty of wild meat, and a summer more beautiful than in the south.' I did not want to part from him, for once, when some miner stole my claim, and I fought, he stood by me. But in some things he was a little child. That was from his big heart. Well, he would go, he said; and we came away." He suddenly became silent; and shook his head, and spoke under his breath. "Yes," said Lawless quietly, "you went away. What then?" He looked up quickly, as though just aware of their presence, and continued: "Well, the other followed, as I said, and--" "No, Pourcette," interposed Lawless, "you didn't say. Who was the other that followed?" The old man looked at him gravely, and a little severely, and continued: "As I said, Gawdor followed--he and an Indian. Gawdor thought we were going for gold, because I had said I knew a place in the north where there was gold in a river--I know the place, but that is no matter. We did not go for gold just then. Gawdor hated Jo Gordineer. There was a half-breed girl. She was fine to look at. She would have gone to Gordineer if he had beckoned, any time; but he waited--he was very slow, except with his finger on a gun; he waited too long. "Gawdor was mad for the girl. He knew why her feet came slow to the door when he knocked. He would have quarrelled with Jo, if he had dared; Gordineer was too quick a shot. He would have killed him from behind; but it was known in the camp that he was no friend of Gordineer, and it was not safe." Again Pourcette was silent. Lawless put on his knee a new pipe, filled with tobacco. The little man took it, lighted it, and smoked on in silence for a time undisturbed. Shon broke the silence, by a whisper to Lawless: "Jo was a quiet man, as patient as a priest; but when his blood came up, there was trouble in the land. Do you remimber whin--" Lawless interrupted him and motioned towards Pourcette. The old man, after a few puffs, held the pipe on his knee, disregarding it. Lawless silently offered him some more whisky, but he shook his head. Presently, he again took up the thread: "Bien, we travelled slow up through the smoky river country, and beyond into a wild land. We had bully sport as we went. Sometimes I heard shots far away behind us; but Gordineer said it was my guess, for we saw nobody. But I had a feeling. Never mind. At last we come to the Peace River. It was in the early autumn like this, when the land is full of comfort. What is there like it? Nothing. The mountains have colours like a girl's eyes; the smell of the trees is sweet like a child's breath, and the grass feels for the foot and lifts it with a little soft spring. We said we could live here for ever. We built this house high up, as you see, first, because it is good to live high--it puts life in the blood; and, as Gordineer said, it is noble to look far over the world, every time your house-door is open, or the parchment is down from the window. We killed wapiti and caribou without number, and cached them for our food. We caught fish in the river, and made tea out of the brown berry--it is very good. We had flour, a little, which we had brought with us, and I went to Fort St. John and got more. Since then, down in the valley, I have wheat every summer; for the Chinook winds blow across the mountains and soften the bitter cold. "Well, for that journey to Fort St. John. When I got back I found Gawdor with Gordineer. He said he had come north to hunt. His Indian had left, and he had lost his way. Gordineer believed him. He never lied himself. I said nothing, but watched. After a time he asked where the gold-field was. I told him, and he started away--it was about fifty miles to the north. He went, and on his way back he come here. He say he could not find the place, and was going south. I know he lied. At this time I saw that Gordineer was changed. He was slow in the head, and so, when he began thinking up here, it made him lonely. It is always in a fine land like this, where game is plenty, and the heart dances for joy in your throat, and you sit by the fire--that you think of some woman who would be glad to draw in and tie the strings of the tent-curtain, or fasten the latch of the door upon you two alone." Perhaps some memory stirred within the old man, other than that of his dead comrade, for he sighed, muffled his mouth in his beard, and then smiled in a distant way at the fire. The pure truth of what he said came home to Shon M'Gann and Sir Duke Lawless; for both, in days gone by, had sat at camp-fires in silent plains, and thought upon women from whom they believed they were parted for ever, yet who were only kept from them for a time, to give them happier days. They were thinking of these two women now. They scarcely knew how long they sat there thinking. Time passes swiftly when thoughts are cheerful, or are only tinged with the soft melancholy of a brief separation. Memory is man's greatest friend and worst enemy. At last the old man continued: "I saw the thing grew on him. He was not sulky, but he stare much in the fire at night. In the daytime he was differen'. A hunter thinks only of his sport. Gawdor watched him. Gordineer's hand was steady; his nerve was all right. I have seen him stand still till a grizzly come within twice the length of his gun. Then he would twist his mouth, and fire into the mortal spot. Once we were out in the Wide Wing pass. We had never had such a day. Gordineer make grand shots, better than my own; and men have said I can shoot like the devil--ha! ha!" He chuckled to himself noiselessly, and said in a whisper "Twenty grizzlies, and fifty pumas!" Then he rubbed his hands softly on his knees, and spoke aloud again: "Ici, I was proud of him. We were standing together on a ledge of rock. Gawdor was not far away. Gawdor was a poor hunter, and I knew he was wild at Gordineer's great luck.... A splendid bull-wapiti come out on a rock across the gully. It was a long shot. I did not think Gordineer could make it; I was not sure that I could--the wind was blowing and the range was long. But he draw up his gun like lightning, and fire all at once. The bull dropped clean over the cliff, and tumbled dead upon the rocks below. It was fine. But, then, Gordineer slung his gun under his arm, and say: 'That is enough. I am going to the hut.' "He went away. That night he did not talk. The next morning, when I say, 'We will be off again to the pass,' he shake his head. He would not go. He would shoot no more, he said. I understood: it was the girl. He was wide awake at last. Gawdor understanded also. He know that Gordineer would go to the south--to her. "I was sorry; but it was no use. Gawdor went with me to the pass. When we come back, Jo was gone. On a bit of birch-bark he had put where he was going, and the way he would take. He said he would come back to me --ah, the brave comrade! Gawdor say nothing, but his looks were black. I had a feeling. I sat up all night, smoking. I was not afraid, but I know Gawdor had found the valley of gold, and he might put a knife in me, because to know of such a thing alone is fine. Just at dawn, he got up and go out. He did not come back. "I waited, and at last went to the pass. In the afternoon, just as I was rounding the corner of a cliff, there was a shot--then another. The first went by my head; the second caught me along the ribs, but not to great hurt. Still, I fell from the shock, and lost some blood. It was Gawdor; he thought he had killed me. "When I come to myself I bound up the little furrow in the flesh, and start away. I know that Gawdor would follow Gordineer. I follow him, knowing the way he must take. I have never forget the next night. I had to travel hard, and I track him by his fires and other things. When sunset come, I do not stop. I was in a valley, and I push on. There was a little moon. At last I saw a light ahead-a camp-fire, I know. I was weak, and could have dropped; but a dread was on me. "I come to the fire. I saw a man lying near it. Just as I saw him, he was trying to rise. But, as he did so, something sprang out of the shadow upon him, at his throat. I saw him raise his hand, and strike it with a knife. The thing let go, and then I fire--but only scratched, I think. It was a puma. It sprang away again, into the darkness. I ran to the man, and raised him. It was my friend. He looked up at me and shake his head. He was torn at the throat.... But there was something else--a wound in the back. He was stooping over the fire when he was stabbed, and he fell. He saw that it was Gawdor. He had been left for dead, as I was. Nom de Dieu! just when I come and could have save him, the puma come also. It is the best men who have such luck. I have seen it often. I used to wonder they did not curse God." He crossed himself and mumbled something. Lawless rose, and walked up and down the room once or twice, pulling at his beard and frowning. His eyes were wet. Shon kept blowing into his closed hand and blinking at the fire. Pourcette got up and took down the gun from the chimney. He brushed off the dust with his coat-sleeve, and fondled it, shaking his head at it a little. As he began to speak again, Lawless sat down. "Now I know why they do not curse. Something curses for them. Jo give me a word for her, and say 'Well, it is all right; but I wish I had killed the puma.' There was nothing more. . . . I followed Gawdor for days. I know that he would go and get someone, and go back to the gold. I thought at last I had missed him; but no. I had made up my mind what to do when I found him. One night, just as the moon was showing over the hills, I come upon him. I was quiet as a puma. I have a stout cord in my pocket, and another about my body. Just as he was stooping over the fire, as Gordineer did, I sprang upon him, clasping him about the neck, and bringing him to the ground. He could not get me off. I am small, but I have a grip. Then, too, I had one hand at his throat. It was no use to struggle. The cord and a knife were in my teeth. It was a great trick, but his breath was well gone, and I fastened his hands. It was no use to struggle. I tied his feet and legs. Then I carried him to a tree and bound him tight. I unfastened his hands again and tied them round the tree. Then I built a great fire not far away. He begged at first and cried. But I was hard. He got wild, and at last when I leave him he cursed! It was like nothing I ever heard. He was a devil. . . I come back after I have carry the message to the poor girl--it is a sad thing to see the first great grief of the young! Gawdor was not there. The pumas and others had been with him. "There was more to do. I wanted to kill that puma which set its teeth in the throat of my friend. I hunted the woods where it had happened, beating everywhere, thinking that, perhaps, it was dead. There was not much blood on the leaves, so I guessed that it had not died. I hunted from that spot, and killed many--many. I saw that they began to move north. At last I got back here. From here I have hunted and killed them slow; but never that one with a wound in the shoulder from Jo's knife. Still, I can wait. There is nothing like patience for the hunter and for the man who would have blood for blood." He paused, and Lawless spoke. "And when you have killed that puma, Pourcette--if you ever do-what then?" Pourcette fondled the gun, then rose and hung it up again before he replied. "Then I will go to Fort St. John, to the girl--she is there with her father--and sell all the skins to the factor, and give her the money." He waved his hand round the room. "There are many skins here, but I have more cached not far away. Once a year I go to the Fort for flour and bullets. A dog-team and a bois-brule bring them, and then I am alone as before. When all that is done I will come back." "And then, Pourcette?" said Shon. "Then I will hang that one skin over the chimney where his gun is--and go out and kill more pumas. What else can one do? When I stop killing I shall be killed. A million pumas and their skins are not worth the life of my friend." Lawless looked round the room, at the wooden cup, the gun, the bloodstained clothes on the wall, and the skins. He got up, came over, and touched Pourcette on the shoulder. "Little man," he said, "give it up, and come with me. Come to Fort St. John, sell the skins, give the money to the girl, and then let us travel to the Barren Grounds together, and from there to the south country again. You will go mad up here. You have killed enough--Gawdor and many pumas. If Jo could speak, he would say, Give it up. I knew Jo. He was my good friend before he was yours--mine and M'Gann's here--and we searched for him to travel with us. He would have done so, I think, for we had sport and trouble of one kind and another together. And he would have asked you to come also. Well, do so, little man. We haven't told you our names. I am Sir Duke Lawless, and this is Shon M'Gann." Pourcette nodded: "I do not know how it come to me, but I was sure from the first you are his friends. He speak often of you and of two others --where are they?" Lawless replied, and, at the name of Pretty Pierre, Shon hid his forehead in his hand, in a troubled way. "And you will come with us," said Lawless, "away from this loneliness?" "It is not lonely," was the reply. "To hear the thrum of the pigeon, the whistle of the hawk, the chatter of the black squirrel, and the long cry of the eagle, is not lonely. Then, there is the river and the pines--all music; and for what the eye sees, God has been good; and to kill pumas is my joy. . . . So, I cannot go. These hills are mine. Few strangers come, and none stop but me. Still, to-morrow or any day, I will show you the way to the valley where the gold is. Perhaps riches is there, perhaps not, you shall find." Lawless saw that it was no use to press the matter. The old man had but one idea, and nothing could ever change it. Solitude fixes our hearts immovably on things--call it madness, what you will. In busy life we have no real or lasting dreams, no ideals. We have to go to the primeval hills and the wild plains for them. When we leave the hills and the plains, we lose them again. Shon was, however, for the valley of gold. He was a poor man, and it would be a joyful thing for him if one day he could empty ample gold into his wife's lap. Lawless was not greedy, but he and good gold were not at variance. "See," said Shon, "the valley's the thing. We can hunt as we go, and if there's gold for the scrapin', why, there y'are--fill up and come again. If not, divil the harm done. So here's thumbs up to go, say I. But I wish, Lawless, I wish that I'd niver known how Jo wint off, an' I wish we were all t'gither agin, as down in the Pipi Valley." "There's nothing stands in this world, Shon, but the faith of comrades and the truth of good women. The rest hangs by a hair. I'll go to the valley with you. It's many a day since I washed my luck in a gold-pan." "I will take you there," said Pourcette, suddenly rising, and, with shy abrupt motions grasping their hands and immediately letting them go again. "I will take you to-morrow." Then he spread skins upon the floor, put wood upon the fire, and the three were soon asleep. The next morning, just as the sun came laboriously over the white peak of a mountain, and looked down into the great gulch beneath the hut, the three started. For many hours they crept along the side of the mountain, then came slowly down upon pine-crested hills, and over to where a small plain stretched out. It was Pourcette's little farm. Its position was such that it caught the sun always, and was protected from the north and east winds. Tall shafts of Indian corn with their yellow tassels were still standing, and the stubble of the field where the sickle had been showed in the distance like a carpet of gold. It seemed strange to Lawless that this old man beside him should be thus peaceful in his habits, the most primitive and arcadian of farmers, and yet one whose trade was blood--whose one purpose in life was destruction and vengeance. They pushed on. Towards the end of the day they came upon a little herd of caribou, and had excellent sport. Lawless noticed that Pourcette seemed scarcely to take any aim at all, so swift and decisive was his handling of the gun. They skinned the deer and cached them, and took up the journey again. For four days they travelled and hunted alternately. Pourcette had shot two mountain lions, but they had seen no pumas. On the morning of the fifth day they came upon the valley where the gold was. There was no doubt about it. A beautiful little stream ran through it, and its bed was sprinkled with gold--a goodly sight to a poor man like Shon, interesting enough to Lawless. For days, while Lawless and Pourcette hunted, Shon laboured like a galley-slave, making the little specks into piles, and now and again crowning a pile with a nugget. The fever of the hunter had passed from him, and another fever was on him. The others urged him to come away. The winter would soon be hard on them; he must go, and he and Lawless would return in the spring. Prevailing on him at last, they started back to Clear Mountain. The first day Shon was abstracted. He carried the gold he had gathered in a bag wound about his body. It was heavy, and he could not travel fast. One morning, Pourcette, who had been off in the hills, came to say that he had sighted a little herd of wapiti. Shon had fallen and sprained his arm the evening before (gold is heavy to carry), and he did not go with the others. He stayed and dreamed of his good fortune, and of his home. In the late afternoon he lay down in the sun beside the camp-fire and fell asleep from much thinking. Lawless and Pourcette had little success. The herd had gone before they arrived. They beat the hills, and turned back to camp at last, without fret, like good sportsmen. At a point they separated, to come down upon the camp at different angles, in the hope of still getting a shot. The camp lay exposed upon a platform of the mountain. Lawless came out upon a ledge of rock opposite the camp, a gulch lying between. He looked across. He was in the shadow, the other wall of the gulch was in the sun. The air was incomparably clear and fresh, with an autumnal freshness. Everything stood out distinct and sharply outlined, nothing flat or blurred. He saw the camp, and the fire, with the smoke quivering up in a diffusing blue column, Shon lying beside it. He leaned upon his rifle musingly. The shadows of the pines were blue and cold, but the tops of them were burnished with the cordial sun, and a glacier- field, somehow, took on a rose and violet light, reflected, maybe, from the soft-complexioned sky. He drew in a long breath of delight, and widened his line of vision. Suddenly, something he saw made him lurch backward. At an angle in almost equal distance from him and Shon, upon a small peninsula of rock, a strange thing was happening. Old Pourcette was kneeling, engaged with his moccasin. Behind him was the sun, against which he was abruptly defined, looking larger than usual. Clear space and air soft with colour were about him. Across this space, on a little sloping plateau near him, there crept an animal. It seemed to Lawless that he could see the lithe stealthiness of its muscles and the ripple of its skin. But that was imagination, because he was too far away. He cried out, and swung his gun shoulderwards in desperation. But, at the moment, Pourcette turned sharply round, saw his danger, caught his gun, and fired as the puma sprang. There had been no chance for aim, and the beast was only wounded. It dropped upon the man. He let the gun fall; it rolled and fell over the cliff. Then came a scene, wicked in its peril to Pourcette, for whom no aid could come, though two men stood watching the great fight--Shon M'Gann, awake now, and Lawless--with their guns silent in their hands. They dare not fire, for fear of injuring the man, and they could not reach him in time to be of help. There against the weird solitary sky the man and the puma fought. When the animal dropped on him, Pourcette caught it by the throat with both hands, and held back its fangs; but its claws were furrowing the flesh of his breast and legs. His long arms were of immense strength, and though the pain of his torn flesh was great he struggled grandly with the beast, and bore it away, from his body. As he did so he slightly changed the position of one hand. It came upon a welt-a scar. When he felt that, new courage and strength seemed given him. He gave a low growl like an animal, and then, letting go one hand, caught at the knife in his belt. As he did so the puma sprang away from him, and crouched upon the rock, making ready for another leap. Lawless and Shon could see its tail curving and beating. But now, to their astonishment, the man was the aggressor. He was filled with a fury which knows nothing of fear. The welt his fingers had felt burned them. He came slowly upon the puma. Lawless could see the hard glitter of his knife. The puma's teeth sawed together, its claws picked at the rocks, its body curved for a spring. The man sprang first, and ran the knife in; but not into a mortal corner. Once more they locked. The man's fingers were again at the puma's throat, and they swayed together, the claws of the beast making surface havoc. But now as they stood up, to the eyes of the fearful watchers inextricably mixed, the man lunged again with his knife, and this time straight into the heart of the murderer. The puma loosened, quivered, fell back dead. The man rose to his feet with a cry, and his hands stretched above his head, as it were in a kind of ecstasy. Shon forgot his gold and ran; Lawless hurried also. When the two men got to the spot they found Pourcette binding up his wounds. He came to his feet, heedless of his hurts, and grasped their hands. "Come, come, my friends, and see," he cried. He pulled forward the loose skin on the puma's breast and showed them the scar of a knife-wound above the one his own knife had made. "I've got the other murderer," he said; "Gordineer's knife went in here. Sacre, but it is good!" Pourcette's flesh needed little medicine; he did not feel his pain and stiffness. When they reached Clear Mountain, bringing with them the skin which was to hang above the fireplace, Pourcette prepared to go to Fort St. John, as he had said he would, to sell all the skins and give the proceeds to the girl. "When that's done," said Lawless, "you will have no reason for staying here. If you will come with us after, we will go to the Fort with you. We three will then come back in the spring to the valley of gold for sport and riches." He spoke lightly, yet seriously too. The old man shook his head. "I have thought," he said. "I cannot go to the south. I am a hunter now, nothing more. I have been long alone; I do not wish for change. I shall remain at Clear Mountain when these skins have gone to Fort St. John, and if you come to me in the spring or at any time, my door will open to you, and I will share all with you. Gordineer was a good man. You are good men. I'll remember you, but I can't go with you--no. "Some day you would leave me to go to the women who wait for you, and then I should be alone again. I will not change--vraiment!" On the morning they left, he took Jo Gordineer's cup from the shelf, and from a hidden place brought out a flask half filled with liquor. He poured out a little in the cup gravely, and handed it to Lawless, but Lawless gave it back to him. "You must drink from it," he said, "not me." He held out the cup of his own flask. When each of the three had a share, the old man raised his long arm solemnly, and said in a tone so gentle that the others hardly recognised his voice: "To a lost comrade!" They drank in silence. "A little gentleman!" said Lawless, under his breath. When they were ready to start, Lawless said to him at the last: "What will you do here, comrade, as the days go on?" "There are pumas in the mountains," he replied. They parted from him upon the ledge where the great fight had occurred, and travelled into the east. Turning many times, they saw him still standing there. At a point where they must lose sight of him, they looked for the last time. He was alone with his solitary hills, leaning on his rifle. They fired two shots into the air. They saw him raise his rifle, and two faint reports came in reply. He became again immovable: as much a part of those hills as the shining glacier; never to leave them. In silence the two rounded the cliff, and saw him no more. THE TRAIL OF THE SUN DOGS Swell, you see," said Jacques Parfaite, as he gave Whiskey Wine, the leading dog, a cut with the whip and twisted his patois to the uses of narrative, "he has been alone there at the old Fort for a long time. I remember when I first see him. It was in the summer. The world smell sweet if you looked this way or that. If you drew in your breath quick from the top of a hill you felt a great man. Ridley, the chief trader, and myself have come to the Fort on our way to the Mackenzie River. In the yard of the Fort the grass have grown tall, and sprung in the cracks under the doors and windows; the Fort have not been use for a long time. Once there was plenty of buffalo near, and the caribou sometimes; but they were all gone--only a few. The Indians never went that way, only when the seasons were the best. The Company have close the Post; it did not pay. Still, it was pleasant after a long tramp to come to even an empty fort. We know dam' well there is food buried in the yard or under the floor, and it would be droll to open the place for a day--Lost Man's Tavern, we called it. Well--" "Well, what?" said Sir Duke Lawless, who had travelled up to the Barren Grounds for the sake of adventure and game; and, with his old friend, Shon M'Gann, had trusted himself to the excellent care of Jacques Parfaite, the half-breed. Jacques cocked his head on one side and shook it wisely and mysteriously. "Tres bien, we trailed through the long grass, pried open the shutters and door, and went in. It is cool in the north of an evening, as you know. We build a fire, and soon there is very fine times. Ridley pried up the floor, and we found good things. Holy! but it was a feast. We had a little rum also. As we talk and a great laugh swim round, there come a noise behind us like shuffling feet. We got to our legs quick. Mon Dieu, a strange sight! A man stand looking at us with something in his face that make my fingers cold all at once--a look--well you would think it was carved in stone--it never change. Once I was at Fort Garry; the Church of St. Mary is there. They have a picture in it of the great scoundrel Judas as he went to hang himself. Judas was a fool--what was thirty dollars!--you give me hunder' to take you to the Barren Grounds. Pah!" The half-breed chuckled, shook his head sagely, swore half-way through his vocabulary at Whiskey Wine, gratefully received a pipe of tobacco from Shon M'Gann, and continued: "He come in on us slow and still, and push out long thin hands, the fingers bent like claws, towards the pot. He was starving. Yes, it was so; but I nearly laugh. It was spring-- a man is a fool to starve in the spring. But he was differen'. There was a cause. The factor give him soup from the pot and a little rum. He was mad for meat, but that would have kill him--yes. He did not look at you like a man. "When you are starving, you are an animal. But there was something more with this.--He made the flesh creep, he was so thin, and strange, and sulky--eh, is that a word when the face looks dark and never smiles? So. He would not talk. When we ask him where he come from, he points to the north; when we ask him where he is going, he shake his head as he not know. A man is mad not to know where he travel to up here; something comes quick to him unless, and it is not good to die too soon. The trader said, 'Come with us.' He shake his head, No. 'P'r'aps you want to stay here,' said Ridley loud, showing his teeth all in a minute. He nod. Then the trader laugh thick in his throat and give him more soup. After, he try to make the man talk; but he was stubborn like that dirty Whiskey Wine--ah, sacre bleu!" Whiskey Wine had his usual portion of whip and anathema before Jacques again took up the thread. "It was no use. He would not talk. When the trader get angry once more, he turned to me, and the look in his face make me sorry. I swore--Ridley did not mind that, I was thick friends with him. I say, 'Keep still. It is no good. He has had bad times. He has been lost, and seen mad things. He will never be again like when God make him.' Very well, I spoke true. He was like a sun dog." "What's that ye say, Parfaite?" said Shon--"a sun dog?" Sir Duke Lawless, puzzled, listened eagerly for the reply. The half-breed in delight ran before them, cracking his whip and jingling the bells at his knees. "Ah, that's it! It is a name we have for some. You do not know? It is easy. In the high-up country"--pointing north"-- you see sometimes many suns. But it is not many after all; it is only one; and the rest are the same as your face in looking-glasses--one, two, three, plenty. You see?" "Yes," said Sir Duke, "reflections of the real sun." Parfaite tapped him on the arm. "So: you have the thing. Well, this man is not himself--he have left himself where he seen his bad times. It makes your flesh creep sometimes when you see the sun dogs in the sky--this man did the same. You shall see him tonight." Sir Duke looked at the little half-breed, and wondered that the product of so crude a civilisation should be so little crude in his imagination. "What happened?" he asked. "Nothing happened. But the man could not sleep. He sit before the fire, his eyes moving here and there, and sometimes he shiver. Well, I watch him. In the morning we leave him there, and he has been there ever since--the only man at the Fort. The Indians do not go; they fear him; but there is no harm in him. He is old now. In an hour we'll be there." The sun was hanging, with one shoulder up like a great red peering dwarf, on the far side of a long hillock of stunted pines, when the three arrived at the Fort. The yard was still as Parfaite had described it-- full of rank grass, through which one path trailed to the open door. On the stockade walls grass grew, as though where men will not live like men Nature labours to smother. The shutters of the window were not open; light only entered through narrow openings in them, made for the needs of possible attacks by Indians in the far past. One would have sworn that anyone dwelling there was more like the dead than the living. Yet it had, too, something of the peace of the lonely graveyard. There was no one in the Fort; but there were signs of life--skins piled here and there, a few utensils, a bench, a hammock for food swung from the rafters, a low fire burning in the chimney, and a rude spear stretched on the wall. "Sure, the place gives you shivers!" said Shon. "Open go these windows. Put wood on the fire, Parfaite; cook the meat that we've brought, and no other, me boy; and whin we're filled wid a meal and the love o' God, bring in your Lost Man, or Sun Dog, or whativer's he by name or nature." While Parfaite and Shon busied themselves, Lawless wandered out with his gun, and, drawn on by the clear joyous air of the evening, walked along a path made by the same feet that had travelled the yard of the Fort. He followed it almost unconsciously at first, thinking of the strange histories that the far north hoards in its fastnesses, wondering what singular fate had driven the host of this secluded tavern--farthest from the pleasant south country, nearest to the Pole--to stand, as it were, a sentinel at the raw outposts of the world. He looked down at the trail where he was walking with a kind of awe, which even his cheerful common sense could not dismiss. He came to the top of a ridge on which were a handful of meagre trees. Leaning on his gun, he looked straight away into the farthest distance. On the left was a blurred edge of pines, with tops like ungainly tendrils feeling for the sky. On the right was a long bare stretch of hills veiled in the thin smoke of the evening, and between, straight before him, was a wide lane of unknown country, billowing away to where it froze into the vast archipelago that closes with the summit of the world. He experienced now that weird charm which has drawn so many into Arctic wilds and gathered the eyes of millions longingly. Wife, child, London, civilisation, were forgotten for the moment. He was under a spell which, once felt, lingers in your veins always. At length his look drew away from the glimmering distance, and he suddenly became conscious of human presence. Here, almost at his feet, was a man, also looking out along that slumbering waste. He was dressed in skins, his arms were folded across his breast, his chin bent low, and he gazed up and out from deep eyes shadowed by strong brows. Lawless saw the shoulders of the watcher heave and shake once or twice, and then a voice with a deep aching trouble in it spoke; but at first he could catch no words. Presently, however, he heard distinctly, for the man raised his hands high above his head, and the words fell painfully: "Am I my brother's keeper?" Then a low harsh laugh came from him, and he was silent again. Lawless did not move. At last the man turned round, and, seeing him standing motionless, his gun in his hands, he gave a hoarse cry. Then he stood still. "If you have come to kill, do not wait," he said; "I am ready." At the sound of Lawless's reassuring voice he recovered, and began, in stumbling words, to excuse himself. His face was as Jacques Parfaite had described it: trouble of some terrible kind was furrowed in it, and, though his body was stalwart, he looked as if he had lived a century. His eyes dwelt on Sir Duke Lawless for a moment, and then, coming nearer, he said, "You are an Englishman?" Lawless held out his hand in greeting, yet he was not sorry when the other replied: "The hand of no man in greeting. Are you alone?" When he had been told, he turned towards the Fort, and silently they made their way to it. At the door he turned and said to Lawless, "My name--to you--is Detmold." The greeting between Jacques and his sombre host was notable for its extreme brevity; with Shon McGann for its hesitation--Shon's impressionable Irish nature was awed by the look of the man, though he had seen some strange things in the north. Darkness was on them by this time, and the host lighted bowls of fat with wicks of deer's tendons, and by the light of these and the fire they ate their supper. Parfaite beguiled the evening with tales of the north, always interesting to Lawless; to which Shon added many a shrewd word of humour--for he had recovered quickly from his first timidity in the presence of the stranger. As time went on Jacques saw that their host's eyes were frequently fixed on Sir Duke in a half-eager, musing way, and he got Shon away to bed and left the two together. "You are a singular man. Why do you live here?" said Lawless. Then he went straight to the heart of the thing. "What trouble have you had, of what crime are you guilty?" The man rose to his feet, shaking, and walked to and fro in the room for a time, more than once trying to speak, but failing. He beckoned to Lawless, and opened the door. Lawless took his hat and followed him along the trail they had travelled before supper until they came to the ridge where they had met. The man faced the north, the moon glistening coldly on his grey hair. He spoke with incredible weight and slowness: "I tell you--for you are one who understands men, and you come from a life that I once knew well. I know of your people. I was of good family--" "I know the name," said Sir Duke quietly, at the same time fumbling in his memory for flying bits of gossip and history which he could not instantly find. "There were two brothers of us. I was the younger. A ship was going to the Arctic Sea." He pointed into the north. "We were both young and ambitious. He was in the army, I the navy. We went with the expedition. At first it was all beautiful and grand, and it seemed noble to search for those others who had gone into that land and never come back. But our ship got locked in the ice, and then came great trouble. A year went by and we did not get free; then another year began. . . . Four of us set out for the south. Two died. My brother and I were left--" Lawless exclaimed. He now remembered how general sympathy went out to a well-known county family when it was announced that two of its members were lost in the Arctic regions. Detmold continued: "I was the stronger. He grew weaker and weaker. It was awful to live those days: the endless snow and cold, the long nights when you could only hear the whirring of meteors, the bright sun which did not warm you, nor even when many suns, the reflections of itself, followed it--the mocking sun dogs, no more the sun than I am what my mother brought into the world. . . . We walked like dumb men, for the dreadful cold fills the heart with bitterness. I think I grew to hate him because he could not travel faster, that days were lost, and death crept on so pitilessly. Sometimes I had a mad wish to kill him. May you never know suffering that begets such things! I laughed as I sat beside him, and saw him sink to sleep and die. . . . I think I could have saved him. When he was gone I--what do men do sometimes when starvation is on them, and they have a hunger of hell to live? I did that shameless thing--and he was my brother! . . . I lived, and was saved." Lawless shrank away from the man, but words of horror got no farther than his throat. And he was glad afterwards that it was so; for when he looked again at this woful relic of humanity before him he felt a strange pity. "God's hand is on me to punish," said the man. "It will never be lifted. Death were easy: I bear the infamy of living." Lawless reached out and caught him gently by the shoulders. "Poor fellow! poor Detmold!" he said. For an instant the sorrowful face lighted, the square chin trembled, and the hands thrust out towards Lawless, but suddenly dropped. "Go," he said humbly, "and leave me here. We must not meet again. . . I have had one moment of respite. . . . Go." Without a word, Lawless turned and made his way to the Fort. In the morning the three comrades started on their journey again; but no one sped them on their way or watched them as they went. THE PILOT OF BELLE AMOUR He lived in a hut on a jutting crag of the Cliff of the King. You could get to it by a hard climb up a precipitous pathway, or by a ladder of ropes which swung from his cottage door down the cliff-side to the sands. The bay that washed the sands was called Belle Amour. The cliff was huge, sombre; it had a terrible granite moroseness. If you travelled back from its edge until you stood within the very heart of Labrador, you would add step upon step of barrenness and austerity. Only at seasons did the bay share the gloom of the cliff. When out of its shadow it was, in summer, very bright and playful, sometimes boisterous, often idle, coquetting with the sands. There was a great difference between the cliff and the bay: the cliff was only as it appeared, but the bay was a shameless hypocrite. For under one shoulder it hid a range of reefs, and, at a spot where the shadows of the cliff never reached it, and the sun played with a grim kind of joy, a long needle of rock ran up at an angle under the water, waiting to pierce irresistibly the adventurous ship that, in some mad moment, should creep to its shores. The man was more like the cliff than the bay: stern, powerful, brooding. His only companions were the Indians, who in summer-time came and went, getting stores of him, which he in turn got from a post of the Hudson's Bay Company, seventy miles up the coast. At one time the Company, impressed by the number of skins brought to them by the pilot, and the stores he bought of them, had thought of establishing a post at Belle Amour; but they saw that his dealings with them were fair and that he had small gain, and they decided to use him as an unofficial agent, and reap what profit was to be had as things stood. Kenyon, the Company's agent, who had the Post, was keen to know why Gaspard the pilot lived at Belle Amour. No white man sojourned near him, and he saw no one save now and then a priest who travelled silently among the Indians, or some fisherman, hunter, or woodsman, who, for pleasure or from pure adventure, ran into the bay and tasted the hospitality tucked away on a ledge of the Cliff of the King. To Kenyon, Gaspard was unresponsive, however adroit the catechism. Father Corraine also, who sometimes stepped across the dark threshold of Gaspard's hut, would have, for the man's soul's sake, dug out the heart of his secret; but Gaspard, open with food, fire, blanket, and tireless attendance, closed like the doors of a dungeon when the priest would have read him. At the name of good Ste. Anne he would make the sacred gesture, and would take a blessing when the priest passed from his hut to go again into the wilds; but when pressed to disclose his mind and history, he would always say: "M'sieu', I have nothing to confess." After a number of years the priest ceased to ask him, and he remained with the secret of his life, inscrutable and silent. Being vigilant, one would have seen, however, that he lived in some land of memory or anticipation, beyond his life of daily toil and usual dealing. The hut seemed to have been built at a point where east and west and south the great gulf could be seen and watched. It seemed almost ludicrous that a man should call himself a pilot on a coast and at a bay where a pilot was scarce needed once a year. But he was known as Gaspard the pilot, and on those rare occasions when a vessel did anchor in the bay, he performed his duties with such a certainty as to leave unguessed how many deathtraps crouched near that shore. At such times, however, Gaspard seemed to look twenty years younger. A light would come into his face, a stalwart kind of pride sit on him, though beneath there lurked a strange, sardonic look in his deep eyes--such a grim furtiveness as though he should say: "If I but twist my finger we are all for the fishes." But he kept his secret and waited. He never seemed to tire of looking down the gulf, as though expecting some ship. If one appeared and passed on, he merely nodded his head, hung up his glass, returned to his work, or, sitting by the door, talked to himself in low, strange tones. If one came near, making as if it would enter the bay, a hungry joy possessed him. If a storm was on, the joy was the greater. No pilot ever ventured to a ship on such rough seas as Gaspard ventured for small profit or glory. Behind it all lay his secret. There came one day a man who discovered it. It was Pierre, the half-breed adventurer. There was no point in all the wild northland which Pierre had not touched. He loved it as he loved the game of life. He never said so of it, but he never said so of the game of life, and he played it with a deep subterranean joy. He had had his way with the musk-ox in the Arctic Circle; with the white bear at the foot of Alaskan Hills; with the seal in Baffin's Bay; with the puma on the slope of the Pacific; and now at last he had come upon the trail of Labrador. Its sternness, its moodiness pleased him. He smiled at it the comprehending smile of the man who has fingered the nerves and the heart of men and things. As a traveller, wandering through a prison, looks upon its grim cells and dungeons with the eye of unembarrassed freedom, finding no direful significance in the clank of its iron, so Pierre travelled down with a handful of Indians through the hard fastnesses of that country, and, at last, alone, came upon the bay of Belle Amour. There was in him some antique touch of refinement and temperament which, in all his evil days and deeds and moments of shy nobility, could find its way into the souls of men with whom the world had had an awkward hour. He was a man of little speech, but he had that rare persuasive penetration which unlocked the doors of trouble, despair, and tragedy. Men who would never have confessed to a priest confessed to him. In his every fibre was the granite of the Indian nature, which looked upon punishment with stoic satisfaction. In the heart of Labrador he had heard of Gaspard, and had travelled to that point in the compass where he could find him. One day when the sun was fighting hard to make a pathway of light in front of Gaspard's hut, Pierre rounded a corner of the cliff and fronted Gaspard as he sat there, his eyes idling gloomily with the sea. They said little to each other-- in new lands hospitality has not need of speech. When Gaspard and Pierre looked each other in the eyes they knew that one word between them was as a hundred with other men. The heart knows its confessor, and the confessor knows the shadowed eye that broods upon some ghostly secret; and when these are face to face there comes a merciless concision of understanding. "From where away?" said Gaspard, as he handed some tobacco to Pierre. "From Hudson's Bay, down the Red Wolf Plains, along the hills, across the coast country, here." "Why?" Gaspard eyed Pierre's small kit with curiosity; then flung up a piercing, furtive look. Pierre shrugged his shoulders. "Adventure, adventure," he answered. "The land"--he pointed north, west, and east--"is all mine. I am the citizen of every village and every camp of the great north." The old man turned his head towards a spot up the shore of Belle Amour, before he turned to Pierre again, with a strange look, and said: "Where do you go?" Pierre followed his gaze to that point in the shore, felt the undercurrent of vague meaning in his voice, guessed what was his cue, and said: "Somewhere, sometime; but now only Belle Amour. I have had a long travel. I have found an open door. I will stay--if you please--hein? If you please?" Gaspard brooded. "It is lonely," he replied. "This day it is all bright; the sun shines and the little gay waves crinkle to the shore. But, mon Dieu! sometimes it is all black and ugly with storm. The waves come grinding, booming in along the gridiron rocks"--he smiled a grim smile--"break through the teeth of the reefs, and split with a roar of hell upon the cliff. And all the time, and all the time,"--his voice got low with a kind of devilish joy,--"there is a finger--Jesu! you should see that finger of the devil stretch up from the bowels of the earth, waiting, waiting for something to come out of the storm. And then--and then you can hear a wild laugh come out of the land, come up from the sea, come down from the sky--all waiting, waiting for something! No, no, you would not stay here." Pierre looked again to that point in the shore towards which Gaspard's eyes had been cast. The sun was shining hard just then, and the stern, sharp rocks, tumbling awkwardly back into the waste behind, had an insolent harshness. Day perched garishly there. Yet now and then the staring light was broken by sudden and deep shadows--great fissures in the rocks and lanes between. These gave Pierre a suggestion, though why, he could not say. He knew that when men live lives of patient, gloomy vigilance, they generally have something to watch and guard. Why should Gaspard remain here year after year? His occupation was nominally a pilot in a bay rarely touched by vessels, and then only for shelter. A pilot need not take his daily life with such brooding seriousness. In body he was like flexible metal, all cord and muscle. He gave the impression of bigness, though he was small in stature. Yet, as Pierre studied him, he saw something that made him guess the man had had about him one day a woman, perhaps a child; no man could carry that look unless. If a woman has looked at you from day to day, something of her, some reflection of her face, passes to yours and stays there; and if a child has held your hand long, or hung about your knees, it gives you a kind of gentle wariness as you step about your home. Pierre knew that a man will cherish with a deep, eternal purpose a memory of a woman or a child, when, no matter how compelling his cue to remember where a man is concerned, he will yield it up in the end to time. Certain speculations arranged themselves definitely in Pierre's mind: there was a woman, maybe a child once; there was some sorrowful mystery about them; there was a point in the shore that had held the old man's eyes strangely; there was the bay with that fantastic "finger of the devil" stretching up from the bowels of the world. Behind the symbol lay the Thing what was it? Long time he looked out upon the gulf, then his eyes drew into the bay and stayed there, seeing mechanically, as a hundred fancies went through his mind. There were reefs of which the old man had spoken. He could guess from the colour and movement of the water where they were. The finger of the devil--was it not real? A finger of rock, waiting as the old man said--for what? Gaspard touched his shoulder. He rose and went with him into the gloomy cabin. They ate and drank in silence. When the meal was finished they sat smoking till night fell. Then the pilot lit a fire, and drew his rough chair to the door. Though it was only late summer, it was cold in the shade of the cliff. Long time they sat. Now and again Pierre intercepted the quick, elusive glance of his silent host. Once the pilot took the pipe from his mouth, and leaned his hands on his knees as if about to speak. But he did not. Pierre saw that the time was ripe for speech. So he said, as though he knew something: "It is a long time since it happened?" Gaspard, brooding, answered: "Yes, a long time--too long." Then, as if suddenly awakened to the strangeness of the question, he added, in a startled way: " What do you know? Tell me quick what you know." "I know nothing except what comes to me here, pilot,"--Pierre touched his forehead," but there is a thing--I am not sure what. There was a woman-- perhaps a child; there is something on the shore; there is a hidden point of rock in the bay; and you are waiting for a ship--for the ship, and it does not come--isn't that so?" Gaspard got to his feet, and peered into Pierre's immobile face. Their eyes met. "Mon Dieu!" said the pilot, his hand catching the smoke away from between them, "you are a droll man; you have a wonderful mind. You are cold like ice, and still there is in you a look of fire." "Sit down," answered Pierre quietly, "and tell me all. Perhaps I could think it out little by little; but it might take too long--and what is the good?" Slowly Gaspard obeyed. Both hands rested on his knees, and he stared abstractedly into the fire. Pierre thrust forward the tobacco-bag. His hand lifted, took the tobacco, and then his eyes came keenly to Pierre's. He was about to speak. . . . "Fill your pipe first," said the half-breed coolly. The old man did so abstractedly. When the pipe was lighted, Pierre said: "Now!" "I have never told the story, never--not even to Pere Corraine. But I know, I have it here"--he put his hand to his forehead, as did Pierre-- "that you will be silent." Pierre nodded. "She was fine to see. Her eyes were black as beads; and when she laugh it was all music. I was so happy! We lived on the island of the Aux Coudres, far up there at Quebec. It was a wild place. There were smugglers and others there--maybe pirates. But she was like a saint of God among all. I was lucky man. I was pilot, and took ships out to sea, and brought them in safe up the gulf. It is not all easy, for there are mad places. Once or twice when a wild storm was on I could not land at Cap Martin, and was carried out to sea and over to France. . . . Well, that was not so bad; there was plenty to eat and drink, nothing to do. But when I marry it was differen'. I was afraid of being carried away and leave my wife--the belle Mamette--alone long time. You see, I was young, and she was ver' beautiful." He paused and caught his hand over his mouth as though to stop a sound: the lines of his face deepened. Presently he puffed his pipe so hard that the smoke and the sparks hid him in a cloud through which he spoke. "When the child was born--Holy Mother! have you ever felt the hand of your own child in yours, and looked at the mother, as she lies there all pale and shining between the quilts?" He paused. Pierre's eyes dropped to the floor. Gaspard continued: "Well, it is a great thing, and the babe was born quick one day when we were all alone. A thing like that gives you wonder. Then I could not bear to go away with the ships, and at last I said: 'One month, and then the ice fills the gulf, and there will be no more ships for the winter. That will be the last for me. I will be pilot no more-no.' She was ver' happy, and a laugh ran over her little white teeth. Mon Dieu, I stop that laugh pretty quick--in fine way!" He seemed for an instant to forget his great trouble, and his face went to warm sunshine like a boy's; but it was as sun playing on a scarred fortress. Presently the light faded out of his face and left it like iron smouldering from the bellows. "Well," he said, "you see there was a ship to go almost the last of the season, and I said to my wife, 'Mamette, it is the last time I shall be pilot. You must come with me and bring the child, and they will put us off at Father Point, and then we will come back slow to the village on the good Ste. Anne and live there ver' quiet.' When I say that to her she laugh back at me and say, 'Beau! beau!' and she laugh in the child's eyes, and speak--nom de Dieu! she speak so gentle and light--and say to the child: 'Would you like go with your father a pretty journey down the gulf?' And the little child laugh back at her, and shake its soft brown hair over its head. They were both so glad to go. I went to the captain of the ship. I say to him, 'I will take my wife and my little child, and when we come to Father Point we will go ashore.' Bien, the captain laugh big, and it was all right. That was long time ago--long time." He paused again, threw his head back with a despairing toss, his chin dropped on his breast, his hands clasped between his knees, and his pipe, laid beside him on the bench, was forgotten. Pierre quietly put some wood upon the fire, opened his kit, drew out from it a little flask of rum and laid it upon the bench beside the pipe. A long time passed. At last Gaspard roused himself with a long sigh, turned and picked up the pipe, but, seeing the flask of rum, lifted it, and took one long swallow before he began to fill and light his pipe. There came into his voice something of iron hardness as he continued his story. "Alors, we went into the boat. As we travelled down the gulf a great storm came out of the north. We thought it would pass, but it stayed on. When we got to the last place where the pilot could land, the waves were running like hills to the shore, and no boat could live between the ship and the point. For myself, it was nothing--I am a strong man and a great swimmer. But when a man has a wife and a child, it is differen'. So the ship went on out into the ocean with us. Well, we laugh a little, and think what a great brain I had when I say to my wife: 'Come and bring the child for the last voyage of Gaspard the pilot.' You see, there we were on board the ship, everything ver' good, plenty to eat, much to drink, to smoke, all the time. The sailors, they were ver' funny, and to see them take my child, my little Babette, and play with her as she roll on the deck--merci, it was gran'! So I say to my wife: "'This will be bon voyage for all.' But a woman, she has not the mind like a man. When a man laugh in the sun and think nothing of evil, a woman laugh too, but there come a little quick sob to her lips. You ask her why, and she cannot tell. She know that something will happen. A man has great idee, a woman great sight. So my wife, she turn her face away all sad from me then, and she was right--she was right! "One day in the ocean we pass a ship--only two days out. The ship signal us. I say to my wife: 'Ha, ha! now we can go back, maybe, to the good Ste. Anne.' Well, the ships come close together, and the captain of the other ship he have something importan' with ours. He ask if there will be chance of pilot into the gulf, because it is the first time that he visit Quebec. The captain swing round and call to me. I go up. I bring my wife and my little Babette; and that was how we sail back to the great gulf. "When my wife step on board that ship I see her face get pale, and something strange in her eyes. I ask her why; she do not know, but she hug Babette close to her breast with a kind of fear. A long, low, black ship, it could run through every sea. Soon the captain come to me and say: 'You know the coast, the north coast of the gulf, from Labrador to Quebec?' I tell him yes. 'Well,' he say, 'do you know of a bay where few ships enter safe?' I think a moment and I tell him of Belle Amour. Then he say, ver' quick: 'That is the place; we will go to the bay of Belle Amour.' He was ver' kind to my face; he give my wife and child good berth, plenty to eat and drink, and once more I laugh; but my wife--there was in her face something I not understan'. It is not easy to understan' a woman. We got to the bay. I had pride: I was young. I was the best pilot in the St. Lawrence, and I took in the ship between the reefs of the bay, where they run like a gridiron, and I laugh when I swing the ship all ver' quick to the right, after we pass the reefs, and make a curve round--something. The captain pull me up and ask why. But I never tell him that. I not know why I never tell him. But the good God put the thought into my head, and I keep it to this hour, and it never leave me, never--never!" He slowly rubbed his hands up and down his knees, took another sip of rum, and went on: "I brought the ship close up to the shore, and we go to anchor. All that night I see the light of a fire on the shore. So I slide down and swim to the shore. Under a little arch of rocks something was going on. I could not tell, but I know from the sound that they are to bury something. Then, all at once, it come to me--this is a pirate ship! I come closer and closer to the light, and then I see a dreadful thing. There was the captain and the mate, and another. They turn quick upon two other men--two sailors--and kill them. Then they take the bodies and wound them round some casks in a great hole, and cover it all up. I understan'. It is the old legend that a dead body will keep gold all to itself, so that no one shall find it. Mon Dieu!"--his voice dropped low and shook in his throat--"I give one little cry at the sight, and then they see me. There were three. They were armed; they sprang upon me and tied me. Then they fling me beside the fire, and they cover up the hole with the gold and the bodies. "When that was done they take me back to the ship, then with pistols at my head they make me pilot the ship out into the bay again. As we went they make a chart of the place. We travel along the coast for one day; and then a great storm of snow come, and the captain say to me: 'Steer us into harbour.' When we are at anchor, they take me and my wife, and little child and put us ashore alone, with a storm and the bare rocks and the dreadful night, and leave us there, that we shall never tell the secret of the gold. That night my wife and my child die in the snow." Here his voice became strained and slow. "After a long time I work my way to an Injin camp. For months I was a child in strength, all my flesh gone. When the spring come I went and dug a deeper grave for my wife, and p'tite Babette, and leave them there, where they had died. But I come to the bay of Belle Amour, because I knew some day the man with the devil's heart would come back for his gold, and then would arrive my time--the hour of God!" He paused. "The hour of God," he repeated slowly. "I have waited twenty years, but he has not come; yet I know that he will come. I feel it here"--he touched his forehead; "I know it here"--he tapped his heart. "Once where my heart was, there is only one thing, and it is hate, and I know--I know--that he will come. And when he comes--" He raised his arm high above his head, laughed wildly, paused, let the hand drop, and then fell to staring into the fire. Pierre again placed the flask of rum between his fingers. But Gaspard put it down, caught his arms together across his breast, and never turned his face from the fire. Midnight came, and still they sat there silent. No man had a greater gift in waiting than Pierre. Many a time his life had been a swivel, upon which the comedies and tragedies of others had turned. He neither loved nor feared men: sometimes he pitied them. He pitied Gaspard. He knew what it is to have the heartstrings stretched out, one by one, by the hand of a Gorgon, while the feet are chained to the rocking world. Not till the darkest hour of the morning did the two leave their silent watch and go to bed. The sun had crept stealthily to the door of the but before they rose again. Pierre laid his hand upon Gaspard's shoulder as they travelled out into the morning, and said: "My friend, I understand. Your secret is safe with me; you shall take me to the place where the gold is buried, but it shall wait there until the time is ripe. What is gold to me? Nothing. To find gold--that is the trick of any fool. To win it or to earn it is the only game. Let the bodies rot about the gold. You and I will wait. I have many friends in the northland, but there is no face in any tent door looking for me. You are alone: well, I will stay with you. Who can tell--perhaps it is near at hand--the hour of God!" The huge hard hand of Gaspard swallowed the small hand of Pierre, and, in a voice scarcely above a whisper, he answered: "You shall be my comrade. I have told you all, as I have never told it to my God. I do not fear you about the gold--it is all cursed. You are not like other men; I will trust you. Some time you also have had the throat of a man in your fingers, and watched the life spring out of his eyes, and leave them all empty. When men feel like that, what is gold--what is anything! There is food in the bay and on the hills. "We will live together, you and I. Come and I will show you the place of hell." Together they journeyed down the crag and along the beach to the place where the gold, the grim god of this world, was fortressed and bastioned by its victims. The days went on; the weeks and months ambled by. Still the two lived together. Little speech passed between them, save that speech of comrades, who use more the sign than the tongue. It seemed to Pierre after a time that Gaspard's wrongs were almost his own. Yet with this difference: he must stand by and let the avenger be the executioner; he must be the spectator merely. Sometimes he went inland and brought back moose, caribou, and the skins of other animals, thus assisting Gaspard in his dealings with the great Company. But again there were days when he did nothing but lie on the skins at the hut's door, or saunter in the shadows and the sunlight. Not since he had come to Gaspard had a ship passed the bay or sought to anchor in it. But there came a day. It was the early summer. The snow had shrunk from the ardent sun, and had swilled away to the gulf, leaving the tender grass showing. The moss on the rocks had changed from brown to green, and the vagrant birds had fluttered back from the south. The winter's furs had been carried away in the early spring to the Company's post, by a detachment of coureurs de bois. There was little left to do. This morning they sat in the sun looking out upon the gulf. Presently Gaspard rose and went into the hut. Pierre's eyes still lazily scanned the water. As he looked he saw a vessel rounding a point in the distance. Suppose this was the ship of the pirate and murderer? The fancy diverted him. His eyes drew away from the indistinct craft--first to the reefs, and then to that spot where the colossal needle stretched up under the water. It was as Pierre speculated. Brigond, the French pirate, who had hidden his gold at such shameless cost, was, after twenty years in the galleys at Toulon, come back to find his treasure. He had doubted little that he would find it. The lonely spot, the superstition concerning dead bodies, the supposed doom of Gaspard, all ran in his favour. His little craft came on, manned by as vile a mob as ever mutinied or built a wrecker's fire. When the ship got within a short distance of the bay, Pierre rose and called. Gaspard came to the door. "There's work to do, pilot," he said. Gaspard felt the thrill of his voice, and flashed a look out to the gulf. He raised his hands with a gasp. "I feel it," he said: "it is the hour of God!" He started to the rope ladder of the cliff, then wheeled suddenly and came back to Pierre. "You must not come," he said. "Stay here and watch; you shall see great things." His voice had a round, deep tone. He caught both Pierre's hands in his and added: "It is for my wife and child; I have no fear. Adieu, my friend! When you see the good Pere Corraine say to him--but no, it is no matter--there is One greater!" Once again he caught Pierre hard by the shoulder, then ran to the cliff and swung down the ladder. All at once there shot through Pierre's body an impulse, and his eyes lighted with excitement. He sprang towards the cliff. "Gaspard, come back!" he called; then paused, and, with an enigmatical smile, shrugged his shoulders, drew back, and waited. The vessel was hove to outside the bay, as if hesitating. Brigond was considering whether it were better, with his scant chart, to attempt the bay, or to take small boats and make for the shore. He remembered the reefs, but he did not know of the needle of rock. Presently he saw Gaspard's boat coming. "Someone who knows the bay," he said; "I see a hut on the cliff." "Hello, who are you?" Brigond called down as Gaspard drew alongside. "A Hudson's Bay Company's man," answered Gaspard. "How many are there of you?" "Myself alone." "Can you pilot us in?" "I know the way." "Come up." Gaspard remembered Brigond, and he veiled his eyes lest the hate he felt should reveal him. No one could have recognised him as the young pilot of twenty years before. Then his face was cheerful and bright, and in his eye was the fire of youth. Now a thick beard and furrowing lines hid all the look of the past. His voice, too, was desolate and distant. Brigond clapped him on the shoulder. "How long have you lived off there?" he asked, as he jerked his finger towards the shore. "A good many years." "Did anything strange ever happen there?" Gaspard felt his heart contract again, as it did when Brigond's hand touched his shoulder. "Nothing strange is known." A vicious joy came into Brigond's face. His fingers opened and shut. "Safe, by the holy heaven!" he grunted. "'By the holy heaven!'" repeated Gaspard, under his breath. They walked forward. Almost as they did so there came a big puff of wind across the bay: one of those sudden currents that run in from the ocean and the gulf stream. Gaspard saw, and smiled. In a moment the vessel's nose was towards the bay, and she sailed in, dipping a shoulder to the sudden foam. On she came past reef and bar, a pretty tumbril to the slaughter. The spray feathered up to her sails, the sun caught her on deck and beam; she was running dead for the needle of rock. Brigond stood at Gaspard's side. All at once Gaspard made the sacred gesture and said, in a low tone, as if only to himself: "Pardon, mon capitaine, mon Jesu!" Then he turned triumphantly, fiercely, upon Brigond. The pirate was startled. "What's the matter?" he said. Not Gaspard, but the needle rock replied. There was a sudden shock; the vessel stood still and shivered; lurched, swung shoulder downwards, reeled and struggled. Instantly she began to sink. "The boats! lower the boats!" cried Brigond. "This cursed fool has run us on a rock!" The waves, running high, now swept over the deck. Brigond started aft, but Gaspard sprang before him. "Stand back!" he called. "Where you are you die!" Brigond, wild with terror and rage, ran at him. Gaspard caught him as he came. With vast strength he lifted him and dashed him to the deck. "Die there, murderer!" he cried. Brigond crouched upon the deck, looking at him with fearful eyes. "Who- are you?" he asked. "I am Gaspard the pilot. I have waited for you twenty years. Up there, in the snow, my wife and child died. Here, in this bay, you die." There was noise and racketing behind them, but they two heard nothing. The one was alone with his terror, the other with his soul. Once, twice, thrice, the vessel heaved, then went suddenly still. Gaspard understood. One look at his victim, then he made the sacred gesture again, and folded his arms. Pierre, from the height of the cliff, looking down, saw the vessel dip at the bow, and then the waters divided and swallowed it up. "Gaspard should have lived," he said. "But--who can tell! Perhaps Mamette was waiting for him." ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Have you ever felt the hand of your own child in yours Memory is man's greatest friend and worst enemy Solitude fixes our hearts immovably on things When a man laugh in the sun and think nothing of evil A ROMANY OF THE SNOWS BEING A CONTINUATION OF THE PERSONAL HISTORIES OF "PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE" AND THE LAST EXISTING RECORDS OF PRETTY PIERRE By Gilbert Parker Volume 5. THE CRUISE OF THE "NINETY-NINE" A ROMANY OF THE SNOWS THE PLUNDERER THE CRUISE OF THE "NINETY-NINE" I. THE SEARCH She was only a big gulf yawl, which a man and a boy could manage at a pinch, with old-fashioned high bulwarks, but lying clean in the water. She had a tolerable record for speed, and for other things so important that they were now and again considered by the Government at Quebec. She was called the Ninety-Nine. With a sense of humour the cure had called her so, after an interview with her owner and captain, Tarboe the smuggler. When he said to Tarboe at Angel Point that he had come to seek the one sheep that was lost, leaving behind him the other ninety-and-nine within the fold at Isle of Days, Tarboe had replied that it was a mistake--he was the ninety-nine, for he needed no repentance, and immediately offered the cure some old brown brandy of fine flavour. They both had a whimsical turn, and the cure did not ask Tarboe how he came by such perfect liquor. Many high in authority, it was said, had been soothed even to the winking of an eye when they ought to have sent a Nordenfeldt against the Ninety-Nine. The day after the cure left Angel Point he spoke of Tarboe and his craft as the Ninety-and-Nine; and Tarboe hearing of this--for somehow he heard everything--immediately painted out the old name, and called her the Ninety-Nine, saying that she had been so blessed by the cure. Afterwards the Ninety-Nine had an increasing reputation for exploit and daring. In brief, Tarboe and his craft were smugglers, and to have trusted gossip would have been to say that the boat was as guilty as the man. Their names were much more notorious than sweet; and yet in Quebec men laughed as they shrugged their shoulders at them; for as many jovial things as evil were told of Tarboe. When it became known that a dignitary of the Church had been given a case of splendid wine, which had come in a roundabout way to him, men waked in the night and laughed, to the annoyance of their wives; for the same dignitary had preached a powerful sermon against smugglers and the receivers of stolen goods. It was a sad thing for monsignor to be called a Ninety-Niner, as were all good friends of Tarboe, high and low. But when he came to know, after the wine had been leisurely drunk and becomingly praised, he brought his influence to bear in civic places, so that there was nothing left to do but to corner Tarboe at last. It was in the height of summer, when there was little to think of in the old fortressed city, and a dart after a brigand appealed to the romantic natures of the idle French folk, common and gentle. Through clouds of rank tobacco smoke, and in the wash of their bean soup, the habitants discussed the fate of "Black Tarboe," and officers of the garrison and idle ladies gossiped at the Citadel and at Murray Bay of the freebooting gentlemen, whose Ninety-Nine had furnished forth many a table in the great walled city. But Black Tarboe himself was down at Anticosti, waiting for a certain merchantman. Passing vessels saw the Ninety-Nine anchored in an open bay, flying its flag flippantly before the world--a rag of black sheepskin, with the wool on, in profane keeping with its name. There was no attempt at hiding, no skulking behind a point, or scurrying from observation, but an indolent and insolent waiting--for something. "Black Tarboe's getting reckless," said one captain coming in, and another, going out, grinned as he remembered the talk at Quebec, and thought of the sport provided for the Ninety-Nine when she should come up stream; as she must in due time, for Tarboe's home was on the Isle of Days, and was he not fond and proud of his daughter Joan to a point of folly? He was not alone in his admiration of Joan, for the cure at Isle of Days said high things of her. Perhaps this was because she was unlike most other girls, and women too, in that she had a sense of humour, got from having mixed with choice spirits who visited her father and carried out at Angel Point a kind of freemasonry, which had few rites and many charges and countercharges. She had that almost impossible gift in a woman--the power of telling a tale whimsically. It was said that once, when Orvay Lafarge, a new Inspector of Customs, came to spy out the land, she kept him so amused by her quaint wit, that he sat in the doorway gossiping with her, while Tarboe and two others unloaded and safely hid away a cargo of liquors from the Ninety-Nine. And one of the men, as cheerful as Joan herself, undertook to carry a little keg of brandy into the house, under the very nose of the young inspector, who had sought to mark his appointment by the detection and arrest of Tarboe single-handed. He had never met Tarboe or Tarboe's daughter when he made his boast. If his superiors had known that Loco Bissonnette, Tarboe's jovial lieutenant, had carried the keg of brandy into the house in a water-pail, not fifteen feet from where Lafarge sat with Joan, they might have asked for his resignation. True, the thing was cleverly done, for Bissonnette made the water spill quite naturally against his leg, and when he turned to Joan and said in a crusty way that he didn't care if he spilled all the water in the pail, he looked so like an unwilling water-carrier that Joan for one little moment did not guess. When she understood, she laughed till the tears came to her eyes, and presently, because Lafarge seemed hurt, gave him to understand that he was upon his honour if she told him what it was. He consenting, she, still laughing, asked him into the house, and then drew the keg from the pail, before his eyes, and, tapping it, gave him some liquor, which he accepted without churlishness. He found nothing in this to lessen her in his eyes, for he knew that women have no civic virtues. He drank to their better acquaintance with few compunctions; a matter not scandalous, for there is nothing like a witty woman to turn a man's head, and there was not so much at stake after all. Tarboe had gone on for many a year till his trade seemed like the romance of law rather than its breach. It is safe to say that Lafarge was a less sincere if not a less blameless customs officer from this time forth. For humour on a woman's lips is a potent thing, as any man knows that has kissed it off in laughter. As we said, Tarboe lay rocking in a bight at Anticosti, with an empty hold and a scanty larder. Still, he was in no ill-humour, for he smoked much and talked more than common. Perhaps that was because Joan was with him--an unusual thing. She was as good a sailor as her father, but she did not care, nor did he, to have her mixed up with him in his smuggling. So far as she knew, she had never been on board the Ninety-Nine when it carried a smuggled cargo. She had not broken the letter of the law. Her father, on asking her to come on this cruise, had said that it was a pleasure trip to meet a vessel in the gulf. The pleasure had not been remarkable, though there had been no bad weather. The coast of Anticosti is cheerless, and it is possible even to tire of sun and water. True, Bissonnette played the concertina with passing sweetness, and sang as little like a wicked smuggler as one might think. But there were boundaries even to that, as there were to his love-making, which was, however, so interwoven with laughter that it was impossible to think the matter serious. Sometimes of an evening Joan danced on deck to the music of the concertina--dances which had their origin largely with herself fantastic, touched off with some unexpected sleight of foot--almost uncanny at times to Bissonnette, whose temperament could hardly go her distance when her mood was as this. Tarboe looked on with a keener eye and understanding, for was she not bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh? Who was he that he should fail to know her? He saw the moonlight play on her face and hair, and he waved his head with the swaying of her body, and smacked his lips in thought of the fortune which, smuggling days over, would carry them up to St. Louis Street, Quebec, there to dwell as in a garden of good things. After many days had passed, Joan tired of the concertina, of her own dancing, of her father's tales, and became inquisitive. So at last she said: "Father, what's all this for?" Tarboe did not answer her at once, but, turning to Bissonnette, asked him to play "The Demoiselle with the Scarlet Hose." It was a gay little demoiselle according to Bissonnette, and through the creaking, windy gaiety Tarboe and his daughter could talk without being heard by the musician. Tarboe lit another cigar--that badge of greatness in the eyes of his fellow-habitants, and said: "What's all this for, Joan? Why, we're here for our health." His teeth bit on the cigar with enjoyable emphasis. "If you don't tell me what's in the wind, you'll be sorry. Come, where's the good? I've got as much head as you have, father, and--" "Mon Dieu! Much more. That's not the question. It was to be a surprise to you." "Pshaw! You can only have one minute of surprise, and you can have months of fun looking out for a thing. I don't want surprises; I want what you've got--the thing that's kept you good-tempered while we lie here like snails on the rocks." "Well, my cricket, if that's the way you feel, here you are. It is a long story, but I will make it short. Once there was a pirate called Brigond, and he brought into a bay on the coast of Labrador a fortune in some kegs--gold, gold! He hid it in a cave, wrapping around it the dead bodies of two men. It is thought that one can never find it so. He hid it, and sailed away. He was captured, and sent to prison in France for twenty years. Then he come back with a crew and another ship, and sailed into the bay, but his ship went down within sight of the place. And so the end of him and all. But wait. There was one man, the mate on the first voyage. He had been put in prison also. He did not get away as soon as Brigond. When he was free, he come to the captain of a ship that I know, the Free-and-Easy, that sails to Havre, and told him the story, asking for passage to Quebec. The captain--Gobal--did not believe it, but said he would bring him over on the next voyage. Gobal come to me and told me all there was to tell. I said that it was a true story, for Pretty Pierre told me once he saw Brigond's ship go down in the bay; but he would not say how, or why, or where. Pierre would not lie in a thing like that, and--" "Why didn't he get the gold himself?" "What is money to him? He is as a gipsy. To him the money is cursed. He said so. Eh bien! some wise men are fools, one way or another. Well, I told Gobal I would give the man the Ninety-Nine for the cruise and search, and that we should divide the gold between us, if it was found, taking out first enough to make a dot for you and a fine handful for Bissonnette. But no, shake not your head like that. It shall be so. Away went Gobal four months ago, and I get a letter from him weeks past, just after Pentecost, to say he would be here some time in the first of July, with the man. "Well, it is a great game. The man is a pirate, but it does not matter-- he has paid for that. I thought you would be glad of a fine adventure like that, so I said to you, Come." "But, father--" "If you do not like you can go on with Gobal in the Free-and-Easy, and you shall be landed at the Isle of Days. That's all. We're waiting here for Gobal. He promised to stop just outside this bay and land our man on us. Then, blood of my heart, away we go after the treasure!" Joan's eyes flashed. Adventure was in her as deep as life itself. She had been cradled in it, reared in it, lived with it, and here was no law- breaking. Whose money was it? No one's: for who should say what ship it was, or what people were robbed by Brigond and those others? Gold--that was a better game than wine and brandy, and for once her father would be on a cruise which would not be, as it were, sailing in forbidden waters. "When do you expect Gobal?" she asked eagerly. "He ought to have been here a week ago. Maybe he has had a bad voyage, or something." "He's sure to come?" "Of course. I found out about that. She's got a big consignment to people in Quebec. Something has gone wrong, but she'll be here--yes." "What will you do if you get the money?" she asked. Tarboe laughed heartily. "My faith! Come play up those scarlet hose, Bissonnette! My faith, I'll go into Parliament at Quebec. Thunder! I will have sport with them. I'll reform the customs. There shan't be any more smuggling. The people of Quebec shall drink no more good wine--no one except Black Tarboe, the member for Isle of Days." Again he laughed, and his eyes spilt fire like revolving wheels. For a moment Joan was quiet; her face was shining like the sun on a river. She saw more than her father, for she saw release. A woman may stand by a man who breaks the law, but in her heart she always has bitterness, for that the world shall speak well of herself and what she loves is the secret desire of every woman. In her heart she never can defy the world as does a man. She had carried off the situation as became the daughter of a daring adventurer, who in more stirring times might have been a Du Lhut or a Rob Roy, but she was sometimes tired of the fighting, sometimes wishful that she could hold her position easier. Suppose the present good cure should die and another less considerate arrive, how hard might her position become! Then, she had a spirit above her station, as have most people who know the world and have seen something of its forbidden side; for it is notable that wisdom comes not alone from loving good things, but from having seen evil as well as good. Besides Joan was not a woman to go singly to her life's end. There was scarcely a man on Isle of Days and in the parish of Ste. Eunice, on the mainland, but would gladly have taken to wife the daughter of Tarboe the smuggler, and it is likely that the cure of either parish would not have advised against it. Joan had had the taste of the lawless, and now she knew, as she sat and listened to Bissonnette's music, that she also could dance for joy, in the hope of a taste of the lawful. With this money, if it were got, there could be another life--in Quebec. She could not forbear laughing now as she remembered that first day she had seen Orvay Lafarge, and she said to Bissonnette: "Loce, do you mind the keg in the water-pail?" Bissonnette paused on an out-pull, and threw back his head with a soundless laugh, then played the concertina into contortions. "That Lafarge! H'm! He is very polite; but pshaw, it is no use that, in whisky-running! To beat a great man, a man must be great. Tarboe Noir can lead M'sieu' Lafarge all like that!" It seemed as if he were pulling the nose of the concertina. Tarboe began tracing a kind of maze with his fingers on the deck, his eyes rolling outward like an endless puzzle. But presently he turned sharp on Joan. "How many times have you met him?" he asked. "Oh, six or seven--eight or nine, perhaps." Her father stared. "Eight or nine? By the holy! Is it like that? Where have you seen him?" "Twice at our home, as you know; two or three times at dances at the Belle Chatelaine, and the rest when we were at Quebec in May. He is amusing, M'sieu' Lafarge." "Yes, two of a kind," remarked Tarboe drily; and then he told his schemes to Joan, letting Bissonnette hang up the "The Demoiselle with the Scarlet Hose," and begin "The Coming of the Gay Cavalier." She entered into his plans with spirit, and together they speculated what bay it might be, of the many on the coast of Labrador. They spent two days longer waiting, and then at dawn a merchantman came sauntering up to anchor. She signalled to the Ninety-Nine. In five minutes Tarboe was climbing up the side of the Free-and-Easy, and presently was in Gobal's cabin, with a glass of wine in his hand. "What kept you, Gobal?" he asked. "You're ten days late, at least." "Storm and sickness--broken mainmast and smallpox." Gobal was not cheerful. Tarboe caught at something. "You've got our man?" Gobal drank off his wine slowly. "Yes," he said. "Well?--Why don't you fetch him?" "You can see him below." "The man has legs, let him walk here. Hello, my Gobal, what's the matter? If he's here bring him up. We've no time to lose." "Tarboe, the fool got smallpox, and died three hours ago--the tenth man since we started. We're going to give him to the fishes. They're putting him in his linen now." Tarboe's face hardened. Disaster did not dismay him, it either made him ugly or humourous, and one phase was as dangerous as the other. "D'ye mean to say," he groaned, "that the game is up? Is it all finished? Sweat o' my soul, my skin crawls like hot glass! Is it the end, eh? The beast, to die!" Gobal's eyes glistened. He had sent up the mercury, he would now bring it down. "Not such a beast as you think. Alive pirate, a convict, as comrade in adventure, is not sugar in the teeth. This one was no better than the worst. Well, he died. That was awkward. But he gave me the chart of the bay before he died--and that was damn square." Tarboe held out his hand eagerly, the big fingers bending claw-like. "Give it me, Gobal," he said. "Wait. There's no hurry. Come along, there's the bell: they're going to drop him." He coolly motioned, and passed out from the cabin to the ship's side. Tarboe kept his tongue from blasphemy, and his hand from the captain's shoulder, for he knew only too well that Gobal held the game in his hands. They leaned over and saw two sailors with something on a plank. "We therefore commit his body to the deep, in the knowledge of the Judgment Day--let her go!" grunted Gobal; and a long straight canvas bundle shot with a swishing sound beneath the water. "It was rough on him too," he continued. "He waited twenty years to have his chance again. Damn me, if I didn't feel as if I'd hit him in the eye, somehow, when he begged me to keep him alive long enough to have a look at the rhino. But it wasn't no use. He had to go, and I told him so. "Then he did the fine thing: he give me the chart. But he made me swear on a book of the Mass that if we got the gold we'd send one-half his share to a woman in Paris, and the rest to his brother, a priest at Nancy. I'll keep my word--but yes! Eh, Tarboe?" "You can keep your word for me! What, you think, Gobal, there is no honour in Black Tarboe, and you've known me ten years! Haven't I always kept my word like a clock?" Gobal stretched out his hand. "Like the sun-sure. That's enough. We'll stand by my oath. You shall see the chart." Going again inside the cabin, Gobal took out a map grimed with ceaseless fingering, and showed it to Tarboe, putting his finger on the spot where the treasure lay. "The Bay of Belle Amour!" cried Tarboe, his eyes flashing. "Ah, I know it! That's where Gaspard the pilot lived. It's only forty leagues or so from here." His fingers ran here and there on the map. "Yes, yes," he continued, "it's so, but he hasn't placed the reef right. Ah, here is how Brigond's ship went down! There's a needle of rock in the bay. It isn't here." Gobal handed the chart over. "I can't go with you, but I take your word; I can say no more. If you cheat me I'll kill you; that's all." "Let me give a bond," said Tarboe quickly. "If I saw much gold perhaps I couldn't trust myself, but there's someone to be trusted, who'll swear for me. If my daughter Joan give her word--" "Is she with you?" "Yes, in the Ninety-Nine, now. I'll send Bissonnette for her. Yes, yes, I'll send, for gold is worse than bad whisky when it gets into a man's head. Joan will speak for me." Ten minutes later Joan was in Gobal's cabin, guaranteeing for her father the fulfilment of his bond. An hour afterwards the Free-and-Easy was moving up stream with her splintered mast and ragged sails, and the Ninety-Nine was looking up and over towards the Bay of Belle Amour. She reached it in the late afternoon of the next day. Bissonnette did not know the object of the expedition, but he had caught the spirit of the affair, and his eyes were like spots of steel as he held the sheet or took his turn at the tiller. Joan's eyes were now on the sky, now on the sail, and now on the land, weighing as wisely as her father the advantage of the wind, yet dwelling on that cave where skeletons kept ward over the spoils of a pirate ship. They arrived, and Tarboe took the Ninety-Nine warily in on a little wind off the land. He came near sharing the fate of Brigond, for the yawl grazed the needle of the rock that, hiding away in the water, with a nose out for destruction, awaits its victims. They reached safe anchorage, but by the time they landed it was night, with, however, a good moon showing. All night they searched, three silent, eager figures, drawing step by step nearer the place where the ancient enemy of man was barracked about by men's bodies. It was Joan who, at last, as dawn drew up, discovered the hollow between two great rocks where the treasure lay. A few minutes' fierce digging, and the kegs of gold were disclosed, showing through the ribs of two skeletons. Joan shrank back, but the two men tossed aside the rattling bones, and presently the kegs were standing between them on the open shore. Bissonnette's eyes were hungry--he knew now the wherefore of the quest. He laughed outright, a silly, loud, hysterical laugh. Tarboe's eyes shifted from the sky to the river, from the river to the kegs, from the kegs to Bissonnette. On him they stayed a moment. Bissonnette shrank back. Tarboe was feeling for the first time in his life the deadly suspicion which comes with ill-gotten wealth. This passed as his eyes and Joan's met, for she had caught the melodrama, the overstrain; Bissonnette's laugh had pointed the situation; and her sense of humour had prevailed. "La, la," she said, with a whimsical quirk of the head, and no apparent relevancy: "Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home, Your house is on fire, and your children all gone." The remedy was good. Tarboe's eyes came again to their natural liveliness, and Bissonnette said: "My throat's like a piece of sand-paper." Tarboe handed over a brandy flask, after taking a pull himself, and then sitting down on one of the kegs, he said: "It is as you see, and now Angel Point very quick. To get it there safe, that's the thing!" Then, scanning the sky closely: "It's for a handsome day, and the wind goes to bear us up fine. Good! Well, for you, Bissonnette, there shall be a thousand dollars, you shall have the Belle Chatelaine Inn and the little lady at Point Pierrot. For the rest, you shall keep a quiet tongue, eh? If not, my Bissonnette, we shall be the best of strangers, and you shall not be happy. Hein?" Bissonnette's eyes flashed. "The Belle Chatelaine? Good! That is enough. My tongue is tied; I cannot speak; it is fastened with a thousand pegs." "Very good, a thousand gold pegs, and you shall never pull them. The little lady will have you with them, not without; and unless you stand by me, no one shall have you at any price--by God!" He stood up, but Joan put out her hand. "You have been speaking, now it is my turn. Don't cry cook till you have the venison home. What is more, I gave my word to Gobal, and I will keep it. I will be captain. No talking! When you've got the kegs in the cellar at Angel Point, good! But now--come, my comrades, I am your captain!" She was making the thing a cheerful adventure, and the men now swung the kegs on their shoulders and carried them to the boat. In another half- hour they were under way in the gaudy light of an orange sunrise, a simmering wind from the sea lifting them up the river, and the grey-red coast of Labrador shrinking sullenly back. About this time, also, a Government cutter was putting out from under the mountain-wall at Quebec, its officer in command having got renewed orders from the Minister to bring in Tarboe the smuggler. And when Mr. Martin, the inspector in command of the expedition, was ordered to take with him Mr. Orvay Lafarge and five men, "effectively armed," it was supposed by the romantic Minister that the matter was as good as done. What Mr. Orvay Lafarge did when he got the word, was to go straight to his hat-peg, then leave the office, walk to the little club where he spent leisure hours, called office hours by people who wished to be precise as well as suggestive,--sit down, and raise a glass to his lips. After which he threw himself back in his chair and said: "Well, I'm particularly damned!" A few hours later they were away on their doubtful exploit. II. THE DEFENCE On the afternoon of the second day after she left Labrador, the Ninety- Nine came rippling near Isle of Fires, not sixty miles from her destination, catching a fair wind on her quarter off the land. Tarboe was in fine spirits, Joan was as full of songs as a canary, and Bissonnette was as busy watching her as in keeping the nose of the Ninety-Nine pointing for Cap de Gloire. Tarboe was giving the sail full to the wind, and thinking how he would just be able to reach Angel Point and get his treasure housed before mass in the morning. Mass! How many times had he laughed as he sat in church and heard the cure have his gentle fling at smuggling! To think that the hiding-place for his liquor was the unused, almost unknown, cellar of that very church, built a hundred years before as a refuge from the Indians, which he had reached by digging a tunnel from the shore to its secret passage! That was why the customs officers never found anything at Angel Point, and that was why Tarboe much loved going to mass. He sometimes thought he could catch the flavour of the brands as he leaned his forehead on the seat before him. But this time he would go to mass with a fine handful of those gold pieces in his pocket, just to keep him in a commendable mood. He laughed out loud at the thought of doing so within a stone's throw of a fortune and nose-shot of fifty kegs of brandy. As he did so, Bissonnette gave a little cry. They were coming on to Cap de Gloire at the moment, and Tarboe and Joan, looking, saw a boat standing off towards the mainland, as if waiting for them. Tarboe gave a roar, and called to Joan to take the tiller. He snatched a glass and levelled it. "A Government tug!" he said, "and tete de Diable! there's your tall Lafarge among 'em, Joan! I'd know him by his height miles off." Joan lost colour a trifle and then got courage. "Pshaw," she said, "what does he want?" "Want? Want? He wants the Ninety-Nine and her cargo; but by the sun of my soul, he'll get her across the devil's gridiron! See here, my girl, this ain't any sport with you aboard. Bissonnette and I could make a stand for it alone, but what's to become of you? I don't want you mixed up in the mess." The girl was eyeing the Government boat. "But I'm in it, and I can't be out of it, and I don't want to be out now that I am in. Let me see the glass." She took it in one hand. "Yes, it must be M'sieu' Lafarge," she said, frowning. "He might have stayed out of this." "When he's got orders, he has to go," answered her father; "but he must look out, for a gun is a gun, and I don't pick and choose. Besides, I've no contraband this cruise, and I'll let no one stick me up." "There are six or seven of them," said Joan debatingly. "Bring her up to the wind," shouted Tarboe to Bissonnette. The mainsail closed up several points, the Ninety-Nine slackened her pace and edged in closer to the land. "Now, my girl," said Tarboe, "this is how it stands. If we fight, there's someone sure to be hurt, and if I'm hurt, where'll you be?" Bissonnette interposed. "We've got nothing contraband. The gold is ours." "Trust that crew--but no!" cried Tarboe, with an oath. "The Government would hold the rhino for possible owners, and then give it to a convent or something. They shan't put foot here. They've said war, and they'll get it. They're signalling us to stop, and they're bearing down. There goes a shot!" The girl had been watching the Government boat coolly. Now that it began to bear on, she answered her father's question. "Captain," she said, like a trusted mate, "we'll bluff them." Her eyes flashed with the intelligence of war. "Here, quick, I'll take the tiller. They haven't seen Bissonnette yet; he sits low. Call all hands on deck--shout! Then, see: Loce will go down the middle hatch, get a gun, come up with it on his shoulder, and move on to the fo'castle. Then he'll drop down the fo'castle hatch, get along to the middle hatch, and come up again with the gun, now with his cap, now without it, now with his coat, now without it. He'll do that till we've got twenty or thirty men on deck! They'll think we've been laying for them, and they'll not come on--you see!" Tarboe ripped out an oath. "It's a great game," he said, and a moment afterwards, in response to his roars, Bissonnette came up the hatch with his gun showing bravely; then again and again, now with his cap, now without, now with his coat, now with none, anon with a tarpaulin over his shoulders grotesquely. Meanwhile Tarboe trained his one solitary little cannon on the enemy, roaring his men into place. From the tug it seemed that a large and well-armed crew were ranging behind the bulwarks of the Ninety-Nine. Mr. Martin, the inspector, saw with alarm Bissonnette's constantly appearing rifle. "They've arranged a plant for us, Mr. Lafarge. What do you think we'd better do?" he asked. "Fight!" answered Lafarge laconically. He wished to put himself on record, for he was the only one on board who saw through the ruse. "But I've counted at least twenty men, all armed, and we've only five." "As you please, sir," said Lafarge bluntly, angry at being tricked, but inwardly glad to be free of the business, for he pictured to himself that girl at the tiller--he had seen her as she went aft--in a police court at Quebec. Yet his instinct for war and his sense of duty impelled him to say: "Still, sir, fight!" "No, no, Mr. Lafarge," excitedly rejoined his chief. "I cannot risk it. We must go back for more men and bring along a Gatling. Slow down!" he called. Lafarge turned on his heel with an oath, and stood watching the Ninety-Nine. "She'll laugh at me till I die!" he said to himself presently, as the tug turned up stream and pointed for Quebec. "Well, I'm jiggered!" he added, as a cannon shot came ringing over the water after them. He was certain also that he heard loud laughter. No doubt he was right; for as the tug hurried on, Tarboe ran to Joan, hugged her like a bear, and roared till he ached. Then she paid out the sheet, they clapped on all sail, and travelled in the track of the enemy. Tarboe's spirit was roused. He was not disposed to let his enemy off on even such terms, so he now turned to Joan and said: "What say you to a chase of the gentleman?" Joan was in a mood for such a dare-devil adventure. For three people, one of whom was a girl, to give chase to a well-manned, well-armed Government boat was too good a relish to be missed. Then, too, it had just occurred to her that a parley would be amusing, particularly if she and Lafarge were the truce-bearers. So she said: "That is very good." "Suppose they should turn and fight?" suggested Bissonnette. "That's true--here's m'am'selle," agreed Tarboe. "But, see," said Joan. "If we chase them and call upon them to surrender--and after all, we can prove that we had nothing contraband--what a splendid game it'll be!" Mischief flicked in her eyes. "Good!" said Tarboe. "To-morrow I shall be a rich man, and then they'll not dare to come again." So saying, he gave the sail to the wind, and away the Ninety-Nine went after the one ewe lamb of the Government. Mr. Martin saw her coming, and gave word for all steam. It would be a pretty game, for the wind was in Tarboe's favour, and the general advantage was not greatly with the tug. Mr. Martin was now anxious indeed to get out of the way of the smuggler. Lafarge made one restraining effort, then settled into an ironical mood. Yet a half-dozen times he was inclined to blurt out to Martin what he believed was the truth. A man, a boy, and a girl to bluff them that way! In his bones he felt that it was the girl who was behind this thing. Of one matter he was sure--they had no contraband stuff on board, or Tarboe would not have brought his daughter along. He could not understand the attitude, for Tarboe would scarcely have risked the thing out of mere bravado. Why not call a truce? Perhaps he could solve the problem. They were keeping a tolerably safe distance apart, and there was no great danger of the Ninety-Nine overhauling them even if it so willed; but Mr. Martin did not know that. What he said to his chief had its effect, and soon there was a white flag flying on the tug. It was at once answered with a white handkerchief of Joan's. Then the tug slowed up, the Ninety-Nine came on gaily, and at a good distance came up to the wind, and stood off. "What do you want?" asked Tarboe through his speaking-tube. "A parley," called Mr. Martin. "Good; send an officer," answered Tarboe. A moment after, Lafarge was in a boat rowing over to meet another boat rowed by Joan alone, who, dressed in a suit of Bissonnette's, had prevailed on her father to let her go. The two boats nearing each other, Joan stood up, saluting, and Lafarge did the same. "Good-day, m'sieu'," said Joan, with assumed brusqueness, mischief lurking about her mouth. "What do you want?" "Good-day, monsieur; I did not expect to confer with you." "M'sieu'," said Joan, with well-acted dignity, "if you prefer to confer with the captain or Mr. Bissonnette, whom I believe you know in the matter of a pail, and--" "No, no; pardon me, monsieur," said Lafarge more eagerly than was good for the play, "I am glad to confer with you, you will understand--you will understand--" He paused. "What will I understand?" "You will understand that I understand!" Lafarge waved meaningly towards the Ninety-Nine, but it had no effect at all. Joan would not give the game over into his hands. "That sounds like a charade or a puzzle game. We are gentlemen on a serious errand, aren't we?" "Yes," answered Lafarge, "perfect gentlemen on a perfectly serious errand!" "Very well, m'sieu'. Have you come to surrender?" The splendid impudence of the thing stunned Lafarge, but he said: "I suppose one or the other ought to surrender; and naturally," he added with slow point, "it should be the weaker." "Very well. Our captain is willing to consider conditions. You came down on us to take us--a quiet craft sailing in free waters. You attack us without cause. We summon all hands, and you run. We follow, you ask for truce. It is granted. We are not hard--no. We only want our rights. Admit them; we'll make surrender easy, and the matter is over." Lafarge gasped. She was forcing his hand. She would not understand his oblique suggestions. He saw only one way now, and that was to meet her, boast for boast. "I haven't come to surrender," he said, "but to demand." "M'sieu'," Joan said grandly, "there's nothing more to say. Carry word to your captain that we'll overhaul him by sundown, and sink him before supper." Lafarge burst out laughing. "Well, by the Lord, but you're a swashbuckler, Joan--" "M'sieu'--" "Oh, nonsense! I tell you, nonsense! Let's have over with this, my girl. You're the cleverest woman on the continent, but there's a limit to everything. Here, tell me now, and if you answer me straight I'll say no more." "M'sieu', I am here to consider conditions, not to--" "Oh, for God's sake, Joan! Tell me now, have you got anything contraband on board? There'll be a nasty mess about the thing, for me and all of us, and why can't we compromise? I tell you honestly we'd have come on, if I hadn't seen you aboard." Joan turned her head back with a laugh. "My poor m'sieu'! You have such bad luck. Contraband? Let me see? Liquors and wines and tobacco are contraband. Is it not so?" Lafarge nodded. "Is money--gold--contraband?" "Money? No; of course not, and you know it. Why won't you be sensible? You're getting me into a bad hole, and--" "I want to see how you'll come out. If you come out well--" She paused quaintly. "Yes, if I come out well--" "If you come out very well, and we do not sink you before supper, I may ask you to come and see me." "H'm! Is that all? After spoiling my reputation, I'm to be let come and see you." "Isn't that enough to start with? What has spoiled your reputation?" "A man, a boy, and a slip of a girl." He looked meaningly enough at her now. She laughed. "See," he added; "give me a chance. Let me search the Ninety-Nine for contraband,--that's all I've got to do with,--and then I can keep quiet about the rest. If there's no contraband, whatever else there is, I'll hold my tongue." "I've told you what there is." He did not understand. "Will you let me search?" Joan's eyes flashed. "Once and for all, no, Orvay Lafarge. I am the daughter of a man whom you and your men would have killed or put in the dock. He's been a smuggler, and I know it. Who has he robbed? Not the poor, not the needy; but a rich Government that robs also. Well, in the hour when he ceases to be a smuggler for ever, armed men come to take him. Why didn't they do so before? Why so pious all at once? No; I am first the daughter of my father, and afterwards--" "And afterwards?" "What to-morrow may bring forth." Lafarge became very serious. "I must go back. Mr. Martin is signalling, and your father is calling. I do not understand, but you're the one woman in the world for my money, and I'm ready to stand by that and leave the customs to-morrow if need be." Joan's eyes blazed, her cheek was afire. "Leave it to-day. Leave it now. Yes; that's my one condition. If you want me, and you say you do, come aboard the Ninety-Nine, and for to-day be one of us-to-morrow what you will." "What I will? What I will, Joan? Do you mean it?" "Yes. Pshaw! Your duty? Don't I know how the Ministers and the officers have done their duty at Quebec? It's all nonsense. You must make your choice once for all now." Lafarge stood a moment thinking. "Joan, I'll do it. I'd go hunting in hell at your bidding. But see. Everything's changed. I couldn't fight against you, but I can fight for you. All must be open now. You've said there's no contraband. Well, I'll tell Mr. Martin so, but I'll tell him also that you've only a crew of two--" "Of three, now!" "Of three! I will do my duty in that, then resign and come over to you, if I can." If you can? You mean that they may fire on you?" "I can't tell what they may do. But I must deal fair." Joan's face was grave. "Very well, I will wait for you here." "They might hit you." "But no. They can't hit a wall. Go on, my dear." They saluted, and, as Lafarge turned away, Joan said, with a little mocking laugh, "Tell him that he must surrender, or we'll sink him before supper." Lafarge nodded, and drew away quickly towards the tug. His interview with Mr. Martin was brief, and he had tendered his resignation, though it was disgracefully informal, and was over the side of the boat again and rowing quickly away before his chief recovered his breath. Then Mr. Martin got a large courage. He called on his men to fire when Lafarge was about two hundred and fifty feet from the tug. The shots rattled about him. He turned round coolly and called out, "Coward-we'll sink you before supper!" A minute afterwards there came another shot, and an oar dropped from his hand. But now Joan was rowing rapidly towards him, and presently was alongside. "Quick, jump inhere," she said. He did so, and she rowed on quickly. Tarboe did not understand, but now his blood was up, and as another volley sent bullets dropping around the two he gave the Ninety-Nine to the wind, and she came bearing down smartly to them. In a few moments they were safely on board, and Joan explained. Tarboe grasped Lafarge's unmaimed hand,--the other Joan was caring for,--and swore that fighting was the only thing left now. Mr. Martin had said the same, but when he saw the Ninety-Nine determined, menacing, and coming on, he became again uncertain, and presently gave orders to make for the lighthouse on the opposite side of the river. He could get over first, for the Ninety-Nine would not have the wind so much in her favour, and there entrench himself; for even yet Bissonnette amply multiplied was in his mind--Lafarge had not explained that away. He was in the neighbourhood of some sunken rocks of which he and his man at the wheel did not know accurately, and in making what he thought was a clear channel he took a rock with great force, for they were going full steam ahead. Then came confusion, and in getting out the one boat it was swamped and a man nearly drowned. Meanwhile the tug was fast sinking. While they were throwing off their clothes, the Ninety-Nine came down, and stood off. On one hand was the enemy, on the other the water, with the shore half a mile distant. "Do you surrender?" called out Tarboe. "Can't we come aboard without that?" feebly urged Mr. Martin. "I'll see you damned first, Mr. Martin. Come quick, or I'll give you what for." "We surrender," answered the officer gently. A few minutes later he and his men were on board, with their rifles stacked in a corner at Bissonnette's hand. Then Tarboe brought the Ninety-Nine close to the wreck, and with his little cannon put a ball into her. This was the finish. She shook her nose, shivered, shot down like a duck, and was gone. Mr. Martin was sad even to tears. "Now, my beauties," said Tarboe, "now that I've got you safe, I'll show you the kind of cargo I've got." A moment afterwards he hoisted a keg on deck. "Think that's whisky?" he asked. "Lift it, Mr. Martin." Mr. Martin obeyed. "Shake it," he added. Mr. Martin did so. "Open it, Mr. Martin." He held out a hatchet-hammer. The next moment a mass of gold pieces yellowed to their eyes. Mr. Martin fell back, breathing hard. "Is that contraband, Mr. Martin?" "Treasure-trove," humbly answered the stricken officer. "That's it, and in a month, Mr. Martin, I'll be asking the chief of your department to dinner." Meanwhile Lafarge saw how near he had been to losing a wife and a fortune. Arrived off Isle of Day; Tarboe told Mr. Martin and his men that if they said "treasure-trove" till they left the island their live would not be worth "a tinker's damn." When the had sworn, he took them to Angel Point, fed then royally, gave them excellent liquor to drink, and sent them in a fishing-smack with Bissonnette to Quebec where, arriving, they told strange tales. Bissonnette bore a letter to a certain banker in Quebec, who already had done business with Tarboe, and next midnight Tarboe himself, with Gobal, Lafarge, Bissonnette, and another, came knocking at the banker's door, each carrying a keg on his shoulder and armed to the teeth. And, what was singular two stalwart police-officers walked behind with comfortable and approving looks. A month afterwards Lafarge and Joan were married in the parish church at Isle of Days, and it was said that Mr. Martin, who, for some strange reason, was allowed to retain his position in the customs, sent a present. The wedding ended with a sensation, for just as the benediction was pronounced a loud report was heard beneath the floor of the church. There was great commotion, but Tarboe whispered in the curb's ear, and he blushing, announced that it was the bursting of a barrel. A few minutes afterwards the people of the parish knew the old hiding-place of Tarboe's contraband, and, though the cure rebuked them, they roared with laughter at the knowledge. "So droll, so droll, our Tarboe there!" they shouted, for already they began to look upon him as their Seigneur. In time the cure forgave him also. Tarboe seldom left Isle of Days, save when he went to visit his daughter, in St. Louis Street, Quebec, not far from the Parliament House, where Orvay Lafarge is a member of the Ministry. The ex-smuggler was a member of the Assembly for three months, but after defeating his own party on a question of tariff, he gave a portrait of himself to the Chamber, and threw his seat into the hands of his son-in-law. At the Belle Chatelaine, where he often goes, he sometimes asks Bissonnette to play "The Demoiselle with the Scarlet Hose." ROMANY OF THE SNOWS I When old Throng the trader, trembling with sickness and misery, got on his knees to Captain Halby and groaned, "She didn't want to go; they dragged her off; you'll fetch her back, won't ye?--she always had a fancy for you, cap'n," Pierre shrugged a shoulder and said: "But you stole her when she was in her rock-a-by, my Throng--you and your Manette." "Like a match she was--no bigger," continued the old man. "Lord, how that stepmother bully-ragged her, and her father didn't care a darn. He'd half a dozen others--Manette and me hadn't none. We took her and used her like as if she was an angel, and we brought her off up here. Haven't we set store by her? Wasn't it 'cause we was lonely an' loved her we took her? Hasn't everybody stood up and said there wasn't anyone like her in the North? Ain't I done fair by her always--ain't I? An' now, when this cough 's eatin' my life out, and Manette 's gone, and there ain't a soul but Duc the trapper to put a blister on to me, them brutes ride up from over the border, call theirselves her brothers, an' drag her off!" He was still on his knees. Pierre reached over and lightly kicked a moccasined foot. "Get up, Jim Throng," he said. "Holy! do you think the law moves because an old man cries? Is it in the statutes?--that's what the law says. Does it come within the act? Is it a trespass--an assault and battery? --a breach of the peace?--a misdemeanour? Victoria--So and So: that's how the law talks. Get on your knees to Father Corraine, not to Captain Halby, Jimmy Throng." Pierre spoke in a half-sinister, ironical way, for between him and Captain Halby's Riders of the Plains there was no good feeling. More than once he had come into conflict with them, more than once had they laid their hands on him--and taken them off again in due time. He had foiled them as to men they wanted; he had defied them--but he had helped them too, when it seemed right to him; he had sided with them once or twice when to do so was perilous to himself. He had sneered at them, he did not like them, nor they him. The sum of it was, he thought them brave--and stupid; and he knew that the law erred as often as it set things right. The Trader got up and stood between the two men, coughing much, his face straining, his eyes bloodshot, as he looked anxiously from Pierre to Halby. He was the sad wreck of a strong man. Nothing looked strong about him now save his head, which, with its long grey hair, seemed badly balanced by the thin neck, through which the terrible cough was hacking. "Only half a lung left," he stammered, as soon as he could speak, "an' Duc can't fix the boneset, camomile, and whisky, as she could. An' he waters the whisky--curse-his-soul!" The last three words were spoken through another spasm of coughing. "An' the blister--how he mucks the blister!" Pierre sat back on the table, laughing noiselessly, his white teeth shining. Halby, with one foot on a bench, was picking at the fur on his sleeve thoughtfully. His face was a little drawn, his lips were tight- pressed, and his eyes had a light of excitement. Presently he straightened himself, and, after a half-malicious look at Pierre, he said to Throng: "Where are they, do you say?" "They're at"--the old man coughed hard--"at Fort O'Battle." "What are they doing there?" "Waitin' till spring, when they'll fetch their cattle up an' settle there." "They want--Lydia--to keep house for them?" The old man writhed. "Yes, God's sake, that's it! An' they want Liddy to marry a devil called Borotte, with a thousand cattle or so--Pito the courier told me yesterday. Pito saw her, an' he said she was white like a sheet, an' called out to him as he went by. Only half a lung I got, an' her boneset and camomile 'd save it for a bit, mebbe--mebbe!" "It's clear," said Halby, "that they trespassed, and they haven't proved their right to her." "Tonnerre, what a thinker!" said Pierre, mocking. Halby did not notice. His was a solid sense of responsibility. "She is of age?" he half asked, half mused. "She's twenty-one," answered the old man, with difficulty. "Old enough to set the world right," suggested Pierre, still mocking. "She was forced away, she regarded you as her natural protector, she believed you her father: they broke the law," said the soldier. "There was Moses, and Solomon, and Caesar, and Socrates, and now....!" murmured Pierre in assumed abstraction. A red spot burned on Halby's high cheekbone for a minute, but he persistently kept his temper. "I'm expected elsewhere," he said at last. "I'm only one man, yet I wish I could go to-day--even alone. But--" "But you have a heart," said Pierre. "How wonderful--a heart! And there's the half a lung, and the boneset and camomile tea, and the blister, and the girl with an eye like a spot of rainbow, and the sacred law in a Remington rifle! Well, well! And to do it in the early morning--to wait in the shelter of the trees till some go to look after the horses, then enter the house, arrest those inside, and lay low for the rest." Halby looked over at Pierre astonished. Here was raillery and good advice all in a piece. "It isn't wise to go alone, for if there's trouble and I should go down, who's to tell the truth? Two could do it; but one--no, it isn't wise, though it would look smart enough." "Who said to go alone?" asked Pierre, scrawling on the table with a burnt match. "I have no men." Pierre looked up at the wall. "Throng has a good Snider there," he said. "Bosh! Throng can't go." The old man coughed and strained. "If it wasn't--only-half a lung, and I could carry the boneset 'long with us." Pierre slid off the table, came to the old man, and, taking him by the arms, pushed him gently into a chair. "Sit down; don't be a fool, Throng," he said. Then he turned to Halby: "You're a magistrate-- make me a special constable; I'll go, monsieur le capitaine--of no company." Halby stared. He knew Pierre's bravery, his ingenuity and daring. But this was the last thing he expected: that the malicious, railing little half-breed would work with him and the law. Pierre seemed to understand his thoughts, for he said: "It is not for you. I am sick for adventure, and then there is mademoiselle--such a finger she has for a ven'son pudding." Without a word Halby wrote on a leaf in his notebook, and presently handed the slip to Pierre. "That's your commission as a special constable," he said, "and here's the seal on it." He handed over a pistol. Pierre raised his eyebrows at it, but Halby continued: "It has the Government mark. But you'd better bring Throng's rifle too." Throng sat staring at the two men, his hands nervously shifting on his knees. "Tell Liddy," he said, "that the last batch of bread was sour-- Duc ain't no good-an' that I ain't had no relish sence she left. Tell her the cough gits lower down all the time. 'Member when she tended that felon o' yourn, Pierre?" Pierre looked at a sear on his finger and nodded. "She cut it too young; but she had the nerve! When do you start, captain? It's an eighty-mile ride." "At once," was the reply. "We can sleep to-night in the Jim-a-long-Jo" (a hut which the Company had built between two distant posts), "and get there at dawn day after to-morrow. The snow is light and we can travel quick. I have a good horse, and you--" "I have my black Tophet. He'll travel with your roan as on one snaffle- bar. That roan--you know where he come from?" "From the Dolright stud, over the Border." "That's wrong. He come from Greystop's paddock, where my Tophet was foaled; they are brothers. Yours was stole and sold to the Gover'ment; mine was bought by good hard money. The law the keeper of stolen goods, eh? But these two will go cinch to cinch all the way, like two brothers --like you and me." He could not help the touch of irony in his last words: he saw the amusing side of things, and all humour in him had a strain of the sardonic. "Brothers-in-law for a day or two," answered Halby drily. Within two hours they were ready to start. Pierre had charged Duc the incompetent upon matters for the old man's comfort, and had himself, with a curious sort of kindness, steeped the boneset and camomile in whisky, and set a cup of it near his chair. Then he had gone up to Throng's bedroom and straightened out and shook and "made" the corn-husk bed, which had gathered into lumps and rolls. Before he came down he opened a door near by and entered another room, shutting the door, and sitting down on a chair. A stovepipe ran through the room, and it was warm, though the window was frosted and the world seemed shut out. He looked round slowly, keenly interested. There was a dressing-table made of an old box; it was covered with pink calico, with muslin over this. A cheap looking-glass on it was draped with muslin and tied at the top with a bit of pink ribbon. A common bone comb lay near the glass, and beside it a beautiful brush with an ivory back and handle. This was the only expensive thing in the room. He wondered, but did not go near it yet. There was a little eight-day clock on a bracket which had been made by hand--pasteboard darkened with umber and varnished; a tiny little set of shelves made of the wood of cigar-boxes; and--alas, the shifts of poverty to be gay!--an easy-chair made of the staves of a barrel and covered with poor chintz. Then there was a photograph or two, in little frames made from the red cedar of cigar-boxes, with decorations of putty, varnished, and a long panel screen of birch-bark of Indian workmanship. Some dresses hung behind the door. The bedstead was small, the frame was of hickory, with no footboard, ropes making the support for the husk tick. Across the foot lay a bedgown and a pair of stockings. Pierre looked long, at first curiously; but after a little his forehead gathered and his lips drew in a little, as if he had a twinge of pain. He got up, went over near the bed, and picked up a hairpin. Then he came back to the chair and sat down, turning it about in his fingers, still looking abstractedly at the floor. "Poor Lucy!" he said presently; "the poor child! Ah, what a devil I was then--so long ago!" This solitary room--Lydia's--had brought back the time he went to the room of his own wife, dead by her own hand after an attempt to readjust the broken pieces of life, and sat and looked at the place which had been hers, remembering how he had left her with her wet face turned to the wall, and never saw her again till she was set free for ever. Since that time he had never sat in a room sacred to a woman alone. "What a fool, what a fool, to think!" he said at last, standing up; "but this girl must be saved. She must have her home here again." Unconsciously he put the hairpin in his pocket, walked over to the dressing-table and picked up the hair-brush. On its back was the legend, "L. T. from C. H." He gave a whistle. "So-so?" he said, "'C. H.' M'sieu' le capitaine, is it like that?" A year before, Lydia had given Captain Halby a dollar to buy her a hair- brush at Winnipeg, and he had brought her one worth ten dollars. She had beautiful hair, and what pride she had in using this brush! Every Sunday morning she spent a long time in washing, curling, and brushing her hair, and every night she tended it lovingly, so that it was a splendid rich brown like her eye, coiling nobly above her plain, strong face with its good colour. Pierre, glancing in the glass, saw Captain Halby's face looking over his shoulder. It startled him, and he turned round. There was the face looking out from a photograph that hung on the wall in the recess where the bed was. He noted now that the likeness hung where the girl could see it the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning. "So far as that, eh!" he said. "And m'sieu' is a gentleman, too. We shall see what he will do: he has his chance now, once for all." He turned, came to the door, softly opened it, passed out, and shut it, then descended the stairs, and in half an hour was at the door with Captain Halby, ready to start. It was an exquisite winter day, even in its bitter coldness. The sun was shining clear and strong, all the plains glistened and shook like quicksilver, and the vast blue cup of sky seemed deeper than it had ever been. But the frost ate the skin like an acid, and when Throng came to the door Pierre drove him back instantly from the air. "I only-wanted--to say--to Liddy," hacked the old man, "that I'm thinkin'--a little m'lasses 'd kinder help--the boneset an' camomile. Tell her that the cattle 'll all be hers--an'--the house, an' I ain't got no one but--" But Pierre pushed him back and shut the door, saying: "I'll tell her what a fool you are, Jimmy Throng." The old man, as he sat down awkwardly in his chair, with Duc stolidly lighting his pipe and watching him, said to himself: "Yes, I be a durn fool; I be, I be!" over and over again. And when the dog got up from near the stove and came near to him, he added: "I be, Touser; I be a durn fool, for I ought to ha' stole two or three, an' then I'd not be alone, an' nothin' but sour bread an' pork to eat. I ought to ha' stole three." "Ah, Manette ought to have given you some of your own, it's true, that!" said Duc stolidly. "You never was a real father, Jim." "Liddy got to look like me; she got to look like Manette and me, I tell ye!" said the old man hoarsely. Duc laughed in his stupid way. "Look like you? Look like you, Jim, with a face to turn milk sour? Ho, ho!" Throng rose, his face purple with anger, and made as if to catch Duc by the throat, but a fit of coughing seized him, and presently blood showed on his lips. Duc, with a rough gentleness, wiped off the blood and put the whisky-and-herbs to the sick man's lips, saying, in a fatherly way: "For why you do like that? You're a fool, Jimmy!" "I be, I be," said the old man in a whisper, and let his hand rest on Duc's shoulder. "I'll fix the bread sweet next time, Jimmy." "No, no," said the husky voice peevishly. "She'll do it--Liddy'll do it. Liddy's comin'." "All right, Jimmy. All right." After a moment Throng shook his head feebly and said, scarcely above a whisper: "But I be a durn fool--when she's not here." Duc nodded and gave him more whisky and herbs. "My feet's cold," said the old man, and Duc wrapped a bearskin round his legs. II For miles Pierre and Halby rode without a word. Then they got down and walked for a couple of miles, to bring the blood into their legs again. "The old man goes to By-by bientot," said Pierre at last. "You don't think he'll last long?" "Maybe ten days; maybe one. If we don't get the girl, out goes his torchlight straight." "She's been very good to him." "He's been on his knees to her all her life." "There'll be trouble out of this, though." "Pshaw! The girl is her own master." "I mean, someone will probably get hurt over there." He nodded in the direction of Fort O'Battle. "That's in the game. The girl is worth fighting for, hein?" "Of course, and the law must protect her. It's a free country." "So true, my captain," murmured Pierre drily. "It is wonderful what a man will do for the law." The tone struck Halby. Pierre was scanning the horizon abstractedly. "You are always hitting at the law," he said. "Why do you stand by it now?" "For the same reason as yourself." "What is that?" "She has your picture in her room, she has my lucky dollar in her pocket." Halby's face flushed, and then he turned and looked steadily into Pierre's eyes. "We'd better settle this thing at once. If you're going to Fort O'Battle because you've set your fancy there, you'd better go back now. That's straight. You and I can't sail in the same boat. I'll go alone, so give me the pistol." Pierre laughed softly, and waved the hand back. "T'sh! What a high- cock-a-lorum! You want to do it all yourself--to fill the eye of the girl alone, and be tucked away to By-by for your pains--mais, quelle folie! See: you go for law and love; I go for fun and Jimmy Throng. The girl? Pshaw! she would come out right in the end, without you or me. But the old man with half a lung--that's different. He must have sweet bread in his belly when he dies, and the girl must make it for him. She shall brush her hair with the ivory brush by Sunday morning." Halby turned sharply. "You've been spying," he said. "You've been in her room--you--" Pierre put out his hand and stopped the word on Halby's lips. "Slow, slow," he said; "we are both--police to-day. Voila! we must not fight. There is Throng and the girl to think of." Suddenly, with a soft fierceness, he added: "If I looked in her room, what of that? In all the North is there a woman to say I wrong her? No. Well, what if I carry her room in my eye; does that hurt her or you?" Perhaps something of the loneliness of the outlaw crept into Pierre's voice for an instant, for Halby suddenly put a hand on his shoulder and said: "Let's drop the thing, Pierre." Pierre looked at him musingly. "When Throng is put to By-by what will you do?" he asked. "I will marry her, if she'll have me." "But she is prairie-born, and you!" "I'm a prairie-rider." After a moment Pierre said, as if to himself: "So quiet and clean, and the print calico and muslin, and the ivory brush!" It is hard to say whether he was merely working on Halby that he be true to the girl, or was himself softhearted for the moment. He had a curious store of legend and chanson, and he had the Frenchman's power of applying them, though he did it seldom. But now he said in a half monotone: "Have you seen the way I have built my nest? (O brave and tall is the Grand Seigneur!) I have trailed the East, I have searched the West, (O clear of eye is the Grand Seigneur!) From South and North I have brought the best: The feathers fine from an eagle's crest, The silken threads from a prince's vest, The warm rose-leaf from a maiden's breast (O long he bideth, the Grand Seigneur!)." They had gone scarce a mile farther when Pierre, chancing to turn round, saw a horseman riding hard after them. They drew up, and soon the man-- a Rider of the Plains--was beside them. He had stopped at Throng's to find Halby, and had followed them. Murder had been committed near the border, and Halby was needed at once. Halby stood still, numb with distress, for there was Lydia. He turned to Pierre in dismay. Pierre's face lighted up with the spirit of fresh adventure. Desperate enterprises roused him; the impossible had a charm for him. "I will go to Fort O'Battle," he said. "Give me another pistol." "You cannot do it alone," said Halby, hope, however, in his voice. "I will do it, or it will do me, voila!" Pierre replied. Halby passed over a pistol. "I'll never forget it, on my honour, if you do it," he said. Pierre mounted his horse and said, as if a thought had struck him: "If I stand for the law in this, will you stand against it some time for me?" Halby hesitated, then said, holding out his hand, "Yes, if it's nothing dirty." Pierre smiled. "Clean tit for clean tat," he said, touching Halby's fingers, and then, with a gesture and an au revoir, put his horse to the canter, and soon a surf of snow was rising at two points on the prairie, as the Law trailed south and east. That night Pierre camped in the Jim-a-long-Jo, finding there firewood in plenty, and Tophet was made comfortable in the lean-to. Within another thirty hours he was hid in the woods behind Fort O'Battle, having travelled nearly all night. He saw the dawn break and the beginning of sunrise as he watched the Fort, growing every moment colder, while his horse trembled and whinnied softly, suffering also. At last he gave a little grunt of satisfaction, for he saw two men come out of the Fort and go to the corral. He hesitated a minute longer, then said: "I'll not wait," patted his horse's neck, pulled the blanket closer round him, and started for the Fort. He entered the yard--it was empty. He went to the door of the Fort, opened it, entered, shut it, locked it softly, and put the key in his pocket. Then he passed through into a room at the end of the small hallway. Three men rose from seats by the fire as he did so, and one said: "Hullo, who're you?" Another added: "It's Pretty Pierre." Pierre looked at the table laid for breakfast, and said: "Where's Lydia Throng?" The elder of the three brothers replied: "There's no Lydia Throng here. There's Lydia Bontoff, though, and in another week she'll be Lydia something else." "What does she say about it herself?" "You've no call to know." "You stole her, forced her from Throng's-her father's house." "She wasn't Throng's; she was a Bontoff--sister of us. "Well, she says Throng, and Throng it's got to be." "What have you got to say about it?" At that moment Lydia appeared at the door leading from the kitchen. "Whatever she has to say," answered Pierre. "Who're you talking for?" "For her, for Throng, for the law." "The law--by gosh, that's good! You, you darned gambler; you scum!" said Caleb, the brother who knew him. Pierre showed all the intelligent, resolute coolness of a trained officer of the law. He heard a little cry behind him, and stepping sideways, and yet not turning his back on the men, he saw Lydia. "Pierre! Pierre!" she said in a half-frightened way, yet with a sort of pleasure lighting up her face; and she stepped forward to him. One of the brothers was about to pull her away, but Pierre whipped out his commission. "Wait," he said. "That's enough. I'm for the law; I belong to the mounted police. I have come for the girl you stole." The elder brother snatched the paper and read. Then he laughed loud and long. "So you've come to fetch her away," he said, "and this is how you do it!"--he shook the paper. "Well, by--" Suddenly he stopped. "Come," he said, "have a drink, and don't be a dam' fool. She's our sister,--old Throng stole her, and she's goin' to marry our partner. Here, Caleb, fish out the brandy-wine," he added to his younger brother, who went to a cupboard and brought the bottle. Pierre, waving the liquor away, said quietly to the girl: "You wish to go back to your father, to Jimmy Throng?" He then gave her Throng's message, and added: "He sits there rocking in the big chair and coughing --coughing! And then there's the picture on the wall upstairs and the little ivory brush--" She put out her hands towards him. "I hate them all here," she said. "I never knew them. They forced me away. I have no father but Jimmy Throng. I will not stay," she flashed out in sudden anger to the others; "I'll kill myself and all of you before I marry that Borotte." Pierre could hear a man tramping about upstairs. Caleb knocked on the stove-pipe, and called to him to come down. Pierre guessed it was Borotte. This would add one more factor to the game. He must move at once. He suddenly slipped a pistol into the girl's hand, and with a quick word to her, stepped towards the door. The elder brother sprang between--which was what he looked for. By this time every man had a weapon showing, snatched from wall and shelf. Pierre was cool. He said: "Remember, I am for the law. I am not one man. You are thieves now; if you fight and kill, you will get the rope, every one. Move from the door, or I'll fire. The girl comes with me." He had heard a door open behind him, now there was an oath and a report, and a bullet grazed his cheek and lodged in the wall beyond. He dared not turn round, for the other men were facing him. He did not move, but the girl did. "Coward!" she said, and raised her pistol at Borotte, standing with her back against Pierre's. There was a pause, in which no one stirred, and then the girl, slowly walking up to Borotte, her pistol levelled, said: "You low coward--to shoot a man from behind; and you want to be a decent girl's husband! These men that say they're my brothers are brutes, but you're a sneak. If you stir a step I'll fire." The cowardice of Borotte was almost ridiculous. He dared not harm the girl, and her brothers could not prevent her harming him. Here there came a knocking at the front door. The other brothers had come, and found it locked. Pierre saw the crisis, and acted instantly. "The girl and I--we will fight you to the end," he said, "and then what's left of you the law will fight to the end. Come," he added, "the old man can't live a week. When he's gone then you can try again. She will have what he owns. Quick, or I arrest you all, and then--" "Let her go," said Borotte; "it ain't no use." Presently the elder brother broke out laughing. "Damned if I thought the girl had the pluck, an' damned if I thought Borotte was a crawler. Put an eye out of him, Liddy, an' come to your brother's arms. Here," he added to the others, "up with your popguns; this shindy's off; and the girl goes back till the old man tucks up. Have a drink," he added to Pierre, as he stood his rifle in a corner and came to the table. In half an hour Pierre and the girl were on their way, leaving Borotte quarrelling with the brothers, and all drinking heavily. The two arrived at Throng's late the next afternoon. There had been a slight thaw during the day, and the air was almost soft, water dripping from the eaves down the long icicles. When Lydia entered, the old man was dozing in his chair. The sound of an axe out behind the house told where Duc was. The whisky-and-herbs was beside the sick man's chair, and his feet were wrapped about with bearskins. The girl made a little gesture of pain, and then stepped softly over and, kneeling, looked into Throng's face. The lips were moving. "Dad," she said, "are you asleep?" "I be a durn fool, I be," he said in a whisper, and then he began to cough. She took his' hands. They were cold, and she rubbed them softly. "I feel so a'mighty holler," he said, gasping, "an' that bread's sour agin." He shook his head pitifully. His eyes at last settled on her, and he recognised her. He broke into a giggling laugh; the surprise was almost too much for his feeble mind and body. His hands reached and clutched hers. "Liddy! Liddy!" he whispered, then added peevishly, "the bread's sour, an' the boneset and camomile's no good. . . . Ain't tomorrow bakin'-day?" he added. "Yes, dad," she said, smoothing his hands. "What damned--liars--they be--Liddy! You're my gel, ain't ye?" "Yes, dad. I'll make some boneset liquor now." "Yes, yes," he said, with childish eagerness and a weak, wild smile. "That's it--that's it." She was about to rise, but he caught her shoulder. "I bin a good dad to ye, hain't I, Liddy?" he whispered. "Always." "Never had no ma but Manette, did ye?" "Never, dad." "What danged liars they be!" he said, chuckling. She kissed him, and moved away to the fire to pour hot water and whisky on the herbs. His eyes followed her proudly, shining like wet glass in the sun. He laughed--such a wheezing, soundless laugh! "He! he! he! I ain't no--durn--fool--bless--the Lord!" he said. Then the shining look in his eyes became a grey film, and the girl turned round suddenly, for the long, wheezy breathing had stopped. She ran to him, and, lifting up his head, saw the look that makes even the fool seem wise in his cold stillness. Then she sat down on the floor, laid her head against the arm of his chair, and wept. It was very quiet inside. From without there came the twang of an axe, and a man's voice talking to his horse. When the man came in, he lifted the girl up, and, to comfort her, bade her go look at a picture hanging in her little room. After she was gone he lifted the body, put it on a couch, and cared for it. THE PLUNDERER It was no use: men might come and go before her, but Kitty Cline had eyes for only one man. Pierre made no show of liking her, and thought, at first, that hers was a passing fancy. He soon saw differently. There was that look in her eyes which burns conviction as deep as the furnace from which it comes: the hot, shy, hungering look of desire; most childlike, painfully infinite. He would rather have faced the cold mouth of a pistol; for he felt how it would end. He might be beyond wish to play the lover, but he knew that every man can endure being loved. He also knew that some are possessed--a dream, a spell, what you will--for their life long. Kitty Cline was one of these. He thought he must go away, but he did not. From the hour he decided to stay misfortune began. Willie Haslam, the clerk at the Company's Post, had learned a trick or two at cards in the east, and imagined that he could, as he said himself, "roast the cock o' the roost"--meaning Pierre. He did so for one or two evenings, and then Pierre had a sudden increase of luck (or design), and the lad, seeing no chance of redeeming the I O U, representing two years' salary, went down to the house where Kitty Cline lived, and shot himself on the door-step. He had had the misfortune to prefer Kitty to the other girls at Guidon Hill--though Nellie Sanger would have been as much to him, if Kitty had been easier to win. The two things together told hard against Pierre. Before, he might have gone; in the face of difficulty he certainly would not go. Willie Haslam's funeral was a public function: he was young, innocent-looking, handsome, and the people did not know what Pierre would not tell now--that he had cheated grossly at cards. Pierre was sure, before Liddall, the surveyor, told him, that a movement was apace to give him trouble--possibly fatal. "You had better go," said Liddall. "There's no use tempting Providence." "They are tempting the devil," was the cool reply; "and that is not all joy, as you shall see." He stayed. For a time there was no demonstration on either side. He came and went through the streets, and was found at his usual haunts, to observers as cool and nonchalant as ever. He was a changed man, however. He never got away from the look in Kitty Cline's eyes. He felt the thing wearing on him, and he hesitated to speculate on the result; but he knew vaguely that it would end in disaster. There is a kind of corrosion which eats the granite out of the blood, and leaves fever. "What is the worst thing that can happen a man, eh?" he said to Liddall one day, after having spent a few minutes with Kitty Cline. Liddall was an honest man. He knew the world tolerably well. In writing once to his partner in Montreal he had spoken of Pierre as "an admirable, interesting scoundrel." Once when Pierre called him "mon ami," and asked him to come and spend an evening in his cottage, he said: "Yes, I will go. But--pardon me--not as your friend. Let us be plain with each other. I never met a man of your stamp before--" "A professional gambler--yes? Bien?" "You interest me; I like you; you have great cleverness--" "A priest once told me I had a great brain-there is a difference. Well?" "You are like no man I ever met before. Yours is a life like none I ever knew. I would rather talk with you than with any other man in the country, and yet--" "And yet you would not take me to your home? That is all right. I expect nothing. I accept the terms. I know what I am and what you are. I like men who are square. You would go out of your way to do me a good turn." It was on his tongue to speak of Katy Cline, but he hesitated: it was not fair to the girl, he thought, though what he had intended was for her good. He felt he had no right to assume that Liddall knew how things were. The occasion slipped by. But the same matter had been in his mind when, later, he asked, "What is the worst thing that can happen to a man?" Liddall looked at him long, and then said: "To stand between two fires." Pierre smiled: it was an answer after his own heart. Liddall remembered it very well in the future. "What is the thing to do in such a case?" Pierre asked. "It is not good to stand still." "But what if you are stunned, or do not care?" "You should care. It is not wise to strain a situation." Pierre rose, walked up and down the room once or twice, then stood still, his arms folded, and spoke in a low tone. "Once in the Rockies I was lost. I crept into a cave at night. I knew it was the nest of some wild animal; but I was nearly dead with hunger and fatigue. I fell asleep. When I woke--it was towards morning--I saw two yellow stars glaring where the mouth of the cave had been. They were all hate: like nothing you could imagine: passion as it is first made--yes. There was also a rumbling sound. It was terrible, and yet I was not scared. Hate need not disturb you.--I am a quick shot. I killed that mountain lion, and I ate the haunch of deer I dragged from under her . . . " He turned now, and, facing the doorway, looked out upon the village, to the roof of a house which they both knew. "Hate," he said, "is not the most wonderful thing. I saw a woman look once as though she could lose the whole world--and her own soul. She was a good woman. The man was bad--most: he never could be anything else. A look like that breaks the nerve. It is not amusing. In time the man goes to pieces. But before that comes he is apt to do strange things. Eh-so!" He sat down, and, with his finger, wrote musingly in the dust upon the table. Liddall looked keenly at him, and replied more brusquely than he felt: "Do you think it fair to stay--fair to her?" "What if I should take her with me?" Pierre flashed a keen, searching look after the words. "It would be useless devilry." "Let us drink," said Pierre, as he came to his feet quickly: "then for the House of Lords" (the new and fashionable tavern). They separated in the street, and Pierre went to the House of Lords alone. He found a number of men gathered before a paper pasted on a pillar of the veranda. Hearing his own name, he came nearer. A ranch man was reading aloud an article from a newspaper printed two hundred miles away. The article was headed, "A Villainous Plunderer." It had been written by someone at Guidon Hill. All that was discreditable in Pierre's life it set forth with rude clearness; he was credited with nothing pardonable. In the crowd there were mutterings unmistakable to Pierre. He suddenly came among them, caught a revolver from his pocket, and shot over the reader's shoulder six times into the pasted strip of newspaper. The men dropped back. They were not prepared for warlike measures at the moment. Pierre leaned his back against the pillar and waited. His silence and coolness, together with an iron fierceness in his face, held them from instant demonstration against him; but he knew that he must face active peril soon. He pocketed his revolver and went up the hill to the house of Kitty Cline's mother. It was the first time he had ever been there. At the door he hesitated, but knocked presently, and was admitted by Kitty, who, at sight of him, turned faint with sudden joy, and grasped the lintel to steady herself. Pierre quietly caught her about the waist, and shut the door. She recovered, and gently disengaged herself. He made no further advance, and they stood looking at each other for a minute: he, as one who had come to look at something good he was never to see again; she, as at something she hoped to see for ever. They had never before been where no eyes could observe them. He ruled his voice to calmness. "I am going away," he said, "and I have come to say good-bye." Her eyes never wavered from his. Her voice was scarce above a whisper. "Why do you go? Where are you going?" "I have been here too long. I am what they call a villain and a plunderer. I am going to-mon Dieu, I do not know!" He shrugged his shoulders, and smiled with a sort of helpless disdain. She leaned her hands on the table before her. Her voice was still that low, clear murmur. "What people say doesn't matter." She staked her all upon her words. She must speak them, though she might hate herself afterwards. "Are you going--alone?" "Where I may have to go I must travel alone." He could not meet her eyes now; he turned his head away. He almost hoped she would not understand. "Sit down," he added; "I want to tell you of my life." He believed that telling it as he should, she would be horror-stricken, and that the deep flame would die out of her eyes. Neither he nor she knew how long they sat there, he telling with grim precision of the life he had led. Her hands were clasped before her, and she shuddered once or twice, so that he paused; but she asked him firmly to go on. When all was told he stood up. He could not see her face, but he heard her say: "You have forgotten many things that were not bad. Let me say them." She named things that would have done honour to a better man. He was standing in the moonlight that came through the window. She stepped forward, her hands quivering out to him. "Oh, Pierre," she said, "I know why you tell me this: but it makes no difference-none! I will go with you wherever you go." He caught her hands in his. She was stronger than he was now. Her eyes mastered him. A low cry broke from him, and he drew her almost fiercely into his arms. "Pierre! Pierre!" was all she could say. He kissed her again and again upon the mouth. As he did so, he heard footsteps and muffled voices without. Putting her quickly from him, he sprang towards the door, threw it open, closed it behind him, and drew his revolvers. A half-dozen men faced him. Two bullets whistled by his head, and lodged in the door. Then he fired swiftly, shot after shot, and three men fell. His revolvers were empty. There were three men left. The case seemed all against him now, but just here a shot, and then another, came from the window, and a fourth man fell. Pierre sprang upon one, the other turned and ran. There was a short sharp struggle: then Pierre rose up--alone. The girl stood in the doorway. "Come, my dear," he said, you must go with me now." "Yes, Pierre," she cried, a mad light in her face, "I have killed men too--for you." Together they ran down the hillside, and made for the stables of the Fort. People were hurrying through the long street of the town, and torches were burning, but they came by a roundabout to the stables safely. Pierre was about to enter, when a man came out. It was Liddall. He kept his horses there, and he had saddled one, thinking that Pierre might need it. There were quick words of explanation, and then, "Must the girl go too?" he asked. "It will increase the danger--besides--" "I am going wherever he goes," she interrupted hoarsely. "I have killed men; he and I are the same now." Without a word Liddall turned back, threw a saddle on another horse, and led it out quickly. "Which way?" he asked; "and where shall I find the horses?" "West to the mountains. The horses you will find at Tete Blanche Hill, if we get there. If not, there is money under the white pine at my cottage. Goodbye!" They galloped away. But there were mounted men in the main street, and one, well ahead of the others, was making towards the bridge over which they must pass. He reached it before they did, and set his horse crosswise in its narrow entrance. Pierre urged his mare in front of the girl's, and drove straight at the head and shoulders of the obstructing horse. His was the heavier animal, and it bore the other down. The rider fired as he fell, but missed, and, in an instant, Pierre and the girl were over. The fallen man fired the second time, but again missed. They had a fair start, but the open prairie was ahead of them, and there was no chance to hide. Riding must do all, for their pursuers were in full cry. For an hour they rode hard. They could see their hunters not very far in the rear. Suddenly Pierre started and sniffed the air. "The prairie's on fire," he said exultingly, defiantly. Almost as he spoke, clouds ran down the horizon, and then the sky lighted up. The fire travelled with incredible swiftness: they were hastening to meet it. It came on wave-like, hurrying down at the right and the left as if to close in on them. The girl spoke no word; she had no fear: what Pierre did she would do. He turned round to see his pursuers: they had wheeled and were galloping back the way they came. His horse and hers were travelling neck and neck. He looked at her with an intense, eager gaze. "Will you ride on?" he asked eagerly. "We are between two fires." He smiled, remembering his words to Liddall. "Ride on," she urged in a strong, clear voice, a kind of wild triumph in it. "You shall not go alone." There ran into his eyes now the same infinite look that had been in hers --that had conquered him. The flame rolling towards them was not brighter or hotter. "For heaven or hell, my girl!" he cried, and they drove their horses on --on. Far behind upon a Divide the flying hunters from Guidon Hill paused for a moment. They saw with hushed wonder and awe a man and woman, dark and weird against the red light, ride madly into the flickering surf of fire. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: All humour in him had a strain of the sardonic In her heart she never can defy the world as does a man Some wise men are fools, one way or another ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "ROMANY OF THE SNOWS": A human life he held to be a trifle in the big sum of time Advantage to live where nothing was required of her but truth All humour in him had a strain of the sardonic Bad turns good sometimes, when you know the how Don't be too honest Every shot that kills ricochets Fear of one's own wife is the worst fear in the world Have you ever felt the hand of your own child in yours He never saw an insult unless he intended to avenge it How can you judge the facts if you don't know the feeling? In her heart she never can defy the world as does a man Liars all men may be, but that's wid wimmin or landlords Memory is man's greatest friend and worst enemy Men are like dogs--they worship him who beats them Not good to have one thing in the head all the time Put the matter on your own hearthstone Remember the sorrow of thine own wife Secret of life: to keep your own commandments She valued what others found useless She had not suffered that sickness, social artifice Solitude fixes our hearts immovably on things Some people are rough with the poor--and proud Some wise men are fools, one way or another They whose tragedy lies in the capacity to suffer greatly Think with the minds of twelve men, and the heart of one woman When a man laugh in the sun and think nothing of evil Women are half saints, half fools Youth hungers for the vanities NORTHERN LIGHTS, Complete By Gilbert Parker Volume 1. CONTENTS Volume 1. A LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS ONCE AT RED MAN'S RIVER THE STROKE OF THE HOUR BUCKMASTER'S BOY Volume 2. TO-MORROW QU'APPELLE THE STAKE AND THE PLUMB-LINE Volume 3. WHEN THE SWALLOWS HOMEWARD FLY GEORGE'S WIFE MARCILE Volume 4. A MAN, A FAMINE, AND A HEATHEN BOY THE HEALING SPRINGS AND THE PIONEERS THE LITTLE WIDOW OF JANSEN WATCHING THE RISE OF ORION Volume 5. THE ERROR OF THE DAY THE WHISPERER AS DEEP AS THE SEA INTRODUCTION This book, Northern Lights, belongs to an epoch which is a generation later than that in which Pierre and His People moved. The conditions under which Pierre and Shon McGann lived practically ended with the advent of the railway. From that time forwards, with the rise of towns and cities accompanied by an amazing growth of emigration, the whole life lost much of that character of isolation and pathetic loneliness which marked the days of Pierre. When, in 1905, I visited the Far West again after many years, and saw the strange new life with its modern episode, energy, and push, and realised that even the characteristics which marked the period just before the advent, and just after the advent, of the railway were disappearing, I determined to write a series of stories which would catch the fleeting characteristics and hold something of the old life, so adventurous, vigorous, and individual, before it passed entirely and was forgotten. Therefore, from 1905 to 1909, I kept drawing upon all those experiences of others, from the true tales that had been told me, upon the reminiscences of Hudson's Bay trappers and hunters, for those incidents natural to the West which imagination could make true. Something of the old atmosphere had gone, and there was a stir and a murmur in all the West which broke that grim yet fascinating loneliness of the time of Pierre. Thus it is that Northern Lights is written in a wholly different style from that of Pierre and His People, though here and there, as for instance in A Lodge in the Wilderness, Once at Red Man's River, The Stroke of the Hour, Qu'appelle, and Marcile, the old note sounds, and something of the poignant mystery, solitude, and big primitive incident of the earlier stories appears. I believe I did well--at any rate for myself and my purposes--in writing this book, and thus making the human narrative of the Far West and North continuous from the time of the sixties onwards. So have I assured myself of the rightness of my intention, that I shall publish a novel presently which will carry on this human narrative of the West into still another stage-that of the present, when railways are intersecting each other, when mills and factories are being added to the great grain elevators in the West, and when hundreds and thousands of people every year are moving across the plains where, within my own living time, the buffalo ranged in their millions, and the red men, uncontrolled, set up their tepees. NOTE The tales in this book belong to two different epochs in the life of the Far West. The first five are reminiscent of "border days and deeds"-- of days before the great railway was built which changed a waste into a fertile field of civilisation. The remaining stories cover the period passed since the Royal North-West Mounted Police and the Pullman car first startled the early pioneer, and sent him into the land of the farther North, or drew him into the quiet circle of civic routine and humdrum occupation. G. P. Volume 1. A LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS ONCE AT RED MAN'S RIVER THE STROKE OF THE HOUR BUCKMASTER'S BOY A LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS "Hai--Yai, so bright a day, so clear!" said Mitiahwe as she entered the big lodge and laid upon a wide, low couch, covered with soft skins, the fur of a grizzly which had fallen to her man's rifle. "Hai-yai, I wish it would last for ever--so sweet!" she added, smoothing the fur lingeringly, and showing her teeth in a smile. "There will come a great storm, Mitiahwe. See, the birds go south so soon," responded a deep voice from a corner by the doorway. The young Indian wife turned quickly, and, in a defiant fantastic mood --or was it the inward cry against an impending fate, the tragic future of those who will not see, because to see is to suffer?--she made some quaint, odd motions of the body which belonged to a mysterious dance of her tribe, and, with flashing eyes, challenged the comely old woman seated on a pile of deer-skins. "It is morning, and the day will last for ever," she said nonchalantly, but her eyes suddenly took on a faraway look, half apprehensive, half wondering. The birds were indeed going south very soon, yet had there ever been so exquisite an autumn as this, had her man ever had so wonderful a trade--her man with the brown hair, blue eyes, and fair, strong face? "The birds go south, but the hunters and buffalo still go north," Mitiahwe urged searchingly, looking hard at her mother--Oanita, the Swift Wing. "My dream said that the winter will be dark and lonely, that the ice will be thick, the snow deep, and that many hearts will be sick because of the black days and the hunger that sickens the heart," answered Swift Wing. Mitiahwe looked into Swift Wing's dark eyes, and an anger came upon her. "The hearts of cowards will freeze," she rejoined, "and to those that will not see the sun the world will be dark," she added. Then suddenly she remembered to whom she was speaking, and a flood of feeling ran through her; for Swift Wing had cherished her like a fledgeling in the nest till her young white man came from "down East." Her heart had leapt up at sight of him, and she had turned to him from all the young men of her tribe, waiting in a kind of mist till he, at last, had spoken to her mother, and then one evening, her shawl over her head, she had come along to his lodge. A thousand times as the four years passed by she had thought how good it was that she had become his wife--the young white man's wife, rather than the wife of Breaking Rock, son of White Buffalo, the chief, who had four hundred horses, and a face that would have made winter and sour days for her. Now and then Breaking Rock came and stood before the lodge, a distance off, and stayed there hour after hour, and once or twice he came when her man was with her; but nothing could be done, for earth and air and space were common to them all, and there was no offence in Breaking Rock gazing at the lodge where Mitiahwe lived. Yet it seemed as though Breaking Rock was waiting--waiting and hoping. That was the impression made upon all who saw him, and even old White Buffalo, the chief, shook his head gloomily when he saw Breaking Rock, his son, staring at the big lodge which was so full of happiness, and so full also of many luxuries never before seen at a trading post on the Koonce River. The father of Mitiahwe had been chief, but because his three sons had been killed in battle the chieftainship had come to White Buffalo, who was of the same blood and family. There were those who said that Mitiahwe should have been chieftainess; but neither she nor her mother would ever listen to this, and so White Buffalo, and the tribe loved Mitiahwe because of her modesty and goodness. She was even more to White Buffalo than Breaking Rock, and he had been glad that Dingan the white man--Long Hand he was called--had taken Mitiahwe for his woman. Yet behind this gladness of White Buffalo, and that of Swift Wing, and behind the silent watchfulness of Breaking Rock, there was a thought which must ever come when a white man mates with an Indian maid, without priest or preacher, or writing, or book, or bond. Yet four years had gone; and all the tribe, and all who came and went, half-breeds, traders, and other tribes, remarked how happy was the white man with his Indian wife. They never saw anything but light in the eyes of Mitiahwe, nor did the old women of the tribe who scanned her face as she came and went, and watched and waited too for what never came--not even after four years. Mitiahwe had been so happy that she had not really missed what never came; though the desire to have something in her arms which was part of them both had flushed up in her veins at times, and made her restless till her man had come home again. Then she had forgotten the unseen for the seen, and was happy that they two were alone together--that was the joy of it all, so much alone together; for Swift Wing did not live with them, and, like Breaking Rock, she watched her daughter's life, standing afar off, since it was the unwritten law of the tribe that the wife's mother must not cross the path or enter the home of her daughter's husband. But at last Dingan had broken through this custom, and insisted that Swift Wing should be with her daughter when he was away from home, as now on this wonderful autumn morning, when Mitiahwe had been singing to the Sun, to which she prayed for her man and for everlasting days with him. She had spoken angrily but now, because her soul sharply resented the challenge to her happiness which her mother had been making. It was her own eyes that refused to see the cloud, which the sage and bereaved woman had seen and conveyed in images and figures of speech natural to the Indian mind. "Hai-yai," she said now, with a strange touching sigh breathing in the words, "you are right, my mother, and a dream is a dream; also, if it be dreamt three times, then is it to be followed, and it is true. You have lived long, and your dreams are of the Sun and the Spirit." She shook a little as she laid her hand on a buckskin coat of her man hanging by the lodge-door; then she steadied herself again, and gazed earnestly into her mother's eyes. "Have all your dreams come true, my mother?" she asked with a hungering heart. "There was the dream that came out of the dark five times, when your father went against the Crees, and was wounded, and crawled away into the hills, and all our warriors fled--they were but a handful, and the Crees like a young forest in number! I went with my dream, and found him after many days, and it was after that you were born, my youngest and my last. There was also"--her eyes almost closed, and the needle and thread she held lay still in her lap--"when two of your brothers were killed in the drive of the buffalo. Did I not see it all in my dream, and follow after them to take them to my heart? And when your sister was carried off, was it not my dream which saw the trail, so that we brought her back again to die in peace, her eyes seeing the Lodge whither she was going, open to her, and the Sun, the Father, giving her light and promise--for she had wounded herself to die that the thief who stole her should leave her to herself. Behold, my daughter, these dreams have I had, and others; and I have lived long and have seen the bright day break into storm, and the herds flee into the far hills where none could follow, and hunger come, and--" "Hai-yo, see, the birds flying south," said the girl with a gesture towards the cloudless sky. "Never since I lived have they gone south so soon." Again she shuddered slightly, then she spoke slowly: "I also have dreamed, and I will follow my dream. I dreamed"--she knelt down beside her mother, and rested her hands in her mother's lap--"I dreamed that there was a wall of hills dark and heavy and far away, and that whenever my eyes looked at them they burned with tears; and yet I looked and looked, till my heart was like lead in my breast; and I turned from them to the rivers and the plains that I loved. But a voice kept calling to me, 'Come, come! Beyond the hills is a happy land. The trail is hard, and your feet will bleed, but beyond is the happy land.' And I would not go for the voice that spoke, and at last there came an old man in my dream and spoke to me kindly, and said, 'Come with me, and I will show thee the way over the hills to the Lodge where thou shalt find what thou hast lost.' And I said to him, 'I have lost nothing;' and I would not go. Twice I dreamed this dream, and twice the old man came, and three times I dreamed it; and then I spoke angrily to him, as but now I did to thee; and behold he changed before my eyes, and I saw that he was now become--"she stopped short, and buried her face in her hands for a moment, then recovered herself--"Breaking Rock it was, I saw before me, and I cried out and fled. Then I waked with a cry, but my man was beside me, and his arm was round my neck; and this dream, is it not a foolish dream, my mother?" The old woman sat silent, clasping the hands of her daughter firmly, and looking out of the wide doorway towards the trees that fringed the river; and presently, as she looked, her face changed and grew pinched all at once, and Mitiahwe, looking at her, turned a startled face towards the river also. "Breaking Rock!" she said in alarm, and got to her feet quickly. Breaking Rock stood for a moment looking towards the lodge, then came slowly forward to them. Never in all the four years had he approached this lodge of Mitiahwe, who, the daughter of a chief, should have married himself, the son of a chief! Slowly but with long slouching stride Breaking Rock came nearer. The two women watched him without speaking. Instinctively they knew that he brought news, that something had happened; yet Mitiahwe felt at her belt for what no Indian girl would be without; and this one was a gift from her man, on the anniversary of the day she first came to his lodge. Breaking Rock was at the door now, his beady eyes fixed on Mitiahwe's, his figure jerked to its full height, which made him, even then, two inches less than Long Hand. He spoke in a loud voice: "The last boat this year goes down the river tomorrow. Long Hand, your man, is going to his people. He will not come back. He has had enough of the Blackfoot woman. You will see him no more." He waved a hand to the sky. "The birds are going south. A hard winter is coming quick. You will be alone. Breaking Rock is rich. He has five hundred horses. Your man is going to his own people. Let him go. He is no man. It is four years, and still there are but two in your lodge. How!" He swung on his heel with a chuckle in his throat, for he thought he had said a good thing, and that in truth he was worth twenty white men. His quick ear caught a movement behind him, however, and he saw the girl spring from the lodge door, something flashing from her belt. But now the mother's arms were round her, with cries of protest, and Breaking Rock, with another laugh, slipped away swiftly toward the river. "That is good," he muttered. "She will kill him perhaps, when she goes to him. She will go, but he will not stay. I have heard." As he disappeared among the trees Mitiahwe disengaged herself from her mother's arms, went slowly back into the lodge, and sat down on the great couch where, for so many moons, she had lain with her man beside her. Her mother watched her closely, though she moved about doing little things. She was trying to think what she would have done if such a thing had happened to her, if her man had been going to leave her. She assumed that Dingan would leave Mitiahwe, for he would hear the voices of his people calling far away, even as the red man who went East into the great cities heard the prairies and the mountains and the rivers and his own people calling, and came back, and put off the clothes of civilisation, and donned his buckskins again, and sat in the Medicine Man's tent, and heard the spirits speak to him through the mist and smoke of the sacred fire. When Swift Wing first gave her daughter to the white man she foresaw the danger now at hand, but this was the tribute of the lower race to the higher, and--who could tell! White men had left their Indian wives, but had come back again, and for ever renounced the life of their own nations, and become great chiefs, teaching useful things to their adopted people, bringing up their children as tribesmen--bringing up their children! There it was, the thing which called them back, the bright-eyed children with the colour of the brown prairie in their faces, and their brains so sharp and strong. But here was no child to call Dingan back, only the eloquent, brave, sweet face of Mitiahwe. . . . If he went! Would he go? Was he going? And now that Mitiahwe had been told that he would go, what would she do? In her belt was--but, no, that would be worse than all, and she would lose Mitiahwe, her last child, as she had lost so many others. What would she herself do if she were in Mitiahwe's place? Ah, she would make him stay somehow--by truth or by falsehood; by the whispered story in the long night, by her head upon his knee before the lodge-fire, and her eyes fixed on his, luring him, as the Dream lures the dreamer into the far trail, to find the Sun's hunting- ground where the plains are filled with the deer and the buffalo and the wild horse; by the smell of the cooking-pot and the favourite spiced drink in the morning; by the child that ran to him with his bow and arrows and the cry of the hunter--but there was no child; she had forgotten. She was always recalling her own happy early life with her man, and the clean-faced papooses that crowded round his knee--one wife and many children, and the old Harvester of the Years reaping them so fast, till the children stood up as tall as their father and chief. That was long ago, and she had had her share--twenty-five years of happiness; but Mitiahwe had had only four. She looked at Mitiahwe, standing still for a moment like one rapt, then suddenly she gave a little cry. Something had come into her mind, some solution of the problem, and she ran and stooped over the girl and put both hands on her head. "Mitiahwe, heart's blood of mine," she said, "the birds go south, but they return. What matter if they go so soon, if they return soon. If the Sun wills that the winter be dark, and he sends the Coldmaker to close the rivers and drive the wild ones far from the arrow and the gun, yet he may be sorry, and send a second summer--has it not been so, and Coldmaker has hurried away--away! The birds go south, but they will return, Mitiahwe." "I heard a cry in the night while my man slept," Mitiahwe answered, looking straight before her, "and it was like the cry of a bird-calling, calling, calling." "But he did not hear--he was asleep beside Mitiahwe. If he did not wake, surely it was good luck. Thy breath upon his face kept him sleeping. Surely it was good luck to Mitiahwe that he did not hear." She was smiling a little now, for she had thought of a thing which would, perhaps, keep the man here in this lodge in the wilderness; but the time to speak of it was not yet. She must wait and see. Suddenly Mitiahwe got to her feet with a spring, and a light in her eyes. "Hai-yai!" she said with plaintive smiling, ran to a corner of the lodge, and from a leather bag drew forth a horse-shoe and looked at it, murmuring to herself. The old woman gazed at her wonderingly. "What is it, Mitiahwe?" she asked. "It is good-luck. So my man has said. It is the way of his people. It is put over the door, and if a dream come it is a good dream; and if a bad thing come, it will not enter; and if the heart prays for a thing hid from all the world, then it brings good-luck. Hai-yai! I will put it over the door, and then--"All at once her hand dropped to her side, as though some terrible thought had come to her, and, sinking to the floor, she rocked her body backward and forward for a time, sobbing. But presently she got to her feet again, and, going to the door of the lodge, fastened the horseshoe above it with a great needle and a string of buckskin. "Oh great Sun," she prayed, "have pity on me and save me! I cannot live alone. I am only a Blackfoot wife; I am not blood of his blood. Give, O great one, blood of his blood, bone of his bone, soul of his soul, that he will say, This is mine, body of my body, and he will hear the cry and will stay. O great Sun, pity me!" The old woman's heart beat faster as she listened. The same thought was in the mind of both. If there were but a child, bone of his bone, then perhaps he would not go; or, if he went, then surely he would return, when he heard his papoose calling in the lodge in the wilderness. As Mitiahwe turned to her, a strange burning light in her eyes, Swift Wing said: "It is good. The white man's Medicine for a white man's wife. But if there were the red man's Medicine too--" "What is the red man's Medicine?" asked the young wife, as she smoothed her hair, put a string of bright beads around her neck, and wound a red sash round her waist. The old woman shook her head, a curious half-mystic light in her eyes, her body drawn up to its full height, as though waiting for something. "It is an old Medicine. It is of winters ago as many as the hairs of the head. I have forgotten almost, but it was a great Medicine when there were no white men in the land. And so it was that to every woman's breast there hung a papoose, and every woman had her man, and the red men were like leaves in the forest--but it was a winter of winters ago, and the Medicine Men have forgotten; and thou hast no child! When Long Hand comes, what will Mitiahwe say to him?" Mitiahwe's eyes were determined, her face was set, she flushed deeply, then the colour fled. "What my mother would say, I will say. Shall the white man's Medicine fail? If I wish it, then it will be so: and I will say so." "But if the white man's Medicine fail?"--Swift Wing made a gesture toward the door where the horse-shoe hung. "It is Medicine for a white man, will it be Medicine for an Indian?" "Am I not a white man's wife?" "But if there were the Sun Medicine also, the Medicine of the days long ago?" "Tell me. If you remember--Kai! but you do remember--I see it in your face. Tell me, and I will make that Medicine also, my mother." "To-morrow, if I remember it--I will think, and if I remember it, to-morrow I will tell you, my heart's blood. Maybe my dream will come to me and tell me. Then, even after all these years, a papoose--" "But the boat will go at dawn to-morrow, and if he go also--" "Mitiahwe is young, her body is warm, her eyes are bright, the songs she sings, her tongue--if these keep him not, and the Voice calls him still to go, then still Mitiahwe shall whisper, and tell him--" "Hai-yo-hush," said the girl, and trembled a little, and put both hands on her mother's mouth. For a moment she stood so, then with an exclamation suddenly turned and ran through the doorway, and sped toward the river, and into the path which would take her to the post, where her man traded with the Indians and had made much money during the past six years, so that he could have had a thousand horses and ten lodges like that she had just left. The distance between the lodge and the post was no more than a mile, but Mitiahwe made a detour, and approached it from behind, where she could not be seen. Darkness was gathering now, and she could see the glimmer of the light of lamps through the windows, and as the doors opened and shut. No one had seen her approach, and she stole through a door which was open at the rear of the warehousing room, and went quickly to another door leading into the shop. There was a crack through which she could see, and she could hear all that was said. As she came she had seen Indians gliding through the woods with their purchases, and now the shop was clearing fast, in response to the urging of Dingan and his partner, a Scotch half-breed. It was evident that Dingan was at once abstracted and excited. Presently only two visitors were left, a French halfbreed call Lablache, a swaggering, vicious fellow, and the captain of the steamer, Ste. Anne, which was to make its last trip south in the morning--even now it would have to break its way through the young ice. Dingan's partner dropped a bar across the door of the shop, and the four men gathered about the fire. For a time no one spoke. At last the captain of the Ste. Anne said: "It's a great chance, Dingan. You'll be in civilisation again, and in a rising town of white people--Groise 'll be a city in five years, and you can grow up and grow rich with the place. The Company asked me to lay it all before you, and Lablache here will buy out your share of the business, at whatever your partner and you prove its worth. You're young; you've got everything before you. You've made a name out here for being the best trader west of the Great Lakes, and now's your time. It's none of my affair, of course, but I like to carry through what I'm set to do, and the Company said, 'You bring Dingan back with you. The place is waiting for him, and it can't wait longer than the last boat down.' You're ready to step in when he steps out, ain't you, Lablache?" Lablache shook back his long hair, and rolled about in his pride. "I give him cash for his share to-night someone is behin' me, share, yes! It is worth so much, I pay and step in--I take the place over. I take half the business here, and I work with Dingan's partner. I take your horses, Dingan, I take you lodge, I take all in your lodge--everyt'ing." His eyes glistened, and a red spot came to each cheek as he leaned forward. At his last word Dingan, who had been standing abstractedly listening, as it were, swung round on him with a muttered oath, and the skin of his face appeared to tighten. Watching through the crack of the door, Mitiahwe saw the look she knew well, though it had never been turned on her, and her heart beat faster. It was a look that came into Dingan's face whenever Breaking Rock crossed his path, or when one or two other names were mentioned in his presence, for they were names of men who had spoken of Mitiahwe lightly, and had attempted to be jocular about her. As Mitiahwe looked at him, now unknown to himself, she was conscious of what that last word of Lablache's meant. Everyt'ing meant herself. Lablache--who had neither the good qualities of the white man nor the Indian, but who had the brains of the one and the subtilty of the other, and whose only virtue was that he was a successful trader, though he looked like a mere woodsman, with rings in his ears, gaily decorated buckskin coat and moccasins, and a furtive smile always on his lips! Everyt'ing!--Her blood ran cold at the thought of dropping the lodge- curtain upon this man and herself alone. For no other man than Dingan had her blood run faster, and he had made her life blossom. She had seen in many a half-breed's and in many an Indian's face the look which was now in that of Lablache, and her fingers gripped softly the thing in her belt that had flashed out on Breaking Rock such a short while ago. As she looked, it seemed for a moment as though Dingan would open the door and throw Lablache out, for in quick reflection his eyes ran from the man to the wooden bar across the door. "You'll talk of the shop, and the shop only, Lablache," Dingan said grimly. "I'm not huckstering my home, and I'd choose the buyer if I was selling. My lodge ain't to be bought, nor anything in it--not even the broom to keep it clean of any half-breeds that'd enter it without leave." There was malice in the words, but there was greater malice in the tone, and Lablache, who was bent on getting the business, swallowed his ugly wrath, and determined that, if he got the business, he would get the lodge also in due time; for Dingan, if he went, would not take the lodge- or the woman with him; and Dingan was not fool enough to stay when he could go to Groise to a sure fortune. The captain of the Ste. Anne again spoke. "There's another thing the Company said, Dingan. You needn't go to Groise, not at once. You can take a month and visit your folks down East, and lay in a stock of home- feelings before you settle down at Groise for good. They was fair when I put it to them that you'd mebbe want to do that. 'You tell Dingan,' they said, 'that he can have the month glad and grateful, and a free ticket on the railway back and forth. He can have it at once,' they said." Watching, Mitiahwe could see her man's face brighten, and take on a look of longing at this suggestion; and it seemed to her that the bird she heard in the night was calling in his ears now. Her eyes went blind a moment. "The game is with you, Dingan. All the cards are in your hands; you'll never get such another chance again; and you're only thirty," said the captain. "I wish they'd ask me," said Dingan's partner with a sigh, as he looked at Lablache. "I want my chance bad, though we've done well here--good gosh, yes, all through Dingan." "The winters, they go queeck in Groise," said Lablache. "It is life all the time, trade all the time, plenty to do and see--and a bon fortune to make, bagosh!" "Your old home was in Nove Scotia, wasn't it, Dingan?" asked the captain in a low voice. "I kem from Connecticut, and I was East to my village las' year. It was good seein' all my old friends again; but I kem back content, I kem back full of home-feelin's and content. You'll like the trip, Dingan. It'll do you good." Dingan drew himself up with a start. "All right. I guess I'll do it. Let's figure up again," he said to his partner with a reckless air. With a smothered cry Mitiahwe turned and fled into the darkness, and back to the lodge. The lodge was empty. She threw herself upon the great couch in an agony of despair. A half-hour went by. Then she rose, and began to prepare supper. Her face was aflame, her manner was determined, and once or twice her hand went to her belt, as though to assure herself of something. Never had the lodge looked so bright and cheerful; never had she prepared so appetising a supper; never had the great couch seemed so soft and rich with furs, so homelike and so inviting after a long day's work. Never had Mitiahwe seemed so good to look at, so graceful and alert and refined--suffering does its work even in the wild woods, with "wild people." Never had the lodge such an air of welcome and peace and home as to-night; and so Dingan thought as he drew aside the wide curtains of deerskin and entered. Mitiahwe was bending over the fire and appeared not to hear him. "Mitiahwe," he said gently. She was singing to herself to an Indian air the words of a song Dingan had taught her: "Open the door: cold is the night, and my feet are heavy, Heap up the fire, scatter upon it the cones and the scented leaves; Spread the soft robe on the couch for the chief that returns, Bring forth the cup of remembrance--" It was like a low recitative, and it had a plaintive cadence, as of a dove that mourned. "Mitiahwe," he said in a louder voice, but with a break in it too; for it all rushed upon him, all that she had been to him--all that had made the great West glow with life, made the air sweeter, the grass greener, the trees more companionable and human: who it was that had given the waste places a voice. Yet--yet, there were his own people in the East, there was another life waiting for him, there was the life of ambition and wealth, and, and home--and children. His eyes were misty as she turned to him with a little cry of surprise, how much natural and how much assumed--for she had heard him enter--it would have been hard to say. She was a woman, and therefore the daughter of pretence even when most real. He caught her by both arms as she shyly but eagerly came to him. "Good girl, good little girl," he said. He looked round him. "Well, I've never seen our lodge look nicer than it does to-night; and the fire, and the pot on the fire, and the smell of the pine-cones, and the cedar-boughs, and the skins, and--" "And everything," she said, with a queer little laugh, as she moved away again to turn the steaks on the fire. Everything! He started at the word. It was so strange that she should use it by accident, when but a little while ago he had been ready to choke the wind out of a man's body for using it concerning herself. It stunned him for a moment, for the West, and the life apart from the world of cities, had given him superstition, like that of the Indians, whose life he had made his own. Herself--to leave her here, who had been so much to him? As true as the sun she worshipped, her eyes had never lingered on another man since she came to his lodge; and, to her mind, she was as truly sacredly married to him as though a thousand priests had spoken, or a thousand Medicine Men had made their incantations. She was his woman and he was her man. As he chatted to her, telling her of much that he had done that day, and wondering how he could tell her of all he had done, he kept looking round the lodge, his eye resting on this or that; and everything had its own personal history, had become part of their lodge-life, because it had a use as between him and her, and not a conventional domestic place. Every skin, every utensil, every pitcher and bowl and pot and curtain, had been with them at one time or another, when it became of importance and renowned in the story of their days and deeds. How could he break it to her--that he was going to visit his own people, and that she must be alone with her mother all winter, to await his return in the spring? His return? As he watched her sitting beside him, helping him to his favourite dish, the close, companionable trust and gentleness of her, her exquisite cleanness and grace in his eyes, he asked himself if, after all, it was not true that he would return in the spring. The years had passed without his seriously thinking of this inevitable day. He had put it off and off, content to live each hour as it came and take no real thought for the future; and yet, behind all was the warning fact that he must go one day, and that Mitiahwe could not go with him. Her mother must have known that when she let Mitiahwe come to him. Of course; and, after all, she would find another mate, a better mate, one of her own people. But her hand was in his now, and it was small and very warm, and suddenly he shook with anger at the thought of one like Breaking Rock taking her to his wigwam; or Lablache--this roused him to an inward fury; and Mitiahwe saw and guessed the struggle that was going on in him, and she leaned her head against his shoulder, and once she raised his hand to her lips, and said, "My chief!" Then his face cleared again, and she got him his pipe and filled it, and held a coal to light it; and, as the smoke curled up, and he leaned back contentedly for the moment, she went to the door, drew open the curtains, and, stepping outside, raised her eyes to the horseshoe. Then she said softly to the sky: "O Sun, great Father, have pity on me, for I love him, and would keep him. And give me bone of his bone, and one to nurse at my breast that is of him. O Sun, pity me this night, and be near me when I speak to him, and hear what I say!" "What are you doing out there, Mitiahwe?" Dingan cried; and when she entered again he beckoned her to him. "What was it you were saying? Who were you speaking to?" he asked. "I heard your voice." "I was thanking the Sun for his goodness to me. I was speaking for the thing that is in my heart, that is life of my life," she added vaguely. "Well, I have something to say to you, little girl," he said, with an effort. She remained erect before him waiting for the blow--outwardly calm, inwardly crying out in pain. "Do you think you could stand a little parting?" he asked, reaching out and touching her shoulder. "I have been alone before--for five days," she answered quietly. "But it must be longer this time." "How long?" she asked, with eyes fixed on his. "If it is more than a week I will go too." "It is longer than a month," he said. "Then I will go." "I am going to see my people," he faltered. "By the Ste. Anne?" He nodded. "It is the last chance this year; but I will come back-- in the spring." As he said it he saw her shrink, and his heart smote him. Four years such as few men ever spent, and all the luck had been with him, and the West had got into his bones! The quiet, starry nights, the wonderful days, the hunt, the long journeys, the life free of care, and the warm lodge; and, here, the great couch--ah, the cheek pressed to his, the lips that whispered at his ear, the smooth arm round his neck. It all rushed upon him now. His people? His people in the East, who had thwarted his youth, vexed and cramped him, saw only evil in his widening desires, and threw him over when he came out West--the scallywag, they called him, who had never wronged a man or-or a woman! Never--wronged-a-woman? The question sprang to his lips now. Suddenly he saw it all in a new light. White or brown or red, this heart and soul and body before him were all his, sacred to him; he was in very truth her "Chief." Untutored as she was, she read him, felt what was going on in him. She saw the tears spring to his eyes. Then, coming close to him she said softly, slowly: "I must go with you if you go, because you must be with me when--oh, hai-yai, my chief, shall we go from here? Here in this lodge wilt thou be with thine own people--thine own, thou and I--and thine to come." The great passion in her heart made the lie seem very truth. With a cry he got to his feet, and stood staring at her for a moment, scarcely comprehending; then suddenly he clasped her in his arms. "Mitiahwe--Mitiahwe, oh, my little girl!" he cried. "You and me--and our own--our own people!" Kissing her, he drew her down beside him on the couch. "Tell me again--it is so at last?" he said, and she whispered in his ear once more. In the middle of the night he said to her, "Some day, perhaps, we will go East--some day, perhaps." "But now?" she asked softly. "Not now--not if I know it," he answered. "I've got my heart nailed to the door of this lodge." As he slept she got quietly out, and, going to the door of the lodge, reached up a hand and touched the horse-shoe. "Be good Medicine to me," she said. Then she prayed. "O Sun, pity me that it may be as I have said to him. O pity me, great Father!" In the days to come Swift Wing said that it was her Medicine; when her hand was burned to the wrist in the dark ritual she had performed with the Medicine Man the night that Mitiahwe fought for her man--but Mitiahwe said it was her Medicine, the horse-shoe, which brought one of Dingan's own people to the lodge, a little girl with Mitiahwe's eyes and form and her father's face. Truth has many mysteries, and the faith of the woman was great; and so it was that, to the long end, Mitiahwe kept her man. But truly she was altogether a woman, and had good fortune. ONCE AT RED MAN'S RIVER "It's got to be settled to-night, Nance. This game is up here, up for ever. The redcoat police from Ottawa are coming, and they'll soon be roostin' in this post; the Injuns are goin', the buffaloes are most gone, and the fur trade's dead in these parts. D'ye see?" The woman did not answer the big, broad-shouldered man bending over her, but remained looking into the fire with wide, abstracted eyes and a face somewhat set. "You and your brother Bantry's got to go. This store ain't worth a cent now. The Hudson's Bay Company'll come along with the redcoats, and they'll set up a nice little Sunday-school business here for what they call 'agricultural settlers.' There'll be a railway, and the Yankees'll send up their marshals to work with the redcoats on the border, and--" "And the days of smuggling will be over," put in the girl in a low voice. "No more bull-wackers and muleskinners 'whooping it up'; no more Blackfeet and Piegans drinking alcohol and water, and cutting each others' throats. A nice quiet time coming on the border, Abe, eh?" The man looked at her queerly. She was not prone to sarcasm, she had not been given to sentimentalism in the past; she had taken the border-life as it was, had looked it straight between the eyes. She had lived up to it, or down to it, without any fuss, as good as any man in any phase of the life, and the only white woman in this whole West country. It was not in the words, but in the tone, that Abe Hawley found something unusual and defamatory. "Why, gol darn it, Nance, what's got into you? You bin a man out West, as good a pioneer as ever was on the border. But now you don't sound friendly to what's been the game out here, and to all of us that've been risking our lives to get a livin'." "What did I say?" asked the girl, unmoved. "It ain't what you said, it's the sound o' your voice." "You don't know my voice, Abe. It ain't always the same. You ain't always about; you don't always hear it." He caught her arm suddenly. "No, but I want to hear it always. I want to be always where you are, Nance. That's what's got to be settled to-day--to-night." "Oh, it's got to be settled to-night!" said the girl meditatively, kicking nervously at a log on the fire. "It takes two to settle a thing like that, and there's only one says it's got to be settled. Maybe it takes more than two--or three--to settle a thing like that." Now she laughed mirthlessly. The man started, and his face flushed with anger; then he put a hand on himself, drew a step back, and watched her. "One can settle a thing, if there's a dozen in it. You see, Nance, you and Bantry's got to close out. He's fixing it up to-night over at Dingan's Drive, and you can't go it alone when you quit this place. Now, it's this way: you can go West with Bantry, or you can go North with me. Away North there's buffalo and deer, and game aplenty, up along the Saskatchewan, and farther up on the Peace River. It's going to be all right up there for half a lifetime, and we can have it in our own way yet. There'll be no smuggling, but there'll be trading, and land to get; and, mebbe, there'd be no need of smuggling, for we can make it, I know how--good white whiskey--and we'll still have this free life for our own. I can't make up my mind to settle down to a clean collar and going to church on Sundays, and all that. And the West's in your bones too. You look like the West--" The girl's face brightened with pleasure, and she gazed at him steadily. "You got its beauty and its freshness, and you got its heat and cold--" She saw the tobacco-juice stain at the corners of his mouth, she became conscious of the slight odour of spirits in the air, and the light in her face lowered in intensity. "You got the ways of the deer in your walk, the song o' the birds in your voice; and you're going North with me, Nance, for I bin talkin' to you stiddy four years. It's a long time to wait on the chance, for there's always women to be got, same as others have done--men like Dingan with Injun girls, and men like Tobey with half-breeds. But I ain't bin lookin' that way. I bin lookin' only towards you." He laughed eagerly, and lifted a tin cup of whiskey standing on a table near. "I'm lookin' towards you now, Nance. Your health and mine together. It's got to be settled now. You got to go to the 'Cific Coast with Bantry, or North with me." The girl jerked a shoulder and frowned a little. He seemed so sure of himself. "Or South with Nick Pringle, or East with someone else," she said quizzically. "There's always four quarters to the compass, even when Abe Hawley thinks he owns the world and has a mortgage on eternity. I'm not going West with Bantry, but there's three other points that's open." With an oath the man caught her by the shoulders, and swung her round to face him. He was swelling with anger. "You--Nick Pringle, that trading cheat, that gambler! After four years, I--" "Let go my shoulders," she said quietly. "I'm not your property. Go and get some Piegan girl to bully. Keep your hands off. I'm not a bronco for you to bit and bridle. You've got no rights. You--" Suddenly she relented, seeing the look in his face, and realising that, after all, it was a tribute to herself that she could keep him for four years and rouse him to such fury--"but yes, Abe," she added, "you have some rights. We've been good friends all these years, and you've been all right out here. You said some nice things about me just now, and I liked it, even if it was as if you learned it out of a book. I've got no po'try in me; I'm plain homespun. I'm a sapling, I'm not any prairie-flower, but I like when I like, and I like a lot when I like. I'm a bit of hickory, I'm not a prairie-flower--" "Who said you was a prairie-flower? Did I? Who's talking about prairie- flowers--" He stopped suddenly, turned round at the sound of a footstep behind him, and saw, standing in a doorway leading to another room, a man who was digging his knuckles into his eyes and stifling a yawn. He was a refined-looking stripling of not more than twenty-four, not tall, but well made, and with an air of breeding, intensified rather than hidden by his rough clothes. "Je-rick-ety! How long have I slept?" he said, blinking at the two beside the fire. "How long?" he added, with a flutter of anxiety in his tone. "I said I'd wake you," said the girl, coming forwards. "You needn't have worried." "I don't worry," answered the young man. "I dreamed myself awake, I suppose. I got dreaming of redcoats and U. S. marshals, and an ambush in the Barfleur Coulee, and--" He saw a secret, warning gesture from the girl, and laughed, then turned to Abe and looked him in the face. "Oh, I know him! Abe Hawley's all O. K.--I've seen him over at Dingan's Drive. Honour among rogues. We're all in it. How goes it--all right?" he added carelessly to Hawley, and took a step forwards, as though to shake hands. Seeing the forbidding look by which he was met, however, he turned to the girl again, as Hawley muttered something they could not hear. "What time is it?" he asked. "It's nine o'clock," answered the girl, her eyes watching his every movement, her face alive. "Then the moon's up almost?" "It'll be up in an hour." "Jerickety! Then I've got to get ready." He turned to the other room again and entered. "College pup!" said Hawley under his breath savagely. "Why didn't you tell me he was here?" "Was it any of your business, Abe?" she rejoined quietly. "Hiding him away here--" "Hiding? Who's been hiding him? He's doing what you've done. He's smuggling--the last lot for the traders over by Dingan's Drive. He'll get it there by morning. He has as much right here as you. What's got into you, Abe?" "What does he know about the business? Why, he's a college man from the East. I've heard o' him. Ain't got no more sense for this life than a dicky-bird. White-faced college pup! What's he doing out here? If you're a friend o' his, you'd better look after him. He's green." "He's going East again," she said, "and if I don't go West with Bantry, or South over to Montana with Nick Pringle, or North--" "Nancy--" His eyes burned, his lips quivered. She looked at him and wondered at the power she had over this bully of the border, who had his own way with most people, and was one of the most daring fighters, hunters, and smugglers in the country. He was cool, hard, and well-in-hand in his daily life, and yet, where she was concerned, "went all to pieces," as someone else had said about himself to her. She was not without the wiles and tact of her sex. "You go now, and come back, Abe," she said in a soft voice. "Come back in an hour. Come back then, and I'll tell you which way I'm going from here." He was all right again. "It's with you, Nancy," he said eagerly. "I bin waiting four years." As he closed the door behind him the "college pup" entered the room again. "Oh, Abe's gone!" he said excitedly. "I hoped you'd get rid of the old rip-roarer. I wanted to be alone with you for a while. I don't really need to start yet. With the full moon I can do it before daylight." Then, with quick warmth, "Ah, Nancy, Nancy, you're a flower-- the flower of all the prairies," he added, catching her hand and laughing into her eyes. She flushed, and for a moment seemed almost bewildered. His boldness, joined to an air of insinuation and understanding, had influenced her greatly from the first moment they had met two months ago, as he was going South on his smuggling enterprise. The easy way in which he had talked to her, the extraordinary sense he seemed to have of what was going on in her mind, the confidential meaning in voice and tone and words had, somehow, opened up a side of her nature hitherto unexplored. She had talked with him freely then, for it was only when he left her that he said what he instinctively knew she would remember till they met again. His quick comments, his indirect but acute questions, his exciting and alluring reminiscences of the East, his subtle yet seemingly frank compliments, had only stimulated a new capacity in her, evoked comparisons of this delicate-looking, fine-faced gentleman with the men of the West by whom she was surrounded. But later he appeared to stumble into expressions of admiration for her, as though he was carried off his feet and had been stunned by her charm. He had done it all like a master. He had not said that she was beautiful--she knew she was not-- but that she was wonderful, and fascinating, and with "something about her" he had never seen in all his life, like her own prairies, thrilling, inspiring, and adorable. His first look at her had seemed full of amazement. She had noticed that, and thought it meant only that he was surprised to find a white girl out here among smugglers, hunters, squaw- men, and Indians. But he said that the first look at her had made him feel things-feel life and women different from ever before; and he had never seen anyone like her, nor a face with so much in it. It was all very brilliantly done. "You make me want to live," he had said, and she, with no knowledge of the nuances of language, had taken it literally, and had asked him if it had been his wish to die; and he had responded to her mistaken interpretation of his meaning, saying that he had had such sorrow he had not wanted to live. As he said it his face looked, in truth, overcome by some deep inward care; so that there came a sort of feeling she had never had so far for any man--that he ought to have someone to look after him. This was the first real stirring of the maternal and protective spirit in her towards men, though it had shown itself amply enough regarding animals and birds. He had said he had not wanted to live, and yet he had come out West in order to try and live, to cure the trouble that had started in his lungs. The Eastern doctors had told him that the rough outdoor life would cure him, or nothing would, and he had vanished from the college walls and the pleasant purlieus of learning and fashion into the wilds. He had not lied directly to her when he said that he had had deep trouble; but he had given the impression that he was suffering from wrongs which had broken his spirit and ruined his health. Wrongs there certainly had been in his life, by whomever committed. Two months ago he had left this girl with her mind full of memories of what he had said to her, and there was something in the sound of the slight cough following his farewell words which had haunted her ever since. Her tremendous health and energy, the fire of life burning so brightly in her, reached out towards this man living on so narrow a margin of force, with no reserve for any extra strain, with just enough for each day's use and no more. Four hours before he had come again with his team of four mules and an Indian youth, having covered forty miles since his last stage. She was at the door and saw him coming while he was yet along distance off. Some instinct had told her to watch that afternoon, for she knew of his intended return and of his dangerous enterprise. The Indians had trailed south and east, the traders had disappeared with them, her brother Bantry had gone up and over to Dingan's Drive, and, save for a few loiterers and last hangers-on, she was alone with what must soon be a deserted post; its walls, its great enclosed yard, and its gun-platforms (for it had been fortified) left for law and order to enter upon, in the persons of the red-coated watchmen of the law. Out of the South, from over the border, bringing the last great smuggled load of whiskey which was to be handed over at Dingan's Drive, and then floated on Red Man's River to settlements up North, came the "college pup," Kelly Lambton, worn out, dazed with fatigue, but smiling too, for a woman's face was ever a tonic to his blood since he was big enough to move in life for himself. It needed courage--or recklessness--to run the border now; for, as Abe Hawley had said, the American marshals were on the pounce, the red-coated mounted police were coming west from Ottawa, and word had winged its way along the prairie that these redcoats were only a few score miles away, and might be at Fort Fair Desire at any moment. The trail to Dingan's Drive lay past it. Through Barfleur Coulee, athwart a great open stretch of country, along a wooded belt, and then, suddenly, over a ridge, Dingan's Drive and Red Man's River would be reached. The Government had a mind to make an example, if necessary, by killing some smugglers in conflict, and the United States marshals had been goaded by vanity and anger at one or two escapes "to have something for their money," as they said. That, in their language, meant, "to let the red run," and Kelly Lambton had none too much blood to lose. He looked very pale and beaten as he held Nance Machell's hands now, and called her a prairie-flower, as he had done when he left her two months before. On his arrival but now he had said little, for he saw that she was glad to see him, and he was dead for sleep, after thirty-six hours of ceaseless travel and watching and danger. Now, with the most perilous part of his journey still before him, and worn physically as he was, his blood was running faster as he looked into the girl's face, and something in her abundant force and bounding life drew him to her. Such vitality in a man like Abe Hawley would have angered him almost, as it did a little time ago, when Abe was there; but possessed by the girl, it roused in him a hunger to draw from the well of her perfect health, from the unused vigour of her being, something for himself. The touch of her hands warmed him, in the fulness of her life, in the strong eloquence of face and form, he forgot she was not beautiful. The lightness passed from his words, and his face became eager. "Flower, yes, the flower of the life of the West--that's what I mean," he said. "You are like an army marching. When I look at you, my blood runs faster. I want to march too. When I hold your hand I feel that life's worth living--I want to do things." She drew her hand away rather awkwardly. She had not now that command of herself which had ever been easy with the men of the West, except, perhaps, with Abe Hawley when-- But with an attempt, only half-meant, to turn the topic, she said: "You must be starting if you want to get through to-night. If the redcoats catch you this side of Barfleur Coulee, or in the Coulee itself, you'll stand no chance. I heard they was only thirty miles north this afternoon. Maybe they'll come straight on here to-night, instead of camping. If they have news of your coming, they might. You can't tell." "You're right." He caught her hand again. "I've got to be going now. But Nance--Nance--Nancy, I want to stay here, here with you; or to take you with me." She drew back. "What do you mean?" she asked. "Take me with you--me-- where?" "East--away down East." Her brain throbbed, her pulses beat so hard. She scarcely knew what to say, did not know what she said. "Why do you do this kind of thing? Why do you smuggle?" she asked. "You wasn't brought up to this." "To get this load of stuff through is life and death to me," he answered. "I've made six thousand dollars out here. That's enough to start me again in the East, where I lost everything. But I've got to have six hundred dollars clear for the travel--railways and things; and I'm having this last run to get it. Then I've finished with the West, I guess. My health's better; the lung is closed up, I've only got a little cough now and again; and I'm off East. I don't want to go alone." He suddenly caught her in his arms. "I want you--you, to go with me, Nancy--Nance!" Her brain swam. To leave the West behind, to go East to a new life full of pleasant things, as this man's wife! Her great heart rose, and suddenly the mother in her as well as the woman in her was captured by his wooing. She had never known what it was to be wooed like this. She was about to answer, when there came a sharp knock at the door leading from the backyard, and Lambton's Indian lad entered. "The soldier--he come--many. I go over the ridge; I see. They come quick here," he said. Nance gave a startled cry, and Lambton turned to the other room for his pistols, overcoat, and cap, when there was the sound of horses' hoofs, the door suddenly opened, and an officer stepped inside. "You're wanted for smuggling, Lambton," he said brusquely. "Don't stir!" In his hand was a revolver. "Oh, bosh! Prove it," answered the young man, pale and startled, but cool in speech and action. "We'll prove it all right. The stuff is hereabouts." The girl said something to the officer in the Chinook language. She saw he did not understand. Then she spoke quickly to Lambton in the same tongue. "Keep him here a bit," she said. "His men haven't come yet. Your outfit is well hid. I'll see if I can get away with it before they find it. They'll follow, and bring you with them, that's sure. So if I have luck and get through, we'll meet at Dingan's Drive." Lambton's face brightened. He quickly gave her a few directions in Chinook, and told her what to do at Dingan's if she got there first. Then she was gone. The officer did not understand what Nance had said, but he realised that, whatever she intended to do, she had an advantage over him. With an unnecessary courage he had ridden on alone to make his capture, and, as it proved, without prudence. He had got his man, but he had not got the smuggled whiskey and alcohol he had come to seize. There was no time to be lost. The girl had gone before he realised it. What had she said to the prisoner? He was foolish enough to ask Lambton, and Lambton replied coolly: "She said she'd get you some supper, but she guessed it would have to be cold--What's your name? Are you a colonel, or a captain, or only a principal private?" "I am Captain MacFee, Lambton. And you'll now bring me where your outfit is. March!" The pistol was still in his hand, and he had a determined look in his eye. Lambton saw it. He was aware of how much power lay in the threatening face before him, and how eager that power was to make itself felt, and provide "Examples"; but he took his chances. "I'll march all right," he answered, "but I'll march to where you tell me. You can't have it both ways. You can take me, because you've found me, and you can take my outfit too when you've found it; but I'm not doing your work, not if I know it." There was a blaze of anger in the eyes of the officer, and it looked for an instant as though something of the lawlessness of the border was going to mark the first step of the Law in the Wilderness, but he bethought himself in time, and said quietly, yet in a voice which Lambton knew he must heed: "Put on your things-quick." When this was accomplished, and MacFee had secured the smuggler's pistols, he said again, "March, Lambton." Lambton marched through the moonlit night towards the troop of men who had come to set up the flag of order in the plains and hills, and as he went his keen ear heard his own mules galloping away down towards the Barfleur Coulee. His heart thumped in his breast. This girl, this prairie-flower, was doing this for him, was risking her life, was breaking the law for him. If she got through, and handed over the whiskey to those who were waiting for it, and it got bundled into the boats going North before the redcoats reached Dingan's Drive, it would be as fine a performance as the West had ever seen; and he would be six hundred dollars to the good. He listened to the mules galloping, till the sounds had died into the distance, but he saw now that his captor had heard too, and that the pursuit would be desperate. A half-hour later it began, with MacFee at the head, and a dozen troopers pounding behind, weary, hungry, bad-tempered, ready to exact payment for their hardships and discouragement. They had not gone a dozen miles when a shouting horseman rode furiously on them from behind. They turned with carbines cocked, but it was Abe Hawley who cursed them, flung his fingers in their faces, and rode on harder and harder. Abe had got the news from one of Nancy's half-breeds, and, with the devil raging in his heart, had entered on the chase. His spirit was up against them all; against the Law represented by the troopers camped at Fort Fair Desire, against the troopers and their captain speeding after Nancy Machell--his Nonce, who was risking her life and freedom for the hated, pale-faced smuggler riding between the troopers; and his spirit was up against Nance herself. Nance had said to him, "Come back in an hour," and he had come back to find her gone. She had broken her word. She had deceived him. She had thrown the four years of his waiting to the winds, and a savage lust was in his heart, which would not be appeased till he had done some evil thing to someone. The girl and the Indian lad were pounding through the night with ears strained to listen for hoof-beats coming after, with eyes searching forward into the trail for swollen creeks and direful obstructions. Through Barfleur Coulee it was a terrible march, for there was no road, and again and again they were nearly overturned, while wolves hovered in their path, ready to reap a midnight harvest. But once in the open again, with the full moonlight on their trail, the girl's spirits rose. If she could do this thing for the man who had looked into her eyes as no one had ever done, what a finish to her days in the West! For they were finished, finished for ever, and she was going--she was going East; not West with Bantry, nor South with Nick Pringle, nor North with Abe Hawley, ah, Abe Hawley, he had been a good friend, he had a great heart, he was the best man of all the western men she had known; but another man had come from the East, a man who had roused something in her never felt before, a man who had said she was wonderful; and he needed someone to take good care of him, to make him love life again. Abe would have been all right if Lambton had never come, and she had meant to marry Abe in the end; but it was different now, and Abe must get over it. Yet she had told Abe to come back in an hour. He was sure to do it; and, when he had done it, and found her gone on this errand, what would he do? She knew what he would do. He would hurt someone. He would follow too. But at Dingan's Drive, if she reached it before the troopers and before Abe, and did the thing she had set out to do; and, because no whiskey could be found, Lambton must go free; and they all stood there together, what would be the end? Abe would be terrible; but she was going East, not North, and when the time came she would face it and put things right somehow. The night seemed endless to her fixed and anxious eyes and mind, yet dawn came, and there had fallen no sound of hoof-beats on her ear. The ridge above Dingan's Drive was reached and covered, but yet there was no sign of her pursuers. At Red Man's River she delivered her load of contraband to the traders waiting for it, and saw it loaded into the boats and disappear beyond the wooded bend above Dingan's. Then she collapsed into the arms of her brother Bantry, and was carried, fainting, into Dingan's Lodge. A half-hour later MacFee and his troopers and Lambton came. MacFee grimly searched the post and the shore, but he saw by the looks of all that he had been foiled. He had no proof of anything, and Lambton must go free. "You've fooled us," he said to Nance sourly, yet with a kind of admiration too. "Through you they got away with it. But I wouldn't try it again, if I were you." "Once is enough," answered the girl laconically, as Lambton, set free, caught both her hands in his and whispered in her ear. MacFee turned to the others. "You'd better drop this kind of thing," he said. "I mean business." They saw the troopers by the horses, and nodded. "Well, we was about quit of it anyhow," said Bantry. "We've had all we want out here." A loud laugh went up, and it was still ringing when there burst into the group, out of the trail, Abe Hawley, on foot. He looked round the group savagely till his eyes rested on Nance and Lambton. "I'm last in," he said in a hoarse voice. "My horse broke its leg cutting across to get here before her--" He waved a hand towards Nance. "It's best stickin' to old trails, not tryin' new ones." His eyes were full of hate as he looked at Lambton. "I'm keeping to old trails. I'm for goin' North, far up, where these two-dollar-a-day and hash-and-clothes people ain't come yet." He made a contemptuous gesture toward MacFee and his troopers. "I'm goin' North--" He took a step forward and fixed his bloodshot eyes on Nance. "I say I'm goin' North. You comin' with me, Nance?" He took off his cap to her. He was haggard, his buckskins were torn, his hair was dishevelled, and he limped a little; but he was a massive and striking figure, and MacFee watched him closely, for there was that in his eyes which meant trouble. "You said, 'Come back in an hour,' Nance, and I come back, as I said I would," he went on. "You didn't stand to your word. I've come to git it. I'm goin' North, Nance, and I bin waitin' for four years for you to go with me. Are you comin'?" His voice was quiet, but it had a choking kind of sound, and it struck strangely in the ears of all. MacFee came nearer. "Are you comin' with me, Nance, dear?" She reached a hand towards Lambton, and he took it, but she did not speak. Something in Abe's eyes overwhelmed her--something she had never seen before, and it seemed to stifle speech in her. Lambton spoke instead. "She's going East with me," he said. "That's settled." MacFee started. Then he caught Abe's arm. "Wait!" he said peremptorily. "Wait one minute." There was something in his voice which held Abe back for the instant. "You say she is going East with you," MacFee said sharply to Lambton. "What for?" He fastened Lambton with his eyes, and Lambton quailed. "Have you told her you've got a wife--down East? I've got your history, Lambton. Have you told her that you've got a wife you married when you were at college--and as good a girl as ever lived?" It had come with terrible suddenness even to Lambton, and he was too dazed to make any reply. With a cry of shame and anger Nancy started back. Growling with rage and hate, Abe Hawley sprang toward Lambton, but the master of the troopers stepped between. No one could tell who moved first, or who first made the suggestion, for the minds of all were the same, and the general purpose was instantaneous; but in the fraction of a minute Lambton, under menace, was on his hands and knees crawling to the riverside. Watchful, but not interfering, the master of the troopers saw him set adrift in a canoe without a paddle, while he was pelted with mud from the shore. The next morning at sunrise Abe Hawley and the girl he had waited for so long started on the North trail together, MacFee, master of the troopers and justice of the peace, handing over the marriage lines. THE STROBE OF THE HOUR "They won't come to-night--sure." The girl looked again towards the west, where, here and there, bare poles, or branches of trees, or slips of underbrush marked a road made across the plains through the snow. The sun was going down golden red, folding up the sky a wide soft curtain of pink and mauve and deep purple merging into the fathomless blue, where already the stars were beginning to quiver. The house stood on the edge of a little forest, which had boldly asserted itself in the wide flatness. At this point in the west the prairie merged into an undulating territory, where hill and wood rolled away from the banks of the Saskatchewan, making another England in beauty. The forest was a sort of advance-post of that land of beauty. Yet there was beauty too on this prairie, though there was nothing to the east but snow and the forest so far as eye could see. Nobility and peace and power brooded over the white world. As the girl looked, it seemed as though the bosom of the land rose and fell. She had felt this vibrating life beat beneath the frozen surface. Now, as she gazed, she smiled sadly to herself, with drooping eyelids looking out from beneath strong brows. "I know you--I know you," she said aloud. "You've got to take your toll. And when you're lying asleep like that, or pretending to, you reach up- and kill. And yet you can be kind-ah, but you can be kind and beautiful! But you must have your toll one way or t'other." She sighed and paused; then, after a moment, looking along the trail--"I don't expect they'll come to-night, and mebbe not to-morrow, if--if they stay for THAT." Her eyes closed, she shivered a little. Her lips drew tight, and her face seemed suddenly to get thinner. "But dad wouldn't--no, he couldn't, not considerin'--" Again she shut her eyes in pain. Her face was now turned from the western road by which she had expected her travellers, and towards the east, where already the snow was taking on a faint bluish tint, a reflection of the sky deepening nightwards in that half-circle of the horizon. Distant and a little bleak and cheerless the half-circle was looking now. "No one--not for two weeks," she said, in comment on the eastern trail, which was so little frequented in winter, and this year had been less travelled than ever. "It would be nice to have a neighbour," she added, as she faced the west and the sinking sun again. "I get so lonely--just minutes I get lonely. But it's them minutes that seem to count more than all the rest when they come. I expect that's it--we don't live in months and years, but just in minutes. It doesn't take long for an earthquake to do its work--it's seconds then. . . . P'r'aps dad won't even come to-morrow," she added, as she laid her hand on the latch. "It never seemed so long before, not even when he's been away a week." She laughed bitterly. "Even bad company's better than no company at all. Sure. And Mickey has been here always when dad's been away past times. Mickey was a fool, but he was company; and mebbe he'd have been better company if he'd been more of a scamp and less a fool. I dunno, but I really think he would. Bad company doesn't put you off so." There was a scratching at the inside of the door. "My, if I didn't forget Shako," she said, "and he dying for a run!" She opened the door quickly, and out jumped a Russian dog of almost full breed, with big, soft eyes like those of his mistress, and with the air of the north in every motion--like his mistress also. "Come, Shako, a run--a run!" An instant after she was flying off on a path towards the woods, her short skirts flying and showing limbs as graceful and shapely as those of any woman of that world of social grace which she had never seen; for she was a prairie girl through and through, born on the plains and fed on its scanty fare--scanty as to variety, at least. Backwards and forwards they ran, the girl shouting like a child of ten,--she was twenty-three, her eyes flashing, her fine white teeth showing, her hands thrown up in sheer excess of animal life, her hair blowing about her face-brown, strong hair, wavy and plentiful. Fine creature as she was, her finest features were her eyes and her hands. The eyes might have been found in the most savage places; the hands, however, only could have come through breeding. She had got them honestly; for her mother was descended from an old family of the French province. That was why she had the name of Loisette--and had a touch of distinction. It was the strain of the patrician in the full blood of the peasant; but it gave her something which made her what she was--what she had been since a child, noticeable and besought, sometimes beloved. It was too strong a nature to compel love often, but it never failed to compel admiration. Not greatly a creature of words, she had become moody of late; and even now, alive with light and feeling and animal life, she suddenly stopped her romp and run, and called the dog to her. "Heel, Shako!" she said, and made for the door of the little house, which looked so snug and home-like. She paused before she came to the door, to watch the smoke curling up from the chimney straight as a column, for there was not a breath of air stirring. The sun was almost gone and the strong bluish light was settling on everything, giving even the green spruce trees a curious burnished tone. Swish! Thud! She faced the woods quickly. It was only a sound that she had heard how many hundreds of times! It was the snow slipping from some broad branch of the fir trees to the ground. Yet she started now. Something was on her mind, agitating her senses, affecting her self- control. "I'll be jumping out of my boots when the fire snaps, or the frost cracks the ice, next," she said aloud contemptuously. "I dunno what's the matter with me. I feel as if someone was hiding somewhere ready to pop out on me. I haven't never felt like that before." She had formed the habit of talking to herself, for it had seemed at first, as she was left alone when her father went trapping or upon journeys for the Government, that by and by she would start at the sound of her own voice, if she didn't think aloud. So she was given to soliloquy, defying the old belief that people who talked to themselves were going mad. She laughed at that. She said that birds sang to themselves and didn't go mad, and crickets chirruped, and frogs croaked, and owls hooted, and she would talk and not go crazy either. So she talked to herself and to Shako when she was alone. How quiet it was inside when her light supper was eaten, bread and beans and pea-soup--she had got this from her French mother. Now she sat, her elbows on her knees, her chin on her hands, looking into the fire. Shako was at her feet upon the great musk-ox rug, which her father had got on one of his hunting trips in the Athabasca country years ago. It belonged as she belonged. It breathed of the life of the north-land, for the timbers of the hut were hewn cedar; the rough chimney, the seats, and the shelves on which a few books made a fair show beside the bright tins and the scanty crockery, were of pine; and the horned heads of deer and wapiti made pegs for coats and caps, and rests for guns and rifles. It was a place of comfort; it had an air of well-to-do thrift, even as the girl's dress, though plain, was made of good sound stuff, grey, with a touch of dark red to match the auburn of her hair. A book lay open in her lap, but she had scarcely tried to read it. She had put it down after a few moments fixed upon it. It had sent her thoughts off into a world where her life had played a part too big for books, too deep for the plummet of any save those who had lived through the storm of life's trials; and life when it is bitter to the young is bitter with an agony the old never know. At last she spoke to herself. "She knows now. Now she knows what it is, how it feels--your heart like red-hot coals, and something in your head that's like a turnscrew, and you want to die and can't, for you've got to live and suffer." Again she was quiet, and only the dog's heavy breathing, the snap of the fire, or the crack of a timber in the deadly frost broke the silence. Inside it was warm and bright and home-like; outside it was twenty degrees below zero, and like some vast tomb where life itself was congealed, and only the white stars, low, twinkling, and quizzical, lived-a life of sharp corrosion, not of fire. Suddenly she raised her head and listened. The dog did the same. None but those whose lives are lived in lonely places can be so acute, so sensitive to sound. It was a feeling delicate and intense, the whole nature getting the vibration. You could have heard nothing had you been there; none but one who was of the wide spaces could have done so. But the dog and the woman felt, and both strained towards the window. Again they heard, and started to their feet. It was far, far away, and still you could not have heard; but now they heard clearly--a cry in the night, a cry of pain and despair. The girl ran to the window and pulled aside the bearskin curtain which had completely shut out the light. Then she stirred the fire, threw a log upon it, snuffed the candles, hastily put on her moccasins, fur coat, wool cap, and gloves, and went to the door quickly, the dog at her heels. Opening it, she stepped out into the night. "Qui va la? Who is it? Where?" she called, and strained towards the west. She thought it might be her father or Mickey the hired man, or both. The answer came from the east, out of the homeless, neighbourless, empty east--a cry, louder now. There were only stars, and the night was dark, though not deep dark. She sped along the prairie road as fast as she could, once or twice stopping to call aloud. In answer to her calls the voice sounded nearer and nearer. Now suddenly she left the trail and bore away northward. At last the voice was very near. Presently a figure appeared ahead, staggering towards her. "Qui va la? Who is it?" she asked. "Ba'tiste Caron," was the reply in English, in a faint voice. She was beside him in an instant. "What has happened? Why are you off the trail?" she said, and supported him. "My Injun stoled my dogs and run off," he replied. "I run after. Then, when I am to come to the trail"--he paused to find the English word, and could not--"encore to this trail I no can. So. Ah, bon Dieu, it has so awful!" He swayed and would have fallen, but she caught him, bore him up. She was so strong, and he was as slight as a girl, though tall. "When was that?" she asked. "Two nights ago," he answered, and swayed. "Wait," she said, and pulled a flask from her pocket. "Drink this-quick." He raised it to his lips, but her hand was still on it, and she only let him take a little. Then she drew it away, though she had almost to use force, he was so eager for it. Now she took a biscuit from her pocket. "Eat; then some more brandy after," she urged. "Come on; it's not far. See, there's the light," she added cheerily, raising her head towards the hut. "I saw it just when I have fall down--it safe me. I sit down to die-- like that! But it safe me, that light--so. Ah, bon Dieu, it was so far, and I want eat so!" Already he had swallowed the biscuit. "When did you eat last?" she asked, as she urged him on. "Two nights--except for one leetla piece of bread--O--O--I fin' it in my pocket. Grace! I have travel so far. Jesu, I think it ees ten thousan' miles I go. But I mus' go on, I mus' go--O--certainement." The light came nearer and nearer. His footsteps quickened, though he staggered now and then, and went like a horse that has run its race, but is driven upon its course again, going heavily with mouth open and head thrown forwards and down. "But I mus' to get there, an' you-you will to help me, eh?" Again he swayed, but her strong arm held him up. As they ran on, in a kind of dog-trot, her hand firm upon his arm--he seemed not to notice it --she became conscious, though it was half dark, of what sort of man she had saved. He was about her own age, perhaps a year or two older, with little, if any, hair upon his face, save a slight moustache. His eyes, deep sunken as they were, she made out were black, and the face, though drawn and famished, had a handsome look. Presently she gave him another sip of brandy, and he quickened his steps, speaking to himself the while. "I haf to do it--if I lif. It is to go, go, go, till I get." Now they came to the hut where the firelight flickered on the window- pane; the door was flung open, and, as he stumbled on the threshold, she helped him into the warm room. She almost pushed him over to the fire. Divested of his outer coat, muffler, cap, and leggings, he sat on a bench before the fire, his eyes wandering from the girl to the flames, and his hands clasping and unclasping between his knees. His eyes dilating with hunger, he watched her preparations for his supper; and when at last--and she had been but a moment--it was placed before him, his head swam, and he turned faint with the stress of his longing. He would have swallowed a basin of pea-soup at a draught, but she stopped him, holding the basin till she thought he might venture again. Then came cold beans, and some meat which she toasted at the fire and laid upon his plate. They had not spoken since first entering the house, when tears had shone in his eyes, and he had said: "You have safe--ah, you have safe me, and so I will do it yet by help bon Dieu--yes." The meat was done at last, and he sat with a great dish of tea beside him, and his pipe alight. "What time, if please?" he asked. "I t'ink nine hour, but no sure." "It is near nine," she said. She hastily tidied up the table after his meal, and then came and sat in her chair over against the wall of the rude fireplace. "Nine--dat is good. The moon rise at 'leven; den I go. I go on," he said, "if you show me de queeck way." "You go on--how can you go on?" she asked, almost sharply. "Will you not to show me?" he asked. "Show you what?" she asked abruptly. "The queeck way to Askatoon," he said, as though surprised that she should ask. "They say me if I get here you will tell me queeck way to Askatoon. Time, he go so fas', an' I have loose a day an' a night, an' I mus' get Askatoon if I lif--I mus' get dere in time. It is all safe to de stroke of de hour, mais, after, it is--bon Dieu--it is hell then. Who shall forgif me--no!" "The stroke of the hour--the stroke of the hour!" It beat into her brain. Were they both thinking of the same thing now? "You will show me queeck way. I mus' be Askatoon in two days, or it is all over," he almost moaned. "Is no man here--I forget dat name, my head go round like a wheel; but I know dis place, an' de good God He help me fin' my way to where I call out, bien sur. Dat man's name I have forget." "My father's name is John Alroyd," she answered absently, for there were hammering at her brain the words, "The stroke of the hour." "Ah, now I get--yes. An' your name, it is Loisette Alroy'--ah, I have it in my mind now--Loisette. I not forget dat name, I not forget you--no." "Why do you want to go the 'quick' way to Askatoon?" she asked. He puffed a moment at his pipe before he answered her. Presently he said, holding out his pipe, "You not like smoke, mebbe?" She shook her head in negation, making an impatient gesture. "I forget ask you," he said. "Dat journee make me forget. When Injun Jo, he leave me with the dogs, an' I wake up all alone, an' not know my way--not like Jo, I think I die, it is so bad, so terrible in my head. Not'ing but snow, not'ing. But dere is de sun; it shine. It say to me, 'Wake up, Ba'tiste; it will be all right bime-bye.' But all time I t'ink I go mad, for I mus' get Askatoon before--dat." She started. Had she not used the same word in thinking of Askatoon. "That," she had said. "Why do you want to go the 'quick' way to Askatoon?" she asked again, her face pale, her foot beating the floor impatiently. "To save him before dat!" he answered, as though she knew of what he was speaking and thinking. "What is that?" she asked. She knew now, surely, but she must ask it nevertheless. "Dat hanging--of Haman," he answered. He nodded to himself. Then he took to gazing into the fire. His lips moved as though talking to himself, and the hand that held the pipe lay forgotten on his knee. "What have you to do with Haman?" she asked slowly, her eyes burning. "I want safe him--I mus' give him free." He tapped his breast. "It is hereto mak' him free." He still tapped his breast. For a moment she stood frozen still, her face thin and drawn and white; then suddenly the blood rushed back into her face, and a red storm raged in her eyes. She thought of the sister, younger than herself, whom Rube Haman had married and driven to her grave within a year--the sweet Lucy, with the name of her father's mother. Lucy had been all English in face and tongue, a flower of the west, driven to darkness by this horse-dealing brute, who, before he was arrested and tried for murder, was about to marry Kate Wimper. Kate Wimper had stolen him from Lucy before Lucy's first and only child was born, the child that could not survive the warm mother-life withdrawn, and so had gone down the valley whither the broken-hearted mother had fled. It was Kate Wimper, who, before that, had waylaid the one man for whom she herself had ever cared, and drawn him from her side by such attractions as she herself would keep for an honest wife, if such she ever chanced to be. An honest wife she would have been had Kate Wimper not crossed the straight path of her life. The man she had loved was gone to his end also, reckless and hopeless, after he had thrown away his chance of a lifetime with Loisette Alroyd. There had been left behind this girl, to whom tragedy had come too young, who drank humiliation with a heart as proud as ever straightly set its course through crooked ways. It had hurt her, twisted her nature a little, given a fountain of bitterness to her soul, which welled up and flooded her life sometimes. It had given her face no sourness, but it put a shadow into her eyes. She had been glad when Haman was condemned for murder, for she believed he had committed it, and ten times hanging could not compensate for that dear life gone from their sight--Lucy, the pride of her father's heart. She was glad when Haman was condemned, because of the woman who had stolen him from Lucy, because of that other man, her lover, gone out of her own life. The new hardness in her rejoiced that now the woman, if she had any heart at all, must have it bowed down by this supreme humiliation and wrung by the ugly tragedy of the hempen rope. And now this man before her, this man with a boy's face, with the dark luminous eyes, whom she had saved from the frozen plains, he had that in his breast which would free Haman, so he had said. A fury had its birth in her at that moment. Something seemed to seize her brain and master it, something so big that it held all her faculties in perfect control, and she felt herself in an atmosphere where all life moved round her mechanically, she herself the only sentient thing, so much greater than all she saw, or all that she realised by her subconscious self. Everything in the world seemed small. How calm it was even with the fury within! "Tell me," she said quietly--"tell me how you are able to save Haman?" "He not kill Wakely. It is my brudder Fadette dat kill and get away. Haman he is drunk, and everyt'ing seem to say Haman he did it, an' everyone know Haman is not friend to Wakely. So the juree say he must be hanging. But my brudder he go to die with hawful bad cold queeck, an' he send for the priest an' for me, an' tell all. I go to Governor with the priest, an' Governor gif me dat writing here." He tapped his breast, then took out a wallet and showed the paper to her. "It is life of dat Haman, voici! And so I safe him for my brudder. Dat was a bad boy, Fadette. He was bad all time since he was a baby, an' I t'ink him pretty lucky to die on his bed, an' get absolve, and go to purgatore. If he not have luck like dat he go to hell, an' stay there." He sighed, and put the wallet back in his breast carefully, his eyes half-shut with weariness, his handsome face drawn and thin, his limbs lax with fatigue. "If I get Askatoon before de time for dat, I be happy in my heart, for dat brudder off mine he get out of purgatore bime-bye, I t'ink." His eyes were almost shut, but he drew himself together with a great effort, and added desperately, "No sleep. If I sleep it is all smash. Man say me I can get Askatoon by dat time from here, if I go queeck way across lak'--it is all froze now, dat lak'--an' down dat Foxtail Hills. Is it so, ma'm'selle?" "By the 'quick' way if you can make it in time," she said; "but it is no way for the stranger to go. There are always bad spots on the ice--it is not safe. You could not find your way." "I mus' get dere in time," he said desperately. "You can't do it-- alone," she said. "Do you want to risk all and lose?" He frowned in self-suppression. "Long way, I no can get dere in time?" he asked. She thought a moment. "No; it can't be done by the long way. But there is another way--a third trail, the trail the Gover'ment men made a year ago when they came to survey. It is a good trail. It is blazed in the woods and staked on the plains. You cannot miss. But--but there is so little time." She looked at the clock on the wall. "You cannot leave here much before sunrise, and--" "I will leef when de moon rise, at eleven," he interjected. "You have had no sleep for two nights, and no food. You can't last it out," she said calmly. The deliberate look on his face deepened to stubbornness. "It is my vow to my brudder--he is in purgatore. An' I mus' do it," he rejoined, with an emphasis there was no mistaking. "You can show me dat way?" She went to a drawer and took out a piece of paper. Then, with a point of blackened stick, as he watched her and listened, she swiftly drew his route for him. "Yes, I get it in my head," he said. "I go dat way, but I wish--I wish it was dat queeck way. I have no fear, not'ing. I go w'en dat moon rise--I go, bien sur." "You must sleep, then, while I get some food for you." She pointed to a couch in a corner. "I will wake you when the moon rises." For the first time he seemed to realise her, for a moment to leave the thing which consumed him, and put his mind upon her. "You not happy--you not like me here?" he asked simply; then added quickly, "I am not bad man like me brudder--no." Her eyes rested on him for a moment as though realising him, while some thought was working in her mind behind. "No, you are not a bad man," she said. "Men and women are equal on the plains. You have no fear--I have no fear." He glanced at the rifles on the walls, then back at her. "My mudder, she was good woman. I am glad she did not lif to know what Fadette do." His eyes drank her in for a minute, then he said: "I go sleep now, t'ank you --till moontime." In a moment his deep breathing filled the room, the only sound save for the fire within and the frost outside. Time went on. The night deepened. ......................... Loisette sat beside the fire, but her body was half-turned from it towards the man on the sofa. She was not agitated outwardly, but within there was that fire which burns up life and hope and all the things that come between us and great issues. It had burned up everything in her except one thought, one powerful motive. She had been deeply wronged, and justice had been about to give "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But the man lying there had come to sweep away the scaffolding of justice--he had come for that. Perhaps he might arrive at Askatoon before the stroke of the hour, but still he would be too late, for in her pocket now was the Governor's reprieve. The man had slept soundly. His wallet was still in his breast; but the reprieve was with her. If he left without discovering his loss, and got well on his way, and discovered it then, it would be too late. If he returned--she only saw one step before her, she would wait for that, and deal with it when it came. She was thinking of Lucy, of her own lover ruined and gone. She was calm in her madness. At the first light of the moon she roused him. She had put food into his fur-coat pocket, and after he had drunk a bowl of hot pea-soup, while she told him his course again, she opened the door, and he passed out into the night. He started forward without a word, but came back again and caught her hand. "Pardon," he said; "I go forget everyt'ing except dat. But I t'ink what you do for me, it is better than all my life. Bien sur, I will come again, when I get my mind to myself. Ah, but you are beautibul," he said, "an' you not happy. Well, I come again--yes, a Dieu." He was gone into the night, with the moon silvering the sky, and the steely frost eating into the sentient life of this northern world. Inside the house, with the bearskin blind dropped at the window again, and the fire blazing high, Loisette sat with the Governor's reprieve in her hand. Looking at it, she wondered why it had been given to Ba'tiste Caron, and not to a police-officer. Ah yes, it was plain--Ba'tiste was a woodsman and plainsman, and could go far more safely than a constable, and faster. Ba'tiste had reason for going fast, and he would travel night and day--he was travelling night and day indeed. And now Ba'tiste might get there, but the reprieve would not. He would not be able to stop the hanging of Haman--the hanging of Rube Haman. A change came over her. Her eyes blazed, her breast heaved now. She had been so quiet, so cold and still. But life seemed moving in her once again. The woman, Kate Wimper, who had helped to send two people to their graves, would now drink the dregs of shame, if she was capable of shame--would be robbed of her happiness, if so be she loved Rube Haman. She stood up, as though to put the paper in the fire, but paused suddenly at one thought--Rube Haman was innocent of murder. Even so, he was not innocent of Lucy's misery and death, of the death of the little one who only opened its eyes to the light for an instant, and then went into the dark again. But truly she was justified! When Haman was gone things would go on just the same--and she had been so bitter, her heart had been pierced as with a knife these past three years. Again she held out her hand to the fire, but suddenly she gave a little cry and put her hand to her head. There was Ba'tiste! What was Ba'tiste to her? Nothing-nothing at all. She had saved his life--even if she wronged Ba'tiste, her debt would be paid. No, she would not think of Ba'tiste. Yet she did not put the paper in the fire, but in the pocket of her dress. Then she went to her room, leaving the door open. The bed was opposite the fire, and, as she lay there--she did not take off her clothes, she knew not why-she could see the flames. She closed her eyes, but could not sleep, and more than once when she opened them she thought she saw Ba'tiste sitting there as he had sat hours before. Why did Ba'tiste haunt her so? What was it he had said in his broken English as he went away?--that he would come back; that she was "beautibul." All at once as she lay still, her head throbbing, her feet and hands icy cold, she sat up listening. "Ah-again!" she cried. She sprang from her bed, rushed to the door, and strained her eyes into the silver night. She called into the icy void, "Qui va la? Who goes?" She leaned forwards, her hand at her ear, but no sound came in reply. Once more she called, but nothing answered. The night was all light and frost and silence. She had only heard, in her own brain, the iteration of Ba'tiste's calling. Would he reach Askatoon in time, she wondered, as she shut the door? Why had she not gone with him and attempted the shorter way the quick way, he had called it? All at once the truth came back upon her, stirring her now. It would do no good for Ba'tiste to arrive in time. He might plead to them all and tell the truth about the reprieve, but it would not avail--Rube Haman would hang. That did not matter--even though he was innocent; but Ba'tiste's brother would be so long in purgatory. And even that would not matter; but she would hurt Ba'tiste--Ba'tiste-- Ba'tiste. And Ba'tiste he would know that she--and he had called her "beautibul," that she had-- With a cry she suddenly clothed herself for travel. She put some food and drink in a leather bag and slung them over her shoulder. Then she dropped on a knee and wrote a note to her father, tears falling from her eyes. She heaped wood on the fire and moved towards the door. All at once she turned to the crucifix on the wall which had belonged to her mother, and, though she had followed her father's Protestant religion, she kissed the feet of the sacred figure. "Oh, Christ, have mercy on me, and bring me safe to my journey's end-in time," she said breathlessly; then she went softly to the door, leaving the dog behind. It opened, closed, and the night swallowed her. Like a ghost she sped the quick way to Askatoon. She was six hours behind Ba'tiste, and, going hard all the time, it was doubtful if she could get there before the fatal hour. On the trail Ba'tiste had taken there were two huts where he could rest, and he had carried his blanket slung on his shoulder. The way she went gave no shelter save the trees and caves which had been used to cache buffalo meat and hides in old days. But beyond this there was danger in travelling by night, for the springs beneath the ice of the three lakes she must, cross made it weak and rotten even in the fiercest weather, and what would no doubt have been death to Ba'tiste would be peril at least to her. Why had she not gone with him? "He had in his face what was in Lucy's," she said to herself, as she sped on. "She was fine like him, ready to break her heart for those she cared for. My, if she had seen him first instead of--" She stopped short, for the ice gave way to her foot, and she only sprang back in time to save herself. But she trotted on, mile after mile, the dog-trot of the Indian, head bent forwards, toeing in, breathing steadily but sharply. The morning came, noon, then a fall of snow and a keen wind, and despair in her heart; but she had passed the danger-spots, and now, if the storm did not overwhelm her, she might get to Askatoon in time. In the midst of the storm she came to one of the caves of which she had known. Here was wood for a fire, and here she ate, and in weariness unspeakable fell asleep. When she waked it was near sun-down, the storm had ceased, and, as on the night before, the sky was stained with colour and drowned in splendour. "I will do it--I will do it, Ba'tiste!" she called, and laughed aloud into the sunset. She had battled with herself all the way, and she had conquered. Right was right, and Rube Haman must not be hung for what he did not do. Her heart hardened whenever she thought of the woman, but softened again when she thought of Ba'tiste, who had to suffer for the deed of a brother in "purgatore." Once again the night and its silence and loneliness followed her, the only living thing near the trail till long after midnight. After that, as she knew, there were houses here and there where she might have rested, but she pushed on unceasing. At daybreak she fell in with a settler going to Askatoon with his dogs. Seeing how exhausted she was, he made her ride a few miles upon his sledge; then she sped on ahead again till she came to the borders of Askatoon. People were already in the streets, and all were tending one way. She stopped and asked the time. It was within a quarter of an hour of the time when Haman was to pay another's penalty. She spurred herself on, and came to the jail blind with fatigue. As she neared the jail she saw her father and Mickey. In amazement her father hailed her, but she would not stop. She was admitted to the prison on explaining that she had a reprieve. Entering a room filled with excited people, she heard a cry. It came from Ba'tiste. He had arrived but ten minutes before, and, in the Sheriff's presence had discovered his loss. He had appealed in vain. But now, as he saw the girl, he gave a shout of joy which pierced the hearts of all. "Ah, you haf it! Say you haf it, or it is no use--he mus' hang. Spik- spik! Ah, my brudder--it is to do him right! Ah, Loisette--bon Dieu, merci!" For answer she placed the reprieve in the hands of the Sheriff. Then she swayed and fell fainting at the feet of Ba'tiste. She had come at the stroke of the hour. When she left for her home again the Sheriff kissed her. And that was not the only time he kissed her. He did it again six months later, at the beginning of the harvest, when she and Ba'tiste Caron started off on the long trail of life together. None but Ba'tiste knew the truth about the loss of the reprieve, and to him she was "beautibul" just the same, and greatly to be desired. BUCKMASTER'S BOY "I bin waitin' for him, an' I'll git him of it takes all winter. I'll git him--plumb." The speaker smoothed the barrel of his rifle with mittened hand, which had, however, a trigger-finger free. With black eyebrows twitching over sunken grey eyes, he looked doggedly down the frosty valley from the ledge of high rock where he sat. The face was rough and weather-beaten, with the deep tan got in the open life of a land of much sun and little cloud, and he had a beard which, untrimmed and growing wild, made him look ten years older than he was. "I bin waitin' a durn while," the mountain-man added, and got to his feet slowly, drawing himself out to six and a half feet of burly manhood. The shoulders were, however, a little stooped, and the head was thrust forwards with an eager, watchful look--a habit become a physical characteristic. Presently he caught sight of a hawk sailing southward along the peaks of the white icebound mountains above, on which the sun shone with such sharp insistence, making sky and mountain of a piece in deep purity and serene stillness. "That hawk's seen him, mebbe," he said, after a moment. "I bet it went up higher when it got him in its eye. Ef it'd only speak and tell me where he is--ef he's a day, or two days, or ten days north." Suddenly his eyes blazed and his mouth opened in superstitious amazement, for the hawk stopped almost directly overhead at a great height, and swept round in a circle many times, waveringly, uncertainly. At last it resumed its flight southward, sliding down the mountains like a winged star. The mountaineer watched it with a dazed expression for a moment longer, then both hands clutched the rifle and half swung it to position involuntarily. "It's seen him, and it stopped to say so. It's seen him, I tell you, an' I'll git him. Ef it's an hour, or a day, or a week, it's all the same. I'm here watchin', waitin' dead on to him, the poison skunk!" The person to whom he had been speaking now rose from the pile of cedar boughs where he had been sitting, stretched his arms up, then shook himself into place, as does a dog after sleep. He stood for a minute looking at the mountaineer with a reflective, yet a furtively sardonic, look. He was not above five feet nine inches in height, and he was slim and neat; and though his buckskin coat and breeches were worn and even frayed in spots, he had an air of some distinction and of concentrated force. It was a face that men turned to look at twice and shook their heads in doubt afterwards--a handsome, worn, secretive face, in as perfect control as the strings of an instrument under the bow of a great artist. It was the face of a man without purpose in life beyond the moment--watchful, careful, remorselessly determined, an adventurer's asset, the dial-plate of a hidden machinery. Now he took the handsome meerschaum pipe from his mouth, from which he had been puffing smoke slowly, and said in a cold, yet quiet voice, "How long you been waitin', Buck?" "A month. He's overdue near that. He always comes down to winter at Fort o' Comfort, with his string of half-breeds, an' Injuns, an' the dogs." "No chance to get him at the Fort?" "It ain't so certain. They'd guess what I was doin' there. It's surer here. He's got to come down the trail, an' when I spot him by the Juniper clump"--he jerked an arm towards a spot almost a mile farther up the valley--"I kin scoot up the underbrush a bit and git him--plumb. I could do it from here, sure, but I don't want no mistake. Once only, jest one shot, that's all I want, Sinnet." He bit off a small piece of tobacco from a black plug Sinnet offered him, and chewed it with nervous fierceness, his eyebrows working, as he looked at the other eagerly. Deadly as his purpose was, and grim and unvarying as his vigil had been, the loneliness had told on him, and he had grown hungry for a human face and human companionship. Why Sinnet had come he had not thought to inquire. Why Sinnet should be going north instead of south had not occurred to him. He only realised that Sinnet was not the man he was waiting for with murder in his heart; and all that mattered to him in life was the coming of his victim down the trail. He had welcomed Sinnet with a sullen eagerness, and had told him in short, detached sentences the dark story of a wrong and a waiting revenge, which brought a slight flush to Sinnet's pale face and awakened a curious light in his eyes. "Is that your shack--that where you shake down?" Sinnet said, pointing towards a lean-to in the fir trees to the right. "That's it. I sleep there. It's straight on to the Juniper clump, the front door is." He laughed viciously, grimly. "Outside or inside, I'm on to the Juniper clump. Walk into the parlour?" he added, and drew open a rough-made door, so covered with green cedar boughs that it seemed of a piece with the surrounding underbrush and trees. Indeed, the little but was so constructed that it could not be distinguished from the woods even a short distance away. "Can't have a fire, I suppose?" Sinnet asked. "Not daytimes. Smoke 'd give me away if he suspicioned me," answered the mountaineer. "I don't take no chances. Never can tell." "Water?" asked Sinnet, as though interested in the surroundings, while all the time he was eyeing the mountaineer furtively--as it were, prying to the inner man, or measuring the strength of the outer man. He lighted a fresh pipe and seated himself on a rough bench beside the table in the middle of the room, and leaned on his elbows, watching. The mountaineer laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh to hear. "Listen," he said. "You bin a long time out West. You bin in the mountains a good while. Listen." There was silence. Sinnet listened intently. He heard the faint drip, drip, drip of water, and looked steadily at the back wall of the room. "There--rock?" he said, and jerked his head towards the sound. "You got good ears," answered the other, and drew aside a blanket which hung on the back wall of the room. A wooden trough was disclosed hanging under a ledge of rock, and water dripped into it softly, slowly. "Almost providential, that rock," remarked Sinnet. "You've got your well at your back door. Food--but you can't go far, and keep your eye on the Bend too," he nodded towards the door, beyond which lay the frost-touched valley in the early morning light of autumn. "Plenty of black squirrels and pigeons come here on account of the springs like this one, and I get 'em with a bow and arrow. I didn't call myself Robin Hood and Daniel Boone not for nothin' when I was knee-high to a grasshopper." He drew from a rough cupboard some cold game, and put it on the table, with some scones and a pannikin of water. Then he brought out a small jug of whiskey and placed it beside his visitor. They began to eat. "How d'ye cook without fire?" asked Sinnet. "Fire's all right at nights. He'd never camp 'twixt here an' Juniper Bend at night. The next camp's six miles north from here. He'd only come down the valley daytimes. I studied it 'all out, and it's a dead sure thing. From daylight till dusk I'm on to him. I got the trail in my eye." He showed his teeth like a wild dog, as his look swept the valley. There was something almost revolting in his concentrated ferocity. Sinnet's eyes half closed as he watched the mountaineer, and the long, scraggy hands and whipcord neck seemed to interest him greatly. He looked at his own slim brown hands with a half smile, and it was almost as cruel as the laugh of the other. Yet it had, too, a knowledge and an understanding which gave it humanity. "You're sure he did it?" Sinnet asked presently, after drinking a very small portion of liquor, and tossing some water from the pannikin after it. "You're sure Greevy killed your boy, Buck?" "My name's Buckmaster, ain't it--Jim Buckmaster? Don't I know my own name? It's as sure as that. My boy said it was Greevy when he was dying. He told Bill Ricketts so, and Bill told me afore he went East. Bill didn't want to tell, but he said it was fair I should know, for my boy never did nobody any harm--an' Greevy's livin' on. But I'll git him. Right's right." "Wouldn't it be better for the law to hang him, if you've got the proof, Buck? A year or so in jail, an' a long time to think over what's going round his neck on the scaffold--wouldn't that suit you, if you've got the proof?" A rigid, savage look came into Buckmaster's face. "I ain't lettin' no judge and jury do my business. I'm for certain sure, not for p'r'aps! An' I want to do it myself. Clint was only twenty. Like boys we was together. I was eighteen when I married, an' he come when she went--jest a year--jest a year. An' ever since then we lived together, him an' me, an' shot together, an' trapped together, an' went gold-washin' together on the Cariboo, an' eat out of the same dish, an' slept under the same blanket, and jawed together nights--ever since he was five, when old Mother Lablache had got him into pants, an' he was fit to take the trail." The old man stopped a minute, his whipcord neck swelling, his lips twitching. He brought a fist down on the table with a bang. "The biggest little rip he was, as full of fun as a squirrel, an' never a smile-o-jest his eyes dancin', an' more sense than a judge. He laid hold o' me, that cub did--it was like his mother and himself together; an' the years flowin' in an' peterin' out, an' him gettin' older, an' always jest the same. Always on rock-bottom, always bright as a dollar, an' we livin' at Black Nose Lake, layin' up cash agin' the time we was to go South, an' set up a house along the railway, an' him to git married. I was for his gittin' married same as me, when we had enough cash. I use to think of that when he was ten, and when he was eighteen I spoke to him about it; but he wouldn't listen--jest laughed at me. You remember how Clint used to laugh sort of low and teasin' like--you remember that laugh o' Clint's, don't you?" Sinnet's face was towards the valley and Juniper Bend, but he slowly turned his head and looked at Buckmaster strangely out of his half-shut eyes. He took the pipe from his mouth slowly. "I can hear it now," he answered slowly. "I hear it often, Buck." The old man gripped his arm so suddenly that Sinnet was startled,--in so far as anything could startle anyone who had lived a life of chance and danger and accident, and his face grew a shade paler; but he did not move, and Buckmaster's hand tightened convulsively. "You liked him, an' he liked you; he first learnt poker off you, Sinnet. He thought you was a tough, but he didn't mind that no more than I did. It ain't for us to say what we're goin' to be, not always. Things in life git stronger than we are. You was a tough, but who's goin' to judge you! I ain't; for Clint took to you, Sinnet, an' he never went wrong in his thinkin'. God! he was wife an' child to me--an' he's dead--dead-- dead." The man's grief was a painful thing to see. His hands gripped the table, while his body shook with sobs, though his eyes gave forth no tears. It was an inward convulsion, which gave his face the look of unrelieved tragedy and suffering--Laocoon struggling with the serpents of sorrow and hatred which were strangling him. "Dead an' gone," he repeated, as he swayed to and fro, and the table quivered in his grasp. Presently, however, as though arrested by a thought, he peered out of the doorway towards Juniper Bend. "That hawk seen him--it seen him. He's comin', I know it, an' I'll git him--plumb." He had the mystery and imagination of the mountain-dweller. The rifle lay against the wall behind him, and he turned and touched it almost caressingly. "I ain't let go like this since he was killed, Sinnet. It don't do. I got to keep myself stiddy to do the trick when the minute comes. At first I usen't to sleep at nights, thinkin' of Clint, an' missin' him, an' I got shaky and no good. So I put a cinch on myself, an' got to sleepin' again--from the full dusk to dawn, for Greevy wouldn't take the trail at night. I've kept stiddy." He held out his hand as though to show that it was firm and steady, but it trembled with the emotion which had conquered him. He saw it, and shook his head angrily. "It was seein' you, Sinnet. It burst me. I ain't seen no one to speak to in a month, an' with you sittin' there, it was like Clint an' me cuttin' and comin' again off the loaf an' the knuckle-bone of ven'son." Sinnet ran a long finger slowly across his lips, and seemed meditating what he should say to the mountaineer. At length he spoke, looking into Buckmaster's face. "What was the story Ricketts told you? What did your boy tell Ricketts? I've heard, too, about it, and that's why I asked you if you had proofs that Greevy killed Clint. Of course, Clint should know, and if he told Ricketts, that's pretty straight; but I'd like to know if what I heard tallies with what Ricketts heard from Clint. P'r'aps it'd ease your mind a bit to tell it. I'll watch the Bend--don't you trouble about that. You can't do these two things at one time. I'll watch for Greevy; you give me Clint's story to Ricketts. I guess you know I'm feelin' for you, an' if I was in your place I'd shoot the man that killed Clint, if it took ten years. I'd have his heart's blood--all of it. Whether Greevy was in the right or in the wrong, I'd have him-- plumb." Buckmaster was moved. He gave a fierce exclamation and made a gesture of cruelty. "Clint right or wrong? There ain't no question of that. My boy wasn't the kind to be in the wrong. What did he ever do but what was right? If Clint was in the wrong I'd kill Greevy jest the same, for Greevy robbed him of all the years that was before him--only a sapling he was, an' all his growin' to do, all his branches to widen an' his roots to spread. But that don't enter in it, his bein' in the wrong. It was a quarrel, and Clint never did Greevy any harm. It was a quarrel over cards, an' Greevy was drunk, an' followed Clint out into the prairie in the night and shot him like a coyote. Clint hadn't no chance, an' he jest lay there on the ground till morning, when Ricketts and Steve Joicey found him. An' Clint told Ricketts who it was." "Why didn't Ricketts tell it right out at once?" asked Sinnet. "Greevy was his own cousin--it was in the family, an' he kept thinkin' of Greevy's gal, Em'ly. Her--what'll it matter to her! She'll get married, an she'll forgit. I know her, a gal that's got no deep feelin' like Clint had for me. But because of her Ricketts didn't speak for a year. Then he couldn't stand it any longer, an' he told me--seein' how I suffered, an' everybody hidin' their suspicions from me, an' me up here out o' the way, an' no account. That was the feelin' among 'em--what was the good of making things worse! They wasn't thinkin' of the boy or of Jim Buckmaster, his father. They was thinkin' of Greevy's gal--to save her trouble." Sinnet's face was turned towards Juniper Bend, and the eyes were fixed, as it were, on a still more distant object--a dark, brooding, inscrutable look. "Was that all Ricketts told you, Buck?" The voice was very quiet, but it had a suggestive note. "That's all Clint told Bill before he died. That was enough." There was a moment's pause, and then, puffing out long clouds of smoke, and in a tone of curious detachment, as though he were telling of something that he saw now in the far distance, or as a spectator of a battle from a far vantage-point might report to a blind man standing near, Sinnet said: "P'r'aps Ricketts didn't know the whole story; p'r'aps Clint didn't know it all to tell him; p'r'aps Clint didn't remember it all. P'r'aps he didn't remember anything except that he and Greevy quarrelled, and that Greevy and he shot at each other in the prairie. He'd only be thinking of the thing that mattered most to him--that his life was over, an' that a man had put a bullet in him, an'--" Buckmaster tried to interrupt him, but he waved a hand impatiently, and continued: "As I say, maybe he didn't remember everything; he had been drinkin' a bit himself, Clint had. He wasn't used to liquor, and couldn't stand much. Greevy was drunk, too, and gone off his head with rage. He always gets drunk when he first comes South to spend the winter with his girl Em'ly." He paused a moment, then went on a little more quickly. "Greevy was proud of her--couldn't even bear her being crossed in any way; and she has a quick temper, and if she quarrelled with anybody Greevy quarrelled too." "I don't want to know anything about her," broke in Buckmaster roughly. "She isn't in this thing. I'm goin' to git Greevy. I bin waitin' for him, an' I'll git him." "You're going to kill the man that killed your boy, if you can, Buck; but I'm telling my story in my own way. You told Ricketts's story; I'll tell what I've heard. And before you kill Greevy you ought to know all there is that anybody else knows--or suspicions about it." "I know enough. Greevy done it, an' I'm here." With no apparent coherence and relevancy Sinnet continued, but his voice was not so even as before. "Em'ly was a girl that wasn't twice alike. She was changeable. First it was one, then it was another, and she didn't seem to be able to fix her mind. But that didn't prevent her leadin' men on. She wasn't changeable, though, about her father. She was to him what your boy was to you. There she was like you, ready to give everything up for her father." "I tell y' I don't want to hear about her," said Buckmaster, getting to his feet and setting his jaws. "You needn't talk to me about her. She'll git over it. I'll never git over what Greevy done to me or to Clint--jest twenty, jest twenty! I got my work to do." He took his gun from the wall, slung it into the hollow of his arm, and turned to look up the valley through the open doorway. The morning was sparkling with life--the life and vigour which a touch of frost gives to the autumn world in a country where the blood tingles to the dry, sweet sting of the air. Beautiful, and spacious, and buoyant, and lonely, the valley and the mountains seemed waiting, like a new-born world, to be peopled by man. It was as though all had been made ready for him--the birds whistling and singing in the trees, the whisk of the squirrels leaping from bough to bough, the peremptory sound of the woodpecker's beak against the bole of a tree, the rustle of the leaves as a wood-hen ran past--a waiting, virgin world. Its beauty and its wonderful dignity had no appeal to Buckmaster. His eyes and mind were fixed on a deed which would stain the virgin wild with the ancient crime that sent the first marauder on human life into the wilderness. As Buckmaster's figure darkened the doorway Sinnet seemed to waken as from a dream, and he got swiftly to his feet. "Wait--you wait, Buck. You've got to hear all. You haven't heard my story yet. Wait, I tell you." His voice was so sharp and insistent, so changed, that Buckmaster turned from the doorway and came back into the room. "What's the use of my hearin'? You want me not to kill Greevy, because of that gal. What's she to me?" "Nothing to you, Buck, but Clint was everything to her." The mountaineer stood like one petrified. "What's that--what's that you say? It's a damn lie!" "It wasn't cards--the quarrel, not the real quarrel. Greevy found Clint kissing her. Greevy wanted her to marry Gatineau, the lumber-king. That was the quarrel." A snarl was on the face of Buckmaster. "Then she'll not be sorry when I git him. It took Clint from her as well as from me." He turned to the door again. "But, wait, Buck, wait one minute and hear--" He was interrupted by a low, exultant growl, and he saw Buckmaster's rifle clutched as a hunter, stooping, clutches his gun to fire on his prey. "Quick, the spy-glass!" he flung back at Sinnet. "It's him--but I'll make sure." Sinnet caught the telescope from the nails where it hung, and looked out towards Juniper Bend. "It's Greevy--and his girl, and the half-breeds," he said, with a note in his voice that almost seemed agitation, and yet few had ever seen Sinnet agitated. "Em'ly must have gone up the trail in the night." "It's my turn now," the mountaineer said hoarsely, and, stooping, slid away quickly into the undergrowth. Sinnet followed, keeping near him, neither speaking. For a half mile they hastened on, and now and then Buckmaster drew aside the bushes, and looked up the valley, to keep Greevy and his bois brulees in his eye. Just so had he and his son and Sinnet stalked the wapiti and the red deer along these mountains; but this was a man that Buckmaster was stalking now, with none of the joy of the sport which had been his since a lad; only the malice of the avenger. The lust of a mountain feud was on him; he was pursuing the price of blood. At last Buckmaster stopped at a ledge of rock just above the trail. Greevy would pass below, within three hundred yards of his rifle. He turned to Sinnet with cold and savage eyes. "You go back," he said. "It's my business. I don't want you to see. You don't want to see, then you won't know, and you won't need to lie. You said that the man that killed Clint ought to die. He's going to die, but it's none o' your business. I want to be alone. In a minute he'll be where I kin git him --plumb. You go, Sinnet-right off. It's my business." There was a strange, desperate look in Sinnet's face; it was as hard as stone, but his eyes had a light of battle in them. "It's my business right enough, Buck," he said, "and you're not going to kill Greevy. That girl of his has lost her lover, your boy. It's broke her heart almost, and there's no use making her an orphan too. She can't stand it. She's had enough. You leave her father alone--you hear me, let up!" He stepped between Buckmaster and the ledge of rock from which the mountaineer was to take aim. There was a terrible look in Buckmaster's face. He raised his single- barrelled rifle, as though he would shoot Sinnet; but, at the moment, he remembered that a shot would warn Greevy, and that he might not have time to reload. He laid his rifle against a tree swiftly. "Git away from here," he said, with a strange rattle in his throat. "Git away quick; he'll be down past here in a minute." Sinnet pulled himself together as he saw Buckmaster snatch at a great clasp-knife in his belt. He jumped and caught Buckmaster's wrist in a grip like a vice. "Greevy didn't kill him, Buck," he said. But the mountaineer was gone mad, and did not grasp the meaning of the words. He twined his left arm round the neck of Sinnet, and the struggle began, he fighting to free Sinnet's hand from his wrist, to break Sinnet's neck. He did not realise what he was doing. He only knew that this man stood between him and the murderer of his boy, and all the ancient forces of barbarism were alive in him. Little by little they drew to the edge of the rock, from which there was a sheer drop of two hundred feet. Sinnet fought like a panther for safety, but no sane man's strength could withstand the demoniacal energy that bent and crushed him. Sinnet felt his strength giving. Then he said in a hoarse whisper, "Greevy didn't kill him. I killed him, and--" At that moment he was borne to the ground with a hand on his throat, and an instant after the knife went home. Buckmaster got to his feet and looked at his victim for an instant, dazed and wild; then he sprang for his gun. As he did so the words that Sinnet had said as they struggled rang in his ears, "Greevy didn't kill him; I killed him!" He gave a low cry and turned back towards Sinnet, who lay in a pool of blood. Sinnet was speaking. He went and stooped over him. "Em'ly threw me over for Clint," the voice said huskily, "and I followed to have it out with Clint. So did Greevy, but Greevy was drunk. I saw them meet. I was hid. I saw that Clint would kill Greevy, and I fired. I was off my head--I'd never cared for any woman before, and Greevy was her father. Clint was off his head too. He had called me names that day--a cardsharp, and a liar, and a thief, and a skunk, he called me, and I hated him just then. Greevy fired twice wide. He didn't know but what he killed Clint, but he didn't. I did. So I tried to stop you, Buck--" Life was going fast, and speech failed him; but he opened his eyes again and whispered, "I didn't want to die, Buck. I am only thirty-five, and it's too soon; but it had to be. Don't look that way, Buck. You got the man that killed him--plumb. But Em'ly didn't play fair with me--made a fool of me, the only time in my life I ever cared for a woman. You leave Greevy alone, Buck, and tell Em'ly for me I wouldn't let you kill her father." "You--Sinnet--you, you done it! Why, he'd have fought for you. You-- done it--to him--to Clint!" Now that the blood-feud had been satisfied, a great change came over the mountaineer. He had done his work, and the thirst for vengeance was gone. Greevy he had hated, but this man had been with him in many a winter's hunt. His brain could hardly grasp the tragedy--it had all been too sudden. Suddenly he stooped down. "Sinnet," he said, "ef there was a woman in it, that makes all the difference. Sinnet, of--" But Sinnet was gone upon a long trail that led into an illimitable wilderness. With a moan the old man ran to the ledge of rock. Greevy and his girl were below. "When there's a woman in it--!" he said, in a voice of helplessness and misery, and watched Em'ly till she disappeared from view. Then he turned, and, lifting up in his arms the man he had killed, carried him into the deeper woods. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Even bad company's better than no company at all Future of those who will not see, because to see is to suffer I like when I like, and I like a lot when I like It ain't for us to say what we're goin' to be, not always Things in life git stronger than we are We don't live in months and years, but just in minutes NORTHERN LIGHTS By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. TO-MORROW QU'APPELLE THE STAKE AND THE PLUMB-LINE TO-MORROW "My, nothing's the matter with the world to-day! It's so good it almost hurts." She raised her head from the white petticoat she was ironing, and gazed out of the doorway and down the valley with a warm light in her eyes and a glowing face. The snow-tipped mountains far above and away, the fir- covered, cedar-ranged foothills, and, lower down, the wonderful maple and ash woods, with their hundred autumn tints, all merging to one soft, red tone, the roar of the stream tumbling down the ravine from the heights, the air that braced the nerves--it all seemed to be part of her, the passion of life corresponding to the passion of living in her. After watching the scene dreamily for a moment, she turned and laid the iron she had been using upon the hot stove near. Taking up another, she touched it with a moistened finger to test the heat, and, leaning above the table again, passed it over the linen for a few moments, smiling at something that was in her mind. Presently she held the petticoat up, turned it round, then hung it in front of her, eyeing it with critical pleasure. "To-morrow!" she said, nodding at it. "You won't be seen, I suppose, but I'll know you're nice enough for a queen--and that's enough to know." She blushed a little, as though someone had heard her words and was looking at her, then she carefully laid the petticoat over the back of a chair. "No queen's got one whiter, if I do say it," she continued, tossing her head. In that, at any rate, she was right, for the water of the mountain springs was pure, the air was clear, and the sun was clarifying; and little ornamented or frilled as it was, the petticoat was exquisitely soft and delicate. It would have appealed to more eyes than a woman's. "To-morrow!" She nodded at it again and turned again to the bright world outside. With arms raised and hands resting against the timbers of the doorway, she stood dreaming. A flock of pigeons passed with a whir not far away, and skirted the woods making down the valley. She watched their flight abstractedly, yet with a subconscious sense of pleasure. Life--they were Life, eager, buoyant, belonging to this wild region, where still the heart could feel so much at home, where the great world was missed so little. Suddenly, as she gazed, a shot rang out down the valley, and two of the pigeons came tumbling to the ground, a stray feather floating after. With a startled exclamation she took a step forward. Her brain became confused and disturbed. She had looked out on Eden, and it had been ravaged before her eyes. She had been thinking of to-morrow, and this vast prospect of beauty and serenity had been part of the pageant in which it moved. Not the valley alone had been marauded, but that "To- morrow," and all it meant to her. Instantly the valley had become clouded over for her, its glory and its grace despoiled. She turned back to the room where the white petticoat lay upon the chair, but stopped with a little cry of alarm. A man was standing in the centre of the room. He had entered stealthily by the back door, and had waited for her to turn round. He was haggard and travel stained, and there was a feverish light in his eyes. His fingers trembled as they adjusted his belt, which seemed too large for him. Mechanically he buckled it tighter. "You're Jenny Long, ain't you?" he asked. "I beg pardon for sneakin' in like this, but they're after me, some ranchers and a constable--one o' the Riders of the Plains. I've been tryin' to make this house all day. You're Jenny Long, ain't you?" She had plenty of courage, and, after the first instant of shock, she had herself in hand. She had quickly observed his condition, had marked the candour of the eye and the decision and character of the face, and doubt of him found no place in her mind. She had the keen observation of the dweller in lonely places, where every traveller has the potentialities of a foe, while the door of hospitality is opened to him after the custom of the wilds. Year in, year out, since she was a little girl and came to live here with her Uncle Sanger when her father died--her mother had gone before she could speak--travellers had halted at this door, going North or coming South, had had bite and sup, and bed, may be, and had passed on, most of them never to be seen again. More than that, too, there had been moments of peril, such as when, alone, she had faced two wood- thieves with a revolver, as they were taking her mountain-pony with them, and herself had made them "hands-up," and had marched them into a prospector's camp five miles away. She had no doubt about the man before her. Whatever he had done, it was nothing dirty or mean--of that she was sure. "Yes, I'm Jenny Long," she answered. "What have you done? What are they after you for?" "Oh! to-morrow," he answered, "to-morrow I got to git to Bindon. It's life or death. I come from prospecting two hundred miles up North. I done it in two days and a half. My horse dropped dead--I'm near dead myself. I tried to borrow another horse up at Clancey's, and at Scotton's Drive, but they didn't know me, and they bounced me. So I borrowed a horse off Weigall's paddock, to make for here--to you. I didn't mean to keep that horse. Hell, I'm no horse-stealer! But I couldn't explain to them, except that I had to git to Bindon to save a man's life. If people laugh in your face, it's no use explainin'. I took a roan from Weigall's, and they got after me. 'Bout six miles up they shot at me an' hurt me." She saw that one arm hung limp at his side and that his wrist was wound with a red bandana. She started forward. "Are you hurt bad? Can I bind it up or wash it for you? I've got plenty of hot water here, and it's bad letting a wound get stale." He shook his head. "I washed the hole clean in the creek below. I doubled on them. I had to go down past your place here, and then work back to be rid of them. But there's no telling when they'll drop on to the game, and come back for me. My only chance was to git to you. Even if I had a horse, I couldn't make Bindon in time. It's two days round the gorge by trail. A horse is no use now--I lost too much time since last night. I can't git to Bindon to-morrow in time, if I ride the trail." "The river?" she asked abruptly. "It's the only way. It cuts off fifty mile. That's why I come to you." She frowned a little, her face became troubled, and her glance fell on his arm nervously. "What've I got to do with it?" she asked almost sharply. "Even if this was all right,"--he touched the wounded arm--" I couldn't take the rapids in a canoe. I don't know them, an' it would be sure death. That's not the worst, for there's a man at Bindon would lose his life--p'r'aps twenty men--I dunno; but one man sure. To-morrow, it's go or stay with him. He was good--Lord, but he was good!--to my little gal years back. She'd only been married to me a year when he saved her, riskin' his own life. No one else had the pluck. My little gal, only twenty she was, an' pretty as a picture, an' me fifty miles away when the fire broke out in the hotel where she was. He'd have gone down to hell for a friend, an' he saved my little gal. I had her for five years after that. That's why I got to git to Bindon to-morrow. If I don't, I don't want to see to-morrow. I got to go down the river to-night." She knew what he was going to ask her. She knew he was thinking what all the North knew, that she was the first person to take the Dog Nose Rapids in a canoe, down the great river scarce a stone's-throw from her door; and that she had done it in safety many times. Not in all the West and North were there a half-dozen people who could take a canoe to Bindon, and they were not here. She knew that he meant to ask her to paddle him down the swift stream with its murderous rocks, to Bindon. She glanced at the white petticoat on the chair, and her lips tightened. To-morrow- tomorrow was as much to her here as it would be to this man before her, or the man he would save at Bindon. "What do you want?" she asked, hardening her heart. "Can't you see? I want you to hide me here till tonight. There's a full moon, an' it would be as plain goin' as by day. They told me about you up North, and I said to myself, 'If I git to Jenny Long, an' tell her about my friend at Bindon, an' my little gal, she'll take me down to Bindon in time.' My little gal would have paid her own debt if she'd ever had the chance. She didn't--she's lying up on Mazy Mountain. But one woman'll do a lot for the sake of another woman. Say, you'll do it, won't you? If I don't git there by to-morrow noon, it's no good." She would not answer. He was asking more than he knew. Why should she be sacrificed? Was it her duty to pay the "little gal's debt," to save the man at Bindon? To-morrow was to be the great day in her own life. The one man in all the world was coming to marry her to-morrow. After four years' waiting, after a bitter quarrel in which both had been to blame, he was coming from the mining town of Selby to marry her to- morrow. "What will happen? Why will your friend lose his life if you don't get to Bindon?" "By noon to-morrow, by twelve o'clock noon; that's the plot; that's what they've schemed. Three days ago, I heard. I got a man free from trouble North--he was no good, but I thought he ought to have another chance, and I got him free. He told me of what was to be done at Bindon. There'd been a strike in the mine, an' my friend had took it in hand with knuckle-dusters on. He isn't the kind to fell a tree with a jack-knife. Then three of the strikers that had been turned away--they was the ringleaders--they laid a plan that'd make the devil sick. They've put a machine in the mine, an' timed it, an' it'll go off when my friend comes out of the mine at noon to-morrow." Her face was pale now, and her eyes had a look of pain and horror. Her man--him that she was to marry--was the head of a mine also at Selby, forty miles beyond Bindon, and the horrible plot came home to her with piercing significance. "Without a second's warning," he urged, "to go like that, the man that was so good to my little gal, an' me with a chance to save him, an' others too, p'r'aps. You won't let it be. Say, I'm pinnin' my faith to you. I'm--" Suddenly he swayed. She caught him, held him, and lowered him gently in a chair. Presently he opened his eyes. "It's want o' food, I suppose," he said. "If you've got a bit of bread and meat--I must keep up." She went to a cupboard, but suddenly turned towards him again. Her ears had caught a sound outside in the underbush. He had heard also, and he half staggered to his feet. "Quick-in here!" she said, and, opening a door, pushed him inside. "Lie down on my bed, and I'll bring you vittles as quick as I can," she added. Then she shut the door, turned to the ironing-board, and took up the iron, as the figure of a man darkened the doorway. "Hello, Jinny, fixin' up for to-morrow?" the man said, stepping inside, with a rifle under his arm and some pigeons in his hand. She nodded and gave him an impatient, scrutinising glance. His face had a fatuous kind of smile. "Been celebrating the pigeons?" she asked drily, jerking her head towards the two birds, which she had seen drop from her Eden skies a short time before. "I only had one swig of whiskey, honest Injun!" he answered. "I s'pose I might have waited till to-morrow, but I was dead-beat. I got a bear over by the Tenmile Reach, and I was tired. I ain't so young as I used to be, and, anyhow, what's the good! What's ahead of me? You're going to git married to-morrow after all these years we bin together, and you're going down to Selby from the mountains, where I won't see you, not once in a blue moon. Only that old trollop, Mother Massy, to look after me." "Come down to Selby and live there. You'll be welcome by Jake and me." He stood his gun in the corner and, swinging the pigeons in his hand, said: "Me live out of the mountains? Don't you know better than that? I couldn't breathe; and I wouldn't want to breathe. I've got my shack here, I got my fur business, and they're still fond of whiskey up North!" He chuckled to himself, as he thought of the illicit still farther up the mountain behind them. "I make enough to live on, and I've put a few dollars by, though I won't have so many after to-morrow, after I've given you a little pile, Jinny." "P'r'aps there won't be any to-morrow, as you expect," she said slowly. The old man started. "What, you and Jake ain't quarrelled again? You ain't broke it off at the last moment, same as before? You ain't had a letter from Jake?" He looked at the white petticoat on the chairback, and shook his head in bewilderment. "I've had no letter," she answered. "I've had no letter from Selby for a month. It was all settled then, and there was no good writing, when he was coming to-morrow with the minister and the licence. Who do you think'd be postman from Selby here? It must have cost him ten dollars to send the last letter." "Then what's the matter? I don't understand," the old man urged querulously. He did not want her to marry and leave him, but he wanted no more troubles; he did not relish being asked awkward questions by every mountaineer he met, as to why Jenny Long didn't marry Jake Lawson. "There's only one way that I can be married tomorrow," she said at last, "and that's by you taking a man down the Dog Nose Rapids to Bindon to- night." He dropped the pigeons on the floor, dumbfounded. "What in--" He stopped short, in sheer incapacity, to go further. Jenny had not always been easy to understand, but she was wholly incomprehensible now. She picked up the pigeons and was about to speak, but she glanced at the bedroom door, where her exhausted visitor had stretched himself on her bed, and beckoned her uncle to another room. "There's a plate of vittles ready for you in there," she said. "I'll tell you as you eat." He followed her into the little living-room adorned by the trophies of his earlier achievements with gun and rifle, and sat down at the table, where some food lay covered by a clean white cloth. "No one'll ever look after me as you've done, Jinny," he said, as he lifted the cloth and saw the palatable dish ready for him. Then he remembered again about to-morrow and the Dog Nose Rapids. "What's it all about, Jinny? What's that about my canoeing a man down to Bindon?" "Eat, uncle," she said more softly than she had yet spoken, for his words about her care of him had brought a moisture to her eyes. "I'll be back in a minute and tell you all about it." "Well, it's about took away my appetite," he said. "I feel a kind of sinking." He took from his pocket a bottle, poured some of its contents into a tin cup, and drank it off. "No, I suppose you couldn't take a man down to Bindon," she said, as she saw his hand trembling on the cup. Then she turned and entered the other room again. Going to the cupboard, she hastily heaped a plate with food, and, taking a dipper of water from a pail near by, she entered her bedroom hastily and placed what she had brought on a small table, as her visitor rose slowly from the bed. He was about to speak, but she made a protesting gesture. "I can't tell you anything yet," she said. "Who was it come?" he asked. "My uncle--I'm going to tell him." "The men after me may git here any minute," he urged anxiously. "They'd not be coming into my room," she answered, flushing slightly. "Can't you hide me down by the river till we start?" he asked, his eyes eagerly searching her face. He was assuming that she would take him down the river: but she gave no sign. "I've got to see if he'll take you first," she answered. "He--your uncle, Tom Sanger? He drinks, I've heard. He'd never git to Bindon." She did not reply directly to his words. "I'll come back and tell you. There's a place you could hide by the river where no one could ever find you," she said, and left the room. As she stepped out, she saw the old man standing in the doorway of the other room. His face was petrified with amazement. "Who you got in that room, Jinny? What man you got in that room? I heard a man's voice. Is it because o' him that you bin talkin' about no weddin' to-morrow? Is it one o' the others come back, puttin' you off Jake again?" Her eyes flashed fire at his first words, and her breast heaved with anger, but suddenly she became composed again and motioned him to a chair. "You eat, and I'll tell you all about it, Uncle Tom," she said, and, seating herself at the table also, she told him the story of the man who must go to Bindon. When she had finished, the old man blinked at her for a minute without speaking, then he said slowly: "I heard something 'bout trouble down at Bindon yisterday from a Hudson's Bay man goin' North, but I didn't take it in. You've got a lot o' sense, Jinny, an' if you think he's tellin' the truth, why, it goes; but it's as big a mixup as a lariat in a steer's horns. You've got to hide him sure, whoever he is, for I wouldn't hand an Eskimo over, if I'd taken him in my home once; we're mountain people. A man ought to be hung for horse-stealin', but this was different. He was doing it to save a man's life, an' that man at Bindon was good to his little gal, an' she's dead." He moved his head from side to side with the air of a sentimental philosopher. He had all the vanity of a man who had been a success in a small, shrewd, culpable way--had he not evaded the law for thirty years with his whiskey-still? "I know how he felt," he continued. "When Betsy died--we was only four years married--I could have crawled into a knot-hole an' died there. You got to save him, Jinny, but"--he came suddenly to his feet--"he ain't safe here. They might come any minute, if they've got back on his trail. I'll take him up the gorge. You know where." "You sit still, Uncle Tom," she rejoined. "Leave him where he is a minute. There's things must be settled first. They ain't going to look for him in my bedroom, be they?" The old man chuckled. "I'd like to see 'em at it. You got a temper, Jinny; and you got a pistol too, eh?" He chuckled again. "As good a shot as any in the mountains. I can see you darin' 'em to come on. But what if Jake come, and he found a man in your bedroom"--he wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes--"why, Jinny--!" He stopped short, for there was anger in her face. "I don't want to hear any more of that. I do what I want to do," she snapped out. "Well, well, you always done what you wanted; but we got to git him up the hills, till it's sure they're out o' the mountains and gone back. It'll be days, mebbe." "Uncle Tom, you've took too much to drink," she answered. "You don't remember he's got to be at Bindon by to-morrow noon. He's got to save his friend by then." "Pshaw! Who's going to take him down the river to-night? You're goin' to be married to-morrow. If you like, you can give him the canoe. It'll never come back, nor him neither!" "You've been down with me," she responded suggestively. "And you went down once by yourself." He shook his head. "I ain't been so well this summer. My sight ain't what it was. I can't stand the racket as I once could. 'Pears to me I'm gettin' old. No, I couldn't take them rapids, Jinny, not for one frozen minute." She looked at him with trouble in her eyes, and her face lost some of its colour. She was fighting back the inevitable, even as its shadow fell upon her. "You wouldn't want a man to die, if you could save him, Uncle Tom--blown up, sent to Kingdom Come without any warning at all; and perhaps he's got them that love him--and the world so beautiful." "Well, it ain't nice dyin' in the summer, when it's all sun, and there's plenty everywhere; but there's no one to go down the river with him. What's his name?" Her struggle was over. She had urged him, but in very truth she was urging herself all the time, bringing herself to the axe of sacrifice. "His name's Dingley. I'm going down the river with him--down to Bindon." The old man's mouth opened in blank amazement. His eyes blinked helplessly. "What you talkin' about, Jinny! Jake's comin' up with the minister, an' you're goin' to be married at noon to-morrow." "I'm takin' him"--she jerked her head towards the room where Dingley was --"down Dog Nose Rapids to-night. He's risked his life for his friend, thinkin' of her that's dead an' gone, and a man's life is a man's life. If it was Jake's life in danger, what'd I think of a woman that could save him, and didn't?" "Onct you broke off with Jake Lawson--the day before you was to be married; an' it's took years to make up an' agree again to be spliced. If Jake comes here to-morrow, and you ain't here, what do you think he'll do? The neighbours are comin' for fifty miles round, two is comin' up a hundred miles, an' you can't--Jinny, you can't do it. I bin sick of answerin' questions all these years 'bout you and Jake, an' I ain't goin' through it again. I've told more lies than there's straws in a tick." She flamed out. "Then take him down the river yourself--a man to do a man's work. Are you afeard to take the risk?" He held out his hands slowly and looked at them. They shook a little. "Yes, Jinny," he said sadly, "I'm afeard. I ain't what I was. I made a mistake, Jinny. I've took too much whiskey. I'm older than I ought to be. I oughtn't never to have had a whiskey-still, an' I wouldn't have drunk so much. I got money--money for you, Jinny, for you an' Jake, but I've lost what I'll never git back. I'm afeard to go down the river with him. I'd go smash in the Dog Nose Rapids. I got no nerve. I can't hunt the grizzly any more, nor the puma, Jinny. I got to keep to common shootin', now and henceforth, amen! No, I'd go smash in Dog Nose Rapids." She caught his hands impulsively. "Don't you fret, Uncle Tom. You've bin a good uncle to me, and you've bin a good friend, and you ain't the first that's found whiskey too much for him. You ain't got an enemy in the mountains. Why, I've got two or three--" "Shucks! Women--only women whose beaux left 'em to follow after you. That's nothing, an' they'll be your friends fast enough after you're married tomorrow." "I ain't going to be married to-morrow. I'm going down to Bindon to-night. If Jake's mad, then it's all over, and there'll be more trouble among the women up here." By this time they had entered the other room. The old man saw the white petticoat on the chair. "No woman in the mountains ever had a petticoat like that, Jinny. It'd make a dress, it's that pretty an' neat. Golly, I'd like to see it on you, with the blue skirt over, and just hitched up a little." "Oh, shut up--shut up!" she said in sudden anger, and caught up the petticoat as though she would put it away; but presently she laid it down again and smoothed it with quick, nervous fingers. "Can't you talk sense and leave my clothes alone? If Jake comes, and I'm not here, and he wants to make a fuss, and spoil everything, and won't wait, you give him this petticoat. You put it in his arms. I bet you'll have the laugh on him. He's got a temper." "So've you, Jinny, dear, so've you," said the old man, laughing. "You're goin' to have your own way, same as ever--same as ever." II A moon of exquisite whiteness silvering the world, making shadows on the water as though it were sunlight and the daytime, giving a spectral look to the endless array of poplar trees on the banks, glittering on the foam of the rapids. The spangling stars made the arch of the sky like some gorgeous chancel in a cathedral as vast as life and time. Like the day which was ended, in which the mountain-girl had found a taste of Eden, it seemed too sacred for mortal strife. Now and again there came the note of a night-bird, the croak of a frog from the shore; but the serene stillness and beauty of the primeval North was over all. For two hours after sunset it had all been silent and brooding, and then two figures appeared on the bank of the great river. A canoe was softly and hastily pushed out from its hidden shelter under the overhanging bank, and was noiselessly paddled out to midstream, dropping down the current meanwhile. It was Jenny Long and the man who must get to Bindon. They had waited till nine o'clock, when the moon was high and full, to venture forth. Then Dingley had dropped from her bedroom window, had joined her under the trees, and they had sped away, while the man's hunters, who had come suddenly, and before Jenny could get him away into the woods, were carousing inside. These had tracked their man back to Tom Sanger's house, and at first they were incredulous that Jenny and her uncle had not seen him. They had prepared to search the house, and one had laid his finger on the latch of her bedroom door; but she had flared out with such anger that, mindful of the supper she had already begun to prepare for them, they had desisted, and the whiskey-jug which the old man brought out distracted their attention. One of their number, known as the Man from Clancey's, had, however, been outside when Dingley had dropped from the window, and had seen him from a distance. He had not given the alarm, but had followed, to make the capture by himself. But Jenny had heard the stir of life behind them, and had made a sharp detour, so that they had reached the shore and were out in mid-stream before their tracker got to the river. Then he called to them to return, but Jenny only bent a little lower and paddled on, guiding the canoe towards the safe channel through the first small rapids leading to the great Dog Nose Rapids. A rifle-shot rang out, and a bullet "pinged" over the water and splintered the side of the canoe where Dingley sat. He looked calmly back, and saw the rifle raised again, but did not stir, in spite of Jenny's warning to lie down. "He'll not fire on you so long as he can draw a bead on me," he said quietly. Again a shot rang out, and the bullet sang past his head. "If he hits me, you go straight on to Bindon," he continued. "Never mind about me. Go to the Snowdrop Mine. Get there by twelve o'clock, and warn them. Don't stop a second for me--" Suddenly three shots rang out in succession--Tom Sanger's house had emptied itself on the bank of the river--and Dingley gave a sharp exclamation. "They've hit me, but it's the same arm as before," he growled. "They got no right to fire at me. It's not the law. Don't stop," he added quickly, as he saw her half turn round. Now there were loud voices on the shore. Old Tom Sanger was threatening to shoot the first man that fired again, and he would have kept his word. "Who you firin' at?" he shouted. "That's my niece, Jinny Long, an' you let that boat alone. This ain't the land o' lynch law. Dingley ain't escaped from gaol. You got no right to fire at him." "No one ever went down Dog Nose Rapids at night," said the Man from Clancey's, whose shot had got Dingley's arm. "There ain't a chance of them doing it. No one's ever done it." The two were in the roaring rapids now, and the canoe was jumping through the foam like a racehorse. The keen eyes on the bank watched the canoe till it was lost in the half-gloom below the first rapids, and then they went slowly back to Tom Sanger's house. "So there'll be no wedding to-morrow," said the Man from Clancey's. "Funerals, more likely," drawled another. "Jinny Long's in that canoe, an' she ginerally does what she wants to," said Tom Sanger sagely. "Well, we done our best, and now I hope they'll get to Bindon," said another. Sanger passed the jug to him freely. Then they sat down and talked of the people who had been drowned in Dog Nose Rapids and of the last wedding in the mountains. III It was as the Man from Clancey's had said, no one had ever gone down Dog Nose Rapids in the nighttime, and probably no one but Jenny Long would have ventured it. Dingley had had no idea what a perilous task had been set his rescuer. It was only when the angry roar of the great rapids floated up-stream to them, increasing in volume till they could see the terror of tumbling waters just below, and the canoe shot forward like a snake through the swift, smooth current which would sweep them into the vast caldron, that he realised the terrible hazard of the enterprise. The moon was directly overhead when they drew upon the race of rocks and fighting water and foam. On either side only the shadowed shore, forsaken by the races which had hunted and roamed and ravaged here--not a light, nor any sign of life, or the friendliness of human presence to make their isolation less complete, their danger, as it were, shared by fellow-mortals. Bright as the moon was, it was not bright enough for perfect pilotage. Never in the history of white men had these rapids been ridden at nighttime. As they sped down the flume of the deep, irresistible current, and were launched into the trouble of rocks and water, Jenny realised how great their peril was, and how different the track of the waters looked at nighttime from daytime. Outlines seemed merged, rocks did not look the same, whirlpools had a different vortex, islands of stone had a new configuration. As they sped on, lurching, jumping, piercing a broken wall of wave and spray like a torpedo, shooting an almost sheer fall, she came to rely on a sense of intuition rather than memory, for night had transformed the waters. Not a sound escaped either. The man kept his eyes fixed on the woman; the woman scanned the dreadful pathway with eyes deep-set and burning, resolute, vigilant, and yet defiant too, as though she had been trapped into this track of danger, and was fighting without great hope, but with the temerity and nonchalance of despair. Her arms were bare to the shoulder almost, and her face was again and again drenched; but second succeeded second, minute followed minute in a struggle which might well turn a man's hair grey, and now, at last-how many hours was it since they had been cast into this den of roaring waters!--at last, suddenly, over a large fall, and here smooth waters again, smooth and untroubled, and strong and deep. Then, and only then, did a word escape either; but the man had passed through torture and unavailing regret, for he realised that he had had no right to bring this girl into such a fight. It was not her friend who was in danger at Bindon. Her life had been risked without due warrant. "I didn't know, or I wouldn't have asked it," he said in a low voice. "Lord, but you are a wonder--to take that hurdle for no one that belonged to you, and to do it as you've done it. This country will rise to you." He looked back on the raging rapids far behind, and he shuddered. "It was a close call, and no mistake. We must have been within a foot of down-you-go fifty times. But it's all right now, if we can last it out and git there." Again he glanced back, then turned to the girl. "It makes me pretty sick to look at it," he continued. "I bin through a lot, but that's as sharp practice as I want." "Come here and let me bind up your arm," she answered. "They hit you-- the sneaks! Are you bleeding much?" He came near her carefully, as she got the big canoe out of the current into quieter water. She whipped the scarf from about her neck, and with his knife ripped up the seam of his sleeve. Her face was alive with the joy of conflict and elated with triumph. Her eyes were shining. She bathed the wound--the bullet had passed clean through the fleshy part of the arm--and then carefully tied the scarf round it over her handkerchief. "I guess it's as good as a man could do it," she said at last. "As good as any doctor," he rejoined. "I wasn't talking of your arm," she said. "'Course not. Excuse me. You was talkin' of them rapids, and I've got to say there ain't a man that could have done it and come through like you. I guess the man that marries you'll get more than his share of luck." "I want none of that," she said sharply, and picked up her paddle again, her eyes flashing anger. He took a pistol from his pocket and offered it to her. "I didn't mean any harm by what I said. Take this if you think I won't know how to behave myself," he urged. She flung up her head a little. "I knew what I was doing before I started," she said. "Put it away. How far is it, and can we do it in time?" "If you can hold out, we can do it; but it means going all night and all morning; and it ain't dawn yet, by a long shot." Dawn came at last, and the mist of early morning, and the imperious and dispelling sun; and with mouthfuls of food as they drifted on, the two fixed their eyes on the horizon beyond which lay Bindon. And now it seemed to the girl as though this race to save a life or many lives was the one thing in existence. To-morrow was to-day, and the white petticoat was lying in the little house in the mountains, and her wedding was an interminable distance off, so had this adventure drawn her into its risks and toils and haggard exhaustion. Eight, nine, ten, eleven o'clock came, and then they saw signs of settlement. Houses appeared here and there upon the banks, and now and then a horseman watched them from the shore, but they could not pause. Bindon--Bindon--Bindon--the Snowdrop Mine at Bindon, and a death-dealing machine timed to do its deadly work, were before the eyes of the two voyageurs. Half-past eleven, and the town of Bindon was just beyond them. A quarter to twelve, and they had run their canoe into the bank beyond which were the smokestacks and chimneys of the mine. Bindon was peacefully pursuing its way, though here and there were little groups of strikers who had not resumed work. Dingley and the girl scrambled up the bank. Trembling with fatigue, they hastened on. The man drew ahead of her, for she had paddled for fifteen hours, practically without ceasing, and the ground seemed to rise up at her. But she would not let him stop. He hurried on, reached the mine, and entered, shouting the name of his friend. It was seven minutes to twelve. A moment later, a half-dozen men came rushing from that portion of the mine where Dingley had been told the machine was placed, and at their head was Lawson, the man he had come to save. The girl hastened on to meet them, but she grew faint and leaned against a tree, scarce conscious. She was roused by voices. "No, it wasn't me, it wasn't me that done it; it was a girl. Here she is--Jenny Long! You got to thank her, Jake." Jake! Jake! The girl awakened to full understanding now. Jake--what Jake? She looked, then stumbled forward with a cry. "Jake--it was my Jake!" she faltered. The mine-boss caught her in his arms. "You, Jenny! It's you that's saved me!" Suddenly there was a rumble as of thunder, and a cloud of dust and stone rose from the Snowdrop Mine. The mine-boss tightened his arm round the girl's waist. "That's what I missed, through him and you, Jenny," he said. "What was you doing here, and not at Selby, Jake?" she asked. "They sent for me-to stop the trouble here." "But what about our wedding to-day?" she asked with a frown. "A man went from here with a letter to you three days ago," he said, "asking you to come down here and be married. I suppose he got drunk, or had an accident, and didn't reach you. It had to be. I was needed here--couldn't tell what would happen." "It has happened out all right," said Dingley, "and this'll be the end of it. You got them miners solid now. The strikers'll eat humble pie after to-day." "We'll be married to-day, just the same," the mine-boss said, as he gave some brandy to the girl. But the girl shook her head. She was thinking of a white petticoat in a little house in the mountains. "I'm not going to be married to-day," she said decisively. "Well, to-morrow," said the mine-boss. But the girl shook her head again. "To-day is tomorrow," she answered. "You can wait, Jake. I'm going back home to be married." QU'APPELLE (Who calls?) "But I'm white; I'm not an Indian. My father was a white man. I've been brought up as a white girl. I've had a white girl's schooling." Her eyes flashed as she sprang to her feet and walked up and down the room for a moment, then stood still, facing her mother,--a dark-faced, pock-marked woman, with heavy, somnolent eyes, and waited for her to speak. The reply came slowly and sullenly-- "I am a Blackfoot woman. I lived on the Muskwat River among the braves for thirty years. I have killed buffalo. I have seen battles. Men, too, I have killed when they came to steal our horses and crept in on our lodges in the night-the Crees! I am a Blackfoot. You are the daughter of a Blackfoot woman. No medicine can cure that. Sit down. You have no sense. You are not white. They will not have you. Sit down." The girl's handsome face flushed; she threw up her hands in an agony of protest. A dreadful anger was in her panting breast, but she could not speak. She seemed to choke with excess of feeling. For an instant she stood still, trembling with agitation, then she sat down suddenly on a great couch covered with soft deerskins and buffalo robes. There was deep in her the habit of obedience to this sombre but striking woman. She had been ruled firmly, almost oppressively, and she had not yet revolted. Seated on the couch, she gazed out of the window at the flying snow, her brain too much on fire for thought, passion beating like a pulse in all her lithe and graceful young body, which had known the storms of life and time for only twenty years. The wind shrieked and the snow swept past in clouds of blinding drift, completely hiding from sight the town below them, whose civilisation had built itself many habitations and was making roads and streets on the green-brown plain, where herds of buffalo had stamped and streamed and thundered not long ago. The town was a mile and a half away, and these two were alone in a great circle of storm, one of them battling against a tempest which might yet overtake her, against which she had set her face ever since she could remember, though it had only come to violence since her father died two years before--a careless, strong, wilful white man, who had lived the Indian life for many years, but had been swallowed at last by the great wave of civilisation streaming westward and northward, wiping out the game and the Indian, and overwhelming the rough, fighting, hunting, pioneer life. Joel Renton had made money, by good luck chiefly, having held land here and there which he had got for nothing, and had then almost forgotten about it, and, when reminded of it, still held on to it with that defiant stubbornness which often possesses improvident and careless natures. He had never had any real business instinct, and to swagger a little over the land he held and to treat offers of purchase with contempt was the loud assertion of a capacity he did not possess. So it was that stubborn vanity, beneath which was his angry protest against the prejudice felt by the new people of the West for the white pioneer who married an Indian, and lived the Indian life,--so it was that this gave him competence and a comfortable home after the old trader had been driven out by the railway and the shopkeeper. With the first land he sold he sent his daughter away to school in a town farther east and south, where she had been brought in touch with a life that at once cramped and attracted her; where, too, she had felt the first chill of racial ostracism, and had proudly fought it to the end, her weapons being talent, industry, and a hot, defiant ambition. There had been three years of bitter, almost half-sullen, struggle, lightened by one sweet friendship with a girl whose face she had since drawn in a hundred different poses on stray pieces of paper, on the walls of the big, well-lighted attic to which she retreated for hours every day, when she was not abroad on the prairies, riding the Indian pony that her uncle the Piegan Chief, Ice Breaker, had given her years before. Three years of struggle, and then her father had died, and the refuge for her vexed, defiant heart was gone. While he lived she could affirm the rights of a white man's daughter, the rights of the daughter of a pioneer who had helped to make the West; and her pride in him had given a glow to her cheek and a spring to her step which drew every eye. In the chief street of Portage la Drome men would stop their trafficking and women nudge each other when she passed, and wherever she went she stirred interest, excited admiration, or aroused prejudice--but the prejudice did not matter so long as her father, Joel Renton, lived. Whatever his faults, and they were many--sometimes he drank too much, and swore a great deal, and bullied and stormed--she blinked at them all, for he was of the conquering race, a white man who had slept in white sheets and eaten off white tablecloths, and used a knife and fork, since he was born; and the women of his people had had soft petticoats and fine stockings, and silk gowns for festal days, and feathered hats of velvet, and shoes of polished leather, always and always, back through many generations. She had held her head high, for she was of his women, of the women of his people, with all their rights and all their claims. She had held it high till that stormy day--just such a day as this, with the surf of snow breaking against the house--when they carried him in out of the wild turmoil and snow, laying him on the couch where she now sat, and her head fell on his lifeless breast, and she cried out to him in vain to come back to her. Before the world her head was still held high, but in the attic-room, and out on the prairies far away, where only the coyote or the prairie- hen saw, her head drooped, and her eyes grew heavy with pain and sombre protest. Once in an agony of loneliness, and cruelly hurt by a conspicuous slight put upon her at the Portage by the wife of the Reeve of the town, who had daughters twain of pure white blood got from behind the bar of a saloon in Winnipeg, she had thrown open her window at night with the frost below zero, and stood in her thin nightdress, craving the death which she hoped the cold would give her soon. It had not availed, however, and once again she had ridden out in a blizzard to die, but had come upon a man lost in the snow, and her own misery had passed from her, and her heart, full of the blood of plainsmen, had done for another what it would not do for itself. The Indian in her had, with strange, sure instinct, found its way to Portage la Drome, the man with both hands and one foot frozen, on her pony, she walking at his side, only conscious that she had saved one, not two, lives that day. Here was another such day, here again was the storm in her heart which had driven her into the plains that other time, and here again was that tempest of white death outside. "You have no sense. You are not white. They will not have you. Sit down--" The words had fallen on her ears with a cold, deadly smother. There came a chill upon her which stilled the wild pulses in her, which suddenly robbed the eyes of their brightness and gave a drawn look to the face. "You are not white. They will not have you, Pauline." The Indian mother repeated the words after a moment, her eyes grown still more gloomy; for in her, too, there was a dark tide of passion moving. In all the outlived years this girl had ever turned to the white father rather than to her, and she had been left more and more alone. Her man had been kind to her, and she had been a faithful wife, but she had resented the natural instinct of her half-breed child, almost white herself and with the feelings and ways of the whites, to turn always to her father, as though to a superior guide, to a higher influence and authority. Was not she herself the descendant of Blackfoot and Piegan chiefs through generations of rulers and warriors? Was there not Piegan and Blackfoot blood in the girl's veins? Must only the white man's blood be reckoned when they made up their daily account and balanced the books of their lives, credit and debtor,--misunderstanding and kind act, neglect and tenderness, reproof and praise, gentleness and impulse, anger and caress,--to be set down in the everlasting record? Why must the Indian always give way--Indian habits, Indian desires, the Indian way of doing things, the Indian point of view, Indian food, Indian medicine? Was it all bad, and only that which belonged to white life good? "Look at your face in the glass, Pauline," she added at last. "You are good-looking, but it isn't the good looks of the whites. The lodge of a chieftainess is the place for you. There you would have praise and honour; among the whites you are only a half-breed. What is the good? Let us go back to the life out there beyond the Muskwat River--up beyond. There is hunting still, a little, and the world is quiet, and nothing troubles. Only the wild dog barks at night, or the wolf sniffs at the door and all day there is singing. Somewhere out beyond the Muskwat the feasts go on, and the old men build the great fires, and tell tales, and call the wind out of the north, and make the thunder speak; and the young men ride to the hunt or go out to battle, and build lodges for the daughters of the tribe; and each man has his woman, and each woman has in her breast the honour of the tribe, and the little ones fill the lodge with laughter. Like a pocket of deerskin is every house, warm and small and full of good things. Hai-yai, what is this life to that! There you will be head and chief of all, for there is money enough for a thousand horses; and your father was a white man, and these are the days when the white man rules. Like clouds before the sun are the races of men, and one race rises and another falls. Here you are not first, but last; and the child of the white father and mother, though they be as the dirt that flies from a horse's heels, it is before you. Your mother is a Blackfoot." As the woman spoke slowly and with many pauses, the girl's mood changed, and there came into her eyes a strange, dark look deeper than anger. She listened with a sudden patience which stilled the agitation in her breast and gave a little touch of rigidity to her figure. Her eyes withdrew from the wild storm without and gravely settled on her mother's face, and with the Indian woman's last words understanding pierced, but did not dispel, the sombre and ominous look in her eyes. There was silence for a moment, and then she spoke almost as evenly as her mother had done. "I will tell you everything. You are my mother, and I love you; but you will not see the truth. When my father took you from the lodges and brought you here, it was the end of the Indian life. It was for you to go on with him, but you would not go. I was young, but I saw, and I said that in all things I would go with him. I did not know that it would be hard, but at school, at the very first, I began to understand. There was only one, a French girl--I loved her--a girl who said to me, 'You are as white as I am, as anyone, and your heart is the same, and you are beautiful.' Yes, Manette said I was beautiful." She paused a moment, a misty, far-away look came into her eyes, her fingers clasped and unclasped, and she added: "And her brother, Julien,--he was older,--when he came to visit Manette, he spoke to me as though I was all white, and was good to me. I have never forgotten, never. It was five years ago, but I remember him. He was tall and strong, and as good as Manette--as good as Manette. I loved Manette, but she suffered for me, for I was not like the others, and my ways were different--then. I had lived up there on the Warais among the lodges, and I had not seen things--only from my father, and he did so much in an Indian way. So I was sick at heart, and sometimes I wanted to die; and once--But there was Manette, and she would laugh and sing, and we would play together, and I would speak French and she would speak English, and I learned from her to forget the Indian ways. What were they to me? I had loved them when I was of them, but I came on to a better life. The Indian life is to the white life as the parfleche pouch to--to this." She laid her hand upon a purse of delicate silver mesh hanging at her waist. "When your eyes are opened you must go on, you cannot stop. There is no going back. When you have read of all there is in the white man's world, when you have seen, then there is no returning. You may end it all, if you wish, in the snow, in the river, but there is no returning. The lodge of a chief--ah, if my father had heard you say that--!" The Indian woman shifted heavily in her chair, then shrank away from the look fixed on her. Once or twice she made as if she would speak, but sank down in the great chair, helpless and dismayed. "The lodge of a chief!" the girl continued in a low, bitter voice. "What is the lodge of a chief? A smoky fire, a pot, a bed of skins, aih- yi! If the lodges of the Indians were millions, and I could be head of all, and rule the land, yet would I rather be a white girl in the hut of her white man, struggling for daily bread among the people who sweep the buffalo out, but open up the land with the plough, and make a thousand live where one lived before. It is peace you want, my mother, peace and solitude, in which the soul goes to sleep. Your days of hope are over, and you want to drowse by the fire. I want to see the white men's cities grow, and the armies coming over the hill with the ploughs and the reapers and the mowers, and the wheels and the belts and engines of the great factories, and the white woman's life spreading everywhere; for I am a white man's daughter. I can't be both Indian and white. I will not be like the sun when the shadow cuts across it and the land grows dark. I will not be half-breed. I will be white or I will be Indian; and I will be white, white only. My heart is white, my tongue is white, I think, I feel, as white people think and feel. What they wish, I wish; as they live, I live; as white women dress, I dress." She involuntarily drew up the dark red skirt she wore, showing a white petticoat and a pair of fine stockings on an ankle as shapely as she had ever seen among all the white women she knew. She drew herself up with pride, and her body had a grace and ease which the white woman's convention had not cramped. Yet, with all her protests, no one would have thought her English. She might have been Spanish, or Italian, or Roumanian, or Slav, though nothing of her Indian blood showed in purely Indian characteristics, and something sparkled in her, gave a radiance to her face and figure which the storm and struggle in her did not smother. The white women of Portage la Drome were too blind, too prejudiced, to see all that she really was, and admiring white men could do little, for Pauline would have nothing to do with them till the women met her absolutely as an equal; and from the other halfbreeds, who intermarried with each other and were content to take a lower place than the pure whites, she held aloof, save when any of them was ill or in trouble. Then she recognised the claim of race, and came to their doors with pity and soft impulses to help them. French and Scotch and English half-breeds, as they were, they understood how she was making a fight for all who were half-Indian, half- white, and watched her with a furtive devotion, acknowledging her superior place, and proud of it. "I will not stay here," said the Indian mother with sullen stubbornness. "I will go back beyond the Warais. My life is my own life, and I will do what I like with it." The girl started, but became composed again on the instant. "Is your life all your own, mother?" she asked. "I did not come into the world of my own will. If I had I would have come all white or all Indian. I am your daughter, and I am here, good or bad--is your life all your own?" "You can marry and stay here, when I go. You are twenty. I had my man, your father, when I was seventeen. You can marry. There are men. You have money. They will marry you--and forget the rest." With a cry of rage and misery the girl sprang to her feet and started forwards, but stopped suddenly at sound of a hasty knocking and a voice asking admittance. An instant later, a huge, bearded, broad-shouldered man stepped inside, shaking himself free of the snow, laughing half- sheepishly as he did so, and laying his fur-cap and gloves with exaggerated care on the wide window-sill. "John Alloway," said the Indian woman in a voice of welcome, and with a brightening eye, for it would seem as though he came in answer to her words of a few moments before. With a mother's instinct she had divined at once the reason for the visit, though no warning thought crossed the mind of the girl, who placed a chair for their visitor with a heartiness which was real--was not this the white man she had saved from death in the snow a year ago? Her heart was soft towards the life she had kept in the world. She smiled at him, all the anger gone from her eyes, and there was almost a touch of tender anxiety in her voice as she said "What brought you out in this blizzard? It wasn't safe. It doesn't seem possible you got here from the Portage." The huge ranchman and auctioneer laughed cheerily. "Once lost, twice get there," he exclaimed, with a quizzical toss of the head, thinking he had said a good thing. "It's a year ago to the very day that I was lost out back"--he jerked a thumb over his shoulder--"and you picked me up and brought me in; and what was I to do but come out on the anniversary and say thank you? I'd fixed up all year to come to you, and I wasn't to be stopped, 'cause it was like the day we first met, old Coldmaker hitting the world with his whips of frost, and shaking his ragged blankets of snow over the wild west." "Just such a day," said the Indian woman after a pause. Pauline remained silent, placing a little bottle of cordial before their visitor, with which he presently regaled himself, raising his glass with an air. "Many happy returns to us both!" he said, and threw the liquor down his throat, smacked his lips, and drew his hand down his great moustache and beard like some vast animal washing its face with its paw. Smiling and yet not at ease, he looked at the two women and nodded his head encouragingly, but whether the encouragement was for himself or for them he could not have told. His last words, however, had altered the situation. The girl had caught at a suggestion in them which startled her. This rough white plainsman was come to make love to her, and to say--what? He was at once awkward and confident, afraid of her, of her refinement, grace, beauty, and education, and yet confident in the advantage of his position, a white man bending to a half-breed girl. He was not conscious of the condescension and majesty of his demeanour, but it was there, and his untutored words and ways must make it all too apparent to the girl. The revelation of the moment made her at once triumphant and humiliated. This white man had come to make love to her, that was apparent; but that he, ungrammatical, crude, and rough, should think he had but to put out his hand, and she in whom every subtle emotion and influence had delicate response, whose words and ways were as far removed from his as day from night, would fly to him, brought the flush of indignation to her cheek. She responded to his toast with a pleasant nod, however, and said: "But if you will keep coming in such wild storms, there will not be many anniversaries." Laughing, she poured out another glass of liquor for him. "Well, now, p'r'aps you're right, and so the only thing to do is not to keep coming, but to stay--stay right where you are." The Indian woman could not see her daughter's face, which was turned to the fire, but she herself smiled at John Alloway, and nodded her head approvingly. Here was the cure for her own trouble and loneliness. Pauline and she, who lived in different worlds, and yet were tied to each other by circumstances they could not control, would each work out her own destiny after her own nature, since John Alloway had come a-wooing. She would go back on the Warais, and Pauline would remain at the Portage, a white woman with her white man. She would go back to the smoky fires in the huddled lodges; to the venison stew and the snake dance; to the feasts of the Medicine Men, and the long sleeps in the summer days, and the winter's tales, and be at rest among her own people; and Pauline would have revenge of the wife of the prancing Reeve, and perhaps the people would forget who her mother was. With these thoughts flying through her sluggish mind, she rose and moved heavily from the room, with a parting look of encouragement at Alloway, as though to say, a man that is bold is surest. With her back to the man, Pauline watched her mother leave the room, saw the look she gave Alloway. When the door was closed she turned and looked Alloway in the eyes. "How old are you?" she asked suddenly. He stirred in his seat nervously. "Why, fifty, about," he answered with confusion. "Then you'll be wise not to go looking for anniversaries in blizzards, when they're few at the best," she said with a gentle and dangerous smile. "Fifty-why, I'm as young as most men of thirty," he responded with an uncertain laugh. "I'd have come here to-day if it had been snowing pitchforks and chain-lightning. I made up my mind I would. You saved my life, that's dead sure; and I'd be down among the: moles if it wasn't for you and that Piegan pony of yours. Piegan ponies are wonders in a storm- seem to know their way by instinct. You, too--why, I bin on the plains all my life, and was no better than a baby that day; but you--why, you had Piegan in you, why, yes--" He stopped short for a moment, checked by the look in her face, then went blindly on: "And you've got Blackfoot in you, too; and you just felt your way through the tornado and over the blind prairie like a, bird reaching for the hills. It was as easy to you as picking out a moverick in a bunch of steers to me. But I never could make out what you was doing on the prairie that terrible day. I've thought of it a hundred times. What was you doing, if it ain't cheek to ask?" "I was trying to lose a life," she answered quietly, her eyes dwelling on his face, yet not seeing him; for it all came back on her, the agony which had driven her out into the tempest to be lost evermore. He laughed. "Well, now, that's good," he said; "that's what they call speaking sarcastic. You was out to save, and not to lose, a life; that was proved to the satisfaction of the court." He paused and chuckled to himself, thinking he had been witty, and continued: "And I was that court, and my judgment was that the debt of that life you saved had to be paid to you within one calendar year, with interest at the usual per cent for mortgages on good security. That was my judgment, and there's no appeal from it. I am the great Justinian in this case." "Did you ever save anybody's life?" she asked, putting the bottle of cordial away, as he filled his glass for the third time. "Twice certain, and once dividin' the honours," he answered, pleased at the question. "And did you expect to get any pay, with or without interest?" she added. "Me? I never thought of it again. But yes--by gol, I did! One case was funny, as funny can be. It was Ricky Wharton over on the Muskwat River. I saved his life right enough, and he came to me a year after and said, You saved my life, now what are you going to do with it? I'm stony broke. I owe a hundred dollars, and I wouldn't be owing it if you hadn't saved my life. When you saved it I was five hunderd to the good, and I'd have left that much behind me. Now I'm on the rocks, because you insisted on saving my life; and you just got to take care of me.' I 'insisted!' Well, that knocked me silly, and I took him on--blame me, if I didn't keep Ricky a whole year, till he went north looking for gold. Get pay--why, I paid! Saving life has its responsibilities, little gal." "You can't save life without running some risk yourself, not as a rule, can you?" she said, shrinking from his familiarity. "Not as a rule," he replied. "You took on a bit of risk with me, you and your Piegan pony." "Oh, I was young," she responded, leaning over the table, and drawing faces on a piece of paper before her. "I could take more risks, I was only nineteen!" "I don't catch on," he rejoined. "If it's sixteen or--" "Or fifty," she interposed. "What difference does it make? If you're done for, it's the same at nineteen as fifty, and vicey-versey." "No, it's not the same," she answered. "You leave so much more that you want to keep, when you go at fifty." "Well, I dunno. I never thought of that." "There's all that has belonged to you. You've been married, and have children, haven't you?" He started, frowned, then straightened himself. "I got one girl--she's east with her grandmother," he said jerkily. "That's what I said; there's more to leave behind at fifty," she replied, a red spot on each cheek. She was not looking at him, but at the face of a man on the paper before her--a young man with abundant hair, a strong chin, and big, eloquent eyes; and all around his face she had drawn the face of a girl many times, and beneath the faces of both she was writing Manette and Julien. The water was getting too deep for John Alloway. He floundered towards the shore. "I'm no good at words," he said-- "no good at argyment; but I've got a gift for stories--round the fire of a night, with a pipe and a tin basin of tea; so I'm not going to try and match you. You've had a good education down at Winnipeg. Took every prize, they say, and led the school, though there was plenty of fuss because they let you do it, and let you stay there, being half-Indian. You never heard what was going on outside, I s'pose. It didn't matter, for you won out. Blamed foolishness, trying to draw the line between red and white that way. Of course, it's the women always, always the women, striking out for all-white or nothing. Down there at Portage they've treated you mean, mean as dirt. The Reeve's wife--well, we'll fix that up all right. I guess John Alloway ain't to be bluffed. He knows too much and they all know he knows enough. When John Alloway, 32 Main Street, with a ranch on the Katanay, says, 'We're coming--Mr. and Mrs. John Alloway is coming,' they'll get out their cards visite, I guess." Pauline's head bent lower, and she seemed laboriously etching lines into the faces before her--Manette and Julien, Julien and Manette; and there came into her eyes the youth and light and gaiety of the days when Julien came of an afternoon and the riverside rang with laughter; the dearest, lightest days she had ever spent. The man of fifty went on, seeing nothing but a girl over whom he was presently going to throw the lasso of his affection, and take her home with him, yielding and glad, a white man, and his half-breed girl--but such a half-breed! "I seen enough of the way some of them women treated you," he continued, "and I sez to myself, Her turn next. There's a way out, I sez, and John Alloway pays his debts. When the anniversary comes round I'll put things right, I sez to myself. She saved my life, and she shall have the rest of it, if she'll take it, and will give a receipt in full, and open a new account in the name of John and Pauline Alloway. Catch it? See-- Pauline?" Slowly she got to her feet. There was a look in her eyes such as had been in her mother's a little while before, but a hundred times intensified: a look that belonged to the flood and flow of generations of Indian life, yet controlled in her by the order and understanding of centuries of white men's lives, the pervasive, dominating power of race. For an instant she kept her eyes towards the window. The storm had suddenly ceased, and a glimmer of sunset light was breaking over the distant wastes of snow. "You want to pay a debt you think you owe," she said, in a strange, lustreless voice, turning to him at last. "Well, you have paid it. You have given me a book to read which I will keep always. And I give you a receipt in full for your debt." "I don't know about any book," he answered dazedly. "I want to marry you right away." "I am sorry, but it is not necessary," she replied suggestively. Her face was very pale now. "But I want to. It ain't a debt. That was only a way of putting it. I want to make you my wife. I got some position, and I can make the West sit up, and look at you and be glad." Suddenly her anger flared out, low and vivid and fierce, but her words were slow and measured. "There is no reason why I should marry you--not one. You offer me marriage as a prince might give a penny to a beggar. If my mother were not an Indian woman, you would not have taken it all as a matter of course. But my father was a white man, and I am a white man's daughter, and I would rather marry an Indian, who would think me the best thing there was in the light of the sun, than marry you. Had I been pure white you would not have been so sure, you would have asked, not offered. I am not obliged to you. You ought to go to no woman as you came to me. See, the storm has stopped. You will be quite safe going back now. The snow will be deep, perhaps, but it is not far." She went to the window, got his cap and gloves, and handed them to him. He took them, dumbfounded and overcome. "Say, I ain't done it right, mebbe, but I meant well, and I'd be good to you and proud of you, and I'd love you better than anything I ever saw," he said shamefacedly, but eagerly and honestly too. "Ah, you should have said those last words first," she answered. "I say them now." "They come too late; but they would have been too late in any case," she added. "Still, I am glad you said them." She opened the door for him. "I made a mistake," he urged humbly. "I understand better now. I never had any schoolin'." "Oh, it isn't that," she answered gently. "Goodbye." Suddenly he turned. "You're right--it couldn't ever be," he said. "You're--you're great. And I owe you my life still." He stepped out into the biting air. For a moment Pauline stood motionless in the middle of the room, her gaze fixed upon the door which had just closed; then, with a wild gesture of misery and despair, she threw herself upon the couch in a passionate outburst of weeping. Sobs shook her from head to foot, and her hands, clenched above her head, twitched convulsively. Presently the door opened and her mother looked in eagerly. At what she saw her face darkened and hardened for an instant, but then the girl's utter abandonment of grief and agony convinced and conquered her. Some glimmer of the true understanding of the problem which Pauline represented got into her heart, and drove the sullen selfishness from her face and eyes and mind. She came over heavily and, sinking upon her knees, swept an arm around the girl's shoulder. She realised what had happened, and probably this was the first time in her life that she had ever come by instinct to a revelation of her daughter's mind, or of the faithful meaning of incidents of their lives. "You said no to John Alloway," she murmured. Defiance and protest spoke in the swift gesture of the girl's hands. "You think because he was white that I'd drop into his arms! No--no--no!" "You did right, little one." The sobs suddenly stopped, and the girl seemed to listen with all her body. There was something in her Indian mother's voice she had never heard before--at least, not since she was a little child, and swung in a deer-skin hammock in a tamarac tree by Renton's Lodge, where the chiefs met, and the West paused to rest on its onward march. Something of the accents of the voice that crooned to her then was in the woman's tones now. "He offered it like a lump of sugar to a bird--I know. He didn't know that you have great blood--yes, but it is true. My man's grandfather, he was of the blood of the kings of England. My man had the proof. And for a thousand years my people have been chiefs. There is no blood in all the West like yours. My heart was heavy, and dark thoughts came to me, because my man is gone, and the life is not my life, and I am only an Indian woman from the Warais, and my heart goes out there always now. But some great Medicine has been poured into my heart. As I stood at the door and saw you lying there, I called to the Sun. 'O great Spirit,' I said, 'help me to understand; for this girl is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, and Evil has come between us!' And the Sun Spirit poured the Medicine into my spirit, and there is no cloud between us now. It has passed away, and I see. Little white one, the white life is the only life, and I will live it with you till a white man comes and gives you a white man's home. But not John Alloway--shall the crow nest with the oriole?" As the woman spoke with slow, measured voice, full of the cadences of a heart revealing itself, the girl's breath at first seemed to stop, so still she lay; then, as the true understanding of the words came to her, she panted with excitement, her breast heaved, and the blood flushed her face. When the slow voice ceased, and the room became still, she lay quiet for a moment, letting the new thing find secure lodgment in her thought; then, suddenly, she raised herself and threw her arms round her mother in a passion of affection. "Lalika! O mother Lalika!" she said tenderly, and kissed her again and again. Not since she was a little girl, long before they left the Warais, had she called her mother by her Indian name, which her father had humorously taught her to do in those far-off happy days by the beautiful, singing river and the exquisite woods, when, with a bow and arrow, she had ranged a young Diana who slew only with love. "Lalika, mother Lalika, it is like the old, old times," she added softly. "Ah, it does not matter now, for you understand!" "I do not understand altogether," murmured the Indian woman gently. "I am not white, and there is a different way of thinking; but I will hold your hand, and we will live the white life together." Cheek to cheek they saw the darkness come, and, afterwards, the silver moon steal up over a frozen world, in which the air bit like steel and braced the heart like wine. Then, at last, before it was nine o'clock, after her custom, the Indian woman went to bed, leaving her daughter brooding peacefully by the fire. For a long time Pauline sat with hands clasped in her lap, her gaze on the tossing flames, in her heart and mind a new feeling of strength and purpose. The way before her was not clear, she saw no further than this day, and all that it had brought; yet she was as one that has crossed a direful flood and finds herself on a strange shore in an unknown country, with the twilight about her, yet with so much of danger passed that there was only the thought of the moment's safety round her, the camp-fire to be lit, and the bed to be made under the friendly trees and stars. For a half-hour she sat so, and then, suddenly, she raised her head listening, leaning towards the window, through which the moonlight streamed. She heard her name called without, distinct and strange-- "Pauline! Pauline!" Starting up, she ran to the door and opened it. All was silent and cruelly cold. Nothing but the wide plain of snow and the steely air. But as she stood intently listening, the red glow from the fire behind her, again came the cry--"Pauline!" not far away. Her heart beat hard, and she raised her head and called--why was it she should call out in a language not her own? "Qu'appelle? Qu'appelle?" And once again on the still night air came the trembling appeal-- "Pauline!" "Qu'appelle? Qu'appelle?" she cried, then, with a gasping murmur of understanding and recognition she ran forwards in the frozen night towards the sound of the voice. The same intuitive sense which had made her call out in French, without thought or reason, had revealed to her who it was that called; or was it that even in the one word uttered there was the note of a voice always remembered since those days with Manette at Winnipeg? Not far away from the house, on the way to Portage la Drome, but a little distance from the road, was a crevasse, and towards this she sped, for once before an accident had happened there. Again the voice called as she sped--"Pauline!" and she cried out that she was coming. Presently she stood above the declivity, and peered over. Almost immediately below her, a few feet down, was a man lying in the snow. He had strayed from the obliterated road, and had fallen down the crevasse, twisting his foot cruelly. Unable to walk he had crawled several hundred yards in the snow, but his strength had given out, and then he had called to the house, on whose dark windows flickered the flames of the fire, the name of the girl he had come so far to see. With a cry of joy and pain at once she recognised him now. It was as her heart had said--it was Julien, Manette's brother. In a moment she was beside him, her arm around his shoulder. "Pauline!" he said feebly, and fainted in her arms. An instant later she was speeding to the house, and, rousing her mother and two of the stablemen, she snatched a flask of brandy from a cupboard and hastened back. An hour later Julien Labrosse lay in the great sitting-room beside the fire, his foot and ankle bandaged, and at ease, his face alight with all that had brought him there. And once again the Indian mother with a sure instinct knew why he had come, and saw that now her girl would have a white woman's home, and, for her man, one of the race like her father's race, white and conquering. "I'm sorry to give trouble," Julien said, laughing--he had a trick of laughing lightly; "but I'll be able to get back to the Portage to-morrow." To this the Indian mother said, however: "To please yourself is a great thing, but to please others is better; and so you will stay here till you can walk back to the Portage, M'sieu' Julien." "Well, I've never been so comfortable," he said--"never so--happy. If you don't mind the trouble!" The Indian woman nodded pleasantly, and found an excuse to leave the room. But before she went she contrived to place near his elbow one of the scraps of paper on which Pauline had drawn his face, with that of Manette. It brought a light of hope and happiness into his eyes, and he thrust the paper under the fur robes of the couch. "What are you doing with your life?" Pauline asked him, as his eyes sought hers a few moments later. "Oh, I have a big piece of work before me," he answered eagerly, "a great chance--to build a bridge over the St. Lawrence, and I'm only thirty! I've got my start. Then, I've made over the old Seigneury my father left me, and I'm going to live in it. It will be a fine place, when I've done with it--comfortable and big, with old oak timbers and walls, and deep fireplaces, and carvings done in the time of Louis Quinze, and dark red velvet curtains for the drawingroom, and skins and furs. Yes, I must have skins and furs like these here." He smoothed the skins with his hand. "Manette, she will live with you?" Pauline asked. "Oh no, her husband wouldn't like that. You see, Manette is to be married. She told me to tell you all about it." He told her all there was to tell of Manette's courtship, and added that the wedding would take place in the spring. "Manette wanted it when the leaves first flourish and the birds come back," he said gaily; "and so she's not going to live with me at the Seigneury, you see. No, there it is, as fine a house, good enough for a prince, and I shall be there alone, unless--" His eyes met hers, and he caught the light that was in them, before the eyelids drooped over them and she turned her head to the fire. "But the spring is two months off yet," he added. "The spring?" she asked, puzzled, yet half afraid to speak. "Yes, I'm going into my new house when Manette goes into her new house-- in the spring. And I won't go alone if--" He caught her eyes again, but she rose hurriedly and said: "You must sleep now. Good-night." She held out her hand. "Well, I'll tell you the rest to-morrow-to-morrow night when it's quiet like this, and the stars shine," he answered. "I'm going to have a home of my own like this--ah, bien sur, Pauline." That night the old Indian mother prayed to the Sun. "O great Spirit," she said, "I give thanks for the Medicine poured into my heart. Be good to my white child when she goes with her man to the white man's home far away. O great Spirit, when I return to the lodges of my people, be kind to me, for I shall be lonely; I shall not have my child; I shall not hear my white man's voice. Give me good Medicine, O Sun and great Father, till my dream tells me that my man comes from over the hills for me once more." THE STAKE AND THE PLUMB-LINE She went against all good judgment in marrying him; she cut herself off from her own people, from the life in which she had been an alluring and beautiful figure. Washington had never had two such seasons as those in which she moved; for the diplomatic circle who had had "the run of the world" knew her value, and were not content without her. She might have made a brilliant match with one ambassador thirty years older than herself--she was but twenty-two; and there were at least six attaches and secretaries of legation who entered upon a tournament for her heart and hand; but she was not for them. All her fine faculties of tact and fairness, of harmless strategy, and her gifts of wit and unexpected humour were needed to keep her cavaliers constant and hopeful to the last; but she never faltered, and she did not fail. The faces of old men brightened when they saw her, and one or two ancient figures who, for years, had been seldom seen at social functions now came when they knew she was to be present. There were, of course, a few women who said she would coquette with any male from nine to ninety; but no man ever said so; and there was none, from first to last, but smiled with pleasure at even the mention of her name, so had her vivacity, intelligence, and fine sympathy conquered them. She was a social artist by instinct. In their hearts they all recognised how fair and impartial she was; and she drew out of every man the best that was in him. The few women who did not like her said that she chattered; but the truth was she made other people talk by swift suggestion or delicate interrogation. After the blow fell, Freddy Hartzman put the matter succinctly, and told the truth faithfully, when he said, "The first time I met her, I told her all I'd ever done that could be told, and all I wanted to do; including a resolve to carry her off to some desert place and set up a Kingdom of Two. I don't know how she did it. I was like a tap, and poured myself out; and when it was all over, I thought she was the best talker I'd ever heard. But yet she'd done nothing except look at me and listen, and put in a question here and there, that was like a baby asking to see your watch. Oh, she was a lily-flower, was Sally Seabrook, and I've never been sorry I told her all my little story! It did me good. Poor darling--it makes me sick sometimes when I think of it. Yet she'll win out all right--a hundred to one she'll win out. She was a star." Freddy Hartzman was in an embassy of repute; he knew the chancelleries and salons of many nations, and was looked upon as one of the ablest and shrewdest men in the diplomatic service. He had written one of the best books on international law in existence, he talked English like a native, he had published a volume of delightful verse, and had omitted to publish several others, including a tiny volume which Sally Seabrook's charms had inspired him to write. His view of her was shared by most men who knew the world, and especially by the elderly men who had a real knowledge of human nature, among whom was a certain important member of the United States executive called John Appleton. When the end of all things at Washington came for Sally, these two men united to bear her up, that her feet should not stumble upon the stony path of the hard journey she had undertaken. Appleton was not a man of much speech, but his words had weight; for he was not only a minister; he came of an old family which had ruled the social destinies of a state, and had alternately controlled and disturbed its politics. On the day of the sensation, in the fiery cloud of which Sally disappeared, Appleton delivered himself of his mind in the matter at a reception given by the President. "She will come back--and we will all take her back, be glad to have her back," he said. "She has the grip of a lever which can lift the eternal hills with the right pressure. Leave her alone--leave her alone. This is a democratic country, and she'll prove democracy a success before she's done." The world knew that John Appleton had offered her marriage, and he had never hidden the fact. What they did not know was that she had told him what she meant to do before she did it. He had spoken to her plainly, bluntly, then with a voice that was blurred and a little broken, urging her against the course towards which she was set; but it had not availed; and, realising that he had come upon a powerful will underneath the sunny and so human surface, he had ceased to protest, to bear down upon her mind with his own iron force. When he realised that all his reasoning was wasted, that all worldly argument was vain, he made one last attempt, a forlorn hope, as though to put upon record what he believed to be the truth. "There is no position you cannot occupy," he said. "You have the perfect gift in private life, and you have a public gift. You have a genius for ruling. Say, my dear, don't wreck it all. I know you are not for me, but there are better men in the country than I am. Hartzman will be a great man one day--he wants you. Young Tilden wants you; he has millions, and he will never disgrace them or you, the power which they can command, and the power which you have. And there are others. Your people have told you they will turn you off; the world will say things-- will rend you. There is nothing so popular for the moment as the fall of a favourite. But that's nothing--it's nothing at all compared with the danger to yourself. I didn't sleep last night thinking of it. Yet I'm glad you wrote me; it gave me time to think, and I can tell you the truth as I see it. Haven't you thought that he will drag you down, down, down, wear out your soul, break and sicken your life, destroy your beauty--you are beautiful, my dear, beyond what the world sees, even. Give it up-- ah, give it up, and don't break our hearts! There are too many people loving you for you to sacrifice them--and yourself, too. . . . You've had such a good time!" "It's been like a dream," she interrupted, in a faraway voice, "like a dream, these two years." "And it's been such a good dream," he urged; "and you will only go to a bad one, from which you will never wake. The thing has fastened on him; he will never give it up. And penniless, too--his father has cast him off. My girl, it's impossible. Listen to me. There's no one on earth that would do more for you than I would--no one." "Dear, dear friend!" she cried with a sudden impulse, and caught his hand in hers and kissed it before he could draw it back. "You are so true, and you think you are right. But, but"--her eyes took on a deep, steady, far-away look--"but I will save him; and we shall not be penniless in the end. Meanwhile I have seven hundred dollars a year of my own. No one can touch that. Nothing can change me now--and I have promised." When he saw her fixed determination, he made no further protest, but asked that he might help her, be with her the next day, when she was to take a step which the wise world would say must lead to sorrow and a miserable end. The step she took was to marry Jim Templeton, the drunken, cast-off son of a millionaire senator from Kentucky, who controlled railways, and owned a bank, and had so resented his son's inebriate habits that for five years he had never permitted Jim's name to be mentioned in his presence. Jim had had twenty thousand dollars left him by his mother, and a small income of three hundred dollars from an investment which had been made for him when a little boy. And this had carried him on; for, drunken as he was, he had sense enough to eke out the money, limiting himself to three thousand dollars a year. He had four thousand dollars left, and his tiny income of three hundred, when he went to Sally Seabrook, after having been sober for a month, and begged her to marry him. Before dissipation had made him look ten years older than he was, there had been no handsomer man in all America. Even yet he had a remarkable face; long, delicate, with dark brown eyes, as fair a forehead as man could wish, and black, waving hair, streaked with grey-grey, though he was but twenty-nine years of age. When Sally was fifteen and he twenty-two, he had fallen in love with her and she with him; and nothing had broken the early romance. He had captured her young imagination, and had fastened his image on her heart. Her people, seeing the drift of things, had sent her to a school on the Hudson, and the two did not meet for some time. Then came a stolen interview, and a fastening of the rivets of attraction--for Jim had gifts of a wonderful kind. He knew his Horace and Anacreon and Heine and Lamartine and Dante in the originals, and a hundred others; he was a speaker of power and grace; and he had a clear, strong head for business. He was also a lawyer, and was junior attorney to his father's great business. It was because he had the real business gift, not because he had a brilliant and scholarly mind, that his father had taken him into his concerns, and was the more unforgiving when he gave way to temptation. Otherwise, he would have pensioned Jim off, and dismissed him from his mind as a useless, insignificant person; for Horace, Anacreon, and philosophy and history were to him the recreations of the feeble-minded. He had set his heart on Jim, and what Jim could do and would do by and by in the vast financial concerns he controlled, when he was ready to slip out and down; but Jim had disappointed him beyond calculation. In the early days of their association Jim had left his post and taken to drink at critical moments in their operations. At first, high words had been spoken; then there came the strife of two dissimilar natures, and both were headstrong, and each proud and unrelenting in his own way. Then, at last, had come the separation, irrevocable and painful; and Jim had flung out into the world, a drunkard, who, sober for a fortnight or a month, or three months, would afterward go off on a spree, in which he quoted Sappho and Horace in taverns, and sang bacchanalian songs with a voice meant for the stage--a heritage from an ancestor who had sung upon the English stage a hundred years before. Even in his cups, even after his darling vice had submerged him, Jim Templeton was a man marked out from his fellows, distinguished and very handsome. Society, however, had ceased to recognise him for a long time, and he did not seek it. For two or three years he practised law now and then. He took cases, preferably criminal cases, for which very often he got no pay; but that, too, ceased at last. Now, in his quiet, sober intervals he read omnivorously, and worked out problems in physics for which he had a taste, until the old appetite surged over him again. Then his spirits rose, and he was the old brilliant talker, the joyous galliard until, in due time, he became silently and lethargically drunk. In one of his sober intervals he had met Sally Seabrook in the street. It was the first time in four years, for he had avoided her, and though she had written to him once or twice, he had never answered her--shame was in his heart. Yet all the time the old song was in Sally's ears. Jim Templeton had touched her in some distant and intimate corner of her nature where none other had reached; and in all her gay life, when men had told their tale of admiration in their own way, her mind had gone back to Jim, and what he had said under the magnolia trees; and his voice had drowned all others. She was not blind to what he had become, but a deep belief possessed her that she, of all the world, could save him. She knew how futile it would look to the world, how wild a dream it looked even to her own heart, how perilous it was; but, play upon the surface of things as she had done so much and so often in her brief career, she was seized of convictions having origin, as it might seem, in something beyond herself. So when she and Jim met in the street, the old true thing rushed upon them both, and for a moment they stood still and looked at each other. As they might look who say farewell forever, so did each dwell upon the other's face. That was the beginning of the new epoch. A few days more, and Jim came to her and said that she alone could save him; and she meant him to say it, had led him to the saying, for the same conviction was burned deep in her own soul. She knew the awful risk she was taking, that the step must mean social ostracism, and that her own people would be no kinder to her than society; but she gasped a prayer, smiled at Jim as though all were well, laid her plans, made him promise her one thing on his knees, and took the plunge. Her people did as she expected. She was threatened with banishment from heart and home--with disinheritance; but she pursued her course; and the only person who stood with her and Jim at the altar was John Appleton, who would not be denied, and who had such a half-hour with Jim before the ceremony as neither of them forgot in the years that the locust ate thereafter. And, standing at the altar, Jim's eyes were still wet, with new resolves in his heart and a being at his side meant for the best man in the world. As he knelt beside her, awaiting the benediction, a sudden sense of the enormity of this act came upon him, and for her sake he would have drawn back then, had it not been too late. He realised that it was a crime to put this young, beautiful life in peril; that his own life was a poor, contemptible thing, and that he had been possessed of the egotism of the selfish and the young. But the thing was done, and a new life was begun. Before they were launched upon it, however, before society had fully grasped the sensation, or they had left upon their journey to northern Canada, where Sally intended they should work out their problem and make their home, far and free from all old associations, a curious thing happened. Jim's father sent an urgent message to Sally to come to him. When she came, he told her she was mad, and asked her why she had thrown her life away. "Why have you done it?" he said. "You--you knew all about him; you might have married the best man in the country. You could rule a kingdom; you have beauty and power, and make people do what you want: and you've got a sot." "He is your son," she answered quietly. She looked so beautiful and so fine as she stood there, fearless and challenging before him, that he was moved. But he would not show it. "He was my son--when he was a man," he retorted grimly. "He is the son of the woman you once loved," she answered. The old man turned his head away. "What would she have said to what you did to Jim?" He drew himself around sharply. Her dagger had gone home, but he would not let her know it. "Leave her out of the question--she was a saint," he said roughly. "She cannot be left out; nor can you. He got his temperament naturally; he inherited his weakness from your grandfather, from her father. Do you think you are in no way responsible?" He was silent for a moment, but then said stubbornly: "Why--why have you done it? What's between him and me can't be helped; we are father and son; but you--you had no call, no responsibility." "I love Jim. I always loved him, ever since I can remember, as you did. I see my way ahead. I will not desert him. No one cares what happens to him, no one but me. Your love wouldn't stand the test; mine will." "Your folks have disinherited you,--you have almost nothing, and I will not change my mind. What do you see ahead of you?" "Jim--only Jim--and God." Her eyes were shining, her hands were clasped together at her side in the tenseness of her feeling, her indomitable spirit spoke in her face. Suddenly the old man brought his fist down on the table with a bang. "It's a crime--oh, it's a crime, to risk your life so! You ought to have been locked up. I'd have done it." "Listen to me," she rejoined quietly. "I know the risk. But do you think that I could have lived my life out, feeling that I might have saved Jim, and didn't try? You talk of beauty and power and ruling--you say what others have said to me. Which is the greater thing, to get what pleases one, or to work for something which is more to one than all else in the world? To save one life, one intellect, one great man--oh, he has the making of a great man in him!--to save a soul, would not life be well lost, would not love be well spent in doing it?" "Love's labour lost," said the old man slowly, cynically, but not without emotion. "I have ambition," she continued. "No girl was ever more ambitious, but my ambition is to make the most and best of myself. Place?--Jim and I will hold it yet. Power?--it shall be as it must be; but Jim and I will work for it to fulfil ourselves. For me--ah, if I can save him--and I mean to do so--do you think that I would not then have my heaven on earth? You want money--money--money, power, and to rule; and these are to you the best things in the world. I make my choice differently, though I would have these other things if I could; and I hope I shall. But Jim first--Jim first, your son, Jim--my husband, Jim." The old man got to his feet slowly. She had him at bay. "But you are great," he said, "great! It is an awful stake--awful. Yet if you win, you'll have what money can't buy. And listen to me. We'll make the stake bigger. It will give it point, too, in another way. If you keep Jim sober for four years from the day of your marriage, on the last day of that four years I'll put in your hands for you and him, or for your child--if you have one--five millions of dollars. I am a man of my word. While Jim drinks I won't take him back; he's disinherited. I'll give him nothing now or hereafter. Save him for four years,--if he can do that he will do all, and there's five millions as sure as the sun's in heaven. Amen and amen." He opened the door. There was a strange soft light in her eyes as she came to go. "Aren't you going to kiss me?" she said, looking at him whimsically. He was disconcerted. She did not wait, but reached up and kissed him on the cheek. "Good-by," she said with a smile. "We'll win the stake. Good-by." An instant, and she was gone. He shut the door, then turned and looked in a mirror on the wall. Abstractedly he touched the cheek she had kissed. Suddenly a change passed over his face. He dropped in a chair, and his fist struck the table as he said: "By God, she may do it, she may do it! But it's life and death--it's life and death." Society had its sensation, and then the veil dropped. For a long time none looked behind it except Jim's father. He had too much at stake not to have his telescope upon them. A detective followed them to keep Jim's record. But this they did not know. II From the day they left Washington Jim put his life and his fate in his wife's hands. He meant to follow her judgment, and, self-willed and strong in intellect as he was, he said that she should have a fair chance of fulfilling her purpose. There had been many pour parlers as to what Jim should do. There was farming. She set that aside, because it meant capital, and it also meant monotony and loneliness; and capital was limited, and monotony and loneliness were bad for Jim, deadening an active brain which must not be deprived of stimulants--stimulants of a different sort, however, from those which had heretofore mastered it. There was the law. But Jim would have to become a citizen of Canada, change his flag, and where they meant to go--to the outskirts--there would be few opportunities for the law; and with not enough to do there would be danger. Railway construction? That seemed good in many ways, but Jim had not the professional knowledge necessary; his railway experience with his father had only been financial. Above all else he must have responsibility, discipline, and strict order in his life. "Something that will be good for my natural vanity, and knock the nonsense out of me," Jim agreed, as they drew farther and farther away from Washington and the past, and nearer and nearer to the Far North and their future. Never did two more honest souls put their hands in each other's, and set forth upon the thorniest path to a goal which was their hearts' desire. Since they had become one, there had come into Sally's face that illumination which belongs only to souls possessed of an idea greater than themselves, outside themselves--saints, patriots; faces which have been washed in the salt tears dropped for others' sorrows, and lighted by the fire of self-sacrifice. Sally Seabrook, the high- spirited, the radiant, the sweetly wilful, the provoking, to concentrate herself upon this narrow theme--to reconquer the lost paradise of one vexed mortal soul! What did Jim's life mean?--It was only one in the millions coming and going, and every man must work out his own salvation. Why should she cramp her soul to this one issue, when the same soul could spend itself upon the greater motives and in the larger circle? A wide world of influence had opened up before her; position, power, adulation, could all have been hers, as John Appleton and Jim's father had said. She might have moved in well-trodden ways, through gardens of pleasure, lived a life where all would be made easy, where she would be shielded at every turn, and her beauty would be flattered by luxury into a constant glow. She was not so primitive, so unintellectual, as not to have thought of this, else her decision would have had less importance; she would have been no more than an infatuated emotional woman with a touch of second class drama in her nature. She had thought of it all, and she had made her choice. The easier course was the course for meaner souls, and she had not one vein of thin blood nor a small idea in her whole nature. She had a heart and mind for great issues. She believed that Jim had a great brain, and would and could accomplish great things. She knew that he had in him the strain of hereditary instinct--his mother's father had ended a brief life in a drunken duel on the Mississippi, and Jim's boyhood had never had discipline or direction, or any strenuous order. He might never acquire order, and the power that order and habit and the daily iteration of necessary thoughts and acts bring; but the prospect did not appal her. She had taken the risk with her eyes wide open; had set her own life and happiness in the hazard. But Jim must be saved, must be what his talents, his genius, entitled him to be. And the long game must have the long thought. So, as they drew into the great Saskatchewan Valley, her hand in his, and hope in his eyes, and such a look of confidence and pride in her as brought back his old strong beauty of face, and smoothed the careworn lines of self-indulgence, she gave him his course: as a private he must join the North-West Mounted Police, the red-coated riders of the plains, and work his way up through every stage of responsibility, beginning at the foot of the ladder of humbleness and self-control. She believed that he would agree with her proposal; but her hands clasped his a little more firmly and solicitously--there was a faint, womanly fear at her heart-- as she asked him if he would do it. The life meant more than occasional separation; it meant that there would be periods when she would not be with him; and there was great danger in that; but she knew that the risks must be taken, and he must not be wholly reliant on her presence for his moral strength. His face fell for a moment when she made the suggestion, but it cleared presently, and he said with a dry laugh: "Well, I guess they must make me a sergeant pretty quick. I'm a colonel in the Kentucky Carbineers!" She laughed, too; then a moment afterwards, womanlike, wondered if she was right, and was a little frightened. But that was only because she was not self-opinionated, and was anxious, more anxious than any woman in all the North. It happened as Jim said; he was made a sergeant at once--Sally managed that; for, when it came to the point, and she saw the conditions in which the privates lived, and realised that Jim must be one of them and clean out the stables, and groom his horse and the officers' horses, and fetch and carry, her heart failed her, and she thought that she was making her remedy needlessly heroical. So she went to see the Commissioner, who was on a tour of scrutiny on their arrival at the post, and, as better men than he had done in more knowing circles, he fell under her spell. If she had asked for a lieutenancy, he would probably have corrupted some member of Parliament into securing it for Jim. But Jim was made a sergeant, and the Commissioner and the captain of the troop kept their eyes on him. So did other members of the troop who did not quite know their man, and attempted, figuratively, to pinch him here and there. They found that his actions were greater than his words, and both were in perfect harmony in the end, though his words often seemed pointless to their minds, until they understood that they had conveyed truths through a medium more like a heliograph than a telephone. By and by they begin to understand his heliographing, and, when they did that, they began to swear by him, not at him. In time it was found that the troop never had a better disciplinarian than Jim. He knew when to shut his eyes, and when to keep them open. To non-essentials he kept his eyes shut; to essentials he kept them very wide open. There were some men of good birth from England and elsewhere among them, and these mostly understood him first. But they all understood Sally from the beginning, and after a little they were glad enough to be permitted to come, on occasion, to the five-roomed little house near the barracks, and hear her talk, then answer her questions, and, as men had done at Washington, open out their hearts to her. They noticed, however, that while she made them barley-water, and all kinds of soft drinks from citric acid, sarsaparilla and the like, and had one special drink of her own invention, which she called cream-nectar, no spirits were to be had. They also noticed that Jim never drank a drop of liquor, and by and by, one way or another, they got a glimmer of the real truth, before it became known who he really was or anything of his story. And the interest in the two, and in Jim's reformation, spread through the country, while Jim gained reputation as the smartest man in the force. They were on the outskirts of civilisation; as Jim used to say, "One step ahead of the procession." Jim's duty was to guard the columns of settlement and progress, and to see that every man got his own rights and not more than his rights; that justice should be the plumb-line of march and settlement. His principle was embodied in certain words which he quoted once to Sally from the prophet Amos: "And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumbline." On the day that Jim became a lieutenant his family increased by one. It was a girl, and they called her Nancy, after Jim's mother. It was the anniversary of their marriage, and, so far, Jim had won, with what fightings and strugglings and wrestlings of the spirit only Sally and himself knew. And she knew as well as he, and always saw the storm coming before it broke--a restlessness, then a moodiness, then a hungry, eager, helpless look, and afterwards an agony of longing, a feverish desire to break away and get the thrilling thing which would still the demon within him. There had been moments when his doom seemed certain--he knew and she knew that if he once got drunk again he would fall never to rise. On one occasion, after a hard, long, hungry ride, he was half-mad with desire, but even as he seized the flask that was offered to him by his only enemy, the captain of B Troop, at the next station eastward, there came a sudden call to duty, two hundred Indians having gone upon the war-path. It saved him; it broke the spell. He had to mount and away, with the antidote and stimulant of responsibility driving him on. Another occasion was equally perilous to his safety. They had been idle for days in a hot week in summer, waiting for orders to return from the rail-head where they had gone to quell a riot, and where drink and hilarity were common. Suddenly--more suddenly than it had ever come, the demon of his thirst had Jim by the throat. Sergeant Sewell, of the grey- stubble head, who loved him more than his sour heart had loved anybody in all his life, was holding himself ready for the physical assault he must make upon his superior officer, if he raised a glass to his lips, when salvation came once again. An accident had occurred far down on the railway line, and the operator of the telegraph-office had that very day been stricken down with pleurisy and pneumonia. In despair the manager had sent to Jim, eagerly hoping that he might help them, for the Riders of the Plains were a sort of court of appeal for every trouble in the Far North. Instantly Jim was in the saddle with his troop. Out of curiosity he had learned telegraphy when a boy, as he had learned many things, and, arrived at the scene of the accident, he sent messages and received them- -by sound, not on paper as did the official operator, to the amazement and pride of the troop. Then, between caring for the injured in the accident, against the coming of the relief train, and nursing the sick operator through the dark moments of his dangerous illness, he passed a crisis of his own disease triumphantly; but not the last crisis. So the first and so the second and third years passed in safety. III "PLEASE, I want to go, too, Jim." Jim swung round and caught the child up in his arms. "Say, how dare you call your father Jim--eh, tell me that?" "It's what mummy calls you--it's pretty." "I don't call her 'mummy' because you do, and you mustn't call me Jim because she does--do you hear?" The whimsical face lowered a little, then the rare and beautiful dark blue eyes raised slowly, shaded by the long lashes, and the voice said demurely, "Yes--Jim." "Nancy--Nancy," said a voice from the corner in reproof, mingled with suppressed laughter. "Nancy, you musn't be saucy. You must say 'father' to--" "Yes, mummy. I'll say father to--Jim." "You imp--you imp of delight," said Jim, as he strained the dainty little lass to his breast, while she appeared interested in a wave of his black hair, which she curled around her finger. Sally came forwards with the little parcel of sandwiches she had been preparing, and put them in the saddle-bags lying on a chair at the door, in readiness for the journey Jim was about to make. Her eyes were glistening, and her face had a heightened colour. The three years which had passed since she married had touched her not at all to her disadvantage, rather to her profit. She looked not an hour older; motherhood had only added to her charm, lending it a delightful gravity. The prairie life had given a shining quality to her handsomeness, an air of depth and firmness, an exquisite health and clearness to the colour in her cheeks. Her step was as light as Nancy's, elastic and buoyant-- a gliding motion which gave a sinuous grace to the movements of her body. There had also come into her eyes a vigilance such as deaf people possess, a sensitive observation imparting a deeper intelligence to the face. Here was the only change by which you could guess the story of her life. Her eyes were like the ears of an anxious mother who can never sleep till every child is abed; whose sense is quick to hear the faintest footstep without or within; and who, as years go on, and her children grow older and older, must still lie awake hearkening for the late footstep on the stair. In Sally's eyes was the story of the past three years: of love and temptation and struggle, of watchfulness and yearning and anxiety, of determination and an inviolable hope. Her eyes had a deeper look than that in Jim's. Now, as she gazed at him, the maternal spirit rose up from the great well of protectiveness in her and engulfed both husband and child. There was always something of the maternal in her eyes when she looked at Jim. He did not see it--he saw only the wonderful blue, and the humour which had helped him over such difficult places these past three years. In steadying and strengthening Jim's will, in developing him from his Southern indolence into Northern industry and sense of responsibility, John Appleton's warnings had rung in Sally's ears, and Freddy Hartzman's forceful and high-minded personality had passed before her eyes with an appeal powerful and stimulating; but always she came to the same upland of serene faith and white-hearted resolve; and Jim became dearer and dearer. The baby had done much to brace her faith in the future and comfort her anxious present. The child had intelligence of a rare order. She would lie by the half-hour on the floor, turning over the leaves of a book without pictures, and, before she could speak, would read from the pages in a language all her own. She made a fairy world for herself, peopled by characters to whom she gave names, to whom she assigned curious attributes and qualities. They were as real to her as though flesh and blood, and she was never lonely, and never cried; and she had buried herself in her father's heart. She had drawn to her the roughest men in the troop, and for old Sewell, the grim sergeant, she had a specially warm place. "You can love me if you like," she had said to him at the very start, with the egotism of childhood; but made haste to add, "because I love you, Gri-Gri." She called him Gri-Gri from the first, but they knew only long afterwards that "gri-gri" meant "grey-grey," to signify that she called him after his grizzled hairs. What she had been in the life-history of Sally and Jim they both knew. Jim regarded her with an almost superstitious feeling. Sally was his strength, his support, his inspiration, his bulwark of defence; Nancy was the charm he wore about his neck--his mascot, he called her. Once, when she was ill, he had suffered as he had never done before in his life. He could not sleep nor eat, and went about his duties like one in a dream. When his struggles against his enemy were fiercest, he kept saying over her name to himself, as though she could help him. Yet always it was Sally's hand he held in the darkest hours, in his brutal moments; for in this fight between appetite and will there are moments when only the animal seems to exist, and the soul disappears in the glare and gloom of the primal emotions. Nancy he called his "lucky sixpence," but he called Sally his "guinea-girl." From first to last his whimsicality never deserted him. In his worst hours, some innate optimism and humour held him steady in his fight. It was not depression that possessed him at the worst, but the violence of an appetite most like a raging pain which men may endure with a smile upon their lips. He carried in his face the story of a conflict, the aftermath of bitter experience; and through all there pulsed the glow of experience. He had grown handsomer, and the graceful decision of his figure, the deliberate certainty of every action, heightened the force of a singular personality. As in the eyes of Sally, in his eyes was a long reflective look which told of things overcome, and yet of dangers present. His lips smiled often, but the eyes said: "I have lived, I have seen, I have suffered, and I must suffer more. I have loved, I have been loved under the shadow of the sword. Happiness I have had, and golden hours, but not peace--never peace. My soul has need of peace." In the greater, deeper experience of their lives, the more material side of existence had grown less and less to them. Their home was a model of simple comfort and some luxury, though Jim had insisted that Sally's income should not be spent, except upon the child, and should be saved for the child, their home being kept on his pay and on the tiny income left by his mother. With the help of an Indian girl, and a half-breed for outdoor work and fires and gardening, Sally had cared for the house herself. Ingenious and tasteful, with a gift for cooking and an educated hand, she had made her little home as pretty as their few possessions would permit. Refinement covered all, and three or four-score books were like so many friends to comfort her when Jim was away; like kind and genial neighbours when he was at home. From Browning she had written down in her long sliding handwriting, and hung up beneath Jim's looking- glass, the heartening and inspiring words: "One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake." They had lived above the sordid, and there was something in the nature of Jim's life to help them to it. He belonged to a small handful of men who had control over an empire, with an individual responsibility and influence not contained in the scope of their commissions. It was a matter of moral force and character, and of uniform, symbolical only of the great power behind; of the long arm of the State; of the insistence of the law, which did not rely upon force alone, but on the certainty of its administration. In such conditions the smallest brain was bound to expand, to take on qualities of judgment and temperateness which would never be developed in ordinary circumstances. In the case of Jim Templeton, who needed no stimulant to his intellect, but rather a steadying quality, a sense of proportion, the daily routine, the command of men, the diverse nature of his duties, half civil, half military, the personal appeals made on all sides by the people of the country for advice, for help, for settlement of disputes, for information which his well-instructed mind could give--all these modified the romantic brilliance of his intellect, made it and himself more human. It had not come to him all at once. His intellect at first stood in his way. His love of paradox, his deep observation, his insight, all made him inherently satirical, though not cruelly so; but satire had become pure whimsicality at last; and he came to see that, on the whole, the world was imperfect, but also, on the whole, was moving towards perfection rather than imperfection. He grew to realise that what seemed so often weakness in men was tendency and idiosyncrasy rather than evil. And in the end he thought better of himself as he came to think better of all others. For he had thought less of all the world because he had thought so little of himself. He had overestimated his own faults, had made them into crimes in his own eyes, and, observing things in others of similar import, had become almost a cynic in intellect, while in heart he had remained, a boy. In all that he had changed a great deal. His heart was still the heart of a boy, but his intellect had sobered, softened, ripened--even in this secluded and seemingly unimportant life; as Sally had said and hoped it would. Sally's conviction had been right. But the triumph was not yet achieved. She knew it. On occasion the tones of his voice told her, the look that came into his eyes proclaimed it to her, his feverishness and restlessness made it certain. How many a night had she thrown her arm over his shoulder, and sought his hand and held it while in the dark silence, wide-eyed, dry-lipped, and with a throat like fire he had held himself back from falling. There was liquor in the house--the fight would not have been a fight without it. She had determined that he should see his enemy and meet him in the plains and face him down; and he was never many feet away from his possible disaster. Yet for long over three years all had gone well. There was another year. Would he last out the course? At first the thought of the great stake for which she was playing in terms of currency, with the head of Jim's father on every note, was much with her. The amazing nature of the offer of five millions of dollars stimulated her imagination, roused her; gold coins are counters in the game of success, signs and tokens. Money alone could not have lured her; but rather what it represented--power, width of action, freedom to help when the heart prompted, machinery for carrying out large plans, ability to surround with advantage those whom we love. So, at first, while yet the memories of Washington were much with her, the appeal of the millions was strong. The gallant nature of the contest and the great stake braced her; she felt the blood quicken in her pulse. But, all through, the other thing really mastered her: the fixed idea that Jim must be saved. As it deepened, the other life that she had lived became like the sports in which we shared when children, full of vivacious memory, shining with impulse and the stir of life, but not to be repeated--days and deeds outgrown. So the light of one idea shone in her face. Yet she was intensely human too; and if her eyes had not been set on the greater glory, the other thought might have vulgarised her mind, made her end and goal sordid--the descent of a nature rather than its ascension. When Nancy came, the lesser idea, the stake, took on a new importance, for now it seemed to her that it was her duty to secure for the child its rightful heritage. Then Jim, too, appeared in a new light, as one who could never fulfil himself unless working through the natural channels of his birth, inheritance, and upbringing. Jim, drunken and unreliable, with broken will and fighting to find himself--the waste places were for him, until he was the master of his will and emotions. Once however, secure in ability to control himself, with cleansed brain and purpose defined, the widest field would still be too narrow for his talents--and the five, yes, the fifty millions of his father must be his. She had never repented having married Jim; but twice in those three years she had broken down and wept as though her heart would break. There were times when Jim's nerves were shaken in his struggle against the unseen foe, and he had spoken to her querulously, almost sharply. Yet in her tears there was no reproach for him, rather for herself--the fear that she might lose her influence over him, that she could not keep him close to her heart, that he might drift away from her in the commonplaces and monotony of work and domestic life. Everything so depended on her being to him not only the one woman for whom he cared, but the woman without whom he could care for nothing else. "Oh, my God, give me his love," she had prayed. "Let me keep it yet a little while. For his sake, not for my own, let me have the power to hold his love. Make my mind always quiet, and let me blow neither hot nor cold. Help me to keep my temper sweet and cheerful, so that he will find the room empty where I am not, and his footsteps will quicken when he comes to the door. Not for my sake, dear God, but for his, or my heart will break--it will break unless Thou dost help me to hold him. O Lord, keep me from tears; make my face happy that I may be goodly to his eyes, and forgive the selfishness of a poor woman who has little, and would keep her little and cherish it, for Christ's sake." Twice had she poured out her heart so, in the agony of her fear that she should lose favour in Jim's sight--she did not know how alluring she was, in spite of the constant proofs offered her. She had had her will with all who came her way, from governor to Indian brave. Once, in a journey they had made far north, soon after they came, she had stayed at a Hudson's Bay Company's post for some days, while there came news of restlessness among the Indians, because of lack of food, and Jim had gone farther north to steady the tribes, leaving her with the factor and his wife and a halfbreed servant. While she and the factor's wife were alone in the yard of the post one day, an Indian--chief, Arrowhead, in warpaint and feathers, entered suddenly, brandishing a long knife. He had been drinking, and there was danger in his black eyes. With a sudden inspiration she came forward quickly, nodded and smiled to him, and then pointed to a grindstone standing in the corner of the yard. As she did so, she saw Indians crowding into the gate armed with knives, guns, bows, and arrows. She beckoned to Arrowhead, and he followed her to the grindstone. She poured some water on the wheel and began to turn it, nodding at the now impassive Indian to begin. Presently he nodded also, and put his knife on the stone. She kept turning steadily, singing to herself the while, as with anxiety she saw the Indians drawing closer and closer in from the gate. Faster and faster she turned, and at last the Indian lifted his knife from the stone. She reached out her hand with simulated interest, felt the edge with her thumb, the Indian looking darkly at her the while. Presently, after feeling the edge himself, he bent over the stone again, and she went on turning the wheel still singing softly. At last he stopped again and felt the edge. With a smile which showed her fine white teeth, she said, "Is that for me?" making a significant sign across her throat at the same time. The old Indian looked at her grimly, then slowly shook his head in negation. "I go hunt Yellow Hawk to-night," he said. "I go fight; I like marry you when I come back. How!" he said and turned away towards the gate. Some of his braves held back, the blackness of death in their looks. He saw. "My knife is sharp," he said. "The woman is brave. She shall live--go and fight Yellow Hawk, or starve and die." Divining their misery, their hunger, and the savage thought that had come to them, Sally had whispered to the factor's wife to bring food, and the woman now came running out with two baskets full, and returned for more. Sally ran forward among the Indians and put the food into their hands. With grunts of satisfaction they seized what she gave, and thrust it into their mouths, squatting on the ground. Arrowhead looked on stern and immobile, but when at last she and the factor's wife sat down before the braves with confidence and an air of friendliness, he sat down also; yet, famished as he was, he would not touch the food. At last Sally, realising his proud defiance of hunger, offered him a little lump of pemmican and a biscuit, and with a grunt he took it from her hands and ate it. Then, at his command a fire was lit, the pipe of peace was brought out, and Sally and the factor's wife touched their lips to it, and passed it on. So was a new treaty of peace and loyalty made with Arrowhead and his tribe by a woman without fear, whose life had seemed not worth a minute's purchase; and, as the sun went down, Arrowhead and his men went forth to make war upon Yellow Hawk beside the Nettigon River. In this wise had her influence spread in the land. ....................... Standing now with the child in his arms and his wife looking at him with a shining moisture of the eyes, Jim laughed outright. There came upon him a sudden sense of power, of aggressive force--the will to do. Sally understood, and came and laughingly grasped his arm. "Oh, Jim," she said playfully, "you are getting muscles like steel. You hadn't these when you were colonel of the Kentucky Carbineers!" "I guess I need them now," he said, smiling, and with the child still in his arms drew her to a window looking northward. As far as the eye could see, nothing but snow, like a blanket spread over the land. Here and there in the wide expanse a tree silhouetted against the sky, a tracery of eccentric beauty, and off in the far distance a solitary horseman riding towards the postriding hard. "It was root, hog, or die with me, Sally," he continued, "and I rooted. . . . I wonder--that fellow on the horse--I have a feeling about him. See, he's been riding hard and long-you can tell by the way the horse drops his legs. He sags a bit himself. . . . But isn't it beautiful, all that out there--the real quintessence of life." The air was full of delicate particles of frost on which the sun sparkled, and though there was neither bird nor insect, nor animal, nor stir of leaf, nor swaying branch or waving grass, life palpitated in the air, energy sang its song in the footstep that crunched the frosty ground, that broke the crusted snow; it was in the delicate wind that stirred the flag by the barracks away to the left; hope smiled in the wide prospect over which the thrilling, bracing air trembled. Sally had chosen right. "You had a big thought when you brought me here, guinea-girl," he added presently. "We are going to win out here"--he set the child down--"you and I and this lucky sixpence." He took up his short fur coat. "Yes, we'll win, honey." Then, with a brooding look in his face, he added: "'The end comes as came the beginning, And shadows fail into the past; And the goal, is it not worth the winning, If it brings us but home at the last? "'While far through the pain of waste places We tread, 'tis a blossoming rod That drives us to grace from disgraces, From the fens to the gardens of God!'" He paused reflectively. "It's strange that this life up here makes you feel that you must live a bigger life still, that this is only the wide porch to the great labour-house--it makes you want to do things. Well, we've got to win the stake first," he added with a laugh. "The stake is a big one, Jim--bigger than you think." "You and her and me--me that was in the gutter." "What is the gutter, dadsie?" asked Nancy. "The gutter--the gutter is where the dish-water goes, midget," he answered with a dry laugh. "Oh, I don't think you'd like to be in the gutter," Nancy said solemnly. "You have to get used to it first, miss," answered Jim. Suddenly Sally laid both hands on Jim's shoulders and looked him in the eyes. "You must win the stake Jim. Think--now!" She laid a hand on the head of the child. He did not know that he was playing for a certain five millions, perhaps fifty millions, of dollars. She had never told him of his father's offer. He was fighting only for salvation, for those he loved, for freedom. As they stood there, the conviction had come upon her that they had come to the last battle-field, that this journey which Jim now must take would decide all, would give them perfect peace or lifelong pain. The shadow of battle was over them, but he had no foreboding, no premonition; he had never been so full of spirits and life. To her adjuration Jim replied by burying his face in her golden hair, and he whispered: "Say, I've done near four years, my girl. I think I'm all right now--I think. This last six months, it's been easy--pretty fairly easy." "Four months more, only four months more--God be good to us!" she said with a little gasp. If he held out for four months more, the first great stage in their life --journey would be passed, the stake won. "I saw a woman get an awful fall once," Jim said suddenly. "Her bones were broken in twelve places, and there wasn't a spot on her body without injury. They set and fixed up every broken bone except one. It was split down. They didn't dare perform the operation; she couldn't stand it. There was a limit to pain, and she had reached the boundary. Two years went by, and she got better every way, but inside her leg those broken pieces of bone were rubbing against each other. She tried to avoid the inevitable operation, but nature said, 'You must do it, or die in the end.' She yielded. Then came the long preparations for the operation. Her heart shrank, her mind got tortured. She'd suffered too much. She pulled herself together, and said, 'I must conquer this shrinking body of mine, by my will. How shall I do it?' Something within her said, 'Think and do for others. Forget yourself.' And so, as they got her ready for her torture, she visited hospitals, agonised cripple as she was, and smiled and talked to the sick and broken, telling them of her own miseries endured and dangers faced, of the boundary of human suffering almost passed; and so she got her courage for her own trial. And she came out all right in the end. Well, that's the way I've felt sometimes. But I'm ready for my operation now whenever it comes, and it's coming, I know. Let it come when it must." He smiled. There came a knock at the door, and presently Sewell entered. "The Commissioner wishes you to come over, sir," he said. "I was just coming, Sewell. Is all ready for the start?" "Everything's ready, sir, but there's to be a change of orders. Something's happened--a bad job up in the Cree country, I think." A few minutes later Jim was in the Commissioner's office. The murder of a Hudson's Bay Company's man had been committed in the Cree country. The stranger whom Jim and Sally had seen riding across the plains had brought the news for thirty miles, word of the murder having been carried from point to point. The Commissioner was uncertain what to do, as the Crees were restless through want of food and the absence of game, and a force sent to capture Arrowhead, the chief who had committed the murder, might precipitate trouble. Jim solved the problem by offering to go alone and bring the chief into the post. It was two hundred miles to the Cree encampment, and the journey had its double dangers. Another officer was sent on the expedition for which Jim had been preparing, and he made ready to go upon his lonely duty. His wife did not know till three days after he had gone what the nature of his mission was. IV Jim made his journey in good weather with his faithful dogs alone, and came into the camp of the Crees armed with only a revolver. If he had gone with ten men, there would have been an instant melee, in which he would have lost his life. This is what the chief had expected, had prepared for; but Jim was more formidable alone, with power far behind him which could come with force and destroy the tribe, if resistance was offered, than with fifty men. His tongue had a gift of terse and picturesque speech, powerful with a people who had the gift of imagination. With five hundred men ready to turn him loose in the plains without dogs or food, he carried himself with a watchful coolness and complacent determination which got home to their minds with great force. For hours the struggle for the murderer went on, a struggle of mind over inferior mind and matter. Arrowhead was a chief whose will had never been crossed by his own people, and to master that will by a superior will, to hold back the destructive force which, to the ignorant minds of the braves, was only a natural force of defence, meant a task needing more than authority behind it. For the very fear of that authority put in motion was an incentive to present resistance to stave off the day of trouble. The faces that surrounded Jim were thin with hunger, and the murder that had been committed by the chief had, as its origin, the foolish replies of the Hudson's Bay Company's man to their demand for supplies. Arrowhead had killed him with his own hand. But Jim Templeton was of a different calibre. Although he had not been told it, he realised that, indirectly, hunger was the cause of the crime and might easily become the cause of another; for their tempers were sharper even than their appetites. Upon this he played; upon this he made an exhortation to the chief. He assumed that Arrowhead had become violent, because of his people's straits, that Arrowhead's heart yearned for his people and would make sacrifice for them. Now, if Arrowhead came quietly, he would see that supplies of food were sent at once, and that arrangements were made to meet the misery of their situation. Therefore, if Arrowhead came freely, he would have so much in his favour before his judges; if he would not come quietly, then he must be brought by force; and if they raised a hand to prevent it, then destruction would fall upon all--all save the women and children. The law must be obeyed. They might try to resist the law through him, but, if violence was shown, he would first kill Arrowhead, and then destruction would descend like a wind out of the north, darkness would swallow them, and their bones would cover the plains. As he ended his words a young brave sprang forwards with hatchet raised. Jim's revolver slipped down into his palm from his sleeve, and a bullet caught the brave in the lifted arm. The hatchet dropped to the ground. Then Jim's eyes blazed, and he turned a look of anger on the chief, his face pale and hard, as he said: "The stream rises above the banks; come with me, chief, or all will drown. I am master, and I speak. Ye are hungry because ye are idle. Ye call the world yours, yet ye will not stoop to gather from the earth the fruits of the earth. Ye sit idle in the summer, and women and children die round you when winter comes. Because the game is gone, ye say. Must the world stand still because a handful of Crees need a hunting-ground? Must the makers of cities and the wonders of the earth, who fill the land with plenty--must they stand far off, because the Crees and their chief would wander over millions of acres, for each man a million, when by a hundred, ay, by ten, each white man would live in plenty, and make the land rejoice. See. Here is the truth. When the Great Spirit draws the game away so that the hunting is poor, ye sit down and fill your hearts with murder, and in the blackness of your thoughts kill my brother. Idle and shiftless and evil ye are, while the earth cries out to give you of its plenty, a great harvest from a little seed, if ye will but dig and plant, and plough and sow and reap, and lend your backs to toil. Now hear and heed. The end is come. "For this once ye shall be fed--by the blood of my heart, ye shall be fed! And another year ye shall labour, and get the fruits of your labour, and not stand waiting, as it were, till a fish shall pass the spear, or a stag water at your door, that ye may slay and eat. The end is come, ye idle men. O chief, harken! One of your braves would have slain me, even as you slew my brother--he one, and you a thousand. Speak to your people as I have spoken, and then come and answer for the deed done by your hand. And this I say that right shall be done between men and men. Speak." Jim had made his great effort, and not without avail. Arrowhead rose slowly, the cloud gone out of his face, and spoke to his people, bidding them wait in peace until food came, and appointing his son chief in his stead until his return. "The white man speaks truth, and I will go," he said. "I shall return," he continued, "if it be written so upon the leaves of the Tree of Life; and if it be not so written, I shall fade like a mist, and the tepees will know me not again. The days of my youth are spent, and my step no longer springs from the ground. I shuffle among the grass and the fallen leaves, and my eyes scarce know the stag from the doe. The white man is master--if he wills it we shall die, if he wills it we shall live. And this was ever so. It is in the tale of our people. One tribe ruled, and the others were their slaves. If it is written on the leaves of the Tree of Life that the white man rule us for ever, then it shall be so. I have spoken. Now, behold I go." Jim had conquered, and together they sped away with the dogs through the sweet-smelling spruce woods where every branch carried a cloth of white, and the only sound heard was the swish of a blanket of snow as it fell to the ground from the wide webs of green, or a twig snapped under the load it bore. Peace brooded in the silent and comforting forest, and Jim and Arrowhead, the Indian ever ahead, swung along, mile after mile, on their snow-shoes, emerging at last upon the wide white prairie. A hundred miles of sun and fair weather, sleeping at night in the open in a trench dug in the snow, no fear in the thoughts of Jim, nor evil in the heart of the heathen man. There had been moments of watchfulness, of uncertainty, on Jim's part, the first few hours of the first night after they left the Cree reservation; but the conviction speedily came to Jim that all was well; for the chief slept soundly from the moment he lay down in his blankets between the dogs. Then Jim went to sleep as in his own bed, and, waking, found Arrowhead lighting a fire from a little load of sticks from the sledges. And between murderer and captor there sprang up the companionship of the open road which brings all men to a certain land of faith and understanding, unless they are perverted and vile. There was no vileness in Arrowhead. There were no handcuffs on his hands, no sign of captivity; they two ate out of the same dish, drank from the same basin, broke from the same bread. The crime of Arrowhead, the gallows waiting for him, seemed very far away. They were only two silent travellers, sharing the same hardship, helping to give material comfort to each other--in the inevitable democracy of those far places, where small things are not great nor great things small; where into men's hearts comes the knowledge of the things that matter; where, from the wide, starry sky, from the august loneliness, and the soul of the life which has brooded there for untold generations, God teaches the values of this world and the next. One hundred miles of sun and fair weather, and then fifty miles of bitter, aching cold, with nights of peril from the increasing chill, so that Jim dared not sleep lest he should never wake again, but die benumbed and exhausted. Yet Arrowhead slept through all. Day after day so, and then ten miles of storm such as come only to the vast barrens of the northlands; and woe to the traveller upon whom the icy wind and the blinding snow descended! Woe came upon Jim Templeton and Arrowhead, the heathen. In the awful struggle between man and nature that followed, the captive became the leader. The craft of the plains, the inherent instinct, the feeling which was more than eyesight became the only hope. One whole day to cover ten miles--an endless path of agony, in which Jim went down again and again, but came up blinded by snow and drift, and cut as with lashes by the angry wind. At the end of the ten miles was a Hudson's Bay Company's post and safety; and through ten hours had the two struggled towards it, going off at tangents, circling on their own tracks; but the Indian, by an instinct as sure as the needle to the pole, getting the direction to the post again, in the moments of direst peril and uncertainty. To Jim the world became a sea of maddening forces which buffeted him; a whirlpool of fire in which his brain was tortured, his mind was shrivelled up; a vast army rending itself, each man against the other. It was a purgatory of music, broken by discords; and then at last--how sweet it all was, after the eternity of misery--"Church bells and voices low," and Sally singing to him, Nancy's voice calling! Then, nothing but sleep--sleep, a sinking down millions of miles in an ether of drowsiness which thrilled him; and after--no more. None who has suffered up to the limit of what the human body and soul may bear can remember the history of those distracted moments when the struggle became one between the forces in nature and the forces in man, between agonised body and smothered mind, yet with the divine intelligence of the created being directing, even though subconsciously, the fight. How Arrowhead found the post in the mad storm he could never have told. Yet he found it, with Jim unconscious on the sledge and with limbs frozen, all the dogs gone but two, the leathers over the Indian's shoulders as he fell against the gate of the post with a shrill cry that roused the factor and his people within, together with Sergeant Sewell, who had been sent out from headquarters to await Jim's arrival there. It was Sewell's hand which first felt Jim's heart and pulse, and found that there was still life left, even before it could be done by the doctor from headquarters, who had come to visit a sick man at the post. For hours they worked with snow upon the frozen limbs to bring back life and consciousness. Consciousness came at last with half delirium, half understanding; as emerging from the passing sleep of anaesthetics, the eye sees things and dimly registers them, before the brain has set them in any relation to life or comprehension. But Jim was roused at last, and the doctor presently held to his lips a glass of brandy. Then from infinite distance Jim's understanding returned; the mind emerged, but not wholly, from the chaos in which it was travelling. His eyes stood out in eagerness. "Brandy! brandy!" he said hungrily. With an oath Sewell snatched the glass from the doctor's hand, put it on the table, then stooped to Jim's ear and said hoarsely: "Remember--Nancy. For God's sake, sir, don't drink." Jim's head fell back, the fierce light went out of his eyes, the face became greyer and sharper. "Sally--Nancy--Nancy," he whispered, and his fingers clutched vaguely at the quilt. "He must have brandy or he will die. The system is pumped out. He must be revived," said the doctor. He reached again for the glass of spirits. Jim understood now. He was on the borderland between life and death; his feet were at the brink. "No--not--brandy, no!" he moaned. "Sally- Sally, kiss me," he said faintly, from the middle world in which he was. "Quick, the broth!" said Sewell to the factor, who had been preparing it. "Quick, while there's a chance." He stooped and called into Jim's ear: "For the love of God, wake up, sir. They're coming--they're both coming--Nancy's coming. They'll soon be here." What matter that he lied, a life was at stake. Jim's eyes opened again. The doctor was standing with the brandy in his hand. Half madly Jim reached out. "I must live until they come," he cried; "the brandy--give it me! Give it--ah, no, no, I must not!" he added, gasping, his lips trembling, his hands shaking. Sewell held the broth to his lips. He drank a little, yet his face became greyer and greyer; a bluish tinge spread about his mouth. "Have you nothing else, sir?" asked Sewell in despair. The doctor put down the brandy, went quickly to his medicine-case, dropped into a glass some liquid from a phial, came over again, and poured a little between the lips; then a little more, as Jim's eyes opened again; and at last every drop in the glass trickled down the sinewy throat. Presently as they watched him the doctor said: "It will not do. He must have brandy. It has life-food in it." Jim understood the words. He knew that if he drank the brandy the chances against his future were terrible. He had made his vow, and he must keep it. Yet the thirst was on him; his enemy had him by the throat again, was dragging him down. Though his body was so cold, his throat was on fire. But in the extremity of his strength his mind fought on-- fought on, growing weaker every moment. He was having his last fight. They watched him with an aching anxiety, and there was anger in the doctor's face. He had no patience with these forces arrayed against him. At last the doctor whispered to Sewell: "It's no use; he must have the brandy, or he can't live an hour." Sewell weakened; the tears fell down his rough, hard cheeks. "It'll ruin him-it's ruin or death." "Trust a little more in God, and in the man's strength. Let us give him the chance. Force it down his throat--he's not responsible," said the physician, to whom saving life was more than all else. Suddenly there appeared at the bedside Arrowhead, gaunt and weak, his face swollen, the skin of it broken by the whips of storm. "He is my brother," he said, and, stooping, laid both hands, which he had held before the fire for a long time, on Jim's heart. "Take his feet, his hands, his, legs, and his head in your hands," he said to them all. "Life is in us; we will give him life." He knelt down and kept both hands on Jim's heart, while the others, even the doctor, awed by his act, did as they were bidden. "Shut your eyes. Let your life go into him. Think of him, and him alone. Now!" said Arrowhead in a strange voice. He murmured, and continued murmuring, his body drawing closer and closer to Jim's body, while in the deep silence, broken only by the chanting of his low monotonous voice, the others pressed Jim's hands and head and feet and legs--six men under the command of a heathen murderer. The minutes passed. The colour came back to Jim's face, the skin of his hands filled up, they ceased twitching, his pulse got stronger, his eyes opened with a new light in them. "I'm living, anyhow," he said at last with a faint smile. "I'm hungry-- broth, please." The fight was won, and Arrowhead, the pagan murderer, drew over to the fire and crouched down beside it, his back to the bed, impassive and still. They brought him a bowl of broth and bread, which he drank slowly, and placed the empty bowl between his knees. He sat there through the night, though they tried to make him lie down. As the light came in at the windows, Sewell touched him on the shoulder, and said: "He is sleeping now." "I hear my brother breathe," answered Arrowhead. "He will live." All night he had listened, and had heard Jim's breath as only a man who has lived in waste places can hear. "He will live. What I take with one hand I give with the other." He had taken the life of the factor; he had given Jim his life. And when he was tried three months later for murder, some one else said this for him, and the hearts of all, judge and jury, were so moved they knew not what to do. But Arrowhead was never sentenced, for, at the end of the first day's trial, he lay down to sleep and never waked again. He was found the next morning still and cold, and there was clasped in his hands a little doll which Nancy had given him on one of her many visits to the prison during her father's long illness. They found a piece of paper in his belt with these words in the Cree language: "With my hands on his heart at the post I gave him the life that was in me, saving but a little until now. Arrowhead, the chief, goes to find life again by the well at the root of the tree. How!" V On the evening of the day that Arrowhead made his journey to "the well at the root of the tree" a stranger knocked at the door of Captain Templeton's cottage; then, without awaiting admittance, entered. Jim was sitting with Nancy on his knee, her head against his shoulder, Sally at his side, her face alight with some inner joy. Before the knock came to the door Jim had just said, "Why do your eyes shine so, Sally? What's in your mind?" She had been about to answer, to say to him what had been swelling her heart with pride, though she had not meant to tell him what he had forgotten--not till midnight. But the figure that entered the room, a big man with deep-set eyes, a man of power who had carried everything before him in the battle of life, answered for her. "You have won the stake, Jim," he said in a hoarse voice. "You and she have won the stake, and I've brought it--brought it." Before they could speak he placed in Sally's hands bonds for five million dollars. "Jim--Jim, my son!" he burst out. Then, suddenly, he sank into a chair and, putting his head in his hands, sobbed aloud. "My God, but I'm proud of you--speak to me, Jim. You've broken me up." He was ashamed of his tears, but he could not wipe them away. "Father, dear old man!" said Jim, and put his hands on the broad shoulders. Sally knelt down beside him, took both the great hands from the tear- stained face, and laid them against her cheek. But presently she put Nancy on his knees. "I don't like you to cry," the child said softly; "but to-day I cried too, 'cause my Indian man is dead." The old man could not speak, but he put his cheek down to hers. After a minute, "Oh, but she's worth ten times that!" he said as Sally came close to him with the bundle he had thrust into her hands. "What is it?" said Jim. "It's five million dollars--for Nancy," she said. "Five-million--what?" "The stake, Jim," said Sally. "If you did not drink for four years-- never touched a drop--we were to have five million dollars." "You never told him, then--you never told him that?" asked the old man. "I wanted him to win without it," she said. "If he won, he would be the stronger; if he lost, it would not be so hard for him to bear." The old man drew her down and kissed her cheek. He chuckled, though the tears were still in his eyes. "You are a wonder--the tenth wonder of the world!" he declared. Jim stood staring at the bundle in Nancy's hands. "Five millions--five million dollars!"--he kept saying to himself. "I said Nancy's worth ten times that, Jim." The old man caught his hand and pressed it. "But it was a damned near thing, I tell you," he added. "They tried to break me and my railways and my bank. I had to fight the combination, and there was one day when I hadn't that five million dollars there, nor five. Jim, they tried to break the old man. And if they'd broken me, they'd have made me out a scoundrel to her--to this wife of yours who risked everything for both of us, for both of us, Jim; for she'd given up the world to save you, and she was playing like a soul in Hell for Heaven. If they'd broken me, I'd never have lifted my head again. When things were at their worst I played to save that five millions,--her stake and mine,--I played for that. I fought for it as a man fights his way out of a burning house. And I won--I won. And it was by fighting for that five millions I saved fifty--fifty millions, son. They didn't break the old man, Jim. They didn't break him--not much." "There are giants in the world still," said Jim, his own eyes full. He knew now his father and himself, and he knew the meaning of all the bitter and misspent life of the old days. He and his father were on a level of understanding at last. "Are you a giant?" asked Nancy, peering up into her grandfather's eyes. The old man laughed, then sighed. "Perhaps I was once, more or less, my dear--" saying to her what he meant for the other two. "Perhaps I was; but I've finished. I'm through. I've had my last fight." He looked at his son. "I pass the game on to you, Jim. You can do it. I knew you could do it as the reports came in this year. I've had a detective up here for four years. I had to do it. It was the devil in me. "You've got to carry on the game, Jim; I'm done. I'll stay home and potter about. I want to go back to Kentucky, and build up the old place, and take care of it a bit-your mother always loved it. I'd like to have it as it was when she was there long ago. But I'll be ready to help you when I'm wanted, understand." "You want me to run things--your colossal schemes? You think--?" "I don't think. I'm old enough to know." ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: I don't think. I'm old enough to know Knew when to shut his eyes, and when to keep them open Nothing so popular for the moment as the fall of a favourite That he will find the room empty where I am not The temerity and nonchalance of despair NORTHERN LIGHTS By Gilbert Parker Volume 3. WHEN THE SWALLOWS HOMEWARD FLY GEORGE'S WIFE MARCILE WHEN THE SWALLOWS HOMEWARD FLY The arrogant sun had stalked away into the evening, trailing behind him banners of gold and crimson, and a swift twilight was streaming over the land. As the sun passed, the eyes of two men on a high hill followed it, and the look of one was like a light in a window to a lost traveller. It had in it the sense of home and the tale of a journey done. Such a journey this man had made as few have ever attempted, and fewer accomplished. To the farthermost regions of snow and ice, where the shoulder of a continent juts out into the northwestern Arctic seas, he had travelled on foot and alone, save for his dogs, and for Indian guides, who now and then shepherded him from point to point. The vast ice-hummocks had been his housing, pemmican, the raw flesh of fish, and even the fat and oil of seals had been his food. Ever and ever through long months the everlasting white glitter of the snow and ice, ever and ever the cold stars, the cloudless sky, the moon at full, or swung like a white sickle in the sky to warn him that his life must be mown like grass. At night to sleep in a bag of fur and wool, by day the steely wind, or the air shaking with a filmy powder of frost; while the illimitably distant sun made the tiny flakes sparkle like silver--a poudre day, when the face and hands are most like to be frozen, and all so still and white and passionless, yet aching with energy. Hundreds upon hundreds of miles that endless trail went winding to the farthest North-west. No human being had ever trod its lengths before, though Indians or a stray Hudson's Bay Company man had made journeys over part of it during the years that have passed since Prince Rupert sent his adventurers to dot that northern land with posts and forts, and trace fine arteries of civilisation through the wastes. Where this man had gone none other had been of white men from the Western lands, though from across the wide Pacific, from the Eastern world, adventurers and exiles had once visited what is now known as the Yukon Valley. So this man, browsing in the library of his grandfather, an Eastern scholar, had come to know; and for love of adventure, and because of the tale of a valley of gold and treasure to be had, and because he had been ruined by bad investments, he had made a journey like none ever essayed before. And on his way up to those regions, where the veil before the face of God is very thin and fine, and men's hearts glow within them, where there was no oasis save the unguessed deposit of a great human dream that his soul could feel, the face of a girl had haunted him. Her voice--so sweet a voice that it rang like muffled silver in his ears, till, in the everlasting theatre of the Pole, the stars seemed to repeat it through millions of echoing hills, growing softer and softer as the frost hushed it to his ears-had said to him late and early, "You must come back with the swallows." Then she had sung a song which had been like a fire in his heart, not alone because of the words of it, but because of the soul in her voice, and it had lain like a coverlet on his heart to keep it warm: "Adieu! The sun goes awearily down, The mist creeps up o'er the sleepy town, The white sail bends to the shuddering mere, And the reapers have reaped and the night is here. Adieu! And the years are a broken song, The right grows weak in the strife with wrong, The lilies of love have a crimson stain, And the old days never will come again. Adieu! Where the mountains afar are dim 'Neath the tremulous tread of the seraphim, Shall not our querulous hearts prevail, That have prayed for the peace of the Holy Grail. Adieu! Sometime shall the veil between The things that are and that might have been Be folded back for our eyes to see, And the meaning of all shall be clear to me." It had been but an acquaintance of five days while he fitted out for his expedition, but in this brief time it had sunk deep into his mind that life was now a thing to cherish, and that he must indeed come back; though he had left England caring little if, in the peril and danger of his quest, he ever returned. He had been indifferent to his fate till he came to the Valley of the Saskatchewan, to the town lying at the foot of the maple hill beside the great northern stream, and saw the girl whose life was knit with the far north, whose mother's heart was buried in the great wastes where Sir John Franklin's expedition was lost; for her husband had been one of the ill-fated if not unhappy band of lovers of that civilisation for which they had risked all and lost all save immortality. Hither the two had come after he had been cast away on the icy plains, and as the settlement had crept north, had gone north with it, always on the outer edge of house and field, ever stepping northward. Here, with small income but high hearts and quiet souls, they had lived and laboured. And when this newcomer from the old land set his face northward to an unknown destination, the two women had prayed as the mother did in the old days when the daughter was but a babe at her knee, and it was not yet certain that Franklin and his men had been cast away for ever. Something in him, his great height, his strength of body, his clear, meditative eyes, his brave laugh, reminded her of him--her husband--who, like Sir Humphrey Gilbert, had said that it mattered little where men did their duty, since God was always near to take or leave as it was His will. When Bickersteth went, it was as though one they had known all their lives had passed; and the woman knew also that a new thought had been sown in her daughter's mind, a new door opened in her heart. And he had returned. He was now looking down into the valley where the village lay. Far, far over, two days' march away, he could see the cluster of houses, and the glow of the sun on the tin spire of the little Mission Church where he had heard the girl and her mother sing, till the hearts of all were swept by feeling and ravished by the desire for "the peace of the Holy Grail." The village was, in truth, but a day's march away from him, but he was not alone, and the journey could not be hastened. Beside him, his eyes also upon the sunset and the village, was a man in a costume half-trapper, half-Indian, with bushy grey beard and massive frame, and a distant, sorrowful look, like that of one whose soul was tuned to past suffering. As he sat, his head sunk on his breast, his elbow resting on a stump of pine--the token of a progressive civilisation--his chin upon his hand, he looked like the figure of Moses made immortal by Michael Angelo. But his strength was not like that of the man beside him, who was thirty years younger. When he walked, it was as one who had no destination, who had no haven towards which to travel, who journeyed as one to whom the world is a wilderness, and one tent or one hut is the same as another, and none is home. Like two ships meeting hull to hull on the wide seas, where a few miles of water will hide them from each other, whose ports are thousands of miles apart, whose courses are not the same, they two had met, the elder man, sick and worn, and near to death, in the poor hospitality of an Indian's tepee. John Bickersteth had nursed the old man back to strength, and had brought him southward with him--a silent companion, who spoke in monosyllables, who had no conversation at all of the past, and little of the present; but who was a woodsman and an Arctic traveller of the most expert kind; who knew by instinct where the best places for shelter and for sleeping might be found; who never complained, and was wonderful with the dogs. Close as their association was, Bickersteth had felt concerning the other that his real self was in some other sphere or place towards which his mind was always turning, as though to bring it back. Again and again had Bickersteth tried to get the old man to speak about the past, but he had been met by a dumb sort of look, a straining to understand. Once or twice the old man had taken his hands in both of his own, and gazed with painful eagerness into his face, as though trying to remember or to comprehend something that eluded him. Upon these occasions the old man's eyes dropped tears in an apathetic quiet, which tortured Bickersteth beyond bearing. Just such a look he had seen in the eyes of a favourite dog when he had performed an operation on it to save its life--a reproachful, non-comprehending, loving gaze. Bickersteth understood a little of the Chinook language, which is familiar to most Indian tribes, and he had learned that the Indians knew nothing exact concerning the old man; but rumours had passed from tribe to tribe that this white man had lived for ever in the farthest north among the Arctic tribes, and that he passed from people to people, disappearing into the untenanted wilderness, but reappearing again among stranger tribes, never resting, and as one always seeking what he could not find. One thing had helped this old man in all his travels and sojourning. He had, as it seemed to the native people, a gift of the hands; for when they were sick, a few moments' manipulation of his huge, quiet fingers vanquished pain. A few herbs he gave in tincture, and these also were praised; but it was a legend that when he was persuaded to lay on his hands and close his eyes, and with his fingers to "search for the pain and find it, and kill it," he always prevailed. They believed that though his body was on earth his soul was with Manitou, and that it was his soul which came into him again, and gave the Great Spirit's healing to the fingers. This had been the man's safety through how many years-- or how many generations--they did not know; for legends regarding the pilgrim had grown and were fostered by the medicine men who, by giving him great age and supernatural power, could, with more self-respect, apologise for their own incapacity. So the years--how many it was impossible to tell, since he did not know or would not say--had gone on; and now, after ceaseless wandering, his face was turned towards that civilisation out of which he had come so long ago--or was it so long ago--one generation, or two, or ten? It seemed to Bickersteth at times as though it were ten, so strange, so unworldly was his companion. At first he thought that the man remembered more than he would appear to acknowledge, but he found that after a day or two everything that happened as they journeyed was also forgotten. It was only visible things, or sounds, that appeared to open the doors of memory of the most recent happenings. These happenings, if not varied, were of critical moment, since, passing down from the land of unchanging ice and snow, they had come into March and April storms, and the perils of the rapids and the swollen floods of May. Now, in June, two years and a month since Bickersteth had gone into the wilds, they looked down upon the goal of one at least--of the younger man who had triumphed in his quest up in these wilds abandoned centuries ago. With the joyous thought in his heart, that he had discovered anew one of the greatest gold-fields of the world, that a journey unparalleled had been accomplished, he turned towards his ancient companion, and a feeling of pity and human love enlarged within him. He, John Bickersteth, was going into a world again, where--as he believed--a happy fate awaited him; but what of this old man? He had brought him out of the wilds, out of the unknown--was he only taking him into the unknown again? Were there friends, any friends anywhere in the world waiting for him? He called himself by no name, he said he had no name. Whence came he? Of whom? Whither was he wending now? Bickersteth had thought of the problem often, and he had no answer for it save that he must be taken care of, if not by others, then by himself; for the old man had saved him from drowning; had also saved him from an awful death on a March day when he fell into a great hole and was knocked insensible in the drifting snow; had saved him from brooding on himself--the beginning of madness-- by compelling him to think for another. And sometimes, as he had looked at the old man, his imagination had caught the spirit of the legend of the Indians, and he had cried out, "O soul, come back and give him memory--give him back his memory, Manitou the mighty!" Looking on the old man now, an impulse seized him. "Dear old man," he said, speaking as one speaks to a child that cannot understand, "you shall never want, while I have a penny, or have head or hands to work. But is there no one that you care for or that cares for you, that you remember, or that remembers you?" The old man shook his head though not with understanding, and he laid a hand on the young man's shoulder, and whispered: "Once it was always snow, but now it is green, the land. I have seen it --I have seen it once." His shaggy eyebrows gathered over, his eyes searched, searched the face of John Bickersteth. "Once, so long ago-- I cannot think," he added helplessly. "Dear old man," Bickersteth said gently, knowing he would not wholly comprehend, "I am going to ask her--Alice--to marry me, and if she does, she will help look after you, too. Neither of us would have been here without the other, dear old man, and we shall not be separated. Whoever you are, you are a gentleman, and you might have been my father or hers --or hers." He stopped suddenly. A thought had flashed through his mind, a thought which stunned him, which passed like some powerful current through his veins, shocked him, then gave him a palpitating life. It was a wild thought, but yet why not--why not? There was the chance, the faint, far-off chance. He caught the old man by the shoulders, and looked him in the eyes, scanned his features, pushed back the hair from the rugged forehead. "Dear old man," he said, his voice shaking, "do you know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking that you may be of those who went out to the Arctic Sea with Sir John Franklin--with Sir John Franklin, you understand. Did you know Sir John Franklin--is it true, dear old boy, is it true? Are you one that has lived to tell the tale? Did you know Sir John Franklin--is it--tell me, is it true?" He let go the old man's shoulders, for over the face of the other there had passed a change. It was strained and tense. The hands were outstretched, the eyes were staring straight into the west and the coming night. "It is--it is--that's it!" cried Bickersteth. "That's it--love o' God, that's it! Sir John Franklin--Sir John Franklin, and all the brave lads that died up there! You remember the ship--the Arctic Sea--the ice- fields, and Franklin--you remember him? Dear old man, say you remember Franklin?" The thing had seized him. Conviction was upon him, and he watched the other's anguished face with anguish and excitement in his own. But--but it might be, it might be her father--the eyes, the forehead are like hers; the hands, the long hands, the pointed fingers. "Come, tell me, did you have a wife and child, and were they both called Alice--do you remember? Franklin--Alice! Do you remember?" The other got slowly to his feet, his arms outstretched, the look in his face changing, understanding struggling for its place, memory fighting for its own, the soul contending for its mastery. "Franklin--Alice--the snow," he said confusedly, and sank down. "God have mercy!" cried Bickersteth, as he caught the swaying body, and laid it upon the ground. "He was there--almost." He settled the old man against the great pine stump and chafed his hands. "Man, dear man, if you belong to her--if you do, can't you see what it will mean to me? She can't say no to me then. But if it's true, you'll belong to England and to all the world, too, and you'll have fame everlasting. I'll have gold for her and for you, and for your Alice, too, poor old boy. Wake up now and remember if you are Luke Allingham who went with Franklin to the silent seas of the Pole. If it's you, really you, what wonder you lost your memory! You saw them all die, Franklin and all, die there in the snow, with all the white world round them. If you were there, what a travel you have had, what strange things you have seen! Where the world is loneliest, God lives most. If you get close to the heart of things, it's no marvel you forgot what you were, or where you came from; because it didn't matter; you knew that you were only one of thousands of millions who have come and gone, that make up the soul of things, that make the pulses of the universe beat. That's it, dear old man. The universe would die, if it weren't for the souls that leave this world and fill it with life. Wake up! Wake up, Allingham, and tell us where you've been and what you've seen." He did not labour in vain. Slowly consciousness came back, and the grey eyes opened wide, the lips smiled faintly under the bushy beard; but Bickersteth saw that the look in the face was much the same as it had been before. The struggle had been too great, the fight for the other lost self had exhausted him, mind and body, and only a deep obliquity and a great weariness filled the countenance. He had come back to the verge, he had almost again discovered himself; but the opening door had shut fast suddenly, and he was back again in the night, the incompanionable night of forgetfulness. Bickersteth saw that the travail and strife had drained life and energy, and that he must not press the mind and vitality of this exile of time and the unknown too far. He felt that when the next test came the old man would either break completely, and sink down into another and everlasting forgetfulness, or tear away forever the veil between himself and his past, and emerge into a long-lost life. His strength must be shepherded, and he must be kept quiet and undisturbed until they came to the town yonder in the valley, over which the night was slowly settling down. There two women waited, the two Alices, from both of whom had gone lovers into the North. The daughter was living over again in her young love the pangs of suspense through which her mother had passed. Two years since Bickersteth had gone, and not a sign! Yet, if the girl had looked from her bedroom window, this Friday night, she would have seen on the far hill a sign; for there burned a fire beside which sat two travellers who had come from the uttermost limits of snow. But as the fire burned--a beacon to her heart if she had but known it--she went to her bed, the words of a song she had sung at choir-- practice with tears in her voice and in her heart ringing in her ears. A concert was to be held after the service on the coming Sunday night, at which there was to be a collection for funds to build another mission- house a hundred miles farther North, and she had been practising music she was to sing. Her mother had been an amateur singer of great power, and she was renewing her mother's gift in a voice behind which lay a hidden sorrow. As she cried herself to sleep the words of the song which had moved her kept ringing in her ears and echoing in her heart: "When the swallows homeward fly, And the roses' bloom is o'er--" But her mother, looking out into the night, saw on the far hill the fire, burning like a star, where she had never seen a fire set before, and a hope shot into her heart for her daughter--a hope that had flamed up and died down so often during the past year. Yet she had fanned with heartening words every such glimmer of hope when it came, and now she went to bed saying, "Perhaps he will come to-morrow." In her mind, too, rang the words of the song which had ravished her ears that night, the song she had sung the night before her own husband, Luke Allingham, had gone with Franklin to the Polar seas: "When the swallows homeward fly--" As she and her daughter entered the little church on the Sunday evening, two men came over the prairie slowly towards the town, and both raised their heads to the sound of the church-bell calling to prayer. In the eyes of the younger man there was a look which has come to many in this world returning from hard enterprise and great dangers, to the familiar streets, the friendly faces of men of their kin and clan-to the lights of home. The face of the older man, however, had another look. It was such a look as is seldom seen in the faces of men, for it showed the struggle of a soul to regain its identity. The words which the old man had uttered in response to Bickersteth's appeal before he fainted away, "Franklin--Alice--the snow," had showed that he was on the verge; the bells of the church pealing in the summer air brought him near it once again. How many years had gone since he had heard church-bells? Bickersteth, gazing at him in eager scrutiny, wondered if, after all, he might be mistaken about him. But no, this man had never been born and bred in the far North. His was a type which belonged to the civilisation from which he himself had come. There would soon be the test of it all. Yet he shuddered, too, to think what might happen if it was all true, and discovery or reunion should shake to the centre the very life of the two long-parted ones. He saw the look of perplexed pain and joy at once in the face of the old man, but he said nothing, and he was almost glad when the bell stopped. The old man turned to him. "What is it?" he asked. "I remember--" but he stopped suddenly, shaking his head. An hour later, cleared of the dust of travel, the two walked slowly towards the church from the little tavern where they were lodged. The service was now over, but the concert had begun. The church was full, and there were people in the porch; but these made way for the two strangers; and, as Bickersteth was recognised by two or three present, place was found for them. Inside, the old man stared round him in a confused and troubled way, but his motions were quiet and abstracted and he looked like some old viking, his workaday life done, come to pray ere he went hence forever. They had entered in a pause in the concert, but now two ladies came forward to the chancel steps, and one with her hands clasped before her, began to sing: "When the swallows homeward fly, And the roses' bloom is o'er, And the nightingale's sweet song In the woods is heard no more--" It was Alice--Alice the daughter--and presently the mother, the other Alice, joined in the refrain. At sight of them Bickersteth's eyes had filled, not with tears, but with a cloud of feeling, so that he went blind. There she was, the girl he loved. Her voice was ringing in his ears. In his own joy for one instant he had forgotten the old man beside him, and the great test that was now upon him. He turned quickly, however, as the old man got to his feet. For an instant the lost exile of the North stood as though transfixed. The blood slowly drained from his face, and in his eyes was an agony of struggle and desire. For a moment an awful confusion had the mastery, and then suddenly a clear light broke into his eyes, his face flushed healthily and shone, his arms went up, and there rang in his ears the words: "Then I think with bitter pain, Shall we ever meet again? When the swallows homeward fly--" "Alice--Alice!" he called, and tottered forward up the aisle, followed by John Bickersteth. "Alice, I have come back!" he cried again. GEORGE'S WIFE "She's come, and she can go back. No one asked her, no one wants her, and she's got no rights here. She thinks she'll come it over me, but she'll get nothing, and there's no place for her here." The old, grey-bearded man, gnarled and angular, with overhanging brows and a harsh face, made this little speech of malice and unfriendliness, looking out on the snow-covered prairie through the window. Far in the distance were a sleigh and horses like a spot in the snow, growing larger from minute to minute. It was a day of days. Overhead, the sun was pouring out a flood of light and warmth, and though it was bitterly cold, life was beating hard in the bosom of the West. Men walked lightly, breathed quickly, and their eyes were bright with the brightness of vitality and content. Even the old man at the window of this lonely house, in a great lonely stretch of country, with the cedar hills behind it, had a living force which defied his seventy odd years, though the light in his face was hard and his voice was harder still. Under the shelter of the foothills, cold as the day was, his cattle were feeding in the open, scratching away the thin layer of snow, and browsing on the tender grass underneath. An arctic world in appearance, it had an abounding life which made it friendly and generous--the harshness belonged to the surface. So, perhaps, it was with the old man who watched the sleigh in the distance coming nearer, but that in his nature on which any one could feed was not so easily reached as the fresh young grass under the protecting snow. "She'll get nothing out of me," he repeated, as the others in the room behind him made no remark, and his eyes ranged gloatingly over the cattle under the foothills and the buildings which he had gathered together to proclaim his substantial greatness in the West. "Not a sous markee," he added, clinking some coins in his pocket. "She's got no rights." "Cassy's got as much right here as any of us, Abel, and she's coming to say it, I guess." The voice which spoke was unlike a Western voice. It was deep and full and slow, with an organ-like quality. It was in good keeping with the tall, spare body and large, fine rugged face of the woman to whom it belonged. She sat in a rocking-chair, but did not rock, her fingers busy with the knitting-needles, her feet planted squarely on the home-made hassock at her feet. The old man waited for a minute in a painful silence, then he turned slowly round, and, with tight-pressed lips, looked at the woman in the rocking-chair. If it had been anyone else who had "talked back" at him, he would have made quick work of them, for he was of that class of tyrant who pride themselves on being self-made, and have an undue respect for their own judgment and importance. But the woman who had ventured to challenge his cold-blooded remarks about his dead son's wife, now hastening over the snow to the house her husband had left under a cloud eight years before, had no fear of him, and, maybe, no deep regard for him. He respected her, as did all who knew her--a very reticent, thoughtful, busy being, who had been like a well of comfort to so many that had drunk and passed on out of her life, out of time and time's experiences. Seventy-nine years saw her still upstanding, strong, full of work, and fuller of life's knowledge. It was she who had sent the horses and sleigh for "Gassy," when the old man, having read the letter that Cassy had written him, said that she could "freeze at the station" for all of him. Aunt Kate had said nothing then, but, when the time came, by her orders the sleigh and horses were at the station; and the old man had made no direct protest, for she was the one person he had never dominated nor bullied. If she had only talked, he would have worn her down, for he was fond of talking, and it was said by those who were cynical and incredulous about him that he had gone to prayer-meetings, had been a local preacher, only to hear his own voice. Probably if there had been any politics in the West in his day, he would have been a politician, though it would have been too costly for his taste, and religion was very cheap; it enabled him to refuse to join in many forms of expenditure, on the ground that he "did not hold by such things." In Aunt Kate, the sister of his wife, dead so many years ago, he had found a spirit stronger than his own. He valued her; he had said more than once, to those who he thought would never repeat it to her, that she was a "great woman"; but self-interest was the mainspring of his appreciation. Since she had come again to his house--she had lived with him once before for two years when his wife was slowly dying--it had been a different place. Housekeeping had cost less than before, yet the cooking was better, the place was beautifully clean, and discipline without rigidity reigned everywhere. One by one the old woman's boys and girls had died--four of them--and she was now alone, with not a single grandchild left to cheer her; and the life out here with Abel Baragar had been unrelieved by much that was heartening to a woman; for Black Andy, Abel's son, was not an inspiring figure, though even his moroseness gave way under her influence. So it was that when Cassy's letter came, her breast seemed to grow warmer, and swell with longing to see the wife of her nephew, who had such a bad reputation in Abel's eyes, and to see George's little boy, who was coming too. After all, whatever Cassy was, she was the mother of Abel's son's son; and Aunt Kate was too old and wise to be frightened by tales told of Cassy or any one else. So, having had her own way so far regarding Cassy's coming, she looked Abel calmly in the eyes, over the gold-rimmed spectacles which were her dearest possession--almost the only thing of value she had. She was not afraid of Abel's anger, and he knew it; but his eldest son, Black Andy, was present, and he must make a show of being master of the situation. "Aunt Kate," he said, "I didn't make a fuss about you sending the horses and sleigh for her, because women do fool things sometimes. I suppose curiosity got the best of you. Anyhow, mebbe it's right Cassy should find out, once for all, how things stand, and that they haven't altered since she took George away, and ruined his life, and sent him to his grave. That's why I didn't order Mick back when I saw him going out with the team." "Cassy Mavor," interjected a third voice from a corner behind the great stove--"Cassy Mavor, of the variety-dance-and-song, and a talk with the gallery between!" Aunt Kate looked over at Black Andy, and stopped knitting, for there was that in the tone of the sullen ranchman which stirred in her a sudden anger, and anger was a rare and uncomfortable sensation to her. A flush crept slowly over her face, then it died away, and she said quietly to Black Andy--for she had ever prayed to be master of the demon of temper down deep in her, and she was praying now: "She earnt her living by singing and dancing, and she's brought up George's boy by it, and singing and dancing isn't a crime. David danced before the Lord. I danced myself when I was a young girl, and before I joined the church. 'Twas about the only pleasure I ever had; 'bout the only one I like to remember. There's no difference to me 'twixt making your feet handy and clever and full of music, and playing with your fingers on the piano or on a melodeon at a meeting. As for singing, it's God's gift; and many a time I wisht I had it. I'd have sung the blackness out of your face and heart, Andy." She leaned back again and began to knit very fast. "I'd like to hear Cassy sing, and see her dance too." Black Andy chuckled coarsely, "I often heard her sing and saw her dance down at Lumley's before she took George away East. You wouldn't have guessed she had consumption. She knocked the boys over down to Lumley's. The first night at Lumley's done for George." Black Andy's face showed no lightening of its gloom as he spoke, but there was a firing up of the black eyes, and the woman with the knitting felt that--for whatever reason--he was purposely irritating his father. "The devil was in her heels and in her tongue," Andy continued. "With her big mouth, red hair, and little eyes, she'd have made anybody laugh. I laughed." "You laughed!" snapped out his father with a sneer. Black Andy's eyes half closed with a morose look, then he went on. "Yes, I laughed at Cassy. While she was out here at Lumley's getting cured, accordin' to the doctor's orders, things seemed to get a move on in the West. But it didn't suit professing Christians like you, dad." He jerked his head towards the old man and drew the spittoon near with his feet. "The West hasn't been any worse off since she left," snarled the old man. "Well, she took George with her," grimly retorted Black Andy. Abel Baragar's heart had been warmer towards his dead son George than to any one else in the world. George had been as fair of face and hair as Andrew was dark; as cheerful and amusing as Andrew was gloomy and dispiriting; as agile and dexterous of mind and body as his brother was slow and angular; as emotional and warm-hearted as the other was phlegmatic and sour--or so it seemed to the father and to nearly all others. In those old days they had not been very well off. The railway was not completed, and the West had not begun "to move." The old man had bought and sold land and cattle and horses, always living on a narrow margin of safety, but in the hope that one day the choice bits of land he was shepherding here and there would take a leap up in value; and his judgment had been right. His prosperity had all come since George went away with Cassy Mavor. His anger at George had been the more acute, because the thing happened at a time when his affairs were on the edge of a precipice. He had won through it, but only by the merest shave, and it had all left him with a bad spot in his heart, in spite of his "having religion." Whenever he remembered George, he instinctively thought of those black days when a Land and Cattle Syndicate was crowding him over the edge into the chasm of failure, and came so near doing it. A few thousand dollars less to put up here and there, and he would have been ruined; his blood became hotter whenever he thought of it. He had had to fight the worst of it through alone, for George, who had been useful as a kind of buyer and seller, who was ever all things to all men, and ready with quip and jest, and not a little uncertain as to truth--to which the old man shut his eyes when there was a "deal" on--had, in the end, been of no use at all, and had seemed to go to pieces just when he was most needed. His father had put it all down to Cassy Mavor, who had unsettled things since she had come to Lumley's, and being a man of very few ideas, he cherished those he had with an exaggerated care. Prosperity had not softened him; it had given him an arrogance unduly emphasised by a reputation for rigid virtue and honesty. The indirect attack which Andrew now made on George's memory roused him to anger, as much because it seemed to challenge his own judgment as cast a slight on the name of the boy whom he had cast off, yet who had a firmer hold on his heart than any human being ever had. It had only been pride which had prevented him from making it up with George before it was too late; but, all the more, he was set against the woman who "kicked up her heels for a living"; and, all the more, he resented Black Andy, who, in his own grim way, had managed to remain a partner with him in their present prosperity, and had done so little for it. "George helped to make what you've got, Andy," he said darkly now. "The West missed George. The West said, 'There was a good man ruined by a woman.' The West'd never think anything or anybody missed you, 'cept yourself. When you went North, it never missed you; when you come back, its jaw fell. You wasn't fit to black George's boots." Black Andy's mouth took on a bitter sort of smile, and his eyes drooped furtively, as he struck the damper of the stove heavily with his foot, then he replied slowly: "Well, that's all right; but if I wasn't fit to black his boots, it ain't my fault. I git my nature honest, as he did. We wasn't any cross- breeds, I s'pose. We got the strain direct, and we was all right on her side." He jerked his head towards Aunt Kate, whose face was growing pale. She interposed now. "Can't you leave the dead alone?" she asked in a voice ringing a little. "Can't you let them rest? Ain't it enough to quarrel about the living? Cassy'll be here soon," she added, peering out of the window, "and if I was you, I'd try and not make her sorry she ever married a Baragar. It ain't a feeling that'd make a sick woman live long." Aunt Kate did not strike often, but when she did, she struck hard. Abel Baragar staggered a little under this blow, for, at the moment, it seemed to him that he saw his dead wife's face looking at him from the chair where her sister now sat. Down in his ill-furnished heart, where there had been little which was companionable, there was a shadowed corner. Sophy Baragar had been such a true-hearted, brave-souled woman, and he had been so impatient and exacting with her, till the beautiful face, which had been reproduced in George, had lost its colour and its fire, had become careworn and sweet with that sweetness which goes early out of the world. In all her days the vanished wife had never hinted at as much as Aunt Kate suggested now, and Abel Baragar shut his eyes against the thing which he was seeing. He was not all hard, after all. Aunt Kate turned to Black Andy now. "Mebbe Cassy ain't for long," she said. "Mebbe she's come out for what she came out for before. It seems to me it's that, or she wouldn't have come; because she's young yet, and she's fond of her boy, and she'd not want to bury herself alive out here with us. Mebbe her lungs is bad again." "Then she's sure to get another husband out here," said the old man, recovering himself. "She got one before easy, on the same ticket." With something of malice he looked over at Black Andy. "If she can sing and dance as she done nine years ago, I shouldn't wonder," answered Black Andy smoothly. These two men knew each other; they had said hard things to each other for many a year, yet they lived on together unshaken by each other's moods and bitternesses. "I'm getting old,--I'm seventy-nine,--and I ain't for long," urged Aunt Kate, looking Abel in the eyes. "Some day soon I'll be stepping out and away. Then things'll go to sixes and sevens, as they did after Sophy died. Some one ought to be here that's got a right to be here, not a hired woman." Suddenly the old man raged out. "Her--off the stage, to look after this! Her, that's kicked up her heels for a living! It's--no, she's no good. She's common. She's come, and she can go. I ain't having sweepings from the streets living here as if they had rights." Aunt Kate set her lips. "Sweepings! You've got to take that back, Abel. It's not Christian. You've got to take that back." "He'll take it back all right before we've done, I guess," remarked Black Andy. "He'll take a lot back." "Truth's truth, and I'll stand by it, and--" The old man stopped, for there came to them now, clearly, the sound of sleigh bells. They all stood still for an instant, silent and attentive, then Aunt Kate moved towards the door. "Cassy's come," she said. "Cassy and George's boy've come." Another instant and the door was opened on the beautiful, white, sparkling world, and the low sleigh, with its great warm buffalo robes, in which the small figures of a woman and a child were almost lost, stopped at the door. Two whimsical but tired eyes looked over a rim of fur at the old woman in the doorway, then Cassy's voice rang out. "Hello, that's Aunt Kate, I know! Well, here we are, and here's my boy. Jump, George!" A moment later, and the gaunt old woman folded both mother and son in her arms and drew them into the room. The door was shut, and they all faced each other. The old man and Black Andy did not move, but stood staring at the trim figure in black, with the plain face, large mouth, and tousled red hair, and the dreamy-eyed, handsome little boy beside her. Black Andy stood behind the stove, looking over at the new-comers with quizzical, almost furtive eyes, and his father remained for a moment with mouth open, gazing at his dead son's wife and child, as though not quite comprehending the scene. The sight of the boy had brought back, in some strange, embarrassing way, a vision of thirty years before, when George was a little boy in buckskin pants and jacket, and was beginning to ride the prairie with him. This boy was like George, yet not like him. The face was George's, the sensuous, luxurious mouth; but the eyes were not those of a Baragar, nor yet those of Aunt Kate's family; and they were not wholly like the mother's. They were full and brimming, while hers were small and whimsical; yet they had her quick, humourous flashes and her quaintness. "Have I changed so much? Have you forgotten me?" Cassy asked, looking the old man in the eyes. "You look as strong as a bull." She held out her hand to him and laughed. "Hope I see you well," said Abel Baragar mechanically, as he took the hand and shook it awkwardly. "Oh, I'm all right," answered the nonchalant little woman, undoing her jacket. "Shake hands with your grandfather, George. That's right--don't talk too much," she added, with a half-nervous little laugh, as the old man, with a kind of fixed smile, and the child shook hands in silence. Presently she saw Black Andy behind the stove. "Well, Andy, have you been here ever since?" she asked, and, as he came forward, she suddenly caught him by both arms, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him. "Last time I saw you, you were behind the stove at Lumley's. Nothing's ever too warm for you," she added. "You'd be shivering on the Equator. You were always hugging the stove at Lumley's." "Things was pretty warm there, too, Cassy," he said, with a sidelong look at his father. She saw the look, her face flashed with sudden temper, then her eyes fell on her boy, now lost in the arms of Aunt Kate, and she curbed herself. "There were plenty of things doing at Lumley's in those days," she said brusquely. "We were all young and fresh then," she added, and then something seemed to catch her voice, and she coughed a little--a hard, dry, feverish cough. "Are the Lumleys all right? Are they still there, at the Forks?" she asked, after the little paroxysm of coughing. "Cleaned out--all scattered. We own the Lumleys' place now," replied Black Andy, with another sidelong glance at his father, who, as he put some more wood on the fire and opened the damper of the stove wider, grimly watched and listened. "Jim, and Lance, and Jerry, and Abner?" she asked almost abstractedly. "Jim's dead-shot by a U. S. marshal by mistake for a smuggler," answered Black Andy suggestively. "Lance is up on the Yukon, busted; Jerry is one of our, hands on the place; and Abner is in jail." "Abner-in jail!" she exclaimed in a dazed way. "What did he do? Abner always seemed so straight." "Oh, he sloped with a thousand dollars of the railway people's money. They caught him, and he got seven years." "He was married, wasn't he?" she asked in a low voice. "Yes, to Phenie Tyson. There's no children, so she's all right, and divorce is cheap over in the States, where she is now." "Phenie Tyson didn't marry Abner because he was a saint, but because he was a man, I suppose," she replied gravely. "And the old folks?" "Both dead. What Abner done sent the old man to his grave. But Abner's mother died a year before." "What Abner done killed his father," said Abel Baragar with dry emphasis. "Phenie Tyson was extravagant-wanted this and that, and nothin' was too good for her. Abner spoilt his life gettin' her what she wanted; and it broke old Ezra Lumley's heart." George's wife looked at him for a moment with her eyes screwed up, and then she laughed softly. "My, it's curious how some folks go up and some go down! It must be lonely for Phenie waiting all these years for Abner to get free. . . . I had the happiest time in my life at Lumley's. I was getting better of my-cold. While I was there I got lots of strength stored up, to last me many a year when I needed it; and, then, George and I were married at Lumley's. . . ." Aunt Kate came slowly over with the boy, and laid a hand on Cassy's shoulder, for there was an undercurrent to the conversation which boded no good. The very first words uttered had plunged Abel Baragar and his son's wife into the midst of the difficulty which she had hoped might, after all, be avoided. "Come, and I'll show you your room, Cassy," she said. "It faces south, and you'll get the sun all day. It's like a sun-parlour. We're going to have supper in a couple of hours, and you must rest some first. Is the house warm enough for you?" The little, garish woman did not reply directly, but shook back her red hair and caught her boy to her breast and kissed him; then she said in that staccato manner which had given her words on the stage such point and emphasis, "Oh, this house is a'most too warm for me, Aunt Kate!" Then she moved towards the door with the grave, kindly old woman, her son's hand in her own. "You can see the Lumleys' place from your window, Cassy," said Black Andy grimly. "We got a mortgage on it, and foreclosed it, and it's ours now; and Jerry Lumley's stock-riding for us. Anyhow, he's better off than Abner, or Abner's wife." Cassy turned at the door and faced him. Instinctively she caught at some latent conflict with old Abel Baragar in what Black Andy had said, and her face softened, for it suddenly flashed into her mind that he was not against her. "I'm glad to be back West," she said. "It meant a lot to me when I was at Lumley's." She coughed a little again, but turned to the door with a laugh. "How long have you come to stay here--out West?" asked the old man furtively. "Why, there's plenty of time to think of that!" she answered brusquely, and she heard Black Andy laugh derisively as the door closed behind her. In a blaze of joy the sun swept down behind the southern hills, and the windows of Lumley's house at the Forks, catching the oblique rays, glittered and shone like flaming silver. Nothing of life showed, save the cattle here and there, creeping away to the shelter of the foothills for the night. The white, placid snow made a coverlet as wide as the vision of the eye, save where spruce and cedar trees gave a touch of warmth and refuge here and there. A wonderful, buoyant peace seemed to rest upon the wide, silent expanse. The birds of song were gone South over the hills, and the living wild things of the prairies had stolen into winter quarters. Yet, as Cassy Mavor looked out upon the exquisite beauty of the scene, upon the splendid outspanning of the sun along the hills, the deep plangent blue of the sky and the thrilling light, she saw a world in agony and she heard the moans of the afflicted. The sun shone bright on the windows of Lumley's house, but she could hear the crying of Abner's wife, and of old Ezra and Eliza Lumley, when their children were stricken or shamed; when Abel Baragar drew tighter and tighter the chains of the mortgage, which at last made them tenants in the house once their own. Only eight years ago, and all this had happened. And what had not happened to her, too, in those eight years! With George--reckless, useless, loving, lying George--she had left Lumley's with her sickness cured, as it seemed, after a long year in the West, and had begun life again. What sort of life had it been? "Kicking up her heels on the stage," as Abel Baragar had said; but, somehow, not as it was before she went West to give her perforated lung to the healing air of the plains, and to live outdoors with the men--a man's life. Then she had never put a curb on her tongue, or greatly on her actions, except that, though a hundred men quarrelled openly, or in their own minds, about her, no one had ever had any right to quarrel about her. With a tongue which made men gasp with laughter, with as comic a gift as ever woman had, and as equally comic a face, she had been a good-natured little tyrant in her way. She had given a kiss here and there, and had taken one, but always there had been before her mind the picture of a careworn woman who struggled to bring up her three children honestly, and without the help of charity, and, with a sigh of content and weariness, had died as Cassy made her first hit on the stage and her name became a household word. And Cassy, garish, gay, freckled, witty and whimsical, had never forgotten those days when her mother prayed and worked her heart out to do her duty by her children. Cassy Mavor had made her following, had won her place, was the idol of "the gallery"; and yet she was "of the people," as she had always been, until her first sickness came, and she had gone out to Lumley's, out along the foothills of the Rockies. What had made her fall in love with George Baragar? She could not have told, if she had been asked. He was wayward, given to drink at times, given also to card-playing and racing; but he had a way with him which few women could resist and which made men his friends; and he had a sense of humour akin to her own. In any case, one day she let him catch her up in his arms, and there was the end of it. But no, not the end, after all. It was only the beginning of real life for her. All that had gone before seemed but playing on the threshold, though it had meant hard, bitter hard work, and temptation, and patience, and endurance of many kinds. And now George was gone for ever. But George's little boy lay there on the bed in a soft sleep, with all his life before him. She turned from the warm window and the buoyant, inspiring scene to the bed. Stooping over, she kissed the sleeping boy with an abrupt eagerness, and made a little awkward, hungry gesture of love over him, and her face flushed hot with the passion of motherhood in her. "All I've got now," she murmured. "Nothing else left--nothing else at all." She heard the door open behind her, and she turned round. Aunt Kate was entering with a bowl in her hands. "I heard you moving about, and I've brought you something hot to drink," she said. "That's real good of you, Aunt Kate," was the cheerful reply. "But it's near supper-time, and I don't need it." "It's boneset tea--for your cold," answered Aunt Kate gently, and put it on the high dressing-table made of a wooden box and covered with muslin. "For your cold, Cassy," she repeated. The little woman stood still a moment gazing at the steaming bowl, lines growing suddenly around her mouth, then she looked at Aunt Kate quizzically. "Is my cold bad--so bad that I need boneset?" she asked in a queer, constrained voice. "It's comforting, is boneset tea, even when there's no cold, 'specially when the whiskey's good, and the boneset and camomile has steeped some days." "Have you been steeping them some days?" Cassy asked softly, eagerly. Aunt Kate nodded, then tried to explain. "It's always good to be prepared, and I didn't know but what the cold you used to have might be come back," she said. "But I'm glad if it ain't, if that cough of yours is only one of the measly little hacks people get in the East, where it's so damp." Cassy was at the window again, looking out at the dying radiance of the sun. Her voice seemed hollow and strange and rather rough, as she said in reply: "It's a real cold, deep down, the same as I had nine years ago, Aunt Kate; and it's come to stay, I guess. That's why I came back West. But I couldn't have gone to Lumley's again, even if they were at the Forks now, for I'm too poor. I'm a back-number now. I had to give up singing and dancing a year ago, after George died. So I don't earn my living any more, and I had to come to George's father with George's boy." Aunt Kate had a shrewd mind, and it was tactful, too. She did not understand why Cassy, who had earned so much money all these years, should be so poor now, unless it was that she hadn't saved--that she and George hadn't saved. But, looking at the face before her, and the child on the bed, she was convinced that the woman was a good woman, that, singer and dancer as she was, there was no reason why any home should be closed to her, or any heart should shut its doors before her. She guessed a reason for this poverty of Cassy Mavor, but it only made her lay a hand on the little woman's shoulders and look into her eyes. "Cassy," she said gently, "you was right to come here. There's trials before you, but for the boy's sake you must bear them. Sophy, George's mother, had to bear them, and Abel was fond of her, too, in his way. He's stored up a lot of things to say, and he'll say them; but you'll keep the boy in your mind, and be patient, won't you, Cassy? You got rights here, and it's comfortable, and there's plenty, and the air will cure your lung as it did before. It did all right before, didn't it?" She handed the bowl of boneset tea. "Take it; it'll do you good, Cassy," she added. Cassy said nothing in reply. She looked at the bed where her boy lay, she looked at the angular face of the woman, with its brooding motherliness, at the soft, grey hair, and, with a little gasp of feeling, she raised the bowl to her lips and drank freely. Then, putting it down, she said: "He doesn't mean to have us, Aunt Kate, but I'll try and keep my temper down. Did he ever laugh in his life?" "He laughs sometimes--kind o' laughs." "I'll make him laugh real, if I can," Cassy rejoined. "I've made a lot of people laugh in my time." The old woman leaned suddenly over, and drew the red, ridiculous head to her shoulder with a gasp of affection, and her eyes were full of tears. "Cassy," she exclaimed, "Cassy, you make me cry." Then she turned and hurried from the room. Three hours later the problem was solved in the big sitting-room where Cassy had first been received with her boy. Aunt Kate sat with her feet on a hassock, rocking gently and watching and listening. Black Andy was behind the great stove with his chair tilted back, carving the bowl of a pipe; the old man sat rigid by the table, looking straight before him and smacking his lips now and then as he was won't to do at meeting; while Cassy, with her chin in her hands and elbows on her knees, gazed into the fire and waited for the storm to break. Her little flashes of humour at dinner had not brightened things, and she had had an insane desire to turn cart-wheels round the room, so implacable and highly strained was the attitude of the master of the house, so unctuous was the grace and the thanksgiving before and after the meal. Abel Baragar had stored up his anger and his righteous antipathy for years, and this was the first chance he had had of visiting his displeasure on the woman who had "ruined" George, and who had now come to get "rights," which he was determined she should not have. He had steeled himself against seeing any good in her whatever. Self-will, self-pride, and self-righteousness were big in him, and so the supper had ended in silence, and with a little attack of coughing on the part of Cassy, which made her angry at herself. Then the boy had been put to bed, and she had come back to await the expected outburst. She could feel it in the air, and while her blood tingled in a desire to fight this tyrant to the bitter end, she thought of her boy and his future, and she calmed the tumult in her veins. She did not have to wait very long. The querulous voice of the old man broke the silence. "When be you goin' back East? What time did you fix for goin'?" he asked. She raised her head and looked at him squarely. "I didn't fix any time for going East again," she replied. "I came out West this time to stay." "I thought you was on the stage," was the rejoinder. "I've left the stage. My voice went when I got a bad cold again, and I couldn't stand the draughts of the theatre, and so I couldn't dance, either. I'm finished with the stage. I've come out here for good and all. "Where did you think of livin' out here?" "I'd like to have gone to Lumley's, but that's not possible, is it? Anyway, I couldn't afford it now. So I thought I'd stay here, if there was room for me." "You want to board here?" "I didn't put it to myself that way. I thought perhaps you'd be glad to have me. I'm handy. I can cook, I can sew, and I'm quite cheerful and kind. Then there's George--little George. I thought you'd like to have your grandson here with you." "I've lived without him--or his father--for eight years, an' I could bear it a while yet, mebbe." There was a half-choking sound from the old woman in the rocking-chair, but she did not speak, though her knitting dropped into her lap. "But if you knew us better, perhaps you'd like us better," rejoined Cassy gently. "We're both pretty easy to get on with, and we see the bright side of things. He has a wonderful disposition, has George." "I ain't goin' to like you any better," said the old man, getting to his feet. "I ain't goin' to give you any rights here. I've thought it out, and my mind's made up. You can't come it over me. You ruined my boy's life and sent him to his grave. He'd have lived to be an old man out here; but you spoiled him. You trapped him into marrying you, with your kicking and your comic songs, and your tricks of the stage, and you parted us--parted him and me for ever." "That was your fault. George wanted to make it up." "With you!" The old man's voice rose shrilly, the bitterness and passion of years was shooting high in the narrow confines of his mind. The geyser of his prejudice and antipathy was furiously alive. "To come back with you that ruined him and broke up my family, and made my life like bitter aloes! No! And if I wouldn't have him with you, do you think I'll have you without him? By the God of Israel, no!" Black Andy was now standing up behind the stove intently watching, his face grim and sombre; Aunt Kate sat with both hands gripping the arms of the rocker. Cassy got slowly to her feet. "I've been as straight a woman as your mother or your wife ever was," she said, "and all the world knows it. I'm poor--and I might have been rich. I was true to myself before I married George, and I was true to George after, and all I earned he shared; and I've got little left. The mining stock I bought with what I saved went smash, and I'm poor as I was when I started to work for myself. I can work awhile yet, but I wanted to see if I could fit in out here, and get well again, and have my boy fixed in the house of his grandfather. That's the way I'm placed, and that's how I came. But give a dog a bad name--ah, you shame your dead boy in thinking bad of me! I didn't ruin him. I didn't kill him. He never came to any bad through me. I helped him; he was happy. Why, I--" She stopped suddenly, putting a hand to her mouth. "Go on, say what you want to say, and let's understand once for all," she added with a sudden sharpness. Abel Baragar drew himself up. "Well, I say this. I'll give you three thousand dollars, and you can go somewhere else to live. I'll keep the boy here. That's what I've fixed in my mind to do. You can go, and the boy stays. I ain't goin' to live with you that spoiled George's life." The eyes of the woman dilated, she trembled with a sudden rush of anger, then stood still, staring in front of her without a word. Black Andy stepped from behind the stove. "You are going to stay here, Cassy," he said; "here where you have rights as good as any, and better than any, if it comes to that." He turned to his father. "You thought a lot of George," he added. "He was the apple of your eye. He had a soft tongue, and most people liked him; but George was foolish--I've known it all these years. George was pretty foolish. He gambled, he bet at races, he speculated--wild. You didn't know it. He took ten thousand dollars of your money, got from the Wonegosh farm he sold for you. He--" Cassy Mavor started forwards with a cry, but Black Andy waved her down. "No, I'm going to tell it. George lost your ten thousand dollars, dad, gambling, racing, speculating. He told her--Cassy-two days after they was married, and she took the money she earned on the stage, and give it to him to pay you back on the quiet through the bank. You never knew, but that's the kind of boy your son George was, and that's the kind of wife he had. George told me all about it when I was East six years ago." He came over to Cassy and stood beside her. "I'm standing by George's wife," he said, taking her hand, while she shut her eyes in her misery-- had she not hid her husband's wrong-doing all these years? "I'm standing by her. If it hadn't been for that ten thousand dollars she paid back for George, you'd have been swamped when the Syndicate got after you, and we wouldn't have had Lumley's place, nor this, nor anything. I guess she's got rights here, dad, as good as any." The old man sank slowly into a chair. "George--George stole from me-- stole money from me!" he whispered. His face was white. His pride and vainglory were broken. He was a haggard, shaken figure. His self- righteousness was levelled in the dust. With sudden impulse, Cassy stole over to him, and took his hand and held it tight. "Don't! Don't feel so bad!" she said. "He was weak and wild then. But he was all right afterwards. He was happy with me." "I've owed Cassy this for a good many years, dad," said Black Andy, "and it had to be paid. She's got better stuff in her than any Baragar." ......................... An hour later, the old man said to Cassy at the door of her room: "You got to stay here and git well. It's yours, the same as the rest of us --what's here." Then he went downstairs and sat with Aunt Kate by the fire. "I guess she's a good woman," he said at last. "I didn't use her right." "You've been lucky with your women-folk," Aunt Kate answered quietly. "Yes, I've been lucky," he answered. "I dunno if I deserve it. Mebbe not. Do you think she'll git well?" "It's a healing air out here," Aunt Kate answered, and listened to the wood of the house snapping in the sharp frost. MARCILE That the day was beautiful, that the harvest of the West had been a great one, that the salmon-fishing had been larger than ever before, that gold had been found in the Yukon, made no difference to Jacques Grassette, for he was in the condemned cell of Bindon Jail, living out those days which pass so swiftly between the verdict of the jury and the last slow walk with the Sheriff. He sat with his back to the stone wall, his hands on his knees, looking straight before him. All that met his physical gaze was another stone wall, but with his mind's eye he was looking beyond it into spaces far away. His mind was seeing a little house with dormer windows, and a steep roof on which the snow could not lodge in winter-time; with a narrow stoop in front where one could rest of an evening, the day's work done; the stone-and-earth oven near by in the open, where the bread for a family of twenty was baked; the wooden plough tipped against the fence, to wait the "fall" cultivation; the big iron cooler in which the sap from the maple trees was boiled, in the days when the snow thawed and spring opened the heart of the wood; the flash of the sickle and the scythe hard by; the fields of the little narrow farm running back from the St. Lawrence like a riband; and, out on the wide stream, the great rafts with their riverine population floating down to Michelin's mill-yards. For hours he had sat like this, unmoving, his gnarled red hands clamping each leg as though to hold him steady while he gazed; and he saw himself as a little lad, barefooted, doing chores, running after the shaggy, troublesome pony which would let him catch it when no one else could, and, with only a halter on, galloping wildly back to the farmyard, to be hitched up in the carriole which had once belonged to the old Seigneur. He saw himself as a young man, back from "the States" where he had been working in the mills, regarded austerely by little Father Roche, who had given him his first Communion--for, down in Massachusetts he had learned to wear his curly hair plastered down on his forehead, smoke bad cigars, and drink "old Bourbon," to bet and to gamble, and be a figure at horse- races. Then he saw himself, his money all gone, but the luck still with him, at Mass on the Sunday before going to the backwoods lumber-camp for the winter, as boss of a hundred men. He had a way with him, and he had brains, had Jacques Grassette, and he could manage men, as Michelin the lumber-king himself had found in a great river-row and strike, when bloodshed seemed certain. Even now the ghost of a smile played at his lips, as he recalled the surprise of the old habitants and of Father Roche when he was chosen for this responsible post; for to run a great lumber-camp well, hundreds of miles from civilisation, where there is no visible law, no restraints of ordinary organised life, and where men, for seven months together, never saw a woman or a child, and ate pork and beans, and drank white whisky, was a task of administration as difficult as managing a small republic new-created out of violent elements of society. But Michelin was right, and the old Seigneur, Sir Henri Robitaille, who was a judge of men, knew he was right, as did also Hennepin the schoolmaster, whose despair Jacques had been, for he never worked at his lessons as a boy, and yet he absorbed Latin and mathematics by some sure but unexplainable process. "Ah! if you would but work, Jacques, you vaurien, I would make a great man of you," Hennepin had said to him more than once; but this had made no impression on Jacques. It was more to the point that the ground-hogs and black squirrels and pigeons were plentiful in Casanac Woods. And so he thought as he stood at the door of the Church of St. Francis on that day before going "out back" to the lumber-camp. He had reached the summit of greatness--to command men. That was more than wealth or learning, and as he spoke to the old Seigneur going in to Mass, he still thought so, for the Seigneur's big house and the servants and the great gardens had no charm for him. The horses--that was another thing; but there would be plenty of horses in the lumber-camp; and, on the whole, he felt himself rather superior to the old Seigneur, who now was Lieutenant- Governor of the province in which lay Bindon Jail. At the door of the Church of St. Francis he had stretched himself up with good-natured pride, for he was by nature gregarious and friendly, but with a temper quick and strong, and even savage when roused; though Michelin the lumber-king did not know that when he engaged him as boss, having seen him only at the one critical time, when his superior brain and will saw its chance to command, and had no personal interest in the strife. He had been a miracle of coolness then, and his six-foot-two of pride and muscle was taking natural tribute at the door of the Church of St. Francis, where he waited till nearly everyone had entered, and Father Roche's voice could be heard in the Mass. Then had happened the real event of his life: a blackeyed, rose-checked girl went by with her mother, hurrying in to Mass. As she passed him their eyes met, and his blood leapt in his veins. He had never seen her before, and, in a sense, he had never seen any woman before. He had danced with many a one, and kissed a few in the old days among the flax- beaters, at the harvesting, in the gaieties of a wedding, and also down in Massachusetts. That, however, was a different thing, which he forgot an hour after; but this was the beginning of the world for him; for he knew now, of a sudden, what life was, what home meant, why "old folks" slaved for their children, and mothers wept when girls married or sons went away from home to bigger things; why in there, in at Mass, so many were praying for all the people, and thinking only of one. All in a moment it came--and stayed; and he spoke to her, to Marcile, that very night, and he spoke also to her father, Valloir the farrier, the next morning by lamplight, before he started for the woods. He would not be gainsaid, nor take no for an answer, nor accept, as a reason for refusal, that she was only sixteen, and that he did not know her, for she had been away with a childless aunt since she was three. That she had fourteen brothers and sisters who had to be fed and cared for did not seem to weigh with the farrier. That was an affair of le bon Dieu, and enough would be provided for them all as heretofore--one could make little difference; and though Jacques was a very good match, considering his prospects and his favour with the lumber-king, Valloir had a kind of fear of him, and could not easily promise his beloved Marcile, the flower of his flock, to a man of whom the priest so strongly disapproved. But it was a new sort of Jacques Grassette who, that morning, spoke to him with the simplicity and eagerness of a child; and the suddenly conceived gift of a pony stallion, which every man in the parish envied Jacques, won Valloir over; and Jacques went "away back" with the first timid kiss of Marcile Valloir burning on his cheek. "Well, bagosh, you are a wonder!" said Jacques' father, when he told him the news, and saw Jacques jump into the carriole and drive away. Here in prison, this, too, Jacques saw--this scene; and then the wedding in the spring, and the tour through the parishes for days together, lads and lasses journeying with them; and afterwards the new home with a bigger stoop than any other in the village, with some old gnarled crab- apple trees and lilac bushes, and four years of happiness, and a little child that died; and all the time Jacques rising in the esteem of Michelin the lumber-king, and sent on inspections, and to organise camps; for weeks, sometimes for months, away from the house behind the lilac bushes--and then the end of it all, sudden and crushing and unredeemable. Jacques came back one night and found the house empty. Marcile had gone to try her luck with another man. That was the end of the upward career of Jacques Grassette. He went out upon a savage hunt which brought him no quarry, for the man and the woman had disappeared as completely as though they had been swallowed by the sea. And here, at last, he was waiting for the day when he must settle a bill for a human life taken in passion and rage. His big frame seemed out of place in the small cell, and the watcher sitting near him, to whom he had not addressed a word nor replied to a question since the watching began, seemed an insignificant factor in the scene. Never had a prisoner been more self-contained, or rejected more completely all those ministrations of humanity which relieve the horrible isolation of the condemned cell. Grassette's isolation was complete. He lived in a dream, did what little there was to do in a dark abstraction, and sat hour after hour, as he was sitting now, piercing, with a brain at once benumbed to all outer things and afire with inward things, those realms of memory which are infinite in a life of forty years. "Sacre!" he muttered at last, and a shiver seemed to pass through him from head to foot; then an ugly and evil oath fell from his lips, which made his watcher shrink back appalled, for he also was a Catholic, and had been chosen of purpose, in the hope that he might have an influence on this revolted soul. It had, however, been of no use, and Grassette had refused the advances and ministrations of the little good priest, Father Laflamme, who had come from the coast of purpose to give him the offices of the Church. Silent, obdurate, sullen, he had looked the priest straight in the face and had said in broken English, "Non, I pay my bill. Nom de diable, I will say my own Mass, light my own candle, go my own way. I have too much." Now, as he sat glooming, after his outbreak of oaths, there came a rattling noise at the door, the grinding of a key in the lock, the shooting of bolts, and a face appeared at the little wicket in the door. Then the door opened and the Sheriff stepped inside, accompanied by a white-haired, stately old man. At sight of this second figure--the Sheriff had come often before, and would come for one more doleful walk with him--Grassette started. His face, which had never whitened in all the dismal and terrorising doings of the capture and the trial and sentence, though it had flushed with rage more than once, now turned a little pale, for it seemed as if this old man had stepped out of the visions which had just passed before his eyes. "His Honour, the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Henri Robitaille, has come to speak with you. . . . Stand up," the Sheriff added sharply, as Grassette kept his seat. Grassette's face flushed with anger, for the prison had not broken his spirits; then he got up slowly. "I not stand up for you," he growled at the Sheriff; "I stand up for him." He jerked his head towards Sir Henri Robitaille. This grand Seigneur, with Michelin, had believed in him in those far-off days which he had just been seeing over again, and all his boyhood and young manhood was rushing back on him. But now it was the Governor who turned pale, seeing who the criminal was. "Jacques Grassette!" he cried in consternation and emotion, for under another name the murderer had been tried and sentenced, nor had his identity been established--the case was so clear, the defence had been perfunctory, and Quebec was very far away. "M'sieu'!" was the respectful response, and Grassette's fingers twitched. "It was my sister's son you killed, Grassette," said the Governor in a low, strained voice. "Nom de Dieu!" said Grassette hoarsely. "I did not know, Grassette," the Governor went on "I did not know it was you." "Why did you come, m'sieu'?" "Call him 'your Honour,"' said the Sheriff sharply. Grassette's face hardened, and his look turned upon the Sheriff was savage and forbidding. "I will speak as it please me. Who are you? What do I care? To hang me--that is your business; but, for the rest, you spik to me differen'. Who are you? Your father kep' a tavern for thieves, vous savez bien!" It was true that the Sheriff's father had had no savoury reputation in the West. The Governor turned his head away in pain and trouble, for the man's rage was not a thing to see--and they both came from the little parish of St. Francis, and had passed many an hour together. "Never mind, Grassette," he said gently. "Call me what you will. You've got no feeling against me; and I can say with truth that I don't want your life for the life you took." Grassette's breast heaved. "He put me out of my work, the man I kill. He pass the word against me, he hunt me out of the mountains, he call-- tete de diable! he call me a name so bad. Everything swim in my head, and I kill him." The Governor made a protesting gesture. "I understand. I am glad his mother was dead. But do you not think how sudden it was? Now here, in the thick of life, then, out there, beyond this world in the darkin purgatory." The brave old man had accomplished what everyone else, priest, lawyer, Sheriff and watcher, had failed to do: he had shaken Grassette out of his blank isolation and obdurate unrepentance, had touched some chord of recognisable humanity. "It is done--well, I pay for it," responded Grassette, setting his jaw. "It is two deaths for me. Waiting and remembering, and then with the Sheriff there the other--so quick, and all." The Governor looked at him for some moments without speaking. The Sheriff intervened again officiously. "His Honour has come to say something important to you," he remarked oracularly. "Hold you--does he need a Sheriff to tell him when to spik?" was Grassette's surly comment. Then he turned to the Governor. "Let us speak in French," he said in patois. "This rope-twister will not understan'. He is no good--I spit at him." The Governor nodded, and, despite the Sheriff's protest, they spoke in French, Grassette with his eyes intently fixed on the other, eagerly listening. "I have come," said the Governor, "to say to you, Grassette, that you have still a chance of life." He paused, and Grassette's face took on a look of bewilderment and vague anxiety. A chance of life--what did it mean? "Reprieve?" he asked in a hoarse voice. The Governor shook his head. "Not yet; but there is a chance. Something has happened. A man's life is in danger, or it may be he is dead; but more likely he is alive. You took a life; perhaps you can save one now. Keeley's Gulch--the mine there." "They have found it--gold?" asked Grassette, his eyes staring. He was forgetting for a moment where and what he was. "He went to find it, the man whose life is in danger. He had heard from a trapper who had been a miner once. While he was there, a landslip came, and the opening to the mine was closed up--" "There were two ways in. Which one did he take?" cried Grassette. "The only one he could take, the only one he or anyone else knew. You know the other way in--you only, they say." "I found it--the easier, quick way in; a year ago I found it." "Was it near the other entrance?" Grassette shook his head. "A mile away." "If the man is alive--and we think he is--you are the only person that can save him. I have telegraphed the Government. They do not promise, but they will reprieve, and save your life, if you find the man." "Alive or dead?" "Alive or dead, for the act would be the same. I have an order to take you to the Gulch, if you will go; and I am sure that you will have your life, if you do it. I will promise--ah yes, Grassette, but it shall be so! Public opinion will demand it. You will do it?" "To go free--altogether?" "Well, but if your life is saved, Grassette?" The dark face flushed, then grew almost repulsive again in its sullenness. "Life--and this, in prison, shut in year after year. To do always what some one else wills, to be a slave to a warder. To have men like that over me that have been a boss of men--wasn't it that drove me to kill?-- to be treated like dirt. And to go on with this, while outside there is free life, and to go where you will at your own price-no! What do I care for life! What is it to me! To live like this--ah, I would break my head against these stone walls, I would choke myself with my own hands! If I stayed here, I would kill again, I would kill--kill." "Then to go free altogether--that would be the wish of all the world, if you save this man's life, if it can be saved. Will you not take the chance? We all have to die some time or other, Grassette, some sooner, some later; and when you go, will you not want to take to God in your hands a life saved for a life taken? Have you forgotten God, Grassette? We used to remember Him in the Church of St. Francis down there at home." There was a moment's silence, in which Grassette's head was thrust forwards, his eyes staring into space. The old Seigneur had touched a vulnerable corner in his nature. Presently he said in a low voice: "To be free altogether. . . . What is his name? Who is he?" "His name is Bignold," the Governor answered. He turned to the Sheriff inquiringly. "That is it, is it not?" he asked in English again. "James Tarran Bignold," answered the Sheriff. The effect of these words upon Grassette was remarkable. His body appeared to stiffen, his face became rigid, he stared at the Governor blankly, appalled, the colour left his face, and his mouth opened with a curious and revolting grimace. The others drew back, startled, and watched him. "Sang de Dieu!" he murmured at last, with a sudden gesture of misery and rage. Then the Governor understood: he remembered that the name just given by the Sheriff and himself was the name of the Englishman who had carried off Grassette's wife years ago. He stepped forwards and was about to speak, but changed his mind. He would leave it all to Grassette; he would not let the Sheriff know the truth, unless Grassette himself disclosed the situation. He looked at Grassette with a look of poignant pity and interest combined. In his own placid life he had never had any tragic happening, his blood had run coolly, his days had been blessed by an urbane fate; such scenes as this were but a spectacle to him; there was no answering chord of human suffering in his own breast, to make him realise what Grassette was undergoing now; but he had read widely, he had been an acute observer of the world and its happenings, and he had a natural human sympathy which had made many a man and woman eternally grateful to him. What would Grassette do? It was a problem which had no precedent, and the solution would be a revelation of the human mind and heart. What would the man do? "Well, what is all this, Grassette?" asked the Sheriff brusquely. His official and officious intervention, behind which was the tyranny of the little man, given a power which he was incapable of wielding wisely, would have roused Grassette to a savage reply a half-hour before, but now it was met by a contemptuous wave of the hand, and Grassette kept his eyes fixed on the Governor. "James Tarran Bignold!" Grassette said harshly, with eyes that searched the Governor's face; but they found no answering look there. The Governor, then, did not remember that tragedy of his home and hearth, and the man who had made of him an Ishmael. Still, Bignold had been almost a stranger in the parish, and it was not curious if the Governor had forgotten. "Bignold!" he repeated, but the Governor gave no response. "Yes, Bignold is his name, Grassette," said the Sheriff. "You took a life, and now, if you save one, that'll balance things. As the Governor says, there'll be a reprieve anyhow. It's pretty near the day, and this isn't a bad world to kick in, so long as you kick with one leg on the ground, and--" The Governor hastily intervened upon the Sheriff's brutal remarks. "There is no time to be lost, Grassette. He has been ten days in the mine." Grassette's was not a slow brain. For a man of such physical and bodily bulk, he had more talents than are generally given. If his brain had been slower, his hand also would have been slower to strike. But his intelligence had been surcharged with hate these many years, and since the day he had been deserted, it had ceased to control his actions--a passionate and reckless wilfulness had governed it. But now, after the first shock and stupefaction, it seemed to go back to where it was before Marcile went from him, gather up the force and intelligence it had then, and come forwards again to this supreme moment, with all that life's harsh experiences had done for it, with the education that misery and misdoing give. Revolutions are often the work of instants, not years, and the crucial test and problem by which Grassette was now faced had lifted him into a new atmosphere, with a new capacity alive in him. A moment ago his eyes had been bloodshot and swimming with hatred and passion; now they grew, almost suddenly, hard and lurking and quiet, with a strange, penetrating force and inquiry in them. "Bignold--where does he come from? What is he?" he asked the Sheriff. "He is an Englishman; he's only been out here a few months. He's been shooting and prospecting; but he's a better shooter than prospector. He's a stranger; that's why all the folks out here want to save him if it's possible. It's pretty hard dying in a strange land far away from all that's yours. Maybe he's got a wife waiting for him over there." "Nom de Dieu!" said Grassette with suppressed malice, under his breath. "Maybe there's a wife waiting for him, and there's her to think of. The West's hospitable, and this thing has taken hold of it; the West wants to save this stranger, and it's waiting for you, Grassette, to do its work for it, you being the only man that can do it, the only one that knows the other secret way into Keeley's Gulch. Speak right out, Grassette. It's your chance for life. Speak out quick." The last three words were uttered in the old slave-driving tone, though the earlier part of the speech had been delivered oracularly, and had brought again to Grassette's eyes the reddish, sullen look which had made them, a little while before, like those of some wounded, angered animal at bay; but it vanished slowly, and there was silence for a moment. The Sheriff's words had left no vestige of doubt in Grassette's mind. This Bignold was the man who had taken Marcile away, first to the English province, then into the States, where he had lost track of them, then over to England. Marcile--where was Marcile now? In Keeley's Gulch was the man who could tell him, the man who had ruined his home and his life. Dead or alive, he was in Keeley's Gulch, the man who knew where Marcile was; and if he knew where Marcile was, and if she was alive, and he was outside these prison walls, what would he do to her? And if he was outside these prison walls, and in the Gulch, and the man was there alive before him, what would he do? Outside these prison walls-to be out there in the sun, where life would be easier to give up, if it had to be given up! An hour ago he had been drifting on a sea of apathy, and had had his fill of life. An hour ago he had had but one desire, and that was to die fighting, and he had even pictured to himself a struggle in this narrow cell where he would compel them to kill him, and so in any case let him escape the rope. Now he was suddenly brought face to face with the great central issue of his life, and the end, whatever that end might be, could not be the same in meaning, though it might be the same concretely. If he elected to let things be, then Bignold would die out there in the Gulch, starved, anguished, and alone. If he went, he could save his own life by saving Bignold, if Bignold was alive; or he could go--and not save Bignold's life or his own! What would he do? The Governor watched him with a face controlled to quietness, but with an anxiety which made him pale in spite of himself. "What will you do, Grassette?" he said at last in a low voice, and with a step forwards to him. "Will you not help to clear your conscience by doing this thing? You don't want to try and spite the world by not doing it. You can make a lot of your life yet, if you are set free. Give yourself, and give the world a chance. You haven't used it right. Try again." Grassette imagined that the Governor did not remember who Bignold was, and that this was an appeal against his despair, and against revenging himself on the community which had applauded his sentence. If he went to the Gulch, no one would know or could suspect the true situation, everyone would be unprepared for that moment when Bignold and he would face each other--and all that would happen then. Where was Marcile? Only Bignold knew. Alive or dead? Only Bignold knew. "Bien, I will do it, m'sieu'," he said to the Governor. "I am to go alone--eh?" The Sheriff shook his head. "No, two warders will go with you--and myself." A strange look passed over Grassette's face. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, then he said again: "Bon, I will go." "Then there is, of course, the doctor," said the Sheriff. "Bon," said Grassette. "What time is it?" "Twelve o'clock," answered the Sheriff, and made a motion to the warder to open the door of the cell. "By sundown!" Grassette said, and he turned with a determined gesture to leave the cell. At the gate of the prison, a fresh, sweet air caught his face. Involuntarily he drew in a great draught of it, and his eyes seemed to gaze out, almost wonderingly, over the grass and the trees to the boundless horizon. Then he became aware of the shouts of the crowd-- shouts of welcome. This same crowd had greeted him with shouts of execration when he had left the Court House after his sentence. He stood still for a moment and looked at them, as it were only half comprehending that they were cheering him now, and that voices were saying, "Bravo, Grassette! Save him, and we'll save you." Cheer upon cheer, but he took no notice. He walked like one in a dream, a long, strong step. He turned neither to left nor right, not even when the friendly voice of one who had worked with him bade him: "Cheer up, and do the trick." He was busy working out a problem which no one but himself could solve. He was only half conscious of his surroundings; he was moving in a kind of detached world of his own, where the warders and the Sheriff and those who followed were almost abstract and unreal figures. He was living with a past which had been everlasting distant, and had now become a vivid and buffeting present. He returned no answers to the questions addressed to him, and would not talk, save when for a little while they dismounted from their horses, and sat under the shade of a great ash-tree for a few moments, and snatched a mouthful of luncheon. Then he spoke a little and asked some questions, but lapsed into a moody silence afterwards. His life and nature were being passed through a fiery crucible. In all the years that had gone, he had had an ungovernable desire to kill both Bignold and Marcile if he ever met them, a primitive, savage desire to blot them out of life and being. His fingers had ached for Marcile's neck, that neck in which he had lain his face so often in the transient, unforgettable days of their happiness. If she was alive now--if she was still alive! Her story was hidden there in Keeley's Gulch with Bignold, and he was galloping hard to reach his foe. As he went, by some strange alchemy of human experience, by that new birth of his brain, the world seemed different from what it had ever been before, at least since the day when he had found an empty home and a shamed hearthstone. He got a new feeling toward it, and life appealed to him as a thing that might have been so well worth living. But since that was not to be, then he would see what he could do to get compensation for all that he had lost, to take toll for the thing that had spoiled him, and given him a savage nature and a raging temper, which had driven him at last to kill a man who, in no real sense, had injured him. Mile after mile they journeyed, a troop of interested people coming after, the sun and the clear sweet air, the waving grass, the occasional clearings where settlers had driven in the tent-pegs of home, the forest now and then swallowing them, the mountains rising above them like a blank wall, and then suddenly opening out before them; and the rustle and scamper of squirrels and coyotes; and over their heads the whistle of birds, the slow beat of wings of great wild-fowl. The tender sap of youth was in this glowing and alert new world, and, by sudden contrast with the prison walls which he had just left behind, the earth seemed recreated, unfamiliar, compelling and companionable. Strange that in all the years that had been since he had gone back to his abandoned home to find Marcile gone, the world had had no beauty, no lure for him. In the splendour of it all, he had only raged and stormed, hating his fellowman, waiting, however hopelessly, for the day when he should see Marcile and the man who had taken her from him. And yet now, under the degradation of his crime and its penalty, and the unmanning influence of being the helpless victim of the iron power of the law, rigid, ugly and demoralising--now with the solution of his life's great problem here before him in the hills, with the man for whom he had waited so long caverned in the earth, but a hand-reach away, as it were, his wrongs had taken a new manifestation in him, and the thing that kept crying out in him every moment was, Where is Marcile? It was four o'clock when they reached the pass which only Grassette knew, the secret way into the Gulch. There was two hours' walking through the thick, primeval woods, where few had ever been, except the ancient tribes which had once lorded it here; then came a sudden drop into the earth, a short travel through a dim cave, and afterward a sheer wall of stone enclosing a ravine where the rocks on either side nearly met overhead. Here Grassette gave the signal to shout aloud, and the voice of the Sheriff called out: "Hello, Bignold! "Hello! Hello, Bignold! Are you there?--Hello!" His voice rang out clear and piercing, and then came a silence-a long, anxious silence. Again the voice rang out: "Hello! Hello-o-o! Bignold! Bigno-o-ld!" They strained their ears. Grassette was flat on the ground, his ear to the earth. Suddenly he got to his feet, his face set, his eyes glittering. "He is there beyon'--I hear him," he said, pointing farther down the Gulch. "Water--he is near it." "We heard nothing," said the Sheriff, "not a sound." "I hear ver' good. He is alive. I hear him--so," responded Grassette; and his face had a strange, fixed look which the others interpreted to be agitation at the thought that he had saved his own life by finding Bignold--and alive; which would put his own salvation beyond doubt. He broke away from them and hurried down the Gulch. The others followed hard after, the Sheriff and the warders close behind; but he outstripped them. Suddenly he stopped and stood still, looking at something on the ground. They saw him lean forwards and his hands stretch out with a fierce gesture. It was the attitude of a wild animal ready to spring. They were beside him in an instant, and saw at his feet Bignold worn to a skeleton, with eyes starting from his head, and fixed on Grassette in agony and stark fear. The Sheriff stooped to lift Bignold up, but Grassette waved them back with a fierce gesture, standing over the dying man. "He spoil my home. He break me--I have my bill to settle here," he said in a voice hoarse and harsh. "It is so? It is so--eh? Spik!" he said to Bignold. "Yes," came feebly from the shrivelled lips. "Water! Water!" the wretched man gasped. "I'm dying!" A sudden change came over Grassette. "Water--queeck!" he said. The Sheriff stooped and held a hatful of water to Bignold's lips, while another poured brandy from a flask into the water. Grassette watched them eagerly. When the dying man had swallowed a little of the spirit and water, Grassette leaned over him again, and the others drew away. They realised that these two men had an account to settle, and there was no need for Grassette to take revenge, for Bignold was going fast. "You stan' far back," said Grassette, and they fell away. Then he stooped down to the sunken, ashen face, over which death was fast drawing its veil. "Marcile--where is Marcile?" he asked. The dying man's lips opened. "God forgive me--God save my soul!" he whispered. He was not concerned for Grassette now. "Queeck-queeck, where is Marcile?" Grassette said sharply. "Come back, Bignold. Listen--where is Marcile?" He strained to hear the answer. Bignold was going, but his eyes opened again, however, for this call seemed to pierce to his soul as it struggled to be free. "Ten years--since--I saw her," he whispered. "Good girl--Marcile. She loves you, but she--is afraid." He tried to say something more, but his tongue refused its office. "Where is she-spik!" commanded Grassette in a tone of pleading and agony now. Once more the flying spirit came back. A hand made a motion towards his pocket, then lay still. Grassette felt hastily in the dead man's pocket, drew forth a letter, and with half-blinded eyes read the few lines it contained. It was dated from a hospital in New York, and was signed: "Nurse Marcile." With a moan of relief Grassette stood staring at the dead man. When the others came to him again, his lips were moving, but they did not hear what he was saying. They took up the body and moved away with it up the ravine. "It's all right, Grassette. You'll be a freeman," said the Sheriff. Grassette did not answer. He was thinking how long it would take him to get to Marcile, when he was free. He had a true vision of beginning life again with Marcile. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Being a man of very few ideas, he cherished those he had Self-will, self-pride, and self-righteousness were big in him Tyranny of the little man, given a power NORTHERN LIGHTS By Gilbert Parker Volume 4. A MAN, A FAMINE, AND A HEATHEN BOY THE HEALING SPRINGS AND THE PIONEERS THE LITTLE WIDOW OF JANSEN WATCHING THE RISE OF ORION A MAN, A FAMINE, AND A HEATHEN BOY Athabasca in the Far North is the scene of this story--Athabasca, one of the most beautiful countries in the world in summer, but a cold, bare land in winter. Yet even in winter it is not so bleak and bitter as the districts south-west of it, for the Chinook winds steal through from the Pacific and temper the fierceness of the frozen Rockies. Yet forty and fifty degrees below zero is cold after all, and July strawberries in this wild North land are hardly compensation for seven months of ice and snow, no matter how clear and blue the sky, how sweet the sun during its short journey in the day. Some days, too, the sun may not be seen even when there is no storm, because of the fine, white, powdered frost in the air. A day like this is called a poudre day; and woe to the man who tempts it unthinkingly, because the light makes the delicate mist of frost shine like silver. For that powder bites the skin white in short order, and sometimes reckless men lose ears, or noses, or hands under its sharp caress. But when it really storms in that Far North, then neither man nor beast should be abroad--not even the Eskimo dogs; though times and seasons can scarcely be chosen when travelling in Athabasca, for a storm comes unawares. Upon the plains you will see a cloud arising, not in the sky, but from the ground--a billowy surf of drifting snow; then another white billow from the sky will sweep down and meet it, and you are caught between. He who went to Athabasca to live a generation ago had to ask himself if the long winter, spent chiefly indoors, with, maybe, a little trading with the Indians, meagre sport, and scant sun, savages and half-breeds the only companions, and out of all touch with the outside world, letters coming but once a year; with frozen fish and meat, always the same, as the staple items in a primitive fare; with danger from starvation and marauding tribes; with endless monotony, in which men sometimes go mad-- he had to ask himself if these were to be cheerfully endured because, in the short summer, the air is heavenly, the rivers and lakes are full of fish, the flotilla of canoes of the fur-hunters is pouring down, and all is gaiety and pleasant turmoil; because there is good shooting in the autumn, and the smell of the land is like a garden, and hardy fruits and flowers are at hand. That is a question which was asked William Rufus Holly once upon a time. William Rufus Holly, often called "Averdoopoy," sometimes "Sleeping Beauty," always Billy Rufus, had had a good education. He had been to high school and to college, and he had taken one or two prizes en route to graduation; but no fame travelled with him, save that he was the laziest man of any college year for a decade. He loved his little porringer, which is to say that he ate a good deal; and he loved to read books, which is not to say that he loved study; he hated getting out of bed, and he was constantly gated for morning chapel. More than once he had sweetly gone to sleep over his examination papers. This is not to say that he failed at his examinations--on the contrary, he always succeeded; but he only did enough to pass and no more; and he did not wish to do more than pass. His going to sleep at examinations was evidence that he was either indifferent or self-indulgent, and it certainly showed that he was without nervousness. He invariably roused himself, or his professor roused him, a half-hour before the papers should be handed in, and, as it were by a mathematical calculation, he had always done just enough to prevent him being plucked. He slept at lectures, he slept in hall, he slept as he waited his turn to go to the wicket in a cricket match, and he invariably went to sleep afterwards. He even did so on the day he had made the biggest score, in the biggest game ever played between his college and the pick of the country; but he first gorged himself with cake and tea. The day he took his degree he had to be dragged from a huge grandfather's chair, and forced along in his ragged gown--"ten holes and twelve tatters"--to the function in the convocation hall. He looked so fat and shiny, so balmy and sleepy when he took his degree and was handed his prize for a poem on Sir John Franklin, that the public laughed, and the college men in the gallery began singing: "Bye O, my baby, Father will come to you soo-oon!" He seemed not to care, but yawned in his hand as he put his prize book under his arm through one of the holes in his gown, and in two minutes was back in his room, and in another five was fast asleep. It was the general opinion that William Rufus Holly, fat, yellow-haired, and twenty-four years old, was doomed to failure in life, in spite of the fact that he had a little income of a thousand dollars a year, and had made a century in an important game of cricket. Great, therefore, was the surprise of the college, and afterward of the Province, when, at the farewell dinner of the graduates, Sleeping Beauty announced, between his little open-eyed naps, that he was going Far North as a missionary. At first it was thought he was joking, but when at last, in his calm and dreamy look, they saw he meant what he said, they rose and carried him round the room on a chair, making impromptu songs as they travelled. They toasted Billy Rufus again and again, some of them laughing till they cried at the thought of Averdoopoy going to the Arctic regions. But an uneasy seriousness fell upon these "beautiful, bountiful, brilliant boys," as Holly called them later, when in a simple, honest, but indolent speech he said he had applied for ordination. Six months later William Rufus Holly, a deacon in holy orders, journeyed to Athabasca in the Far North. On his long journey there was plenty of time to think. He was embarked on a career which must for ever keep him in the wilds; for very seldom indeed does a missionary of the North ever return to the crowded cities or take a permanent part in civilised life. What the loneliness of it would be he began to feel, as for hours and hours he saw no human being on the plains; in the thrilling stillness of the night; in fierce storms in the woods, when his half-breed guides bent their heads to meet the wind and rain, and did not speak for hours; in the long, adventurous journey on the river by day, in the cry of the plaintive loon at night; in the scant food for every meal. Yet what the pleasure would be he felt in the joyous air, the exquisite sunshine, the flocks of wild-fowl flying North, honking on their course; in the song of the half-breeds as they ran the rapids. Of course, he did not think these things quite as they are written here--all at once and all together; but in little pieces from time to time, feeling them rather than saying them to himself. At least he did understand how serious a thing it was, his going as a missionary into the Far North. Why did he do it? Was it a whim, or the excited imagination of youth, or that prompting which the young often have to make the world better? Or was it a fine spirit of adventure with a good heart behind it? Perhaps it was a little of all these; but there was also something more, and it was to his credit. Lazy as William Rufus Holly had been at school and college, he had still thought a good deal, even when he seemed only sleeping; perhaps he thought more because he slept so much, because he studied little and read a great deal. He always knew what everybody thought--that he would never do anything but play cricket till he got too heavy to run, and then would sink into a slothful, fat, and useless middle and old age; that his life would be a failure. And he knew that they were right; that if he stayed where he could live an easy life, a fat and easy life he would lead; that in a few years he would be good for nothing except to eat and sleep--no more. One day, waking suddenly from a bad dream of himself so fat as to be drawn about on a dray by monstrous fat oxen with rings through their noses, led by monkeys, he began to wonder what he should do--the hardest thing to do; for only the hardest life could possibly save him from failure, and, in spite of all, he really did want to make something of his life. He had been reading the story of Sir John Franklin's Arctic expedition, and all at once it came home to him that the only thing for him to do was to go to the Far North and stay there, coming back about once every ten years to tell the people in the cities what was being done in the wilds. Then there came the inspiration to write his poem on Sir John Franklin, and he had done so, winning the college prize for poetry. But no one had seen any change in him in those months; and, indeed, there had been little or no change, for he had an equable and practical, though imaginative, disposition, despite his avoirdupois, and his new purpose did not stir him yet from his comfortable sloth. And in all the journey West and North he had not been stirred greatly from his ease of body, for the journey was not much harder than playing cricket every day, and there were only the thrill of the beautiful air, the new people, and the new scenes to rouse him. As yet there was no great responsibility. He scarcely realised what his life must be, until one particular day. Then Sleeping Beauty waked wide up, and from that day lost the name. Till then he had looked and borne himself like any other traveller, unrecognised as a parson or "mikonaree." He had not had prayers in camp en route, he had not preached, he had held no meetings. He was as yet William Rufus Holly, the cricketer, the laziest dreamer of a college decade. His religion was simple and practical; he had never had any morbid ideas; he had lived a healthy, natural, and honourable life, until he went for a mikonaree, and if he had no cant, he had not a clear idea of how many-sided, how responsible, his life must be--until that one particular day. This is what happened then. From Fort O'Call, an abandoned post of the Hudson's Bay Company on the Peace River, nearly the whole tribe of the Athabasca Indians in possession of the post now had come up the river, with their chief, Knife-in-the-Wind, to meet the mikonaree. Factors of the Hudson's Bay Company, coureurs de bois, and voyageurs had come among them at times, and once the renowned Father Lacombe, the Jesuit priest, had stayed with them three months; but never to this day had they seen a Protestant mikonaree, though once a factor, noted for his furious temper, his powers of running, and his generosity, had preached to them. These men, however, were both over fifty years old. The Athabascas did not hunger for the Christian religion, but a courier from Edmonton had brought them word that a mikonaree was coming to their country to stay, and they put off their stoical manner and allowed themselves the luxury of curiosity. That was why even the squaws and papooses came up the river with the braves, all wondering if the stranger had brought gifts with him, all eager for their shares; for it had been said by the courier of the tribe that "Oshondonto," their name for the newcomer, was bringing mysterious loads of well-wrapped bales and skins. Upon a point below the first rapids of the Little Manitou they waited with their camp-fires burning and their pipe of peace. When the canoes bearing Oshondonto and his voyageurs shot the rapids to the song of the river, "En roulant, ma boule roulant, En roulant, ma boule!" with the shrill voices of the boatmen rising to meet the cry of the startled water-fowl, the Athabascas crowded to the high banks. They grunted "How!" in greeting, as the foremost canoe made for the shore. But if surprise could have changed the countenances of Indians, these Athabascas would not have known one another when the missionary stepped out upon the shore. They had looked to see a grey-bearded man like the chief factor who quarrelled and prayed; but they found instead a round- faced, clean-shaven youth, with big, good-natured eyes, yellow hair, and a roundness of body like that of a month-old bear's cub. They expected to find a man who, like the factor, could speak their language, and they found a cherub sort of youth who talked only English, French, and Chinook--that common language of the North--and a few words of their own language which he had learned on the way. Besides, Oshondonto was so absent-minded at the moment, so absorbed in admiration of the garish scene before him, that he addressed the chief in French, of which Knife-in-the-Wind knew but the one word cache, which all the North knows. But presently William Rufus Holly recovered himself, and in stumbling Chinook made himself understood. Opening a bale, he brought out beads and tobacco and some bright red flannel, and two hundred Indians sat round him and grunted "How!" and received his gifts with little comment. Then the pipe of peace went round, and Oshondonto smoked it becomingly. But he saw that the Indians despised him for his youth, his fatness, his yellow hair as soft as a girl's, his cherub face, browned though it was by the sun and weather. As he handed the pipe to Knife-in-the-Wind, an Indian called Silver Tassel, with a cruel face, said grimly: "Why does Oshondonto travel to us?" William Rufus Holly's eyes steadied on those of the Indian as he replied in Chinook: "To teach the way to Manitou the Mighty, to tell the Athabascas of the Great Chief who died to save the world." "The story is told in many ways; which is right? There was the factor, Word of Thunder. There is the song they sing at Edmonton--I have heard." "The Great Chief is the same Chief," answered the missionary. "If you tell of Fort O'Call, and Knife-in-the-Wind tells of Fort O'Call, he and you will speak different words, and one will put in one thing and one will leave out another; men's tongues are different. But Fort O'Call is the-same, and the Great Chief is the same." "It was a long time ago," said Knife-in-the-Wind sourly, "many thousand moons, as the pebbles in the river, the years." "It is the same world, and it is the same Chief, and it was to save us," answered William Rufus Holly, smiling, yet with a fluttering heart, for the first test of his life had come. In anger Knife-in-the-Wind thrust an arrow into the ground and said: "How can the white man who died thousands of moons ago in a far country save the red man to-day?" "A strong man should bear so weak a tale," broke in Silver Tassel ruthlessly. "Are we children that the Great Chief sends a child as messenger?" For a moment Billy Rufus did not know how to reply, and in the pause Knife-in-the-Wind broke in two pieces the arrow he had thrust in the ground in token of displeasure. Suddenly, as Oshondonto was about to speak, Silver Tassel sprang to his feet, seized in his arms a lad of twelve who was standing near, and running to the bank, dropped him into the swift current. "If Oshondonto be not a child, let him save the lad," said Silver Tassel, standing on the brink. Instantly William Rufus Holly was on his feet. His coat was off before Silver Tassel's words were out of his mouth, and crying, "In the name of the Great White Chief!" he jumped into the rushing current. "In the name of your Manitou, come on, Silver Tassel!" he called up from the water, and struck out for the lad. Not pausing an instant, Silver Tassel sprang into the flood, into the whirling eddies and dangerous current below the first rapids and above the second. Then came the struggle for Wingo of the Cree tribe, a waif among the Athabascas, whose father had been slain as they travelled, by a wandering tribe of Blackfeet. Never was there a braver rivalry, although the odds were with the Indian-in lightness, in brutal strength. With the mikonaree, however, were skill, and that sort of strength which the world calls "moral," the strength of a good and desperate purpose. Oshondonto knew that on the issue of this shameless business--this cruel sport of Silver Tassel--would depend his future on the Peace River. As he shot forward with strong strokes in the whirling torrent after the helpless lad, who, only able to keep himself afloat, was being swept down towards the rapids below, he glanced up to the bank along which the Athabascas were running. He saw the garish colours of their dresses; he saw the ignorant medicine man, with his mysterious bag, making incantations; he saw the tepee of the chief, with its barbarous pennant above; he saw the idle, naked children tearing at the entrails of a calf; and he realised that this was a deadly tournament between civilisation and barbarism. Silver Tassel was gaining on him, they were both overhauling the boy; it was now to see which should reach Wingo first, which should take him to shore. That is, if both were not carried under before they reached him; that is, if, having reached him, they and he would ever get to shore; for, lower down, before it reached the rapids, the current ran horribly smooth and strong, and here and there were jagged rocks just beneath the surface. Still Silver Tassel gained on him, as they both gained on the boy. Oshondonto swam strong and hard, but he swam with his eye on the struggle for the shore also; he was not putting forth his utmost strength, for he knew it would be bitterly needed, perhaps to save his own life by a last effort. Silver Tassel passed him when they were about fifty feet from the boy. Shooting by on his side, with a long stroke and the plunge of his body like a projectile, the dark face with the long black hair plastering it turned towards his own, in fierce triumph Silver Tassel cried "How!" in derision. Billy Rufus set his teeth and lay down to his work like a sportsman. His face had lost its roses, and it was set and determined, but there was no look of fear upon it, nor did his heart sink when a cry of triumph went up from the crowd on the banks. The white man knew by old experience in the cricket-field and in many a boat-race that it is well not to halloo till you are out of the woods. His mettle was up, he was not the Reverend William Rufus Holly, missionary, but Billy Rufus, the champion cricketer, the sportsman playing a long game. Silver Tassel reached the boy, who was bruised and bleeding and at his last gasp, and throwing an arm round him, struck out for the shore. The current was very strong, and he battled fiercely as Billy Rufus, not far above, moved down toward them at an angle. For a few yards Silver Tassel was going strong, then his pace slackened, he seemed to sink lower in the water, and his stroke became splashing and irregular. Suddenly he struck a rock, which bruised him badly, and, swerving from his course, he lost his stroke and let go the boy. By this time the mikonaree had swept beyond them, and he caught the boy by his long hair as he was being swept below. Striking out for the shore, he swam with bold, strong strokes, his judgment guiding him well past rocks beneath the surface. Ten feet from shore he heard a cry of alarm from above. It concerned Silver Tassel, he knew, but he could not look round yet. In another moment the boy was dragged up the bank by strong hands, and Billy Rufus swung round in the water towards Silver Tassel, who, in his confused energy, had struck another rock, and, exhausted now, was being swept towards the rapids. Silver Tassel's shoulder scarcely showed, his strength was gone. In a flash Billy Rufus saw there was but one thing to do. He must run the rapids with Silver Tassel-there was no other way. It would be a fight through the jaws of death; but no Indian's eyes had a better sense for river-life than William Rufus Holly's. How he reached Silver Tassel, and drew the Indian's arm over his own shoulder; how they drove down into the boiling flood; how Billy Rufus's fat body was battered and torn and ran red with blood from twenty flesh wounds; but how by luck beyond the telling he brought Silver Tassel through safely into the quiet water a quarter of a mile below the rapids, and was hauled out, both more dead than alive, is a tale still told by the Athabascas around their camp-fire. The rapids are known to-day as the Mikonaree Rapids. The end of this beginning of the young man's career was that Silver Tassel gave him the word of eternal friendship, Knife-in-the-Wind took him into the tribe, and the boy Wingo became his very own, to share his home, and his travels, no longer a waif among the Athabascas. After three days' feasting, at the end of which the missionary held his first service and preached his first sermon, to the accompaniment of grunts of satisfaction from the whole tribe of Athabascas, William Rufus Holly began his work in the Far North. The journey to Fort O'Call was a procession of triumph, for, as it was summer, there was plenty of food, the missionary had been a success, and he had distributed many gifts of beads and flannel. All went well for many moons, although converts were uncertain and baptisms few, and the work was hard and the loneliness at times terrible. But at last came dark days. One summer and autumn there had been poor fishing and shooting, the caches of meat were fewer on the plains, and almost nothing had come up to Fort O'Call from Edmonton, far below. The yearly supplies for the missionary, paid for out of his private income--the bacon, beans, tea, coffee and flour--had been raided by a band of hostile Indians, and he viewed with deep concern the progress of the severe winter. Although three years of hard, frugal life had made his muscles like iron, they had only mellowed his temper, increased his flesh and rounded his face; nor did he look an hour older than on the day when he had won Wingo for his willing slave and devoted friend. He never resented the frequent ingratitude of the Indians; he said little when they quarrelled over the small comforts his little income brought them yearly from the South. He had been doctor, lawyer, judge among them, although he interfered little in the larger disputes, and was forced to shut his eyes to intertribal enmities. He had no deep faith that he could quite civilise them; he knew that their conversion was only on the surface, and he fell back on his personal influence with them. By this he could check even the excesses of the worst man in the tribe, his old enemy, Silver Tassel of the bad heart, who yet was ready always to give a tooth for a tooth, and accepted the fact that he owed Oshondonto his life. When famine crawled across the plains to the doors of the settlement and housed itself at Fort O'Call, Silver Tassel acted badly, however, and sowed fault-finding among the thoughtless of the tribe. "What manner of Great Spirit is it who lets the food of his chief Oshondonto fall into the hands of the Blackfeet?" he said. "Oshondonto says the Great Spirit hears. What has the Great Spirit to say? Let Oshondonto ask." Again, when they all were hungrier, he went among them with complaining words. "If the white man's Great Spirit can do all things, let him give Oshondonto and the Athabascas food." The missionary did not know of Silver Tassel's foolish words, but he saw the downcast face of Knife-in-the-Wind, the sullen looks of the people; and he unpacked the box he had reserved jealously for the darkest days that might come. For meal after meal he divided these delicacies among them--morsels of biscuit, and tinned meats, and dried fruits. But his eyes meanwhile were turned again and again to the storm raging without, as it had raged for this the longest week he had ever spent. If it would but slacken, a boat could go out to the nets set in the lake near by some days before, when the sun of spring had melted the ice. From the hour the nets had been set the storm had raged. On the day when the last morsel of meat and biscuit had been given away the storm had not abated, and he saw with misgiving the gloomy, stolid faces of the Indians round him. One man, two children, and three women had died in a fortnight. He dreaded to think what might happen, his heart ached at the looks of gaunt suffering in the faces of all; he saw, for the first time, how black and bitter Knife-in-the-Wind looked as Silver Tassel whispered to him. With the colour all gone from his cheeks, he left the post and made his way to the edge of the lake where his canoe was kept. Making it ready for the launch, he came back to the Fort. Assembling the Indians, who had watched his movements closely, he told them that he was going through the storm to the nets on the lake, and asked for a volunteer to go with him. No one replied. He pleaded-for the sake of the women and children. Then Knife-in-the-Wind spoke. "Oshondonto will die if he goes. It is a fool's journey--does the wolverine walk into an empty trap?" Billy Rufus spoke passionately now. His genial spirit fled; he reproached them. Silver Tassel spoke up loudly. "Let Oshondonto's Great Spirit carry him to the nets alone, and back again with fish for the heathen the Great Chief died to save." "You have a wicked heart, Silver Tassel. You know well that one man can't handle the boat and the nets also. Is there no one of you--?" A figure shot forwards from a corner. "I will go with Oshondonto," came the voice of Wingo, the waif of the Crees. The eye of the mikonaree flashed round in contempt on the tribe. Then suddenly it softened, and he said to the lad: "We will go together, Wingo." Taking the boy by the hand, he ran with him through the rough wind to the shore, launched the canoe on the tossing lake, and paddled away through the tempest. The bitter winds of an angry spring, the sleet and wet snow of a belated winter, the floating blocks of ice crushing against the side of the boat, the black water swishing over man and boy, the harsh, inclement world near and far. . . . The passage made at last to the nets; the brave Wingo steadying the canoe--a skilful hand sufficing where the strength of a Samson would not have availed; the nets half full, and the breaking cry of joy from the lips of the waif-a cry that pierced the storm and brought back an answering cry from the crowd of Indians on the far shore. . . The quarter-hour of danger in the tossing canoe; the nets too heavy to be dragged, and fastened to the thwarts instead; the canoe going shoreward jerkily, a cork on the waves with an anchor behind; heavier seas and winds roaring down on them as they slowly near the shore; and at last, in one awful moment, the canoe upset, and the man and the boy in the water. . . . Then both clinging to the upturned canoe as it is driven nearer and nearer shore.... The boy washed off once, twice, and the man with his arm round clinging-clinging, as the shrieking storm answers to the calling of the Athabascas on the shore, and drives craft and fish and man and boy down upon the banks; no savage bold enough to plunge in to their rescue. . . . At last a rope thrown, a drowning man's wrists wound round it, his teeth set in it--and now, at last, a man and a heathen boy, both insensible, being carried to the mikonaree's but and laid upon two beds, one on either side of the small room, as the red sun goes slowly down. . . . The two still bodies on bearskins in the hut, and a hundred superstitious Indians flying from the face of death. . . . The two alone in the light of the flickering fire; the many gone to feast on fish, the price of lives. But the price was not yet paid, for the man waked from insensibility-- waked to see himself with the body of the boy beside him in the red light of the fires. For a moment his heart stopped beating, he turned sick and faint. Deserted by those for whom he risked his life! . . . How long had he lain there? What time was it? When was it that he had fought his way to the nets and back again-hours maybe? And the dead boy there, Wingo, who had risked his life, also dead--how long? His heart leaped--ah! not hours, only minutes maybe. It was sundown as unconsciousness came on him--Indians would not stay with the dead after sundown. Maybe it was only ten minutes-five minutes--one minute ago since they left him!. . . His watch! Shaking fingers drew it out, wild eyes scanned it. It was not stopped. Then it could have only been minutes ago. Trembling to his feet, he staggered over to Wingo, he felt the body, he held a mirror to the lips. Yes, surely there was light moisture on the glass. Then began another fight with death--William Rufus Holly struggling to bring to life again Wingo, the waif of the Crees. The blood came back to his own heart with a rush as the mad desire to save this life came on him. He talked to the dumb face, he prayed in a kind of delirium, as he moved the arms up and down, as he tilted the body, as he rubbed, chafed and strove. He forgot he was a missionary, he almost cursed himself. "For them--for cowards, I risked his life, the brave lad with no home. Oh, God! give him back to me!" he sobbed. "What right had I to risk his life for theirs? I should have shot the first man that refused to go.... Wingo, speak! Wake up! Come back!" The sweat poured from him in his desperation and weakness. He said to himself that he had put this young life into the hazard without cause. Had he, then, saved the lad from the rapids and Silver Tassel's brutality only to have him drag fish out of the jaws of death for Silver Tassel's meal? It seemed to him that he had been working for hours, though it was in fact only a short time, when the eyes of the lad slowly opened and closed again, and he began to breathe spasmodically. A cry of joy came from the lips of the missionary, and he worked harder still. At last the eyes opened wide, stayed open, saw the figure bent over him, and the lips whispered, "Oshondonto--my master," as a cup of brandy was held to his lips. He had conquered the Athabascas for ever. Even Silver Tassel acknowledged his power, and he as industriously spread abroad the report that the mikonaree had raised Wingo from the dead, as he had sown dissension during the famine. But the result was that the missionary had power in the land, and the belief in him was so great, that, when Knife- in-the-Wind died, the tribe came to ask him to raise their chief from the dead. They never quite believed that he could not--not even Silver Tassel, who now rules the Athabascas and is ruled by William Rufus Holly: which is a very good thing for the Athabascas. Billy Rufus the cricketer had won the game, and somehow the Reverend William Rufus Holly the missionary never repented the strong language he used against the Athabascas, as he was bringing Wingo back to life, though it was not what is called "strictly canonical." THE HEALING SPRINGS AND THE PIONEERS He came out of the mysterious South one summer day, driving before him a few sheep, a cow, and a long-eared mule which carried his tent and other necessaries, and camped outside the town on a knoll, at the base of which was a thicket of close shrub. During the first day no one in Jansen thought anything of it, for it was a land of pilgrimage, and hundreds came and went on their journeys in search of free homesteads and good water and pasturage. But when, after three days, he was still there, Nicolle Terasse, who had little to do, and an insatiable curiosity, went out to see him. He found a new sensation for Jansen. This is what he said when he came back: "You want know 'bout him, bagosh! Dat is somet'ing to see, dat man-- Ingles is his name. Sooch hair--mooch long an' brown, and a leetla beard not so brown, an' a leather sole onto his feet, and a grey coat to his anklesyes, so like dat. An' his voice--voila, it is like water in a cave. He is a great man--I dunno not; but he spik at me like dis, 'Is dere sick, and cripple, and stay in-bed people here dat can't get up?' he say. An' I say, 'Not plenty, but some-bagosh! Dere is dat Miss Greet, an' ole Ma'am Drouchy, an' dat young Pete Hayes--an' so on.' 'Well, if they have faith I will heal them,' he spik at me. 'From de Healing Springs dey shall rise to walk,' he say. Bagosh, you not t'ink dat true? Den you go see." So Jansen turned out to see, and besides the man they found a curious thing. At the foot of the knoll, in a space which he had cleared, was a hot spring that bubbled and rose and sank, and drained away into the thirsty ground. Luck had been with Ingles the Faith Healer. Whether he knew of the existence of this spring, or whether he chanced upon it, he did not say; but while he held Jansen in the palm of his hand, in the feverish days that followed, there were many who attached mysterious significance to it, who claimed for it supernatural origin. In any case, the one man who had known of the existence of this spring was far away from Jansen, and he did not return till a day of reckoning came for the Faith Healer. Meanwhile Jansen made pilgrimage to the Springs of Healing, and at unexpected times Ingles suddenly appeared in the town, and stood at street corners; and in his "Patmian voice," as Flood Rawley the lawyer called it, warned the people to flee their sins, and purifying their hearts, learn to cure all ills of mind and body, the weaknesses of the sinful flesh and the "ancient evil" in their souls, by faith that saves. "'Is not the life more than meat'" he asked them. "And if, peradventure, there be those among you who have true belief in hearts all purged of evil, and yet are maimed, or sick of body, come to me, and I will lay my hands upon you, and I will heal you." Thus he cried. There were those so wrought upon by his strange eloquence and spiritual passion, so hypnotised by his physical and mental exaltation, that they rose up from the hand-laying and the prayer eased of their ailments. Others he called upon to lie in the hot spring at the foot of the hill for varying periods, before the laying on of hands, and these also, crippled, or rigid with troubles' of the bone, announced that they were healed. People flocked from other towns, and though, to some who had been cured, their pains and sickness returned, there were a few who bore perfect evidence to his teaching and healing, and followed him, "converted and consecrated," as though he were a new Messiah. In this corner of the West was such a revival as none could remember--not even those who had been to camp meetings in the East in their youth, and had seen the Spirit descend upon hundreds and draw them to the anxious seat. Then came the great sensation--the Faith Healer converted Laura Sloly. Upon which Jansen drew its breath painfully; for, while it was willing to bend to the inspiration of the moment, and to be swept on a tide of excitement into that enchanted field called Imagination, it wanted to preserve its institutions--and Laura Sloly had come to be an institution. Jansen had always plumed itself, and smiled, when she passed; and even now the most sentimentally religious of them inwardly anticipated the time when the town would return to its normal condition; and that condition would not be normal if there were any change in Laura Sloly. It mattered little whether most people were changed or not because one state of their minds could not be less or more interesting than another; but a change in Laura. Sloly could not be for the better. Her father had come to the West in the early days, and had prospered by degrees until a town grew up beside his ranch; and though he did not acquire as much permanent wealth from this golden chance as might have been expected, and lost much he did make by speculation, still he had his rich ranch left, and it, and he, and Laura were part of the history of Jansen. Laura had been born at Jansen before even it had a name. Next to her father she was the oldest inhabitant, and she had a prestige which was given to no one else. Everything had conspired to make her a figure of moment and interest. She was handsome in almost a mannish sort of way, being of such height and straightness, and her brown eyes had a depth and fire in which more than a few men had drowned themselves. Also, once she had saved a settlement by riding ahead of a marauding Indian band to warn their intended victims, and had averted another tragedy of pioneer life. Pioneers proudly told strangers to Jansen of the girl of thirteen who rode a hundred and twenty miles without food, and sank inside the palisade of the Hudson's Bay Company's fort, as the gates closed upon the settlers taking refuge, the victim of brain fever at last. Cerebrospinal meningitis, the doctor from Winnipeg called it, and the memory of that time when men and women would not sleep till her crisis was past, was still fresh on the tongues of all. Then she had married at seventeen, and, within a year, had lost both her husband and her baby, a child bereaved of her Playmates--for her husband had been but twenty years old and was younger far than she in everything. And since then, twelve years before, she had seen generations of lovers pass into the land they thought delectable; and their children flocked to her, hung about her, were carried off by her to the ranch, and kept for days, against the laughing protests of their parents. Flood Rawley called her the Pied Piper of Jansen, and indeed she had a voice that fluted and piped, and yet had so whimsical a note, that the hardest faces softened at the sound of it; and she did not keep its best notes for the few. She was impartial, almost impersonal; no woman was her enemy, and every man was her friend--and nothing more. She had never had an accepted lover since the day her Playmates left her. Every man except one had given up hope that he might win her; and though he had been gone from Jansen for two years, and had loved her since the days before the Playmates came and went, he never gave up hope, and was now to return and say again what he had mutely said for years--what she understood, and he knew she understood. Tim Denton had been a wild sort in his brief day. He was a rough diamond, but he was a diamond, and was typical of the West--its heart, its courage, its freedom, and its force; capable of exquisite gentleness, strenuous to exaggeration, with a very primitive religion; and the only religion Tim knew was that of human nature. Jansen did not think Tim good enough--not within a comet shot--for Laura Sloly; but they thought him better than any one else. But now Laura was a convert to the prophet of the Healing Springs, and those people who still retain their heads in the eddy of religious emotion were in despair. They dreaded to meet Laura; they kept away from the "protracted meetings," but were eager to hear about her and what she said and did. What they heard allayed their worst fears. She still smiled, and seemed as cheerful as before, they heard, and she neither spoke nor prayed in public, but she led the singing always. Now the anxious and the sceptical and the reactionary ventured out to see and hear; and seeing and hearing gave them a satisfaction they hardly dared express. She was more handsome than ever, and if her eyes glistened with a light they had never seen before, and awed them, her lips still smiled, and the old laugh came when she spoke to them. Their awe increased. This was "getting religion" with a difference. But presently they received a shock. A whisper grew that Laura was in love with the Faith Healer. Some woman's instinct drove straight to the centre of a disconcerting possibility, and in consternation she told her husband; and Jansen husbands had a freemasonry of gossip. An hour, and all Jansen knew, or thought they knew; and the "saved" rejoiced; and the rest of the population, represented by Nicolle Terasse at one end and Flood Rawley at the other, flew to arms. No vigilance committee was ever more determined and secret and organised than the unconverted civic patriots, who were determined to restore Jansen to its old-time condition. They pointed out cold-bloodedly that the Faith Healer had failed three times where he had succeeded once; and that, admitting the successes, there was no proof that his religion was their cause. There were such things as hypnotism and magnetism and will-power, and abnormal mental stimulus on the part of the healed--to say nothing of the Healing Springs. Carefully laying their plans, they quietly spread the rumour that Ingles had promised to restore to health old Mary Jewell, who had been bedridden ten years, and had sent word and prayed to have him lay his hands upon her--Catholic though she was. The Faith Healer, face to face with this supreme and definite test, would have retreated from it but for Laura Sloly. She expected him to do it, believed that he could, said that he would, herself arranged the day and the hour, and sang so much exaltation into him, that at last a spurious power seemed to possess him. He felt that there had entered into him something that could be depended on, not the mere flow of natural magnetism fed by an outdoor life and a temperament of great emotional force, and chance, and suggestion-- and other things. If, at first, he had influenced Laura, some ill- controlled, latent idealism in him, working on a latent poetry and spirituality in her, somehow bringing her into nearer touch with her lost Playmates than she had been in the long years that had passed; she, in turn, had made his unrationalised brain reel; had caught him up into a higher air, on no wings of his own; had added another lover to her company of lovers--and the first impostor she had ever had. She who had known only honest men as friends, in one blind moment lost her perspicuous sense; her instinct seemed asleep. She believed in the man and in his healing. Was there anything more than that? The day of the great test came, hot, brilliant, vivid. The air was of a delicate sharpness, and, as it came toward evening, the glamour of an August when the reapers reap was upon Jansen; and its people gathered round the house of Mary Jewell to await the miracle of faith. Apart from the emotional many who sang hymns and spiritual songs were a few determined men, bent on doing justice to Jansen though the heavens might fall. Whether or no Laura Sloly was in love with the Faith Healer, Jansen must look to its own honour--and hers. In any case, this peripatetic saint at Sloly's Ranch--the idea was intolerable; women must be saved in spite of themselves. Laura was now in the house by the side of the bedridden Mary Jewell, waiting, confident, smiling, as she held the wasted hand on the coverlet. With her was a minister of the Baptist persuasion, who was swimming with the tide, and who approved of the Faith Healer's immersions in the hot Healing Springs; also a medical student who had pretended belief in Ingles, and two women weeping with unnecessary remorse for human failings of no dire kind. The windows were open, and those outside could see. Presently, in a lull of the singing, there was a stir in the crowd, and then, sudden loud greetings: "My, if it ain't Tim Denton! Jerusalem! You back, Tim!" These and other phrases caught the ear of Laura Sloly in the sick-room. A strange look flashed across her face, and the depth of her eyes was troubled for a moment, as to the face of the old comes a tremor at the note of some long-forgotten song. Then she steadied herself and waited, catching bits of the loud talk which still floated towards her from without. "What's up? Some one getting married--or a legacy, or a saw-off? Why, what a lot of Sunday-go-to-meeting folks to be sure!" Tim laughed loudly. After which the quick tongue of Nicolle Terasse: "You want know? Tiens, be quiet; here he come. He cure you body and soul, ver' queeck--yes." The crowd swayed and parted, and slowly, bare head uplifted, face looking to neither right nor left, the Faith Healer made his way to the door of the little house. The crowd hushed. Some were awed, some were overpoweringly interested, some were cruelly patient. Nicolle Terasse and others were whispering loudly to Tim Denton. That was the only sound, until the Healer got to the door. Then, on the steps, he turned to the multitude. "Peace be to you all, and upon this house," he said and stepped through the doorway. Tim Denton, who had been staring at the face of the Healer, stood for an instant like one with all his senses arrested. Then he gasped, and exclaimed, "Well, I'm eternally--" and broke off with a low laugh, which was at first mirthful, and then became ominous and hard. "Oh, magnificent--magnificent--jerickety!" he said into the sky above him. His friends who were not "saved," closed in on him to find the meaning of his words, but he pulled himself together, looked blankly at them, and asked them questions. They told him so much more than he cared to hear, that his face flushed a deep red--the bronze of it most like the colour of Laura Sloly's hair; then he turned pale. Men saw that he was roused beyond any feeling in themselves. "'Sh!" he said. "Let's see what he can do." With the many who were silently praying, as they had been, bidden to do, the invincible ones leant forwards, watching the little room where healing--or tragedy--was afoot. As in a picture, framed by the window, they saw the kneeling figures, the Healer standing with outstretched arms. They heard his voice, sonorous and appealing, then commanding--and yet Mary Jewell did not rise from her bed and walk. Again, and yet again, the voice rang out, and still the woman lay motionless. Then he laid his hands upon her, and again he commanded her to rise. There was a faint movement, a desperate struggle to obey, but Nature and Time and Disease had their way. Yet again there was the call. An agony stirred the bed. Then another great Healer came between, and mercifully dealt the sufferer a blow--Death has a gentle hand sometimes. Mary Jewell was bedridden still--and for ever. Like a wind from the mountains the chill knowledge of death wailed through the window, and over the heads of the crowd. All the figures were upright now in the little room. Then those outside saw Laura Sloly lean over and close the sightless eyes. This done, she came to the door and opened it, and motioned for the Healer to leave. He hesitated, hearing the harsh murmur from the outskirts of the crowd. Once again she motioned, and he came. With a face deadly pale she surveyed the people before her silently for a moment, her eyes all huge and staring. Presently she turned to Ingles and spoke to him quickly in a low voice; then, descending the steps, passed out through the lane made for her by the crowd, he following with shaking limbs and bowed bead. Warning words had passed among the few invincible ones who waited where the Healer must pass into the open, and there was absolute stillness as Laura advanced. Their work was to come--quiet and swift and sure; but not yet. Only one face Laura saw, as she led the way to the moment's safety--Tim Denton's; and it was as stricken as her own. She passed, then turned, and looked at him again. He understood; she wanted him. He waited till she sprang into her waggon, after the Healer had mounted his mule and ridden away with ever-quickening pace into the prairie. Then he turned to the set, fierce men beside him. "Leave him alone," he said, "leave him to me. I know him. You hear? Ain't I no rights? I tell you I knew him--South. You leave him to me." They nodded, and he sprang into his saddle and rode away. They watched the figure of the Healer growing smaller in the dusty distance. "Tim'll go to her," one said, "and perhaps they'll let the snake get off. Hadn't we best make sure?" "Perhaps you'd better let him vamoose," said Flood Rawley anxiously. "Jansen is a law-abiding place!" The reply was decisive. Jansen had its honour to keep. It was the home of the Pioneers--Laura Sloly was a Pioneer. Tim Denton was a Pioneer, with all the comradeship which lay in the word, and he was that sort of lover who has seen one woman, and can never see another--not the product of the most modern civilisation. Before Laura had had Playmates he had given all he had to give; he had waited and hoped ever since; and when the ruthless gossips had said to him before Mary Jewell's house that she was in love with the Faith Healer, nothing changed in him. For the man, for Ingles, Tim belonged to a primitive breed, and love was not in his heart. As he rode out to Sloly's Ranch, he ground his teeth in rage. But Laura had called him to her, and: "Well, what you say goes, Laura," he muttered at the end of a long hour of human passion and its repression. "If he's to go scot-free, then he's got to go; but the boys yonder'll drop on me, if he gets away. Can't you see what a swab he is, Laura?" The brown eyes of the girl looked at him gently. The struggle between them was over; she had had her way--to save the preacher, impostor though he was; and now she felt, as she had never felt before in the same fashion, that this man was a man of men. "Tim, you do not understand," she urged. "You say he was a landsharp in the South, and that he had to leave-" "He had to vamoose, or take tar and feathers." "But he had to leave. And he came here preaching and healing; and he is a hypocrite and a fraud--I know that now, my eyes are opened. He didn't do what he said he could do, and it killed Mary Jewell--the shock; and there were other things he said he could do, and he didn't do them. Perhaps he is all bad, as you say--I don't think so. But he did some good things, and through him I've felt as I've never felt before about God and life, and about Walt and the baby--as though I'll see them again, sure. I've never felt that before. It was all as if they were lost in the hills, and no trail home, or out to where they are. Like as not God was working in him all the time, Tim; and he failed because he counted too much on the little he had, and made up for what he hadn't by what he pretended." "He can pretend to himself, or God Almighty, or that lot down there"--he jerked a finger towards the town--"but to you, a girl, and a Pioneer--" A flash of humour shot into her eyes at his last words, then they filled with tears, through which the smile shone. To pretend to "a Pioneer"-- the splendid vanity and egotism of the West! "He didn't pretend to me, Tim. People don't usually have to pretend to like me." "You know what I'm driving at." "Yes, yes, I know. And whatever he is, you've said that you will save him. I'm straight, you know that. Somehow, what I felt from his preaching--well, everything got sort of mixed up with him, and he was-- was different. It was like the long dream of Walt and the baby, and he a part of it. I don't know what I felt, or what I might have felt for him. I'm a woman--I can't understand. But I know what I feel now. I never want to see him again on earth--or in Heaven. It needn't be necessary even in Heaven; but what happened between God and me through him stays, Tim; and so you must help him get away safe. It's in your hands--you say they left it to you." "I don't trust that too much." Suddenly he pointed out of the window towards the town. "See, I'm right; there they are, a dozen of 'em mounted. They're off, to run him down." Her face paled; she glanced towards the Hill of Healing. "He's got an hour's start," she said; "he'll get into the mountains and be safe." "If they don't catch him 'fore that." "Or if you don't get to him first," she said, with nervous insistence. He turned to her with a hard look; then, as he met her soft, fearless, beautiful eyes, his own grew gentle. "It takes a lot of doing. Yet I'll do it for you, Laura," he said. "But it's hard on the Pioneers." Once more her humour flashed, and it seemed to him that "getting religion" was not so depressing after all--wouldn't be, anyhow, when this nasty job was over. "The Pioneers will get over it, Tim," she rejoined. "They've swallowed a lot in their time. Heaven's gate will have to be pretty wide to let in a real Pioneer," she added. "He takes up so much room-- ah, Timothy Denton!" she added, with an outburst of whimsical merriment. "It hasn't spoiled you--being converted, has it?" he said, and gave a quick little laugh, which somehow did more for his ancient cause with her than all he had ever said or done. Then he stepped outside and swung into his saddle. It had been a hard and anxious ride, but Tim had won, and was keeping his promise. The night had fallen before he got to the mountains, which he and the Pioneers had seen the Faith Healer enter. They had had four miles' start of Tim, and had ridden fiercely, and they entered the gulch into which the refugee had disappeared still two miles ahead. The invincibles had seen Tim coming, but they had determined to make a sure thing of it, and would themselves do what was necessary with the impostor, and take no chances. So they pressed their horses, and he saw them swallowed by the trees, as darkness gathered. Changing his course, he entered the familiar hills, which he knew better than any pioneer of Jansen, and rode a diagonal course over the trail they would take. But night fell suddenly, and there was nothing to do but to wait till morning. There was comfort in this--the others must also wait, and the refugee could not go far. In any case, he must make for settlement or perish, since he had left behind his sheep and his cow. It fell out better than Tim hoped. The Pioneers were as good hunters as was he, their instinct was as sure, their scouts and trackers were many, and he was but one. They found the Faith Healer by a little stream, eating bread and honey, and, like an ancient woodlander drinking from a horn--relics of his rank imposture. He made no resistance. They tried him formally, if perfunctorily; he admitted his imposture, and begged for his life. Then they stripped him naked, tied a bit of canvas round his waist, fastened him to a tree, and were about to complete his punishment when Tim Denton burst upon them. Whether the rage Tim showed was all real or not; whether his accusations of bad faith came from so deeply wounded a spirit as he would have them believe, he was not likely to tell; but he claimed the prisoner as his own, and declined to say what he meant to do. When, however, they saw the abject terror of the Faith Healer as he begged not to be left alone with Tim--for they had not meant death, and Ingles thought he read death in Tim's ferocious eyes--they laughed cynically, and left it to Tim to uphold the honour of Jansen and the Pioneers. As they disappeared, the last thing they saw was Tim with his back to them, his hands on his hips, and a knife clasped in his fingers. "He'll lift his scalp and make a monk of him," chuckled the oldest and hardest of them. "Dat Tim will cut his heart out, I t'ink-bagosh!" said Nicolle Terasse, and took a drink of white-whiskey. For a long time Tim stood looking at the other, until no sound came from the woods, whither the Pioneers had gone. Then at last, slowly, and with no roughness, as the terror- stricken impostor shrank and withered, he cut the cords. "Dress yourself," he said shortly, and sat down beside the stream, and washed his face and hands, as though to cleanse them from contamination. He appeared to take no notice of the other, though his ears keenly noted every movement. The impostor dressed nervously, yet slowly; he scarce comprehended anything, except that he was not in immediate danger. When he had finished, he stood looking at Tim, who was still seated on a log plunged in meditation. It seemed hours before Tim turned round, and now his face was quiet, if set and determined. He walked slowly over, and stood looking at his victim for some time without speaking. The other's eyes dropped, and a greyness stole over his features. This steely calm was even more frightening than the ferocity which had previously been in his captor's face. At length the tense silence was broken. "Wasn't the old game good enough? Was it played out? Why did you take to this? Why did you do it, Scranton?" The voice quavered a little in reply. "I don't know. Something sort of pushed me into it." "How did you come to start it?" There was a long silence, then the husky reply came. "I got a sickener last time--" "Yes, I remember, at Waywing." "I got into the desert, and had hard times--awful for a while. I hadn't enough to eat, and I didn't know whether I'd die by hunger, or fever, or Indians--or snakes." "Oh, you were seeing snakes!" said Tim grimly. "Not the kind you mean; I hadn't anything to drink--" "No, you never did drink, I remember--just was crooked, and slopped over women. Well, about the snakes?" "I caught them to eat, and they were poison-snakes often. And I wasn't quick at first to get them safe by the neck--they're quick, too." Tim laughed inwardly. "Getting your food by the sweat of your brow--and a snake in it, same as Adam! Well, was it in the desert you got your taste for honey, too, same as John the Baptist--that was his name, if I recomember?" He looked at the tin of honey on the ground. "Not in the desert, but when I got to the grass-country." "How long were you in the desert?" "Close to a year." Tim's eyes opened wider. He saw that the man was speaking the truth. "Got to thinking in the desert, and sort of willing things to come to pass, and mooning along, you, and the sky, and the vultures, and the hot hills, and the snakes, and the flowers--eh?" "There weren't any flowers till I got to the grass-country." "Oh, cuss me, if you ain't simple for your kind! I know all about that. And when you got to the grass-country, you just picked up the honey, and the flowers, and a calf, and a lamb, and a mule here and there, 'without money and without price,' and walked on--that it?" The other shrank before the steel in the voice, and nodded his head. "But you kept thinking in the grass-country of what you'd felt and said and done--and willed, in the desert, I suppose?" Again the other nodded. "It seemed to you in the desert, as if you'd saved your own life a hundred times, as if you'd just willed food and drink and safety to come; as if Providence had been at your elbow?" "It was like a dream, and it stayed with me. I had to think in the desert things I'd never thought before," was the half-abstracted answer. "You felt good in the desert?" The other hung his head in shame. "Makes you seem pretty small, doesn't it? You didn't stay long enough, I guess, to get what you were feeling for; you started in on the new racket too soon. You never got really possessed that you was a sinner. I expect that's it." The other made no reply. "Well, I don't know much about such things. I was loose brought up; but I've a friend"--Laura was before his eyes--"that says religion's all right, and long ago as I can remember my mother used to pray three times a day--with grace at meals, too. I know there's a lot in it for them that need it; and there seems to be a lot of folks needing it, if I'm to judge by folks down there at Jansen, specially when there's the laying-on of hands and the Healing Springs. Oh, that was a pigsty game, Scranton, that about God giving you the Healing Springs, like Moses and the rock! Why, I discovered them springs myself two years ago, before I went South, and I guess God wasn't helping me any--not after I've kept out of His way as I have. But, anyhow, religion's real; that's my sense of it; and you can get it, I bet, if you try. I've seen it got. A friend of mine got it--got it under your preaching; not from you; but you was the accident that brought it about, I expect. It's funny--it's merakilous, but it's so. Kneel down!" he added, with peremptory suddenness. "Kneel, Scranton!" In fear the other knelt. "You're going to get religion now--here. You're going to pray for what you didn't get--and almost got--in the desert. You're going to ask forgiveness for all your damn tricks, and pray like a fanning-mill for the spirit to come down. You ain't a scoundrel at heart--a friend of mine says so. You're a weak vessel, cracked, perhaps. You've got to be saved, and start right over again--and 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow!' Pray--pray, Scranton, and tell the whole truth, and get it--get religion. Pray like blazes. You go on, and pray out loud. Remember the desert, and Mary Jewell, and your mother--did you have a mother, Scranton--say, did you have a mother, lad?" Tim's voice suddenly lowered before the last word, for the Faith Healer had broken down in a torrent of tears. "Oh, my mother--O God!" he groaned. "Say, that's right--that's right--go on," said the other, and drew back a little, and sat down on a log. The man on his knees was convulsed with misery. Denton, the world, disappeared. He prayed in agony. Presently Tim moved uneasily, then got up and walked about; and at last, with a strange, awed look, when an hour was past, he stole back into the shadow of the trees, while still the wounded soul poured out its misery and repentance. Time moved on. A curious shyness possessed Tim now, a thing which he had never felt in his life. He moved about self-consciously, awkwardly, until at last there was a sudden silence over by the brook. Tim looked, and saw the face of the kneeling man cleared, and quiet and shining. He hesitated, then stepped out, and came over. "Have you got it?" he asked quietly. "It's noon now." "May God help me to redeem my past," answered the other in a new voice. "You've got it--sure?" Tim's voice was meditative. "God has spoken to me," was the simple answer. "I've got a friend'll be glad to hear that," he said; and once more, in imagination, he saw Laura Sloly standing at the door of her home, with a light in her eyes he had never seen before. "You'll want some money for your journey?" Tim asked. "I want nothing but to go away--far away," was the low reply. "Well, you've lived in the desert--I guess you can live in the grass- country," came the dry response. "Good-bye-and good luck, Scranton." Tim turned to go, moved on a few steps, then looked back. "Don't be afraid--they'll not follow," he said. "I'll fix it for you all right." But the man appeared not to hear; he was still on his knees. Tim faced the woods once more. He was about to mount his horse when he heard a step behind him. He turned sharply--and faced Laura. "I couldn't rest. I came out this morning. I've seen everything," she said. "You didn't trust me," he said heavily. "I never did anything else," she answered. He gazed half-fearfully into her eyes. "Well?" he asked. "I've done my best, as I said I would." "Tim," she said, and slipped a hand in his, "would you mind the religion --if you had me?" THE LITTLE WIDOW OF JANSEN Her advent to Jansen was propitious. Smallpox in its most virulent form had broken out in the French-Canadian portion of the town, and, coming with some professional nurses from the East, herself an amateur, to attend the sufferers, she worked with such skill and devotion that the official thanks of the Corporation were offered her, together with a tiny gold watch, the gift of grateful citizens. But she still remained on at Jansen, saying always, however, that she was "going East in the spring." Five years had passed, and still she had not gone East, but remained perched in the rooms she had first taken, over the Imperial Bank, while the town grew up swiftly round her. And even when the young bank manager married, and wished to take over the rooms, she sent him to the right- about from his own premises in her gay, masterful way. The young manager behaved well in the circumstances, because he had asked her to marry him, and she had dismissed him with a warning against challenging his own happiness--that was the way she had put it. Perhaps he was galled the less because others had striven for the same prize, and had been thrust back, with an almost tender misgiving as to their sense of self- preservation and sanity. Some of them were eligible enough, and all were of some position in the West. Yet she smiled them firmly away, to the wonder of Jansen, and to its satisfaction, for was it not a tribute to all that she would distinguish no particular unit by her permanent favour? But for one so sprightly and almost frivolous in manner at times, the self-denial seemed incongruous. She was unconventional enough to sit on the side-walk with a half-dozen children round her blowing bubbles, or to romp in any garden, or in the street, playing Puss-in-the- ring; yet this only made her more popular. Jansen's admiration was at its highest, however, when she rode in the annual steeplechase with the best horsemen of the province. She had the gift of doing as well as of being. "'Tis the light heart she has, and slippin' in and out of things like a humming-bird, no easier to ketch, and no longer to stay," said Finden, the rich Irish landbroker, suggestively to Father Bourassa, the huge French-Canadian priest who had worked with her through all the dark weeks of the smallpox epidemic, and who knew what lay beneath the outer gaiety. She had been buoyant of spirit beside the beds of the sick, and her words were full of raillery and humour, yet there was ever a gentle note behind all; and the priest had seen her eyes shining with tears, as she bent over some stricken sufferer bound upon an interminable journey. "Bedad! as bright a little spark as ever struck off the steel," added Finden to the priest, with a sidelong, inquisitive look, "but a heart no bigger than a marrowfat pea-selfishness, all self. Keepin' herself for herself when there's manny a good man needin' her. Mother o' Moses, how manny! From Terry O'Ryan, brother of a peer, at Latouche, to Bernard Bapty, son of a millionaire, at Vancouver, there's a string o' them. All pride and self; and as fair a lot they've been as ever entered for the Marriage Cup. Now, isn't that so, father?" Finden's brogue did not come from a plebeian origin. It was part of his commercial equipment, an asset of his boyhood spent among the peasants on the family estate in Galway. Father Bourassa fanned himself with the black broadbrim hat he wore, and looked benignly but quizzically on the wiry, sharp-faced Irishman. "You t'ink her heart is leetla. But perhaps it is your mind not so big enough to see--hein?" The priest laughed noiselessly, showing white teeth. "Was it so selfish in Madame to refuse the name of Finden-- n'est-ce pas?" Finden flushed, then burst into a laugh. "I'd almost forgotten I was one of them--the first almost. Blessed be he that expects nothing, for he'll get it, sure. It was my duty, and I did it. Was she to feel that Jansen did not price her high? Bedad, father, I rose betimes and did it, before anny man should say he set me the lead. Before the carpet in the parlour was down, and with the bare boards soundin' to my words, I offered her the name of Finden." "And so--the first of the long line! Bien, it is an honour." The priest paused a moment, looked at Finden with a curious reflective look, and then said: "And so you t'ink there is no one; that she will say yes not at all--no?" They were sitting on Father Bourassa's veranda, on the outskirts of the town, above the great river, along which had travelled millions of bygone people, fighting, roaming, hunting, trapping; and they could hear it rushing past, see the swirling eddies, the impetuous currents, the occasional rafts moving majestically down the stream. They were facing the wild North, where civilisation was hacking and hewing and ploughing its way to newer and newer cities, in an empire ever spreading to the Pole. Finden's glance loitered on this scene before he replied. At length, screwing up one eye, and with a suggestive smile, he answered: "Sure, it's all a matter of time, to the selfishest woman. 'Tis not the same with women as with men; you see, they don't get younger--that's a point. But"--he gave a meaning glance at the priest--"but perhaps she's not going to wait for that, after all. And there he rides, a fine figure of a man, too, if I have to say it!" "M'sieu' Varley?" the priest responded, and watched a galloping horseman to whom Finden had pointed, till he rounded the corner of a little wood. "Varley, the great London surgeon, sure! Say, father, it's a hundred to one she'd take him, if--" There was a curious look in Father Bourassa's face, a cloud in his eyes. He sighed. "London, it is ver' far away," he remarked obliquely. "What's to that? If she is with the right man, near or far is nothing." "So far--from home," said the priest reflectively, but his eyes furtively watched the other's face. "But home's where man and wife are." The priest now looked him straight in the eyes. "Then, as you say, she will not marry M'sieu' Varley--hein?" The humour died out of Finden's face. His eyes met the priest's eyes steadily. "Did I say that? Then my tongue wasn't making a fool of me, after all. How did you guess I knew--everything, father?" "A priest knows many t'ings--so." There was a moment of gloom, then the Irishman brightened. He came straight to the heart of the mystery around which they had been maneuvering. "Have you seen her husband--Meydon--this year? It isn't his usual time to come yet." Father Bourassa's eyes drew those of his friend into, the light of a new understanding and revelation. They understood and trusted each other. "Helas! He is there in the hospital," he answered, and nodded towards a building not far away, which had been part of an old Hudson's Bay Company's fort. It had been hastily adapted as a hospital for the smallpox victims. "Oh, it's Meydon, is it, that bad case I heard of to-day?" The priest nodded again and 'pointed. "Voila, Madame Meydon, she is coming. She has seen him--her hoosban'." Finden's eyes followed the gesture. The little widow of Jansen was coming from the hospital, walking slowly towards the river. "As purty a woman, too--as purty and as straight bewhiles. What is the matter with him--with Meydon?" Finden asked, after a moment. "An accident in the woods--so. He arrive, it is las' night, from Great Slave Lake." Finden sighed. "Ten years ago he was a man to look at twice--before he did It and got away. Now his own mother wouldn't know him--bad 'cess to him! I knew him from the cradle almost. I spotted him here by a knife- cut I gave him in the hand when we were lads together. A divil of a timper always both of us had, but the good-nature was with me, and I didn't drink and gamble and carry a pistol. It's ten years since he did the killing, down in Quebec, and I don't suppose the police will get him now. He's been counted dead. I recognised him here the night after I asked her how she liked the name of Finden. She doesn't know that I ever knew him. And he didn't recognise me-twenty-five years since we met before! It would be better if he went under the sod. Is he pretty sick, father?" "He will die unless the surgeon's knife it cure him before twenty-four hours, and--" "And Doctor Brydon is sick, and Doctor Hadley away at Winnipeg, and this is two hundred miles from nowhere! It looks as if the police'll never get him, eh?" "You have not tell any one--never?" Finden laughed. "Though I'm not a priest, I can lock myself up as tight as anny. There's no tongue that's so tied, when tying's needed, as the one that babbles most bewhiles. Babbling covers a lot of secrets." "So you t'ink it better Meydon should die, as Hadley is away and Brydon is sick-hein?" "Oh, I think--" Finden stopped short, for a horse's hoofs sounded on the turf beside the house, and presently Varley, the great London surgeon, rounded the corner and stopped his horse in front of the veranda. He lifted his hat to the priest. "I hear there's a bad case at the hospital," he said. "It is ver' dangerous," answered Father Bourassa; "but, voila, come in! There is something cool to drink. Ah yes, he is ver' bad, that man from the Great Slave Lake." Inside the house, with the cooling drinks, Varley pressed his questions, and presently, much interested, told at some length of singular cases which had passed through his hands--one a man with his neck broken, who had lived for six months afterward. "Broken as a man's neck is broken by hanging--dislocation, really--the disjointing of the medulla oblongata, if you don't mind technicalities," he said. "But I kept him living just the same. Time enough for him to repent in and get ready to go. A most interesting case. He was a criminal, too, and wanted to die; but you have to keep life going if you can, to the last inch of resistance." The priest looked thoughtfully out of the window; Finden's eyes were screwed up in a questioning way, but neither made any response to Varley's remarks. There was a long minute's silence. They were all three roused by hearing a light footstep on the veranda. Father Bourassa put down his glass and hastened into the hallway. Finden caught a glimpse of a woman's figure, and, without a word, passed abruptly from the dining-room where they were, into the priest's study, leaving Varley alone. Varley turned to look after him, stared, and shrugged his shoulders. "The manners of the West," he said good-humouredly, and turned again to the hallway, from whence came the sound of the priest's voice. Presently there was another voice--a woman's. He flushed slightly and involuntarily straightened himself. "Valerie," he murmured. An instant afterwards she entered the room with the priest. She was dressed in a severely simple suit of grey, which set off to advantage her slim, graceful figure. There seemed no reason why she should have been called the little widow of Jansen, for she was not small, but she was very finely and delicately made, and the name had been but an expression of Jansen's paternal feeling for her. She had always had a good deal of fresh colour, but to-day she seemed pale, though her eyes had a strange disturbing light. It was not that they brightened on seeing this man before her; they had been brighter, burningly bright, when she left the hospital, where, since it had been built, she had been the one visitor of authority--Jansen had given her that honour. She had a gift of smiling, and she smiled now, but it came from grace of mind rather than from humour. As Finden had said, "She was for ever acting, and never doin' any harm by it." Certainly she was doing no harm by it now; nevertheless, it was acting. Could it be otherwise, with what was behind her life--a husband who had ruined her youth, had committed homicide, had escaped capture, but who had not subsequently died, as the world believed he had done, so circumstantial was the evidence. He was not man enough to make the accepted belief in his death a fact. What could she do but act, since the day she got a letter from the Far North, which took her out to Jansen, nominally to nurse those stricken with smallpox under Father Bourassa's care, actually to be where her wretched husband could come to her once a year, as he had asked with an impossible selfishness? Each year she had seen him for an hour or less, giving him money, speaking to him over a gulf so wide that it seemed sometimes as though her voice could not be heard across it; each year opening a grave to look at the embalmed face of one who had long since died in shame, which only brought back the cruellest of all memories, that which one would give one's best years to forget. With a fortitude beyond description she had faced it, gently, quietly, but firmly faced it--firmly, because she had to be firm in keeping him within those bounds the invasion of which would have killed her. And after the first struggle with his unchangeable brutality it had been easier: for into his degenerate brain there had come a faint understanding of the real situation and of her. He had kept his side of the gulf, but gloating on this touch between the old luxurious, indulgent life, with its refined vices, and this present coarse, hard life, where pleasures were few and gross. The free Northern life of toil and hardship had not refined him. He greedily hung over this treasure, which was not for his spending, yet was his own--as though in a bank he had hoards of money which he might not withdraw. So the years had gone on, with their recurrent dreaded anniversaries, carrying misery almost too great to be borne by this woman mated to the loathed phantom of a sad, dead life; and when this black day of each year was over, for a few days afterwards she went nowhere, was seen by none. Yet, when she did appear again, it was with her old laughing manner, her cheerful and teasing words, her quick response to the emotions of others. So it had gone till Varley had come to follow the open air life for four months, after a heavy illness due to blood-poisoning got in his surgical work in London. She had been able to live her life without too great a struggle till he came. Other men had flattered her vanity, had given her a sense of power, had made her understand her possibilities, but nothing more--nothing of what Varley brought with him. And before three months had gone, she knew that no man had ever interested her as Varley had done. Ten years before, she would not have appreciated or understood him, this intellectual, clean-shaven, rigidly abstemious man, whose pleasures belonged to the fishing-rod and the gun and the horse, and who had come to be so great a friend of him who had been her best friend-- Father Bourassa. Father Bourassa had come to know the truth--not from her, for she had ever been a Protestant, but from her husband, who, Catholic by birth and a renegade from all religion, had had a moment of spurious emotion, when he went and confessed to Father Bourassa and got absolution, pleading for the priest's care of his wife. Afterwards Father Bourassa made up his mind that the confession had a purpose behind it other than repentance, and he deeply resented the use to which he thought he was being put--a kind of spy upon the beautiful woman whom Jansen loved, and who, in spite of any outward flippancy, was above reproach. In vital things the instinct becomes abnormally acute, and, one day, when the priest looked at her commiseratingly, she had divined what moved him. However it was, she drove him into a corner with a question to which he dare not answer yes, but to which he might not answer no, and did not; and she realised that he knew the truth, and she was the better for his knowing, though her secret was no longer a secret. She was not aware that Finden also knew. Then Varley came, bringing a new joy and interest in her life, and a new suffering also, for she realised that if she were free, and Varley asked her to marry him, she would consent. But when he did ask her, she said no with a pang that cut her heart in two. He had stayed his four months, and it was now six months, and he was going at last-tomorrow. He had stayed to give her time to learn to say yes, and to take her back with him to London; and she knew that he would speak again to-day, and that she must say no again; but she had kept him from saying the words till now. And the man who had ruined her life and had poisoned her true spirit was come back broken and battered. He was hanging between life and death; and now--for he was going to-morrow--Varley would speak again. The half-hour she had just spent in the hospital with Meydon had tried her cruelly. She had left the building in a vortex of conflicting emotions, with the call of duty and of honour ringing through a thousand other voices of temptation and desire, the inner pleadings for a little happiness while yet she was young. After she married Meydon, there had only been a few short weeks of joy before her black disillusion came, and she had realised how bitter must be her martyrdom. When she left the hospital, she seemed moving in a dream, as one, intoxicated by some elixir, might move unheeding among event and accident and vexing life and roaring multitudes. And all the while the river flowing through the endless prairies, high-banked, ennobled by living woods, lipped with green, kept surging in her ears, inviting her, alluring her--alluring her with a force too deep and powerful for weak human nature to bear for long. It would ease her pain, it said; it would still the tumult and the storm; it would solve her problem, it would give her peace. But as she moved along the river-bank among the trees, she met the little niece of the priest, who lived in his house, singing as though she was born but to sing, a song which Finden had written and Father Bourassa had set to music. Did not the distant West know Father Bourassa's gift, and did not Protestants attend Mass to hear him play the organ afterwards? The fresh, clear voice of the child rang through the trees, stealing the stricken heart away from the lure of the river: "Will you come back home, where the young larks are singin'? The door is open wide, and the bells of Lynn are ringin'; There's a little lake I know, And a boat you used to row To the shore beyond that's quiet--will you come back home? Will you come back, darlin'? Never heed the pain and blightin', Never trouble that you're wounded, that you bear the scars of fightin'; Here's the luck o' Heaven to you, Here's the hand of love will brew you The cup of peace--ah, darlin', will you come back home?" She stood listening for a few moments, and, under the spell of the fresh, young voice, the homely, heart-searching words, and the intimate sweetness of the woods, the despairing apathy lifted slowly away. She started forwards again with a new understanding, her footsteps quickened. She would go to Father Bourassa. He would understand. She would tell him all. He would help her to do what now she knew she must do, ask Leonard Varley to save her husband's life--Leonard Varley to save her husband's life! When she stepped upon the veranda of the priest's house, she did not know that Varley was inside. She had no time to think. She was ushered into the room where he was, with the confusing fact of his presence fresh upon her. She had had but a word or two with the priest, but enough for him to know what she meant to do, and that it must be done at once. Varley advanced to meet her. She shuddered inwardly to think what a difference there was between the fallen creature she had left behind in the hospital and this tall, dark, self-contained man, whose name was familiar in the surgeries of Europe, who had climbed from being the son of a clockmaker to his present distinguished place. "Have you come for absolution, also?" he asked with a smile; "or is it to get a bill of excommunication against your only enemy--there couldn't be more than one?" Cheerful as his words were, he was shrewdly observing her, for her paleness, and the strange light in her eyes, gave him a sense of anxiety. He wondered what trouble was on her. "Excommunication?" he repeated. The unintended truth went home. She winced, even as she responded with that quaint note in her voice which gave humour to her speech. "Yes, excommunication," she replied; "but why an enemy? Do we not need to excommunicate our friends sometimes?" "That is a hard saying," he answered soberly. Tears sprang to her eyes, but she mastered herself, and brought the crisis abruptly. "I want you to save a man's life," she said, with her eyes looking straight into his. "Will you do it?" His face grew grave and eager. "I want you to save a man's happiness," he answered. "Will you do it?" "That man yonder will die unless your skill saves him," she urged. "This man here will go away unhappy and alone, unless your heart befriends him," he replied, coming closer to her. "At sunrise to-morrow he goes." He tried to take her hand. "Oh, please, please," she pleaded, with a quick, protesting gesture. "Sunrise is far off, but the man's fate is near, and you must save him. You only can do so, for Doctor Hadley is away, and Doctor Brydon is sick, and in any case Doctor Brydon dare not attempt the operation alone. It is too critical and difficult, he says." "So I have heard," he answered, with a new note in his voice, his professional instinct roused in spite of himself. "Who is this man? What interests you in him?" "To how many unknown people have you given your skill for nothing--your skill and all your experience to utter strangers, no matter how low or poor! Is it not so? Well, I cannot give to strangers what you have given to so many, but I can help in my own way." "You want me to see the man at once?" "If you will." "What is his name? I know of his accident and the circumstances." She hesitated for an instant, then said, "He is called Draper--a trapper and woodsman." "But I was going away to-morrow at sunrise. All my arrangements are made," he urged, his eyes holding hers, his passion swimming in his eyes again. "But you will not see a man die, if you can save him?" she pleaded, unable now to meet his look, its mastery and its depth. Her heart had almost leaped with joy at the suggestion that he could not stay; but as suddenly self-reproach and shame filled her mind, and she had challenged him so. But yet, what right had she to sacrifice this man she loved to the perverted criminal who had spoiled her youth and taken away from her every dear illusion of her life and heart? By every right of justice and humanity she was no more the wife of Henry Meydon than if she had never seen him. He had forfeited every claim upon her, dragged in the mire her unspotted life--unspotted, for in all temptation, in her defenceless position, she had kept the whole commandment; she had, while at the mercy of her own temperament, fought her way through all, with a weeping heart and laughing lips. Had she not longed for a little home with a great love, and a strong, true man? Ah, it had been lonely, bitterly lonely! Yet she had remained true to the scoundrel, from whom she could not free herself without putting him in the grasp of the law to atone for his crime. She was punished for his crimes; she was denied the exercise of her womanhood in order to shield him. Still she remembered that once she had loved him, those years ago, when he first won her heart from those so much better than he, who loved her so much more honestly; and this memory had helped her in a way. She had tried to be true to it, that dead, lost thing, of which this man who came once a year to see her, and now, lying with his life at stake in the hospital, was the repellent ghost. "Ah, you will not see him die?" she urged. "It seems to move you greatly what happens to this man," he said, his determined dark eyes searching hers, for she baffled him. If she could feel so much for a, "casual," why not a little more feeling for him? Suddenly, as he drew her eyes to him again, there came the conviction that they were full of feeling for him. They were sending a message, an appealing, passionate message, which told him more than he had ever heard from her or seen in her face before. Yes, she was his! Without a spoken word she had told him so. What, then, held her back? But women were a race by themselves, and he knew that he must wait till she chose to have him know what she had unintentionally conveyed but now. "Yes, I am moved," she continued slowly. "Who can tell what this man might do with his life, if it is saved! Don't you think of that? It isn't the importance of a life that's at stake; it's the importance of living; and we do not live alone, do we?" His mind was made up. "I will not, cannot promise anything till I have seen him. But I will go and see him, and I'll send you word later what I can do, or not do. Will that satisfy you? If I cannot do it, I will come to say good-by." Her face was set with suppressed feeling. She held out her hand to him impulsively, and was about to speak, but suddenly caught the hand away again from his thrilling grasp and, turning hurriedly, left the room. In the hall she met Father Bourassa. "Go with him to the hospital," she whispered, and disappeared through the doorway. Immediately after she had gone, a man came driving hard to bring Father Bourassa to visit a dying Catholic in the prairie, and it was Finden who accompanied Varley to the hospital, waited for him till his examination of the "casual" was concluded, and met him outside. "Can it be done?" he asked of Varley. "I'll take word to Father Bourassa." "It can be done--it will be done," answered Varley absently. "I do not understand the man. He has been in a different sphere of life. He tried to hide it, but the speech--occasionally! I wonder." "You wonder if he's worth saving?" Varley shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "No, that's not what I meant." Finden smiled to himself. "Is it a difficult case?" he asked. "Critical and delicate; but it has been my specialty." "One of the local doctors couldn't do it, I suppose?" "They would be foolish to try." "And you are going away at sunrise to-morrow?" "Who told you that?" Varley's voice was abrupt, impatient. "I heard you say so-everybody knows it. . . . That's a bad man yonder, Varley." He jerked his thumb towards the hospital. "A terrible bad man, he's been. A gentleman once, and fell down--fell down hard. He's done more harm than most men. He's broken a woman's heart and spoilt her life, and, if he lives, there's no chance for her, none at all. He killed a man, and the law wants him; and she can't free herself without ruining him; and she can't marry the man she loves because of that villain yonder, crying for his life to be saved. By Josh and by Joan, but it's a shame, a dirty shame, it is!" Suddenly Varley turned and gripped his arm with fingers of steel. "His name--his real name?" "His name's Meydon--and a dirty shame it is, Varley." Varley was white. He had been leading his horse and talking to Finden. He mounted quickly now, and was about to ride away, but stopped short again. "Who knows--who knows the truth?" he asked. "Father Bourassa and me--no others," he answered. "I knew Meydon thirty years ago." There was a moment's hesitation, then Varley said hoarsely, "Tell me-- tell me all." When all was told, he turned his horse towards the wide waste of the prairie, and galloped away. Finden watched him till he was lost to view beyond the bluff. "Now, a man like that, you can't guess what he'll do," he said reflectively. "He's a high-stepper, and there's no telling what foolishness will get hold of him. It'd be safer if he got lost on the prairie for twenty-four hours. He said that Meydon's only got twenty- four hours, if the trick isn't done! Well--" He took a penny from his pocket. "I'll toss for it. Heads he does it, and tails he doesn't." He tossed. It came down heads. "Well, there's one more fool in the world than I thought," he said philosophically, as though he had settled the question; as though the man riding away into the prairie with a dark problem to be solved had told the penny what he meant to do. Mrs. Meydon, Father Bourassa, and Finden stood in the little waiting-room of the hospital at Jansen, one at each window, and watched the wild thunderstorm which had broken over the prairie. The white heliographs of the elements flashed their warnings across the black sky, and the roaring artillery of the thunder came after, making the circle of prairie and tree and stream a theatre of anger and conflict. The streets of Jansen were washed with flood, and the green and gold things of garden and field and harvest crumbled beneath the sheets of rain. The faces at the window of the little room of the hospital, however, were but half-conscious of the storm; it seemed only an accompaniment of their thoughts, to typify the elements of tragedy surrounding them. For Varley there had been but one thing to do. A life might be saved, and it was his duty to save it. He had ridden back from the prairie as the sun was setting the night before, and had made all arrangements at the hospital, giving orders that Meydon should have no food whatever till the operation was performed the next afternoon, and nothing to drink except a little brandy-and-water. The operation was performed successfully, and Varley had issued from the operating-room with the look of a man who had gone through an ordeal which had taxed his nerve to the utmost, to find Valerie Meydon waiting, with a piteous, dazed look in her eyes. But this look passed when she heard him say, "All right!" The words brought a sense of relief, for if he had failed it would have seemed almost unbearable in the circumstances--the cup of trembling must be drunk to the dregs. Few words had passed between them, and he had gone, while she remained behind with Father Bourassa, till the patient should wake from the sleep into which he had fallen when Varley left. But within two hours they sent for Varley again, for Meydon was in evident danger. Varley had come, and had now been with the patient for some time. At last the door opened and Varley came in quickly. He beckoned to Mrs. Meydon and to Father Bourassa. "He wishes to speak with you," he said to her. "There is little time." Her eyes scarcely saw him, as she left the room and passed to where Meydon lay nerveless, but with wide-open eyes, waiting for her. The eyes closed, however, before she reached the bed. Presently they opened again, but the lids remained fixed. He did not hear what she said. ...................... In the little waiting-room, Finden said to Varley, "What happened?" "Food was absolutely forbidden, but he got it from another patient early this morning while the nurse was out for a moment. It has killed him." "'Twas the least he could do, but no credit's due him. It was to be. I'm not envying Father Bourassa nor her there with him." Varley made no reply. He was watching the receding storm with eyes which told nothing. Finden spoke once more, but Varley did not hear him. Presently the door opened and Father Bourassa entered. He made a gesture of the hand to signify that all was over. Outside, the sun was breaking through the clouds upon the Western prairie, and there floated through the evening air the sound of a child's voice singing beneath the trees that fringed the river: "Will you come back, darlin'? Never heed the pain and blightin', Never trouble that you're wounded, that you bear the scars of fightin'; Here's the luck o' Heaven to you, Here's the hand of love will brew you The cup of peace-ah, darlin', will you come back home?" WATCHING THE RISE OF ORION "In all the wide border his steed was the best," and the name and fame of Terence O'Ryan were known from Strathcona to Qu'appelle. He had ambition of several kinds, and he had the virtue of not caring who knew of it. He had no guile, and little money; but never a day's work was too hard for him, and he took bad luck, when it came, with a jerk of the shoulder and a good-natured surprise on his clean-shaven face that suited well his wide grey eyes and large, luxurious mouth. He had an estate, half ranch, half farm, with a French Canadian manager named Vigon, an old prospector who viewed every foot of land in the world with the eye of the discoverer. Gold, coal, iron, oil, he searched for them everywhere, making sure that sooner or later he would find them. Once Vigon had found coal. That was when he worked for a man called Constantine Jopp, and had given him great profit; but he, the discoverer, had been put off with a horse and a hundred dollars. He was now as devoted to Terence O'Ryan as he had been faithful to Constantine Jopp, whom he cursed waking and sleeping. In his time O'Ryan had speculated, and lost; he had floated a coal mine, and "been had"; he had run for the local legislature, had been elected, and then unseated for bribery committed by an agent; he had run races at Regina, and won--he had won for three years in succession; and this had kept him going and restored his finances when they were at their worst. He was, in truth, the best rider in the country, and, so far, was the owner also of the best three-year-old that the West had produced. He achieved popularity without effort. The West laughed at his enterprises and loved him; he was at once a public moral and a hero. It was a legend of the West that his forbears had been kings in Ireland like Brian Borhoime. He did not contradict this; he never contradicted anything. His challenge to all fun and satire and misrepresentation was, "What'll be the differ a hundred years from now!" He did not use this phrase, however, towards one experience--the advent of Miss Molly Mackinder, the heiress, and the challenge that reverberated through the West after her arrival. Philosophy deserted him then; he fell back on the primary emotions of mankind. A month after Miss Mackinder's arrival at La Touche a dramatic performance was given at the old fort, in which the officers of the Mounted Police took part, together with many civilians who fancied themselves. By that time the district had realised that Terry O'Ryan had surrendered to what they called "the laying on of hands" by Molly Mackinder. It was not certain, however, that the surrender was complete, because O'Ryan had been wounded before, and yet had not been taken captive altogether. His complete surrender seemed now more certain to the public because the lady had a fortune of two hundred thousand dollars, and that amount of money would be useful to an ambitious man in the growing West. It would, as Gow Johnson said, "Let him sit back and view the landscape o'er, before he puts his ploughshare in the mud." There was an outdoor scene in the play produced by the impetuous amateurs, and dialogue had been interpolated by three "imps of fame" at the suggestion of Constantine Jopp, one of the three, who bore malice towards O'Ryan, though this his colleagues did not know distinctly. The scene was a camp-fire--a starlit night, a colloquy between the three, upon which the hero of the drama, played by Terry O'Ryan, should break, after having, unknown to them, but in sight of the audience, overheard their kind of intentions towards himself. The night came. When the curtain rose for the third act there was exposed a star-sown sky, in which the galaxy of Orion was shown with distinctness, each star sharply twinkling from the electric power behind- a pretty scene evoking great applause. O'Ryan had never seen this back curtain--they had taken care that he should not--and, standing in the wings awaiting his cue, he was unprepared for the laughter of the audience, first low and uncertain, then growing, then insistent, and now a peal of ungovernable mirth, as one by one they understood the significance of the stars of Orion on the back curtain. O'Ryan got his cue, and came on to an outburst of applause which shook the walls. La Touche rose at him, among them Miss Molly Mackinder in the front row with the notables. He did not see the back curtain, or Orion blazing in the ultramarine blue. According to the stage directions, he was to steal along the trees at the wings, and listen to the talk of the men at the fire plotting against him, who were presently to pretend good comradeship to his face. It was a vigorous melodrama with some touches of true Western feeling. After listening for a moment, O'Ryan was to creep up the stage again towards the back curtain, giving a cue for his appearance. When the hilarious applause at his entrance had somewhat subsided, the three took up their parable, but it was not the parable of the play. They used dialogue not in the original. It had a significance which the audience were not slow to appreciate, and went far to turn "The Sunburst Trail" at this point into a comedy-farce. When this new dialogue began, O'Ryan could scarcely trust his ears, or realise what was happening. "Ah, look," said Dicky Fergus at the fire, "as fine a night as ever I saw in the West! The sky's a picture. You could almost hand the stars down, they're so near." "What's that clump together on the right--what are they called in astronomy?" asked Constantine Jopp, with a leer. "Orion is the name--a beauty, ain't it?" answered Fergus. "I've been watching Orion rise," said the third--Holden was his name. "Many's the time I've watched Orion rising. Orion's the star for me. Say, he wipes 'em all out--right out. Watch him rising now." By a manipulation of the lights Orion moved up the back curtain slowly, and blazed with light nearer the zenith. And La Touche had more than the worth of its money in this opening to the third act of the play. O'Ryan was a favourite, at whom La Touche loved to jeer, and the parable of the stars convulsed them. At the first words O'Ryan put a hand on himself and tried to grasp the meaning of it all, but his entrance and the subsequent applause had confused him. Presently, however, he turned to the back curtain, as Orion moved slowly up the heavens, and found the key to the situation. He gasped. Then he listened to the dialogue which had nothing to do with "The Sunburst Trail." "What did Orion do, and why does he rise? Has he got to rise? Why was the gent called Orion in them far-off days?" asked Holden. "He did some hunting in his time--with a club," Fergus replied. "He kept making hits, he did. Orion was a spoiler. When he took the field there was no room for the rest of the race. Why does he rise? Because it is a habit. They could always get a rise out of Orion. The Athens Eirenicon said that yeast might fail to rise, but touch the button and Orion would rise like a bird." At that instant the galaxy jerked up the back curtain again, and when the audience could control itself, Constantine Jopp, grinning meanly, asked: "Why does he wear the girdle?" "It is not a girdle--it is a belt," was Dicky Fergus's reply. "The gods gave it to him because he was a favourite. There was a lady called Artemis--she was the last of them. But he went visiting with Eos, another lady of previous acquaintance, down at a place called Ortygia, and Artemis shot him dead with a shaft Apollo had given her; but she didn't marry Apollo neither. She laid Orion out on the sky, with his glittering belt, around him. And Orion keeps on rising." "Will he ever stop rising?" asked Holden. Followed for the conspirators a disconcerting moment; for, when the laughter had subsided, a lazy voice came from the back of the hall, "He'll stop long enough to play with Apollo a little, I guess." It was Gow Johnson who had spoken, and no man knew Terry O'Ryan better, or could gauge more truly the course he would take. He had been in many an enterprise, many a brush with O'Ryan, and his friendship would bear any strain. O'Ryan recovered himself from the moment he saw the back curtain, and he did not find any fun in the thing. It took a hold on him out of all proportion to its importance. He realised that he had come to the parting of the ways in his life. It suddenly came upon him that something had been lacking in him in the past; and that his want of success in many things had not been wholly due to bad luck. He had been eager, enterprising, a genius almost at seeing good things; and yet others had reaped where he had sown. He had believed too much in his fellow-man. For the first time in his life he resented the friendly, almost affectionate satire of his many friends. It was amusing, it was delightful; but down beneath it all there was a little touch of ridicule. He had more brains than any of them, and he had known it in a way; he had led them sometimes, too, as on raids against cattle-stealers, and in a brush with half-breeds and Indians; as when he stood for the legislature; but he felt now for the first time that he had not made the most of himself, that there was something hurting to self-respect in this prank played upon him. When he came to that point his resentment went higher. He thought of Molly Mackinder, and he heard all too acutely the vague veiled references to her in their satire. By the time Gow Johnson spoke he had mastered himself, however, and had made up his mind. He stood still for a moment. "Now, please, my cue," he said quietly and satirically from the trees near the wings. He was smiling, but Gow Johnson's prognostication was right; and ere long the audience realised that he was right. There was standing before them not the Terry O'Ryan they had known, but another. He threw himself fully into his part--a young rancher made deputy sheriff, who by the occasional exercise of his duty had incurred the hatred of a small floating population that lived by fraud, violence, and cattle-stealing. The conspiracy was to raid his cattle, to lure him to pursuit, to ambush him, and kill him. Terry now played the part with a naturalness and force which soon lifted the play away from the farcical element introduced into it by those who had interpolated the gibes at himself. They had gone a step too far. "He's going large," said Gow Johnson, as the act drew near its close, and the climax neared, where O'Ryan was to enter upon a physical struggle with his assailants. "His blood's up. There'll be hell to pay." To Gow Johnson the play had instantly become real, and O'Ryan an injured man at bay, the victim of the act--not of the fictitious characters of the play, but of the three men, Fergus, Holden, and Constantine Jopp, who had planned the discomfiture of O'Ryan; and he felt that the victim's resentment would fall heaviest on Constantine Jopp, the bully, an old schoolmate of Terry's. Jopp was older than O'Ryan by three years, which in men is little, but in boys, at a certain time of life, is much. It means, generally, weight and height, an advantage in a scrimmage. Constantine Jopp had been the plague and tyrant of O'Ryan's boyhood. He was now a big, leering fellow with much money of his own, got chiefly from the coal discovered on his place by Vigon, the half-breed French Canadian. He had a sense of dark and malicious humour, a long horse-like face, with little beady eyes and a huge frame. Again and again had Terry fought him as a boy at school, and often he had been badly whipped, but he had never refused the challenge of an insult when he was twelve and Jopp fifteen. The climax to their enmity at school had come one day when Terry was seized with a cramp while bathing, and after having gone down twice was rescued by Jopp, who dragged him out by the hair of the head. He had been restored to consciousness on the bank and carried to his home, where he lay ill for days. During the course of the slight fever which followed the accident his hair was cut close to his head. Impetuous always, his first thought was to go and thank Constantine Jopp for having saved his life. As soon as he was able he went forth to find his rescuer, and met him suddenly on turning a corner of the street. Before he could stammer out the gratitude that was in his heart, Jopp, eyeing him with a sneering smile, said drawlingly: "If you'd had your hair cut like that I couldn't have got you out, could I? Holy, what a sight! Next time I'll take you by the scruff, putty- face--bah!" That was enough for Terry. He had swallowed the insult, stuttered his thanks to the jeering laugh of the lank bully, and had gone home and cried in shame and rage. It was the one real shadow in his life. Ill luck and good luck had been taken with an equable mind; but the fact that he must, while he lived, own the supreme debt of his life to a boy and afterwards to a man whom he hated by instinct was a constant cloud on him. Jopp owned him. For some years they did not meet, and then at last they again were thrown together in the West, when Jopp settled at La Touche. It was gall and wormwood to Terry, but he steeled himself to be friendly, although the man was as great a bully as the boy, as offensive in mind and character; but withal acute and able in his way, and with a reputation for commercial sharpness which would be called by another name in a different civilisation. They met constantly, and O'Ryan always put a hand on himself, and forced himself to be friendly. Once when Jopp became desperately ill there had been--though he fought it down, and condemned himself in every term of reproach--a sense of relief in the thought that perhaps his ancient debt would now be cancelled. It had gone on so long. And Constantine Jopp had never lost an opportunity of vexing him, of torturing him, of giving veiled thrusts, which he knew O'Ryan could not resent. It was the constant pin-prick of a mean soul, who had an advantage of which he could never be dispossessed--unless the ledger was balanced in some inscrutable way. Apparently bent on amusement only, and hiding his hatred from his colleagues, Jopp had been the instigator and begetter of the huge joke of the play; but it was the brains of Dick Fergus which had carried it out, written the dialogue, and planned the electric appliances of the back curtain--for he was an engineer and electrician. Neither he nor Holden had known the old antipathy of Terry and Constantine Jopp. There was only one man who knew the whole truth, and that was Gow Johnson, to whom Terry had once told all. At the last moment Fergus had interpolated certain points in the dialogue which were not even included at rehearsal. These referred to Apollo. He had a shrewd notion that Jopp had an idea of marrying Molly Mackinder if he could, cousins though they were; and he was also aware that Jopp, knowing Molly's liking for Terry, had tried to poison her mind against him, through suggestive gossip about a little widow at Jansen, thirty miles away. He had in so far succeeded that, on the very day of the performance, Molly had declined to be driven home from the race-course by Terry, despite the fact that Terry had won the chief race and owned the only dog-cart in the West. As the day went on Fergus realised, as had Gow Johnson, that Jopp had raised a demon. The air was electric. The play was drawing near to its climax--an attempt to capture the deputy sheriff, tie him to a tree, and leave him bound and gagged alone in the waste. There was a glitter in Terry's eyes, belying the lips which smiled in keeping with the character he presented. A look of hardness was stamped on his face, and the outlines of the temples were as sharp as the chin was set and the voice slow and penetrating. Molly Mackinder's eyes were riveted on him. She sat very still, her hands clasped in her lap, watching his every move. Instinct told her that Terry was holding himself in; that some latent fierceness and iron force in him had emerged into life; and that he meant to have revenge on Constantine Jopp one way or another, and that soon; for she had heard the rumour flying through the hall that her cousin was the cause of the practical joke just played. From hints she had had from Constantine that very day she knew that the rumour was the truth; and she recalled now with shrinking dislike the grimace accompanying the suggestion. She had not resented it then, being herself angry with Terry because of the little widow at Jansen. Presently the silence in the hall became acute; the senses of the audience were strained to the utmost. The acting before them was more realistic than anything they had ever seen, or were ever likely to see again in La Touche. All three conspirators, Fergus, Holden, and Jopp, realised that O'Ryan's acting had behind it an animal anger which transformed him. When he looked into their eyes it was with a steely directness harder and fiercer than was observed by the audience. Once there was occasion for O'Ryan to catch Fergus by the arm, and Fergus winced from the grip. When standing in the wings with Terry he ventured to apologise playfully for the joke, but Terry made no answer; and once again he had whispered good-naturedly as they stood together on the stage; but the reply had been a low, scornful laugh. Fergus realised that a critical moment was at hand. The play provided for some dialogue between Jopp and Terry, and he observed with anxiety that Terry now interpolated certain phrases meant to warn Constantine, and to excite him to anger also. The moment came upon them sooner than the text of the play warranted. O'Ryan deliberately left out several sentences, and gave a later cue, and the struggle for his capture was precipitated. Terry meant to make the struggle real. So thrilling had been the scene that to an extent the audience was prepared for what followed; but they did not grasp the full reality--that the play was now only a vehicle for a personal issue of a desperate character. No one had ever seen O'Ryan angry; and now that the demon of rage was on him, directed by a will suddenly grown to its full height, they saw not only a powerful character in a powerful melodrama, but a man of wild force. When the three desperadoes closed in on O'Ryan, and, with a blow from the shoulder which was not a pretence, he sent Holden into a far corner gasping for breath and moaning with pain, the audience broke out into wild cheering. It was superb acting, they thought. As most of them had never seen the play, they were not surprised when Holden did not again join the attack on the deputy sheriff. Those who did know the drama--among them Molly Mackinder-- became dismayed, then anxious. Fergus and Jopp knew well from the blow O'Ryan had given that, unless they could drag him down, the end must be disaster to some one. They were struggling with him for personal safety now. The play was forgotten, though mechanically O'Ryan and Fergus repeated the exclamations and the few phrases belonging to the part. Jopp was silent, fighting with a malice which belongs to only half-breed, or half-bred, natures; and from far back in his own nature the distant Indian strain in him was working in savage hatred. The two were desperately hanging on to O'Ryan like pumas on a grizzly, when suddenly, with a twist he had learned from Ogami the Jap on the Smoky River, the slim Fergus was slung backward to the ground with the tendons of his arm strained and the arm itself useless for further work. There remained now Constantine Jopp, heavier and more powerful than O'Ryan. For O'Ryan the theatre, the people, disappeared. He was a boy again on the village green, with the bully before him who had tortured his young days. He forgot the old debt to the foe who saved his life; he forgot everything, except that once again, as of old, Constantine Jopp was fighting him, with long, strong arms trying to bring him to the ground. Jopp's superior height gave him an advantage in a close grip; the strength of his gorilla-like arms was difficult to withstand. Both were forgetful of the world, and the two other injured men, silent and awed, were watching the, fight, in which one of them, at least, was powerless to take part. The audience was breathless. Most now saw the grim reality of the scene before them; and when at last O'Ryan's powerful right hand got a grip upon the throat of Jopp, and they saw the grip tighten, tighten, and Jopp's face go from red to purple, a hundred people gasped. Excited men made as though to move toward the stage; but the majority still believed that it all belonged to the play, and shouted "Sit down!" Suddenly the voice of Gow Johnson was heard "Don't kill him--let go, boy!" The voice rang out with sharp anxiety, and pierced the fog of passion and rage in which O'Ryan was moving. He realised what he was doing, the real sense of it came upon him. Suddenly he let go the lank throat of his enemy, and, by a supreme effort, flung him across the stage, where Jopp lay resting on his hands, his bleared eyes looking at Terry with the fear and horror still in them which had come with that tightening grip on his throat. Silence fell suddenly on the theatre. The audience was standing. A woman sobbed somewhere in a far corner, but the rest were dismayed and speechless. A few steps before them all was Molly Mackinder, white and frightened, but in her eyes was a look of understanding as she gazed at Terry. Breathing hard, Terry stood still in the middle of the stage, the red fog not yet gone out of his eyes, his hands clasped at his side, vaguely realising the audience again. Behind him was the back curtain in which the lights of Orion twinkled aggressively. The three men who had attacked him were still where he had thrown them. The silence was intense, the strain oppressive. But now a drawling voice came from the back of the hall. "Are you watching the rise of Orion?" it said. It was the voice of Gow Johnson. The strain was broken; the audience dissolved in laughter; but it was not hilarious; it was the nervous laughter of relief, touched off by a native humour always present in the dweller of the prairie. "I beg your pardon," said Terry quietly and abstractedly to the audience. And the scene-shifter bethought himself and let down the curtain. The fourth act was not played that night. The people had had more than the worth of their money. In a few moments the stage was crowded with people from the audience, but both Jopp and O'Ryan had disappeared. Among the visitors to the stage was Molly Mackinder. There was a meaning smile upon her face as she said to Dicky Fergus: "It was quite wonderful, wasn't it--like a scene out of the classics--the gladiators or something?" Fergus gave a wary smile as he answered: "Yes. I felt like saying Ave Caesar, Ave! and I watched to see Artemis drop her handkerchief." "She dropped it, but you were too busy to pick it up. It would have been a useful sling for your arm," she added with thoughtful malice. "It seemed so real--you all acted so well, so appropriately. And how you keep it up!" she added, as he cringed when some one knocked against his elbow, hurting the injured tendons. Fergus looked at her meditatively before he answered. "Oh, I think we'll likely keep it up for some time," he rejoined ironically. "Then the play isn't finished?" she added. "There is another act? Yes, I thought there was, the programme said four." "Oh yes, there's another act," he answered, "but it isn't to be played now; and I'm not in it." "No, I suppose you are not in it. You really weren't in the last act. Who will be in it?" Fergus suddenly laughed outright, as he looked at Holden expostulating intently to a crowd of people round him. "Well, honour bright, I don't think there'll be anybody in it except little Conny Jopp and gentle Terry O'Ryan; and Conny mayn't be in it very long. But he'll be in it for a while, I guess. You see, the curtain came down in the middle of a situation, not at the end of it. The curtain has to rise again." "Perhaps Orion will rise again--you think so?" She laughed in satire; for Dicky Fergus had made love to her during the last three months with unsuppressed activity, and she knew him in his sentimental moments; which is fatal. It is fatal if, in a duet, one breathes fire and the other frost. "If you want my opinion," he said in a lower voice, as they moved towards the door, while people tried to listen to them--"if you want it straight, I think Orion has risen--right up where shines the evening star--Oh, say, now," he broke off, "haven't you had enough fun out of me? I tell you, it was touch and go. He nearly broke my arm--would have done it, if I hadn't gone limp to him; and your cousin Conny Jopp, little Conny Jopp, was as near Kingdom Come as a man wants at his age. I saw an elephant go 'must' once in India, and it was as like O'Ryan as putty is to dough. It isn't all over either, for O'Ryan will forget and forgive, and Jopp won't. He's your cousin, but he's a sulker. If he has to sit up nights to do it, he'll try to get back on O'Ryan. He'll sit up nights, but he'll do it, if he can. And whatever it is, it won't be pretty." Outside the door they met Gow Johnson, excitement in his eyes. He heard Fergus's last words. "He'll see Orion rising if he sits up nights," Gow Johnson said. "The game is with Terry--at last." Then he called to the dispersing gossiping crowd: "Hold on--hold on, you people. I've got news for you. Folks, this is O'Ryan's night. It's his in the starry firmament. Look at him shine," he cried, stretching out his arm towards the heavens, where the glittering galaxy hung near the zenith. "Terry O'Ryan, our O'Ryan--he's struck oil--on his ranch it's been struck. Old Vigon found it. Terry's got his own at last. O'Ryan's in it--in it alone. Now, let's hear the prairie-whisper," he shouted, in a great raucous voice. "Let's hear the prairie-whisper. What is it?" The crowd responded in a hoarse shout for O'Ryan and his fortune. Even the women shouted--all except Molly Mackinder. She was wondering if O'Ryan risen would be the same to her as O'Ryan rising. She got into her carriage with a sigh, though she said to the few friends with her: "If it's true, it's splendid. He deserves it too. Oh, I'm glad--I'm so glad." She laughed; but the laugh was a little hysterical. She was both glad and sorry. Yet as she drove home over the prairie she was silent. Far off in the east was a bright light. It was a bonfire built on O'Ryan's ranch, near where he had struck oil--struck it rich. The light grew and grew, and the prairie was alive with people hurrying towards it. La Touche should have had the news hours earlier, but the half-breed French-Canadian, Vigon, who had made the discovery, and had started for La Touche with the news, went suddenly off his head with excitement, and had ridden away into the prairie fiercely shouting his joy to an invisible world. The news had been brought in later by a farmhand. Terry O'Ryan had really struck oil, and his ranch was a scene of decent revelry, of which Gow Johnson was master. But the central figure of it all, the man who had, in truth, risen like a star, had become to La Touche all at once its notoriety as well as its favourite, its great man as well as its friend, he was nowhere to be found. He had been seen riding full speed into the prairie towards the Kourmash Wood, and the starlit night had swallowed him. Constantine Jopp had also disappeared; but at first no one gave that thought or consideration. As the night went on, however, a feeling began to stir which it is not good to rouse in frontier lands. It is sure to exhibit itself in forms more objective than are found in great populations where methods of punishment are various, and even when deadly are often refined. But society in new places has only limited resources, and is thrown back on primary ways and means. La Touche was no exception, and the keener spirits, to whom O'Ryan had ever been "a white man," and who so rejoiced in his good luck now that they drank his health a hundred times in his own whiskey and cider, were simmering with desire for a public reproval of Constantine Jopp's conduct. Though it was pointed out to them by the astute Gow Johnson that Fergus and Holden had participated in the colossal joke of the play, they had learned indirectly also the whole truth concerning the past of the two men. They realised that Fergus and Holden had been duped by Jopp into the escapade. Their primitive sense of justice exonerated the humourists and arraigned the one malicious man. As the night wore on they decided on the punishment to be meted out by La Touche to the man who had not "acted on the square." Gow Johnson saw, too late, that he had roused a spirit as hard to appease as the demon roused in O'Ryan earlier in the evening. He would have enjoyed the battue of punishment under ordinary circumstances; but he knew that Miss Molly Mackinder would be humiliated and indignant at the half-savage penalty they meant to exact. He had determined that O'Ryan should marry her; and this might be an obstruction in the path. It was true that O'Ryan now would be a rich man--one of the richest in the West, unless all signs failed; but meanwhile a union of fortunes would only be an added benefit. Besides, he had seen that O'Ryan was in earnest, and what O'Ryan wanted he himself wanted even more strongly. He was not concerned greatly for O'Ryan's absence. He guessed that Terry had ridden away into the night to work off the dark spirit that was on him, to have it out with himself. Gow Johnson was a philosopher. He was twenty years older than O'Ryan, and he had studied his friend as a pious monk his missal. He was right in his judgment. When Terry left the theatre he was like one in a dream, every nerve in his body at tension, his head aflame, his pulses throbbing. For miles he rode away into the waste along the northern trail, ever away from La Touche and his own home. He did not know of the great good fortune that had come to him; and if, in this hour, he had known, he would not have cared. As he rode on and on remorse drew him into its grasp. Shame seized him that he had let passion be his master, that he had lost his self-control, had taken a revenge out of all proportion to the injury and insult to himself. It did not ease his mind that he knew Constantine Jopp had done the thing out of meanness and malice; for he was alive to-night in the light of the stars, with the sweet crisp air blowing in his face, because of an act of courage on the part of his schooldays' foe. He remembered now that, when he was drowning, he had clung to Jopp with frenzied arms and had endangered the bully's life also. The long torture of owing this debt to so mean a soul was on him still, was rooted in him; but suddenly, in the silent searching night, some spirit whispered in his ear that this was the price which he must pay for his life saved to the world, a compromise with the Inexorable Thing. On the verge of oblivion and the end, he had been snatched back by relenting Fate, which requires something for something given, when laws are overridden and doom defeated. Yes, the price he was meant to pay was gratitude to one of shrivelled soul and innate antipathy; and he had not been man enough to see the trial through to the end! With a little increased strain put upon his vanity and pride he had run amuck. Like some heathen gladiator he had ravaged in the ring. He had gone down into the basements of human life and there made a cockpit for his animal rage, till, in the contest, brain and intellect had been saturated by the fumes and sweat of fleshly fury. How quiet the night was, how soothing to the fevered mind and body, how the cool air laved the heated head and flushed the lungs of the rheum of passion! He rode on and on, farther and farther away from home, his back upon the scenes where his daily deeds were done. It was long past midnight before he turned his horse's head again homeward. Buried in his thoughts, now calm and determined, with a new life grown up in him, a new strength different from the mastering force which gave him a strength in the theatre like one in delirium, he noticed nothing. He was only conscious of the omniscient night and its warm penetrating friendliness; as, in a great trouble, when no words can be spoken, a cool kind palm steals into the trembling hand of misery and stills it, gives it strength and life and an even pulse. He was now master in the house of his soul, and had no fear or doubt as to the future, or as to his course. His first duty was to go to Constantine Jopp, and speak his regret like a man. And after that it would be his duty to carry a double debt his life long for the life saved, for the wrong done. He owed an apology to La Touche, and he was scarcely aware that the native gentlemanliness in him had said through his fever of passion over the footlights: "I beg your pardon." In his heart he felt that he had offered a mean affront to every person present, to the town where his interests lay, where his heart lay. Where his heart lay--Molly Mackinder! He knew now that vanity had something to do, if not all to do, with his violent acts, and though there suddenly shot through his mind, as he rode back, a savage thrill at the remembrance of how he had handled the three, it was only a passing emotion. He was bent on putting himself right with Jopp and with La Touche. With the former his way was clear; he did not yet see his way as to La Touche. How would he be able to make the amende honorable to La Touche? By and by he became somewhat less absorbed and enveloped by the comforting night. He saw the glimmer of red light afar, and vaguely wondered what it was. It was in the direction of O'Ryan's Ranch, but he thought nothing of it, because it burned steadily. It was probably a fire lighted by settlers trailing to the farther north. While the night wore on he rode as slowly back to the town as he had galloped from it like a centaur with a captive. Again and again Molly Mackinder's face came before him; but he resolutely shut it out of his thoughts. He felt that he had no right to think of her until he had "done the right thing" by Jopp and by La Touche. Yet the look in her face as the curtain came down, it was not that of one indifferent to him or to what he did. He neared the town half-way between midnight and morning. Almost unconsciously avoiding the main streets, he rode a roundabout way towards the little house where Constantine Jopp lived. He could hear loud noises in the streets, singing, and hoarse shouts. Then silence came, then shouts, and silence again. It was all quiet as he rode up to Jopp's house, standing on the outskirts of the town. There was a bright light in the window of a room. Jopp, then, was still up. He would not wait till tomorrow. He would do the right thing now. He would put things straight with his foe before he slept; he would do it at any sacrifice to his pride. He had conquered his pride. He dismounted, threw the bridle over a post, and, going into the garden, knocked gently at the door. There was no response. He knocked again, and listened intently. Now he heard a sound-like a smothered cry or groan. He opened the door quickly and entered. It was dark. In another room beyond was a light. From it came the same sound he had heard before, but louder; also there was a shuffling footstep. Springing forward to the half-open door, he pushed it wide, and met the terror- stricken eyes of Constantine Jopp--the same look that he had seen at the theatre when his hands were on Jopp's throat, but more ghastly. Jopp was bound to a chair by a lasso. Both arms were fastened to the chair-arm, and beneath them, on the floor, were bowls into which blood dripped from his punctured wrists. He had hardly taken it all in--the work of an instant--when he saw crouched in a corner, madness in his eyes, his half-breed Vigon. He grasped the situation in a flash. Vigon had gone mad, had lain in wait in Jopp's house, and when the man he hated had seated himself in the chair, had lassoed him, bound him, and was slowly bleeding him to death. He had no time to think. Before he could act Vigon was upon him also, frenzy in his eyes, a knife clutched in his hand. Reason had fled, and he only saw in O'Ryan the frustrator of his revenge. He had watched the drip, drip from his victim's wrists with a dreadful joy. They were man and man, but O'Ryan found in this grisly contest a vaster trial of strength than in the fight upon the stage a few hours ago. The first lunge that Vigon made struck him on the tip of the shoulder, and drew blood; but he caught the hand holding the knife in an iron grasp, while the half-breed, with superhuman strength, tried in vain for the long brown throat of the man for whom he had struck oil. As they struggled and twisted, the eyes of the victim in the chair watched them with agonised emotions. For him it was life or death. He could not cry out--his mouth was gagged; but to O'Ryan his groans were like a distant echo of his own hoarse gasps as he fought his desperate fight. Terry was as one in an awful dream battling with vague impersonal powers which slowly strangled his life, yet held him back in torture from the final surrender. For minutes they struggled. At last O'Ryan's strength came to the point of breaking, for Vigon was a powerful man, and to this was added a madman's energy. He felt that the end was coming. But all at once, through the groans of the victim in the chair, Terry became conscious of noises outside--such noises as he had heard before he entered the house, only nearer and louder. At the same time he heard a horse's hoofs, then a knock at the door, and a voice calling: "Jopp! Jopp!" He made a last desperate struggle, and shouted hoarsely. An instant later there were footsteps in the room, followed by a cry of fright and amazement. It was Gow Johnson. He had come to warn Constantine Jopp that a crowd were come to tar and feather him, and to get him away on his own horse. Now he sprang to the front door, called to the approaching crowd for help, then ran back to help O'Ryan. A moment later a dozen men had Vigon secure, and had released Constantine Jopp, now almost dead from loss of blood. As they took the gag from his mouth and tied their handkerchiefs round his bleeding wrists, Jopp sobbed aloud. His eyes were fixed on Terry O'Ryan. Terry met the look, and grasped the limp hand lying on the chair-arm. "I'm sorry, O'Ryan, I'm sorry for all I've done to you," Jopp sobbed. "I was a sneak, but I want to own it. I want to be square now. You can tar and feather me, if you like. I deserve it." He looked at the others. "I deserve it," he repeated. "That's what the boys had thought would be appropriate," said Gow Johnson with a dry chuckle, and the crowd looked at each other and winked. The wink was kindly, however. "To own up and take your gruel" was the easiest way to touch the men of the prairie. A half-hour later the roisterers, who had meant to carry Constantine Jopp on a rail, carried Terry O'Ryan on their shoulders through the town, against his will. As they passed the house where Miss Mackinder lived some one shouted: "Are you watching the rise of Orion?" Many a time thereafter Terry O'Ryan and Molly Mackinder looked at the galaxy in the evening sky with laughter and with pride. It had played its part with Fate against Constantine Jopp and the little widow at Jansen. It had never shone so brightly as on the night when Vigon struck oil on O'Ryan's ranch. But Vigon had no memory of that. Such is the irony of life. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Babbling covers a lot of secrets Beneath it all there was a little touch of ridicule What'll be the differ a hundred years from now NORTHERN LIGHTS By Gilbert Parker Volume 5. THE ERROR OF THE DAY THE WHISPERER AS DEEP AS THE SEA THE ERROR OF THE DAY The "Error of the Day" may be defined as "The difference between the distance or range which must be put upon the sights in order to hit the target and the actual distance from the gun to the target."--Admiralty Note. A great naval gun never fires twice alike. It varies from day to day, and expert allowance has to be made in sighting every time it is fired. Variations in atmosphere, condition of ammunition, and the wear of the gun are the contributory causes to the ever-varying "Error of the Day." ......................... "Say, ain't he pretty?" "A Jim-dandy-oh, my!" "What's his price in the open market?" "Thirty millions-I think not." Then was heard the voice of Billy Goat--his name was William Goatry "Out in the cold world, out in the street; Nothing to wear, and nothing to eat, Fatherless, motherless, sadly I roam, Child of misfortune, I'm driven from home." A loud laugh followed, for Billy Goat was a popular person at Kowatin in the Saskatchewan country. He had an inimitable drollery, heightened by a cast in his eye, a very large mouth, and a round, good-humoured face; also he had a hand and arm like iron, and was altogether a great man on a "spree." There had been a two days' spree at Kowatin, for no other reason than that there had been great excitement over the capture and the subsequent escape of a prairie-rover, who had robbed the contractor's money-chest at the rail-head on the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Forty miles from Kowatin he had been caught by, and escaped from, the tall, brown-eyed man with the hard-bitten face who leaned against the open window of the tavern, looking indifferently at the jeering crowd before him. For a police officer he was not unpopular with them, but he had been a failure for once, and, as Billy Goat had said: "It tickled us to death to see a rider of the plains off his trolley--on the cold, cold ground, same as you and me." They did not undervalue him. If he had been less a man than he was, they would not have taken the trouble to cover him with their drunken ribaldry. He had scored off them in the past in just such sprees as this, when he had the power to do so, and used the power good-naturedly and quietly--but used it. Then, he was Sergeant Foyle of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, on duty in a district as large as the United Kingdom. And he had no greater admirer than Billy Goat, who now reviled him. Not without cause, in a way, for he had reviled himself to this extent, that when the prairie- rover, Halbeck, escaped on the way to Prince Albert, after six months' hunt for him and a final capture in the Kowatin district, Foyle resigned the Force before the Commissioner could reproach him or call him to account. Usually so exact, so certain of his target, some care had not been taken, he had miscalculated, and there had been the Error of the Day. Whatever it was, it had seemed to him fatal; and he had turned his face from the barrack yard. Then he had made his way to the Happy Land Hotel at Kowatin, to begin life as "a free and independent gent on the loose," as Billy Goat had said. To resign had seemed extreme; because, though the Commissioner was vexed at Halbeck's escape, Foyle was the best non-commissioned officer in the Force. He had frightened horse thieves and bogus land-agents and speculators out of the country; had fearlessly tracked down a criminal or a band of criminals when the odds were heavy against him. He carried on his cheek the scars of two bullets, and there was one white lock in his brown hair, where an arrow had torn the scalp away as, alone, he drove into the Post a score of Indians, fresh from raiding the cattle of an immigrant trailing north. Now he was out of work, or so it seemed; he had stepped down from his scarlet-coated dignity, from the place of guardian and guide of civilisation, into the idleness of a tavern stoop. As the little group swayed round him, and Billy Goat started another song, Foyle roused himself as though to move away--he was waiting for the mail-stage to take him south: "Oh, father, dear father, come home with me now, The clock in the steeple strikes one; You said you were coming right home from the shop As soon as your day's work was done. Come home--come home--" The song arrested him, and he leaned back against the window again. A curious look came into his eyes, a look that had nothing to do with the acts of the people before him. It was searching into a scene beyond this bright sunlight and the far green-brown grass, and the little oasis of trees in the distance marking a homestead and the dust of the wagon- wheels, out on the trail beyond the grain-elevator-beyond the blue horizon's rim, quivering in the heat, and into regions where this crisp, clear, life-giving, life-saving air never blew. "You said you were coming right home from the shop As soon as your day's work was done. Come home--come home--" He remembered when he had first heard this song in a play called 'Ten Nights in a Bar-room', many years before, and how it had wrenched his heart and soul, and covered him with a sudden cloud of shame and anger. For his father had been a drunkard, and his brother had grown up a drunkard, that brother whom he had not seen for ten years until--until-- He shuddered, closed his eyes, as though to shut out something that the mind saw. He had had a rough life, he had become inured to the seamy side of things--there was a seamy side even in this clean, free, wide land; and he had no sentimentality; though something seemed to hurt and shame him now. "As soon as your day's work was done. Come home--come home--" The crowd was uproarious. The exhilaration had become a kind of delirium. Men were losing their heads; there was an element of irresponsibility in the new outbreak likely to breed some violent act, which every man of them would lament when sober again. Nettlewood Foyle watched the dust rising from the wheels of the stage, which had passed the elevator and was nearing the Prairie Home Hotel far down the street. He would soon leave behind him this noisy ribaldry of which he was the centre. He tossed his cheroot away. Suddenly he heard a low voice behind him. "Why don't you hit out, sergeant?" it said. He started almost violently, and turned round. Then his face flushed, his eyes blurred with feeling and deep surprise, and his lips parted in a whispered exclamation and greeting. A girl's face from the shade of the sitting-room was looking out at him, half-smiling, but with heightened colour and a suppressed agitation. The girl was not more than twenty-five, graceful, supple, and strong. Her chin was dimpled; across her right temple was a slight scar. She had eyes of a wonderful deep blue; they seemed to swim with light. As Foyle gazed at her for a moment dumfounded, with a quizzical suggestion and smiling still a little more, she said: "You used to be a little quicker, Nett." The voice appeared to attempt unconcern; but it quivered from a force of feeling underneath. It was so long since she had seen him. He was about to reply, but, at the instant, a reveller pushed him with a foot behind the knees so that they were sprung forward. The crowd laughed--all save Billy Goat, who knew his man. Like lightning, and with cold fury in his eyes, Foyle caught the tall cattleman by the forearm, and, with a swift, dexterous twist, had the fellow in his power. "Down--down, to your knees, you skunk," he said in a low, fierce voice. The knees of the big man bent,--Foyle had not taken lessons of Ogami, the Jap, for nothing--they bent, and the cattleman squealed, so intense was the pain. It was break or bend; and he bent--to the ground and lay there. Foyle stood over him for a moment, a hard light in his eyes, and then, as if bethinking himself, he looked at the other roisterers, and said: "There's a limit, and he reached it. Your mouths are your own, and you can blow off to suit your fancy, but if any one thinks I'm a tame coyote to be poked with a stick--!" He broke off, stooped over, and helped the man before him to his feet. The arm had been strained, and the big fellow nursed it. "Hell, but you're a twister!" the cattleman said with a grimace of pain. Billy Goat was a gentleman, after his kind, and he liked Sergeant Foyle with a great liking. He turned to the crowd and spoke. "Say, boys, this mine's worked out. Let's leave the Happy Land to Foyle. Boys, what is he--what--is he? What--is--Sergeant Foyle--boys?" The roar of the song they all knew came in reply, as Billy Goat waved his arms about like the wild leader of a wild orchestra: "Sergeant Foyle, oh, he's a knocker from the West, He's a chase-me-Charley, come-and-kiss-me tiger from the zoo; He's a dandy on the pinch, and he's got a double cinch On the gent that's going careless, and he'll soon cinch you: And he'll soon--and he'll soon--cinch you!" Foyle watched them go, dancing, stumbling, calling back at him, as they moved towards the Prairie Home Hotel: "And he'll soon-and he'll soon-cinch you!" His under lip came out, his eyes half-closed, as he watched them. "I've done my last cinch. I've done my last cinch," he murmured. Then, suddenly, the look in his face changed, the eyes swam as they had done a minute before at the sight of the girl in the room behind. Whatever his trouble was, that face had obscured it in a flash, and the pools of feeling far down in the depths of a lonely nature had been stirred. Recognition, memory, tenderness, desire swam in his face, made generous and kind the hard lines of the strong mouth. In an instant he had swung himself over the window-sill. The girl had drawn away now into a more shaded corner of the room, and she regarded him with a mingled anxiety and eagerness. Was she afraid of something? Did she fear that --she knew not quite what, but it had to do with a long ago. "It was time you hit out, Nett," she said, half shyly. "You're more patient than you used to be, but you're surer. My, that was a twist you gave him, Nett. Aren't you glad to see me?" she added hastily, and with an effort to hide her agitation. He reached out and took her hand with a strange shyness, and a self- consciousness which was alien to his nature. The touch of her hand thrilled him. Their eyes met. She dropped hers. Then he gathered him self together. "Glad to see you? Of course, of course, I'm glad. You stunned me, Jo. Why, do you know where you are? You're a thousand miles from home. I can't get it through my head, not really. What brings you here? It's ten years--ten years since I saw you, and you were only fifteen, but a fifteen that was as good as twenty." He scanned her face closely. "What's that scar on your forehead, Jo? You hadn't that--then." "I ran up against something," she said evasively, her eyes glittering, "and it left that scar. Does it look so bad?" "No, you'd never notice it, if you weren't looking close as I am. You see, I knew your face so well ten years ago." He shook his head with a forced kind of smile. It became him, however, for he smiled rarely; and the smile was like a lantern turned on his face; it gave light and warmth to its quiet strength-or hardness. "You were always quizzing," she said with an attempt at a laugh--"always trying to find out things. That's why you made them reckon with you out here. You always could see behind things; always would have your own way; always were meant to be a success." She was beginning to get control of herself again, was trying hard to keep things on the surface. "You were meant to succeed--you had to," she added. "I've been a failure--a dead failure," he answered slowly. "So they say. So they said. You heard them, Jo." He jerked his head towards the open window. "Oh, those drunken fools!" she exclaimed indignantly, and her face hardened. "How I hate drink! It spoils everything." There was silence for a moment. They were both thinking of the same thing--of the same man. He repeated a question. "What brings you out here, Jo?" he asked gently. "Dorland," she answered, her face setting into determination and anxiety. His face became pinched. "Dorl!" he said heavily. "What for, Jo? What do you want with Dorl?" "When Cynthy died she left her five hundred dollars a year to the baby, and--" "Yes, yes, I know. Well, Jo?" "Well, it was all right for five years--Dorland paid it in; but for five years he hasn't paid anything. He's taken it, stolen it from his own child by his own honest wife. I've come to get it--anyway, to stop him from doing it any more. His own child--it puts murder in my heart, Nett! I could kill him." He nodded grimly. "That's likely. And you've kept, Dorl's child with your own money all these years?" "I've got four hundred dollars a year, Nett, you know; and I've been dressmaking--they say I've got taste," she added, with a whimsical smile. Nett nodded his head. "Five years. That's twenty-five hundred dollars he's stolen from his own child. It's eight years old now, isn't it?" "Bobby is eight and a half," she answered. "And his schooling, and his clothing, and everything; and you have to pay for it all?" "Oh, I don't mind, Nett, it isn't that. Bobby is Cynthy's child; and I love him--love him; but I want him to have his rights. Dorl must give up his hold on that money--or--" He nodded gravely. "Or you'll set the law on him?" "It's one thing or the other. Better to do it now when Bobby is young and can't understand." "Or read the newspapers," he commented thoughtfully. "I don't think I've a hard heart," she continued, "but I'd like to punish him, if it wasn't that he's your brother, Nett; and if it wasn't for Bobby. Dorland was dreadfully cruel, even to Cynthy." "How did you know he was up here?" he asked. "From the lawyer that pays over the money. Dorland has had it sent out here to Kowatin this two years. And he sent word to the lawyer a month ago that he wanted it to get here as usual. The letter left the same day as I did, and it got here yesterday with me, I suppose. He'll be after it-perhaps to-day. He wouldn't let it wait long, Dorl wouldn't." Foyle started. "To-day--to-day--" There was a gleam in his eyes, a setting of the lips, a line sinking into the forehead between the eyes. "I've been watching for him all day, and I'll watch till he comes. I'm going to say some things to him that he won't forget. I'm going to get Bobby's money, or have the law do it--unless you think I'm a brute, Nett." She looked at him wistfully. "That's all right. Don't worry about me, Jo. He's my brother, but I know him--I know him through and through. He's done everything that a man can do and not be hanged. A thief, a drunkard, and a brute--and he killed a man out here," he added hoarsely. "I found it out myself-- myself. It was murder." Suddenly, as he looked at her, an idea seemed to flash into his mind. He came very near and looked at her closely. Then he reached over and almost touched the scar on her forehead. "Did he do that, Jo?" For an instant she was silent and looked down at the floor. Presently she raised her eyes, her face suffused. Once or twice she tried to speak, but failed. At last she gained courage and said: "After Cynthy's death I kept house for him for a year, taking care of little Bobby. I loved Bobby so--he has Cynthy's eyes. One day Dorland --oh, Nett, of course I oughtn't to have stayed there, I know it now; but I was only sixteen, and what did I understand! And my mother was dead. One day--oh, please, Nett, you can guess. He said something to me. I made him leave the house. Before I could make plans what to do, he came back mad with drink. I went for Bobby, to get out of the house, but he caught hold of me. I struck him in the face, and he threw me against the edge of the open door. It made the scar." Foyle's face was white. "Why did you never write and tell me that, Jo? You know that I--" He stopped suddenly. "You had gone out of our lives down there. I didn't know where you were for a long time; and then--then it was all right about Bobby and me, except that Bobby didn't get the money that was his. But now--" Foyle's voice was hoarse and low. "He made that scar, and he--and you only sixteen--Oh, my God!" Suddenly his face reddened, and he choked with shame and anger. "And he's my brother!" was all that he could say. "Do you see him up here ever?" she asked pityingly. "I never saw him till a week ago." A moment, then he added: "The letter wasn't to be sent here in his own name, was it?" She nodded. "Yes, in his own name, Dorland W. Foyle. Didn't he go by that name when you saw him?" There was an oppressive silence, in which she saw that something moved him strangely, and then he answered: "No, he was going by the name of Halbeck--Hiram Halbeck." The girl gasped. Then the whole thing burst upon her. "Hiram Halbeck! Hiram Halbeck, the thief--I read it all in the papers--the thief that you caught, and that got away. And you've left the Mounted Police because of it--oh, Nett!" Her eyes were full of tears, her face was drawn and grey. He nodded. "I didn't know who he was till I arrested him," he said. "Then, afterward, I thought of his child, and let him get away; and for my poor old mother's sake. She never knew how bad he was even as a boy. But I remember how he used to steal and drink the brandy from her bedside, when she had the fever. She never knew the worst of him. But I let him away in the night, Jo, and I resigned, and they thought that Halbeck had beaten me, had escaped. Of course I couldn't stay in the Force, having done that. But, by the heaven above us, if I had him here now, I'd do the thing--do it, so help me God!" "Why should you ruin your life for him?" she said, with an outburst of indignation. All that was in her heart welled up in her eyes at the thought of what Foyle was. "You must not do it. You shall not do it. He must pay for his wickedness, not you. It would be a sin. You and what becomes of you mean so much." Suddenly with a flash of purpose she added: "He will come for that letter, Nett. He would run any kind of risk to get a dollar. He will come here for that letter--perhaps today." He shook his head moodily, oppressed by the trouble that was on him. "He's not likely to venture here, after what's happened." "You don't know him as well as I do, Nett. He is so vain he'd do it, just to show that he could. He'd' probably come in the evening. Does any one know him here? So many people pass through Kowatin every day. Has any one seen him?" "Only Billy Goatry," he answered, working his way to a solution of the dark problem. "Only Billy Goatry knows him. The fellow that led the singing--that was Goatry." "There he is now," he added, as Billy Goat passed the window. She came and laid a hand on his arm. "We've got to settle things with him," she said. "If Dorl comes, Nett--" There was silence for a moment, then he caught her hand in his and held it. "If he comes, leave him to me, Jo. You will leave him to me?" he added anxiously. "Yes," she answered. "You'll do what's right-by Bobby?" "And by Dorl, too," he replied strangely. There were loud footsteps without. "It's Goatry," said Foyle. "You stay here. I'll tell him everything. He's all right; he's a true friend. He'll not interfere." The handle of the door turned slowly. "You keep watch on the post- office, Jo," he added. Goatry came round the opening door with a grin. "Hope I don't intrude," he said, stealing a half-leering look at the girl. As soon as he saw her face, however, he straightened himself up and took on different manners. He had not been so intoxicated as he had made, out, and he seemed only "mellow" as he stood before them, with his corrugated face and queer, quaint look, the eye with the cast in it blinking faster than the. other. "It's all right, Goatry," said Foyle. "This lady is, one of my family from the East." "Goin' on by stage?" Goatry said vaguely, as they shook hands. She did not reply, for she was looking down the street, and presently she started as she gazed. She laid a hand suddenly on Foyle's arm. "See--he's come," she said in a whisper, and as though not realising Goatry's presence. "He's come." Goatry looked as well as Foyle. "Halbeck--the devil!" he said. Foyle turned to him. "Stand by, Goatry. I want you to keep a shut mouth. I've work to do." Goatry held out his hand. "I'm with you. If you get him this time, clamp him, clamp him like a tooth in a harrow." Halbeck had stopped his horse at the post-office door. Dismounting he looked quickly round, then drew the reins over the horse's head, letting them trail, as is the custom of the West. A few swift words passed between Goatry and Foyle. "I'll do this myself, Jo," he whispered to the girl presently. "Go into another room. I'll bring him here." In another minute Goatry was leading the horse away from the post-office, while Foyle stood waiting quietly at the door. The departing footsteps of the horse brought Halbeck swiftly to the doorway, with a letter in his hand. "Hi, there, you damned sucker!" he called after Goatry, and then saw Foyle waiting. "What the hell--!" he said fiercely, his hand on something in his hip pocket. "Keep quiet, Dorl. I want to have a little talk with you. Take your hand away from that gun--take it away," he added with a meaning not to be misunderstood. Halbeck knew that one shout would have the town on him, and he did not know what card his brother was going to play. He let his arm drop to his side. "What's your game? What do you want?" he asked surlily. "Come over to the Happy Land Hotel," Foyle answered, and in the light of what was in his mind his words had a grim irony. With a snarl Halbeck stepped out. Goatry, who had handed the horse over to the hostler, watched them coming. "Why did I never notice the likeness before?" Goatry said to himself. "But, gosh! what a difference in the men. Foyle's going to double cinch him this time, I guess." He followed them inside the hall of the Happy Land. When they stepped into the sitting-room, he stood at the door waiting. The hotel was entirely empty, the roisterers at the Prairie Home having drawn off the idlers and spectators. The barman was nodding behind the bar, the proprietor was moving about in the backyard inspecting a horse. There was a cheerful warmth everywhere, the air was like an elixir, the pungent smell of a pine-tree at the door gave a kind of medicament to the indrawn breath. And to Billy Goat, who sometimes sang in the choir of a church not a hundred miles away--for people agreed to forget his occasional sprees--there came, he knew not why, the words of a hymn he had sung only the preceding Sunday: "As pants the hart for cooling streams, When heated in the chase--" The words kept ringing in his ears as he listened to the conversation inside the room--the partition was thin, the door thinner, and he heard much. Foyle had asked him not to intervene, but only to stand by and await the issue of this final conference. He meant, however, to take a hand in, if he thought he was needed, and he kept his ear glued to the door. If he thought Foyle needed him--his fingers were on the handle of the door. "Now, hurry up! What do you want with me?" asked Halbeck of his brother. "Take your time," said ex-Sergeant Foyle, as he drew the blind three- quarters down, so that they could not be seen from the street. "I'm in a hurry, I tell you. I've got my plans. I'm going South. I've only just time to catch the Canadian Pacific three days from now, riding hard." "You're not going South, Dorl." "Where am I going, then?" was the sneering reply. "Not farther than the Happy Land." "What the devil's all this? You don't mean you're trying to arrest me again, after letting me go?" "You don't need to ask. You're my prisoner. You're my prisoner," he said in a louder voice--" until you free yourself." "I'll do that damn quick, then," said the other, his hand flying to his hip. "Sit down," was the sharp rejoinder, and a pistol was in his face before he could draw his own weapon. "Put your gun on the table," Foyle said quietly. Halbeck did so. There was no other way. Foyle drew it over to himself. His brother made a motion to rise. "Sit still, Dorl," came the warning voice. White with rage, the freebooter sat still, his dissipated face and heavy angry lips looking like a debauched and villainous caricature of his brother before him. "Yes, I suppose you'd have potted me, Dorl," said the ex-sergeant. "You'd have thought no more of doing that than you did of killing Linley, the ranchman; than you did of trying to ruin Jo Byndon, your wife's sister, when she was sixteen years old, when she was caring for your child--giving her life for the child you brought into the world." "What in the name of hell--it's a lie!" "Don't bluster. I know the truth." "Who told you-the truth?" "She did--to-day--an hour ago." "She here--out here?" There was a new cowed note in the voice. "She is in the next room." "What did she come here for?" "To make you do right by your own child. I wonder what a jury of decent men would think about a man who robbed his child for five years, and let that child be fed and clothed and cared for by the girl he tried to destroy, the girl he taught what sin there was in the world." "She put you up to this. She was always in love with you, and you know it." There was a dangerous look in Foyle's eyes, and his jaw set hard. "There would be no shame in a decent woman caring for me, even if it was true. I haven't put myself outside the boundary as you have. You're my brother, but you're the worst scoundrel in the country--the worst unhanged. Put on the table there the letter in your pocket. It holds five hundred dollars belonging to your child. There's twenty-five hundred dollars more to be accounted for." The other hesitated, then with an oath threw the letter on the table. "I'll pay the rest as soon as I can, if you'll stop this damned tomfoolery," he said sullenly, for he saw that he was in a hole. "You'll pay it, I suppose, out of what you stole from the C.P.R. contractor's chest. No, I don't think that will do." "You want me to go to prison, then?" "I think not. The truth would come out at the trial--the whole truth-- the murder, and all. There's your child Bobby. You've done him enough wrong already. Do you want him--but it doesn't matter whether you do or not--do you want him to carry through life the fact that his father was a jail-bird and a murderer, just as Jo Byndon carries the scar you made when you threw her against the door?" "What do you want with me, then?" The man sank slowly and heavily back into the chair. "There is a way--have you never thought of it? When you threatened others as you did me, and life seemed such a little thing in others --can't you think?" Bewildered, the man looked around helplessly. In the silence which followed Foyle's words his brain was struggling to see a way out. Foyle's further words seemed to come from a great distance. "It's not too late to do the decent thing. You'll never repent of all you've done; you'll never do different." The old reckless, irresponsible spirit revived in the man; he had both courage and bravado, he was not hopeless yet of finding an escape from the net. He would not beg, he would struggle. "I've lived as I meant to, and I'm not going to snivel or repent now. It's all a rotten business, anyhow," he rejoined. With a sudden resolution the ex-sergeant put his own pistol in his pocket, then pushed Halbeck's pistol over towards him on the table. Halbeck's eyes lighted eagerly, grew red with excitement, then a change passed over them. They now settled on the pistol, and stayed. He heard Foyle's voice. "It's with you to do what you ought to do. Of course you can kill me. My pistol's in my pocket. But I don't think you will. You've murdered one man. You won't load your soul up with another. Besides, if you kill me, you will never get away from Kowatin alive. But it's with you--take your choice. It's me or you." Halbeck's fingers crept out and found the pistol. "Do your duty, Dorl," said the ex-sergeant as he turned his back on his brother. The door of the room opened, and Goatry stepped inside softly. He had work to do, if need be, and his face showed it. Halbeck did not see him. There was a demon in Halbeck's eyes, as his brother stood, his back turned, taking his chances. A large mirror hung on the wall opposite Halbeck. Goatry was watching Halbeck's face in the glass, and saw the danger. He measured his distance. All at once Halbeck caught Goatry's face in the mirror. The dark devilry faded out of his eyes. His lips moved in a whispered oath. Every way was blocked. With a sudden wild resolution he raised the pistol to his head. It cracked, and he fell back heavily in the chair. There was a red trickle at the temple. He had chosen the best way out. "He had the pluck," said Goatry, as Foyle swung round with a face of misery. A moment afterward came a rush of people. Goatry kept them back. "Sergeant Foyle arrested Halbeck, and Halbeck's shot himself," Goatry explained to them. A white-faced girl with a scar on her temple made her way into the room. "Come away-come away, Jo," said the voice of the man she loved; and he did not let her see the lifeless figure in the chair. Three days later the plains swallowed them, as they made their way with Billy Goatry to the headquarters of the Riders of the Plains, where Sergeant Foyle was asked to reconsider his resignation: which he did. THE WHISPERER "And thou shalt be brought down and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be as of one that hath a familiar spirit out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust." The harvest was all in, and, as far as eye could observe nothing remained of the golden sea of wheat which had covered the wide prairie save the yellow stubble, the bed of an ocean of wealth which had been gathered. Here, the yellow level was broken by a dark patch of fallow land, there, by a covert of trees also tinged with yellow, or deepening to crimson and mauve--the harbinger of autumn. The sun had not the insistent and intensive strength of more southerly climes; it was buoyant, confident and heartening, and it shone in a turquoise vault which covered and endeared the wide, even world beneath. Now and then a flock of wild ducks whirred past, making for the marshes or the innumerable lakes that vitalised the expanse, or buzzards hunched heavily along, frightened from some far resort by eager sportsmen. That was above; but beneath, on a level with the unlifted eye, were houses here and there, looking in the vastness like dolls' habitations. Many of the houses stood blank and staring in the expanse, but some had trees, and others little oases of green. Everywhere prosperity, everywhere the strings of life pulled taut, signs that energy had been straining on the leash. Yet there was one spot where it seemed that deadness made encampment. It could not be seen in the sweep of the eye, you must have travelled and looked vigilantly to find it; but it was there--a lake shimmering in the eager sun, washing against a reedy shore, a little river running into the reedy lake at one end and out at, the other, a small, dilapidated house half hid in a wood that stretched for half a mile or so upon a rising ground. In front of the house, not far from the lake, a man was lying asleep upon the ground, a rough felt hat drawn over his eyes. Like the house, the man seemed dilapidated also: a slovenly, ill-dressed, demoralised figure he looked, even with his face covered. He seemed in a deep sleep. Wild ducks settled on the lake not far from him with a swish and flutter; a coyote ran past, veering as it saw the recumbent figure; a prairie hen rustled by with a shrill cluck, but he seemed oblivious to all. If asleep, he was evidently dreaming, for now and then he started, or his body twitched, and a muttering came from beneath the hat. The battered house, the absence of barn or stable or garden, or any token of thrift or energy, marked the man as an excrescence in this theatre of hope and fruitful toil. It all belonged to some degenerate land, some exhausted civilisation, not to this field of vigour where life rang like silver. So the man lay for hour upon hour. He slept as though he had been upon a long journey in which the body was worn to helplessness. Or was it that sleep of the worn-out spirit which, tortured by remembrance and remorse, at last sinks into the depths where the conscious vexes the unconscious --a little of fire, a little of ice, and now and then the turn of the screw? The day marched nobly on towards evening, growing out of its blue and silver into a pervasive golden gleam; the bare, greyish houses on the prairie were transformed into miniature palaces of light. Presently a girl came out of the woods behind, looking at the neglected house with a half-pitying curiosity. She carried in one hand a fishing rod which had been telescoped till it was no bigger than a cane; in the other she carried a small fishing basket. Her father's shooting and fishing camp was a few miles away by a lake of greater size than this which she approached. She had tired of the gay company in camp, brought up for sport from beyond the American border where she also belonged, and she had come to explore the river running into this reedy lake. She turned from the house and came nearer to the lake, shaking her head, as though compassionating the poor, folk who lived there. She was beautiful. Her hair was brown, going to tawny, but in this soft light which enwrapped her, she was in a sort of topaz flame. As she came on, suddenly she stopped as though transfixed. She saw the man--and saw also a tragedy afoot. The man stirred violently in his sleep, cried out, and started up. As he did so, a snake, disturbed in its travel past him, suddenly raised itself in anger. Startled out of sleep by some inner torture, the man heard the sinister rattle he knew so well, and gazed paralysed. The girl had been but a few feet away when she first saw the man and his angry foe. An instant, then, with the instinct of the woods and the plains, and the courage that has habitation everywhere, dropping her basket she sprang forward noiselessly. The short, telescoped fishing rod she carried swung round her head and completed its next half-circle at the head of the reptile, even as it was about to strike. The blow was sure, and with half-severed head the snake fell dead upon the ground beside the man. He was like one who has been projected from one world to another, dazed, stricken, fearful. Presently the look of agonised dismay gave way to such an expression of relief as might come upon the face of a reprieved victim about to be given to the fire, or to the knife that flays. The place of dreams from which he had emerged was like hell, and this was some world of peace that he had not known these many years. Always one had been at his elbow--"a familiar spirit out of the ground"--whispering in his ear. He had been down in the abysses of life. He glanced again at the girl, and realised what she had done: she had saved his life. Whether it had been worth saving was another question; but he had been near to the brink, had looked in, and the animal in him had shrunk back from the precipice in a confused agony of fear. He staggered to his feet. "Where do you come from?" he said, pulling his coat closer to hide the ragged waistcoat underneath, and adjusting his worn and dirty hat--in his youth he had been vain and ambitious and good-looking also. He asked his question in no impertinent tone, but in the low voice of one who "shall whisper out of the dust." He had not yet recovered from the first impression of his awakening, that the world in which he now stood was not a real world. She understood, and half in pity and half in conquered repugnance said: "I come from a camp beyond"--she indicated the direction by a gesture. "I had been fishing"--she took up the basket--"and chanced on you--then." She glanced at the snake significantly. "You killed it in the nick of time," he said, in a voice that still spoke of the ground, but with a note of half-shamed gratitude. "I want to thank you," he added. "You were brave. It would have turned on you if you had missed. I know them. I've killed five." He spoke very slowly, huskily. "Well, you are safe--that is the chief thing," she rejoined, making as though to depart. But presently she turned back. "Why are you so dreadfully poor--and everything?" she asked gently. His eye wandered over the lake and back again before he answered her, in a dull, heavy tone: "I've had bad luck, and, when you get down, there are plenty to kick you farther." "You weren't always poor as you are now--I mean long ago, when you were young." "I'm not so old," he rejoined sluggishly--"only thirty-four." She could not suppress her astonishment. She looked at the hair already grey, the hard, pinched face, the lustreless eyes. "Yet it must seem long to you," she said with meaning. Now he laughed --a laugh sodden and mirthless. He was thinking of his boyhood. Everything, save one or two spots all fire or all darkness, was dim in his debilitated mind. "Too far to go back," he said, with a gleam of the intelligence which had been strong in him once. She caught the gleam. She had wisdom beyond her years. It was the greater because her mother was dead, and she had had so much wealth to dispense, for her father was rich beyond counting, and she controlled his household, and helped to regulate his charities. She saw that he was not of the labouring classes, that he had known better days; his speech, if abrupt and cheerless, was grammatical. "If you cannot go back, you can go forwards," she said firmly. "Why should you be the only man in this beautiful land who lives like this, who is idle when there is so much to do, who sleeps in the daytime when there is so much time to sleep at night?" A faint flush came on the greyish, colourless face. "I don't sleep at night," he returned moodily. "Why don't you sleep?" she asked. He did not answer, but stirred the body of the snake with his foot. The tail moved; he stamped upon the head with almost frenzied violence, out of keeping with his sluggishness. She turned away, yet looked back once more--she felt tragedy around her. "It is never too late to mend," she said, and moved on, but stopped; for a young man came running from the woods towards her. "I've had a hunt--such a hunt for you," the young man said eagerly, then stopped short when he saw to whom she had been talking. A look of disgust came upon his face as he drew her away, his hand on her arm. "In Heaven's name, why did you talk to that man?" he said. "You ought not to have trusted yourself near him." "What has he done?" she asked. "Is he so bad?" "I've heard about him. I inquired the other day. He was once in a better position as a ranchman--ten years ago; but he came into some money one day, and he changed at once. He never had a good character; even before he got his money he used to gamble, and was getting a bad name. Afterwards he began drinking, and he took to gambling harder than ever. Presently his money all went and he had to work; but his bad habits had fastened on him, and now he lives from hand to mouth, sometimes working for a month, sometimes idle for months. There's something sinister about him, there's some mystery; for poverty or drink even--and he doesn't drink much now--couldn't make him what he is. He doesn't seek company, and he walks sometimes endless miles talking to himself, going as hard as he can. How did you come to speak to him, Grace?" She told him all, with a curious abstraction in her voice, for she was thinking of the man from a standpoint which her companion could not realise. She was also trying to verify something in her memory. Ten years ago, so her lover had just said, the poor wretch behind them had been a different man; and there had shot into her mind the face of a ranchman she had seen with her father, the railway king, one evening when his "special" had stopped at a railway station on his tour through Montana--ten years ago. Why did the face of the ranchman which had fixed itself on her memory then, because he had come on the evening of her birthday and had spoiled it for her, having taken her father away from her for an hour--why did his face come to her now? What had it to do with the face of this outcast she had just left? "What is his name?" she asked at last. "Roger Lygon," he answered. "Roger Lygon," she repeated mechanically. Something in the man chained her thought--his face that moment when her hand saved him and the awful fear left him, and a glimmer of light came into his eyes. But her lover beside her broke into song. He was happy with her. Everything was before him, her beauty, her wealth, herself. He could not dwell upon dismal things; his voice rang out on the sharp sweet evening air: "'Oh, where did you get them, the bonny, bonny roses That blossom in your cheeks, and the morning in your eyes?' 'I got them on the North Trail, the road that never closes, That widens to the seven gold gates of paradise.' 'O come, let us camp in the North Trail together, With the night-fires lit and the tent-pegs down.'" Left alone, the man by the reedy lake stood watching them until they were out of view. The song came back to him, echoing across the waters: "O come, let us camp on the North Trail together, With the night-fires lit and the tent-pegs down." The sunset glow, the girl's presence, had given him a moment's illusion, had absorbed him for a moment, acting on his deadened nature like a narcotic at once soothing and stimulating. As some wild animal in a forgotten land, coming upon ruins of a vast civilisation, towers, temples, and palaces, in the golden glow of an Eastern evening, stands abashed and vaguely wondering, having neither reason to understand, nor feeling to enjoy, yet is arrested and abashed, so he stood. He had lived the last three years so much alone, had been cut off so completely from his kind--had lived so much alone. Yet to-night, at last, he would not be alone. Some one was coming to-night, some one whom he had not seen for a long time. Letters had passed, the object of the visit had been defined, and he had spent the intervening days since the last letter had arrived, now agitated, now apathetic and sullen, now struggling with some invisible being that kept whispering in his ear, saying to him, "It was the price of fire, and blood, and shame. You did it--you--you--you! You are down, and you will never get up. You can only go lower still--fire, and blood, and shame!" Criminal as he was he had never become hardened, he had only become degraded. Crime was not his vocation. He had no gift for it; still the crime he had committed had never been discovered--the crime that he did with others. There were himself and Dupont and another. Dupont was coming to-night--Dupont who had profited by the crime, and had not spent his profits, but had built upon them to further profit; for Dupont was avaricious and prudent, and a born criminal. Dupont had never had any compunctions or remorse, had never lost a night's sleep because of what they two had done, instigated thereto by the other, who had paid them so well for the dark thing. The other was Henderley, the financier. He was worse perhaps than Dupont, for he was in a different sphere of life, was rich beyond counting, and had been early nurtured in quiet Christian surroundings. The spirit of ambition, rivalry, and the methods of a degenerate and cruel finance had seized him, mastered him; so that, under the cloak of power--as a toreador hides the blade under the red cloth before his enemy the toro--he held a sword of capital which did cruel and vicious things, at last becoming criminal also. Henderley had incited and paid; the others, Dupont and Lygon, had acted and received. Henderley had had no remorse, none at any rate that weighed upon him; for he had got used to ruining rivals, and seeing strong men go down, and those who had fought him come to beg or borrow of him in the end. He had seen more than one commit suicide, and those they loved go down and farther down, and he had helped these up a little, but not enough to put them near his own plane again; and he could not see--it never occurred to him--that he had done any evil to them. Dupont thought upon his crimes now and then, and his heart hardened, for he had no moral feeling; Henderley did not think at all. It was left to the man of the reedy lake to pay the penalty of apprehension, to suffer the effects of crime upon a nature not naturally criminal. Again and again, how many hundreds of times, had Roger Lygon seen in his sleep--had even seen awake so did hallucination possess him--the new cattle trail he had fired for scores of miles. The fire had destroyed the grass over millions of acres, two houses had been burned and three people had lost their lives; all to satisfy the savage desire of one man, to destroy the chance of a cattle trade over a great section of country for the railway which was to compete with his own--an act which, in the end, was futile, failed of its purpose. Dupont and Lygon had been paid their price, and had disappeared, and been forgotten--they were but pawns in his game--and there was no proof against Henderley. Henderley had forgotten. Lygon wished to forget, but Dupont remembered, and meant now to reap fresh profit by the remembrance. Dupont was coming to-night, and the hatchet of crime was to be dug up again. So it had been planned. As the shadows fell, Lygon roused himself from his trance with a shiver. It was not cold, but in him there was a nervous agitation, making him cold from head to foot; his body seemed as impoverished as his mind. Looking with heavy-lidded eyes across the prairie, he saw in the distance the barracks of the Riders of the Plains and the jail near by, and his shuddering ceased. There was where he belonged, within four stone walls; yet here he was free to go where he willed, to live as he willed, with no eye upon him. With no eye upon him? There was no eye, but there was the Whisperer whom he could never drive away. Morning and night he heard the words, "You--you--you! Fire, and blood, and shame!" He had snatched sleep when he could find it, after long, long hours of tramping over the plains, ostensibly to shoot wild fowl, but in truth to bring on a great bodily fatigue--and sleep. His sleep only came then in the first watches of the night. As the night wore on the Whisperer began again, as the cloud of weariness lifted a little from him, and the senses were released from the heavy sedative of unnatural exertion. ......................... The dusk deepened. The moon slowly rose. He cooked his scanty meal, and took a deep draught from a horn of whiskey from beneath a board in the flooring. He had not the courage to face Dupont without it, nor yet to forget what he must forget, if he was to do the work Dupont came to arrange--he must forget the girl who had saved his life and the influence of those strange moments in which she had spoken down to him, in the abyss where he had been lying. He sat in the doorway, a fire gleaming behind him; he drank in the good air as though his lungs were thirsty for it, and saw the silver glitter of the moon upon the water. Not a breath of wind stirred, and the shining path the moon made upon the reedy lake fascinated his eye. Everything was so still except that whisper louder in his ear than it had ever been before. Suddenly, upon the silver path upon the lake there shot a silent canoe, with a figure as silently paddling towards him. He gazed for a moment dismayed, and then got to his feet with a jerk. "Dupont," he said mechanically. The canoe swished among the reeds and rushes, scraped on the shore, and a tall, burly figure sprang from it, and stood still, looking at the house. "Qui reste la--Lygon?" he asked. "Dupont," was the nervous, hesitating reply. Dupont came forwards quickly. "Ah, ben, here we are again--so," he grunted cheerily. Entering the house they sat before the fire, holding their hands to the warmth from force of habit, though the night was not cold. "Ben, you will do it to-night--then?" Dupont said. "Sacre, it is time!" "Do what?" rejoined the other heavily. An angry light leapt into Dupont's eyes. "You not unnerstan' my letters- bah! You know it all right, so queeck." The other remained silent, staring into the fire with wide, searching eyes. Dupont put a hand on him. "You ketch my idee queeck. We mus' have more money from that Henderley--certainlee. It is ten years, and he t'ink it is all right. He t'ink we come no more becos' he give five t'ousan' dollars to us each. That was to do the t'ing, to fire the country. Now we want another ten t'ousan' to us each, to forget we do it for him --hein?" Still there was no reply. Dupont went on, watching the other furtively, for he did not like this silence. But he would not resent it till he was sure there was good cause. "It comes to suit us. He is over there at the Old Man Lak', where you can get at him easy, not like in the city where he lif'. Over in the States, he laugh mebbe, becos' he is at home, an' can buy off the law. But here--it is Canadaw, an' they not care eef he have hunder' meellion dollar. He know that--sure. Eef you say you not care a dam to go to jail, so you can put him there, too, becos' you have not'ing, an' so dam seeck of everyt'ing, he will t'ink ten t'ousan' dollar same as one cent to Nic Dupont--ben sur!" Lygon nodded his head, still holding his hands to the blaze. With ten thousand dollars he could get away into--into another world somewhere, some world where he could forget; as he forgot for a moment this afternoon when the girl said to him, "It is never too late to mend." Now as he thought of her, he pulled his coat together, and arranged the rough scarf at his neck involuntarily. Ten thousand dollars--but ten thousand dollars by blackmail, hush-money, the reward of fire, and blood, and shame! Was it to go on? Was he to commit a new crime? He stirred, as though to shake off the net that he felt twisting round him, in the hands of the robust and powerful Dupont, on whom crime sat so lightly, who had flourished while he, Lygon, had gone lower and lower. Ten years ago he had been the better man, had taken the lead, was the master, Dupont the obedient confederate, the tool. Now, Dupont, once the rough river-driver, grown prosperous in a large way for him--who might yet be mayor of his town in Quebec--he held the rod of rule. Lygon was conscious that the fifty dollars sent him every New Year for five years by Dupont had been sent with a purpose, and that he was now Dupont's tool. Debilitated, demoralised, how could he, even if he wished, struggle against this powerful confederate, as powerful in will as in body? Yet if he had his own way he would not go to Henderley. He had lived with "a familiar spirit" so long, he feared the issue of this next excursion into the fens of crime. Dupont was on his feet now. "He will be here only three days more--I haf find it so. To-night it mus' be done. As we go I will tell you what to say. I will wait at the Forks, an' we will come back togedder. His cheque will do. Eef he gif at all, the cheque is all right. He will not stop it. Eef he haf the money, it is better--sacre--yes. Eef he not gif--well, I will tell you, there is the other railway man he try to hurt, how would he like--But I will tell you on the river. Main'enant-- queeck, we go." Without a word Lygon took down another coat and put it on. Doing so he concealed a weapon quickly as Dupont stooped to pick a coal for his pipe from the blaze. Lygon had no fixed purpose in taking a weapon with him; it was only a vague instinct of caution that moved him. In the canoe on the river, in an almost speechless apathy, he heard Dupont's voice giving him instructions. ....................... Henderley, the financier, had just finished his game of whist and dismissed his friends--it was equivalent to dismissal, rough yet genial as he seemed to be, so did immense wealth and its accompanying power affect his relations with those about him. In everything he was "considered." He was in good humour, for he had won all the evening, and with a smile he rubbed his hands among the notes--three thousand dollars it was. It was like a man with a pocket full of money, chuckling over a coin he has found in the street. Presently he heard a rustle of the inner tent-curtain and swung round. He faced the man from the reedy lake. Instinctively he glanced round for a weapon, mechanically his hands firmly grasped the chair in front of him. He had been in danger of his life many times, and he had no fear. He had been threatened with assassination more than once, and he had got used to the idea of danger; life to him was only a game. He kept his nerve; he did not call out; he looked his visitor in the eyes. "What are you doing here? Who are you?" he said. "Don't you know me?" answered Lygon, gazing intently at him. Face to face with the man who had tempted him to crime, Lygon had a new sense of boldness, a sudden feeling of reprisal, a rushing desire to put the screw upon him. At sight of this millionaire with the pile of notes before him there vanished the sickening hesitation of the afternoon, of the journey with Dupont. The look of the robust, healthy financier was like acid in a wound; it maddened him. "You will know me better soon," Lygon added, his head twitching with excitement. Henderley recognised him now. He gripped the armchair spasmodically, but presently regained a complete composure. He knew the game that was forward here; and he also thought that if once he yielded to blackmail there would never be an end to it. He made no pretence, but came straight to the point. "You can do nothing; there is no proof," he said with firm assurance. "There is Dupont," answered Lygon doggedly. "Who is Dupont?" "The French Canadian who helped me--I divided with him." "You said the man who helped you died. You wrote that to me. I suppose you are lying now." Henderley coolly straightened the notes on the table, smoothing out the wrinkles, arranging them according to their denominations with an apparently interested eye; yet he was vigilantly watching the outcast before him. To yield to blackmail would be fatal; not to yield to it-- he could not see his way. He had long ago forgotten the fire, and blood, and shame. No Whisperer reminded him of that black page in the history of his life; he had been immune of conscience. He could not understand this man before him. It was as bad a case of human degradation as ever he had seen--he remembered the stalwart, if dissipated, ranchman who had acted on his instigation. He knew now that he had made a foolish blunder then, that the scheme had been one of his failures; but he had never looked on it as with eyes reproving crime. As a hundred thoughts tending towards the solution of the problem by which he was faced, flashed through his mind, and he rejected them all, he repeated mechanically the phrase, "I suppose you are lying now." "Dupont is here--not a mile away," was the reply. "He will give proof. He would go to jail or to the gallows to put you there, if you do not pay. He is a devil--Dupont." Still the great man could not see his way out. He must temporise for a little longer, for rashness might bring scandal or noise; and near by was his daughter, the apple of his eye. "What do you want? How much did you figure you could get out of me, if I let you bleed me?" he asked sneeringly and coolly. "Come now, how much?" Lygon, in whom a blind hatred of the man still raged, was about to reply, when he heard a voice calling, "Daddy, Daddy!" Suddenly the red, half-insane light died down in Lygon's eyes. He saw the snake upon the ground by the reedy lake, the girl standing over it-- the girl with the tawny hair. This was her voice. Henderley had made a step towards a curtain opening into another room of the great tent, but before he could reach it the curtain was pushed back, and the girl entered with a smile. "May I come in?" she said; then stood still astonished; seeing Lygon. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Oh--you!" All at once a look came into her face which stirred it as a flying insect stirs the water of a pool. On the instant she remembered that she had seen the man before. It was ten years ago in Montana on the night of her birthday. Her father had been called away to talk with this man, and she had seen him from the steps of the "special." It was only the caricature of the once strong, erect ranchman that she saw, but there was no mistake, she recognised him now. Lygon, dumfounded, looked from her to her father, and he saw now in Henderley's eyes a fear that was not to be misunderstood. Here was where Henderley could be smitten, could be brought to his knees. It was the vulnerable part of him. Lygon could see that he was stunned. The great financier was in his power. He looked back again to the girl, and her face was full of trouble. A sharp suspicion was in her heart that somehow or other her father was responsible for this man's degradation and ruin. She looked Lygon in the eyes. "Did you want to see me?" she asked. She scarcely knew why she said it; but she was sensible of trouble, maybe of tragedy, somewhere; and she had a vague dread of she knew not what, for hide it, avoid it, as she had done so often, there was in her heart an unhappy doubt concerning her father. A great change had come over Lygon. Her presence had altered him. He was again where she had left him in the afternoon. He heard her say to her father, "This was the man I told you of--at the reedy lake. Did you come to see me?" she repeated. "I did not know you were here," he answered. "I came"--he was conscious of Henderley's staring eyes fixed upon him helplessly--"I came to ask your father if he would not buy my shack. There is good shooting at the lake; the ducks come plenty, sometimes. I want to get away, to start again somewhere. I've been a failure. I want to get away, right away south. If he would buy it I could start again. I've had no luck." He had invented it on the moment, but the girl understood better than Lygon or Henderley could have dreamed. She had seen the change pass over Lygon. Henderley had a hand on himself again, and the startled look went out of his eyes. "What do you want for your shack and the lake?" he asked with restored confidence. The fellow no doubt was grateful that his daughter had saved his life, he thought. "Five hundred dollars," answered Lygon quickly. Henderley would have handed over all that lay on the table before him but that he thought it better not to do so. "I'll buy it," he said. "You seem to have been hit hard. Here is the money. Bring me the deed to-morrow--to-morrow." "I'll not take the money till I give you the deed," said Lygon. "It will do to-morrow. It's doing me a good turn. I'll get away and start again somewhere. I've done no good up here. Thank you, sir--thank you." Before they realised it, the tent-curtain rose and fell, and he was gone into the night. The trouble was still deep in the girl's eyes as she kissed her father, and he, with an overdone cheerfulness, wished her a good night. The man of iron had been changed into a man of straw once at least in his lifetime. Lygon found Dupont at the Forks. "Eh ben, it is all right--yes?" Dupont asked eagerly as Lygon joined him. "Yes, it is all right," answered Lygon. With an exulting laugh and an obscene oath, Dupont pushed out the canoe, and they got away into the moonlight. No word was spoken for some distance, but Dupont kept giving grunts of satisfaction. "You got the ten t'ousan' each--in cash or cheque, eh? The cheque or the money-hein?" "I've got nothing," answered Lygon. Dupont dropped his paddle with a curse. "You got not'ing! You said eet was all right," he growled. "It is all right. I got nothing. I asked for nothing. I have had enough. I have finished." With a roar of rage Dupont sprang on him, and caught him by the throat as the canoe swayed and dipped. He was blind with fury. Lygon tried with one hand for his knife, and got it, but the pressure on his throat was growing terrible. For minutes the struggle continued, for Lygon was fighting with the desperation of one who makes his last awful onset against fate and doom. Dupont also had his knife at work. At last it drank blood, but as he got it home, he suddenly reeled blindly, lost his balance, and lurched into the water with a groan. Lygon, weapon in hand, and bleeding freely, waited for him to rise and make for the canoe again. Ten, twenty, fifty seconds passed. Dupont did not rise. A minute went by, and still there was no stir, no sign. Dupont would never rise again. In his wild rage he had burst a blood vessel on the brain. Lygon bound up his reeking wound as best he could. He did--it calmly, whispering to himself the while. "I must do it. I must get there if I can. I will not be afraid to die then," he muttered to himself. Presently he grasped an oar and paddled feebly. A slight wind had risen, and, as he turned the boat in to face the Forks again, it helped to carry the canoe to the landing-place. Lygon dragged himself out. He did not try to draw the canoe up, but began this journey of a mile back to the tent he had left so recently. First, step by step, leaning against trees, drawing himself forwards, a journey as long to his determined mind as from youth to age. Would it never end? It seemed a terrible climbing up the sides of a cliff, and, as he struggled fainting on, all sorts of sounds were in his ears, but he realised that the Whisperer was no longer there. The sounds he heard did not torture, they helped his stumbling feet. They were like the murmur of waters, like the sounds of the forest and soft, booming bells. But the bells were only the beatings of his heart-so loud, so swift. He was on his knees now crawling on-on-on. At last there came a light, suddenly bursting on him from a tent, he was so near. Then he called, and called again, and fell forwards on his face. But now he heard a voice above him. It was her voice. He had blindly struggled on to die near her, near where she was, she was so pitiful and good. He had accomplished his journey, and her voice was speaking above him. There were other voices, but it was only hers that he heard. "God help him--oh, God help him!" she was saying. He drew a long quiet breath. "I will sleep now," he said clearly. He would hear the Whisperer no more. AS DEEP AS THE SEA "What can I do, Dan? I'm broke, too. My last dollar went to pay my last debt to-day. I've nothing but what I stand in. I've got prospects, but I can't discount prospects at the banks." The speaker laughed bitterly. "I've reaped and I'm sowing, the same as you, Dan." The other made a nervous motion of protest. "No; not the same as me, Flood--not the same. It's sink or swim with me, and if you can't help me--oh, I'd take my gruel without whining, if it wasn't for Di! It's that knocks me over. It's the shame to her. Oh, what a cursed ass and fool--and thief, I've been!" "Thief-thief?" Flood Rawley dropped the flaming match with which he was about to light a cheroot, and stood staring, his dark-blue eyes growing wider, his worn, handsome face becoming drawn, as swift conviction mastered him. He felt that the black words which had fallen from his friend's lips--from the lips of Diana Welldon's brother--were the truth. He looked at the plump face, the full amiable eyes, now misty with fright, at the characterless hand nervously feeling the golden moustache, at the well-fed, inert body; and he knew that whatever the trouble or the peril, Dan Welldon could not surmount it alone. "What is it?" Rawley asked rather sharply, his fingers running through his slightly grizzled, black hair, but not excitedly, for he wanted no scenes; and if this thing could hurt Di Welldon, and action was necessary, he must remain cool. What she was to him, Heaven and he only knew; what she had done for him, perhaps neither understood fully as yet. "What is it--quick?" he added, and his words were like a sharp grip upon Dan Welldon's shoulder. "Racing--cards?" Dan nodded. "Yes, over at Askatoon; five hundred on Jibway, the favourite--he fell at the last fence; five hundred at poker with Nick Fison; and a thousand in land speculation at Edmonton, on margin. Everything went wrong." "And so you put your hand in the railway company's money-chest?" "It seemed such a dead certainty--Jibway; and the Edmonton corner-blocks, too. I'd had luck with Nick before; but--well, there it is, Flood." "They know--the railway people--Shaughnessy knows?" "Yes, the president knows. He's at Calgary now. They telegraphed him, and he wired to give me till midnight to pay up, or go to jail. They're watching me now. I can't stir. There's no escape, and there's no one I can ask for help but you. That's why I've come, Flood." "Lord, what a fool! Couldn't you see what the end would be, if your plunging didn't come off? You--you oughtn't to bet, or speculate, or play cards, you're not clever enough. You've got blind rashness, and so you think you're bold. And Di--oh, you idiot! And on a salary of a thousand dollars a year!" "I suppose Di would help me; but I couldn't explain." The weak face puckered, a lifeless kind of tear gathered in the ox-like eyes. "Yes, she probably would help you. She'd probably give you all she's saved to go to Europe with and study, saved from her pictures sold at twenty per cent of their value; and she'd mortgage the little income she's got to keep her brother out of jail. Of course she would, and of course you ought to be ashamed of yourself for thinking of it." Rawley lighted his cigar and smoked fiercely. "It would be better for her than my going to jail," stubbornly replied the other. "But I don't want to tell her, or to ask her for money. That's why I've come to you. You needn't be so hard, Flood; you've not been a saint; and Di knows it." Rawley took the cheroot from his mouth, threw back his head, and laughed mirthlessly, ironically. Then suddenly he stopped and looked round the room till his eyes rested on a portrait-drawing which hung on the wall opposite the window, through which the sun poured. It was the face of a girl with beautiful bronzed hair, and full, fine, beautifully modelled face, with brown eyes deep and brooding, which seemed to have time and space behind them--not before them. The lips were delicate and full, and had the look suggesting a smile which the inward thought has stayed. It was like one of the Titian women--like a Titian that hangs on the wall of the Gallery at Munich. The head and neck, the whole personality, had an air of distinction and destiny. The drawing had been done by a wandering duchess who had seen the girl sketching in the foothills, when on a visit to that "Wild West" which has such power to refine and inspire minds not superior to Nature. Its replica was carried to a castle in Scotland. It had been the gift of Diana Welldon on a certain day not long ago, when Flood Rawley had made a pledge to her, which was as vital to him and to his future as two thousand dollars were vital to Dan Welldon now. "You've not been a saint, and Di knows it," repeated the weak brother of a girl whose fame belonged to the West; whose name was a signal for cheerful looks; whose buoyant humour and impartial friendliness gained her innumerable friends; and whose talent, understood by few, gave her a certain protection, lifting her a little away from the outwardly crude and provincial life around her. When Rawley spoke, it was with quiet deliberation, and even gentleness. "I haven't been a saint, and she knows it, as you say, Dan; but the law is on my side as yet, and it isn't on yours. There's the difference." "You used to gamble yourself; you were pretty tough, and you oughtn't to walk up my back with hobnailed boots." "Yes, I gambled, Dan, and I drank, and I raised a dust out here. My record was writ pretty big. But I didn't lay my hands on the ark of the social covenant, whose inscription is, Thou shalt not steal; and that's why I'm poor but proud, and no one's watching for me round the corner, same as you." Welldon's half-defiant petulance disappeared. "What's done can't be undone." Then, with a sudden burst of anguish: "Oh, get me out of this somehow!" "How? I've got no money. By speaking to your sister?" The other was silent. "Shall I do it?" Rawley peered anxiously into the other's face, and he knew that there was no real security against the shameful trouble being laid bare to her. "I want a chance to start straight again." The voice was fluttered, almost whining; it carried no conviction; but the words had in them a reminder of words that Rawley himself had said to Diana Welldon but a few months ago, and a new spirit stirred in him. He stepped forwards and, gripping Dan's shoulder with a hand of steel, said fiercely: "No, Dan. I'd rather take you to her in your coffin. She's never known you, never seen what most of us have seen, that all you have--or nearly all--is your lovely looks, and what they call a kind heart. There's only you two in your family, and she's got to live with you--awhile, anyhow. She couldn't stand this business. She mustn't stand it. She's had enough to put up with in me; but at the worst she could pass me by on the other side, and there would be an end. It would have been said that Flood Rawley had got his deserts. It's different with you." His voice changed, softened. "Dan, I made a pledge to her that I'd never play cards again for money while I lived, and it wasn't a thing to take on without some cogitation. But I cogitated, and took it on, and started life over again--me! Began practising law again--barrister, solicitor, notary public--at forty. And at last I've got my chance in a big case against the Canadian Pacific. It'll make me or break me, Dan. . . . There, I wanted you to see where I stand with Di; and now I want you to promise me that you'll not leave these rooms till I see you again. I'll get you clear; I'll save you, Dan." "Flood! Oh, my God, Flood!" The voice was broken. "You've got to stay here, and you're to remember not to get the funk, even if I don't come before midnight. I'll be here then, if I'm alive. If you don't keep your word--but, there, you will." Both hands gripped the graceful shoulders of the miscreant like a vice. "So help me, Flood," was the frightened, whispered reply, "I'll make it up to you somehow, some day. I'll pay you back." Rawley caught up his cap from the table. "Steady--steady. Don't go at a fence till you're sure of your seat, Dan," he said. Then with a long look at the portrait on the wall, and an exclamation which the other did not hear, he left the room with a set, determined face. ...................... "Who told you? What brought you, Flood?" the girl asked, her chin in her long, white hands, her head turned from the easel to him, a book in her lap, the sun breaking through the leaves upon her hat, touching the Titian hair with splendour. "Fate brought me, and didn't tell me," he answered, with a whimsical quirk of the mouth, and his trouble lurking behind the sea-deep eyes. "Wouldn't you have come if you knew I was here?" she urged archly. "Not for two thousand dollars," he answered, the look of trouble deepening in his eyes, but his lips were smiling. He had a quaint sense of humour, and at his last gasp would have noted the ridiculous thing. And surely it was a droll malignity of Fate to bring him here to her whom, in this moment of all moments in his life, he wished far away. Fate meant to try him to the uttermost. This hurdle of trial was high indeed. "Two thousand dollars--nothing less?" she inquired gaily. "You are too specific for a real lover." "Fate fixed the amount," he added drily. "Fate--you talk so much of Fate," she replied gravely, and her eyes looked into the distance. "You make me think of it too, and I don't want to do so. I don't want to feel helpless, to be the child of Accident and Destiny." "Oh, you get the same thing in the 'fore-ordination' that old Minister M'Gregor preaches every Sunday. 'Be elect or be damned,' he says to us all. Names aren't important; but, anyhow, it was Fate that led me here." "Are you sure it wasn't me?" she asked softly. "Are you sure I wasn't calling you, and you had to come?" "Well, it was en route, anyhow; and you are always calling, if I must tell you," he laughed. Suddenly he became grave. "I hear you call me in the night sometimes, and I start up and say 'Yes, Di!' out of my sleep. It's a queer hallucination. I've got you on the brain, certainly." "It seems to vex you--certainly," she said, opening the book that lay in her lap, "and your eyes trouble me to-day. They've got a look that used to be in them, Flood, before--before you promised; and another look I don't understand and don't like. I suppose it's always so. The real business of life is trying to understand each other." "You have wonderful thoughts for one that's had so little chance," he said. "That's because you're a genius, I suppose. Teaching can't give that sort of thing--the insight." "What is the matter, Flood?" she asked suddenly again, her breast heaving, her delicate, rounded fingers interlacing. "I heard a man say once that you were 'as deep as the sea.' He did not mean it kindly, but I do. You are in trouble, and I want to share it if I can. Where were you going when you came across me here?" "To see old Busby, the quack-doctor up there," he answered, nodding towards a shrubbed and wooded hillock behind them. "Old Busby!" she rejoined in amazement. "What do you want with him --not medicine of that old quack, that dreadful man?" "He cures people sometimes. A good many out here owe him more than they'll ever pay him." "Is he as rich an old miser as they say?" "He doesn't look rich, does he?" was the enigmatical answer. "Does any one know his real history? He didn't come from nowhere. He must have had friends once. Some one must once have cared for him, though he seems such a monster now." "Yet he cures people sometimes," he rejoined abstractedly. "Probably there's some good underneath. I'm going to try and see." "What is it. What is your business with him? Won't you tell me? Is it so secret?" "I want him to help me in a case I've got in hand. A client of mine is in trouble--you mustn't ask about it; and he can help, I think--I think so." He got to his feet. "I must be going, Di," he added. Suddenly a flush swept over his face, and he reached out and took both her hands. "Oh, you are a million times too good for me!" he said. "But if all goes well, I'll do my best to make you forget it." "Wait--wait one moment," she answered. "Before you go, I want you to hear what I've been reading over and over to myself just now. It is from a book I got from Quebec, called 'When Time Shall Pass'. It is a story of two like you and me. The man is writing to the woman, and it has things that you have said to me--in a different way." "No, I don't talk like a book, but I know a star in a dark night when I see it," he answered, with a catch in his throat. "Hush," she said, catching his hand in hers, as she read, while all around them the sounds of summer--the distant clack of a reaper, the crack of a whip, the locusts droning, the whir of a young partridge, the squeak of a chipmunk--were tuned to the harmony of the moment and her voice: "'Night and the sombre silence, oh, my love, and one star shining! First, warm, velvety sleep, and then this quick, quiet waking to your voice which seems to call me. Is it--is it you that calls? Do you sometimes, even in your dreams, speak to me? Far beneath unconsciousness is there the summons of your spirit to me? . . . I like to think so. I like to think that this thing which has come to us is deeper, greater than we are. Sometimes day and night there flash before my eyes--my mind's eyes--pictures of you and me in places unfamiliar, landscapes never before seen, activities uncomprehended and unknown, bright, alluring glimpses of some second being, some possible, maybe never-to-be-realised future, alas! Yet these swift-moving shutters of the soul, or imagination, or reality --who shall say which?-give me a joy never before felt in life. If I am not a better man for this love of mine for you, I am more than I was, and shall be more than I am. Much of my life in the past was mean and small, so much that I have said and done has been unworthy --my love for you is too sharp a light for my gross imperfections of the past! Come what will, be what must, I stake my life, my heart, my soul on you--that beautiful, beloved face; those deep eyes in which my being is drowned; those lucid, perfect hands that have bound me to the mast of your destiny. I cannot go back, I must go forwards: now I must keep on loving you or be shipwrecked. I did not know that this was in me, this tide of love, this current of devotion. Destiny plays me beyond my ken, beyond my dreams. "O Cithaeron!" Turn from me now--or never, O my love! Loose me from the mast, and let the storm and wave wash me out into the sea of your forgetfulness now--or never! . . . But keep me, keep me, if your love is great enough, if I bring you any light or joy; for I am yours to my uttermost note of life.'" "He knew--he knew!" Rawley said, catching her wrists in his hands and drawing her to him. "If I could write, that's what I should have said to you, beautiful and beloved. How mean and small and ugly my life was till you made me over. I was a bad lot." "So much hung on one little promise," she said, and drew closer to him. "You were never bad," she added; then, with an arm sweeping the universe, "Oh, isn't it all good, and isn't it all worth living?" His face lost its glow. Over in the town her brother faced a ruined life, and the girl beside him, a dark humiliation and a shame which would poison her life hereafter, unless--his look turned to the little house where the quack-doctor lived. He loosed her hands. "Now for Caliban," he said. "I shall be Ariel and follow you-in my heart," she said. "Be sure and make him tell you the story of his life," she added with a laugh, as his lips swept the hair behind her ears. As he moved swiftly away, watching his long strides, she said proudly, "As deep as the sea." After a moment she added: "And he was once a gambler, until, until--" she glanced at the open book, then with sweet mockery looked at her hands--"until 'those lucid, perfect hands bound me to the mast of your destiny.' O vain Diana! But they are rather beautiful," she added softly, "and I am rather happy." There was something like a gay little chuckle in her throat. "O vain Diana!" she repeated. ....................... Rawley entered the door of the but on the hill without ceremony. There was no need for courtesy, and the work he had come to do could be easier done without it. Old Busby was crouched over a table, his mouth lapping milk from a full bowl on the table. He scarcely raised his head when Rawley entered-- through the open door he had seen his visitor coming. He sipped on, his straggling beard dripping. There was silence for a time. "What do you want?" he growled at last. "Finish your swill, and then we can talk," said Rawley carelessly. He took a chair near the door, lighted a cheroot and smoked, watching the old man, as he tipped the great bowl towards his face, as though it were some wild animal feeding. The clothes were patched and worn, the coat- front was spattered with stains of all kinds, the hair and beard were unkempt and long, giving him what would have been the look of a mangy lion, but that the face had the expression of some beast less honourable. The eyes, however, were malignantly intelligent, the hands, ill-cared for, were long, well-shaped and capable, but of a hateful yellow colour like the face. And through all was a sense of power, dark and almost mediaeval. Secret, evilly wise and inhuman, he looked a being apart, whom men might seek for help in dark purposes. "What do you want--medicine?" he muttered at last, wiping his beard and mouth with the palm of his hand, and the palm on his knees. Rawley looked at the ominous-looking bottles on the shelves above the old man's head; at the forceps, knives, and other surgical instruments on the walls--they at least were bright and clean--and, taking the cheroot slowly from his mouth, he said: "Shin-plasters are what I want. A friend of mine has caught his leg in a trap." The old man gave an evil chuckle at the joke, for a "shin-plaster" was a money-note worth a quarter of a dollar. "I've got some," he growled in reply, "but they cost twenty-five cents each. You can have them for your friend at the price." "I want eight thousand of them from you. He's hurt pretty bad," was the dogged, dry answer. The shaggy eyebrows of the quack drew together, and the eyes peered out sharply through half-closed lids. "There's plenty of wanting and not much getting in this world," he rejoined, with a leer of contempt, and spat on the floor, while yet the furtive watchfulness of the eyes indicated a mind ill at ease. Smoke came in placid puffs from the cheroot--Rawley was smoking very hard, but with a judicial meditation, as it seemed. "Yes, but if you want a thing so bad that, to get it, you'll face the devil or the Beast of Revelations, it's likely to come to you." "You call me a beast?" The reddish-brown face grew black like that of a Bedouin in his rage. "I said the Beast of Revelations--don't you know the Scriptures?" "I know that a fool is to be answered according to his folly," was the hoarse reply, and the great head wagged to and fro in its smarting rage. "Well, I'm doing my best; and perhaps when the folly is all out, we'll come to the revelations of the Beast." There was a silence, in which the gross impostor shifted heavily in his seat, while a hand twitched across the mouth, and then caught at the breast of the threadbare black coat abstractedly. Rawley leaned forward, one elbow on a knee, the cheroot in his fingers. He spoke almost confidentially, as to some ignorant and misguided savage --as he had talked to Indian chiefs in his time, when searching for the truth regarding some crime: "I've had a lot of revelations in my time. A lawyer and a doctor always do. And though there are folks who say I'm no lawyer, as there are those who say with greater truth that you're no doctor, speaking technically, we've both had 'revelations.' You've seen a lot that's seamy, and so have I. You're pretty seamy yourself. In fact, you're as bad a man as ever saved lives--and lost them. You've had a long tether, and you've swung on it--swung wide. But you've had a lot of luck that you haven't swung high, too." He paused and flicked away the ash from his cheroot, while the figure before him swayed animal-like from side to side, muttering. "You've got brains, a great lot of brains of a kind--however you came by them," Rawley continued; "and you've kept a lot of people in the West from passing in their cheques before their time. You've rooked 'em, chiselled 'em out of a lot of cash, too. There was old Lamson--fifteen hundred for the goitre on his neck; and Mrs. Gilligan for the cancer--two thousand, wasn't it? Tincture of Lebanon leaves you called the medicine, didn't you? You must have made fifty thousand or so in the last ten years." "What I've made I'll keep," was the guttural answer, and the talon-like fingers clawed the table. "You've made people pay high for curing them, saving them sometimes; but you haven't paid me high for saving you in the courts; and there's one case that you haven't paid me for at all. That was when the patient died--and you didn't." The face of the old man became mottled with a sudden fear, but he jerked it forwards once or twice with an effort at self-control. Presently he steadied to the ordeal of suspense, while he kept saying to himself, "What does he know--what--which?" "Malpractice resulting in death--that was poor Jimmy Tearle; and something else resulting in death--that was the switchman's wife. And the law is hard in the West where a woman's in the case--quick and hard. Yes, you've swung wide on your tether; look out that you don't swing high, old man." "You can prove nothing; it's bluff;" came the reply in a tone of malice and of fear. "You forget. I was your lawyer in Jimmy Tearle's case, and a letter's been found written by the switchman's wife to her husband. It reached me the night he was killed by the avalanche. It was handed over to me by the post-office, as the lawyer acting for the relatives. I've read it. I've got it. It gives you away." "I wasn't alone." Fear had now disappeared, and the old man was fighting. "No, you weren't alone; and if the switchman and the switchman's wife weren't dead and out of it all; and if the other man that didn't matter any more than you wasn't alive and hadn't a family that does matter, I wouldn't be asking you peaceably for two thousand dollars as my fee for getting you off two cases that might have sent you to prison for twenty years, or, maybe, hung you to the nearest tree." The heavy body pulled itself together, the hands clinched. "Blackmail- you think I'll stand it?" "Yes, I think you will. I want two thousand dollars to help a friend in a hole, and I mean to have it, if you think your neck's worth it." Teeth, wonderfully white, showed through the shaggy beard. "If I had to go to prison--or swing, as you say, do you think I'd go with my mouth shut? I'd not pay up alone. The West would crack--holy Heaven, I know enough to make it sick. Go on and see! I've got the West in my hand." He opened and shut his fingers with a grimace of cruelty which shook Rawley in spite of himself. Rawley had trusted to the inspiration of the moment; he had had no clearly defined plan; he had believed that he could frighten the old man, and by force of will bend him to his purposes. It had all been more difficult than he had expected. He kept cool, imperturbable, and determined, however. He knew that what the old quack said was true--the West might shake with scandal concerning a few who, no doubt, in remorse and secret fear, had more than paid the penalty of their offences. But he thought of Di Welldon and of her criminal brother, and every nerve, every faculty was screwed to its utmost limit of endurance and capacity. Suddenly the old man gave a new turn to the event. He got up and, rummaging in an old box, drew out a dice-box. Rattling the dice, he threw them out on the table before him, a strange, excited look crossing his face. "Play for it," he said in a harsh, croaking voice. "Play for the two thousand. Win it if you can. You want it bad. I want to keep it bad. It's nice to have; it makes a man feel warm--money does. I'd sleep in ten-dollar bills, I'd have my clothes made of them, if I could; I'd have my house papered with them; I'd eat 'em. Oh, I know, I know about you-- and her--Diana Welldon! You've sworn off gambling, and you've kept your pledge for near a year. Well, it's twenty years since I gambled--twenty years. I gambled with these then." He shook the dice in the box. "I gambled everything I had away--more than two thousand dollars, more than two thousand dollars." He laughed a raw, mirthless laugh. "Well, you're the greatest gambler in the West. So was I-in the East. It pulverised me at last, when I'd nothing left--and drink, drink, drink. I gave up both one night and came out West. "I started doctoring here. I've got money, plenty of money--medicine, mines, land got it for me. I've been lucky. Now you come to bluff me-- me! You don't know old Busby." He spat on the floor. "I'm not to be bluffed. I know too much. Before they could lynch me I'd talk. But to play you, the greatest gambler in the West, for two thousand dollars-- yes, I'd like the sting of it again. Twos, fours, double-sixes--the gentleman's game!" He rattled the dice and threw them with a flourish out on the table, his evil face lighting up. "Come! You can't have something for nothing," he growled. As he spoke, a change came over Rawley's face. It lost its cool imperturbability, it grew paler, the veins on the fine forehead stood out, a new, flaring light came into the eyes. The old gambler's spirit was alive. But even as it rose, sweeping him into that area of fiery abstraction where every nerve is strung to a fine tension, and the surrounding world disappears, he saw the face of Diana Welldon, he remembered her words to him not an hour before, and the issue of the conflict, other considerations apart, was without doubt. But there was her brother and his certain fate, if the two thousand dollars were not paid in by midnight. He was desperate. It was in reality for Diana's sake. He approached the table, and his old calm returned. "I have no money to play with," he said quietly. With a gasp of satisfaction, the old man fumbled in the inside of his coat and drew out layers of ten, fifty, and hundred-dollar bills. It was lined with them. He passed a pile over to Rawley--two thousand dollars. He placed a similar pile before himself. As Rawley laid his hand on the bills, the thought rushed through his mind, "You have it--keep it!" but he put it away from him. With a gentleman he might have done it, with this man before him, it was impossible. He must take his chances; and it was the only chance in which he had hope now, unless he appealed for humanity's sake, for the girl's sake, and told the real truth. It might avail. Well, that would be the last resort. "For small stakes?" said the grimy quack in a gloating voice. Rawley nodded and then added, "We stop at eleven o'clock, unless I've lost or won all before that." "And stake what's left on the last throw?" "Yes." There was silence for a moment, in which Rawley seemed to grow older, and a set look came to his mouth--a broken pledge, no matter what the cause, brings heavy penalties to the honest mind. He shut his eyes for an instant, and, when he opened them, he saw that his fellow-gambler was watching him with an enigmatical and furtive smile. Did this Caliban have some understanding of what was at stake in his heart and soul? "Play!" Rawley said sharply, and was himself again. For hour after hour there was scarce a sound, save the rattle of the dice and an occasional exclamation from the old man as he threw a double-six. As dusk fell, the door had been shut, and a lighted lantern was hung over their heads. Fortune had fluctuated. Once the old man's pile had diminished to two notes, then the luck had changed and his pile grew larger; then fell again; but, as the hands of the clock on the wall above the blue medicine bottles reached a quarter to eleven, it increased steadily throw after throw. Now the player's fever was in Rawley's eyes. His face was deadly pale, but his hand threw steadily, calmly, almost negligently, as it might seem. All at once, at eight minutes to eleven, the luck turned in his favour, and his pile mounted again. Time after time he dropped double- sixes. It was almost uncanny. He seemed to see the dice in the box, and his hand threw them out with the precision of a machine. Long afterwards he had this vivid illusion that he could see the dice in the box. As the clock was about to strike eleven he had before him three thousand eight hundred dollars. It was his throw. "Two hundred," he said in a whisper, and threw. He won. With a gasp of relief, he got to his feet, the money in his hand. He stepped backward from the table, then staggered, and a faintness passed over him. He had sat so long without moving that his legs bent under him. There was a pail of water with a dipper in it on a bench. He caught up a dipperful of water, drank it empty, and let it fall in the pail again with a clatter. "Dan," he said abstractedly, "Dan, you're all safe now." Then he seemed to wake, as from a dream, and looked at the man at the table. Busby was leaning on it with both hands, and staring at Rawley like some animal jaded and beaten from pursuit. Rawley walked back to the table and laid down two thousand dollars. "I only wanted two thousand," he said, and put the other two thousand in his pocket. The evil eyes gloated, the long fingers clutched the pile, and swept it into a great inside pocket. Then the shaggy head bent forwards. "You said it was for Dan," he said--"Dan Welldon?" Rawley hesitated. "What is that to you?" he replied at last. With a sudden impulse the old impostor lurched round, opened a box, drew out a roll, and threw it on the table. "It's got to be known sometime," he said, "and you'll be my lawyer when I'm put into the ground--you're clever. They call me a quack. Malpractice--bah! There's my diploma--James Clifton Welldon. Right enough, isn't it?" Rawley was petrified. He knew the forgotten story of James Clifton Welldon, the specialist, turned gambler, who had almost ruined his own brother--the father of Dan and Diana--at cards and dice, and had then ruined himself and disappeared. Here, where his brother had died, he had come years ago, and practised medicine as a quack. "Oh, there's plenty of proof, if it's wanted!" he said. "I've got it here." He tapped the box behind him. "Why did I do it? Because it's my way. And you're going to marry my niece, and 'll have it all some day. But not till I've finished with it--not unless you win it from me at dice or cards. . . . But no"--something human came into the old, degenerate face--"no more gambling for the man that's to marry Diana. There's a wonder and a beauty!" He chuckled to himself. "She'll be rich when I've done with it. You're a lucky man--ay, you're lucky." Rawley was about to tell the old man what the two thousand dollars was for, but a fresh wave of repugnance passed over him, and, hastily drinking another dipperful of water, he opened the door. He looked back. The old man was crouching forward, lapping milk from the great bowl, his beard dripping. In disgust he swung round again. The fresh, clear air caught his face. With a gasp of relief he stepped out into the night, closing the door behind him. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Don't go at a fence till you're sure of your seat The real business of life is trying to understand each other You've got blind rashness, and so you think you're bold ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "NORTHERN LIGHTS": Babbling covers a lot of secrets Being a man of very few ideas, he cherished those he had Beneath it all there was a little touch of ridicule Don't go at a fence till you're sure of your seat Even bad company's better than no company at all Future of those who will not see, because to see is to suffer I like when I like, and I like a lot when I like I don't think. I'm old enough to know It ain't for us to say what we're goin' to be, not always Knew when to shut his eyes, and when to keep them open Nothing so popular for the moment as the fall of a favourite Self-will, self-pride, and self-righteousness were big in him That he will find the room empty where I am not The temerity and nonchalance of despair The real business of life is trying to understand each other Things in life git stronger than we are Tyranny of the little man, given a power We don't live in months and years, but just in minutes What'll be the differ a hundred years from now You've got blind rashness, and so you think you're bold Extensive proofreading done by Andrew Sly MRS. FALCHION By Gilbert Parker INTRODUCTION This novel was written in the days of the three-decker, and it went out to sea as such. Every novel of mine written until 1893 was published in two or three volumes, and the sale to the libraries was greater than the sale to the general public. This book was begun in 1892 at the time when the Pierre stories were being written, and it was finished in the summer of 1893. It did not appear serially; indeed, I made no attempt at serial publication. I had a feeling that as it was to be my first novel, it should be judged as a whole and taken at a gasp, as it were. I believe that the reader of Messrs. Methuen & Company was not disposed to publish the book, but Mr. Methuen himself (or Mr. Stedman as he was then called) was impressed by it and gave it his friendly confidence. He was certain that it would arrest the attention of the critics and of the public, whether it became popular or not. I have not a set of those original three volumes. I wish I had, because they won for me an almost unhoped- for pleasure. The 'Daily Chronicle' gave the volumes over a column of review, and headed the notice, "A Coming Novelist." The 'Athenaeum' said that 'Mrs. Falchion' was a splendid study of character; 'The Pall Mall Gazette' said that the writing was as good as anything that had been done in our time, while at the same time it took rather a dark view of my future as a novelist, because it said I had not probed deep enough into the wounds of character which I had inflicted. The article was written by Mr. George W. Stevens, and he was right in saying that I had not probed deep enough. Few very young men--and I was very young then--do probe very deeply. At the appearance of 'When Valmond Came to Pontiac', however, Mr. Stevens came to the conclusion that my future was assured. I mention these things because they were burnt into my mind at the time. 'Mrs. Falchion' was my first real novel, as I have said, though it had been preceded by a short novel called 'The Chief Factor', since rescued from publication and never published in book form in England. I realised when I had written 'Mrs. Falchion' that I had not found my metier, and I was fearful of complete failure. I had come but a few years before from the South Seas; I was full of what I had seen and felt; I was eager to write of it all, and I did write of it; but the thing which was deeper still in me was the life which 'Pierre and His People', 'The Seats of the Mighty', 'The Trail of the Sword', 'The Lane That Had no Turning', and 'The Right of Way' portrayed. That life was destined to give me an assured place and public, while 'Mrs. Falchion', and the South Sea stories published in various journals before the time of its production, and indeed anterior to the writing of the Pierre series, only assured me attention. Happily for the book, which has faults of construction, superficialities as to incident, and with some crudity of plot, it was, in the main, a study of character. There was focus, there was illumination in the book, to what degree I will not try to say; and the attempt to fasten the mind of the reader upon the central figure, and to present that central figure in many aspects, safeguarded the narrative from the charge of being a mere novel of adventure, or, as one writer called it, "an impudent melodrama, which has its own fascinations." Reading Mrs. Falchion again after all these years, I seem to realise in it an attempt to combine the objective and subjective methods of treatment--to combine analysis of character and motive with arresting episode. It is a difficult thing to do, as I have found. It was not done on my part wholly by design, but rather by instinct, and I imagine that this tendency has run through all my works. It represents the elements of romanticism and of realism in one, and that kind of representation has its dangers, to say nothing of its difficulties. It sometimes alienates the reader, who by instinct and preference is a realist, and it troubles the reader who wants to read for a story alone, who cares for what a character does, and not for what a character is or says, except in so far as it emphasises what it does. One has to work, however, in one's own way, after one's own idiosyncrasies, and here is the book that represents one of my own idiosyncrasies in its most primitive form. CONTENTS: BOOK I BELOW THE SUN LINE I. THE GATES OF THE SEA II. "MOTLEY IS YOUR ONLY WEAR" III. A TALE OF NO MAN'S SEA IV. THE TRAIL OF THE ISHMAELITE V. ACCUSING FACES VI. MUMMERS ALL VII. THE WHEEL COMES FULL CIRCLE VIII. A BRIDGE OF PERIL IX. "THE PROGRESS OF THE SUNS" X. BETWEEN DAY AND DARK BOOK II THE SLOPE OF THE PACIFIC XI. AMONG THE HILLS OF GOD XII. THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME XIII. THE SONG OF THE SAW XIV. THE PATH OF THE EAGLE XV. IN THE TROUGH OF THE WINDS XVI. A DUEL IN ARCADY XVII. RIDING THE REEFS XVIII. THE STRINGS OF DESTINY XIX. THE SENTENCE XX. AFTER THE STORM XXI. IN PORT BOOK I BELOW THE SUN LINE CHAPTER I THE GATES OF THE SEA The part I played in Mrs. Falchion's career was not very noble, but I shall set it forth plainly here, else I could not have the boldness to write of her faults or those of others. Of my own history little need be said in preface. Soon after graduating with honours as a physician, I was offered a professional post in a college of medicine in Canada. It was difficult to establish a practice in medicine without some capital, else I had remained in London; and, being in need of instant means, I gladly accepted the offer. But six months were to intervene before the beginning of my duties--how to fill that time profitably was the question. I longed to travel, having scarcely been out of England during my life. Some one suggested the position of surgeon on one of the great steamers running between England and Australia. The idea of a long sea- voyage was seductive, for I had been suffering from over-study, though the position itself was not very distinguished. But in those days I cared more for pleasing myself than for what might become a newly-made professor, and I was prepared to say with a renowned Irish dean: "Dignity and I might be married, for all the relations we are." I secured the position with humiliating ease and humiliating smallness of pay. The steamer's name was the 'Fulvia'. It was one of the largest belonging to the Occidental Company. It carried no emigrants and had a passenger list of fashionable folk. On the voyage out to Australia the weather was pleasant, save in the Bay of Biscay; there was no sickness on board, and there were many opportunities for social gaiety, the cultivation of pleasant acquaintances, and the encouragement of that brisk idleness which aids to health. This was really the first holiday in my life, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Nothing of unusual interest occurred on the outward voyage; for one thing, because there were no unusual people among the passengers; for another, because the vessel behaved admirably. The same cannot be said of the return voyage: and with it my story really begins. Misfortune followed us out of Sydney harbour. We broke a crank-shaft between there and Port Phillip, Melbourne; a fire in the hold occurred at Adelaide; and at Albany we buried a passenger who had died of consumption one day out from King George's Sound. At Colombo, also, we had a misfortune, but it was of a peculiar kind, and did not obtrude itself at once; it was found in an addition to our passenger list. I had spent a day in exploring Colombo-- visiting Arabi Pasha, inspecting Hindu temples, watching the jugglers and snake-charmers, evading guides and the sellers of brummagem jewellery, and idling in the Cinnamon Gardens. I returned to the ship tired out. After I had done some official duties, I sauntered to the gangway, and, leaning against the bulwarks, idly watched the passengers come on board from the tender. Two of these made an impression on me. One was a handsome and fashionably-dressed woman, who was followed by a maid or companion (as I fancied), carrying parcels; the other, a shabbily-dressed man, who was the last to come up from the tender. The woman was going down the companion-way when he stepped on deck with a single bag in his hand, and I noticed that he watched her with a strange look in his eyes. He stood still as he gazed, and remained so for a moment after she had gone; then he seemed to recover himself, and started, as I thought, almost guiltily, when he saw that my attention was attracted. He nervously shifted his bag from one hand to the other, and looked round as though not certain of where he should go. A steward came to him officiously, and patronisingly too,--which is the bearing of servants to shabbily-dressed people,--but he shook his head, caught his bag smartly away from the steward's fingers, and moved towards the after part of the ship, reserved for intermediate passengers. As he went he hesitated, came to the side of the vessel, looked down at the tender for a moment, cast his eyes to where the anchor was being weighed, made as if he would go back to the tender, then, seeing that the ladder was now drawn up, sighed, and passed on to the second-class companion-way, through which he disappeared. I stood commenting idly to myself upon this incident, which, slight though it was, appeared to have significance of a kind, when Hungerford, the fifth officer, caught me slyly by the arm and said, "Lucky fellow! Nothing to do but watch the world go by. I wish I had you in the North Atlantic on a whaler, or in the No Man's Sea on a pearl-smack for a matter of thirty days." "What would come of that, Hungerford?" said I. "An exchange of matter for mind, Marmion; muscle for meditation, physics for philosophy." "You do me too much honour; at present I've neither mind, meditation, nor philosophy; I am simply vegetating." "Which proves you to be demoralised. I never saw a surgeon on a ship who wasn't. They began with mind--more or less--they ate the fruits of indolence, got precious near being sinful as well as indolent, and ended with cheap cynicism, with the old 'quid refert'--the thing Hamlet plagiarised in his, 'But it is no matter.'" "Isn't this an unusual occupation for you, Hungerford--this Swift-like criticism?" "Swift-like, is it? You see, I've practised on many of your race, Marmion, and I have it pat now. You are all of two classes--those who sicken in soul and leave after one trip, and those who make another trip and are lost." "Lost? How?" Hungerford pressed his fingers hard on my breastbone, looked at me enigmatically from under his well-hung brows, and replied: "Brains put out to seed, morals put out to vegetate--that's 'lost.'" "What about fifth officers?" "Fifth officers work like navvies, and haven't time for foolishness. They've got to walk the bridge, and practise the boats, and be responsible for luggage--and here I am talking to you like an infallible undergraduate, while the lascars are in endless confusion with a half- dozen pieces of baggage, and the first officer foams because I'm not there to set them right. I leave you to your dreams. Good-bye." Hungerford was younger than myself, but he knew the world, and I was flattered by these uncommon remarks, because he talked to no one else on the ship in the same way. He never sought to make friends, had a thorough contempt for social trifling, and shrugged his shoulders at the "swagger" of some of the other officers. I think he longed for a different kind of sea-life, so accustomed had he been to adventurous and hardy ways. He had entered the Occidental service because he had fallen in love with a pretty girl, and thought it his duty to become a "regular," and thus have the chance of seeing her every three months in London. He had conceived a liking for me, reciprocated on my part; the more so, because I knew that behind his blunt exterior there was a warm and manly heart. When he left me I went to my cabin and prepared for dinner, laughing as I did so at his keen, uncompromising criticism, which I knew was correct enough; for of all official posts that of a ship- surgeon is least calculated to make a man take a pride in existence. At its best, it is assisting in the movement of a panorama; at its worst, worse than a vegetation. Hungerford's solicitude for myself, however, was misplaced, because this one voyage would end my career as ship- surgeon, and, besides, I had not vegetated, but had been interested in everything that had occurred, humdrum as it was. With these thoughts, I looked out of the port-hole, to see the shores of Colombo, Galle Face, and Mount Lavinia fading in the distance, and heard seven bells--the time for dinner. When I took my seat at the table of which I was the head, my steward handed to me a slip of paper, saying that the chief steward had given a new passenger, a lady, the seat at my right hand, which had been vacated at Colombo. The name on the paper was "Mrs. Falchion." The seat was still empty, and I wondered if this was the beautiful passenger who had attracted me and interested the Intermediate Passenger. I was selfish enough to wish so: and it was so. We had finished the soup before she entered. The chief steward, with that anxious civility which beauty can inspire in even so great a personage, conducted her to her seat beside me. I confess that though I was at once absorbed in this occurrence, I noticed also that some of the ladies present smiled significantly when they saw at whose table Mrs. Falchion was placed, and looked not a little ironically at the purser, who, as it was known, always tried to get for his table the newest addition to the passenger list--when it was a pretty woman. I believe that one or two rude people chaffed the chief steward about "favouring the doctor"; but he had a habit of saying uncomfortable things in a deferential way, and they did not pursue the subject. Then they commiserated the purser, who was an unpleasant little Jew of an envious turn of mind; and he, as I was told, likened me to Sir John Falstaff. I was sensitive in those days, and this annoyed me, particularly that I had had nothing to do with placing Mrs. Falchion at my table. We are always most sensitive when guilty concerning the spirit and not the letter. One who has lived the cosmopolitan life of London should be quick at detecting nationalities, but I found it difficult, even after I heard her speak, to guess at Mrs. Falchion's native land. There were good reasons for this, as may be duly seen. Her appearance in the saloon caused an instant buzz of admiration and interest, of which she seemed oblivious. If it was acting, it was good acting; if it was lack of self- consciousness, it was remarkable. As I soon came to know, it was the latter--which, in such a woman, increased the remarkableness. I was inclined at first to venture the opinion that she was an actress; but I discovered that she possessed the attracting power of an actress without the calculated manner of one; her very lack of self-consciousness was proof of this emancipation. When she sat down, I immediately welcomed her by name to my table. The only surprise she showed at my knowledge of her name and my self- introduction was to lift her head slightly and look at me, as if wondering whether I was likely to be an inquisitive and troublesome host; and also, as I thought, to measure me according to her measure. It was a quick look, and the interest she showed was of a passive kind. She asked me as she might an old acquaintance--or a waiter--if the soup was good, and what the fish was like; decided on my recommendation to wait for the entrees; requested her next neighbour to pass the olives; in an impersonal way began to talk about the disadvantages of life at sea; regretted that all ship food tasted alike; wondered if the cook knew how to make a Russian salad; and added that the menu was a national compromise. Now that she was close to me, I could see that her beauty was real and notable. Her features were regular, her eyes of a greyish violet, her chin strong, yet not too strong--the chin of a singer; her hands had that charming quiet certainty of movement possessed by so few; and her colour was of the most delightful health. In this delightful health, in her bountiful yet perfect physical eloquence, her attractiveness, as it seemed to me, chiefly lay. For no one would ever have guessed her to possess an emotional temperament. All that was outer was fascinating, all that was inner suggested coldness. After experience assured me that all who came to know her shared this estimate, even in those days when every man on the ship was willing to be her slave. She had a compelling atmosphere, a possessive presence; and yet her mind at this time was unemotional--like Octavia, the wife of Mark Antony, "of a cold conversation." She was striking and unusual in appearance, and yet well within convention and "good form." Her dress was simply and modestly worn, and had little touches of grace and taste which, I understand, many ladies on board sought to imitate, when they recovered from the first feeling of envy. She was an example of splendid life. I cared to look at her as one would dwell on the sleek beauty of a deer--as, indeed, I have many a time since then, in India, watched a tigress asleep on her chain, claws hidden, wild life latent but slumbering. I could have staked my life that Mrs. Falchion was insensible to love or passion, and unimpeachable in the broad scheme of right and wrong; imperious in requiring homage, incapable of giving it. I noticed when she laughed, as she did once at table, that her teeth were very white and small and square; and, like a schoolgirl, she had a habit of clicking them together very lightly, but not conspicuously, as if trying their quality. This suggested, however, something a little cruel. Her appetite was very good. She was coolly anxious about the amusements; she asked me if I could get her a list of the passengers, said that she was never sea-sick, and took a languid interest in the ladies present. Her glance at the men was keen at first, then neutral. Once again, during the meal, she slowly turned and flashed an inquiring glance at me. I caught her eyes. She did not show the least embarrassment, and asked me if the band insisted on playing every day. Before she left the saloon, one could see that many present were talking about her. Even the grim old captain followed her with his eyes as she went. When she rose, I asked her if she was going on deck. I did it casually, as though it was her usual custom to appear there after dinner. In like fashion she replied that her maid had some unpacking to do, she had some things to superintend, and, when this was done, she intended to spend a time on deck. Then, with a peculiar smile, she passed out. [Note by Dr. Marmion appended to his MSS.:--"Many of the conversations and monologues in this history, not heard by myself when they occurred, were told to me afterwards, or got from the diaries and notes of the persons concerned. Only a few are purely imaginary."] CHAPTER II "MOTLEY IS YOUR ONLY WEAR" I went to my cabin, took a book, sat down, and began to smoke. My thoughts drifted from the book, and then occurred a strange, incongruous thing. It was a remembered incident. It came like a vision as I was lighting a fresh cigar: A boy and a girl in a village chemist's shop; he with a boy's love for her, she responding in terms, but not in fact. He passed near her carrying a measure of sulphuric acid. She put out her hand suddenly and playfully, as though to bar his way. His foot slipped on the oily floor, and the acid spilled on his hands and the skirt of her dress. He turned instantly and plunged his hands into a measure of alcohol standing near before the acid had more than slightly scalded them. She glanced at his startled face; hers was without emotion. She looked down, and said petulantly: "You have spoiled my dress; I cannot go into the street." The boy's clothes were burnt also. He was poor, and to replace them must be a trial to him; her father owned the shop, and was well-to-do. Still, he grieved most that she should be annoyed, though he saw her injustice. But she turned away and left him. Another scene then crossed the disc of smoke: The boy and girl, now man and woman, standing alone in the chemist's shop. He had come out of the big working world, after travel in many countries. His fame had come with him. She was to be married the next day to a seller of purple and fine linen. He was smiling a good-bye, and there was nothing of the old past in the smile. The flame now was in her eyes, and she put out both her hands to stop him as he turned to go; but his face was passionless. "You have spoiled my heart," she said; "I cannot go into the world so." "It is too late; the measures are empty," he replied. "I love you to-day, I will loathe you to-morrow," was the answer. But he turned and left her, and she blindly stretched out her hands and followed him into the darkness, weeping. Was it the scent of the chemicals in my cabin, coupled with some subterranean association of things, which brought these scenes vividly before me at this moment? What had they to do with Mrs. Falchion? A time came when the occurrence appeared to me in the light of prescience, but that was when I began to understand that all ideas, all reason and philosophy, are the result of outer impression. The primal language of our minds is in the concrete. Afterwards it becomes the cypher, and even at its highest it is expressed by angles, lines, and geometrical forms--substances and allusive shapes. But now, as the scene shifted by, I had involuntarily thrust forward my hands as did the girl when she passed out into the night, and, in doing so, touched the curtain of my cabin door swinging in towards me. I recovered myself, and a man timidly stepped inside, knocking as he did so. It was the Intermediate Passenger. His face was pale; he looked ill. Poor as his dress was, I saw that he had known the influences and practised the graces of good society, though his manner was hesitating and anxious now. I knew at a glance that he was suffering from both physical pain and mental worry. Without a word, I took his wrist and felt his pulse, and he said: "I thought I might venture to come--" I motioned him not to speak. I counted the irregular pulse-beats, then listened to the action of his heart, with my ear to his breast. There lay his physical trouble. I poured out a dose of digitalis, and, handing it to him, asked him to sit down. As he sat and drank the medicine, I rapidly studied him. The chin was firm, and the eyes had a dogged, persistent look that, when turned on you, saw not you, but something beyond you. The head was thrown slightly forward, the eyes looking up at an angle. This last action was habitual with him. It gave him a peculiar earnestness. As I noted these peculiarities, my mind was also with his case; I saw that his life was threatened. Perhaps he guessed what was going on in me, for he said in a low, cultured voice: "The wheels will stop too long some time, and there will be no rebound;" --referring to the irregular action of his heart. "Perhaps that is true," I said; "yet it depends a good deal upon yourself when it will be. Men can die if they wish without committing suicide. Look at the Maori, the Tongan, the Malay. They can also prolong life (not indefinitely, but in a case like yours considerably), if they choose. You can lengthen your days if you do not brood on fatal things --fatal to you; if you do not worry yourself into the grave." I knew that something of this was platitude, and that counsel to such a man must be of a more possible cast, if it is to be followed. I was aware also that, in nine cases out of ten, worry is not a voluntary or constitutional thing, but springs from some extraneous cause. He smiled faintly, raised his head a little higher, and said: "Yes, that's just it, I suppose; but then we do not order our own constitutions; and I believe, Doctor, that you must kill a nerve before it ceases to hurt. One doesn't choose to worry, I think, any more than one chooses to lay bare a nerve." And then his eyes dropped, as if he thought he had already said too much. Again I studied him, repeating my definitions in my mind. He was not a drunkard; he might have had no vice, so free was his face from any sign of dissipation or indulgence; but there was suffering, possibly the marks of some endured shame. The suffering and shadows showed the more because his features were refined enough for a woman. And altogether it struck me that he was possessed by some one idea, which gave his looks a kind of sorrowful eloquence, such as one sees on occasion in the face of a great actor like Salvini, on the forehead of a devout Buddhist, or in the eyes of a Jesuit missionary who martyrs himself in the wilds. I felt at once for the man a sympathy, a brotherliness, the causes of which I should be at a loss to trace. Most people have this experience at one time or another in their lives. It is not a matter of sex; it may be between an old man and a little child, a great man and a labourer, a schoolgirl and an old native woman. There is in such companionships less self-interest than in any other. As I have said, I thought that this man had a trouble, and I wished to know it; not from curiosity,--though my mind had a selfish, inquiring strain,--but because I hoped I might be able to help him in some way. I put my hand on his shoulder, and replied: "You will never be better unless you get rid of your worry." He drew in a sharp breath, and said: "I know that. I am afraid I shall never be better." There was a silence in which we looked at each other steadily, and then he added, with an intense but quiet misery: "Never--never!" At that he moved his hand across his forehead wearily, rose, and turned toward the door. He swayed as he did so, and would have fallen, but I caught him as he lost consciousness, and laid him on the cabin sofa. I chafed his hands, unloosed his collar, and opened the bosom of his shirt. As the linen dropped away from his throat, a small portrait on ivory was exposed on his breast. I did not look closely at it then, but it struck me that the woman's head in the portrait was familiar, though the artistic work was not recent, and the fashion of the hair was of years before. When his eyes opened, and he felt his neck bare, he hurriedly put up his hand and drew the collar close, and at the same time sent a startled and inquiring look at me. After a few moments I helped him to his feet, and, thanking me more with a look than with words, he turned towards the door again. "Wait," I said, "until I give you some medicine, and then you shall take my arm to your cabin." With a motion of the hand, signifying the uselessness of remedies, he sat down again. As I handed him the phial, I continued: "I know that it is none of my business, but you are suffering. To help your body, your mind should be helped also. Can't you tell me your trouble? Perhaps I should be able to serve you. I would if I could." It may be that I spoke with a little feeling and an apparent honesty; for his eyes searched mine in a kind of earnest bewilderment, as if this could not be true--as if, indeed, life had gone so hard with him that he had forgotten the way of kindness. Then he stretched out his hand and said brokenly: "I am grateful, believe me. I cannot tell you just now, but I will soon, perhaps." His hand was upon the curtain of the door, when my steward's voice was heard outside, calling my name. The man himself entered immediately, and said that Mrs. Falchion sent her compliments, and would I come at once to see her companion, Miss Caron, who had injured herself. The Intermediate Passenger turned towards me a strange look; his lips opened as if about to speak, but he said nothing. At the instant there came to my mind whom the picture on his breast resembled: it was Mrs. Falchion. I think he saw this new intelligence in my face, and a meaning smile took the place of words, as he slowly left the cabin, mutely refusing assistance. I went to Mrs. Falchion's cabin, and met her outside the door. She looked displeased. "Justine has hurt herself," she said. "Please attend to her; I am going on deck." The unfeeling nature of this remark held me to the spot for a moment; then I entered the cabin. Justine Caron, a delicate but warm-faced girl of little more than twenty, was sitting on the cabin sofa, her head supported against the wall, and her hand wound in a handkerchief soaked in blood. Her dress and the floor were also stained. I undid the handkerchief and found an ugly wound in the palm of the hand. I called the steward, and sent him to my dispensary for some necessaries; then I asked her how it happened. At the moment I saw the cause--a broken bottle lying on the floor. "The ship rolled," she said. "The bottle fell from the shelf upon the marble washstand, and, breaking, from there to the floor. Madame caught at my arm to save herself from falling; but I slipped, and was cut on the bottle--so." As she ended there was a knock, but the curtain was not drawn, and Mrs. Falchion's voice was heard. "My dress is stained, Justine." The half-fainting girl weakly replied: "I am very sorry, madame, indeed." To this Mrs. Falchion rejoined: "When you have been attended to, you may go to bed, Justine. I shall not want you again to-night. But I shall change my dress. It is so unpleasant; I hate blood. I hope you will be well in the morning." To this Justine replied: "Ah, madame, I am sorry. I could not help it; but I shall be quite well in the morning, I am sure." Then she added quietly to me: "The poor madame! She will not see suffering. She hates pain. Sickness troubles her. Shall I be able to use my hand very soon, monsieur?" There was a wistful look in her eyes, and guessing why it was there, I said: "Yes, soon, I hope--in a few days, no doubt." Her face lighted up, and she said: "Madame likes about her people who are happy and well." Then, as if she might have said too much, she hurriedly added: "But she is very kind;" and, stooping down quickly, her face whitening with the effort, she caught up the broken glass and threw it through the port-hole into the sea. A half-hour later I went on deck, and found Mrs. Falchion comfortably seated in her deck-chair. I brought a stool over, and sat down beside her. To this hour the quickness with which I got upon friendly terms with her astonishes me. "Justine is better?" she said, and her hand made a slight motion of disgust. "Yes. She was not dangerously hurt, of course." "Let us change the subject, please. They are going to have a fancy-dress ball on board, I believe, before we get to Aden. How tiresome! Isn't it a little affectation on the part of the stage-struck committee? Isn't it--inconsequent?" "That depends," I said vaguely, inviting a question. She idled with a book in her lap. "On what?" "On those who go, what costumes are worn, and how much beauty and art appear." "But the trouble! Does it pay? What return does one get?" "If all admire, half are envious, some are jealous, and one is devoted-- isn't that enough?" I think I was a fool that night. "You seem to understand women," she said, with a puzzling and not quite satisfactory smile. "Yes, all that is something." Though I was looking at the sea rather than at her, I saw again that inquiring look in her eyes--such a measuring look as a recruiting sergeant might give a victim of the Queen's shilling. After a moment's pause she continued, I thought, abstractedly: "As what should you go?" I answered lightly and without premeditation, "As Caius Cassius. Why should you not appear as Portia?" She lifted her eyebrows at me. "As Portia?" "As Portia, the wife of Brutus," I blundered on, at the same time receiving her permission, by a nod, to light my cigar. "The pious, love-sick wife of Brutus!" This in a disdainful tone, and the white teeth clicked softly together. "Yes, a good disguise," I said banteringly, though I fancy somewhat tentatively also, and certainly with a touch of rudeness. I was thinking at that moment of the Intermediate Passenger, and I was curious. "And you think of going in the disguise of a gentleman? Caius Cassius was that, wasn't he?" she retorted in an ironical tone. "I suppose he was, though he was punished once for rudeness," I replied apologetically. "Quite so," was the decisive reply. I felt that she was perfectly cool, while I was a little confused, and ashamed too, that I had attempted to be playfully satirical. And so, wondering what I should say next, I remarked in desperation: "Do you like the sea?" "I am never ill at sea," was her reply. "But I do not really like it; it is treacherous. The land would satisfy me if--" She paused. "Yes, Mrs. Falchion--'if'?" "If I did not wish to travel," she vaguely added, looking blandly at me. "You have travelled much?" I ventured. "A great deal;" and again I saw that scrutiny in her eyes. It occurred to me at the moment that she might think I possessed some previous knowledge of her. My mind became occupied again with the Intermediate Passenger and the portrait that he wore at his neck. I almost laughed to think of the melodramatic turn which my first conversation with this woman might chance to take. I felt that I was dealing with one who was able to meet cleverly any advance of mine, but I determined to lead the talk into as deep waters as possible. "I suppose, too, you are a good practical sailor--that is, you understand seamanship, if you have travelled much?" I do not know why I said that, for it sounded foolish to me afterwards. "Pretty well," she replied. "I can manage a sail; I know the argot, I could tell the shrouds from the bulwarks, and I've rowed a boat in a choppy sea." "It is not an accomplishment usual to your sex." "It was ordinary enough where I spent the early part of my life," was the idle reply; and she settled herself more comfortably in her chair. "Yes? May I ask where that was?" and as I said this, it occurred to me that she was, perhaps, leading me on, instead of my leading her; to betray me as to anything I knew about her. "In the South Seas," she replied. "My father was a British consul in the Islands." "You have not come from the Islands now, I suppose?" "No," she said a little more softly; "it is years since I was in Samoa. . . . My father is buried there." "You must have found it a romantic life in those half-barbaric places?" She shifted in her chair. "Romantic!" Her tone conveyed a very slight uneasiness and vagueness. "I am afraid you must ask some one else about that sort of thing. I did not see much romance, but I saw plenty that was half-barbaric." Here she laughed slightly. Just then I saw the lights of a vessel far off. "See--a vessel!" I said; and I watched the lights in silence, but thinking. I saw that she too was watching idly. At length, as if continuing the conversation, I said: "Yes, I suppose life must be somewhat adventurous and dangerous among savage people like the Samoans, Tongans, and Fijians?" "Indeed, then," she replied decisively, "you are not to suppose anything of the kind. The danger is not alone for the white people." At this I appeared, as I really was, interested, and begged her to explain what she meant. She thought a moment, and then briefly, but clearly, sketched the life of those islands, showing how, in spite of missionary labour selfish and unselfish, the native became the victim of civilisation, the prey of the white trader and beachcomber, who were protected by men-of-war with convincing Nordenfeldt and Hotchkiss guns; how the stalwart force of barbaric existence declined, and with it the crude sense of justice, the practice of communism at its simplest and purest, the valour of nationality. These phrases are my own--the substance, not the fashion, of her speech. "You do not, then," I said, "believe wholly in the unselfishness of missionaries, the fair dealing of traders, the perfect impartiality of justice, as shown through steel-clad cruisers?" "I have seen too much to be quite fair in judgment, I fear, even to men- of-war's men;" and she paused, listening to a song which came from the after-part of the ship. The air was very still, and a few of the words of the droll, plaintive ditty came to us. Quartermaster Stone, as he passed us, hummed it, and some voices of the first-class passengers near joined in the refrain: "Sing, hey, for a rover on the sea, And the old world!" Some days later I got all of the song from one of the intermediate passengers, and the last verse of it I give here: "I'm a-sailing, I'm a-sailing on the sea, To a harbour where the wind is still; Oh, my dearie, do you wait for me? Oh, my dearie, do you love me still? Sing, hey, for a rover on the sea, And the old world!" I noticed that Mrs. Falchion's brow contracted as the song proceeded, making a deep vertical line between the eyes, and that the fingers of the hand nearest me closed on the chair-arm firmly. The hand attracted me. It was long, the fingers were shapely, but not markedly tapering, and suggested firmness. I remarked afterward, when I chanced to shake hands with her, that her fingers enclosed one's hand; it was not a mere touch or pressure, but an unemotional and possessive clasp. I felt sure that she had heard the song before, else it had not produced even this so slight effect on her nerves. I said: "It is a quaint song. I suppose you are familiar with it and all of its kind?" "I fancy I have heard it somewhere," she answered in a cold voice. I am aware that my next question was not justified by our very short acquaintance; but this acquaintance had been singular from its beginning, and it did not seem at that moment as it looks on paper; besides, I had the Intermediate Passenger in my mind. "Perhaps your husband is a naval man?" I asked. A faint flush passed over her face, and then, looking at me with a neutral expression and some reserve of manner, she replied: "My husband was not a naval man." She said "was not." That implied his death. There was no trouble in her manner; I could detect no sign of excitement. I turned to look at the lights of the approaching vessel, and there, leaning against the railing that divided the two decks, was the Intermediate Passenger. He was looking at us intently. A moment after he disappeared. Beyond doubt there was some intimate association between these two. My thoughts were, however, distracted by our vessel signalling the other. Hungerford was passing just then, and I said: "Have you any idea what vessel it is, Hungerford?" "Yes, man-of-war 'Porcupine', bound for Aden, I think." Mrs. Falchion at this laughed strangely, as she leaned forward looking, and then, rising quickly, said: "I prefer to walk." "May I accompany you?" I asked. She inclined her head, and we joined the promenaders. The band was playing, and, for a ship-band, playing very well, the ballet music of Delibes' 'Sylvia'. The musicians had caught that unaccentuated and sensuous swing of the melody which the soft, tropical atmosphere rendered still more languorous. With Mrs. Falchion's hand upon my arm, I felt a sense of capitulation to the music and to her, uncanny in its suddenness. At this distance of time it seems to me absurd. I had once experienced something of the same feeling with the hand of a young medical student, who, skilled in thought-reading, discovered the number of a bank-note that was in my mind. This woman had an attractiveness compelling and delightful, at least in its earlier application to me. Both professionally and socially I have been brought into contact with women of beauty and grace, but never one who, like Mrs. Falchion, being beautiful, seemed so unconscious of the fact, so indifferent to those about her, so untouched by another's emotion, so lacking in sensitiveness of heart; and who still drew people to her. I am speaking now of the earlier portion of our acquaintance; of her as she was up to this period in her life. I was not alone in this opinion of her, for, as time went on, every presentable man and woman on the boat was introduced to her; and if some women criticised and some disliked her, all acknowledged her talent and her imperial attraction. Among the men her name was never spoken but with reserve and respect, and her afternoon teas were like a little court. She had no compromising tenderness of manner for man or woman; she ruled, yet was unapproachable through any avenues of sentiment. She had a quiet aplomb, which would be called 'sang-froid' in a man. "Did you ever see a Spanish-Mexican woman dance?" she asked in one of the pauses of the music. "Never: never any good dancing, save what one gets at a London theatre." "That is graceful," she said, "but not dancing. You have heard of music stirring the blood; of savage races--and others--working themselves up to ecstatic fury? Maybe you have seen the Dervishes, or the Fijians, or the Australian aboriginals? No? Well, I have, and I have seen--which is so much more--those Spanish-Mexican women dance. Did you ever see anything so thrilling, so splendid, that you felt you must possess it?"--She asked me that with her hand upon my arm!--"Well, that is it. I have felt that way towards a horse which has won a great race, and to a woman who has carried me with her through the fantastic drama of her dance, until she stood at the climax, head thrown back, face glowing--a statue. It is grand to be eloquent like that, not in words, but in person." In this was the key to her own nature. Body and mind she was free from ordinary morbidness, unless her dislike of all suffering was morbid. With her this was a dislike of any shock to the senses. She was selfish at all points. These conclusions were pursued at the expense of speech on my part. At first she did not appear to regard my silence. She seemed to have thoughts of her own; but she shook them off with a little firm motion of the shoulders, and, with the assumption of a demureness of manner and an airy petulance, said: "Well, amuse me." "Amuse you?" was my reply. "Delighted to do so if I can. How?" "Talk to me," was the quick response. "Would that accomplish the purpose?" This in a tone of mock protest. "Please don't be foolish, Dr. Marmion. I dislike having to explain. Tell me things." "About what?" "Oh, about yourself--about people you have met, and all that; for I suppose you have seen a good deal and lived a good deal." "About hospital cases?" I said a little maliciously. "No, please, no! I abhor everything that is sick and poor and miserable." "Well," said I, at idle venture, "if not a hospital, what about a gaol?" I felt the hand on my arm twitch slightly, and then her reply came. "I said I hated everything that was wretched and wicked. You are either dense, or purposely irritating." "Well, then, a college?" "A college? Yes, that sounds better. But I do not wish descriptions of being 'gated,' or 'sent down,' or 'ploughed,' and that kind of commonplace. I should prefer, unless your vanity leads you irresistibly in that direction, something with mature life and amusement; or, at least, life and incident, and good sport--if you do not dwell on the horrors of killing." On the instant there came to me the remembrance of Professor Valiant's wife. I think it was not what she wanted; but I had a purpose, and I began: "Every one at St. Luke's admired and respected Professor Valiant's wife, she was so frank and cordial and prettily downright. In our rooms we all called her a good chap, and a dashed good chap when her husband happened to be rustier than usual. He was our professor in science. It was the general belief that he chose science for his life-work because it gave unusual opportunities for torture. He was believed to be a devoted vivisectionist; he certainly had methods of cruelty, masterly in their ingenuity. He could make a whole class raw with punishment in a few words; and many a scorching bit of Latin verse was written about his hooked nose and fishy eye. "But his highest talents in this direction were reserved for his wife. His distorted idea of his own importance made him view her as a chattel, an inferior being; the more so, I believe, because she brought him little money when he married her. She was too much the woman to pretend to kneel to him, and because she would not be his slave, she had a hard time of it. He began by insisting that she should learn science, that she might assist him in his experiments. She knew that she had no taste for it, that it was no part of her wifely duty, and she did what suited her better--followed the hounds. It was a picture to see her riding across country. She could take a fence with a sound hunter like a bird. And so it happened that, after a time, they went their own ways pretty well; he ignoring her, neglecting her, deprecating her by manner, if not by speech, and making her life more than uncomfortable. "She was always kind to me. I was the youngest chap in the college, and was known as 'Marmy' by every one; and because I was fonder of science than most other men in the different years, Valiant was more gracious to me than the rest, though I did not like him. One day, when I called, I heard her say to him, not knowing that I was near: 'Whatever you feel, or however you act towards me in private, I will have respect when others are present.' "It was the custom for the professors to invite each student to luncheon or dinner once during term-time. Being somewhat of a favourite of both Professor and Mrs. Valiant however, I lunched with them often. I need hardly say that I should not have exceeded the regulation once had it not been for Mrs. Valiant. The last time I went is as clear in my memory as if it were yesterday. Valiant was more satirical and cold-blooded than usual. I noticed a kind of shining hardness in his wife's eyes, which gave me a strange feeling; yet she was talkative and even gay, I thought, while I more than once clinched my fist under the table, so much did I want to pummel him; for I was a lover of hers, in a deferential, boyish way. "At last, knowing that she liked the hunt, I asked her if she was going to the meet on the following Saturday, saying that I intended to follow, having been offered a horse. With a steely ring to her voice, and a further brightening of the eyes, she said: 'You are a stout little sportsman, Marmy. Yes, I am going on Major Karney's big horse, Carbine.' "Valiant looked up, half sneering, half doubtful, I thought, and rejoined: 'Carbine is a valuable horse, and the fences are stiff in the Garston country.' "She smiled gravely, then, with her eyes fixed on her husband, said: 'Carbine is a perfect gentleman. He will do what I ask him. I have ridden him.' "'The devil you have!' he replied. "'I am sure,' said I, as I hoped, bravely, and not a little enthusiastically, 'that Carbine would take any fence you asked him.' "'Or not, as the case might be. Thank you, Marmy, for the compliment,' she said. "'A Triton among minnows,' remarked Valiant, not entirely under his breath; 'horses obey, and students admire, and there is no end to her greatness.' "'There is an end to everything, Edward,' she remarked a shade sadly and quietly. "He turned to me and said: 'Science is a great study, Marmion, but it is sardonic too; for you shall find that when you reduce even a Triton to its original elements--' "'Oh, please let me finish,' she interrupted softly. 'I know the lecture so well. It reads this way: "The place of generation must break to give place to the generated; but the influence spreads out beyond the fragments, and is greater thus than in the mass--neither matter nor mind can be destroyed. The earth was molten before it became cold rock and quiet world." There, you see, Marmy, that I am a fellow-student of yours.' "Valiant's eyes were ugly to watch; for she had quoted from a lecture of his, delivered to us that week. After an instant he said, with slow maliciousness: 'Oh, ye gods, render me worthy of this Portia, and teach her to do as Brutus's Portia did, ad eternum!' "She shuddered a little, then said very graciously, and as if he had meant nothing but kindness: 'Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks.' I will leave you now to your cigarettes; and because I must go out soon, and shall not, I fear, see you again this afternoon, good-bye, Marmy, till Saturday--till Saturday.' And she left us. "I was white and trembling with anger. He smiled coolly, and was careful to choose me one of his best cigars, saying as he handed it: 'Conversation is a science, Marmion. Study it; there is solid satisfaction in it; it is the only art that brings instant pleasure. Like the stage, it gets its immediate applause.' "Well, Mrs. Valiant did ride Carbine on that Saturday. Such a scene it was! I see it now--the mottled plump of hounds upon the scent, the bright sun showing up the scarlet coats of the whips gloriously, the long stride of the hunters, ears back and quarters down! She rode Carbine, and the fences WERE stiff--so stiff that I couldn't have taken half of them. Afterward I was not sorry that I couldn't; for she rode for a fall that day on Carbine, her own horse, she had bought him of Major Karney a few days before,--and I heard her last words as she lay beside him, smiling through the dreadful whiteness of her lips. 'Goodbye, Marmy,' she whispered. 'Carbine and I go together. It is better so, in the full cry and a big field. Tell the men at Luke's that I hope they will pass at the coming exams. . . . I am going up--for my final--Marmy.-- I wonder--if I'll--pass.' And then the words froze on her lips. "It was persecution that did it--diabolical persecution and selfishness. That was the worst day the college ever knew. At the funeral, when the provost read, 'For that it hath pleased Thee to deliver this our sister out of the miseries of this sinful world,' Big Wallington, the wildest chap among the grads, led off with a gulp in his throat, and we all followed. And that gold-spectacled sneak stood there, with a lying white handkerchief at his eyes. "I laid myself out to make the college too hot for him. In a week I had every man in the place with me, and things came to such a pass that all of us must be sent down, or Valiant resign. He resigned. He found another professorship; but the thing followed him, and he was obliged to leave the country." When I finished the story, Mrs. Falchion was silent for a time, then, with a slight air of surprise, and in a quite critical way, she said: "I should think you would act very well, if you used less emotion. Mrs. Valiant had a kind of courage, but she was foolish to die. She should have stayed and fought him--fought him every way, until she was his master. She could have done it; she was clever, I should think. Still, if she had to die, it was better to go with a good horse that way. I think I should prefer to go swiftly, suddenly, but without the horror of blood and bruises, and that sort of thing. . . . I should like to meet Professor Valiant. He was hard, but he was able too. . . . But haven't we had enough of horror? I asked you to amuse me, and you have merely interested me instead. Oh!--" This exclamation, I thought, was caused by the voice of the quartermaster humming: "I'm a-sailing, I'm a-sailing on the sea, To a harbour where the wind is still"-- Almost immediately she said: "I think I will go below." Then, after a slight pause: "This is a liberal acquaintance for one day, Dr. Marmion; and, you know, we were not introduced." "No, Mrs. Falchion, we were not introduced; but I am in some regards your host, and I fear we should all be very silent if we waited for regular introductions here. The acquaintance gives me pleasure, but it is not nearly so liberal as I hope it may become." She did not answer, but smiled at me over her shoulder as she passed down the staircase, and the next instant I could have bitten my tongue for playing the cavalier as I had done; for showing, as I think I did, that she had an influence over me--an influence peculiar to herself, and difficult to account for when not in her presence. I sat down, lit a cigar, and went over in my mind all that had been said between us; all that had occurred in my cabin after dinner; every minute since we left Colombo was laid bare to its minutest detail. Lascars slipped by me in the half-darkness, the voices of two lovers near alternated with their expressive silences, and from the music saloon there came the pretty strains of a minuet, played very deftly. Under the influence of this music my thoughts became less exact; they drifted. My eyes shifted to the lights of the 'Porcupine' in the distance, and from them again to the figures passing and repassing me on the deck. The "All's well" of the look-out seemed to come from an endless distance; the swish of water against the dividing hull of the 'Fulvia' sounded like a call to silence from another world; the phosphorescence swimming through the jarred waters added to the sensation of unreality and dreams. These dreams grew, till they were broken by a hand placed on my shoulder, and I saw that one of the passengers, Clovelly, an English novelist, had dropped out from the promenade to talk with me. He saw my mood, however, and said quietly: "Give me a light for my cigar, will you? Then, astride this stool, I'll help you to make inventory of the rest of them. A pretty study; for, at our best, 'What fools we mortals be!'" "'Motley is your only wear,'" was my reply; and for a full half-hour, which, even for a man, is considerable, we spoke no word, but only nodded when some one of the promenaders noticed us. There was a bookmaker fresh from the Melbourne races; an American, Colonel Ryder, whose eloquence had carried him round the world; a stalwart squatter from Queensland; a pretty widow, who had left her husband under the sods of Tasmania; a brace of girls going to join their lovers and be married in England; a few officers fleeing from India with their livers and their lives; a family of four lanky lasses travelling "home" to school; a row of affable ladies, who alternated between envy and gaiety and delight in, and criticism of, their husbands; a couple of missionaries, preparing to give us lectures on the infamous gods of the heathen,--gods which, poor harmless little creatures! might be bought at a few annas a pint at Aden or Colombo,--and on the Exodus and the Pharaohs--pleasures reserved for the Red Sea; a commercial traveller, who arranged theatricals, and cast himself for all the principal parts; a humorous and naive person who industriously hinted at the opulence of his estates in Ireland; two stately English ladies of title; a cheerful array of colonial knights and judges off to Europe for a holiday; and many others, who made little worlds unto themselves, called cliques by blunt people. "To my mind, the most interesting persons on the ship," said Clovelly at last, "are the bookmaker, Miss Treherne, and the lady with whom you have just been talking--an exceptional type." "An unusual woman, I fancy," was my reply. "But which is Miss Treherne? I am afraid I am not quite sure." He described her and her father, with whom I had talked--a London Q.C., travelling for his health, a notable man with a taste for science, who spent his idle hours in reading astronomy and the plays of Euripides. "Why not include the father in the list of the most interesting persons?" I questioned. "Because I have met many men like him, but no one quite like his daughter, or Mrs.--what is her name?" "Mrs. Falchion." "Or Mrs. Falchion or the bookmaker." "What is there so uncommon about Miss Treherne? She had not struck me as being remarkable." "No? Well, of course, she is not striking after the fashion of Mrs. Falchion. But watch her, study her, and you will find her to be the perfection of a type--the finest expression of a decorous convention, a perfect product of social conservatism; unaffected, cheerful, sensitive, composed, very talented, altogether companionable." "Excuse me," I said, laughing, though I was impressed; "that sounds as if you had been writing about her, and applying to her the novelist's system of analysis, which makes an imperfect individual a perfect type. Now, frankly, are you speaking of Miss Treherne, or of some one of whom she is the outline, as it were?" Clovelly turned and looked at me steadily. "When you consider a patient," he said, "do you arrange a diagnosis of a type or of a person? --And, by the way, 'type' is a priggish word." "I consider the type in connection with the person." "Exactly. The person is the thing. That clears up the matter of business and art. But now, as to Miss Treherne: I want to say that, having been admitted to her acquaintance and that of her father, I have thought of them only as friends, and not as 'characters' or 'copy.'" "I beg your pardon, Clovelly," said I. "I might have known." "Now, to prove how magnanimous I am, I shall introduce you to Miss Treherne, if you will let me. You've met her father, I suppose?" he added, and tossed his cigar overboard. "Yes, I have talked with him. He is a courteous and able man, I should think." We rose. Presently he continued: "See, Miss Treherne is sitting there with the Tasmanian widow--what is HER name?" "Mrs. Callendar," I replied. "Blackburn, the Queenslander, is joining them." "So much the better," he said. "Come on." As we passed the music saloon, we paused for an instant to look through the port-hole at a pale-faced girl with big eyes and a wonderful bright red dress, singing "The Angels' Serenade," while an excitable bear-leader turned her music for her. Near her stood a lanky girl who adored actors and tenors, and lived in the hope of meeting some of those gentlemen of the footlights, who plough their way so calmly through the hearts of maidens fresh from school. We drew back to go on towards Miss Treherne, when Hungerford touched me on the arm, and said: "I want to see you for a little while, Marmion, if Mr. Clovelly will excuse you." I saw by Hungerford's face that he had something of importance to say, and, linking my arm in his, I went with him to his cabin, which was near those of the intermediate passengers. CHAPTER III A TALE OF NO MAN'S SEA Inside the cabin Hungerford closed the door, gripped me by the arm, and then handed me a cheroot, with the remark: "My pater gave them to me last voyage home. Have kept 'em in tea." And then he added, with no appearance of consecutiveness: "Hang the bally ship, anyhow!" I shall not attempt to tone down the crudeness of Hungerford's language. It contents me to think that the solidity of his character and his worth will appear even through the crust of free-and-easy idioms, as they will certainly be seen in his acts;--he was sound at heart and true as steel. "What is the matter, Hungerford?" I asked lighting the cheroot. "Everything's the matter. Captain, with his nose in the air, and trusting all round to his officers. First officer, no good--never any use since they poured the coal on him. Purser, ought to be on a Chinese junk. Second, third, fourth officers, first-rate chaps, but so-so sailors. Doctor, frivolling with a lovely filly, pedigree not known. Why, confound it! nobody takes this business seriously except the captain, and he sits on a golden throne. He doesn't know that in any real danger this swagger craft would be filled with foolishness. There isn't more than one good boat's crew on board--sailors, lascars, stewards, and all. As for the officers, if the surgeon would leave the lovely ladies to themselves, he'd find cases worth treating, and duties worth doing. He should keep himself fit for shocks. And he can take my word for it--for I've been at sea since I was a kid, worse luck!--that a man with anything to do on a ship ought to travel every day nose out for shipwreck next day, and so on, port to port. Ship-surgeons, as well as all other officers, weren't ordained to follow after cambric skirts and lace handkerchiefs at sea. Believe me or not as you like, but, for a man having work to do, woman, lovely woman, is rocks. Now, I suppose you'll think I'm insolent, for I'm younger than you are, Marmion, but you know what a rough-and-tumble fellow I am, and you'll not mind." "Well, Hungerford," I said, "to what does this lead?" "To Number 116 Intermediate, for one thing. It's letting off steam for another. I tell you, Marmion, these big ships are too big. There are those canvas boats. They won't work; you can't get them together. You couldn't launch one in an hour. And as for the use of the others, the lascars would melt like snow in any real danger. There's about one decent boat's crew on the ship, that's all. There! I've unburdened myself; I feel better." Presently he added, with a shake of the head: "See here: now-a-days we trust too much to machinery and chance, and not enough to skill of hand and brain stuff. I'd like to show you some of the crews I've had in the Pacific and the China Sea--but I'm at it again! I'll now come, Marmion, to the real reason why I brought you here. . . . Number 116 Intermediate is under the weather; I found him fainting in the passage. I helped him into his cabin. He said he'd been to you to get medicine, and you'd given him some. Now, the strange part of the business is, I know him. He didn't remember me, however--perhaps because he didn't get a good look at me. Coincidence is a strange thing. I can point to a dozen in my short life, every one as remarkable, if not as startling, as this. Here, I'll spin you a yarn: "It happened four years ago. I had no moustache then, was fat like a whale, and first mate on the 'Dancing Kate', a pearler in the Indian Ocean, between Java and Australia. That was sailing, mind you--real seamanship, no bally nonsense; a fight every weather, interesting all round. If it wasn't a deadly calm, it was a typhoon; if it wasn't either, it was want of food and water. I've seen us with pearls on board worth a thousand quid, and not a drop of water nor three square meals in the caboose. But that was life for men and not Miss Nancys. If they weren't saints, they were sailors, afraid of nothing but God Almighty--and they do respect Him, even when they curse the winds and the sea. Well, one day we were lying in the open sea, about two hundred and fifty miles from Port Darwin. There wasn't a breath of air. The sea was like glass; the sun was drawing turpentine out of every inch of the 'Dancing Kate'. The world was one wild blister. There wasn't a comfortable spot in the craft, and all round us was that staring, oily sea. It was too hot to smoke, and I used to make a Sede boy do my smoking for me. I got the benefit of the smell without any work. I was lying under the droop of a dingey, making the Sede boy call on all his gods for wind, with interludes of smoke, when he chucked his deities and tobacco, and, pointing, shouted, 'Man! man!' "I snatched a spy-glass. Sure enough, there was a boat on the water. It was moving ever so slowly. It seemed to stop, and we saw something lifted and waved, and then all was still again. I got a boat's crew together, and away we went in that deadly smother. An hour's row and we got within hail of the derelict--as one of the crew said, 'feelin' as if the immortal life was jerked out of us.' The dingey lay there on the glassy surface, not a sign of life about her. Yet I had, as I said, seen something waved. The water didn't even lap its sides. It was ghostly, I can tell you. Our oars licked the water; they didn't attack it. Now, I'm going to tell you something, Marmion, that'll make you laugh. I don't think I've got any poetry in me, but just then I thought of some verses I learned when I was a little cove at Wellington--a devilishly weird thing. It came to me at that moment like a word in my ear. It made me feel awkward for a second. All sailors are superstitious, you know. I'm superstitious about this ship. Never mind; I'll tell you the verses, to show you what a queer thing memory is. The thing was called 'No Man's Sea': "'The days are dead in the No Man's Sea, And God has left it alone; The angels cover their heads and flee, And the wild four winds have flown. "'There's never a ripple upon the tide, There's never a word or sound; But over the waste the white wraiths glide, To look for the souls of the drowned. "'The No Man's Sea is a gaol of souls, And its gate is a burning sun, And deep beneath it a great bell tolls For a death that never is done. "'Alas! for any that comes anear, That lies on its moveless breast; The grumbling water shall be his bier, And never a place of rest."' "There are four of the verses. Well, I made a motion to stop the rowing, and was mum for a minute. The men got nervous. They looked at the boat in front of us, and then turned round, as though to see if the 'Dancing Kate' was still in sight. I spoke, and they got more courage. I stood up in the boat, but could see nothing in the dingey. I gave a sign to go on, and soon we were alongside. In the bottom of the dingey lay a man, apparently dead, wearing the clothes of a convict. One of the crew gave a grunt of disgust, the others said nothing. I don't take to men often, and to convicts precious seldom; but there was a look in this man's face which the prison clothes couldn't demoralise--a damned pathetic look, which seemed to say, 'Not guilty.' "In a minute I was beside him, and found he wasn't dead. Brandy brought him round a little; but he was a bit gone in the head, and muttered all the way back to the ship. I had unbuttoned his shirt, and I saw on his breast a little ivory portrait of a woman. I didn't let the crew see it; for the fellow, even in his delirium, appeared to know I had exposed the thing, and drew the linen close in his fingers, and for a long time held it at his throat." "What was the woman's face like, Hungerford?" I asked. He parried, remarking only that she had the face of a lady, and was handsome. I pressed him. "But did it resemble any one you had ever seen?" With a slight droop of his eyelids, he said: "Don't ask foolish questions, Marmion. Well, the castaway had a hard pull for life. He wouldn't have lived at all, if a breeze hadn't come up and let us get away to the coast. It was the beginning of the monsoon, and we went bowling down towards Port Darwin, a crowd of Malay proas in our wake. However, the poor beggar thought he was going to die, and one night he told me his story. He was an escaped convict from Freemantle, Western Australia. He had, with others, been taken up to the northern coast to do some Government work, and had escaped in the dingey. His crime was stealing funds belonging to a Squatting and Mining Company. There was this extenuating circumstance: he could have replaced the money, which, as he said, he'd only intended to use for a few weeks. But a personal enemy threw suspicion on him, accounts were examined, and though he showed he'd only used the money while more of his own was on the way to him, the Company insisted on prosecuting him. For two reasons: because it was itself in bad odour, and hoped by this trial to divert public attention from its own dirty position; and because he had against him not only his personal enemy, but those who wanted to hit the Company through him. He'd filched to be able to meet the large expenses of his wife's establishment. Into this he didn't enter minutely, and he didn't blame her for having so big a menage; he only said he was sorry that he hadn't been able to support it without having to come, even for a day, to the stupidity of stealing. After two years he escaped. He asked me to write a letter to his wife, which he'd dictate. Marmion, you or I couldn't have dictated that letter if we'd taken a year to do it. There was no religion in it, no poppy-cock, but straightforward talk, full of sorrow for what he'd done, and for the disgrace he'd brought on her. I remember the last few sentences as if I'd seen them yesterday. 'I am dying on the open sea, disgraced, but free,' he said. 'I am not innocent in act, but I was not guilty of intentional wrong. I did what I did that you should have all you wished, all you ought to have. I ask but this--and I shall soon ask for nothing--that you will have a kind thought, now and then, for the man who always loved you, and loves you yet. I have never blamed you that you did not come near me in my trouble; but I wish you were here for a moment before I go away for ever. You must forgive me now, for you will be free. If I were a better man I would say, God bless you. In my last conscious moments I will think of you, and speak your name. And now good-bye--an everlasting good-bye. I was your loving husband, and am your lover until death.' And it was signed, 'Boyd Madras.' "However, he didn't die. Between the captain and myself, we kept life in him, and at last landed him at Port Darwin; all of us, officers and crew, swearing to let no one know he was a convict. And I'll say this for the crew of the 'Dancing Kate' that, so far as I know, they kept their word. That letter, addressed in care of a firm of Melbourne bankers, I gave back to him before we landed. We made him up a purse of fifty pounds,-- for the crew got to like him,--and left him at Port Darwin, sailing away again in a few days to another pearl-field farther east. What happened to him at Port Darwin and elsewhere, I don't know; but one day I found him on a fashionable steamer in the Indian Ocean, looking almost as near to Kingdom Come as when he starved in the dingey on No Man's Sea. As I said before, I think he didn't recognise me; and he's lying now in 116 Intermediate, with a look on him that I've seen in the face of a man condemned to death by the devils of cholera or equatorial fever. And that's the story, Marmion, which I brought you to hear--told, as you notice, in fine classical style." "And why do you tell ME this, Hungerford--a secret you've kept all these years? Knowledge of that man's crime wasn't necessary before giving him belladonna or a hot bath." Hungerford kept back the whole truth for reasons of his own. He said: "Chiefly because I want you to take a decent interest in the chap. He looks as if he might go off on the long voyage any tick o' the clock. You are doctor, parson, and everything else of the kind on board. I like the poor devil, but anyhow I'm not in a position to be going around with ginger-tea in a spoon, or Ecclesiastes under my arm,--very good things. Your profession has more or less to do with the mind as well as the body, and you may take my word for it that Boyd Madras's mind is as sick as his torso. By the way, he calls himself 'Charles Boyd,' so I suppose we needn't recall to him his former experiences by adding the 'Madras.'" Hungerford squeezed my arm again violently, and added: "Look here, Marmion, we understand each other in this, don't we? To do what we can for the fellow, and be mum." Some of this looks rough and blunt, but as it was spoken there was that in it which softened it to my ear. I knew he had told all he thought I ought to know, and that he wished me to question him no more, nor to refer to Mrs. Falchion, whose relationship to Boyd Madras--or Charles Boyd--both of us suspected. "It was funny about those verses coming to my mind, wasn't it, Marmion?" he continued. And he began to repeat one of them, keeping time to the wave-like metre with his cheroot, winding up with a quick, circular movement, and putting it again between his lips: "'There's never a ripple upon the tide, There's never a breath or sound; But over the waste the white wraiths glide, To look for the souls of the drowned."' Then he jumped off the berth where he had been sitting, put on his jacket, said it was time to take his turn on the bridge, and prepared to go out, having apparently dismissed Number 116 Intermediate from his mind. I went to Charles Boyd's cabin, and knocked gently. There was no response. I entered. He lay sleeping soundly--the sleep that comes after nervous exhaustion. I had a good chance to study him as he lay there. The face was sensitive and well fashioned, but not strong; the hands were delicate, yet firmly made. One hand was clinched upon that portion of his breast where the portrait hung. CHAPTER IV THE TRAIL OF THE ISHMAELITE I went on deck again, and found Clovelly in the smoking-room. The bookmaker was engaged in telling tales of the turf, alternated with comic songs by Blackburn--an occupation which lasted throughout the voyage, and was associated with electric appeals to the steward to fill the flowing bowl. Clovelly came with me, and we joined Miss Treherne and her father. Mr. Treherne introduced me to his daughter, and Clovelly amiably drew the father into a discussion of communism as found in the South Sea Islands. I do not think my conversation with Miss Treherne was brilliant. She has since told me that I appeared self-conscious and preoccupied. This being no compliment to her, I was treated accordingly. I could have endorsed Clovelly's estimate of her so far as her reserve and sedateness were concerned. It seemed impossible to talk naturally. The events of the day were interrupting the ordinary run of thought, and I felt at a miserable disadvantage. I saw, however, that the girl was gifted and clear of mind, and possessed of great physical charm, but of that fine sort which must be seen in suitable surroundings to be properly appreciated. Here on board ship a sweet gravity and a proud decorum--not altogether unnecessary--prevented her from being seen at once to the best advantage. Even at this moment I respected her the more for it, and was not surprised, nor exactly displeased, that she adroitly drew her father and Clovelly into the conversation. With Clovelly she seemed to find immediate ground for naive and pleasant talk; on his part, deferential, original, and attentive; on hers, easy, allusive, and warmed with piquant humour. I admired her; saw how cleverly Clovelly was making the most of her; guessed at the solicitude, studious care, and affection of her bringing-up; watched the fond pleasure of the father as he listened; and was angry with myself that Mrs. Falchion's voice rang in my ears at the same moment as hers. But it did ring there, and the real value of that smart tournament of ideas was partially lost to me. The next morning I went to Boyd Madras's cabin. He welcomed me gratefully, and said that he was much better; as he seemed; but he carried a hectic flush, such as comes to a consumptive person. I said little to him beyond what was necessary for the discussion of his case. I cautioned him about any unusual exertion, and was about to leave, when an impulse came to me, and I returned and said: "You will not let me help you in any other way?" "Yes," he answered; "I shall be very glad of your help, but not just yet. And, Doctor, believe me, I think medicines can do very little. Though I am thankful to you for visiting me, you need not take the trouble, unless I am worse, and then I will send a steward to you, or go to you myself." What lay behind this request, unless it was sensitiveness, I could not tell; but I determined to take my own course, and to visit him when I thought fit. Still, I saw him but once or twice on the after-deck in the succeeding days. He evidently wished to keep out of sight as much as possible. I am ashamed to say there was a kind of satisfaction in this to me; for, when a man's wife--and I believed she was Boyd Madras's wife--hangs on your arm, and he himself is denied that privilege, and fares poorly beside her sumptuousness, and lives as a stranger to her, you can scarcely regard his presence with pleasure. And from the sheer force of circumstances, as it seemed to me then, Mrs. Falchion's hand was often on my arm; and her voice was always in my ear at meal-times and when I visited Justine Caron to attend to her wound, or joined in the chattering recreations of the music saloon. It was impossible not to feel her influence; and if I did not yield entirely to it, I was more possessed by it than I was aware. I was inquisitive to know beyond doubt that she was the wife of this man. I think it was in my mind at the time that, perhaps, by being with her much, I should be able to do him a service. But there came a time when I was sufficiently undeceived. It was all a game of misery in which some one stood to lose all round. Who was it: she, or I, or the refugee of misfortune, Number 116 Intermediate? She seemed safe enough. He or I would suffer in the crash of penalties. It was a strange situation. I, the acquaintance of a day, was welcome within the circle of this woman's favour--though it was an unemotional favour on her side; he, the husband, as I believed, though only half the length of the ship away, was as distant from her as the north star. When I sat with her on deck at night, I seemed to feel Boyd Madras's face looking at me from the half-darkness of the after-deck; and Mrs. Falchion, whose keen eyes missed little, remarked once on my gaze in that direction. Thereafter I was more careful, but the idea haunted me. Yet, I was not the only person who sat with her. Other men paid her attentive court. The difference was, however, that with me she assumed ever so delicate, yet palpable an air of proprietorship, none the less alluring because there was no heart in it. So far as the other passengers were concerned, there was nothing jarring to propriety in our companionship. They did not know of Number 116 Intermediate. She had been announced as a widow; and she had told Mrs. Callendar that her father's brother, who, years before, had gone to California, had died within the past two years and left her his property; and, because all Californians are supposed to be millionaires, her wealth was counted fabulous. She was going now to England, and from there to California in the following year. People said that Dr. Marmion knew on which side his bread was buttered. They may have said more unpleasant things, but I did not hear them, or of them. All the time I was conscious of a kind of dishonour, and perhaps it was that which prompted me (I had fallen away from my intention of visiting him freely) to send my steward to see how Boyd Madras came on, rather than go myself. I was, however, conscious that the position could not-- should not--be maintained long. The practical outcome of this knowledge was not tardy. A new influence came into my life which was to affect it permanently: but not without a struggle. A series of concerts and lectures had been arranged for the voyage, and the fancy-dress ball was to close the first part of the journey--that is, at Aden. One night a concert was on in the music saloon. I had just come from seeing a couple of passengers who had been suffering from the heat, and was debating whether to find Mrs. Falchion, who, I knew, was on the other side of the deck, go in to the concert, or join Colonel Ryder and Clovelly, who had asked me to come to the smoking-room when I could. I am afraid I was balancing heavily in favour of Mrs. Falchion, when I heard a voice that was new to me, singing a song I had known years before, when life was ardent, and love first came--halcyon days in country lanes, in lilac thickets, of pleasant Hertfordshire, where our footsteps met a small bombardment of bursting seed-pods of the furze, along the green common that sloped to the village. I thought of all this, and of HER everlasting quiet. With a different voice the words of the song would have sent me out of hearing; now I stood rooted to the spot, as the notes floated out past me to the nervelessness of the Indian Ocean, every one of them a commandment from behind the curtain of a sanctuary. The voice was a warm, full contralto of exquisite culture. It suggested depths of rich sound behind, from which the singer, if she chose, might draw, until the room and the deck and the sea ached with sweetness. I scarcely dared to look in to see who it was, lest I should find it a dream. I stood with my head turned away towards the dusky ocean. When, at last, with the closing notes of the song, I went to the port-hole and looked in, I saw that the singer was Miss Treherne. There was an abstracted look in her eyes as she raised them, and she seemed unconscious of the applause following the last chords of the accompaniment. She stood up, folding the music as she did so, and unconsciously raised her eyes toward the port-hole where I was. Her glance caught mine, and instantly a change passed over her face. The effect of the song upon her was broken; she flushed slightly, and, as I thought, with faint annoyance. I know of nothing so little complimentary to a singer as the audience that patronisingly listens outside a room or window,--not bound by any sense of duty as an audience,--between whom and the artists an unnatural barrier is raised. But I have reason to think now that Belle Treherne was not wholly moved by annoyance--that she had seen something unusual, maybe oppressive, in my look. She turned to her father. He adjusted his glasses as if, in his pride, to see her better. Then he fondly took her arm, and they left the room. Then I saw Mrs. Falchion's face at the port-hole opposite. Her eyes were on me. An instant before, I had intended following Miss Treherne and her father; now some spirit of defiance, some unaccountable revolution, took possession of me, so that I flashed back to her a warm recognition. I could not have believed it possible, if it had been told of me, that, one minute affected by beautiful and sacred remembrances, the next I should be yielding to the unimpassioned tyranny of a woman who could never be anything but a stumbling-block and an evil influence. I had yet to learn that in times of mental and moral struggle the mixed fighting forces in us resolve themselves into two cohesive powers, and strive for mastery; that no past thought or act goes for nothing at such a time, but creeps out from the darkness where we thought it had gone for ever, and does battle with its kind against the common foe. There moved before my sight three women: one, sweet and unsubstantial, wistful and mute and very young, not of the earth earthy; one, lissom, grave, with gracious body and warm abstracted eyes, all delicacy, strength, reserve; the other and last, daring, cold, beautiful, with irresistible charm, silent and compelling. And these are the three women who have influenced my life, who fought in me then for mastery; one from out the unchangeable past, the others in the tangible and delible present. Most of us have to pass through such ordeals before character and conviction receive their final bias; before human nature has its wild trouble, and then settles into "cold rock and quiet world;" which any lesser after-shocks may modify, but cannot radically change. I tried to think. I felt that to be wholly a man I should turn from those eyes drawing me on. I recalled the words of Clovelly, who had said to me that afternoon, half laughingly: "Dr. Marmion, I wonder how many of us wish ourselves transported permanently to that time when we didn't know champagne from 'alter feiner madeira' or dry hock from sweet sauterne; when a pretty face made us feel ready to abjure all the sinful lusts of the flesh and become inheritors of the kingdom of heaven? Egad! I should like to feel it once again. But how can we, when we have been intoxicated with many things; when we are drunk with success and experience; have hung on the fringe of unrighteousness; and know the world backward, and ourselves mercilessly?" Was I, like the drunkard, coming surely to the time when I could no longer say yes to my wisdom, or no to my weakness? I knew that, an hour before, in filling a phial with medicine, I found I was doing it mechanically, and had to begin over again, making an effort to keep my mind to my task. I think it is an axiom that no man can properly perform the business of life who indulges in emotional preoccupation. These thoughts, which take so long to write, passed then through my mind swiftly; but her eyes were on me with a peculiar and confident insistence--and I yielded. On my way to her I met Clovelly and Colonel Ryder. Hungerford was walking between them. Colonel Ryder said: "I've been saving that story for you, Doctor; better come and get it while it's hot." This was a promised tale of the taking of Mobile in the American Civil War. At any other time the invitation would have pleased me mightily; for, apart from the other two, Hungerford's brusque and original conversation was always a pleasure--so were his cheroots; but now I was under an influence selfish in its source. At the same time I felt that Hungerford was storing up some acute criticism of me, and that he might let me hear it any moment. I knew, numbering the order of his duties, that he could have but a very short time to spare for gossip at this juncture, yet I said that I could not join them for half an hour or so. Hungerford had a fashion of looking at me searchingly from under his heavy brows, and I saw that he did so now with impatience, perhaps contempt. I was certain that he longed to thrash me. That was his idea of punishment and penalty. He linked his arm in those of the other two men, and they moved on, Colonel Ryder saying that he would keep the story till I came and would wait in the smoking-room for me. The concert was still on when I sat down beside Mrs. Falchion. "You seemed to enjoy Miss Treherne's singing?" she said cordially enough as she folded her hands in her lap. "Yes, I thought it beautiful. Didn't you?" "Pretty, most pretty; and admirable in technique and tone; but she has too much feeling to be really artistic. She felt the thing, instead of pretending to feel it--which makes all the difference. She belongs to a race of delightful women, who never do any harm, whom everybody calls good, and who are very severe on those who do not pretend to be good. Still, all of that pleasant race will read their husband's letters and smuggle. They have no civic virtues. Yet they would be shocked to bathe on the beach without a machine, as American women do,--and they look for a new fall of Jerusalem when one of their sex smokes a cigarette after dinner. Now, I do not smoke cigarettes after dinner, so I can speak freely. But, at the same time, I do not smuggle, and I do bathe on the beach without a machine--when I am in a land where there are no sharks and no taboo. If morally consumptive people were given a few years in the South Seas, where they could not get away from nature, there would be more strength and less scandal in society." I laughed. "There is a frank note for Mr. Clovelly, who thinks he knows the world and my sex thoroughly. He says as much in his books.--Have you read his 'A Sweet Apocalypse'? He said more than as much to me. But he knows a mere nothing about women--their amusing inconsistencies; their infidelity in little things and fidelity in big things; their self- torturings; their inability to comprehend themselves; their periods of religious insanity; their occasional revolts against the restraints of a woman's position, known only to themselves in their dark hours; ah, really, Dr. Marmion, he is ignorant, I assure you. He has only got two or three kinds of women in his mind, and the representatives of these fooled him, as far as he went with them, to their hearts' content. Believe me, there is no one quite so foolish as the professional student of character. He sees things with a glamour; he is impressionable; he immediately begins to make a woman what he wishes her to be for his book, not what she is; and women laugh at him when they read his books, or pity him if they know him personally. I venture to say that I could make Mr. Clovelly use me in a novel--not 'A Sweet Apocalypse'--as a placid lover of fancy bazaars and Dorcas societies, instead of a very practical person, who has seen life without the romantic eye, and knows as well the working of a buccaneering craft--through consular papers and magisterial trials, of course--as of a colonial Government House. But it is not worth while trying to make him falsify my character. Besides, you are here to amuse me." This speech, as she made it, was pleasantly audacious and clever. I laughed, and made a gesture of mock dissent, and she added: "Now I have finished my lecture. Please tie my shoe-lace there, and then, as I said, amuse me. Oh, you can, if you choose! You are clever when you like to be. Only, this time, do not let it be a professor's wife who foolishly destroys herself, and cuts short what might have been a brilliant career." On the instant I determined to probe deeper into her life, and try her nerve, by telling a story with enough likeness to her own (if she was the wife of Boyd Madras) to affect her acutely; though I was not sure I could succeed. A woman who triumphs over sea-sickness, whom steam from the boilers never affects, nor the propeller-screw disturbs, has little to fear from the words of a man who is neither adroit, eloquent, nor dramatic. However, I determined to try what I could do. I said: "I fancy you would like something in the line of adventure; but my career has not run in that direction, so I shall resort to less exciting fields, and, I fear, also, a not very cheerful subject." "Oh, never mind!" said she. "What you wish, so long as it is not conventional and hackneyed. But I know you will not be prosy, so go on, please." "Well," I began, "once, in the hospital, I attended a man--Anson was his name--who, when he thought he was going to die, confided to me his life's secret. I liked the man; he was good-looking, amiable, but hopelessly melancholy. He was dying as much from trouble as disease. No counsel or encouragement had any effect upon him; he did, as I have seen so many do--he resigned himself to the out-going tide. Well, for the secret. He had been a felon. His crime had been committed through ministering to his wife's vanity." Here I paused. I felt Mrs. Falchion's eyes searching me. I raised mine steadily to hers with an impersonal glance, and saw that she had not changed colour in the least. But her eyes were busy. I proceeded: "When he was disgraced she did not come near him. When he went to her, after he was released" (here I thought it best to depart from any close resemblance to Mrs. Falchion's own story), "and was admitted to her, she treated him as an absolute stranger--as one who had intruded, and might be violent. She said that she and her maid were alone in the house, and hinted that he had come to disturb them. She bade him go, or she must herself go. He called her by his own name, and begged her, by the memory of their dead child, to speak kindly to him. She said he was quite mistaken in her name, that she was Mrs. Glave, not Mrs. Anson, and again insisted that he should go. He left her, and at last, broken-hearted, found his way, in illness and poverty to the hospital, where, toward the last, he was cared for by a noble girl, a companion of his boyhood and his better days, who urged his wife to visit him. She left him alone, said unpleasant things to the girl, did not come to see her husband when he was dead, and provided nothing for his burial. You see that, like you, she hated suffering and misery--and criminals. The girl and her mother paid the expenses of the funeral, and, with myself, were the only mourners. I am doubtful if the wife knows even where he lies. I admit that the story sounds melodramatic; but truth is more drama than comedy, I fancy. Now, what do you think of it all, Mrs. Falchion?" I had felt her shrink a little at the earlier part of my story, as if she feared that her own tale was to be brutally bared before her; but that soon passed, and she languidly tapped the chair-arm as the narrative continued. When it was finished, she leaned over slightly, and with these same fingers tapped my arm. I thrilled involuntarily. "He died, did he?" she said. "That was the most graceful thing he could do. So far as my knowledge of the world is concerned, men of his class do NOT die. They live, and they never rise above their degradation. They had not brains or courage enough to keep them out of gaol, and they have not pluck or brains enough to succeed--afterwards. Your friend Anson was quite gentlemanly in his action at the last. He had some sense of the fitness of things. He could not find a place in the world without making other people uncomfortable, and causing trouble. If he had lived, he would always have added to the blight on his wife's career, and have been an arrow--not a thorn--in her side. Very likely he would have created a scandal for the good young girl who nursed him. He made the false step, and compelled society to reject him. It did not want to do so; it never does. It is long-suffering; it tries not to see and acknowledge things until the culprit himself forces it to take action. Then it says: 'Now you have openly and inconsiderately broken our bond of mutual forbearance. You make me send you away. Go, then, behind stone walls, and please do not come to me again. If you do, you will only be a troublesome ghost. You will cause awkwardness and distress.' So, Mr. Anson--I must be polite to him--did the most reasonable and proper thing. He disappeared from the play before it actually became tragedy. There was no tragedy in his death--death is a magnificent ally; it untangles knots. The tragedy was in his living--in the perpetual ruin of his wife's life, renewed every morning. He disappeared. Then the play became drama, with only a little shadow of tragedy behind it. Now, frankly, am I not right?" "Mrs. Falchion," I said, "your argument is clever, but it is only incidentally true. You draw life, society and men no more correctly than the author of 'A Sweet Apocalypse' would draw you. The social law you sketch when reduced to its bare elements, is remorseless. It does not provide for repentance, for restitution, for recovering a lost paradise. It makes an act final, a sin irrevocable." "Well, since we are beginning to talk like a couple of books by a pair of priggish philosophers, I might as well say that I think sin is final so far as the domestic and social machinery of the world is concerned. What his religious belief requires of a man is one thing, what his fellow-men require of him is another. The world says, You shall have latitude enough to swing in freely, but you must keep within the code. As soon as you break the law openly, and set the machinery of public penalty in motion, there is an end of you, so far as this world is concerned. You may live on, but you have been broken on the wheel, and broken you always will be. It is not a question of right or wrong, of kindness or cruelty, but of general expediency and inevitableness. To all effect, Mr. Anson was dead before he breathed his last. He died when he passed within the walls of a gaol--condemned for theft." There was singular scorn in her last few words, and, dissent as I did from her merciless theories, I was astonished at her adroitness and downrightness--enchanted by the glow of her face. To this hour, knowing all her life as I do, I can only regard her as a splendid achievement of nature, convincing even when at the most awkward tangents with the general sense and the straitest interpretation of life; convincing even in those other and later incidents, which showed her to be acting not so much by impulse as by the law of her nature. Her emotions were apparently rationalised at birth--to be derationalised and broken up by a power greater than herself before her life had worked itself out. I had counted her clever; I had not reckoned with her powers of reasoning. Influenced as I was by emotion when in her presence, I resorted to a personal application of my opinions--the last and most unfair resort of a disputant. I said I would rather be Anson dead than Mrs. Anson living; I would rather be the active than the passive sinner; the victim, than a part of that great and cruel machine of penalty. "The passive sinner!" she replied. "Why, what wrong did she do?" The highest moral conceptions worked dully in her. Yet she seemed then, as she always appeared to be, free from any action that should set the machine of penalty going against herself. She was inexorable, but she had never, knowingly, so much as slashed the hem of the moral code. "It was to give his wife pleasure that Anson made the false step," I urged. "Do you think she would have had the pleasure at the price? The man was vain and selfish to run any risk, to do anything that might endanger her safety--that is, her happiness and comfort." "But suppose he knew that she loved ease and pleasure?--that he feared her anger or disdain if he did not minister to her luxuries?" "Then he ought not to have married that kind of a woman." The hardness in her voice was matched at that moment by the coldness of her face. "That is begging the question," I replied. "What would such a selfish woman do in such a case, if her pleasure could not be gratified?" "You must ask that kind of woman," was her ironical answer. I rashly felt that her castle of strength was crumbling. I ventured farther. "I have done so." She turned slightly toward me, yet not nervously, as I had expected. "What did she say?" "She declined to answer directly." There was a pause, in which I felt her eyes searching my face. I fear I must have learned dissimulation well; for, after a minute, I looked at her, and saw, from the absence of any curious anxiety, that I had betrayed nothing. She looked me straight in the eyes and said: "Dr. Marmion, a man must not expect to be forgiven, who has brought shame on a woman." "Not even when he has repented and atoned?" "Atoned! How mad you are! How can there be atonement? You cannot wipe things out--on earth. We are of the earth. Records remain. If a man plays the fool, the coward, and the criminal, he must expect to wear the fool's cap, the white feather, and the leg-chain until his life's end. And now, please, let us change the subject. We have been bookish long enough." She rose with a gesture of impatience. I did not rise. "Pardon me, Mrs. Falchion," I urged, "but this interests me so. I have thought much of Anson lately. Please, let us talk a little longer. Do sit down." She sat down again with an air of concession rather than of pleasure. "I am interested," I said, "in looking at this question from a woman's standpoint. You see, I am apt to side with the miserable fellow who made a false step--foolish, if you like--all for love of a selfish and beautiful woman." "She was beautiful?" "Yes, as you are." She did not blush at that rank compliment, any more than a lioness would, if you praised the astonishing sleekness and beauty of its skin. "And she had been a true wife to him before that?" "Yes, in all that concerned the code." "Well?--Well, was not that enough? She did what she could, as long as she could." She leaned far back in the chair, her eyes half shut. "Don't you think--as a woman, not as a theorist--that Mrs. Anson might at least have come to him when he was dying?" "It would only have been uncomfortable for her. She had no part in his life; she could not feel with him. She could do nothing." "But suppose she had loved him? By that memory, then, of the time when they took each other for better or for worse, until death should part them?" "Death did part them when the code banished him; when he passed from a free world into a cage. Besides, we are talking about people marrying, not about their loving." "I will admit," I said, with a little raw irony, "that I was not exact in definition." Here I got a glimpse into her nature which rendered after events not so marvellous to me as they might seem to others. She thought a moment quite indolently, and then continued: "You make one moralise like George Eliot. Marriage is a condition, but love must be an action. The one is a contract, the other is complete possession, a principle--that is, if it exists at all. I do not know." She turned the rings round mechanically on her finger; and among them was a wedding-ring! Her voice had become low and abstracted, and now she seemed to have forgotten my presence, and was looking out upon the humming darkness round us, through which now and again there rang a boatswain's whistle, or the loud laugh of Blackburn, telling of a joyous hour in the smoking-room. I am now about to record an act of madness, of folly, on my part. I suppose most men have such moments of temptation, but I suppose, also, that they act more sensibly and honourably than I did then. Her hand had dropped gently on the chair-arm, near to my own, and though our fingers did not touch, I felt mine thrilled and impelled toward hers. I do not seek to palliate my action. Though the man I believed to be her husband was below, I yielded myself to an imagined passion for her. In that moment I was a captive. I caught her hand and kissed it hotly. "But you might know what love is," I said. "You might learn--learn of me. You--" Abruptly and with surprise she withdrew her hand, and, without any visible emotion save a quicker pulsation of her breast, which might have been indignation, spoke. "But even if I might learn, Dr. Marmion, be sure that neither your college nor Heaven gave you the knowledge to instruct me. . . . There: pardon me, if I speak harshly; but this is most inconsiderate of you, most impulsive--and compromising. You are capable of singular contrasts. Please let us be friends, friends simply. You are too interesting for a lover, really you are." Her words were a cold shock to my emotion--my superficial emotion; though, indeed, for that moment she seemed adorable to me. Without any apparent relevancy, but certainly because my thoughts in self-reproach were hovering about cabin 116 Intermediate, I said, with a biting shame, "I do not wonder now!" "You do not wonder at what?" she questioned; and she laid her hand kindly on my arm. I put the hand away a little childishly, and replied, "At men going to the devil." But this was not what I thought. "That does not sound complimentary to somebody. May I ask you what you mean?" she said calmly. "I mean that Anson loved his wife, and she did not love him; yet she held him like a slave, torturing him at the same time." "Does it not strike you that this is irrelevant? You are not my husband --not my slave. But, to be less personal, Mr. Anson's wife was not responsible for his loving her. Love, as I take it, is a voluntary thing. It pleased him to love her--he would not have done it if it did not please him; probably his love was an inconvenient thing domestically --if he had no tact." "Of that," I said, "neither you nor I can know with any certainty. But, to be scriptural, she reaped where she had not sowed, and gathered where she had not strawed. If she did not make the man love her,--I believe she did, as I believe you would, perhaps unconsciously, do,--she used his love, and was therefore better able to make all other men admire her. She was richer in personal power for that experience; but she was not grateful for it nor for his devotion." "You mean, in fact, that I--for you make the personal application--shall be better able henceforth to win men's love, because--ah, surely, Dr. Marmion, you do not dignify this impulse, this foolishness of yours, by the name of love!" She smiled a little satirically at the fingers I had kissed. I was humiliated, and annoyed with her and with myself, though, down in my mind, I knew that she was right. "I mean," said I, "that I can understand how men have committed suicide because of just such things. My wonder is that Anson, poor devil! did not do it." I knew I was talking foolishly. "He hadn't the courage, my dear sir. He was gentlemanly enough to die, but not to be heroic to that extent. For it does need a strong dash of heroism to take one's own life. As I conceive it, suicide would have been the best thing for him when he sinned against the code. The world would have pitied him then, would have said, He spared us the trial of punishing him. But to pay the vulgar penalty of prison--ah!" She shuddered and then almost coldly continued: "Suicide is an act of importance; it shows that a man recognises, at least, the worthlessness of his life. He does one dramatic and powerful thing; he has an instant of great courage, and all is over. If it had been a duel in which, of intention, he would fire wide, and his assailant would fire to kill, so much the better; so much the more would the world pity. But either is superior, as a final situation, than death with a broken heart--I suppose that is possible?--and disgrace, in a hospital." "You seem to think only of the present, only of the code and the world; and as if there were no heroism in a man living down his shame, righting himself heroically at all points possible, bearing his penalty, and showing the courage of daily wearing the sackcloth of remorse and restitution." "Oh," she persisted, "you make me angry. I know what you wish to express; I know that you consider it a sin to take one's life, even in 'the high Roman fashion.' But, frankly, I do not, and I fear--or rather, I fancy--that I never shall. After all, your belief is a pitiless one; for, as I have tried to say, the man has not himself alone to consider, but those to whom his living is a perpetual shame and menace and cruelty insupportable--insupportable! Now, please, let us change the subject finally; and"--here she softly laughed--"forgive me if I have treated your fancied infatuation lightly or indifferently. I want you for a friend--at least, for a friendly acquaintance. I do not want you for a lover." We both rose. I was not quite content with her nor with myself yet. I felt sure that while she did not wish me for a lover, she was not averse to my playing the devoted cavalier, who should give all, while she should give nothing. I knew that my punishment had already begun. We paced the deck in silence; and once, as we walked far aft, I saw, leaning upon the railing of the intermediate deck, and looking towards us--Boyd Madras; and the words of that letter which he wrote on the No Man's Sea came to me. At length she said: "You have made no reply to my last remark. Are we to be friends, and not lovers? Or shall you cherish enmity against me? Or, worse still,"--and here she laughed, I thought, a little ironically, --"avoid me, and be as icy as you have been--fervid?" "Mrs. Falchion," I said, "your enemy I do not wish to be--I could not be if I wished; but, for the rest, you must please let me see what I may think of myself to-morrow. There is much virtue in to-morrow," I added. "It enables one to get perspective." "I understand," she said; and then was silent. We walked the deck slowly for several minutes. Then we were accosted by two ladies of a committee that had the fancy-dress ball in hand. They wished to consult Mrs. Falchion in certain matters of costume and decoration, for which, it had been discovered, she had a peculiar faculty. She turned to me half inquiringly, and I bade her good-night, inwardly determined (how easy it is after having failed to gratify ourselves!) that the touch of her fingers should never again make my heart beat faster. I joined Colonel Ryder and Clovelly in the smoking-room. Hungerford, as I guessed gladly, was gone. I was too much the coward to meet his eye just then. Colonel Ryder was estimating the amount he would wager--if he were in the habit of betting--that the 'Fulvia' could not turn round in her tracks in twenty minutes, while he parenthetically endorsed Hungerford's remarks to me--though he was ignorant of them--that lascars should not be permitted on English passenger ships. He was supported by Sir Hayes Craven, a shipowner, who further said that not one out of ten British sailors could swim, while not five out of ten could row a boat properly. Ryder's anger was great, because Clovelly remarked with mock seriousness that the lascars were picturesque, and asked the American if he had watched them listlessly eating rice and curry as they squatted between decks; whether he had observed the Serang, with his silver whistle, who ruled them, and despised us "poor white trash;" and if he did not think it was a good thing to have fatalists like them as sailors --they would be cool in time of danger. Colonel Ryder's indignation was curbed, however, by the bookmaker, who, having no views, but seeing an opportunity for fun, brought up reinforcements of chaff and slang, easily construable into profanity, and impregnated with terse humour. Many of the ladies had spoken of the bookmaker as one of the best-mannered men on board. So he was to all appearance. None dressed with better taste, nor carried himself with such an air. There was even a deferential tone in his strong language, a hesitating quaintness, which made it irresistible. He was at the service of any person on board needing championship. His talents were varied. He could suggest harmonies in colour to the ladies at one moment, and at the next, in the seclusion of the bar counter, arrange deadly harmonies in liquor. He was an authority on acting; he knew how to edit a newspaper; he picked out the really nice points in the sermons delivered by the missionaries in the saloon; he had some marvellous theories about navigation; and his trick with a salad was superb. He now convulsed the idlers in the smoking-room with laughter, and soon deftly drew off the discussion to the speed of the vessel, arranging a sweep-stake immediately, upon the possibilities of the run. He instantly proposed to sell the numbers by auction. He was the auctioneer. With his eye-glass at his eye, and Bohemian pleasantry falling from his lips, he ran the prices up. He was selling Clovelly's number, and had advanced it beyond the novelist's own bidding, when suddenly the screw stopped, the engines ceased working, and the 'Fulvia' slowed down. The numbers remained unsold. Word came to us that an accident had happened to the machinery, and that we should be hove-to for a day, or longer, to accomplish necessary repairs. How serious the accident to the machinery was no one knew. CHAPTER V ACCUSING FACES While we were hove-to, the 'Porcupine' passed us. In all probability it would now get to Aden ahead of us; and herein lay a development of the history of Mrs. Falchion. I was standing beside Belle Treherne as the ship came within hail of us and signalled to see what was the matter. Mrs. Falchion was not far from us. She was looking intently at the vessel through marine-glasses, and she did not put them down until it had passed. Then she turned away with an abstracted light in her eyes and a wintry smile; and the look and the smile continued when she sat down in her deck-chair and leaned her cheek meditatively on the marine-glass. But I saw now that something was added to the expression of her face--a suggestion of brooding or wonder. Belle Treherne, noticing the direction of my glances, said: "Have you known Mrs. Falchion long?" "No, not long," I replied. "Only since she came on board." "She is very clever, I believe." I felt my face flushing, though, reasonably, there was no occasion for it, and I said: "Yes, she is one of the ablest women I have ever met." "She is beautiful, too--very beautiful." This very frankly. "Have you talked with her?" asked I. "Yes, a little this morning, for the first time. She did not speak much, however." Here Miss Treherne paused, and then added meditatively: "Do you know, she impressed me as having singular frankness and singular reserve as well? I think I admired it. There is no feeling in her speech, and yet it has great candour. I never before met any one like her. She does not wear her heart upon her sleeve, I imagine." A moment of irony came over me; that desire to say what one really does not believe (a feminine trait), and I replied: "Are both those articles necessary to any one? A sleeve?--well, one must be clothed. But a heart?--a cumbrous thing, as I take it." Belle Treherne turned, and looked me steadily in the eyes for an instant, as if she had suddenly awakened from abstraction, and slowly said, while she drew back slightly: "Dr. Marmion, I am only a girl, I know, and inexperienced, but I hoped most people of education and knowledge of life were free from that kind of cynicism to be read of in books." Then something in her thoughts seemed to chill her words and manner, and her father coming up a moment after, she took his arm, and walked away with a not very cordial bow to me. The fact is, with a woman's quick intuition, she had read in my tone something suggestive of my recent experience with Mrs. Falchion. Her fine womanliness awoke; the purity of her thoughts, rose in opposition to my flippancy and to me; and I knew that I had raised a prejudice not easy to destroy. This was on a Friday afternoon. On the Saturday evening following, the fancy-dress ball was to occur. The accident to the machinery and our delay were almost forgotten in the preparations therefor. I had little to do; there was only one sick man on board, and my hand could not cure his sickness. How he fared, my uncomfortable mind, now bitterly alive to a sense of duty, almost hesitated to inquire. Yet a change had come. A reaction had set in for me. Would it be permanent? I dared scarcely answer that question, with Mrs. Falchion at my right hand at table, with her voice at my ear. I was not quite myself yet; I was struggling, as it were, with the effects of a fantastic dream. Still, I had determined upon my course. I had made resolutions. I had ended the chapter of dalliance. I had wished to go to 116 Intermediate and let its occupant demand what satisfaction he would. I wanted to say to Hungerford that I was an ass; but that was even harder still. He was so thorough and uncompromising in nature, so strong in moral fibre, that I felt his sarcasm would be too outspoken for me just at present. In this, however, I did not give him credit for a fine sense of consideration, as after events showed. Although there had been no spoken understanding between us that Mrs. Falchion was the wife of Boyd Madras, the mind of one was the other's also. I understood exactly why he told me Boyd Madras's story: it was a warning. He was not the man to harp on things. He gave the hint, and there the matter ended, so far as he was concerned, until a time might come when he should think it his duty to refer to the subject again. Some time before, he had shown me the portrait of the girl who had promised to be his wife. She, of course, could trust HIM anywhere, everywhere. Mrs. Falchion had seen the change in me, and, I am sure, guessed the new direction of my thoughts, and knew that I wished to take refuge in a new companionship--a thing, indeed, not easily to be achieved, as I felt now; for no girl of delicate and proud temper would complacently regard a hasty transference of attention from another to herself. Besides, it would be neither courteous nor reasonable to break with Mrs. Falchion abruptly. The error was mine, not hers. She had not my knowledge of the immediate circumstances, which made my position morally untenable. She showed unembarrassed ignorance of the change. At the same time I caught a tone of voice and a manner which showed she was not actually oblivious, but was touched in that nerve called vanity; and from this much feminine hatred springs. I made up my mind to begin a course of scientific reading, and was seated in my cabin, vainly trying to digest a treatise on the pathology of the nervous system, when Hungerford appeared at the door. With a nod, he entered, threw himself down on the cabin sofa, and asked for a match. After a pause, he said: "Marmion, Boyd Madras, alias Charles Boyd, has recognised me." I rose to get a cigar, thus turning my face from him, and said: "Well?" "Well, there isn't anything very startling. I suppose he wishes I had left him in the dingey on No Man's Sea. He's a fool." "Indeed, why?" "Marmion, are your brains softening? Why does he shadow a woman who wouldn't lift her finger to save him from battle, murder, or sudden death?" "From the code," I said, in half soliloquy. "From the what?" "Oh, never mind, Hungerford. I suppose he is shadowing--Mrs. Falchion?" He eyed me closely. "I mean the woman that chucked his name; that turned her back on him when he was in trouble; that hopes he is dead, if she doesn't believe that he is actually; that would, no doubt, treat him as a burglar if he went to her, got down on his knees, and said: 'Mercy, my girl, I've come back to you a penitent prodigal. Henceforth I shall be as straight as the sun, so help me Heaven and your love and forgiveness!'" Hungerford paused, as if expecting me to reply; but, leaning forward on my knees and smoking hard, I remained silent. This seemed to anger him, for he said a little roughly: "Why doesn't he come out and give you blazes on the promenade deck, and corner her down with a mighty cheek, and levy on her for a thousand pounds? Both you and she would think more of him. Women don't dislike being bullied, if it is done in the right way--haven't I seen it the world over, from lubra to dowager? I tell you, man--sinning or not--was meant to be woman's master and lover, and just as much one as the other." At this point Hungerford's manner underwent a slight change, and he continued: "Marmion, I wouldn't have come near you, only I noticed you have altered your course, and are likely to go on a fresh tack. It isn't my habit to worry a man. I gave you a signal, and you didn't respond at first. Well, we have come within hail again; and now, don't you think that you might help to straighten this tangle, and try to arrange a reconciliation between those two? "The scheme is worth trying. Nobody need know but you and me. It wouldn't be much of a sacrifice to her to give him a taste of the thing she swore to do--how does it run?--'to have and to hold from this day forward'?--I can't recall it; but it's whether the wind blows fair or foul, or the keel scrapes the land or gives to the rock, till the sea gulps one of 'em down for ever. That's the sense of the thing, Marmion, and the contract holds between the two, straight on into the eternal belly. Whatever happens, a husband is a husband, and a wife a wife. It seems to me that, in the sight of Heaven, it's he that's running fair in the teeth of the wind, every timber straining, and she that's riding with it, well coaled, flags flying, in an open channel, and passing the derelict without so much as, 'Ahoy there!'" Now, at this distance of time, I look back, and see Hungerford, "the rowdy sailor," as he called himself, lying there, his dark grey eyes turned full on me; and I am convinced that no honester, more sturdy- minded man ever reefed a sail, took his turn upon the bridge, or walked the dry land in the business of life. It did not surprise me, a year after, when I saw in public prints that he was the hero of--but that must be told elsewhere. I was about to answer him then as I knew he would wish, when a steward appeared and said: "Mr. Boyd, 116 Intermediate, wishes you would come to him, sir, if you would be so kind." Hungerford rose, and, as I made ready to go, urged quietly: "You've got the charts and soundings, Marmion, steam ahead!" and, with a swift but kindly clench of my shoulder, he left me. In that moment there came a cowardly feeling, a sense of shamefacedness, and then, hard upon it, and overwhelming it, a determination to serve Boyd Madras so far as lay in my power, and to be a man, and not a coward or an idler. When I found him he was prostrate. In his eyes there was no anger, no indignation, nor sullenness--all of which he might reasonably have felt; and instantly I was ashamed of the thought which, as I came to him, flashed through my mind, that he might do some violent thing. Not that I had any fear of violence; but I had an active dislike of awkward circumstances. I felt his fluttering pulse, and noted the blue line on his warped lips. I gave him some medicine, and then sat down. There was a silence. What could I say? A dozen thoughts came to my mind, but I rejected them. It was difficult to open up the subject. At last he put his hand upon my arm and spoke: "You told me one night that you would help me if you could. I ought to have accepted your offer at first; it would have been better.--No, please don't speak just yet. I think I know what you would say. I knew that you meant all you urged upon me; that you liked me. I was once worthy of men's liking, perhaps, and I had good comrades; but that is all over. You have not come near me lately, but it wasn't because you felt any neglect, or wished to take back your words; but--because of something else. . . . I understand it all. She has great power. She always had. She is very beautiful. I remember when--but I will not call it back before you, though, God knows, I go over it all every day and every night, until it seems that only the memory of her is real, and that she herself is a ghost. I ought not to have crossed her path again, even unknown to her. But I have done it, and now I cannot go out of that path without kneeling before her once again, as I did long ago. Having seen her, breathed the same air, I must speak or die; perhaps it will be both. That is a power she has: she can bend one to her will, although she often, involuntarily, wills things that are death to others. One MUST care for her, you understand; it is natural, even when it is torture to do so." He put his hand on his side and moved as if in pain. I reached over and felt his pulse, then took his hand and pressed it, saying: "I will be your friend now, Madras, in so far as I can." He looked up at me gratefully, and replied: "I know that--I know that. It is more than I deserve." Then he began to speak of his past. He told me of Hungerford's kindness to him on the 'Dancing Kate', of his luckless days at Port Darwin, of his search for his wife, his writing to her, and her refusal to see him. He did not rail against her. He apologised for her, and reproached himself. "She is most singular," he continued, "and different from most women. She never said she loved me, and she never did, I know. Her father urged her to marry me; he thought I was a good man." Here he laughed a little bitterly. "But it was a bad day for her. She never loved any one, I think, and she cannot understand what love is, though many have cared for her. She is silent where herself is concerned. I think there was some trouble--not love, I am sure of that --which vexed her, and made her a little severe at times; something connected with her life, or her father's life, in Samoa. One can only guess, but white men take what are called native wives there very often --and who can tell? Her father--but that is her secret! . . . While I was right before the world, she was a good wife to me in her way. When I went wrong, she treated me as if I were dead, and took her old name. But if I could speak to her quietly once more, perhaps she would listen. It would be no good at all to write. Perhaps she would never begin the world with me again, but I should like to hear her say, 'I forgive you. Good-bye.' There would be some comfort in a kind farewell from her. You can see that, Dr. Marmion?" He paused, waiting for me to speak. "Yes, I can see that," I said; and then I added: "Why did you not speak to her before you both came on board at Colombo?" "I had no chance. I only saw her in the street, an hour before the ship sailed. I had scarcely time to take my passage." Pain here checked his utterance, and when he recovered, he turned again to me, and continued: "To-morrow night there is to be a fancy-dress ball on board. I have been thinking. I could go in a good disguise. I could speak to her, and attract no notice; and if she will not listen to me, why, then, that ends it. I shall know the worst, and to know the worst is good." "Yes," said I; "and what do you wish me to do?" "I wish to go in a disguise, of course; to dress in your cabin, if you will let me. I cannot dress here, it would attract attention; and I am not a first-class passenger." "I fear," I replied, "that it is impossible for me to assist you to the privileges of a first-class passenger. You see, I am an officer of the ship. But still I can help you. You shall leave this cabin to-night. I will arrange so that you may transfer yourself to one in the first- class section. . . . No, not a word; it must be as I wish in this. You are ill; I can do you that kindness at least, and then, by right, you can attend the ball, and, after it, your being among the first-class passengers can make little difference; for you will have met and spoken then, either to peace or otherwise." I had very grave doubts of any reconciliation; the substance of my notable conversation with Mrs. Falchion was so prominent in my mind. I feared she would only reproduce the case of Anson and his wife. I was also afraid of a possible scene--which showed that I was not yet able to judge of her resources. After a time, in which we sat silent, I said to Madras: "But suppose she should be frightened?--should--should make a scene?" He raised himself to a sitting posture. "I feel better," he said. Then, answering my question: "You do not know her quite. She will not stir a muscle. She has nerve. I have seen her in positions of great peril and trial. She is not emotional, though I truly think she will wake one day and find her heart all fire but not for me. Still, I say that all will be quite comfortable, so far as any demonstration on her part is concerned. She will not be melodramatic, I do assure you." "And the disguise--your dress?" inquired I. He rose from the berth slowly, and, opening a portmanteau, drew from it a cloth of white and red, fringed with gold. It was of beautiful texture, and made into the form of a toga or mantle. He said: "I was a seller of such stuffs in Colombo, and these I brought with me, because I could not dispose of them without sacrifice when I left hurriedly. I have made them into a mantle. I could go as--a noble Roman, perhaps!" Then a slight, ironical smile crossed his lips, and he stretched out his thin but shapely arms, as if in derision of himself. "You will go as Menelaus the Greek," said I. "I as Menelaus the Greek?" The smile became a little grim. "Yes, as Menelaus; and I will go as Paris." I doubt not that my voice showed a good deal of self-scorn at the moment; but there was a kind of luxury in self-abasement before him. "Your wife, I know, intends to go as Helen of Troy. It is all mumming. Let it stand so, as Menelaus and Helen and Paris before there was any Trojan war, and as if there never could be any--as if Paris went back discomfited, and the other two were reconciled." His voice was low and broken. "I know you exaggerate matters, and condemn yourself beyond reason," he replied. "I will do as you say. But, Dr. Marmion, it will not be all mumming, as you shall see." A strange look came upon his face at this. I could not construe it; and, after a few words of explanation regarding his transference to the forward part of the ship, I left him. I found the purser, made the necessary arrangements for him, and then sought my cabin, humbled in many ways. I went troubled to bed. After a long wakefulness, I dozed away into that disturbed vestibule of sleep where the world's happenings mingle with the visions of unconsciousness. I seemed to see a man's heart beating in his bosom in growing agonies, until, with one last immense palpitation, it burst, and life was gone. Then the dream changed, and I saw a man in the sea, drowning, who seemed never to drown entirely, his hands ever beating the air and the mocking water. I thought that I tried many times to throw him a lighted buoy in the half- shadow, but some one held me back, and I knew that a woman's arms were round me. But at last the drowning man looked up and saw the woman so, and, with a last quiver of the arms, he sank from sight. When he was gone, the woman's arms dropped away from me; but when I turned to speak to her, she, too, had gone. I awoke. Two stewards were talking in the passage, and one was saying, "She'll get under way by daybreak, and it will be a race with the 'Porcupine' to Aden. How the engines are kicking below!" CHAPTER VI MUMMERS ALL The next day was beautiful, if not enjoyable. Stirring preparations were being made for the ball. Boyd Madras was transferred to a cabin far forward, but he did not appear at any meal in the saloon, or on deck. In the morning I was busy in the dispensary. While I was there, Justine Caron came to get some medicine that I had before given her. Her hand was now nearly well. Justine had nerves, and it appeared to me that her efforts to please her mistress, and her occasional failures, were wearing her unduly. I said to her: "You have been worried, Miss Caron?" "Oh, no, Doctor," she quickly replied. I looked at her a little sceptically, and she said at last: "Well, perhaps a little. You see, madame did not sleep well last night, and I read to her. It was a little difficult, and there was not much choice of books." "What did you read?" I asked mechanically, as I prepared her medicine. "Oh, some French novel first--De Maupassant's; but madame said he was impertinent--that he made women fools and men devils. Then I tried some modern English tales, but she said they were silly. I knew not what to do. But there was Shakespeare. I read Antony and Cleopatra, and she said that the play was grand, but the people were foolish except when they died--their deaths were magnificent. Madame is a great critic; she is very clever." "Yes, yes, I know that; but when did she fall asleep?" "About four o'clock in the morning. I was glad, because she is very beautiful when she has much sleep." "And you--does not sleep concern you in this matter of madame?" "For me," she said, looking away, "it is no matter. I have no beauty. Besides, I am madame's servant,"--she blushed slightly at this,"--and she is generous with money." "Yes, and you like money so much?" Her eyes flashed a little defiantly as she looked me in the face. "It is everything to me." She paused as if to see the effect upon me, or to get an artificial (I knew it was artificial) strength to go on, then she added: "I love money. I work for it; I would bear all for it--all that a woman could bear. I--" But here she paused again, and, though the eyes still flashed, the lips quivered. Hers was not the face of cupidity. It was sensitive, yet firm, as with some purpose deep as her nature was by creation and experience, and always deepening that nature. I suddenly got the conviction that this girl had a sorrow of some kind in her life, and that this unreal affection for money was connected with it. Perhaps she saw my look of interest, for she hurriedly continued: "But, pardon me, I am foolish. I shall be better when the pain is gone. Madame is kind; she will let me sleep this afternoon, perhaps." I handed her the medicine, and then asked: "How long have you known Mrs. Falchion, Miss Caron?" "Only one year." "Where did you join her?" "In Australia." "In Australia? You lived there?" "No, monsieur, I did not live there." A thought came to my mind--the nearness of New Caledonia to Australia, and New Caledonia was a French colony--a French penal colony! I smiled as I said the word penal to myself. Of course the word could have no connection with a girl like her, but still she might have lived in the colony. So I added quietly: "You perhaps had come from New Caledonia?" Her look was candid, if sorrowful. "Yes, from New Caledonia." Was she, thought I, the good wife of some convict--some political prisoner?--the relative of some refugee of misfortune? Whatever she was, I was sure that she was free from any fault. She evidently thought that I might suspect something uncomplimentary of her, for she said: "My brother was an officer at Noumea. He is dead. I am going to France, when I can." I tried to speak gently to her. I saw that her present position must be a trial. I advised her to take more rest, or she would break down altogether, for she was weak and nervous; I hinted that she might have to give up entirely, if she continued to tax herself heedlessly; and, finally, that I would speak to Mrs. Falchion about her. I was scarcely prepared for her action then. Tears came to her eyes, and she said to me, her hand involuntarily clasping my arm: "Oh no, no! I ask you not to speak to madame. I will sleep--I will rest. Indeed, I will. This service is so much to me. She is most generous. It is because I am so altogether hers, night and day, that she pays me well. And the money is so much. It is my honour--my dead brother's honour. You are kind at heart; you will make me strong with medicine, and I will ask God to bless you. I could not suffer such poverty again. And then, it is my honour!" I felt that she would not have given way thus had not her nerves been shaken, had she not lived so much alone, and irregularly, so far as her own rest and comfort were concerned, and at such perpetual cost to her energy. Mrs. Falchion, I knew, was selfish, and would not, or could not, see that she was hard upon the girl, by such exactions as midnight reading and loss of sleep. She demanded not merely physical but mental energy--a complete submission of both; and when this occurred with a sensitive, high-strung girl, she was literally feeding on another's life- blood. If she had been told this, she, no doubt, would have been very much surprised. I reassured Justine. I told her that I should say nothing directly to Mrs. Falchion, for I saw she was afraid of unpleasantness; but I impressed upon her that she must spare herself, or she would break down, and extorted a promise that she would object to sitting up after midnight to read to Mrs. Falchion. When this was done, she said: "But, you see, it is not madame's fault that I am troubled." "I do not wish," I said, "to know any secret,--I am a doctor, not a priest,--but if there is anything you can tell me, in which I might be able to help you, you may command me in so far as is possible." Candidly, I think I was too inquiring in those days. She smiled wistfully, and replied: "I will think of what you say so kindly, and perhaps, some day soon, I will tell you of such trouble as I have. But, believe me, it is no question of wrong at all, by any one --now. The wrong is over. It is simply that a debt of honour must be satisfied; it concerns my poor dead brother." "Are you going to relatives in France?" I asked. "No; I have no relatives, no near friends. I am alone in the world. My mother I cannot remember; she died when I was very young. My father had riches, but they went before he died. Still, France is home, and I must go there." She turned her head away to the long wastes of sea. Little more passed between us. I advised her to come often on deck, and mingle with the passengers; and told her that, when she pleased, I should be glad to do any service that lay in my power. Her last words were that, after we put into Aden, she would possibly take me at my word. After she had gone, I found myself wondering at my presentiment that Aden was to be associated with critical points in the history of some of us; and from that moment I began to connect Justine Caron with certain events which, I felt sure, were marshalling to an unhappy conclusion. I wondered, too, what part I should play in the development of the comedy, tragedy, or whatever it was to be. In this connection I thought of Belle Treherne, and of how I should appear in her eyes if that little scene with Mrs. Falchion, now always staring me in the face, were rehearsed before her. I came quickly to my feet, with a half-imprecation at myself; and a verse of a crude sea-song was in my ears: "You can batten down cargo, live and dead, But you can't put memory out of sight; You can paint the full sails overhead, But you can't make a black deed white. . . ." Angry, I said to myself: "It wasn't a black deed; it was foolish, it was infatuation, it was not right, but it is common to shipboard; and I lost my head, that was all." Some time later I was still at work in the dispensary, when I heard Mr. Treherne's voice calling to me from outside. I drew back the curtain. He was leaning on his daughter's arm, while in one hand he carried a stick. "Ah, Doctor, Doctor," cried he, "my old enemy, sciatica, has me in its grip, and why, in this warm climate, I can't understand. I'm afraid I shall have to heave-to, like the 'Fulvia', and lay up for repairs. And, by the way, I'm glad we are on our course again." He entered, and sat down. Belle Treherne bowed to me gravely, and smiled slightly. The smile was not peculiarly hospitable. I knew perfectly well that to convince her of the reality of my growing admiration for her would be no easy task; but I was determined to base my new religion of the affections upon unassailable canons, and I felt that now I could do best by waiting and proving myself. While I was arranging some medicine for Mr. Treherne, and advising him on care against chills in a hot climate, he suddenly broke in with: "Dr. Marmion, Captain Ascott tells me that we shall get to Aden by Tuesday morning next. Now, I was asked by a friend of mine in London to visit the grave of a son of his--a newspaper correspondent--who was killed in one of the expeditions against the native tribes, and was buried in the general cemetery at Aden. On the way out I was not able to fulfil the commission, because we passed Aden in the night. But there will be plenty of time to do so on Tuesday, I am told. This, however, is my difficulty: I cannot go unless I am better, and I'm afraid there is no such luck as that in store for me. These attacks last a week, at least. I wish my daughter, however, to go. One of the ladies on board will go with her--Mrs. Callendar, I believe; and I am going to be so bold as to ask you to accompany them, if you will. I know you better than any officer on board; and, besides, I should feel safer and better satisfied if she went under the protection of an officer,--these barbarous places, you know!--though, of course, it may be asking too much of you, or what is impossible." I assented with pleasure. Belle Treherne was looking at the Latin names on the bottles at the time, and her face showed no expression either of pleasure or displeasure. Mr. Treherne said bluffly: "Dr. Marmion, you are kind--very kind, and, upon my word, I'm much obliged." He then looked at his daughter as if expecting her to speak. She looked up and said conventionally: "You are very kind, Dr. Marmion, and I am much obliged." Then I thought her eyes twinkled with amusement at her own paraphrase of her father's speech, and she added: "Mrs. Callendar and myself will be much honoured indeed, and feel very important in having an officer to attend us. Of course everybody else will be envious, and, again of course, that will add to our vanity." At this she would have gone; but her father, who was suffering just enough pain to enjoy anything that would divert his attention from it, fell into conversation upon a subject of mutual interest, in which his daughter joined on occasion, but not with enthusiasm. Yet, when they came to go, she turned and said kindly, almost softly, as her fingers touched mine: "I almost envy you your profession, Dr. Marmion. It opens doors to so much of humanity and life." "There is no sin," I laughingly said, "in such a covetousness, and, believe me, it can do no harm to me, at least." Then I added gravely: "I should like my profession, in so far as I am concerned, to be worth your envy." She had passed through the door before the last words were said, but I saw that her look was not forbidding. ......................... Is there unhappiness anywhere? There is not a vexing toss of the sea, not a cloud in the sky. Is not catastrophe dead, and the arrows of tragedy spilled? Peace broadens into deep, perfumed dusk towards Arabia; languor spreads towards the unknown lands of the farthest south. No anxious soul leans out from the casement of life; the time is heavy with delightful ease. There is no sound that troubles; the world goes by and no one heeds; for it is all beyond this musky twilight and this pleasant hour. In this palace on the sea Mirth trails in and out with airy and harmonious footsteps. Even the clang-clang of eight bells has music--not boisterous nor disturbing, but muffled in the velvety air. Then, through this hemisphere of jocund quiet, there sounds the "All's well" of the watch. But, look! Did you see a star fall just then, and the long avenue of expiring flame behind it?--Do not shudder; it is nothing. No cry of pain came through that brightness. There was only the "All's well" from the watchers. The thud of the engines falls on a padded atmosphere, and the lascars move like ghosts along the decks. The long, smooth promenade is canopied and curtained, and hung with banners, and gay devices of the gorgeous East are contributing to the federation of pleasure. And now, through a festooned doorway, there come the people of many lands to inhabit the gay court. Music follows their footsteps: Hamlet and Esther; Caractacus and Iphigenia; Napoleon and Hermione; The Man in the Iron Mask and Sappho; Garibaldi and Boadicea; an Arab sheikh and Joan of Arc; Mahomet and Casablanca; Cleopatra and Hannibal--a resurrected world. But the illusion is short and slight. This world is very sordid--of shreds and patches, after all. It is but a pretty masquerade, in which feminine vanity beats hard against strangely-clothed bosoms; and masculine conceit is shown in the work of the barber's curling-irons and the ship-carpenter's wooden swords and paper helmets. The pride of these folk is not diminished because Hamlet's wig gets awry, or a Roman has trouble with his foolish garters. Few men or women can resist mumming; they fancy themselves as somebody else, dead or living. Yet these seem happy in this nonsense. The indolent days appear to have deadened hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. They shall strut and fret their hour upon this little stage. Let that sprightly girl forget the sudden death which made her an orphan; the nervous broker his faithless wife; the grey-haired soldier his silly and haunting sins; the bankrupt his creditors. "On with the dance, let joy be unconfined!" For the captain is on the bridge, the engineer is beneath; we have stout walls, and a ceaseless sentry-go. In the intervals of the dance wine passes, and idle things are said beside the draped and cushioned capstan or in the friendly gloom of a boat, which, in the name of safety, hangs taut between its davits. Let this imitation Cleopatra use the Cleopatra's arts; this mellow Romeo (sometime an Irish landlord) vow to this coy Juliet; this Helen of Troy-- Of all who walked these decks, mantled and wigged in characters not their own, Mrs. Falchion was the handsomest, most convincing. With a graceful swaying movement she passed along the promenade, and even envy praised her. Her hand lay lightly on the arm of a brown stalwart native of the Indian hills, fierce and savage in attire. Against his wild picturesqueness and brawny strength, her perfectness of animal beauty, curbed and rendered delicate by her inner coldness, showed in fine contrast; and yet both were matched in the fine natural prowess of form. With a singular affirmation of what had been, after all, but a sadly- humourous proposal, I had attired myself in a Greek costume--quickly made by my steward, who had been a tailor--and was about to leave my cabin, when Hungerford entered, and exclaimed, as he took his pipe from his mouth in surprise: "Marmion, what does this mean? Don't you know your duties better? No officer may appear at these flare-ups in costume other than his uniform. You're the finest example of suburban innocence and original sin I've seen this last quarter of a century, wherein I've kept the world--and you--from tottering to destruction." He reached for one of my cigars. Without a word, and annoyed at my own stupidity, I slowly divested myself of the clothes of Greece; while Hungerford smoked on, humming to himself occasionally a few bars of The Buccaneer's Bride, but evidently occupied with something in his mind. At length he said: "Marmion, I said suburban innocence and original sin, but you've a grip on the law of square and compass too. I'll say that for you, old chap--and I hope you don't think I'm a miserable prig." Still I replied nothing, but offered him one of my best cigars, taking the other one from him, and held the match while he lighted it--which, between men, is sufficient evidence of good-feeling. He understood, and continued: "Of course you'll keep your eye on Mrs. Falchion and Madras to-night: if he is determined that they shall meet, and you have arranged it. I'd like to know how it goes before you turn in, if you don't mind. And, I say, Marmion, ask Miss Treherne to keep a dance for me--a waltz-- towards the close of the evening, will you? Excuse me, but she is the thorough-bred of the ship. And if I have only one hop down the promenade, I want it to be with a girl who'll remind me of some one that is making West Kensington worth inhabiting. Only think, Marmion, of a girl like her--a graduate in arts, whose name and picture have been in all the papers--being willing to make up with me, Dick Hungerford! She is as natural and simple as a girl can be, and doesn't throw Greek roots at you, nor try to convince you of the difference between the songs of the troubadours and the sonnets of Petrarch. She doesn't care a rap whether Dante's Beatrice was a real woman or a principle; whether James the First poisoned his son; or what's the margin between a sine and a cosine. She can take a fence in the hunting-field like a bird--! Oh, all right, just hold still, and I'll unfasten it." And he struggled with a recalcitrant buckle. "Well, you'll not forget about Miss Treherne, will you? She ought to go just as she is. Fancy-dress on her would be gilding the gold; for, though she isn't surpassingly beautiful, she is very fine, very fine indeed. There, now, you're yourself again, and look all the better for it." By this time I was again in my uniform, and I sat down, and smoked, and looked at Hungerford. His long gossip had been more or less detached, and I had said nothing. I understood that he was trying, in his blunt, honest way, to turn my thoughts definitely from Mrs. Falchion to Belle Treherne; and he never seemed to me such a good fellow as at that moment. I replied at last: "All right, Hungerford; I'll be your deputation, your ambassador, to Miss Treherne. What time shall we see you on deck?" "About 11.40--just in time to trip a waltz on the edge of eight bells." "On the edge of Sunday, my boy." "Yes. Do you know, it is just four years ago tomorrow since I found Boyd Madras on the No Man's Sea?" "Let us not talk of it," said I. "All right. I merely stated the fact because it came to me. I'm mum henceforth. And I want to talk about something else. The first officer,--I don't know whether you have noticed him lately, but I tell you this: if we ever get into any trouble with this ship he'll go to pieces. Why, the other night, when the engine got tangled, he was as timid as a woman. That shock he had with the coal, as I said before, has broken his nerve, big man as he is." "Hungerford," I said, "you do not generally croak, but you are earning the character of the raven for yourself to-night. The thing is growing on you. What IS the use of bringing up unpleasant subjects? You are an old woman." I fear there was the slightest irritation in my voice; but, truth is, the last few days' experiences had left their mark on me, and Hungerford's speech and manner had suddenly grown trying. He stood for a moment looking at me with direct earnestness from under his strong brows, and then he stepped forward, and, laying his hand upon my arm, rejoined: "Do not be raw, Marmion. I'm only a blunt, stupid sailor; and, to tell you God's truth, as I have told you before, every sailor is superstitious--every real sailor. He can't help it--I can't. I have a special fit on me now. Why don't I keep it to myself? Because I'm selfish, and it does me good to talk. You and I are in one secret together, and it has made me feel like sharing this thing with a pal, I suppose." I seized his hand and begged his pardon, and called myself unpleasant names, which he on the instant stopped, and said: "That's all right, Marmy; shake till the knuckles crack! I'm off. Don't forget the dance." He disappeared down the passage. Then I went on deck, and the scene which I have so imperfectly described passed before me. Mrs. Falchion was surrounded with admirers all the evening, both men and women; and two of the very stately English ladies of title, to whom I before referred, were particularly gracious to her; while she, in turn, bore herself with becoming dignity. I danced with her once, and was down on her programme for another dance. I had also danced with Belle Treherne, who appeared as Miriam, and was chaperoned by one of the ladies of title; and I had also "sat out" one dance with her. Chancing to pass her as the evening wore on, I saw her in conversation with Mrs. Falchion, who had dismissed her cavalier, preferring to talk, she said, for dancing was tiresome work on the Indian Ocean. Belle Treherne, who up to that moment had never quite liked her, yielded to the agreeable charm of her conversation and her frank applausive remarks upon the costumes of the dancers. She had a good word for every one, and she drew her companion out to make the most of herself, as women less often do before women than in the presence of men. I am certain that her interest in Belle Treherne was real, and likewise certain that she cherished no pique against her because I had transferred my allegiance. Indeed, I am sure that she had no deep feeling of injured pride where I was concerned. Such after acidity as she sometimes showed was directed against the foolish part I had played with her and my action in subsequent events; it did not proceed from personal feeling or self- value. Some time after this meeting I saw Boyd Madras issue from the companion- way dressed as a Greek. He wore a false beard, and carried off well his garments of white and scarlet and gold--a very striking and presentable man. He came slowly forward, looking about him steadily, and, seeing me, moved towards me. But for his manner I should scarcely have recognised him. A dance was beginning; but many eyes were turned curiously, and even admiringly, to him; for he looked singular and impressive and his face was given fulness by a beard and flesh paints. I motioned him aside where there was shadow, and said: "Well, you have determined to see her?" "Yes," he said; "and I wish you, if you will, to introduce me to her as Mr. Charles Boyd. "You still think this wise?" I asked. "It is my earnest wish. I must have an understanding to-night." He spoke very firmly, and showed no excitement. His manner was calm and gentlemanly. He had a surprising air of decision. Supporting an antique character, he seemed for the moment to have put on also something of antique strength of mind, and to be no longer the timid invalid. "Then, come with me," I answered. We walked in silence for a few minutes, and then, seeing where Mrs. Falchion was, we advanced to her. The next dance on her programme was mine. In my previous dance with her we had talked as we now did at table--as we did the first hour I met her--impersonally, sometimes (I am bold to say) amusingly. Now I approached her with apologies for being late. The man beside her took his leave. She had only just glanced at me at first, but now she looked at my companion, and the look stayed, curious, bewildered. "It is fitting," I said, "that Greek meet Greek--that Menelaus should be introduced to Helen. May I say that when Helen is not Helen she is Mrs. Falchion, and when Menelaus is not Menelaus he is--Mr. Charles Boyd." I am afraid my voice faltered slightly, because there came over me suddenly a nervousness as unexpected as it was inconvenient, and my words, which began lightly, ended huskily. Had Madras miscalculated this woman? Her eyes were afire, and her face was as pale as marble; all its slight but healthy glow had fled. A very faint gasp came from her lips. I saw that she recognised him, as he bowed and mentioned her name, following my introduction. I knew not what might occur, for I saw danger in her eyes in reply to the beseeching look in his. Would melodrama supervene after all? She merely bowed towards me, as if to dismiss me, and then she rose, took his arm, and moved away. The interview that follows came to me from Boyd Madras afterwards. When they had reached the semi-darkness of the forward part of the ship, she drew her hand quickly away, and, turning to him, said: "What is the name by which you are called? One does not always hear distinctly when being introduced." He did not understand what she was about to do, but he felt the deadly coldness in her voice. "My name is known to you," he replied. He steadied himself. "No, pardon me, I do not know it, for I do not know you. . . . I never saw you before." She leaned her hand carelessly on the bulwarks. He was shocked, but he drew himself together. Their eyes were intent on each other. "You do know me! Need I tell you that I am Boyd Madras?" "Boyd Madras," she said, musing coldly. "A peculiar name." "Mercy Madras was your name until you called yourself Mrs. Falchion," he urged indignantly, yet anxiously too. "It suits you to be mysterious, Mr.--ah yes, Mr. Boyd Madras; but, really, you might be less exacting in your demands upon one's imagination." Her look was again on him casually. He spoke breathlessly. "Mercy--Mercy--for God's sake, don't treat me like this! Oh, my wife, I have wronged you every way, but I loved you always--love you now. I have only followed you to ask you to forgive me, after all these years. I saw you in Colombo just before you came on board, and I felt that I must come also. You never loved me. Perhaps that is better for you, but you do not know what I suffer. If you could give me a chance, and come with me to America--anywhere, and let me start the world again? I can--travel straight now, and I will work hard, and be honest. I will--" But here sudden pain brought back the doubt concerning his life and its possibilities. He leaned against the bulwarks, and made a helpless, despairing motion with his hand. "No, no!" he said; and added with a bitter laugh: "Not to begin the world again, but to end it as profitably and silently as I can. . . . But you will listen to me, my wife? You will say at least that you forgive me the blight and ill I brought upon you?" She had listened to him unmoved outwardly. Her reply was instant. "You are more melodramatic than I thought you capable of being--from your appearance," she said in a hard tone. "Your acting is very good, but not convincing. I cannot respond as would become the unity and sequence of the play. . . . I have no husband. My husband is dead--I buried him years ago. I have forgotten his name--I buried that too." All the suffering and endured scorn of years came to revolt in him. He leaned forward now, and caught her wrist. "Have you no human feeling?" he said "no heart in you at all? Look. I have it in me here suddenly to kill you as you stand. You have turned my love to hate. From your smooth skin there I could strip those rags, and call upon them all to look at you--my wife--a felon's wife; mine to have and to hold--to hold, you hear!--as it was sworn at the altar. I bare my heart to you, repenting, and you mock it, torture it, with your undying hate and cruelty. You have no heart, no life. This white bosom is all of you --all of your power to make men love you--this, and your beauty. All else, by God, is cruel as the grave!" His voice had sunk to a hoarse whisper. She had not sought to remove his hand, nor struggled in the least; and once it seemed as if this new development of his character, this animal fierceness, would conquer her: she admired courage. It was not so. He trembled with weakness before he had finished. He stopped too soon; he lost. "You will find such parts exhausting to play," she murmured, as he let her arm fall. "It needs a strong physique to endure exaggerated, nervous sentiment. And now, please, let us perform less trying scenes." Then, with a low, cold anger, she continued: "It is only a coward that will dog a woman who finds his presence insupportable to her. This woman cannot, if she would, endure this man's presence; it is her nature. Well, why rush blindly at the impossible? She wishes to live her spoiled life alone. The man can have no part in it--never, never! But she has money. If in that way--" He stretched out his hand protestingly, the fingers spread in excitement. "No more--not another word!" he said. "I ask for forgiveness, for one word of kindness--and I am offered money! the fire that burned me to eat, instead of bread! I had a wife once," he added in a kind of troubled dream, looking at her as if she were very far away, "and her name was Mercy--her name was Mercy--Mercy Madras. I loved her. I sinned for her sake. A message came that she was dead to me; but I could not believe that it was so altogether, for I had knelt at her feet and worshipped her. I went to her, but she sent me away angrily. Years passed. 'She will have relented now,' I said, and I followed her, and found her as I thought. But it was not she; it was a wicked ghost in her beautiful body--nothing more. And then I turned away and cursed all things, because I knew that I should never see my wife again. Mercy Madras was dead. . . . Can you not hear the curses?" Still she was unmoved. She said with a cruel impatience in her voice: "Yes, Mercy Madras is dead. How then can she forgive? What could her ghost--as you call her--do, but offer the thing which her husband--when he was living--loved so well that he sold himself into bondage, and wrecked his world and hers for it--Money? Well, money is at his disposal, as she said before--" But she spoke no more. The man in him straight way shamed her into silence with a look. She bowed her head, yet not quite in shame, for there was that in her eyes which made her appear as if his suffering was a gratuitous infliction. But at this moment he was stronger, and he drew her eyes up by the sheer force of his will. "I need no money now," he coldly declared. "I need nothing--not even you; and can you fancy that, after waiting all these years for this hour, money would satisfy me? Do you know," he continued slowly and musingly, "I can look upon you now --yes, at this moment--with more indifference than you ever showed to me? A moment ago I loved you: now I think you horrible; because you are no woman; you have a savage heart. And some day you will suffer as I do, so terribly that even the brazen serpent could not cure you. Then you will remember me." He was about to leave her, but he had not taken two steps before he turned, with all the anger and the passion softened in his eyes, and said, putting his hand out towards yet not to touch her, "Good-bye--for the last time." And then the look was such as might be turned upon a forgiven executioner. "Good-night," she replied, and she did not look into his eyes, but out to sea. Her eyes remained fixed upon its furtive gloom. She too was furtive and gloomy at this moment. They were both sleek, silent, and remorseless. There was a slight rustle to her dress as she changed her position. It was in grim keeping with the pitiless rustle of the sea. And so they parted. I saw him move on towards the companion-way, and though I felt instinctively that all had gone ill with him, I was surprised to see how erect he walked. After a minute I approached her. She heard me coming, and presently turned to me with a curious smile. "Who is Mr. Charles Boyd?" she asked. "I did not pierce his disguise. I could not tell whether I had met him on board before. Have I? But my impression is that I had not seen him on the ship." "No, you had not seen him," I replied. "He had a fancy to travel, until yesterday, with the second-class passengers. Now he has a first-class cabin--in his proper place, in fact." "You think so--in his proper place?" The suggestion was not pleasant. "Assuredly. Why do you speak in that way?" was my indignant reply. She took my arm as we moved on. "Because he was slightly rude to me." I grew bold, and determined to bring her to some sort of reckoning. "How rude were you to him?" "Not rude at all. It is not worth while being so--to anybody," was her chilly answer. "I was under the impression you had met him before," I said gravely. "Indeed? And why?" She raised her eyebrows at me. I pushed the matter to a conclusion. "He was ill the other day--he has heart trouble. It was necessary for me to open the clothes about his neck. On his breast I saw a little ivory portrait of a woman's head." "A woman's head," she repeated absently, and her fingers idly toyed with a jingling ornament in her belt. In an idle moment I had sketched the head, as I remembered it, on a sheet of paper, and now I took it from my pocket and handed it to her. We were standing near a port-hole of the music saloon, from which light streamed. "That is the head," said I. She deliberately placed the paper in the belt of light, and, looking at it, remarked mechanically: "This is the head, is it?" She showed no change of countenance, and handed it back to me as if she had seen no likeness. "It is very interesting," she said, "but one would think you might make better use of your time than by surreptitiously sketching portraits from sick men's breasts. One must have plenty of leisure to do that sort of thing, I should think. Be careful that you do not get into mischief, Dr. Marmion." She laughed. "Besides, where was the special peculiarity in that portrait that you should treasure it in pencil so conventionally?--Your drawing is not good.--Where was the point or need?" "I have no right to reply to that directly," I responded. "But this man's life is not for always, and if anything happened to him it would seem curious to strangers to find that on his breast--because, of course, more than I would see it there." "If anything happened? What should happen? You mean, on board ship?" There was a little nervousness in her tone now. "I am only hinting at an awkward possibility," I replied. She looked at me scornfully. "When did you see that picture on his breast?" I told her. "Ah! before THAT day?" she rejoined. I knew that she referred to the evening when I had yielded foolishly to the fascination of her presence. The blood swam hotly in my face. "Men are not noble creatures," she continued. "I am afraid you would not give many their patents of nobility if you had power to bestow them," I answered. "Most men at the beginning, and very often ever after, are ignoble creatures. Yet I should confer the patents of nobility, if it were my prerogative; for some would succeed in living up to them. Vanity would accomplish that much. Vanity is the secret of noblesse oblige; not radical virtue--since we are beginning to be bookish again." "To what do you reduce honour and right?" returned I. "As I said to you on a memorable occasion," she answered very drily, "to a code." "That is," rejoined I, "a man does a good action, lives an honourable life, to satisfy a social canon--to gratify, say, a wife or mother, who believes in him, and loves him?" "Yes." She was watching Belle Treherne promenading with her father. She drew my attention to it by a slight motion of the hand, but why I could not tell. "But might not a man fall by the same rule of vanity?" I urged. "That he shall appear well in their eyes, that their vanity in turn should be fed, might he not commit a crime, and so bring misery?" "Yes, it is true either way--pleasure or misery. Please come to the saloon and get me an ice before the next dance." I was perplexed. Was she altogether soulless? Even now, as we passed among the dancers, she replied to congratulations on her make-up and appearance with evident pleasure. An hour later, I was taking Belle Treherne from the arm of Hungerford for the last waltz, and, in reply to an inquiring glance from him, I shook my head mournfully. His face showed solicitude as he walked away. Perhaps it did not gratify my vanity that Belle Treherne, as her father limped forward at the stroke of eight bells to take her below, said to me: "How downright and thorough Mr. Hungerford is!" But I frankly admitted that he was all she might say good of him, and more. The deck was quickly dismantled, the lights went out, and all the dancers disappeared. The masquerade was over; and again, through the darkness, rose the plaintive "All's well!" And it kept ringing in my ears until it became a mocking sound, from which I longed to be free. It was like the voice of Lear crying over the body of Cordelia: "Never, never, never, never, never!" Something of Hungerford's superstitious feeling possessed me. I went below, and involuntarily made my way to Boyd Madras's cabin. Though the night was not hot, the door was drawn to. I tapped. His voice at once asked who was there, and when I told him, and inquired how he was, he said he was not ill, and asked me to come to his cabin in the morning, if I would. I promised, and bade him good-night. He responded, and then, as I turned away from the door, I heard him repeat the good- night cordially and calmly. CHAPTER VII THE WHEEL COMES FULL CIRCLE The next morning I was up early, and went on deck. The sun had risen, and in the moist atmosphere the tints of sky and sea were beautiful. Everywhere was the warm ocean undulating lazily to the vague horizon. A few lascars were still cleansing the decks; others were seated on their haunches between decks, eating curry from a calabash; a couple of passengers were indolently munching oranges; and Stone the quartermaster was inspecting the work lately done by the lascars. Stone gave me a pleasant good-morning, and we walked together the length of the deck forward. I had got about three-fourths of the length back again, when I heard a cry from aft--a sharp call of "Man overboard!" In a moment I had travelled the intermediate deck, and was at the stern, looking below, where, in the swirling waters, was the head of a man. With cries of "Man overboard!" I threw two or three buoys after the disappearing head, above which a bare arm thrust itself. I heard the rush of feet behind me, and in a moment Hungerford and Stone were beside me. The signal was given for the engines to stop; stewards and lascars came running on deck in response to Hungerford's call, and the first officer now appeared. Very soon a crew was gathered on the after-deck, about a boat on the port side. Passengers by this time showed in various stages of dressing-- women wringing their hands, men gesticulating. If there is anything calculated to send a thrill of awe through a crowd, it is the cry of "Man overboard!" And when one looked below, and saw above the drowning head two white arms thrust from the sea, a horrible thing was brought home to each of us. Besides, the scene before us on the deck was not reassuring. There was trouble in getting the boat lowered. The first officer was excited, the lascars were dazed, the stewards were hurried without being confident; only Hungerford, Stone, and the gunner were collected. The boat should have been launched in a minute, but still it hung between its davits; its course downward was interrupted; something was wrong with the ropes, "A false start, by --- !" said the bookmaker, looking through his eye-glass. Colonel Ryder's face was stern, Clovelly was pale and anxious, as moment after moment went, and the boat was not yet free. Ages seemed to pass before the boat was let down even with the bulwarks, and a crew of ten, with Hungerford in command, were in it, ready to be lowered. Whether the word was given to lower, or whether it was any one's fault, may never perhaps be known; but, as the boat hung there, suddenly it shot down at the stern, some one having let go the ropes at that end; and the bow being still fast, it had fallen like a trap-door. It seemed, on the instant, as if the whole crew were tossed into the water; but some had successfully clutched the boat's side, and Hungerford hung by a rope with one hand. In the eddying water, however, about the reversing screw, were two heads, and farther off was a man struggling. The face of one of the men near the screw was upturned for a moment; it was that of Stone the quartermaster. A cry went up from the passengers, and they swayed forward to the suspended boat; but Colonel Ryder turned almost savagely upon them. "Keep quiet!" he said. "Stand back! What can you do? Give the officers a chance." He knew that there had been a false start, and bad work indeed; but he also saw that the task of the officers must not be made harder. His sternness had effect. The excited passengers drew back, and I took his place in front of them. When the first effort had been made to lower the boat, I asked the first officer if I could accompany the crew, but he said no. I could, therefore, do nothing but wait. A change came on the crowd. It became painfully silent, none speaking save in whispers, and all watching with anxious faces either the receding heads in the water or the unfortunate boat's crew. Hungerford showed himself a thorough sailor. Hanging to the davit, he quietly, reassuringly, gave the order for righting the boat, virtually taking the command out of the hands of the first officer, who was trembling with nervousness. Hungerford was right; this man's days as a sailor were over. The accident from which he had suffered had broken his nerve, stalwart as he was. But Hungerford was as cool as if this were ordinary boat-practice. Soon the boat was drawn up again, and others took the place of those who had disappeared. Then it was lowered safely, and, with Hungerford erect in the bows, it was pulled swiftly along the path we had come. At length, too, the great ship turned round, but not in her tracks. It is a pleasant fiction that these great steamers are easily managed. They can go straight ahead, but their huge proportions are not adapted for rapid movement. However, the work of rescue was begun. Sailors were aloft on watch, Captain Ascott was on the bridge, sweeping the sea with his glass; order was restored. But the ship had the feeling of a home from which some familiar inmate had been taken, to return no more. Children clasped their mothers' hands and said, "Mother, was it the poor quartermaster?" and men who the day before had got help from the petty officers in the preparation of costumes, said mournfully: "Fife the gunner was one of them." But who was the man first to go overboard--and who was it first gave the alarm? There were rumours, but no one was sure. All at once I remembered something peculiar in that cry of "Man overboard!" and it shocked me. I hurried below, and went to the cabin of Boyd Madras. It was empty; but on a shelf lay a large envelope, addressed to Hungerford and myself. I tore it open. There was a small packet, which I knew contained the portrait he had worn on his bosom, addressed to Mrs. Falchion; and the other was a single sheet directed to me, fully written upon, and marked in the corner: "To be made public." So, he had disappeared from the play? He had made his exit? He had satisfied the code at last? Before opening the letter addressed to me, I looked round. His clothes were folded upon one of the berths; but the garments of masquerade were not in the cabin. Had he then gone out of the world in the garb of a mummer? Not altogether, for the false beard he had worn the night before lay beside the clothes. But this terrible earnestness of his would look strange in last night's disguise. I opened the packet addressed to Hungerford and myself, and saw that it contained a full and detailed account of his last meeting with his wife. The personal letter was short. He said that his gratitude was unspeakable, and now must be so for ever. He begged us not to let the world know who he was, nor his relationship to Mrs. Falchion, unless she wished it; he asked me to hand privately to her the packet bearing her name. Lastly, he requested that the paper for the public be given to the captain of the 'Fulvia'. Going out into the passage, I found a steward, who hurriedly told me that just before the alarm was given he had seen Boyd Madras going aft in that strange costume, which he mistook for a dressing-gown, and he had come to see if, by any chance, it was he who had gone overboard. I told him that it was. He disappeared, and soon the whole ship knew it. I went to the captain, gave him the letter, and told him only what was necessary to tell. He was on the bridge, and was occupied with giving directions, so he asked me the substance of the letter, and handed it back to me, requesting me to make a copy of it soon and leave it in his cabin. I then took all the papers to my cabin, and locked them up. I give here the substance of the letter which was to be made public: Because you know how much I have suffered physically while on board this ship, and because you have been kind to me, I wish, through you, to say my last word to the world: though, indeed, this may seem a strange form for gratitude to take. Dying men, however, make few apologies, and I shall make none. My existence, as you know, is an uncertain quantity, and may be cut short at any moment in the ordinary course of things. But I have no future in the active concerns of life; no past on which to dwell with satisfaction; no friends to mourn for my misfortunes in life, nor for my death, whether it be peaceful or violent; therefore, I have fewer compunctions in ending a mistaken career and a worthless life. Some one will profit by my death: who it is matters not, for it is no friend of mine. My death adjusts a balance, perhaps not nicely, yet it does it. And this is all I have to say. . . . I am going. Farewell. . . . After a brief farewell to me added, there came the subscription "Charles Boyd;" and that was all. Why he cried out "Man overboard" (for now I recognised that it was his voice which gave the alarm), I do not know, except that he wished his body to be recovered, and to receive burial. Just here, some one came fumbling at the curtain of my cabin. I heard a gasp--"Doctor--my head! quick!" I looked out. As I drew the curtain a worthless lascar sailor fell fainting into my cabin. He had been drinking a good deal, and the horror and excitement of the accident had brought on an apoplectic fit. This in a very hot climate is suddenly fatal. In three minutes, in spite of me, he was dead. Postponing report of the matter, I went on deck again among the passengers. I expected that Mrs. Falchion would be among them, for the news must have gone to every part of the ship; but she was not there. On the outskirts of one of the groups, however, I saw Justine Caron. I went to her, and asked her if Mrs. Falchion had risen. She said that she had not: that she had been told of the disaster, and had appeared shocked; but had complained of a headache, and had not risen. I then asked Justine if Mrs. Falchion had been told who the suicide was, and was answered in the negative. At that moment a lady came to me and said in an awed whisper: "Dr. Marmion, is it true that the man who committed suicide was a second- class passenger, and that he appeared at the ball last night, and danced with Mrs. Falchion?" I knew that my reply would soon become common property, so I said: "He was a first-class passenger, though until yesterday he travelled second-class. I knew him. His name was Charles Boyd. I introduced him to Mrs. Falchion last night, but he did not stay long on deck, because he felt ill. He had heart trouble. You may guess that he was tired of life." Then I told her of the paper which was for the public, and she left me. The search for the unfortunate men went on. No one could be seen near the floating buoys which were here and there picked up by Hungerford's boat. The long undulations of the water had been broken up in a large area about the ship, but the sea was still comparatively smooth. We were steaming back along the track we had come. There was less excitement on board than might be expected. The tropical stillness of the air, the quiet suddenness of the tragedy itself, the grim decisiveness of Hungerford, the watchful silence of a few men like Colonel Ryder and Clovelly, had effect upon even the emotion of those women, everywhere found, who get a morbid enjoyment out of misery. Nearly all were watching the rescue boat, though a few looked over the sides of the ship as if they expected to find bodies floating about. They saw sharks, instead, and a trail of blood, and this sent them away sickened from the bulwarks. Then they turned their attention again upon the rescue party. It was impossible not to note what a fine figure Hungerford made, as he stood erect in the bow, his hand over his eyes, searching the water. Presently we saw him stop the boat, and something was drawn in. He signalled the ship. He had found one man--but dead or alive? The boat was rapidly rowed back to the ship, Hungerford making efforts for resuscitation. Arrived at the vessel, the body was passed up to me. It was that of Stone the quartermaster. I worked to bring back life, but it was of no avail. A minute after, a man in the yards signalled that he saw another. It was not a hundred yards away, and was floating near the surface. It was a strange sight, for the water was a vivid green, and the man wore garments of white and scarlet, and looked a part of some strange mosaic: as one has seen astonishing figures set in balls of solid glass. This figure framed in the sea was Boyd Madras. The boat was signalled, it drew near, and two men dragged the body in, as a shark darted forward, just too late, to seize it. The boat drew alongside the 'Fulvia'. I stood at the gangway to receive this castaway. I felt his wrist and heart. As I did so I chanced to glance up at the passengers, who were looking at this painful scene from the upper deck. There, leaning over the railing, stood Mrs. Falchion, her eyes fixed with a shocking wonder at the drooping, weird figure. Her lips parted, but at first they made no sound. Then, she suddenly drew herself up with a shudder. "Horrible! horrible!" she said, and turned away. I had Boyd Madras taken to an empty cabin next to mine, which I used for operations, and there Hungerford and myself worked to resuscitate him. We allowed no one to come near. I had not much hope of bringing life back, but still we worked with a kind of desperation, for it seemed to Hungerford and myself that somehow we were responsible to humanity for him. His heart had been weak, but there had been no organic trouble: only some functional disorder, which open-air life and freedom from anxiety might have overcome. Hungerford worked with an almost fierce persistence. Once he said: "By God, I will bring him back, Marmion, to face that woman down when she thinks she has got the world on the hip!" I cannot tell what delight we felt when, after a little time, I saw a quiver of the eyelids and a slight motion of the chest. Presently a longer breath came, and the eyes opened; at first without recognition. Then, in a few moments, I knew that he was safe--desperately against his will, but safe. His first sentient words startled me. He gasped, "Does she think I am drowned?" "Yes." "Then she must continue to do so!" "Why?" "Because"--here he spoke faintly, as if sudden fear had produced additional weakness--"because I had rather die a thousand deaths than meet her now; because she hates me. I must begin the world again. You have saved my life against my will: I demand that you give that life its only chance of happiness." As his words came to me, I remembered with a start the dead lascar, and, leading Hungerford to my cabin, I pointed to the body, and whispered that the sailor's death was only known to me. "Then this is the corpse of Boyd Madras, and we'll bury it for him," he said with quick bluntness. "Do not report this death to Captain Ascott--he would only raise objections to the idea. This lascar was in my watch. It will be supposed he fell overboard during the accident to the boat. Perhaps some day the funeral of this nigger will be a sensation and surprise to her blessed ladyship on deck." I suggested that it seemed underhand and unprofessional, but the entreating words of the resuscitated man in the next room conquered my objections. It was arranged that Madras should remain in the present cabin, of which I had a key, until we reached Aden; then he should, by Hungerford's aid, disappear. We were conspirators, but we meant harm to nobody. I covered up the face of the dead lascar and wrapped round him the scarlet and gold cloth that Madras had worn. Then I got a sailor, who supposed Boyd Madras was before him, and the body was soon sewed in its shotted shroud and carried to where Stone the quartermaster lay. At this day I cannot suppose I would do these things, but then it seemed right to do as Madras wished: he was, under a new name, to begin life afresh. After giving directions for the disposition of the bodies, I went on deck. Mrs. Falchion was still there. Some one said to her: "Did you know the man who committed suicide?" "He was introduced to me last night by Dr. Marmion," she replied, and she shuddered again, though her face showed no remarkable emotion. She had had a shock to the senses, not to the heart. When I came to her on the deck, Justine was saying to her: "Madame, you should not have come. You should not see such painful things when you are not well." She did not reply to this. She looked up at me and said: "A strange whim, to die in those fanciful rags. It is dreadful to see; but he had the courage." I replied: "They have as much courage who make men do such things and then live on." Then I told her briefly that I held the packet for her, that I guessed what was in it, and that I would hand it to her later. I also said that he had written to me the record of last night's meeting with her, and that he had left a letter which was to be made public. As I said these things we were walking the decks, and, because eyes were on both of us, I tried to show nothing more unusual in manner than the bare tragedy might account for. "Well," she said, with a curious coldness, "what use shall you make of your special knowledge?" "I intend," I said, "to respect his wish, that your relationship to him be kept unknown, unless you declare otherwise." "That is reasonable. If he had always been as reasonable! And," she continued, "I do not wish the relationship to be known: practically there is none. . . . Oh! oh!" she added, with a sudden change in her voice, "why did he do as he did, and make everything else impossible-- impossible! . . . Send me, or give me the packet, when you wish: and now please leave me, Dr. Marmion." The last few words were spoken with some apparent feeling, but I knew she was thinking of herself most, and I went from her angry. I did not see her again before the hour that afternoon when we should give the bodies of the two men to the ocean. No shroud could be prepared for gunner Fife and able-seaman Winter, whose bodies had no Christian burial, but were swallowed by the eager sea, not to be yielded up even for a few hours. We were now steaming far beyond the place where they were lost. The burial was an impressive sight, as burials at sea mostly are. The lonely waters stretching to the horizon helped to make it so. There was a melancholy majesty in the ceremony. The clanging bell had stopped. Captain Ascott was in his place at the head of the rude draped bier. In the silence one only heard the swish of water against the 'Fulvia's' side, as we sped on towards Aden. People do not know how beautiful, how powerful, is the burial service in the Book of Common Prayer, who have only heard it recited by a clergyman. To hear it read by a hardy man, whose life is among stern duties, is to receive a new impression. He knows nothing of lethargic monotone; he interprets as he reads. And when the man is the home-spun captain of a ship, who sees before him the poor shell of one that served him for ten years, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord," has a strange significance. It is only men who have borne the shock of toil and danger, and have beaten up against the world's buffetings, that are fit to say last words over those gone down in the storm or translated in the fiery chariot of duty. The engines suddenly stopped. The effect was weird. Captain Ascott's fingers trembled, and he paused for an instant and looked down upon the dead, then out sorrowfully to the waiting sea, before he spoke the words, "We therefore commit their bodies to the deep." But, the moment they were uttered, the bier was lifted, there was a swift plunge, and only the flag and the empty boards were left. The sobbing of women now seemed almost unnatural; for around us was the bright sunlight, the gay dresses of the lascars, the sound of the bell striking the hours, and children playing on the deck. The ship moved on. And Mrs. Falchion? As the burial service was read, she had stood, and looked, not at the bier, but straight out to sea, calm and apparently unsympathetic, though, as she thought, her husband was being buried. When, however, the weighted body divided the water with a swingeing sound, her face suddenly suffused, as though shame had touched her or some humiliating idea had come. But she turned to Justine almost immediately, and soon after said calmly: "Bring a play of Moliere, and read to me, Justine." I had the packet her supposed dead husband had left for her in my pocket. I joined her, and we paced the deck, at first scarcely speaking, while the passengers dispersed, some below, some to the smoking-rooms, some upon deck-chairs to doze through the rest of the lazy afternoon. The world had taken up its orderly course again. At last, in an unfrequented corner of the deck, I took the packet from my pocket and handed it to her. "You understand?" I asked. "Yes, I understand. And now, may I beg that for the rest of your natural life"--here she paused, and bit her lip in vexation that the unlucky phrase had escaped her--"you will speak of this no more?" "Mrs. Boyd Madras," I said (here she coloured indignantly),--"pardon me for using the name, but it is only this once,--I shall never speak of the matter to you again, nor to any one else, unless there is grave reason." We walked again in silence. Passing the captain's cabin, we saw a number of gentlemen gathered about the door, while others were inside. We paused, to find what the incident was. Captain Ascott was reading the letter which Boyd Madras had wished to be made public. (I had given it to him just before the burial, and he was acting as though Boyd Madras was really dead--he was quite ignorant of our conspiracy.) I was about to move on, but Mrs. Falchion touched my arm. "Wait," she said. She stood and heard the letter through. Then we walked on, she musing. Presently she said: "It is a pity--a pity." I looked at her inquiringly, but she offered no explanation of the enigmatical words. But, at this moment, seeing Justine waiting, she excused herself, and soon I saw her listening to Moliere. Later in the day I saw her talking with Miss Treherne, and it struck me that she had never looked so beautiful as then, and that Miss Treherne had never seemed so perfect a product of a fine convention. But, watching them together, one who had had any standard of good life could never have hesitated between the two. It was plain to me that Mrs. Falchion was bent upon making a conquest of this girl who so delicately withstood her; and Belle Treherne has told me since, that, when in her presence, and listening to her, she was irresistibly drawn to her; though at the same time she saw there was some significant lack in her nature; some hardness impossible to any one who had ever known love. She also told me that on this occasion Mrs. Falchion did not mention my name, nor did she ever in their acquaintance, save in the most casual fashion. Her conversation with Miss Treherne was always far from petty gossip or that smart comedy in which some women tell much personal history, with the guise of badinage and bright cynicism. I confess, though, it struck me unpleasantly at the time, that this fresh, high-hearted creature should be in familiar conversation with a woman who, it seemed to me, was the incarnation of cruelty. Mrs. Falchion subscribed most liberally to the fund raised for the children of the quartermaster and munificently to that for the crew which had, under Hungerford, performed the rescue work. The only effect of this was to deepen the belief that she was very wealthy, and could spend her money without affectation; for it was noticeable that she, of all on board, showed the least outward excitement at the time of the disaster. It occurred to me that once or twice I had seen her eyes fixed on Hungerford inquisitively, and not free from antipathy. It was something behind her usual equanimity. Her intuitive observation had led her to trace his hand in recent events. Yet I know she admired him too for his brave conduct. The day following the tragedy we were seated at dinner. The captain and most of the officers had risen, but Mrs. Falchion, having come in late, was still eating, and I remained seated also. Hungerford approached me, apologising for the interruption. He remarked that he was going on the bridge, and wished to say something to me before he went. It was an official matter, to which Mrs. Falchion apparently did not listen. When he was about to turn away, he bowed to her rather distantly; but she looked up at him and said, with an equivocal smile: "Mr. Hungerford, we often respect brave men whom we do not like." Then he, understanding her, but refusing to recognise the compliment, not altogether churlishly replied: "And I might say the same of women, Mrs. Falchion; but there are many women we dislike who are not brave." "I think I could recognise a brave man without seeing his bravery," she urged. "But I am a blundering sailor," he rejoined, "who only believes his eyes." "You are young yet," she replied. "I shall be older to-morrow," was his retort. "Well, perhaps you will see better to-morrow," she rejoined, with indolent irony. "If I do, I'll acknowledge it," he added. Then Hungerford smiled at me inscrutably. We two held a strange secret. CHAPTER VIII A BRIDGE OF PERIL No more delightful experience may be had than to wake up in the harbour of Aden some fine morning--it is always fine there--and get the first impression of that mighty fortress, with its thousand iron eyes, in strong repose by the Arabian Sea. Overhead was the cloudless sun, and everywhere the tremulous glare of a sandy shore and the creamy wash of the sea, like fusing opals. A tiny Mohammedan mosque stood gracefully where the ocean almost washed its steps, and the Resident's house, far up the hard hillside, looked down upon the harbour from a green coolness. The place had a massive, war-like character. Here was a battery with earthworks; there, a fort; beyond, a signal-staff. Hospitals, hotels, and stores were incidents in the picture. Beyond the mountain-wall and lofty Jebel Shamsan, rising in fine pink and bronze, and at the end of a high-walled path between the great hills, lay the town of Aden proper. Above the town again were the mighty Tanks, formed out of clefts in the mountains, and built in the times when the Phoenicians made Aden a great mart, the richest spot in all Arabia. Over to the left, on the opposite side of the harbour, were wide bungalows shining in the sun, and flanking the side of the ancient aqueduct, the gigantic tomb of an Arab sheikh. In the harbour were the men-of-war of all nations, and Arab dhows sailed slowly in, laden with pilgrims for Mecca--masses of picturesque sloth and dirt--and disease also; for more than one vessel flew the yellow flag. As we looked, a British man-of-war entered the gates of the harbour in the rosy light. It was bringing back the disabled and wounded from a battle, in which a handful of British soldiers were set to punish thirty times their number in an unknown country. But there was another man-of-war in port with which we were familiar. We passed it far out on the Indian Ocean. It again passed us, and reached Aden before we did. The 'Porcupine' lay not far from the 'Fulvia', and as I leaned over the bulwarks, idly looking at her, a boat shot away from her side, and came towards us. As it drew near, I saw that it was filled with luggage--a naval officer's, I knew it to be. As the sailors hauled it up, I noticed that the initials upon the portmanteaus were G. R. The owner was evidently an officer going home on leave, or invalided. It did not, however, concern me, as I thought, and I turned away to look for Mr. Treherne, that I might fulfil my promise to escort his daughter and Mrs. Callendar to the general cemetery at Aden; for I knew he was not fit to do the journey, and there was nothing to prevent my going. A few hours later I stood with Miss Treherne and Mrs. Callendar in the graveyard beside the fortress-wall, placing wreaths of artificial flowers and one or two natural roses--a chance purchase from a shop at the port-- on the grave of the young journalist. Miss Treherne had brought some sketching materials, and both of us (for, as has been suggested, I had a slight gift for drawing) made sketches of the burial-place. Having done this, we moved away to other parts of the cemetery, looking at the tombstones, many of which told sad tales enough of those who died far away from home and friends. As we wandered on, I noticed a woman kneeling beside a grave. It grew upon me that the figure was familiar. Presently I saw who it was, for the face lifted. I excused myself, went over to her, and said:--"Miss Caron, you are in trouble?" She looked up, her eyes swimming with tears and pointed to the tombstone. On it I read: Sacred to the Memory of HECTOR CARON, Ensign in the French Navy. Erected by his friend, Galt Roscoe, H.B.M.N. Beneath this was the simple line: "Why, what evil hath he done?" "He was your brother?" I asked. "Yes, monsieur, my one brother." Her tears dropped slowly. "And Galt Roscoe, who was he?" asked I. Through her grief her face was eloquent. "I never saw him--never knew him," she said. "He saved my poor Hector from much suffering; he nursed him, and buried him here when he died, and then--that!" pointing to the tombstone. "He made me love the English," she said. "Some day I shall find him, and I shall have money to pay him back all he spent--all." Now I guessed the meaning of the scene on board the 'Fulvia', when she had been so anxious to preserve her present relations with Mrs. Falchion. This was the secret--a beautiful one. She rose. "They disgraced Hector in New Caledonia," she said, "because he refused to punish a convict at Ile Nou who did not deserve it. He determined to go to France to represent his case. He left me behind, because we were poor. He went to Sydney. There he came to know this good man,"--her finger gently felt his name upon the stone,--"who made him a guest upon his ship; and so he came on towards England. In the Indian Ocean he was taken ill: and this was the end." She mournfully sank again beside the grave, but she was no longer weeping. "What was this officer's vessel?" I said presently. She drew from her dress a letter. "It is here. Please read it all. He wrote that to me when Hector died." The superscription to the letter was--H.B.M.S. Porcupine. I might have told her then that the 'Porcupine' was in the harbour at Aden, but I felt that things would work out to due ends without my help--which, indeed, they began to do immediately. As we stood there in silence, I reading over and over again the line upon the pedestal, I heard footsteps behind, and, turning, I saw a man approaching us, who, from his manner, though he was dressed in civilian's clothes, I guessed to be an officer of the navy. He was of more than middle height, had black hair, dark blue eyes, straight, strongly-marked brows, and was clean-shaven. He was a little ascetic-looking, and rather interesting and uncommon, and yet he was unmistakably a sea-going man. It was a face that one would turn to look at again and again--a singular personality. And yet my first glance told me that he was not one who had seen much happiness. Perhaps that was not unattractive in itself, since people who are very happy, and show it, are often most selfish too, and repel where they should attract. He was now standing near the grave, and his eyes were turned from one to the other of us, at last resting on Justine. Presently I saw a look of recognition. He stepped quickly forward. "Mademoiselle, will you pardon me?" he said very gently, "but you remind me of one whose grave I came to see." His hand made a slight motion toward Hector Caron's resting-place. Her eyes were on him with an inquiring earnestness. "Oh, monsieur, is it possible that you are my brother's friend and rescuer?" "I am Roscoe. He was my good friend," he said to her, and he held out his hand. She took it, and kissed it impulsively. He flushed, and drew it back quickly and shyly. "Some day I shall be able to repay you for all your goodness," she said. "I am only grateful now--grateful altogether. And you will tell me all you knew of him--all that he said and did before he died?" "I will gladly tell you all I know," he answered, and he looked at her compassionately, and yet with a little scrutiny, as though to know more of her and how she came to be in Aden. He turned to me inquiringly. I interpreted his thought by saying: "I am the surgeon of the 'Fulvia'. I chanced upon Miss Caron here. She is travelling by the 'Fulvia'." With a faint voice, Justine here said: "Travelling--with my mistress." "As companion to a lady," I preferred to add in explanation, for I wished not to see her humble herself so. A look of understanding came into Roscoe's face. Then he said: "I am glad that I shall see more of you; I am to travel by the 'Fulvia' also to London." "Yet I am afraid I shall see very little of you," she quietly replied. He was about to say something to her, but she suddenly swayed and would have fallen, but that he caught her and supported her. The weakness lasted only for a moment, and then, steadying herself, she said to both of us: "I hope you will say nothing of this to madame? She is kind, most kind, but she hates illness--and such things." Galt Roscoe looked at me to reply, his face showing clearly that he thought "madame" an extraordinary woman. I assured Justine that we would say nothing. Then Roscoe cordially parted from us, saying that he would look forward to seeing us both on the ship; but before he finally went, he put on the grave a small bouquet from his buttonhole. Then I excused myself from Justine, and, going over to Miss Treherne, explained to her the circumstances, and asked her if she would go and speak to the afflicted girl. She and Mrs. Callendar had been watching the incident, and they eagerly listened to me. I think this was the moment that I first stood really well with Belle Treherne. Her sympathy for the bereaved girl flooded many barriers between herself and me. "Oh," she said quickly, "indeed I will go to her, poor girl! Will you come also, Mrs. Callendar?" But Mrs. Callendar timidly said she would rather Miss Treherne went without her; and so it was. While Miss Treherne was comforting the bereaved girl, I talked to Mrs. Callendar. I fear that Mrs. Callendar was but a shallow woman; for, after a moment of excitable interest in Justine, she rather naively turned the talk upon the charms of Europe. And, I fear, not without some slight cynicism, I followed her where she led; for, as I said to myself, it did not matter what direction our idle tongues took, so long as I kept my mind upon the two beside that grave: but it gave my speech a spice of malice. I dwelt upon Mrs. Callendar's return to her native heath--that is, the pavements of Bond Street and Piccadilly, although I knew that she was a native of Tasmania. At this she smiled egregiously. At length Miss Treherne came to us and said that Justine insisted she was well enough to go back to the vessel alone, and wished not to be accompanied. So we left her there. A score of times I have stopped when preparing my notes for this tale from my diary and those of Mrs. Falchion and Galt Roscoe, to think how, all through the events recorded here, and many others omitted, Justine Caron was like those devoted and, often, beautiful attendants of the heroes and heroines of tragedy, who, when all is over, close the eyes, compose the bodies, and cover the faces of the dead, pronouncing with just lips the benediction, fittest in their mouths. Their loves, their deeds, their lives, however good and worthy, were clothed in modesty and kept far up the stage, to be, even when everything was over, not always given the privilege to die as did their masters, but, like Horatio, bade to live and be still the loyal servant: "But in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story." There was no reason why we should go to the ship immediately, and I proposed that we should first explore the port-town, and then visit the city of Aden--five miles away beyond the hills--and the Tanks. To this the ladies consented. Somauli policemen patrolled the streets; Somauli, Arab, and Turkish guides impeded the way; Arabs in plain white, Arab sheikhs in blue and white, and gold, lounged languidly about, or drank their coffee in the shade of the bazaars. Children of the desert, nearly naked, sprinkled water before the doors of the bazaars and stores and upon the hot thoroughfare, from long leather bottles; caravans of camels, with dusty stride, swung up the hillside and beyond into the desert; the Jewish water-carrier with his donkey trudged down the pass from the cool fountains in the volcanic hills; a guard of eunuchs marched by with the harem of a Mohammedan; in the doorways of the houses goats and donkeys fed. Jews, with greasy faces, red-hemmed skirt, and hungry look, moved about, offering ostrich feathers for sale, everywhere treated worse than the Chinaman in Oregon or at Port Darwin. We saw English and Australian passengers of the 'Fulvia' pelting the miserable members of a despised race with green fruit about the streets, and afterwards from the deck of the ship. A number of these raised their hats to us as they passed; but Belle Treherne's acknowledgment was chilly. "It is hard to be polite to cowards," she said. After having made some ruinous bargains in fezes, Turkish cloths and perfume, I engaged a trap, and we started for Aden. The journey was not one of beauty, but it had singular interest. Every turn of the wheels carried us farther and farther away from a familiar world to one of yesterday. White-robed warriors of the desert, with lances, bent their brows upon us as they rode away towards the endless sands, and vagabonds of Egypt begged for alms. In about three-quarters of an hour we had passed the lofty barriers of Jebel Shamsan and its comrades, and were making clouds of dust in the streets of Aden. In spite of the cantonments, the British Government House, and the European Church, it was an Oriental town pure and simple, where the slow-footed hours wandered by, leaving apathy in their train; where sloth and surfeit sat in the market-places; idle women gossiped in their doorways; and naked children rolled in the sun. Yet how, in the most unfamiliar places, does one wake suddenly to hear or see some most familiar thing, and learn again that the ways of all people and nations are not, after all, so far apart! Here three naked youths, with trays upon their heads, cried aloud at each doorway what, interpreted, was: "Pies! Hot pies! Pies all hot!" or, "Crum-pet! Crumpet! Won't you buy-uy a crum-pet!" One sees the same thing in Kandy, in Calcutta, in Tokio, in Istamboul, in Teheran, in Queensland, in London. To us the great Tanks overlooking the place were more interesting than the town itself, and we drove thither. At Government House and here were the only bits of green that we had seen; they were, in fact, the only spots of verdure on the peninsula of Aden. It was a very sickly green, from which wan and dusty fig trees rose. In their scant shadow, or in the shelter of an overhanging ledge of rock, Arabs offered us draughts of cool water, and oranges. There were people in the sickly gardens, and others were inspecting the Tanks. Passengers from the ship had brought luncheon-baskets to this sad oasis. As we stood at the edge of one of the Tanks, Miss Treherne remarked with astonishment that they were empty. I explained to her that Aden did not have the benefits conferred even on the land of the seven fat and seven lean kine--that there had not been rain there for years, and that when it did come it was neither prolonged nor plentiful. Then came questions as to how long ago the Tanks were built. "Thirteen hundred years!" she exclaimed. "How strange to feel it so! It is like looking at old graves. And how high the walls are, closing up the gorge between the hills." At that moment Mrs. Callendar drew our attention to Mrs. Falchion and a party from the ship. Mrs. Falchion was but a few paces from us, smiling agreeably as she acknowledged our greetings. Presently two of her party came to us and asked us to share their lunch. I would have objected, and I am certain Belle Treherne would gladly have done so, but Mrs. Callendar was anxious to accept, therefore we expressed our gratitude and joined the group. On second thoughts I was glad that we did so, because, otherwise, my party must have been without refreshments until they returned to the ship--the restaurants at Aden are not to be trusted. To me Mrs. Falchion was pleasantly impersonal, to Miss Treherne delicately and actively personal. At the time I had a kind of fear of her interest in the girl, but I know now that it was quite sincere, though it began with a motive not very lofty--to make Belle Treherne her friend, and so annoy me, and also to study, as would an anatomist, the girl's life. We all moved into the illusive shade of the fig and magnolia trees, and lunch was soon spread. As we ate, conversation turned upon the annoying persistency of Eastern guides, and reference was made to the exciting circumstances attending the engagement of Amshar, the guide of Mrs. Falchion's party. Among a score of claimants, Amshar had had one particular opponent--a personal enemy--who would not desist even when the choice had been made. He, indeed, had been the first to solicit the party, and was rejected because of his disagreeable looks. He had even followed the trap from the Port of Aden. As one of the gentlemen was remarking on the muttered anger of the disappointed Arab, Mrs. Falchion. said: "There he is now at the gate of the garden." His look was sullenly turned upon our party. Blackburn, the Queenslander said, "Amshar, the other fellow is following up the game," and pointed to the gate. Amshar understood the gesture at least, and though he gave a toss of the head, I noticed that his hand trembled as he handed me a cup of water, and that he kept his eyes turned on his opponent. "One always feels unsafe with these cut-throat races," said Colonel Ryder, "as some of us know, who have had to deal with the nigger of South America. They think no more of killing a man--" "Than an Australian squatter does of dispersing a mob of aboriginals or kangaroos," said Clovelly. Here Mrs. Callendar spoke up briskly. "I don't know what you mean by 'dispersing.'" "You know what a kangaroo battue is, don't you?" "But that is killing, slaughtering kangaroos by the hundred." "Well, and that is aboriginal dispersion," said the novelist. "That is the aristocratic method of legislating the native out of existence." Blackburn here vigorously protested. "Yes, it's very like a novelist, on the hunt for picturesque events, to spend his forensic soul upon 'the poor native,'--upon the dirty nigger, I choose to call him: the meanest, cruellest, most cowardly, and murderous--by Jove, what a lot of adjectives!--of native races. But we fellows, who have lost some of the best friends we ever had--chums with whom we've shared blanket and tucker--by the crack of a nulla-nulla in the dark, or a spear from the scrub, can't find a place for Exeter Hall and its 'poor native' in our hard hearts. We stand in such a case for justice. It is a new country. Not once in fifty times would law reach them. Reprisal and dispersion were the only things possible to men whose friends had been massacred, and--well, they punished tribes for the acts of individuals." Mrs. Falchion here interposed. "That is just what England does. A British trader is killed. She sweeps a native town out of existence with Hotchkiss guns--leaves it naked and dead. That is dispersion too; I have seen it, and I know how far niggers as a race can be trusted, and how much they deserve sympathy. I agree with Mr. Blackburn." Blackburn raised his glass. "Mrs. Falchion," he said, "I need no further evidence to prove my case. Experience is the best teacher." "As I wish to join the chorus to so notable a compliment, will somebody pass the claret?" said Colonel Ryder, shaking the crumbs of a pate from his coat-collar. When his glass was filled, he turned towards Mrs. Falchion, and continued: "I drink to the health of the best teacher." And every one laughingly responded. This impromptu toast would have been drunk with more warmth, if we could have foreseen an immediate event. Not less peculiar were Mrs. Falchion's words to Hungerford the evening before, recorded in the last sentence of the preceding chapter. Cigars were passed, and the men rose and strolled away. We wandered outside the gardens, passing the rejected guide as we did so. "I don't like the look in his eye," said Clovelly. Colonel Ryder laughed. "You've always got a fine vision for the dramatic." We passed on. I suppose about twenty minutes had gone when, as we were entering the garden again, we heard loud cries. Hurrying forward towards the Tanks, we saw a strange sight. There, on a narrow wall dividing two great tanks, were three people-- Mrs. Falchion, Amshar, and the rejected Arab guide. Amshar was crouching behind Mrs. Falchion, and clinging to her skirts in abject fear. The Arab threatened with a knife. He could not get at Amshar without thrusting Mrs. Falchion aside, and, as I said, the wall was narrow. He was bent like a tiger about to spring. Seeing Mrs. Falchion and Amshar apart from the others,--Mrs. Falchion having insisted on crossing this narrow and precipitous wall,--he had suddenly rushed after them. As he did so, Miss Treherne saw him, and cried out. Mrs. Falchion faced round swiftly, and then came this tragic situation. Some one must die. Seeing that Mrs. Falchion made no effort to dislodge Amshar from her skirts, the Arab presently leaped forward. Mrs. Falchion's arms went out suddenly, and she caught the wrist that held the dagger. Then there was an instant's struggle. It was Mrs. Falchion's life now, as well as Amshar's. They swayed. They hung on the edge of the rocky chasm. Then we lost the gleam of the knife, and the Arab shivered, and toppled over. Mrs. Falchion would have gone with him, but Amshar caught her about the waist, and saved her from the fall which would have killed her as certainly as it killed the Arab lying at the bottom of the tank. She had managed to turn the knife in the Arab's hand against his own breast, and then suddenly pressed her body against it; but the impulse of the act came near carrying her over also. Amshar was kneeling at her feet, and kissing her gown gratefully. She pushed him away with her foot, and, coolly turning aside, began to arrange her hair. As I approached her, she glanced down at the Arab. "Horrible! horrible!" she said. I remembered that these were her words when her husband was lifted from the sea to the 'Fulvia'. Not ungently, she refused my hand or any assistance, and came down among the rest of the party. I could not but feel a strange wonder at the powerful side of her character just shown--her courage, her cool daring. In her face now there was a look of annoyance, and possibly disgust, as well as of triumph--so natural in cases of physical prowess. Everybody offered congratulations, but she only showed real pleasure, and that mutely, at those of Miss Treherne. To the rest of us she said: "One had to save one's self, and Amshar was a coward." And so this woman, whose hardness of heart and excessive cruelty Hungerford and I were keeping from the world, was now made into a heroine, around whom a halo of romance would settle whenever her name should be mentioned. Now, men, eligible and ineligible, would increase their homage. It seemed as if the stars had stopped in their courses to give her special fortune. That morning I had thought her appearance at this luncheon-party was little less than scandalous, for she knew, if others did not, who Boyd Madras was. After the occurrence with the Arab, the other event was certainly much less prominent, and here, after many years, I can see that the act was less in her than it would have been in others. For, behind her outward hardness, there was a sort of justice working, an iron thing, but still not unnatural in her. Belle Treherne awakened also to a new perception of her character, and a kind of awe possessed her, so masculine seemed her courage, yet so womanly and feminine her manner. Mrs. Callendar was loud in her exclamations of delight and wonder at Mrs. Falchion's coolness; and the bookmaker, with his usual impetuosity, offered to take bets at four to one that we should all be detained to give evidence in the matter. Clovelly was silent. He occasionally adjusted his glasses, and looked at Mrs. Falchion as if he had suddenly come to a full stop in his opinions regarding her. This, I think, was noticed by her, and enjoyed too, for she doubtless remembered her conversation with me, in which she had said that Clovelly thought he understood her perfectly. Colonel Ryder, who was loyal at all times, said she had the nerve of a woman from Kentucky. Moreover, he had presence of mind, for he had immediately sent off a native to inform the authorities of what had occurred; so that before we had got half-way to the town we were met by policemen running towards us, followed by a small detachment of Indian soldiers. The officer in command of the detachment stopped us, and said that the governor would be glad if we would come to Government House for an hour, while an inquiry was being held. To this we cheerfully consented, of course; and, in a room where punkahs waved and cool claret-cup awaited us, we were received by the governor, who was full of admiration of Mrs. Falchion. It was plain, however, that he was surprised at her present equanimity. Had she no nerves at all? "I can only regret exceedingly," said the governor, "that your visit to Aden has had such a tragical interruption; but since it has occurred, I am glad to have the privilege of meeting a lady so brave as Mrs. Falchion."--The bookmaker had introduced us all with a naivete that, I am sure, amused the governor, as it certainly did his aide-de-camp. "We should not need to fear the natives if we had soldiers as fearless," his excellency continued. At this point the inquiry began, and, after it was over, the governor said that there the matter ended so far as we were concerned, and then he remarked gallantly that the Government of Aden would always remain Mrs. Falchion's debtor. She replied that it was a debt she would be glad to preserve unsettled for ever. After this pretty exchange of compliments, the governor smiled, and offered her his arm to the door, where our 'char a bans' awaited us. So impressed was the bookmaker with the hospitable reception the governor had given us, that he offered him his cigar-case with its contents, said he hoped they would meet again, and asked his excellency if he thought of coming to Australia. The governor declined the cigars graciously, ignored the hoped-for pleasure of another meeting, and trusted that it might fall to his lot to visit Australia some day. Thereupon the bookmaker insisted on the aide-de-camp accepting the cigar-case, and gave him his visiting-card. The aide-de-camp lost nothing by his good-humoured acceptance, if he smoked, because, as I knew, the cigars were very good indeed. Bookmakers, gamblers and Jews are good judges of tobacco. And the governor's party lost nothing in dignity because, as the traps wheeled away, they gave a polite little cheer for Mrs. Falchion. I, at first, was fearful how Belle Treherne would regard the gaucheries of the bookmaker, but I saw that he was rather an object of interest to her than otherwise; for he was certainly amusing. As we drove through Aden, a Somauli lad ran from the door of a house, and handed up a letter to the driver of my trap. It bore my name, and was handed over to me. I recognised the handwriting. It was that of Boyd Madras. He had come ashore by Hungerford's aid in the night. The letter simply gave an address in England that would always find him, and stated that he intended to take another name. CHAPTER IX "THE PROGRESS OF THE SUNS" News of the event had preceded us to the 'Fulvia', and, as we scrambled out on the ship's stairs, cheers greeted us. Glancing up, I saw Hungerford, among others, leaning over the side, and looking at Mrs. Falchion in a curious cogitating fashion, not unusual to him. The look was non- committal, yet earnest. If it was not approval, it was not condemnation; but it might have been slightly ironical, and that annoyed me. It seemed impossible for him--and it was so always, I believe--to get out of his mind the thought of the man he had rescued on No Man's Sea. I am sure it jarred upon him that the band foolishly played a welcome when Mrs. Falchion stepped on the deck. As I delivered Miss Treherne into the hands of her father, who was anxiously awaiting us, Hungerford said in my ear: "A tragedy queen, Marmion." He said it so distinctly that Mrs. Falchion heard it, and she gave him a searching look. Their eyes met and warred for a moment, and then he added: "I remember! Yes, I can respect the bravery of a woman whom I do not like." "And this is to-morrow," she said, "and a man may change his mind, and that may be fate--or a woman's whim." She bowed, turned away, and went below, evidently disliking the reception she had had, and anxious to escape inquiries and congratulations. Nor did she appear again until the 'Fulvia' got under way about six o'clock in the evening. As we moved out of the harbour we passed close to the 'Porcupine' and saw its officers grouped on the deck, waving adieus to some one on our deck, whom I guessed, of course, to be Galt Roscoe. At this time Mrs. Falchion was standing near me. "For whom is that demonstration?" she said. "For one of her officers, who is a passenger by the 'Fulvia'," I replied. "You remember we passed the 'Porcupine' in the Indian Ocean?" "Yes, I know that very well," she said, with a shade of meaning. "But"-- here I thought her voice had a touch of breathlessness--"but who is the officer? I mean, what is his name?" "He stands in the group near the door of the captain's cabin, there. His name is Galt Roscoe, I think." A slight exclamation escaped her. There was a chilly smile on her lips, and her eyes sought the group until it rested on Galt Roscoe. In a moment she said "You have met him?" "In the cemetery this morning, for the first time." "Everybody seems to have had business this morning at the cemetery. Justine Caron spent hours there. To me it is so foolish, heaping up a mound, and erecting a tombstone over--what?--a dead thing, which, if one could see it, would be dreadful." "You would prefer complete absorption--as of the ocean?" I brutally retorted. She appeared not to notice the innuendo. "Yes, what is gone is gone. Graves are idolatry. Gravestones are ghostly. It is people without imagination who need these things, together with crape and black-edged paper. It is all barbaric ritual. I know you think I am callous, but I cannot help that. For myself, I wish the earth close about me, and level green grass above me, and no one knowing of the place; or else, fire or the sea." "Mrs. Falchion," said I, "between us there need be no delicate words. You appear to have neither imagination, nor idolatry, nor remembrances, nor common womanly kindness." "Indeed!" she said. "Yet you might know me better." Here she touched my arm with the tips of her fingers, and, in spite of myself, I felt my pulse beat faster. It seemed to me that in her presence, even now, I could not quite trust myself. "Indeed!" she repeated. "And who made you omniscient, Dr. Marmion? You hardly do yourself justice. You hold a secret. You insist on reminding me of the fact. Is that in perfect gallantry? Do you know me altogether, from your knowledge of that one thing? You are vain. Or does the secret wear on you, and--Mr. Hungerford? Was it necessary to seek HIS help in keeping it?" I told her then the true history of Hungerford's connection with Boyd Madras, and also begged her pardon for showing just now my knowledge of her secret. At this she said, "I suppose I should be grateful," and was there a slightly softer cadence to her voice? "No, you need not be grateful," I said. "We are silent, first, because he wished it; then because you are a woman." "You define your reasons with astonishing care and taste," she replied. "Oh, as to taste!--" said I; but then I bit my tongue. At that she said, her lips very firm and pale, "I could not pretend to a grief I did not feel. I acted no lie. He died as we had lived-- estranged. I put up no memorials." But I, thinking of my mother lying in her grave, a woman after God's own heart, who loved me more than I deserved, repeated almost unconsciously these lines (clipped from a magazine): "Sacred the ring, the faded glove, Once worn by one we used to love; Dead warriors in their armour live, And in their relics saints survive. "Oh, Mother Earth, henceforth defend All thou hast garnered of my friend, From winter's wind and driving sleet, From summer's sun and scorching heat. "Within thine all-embracing breast Is hid one more forsaken nest; While, in the sky, with folded wings, The bird that left it sits and sings." I paused; the occasion seemed so little suited to the sentiment, for around us was the idle excitement of leaving port. I was annoyed with myself for my share in the conversation so far. Mrs. Falchion's eyes had scarcely left that group around the captain's door, although she had appeared acutely interested in what I was saying. Now she said: "You recite very well. I feel impressed, but I fancy it is more your voice than those fine sentiments; for, after all, you cannot glorify the dead body. Look at the mummy of Thothmes at Boulak, and think what Cleopatra must look like now. And please let us talk about something else. Let us--" She paused. I followed the keen, shaded glance of her eyes, and saw, coming from the group by the captain's door, Galt Roscoe. He moved in our direction. Suddenly he paused. His look was fixed upon Mrs. Falchion. A flush passed over his face, not exactly confusing, but painful, and again it left him pale, and for a moment he stood motionless. Then he came forward to us. He bowed to me, then looked hard at her. She held out her hand. "Mr. Roscoe, I think?" she said. "An old friend," she added, turning to me. He gravely took her extended hand and said: "I did not think to see you here, Miss--" "MRS. Falchion," she interrupted clearly. "MRS. Falchion!" he said, with surprise. "It is so many years since we had met, and--" "And it is so easy to forget things? But it isn't so many, really--only seven, the cycle for constitutional renewal. Dear me, how erudite that sounds! . . . So, I suppose, we meet the same, yet not the same." "The same, yet not the same," he repeated after her, with an attempt at lightness, yet abstractedly. "I think you gentlemen know each other?" she said. "Yes; we met in the cemetery this morning. I was visiting the grave of a young French officer." "I know," she said--"Justine Caron's brother. She has told me; but she did not tell me your name." "She has told you?" he said. "Yes. She is--my companion." I saw that she did not use the word that first came to her. "How strangely things occur! And yet," he added musingly, "I suppose, after all, coincidence is not so strange in these days of much travel, particularly with people whose lives are connected--more or less." "Whose lives are connected--more or less," she repeated after him, in a steely tone. It seemed to me that I had received my cue to leave. I bowed myself away, and went about my duties. As we steamed bravely through the Straits of Babelmandeb, with Perim on our left, rising lovely through the milky haze, I came on deck again, and they were still near where I had left them an hour before. I passed, glancing at them as I did so. They did not look towards me. His eyes were turned to the shore, and hers were fixed on him. I saw an expression on her lips that gave her face new character. She was speaking, as I thought, clearly and mercilessly. I could not help hearing her words as I passed them. "You are going to be that--you!" There was a ring of irony in her tone. I heard nothing more in words, but I saw him turn to her somewhat sharply, and I caught the deep notes of his voice as he answered her. When, a moment after, I looked back, she had gone below. Galt Roscoe had a seat at Captain Ascott's table, and I did not see anything of him at meal-times, but elsewhere I soon saw him a great deal. He appeared to seek my company. I was glad of this, for I found that he was an agreeable man, and had distinct originality of ideas, besides being possessed of very considerable culture. He also had that social aplomb so much a characteristic of the naval officer. Yet, man of the world as he was, he had a strain of asceticism which puzzled me. It did not make him eccentric, but it was not a thing usual with the naval man. Again, he wished to be known simply as Mr. Roscoe, not as Captain Roscoe, which was his rank. He said nothing about having retired, yet I guessed he had done so. One evening, however, soon after we had left Aden, we were sitting in my cabin, and the conversation turned upon a recent novel dealing with the defection of a clergyman of the Church of England through agnosticism. The keenness with which he threw himself into the discussion and the knowledge he showed, surprised me. I knew (as most medical students get to know, until they know better) some scientific objections to Christianity, and I put them forward. He clearly and powerfully met them. I said at last, laughingly: "Why, you ought to take holy orders." "That is what I am going to do," he said very seriously, "when I get to England. I am resigning the navy." At that instant there flashed through my mind Mrs. Falchion's words: "You are going to be that--you!" Then he explained to me that he had been studying for two years, and expected to go up for deacon's orders soon after his return to England. I cannot say that I was greatly surprised, for I had known a few, and had heard of many, men who had exchanged the navy for the Church. It struck me, however, that Galt Roscoe appeared to view the matter from a stand- point not professional; the more so, that he expressed his determination to go to the newest part of a new country, to do the pioneer work of the Church. I asked him where he was going, and he said to the Rocky Mountains of Canada. I told him that my destination was Canada also. He warmly expressed the hope that we should see something of each other there. This friendship of ours may seem to have been hastily hatched, but it must be remembered that the sea is a great breeder of friendship. Two men who have known each other for twenty years find that twenty days at sea bring them nearer than ever they were before, or else estrange them. It was on this evening that, in a lull of the conversation, I casually asked him when he had known Mrs. Falchion. His face was inscrutable, but he said somewhat hurriedly, "In the South Sea Islands," and then changed the subject. So, there was some mystery again? Was this woman never to be dissociated from enigma? In those days I never could think of her save in connection with some fatal incident in which she was scathless, and some one else suffered. It may have been fancy, but I thought that, during the first day or two after leaving Aden, Galt Roscoe and Mrs. Falchion were very little together. Then the impression grew that this was his doing, and again that she waited with confident patience for the time when he would seek her--because he could not help himself. Often when other men were paying her devoted court I caught her eyes turned in his direction, and I thought I read in her smile a consciousness of power. And it so was. Very soon he was at her side. But I also noticed that he began to look worn, that his conversation with me lagged. I think that at this time I was so much occupied with tracing personal appearances to personal influences that I lost to some degree the physician's practical keenness. My eyes were to be opened. He appeared to be suffering, and she seemed to unbend to him more than she ever unbent to me, or any one else on board. Hungerford, seeing this, said to me one day in his blunt way: "Marmion, old Ulysses knew what he was about when he tied himself to the mast." But the routine of the ship went on as before. Fortunately, Mrs. Falchion's heroism at Aden had taken the place of the sensation attending Boyd Madras's suicide. Those who tired of thinking of both became mildly interested in Red Sea history. Chief among these was the bookmaker. As an historian the bookmaker was original. He cavalierly waved aside all such confusing things as dates: made Moses and Mahomet contemporaneous, incidentally referred to King Solomon's visits to Cleopatra, and with sad irreverence spoke of the Exodus and the destruction of Pharaoh's horses and chariots as "the big handicap." He did not mean to be irreverent or unhistorical. He merely wished to enlighten Mrs. Callendar, who said he was very original, and quite clever at history. His really startling points, however, were his remarks upon the colours of the mountains of Egypt and the sunset tints to be seen on the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. To him the grey, and pink, and melancholy gold only brought up visions of a race at Epsom or Flemington--generally Flemington, where the staring Australian sun pours down on an emerald course, on a score of horses straining upon the start, the colours of the jockeys' coats and caps changing in the struggle like a kaleidoscope, and making strange harmonies of colour. The comparison between the mountains of Egypt and a race-course might seem most absurd, if one did not remember that the bookmaker had his own standards, and that he thought he was paying unusual honour to the land of the Fellah. Clovelly plaintively said, as he drank his hock and seltzer, that the bookmaker was hourly saving his life; and Colonel Ryder admitted at last that Kentucky never produced anything quite like him. The evening before we came to the Suez Canal I was walking with Miss Treherne and her father. I had seen Galt Roscoe in conversation with Mrs. Falchion. Presently I saw him rise to go away. A moment after, in passing, I was near her. She sprang up, caught my arm, and pointed anxiously. I looked, and saw Galt Roscoe swaying as he walked. "He is ill--ill," she said. I ran forward and caught him as he was falling. Ill? Of course he was ill. What a fool I had been! Five minutes with him assured me that he had fever. I had set his haggard appearance down to some mental trouble--and I was going to be a professor in a medical college! Yet I know now that a troubled mind hastened the fever. CHAPTER X BETWEEN DAY AND DARK From the beginning Galt Roscoe's fever was violent. It had been hanging about him for a long time, and was the result of malarial poisoning. I devoutly wished that we were in the Mediterranean instead of the Red Sea, where the heat was so great; but fortunately we should soon be there. There was no other case of sickness on board, and I could devote plenty of time to him. Offers of assistance in nursing were numerous, but I only encouraged those of the bookmaker, strange as this may seem; yet he was as gentle and considerate as a woman in the sick-room. This was on the first evening of his attack. After that I had reasons for dispensing with his generous services. The night after Roscoe was taken ill we were passing through the canal, the search-light of the 'Fulvia' sweeping the path ahead of it and glorifying everything it touched. Mud barges were fairy palaces; Arab punts beautiful gondolas; the ragged Egyptians on the banks became picturesque; and the desolate country behind them had a wide vestibule of splendour. I stood for half an hour watching this scene, then I went below to Roscoe's cabin and relieved the bookmaker. The sick man was sleeping from the effects of a sedative draught. The bookmaker had scarcely gone when I heard a step behind me, and I turned and saw Justine Caron standing timidly at the door, her eyes upon the sleeper. She spoke quietly. "Is he very ill?" I answered that he was, but also that for some days I could not tell how dangerous his illness might be. She went to the berth where he lay, the reflected light from without playing weirdly on his face, and smoothed the pillow gently. "If you are willing, I will watch for a time," she said. "Everybody is on deck. Madame said she would not need me for a couple of hours. I will send a steward for you if he wakes; you need rest yourself." That I needed rest was quite true, for I had been up all the night before; still I hesitated. She saw my hesitation, and added: "It is not much that I can do, still I should like to do it. I can at least watch." Then, very earnestly: "He watched beside Hector." I left her with him, her fingers moving the small bag of ice about his forehead to allay the fever and her eyes patiently regarding him. I went on deck again. I met Miss Treherne and her father. They both inquired for the sick man, and I told Belle--for she seemed much interested--the nature of such malarial fevers, the acute forms they sometimes take, and the kind of treatment required. She asked several questions, showing a keen understanding of my explanations, and then, after a moment's silence, said meditatively: "I think I like men better when they are doing responsible work; it is difficult to be idle--and important too." I saw very well that, with her, I should have to contend for a long time against those first few weeks of dalliance on the 'Fulvia'. Clovelly joined us, and for the first time--if I had not been so egotistical it had appeared to me before--I guessed that his somewhat professional interest in Belle Treherne had developed into a very personal thing. And with that thought came also the conception of what a powerful antagonist he would be. For it improves some men to wear glasses; and Clovelly had a delightful, wheedling tongue. It was allusive, contradictory (a thing pleasing to women), respectful yet playful, bold yet reverential. Many a time I have longed for Clovelly's tongue. Unfortunately for me, I learned some of his methods without his art; and of this I am occasionally reminded at this day. A man like Clovelly is dangerous as a rival when he is not in earnest; when he IS in earnest, it becomes a lonely time for the other man--unless the girl is perverse. I left the two together, and moved about the deck, trying to think closely about Roscoe's case, and to drive Clovelly's invasion from my mind. I succeeded, and was only roused by Mrs. Falchion's voice beside me. "Does he suffer much?" she murmured. When answered, she asked nervously how he looked--it was impossible that she should consider misery without shrinking. I told her that he was only flushed and haggard as yet and that he was little wasted. A thought flashed to her face. She was about to speak, but paused. After a moment, however, she remarked evenly: "He is likely to be delirious?" "It is probable," I replied. Her eyes were fixed on the search-light. The look in them was inscrutable. She continued quietly: "I will go and see him, if you will let me. Justine will go with me." "Not now," I replied. "He is sleeping. To-morrow, if you will." I did not think it necessary to tell her that Justine was at that moment watching beside him. We walked the deck together in silence. "I wonder," she said, "that you care to walk with me. Please do not make the matter a burden." She did not say this with any invitation to courteous protest on my part, but rather with a cold frankness--for which, I confess, I always admired her. I said now: "Mrs. Falchion, you have suggested what might easily be possible in the circumstances, but I candidly admit that I have never yet found your presence disagreeable; and I suppose that is a comment upon my weakness. Though, to speak again with absolute truth, I think I do not like you at this present." "Yes, I fancy I can understand that," she said. "I can understand how, for instance, one might feel a just and great resentment, and have in one's hand the instrument of punishment, and yet withhold one's hand and protect where one should injure." At this moment these words had no particular significance to me, but there chanced a time when they came home with great force. I think, indeed, that she was speaking more to herself than to me. Suddenly she turned to me. "I wonder," she said, "if I am as cruel as you think me--for, indeed, I do not know. But I have been through many things." Here her eyes grew cold and hard. The words that followed seemed in no sequence. "Yet," she said, "I will go and see him to-morrow. . . . Good-night." After about an hour I went below to Galt Roscoe's cabin. I drew aside the curtain quietly. Justine Caron evidently had not heard me. She was sitting beside the sick man, her fingers still smoothing away the pillow from his fevered face and her eyes fixed on him. I spoke to her. She rose. "He has slept well," she said. And she moved to the door. "Miss Caron," I said, "if Mrs. Falchion is willing, you could help me to nurse Mr. Roscoe?" A light sprang to her eyes. "Indeed, yes," she said. "I will speak to her about it, if you will let me?" She bowed her head, and her look was eloquent of thanks. After a word of good-night we parted. I knew that nothing better could occur to my patient than that Justine Caron should help to nurse him. This would do far more for him than medicine--the tender care of a woman--than many pharmacopoeias. Hungerford had insisted on relieving me for a couple of hours at midnight. He said it would be a good preparation for going on the bridge at three o'clock in the morning. About half-past two he came to my cabin and waked me, saying: "He is worse--delirious; you had better come." He was indeed delirious. Hungerford laid his hand on my shoulder. "Marmion," he said, "that woman is in it. Like the devil, she is ubiquitous. Mr. Roscoe's past is mixed up with hers somehow. I don't suppose men talk absolute history in delirium, but there is no reason, I fancy, why they shouldn't paraphrase. I should reduce the number of nurses to a minimum if I were you." A determined fierceness possessed me at the moment. I said to him: "She shall nurse him, Hungerford--she, and Justine Caron, and myself." "Plus Dick Hungerford," he added. "I don't know quite how you intend to work this thing, but you have the case in your hands, and what you've told me about the French girl shows that she is to be trusted. But as for myself, Marmion M.D., I'm sick--sick--sick of this woman, and all her words and works. I believe that she has brought bad luck to this ship; and it's my last voyage on it; and--and I begin to think you're a damned good fellow--excuse the insolence of it; and--good-night." For the rest of the night I listened to Galt Roscoe's wild words. He tossed from side to side, and murmured brokenly. Taken separately, and as they were spoken, his words might not be very significant, but pieced together, arranged, and interpreted through even scant knowledge of circumstances, they were sufficient to give me a key to difficulties which, afterwards, were to cause much distress. I arrange some of the sentences here to show how startling were the fancies--or remembrances --that vexed him. "But I was coming back--I was coming back--I tell you I should have stayed with her for ever. . . . See how she trembles!--Now her breath is gone--There is no pulse--Her heart is still--My God, her heart is still!--Hush! cover her face. . . . Row hard, you devils!--A hundred dollars if you make the point in time. . . . Whereaway?--Whereaway?-- Steady now!--Let them have it across the bows!--Low! low!--fire low! . . . She is dead--she is dead!" These things he would say over and over again breathlessly, then he would rest a while, and the trouble would begin again. "It was not I that did it--no, it was not I. She did it herself!--She plunged it in, deep, deep, deep! You made me a devil! . . . Hush! I WILL tell!--I know you--yet--Mercy--Mercy--Falchion--" Yes, it was best that few should enter his cabin. The ravings of a sick man are not always counted ravings, no more than the words of a well man are always reckoned sane. At last I got him into a sound sleep, and by that time I was thoroughly tired out. I called my own steward, and asked him to watch for a couple of hours while I rested. I threw myself down and slept soundly for an hour beyond that time, the steward having hesitated to wake me. By that time we had passed into the fresher air of the Mediterranean, and the sea was delightfully smooth. Galt Roscoe still slept, though his temperature was high. My conference with Mrs. Falchion after breakfast was brief, but satisfactory. I told her frankly that Roscoe had been delirious, that he had mentioned her name, and that I thought it best to reduce the number of nurses and watchers. I made my proposition about Justine Caron. She shook her head a little impatiently, and said that Justine had told her, and that she was quite willing. Then I asked her if she would not also assist. She answered immediately that she wished to do so. As if to make me understand why she did it, she added: "If I did not hear the wild things he says, some one else would; and the difference is that I understand them, and the some one else would interpret them with the genius of the writer of a fairy book." And so it happened that Mrs. Falchion came to sit many hours a day beside the sick couch of Galt Roscoe, moistening his lips, cooling his brow, giving him his medicine. After the first day, when she was, I thought, alternating between innate disgust of misery and her womanliness and humanity,--in these days more a reality to me,--she grew watchful and silently solicitous at every turn of the malady. What impressed me most was that she was interested and engrossed more, it seemed, in the malady than in the man himself. And yet she baffled me even when I had come to this conclusion. During most of his delirium she remained almost impassive, as if she had schooled herself to be calm and strong in nerve; but one afternoon she did a thing that upset all my opinions of her for a moment. Looking straight at her with staring, unconscious eyes, he half rose in his bed, and said in a low, bitter tone: "I hate you. I once loved you--but I hate you now!" Then he laughed scornfully, and fell back on the pillow. She had been sitting very quietly, musing. His action had been unexpected, and had broken upon a silence. She rose to her feet quickly, gave a sharp indrawn breath, and pressed her hand against her side, as though a sudden pain had seized her. The next moment, however, she was composed again, and said in explanation that she had been half asleep, and he had startled her. But I had seen her under what seemed to me more trying conditions, and she had not shown any nervousness such as this. The passengers, of course, talked. Many "true histories" of Mrs. Falchion's devotion to the sick man were abroad; but it must be said, however, that all of them were romantically creditable to her. She had become a rare product even in the eyes of Miss Treherne, and more particularly her father, since the matter at the Tanks. Justine Caron was slyly besieged by the curious, but they went away empty; for Justine, if very simple and single-minded, was yet too much concerned for both Galt Roscoe and Mrs. Falchion to give the inquiring the slightest clue. She knew, indeed, little herself, whatever she may have guessed. As for Hungerford, he was dumb. He refused to consider the matter. But he roundly maintained once or twice, without any apparent relevance, that a woman was like a repeating decimal--you could follow her, but you never could reach her. He usually added to this: "Minus one, Marmion," meaning thus to exclude the girl who preferred him to any one else. When I ventured to suggest that Miss Treherne might also be excepted, he said, with maddening suggestion: "She lets Mrs. Falchion fool her, doesn't she? And she isn't quite sure the splendour of a medical professor's position is superior to that of an author." In these moments, although I tried to smile on him, I hated him a little. I sought to revenge myself on him by telling him to help himself to a cigar, having first placed the box of Mexicans near him. He invariably declined them, and said he would take one of the others from the tea-box --my very best, kept in tea for sake of dryness. If I reversed the process he reversed his action. His instinct regarding cigars was supernatural, and I almost believe that he had--like the Black Dwarf's cat--the "poo'er" of reading character and interpreting events--an uncanny divination. I knew by the time we reached Valetta that Roscoe would get well; but he recognised none of us until we arrived at Gibraltar. Justine Caron and myself had been watching beside him. As the bells clanged to "slow down" on entering the harbour, his eyes opened with a gaze of sanity and consciousness. He looked at me, then at Justine. "I have been ill?" he said. Justine's eyes were not entirely to be trusted. She turned her head away. "Yes, you have been very ill," I replied, "but you are better." He smiled feebly, adding: "At least, I am grateful that I did not die at sea." Then he closed his eyes. After a moment he opened them, and said, looking at Justine: "You have helped to nurse me, have you not?" His wasted fingers moved over the counterpane towards her. "I could do so little," she murmured. "You have more than paid your debt to me," he gently replied. "For I live, you see, and poor Hector died." She shook her head gravely, and rejoined: "Ah no, I can never pay the debt I owe to you and to God--now." He did not understand this, I know. But I did. "You must not talk any more," I said to him. But Justine interposed. "He must be told that the nurse who has done most for him is Mrs. Falchion." His brows contracted as if he were trying to remember something. He moved his head wearily. "Yes, I think I remember," he said, "about her being with me, but nothing clearly--nothing clearly. She is very kind." Justine here murmured: "Shall I tell her?" I was about to say no; but Roscoe nodded, and said quietly, "Yes, yes." Then I made no objection, but urged that the meeting should only be for a moment. I determined not to leave them alone even for that moment. I did not know what things connected with their past--whatever it was-- might be brought up, and I knew that entire freedom from excitement was necessary. I might have spared myself any anxiety on the point. When she came she was perfectly self-composed, and more as she seemed when I first knew her, though I will admit that I thought her face more possible to emotion than in the past. It seems strange to write of a few weeks before as the past; but so much had occurred that the days might easily have been months and the weeks years. She sat down beside him and held out her hand. And as she did so, I thought of Boyd Madras and of that long last night of his life, and of her refusal to say to him one comforting word, or to touch his hand in forgiveness and friendship. And was this man so much better than Boyd Madras? His wild words in delirium might mean nothing, but if they meant anything, and she knew of that anything, she was still a heartless, unnatural woman, as I had once called her. Roscoe took her hand and held it briefly. "Dr. Marmion says that you have helped to nurse me through my illness," he whispered. "I am most grateful." I thought she replied with the slightest constraint in her voice. "One could not let an old acquaintance die without making an effort to save him." At that instant I grew scornful, and longed to tell him of her husband. But then a husband was not an acquaintance. I ventured instead: "I am sorry, but I must cut short all conversation for the present. When he is a little better, he will be benefited by your brightest gossip, Mrs. Falchion." She rose smiling, but she did not again take his hand, though I thought he made a motion to that end. But she looked down at him steadily for a moment. Beneath her look his face flushed, and his eyes grew hot with light; then they dropped, and the eyelids closed on them. At that she said, with an incomprehensible airiness: "Good-night. I am going now to play the music of 'La Grande Duchesse' as a farewell to Gibraltar. They have a concert on to-night." And she was gone. At the mention of La Grande Duchesse he sighed, and turned his head away from her. What it all meant I did not know, and she had annoyed me as much as she had perplexed me; her moods were like the chameleon's colours. He lay silent for a long time, then he turned to me and said: "Do you remember that tale in the Bible about David and the well of Bethlehem?" I had to confess my ignorance. "I think I can remember it," he continued. And though I urged him not to tax himself, he spoke slowly thus: "And David was in an hold, and the garrison of the Philistines was then in Bethlehem. "And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me to drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem that is at the gate! "And the three brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem that was by the gate, and took and brought it to David; nevertheless, he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the Lord. "And he said, My God forbid it me that I should do this; is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? Therefore he would not drink it." He paused a moment, and then added: "One always buys back the past at a tremendous price. Resurrections give ghosts only." "But you must sleep now," I urged. And then, because I knew not what else more fitting, I added: "Sleep, and "'Let the dead past bury its dead.'" "Yes, I will sleep," he answered. MRS. FALCHION By Gilbert Parker BOOK II. THE SLOPE OF THE PACIFIC CHAPTER XI AMONG THE HILLS OF GOD "Your letters, sir," said my servant, on the last evening of the college year. Examinations were over at last, and I was wondering where I should spend my holidays. The choice was very wide; ranging from the Muskoka lakes to the Yosemite Valley. Because it was my first year in Canada, I really preferred not to go beyond the Dominion. With these thoughts in my mind I opened my letters. The first two did not interest me; tradesmen's bills seldom do. The third brought a thumping sensation of pleasure--though it was not from Miss Treherne. I had had one from her that morning, and this was a pleasure which never came twice in one day, for Prince's College, Toronto, was a long week's journey from London, S.W. Considering, however, that I did receive letters from her once a week, it may be concluded that Clovelly did not; and that, if he had, it would have been by a serious infringement of my rights. But, indeed, as I have learned since, Clovelly took his defeat in a very characteristic fashion, and said on an important occasion some generous things about me. The letter that pleased me so much was from Galt Roscoe, who, as he had intended, was settled in a new but thriving district of British Columbia, near the Cascade Mountains. Soon after his complete recovery he had been ordained in England, had straightway sailed for Canada, and had gone to work at once. This note was an invitation to spend the holiday months with him, where, as he said, a man "summering high among the hills of God" could see visions and dream dreams, and hunt and fish too-- especially fish. He urged that he would not talk parish concerns at me; that I should not be asked to be godfather to any young mountaineers; and that the only drawback, so far as my own predilections were concerned, was the monotonous health of the people. He described his summer cottage of red pine as being built on the edge of a lovely ravine; he said that he had the Cascades on one hand with their big glacier fields, and mighty pine forests on the other; while the balmiest breezes of June awaited "the professor of pathology and genial saw-bones." At the end of the letter he hinted something about a pleasant little secret for my ear when I came; and remarked immediately afterwards that there were one or two delightful families at Sunburst and Viking, villages in his parish. One naturally associated the little secret with some member of one of these delightful families. Finally, he said he would like to show me how it was possible to transform a naval man into a parson. My mind was made up. I wrote to him that I would start at once. Then I began to make preparations, and meanwhile fell to thinking again about him who was now the Reverend Galt Roscoe. After the 'Fulvia' reached London I had only seen him a few times, he having gone at once into the country to prepare for ordination. Mrs. Falchion and Justine Caron I had met several times, but Mrs. Falchion forbore inquiring for Galt Roscoe: from which, and from other slight but significant matters, I gathered that she knew of his doings and whereabouts. Before I started for Toronto she said that she might see me there some day, for she was going to San Francisco to inspect the property her uncle had left her, and in all probability would make a sojourn in Canada. I gave her my address, and she then said she understood that Mr. Roscoe intended taking a missionary parish in the wilds. In his occasional letters to me while we all were in England Roscoe seldom spoke of her, but, when he did, showed that he knew of her movements. This did not strike me at the time as anything more than natural. It did later. Within a couple of weeks I reached Viking, a lumbering town with great saw-mills, by way of San Francisco and Vancouver. Roscoe met me at the coach, and I was taken at once to the house among the hills. It stood on the edge of a ravine, and the end of the verandah looked over a verdant precipice, beautiful but terrible too. It was uniquely situated; a nest among the hills, suitable either for work or play. In one's ears was the low, continuous din of the rapids, with the music of a neighbouring waterfall. On the way up the hills I had a chance to observe Roscoe closely. His face had not that sturdy buoyancy which his letter suggested. Still, if it was pale, it had a glow which it did not possess before, and even a stronger humanity than of old. A new look had come into his eyes, a certain absorbing earnestness, refining the past asceticism. A more amiable and unselfish comrade man never had. The second day I was there he took me to call upon a family at Viking, the town with a great saw-mill and two smaller ones, owned by James Devlin, an enterprising man who had grown rich at lumbering, and who lived here in the mountains many months in each year. Mr. James Devlin had a daughter who had had some advantages in the East after her father had become rich, though her earlier life was spent altogether in the mountains. I soon saw where Roscoe's secret was to be found. Ruth Devlin was a tall girl of sensitive features, beautiful eyes, and rare personality. Her life, as I came to know, had been one of great devotion and self-denial. Before her father had made his fortune, she had nursed a frail-bodied, faint-hearted mother, and had cared for, and been a mother to, her younger sisters. With wealth and ease came a brighter bloom to her cheek, but it had a touch of care which would never quite disappear, though it became in time a beautiful wistfulness rather than anxiety. Had this responsibility come to her in a city, it might have spoiled her beauty and robbed her of her youth altogether; but in the sustaining virtue of a life in the mountains, warm hues remained on her cheek and a wonderful freshness in her nature. Her family worshipped her--as she deserved. That evening Roscoe confided to me that he had not asked Ruth Devlin to be his wife, nor had he, indeed, given her definite tokens of his love. But the thing was in his mind as a happy possibility of the future. We talked till midnight, sitting at the end of the verandah overlooking the ravine. This corner, called the coping, became consecrated to our many conversations. We painted and sketched there in the morning (when we were not fishing or he was not at his duties), received visitors, and smoked in the evening, inhaling the balsam from the pines. An old man and his wife kept the house for us, and gave us to eat of simple but comfortable fare. The trout-fishing was good, and many a fine trout was broiled for our evening meal; and many a fine string of trout found its way to the tables of Roscoe's poorest parishioners, or else to furnish the more fashionable table at which Ruth Devlin presided. There were excursions up the valley, and picnics on the hill-sides, and occasional lunches and evening parties at the summer hotel, a mile from us farther down the valley, at which tourists were beginning to assemble. Yet, all the time, Roscoe was abundantly faithful to his duties at Viking and in the settlement called Sunburst, which was devoted to salmon- fishing. Between Viking and Sunburst there was a great jealousy and rivalry; for the salmon-fishers thought that the mills, though on a tributary stream, interfered, by the sawdust spilled in the river, with the travel and spawning of the salmon. It needed all the tact of both Mr. Devlin and Roscoe to keep the places from open fighting. As it was, the fire smouldered. When Sunday came, however, there seemed to be truce between the villages. It appeared to me that one touched the primitive and idyllic side of life: lively, sturdy, and simple, with nature about us at once benignant and austere. It is impossible to tell how fresh, bracing, and inspiring was the climate of this new land. It seemed to glorify humanity, to make all who breathed it stalwart, and almost pardonable even in wrong-doing. Roscoe was always received respectfully, and even cordially, among the salmon-fishers of Sunburst, as among the mill-men and river-drivers of Viking: not the less so, because he had an excellent faculty for machinery, and could talk to the people in their own colloquialisms. He had, besides, though there was little exuberance in his nature, a gift of dry humour, which did more than anything else, perhaps, to make his presence among them unrestrained. His little churches at Viking and Sunburst were always well attended-- often filled to overflowing--and the people gave liberally to the offertory: and I never knew any clergyman, however holy, who did not view such a proceeding with a degree of complacency. In the pulpit Roscoe was almost powerful. His knowledge of the world, his habits of directness, his eager but not hurried speech, his unconventional but original statements of things, his occasional literary felicity and unusual tact, might have made him distinguished in a more cultured community. Yet there was something to modify all this: an occasional indefinable sadness, a constant note of pathetic warning. It struck me that I never had met a man whose words and manner were at times so charged with pathos; it was artistic in its searching simplicity. There was some unfathomable fount in his nature which was even beyond any occurrence of his past; some radical, constitutional sorrow, coupled with a very strong, practical, and even vigorous nature. One of his most ardent admirers was a gambler, horse-trader, and watch- dealer, who sold him a horse, and afterwards came and offered him thirty dollars, saying that the horse was worth that much less than Roscoe had paid for it, and protesting that he never could resist the opportunity of getting the best of a game. He said he did not doubt but that he would do the same with one of the archangels. He afterwards sold Roscoe a watch at cost, but confessed to me that the works of the watch had been smuggled. He said he was so fond of the parson that he felt he had to give him a chance of good things. It was not uncommon for him to discourse of Roscoe's quality in the bar-rooms of Sunburst and Viking, in which he was ably seconded by Phil Boldrick, an eccentric, warm- hearted fellow, who was so occupied in the affairs of the villages generally, and so much an advisory board to the authorities, that he had little time left to progress industrially himself. Once when a noted bully came to Viking, and, out of sheer bravado and meanness, insulted Roscoe in the streets, two or three river-drivers came forward to avenge the insult. It was quite needless, for the clergyman had promptly taken the case in his own hands. Waving them back, he said to the bully: "I have no weapon, and if I had, I could not take your life, nor try to take it; and you know that very well. But I propose to meet your insolence--the first shown me in this town." Here murmurs of approbation went round. "You will, of course, take the revolver from your pocket, and throw it on the ground." A couple of other revolvers were looking the bully in the face, and he sullenly did as he was asked. "You have a knife: throw that down." This also was done under the most earnest emphasis of the revolvers. Roscoe calmly took off his coat. "I have met such scoundrels as you on the quarter-deck," he said, "and I know what stuff is in you. They call you beachcombers in the South Seas. You never fight fair. You bully women, knife natives, and never meet any one in fair fight. You have mistaken your man this time." He walked close up to the bully, his face like steel, his thumbs caught lightly in his waistcoat pockets; but it was noticeable that his hands were shut. "Now," he said, "we are even as to opportunity. Repeat, if you please, what you said a moment ago." The bully's eye quailed, and he answered nothing. "Then, as I said, you are a coward and a cur, who insults peaceable men and weak women. If I know Viking right, it has no room for you." Then he picked up his coat, and put it on. "Now," he added, "I think you had better go; but I leave that to the citizens of Viking." What they thought is easily explained. Phil Boldrick, speaking for all, said: "Yes, you had better go--quick; but on the hop like a cur, mind you: on your hands and knees, jumping all the way." And, with weapons menacing him, this visitor to Viking departed, swallowing as he went the red dust disturbed by his hands and feet. This established Roscoe's position finally. Yet, with all his popularity and the solid success of his work, he showed no vanity or egotism, nor ever traded on the position he held in Viking and Sunburst. He seemed to have no ambition further than to do good work; no desire to be known beyond his own district; no fancy, indeed, for the communications of his labours to mission papers and benevolent ladies in England--so much the habit of his order. He was free from professional mannerisms. One evening we were sitting in the accustomed spot--that is, the coping. We had been silent for a long time. At last Roscoe rose, and walked up and down the verandah nervously. "Marmion," said he, "I am disturbed to-day, I cannot tell you how: a sense of impending evil, an anxiety." I looked up at him inquiringly, and, of purpose, a little sceptically. He smiled something sadly and continued: "Oh, I know you think it foolishness. But remember that all sailors are more or less superstitious: it is bred in them; it is constitutional, and I am afraid there's a good deal of the sailor in me yet." Remembering Hungerford, I said: "I know that sailors are superstitious, the most seasoned of them are that. But it means nothing. I may think or feel that there is going to be a plague, but I should not enlarge the insurance on my life because of it." He put his hand on my shoulder and looked down at me earnestly. "But, Marmion, these things, I assure you, are not matters of will, nor yet morbidness. They occur at the most unexpected times. I have had such sensations before, and they were followed by strange matters." I nodded, but said nothing. I was still thinking of Hungerford. After a slight pause he continued somewhat hesitatingly: "I dreamed last night, three times, of events that occurred in my past; events which I hoped would never disturb me in the life I am now leading." "A life of self-denial," ventured I. I waited a minute, and then added: "Roscoe, I think it only fair to tell you--I don't know why I haven't done so before--that when you were ill you were delirious, and talked of things that may or may not have had to do with your past." He started, and looked at me earnestly. "They were unpleasant things?" "Trying things; though all was vague and disconnected," I replied. "I am glad you tell me this," he remarked quietly. "And Mrs. Falchion and Justine Caron--did they hear?" He looked off to the hills. "To a certain extent, I am sure. Mrs. Falchion's name was generally connected with--your fancies.... But really no one could place any weight on what a man said in delirium, and I only mention the fact to let you see exactly on what ground I stand with you." "Can you give me an idea--of the thing I raved about?" "Chiefly about a girl called Alo, not your wife, I should judge--who was killed." At that he spoke in a cheerless voice: "Marmion, I will tell you all the story some day; but not now. I hoped that I had been able to bury it, even in memory, but I was wrong. Some things--such things--never die. They stay; and in our cheerfulest, most peaceful moments confront us, and mock the new life we are leading. There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world. The spirits of our foolish deeds haunt us, with or without repentance." He turned again from me and set a sombre face towards the ravine. "Roscoe," I said, taking his arm, "I cannot believe that you have any sin on your conscience so dark that it is not wiped out now." "God bless you for your confidence. But there is one woman who, I fear, could, if she would, disgrace me before the world. You understand," he added, "that there are things we repent of which cannot be repaired. One thinks a sin is dead, and starts upon a new life, locking up the past, not deceitfully, but believing that the book is closed, and that no good can come of publishing it; when suddenly it all flames out like the letters in Faust's book of conjurations." "Wait," I said. "You need not tell me more, you must not--now; not until there is any danger. Keep your secret. If the woman--if THAT woman-- ever places you in danger, then tell me all. But keep it to yourself now. And don't fret because you have had dreams." "Well, as you wish," he replied after a long time. As he sat in silence, I smoking hard, and he buried in thought, I heard the laughter of people some distance below us in the hills. I guessed it to be some tourists from the summer hotel. The voices came nearer. A singular thought occurred to me. I looked at Roscoe. I saw that he was brooding, and was not noticing the voices, which presently died away. This was a relief to me. We were then silent again. CHAPTER XII THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME Next day we had a picnic on the Whi-Whi River, which, rising in the far north, comes in varied moods to join the Long Cloud River at Viking. [Dr. Marmion, in a note of his MSS., says that he has purposely changed the names of the rivers and towns mentioned in the second part of the book, because he does not wish the locale to be too definite.] Ruth Devlin, her young sister, and her aunt Mrs. Revel, with Galt Roscoe and myself, constituted the party. The first part of the excursion had many delights. The morning was fresh and sweet, and we were all in excellent spirits. Roscoe's depression had vanished; but there was an amiable seriousness in his manner which, to me, portended that the faint roses in Ruth Devlin's cheeks would deepen before the day was done, unless something inopportune happened. As we trudged gaily up the canon to the spot where we were to take a big skiff, and cross the Whi-Whi to our camping-ground, Ruth Devlin, who was walking with me, said: "A large party of tourists arrived at Viking yesterday, and have gone to the summer hotel; so I expect you will be gay up here for some time to come. Prepare, then, to rejoice." "Don't you think it is gay enough as it is?" I answered. "Behold this festive throng." "Oh, it is nothing to what there might be. This could never make Viking and 'surrounding country' notorious as a pleasure resort. To attract tourists you must have enough people to make romances and tragedies,-- without loss of life, of course,--merely catastrophes of broken hearts, and hair-breadth escapes, and mammoth fishing and shooting achievements, such as men know how to invent,"--it was delightful to hear her voice soften to an amusing suggestiveness, "and broken bridges and land-slides, with many other things which you can supply, Dr. Marmion. No, I am afraid that Viking is too humdrum to be notable." She laughed then very lightly and quaintly. She had a sense of humour. "Well, but, Miss Devlin," said I, "you cannot have all things at once. Climaxes like these take time. We have a few joyful things. We have splendid fishing achievements,--please do not forget that basket of trout I sent you the other morning,--and broken hearts and such tragedies are not impossible; as, for instance, if I do not send you as good a basket of trout to-morrow evening; or if you should remark that there was nothing in a basket of trout to--" "Now," she said, "you are becoming involved and--inconsiderate. Remember, I am only a mountain girl." "Then let us only talk of the other tragedies. But are you not a little callous to speak of such things as if you thirsted for their occurrence?" "I am afraid you are rather silly," she replied. "You see, some of the land up here belongs to me. I am anxious that it should 'boom'--that is the correct term, is it not?--and a sensation is good for 'booming.' What an advertisement would ensue if the lovely daughter of an American millionaire should be in danger of drowning in the Long Cloud, and a rough but honest fellow--a foreman on the river, maybe a young member of the English aristocracy in disguise--perilled his life for her! The place of peril would, of course, be named Lover's Eddy, or the Maiden's Gate--very much prettier, I assure you, than such cold-blooded things as the Devil's Slide, where we are going now, and much more attractive to tourists." "Miss Devlin," laughed I, "you have all the eagerness of the incipient millionaire. May I hope to see you in Lombard Street some day, a very Katherine among capitalists?--for, from your remarks, I judge that you would--I say it pensively--'wade through slaughter to a throne.'" Galt Roscoe, who was just ahead with Mrs. Revel and Amy Devlin, turned and said: "Who is that quoting so dramatically? Now, this is a picnic party, and any one who introduces elegies, epics, sonnets, 'and such,' is guilty of breaking the peace at Viking and its environs. Besides, such things should always be left to the parson. He must not be outflanked, his thunder must not be stolen. The scientist has unlimited resources; all he has to do is to be vague, and look prodigious; but the parson must have his poetry as a monopoly, or he is lost to sight, and memory." "Then," said I, "I shall leave you to deal with Miss Devlin yourself, because she is the direct cause of my wrong-doing. She has expressed the most sinister sentiments about Viking and your very extensive parish. Miss Devlin," I added, turning to her, "I leave you to your fate, and I cannot recommend you to mercy, for what Heaven made fair should remain tender and merciful, and--" "'So young and so untender!'" she interjected, with a rippling laugh. "Yet Cordelia was misjudged very wickedly, and traduced very ungallantly, and so am I. And I bid you good-day, sir." Her delicate laugh rings in my ears as I write. I think that sun and clear skies and hills go far to make us cheerful and harmonious. Somehow, I always remember her as she was that morning. She was standing then on the brink of a new and beautiful experience, at the threshold of an acknowledged love. And that is a remarkable time to the young. There was something thrilling about the experiences of that morning, and I think we all felt it. Even the great frowning precipices seemed to have lost their ordinary gloom, and when some young white eagles rose from a crag and flew away, growing smaller as they passed, until they were one with the snow of the glacier on Mount Trinity, or a wapiti peeped out from the underwood and stole away with glancing feet down the valley; we could scarcely refrain from doing some foolish thing out of sheer delight. At length we emerged from a thicket of Douglas pine upon the shore of the Whi-Whi, and, loosening our boat, were soon moving slowly on the cool current. For an hour or more we rowed down the river towards the Long Cloud, and then drew into the shade of a little island for lunch. When we came to the rendezvous, where picnic parties generally feasted, we found a fire still smoking and the remnants of a lunch scattered about. A party of picnickers had evidently been there just before us. Ruth suggested that it might be some of the tourists from the hotel. This seemed very probable. There were scraps of newspaper on the ground, and among them was an empty envelope. Mechanically I picked it up, and read the superscription. What I saw there I did not think necessary to disclose to the other members of the party; but, as unconcernedly as possible, for Ruth Devlin's eyes were on me, I used it to light a cigar--inappropriately, for lunch would soon be ready. "What was the name on the envelope?" she said. "Was there one?" I guessed she had seen my slight start. I said evasively: "I fancy there was, but a man who is immensely interested in a new brand of cigar--" "You are a most deceitful man," she said. "And, at the least, you are selfish in holding your cigar more important than a woman's curiosity. Who can tell what romance was in the address on that envelope--" "What elements of noble tragedy, what advertisement for a certain property in the Whi-Whi Valley," interrupted Roscoe, breaking off the thread of a sailor's song he was humming, as he tended the water-kettle on the fire. This said, he went on with the song again. I was struck by the wonderful change in him now. Presentiments were far from him, yet I, having read that envelope, knew that they were not without cause. Indeed, I had an inkling of that the night before, when I heard the voices on the hill. Ruth Devlin stopped for a moment in the preparations to ask Roscoe what he was humming. I, answering for him, told her that it was an old sentimental sea-song of common sailors, often sung by officers at their jovial gatherings. At this she pretended to look shocked, and straightway demanded to hear the words, so that she could pronounce judgment on her spiritual pastor and master. He good-naturedly said that many of these old sailor songs were amusing, and that he often found himself humming them. To this I could testify, and he sang them very well indeed--quietly, but with the rolling tone of the sailor, jovial yet fascinating. At our united request, his humming became distinct. Three of the verses I give here: "The 'Lovely Jane' went sailing down To anchor at the Spicy Isles; And the wind was fair as ever was blown, For the matter of a thousand miles. "Then a storm arose as she crossed the line, Which it caused her masts to crack; And she gulped her fill of the whooping brine, And she likewise sprained her back. "And the capting cried, 'If it's Davy Jones, Then it's Davy Jones,' says he, 'Though I don't aspire to leave my bones In the equatorial sea.'" What the further history of the 'Lovely Jane' was we were not informed, for Ruth Devlin announced that the song must wait, though it appeared to be innocuous and child-like in its sentiments, and that lunch would be served between the acts of the touching tragedy. When lunch was over, and we had again set forth upon the Whi-Whi, I asked Ruth to sing an old French-Canadian song which she had once before sung to us. Many a time the woods of the West had resounded to the notes of 'En Roulant ma Boule', as the 'voyageurs' traversed the long paths of the Ottawa, St. Lawrence, and Mississippi; brave light-hearted fellows, whose singing days were over. By the light of coming events there was something weird and pathetic in this Arcadian air, sung as it was by her. Her voice was a mezzo-soprano of rare bracing quality, and she had enough natural sensibility to give the antique refinement of the words a wistful charm, particularly apparent in these verses: "Ah, cruel Prince, my heart you break, In killing thus my snow-white drake. "My snow-white drake, my love, my King, The crimson life-blood stains his wing. "His golden bill sinks on his breast, His plumes go floating east and west-- "En roulant ma boule: Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant, En roulant ma boule roulant, En roulant ma boule!" As she finished the song we rounded an angle in the Whi-Whi. Ahead of us lay the Snow Rapids and the swift channel at one side of the rapids which, hurrying through a rocky archway, was known as the Devil's Slide. There was one channel through the rapids by which it was perfectly safe to pass, but that sweep of water through the Devil's Slide was sometimes a trap of death to even the most expert river-men. A half-mile below the rapids was the confluence of the two rivers. The sight of the tumbling mass of white water, and the gloomy and colossal grandeur of the Devil's Slide, a buttress of the hills, was very fine. But there was more than scenery to interest us here, for, moving quickly towards the Slide, was a boat with three people in it. They were evidently intending to attempt that treacherous passage, which culminated in a series of eddies, a menace to even the best oarsman ship. They certainly were not aware of their danger, for there came over the water the sound of a man's laughing voice, and the two women in the boat were in unconcerned attitudes. Roscoe shouted to them, and motioned them back, but they did not appear to understand. The man waved his hat to us, and rowed on. There was but one thing for us to do: to make the passage quickly through the safe channel of the rapids, and to be of what service we could on the other side of the Slide, if necessary. We bent to the oars, and the boat shot through the water. Ruth held the rudder firmly, and her young sister and Mrs. Revel sat perfectly still. But the man in the other boat, thinking, doubtless, that we were attempting a race, added his efforts to the current of the channel. I am afraid that I said some words below my breath scarcely proper to be spoken in the presence of maidens and a clerk in holy orders. Roscoe was here, however, a hundred times more sailor than parson. He spoke in low, firm tones, as he now and then suggested a direction to Ruth Devlin or myself. Our boat tossed and plunged in the rapids, and the water washed over us lightly once or twice, but we went through the passage safely, and had turned towards the Slide before the other boat got to the rocky archway. We rowed hard. The next minute was one of suspense, for we saw the boat shoot beneath the archway. Presently it emerged, a whirling plaything in treacherous eddies. The man wildly waved his arm, and shouted to us. The women were grasping the sides of the boat, but making no outcry. We could not see the faces of the women plainly yet. The boat ran forward like a race-horse; it plunged hither and thither. An oar snapped in the rocks, and the other one shot from the man's hand. Now the boat swung round and round, and dipped towards the hollow of a whirlpool. When we were within a few rods of them, it appeared to rise from the water, was hurled on a rock, and overturned. Mrs. Revel buried her face in her hands, and Ruth gave a little groan, but she held the rudder firmly, as we swiftly approached the forms struggling in the water. All, fortunately, had grasped the swamped boat, and were being carried down the stream towards us. The man was caring resolutely for himself, but one, of the women had her arm round the other, supporting her. We brought our skiff close to the swirling current. I called out words of encouragement, and was preparing to jump into the water, when Roscoe exclaimed in a husky voice: "Marmion, it is Mrs. Falchion." Yes, it was Mrs. Falchion; but I had known that before. We heard her words to her companion: "Justine, do not look so. Your face is like death. It is hateful." Then the craft veered towards the smoother water where we were. This was my opportunity. Roscoe threw me a rope, and I plunged in and swam towards the boat. I saw that Mrs. Falchion recognised me; but she made no exclamation, nor did Justine Caron. Their companion, however, on the other side of the boat, was eloquent in prayers to be rescued. I caught the bow of the boat as it raced past me, and with all my strength swung it towards the smoother water. I ran the rope I had brought, through the iron ring at the bow, and was glad enough of that; for their lives perhaps depended on being able to do it. It had been a nice calculation of chances, but it was done. Roscoe immediately bent to the oars, I threw an arm around Justine, and in a moment Roscoe had towed us into safer quarters. Then he drew in the rope. As he did so, Mrs. Falchion said: "Justine would drown so easily if one would let her." These were her first words to me. I am sure I never can sufficiently admire the mere courage of the woman and her presence of mind in danger. Immediately afterwards she said--and subsequently it seemed to me marvellous: "You are something more than the chorus to the play this time, Dr. Marmion." A minute after, and Justine was dragged into our boat, and was followed by Mrs. Falchion, whose first words to Roscoe were: "It is not such a meeting as one would plan." And he replied: "I am glad no harm has come to you." The man was duly helped in. A poor creature he was, to pass from this tale as he entered it, ignominiously and finally here. I even hide his nationality, for his race are generally more gallant. But he was wealthy, had an intense admiration for Mrs. Falchion, and had managed to secure her in his boat, to separate from the rest of the picnic party-- chiefly through his inefficient rowing. Dripping with water as Mrs. Falchion was, she did not, strange to say, appear at serious disadvantage. Almost any other woman would have done so. She was a little pale, she must have felt miserable, but she accepted Ruth Devlin's good offices--as did Justine Caron those of Mrs. Revel--with much self-possession, scanning her face and form critically the while, and occasionally turning a glance on Roscoe, who was now cold and impassive. I never knew a man who could so banish expression from his countenance when necessary. Speaking to Belle Treherne long afterwards of Mrs. Falchion's self-possessed manner on this occasion, and of how she rose superior to the situation, I was told that I must have regarded the thing poetically and dramatically, for no woman could possibly look self-possessed in draggled skirts. She said that I always magnified certain of Mrs. Falchion's qualities. That may be so, and yet it must be remembered that I was not predisposed towards her, and that I wished her well away from where Roscoe was. As for Justine Caron, she lay with her head on Mrs. Revel's lap, and looked from beneath heavy eyelids at Roscoe with such gratitude and--but, no, she is only a subordinate in the story, and not a chief factor, and what she said or did here is of no vital consequence at this moment! We rowed to a point near the confluence of the two rivers, where we could leave our boats to be poled back through the rapids or portaged past them. On the way Mrs. Falchion said to Roscoe: "I knew you were somewhere in the Rockies; and at Vancouver, when I came from San Francisco, I heard of your being here. I had intended spending a month somewhere in the mountains, so I came to Viking, and on to the summer hotel: but really this is too exciting for recreation." This was spoken with almost gay outward manner, but there was a note in her words which I did not like, nor did I think that her eye was very kind, especially when she looked at Ruth Devlin and afterwards at Roscoe. We had several miles to go, and it was nightfall--for which Mrs. Falchion expressed herself as profoundly grateful--when we arrived at the hotel. Our parting words were as brief as, of necessity, they had been on our journey through the mountains, for the ladies had ridden the horses which we had sent over for ourselves from Viking, and we men walked in front. Besides, the thoughts of some of us were not at all free from misgiving. The spirit possessing Roscoe the night before seemed to enter into all of us, even into Mrs. Falchion, who had lost, somewhat, the aplomb with which she had held the situation in the boat. But at the door of the hotel she said cheerfully: "Of course, Dr. Marmion will find it necessary to call on his patients to-morrow--and the clergyman also on his new parishoners." The reply was left to me. I said gravely: "Let us be thankful that both doctor and clergyman are called upon to use their functions; it might easily have been only the latter." "Oh, do not be funereal!" she replied. "I knew that we were not to drown at the Devil's Slide. The drama is not ended yet, and the chief actors cannot go until 'the curtain.'--Though I am afraid that is not quite orthodox, is it, Mr. Roscoe?" Roscoe looked at her gravely. "It may not be orthodox as it is said, but it is orthodox, I fancy, if we exchange God for fate, and Providence for chance. . . . Good-night." He said this wearily. She looked up at him with an ironical look, then held out her hand, and quickly bade him good-night. Partings all round were made, and, after some injunctions to Mrs. Falchion and Justine Caron from myself as to preventives against illness, the rest of us started for Sunburst. As we went, I could not help but contrast Ruth and Amy Devlin, these two gentle yet strong mountain girls, with the woman we had left. Their lives were far from that dolorous tide which, sweeping through a selfish world, leaves behind it the stain of corroding passions; of cruelties, ingratitude, hate, and catastrophe. We are all ambitious, in one way or another. We climb mountains over scoria that frays and lava that burns. We try to call down the stars, and when, now and then, our conjuring succeeds, we find that our stars are only blasting meteors. One moral mishap lames character for ever. A false start robs us of our natural strength, and a misplaced or unrighteous love deadens the soul and shipwrecks just conceptions of life. A man may be forgiven for a sin, but the effect remains; it has found its place in his constitution, and it cannot be displaced by mere penitence, nor yet forgiveness. A man errs, and he must suffer; his father erred, and he must endure; or some one sinned against the man, and he hid the sin--But here a hand touched my shoulder! I was startled, for my thoughts had been far away. Roscoe's voice spoke in my ear: "It is as she said; the actors come together for 'the curtain.'" Then his eyes met those of Ruth Devlin turned to him earnestly and inquiringly. And I felt for a moment hard against Roscoe, that he should even indirectly and involuntarily, bring suffering into her life. In youth, in early manhood, we do wrong. At the time we seem to be injuring no one but ourselves; but, as we live on, we find that we were wronging whomsoever should come into our lives in the future. At the instant I said angrily to myself: "What right has he to love a girl like that, when he has anything in his life that might make her unhappy, or endanger her in ever so little!" But I bit my tongue, for it seemed to me that I was pharisaical; and I wondered rather scornfully if I should have been so indignant were the girl not so beautiful, young, and ingenuous. I tried not to think further of the matter, and talked much to Ruth,--Gait Roscoe walked with Mrs. Revel and Amy Devlin,--but I found I could not drive it from my mind. This was not unnatural, for was not I the "chorus to the play"? CHAPTER XIII THE SONG OF THE SAW There was still a subdued note to Roscoe's manner the next morning. He was pale. He talked freely however of the affairs of Viking and Sunburst, and spoke of business which called him to Mr. Devlin's great saw mill that day. A few moments after breakfast we were standing in the doorway. "Well," he said, "shall we go?" I was not quite sure where he meant to go, but I took my hat and joined him. I wondered if it would be to the summer hotel or the great mill. My duty lay in the direction of the hotel. When we stepped out, he added: "Let us take the bridle-path along the edge of the ravine to the hotel." The morning was beautiful. The atmosphere of the woods was of soft, diffusive green--the sunlight filtering through the transparent leaves. Bowers of delicate ferns and vines flanked the path, and an occasional clump of giant cedars invited us: the world was eloquent. Several tourists upon the verandah of the hotel remarked us with curiosity as we entered. A servant said that Mrs. Falchion would be glad to see us; and we were ushered into her sitting-room. She carried no trace of yesterday's misadventure. She appeared superbly well. And yet, when I looked again, when I had time to think upon and observe detail, I saw signs of change. There was excitement in the eyes, and a slight nervous darkness beneath them, which added to their charm. She rose, smiling, and said: "I fear I am hardly entitled to this visit, for I am beyond convalescence, and Justine is not in need of shrift or diagnosis, as you see." I was not so sure of Justine Caron as she was, and when I had paid my respects to her, I said a little priggishly (for I was young), still not too solemnly: "I cannot allow you to pronounce for me upon my patients, Mrs. Falchion; I must make my own inquiries." But Mrs. Falchion was right. Justine Caron was not suffering much from her immersion; though, speaking professionally, her temperature was higher than the normal. But that might be from some impulse of the moment, for Justine was naturally a little excitable. We walked aside, and, looking at me with a flush of happiness in her face, she said: "You remember one day on the 'Fulvia' when I told you that money was everything to me; that I would do all I honourably could to get it?" I nodded. She continued: "It was that I might pay a debt--you know it. Well, money is my god no longer, for I can pay all I owe. That is, I can pay the money, but not the goodness, the noble kindness. He is most good, is he not? The world is better that such men as Captain Galt Roscoe live--ah, you see I cannot quite think of him as a clergyman. I wonder if I ever shall!" She grew suddenly silent and abstracted, and, in the moment's pause, some ironical words in Mrs. Falchion's voice floated across the room to me: "It is so strange to see you so. And you preach, and baptise; and marry, and bury, and care for the poor and--ah, what is it?--'all those who, in this transitory life, are in sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity'? . . . And do you never long for the flesh-pots of Egypt? Never long for"--here her voice was not quite so clear--"for the past?" I was sure that, whatever she was doing, he had been trying to keep the talk, as it were, on the surface. I was equally sure that, to her last question, he would make no reply. Though I was now speaking to Justine Caron, I heard him say quite calmly and firmly: "Yes, I preach, baptise, marry, and bury, and do all I can for those who need help." "The people about here say that you are good and charitable. You have won the hearts of the mountaineers. But you always had a gift that way."--I did not like her tone.--"One would almost think you had founded a new dispensation. And if I had drowned yesterday, you would, I suppose, have buried me, and have preached a little sermon about me. --You could have done that better than any one else! . . . What would you have said in such a case?" There was an earnest, almost a bitter, protest in the reply. "Pardon me, if I cannot answer your question. Your life was saved, and that is all we have to consider, except to be grateful to Providence. The duties of my office have nothing to do with possibilities." She was evidently torturing him, and I longed to say a word that would torture her. She continued: "And the flesh-pots--you have not answered about them: do you not long for them--occasionally?" "They are of a period," he answered, "too distant for regret." "And yet," she replied softly, "I fancied sometimes in London last year, that you had not outgrown that antique time--those lotos-days." He made no reply at once, and in the pause Justine and I passed out to the verandah. "How long does Mrs. Falchion intend remaining here, Miss Caron?" I said. Her reply was hesitating: "I do not quite know; but I think some time. She likes the place; it seems to amuse her." "And you--does it amuse you?" "It does not matter about me. I am madame's servant; but, indeed, it does not amuse me particularly." "Do you like the place?" The reply was somewhat hurried, and she glanced at me a little nervously. "Oh yes," she said, "I like the place, but--" Here Roscoe appeared at the door and said, "Mrs. Falchion wishes to see Viking and Mr. Devlin's mills, Marmion. She will go with us." In a little time we were on our way to Viking. I walked with Mrs. Falchion, and Roscoe with Justine. I was aware of a new element in Mrs. Falchion's manner. She seemed less powerfully attractive to me than in the old days, yet she certainly was more beautiful. It was hard to trace the new characteristic. But at last I thought I saw it in a decrease of that cold composure, that impassiveness, so fascinating in the past. In its place had come an allusive, restless something, to be found in words of troublesome vagueness, in variable moods, in an increased sensitiveness of mind and an undercurrent of emotional bitterness--she was emotional at last! She puzzled me greatly, for I saw two spirits in her: one pitiless as of old; the other human, anxious, not unlovely. At length we became silent, and walked so side by side for a time. Then, with that old delightful egotism and selfishness--delightful in its very daring--she said: "Well, amuse me!" "And is it still the end of your existence," I rejoined--"to be amused?" "What is there else to do?" she replied with raillery. "Much. To amuse others, for instance; to regard human beings as something more than automata." "Has Mr. Roscoe made you a preaching curate? I helped Amshar at the Tanks." "One does not forget that. Yet you pushed Amshar with your foot." "Did you expect me to kiss the black coward? Then, I nursed Mr. Roscoe in his illness." "And before that?" "And before that I was born into the world, and grew to years of knowledge, and learned what fools we mortals be, and--and there--is that Mr. Devlin's big sawmill?" We had suddenly emerged on a shelf of the mountainside, and were looking down into the Long Cloud Valley. It was a noble sight. Far to the north were foothills covered with the glorious Norfolk pine, rising in steppes till they seemed to touch white plateaus of snow, which again billowed to glacier fields whose austere bosoms man's hand had never touched; and these suddenly lifted up huge, unapproachable shoulders, crowned with majestic peaks that took in their teeth the sun, the storm, and the whirlwinds of the north, never changing countenance from day to year and from year to age. Facing this long line of glory, running irregularly on towards that sea where Franklin and M'Clintock led their gay adventurers,--the bold ships,--was another shore, not so high or superior, but tall and sombre and warm, through whose endless coverts of pine there crept and idled the generous Chinook winds--the soothing breath of the friendly Pacific. Between these shores the Long Cloud River ran; now boisterous, now soft, now wallowing away through long channels, washing gorges always dark as though shaded by winter, and valleys always green as favoured by summer. Creeping along a lofty narrow path upon that farther shore was a mule train, bearing packs which would not be opened till, through the great passes of the mountain, they were spilled upon the floors of fort and post on the east side of the Rockies. Not far from where the mule train crept along was a great hole in the mountain-side, as though antique giants of the hills had tunnelled through to make themselves a home or to find the eternal secret of the mountains. Near to this vast dark cavity was a hut--a mere playhouse, it seemed, so small was it, viewed from where we stood. From the edge of a cliff just in front of this hut, there swung a long cable, which reached almost to the base of the shore beneath us; and, even as we looked, we saw what seemed a tiny bucket go swinging slowly down that strange hypotenuse. We watched it till we saw it get to the end of its journey in the valley beneath, not far from the great mill to which we were bound. "How mysterious!" said Mrs. Falchion. "What does it mean? I never saw anything like that before. What a wonderful thing!" Roscoe explained. "Up there in that hut," he said, "there lives a man called Phil Boldrick. He is a unique fellow, with a strange history. He has been miner, sailor, woodsman, river-driver, trapper, salmon-fisher; --expert at the duties of each of these, persistent at none. He has a taste for the ingenious and the unusual. For a time he worked in Mr. Devlin's mill. It was too tame for him. He conceived the idea of supplying the valley with certain necessaries, by intercepting the mule trains as they passed across the hills, and getting them down to Viking by means of that cable. The valley laughed at him; men said it was impossible. He went to Mr. Devlin, and Mr. Devlin came to me. I have, as you know, some knowledge of machinery and engineering. I thought the thing feasible but expensive, and told Mr. Devlin so. However, the ingenuity of the thing pleased Mr. Devlin, and, with that singular enterprise which in other directions has made him a rich man, he determined on its completion. Between us we managed it. Boldrick carries on his aerial railway with considerable success, as you see." "A singular man," said Mrs. Falchion. "I should like to see him. Come, sit down here and tell me all you know about him, will you not?" Roscoe assented. I arranged a seat for us, and we all sat. Roscoe was about to begin, when Mrs. Falchion said, "Wait a minute. Let us take in this scene first." We were silent. After a moment I turned to Mrs. Falchion, and said: "It is beautiful, is it not?" She drew in a long breath, her eyes lighted up, and she said, with a strange abandon of gaiety: "Yes, it is delightful to live." It seemed so, in spite of the forebodings of my friend and my own uneasiness concerning him, Ruth Devlin, and Mrs. Falchion. The place was all peace: a very monotony of toil and pleasure. The heat drained through the valley back and forth in visible palpitations upon the roofs of the houses, the mills, and the vast piles of lumber: all these seemed breathing. It looked a busy Arcady. From beneath us life vibrated with the regularity of a pulse: distance gave a kind of delighted ease to toil. Event appeared asleep. But when I look back now, after some years, at the experiences of that day, I am astonished by the running fire of events, which, unfortunately, were not all joy. As I write I can hear that keen wild singing of the saw come to us distantly, with a pleasant, weird elation. The big mill hung above the river, its sides all open, humming with labour, as I had seen it many a time during my visit to Roscoe. The sun beat in upon it, making a broad piazza of light about its sides. Beyond it were pleasant shadows, through which men passed and repassed at their work. Life was busy all about it. Yet the picture was bold, open, and strong. Great iron hands reached down into the water, clamped a massive log or huge timber, lightly drew it up the slide from the water, where, guided by the hand- spikes of the men, it was laid upon its cradle and carried slowly to the devouring teeth of the saws: there to be sliced through rib and bone in moist sandwiched layers, oozing the sweet sap of its fibre; and carried out again into the open to be drained to dry bones under the exhaust- pipes of the sun: piles upon piles; houses with wide chinks through which the winds wandered, looking for tenants and finding none. To the north were booms of logs, swilling in the current, waiting for their devourer. Here and there were groups of river-drivers and their foremen, prying twisted heaps of logs from the rocks or the shore into the water. Other groups of river-drivers were scattered upon the banks, lifting their huge red canoes high up on the platforms, the spring's and summer's work of river-driving done; while others lounged upon the grass, or wandered lazily through the village, sporting with the Chinamen, or chaffing the Indian idling in the sun--a garish figure stoically watching the inroads of civilisation. The town itself was squat but amiable: small houses and large huts; the only place of note and dignity, the new town hall, which was greatly overshadowed by the big mill, and even by the two smaller ones flanking it north and south. But Viking was full of men who had breathed the strong life of the hills, had stolen from Nature some of her brawny strength, and set themselves up before her as though a man were as great as a mountain and as good a thing to see. It was of such a man that Galt Roscoe was to tell us. His own words I will not give, but will speak of Phil Boldrick as I remember him and as Roscoe described him to us. Of all the men in the valley, none was so striking as Phil Boldrick. Of all faces his was the most singular; of all characters his the most unique; of all men he was the most unlucky, save in one thing--the regard of his fellows. Others might lay up treasures, not he; others lose money at gambling, not he--he never had much to lose. But yet he did all things magniloquently. The wave of his hand was expansive, his stride was swaying and decisive, his over-ruling, fraternal faculty was always in full swing. Viking was his adopted child; so much so that a gentleman river-driver called it Philippi; and by that name it sometimes went, and continues still so among those who knew it in the old days. Others might have doubts as to the proper course to pursue under certain circumstances; it was not so with Phil. They might argue a thing out orally, he did so mentally, and gave judgment on it orally. He was final, not oracular. One of his eyes was of glass, and blue; the other had an eccentricity, and was of a deep and meditative grey. It was a wise and knowing eye. It was trained to many things--like one servant in a large family. One side of his face was solemn, because of the gay but unchanging blue eye, the other was gravely humourous, shrewdly playful. His fellow citizens respected him; so much so, that they intended to give him an office in the new-formed corporation; which means that he had courage and downrightness, and that the rough, straightforward gospel of the West was properly interpreted by him. If a stranger came to the place, Phil was sent first to reconnoitre; if any function was desirable, Phil was requested to arrange it; if justice was to be meted out, Phil's opinion had considerable weight--for he had much greater leisure than other more prosperous men; if a man was taken ill (this was in the days before a doctor came), Phil was asked to declare if he would "shy from the finish." I heard Roscoe more than once declare that Phil was as good as two curates to him. Not that Phil was at all pious, nor yet possessed of those abstemious qualities in language and appetite by which good men are known; but he had a gift of civic virtue--important in a wicked world, and of unusual importance in Viking. He had neither self-consciousness nor fear; and while not possessed of absolute tact in a social way, he had a knack of doing the right thing bluntly, or the wrong thing with an air of rightness. He envied no man, he coveted nothing; had once or twice made other men's fortunes by prospecting, but was poor himself. And in all he was content, and loved life and Viking. Immediately after Roscoe had reached the mountains Phil had become his champion, declaring that there was not any reason why a man should not be treated sociably because he was a parson. Phil had been a great traveller, as had many who settled at last in these valleys to the exciting life of the river: salmon-catching or driving logs. He had lived for a time in Lower California and Mexico, and had given Roscoe the name of The Padre: which suited the genius and temper of the rude population. And so it was that Roscoe was called The Padre by every one, though he did not look the character. As he told his story of Phil's life I could not help but contrast him with most of the clergymen I knew or had seen. He had the admirable ease and tact of a cultured man of the world, and the frankness and warmth of a hearty nature, which had, however, some inherent strain of melancholy. Wherever I had gone with him I had noticed that he was received with good-humoured deference by his rough parishioners and others who were such only in the broadest sense. Perhaps he would not have succeeded so well if he had worn clerical clothes. As it was, of a week day, he could not be distinguished from any respectable layman. The clerical uniform attracts women more than men, who, if they spoke truly, would resent it. Roscoe did not wear it, because he thought more of men than of function, of manliness than clothes; and though this sometimes got him into trouble with his clerical brethren who dearly love Roman collar, and coloured stole, and the range of ritual from a lofty intoning to the eastward position, he managed to live and himself be none the worse, while those who knew him were certainly the better. When Roscoe had finished his tale, Mrs. Falchion said: "Mr. Boldrick must be a very interesting man;" and her eyes wandered up to the great hole in the mountain-side, and lingered there. "As I said, I must meet him," she added; "men of individuality are rare." Then: "That great 'hole in the wall' is, of course, a natural formation." "Yes," said Roscoe. "Nature seems to have made it for Boldrick. He uses it as a storehouse." "Who watches it while he is away?" she said. "There is no door to the place, of course." Roscoe smiled enigmatically. "Men do not steal up here: that is the unpardonable crime; any other may occur and go unpunished; not it." The thought seemed to strike Mrs. Falchion. "I might have known!" she said. "It is the same in the South Seas among the natives--Samoans, Tongans, Fijians, and others. You can--as you know, Mr. Roscoe,"--her voice had a subterranean meaning,--" travel from end to end of those places, and, until the white man corrupts them, never meet with a case of stealing; you will find them moral too in other ways until the white man corrupts them. But sometimes the white man pays for it in the end." Her last words were said with a kind of dreaminess, as though they had no purpose; but though she sat now idly looking into the valley beneath, I could see that her eyes had a peculiar glance, which was presently turned on Roscoe, then withdrawn again. On him the effect was so far disturbing that he became a little pale, but I noticed that he met her glance unflinchingly and then looked at me, as if to see in how far I had been affected by her speech. I think I confessed to nothing in my face. Justine Caron was lost in the scene before us. She had, I fancy, scarcely heard half that had been said. Roscoe said to her presently: "You like it, do you not?" "Like it?" she said. "I never saw anything so wonderful." "And yet it would not be so wonderful without humanity there," rejoined Mrs. Falchion. "Nature is never complete without man. All that would be splendid without the mills and the machinery and Boldrick's cable, but it would not be perfect: it needs man--Phil Boldrick and Company in the foreground. Nature is not happy by itself: it is only brooding and sorrowful. You remember the mountain of Talili in Samoa, Mr. Roscoe, and the valley about it: how entrancing yet how melancholy it is. It always seems to be haunted, for the natives never live in the valley. There is a tradition that once one of the white gods came down from heaven, and built an altar, and sacrificed a Samoan girl--though no one ever knew quite why: for there the tradition ends." I felt again that there was a hidden meaning in her words; but Roscoe remained perfectly still. It seemed to me that I was little by little getting the threads of his story. That there was a native girl; that the girl had died or been killed; that Roscoe was in some way--innocently I dared hope--connected with it; and that Mrs. Falchion held the key to the mystery, I was certain. That it was in her mind to use the mystery, I was also certain. But for what end I could not tell. What had passed between them in London the previous winter I did not know: but it seemed evident that she had influenced him there as she did on the 'Fulvia', had again lost her influence, and was now resenting the loss, out of pique or anger, or because she really cared for him. It might be that she cared. She added after a moment: "Add man to nature, and it stops sulking: which goes to show that fallen humanity is better than no company at all." She had an inherent strain of mockery, of playful satire, and she told me once, when I knew her better, that her own suffering always set her laughing at herself, even when it was greatest. It was this characteristic which made her conversation very striking, it was so sharply contrasted in its parts; a heartless kind of satire set against the most serious and acute statements. One never knew when she would turn her own or her interlocutor's gravity into mirth. Now no one replied immediately to her remarks, and she continued: "If I were an artist I should wish to paint that scene, given that the lights were not so bright and that mill machinery not so sharply defined. There is almost too much limelight, as it were; too much earnestness in the thing. Either there should be some side-action of mirth to make it less intense, or of tragedy to render it less photographic; and unless, Dr. Marmion, you would consent to be solemn, which would indeed be droll; or that The Padre there--how amusing they should call him that!--should cease to be serious, which, being so very unusual, would be tragic, I do not know how we are to tell the artist that he has missed a chance of immortalising himself." Roscoe said nothing, but smiled at her vivacity, while he deprecated her words by a wave of his hand. I also was silent for a moment; for there had come to my mind, while she was speaking and I was watching the scene, something that Hungerford had said to me once on board the 'Fulvia'. "Marmion," said he, "when everything at sea appears so absolutely beautiful and honest that it thrills you, and you're itching to write poetry, look out. There's trouble ahead. It's only the pretty pause in the happy scene of the play before the villain comes in and tumbles things about. When I've been on the bridge," he continued, "of a night that set my heart thumping, I knew, by Jingo! it was the devil playing his silent overture. Don't you take in the twaddle about God sending thunderbolts; it's that old war-horse down below.--And then I've kept a sharp lookout, for I knew as right as rain that a company of waterspouts would be walking down on us, or a hurricane racing to catch us broadsides. And what's gospel for sea is good for land, and you'll find it so, my son." I was possessed of the same feeling now as I looked at the scene before us, and I suppose I seemed moody, for immediately Mrs. Falchion said: "Why, now my words have come true; the scene can be made perfect. Pray step down to the valley, Dr. Marmion, and complete the situation, for you are trying to seem serious, and it is irresistibly amusing--and professional, I suppose; one must not forget that you teach the young 'sawbones' how to saw." I was piqued, annoyed. I said, though I admit it was not cleverly said: "Mrs. Falchion, I am willing to go and complete that situation, if you will go with me; for you would provide the tragedy--plenty of it; there would be the full perihelion of elements; your smile is the incarnation of the serious." She looked at me full in the eyes. "Now that," she said, "is a very good 'quid pro quo'--is that right?--and I have no doubt that it is more or less true; and for a doctor to speak truth and a professor to be under stood is a matter for angels. And I actually believe that, in time, you will be free from priggishness, and become a brilliant conversationalist; and--suppose we wander on to our proper places in the scene. . . . Besides, I want to see that strange man, Mr. Boldrick." CHAPTER XIV THE PATH OF THE EAGLE We travelled slowly down the hillside into the village, and were about to turn towards the big mill when we saw Mr. Devlin and Ruth riding towards us. We halted and waited for them. Mr. Devlin was introduced to Mrs. Falchion by his daughter, who was sweetly solicitous concerning Mrs. Falchion and Justine Caron, and seemed surprised at finding them abroad after the accident of the day before. Ruth said that her father and herself had just come from the summer hotel, where they had gone to call upon Mrs. Falchion. Mrs. Falchion heartily acknowledged the courtesy. She seemed to be playing no part, but was apparently grateful all round; yet I believe that even already Ruth had caught at something in her presence threatening Roscoe's peace; whilst she, from the beginning, had, with her more trained instincts, seen the relations between the clergyman and his young parishioner.--But what had that to do with her? Between Roscoe and Ruth there was the slightest constraint, and I thought that it gave a troubled look to the face of the girl. Involuntarily, the eyes of both were attracted to Mrs. Falchion. I believe in that moment there was a kind of revelation among the three. While I talked to Mr. Devlin I watched them, standing a little apart, Justine Caron with us. It must have been a painful situation for them; to the young girl because a shadow was trailing across the light of her first love; to Roscoe because the shadow came out of his past; to Mrs. Falchion because she was the shadow. I felt that trouble was at hand. In this trouble I knew that I was to play a part; for, if Roscoe had his secret and Mrs. Falchion had the key to it, I also held a secret which, in case of desperate need, I should use. I did not wish to use it, for though it was mine it was also another's. I did not like the look in Mrs. Falchion's eyes as she glanced at Ruth: I was certain that she resented Roscoe's regard for Ruth and Ruth's regard for Roscoe; but, up to that moment, I had not thought it possible that she cared for him deeply. Once she had influenced me, but she had never cared for me. I could see a change in her. Out of it came that glance at Ruth, which seemed to me the talon-like hatred that shot from the eyes of Goneril and Regan: and I was sure that if she loved Roscoe there would be mad trouble for him and for the girl. Heretofore she had been passionless, but there was a dormant power in her which had only to be wickedly aroused to wreck her own and others' happiness. Hers was one of those volcanic natures, defying calculation and ordinary conceptions of life; having the fullest capacity for all the elementary passions--hatred, love, cruelty, delight, loyalty, revolt, jealousy. She had never from her birth until now felt love for any one. She had never been awakened. Even her affection for her father had been dutiful rather than instinctive. She had provoked love, but had never given it. She had been self-centred, compulsive, unrelenting. She had unmoved seen and let her husband go to his doom-- it was his doom and death so far as she knew. Yet, as I thought of this, I found myself again admiring her. She was handsome, independent, distinctly original, and possessing capacity for great things. Besides, so far, she had not been actively vindictive-- simply passively indifferent to the sufferings of others. She seemed to regard results more than means. All she did not like she could empty into the mill of the destroying gods: just as General Grant poured hundreds of thousands of men into the valley of the James, not thinking of lives but victory, not of blood but triumph. She too, even in her cruelty, seemed to have a sense of wild justice which disregarded any incidental suffering. I could see that Mr. Devlin was attracted by her, as every man had been who had ever met her; for, after all, man is but a common slave to beauty: virtue he respects, but beauty is man's valley of suicide. Presently she turned to Mr. Devlin, having, as it seemed to me, made Roscoe and Ruth sufficiently uncomfortable. With that cheerful insouciance which was always possible to her on the most trying occasions, she immediately said, as she had often said to me, that she had come to Mr. Devlin to be amused for the morning, perhaps the whole day. It was her way, her selfish way, to make men her slaves. Mr. Devlin gallantly said that he was at her disposal, and with a kind of pride added that there was plenty in the valley which would interest her; for he was a frank, bluff man, who would as quickly have spoken disparagingly of what belonged to himself, if it was not worthy, as have praised it. "Where shall we go first?" he said. "To the mill?" "To the mill, by all means," Mrs. Falchion replied; "I have never been in a great saw-mill, and I believe this is very fine. Then," she added, with a little wave of the hand towards the cable running down from Phil Boldrick's eyrie in the mountains, "then I want to see all that cable can do--all, remember." Mr. Devlin laughed. "Well, it hasn't many tricks, but what it does it does cleverly, thanks to The Padre." "Oh yes," responded Mrs. Falchion, still looking at the cable; "The Padre, I know, is very clever." "He is more than clever," bluffly replied Mr. Devlin, who was not keen enough to see the faint irony in her tones. "Yes," responded Mrs. Falchion in the same tone of voice, "he is more than clever. I have been told that he was once very brave. I have been told that once in the South Seas he did his country a great service." She paused. I could see Ruth's eyes glisten and her face suffuse, for though she read the faint irony in the tone, still she saw that the tale which Mrs. Falchion was evidently about to tell, must be to Galt Roscoe's credit. Mrs. Falchion turned idly upon Ruth and saw the look in her face. An almost imperceptible smile came upon her lips. She looked again at the cable and Phil Boldrick's eyrie, which seemed to have a wonderful attraction for her. Not turning away from it, save now and then to glance indolently at Mr. Devlin or Ruth, and once enigmatically at myself, she said: "Once upon a time--that is the way, I believe, to begin a pretty story-- there were four men-of-war idling about a certain harbour of Samoa. One of the vessels was the flag-ship, with its admiral on board. On one of the other vessels was an officer who had years before explored this harbour. It was the hurricane season. He advised the admiral not to enter the harbour, for the indications foretold a gale, and himself was not sure that his chart was in all respects correct, for the harbour had been hurriedly explored and sounded. But the admiral gave orders, and they sailed in. "That day a tremendous hurricane came crying down upon Samoa. It swept across the island, levelled forests of cocoa palms, battered villages to pieces, caught that little fleet in the harbour, and played with it in a horrible madness. To right and left were reefs, behind was the shore, with a monstrous surf rolling in; before was a narrow passage. One vessel made its way out--on it was the officer who had surveyed the harbour. In the open sea there was safety. He brought his vessel down the coast a little distance, put a rope about him and in the wild surf made for the shore. I believe he could have been court-martialled for leaving his ship, but he was a man who had taken a great many risks of one kind and another in his time. It was one chance out of a hundred; but he made it--he got to the shore, travelled down to the harbour where the men-of-war were careening towards the reefs, unable to make the passage out, and once again he tied a rope about him and plunged into the surf to try for the admiral's ship. He got there terribly battered. They tell how a big wave lifted him and landed him upon the quarter-deck just as big waves are not expected to do. Well, like the hero in any melodrama of the kind, he very prettily piloted monsieur the admiral and his fleet out to the open sea." She paused, smiling in an inscrutable sort of way, then turned and said with a sudden softness in her voice, though still with the air of one who wished not to be taken with too great a seriousness: "And, ladies and gentlemen, the name of the ship that led the way was the 'Porcupine'; and the name of the hero was Commander Galt Roscoe, R.N.; and 'of such is the kingdom of heaven!'" There was silence for a moment. The tale had been told adroitly, and with such tact as to words that Roscoe could not take offence--need not, indeed, as he did not, I believe, feel any particular self-consciousness. I am not sure but he was a little glad that such evidence should have been given at the moment, when a kind of restraint had come between him and Ruth, by one who he had reason to think was not wholly his friend might be his enemy. It was a kind of offset to his premonitions and to the peril over which he might stumble at any moment. To me the situation was almost inexplicable; but the woman herself was inexplicable: at this moment the evil genius of us all, at that doing us all a kind of crude, superior justice. I was the first to speak. "Roscoe," I said, "I never had heard of this, although I remember the circumstance as told in the newspapers. But I am glad and proud that I have a friend with such a record." "And, only think," said Mrs. Falchion, "he actually was not court- martialled for abandoning his ship to save an admiral and a fleet. But the ways of the English Admiralty are wonderful. They go out of their way to avoid a court-martial sometimes, and they go out of their way to establish it sometimes." By this time we had started towards the mill. Roscoe walked ahead with Ruth Devlin. Mr. Devlin, Mrs. Falchion, Justine Caron and myself walked together. Mrs. Falchion presently continued, talking, as it seemed to me, at the back of Roscoe's head: "I have known the Admiralty to force an officer to resign the navy because he had married a native wife. But I never knew the Admiralty to court-martial an officer because he did not marry a native wife whom he OUGHT to have married: but, as I said, the ways of the Admiralty are past admiration." I could see Roscoe's hand clinch at his side, and presently he said over his shoulder at her: "Your memory and your philosophy are as wonderful as the Admiralty are inscrutable." She laughed. "You have not lost your old gift of retort," she said. "You are still amusing." "Well, come," said Mr. Devlin cheerfully, "let's see if there isn't something even more amusing than Mr. Roscoe in Viking. I will show you, Mrs. Falchion, the biggest saw that ever ate the heart out of a Norfolk pine." At the mill Mrs. Falchion was interested. She asked questions concerning the machinery which mightily pleased Mr. Devlin, they were so apt and intelligent; and herself assisted in giving an immense log to the teeth of the largest saw, which, with its six upright blades, ate, and was never satisfied. She stooped and ran her ungloved hand into the sawdust, as sweet before the sun has dried it as the scent of a rose. The rich smell of the fresh-cut lumber filled the air, and suggested all kinds of remote and pleasant things. The industry itself is one of the first that comes with the invasion of new territory, and makes one think of man's first work in the world: to fell the tree and till the soil. It is impossible to describe that fierce, jubilant song of the saw, which even when we were near was never shrill or shrieking: never drowning our voices, but vibrant and delightful. To Mrs. Falchion it was new; she was impressed. "I have seen," she said to Mr. Devlin, "all sorts of enterprises, but never anything like this. It all has a kind of rough music. It is enjoyable." Mr. Devlin beamed. "I have just added something to the mill that will please you," he said. She looked interested. We all gathered round. I stood between Mrs. Falchion and Ruth Devlin, and Roscoe beside Justine Caron. "It is the greatest mill-whistle in the country," he continued. "It will be heard from twelve to twenty-five miles, according to the condition of the atmosphere. I want big things all round, and this is a masterpiece, I guess. Now, I'll let you hear it if you like. I didn't expect to use it until to-night at nine o'clock, when, also for the first time, I am to light the mills by electricity; a thing that's not been attempted yet in any saw-mill on the Continent. We're going to work night and day for a couple of months." "This is all very wonderful. And are you indebted to Mr. Roscoe in these things too?--Everybody seems to need him here." "Well," said the mill-owner, laughing, "the whistle is my own. It's the sort of thing I would propose--to blow my trumpet, as it were; but the electricity and the first experiments in it I owe to The Padre." "As I thought," she said, and turned to Roscoe. "I remember," she added, "that you had an electrical search-light on the 'Porcupine', and that you were fond of electricity. Do you ever use search-lights here? I should think they might be of use in your parish. Then, for a change, you could let the parish turn it upon you, for the sake of contrast and edification." For the moment I was exceedingly angry. Her sarcasm was well veiled, but I could feel the sardonic touch beneath the smiling surface. This innuendo seemed so gratuitous. I said to her, almost beneath my breath, that none of the others could hear: "How womanly!" She did no more than lift her eyebrows in acknowledgment, and went on talking lightly to Mr. Devlin. Roscoe was cool, but I could see now in his eyes a kind of smouldering anger; which was quite to my wish. I hoped he would be meek no longer. Presently Ruth Devlin said: "Would it not be better to wait till to- night, when the place is lighted, before the whistle is blown? Then you can get a better first impression. And if Mrs. Falchion will come over to our home at Sunburst, we will try and amuse her for the rest of the day--that is, after she has seen all here." Mrs. Falchion seemed struck by the frankness of the girl, and for an instant debated, but presently said: "No, thank you. When all is seen now, I will go to the hotel, and then will join you all here in the evening, if that seems feasible. Perhaps Dr. Marmion will escort me here. Mr. Roscoe, of course, has other duties." "I shall be happy," I said, maliciously smiling, "to guide you to the sacrifice of the saw." She was not disturbed. She touched Mr. Devlin's arm, and, looking archly at him, nodded backwards towards me. "'Beware the anaconda!'" she said. It was impossible not to be amused; her repartee was always so unrestrained. She disarmed one by what would have been, in a man, insolent sang-froid: in her it was piquancy, daring. Presently she added: "But if we are to have no colossal whistle and no electric light till evening, there is one thing I must have: and that is your remarkable Phil Boldrick, who seems to hold you all in the palm of his hand, and lives up there like a god on his Olympus." "Well, suppose you go and call on him," said Roscoe, with a touch of dry humour, his eye on the cable that reached to Boldrick's perch. She saw her opportunity, and answered promptly: "Yes, I will call on him immediately,"--here she turned towards Ruth,--"if Miss Devlin and yourself will go with me." "Nonsense," interposed Mr. Devlin. "Besides, the cage will only hold two easily. Anyhow, it's absurd." "Why is it absurd? Is there any danger?" queried Mrs. Falchion. "Not unless there's an idiot at the machinery." "I should expect you to manage it," she persisted. "But no woman has ever done it." "I will make the record." And, turning to Ruth: "You are not afraid?" "No, I am not afraid," said the girl bravely, though she acknowledged to me afterwards that while she was not afraid of anything where her own skill was called in question, such as mountain-climbing, or even puma- hunting, she did not joyfully anticipate swinging between heaven and earth on that incline. "I will go," she added, "if my father will let me. . . . May I?" she continued, turning to him. Perhaps something of the father's pride came up in him, perhaps he had just got some suspicion that between his daughter and Mrs. Falchion there was a subterranean rivalry. However it was, he gave a quick, quizzical look at both of them, then glanced at Roscoe, and said: "I'll make no objections, if Ruth would like to introduce you to Phil. And, as Mrs. Falchion suggested, I'll 'turn the crank.'" I could see that Roscoe had a bad moment. But presently he appeared to me perfectly willing that Ruth should go. Maybe he was as keen that she should not appear at a disadvantage beside Mrs. Falchion as was her father. A signal was given, and the cage came slowly down the cable to the mill. We could see Boldrick, looking little bigger than a child at the other end, watching our movements. At the last moment Mr. Devlin and Roscoe seemed apprehensive, but the women were cool and determined. I noticed Mrs. Falchion look at Ruth curiously once or twice after they entered the cage, and before they started, and what she saw evidently gave her a higher opinion of the girl, for she laid her hand on Ruth's arm suddenly, and said: "We will show these mere men what nerve is." Ruth nodded, then 'bon voyage' was said, and the signal was given. The cage ascended at first quickly, then more slowly, swaying up and down a little on the cable, and climbing higher and higher through the air to the mountain-side. What Boldrick thought when he saw the two ascending towards him, he expressed to Mr. Devlin later in the day in vigorous language: what occurred at his but Ruth Devlin told me afterwards. When the cage reached him, he helped the two passengers out, and took them to his hut. With Ruth he had always been a favourite, and he welcomed her with admiring and affectionate respect. "Never b'lieved you could have done it, Miss Devlin--never! Not but what I knew you weren't afraid of anything on the earth below, or the waters under the earth; but when you get swinging there over the world, and not high enough to get a hold on heaven, it makes you feel as if things was droppin' away from you like. But, by gracious! you did it like an eagle-- you and your friend." By this time he was introduced, and at the name of Mrs. Falchion, he cocked his head, and looked quizzically, as if trying to remember something, then drew his hand once or twice across his forehead. After a moment he said: "Strange, now, ma'am, how your name strikes me. It isn't a common name, and I've heerd it before somewhere--somewhere. It isn't your face that I've seen before--for I'd have remembered it if it was a thousand years ago," he added admiringly. "But I've heard some one use it; and I can't tell where." She looked curiously at him, and said: "Don't try to remember, and it will come to you in good time. But show us everything about your place before we go back, won't you, please?" He showed them his hut, where he lived, quite alone. It was supplied with bare necessaries, and with a counter, behind which were cups and a few bottles. In reference to this, Boldrick said: "Temperance drinks for the muleteers, tobacco and tea and sugar and postage stamps and things. They don't gargle their throats with anything stronger than coffee at this tavern." Then he took them to the cave in which puma, bear, and wapiti skins were piled, together with a few stores and the kits of travellers who had left their belongings in Boldrick's keeping till they should come again. After Mrs. Falchion and Ruth had seen all, they came out upon the mountain-side and waved their handkerchiefs to us, who were still watching from below. Then Boldrick hoisted a flag on his hut, which he used on gala occasions, to celebrate the event, and, not content with this, fired a 'feu de joie', managed in this way: He took two anvils used by the muleteers and expressmen to shoe their animals, and placed one on the other, putting powder between. Then Mrs. Falchion thrust a red-hot iron into the powder, and an explosion ensued. I was for a moment uneasy, but Mr. Devlin reassured me, and instantly a shrill whistle from the little mills answered the salute. Just before they got into the cage, Mrs. Falchion turned to Boldrick, and said: "You have not been trying to remember where you heard my name before? Well, can you not recall it now?" Boldrick shook his head. "Perhaps you will recall it before I see you again," she said. They started. As they did so, Mrs. Falchion said suddenly, looking at Boldrick keenly: "Were you ever in the South Seas?" Boldrick stood for an instant open-mouthed, and then exclaimed loudly, as the cage swung down the incline: "By Jingo! No, ma'am, I was never there, but I had a pal who come from Samoa." She called back at him: "Tell me of him when we meet again. What was his name?" They were too far down the cable now for Boldrick's reply to reach them distinctly. The descent seemed even more adventurous than the ascent, and, in spite of myself, I could not help a thrill of keen excitement. But they were both smiling when the cage reached us, and both had a very fine colour. "A delightful journey, a remarkable reception, and a very singular man is your Mr. Boldrick," said Mrs. Falchion. "Yes," replied Mr. Devlin, "you'll know Boldrick a long time before you find his limits. He is about the most curious character I ever knew, and does the most curious things. But straight--straight as a die, Mrs. Falchion!" "I fancy that Mr. Boldrick and I would be very good friends indeed," said Mrs. Falchion; "and I purpose visiting him again. It is quite probable that we shall find we have had mutual acquaintances." She looked at Roscoe meaningly as she said this, but he was occupied with Ruth. "You were not afraid?" Roscoe said to Ruth. "Was it not a strange sensation?" "Frankly, at first I was a little afraid, because the cage swings on the cable, and it makes you uncomfortable. But I enjoyed it before we got to the end." Mrs. Falchion turned to Mr. Devlin. "I find plenty here to amuse me," she said, "and I am glad I came. To-night I want to go up that cable and call on Mr. Boldrick again, and see the mills and the electric light, and hear your whistle, from up there. Then, of course, you must show us the mill working at night, and afterwards--may I ask it?--you must all come and have supper with me at the summer hotel." Ruth dropped her eyes. I saw she did not wish to go. Fortunately Mr. Devlin extricated her. "I'm afraid that will be impossible, Mrs. Falchion," he said: "much obliged to you all the same. But I am going to be at the mill pretty near all night, and shouldn't be able to go, and I don't want Ruth to go without me." "Then it must be another time," said Mrs. Falchion. "Oh, whenever it's convenient for Ruth, after a day or two, I'll be ready and glad. But I tell you what: if you want to see something fine, you must go down as soon as possible to Sunburst. We live there, you know, not here at Viking. It's funny, too, because, you see, there's a feud between Viking and Sunburst--we are all river-men and mill-hands at Viking, and they're all salmon-fishers and fruit-growers at Sunburst. By rights I ought to live here, but when I started I thought I'd build my mills at Sunburst, so I pitched my tent down there. My wife and the girls got attached to the place, and though the mills were built at Viking, and I made all my money up here, I live at Sunburst and spend my shekels there. I guess if I didn't happen to live at Sunburst, people would be trailing their coats and making Donnybrook fairs every other day between these two towns. But that's neither here nor there. Take my advice, Mrs. Falchion, and come to Sunburst and see the salmon-fishers at work, both day and night. It is about the biggest thing in the way of natural picturesqueness that you'll see--outside my mills. Indians, half-breeds, white men, Chinamen--they are all at it in weirs and cages, or in the nets, and spearing by torch-light!--Don't you think I would do to run a circus, Mrs. Falchion?--Stand at the door, and shout: 'Here's where you get the worth of your money'?" Mrs. Falchion laughed. "I am sure you and I will be good friends; you are amusing. And, to be perfectly frank with you, I am very weary of trying to live in the intellectual altitudes of Dr. Marmion--and The Padre." I had never seen her in a greater strain of gaiety. It had almost a kind of feverishness--as if she relished fully the position she held towards Roscoe and Ruth, her power over their future, and her belief (as I think was in her mind then) that she could bring back to her self Roscoe's old allegiance. That she believed this, I was convinced; that she would never carry it out, was just as strong: for I, though only the chorus in the drama, might one day find it in my power to become, for a moment, one of the principal actors--from which position I had declined one day when humiliated before Mrs. Falchion on the 'Fulvia'. Boyd Madras was in my mind. After a few minutes we parted, agreeing to meet again in the valley in the evening. I had promised, as Mrs. Falchion had suggested, to escort her and Justine Caron from the summer hotel to the mill. Roscoe had duties at both Viking and Sunburst and would not join us until we all met in the evening. Mr. Devlin and Ruth rode away towards Sunburst. Mrs. Falchion, Justine, and myself travelled slowly up the hillside, talking chiefly upon the events of the morning. Mrs. Falchion appeared to admire greatly the stalwart character of Mr. Devlin; in a few swift, complimentary words disposed of Ruth; and then made many inquiries concerning Roscoe's work, my own position, and the length of my stay in the mountains; and talked upon many trivial matters, never once referring--as it seemed to me, purposely--to our past experiences on the 'Fulvia', nor making any inquiry concerning any one except Belle Treherne. She showed no surprise when I told her that I expected to marry Miss Treherne. She congratulated me with apparent frankness, and asked for Miss Treherne's address, saying she would write to her. As soon as she had left Roscoe's presence she had dropped all enigmatical words and phrases, and, during this hour I was with her, was the tactful, accomplished woman of the world, with the one present object: to make her conversation agreeable, and to keep things on the surface. Justine Caron scarcely spoke during the whole of our walk, although I addressed myself to her frequently. But I could see that she watched Mrs. Falchion's face curiously; and I believe that at this time her instinct was keener by far to read what was in Mrs. Falchion's mind than my own, though I knew much more of the hidden chain of events connecting Mrs. Falchion's life and Galt Roscoe's. I parted from them at the door of the hotel, made my way down to Roscoe's house at the ravine, and busied myself for the greater part of the day in writing letters, and reading on the coping. About sunset I called for Mrs. Falchion, and found her and Justine Caron ready and waiting. There was nothing eventful in our talk as we came down the mountain-side towards Viking--Justine Caron's presence prevented that. It was dusk when we reached the valley. As yet the mills were all dark. The only lights visible were in the low houses lining the banks of the river. Against the mountainside there seemed to hang one bunch of flame like a star, large, red, and weird. It was a torch burning in front of Phil Boldrick's hut. We made our way slowly to the mill, and found Mr. Devlin, Ruth, and Roscoe, with Ruth's sister, and one or two other friends, expecting us. "Well," said Mr. Devlin heartily, "I have kept the show waiting for you. The house is all dark, but I guess you'll see a transformation scene pretty quick. Come out," he continued, "and let us get the front seats. They are all stalls here; nobody has a box except Boldrick, and it is up in the flies." "Mr. Devlin," said Mrs. Falchion, "I purpose to see this show not only from the stalls, but from the box in the flies. Therefore, during the first act, I shall be here in front of the foot-lights. During the second act I shall be aloft like Tom Bowling--" "In other words--" began Mr. Devlin. "In other words," added Mrs. Falchion, "I am going to see the valley and hear your great horn blow from up there!" She pointed towards the star in front of Phil's hut. "All right," said Mr. Devlin; "but you will excuse me if I say that I don't particularly want anybody to see this performance from where Tom Bowling bides." We left the office and went out upon the platform, a little distance from the mill. Mr. Devlin gave a signal, touched a wire, and immediately it seemed as if the whole valley was alight. The mill itself was in a blaze of white. It was transfigured--a fairy palace, just as the mud barges in the Suez Canal had been transformed by the search-light of the 'Fulvia'. For the moment, in the wonder of change from darkness to light, the valley became the picture of a dream. Every man was at his post in the mill, and in an instant work was going on as we had seen it in the morning. Then, all at once, there came a great roar, as it were, from the very heart of the mill--a deep diapason, dug out of the throat of the hills: the big whistle. "It sounds mournful--like a great animal in pain," said Mrs. Falchion. "You might have got one more cheerful." "Wait till it gets tuned up," said Mr. Devlin. "It hasn't had a chance to get the burs out of its throat. It will be very fine as soon as the engine-man knows how to manage it." "Yes," said Ruth, interposing, "a little toning down would do it good-- it is shaking the windows in your office; feel this platform tremble!" "Well, I bargained for a big whistle and I've got it: and I guess they'll know if ever there's a fire in the town!" Just as he said this, Roscoe gave a cry and pointed. We all turned, and saw a sight that made Ruth Devlin cover her face with her hands and Mrs. Falchion stand horror-stricken. There, coming down the cable with the speed of lightning, was the cage. In it was a man-- Phil Boldrick. With a cry and a smothered oath, Mr. Devlin sprang towards the machinery, Roscoe with him. There was nobody near it, but they saw a boy whose duty it was that night to manage the cable, running towards it. Roscoe was the first to reach the lever; but it was too late. He partially stopped the cage, but only partially. It came with a dull, sickening thud to the ground, and Phil Boldrick--Phil Boldrick's broken, battered body--was thrown out. A few minutes later Boldrick was lying in Mr. Devlin's office. Ill luck for Viking in the hour of her success. Phil's shattered hulk is drifting. The masts have gone by the board, the pilot from the captain's side. Only the man's "unconquerable soul" is on the bridge, watching the craft dip at the bow till the waters, their sport out, should hugely swallow it. We were all gathered round. Phil had asked to see the lad who, by neglecting the machinery for a moment, had wrecked his life. "My boy," he said, "you played an ugly game. It was a big mistake. I haven't any grudge agen you, but be glad I'm not one that'd haunt you for your cussed foolishness. . . . There, now, I feel better; that's off my mind!" "If you're wanting to show remorse or anything," he continued, "there's my friend, Mr. Roscoe, The Padre--he's all right, you understand!--Are you there? . . . Why don't you speak?" He stretched out his hand. The lad took it, but he could not speak: he held it and sobbed. Then Phil understood. His brow wrinkled with a sudden trouble. He said: "There, never mind. I'm dying, but it isn't what I expected. It doesn't smart nor tear much; not more than river-rheumatism. P'r'aps I wouldn't mind it at all if I could see." For Phil was entirely blind now. The accident had destroyed his remaining eye. Being blind, he had already passed that first corridor of death--darkness. Roscoe stooped over him, took his hand, and spoke quietly to him. Phil knew the voice, and said with a faint smile: "Do you think they'd plant me with municipal honours--honours to pardners?" "We'll see to that, Phil," said Mr. Devlin from behind the clergyman. Phil recognised the voice. "You think that nobody'll kick at making it official?" "Not one, Phil." "And maybe they wouldn't mind firin' a volley--Lights out, as it were: and blow the big whistle? It'd look sociable, wouldn't it?" "There'll be a volley and the whistle, Phil--if you have to go," said Mr. Devlin. There was a silence, then the reply came musingly: "I guess I hev to go. . . . I'd hev liked to see the corporation runnin' longer, but maybe I can trust the boys." A river-driver at the door said in a deep voice: "By the holy! yes, you can trust us." "Thank you kindly. . . . If it doesn't make any difference to the rest, I'd like to be alone with The Padre for a little--not for religion, you understand, for I go as I stayed, and I hev my views,--but for private business." Slowly, awkwardly, the few river-drivers passed out--Devlin and Mrs. Falchion and Ruth and I with them--for I could do nothing now for him--he was broken all to pieces. Roscoe told me afterwards what happened then. "Padre," he said to Roscoe, "are we alone?" "Quite alone, Phil." "Well, I hevn't any crime to tell, and the business isn't weighty; but I hev a pal at Danger Mountain--" He paused. "Yes, Phil?" "He's low down in s'ciety; but he's square, and we've had the same blanket for many a day together. I crossed him first on the Panama level. I was broke--stony broke. He'd been shipwrecked, and was ditto. He'd been in the South Seas; I in Nicaragua. We travelled up through Mexico and Arizona, and then through California to the Canadian Rockies. At last we camped at Danger Mountain, a Hudson's Bay fort, and stayed there. It was a roughish spot, but we didn't mind that. Every place isn't Viking. One night we had a difference--not a quarrel, mind you, but a difference. He was for lynchin' a fellow called Piccadilly, a swell that'd come down in the world, bringin' the worst tricks of his tribe with him. He'd never been a bony fidy gentleman--just an imitation. He played sneak with the daughter of Five Fingers, an Injin chief. We'd set store by that girl. There wasn't one of us rough nuts but respected her. She was one of the few beautiful Injin women I've seen. Well, it come out that Piccadilly had ruined her, and one morning she was found dead. It drove my pal well-nigh crazy. Not that she was anything partik'ler to him; but the thing took hold of him unusual." Now that I know all concerning Roscoe's past life, I can imagine that this recital must have been swords at his heart. The whole occurrence is put down minutely in his diary, but there is no word of comment upon it. Phil had been obliged to stop for pain, and, after Roscoe had adjusted the bandages, he continued: "My pal and the others made up their minds they'd lynch Piccadilly; they wouldn't give him the benefit of the doubt--for it wasn't certain that the girl hadn't killed herself. . . . Well, I went to Piccadilly, and give him the benefit. He left, and skipped the rope. Not, p'r'aps, that he ought to hev got away, but once he'd showed me a letter from his mother,--he was drunk too, at the time,--and I remembered when my brother Rodney was killed in the Black Hills, and how my mother took it; so I give him the tip to travel quick." He paused and rested. Then presently continued: "Now, Padre, I've got four hundred dollars--the most I ever had at one time in my life. And I'd like it to go to my old pal--though we had that difference, and parted. I guess we respect each other about the same as we ever did. And I wish you'd write it down so that the thing would be municipal." Roscoe took pencil and paper and said: "What's his name, Phil?" "Sam--Tonga Sam." "But that isn't all his name?" "No, I s'pose not, but it's all he ever had in general use. He'd got it because he'd been to the Tonga Islands and used to yarn about them. Put 'Tonga Sam, Phil Boldrick's Pal at Danger Mountain, ult'--add the 'ult,' it's c'rrect.--That'll find him. And write him these words, and if you ever see him say them to him--'Phil Boldrick never had a pal that crowded Tonga Sam.'" When the document was written, Roscoe read it aloud, then both signed it, Roscoe guiding the battered hand over the paper. This done, there was a moment's pause, and then Phil said: "I'd like to be in the open. I was born in the open--on the Madawaska. Take me out, Padre." Roscoe stepped to the door, and silently beckoned to Devlin and myself. We carried him out, and put him beside a pine tree. "Where am I now?" he said. "Under the white pine, Phil." "That's right. Face me to the north." We did so. Minutes passed in silence. Only the song of the saw was heard, and the welting of the river. "Padre," he said at last hurriedly, "lift me up, so's I can breathe." This was done. "Am I facin' the big mill?" "Yes." "That's c'rrect. And the 'lectric light is burnin' in the mill and in the town, an' the saws are all goin'?" "Yes." "By gracious, yes--you can hear 'em! Don't they scrunch the stuff, though!" He laughed a little. "Mr. Devlin an' you and me hev been pretty smart, hevn't we?" Then a spasm caught him, and after a painful pause he called: "It's the biggest thing in cables. . . . Stand close in the cage. . . . Feel her swing!--Safe, you bet, if he stands by the lever. . . ." His face lighted with the last gleam of living, and he said slowly: "I hev a pal--at Danger Mountain." CHAPTER XV IN THE TROUGH OF THE WINDS The three days following the events recorded in the preceding chapter were notable to us all. Because my own affairs and experiences are of the least account, I shall record them first: they will at least throw a little light on the history of people who appeared previously in this tale, and disappeared suddenly when the 'Fulvia' reached London, to make room for others. The day after Phil Boldrick's death I received a letter from Hungerford, and also one from Belle Treherne. Hungerford had left the Occidental Company's service, and had been fortunate enough to get the position of first officer on a line of steamers running between England and the West Indies. The letter was brusque, incisive, and forceful, and declared that, once he got his foot firmly planted in his new position, he would get married and be done with it. He said that Clovelly the novelist had given a little dinner at his chambers in Piccadilly, and that the guests were all our fellow-passengers by the 'Fulvia'; among them Colonel Ryder, the bookmaker, Blackburn the Queenslander, and himself. This is extracted from the letter: . . . Clovelly was in rare form.--Don't run away with the idea that he's eating his heart out because you came in just ahead in the race for Miss Treherne. For my part--but, never mind!--You had phenomenal luck, and you will be a phenomenal fool if you don't arrange for an early marriage. You are a perfect baby in some things. Don't you know that the time a woman most yearns for a man is when she has refused him? And Clovelly is here on the ground, and they are in the same set, and though I'd take my oath she would be loyal to you if you were ten thousand miles from here for ten years, so far as a promise is concerned, yet remember that a promise and a fancy are two different things. We may do what's right for the fear o' God, and not love Him either. Marmion, let the marriage bells be rung early--a maiden's heart is a ticklish thing. . . . But Clovelly was in rare form, as I said; and the bookmaker, who had for the first time read a novel of his, amiably quoted from it, and criticised it during the dinner, till the place reeked with laughter. At first every one stared aghast ("stared aghast!"--how is that for literary form?); but when Clovelly gurgled, and then haw-hawed till he couldn't lift his champagne, the rest of us followed in a double-quick. And the bookmaker simply sat calm and earnest with his eye-glass in his eye, and never did more than gently smile. "See here," he said ever so candidly of Clovelly's best character, a serious, inscrutable kind of a man, the dignified figure in the book--"I liked the way you drew that muff. He was such an awful outsider, wasn't he? All talk, and hypocrite down to his heels. And when you married him to that lady who nibbled her food in public and gorged in the back pantry, and went 'slumming' and made shoulder-strings for the parson--oh, I know the kind!"-- [This was Clovelly's heroine, whom he had tried to draw, as he said himself, "with a perfect sincerity and a lovely worldly-mindedness, and a sweet creation altogether."] "I said, that's poetic justice, that's the refinement of retribution. Any other yarn-spinner would have killed the male idiot by murder, or a drop from a precipice, or a lingering fever; but Clovelly did the thing with delicate torture. He said, 'Go to blazes,' and he fixed up that marriage--and there you are! Clovelly, I drink to you; you are a master!" Clovelly acknowledged beautifully, and brought off a fine thing about the bookmaker having pocketed L5000 at the Derby, then complimented Colonel Ryder on his success as a lecturer in London (pretty true, by the way), and congratulated Blackburn on his coming marriage with Mrs. Callendar, the Tasmanian widow. What he said of myself I am not going to repeat; but it was salaaming all round, with the liquor good, and fun bang over the bulwarks. How is Roscoe? I didn't see as much of him as you did, but I liked him. Take my tip for it, that woman will make trouble for him some day. She is the biggest puzzle I ever met. I never could tell whether she liked him or hated him; but it seems to me that either would be the ruin of any "Christom man." I know she saw something of him while she was in London, because her quarters were next to those of my aunt the dowager (whose heart the gods soften at my wedding!) in Queen Anne's Mansions, S.W., and who actually liked Mrs. F., called on her, and asked her to dinner, and Roscoe too, whom she met at her place. I believe my aunt would have used her influence to get him a good living, if he had played his cards properly; but I expect he wouldn't be patronised, and he went for a "mickonaree," as they say in the South Seas. . . . Well, I'm off to the Spicy Isles, then back again to marry a wife. "Go thou and do likewise." By the way, have you ever heard of or seen Boyd Madras since he slipped our cable at Aden and gave the world another chance? I trust he will spoil her wedding--if she ever tries to have one. May I be there to see! Because we shall see nothing more of Hungerford till we finally dismiss the drama, I should like to say that this voyage of his to the West Indies made his fortune--that is, it gave him command of one of the finest ships in the English merchant service. In a storm a disaster occurred to his vessel, his captain was washed overboard, and he was obliged to take command. His skill, fortitude, and great manliness, under tragical circumstances, sent his name booming round the world; and, coupled, as it was, with a singular act of personal valour, he had his pick of all vacancies and possible vacancies in the merchant service, boy (or little more) as he was. I am glad to say that he is now a happy husband and father too. The letter from Belle Treherne mentioned having met Clovelly several times of late, and, with Hungerford's words hot in my mind, I determined, though I had perfect confidence in her, as in myself, to be married at Christmas-time. Her account of the courtship of Blackburn and Mrs. Callendar was as amusing as her description of an evening which the bookmaker had spent with her father, when he said he was going to marry an actress whom he had seen at Drury Lane Theatre in a racing drama. This he subsequently did, and she ran him a break-neck race for many a day, but never making him unhappy or less resourceful. His verdict, and his only verdict, upon Mrs. Falchion had been confided to Blackburn, who in turn confided it to Clovelly, who passed it on to me. He said: "A woman is like a horse. Make her beautiful, give her a high temper and a bit of bad luck in her youth, and she'll take her revenge out of life; even though she runs straight, and wins straight every time; till she breaks her heart one day over a lost race. After that she is good to live with for ever. A heart-break for that kind is their salvation: without it they go on breaking the hearts of others." As I read Belle's and Hungerford's letters my thoughts went back again --as they did so often indeed--to the voyage of the 'Fulvia', and then to Mrs. Falchion's presence in the Rocky Mountains. There was a strange destiny in it all, and I had no pleasant anticipations about the end; for, even if she could or did do Roscoe no harm, so far as his position was concerned, I saw that she had already begun to make trouble between him and Ruth. That day which saw poor Boldrick's death put her in a conflicting light to me. Now I thought I saw in her unusual gentleness, again an unusual irony, an almost flippant and cruel worldliness; and though at the time she was most touched by the accident, I think her feeling of horror at it made her appear to speak in a way which showed her unpleasantly to Mr. Devlin and his daughter. It may be, however, that Ruth Devlin saw further into her character than I guessed, and understood the strange contradictions of her nature. But I shall, I suppose, never know absolutely about that; nor does it matter much now. The day succeeding Phil's death was Sunday, and the little church at Viking was full. Many fishers had come over from Sunburst. It was evident that people expected Roscoe to make some reference to Phil's death in his sermon, or, at least, have a part of the service appropriate. By a singular chance the first morning lesson was David's lamentation for Saul and Jonathan. Roscoe had a fine voice. He read easily, naturally--like a cultivated layman, not like a clergyman; like a man who wished to convey the simple meaning of what he read, reverently, honestly. On the many occasions when I heard him read the service, I noticed that he never changed the opening sentence, though there were, of course, others from which to choose. He drew the people to their feet always with these words, spoken as it were directly to them: "When the wicked man turneth away from the wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive." I noticed this morning that he instantly attracted the attention of every one, and held it, with the first words of the lesson: "The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen!" It seemed to me as if the people at first almost tried to stop breathing, so intense was the feeling. Mrs. Falchion was sitting very near me, and though she had worn her veil up at first, as I uncharitably put it then, to disconcert him, she drew it rather quickly down as his reading proceeded; but, so far as I could see, she never took her eyes off his face through the whole service; and, impelled in spite of myself, I watched her closely. Though Ruth Devlin was sitting not far from her, she scarcely looked that way. Evidently the text of the sermon was not chosen that it might have some association with Phil's death, but there was a kind of simple grandeur, and certainly cheerful stalwartness, in his interpretation and practical rendering of the text: "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? . . . travelling in the greatness of his strength? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save." A man was talking to men sensibly, directly, quietly. It was impossible to resist the wholesome eloquence of his temperament; he was a revelation of humanity: what he said had life. I said to myself, as I had before, Is it possible that this man ever did anything unmanly? After the service, James Devlin--with Ruth--came to Roscoe and myself, and asked us to lunch at his house. Roscoe hesitated, but I knew it was better for him not to walk up the hills and back again immediately after luncheon; so I accepted for us both; and Ruth gave me a grateful look. Roscoe seemed almost anxious not to be alone with Ruth--not from any cowardly feeling, but because he was perplexed by the old sense of coming catastrophe, which, indeed, poor fellow, he had some cause to feel. He and Mr. Devlin talked of Phil's funeral and the arrangements that had been made, and during the general conversation Ruth and I dropped behind. Quite abruptly she said to me: "Who is Mrs. Falchion?" "A widow--it is said--rich, unencumbered," I as abruptly answered. "But I suppose even widows may have pedigrees, and be conjugated in the past tense," was the cool reply. She drew herself up a little proudly. I was greatly astonished. Here was a girl living most of her life in these mountains, having only had a few years of social life in the East, practising with considerable skill those arts of conversation so much cultivated in metropolitan drawing-rooms. But I was a very dull fellow then, and had yet to learn that women may develop in a day to wonderful things. "Well," I said in reply, "I suppose not. But I fear I cannot answer regarding the pedigree, nor a great deal about the past, for I only met her under two years ago." "And yet I have imagined that you knew her pretty well, and that Mr. Roscoe knew her even better--perhaps," she said suggestively. "That is so," I tried to say with apparent frankness, "for she lived in the South Seas with her father, and Roscoe knew her there." "She is a strange woman, and quite heartless in some ways; and yet, do you know, I like her while I dislike her; and I cannot tell why." "Do not try to tell," I answered, "for she has the gift of making people do both.--I think she likes and dislikes herself--as well as others." "As well--as others," she replied slowly. "Yes, I think I have noticed that. You see," she added, "I do not look at people as most girls of my age: and perhaps I am no better for that. But Mrs. Falchion's introduction to me occurred in such peculiar circumstances, and the coincidence of your knowing her was so strange, that my interest is not unnatural, I suppose." "On the contrary," I said, "I am only surprised that you have restrained your curiosity so much and so long. It was all very strange; though the meeting was quite to be expected, as Mrs. Falchion herself explained that day. She had determined on coming over to the Pacific Coast; this place was in her way; it is a fashionable resort; and she stood a good chance of finding old friends." "Yes--of finding--old friends," was the abstracted reply. "I like Miss Caron, her companion, very much better than--most women I have met." This was not what she was going to say, but she checked herself, lest she might be suspected of thinking uncharitably of Mrs. Falchion. I, of course, agreed with her, and told her the story of Galt Roscoe and Hector Caron, and of Justine's earnestness regarding her fancied debt to Roscoe. I saw that the poison of anxiety had entered the girl's mind; and it might, perhaps, bear fruit of no engaging quality. In her own home, however, it was a picture to see her with her younger sisters and brothers, and invalid mother. She went about very brightly and sweetly among them, speaking to them as if she was mother to them all, angel of them all, domestic court for them all; as indeed she was. Here there seemed no disturbing element in her; a close observer might even have said (and in this case I fancy I was that) that she had no mind or heart for anything or anybody but these few of her blood and race. Hers was a fine nature--high, wholesome, unselfish. Yet it struck me sadly also, to see how the child-like in her, and her young spirit, had been so early set to the task of defence and protection: a mother at whose breasts a child had never hung; maternal, but without the relieving joys of maternity. I knew that she would carry through her life that too watchful, too anxious tenderness; that to her last day she would look back and not remember that she had a childhood once; because while yet a child she had been made into a woman. Such of the daughters of men make life beautiful; but themselves are selfish who do not see the almost intolerable pathos of unselfishness and sacrifice. At the moment I was bitter with the thought that, if Mrs. Falchion intended anything which could steal away this girl's happiness from her, even for a time, I should myself seek to retaliate--which was, as may appear, in my power. But I could not go to Mrs. Falchion now and say: "You intend some harm to these two: for God's sake go away and leave them alone!" I had no real ground for making such a request. Besides, if there was any catastrophe, any trouble, coming, or possible, that might hasten it, or, at least, give it point. I could only wait. I had laid another plan, and from a telegram I had received in answer to one I had sent, I believed it was working. I did not despair. I had, indeed, sent a cable to my agent in England, which was to be forwarded to the address given me by Boyd Madras at Aden. I had got a reply saying that Boyd Madras had sailed for Canada by the Allan Line of steamers. I had then telegraphed to a lawyer I knew in Montreal, and he had replied that he was on the track of the wanderer. All Viking and Sunburst turned out to Phil Boldrick's funeral. Everything was done that he had requested. The great whistle roared painfully, revolvers and guns were fired over his grave, and the new- formed corporation appeared. He was buried on the top of a foot-hill, which, to this day, is known as Boldricks' Own. The grave was covered by an immense flat stone bearing his name. But a flagstaff was erected near, no stouter one stands on Beachy Head or elsewhere,--and on it was engraved: PHIL BOLDRICK, Buried with Municipal Honours on the Thirtieth day of June 1883. This to his Memory, and for the honour of Viking and Sunburst. "Padre," said a river-driver to Galt Roscoe after the rites were finished, "that was a man you could trust." "Padre," added another, "that was a man you could bank on, and draw your interest reg'lar. He never done a mean thing, and he never pal'd with a mean man. He wasn't for getting his teeth on edge like some in the valley. He didn't always side with the majority, and he had a gift of doin' things on the square." Others spoke in similar fashion, and then Viking went back to work, and we to our mountain cottage. Many days passed quietly. I saw that Galt Roscoe wished to speak to me on the subject perplexing him, but I did not help him. I knew that it would come in good time, and the farther off it was the better. I dreaded to hear what he had to tell, lest, in spite of my confidence in him, it should really be a thing which, if made public, must bring ruin. During the evenings of these days he wrote much in his diary--the very book that lies by me now. Writing seemed a relief to him, for he was more cheerful afterwards. I know that he had received letters from the summer hotel, but whether they were from Mrs. Falchion or Justine Caron I was not then aware, though I afterwards came to know that one of them was from Justine, asking him if she might call on him. He guessed that the request was connected with Hector Caron's death; and, of course, gave his consent. During this time he did not visit Ruth Devlin, nor did he mention her name. As for myself, I was sick of the whole business, and wished it well over, whatever the result. I make here a few extracts from Roscoe's diary, to show the state of his mind at this period: Can a man never get away from the consequences of his wickedness, even though he repents? . . . Restitution is necessary as well as repentance; but when one cannot make restitution, when it is impossible--what then? I suppose one has to reply, Well, you have to suffer, that is all. . . . Poor Alo! To think that after all these years, you can strike me! There is something malicious in the way Mercy Falchion crosses my path. What she knows, she knows; and what she can do if she chooses, I must endure. I cannot love Mercy Falchion again, and that, I suppose, is the last thing she would wish now. I cannot bring Alo back. But how does that concern her! Why does she hate me so? For, underneath her kindest words,--and they are kind sometimes,--I can detect the note of enmity, of calculating scorn. . . . I wish I could go to Ruth and tell her all, and ask her to decide if she can take a man with such a past. . . . What a thing it is to have had a clean record of unflinching manliness at one's back! I add another extract: Phil's story of Danger Mountain struck like ice at my heart. There was a horrible irony in the thing: that it should be told to me, of all the world, and at such a time. Some would say, I suppose, that it was the arrangement of Providence. Not to speak it profanely, it seems to be the achievement of the devil. The torture was too malicious for God. . . . Phil's letter has gone to his pal at Danger Mountain. . . . The fourth day after the funeral Justine Caron came to see Galt Roscoe. This was the substance of their conversation, as I came to know long afterwards. "Monsieur," she said, "I have come to pay something of a debt which I owe to you. It is a long time since you gave my poor Hector burial, but I have never forgotten, and I have brought you at last--you must not shake your head so--the money you spent. . . . But you MUST take it. I should be miserable if you did not. The money is all that I can repay; the kindness is for memory and gratitude always." He looked at her wonderingly, earnestly, she seemed so unworldly, standing there, her life's ambition not stirring beyond duty to her dead. If goodness makes beauty, she was beautiful; and yet, besides all that, she had a warm, absorbing eye, a soft, rounded cheek, and she carried in her face the light of a cheerful, engaging spirit. "Will it make you happier if I take the money?" he said at last, and his voice showed how she had moved him. "So much happier!" she answered, and she put a roll of notes into his hand. "Then I will take it," he replied, with a manner not too serious, and he looked at the notes carefully; "but only what I actually spent, remember; what I told you when you wrote me at Hector's death; not this ample interest. You forget, Miss Caron, that your brother was my friend." "No I cannot forget that. It lives with me," she rejoined softly. But she took back the surplus notes. "And I have my gratitude left still," she added, smiling. "Believe me, there is no occasion for gratitude. Why, what less could one do?" "One could pass by on the other side." "He was not fallen among thieves," was his reply; "he was among Englishmen, the old allies of the French." "But the Priests and the Levites, people of his own country--Frenchmen-- passed him by. They were infamous in falsehood, cruel to him and to me. --You are an Englishman; you have heart and kindness." He hesitated, then he gravely said: "Do not trust Englishmen more than you trust your own countrymen. We are selfish even in our friendships often. We stick to one person, and to benefit that one we sacrifice others. Have you found all Englishmen--and WOMEN unselfish?" He looked at her steadily; but immediately repented that he had asked the question, for he had in his mind one whom they both knew, too well, perhaps; and he added quickly: "You see, I am not kind." They were standing now in the sunlight just outside the house. His hands were thrust down in the pockets of his linen coat; her hands opening and shutting her parasol slightly. They might, from their appearance, have been talking of very inconsequent things. Her eyes lifted sorrowfully to his. "Ah, monsieur," she rejoined, "there are two times when one must fear a woman." She answered his question more directly than he could have conjectured. But she felt that she must warn him. "I do not understand," he said. "Of course you do not. Only women themselves understand that the two times when one must fear a woman are when she hates, and when she loves-- after a kind. When she gets wicked or mad enough to hate, either through jealousy or because she cannot love where she would, she is merciless. She does not know the honour of the game. She has no pity. Then, sometimes when she loves in a way, she is, as you say, most selfish. I mean a love which--is not possible. Then she does some mad act--all women are a little mad sometimes. Most of us wish to be good, but we are quicksilver. . . ." Roscoe's mind had been working fast. He saw she meant to warn him against Mrs. Falchion. His face flushed slightly. He knew that Justine had thought well of him, and now he knew also that she suspected something not creditable or, at least, hazardous in his life. "And the man--the man whom the woman hates?" "When the woman hates--and loves too, the man is in danger." "Do you know of such a man?" he almost shrinkingly said. "If I did I would say to him, The world is wide. There is no glory in fighting a woman who will not be fair in battle. She will say what may appear to be true, but what she knows in her own heart to be false--false and bad." Roscoe now saw that Justine had more than an inkling of his story. He said calmly: "You would advise that man to flee from danger?" "Yes, to flee," she replied hurriedly, with a strange anxiety in her eyes; "for sometimes a woman is not satisfied with words that kill. She becomes less than human, and is like Jael." Justine knew that Mrs. Falchion held a sword over Roscoe's career; she guessed that Mrs. Falchion both cared for him and hated him too; but she did not know the true reason of the hatred--that only came out afterwards. Woman-like, she exaggerated in order that she might move him; but her motive was good, and what she said was not out of keeping with the facts of life. "The man's life even might be in danger?" he asked. "It might." "But surely that is not so dreadful," he still said calmly. "Death is not the worst of evils." "No, not the worst; one has to think of the evil word as well. The evil word can be outlived; but the man must think of those who really love him--who would die to save him--and whose hearts would break if he were killed. Love can outlive slander, but it is bitter when it has to outlive both slander and death. It is easy to love with joy so long as both live, though there are worlds between. Thoughts fly and meet; but Death makes the great division. . . . Love can only live in the pleasant world." Very abstractedly he said: "Is it a pleasant world to you?" She did not reply directly to that, but answered: "Monsieur, if you know of such a man as I speak of, warn him to fly." And she raised her eyes from the ground and looked earnestly at him. Now her face was slightly flushed, she looked almost beautiful. "I know of such a man," he replied, "but he will not go. He has to answer to his own soul and his conscience. He is not without fear, but it is only fear for those who care for him, be they ever so few. And he hopes that they will be brave enough to face his misery, if it must come. For we know that courage has its hour of comfort. . . . When such a man as you speak of has his dark hour he will stand firm." Then with a great impulse he added: "This man whom I know did wrong, but he was falsely accused of doing a still greater. The consequence of the first thing followed him. He could never make restitution. Years went by. Some one knew that dark spot in his life--his Nemesis." "The worst Nemesis in this life, monsieur, is always a woman," she interrupted. "Perhaps she is the surest," he continued. "The woman faced him in the hour of his peace and--" he paused. His voice was husky. "Yes, 'and,' monsieur?" "And he knows that she would ruin him, and kill his heart and destroy his life." "The waters of Marah are bitter," she murmured, and she turned her face away from him to the woods. There was no trouble there. The birds were singing, black squirrels were jumping from bough to bough, and they could hear the tapping of the woodpecker. She slowly drew on her gloves, as if for occupation. He spoke at length as though thinking aloud: "But he knows that, whatever comes, life has had for him more compensations than he deserves. For, in his trouble, a woman came, and said kind words, and would have helped him if she could." "There were TWO women," she said solemnly. "Two women?" he repeated slowly. "The one stayed in her home and prayed, and the other came." "I do not understand," he said: and he spoke truly. "Love is always praying for its own, therefore one woman prayed at home. The other woman who came was full of gratitude, for the man was noble, she owed him a great debt, and she believed in him always. She knew that if at any time in his life he had done wrong, the sin was without malice or evil." "The woman is gentle and pitiful with him, God knows." She spoke quietly now, and her gravity looked strange in one so young. "God knows she is just, and would see him fairly treated. She is so far beneath him! and yet one can serve a friend though one is humble and poor." "How strange," he rejoined, "that the man should think himself miserable who is befriended in such a way! Mademoiselle, he will carry to his grave the kindness of this woman." "Monsieur," she added humbly, yet with a brave light in her eyes, "it is good to care whether the wind blows bitter or kind. Every true woman is a mother, though she have no child. She longs to protect the suffering, because to protect is in her so far as God is. . . . Well, this woman cares that way. . . ." She held out her hand to say good-bye. Her look was simple, direct, and kind. Their parting words were few and unremarkable. Roscoe watched Justine Caron as she passed out into the shade of the woods, and he said to himself: "Gratitude like that is a wonderful thing." He should have said something else, but he did not know, and she did not wish him to know: and he never knew. CHAPTER XVI A DUEL IN ARCADY The more I thought of Mrs. Falchion's attitude towards Roscoe, the more I was puzzled. But I had at last reduced the position to this: Years ago Roscoe had cared for her and she had not cared for him. Angered or indignant at her treatment of him, Roscoe's affections declined unworthily elsewhere. Then came a catastrophe of some kind, in which Alo (whoever she was) suffered. The secret of this catastrophe Mrs. Falchion, as I believe, held. There was a parting, a lapse of years, and then the meeting on the 'Fulvia': with it, partial restoration of Mrs. Falchion's influence, then its decline, and then a complete change of position. It was now Mrs. Falchion that cared, and Roscoe that shunned. It perplexed me that there seemed to be behind Mrs. Falchion's present regard for Roscoe some weird expression of vengeance, as though somehow she had been wronged, and it was her duty to punish. In no other way was the position definable. That Roscoe would never marry her was certain to my mind. That he could not marry her now was also certain--to me; I had the means to prevent it. That she wished to marry him I was not sure, though she undoubtedly cared for him. Remained, therefore, the supposition that if he cared for her she would do him no harm, as to his position. But if he married Ruth, disaster would come-- Roscoe himself acknowledged that she held the key of his fortunes. Upon an impulse, and as a last resort, I had taken action whereby in some critical moment I might be able to wield a power over Mrs. Falchion. I was playing a blind game, but it was the only card I held. I had heard from the lawyer in Montreal that Madras, under another name, had gone to the prairie country to enter the mounted police. I had then telegraphed to Winnipeg, but had got no answer. I had seen her many times, but we had never, except very remotely, touched upon the matter which was uppermost in both our minds. It was not my wish to force the situation. I knew that my opportunity would come wherein to spy upon the mind of the enemy. It came. On the evening that Justine Caron called upon Roscoe, I accidentally met Mrs. Falchion in the grounds of the hotel. She was with several people, and as I spoke to her she made a little gesture of invitation. I went over, was introduced to her companions, and then she said: "Dr. Marmion, I have not yet made that visit to the salmon-fishers at Sunburst. Unfortunately, on the days when I called on Miss Devlin, my time was limited. But now I have a thirst for adventure, and time hangs heavy. Will you perform your old office of escort, and join a party, which we can make up here, to go there to-morrow?" I had little love for Mrs. Falchion, but I consented, because it seemed to me the chance had come for an effective talk with her; and I suggested that we should go late in the afternoon of the next day, and remain till night and see the Indians, the half-breeds, and white fishermen working by torch-light on the river. The proposition was accepted with delight. Then the conversation turned upon the feud that existed between Viking and Sunburst, the river-drivers and the fishers. During the last few days, owing to the fact that there were a great many idle river-men about, the river-driving for the season being done, there had been more than one quarrel of a serious nature at Sunburst. It had needed a great deal of watchfulness on the part of Mr. Devlin and his supporters to prevent fighting. In Sunburst itself, Mr. Devlin had much personal influence. He was a man of exceedingly strong character, bold, powerful, persuasive. But this year there had been a large number of rough, adventurous characters among the river-men, and they seemed to take delight in making sport of, and even interfering with, the salmon- fishers. We talked of these things for some time, and then I took my leave. As I went, Mrs. Falchion stepped after me, tapped me on the arm, and said in a slow, indolent tone: "Whenever you and I meet, Dr. Marmion, something happens--something strange. What particular catastrophe have you arranged for to-morrow? For you are, you know, the chorus to the drama." "Do not spoil the play by anticipation," I said. "One gets very weary of tragedy," she retorted. "Comedy would be a relief. Could you not manage it?" "I do not know about to-morrow," I said, "as to a comedy. But I promise you that one of these days I will present to you the very finest comedy imaginable." "You speak oracularly," she said; "still you are a professor, and professors always pose. But now, to be perfectly frank with you, I do not believe that any comedy you could arrange would be as effective as your own." "You have read 'Much Ado about Nothing'," I said. "Oh, it is as good as that, is it?" she asked. "Well, it has just as good a final situation," I answered. She seemed puzzled, for she saw I spoke with some undercurrent of meaning. "Mrs. Falchion," I said to her suddenly and earnestly, "I wish you to think between now and to-morrow of what I am just going to say to you." "It sounds like the task set an undergraduate, but go on," she said. "I wish you to think," said I, "of the fact that I helped to save your life." She flushed; an indignant look shot into her face, and her voice vibrating, she said: "What man would have done less?" Then, almost immediately after, as though repenting of what she had said, she continued in a lower tone and with a kind of impulsiveness uncommon to her: "But you had courage, and I appreciate that; still, do not ask too much. Good-night." We parted at that, and did not meet again until the next afternoon, when I joined her and her party at the summer hotel. Together we journeyed down to Sunburst. It was the height of the salmon-fishing season. Sunburst lay cloyed among the products of field and forest and stream. At Viking one got the impression of a strong pioneer life, vibrant, eager, and with a touch of Arcady. But viewed from a distance Sunburst seemed Arcady itself. It was built in green pastures, which stretched back on one side of the river, smooth, luscious, undulating to the foot-hills. This was on one side of the Whi-Whi River. On the other side was a narrow margin, and then a sheer wall of hills in exquisite verdure. The houses were of wood, and chiefly painted white, sweet and cool in the vast greenness. Cattle wandered shoulders deep in the rich grass, and fruit of all kinds was to be had for the picking. The population was strangely mixed. Men had drifted here from all parts of the world, sometimes with their families, sometimes without them. Many of them had settled here after mining at the Caribou field and other places on the Frazer River. Mexican, Portuguese, Canadian, Californian, Australian, Chinaman, and coolie lived here, side by side, at ease in the quiet land, following a primitive occupation with primitive methods. One could pick out the Indian section of the village, because not far from it was the Indian graveyard, with its scaffolding of poles and brush and its offerings for the dead. There were almost interminable rows of scaffolding on the river's edge and upon the high bank where hung the salmon drying in the sun. The river, as it ambled along, here over shallows, there over rapids and tiny waterfalls, was the pathway for millions and millions of salmon upon a pilgrimage to the West and North-- to the happy hunting grounds of spawn. They came in droves so thick at times that, crowding up the little creeks which ran into the river, they filled them so completely as to dam up the water and make the courses a solid mass of living and dead fish. In the river itself they climbed the rapids and leaped the little waterfalls with incredible certainty; except where man had prepared his traps for them. Sometimes these traps were weirs or by-washes, made of long lateral tanks of wicker-work. Down among the boulders near the shore, scaffoldings were raised, and from these the fishermen with nets and wicker-work baskets caught the fish as they came up. We wandered about during the afternoon immensely interested in all that we saw. During that time the party was much together, and my conversation with Mrs. Falchion was general. We had supper at a quiet little tavern, idled away an hour in drinking in the pleasant scene; and when dusk came went out again to the banks of the river. From the time we left the tavern to wander by the river I managed to be a good deal alone with Mrs. Falchion. I do not know whether she saw that I was anxious to speak with her privately, but I fancy she did. Whatever we had to say must, in the circumstances, however serious, be kept superficially unimportant. And, as it happened, our serious conference was carried on with an air of easy gossip, combined with a not artificial interest in all we saw. And there was much to see. Far up and down the river the fragrant dusk was spotted with the smoky red light of torches, and the atmosphere shook with shadows, through which ran the song of the river, more amiable than the song of the saw, and the low, weird cry of the Indians and white men as they toiled for salmon in the glare of the torches. Here upon a scaffolding a half-dozen swung their nets and baskets in the swift river, hauling up with their very long poles thirty or forty splendid fish in an hour; there at a small cascade, in great baskets sunk into the water, a couple of Indians caught and killed the salmon that, in trying to leap the fall, plumped into the wicker cage; beyond, others, more idle and less enterprising, speared the finny travellers, thus five hundred miles from home--the brave Pacific. Upon the banks the cleaning and curing went on, the women and children assisting, and as the Indians and half-breeds worked they sang either the wild Indian melodies, snatches of brave old songs of the 'voyageurs' of a past century, or hymns taught by the Jesuit missionaries in the persons of such noble men as Pere Lacombe and Pere Durieu, who have wandered up and down the vast plains of both sides of the Rockies telling an old story in a picturesque, heroic way. These old hymns were written in Chinook, that strange language,--French, English, Spanish, Indian, arranged by the Hudson's Bay Company, which is, like the wampum-belt, a common tongue for tribes and peoples not speaking any language but their own. They were set to old airs--lullabies, chansons, barcarolles, serenades, taken out of the folk-lore of many lands. Time and again had these simple arcadian airs been sung as a prelude to some tribal act that would not bear the search-light of civilisation--little by the Indians east of the Rockies, for they have hard hearts and fierce tongues, but much by the Shuswaps, Siwashes, and other tribes of the Pacific slope, whose natures are for peace more than for war; who, one antique day, drifted across from Japan or the Corea, and never, even in their wild, nomadic state, forgot their skill and craft in wood and gold and silver. We sat on the shore and watched the scene for a time, saying nothing. Now and again, as from scaffolding to scaffolding, from boat to boat, and from house to house, the Chinook song rang and was caught up in a slow monotone, so not interfering with the toil, there came the sound of an Indian drum beaten indolently, or the rattle of dry hard sticks--a fantastic accompaniment. "Does it remind you of the South Seas?" I asked Mrs. Falchion, as, with her chin on her hand, she watched the scene. She drew herself up, almost with an effort, as though she had been lost in thought, and looked at me curiously for a moment. She seemed trying to call back her mind to consider my question. Presently she answered me: "Very little. There is something finer, stronger here. The atmosphere has more nerve, the life more life. This is not a land for the idle or vicious, pleasant as it is." "What a thinker you are, Mrs. Falchion!" She seemed to recollect herself suddenly. Her voice took on an inflection of satire. "You say it with the air of a discoverer. With Columbus and Hervey and you, the world--" She stopped, laughing softly at the thrust, and moved the dust about with her foot. "In spite of the sarcasm, I am going to add that I feel a personal satisfaction in your being a woman who does think, and acts more on thought than impulse." "'Personal satisfaction' sounds very royal and august. It is long, I imagine, since you took a--personal satisfaction--in me." I was not to be daunted. "People who think a good deal and live a fresh, outdoor life--you do that--naturally act most fairly and wisely in time of difficulty--and contretemps." "But I had the impression that you thought I acted unfairly and unwisely --at such times." We had come exactly where I wanted. In our minds we were both looking at those miserable scenes on the 'Fulvia', when Madras sought to adjust the accounts of life and sorely muddled them. "But," said I, "you are not the same woman that you were." "Indeed, Sir Oracle," she answered: "and by what necromancy do you know?" "By none. I think you are sorry now--I hope you are--for what--" She interrupted me indignantly. "You go too far. You are almost-- unbearable. You said once that the matter should be buried, and yet here you work for an opportunity, Heaven knows why, to place me at a disadvantage!" "Pardon me," I answered; "I said that I would never bring up those wretched scenes unless there was cause. There is cause." She got to her feet. "What cause--what possible cause can there be?" I met her eye firmly. "I am bound to stand by my friend," I said. "I can and I will stand by him." "If it is a game of drawn swords, beware!" she retorted. "You speak to me as if I were a common adventuress. You mistake me, and forget that you--of all men--have little margin of high morality on which to speculate." "No, I do not forget that," I said, "nor do I think of you as an adventuress. But I am sure you hold a power over my friend, and--" She stopped me. "Not one word more on the subject. You are not to suppose this or that. Be wise do not irritate and annoy a woman like me. It were better to please me than to preach to me." "Mrs. Falchion," I said firmly, "I wish to please you--so well that some day you will feel that I have been a good friend to you as well as to him--" Again she interrupted me. "You talk in foolish riddles. No good can come of this." "I cannot believe that," I urged; "for when once your heart is moved by the love of a man, you will be just, and then the memory of another man who loved you and sinned for you--" "Oh, you coward!" she broke out scornfully--"you coward to persist in this!" I made a little motion of apology with my hand, and was silent. I was satisfied. I felt that I had touched her as no words of mine had ever touched her before. If she became emotional, was vulnerable in her feelings, I knew that Roscoe's peace might be assured. That she loved Roscoe now I was quite certain. Through the mists I could see a way, even if I failed to find Madras and arrange another surprising situation. She was breathing hard with excitement. Presently she said with incredible quietness, "Do not force me to do hard things. I have a secret." "I have a secret too," I answered. "Let us compromise." "I do not fear your secret," she answered. She thought I was referring to her husband's death. "Well," I replied, "I honestly hope you never will. That would be a good day for you." "Let us go," she said; then, presently: "No, let us sit here and forget that we have been talking." I was satisfied. We sat down. She watched the scene silently, and I watched her. I felt that it would be my lot to see stranger things happen to her than I had seen before; but all in a different fashion. I had more hope for my friend, for Ruth Devlin, for--! I then became silent even to myself. The weltering river, the fishers and their labour and their songs, the tall dark hills, the deep gloomy pastures, the flaring lights, were then in a dream before me; but I was thinking, planning. As we sat there, we heard noises, not very harmonious, interrupting the song of the salmon-fishers. We got up to see. A score of river-drivers were marching down through the village, mocking the fishers and making wild mirth. The Indians took little notice, but the half-breeds and white fishers were restless. "There will be trouble here one day," said Mrs. Falchion. "A free fight which will clear the air," I said. "I should like to see it--it would be picturesque, at least," she added cheerfully; "for I suppose no lives would be lost." "One cannot tell," I answered; "lives do not count so much in new lands." "Killing is hateful, but I like to see courage." And she did see it. CHAPTER XVII RIDING THE REEFS The next afternoon Roscoe was sitting on the coping deep in thought, when Ruth rode up with her father, dismounted, and came upon him so quietly that he did not hear her. I was standing in the trees a little distance away. She spoke to him once, but he did not seem to hear. She touched his arm. He got to his feet. "You were so engaged that you did not hear me," she said. "The noise of the rapids!" he answered, after a strange pause, "and your footstep is very light." She leaned her chin on her hand, rested against the rail of the coping, looked meditatively into the torrent below, and replied: "Is it so light?" Then after a pause: "You have not asked me how I came, who came with me, or why I am here." "It was first necessary for me to conceive the delightful fact that you are here," he said in a dazed, and, therefore, not convincing tone. She looked him full in the eyes. "Please do not pay me the ill compliment of a compliment," she said. "Was it the sailor who spoke then or the--or yourself? It is not like you." "I did not mean it as a compliment," he replied. "I was thinking about critical and important things." "'Critical and important' sounds large," she returned. "And the awakening was sudden," he continued. "You must make allowance, please, for--" "For the brusque appearance of a very unimaginative, substantial, and undreamlike person? I do. And now, since you will not put me quite at my ease by assuming, in words, that I have been properly 'chaperoned' here, I must inform you that my father waits hard by--is, as my riotous young brother says, 'without on the mat.'" "I am very glad," he replied with more politeness than exactness. "That I was duly escorted, or that my father is 'without on the mat'? . . . However, you do not appear glad one way or the other. And now I must explain our business. It is to ask your company at dinner (do consider yourself honoured--actually a formal dinner party in the Rockies!) to meet the lieutenant-governor, who is coming to see our famous Viking and Sunburst. . . . But you are expected to go out where my father feeds his--there, see--his horse on your 'trim parterre.' And now that I have done my duty as page and messenger without a word of assistance, Mr. Roscoe, will you go and encourage my father to hope that you will be vis-a-vis to his excellency?" She lightly beat the air with her whip, while I took a good look at the charming scene. Roscoe looked seriously at the girl for an instant. He understood too well the source of such gay social banter. He knew it covered a hurt. He said to her: "Is this Ruth Devlin or another?" And she replied very gravely: "It is Ruth Devlin and another too," and she looked down to the chasm beneath with a peculiar smile; and her eyes were troubled. He left her and went and spoke to her father whom I had joined, but, after a moment, returned to Ruth. Ruth turned slightly to meet him as he came. "And is the prestige of the house of Devlin to be supported?" she said; "and the governor to be entertained with tales of flood and field?" His face had now settled into a peculiar calmness. He said with a touch of mock irony: "The sailor shall play his part--the obedient retainer of the house of Devlin." "Oh," she said, "you are malicious now! You turn your long accomplished satire on a woman." And she nodded to the hills opposite, as if to tell them that it was as they had said to her: those grand old hills with which she had lived since childhood, to whom she had told all that had ever happened to her. "No, indeed no," he replied, "though I am properly rebuked. I fear I am malicious--just a little, but it is all inner-self-malice: 'Rome turned upon itself.'" "But one cannot always tell when irony is intended for the speaker of it. Yours did not seem applied to yourself," was her slow answer, and she seemed more interested in Mount Trinity than in him. "No?" Then he said with a playful sadness: "A moment ago you were not completely innocent of irony, were you?" "But a man is big and broad, and should not--he should be magnanimous, leaving it to woman, whose life is spent among little things, to be guilty of littlenesses. But see how daring I am--speaking like this to you who know so much more than I do. . . . Surely, you are still only humorous, when you speak of irony turned upon yourself--the irony so icy to your friends?" She had developed greatly. Her mind had been sharpened by pain. The edge of her wit had become poignant, her speech rendered logical and allusive. Roscoe was wise enough to understand that the change in her had been achieved by the change in himself; that since Mrs. Falchion came, Ruth had awakened sharply to a distress not exactly definable. She felt that though he had never spoken of love to her, she had a right to share his troubles. The infrequency of his visits to her of late, and something in his manner, made her uneasy and a little bitter. For there was an understanding between them, though it had been unspoken and unwritten. They had vowed without priest or witness. The heart speaks eloquently in symbols first, and afterwards in stumbling words. It seemed to Roscoe at this moment, as it had seemed for some time, that the words would never be spoken. And was this all that had troubled her --the belief that Mrs. Falchion had some claim upon his life? Or had she knowledge, got in some strange way, of that wretched shadow in his past? This possibility filled him with bitterness. The old Adam in him awoke, and he said within himself "God in heaven, must one folly, one sin, kill me and her too? Why me more than another! . . . And I love her, I love her!" His eyes flamed until their blue looked all black, and his brows grew straight over them sharply, making his face almost stern. . . . There came swift visions of renouncing his present life; of going with her-- anywhere: to tell her all, beg her forgiveness, and begin life over again, admitting that this attempt at expiation was a mistake; to have his conscience clear of secret, and trust her kindness. For now he was sure that Mrs. Falchion meant to make his position as a clergyman impossible; to revenge herself on him for no wrong that, as far as he knew, he ever did directly to her. But to tell this girl, or even her father or mother, that he had been married, after a shameful, unsanctified fashion, to a savage, with what came after, and the awful thing that happened--he who ministered at the altar! Now that he looked the thing in the face it shocked him. No, he could not do it. She said to him, while he looked at her as though he would read her through and through, though his mind was occupied with a dreadful possibility beyond her: "Why do you look so? You are stern. You are critical. Have I-- disimproved so?" The words were full of a sudden and natural womanly fear, that something in herself had fallen in value. They had a pathos so much the more moving because she sought to hide it. There swam before his eyes the picture of happiness from which she herself had roused him when she came. He involuntarily, passionately, caught her hand and pressed it to his lips twice; but spoke nothing. "Oh! oh!--please!" she said. Her voice was low and broken, and she spoke appealingly. Could he not see that he was breaking her heart, while filling it also with unbearable joy? Why did he not speak and make this possible, and not leave it a thing to flush her cheeks, and cause her to feel he had acted on a knowledge he had no right to possess till he had declared himself in speech? Could he not have spared her that?-- This Christian gentleman, whose worth had compassed these mountains and won the dwellers among them--it was bitter. Her pride and injured heart rose up and choked her. He let go her hand. Now his face was partly turned from her, and she saw how thin and pale it was. She saw, too, what I had seen during the past week, that his hair had become almost white about the temples; and the moveless sadness of his position struck her with unnatural force, so that, in spite of herself, tears came suddenly to her eyes, and a slight moan broke from her. She would have run away; but it was too late. He saw the tears, the look of pity, indignation, pride, and love in her face. "My love!" he cried passionately. He opened his arms to her. But she stood still. He came very close to her, spoke quickly, and almost despairingly: "Ruth, I love you, and I have wronged you; but here is your place, if you will come." At first she seemed stunned, and her face was turned to her mountains, as though the echo of his words were coming back to her from them, but the thing crept into her heart and flooded it. She seemed to wake, and then all her affection carried her into his arms, and she dried her eyes upon his breast. After a time he whispered, "My dear, I have wronged you. I should not have made you care for me." She did not seem to notice that he spoke of wrong. She said: "I was yours, Galt, even from the beginning, I think, though I did not quite know it. I remember what you read in church the first Sunday you came, and it has always helped me; for I wanted to be good." She paused and raised her eyes to his, and then with sweet solemnity she said: "The words were: "'The Lord God is my strength, and He will make my feet like hinds' feet, and He will make me to walk upon mine high places.'" "Ruth," he answered, "you have always walked on the high places. You have never failed. And you are as safe as the nest of the eagle, a noble work of God." "No, I am not noble; but I should like to be so. Most women like goodness. It is instinct with us, I suppose. We had rather be good than evil, and when we love we can do good things; but we quiver like the compass-needle between two poles. Oh, believe me! we are weak; but we are loving." "Your worst, Ruth, is as much higher than my best as the heaven is--" "Galt, you hurt my fingers!" she interrupted. He had not noticed the almost fierce strength of his clasp. But his life was desperately hungry for her. "Forgive me, dearest.--As I said, better than my best; for, Ruth, my life was--wicked, long ago. You cannot understand how wicked!" "You are a clergyman and a good man," she said, with pathetic negation. "You give me a heart unsoiled, unspotted of the world. I have been in some ways worse than the worst men in the valley there below." "Galt, Galt, you shock me!" she said. "Why did I speak? Why did I kiss your hand as I did? Because at the moment it was the only honest thing to do; because it was due you that I should say: 'Ruth, I love you, love you so much'"--here she nestled close to him--"'so well, that everything else in life is as nothing beside it --nothing! so well that I could not let you share my wretchedness.'" She ran her hand along his breast and looked up at him with swimming eyes. "And you think that this is fair to me? that a woman gives the heart for pleasant weather only? I do not know what your sorrow may be, but it is my right to share it. I am only a woman; but a woman can be strong for those she loves. Remember that I have always had to care for others-- always; and I can bear much. I will not ask what your trouble is, I only ask you"--here she spoke slowly and earnestly, and rested her hand on his shoulder--"to say to me that you love no other woman; and that--that no other woman has a claim upon you. Then I shall be content to pity you, to help you, to love you. God gives women many pains, but none so great as the love that will not trust utterly; for trust is our bread of life. Yes, indeed, indeed!" "I dare not say," he said, "that it is your misfortune to love me, for in this you show how noble a woman can be. But I will say that the cup is bitter-sweet for you. . . . I cannot tell you now what my trouble is; but I can say that no other living woman has a claim upon me. . . . My reckoning is with the dead." "That is with God," she whispered, "and He is just and merciful too. . . . Can it not be repaired here?" She smoothed back his hair, then let her fingers stray lightly on his cheek. It hurt him like death to reply. "No, but there can be punishment here." She shuddered slightly. "Punishment, punishment," she repeated fearfully--"what punishment?" "I do not quite know." Lines of pain grew deeper in his face. . . . "Ruth, how much can a woman forgive?" "A mother, everything." But she would say no more. He looked at her long and earnestly, and said at last: "Will you believe in me no matter what happens?" "Always, always." Her smile was most winning. "If things should appear dark against me?" "Yes, if you give me your word." "If I said to you that I did a wrong; that I broke the law of God, though not the laws of man?" There was a pause in which she drew back, trembling slightly, and looked at him timidly and then steadily, but immediately put her hands bravely in his, and said: "Yes." "I did not break the laws of man." "It was when you were in the navy?" she inquired, in an awe-stricken tone. "Yes, years ago." "I know. I feel it. You must not tell me. It was a woman, and this other woman, this Mrs. Falchion knows, and she would try to ruin you, or"--here she seemed to be moved suddenly by a new thought--"or have you love her. But she shall not, she shall not--neither! For I will love you, and God will listen to me, and answer me." "Would to Heaven I were worthy of you! I dare not think of where you might be called to follow me, Ruth." "'Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God,'" she rejoined in a low voice. "'Thy God my God!'" he repeated after her slowly. He suddenly wondered if his God was her God; whether now, in his trouble, he had that comfort which his creed and profession should give him. For the first time he felt acutely that his choice of this new life might have been more a reaction from the past, a desire for expiation, than radical belief that this was the right and only thing for him to do. And when, some time after, he bade Ruth good-bye, as she went with her father, it came to him with appalling conviction that his life had been a mistake. The twist of a great wrong in a man's character distorts his vision; and if he has a tender conscience he magnifies his misdeeds. In silence Roscoe and I watched the two ride down the slope. I guessed what had happened: afterwards I was told all. I was glad of it, though the end was not yet promising. When we turned to go towards the house again, a man lounged out of the trees towards us. He looked at me, then at Roscoe, and said: "I'm Phil Boldrick's pal from Danger Mountain." Roscoe held out his hand, and the man took it, saying: "You're The Padre, I suppose, and Phil was soft on you. Didn't turn religious, did he? He always had a streak of God A'mighty in him; a kind of give-away-the-top-of-your-head chap; friend o' the widow and the orphan, and divvy to his last crust with a pal. I got your letter, and come over here straight to see that he's been tombed accordin' to his virtues; to lay out the dollars he left me on the people he had on his visitin' list; no loafers, no gophers, not one; but to them that stayed by him I stay, while prog and liquor last." I saw Roscoe looking at him in an abstracted way, and, as he did not reply, I said: "Phil had many friends and no enemies." Then I told him the tale of his death and funeral, and how the valley mourned for him. While I spoke he stood leaning against a tree, shaking his head and listening, his eyes occasionally resting on Roscoe with a look as abstracted and puzzled as that on Roscoe's face. When I had finished he drew his hand slowly down his beard and a thick sound came from behind his fingers. But he did not speak. Then I suggested quietly that Phil's dollars could be put to a better use than for prog and liquor. He did not reply to this at all; but after a moment's pause, in which he seemed to be studying the gambols of a squirrel in a pine tree, he rubbed his chin nervously, and more in soliloquy than conversation said: "I never had but two pals that was pals through and through. And one was Phil and the other was Jo--Jo Brackenbury." Here Roscoe's hand, which had been picking at the bark of a poplar, twitched suddenly. The man continued: "Poor Jo went down in the 'Fly Away' when she swung with her bare ribs flat before the wind, and swamped and tore upon the bloody reefs at Apia. . . . God, how they gnawed her! And never a rag holdin' nor a stick standin', and her pretty figger broke like a tin whistle in a Corliss engine. And Jo Brackenbury, the dandiest rip, the noisiest pal that ever said 'Here's how!' went out to heaven on a tearing sea." "Jo Brackenbury--" Roscoe repeated musingly. His head was turned away from us. "Yes, Jo Brackenbury; and Captain Falchion said to me" (I wonder that I did not start then) "when I told him how the 'Fly Away' went down to Davy, and her lovers went aloft, reefed close afore the wind--'Then,' says he, 'they've got a damned sound seaman on the Jordan, and so help me! him that's good enough to row my girl from open sea, gales poundin' and breakers showin' teeth across the bar to Maita Point, is good enough for use where seas is still and reefs ain't fashionable.'" Roscoe's face looked haggard as it now turned towards us. "If you will meet me," he said to the stranger, "to-morrow morning, in Mr. Devlin's office at Viking, I will hand you over Phil Boldrick's legacy." The man made as if he would shake hands with Roscoe, who appeared not to notice the motion, and then said: "I'll be there. You can bank on that; and, as we used to say down in the Spicy Isles, where neither of you have been, I s'pose, Talofa!" He swung away down the hillside. Roscoe turned to me. "You see, Marmion, all things circle to a centre. The trail seems long, but the fox gets killed an arm's length from his hole." "Not always. You take it too seriously," I said. "You are no fox." "That man will be in at the death," he persisted. "Nonsense, Roscoe. He does not know you. What has he to do with you? This is overwrought nerves. You are killing yourself with worry." He was motionless and silent for a minute. Then he said very quietly: "No, I do not think that I really worry now. I have known"--here he laid his hand upon my shoulder and his eyes had a shining look--"what it is to be happy, unspeakably happy, for a moment; and that stays with me. I am a coward no longer." He drew his finger tips slowly across his forehead. Then he continued: "To-morrow I shall be angry with myself, no doubt, for having that moment's joy, but I cannot feel so now. I shall probably condemn myself for cruel selfishness; but I have touched life's highest point this afternoon, Marmion." I drew his hand down from my shoulder and pressed it. It was cold. He withdrew his eyes from the mountain, and said: "I have had dreams, Marmion, and they are over. I lived in one: to expiate--to wipe out-- a past, by spending my life for others. The expiation is not enough. I lived in another: to win a woman's love; and I have, and was caught up by it for a moment, and it was wonderful. But it is over now, quite over. . . . And now for her sake renunciation must be made, before I have another dream--a long one, Marmion." I had forebodings, but I pulled myself together and said firmly: "Roscoe, these are fancies. Stop it, man. You are moody. Come, let us walk, and talk of other things." "No, we will not walk," he said, "but let us sit there on the coping and be quiet--quiet in that roar between the hills." Suddenly he swung round, caught me by the shoulders and held me gently so. "I have a pain at my heart, Marmion, as if I'd heard my death sentence; such as a soldier feels who knows that Death looks out at him from iron eyes. You smile: I suppose you think I am mad." I saw that it was best to let him speak his mind. So I answered: "Not mad, my friend. Say on what you like. Tell me all you feel. Only, for God's sake be brave, and don't give up until there's occasion. I am sure you exaggerate your danger, whatever it is." "Listen for a minute," said he: "I had a brother Edward, as good a lad as ever was; a boisterous, healthy fellow. We had an old nurse in our family who came from Irish hills, faithful and kind to us both. There came a change over Edward. He appeared not to take the same interest in his sports. One day he came to me, looking a bit pale, and said: 'Galt, I think I should like to study for the Church.' I laughed at it, yet it troubled me in a way, for I saw he was not well. I told Martha, the nurse. She shook her head sadly, and said: 'Edward is not for the Church, but you, my lad. He is for heaven.' "'For heaven, Martha?' laughed I. "'In truth for heaven,' she replied, 'and that soon. The look of his eye is doom. I've seen it since I swaddled him, and he will go suddenly.' "I was angry, and I said to her,--though she thought she spoke the truth,--'This is only Irish croaking. We'll have the banshee next.' "She got up from her chair and answered me solemnly: 'Galt Roscoe, I HAVE heard the banshee wail, and sorrow falls upon your home. And don't you be so hard with me that have loved you, and who suffers for the lad that often and often lay upon my breast. Don't be so hard; for your day of trouble comes too. You, not he, will be priest at the altar. Death will come to him like a swift and easy sleep; but you will feel its hand upon your heart and know its hate for many a day, and bear the slow pangs of it until your life is all crushed, and you go from the world alone, Love crying after you and not able to save you, not even the love of woman-- weaker than death. . . . And, in my grave, when that day comes beside a great mountain in a strange land, I will weep and pray for you; for I was mother to you too, when yours left you alone bewhiles, never, in this world, to come back.' "And, Marmion, that night towards morning, as I lay in the same room with Edward, I heard his breath stop sharply. I jumped up and drew aside the curtains to let in the light, and then I knew that the old woman spoke true. . . . And now! . . . Well, I am like Hamlet--and I can say with him: 'But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart --but it is no matter!"' . . . . I tried to laugh and talk away his brooding, but there was little use, his convictions were so strong. Besides, what can you do with a morbidness which has its origin in fateful circumstances? I devoutly wished that a telegram would come from Winnipeg to let me know if Boyd Madras, under his new name, could be found. I was a hunter on a faint trail. CHAPTER XVIII THE STRINGS OF DESTINY When Phil's pal left us he went wandering down the hillside, talking to himself. Long afterwards he told me how he felt, and I reproduce his phrases as nearly as I can. "Knocked 'em, I guess," he said, "with that about Jo Brackenbury. . . . Poor Jo! Stuck together, him and me did, after she got the steel in her heart." . . . He pulled himself together, shuddering. . . . "Went back on me, she did, and took up with a cursed swell, and got it cold-- cold. And I? By Judas! I never was shut of that. I've known women, many of 'em, all countries, but she was different. I expect now, after all these years, that if I got my hand on the devil that done for her, I'd rattle his breath in his throat. There's things that clings. She clings, Jo Brackenbury clings, and Phil Boldrick clings; and they're gone, and I'm left to go it alone. To play the single hand--what!--by Jiminy!" He exclaimed thus on seeing two women approach from the direction of the valley. He stood still, mouth open, staring. They drew near, almost passed him. But one of them, struck by his intense gaze, suddenly turned and came towards him. "Miss Falchion! Miss Falchion!" he cried. Then, when she hesitated as if with an effort of memory, he added: "Don't you know me?" "Ah," she replied abruptly, "Sam Kilby! Are you Sam Kilby, Jo Brackenbury's friend, from Samoa?" "Yes, miss, I'm Jo Brackenbury's friend; and I've rowed you across the reefs with him more than once I guess so! But it's a long way from Apia to the Rockies, and it's funny to meet here." "When did you come here--and from where?" "I come to-day from the Hudson's Bay post at Danger Mountain. I'm Phil Boldrick's pal." "Ah," she said again, with a look in her eyes not pleasant to see, "and what brings you up here in the hills?" Hers was more than an ordinary curiosity. "I come to see the Padre who was with Phil--when he left. And the Padre's a fair square sort, as I reckon him, but melancholy, almighty melancholy." "Yes, melancholy, I suppose," she said, "and fair square, as you say. And what did you say and do?" "Why, we yarned about Phil, and where I'd get the legacy to-morrow; and I s'pose I had a strong breeze on the quarter, for I talked as free as if we'd grubbed out of the same dough-pan since we was kiddies." "Yes?" "Yes siree; I don't know how it was, but I got to reelin' off about Jo-- queer, wasn't it? And I told 'em how he went down in the 'Fly Away', and how the lovely ladies--you remember how we used to call the whitecaps lovely ladies--fondled him out to sea and on to heaven." "And what did--the Padre--think of that?" "Well, he's got a heart, I should say, and that's why Phil cottoned to him, maybe,--for he looked as if he'd seen ghosts. I guess he'd never had a craft runnin' 'tween a sand-bar and a ragged coral bank; nor seen a girl like the 'Fly Away' take a buster in her teeth; nor a man-of-war come bundlin' down upon a nasty glacis, the captain on the bridge, engines goin' for all they're worth, every man below battened in, and every Jack above watchin' the fight between the engines and the hurricane. . . . Here she rolls six fathoms from the glacis that'll rip her copper garments off, and the quiverin' engines pull her back; and she swings and struggles and trembles between hell in the hurricane and God A'mighty in the engines; till at last she gets her nose at the neck of the open sea and crawls out safe and sound. . . . I guess he'd have more marble in his cheeks, if he saw likes o' that, Miss Falchion?" Kilby paused and wiped his forehead. She had listened calmly. She did not answer his question. She said: "Kilby, I am staying at the summer hotel up there. Will you call on me-- let me see . . . . say, to-morrow afternoon?--Some one will tell you the way, if you do not know it. . . . Ask for MRS. Falchion, Kilby, not Miss Falchion. . . . You will come?" "Why, yes," he replied, "you can count on me; for I'd like to hear of things that happened after I left Apia--and how it is that you are Mrs. Falchion, for that's mighty queer." "You shall hear all that and more." She held out her hand to him and smiled. He took it, and she knew that now she was gathering up the strings of destiny. They parted. The two passed on, looking, in their cool elegance, as if life were the most pleasant thing; as though the very perfume of their garments would preserve them from that plague called trouble. "Justine," said Mrs. Falchion, "there is one law stranger than all; the law of coincidence. Perhaps the convenience of modern travel assists it, but fate is in it also. Events run in circles. People connected with them travel that way also. We pass and re-pass each other many times, but on different paths, until we come close and see each other face to face." She was speaking almost the very words which Roscoe had spoken to me. But perhaps there was nothing strange in that. "Yes, madame," replied Justine; "it is so, but there is a law greater than coincidence." "What, Justine?" "The law of love, which is just and merciful, and would give peace instead of trouble." Mrs. Falchion looked closely at Justine, and, after a moment, evidently satisfied, said: "What do you know of love?" Justine tried hard for composure, and answered gently: "I loved my brother Hector." "And did it make you just and merciful and--an angel?" "Madame, you could answer that better. But it has not made me be at war; it has made me patient." "Your love--for your brother--has made you that?" Again she looked keenly, but Justine now showed nothing but earnestness. "Yes, madame." Mrs. Falchion paused for a moment, and seemed intent on the beauty of the pine-belted hills, capped by snowy peaks, and wrapped in a most hearty yet delicate colour. The red of her parasol threw a warm soft ness upon her face. She spoke now without looking at Justine. "Justine, did you ever love any one besides your brother?--I mean another man." Justine was silent for a moment, and then she said: "Yes, once." She was looking at the hills now, and Mrs. Falchion at her. "And you were happy?" Here Mrs. Falchion abstractedly toyed with a piece of lace on Justine's arm. Such acts were unusual with her. "I was happy--in loving." "Why did you not marry?" "Madame--it was impossible--quite." This, with hesitation and the slightest accent of pain. "Why impossible? You have good looks, you were born a lady; you have a foolish heart--the fond are foolish." She watched the girl keenly, the hand ceased to toy with the lace, and caught the arm itself--"Why impossible?" "Madame, he did not love me, he never could." "Did he know of your love?" "Oh no, no!" This with trouble in her voice. "And you have never forgotten?" The catechism was merciless; but Mrs. Falchion was not merely malicious. She was inquiring of a thing infinitely important to her. She was searching the heart of another, not only because she was suspicious, but because she wanted to know herself better. "It is easy to remember." "Is it long since you saw him?" The question almost carried terror with it, for she was not quite sure why Mrs. Falchion questioned her. She lifted her eyes slowly, and there was in them anxiety and joy. "It seems," she said, "like years." "He loves some one else, perhaps?" "Yes, I think so, madame." "Did you hate her?" "Oh no; I am glad for him." Here Mrs. Falchion spoke sharply, almost bitterly. Even through her soft colour a hardness appeared. "You are glad for him? You would see another woman in his arms and not be full of anger?" "Quite." "Justine, you are a fool." "Madame, there is no commandment against being a fool." "Oh, you make me angry with your meekness!" Here Mrs. Falchion caught a twig from a tree by her, snapped it in her fingers, and petulantly threw its pieces to the ground. "Suppose that the man had once loved you, and afterwards loved another--then again another?" "Madame, that would be my great misfortune, but it might be no wrong in him." "How not a wrong in him?" "It may have been my fault. There must be love in both--great love, for it to last." "And if the woman loved him not at all?" "Where, then, could be the wrong in him?" "And if he went from you,"--here her voice grew dry and her words were sharp,--"and took a woman from the depths of--oh, no matter what! and made her commit--crime--and was himself a criminal?" "It is horrible to think of; but I should ask myself how much I was to blame. . . . What would you ask yourself, madame?" "You have a strain of the angel in you, Justine. You would forgive Judas if he said, 'Peccavi.' I have a strain of Satan--it was born in me-- I would say, You have sinned, now suffer." "God give you a softer heart," said Justine, with tender boldness and sincerity. At this Mrs. Falchion started slightly, and trouble covered her face. She assumed, however, a tone almost brusque, artificially airy and unimportant. "There, that will do, thank you. . . . We have become serious and incomprehensible. Let us talk of other things. I want to be gay. . . . Amuse me." Arrived at the hotel, she told Justine that she must not be disturbed till near dinner-time, and withdrew to her sitting-room. There she sat and thought, as she had never done in her life before. She thought upon everything that had happened since the day when she met Galt Roscoe on the 'Fulvia'; of a certain evening in England, before he took orders, when he told her, in retort to some peculiarly cutting remark of hers, that she was the evil genius of his life: that evening when her heart grew hard, as she had once said it should always be to him, and she determined again, after faltering many times, that just such a genius she would be; of the strange meeting in the rapids at the Devil's Slide, and the irony of it; and the fact that he had saved her life--on that she paused a while; of Ruth Devlin--and here she was swayed by conflicting emotions; of the scene at the mill, and Phil Boldrick's death and funeral; of the service in the church where she meant to mock him, and, instead, mocked herself; of the meeting with Tonga Sam; of all that Justine had said to her: then again of the far past in Samoa, with which Galt Roscoe was associated, and of that first vow of vengeance for a thing he had done; and how she had hesitated to fulfil it year after year till now. Passing herself slowly back and forth before her eyes, she saw that she had lived her life almost wholly alone; that no woman had ever cherished her as a friend, and that on no man's breast had she ever laid her head in trust and love. She had been loved, but it had never brought her satisfaction. From Justine there was devotion; but it had, as she thought, been purchased, paid for, like the labour of a ploughboy. And if she saw now in Justine's eyes a look of friendship, a note of personal allegiance, she knew it was because she herself had grown more human. Her nature had been stirred. Her natural heart was struggling against her old bitterness towards Galt Roscoe and her partial hate of Ruth Devlin. Once Roscoe had loved her, and she had not loved him. Then, on a bitter day for him, he did a mad thing. The thing became--though neither of them knew it at the time, and he not yet--a great injury to her, and this had called for the sharp retaliation which she had the power to use. But all had not happened as she expected; for something called Love had been conceived in her very slowly, and was now being born, and sent, trembling for its timid life, into the world. She closed her eyes with weariness, and pressed her hands to her temples. She wondered why she could not be all evil or all good. She spoke and acted against Ruth Devlin, and yet she pitied her. She had the nettle to sting Roscoe to death, and yet she hesitated to use it. She had said to herself that she would wait till the happiest moment of his life, and then do so. Well, his happiest moment had come. Ruth Devlin's heart was all out, all blossomed--beside Mrs. Falchion's like some wild flower to the aloe. . . . Only now she had come to know that she had a heart. Something had chilled her at her birth, and when her mother died, a stranger's kiss closed up all the ways to love, and left her an icicle. She was twenty-eight years old, and yet she had never kissed a face in joy or to give joy. And now, when she had come to know herself, and understand what others understand when they are little children in their mother's arms, she had to bow to the spirit that denies. She drew herself up with a quiver of the body. "O God!" she said, "do I hate him or love him!" Her head dropped in her hands. She sat regardless of time, now scarcely stirring, desperately quiet. The door opened softly and Justine entered. "Madame," she said, "pardon me; I am so sorry, but Miss Devlin has come to see you, and I thought--" "You thought, Justine, that I would see her." There was unmistakable irony in her voice. "Very well. . . . Show her in." She rose, stretched out her arms as if to free herself of a burden, smoothed her hair, composed herself, and waited, the afternoon sun just falling across her burnished shoes, giving her feet of gold. She chanced to look down at them. A strange memory came to her: words that she had heard Roscoe read in church. The thing was almost grotesque in its association. "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who bringeth glad tidings, who publisheth peace!" Ruth Devlin entered, saying, "I have come, to ask you if you will dine with us next Monday evening?" Then she explained the occasion of the dinner party, and said: "You see, though it is formal, I am asking our guests informally;" and she added as neutrally and as lightly as she could--"Mr. Roscoe and Dr. Marmion have been good enough to say that they will come. Of course, a dinner party as it should be is quite impossible to us simple folk, but when a lieutenant-governor commands, we must do the best we can--with the help of our friends." Mrs. Falchion was delighted, she said, and then they talked of trivial matters, Ruth smoothing out the folds of her riding-dress with her whip more earnestly, in preoccupation, than the act called for. At last she said, in the course of the formal talk: "You have travelled much?" "Yes, that has been my lot," was the reply; and she leaned back in the gold-trimmed cane chair, her feet still in the belt of sunlight. "I have often wished that I might travel over the ocean," said Ruth, "but here I remain--what shall I say?--a rustic in a bandbox, seeing the world through a pin-hole. That is the way my father puts it. Except, of course, that I think it very inspiring to live out here among wonderful mountains, which, as Mr. Roscoe says, are the most aristocratic of companions." Some one in the next room was playing the piano idly yet expressively. The notes of Il Trovatore kept up a continuous accompaniment to their talk, varying, as if by design, with its meaning and importance, and yet in singular contrast at times to their thoughts and words. It was almost sardonic in its monotonous persistence. "Travel is not all, believe me, Miss Devlin," was the indolent reply. "Perhaps the simpler life is the happier. The bandbox is not the worst that may come to one--when one is born to it. I am not sure but it is the best. I doubt that when one has had the fever of travel and the world, the bandbox is permanently habitable again." Mrs. Falchion was keen; she had found her opportunity. On the result of this duel, if Ruth Devlin but knew it, depends her own and another's happiness. It is not improbable, however, that something of this was in her mind. She shifted her chair so that her face was not so much in the light. But the belt of sunlight was broadening from Mrs. Falchion's feet to her dress. "You think not?" Ruth asked slowly. The reply was not important in tone. Mrs. Falchion had picked up a paper knife and was bending it to and fro between her fingers. "I think not. Particularly with a man, who is, we will say, by nature, adventurous and explorative. I think if, in some mad moment, I determined to write a novel, it should be of such a man. He flies wide and far; he sees all; he feeds on novelty; he passes from experience to experience--liberal pleasures of mind and sense all the way. Well, he tires of Egypt and its flesh-pots. He has seen as he hurried on--I hope I am not growing too picturesque--too much of women, too many men. He has been unwise--most men are. Perhaps he has been more than unwise; he has made a great mistake, a social mistake--or crime--less or more. If it is a small one, the remedy is not so difficult. Money, friends, adroitness, absence, long retirement, are enough. If a great one, and he is sensitive--and sated--he flies, he seeks seclusion. He is afflicted with remorse. He is open to the convincing pleasures of the simple and unadorned life; he is satisfied with simple people. The snuff of the burnt candle of enjoyment he calls regret, repentance. He gives himself the delights of introspection, and wishes he were a child again--yes, indeed it is so, dear Miss Devlin." Ruth sat regarding her, her deep eyes glowing. Mrs. Falchion continued: "In short, he finds the bandbox, as you call it, suited to his renunciations. Its simplicities, which he thinks is regeneration, are only new sensations. But--you have often noticed the signification of a 'but,'" she added, smiling, tapping her cheek lightly with the ivory knife--"but the hour arrives when the bandbox becomes a prison, when the simple hours cloy. Then the ordinary incident is merely gauche, and expiation a bore. "I see by your face that you understand quite what I mean. . . . Well, these things occasionally happen. The great mistake follows the man, and, by a greater misery, breaks the misery of the bandbox; or the man himself, hating his captivity, becomes reckless, does some mad thing, and has a miserable end. Or again, some one who holds the key to his mistake comes in from the world he has left, and considers--considers, you understand!--whether to leave him to work out his servitude, or, mercifully--if he is not altogether blind--permit him the means of escape to his old world, to the life to which he was born--away from the bandbox and all therein. . . . I hope I have not tired you--I am sure I have." Ruth saw the full meaning of Mrs. Falchion's words. She realised that her happiness, his happiness--everything--was at stake. All Mrs. Falchion's old self was battling with her new self. She had determined to abide by the result of this meeting. She had spoken in a half gay tone, but her words were not everything; the woman herself was there, speaking in every feature and glance. Ruth had listened with an occasional change of colour, but also with an outward pride to which she seemed suddenly to have grown. But her heart was sick and miserable. How could it be otherwise, reading, as she did, the tale just told her in a kind, of allegory, in all its warning, nakedness, and vengeance? But she detected, too, an occasional painful movement of Mrs. Falchion's lips, a kind of trouble in the face. She noticed it at first vaguely as she listened to the music in the other room; but at length she interpreted it aright, and she did not despair. She did not then follow her first impulse to show that she saw the real meaning of that speech, and rise and say, "You are insulting," and bid her good-day. After all, where was the ground for the charge of insult? The words had been spoken impersonally. So, after a moment, she said, as she drew a glove from a hand slightly trembling: "And you honestly think it is the case: that one having lived such a life as you describe so unusually, would never be satisfied with a simple life?" "My dear, never--not such a man as I describe. I know the world." "But suppose not quite such an one; suppose one that had not been so-- intense; so much the social gladiator; who had business of life as well," --here the girl grew pale, for this was a kind of talk unfamiliar and painful to her, but to be endured for her cause,--"as well as 'the flesh- pots of Egypt;' who had made no wicked mistakes--would he necessarily end as you say?" "I am speaking of the kind of man who had made such mistakes, and he would end as I say. Few men, if any, would leave the world for--the bandbox, shall I still say? without having a Nemesis." "But the Nemesis need not, as you say yourself, be inevitable. The person who holds the key of his life, the impersonation of his mistake--" "His CRIMINAL mistake," Mrs. Falchion interrupted, her hand with the ivory knife now moveless in that belt of sunlight across her knees. "His criminal mistake," Ruth repeated, wincing--"might not it become changed into mercy, and the man be safe?" "Safe? Perhaps. But he would tire of the pin-hole just the same. . . . My dear, you do not know life." "But, Mrs. Falchion," said the girl, now very bravely, "I know the crude elements of justice. That is one plain thing taught here in the mountains. We have swift reward and punishment--no hateful things called Nemesis. The meanest wretch here in the West, if he has a quarrel, avenges himself openly and at once. Actions are rough and ready, perhaps, but that is our simple way. Hate is manly--and womanly too-- when it is open and brave. But when it haunts and shadows, it is not understood here." Mrs. Falchion sat during this speech, the fingers of one hand idly drumming the arm of her chair, as idly as when on board the 'Fulvia' she listened to me telling that story of Anson and his wife. Outwardly her coolness was remarkable. But she was really admiring, and amazed at Ruth's adroitness and courage. She appreciated fully the skilful duel that had kept things on the surface, and had committed neither of them to anything personal. It was a battle--the tragical battle of a drawing- room. When Ruth had ended, she said slowly: "You speak very earnestly. You do your mountains justice; but each world has its code. It is good for some men to be followed by a slow hatred--it all depends on themselves. There are some who wish to meet their fate and its worst, and others who would forget it. The latter are in the most danger always." Ruth rose. She stepped forward slightly, so that her feet also were within the sunlight. The other saw this; it appeared to interest her. Ruth looked --as such a girl can look--with incredible sincerity into Mrs. Falchion's eyes, and said: "Oh, if I knew such a man, I would be sorry--sorry for him; and if I also knew that his was only a mistake and not a crime, or, if the crime itself had been repented of, and atonement made, I would beg some one--some one better than I--to pray for him. And I would go to the person who had his life and career at disposal, and would say to her, if it were a woman, oh, remember that it is not he alone who would suffer! I would beg that woman--if it were a woman--to be merciful, as she one day must ask for mercy." The girl as she stood there, all pale, yet glowing with the white light of her pain, was beautiful, noble, compelling. Mrs. Falchion now rose also. She was altogether in the sunlight now. From the piano in the next room came a quick change of accompaniment, and a voice was heard singing, as if to the singer's self, 'Il balen del suo sorris'. It is hard to tell how far such little incidents affected her in what she did that afternoon; but they had their influence. She said: "You are altruistic--or are you selfish, or both? . . . And should the woman --if it were a woman--yield, and spare the man, what would you do?" "I would say that she had been merciful and kind, and that one in this world would pray for her when she needed prayers most." "You mean when she was old,"--Mrs. Falchion shrank a little at the sound of her own words. Now her careless abandon was gone; she seemed to be following her emotions. "When she was old," she continued, "and came to die? It is horrible to grow old, except one has been a saint--and a mother. . . . And even then--have you ever seen them, the women of that Egypt of which we spoke--powdered, smirking over their champagne, because they feel for an instant a false pulse of their past?--See how eloquent your mountains make me!--I think that would make one hard and cruel; and one would need the prayers of a churchful of good women, even as good--as you." She could not resist a touch of irony in the last words, and Ruth, who had been ready to take her hand impulsively, was stung. But she replied nothing; and the other, after waiting, added, with a sudden and wonderful kindness: "I say what is quite true. Women might dislike you--many of them would--though you could not understand why; but you are good, and that, I suppose, is the best thing in the world. Yes, you are good," she said musingly, and then she leaned forward and quickly kissed the girl's cheek. "Good-bye," she said, and then she turned her head resolutely away. They stood there both in the sunlight, both very quiet, but their hearts were throbbing with new sensations. Ruth knew that she had conquered, and, with her eyes all tearful, she looked steadily, yearningly at the woman before her; but she knew it was better she should say little now, and, with a motion of the hand in good-bye,--she could do no more,--she slowly went to the door. There she paused and looked back, but the other was still turned away. For a minute Mrs. Falchion stood looking at the door through which the girl had passed, then she caught close the curtains of the window, and threw herself upon the sofa with a sobbing laugh. "To her--I played the game of mercy to her!" she cried. "And she has his love, the love which I rejected once, and which I want now--to my shame! A hateful and terrible love. I, who ought to say to him, as I so long determined: 'You shall be destroyed. You killed my sister, poor Alo; if not with a knife yourself you killed her heart, and that is just the same.' I never knew until now what a heart is when killed." She caught her breast as though it hurt her, and, after a moment, continued: "Do hearts always ache so when they love? I was the wife of a good man oh! he WAS a good man, who sinned for me. I see it now!--and I let him die--die alone!" She shuddered. "Oh, now I see, and I know what love such as his can be! I am punished--punished! for my love is impossible, horrible." There was a long silence, in which she sat looking at the floor, her face all grey with pain. At last the door of the room softly opened, and Justine entered. "May I come in, madame?" she said. "Yes, come, Justine." The voice was subdued, and there was in it what drew the girl swiftly to the side of Mrs. Falchion. She spoke no word, but gently undid the other's hair, and smoothed and brushed it softly. At last Mrs. Falchion said: "Justine, on Monday we will leave here." The girl was surprised, but she replied without comment: "Yes, madame; where do we go?" There was a pause; then: "I do not know. I want to go where I shall get rested. A village in Italy or--" she paused. "Or France, madame?" Justine was eager. Mrs. Falchion made a gesture of helplessness. "Yes, France will do. . . . The way around the world is long, and I am tired." Minutes passed, and then she slowly said: "Justine, we will go to-morrow night." "Yes, madame, to-morrow night--and not next Monday." There was a strange only half-veiled melancholy in Mrs. Falchion's next words: "Do you think, Justine, that I could be happy anywhere?" "I think anywhere but here, madame." Mrs. Falchion rose to a sitting posture, and looked at the girl fixedly, almost fiercely. A crisis was at hand. The pity, gentleness, and honest solicitude of Justine's face conquered her, and her look changed to one of understanding and longing for companionship: sorrow swiftly welded their friendship. Before Mrs. Falchion slept that night, she said again: "We will leave here to-morrow, Justine, for ever." And Justine replied: "Yes, madame, for ever." CHAPTER XIX THE SENTENCE The next morning Roscoe was quiet and calm, but he looked ten years older than when I had first seen him. After breakfast he said to me: "I have to go to the valley to pay Phil Boldrick's friend the money, and to see Mr. Devlin. I shall be back, perhaps, by lunchtime. Will you go with me, or stay here?" "I shall try to get some fishing this morning, I fancy," I said. "And possibly I shall idle a good deal, for my time with you here is shortening, and I want to have a great store of laziness behind me for memory, when I've got my nose to the grindstone." He turned to the door, and said: "Marmion, I wish you weren't going. I wish that we might be comrades under the same roof till--" He paused and smiled strangely. "Till the finish," I added, "when we should amble grey-headed, sans everything, out of the mad old world? I imagine Miss Belle Treherne would scarcely fancy that. . . . Still, we can be friends just the same. Our wives won't object to an occasional bout of loafing together, will they?" I was determined not to take him too seriously. He said nothing, and in a moment he was gone. I passed the morning idly enough, yet thinking, too, very much about my friend. I was anxiously hoping that the telegram from Winnipeg would come. About noon it came. It was not known quite in what part of the North-west, Madras (under his new name) was, for the corps of mounted police had been changed about recently. My letter had, however, been forwarded into the wilds. I saw no immediate way but to go to Mrs. Falchion and make a bold bid for his peace. I had promised Madras never to let her know that he was alive, but I would break the promise if Madras himself did not come. After considerable hesitation I started. It must be remembered that the events of the preceding chapter were only known to me afterwards. Justine Caron was passing through the hall of the hotel when I arrived. After greetings, she said that Mrs. Falchion might see me, but that they were very busy; they were leaving in the evening for the coast. Here was a pleasant revelation! I was so confused with delight at the information, that I could think of nothing more sensible to say than that the unexpected always happens. By this time we were within Mrs. Falchion's sitting-room. And to my remark, Justine replied "Yes, it is so. One has to reckon most with the accidents of life. The expected is either pleasant or unpleasant; there is no middle place." "You are growing philosophic," said I playfully. "Monsieur," she said gravely, "I hope as I live and travel, I grow a little wiser." Still she lingered, her hand upon the door. "I had thought that you were always wise." "Oh no, no! How can you say so? I have been very foolish sometimes." . . . She came back towards me. "If I am wiser I am also happier," she added. In that moment we understood each other; that is, I read how unselfish this girl could be, and she knew thoroughly the source of my anxiety, and was glad that she could remove it. "I would not speak to any one save you," she said, "but do you not also think that it is good we go?" "I have been thinking so, but I hesitated to say so," was my reply. "You need not hesitate," she said earnestly. "We have both understood, and I know that you are to be trusted." "Not always," I said, remembering that one experience of mine with Mrs. Falchion on the 'Fulvia'. Holding the back of a chair, and looking earnestly at me, she continued: "Once, on the vessel, you remember, in a hint so very little, I made it appear that madame was selfish. . . . I am sorry. Her heart was asleep. Now, it is awake. She is unselfish. The accident of our going away is hers. She goes to leave peace behind." "I am most glad," said I. "And you think there will be peace?" "Surely, since this has come, that will come also." "And you--Mademoiselle?" I should not have asked that question had I known more of the world. It was tactless and unkind. "For me it is no matter at all. I do not come in anywhere. As I said, I am happy." And turning quickly, yet not so quickly but that I saw her cheeks were flushed, she passed out of the room. In a moment Mrs. Falchion entered. There was something new in her carriage, in her person. She came towards me, held out her hand, and said, with the same old half-quizzical tone: "Have you, with your unerring instinct, guessed that I was leaving, and so come to say good-bye?" "You credit me too highly. No, I came to see you because I had an inclination. I did not guess that you were going until Miss Caron told me." "An inclination to see me is not your usual instinct, is it? Was it some special impulse, based on a scientific calculation--at which, I suppose, you are an adeptor curiosity? Or had it a purpose? Or were you bored, and therefore sought the most startling experience you could conceive?" She deftly rearranged some flowers in a jar. "I can plead innocence of all directly; I am guilty of all indirectly: I was impelled to come. I reasoned--if that is scientific--on what I should say if I did come, knowing how inclined I was to--" "To get beyond my depth," she interrupted, and she motioned me to a chair. "Well, let it be so," said I. "I was curious to know what kept you in this sylvan, and I fear, to you, half-barbaric spot. I was bored with myself; and I had some purpose in coming, or I should not have had the impulse." She was leaning back in her chair easily, not languidly. She seemed reposeful, yet alert. "How wonderfully you talk!" she said, with good-natured mockery. "You are scientifically frank. You were bored with yourself.--Then there is some hope for your future wife. . . . We have had many talks in our acquaintance, Dr. Marmion, but none so interesting as this promises to be. But now tell me what your purpose was in coming. 'Purpose' seems portentous, but quite in keeping." I noticed here the familiar, almost imperceptible click of the small white teeth. Was I so glad she was going that I was playful, elated? "My purpose," said I, "has no point now; for even if I were to propose to amuse you--I believe that was the old formula--by an idle day somewhere, by an excursion, an--" "An autobiography," she broke in soothingly. "Or an autobiography," I repeated stolidly, "you would not, I fancy, be prepared to accept my services. There would be no chance--now that you are going away--for me to play the harlequin--" "Whose office you could do pleasantly if it suited you--these adaptable natures!" "Quite so. But it is all futile now, as I say." "Yes, you mentioned that before.--Well?" "It is well," I replied, dropping into a more meaning tone. "You say it patriarchally, but yet flatteringly." Here she casually offered me a flower. I mechanically placed it in my buttonhole. She seemed delighted at confusing me. But I kept on firmly. "I do not think," I rejoined gravely now, "that there need be any flattery between us." "Why?--We are not married." "That is as radically true as it is epigrammatic," blurted I. "And truth is more than epigram?" "One should delight in truth; I do delight in epigram; there seems little chance for choice here." It seemed to me that I had said quite what I wished there, but she only looked at me enigmatically. She arranged a flower in her dress as she almost idly replied, though she did not look me full in the face as she had done before: "Well, then, let me add to your present delight by saying that you may go play till doomsday, Dr. Marmion. Your work is done." "I do not understand." Her eyes were on me now with the directness she could so well use at need. "I did not suppose you would, despite your many lessons at my hands. You have been altruistic, Dr. Marmion; I fear critical people would say that you meddled. I shall only say that you are inquiring--scientific, or feminine--what you please! . . . You can now yield up your portfolio of--foreign affairs--of war--shall I say? and retire into sedative habitations, which, believe me, you become best. . . . What concerns me need concern you no longer. The enemy retreats. She offers truce-- without conditions. She retires. . . . Is that enough for even you, Professor Marmion?" "Mrs. Falchion," I said, finding it impossible to understand why she had so suddenly determined to go away (for I did not know all the truth until afterwards--some of it long afterwards), "it is more than I dared to hope for, though less, I know, than you have heart to do if you willed so. I know that you hold some power over my friend." "Do not think," she said, "that you have had the least influence. What you might think, or may have intended to do, has not moved me in the least. I have had wrongs that you do not know. I have changed--that is all. I admit I intended to do Galt Roscoe harm. "I thought he deserved it. That is over. After to-night, it is not probable that we shall meet again. I hope that we shall not; as, doubtless, is your own mind." She kept looking at me with that new deep look which I had seen when she first entered the room. I was moved, and I saw that just at the last she had spoken under considerable strain. "Mrs. Falchion," said I, "I have THOUGHT harder things of you than I ever SAID to any one. Pray believe that, and believe, also, that I never tried to injure you. For the rest, I can make no complaint. You do not like me. I liked you once, and do now, when you do not depreciate yourself of purpose. . . . Pardon me, but I say this very humbly too. . . . I suppose I always shall like you, in spite of myself. You are one of the most gifted and fascinating women that I ever met. I have been anxious for my friend. I was concerned to make peace between you and your husband--" "The man who WAS my husband," she interrupted musingly. "Your husband--whom you so cruelly treated. But I confess I have found it impossible to withhold admiration of you." For a long time she did not reply, but she never took her eyes off my face, as she leaned slightly forward. Then at last she spoke more gently than I had ever heard her, and a glow came upon her face. "I am only human. You have me at advantage. What woman could reply unkindly to a speech like that? I admit I thought you held me utterly bad and heartless, and it made me bitter. . . . I had no heart--once. I had only a wrong, an injury, which was in my mind; not mine, but another's, and yet mine. Then strange things occurred. . . . At last I relented. I saw that I had better go. Yesterday I saw that; and I am going--that is all. . . . I wished to keep the edge of my intercourse with you sharp and uncompanionable to the end; but you have forced me at my weakest point. . . ." Here she smiled somewhat painfully. . . . "Believe me, that is the way to turn a woman's weapon upon herself. You have learned much since we first met. . . . Here is my hand in friendliness, if you care to take it; and in good-bye, should we not meet again more formally before I go." "I wish now that your husband, Boyd Madras, were here," I said. She answered nothing, but she did not resent it, only shuddered a little. Our hands grasped silently. I was too choked to speak, and I left her. At that moment she blinded me to all her faults. She was a wonderful woman. ..................... Galt Roscoe had walked slowly along the forest-road towards the valley, his mind in that state of calm which, in some, might be thought numbness of sensation, in others fortitude--the prerogative of despair. He came to the point of land jutting out over the valley, where he had stood with Mrs. Falchion, Justine, and myself, on the morning of Phil Boldrick's death. He looked for a long time, and then, slowly descending the hillside, made his way to Mr. Devlin's office. He found Phil's pal awaiting him there. After a few preliminaries, the money was paid over, and Kilby said: "I've been to see his camping-ground. It's right enough. Viking has done it noble. . . . Now, here's what I'm goin' to do: I'm goin' to open bottles for all that'll drink success to Viking. A place that's stood by my pal, I stand by--but not with his money, mind you! No, that goes to you, Padre, for hospital purposes. My gift an' his. . . . So, sit down and write a receipt, or whatever it's called, accordin' to Hoyle, and you'll do me proud." Roscoe did as he requested, and handed the money over to Mr. Devlin for safe keeping, remarking, at the same time, that the matter should be announced on a bulletin outside the office at once. As Kilby stood chewing the end of a cigar and listening to the brief conversation between Roscoe and Mr. Devlin, perplexity crossed his face. He said, as Roscoe turned round: "There's something catchy about your voice, Padre. I don't know what; but it's familiar like. You never was on the Panama level, of course?" "Never." "Nor in Australia?" "Yes, in 1876." "I wasn't there then." Roscoe grew a shade paler, but he was firm and composed. He was determined to answer truthfully any question that was asked him, wherever it might lead. "Nor in Samoa?" There was the slightest pause, and then the reply came: "Yes, in Samoa." "Not a missionary, by gracious! Not a mickonaree in Samoa?" "No." He said nothing further. He did not feel bound to incriminate himself. "No? Well, you wasn't a beachcomber, nor trader, I'll swear. Was you there in the last half of the Seventies? That's when I was there." "Yes." The reply was quiet. "By Jingo!" The man's face was puzzled. He was about to speak again; but at that moment two river-drivers--boon companions, who had been hanging about the door--urged him to come to the tavern. This distracted him. He laughed, and said that he was coming, and then again, though with less persistency, questioned Roscoe. . "You don't remember me, I suppose?" "No, I never saw you, so far as I know, until yesterday." "No? Still, I've heard your voice. It keeps swingin' in my ears; and I can't remember. . . . I can't remember! . . . But we'll have a spin about it again, Padre." He turned to the impatient men. "All right, bully-boys, I'm comin'." At the door he turned and looked again at Roscoe with a sharp, half- amused scrutiny, then the two parted. Kilby kept his word. He was liberal to Viking; and Phil's memory was drunk, not in silence, many times that day. So that when, in the afternoon, he made up his mind to keep his engagement with Mrs. Falchion, and left the valley for the hills, he was not entirely sober. But he was apparently good-natured. As he idled along he talked to himself, and finally broke out into singing: "'Then swing the long boat down the drink, For the lads as pipe to go; But I sink when the 'Lovely Jane' does sink, To the mermaids down below.' "'The long boat bides on its strings,' says we, 'An' we bides where the long boat bides; An' we'll bluff this equatorial sea, Or swallow its hurricane tides.' "But the 'Lovely Jane' she didn't go down, An' she anchored at the Spicy Isles; An' she sailed again to Wellington Town-- A matter of a thousand miles." It will be remembered that this was part of the song sung by Galt Roscoe on the Whi-Whi River, the day we rescued Mrs. Falchion and Justine Caron. Kilby sang the whole song over to himself until he reached a point overlooking the valley. Then he stood silent for a time, his glance upon the town. The walk had sobered him a little. "Phil, old pal," he said at last, "you ain't got the taste of raw whiskey with you now. When a man loses a pal he loses a grip on the world equal to all that pal's grip was worth. . . . I'm drunk, and Phil's down there among the worms-- among the worms! . . . Ah!" he added in disgust, and, dashing his hand across his eyes, struck off into the woods again, making his way to the summer hotel, where he had promised to meet Mrs. Falchion. He inquired for her, creating some astonishment by his uncouth appearance and unsteady manner. He learned from Justine that Mrs. Falchion had gone to see Roscoe, and that he would probably meet her if he went that way. This he did. He was just about to issue into a partly open space by a ravine near the house, when he heard voices, and his own name mentioned. He stilled and listened. "Yes, Galt Roscoe," said a voice, "Sam Kilby is the man that loved Alo-- loved her not as you did. He would have given her a home, have made her happy, perhaps. You, when Kilby was away, married her--in native fashion--which is no marriage--and KILLED her." "No, no, I did not kill her--that is not so. As God is my Judge, that is not so." "You did not kill her with the knife? . . . Well, I will be honest now, and say that I believe that, whatever I may have hinted or said before. But you killed her just the same when you left her." "Mercy Falchion," he said desperately, "I will not try to palliate my sin. But still I must set myself right with you in so far as I can. The very night Alo killed herself I had made up my mind to leave the navy. I was going to send in my papers, and come back to Apia, and marry her as Englishmen are married. While I remained in the navy I could not, as you know, marry her. It would be impossible to an English officer. I intended to come back and be regularly married to her." "You say that now," was the cold reply. "But it is the truth, the truth indeed. Nothing that you might say could make me despise myself more than I do; but I have told you all, as I shall have to tell it one day before a just God. You have spared me: He will not." "Gait Roscoe," she replied, "I am not merciful, nor am I just. I intended to injure you, though you will remember I saved your life that night by giving you a boat for escape across the bay to the 'Porcupine', which was then under way. The band on board, you also remember, was playing the music of La Grande Duchesse. You fired on the natives who followed. Well, Sam Kilby was with them. Your brother officers did not know the cause of the trouble. It was not known to any one in Apia exactly who it was that Kilby and the natives had tracked from Alo's hut." He drew his hand across his forehead dazedly. "Oh, yes I remember!" he said. "I wish I had faced the matter there and then. It would have been better." "I doubt that," she replied. "The natives who saw you coming from Alo's hut did not know you. You wisely came straight to the Consul's office-- my father's house. And I helped you, though Alo, half-caste Alo, was-- my sister!" Roscoe started back. "Alo--your--sister!" he exclaimed in horror. "Yes, though I did not know it till afterwards, not till just before my father died. Alo's father was my father; and her mother had been honestly married to my father by a missionary; though for my sake it had never been made known. You remember, also, that you carried on your relations with Alo secretly, and my father never suspected it was you." "Your sister!" Roscoe was white and sick. "Yes. And now you understand my reason for wishing you ill, and for hating you to the end." "Yes," he said despairingly, "I see." She was determined to preserve before him the outer coldness of her nature to the last. "Let us reckon together," she said. "I helped to--in fact, I saved your life at Apia. You helped to save my life at the Devil's Slide. That is balanced. You did me--the honour to say that you loved me once. Well, one of my race loved you. That is balanced also. My sister's death came through you. There is no balance to that. What shall balance Alo's death? . . . I leave you to think that over. It is worth thinking about. I shall keep your secret, too. Kilby does not know you. I doubt that he ever saw you, though, as I said, he followed you with the natives that night in Apia. He was to come to see me to-day. I think I intended to tell him all, and shift--the duty--of punishment on his shoulders, which I do not doubt he would fulfil. But he shall not know. Do not ask why. I have changed my mind, that is all. But still the account remains a long one. You will have your lifetime to reckon with it, free from any interference on my part; for, if I can help it, we shall never meet again in this world--never. . . . And now, good-bye." Without a gesture of farewell she turned and left him standing there, in misery and bitterness, but in a thankfulness too, more for Ruth's sake than his own. He raised his arms with a despairing motion, then let them drop heavily to his side. . . . And then two strong hands caught his throat, a body pressed hard against him, and he was borne backward--backward--to the cliff! CHAPTER XX AFTER THE STORM I was sitting on the verandah, writing a letter to Belle Treherne. The substantial peace of a mountain evening was on me. The air was clear, and full of the scent of the pines and cedars, and the rumble of the rapids came musically down the canon. I lifted my head and saw an eagle sailing away to the snow-topped peak of Trinity, and then turned to watch the orioles in the trees. The hour was delightful. It made me feel how grave mere living is, how noble even the meanest of us becomes sometimes --in those big moments when we think the world was built for us. It is half egotism, half divinity; but why quarrel with it? I was young, ambitious; and Love and I were at that moment the only figures in the universe really deserving attention! I looked on down a lane of cedars before me, seeing in imagination a long procession of pleasant things; of-- As I looked, another procession moved through the creatures of my dreams, so that they shrank away timidly, then utterly, and this new procession came on and on, until--I suddenly rose, and started forward fearfully, to see--unhappy reality!--the body of Galt Roscoe carried towards me. Then a cold wind seemed to blow from the glacier above and killed all the summer. A man whispered to me: "We found him at the bottom of the ravine yonder. He'd fallen over, I suppose." I felt his heart. "He is not dead, thank God!" I said. "No, sir," said the other, "but he's all smashed." They brought him in and laid him on his bed. I sent one of the party for the doctor at Viking, and myself set to work, with what appliances I had, to deal with the dreadful injuries. When the doctor came, together we made him into the semblance of a man again. His face was but slightly injured, though his head had received severe hurts. I think that I alone saw the marks on his throat; and I hid them. I guessed the cause, but held my peace. I had sent round at once to James Devlin (but asked him not to come till morning), and also to Mrs. Falchion; but I begged her not to come at all. I might have spared her that; for, as I afterwards knew, she had no intention of coming. She had learned of the accident on her way to Viking, and had turned back; but only to wait and know the worst or the best. About midnight I was left alone with Roscoe. Once, earlier in the evening, he had recognised me and smiled faintly, but I had shaken my head, and he had said nothing. Now, however, he was looking at me earnestly. I did not speak. What he had to tell me was best told in his own time. At last he said faintly: "Marmion, shall I die soon?" I knew that frankness was best, and I replied: "I cannot tell, Roscoe. There is a chance of your living." He moved his head sadly. "A very faint chance?" "Yes, a faint one, but--" "Yes? 'But'?" He looked at me as though he wished it over. "But it rests with you whether the chance is worth anything. If you are content to die, it is gone." "I am content to die," he replied. "And there," said I, "you are wrong and selfish. You have Ruth to live for. Besides, if you are given the chance, you commit suicide if you do not take it." There was a long pause, and then he said: "You are right; I will live if I can, Marmion." "And now YOU are right." I nodded soothingly to him, and then asked him to talk no more; for I knew that fever would soon come on. He lay for a moment silent, but at length whispered: "Did you know it was not a fall I had?" He raised his chin and stretched his throat slightly, with a kind of trembling. "I thought it was not a fall," I replied. "It was Phil's pal--Kilby." "I thought that." "How could you--think it? Did--others--think so?" he asked anxiously. "No, not others; I alone. They thought it accident; they could have no ground for suspicion. But I had; and, besides, there were marks on your throat." "Nothing must happen to him, you understand. He had been drinking, and --and he was justified. I wronged him in Samoa, him and Mrs. Falchion." I nodded and put my fingers on my lips. Again there was silence. I sat and watched him, his eyes closed, his body was motionless. He slept for hours so, and then he waked rather sharply, and said half deliriously: "I could have dragged him with me, Marmion." "But you did not. Yes, I understand. Go to sleep again, Roscoe." Later on the fever came, and he moaned and moved his head about his pillow. He could not move his body--it was too much injured. There was a source of fear in Kilby. Would he recklessly announce what he had done, and the cause of it? After thinking it over and over, I concluded that he would not disclose his crimes. My conclusions were right, as after events showed. As for Roscoe, I feared that if he lived he must go through life maimed. He had a private income; therefore if he determined to work no more in the ministry, he would, at least, have the comforts of life. Ruth Devlin came. I went to Roscoe and told him that she wished to see him. He smiled sorrowfully and said: "To what end, Marmion? I am a drifting wreck. It will only shock her." I think he thought she would not love him now if he lived--a crippled man. "But is this noble? Is it just to her?" said I. After a long time he answered: "You are right again, quite right. I am selfish. When one is shaking between life and death, one thinks most of one's self." "She will help to bring you back from those places, Roscoe." "If I am delirious ever, do not let her come, will you, Marmion? Promise me that." I promised. I went to her. She was very calm and womanly. She entered the room, went quietly to his bedside, and, sitting down, took his hand. Her smile was pitiful and anxious, but her words were brave. "My dearest," she said, "I am so sorry. But you will soon be well, so we must be as patient and cheerful as we can." His eyes answered, but he did not speak. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. Then he said: "I hope I may get well." "This was the shadow over you," she ventured. "This was your presentiment of trouble--this accident." "Yes, this was the shadow." Some sharp thought seemed to move her, for her eyes grew suddenly hard, and she stooped and whispered: "Was SHE there--when--it happened, Galt?" He shrank from the question, but he said immediately: "No, she was not there." "I am glad," she added, "that it was only an accident." Her eyes grew clear of their momentary hardness. There is nothing in life like the anger of one woman against another concerning a man. Justine Caron came to the house, pale and anxious, to inquire. Mrs. Falchion, she said, was not going away until she knew how Mr. Roscoe's illness would turn. "Miss Caron," I said to her, "do you not think it better that she should go?" "Yes, for him; but she grieves now." "For him?" "Not alone for him," was the reply. There was a pause, and then she continued: "Madame told me to say to you that she did not wish Mr. Roscoe to know that she was still here." I assured her that I understood, and then she added mournfully: "I cannot help you now, monsieur, as I did on board the 'Fulvia'. But he will be better cared for in Miss Devlin's hands, the poor lady! . . . Do you think that he will live?" "I hope so. I am not sure." Her eyes went to tears; and then I tried to speak more encouragingly. All day people came to inquire, chief among them Mr. Devlin, whose big heart split itself in humanity and compassion. "The price of the big mill for the guarantee of his life!" he said over and over again. "We can't afford to let him go." Although I should have been on my way back to Toronto, I determined to stay until Roscoe was entirely out of danger. It was singular, but in this illness, though the fever was high, he never was delirious. It would almost seem as if, having paid his penalty, the brain was at rest. While Roscoe hovered between life and death, Mr. Devlin, who persisted that he would not die, was planning for a new hospital and a new church, of which Roscoe should be president and padre respectively. But the suspense to us all, for many days, was very great; until, one morning when the birds were waking the cedars, and the snow on Mount Trinity was flashing coolness down the hot valley, he waked and said to me: "Marmion, old friend; it is morning at last." "Yes, it is morning," said I. "And you are going to live now? You are going to be reasonable and give the earth another chance?" "Yes, I believe I shall live now." To cheer him, I told him what Mr. Devlin intended and had planned; how river-drivers and salmon-fishers came every day from the valley to inquire after him. I did not tell him that there had been one or two disturbances between the river-drivers and the salmon-fishers. I tried to let him see that there need be no fresh change in his life. At length he interrupted me. "Marmion," he said, "I understand what you mean. It would be cowardly of me to leave here now if I were a whole man. I am true in intention, God knows, but I must carry a crippled arm for the rest of my life, must I not? . . . . and a crippled Padre is not the kind of man for this place. They want men straight on their feet." "Do you think," I answered, "that they will not be able to stand the test? You gave them--shall I say it?--a crippled mind before; you give them a crippled body now. Well, where do you think the odds lie? I should fancy with you as you are." There was a long silence in which neither of us moved. At last he turned his face towards the window, and, not looking at me, said lingeringly: "This is a pleasant place." I knew that he would remain. I had not seen Mrs. Falchion during Roscoe's illness; but every day Justine came and inquired, or a messenger was sent. And when, this fortunate day, Justine herself came, and I told her that the crisis was past, she seemed infinitely relieved and happy. Then she said: "Madame has been ill these three days also; but now I think she will be better; and we shall go soon." "Ask her," said I, "not to go yet for a few days. Press it as a favour to me." Then, on second thought, I sat down and wrote Mrs. Falchion a note, hinting that there were grave reasons why she should stay a little longer: things connected with her own happiness. Truth is, I had received a note that morning which had excited me. It referred to Mrs. Falchion. For I was an arch-plotter--or had been. I received a note in reply which said that she would do as I wished. Meanwhile I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of some one. That night a letter came to Roscoe. After reading it shrinkingly he handed it to me. It said briefly: I'm not sorry I did it, but I'm glad I hevn't killed you. I was drunk and mad. If I hadn't hurt you, I'd never hev forgive myself. I reckon now, there's no need to do any forgivin' either side. We're square--though maybe you didn't kill her after all. Mrs. Falchion says you didn't. But you hurt her. Well, I've hurt you. And you will never hear no more of Phil's pal from Danger Mountain. Immediately after sunset of this night, a storm swept suddenly down the mountains, and prevented Ruth and her father from going to Viking. I left them talking to Roscoe, he wearing such a look on his face as I like to remember now, free from distress of mind--so much more painful than distress of body. As I was leaving the room, I looked back and saw Ruth sitting on a stool beside Roscoe's chair, holding the unmaimed hand in hers; the father's face shining with pleasure and pride. Before I went out, I turned again to look at them, and, as I did so, my eye fell on the window against which the wind and rain were beating. And through the wet there appeared a face, shocking in its paleness and misery--the face of Mrs. Falchion. Only for an instant, and then it was gone. I opened the door and went out upon the verandah. As I did so, there was a flash of lightning, and in that flash a figure hurried by me. One moment, and there was another flash; and I saw the figure in the beating rain, making toward the precipice. Then I heard a cry, not loud, but full of entreaty and sorrow. I moved quickly toward it. In another white gleam I saw Justine with her arms about the figure, holding it back from the abyss. She said with incredible pleading: "No, no, madame, not that! It is wicked--wicked." I came and stood beside them. The figure sank upon the ground and buried a pitiful face in the wet grass. Justine leaned over her. She sobbed as one whose harvest of the past is all tears. Nothing human could comfort her yet. I think she did not know that I was there. Justine lifted her face to me, appealing. I turned and stole silently away. CHAPTER XXI IN PORT That night I could not rest. It was impossible to rid myself of the picture of Mrs. Falchion as I had seen her by the precipice in the storm. What I had dared to hope for had come. She had been awakened; and with the awakening had risen a new understanding of her own life and the lives of others. The storm of wind and rain that had swept down the ravine was not wilder than her passions when I left her with Justine in the dark night. All had gone well where the worst might have been. Roscoe's happiness was saved to him. He felt that the accident to him was the penalty he paid for the error of his past; but in the crash of penalties Mrs. Falchion, too, was suffering; and, so far as she knew, must carry with her the remorse of having seen, without mercy, her husband sink to a suicide's grave. I knew that she was paying a great price now for a mistaken past. I wished that I might make her remorse and sorrow less. There was a way, but I was not sure that all would be as I wished. Since a certain dreadful day on the 'Fulvia', Hungerford and I had held a secret in our hands. When it seemed that Mrs. Falchion would bring a great trouble and shame into Roscoe's life, I determined to use the secret. It must be used now only for Mrs. Falchion's good. As I said in the last chapter, I had received word that somebody was coming whose presence must take a large place in the drama of these events: and I hoped the best. Until morning I lay and planned the best way to bring things to a successful issue. The morning came--beautiful after a mad night. Soon after I got up I received a note, brought by a boy from Viking, which gave me a thrill of excitement. The note requested me to go to Sunburst. But first I sent a note to Mrs. Falchion, begging her in the name of our new friendship not to leave the mountains that day. I also asked that she would meet me in Sunburst that evening at eight o'clock, at a place indicated by me. I asked for a reply by the messenger I sent, and urged her to ask no questions, but to trust me as one who only wished to do her a great service, as I hoped her compliance would make possible. I waited for the reply, and it bore but the one word--"Yes." Greatly pleased, I started down the valley. It was still early when I reached Sunburst. I went directly to the little tavern from whence the note had come, and remained an hour or more. The result of that hour's conversation with the writer of the note was memorable, as was the hour itself. I began to hope fondly for the success of my scheme. From the tavern I went to the village, with an elation hardly disturbed by the fact that many of the salmon-fishers were sullen, because of foolish depredations committed the evening before by idle river-men and mill-hands of Viking. Had I not been so occupied with Mrs. Falchion and an event wherein she must figure, I should have taken more seriously the mutterings of the half-breeds, the moroseness of the Indians, and the nervous threatenings of the white fishers: the more so because I knew that Mr. Devlin had started early that morning for the Pacific Coast, and would not be back for some days. No two classes of people could be more unlike than the salmon-fishers of Sunburst and the mill-hands and river-drivers of Viking. The life of the river-men was exciting, hardy, and perilous; tending to boisterousness, recklessness, daring, and wild humour: that of the salmon-fishers was cheerful, picturesque, infrequently dangerous, mostly simple and quiet. The river-driver chose to spend his idle hours in crude, rough sprightliness; the salmon-fisher loved to lie upon the shore and listen to the village story-teller,--almost official when successful,--who played upon the credulity and imagination of his listeners. The river- driver loved excitement for its own sake, and behind his boisterousness there was little evil. When the salmon-fisher was roused, his anger became desperately serious. It was not his practice to be boisterous for the sake of boisterousness. All this worked for a crisis. From Sunburst I went over to Viking, and for a time watched a handful of river-drivers upon a little island in the centre of the river, working to loosen some logs and timber and foist them into the water, to be driven down to the mill. I stood interested, because I had nothing to do of any moment for a couple of hours. I asked an Indian on the bank to take his canoe and paddle me over to the island. He did so. I do not know why I did not go alone; but the Indian was near me, his canoe was at his hand, and I did the thing almost mechanically. I landed on the island and watched with great interest the men as they pried, twisted and tumbled the pile to get at the key-log which, found and loosened, would send the heap into the water. I was sorry I brought the Indian with me, for though the river-drivers stopped their wild sing-song cry for a moment to call a "How!" at me, they presently began to toss jeering words at the Indian. They had recognised him--I had not--as a salmon-fisher and one of the Siwash tribe from Sunburst. He remained perfectly silent, but I could see sullenness growing on his face. He appeared to take no notice of his scornful entertainers, but, instead of edging away, came nearer and nearer to the tangle of logs--came, indeed, very close to me, as I stood watching four or five men, with the foreman close by, working at a huge timber. At a certain moment the foreman was in a kind of hollow. Just behind him, near to the Indian, was a great log, which, if loosened by a slight impulse, must fall into the hollow where the foreman stood. The foreman had his face to us; the backs of the other men were on us. Suddenly the foreman gave a frightened cry, and I saw at the same instant the Indian's foot thrust out upon the big log. Before the foreman had time to get out of the hollow, it slid down, caught him just above the ankle and broke the leg. I wheeled, to see the Indian in his canoe making for the shore. He was followed by the curses of the foreman and the gang. The foreman was very quiet, but I could see that there was danger in his eye, and the exclamations of the men satisfied me that they were planning an inter- municipal difficulty. I improvised bandages, set the leg directly, and in a little while we got to the shore on a hastily constructed raft. After seeing the foreman safely cared for, and giving Mr. Devlin's manager the facts of the occurrence, more than sated with my morning's experience, I climbed the mountain side, and took refuge from the heat in the coolness of Roscoe's rooms. In the afternoon I received a note from Mrs. Falchion, saying that on the following day she would start for the coast; that her luggage would be taken to Sunburst at once; and that, her engagement with me fulfilled, she would spend a night there, not returning again to the hills. I was preparing for my own departure, and was kept very busy until evening. Then I went quickly down into the valley,--for I was late,--and trudged eagerly on to Sunburst. As I neared the village I saw that there were fewer lights--torches and fires--than usual on the river. I noticed also that there were very few fishers on the banks or in the river. But still the village seemed noisy, and, although it was dusk, I could make out much stir in the one street along which the cottages and huts ambled for nearly a mile. All at once it came to me strongly that the friction between the two villages had consummated in the foreman's injury, and was here coming to a painful crisis. My suspicions had good grounds. As I hurried on I saw that the lights usually set on the banks of the river were scattered through the town. Bonfires were being lighted, and torches were flaring in front of the Indian huts. Coming closer, I saw excited groups of Indians, half-breeds, and white men moving here and there; and then, all at once, there came a cry--a kind of roar--from farther up the village, and the men gathered themselves together, seizing guns, sticks, irons, and other weapons, and ran up the street. I understood. I was moderately swift of foot those days. I came quickly after them, and passed them. As I did so I inquired of one or two fishers what was the trouble. They told me, as I had guessed, that they expected an attack on the village by the mill-hands and river-drivers of Viking. The situation was critical. I could foresee a catastrophe which would for ever unsettle the two towns, and give the valley an unenviable reputation. I was certain that, if Roscoe or Mr. Devlin were present, a prohibitive influence could be brought to bear; that some one of strong will could stand, as it were, in the gap between them, and prevent a pitched battle, and, possibly, bloodshed. I was sure that at Viking the river-drivers had laid their plans so secretly that the news of them would scarcely reach the ears of the manager of the mill, and that, therefore, his influence, as Mr. Devlin's, would not be available. Remained only myself--as I first thought. I was unknown to a great number of the men of both villages, and familiar with but very few-- chiefly those with whom I had a gossiping acquaintance. Yet, somehow, I felt that if I could but get a half-dozen men to take a firm stand with me, I might hold the rioters in check. As I ran by the side of the excitable fishers, I urged upon one or two of them the wisdom and duty of preventing a conflict. Their reply was--and it was very convincing--that they were not forcing a struggle, but were being attacked, and in the case would fight. My hasty persuasion produced but little result. But I kept thinking hard. Suddenly it came to me that I could place my hand upon a man whose instincts in the matter would be the same as mine; who had authority; knew the world; had been in dangerous positions in his lifetime; and owed me something. I was sure that I could depend upon him: the more so that once frail of body he had developed into a strong, well-controlled man. Even as I thought of him, I was within a few rods of the house where he was. I looked, and saw him standing in the doorway. I ran and called to him. He instantly joined me, and we ran on together: the fishermen shouting loudly as they watched the river-drivers come armed down the hill-slope into the village. I hastily explained the situation to my friend, and told him what we must do. A word or two assured me of all I wished to know. We reached the scene of the disorder. The fishermen were bunched together, the river on the one side, the houses and hills on the other. The river-drivers had halted not many yards away, cool, determined and quiet, save for a little muttering. In their red shirts, top boots, many of them with long black hair and brass earrings, they looked a most formidable crowd. They had evidently taken the matter seriously, and were come with the intention of carrying their point, whatever it might be. Just as we reached the space between the two parties, the massive leader of the river-drivers stepped forward, and in a rough but collected voice said that they had come determined to fight, if fighting were necessary, but that they knew what the end of the conflict would be, and they did not wish to obliterate Sunburst entirely if Sunburst accepted the conditions of peace. There seemed no leader to the fishermen. My friend said to me quickly: "You speak first." Instantly I stepped forward and demanded to know what the terms of peace were. As soon as I did so, there were harsh mutterings among the river-drivers. I explained at once, waving back some of the fisher-men who were clamouring about me, that I had nothing whatever to do with the quarrel; that I happened to be where I was by accident, as I had happened by accident to see the difficulty of the morning. But I said that it was the duty of every man who was a good citizen and respected the laws of his country, to see, in so far as it was possible, that there should be no breach of those laws. I spoke in a clear strong voice, and I think I produced some effect upon both parties to the quarrel. The reply of the leader was almost immediate. He said that all they demanded was the Indian who had so treacherously injured the foreman of their gangs. I saw the position at once, and was dumfounded. For a moment I did not speak. I was not prepared for the scene that immediately followed. Some one broke through the crowd at my back, rushed past me, and stood between the two forces. It was the Indian who had injured the foreman. He was naked to the waist, and painted and feathered after the manner of his tribe going to battle. There was a wild light in his eye, but he had no weapon. He folded his arms across his breast, and said: "Well, you want me. Here I am. I will fight with any man all alone, without a gun or arrow or anything. I will fight with my arms--to kill." I saw revolvers raised at him instantly, but at that the man, my friend, who stood beside me, sprang in front of the Indian. "Stop--stop!" he cried. "In the name of the law! I am a sergeant of the mounted police of Canada. My jurisdiction extends from Winnipeg to Vancouver. You cannot have this man except over my body: and for my body every one of you will pay with your lives; for every blow struck this night, there will be a hundred blows struck upon the river-drivers and mill-hands of this valley. Take care! Behind me is the law of the land --her police and her soldiery." He paused. There was almost complete silence. He continued: "This man is my prisoner; I arrest him."--He put his hand upon the Indian's shoulder.--"For the crime he committed this morning he shall pay: but to the law, not to you. Put up your revolvers, men. Go back to Viking. Don't risk your lives; don't break the law and make yourselves criminals and outlaws. Is it worth it? Be men. You have been the aggressors. There isn't one of you but feels that justice which is the boast of every man of the West. You wanted to avenge the crime of this morning. But the vengeance is the law's.--Stand back--Stand back!" he said, and drew his revolver, as the leader of the river-drivers stepped forward. "I will kill the first man that tries to lay his hand upon my prisoner. Don't be mad. I am not one man, I am a whole country." I shall never forget the thrill that passed through me as I saw a man who, but a handful of months before, was neck deep in his grave, now blossomed out into a strong, defiant soldier. There was a pause. At last the leader of the river-drivers spoke. "See," he said, "Sergeant, I guess you're right. You're a man, so help me! Say, boys," he continued, turning to his followers, "let him have the Injin. I guess he's earned him." So saying he wheeled, the men with him, and they tramped up the slope again on their way back to Viking. The man who had achieved this turned upon the fishers. "Back to your homes!" he said. "Be thankful that blood was not shed here to-night, and let this be a lesson to you. Now, go." The crowd turned, slowly shambled down the riverside, and left us three standing there. But not alone. Out of the shadow of one of the houses came two women. They stepped forward into the light of the bonfire burning near us. One of the women was very pale. It was Mrs. Falchion. I touched the arm of the man standing beside me. He wheeled and saw her also. A cry broke from his lips, but he stood still. A whole life-time of sorrow, trouble, and love looked out of his eyes. Mrs. Falchion came nearer. Clasping her hands upon her breast, she peered up into his face, and gasped: "Oh--oh--I thought that you were drowned--and dead! I saw you buried in the sea. No--no--it cannot be you! I have heard and seen all within these past few minutes. YOU are so strong and brave, so great a man!... Oh, tell me, tell me, are you in truth my husband?" He spoke. "I was your husband, Mercy Falchion. I was drowned, but this man"--he turned and touched my shoulder--"this man brought me back to life. I wanted to be dead to the world. I begged him to keep my secret. A sailor's corpse was buried in my shroud, and I lived. At Aden I stole from the boat in the night. I came to America--to Canada--to begin a new life under a new name, never to see you again. . . . Do not, do not speak to me--unless I am not to lose you again; unless I am to know that now you forgive me--that you forgive me--and wish me to live--my wife!" She put both her hands out, a strange, sorrowful look in her eyes, and said: "I have sinned--I have sinned." He took her hands in his. "I know," he said, "that you do not love me yet; but you may some day." "No," she said, "I do not love you; but . . . . I am glad you live. Let us--go home." THE END. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: A heart-break for that kind is their salvation A man may be forgiven for a sin, but the effect remains A man you could bank on, and draw your interest reg'lar Aboriginal dispersion All he has to do is to be vague, and look prodigious (Scientist) And even envy praised her Audience that patronisingly listens outside a room or window But to pay the vulgar penalty of prison--ah! Death is a magnificent ally; it untangles knots Death is not the worst of evils Engrossed more, it seemed, in the malady than in the man Every true woman is a mother, though she have no child Fear a woman are when she hates, and when she loves For a man having work to do, woman, lovely woman, is rocks He didn't always side with the majority He had neither self-consciousness nor fear Her own suffering always set her laughing at herself It is difficult to be idle--and important too It is hard to be polite to cowards Jews everywhere treated worse than the Chinaman Learned what fools we mortals be Love can outlive slander Men do not steal up here: that is the unpardonable crime One always buys back the past at a tremendous price One doesn't choose to worry Saying uncomfortable things in a deferential way She had provoked love, but had never given it Slow-footed hours wandered by, leaving apathy in their train "Still the end of your existence," I rejoined--"to be amused?" That anxious civility which beauty can inspire The happy scene of the play before the villain comes in The ravings of a sick man are not always counted ravings The sea is a great breeder of friendship The tender care of a woman--than many pharmacopoeias The threshold of an acknowledged love There are things we repent of which cannot be repaired There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world Think that a woman gives the heart for pleasant weather only? Thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart Time a woman most yearns for a man is when she has refused him Vanity; and from this much feminine hatred springs Very severe on those who do not pretend to be good What is gone is gone Graves are idolatry Who get a morbid enjoyment out of misery Would look back and not remember that she had a childhood CUMNER'S SON AND OTHER SOUTH SEA FOLK, Complete by Gilbert Parker CONTENTS Volume 1. CUMNER'S SON Volume 2. THE HIGH COURT OF BUDGERY-GAR AN EPIC IN YELLOW DIBBS, R.N. A LITTLE MASQUERADE DERELICT OLD ROSES MY WIFE'S LOVERS THE STRANGERS' HUT Volume 3. THE PLANTER'S WIFE BARBARA GOLDING THE LONE CORVETTE Volume 4. A SABLE SPARTAN A VULGAR FRACTION HOW PANGO WANGO WAS ANNEXED AN AMIABLE REVENGE THE BLIND BEGGAR AND THE LITTLE RED PEG A FRIEND OF THE COMMUNE Volume 5. A PAGAN OF THE SOUTH INTRODUCTION In a Foreword to Donovan Pasha, published in 1902, I used the following words: "It is now twelve years since I began giving to the public tales of life in lands well known to me. The first of them were drawn from Australia and the islands of the southern Pacific, where I had lived and roamed in the middle and late eighties. . . . Those tales of the Far South were given out with some prodigality. They did not appear in book form, however; for at the time I was sending out these antipodean sketches I was also writing--far from the scenes where they were laid--a series of Canadian tales, many of which appeared in the 'Independent' of New York, in the 'National Observer', edited by Mr. Henley, and in the 'Illustrated London News'. On the suggestion of my friend Mr. Henley, the Canadian tales, Pierre and His People, were published first; with the result that the stories of the southern hemisphere were withheld from publication, though they have been privately printed and duly copyrighted. Some day I may send them forth, but meanwhile I am content to keep them in my care." These stories made the collection published eventually under the title of Cumner's Son, in 1910. They were thus kept for nearly twenty years without being given to the public in book form. In 1910 I decided, however, that they should go out and find their place with my readers. The first story in the book, Cumner's Son, which represents about four times the length of an ordinary short story, was published in Harper's Weekly, midway between 1890 and 1900. All the earlier stories belonged to 1890, 1891, 1892, and 1893. The first of these to be published was 'A Sable Spartan', 'An Amiable Revenge', 'A Vulgar Fraction', and 'How Pango Wango Was Annexed'. They were written before the Pierre series, and were instantly accepted by Mr. Frederick Greenwood, that great journalistic figure of whom the British public still takes note, and for whom it has an admiring memory, because of his rare gifts as an editor and publicist, and by a political section of the public, because Mr. Greenwood recommended to Disraeli the purchase of the Suez Canal shares. Seventeen years after publishing these stories I had occasion to write to Frederick Greenwood, and in my letter I said: "I can never forget that you gave me a leg up in my first struggle for recognition in the literary world." His reply was characteristic; it was in keeping with the modest, magnanimous nature of the man. He said: "I cannot remember that there was any day when you required a leg up." While still contributing to the 'Anti-Jacobin', which had a short life and not a very merry one, I turned my attention to a weekly called 'The Speaker', to which I have referred elsewhere, edited by Mr. Wemyss Reid, afterwards Sir Wemyss Reid, and in which Mr. Quiller-Couch was then writing a striking short story nearly every week. Up to that time I had only interviewed two editors. One was Mr. Kinloch-Cooke, now Sir Clement Kinloch-Cooke, who at that time was editor of the 'English Illustrated Magazine', and a very good, courteous, and generous editor he was, and he had a very good magazine; the other was an editor whose name I do not care to mention, because his courtesy was not on the same expansive level as his vanity. One bitter winter's day in 1891 I went to Wemyss Reid to tell him, if he would hear me, that I had in my mind a series of short stories of Australia and the South Seas, and to ask him if he could give them a place in 'The Speaker'. It was a Friday afternoon, and as I went into the smudgy little office I saw a gentleman with a small brown bag emerging from another room. At that moment I asked for Mr. Wemyss Reid. The gentleman with the little brown bag stood and looked sharply at me, but with friendly if penetrating eyes. "I am Wemyss Reid--you wish to see me?" he said. "Will you give me five minutes?" I asked. "I am just going to the train, but I will spare you a minute," he replied. He turned back into another smudgy little room, put his bag on the table, and said: "Well?" I told him quickly, eagerly, what I wished to do, and I said to him at last: "I apologise for seeking you personally, but I was most anxious that my work should be read by your own eyes, because I think I should be contented with your judgment, whether it was favourable or unfavourable." Taking up his bag again, he replied, "Send your stories along. If I think they are what I want I will publish them. I will read them myself." He turned the handle of the door, and then came back to me and again looked me in the eyes. "If I cannot use them--and there might be a hundred reasons why I could not, and none of them derogatory to your work--" he said, "do not be discouraged. There are many doors. Mine is only one. Knock at the others. Good luck to you." I never saw Wemyss Reid again, but he made a friend who never forgot him, and who mourned his death. It was not that he accepted my stories; it was that he said what he did say to a young man who did not yet know what his literary fortune might be. Well, I sent him a short story called, 'An Epic in Yellow'. Proofs came by return of post. This story was followed by 'The High Court of Budgery-Gar', 'Old Roses', 'My Wife's Lovers', 'Derelict', 'Dibbs, R.N.', 'A Little Masquerade', and 'The Stranger's Hut'. Most, if not all, of these appeared before the Pierre stories were written. They did not strike the imagination of the public in the same way as the Pierre series, but they made many friends. They were mostly Australian, and represented the life which for nearly four years I knew and studied with that affection which only the young, open-eyed enthusiast, who makes his first journey in the world, can give. In the same year, for 'Macmillan's Magazine', I wrote 'Barbara Golding' and 'A Pagan of the South', which was originally published as 'The Woman in the Morgue'. 'A Friend of the Commune' was also published in the 'English Illustrated Magazine', and 'The Blind Beggar and the Little Red Peg' found a place in the 'National Observer' after W. E. Henley had ceased to be its editor, and Mr. J. C. Vincent, also since dead, had taken his place. 'The Lone Corvette' was published in 'The Westminster Gazette' as late as 1893. Of certain of these stories, particularly of the Australian group, I have no doubt. They were lifted out of the life of that continent with sympathy and care, and most of the incidents were those which had come under my own observation. I published them at last in book form, because I felt that no definitive edition of my books ought to appear--and I had then a definitive edition in my mind--without these stories which represented an early phase in my work. Whatever their degree of merit, they possess freshness and individuality of outlook. Others could no doubt have written them better, but none could have written them with quite the same touch or turn or individuality; and, after all, what we want in the art of fiction is not a story alone, not an incident of life or soul simply as an incident, but the incident as seen with the eye-- and that eye as truthful and direct as possible--of one individual personality. George Meredith and Robert Louis Stevenson might each have chosen the same subject and the same story, and each have produced a masterpiece, and yet the world of difference between the way it was presented by each was the world of difference between the eyes that saw. So I am content to let these stories speak little or much, but still to speak for me. CUMNER'S SON I THE CHOOSING OF THE MESSENGER There was trouble at Mandakan. You could not have guessed it from anything the eye could see. In front of the Residency two soldiers marched up and down sleepily, mechanically, between two ten-pounders marking the limit of their patrol; and an orderly stood at an open door, lazily shifting his eyes from the sentinels to the black guns, which gave out soft, quivering waves of heat, as a wheel, spinning, throws off delicate spray. A hundred yards away the sea spread out, languid and huge. It was under-tinged with all the colours of a morning sunrise over Mount Bobar not far beyond, lifting up its somnolent and massive head into the Eastern sky. "League-long rollers" came in as steady as columns of infantry, with white streamers flying along the line, and hovering a moment, split, and ran on the shore in a crumbling foam, like myriads of white mice hurrying up the sand. A little cloud of tobacco smoke came curling out of a window of the Residency. It was sniffed up by the orderly, whose pipe was in barracks, and must lie there untouched until evening at least; for he had stood at this door since seven that morning, waiting orders; and he knew by the look on Colonel Cumner's face that he might be there till to-morrow. But the ordinary spectator could not have noticed any difference in the general look of things. All was quiet, too, in the big native city. At the doorways the worker in brass and silver hammered away at his metal, a sleepy, musical assonance. The naked seller of sweetmeats went by calling his wares in a gentle, unassertive voice; in dark doorways worn-eyed women and men gossiped in voices scarce above a whisper; and brown children fondled each other, laughing noiselessly, or lay asleep on rugs which would be costly elsewhere. In the bazaars nothing was selling, and no man did anything but mumble or eat, save the few scholars who, cross-legged on their mats, read and laboured towards Nirvana. Priests in their yellow robes and with bare shoulders went by, oblivious of all things. Yet, too, the keen observer could have seen gathered into shaded corners here and there, a few sombre, low-voiced men talking covertly to each other. They were not the ordinary gossipers; in the faces of some were the marks of furtive design, of sinister suggestion. But it was all so deadly still. The gayest, cheeriest person in Mandakan was Colonel Cumner's son. Down at the opal beach, under a palm-tree, he sat, telling stories of his pranks at college to Boonda Broke, the half-breed son of a former Dakoon who had ruled the State of Mandakan when first the English came. The saddest person in Mandakan was the present Dakoon, in his palace by the Fountain of the Sweet Waters, which was guarded by four sacred warriors in stone and four brown men armed with the naked kris. The Dakoon was dying, though not a score of people in the city knew it. He had drunk of the Fountain of Sweet Waters, also of the well that is by Bakbar; he had eaten of the sweetmeat called the Flower of Bambaba, his chosen priests had prayed, and his favourite wife had lain all day and all night at the door of his room, pouring out her soul; but nothing came of it. And elsewhere Boonda Broke was showing Cumner's Son how to throw a kris towards one object and make it hit another. He gave an illustration by aiming at a palm-tree and sticking a passing dog behind the shoulder. The dog belonged to Cumner's Son, and the lad's face suddenly blazed with anger. He ran to the dog, which had silently collapsed like a punctured bag of silk, drew out the kris, then swung towards Boonda Broke, whose cool, placid eyes met his without emotion. "You knew that was my dog," he said quickly in English, "and--and I tell you what, sir, I've had enough of you. A man that'd hit a dog like that would hit a man the same way." He was standing with the crimson kris in his hand above the dog. His passion was frank, vigorous, and natural. Boonda Broke smiled passively. "You mean, could hit a man the same way, honoured lord." "I mean what I said," answered the lad, and he turned on his heel; but presently he faced about again, as though with a wish to give his foe the benefit of any doubt. Though Boonda Broke was smiling, the lad's face flushed again with anger, for the man's real character had been revealed to him on the instant, and he was yet in the indignant warmth of the new experience. If he had known that Boonda Broke had cultivated his friendship for months, to worm out of him all the secrets of the Residency, there might have been a violent and immediate conclusion to the incident, for the lad was fiery, and he had no fear in his heart; he was combative, high-tempered, and daring. Boonda Broke had learned no secrets of him, had been met by an unconscious but steady resistance, and at length his patience had given way in spite of himself. He had white blood in his veins--fighting Irish blood--which sometimes overcame his smooth, Oriental secretiveness and cautious duplicity; and this was one of those occasions. He had flung the knife at the dog with a wish in his heart that it was Cumner's Son instead. As he stood looking after the English lad, he said between his teeth with a great hatred, though his face showed no change: "English dog, thou shalt be dead like thy brother there when I am Dakoon of Mandakan." At this moment he saw hurrying towards him one of those natives who, a little while before, had been in close and furtive talk in the Bazaar. Meanwhile the little cloud of smoke kept curling out of the Governor's door, and the orderly could catch the fitful murmur of talk that followed it. Presently rifle shots rang out somewhere. Instantly a tall, broad- shouldered figure, in white undress uniform, appeared in the doorway and spoke quickly to the orderly. In a moment two troopers were galloping out of the Residency Square and into the city. Before two minutes had passed one had ridden back to the orderly, who reported to the Colonel that the Dakoon had commanded the shooting of five men of the tribe of the outlaw hill-chief, Pango Dooni, against the rear wall of the Palace, where the Dakoon might look from his window and see the deed. The Colonel sat up eagerly in his chair, then brought his knuckles down smartly on the table. He looked sharply at the three men who sat with him. "That clinches it," said he. "One of those fellows was Pango Dooni's nephew, another was his wife's brother. It's the only thing to do--some one must go to Pango Dooni, tell him the truth, ask him to come down and save the place, and sit up there in the Dakoon's place. He'll stand by us, and by England." No one answered at first. Every face was gloomy. At last a grey-haired captain of artillery spoke his mind in broken sentences: "Never do--have to ride through a half-dozen sneaking tribes--Pango Dooni, rank robber--steal like a barrack cat--besides, no man could get there. Better stay where we are and fight it out till help comes." "Help!" said Cumner bitterly. "We might wait six months before a man- of-war put in. The danger is a matter of hours. A hundred men, and a score of niggers--what would that be against thirty thousand natives?" "Pango Dooni is as likely to butcher us as the Dakoon," said McDermot, the captain of artillery. Every man in the garrison had killed at least one of Pango Dooni's men, and every man of them was known from the Kimar Gate to the Neck of Baroob, where Pango Dooni lived and ruled. The Colonel was not to be moved. "I'd ride the ninety miles myself, if my place weren't here--no, don't think I doubt you, for I know you all! But consider the nest of murderers that'll be let loose here when the Dakoon dies. Better a strong robber with a strong robber's honour to perch there in the Palace, than Boonda Broke and his cut-throats--" "Honour--honour?--Pango Dooni!" broke out McDermot the gunner scornfully. "I know the man," said the Governor gruffly; "I know the man, I tell you, and I'd take his word for ten thousand pounds, or a thousand head of cattle. Is there any of you will ride to the Neck of Baroob for me? For one it must be, and no more--we can spare scarce that, God knows!" he added sadly. "The women and children--" "I will go," said a voice behind them all; and Cumner's Son stepped forward. "I will go, if I may ride the big sorrel from the Dakoon's stud." The Colonel swung round in his chair and stared mutely at the lad. He was only eighteen years old, but of good stature, well-knit, and straight as a sapling. Seeing that no one answered him, but sat and stared incredulously, he laughed a little, frankly and boyishly. "The kris of Boonda Broke is for the hearts of every one of us," said he. "He may throw it soon-- to-night--to-morrow. No man can leave here--all are needed; but a boy can ride; he is light in the saddle, and he may pass where a man would be caught in a rain of bullets. I have ridden the sorrel of the Dakoon often; he has pressed it on me; I will go to the master of his stud, and I will ride to the Neck of Baroob." "No, no," said one after the other, getting to his feet, "I will go." The Governor waved them down. "The lad is right," said he, and he looked him closely and proudly in the eyes. "By the mercy of God, you shall ride the ride," said he. "Once when Pango Dooni was in the city, in disguise, aye, even in the Garden of the Dakoon, the night of the Dance of the Yellow Fire, I myself helped him to escape, for I stand for a fearless robber before a cowardly saint." His grey moustache and eyebrows bristled with energy as he added: "The lad shall go. He shall carry in his breast the bracelet with the red stone that Pango Dooni gave me. On the stone is written the countersign that all hillsmen heed, and the tribe-call I know also." "The danger--the danger--and the lad so young!" said McDermot; but yet his eyes rested lovingly on the boy. The Colonel threw up his head in anger. "If I, his father, can let him go, why should you prate like women? The lad is my son, and he shall win his spurs--and more, and more, maybe," he added. He took from his pocket Pango Dooni's gift and gave it to the lad, and three times he whispered in his ear the tribe-call and the countersign that he might know them. The lad repeated them three times, and, with his finger, traced the countersign upon the stone. That night he rode silently out of the Dakoon's palace yard by a quiet gateway, and came, by a roundabout, to a point near the Residency. He halted under a flame-tree, and a man came out of the darkness and laid a hand upon his knee. "Ride straight and swift from the Kimar Gate. Pause by the Koongat Bridge an hour, rest three hours at the Bar of Balmud, and pause again where the roof of the Brown Hermit drums to the sorrel's hoofs. Ride for the sake of the women and children and for your own honour. Ride like a Cumner, lad." The last sound of the sorrel's hoofs upon the red dust beat in the Colonel's ears all night long, as he sat waiting for news from the Palace, the sentinels walking up and down, the orderly at the door, and Boonda Broke plotting in the town. II "REST AT THE KOONGAT BRIDGE AN HOUR" There was no moon, and but few stars were shining. When Cumner's Son first set out from Mandakan he could scarcely see at all, and he kept his way through the native villages more by instinct than by sight. As time passed he saw more clearly; he could make out the figures of natives lying under trees or rising from their mats to note the flying horseman. Lights flickered here and there in the houses and by the roadside. A late traveller turned a cake in the ashes or stirred some rice in a calabash; an anxious mother put some sandalwood on the coals and added incense, that the gods might be good to the ailing child on the mat; and thrice, at forges in the village, he saw the smith languidly beating iron into shape, while dark figures sat on the floor near by, and smoked and murmured to each other. These last showed alertness at the sound of the flying sorrel's hoofs, and all at once a tall, keen-eyed horseman sprang to the broad doorway and strained his eyes into the night after Cumner's Son. He waited a few moments; then, as if with a sudden thought, he ran to a horse tethered near by and vaulted into the saddle. At a word his chestnut mare got away with telling stride in pursuit of the unknown rider, passing up the Gap of Mandakan like a ghost. Cumner's Son had a start by about half a mile, but Tang-a-Dahit rode a mare that had once belonged to Pango Dooni, and Pango Dooni had got her from Colonel Cumner the night he escaped from Mandakan. For this mare the hill-chief had returned no gift save the gold bracelet which Cumner's Son now carried in his belt. The mare leaned low on her bit, and travelled like a thirsty hound to water, the sorrel tugged at the snaffle, and went like a bullmoose hurrying to his herd, "That long low gallop that can tire The hounds' deep hate or hunter's fire." The pace was with the sorrel. Cumner's Son had not looked behind after the first few miles, for then he had given up thought that he might be followed. He sat in his saddle like a plainsman; he listened like a hillsman; he endured like an Arab water-carrier. There was not an ounce of useless flesh on his body, and every limb, bone, and sinew had been stretched and hardened by riding with the Dakoon's horsemen, by travelling through the jungle for the tiger and the panther, by throwing the kris with Boonda Broke, fencing with McDermot, and by sabre practice with red-headed Sergeant Doolan in the barracks by the Residency Square. After twenty miles' ride he was dry as a bone, after thirty his skin was moist but not damp, and there was not a drop of sweat on the skin-leather of his fatigue cap. When he got to Koongat Bridge he was like a racer after practice, ready for a fight from start to finish. Yet he was not foolhardy. He knew the danger that beset him, for he could not tell, in the crisis come to Mandakan, what designs might be abroad. He now saw through Boonda Broke's friendship for him, and he only found peace for his mind upon the point by remembering that he had told no secrets, had given no information of any use to the foes of the Dakoon or the haters of the English. On this hot, long, silent ride he looked back carefully, but he could not see where he had been to blame; and, if he were, he hoped to strike a balance with his own conscience for having been friendly to Boonda Broke, and to justify himself in his father's eyes. If he came through all right, then "the Governor"--as he called his father, with the friendly affection of a good comrade, and as all others in Mandakan called him because of his position--the Governor then would say that whatever harm he had done indirectly was now undone. He got down at the Koongat Bridge, and his fingers were still in the sorrel's mane when he heard the call of a bittern from the river bank. He did not loose his fingers, but stood still and listened intently, for there was scarcely a sound of the plain, the river, or jungle he did not know, and his ear was keen to balance 'twixt the false note and the true. He waited for the sound again. From that first call he could not be sure which had startled him--the night was so still--the voice of a bird or the call between men lying in ambush. He tried the trigger of his pistol softly, and prepared to mount. As he did so, the call rang out across the water again, a little louder, a little longer. Now he was sure. It was not from a bittern--it was a human voice, of whose tribe he knew not--Pango Dooni's, Boonda Broke's, the Dakoon's, or the segments of peoples belonging to none of these--highway robbers, cattle-stealers, or the men of the jungle, those creatures as wild and secret as the beasts of the bush and more cruel and more furtive. The fear of the ambushed thing is the worst fear of this world--the sword or the rifle-barrel you cannot see and the poisoned wooden spear which the men of the jungle throw gives a man ten deaths, instead of one. Cumner's Son mounted quickly, straining his eyes to see and keeping his pistol cocked. When he heard the call a second time he had for a moment a thrill of fear, not in his body, but in his brain. He had that fatal gift, imagination, which is more alive than flesh and bone, stronger than iron and steel. In his mind he saw a hundred men rise up from ambush, surround him, and cut him down. He saw himself firing a half-dozen shots, then drawing his sword and fighting till he fell; but he did fall in the end, and there was an end of it. It seemed like years while these visions passed through his mind, but it was no longer than it took to gather the snaffle-rein close to the sorrel's neck, draw his sword, clinch it in his left hand with the rein, and gather the pistol snugly in his right. He listened again. As he touched the sorrel with his knee he thought he heard a sound ahead. The sorrel sprang forward, sniffed the air, and threw up his head. His feet struck the resounding timbers of the bridge, and, as they did so, he shied; but Cumner's Son, looking down sharply, could see nothing to either the right or left--no movement anywhere save the dim trees on the banks waving in the light wind which had risen. A crocodile slipped off a log into the water--he knew that sound; a rank odour came from the river bank--he knew the smell of the hippopotamus. These very things gave him new courage. Since he came from Eton to Mandakan he had hunted often and well, and once he had helped to quarry the Little Men of the Jungle when they carried off the wife and daughter of a soldier of the Dakoon. The smell and the sound of wild life roused all the hunter in him. He had fear no longer; the primitive emotion of fighting or self-defence was alive in him. He had left the bridge behind by twice the horse's length, when, all at once, the call of the red bittern rang out the third time, louder than before; then again; and then the cry of a grey wolf came in response. His peril was upon him. He put spurs to the sorrel. As he did so, dark figures sprang up on all sides of him. Without a word he drove the excited horse at his assailants. Three caught his bridle-rein, and others snatched at him to draw him from his horse. "Hands off!" he cried, in the language of Mandakan, and levelled his pistol. "He is English!" said a voice. "Cut him down!" "I am the Governor's son," said the lad. "Let go." "Cut him down!" snarled the voice again. He fired twice quickly. Then he remembered the tribe-call given his father by Pango Dooni. Rising in his saddle and firing again, he called it out in a loud voice. His plunging horse had broken away from two of the murderers; but one still held on, and he slashed the hand free with his sword. The natives were made furious by the call, and came on again, striking at him with their krises. He shouted the tribe-call once more, but this time it was done involuntarily. There was no response in front of him; but one came from behind. There was clattering of hoofs on Koongat Bridge, and the password of the clan came back to the lad, even as a kris struck him in the leg and drew out again. Once again he called, and suddenly a horseman appeared beside him, who clove through a native's head with a broadsword, and with a pistol fired at the fleeing figures; for Boonda Broke's men who were thus infesting the highway up to Koongat Bridge, and even beyond, up to the Bar of Balmud, hearing the newcomer shout the dreaded name of Pango Dooni, scattered for their lives, though they were yet twenty to two. One stood his ground, and it would have gone ill for Cumner's Son, for this thief had him at fatal advantage, had it not been for the horseman who had followed the lad from the forge-fire to Koongat Bridge. He stood up in his stirrups and cut down with his broadsword, so that the blade was driven through the head and shoulders of his foe as a woodsman splits a log half through, and grunts with the power of his stroke. Then he turned to the lad. "What stranger calls by the word of our tribe?" he asked. "I am Cumner's Son," was the answer, "and my father is brother-in-blood with Pango Dooni. I ride to Pango Dooni for the women and children's sake." "Proof! Proof! If you be Cumner's Son, another word should be yours." The Colonel's Son took out the bracelet from his breast. "It is safe hid here," said he, "and hid also under my tongue. If you be from the Neck of Baroob you will know it when I speak it;" and he spoke reverently the sacred countersign. By a little fire kindled in the road, the bodies of their foe beside them, they vowed to each other, mingling their blood from dagger pricks in the arm. Then they mounted again and rode towards the Neck of Baroob. In silence they rode awhile, and at last the hillsman said: "If fathers be brothers-in-blood, behold it is good that sons be also." By this the lad knew that he was now brother-in-blood to the son of Pango Dooni. III THE CODE OF THE HILLS "You travel near to Mandakan!" said the lad. "Do you ride with a thousand men?" "For a thousand men there are ten thousand eyes to see; I travel alone and safe," answered Tang-a-Dahit. "To thrust your head in the tiger's jaw," said Cumner's Son. "Did you ride to be in at the death of the men of your clan?" "A man will ride for a face that he loves, even to the Dreadful Gates," answered Tang-a-Dahit. "But what is this of the men of my clan?" Then the lad told him of those whose heads hung on the rear Palace wall, where the Dakoon lay dying, and why he rode to Pango Dooni. "It is fighting and fighting, naught but fighting," said Tang-a-Dahit after a pause; "and there is no peace. It is fighting and fighting, for honour, and glory, and houses and cattle, but naught for love, and naught that there may be peace." Cumner's Son turned round in his saddle as if to read the face of the man, but it was too dark. "And naught that there maybe peace." Those were the words of a hillsman who had followed him furiously in the night ready to kill, who had cloven the head of a man like a piece of soap, and had been riding even into Mandakan where a price was set on his head. For long they rode silently, and in that time Cumner's Son found new thoughts; and these thoughts made him love the brown hillsman as he had never loved any save his own father. "When there is peace in Mandakan," said he at last, "when Boonda Broke is snapped in two like a pencil, when Pango Dooni sits as Dakoon in the Palace of Mandakan--" "There is a maid in Mandakan," interrupted Tanga-Dahit, "and these two years she has lain upon her bed, and she may not be moved, for the bones of her body are as the soft stems of the lily, but her face is a perfect face, and her tongue has the wisdom of God." "You ride to her through the teeth of danger?" "She may not come to me, and I must go to her," answered the hillsman. There was silence again for a long time, for Cumner's Son was turning things over in his mind; and all at once he felt that each man's acts must be judged by the blood that is in him and the trail by which he has come. The sorrel and the chestnut mare travelled together as on one snaffle- bar, step by step, for they were foaled in the same stable. Through stretches of reed-beds and wastes of osiers they passed, and again by a path through the jungle where the briar-vines caught at them like eager fingers, and a tiger crossed their track, disturbed in his night's rest. At length out of the dank distance they saw the first colour of dawn. "Ten miles," said Tang-a-Dahit, "and we shall come to the Bar of Balmud. Then we shall be in my own country. See, the dawn comes up! 'Twixt here and the Bar of Balmud our danger lies. A hundred men may ambush there, for Boonda Broke's thieves have scattered all the way from Mandakan to our borders." Cumner's Son looked round. There were hills and defiles everywhere, and a thousand places where foes could hide. The quickest way, but the most perilous, lay through the long defile between the hills, flanked by boulders and rank scrub. Tang-a-Dahit pointed out the ways that they might go--by the path to the left along the hills, or through the green defile; and Cumner's Son instantly chose the latter way. "If the fight were fair," said the hillsman, "and it were man to man, the defile is the better way; but these be dogs of cowards who strike from behind rocks. No one of them has a heart truer than Boonda Broke's, the master of the carrion. We will go by the hills. The way is harder but more open, and if we be prospered we will rest awhile at the Bar of Balmud, and at noon we will tether and eat in the Neck of Baroob." They made their way through the medlar trees and scrub to the plateau above, and, the height gained, they turned to look back. The sun was up, and trailing rose and amber garments across the great Eastern arch. Their path lay towards it, for Pango Dooni hid in the hills, where the sun hung a roof of gold above his stronghold. "Forty to one!" said Tang-a-Dahit suddenly. "Now indeed we ride for our lives!" Looking down the track of the hillsman's glance Cumner's Son saw a bunch of horsemen galloping up the slope. Boonda Broke's men! The sorrel and the mare were fagged, the horses of their foes were fresh; and forty to one were odds that no man would care to take. It might be that some of Pango Dooni's men lay between them and the Bar of Balmud, but the chance was faint. "By the hand of Heaven," said the hillsman, "if we reach to the Bar of Balmud, these dogs shall eat their own heads for dinner!" They set their horses in the way, and gave the sorrel and mare the bit and spur. The beasts leaned again to their work as though they had just come from a feeding-stall and knew their riders' needs. The men rode light and free, and talked low to their horses as friend talks to friend. Five miles or more they went so, and then the mare stumbled. She got to her feet again, but her head dropped low, her nostrils gaped red and swollen, and the sorrel hung back with her, for a beast, like a man, will travel farther two by two than one by one. At another point where they had a long view behind they looked back. Their pursuers were gaining. Tang-a-Dahit spurred his horse on. "There is one chance," said he, "and only one. See where the point juts out beyond the great medlar tree. If, by the mercy of God, we can but make it!" The horses gallantly replied to call and spur. They rounded a curve which made a sort of apse to the side of the valley, and presently they were hid from their pursuers. Looking back from the thicket they saw the plainsmen riding hard. All at once Tang-a-Dahit stopped. "Give me the sorrel," said he. "Quick--dismount!" Cumner's Son did as he was bid. Going a little to one side, the hillsman pushed through a thick hedge of bushes, rolled away a rock, and disclosed an opening which led down a steep and rough-hewn way to a great misty valley beneath, where was never a bridle-path or causeway over the brawling streams and boulders. "I will ride on. The mare is done, but the sorrel can make the Bar of Balmud." Cumner's Son opened his mouth to question, but stopped, for the eyes of the hillsman flared up, and Tang-a-Dahit said: "My arm in blood has touched thy arm, and thou art in my hills and not in thine own country. Thy life is my life, and thy good is my good. Speak not, but act. By the high wall of the valley where no man bides there is a path which leads to the Bar of Balmud; but leave it not, whether it go up or down or be easy or hard. If thy feet be steady, thine eye true, and thy heart strong, thou shalt come by the Bar of Balmud among my people." Then he caught the hand of Cumner's Son in his own and kissed him between the eyes after the manner of a kinsman, and, urging him into the hole, rolled the great stone into its place again. Mounting the sorrel he rode swiftly out into the open, rounded the green point full in view of his pursuers, and was hid from them in an instant. Then, dismounting, he swiftly crept back through the long grass into the thicket again, mounted the mare, and drove her at laboured gallop also around the curve, so that it seemed to the plainsmen following that both men had gone that way. He mounted the sorrel again, and loosing a long sash from his waist drew it through the mare's bit. The mare, lightened of the weight, followed well. When the plainsmen came to the cape of green, they paused not by the secret place, for it seemed to them that two had ridden past and not one. The Son of Pango Dooni had drawn pursuit after himself, for it is the law of the hills that a hillsman shall give his life or all that he has for a brother-in-blood. When Cumner's Son had gone a little way he understood it all! And he would have turned back, but he knew that the hillsman had ridden far beyond his reach. So he ran as swiftly as he could; he climbed where it might seem not even a chamois could find a hold; his eyes scarcely seeing the long, misty valley, where the haze lay like a vapour from another world. There was no sound anywhere save the brawling water or the lonely cry of the flute-bird. Here was the last refuge of the hillsmen if they should ever be driven from the Neck of Baroob. They could close up every entrance, and live unscathed; for here was land for tilling, and wood, and wild fruit, and food for cattle. Cumner's Son was supple and swift, and scarce an hour had passed ere he came to a steep place on the other side, with rough niches cut in the rocks, by which a strong man might lift himself up to safety. He stood a moment and ate some coffee-beans and drank some cold water from a stream at the foot of the crag, and then began his ascent. Once or twice he trembled, for he was worn and tired; but he remembered the last words of Tang-a-Dahit, and his fingers tightened their hold. At last, with a strain and a gasp, he drew himself up, and found himself on a shelf of rock with all the great valley spread out beneath him. A moment only he looked, resting himself, and then he searched for a way into the hills; for everywhere there was a close palisade of rocks and saplings. At last he found an opening scarce bigger than might let a cat through; but he laboured hard, and at last drew himself out and looked down the path which led into the Bar of Balmud--the great natural escarpment of giant rocks and monoliths and medlar trees, where lay Pango Dooni's men. He ran with all his might, and presently he was inside the huge defence. There was no living being to be seen; only the rock-strewn plain and the woods beyond. He called aloud, but nothing answered; he called again the tribe-call of Pango Dooni's men, and a hundred armed men sprang up. "I am a brother-in-blood of Pango Dooni's Son," said he. "Tang-a-Dahit rides for his life to the Bar of Balmud. Ride forth if ye would save him." "The lad speaks with the tongue of a friend," said a scowling hillsman, advancing, "yet how know we but he lies?" "Even by this," said Cumner's Son, and he spoke the sacred countersign and showed again the bracelet of Pango Dooni, and told what had happened. Even as he spoke the hillsmen gave the word, and two score men ran down behind the rocks, mounted, and were instantly away by the road that led to the Koongat Bridge. The tall hillsman turned to the lad. "You are beaten by travel," said he. "Come, eat and drink, and rest." "I have sworn to breakfast where Pango Dooni bides, and there only will I rest and eat," answered the lad. "The son of Pango Dooni knows the lion's cub from the tame dog's whelp. You shall keep your word. Though the sun ride fast towards noon, faster shall we ride in the Neck of Baroob," said the hillsman. It was half-way towards noon when the hoof-beats drummed over the Brown Hermit's cave, and they rested not there; but it was noon and no more when they rode through Pango Dooni's gates and into the square where he stood. The tall hillsman dropped to the ground, and Cumner's Son made to do the same. Yet he staggered, and would have fallen, but the hillsman ran an arm around his shoulder. The lad put by the arm, and drew him self up. He was most pale. Pango Dooni stood looking at him, without a word, and Cumner's Son doffed his cap. There was no blood in his lips, and his face was white and drawn. "Since last night what time the bugle blows in the Palace yard, I have ridden," said he. At the sound of his voice the great chief started. "The voice I know, but not the face," said he. "I am Cumner's Son," replied the lad, and once more he spoke the sacred countersign. IV BY THE OLD WELL OF JAHAR To Cumner's Son when all was told, Pango Dooni said: "If my son be dead where those jackals swarm, it is well he died for his friend. If he be living, then it is also well. If he be saved, we will march to Mandakan, with all our men, he and I, and it shall be as Cumner wills, if I stay in Mandakan or if I return to my hills." "My father said in the council-room, 'Better the strong robber than the weak coward,' and my father never lied," said the lad dauntlessly. The strong, tall chief, with the dark face and fierce eyes, roused in him the regard of youth for strong manhood. "A hundred years ago they stole from my fathers the State of Mandakan," answered the chief, "and all that is here and all that is there is mine. If I drive the kine of thieves from the plains to my hills, the cattle were mine ere I drove them. If I harry the rich in the midst of the Dakoon's men, it is gaining my own over naked swords. If I save your tribe and Cumner's men from the half-bred jackal Boonda Broke, and hoist your flag on the Palace wall, it is only I who should do it." Then he took the lad inside the house, with the great wooden pillars and the high gates, and the dark windows all barred up and down with iron, and he led him to a court-yard where was a pool of clear water. He made him bathe in it, and dark-skinned natives brought him bread dipped in wine, and when he had eaten they laid him on skins and rubbed him dry, and rolled him in soft linen, and he drank the coffee they gave him, and they sat by and fanned him until he fell asleep. ....................... The red birds on the window-sill sang through his sleep into his dreams. In his dreams he thought he was in the Dakoon's Palace at Mandakan with a thousand men before him, and three men came forward and gave him a sword. And a bird came flying through the great chambers and hung over him, singing in a voice that he understood, and he spoke to the three and to the thousand, in the words of the bird, and said: "It is fighting, and fighting for honour and glory and houses and kine, but naught for love, and naught that there may be peace." And the men said in reply: "It is all for love and it is all for peace," and they still held out the sword to him. So he took it and buckled it to his side, and the bird, flying away out of the great window of the chamber, sang: "Peace! Peace! Peace!" And Pango Dooni's Son standing by, with a shining face, said, "Peace! Peace!" and the great Cumner said, "Peace!" and a woman's voice, not louder than a bee's, but clear above all others, said, "Peace!" ...................... He awoke and knew it was a dream; and there beside him stood Pango Dooni, in his dress of scarlet and gold and brown, his broadsword buckled on, a kris at his belt, and a rich jewel in his cap. "Ten of my captains and three of my kinsmen are come to break bread with Cumner's Son," said he. "They would hear the tale of our kinsmen who died against the Palace wall, by the will of the sick Dakoon." The lad sprang to his feet fresh and well, the linen and skins falling away from his lithe, clean body and limbs, and he took from the slaves his clothes. The eye of the chief ran up and down his form, from his keen blue eyes to his small strong ankle. "It is the body of a perfect man," said he. "In the days when our State was powerful and great, when men and not dogs ruled at Mandakan, no man might be Dakoon save him who was clear of mote or beam; of true bone and body, like a high-bred yearling got from a perfect stud. But two such are there that I have seen in Mandakan to-day, and they are thyself and mine own son." The lad laughed. "I have eaten good meat," said he, "and I have no muddy blood." When they came to the dining-hall, the lad at first was abashed, for twenty men stood up to meet him, and each held out his hand and spoke the vow of a brother-in-blood, for the ride he had made and his honest face together acted on them. Moreover, whom the head of their clan honoured they also willed to honour. They were tall, barbaric-looking men, and some had a truculent look, but most were of a daring open manner, and careless in speech and gay at heart. Cumner's Son told them of his ride and of Tang-a-Dahit, and, at last, of the men of their tribe who died by the Palace wall. With one accord they rose in their places and swore over bread and a drop of blood of their chief that they would not sheathe their swords again till a thousand of Boonda Broke's and the Dakoon's men lay where their own kinsmen had fallen. If it chanced that Tang-a-Dahit was dead, then they would never rest until Boonda Broke and all his clan were blotted out. Only Pango Dooni himself was silent, for he was thinking much of what should be done at Mandakan. They came out upon the plateau where the fortress stood, and five hundred mounted men marched past, with naked swords and bare krises in their belts, and then wheeled suddenly and stood still, and shot their swords up into the air the full length of the arm, and called the battle-call of their tribe. The chief looked on unmoved, save once when a tall trooper rode near him. He suddenly called this man forth. "Where hast thou been, brother?" he asked. "Three days was I beyond the Bar of Balmud, searching for the dog who robbed my mother; three days did I ride to keep my word with a foe, who gave me his horse when we were both unarmed and spent, and with broken weapons could fight no more; and two days did I ride to be by a woman's side when her great sickness should come upon her. This is all, my lord, since I went forth, save this jewel which I plucked from the cap of a gentleman from the Palace. It was toll he paid even at the gates of Mandakan." "Didst thou do all that thou didst promise?" "All, my lord." "Even to the woman?" The chief's eye burned upon the man. "A strong male child is come into the world to serve my lord," said the trooper, and he bowed his head. "The jewel is thine and not mine, brother," said the chief softly, and the fierceness of his eyes abated; "but I will take the child." The trooper drew back among his fellows, and the columns rode towards the farther end of the plateau. Then all at once the horses plunged into wild gallop, and the hillsmen came thundering down towards the chief and Cumner's Son, with swords waving and cutting to right and left, calling aloud, their teeth showing, death and valour in their eyes. The chief glanced at Cumner's Son. The horses were not twenty feet from the lad, but he did not stir a muscle. They were not ten feet from him, and swords flashed before his eyes, but still he did not stir a hair's breadth. In response to a cry the horses stopped in full career, not more than three feet from him. Reaching out he could have stroked the flaming nostril of the stallion nearest him. Pango Dooni took from his side a short gold-handled sword and handed it to him. "A hundred years ago," said he, "it hung in the belt of the Dakoon of Mandakan; it will hang as well in thine." Then he added, for he saw a strange look in the lad's eyes: "The father of my father's father wore it in the Palace, and it has come from his breed to me, and it shall go from me to thee, and from thee to thy breed, if thou wilt honour me." The lad stuck it in his belt with pride, and taking from his pocket a silver-mounted pistol, said: "This was the gift of a fighting chief to a fighting chief when they met in a beleaguered town, with spoil, and blood, and misery, and sick women and children round them; and it goes to a strong man, if he will take the gift of a lad." At that moment there was a cry from beyond the troopers, and it was answered from among them by a kinsman of Pango Dooni, and presently, the troopers parting, down the line came Tang-a-Dahit, with bandaged head and arm. In greeting, Pango Dooni raised the pistol which Cumner's Son had given him and fired it into the air. Straightway five hundred men did the same. Dismounting, Tang-a-Dahit stood before his father. "Have the Dakoon's vermin fastened on the young bull at last?" asked Pango Dooni, his eyes glowering. "They crawled and fastened, but they have not fed," answered Tang-a-Dahit in a strong voice, for his wounds had not sunk deep. "By the Old Well of Jahar, which has one side to the mountain wall, and one to the cliff edge, I halted and took my stand. The mare and the sorrel of Cumner's Son I put inside the house that covers the well, and I lifted two stones from the floor and set them against the entrance. A beggar lay dead beside the well, and his dog licked his body. I killed the cur, for, following its master, it would have peace, and peace is more than life. Then, with the pole of the waterpail, I threw the dead dog across the entrance upon the paving stones, for these vermin of plainsmen will not pass where a dead dog lies, as my father knows well. They came not by the entrance, but they swarmed elsewhere, as ants swarm upon a sandhill, upon the roofs, and at the little window where the lamp burns. "I drove them from the window and killed them through the doorway, but they were forty to one. In the end the pest would have carried me to death, as a jackal carries the broken meats to his den, if our hillsmen had not come. For an hour I fought, and five of them I killed and seven wounded, and then at the shouts of our hillsmen they fled at last. Nine of them fell by the hands of our people. Thrice was I wounded, but my wounds are no deeper than the scratches of a tiger's cub." "Hadst thou fought for thyself the deed were good," said Pango Dooni, "but thy blood was shed for another, and that is the pride of good men. We have true men here, but thou art a true chief and this shalt thou wear." He took the rich belt from his waist, and fastened it round the waist of his son. "Cumner's Son carries the sword that hung in the belt. We are for war, and the sword should be out of the belt. When we are at peace again ye shall put the sword in the belt once more, and hang it upon the wall of the Palace at Mandakan, even as ye who are brothers shall never part." Two hours Tang-a-Dahit rested upon skins by the bathing pool, and an hour did the slaves knead him and rub him with oil, and give him food and drink; and while yet the sun was but half-way down the sky, they poured through the Neck of Baroob, over five hundred fighting men, on horses that would kneel and hide like dogs, and spring like deer, and that knew each tone of their masters' voices. By the Bar of Balmud they gathered another fifty hillsmen, and again half-way beyond the Old Well of Jahar they met two score more, who had hunted Boonda Broke's men, and these moved into column. So that when they came to Koongat Bridge, in the country infested by the men of the Dakoon, seven hundred stalwart and fearless men rode behind Pango Dooni. From the Neck of Baroob to Koongat Bridge no man stayed them, but they galloped on silently, swiftly, passing through the night like a cloud, upon which the dwellers by the wayside gazed in wonder and in fear. At Koongat Bridge they rested for two hours, and drank coffee, and broke bread, and Cumner's Son slept by the side of Tang-a-Dahit, as brothers sleep by their mother's bed. And Pango Dooni sat on the ground near them and pondered, and no man broke his meditation. When the two hours were gone, they mounted again and rode on through the dark villages towards Mandakan. It was just at the close of the hour before dawn that the squad of troopers who rode a dozen rods before the columns, heard a cry from the dark ahead. "Halt-in the name of the Dakoon!" V CHOOSE YE WHOM YE WILL SERVE The company drew rein. All they could see in the darkness was a single mounted figure in the middle of the road. The horseman rode nearer. "Who are you?" asked the leader of the company. "I keep the road for the Dakoon, for it is said that Cumner's Son has ridden to the Neck of Baroob to bring Pango Dooni down." By this time the chief and his men had ridden up. The horseman recognised the robber chief, and raised his voice. "Two hundred of us rode out to face Pango Dooni in this road. We had not come a mile from the Palace when we fell into an ambush, even two thousand men led by Boonda Broke, who would steal the roof and bed of the Dakoon before his death. For an hour we fought but every man was cut down save me." "And you?" asked Pango Dooni. "I come to hold the road against Pango Dooni, as the Dakoon bade me." Pango Dooni laughed. "Your words are large," said he. "What could you, one man, do against Pango Dooni and his hillsman?" "I could answer the Dakoon here or elsewhere, that I kept the road till the hill-wolves dragged me down." "We be the wolves from the hills," answered Pango Dooni. "You would scarce serve a scrap of flesh for one hundred, and we are seven." "The wolves must rend me first," answered the man, and he spat upon the ground at Pango Dooni's feet. A dozen men started forward, but the chief called them back. "You are no coward, but a fool," said he to the horseman. "Which is it better: to die, or to turn with us and save Cumner and the English, and serve Pango Dooni in the Dakoon's Palace?" "No man knows that he must die till the stroke falls, and I come to fight and not to serve a robber mountaineer." Pango Dooni's eyes blazed with anger. "There shall be no fighting, but a yelping cur shall be hung to a tree," said he. He was about to send his men upon the stubborn horseman when the fellow said: "If you be a man you will give me a man to fight. We were two hundred. If it chance that one of a company shall do as the Dakoon hath said, then is all the company absolved; and beyond the mists we can meet the Dakoon with open eyes and unafraid when he saith, 'Did ye keep your faith?'" "By the word of a hillsman, but thou shalt have thy will," said the chief. "We are seven hundred men--choose whom to fight." "The oldest or the youngest," answered the man. "Pango Dooni or Cumner's Son." Before the chief had time to speak, Cumner's Son struck the man with the flat of his sword across the breast. The man did not lift his arm, but looked at the lad steadily for a moment. "Let us speak together before we fight," said he, and to show his good faith he threw down his sword. "Speak," said Cumner's Son, and laid his sword across the pommel of his saddle. "Does a man when he dies speak his heart to the ears of a whole tribe?" "Then choose another ear than mine," said Cumner's Son. "In war I have no secrets from my friends." A look of satisfaction came into Pango Dooni's face. "Speak with the man alone," said he, and he drew back. Cumner's Son drew a little to one side with the man, who spoke quickly and low in English. "I have spoken the truth," said he. "I am Cushnan Di"--he drew himself up--"and once I had a city of my own and five thousand men, but a plague and then a war came, and the Dakoon entered upon my city. I left my people and hid, and changed myself that no one should know me, and I came to Mandakan. It was noised abroad that I was dead. Little by little I grew in favour with the Dakoon, and little by little I gathered strong men about me-two hundred in all at last. It was my purpose, when the day seemed ripe, to seize upon the Palace as the Dakoon had seized upon my little city. I knew from my father, whose father built a new portion of the Palace, of a secret way by the Aqueduct of the Failing Fountain, even into the Palace itself. An army could ride through and appear in the Palace yard like the mist-shapes from the lost legions. When I had a thousand men I would perform this thing, I thought. "But day by day the Dakoon drew me to him, and the thing seemed hard to do, even now before I had the men. Then his sickness came, and I could not strike an ailing man. When I saw how he was beset by traitors, in my heart I swore that he should not suffer by my hands. I heard of your riding to the Neck of Baroob--the men of Boonda Broke brought word. So I told the Dakoon, and I told him also that Boonda Broke was ready to steal into his Palace even before he died. He started up, and new life seemed given him. Calling his servants, he clothed himself, and he came forth and ordered out his troops. He bade me take my men to keep the road against Pango Dooni. Then he ranged his men before the Palace, and scattered them at points in the city to resist Boonda Broke. "So I rode forth, but I came first to my daughter's bedside. She lies in a little house not a stone's throw from the Palace, and near to the Aqueduct of the Falling Fountain. Once she was beautiful and tall and straight as a bamboo stem, but now she is in body no more than a piece of silken thread. Yet her face is like the evening sky after a rain. She is much alone, and only in the early mornings may I see her. She is cared for by an old woman of our people, and there she bides, and thinks strange thoughts, and speaks words of wisdom. "When I told her what the Dakoon bade me do, and what I had sworn to perform when the Dakoon was dead, she said: "'But no. Go forth as the Dakoon hath bidden. Stand in the road and oppose the hillsmen. If Cumner's Son be with them, thou shalt tell him all. If he speak for the hillsmen and say that all shall be well with thee, and thy city be restored when Pango Dooni sits in the Palace of the Dakoon, then shalt thou join with them, that there may be peace in the land, for Pango Dooni and the son of Pango Dooni be brave strong men. But if he will not promise for the hillsmen, then shalt thou keep the secret of the Palace, and abide the will of God."' "Dost thou know Pango Dooni's son?" asked the lad, for he was sure that this man's daughter was she of whom Tang-a-Dahit had spoken. "Once when I was in my own city and in my Palace I saw him. Then my daughter was beautiful, and her body was like a swaying wand of the boolda tree. But my city passed, and she was broken like a trailing vine, and the young man came no more." "But if he came again now?" "He would not come." "But if he had come while she lay there like a trailing vine, and listened to her voice, and thought upon her words and loved her still. If for her sake he came secretly, daring death, wouldst thou stand--" The man's eyes lighted. "If there were such truth in any man," he interrupted, "I would fight, follow him, and serve him, and my city should be his city, and the knowledge of my heart be open to his eye." Cumner's Son turned and called to Pango Dooni and his son, and they came forward. Swiftly he told them all. When he had done so the man sprang from his horse, and taking off the thin necklet of beaten gold he wore round his throat, without a word he offered it to Tang-a-Dahit, and Tang- a-Dahit kissed him on the cheek and gave him the thick, loose chain of gold he wore. "For this was it you risked your life going to Mandakan," said Pango Dooni, angrily, to his son; "for a maid with a body like a withered gourd." Then all at once, with a new look in his face, he continued softly: "Thou hast the soul of a woman, but thy deeds are the deeds of a man. As thy mother was in heart so art thou." ...................... Day was breaking over Mandakan, and all the city was a tender pink. Tower and minaret were like inverted cups of ruddy gold, and the streets all velvet dust, as Pango Dooni, guided by Cushnan Di, halted at the wood of wild peaches, and a great thicket near to the Aqueduct of the Failing Fountain, and looked out towards the Palace of the Dakoon. It was the time of peach blossoms, and all through the city the pink and white petals fell like the gay crystals of a dissolving sunrise. Yet there rose from the midst of it a long, rumbling, intermittent murmur, and here and there marched columns of men in good order, while again disorderly bands ran hither and hither with krises waving in the sun, and the red turban of war wound round their heads. They could not see the front of the Palace, nor yet the Residency Square, but, even as they looked, a cannonade began, and the smoke of the guns curled through the showering peach-trees. Hoarse shoutings and cries came rolling over the pink roofs, and Cumner's Son could hear through all the bugle-call of the artillery. A moment later Cushnan Di was leading them through a copse of pawpaw trees to a secluded garden by the Aqueduct, overgrown with vines and ancient rose trees, and cherry shrubs. After an hour's labour with spades, while pickets guarded all approach, an opening was disclosed beneath the great flag-stones of a ruined building. Here was a wide natural corridor overhung with stalactites, and it led on into an artificial passage which inclined gradually upwards till it came into a mound above the level by which they entered. Against this mound was backed a little temple in the rear of the Palace. A dozen men had remained behind to cover up the entrance again. When these heard Pango Dooni and the others in the Palace yard they were to ride straight for a gate which should be opened to them. There was delay in opening the stone door which led into the temple, but at last they forced their way. The place was empty, and they rode through the Palace yard, pouring out like a stream of spectral horsemen from the altar of the temple. Not a word was spoken as Pango Dooni and his company galloped towards the front of the Palace. Hundreds of the Dakoon's soldiers and terrified people who had taken refuge in the great court-yard, ran screaming into corners, or threw themselves in terror upon the ground. The walls were lined with soldiers, but not one raised his hand to strike--so sudden was the coming of the dreaded hillsman. They knew him by the black flag and the yellow sunburst upon it. Presently Pango Dooni gave the wild battle-call of his tribe, and every one of his seven hundred answered him as they rode impetuously to the Palace front. Two thousand soldiers of the Dakoon, under command of his nephew, Gis-yo-Bahim, were gathered there. They were making ready to march out and defend the Palace. When they saw the flag and heard the battle-cry there was a movement backward, as though this handful of men were an overwhelming army coming at them. Scattered and disorderly groups of men swayed here and there, and just before the entrance of the Palace was a wailing group, by which stood two priests with their yellow robes and bare shoulders, speaking to them. From the walls the soldiers paused from resisting the swarming herds without. "The Dakoon is dead!" cried Tang-a-Dahit. As if in response came the wailing death-cry of the women of the Palace through the lattice windows, and it was taken up by the discomfited crowd before the Palace door. "The Lord of all the Earth, the great Dakoon, is dead." Pango Dooni rode straight upon the group, who fled at his approach, and, driving the priests indoors, he called aloud: "The Dakoon is living. Fear not!" For a moment there was no reply, and he waved his men into place before the Palace, and was about to ride down upon the native army, but Cumner's Son whispered to him, and an instant after the lad was riding alone upon the dark legions. He reined in his horse not ten feet away from the irregular columns. "You know me," said he. "I am Cumner's Son. I rode into the hills at the Governor's word to bring a strong man to rule you. Why do ye stand here idle? My father, your friend, fights with a hundred men at the Residency. Choose ye between Boonda Broke, the mongrel, and Pango Dooni, the great hillsman. If ye choose Boonda Broke, then shall your city be levelled to the sea, and ye shall lose your name as a people. Choose!" One or two voices cried out; then from the people, and presently from the whole dark battalions, came the cry: "Long live Pango Dooni!" Pango Dooni rode down with Tang-a-Dahit and Cushnan Di. He bade all but five hundred mounted men to lay down their arms. Then he put over them a guard of near a hundred of his own horsemen. Gathering the men from the rampart he did the same with these, reserving only one hundred to remain upon the walls under guard of ten hillsmen. Then, taking his own six hundred men and five hundred of the Dakoon's horsemen, he bade the gates to be opened, and with Cushnan Di marched out upon the town, leaving Tanga-Dahit and Cumner's Son in command at the Palace. At least four thousand besiegers lay before the walls, and, far beyond, they could see the attack upon the Residency. The gates of the Palace closed on the last of Pango Dooni's men, and with a wild cry they rode like a monstrous wave upon the rebel mob. There was no preparation to resist the onset. The rush was like a storm out of the tropics, and dread of Pango Dooni's name alone was as death among them. The hillsmen clove the besiegers through like a piece of pasteboard, and turning, rode back again through the broken ranks, their battle-call ringing high above the clash of steel. Again they turned at the Palace wall, and, gathering impetus, they rode at the detached and battered segments of the miserable horde, and once more cut them down, then furiously galloped towards the Residency. They could hear one gun firing intermittently, and the roars of Boonda Broke's men. They did not call or cry till within a few hundred yards of the Residency Square. Then their battle-call broke forth, and Boonda Broke turned to see seven hundred bearing down on his ten thousand, the black flag with the yellow sunburst over them. Cumner, the Governor, and McDermot heard the cry of the hillsmen, too, and took heart. Boonda Broke tried to divide his force, so that half of them should face the hillsmen, and half the Residency; but there was not time enough; and his men fought as they were attacked, those in front against Pango Dooni, those behind against Cumner. The hillsmen rode upon the frenzied rebels, and were swallowed up by the great mass of them, so that they seemed lost. But slowly, heavily, and with ferocious hatred, they drove their hard path on. A head and shoulders dropped out of sight here and there; but the hillsmen were not counting their losses that day, and when Pango Dooni at last came near to Boonda Broke the men he had lost seemed found again, for it was like water to the thirsty the sight of this man. But suddenly there was a rush from the Residency Square, and thirty men, under the command of Cumner, rode in with sabres drawn. There was a sudden swaying movement of the shrieking mass between Boonda Broke and Pango Dooni, and in the confusion and displacement Boonda Broke had disappeared. Panic and flight came after, and the hillsmen and the little garrison were masters of the field. "I have paid the debt of the mare," said Pango Dooni, laughing. "No debt is paid till I see the face of my son," answered Cumner anxiously. Pango Dooni pointed with his sword. "In the Palace yard," said he. "In the Palace yard, alive?" asked Cumner. Pango Dooni smiled. "Let us go and see." Cumner wiped the sweat and dust and blood from his face, and turned to McDermot. "Was I right when I sent the lad?" said he proudly. "The women and children are safe." VI CONCERNING THE DAUGHTER OF CUSHNAN DI The British flag flew half-mast from the Palace dome, and two others flew behind it; one the black and yellow banner of the hillsmen, the other the red and white pennant of the dead Dakoon. In the Palace yard a thousand men stood at attention, and at their head was Cushnan Di with fifty hillsmen. At the Residency another thousand men encamped, with a hundred hillsmen and eighty English, under the command of Tang-a-Dahit and McDermot. By the Fountain of the Sweet Waters, which is over against the Tomb where the Dakoon should sleep, another thousand men were patrolled, with a hundred hillsmen, commanded by a kinsman of Pango Dooni. Hovering near were gloomy, wistful crowds of people, who drew close to the mystery of the House of Death, as though the soul of a Dakoon were of more moment than those of the thousand men who had fallen that day. Along the line of the Bazaar ranged another thousand men, armed only with krises, under the command of the heir of the late Dakoon, and with these were a hundred and fifty mounted hillsmen, watchful and deliberate. These were also under the command of a kinsman of Pango Dooni. It was at this very point that the danger lay, for the nephew of the Dakoon, Gis-yo-Bahim, was a weak but treacherous man, ill-fitted to rule; a coward, yet ambitious; distrusted by the people, yet the heir to the throne. Cumner and Pango Dooni had placed him at this point for no other reason than to give him his chance for a blow, if he dared to strike it, at the most advantageous place in the city. The furtive hangers-on, cut- throats, mendicants, followers of Boonda Broke, and haters of the English, lurked in the Bazaars, and Gis-yo-Bahim should be tempted for the first and the last time. Crushed now, he could never rise again. Pango Dooni had carefully picked the hillsmen whom he had sent to the Bazaar, and their captain was the most fearless and the wariest fighter from the Neck of Baroob, save Pango Dooni himself. Boonda Broke was abroad still. He had escaped from the slaughter before the Residency and was hidden somewhere in the city. There were yet in Mandakan ten thousand men who would follow him that would promise the most, and Boonda Broke would promise the doors of Heaven as a gift to the city, and the treasures of Solomon to the people, if it might serve his purposes. But all was quiet save where the mourners followed their dead to the great funeral pyres, which were set on three little hills just outside the city. These wailed as they passed by. The smoke of the burnt powder had been carried away by a gentle wind, and in its place was the pervasive perfume of the peach and cherry trees, and the aroma of the gugan wood which was like cut sandal in the sun after a rain. In the homes of a few rich folk there was feasting also, for it mattered little to them whether Boonda Broke or Pango Dooni ruled in Mandakan, so that their wealth was left to them. But hundreds of tinkling little bells broke the stillness. These were carried by brown bare-footed boys, who ran lightly up and down the streets, calling softly: "Corn and tears and wine for the dead!" It was the custom for mourners to place in the hands of the dead a bottle of tears and wine, and a seed of corn, as it is written in the Proverbs of Dol: "When thou journeyest into the Shadows, take not sweetmeats with thee, but a seed of corn and a bottle of tears and wine; that thou mayest have a garden in the land whither thou goest." It was yet hardly night when the pyres were lighted on the little hills and a warm glow was thrown over all the city, made warmer by roseate-hued homes and the ruddy stones and velvety dust of the streets. At midnight the Dakoon was to be brought to the Tomb with the Blue Dome. Now in the Palace yard his body lay under a canopy, the flags of Mandakan and England over his breast, twenty of his own naked body-guard stood round, and four of his high chiefs stood at his head and four at his feet, and little lads ran softly past, crying: "Corn and tears and wine for the dead!" And behind all these again were placed the dark battalions and the hillsmen. It went abroad through the city that Pango Dooni and Cumner paid great homage to the dead Dakoon, and the dread of the hillsmen grew less. But in one house there had been no fear, for there, by the Aqueduct of the Failing Fountain, lived Cushnan Di, a fallen chief, and his daughter with the body like a trailing vine; for one knew the sorrow of dispossession and defeat and the arm of a leader of men, and the other knew Tang-a-Dahit and the soul that was in him. This night, while yet there was an hour before the body of the dead Dakoon should go to the Tomb with the Blue Dome, the daughter of Cushnan Di lay watching for her door to open; for she knew what had happened in the city, and there was one whom her spirit longed for. An old woman sat beside her with hands clasped about her knees. "Dost thou hear nothing?" said a voice from the bed. "Nothing but the stir of the mandrake trees, beloved." "Nay, but dost thou not hear a step?" "Naught, child of the heaven-flowers, but a dog's foot in the moss." "Thou art sure that my father is safe?" "The Prince is safe, angel of the high clouds. He led the hillsmen by the secret way into the Palace yard." There was silence for a moment, and then the girl's voice said again: "Hush! but there was a footstep-- I heard a breaking twig." Her face lighted, and the head slightly turned towards the door. But the body did not stir. It lay moveless, save where the bosom rose and fell softly, quivering under the white robe. A great wolf-dog raised its head at the foot of the bed and pointed its ears, looking towards the door. The face of the girl was beautiful. A noble peace was upon it, and the eyes were like lamps of dusky fire, as though they held all the strength of the nerveless body. The love burning in them was not the love of a maid for a man, but that which comes after, through pain and trouble and wisdom. It was the look that lasts after death, the look shot forward from the Hereafter upon a living face which has looked into the great mystery, but has not passed behind the curtains. There was a knock upon the door, and, in response to a summons, Tang-a- Dahit stepped inside. A beautiful smile settled upon the girl's face, and her eyes brooded tenderly upon the young hillsman. "I am here, Mami," said he. "Friend of my heart," she answered. "It is so long!" Then he told her how, through Cumner's Son, he had been turned from his visit two days before, and of the journey down, and of the fighting, and of all that had chanced. She smiled, and assented with her eyes--her father had told her. "My father knows that thou dost come to me, and he is not angry," she said. Then she asked him what was to be the end of all, and he shook his head. "The young are not taken into counsel," he answered, "neither I nor Cumner's Son." All at once her eyes brightened as though a current of light had been suddenly sent through them. "Cumner's Son," said she--"Cumner's Son, and thou--the future of Mandakan is all with ye; neither with Cumner, nor with Pango Dooni, nor with Cushnan Di. To the old is given counsel, and device, and wisdom, and holding; but to the young is given hope, and vision, and action, and building, and peace." "Cumner's Son is without," said he. "May I fetch him to thee?" She looked grave, and shrank a little, then answered yes. "So strong, so brave, so young!" she said, almost under her breath, as the young man entered. Cumner's Son stood abashed at first to see this angelic head, so full of light and life, like nothing he had ever seen, and the nerveless, moveless body, like a flower with no roots. "Thou art brave," said she, "and thy heart is without fear, for thou hast no evil in thee. Great things shall come to thee, and to thee," she added, turning to Tang-a-Dahit, "but by different ways." Tang-a-Dahit looked at her as one would look at the face of a saint; and his fingers, tired yet with the swinging of the sword, stroked the white coverlet of her couch gently and abstractedly. Once or twice Cumner's Son tried to speak, but failed; and at last all he could say was: "Thou art good--thou art good!" and then he turned and stole quietly from the room. At midnight they carried the Dakoon to the resting-place of his fathers. A thousand torches gleamed from the Palace gates through the Street of Divers Pities, and along the Path by the Bazaar to the Tomb with the Blue Dome. A hundred hillsmen rode before, and a hundred behind, and between were two thousand soldiers of Mandakan on foot and fifty of the late Dakoon's body-guard mounted and brilliant in scarlet and gold. Behind the gun-carriage, which bore the body, walked the nephew of the great Dakoon, then came a clear space, and then Pango Dooni, and Cumner, and behind these twenty men of the artillery, at whose head rode McDermot and Cumner's Son. As they passed the Path by the Bazaar every eye among the hillsmen and among the handful of British was alert. Suddenly a savage murmuring among the natives in the Bazaar broke into a loud snarl, and it seemed as if a storm was about to break; but as suddenly, at a call from Cumner, the hillsmen, the British, and a thousand native soldiers, faced the Bazaar in perfect silence, their lances, swords, and rifles in a pose of menace. The whole procession stood still for a moment. In the pause the crowds in the Bazaar drew back, then came a loud voice calling on them to rescue the dead Dakoon from murderers and infidels; and a wave of dark bodies moved forward, but suddenly cowered before the malicious stillness of the hillsmen and the British, and the wave retreated. Cumner's Son had recognised the voice, and his eye followed its direction with a perfect certainty. Even as he saw the figure of Boonda Broke disguised as a native soldier the half-breed's arm was raised, and a kris flew from his hands, aimed at the heart of Pango Dooni. But as the kris flew the youth spurred his horse out of the ranks and down upon the murderer, who sprang back into the Bazaar. The lad fearlessly rode straight into the Bazaar, and galloped down upon the fugitive, who suddenly swung round to meet him with naked kris; but, as he did so, a dog ran across his path, tripped him up, and he half fell. Before he could recover himself a pistol was at his head. "March!" said the lad; and even as ten men of the artillery rode through the crowd to rescue their Colonel's son, he marched the murderer on. But a sudden frenzy possessed Boonda Broke. He turned like lightning on the lad, and raised his kris to throw; but a bullet was quicker, and he leaped into the air and fell dead without a cry, the kris dropping from his hand. As Cumner's Son came forth into the path the hills men and artillery cheered him, the native troops took it up, and it was answered by the people in all the thoroughfare. Pango Dooni had also seen the kris thrown at himself, but he could not escape it, though he half swung round. It struck him in the shoulder, and quivered where it struck, but he drew it out and threw it down. A hillsman bound up the wound, and he rode on to the Tomb. The Dakoon was placed in his gorgeous house of death, and every man cried: "Sleep, lord of the earth!" Then Cumner stood up in his saddle, and cried aloud: "To-morrow, when the sun stands over the gold dome of the Palace, ye shall come to hear your Dakoon speak in the hall of the Heavenly Hours." No man knew from Cumner's speech who was to be Dakoon, yet every man in Mandakan said in the quiet of his home that night: "To-morrow Pango Dooni will be Dakoon. We will be as the stubble of the field before him. But Pango Dooni is a strong man." VII THE RED PLAGUE "He promised he'd bring me a basket of posies, A garland of lilies, a garland of roses, A little straw hat to set off the blue ribbons That tie up my bonnie brown hair." This was the song McDermot sang to himself as he walked up the great court-yard of the Palace, past the lattice windows, behind which the silent women of the late Dakoon's household still sat, passive and grief- stricken. How knew they what the new Dakoon would do--send them off into the hills, or kill them? McDermot was in a famous humour, for he had just come from Pango Dooni, the possessor of a great secret, and he had been paid high honour. He looked round on the court-yard complacently, and with an air of familiarity and possession which seemed hardly justified by his position. He noted how the lattices stirred as he passed through this inner court-yard where few strangers were ever allowed to pass, and he cocked his head vaingloriously. He smiled at the lizards hanging on the foundation stones, he paused to dip his finger in the basin of a fountain, he eyed good-humouredly the beggars--old pensioners of the late Dakoon--seated in the shade with outstretched hands. One of them drew his attention, a slim, cadaverous-looking wretch who still was superior to his fellows, and who sat apart from them, evidently by their wish as much as by his own. McDermot was still humming the song to himself as he neared the group; but he stopped short, as he heard the isolated beggar repeat after him in English: "He promised he'd bring me a bunch of blue ribbons, To tie up my bonnie brown hair." He was startled. At first he thought it might be an Englishman in disguise, but the brown of the beggar's face was real, and there was no mistaking the high narrow forehead, the slim fingers, and the sloe-black eyes. Yet he seemed not a native of Mandakan. McDermot was about to ask him who he was, when there was a rattle of horse's hoofs, and Cumner's Son galloped excitedly up the court-yard. "Captain, captain," said he, "the Red Plague is on the city!" McDermot staggered back in consternation. "No, no," cried he, "it is not so, sir!" "The man, the first, lies at the entrance of the Path by the Bazaar. No one will pass near him, and all the city goes mad with fear. What's to be done? What's to be done? Is there no help for it?" the lad cried in despair. "I'm going to Pango Dooni. Where is he? In the Palace?" McDermot shook his head mournfully, for he knew the history of this plague, the horror of its ravages, the tribes it had destroyed. The beggar leaned back against the cool wall and laughed. McDermot turned on him in his fury, and would have kicked him, but Cumner's Son, struck by some astute intelligence in the man's look, said: "What do you know of the Red Plague?" Again the beggar laughed. "Once I saved the city of Nangoon from the plague, but they forgot me, and when I complained and in my anger went mad at the door of the Palace, the Rajah drove me from the country. That was in India, where I learned to speak English; and here am I at the door of a Palace again!" "Can you save the city from the plague?" asked Cumner's Son, coming closer and eagerly questioning. "Is the man dead?" asked the beggar. "Not when I saw him--he had just been taken." "Good. The city may be saved if--" he looked at Cumner's Son, "if thou wilt save him with me. If he be healed there is no danger; it is the odour of death from the Red Plague which carries death abroad." "Why do you ask this?" asked McDermot, nodding towards Cumner's Son. The beggar shrugged his shoulders. "That he may not do with me as did the Rajah of Nangoon." "He is not Dakoon," said McDermot. "Will the young man promise me?" "Promise what?" asked Cumner's Son. "A mat to pray on, a house, a servant, and a loaf of bread, a bowl of goat's milk, and a silver najil every day till I die." "I am not Dakoon," said the lad, "but I promise for the Dakoon--he will do this thing to save the city." "And if thou shouldst break thy promise?" "I keep my promises," said the lad stoutly. "But if not, wilt thou give thy life to redeem it?" "Yes." The beggar laughed again and rose. "Come," said he. "Don't go--it's absurd!" said McDermot, laying a hand on the young man's arm. "The plague cannot be cured." "Yes, I will go," answered Cumner's Son. "I believe he speaks the truth. Go you to Pango Dooni and tell him all." He spurred his horse and trotted away, the beggar running beside him. They passed out of the court-yard, and through the Gate by the Fountain of Sweet Waters. They had not gone far when they saw Cumner, the Governor, and six men of the artillery riding towards them. The Governor stopped, and asked him where he was going. The young man told him all. The Colonel turned pale. "You would do this thing!" said he dumfounded. "Suppose this rascal," nodding towards the beggar, "speaks the truth; and suppose that, after all, the sick man should die and--" "Then the lad and myself would be the first to follow him," interrupted the beggar, "and all the multitude would come after, from the babe on the mat to the old man by the Palace gates. But if the sick man lives--" The Governor looked at his son partly in admiration, partly in pain, and maybe a little of anger. "Is there no one else? I tell you I--" "There is no one else; the lad or death for the city! I can believe the young; the old have deceived me," interposed the beggar again. "Time passes," said Cumner's Son anxiously. "The man may die. You say yes to my going, sir?" he asked his father. The Governor frowned, and the skin of his cheeks tightened. "Go-go, and good luck to you, boy." He made as if to ride on, but stopped short, flung out his hand, and grasped the hand of his son. "God be with you, lad," said he; then his jaws closed tightly, and he rode on. It was easier for the lad than for him. When he told the story to Pango Dooni the chief was silent for a moment; then he said: "Until we know whether it be death or life, whether Cumner's Son save the city or lose his life for its sake, we will not call the people together in the Hall of the Heavenly Hours. I will send the heralds abroad, if it be thy pleasure, Cumner." At noon--the hour when the people had been bidden to cry, "Live, Prince of the Everlasting Glory!"--they were moving restlessly, fearfully through the Bazaar and the highways, and watching from a distance a little white house, with blue curtains, where lay the man who was sick with the Red Plague, and where watched beside his bed Cumner's Son and the beggar of Nangoon. No one came near. From the time the sick man had been brought into the house, the beggar had worked with him, giving him tinctures which he boiled with sweetmeat called the Flower of Bambaba, while Cumner's Son rubbed an ointment into his body. Now and again the young man went to the window and looked out at the lines of people hundreds of yards away, and the empty spaces where the only life that showed was a gay-plumaged bird that drifted across the sunlight, or a monkey that sat in the dust eating a nut. All at once the awe and danger of his position fell upon him. Imagination grew high in him in a moment--that beginning of fear and sorrow and heart-burning; yet, too, the beginning of hope and wisdom and achievement. For the first time in his life that knowledge overcame him which masters us all sometimes. He had a desire to fly the place; he felt like running from the house, shrieking as he went. A sweat broke out on his forehead, his lips clung to his teeth, his mouth was dry, his breast seemed to contract, and breathing hurt him. "What a fool I was! What a fool I was to come here!" he said. He buried his head in his arms as he leaned against the wall, and his legs trembled. From that moment he passed from headlong, daring, lovable youth, to manhood; understanding, fearful, conscientious, and morally strong. Just as abject as was his sudden fear, so triumphant was his reassertion of himself. "It was the only way," he said to himself, suddenly wresting his head from his protecting arms. "There's a chance of life, anyhow, chance for all of us." He turned away to the sick man's bed, to see the beggar watching him with cold, passive eyes and a curious, half-sneering smile. He braced himself and met the passive, scrutinising looks firmly. The beggar said nothing, but motioned to him to lift the sick man upright, while he poured some tincture down his throat, and bound the head and neck about with saturated linen. There came a knocking at the door. The beggar frowned, but Cumner's Son turned eagerly. He had only been in this room ten hours, but it seemed like years in which he had lived alone-alone. But he met firmly the passive, inquisitorial eyes of the healer of the plague, and he turned, dropped another bar across the door, and bade the intruder to depart. "It is I, Tang-a-Dahit. Open!" came a loud, anxious voice. "You may not come in." "I am thy brother-in-blood, and my life is thine." "Then keep it safe for those who prize it. Go back to the Palace." "I am not needed there. My place is with thee." "Go, then, to the little house by the Aqueduct." There was silence for a moment, and then Tang-a-Dahit said: "Wilt thou not let me enter?" The sudden wailing of the stricken man drowned Tang-a-Dahit's words, and without a word Cumner's Son turned again to the victim of the Red Plague. All day the people watched from afar, and all day long soldiers and hillsmen drew a wide cordon of quarantine round the house. Terror seized the people when the sun went down, and to the watchers the suspense grew. Ceaseless, alert, silent, they had watched and waited, and at last the beggar knelt with his eyes fixed on the sleeper, and did not stir. A little way off from him stood Cumner's Son-patient, pale, worn, older by ten years than he was three days before. In the city dismay and misery ruled. Boonda Broke and the dead Dakoon were forgotten. The people were in the presence of a monster which could sweep them from their homes as a hail-storm scatters the hanging nests of wild bees. In a thousand homes little red lights of propitiation were shining, and the sweet boolda wood was burning at a thousand shrines. Midnight came, then the long lethargic hours after; then that moment when all cattle of the field and beasts of the forest wake and stand upon their feet, and lie down again, and the cocks crow, and the birds flutter their wings, and all resign themselves to sleep once more. It was in this hour that the sick man opened his eyes and raised his head, as though the mysterious influence of primitive life were rousing him. He said nothing and did nothing, but lay back and drew in a long, good breath of air, and afterwards fell asleep. The beggar got to his feet. "The man is safe," said he. "I will go and tell them," said Cumner's Son gladly, and he made as if to open the door. "Not till dawn," commanded the beggar. "Let them suffer for their sins. We hold the knowledge of life and death in our hands." "But my father, and Tang-a-Dahit, and Pango Dooni." "Are they without sin?" asked the beggar scornfully. "At dawn, only at dawn!" So they sat and waited till dawn. And when the sun was well risen, the beggar threw wide open the door of the house, and called aloud to the horsemen far off, and Cumner's Son waved with his hand; and McDermot came galloping to them. He jumped from his horse and wrung the boy's hand, then that of the beggar, then talked in broken sentences, which were spattered by the tears in his throat. He told Cumner's Son that his face was as that of one who had lain in a grave, and he called aloud in a blustering voice, and beckoned for troopers to come. The whole line moved down on them, horsemen and soldiers and people. The city was saved from the Red Plague, and the people, gone mad with joy, would have carried Cumner's Son to the Palace on their shoulders, but he walked beside the beggar to his father's house, hillsmen in front and English soldiers behind; and wasted and ghostly, from riding and fighting and watching, he threw himself upon the bed in his own room, and passed, as an eyelid blinks, into a deep sleep. But the beggar sat down on a mat with a loaf of bread, a bowl of goat's milk, and a long cigar which McDermot gave him, and he received idly all who came, even to the sick man, who ere the day was done was brought to the Residency, and, out of danger and in his right mind, lay in the shade of a banyan tree, thinking of nothing save the joy of living. VIII THE CHOOSING OF THE DAKOON It was noon again. In the Hall of the Heavenly Hours all the chiefs and great people of the land were gathered, and in the Palace yard without were thousands of the people of the Bazaars and the one-storied houses. The Bazaars were almost empty, the streets deserted. Yet silken banners of gorgeous colours flew above the pink terraces, and the call of the silver horn of Mandakan, which was made first when Tubal Cain was young, rang through the long vacant avenues. A few hundred native troops and a handful of hillsmen rode up and down, and at the Residency fifty men kept guard under command of Sergeant Doolan of the artillery--his superior officers and the rest of his comrades were at the Palace. In the shade of a banyan tree sat the recovered victim of the Red Plague and the beggar of Nangoon, playing a game of chuck-farthing, taught them by Sergeant Doolan, a bowl of milk and a calabash of rice beside them, and cigarettes in their mouths. The beggar had a new turban and robe, and he sat on a mat which came from the Palace. He had gone to the Palace that morning as Colonel Cumner had commanded, that he might receive the thanks of the Dakoon for the people of Mandakan; but he had tired of the great place, and had come back to play at chuck-farthing. Already he had won everything the other possessed, and was now playing for his dinner. He was still chuckling over his victory when an orderly and two troopers arrived with a riderless horse, bearing the command of Colonel Cumner for the beggar to appear at once at the Palace. The beggar looked doubtfully at the orderly a moment, then rose with an air of lassitude and languidly mounted the horse. Before he had got half-way to the Palace he suddenly slid from the horse and said: "Why should I go? The son of the great Cumner promised for the Dakoon. He tells the truth. Light of my soul, but truth is the greatest of all! I go to play chuck-farthing." So saying, he turned and ran lazily back to the Residency and sat down beneath the banyan tree. The orderly had no commands to bring him by force, so he returned to the Palace, and entered it as the English Governor was ending his speech to the people. "We were in danger," said Cumner, "and the exalted chief, Pango Dooni, came to save us. He shielded us from evil and death and the dagger of the mongrel chief, Boonda Broke. Children of heavenly Mandakan, Pango Dooni has lived at variance with us, but now he is our friend. A strong man should rule in the Palace of Mandakan as my brother and the friend of my people. I speak for Pango Dooni. For whom do you speak?" As he had said, so said all the people in the Hall of the Heavenly Hours, and it was taken up with shouts by the people in the Palace yard. Pango Dooni should be Dakoon! Pango Dooni came forward and said: "If as ye say I have saved ye, then will ye do after my desire, if it be right. I am too long at variance with this Palace to sit comfortably here. Sometime, out of my bitter memories, I should smite ye. Nay, let the young, who have no wrongs to satisfy, let the young who have dreams and visions and hopes, rule; not the old lion of the hills, who loves too well himself and his rugged ease of body and soul. But if ye owe me any debt, and if ye mean me thanks, then will ye make my son Dakoon. For he is braver than I, and between ye there is no feud. Then will I be your friend, and because my son shall be Dakoon I will harry ye no more, but bide in my hills, free and friendly, and ready with sword and lance to stand by the faith and fealty that I promise. If this be your will, and the will of the great Cumner, speak." Cumner bowed his head in assent, and the people called in a loud voice for Tang-a-Dahit. The young man stepped forth, and baring his head, said: "It is meet that the race be to the swift, to those who have proven their faith and their swords; who have the gift for ruling, and the talent of the sword to sustain it. For me, if ye will hear me, I will go another way. I will not rule. My father hath passed on this honour to me, but I yield it up to one who hath saved ye from a double death, even to the great Cumner's Son. He rode, as ye know, through peril to Pango Dooni, bearing the call for help, and he hath helped to save the whole land from the Red Plague. But for him Mandakan would be only a place of graves. Speak, children of heavenly Mandakan, whom will ye choose?" When Cumner's Son stood forth he was pale and astounded before the cries of greeting that were carried out through the Palace yard, through the highways, and even to the banyan tree where sat the beggar of Nangoon. "I have done nothing, I have done nothing," said he sincerely. "It was Pango Dooni, it was the beggar of Nangoon. I am not fit to rule." He turned to his father, but saw no help in his eyes for refusal. The lad read the whole story of his father's face, and he turned again to the people. "If ye will have it so, then, by the grace of God, I will do right by this our land," said he. A half-hour later he stood before them, wearing the costly robe of yellow feathers and gold and perfect silk of the Dakoon of Mandakan. "The beggar of Nangoon who saved our city, bid him come near," he said; but the orderly stepped forward and told his story of how the beggar had returned to his banyan tree. "Then tell the beggar of Nangoon," said he, "that if he will not visit me, I will visit him; and all that I promised for the Dakoon of Mandakan I will fulfil. Let Cushnan Di stand forth," he added, and the old man came near. "The city which was yours is yours, again, and all that was taken from it shall be restored," said he. Then he called him by his real name, and the people were amazed. Cushnan Di, as he had been known to them, said quietly: "If my Lord will give me place near him as general of his armies and keeper of the gates, I will not ask that my city be restored, and I will live near to the Palace--" "Nay, but in the Palace," interrupted Cumner's Son, "and thy daughter also, who hath the wisdom of heaven, that there be always truth shining in these high places." An hour later the Dakoon passed through the Path by the Bazaar. "Whither goes the Dakoon?" asked a native chief of McDermot. "To visit a dirty beggar in the Residency Square, and afterwards to the little house of Cushnan Di," was the reply. IX THE PROPHET OF PEACE The years went by. In the cool of a summer evening a long procession of people passed through the avenues of blossoming peach and cherry trees in Mandakan, singing a high chant or song. It was sacred, yet it was not solemn; peaceful, yet not sombre; rather gentle, aspiring, and clear. The people were not of the city alone, but they had been gathered from all parts of the land--many thousands, who were now come on a pilgrimage to Mandakan. At the head of the procession was a tall, lithe figure, whose face shone, and whose look was at once that of authority and love. Three years' labour had given him these followers and many others. His dreams were coming true. "Fighting, fighting, naught but fighting for honour and glory and homes and kine, but naught for love, and naught that there may be peace."--This was no longer true; for the sword of the young Dakoon was ever lifted for love and for peace. The great procession stopped near a little house by the Aqueduct of the Failing Fountain, and spread round it, and the leader stepped forward to the door of the little house and entered. A silence fell upon the crowd, for they were to look upon the face of a dying girl, who chose to dwell in her little home rather than in a palace. She was carried forth on a litter, and set down, and the long procession passed by her as she lay. She smiled at all an ineffable smile of peace, and her eyes had in them the light of a good day drawing to its close. Only once did she speak, and that was when all had passed, and a fine troop of horsemen came riding up. This was the Dakoon of Mandakan and his retinue. When he dismounted and came to her, and bent over her, he said something in a low tone for her ear alone, and she smiled at him, and whispered the one word "Peace!" Then the Dakoon, who once was known only as Cumner's Son, turned and embraced the prophet Sandoni, as he was now called, though once he had been called Tang-a-Dahit the hillsman. "What message shall I bear thy father?" asked the Dakoon, after they had talked a while. Sandoni told him, and then the Dakoon said: "Thy father and mine, who are gone to settle a wild tribe of the hills in a peaceful city, send thee a message." And he held up his arm, where a bracelet shone. The Prophet read thereon the Sacred Countersign of the hillsmen. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Ate some coffee-beans and drank some cold water His courtesy was not on the same expansive level as his vanity CUMNER'S SON AND OTHER SOUTH SEA FOLK (AUSTRALIANA) by Gilbert Parker Volume 2. THE HIGH COURT OF BUDGERY-GAR AN EPIC IN YELLOW DIBBS, R.N. A LITTLE MASQUERADE DERELICT OLD ROSES MY WIFE'S LOVERS THE STRANGERS' HUT THE HIGH COURT OF BUDGERY-GAR We were camped on the edge of a billabong. Barlas was kneading a damper, Drysdale was tenderly packing coals about the billy to make the water boil, and I was cooking the chops. The hobbled horses were picking the grass and the old-man salt-bush near, and Bimbi, the black boy, was gathering twigs and bark for the fire. That is the order of merit-- Barlas, Drysdale, myself, the horses and Bimbi. Then comes the Cadi all by himself. He is given an isolated and indolent position, because he was our guest and also because, in a way, he represented the Government. And though bushmen do not believe much in a far-off Government--even though they say when protesting against a bad Land Law, "And your Petitioners will ever Pray," and all that kind of yabber-yabber--they give its representative the lazy side of the fire and a fig of the best tobacco when he bails up a camp as the Cadi did ours. Stewart Ruttan, the Cadi, was the new magistrate at Windowie and Gilgan, which stand for a huge section of the Carpentaria country. He was now on his way to Gilgan to try some cases there. He was a new chum, though he had lived in Australia for years. As Barlas said, he'd been kept in a cultivation- paddock in Sydney and Brisbane; and he was now going to take the business of justice out of the hands of Heaven and its trusted agents the bushmen, and reduce the land to the peace of the Beatitudes by the imposing reign of law and summary judgments. Barlas had just said as much, though in different language. I knew by the way that Barlas dropped the damper on the hot ashes and swung round on his heel that he was in a bad temper. "And so you think, Cadi," said he, "that we squatters and bushmen are a strong, murderous lot; that we hunt down the Myalls--[Aborigines]--like kangaroos or dingoes, and unrighteously take justice in our own hands instead of handing it over to you?" "I think," said the Cadi, "that individual and private revenge should not take the place of the Courts of Law. If the blacks commit depredations--" "Depredations!" interjected Drysdale with sharp scorn. "If they commit depredations and crimes," the Cadi continued, "they should be captured as criminals are captured elsewhere and be brought in and tried. In that way respect would be shown to British law and--" here he hesitated slightly, for Barlas's face was not pleasant to see-- "and the statutes." But Barlas's voice was almost compassionate as he said: "Cadi, every man to his trade, and you've got yours. But you haven't learned yet that this isn't Brisbane or Melbourne. You haven't stopped to consider how many police would be necessary for this immense area of country if you are really to be of any use. And see here,"--his face grew grim and dark, "you don't know what it is to wait for the law to set things right in this Never Never Land. There isn't a man in the Carpentaria and Port Darwin country but has lost a friend by the cowardly crack of a waddy in the dead of night or a spear from behind a tree. Never any fair fighting, but red slaughter and murder--curse their black hearts!" Barlas gulped down what seemed very like a sob. Drysdale and I knew how strongly Barlas felt. He had been engaged to be married to a girl on the Daly River, and a week before the wedding she and her mother and her two brothers were butchered by blacks whom they had often befriended and fed. We knew what had turned Barlas's hair grey and spoiled his life. Drysdale took up the strain: "Yes, Cadi, you've got the true missionary gospel, the kind of yabber they fire at each other over tea and buns at Darling Point and Toorak--all about the poor native and the bad, bad men who don't put peas in their guns, and do sometimes get an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. . . . Come here, Bimbi." Bimbi came. "Yes, master," Bimbi said. "You kill that black-fellow mother belonging to you?" "Yes, master." "Yes," Drysdale continued, "Bimbi went out with a police expedition against his own tribe, and himself cut his own mother's head off. As a race, as a family, the blacks have no loyalty. They will track their own brothers down for the whites as ruthlessly as they track down the whites. As a race they are treacherous and vile, though as individuals they may have good points." "No, Cadi," once more added Barlas, "we can get along very well without your consolidated statutes or High Courts or Low Courts just yet. They are too slow. Leave the black devils to us. You can never prove anything against them in a court of law. We've tried that. Tribal punishment is the only proper thing for individual crime. That is what the nations practise in the islands of the South Seas. A trader or a Government official is killed. Then a man-of-war sweeps a native village out of existence with Hotchkiss guns. Cadi, we like you; but we say to you, Go back to your cultivation-paddock at Brisbane, and marry a wife and beget children before the Lord, and feed on the Government, and let us work out our own salvation. We'll preserve British justice and the statutes, too. . . . There, the damper, as Bimbi would say, is 'corbon budgery', and your chop is done to a turn, Cadi. And now let's talk of something that doesn't leave a bad taste in the mouth." The Cadi undoubtedly was more at home with reminiscences of nights at the Queensland Club and moonlight picnics at lovely Humpy Bong and champagne spreads in a Government launch than at dispensing law in the Carpentaria district. And he had eager listeners. Drysdale's open-mouthed, admiring "My word!" as he puffed his pipe, his back against an ironbark tree, was most eloquent of long banishment from the delights of the "cultivation- paddock"; and Barlas nodded frequently his approval, and was less grim than usual. Yet, peaceful as we were, it might have puzzled a stranger to see that all of us were armed--armed in this tenantless, lonely wilderness! Lonely and tenantless enough it seemed. There was the range of the Copper-mine hills to the south, lighted by the wan moon; and between and to the west a rough scrub country, desolating beyond words, and where even edible snakes would be scarce; spots of dead-finish, gidya, and brigalow-bush to north and east, and in the trees by the billabong the cry of the cockatoo and the laughing-jackass. It was lonely, but surely it was safe. Yes, perhaps it was safe! It was late when we turned in, our heads upon our saddles, for the Cadi had been more than amusing--he had been confidential, and some political characters were roughly overhauled for our benefit, while so-called Society did not escape flagellation. Next morning the Cadi left us. He gave us his camps--Bora Bora, Budgery-Gar, Wintelliga, and Gilgan--since we were to go in his direction also soon. He turned round in his saddle as he rode off, and said gaily: "Gentlemen, I hope you'll always help to uphold the majesty of the law as nobly as you have sustained its envoy from your swags." Drysdale and I waved our hands to him, but Barlas muttered something between his teeth. We had two days of cattle-hunting in the Copper-mine hills, and then we started westward, in the tracks of the Cadi, to make for Barlas's station. The second day we camped at Bora Bora Creek. We had just hobbled the horses, and were about to build a fire, when Bimbi came running to us. "Master, master," he said to Drysdale, "that fellow Cadi yarraman mumkull over there. Plenty myall mandowie!"--(" Master, master, the Cadi's horse is dead over there, and there are plenty of black fellows' tracks about.") We found the horse pierced with spears. The Cadi had evidently mounted and tried to get away. And soon, by a clump of the stay-a-while bush, we discovered, alas! the late companion of our camp-fire. He was gashed from head to foot, and naked. We buried him beneath a rustling sandal-tree, and on its bark carved the words: "Sacred to the memory of Stewart Ruttan." And beneath, Barlas added the following: "The Cadi sleeps. The Law regards him not." In a pocket of the Cadi's coat, which lay near, we found the picture of a pretty girl. On it was written: "To dearest Stewart, from Alice." Barlas's face was stern and drawn. He looked at us from under his shaggy brows. "There's a Court to be opened," he said. "Do you stand for law or justice?" "For justice," we replied. Four days later in a ravine at Budgery-Gar a big camp of blacks were feasting. With loathsome pantomime they were re-enacting the murders they had committed within the past few days; murders of innocent white women and children, and good men and true--among them the Cadi, God help him! Great fires were burning in the centre of the camp, and the bodies of the black devils writhed with hideous colour in the glare. Effigies of murdered whites were speared and mangled with brutal cries, and then black women of the camp were brought out, and mockeries of unnameable horrors were performed. Hell had emptied forth its carrion. But twelve bitter white men looked down upon this scene from the scrub and rocks above, and their teeth were set. Barlas, their leader, turned to them and said: "This court is open. Are you ready?" The click of twelve rifles was the reply. When these twelve white jurymen rode away from the ravine there was not one but believed that justice had been done by the High Court of Budgery- Gar. AN EPIC IN YELLOW There was a culminating growth of irritation on board the Merrie Monarch. The Captain was markedly fitful and, to a layman's eye, unreliable at the helm; the Hon. Skye Terryer was smoking violently, and the Newspaper Correspondent--representing an American syndicate--chewed his cigar in silence. "Yes," Gregson, the Member of Parliament, continued, "if I had my way I'd muster every mob of Chinamen in Australia, I'd have one thundering big roundup, and into the Pacific and the Indian Sea they'd go, to the crack of a stock-whip or of something more convincing." The Hon. Skye Terryer was in agreement with the Squatting Member in the principle of his argument if not in the violence of his remedies. He was a young travelling Englishman; one of that class who are Radicals at twenty, Independents at thirty, and Conservatives at forty. He had not yet reached the intermediate stage. He saw in this madcap Radical Member one of the crude but strong expressions of advanced civilisation. He had the noble ideal of Australia as a land trodden only by the Caucasian. The Correspondent, much to our surprise, had by occasional interjections at the beginning of the discussion showed that he was not antipathetic to Mongolian immigration. The Captain? "Yes, I'd give 'em Botany Bay, my word!" added the Member as an anti- climax. The Captain let go the helm with a suddenness which took our breath away, apparently regardless that we were going straight as an arrow on the Island of Pentecost, the shore of which, in its topaz and emerald tints, was pretty enough to look at but not to attack, end on. He pushed both hands down deep into his pockets and squared himself for war. "Gregson," he said, "that kind of talk may be good enough for Parliament and for labour meetings, but it is not proper diet for the Merrie Monarch. It's a kind of political gospel that's no better than the creed of the Malay who runs amuck. God's Providence--where would your Port Darwin Country have been without the Chinaman? What would have come to tropical agriculture in North Queensland if it had not been for the same? And what would all your cities do for vegetables to eat and clean shirts to their backs if it was not for the Chinkie? As for their morals, look at the police records of any well-regulated city where they are--well- regulated, mind you, not like San Francisco! I pity the morals of a man and the stupidity of him and the benightedness of him that would drive the Chinaman out at the point of the bayonet or by the crack of a rifle. I pity that man, and--and I wash my hands of him." And having said all this with a strong Scotch accent the Captain opportunely turned to his duty and prevented us from trying conclusions with the walls of a precipice, over which fell silver streams of water like giant ropes up which the Naiads might climb to the balmy enclosures where the Dryads dwelt. The beauty of the scene was but a mechanical impression, to be remembered afterward when thousands of miles away, for the American Correspondent now at last lit his cigar and took up the strain. "Say, the Captain's right," he said. "You English are awful prigs and hypocrites, politically; as selfish a lot as you'll find on the face of the globe. But in this matter of the Chinaman there isn't any difference between a man from Oregon and one from Sydney, only the Oregonian isn't a prig and a hypocrite; he's only a brute, a bragging, hard-handed brute. He got the Chinaman to build his railways--he couldn't get any other race to do it--same fix as the planter in North Queensland with the Polynesian; and to serve him in pioneer times and open up the country, and when that was done he turns round and says: 'Out you go, you Chinkie --out you go and out you stay! We're going to reap this harvest all alone; we're going to Chicago you clean off the table!' And Washington, the Home of Freedom and Tammany Tigers, shoves a prohibitive Bill through the Legislature, as Parkes did in Sydney; only Parkes talked a lot of Sunday-school business about the solidarity of the British race, and Australia for the Australians, and all that patter; and the Oregonian showed his dirty palm of selfishness straight out, and didn't blush either. 'Give 'em Botany Bay! Give'em the stock-whip and the rifle!' That's a nice gospel for the Anglo-Saxon dispensation." The suddenness of the attack overwhelmed the Member, but he was choking with wrath. Had he not stone-walled in the New South Wales Parliament for nine hours, and been placed on a Royal Commission for that service? "My word!" But the box of cigars was here amiably passed, and what seemed like a series of international complications was stayed. It was perhaps fortunate, however, that at this moment a new interest sprang up. We were rounding a lofty headland crowned with groves of cocoa-palms and bananas and with trailing skirts of flowers and vines, when we saw ahead of us a pretty little bay, and on the shore a human being plainly not a Polynesian. Up the hillside that rose suddenly from the beach was a thatched dwelling, not built open all round like most native houses, and apparently having but one doorway. In front of the house, and near it, was a tall staff, and on the staff the British Flag. In a moment we, too, had the British Flag flying at our mast-head. Long ago I ceased to wonder at coincidences, still I confess I was scarcely prepared for the Correspondent's exclamation, as, taking the marine glass from his eyes, he said: "Well, I'm decalogued if it ain't a Chinaman!" It certainly was so. Here on the Island of Pentecost, in the New Hebrides, was a Celestial washing clothes on the beach as much at home as though he were in Tacoma or Cooktown. The Member's "My oath!" Skye Terryer's "Ah!" and the Captain's chuckle were as weighty with importance as though the whole question of Chinese immigration were now to be settled. As we hove-to and dropped anchor, a boat was pushed out into the surf by a man who had hurriedly come down the beach from the house. In a moment or two he was alongside. An English face and an English voice greeted us, and in the doorway of the house were an English woman and her child. What pleasure this meeting gave to us and to the trader--for such he was, those only can know who have sailed these Southern Seas through long and nerveless tropic days, and have lived, as this man did with his wife and child, for months never seeing a white face, and ever in danger of an attack from cannibal tribes, who, when apparently most disposed to amity, are really planning a massacre. Yet with that instinct of gain so strong in the Anglo-Saxon, this trader had dared the worst for the chance of making money quickly and plentifully by the sale of copra to occasional vessels. The Chinaman had come with the trader from Queensland, and we were assured was "as good as gold." If colour counted, he looked it. At this the pro-Mongolian magnanimously forbore to show any signs of triumph. The Correspondent, on the contrary, turned to the Chinaman and began chaffing him; he continued it as the others, save myself, passed on towards the house. This was the close of the dialogue: "Well, John, how are you getting on?" "Welly good," was John's reply; "thirletty dollars a month, and learn the plan of salvation." The Correspondent laughed. "Well, you good Englishman, John? You like British flag? You fight?" And John, blinking jaundicely, replied: "John allee samee Linglishman- muchee fightee blimeby--nigger no eatee China boy;" and he chuckled. A day and a night we lingered in the little Bay of Vivi, and then we left it behind; each of us, however, watching till we could see the house on the hillside and the flag no longer, and one at least wondering if that secret passage into the hills from the palm-thatched home would ever be used as the white dwellers fled for their lives. We had promised that, if we came near Pentecost again on our cruise, we would spend another idle day in the pretty bay. Two months passed and then we kept our word. As we rounded the lofty headland the Correspondent said: "Say, I'm hankering after that baby!" But the Captain at the moment hoarsely cried: "God's love! but where are the house and the flag?" There was no house and there was no flag above the Bay of Vivi. Ten minutes afterwards we stood beside the flag-staff, and at our feet lay a moaning, mangled figure. It was the Chinaman, and over his gashed misery were drawn the folds of the flag that had flown on the staff. What horror we feared for those who were not to be seen needs no telling here. As for the Chinaman, it was as he said; the cannibals would not "eatee Chinee boy." They were fastidious. They had left him, disdaining even to take his head for a trophy. Hours after, on board the Merrie Monarch, we learned in fragments the sad story. It was John Chinaman that covered the retreat of the wife and child into the hills when the husband had fallen. The last words that the dying Chinkie said were these: "Blitish flag wellee good thing keepee China boy walm; plentee good thing China boy sleepee in all a-time." So it was. With rude rites and reverent hands, we lowered him to the deep from the decks of the Merrie Monarch, and round him was that flag under which he had fought for English woman and English child so valorously. "And he went like a warrior into his rest With the Union Jack around him." That was the paraphrasing epitaph the Correspondent wrote for him in the pretty Bay of Vivi, and when he read it, we all drank in silence to the memory of "a Chinkie." We found the mother and the child on the other side of the island ere a week had passed, and bore them away in safety. They speak to-day of a member of a despised race, as one who showed "The constant service of the antique world." DIBBS, R.N. "Now listen to me, Neddie Dibbs," she said, as she bounced the ball lightly on her tennis-racket, "you are very precipitate. It's only four weeks since you were court-martialed, and you escaped being reduced by the very closest shave; and yet you come and make love to me, and want me to marry you. You don't lack confidence, certainly." Commander Dibbs, R.N. was hurt; but he did not become dramatic. He felt the point of his torpedo-cut beard, and smiled up pluckily at her--she was much taller than he. "I know the thing went against me rather," he said, but it was all wrong, I assure you. It's cheeky, of course, to come to you like this so soon after, but for two years I've been looking forward up there in the China Sea to meeting you again. You don't know what a beast of a station it is--besides, I didn't think you'd believe the charge." "The charge was that you had endangered the safety of one of her Majesty's cruisers by trying to run through an unexplored opening in the Barrier Reef. Was that it?" "That was it." "And you didn't endanger her?" "Yes, I did, but not wilfully, of course, nor yet stupidly." "I read the evidence, and, frankly, it looked like stupidity." "I haven't been called stupid usually, have I" "No. I've heard you called many things, but never that." Every inch of his five-feet-five was pluck. He could take her shots broadside, and laugh while he winced. "You've heard me called a good many things not complimentary, I suppose, for I know I'm not much to look at, and I've an edge to my tongue sometimes. What is the worst thing you ever said of me?" he added a little bitterly. "What I say to you now--though, by the way, I've never said it before-- that your self-confidence is appalling. Don't you know that I'm very popular, that they say I'm clever, and that I'm a tall, good-looking girl?" She looked down at him, and said it with such a delightful naivete, through which a tone of raillery ran, that it did not sound as it may read. She knew her full value, but no one had ever accused her of vanity--she was simply the most charming, outspoken girl in the biggest city of Australia. "Yes, I know all that," he replied with an honest laugh. "When you were a little child,--according to your mother, and were told you were not good, you said: 'No, I'm not good--I'm only beautiful.'" Dibbs had a ready tongue, and nothing else he said at the moment could have had so good an effect. She laughed softly and merrily. "You have awkward little corners in your talk at times. I wonder they didn't reduce you at the court-martial. You were rather keen with your words once or twice there." A faint flush ran over Dibbs's face, but he smiled through it, and didn't give away an inch of self-possession. "If the board had been women, I'd have been reduced right enough--women don't go by evidence, but by their feelings; they don't know what justice really is, though by nature they've some undisciplined generosity." "There again you are foolish. I'm a woman. Now why do you say such things to me, especially when--when you are aspiring! Properly, I ought to punish you. But why did you say those sharp things at your trial? They probably told against you." "I said them because I felt them, and I hate flummery and thick- headedness. I was as respectful as I could be; but there were things about the trial I didn't like--irregular things, which the Admiral himself, who knows his business, set right." "I remember the Admiral said there were points about the case that he couldn't quite understand, but that they could only go by such testimony as they had." "Exactly," he said sententiously. She wheeled softly on him, and looked him full in the eyes. "What other testimony was there to offer?" "We are getting a long way from our starting-point," he answered evasively. "We were talking of a more serious matter." "But a matter with which this very thing has to do, Neddie Dibbs. There's a mystery somewhere. I've asked Archie; but he won't say a word about it, except that he doesn't think you were to blame." "Your brother is a cautious fellow." Then, hurriedly: "He is quite right to express no opinion as to any mystery. Least said soonest mended." "You mean that it is proper not to discuss professional matters in society?" "That's it." A change had passed over Dibbs's face--it was slightly paler, but his voice was genial and inconsequential. "Come and sit down at the Point," she said. They went to a cliff which ran out from one corner of the garden, and sat down on a bench. Before them stretched the harbour, dotted with sails; men-of-war lay at anchor, among them the little Ruby, Commander Dibbs's cruiser. Pleasure-steamers went hurrying along to many shady harbours; a tall-masted schooner rode grandly in between the Heads, balanced with foam; and a beach beneath them shone like opal: it was a handsome sight. For a time they were silent. At last he said: "I know I haven't much to recommend me. I'm a little beggar--nothing to look at; I'm pretty poor; I've had no influence to push me on; and just at the critical point in my career--when I was expecting promotion--I get this set-back, and lose your good opinion, which is more to me, though I say it bluntly like a sailor, than the praise of all the Lords of the Admiralty, if it could be got. You see, I always was ambitious; I was certain I'd be a captain; I swore I'd be an admiral one day; and I fell in love with the best girl in the world, and said I'd not give up thinking I would marry her until and unless I saw her wearing another man's name--and I don't know that I should even then." "Now that sounds complicated--or wicked," she said, her face turned away from him. "Believe me, it is not complicated; and men marry widows sometimes." "You are shocking," she said, turning on him with a flush to her cheek and an angry glitter in her eye. "How dare you speak so cold-bloodedly and thoughtlessly?" "I am not cold-blooded or thoughtless, nor yet shocking. I only speak what is in my mind with my usual crudeness. I know it sounds insolent of me, but, after all, it is only being bold with the woman for whom--half- disgraced, insignificant, but unquenchable fellow as I am--I'd do as much as, and, maybe, dare more for than any one of the men who would marry her if they could." "I like ambitious men," she said relenting, and meditatively pushing the grass with her tennis-racket; "but ambition isn't everything, is it? There must be some kind of fulfilment to turn it into capital, as it were. Don't let me hurt your feelings, but you haven't done a great deal yet, have you?" "No, I haven't. There must be occasion. The chance to do something big may start up any time, however. You never can tell when things will come your way. You've got to be ready, that's all." "You are very confident." "You'll call me a prig directly, perhaps, but I can't help that. I've said things to you that I've never said to any one in the world, and I don't regret saying them." She looked at him earnestly. She had never been made love to in this fashion. There was no sentimentalism in it, only straightforward feeling, forceful, yet gentle. She knew he was aware that the Admiral of his squadron had paid, and was paying, court to her; that a titled aide- de-camp at Government House was conspicuously attentive; that one of the richest squatters in the country was ready to make astonishing settlements at any moment; and that there was not a young man of note acquainted with her who did not offer her gallant service-in the ball- room. She smiled as she thought of it. He was certainly not large, but no finer head was ever set on a man's shoulders, powerful, strongly outlined, nobly balanced. The eyes were everywhere; searching, indomitable, kind. It was a head for a sculptor. Ambition became it well. She had studied that head from every stand-point, and had had the keenest delight in talking to the man. But, as he said, that was two years before, and he had had bad luck since then. She suddenly put this question to him: "Tell me all the truth about that accident to the Ruby. You have been hiding something. The Admiral was right, I know. Some evidence was not forthcoming that would have thrown a different light on the affair." "I can tell you nothing," he promptly replied. "I shall find out one day," she said. "I hope not; though I'm grateful that you wish to do so." He rose hurriedly to his feet; he was looking at the harbour below. He raised the field-glass he had carried from the veranda to his eyes. He was watching a yacht making across the bay towards them. She spoke again. "You are going again to-morrow?" "Yes; all the ships of the squadron but one get away." "How long shall you be gone?" "Six months at least---- Great God!" He had not taken the glasses from his eyes as they talked, but had watched the yacht as she came on to get under the lee of the high shore at their right. He had noticed that one of those sudden fierce winds, called Southerly Busters, was sweeping down towards the craft, and would catch it when it came round sharp, as it must do. He recognised the boat also. It belonged to Laura Harman's father, and her brother Archie was in it. The gale caught the yacht as Dibbs foresaw, and swamped her. He dropped the glass, cried to the girl to follow, and in a minute had scrambled down the cliff, and thrown off most of his things. He had launched a skiff by the time the girl reached the shore. She got in without a word. She was deadly pale, but full of nerve. They rowed hard to where they could see two men clinging to the yacht; there had been three in it. The two men were not hauled in, for the gale was blowing too hard, but they clung to the rescuing skiff. The girl's brother was not to be seen. Instantly Dibbs dived under the yacht. It seemed an incredible time before he reappeared; but when he did, he had a body with him. Blood was coming from his nose, the strain of holding his breath had been so great. It was impossible to get the insensible body into the skiff. He grasped the side, and held the boy's head up. The girl rowed hard, but made little headway. Other rescue boats arrived presently, however, and they were all got to shore safely. Lieutenant Archie Harman did not die. Animation was restored after great difficulty, but he did not sail away with the Ruby next morning to the Polynesian Islands. Another man took his place. Little was said between Commander Dibbs and Laura Harman at parting late that night. She came from her brother's bedside and laid her hand upon his arm. "It is good," she said, "for a man to be brave as well as ambitious. You are sure to succeed; and I shall be proud of you, for-- for you saved my brother's life, you see," she timidly added; and she was not often timid. ......................... Five months after, when the Ruby was lying with the flag-ship off one of the Marshall Islands, a packet of letters was brought from Fiji by a trading-schooner. One was for Commander Dibbs. It said in brief: "You saved my brother's life--that was brave. You saved his honour--that was noble. He has told me all. He will resign and clear you when the Admiral returns. You are a good man." "He ought to be kicked," Dibbs said to himself. "Did the cowardly beggar think I did it for him--blast him!" He raged inwardly; but he soon had something else to think of, for a hurricane came down on them as they lay in a trap of coral with only one outlet, which the Ruby had surveyed that day. He took his ship out gallantly, but the flag-ship dare not attempt it--Dibbs was the only man who knew the passage thoroughly. He managed to land on the shore below the harbour, and then, with a rope round him, essayed to reach the flag- ship from the beach. It was a wild chance, but he got there badly battered. Still, he took her with her Admiral out to the open safely. That was how Dibbs became captain of a great iron-clad. Archie Harman did not resign; Dibbs would not let him. Only Archie's sister knew that he was responsible for the accident to the Ruby, which nearly cost Dibbs his reputation; for he and Dibbs had surveyed the passage in the Barrier Reef when serving on another ship, and he had neglected instructions and wrongly and carelessly interpreted the chart. And Dibbs had held his tongue. One evening Laura Harman said to Captain Dibbs: "Which would you rather be--Admiral of the Fleet or my husband?" Her hand was on his arm at the time. He looked up at her proudly, and laughed slyly. "I mean to be both, dear girl." "You have an incurable ambition," she said. A LITTLE MASQUERADE "Oh, nothing matters," she said, with a soft, ironical smile, as she tossed a bit of sugar to the cockatoo. "Quite so," was his reply, and he carefully gathered in a loose leaf of his cigar. Then, after a pause: "And yet, why so? It's a very pretty world one way and another." "Yes, it's a pretty world at times." At that moment they were both looking out over a part of the world known as the Nindobar Plains, and it was handsome to the eye. As far as could be seen was a carpet of flowers under a soft sunset. The homestead by which they sat was in a wilderness of blossoms. To the left was a high rose-coloured hill, solemn and mysterious; to the right--afar off-- a forest of gum-trees, pink and purple against the horizon. At their feet, beyond the veranda, was a garden joyously brilliant, and bright- plumaged birds flitted here and there. The two looked out for a long time, then, as if by a mutual impulse, suddenly turned their eyes on each other. They smiled, and, somehow, that smile was not delightful to see. The girl said presently: "It is all on the surface." Jack Sherman gave a little click of the tongue peculiar to him, and said: "You mean that the beautiful birds have dreadful voices; that the flowers are scentless; that the leaves of the trees are all on edge and give no shade; that where that beautiful carpet of blossoms is there was a blazing quartz plain six months ago, and there's likely to be the same again; that, in brief, it's pretty, but hollow." He made a slight fantastic gesture, as though mocking himself for so long a speech, and added: "Really, I didn't prepare this little oration." She nodded, and then said: "Oh, it's not so hollow,--you would not call it that exactly, but it's unsatisfactory." "You have lost your illusions." "And before that occurred you had lost yours." "Do I betray it, then?" He laughed, not at all bitterly, yet not with cheerfulness. "And do you think that you have such acuteness, then, and I--" Nellie Hayden paused, raised her eyebrows a little coldly, and let the cockatoo bite her finger. "I did not mean to be egotistical. The fact is I live my life alone, and I was interested for the moment to know how I appeared to others. You and I have been tolerably candid with each other since we met, for the first time, three days ago; I knew you would not hesitate to say what was in your mind, and I asked out of honest curiosity. One fancies one hides one's self, and yet--you see!" "Do you find it pleasant, then, to be candid and free with some one?.... Why with me?" She looked him frankly in the eyes. "Well, to be more candid. You and I know the world very well, I fancy. You were educated in Europe, travelled, enjoyed--and suffered." The girl did not even blink, but went on looking at him steadily. "We have both had our hour with the world; have learned many sides of the game. We haven't come out of it without scars of one kind or another. Knowledge of the kind is expensive." "You wanted to say all that to me the first evening we met, didn't you?" There was a smile of gentle amusement on her face. "I did. From the moment I saw you I knew that we could say many things to each other 'without pre liminaries.' To be able to do that is a great deal." "It is a relief to say things, isn't it?" "It is better than writing them, though that is pleasant, after its kind." "I have never tried writing--as we talk. There's a good deal of vanity at the bottom of it though, I believe." "Of course. But vanity is a kind of virtue, too." He leaned over towards her, dropping his arms on his knees and holding her look. "I am very glad that I met you. I intended only staying here over night, but--" "But I interested you in a way--you see, I am vain enough to think that. Well, you also interested me, and I urged my aunt to press you to stay. It has been very pleasant, and when you go it will be very humdrum again; our conversation, mustering, rounding-up, bullocks, and rabbits. That, of course, is engrossing in a way, but not for long at a time." He did not stir, but went on looking at her. "Yes, I believe it has been pleasant for you, else it had not been so pleasant for me. Honestly, I don't believe I shall ever get you out of my mind." "That is either slightly rude or badly expressed," she said. "Do you wish, then, to get me out of your mind?" "No, no---- You are very keen. I wish to remember you always. But what I felt at the moment was this. There are memories which are always passive and delightful. We have no wish to live the scenes of which they are over again, the reflection is enough. There are others which cause us to wish the scenes back again, with a kind of hunger; and yet they won't or can't come back. I wondered of what class this memory would be." The girl flushed ever so slightly, and her fingers clasped a little nervously, but she was calm. Her voice was even; it had, indeed, a little thrilling ring of energy. "You are wonderfully daring," she replied, "to say that to me. To a school-girl it might mean so much: to me--!" She shook her head at him reprovingly. He was not in the least piqued. "I was absolutely honest in that. I said nothing but what I felt. I would give very much to feel confident one way or the other--forgive me, for what seems incredible egotism. If I were five years younger I should have said instantly that the memory would be one--" "Which would disturb you, make you restless, cause you to neglect your work, fill you with regret; and yet all too late--isn't that it?" She laughed lightly and gave a lump of sugar to the cockatoo. "You read me accurately. But why touch your words with satire?" "I believe I read you better than you read me. I didn't mean to be satirical. Don't you know that what often seems irony directed towards others is in reality dealt out to ourselves? Such irony as was in my voice was for myself." "And why for yourself?" he asked quietly, his eyes full of interest. He was cutting the end of a fresh cigar. "Was it"--he was about to strike a match, but paused suddenly--"was it because you had thought the same thing?" She looked for a moment as though she would read him through and through; as though, in spite of all their candour, there was some lingering uncertainty as to his perfect straightforwardness; then, as if satisfied, she said at last: "Yes, but with a difference. I have no doubt which memory it will be. You will not wish to be again on the plains of Nindobar." "And you," he said musingly, "you will not wish me here?" There was no real vanity in the question. He was wondering how little we can be sure of what we shall feel to-morrow from what we feel to-day. Besides, he knew that a wise woman is wiser than a wise man. "I really don't think I shall care particularly. Probably, if we met again here, there would be some jar to our comradeship--I may call it that, I suppose?" "Which is equivalent to saying that good-bye in most cases, and always in cases such as ours, is a, little tragical, because we can never meet quite the same again." She bowed her head, but did not reply. Presently she glanced up at him kindly. "What would you give to have back the past you had before you lost your illusions, before you had--trouble?" "I do not want it back. I am not really disillusionised. I think that we should not make our own personal experience a law unto the world. I believe in the world in spite--of trouble. You might have said trouble with a woman--I should not have minded." He was smoking now, and the clouds twisted about his face so that only his eyes looked through earnestly. "A woman always makes laws from her personal experience. She has not the faculty of generalisation--I fancy that's the word to use." She rose now with a little shaking motion, one hand at her belt, and rested a shoulder against a pillar of the veranda. He rose also at once, and said, touching her hand respectfully with his finger tips: "We may be sorry one day that we did not believe in ourselves more." "Oh, no," she said, turning and smiling at him, "I think not. You will be in England hard at work, I here hard at living; our interests will lie far apart. I am certain about it all. We might have been what my cousin calls 'trusty pals'--no more." "I wish to God I felt sure of that." She held out her hand to him. "I believe you are honest in this. I expect both of us have played hide-and-seek with sentiment in our time; but it would be useless for us to masquerade with each other: we are of the world, very worldly." "Quite useless--here comes your cousin! I hope I don't look as agitated as I feel." "You look perfectly cool, and I know I do. What an art this living is! My cousin comes about the boarhunt to-morrow." "Shall you join us?" "Of course. I can handle a rifle. Besides, it is your last day here." "Who can tell what to-morrow may bring forth?" he said. ........................ The next day the boar-hunt occurred. They rode several miles to a little lake and a scrub of brigalow, and, dismounting, soon had exciting sport. Nellie was a capital shot, and, without loss of any womanliness, was a thorough sportsman. To-day, however, there was something on her mind, and she was not as alert and successful as usual. Sherman kept with her as much as possible--the more so because he saw that her cousins, believing she was quite well able to take care of herself, gave her to her own resources. Presently, however, following an animal, he left her a distance behind. On the edge of a little billabong she came upon a truculent boar. It turned on her, but she fired, and it fell. Seeing another ahead, she pushed on quickly to secure it, too. As she went she half-cocked her rifle. Had her mind been absolutely intent on the sport, she had full cocked it. All at once she heard the thud of feet behind her. She turned swiftly, and saw the boar she had shot bearing upon her, its long yellow tusks standing up like daggers. A sweeping thrust from one of them leaves little chance of life. She dropped upon a knee, swung her rifle to her shoulder, and pulled the trigger. The rifle did not go off. For an instant she did not grasp the trouble. With singular presence of mind, however, she neither lowered her rifle nor took her eye from the beast; she remained immovable. It was all a matter of seconds. Evidently cowed, the animal, when within a few feet of her, swerved to the right, then made as though to come down on her again. But, meanwhile, she had discovered her mistake, and cocked her rifle. She swiftly trained it on the boar, and fired. It was hit, but did not fall; and came on. Then another shot rang out from behind her, and the boar fell so near her that its tusk caught her dress. Jack Sherman had saved her. She was very white when she faced him. She could not speak. That night, however, she spoke very gratefully and almost tenderly. To something that he said gently to her then about a memory, she replied: "Tell me now as candidly as if to your own soul, did you feel at the critical moment that life would be horrible and empty without me?" "I thought only of saving you," he said honestly. "Then I was quite right; you will never have any regret," she said. "I wonder, ah, I wonder!" he added sorrowfully. But the girl was sure. The regret was hers; though he never knew that. It is a lonely life on the dry plains of Nindobar. DERELICT He was very drunk; and because of that Victoria Lindley, barmaid at O'Fallen's, was angry--not at him but at O'Fallen, who had given him the liquor. She knew more about him than any one else. The first time she saw him he was not sober. She had left the bar-room empty; and when she came back he was there with others who had dropped in, evidently attracted by his unusual appearance--he wore an eyeglass--and he had been saying something whimsically audacious to Dicky Merritt, who, slapping him on the shoulder, had asked him to have a swizzle. Dicky Merritt had a ripe sense of humour, and he was the first to grin. This was followed by loud laughs from others, and these laughs went out where the dust lay a foot thick and soft like precipitated velvet, and hurrying over the street, waked the Postmaster and roused the Little Milliner, who at once came to their doors. Catching sight of each other, they nodded, and blushed, and nodded again; and then the Postmaster, neglecting the business of the country, went upon his own business into the private sitting-room of the Little Milliner; for those wandering laughs from O'Fallen's had done the work set for them by the high powers. Over in the hot bar-room the man with the eye-glass was being frankly "intr'juced" to Dicky Merritt and Company, Limited, by Victoria Lindley, who, as hostess of this saloon, was, in his eyes, on a footing of acquaintance. To her he raised his hat with accentuated form, and murmured his name--"Mr. Jones--Mr. Jones." Forthwith, that there might be no possible unpleasantness--for even such hostesses have their duties of tact--she politely introduced him as Mr. Jones. He had been a man of innumerable occupations--nothing long: caretaker of tanks, rabbit-trapper, boundary-rider, cook at a shearers' camp, and, in due time, he became book-keeper at O'Fallen's. That was due to Vic. Mr. Jones wrote a very fine hand--not in the least like a business man-- when he was moderately sober, and he also had an exceedingly caustic wit when he chose to use it. He used it once upon O'Fallen, who was a rough, mannerless creature, with a good enough heart, but easily irritated by the man with the eye-glass, whose superior intellect and manner, even when drunk, were too noticeable. He would never have employed him were it not for Vic, who was worth very much money to him in the course of the year. She was the most important person within a radius of a hundred and fifty miles, not excepting Rembrandt, the owner of Bomba Station, which was twenty miles square, nor the parson at Magari, ninety miles south, by the Ring-Tail Billabong. For both Rembrandt and the parson had, and showed, a respect for her, which might appear startling were it seen in Berkeley Square or the Strand. When, therefore, O'Fallen came raging into the barroom one morning, with the gentle remark that "he'd roast the tongue of her fancy gent if he didn't get up and git," he did a foolish thing. It was the first time that he had insulted Victoria, and it was the last. She came out white and quiet from behind the bar-counter, and, as he retreated from her into a corner, said: "There is not a man who drinks over this bar, or puts his horse into your shed, who wouldn't give you the lie to that and thrash you as well--you coward!" Her words came on low and steady: "Mr. Jones will go now, of course, but I shall go also." This awed O'Fallen. To lose Vic was to lose the reputation of his house. He instantly repented, but she turned her shoulder on him, and went into the little hot office, where the book-keeper was, leaving him gesticulating as he swore at himself in the glass behind the bar. When she entered the room she found Mr. Jones sitting rigid on his stool, looking at the open ledger before him. She spoke his name. He nodded ever so slightly, but still looked hard at the book. She knew his history. Once he had told it to her. It happened one day when he had resigned his position as boundary-rider, in which he was practically useless. He had been drinking, and, as he felt for the string of his eye-glass, his fingers caught another thin black cord which protruded slightly from his vest. He drew it out by mistake, and a small gold cross shone for a moment against the faded black coat. His fingers felt for it to lift it to his eye as though it were his eye-glass, but dropped it suddenly. He turned pale for a minute, then caught it as suddenly again, and thrust it into his waistcoat. But Vic had seen, and she had very calm, intelligent eyes, and a vast deal of common sense, though she had only come from out Tibbooburra way. She kept her eyes on him kindly, knowing that he would speak in time. They were alone, for most of the people of Wadgery were away at a picnic. There is always one moment when a man who has a secret, good or bad, fatal or otherwise, feels that he must tell it or die. And Mr. Jones told Vic, and she said what she could, though she knew that a grasp of her firm hands was better than any words; and she was equally sure in her own mind that word and grasp would be of no avail in the end. She saw that the beginning of the end had come as she looked at him staring at the ledger, yet exactly why she could not tell. She knew that he had been making a fight since he had been book-keeper, and that now he felt that he had lost. She guessed also that he had heard what O'Fallen said to her, and what she had replied. "You ought not to have offended him," she tried to say severely. "It had to come," he said with a dry, crackling laugh, and he fastened his eye-glass in his eye. "I wasn't made for this. I could only do one thing, and--" He laughed that peculiar laugh again, got down from the stool, and held out his hand to her. "What do you intend?" she said. "I'm going, of course. Good-bye!" "But not at once?" she said very kindly. "Perhaps not just at once," he answered with a strange smile. She did not know what to say or do; there are puzzling moments even for a wise woman, and there is nothing wiser than that. He turned at the door. "God bless you!" he said. Then, as if caught in an act to be atoned for, he hurried out into the street. From the door she watched him till the curtains of dust rose up about him and hid him from sight. When he came back to Wadgery months after he was a terrible wreck; so much so that Vic could hardly look at him at first; and she wished that she had left O'Fallen's as she threatened, and so have no need to furnish any man swizzles. She knew he would never pull himself together now. It was very weak of him, and horrible, but then . . . When that thirst gets into the blood, and there's something behind the man's life too--as Dicky Merritt said, "It's a case for the little black angels." Vic would not give him liquor. He got it, however, from other sources. He was too far gone to feel any shame now. His sensibilities were all blunted. One day he babbled over the bar-counter to O'Fallen, desiring greatly that they should be reconciled. To that end he put down the last shilling he had for a swizzle, and was so outrageously offended when O'Fallen refused to take it, that the silver was immediately swept into the till; and very soon, with his eye-glass to his eye, Mr. Jones was drunk. That was the occasion mentioned in the first sentence of this history, when Vic was very angry. The bar-room was full. Men were wondering why it was that the Postmaster and the Little Milliner, who went to Magari ten days before, to get married by the parson there, had not returned. While they talked and speculated, the weekly coach from Magari came up slowly to the door, and, strange to say, without a blast from the driver's horn. Dicky Merritt and Company rushed out to ask news of the two truants, and were met with a warning wave of the driver's hand, and a "Sh-h! sh--!" as he motioned towards the inside of the coach. There they found the Postmaster and the Little Milliner mere skeletons, and just alive. They were being cared for by a bushman, who had found them in the plains, delirious and nearly naked. They had got lost, there being no regular road over the plains, and their horse, which they had not tethered properly, had gone large. They had been days without food and water when they were found near the coach-track. They were carried into O'Fallen's big sitting-room. Dicky brought the doctor, who said that they both would die, and soon. Hours passed. The sufferers at last became sane and conscious, as though they could not go without something being done. The Postmaster lifted a hand to his pocket. Dicky Merritt took out of it a paper. It was the marriage licence. The Little Milliner's eyes were painful to see; she was not dying happy. The Postmaster, too, moved his head from side to side in trouble. He reached over and took her hand. She drew it back, shuddering a little. "The ring! The ring!" she whispered. "It is lost," he said. Vic, who was at the woman's head, understood. She stooped, said something in her ear, then in that of the Postmaster, and left the room. When she came back, two minutes later, Mr. Jones was with her. What she had done to him to sober him no one ever knew. But he had a book in his hand, and on the dingy black of his waistcoat there shone a little gold cross. He came to where the two lay. Vic drew from her finger a ring. What then occurred was never forgotten by any who saw it; and you could feel the stillness, it was so great, after a high, sing-song voice said: "Those whom God hath joined let no man put asunder." The two lying cheek by cheek knew now that they could die in peace. The sing-song voice rose again in the ceremony of blessing, but suddenly it quavered and broke, the man rose, dropping the prayer-book to the floor, and ran quickly out of the room and into the dust of the street, and on, on into the plains. "In the name of God, who is he?" said Dicky Merritt to Victoria Lindley. "He was the Reverend Jones Leverton, of Harfordon-Thames," was her reply. "Once a priest, always a priest," added Dicky. "He'll never come back," said the girl, tears dropping from her eyes. And she was right. OLD ROSES It was a barren country, and Wadgery was generally shrivelled with heat, but he always had roses in his garden, on his window-sill, or in his button-hole. Growing flowers under difficulties was his recreation. That was why he was called Old Roses. It was not otherwise inapt, for there was something antique about him, though he wasn't old; a flavour, an old-fashioned repose and self-possession. He was Inspector of Tanks for this God-forsaken country. Apart from his duties he kept mostly to himself, though when not travelling he always went down to O'Fallen's Hotel once a day for a glass of whisky and water--whisky kept especially for him; and as he drank this slowly he talked to Victoria Lindley the barmaid, or to any chance visitors whom he knew. He never drank with any one, nor asked any one to drink; and, strange to say, no one resented this. As Vic said: "He was different." Dicky Merritt, the solicitor, who was hail-fellow with squatter, homestead lessee, cockatoo-farmer, and shearer, called him "a lively old buffer." It was he, indeed, who gave him the name of Old Roses. Dicky sometimes went over to Long Neck Billabong, where Old Roses lived, for a reel, as he put it, and he always carried away a deep impression of the Inspector's qualities. "Had his day," said Dicky in O'Fallen's sitting-room one night, "in marble halls, or I'm a Jack. Run neck and neck with almighty swells once. Might live here for a thousand years and he'd still be the nonesuch of the back-blocks. I'd patent him--file my caveat for him to-morrow, if I could, bully Old Roses!" Victoria Lindley, the barmaid, lifted her chin slightly from her hands, as she leaned through the opening between the bar and the sitting-room, and said: "Mr. Merritt, Old Roses is a gentleman; and a gentleman is a gentleman till he--" "Till he humps his bluey into the Never Never Land, Vic? But what do you know about gentlemen, anyway? You were born only five miles from the jumping-off place, my dear." "Oh," was the quiet reply, "a woman--the commonest woman--knows a gentleman by instinct. It isn't what they do, it's what they don't do; and Old Roses doesn't do lots of things." "Right you are, Victoria, right you are again! You do Tibbooburra credit. Old Roses has the root of the matter in him--and there you have it." Dicky had a profound admiration for Vic. She had brains, was perfectly fearless, no man had ever taken a liberty with her, and every one in the Wadgery country who visited O'Fallen's had a wholesome respect for her opinion. About this time news came that the Governor, Lord Malice, would pass through Wadgery on his tour up the back-blocks. A great function was necessary. It was arranged. Then came the question of the address of welcome to be delivered at the banquet. Dicky Merritt and the local doctor were named for the task, but they both declared they'd only "make rot of it," and suggested Old Roses. They went to lay the thing before him. They found him in his garden. He greeted them, smiling in his quiet, enigmatical way, and listened. While Dicky spoke, a flush slowly passed over him, and then immediately left him pale; but he stood perfectly still, his hand leaning against a sandal tree, and the coldness of his face warmed up again slowly. His head having been bent attentively as he listened, they did not see anything unusual. After a moment of inscrutable deliberation, he answered that he would do as they wished. Dicky hinted that he would require some information about Lord Malice's past career and his family's history, but he assured them that he did not need it; and his eyes idled ironically with Dicky's face. When the two had gone, Old Roses sat in his room, a handful of letters, a photograph, and a couple of decorations spread out before him, his fingers resting on them, his look engaged with a far horizon. The Governor came. He was met outside the township by the citizens and escorted in--a dusty and numerous cavalcade. They passed the Inspector's house. The garden was blooming, and on the roof a flag was flying. Struck by the singular character of the place Lord Malice asked who lived there, and proposed stopping for a moment to make the acquaintance of its owner; adding, with some slight sarcasm, that if the officers of the Government were too busy to pay their respects to their Governor, their Governor must pay his respects to them. But Old Roses was not in the garden nor in the house, and they left without seeing him. He was sitting under a willow at the billabong, reading over and over to himself the address to be delivered before the Governor in the evening. As he read his face had a wintry and inhospitable look. The night came. Old Roses entered the dining-room quietly with the crowd, far in the Governor's wake. According to his request, he was given a seat in a distant corner, where he was quite inconspicuous. Most of the men present were in evening dress. He wore a plain tweed suit, but carried a handsome rose in his button-hole. It was impossible to put him at a disadvantage. He looked distinguished as he was. He appeared to be much interested in Lord Malice. The early proceedings were cordial, for the Governor and his suite made themselves agreeable, and talk flowed amiably. After a time there was a rattle of knives and forks, and the Chairman rose. Then, after a chorus of "hear, hears," there was general silence. The doorways of the room were filled by the women-servants of the hotel. Chief among them was Vic, who kept her eyes fixed on Old Roses. She knew that he was to read the address and speak, and she was more interested in him and in his success than in Lord Malice and his suite. Her admiration of him was great. He had always treated her as though she had been born a lady, and it had done her good. "And I call upon Mr. Adam Sherwood to speak to the health of His Excellency, Lord Malice." In his modest corner Old Roses stretched to his feet. The Governor glanced over carelessly. He only saw a figure in grey, with a rose in his button-hole. The Chairman whispered that it was the owner of the house and garden which had interested His Excellency that afternoon. His Excellency looked a little closer, but saw only a rim of iron-grey hair above the paper held before Old Roses' face. Then a voice came from behind the paper: "Your Excellency--" At the first words the Governor started, and his eyes flashed searchingly, curiously at the paper that walled the face, and at the iron-grey hair. The voice rose distinct and clear, with modulated emphasis. It had a peculiarly penetrating quality. A few in the room --and particularly Vic--were struck by something in the voice: that it resembled another voice. She soon found the trail. Her eyes also fastened on the paper. Then she moved and went to another door. Here she could see behind the paper at an angle. Her eyes ran from the screened face to that of the Governor. His Excellency had dropped the lower part of his face in his hand, and he was listening intently. Vic noticed that his eyes were painfully grave and concerned. She also noticed other things. The address was strange. It had been submitted to the Committee, and though it struck them as out-of the-wayish, it had been approved. It seemed different when read as Old Roses was reading it. The words sounded inclement as they were chiselled out by the speaker's voice. Dicky Merritt afterwards declared that many phrases were interpolated by Old Roses at the moment. The speaker referred intimately and with peculiar knowledge to the family history of Lord Malice, to certain more or less private matters which did not concern the public, to the antiquity of the name, and the high duty devolving upon one who bore the Earldom of Malice. He dwelt upon the personal character of His Excellency's antecedents, and praised their honourable services to the country. He referred to the death of Lord Malice's eldest brother in Burmah, but he did it strangely. Then, with acute incisiveness, he drew a picture of what a person in so exalted a position as a Governor should be and should not be. His voice assuredly at this point had a touch of scorn. The aides-de-camp were nervous, the Chairman apprehensive, the Committee ill at ease. But the Governor now was perfectly still, though, as Vic Lindley thought, rather pinched and old-looking. His fingers toyed with a wine-glass, but his eyes never wavered from that paper and the grey hair. Presently the voice of the speaker changed. "But," said he, "in Lord Malice we have--the perfect Governor; a man of blameless and enviable life, and possessed abundantly of discreetness, judgment, administrative ability and power; the absolute type of English nobility and British character." He dropped the paper from before his face, and his eyes met those of the Governor, and stayed. Lord Malice let go a long choking breath, which sounded like immeasurable relief. During the rest of the speech-- delivered in a fine-tempered voice--he sat as in a dream, his eyes intently upon the other, who now seemed to recite rather than read. He thrilled all by the pleasant resonance of his tones, and sent the blood aching delightfully through Victoria Lindley's veins. When he sat down there was immense applause. The Governor rose in reply. He spoke in a low voice, but any one listening outside would have said that Old Roses was still speaking. By this resemblance the girl, Vic, had trailed to others. It was now apparent to many, but Dicky said afterwards that it was simply a case of birth and breeding--men used to walking red carpet grew alike, just as stud-owners and rabbit-catchers did. The last words of the Governor's reply were delivered in a convincing tone as his eyes hung on Old Roses' face. "And, as I am indebted to you, gentlemen, for the feelings of loyalty to the Throne which prompted this reception and the address just delivered, so I am indebted to Mr.--Adam Sherwood for his admirable words and the unusual sincerity and eloquence of his speech; and to both you and him for most notable kindness." Immediately after the Governor's speech Old Roses stole out; but as he passed through the door where Vic stood, his hand brushed against hers. Feeling its touch, he grasped it eagerly for an instant as though he were glad of the friendliness in her eyes. It was just before dawn of the morning that the Governor knocked at the door of the house by Long Neck Billabong. The door opened at once, and he entered without a word. He and Old Roses stood face to face. His countenance was drawn and worn, the other's cold and calm. "Tom, Tom," Lord Malice said, "we thought you were dead--" "That is, Edward, having left me to my fate in Burmah--you were only half a mile away with a column of stout soldiers and hillmen--you waited till my death was reported, and seemed assured, and then came on to England: to take the title, just vacant by our father's death, and to marry my intended wife, who, God knows, appeared to have little care which brother it was! You got both. I was long a prisoner. When I got free, I learned all; I bided my time. I was waiting till you had a child. Twelve years have gone: you have no child. But I shall spare you awhile longer. If your wife should die, or you should yet have a child, I shall return." The Governor lifted his head wearily from the table where he now sat. "Tom," he said in a low, heavy voice, "I was always something of a scoundrel, but I've repented of that thing every day of my life since. It has been knives--knives all the way. I am glad--I can't tell you how glad--that you are alive." He stretched out his hand with a motion of great relief. "I was afraid you were going to speak to-night--to tell all, even though I was your brother. You spared me for the sake--" "For the sake of the family name," the other interjected stonily. "For the sake of our name. But I would have taken my punishment, in thankfulness, because you are alive." "Taken it like a man, your Excellency," was the low rejoinder. He laughed bitterly. "You will not wipe the thing out, Tom? You will not wipe it out, and come back, and take your own--now?" said the other anxiously. The other dried the perspiration from his forehead. "I will come back in my own time; and it can never be wiped out. For you shook all my faith in my old world. That's the worst thing that can happen a man. I only believe in the very common people now--those who are not put upon their honour. One doesn't expect it of them, and, unlikely as it is, one isn't often deceived. I think we'd better talk no more about it." "You mean I had better go." "I think so. I am going to marry soon." The other started nervously. "You needn't be so shocked. I will come back one day, but not till your wife dies, or you have a child, as I said." The Governor rose to his feet, and went to the door. "Whom do you intend marrying?" he asked in a voice far from vice-regal, only humbled and disturbed. The reply was instant and keen: "A bar-maid." The other's hand dropped from the door. But Old Roses, passing over, opened it, and, waiting for the other to pass through, said: "I do not doubt but there will be issue. Good-day, my lord!" The Governor passed out from the pale light of the lamp into the grey and moist morning. He turned at a point where the house would be lost to view, and saw the other still standing there. The voice of Old Roses kept ringing in his ears sardonically. He knew that his punishment must go on and on; and it did. Old Roses married Victoria Lindley from "out Tibbooburra way," and there was comely issue, and that issue is now at Eton; for Esau came into his birthright, as he said he would, at his own time. But he and his wife have a way of being indifferent to the gay, astonished world; and, uncommon as it may seem, he has not tired of her. MY WIFE'S LOVERS There were three of them in 1886, the big drought year: old Eversofar, Billy Marshall, and Bingong. I never was very jealous of them, not even when Billy gave undoubted ground for divorce by kissing her boldly in the front garden, with Eversofar and Bingong looking on--to say nothing of myself. So far as public opinion went it could not matter, because we were all living at Tilbar Station in the Tibbooburra country, and the nearest neighbour to us was Mulholland of Nimgi, a hundred miles away. Billy was the son of my manager, John Marshall, and, like his father, had an excellent reputation as a bushman, and, like his mother, was very good-looking. He was very much indeed about my house, suggesting improvements in household arrangements; making remarks on my wife's personal appearance--with corresponding disparagement of myself; riding with my wife across the plains; shooting kangaroos with her by night; and secretly instructing her in the mysteries of a rabbit-trap, with which, he was sure, he could make "dead loads of metal" (he was proficient in the argot of the back-blocks); and with this he would buy her a beautiful diamond ring, and a horse that had won the Melbourne Cup, and an air-gun! Once when she was taken ill, and I was away in the South, he used to sit by her bedside, fanning her hour after hour, being scarcely willing to sleep at night; and was always on hand, smoothing her pillow, and issuing a bulletin to Eversofar and Bingong the first thing in the morning. I have no doubt that Eversofar and Bingong cared for her just as much as he did; but, from first to last, they never had his privileges, and were always subordinate to him in showing her devotion. He was sound and frank with them. He told Eversofar that, of course, she only was kind to him, and let him have a hut all to himself, because he was old and had had a bad time out on the farthest back-station (that was why he was called Eversofar), and had once carried Bingong with a broken leg, on his back, for twenty miles. As for Bingong, he was only a black fellow, aged fifteen, and height inconsiderable. So, of the three, Billy had his own way, and even shamelessly attempted to lord it over me. Most husbands would consider my position painful, particularly when I say that my wife accepted the attention of all three lovers with calm pleasure, and that of Billy with a shocking indifference to my feelings. She never tried to explain away any circumstance, no matter how awkward it might look if put down in black and white. Billy never quailed before my look; he faced me down with his ingenuous smile; he patted me on the arms approvingly; or, with apparent malice, asked me questions difficult to answer, when I came back from a journey to Brisbane--for a man naturally finds it hard to lay bare how he spent all his time in town. Because he did it so suavely and naively, one could not be resentful. It might seem that matters had reached a climax, when, one day, Mulholland came over, and, seeing my wife and her lovers together watering the garden and teaching cockatoos, said to me that Billy had the advantage of me on my own ground. It may not be to my credit that I only grinned, and forbore even looking foolish. Yet I was very fond of my wife all the time. We stood pretty high on the Charwon Downs, and though it was terribly hot at times, it was healthy enough; and she never lost her prettiness, though, maybe, she lacked bloom. I think I never saw her look better than she did that day when Mulholland was with me. She had on the lightest, softest kind of stuff, with sleeves reaching only a little below her elbow--her hands and arms never got sunburnt in the hottest weather--her face smiled out from under the coolest-looking hat imaginable, and her hair, though gathered, had a happy trick of always lying very loose and free about the head, saving her from any primness otherwise possible, she was so neat. Mulholland and I were sitting in the veranda. I glanced up at the thermometer, and it registered a hundred in the shade! Mechanically I pushed the lime- juice towards Mulholland, and pointed to the water-bag. There was nothing else to do except grumble at the drought. Yet there my wife was, a picture of coolness and delight; the intense heat seemed only to make her the more refreshing to the eye. Water was not abundant, but we still felt justified in trying to keep her bushes and flowers alive; and she stood there holding the hose and throwing the water in the cheerfulest shower upon the beds. Billy stood with his hands on his hips watching her, very hot, very self-contained. He was shining with perspiration; and he looked the better of it. Eversofar was camped beneath a sandal- tree teaching a cockatoo, also hot and panting, but laughing low through his white beard; and Bingong, black, hatless--less everything but a pair of trousers which only reached to his knees--was dividing his time between the cockatoo and my wife. Presently Bingong sighted an iguana and caught it, and the three gathered about it in the shade of the sandal. After a time the interest in the iguana seemed to have shifted to something else; and they were all speaking very earnestly. At last I saw Billy and my wife only talking. Billy was excited, and apparently indignant. I could not hear what they were saying, but I saw he was pale, and his compatriots in worship rather frightened; for he suddenly got into a lofty rage. It was undoubtedly a quarrel. Mulholland saw, too, and said to me: "This looks as if there would be a chance for you yet." He laughed. So did I. Soon I saw by my wife's face that she was saying something sarcastical. Then Billy drew himself up very proudly, and waving his hand in a grand way, said loudly, so that we could hear: "It's as true as gospel; and you'll be sorry for this-like anything and anything!" Then he stalked away from her, raising his hat proudly, but immediately turned, and beckoning to Eversofar and Bingong added: "Come on with me to barracks, you two." They started away towards him, looking sheepishly at my wife as they did so; but Billy finding occasion to give counter-orders, said: "But you needn't come until you put the cockatoos away, and stuck the iguana in a barrel, and put the hose up for--for her." He watched them obey his orders, his head in the air the while, and when they had finished, and were come towards him, he again took off his hat, and they all left her standing alone in the garden. Then she laughed a little oddly to herself, and stood picking to pieces the wet leaves of a geranium, looking after the three. After a little she came slowly over to us. "Well," said I, feigning great irony, "all loves must have their day, both old and new. You see how they've deserted you. Yet you smile at it!" "Indeed, my lord and master," she said, "it is not a thing to laugh at. It's very serious." "And what has broken the charm of your companionship?" I asked. "The mere matter of the fabled Bunyip. He claimed that he had seen it, and I doubted his word. Had it been you it would not have mattered. You would have turned the other cheek, you are so tame. But he has fire and soul, and so we quarrelled." "And your other lovers turned tail," I maliciously, said. "Which only shows how superior he is," was her reply. "If you had been in the case they would never have left me." "Oh, oh!" blurted Mulholland, "I am better out of this; for I little care to be called as a witness in divorce." He rose from his chair, but I pushed him back, and he did not leave till "the cool of the evening." The next morning, at breakfast-time, a rouseabout brought us a piece of paper which had been nailed to the sandal-tree. On it was written: "We have gone for the Bunyip. We travel on foot! Farewell and Farewell!" We had scarcely read it, when John Marshall and his wife came in agitation, and said that Billy's bed had not been slept in during the night. From the rouseabout we found that Eversofar and Bingong were also gone. They had not taken horses, doubtless because Billy thought it would hardly be valiant and adventurous enough, and because neither Bingong nor Eversofar owned one, and it might look criminal to go off with mine. We suspected that they had headed for the great Debil-devil Waterhole, where, it was said, the Bunyip appeared: that mysterious animal, or devil, or thing, which nobody has ever seen, but many have pretended to see. Now, this must be said of Billy, that he never had the feeling of fear--he was never even afraid of me. He had often said he had seen a Bunyip, and that he'd bring one home some day, but no one took him seriously. It showed what great influence he had over his companions, that he could induce them to go with him; for Bingong, being a native, must naturally have a constitutional fear of the Debil-debil, as the Bunyip is often called. The Debil-debil Waterhole was a long way off, and through a terrible country--quartz plains, ragged scrub, and little or no water all the way. Then, had they taken plenty of food with them? So far as we could see, they had taken some, but we could not tell how much. My wife smiled at the business at first; then became worried as the day wore on, and she could see the danger and hardship of wandering about this forsaken country without a horse and with uncertain water. The day passed. They did not return. We determined on a search the next morning. At daybreak, Marshall and I and the rouseabout started on good horses, each going at different angles, but agreeing to meet at the Debil debil Waterhole, and to wait there for each other. If any one of us did not come after a certain time, we were to conclude that he had found the adventurers and was making his way back with them. After a day of painful travel and little water, Marshall and I arrived, almost within an hour of each other. We could see no sign of anybody having been at the lagoon. We waited twelve hours, and were about to go, leaving a mark behind us to show we had been there, when we saw the rouseabout and his exhausted horse coming slowly through the bluebush to us. He had suffered much for want of water. We all started back again at different angles, our final rendezvous being arranged for the station homestead, the rouseabout taking a direct line, and making for the Little Black Billabong on the way. I saw no sign of the adventurers. I sickened with the heat, and my eyes became inflamed. I was glad enough when, at last, I drew rein in the home paddock. I couldn't see any distance, though I was not far from the house. But when I got into the garden I saw that others had just arrived. It was the rouseabout with my wife's lovers. He had found Billy nursing Eversofar in the shade of a stunted brigalow, while Bingong was away hunting for water. Billy himself had pushed his cause as bravely as possible, and had in fact visited the Little Black Billabong, where--he always maintains--he had seen the great Bunyip. But after watching one night, they tried to push on to the Debil-debil Waterhole. Old Eversofar, being weak and old, gave in, and Billy became a little delirious--he has denied it, but Bingong says it is so; yet he pulled himself together as became the leader of an expedition, and did what he could for Eversofar until the rouseabout came with food and water. Then he broke down and cried-- he denies this also. They tied the sick man on the horse and trudged back to the station in a bad plight. As I came near the group I heard my wife say to Billy, who looked sadly haggard and ill, that she was sure he would have got the Bunyip if it hadn't been for the terrible drought; and at that, regardless of my presence, he took her by the arms and kissed her, and then she kissed him several times. Perhaps I ought to have mentioned before that Billy was just nine years old. THE STRANGERS' HUT I had come a long journey across country with Glenn, the squatter, and now we were entering the homestead paddock of his sheep-station, Winnanbar. Afar to the left was a stone building, solitary in a waste of saltbush and dead-finish scrub. I asked Glenn what it was. He answered, smilingly: "The Strangers' Hut. Sundowners and that lot sleep there; there's always some flour and tea in a hammock, under the roof, and there they are with a pub of their own. It's a fashion we have in Australia." "It seems all right, Glenn," I said with admiration. "It's surer than Elijah's ravens." "It saves us from their prowling about the barracks, and camping on the front veranda." "How many do you have of a week?" "That depends. Sundowners are as uncertain as they are unknown quantities. After shearing-time they're thickest; in the dead of summer fewest. This is the dead of summer," and, for the hundredth time in our travel, Glenn shook his head sadly. Sadness was ill-suited to his burly form and bronzed face, but it was there. He had some trouble, I thought, deeper than drought. It was too introspective to have its origin solely in the fact that sheep were dying by thousands, that the stock-routes were as dry of water as the hard sky above us, and that it was a toss-up whether many families in the West should not presently abandon their stations, driven out by a water- famine--and worse. After a short silence Glenn stood up in the trap, and, following the circle of the horizon with his hand, said: "There's not an honest blade of grass in all this wretched West. This whole business is gambling with God." "It is hard on women and children that they must live here," I remarked, with my eyes on the Strangers' Hut. "It's harder for men without them," he mournfully replied; and at that moment I began to doubt whether Glenn, whom I had heard to be a bachelor, was not tired of that calm but chilly state. He followed up this speech immediately by this: "Look at that drinking-tank!" The thing was not pleasant in the eye. Sheep were dying and dead by thousands round it, and the crows were feasting horribly. We became silent again. The Strangers' Hut, and its unique and, to me, awesome hospitality, was still in my mind. It remained with me until, impelled by curiosity, I wandered away towards it in the glow and silence of the evening. The walk was no brief matter, but at length I stood near the lonely public, where no name of guest is ever asked, and no bill ever paid. And then I fell to musing on how many life-histories these grey walls had sheltered for a fitful hour, how many stumbling wayfarers had eaten and drunken in this Hotel of Refuge. I dropped my glances on the ground; a bird, newly dead, lay at my feet, killed by the heat. At that moment I heard a child's crying. I started forward, then faltered. Why, I could not tell, save that the crying seemed so a part of the landscape that it might have come out of the sickly sunset, out of the yellow sky, out of the aching earth about me. To follow it might be like pursuing dreams. The crying ceased. Thus for a moment, and then I walked round to the door of the hut. At the sound of slight moaning I paused again. Then I crossed the threshold resolutely. A woman with a child in her arms sat on a rude couch. Her lips were clinging to the infant's forehead. At the sound of my footsteps she raised her head. "Ah!" she said, and, trembling, rose to her feet. She was fair-haired and strong, if sad, of face. Perhaps she never had been beautiful, but in health her face must have been persistent in its charm. Even now it was something noble. With that patronage of compassion which we use towards those who are unfortunate and humble, I was about to say to her, "My poor woman!" but there was something in her manner so above her rude surroundings that I was impelled to this instead: "Madam, you are ill. Can I be of service to you?" Then I doffed my hat. I had not done so before, and I blushed now as I did it, for I saw that she had compelled me. She sank back upon the couch again as though the effort to achieve my courtesy had unnerved her, and she murmured simply and painfully: "Thank you very much: I have travelled far." "May I ask how far?" "From Mount o' Eden, two hundred miles and more, I think"; and her eyes sought the child's face, while her cheek grew paler. She had lighted a tiny fire on the hearthstone and had put the kettle on the wood. Her eyes were upon it now with the covetousness of thirst and hunger. I kneeled, and put in the tin of water left behind by some other pilgrim, a handful of tea from the same source--the outcast and suffering giving to their kind. I poured out for her soon a little of the tea. Then I asked for her burden. She gave it to my arms--a wan, wise-faced child. "Madam," I said, "I am only a visitor here, but, if you feel able, and will come with me to the homestead, you shall, I know, find welcome and kindness, or, if you will wait, there are horses, and you shall be brought--yes, indeed," I added, as she shook her head in sad negation, "you will be welcome." I was sure that, whatever ill chances had befallen the mother of this child, she was one of those who are found in the sight of the Perfect Justice sworn for by the angels. I knew also that Glenn would see that she should be cordially sheltered and brought back to health; for men like Glenn, I said to myself, are kinder in their thought of suffering women than women themselves-are kinder, juster, and less prone to think evil. She raised her head, and answered: "I think that I could walk; but this, you see, is the only hospitality that I can accept, save, it may be, some bread and a little meat, that the child suffer no more, until I reach Winnanbar, which, I fear, is still far away." "This," I replied, "is Winnanbar; the homestead is over there, beyond the hill." "This is--Winnanbar?" she whisperingly said, "this--is--Winnanbar! I did not think--I was-so near." . . . A thankful look came to her face. She rose, and took the child again and pressed it to her breast, and her eyes brooded upon it. "Now she is beautiful," I thought, and waited for her to speak. "Sir--" she said at last, and paused. In the silence a footstep sounded without, and then a form appeared in the doorway. It was Glenn. "I followed you," he said to me; "and--!" He saw the woman, and a low cry broke from her. "Agnes! Agnes!" he cried, with something of sternness and a little shame. "I have come--to you--again-Robert," she brokenly, but not abjectly, said. He came close to her and looked into her face, then into the face of the child, with a sharp questioning. She did not flinch, but answered his scrutiny clearly and proudly. Then, after a moment, she turned a disappointed look upon me, as though to say that I, a stranger, had read her aright at once, while this man held her afar in the cold courts of his judgment ere he gave her any welcome or said a word of pity. She sank back on the bench, and drew a hand with sorrowful slowness across her brow. He saw a ring upon her finger. He took her hand and said: "You are married, Agnes?" "My husband is dead, and the sister of this poor one also," she replied; and she fondled the child and raised her eyes to her brother's. His face now showed compassion. He stooped and kissed her cheek. And it seemed to me at that moment that she could not be gladder than I. "Agnes," he said, "can you forgive me?" "He was only a stock-rider," she murmured, as if to herself, "but he was well-born. I loved him. You were angry. I went away with him in the night . . . far away to the north. God was good--" Here she brushed her lips tenderly across the curls of the child. "Then the drought came and sickness fell and . . . death . . . and I was alone with my baby--" His lips trembled and his hand was hurting my arm, though he knew it not. "Where could I go?" she continued. Glenn answered pleadingly now: "To your unworthy brother, God bless you and forgive me, dear!--though even here at Winnanbar there is drought and famine and the cattle die." "But my little one shall live!" she cried joyfully. That night Glenn of Winnanbar was a happy man, for rain fell on the land, and he held his sister's child in his arms. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: It isn't what they do, it's what they don't do No, I'm not good--I'm only beautiful Should not make our own personal experience a law unto the world Undisciplined generosity Women don't go by evidence, but by their feelings You have lost your illusions You've got to be ready, that's all CUMNER'S SON AND OTHER SOUTH SEA FOLK by Gilbert Parker Volume 3. THE PLANTER'S WIFE BARBARA GOLDING THE LONE CORVETTE THE PLANTER'S WIFE I She was the daughter of a ruined squatter, whose family had been pursued with bad luck; he was a planter, named Houghton. She was not an uncommon woman; he was not an unusual man. They were not happy, they might never be; he was almost sure they would not be; she had long ceased to think they could be. She had told him when she married him that she did not love him. He had been willing to wait for her love, believing that by patience and devotion he could win it. They were both sorry for each other now. They accepted things as they were, but they knew there was danger in the situation. She loved some one else, and he knew it, but he had never spoken to her of it--he was of too good stuff for that. He was big and burly, and something awkward in his ways. She was pretty, clear- minded, kind, and very grave. There were days when they were both bitter at heart. On one such day they sat at luncheon, eating little, and looking much out of the door across the rice fields and banana plantations to the Hebron Mountains. The wife's eyes fixed on the hills and stayed. A road ran down the hill towards a platform of rock which swept smooth and straight to the sheer side of the mountain called White Bluff. At first glance it seemed that the road ended at the cliff-- a mighty slide to destruction. Instead, however, of coming straight to the cliff it veered suddenly, and ran round the mountain side, coming down at a steep but fairly safe incline. The platform or cliff was fenced off by a low barricade of fallen trees, scarcely noticeable from the valley below. The wife's eyes had often wandered to the spot with a strange fascination, as now. Her husband looked at her meditatively. He nodded slightly, as though to himself. She looked up. Their understanding of each other's thoughts was singular. "Tom," she said, "I will ride the chestnut, Bowline, to that fence some day. It will be a big steeplechase." He winced, but answered slowly. "You have meant to say that for a long time past. I am glad it has been said at last." She was struck by the perfect quietness of his tone. Her eyes sought his face and rested for a moment, half bewildered, half pitying. "Yes, it has been in my mind often--often," she said. "It's a horrible thought," he gravely replied; "but it is better to be frank. Still, you'll never do it, Alice--you'll never dare to do it." "Dare, dare," she answered, springing to her feet, and a shuddering sigh broke from her. "The thing itself is easy enough, Tom." "And why haven't you done it?" he asked in a hard voice, but still calmly. She leaned one hand upon the table, the other lay at her cheek, and her head bent forward at him. "Because," she answered, "because I have tried to be thoughtful for you." "Oh, as to that," he said--"as to that!" and he shrugged his shoulders slightly. "You don't care a straw," she said sharply, "you never did." He looked up suddenly at her, a great bitterness in his face, and laughed strangely, as he answered: "Care! Good God! Care! . . . What's the use of caring? It's been all a mistake; all wrong." "That is no news," she said wearily. "You discovered that long ago." He looked out of the door across the warm fields again; he lifted his eyes to that mountain road; he looked down at her. "I haven't any hope left now, Alice. Let's be plain with each other. We've always been plain, but let us be plainer still. There are those rice fields out there, that banana plantation, and the sugar-cane stretching back as far as the valley goes--it's all mine, all mine. I worked hard for it. I had only one wish with it all, one hope through it all, and it was, that when I brought you here as my wife, you would come to love me--some time. Well, I've waited, and waited. It hasn't come. We're as far apart to- day as we were the day I married you. Farther, for I had hope then, but I've no hope now, none at all." They both turned towards the intemperate sunlight and the great hill. The hollowness of life as they lived it came home to them with an aching force. Yet she lifted her fan from the table and fanned herself gently with it, and he mechanically lit a cigar. Servants passed in and out removing the things from the table. Presently they were left alone. The heavy breath of the palm trees floated in upon them; the fruit of the passion-flower hung temptingly at the window; they could hear the sound of a torrent just behind the house. The day was droning luxuriously, yet the eyes of both, as by some weird influence, were fastened upon the hill; and presently they saw, at the highest point where the road was visible, a horseman. He came slowly down until he reached the spot where the road was barricaded from the platform of the cliff. Here he paused. He sat long, looking, as it appeared, down into the valley. The husband rose and took down a field-glass from a shelf; he levelled it at the figure. "Strange, strange," he said to himself; "he seems familiar, and yet--" She rose and reached out her hand for the glass. He gave it to her. She raised it to her eyes, but, at that moment, the horseman swerved into the road again, and was lost to view. Suddenly Houghton started; an enigmatical smile passed across his face. "Alice," said he, "did you mean what you said about the steeplechase-- I mean about the ride down the White Bluff road?" "I meant all I said," was her bitter reply. "You think life is a mistake?" he rejoined. "I think we have made a mistake," was her answer; "a deadly mistake, and it lasts all our lives." He walked to the door, trained the glass again on the hill, then afterwards turned round, and said: "If ever you think of riding the White Bluff road--straight for the cliff itself and over--tell me, and I'll ride it with you. If it's all wrong as it is, it's all wrong for both, and, maybe, the worst of what comes after is better than the worst of what is here." They had been frank with each other in the past, but never so frank as this. He was determined that they should be still more frank; and so was she. "Alice," he said-- "Wait a minute," she interjected. "I have something to say, Tom. I never told you--indeed, I thought I never should tell you; but now I think it's best to do so. I loved a man once--with all my soul." "You love him still," was the reply; and he screwed and unscrewed the field-glass in his hand, looking bluntly at her the while. She nodded, returning his gaze most earnestly and choking back a sob. "Well, it's a pity, it's a pity," he replied. "We oughtn't to live together as it is. It's all wrong; it's wicked--I can see that now." "You are not angry with me?" she answered in surprise. "You can't help it, I suppose," he answered drearily. "Do you really mean," she breathlessly said, "that we might as well die together, since we can't live together and be happy?" "There's nothing in life that gives me a pleasant taste in the mouth, so what's the good? Mind you, my girl, I think it a terrible pity that you should have the thought to die; and if you could be happy living, I'd die myself to save you. But can you? That's the question--can you be happy, even if I went and you stayed?" "I don't think so," she said thoughtfully, and without excitement. "No, I don't think so." "The man's name was Cayley--Cayley," he said to her bluntly. "How did you know?" she asked, astonished. "You never saw him." "Oh, yes, I've seen him," was the reply--"seen him often. I knew him once." "I do not understand you," she rejoined. "I knew it all along," he continued, "and I've waited for you to tell me." "How did you know?" "Cayley told me." "When did he tell you?" "The morning that I married you." His voice was thick with misery. She became white and dazed. "Before--or after?" she asked. He paused a moment, looking steadily at her, and answered, "Before." She drew back as though she had been struck. "Good God!" she cried. "Why did he not--" she paused. "Why did he not marry you himself?" he rejoined. "You must ask him that yourself, if you do not know." "And yet you married me, knowing all--that he loved me," she gasped. "I would have married you then, knowing a thousand times that." She cowered, but presently advanced to him. "You have sinned as much as I," she said. "Do you dare pay the penalty?" "Do I dare ride with you to the cliff--and beyond?" Her lips framed a reply, but no sound came. "But we will wait till to-morrow," he said absently. "Why not to-day?" she painfully asked. "We will wait till to-morrow," he urged, and his eyes followed the trail of a horseman on the hill. "Why not while we have courage?" she persisted, as though the suspense hurt her." "But we will wait till to-morrow, Alice," he again repeated. "Very well," she answered, with the indifference of despair. He stood in the doorway and watched a horseman descending into valley. "Strange things may chance before to-morrow," he said to himself, and he mechanically lighted another cigar. She idled with her fan. II He did not leave the house that afternoon. He kept his post on the veranda, watching the valley. With an iron kind of calmness he was facing a strange event. It was full of the element of chance, and he had been taking chances all his life. With the chances of fortune he had won; with the chances of love and happiness he had lost. He knew that the horseman on the mountain-side was Cayley; he knew that Cayley would not be near his home without a purpose. Besides, Cayley had said he would come--he had said it in half banter, half threat. Houghton had had too many experiences backward and forward in the world, to be afflicted with littleness of mind. He had never looked to get an immense amount of happiness out of life, but he thought that love and marriage would give him a possible approach to content. He had chanced it, and he had lost. At first he had taken it with a dreadful bitterness; now he regarded it with a quiet, unimpassioned despair. He regarded his wife, himself, and Cayley, as an impartial judge would view the extraordinary claims of three desperate litigants. He thought it all over as he sat there smoking. When the servants came to him to ask him questions or his men ventured upon matters of business, he answered them directly, decisively, and went on thinking. His wife had come to take coffee with him at the usual hour of the afternoon. There was no special strain of manner or of speech. The voices were a little lower, the tones a little more decided, their eyes did not meet; that was all. When coffee-drinking was over the wife retired to her room. Still Houghton smoked on. At length he saw the horseman entering into the grove of palms before the door. He rose deliberately from his seat and walked down the pathway. "Good day to you, Houghton," the horseman said; "we meet again, you see." "I see." "You are not overjoyed." "There's no reason why I should be glad. Why have you come?" "You remember our last meeting five years ago. You were on your way to be married. Marriage is a beautiful thing, Houghton, when everything is right and square, and there's love both sides. Well, everything was right and square with you and the woman you were going to marry; but there was not love both sides." While they had been talking thus, Houghton had, of purpose, led his companion far into the shade of the palms. He now wheeled upon Cayley, and said sternly: "I warn you to speak with less insolence; we had better talk simply." Cayley was perfectly cool. "We will talk simply. As I said, you had marriage without love. The woman loved another man. That other man loved the woman--that good woman. In youthful days at college he had married, neither wisely nor well, a beggar-maid without those virtues usually credited to beggar-maidens who marry gentlemen. Well, Houghton, the beggar-maid was supposed to have died. She hadn't died; she had shammed. Meanwhile, between her death and her resurrection, the man came to love that good woman. And so, lines got crossed; things went wrong. Houghton, I loved Alice before she was your wife. I should have married her but for the beggar-maid." "You left her without telling her why." "I told her that things must end, and I went away." "Like a coward," rejoined Houghton. "You should have told her all." "What difference has it made?" asked Cayley gloomily. "My happiness and hers. If you had told her all, there had been an end of mystery. Mystery is dear to a woman's heart. She was not different in that respect from others. You took the surest way to be remembered." Cayley's fingers played with his horse's mane; his eyes ran over the ground debatingly; then he lifted them suddenly, and said: "Houghton, you are remarkably frank with me; what do you mean by it?" "I'll tell you if you will answer me this question: Why have you come here?" The eyes of both men crossed like swords, played with each other for a moment, and then fixed to absolute determination. Cayley answered doggedly: "I came to see your wife, because I'm not likely ever to see her or you again. I wanted one look of her before I went away. There, I'm open with you." "It is well to be open with me," Houghton replied. He drew Cayley aside to an opening in the trees, where the mountain and the White Bluff road could be seen, and pointed. "That would make a wonderful leap," he said, "from the top of the hill down to the cliff edge--and over!" "A dreadful steeplechase," said Cayley. Houghton lowered his voice. "Two people have agreed to take that fence." Cayley frowned. "What two people?" "My wife and I" "Why?" "Because there has been a mistake, and to live is misery." "Has it come to that?" Cayley asked huskily. "Is there no way--no better way? Are you sure that Death mends things?" Presently he put his hand upon Houghton's arm, as if with a sudden, keen resolve. "Houghton," he said, "you are a man--I have become a villain. A woman sent me once on the high road to the devil; then an angel came in and made a man of me again; but I lost the angel, and another man found her, and I took the highway with the devil again. I was born a gentleman--that you know. Now I am . . ." He hesitated. A sardonic smile crept across his face. "Yes, you are--?" interposed Houghton. "I am--a man who will give you your wife's love." "I do not understand," Houghton responded. Cayley drew Houghton back from where they stood and away from the horse. "Look at that horse," he said. "Did you ever see a better?" "Never," answered Houghton, running him over with his eye, "never." "You notice the two white feet and the star on the forehead. Now, listen. Firefoot, here!" "My God!" said Houghton, turning upon him with staring eyes, "you are--" "Whose horse is that?" interjected Cayley. Firefoot laid his head upon Cayley's shoulder. Houghton looked at them both for a moment. "It is the horse of Hyland the bushranger," he said. "All Queensland knows Firefoot." Then he dazedly added: "Are you Hyland?" "A price is set on my head," the bushranger answered with a grim smile. Houghton stood silent for a moment, breathing hard. Then he rejoined: "You are bold to come here openly." "If I couldn't come here openly I would not come at all," answered the other. "After what I have told you," he added, "will you take me in and let me speak with your wife?" Houghton's face turned black, and he was about to answer angrily, but Cayley said: "On my honour--I will play a fair game," he said. For an instant their eyes were fixed on each other; then, with a gesture for Cayley to follow, Houghton went towards the house. Five, minutes later Houghton said to his wife: "Alice, a stranger has come." "Who is it?" she asked breathlessly, for she read importance in his tone. "It is the horseman we saw on the hillside." His eyes passed over her face pityingly. "I will go and bring him." She caught his arm. "Who is it? Is it any one I know?" "It is some one you know," he answered, and left the room. Bewildered, anticipating, yet dreading to recognise her thoughts, she sat down and waited in a painful stillness. Presently the door opened, and Cayley entered. She started to her feet with a stifled, bitter cry: "Oh, Harry!" He hurried to her with arms outstretched, for she swayed; but she straightway recovered herself, and, leaning against a chair, steadied to his look. "Why have you come here?" she whispered. "To say good-bye for always," was his reply. "And why--for always?" She was very white and quiet. "Because we are not likely ever to meet again." "Where are you going?" she anxiously asked. "God knows!" Strange sensations were working in her. What would be the end of this? Her husband, knowing all, had permitted this man to come to her alone. She had loved him for years; though he had deserted her years ago, she loved him still--did she love him still? "Will you not sit down?" she said with mechanical courtesy. A stranger would not have thought from their manner that there were lives at stake. They both sat, he playing with the leaves of an orchid, she opening and shutting her fan absently. But she was so cold she could hardly speak. Her heart seemed to stand still. "How has the world used you since we met last?" she tried to say neutrally. "Better, I fear, than I have used it," he answered quietly. "I do not quite see. How could you ill-use the world?" There was faint irony in her voice now. A change seemed to have come upon her. "By ill-using any one person we ill-use society--the world"--he meaningly replied. "Whom have you ill-used?" She did not look at him. "Many--you chiefly." "How have you--most-ill-used me?" "By letting you think well of me--you have done so, have you not?" She did not speak, but lowered her head, and caught her breath slightly. There was a silence. Then she said: "There was no reason why I should-- But you must not say these things to me. My husband--" "Your husband knows all." "But that does not alter it," she urged firmly. "Though he may be willing you should speak of these things, I am not." "Your husband is a good fellow," he rejoined. "I am not." "You are not?" she asked wearily. "No. What do you think was the reason that, years ago, I said we could never be married, and that we must forget each other?" "I cannot tell. I supposed it was some duty of which I could not know. There are secret and sacred duties which we sometimes do not tell, even to our nearest and dearest . . . but I said we should not speak of these things, and we must not." She rose to her feet. "My husband is somewhere near. I will call him. There are so many things that men can talk of-pleasant and agreeable things--" He had risen with her, and as her hand was stretched out to ring, stayed it. "No, never mind your husband just now. I think he knows what I am going to say to you." "But, oh, you must not--must not!" she urged. "Pardon me, but I must," was his reply. "As I said, you thought I was a good fellow. Well, I am not; not at all. I will tell you why I left you. I was--already married." He let the bare unrelieved fact face her, and shock her. "You were--already married--when--you loved me," she said, her face showing misery and shame. He smiled a little bitterly when he saw the effect of his words, but said clearly: "Yes. You see I was a villain." She shuddered a little, and then said simply: "Your face was not the face of a bad man. Are you telling me the truth?" He nodded. "Then you were wicked with me," she said at last, with a great sigh, looking him straight in the eyes. "But you--you loved me?" she said with injured pride and a piteous appeal in her voice. "Ah, I know you loved me!" "I will tell you when you know all," he answered evenly. "Is there more to tell?" she asked heavily, and shrinking from him now. "Much more. Please, come here." He went towards the open window of the room, and she followed. He pointed out to where his horse stood in the palms. "That is my horse," he said. He whistled to the horse, which pricked up its ears and trotted over to the window. "The name of my horse," he said, "maybe familiar to you. He is called Firefoot." "Firefoot!" she answered dazedly, "that is the name of Hyland's horse-- Hyland the bushranger." "This is Hyland's horse," he said, and he patted the animal's neck gently as it thrust its head within the window. "But you said it was your horse," she rejoined slowly, as though the thing perplexed her sorely. "It is Hyland's horse; it is my horse," he urged without looking at her. His courage well-nigh failed him. Villain as he was, he loved her, and he saw the foundations of her love for him crumbling away before him. In all his criminal adventures he had cherished this one thing. She suddenly gave a cry of shame and agony, a low trembling cry, as though her heart-strings were being dragged out. She drew back from him --back to the middle of the room. He came towards her, reaching out his arms. "Forgive me," he said. "Oh, no, never!" she cried with horror. The cry had been heard outside, and Houghton entered the room, to find his wife, all her strength gone, turning a face of horror upon Cayley. She stretched out her arms to her husband with a pitiful cry. "Tom," she said, "Tom, take me away." He took her gently in his arms. Cayley stood with his hand upon his horse's neck. "Houghton," he said in a low voice, "I have been telling your wife what I was, and who I am. She is shocked. I had better go." The woman's head had dropped on her husband's shoulder. Houghton waited to see if she would look up. But she did not. "Well, good-bye to you both," Cayley said, stepped through the window, and vaulted on his horse's back. "I'm going to see if the devil's as black as he's painted." Then, setting spurs to his horse, he galloped away through the palms to the gate. ...................... A year later Hyland the bushranger was shot in a struggle with the mounted police sent to capture him. The planter's wife read of it in England, whither she had gone on a visit. "It is better so," she said to herself, calmly. "And he wished it, I am sure." For now she knew the whole truth, and she did not love her husband less --but more. BARBARA GOLDING The last time John Osgood saw Barbara Golding was on a certain summer afternoon at the lonely Post, Telegraph, and Customs Station known as Rahway, on the Queensland coast. It was at Rahway also that he first and last saw Mr. Louis Bachelor. He had had excellent opportunities for knowing Barbara Golding; for many years she had been governess (and something more) to his sisters Janet, Agnes and Lorna. She had been engaged in Sydney as governess simply, but Wandenong cattle station was far up country, and she gradually came to perform the functions of milliner and dressmaker, encouraged thereto by the family for her unerring taste and skill. Her salary, however, had been proportionately increased, and it did not decline when her office as governess became practically a sinecure as her pupils passed beyond the sphere of the schoolroom. Perhaps George Osgood, father of John Osgood, and owner of Wandenong, did not make an allowance to Barbara Golding for her services as counsellor and confidant of his family; but neither did he subtract anything from her earnings in those infrequent years when she journeyed alone to Sydney on those mysterious visits which so mightily puzzled the good people of Wandenong. The boldest and most off-hand of them, however, could never discover what Barbara Golding did not choose to tell. She was slight, almost frail in form, and very gentle of manner; but she also possessed that rare species of courtesy which, never declining to fastidiousness nor lapsing into familiarity, checked all curious intrusion, was it ever so insinuating; and the milliner and dressmaker was not less self-poised and compelling of respect than the governess and confidant. In some particulars the case of Louis Bachelor was similar. Besides being the Post, Telegraph, and Customs Officer, and Justice of the Peace at Rahway, he was available and valuable to the Government as a meteorologist. The Administration recognised this after a few years of voluntary and earnest labour on Louis Bachelor's part. It was not, however, his predictions concerning floods or droughts that roused this official appreciation, but the fulfilment of those predictions. At length a yearly honorarium was sent to him, and then again, after a dignified delay, there was forwarded to him a suggestion from the Cabinet that he should come to Brisbane and take a more important position. It was when this patronage was declined that the Premier (dropping for a moment into that bushman's jargon which came naturally to him) said, irritably, that Louis Bachelor was a "old fossil who didn't know when he'd got his dover in the dough," which, being interpreted into the slang of the old world, means, his knife into the official loaf. But the fossil went on as before, known by name to the merest handful of people in the colony, though they all profited, directly or indirectly, by his scientific services. He was as unknown to the dwellers at Wandenong as they were to him, or he again to the citizens of the moon. It was the custom for Janet and Agnes Osgood to say that Barbara Golding had a history. On every occasion the sentiment was uttered with that fresh conviction in tone which made it appear to be born again. It seemed to have especially pregnant force one evening after Janet had been consulting Barbara on the mysteries of the garment in which she was to be married to Druce Stephens, part owner of Booldal Station. "Aggie," remarked the coming bride, "Barbara's face flushed up ever so pink when I said to her that she seemed to know exactly what a trousseau ought to be. I wonder! She is well-bred enough to have been anybody; and the Bishop of Adelaide recommended her, you know." Soon after this Druce Stephens arrived at Wandenong and occupied the attention of Janet until suppertime, when he startled the company by the tale of his adventures on the previous evening with Roadmaster, the mysterious bushranger, whose name was now in every man's mouth; who apparently worked with no confederates--a perilous proceeding, though it reduced the chances of betrayal. Druce was about to camp on the plains for the night, in preference to riding on to a miserable bush-tavern a few miles away, when he was suddenly accosted in the scrub by a gallant- looking fellow on horseback, who, from behind his mask, asked him to give up what money he had about him, together with his watch and ring. The request was emphasised by the presence of a revolver held at an easy but suggestive angle. The disadvantage to the squatter was obvious. He merely asked that he should be permitted to keep the ring, as it had many associations, remarking at the same time that he would be pleased to give an equivalent for it if the bushranger would come to Wandenong. At the mention of Wandenong the highwayman asked his name. On being told, he handed back the money, the watch, and the ring, and politely requested a cigar, saying that the Osgoods merited consideration at his hands, and that their friends were safe from molestation. Then he added, with some grim humour, that if Druce had no objection to spending an hour with Roadmaster over a fire and a billy of tea, he would be glad of his company; for bushranging, according to his system, was but dull work. The young squatter consented, and together they sat for two hours, the highwayman, however, never removing his mask. They talked of many things, and at last Druce ventured to ask his companion about the death of Blood Finchley, the owner of Tarawan sheep-run. At this Roadmaster became weary, and rose to leave; but as if on second thought, he said that Finchley's companion, whom he allowed to go unrobbed and untouched, was both a coward and a liar; that the slain man had fired thrice needlessly, and had wounded him in the neck (the scar of which he showed) before he drew trigger. Druce then told him that besides a posse of police, a number of squatters and bushmen had banded to hunt him down, and advised him to make for the coast if he could, and leave the country. At this Roadmaster laughed, and said that his fancy was not sea-ward yet, though that might come; and then, with a courteous wave of his hand, he jumped on his horse and rode away. The Osgoods speculated curiously and futilely on Roadmaster's identity, as indeed the whole colony had done. And here it may be said that people of any observation (though, of necessity, they were few, since Rahway attracted only busy sugar-planters and their workmen) were used to speak of Louis Bachelor as one who must certainly have a history. The person most likely to have the power of inquisition into his affairs was his faithful aboriginal servant, Gongi. But records and history were only understood by Gongi when they were restricted to the number of heads taken in tribal battle. At the same time he was a devoted slave to the man who, at the risk of his own life, had rescued him from the murderous spears of his aboriginal foes. That was a kind of record within Gongi's comprehension, from the contemplation of which he turned to speak of Louis Bachelor as "That fellow budgery marmi b'longin' to me," which, in civilised language, means "my good master." Gongi often dilated on this rescue, and he would, for purposes of illustration, take down from his master's wall an artillery officer's sabre and show how his assailants had been dispersed. From the presence of this sword it was not unreasonably assumed that Louis Bachelor had at some time been in the army. He was not, however, communicative on this point, though he shrewdly commented on European wars and rumours of wars when they occurred. He also held strenuous opinions of the conduct of Government and the suppression of public evils, based obviously upon military views of things. . For bushrangers he would have a modern Tyburn, but this and other tragic suggestions lacked conviction when confronted with his verdicts given as Justice of the Peace. He pronounced judgments in a grand and airy fashion, but as if he were speaking by a card, the Don Quixote whose mercy would be vaster than his wrath. This was the impression he gave, to, John Osgood on the day when the young squatter introduced himself to Rahway, where he had come on a mission to its one official. The young man's father had a taste for many things; astronomy was his latest, and he had bought from the Government a telescope which, excellent in its day, had been superseded by others of later official purchase. He had brought it to Wandenong, had built a home for it, and had got it into trouble. He had then sent to Brisbane for assistance, and the astronomer of the Government had referred him to the postmaster at Rahway, "Prognosticator" of the meteorological column in The Courier, who would be instructed to give Mr. Osgood every help, especially as the occultation of Venus was near. Men do not send letters by post in a new country when personal communication is possible, and John Osgood was asked by his father to go to Rahway. When John wished for the name of this rare official, the astronomer's letter was handed over with a sarcastic request that the name might be deciphered; but the son was not more of an antiquary than his father, and he had to leave without it. He rode to the coast, and there took a passing steamer to Rahway. From the sea Rahway looked a tropical paradise. The bright green palisades of mangrove on the right crowded down to the water's edge; on the left was the luxuriance of a tropical jungle; in the centre was an are of opal shore fringed with cocoa-palms, and beyond the sea a handful of white dwellings. Behind was a sweeping monotony of verdure stretching back into the great valley of the Popri, and over all the heavy languor of the South. But the beauty was a delusion. When John Osgood's small boat swept up the sands on the white crest of a league-long roller, how different was the scene! He saw a group of dilapidated huts, a tavern called The Angel's Rest, a blackfellow's hut, and the bareness of three Government offices, all built on piles, that the white ants should not humble them suddenly to the dust; a fever-making mangrove swamp, black at the base as the filthiest moat, and tenanted by reptiles; feeble palms, and a sickly breath creeping from the jungle to mingle with the heavy scent of the last consignment of augar from the Popri valley. It brought him to a melancholy standstill, disturbed at last by Gongi touching him on the arm and pointing towards the post-office. His language to Gongi was strong; he called the place by names that were not polite; and even on the threshold of the official domain said that the Devil would have his last big muster there. But from that instant his glibness declined. The squatters are the aristocracy of Australia, and rural postmasters are not always considered eligible for a dinner-party at Government House; but when Louis Bachelor came forward to meet his visitor the young fellow's fingers quickly caught his hat from his head, and an off-hand greeting became a respectful salute. At first the young man was awed by the presence of the grizzled gentleman, and he struggled with his language to bring it up to the classic level of the old meteorologist's speech. Before they had spoken a dozen words John Osgood said to himself: "What a quaint team he and the Maid of Honour would make! It's the same kind of thing in both, with the difference of sex and circumstance." The nature of his visitor's business pleased the old man, and infused his courtesy with warmth. Yes, he would go to Wandenong with pleasure; the Government had communicated with him about it; a substitute had been offered; he was quite willing to take his first leave in four years; astronomy was a great subject, he had a very good and obedient telescope of his own, though not nearly so large as that at Wandenong; he would telegraph at once to Brisbane for the substitute to be sent on the following day, and would be ready to start in twenty-four hours. After visiting Wandenong he would go to Brisbane for some scientific necessaries--and so on through smooth parentheses of talk. Under all the bluntness of the Bush young Osgood had a refinement which now found expression in an attempt to make himself agreeable--not a difficult task, since, thanks to his father's tastes and a year or two at college, he had a smattering of physical science. He soon won his way to the old man's heart, and to his laboratory, which had been developed through years of patience and ingenious toil in this desolate spot. Left alone that evening in Louis Bachelor's sitting-room, John Osgood's eyes were caught by a portrait on the wall, the likeness of a beautiful girl. Something about the face puzzled him. Where had he seen it? More than a little of an artist, he began to reproduce the head on paper. He put it in different poses; he added to it; he took away from it; he gave it a child's face, preserving the one striking expression; he made it that of a woman--of an elderly, grave woman. Why, what was this? Barbara Golding! He would not spoil the development of the drama, of which he now held the fluttering prologue, by any blunt treatment; he would touch this and that nerve gently to see what past connection there was between: "These dim blown birds beneath an alien sky." He mooned along in this fashion, a fashion in which his bushmen friends would not have known him, until his host entered. Then, in that auspicious moment when his own pipe and his companion's cigarette were being lighted, he said: "I've been amusing myself with drawing since you left, sir, and I've produced this," handing over the paper. Louis Bachelor took the sketch, and, walking to the window for better light, said: "Believe me, I have a profound respect for the artistic talent. I myself once had--ah!" He sharply paused as he saw the pencilled head, and stood looking fixedly at it. Presently he turned slowly, came to the portrait on the wall, and compared it with that in his hand. Then, with a troubled face, he said: "You have much talent, but it is--it is too old--much too old--and very sorrowful." "I intended the face to show age and sorrow, Mr. Bachelor. Would not the original of that have both?" "She had sorrow--she had sorrow, but," and he looked sadly at the sketch again, "it is too old for her. Her face was very young--always very young." "But has she not sorrow now, sir?" the other persisted gently. The grey head was shaken sadly, and the unsteady voice meditatively murmured: "Such beauty, such presence! I was but five-and-thirty then." There was a slight pause, and then, with his hand touching the young man's shoulder, Louis Bachelor continued: "You are young; you have a good heart; I know men. You have the sympathy of the artist--why should I not speak to you? I have been silent about it so long. You have brought the past back, I know not how, so vividly! I dream here, I work here; men come with merchandise and go again; they only bind my tongue; I am not of them: but you are different, as it seems to me, and young. God gave me a happy youth. My eyes were bright as yours, my heart as fond. You love-- is it not so? Ah, you smile and blush like an honest man. Well, so much the more I can speak now. God gave me then strength and honour and love --blessed be His name! And then He visited me with sorrow, and, if I still mourn, I have peace, too, and a busy life." Here he looked at the sketch again. "Then I was a soldier. She was my world. Ah, true, love is a great thing--a great thing! She had a brother. They two with their mother were alone in the world, and we were to be married. One day at Gibraltar I received a letter from her saying that our marriage could not be; that she was going away from England; that those lines were her farewell; and that she commended me to the love of Heaven. Such a letter it was--so saintly, so unhappy, so mysterious! When I could get leave I went to England. She--they--had gone, and none knew whither; or, if any of her friends knew, none would speak. I searched for her everywhere. At last I came to Australia, and I am here, no longer searching, but waiting, for there is that above us!" His lips moved as if in prayer. "And this is all I have left of her, except memory," he said, tenderly touching the portrait. Warmly, yet with discreet sympathy, the young man rejoined: "Sir, I respect, and I hope I understand, your confidence." Then, a little nervously: "Might I ask her name?" The reply was spoken to the portrait: "Barbara--Barbara Golding." With Louis Bachelor the young squatter approached Wandenong homestead in some excitement. He had said no word to his companion about that Barbara Golding who played such a gracious part in the home of the Osgoods. He had arranged the movement of the story to his fancy, but would it occur in all as he hoped? With an amiability that was almost malicious in its adroit suggestiveness, though, to be sure, it was honest, he had induced the soldier to talk of his past. His words naturally, and always, radiated to the sun, whose image was now hidden, but for whose memory no superscription on monument or cenotaph was needed. Now it was a scrap of song, then a tale, and again a verse, by which the old soldier was delicately worked upon, until at last, as they entered the paddocks of Wandenong, stars and telescopes and even Governments had been forgotten in the personal literature of sentiment. Yet John Osgood was not quite at his ease. Now that it was at hand, he rather shrank from the meeting of these ancient loves. Apart from all else, he knew that no woman's nerves are to be trusted. He hoped fortune would so favour him that he could arrange for the meeting of the two alone, or, at least, in his presence only. He had so far fostered this possibility by arriving at the station at nightfall. What next? He turned and looked at the soldier, a figure out of Hogarth, which even dust and travel left unspoiled. It was certain that the two should meet where John Osgood, squatter and romancer, should be prompter, orchestra, and audience, and he alone. Vain lad! When they drew rein the young man took his companion at once to his own detached quarters known as the Barracks, and then proceeded to the house. After greetings with his family he sought Barbara Golding, who was in the schoolroom, piously employed, Agnes said, in putting the final touches to Janet's trousseau. He went across the square to the schoolroom, and, looking through the window, saw that she was quite alone. A few moments later he stood at the schoolroom door with Louis Bachelor. With his hand on the latch he hesitated. Was it not fairer to give some warning to either? Too late! He opened the door and they entered. She was sewing, and a book lay open beside her, a faded, but stately little figure whose very garments had an air. She rose, seeing at first only John Osgood, who greeted her and then said: "Miss Golding, I have brought you an old friend." Then he stepped back and the two were face to face. Barbara Golding's cheeks became pale, but she did not stir; the soldier, with an exclamation of surprise half joyful, half pathetic, took a step forward, and then became motionless also. Their eyes met and stayed intent. This was not quite what the young man had expected. At length the soldier bowed low, and the woman responded gravely. At this point Osgood withdrew to stand guard at the door. Barbara Golding's eyes were dim with tears. The soldier gently said, "I received--" and then paused. She raised her eyes to his. "I received a letter from you five-and-twenty years ago." "Yes, five-and-twenty years ago." "I hope you cannot guess what pain it gave me." "Yes," she answered faintly, "I can conceive it, from the pain it gave to me." There was a pause, and then he stepped forward and, holding out his hand, said: "Will you permit me?" He kissed her fingers courteously, and she blushed. "I have waited," he added, "for God to bring this to pass." She shook her head sadly, and her eyes sought his beseechingly, as though he should spare her; but perhaps he could not see that. "You spoke of a great obstacle then; has it been removed?" "It is still between us," she murmured. "Is it likely ever to vanish?" "I--I do not know." "You can not tell me what it is?" "Oh, you will not ask me," she pleaded. He was silent a moment, then spoke. "Might I dare to hope, Barbara, that you still regard me with--" he hesitated. The fires of a modest valour fluttered in her cheeks, and she pieced out his sentence: "With all my life's esteem." But she was a woman, and she added: "But I am not young now, and I am very poor." "Barbara," he said; "I am not rich and I am old; but you, you have not changed; you are beautiful, as you always were." The moment was crucial. He stepped towards her, but her eyes held him back. He hoped that she would speak, but she only smiled sadly. He waited, but, in the waiting, hope faded, and he only said, at last, in a voice of new resolve grown out of dead expectancy: "Your brother--is he well?" "I hope so," she somewhat painfully replied. "Is he in Australia?" "Yes. I have not seen him for years, but he is here." As if a thought had suddenly come to him, he stepped nearer, and made as if he would speak; but the words halted on his lips, and he turned away again. She glided to his side and touched his arm. "I am glad that you trust me," she faltered. "There is no more that need be said," he answered. And now, woman-like, denying, she pitied, too. "If I ever can, shall--shall I send for you to tell you all?" she murmured. "You remember I told you that the world had but one place for me, and that was by your side; that where you are, Barbara--" "Hush, oh hush!" she interrupted gently. "Yes, I remember everything." "There is no power can alter what is come of Heaven," he said, smiling faintly. She looked with limpid eyes upon him as he bowed over her hand, and she spoke with a sweet calm: "God be with you, Louis." Strange as it may seem, John Osgood did not tell his sisters and his family of this romance which he had brought to the vivid close of a first act. He felt the more so because Louis Bachelor had said no word about it, but had only pressed his hand again and again--that he was somehow put upon his honour, and he thought it a fine thing to stand on a platform of unspoken compact with this gentleman of a social school unfamiliar to him; from which it may be seen that cattle-breeding and bullock-driving need not make a man a boor. What his sisters guessed when they found that Barbara Golding and the visitor were old friends is another matter; but they could not pierce their brother's reserve on the point. No one at Wandenong saw the parting between the two when Louis Bachelor, his task with the telescope ended, left again for the coast; but indeed it might have been seen by all men, so outwardly formal was it, even as their brief conversations had been since they met again. But is it not known by those who look closely upon the world that there is nothing so tragic as the formal? John Osgood accompanied his friend to the sea, but the name of Barbara Golding was not mentioned, nor was any reference made to her until the moment of parting. Then the elder man said: "Sir, your consideration and delicacy of feeling have moved me, and touched her. We have not been blind to your singular kindness of heart and courtesy, and--God bless you, my friend!" On his way back to Wandenong, Osgood heard exciting news of Roadmaster. The word had been passed among the squatters who had united to avenge Finchley's death that the bushranger was to be shot on sight, that he should not be left to the uncertainty of the law. The latest exploit of the daring freebooter had been to stop on the plains two members of a Royal Commission of Inquiry. He had relieved them of such money as was in their pockets, and then had caused them to write sumptuous cheques on their banks, payable to bearer. These he had cashed in the very teeth of the law, and actually paused in the street to read a description of himself posted on a telegraph-pole. "Inaccurate, quite inaccurate," he said to a by-stander as he drew his riding-whip slowly along it, and then, mounting his horse, rode leisurely away into the plains. Had he been followed it would have been seen that he directed his course to that point in the horizon where Wandenong lay, and held to it. It would not perhaps have been pleasant to Agnes Osgood had she known that, as she hummed a song under a she-oak, a mile away from the homestead, a man was watching her from a clump of scrub near by; a man who, however gentlemanly his bearing, had a face where the devil of despair had set his foot, and who carried in his pocket more than one weapon of inhospitable suggestion. But the man intended no harm to her, for, while she sang, something seemed to smooth away the active evil of his countenance, and to dispel a threatening alertness that marked the whole personality. Three hours later this same man crouched by the drawing-room window of the Wandenong homestead and looked in, listening to the same voice, until Barbara Golding entered the room and took a seat near the piano, with her face turned full towards him. Then he forgot the music and looked long at the face, and at last rose, and stole silently to where his horse was tied in the scrub. He mounted, and turning towards the house muttered: "A little more of this, and good-bye to my nerves! But it's pleasant to have the taste of it in my mouth for a minute. How would it look in Roadmaster's biography, that a girl just out of school brought the rain to his eyes?" He laughed a little bitterly, and then went on: "Poor Barbara! She mustn't know while I'm alive. Stretch out, my nag; we've a long road to travel to-night." This was Edward Golding, the brother whom Barbara thought was still in prison at Sydney under another name, serving a term of ten years for manslaughter. If she had read the papers more carefully she would have known that he had been released two years before his time was up. It was eight years since she had seen him. Twice since then she had gone to visit him, but he would not see her. Bad as he had been, his desire was still strong that the family name should not be publicly reviled. At his trial his real name had not been made known; and at his request his sister sent him no letters. Going into gaol a reckless man he came out a constitutional criminal; with the natural instinct for crime greater than the instinct for morality. He turned bushranger for one day, to get money to take him out of the country; but having once entered the lists he left them no more, and, playing at deadly joust with the law, soon became known as Roadmaster, the most noted bushranger since the days of Captain Starlight. It was forgery on the name of his father's oldest friend that had driven him from England. He had the choice of leaving his native land for ever or going to prison, and he chose the former. The sorrow of the crime killed his mother. From Adelaide, where he and Barbara had made their new home, he wandered to the far interior and afterwards to Sydney; then came his imprisonment on a charge of manslaughter, and now he was free- but what a freedom! With the name of Roadmaster often heard at Wandenong, Barbara Golding's heart had no warning instinct of who the bushranger was. She thought only and continuously of the day when her brother should be released, to begin the race of life again with her. She had yet to learn in what manner they come to the finish who make a false start. Louis Bachelor, again in his place Rahway, tried to drive away his guesses at the truth by his beloved science. When sleep would not come at night he rose and worked in his laboratory; and the sailors of many a passing vessel saw the light of his lamp in the dim hours before dawn, and spoke of fever in the port of Rahway. Nor did they speak without reason; fever was preparing a victim for the sacrifice at Rahway, and Louis Bachelor was fed with its poison till he grew haggard and weak. One night he was sending his weather prognostications to Brisbane, when a stranger entered from the shore. The old man did not at first look up, and the other leisurely studied him as the sounder clicked its message. When the key was closed the new-comer said: "Can you send a message to Brisbane for me?" "It is after hours; I cannot," was the reply. "But you were just sending one." "That was official," and the elder man passed his hand wearily along his forehead. He was very pale. The other drew the telegraph-forms towards him and wrote on one, saying as he did so: "My business is important;" then handing over what he had written, and, smiling ironically, added: "Perhaps you will consider that official." Louis Bachelor took the paper and read as follows: To the Colonial Secretary, Brisbane. I am here tonight; to-morrow find me. Roadmaster." He read it twice before he fully comprehended it. Then he said, as if awakening from a dream: "You are--" "I am Roadmaster," said the other. But now the soldier and official in the other were awake. He drew himself up, and appeared to measure his visitor as a swordsman would his enemy. "What is your object in coming here?" he asked. "For you to send that message if you choose. That you may arrest me peaceably if you wish; or there are men at The Angel's Rest and a Chinaman or two here who might care for active service against Roadmaster." He laughed carelessly. "Am I to understand that you give yourself up to me?" "Yes, to you, Louis Bachelor, Justice of the Peace, to do what you will with for this night," was the reply. The soldier's hands trembled, but it was from imminent illness, not from fear or excitement. He came slowly towards the bushranger who, smiling, said as he advanced: "Yes, arrest me!" Louis Bachelor raised his hand, as though to lay it on the shoulder of the other; but something in the eyes of the highwayman stayed his hand. "Proceed, Captain Louis Bachelor," said Roadmaster in a changed tone. The hand fell to the old man's side. "Who are you?" he faintly exclaimed. "I know you yet I cannot quite remember." More and more the voice and manner of the outlaw altered as he replied with mocking bitterness: "I was Edward Golding, gentleman; I became Edward Golding, forger; I am Roadmaster, convicted of manslaughter, and bushranger." The old man's state was painful to see. "You--you--that, Edward!" he uttered brokenly. "All that. Will you arrest me now?" "I--cannot." The bushranger threw aside all bravado and irony, and said: "I knew you could not. Why did I come? Listen--but first, will you shelter me here to-night?" The soldier's honourable soul rose up against this thing, but he said slowly at last: "If it is to save you from peril, yes." Roadmaster laughed a little and rejoined: "By God, sir, you're a man! But it isn't likely that I'd accept it of you, is it? You've had it rough enough, without my putting a rock in your swag that would spoil you for the rest of the tramp. You see, I've even forgotten how to talk like a gentleman. And now, sir, I want to show you, for Barbara's sake, my dirty logbook." Here he told the tale of his early sin and all that came of it. When he had finished the story he spoke of Barbara again. "She didn't want to disgrace you, you understand," he said. "You were at Wandenong; I know that, never mind how. She'd marry you if I were out of the way. Well, I'm going to be out of the way. I'm going to leave this country, and she's to think I'm dead, you see." At this point Louis Bachelor swayed, and would have fallen, but that the bushranger's arms were thrown round him and helped him to a chair. "I'm afraid that I am ill," he said; "call Gongi. Ah!" He had fainted. The bushranger carried him to a bed, and summoned Gongi and the woman from the tavern, and in another hour was riding away through the valley of the Popri. Before thirty-six hours had passed a note was delivered to a station-hand at Wandenong addressed to Barbara Golding, and signed by the woman from The Angel's Rest. Within another two days Barbara Golding was at the bedside of Captain Louis Bachelor, battling with an enemy that is so often stronger than love and always kinder than shame. In his wanderings the sick man was ever with his youth and early manhood, and again and again he uttered Barbara's name in caressing or entreaty; though it was the Barbara of far-off days that he invoked; the present one he did not know. But the night in which the crisis, the fortunate crisis, of the fever occurred, he talked of a great flood coming from the North, and in his half-delirium bade them send to headquarters, and mournfully muttered of drowned plantations and human peril. Was this instinct and knowledge working through the disordered fancies of fever? Or was it mere coincidence that the next day a great storm and flood did sweep through the valley of the Popri, putting life in danger and submerging plantations? It was on this day that Roadmaster found himself at bay in the mangrove swamp not far from the port of Rahway, where he had expected to find a schooner to take him to the New Hebrides. It had been arranged for by a well-paid colleague in crime; but the storm had delayed the schooner, and the avenging squatters and bushmen were closing in on him at last. There was flood behind him in the valley, a foodless swamp on the left of him, open shore and jungle on the right, the swollen sea before him; and the only avenue of escape closed by Blood Finchley's friends. He had been eluding his pursuers for days with little food and worse than no sleep. He knew that he had played his last card and lost; but he had one thing yet to do, that which even the vilest do, if they can, before they pay the final penalty--to creep back for a moment into their honest past, however dim and far away. With incredible skill he had passed under the very rifles of his hunters, and now stood almost within the stream of light which came from the window of the sick man's room, where his sister was. There was to be no more hiding, no more strategy. He told Gongi and another that he was Roadmaster, and bade them say to his pursuers, should they appear, that he would come to them upon the shore when his visit to Louis Bachelor, whom he had known in other days, was over, indicating the place at some distance from the house where they would find him. He entered the house. The noise of the opening door brought his sister to the room. At last she said: "Oh, Edward, you are free at last!" "Yes, I am free at last," he quietly replied. "I have always prayed for you, Edward, and for this." "I know that, Barbara; but prayer cannot do anything, can it? You see, though I was born a gentleman, I had a bad strain in me. I wonder if, somewhere, generations back, there was a pirate or a gipsy in our family." He had been going to say highwayman, but paused in time. "I always intended to be good and always ended by being bad. I wanted to be of the angels and play with the devils also. I liked saints--you are a saint, Barbara--but I loved all sinners too. I hope when--when I die, that the little bit of good that's in me will go where you are. For the rest of me, it must be as it may." "Don't speak like that, Edward, please, dear. Yes, you have been wicked, but you have been punished, oh, those long, long years!" "I've lost a great slice of life by both the stolen waters and the rod, but I'm going to reform now, Barbara." "You are going to reform? Oh, I knew you would! God has answered my prayer." Her eyes lighted. He did not speak at once, for his ears, keener than hers, were listening to a confused sound of voices coming from the shore. At length he spoke firmly: "Yes, I'm going to reform, but it's on one condition." Her eyes mutely asked a question, and he replied: "That you marry him," pointing to the inner room, "if he lives." "He will live, but I--I cannot tell him, Edward," she sadly said. "He knows." "He knows! Did you dare to tell him?" It was the lover, not the sister, who spoke then. "Yes. And he knows also that I'm going to reform--that I'm going away." Her face was hid in her hand. "And I kept it from him five-and-twenty years! . . . Where are you going, Edward?" "To the Farewell Islands," he slowly replied. And she, thinking he meant some island group in the Pacific, tearfully inquired: "Are they far away?" "Yes, very far away, my girl." "But you will write to me or come to see me again--you will come to see me again, sometimes, Edward?" He paused. He knew not at first what to reply, but at length he said, with a strangely determined flash of his dark eyes: "Yes, Barbara, I will come to see you again--if I can." He stooped and kissed her. "Goodbye, Barbara." "But, Edward, must you go to-night?" "Yes, I must go now. They are waiting for me. Good-bye." She would have stayed him but he put her gently back, and she said plaintively: "God keep you, Edward. Remember you said that you would come again to me." "I shall remember," he said quietly, and he was gone. Standing in the light from the window of the sick man's room he wrote a line in Latin on a slip of paper, begging of Louis Bachelor the mercy of silence, and gave it to Gongi, who whispered that he was surrounded. This he knew; he had not studied sounds in prison through the best years of his life for nothing. He asked Gongi to give the note to his master when he was better, and when it could be done unseen of any one. Then he turned and walked coolly towards the shore. A few minutes later he lay upon a heap of magnolia branches breathing his life away. At the same moment of time that a rough but kindly hand closed the eyes of the bushranger, the woman from The Angel's Rest and Louis Bachelor saw the pale face of Roadmaster peer through the bedroom window at Barbara Golding sitting in a chair asleep; and she started and said through her half-wakefulness, looking at the window: "Where are you going, Edward?" THE LONE CORVETTE "And God shall turn upon them violently, and toss them like a ball into a large country."--ISAIH. "Poor Ted, poor Ted! I'd give my commission to see him once again." "I believe you would, Debney." "I knew him to the last button of his nature, and any one who knew him well could never think hardly of him. There were five of us brothers, and we all worshipped him. He could run rings round us in everything, at school, with sports, in the business of life, in love." Debney's voice fell with the last few words, and there was a sorrowful sort of smile on his face. His look was fastened on the Farilone Islands, which lay like a black, half-closed eyelid across the disc of the huge yellow sun, as it sank in the sky straight out from the Golden Gate. The long wash of the Pacific was in their ears at their left, behind them was the Presidio, from which they had come after a visit to the officers, and before them was the warm, inviting distance of waters, which lead, as all men know, to the Lotos Isles. Debney sighed and shook his head. "He was, by nature, the ablest man I ever knew. Everything in the world interested him." "There lay the trouble, perhaps." "Nowhere else. All his will was with the wholesome thing, but his brain, his imagination were always hunting. He was the true adventurer at the start. That was it, Mostyn." "He found the forbidden thing more interesting than--the other?" "Quite so. Unless a thing was really interesting, stood out, as it were, he had no use for it--nor for man nor woman." "Lady Folingsby, for instance." "Do you know, Mostyn, that even to-day, whenever she meets me, I can see one question in her eyes: 'Where is he?' Always, always that. He found life and people so interesting that he couldn't help but be interesting himself. Whatever he was, I never knew a woman speak ill of him. . . . Once a year there comes to me a letter from an artist girl in Paris, written in language that gets into my eyes. There is always the one refrain: 'He will return some day. Say to him that I do not forget.'" "Whatever his faults, he was too big to be anything but kind to a woman, was Ted." "I remember the day when his resignation was so promptly accepted by the Admiralty. He walked up to the Admiral--Farquhar it was, on the Bolingbroke--and said: 'Admiral, if I'd been in your place I'd have done the same. I ought to resign, and I have. Yet if I had to do it over again, I'd be the same. I don't repent. I'm out of the Navy now, and it doesn't make any difference what I say, so I'll have my preachment out. If I were Admiral Farquhar, and you were Edward Debney, ex-commander, I'd say: "Debney, you're a damned good fellow and a damned bad officer."' "The Admiral liked Edward, in spite of all, better than any man in the Squadron, for Ted's brains were worth those of any half-dozen officers he had. He simply choked, and then, before the whole ship, dropped both hands on his shoulders, and said: 'Debney, you're a damned good fellow and a damned bad officer, and I wish to God you were a damned bad fellow and a damned good officer--for then there were no need to part.' At that they parted. But as Edward was leaving, the Admiral came forward again, and said: 'Where are you going, Debney?' 'I'm going nowhere, sir,' Ted answered. 'I'm being tossed into strange waters--a lone corvette of no squadron.' He stopped, smiled, and then said--it was so like him, for, with all his wildness, he had the tastes of a student: 'You remember that passage in Isaiah, sir, "And God shall turn upon them violently, and toss them like a ball into a large country"?' "There wasn't a man but had a kind thought for him as he left, and there was rain in the eyes of more than one A.B. Well, from that day he disappeared, and no one has seen him since. God knows where he is; but I was thinking, as I looked out there to the setting sun, that his wild spirit would naturally turn to the South, for civilised places had no charm for him." "I never knew quite why he had to leave the Navy." "He opened fire on a French frigate off Tahiti which was boring holes in an opium smuggler." Mostyn laughed. "Of course; and how like Ted it was--an instinct to side with the weakest." "Yes, coupled with the fact that the Frenchman's act was mere brutality, and had not sufficient motive or justification. So Ted pitched into him." "Did the smuggler fly the British flag?" "No, the American; and it was only the intervention of the United States which prevented serious international trouble. Out of the affair came Ted a shipwreck." "Have you never got on his track?" "Once I thought I had at Singapore, but nothing came of it. No doubt he changed his name. He never asked for, never got, the legacy my poor father left him." "What was it made you think you had come across him at Singapore?" "Oh, certain significant things." "What was he doing?" Debney looked at his old friend for a moment debatingly, then said quietly: "Slave-dealing, and doing it successfully, under the noses of men-of-war of all nations." "But you decided it was not he after all?" "I doubted. If Ted came to that, he would do it in a very big way. It would appeal to him on some grand scale, with real danger and, say, a few scores of thousands of pounds at stake--not unless." Mostyn lit a cigar, and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, regarded the scene before him with genial meditation--the creamy wash of the sea at their feet, the surface of the water like corrugated silver stretching to the farther sky, with that long lane of golden light crossing it to the sun, Alcatras, Angel Island, Saucilito, the rocky fortresses, and the men-of-war in the harbour, on one of which flew the British ensign--the Cormorant, commanded by Debney. "Poor Ted!" said Mostyn at last; "he might have been anything." "Let us get back to the Cormorant," responded Debney sadly. "And see, old chap, when you get back to England, I wish you'd visit my mother for me, for I shall not see her for another year, and she's always anxious-- always since Ted left." Mostyn grasped the other's hand, and said: "It's the second thing I'll do on landing, my boy." Then they talked of other things, but as they turned at the Presidio for a last look at the Golden Gate, Mostyn said musingly: "I wonder how many millions' worth of smuggled opium have come in that open door?" Debney shrugged a shoulder. "Try Nob Hill, Fifth Avenue, and the Champs Elysees. What does a poor man-o'-war's-man know of such things?" An hour later they were aboard the Cormorant dining with a number of men asked to come and say good-bye to Mostyn, who was starting for England the second day following, after a pleasant cruise with Debney. Meanwhile, from far beyond that yellow lane of light running out from Golden Gate, there came a vessel, sailing straight for harbour. She was an old-fashioned cruiser, carrying guns, and when she passed another vessel she hoisted the British flag. She looked like a half-obsolete corvette, spruced up, made modern by every possible device, and all her appointments were shapely and in order. She was clearly a British man- of-war, as shown in her trim-dressed sailors, her good handful of marines; but her second and third lieutenants seemed little like Englishmen. There was gun-drill and cutlass-drill every day, and, what was also singular, there was boat-drill twice a day, so that the crew of this man-of-war, as they saw Golden Gate ahead of them, were perhaps more expert at boat-drill than any that sailed. They could lower and raise a boat with a wonderful expertness in a bad sea, and they rowed with clock- like precision and machine-like force. Their general discipline did credit to the British Navy. But they were not given to understand that by their Commander, Captain Shewell, who had an eye like a spot of steel and a tongue like aloes or honey as the mood was on him. It was clear that he took his position seriously, for he was as rigid and exact in etiquette as an admiral of the old school, and his eye was as keen for his officers as for his men; and that might have seemed strange too, if one had seen him two years before commanding a schooner with a roving commission in the South Seas. Then he was more genial of eye and less professional of face. Here he could never be mistaken for anything else than the commander of a man-of-war--it was in his legs, in the shoulder he set to the wind, in the tone of his orders, in his austere urbanity to his officers. Yet there was something else in his eye, in his face, which all this professionalism could not hide, even when he was most professional--some elusive, subterranean force or purpose. This was most noticeable when he was shut away from the others in his cabin. Then his whole body seemed to change. The eye became softer, and yet full of a sort of genial devilry, the body had a careless alertness and elasticity, the whole man had the athletic grace of a wild animal, and his face had a hearty sort of humour, which the slightly-lifting lip, in its insolent disdain, could not greatly modify. He certainly seemed well pleased with himself, and more than once, as he sat alone, he laughed outright, and once he said aloud, as his fingers ran up and down a schedule--not a man-o'-war's schedule--laughing softly: "Poor old Farquhar, if he could see me now!" Then, to himself: "Well, as I told him, I was violently tossed like a ball into the large country; and I've had a lot of adventure and sport. But here's something more the biggest game ever played between nations by a private person--with fifty thousand pounds as the end thereof, if all goes well with my lone corvette." The next evening, just before dusk, after having idled about out of sight of the signal station nearly all day, Captain Shewell entered Golden Gate with the Hornet-of no squadron. But the officers at the signal station did not know that, and simply telegraphed to the harbour, in reply to the signals from the corvette, that a British man-of-war was coming. She came leisurely up the bay, with Captain Shewell on the bridge. He gave a low whistle as he saw the Cormorant in the distance. He knew the harbour well, and saw that the Cormorant had gone to a new anchorage, not the same as British men-of-war took formerly. He drew away to the old anchorage--he need not be supposed to know that a change was expected; besides--and this was important to Captain Shewell--the old anchorage was near the docks; and it was clear, save for one little life-boat and a schooner which was making out as he came up. As the Hornet came to anchor the Cormorant saluted her, and she replied instantly. Customs officers who were watching the craft from the shore or from their boats put down their marine glasses contentedly when they saw and heard the salutes. But two went out to the Hornet, were received graciously by Captain Shewell, who, over a glass of wine in his cabin- appropriately hung with pictures of Nelson and Collingwood--said that he was proceeding to Alaska to rescue a crew shipwrecked which had taken refuge on a barren island, and that he was leaving the next day as soon as he could get some coal; though he feared it would be difficult coaling up that night. He did not need a great deal, he said--which was, indeed, the case--but he did need some, and for the Hornet's safety he must have it. After this, with cheerful compliments, and the perfunctory declaration on his part that there was nothing dutiable on board, the officers left him, greatly pleased with his courtesy, saluted by the sailors standing at the gangway as they left the ship's side. The officers did not notice that one of these sailors winked an eye at another, and that both then grinned, and were promptly ordered aft by the second lieutenant. As soon as it was very dark two or three boats pushed out from the Hornet, and rowed swiftly to shore, passing a Customs boat as they went, which was saluted by the officers in command. After this, boats kept passing backward and forward for a long time between the Hornet and the shore, which was natural, seeing that a first night in port is a sort of holiday for officers and men. If these sailors had been watched closely, however, it would have been seen that they visited but few saloons on shore, and drank little, and then evidently as a blind. Close watching would also have discovered the fact that there were a few people on shore who were glad to see the safe arrival of the Hornet, and who, about one o'clock in the morning, almost fell on the neck of Captain Shewell as they bade him good bye. Then, for the rest of the night, coal was carried out to the Hornet in boats and barges. By daybreak her coal was aboard, then came cleaning up, and preparations to depart. Captain Shewell's eye was now much on the Cormorant. He had escaped one danger, he had landed half a million dollars' worth of opium in the night, under the very nose of the law, and while Customs boats were patrolling the bay; there was another danger--the inquisitiveness of the Cormorant. It was etiquette for him to call upon the captain of the Cormorant, and he ought to have done so the evening before, but he had not dared to run the risk, nor could he venture this morning. And yet if the Cormorant discovered that the Hornet was not a British man-of-war, but a bold and splendid imposture, made possible by a daring ex-officer of the British Navy, she might open fire, and he could make but a sorry fight, for he was equipped for show rather than for deadly action. He had got this ex-British man-of-war two years before, purchased in Brazil by two adventurous spirits in San Francisco, had selected his crew carefully, many of them deserters from the British Navy, drilled them, and at last made this bold venture under the teeth of a fortress, and at the mouth of a warship's guns. Just as he was lifting anchor to get away, he saw a boat shoot out from the side of the Cormorant. Captain Debney, indignant at the lack of etiquette, and a little suspicious also now--for there was no Hornet in the Pacific Squadron, though there was a Hornet, he knew, in the China Squadron--was coming to visit the discourteous commander. He was received with the usual formalities, and was greeted at once by Captain Shewell. As the eyes of the two men met both started, but Captain Debney was most shaken. He turned white, and put out his hand to the bulwark to steady himself. But Captain Shewell held the hand that had been put out; shook it, pressed it. He tried to urge Captain Debney forward, but the other drew back to the gangway. "Pull yourself together, Dick, or there'll be a mess," said Shewell softly. "My God, how could you do it?" replied his brother aghast. Meanwhile the anchor had been raised, and the Hornet was moving towards the harbour mouth. "You have ruined us both," said Richard Debney. "Neither, Dick! I'll save your bacon." He made a sign, the gangway was closed, he gave the word for full steam ahead, and the Hornet began to race through the water before Captain Debney guessed his purpose. "What do you mean to do?" he asked sternly, as he saw his own gig falling astern. "To make it hard for you to blow me to pieces. You've got to do it, of course, if you can, but I must get a start." "How far do you intend carrying me?" "To the Farilones, perhaps." Richard Debney's face had a sick look. "Take me to your cabin," he whispered. What was said behind the closed door no man in this world knows, and it is well not to listen too closely to those who part, knowing that they will never meet again. They had been children in the one mother's arms; there was nothing in common between them now except that ancient love. Nearing the Farilones, Captain Debney was put off in an open boat. Standing there alone, he was once more a naval officer, and he called out sternly: "Sir, I hope to sink you and your smuggling craft within four- and-twenty hours!" Captain Shewell spoke no word, but saluted deliberately, and watched his brother's boat recede, till it was a speck upon the sea, as it moved towards Golden Gate. "Good old Dick!" he said at last, as he turned away toward the bridge. "And he'll do it, if he can!" But he never did, for as the Cormorant cleared the harbour that evening there came an accident to her machinery, and with two days' start the Hornet was on her way to be sold again to a South American Republic. And Edward Debney, once her captain? What does it matter? ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Answered, with the indifference of despair Mystery is dear to a woman's heart Never looked to get an immense amount of happiness out of life There is nothing so tragic as the formal CUMNER'S SON AND OTHER SOUTH SEA FOLK by Gilbert Parker Volume 4. A SABLE SPARTAN A VULGAR FRACTION HOW PANGO WANGO WAS ANNEXED AN AMIABLE REVENGE THE BLIND BEGGAR AND THE LITTLE RED PEG A FRIEND OF THE COMMUNE A SABLE SPARTAN Lady Tynemouth was interested; his Excellency was amused. The interest was real, the amusement was not ironical. Blithelygo, seeing that he had at least excited the attention of the luncheon party, said half- apologetically: "Of course my experience is small, but in many parts of the world I have been surprised to see how uniform revolutionises the savage. Put him into Convention, that is clothes, give him Responsibility, that is a chance to exercise vanity and power, and you make him a Britisher--a good citizen to all intents and purposes." Blithelygo was a clever fellow in his way. He had a decided instinct for military matters, and for good cigars and pretty women. Yet he would rather give up both than an idea which had got firmly fixed in his mind. He was very deferential in his remarks, but at the same time he was quite willing to go into a minority which might not include pretty Miss Angel who sat beside him, if he was not met by conclusive good arguments. In the slight pause which followed his rather long speech, his Excellency passed the champagne cup, and Lady Tynemouth said: "But I suppose it depends somewhat on the race, doesn't it, Mr. Travers? I am afraid mere uniforming would scarcely work successfully--among the Bengalese, for instance." "A wretched crew," said Major Warham; "awful liars, awful scoundrels, need kicking every morning." "Of course," said Blithelygo, "there must be some consideration of race. But look at the Indian Mutiny. Though there was revolt, look at those who 'fought with us faithful and few'; look at the fidelity of the majority of the native servants. Look at the native mounted police in Australia; at the Sikhs in the Settlements and the Native States; at the Indian scouts of the United States and Canada; and look at these very Indian troops at your door, your Excellency! I think my principle holds good; give uniform, give responsibility--under European surveillance of course--get British civilisation." His Excellency's eyes had been wandering out of the window, over the white wall and into the town where Arabia, India, Africa, the Islands of the South and Palestine were blended in a quivering, radiant panorama. Then they rose until they fell upon Jebel Shamsan, in its intoxicating red and opal far away, and upon the frowning and mighty rampart that makes Aden one of the most impregnable stations of the Empire. The amusement in his eyes had died away; and as he dipped his fingers in the water at his side and motioned for a quickening of the punkahs, he said: "There is force in what you say. It would be an unpleasant look-out for us here and in many parts of the world if we could not place reliance on the effect of uniform; but"--and the amused look came again to his eyes-- "we somehow get dulled to the virtues of Indian troops and Somauli policemen. We can't get perspective, you see." Blithelygo good-naturedly joined in the laugh that went round the table; for nearly all there had personal experience of "uniformed savages." As the ladies rose Miss Angel said naively to Blithelygo: "You ought to spend a month in Aden, Mr. Blithelygo. Don't go by the next boat, then you can study uniforms here." We settled down to our cigars. Major Warham was an officer from Bombay. He had lived in India for twenty years: long enough to be cynical of justice at the Horse Guards or at the India Office: to become in fact bitter against London, S.W., altogether. It was he that proposed a walk through the town. The city lay sleepy and listless beneath a proud and distant sky of changeless blue. Idly sat the Arabs on the benches outside the low- roofed coffee-houses; lazily worked the makers of ornaments in the bazaars; yawningly pounded the tinkers; greedily ate the children; the city was cloyed with ease. Warham, Blithelygo and myself sat in the evening sun surrounded by gold-and-scarlet bedizened gentry of the desert, and drank strong coffee and smoked until we too were satisfied, if not surfeited; animals like the rest. Silence fell on us. This was a new life to two of us; to Warham it was familiar, therefore comfortable and soporific. I leaned back and languidly scanned the scene; eyes halfshut, senses half-awake. An Arab sheikh passed swiftly with his curtained harem; and then went filing by in orderly and bright array a number of Mahommedans, the first of them bearing on a cushion of red velvet, and covered with a cloth of scarlet and gold, a dead child to burial. Down from the colossal tanks built in the mountain gorges that were old when Mahomet was young, there came donkeys bearing great leathern bottles such as the Israelites carried in their forty years' sojourning. A long line of swaying camels passed dustily to the desert that burns even into this city of Aden, built on a volcano; groups of Somaulis, lithe and brawny, moved chattering here and there; and a handful of wandering horsemen, with spears and snowy garments, were being swallowed up in the mountain defiles. The day had been long, the coffee and cigarettes had been heavy, and we dozed away in the sensuous atmosphere. Then there came, as if in a dream, a harsh and far-off murmur of voices. It grew from a murmur to a sharp cry, and from a sharp cry to a roar of rage. In a moment we were on our feet, and dashing away toward the sound. The sight that greeted us was a strange one, and horribly picturesque. In front of a low-roofed house of stone was a crowd of Mahommedans fierce with anger and loud in imprecation. Knives were flashing; murder was afoot. There stood, with his back to the door of the house, a Somauli policeman, defending himself against this raging little mob. Not defending himself alone. Within the house he had thrust a wretched Jew, who had defiled a Mahommedan mosque; and he was here protecting him against these nervous champions of the faith. Once, twice, thrice, they reached him; but he fought on with his unwounded arm. We were unarmed and helpless; no Somaulis were near. Death glittered in these white blades. But must this Spartan die? Now there was another cry, a British cheer, a gleam of blue and red, a glint of steel rounding the corner at our left, and the Mahommedans broke away, with a parting lunge at the Somauli. British soldiers took the place of the bloodthirsty mob. Danger over, the Somauli sank down on the threshold, fainting from loss of blood. As we looked at him gashed all over, but not mortally wounded, Blithelygo said with glowing triumph: "British, British, you see!" At that moment the door of the house opened, and out crawled to the feet of the officer in command the miserable Israelite with his red hemmed skirt and greasy face. For this cowardly creature the Somauli policeman had perilled his life. Sublime! How could we help thinking of the talk at his Excellency's table? Suddenly the Somauli started up and looked round anxiously. His eyes fell on the Jew. His countenance grew peaceful. He sank back again into the arms of the surgeon and said, pointing to the son of Abraham: "He owe me for a donkey." Major Warham looking at Blithelygo said with a chilled kind of lustre to his voice: "British, so British, don't you know!" A VULGAR FRACTION Sometimes when, like Mirza, I retire to my little Hill of Bagdad for meditation, there comes before me the bright picture of Hawaii with its coral-bulwarked islands and the memory of an idle sojourn on their shores. I remember the rainbow-coloured harbour of Honolulu Hilo, the simply joyous Arcadie at the foot of Mauna Loa, and Mauna Kea which lifted violet shoulders to the morning, the groves of cocoa-palms and tamarinds, the waterfalls dropping over sheer precipices a thousand feet into the ocean, the green embrasures where the mango, the guava, and the lovi lovi grow, and where the hibiscus lifts red hands to the light. I call to mind the luau where Kalakua, the King, presided over the dispensation of stewed puppy, lifted to one's lips by brown but fair fingers, of live shrimps, of poi and taro and balls of boiled sea-weed stuffed with Heaven knows what; and to crown all, or to drown all, the insinuating liquor kava, followed when the festival was done by the sensuous but fascinating hula hula, danced by maidens of varying loveliness. Of these Van Blaricom, the American, said, "they'd capture Chicago in a week with that racket," and he showed Blithelygo his calculations as to profits. The moments that we enjoyed the most, however, were those that came when feast and serenade were over, when Hawaii Ponoi, the National Anthem, was sung, and we lay upon the sands and watched the long white coverlet of foam folding towards the shore, and saw visions and dreamed dreams. But at times we also breathed a prayer--a prayer that somebody or something would come and carry off Van Blaricom, whose satire, born and nurtured in Chicago, was ever turned against Hawaii and all that therein was. There are times when I think I had a taste of Paradise in Hawaii--but a Paradise not without a Satanic intruder in the shape of that person from Illinois. Nothing escaped his scorn. One day we saw from Diamond Head three water-spouts careering to the south, a splendid procession of the powers of the air. He straightway said to Kalakua, that "a Michigan cyclone had more git-up-and-git about it than them three black cats with their tails in the water." He spent hours in thinking out rudely caustic things to repeat about this little kingdom. He said that the Government was a Corliss-engine running a sewing machine. He used to ask the Commander of the Forces when the Household Cavalry were going into summer camp--they were twelve. The only thing that appeared to impress him seriously was Molokai, the desolate island where the lepers made their cheerless prison-home. But the reason for his gravity appeared when he said to Blithelygo and myself: "There'd be a fortune in that menagerie if it was anchored in Lake Michigan." On that occasion he was answered in strong terms. It was the only time I ever heard Blithelygo use profanity. But the American merely dusted his patent leather shoes with a gay silk kerchief, adjusted his clothes on his five-foot frame as he stood up; and said: "Say you ought to hear my partner in Chicago when he lets out. He's an artist!" This Man from the West was evidently foreordained to play a part in the destinies of Blithelygo and myself, for during two years of travel he continuously crossed our path. His only becoming quality was his ample extravagance. Perhaps it was the bountiful impetus he gave to the commerce of Honolulu, and the fact that he talked of buying up a portion of one of the Islands for sugar-planting, that induced the King to be gracious to him. However that might be, when Blithelygo and I joined his Majesty at Hilo to visit the extinct volcano of Kilauea, there was the American coolly puffing his cigar and quizzically feeling the limbs and prodding the ribs of the one individual soldier who composed the King's body-guard. He was not interested in our arrival further than to give us a nod. In a pause that followed our greetings, he said to his Majesty, while jerking his thumb towards the soldier: "King, how many of 'em have you got in your army?" His Majesty blandly but with dignity turned to his aide-de-camp and raised his eyebrows inquiringly. The aide-de-camp answered: "Sixty." "Then we've got 1/60th of the standing army with us, eh?" drawled Van Blaricom. The aide-de-camp bowed affirmatively. The King was scanning Mauna Loa. The American winked at us. The King did not see the wink, but he had caught a tone in the voice of the invader, which brought, as I thought, a slight flush to his swarthy cheek. The soldier-his name was Lilikalu --looked from his King to the critic of his King's kingdom and standing army, and there was a glow beneath his long eyelashes which suggested that three-quarters of a century of civilisation had not quite drawn the old savage spirit from the descendants of Lailai, the Hawaiian Eve. During the journey up the Forty-Mile Track to Kilauea, the American enveloped 1/60th of his Majesty's standing army with his Michigan Avenue and peanut-stand wit, and not always, it was observed, out of the hearing of the King, who nevertheless preserved a marked unconsciousness. Majesty was at a premium with two of us on that journey. Only once was the Chicagonian's wit not stupid as well as offensive. It chanced thus. The afternoon in which we reached the volcano was suffocatingly hot, and the King's bodyguard had discarded all clothing--brief when complete-- save what would not count in any handicap. He was therefore at peace, while the rest of us, Royalty included, were inwardly thinking that after this the orthodox future of the wicked would have no terrors. At a moment when the body-guard appeared to be most ostentatious in his freedom from clothing the American said to his Majesty: "King, do you know what 1/60th of your standing army is?" The reply was a low and frigid: "No." "It's a vulgar fraction." ..................... There were seven of us walking on the crater of the volcano: great banks of sulphur on the right, dark glaciers of lava on the left, high walls of scoria and volcanic crust enveloping us all about. We were four thousand feet above the level of the sea. We were standing at the door of the House of Pele, the Goddess of Fire. We knocked, but she would not open. The flames were gone from her hearthstone, her smoke was gorging the throat of the suffering earth. "Say, she was awful sick while she was about it," said the American as he stumbled over the belched masses of lava. That was one day. But two days after we stood at Pele threshold again. Now red scoria and pumice and sulphur boiled and rolled where the hard lava had frayed our boots. Within thirty-six hours Kilauea has sprung from its flameless sleep into sulphurous life and red roaring grandeur. Though Pele came but slowly, she came; and a lake of fire beat at the lofty sides of the volcanic cup. The ruby spray flashed up to the sky, and geysers of flame hurled long lances at the moon. "King," said the American, "why don't you turn it into an axe-factory?" At last the time came when we must leave this scene of marvel and terror, and we retired reluctantly. There were two ways by which we might return to the bridle path that led down the mountain. The American desired to take the one by which we had not come; the rest of us, tired out, preferred to go as we came--the shortest way. A compromise was made by his Majesty sending 1/60th of the standing army with the American, who gaily said he would join us, "horse, foot and cavalry," in the bridle- path. We reached the meeting-point first, but as we looked back we saw with horror that two streams of fire were flowing down the mountain side. We were to the left of them both, and safe; but between them, and approaching us, were Van Blaricom and the native soldier. The two men saw their danger, and pushed swiftly down the mountainside and towards us, but more swiftly still these narrow snake-like streams came on. Presently the streams veered towards each other and joined. The two men were on an island with a shore of fire. There was one hope--the shore was narrow yet. But in running the American fell, spraining his ankle badly. We were speechless, but the King's lips parted with a moan, as he said: "Lilikalu can jump the stream, but the other--!" They were now at the margin of that gleaming shore, the American wringing his hands. It was clear to him that unless a miracle happened he would see his beloved Chicago no more; for the stream behind them was rapidly widening. I think I see that 1/60th of his Majesty's infantry as he looked down upon the slight and cowering form of the American. His moment of vengeance had come. A second passed, marked by the splashing roar of the waves in the hill above us, and then the soldier-naked, all save the boots he wore-seized the other in his arms, stepped back a few paces, and then ran forward and leaped across the barrier of flame. Not quite across! One foot and ankle sank into the molten masses, with a shiver of agony, he let the American fall on the safe ground. An instant later and he lay at our feet, helpless and maimed for many a day; and the standing army of the King was deprived of 1/60th of its strength. HOW PANGO WANGO WAS ANNEXED Blithelygo and I were at Levuka, Fiji, languidly waiting for some "trader" or mail-steamer to carry us away anywhere. Just when we were bored beyond endurance and when cigars were running low, a Fijian came to us and said: "That fellow, white fellow, all a-same a-you, long a-shore. Pleni sail. Pleni Melican flag." We went to the beach, and there was Jude Van Blaricom, our American. We had left him in New Zealand at the Pink Terraces, bidding him an eternal farewell. We wished it so. But we had met him afterwards at Norfolk Island, and again at Sydney, and we knew now that we should never cease to meet him during our sojourn on this earth. An hour later we were on board his yacht, Wilderness, being introduced to MacGregor, the captain, to Mr. Dagmar Caramel, C.M.G., his guest, and to some freshly made American cocktails. Then we were shown over the Wilderness. She looked as if she had been in the hands of a Universal Provider. Evidently the American had no intention of roughing it. His toilet requisites were a dream. From the dazzling completeness of the snug saloon we were taken aft to see two coops filled with fowls. "Say," said the American, "how's that for fresh meat?" Though a little ashamed of it, we then and there accepted the Chicagonian's invitation to take a cruise with him in the South Pacific. For days the cruise was pleasant enough, and then things began to drag. Fortunately there came a new interest in the daily routine. One day Van Blaricom was seen standing with the cook before the fowl coops deeply interested; and soon after he had triumphantly arranged what he called "The Coliseum." This was an enclosure of canvas chiefly, where we had cock-fights daily. The gladiators were always ready for the arena. One was called U. S., after General U. S. Grant, and the other Bob Lee, after General Robert Lee. "Go it, U. S. Lift your skewers, you bobtail. Give it to him, you've got him in Andersonville, U. S." Thus, day by day, were the warriors encouraged by Van Blaricom. There is nothing very elegant or interesting in the record so far, but it all has to do with the annexation of Pango Wango, and, as Blithelygo long afterwards remarked, it shows how nations sometimes acquire territory. Yes, this Coliseum of ours had as much to do with the annexation as had the American's toilet requisites his hair-oil and perfume bottles. In the South Pacific, a thousand miles from land, Van Blaricom was redolent of new-mown hay and heliotrope. It was tropically hot. We were in the very middle of the hurricane season. The air had no nerve. Even the gladiators were relaxing their ardour; and soon the arena was cleared altogether, for we were in the midst of a hurricane. It was a desperate time, but just when it seemed most desperate the wheel of doom turned backward and we were saved. The hurricane found us fretful with life by reason of the heat, it left us thankful for being let to live at all; though the Wilderness appeared little better than a drifting wreck. Our commissariat was gone, or almost gone, we hadn't any masts or sails to speak of, and the cook informed us that we had but a few gallons of fresh water left; yet, strange to say, the gladiators remained to us. When the peril was over it surprised me to remember that Van Blaricom had been comparatively cool through it all; for I had still before me a certain scene at the volcano of Kilauea. I was to be still more surprised. We were by no means out of danger. MacGregor did not know where we were; the fresh water was vanishing rapidly, and our patch of sail was hardly enough to warrant a breeze taking any interest in it. We had been saved from immediate destruction, but it certainly seemed like exchanging Tophet for a slow fire. When the heat was greatest and the spiritual gloom thickest the American threw out the sand-bags, as it were, and hope mounted again. "Say, MacGregor," he said, "run up the American flag. There's luck in the old bandana." This being done, he added: "Bring along the cigars; we'll have out U. S. and Bob Lee in the saloon." Our Coliseum was again open to the public at two shillings a head. That had been the price from the beginning. The American was very business- like in the matter, but this admission fee was our only contribution to the expenses of that cruise. Sport could only allay, it could not banish our sufferings. We became as haggard and woe-begone a lot as ever ate provisions impregnated with salt; we turned wistfully from claret to a teaspoonful of water, and had tongues like pieces of blotting-paper. One morning we were sitting at breakfast when we heard a cock-crow, then another and another. MacGregor sprang to his feet crying: "Land!" In a moment we were on deck. There was no land to be seen, but MacGregor maintained that a cock was a better look-out than a human being any time, and in this case he was right. In a few hours we did sight land. Slowly we came nearer to the island. MacGregor was not at all sure where it was, but guessed it might be one of the Solomon Islands. When within a few miles of it Blithelygo unfeelingly remarked that its population might be cannibalistic. MacGregor said it was very likely; but we'd have to be fattened first, and that would give us time to turn round. The American said that the Stars and Stripes and the Coliseum had brought us luck so far, and he'd take the risk if we would. The shore was crowded with natives, and as we entered the bay we saw hundreds take to the water in what seemed fearfully like war-canoes. We were all armed with revolvers, and we had half a dozen rifles handy. As the islanders approached we could see that they also were armed; and a brawny race they looked, and particularly bloodthirsty. In the largest canoe stood a splendid-looking fellow, evidently a chief. On the shore near a large palm-thatched house a great group was gathered, and the American, levelling his glass, said: "Say, it's a she-queen or something over there." At that moment the canoes drew alongside, and while MacGregor adjured us to show no fear, he beckoned the chief to come aboard. An instant, and a score of savages, armed with spears and nulla-nullas were on deck. MacGregor made signs that we were hungry, Blithelygo that we were thirsty, and the American, smoking all the while, offered the chief a cigar. The cigar was refused, but the headman ordered a couple of natives ashore, and in five minutes we had wild bananas and fish to eat, and water to drink. But that five minutes of waiting were filled with awkward incidents. Blithelygo, meaning to be hospitable, had brought up a tumbler of claret for the headman. With violent language, MacGregor stopped its presentation; upon which the poison of suspicion evidently entered the mind of the savage, and he grasped his spear threateningly. Van Blaricom, who wore a long gold watch-chain, now took it off and offered it to the chief, motioning him to put it round his neck. The hand was loosened on the spear, and the Chicagonian stepped forward and put the chain over the head of the native. As he did so the chief suddenly thrust his nose forward and sniffed violently at the American. What little things decide the fate of nations and men! This was a race whose salutation was not nose-rubbing, but smelling, and the American had not in our worst straits failed to keep his hair sleek with hair-oil, verbena scented, and to perfume himself daily with new-mown hay or heliotrope. Thus was he of goodly savour to the chief, and the eyes of the savage grew bright. At that moment the food and drink came. During the repast the chief chuckled in his own strange way, and, when we slackened in our eating, he still motioned to us to go on. Van Blaricom, who had been smiling, suddenly looked grave. "By the great horn-spoons," he said, "they have begun already! They're fattening us!" MacGregor nodded affirmatively, and then Van Blaricom's eyes wandered wildly from the chief to that group on the shore where he thought he had seen the "she-queen." At that moment the headman came forward again, again sniffed at him, and again chuckled, and all the natives as they looked on us chuckled also. It was most unpleasant. Suddenly I saw the American start. He got up, turned to us, and said: "I've got an idea. MacGregor, get U. S. and Bob Lee." Then he quietly disappeared, the eyes of the savages suspiciously following him. In a moment he came back, bearing in his arms a mirror, a bottle of hair-oil, a couple of bottles of perfume, a comb and brush, some variegated bath towels, and an American flag. First he let the chief sniff at the bottles, and then, pointing to the group on the shore, motioned to be taken over. In a few moments he and MacGregor were being conveyed towards the shore in the gathering dusk. Four hours passed. It was midnight. There was noise of drums and shouting on the shore, which did not relieve our suspense. Suddenly there was a commotion in the canoes that still remained near the Wilderness. The headman appeared before us, and beckoned to Blithelygo and myself to come. The beckoning was friendly, and we hoped that affairs had taken a more promising turn. In a space surrounded with palms and ti-trees a great fire was burning. There was a monotonous roll of the savage tom-tom and a noise of shouting and laughter. Yes, we were safe, and the American had done it. The Coliseum was open, MacGregor was ring-master, and U. S. and Bob Lee were at work. This show, with other influences, had conquered Pango Wango. The American flag was hoisted on a staff, and on a mighty stump there sat Van Blaricom, almost innocent of garments, I grieve to say, with one whom we came to know as Totimalu, Queen of Pango Wango, a half circle of savages behind them. Van Blaricom and MacGregor had been naturalised by having their shoulders lanced with a spear-point, and then rubbed against the lanced shoulders of the chiefs. The taking of Pango Wango had not been, I fear, a moral victory. Van Blaricom was smoking a cigar, and was writing on a piece of paper, using the back of a Pango Wango man as a desk. The Queen's garments were chiefly variegated bath-towels, and she was rubbing her beaming countenance and ample bosom with hair-oil and essence of new-mown hay. Van Blaricom nodded to us nonchalantly, saying: "It's all right--she's Totimalu, the Queen. Sign here, Queen," and he motioned for the obese beauty to hold the pencil. She did so, and then he stood up, and, while the cock-fight still went on, he read, with a fine Chicago fluency, what proved to be a proclamation. As will be seen, it was full of ellipses and was fragmentary in its character, though completely effective in fact: Know all men by these Presents, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Seeing that all men are born free and equal (vide United States Constitution), et cetera. We, Jude Van Blaricom, of the city of Chicago, with and by the consent of Queen Totimalu, do, in the name of George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, and the State of Illinois, and by the Grace of Heaven, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, hereby annex the Kingdom of Pango Wango to be of the territory of the American Union, to have and to hold from this day forth (vide Constitution of the United States), et cetera. Signed, JUDE VAN BLARICOM, TOTIMALU X (her mark). "Beat the drums, you niggers!" he cried, and patted Totimalu's shoulder. "Come and join the royal party, gentlemen, and pay your respects. Shake! That's right." Thus was Pango Wango annexed. AN AMIABLE REVENGE Whenever any one says to me that civilisation is a failure, I refer him to certain records of Tonga, and tell him the story of an amiable revenge. He is invariably convinced that savages can learn easily the forms of convention and the arts of government--and other things. The Tongans once had a rough and coarsely effective means for preserving order and morality, but the whole scheme was too absurdly simple. Now, with a Constitution and a Sacred Majesty, and two Houses of Parliament, and a native Magistracy, they show that they are capable of becoming European in its most pregnant meaning. As the machinery has increased the grist for the mill has grown. There was a time when a breach of the Seventh Commandment was punished in Tonga with death, and it was therefore rarely committed. It is no rarity now--so does law and civilisation provide opportunities for proving their existence. On landing at Nukalofa, the capital of Tonga, some years ago, I naturally directed my steps towards the residence of the British consul. The route lay along an arc of emerald and opal shore, the swaying cocoa-palms overhead, and native huts and missionary conventicles hidden away in coverts of ti-trees, hibiscus bushes, and limes; the sensuous, perfume- ladened air pervading all. I had seen the British flag from the coral- bulwarked harbour, but could not find it now. Leaving the indolent village behind, I passed the Palace, where I beheld the sacred majesty of Tonga on the veranda sleepily flapping the flies from his aged calves, and I could not find that flag. Had I passed it? Was it yet to come? I leaned against a bread-fruit tree and thought upon it. The shore was deserted. Nobody had taken any notice of me; even the German steamer Lubeck had not brought a handful of the population to the Quay. I was about to make up my mind to go back to the Lubeck and sulk, when a native issued from the grove at my left and blandly gazed upon me as he passed. He wore a flesh-coloured vala about the loins, a red pandanus flower in his ear, and a lia-lia of hibiscus blossoms about his neck. That was all. Evidently he was not interested in me, for he walked on. I choked back my feelings of hurt pride, and asked him in an off-hand kind of way, and in a sort of pigeon English, if he could tell me where the British consul lived. The stalwart subject of King George Tabou looked at me gravely for an instant, then turned and motioned down the road. I walked on beside him, improperly offended by his dignified airs, his coolness of body and manner, and what I considered the insolent plumpness and form of his chest and limbs. He was a harmony in brown and red. Even his hair was brown. I had to admit to myself that in point of comeliness I could not stand the same scrutiny in the same amount of costume. Perhaps that made me a little imperious, a little superior in manner. Reducing my English to his comprehension as I measured it--he bowed when I asked him if he understood--I explained to him many things necessary for the good of his country. Remembering where I was, I expressed myself in terms that were gentle though austere regarding the King, and reproved the supineness and stupidity of the Crown Prince. Lamenting the departed puissance of the sons of Tongatabu, I warmed to my subject, telling this savage who looked at me with so neutral a countenance how much I deplored the decadence of his race. I bade him think of the time when the Tongans, in token of magnanimous amity, rubbed noses with the white man, and of where those noses were now--between the fingers of the Caucasian. He appeared becomingly attentive, and did me the honour before I began my peroration to change the pandanus flower from the ear next to me to the other. I had just rounded off my last sentence when he pointed to a house, half- native, half-European, in front of which was a staff bearing the British flag. With the generosity which marks the Englishman away from home I felt in my pockets and found a sixpence. I handed it to my companion; and with a "Talofa" the only Tongan I knew--I passed into the garden of the consulate. The consul himself came to the door when I knocked on the lintel. After glancing at my card he shook me by the hand, and then paused. His eyes were intently directed along the road by which I had come. I looked back, and there stood the stalwart Tongan where I had left him, gazing at the sixpence I had placed in his hand. There was a kind of stupefaction in his attitude. Presently the consul said somewhat tartly: "Ah, you've been to the Palace--the Crown Prince has brought you over!" It was not without a thrill of nervousness that I saw my royal guide flip the sixpence into his mouth--he had no pocket--and walk back towards the royal abode. I told the consul just how it was. In turn he told his daughter, the daughter told the native servants, and in three minutes the place was echoing with languid but appreciative laughter. Natives came to the door to look at me, and after wide-eyed smiling at me for a minute gave place to others. Though I too smiled, my thoughts were gloomy; for now it seemed impossible to go to the Palace and present myself to King George and the Heir-Apparent. But the consul, and, still more, the consul's daughter, insisted; pooh-poohing my hesitation. At this distance from the scene and after years of meditation I am convinced that their efforts to induce me to go were merely an unnatural craving for sensation. I went--we three went. Even a bare-legged King has in his own house an advantage over the European stranger. I was heated, partly from self- repression, partly from Scotch tweed. King George was quite, quite cool, and unencumbered, save for a trifling calico jacket, a pink lava-lava, and the august fly-flapper. But what heated me most, I think, was the presence of the Crown Prince, who, on my presentation, looked at me as though he had never seen me before. He was courteous, however, directing a tappa cloth to be spread for me. The things I intended to say to King George for the good of himself and his kingdom, which I had thought out on the steamer Lubeck and rehearsed to my guide a few hours before, would not be tempted forth. There was silence; for the consul did not seem "to be on in the scene," and presently the King of Holy Tonga nodded and fell asleep. Then the Crown Prince came forward, and beckoned me to go with him. He led me to a room which was composed of mats and bamboo pillars chiefly. At first I thought there were about ten pillars to support the roof, but my impression before I left was that there were about ten thousand. For which multiplication there were good reasons. Again a beautiful tappa cloth was spread for me, and then ten maidens entered, and, sitting in a semi-circle, began to chew a root called kava, which, when sufficiently masticated, they returned into a calabash, water being poured on the result. Meanwhile, the Prince, dreamily and ever so gently, was rolling some kind of weed between his fingers. About the time the maidens had finished, the Crown Prince's cigarette was ready. A small calabash of the Result was handed to me, and the cigarette accompanied it. The Crown Prince sat directly opposite me, lit his own cigarette, and handed the matches. I distinctly remember the first half- dozen puffs of that cigarette, the first taste of kava it had the flavour of soft soap and Dover's powder. I have smoked French-Canadian tobacco, I have puffed Mexican hair-lifters, but Heaven had preserved me till that hour from the cigarettes of a Crown Prince of Tonga. As I said, the pillars multiplied; the mats seemed rising from the floor; the maidens grew into a leering army of Amazons; but through it all the face of the Crown Prince never ceased to smile upon me gently. There were some incidents of that festival which I may have forgotten, for the consul said afterwards that I was with his Royal Highness about an hour and a half. The last thing I remember about the visit was the voice of the successor to the throne of Holy Tonga asking me blandly in perfect English: "Will you permit me to show you the way to the consul's house?" To my own credit I respectfully declined. THE BLIND BEGGAR AND THE LITTLE RED PEG As Sherry and I left the theatre in Mexico City one night, we met a blind beggar tapping his way home. Sherry stopped him. "Good evening," he said over the blind man's shoulder. "Good evening, senor," was the reply. "You are late." "Si, senor," and the blind man pushed a hand down in his coat pocket. "He's got his fist on the rhino," said Sherry to me in English. "He's not quite sure whether we're footpads or not--poor devil." "How much has he got?" asked I. "Perhaps four or five dollars. Good business, eh? Got it in big money mostly, too--had it changed at some cafe." The blind man was nervous, seemed not to understand us. He made as if to move on. Sherry and I, to reassure him, put a few reals into his hand-- not without an object, for I asked Sherry to make him talk on. A policeman sauntered near with his large lantern--a superior sort of Dogberry, but very young, as are most of the policemen in Mexico, save the Rurales, that splendid company of highwaymen whom Diaz bought over from being bandits to be the guardians of the peace. This one eyed us meaningly, but Sherry gave him a reassuring nod, and our talk went on, while the blind man was fingering the money we had just given him. Presently Sherry said to him: "I'm Bingham Sherry," adding some other particulars--"and you're all right. I've a friend here who wants to talk with you. Come along; we'll take you home--confound the garlic, what a breath he's got!" For a moment the blind man seemed to hesitate, then he raised his head quickly, as if looking into Sherry's face; a light came over it, and he said, repeating Sherry's name: "Si, senor; si, si, senor. I know you now. You sit in the right-hand corner of the little back-room at the Cafe Manrique, where you come to drink chocolate. Is it not?" "That's where I sit," said Sherry. "And now, be gad, I believe I remember you. Are you Becodar?" "Si, senor." "Well, I'm damned!" Then, turning tome: "Lots of these fellows look so much alike that I didn't recognise this one. He's a character. Had a queer history. I'll get him to tell it." We walked on, one on either side, Sherry using his hat to wave away the smell of garlic. Presently he said "Where've you been to-night, Becodar?" "I have paid my respects to the Maison Dore, to the Cafe de la Concordia, to the Cafe Iturbide, senor." "And how did paying your respects pay you, Becodar?" "The noble courtesy of these cafes, and the great consideration of the hidalgos there assembled rendered to me five pesos and a trifle, senor." "The poor ye have always with you. He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord. Becodar has large transactions with Providence, mio amigo," said Sherry. The beggar turned his sightless eyes to us, as though he would understand these English words. Sherry, seeing, said: "We were saying, Becodar, that the blessed saints know how to take care of a blind man, lest, having no boot, he stub his toe against a stone." Off came Becodar's hat. He tapped the wall. "Where am I, senor?" he asked. Sherry told him. "Ah!" he said, "the church of Saint Joseph is near." Then he crossed himself and seemed to hurry his steps. Presently he stood still. We were beside the church. Against the door, in a niche, was a figure of the Virgin in stone. He got to his knees and prayed fast. And yet as he prayed I saw his hand go to his pocket, and it fumbled and felt the money there. "Begad, he's counting it all," said Sherry, "and now he's giving thanks for the exact amount, adding his distinguished consideration that the sum is by three reals greater than any day since Lent began. He promises to bring some flowers to-morrow for the shrine, and he also swears to go a pilgrimage to a church of Mary at Guadaloupe, and to be a kind compadre-- By Jove, there you are! He's a compadre--a blind compadre!" A little while afterwards we were in Becodar's house--a low adobe but of two rooms with a red light burning over the door, to guard against the plague. It had a table hanging like a lid from the wall, a stone for making tortillas, a mortar for grinding red peppers, a crucifix on the wall, a short sword, a huge pistol, a pair of rusty stirrups, and several chairs. The chairs seemed to be systematically placed, and it was quite wonderful to see how the beggar twisted in and out among them without stumbling. I could not understand this, unless it was that he wished to practise moving about deftly, that he might be at least disadvantage in the cafes and public resorts. He never once stirred them, and I was presently surprised to see that they were all fastened to the floor. Sherry seemed as astonished as I. From this strangeness I came to another. Looking up at the walls I saw set in the timber a number of holes cleanly bored. And in one of the last of these holes was a peg. Again my eyes shifted. From a nail in one corner of the room hung a red and white zarape, a bridle, one of those graceless bits which would wrench the mouth of the wildest horse to agony, and a sombrero. Something in these things fascinated me. I got up and examined them, while the blind man was in the other room. Turning them over I saw that the zarape was pierced with holes-bullet holes. I saw also that it was stained a deeper red than its own. I turned away, questioning Sherry. He came and looked, but said nothing, lifting a hand in deprecation. As we stood so, Becodar appeared again in the doorway, bearing an olla of pulque and some tortilla sandwiches, made of salad and shreds of meat, flavoured with garlic. He paused, his face turned towards us, with an understanding look. His instinct was remarkable. He did not speak, but came and placed the things he carried near the chairs where we had sat. Presently I saw some writing on the adobe wall. The look of it showed the hand of youth, its bold carelessness, a boy. Some of it I set down soon afterwards, and it ran in this fashion: "The most good old compadre! But I'd like another real." Again: "One media for a banderilla, two reals for the bull-fight, five centavos for the sweet oranges, and nothing for dulces. I threw a cigar at the toreador. It was no good, but the toreador was a king. Good-night, compadre the blind, who begs." Again: "If I knew where it was I'd take a real. Carambo! No, I wouldn't. I'll ask him. I'll give him the new sword-stick that my cousin the Rurales gave me. He doesn't need it now he's not a bandit. I'm stuffed, and my head swims. It's the pulque. Sabe Dios!" Again: "Compadre, the most miraculous, that goes tapping your stick along the wall, and jingles the silver in your pocket, whither do you wander? Have you forgotten that I am going to the cock-fight, and want a real? What is a cock-fight without a real? Compadre the brave, who stumbles along and never falls, I am sitting on your doorstep, and I am writing on your wall--if I had as much money as you I'd go to every bull-fight. I'd keep a fighting-cock myself." And once again: "If I was blind I'd have money out of the cafes, but I couldn't see my bulls toss the horses. I'll be a bandit, and when I'm old, and if Diaz doesn't put me against the wall and prod holes in me like Gonzales, they'll take me in the Rurales, same as Gerado." "Who is it writes on the wall, Becodar?" asked Sherry of our host, as, on his knees, he poured out pulque for us. The old man turned musingly, and made motions of writing, a pleased look in his face. "Ah, senor, he who so writes is Bernal--I am his compadre. He has his mother now, but no father, no father." He smiled. "You have never seen so bold and enterprising, never so handsome a boy. He can throw the lasso and use the lariat, and ride--sabe Dios, he can ride! His cousin Gerado the Rurales taught him. I do well by him as I may, who have other things to think on. But I do well by him." "What became of his father, Becodar? Dead?" asked Sherry. The beggar crossed himself. "Altogether, senor. And such a funeral had he, with the car all draped, and even the mutes with the gold braid on their black. I will tell you how it was. We were great friends, Bernal's father and me, and when the boy was born, I said, I will be compadre to him. ('Godfather, or co-father,' interposed Sherry to me.) I had my sight then, senors, out of the exalted mercy of the Saints. Ah, those were great times, when I had my eyes, and no grey hairs, and could wear my sword, and ride my horses. There was work to do then, with sword and horses. It was revolution here and rebellion there, and bandits everywhere. Ah, well, it is no matter; I was speaking of the boy and his father and myself, the compadre. We were all great friends. But you know the way of men. One day he and I--Santiago, Bernal's father-- had been drinking mescal. We quarrelled--I know not why. It is not well nor right for a padre and a compadre to fight--there is trouble in Heaven over that. But there is a way; and we did it as others have done. We took off our sombreros, and put our compadreship on the ground under them. That was all right--it was hid there under the hat. Then we stood up and fought--such a fight--for half an hour. Then he cut me in the thigh--a great gash--and I caught him in the neck the same. We both came to the ground then, the fight was over, and we were, of course, good friends again. I dragged myself over to him as he lay there, and lifted his head and sopped the blood at his neck with my scarf. I did not think that he was hurt so bad. But he said: 'I am gone, my Becodar. I haven't got five minutes in me. Put on your compadreship quick.' I snatched up the sombrero and put it on, and his I tucked under his head. So that we were compadres again. Ah, senor, senor! Soon he drew my cheek down to his and said: 'Adios, compadre: Bernal is thine now. While your eyes see, and your foot travels, let him not want a friend. Adios!' That was the end of him. They had me in Balim for a year, and then I came out to the boy; and since then for twelve years he has not suffered." At this point he offered us the pulque and the sandwiches, and I took both, eating and enjoying as well as I could. Sherry groaned, but took the pulque, refusing the sandwiches almost violently. "How did you lose your sight, Becodar?" asked Sherry presently. Becodar sat perfectly still for a moment, and then said in a low voice: "I will tell you. I will make the story short. Gentle God, what a thing it was! I was for Gonzales then--a loyal gentleman, he called me--I, a gentleman! But that was his way. I was more of a spy for him. Well, I found out that a revolution was to happen, so I gave the word to Gonzales, and with the soldiers came to Puebla. The leaders were captured in a house, brought out, and without trial were set against a wall. I can remember it so well--so well! The light was streaming from an open door upon the wall. They were brought out, taken across the road and stood against a wall. I was standing a distance away, for at the moment I was sorry, though, to be sure, senor, it was for the cause of the country then, I thought. As I stood there looking, the light that streamed from the doorway fell straight upon a man standing against that wall. It was my brother--Alphonso, my brother. I shrieked and ran forward, but the rifles spat out at the moment, and the five men fell. Alphonso--ah, I thank the Virgin every day! he did not know. His zarape hangs there on the wall, his sombrero, his sword, and his stirrups." Sherry shifted nervously in his seat. "There's stuff for you, amigo," he said to me. "Makes you chilly, doesn't it? Shot his own brother-- amounts to same thing, doesn't it? All right, Becodar, we're both sorry, and will pray for his departed spirit; go ahead, Becodar." The beggar kept pulling at a piece of black ribbon which was tied to the arm of the chair in which he now sat. "Senors, after that I became a revolutionist--that was the only way to make it up to my brother, except by masses--I gave candles for every day in the year. One day they were all in my house here, sitting just where you sit in those chairs. Our leader was Castodilian, the bandit with the long yellow hair. We had a keg of powder which we were going to distribute. All at once Gonzales's soldiers burst in. There was a fight, we were overpowered, and Castodilian dropped his cigar--he had kept it in his mouth all the time --in the powder-keg. It killed most of us. I lost my eyes. Gonzales forgave me, if I would promise to be a revolutionist no more. What was there to do? I took the solemn oath at the grave of my mother; and so-- and so, senors." Sherry had listened with a quizzical intentness, now and again cocking his head at some dramatic bit, and when Becodar paused he suddenly leaned over and thrust a dollar into the ever-waiting hand. Becodar gave a great sign of pleasure, and fumbled again with the money in his pocket. Then, after a moment, it shifted to the bit of ribbon that hung from the chair: "See, senors," he said. "I tied this ribbon to the chair all those years ago." My eyes were on the peg and the holes in the wall. Sherry questioned him. "Why do you spike the wall with the little red peg, Becodar?" "The Little Red Peg, senor? Ah! It is not wonderful you notice that. There are eight bullet-holes in that zarape"--he pointed to the wall--" there are eight holes in the wall for the Little Red Peg. Well, of the eight men who fired on my brother, two are left, as you may see. The others are all gone, this way or that." Sherry shrugged a shoulder. "There are two left, eh, Becodar? How will they die, and when?" Becodar was motionless as a stone for a moment. Then he said softly: "I do not know quite how or when. But one drinks much mescal, and the other has a taste for quarrel. He will get in trouble with the Rurales, and then good-bye to him! Four others on furlough got in trouble with the Rurales, and that was the end. They were taken at different times for some fault--by Gerado's company--Gerado, my cousin. Camping at night, they tried to escape. There is the Law of Fire, senors, as you know. If a man thinks his guard sleeps, and makes a run for it, they do not chase--they fire; and if he escapes unhurt, good; he is not troubled. But the Rurales are fine shots!" "You mean," said Sherry, "that the Rurales--your Gerado, for one-- pretended to sleep--to be careless. The fellows made a rush for it and were dropped? Eh, Becodar, of the Little Red Peg?" Becodar shrugged a shoulder gently. "Ah, senor, who can tell? My Gerado is a sure shot." "Egad," said Sherry, "who'd have thought it? It looks like a sweet little vendetta, doesn't it? A blind beggar, too, with his Gerado to help the thing along. "'With his Gerado!' Sounds like a Gatling, or a bomb, or a diabolical machine, doesn't it? And yet they talk of this country being Americanised! You can't Americanise a country with a real history. Well, Becodar, that's four. What of the other two that left for Kingdom Come?" Becodar smiled pensively. He seemed to be enduring a kind of joy, or else making light of a kind of sorrow. "Ah, those two! They were camping in a valley; they were escorting a small party of people who had come to look at ruins--Diaz was President then. Well, a party of Aztecs on the other side of the river began firing across, not as if doing or meaning any harm. By-and-bye the shot came rattling through the tent of the two. One got up, and yelled across to them to stop, but a chance bullet brought him down, and then by some great mistake a lot of bullets came through the tent, and the other soldier was killed. It was all a mistake, of course." "Yes," cynically said Sherry. "The Aztecs got rattled, and then the bullets rattled. And what was done to the Aztecs?" "Senor, what could be done? They meant no harm, as you can see." "Of course, of course; but you put the Little Red Peg down two holes just the same, eh, my Becodar--with your Gerado. I smell a great man in your Gerado, Becodar. Your bandit turned soldier is a notable gentleman-- gentlemen all his tribe. . . . You see," Sherry added to me, "the country was infested with bandits--some big names in this land had bandit for their titles one time or another. Well, along came Diaz, a great man. He said to the bandits: 'How much do you make a year at your trade?' They told him. "'Then,' said he, 'I'll give you as much a month and clothe you. You'll furnish your own horses and keep them, and hold the country in order. Put down the banditti, be my boundary-riders, my gentlemen guards, and we will all love you and cherish you.' And 'it was so,' as Scripture says. And this Gerado can serve our good compadre here, and the Little Red Peg in the wall keeps tally." "What shall you do with Bernal the boy when he grows up?" added Sherry presently. "There is the question for my mind, senor," he answered. "He would be a toreador--already has he served the matador in the ring, though I did not know it, foolish boy! But I would have him in the Rurales." Here he fetched out and handed us a bottle of mescal. Sherry lifted his glass. "To the day when the Little Red Peg goes no farther!" he said. We drank. "To the blind compadre and the boy!" I added, and we drank again. A moment afterwards in the silent street I looked back. The door was shut, and the wee scarlet light was burning over it. I fell to thinking of the Little Red Peg in the wall. A FRIEND OF THE COMMUNE "See, madame--there, on the Hill of Pains, the long finger of the Semaphore! One more prisoner has escaped--one more." "One more, Marie. It is the life here that on the Hill, this here below; and yet the sun is bright, the cockatoos are laughing in the palms, and you hear my linnet singing." "It turns so slowly. Now it points across the Winter Valley. Ah!" "Yes, across the Winter Valley, where the deep woods are, and beyond to the Pascal River." "Towards my home. How dim the light is now! I can only see It--like a long dark finger yonder." "No, my dear, there is bright sunshine still; there is no cloud at all: but It is like a finger; it is quivering now, as though it were not sure." "Thank God, if it be not sure! But the hill is cloudy, as I said." "No, Marie. How droll you are! The hill is not cloudy; even at this distance one can see something glisten beside the grove of pines." "I know. It is the White Rock, where King Ovi died." "Marie, turn your face to me. Your eyes are full of tears. Your heart is tender. Your tears are for the prisoner who has escaped--the hunted in the chase." She shuddered a little and added, "Wherever he is, that long dark finger on the Hill of Pains will find him out--the remorseless Semaphore." "No, madame, I am selfish; I weep for myself. Tell me truly, as--as if I were your own child--was there no cloud, no sudden darkness, out there, as we looked towards the Hill of Pains." "None, dear." "Then--then--madame, I suppose it was my tears that blinded me for the moment." "No doubt it was your tears." But each said in her heart that it was not tears; each said: "Let not this thing come, O God!" Presently, with a caress, the elder woman left the room; but the girl remained to watch that gloomy thing upon the Hill of Pains. As she stood there, with her fingers clasped upon a letter she had drawn from her pocket, a voice from among the palms outside floated towards her. "He escaped last night; the Semaphore shows that they have got upon his track. I suppose they'll try to converge upon him before he gets to Pascal River. Once there he might have a chance of escape; but he'll need a lot of luck, poor devil!" Marie's fingers tightened on the letter. Then another voice replied, and it brought a flush to the cheek of the girl, a hint of trouble to her eyes. It said: "Is Miss Wyndham here still?" "Yes, still here. My wife will be distressed when she leaves us." "She will not care to go, I should think. The Hotel du Gouverneur spoils us for all other places in New Caledonia." "You are too kind, monsieur; I fear that those who think as you are not many. After all, I am little more here than a gaoler--merely a gaoler, M. Tryon." "Yet, the Commandant of a military station and the Governor of a Colony." "The station is a penitentiary; the colony for liberes, ticket-of-leave men, and outcast Paris; with a sprinkling of gentlemen and officers dying of boredom. No, my friend, we French are not colonists. We emigrate, we do not colonise. This is no colony. We do no good here." "You forget the nickel mines." "Quarries for the convicts and for political prisoners of the lowest class." "The plantations?" "Ah, there I crave your pardon. You are a planter, but you are English. M. Wyndham is a planter and an owner of mines, but he is English. The man who has done best financially in New Caledonia is an Englishman. You, and a few others like you, French and English, are the only colony I have. I do not rule you; you help me to rule." "We?" "By being on the side of justice and public morality; by dining with me, though all too seldom; by giving me a quiet hour now and then beneath your vines and fig-trees; and so making this uniform less burdensome to carry. No, no, monsieur, I know you are about to say something very gracious: but no, you shall pay your compliments to the ladies." As they journeyed to the morning-room Hugh Tryon said: "Does M. Laflamme still come to paint Miss Wyndham?" "Yes; but it ends to-morrow, and then no more of that. Prisoners are prisoners, and though Laflamme is agreeable that makes it the more difficult." "Why should he be treated so well, as a first-class prisoner, and others of the Commune be so degraded here--as Mayer, for instance?" "It is but a question of degree. He was an artist and something of a dramatist; he was not at the Place Vendome at a certain critical moment; he was not at Montmartre at a particular terrible time; he was not a high officer like Mayer; he was young, with the face of a patriot. Well, they sent Mayer to the galleys at Toulon first; then, among the worst of the prisoners here--he was too bold, too full of speech; he had not Laflamme's gift of silence, of pathos. Mayer works coarsely, severely here; Laflamme grows his vegetables, idles about Ducos, swings in his hammock, and appears at inspections the picture of docility. One day he sent to me the picture of my wife framed in gold--here it is. Is it not charming? The size of a franc-piece and so perfect! You know the soft hearts of women." "You mean that Madame Solde--" "She persuaded me to let him come here to paint my portrait. He has done so, and now he paints Marie Wyndham. But--" "But?--Yes?" "But these things have their dangers." "Have their dangers," Hugh Tryon musingly repeated, and then added under his breath almost, "Escape or--" "Or something else," the Governor rather sharply interrupted; and then, as they were entering the room, gaily continued: "Ah, here we come, mademoiselle, to pay--" "To pay your surplus of compliments, monsieur le Gouverneur. I could not help but hear something of what you said," responded Marie, and gave her hand to Tryon. "I leave you to mademoiselle's tender mercies, monsieur," said the Governor. "Au revoir!" When he had gone, Hugh said: "You are gay today." "Indeed, no, I am sad." "Wherefore sad? Is nickel proving a drug? Or sugar a failure? Don't tell me that your father says sugar is falling." He glanced at the letter, which she unconsciously held in her hand. She saw his look, smoothed the letter a little nervously between her palms, and put it into her pocket, saying: "No, my father has not said that sugar is falling--but come here, will you?" and she motioned towards the open window. When there, she said slowly, "That is what makes me sad and sorry," and she pointed to the Semaphore upon the Hill of Pains. "You are too tender-hearted," he remarked. "A convict has escaped; he will be caught perhaps--perhaps not; and things will go on as before." "Will go on as before. That is, the 'martinet' worse than the 'knout de Russe'; the 'poucettes', the 'crapaudine' on neck and ankles and wrists; all, all as bad as the 'Pater Noster' of the Inquisition, as Mayer said the other day in the face of Charpentier, the Commandant of the penitentiary. How pleasant also to think of the Boulevard de Guillotine! I tell you it is brutal, horrible. Think of what prisoners have to suffer here, whose only crime is that they were of the Commune; that they were just a little madder than other Frenchmen." "Pardon me if I say that as brutal things were done by the English in Tasmania." "Think of two hundred and sixty strokes of the 'cat.'" "You concern yourself too much about these things, I fear." "I only think that death would be easier than the life of half of the convicts here." "They themselves would prefer it, perhaps." "Tell me, who is the convict that has escaped?" she feverishly asked. "Is it a political prisoner?" "You would not know him. He was one of the Commune who escaped shooting in the Place de la Concorde. Carbourd, I think, was his name." "Carbourd, Carbourd," she repeated, and turned her head away towards the Semaphore. Her earnestness aroused in Tryon a sudden flame of sympathy which had its origin, as he well knew, in three years of growing love. This love leaped up now determinedly--perhaps unwisely; but what should a blunt soul like Hugh Tryon know regarding the best or worst time to seek a woman's heart? He came close to her now and said: "If you are so kind in thought for a convict, I dare hope that you would be more kind to me." "Be kind to you," she repeated, as if not understanding what he said, nor the look in his eyes. "For I am a prisoner, too." "A prisoner?" she rejoined a little tremulously, and coldly. "In your hands, Marie." His eyes laid bare his heart. "Oh!" she replied, in a half-troubled, half-indignant tone, for she was out of touch with the occasion of his suit, and every woman has in her mind the time when she should and when she should not be wooed. "Oh, why aren't you plain with me? I hate enigmas." "Why do I not speak plainly? Because, because, Marie, it is possible for a man to be a coward in his speech"--he touched her fingers--"when he loves." She quickly drew her hand from his. "Oh, can't we be friends without that?" There was a sound of footsteps at the window. Both turned, and saw the political prisoner, Rive Laflamme, followed by a guard. "He comes to finish my portrait," she said. "This is the last sitting." "Marie, must I go like this? When may I see you again? When will you answer me? You will not make all the hopes to end here?" It was evident that some deep trouble was on the girl. She flushed hotly, as if she were about to reply hotly also, but she changed quickly, and said, not unkindly: "When M. Laflamme has gone." And now, as if repenting of her unreasonable words of a moment before, she added: "Oh, please don't think me hard. I am sorry that I grieve you. I'm afraid I am not altogether well, not altogether happy." "I will wait till he has gone," the planter replied. At the door he turned as if to say something, but he only looked steadily, sadly at her, and then was gone. She stood where he had left her, gazing in melancholy abstraction at the door through which he had passed. There were footsteps without in the hall-way. The door was opened, and a servant announced M. Laflamme. The painter-prisoner entered followed by the soldier. Immediately afterward Mrs. Angers, Marie's elderly companion, sidled in gently. Laflamme bowed low, then turned and said coolly to the soldier: "You may wait outside to-day, Roupet. This is my last morning's work. It is important, and you splutter and cough. You are too exhausting for a studio." But Roupet answered: "Monsieur, I have my orders." "Nonsense. This is the Governor's house. I am perfectly safe here. Give your orders a change of scene. You would better enjoy the refreshing coolness of the corridors this morning. You won't? Oh, yes, you will. Here's a cigarette--there, take the whole bunch--I paid too much for them, but no matter. Ah, pardon me, mademoiselle. I forgot that you cannot smoke here, Roupet; but you shall have them all the same, there! Parbleu! you are a handsome rascal, if you weren't so wheezy! Come, come, Roupet, make yourself invisible." The eyes of the girl were on the soldier. They did the work better; a warrior has a soft place in his heart for a beautiful woman. He wheeled suddenly, and disappeared from the room, motioning that he would remain at the door. The painting began, and for half an hour or more was continued without a word. In the silence the placid Angers had fallen asleep. Nodding slightly towards her, Rive Laflamme said in a low voice to Marie: "Her hearing at its best is not remarkable?" "Not remarkable." He spoke more softly. "That is good. Well, the portrait is done. It has been the triumph of my life to paint it. Not that first joy I had when I won the great prize in Paris equals it. I am glad: and yet--and yet there was much chance that it would never be finished." "Why?" "Carbourd is gone." "Yes, I know-well?" "Well, I should be gone also were it not for this portrait. The chance came. I was tempted. I determined to finish this. I stayed." "Do you think that he will be caught?" "Not alive. Carbourd has suffered too much--the galleys, the corde, the triangle, everything but the guillotine. Carbourd has a wife and children--ah, yes, you know all about it. You remember that letter she sent: I can recall every word; can you?" The girl paused, and then with a rapt sympathy in her face repeated slowly: "I am ill, and our children cry for food. The wife calls to her husband, my darlings say, 'Will father never come home?'" Marie's eyes were moist. "Mademoiselle, he was no common criminal. He would have died for the cause grandly. He loved France too wildly. That was his sin." "Carbourd is free," she said, as though to herself. "He has escaped." His voice was the smallest whisper. "And now my time has come." "When? And where do you go?" "To-night, and to join Carbourd, if I can, at the Pascal River. At King Ovi's Cave, if possible." The girl was very pale. She turned and looked at Angers, who still slept. "And then?" "And then, as I have said to you before, to the coast, to board the Parroquet, which will lie off the island Saint Jerome three days from now to carry us away into freedom. It is all arranged by our 'Underground Railway.'" "And you tell me all this--why?" the girl said falteringly. "Because you said that you would not let a hunted fugitive starve; that you would give us horses, with which we could travel the Brocken Path across the hills. Here is the plan of the river that you drew; at this point is the King's Cave which you discovered, and is known only to yourself." "I ought not to have given it to you; but--" "Ah, you will not repent of a noble action, of a great good to me-- Marie?" "Hush, monsieur. Indeed, you may not speak to me so. You forget. I am sorry for you; I think you do not deserve this--banishment; you are unhappy here; and I told you of the King's Cave-that was all." "Ah no, that is not all! To be free, that is good; but only that I may be a man again; that I may love my art--and you; that I may once again be proud of France." "Monsieur, I repeat, you must not speak so. Do not take advantage of my willingness to serve you." "A thousand pardons! but that was in my heart, and I hoped, I hoped--" "You must not hope. I can only know you as M. Laflamme, the--" "The political convict; ah, yes, I know," he said bitterly: "a convict over whom the knout is held; who may at any moment be shot down like a hare: who has but two prayers in all the world: to be free in France once more, and to be loved by one--" She interrupted him: "Your first prayer is natural." "Natural?--Do you know what song we sang in the cages of the ship that carried us into this evil exile here? Do you know what brought tears to the eyes of the guards?--What made the captain and the sailors turn their heads away from us, lest we should see that their faces were wet? What rendered the soldiers who had fought us in the Commune more human for the moment? It was this: "'Adieu, patrie! L'onde est en furie, Adieu patrie, Azur! Adieu, maison, treille au fruit mer, Adieu les fruits d'or du vieux mur! Adieu, patrie, Ciel, foret, prairie; Adieu patrie, Azur.'" "Hush, monsieur!" the girl said with a swift gesture. He looked and saw that Angers was waking. "If I live," he hurriedly whispered, "I shall be at the King's Cave to-morrow night. And you--the horses?" "You shall have my help and the horses." Then, more loudly: "Au revoir, monsieur." At that moment Madame Solde entered the room. She acknowledged Laflamme's presence gravely. "It is all done, madame," he said, pointing to the portrait. Madame Solde bowed coldly, but said: "It is very well done, monsieur." "It is my masterpiece," remarked the painter pensively. "Will you permit me to say adieu, mesdames? I go to join my amiable and attentive companion, Roupet the guard." He bowed himself out. Madame Solde drew Marie aside. Angers discreetly left. The Governor's wife drew the girl's head back on her shoulder. "Marie," she said, "M. Tryon does not seem happy; cannot you change that?" With quivering lips the girl laid her head on the Frenchwoman's breast, and said: "Ah, do not ask me now. Madame, I am going home to-day." "To-day? But, so soon!--I wished--" "I must go to-day." "But we had hoped you would stay while M. Tryon--" "M. Tryon--will--go with me--perhaps." "Ah, my dear Marie!" The woman kissed the girl, and wondered. That afternoon Marie was riding across the Winter Valley to her father's plantation at the Pascal River. Angers was driving ahead. Beside Marie rode Tryon silent and attentive. Arrived at the homestead, she said to him in the shadow of the naoulis: "Hugh Tryon, what would you do to prove the love you say you have for me?" "All that a man could do I would do." "Can you see the Semaphore from here?" "Yes, there it is clear against the sky--look!" But the girl did not look. She touched her eyelids with her finger-tips, as though they were fevered, and then said: "Many have escaped. They are searching for Carbourd and--" "Yes, Marie?" "And M. Laflamme--" "Laflamme!" he said sharply. Then, noticing how at his brusqueness the paleness of her face changed to a startled flush for an instant, his generosity conquered, and he added gently: "Well, I fancied he would try, but what do you know about that, Marie?" "He and Carbourd were friends. They were chained together in the galleys, they lived--at first--together here. They would risk life to return to France." "Tell me," said he, "what do you know of this? What is it to you?" "You wish to know all before you will do what I ask. "I will do anything you ask, because you will not ask of me what is unmanly." "M. Laflamme will escape to-night if possible, and join Carbourd on the Pascal River, at a safe spot that I know." She told him of the Cave. "Yes, yes, I understand. You would help him. And I?" "You will help me. You will?" There was a slight pause, and then he said: "Yes, I will. But think what this is to an Englishman-to yourself, to be accomplice to the escape of a French prisoner." "I gave a promise to a man whom I think deserves it. He believed he was a patriot. If you were in that case, and I were a Frenchwoman, I would do the same for you." He smiled rather grimly and said: "If it please you that this man escape, I shall hope he may, and will help you. . . . Here comes your father." "I could not let my father know," she said. "He has no sympathy for any one like that, for any one at all, I think, but me." "Don't be down-hearted. If you have set your heart on this, I will try to bring it about, God knows! Now let us be less gloomy. Conspirators should smile. That is the cue. Besides, the world is bright. Look at the glow upon the hills." "I suppose the Semaphore is glistening on the Hill of Pains; but I cannot see it." He did not understand her. II A few hours after this conversation, Laflamme sought to accomplish his escape. He had lately borne a letter from the Commandant, which permitted him to go from point to point outside the peninsula of Ducos, where the least punished of the political prisoners were kept. He depended somewhat on this for his escape. Carbourd had been more heroic, but then Carbourd was desperate. Laflamme believed more in ability than force. It was ability and money that had won over the captain of the Parroquet, coupled with the connivance of an old member of the Commune, who was now a guard. This night there was increased alertness, owing to the escape of Carbourd; and himself, if not more closely watched, was at least open to quick suspicion owing to his known friendship for Carbourd. He strolled about the fortified enclosure, chatting to fellow prisoners, and waiting for the call which should summon them to the huts. Through years of studied good-nature he had come to be regarded as a contented prisoner. He had no enemies save one among the guards. This man Maillot he had offended by thwarting his continued ill-treatment of a young lad who had been one of the condemned of the Commune, and whose hammock, at last, by order of the Commandant, was slung in Laflamme's hut. For this kindness and interposition the lad was grateful and devoted. He had been set to labour in the nickel mines; but that came near to killing him, and again through Laflamme's pleading he had been made a prisoner of the first class, and so relieved of all heavy tasks. Not even he suspected the immediate relations of Laflamme and Carbourd; nor that Laflamme was preparing for escape. As Laflamme waited for the summons to huts, a squad of prisoners went clanking by him, manacled. They had come from road-making. These never heard from wife nor child, nor held any commerce with the outside world, nor had any speech with each other, save by a silent gesture--language which eluded the vigilance of the guards. As the men passed, Laflamme looked at them steadily. They knew him well. Some of them remembered his speeches at the Place Vendome. They bore him no ill-will that he did not suffer as they. He made a swift sign to a prisoner near the rear of the column. The man smiled, but gave no answering token. This was part of the unspoken vocabulary, and, in this instance, conveyed the two words: I escape. A couple of hours later Laflamme rose from a hammock in his hut, and leant over the young lad, who was sleeping. He touched him gently. The lad waked: "Yes, yes, monsieur." "I am going away, my friend." "To escape like Carbourd?" "Yes, I hope, like Carbourd." "May I not go also, monsieur? I am not afraid." "No, lad. If there must be death one is enough. You must stay. Good-bye." "You will see my mother? She is old, and she grieves." "Yes, I will see your mother. And more; you shall be free. I will see to that. Be patient, little comrade. Nay, nay, hush! . . . No, thanks. Adieu!" He put his hands on the lad's shoulder and kissed his forehead. "I wish I had died at the Barricades. But, yes, I will be brave--be sure of that." "You shall not die--you shall live in France, which is better. Once more, adieu!" Laflamme passed out. It was raining. He knew that if he could satisfy the first sentinel he should stand a better chance of escape, since he had had so much freedom of late; and to be passed by one would help with others. He went softly, but he was soon challenged. "Halt! Who goes there?" "Condemned of the Commune--by order." "Whose order?" "That of the Commandant." "Advance order." The sentinel knew him. "Ah, Laflamme," he said, and raised the point of his bayonet. The paper was produced. It did not entitle him to go about at night, and certainly not beyond the enclosure without a guard--it was insufficient. In unfolding the paper Laflamme purposely dropped it in the mud. He hastily picked it up, and, in doing so, smeared it. He wiped it, leaving the signature comparatively plain--nothing else. "Well," said the sentinel, "the signature is right. Where do you go?" "To Government House." "I do not know that I should let you pass. But--well, look out that the next sentinel doesn't bayonet you. You came on me suddenly." The next sentinel was a Kanaka. The previous formula was repeated. The Kanaka examined the paper long, and then said: "You cannot pass." "But the other sentinel passed me. Would you get him into trouble?" The Kanaka frowned, hesitated, then said: "That is another matter. Well, pass." Twice more the same formula and arguments were used. At last he heard a voice in challenge that he knew. It was that of Maillot. This was a more difficult game. His order was taken with a malicious sneer by the sentinel. At that instant Laflamme threw his arms swiftly round the other, clapped a hand on his mouth, and, with a dexterous twist of leg, threw him backward, till it seemed as if the spine of the soldier must break. It was impossible to struggle against this trick of wrestling, which Laflamme had learned from a famous Cornish wrestler, in a summer spent on the English coast. "If you shout or speak I will kill you!" he said to Maillot, and then dropped him heavily on the ground, where he lay senseless. Laflamme stooped down and felt his heart. "Alive!" he said, then seized the rifle and plunged into the woods. The moon at that moment broke through the clouds, and he saw the Semaphore like a ghost pointing towards Pascal River. He waved his hand towards his old prison, and sped away. But others were thinking of the Semaphore at this moment, others saw it indistinct, yet melancholy, in the moonlight. The Governor and his wife saw it, and Madame Solde said: "Alfred, I shall be glad when I shall see that no more." "You have too much feeling." "I suppose Marie makes me think more of it to-day. She wept this morning over all this misery and punishment." "You think that. Well, perhaps something more--" "What more?" "Laflamme." "No, no, it is impossible!" "Indeed it is as I say. My wife, you are blind. I chanced to see him with her yesterday. I should have prevented him coming to-day, but I knew it was his last day with the portrait, and that all should end here." "We have done wrong in this--the poor child! Besides, she has, I fear, another sorrow coming. It showed itself to me to-day for the first time." Then she whispered to him, and he started and sighed, and said at last: "But it must be saved. By--! it shall be saved!" And at that moment Marie Wyndham was standing in the open window of the library of Pascal House. She had been thinking of her recent visit to the King's Cave, where she had left food, and of the fact that Carbourd was not there. She raised her face towards the moon and sighed. She was thinking of something else. She was not merely sentimental, for she said, as if she had heard the words of the Governor and Madame Solde: "Oh! if it could be saved!" There was a rustle in the shrubbery near her. She turned towards the sound. A man came quickly towards her. "I am Carbourd," he said; "I could not find the way to the Cave. They were after me. They have tracked me. Tell me quick how to go." She swiftly gave him directions, and he darted away. Again there was a rustle in the leaves, and a man stepped forth. Something glistened in his hands--a rifle, though she could not see it plainly. It was levelled at the flying figure of Carbourd. There was a report. Marie started forward with her hands on her temples and a sharp cry. She started forward--into absolute darkness. There was a man's footsteps going swiftly by her. Why was it so dark? She stretched out her hands with a moan. "Oh! mother!--oh! mother! I am blind!" she cried. But her mother was sleeping unresponsive beyond the dark-beyond all dark. It was, perhaps, natural that she should cry to the dead and not to the living. Marie was blind. She had known it was coming, and it had tried her, as it would have tried any of the race of women. She had, when she needed it most, put love from her, and would not let her own heart speak, even to herself. She had sought to help one who loved her, and to fully prove the other--though the proving, she knew, was not necessary--before the darkness came. But here it was suddenly sent upon her by the shock of a rifle shot. It would have sent a shudder to a stronger heart than hers-- that, in reply to her call on her dead mother, there came from the trees the shrill laugh of the mopoke--the sardonic bird of the South. As she stood there, with this tragedy enveloping her, the dull boom of a cannon came across the valley. "From Ducos," she said. "M. Laflamme has escaped. God help us all!" And she turned and groped her way into the room she had left. She felt for a chair and sat down. She must think of what she now was. She wondered if Carbourd was killed. She listened and thought not, since there was no sound without. But she knew that the house would be roused. She bowed her head in her hands. Surely she might weep a little for herself--she who had been so troubled for others. It is strange, but she thought of her flowers and birds, and wondered how she should tend them; of her own room which faced the north--the English north that she loved so well; of her horse, and marvelled if he would know that she could not see him; and, lastly, of a widening horizon of pain, spread before the eyes of her soul, in which her father and another moved. It seemed to her that she sat there for hours, it was in reality minutes only. A firm step and the opening of a door roused her. She did not turn her head--what need? She knew the step. There was almost a touch of ironical smiling at her lips, as she thought how she must hear and feel things only, in the future. A voice said: "Marie, are you here?" "I am here." "I'll strike a match so that you can see I'm not a bushranger. There has been shooting in the grounds. Did you hear it?" "Yes. A soldier firing at Carbourd." "You saw him?" "Yes. He could not find the Cave. I directed him. Immediately after he was fired upon." "He can't have been hit. There are no signs of him. There, that's lighter and better, isn't it?" "I do not know." She had risen, but she did not turn towards him. He came nearer to her. The enigmatical tone struck him strangely, but he could find nothing less commonplace to say than: "You don't prefer the exaggerated gloaming, do you?" "No, I do not prefer the gloaming, but why should not one be patient?" "Be patient!" he repeated, and came nearer still. "Are you hurt or angry?" "I am hurt, but not angry." "What have I done?--or is it I?" "It is not you. You are very good. It is nobody but God. I am hurt, because He is angry, perhaps." "Tell me what is the matter. Look at me." He faced her now-faced her eyes, looking blindly straight before her. "Hugh," she said, and she put her hand out slightly, not exactly to him, but as if to protect him from the blow which she herself must deal: "I am looking at you now." "Yes, yes, but so strangely, and not in my eyes." "I cannot look into your eyes, because, Hugh, I am blind." Her hand went further out towards him. He took it silently and pressed it to his bosom as he saw that she spoke true; and the shadow of the thing fell on him. The hand held to his breast felt how he was trembling from the shock. "Sit down, Hugh," she said, "and I will tell you all; but do not hold my hand so, or I cannot." Sitting there face to face, with deep furrows growing in his countenance, and a quiet sorrow spreading upon her cheek and forehead, she told the story how, since her childhood, her sight had played her false now and then, and within the past month had grown steadily uncertain. "And now," she said at last, "I am blind. I think I should like to tell my father-- if you please. Then when I have seen him and poor Angers, if you will come again! There is work to be done. I hoped it would be finished before this came; but--there, good friend, go; I will sit here quietly." She could not see his face, but she heard him say: "My love, my love," very softly, as he rose to go; and she smiled sadly to herself. She folded her hands in her lap, and thought, not bitterly, not listlessly, but deeply. She wanted to consider all cheerfully now; she tried to do so. She was musing among those flying perceptions, those nebulous facts of a new life, experienced for the first time; she was now not herself as she had been; another woman was born; and she was feeling carefully along the unfamiliar paths which she must tread. She was not glad that these words ran through her mind continuously at first: "A land of darkness as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death without any order, and where the light is darkness." Her brave nature rose against the moody spirit which sought to take possession of her, and she cried out in her heart valiantly: "But there is order, there is order. I shall feel things as they ought to be. I think I could tell now what was true and what was false in man or woman; it would be in their presence not in their faces." She stopped speaking. She heard footsteps. Her father entered. Hugh Tryon had done his task gently, but the old planter, selfish and hard as he was, loved his daughter; and the meeting was bitter for him. The prop of his pride seemed shaken beyond recovery. But the girl's calm comforted them all, and poignancy became dull pain. Before parting for the night Marie said to Hugh: "This is what I wish you to do for me to bring over two of your horses to Point Assumption on the river. There is a glen beyond that as you know, and from it runs the steep and dangerous Brocken Path across the hills. I wish you to wait there until M. Laflamme and Carbourd come by the river--that is their only chance. If they get across the hills they can easily reach the sea. I know that two of your horses have been over the path; they are sure-footed; they would know it in the night. Is it not so?" "It is so. There are not a dozen horses in the colony that could be trusted on it at night, but mine are safe. I shall do all you wish." She put out both her hands and felt for his shoulders, and let them rest there for a moment, saying: "I ask much, and I can give no reward, except the gratitude of one who would rather die than break a promise. It isn't much, but it is all that is worth your having. Good-night. Good-bye." "Good-night. Good-bye," he gently replied; but he said something beneath his breath that sounded worth the hearing. The next morning while her father was gone to consult the chief army- surgeon at Noumea, Marie strolled with Angers in the grounds. At length she said: "Angers, take me to the river, and then on down, until we come to the high banks." With her hand on Angers' arm, and in her face that passive gentleness which grows so sweetly from sightless eyes till it covers all the face, they passed slowly towards the river. When they came to the higher banks covered with dense scrub, Angers paused, and told Marie where they were. "Find me the she-oak tree," the girl said; "there is only one, you know." "Here it is, my dear. There, your hand is on it now." "Thank you. Wait here, Angers, I shall be back presently." "But oh, my dear--" "Please do as I say, Angers, and do not worry." The girl pushed aside some bushes, and was lost to view. She pressed along vigilantly by a descending path, until her feet touched rocky ground. She nodded to herself, then creeping between two bits of jutting rock at her right, immediately stood at the entrance to a cave, hidden completely from the river and from the banks above. At the entrance, for which she felt, she paused and said aloud: "Is there any one here?" Something clicked far within the cave. It sounded like a rifle. Then stealthy steps were heard, and a voice said: "Ah, mademoiselle!" "You are Carbourd?" "As you see, mademoiselle." "You escaped safely then from the rifle-shot? Where is the soldier?" "He fell into the river. He was drowned." "You are telling me truth?" "Yes, he stumbled in and sank--on my soul!" "You did not try to save him?" "He lied and got me six months in irons once; he called down on my back one hundred and fifty lashes, a year ago; he had me kept on bread and water, and degraded to the fourth class, where I could never hear from my wife and children--never write to them. I lost one eye in the quarries because he made me stand too near a lighted fuse--" "Poor man, poor man!" she said. "You found the food I left here?" "Yes, God bless you! And my wife and children will bless you too, if I see France again." "You know where the boat is?" "I know, mademoiselle." "When you reach Point Assumption you will find horses there to take you across the Brocken Path. M. Laflamme knows. I hope that you will both escape; that you will be happy in France with your wife and children." "You will not come here again?" "No. If M. Laflamme should not arrive, and you should go alone, leave one pair of oars; then I shall know. Good-bye." "Good-bye, mademoiselle. A thousand times I will pray for you. Ah, mon Dieu! take care!--you are on the edge of the great tomb." She stood perfectly still. At her feet was a dark excavation where was the skeleton of Ovi the King. This was the hidden burial-place of the modern Hiawatha of these savage islands, unknown even to the natives themselves, and kept secret with a half-superstitious reverence by this girl, who had discovered it a few months before. "I had forgotten," she said. "Please take my hand and set me right at the entrance." "Your hand, mademoiselle? Mine is so--! It is not dark." "I am blind now." "Blind--blind! Oh, the pitiful thing! Since when, mademoiselle?" "Since the soldier fired on you-the shock. . . . " The convict knelt at her feet. "Ah, mademoiselle, you are a good angel. I shall die of grief. To think--for such as me!" "You will live to love your wife and children. This is the will of God with me. Am I in the path now? Ah, thank you." "But, M. Laflamme--this will be a great sorrow to him." Twice she seemed about to speak, but nothing came save good-bye. Then she crept cautiously away among the bushes and along the narrow path, the eyes of the convict following her. She had done a deed which, she understood, the world would blame her for if it knew, would call culpable or foolishly heroic; but she smiled, because she understood also that she had done that which her own conscience and heart approved, and she was content. At this time Laflamme was stealing watchfully through the tropical scrub, where hanging vines tore his hands, and the sickening perfume of jungle flowers overcame him more than the hard journey which he had undergone during the past twelve hours. Several times he had been within voice of his pursuers, and once a Kanaka scout passed close to him. He had had nothing to eat, he had had no sleep, he suffered from a wound in his neck caused by the broken protruding branch of a tree; but he had courage, and he was struggling for liberty--a tolerably sweet thing when one has it not. He found the Cave at last, and with far greater ease than Carbourd had done, because he knew the ground better, and his instinct was keener. His greeting to Carbourd was nonchalantly cordial: "Well, you see, comrade, King Ovi's Cave is a reality." "So." "I saw the boat. The horses? What do you know?" "They will be at Point Assumption to-night." "Then we go to-night. We shall have to run the chances of rifles along the shore at a range something short, but we have done that before, at the Barricades, eh, Carbourd?" "At the Barricades. It is a pity that we cannot take Citizen Louise Michel with us." "Her time will come." "She has no children crying and starving at home like--" "Like yours, Carbourd, like yours. Well, I am starving here. Give me something to eat. . . . Ah, that is good--excellent! What more can we want but freedom! Till the darkness of tyranny be overpast--overpast, eh?" This speech brought another weighty matter to Carbourd's mind. He said: "I do not wish to distress you, but--" "Now, Carbourd, what is the matter? Faugh! this place smells musty. What's that--a tomb? Speak out, Citizen Carbourd." "It is this: Mademoiselle Wyndham is blind." Carbourd told the story with a great anxiety in his words. "The poor mademoiselle--is it so? A thousand pities! So kind, so young, so beautiful. Ah, I am distressed, and I finished her portrait yesterday! Yes, I remember her eyes looked too bright, and then again too dull: but I thought that it was excitement, and so--that!" Laflamme's regret was real enough up to a certain point, but, in sincerity and value, it was chasms below that of Hugh Tryon, who, even now, was getting two horses ready to give the Frenchmen their chance. After a pause Laflamme said: "She will not come here again, Carbourd? No? Ah, well, perhaps it is better so; but I should have liked to speak my thanks to her." That night Marie sat by the window of the sitting-room, with the light burning, and Angers asleep in a chair beside her--sat till long after midnight, in the thought that Laflamme, if he had reached the Cave, would, perhaps, dare something to see her and bid her good-bye. She would of course have told him not to come, but he was chivalrous, and then her blindness would touch him. Yet as the hours went by the thought came: was he, was he so chivalrous? was he altogether true? . . . He did not come. The next morning Angers took her to where the boat had been, but it was gone, and no oars were left behind. So, both had sought escape in it. She went to the Cave. She took Angers with her now. Upon the wall a paper was found. It was a note from M. Laflamme. She asked Angers to give it to her without reading it. She put it in her pocket and kept it there until she should see Hugh Tryon. He should read it to her. She said to herself as she felt the letter in her pocket: "He loved me. It was the least that I could do. I am so glad." Yet she was not altogether glad either, and disturbing thoughts crossed the parallels of her pleasure. The Governor and Madame Solde first brought news of the complete escape of the prisoners. The two had fled through the hills by the Brocken Path, and though pursued after crossing, had reached the coast, and were taken aboard the Parroquet, which sailed away towards Australia. It is probable that Marie's visitors had their suspicions regarding the escape, but they said nothing, and did not make her uncomfortable. Just now they were most concerned for her bitter misfortune. Madame Solde said to her: "My poor Marie--does it feel so dreadful, so dark?" "No, madame, it is not so bad. There are so many things which one does not wish to see, and one is spared the pain." "But you will see again. When you go to England, to great physicians there." "Then I should have three lives, madame: when I could see, when sight died, and when sight was born again. How wise I should be!" They left her sadly, and after a time she heard footsteps that she knew. She came forward and greeted Tryon. "Ah," she said, "all's well with them, I know; and you were so good." "They are safe upon the seas," he gently replied, and he kissed her hand. "Now you will read this letter for me. M. Laflamme left it behind in the Cave." With a pang he took it, and read thus: DEAR FRIEND,--My grief for your misfortune is inexpressible. If it were possible I should say so in person, but there is danger, and we must fly at once. You shall hear from me in full gratitude when I am in safety. I owe you so many thanks, as I give you so much of devotion. But there is the future for all. Mademoiselle, I kiss your hand. Always yours, RIVE LAFLAMME. "Hugh!" she said sadly when he had finished, "I seem to have new knowledge of things, now that I am blind. I think this letter is not altogether real. You see, that was his way of saying-good-bye." What Hugh Tryon thought, he did not say. He had met the Governor on his way to Pascal House, and had learned some things which were not for her to know. She continued: "I could not bear that one who was innocent of any real crime, who was a great artist, and who believed himself a patriot, should suffer so here. When he asked me I helped him. Yet I suppose I was selfish, wasn't I? It was because he loved me." Hugh spoke breathlessly: "And because--you loved him, Marie?" Her head was lifted quickly, as though she saw, and was looking him in the eyes. "Oh no, oh no," she cried, "I never loved him. I was sorry for him--that was all." "Marie, Marie," he said gently, while she shook her head a little pitifully, "did you, then, love any one else?" She was silent for a space and then she said: "Yes--Oh, Hugh, I am so sorry for your sake that I am blind, and cannot marry you." "But, my darling, you shall not always be blind, you shall see again. And you shall marry me also. As though--life of my life! as though one's love could live but by the sight of the eyes!" "My poor Hugh! But, blind, I could not marry you. It would not be just to you." He smiled with a happy hopeful determination; "But if you should see again?" "Oh, then. . . ." She married him, and in time her sight returned, though not completely. Tryon never told her, as the Governor had told him, that Rive Laflamme, when a prisoner in New Caledonia, had a wife in Paris: and he is man enough to hope that she may never know. But to this hour he has a profound regret that duels are not in vogue among Englishmen. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Preserved a marked unconsciousness Surely she might weep a little for herself Time when she should and when she should not be wooed Where the light is darkness CUMNER'S SON AND OTHER SOUTH SEA FOLK by Gilbert Parker Volume 5. A PAGAN OF THE SOUTH When Blake Shorland stepped from the steamer Belle Sauvage upon the quay at Noumea, he proceeded, with the alertness of the trained newspaper correspondent, to take his bearings. So this was New Caledonia, the home of outcast, criminal France, the recent refuge of Communist exiles, of Rochefort, Louise Michel, Felix Rastoul, and the rest! Over there to the left was Ile Nou, the convict prison; on the hill was the Governor's residence; below, the Government establishments with their red-tiled roofs; and hidden away in a luxuriance of tropical vegetation lay the houses of the citizens. He stroked his black moustache thoughtfully for a moment, and put his hand to his pocket to see that his letters of introduction from the French Consul at Sydney to Governor Rapont and his journalistic credentials were there. Then he remembered the advice of the captain of the Belle Sauvage as to the best hotel, and started towards it. He had not been shown the way, but his instincts directed him. He knew where it ought to be, according to the outlines of the place. It proved to be where he thought, and, having engaged rooms, sent for his luggage, and refreshed himself, he set out to explore the town. His prudent mind told him that he ought to proceed at once to Governor Rapont and present his letters of commendation, for he was in a country where feeling was running high against English interference with the deportation of French convicts to New Caledonia, and the intention of France to annex the New Hebrides. But he knew also that so soon as these letters were presented, his freedom of action would be restricted, either by a courtesy which would be so constant as to become surveillance, or by an injunction having no such gloss. He had come to study French government in New Caledonia, to gauge the extent of the menace that the convict question bore towards Australia, and to tell his tale to Australia, and to such other countries as would listen. The task was not pleasant, and it had its dangers, too, of a certain kind. But Shorland had had difficulty and peril often in his life, and he borrowed no trouble. Proceeding along the Rue de l'Alma, and listening to the babble of French voices round him, he suddenly paused abstractedly, and said to himself "Somehow it brings back Paris to me, and that last night there, when I bade Freeman good-bye. Poor old boy, I'm glad better days are coming for him. Sure to be better, if he marries Clare. Why didn't he do it seven years ago, and save all that other horrible business?" Then he moved on, noticing that he was the object of remark, but as it was daytime, and in the street he felt himself safe. Glancing up at a doorway he saw a familiar Paris name--Cafe Voisin. This was interesting. It was in the Cafe Voisin that he had touched a farewell glass with Luke Freeman, the one bosom friend of his life. He entered this Cafe Voisin with the thought of how vague would be the society which he would meet in such a reproduction of a famous Parisian haunt. He thought of a Cafe chantant at Port Said, and said to himself, "It can't be worse than that." He was right then. The world had no shambles of ghastly frivolity and debauchery like those of Port Said. The Cafe Voisin had many visitors, and Shorland saw at a glance who they were--liberes, or ticket-of-leave men, a drunken soldier or two, and a few of that class who with an army are called camp-followers, in an English town roughs, in a French convict settlement recidivistes. He felt at once that he had entered upon a trying experience; but he also felt that the luck would be with him, as it had been with him so many times these late years. He sat down at a small table, and called to a haggard waitress near to bring him a cup of coffee. He then saw that there was another woman in the room. Leaning with her elbows on the bar and her chin in her hands, she fixed her eyes on him as he opened and made a pretence of reading La Nouvelle Caledonie. Looking up, he met her eyes again; there was hatred in them if ever he saw it, or what might be called constitutional diablerie. He felt that this woman, whoever she was, had power of a curious kind; too much power for her to be altogether vile, too physically healthy to be of that class to which the girl who handed him his coffee belonged. There was not a sign of gaudiness about her; not a ring, a necklace, or a bracelet. Her dress was of cotton, faintly pink and perfectly clean; her hair was brown, and waving away loosely from her forehead. But her eyes--was there a touch of insanity there? Perhaps because they were rather deeply set, though large, and because they seemed to glow in the shadows made by the brows, the strange intensity was deepened. But Shorland could not get rid of the feeling of active malevolence in them. The mouth was neither small nor sensuous, the chin was strong without being coarse, the figure was not suggestive. The hands--confound the woman's eyes! Why could he not get rid of the feeling they gave him? She suddenly turned her head, not moving her chin from her hands, however, or altering her position, and said something to a man at her elbow--rather the wreck of a man, one who bore tokens of having been some time a gallant of the town, now only a disreputable citizen of a far from reputable French colony. Immediately a murmur was heard: "A spy, an English spy!" From the mouths of absinthe-drinking liberes it passed to the mouths of rum-drinking recidivistes. It did not escape Blake Shorland's ears, but he betrayed no sign. He sipped his coffee and appeared absorbed in his paper, thinking carefully of the difficulties of his position. He knew that to rise now and make for the door would be of no advantage, for a number of the excited crowd were between him and it. To show fear might precipitate a catastrophe with this drunken mob. He had nerve and coolness. Presently a dirty outcast passed him and rudely jostled his arm as he drank his coffee. He begged the other's pardon conventionally in French, and went on reading. A moment later the paper was snatched from his hand, and a red-faced unkempt scoundrel yelled in his face: "Spy of the devil! English thief!" Then he rose quickly and stepped back to the wall, feeling for the spring in the sword-stick which he held closely pressed to his side. This same sword-stick had been of use to him on the Fly River in New Guinea. "Down with the English spy!" rang through the room, joined to vile French oaths. Meanwhile the woman had not changed her position, but closely watched the tumult which she herself had roused. She did not stir when she saw a glass hurled at the unoffending Englishman's head. A hand reached over and seized a bottle behind her. The bottle was raised and still she did not move, though her fingers pressed her cheeks with a spasmodic quickness. Three times Shorland had said, in well-controlled tones: "Frenchmen, I am no spy," but they gave him the lie with increasing uproar. Had not Gabrielle Rouget said that he was an English spy? As the bottle was poised in the air with a fiendish cry of "A baptism! a baptism!" and Shorland was debating on his chances of avoiding it, and on the wisdom of now drawing his weapon and cutting his way through the mob, there came from the door a call of "Hold! hold!" and a young officer dashed in, his arm raised against the brutal missile in the hands of the ticket-of-leave man, whose Chauvinism was a matter of absinthe, natural evil, and Gabrielle Rouget. "Wretches! scum of France!" he cried: "what is this here? And you, Gabrielle, do you sleep? Do you permit murder?" The woman met the fire in his eyes without flinching, and some one answered for her. "He is an English spy." "Take care, Gabrielle," the young officer went on, "take care--you go too far!" Waving back the sullen crowd, now joined by the woman who had not yet spoken, he said: "Who are you, monsieur? What is the trouble?" Shorland drew from his pocket his letters and credentials. Gabrielle now stood at the young officer's elbow. As the papers were handed over, a photograph dropped from among them and fell to the floor face upward. Shorland stooped to pick it up, but, as he did so, he heard a low exclamation from Gabrielle. He looked up. She pointed to the portrait, and said gaspingly: "My God--look! look!" She leaned forward and touched the portrait in his hand. "Look! look!" she said again. And then she paused, and a moment after laughed. But there was no mirth in her laughter--it was hollow and nervous. Meanwhile the young officer had glanced at the papers, and now handed them back, with the words: "All is right, monsieur--eh, Gabrielle, well, what is the matter?" But she drew back, keeping her eyes fixed on the Englishman, and did not answer. The young officer stretched out his hand. "I am Alencon Barre, lieutenant, at your service. Let us go, monsieur." But there was some unusual devilry working in that drunken crowd. The sight of an officer was not sufficient to awe them into obedience. Bad blood had been fired, and it was fed by some cause unknown to Alencon Barre, but to be understood fully hereafter. The mass surged forward, with cries of "Down with the Englishman!" Alencon Barre drew his sword. "Villains!" he cried, and pressed the point against the breast of the leader, who drew back. Then Gabrielle's voice was heard: "No, no, my children," she said, "no more of that to-day--not to-day. Let the man go." Her face was white and drawn. Shorland had been turning over in his mind all the events of the last few moments, and he thought as he looked at her that just such women had made a hell of the Paris Commune. But one thought dominated all others. What was the meaning of her excitement when she saw the portrait--the portrait of Luke Freeman? He felt that he was standing on the verge of some tragic history. Barre's sword again made a clear circle round him, and he said: "Shame, Frenchmen! This gentleman is no spy. He is the friend of the Governor-- he is my friend. He is English? Well, where is the English flag, there are the French--good French-protected. Where is the French flag, there shall the English--good English--be safe." As they moved towards the door Gabrielle came forward, and, touching Shorland's arm, said in English: "You will come again, monsieur? You shall be safe altogether. You will come?" Looking at her searchingly, he answered slowly: "Yes, I will come." As they left the turbulent crowd behind them and stepped into the street, Barr$ said: "You should have gone at once to the Hotel du Gouverneur and presented your letters, monsieur, or, at least, have avoided the Cafe Voisin. Noumea is the Whitechapel and the Pentonville of France, remember." Shorland acknowledged his error, thanked his rescuer, enjoyed the situation, and was taken to Governor Rapont, by whom he was cordially received, and then turned over to the hospitality of the officers of the post. It was conveyed to him later by letters of commendation from the Governor that he should be free to go anywhere in the islands and to see whatever was to be seen, from convict prison to Hotel Dieu. II Sitting that night in the rooms of Alencon Barre, this question was put to Blake Shorland by his host: "What did Gabrielle say to you as we left, monsieur? And why did she act so, when she saw the portrait? I do not understand English well, and it was not quite clear." Shorland had a clear conviction that he ought to take Alencon Barre into his confidence. If Gabrielle Rouget should have any special connection with Luke Freeman, there might be need of the active counsel of a friend like this young officer, whose face bespoke chivalry and gentle birth. Better that Alencon Barre should know all, than that he should know in part and some day unwittingly make trouble. So he raised frank eyes to those of the other, and told the story of the man whose portrait had so affected Gabrielle Rouget. "Monsieur," said he, "I will tell you of this man first, and then it will be easier to answer your questions." He took the portrait from his pocket, passed it over, and continued. "I received this portrait in a letter from England the day that I left Sydney, as I was getting aboard the boat. I placed it among those papers which you read. It fell out on the floor of the cafe, and you saw the rest. The man whose face is before you there, and who sent that to me, was my best friend in the days when I was at school and college. Afterwards, when a law-student, and, still later, when I began to practise my profession, we lived together in a rare old house at Fulham, with high garden walls and--but I forget, you do not know London perhaps. Yes? Well, the house is neither here nor there; but I like to think of those days and of that home. Luke Freeman--that was my friend's name-- was an artist and a clever one. He had made a reputation by his paintings of Egyptian and Algerian life. He was brilliant and original, an indefatigable worker. Suddenly, one winter, he became less industrious, fitful in his work, gloomy one day and elated the next, generally uncomfortable. What was the matter? Strange to say, although we were such friends, we chose different sets of society, and therefore seldom appeared at the same houses or knew the same people. He liked most things continental; he found his social pleasures in that polite Bohemia which indulges in midnight suppers and permits ladies to smoke cigarettes after dinner, which dines at rich men's tables and is hob-a- nob with Russian Counts, Persian Ministers, and German Barons. That was not to my taste, save as a kind of dramatic entertainment to be indulged in at intervals like a Drury Lane pantomime. But though I had no proof that such was the case, I knew Luke Freeman's malady to be a woman. I taxed him with it. He did not deny it. He was painting at the time, I remember, and he testily and unprofitably drew his brush across the face of a Copt woman he was working at, and bit off the end of a cigar. I asked him if it was another man's wife; he promptly said no. I asked him if there were any awkward complications any inconsiderate pressure from the girl's parents of brothers; and he promptly told me to be damned. I told him I thought he ought to know that an ambitious man might as well drown himself at once as get a fast woman in his path. Then he showed a faculty for temper and profanity that stunned me. But the up shot was that I found the case straight enough to all appearances. The woman was a foreigner and not easy to win; was beautiful, had a fine voice, loved admiration, and possessed a scamp of a brother who, wanted her to marry a foreigner, so that, according to her father's will, a large portion of her fortune would come to him.... Were you going to speak? No? Very well. Things got worse and worse. Freeman neglected business and everything else, became a nuisance. He never offered to take me to see the lady, and I did not suggest it, did not even know where she lived. What galled me most in the matter was that Freeman had been for years attentive to a cousin of mine, Clare Hazard, almost my sister, indeed, since she had been brought up in my father's house; and I knew that from a child she had adored him. However, these things seldom work out according to the law of Nature, and so I chewed the cud of dissatisfaction and kept the thing from my cousin as long as I could. About the time matters seemed at a crisis I was taken ill, and was ordered south. My mother and Freeman accompanied me as far as Paris. Here Freeman left me to return to England, and in the Cafe Voisin, at Paris--yes, mark that--we had our farewell. I have never seen him since. While in Italy I was brought to death's door by my illness; and when I got up, Clare told me that Freeman was married and had gone to Egypt. She, poor girl, bore it well. I was savage, but it was too late. I was ordered to go to the South Seas, at least to take a long sea-voyage; and though I could not well afford it I started for Australia. On my way out I stopped off at Port Said to try and find Freeman in Egypt, but failed. I heard of him at Cairo, and learned also that his wife's brother had joined them. Two years passed, and then I got a letter from an old friend, saying that Freeman's wife had eloped with a Frenchman. Another year, and then came a letter from Freeman himself, saying that his wife was dead; that he had identified her body in the Morgue at Paris--found drowned, and all that. He believed that remorse had driven her to suicide. But he had no trace of the brother, no trace of the villain whom he had scoured Europe and America over to find. Again, another three years, and now he writes me that he is going to be married to Clare Hazard on the twenty sixth of this month. With that information came this portrait. I tell you all, M. Barre, because I feel that this woman Gabrielle has some connection with the past life of my friend Luke Freeman. She recognised the face, and you saw the effect. Now will you tell me what you know about her?" Shorland had been much more communicative than was his custom. But he knew men. This man had done him a service, and that made towards friendship on both sides. He was an officer and a gentleman, and so he showed his hand. Then he wanted information and perhaps much more, though what that would be he could not yet tell. M. Barre had smoked cigarettes freely during Shorland's narrative. At the end he said with peculiar emphasis: "Your friend's wife was surely a Frenchwoman?" "Yes." "Was her name Laroche?" "Yes, that was it. Do you think that Lucile Laroche and Gabrielle--!" "That Lucile Laroche and Gabrielle Rouget are one? Yes. But that Lucile Laroche was the wife of your friend? Well, that is another matter. But we shall see soon. Listen. A scoundrel, Henri Durien, was sent out here for killing an American at cards. The jury called it murder, but recommended him to mercy, and he escaped the guillotine. He had the sympathy of the women, the Press did not deal hardly with him, and the Public Prosecutor did not seem to push the case as he might have done. But that was no matter to us. The woman, Gabrielle Rouget, followed him here, where he is a prisoner for life. He is engaged in road-making with other prisoners. She keeps the Cafe Voisin. Now here is the point which concerns your story. Once, when Gabrielle was permitted to see Henri, they quarrelled. I was acting as governor of the prison at the time, saw the meeting and heard the quarrel. No one else was near. Henri accused her of being intimate with a young officer of the post. I am sure there was no truth in it, for Gabrielle does not have followers of that kind. But Henri had got the idea from some source; perhaps by the convicts' 'Underground Railway,' which has connection even with the Hotel du Gouverneur. Through it the prisoners know all that is going on, and more. In response to Henri's accusation Gabrielle replied: 'As I live, Henri, it is a lie.' He sardonically rejoined: 'But you do not live. You are dead, dead I tell you. You were found drowned and carried to the Morgue and properly identified--not by me, curse you, Lucile Laroche. And then you were properly buried, and not by me either, nor at my cost, curse you again. You are dead, I tell you!' She looked at him as she looked at you the other day, dazed and spectre-like, and said: 'Henri, I gave up my life once to a husband to please my brother. "He was a villain, my brother. I gave it up a second time to please you, and because I loved you. I left behind me name, fortune, Paris, France, everything, to follow you here. I was willing to live here, while you lived, or till you should be free. And you curse me--you dare to curse me! Now I will give you some cause to curse. You are a devil--I am a sinner. Henceforth I shall be devil and sinner too.' With that she left him. Since then she has been both devil and sinner, but not in the way he meant; simply a danger to the safety of this dangerous community; a Louise Michel--we had her here too!--without Louise Michel's high motives. Gabrielle Rouget may cause a revolt of the convicts some day, to secure the escape of Henri Durien, or to give them all a chance. The Governor does not believe it, but I do. You noticed what I said about the Morgue, and that?" Shorland paced up and down the room for a time, and then said: "Great heaven, suppose that by some hideous chance this woman, Gabrielle Rouget, or Lucile Laroche, should prove to be Freeman's wife! The evidence is so overwhelming. There evidently was some trick, some strange mistake, about the Morgue and the burial. This is the fourteenth of January; Freeman is to be married on the twenty-sixth! Monsieur, if this woman should be his wife, there never was brewed an uglier scrape. There is Freeman--that's pitiful; there is Clare Hazard--that's pitiful and horrible. For nothing can be done; no cables from here, the Belle Sauvage gone, no vessels or sails for two weeks. Ah well, there's only one thing to do--find out the truth from Gabrielle if I can, and trust in Providence." "Well spoken," said M. Barre. "Have some more champagne. I make the most of the pleasure of your company, and so I break another bottle. Besides, it may be the last I shall get for a time. There is trouble brewing at Bompari--a native insurrection--and we may have to move at any moment. However this Gabrielle affair turns out, you have your business to do. You want to see the country, to study our life-well, come with us. We will house you, feed you as we feed, and you shall have your tobacco at army prices." Much as Blake Shorland was moved by the events of the last few hours he was enough the soldier and the man of the world to face possible troubles without the loss of appetite, sleep, or nerve. He had cultivated a habit of deliberation which saved his digestion and preserved his mental poise; and he had a faculty for doing the right thing at the right time. From his stand-point, his late adventure in the Cafe Voisin was the right thing, serious as the results might have been or might yet be. He now promptly met the French officer's exuberance of spirits with a hearty gaiety, and drank his wine with genial compliment and happy anecdote. It was late when they parted; the Frenchman excited, beaming, joyous, the Englishman responsive, but cool in mind still. III After breakfast next morning Shorland expressed to M. Barre his intention of going to see Gabrielle Rouget. He was told that he must not go alone; a guard would be too conspicuous and might invite trouble; he himself would bear him company. The hot January day was reflected from the red streets, white houses, and waxen leaves of the tropical foliage with enervating force. An occasional ex-convict sullenly lounged by, touching his cap as he was required by law; a native here and there leaned idly against a house-wall or a magnolia tree; ill-looking men and women loitered in the shade. A Government officer went languidly by in full uniform--even the Governor wore uniform at all times to encourage respect--and the cafes were filling. Every hour was "absinthe-hour" in Noumea, which had improved on Paris in this particular. A knot of men stood at the door of the Cafe Voisin gesticulating nervously. One was pointing to a notice posted on the bulletin-board of the cafe announcing that all citizens must hold themselves in readiness to bear arms in case the rumoured insurrection among the natives proved serious. It was an evil-looking company who thus discussed Governor Rapont's commands. As the two passed in, Shorland noticed that one of the group made a menacing action towards Alencon Barre. Gabrielle was talking to an ex-convict as they entered. Her face looked worn; there was a hectic spot on each cheek and dark circles round the eyes. There was something animal-like about the poise of the head and neck, something intense and daring about the woman altogether. Her companion muttered between his teeth: "The cursed English spy!" But she turned on him sharply: "Go away, Gaspard, I have business. So have you--go." The ex-convict slowly left the cafe still muttering. "Well, Gabrielle, how are your children this morning? They look gloomy enough for the guillotine, eh?" said M. Barre. "They are much trouble, sometimes--my children." "Last night, for instance." "Last night. But monsieur was unwise. We do not love the English here. They do not find it comfortable on English soil, in Australia--my children! Not so comfortable as Louis Philippe and Louis Napoleon. Criminal kings with gold are welcome; criminal subjects without gold-- ah, that is another matter, monsieur. It is just the same. They may be gentlemen--many are; if they escape to Australia or go as liberes, they are hunted down. That is English, and they hate the English-- my children." Gabrielle's voice was directed to M. Barre, but her eyes were on Shorland. "Well, Gabrielle, all English are not inhospitable. My friend here, we must be hospitable to him. The coals of fire, you know, Gabrielle. We owe him some thing for yesterday. He wishes to speak to you. Be careful, Gabrielle. No communist justice, Citizen Gabrielle." M. Barre smiled gaily. Gabrielle smiled in reply, but it was not a pleasant smile, and she said: "Treachery, M. Barre--treachery in Noumea? There is no such thing. It is all fair in love and war. No quarter, no mercy, no hope. All is fair where all is foul, M. Barre." M. Barre shrugged his shoulders pleasantly and replied: "If I had my way your freedom should be promptly curtailed, Gabrielle. You are an active citizen, but you are dangerous, truly." "I like you better when you do not have your way. Yet my children do not hate you, M. Barre. You speak your thought, and they know what to expect. Your family have little more freedom in France than my children have here." M. Barre looked at her keenly for an instant, then, lighting a cigarette, he said: "So, Gabrielle, so! That is enough. You wish to speak to M. Shorland--well!" He waved his hand to her and walked away from them. Gabrielle paused a moment, looking sharply at Blake Shorland, then she said: "Monsieur will come with me?" She led the way into another room, the boudoir, sitting-room, breakfast- room, library, all in one. She parted the curtains at the window, letting the light fall upon the face of her companion, while hers remained in the shadow. He knew the trick, and moved out of the belt of light. He felt that he was dealing with a woman of singular astuteness, with one whose wickedness was unconventional and intrepid. To his mind there came on the instant the memory of a Rocky Mountain lioness that he had seen caged years before; lithe, watchful, nervously powerful, superior to its surroundings, yet mastered by those surroundings--the trick of a lock, not a trick of strength. He thought he saw in Gabrielle a woman who for a personal motive was trying to learn the trick of the lock in Noumea, France's farthest prison. For a moment they looked at each other steadily, then she said: "That portrait--let me see it." The hand that she held out was unsteady, and it looked strangely white and cold. He drew the photograph from his pocket and handed it to her. A flush passed across her face as she looked at it, and was followed by a marked paleness. She gazed at the portrait for a moment, then her lips parted and a great sigh broke from her. She was about to hand it back to him, but an inspiration seemed to seize her, and she threw it on the floor and put her heel upon it. "That is the way I treated him," she said, and she ground her heel into the face of the portrait. Then she took her foot away. "See, see," she cried, "how his face is scarred and torn! I did that. Do you know what it is to torture one who loves you? No, you do not. You begin with shame and regret. But the sight of your lover's agonies, his indignation, his anger, madden you and you get the lust of cruelty. You become insane. You make new wounds. You tear open old ones. You cut, you thrust, you bruise, you put acid in the sores-- the sharpest nitric acid; and then you heal with a kiss of remorse, and that is acid too--carbolic acid, and it smells of death. They put it in the room where dead people are. Have you ever been to the Morgue in Paris? They use it there." She took up the portrait. "Look," she said, "how his face is torn! Tell me of him." "First, who are you?" She steadied herself. "Who are you?" she asked. "I am his friend, Blake Shorland." "Yes, I remember your name." She threw her hands up with a laugh, a bitter hopeless laugh. Her eyes half closed, so that only light came from them, no colour. The head was thrown back with a defiant recklessness, and then she said: "I was Lucile Laroche, his wife--Luke Freeman's wife." "But his wife died. He identified her in the Morgue." "I do not know why I speak to you so, but I feel that the time has come to tell all to you. That was not his wife in the Morgue. It was his wife's sister, my sister whom my brother drowned for her money--he made her life such a misery! And he did not try to save her when he knew she meant to drown herself. She was not bad; she was a thousand times better than I am, a million times better than he was. He was a devil. But he is dead now too. . . . She was taken to the Morgue. She looked like me altogether; she wore a ring of mine, and she had a mark on her shoulder the same as one on mine; her initials were the same. Luke had never seen her. He believed that I lay dead there, and he buried her for me. I thought at the time that it would be best I should be dead to him and to the world. And so I did not speak. It was all the same to my brother. He got what was left of my fortune, and I got what was left of hers. For I was dead, you see--dead, dead, dead!" She paused again. Neither spoke for a moment. Shorland was thinking what all this meant to Clare Hazard and Luke Freeman. "Where is he? What is he doing?" she said at length. "Tell me. I was --I am--his wife." "Yes, you were--you are--his wife. But better if you had been that woman in the Morgue," he said without pity. What were this creature's feelings to him? There was his friend and the true-souled Clare. "I know, I know," she replied. "Go on!" "He is well. The man that was born when his wife lay before him in the Morgue has found another woman, a good woman who loves him and--" "And is married to her?" interrupted Gabrielle, her face taking on again a shining whiteness. But, as though suddenly remembering something, she laughed that strange laugh which might have come from a soul irretrievably lost. "And is married to her?" Blake Shorland thought of the lust of cruelty, of the wounds, and the acids of torture. "Not yet," he said; "but the marriage is set for the twenty-six of this month." "How I could spoil all that!" "Yes, you could spoil all that. But you have spoiled enough already. Don't you think that if Luke Freeman does marry, you had better be dead as you have been this last five years? To have spoiled one life ought to be enough to satisfy even a woman like you." Her eyes looked through Blake Shorland's eyes and beyond them to something else; and then they closed. When they opened again, she said: "It is strange that I never thought of his marrying again. And now I want to kill her--just for the moment. That is the selfish devil in me. Well, what is to be done, monsieur? There is the Morgue left. But then there is no Morgue here. Ah, well, we can make one, perhaps--we can make a Morgue, monsieur." "Can't you see that he ought to be left the rest of his life in peace?" "Yes, I can see that." "Well, then!" "Well--and then, monsieur? Ah, you did not wish him to marry me. He told me so. 'A fickle foreigner,' you said. And you were right, but it was not pleasant to me. I hated you then, though I had never spoken to you nor seen you; not because I wanted him, but because you interfered. He said once to me that you had told the truth in that. But--and then, monsieur?" "Then continue to efface yourself. Continue to be the woman in the Morgue." "But others know." "Yes, Henri Durien knows and M. Barre suspects." "So, you see." "But Henri Durien is a prisoner for life; he cannot hear of the marriage unless you tell him. M. Barre is a gentleman: he is my friend; his memory will be dead like you." "For M. Barre, well! But the other--Henri. How do you know that he is here for life? Men get pardoned, men get free, men--get free, I tell you." Shorland noticed the interrupted word. He remembered it afterwards all too distinctly enough. "The twenty-sixth, the twenty-sixth," she said. Then a pause, and afterwards with a sudden sharpness: "Come to me on the twenty-fifth, and I will give you my reply, M. Shorland." He still held the portrait in his hand. She stepped forward. "Let me see it again," she said. He handed it to her: "You have spoiled a good face, Gabrielle." "But the eyes are not hurt," she replied; "see how they look at one." She handed it back. "Yes, kindly." "And sadly. As though he still remembered Lucile. Lucile! I have not been called that name for a long time. It is on my grave-stone, you know. Ah, perhaps you do not know. You never saw my grave. I have. And on the tombstone is written this: By Luke to Lucile. And then beneath, where the grass almost hides it, the line: I have followed my Star to the last. You do not know what that line means; I will tell you. Once, when we were first married, he wrote me some verses, and he called them, 'My Star, Lucile.' Here is a verse--ah, why do you not smile, when I say I will tell you what he wrote? Chut! Women such as I have memories sometimes. One can admire the Heaven even if one lives in--ah, you know! Listen." And with a voice that seemed far away and not part of herself she repeated these lines: "In my sky of delight there's a beautiful Star; 'Tis the sun and the moon of my days; And the doors of its glory are ever ajar, And I live in the glow of its rays. 'Tis my winter of joy and my summer of rest, 'Tis my future, my present, my past; And though storms fill the East and the clouds haunt the West, I shall follow my Star to the last." "There, that was to Lucile. What would he write to Gabrielle--to Henri's Gabrielle? How droll--how droll!" Again she laughed that laugh of eternal recklessness. It filled Shorland this time with a sense of fear. He lost sight of everything--this strange and interesting woman, and the peculiar nature of the events in which he was sharing, and saw only Clare Hazard's ruined life, Luke Freeman's despair, and the fatal 26th of January, so near at hand. He could see no way out of the labyrinth of disgrace. It unnerved him more than anything that had ever happened to him, and he turned bewildered towards the door. He saw that while Gabrielle lived, a dead misfortune would be ever crouching at the threshold of Freeman's home, that whether the woman agreed to be silent or not, the hurt to Clare would remain the same. With an angry bitterness in his voice that he did not try to hide he said: "There is nothing more to be done now, Gabrielle, that I can see. But it is a crime--it is a pity!" "A pity that he did not tell the truth on the gravestone--that he did not follow his star to the last, monsieur? How droll! And you should see how green the grass was on my grave! Yes, it is a pity." But Shorland, heavy at heart, looked at her and said nothing more. He wondered why it was that he did not loathe her. Somehow, even in her shame, she compelled a kind of admiration and awe. She was the wreck of splendid possibilities. A poisonous vitality possessed her, but through it glowed a daring and a candour that belonged to her before she became wicked, and that now half redeemed her in the eyes of this man, who knew the worst of her. Even in her sin she was loyal to the scoundrel for whom she had sacrificed two lives, her own and another's. Her brow might flush with shame of the mad deed that turned her life awry, and of the degradation of her present surroundings; but her eyes looked straight into those of Shorland without wavering, with the pride of strength if not of goodness. "Yes, there is one thing more," she said. "Give me that portrait to keep--until the 25th. Then you may take it--from the woman in the Morgue." Shorland thought for a moment. She had spoken just now without sneering, without bravado, without hardness. He felt that behind this woman's outward cruelty and varying moods there was something working that perhaps might be trusted, something in Luke's interest. He was certain that this portrait had moved her deeply. Had she come to that period of reaction in evil when there is an agonised desire to turn back towards the good? He gave the portrait to her. IV Sitting in Alencon Barre's room an hour later, Shorland told him in substance the result of his conference with Gabrielle, and begged his consideration for Luke if the worst should happen. Alencon Barre gave his word as a man of honour that the matter should be sacred to him. As they sat there, a messenger came from the commandant to say that the detachment was to start that afternoon for Bompari. Then a note was handed to Shorland from Governor Rapont offering him a horse and a native servant if he chose to go with the troops. This was what Shorland had come for--news and adventure. He did not hesitate, though the shadow of the twenty-fifth was hanging over him. He felt his helplessness in the matter, but determined to try to be back in Noumea on that date. Not that he expected anything definite, but because he had a feeling that where Gabrielle was on that day he ought to be. For two days they travelled, the friendship between them growing hourly closer. It was the swift amalgamation of two kindred natures in the flame of a perfect sincerity, for even with the dramatic element so strongly developed in him, the Englishman was downright and true. His friendship was as tenacious as his head was cool. On the evening of the third day Shorland noticed that the strap of his spur was frayed. He told his native servant to attend to it. Next morning as they were starting he saw that the strap had not been mended or replaced. His language on the occasion was pointed and confident. The fact is, he was angry with himself for trusting anything to a servant. He was not used to such a luxury, and he made up his mind to live for the rest of the campaign without a servant, as he had done all his life long. The two friends rode side by side for miles through the jungle of fern and palm, and then began to enter a more open but scrubby country. The scouts could be seen half a mile ahead. Not a sign of natives had been discovered on the march. More than once Barre had expressed his anxiety at this. He knew it pointed to concentrated trouble ahead, and, just as they neared the edge of the free country, he rose in his saddle and looked around carefully. Shorland imitated his action, and, as he resumed his seat, he felt his spur-strap break. He leaned back, and drew up the foot to take off the spur. As he did so, he felt a sudden twitch at his side, and Barre swayed in his saddle with a spear in the groin. Shorland caught him and prevented him falling to the ground. A wild cry rose from the jungle behind and from the clearing ahead, and in a moment the infuriated French soldiers were in the thick of a hand-to-hand fray under a rain of spears and clubs. The spear that had struck Barre would have struck Shorland had he not bent backward when he did. As it was the weapon had torn a piece of cloth from his coat. A moment, and the wounded man was lifted to the ground. The surgeon shook his head in sad negation. Death already blanched the young officer's face. Shorland looked into the misty eyes with a sadness only known to those who can gauge the regard of men who suffer for each other. Four days ago this gallant young officer had taken risk for him, had saved him from injury, perhaps death; to-day the spear meant for him had stricken down this same young officer, never to rise again. The vicarious sacrifice seemed none the less noble to the Englishman because it was involuntary and an accident. The only point clear in his mind was that had he not leant back, Barre would be the whole man and he the wounded one. "How goes it, my friend?" said Shorland, bending over him. Alencon Barre looked up, agony twitching his nostrils and a dry white line on his lips. "Ah, mon camarade," he answered huskily, "it is in action--that is much; it is for France, that is more to me--everything. They would not let me serve France in Paris, but I die for her in New Caledonia. I have lived six-and-twenty years. I have loved the world. Many men have been kind, and once there was a woman--and I shall see her soon, quite soon. It is strange. The eyes will become blind, and then they will open, and--ah!" His fingers closed convulsively on those of Blake Shorland. When the ghastly tremor, the deadly corrosions of the poisoned spear passed he said: "So--so! It is the end. C'est bien, c'est bien!" All round them the fight raged, and French soldiers were repeating English bravery in the Soudan. "It is not against a great enemy, but it is good," said the wounded man as he heard the conquering cries of a handful of soldiers punishing ten times their numbers. "You remember Prince Eugene and the assegais?" "I remember." "Our Houses were enemies, but we were friends, he and I. And so, and so, you see, it is the same for both." Again the teeth of the devouring poison fastened on him, and, when it left him, a grey pallor had settled upon the face. Blake Shorland said to him gently: "How do you feel about it all?" As if in gentle protest the head moved slightly. "All's well, all's well," the low voice said. A pause, in which the cries of the wounded came through the smoke, and then the dying man, feeling the approach of another convulsion, said: "A cigarette, mon ami." Blake Shorland put a cigarette between his lips and lighted it. "And now a little wine," the fallen soldier added. The surgeon, who had come again for a moment, nodded and said: "It may help." Barre's native servant brought a bottle of champagne intended to be drunk after the expected victory, but not in this fashion! Shorland understood. This brave young soldier of a dispossessed family wished to show no fear of pain, no lack of outward and physical courage in the approaching and final shock. He must do something that was conventional, natural, habitual, that would take his mind from the thing itself. At heart he was right. The rest was a question of living like a strong-nerved soldier to the last. The tobacco-smoke curled feebly from his lips, and was swallowed up in the clouds of powder-smoke that circled round them. With his head on his native servant's knee he watched Shorland uncork the bottle and pour the wine into the surgeon's medicine- glass. It was put in his fingers; he sipped it once and then drank it all. "Again," he said. Again it was filled. The cigarette was smoked nearly to the end. Shorland must unburden his mind of one thought, and he said: "You took what was meant for me, my friend." "Ah, no, no! It was the fortune, we will say the good fortune. C'est bien!" Then, "The wine, the wine," he said, and his fingers again clasped those of Shorland tremblingly. He took the glass in his right hand and lifted it. "God guard all at home, God keep France!" he said. He was about to place the glass to his lips, when a tremor seized him, and the glass fell from his hand. He fell back, his breath quick and vanishing, his eyes closing, and a faint smile upon his lips. "It is always the same with France," he said; "always the same." And he was gone. V The French had bought their victory dear with the death of Alencon Barre, their favourite officer. When they turned their backs upon a quelled insurrection, there was a gap that not even French buoyancy could fill. On the morning of the twenty-fifth they neared Noumea. Shorland thought of all that day meant to Luke and Clare. He was helpless to alter the course of events, to stay a terrible possibility. "You can never trust a woman of Gabrielle's stamp," he said to himself, as they rode along through valleys of ferns, grenadillas, and limes. "They have no baseline of duty; they either rend themselves or rend others, but rend they must, hearts and not garments. Henri Durien knows, and she knows, and Alencon Barre knew, poor boy! But what Barre knew is buried with him back there under the palms. Luke and Clare are to be married to-morrow-God help them! And I can see them in their home, he standing by the fireplace in his old way--it's winter there--and looking down at Clare; and on the other side of the fireplace sits the sister of the Woman in the Morgue, waiting for the happiest moment in the lives of these two before her. And when it comes, as she did with the portrait, as she did with him before, she will set her foot upon his face and then on Clare's; only neither Luke nor Clare will live again after that crucifixion." Then aloud: "Hello! what's that?--a messenger riding hard to meet us! Smoke in the direction of Noumea and sound of firing! What's that, doctor? Convicts revolted, made a break at the prison and on the way to the quarries at the same moment! Of course--seized the time when the post was weakest, helped by ticket-of-leave-men and led by Henri Durien, Gaspard, and Gabrielle Rouget. Gabrielle Rouget, eh! And this is the twenty-fifth! Yes, I will take Barre's horse, captain, thank you; it is fresher than mine. Away we go! Egad, they're at it, doctor! Hear the rifles!" Answering to the leader's cry of "Forward, forward!" the detachment dashed into the streets of this little Paris, which, after the fashion of its far-away mother, was dipping its hands in Revolution. Outcast and criminal France were arrayed against military France once more. A handful of guards in the prison at Ile Nou were bravely holding in check a ruthless mob of convicts; and a crowd of convicts in the street keeping back a determined military force. Part of the newly-arrived reinforcements proceeded to Ile Nou, part moved towards the barricade. Shorland went to the barricade. The convicts had the Cafe Voisin in their rear. As the reinforcements joined the besieging party a cheer arose, and a sally was made upon the barricade. It was a hail of fire meeting a slighter rain of fire--a cry of coming victory cutting through a sullen roar of despair. The square in which the convicts were massed was a trench of blood and bodies; but they fought on. There was but one hope--to break out, to meet the soldiers hand to hand and fight for passage to the friendly jungle and to the sea, where they might trust to that Providence who appears to help even the wicked sometimes. As Shorland looked upon the scene he thought of Alencon Barre's words: "It is always the same with France, always the same." The fight grew fiercer, the soldiers pressed nearer. And now one clear voice was heard above the din, "Forward, forward, my children!" and some one sprang upon the outer barricade. It was the plotter of the revolt, the leader, the manager of the "Underground Railway," the beloved of the convicts--Gabrielle Rouget. The sunlight glorified her flying hair and vivid dress-vivid with the blood of the fallen. Her arms, her shoulders, her feet were bare; all that she could spare from her body had gone to bind the wounds of her desperate comrades. In her hands she held a carbine. As she stood for an instant unmoving, the firing, as if by magic, ceased. She raised a hand. "We will have the guillotine in Paris," she said; "but not the hell of exile here." Then Henri Durien, the convict, sprang up beside her; the man for whom she had made a life's sacrifice--for whom she had come to this! His head was bandaged and clotted with blood; his eyes shone with the fierceness of an animal at bay. Close after him crowded the handful of his frenzied compatriots in crime. Then a rifle-crack was heard, and Henri Durieu fell at the feet of Gabrielle. The wave on the barricade quivered, and then Gabrielle's voice was heard crying, "Avenge him! Free yourselves, my children! Death is better than prison!" The wave fell in red turmoil on the breakers. And still Gabrielle stood alone above the body of Henri Durien; but the carbine was fallen from her hands. She stood as one awaiting death, her eyes upon the unmoving form at her feet. The soldiers watched her, but no one fired. Her face was white; but in the eyes there was a wild triumph. She wanted death now; but these French soldiers had not the heart to kill her. When she saw that, she leaned and thrust a hand into the bleeding bosom of Henri Durien, and holding it aloft cried: "For this blood men must die." Stooping again she seized the carbine and levelled it at the officer in command. Before she could pull the trigger some one fired, and she fell across the body of her lover. A moment afterwards Shorland stood beside her. She was shot through the lungs. He stooped over her. "Gabrielle, Gabrielle!" he said. "Yes, yes, I know--I saw you. This is the twenty-fifth. He will be married to-morrow-Luke. I owed it to him to die; I owed it to Henri to die this way." She drew the scarred portrait of Luke Freeman from her bosom and gave it over. "His eyes made me," she said. "They haunted me. "Well, it is all done. I am sorry, ah! Never tell him of this. I go away--away--with Henri." She closed her eyes and was still for a moment; so still that he thought her dead. But she looked up at him again and said with her last breath: "I am--the Woman in the Morgue--always--now!" ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: All is fair where all is foul He borrowed no trouble ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "CUMNER'S SON AND OTHER FOLK": All is fair where all is foul Answered, with the indifference of despair Ate some coffee-beans and drank some cold water He borrowed no trouble His courtesy was not on the same expansive level as his vanity It isn't what they do, it's what they don't do Mystery is dear to a woman's heart Never looked to get an immense amount of happiness out of life No, I'm not good--I'm only beautiful Preserved a marked unconsciousness Should not make our own personal experience a law unto the world Surely she might weep a little for herself There is nothing so tragic as the formal Time when she should and when she should not be wooed Undisciplined generosity Where the light is darkness Women don't go by evidence, but by their feelings You have lost your illusions You've got to be ready, that's all WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC, Complete The Story of a Lost Napoleon By Gilbert Parker INTRODUCTION In one sense this book stands by itself. It is like nothing else I have written, and if one should seek to give it the name of a class, it might be called an historical fantasy. It followed The Trail of the Sword and preceded The Seats of the Mighty, and appeared in the summer of 1895. The critics gave it a reception which was extremely gratifying, because, as it seemed to me, they realised what I was trying to do; and that is a great deal. One great journal said it read as though it had been written at a sitting; another called it a tour de force, and the grave Athenaeum lauded it in a key which was likely to make me nervous, since it seemed to set a standard which I should find it hard to preserve in the future. But in truth the newspaper was right which said that the book read as though it was written at a sitting, and that it was a tour de force. The facts are that the book was written, printed, revised, and ready for press in five weeks. The manuscript of the book was complete within four weeks. It possessed me. I wrote night and day. There were times when I went to bed and, unable to sleep, I would get up at two o'clock or three o'clock in the morning and write till breakfast time. A couple of hours' walk after breakfast, and I would write again until nearly two o'clock. Then luncheon; afterwards a couple of hours in the open air, and I would again write till eight o'clock in the evening. The world was shut out. I moved in a dream. The book was begun at Hot Springs, in Virginia, in the annex to the old Hot Springs Hotel. I could not write in the hotel itself, so I went to the annex, and in the big building--in the early spring-time--I worked night and day. There was no one else in the place except the old negro caretaker and his wife. Four-fifths of the book was written in three weeks there. Then I went to New York, and at the Lotus Club, where I had a room, I finished it--but not quite. There were a few pages of the book to do when I went for my walk in Fifth Avenue one afternoon. I could not shake the thing off, the last pages demanded to be written. The sermon which the old Cure was preaching on Valmond's death was running in my head. I could not continue my walk. Then and there I stepped into the Windsor Hotel, which I was passing, and asked if there was a stenographer at liberty. There was. In the stenographer's office of the Windsor Hotel, with the life of a caravanserai buzzing around me, I dictated the last few pages of When Valmond Came to Pontiac. It was practically my only experience of dictation of fiction. I had never been able to do it, and have not been able to do it since, and I am glad that it is so, for I should have a fear of being led into mere rhetoric. It did not, however, seem to matter with this book. It wrote itself anywhere. The proofs of the first quarter of the book were in my hands before I had finished writing the last quarter. It took me a long time to recover from the great effort of that five weeks, but I never regretted those consuming fires which burned up sleep and energy and ravaged the vitality of my imagination. The story was founded on the incident described in the first pages of the book, which was practically as I experienced it when I was a little child. The picture there drawn of Valmond was the memory of just such a man as stood at the four corners in front of the little hotel and scattered his hot pennies to the children of the village. Also, my father used to tell me as a child a story of Napoleon, whose history he knew as well as any man living, and something of that story may be found in the fifth chapter of the book where Valmond promotes Sergeant Lagroin from non-commissioned rank, first to be captain, then to be colonel, and then to be general, all in a moment, as it were. I cannot tell the original story as my father told it to me here, but it was the tale of how a sergeant in the Old Guard, having shared his bivouac supper of roasted potatoes with the Emperor, was told by Napoleon that he should sup with his Emperor when they returned to Versailles. The old sergeant appeared at Versailles in course of time and demanded admittance to the Emperor, saying that he had been asked to supper. When Napoleon was informed, he had the veteran shown in and, recognising his comrade of the baked potatoes, said at once that the sergeant should sup with him. The sergeant's reply was: "Sire, how can a non-commissioned officer dine with a general?" It was then, Napoleon, delighted with the humour and the boldness of his grenadier, summoned the Old Guard, and had the sergeant promoted to the rank of captain on the spot. It was these apparently incongruous things, together with legends that I had heard and read of Napoleon, which gave me the idea of Valmond. First, a sketch of about five thousand words was written, and it looked as though I were going to publish it as a short story; but one day, sitting in a drawing-room in front of a grand piano, on the back of which were a series of miniatures of the noted women who had played their part in Napoleon's life, the incident of the Countess of Carnstadt (I do not use the real name) at St. Helena associated itself with the picture in my memory of the philanthropist of the street corner. Thereupon the whole story of a son of Napoleon, ignorant of his own birth, but knowing that a son had been born to Napoleon at St. Helena, flitted through my imagination; and the story spread out before me all in an hour, like an army with banners. The next night--for this happened in New York--I went down to Hot Springs, Virginia, and began a piece of work which enthralled me as I had never before been enthralled, and as I have never been enthralled in the same way since; for it was perilous to health and mental peace. Fantasy as it is, the book has pictures of French-Canadian life which are as true as though the story itself was all true. Characters are in it like Medallion, the little chemist, the avocat, Lajeunesse the blacksmith, and Madeleinette, his daughter, which were in some of the first sketches I ever wrote of French Canada, and subsequently appearing in the novelette entitled The Lane That Had No Turning. Indeed, 'When Valmond Came to Pontiac', historical fantasy as it is, has elements both of romance and realism. Of all the books which I have written, perhaps because it cost me so much, because it demanded so much of me at the time of its writing, I care for it the most. It was as good work as I could do. This much may at least be said: that no one has done anything quite in the same way or used the same subject, or given it the same treatment. Also it may be said, as the Saturday Review remarked, that it contained one whole, new idea, and that was the pathetic--unutterably pathetic--incident of a man driven by the truth in his blood to impersonate himself. "Oh, withered is the garland of the war, The Soldier's pole is fallen." WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC CHAPTER I On one corner stood the house of Monsieur Garon the avocat; on another, the shop of the Little Chemist; on another, the office of Medallion the auctioneer; and on the last, the Hotel Louis Quinze. The chief characteristics of Monsieur Garon's house were its brass door-knobs, and the verdant vines that climbed its sides; of the Little Chemist's shop, the perfect whiteness of the building, the rolls of sober wall- paper, and the bottles of coloured water in the shop windows; of Medallion's, the stoop that surrounded three sides of the building, and the notices of sales tacked up, pasted up, on the front; of the Hotel Louis Quinze, the deep dormer windows, the solid timbers, and the veranda that gave its front distinction--for this veranda had been the pride of several generations of landlords, and its heavy carving and bulky grace were worth even more admiration than Pontiac gave to it. The square which the two roads and the four corners made was, on week- days, the rendezvous of Pontiac, and the whole parish; on Sunday mornings the rendezvous was shifted to the large church on the hill, beside which was the house of the Cure, Monsieur Fabre. Travelling towards the south, out of the silken haze of a mid-summer day, you would come in time to the hills of Maine; north, to the city of Quebec and the river St. Lawrence; east, to the ocean; and west, to the Great Lakes and the land of the English. Over this bright province Britain raised her flag, but only Medallion and a few others loved it for its own sake, or saluted it in the English tongue. In the drab velvety dust of these four corners, were gathered, one night of July a generation ago, the children of the village and many of their elders. All the events of that epoch were dated from the evening of this particular day. Another day of note the parish cherished, but it was merely a grave fulfilment of the first. Upon the veranda-stoop of the Louis Quinze stood a man of apparently about twenty-eight years of age. When you came to study him closely, some sense of time and experience in his look told you that he might be thirty-eight, though his few grey hairs seemed but to emphasise a certain youthfulness in him. His eye was full, singularly clear, almost benign, and yet at one moment it gave the impression of resolution, at another it suggested the wayward abstraction of the dreamer. He was well-figured, with a hand of peculiar whiteness, suggesting in its breadth more the man of action than of meditation. But it was a contradiction; for, as you saw it rise and fall, you were struck by its dramatic delicacy; as it rested on the railing of the veranda, by its latent power. You faced incongruity everywhere. His dress was bizarre, his face almost classical, the brow clear and strong, the profile good to the mouth, where there showed a combination of sensuousness and adventure. Yet in the face there was an illusive sadness, strangely out of keeping with the long linen coat, frilled shirt, flowered waistcoat, lavender trousers, boots of enamelled leather, and straw hat with white linen streamers. It was a whimsical picture. At the moment that the Cure and Medallion the auctioneer came down the street together towards the Louis Quinze, talking amiably, this singular gentleman was throwing out hot pennies, with a large spoon, from a tray in his hand, calling on the children to gather them, in French which was not the French of Pontiac--or Quebec; and this refined accent the Cure was quick to detect, as Monsieur Garon the avocat, standing on the outskirts of the crowd, had done, some moments before. The stranger seemed only conscious of his act of liberality and the children before him. There was a naturalness in his enjoyment which was almost boylike; a naive sort of exultation possessed him. He laughed softly to see the children toss the pennies from hand to hand, blowing to cool them; the riotous yet half-timorous scramble for them, and burnt fingers thrust into hot, blithe mouths. And when he saw a fat little lad of five crowded out of the way by his elders, he stepped down with a quick word of sympathy, put a half-dozen pennies in the child's pocket, snatched him up and kissed him, and then returned to the stoop, where were gathered the landlord, the miller, and Monsieur De la Riviere, the young Seigneur. But the most intent spectator of the scene was Parpon the dwarf, who was grotesquely crouched upon the wide ledge of a window. Tray after tray of pennies was brought out and emptied, till at last the stranger paused, handed the spoon to the landlord, drew out a fine white handkerchief and dusted his fingers, standing silent for a moment and smiling upon the crowd. It was at this point that some young villager called, in profuse compliment: "Three cheers for the Prince!" The stranger threw an accent of pose into his manner, his eye lighted, his chin came up, he dropped one hand negligently on his hip, and waved the other in acknowledgment. Presently he beckoned, and from the hotel were brought out four great pitchers of wine and a dozen tin cups, and, sending the garcon around with one, the landlord with another, he motioned Parpon the dwarf to bear a hand. Parpon shot out a quick, half-resentful look at him, but meeting a warm, friendly eye, he took the pitcher and went round among the elders, while the stranger himself courteously drank with the young men of the village, who, like many wiser folk, thus yielded to the charm of mystery. To every one he said a hearty thing, and sometimes touched his greeting off with a bit of poetry or a rhetorical phrase. These dramatic extravagances served him well, for he was among a race of story-tellers and crude poets. Parpon, uncouth and furtive, moved through the crowd, dispensing as much irony as wine: "Three bucks we come to a pretty inn, 'Hostess,' say we, 'have you red wine?' Brave! Brave! 'Hostess,' say we, 'have you red wine?' Bravement! Our feet are sore and our crops are dry, Bravement!" This he hummed to the avocat in a tone all silver, for he had that one gift of Heaven as recompense for his deformity, his long arms, big head, and short stature, a voice which gave you a shiver of delight and pain all at once. It had in it mystery and the incomprehensible. This drinking-song, hummed just above his breath, touched some antique memory in Monsieur Garen the avocat, and he nodded kindly at the dwarf, though he refused the wine. "Ah, M'sieu' le Cure," said Parpon, ducking his head to avoid the hand that Medallion would have laid on it, "we're going to be somebody now in Pontiac, bless the Lord! We're simple folk, but we're not neglected. He wears a ribbon on his breast, M'sieu' le Cure!" This was true. Fastened by a gold bar to the stranger's breast was the ribbon of an order. The Cure smiled at Parpon's words, and looked curiously and gravely at the stranger. Tall Medallion the auctioneer took a glass of the wine, and, lifting it, said: "Who shall I drink to, Parpon, my dear? What is he?" "Ten to one, a dauphin or a fool," answered Parpon, with a laugh like the note of an organ. "Drink to both, Long-legs." Then he trotted away to the Little Chemist. "Hush, my friend!" said he, and he drew the other's ear down to his mouth. "Now there'll be plenty of work for you. We're going to be gay in Pontiac. We'll come to you with our spoiled stomachs." He edged round the circle, and back to where the miller his master and the young Seigneur stood. "Make more fine flour, old man," said he to the miller; "pates are the thing now." Then, to Monsieur De la Riviere: "There's nothing like hot pennies and wine to make the world love you. But it's too late, too late for my young Seigneur!" he added in mockery, and again he began to hum in a sort of amiable derision: "My little tender heart, O gai, vive le roi! My little tender heart, O gai, vive le roi! 'Tis for a grand baron, Vive le roi, la reine! 'Tis for a grand baron, Vive Napoleon!" The words of the last two lines swelled out far louder than the dwarf meant, for few save Medallion and Monsieur De la Riviere had ever heard him sing. His concert-house was the Rock of Red Pigeons, his favourite haunt, his other home, where, it was said, he met the Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills, and had gay hours with them. And this was a matter of awe to the timid habitants. At the words, "Vive Napoleon!" a hand touched him on the shoulder. He turned and saw the stranger looking at him intently, his eyes alight. "Sing it," he said softly, yet with an air of command. Parpon hesitated, shrank back. "Sing it," he insisted, and the request was taken up by others, till Parpon's face flushed with a sort of pleasurable defiance. The stranger stooped and whispered something in his ear. There was a moment's pause, in which the dwarf looked into the other's eyes with an intense curiosity--or incredulity--and then Medallion lifted the little man on to the railing of the veranda, and over the heads and into the hearts of the people there passed, in a divine voice, a song known to many, yet coming as a new revelation to them all: "My mother promised it, O gai, rive le roi! My mother promised it, O gai, vive le roi! To a gentleman of the king, Vive le roi, la reine! To a gentleman of the king, Vive Napoleon!" This was chanted lightly, airily, with a sweetness almost absurd, coming as it did from so uncouth a musician. The last verses had a touch of pathos, droll yet searching: "Oh, say, where goes your love? O gai, rive le roi! Oh, say, where goes your love? O gai, vive le roi! He rides on a white horse, Vive le roi, la reine! He wears a silver sword, Vive Napoleon! "Oh, grand to the war he goes, O gai, vive le roi! Oh, grand to the war he goes, O gai, vive le roi! Gold and silver he will bring, Vive le roi, la reine; And eke the daughter of a king Vive Napoleon!" The crowd--women and men, youths and maidens--enthusiastically repeated again and again the last lines and the refrain, "Vive le roi, la reine! Vive Napoleon!" Meanwhile the stranger stood, now looking at the singer with eager eyes, now searching the faces of the people, keen to see the effect upon them. His glance found the faces of the Cure, the avocat, and the auctioneer; and his eyes steadied to Medallion's humorous look, to the Cure's puzzled questioning, to the avocat's bird-like curiosity. It was plain they were not antagonistic (why should they be?); and he--was there any reason why he should care whether or no they were for him or against him? True, he had entered the village in the dead of night, with many packages and much luggage, had roused the people at the Louis Quinze, the driver who had brought him departing before daybreak gaily, because of the gifts of gold given him above his wage. True, this singular gentleman had taken three rooms in the Louis Quinze, had paid the landlord in advance, and had then gone to bed, leaving word that he was not to be waked till three o'clock the next afternoon. True, the landlord could not by any hint or indirection discover from whence his midnight visitor came. But if a gentleman paid his way, and was generous and polite, and minded his own business, wherefore should people busy themselves about him? When he appeared on the veranda of the inn with the hot pennies, not a half-dozen people in the village had known aught of his presence in Pontiac. The children came first, to scorch their fingers and fill their pockets, and after them the idle young men, and the habitants in general. The stranger having warmly shaken Parpon by the hand and again whispered in his ear, stepped forward. The last light of the setting sun was reflected from the red roof of the Little Chemist's shop upon the quaint figure and eloquent face, which had in it something of the gentleman, something of the comedian. The alert Medallion himself did not realise the touch of the comedian in him, till the white hand was waved grandiloquently over the heads of the crowd. Then something in the gesture corresponded with something in the face, and the auctioneer had a nut which he could not crack for many a day. The voice was musical,-- as fine in speaking almost as the dwarf's in singing,--and the attention of the children was caught by the rich, vibrating tones. He addressed himself to them. "My children," he said, "my name is--Valmond! We have begun well; let us be better friends. I have come from far off to be one of you, to stay with you for awhile--who knows how long--how long?" He placed a finger meditatively on his lips, sending a sort of mystery into his look and bearing. "You are French, and so am I. You are playing on the shores of life, and so am I. You are beginning to think and dream, and so am I. We are only children till we begin to make our dreams our life. So I am one with you, for only now do I step from dream to action. My children, you shall be my brothers, and together we will sow the seed of action and reap the grain; we will make a happy garden of flowers, and violets shall bloom everywhere out of our dream--everywhere. Violets, my children, pluck the wild violets, and bring them to me, and I will give you silver for them, and I will love you. Never forget," he added, with a swelling voice, "that you owe your first duty to your mothers, and afterwards to your country, and to the spirit of France. I see afar"--he looked towards the setting sun, and stretched out his arm dramatically, yet such was the eloquence of his voice and person that not even the young Seigneur or Medallion smiled--"I see afar," he repeated, "the glory of our dreams fulfilled; after toil and struggle and loss: and I call upon you now to unfurl the white banner of justice and liberty and the restoration." The women who listened guessed little of what he meant by the fantastic sermon; but they wiped their eyes in sympathy, and gathered their children to them, and said, "Poor gentleman, poor gentleman!" and took him instantly to their hearts. The men were mystified, but wine and rhetoric had fired them, and they cheered him--no one knew why. The Cure, as he turned to leave, with Monsieur Garon, shook his head in bewilderment; but even he did not smile, for the man's eloquence had impressed him; and more than once he looked back at the dispersing crowd and the quaint figure posing on the veranda. The avocat was thinking deeply, and as, in the dusk, he left the Cure at his own door, all that he ventured was: "Singular--a most singular person!" "We shall see, we shall see," said the Cure abstractedly, and they said good-night. Medallion joined the Little Chemist in his shop door and watched the habitants scatter, till only Parpon and the stranger were left, and these two faced each other, and, without a word, passed into the hotel together. "H'm, h'm!" said Medallion into space, drumming the door-jamb with his fingers; "which is it, my Parpon--a dauphin, or a fool?" He and the Little Chemist talked long, their eyes upon the window opposite, inside which Monsieur Valmond and Parpon were in conference. Up the dusty street wandered fitfully the refrain: "To a gentleman of the king, Vive Napoleon!" And once they dimly saw Monsieur Valmond come to the open window and stretch out his hand, as if in greeting to the song and the singer. CHAPTER II This all happened on a Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and for several days, Valmond went about making friends. His pockets were always full of pennies and silver pieces, and he gave them liberally to the children and to the poor, though, indeed, there were few suffering poor in Pontiac. All had food enough to keep them from misery, though often it got no further than sour milk and bread, with a dash of sugar in it of Sundays, and now and then a little pork and molasses. As for homes, every man and woman had a house of a kind, with its low, projecting roof and dormer windows, according to the ability and prosperity of the owner. These houses were whitewashed, or painted white and red, and had double glass in winter, after the same measure. There was no question of warmth, for in snow-time every house was banked up with earth above the foundations, the cracks and intersections of windows and doors filled with cloth from the village looms; and wood was for the chopping far and near. Within these air-tight cubes these simple folk baked and were happy, content if now and then the housewife opened the one pane of glass which hung on a hinge, or the slit in the sash, to let in the cold air. As a rule, the occasional opening of the outer door to admit some one sufficed, for out rushed the hot blast, and in came the dry, frosty air to brace to their tasks the cheerful story-teller and singer. In summer the little fields were broken with wooden ploughs, followed by the limb of a tree for harrow, and the sickle, the scythe, and the flail to do their office in due course; and if the man were well-to-do, he swung the cradle in his rye and wheat, rejoicing in the sweep of the knife and the fulness of the swathe. Then, too, there was the driving of the rivers, when the young men ran the logs from the backwoods to the great mills near and far: red-shirted, sashed, knee-booted, with rings in their ears, and wide hats on their heads, and a song in their mouths, breaking a jamb, or steering a crib, or raft, down the rapids. And the voyageur also, who brought furs out of the North down the great lakes, came home again to Pontiac, singing in his patois: "Nous avons passe le bois, Nous somm's a la rive!" Or, as he went forth: "Le dieu du jour s'avance; Amis, les vents sont doux; Berces par l'esperance, Partons, embarquons-noun. A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!" And, as we know, it was summer when Valmond came to Pontiac. The river- drivers were just beginning to return, and by and by the flax swingeing would begin in the little secluded valley by the river; and one would see, near and far, the bright sickle flashing across the gold and green area; and all the pleasant furniture of summer set forth in pride, by the Mother of the House whom we call Nature. Valmond was alive to it all, almost too alive, for at first the flamboyancy of his spirit touched him off with melodrama. Yet, on the whole, he seemed at first more natural than involved or obscure. His love for children was real, his politeness to women spontaneous. He was seen to carry the load of old Madame Degardy up the hill, and place it at her own door. He also had offered her a pinch of snuff, which she acknowledged by gravely offering a pinch of her own from a dirty twist of brown paper. One day he sprang over a fence, took from the hands of coquettish Elise Malboir an axe, and split the knot which she in vain had tried to break. Not satisfied with this, he piled full of wood the stone oven outside the house, and carried water for her from the spring. This came from natural kindness, for he did not see the tempting look she gave him, nor the invitation in her eye, as he turned to leave her. He merely asked her name. But after he had gone, as though he had forgotten, or remembered, something, he leaped the fence again, came up to her with an air of half- abstraction, half-courtesy, took both her hands in his, and, before she could recover herself, kissed her on the cheeks in a paternal sort of way, saying, "Adieu, adieu, my child!" and left her. The act had condescension in it; yet, too, something unconsciously simple and primitive. Parpon the dwarf, who that moment perched himself on the fence, could not decide which Valmond was just then--dauphin or fool. Valmond did not see the little man, but swung away down the dusty road, reciting to himself couplets from 'Le Vieux Drapeau': "Oh, come, my flag, come, hope of mine, And thou shalt dry these fruitless tears;" and apparently, without any connection, he passed complacently to an entirely different song: "She loved to laugh, she loved to drink, I bought her jewels fine." Then he added, with a suddenness which seemed to astound himself,--for afterwards he looked round quickly, as if to see if he had been heard,-- "Elise Malboir--h'm! a pretty name, Elise; but Malboir--tush! it should be Malbarre; the difference between Lombardy cider and wine of the Empire." Parpon, left behind, sat on the fence with his legs drawn up to his chin, looking at Elise, till she turned and caught the provoking light of his eye. She flushed, then was cool again, for she was put upon her mettle by the suggestion of his glance. "Come, lazy-bones," she said; "come fetch me currants from the garden." "Come, mocking-bird," answered he; "come peck me on the cheek." She tossed her head and struck straight home. "It isn't a game of pass it on from gentleman to beetle." "You think he's a gentleman?" he asked. "As sure as I think you're a beetle." He laughed, took off his cap, and patted himself on the head. "Parpon, Parpon!" said he, "if Jean Malboir could see you now, he'd put his foot on you and crush you--dirty beetle!" At the mention of her father's name a change passed over Elise; for this same Parpon, when all men else were afraid, had saved Jean Malboir's life at a log chute in the hills. When he died, Parpon was nearer to him than the priest, and he loved to hear the dwarf chant his wild rhythms of the Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills, more than to listen to holy prayers. Elise, who had a warm, impulsive nature, in keeping with her black eyes and tossing hair, who was all fire and sun and heart and temper, ran over and caught the dwarf round the neck, and kissed him on the cheek, dashing the tears out of her eyes, as she said: "I'm a cat, I'm a bad-tempered thing, Parpon; I hate myself." He laughed, shook his shaggy head, and pushed her away the length of his long, strong arms. "Bosh!" said he; "you're a puss and no cat, and I like you better for the claws. If you hate yourself, you'll get a big penance. Hate the ugly like Parpon, not the pretty like you. The one's no sin, the other is." She was beside the open door of the oven; and it would be hard to tell whether her face was suffering from heat or from blushes. However that might chance, her mouth was soft and sweet, and her eyes were still wet. "Who is he, Parpon?" she asked, not looking at him. "Is he like Duclosse the mealman, or Lajeunesse the blacksmith, or Garotte the lime-burner-and the rest?" "Of course not," she answered. "Is he like the Cure, or Monsieur De la Riviere, or Monsieur Garon, or Monsieur Medallion?" "He's different," she said hesitatingly. "Better or worse?" "More--more"--she did not know what to say--"more interesting." "Is he like the Judge Honourable that comes from Montreal, or the grand Governor, or the General that travels with the Governor?" "Yes, but different--more--more like us in some things, like them in others, and more--splendid. He speaks such fine things! You mind the other night at the Louis Quinze. He is like--" She paused. "What is he like?" Parpon asked slyly, enjoying her difficulty. "Ah, I know," she answered; "he is a little like Madame the American who came two years ago. There is something--something!" Parpon laughed again. "Like Madame Chalice from New York--fudge!" Yet he eyed her as if he admired her penetration. "How?" he urged. "I don't know--quite," she answered, a little pettishly. "But I used to see Madame go off in the woods, and she would sit hour by hour, and listen to the waterfall, and talk to the birds, and at herself too; and more than once I saw her shut her hands--like that! You remember what tiny hands she had?" (She glanced at her own brown ones unconsciously.) "And she spoke out, her eyes running with tears--and she all in pretty silks, and a colour like a rose. She spoke out like this: 'Oh, if I could only do something, something, some big thing! What is all this silly coming and going to me, when I know, I know I might do it, if I had the chance! O Harry, Harry, can't you see!'" "Harry was her husband. Ah, what a fisherman was he!" said Parpon, nodding. "What did she mean by doing 'big things'?" he added. "How do I know?" she asked fretfully. "But Monsieur Valmond seems to me like her, just the same." "Monsieur Valmond is a great man," said Parpon slowly. "You know!" she cried; "you know! Oh, tell me, what is he? Who is he? Where does he come from? Why is he here? How long will he stay? Tell me, how long will se stay?" She caught flutteringly at Parpon's shoulder. "You remember what I sang the other night?" he asked. "Yes, yes," she answered quickly. "Oh, how beautiful it was! Ah, Parpon, why don't you sing for us oftener, and all the world would love you, and--" "I don't love the world," he retorted gruffly; "and I'll sing for the devil" (she crossed herself) "as soon as for silly gossips in Pontiac." "Well, well!" she asked; "what had your song to do with him, with Monsieur Valmond?" "Think hard, my dear," he said, with mystery in his look. Then, breaking off: "Madame Chalice is coming back to-day; the Manor House is open, and you should see how they fly round up there." He nodded towards the hill beyond. "Pontiac'll be a fine place by and by," she said, for she had village patriotism deep in her veins. Had not her people lived there long before the conquest by the English? "But tell me, tell me what your song had to do with Monsieur," she urged again. "It's a pretty song, but--" "Think about it," he answered provokingly. "Adieu, my child!" he went on mockingly, using Valmond's words, and catching both her hands as he had done; then, springing upon a bench by the oven, he kissed her on both cheeks. "Adieu, my child!" he said again, and, jumping down, trotted away out into the road. Back to her, from the dust he made as he shuffled away, there came the words: "Gold and silver he will bring, Vive le roi, la reine! And eke the daughter of a king Vive Napoleon!" She went about her work, the song in her ears, and the words of the refrain beat in and out, out and in: "Vive Napoleon." Her brow was troubled, and she perched her head on this side and on that, as she tried to guess what the dwarf had meant. At last she sat down on a bench at the door of her home, and the summer afternoon spent its glories on her; for the sunflowers and the hollyhocks were round her, and the warmth gave her face a shining health and joyousness. There she brooded till she heard the voice of her mother calling across the meadow; then she got up with a sigh, and softly repeated Parpon's words: "He is a great man!" In the middle of that night she started up from a sound sleep, and, with a little cry, whispered into the silence: "Napoleon--Napoleon!" She was thinking of Valmond. A revelation had come to her out of her dreams. But she laughed at it, and buried her face in her pillow and went to sleep, hoping to dream again. CHAPTER III In less than one week Valmond was as outstanding from Pontiac as Dalgrothe Mountain, just beyond it in the south. His liberality, his jocundity, his occasional abstraction, his meditative pose, were all his own; his humour that of the people. He was too quick in repartee and drollery for a bourgeois, too "near to the bone" in point for an aristocrat, with his touch of the comedian and the peasant also. Besides, he was mysterious and picturesque, and this is alluring to women and to the humble, if not to all the world. It might be his was the comedian's fascination, but the flashes of grotesqueness rather pleased the eye than hurt the taste of Pontiac. Only in one quarter was there hesitation, added to an anxiety almost painful; for to doubt Monsieur Valmond would have shocked the sense of courtesy so dear to Monsieur the Cure, Monsieur Garon, the Little Chemist, and even Medallion the auctioneer, who had taken into his bluff, odd nature something of the spirit of those old-fashioned gentlemen. Monsieur De la Riviere, the young Seigneur, had to be reckoned with independently. It was their custom to meet once a week, at the house of one or another, for a "causerie," as the avocat called it. On the Friday evening of this particular week, all were seated in the front garden of the Cure's house, as Valmond came over the hill, going towards the Louis Quinze. His step was light, his head laid slightly to one side, as if in pleased and inquiring reverie, and there was a lifting of one corner of the mouth, suggesting an amused disdain. Was it that disdain which comes from conquest not important enough to satisfy ambition? The social conquest of a village--to be conspicuous and attract the groundlings in this tiny theatre of life, that seemed little! Valmond appeared not to see the little coterie, but presently turned, when just opposite the gate, and, raising his hat, half paused. Then, without more ado, he opened the gate and advanced to the outstretched hand of the Cure, who greeted him with a courtly affability. He shook hands with, and nodded good-humouredly at, Medallion and the Little Chemist, bowed to the avocat, and touched off his greeting to Monsieur De la Riviere with deliberation, not offering his hand--this very reserve a sign of equality not lost on the young Seigneur. He had not this stranger at any particular advantage, as he had wished, he knew scarcely why. Valmond took the seat offered him beside the Cure, who remarked presently: "My dear friend, Monsieur Garon, was saying just now that the spirit of France has ever been the Captain of Freedom among the nations." Valmond glanced quickly from the Cure to the others, a swift, inquisitive look, then settled back in his chair, and turned, bowing, towards Monsieur Garon. The avocat's pale face flushed, his long, thin fingers twined round each other and untwined, and presently he said, in his little chirping voice, so quaint as to be almost unreal: "I was saying that the spirit of France lived always ahead of the time, was ever first to conceive the feeling of the coming century, and by its own struggles and sufferings--sometimes too abrupt and perilous--made easy the way for the rest of the world." During these words a change passed over Valmond. His restless body became still, his mobile face steady and almost set--all the life of him seemed to have burnt into his eyes; but he answered nothing, and the Cure, in the pause, was constrained to say: "Our dear Monsieur Garon knows perfectly the history of France, and is devoted to the study of the Napoleonic times and of the Great Revolution --alas for our people and the saints of Holy Church who perished then!" The avocat lifted a hand in mute disacknowledgment. Again there was a silence, and out of the pause Monsieur De la Riviere's voice was heard. "Monsieur Valmond, how fares this spirit of France now--you come from France?" There was a shadow of condescension and ulterior meaning in De la Riviere's voice, for he had caught the tricks of the poseur in this singular gentleman. Valmond did not stir, but looked steadily at De la Riviere, and said slowly, dramatically, yet with a strange genuineness also: "The spirit of France, monsieur, the spirit of France looks not forward only, but backward, for her inspiration. It is as ready for action now as when the old order was dragged from Versailles to Paris, and in Paris to the guillotine, when France got a principle and waited, waited--" He did not finish his sentence, but threw back his head with a sort of reflective laugh. "Waited for what?" asked the young Seigneur, trying to conquer his dislike. "For the Man!" came the quick reply. The avocat rubbed his hands in pleasure. He instantly divined one who knew his subject, though he talked this melodramatically: a thing not uncommon among the habitants and the professional story-tellers, but scarcely the way of the coterie. "Ah, yes, yes," he said, "for--? monsieur, for--?" He paused, as if to give himself the delight of hearing their visitor speak. "For Napoleon," was the abrupt reply. "Ah, yes, dear Lord, yes--a Napoleon--of--of the Empire. France can only cherish an idea when a man is behind it, when a man lives it, embodies it. She must have heroes. She is a poet, a poet--and an actress." "So said the Man, Napoleon," cried Valmond, getting to his feet. "He said that to Barras, to Remusat, to Josephine, to Lucien, to--to another, when France had for the moment lost her idea--and her man." The avocat trembled to his feet to meet Valmond, who stood up as he spoke, his face shining with enthusiasm, a hand raised in broad dramatic gesture, a dignity come upon him, in contrast to the figure which had disported itself through the village during the past week. The avocat had found a man after his own heart. He knew that Valmond understood whereof he spoke. It was as if an artist saw a young genius use a brush on canvas for a moment; a swordsman watch an unknown master of the sword. It was not so much the immediate act, as the divination, the rapport, the spirit behind the act, which could only come from the soul of the real thing. "I thank you, monsieur; I thank you with all my heart," the avocat said. "It is the true word you have spoken." Here a lad came running to fetch the Little Chemist, and Medallion and he departed, but not without the auctioneer having pressed Valmond's hand warmly, for he was quick of emotion, and, like the avocat, he recognised, as he thought, the true word behind the dramatic trappings. Monsieur Garon and Valmond talked on, eager, responsive, Valmond lost in the discussion of Napoleon, Garon in the man before him. By pregnant allusions, by a map drawn hastily on the ground here, and an explosion of secret history there, did Valmond win to a sort of worship this fine little Napoleonic scholar, who had devoured every book on his hero which had come in his way since boyhood. Student as he was, he had met a man whose knowledge of the Napoleonic life was vastly more intricate, searching and vital than his own. He, Monsieur Garon, spoke as from a book or out of a library, but this man as from the Invalides, or, since that is anachronistic, from the lonely rock of St. Helena. A private saying of Napoleon's, a word from his letters and biography, a phrase out of his speeches to his soldiers, sent tears to the avocat's eyes, and for a moment transformed Valmond. While they talked, the Cure and the young Seigneur listened, and there passed into their minds the same wonder that had perplexed Elise Malboir; so that they were troubled, as was she, each after his own manner and temperament. Their reasoning, their feelings were different, but they were coming to the point the girl had reached when she cried into the darkness of the night, "Napoleon--Napoleon!" They sat forgetful of the passing of time, the Cure preening with pleasure because of Valmond's remarks upon the Church when quoting the First Napoleon's praise of religion. Suddenly a carriage came dashing up the hill, with four horses and a postilion. The avocat was in the house searching for a book. De la Riviere, seeing the carriage first, got to his feet with instant excitement, and the others turned to look. As it neared the house, the Cure took off his baretta, and smiled expectantly, a little red spot burning on both cheeks. These deepened as the carriage stopped, and a lady, a little lady like a golden flower, with sunny eyes and face--how did she keep so fresh in their dusty roads?--stood up impulsively, and before any one could reach the gate was entering herself, her blue eyes swimming with the warmth of a kind heart--or a warm temperament, which may exist without a kind heart. Was it the heart, or the temperament, or both, that sent her forward with hands outstretched, saying: "Ah, my dear, dear Cure, how glad I am to see you once again! It is two years too long, dear Cure." She held his hand in both of hers, and looked up into his eyes with a smile at once child-like and naive--and masterful; for behind the simplicity and the girlish manner there was a power, a mind, with which this sweet golden hair and cheeks like a rose-garden had nothing to do. The Cure, beaming, touched by her warmth, and by her tiny caressing fingers, stooped and kissed them both like an old courtier. He had come of a good family in France long ago, very long ago,--and even in this French-Canadian village; where he had taught and served and lingered forty years, he had kept the graces of his youth, and this beautiful woman drew them all out. Since his arrival in Pontiac, he had never kissed a woman's hand--women had kissed his; and this woman was a Protestant, like Medallion! Turning from the Cure, she held out a hand to the young Seigneur with a little casual air, as if she had but seen him yesterday, and said: "Monsieur De la Riviere--what, still buried?--and the world waiting for the great touch! But we in Pontiac gain what the world loses." She turned to the Cure again, and said, placing a hand upon his arm: "I could not pass without stepping in upon my dear old friend, even though soiled and unpresentable. But you forgive that, don't you?" "Madame is always welcome, and always unspotted of the dusty world," he answered gallantly. She caught his fingers in hers as might a child, turned full upon Valmond, and waited. The Cure instantly presented Valmond to her. She looked at him brightly, alluringly, apparently so simply; yet her first act showed the perception behind that rosy and golden face, and the demure eyes whose lids languished now and then--to the unknowing with an air of coquetry, to the knowing--did any know her?--as one would shade one's eyes to see a landscape clearly, or make out a distant figure. As Valmond bowed, a thought seemed to fetch down the pink eyelids, and she stretched out her hand, which he took and kissed, while she said in English, though they had been talking in French: "A traveller too, like myself, Monsieur Valmond? But Pontiac--why Pontiac?" A furtive, inquiring look shot from the eyes of the young Seigneur, a puzzled glance from the Cure's, as they watched Valmond; for they did not know that he had knowledge of English; he had not spoken it to Medallion, who had sent into his talk several English words. How did this woman divine it? A strange suspicion flashed into Valmond's face, but it was gone on the instant, and he replied quickly: "Yes, madame, a traveller; and for Pontiac--there is as much earth and sky about Pontiac as about Paris or London or New York." "But people count, Monsieur-Valmond." She hesitated before the name, as if trying to remember, though she recalled perfectly. It was her tiny fashion to pique, to appear unknowing. "Truly, Madame Chalice," he answered instantly, for he did not yield to the temptation to pause before her name; "but sometimes the few are as important to us as the many--eh?" She almost started at the eh, for it broke in grimly upon the gentlemanly flavour of his speech. "If my reasons for coming were only as good as madame's--" he added. "Who knows!" she said, with her eyes resting idly on his flowered waistcoat, and dropping to the incongruous enamelled knee-boots with their red tassels. She turned to the Cure again, but not till Valmond had added: "Or the same--who knows?" Again she looked at him with drooping eyelids and a slight smile so full of acid possibilities that De la Riviere drew in a sibilant breath of delight. Her movement had been as towards an impertinence; but as she caught Valmond's eye, something in it, so really boylike, earnest, and free from insolence, met hers, that, with a little way she had, she laid back her head slowly, her lips parted in a sweet, ambiguous smile, her eyes dwelt on him with a humorous interest, or flash of purpose, and she said softly: "Nobody knows--eh?" She could not resist the delicate malice of the exclamation, she imitated the gaucherie so delightfully. Valmond did not fail to see her meaning, but he was too wise to show it. He hardly knew how it was he had answered her unhesitatingly in English, for it had been his purpose to avoid speaking English in Pontiac. Presently Madame Chalice caught sight of Monsieur Garon coming from the house. When he saw her, he stopped short in delighted surprise. Gathering up her skirts, she ran to him, put both hands on his shoulders, kissed him on the cheek, and said: "Monsieur Garon, Monsieur Garon, my good avocat, my Solon! are the coffee, and the history, and the blest madeira still chez-toi?" There was no jealousy in the Cure; he smiled at the scene with great benevolence, for he was as a brother to Monsieur Garon. If he had any good thing, it was his first wish to share it with him; even to taking him miles away to some simple home where a happy thing had come to poor folk--the return of a prodigal son, a daughter's fortunate marriage, or the birth of a child to childless people; and there together they exchanged pinches of snuff over the event, and made compliments from the same mould, nor desired difference of pattern. To the pretty lady's words, Monsieur Garon blushed, and his thin hand fluttered to his lips. As if in sympathy, the Cure's fingers trembled to his cassock cord. "Madame, dear madame,"--the Cure approved by a caressing nod," we are all the same here in our hearts and in our homes, and if anything seem good in them to us, it is because you are pleased. You bring sunshine and relish to our lives, dear madame." The Cure beamed. This was after his own heart and he had ever said that his dear avocat would have been a brilliant orator, were it not for his retiring spirit. For himself, he was no speaker at all; he could only do his duty and love his people. So he had declared over and over again, and the look in his eyes said the same now. Madame's eyes were shining with tears. This admiration of her was too real to be doubted. "And yet--and yet"--she said, with a hand in the Cure's and the avocat's, drawing them near her--"a heretic, a heretic, my dear friends! How should I stand in your hearts if I were only of your faith? Or is it so that you yearn over the lost sheep, more than over the ninety and nine of the fold?" There was a real moisture in her eyes, and in her own heart she wondered, this fresh and venturing spirit, if she cared for them as they seemed to care for her--for she felt she had an inherent strain of the actress temperament, while these honest provincials were wholly real. But if she made them happy by her gaiety, what matter! The tears dried, and she flashed a malicious look at the young Seigneur, as though to say: "You had your chance, and you made nothing of it, and these simple gentlemen have done the gracious thing." Perhaps it was a liberal interpretation of his creed which prompted the Cure to add with a quaint smile: "'Thou art not far from the Kingdom,' my daughter." The avocat, who had no vanity, hastened to add to his former remarks, as if he had been guilty of an oversight: "Dear madame, you have flattered my poor gleanings in history; I am happy to tell you that there is here another and a better pilot in that sea. It is Monsieur Valmond," he added, his voice chirruping in his pleasure. "For Napoleon--" "Ah, Napoleon--yes, Napoleon?" she said, turning to Valmond, with a look half of interest, half of incredulity. "--For Napoleon is, through him, a revelation," the avocat went on. "He fills in the vague spaces, clears up mysteries of incident, and gives, instead, mystery of character." "Indeed," she added, still incredulous, but interested in this bizarre figure who had so worked upon her old friend, interested because she had a keen scent for mystery, and instinctively felt it here before her. Like De la Riviere, she perceived a strange combination of the gentleman and--something else; but, unlike him, she saw also a light in the face and eyes that might be genius, poetry, adventure. For the incongruities, what did they matter to her? She wished to probe life, to live it, to race the whole gamut of inquiry, experiences, follies, loves, and sacrifices, to squeeze the orange dry, and then to die while yet young, having gone the full compass, the needle pointing home. She was as broad as sumptuous in her nature; so what did a gaucherie matter? or a dash of the Oriental in a citizen of the Occident? "Then we must set the centuries right, and so on--if you will come to see me when I am settled at the Manor," she added, with soft raillery, to Valmond. He bowed, expressed his pleasure a little oracularly, and was about to say something else, but she turned deftly to De la Riviere, with a sweetness which made up for her previous irony to him, and said: "You, my kind Seigneur, will come to breakfast with me one day? My husband will be here soon. When you see our flag flying, you will find the table always laid for four." Then to the Cure and the avocat: "You shall visit me whenever you will, and you are to wait for nothing, or I shall come to fetch you. Voila! I am so glad to see you. And now, dear Cure, will you take me to my carriage?" Soon there was a surf of dust rising behind the carriage, hiding her; but four men, left behind in the little garden, stood watching, as if they expected to see a vision in rose and gold rise from it; and each was smiling unconsciously. CHAPTER IV Since Friday night the good Cure, in his calm, philosophical way, had brooded much over the talk in the garden upon France, the Revolution, and Napoleon. As a rule, his sermons were commonplace almost to a classical simplicity, but there were times when, moved by some new theme, he talked to the villagers as if they, like himself, were learned and wise. He thought of his old life in France, of two Napoleons that he had seen, and of the time when, at Neuilly, a famous general burst into his father's house, and, with streaming tears, cried: "He is dead--he is dead--at St. Helena--Napoleon! Oh, Napoleon!" A chapter from Isaiah came to the Cure's mind. He brought out his Bible from the house, and, walking up and down, read aloud certain passages. They kept singing in his ears all day He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball into a large country: there shalt thou die, and there the chariots of thy glory shall be the shame of thy lord's house. . . . And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah And I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand. . . . And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father's house. And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house, the offspring and the issue. . . . He looked very benign as he quoted these verses in the pulpit on Sunday morning, with a half smile, as of pleased meditation. He was lost to the people before him, and when he began to speak, it was as in soliloquy. He was talking to a vague audience, into that space where a man's eyes look when he is searching his own mind, discovering it to himself. The instability of earthly power, the putting down of the great, their exile and chastening, and their restoration in their own persons, or in the persons of their descendants--this was his subject. He brought the application down to their own rude, simple life, then returned with it to a higher plane. At last, as if the memories of France, "beloved and incomparable," overcame him, he dwelt upon the bitter glory of the Revolution. Then, with a sudden flush, he spoke of Napoleon. At that name the church became still, and the dullest habitant listened intently. Napoleon was in the air--a curious sequence to the song that was sung on the night of Valmond's arrival, when a phrase was put in the mouths of the parish, which gave birth to a personal reality. "Vive Napoleon!" had been on every lip this week, and it was an easy step from a phrase to a man. The Cure spoke with pensive dignity of Napoleon's past career, his work for France, his too proud ambition, behind which was his great love of country; and how, for chastening, God turned upon him violently and tossed him like a ball into the wide land of exile, from which he came out no more. "But," continued the calm voice, "his spirit, stripped of the rubbish of this quarrelsome world, and freed from the spite of foes, comes out from exile and lives in our France to-day--for she is still ours, though we find peace and bread to eat, under another flag. And in these troubled times, when France needs a man, even as a barren woman a child to be the token of her womanhood, it may be that one sprung from the loins of the Great Napoleon may again give life to the principle which some have sought to make into a legend. Even as the deliverer came out of obscure Corsica, so from some outpost of France, where the old watchwords still are called, may rise another Napoleon, whose mission will be civic glory and peace alone, the champion of the spirit of France, defending it against the unjust. He shall be fastened as a nail in a sure place, as a glorious throne to his father's house." He leaned over the pulpit, and, pausing, looked down at his congregation. Then, all at once, he was aware that he had created a profound impression. Just in front of him, his eyes burning with a strange fire, sat Monsieur Valmond. Parpon, beside him, hung over the back of a seat, his long arms stretched out, his hands applauding in a soundless way. Beneath the sword of Louis the Martyr, the great treasure of the parish, presented to this church by Marie Antoinette, sat Monsieur Garon, his thin fingers pressed to his mouth as if to stop a sound. Presently, out of pure spontaneity, there ran through the church like a soft chorus: "O, say, where goes your love? O gai, vive le roi! He wears a silver sword, Vive Napoleon!" The thing was unprecedented. Who had started it? Afterwards some said it was Parpon, the now chosen comrade--or servant--of Valmond, who, people said, had given himself up to the stranger, body and soul; but no one could swear to that. Shocked, and taken out of his dream, the Cure raised his hand against the song. "Hush, hush, my children!" he said. "Hush, I command you!" It was the sight of the upraised hands, more than the Cure's voice, which stilled the outburst. Those same hands had sprinkled the holy water in the sacrament of baptism, had blessed man and maid at the altar, had quieted the angry arm lifted to strike, had anointed the brow of the dying, and laid a crucifix on breasts which had ceased to harbour breath and care and love, and all things else. Silence fell. In another moment the Cure finished his sermon, but not till his eyes had again met those of Valmond, and there had passed into his mind a sudden, startling thought. Unconsciously the Cure had declared himself the patron of all that made Pontiac for ever a notable spot in the eyes of three nations: and if he repented of it, no man ever knew. During mass and the sermon Valmond had sat very still, once or twice smiling curiously at thought of how, inactive himself, the gate of destiny was being opened up for him. Yet he had not been all inactive. He had paid much attention to his toilet, selecting, with purpose, the white waistcoat, the long, blue-grey coat cut in a fashion anterior to this time by thirty years or more, and particularly to the arrangement of his hair. He resembled Napoleon--not the later Napoleon, but the Bonaparte, lean, shy, laconic, who fought at Marengo; and this had startled the Cure in his pulpit, and the rest of the little coterie. But Madame Chalice, sitting not far from Elise Malboir, had seen the resemblance in the Cure's garden on Friday evening; and though she had laughed at it, for, indeed, the matter seemed ludicrous enough at first, --the impression had remained. She was no Catholic, she did not as a rule care for religious services; but there was interest in the air, she was restless, the morning was inviting, she was reverent of all true expression of life and feeling, though a sad mocker in much; and so she had come to the little church. Following Elise's intent look, she read with amusement the girl's budding romance, and was then suddenly arrested by the head of Valmond, now half turned towards her. It had, indeed, a look of the First Napoleon. Was it the hair? Yes, it must be; but the head was not so square, so firm set; and what a world of difference in the grand effect! The one had been distant, splendid, brooding (so she glorified him); the other was an impressionist imitation, with dash, form, poetry, and colour. But where was the great strength? It was lacking. The close association of Parpon and Valmond--that was droll; yet, too, it had a sort of fitness, she knew scarcely why. However, Monsieur was not a fool, in the vulgar sense, for he had made a friend of a little creature who could be a wasp or a humming-bird, as he pleased. Then, too, this stranger had conquered her dear avocat; had won the hearts of the mothers and daughters--her own servants talked of no one else; had captured this pretty Elise Malboir; had caused the young men to imitate his walk and retail his sayings; had won from herself an invitation to visit her; and now had made an unconscious herald and champion of an innocent old Cure, and set a whole congregation singing "Vive Napoleon" after mass. Napoleon? She threw back her pretty head, laughed softly, and fanned herself. Napoleon? Why, of course there could be no real connection; the man was an impostor, a base impostor, playing upon the credulities of a secluded village. Absurd--and interesting! So interesting, she did not resent the attention given to Valmond, to the exclusion of herself; though to speak truly, her vanity desired not admiration more than is inherent in the race of women. Yet she was very dainty this morning, good to look at, and refreshing, with everything in flower-like accord; simple in general effect, yet with touches of the dramatic here and there--in the little black patch on the delicate health of her cheek, in the seductive arrangements of her laces. She loved dress, all the vanities, but she had something above it all--an imaginative mind, certain of whose faculties had been sharpened to a fine edge of cleverness and wit. For she was but twenty-three; with the logic of a woman of fifty, without its setness and lack of elasticity. She went straight for the hearts of things, while yet she glittered upon the surface. This was why Valmond interested her--not as a man, a physical personality, but as a mystery to be probed, discovered. Sentiment? Coquetry? Not with him. That for less interesting men, she said to herself. Why should a point or two of dress and manners affect her unpleasantly? She ought to be just, to remember that there was a touch of the fantastic, of the barbaric, in all genius. Was he a genius? For an instant she almost thought he was, when she saw the people make way for him to pass out of the church, as though he were a great personage, Parpon trotting behind him. He carried himself with true appreciation of the incident, acknowledging more by look than by sign this courtesy. "Upon my word," she said, "he has them in his pocket." Then, unconsciously plagiarising Parpon: "Prince or barber--a toss-up!" Outside, many had gathered round Medallion. The auctioneer, who liked the unique thing and was not without tact, having the gift of humour, took on himself the office of inquisitor, even as there rose again little snatches of "Vive Napoleon" from the crowd. He approached Valmond, who was moving on towards the Louis Quinze, with appreciation of a time for disappearing. "We know you, sir," said Medallion, "as Monsieur Valmond; but there are those who think you would let us address you by a name better known-- indeed, the name dear to all Frenchmen. If it be so, will you not let us call you Napoleon" (he took off his hat, and Valmond did the same), "and will you tell us what we may do for you?" Madame Chalice, a little way off, watched Valmond closely. He stood a moment in a quandary, yet he was not outwardly nervous, and he answered presently, with an air of empressement: "Monsieur, my friends, I am in the hands of fate. I am dumb. Fate speaks for me. But we shall know each other better; and I trust you, who, as Frenchmen, descended from a better day in France, will not betray me. Let us be patient till Destiny strikes the hour." Now for the first time to-day Valmond saw Madame Chalice. She could have done no better thing to serve him than to hold out her hand, and say in her clear tones, which had, too, a fascinating sort of monotony: "Monsieur, if you are idle Friday afternoon, perhaps you will bestow on me a half-hour at the Manor; and I will try to make half mine no bad one." He was keen enough to feel the delicacy of the point through the deftness of the phrase; and what he said and what he did now had no pose, but sheer gratitude. With a few gracious words to Medallion, she bowed and drove away, leaving Valmond in the midst of an admiring crowd. He was launched on an adventure as whimsical as tragical, if he was an impostor; and if he was not, as pathetic as droll. He was scarcely conscious that Parpon walked beside him, till the dwarf said: "Hold on, my dauphin, you walk too fast for your poor fool." CHAPTER V From this hour Valmond was carried on by a wave of fortune. Before vespers on that Sunday night, it was common talk that he was a true son of the Great Napoleon, born at St. Helena. Why did he come to Pontiac? He wished to be in retirement till his friends, acting for him in France, gave him the signal, and then with a small army of French-Canadians he would land in France. Thousands would gather round his standard, and so marching on to Paris, the Napoleonic faith would be revived, and he would come into his own. It is possible that these stories might have been traced to Parpon, but he had covered up his trail so well that no one followed him. On that Sunday night, young men and old flocked into Valmond's chambers at the Louis Quinze, shook hands with him, addressing him as "Your Excellency" or "Your Highness." He maintained towards them a mysterious yet kindly reserve, singularly effective. They inspected the martial furnishing of the room: the drum, the pair of rifles, the pistols, in the corner, the sabres crossed on the wall, the gold-handled sword that lay upon the table, and the picture of Napoleon on a white horse against the wall. Tobacco and wine were set upon a side table, and every man as he passed out took a glass of wine and enough tobacco for his pipe, and said: "Of grace, your health, monseigneur!" There were those who scoffed, who from natural habit disbelieved, and nodded knowingly, and whispered in each other's ears; but these were in the minority; and all the women and children declared for this new "Man of Destiny." And when some foolish body asked him for a lock of his hair, and old Madame Degardy (crazy Joan, as she was called) followed, offering him a pinch of snuff, and a lad appeared with a bunch of violets from Madame Chalice, the dissentients were cast in shadow, and had no longer courage to doubt. Madame Chalice had been merely whimsical in sending these violets, which her gardener had brought her that very morning. "It will help along the pretty farce," she had said to herself; and then she sat her down to read Napoleon's letters to Josephine, and to wonder that a woman could have been faithless and vile with such a man. Her blood raced indignantly in her veins as she thought of it. She admired intellect, supremacy, the gifts of temperament, deeds of war and adventure beyond all. As yet her brain was stronger than her feelings; there had been no breakers of emotion in her life. A wife, she had no child; the mother in her was spent upon her husband, whose devotion, honour, name, and goodness were dear to her. Yet--yet she had a world of her own; and reading Napoleon's impassioned letters to his wife, written with how great homage! in the flow of the tide washing to famous battle- fields, an exultation of ambition inspired her, and the genius of her distinguished ancestors set her heart beating hard. Presently, her face alive with feeling, a furnace in her eyes, she repeated a paragraph from Napoleon's letters to Josephine: The enemy have lost, my dearest, eighteen thousand men, prisoners, killed, and wounded. Wurmzer has nothing left but to throw himself into Mantua. I hope soon to be in your arms. I love you to distraction. All is well. Nothing is wanting to your husband's happiness, save the love of Josephine. She sprang to her feet. "And she, wife of a hero, was in common intrigue with Hippolyte Charles at the time! She had a conqueror, a splendid adventurer, and coming emperor, for a husband, and she loved him not. I--I could have knelt to him--worshipped him. I"--With a little hysterical, disdainful laugh, as of the soul at itself, she leaned upon the window, looking into the village below, alternately smiling and frowning at the thought of this adventurer down at the Louis Quinze. "Yet, who can tell? Disraeli was half mountebank at the start," she said. "Napoleon dressed infamously, too, before he was successful." But again she laughed, as at an absurdity. During the next few days Valmond was everywhere--kind, liberal, quaint, tireless, at times melancholy; "in the distant perspective of the stage," as Monsieur De la Riviere remarked mockingly. But a passing member of the legislature met and was conquered by Valmond, and carried on to neighbouring parishes the wondrous tale. He carried it through Ville Bambord, fifty miles away; and the story of how a Napoleon had come to Pontiac reached the ears of old Sergeant Eustache Lagroin of the Old Guard, who had fought with the Great Emperor at Waterloo, and in his army on twenty other battle-fields. He had been at Fontainebleau when Napoleon bade farewell to the Old Guard, saying: "For twenty years I have ever found you in the path of honour and glory. Adieu, my children! I would I were able to press you all to my heart-- but I will at least press your eagle. I go to record the great deeds we have done together." When the gossip came to Lagroin, as he sat in his doorway, babbling of Grouchy and Lannes and Davoust, the Little Corporal outflanking them all in his praise, his dim blue eyes flared out from the distant sky of youth and memory, his lips pursed in anger, and he got to his feet, his stick fiercely pounding the ground. "Tut! tut!" said he. "A lie! a pretty lie! I knew all the Napoleons-- Joseph, Lucien, Louis, Jerome, Caroline, Eliza, Pauline--all! I have seen them every one. And their children--pah! Who can deceive me? I will go to Pontiac, I will see to this tomfoolery. I'll bring the rascal to the drumhead. Does he think there is no one? Pish! I will spit him at the first stroke. Here, here, Manette," he cried to his grand- daughter; "fetch out my uniform, give it an airing, and see to the buttons. I will show this brag how one of the Old Guard looked at Saint Jean. Quick, Manette, my sabre polish; I'll clean my musket, and to-morrow I will go to Pontiac. I'll put the scamp through his facings--but yes! I am eighty, but I have an arm of thirty." True to his word, the next morning at daybreak he started to walk to Pontiac, accompanied for a mile or so by Manette and a few of the villagers. "See you, my child," he said, "I will stay with my niece, Desire Malboir, and her daughter Elise, there in Pontiac. You shall hear how I fetch that vagabond to his potage!" Valmond had purchased a tolerable white horse through Medallion. After a day's grooming the beast showed off very well; and he was now seen riding about the parish, dressed after the manner of the First Napoleon, with a cocked hat and a short sword at his side. He rode well, and the silver and pennies he scattered were most fruitful of effect from the martial elevation. He happened to be riding into the village at one end as Sergeant Lagroin entered it at the other, each going towards the Louis Quinze. Valmond knew nothing of Sergeant Lagroin, so that what followed was of the inspiration of the moment. It sprang from his wit, and from his knowledge of Napoleon and the Napoleonic history, a knowledge which had sent Monsieur Garon into tears of joy in his own home, and afterwards off to the Manor House and also to the Seigneury, full of praise of him. Catching sight of the sergeant, the significance of the thing flashed to his brain, and his course was mapped out on the instant. Sitting very straight, Valmond rode steadily down towards the old soldier. The sergeant had drawn notice as he came up the street, and people came to their doors, and children followed the grey, dust-covered veteran, in his last-century uniform. He came as far as the Louis Quinze, and then, looking on up the road, he saw the white horse, the cocked hat, the white waistcoat, and the long grey coat. He brought his stick down smartly on the ground, drew himself up, squared his shoulders, and said: "Courage, Eustache Lagroin. It is not forty Prussians, but one rogue! Crush him! Down with the pretender!" So, with a defiant light in his eye, he came on, the old uniform sagging loosely on the shrunken body, which yet was soldier-like from head to foot. Years of camp and discipline and battle and endurance were in the whole bearing of the man. He was no more of Pontiac and this simple life than was Valmond himself. So they neared each other, the challenger and the challenged, the champion and the invader, and quickly the village emptied itself out to see. When Valmond came so close that he could observe every detail of the old man's uniform, he suddenly reined in his horse, drew him back on his haunches with his left hand, and with his right saluted--not the old sergeant, but the coat of the Old Guard, to which his eyes were directed. Mechanically the hand of the sergeant went to his cap, then, starting forward with an angry movement, he seemed as though he would attack Valmond. Valmond sat very still, his right hand thrust in his bosom, his forehead bent, his eyes calmly, resolutely, yet distantly, looking at the sergeant, who grew suddenly still also, while the people watched and wondered. As Valmond looked, a soft light passed across his face, relieving its theatrical firmness, the half-contemptuous curl of his lip. He knew well enough that this event would make or unmake him in Pontiac. He became also aware that a carriage had driven up among the villagers, and had stopped; and though he did not look directly, he felt that it was Madame Chalice. This soft look on his face was not all assumed; for the ancient uniform of the sergeant touched something in him, the true comedian, or the true Napoleon, and it seemed as if he might dismount and take the old soldier in his arms. He set his horse on a little, and paused again, with not more than fifteen feet between them. The sergeant's brain was going round like a top. It was not he that challenged after all. "Soldier of the Old Guard," cried Valmond, in a clear, ringing voice, "how far is it to Friedland?" Like a machine the veteran's hand again went up to his cap, and he answered: "To Friedland--the width of a ditch!" His voice shook as he said it, and the world to him was all a muddle then; for Napoleon the Great had asked a private this question after that battle on the Alle, when Berningsen, the Russian, threw away an army to the master strategist. The private had answered the question in the words of Sergeant Lagroin. It was a saying long afterwards among the Old Guard, though it may not be found in the usual histories of that time, where every battalion, almost every company, had a watchword, which passed to make room for others, as victory followed victory. "Soldier of the Old Guard," said Valmond again, "how came you by those scars upon your forehead?" "I was a drummer at Auerstadt, a corporal at Austerlitz, a sergeant at Waterloo," rolled back the reply, in a high, quavering voice, as memories of great events blew in upon the ancient fires of his spirit. "Ah!" answered Valmond, nodding eagerly; "with Davoust at Auerstadt-- thirty against sixty thousand men. At eight o'clock, all fog and mist, as you marched up the defile towards the Sonnenberg hills, the brave Gudin and his division feeling their way to Blucher. Comrade, how still you stepped, your bayonet thrust out before you, clearing the mists, your eyes straining, your teeth set, ready to thrust. All at once a quick- moving mass sprang out of the haze, and upon you, with hardly a sound of warning; and an army of hussars launched themselves at your bayonets! You bent that wall back like a piece of steel, and broke it. Comrade, that was the beginning, in the mist of morning. Tell me how you fared in the light of evening, at the end of that bloody day." The old soldier was trembling. There was no sign, no movement, from the crowd. Across the fields came the sharpening of a scythe, the cry of the grasshoppers, and the sound of a mill-wheel arose near by. In the mill itself, far up in a deep dormer window, sat Parpon with his black cat, looking down upon the scene with a grim smiling. The sergeant saw that mist fronting Sonnenberg rise up, and show ten thousand splendid cavalry and fifty thousand infantry, with a king and a prince to lead them down upon those malleable but unmoving squares of French infantry. He saw himself drumming the Prussians back and his Frenchmen on. "Beautiful God!" he cried proudly, "that was a day! And every man of the Third Corps that time lift up the lid of hell and drop a Prussian in. I stand beside Davoust once, and ping! come a bullet, and take off his chapeau. It fell upon my drum. I stoop and pick it up and hand it to him, but I keep drumming with one hand all the time. 'Comrade,' say I, 'the army thanks you for your courtesy.' 'Brother,' he say, 'twas to your drum,' and his eye flash out where Gudin carved his way through those pigs of Prussians. 'I'd take my head off to keep your saddle filled, comrade,' say I. Ping! come a bullet and catch me in the calf. 'You hold your head too high, brother,' the general say, and he smile. 'I'll hold it higher,' answer I, and I snatch at a soldier. 'Up with me on your shoulder, big comrade,' I say, and he lift me up. I make my sticks sing on the leather. 'You shall take off your hat to the Little Corporal to-morrow, if you've still your head, brother'--speak Davoust like that, and then he ride away like the devil to Morand's guns. Ha, ha, ha!" The sergeant's face was blazing with a white glare, for he was very pale, and seemed unconscious of all save the scene in his mind's eye. "Ha, ha, ha!" he laughed again. "Beautiful God, how did Davoust bring us on up to Sonnenberg! And next day I saw the Little Corporal. 'Drummer,' say he, 'no head's too high for my Guard. Come you, comrade, your general gives you to me. Come, Corporal Lagroin,' he call; and I come. 'But, first,' he say, 'up on the shoulder of your big soldier again, and play.' 'What shall I play, sire?' I ask. 'Play ten thousand heroes to Walhalla,' he answer. I play, and I think of my brother Jacques, who went fighting to heaven the day before. Beautiful God! that was a day at Auerstadt." "Soldier," said Valmond, waving his hand, "step on. There is a drum at Louis Quinze. Let us go together, comrade." The old sergeant was in a dream. He wheeled, the crowd made way for him, and at the neck of the white horse he came on with Valmond. As they passed the carriage of Madame Chalice, Valmond made no sign. They stopped in front of the hotel, and Valmond, motioning to the garcon, gave him an order. The old sergeant stood silent, his eyes full fixed upon Valmond. In a moment the boy came out with the drum. Valmond took it, and, holding it in his hands, said softly: "Soldier of the Old Guard, here is a drum of France." Without a word the old man took the drum, his fingers trembling as he fastened it to his belt. When the sticks were in his hand, all trembling ceased, and his hands became steady. He was living in the past entirely. "Soldier," said Valmond in a loud voice, "remember Austerlitz. The Heights of Pratzen are before you. Play up the feet of the army." For an instant the old man did not move, and then a sullen sort of look came over his face. He was not a drummer at Austerlitz, and for the instant he did not remember the tune the drummers played. "Soldier," said Valmond softly, "with 'the Little Sword that Danced' play up the feet of the army." A light broke over the old man's face. The swift look he cast on Valmond had no distrust now. Instantly his hand went to his cap. "My General!" he said, and stepped in front of the white horse. There was a moment's pause, and then the sergeant's arms were raised, and down came the sticks with a rolling rattle on the leather. They sent a shiver of feeling through the village, and turned the meek white horse into a charger of war. No man laughed at the drama performed in Pontiac that day, not even the little coterie who were present, not even Monsieur De la Riviere, whose brow was black with hatred, for he had watched 'the eyes of Madame Chalice fill with tears at the old sergeant's tale of Auerstadt, had noticed her admiring glance, "at this damned comedian," as he now called Valmond. When he came to her carriage, she said, with oblique suggestion: "What do you think of it?" "Impostor! fakir!" was his sulky reply. "Nothing more." "If fakirs and impostors are so convincing, dear monsieur, why be yourself longer? Listen!" she added. Valmond had spoken down at the aged drummer, whose arms were young again, as once more he marched on Pratzen. Suddenly from the sergeant's lips there broke, in a high, shaking voice, to the rattle of the drum: "Conscrits, au pas; Ne pleurez pas; Ne pleurez pas; Marchez au pas, Au pas, au pas, au pas, au pas!" They had not gone twenty yards before fifty men and boys, caught in the inflammable moment, sprang out from the crowd, fell involuntarily into rough marching order, and joined in the inspiring refrain: "Marchez au pas, Au pas, au pas, au pas, au pas!" The old man in front was charged anew. All at once, at a word from Valmond, he broke into the Marseillaise, with his voice and with his drum. To these Frenchmen of an age before the Revolution, the Marseillaise had only been a song. Now in their ignorant breasts there waked the spirit of France, and from their throats there burst out, with a half-delirious ecstasy: "Allons, enfants de la patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrive." As they neared the Louis Quinze, a dozen men, just arrived in the village, returned from river-driving, carried away by the chant, tumultuously joined in the procession, and so came on in a fever of vague patriotism. A false note in the proceedings, a mismove on the part of Valmond, would easily have made the thing ridiculous; but even to Madame Chalice, with her keen artistic sense, it had a pathetic sort of dignity, by virtue of its rude earnestness, its raw sincerity. She involuntarily thought of the great Napoleon and his toy kingdom of Elba, of Garibaldi and his handful of patriots. There were depths here, and she knew it. "Even the pantaloon may have a soul," she said; "or a king may have a heart." In front of the Louis Quinze, Valmond waved his hand for a halt, and the ancient drummer wheeled and faced him, fronting the crowd. Valmond was pale, and his eyes burned like restless ghosts. Surely the Cupid bow of the thin Napoleonic lips was there, the distant yet piercing look. He waved his hand again, and the crowd were silent. "My children," said he, "we have begun well. Once more among you the antique spirit lives. From you may come the quickening of our beloved country; for she is yours, though here under the flag of our ancient and amiable enemy you wait the hour of your return to her. In you there is nothing mean or dull; you are true Frenchmen. My love is with you. And you and I, true to each other, may come into our own again--over there!" He pointed to the East. "Through you and me may France be born again; and in the villages and fields and houses of Normandy and Brittany you may, as did your ancestors, live in peace, and bring your bones to rest in that blessed and honourable ground. My children, my heart is full. Let us move on together. Napoleon from St. Helena calls to you, Napoleon in Pontiac calls to you! Will you come?" Reckless cheering followed; many were carried away into foolish tears, and Valmond sat still and let them kiss his hand, while pitchers of wine went round. "Where is our fakir now, dear monsieur?" said Madame Chalice to De la Riviere once again. Valmond got silence with a gesture. He opened his waistcoat, took from his bosom an order fastened to a little bar of gold, and held it in his hand. "Drummer," he said, in a clear, full tone, "call the army to attention." The old man set their blood tingling with the impish sticks. "I advance Sergeant Lagroin, of the Old Guard of glorious memory, to the rank of Captain in my Household Troops, and I command you to obey him as such." His look bent upon the crowd, as Napoleon's might have done on the Third Corps. "Drummer, call the army to attention," fell the words. And again like a small whirlwind of hailstones the sticks shook on the drum. "I advance Captain Lagroin to the rank of Colonel in my Household Troops, and I command you to obey him as such." And once more: "Drummer, call the army to attention." The sticks swung down, but somehow they faltered, for the drummer was shaking now. "I advance Colonel Lagroin to the rank of General in my Household Troops, and I command you to obey him as such." Then he beckoned, and the old man drew near. Stooping, he pinned the order upon his breast. When the sergeant saw what it was, he turned pale, trembled, and the drumsticks fell from his hand. His eyes shone like sun on wet glass, then tears sprang from them upon his face. He caught Valmond's hand and kissed it, and cried, oblivious of them all: "Ah, sire, sire! It is true. It is true. I know that ribbon, and I know you are a Napoleon. Sire, I love you, and I will die for you!" For the first time that day a touch of the fantastic came into Valmond's manner. "General," he said, "the centuries look down on us as they looked down on him, your sire--and mine!" He doffed his hat, and the hats of all likewise came off in a strange quiet. A cheer followed, and Valmond motioned for wine to go round freely. Then he got off his horse, and, taking the weeping old man by the arm, himself loosening the drum from his belt, they passed into the hotel. "A cheerful bit of foolery and treason," said Monsieur De la Riviere to Madame Chalice. "My dear Seigneur, if you only had more humour and less patriotism!" she answered. "Treason may have its virtues. It certainly is interesting, which, in your present gloomy state, you are not." "I wonder, madame, that you can countenance this imposture," he broke out. "Excellent and superior monsieur, I wonder sometimes that I can countenance you. Breakfast with me on Sunday, and perhaps I will tell you why--at twelve o'clock." She drove on, but, meeting the Cure, stopped her carriage. "Why so grave, my dear Cure?" she asked, holding out her hand. He fingered the gold cross upon his breast--she had given it to him two years before. "I am going to counsel him--Monsieur Valmond," he said. Then, with a sigh: "He sent me two hundred dollars for the altar to-day, and fifty dollars to buy new cassocks for myself." "Come in the morning and tell me what he says," she answered; "and bring our dear avocat." As she looked from her window an hour later, she saw bonfires burning, and up from the village came the old song, that had prefaced a drama in Pontiac. But Elise Malboir had a keener interest that night, for Valmond and Parpon brought her uncle "General Lagroin," in honour to her mother's cottage; and she sat and listened dreamily, as Valmond and the old man talked of great things to be done. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Conquest not important enough to satisfy ambition Face flushed with a sort of pleasurable defiance Touch of the fantastic, of the barbaric, in all genius We are only children till we begin to make our dreams our life WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC The Story of a Lost Napoleon By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. CHAPTER VI Prince or plebeian, Valmond played his part with equal aplomb at the simple home of Elise Malboir and at the Manoir Hilaire, where Madame Chalice received him. His dress had nothing of the bizarre on this occasion. He was in black-long coat, silk stockings, the collar of his waistcoat faced with white, his neckerchief white and full, his enamelled shoes adorned with silver buckles. His present repose and decorum contrasted strangely with the fanciful display at his first introduction. Madame Chalice approved instantly, for though the costume was, in itself, an affectation, previous to the time by a generation, it was in the picture, was sedately refined. She welcomed him in the salon where many another distinguished man had been entertained--from Frontenac, and Vaudreuil, down to Sir Guy Carleton. The Manor had belonged to her husband's people seventy-five years before, and though, as a banker in New York, Monsieur Chalice had become an American of the Americans, at her request he had bought back from a kinsman the old place, unchanged, furniture and all. Bringing the antique plate, china, and bric-a-brac, made in France when Henri Quatre was king, she fared away to Quebec, set the rude mansion in order, and was happy for a whole summer, as was her husband, the best of fishermen and sportsmen. The Manor House stood on a knoll, behind which, steppe on steppe, climbed the hills, till they ended in Dalgrothe Mountain. Beyond the mountain were unexplored regions, hill and valley floating into hill and valley, lost in a miasmic haze, ruddy, silent, untenanted, save, mayhap, by the strange people known as the Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills. The house had been built in the seventeenth century, and the walls were very thick, to keep out both cold and attack. Beneath the high-pointed roof were big dormer windows, and huge chimneys flanked each side of the house. The great roof gave a sense of crouching or hovering, for warmth or in menace. As Valmond entered the garden, Madame Chalice was leaning over the lower half of the entrance door, which opened latitudinally, and was hung on large iron hinges of quaint design, made by some seventeenth- century forgeron. Behind her deepened hospitably the spacious hall, studded and heavy beamed, with its unpainted pine ceiling toned to a good brown by smoke and time. Caribou and moose antlers hung along the wall, with arquebuses, powder-horns, big shot-bags, swords, and even pieces of armour, such as Cartier brought with him from St. Malo. Madame Chalice looked out of this ancient avenue, a contrast, yet a harmony; for, though her dress was modern, her person had a rare touch of the archaic, and fitted into the picture like a piece of beautiful porcelain, coloured long before the art of making fadeless colours was lost. There was an amused, meditative smiling at her lips, a kind of wonder, the tender flush of a new experience. She turned, and, stepping softly into the salon, seated herself near the immense chimney, in a heavily carved chair, her feet lost in rich furs on the polished floor. A quaint table at her hand was dotted with rare old books and miniatures, and behind her ticked an ancient clock in a tall mahogany case. Valmond came forward, hat in hand, and raised to his lips the fingers she gave him. He did it with the vagueness of one in a dream, she thought, and she neither understood nor relished his uncomplimentary abstraction; so she straightway determined to give him some troublesome moments. "I have waited to drink my coffee with you," she said, motioning him to a seat; "and you may smoke a cigarette, if you wish." Her eyes wandered over his costume with critical satisfaction. He waved his hand slightly, declining the permission, and looked at her with an intent seriousness, which took no account of the immediate charm of her presence. "I'd like to ask you a question," he said, without preamble. She was amused, interested. Here was an unusual man, who ignored the conventional preliminary nothings, beating down the grass before the play, as it were. "I was never good at catechism," she answered. "But I will be as hospitable as I can." "I've felt," he said, "that you can--can see through things; that you can balance them, that you get at all sides, and--" She had been reading Napoleon's letters this very afternoon. "Full squared?" she interrupted quizzically. "As the Great Emperor said," he answered. "A woman sees farther than a man, and if she has judgment as well, she is the best prophet in the world." "It sounds distinctly like a compliment," she answered. "You are trying to break that square!" She was mystified; he was different from any man she had ever entertained. She was not half sure she liked it. Yet, if he were in very truth a prince--she thought of his debut in flowered waistcoat, panama hat, and enamelled boots!--she should take this confidence as a compliment; if he were a barber, she could not resent it; she could not waste wit or time; she could not even, in extremity, call the servant to show the barber out; and in any case she was too comfortably interested to worry herself with speculation. He was very much in earnest. "I want to ask you," he said, "what is the thing most needed to make a great idea succeed." "I have never had a great idea," she replied. He looked at her eagerly, with youthful, questioning eyes. "How simple, and yet how astute he is!" she thought, remembering the event of yesterday. "I thought you had--I was sure you had," he said in a troubled sort of way. He did not see that she was eluding him. "I mean, I never had a fixed and definite idea that I proceeded to apply, as you have done," she explained tentatively. "But--well, I suppose that the first requisite for success is absolute belief in the idea; that it be part of one's life; to suffer for, to fight for, to die for, if need be--though that sounds like a handbook of moral mottoes, doesn't it?" "That's it, that's it," he said. "The thing must be in your bones --hein?" "Also in--your blood--hein?" she rejoined slowly and meaningly, looking over the top of her coffee-cup at him. Somehow again the plebeian quality in that hein grated on her, and she could not resist the retort. "What!" said he confusedly, plunging into another pitfall. She had challenged him, and he knew it. "Nothing what-ever," she answered, with an urbanity that defied the suggestion of malice. Yet, now that she remembered, she had sweetly challenged one of a royal house for the like lapse into the vulgar tongue. A man should not be beheaded because of a what. So she continued more seriously: "The idea must be himself, all of him, born with him, the rightful output of his own nature, the thing he must inevitably do, or waste his life." She looked him honestly in the eyes. She had spoken with the soft irony of truth, the blind tyranny of the just. She had meant to test him here and there by throwing little darts of satire, and yet he made her serious and candid in spite of herself. He was of kin to her in some part of his nature. He did not concern her as a man of personal or social possibilities--merely as an active originality. Leaning back languidly, she was eyeing him closely from under drooping lids, smiling, too, in an unimportant sort of way, as if what she had said was a trifle. Consummate liar and comedian, or true man and no pretender, his eyes did not falter. They were absorbed, as if in eager study of a theme. "Yes, yes, that's it; and if he has it, what next?" said he meaningly. "Well, then, opportunity, joined to coolness, knowledge of men, power of combination, strategy, and"--she paused, and a purely feminine curiosity impelled her to add suggestively--"and a woman." He nodded. "And a woman," he repeated after her musingly, and not turning it to account cavalierly, as he might have done. He was taking himself with a simple seriousness that appealed to her. "You may put strategy out of the definition, leaving in the woman," she continued ironically. He felt the point, and her demure dart struck home. But he saw what an ally she might make. Tremendous possibilities moved before him. His heart beat faster than it did yesterday when the old sergeant faced him. Here was beauty--he admired that; power--he wished for that. What might he not accomplish, no matter how wild his move, with this wonderful creature as his friend, his ally, his----He paused, for this house had a master as well as a mistress. "We will leave in the woman," he said quietly, yet with a sort of trouble in his face. "In your idea?" was the negligent question. "Yes." "Where is the woman?" insinuated the soft, bewildering voice. "Here!" he answered emotionally, and he believed it was the truth. She stood looking meditatively out of the window, not at him. "In Pontiac?" she asked presently, turning with a child-like surprise. "Ah, yes, yes! I know--one of the people; suitable for Pontiac; but is it wise? She is pretty--but is it wise?" She was adroitly suggesting Elise Malboir, whose little romance she had discovered. "She is the prettiest and wisest lady I ever knew, or ever hoped to know," he said earnestly, laying his hand upon his heart. "How far will your idea take you?" she asked evasively, her small fingers tightening a gold hair-pin. "To Paris--to the Tuileries!" he answered, rising to his feet. "And you start--from Pontiac?" "What difference, Pontiac or Cannes, like the Great Master after Elba," he said. "The principle is the same." "The money?" "It will come," he answered. "I have friends--and hopes." She almost laughed. She was suddenly struck by the grotesqueness of the situation. But she saw how she had hurt him, and she said instantly: "Of course, with those one may go far. Sit down and tell me all your plans." He was about to comply, when, glancing out of the window, she saw the old sergeant, now "General Lagroin," and Parpon hastening up the walk. Parpon ambled comfortably beside the old man, who seemed ten years younger than he had done the day before. "Your army and cabinet, monseigneur!" she said with a pretty, mocking gesture of salutation. He glanced at her reprovingly. "My General and my Minister; as brave a soldier and as able a counsellor as ever prince had. Madame," he added, "they only are farceurs who do not dare, and have not wisdom. My General has scars from Auerstadt, Austerlitz, and Waterloo; my Minister is feared--in Pontiac. Was he not the trusted friend of the Grand Seigneur, as he was called here, the father of your Monseiur De la Riviere? Has he yet erred in advising me? Have we yet failed? Madame," he added, a little rhetorically, "as we have begun, so will we end, true to our principles, and--" "And gentlemen of the king," she said provokingly, urging him on. "Pardon, gentlemen of the Empire, madame, as time and our lives will prove. . . . Madame, I thank you for your violets of Sunday last." She admired the acumen that had seized the perfect opportunity to thank her for the violets, the badge of the Great Emperor. "My hives shall not be empty of bees--or honey," she said, alluding to the imperial bees, and she touched his arm in a pretty, gracious fashion. "Madame--ah, madame!" he replied, and his eyes grew moist. She bade the servant admit Lagroin and Parpon. They bowed profoundly, first to Valmond, and afterwards to Madame Chalice. She saw the point, and it amused her. She read in the old man's eye the soldier's contempt for women, together with his new-born reverence and love for Valmond. Lagroin was still dressed in the uniform of the Old Guard, and wore on his breast the sacred ribbon which Valmond had given him the day before. "Well, General?" said Valmond. "Sire," said the old man, "they mock us in the streets. Come to the window, sire." The "sire," fell on the ears of Madame Chalice like a mot in a play; but Valmond, living up to his part, was grave and solicitous. He walked to the window, and the old man said: "Sire, do you not hear a drum?" A faint rat-tat came up the road. Valmond bowed. "Sire," the old man continued, "I would not act till I had your orders." "Whence comes the mockery?" Valmond asked quietly. The other shook his head. "Sire, I do not know. But I remember of such a thing happening to the Emperor. It was in the garden of the Tuileries, and twenty-four battalions of the Old Guard filed past our great chief. Some fool sent out a gamin dressed in regimentals in front of one of the bands, and then--" "Enough, General," said Valmond; "I understand. I will go down into the village--eh, monsieur?" he added, turning to Parpon with impressive consideration. "Sire, there is one behind these mockers," answered the little man in a low voice. Valmond turned towards Madame Chalice. "I know my enemy, madame," he said. "Your enemy is not here," she rejoined kindly. He stooped over her hand, and bowed Lagroin and Parpon to the door. "Madame," he said, "I thank you. Will you accept a souvenir of him whom we both love, martyr and friend of France?" He drew from his breast a small painting of Napoleon, on ivory, and handed it to her. "It was the work of David," he continued. "You will find it well authenticated. Look upon the back of it." She looked, and her heart beat a little faster. "This was done when he was alive?" she said. "For the King of Rome," he answered. "Adieu, madame. Again I thank you, for our cause as for myself." He turned away. She let him get as far as the door. "Wait, wait!" she said suddenly, a warm light in her face, for her imagination had been touched. "Tell me, tell me the truth. Who are you? Are you really a Napoleon? I can be a constant ally, but, I charge you, speak the truth to me. Are you--" She stopped abruptly. "No, no; do not tell me," she added quickly. "If you are not, you will be your own executioner. I will ask for no further proof than did Sergeant Lagroin. It is in a small way yet, but you are playing a terrible game. Do you realise what may happen?" "In the hour that you ask a last proof I will give it," he said almost fiercely. "I go now to meet an enemy." "If I should change that enemy into a friend--" she hinted. "Then I should have no need of stratagem or force." "Force?" she asked suggestively. The drollery of it set her smiling. "In a week I shall have five hundred men." "Dreamer!" she thought, and shook her head dubiously; but, glancing again at the ivory portrait, her mood changed. "Au revoir," she said. "Come and tell me about the mockers. Success go with you--sire." Yet she did not know whether she thought him sire or sinner, gentleman or comedian, as she watched him go down the hill with Lagroin and Parpon. But she had the portrait. How did he get it? No matter, it was hers now. Curious to know more of the episode in the village below, she ordered her carriage, and came driving slowly past the Louis Quinze at an exciting moment. A crowd had gathered, and boys, and even women, were laughing and singing in ridicule snatches of, "Vive Napoleon!" For, in derision of yesterday's event, a small boy, tricked out with a paper cocked-hat and incongruous regimentals, with a hobby-horse between his legs, was marching up and down, preceded by another lad, who played a toy drum in derision of Lagroin. The children had been well rehearsed, for even as Valmond arrived upon the scene, Lagroin and Parpon on either side of him, the mock Valmond was bidding the drummer: "Play up the feet of the army!" The crowd parted on either side, silenced and awed by the look of potential purpose in the face of this yesterday's hero. The old sergeant's glance was full of fury, Parpon's of a devilish sort of glee. Valmond approached the lads. "My children," he said kindly, "you have not learned your lesson well enough. You shall be taught." He took the paper caps from their heads. "I will give you better caps than these." He took the hobby-horse, the drum, and the tin swords. "I will give you better things than these." He put the caps on the ground, added the toys to the heap, and Parpon, stooping, lighted the paper. Scattering money among the crowd, and giving some silver to the lads, Valmond stood looking at the bonfire for a moment, and then, pointing to it dramatically, said: "My friends, my brothers, Frenchmen, we will light larger fires than these. Your young Seigneur sought to do me honour this afternoon. I thank him, and he shall have proof of my affection in due time. And now our good landlord's wine is free to you, for one goblet each. My children," he added, turning to the little mockers, "come to me to-morrow and I will show you how to be soldiers. My General shall teach you what to do, and I will teach you what to say." Almost instantly there arose the old admiring cries of, "Vive Napoleon!" and he knew that he had regained his ground. Amid the pleasant tumult the three entered the hotel together, like people in a play. As they were going up the stairs, Parpon whispered to the old soldier, who laid his hand fiercely upon the fine sword at his side, given him that morning by Valmond; for, looking down, Lagroin saw the young Seigneur maliciously laughing at them, as if in delight at the mischief he had caused. That night, at nine o'clock, the old sergeant went to the Seigneury, knocked, and was admitted to a room where were seated the young Seigneur, Medallion, and the avocat. "Well, General," said De la Riviere, rising with great formality, "what may I do to serve you? Will you join our party?" He motioned to a chair. The old man's lips were set and stern, and he vouchsafed no reply to the hospitable request. "Monsieur," he said, "to-day you threw dirt at my great master. He is of royal blood, and he may not fight you. But I, monsieur, his General, demand satisfaction--swords or pistols!" De la Riviere sat down, leaned back in his chair, and laughed. Without a word the old man stepped forward, and struck him across the mouth with his red cotton handkerchief. "Then take that, monsieur," said he, "from one who fought for the First Napoleon, and will fight for this Napoleon against the tongue of slander and the acts of fools. I killed two Prussians once for saying that the Great Emperor's shirt stuck out below his waistcoat. You'll find me at the Louis Quinze," he added, before De la Riviere, choking with wrath, could do more than get to his feet; and, wheeling, he left the room. The young Seigneur would have followed him, but the avocat laid a restraining hand upon his arm, and Medallion said: "Dear Seigneur, see, you can't fight him. The parish would only laugh." De la Riviere took the advice, and on Sunday, over the coffee, unburdened the tale to Madame Chalice. Contrary to his expectations, she laughed a great deal, then soothed his wounded feelings and advised him as Medallion had done. And because Valmond commanded the old sergeant to silence, the matter ended for the moment. But it would have its hour yet, and Valmond knew this as well as did the young Seigneur. CHAPTER VII It was no jest of Valmond's that he would, or could, have five hundred followers in two weeks. Lagroin and Parpon were busy, each in his own way--Lagroin, open, bluff, imperative; Parpon, silent, acute, shrewd. Two days before the feast of St. John the Baptist, the two made a special tour through the parish for certain recruits. If these could be enlisted, a great many men of this and other parishes would follow. They were, by name, Muroc the charcoalman, Duclosse the mealman, Lajeunesse the blacksmith, and Garotte the limeburner, all men of note, after their kind, with influence and individuality. Lagroin chafed that he must play recruiting-sergeant and general also. But it gave him comfort to remember that the Great Emperor had not at times disdained to be his own recruiting-sergeant; that, after Friedland, he himself had been taken into the Old Guard by the Emperor; that Davoust had called him brother; that Ney had shared his supper and slept with him under the same blanket. Parpon would gladly have done this work alone, but he knew that Lagroin in his regimentals would be useful. The sought-for comrades were often to be found together about the noon hour in the shop of Jose Lajeunesse. They formed the coterie of the humble, even as the Cure's coterie represented the aristocracy of Pontiac --with Medallion as a connecting link. Arches and poles were being put up, to be decorated against the feast- day, and piles of wood for bonfires were arranged at points on the hills round the village. Cheer and goodwill were everywhere, for a fine harvest was in view, and this feast-day always brought gladness and simple revelling. Parish interchanged with parish; but, because it was so remote, Pontiac was its own goal of pleasure, and few fared forth, though others came from Ville Bambord and elsewhere to join the fete. As Lagroin and the dwarf came to the door of the smithy, they heard the loud laugh of Lajeunesse. "Good!" said Parpon. "Hear how he tears his throat!" "If he has sense, I'll make a captain of him," remarked Lagroin consequentially. "You shall beat him into a captain on his own anvil," rejoined the little man. They entered the shop. Lajeunesse was leaning on his bellows, laughing, and holding an iron in the spitting fire; Muroc was seated on the edge of the cooling tub; and Duclosse was resting on a bag of his excellent meal. Garotte was the only missing member of the quartette. Muroc was a wag, a grim sort of fellow, black from his trade, with big rollicking eyes. At times he was not easy to please, but if he took a liking, he was for joking at once. He approved of Parpon, and never lost a chance of sharpening his humour on the dwarf's impish whetstone of a tongue. "Lord! Lord!" he cried, with feigned awe, getting to his feet at sight of the two. Then, to his comrades, "Children, children, off with your hats! Here is Monsieur Talleyrand, if I'm not mistaken. On to your feet, mealman, and dust your stomach. Lajeunesse, wipe your face with your leather. Duck your heads, stupids!" With mock solemnity the three greeted Parpon and Lagroin. The old sergeant's face flushed, and his hand dropped to his sword; but he had promised Parpon to say nothing till he got his cue, and he would keep his word. So he disposed himself in an attitude of martial attention. The dwarf bowed to the others with a face of as great gravity as the charcoalman's, and waving his hand, said: "Keep your seats, my children, and God be with you. You are right, smutty-face; I am Monsieur Talleyrand, Minister of the Crown." "The devil, you say!" cried the mealman. "Tut, tut!" said Lajeunesse, chaffing; "haven't you heard the news? The devil is dead!" The dwarf's hand went into his pocket. "My poor orphan," said he, trotting over and thrusting some silver into the blacksmith's pocket, "I see he hasn't left you well off. Accept my humble gift." "The devil dead?" cried Muroc; "then I'll go marry his daughter." Parpon climbed up on a pile of untired wheels, and with an elfish grin began singing. Instantly the three humorists became silent and listened, the blacksmith pumping his bellows mechanically the while. "O mealman white, give me your daughter, Oh, give her to me, your sweet Suzon! O mealman dear, you can do no better For I have a chateau at Malmaison. Black charcoalman, you shall not have her She shall not marry you, my Suzon-- A bag of meal--and a sack of carbon! Non, non, non, non, non, non, non, non! Go look at your face, my fanfaron, For my daughter and you would be night and day, Non, non, non, non, non, non, non, non, Not for your chateau at Malmaison, Non, non, non, non, non, non, non, non, You shall not marry her, my Suzon." A better weapon than his waspish tongue was Parpon's voice, for it, before all, was persuasive. A few years before, none of them had ever heard him sing. An accident discovered it to them, and afterwards he sang for them but little, and never when it was expected of him. He might be the minister of a dauphin or a fool, but he was now only the mysterious Parpon who thrilled them. All the soul cramped in the small body was showing in his eyes, as on that day when he had sung before the Louis Quinze. A face suddenly appeared at a little door just opposite him. No one but Parpon saw it. It belonged to Madelinette, the daughter of Lajeunesse, who had a voice of merit. More than once the dwarf had stopped to hear her singing as he passed the smithy. She sang only the old chansons and the songs of the voyageurs, with a far greater sweetness and richness, however, than any in the parish; and the Cure could detect her among all others at mass. She had been taught her notes, but that had only opened up possibilities, and fretted her till she was unhappy. What she felt she could not put into her singing, for the machinery, unknown and tyrannical, was not hers. Twice before she had heard Parpon sing-- at mass when the miller's wife was buried, and he, forgetting the world, had poured forth all his beautiful voice; and on that notable night before the Louis Quinze. If he would but teach her those songs of his, give her that sound of an organ in her throat! Parpon guessed what she thought. Well, he would see what could be done, if the blacksmith joined Valmond's standard. He stopped singing. "That's as good as dear Caron, the vivandiere of the Third Corps. Blood o' my body, I believe it's better--almost!" said Lagroin, nodding his head patronisingly. "She dragged me from under the mare of a damned Russian that cut me down, before he got my bayonet in his liver. Caron! Caron! ah yes, brave Caron! my dear Caron!" said the old man, smiling through the alluring light that the song had made for him, as he looked behind the curtain of the years. Parpon's pleasant ridicule was not lost on the charcoalman and the mealman; but neither was the singing wasted; and their faces were touched with admiration, while the blacksmith, with a sigh, turned to his fire and blew the bellows softly. "Blacksmith," said Parpon, "you have a bird that sings." "I've no bird that sings like that, though she has pretty notes, my bird." He sighed again. "'Come, blacksmith,' said the Count Lassone, when he came here a-fishing, 'that's a voice for a palace,' said he. 'Take it out of the woods and teach it,' said he, 'and it will have all Paris following it.' That to me, a poor blacksmith, with only my bread and sour milk, and a hundred dollars a year or so, and a sup of brandy when I can get it." The charcoalman spoke up. "You'll not forget the indulgences folks give you more than the pay for setting the dropped shoe--true gifts of God, bought with good butter and eggs at the holy auction, blacksmith. I gave you two myself. You have your blessings, Lajeunesse." "So; and no one to use the indulgences but you and Madelinette, giant," said the fat mealman. "Ay, thank the Lord, we've done well that way!" said the blacksmith, drawing himself up--for he loved nothing better than to be called the giant, though he was known to many as petit enfant, in irony of his size. Lagroin was now impatient. He could not see the drift of this, and he was about to whisper to Parpon, when the little man sent him a look, commanding silence, and he fretted on dumbly. "See, my blacksmith," said Parpon, "your bird shall be taught to sing, and to Paris she shall go by and by." "Such foolery!" said Duclosse. "What's in your noddle, Parpon?" cried the charcoalman. The blacksmith looked at Parpon, his face all puzzled eagerness. But another face at the door grew pale with suspense. Parpon quickly turned towards it. "See here, Madelinette," he said, in a low voice. The girl stepped inside and came to her father. Lajeunesse's arm ran round her shoulder. There was no corner of his heart into which she had not crept. "Out with it, Parpon!" called the blacksmith hoarsely, for the daughter's voice had followed herself into those farthest corners of his rugged nature. "I will teach her to sing first; then she shall go to Quebec, and afterwards to Paris, my friend," he answered. The girl's eyes were dilating with a great joy. "Ah, Parpon--good Parpon!" she whispered. "But Paris! Paris! There's gossip for you, thick as mortar," cried the charcoalman, and the mealman's fingers beat a tattoo on his stomach. Parpon waved his hand. "'Look to the weevil in your meal, Duclosse; and you, smutty-face, leave true things to your betters. See, blacksmith," he added, "she shall go to Quebec, and after that to Paris." Here he got off the wheels, and stepped out into the centre of the shop. "Our master will do that for you. I swear for him, and who can say that Parpon was ever a liar?" The blacksmith's hand tightened on his daughter's shoulder. He was trembling with excitement. "Is it true? is it true?" he asked, and the sweat stood out on his forehead. "He sends this for Madelinette," answered the dwarf, handing over a little bag of gold to the girl, who drew back. But Parpon went close to her, and gently forced it into her hands. "Open it," he said. She did so, and the blacksmith's eyes gloated on the gold. Muroc and Duclosse drew near, and peered in also. And so they stood there for a little while, all looking and exclaiming. Presently Lajeunesse scratched his head. "Nobody does nothing for nothing," said he. "What horse do I shoe for this?" "La, la!" said the charcoalman, sticking a thumb in the blacksmith's side; "you only give him the happy hand--like that!" Duclosse was more serious. "It is the will of God that you become a marshal or a duke," he said wheezingly to the blacksmith. "You can't say no; it is the will of God, and you must bear it like a man." The child saw further; perhaps the artistic strain in her gave her keener reasoning. "Father," she said, "Monsieur Valmond wants you for a soldier." "Wants me?" he roared in astonishment. "Who's to shoe the horses a week days, and throw the weight o' Sundays after mass? Who's to handle a stick for the Cure when there's fighting among the river-men? "But there, la, la! many a time my wife, my good Florienne, said to me, 'Jose--Jose Lajeunesse, with a chest like yours, you ought to be a corporal at least.'" Parpon beckoned to Lagroin, and nodded. "Corporal! corporal!" cried Lagroin; "in a week you shall be a lieutenant and a month shall make you a captain, and maybe better than that!" "Better than that--bagosh!" cried the charcoalman in surprise, proudly using the innocuous English oath. "Better than that--sutler, maybe?" said the mealman, smacking his lips. "Better than that," replied Lagroin, swelling with importance. "Ay, ay, my dears, great things are for you. I command the army, and I have free hand from my master. Ah, what joy to serve a Napoleon once again! What joy! Lord, how I remember--" "Better than that-eh?" persisted Duclosse, perspiring, the meal on his face making a sort of paste. "A general or a governor, my children," said Lagroin. "First in, first served. Best men, best pickings. But every man must love his chief, and serve him with blood and bayonet; and march o' nights if need, and limber up the guns if need, and shoe a horse if need, and draw a cork if need, and cook a potato if need; and be a hussar, or a tirailleur, or a trencher, or a general, if need. But yes, that's it; no pride but the love of France and the cause, and--" "And Monsieur Valmond," said the charcoalman slyly. "And Monsieur the Emperor!" cried Lagroin almost savagely. He caught Parpon's eye, and instantly his hand went to his pocket. "Ah, he is a comrade, that! Nothing is too good for his friends, for his soldiers. See!" he added. He took from his pocket ten gold pieces. "'These are bagatelles,' said His Excellency to me; 'but tell my friends, Monsieur Muroc and Monsieur Duclosse and Monsieur Garotte, that they are buttons for the coats of my sergeants, and that my captains' coats have ten times as many buttons. Tell them,' said he, 'that my friends shall share my fortunes; that France needs us; that Pontiac shall be called the nest of heroes. Tell them that I will come to them at nine o'clock tonight, and we will swear fidelity.'" "And a damned good speech too--bagosh!" cried the mealman, his fingers hungering for the gold pieces. "We're to be captains pretty soon--eh?" asked Muroc. "As quick as I've taught you to handle a company," answered Lagroin, with importance. "I was a patriot in '37," said Muroc. "I went against the English; I held abridge for two hours. I have my musket yet." "I am a patriot now," urged Duclosse. "Why the devil not the English first, then go to France, and lick the Orleans!" "They're a skittish lot, the Orleans; they might take it in their heads to fight," suggested Muroc, with a little grin. "What the devil do you expect?" roared the blacksmith, blowing the bellows hard in his excitement, one arm still round his daughter's shoulder. "D'you think we're going to play leap-frog into the Tuileries? There's blood to let, and we're to let it!" "Good, my leeches!" said Parpon; "you shall have blood to suck. But we'll leave the English be. France first, then our dogs will take a snap at the flag on the citadel yonder." He nodded in the direction of Quebec. Lagroin then put five gold pieces each into the hands of Muroc and Duclosse, and said: "I take you into the service of Prince Valmond Napoleon, and you do hereby swear to serve him loyally, even to the shedding of your blood, for his honour and the honour of France; and you do also vow to require a like loyalty and obedience of all men under your command. Swear." There was a slight pause, for the old man's voice had the ring of a fatal earnestness. It was no farce, but a real thing. "Swear," he said again. "Raise your right hand." "Done!" said Muroc. "To the devil with the charcoal! I'll go wash my face." "There's my hand on it," added Duclosse; "but that rascal Petrie will get my trade, and I'd rather be strung by the Orleans than that." "Till I've no more wind in my bellows!" responded Lajeunesse, raising his hand, "if he keeps faith with my Madelinette." "On the honour of a soldier," said Lagroin, and he crossed himself. "God save us all!" said Parpon. Obeying a motion of the dwarf's hand, Lagroin drew from his pocket a flask of cognac, with four little tin cups fitting into each other. Handing one to each, he poured them brimming full. Then, filling his own, he spilled a little in the steely dust of the smithy floor. All did the same, though they knew not why. "What's that for?" asked the mealman. "To show the Little Corporal, dear Corporal Violet, and my comrades of the Old Guard, that we don't forget them," cried Lagroin. He drank slowly, holding his head far back, and as he brought it straight again, he swung on his heel, for two tears were racing down his cheeks. The mealman wiped his eyes in sympathy; the charcoalman shook his head at the blacksmith, as though to say, "Poor devil!" and Parpon straightway filled their glasses again. Madelinette took the flask to the old sergeant. He looked at her kindly, and patted her shoulder. Then he raised his glass. "Ah, the brave Caron, the dear Lucette Caron! Ah, the time she dragged me from under the Russian's mare!" He smiled into the distance. "Who can tell? Perhaps, perhaps--again!" he added. Then, all at once, as if conscious of the pitiful humour of his meditations, he came to his feet, straightened his shoulders, and cried: "To her we love best!" The charcoalman drank, and smacked his lips. "Yes, yes," he said, looking into the cup admiringly; "like mother's milk that. White of my eye, but I do love her!" The mealman cocked his glance towards the open door. "Elise!" he said sentimentally, and drank. The blacksmith kissed his daughter, and his hand rested on her head as he lifted the cup, but he said never a word. Parpon took one sip, then poured his liquor upon the ground, as though down there was what he loved best; but his eyes were turned to Dalgrothe Mountain, which he could see through the open door. "France!" cried the old soldier stoutly, and tossed off the liquor. CHAPTER VIII That night Valmond and his three new recruits, to whom Garotte the limeburner had been added, met in the smithy and swore fealty to the great cause. Lajeunesse, by virtue of his position in the parish, and his former military experience, was made a captain, and the others sergeants of companies yet unnamed and unformed. The limeburner was a dry, thin man of no particular stature, who coughed a little between his sentences, and had a habit, when not talking, of humming to himself, as if in apology for his silence. This humming had no sort of tune or purpose, and was but a vague musical sputtering. He almost perilled the gravity of the oath they all took to Valmond by this idiosyncrasy. His occupation gave him a lean, arid look; his hair was crisp and straight, shooting out at all points, and it flew to meet his cap as if it were alive. He was a genius after a fashion, too, and at all the feasts and on national holidays he invented some new feature in the entertainments. With an eye for the grotesque, he had formed a company of jovial blades, called Kalathumpians, after the manner of the mimes of old times in his beloved Dauphiny. "All right, all right," he said, when Lagroin, in the half-lighted blacksmith shop, asked him to swear allegiance and service. "'Brigadier, vous avez raison,'" he added, quoting a well-known song. Then he hummed a little and coughed. "We must have a show"--he hummed again--"we must tickle 'em up a bit--touch 'em where they're silly with a fiddle and fife-raddy dee dee, ra dee, ra dee, ra dee!" Then, to Valmond: "We gave the fools who fought the Little Corporal sour apples in Dauphiny, my dear!" He followed this extraordinary speech with a plan for making an ingenious coup for Valmond, when his Kalathumpians should parade the streets on the evening of St. John the Baptist's Day. With hands clasped the new recruits sang: "When from the war we come, Allons gai! Oh, when we ride back home, If we be spared that day, Ma luronne lurette, We'll laugh our scars away, Ma luronne lure, We'll lift the latch and stay, Ma luronne lure." The huge frame of the blacksmith, his love for his daughter, his simple faith in this new creed of patriotism, his tenderness of heart, joined to his irascible disposition, spasmodic humour, and strong arm, roused in Valmond an immediate liking, as keen, after its kind, as that he had for the Cure; and the avocat. With both of these he had had long talks of late, on everything but purely personal matters. They would have thought it a gross breach of etiquette to question him on that which he avoided. His admiration of them was complete, although he sometimes laughed half sadly, half whimsically, as he thought of their simple faith in him. At dusk on the eve of St. John the Baptist's Day, after a long conference with Lagroin and Parpon, Valmond went through the village, and came to the smithy to talk with Lajeunesse. Those who recognised him in passing took off their bonnets rouges, some saying, "Good-night, your Highness;" some, "How are you, monseigneur?" some, "God bless your Excellency;" and a batch of bacchanalian river-men, who had been drinking, called him "General," and insisted on embracing him, offering him cognac from their tin flasks. The appearance among them of old Madame Degardy shifted the good-natured attack. For many a year, winter and summer, she had come and gone in the parish, all rags and tatters, wearing men's kneeboots and cap, her grey hair hanging down in straggling curls, her lower lip thrust out fiercely, her quick eyes wandering to and fro, and her sharp tongue, like Parpon's, clearing a path before her whichever way she turned. On her arm she carried a little basket of cakes and confitures, and these she dreamed she sold, for they were few who bought of Crazy Joan. The stout stick she carried was as compelling as her tongue, so that when the river-men surrounded her in amiable derision, it was used freely and with a heart all kindness: "For the good of their souls," she said, "since the Cure was too mild, Mary in heaven bless him high and low!" She was the Cure's champion everywhere, and he in turn was tender towards the homeless body, whose history even to him was obscure, save in the few particulars that he had given to Valmond the last time they had met. In her youth Madame Degardy was pretty and much admired. Her lover had deserted her, and in a fit of mad indignation and despair she had fled from the village, and vanished no one knew where, though it had been declared by a wandering hunter that she had been seen in the far-off hills that march into the south, and that she lived there with a barbarous mountaineer, who had himself long been an outlaw from his kind. But this had been mere gossip, and after twenty-five years she came back to Pontiac, a half-mad creature, and took up the thread of her life alone; and Parpon and the Cure saw that she suffered nothing in the hard winters. Valmond left the river-men to the tyranny of her tongue and stick, and came on to where the red light of the forge showed through the smithy window. As he neared the door, he heard a voice singularly sweet, and another of commoner calibre was joining in the refrain of a song: "'Oh, traveller, see where the red sparks rise,' (Fly away, my heart, fly away!) But dark is the mist in the traveller's eyes. (Fly away, my heart, fly away!) 'Oh, traveller, see far down the gorge, The crimson light from my father's forge. (Fly away, my heart, fly away!) "'Oh, traveller, hear how the anvils ring.' (Fly away, my heart, fly away!) But the traveller heard, ah, never a thing. (Fly away, my heart, fly away!) 'Oh, traveller, loud do the bellows roar, And my father waits by the smithy door. (Fly away, my heart, fly away!) "'Oh, traveller, see you thy true love's grace.' (Fly away, my heart, fly away!) And now there is joy in the traveller's face. (Fly away, my heart, fly away!) Oh, wild does he ride through the rain and mire, To greet his love by the smithy fire. (Fly away, my heart, fly away!)" In accompaniment, some one was beating softly on the anvil, and the bellows were blowing rhythmically. He lingered for a moment, loath to interrupt the song, and then softly opened the upper half of the door, for it was divided horizontally, and leaned over the lower part. Beside the bellows, her sleeves rolled up, her glowing face cowled in her black hair, comely and strong, stood Elise Malboir, pushing a rod of steel into the sputtering coals. Over the anvil, with a small bar caught in a pair of tongs, hovered Madelinette Lajeunesse, beating, almost tenderly, the red-hot point of the steel. The sound of the iron hammer on the malleable metal was like muffled silver, and the sparks flew out like jocund fireflies. She was making two hooks for her kitchen wall, for she was clever at the forge, and could shoe a horse if she were let to do so. She was but half-turned to Valmond, but he caught the pure outlines of her face and neck, her extreme delicacy of expression, which had a pathetic, subtle refinement, in acute contrast to the quick, abundant health, the warm energy, the half defiant look of Elise. It was a picture of labour and life. A dozen thoughts ran through Valmond's mind. He was responsible, to an extent, for the happiness of these two young creatures. He had promised to make a songstress of the one, to send her to Paris; had roused in her wild, ambitious hopes of fame and fortune--dreams that, in any case, could be little like the real thing: fanciful visions of conquest and golden living, where never the breath of her hawthorn and wild violets entered; only sickly perfumes, as from an odalisque's fan, amid the enervating splendour of voluptuous boudoirs--for she had read of these things. Valmond had, in a vague, graceless sort of way, worked upon the quick emotions of Elise. Every little touch of courtesy had been returned to him in half-shy, half-ardent glances; in flushes, which the kiss he had given her the first day of their meeting had made the signs of an intermittent fever; in modest yet alluring waylayings; in restless nights, in half-tuneful, half-silent days; in a sweet sort of petulance. She had kept in mind everything he had said to her; the playfully emotional pressure of her hand, his eloquent talks with her uncle, the old sergeant's rhapsodies on his greatness; and there was no place in the room where he had sat or stood, which she had not made sacred--she, the mad cap, who had lovers by the dozen. Importuned by the Cure and her mother to marry, she had threatened, if they worried her further, to wed fat Duclosse, the mealman, who had courted her in a ponderous way for at least three years. The fire that corrodes, when it does not make glorious without and within, was in her veins, and when Valmond should call she was ready to come. She could not, at first, see that if he were, in truth, a Napoleon, she was not for him. Seized of that wilful, daring spirit called Love, her sight was bounded by the little field where she strayed. Elise's arm paused upon the lever of the bellows, when she saw Valmond watching them from the door. He took off his hat to them, as Madelinette turned towards him, the hammer pausing in the stroke. "Ah, monseigneur!" she said impulsively, and then paused, confused. Elise did not move, but stood looking at him, her eyes all flame, her cheeks going a little pale, and flushing again. With a quick motion she pushed her hair back, and as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him, she blew the bellows, as if to give a brighter light to the place. The fire flared up, but there were corners in deep shadow. Valmond doffed his hat again and said ceremoniously: "Mademoiselle Madelinette, Mademoiselle Elise, pray do not stop your work. Let me sit here and watch you." Taking from his pocket a cigarette, he came over to the forge and was about to light it with the red steel from the fire, when Elise, snatching up a tiny piece of wood, thrust it in the coals, and, drawing it out, held it towards the cigarette, saying: "Ah, no, your Excellency--this!" As Valmond reached to take it from her, he heard a sound, as of a hoarse breathing, and turned quickly; but his outstretched hand touched Elise's fingers, and it involuntarily closed on them, all her impulsive temperament and warm life thrilling through him. The shock of feeling brought his eyes to hers with a sudden burning mastery. For an instant their looks fused and were lost in a passionate affiance. Then, as if pulling himself out of a dream, he released her fingers with a "Pardon-- my child!" As he did so, a cry ran through the smithy. Madelinette was standing, tense and set with terror, her eyes riveted on something that crouched beside a pile of cart-wheels a few feet away; something with shaggy head, flaring eyes, and a devilish face. The thing raised itself and sprang towards hers with a devouring cry. With desperate swiftness leaping forward, Valmond caught the half man, half beast--it seemed that--by the throat. Madelinette fell fainting against the anvil, and, dazed and trembling, Elise hurried to her. Valmond was in the grasp of a giant, and, struggle as he might, he could not withstand the powerful arms of his assailant. They came to their knees on the ground, where they clutched and strained for a wild minute, Valmond desperately fighting to keep the huge bony fingers from his neck. Suddenly the giant's knee touched the red-hot steel that Madelinette had dropped, and with a snarl he flung Valmond back against the anvil, his head striking the iron with a sickening thud. Then, seizing the steel, he raised it to plunge the still glowing point into Valmond's eyes. Centuries of doom seemed crowded into that instant of time. Valmond caught the giant's wrist with both hands, and with a mighty effort wrenched himself aside. His heart seemed to strain and burst, and just as he felt the end was come, he heard something crash on the murderer's skull, and the great creature fell with a gurgling sound, and lay like a parcel of loose bones across his knees. Valmond raised himself, a strange, dull wonder on him, for as the weapon smote this lifeless creature, he had seen another hurl by and strike the opposite wall. A moment afterwards the dead man was pulled away by Parpon. Trying to rise he felt blood trickling down his neck, and he turned sick and blind. As the world slipped away from him, a soft shoulder caught his head, and out of a vast distance there came to him the wailing cry: "He is dying! my love! my love!" Peril and horror had brought to Elise's breast the one being in the world for her, the face which was etched like a picture upon her eyes and heart. Parpon groaned with a strange horror as he dragged the body from Valmond. For a moment he knelt gasping beside the shapeless being, his great hands spasmodically feeling the pulseless breast. Soon afterwards in the blacksmith's house the two girls nestled in each other's arms, and Valmond, shaken and weak, returned to the smithy. In the dull glare of the forge fire knelt Parpon, rocking back and forth beside the body. Hearing Valmond, he got to his feet. "You have killed him," he said, pointing. "No, no, not I," answered Valmond. "Some one threw a hammer." "There were two hammers." "It was Elise?" asked Valmond, with a shudder. "No, not Elise; it was you," said the dwarf, with a strange insistence. "I tell you no," said Valmond. "It was you, Parpon." "By God, it is a lie!" cried the dwarf, with a groan. Then he came close to Valmond. "He was--my brother! Do you not see?" he demanded fiercely, his eyes full of misery. "Do you not see that it was you? Yes, yes, it was you." Stooping, Valmond caught the little man in an embrace. "It was I that killed him, Parpon. It was I, comrade. You saved my life," he added significantly. "The girl threw, but missed," said Parpon. "She does not know but that she struck him." "She must be told." "I will tell her that you killed him. Leave it to me--all to me, my grand seigneur." A half-hour afterwards the avocat, the Cure, and the Little Chemist, had heard the story as the dwarf told it, and Valmond returned to the Louis Quinze a hero. For hours the habitants gathered under his window and cheered him. Parpon sat long in gloomy silence by his side, but, raising his voice, he began to sing softly a lament for the gross-figured body, lying alone in a shed near the deserted smithy: "Children, the house is empty, The house behind the tall hill; Lonely and still is the empty house. There is no face in the doorway, There is no fire in the chimney. Come and gather beside the gate, Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills. "Where has the wild dog vanished? Where has the swift foot gone? Where is the hand that found the good fruit, That made a garret of wholesome herbs? Where is the voice that awoke the morn, The tongue that defied the terrible beasts? Come and listen beside the door, Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills." The pathos of the chant almost made his listener shrink, so immediate and searching was it. When the lament ceased, there was a long silence, broken by Valmond. "He was your brother, Parpon--how? Tell me about it." The dwarf's eyes looked into the distance. "It was in the far-off country," he said, "in the hills where the Little Good Folk come. My mother married an outlaw. Ah, he was cruel, and an animal! My brother Gabriel was born--he was a giant, his brain all fumbling and wild. Then I was born, so small, a head as a tub, and long arms like a gorilla. We burrowed in the hills, Gabriel and I. One day my mother, because my father struck her, went mad, left us and came to--" He broke off, pausing an instant. "Then Gabriel struck the man, and he died, and we buried him, and my brother also left me, and I was alone. By and by I travelled to Pontiac. Once Gabriel came down from the hills, and Lajeunesse burnt him with a hot iron, for cutting his bellows in the night, to make himself a bed inside them. To-day he came again to do some terrible thing to the blacksmith or the girl, and you have seen--ah, the poor Gabriel, and I killed him!" "I killed him," said Valmond--"I, Parpon, my friend." "My poor fool, my wild dog!" wailed the dwarf mournfully. "Parpon," asked Valmond suddenly, "where is your mother?" "It is no matter. She has forgotten--she is safe." "If she should see him!" said Valmond tentatively, for a sudden thought had come to him that the mother of these misfits of God was Madame Degardy. Parpon sprang to his-feet. "She shall not see him. Ah, you know! You have guessed?" he cried. "She is all safe with me." "She shall not see him. She shall not know," repeated the dwarf, his eyes huddling back in his head with anguish. "Does she not remember you?" "She does not remember the living, but she would remember the dead. She shall not know," he said again. Then, seizing Valmond's hand, he kissed it, and, without a word, trotted from the room--a ludicrously pathetic figure. CHAPTER IX Now and again the moon showed through the cloudy night, and the air was soft and kind. Parpon left behind him the village street, and, after a half mile or more of travel, came to a spot where a crimson light showed beyond a little hill. He halted a moment, as if to think and listen, then crawled up the bank and looked down. Beside a still smoking lime- kiln an abandoned fire was burning down into red coals. The little hut of the lime-burner was beyond in a hollow, and behind that again was a lean-to, like a small shed or stable. Hither stole the dwarf, first pausing to listen a moment at the door of the hut. Leaning into the darkness of the shed, he gave a soft, crooning call. Low growls of dogs came in quick reply. He stepped inside, and spoke to them: "Good dogs! good dogs! good Musket, Coffee, Filthy, Jo-Jo--steady, steady, idiots!" for the huge brutes were nosing him, throwing themselves against: him, and whining gratefully. Feeling the wall, he took down some harness, and, in the dark, put a set on each dog--mere straps for the shoulders, halters, and traces; called to them sharply to be quiet, and, keeping hold of their collars, led them out into the night. He paused to listen again. Presently he drove the dogs across the road, and attached them to a flat vehicle, without wheels or runners, used by Garotte for the drawing of lime and stones. It was not so heavy as many machines of the kind, and at a quick word from the dwarf the dogs darted away. Unseen, a mysterious figure hurried on after them, keeping well in the shadow of the trees fringing the side of the road. The dwarf drove the dogs down a lonely side lane to the village, and came to the shed where lay the uncomely thing he had called brother. He felt for a spot where there was a loose board, forced it and another with his strong fingers, and crawled in. Reappearing with the dead body, he bore it in his huge arms to the stoneboat: a midget carrying a giant. He covered up the face, and, returning to the shed, placed his coat against the boards to deaden the sound, and hammered them tight again with a stone, after having straightened the grass about. Returning, he found the dogs cowering with fear, for one of them had pushed the cloth off the dead man's face with his nose, and death exercised its weird dominion over them. They crouched together, whining and tugging at the traces. With a persuasive word he started them away. The pursuing, watchful figure followed at a distance, on up the road, on over the little hills, on into the high hills, the dogs carrying along steadily the grisly load. And once their driver halted them, and sat in the grey gloom and dust beside the dead body. "Where do you go, dwarf?" he said. "I go to the Ancient House," he made answer to himself. "What do you get?" "I do not go to get; I go to give." "What do you go to give?" "I go to leave an empty basket at the door, and the lantern that the Shopkeeper set in the hand of the pedlar." "Who is the pedlar, hunchback?" "The pedlar is he that carries the pack on his back." "What carries he in the pack?" "He carries what the Shopkeeper gave him--for he had no money and no choice." "Who is the Shopkeeper, dwarf?" "The Shopkeeper--the Shopkeeper is the father of dwarfs and angels and children--and fools." "What does he sell, poor man?" "He sells harness for men and cattle, and you give your lives for the harness." "What is this you carry, dwarf?" "I carry home the harness of a soul." "Is it worth carrying home?" "The eyes grow sick at sight of the old harness in the way." The watching figure, hearing, pitied. It was Valmond. Excited by Parpon's last words at the hotel, he had followed, and was keen to chase this strange journeying to the end, though suffering from the wound in his head, and shaken by the awful accident of the evening. But, as he said to himself; some things were to be seen but once in the great game, and it was worth while seeing them, even if life were the shorter for it. On up the heights filed the strange procession until at last it came to Dalgrothe Mountain. On one of the foot-hills stood the Rock of Red Pigeons. This was the dwarf's secret resort, where no one ever disturbed him; for the Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills (of whom it was rumoured, he had come) held revel there, and people did not venture rashly. The land about it, and a hut farther down the hill, belonged to Parpon; a legacy from the father of the young Seigneur. It was all hills, gorges, rivers, and idle, murmuring pines. Of a morning, mist floated into mist as far as eye could see, blue and grey and amethyst, a glamour of tints and velvety radiance. The great hills waved into each other like a vast violet sea, and, in turn, the tiny earth-waves on each separate hill swelled into the larger harmony. At the foot of a steep precipice was the whirlpool from which Parpon, at great risk, had rescued the father of De la Riviere, and had received this lonely region as his reward. To the dwarf it was his other world, his real home; for here he lived his own life, and it was here he had brought his ungainly dead, to give it housing. The dogs drew up the grim cargo to a plateau near the Rock of Red Pigeons, and, gathering sticks, Parpon lit a sweet-smelling fire of cedar. Then he went to the hut, and came back with a spade and a shovel. At the foot of a great pine he began to dig. As the work went on, he broke into a sort of dirge, painfully sweet. Leaning against a rock not far away, Valmond watched the tiny man with the long arms throw up the soft, good-smelling earth, enriched by centuries of dead leaves and flowers. The trees waved and bent and murmured, as though they gossiped with each other over this odd gravedigger. The light of the fire showed across the gorge, touching off the far wall of pines with burnished crimson, and huge flickering shadows looked like elusive spirits, attendant on the lonely obsequies. Now and then a bird, aroused by the flame or the snap of a burning stick, rose from its nest and flew away; and wild-fowl flitted darkly down the pass, like the souls of heroes faring to Walhalla. When an owl hooted, a wolf howled far off, or a loon cried from the water below; the solemn fantasy took on the aspect of the unreal. Valmond watched like one in a dream, and twice or thrice he turned faint, and drew his cloak about him as if he were cold; for a sickly air, passing by, seemed to fill his lungs with poison. At last the grave was dug, and, sprinkling its depth with leaves and soft branches of spruce, the dwarf drew the body over, and lowered it slowly, awkwardly, into the grave. Then he covered all but the huge, unlovely face, and, kneeling, peered down at it pitifully. "Gabriel, Gabriel," he cried, "surely thy soul is better without its harness! I killed thee, and thou didst kill, and those we love die by our own hands. But no, I lie; I did not love thee, thou wert so ugly and wild and cruel. Poor boy! Thou wast a fool, and thou wast a murderer. Thou wouldst have slain my prince, and so I slew thee--I slew thee." He rocked to and fro in abject sorrow, and cried again: "Hast thou no one in all the world to mourn thee, save him who killed thee? Is there no one to wish thee speed to the Ancient House? Art thou tossed away like an old shoe, and no one to say, The Shoemaker that made thee must see to it if thou wast ill-shapen, and walked crookedly, and did evil things? Ah, is there no one to mourn thee, save him that killed thee?" He leaned back, and cried out into the high hills like a remorseful, tortured soul. Valmond, no longer able to watch this grief in silence, stepped quickly forward. The dogs, seeing him, barked, and then were still; and the dwarf looked up as he heard footsteps. "Another has come to mourn him, Parpon," said Valmond. A look of bewilderment and joy swam into Parpon's eyes. Then he gave a laugh of singular wildness, his face twitched, tears rushed down his cheeks, and he threw himself at Valmond's feet, and clasped his knees, crying: "Ah-ah, my prince, great brother, thou hast come also! Ah, thou didst know the way up the long hill Thou hast come to the burial of a fool. But he had a mother--yes, yes, a mother! All fools have mothers, and they should be buried well. Come, ah, come, and speak softly the Act of Contrition, and I will cover him up." He went to throw in the earth, but Valmond pushed him aside gently. "No, no," he said, "this is for me." And he began filling the grave. When they left the place of burial, the fire was burning low, for they had talked long. At the foot of the hills they looked back. Day was beginning to break over Dalgrothe Mountain. CHAPTER X When, next day, in the bright sunlight, the Little Chemist, the Cure, and others, opened the door of the shed, taking off their hats in the presence of the Master Workman, they saw that his seat was empty. The dead Caliban was gone--who should say how, or where? The lock was still on the doors, the walls were intact, there was no window for entrance or escape. He had vanished as weirdly as he came. All day the people sought the place, viewing with awe and superstition the shed of death, and the spot in the smithy where, it was said, Valmond had killed the giant. The day following was the feast of St. John the Baptist. Mass was said in the church, all the parish attending; and Valmond was present, with Lagroin in full regimentals. Plates of blessed bread were passed round at the close of mass, as was the custom on this feast-day; and with a curious feeling that came to him often afterwards, Valmond listened to his General saying solemnly: "Holy bread, I take thee; If I die suddenly, Serve me as a sacrament." With many eyes watching him curiously, he also ate the bread, repeating the holy words. All day there were sports and processions, the habitants gay in rosettes and ribbons, flowers and maple leaves, as they idled or filed along the streets, under arches of evergreens, where the Tricolor and Union Jack mingled and fluttered amiably together. Anvils, with powder placed between, were touched off with a bar of red-hot iron, making a vast noise and drawing applausive crowds to the smithy. On the hill beside the Cure's house was a little old cannon brought from the battle-field of Ticonderoga, and its boisterous salutations were replied to from the Seigneury, by a still more ancient piece of ordnance. Sixty of Valmond's recruits, under Lajeunesse the blacksmith, marched up and down the streets, firing salutes with a happy, casual intrepidity, and setting themselves off before the crowds with a good many airs and nods and simple vanities. In the early evening the good Cure blessed and lighted the great bonfire before the church; and immediately, at this signal, an answering fire sprang up on a hill at the other side of the village. Then fire on fire glittered and multiplied, till all the village was in a glow. This was a custom set in memory of the old days when fires flashed intelligence, after a fixed code, across the great rivers and lakes, and from hill to hill. Far up against Dalgrothe Mountain appeared a sumptuous star, mystical and red. Valmond saw it from his window, and knew it to be Parpon's watchfire, by the grave of his brother Gabriel. The chief procession started with the lighting of the bonfires: Singing softly, choristers and acolytes in robes preceded the devout Cure, and pious believers and youths on horseback, with ribbons flying, carried banners and shrines. Marshals kept the lines steady, and four were in constant attendance on a gorgeous carriage, all gilt and carving (the heirloom of the parish), in which reclined the figure of a handsome lad, impersonating John the Baptist, with long golden hair, dressed in rich robes and skins-- a sceptre in his hand, a snowy lamb at his feet. The rude symbolism was softened and toned to an almost poetical refinement, and gave to the harmless revels a touch of Arcady. After this semi-religious procession, evening brought the march of Garotte's Kalathumpians. They were carried on three long drays, each drawn by four horses, half of them white, half black. They were an outlandish crew of comedians, dressed after no pattern, save the absurd- clowns, satyrs, kings, soldiers, imps, barbarians. Many had hideous false-faces, and a few horribly tall skeletons had heads of pumpkins containing lighted candles. The marshals were pierrots and clowns on long stilts, who towered in a ghostly way above the crowd. They were cheerful, fantastic revellers, singing the maddest and silliest of songs, with singular refrains and repetitions. The last line of one verse was the beginning of another: "A Saint Malo, beau port de mer, Trois gros navir' sont arrives. Trois gros navir' sont arrives Charges d'avoin', charges de ble." For an hour and more their fantastic songs delighted the simple folk. They stopped at last in front of the Louis Quinze. The windows of Valmond's chambers were alight, and to one a staff was fastened. Suddenly the Kalathumpians quieted where they stood, for the voice of their leader, a sort of fat King of Yvetot, cried out: "See there, my noisy children!" It was the inventive lime-burner who spoke. "What come you here for, my rollicking blades?" "We are a long way from home; we are looking for our brother, your Majesty," they cried in chorus. "Ha, ha! What is your brother like, jolly dogs?" "He has a face of ivory, and eyes like torches, and he carries a silver sword." "But what the devil is his face like ivory for, my fanfarons?" "So that he shall not blush for us. He is a grand seigneur," they shouted back. "Why are his eyes like torches, my ragamuffins?" "To show us the way home." Valmond appeared upon the balcony. "What is it you wish, my children?" he asked. "Brother," said the fantastic leader, "we've lost our way. Will you lead us home again?" "It is a long travel," he answered, after the fashion of their own symbols. "There are high hills to climb; there may be wild beasts in the way; and storms come down the mountains." "We have strong hearts, and you have a silver sword, brother." "I cannot see your faces, to know if you are true, my children," he answered. Instantly the clothes flew off, masks fell, pumpkins came crashing to the ground, the stilts of the marshals dropped, and thirty men stood upon the drays in crude military order, with muskets in their hands and cockades in their caps. At that moment also, a flag--the Tricolor--fluttered upon the staff at Valmond's window. The roll of a drum came out of the street somewhere, and presently the people fell back before sixty armed men, marching in columns, under Lagroin, while from the opposite direction came Lajeunesse with sixty others, silent all, till they reached the drays and formed round them slowly. Valmond stood watching intently, and the people were very still, for this seemed like real life, and no burlesque. Some of the soldiery had military clothes, old militia uniforms, or the rebel trappings of '37; others, less fortunate, wore their trousers in long boots, their coats buttoned lightly over their chests, and belted in; and the Napoleonic cockade was in every cap. "My children," said Valmond at last, "I see that your hearts are strong, and that you have the bodies of true men. We have sworn fealty to each other, and the badge of our love is in your caps. Let us begin our journey home. I will come down among you: I will come down among you, and I will lead you from Pontiac to the sea, gathering comrades as we go; then across the sea, to France; then to Paris and the Tuileries, where an Orleans usurps the place of a Napoleon." He descended and mounted his waiting horse. At that moment De la Riviere appeared on the balcony, and, stepping forward, said: "My friends, do you know what you are doing? This is folly. This man--" He got no further, for Valmond raised his hand to Lagroin, and the drums began to beat. Then he rode down in front of Lajeunesse's men, the others sprang from the drays and fell into place, and soon the little army was marching, four deep, through the village. This was the official beginning of Valmond's fanciful quest for empire. The people had a phrase, and they had a man; and they saw no further than the hour. As they filed past the house of Elise Malboir, the girl stood in the glow of a bonfire, beside the oven where Valmond had first seen her. All around her was the wide awe of night, enriched by the sweet perfume of a coming harvest. He doffed his hat to her, then to the Tricolor, which Lagroin had fastened on a tall staff before the house. Elise did not stir, did not courtesy or bow, but stood silent--entranced. She was in a dream. This man, riding at the head of the simple villagers, was part of her vision; and, at the moment, she did not rouse from the ecstasy of reverie where her new-born love had led her. For Valmond the scene had a moving power. He heard again her voice crying in the smithy: "He is dying! Oh, my love! my love!" He was now in the heart of a fantastical adventure. Filled with its spirit, he would carry it bravely to the end, enjoying every step in it, comedy or tragedy. Yet all day, since he had eaten the sacred bread, there had been ringing in his ears the words: "Holy bread, I take thee; If I die suddenly, Serve me as a sacrament." It came home to him, at the instant, what a toss-up it all was. What was he doing? No matter: it was a game, in which nothing was sure--nothing save this girl. She would, he knew, with the abandon of an absorbing passion, throw all things away for him. Such as Madame Chalice--ah, she was a part of this brave fantasy, this dream of empire, this inspiring play! But Elise Malboir was life itself, absolute, true, abiding. His nature swam gloriously in his daring exploit; he believed in it, he sank himself in it with a joyous recklessness; it was his victory or his doom. But it was a shake of the dice--had Fate loaded them against him? He looked up the hill towards the Manor. Life was there in its essence; beauty, talent, the genius of the dreamer, like his own. But it was not for him; dauphin or fool, it was not for him! Madame Chalice was his friendly inquisitor, not his enemy; she endured him for some talent he had shown, for the apparent sincerity of his love for the cause; but that was all. Yet she was ever in this dream of his, and he felt that she would always be; the unattainable, the undeserved, more splendid than his cause itself--the cause for which he would give--what would he give? Time would show. But Elise Malboir, abundant, true, fine, in the healthy vigour of her nature, with no dream in her heart but love fulfilled--she was no part of his adventure, but of that vital spirit which can bring to the humblest as to the highest the good reality of life. CHAPTER XI It was the poignancy of these feelings which, later, drew Valmond to the ashes of the fire in whose glow Elise had stood. The village was quieting down, the excited habitants had scattered to their homes. But in one or two houses there was dancing, and, as he passed, Valmond heard the chansons of the humble games they played--primitive games, primitive chansons: "In my right hand I hold a rose-bush, Which will bloom, Manon lon la! Which will bloom in the month of May. Come into our dance, pretty rose-bush, Come and kiss, Manon Ion la! Come and kiss whom you love best!" The ardour, the delight, the careless joy of youth, were in the song and in the dance. These simple folk would marry, beget children, labour hard, obey Mother Church, and yield up the ghost peacefully in the end, after their kind; but now and then there was born among them one not after their kind: even such as Madelinette, with the stirring of talent in her veins, and the visions of the artistic temperament--delight and curse all at once--lifting her out of the life, lonely, and yet sorrowfully happy. Valmond looked around. How still it was, the home of Elise standing apart in the quiet fields! But involuntarily his eyes were drawn to the hill beyond, where showed a light in a window of the Manor. To-morrow he would go there: he had much to say to Madame Chalice. The moon was lying off above the edge of hills, looking out on the world complacently, like an indulgent janitor scanning the sleepy street from his doorway. He was abruptly drawn from his reverie by the entrance of Lagroin into the little garden; and he followed the old man through the open doorway. All was dark, but as they stepped within they heard some one move. Presently a match was struck, and Elise came forward with a candle raised level with her dusky head. Lagroin looked at her in indignant astonishment. "Do you not see who is here, girl?" he demanded. "Your Excellency!" she said confusedly to Valmond, and, bowing, offered him a chair. "You must pardon her, sire," said the old sergeant. "She has never been taught, and she's a wayward wench." Valmond waved his hand. "Nonsense, we are friends. You are my General; she is your niece." His eyes followed Elise as she set out for them some cider, a small flask of cognac, and some seed-cakes; luxuries which were served but once a year in this house, as in most homes of Pontiac. For a long time Valmond and his General talked, devised, planned, schemed, till the old man grew husky and pale. The sight of his senile weariness flashed the irony of the whole wild dream into Valmond's mind. He rose, and, giving his arm, led Lagroin to his bedroom, and bade him good-night. When he returned to the room, it was empty. He looked around, and, seeing an open door, moved to it quickly. It led into a little stairway. He remembered then that there was a room which had been, apparently, tacked on, like an after-thought, to the end of the house. Seeing the glimmer of a light beyond, he went up a few steps, and came face to face with Elise, who, candle in hand, was about to descend the stairs again. For a moment she stood quite still, then placed the candle on the rude little dressing-table, built of drygoods boxes, and draped with fresh muslin. Valmond took in every detail of the chamber at a single glance. It was very simple and neat, with the small wooden bedstead corded with rope, the poor hickory rocking-chair, the flaunting chromo of the Holy Family, the sprig of blessed palm, the shrine of the Virgin, the print skirts hanging on the wall, the stockings lying across a chair, the bits of ribbon on the bed. The quietness, the alluring simplicity, the whole room filled with the rich presence of the girl, sent a flood of colour to Valmond's face, and his heart beat hard. Curiosity only had led him into the room, something more radical held him there. Elise seemed to read his thoughts, and, taking up her candle, she came on to the doorway. Neither had spoken. As she was about to pass him, he suddenly took her arm. But, glancing towards the window, he noticed that the blind was not down. He turned and blew out the candle in her hand. "Ah, your Excellency!" she cried in tremulous affright. "We could have been seen from outside," he explained. She turned and saw the moonlight streaming in at the window, and lying like a silver coverlet upon the floor. As if with a blind, involuntary instinct for protection, she stepped forward into the moonlight, and stood there motionless. The sight thrilled him, and he moved towards her. The mind of the girl reasserted itself, and she hastened to the door. Again, as she was about to pass him, he put his hand upon her shoulder. "Elise--Elise!" he said. The voice was persuasive, eloquent, going to every far retreat of emotion in her. There was a sudden riot in his veins, and he took her passionately in his arms, and kissed her on the lips, on the eyes, on the hair, on the neck. At that moment the outer door opened below, and the murmur of voices came to them. "Oh, monsieur--oh, your Excellency, let me go!" she whispered fearfully. "It is my mother and Duclosse the mealman." Valmond recognised the fat, wheezy tones of Duclosse--Sergeant Duclosse. He released her, and she caught up the candle. "What can you do?" she whispered. "I will wait here. I must not go down," he replied. "It would mean ruin." Ruin! ruin! Was she face to face with ruin already, she who, two minutes ago, was as safe and happy as a young bird in its nest? He felt instantly that he had made a mistake, had been cruel, though he had not intended it. "Ruin to me," he said at once. "Duclosse is a stupid fellow: he would not understand; he would desert me; and that would be disastrous at this moment. Go down," he said. "I will wait here, Elise." Her brows knitted painfully. "Oh, monsieur, I'd rather face death, I believe, than that you should remain here." But he pushed her gently towards the door, and a moment afterwards he heard her talking to Duclosse and her mother. He sat down on the couch and listened for a moment. His veins were still glowing from the wild moment just passed. Elise would come back--and then--what? She would be alone with him again in this room, loving him-- fearing him. He remembered that once, when a child, he had seen a peasant strike his wife, felling her to the ground; and how afterwards she had clasped him round the neck and kissed him, as he bent over her in merely vulgar fright lest he had killed her. That scene flashed before him. There came an opposing thought. As Madame Chalice had said, either as prince or barber, he was playing a terrible game. Why shouldn't he get all he could out of it while it lasted--let the world break over him when it must? Why should he stand in an orchard of ripe fruit, and refuse to pick what lay luscious to his hand, what this stupid mealman below would pick, and eat, and yawn over? There was the point. Wouldn't the girl rather have him, Valmond, at any price, than the priest-blessed love of Duclosse and his kind? The thought possessed, devoured him for a moment. Then suddenly there again rang in his ears the words which had haunted him all day: "Holy bread, I take thee; If I die suddenly, Serve me as a sacrament." They passed backwards and forwards in his mind for a little time with no significance. Then they gave birth to another thought. Suppose he stayed; suppose he took advantage of the love of this girl? He looked around the little room, showing so peacefully in the moonlight--the religious symbols, the purity, the cleanliness, the calm poverty. He had known the inside of the boudoirs and the bed-chambers of women of fashion --he had seen them, at least. In them the voluptuous, the indulgent, seemed part of the picture. But he was not a beast, that he could fail to see what this tiny bedroom would be, if he followed his wild will. Some terrible fate might overtake his gay pilgrimage to empire, and leave him lost, abandoned, in a desert of ruin. Why not give up the adventure, and come to this quiet, and this good peace, so shutting out the stir and violence of the world? All at once Madame Chalice came into his thoughts, swam in his sight, and he knew that what he felt for this peasant girl was of one side of his nature only. All of him worth the having--was any worth the having? responded to that diffusing charm which brought so many men to the feet of that lady of the Manor, who had lovers by the score: from such as the Cure and the avocat, gentle and noble, and requited, to the young Seigneur, selfish and ulterior, and unrequited. He got to his feet quietly. No, he would make a decent exit, in triumph or defeat, to honour the woman who was standing his friend. Let them, the British Government at Quebec, proceed against him; he would have only one trouble to meet, one to leave behind. He would not load this girl with shame as well as sorrow. Her love itself was affliction enough to her. This adventure was serious; a bullet might drop him; the law might remove him: so he would leave here at once. He was about to open the window, when he heard a door shut below, and the thud of heavy steps outside the house. Drawing back, he waited until he heard the foot of Elise upon the stair. She came in without a light, and at first did not see him. He heard her gasp. Stepping forward a little, he said: "I am here, Elise. Come." She trembled as she came. "Oh, monsieur--your Excellency!" she whispered; "oh, you cannot go down, for my mother sits ill by the fire. You cannot go out that way." He took both her hands. "No matter. Poor child, you are trembling! Come." He drew her towards the couch. She shrank back. "Oh no, monsieur, oh-- I die of shame!" "There is no need, Elise," he answered gently, and he sat on the edge of the couch, and drew her to his side. "Let us say good-night." She grew very still, and he felt her move towards him, as she divined his purpose, and knew that this room of hers would have no shadow in it to- morrow, and her soul no unpardonable sin. A warm peace passed through her veins, and she drew nearer still. She did not know that this new ardent confidence came near to wrecking her. For Valmond had an instant's madness, and only saved himself from the tumult in his blood by getting to his feet, with strenuous resolution. Taking both her hands, he kissed her on the cheeks, and said: "Adieu, Elise. May your sorrow never be more, and my happiness never less. I am going now." He felt her hand grasp his arm, as if with a desire that he should not leave her. Then she rose quickly, and came with him to the window. Raising the sash, she held it, and he looked out. There seemed to be no one in the road, no one in the yard. So, half turning, he swung himself down by his hands, and dropped to the ground. From the window above a sob came to him, and Elise's face, all tears, showed for an instant in the moonlight. He did not seek the road directly, but, climbing a fence near by, crossed a hay-field, going unseen, as he thought, to the village. But a lady, walking in the road with an old gentleman, had seen and recognised him. Her fingers clinched with anger at the sight, and her spirit filled with disgust. "What are you looking at?" said her companion, who was short-sighted. "At the tricks moonlight plays. Shadows frighten me sometimes, my dear avocat." She shuddered. "My dear madame!" he said in warm sympathy. CHAPTER XII The sun was going down behind the hills, like a drowsy boy to his bed, radiant and weary from his day's sport. The villagers were up at Dalgrothe Mountain, soldiering for Valmond. Every evening, when the haymakers put up their scythes, the mill-wheel stopped turning, and the Angelus ceased, the men marched away into the hills, where the ardent soldier of fortune had pitched his camp. Tents, muskets, ammunition came out of dark places, as they are ever sure to come when the war-trumpet sounds. All seems peace, but suddenly, at the wild call, the latent barbarian in human nature springs up and is ready; and the cruder the arms, the fiercer the temper that wields. Recruits now arrived from other parishes, and besides those who came every night to drill, there were others who stayed always in camp. The lime-burner left his kiln, and sojourned with his dogs at Dalgrothe Mountain; the mealman neglected his trade; and Lajeunesse was no longer at his blacksmith shop, save after dark, when the red glow of his forge could be seen till midnight. He was captain of a company in the daytime, forgeron at night. Valmond, no longer fantastic in dress, speech, or manner, was happy, busy, buoyed up and cast down by turn, troubled, exhilarated. He could not understand these variations of health and mood. He had not felt equably well since the night of Gabriel's burial in the miasmic air of the mountain. At times he felt a wonderful lightness of head and heart, with entrancing hopes; again a heaviness and an aching, accompanied by a feeling of doom. He fought the depression, and appeared before his men cheerful and alert always. He was neither looking back nor looking forward, but living in his dramatic theme from day to day, and wondering if, after all, this movement, by some joyful, extravagant chance, might not carry him on even to the chambers of the Tuileries. From the first day that he had gathered these peasants about him, had convinced, almost against their will, the wise men of the village, this fanciful exploit had been growing a deep reality to him. He had convinced himself; he felt that he could, in a larger sphere, gather thousands about him where he now gathered scores--with a good cause. Well, was his cause not good, he asked himself? There were others to whom this growing reality was painful. The young Seigneur was serious enough about it, and more than once, irritated and perturbed, he sought Madame Chalice; but she gave him no encouragement, remarking coldly that Monsieur Valmond probably knew very well what he was doing, and was weighing all consequences. She had become interested in a passing drama, and De la Riviere's attentions produced no impression on her, and gave her no pleasure. They were, however, not obtrusive. She had seen much of him two years before; he had been a good friend of her husband. She was amused at his attentions then; she had little to occupy her, and she felt herself superior to any man's emotions: not such as this young Seigneur could win her away from her passive but certain fealty. She had played with fire, from the very spirit of adventure in her, but she had not been burnt. "You say he is an impostor, dear monsieur," she said languidly: "do pray exert yourself, and prove him one. What is your evidence?" She leaned back in the very chair where she had sat looking at Valmond a few weeks before, her fingers idly smoothing out the folds of her dress. "Oh, the thing is impossible," he answered, blowing the smoke of a cigarette; "we've had no real proof of his birth, and life--and so on." "But there are relics--and so on!" she said suggestively, and she picked up the miniature of the Emperor. "Owning a skeleton doesn't make it your ancestor," he replied. He laughed, for he was pleased at his own cleverness, and he also wished to remain good-tempered. "I am so glad to see you at last take the true attitude towards this," she responded brightly. "If it's a comedy, enjoy it. If it's a tragedy"--she drew herself up with a little shudder, for she was thinking of that figure dropping from Elise's window--"you cannot stop it. Tragedy is inevitable; but comedy is within the gift and governance of mortals." For a moment again she was lost in the thought of Elise, of Valmond's vulgarity and commonness; and he had dared to speak words of love almost to her! She flushed to the hair, as she had done fifty times since she had seen him that moonlit night. Ah, she had thought him the dreamer, the enthusiast--maybe, in kind, credulous moments, the great man he claimed to be; and he had only been the sensualist after all! That he did not love Elise, she knew well enough: he had been coldblooded; in this, at least, he was Napoleonic. She had not spoken with him since that night; but she had had two long letters superscribed: "In Camp, Headquarters, Dalgrothe Mountain," and these had breathed only patriotism, the love of a cause, the warmth of a strong, virile temperament, almost a poetical abandon of unnamed ambitions and achievements. She had read the letters again and again, for she had found it hard to reconcile them with her later knowledge of this man. He wrote to her as to an ally, frankly, warmly. She felt the genuine thing in him somewhere; and, in spite of all, she felt a sort of kinship for him. Yet that scene--that scene! She flushed with anger again, and, in spite of her smiling lips, the young Seigneur saw the flush, and wondered. "The thing must end soon," he said, as he rose to go, for a messenger had come for him. "He is injuring the peace, the trade, and the life of the parishes; he is gathering men and arms, drilling, exploiting military designs in one country, to proceed against another. England is at peace with France!" "An international matter, this?" she asked sarcastically. "Yes. The Government at Quebec is English; we are French and he is French; and, I repeat, this thing is serious." She smiled. "I am an American. I have no responsibility." "They might arrest you for aiding and abetting if--" "If what, dear and cheerful friend?" "If I did not make it right for you." He smiled, approving his own kindness. She touched his arm, and said with ironical sweetness: "How you relieve my mind!" Then with delicate insinuation: "I have a lot of old muskets here, at least two hundred pounds of powder, and plenty of provisions, and I will send them to--Valmond Napoleon." He instantly became grave. "I warn you--" She interrupted him. "Nonsense! You warn me!" She laughed mockingly. "I warn you, dear Seigneur, that you will be more sorry than satisfied, if you meddle in this matter." "You are going to send those things to him?" he asked anxiously. "Certainly--and food every day." And she kept her word. De la Riviere, as he went down the hill, thought with irritation of how ill things were going with him and Madame Chalice--so different from two years ago, when their friendship had first begun. He had remembered her with a singular persistency; he had looked forward to her coming back; and when she came, his heart had fluttered like a schoolboy's. But things had changed. Clearly she was interested in this impostor. Was it the man himself or the adventure? He did not know. But the adventure was the man--and who could tell? Once he thought he had detected some warmth for himself in her eye, in the clasp of her hand; there was nothing of that sort now. A black, ungentlemanly spirit seized him. It possessed him most strongly at the moment he was passing the home of Elise Malboir. The girl was standing by the gate, looking down towards the village. Her brow was a little heavy, so that it gave her eyes at all times a deep look, but now De la Riviere saw that they were brooding as well. There was sadness in the poise of the head. He did not take off his hat to her. "'Oh, grand to the war he goes, O gai, rive le roi!'" he said teasingly. He thought she might have a lover among the recruits at Dalgrothe Mountain. She turned to him, startled, for she thought he meant Valmond. She did not speak, but became very still and pale. "Better tie him up with a garter, Elise, and get the old uncle back to Ville Bambord. Trouble's coming. The game'll soon be up." "What trouble?" she asked. "Battle, murder, and sudden death," he answered, and passed on with a sour laugh. She slowly repeated his words, looked towards the Manor House, with a strange expression, then went up to her little bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, where she had sat with Valmond. Every word, every incident, of that night came back to her; and her heart filled up with worship. It flowed over into her eyes and fell upon her clasped hands. If trouble did come to him?--He had given her a new world, he should have her life and all else. A half-hour later, De la Riviere came rapping at the Cure's door. The sun was almost gone, the smell of the hay-fields floated over the village, and all was quiet in the streets. Women gossiped in their doorways, but there was no stir anywhere. With the young Seigneur was the member of the Legislature for the county. His mood was different from that of his previous visit to Pontiac; for he had been told that whether the cavalier adventurer was or was not a Napoleon, this campaign was illegal. He had made no move. Being a member of the Legislature, he naturally shirked responsibility, and he had come to see the young Seigneur, who was justice of the peace, and practically mayor of the county. They found the Cure, the avocat, and Medallion, talking together amiably. The three were greatly distressed by the representations of the member and De la Riviere. The Cure turned to Monsieur Garon, the avocat, inquiringly. "The law--the law of the case is clear," said the avocat helplessly. "If the peace is disturbed, if there is conspiracy to injure a country not at war with our own, if arms are borne with menace, if His Excellency--" "His Excellency--my faith!--You're an ass, Garon!" cried the young Seigneur, with an angry sneer. For once in his life the avocat bridled up. He got to his feet, and stood silent an instant, raising himself up and down on his tiptoes, his lips compressed, his small body suddenly contracting to a firmness, and grown to a height, his eyelids working quickly. To the end of his life the Cure remembered and talked of the moment when the avocat gave battle. To him it was superb--he never could have done it himself. "I repeat, His Excellency, Monsieur De la Riviere. My information is greater than yours, both by accident and through knowledge. I accept him as a Napoleon, and as a Frenchman I have no cause to blush for my homage or my faith, or for His Excellency. He is a man of loving disposition, of great knowledge, of power to win men, of deep ideas, of large courage. Monsieur, I cannot forget the tragedy he stayed at the smithy, with risk of his own life. I cannot forget--" The Cure, anticipating, nodded at him encouragingly. Probably the avocat intended to say something quite different, but the look in the Cure's eyes prompted him, and he continued: "I cannot forget that he has given to the poor, and liberally to the Church, and has promised benefits to the deserving--ah, no, no, my dear Seigneur!" He had delivered his speech in a quaint, quick way, as though addressing a jury, and when he had finished, he sat down again, and nodded his head, and tapped a foot on the floor; and the Cure did the same, looking inquiringly at De la Riviere. This was the first time there had been trouble in the little coterie. They had never differed painfully before. Tall Medallion longed to say something, but he waited for the Cure to speak. "What is your mind, Monsieur le Cure?" asked De la Riviere testily. "My dear friend, Monsieur Garon, has answered for us both," replied the Cure quietly. "Do you mean to say that you will not act with me to stop this thing," he urged--"not even for the safety of the people?" The reply was calm and resolute: "My people shall have my prayers and my life, when needed, but I do not feel called upon to act for the State. I have the honour to be a friend of His Excellency." "By Heaven, the State shall act!" cried De la Riviere, fierce with rancour. "I shall go to this Valmond to-night, with my friend the member here. I shall warn him, and call upon the people to disperse. If he doesn't listen, let him beware! I seem to stand alone in the care of Pontiac!" The avocat turned to his desk. "No, no; I will write you a legal opinion," he said, with professional honesty. "You shall have my legal help; but for the rest, I am at one with my dear Cure." "Well, Medallion, you too?" asked De la Riviere. "I'll go with you to the camp," answered the auctioneer. "Fair play is all I care for. Pontiac will come out of this all right. Come along." But the avocat kept them till he had written his legal opinion and had handed it courteously to the young Seigneur. They were all silent. There had been a discourtesy, and it lay like a cloud on the coterie. De la Riviere opened the door to go out, after bowing to the Cure and the avocat, who stood up with mannered politeness; but presently he turned, came back, was about to speak, when, catching sight of a miniature of Valmond on the avocat's desk, before which was set a bunch of violets, he wheeled and left the room without a word. The moon had not yet risen, but stars were shining, when the young Seigneur and the member came to Dalgrothe Mountain. On one side of the Rock of Red Pigeons was a precipice and wild water; on the other was a deep valley like a cup, and in the centre of this was a sort of plateau or gentle slope. Dalgrothe Mountain towered above. Upon this plateau Valmond had pitched his tents. There was water, there was good air, and for purposes of drill--or defence--it was excellent. The approaches were patrolled, so that no outside stragglers could reach either the Rock of Red Pigeons or the valley, or see what was going on below, without permission. Lagroin was everywhere, drilling, commanding, browbeating his recruits one minute, and praising them the next. Lajeunesse, Garotte, and Muroc were invaluable, each after his kind. Duclosse the mealman was sutler. The young Seigneur and his companions were not challenged, and they passed on up to the Rock of Red Pigeons. Looking down, they had a perfect view of the encampment. The tents had come from lumber-camps, from river-driving gangs, and from private stores; there was some regular uniform, flags were flying everywhere, many fires were burning, the voice of Lagroin in command came up the valley loudly, and Valmond watched the drill and a march past. The fires lit up the sides of the valley and glorified the mountains beyond. In this inspiring air it was impossible to feel an accent of disaster or to hear the stealthy footfall of ruin. The three journeyed down into the valley, then up onto the plateau, where they were challenged, allowed to pass, and came to where Valmond sat upon his horse. At sight of them, with a suspicion of the truth, he ordered Lagroin to march the men down the long plateau. They made a good figure filing past the three visitors, as the young Seigneur admitted. Valmond got from his horse, and waited for them. He looked weary, and there were dark circles round his eyes, as though he had had an illness; but he stood erect and quiet. His uniform was that of a general of the Empire. It was rather dingy, yet it was of rich material, and he wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honour on his breast. His paleness was not of fear, for when his eyes met Monsieur De la Riviere's, there was in them waiting, inquiry--nothing more. He greeted them all politely, and Medallion warmly, shaking his hand twice; for he knew well that the gaunt auctioneer had only kindness in his heart; and they had exchanged humorous stories more than once--a friendly bond. He motioned towards his tent near by, but the young Seigneur declined. Valmond looked round, and ordered away a listening soldier. "It is business and imperative," said De la Riviere. Valmond bowed. "Isn't it time this burlesque was ended?" continued the challenger, waving a hand towards the encampment. "My presence here is my reply," answered Valmond. "But how does it concern monsieur?" "All that concerns Pontiac concerns me." "And me; I am as good a citizen as you." "You are troubling our people. This is illegal--this bearing arms, these purposes of yours. It is mere filibustering, and you are an--" Valmond waved his hand, as if to stop the word. "I am Valmond Napoleon, monsieur." "If you do not promise to forego this, I will arrest you," said De la Riviere sharply. "You?" Valmond smiled ironically. "I am a justice of the peace. I have the power." "I have the power to prevent arrest, and I will prevent it, monsieur. You alone of all this parish, I believe of all this province, turn a sour face, a sour heart, to me. I regret it, but I do not fear it." "I will have you in custody, or there is no law in Quebec," was the acrid set-out. Valmond's face was a feverish red now, and he made an impatient gesture. Both men had bitter hearts, for both knew well that the touchstone of this malice was Madame Chalice. Hatred looked out of their eyes. It was, each knew, a fight to the dark end. "There is not law enough to justify you, monsieur," answered Valmond quickly. "Be persuaded, monsieur," urged the member to Valmond, with a persuasive, smirking gesture. "All this country could not persuade me; only France can do that; and first I shall persuade France," he answered, speaking to his old cue stoutly. "Mummer!" broke out De la Riviere. "By God, I will arrest you now!" He stepped forward, putting his hand in his breast, as if to draw a weapon, though, in truth, it was a summons. Like lightning the dwarf shot in between, and a sword flashed up at De la Riviere's breast. "I saved your father's life, but I will take yours, if you step farther, dear Seigneur," he said coolly. Valmond had not stirred, but his face was pale again. "That will do, Parpon," he said quietly. "Monsieur had better go," he added to De la Riviere, "or even his beloved law may not save him!" "I will put an end to this," cried the other, bursting with anger. "Come, gentlemen," he said to his companions, and turned away. Medallion paused, then came to Valmond and said: "Your Excellency, if ever you need me, let me know. I'd do much to prove myself no enemy." Valmond gave him his hand courteously, bowed, and, beckoning a soldier to take his horse, walked towards his tent. He swayed slightly as he went, then a trembling seized him. He staggered as he entered the door of the tent, and Parpon, seeing, ran forward and caught him in his arms. The little man laid him down, felt his pulse, his heart, saw a little black stain on his lips, and cried out in a great fear: "My God! The black fever! Ah, my Napoleon!" Valmond lay in a burning stupor; and word went abroad that he might die; but Parpon insisted that he would be well presently, and at first would let no one but the Little Chemist and the Cure come in or near the tent. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Her sight was bounded by the little field where she strayed I was never good at catechism The blind tyranny of the just Visions of the artistic temperament--delight and curse WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC The Story of a Lost Napoleon By Gilbert Parker Volume 3. CHAPTER XIII The sickness had come like a whirlwind: when it passed, what would be left? The fight went on in the quiet hills--a man of no great stature or strength, against a monster who racked him in a fierce embrace. A thousand scenes flashed through Valmond's brain, before his eyes, while the great wheel of torture went round, and he was broken, broken-mended and broken again, upon it. Spinning--he was for ever spinning, like a tireless moth through a fiery air; and the world went roaring past. In vain he cried to the wheelman to stop the wheel: there was no answer. Would those stars never cease blinking in and out, or the wind stop whipping the swift clouds past? So he went on, endless years, driving through space, some terrible intangible weight dragging at his heart, and all his body panting as it spun. Grotesque faces came and went, and bright-eyed women floated by, laughing at him, beckoning to him; but he could not come, because of this endless going. He heard them singing, he felt the divine notes in his battered soul; he tried to weep for the hopeless joy of it; but the tears came no higher than his throat. Why did they mock him so? At last, all the figures merged into one, and she had the face--ah, he had seen it centuries ago!--of Madame Chalice. Strange that she was so young still, and that was so long past--when he stood on a mountain, and, clambering a high wall of rock, looked over into a happy No-man's Land. Why did the face elude him so, flashing in and out of the vapours? Why was its look sorrowful and distant? And yet there was that perfect smile, that adorable aspect of the brow, that light in the deep eyes. He tried to stop the eternal spinning, but it went remorselessly on; and presently the face was gone; but not till it had given him ease of his pain. Then came fighting, fighting, nothing but fighting--endless charges of cavalry, continuous wheelings and advancings and retreatings, and the mad din of drums; afterwards, in a swift quiet, the deep, even thud of the horses' hoofs striking the ground. Flags and banners flaunted gaily by. How the helmets flashed, and the foam flew from the bits! But those flocks of blackbirds flying over the heads of the misty horsemen--they made him shiver. Battle, battle, battle, and death, and being born--he felt it all. All at once there came a wide peace and clearing, and the everlasting jar and movement ceased. Then a great pause, and light streamed round him, comforting him. It seemed to him that he was lying helpless and still by falling water in a valley. The water soothed him, and he fell asleep. After a long time he waked, and dimly knew that a face, good to look at, was bending over him. In a vague, far-off way he saw that it was Elise Malboir; but even as he saw, his eyes closed, the world dropped away, and he sank to sleep again. It was no vision or delirium; for Elise had come. She had knelt beside his bed, and given him drink, and smoothed his pillow; and once, when no one was in the tent, she stooped and kissed his hot dark lips, and whispered words that were not for his ears to hear, nor to be heard by any one of this world. The good Cure found her there. He had not heart to bid her go home, and he made it clear to the villagers that he approved of her great kindness. But he bade her mother also come, and she stayed in a tent near by. Lagroin and two hundred men held the encampment, and every night the recruits arrived from the village, drilled as before, and waited for the fell disease to pass. No one knew its exact nature, but now and again, in long years, some one going to Dalgrothe Mountain was seized by it, and died, or was left stricken with a great loss of the senses, or the limbs. Yet once or twice, they said, men had come up from it no worse at all. There was no known cure, and the Little Chemist could only watch the swift progress of the fever, and use simple remedies to allay the suffering. Parpon knew that the disease had seized upon Valmond the night of the burial of Gabriel. He remembered now the sickly, pungent air that floated past, and how Valmond, weak from the loss of blood in the fight at the smithy, shuddered, and drew his cloak about him. A few days would end it, for good or ill. Madame Chalice heard the news with consternation, and pity would have sent her to Valmond's bedside, but that she found Elise was his faithful nurse and servitor. This fixed in her mind the belief that if Valmond died, he would leave both misery and shame behind; if he lived, she should, in any case, see him no more. But she sent him wines and delicacies, and she also despatched a messenger to a city sixty miles away, for the best physician. Then she sought the avocat, to discover whether he had any exact information as to Valmond's friends in Quebec, or in France. She had promised not to be his enemy, and she remembered with a sort of sorrow that she had told him she meant to be his friend; but, having promised, she would help him in his sore strait. She had heard of De la Riviere's visit to Valmond, and she intended sending for him, but delayed it. The avocat told her nothing: matters were in abeyance, and she abided the issue; meanwhile getting news of the sick man twice a day. More, she used all her influence to keep up the feeling for him in the country, to prevent flagging of enthusiasm. This she did out of a large heart, and a kind of loyalty to her temperament and to his own ardour for his cause. Until he was proved the comedian (in spite of the young Seigneur) she would stand by him, so far as his public career was concerned. Misfortune could not make her turn from a man; it was then she gave him a helping hand. What was between him and Elise was for their own souls and consciences. As she passed the little cottage in the field the third morning of Valmond's illness, she saw the girl entering. Elise had come to get some necessaries for Valmond and for her mother. She was pale; her face had gained a spirituality, a refinement, new and touching. Madame Chalice was tempted to go and speak to her, and started to do so, but turned back. "No, no, not until we know the worst of this illness--then!" she said to herself. But ten minutes later De la Riviere was not so kind. He had guessed a little at Elise's secret, and as he passed the house on the way to visit Madame Chalice, seeing the girl, he came to the door and said: "How goes it with the distinguished gentleman, Elise? I hear you are his slave." The girl turned a little pale. She was passing a hot iron over some coarse sheets, and, pausing, she looked steadily at him and replied: "It is not far to Dalgrothe Mountain, monsieur." "The journey's too long for me; I haven't your hot young blood," he said suggestively. "It was not so long a dozen years ago, monsieur." De la Riviere flushed to his hair. That memory was a hateful chapter in his life--a boyish folly, which involved the miller's wife. He had buried it, the village had forgotten it,--such of it as knew,--and the remembrance of it stung him. He had, however, brought it on himself, and he must eat the bitter fruit. The girl's eyes were cold and hard. She knew him to be Valmond's enemy, and she had no idea of sparing him. She knew also that he had been courteous enough to send a man each day to inquire after Valmond, but that was not to the point; he was torturing her, he had prophesied the downfall of her "spurious Napoleon." "It will be too long a journey for you, and for all, presently," he said. "You mean that His Excellency will die?" she asked, her heart beating so hard that it hurt her. Yet the flat-iron moved backwards and forwards upon the sheets mechanically. "Or fight a Government," he answered. "He has had a good time, and good times can't last for ever, can they, Elise? Have you ever thought of that?" She turned pale and swayed over the table. In an instant he was beside her; for though he had been irritable and ungenerous, he had at bottom a kind heart. Catching up a glass of water, he ran an arm round her waist and held the cup to her lips. "What's the matter, my girl?" he asked. "There, pull yourself together." She drew away from him, though grateful for his new attitude. She could not bear everything. She felt nervous and strangely weak. "Won't you go, monsieur?" she said, and turned to her ironing again. He looked at her closely, and not unkindly. For a moment the thought possessed him that evil and ill had come to her. But he put it away from him, for there was that in her eyes which gave his quick suspicions the lie. He guessed now that the girl loved Valmond, and he left her with that thought. Going up the hill, deep in thought, he called at the Manor, to find that Madame Chalice was absent, and would not be back till evening. When Elise was left alone, a weakness seized her again, as it had done when De la Riviere was present. She had had no sleep in four days, and it was wearing on her, she said to herself, refusing to believe that a sickness was coming. Leaving the kitchen, she went up to her bedroom. Opening the window, she sat down on the side of the bed and looked round. She figured Valmond in her mind as he stood in this place and that, his voice, his words to her, the look in his face, the clasp of his hand. All at once she sprang up, fell on her knees before the little shrine of the Virgin, and burst into tears. Her rich hair, breaking loose, flowed round her-the picture of a Magdalen; but it was, in truth, a pure girl with a true heart. At last she calmed herself and began to pray: "Ah, dear Mother of God, thou who dost speak for the sorrowful before thy Son and the Father, be merciful to me and hear me. I am but a poor girl, and my life is no matter. But he is a great man, and he has work to do, and he is true and kind. Oh, pray for him, divine Mother, sweet Mary, that he may be saved from death! If the cup must be emptied, may it be given to me to drink! Oh, see how all the people come to him and love him! For the saving of Madelinette, oh, may his own life be given him! He cannot pray for himself, but I pray for him. Dear Mother of God, I love him, and I would lose my life for his sake. Sweet Mary, comfort thy child, and out of thy own sorrow be good to my sorrow. Hear me and pray for me, divine Mary. Amen." Her whole nature had been emptied out, and there came upon her a calm, a strange clearness of brain, exhausted in body as she was. For an instant she stood thinking. "Madame Degardy! Madame Degardy!" she cried, with sudden inspiration. "Ah, I will find her; she may save him with her herbs!" She hurried out of the house and down through the village to the little hut by the river, where the old woman lived. Elise had been to Madame Degardy as good a friend as a half-mad creature, with no memory, would permit her. Parpon had lived for years in the same village, but, though he was her own son, she had never given him a look of recognition, had used him as she used all others. In turn, the dwarf had never told any one but Valmond of the relationship; and so the two lived their strange lives in their own singular way. But the Cure knew who it was that kept the old woman's house supplied with wood and other necessaries. Parpon himself had tried to summon her to Valmond's bedside, for he knew well her skill with herbs, but the little hut was empty, and he could get no trace of her. She had disappeared the night Valmond was seized of the fever, and she came back to her little home in the very hour that Elise visited her. The girl found her boiling herbs before a big fire. She was stirring the pot diligently, now and then sprinkling in what looked like a brown dust, and watching the brew intently. She nodded, but did not look at Elise, and said crossly: "Come in, come in, and shut the door, silly." "Madame," said the girl, "His Excellency has the black fever." "What of that?" she returned irritably. "I thought maybe your herbs could cure him. You've cured others, and this is an awful sickness. Ah, won't you save him, if you can?" "What are you to him, pale-face?" she said, her eyes peering into the pot. "Nothing more to him than you are, madame," the girl answered wearily. "I'll cure because I want, not because you ask me, pretty brat." Elise's heart gave a leap: these very herbs were for Valmond! The old woman had travelled far to get the medicaments immediately she had heard of Valmond's illness. Night and day she had trudged, and she was more brown and weather-beaten than ever. "The black fever! the black fever!" cried the old woman. "I know it well. It's most like a plague. I know it. But I know the cure-ha, ha! Come along now, feather-legs, what are you staring there for? Hold that jug while I pour the darling liquor in. Ha, ha! Crazy Joan hasn't lived for nothing. They have to come to her; the great folks have to come to her!" So she meandered on, filling the jug. Later, in the warm dusk, they travelled up to Dalgrothe Mountain, and came to Valmond's tent. By the couch knelt Parpon, watching the laboured breathing of the sick man. When he saw Madame Degardy, he gave a growl of joy, and made way for her. She pushed him back with her stick contemptuously, looked Valmond over, ran her fingers down his cheek, felt his throat, and at last held his restless hand. Elise, with the quick intelligence of love, stood ready. The old woman caught the jug from her, swung it into the hollow of her arm, poured the cup half full, and motioned the girl to lift up Valmond's head. Elise raised it to her bosom, leaning her face down close to his. Madame Degardy instantly pushed back her head. "Don't get his breath--that's death, idiot!" she said, and began to pour the liquid into Valmond's mouth very slowly. It was a tedious process at first, but at length he began to swallow naturally, and finished the cup. There was no change for an hour, and then he became less restless. After another cupful, his eyes half opened. Within an hour a perspiration came, and he was very quiet, and sleeping easily. Parpon crouched near the door, watching it all with deep, piercing eyes. Madame Degardy never moved from her place, but stood shaking her head and muttering. At last Lagroin came, and whisperingly asked after his chief; then, seeing him in a healthy and peaceful sleep, he stooped and kissed the hand lying upon the blanket. "Beloved sire! Thank the good God!" he said. Soon after he had gone, there was a noise of tramping about the tent, and then a suppressed cheer, which was fiercely stopped by Parpon, and the soldiers of the Household Troops scattered to their tents. "What's that?" asked Valmond, opening his eyes bewilderedly. "Your soldiers, sire," answered the dwarf. Valmond smiled languidly. Then he saw Madame Degardy and Elise. "I am very sleepy, dear friends," he said, with a courteous, apologetic gesture, and closed his eyes. Presently they opened again. "My snuff- box--in my pocket," he said to the old woman, waving a hand to where his uniform hung from the tent-pole; "it is for you, madame." She understood, smiled grimly, felt in a waistcoat pocket, found the snuff-box, and, squatting on the ground like a tailor, she took two pinches, and sat holding the antique silver box in her hand. "Crazy Joan's no fool, dear lad," she said at last, and took another pinch, and knowingly nodded her head again and again, while he slept soundly. CHAPTER XIV "Lights Out!" The bugle-call rang softly down the valley, echoed away tenderly in the hills, and was lost in the distance. Roused by the clear call, Elise rose from watching beside Valmond's couch, and turned towards the door of the tent. The spring of a perfect joy at his safety had been followed by an aching in all her body and a trouble at her heart. Her feet were like lead, her spirit quivered and shrank by turn. The light of the campfires sent a glow through the open doorway upon the face of the sleeper. She leaned over him. The look she gave him seemed to her anxious spirit like a farewell. This man had given her a new life, and out of it had come a new sight. Valmond had escaped death, but in her poor confused way she felt another storm gathering about him. A hundred feelings possessed her; but one thought was master of them all: when trouble drew round him, she must be near him, must be strong to help him, protect him, if need be. Yet a terrible physical weakness was on her. Her limbs trembled, her head ached, her heart throbbed in a sickening way. He stirred in his sleep; a smile passed over his face. She wondered what gave it birth. She knew well it was not for her, that smile. It belonged to his dream of success--when a thousand banners should flaunt in the gardens of the Tuileries. Overcome by a sudden rush of emotion, she fell on her knees at his side, bursting into noiseless sobs, which shook her from head to foot. Every nerve in her body responded to the shock of feeling; she was having her dark hour alone. At last she staggered to her feet and turned to the open door. The tents lay silent in the moonshine, but wayward lights flickered in the sumptuous dusk, and the quiet of the hills hung like a canopy over the bivouac of the little army. No token of misfortune came out of this peaceful encampment, no omen of disaster crossed the long lane of drowsy fires and huge amorous shadows. The sense of doom was in the girl's own heart, not in this deep cradle of the hills. Now and again a sentinel crossed the misty line of vision, silent, and majestically tall, in the soft haze, which came down from Dalgrothe Mountain and fell like a delicate silver veil before the face of the valley. As she looked, lost in a kind of dream, there floated up from the distant tent the refrain she knew so well: "Oh, say, where goes your love? O gai, vine le roi!" Her hand caught her bosom as if to stifle a sudden pain. That song had been the keynote to her new life, and it seemed now as if it were also to be the final benediction. All her spirit gathered itself up for a great resolution: she would not yield to this invading weakness, this misery of body and mind. Some one drew out of the shadows and came towards her. It was Madame Degardy. She had seen the sobbing figure inside the tent, but, with the occasional wisdom of the foolish of this world, she had not been less considerate than the children of light. With brusque, kindly taps of her stick, she drove the girl to her own tent, and bade her sleep: but sleep was not for Elise that night; and in the grey dawn, while yet no one was stirring in the camp, she passed slowly down the valley to her home. Madame Chalice was greatly troubled also. Valmond's life was saved. In three days he was on his feet, eager and ardent again, and preparing to go to the village; but what would the end of it all be? She knew of De la Riviere's intentions, and she foresaw a crisis. If Valmond were in very truth a Napoleon, all might be well, though this crusade must close here. If he were an impostor, things would go cruelly hard with him. Impostor? Strange how, in spite of all evidence against him, she still felt a vital sureness in him somewhere; a radical reality, a convincing quality of presence. At times he seemed like an actor playing his own character. She could never quite get rid of that feeling. In her anxiety--for she was in the affair for good or ill--she went again to Monsieur Garon. "You believe in Monsieur Valmond, dear avocat?" she asked. The little man looked at her admiringly, though his admiration was a quaint, Arcadian thing; and, perching his head on one side abstractedly, he answered: "Ah, yes, ah, yes! Such candour! He is the son of Napoleon and a certain princess, born after Napoleon's fall, not long before his death." "Then, of course, Monsieur Valmond is really nameless?" she asked. "Ah, there is the point--the only point; but His Excellency can clear up all that, and will do so in good time, he says. He maintains that France will accept him." "But the Government here, will they put him down? proceed against him? Can they?" "Ah, yes, I fear they can proceed against him. He may recruit men, but he may not drill and conspire, you see. Yet"--the old man smiled, as though at some distant and pleasing prospect "the cause is a great one; it is great. Ah, madame, dear madame"--he got to his feet and stepped into the middle of the floor--"he has the true Napoleonic spirit. He loves it all. At the very first, it seemed as if he were going to be a little ridiculous; now it is as if there was but one thing for him-- love of France and loyalty to the cause. Ah, think of the glories of the Empire! of France as the light of Europe, of Napoleon making her rich and proud and dominant! And think of her now, sinking into the wallow of bourgeois vulgarity! If--if, as His Excellency said, the light were to come from here, even from this far corner of the world, from this old France, to be the torch of freedom once again--from our little parish here!" His face was glowing, his thin hands made a quick gesture of charmed anticipation. Madame Chalice looked at him in a sort of wonder and delight. Dreamers all! And this visionary Napoleon had come into the little man's quiet, cultured, passive life, and had transformed him, filled him with adventure and patriotism. There must be something behind Valmond, some real, even some great thing, or this were not possible. It was not surprising that she, with the spirit of dreams and romance deep in her, should be sympathetic, even carried away for the moment. "How is the feeling in the country since his illness?" she asked. "Never so strong as now. Many new recruits come to him. Organisation goes on, and His Excellency has issued a proclamation. I have advised him against that--it is not necessary, it is illegal. He should not tempt our Government too far. But he is a gentleman of as great simplicity as courage, of directness and virtue--a wholesome soldier--" She thought again of that moonlit night, and Elise's window, and a kind of hatred of the man came up in her. No, no, she was wrong; he was not the true thing. "Dear avocat," she said suddenly, "you are a good friend. May I have always as good! But have you ever thought that this thing may end in sore disaster? Are we doing right? Is the man worthy our friendship and our adherence?" "Ah, dear madame, convictions, principles, truth, they lead to good ends --somewhere. I have a letter here from Monsieur Valmond. It breathes noble things; it has humour, too--ah, yes, so quaint! I am to see him this afternoon--he returns to the Louis Quinze to-day. The Cure and I--" She laid her hand on his arm, interrupting him. "Will you take me this evening to Monsieur Valmond, dear friend?" she asked. She saw now how useless it was to attempt anything through these admirers of Valmond; she must do it herself. He must be firmly and finally warned and dissuaded. The conviction had suddenly come to her with great force, that the end was near--come to her as it came to Elise. Her wise mind had seen the sure end; Elise's heart had felt it. The avocat readily promised. She was to call for him at a little before eight o'clock. But she decided that she would first seek Elise; before she accused the man, she would question the woman. Above and beyond all anger she felt at this miserable episode, there was pity in her heart for the lonely girl. She was capable of fierce tempers, of great caprices, of even wild injustice, when her emotions had their way with her; but her heart was large, her nature deep and broad, and her instincts kind. The little touch of barbarism in her gave her, too, a sense of primitive justice. She was self-analytical, critical of life and conduct, yet her mind and her heart, when put to the great test, were above mere anatomising. Her rich nature, alive with these momentous events, feeling the prescience of coming crisis, sent a fine glow into her face, into her eyes. Excitement gave a fresh elasticity to her step. In spite of her serious thoughts, she looked very young, almost irresponsible. No ordinary observer could guess the mind that lay behind the eloquent, glowing eyes. Even the tongue at first deceived, till it began to probe, to challenge, to drop sharp, incisive truths in little gold-leaped pellets, which brought conviction when the gold-leaf wore off. The sunlight made her part of the brilliant landscape, and she floated into it, neither too dainty nor too luxurious. The greatest heat of the day was past, and she was walking slowly under the maples, on the way to Elise's home, when she was arrested by a voice near her. Then a tall figure leaped the fence, and came to her with outstretched hand and an unmistakable smile of pleasure. "I've called at the Manor twice, and found you out; so I took to the highway," said the voice gaily. "My dear Seigneur," she answered, with mock gravity, "ancestors' habits show in time." "Come, that's severe, isn't it?" "You have waylaid me in a lonely place, master highwayman!" she said, with a torturing sweetness. He had never seen her so radiantly debonnaire; yet her heart was full of annoying anxiety. "There's so much I want to say to you," he answered more seriously. "So very much?" "Very much indeed." She looked up the road. "I can give you ten minutes," she said. "Suppose we walk up and down under these trees. It is shady and quiet here. Now proceed, monsieur. Is it my money or my life?" "You are in a charming mood to-day." "Which is more than I could say for you the last time we met. You threatened, stormed, were childish, impossible to a degree." His face became grave. "We were such good friends once!" "Once--once?" she asked maliciously. "Once Cain and Abel were a happy family. When was that once?" "Two years ago. What talks we had then! I had so looked forward to your coming again. It was the alluring thing in my life, your arrival," he went on; "but something came between." His tone nettled her. He talked as if he had some distant claim on her. "Something came between?" she repeated slowly, mockingly. "That sounds melodramatic indeed. What was it came between--a coach-and-four, or a grand army?" "Nothing so stately," he answered, piqued by her tone: "a filibuster and his ragamuffins." "Ragamufins would be appreciated by Monsieur Valmond's followers, spoken at the four corners," she answered. "Then I'll change it," he said: "a ragamuffin and his filibusters." "The 'ragamuffin' always speaks of his enemies with courtesy, and the filibusters love their leader," was her pointed rejoinder. "At half a dollar a day," he answered sharply. "They get that much from His Excellency, do they?" she asked in real surprise. "That doesn't look like filibustering, does it?" "'His Excellency!'" he retorted. "Why won't you look this matter straight in the face? Napoleon or no Napoleon, the end of this thing is ruin." "Take care that you don't get lost in the debris," she said bitingly. "I can take care of myself. I am sorry to have you mixed up in it." "You are sorry? How good of you! How paternal!" "If your husband were here--" "If my husband were here, you would probably be his best friend," she rejoined, with acid sweetness; "and I should still have to take care of myself." Had he no sense of what was possible to leave unsaid to a woman? She was very angry, though she was also a little sorry for him; for perhaps in the long run he would be in the right. But he must pay for his present stupidity. "You wrong me," he answered, with a quick burst of feeling. "You are most unfair. You punish me because I do my public duty; and because I would do anything in the world for you, you punish me the more. Have you forgotten two years ago? Is it so easy to your hand, a true and constant admiration, a sincere homage, that you throw it aside like--" "Monsieur De la Riviere," she said, with exasperating deliberation, her eyes having a dangerous light, "your ten minutes is more than up. And it has been quite ten minutes too long." "If I were a filibuster"--he answered bitterly and suggestively. She interrupted him, saying, with a purring softness: "If you had only courage enough--" He waved his hand angrily. "If I had, I should hope you would prove a better friend to me than you are to this man." "Ah, in what way do I fail towards 'this man'?" "By encouraging his downfall. See--I know I am taking my life in my hands, as it were, but I tell you this thing will do you harm when it goes abroad." She felt the honesty of his words, though they angered her. He seemed to impute some personal interest in Valmond. She would not have it from any man in the world. "If you will pick up my handkerchief--ah, thank you! We must travel different roads in this matter. You have warned; let me prophesy. His Highness Valmond Napoleon will come out of this with more honour than yourself." "Thanks to you, then," he said gallantly, for he admired her very stubbornness. "Thanks to himself. I honestly believe that you will be ashamed of your part in this, one day." "In any case, I will force the matter to a conclusion," he answered firmly. "The fantastic thing must end." "When?" "Within a few days." "When all is over, perhaps you will have the honesty to come and tell me which was right--you or I. Goodbye." Elise was busy at her kitchen fire. She looked up, startled, as her visitor entered. Her heavy brow grew heavier, her eyes gleamed sulkily, as she dragged herself forward with weariness, and stood silent and resentful. Why had this lady of the Manor come to her? Madame Chalice scarcely knew how to begin, for, in truth, she wanted to be the girl's friend, and she feared making her do or say some wild thing. She looked round the quiet room. Some fruit was boiling on a stove, giving out a fragrant savour, and Elise's eye was on it mechanically. A bit of sewing lay across a chair, and on the wall hung a military suit of the old sergeant, beside it a short sabre. An old Tricolor was draped from a beam, and one or two maps of France were pinned on the wall. She fastened her look on the maps. They seemed to be her cue. "Have you any influence with your uncle?" she asked. Elise remained gloomily silent. "Because," Madame Chalice went on smoothly, ignoring her silence, "I think it would be better for him to go back to Ville Bambord-- I am sure of it." The girl's lip curled angrily. What right had this great lady to interfere with her or hers? What did she mean? "My uncle is a general and a brave man; he can take care of himself," she answered defiantly. Madame Chalice did not smile at the title. She admired the girl's courage. She persisted however. "He is one man, and--" "He has plenty of men, madame, and His Excellency--" "His Excellency and hundreds of men cannot stand, if the Government send soldiers against them." "Why should the Gover'ment do that? They're only going to France; they mean no trouble here." "They have no right to drill and conspire here, my girl." "Well, my uncle and his men will fight; we'll all fight," Elise retorted, her hands grasping the arms of the rocking-chair she sat in. "But why shouldn't we avoid fighting? What is there to fight for? You are all very happy here. You were very happy here before Monsieur Valmond came. Are you happy now?" Madame Chalice's eyes searched the flushed face anxiously. She was growing more eager every moment to serve, if she could, this splendid creature. "We would die for him!" answered the girl quickly. "You would die for him," came the reply, slowly, meaningly. "And what's it to you, if I would?" came the sharp retort. "Why do you fine folk meddle yourselves with poor folk's affairs?" Then, remembering she was a hostess, with the instinctive courtesy of her race, she said: "Ah, pardon, madame; you meant nothing, I'm sure." "Why should fine folk make poor folk unhappy?" said Madame Chalice, quietly and sorrowfully, for she saw that Elise was suffering, and all the woman in her came to her heart and lips. She laid her hand on the girl's arm. "Indeed yes, why should fine folk make poor folk unhappy? It is not I alone who makes you unhappy, Elise." The girl angrily shook off the hand, for she read the true significance of the words. "What are you trying to find out?" she asked fiercely. "What do you want to do? Did I ever come in your way? Why do you come into mine? What's my life to you? Nothing, nothing at all. You're here to-day and away to-morrow. You're English; you're not of us. Can't you see that I want to be left alone? "If I were unhappy, I could look after myself. But I'm not, I'm not--I tell you I'm not! I'm happy. I never knew what happiness was till now. I'm so happy that I can stand here and not insult you, though you've insulted me." "I meant no insult, Elise. I want to help you; that is all. I know how hard it is to confide in one's kinsfolk, and I wish with all my heart I might be your friend, if you ever need me." Elise met her sympathetic look clearly and steadily. "Speak plain to me, madame," she said. "Elise, I saw some one climb out of your bedroom window," was the slow reply. "Oh, my God!" said the girl; "oh, my God!" and she stared blankly for a moment at Madame Chalice. Then, trembling greatly, she reached to the table for a cup of water. Madame Chalice was at once by her side. "You are ill, poor girl," she said anxiously, and put her arm around her. Elise drew away. "I will tell you all, madame, all; and you must believe it, for, as God is my judge, it is the truth." Then she told the whole story, exactly as it happened, save mention of the kisses that Valmond had given her. Her eyes now and again filled with tears, and she tried, in her poor untutored way, to set him right. She spoke for him altogether, not for herself; and her listener saw that the bond which held the girl to the man might be proclaimed in the streets, with no dishonour. "That's the story, and that's the truth," said Elise at last. "He's a gentleman, a great man, and I'm a poor girl, and there can be nothing between us; but I'd die for him." She no longer resented Madame Chalice's solicitude: she was passive, and showed that she wished to be alone. "You think there's going to be great trouble?" she asked, as Madame Chalice made ready to go. "I fear so, but we will do all we can to prevent it." Elise watched her go on towards the Manor in the declining sunlight, then turned heavily to her work again. There came to her ears the sound of a dog-churn in the yard outside, and the dull roll and beat seemed to keep time to the aching pulses in her head, in all her body. One thought kept going through her brain: there was, as she had felt, trouble coming for Valmond. She had the conviction, too, that it was very near. Her one definite idea was, that she should be able to go to him when that trouble came; that she should not fail him at his great need. Yet these pains in her body, this alternate exaltation and depression, this pitiful weakness! She must conquer it. She remembered the hours spent at his bedside; the moments when he was all hers--by virtue of his danger and her own unwavering care of him. She recalled the dark moment when Death, intrusive, imminent, lurked at the tent door, and in its shadow she emptied out her soul in that one kiss of fealty and farewell. That kiss--there came to her again, suddenly, Madame Degardy's cry of warning: "Don't get his breath--it's death, idiot!" That was it: the black fever was in her veins! That one kiss had sealed her own doom. She knew it now. He had given her life by giving her love. Well, he should give her death too--her lord of fife and death. She was of the chosen few who could drink the cup of light and the cup of darkness with equally regnant soul. But it might lay her low in the very hour of Valmond's trouble. She must conquer it--how? To whom could she turn for succour? There was but one,--yet she could not seek Madame Degardy, for the old woman would drive her to her bed, and keep her there. There was only this to do: to possess herself of those wonderful herbs which had been given her Napoleon in his hour of peril. Dragging herself wearily to the little but by the river, she knocked, and waited. All was still, and, opening the door, she entered. Striking a match, she found a candle, lighted it, and then began her search. Under an old pan on a shelf she found both herbs and powder. She snatched up a handful of the herbs, and kissed them with joyful heart. Saved--she was saved! Ah, thank the Blessed Virgin! She would thank her for ever! A horrible sinking sensation seized her. Turning in dismay, she saw the face of Parpon at the window. With a blind instinct for protection, she staggered towards the door, and fell, her fingers still clasping the precious herbs. As Parpon hastily entered, Madame Degardy hobbled out of the shadow of the trees, and furtively watched the hut. When a light appeared, she crept to the door, opened it stealthily upon the intruders of her home, and stepped inside. Parpon was kneeling by Elise, lifting up her head, and looking at her in horrified distress. With a shrill cry the old woman came forward and dropped on her knees at the other side of Elise. Her hand, fumbling anxiously over the girl's breast, met the hard and warty palm of the dwarf. She stopped suddenly, raised the sputtering candle, and peered into his eyes with a vague, wavering intensity. For minutes they knelt there, the silence clothing them about, the body of the unconscious girl between them. A lost memory was feeling blindly its way home again. By and by, out of an infinite past, something struggled to the old woman's eyes, and Parpon's heart almost burst in his anxiety. At length her look steadied. Memory, recognition, showed in her face. With a wild cry her gaunt arms stretched across, and caught the great head to her breast. "Where have you been so long, Parpon--my son?" she said. CHAPTER XV Valmond's strength came back quickly, but something had given his mind a new colour. He felt, by a strange telegraphy of fate, that he had been spared death by fever to meet an end more in keeping with the strange exploit which now was coming to a crisis. The next day he was going back to Dalgrothe Mountain, the day after that there should be final review, and the succeeding day the march to the sea would begin. A move must be made. There could be no more delay. He had so lost himself in the dream, that it had become real, and he himself was the splendid adventurer, the maker of empires. True, he had only a small band of ill- armed men, but better arms could be got, and by the time they reached the sea--who could tell! As he sat alone in the quiet dusk of his room at the Louis Quinze waiting for Parpon, there came a tap at his door. It opened, the garcon mumbled something, and Madame Chalice entered slowly. Her look had no particular sympathy, but there was a sort of friendliness in the rich colour of her face, in the brightness of her eyes. "The avocat was to have accompanied me," she said; "but at the last I thought it better to come without him, because--" She paused. "Yes, madame--because?" he asked, offering her a chair. He was dressed in simple black, as on that first day when he called at the Manor, and it set off the ivory paleness of his complexion, making his face delicate yet strong. She looked round the room, almost casually, before she went on "Because what I have to say were better said to you alone--much better." "I am sure you are right," he answered, as though he trusted her judgment utterly; and truly there was always something boy-like in his attitude towards her. The compliment was unstudied and pleasant, but she steeled herself for her task. She knew instinctively that she had influence with him, and she meant to use it to its utmost limit. "I am glad, we are all glad, you are better," she said cordially; then added, "how do your affairs come on? What are your plans?" Valmond forgot that she was his inquisitor; he only saw her as his ally, his friend. So he spoke to her, as he had done at the Manor, with a sort of eloquence, of his great theme. He had changed greatly. The rhetorical, the bizarre, had left his speech. There was no more grandiloquence than might be expected of a soldier who saw things in the bright flashes of the battle-field--sharp pinges of colour, the dyes well soaked in. He had the gift of telling a story: some peculiar timbre in the voice, some direct dramatic touch. She listened quietly, impressed and curious. The impossibilities seemed for a moment to vanish in the big dream, and she herself was a dreamer, a born adventurer among the wonders of life. Were she a man, she would have been an explorer or a soldier. But good judgment returned, and she gathered herself together for the unpleasant task that lay before her. She looked him steadily in the eyes. "I have come to tell you that you must give up this dream," she said slowly. "It can come to nothing but ill; and in the mishap you may be hurt past repair." "I shall never give up--this dream," he said, surprised, but firm, almost dominant. "Think of these poor folk who surround you, who follow you. Would you see harm come to them?" "As soldiers, they will fight for a cause." "What is--the cause?" she asked meaningly. "France," was the quiet reply; and there was a strong ring in the tone. "Not so--you, monsieur!" "You called me 'sire' once," he said tentatively. "I called my maid a fool yesterday, under some fleeting influence; one has moods," she answered. "If you would call me puppet to-morrow, we might strike a balance and find--what should we find?" "An adventurer, I fear," she remarked. He was not taken aback. "An adventurer truly," he said. "It is a far travel to France, and there is much to overcome!" She could scarcely reconcile this acute, self-contained man with the enthusiast and comedian she had seen in the Cure's garden. "Monsieur Valmond," she said, "I neither suspect nor accuse; I only feel. There is something terribly uncertain in this cause of yours, in your claims. You have no right to waste lives." "To waste lives?" he asked mechanically. "Yes; the Government is to proceed against you." "Ah, yes," he answered. "Monsieur De la Riviere has seen to that; but he must pay for his interference." "That is beside the point. If a force comes against you--what then?" "Then I will act as becomes a Napoleon," he answered, rather grandly. So there was a touch of the bombastic in his manner even yet! She laughed a little ironically. Then all at once her thoughts reverted to Elise, and some latent cruelty in her awoke. Though she believed the girl, she would accuse the man, the more so, because she suddenly became aware that his eyes were fixed on herself in ardent admiration. "You might not have a convenient window," she said, with deliberate, consuming suggestion. His glance never wavered, though he understood instantly what she meant. Well, she had discovered that! He flushed. "Madame," he said, "I hope that I am a gentleman at heart." The whole scene came back on him, and a moisture sprang to his eyes. "She is innocent," he continued--"upon my sacred honour! Yes, yes, I know that the evidence is all against me, but I speak the absolute truth. You saw--that night, did you?" She nodded. "Ah, it is a pity--a pity. But, madame, as you are a true woman, believe what I say; for, I repeat, it is the truth." Then, with admirable reticence, even great delicacy, he told the story as Elise had told it, and as convincingly. "I believe you, monsieur," she said frankly, when he had done, and stretched out her hand to him with a sudden impulse of regard. "Now, follow up that unselfishness by another." He looked inquiringly at her. "Give up this mad chase," she added eagerly. "Never!" was his instant reply. "Never!" "I beg of you, I appeal to you-my friend," she urged, with that ardour of the counsel who pleads a bad cause. "I do not impeach you or your claims, but I ask that you leave this village as you found it, these happy people undisturbed in their homes. Ah, go! Go now, and you will be a name to them, remembered always with admiration. You have been courageous, you have been loved, you have been inspiring--ah, yes, I admit it, even to me!--inspiring! The spirit of adventure in you, your hopes, your plans to do great things, roused me. It was that made me your ally more than aught else. Truly and frankly, I do not think that I am convinced of anything save that you are no coward, and that you love a cause. Let it go at that--you must, you must. You came in the night, privately and mysteriously; go in the night, this night, mysteriously--an inscrutable, romantic figure. If you are all you say, and I should be glad to think so,--go where your talents will have greater play, your claims larger recognition. This is a small game here. Leave us as you found us. We shall be the better for it; our poor folk here will be the better. Proceed with this, and who can tell what may happen? I was wrong, wrong--I see that now-to have encouraged you at all. I repent of it. Here, as I talk to you, I feel, with no doubt whatever, that the end of your bold exploit is near. Can you not see that? Ah yes, you must, you must! Take my horses to-night, leave here, and come back no more; and so none of us shall feel sorrow in thinking of the time when Valmond came to Pontiac." Variable, accusing, she had suddenly shown him something beyond caprice, beyond accident of mood or temper. The true woman had spoken; all outer modish garments had dropped away from her real nature, and showed its abundant depth and sincerity. All that was roused in him this moment was never known; he never could tell it; there were eternal spaces between them. She had been speaking to him just now with no personal sentiment. She was only the lover of honest things, the friend, the good ally, obliged to flee a cause for its terrible unsoundness, yet trying to prevent wreck and ruin. He arose and turned his head away for an instant, her eloquence had been so moving. His glance caught the picture of the Great Napoleon, and his eyes met hers again with new resolution. "I must stay," he answered; "I will not turn back, whatever comes. This is but child's play, but a speck beside what I mean to do. True, I came in the dark, but I will go in the light. I shall not leave them behind, these poor folk; they shall come with me. I have money, France is waiting, the people are sick of the Orleans, and I--" "But you must, you must listen to me, monsieur!" she said desperately. She came close to him, and, out of the frank eagerness of her nature, laid her hand upon his arm, and looked him in the eyes with an almost tender appealing. At that moment the door opened, and Monsieur De la Riviere was announced. "Ah, madame!" said the young Seigneur in a tone more than a little carbolic; "secrets of State, no doubt?" "Statesmen need not commit themselves to newsmongers, monsieur," she answered, still standing very near Valmond, as though she would continue a familiar talk when the disagreeable interruption had passed. She was thoroughly fearless, clear of heart, above all littlenesses. "I had come to warn Monsieur Valmond once again, but I find him with his ally, counsellor--and comforter," he retorted, with perilous suggestion. Time would move on, and Madame Chalice might forget that wild remark, but she never would forgive it, and she never wished to do so. The insolent, petty, provincial Seigneur! "Monsieur De la Riviere," she returned, with cold dignity, "you cannot live long enough to atone for that impertinence." "I beg your pardon, madame," he returned earnestly, awed by the look in her face; for she was thoroughly aroused. "I came to stop a filibustering expedition, to save the credit of the place where I was born, where my people have lived for generations." She made a quick, deprecatory gesture. "You saw me enter here," she said, "and you thought to discover treason of some kind--Heaven knows what a mind like yours may imagine! You find me giving better counsel to His Highness than you could ever hope to give--out of a better heart and from a better understanding. You have been worse than intrusive; you have been rash and stupid. You call His Highness filibuster and impostor. I assure you it is my fondest hope that Prince Valmond Napoleon will ever count me among his friends, in spite of all his enemies." She turned her shoulder on him, and took Valmond's hand with a pronounced obeisance, saying, "Adieu, sire" (she was never sorry she had said it), and passed from the room. Valmond was about to follow her. "Thank you, no; I will go to my carrriage alone," she said, and he did not insist. When she had gone he stood holding the door open, and looking at De la Riviere. He was very pale; there was a menacing fire in his eyes. The young Seigneur was ready for battle also. "I am occupied, monsieur," said Valmond meaningly. "I have come to warn you--" "The old song; I am occupied, monsieur." "Charlatan!" said De la Riviere, and took a step angrily towards him, for he was losing command of himself. At that moment Parpon, who had been outside in the hall for a half-hour or more, stepped into the room, edged between the two, and looked up with a wicked, mocking leer at the young Seigneur. "You have twenty-four hours to leave Pontiac," cried De la Riviere, as he left the room. "My watch keeps different time, monsieur," said Valmond coolly, and closed the door. CHAPTER XVI From the depths where Elise was cast, it was not for her to see that her disaster had brought light to others; that out of the pitiful confusion of her life had come order and joy. A half-mad woman, without memory, knew again whence she came and whither she was going; and bewildered and happy, with a hungering tenderness, moved her hand over the head of her poor dwarf, as though she would know if he were truly her own son. A new spirit also had come into Parpon's eyes, gentler, less weird, less distant. With the advent of their joy a great yearning came to save Elise. They hung watchful, solicitous, over her bed. It must go hard with her, and twenty-four hours would see the end or a fresh beginning. She had fought back the fever too long, her brain and emotions had been strung to a fatal pitch, and the disease, like a hurricane, carried her on for hours, tearing at her being. Her own mother sat in a corner, stricken and numb. At last she fell asleep in her chair, but Parpon and his mother slept not at all. Now and again the dwarf went to the door and looked out at the night, so still, and full of the wonder of growth and rest. Far up on Dalgrothe Mountain a soft brazen light lay like a shield against the sky, a strange, hovering thing. Parpon knew it to be the reflection of the campfires in the valley, where Lagroin and his men were sleeping. There came, too, out of the general stillness, a long, low murmur, as though nature were crooning: the untiring rustle of the river, the water that rolled on and never came back again. Where did they all go--those thousands of rivers for ever pouring on, lazily or wildly? What motive? What purpose? Just to empty themselves into the greater waters, there to be lost? Was it enough to travel on so inevitably to the end, and be swallowed up? And these millions of lives hurrying along? Was it worth while living, only to grow older and older, and, coming, heavy with sleep, to the Homestead of the Ages, enter a door that only opened inwards, and be swallowed up in the twilight? Why arrest the travelling, however swift it be? Sooner or later it must come--with dusk the end of it. The dwarf heard the moaning of the stricken girl, her cry, "Valmond! Valmond!" the sobs that followed, the woe of her self-abnegation, even in delirium. For one's self it mattered little, maybe, the attitude of the mind, whether it would arrest or be glad of the terrific travel; but for another human being, who might judge? Who might guess what was best for the other; what was most merciful, most good? Destiny meant us to prove our case against it, as well as we might; to establish our right to be here as long as we could, so discovering the world day by day, and ourselves to the world, and ourselves to ourselves. To live it out, resisting the power that destroys so long as might be--that was the divine secret. "Valmond! Valmond! O Valmond!" The voice moaned out the words again and again. Through the sounds there came another inner voice, that resolved all the crude, primitive thoughts here defined; vague, elusive, in Parpon's own brain. The girl's life should be saved at any cost, even if to save it meant the awful and certain doom his mother had whispered to him over the bed an hour before. He turned and went into the house. The old woman bent above Elise, watching intently, her eyes straining, her lips anxiously compressed. "My son," she said, "she will die in an hour if I don't give her more. If I do, she may die at once. If she gets well, she will be--" She made a motion to her eyes. "Blind, mother, blind!" he whispered, and he looked round the room. How good was the sight of the eyes! "Perhaps she'd rather die," said the old woman. "She is unhappy." She was thinking of her own far, bitter past, remembered now after so many years. "Misery and blindness too--ah! What right have I to make her blind? It's a great risk, Parpon, my dear son." "I must, I must, for your sake. Valmond! Valmond! O Valmond!" cried Elise again out of her delirium. The stricken girl had answered for Parpon. She had decided for herself. Life! that was all she prayed for: for another's sake, not her own. Her own mother slept on, in the corner of the room, unconscious of the terrible verdict hanging in the balance. Madame Degardy quickly emptied into a cup of liquor the strange brown powder, mixed it, and held it to the girl's lips, pouring it slowly down. Once, twice, during the next hour, a low, anguished voice filled the room; but just as dawn came, Parpon stooped and tenderly wiped a soft moisture from the face, lying so quiet and peaceful now against the pillow. "She breathes easy, poor pretty bird!" said the old woman gently. "She'll never see again?" asked Parpon mournfully. "Never a thing while she lives," was the whispered reply. "But she has her life," said the dwarf; "she wished it so." "What's the good!" The old woman had divined why Elise had wanted to live. The dwarf did not answer. His eyes wandered about abstractedly, and fell again upon Elise's mother sleeping, unconscious of the awful peril passed, and the painful salvation come to her daughter. The blue-grey light of morning showed under the edge of the closed window-blind. In the room day was mingling incongruously with night, for the candle looked sickly, and the aged crone's face was of a leaden colour, lighted by the piercing eyes that brooded hungrily on her son-- her only son: the dwarf had told her of Gabriel's death. Parpon opened the door and went out. Day was spreading over the drowsy landscape. There was no life as yet in all the horizon, no fires, no animals stirring, no early workmen, no anxious harvesters. But the birds were out, and presently here and there cattle rose up in the fields. Then, over the foot-hills, he saw a white horse and its rider show up against the grey dust of the road. Elise's sorrowful words came to him: "Valmond! Valmond! O Valmond!" His duty to the girl was done; she was safe; now he must follow that figure to where the smoke of the campfires came curling up by Dalgrothe Mountain. There were rumours of trouble; he must again be minister, counsellor, friend, to his master. A half hour later he was climbing the hill where he had seen the white horse and its rider. He heard the sound of a drum in the distance. The gloom and suspense of the night just passed went from him, and into the sunshine he sang: "Oh, grand to the war he goes, O gai, vive le roi!" Not long afterwards he entered the encampment. Around one fire, cooking their breakfasts, were Muroc the charcoalman, Duclosse the mealman, and Garotte the lime-burner. They all were in good spirits. "For my part," Muroc was saying, as Parpon nodded at them, and passed by, "I'm not satisfied." "Don't you get enough to eat?" asked the mealman, whose idea of happiness was based upon the appreciation of a good dinner. "But yes, and enough to drink, thanks to His Excellency, and the buttons he puts on my coat." Muroc jingled some gold coins in his pocket. "It's this being clean that's the devil! When I sold charcoal, I was black and beautiful, and no dirt showed; I polished like a pan. Now if I touch a potato, I'm filthy. Pipe-clay is hell's stuff to show you up as the Lord made you." Garotte laughed. "Wait till you get to fighting. Powder sticks better than charcoal. For my part, I'm always clean as a whistle." "But you're like a bit of wool, lime-burner, you never sweat. Dirt don't stick to you as to me and the meal man. Duclosse there used to look like a pie when the meal and sweat dried on him. When we reach Paris, and His Excellency gets his own, I'll take to charcoal again; I'll fill the palace cellars. That suits me better than chalk and washing every day." "Do you think we'll ever get to Paris?" asked the mealman, cocking his head seriously. "That's the will of God, and the weather at sea, and what the Orleans do," answered Muroc grinning. It was hard to tell how deep this adventure lay in Muroc's mind. He had a prodigious sense of humour, the best critic in the world. "For me," said the lime-burner, "I think there'll be fighting before we get to the Orleans. There's talk that the Gover'ment's coming against us." "Done!" said the charcoalman. "We'll see the way our great man puts their noses out of joint." "Here's Lajeunesse," broke in the mealman, as the blacksmith came near to their fire. He was dressed in complete regimentals, made by the parish tailor. "Is that so, monsieur le capitaine?" said Muroc to Lajeunesse. "Is the Gover'ment to be fighting us? Why should it? We're only for licking the Orleans, and who cares a sou for them, hein?" "Not a go-dam," said Duclosse, airing his one English oath. "The English hate the Orleans too." Lajeunesse looked from one to the other, then burst into a laugh. "There's two gills of rum for every man at twelve o'clock to-day, so says His Excellency; and two yellow buttons for the coat of every sergeant, and five for every captain. The English up there in Quebec can't do better than that, can they? And will they? No. Does a man spend money on a hell's foe, unless he means to give it work to do? Pish! Is His Excellency like to hang back because Monsieur De la Riviere says he'll fetch the Government? Bah! The bully soldiers would come with us as they went with the Great Napoleon at Grenoble. Ah, that! His Excellency told me about that just now. Here stood the soldiers,"-- he mapped out the ground with his sword," here stood the Great Napoleon, all alone. He looks straight before him. What does he see? Nothing less than a hundred muskets pointing at him. What does he do? He walks up to the soldiers, opens his coat, and says, 'Soldiers, comrades, is there one of you will kill your Emperor?' Damned if there was one! They dropped their muskets, and took to kissing his hands. There, my dears, that was the Great Emperor's way, our Emperor's father's little way." "But suppose they fired at us 'stead of at His Excellency?" asked the mealman. "Then, mealman, you'd settle your account for lightweights sooner than you want." Duclosse twisted his mouth dubiously. He was not sure how far his enthusiasm would carry him. Muroc shook his shaggy head in mirth. "Well, 'tis true we're getting off to France," said the lime-burner. "We can drill as we travel, and there's plenty of us for a start." "Morrow we go," said Lajeunesse. "The proclamation's to be out in an hour, and you're all to be ready by ten o'clock in the morning. His Excellency is to make a speech to us to-night; then the General--ah, what a fine soldier, and eighty years old!--he's to give orders, and make a speech also; and I'm to be colonel,"--he paused dramatically,--"and you three are for captains; and you're to have five new yellow buttons to your coats, like these." He drew out gold coins and jingled them. Every man got to his feet, and Muroc let the coffee-tin fall. "There's to be a grand review in the village this afternoon. There's breakfast for you, my dears!" Their exclamations were interrupted by Lajeunesse, who added: "And so my Madelinette is to go to Paris, after all, and Monsieur Parpon is to see that she starts right." "Monsieur" Parpon was a new title for the dwarf. But the great comedy, so well played, had justified it. "Oh, His Excellency 'll keep his oath," said the mealman. "I'd take Elise Malboir's word about a man for a million francs, was he prince or ditcher; and she says he's the greatest man in the world. She knows." "That reminds me," said Lajeunesse gloomily, "Elise has the black fever." The mealman's face seemed to petrify, his eyes stood out, the bread he had in his teeth dropped, and he stared wildly at Lajeunesse. All were occupied in watching the mealman, and they did not see the figure of a girl approaching. Muroc, dumfounded, spoke first. "Elise--the black fever!" he gasped, thoroughly awed. "She is better, she will live," said a voice behind Lajeunesse. It was Madelinette, who had come to the camp early to cook her father's breakfast. Without a word, the mealman turned, pulled his clothes about him with a jerk, and, pale and bewildered, started away at a run down the plateau. "He's going to the village," said the charcoalman. "He hasn't leave. That's court-martial!" Lajeunesse shook his head knowingly. "He's never had but two ideas in his nut-meal and Elise; let him go." The mealman was soon lost to view, unheeding the challenge that rang after him. Lagroin had seen the fugitive from a distance, and came down, inquiring. When he was told he swore that Duclosse should suffer divers punishments. "A pretty kind of officer!" he cried in a fury. "Damn it, is there another man in my army would do it?" No one answered; and because Lagroin was not a wise man, he failed to see that in time his army might be entirely dissipated by such awkward incidents. When Valmond was told, he listened with a better understanding. All that Lajeunesse had announced came to pass. The review and march and show were goodly, after their kind; and, by dint of money and wine, the enthusiasm was greater than ever it had been; for it was joined to the pathos of the expected departure. The Cure and the avocat kept within doors; for they had talked together, and now that the day of fate was at hand, and sons, brothers, fathers, were to go off on this far crusade, a new spirit suddenly thrust itself in, and made them sad and anxious. Monsieur De la Riviere was gloomy. Medallion was the one comfortable, cool person in the parish. It had been his conviction that something would occur to stop the whole business at the critical moment. He was a man of impressions, and he lived in the light of them continuously. Wisdom might have been expected of Parpon, but he had been won by Valmond from the start; and now, in the great hour, he was deep in another theme --the restoration of his mother to himself, and to herself. At seven o'clock in the evening, Valmond and Lagroin were in the streets, after they had marched their men back to camp. A crowd had gathered near the church, for His Excellency was on his way to visit the Cure. As he passed, they cheered him. He stopped to speak to them. Before he had ended, some one came crying wildly that the soldiers, the red-coats were come. The sound of a drum rolled up the street, and presently, round a corner, came the well-ordered troops of the Government. Instantly Lagroin wheeled to summon any stray men of his little army, but Valmond laid a hand on his arm, stopping him. It would have been the same in any case, for the people had scattered like sheep, and stood apart. They were close by the church steps. Valmond mechanically saw the mealman, open-mouthed and dazed, start forward from the crowd; but, hesitating, he drew back again almost instantly, and was swallowed up in the safety of distance. He smiled at the mealman's hesitation, even while he said to himself: "This ends it--ends it!" He said it with no great sinking of heart, with no fear. It was the solution of all; it was his only way to honour. The soldiers were halted a little distance from the two; and the officer commanding, after a dull mechanical preamble, in the name of the Government, formally called upon Valmond and Lagroin to surrender themselves, or suffer the perils of resistance. "Never!" broke out Lagroin, and, drawing his sword, he shouted: "Vive Napoleon! The Old Guard never surrenders!" Then he made as if to rush forward on the troops. "Fire!" called the officer. Twenty rifles blazed out. Lagroin tottered back, and fell at the feet of his master. Raising himself, he clasped Valmond's knee, and, looking up, said gaspingly: "Adieu, sire! I love you; I die for you." His head fell at his Emperor's feet, though the hands still clutched the knee. Valmond stood over his body, one leg on either side, and drew a pistol. "Surrender, monsieur," said the officer, "or we fire!" "Never! A Napoleon knows how to die!" was the reply, and he raised his pistol at the officer. "Fire!" came the sharp command. "Vive Napoleon!" cried the doomed man, and fell, mortally wounded. At that instant the Cure, with Medallion, came hurrying round the corner of the church. "Fools! Murderers!" he said to the soldiers. "Ah, these poor children!" Stooping, he lifted up Valmond's head, and Medallion felt Lagroin's pulseless heart. The officer picked up Valmond's pistol. A moment afterwards he looked at the dying man in wonder; for he found that the weapon was not loaded! CHAPTER XVII "How long, Chemist?" "Two hours, perhaps." "So long?" After a moment he said dreamily: "It is but a step." The Little Chemist nodded, though he did not understand. The Cure stooped over him. "A step, my son?" he asked, thinking he spoke of the voyage the soul takes. "To the Tuileries," answered Valmond, and he smiled. The Cure's brow clouded; he wished to direct the dying man's thoughts elsewhere. "It is but a step--anywhere," he continued; and looked towards the Little Chemist. "Thank you, dear monsieur, thank you. There is a silver night- lamp in my room; I wish it to be yours. Adieu, my friend." The Little Chemist tried to speak, but could not. He stooped and kissed Valmond's hand, as though he thought him still a prince, and not the impostor which the British rifles had declared him. To the end, the coterie would act according to the light of their own eyes. "It is now but a step--to anything," repeated Valmond. The Cure understood him at last. "The longest journey is short by the light of the grave," he responded gently. Presently the door opened, admitting the avocat. Valmond calmly met Monsieur Garon's pained look, and courteously whispered his name. "Your Excellency has been basely treated," said the avocat, his lip trembling. "On the contrary, well, dear monsieur," answered the ruined adventurer. "Destiny plays us all. Think: I die the death of a soldier, and my crusade was a soldier's vision of conquest. I have paid the price. I have--" He did not finish the sentence, but lay lost in thought. At last he spoke in a low tone to the avocat, who quickly began writing at his dictation. The chief clause of the record was a legacy of ten thousand francs to "my faithful Minister and constant friend, Monsieur Parpon;" another of ten thousand to Madame Joan Degardy, "whose skill and care of me merits more than I can requite;" twenty thousand to "the Church of St. Nazaire of the parish of Pontiac," five thousand to "the beloved Monsieur Fabre, cure of the same parish, to whose good and charitable heart I come for my last comforts;" twenty thousand to "Mademoiselle Madelinette Lajeunesse, that she may learn singing under the best masters in Paris." To Madame Chalice he left all his personal effects, ornaments, and relics, save a certain decoration given the old sergeant, and a ring once worn by the Emperor Napoleon. These were for a gift to "dear Monsieur Garon, who has honoured me with his distinguished friendship; and I pray that our mutual love for the same cause may give me some title to his remembrance." Here the avocat stopped him with a quick, protesting gesture. "Your Excellency! your Excellency!" he said in a shaking voice, "my heart has been with the man as with the cause." Other legacies were given to Medallion, to the family of Lagroin, of whom he still spoke as "my beloved General who died for me;" and ten francs to each recruit who had come to his standard. After a long pause, he said lingeringly: "To Mademoiselle Elise Malboir, the memory of whose devotion and solicitude gives me joy in my last hour, I bequeath fifty thousand francs. In the event of her death, this money shall revert to the parish of Pontiac, in whose graveyard I wish my body to lie. The balance of my estate, whatever it may now be, or may prove to be hereafter, I leave to Pierre Napoleon, third son of Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, of whom I cherish a reverent remembrance." A few words more ended the will, and the name of a bank in New York was given as agent. Then there was silence in the room, and Valmond appeared to sleep. Presently the avocat, thinking that he might wish to be alone with the Cure, stepped quietly to the door and opened it upon Madame Chalice. She pressed his hand, her eyes full of tears, passed inside the room, going softly to a shadowed corner, and sat watching the passive figure on the bed. What were the thoughts of this man, now that his adventure was over and his end near? If he were in very truth a prince, how pitiable, how paltry! What cheap martyrdom! If an impostor, had the game been worth the candle?--Death seemed a coin of high value for this short, vanished comedy. The man alone could answer, for the truth might not be known, save by the knowledge that comes with the end of all. She looked at the Cure, where he knelt praying, and wondered how much of this tragedy the anxious priest would lay at his own door. "It is no tragedy, dear Cure" Valmond said suddenly, as if following her thoughts. "My son, it is all tragedy until you have shown me your heart, that I may send you forth in peace." He had forgotten Madame Chalice's presence, and she sat very still. "Even for our dear Lagroin," Valmond continued, "it was no tragedy. He was fighting for the cause, not for a poor fellow like me. As a soldier loves to die, he died--in the dream of his youth, sword in hand." "You loved the cause, my son?" was the troubled question. "You were all honest?" Valmond made as if he would rise on his elbow, in excitement, but the Cure put him gently back. "From a child I loved it, dear Cure," was the quick reply. "Listen, and I will tell you all my story." He composed himself, and his face took on a warm light, giving it a look of happiness almost. "The very first thing I remember was sitting on the sands of the sea- shore, near some woman who put her arms round me and drew me to her heart. I seem even to recall her face now, though I never could before --do we see things clearer when we come to die, I wonder? I never saw her again. I was brought up by my parents, who were humble peasants, on an estate near Viterbo, in Italy. I was taught in the schools, and I made friends among my school-fellows; but that was all the happiness I had; for my parents were strict and hard with me, and showed me no love. At twelve years of age I was taken to Rome, and there I entered the house of Prince Lucien Bonaparte, as page. I was always near the person of His Highness." He paused, at sight of a sudden pain in the Cure's face. Sighing, he continued: "I travelled with him to France, to Austria, to England, where I learned to speak the language, and read what the English wrote about the Great Napoleon. Their hatred angered me, and I began to study what French and Italian books said of him. I treasured up every scrap of knowledge I could get. I listened to all that was said in the Prince's palace, and I was glad when His Highness let me read aloud private papers to him. From these I learned the secrets of the great family. The Prince was seldom gentle with me--sometimes almost brutal, yet he would scarcely let me out of his sight. I had little intercourse then with the other servants, and less still when I was old enough to become a valet; and a valet I was to the Prince for twelve years." The Cure's hand clasped the arm of his chair nervously. His lips moved, but he said nothing aloud, and he glanced quickly towards Madame Chalice, who sat moveless, her face flushed, her look fixed on Valmond. So, he was the mere impostor after all--a valet! Fate had won the toss-up; not faith, or friendship, or any good thing. "All these years," Valmond continued presently, his voice growing weaker, "I fed on such food as is not often within the reach of valets. I knew as much of the Bonapartes, of Napoleonic history, as the Prince himself, so much so, that he often asked me of some date or fact of which he was not sure. In time, I became almost like a private secretary to him. I lived in a dream for years; for I had poetry, novels, paintings, music, at my hand all the time, and the Prince, at the end, changed greatly, was affectionate indeed, and said he would do good things for me. I became familiar with all the intrigues, the designs of the Bonapartes; and what I did not know was told me by Prince Pierre, who was near my own age, and who used me always more like a friend than a servant. "One day the Prince was visited by Count Bertrand, who was with the Emperor in his exile, and I heard him speak of a thing unknown to history: that Napoleon had a son, born at St. Helena, by a countess well known in Europe. She had landed, disguised as a sailor, from a merchant- ship, and had lived in retirement at Longwood for near a year. After the Emperor died, the thing was discovered, but the governor of the island made no report of it to the British Government, for the event would have reflected on himself; and the returned exiles kept the matter a secret. It was said that the child died at St. Helena. The story remained in my mind, and I brooded on it. "Two years ago Prince Lucien died in my arms. When he was gone, I found that I had been left five hundred thousand francs, a chateau, and several relics of the Bonapartes, as reward for my services to the Prince, and, as the will said, in token of the love he had come to bear me. To these Prince Pierre added a number of mementoes. I went to visit my parents, whom I had not seen for many years. I found that my mother was dead, that my father was a drunkard. I left money for my father with the mayor, and sailed for England. From London I came to New York; from New York to Quebec. All the time I was restless, unhappy. I had had to work all my life, now I had nothing to do. I had lived close to great traditions, now there was no habit of life to keep them alive in me. I spent money freely, but it gave me no pleasure. I once was a valet to a great man, now I had the income of a gentleman, and was no gentleman. Ah, do you not shrink from me, Monsieur le Cure?" The Cure did not reply, but made a kindly gesture, and Valmond continued: "Sick of everything, one day I left Quebec hurriedly. Why I came here I do not know, save that I had heard it was near the mountains, was quiet, and I could be at peace. There was something in me which could not be content in the foolishness of idle life. All the time I kept thinking-- thinking. If I were only a Napoleon, how I would try to do great things! Ah, my God! I loved the Great Napoleon. What had the Bonapartes done? Nothing--nothing. Everything had slipped away from them. Not one of them was like the Emperor. His own legitimate son was dead. None of the others had the Master's blood, fire, daring in his veins. The thought grew on me, and I used to imagine myself his son. I loved his memory, all he did, all he was, better than any son could do. It had been my whole life, thinking of him and the Empire, while I brushed the Prince's clothes or combed his hair. Why should such tastes be given to a valet? Some one somewhere was to blame, dear Cure. I really did not conceive or plan imposture. I was only playing a comedian's part in front of the Louis Quinze, till I heard Parpon sing a verse of 'Vive Napoleon!' Then it all rushed on me, captured me--and the rest you know." The Cure could not trust himself to speak yet. "I had not thought to go so far when I began. It was mostly a whim. But the idea gradually possessed me, and at last it seemed to me that I was a real Napoleon. I used to wake from the dream for a moment, and I tried to stop, but something in my blood drove me on--inevitably. You were all good to me; you nearly all believed in me. Lagroin came--and so it has gone on till now, till now. I had a feeling what the end would be. But I should have had my dream. I should have died for the cause as no Napoleon or Bonaparte ever died. Like a man, I would pay the penalty Fate should set. What more could I do? If a man gives all he has, is not that enough? . . . There is my whole story. Now, I shall ask your pardon, dear Cure." "You must ask pardon of God, my son," said the priest, his looks showing the anguish he felt. "The Little Chemist said two hours, but I feel"--his voice got very faint "I feel that he is mistaken." He murmured a prayer, and crossed himself thrice. The Cure made ready to read the office for the dying. "My son," he said, "do you truly and earnestly repent you of your sins?" Valmond's eyes suddenly grew misty, his breathing heavier. He scarcely seemed to comprehend. "I have paid the price--I have loved you all. Parpon--where are you? --Elise!" A moment of silence, and then his voice rang out with a sort of sob. "Ah, madame," he cried chokingly, "dear madame, for you I--" Madame Chalice arose with a little cry, for she knew whom he meant, and her heart ached for him. She forgot his imposture--everything. "Ah, dear, dear monsieur!" she said brokenly. He knew her voice, he heard her coming; his eyes opened wide, and he raised himself on the couch with a start. The effort loosened the bandage at his neck, and blood gushed out on his bosom. With a convulsive motion he drew up the coverlet to his chin, to hide the red stream, and said gaspingly: "Pardon, madame." Then a shudder passed through him, and with a last effort to spare her the sight of his ensanguined body,' he fell face downward, voiceless--for ever. The very earth seemed breathing. Long waves of heat palpitated over the harvest-fields, and the din of the locust drove lazily through. The far cry of the king-fisher, and idly clacking wheels of carts rolling down from Dalgrothe Mountain, accented the drowsy melody of the afternoon. The wild mustard glowed so like a golden carpet, that the destroying hand of the anxious farmer seemed of the blundering tyranny of labour. Whole fields were flaunting with poppies, too gay for sorrow to pass that way; but a blind girl, led by a little child, made a lane through the red luxuriance, hurrying to the place where vanity and valour, and the remnant of an unfulfilled manhood, lay beaten to death. Destiny, which is stronger than human love, or the soul's fidelity, had overmastered self-sacrifice and the heart of a woman. This woman had opened her eyes upon the world again, only to find it all night, all strange; she was captive of a great darkness. As she broke through the hedge of lilacs by the Cure's house, the crowd of awe-stricken people fell back, opening a path for her to the door. She moved as one unconscious of the troubled life and the vibrating world about her. The hand of the child admitted her to the chamber of death; the door closed, and she stood motionless. The Cure made as if to rise and go towards her, but Madame Chalice, sitting sorrowful and dismayed at the foot of the couch, by a motion of her hand stopped him. The girl paused a moment, listening. "Your Excellency," she whispered. It was as if a soul leaned out of the casement of life, calling into the dark and the quiet which may not be comprehended by mortal man. "Monsieur--Valmond !" Her trembling hands were stretched out before her yearningly. The Cure moved. She turned towards the sound with a pitiful vagueness. "Valmond, O Valmond!" again she cried beseechingly, her clouded eyes straining into the silence. The cloak dropped from her shoulders, and the loose robe enveloping her fell away from a bosom that throbbed with the passion of a great despair. Nothing but silence. She moved to the wall like a little child feeling its way, ran her hand vaguely along it, and touched a crucifix. With a moan she pressed her lips to the nailed feet, and came on gropingly to the couch. She reached down towards it, but drew back as if in affright; for a dumb, desolating fear was upon her. But with that direful courage which is the last gift to the hopeless, she stooped down again, and her fingers touched Valmond's cold hands. They ran up his breast, to his neck, to his face, and fondled it, as only life can fondle death, out of that pitiful hunger which never can be satisfied in this world; then they moved with an infinite tenderness to his eyes, now blind like hers, and lingered there in the kinship of eternal loss. A low, anguished cry broke from her: "Valmond--my love!" and she fell forward upon the breast of her lost Napoleon. When the people gathered again in the little church upon the hill, Valmond and his adventure had become almost a legend, so soon are men and events lost in the distance of death and ruin. The Cure preached, as he had always done, with a simple, practical solicitude; but towards the end of his brief sermon he paused, and, with a serious tenderness of voice, said: "My children, vanity is the bane of mankind; it destroys as many souls as self-sacrifice saves. It is the constant temptation of the human heart. I have ever warned you against it, as I myself have prayed to be kept from its devices--alas! how futilely at times. Vanity leads to imposture, and imposture to the wronging of others. But if a man repent, and yield all he has, to pay the high price of his bitter mistake, he may thereby redeem himself even in this world. If he give his life repenting, and if the giving stays the evil he might have wrought, shall we be less merciful than God? "My children" (he did not mention Valmond's name), "his last act was manly; his death was pious; his sin was forgiven. Those rifle bullets that brought him down let out all the evil in his blood. "We, my people, have been delivered from a grave error. Forgetting-- save for our souls' welfare--the misery of this vanity which led us astray, let us remember with gladness all of him that was commendable in our eyes: his kindness, eloquence, generous heart, courage, and love of Mother Church. He lies in our graveyard; he is ours; and, being ours, let us protect his memory, as though he had not sought us a stranger, but was of us: of our homes, as of our love, and of our sorrow. "And so atoning for our sins, as did he, may we at last come to the perfect pardon, and to peace everlasting." EPILOGUE I (EXTRACT FROM A LETTER WRITTEN BY MADAME CHALICE TO MONSIEUR PADRE, CURE OF THE PARISH OF PONTIAC, THREE MONTHS AFTER VALMOND'S DEATH.) " . . . And here, dear Cure, you shall have my justification for writing you two letters in one week, though I should make the accident a habit if I were sure it would more please you than perplex you. "Prince Pierre, son of Prince Lucien Bonaparte, arrived in New York two days ago, and yesterday morning he came to the Atlantic Bank, and asked for my husband. When he made known his business, Harry sent for me, that I might speak with him. "Dear Cure, hearts and instincts were right in Pontiac: our unhappy friend Valmond was that child of Napoleon, born at St. Helena, of whom he himself spoke at his death in your home. His mother was the Countess of Carnstadt. At the beginning of an illness which followed Napoleon's death, the child was taken from her by Prince Lucien Bonaparte, and was brought up and educated as the son of poor peasants in Italy. No one knew of his birth save the companions in exile of the Great Emperor. All of them, with the exception of Count Bertrand, believed, as Valmond said, that the child had died in infancy at St. Helena. "Prince Lucien had sworn to the mother that he would care personally for the child, and he fulfilled his promise by making him a page in his household, and afterwards a valet--base redemption of a vow. "But even as Valmond drew our hearts to him, so at last he won Prince Lucien's, as he had from the first won Prince Pierre's. "It was not until after Valmond's death, when receiving the residue of our poor friend's estate, that Prince Pierre learned the whole truth from Count Bertrand. He immediately set sail for New York, and next week he will secretly visit you, for love of the dead man, and to thank you and our dear avocat, together with all others who believed in and befriended his unfortunate kinsman. "Ah, dear Cure, think of the irony of it all--that a man be driven, by the very truth in his blood, to that strangest of all impostures --to impersonate himself--He did it too well to be the mere comedian; I felt that all the time. I shall show his relics now with more pride than sorrow. Prince Pierre dines with us to-night. He looks as if he had the Napoleonic daring,--or rashness,--but I am sure he has not the good heart of our Valmond Napoleon. . . ." II The haymakers paused and leaned upon their forks, children left the strawberry vines and climbed upon the fences, as the coach from the distant city dashed down the street towards the four corners, and the welcoming hotel, with its big dormer windows and well-carved veranda. As it whirled by, the driver shouted something at a stalwart forgeron, standing at the doorway of his smithy, and he passed it on to a loitering mealman and a lime-burner. A girl came slowly over the crest of a hill. Feeling her way with a stick, she paused now and then to draw in long breaths of sweet air from the meadows, as if in the joy of Nature she found a balm for the cruelties of Destiny. Presently a puff of smoke shot out from the hillside where she stood, and the sound of an old cannon followed. From the Seigneury, far over, came an answering report; and Tricolors ran fluttering up on flagstaffs, at the four corners, and in the Cure's garden. The girl stood wondering, her fine, calm face expressing the quick thoughts which had belonged to eyes once so full of hope and blithe desire. The serenity of her life--its charity, its truth, its cheerful care for others, the confidence of the young which it invited, showed in all the aspect of her. She heard the flapping of the flag in the Cure's garden, and turned her darkened eyes towards it. A look of pain crossed her face, and a hand trembled to her bosom, as if to ease a great throbbing of her heart. These cannon shots and this shivering pennant brought back a scene at the four corners, years before. Footsteps came over the hill: she knew them, and turned. "Parpon!" she said, with a glad gesture. Without a word he placed in her hand a bunch of violets that he carried. She lifted them to her lips. "What is it all?" she asked, turning again to the Tricolor. "Louis Napoleon enters the Tuileries," he answered. "But ours was the son of the Great Emperor!" she said. "Let us be going, Parpon: we will plats these on his grave." She pressed the violets to her heart. "France would have loved him, as we did," said the dwarf, as they moved on. "As we do," the blind girl answered softly. Their figures against the setting sun took on a strange burnished radiance, so that they seemed as mystical pilgrims journeying into that golden haze, which veiled them in beyond the hill, as the Angelus sounded from the tower of the ancient church. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Vanity is the bane of mankind You cannot live long enough to atone for that impertinence ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "VALMOND TO PONTIAC": Conquest not important enough to satisfy ambition Face flushed with a sort of pleasurable defiance Her sight was bounded by the little field where she strayed I was never good at catechism The blind tyranny of the just Touch of the fantastic, of the barbaric, in all genius Vanity is the bane of mankind Visions of the artistic temperament--delight and curse We are only children till we begin to make our dreams our life You cannot live long enough to atone for that impertinence THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD, Complete By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS: EPOCH THE FIRST I. AN ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY II. THE THREAT OF A RENEGADE III. THE FACE AT THE WINDOW IV. THE UPLIFTING OF THE SWORDS V. THE FRUITS OF THE LAW VI. THE KIDNAPPING EPOCH THE SECOND VII. FRIENDS IN COUNCIL VIII. AS SEEN THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY IX. TO THE PORCH OF THE WORLD X. QUI VIVE! XI. WITH THE STRANGE PEOPLE XII. OUT OF THE NET EPOCH THE THIRD XIII. "AS WATER UNTO WINE" XIV. IN WHICH THE HUNTERS ARE OUT XV. IN THE MATTER OF BUCKLAW XVI. IN THE TREASURE HOUSE XVII. THE GIFT OF A CAPTIVE XVIII. MAIDEN NO MORE EPOCH THE FOURTH XIX. WHICH TELLS OF A BROTHER'S BLOOD CRYING FROM THE GROUND XX. A TRAP IS SET XXI. AN UNTOWARD MESSENGER XXII. FROM TIGER'S CLAW TO LION'S MOUTH XXIII. AT THE GATES OF MISFORTUNE XXIV. IN WHICH THE SWORD IS SHEATHED WHEREIN IS SET FORTH THE HISTORY OF JESSICA LEVERET, AS ALSO THAT OF PIERRE LE MOYNE OF IBERVILLE, GEORGE GERING, AND OTHER BOLD SPIRITS; TOGETHER WITH CERTAIN MATTERS OF WAR, AND THE DEEDS OF ONE EDWARD BUCKLAW, MUTINEER AND PIRATE DEDICATION My Dear Father: Once, many years ago, in a kind of despair, you were impelled to say that I would "never be anything but a rascally lawyer." This, it may be, sat upon your conscience, for later you turned me gravely towards Paley and the Thirty-nine Articles; and yet I know that in your deepest soldier's heart, you really pictured me, how unavailingly, in scarlet and pipe-clay, and with sabre, like yourself in youth and manhood. In all I disappointed you, for I never had a brief or a parish, and it was another son of yours who carried on your military hopes. But as some faint apology--I almost dare hope some recompense for what must have seemed wilfulness, I send you now this story of a British soldier and his "dear maid," which has for its background the old city of Quebec, whose high ramparts you walked first sixty years ago; and for setting, the beginning of those valiant fightings, which, as I have heard you say, "through God's providence and James Wolfe, gave England her best possession." You will, I feel sure, quarrel with the fashion of my campaigns, and be troubled by my anachronisms; but I beg you to remember that long ago you gave my young mind much distress when you told that wonderful story, how you, one man, "surrounded" a dozen enemies, and drove them prisoners to headquarters. "Surrounded" may have been mere lack of precision, but it serves my turn now, as you see. You once were--and I am precise here--a gallant swordsman: there are legends yet of your doings with a crack Dublin bully. Well, in the last chapter of this tale you shall find a duel which will perhaps recall those early days of this century, when your blood was hot and your hand ready. You would be distrustful of the details of this scene, did I not tell you that, though the voice is Jacob's the hand is another's. Swordsmen are not so many now in the army or out of it, that, among them, Mr. Walter Herrim Pollock's name will have escaped you: so, if you quarrel, let it be with Esau; though, having good reason to be grateful to him, that would cause me sorrow. My dear father, you are nearing the time-post of ninety years, with great health and cheerfulness; it is my hope you may top the arch of your good and honourable life with a century key-stone. Believe me, sir, Your affectionate son, GILBERT PARKER. 15th September, 1894, 7 Park Place, St. James's S.W. INTRODUCTION THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD This book, like Mrs. Falchion, was published in two volumes in January. That was in 1894. It appeared first serially in the Illustrated London News, for which paper, in effect, it was written, and it also appeared in a series of newspapers in the United States during the year 1893. This was a time when the historical novel was having its vogue. Mr. Stanley Weyman, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and a good many others were following the fashion, and many of the plays at the time were also historical-- so-called. I did not write The Trail of the Sword because it was in keeping with the spirit of the moment. Fashion has never in the least influenced my writing or my literary purposes. Whatever may be thought of my books, they represent nothing except my own bent of mind, my own wilful expression of myself, and the setting forth of that which seized my imagination. I wrote The Trail of the Sword because the early history of the struggles between the French and English and the North American Continent interested me deeply and fascinated my imagination. Also, I had a most intense desire to write of the Frenchman of the early days of the old regime; and I have no idea why it was so, because I have no French blood in my veins nor any trace of French influence in my family. There is, however, the Celtic strain, the Irish blood, immediate of the tang, as it were, and no doubt a sympathy between the Celtic and the Gallic strain is very near, and has a tendency to become very dear. It has always been a difficulty for me to do anything except show the more favourable side of French character and life. I am afraid that both in The Trail of the Sword, which was the forerunner of The Seats of the Mighty, the well sunk, in a sense, out of which the latter was drawn, I gave my Frenchman the advantage over his English rival. In The Trail of the Sword, the gallant French adventurer's chivalrous but somewhat merciless soul, makes a better picture than does his more phlegmatic but brave and honourable antagonist, George Gering. Also in The Seats of the Mighty, Doltaire, the half-villain, overshadows the good English hero from first to last; and yet, despite the unconscious partiality for the individual in both books, English character and the English as a race, as a whole, are dominant in the narrative. There is a long letter, as a dedication to this book, addressed to my father; there is a note also, which explains the spirit in which the book was written, and I have no desire to enlarge this introduction in the presence of these prefaces to the first edition. But I may say that this book was gravely important to me, because it was to test all my capacity for writing a novel with an historical background, and, as it were, in the custom of a bygone time. It was not really the first attempt at handling a theme belonging to past generations, because I had written for Good Words, about the year 1890, a short novel which I called The Chief Factor, a tale of the Hudson's Bay Company. It was the first novel or tale of mine which secured copyright under the new American copyright act of 1892. There was a circumstance connected with this publication which is interesting. When I arrived in New York, I had only three days in which to have the book printed in order to secure the copyright before Good Words published the novel as its Christmas annual in its entirety. I tried Messrs. Harper & Brothers, and several other publishers by turn, but none of them could undertake to print the book in the time. At last some kind friend told me to go to the Trow Directory Binding Company, which I did. They said they could not print the story in the time. I begged them to reconsider. I told them how much was at stake for me. I said that I would stay in the office and read the proofs as they came from the press, and would not move until it was finished. Refusal had been written on the lips and the face of the manager at the beginning, but at last I prevailed. He brought the foreman down there and then. Each of us, elated by the conditions of the struggle, determined to pull the thing off. We printed that book of sixty-five thousand words or so, in forty-eight hours, and it arrived in Washington three hours before the time was up. I saved the copyright, and I need hardly say that my gratitude to the Trow Directory Binding Company was as great as their delight in having done a really brilliant piece of work. The day after the copyright was completed, I happened to mention the incident to Mr. Archibald Clavering Gunter, author of Mr. Barnes of New York, who had a publishing house for his own books. He immediately made me an offer for The Chief Factor. I hesitated, because I had been dealing with great firms like Harpers, and, to my youthful mind, it seemed rather beneath my dignity to have the imprint of so new a firm as the Home Publishing Company on the title-page of my book. I asked the advice of Mr. Walter H. Page, then editor of The Forum, now one of the proprietors of The World's Work and Country Life, and he instantly said: "What difference does it make who publishes your book? It is the public you want." I did not hesitate any longer. The Chief Factor went to Mr. Archibald Clavering Gunter and the Home Publishing Company, and they made a very large sale of it. I never cared for the book however; it seemed stilted and amateurish, though some of its descriptions and some of its dialogues were, I think, as good as I can do; so, eventually, in the middle nineties, I asked Mr. Gunter to sell me back the rights in the book and give me control of it. This he did. I thereupon withdrew it from publication at once, and am not including it in this subscription edition. I think it better dead. But the writing of it taught me better how to write The Trail of the Sword; though, if I had to do this book again, I could construct it better. I think it fresh and very vigorous, and I think it does not lack distinction, while a real air of romance--of refined romance--pervades it. But I know that Mr. W. E. Henley was right when, after most generously helping me to revise it, with a true literary touch wonderfully intimate and affectionate, he said to me: "It is just not quite big, but the next one will get home." He was right. The Trail of the Sword is "just not quite," though I think it has charm; but it remained for The Seats of the Mighty to get home, as "W. E. H.", the most exacting, yet the most generous, of critics, said. This book played a most important part in a development of my literary work, and the warm reception by the public--for in England it has been through its tenth edition, and in America through proportionate thousands--was partly made possible by the very beautiful illustrations which accompanied its publication in The Illustrated London News. The artist was A. L. Forestier, and never before or since has my work received such distinguished pictorial exposition, save, perhaps, in The Weavers, when Andre Castaigne did such triumphant work. It is a joy still to look at the illustrations of The Trail of the Sword, for, absolutely faithful to the time, they add a note of verisimilitude to the tale. A NOTE The actors in this little drama played their parts on the big stage of a new continent two hundred years ago. Despots sat upon the thrones of France and England, and their representatives on the Hudson and the St. Lawrence were despots too, with greater opportunity and to better ends. In Canada, Frontenac quarreled with his Intendant and his Council, set a stern hand upon the Church when she crossed with his purposes, cajoled, treated with, and fought the Indians by turn, and cherished a running quarrel with the English Governor of New York. They were striving for the friendship of the Iroquois on the one hand, and for the trade of the Great West on the other. The French, under such men as La Salle, had pushed their trading posts westward to the great lakes and beyond the Missouri, and north to the shores of Hudson's Bay. They traded and fought and revelled, hot with the spirit of adventure, the best of pioneers and the worst of colonists. Tardily, upon their trail, came the English and the Dutch, slow to acquire but strong to hold; not so rash in adventure, nor so adroit in intrigue, as fond of fighting, but with less of the gift of the woods, and much more the faculty for government. There was little interchange of friendliness and trade between the rival colonists; and Frenchmen were as rare on Manhattan Island as Englishmen on the heights of Quebec--except as prisoners. G. P. THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD EPOCH THE FIRST I. AN ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY II. THE THREAT OF A RENEGADE III. THE FACE AT THE WINDOW IV. THE UPLIFTING OF THE SWORDS V. THE FRUITS OF THE LAW VI. THE KIDNAPPING CHAPTER I AN ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY One summer afternoon a tall, good-looking stripling stopped in the midst of the town of New York, and asked his way to the governor's house. He attracted not a little attention, and he created as much astonishment when he came into the presence of the governor. He had been announced as an envoy from Quebec. "Some new insolence of the County Frontenac!" cried old Richard Nicholls, bringing his fist down on the table. For a few minutes he talked with his chamberfellow; then, "Show the gentleman in," he added. In the room without, the envoy from Quebec had stood flicking the dust from his leggings with a scarf. He was not more than eighteen, his face had scarcely an inkling of moustache, but he had an easy upright carriage, with an air of self-possession, the keenest of grey eyes, a strong pair of shoulders, a look of daring about his rather large mouth, which lent him a manliness well warranting his present service. He had been left alone, and the first thing he had done was to turn on his heel and examine the place swiftly. This he seemed to do mechanically, not as one forecasting danger, not as a spy. In the curve of his lips, in an occasional droop of his eyelids, there was a suggestion of humour: less often a quality of the young than of the old. For even in the late seventeenth century, youth took itself seriously at times. Presently, as he stood looking at the sunshine through the open door, a young girl came into the lane of light, waved her hand, with a little laugh, to some one in the distance, and stepped inside. At first she did not see him. Her glances were still cast back the way she had come. The young man could not follow her glance, nor was he anything curious. Young as he was, he could enjoy a fine picture. There was a pretty demureness in the girl's manner, a warm piquancy in the turn of the neck, and a delicacy in her gestures, which to him, fresh from hard hours in the woods, was part of some delightful Arcady--though Arcady was more in his veins than of his knowledge. For the young seigneur of New France spent far more hours with his gun than with his Latin, and knew his bush- ranging vassal better than his tutor; and this one was too complete a type of his order to reverse its record. He did not look to his scanty lace, or set himself seemingly; he did but stop flicking the scarf held loose in his fingers, his foot still on the bench. A smile played at his lips, and his eyes had a gleam of raillery. He heard the girl say in a soft, quaint voice, just as she turned towards him, "Foolish boy!" By this he knew that the pretty picture had for its inspiration one of his own sex. She faced him, and gave a little cry of surprise. Then their eyes met. Immediately he made the most elaborate bow of all his life, and she swept a graceful courtesy. Her face was slightly flushed that this stranger should have seen, but he carried such an open, cordial look that she paused, instead of hurrying into the governor's room, as she had seemed inclined to do. In the act the string of her hat, slung over her arm, came loose, and the hat fell to the floor. Instantly he picked it up and returned it. Neither had spoken a word. It seemed another act of the light pantomime at the door. As if they had both thought on the instant how droll it was, they laughed, and she said to him naively: "You have come to visit the governor? You are a Frenchman, are you not?" To this in slow and careful English, "Yes," he replied; "I have come from Canada to see his excellency. Will you speak French?" "If you please, no," she answered, smiling; "your English is better than my French. But I must go." And she turned towards the door of the governor's room. "Do not go yet," he said. "Tell me, are you the governor's daughter?" She paused, her hand at the door. "Oh no," she answered; then, in a sprightly way--"are you a governor's son?" "I wish I were," he said, "for then there'd be a new intendant, and we'd put Nick Perrot in the council." "What is an intendant?" she asked, "and who is Nick Perrot?" "Bien! an intendant is a man whom King Louis appoints to worry the governor and the gentlemen of Canada, and to interrupt the trade. Nicolas Perrot is a fine fellow, and a great coureur du bois, and helps to get the governor out of troubles to-day, the intendant to-morrow. He is a splendid fighter. Perrot is my friend." He said this, not with an air of boasting, but with a youthful and enthusiastic pride, which was relieved, by the twinkle in his eyes and his frank manner. "Who brought you here?" she asked demurely. "Are they inside with the governor?" He saw the raillery; though, indeed, it was natural to suppose that he had no business with the governor, but had merely come with some one. The question was not flattering. His hand went up to his chin a little awkwardly. She noted how large yet how well-shaped it was, or, rather, she remembered afterwards. Then it dropped upon the hilt of the rapier he wore, and he answered with good self-possession, though a little hot spot showed on his cheek: "The governor must have other guests who are no men of mine; for he keeps an envoy from Count Frontenac long in his anteroom." The girl became very youthful indeed, and a merry light danced in her eyes and warmed her cheek. She came a step nearer. "It is not so? You do not come from Count Frontenac--all alone, do you?" "I'll tell you after I have told the governor," he answered, pleased and amused. "Oh, I shall hear when the governor hears," she answered, with a soft quaintness, and then vanished into the governor's chamber. She had scarce entered when the door opened again, and the servant, a Scotsman, came out to say that his excellency would receive him. He went briskly forward, but presently paused. A sudden sense of shyness possessed him. It was not the first time he had been ushered into vice-regal presence, but his was an odd position. He was in a strange land, charged with an embassy which accident had thrust upon him. Then, too, the presence of the girl had withdrawn him for an instant from the imminence of his duty. His youth came out of him, and in the pause one could fairly see him turn into man. He had not the dark complexion of so many of his race, but was rather Saxon in face, with rich curling brown hair. Even in that brave time one might safely have bespoken for him a large career. And even while the Scotsman in the doorway eyed him with distant deprecation, as he eyed all Frenchmen, good and bad, ugly or handsome, he put off his hesitation and entered the governor's chamber. Colonel Nicholls came forward to greet him, and then suddenly stopped, astonished. Then he wheeled upon the girl. "Jessica, you madcap!" he said in a low voice. She was leaning against a tall chair, both hands grasping the back of it, her chin just level with the top. She had told the governor that Count Frontenac had sent him a lame old man, and that, enemy or none, he ought not to be kept waiting, with arm in sling and bandaged head. Seated at the table near her was a grave member of the governor's council, William Drayton by name. He lifted a reproving finger at her now, but with a smile on his kindly face, and "Fie, fie, young lady!" he said, in a whisper. Presently the governor mastered his surprise, and seeing that the young man was of birth and quality, extended his hand cordially enough, and said: "I am glad to greet you, sir;" and motioned him to a seat. "But, pray, sit down," he added, "and let us hear the message Count Frontenac has sent. Meanwhile we would be favoured with your name and rank." The young man thrust a hand into his doublet and drew forth a packet of papers. As he handed it over, he said in English--for till then the governor had spoken French, having once served with the army of France, and lived at the French Court: "Your excellency, my name is Pierre le Moyne of Iberville, son of Charles le Moyne, a seigneur of Canada, of whom you may have heard." (The governor nodded.) "I was not sent by Count Frontenac to you. My father was his envoy: to debate with you our trade in the far West and our dealings with the Iroquois." "Exactly," said old William Drayton, tapping the table with his forefinger; "and a very sound move, upon my soul." "Ay, ay," said the governor, "I know of your father well enough. A good fighter and an honest gentleman, as they say. But proceed, Monsieur le Moyne of Iberville." "I am called Iberville," said the young man simply. Then: "My father and myself started from Quebec with good Nick Perrot, the coureur du bois--" "I know him too," the governor interjected--"a scoundrel worth his weight in gold to your Count Frontenac." "For whose head Count Frontenac has offered gold in his time," answered Iberville, with a smile. "A very pretty wit," said old William Drayton, nodding softly towards the girl, who was casting bright, quizzical glances at the youth over the back of the chair. Iberville went on: "Six days ago we were set upon by a score of your Indians, and might easily have left our scalps with them; but, as it chanced, my father was wounded, I came off scot-free, and we had the joy of ridding your excellency of half a dozen rogues." The governor lifted his eyebrows and said nothing. The face of the girl over against the back of the chair had become grave. "It was in question whether Perrot or I should bear Count Frontenac's message. Perrot knew the way, I did not; Perrot also knew the Indians." "But Perrot," said the governor blufily, "would have been the letter- carrier; you are a kind of ambassador. Upon my soul, yes, a sort of ambassador!" he added, enjoying the idea; for, look at it how you would, Iberville was but a boy. "That was my father's thought and my own," answered Iberville coolly. "There was my father to care for till his wound was healed and he could travel back to Quebec, so we thought it better Perrot should stay with him. A Le Moyne was to present himself, and a Le Moyne has done so." The governor was impressed more deeply than he showed. It was a time of peace, but the young man's journey among Indian braves and English outlaws, to whom a French scalp was a thing of price, was hard and hazardous. His reply was cordial, then his fingers came to the seal of the packet; but the girl's hand touched his arm. "I know his name," she said in the governor's ear, "but he does not know mine." The governor patted her hand, and then rejoined: "Now, now, I forgot the lady; but I cannot always remember that you are full fifteen years old." Standing up, with all due gravity and courtesy, "Monsieur Iberville," he said, "let me present you to Mistress Jessica Leveret, the daughter of my good and honoured and absent friend, the Honourable Hogarth Leveret." So the governor and his councillor stood shoulder to shoulder at one window, debating Count Frontenac's message; and shoulder to shoulder at another stood Iberville and Jessica Leveret. And what was between these at that moment--though none could have guessed it--signified as much to the colonies of France and England, at strife in the New World, as the deliberations of their elders. CHAPTER II THE THREAT OF A RENEGADE Iberville was used to the society of women. Even as a young lad, his father's notable place in the colony, and the freedom and gaiety of life in Quebec and Montreal, had drawn upon him a notice which was as much a promise of the future as an accent of the present. And yet, through all of it, he was ever better inspired by the grasp of a common soldier, who had served with Carignan-Salieres, or by the greeting and gossip of such woodsmen as Du Lhut, Mantet, La Durantaye, and, most of all, his staunch friend Perrot, chief of the coureurs du bois. Truth is, in his veins was the strain of war and adventure first and before all. Under his tutor, the good Pere Dollier de Casson, he had never endured his classics, save for the sake of Hector and Achilles and their kind; and his knowledge of English, which his father had pressed him to learn,--for he himself had felt the lack of it in dealings with Dutch and English traders,--only grew in proportion as he was given Shakespeare and Raleigh to explore. Soon the girl laughed up at him. "I have been a great traveller," she said, "and I have ears. I have been as far west as Albany and south to Virginia, with my father, who, perhaps you do not know, is in England now. And they told me everywhere that Frenchmen are bold, dark men, with great black eyes and very fine laces and wigs, and a trick of bowing and making foolish compliments; and they are not to be trusted, and they will not fight except in the woods, where there are trees to climb. But I see that it is not all true, for you are not dark, your eyes are not big or black, your laces are not much to see, you do not make compliments--" "I shall begin now," he interrupted. "--you must be trusted a little, or Count Frontenac would not send you, and--and--tell me, would you fight if you had a chance?" No one of her sex had ever talked so to Iberville. Her demure raillery, her fresh, frank impertinence, through which there ran a pretty air of breeding, her innocent disregard of formality, all joined to impress him, to interest him. He was not so much surprised at the elegance and cleverness of her speech, for in Quebec girls of her age were skilled in languages and arts, thanks to the great bishop, Laval, and to Marie of the Incarnation. In response to her a smile flickered upon his lips. He had a quick fierce temper, but it had never been severely tried; and so well used was he to looking cheerfully upon things, so keen had been his zest in living, that, where himself was concerned, his vanity was not easily touched. So, looking with genial dryness, "You will hardly believe it, of course," he said, "but wings I have not yet grown, and the walking is bad 'twixt here and the Chateau St. Louis." "Iroquois traps," she suggested, with a smile. "With a trick or two of English footpads," was his reply. Meanwhile his eye had loitered between the two men in council at the farther window and the garden, into which he and the girl were looking. Presently he gave a little start and a low whistle, and his eyelids slightly drooped, giving him a handsome sulkiness. "Is it so?" he said between his teeth: "Radisson--Radisson, as I live!" He had seen a man cross a corner of the yard. This man was short, dark- bearded, with black, lanky hair, brass earrings, and buckskin leggings, all the typical equipment of the French coureur du bois. Iberville had only got one glance at his face, but the sinister profile could never be forgotten. At once the man passed out of view. The girl had not seen him, she had been watching her companion. Presently she said, her fingers just brushing his sleeve, for he stood eyeing the point where the man had disappeared: "Wonderful! You look now as if you would fight. Oh, fierce, fierce as the governor when he catches a French spy!" He turned to her and, with a touch of irony, "Pardon!" he retorted. "Now I shall look as blithe as the governor when a traitor deserts to him." Of purpose he spoke loud enough to be heard by the governor and his friend. The governor turned sharply on him. He had caught the ring in the voice, that rash enthusiasm of eager youth, and, taking a step towards Iberville, Count Frontenac's letter still poised in his hand: "Were your words meant for my hearing, monsieur?" he said. "Were you speaking of me or of your governor?" "I was thinking of one Radisson a traitor, and I was speaking of yourself, your excellency." The governor had asked his question in French, in French the reply was given. Both the girl and Councillor Drayton followed with difficulty. Jessica looked a message to her comrade in ignorance. The old man touched the governor's arm. "Let it be in English if monsieur is willing. He speaks it well." The governor was at work to hide his anger: he wished good greeting to Count Frontenac's envoy, and it seemed not fitting to be touched by the charges of a boy. "I must tell you frankly, Monsieur Iberville," he said, "that I do not choose to find a sort of challenge in your words; and I doubt that your father, had he been here, would have spoke quite so roundly. But I am for peace and happy temper when I can. I may not help it if your people, tired of the governance of Louis of France, come into the good ruling of King Charles. As for this man Radisson: what is it you would have?" Iberville was now well settled back upon his native courage. He swallowed the rebuke with grace, and replied with frankness: "Radisson is an outlaw. Once he attempted Count Frontenac's life. He sold a band of our traders to the Iroquois. He led your Hollanders stealthily to cut off the Indians of the west, who were coming with their year's furs to our merchants. There is peace between your colony and ours--is it fair to harbour such a wretch in your court-yard? It was said up in Quebec, your excellency, that such men have eaten at your table." During this speech the governor seemed choleric, but a change passed over him, and he fell to admiring the lad's boldness. "Upon my soul, monsieur," he said, "you are council, judge, and jury all in one; but I think I need not weigh the thing with you, for his excellency, from whom you come, has set forth this same charge,"--he tapped the paper,--"and we will not spoil good-fellowship by threshing it now." He laughed a little ironically. "And I promise you," he added, "that your Radisson shall neither drink wine nor eat bread with you at my table. And now, come, let us talk awhile together; for, lest any accident befall the packet you shall bear, I wish you to carry in your memory, with great distinctness, the terms of my writing to your governor. I would that it were not to be written, for I hate the quill, and I've seen the time I would rather point my sword red than my quill black." By this the shadows were falling. In the west the sun was slipping down behind the hills, leaving the strong day with a rosy and radiant glamour, that faded away in eloquent tones to the grey, tinsel softness of the zenith. Out in the yard a sumach bush was aflame. Rich tiger-lilies thrust in at the sill, and lazy flies and king bees boomed in and out of the window. Something out of the sunset, out of the glorious freshness and primal majesty of the new land, diffused through the room where those four people stood, and made them silent. Presently the governor drew his chair to the table, and motioned Councillor Drayton and Iberville to be seated. The girl touched his arm. "And where am I to sit?" she asked demurely. Colonel Nicholls pursed his lips and seemed to frown severely on her. "To sit? Why, in your room, mistress. Tut, tut, you are too bold. If I did not know your father was coming soon to bear you off, new orders should be issued. Yes, yes, e'en as I say," he added, as he saw the laughter in her eyes. She knew that she could wind the big-mannered soldier about her finger. She had mastered his household; she was the idol of the settlement, her flexible intelligence, the flush of the first delicate bounty of womanhood had made him her slave. In a matter of vexing weight he would not have let her stay, but such deliberatings as he would have with Iberville could well bear her scrutiny. He reached out to pinch her cheek, but she deftly tipped her head and caught his outstretched fingers. "But where am I to sit?" she persisted. "Anywhere, then, but at the council-table," was his response, as he wagged a finger at her and sat down. Going over she perched herself on a high stool in the window behind Iberville. He could not see her, and, if he thought at all about it, he must have supposed that she could not see him. Yet she could; for against the window-frame was a mirror, and it reflected his face and the doings at the board. She did not listen to the rumble of voices. She fell to studying Iberville. Once or twice she laughed softly to herself. As she turned to the window a man passed by and looked in at her. His look was singular, and she started. Something about his face was familiar. She found her mind feeling among far memories, for even the past of the young stretches out interminably. She shuddered, and a troubled look came into her eyes. Yet she could not remember. She leaned slightly forward, as if she were peering into that by-gone world which, maybe, is wider than the future for all of us--the past. Her eyes grew deep and melancholy. The sunset seemed to brighten around her all at once, and enmesh her in a golden web, burnishing her hair, and it fell across her brow with a peculiar radiance, leaving the temples in shadow, softening and yet lighting the carmine of her cheeks and lips, giving a feeling of life to her dress, which itself was like dusty gold. Her hands were caught and clasped at her knees. There was something spiritual and exalted in the picture. It had, too, a touch of tragedy, for something out of her nebulous past had been reflected in faint shadows in her eyes, and this again, by strange, delicate processes, was expressed in every line of her form, in all the aspect of her face. It was as if some knowledge were being filtered to her through myriad atmospheres of premonition; as though the gods in pity foreshadowed a great trouble, that the first rudeness of misery might be spared. She did not note that Iberville had risen, and had come round the table to look over Councillor Drayton's shoulder at a map spread out. After standing a moment watching, the councillor's finger his pilot, he started back to his seat. As he did so he caught sight of her still in that poise of wonderment and sadness. He stopped short, then glanced at Colonel Nicholls and the councillor. Both were bent over the map, talking in eager tones. He came softly round the table, and was about to speak over her shoulder, when she drew herself up with a little shiver and seemed to come back from afar. Her hands went up to her eyes. Then she heard him. She turned quickly, with the pageant of her dreams still wavering in her face; smiled at him distantly, looked towards the window again in a troubled way, then stepped softly and swiftly to the door, and passed out. Iberville watched the door close and turned to the window. Again he saw, and this time nearer to the window, Radisson, and with him the man who had so suddenly mastered Jessica. He turned to Colonel Nicholls. "Your excellency," he said, "will you not let me tell Count Frontenac that you forbid Radisson your purlieus? For, believe me, sir, there is no greater rogue unhanged, as you shall find some day to the hurt of your colony, if you shelter him." The governor rose and paced the room thoughtfully. "He is proclaimed by Frontenac?" he asked. "A price is on his head. As a Frenchman I should shoot him like a wolf where'er I saw him; and so I would now were I not Count Frontenac's ambassador and in your excellency's presence." "You speak manfully, monsieur," said the governor, not ill-pleased; "but how might you shoot him now? Is he without there?" At this he came to where Iberville stood, and looked out. "Who is the fellow with him?" he asked. "A cut-throat scoundrel, I'll swear, though his face is so smug," said Iberville. "What think you sir?" turning to the councillor, who was peering between their shoulders. "As artless yet as strange a face as I have ever seen," answered the merchant. "What's his business here, and why comes he with the other rogue? He would speak with your excellency, I doubt not," he added. Colonel Nicholls turned to Iberville. "You shall have your way," he said. "Yon renegade was useful when we did not know what sudden game was playing from Chateau St. Louis; for, as you can guess, he has friends as faithless as himself. But to please your governor, I will proclaim him." He took his stick and tapped the floor. Waiting a moment, he tapped again. There was no sign. He opened the door; but his Scots body-guard was not in sight. "That's unusual," he said. Then, looking round: "Where is our other councillor? Gone?" he laughed. "Faith, I did not see her go. And now we can swear that where the dear witch is will Morris, my Scotsman, be found. Well, well! They have their way with us whether we will or no. But, here, I'll have your Radisson in at once." He was in act to call when Morris entered. With a little hasty rebuke he gave his order to the man. "And look you, my good Morris," he added, "tell Sherlock and Weir to stand ready. I may need the show of firearms." Turning to Iberville, he said: "I trust you will rest with us some days, monsieur. We shall have sports and junketings anon. We are not yet so grim as our friends in Massachusetts." "I think I might venture two days with you, sir, if for nothing else, to see Radisson proclaimed. Count Frontenac would gladly cut months from his calendar to know you ceased to harbour one who can prove no friend," was the reply. The governor smiled. "You have a rare taste for challenge, monsieur. To be frank, I will say your gift is more that of the soldier than the envoy. But upon my soul, if you will permit me, I think no less of you for that." Then the door opened, and Morris brought in Radisson. The keen, sinister eyes of the woodsman travelled from face to face, and then rested savagely on Iberville. He scented trouble, and traced it to its source. Iberville drew back to the window and, resting his arm on the high stool where Jessica had sat, waited the event. Presently the governor came over to him. "You can understand," he said quietly, "that this man has been used by my people, and that things may be said which--" Iberville waved his hand respectfully. "I understand, your excellency," he said. "I will go." He went to the door. The woodsman as he passed broke out: "There is the old saying of the woods, 'It is mad for the young wolf to trail the old bear.'" "That is so," rejoined Iberville, with excellent coolness, "if the wolf holds not the spring of the trap." In the outer room were two soldiers and the Scot. He nodded, passed into the yard, and there he paced up and down. Once he saw Jessica's face at a window, he was astonished to see how changed. It wore a grave, an apprehensive look. He fell to wondering, but, even as he wondered, his habit of observation made him take in every feature of the governor's house and garden, so that he could have reproduced all as it was mirrored in his eye. Presently he found himself again associating Radisson's comrade with the vague terror in Jessica's face. At last he saw the fellow come forth between two soldiers, and the woodsman turned his head from side to side, showing his teeth like a wild beast at sight of Iberville. His black brows twitched over his vicious eyes. "There are many ways to hell, Monsieur Iberville," he said. "I will show you one. Some day when you think you tread on a wisp of straw, it will be a snake with the deadly tooth. You have made an outlaw--take care! When the outlaw tires of the game, he winds it up quick. And some one pays for the candles and the cards." Iberville walked up to him. "Radisson," he said in a voice well controlled, "you have always been an outlaw. In our native country you were a traitor; in this, you are the traitor still. I am not sorry for you, for you deserve not mercy. Prove me wrong. Go back to Quebec; offer to pay with your neck, then--" "I will have my hour," said the woodsman, and started on. "It's a pity," said Iberville to himself--"as fine a woodsman as Perrot, too!" CHAPTER III THE FACE AT THE WINDOW At the governor's table that night certain ladies and gentlemen assembled to do the envoy honour. There came, too, a young gentleman, son of a distinguished New Englander, his name George Gering, who was now in New York for the first time. The truth is, his visit was to Jessica, his old playmate, the mistress of his boyhood. Her father was in England, her mother had been dead many years, and Colonel Nicholls and his sister being kinsfolk, a whole twelvemonth ago she had been left with them. Her father had thought at first to house her with his old friend Edward Gering, but he loved the Cavalier-like tone of Colonel Nicholls's household better than the less inspiriting air which Madam Puritan Gering suffused about her home. Himself in early youth had felt the austerity of a Cavalier father turned a Puritan on a sudden, and he wished no such experience for his daughter. For all her abundancy of life and feeling, he knew how plastic and impressionable she was, and he dreaded to see that exaltation of her fresh spirit touched with gloom. She was his only child, she had been little out of his sight, her education had gone on under his own care, and, in so far as was possible in a new land, he had surrounded her with gracious influences. He looked forward to any definite separation (as marriage) with apprehension. Perhaps one of the reasons why he chose Colonel Nicholls's house for her home, was a fear lest George Gering should so impress her that she might somehow change ere his return. And in those times brides of sixteen were common as now they are rare. She sat on the governor's left. All the brightness, the soft piquancy, which Iberville knew, had returned; and he wondered--fortunate to know that wonder so young--at her varying moods. She talked little, and most with the governor; but her presence seemed pervasive, the aura in her veins flowed from her eye and made an atmosphere that lighted even the scarred and rather sulky faces of two officers of His Majesty near. They had served with Nicholls in Spain, but not having eaten King Louis's bread, eyed all Frenchmen askance, and were not needlessly courteous to Iberville, whose achievements they could scarce appreciate, having done no Indian fighting. Iberville sat at the governor's end, Gering at the other. It was noticed by Iberville that Gering's eyes were much on Jessica, and in the spirit of rivalry, the legitimate growth of race and habit, he began to speak to her with the air of easy but deliberate playfulness which marked their first meeting. Presently she spoke across the table to him, after Colonel Nicholls had pledged him heartily over wine. The tone was a half whisper as of awe, in reality a pretty mockery. "Tell me," she said, "what is the bravest and greatest thing you ever did?" "Jessica, Jessica!" said the governor in reproof. An old Dutch burgher laughed into his hand, and His Majesty's officers cocked their ears, for the whisper was more arresting than any loud talk. Iberville coloured, but the flush passed quickly and left him unembarrassed. He was not hurt, not even piqued, for he felt well used to her dainty raillery. But he saw that Gering's eyes were on him, and the lull that fell as by a common instinct--for all could not have heard the question--gave him a thrill of timidity. But, smiling, he said drily across the table, his voice quiet and clear: "My bravest and greatest thing was to answer an English lady's wit in English." A murmur of applause ran round, and Jessica laughed and clapped her hands. For the first time in his life Gering had a pang of jealousy and envy. Only that afternoon he had spent a happy hour with Jessica in the governor's garden, and he had then made an advance upon the simple relations of their life in Boston. She had met him without self- consciousness, persisting in her old ways, and showing only when she left him, and then for a breath, that she saw his new attitude. Now the eyes of the two men met, and Gering's dark face flushed and his brow lowered. Perhaps no one saw but Iberville, but he, seeing, felt a sudden desire to play upon the other's weakness. He was too good a sportsman to show temper in a game; he had suddenly come to the knowledge that love, too, is a game, and needs playing. By this time the dinner was drawing to its close and now a singular thing happened. As Jessica, with demure amusement, listened to the talk that followed Iberville's sally, she chanced to lift her eyes to a window. She started, changed colour, and gave a little cry. The governor's hand covered hers at once as he followed her look. It was a summer's night and the curtained windows were partly open. Iberville noted that Jessica's face wore the self-same shadow as in the afternoon when she had seen the stranger with Radisson. "What was it, my dear?" said the governor. She did not answer, but pressed his hand nervously. "A spy, I believe," said Iberville, in a low voice. "Yes, yes," said Jessica in a half whisper; "a man looked in at the window; a face that I have seen--but I can't remember when." The governor went to the window and drew the curtains. There was nothing to see. He ordered Morris, who stood behind his chair, to have the ground searched and to bring in any straggler. Already both the officers were on their way to the door, and at this point it opened and let in a soldier. He said that as he and his comrade were returning from their duty with Radisson they saw a man lurking in the grounds and seized him. He had made no resistance, and was now under guard in the ante-room. The governor apologised to his guests, but the dinner could not be ended formally now, so the ladies rose and retired. Jessica, making a mighty effort to recover herself, succeeded so well that ere she went she was able to reproach herself for her alarm; the more so because the governor's sister showed her such consideration as would be given a frightened child--and she had begun to feel something more. The ladies gone, the governor drew his guests about him and ordered in the prisoner. Morris spoke up, saying that the man had begged an interview with the governor that afternoon, but, being told that his excellency was engaged, had said another hour would do. This man was the prisoner. He came in under guard, but he bore himself quietly enough and made a low bow to the governor. He was not an ill-favoured fellow. His eye was steely cold, but his face was hearty and round, and remarkably free from viciousness. He had a cheerful air and an alert freedom of manner, which suggested good-fellowship and honest enterprise. Where his left hand had been was an iron hook, but not obtrusively in view, nor did it give any marked grimness to his appearance. Indeed, the effect was almost comical when he lifted it and scratched his head and then rubbed his chin with it; it made him look part bumpkin and part sailor. He bore the scrutiny of the company very well, and presently bowed again to the governor as one who waited the expression of that officer's goodwill and pleasure. "Now, fellow," said the colonel, "think yourself lucky my soldiers here did not shoot you without shrift. You chance upon good-natured times. When a spying stranger comes dangling about these windows, my men are given to adorning the nearest tree with him. Out with the truth now. Who and what are you, and why are you here?" The fellow bowed. "I am the captain of a little trading schooner, the Nell Gwynn, which anchors in the roadstead till I have laid some private business before your excellency and can get on to the Spanish Indies." "Business--private business! Then what in the name of all that's infernal," quoth Nicholls, "brought your sneaking face to yon window to fright my lady-guests?" The memory of Jessica's alarm came hotly to his mind. "By Heaven," he said, "I have a will to see you lifted, for means to better manners." The man stood very quiet, now and again, however, raising the hook to stroke his chin. He showed no fear, but Iberville, with his habit of observation, caught in his eyes, shining superficially with a sailor's open honesty, a strange ulterior look. "My business," so he answered Nicholls, "is for your excellency's ears." He bowed again. "Have done with scraping. Now, I tell you what, my gentle spy, if your business hath not concern, I'll stretch you by your fingers there to our public gallows, and my fellows shall fill you with small shot as full as a pod of peas." The governor rose and went into another room, followed by this strange visitor and the two soldiers. There he told the guard to wait at the door, which entered into the ante-room. Then he unlocked a drawer and took out of it a pair of pistols. These he laid on the table (for he knew the times), noting the while that the seaman watched him with a pensive, deprecating grin. "Well, sir," he said sharply (for he was something nettled), "out with your business, and your name in preface." "My name is Edward Bucklaw, and I have come to your excellency because I know there is no braver and more enterprising gentleman in the world." He paused. "So much for preamble; now for the discourse." "By your excellency's leave. I am a poor man. I have only my little craft and a handful of seamen picked up at odd prices. But there's gold and silver enough I know of, owned by no man, to make cargo and ballast for the Nell Gwynn, or another twice her size." "Gold and silver," said the governor, cocking his ear and eyeing his visitor up and down. Colonel Nicholls had an acquisitive instinct; he was interested. "Well, well, gold and silver," he continued, "to fill the Nell Gwynn and another! And what concern is that of mine? Let your words come plain off your tongue; I have no time for foolery." "'Tis no foolery on my tongue, sir, as you may please to see." He drew a paper from his pocket and shook it out as he came a little nearer, speaking all the while. His voice had gone low, running to a soft kind of chuckle, and his eyes were snapping with fire, which Iberville alone had seen was false. "I have come to make your excellency's fortune, if you will stand by with a good, stout ship and a handful of men to see me through." The governor shrugged his shoulders. "Babble," he said, "all babble and bubble. But go on." "Babble, your honour! Every word of it is worth a pint of guineas; and this is the pith of it. Far down West Indies way, some twenty-five, maybe, or thirty years ago, there was a plate ship wrecked upon a reef. I got it from a Spaniard, who had been sworn upon oath to keep it secret by priests who knew. The priests were killed and after a time the Spaniard died also, but not until he had given me the ways whereby I should get at what makes a man's heart rap in his weasand." "Let me see your chart," said the governor. A half-hour later he rose, went to the door, and sent a soldier for the two king's officers. As he did so, Bucklaw eyed the room doors, windows, fireplaces, with a grim, stealthy smile trailing across his face. Then suddenly the good creature was his old good self again--the comfortable shrewdness, the buoyant devil-may-care, the hook stroking the chin pensively. And the king's officers came in, and soon all four were busy with the map. CHAPTER IV THE UPLIFTING OF THE SWORDS Iberville and Gering sat on with the tobacco and the wine. The older men had joined the ladies, the governor having politely asked them to do so when they chose. The other occupant of the room was Morris, who still stood stolidly behind his master's chair. For a time he heard the talk of the two young men as in a kind of dream. Their words were not loud, their manner was amicable enough, if the sharing of a bottle were anything to the point. But they were sitting almost the full length of the table from him, and to quarrel courteously and with an air hath ever been a quality in men of gentle blood. If Morris's eyesight had been better, he would have seen that Gering handled his wine nervously, and had put down his long Dutch pipe. He would also have seen that Iberville was smoking with deliberation, and drinking with a kind of mannered coolness. Gering's face was flushed, his fine nostrils were swelling viciously, his teeth showed white against his red lips, and his eyes glinted. There was a kind of devilry at Iberville's large and sensuous mouth, but his eyes were steady and provoking, and while Gering's words went forth pantingly, Iberville's were slow and concise, and chosen with the certainty of a lapidary. It is hard to tell which had started the quarrel, but an edge was on their talk from the beginning. Gering had been moved by a boyish jealousy; Iberville, who saw the injustice of his foolish temper, had played his new-found enemy with a malicious adroitness. The aboriginal passions were strong in him. He had come of a people which had to do with essentials in the matter of emotions. To love, to hate, to fight, to explore, to hunt, to be loyal, to avenge, to bow to Mother Church, to honour the king, to beget children, to taste outlawry under a more refined name, and to die without whining: that was its range of duty, and a very sufficient range it was. The talk had been running on Bucklaw. It had then shifted to Radisson. Gering had crowded home with flagrant emphasis the fact that, while Radisson was a traitor and a scoundrel,--which Iberville himself had admitted with an ironical frankness,--he was also a Frenchman. It was at this point that Iberville remembered, also with something of irony, the words that Jessica had used that afternoon when she came out of the sunshine into the ante-room of the governor's chamber. She had waved her hand into the distance and had said: "Foolish boy!" He knew very well that that part of the game was turned against him, but with a kind of cheerful recklessness, as was ever his way with odds against him, and he guessed that the odds were with Gering in the matter of Jessica,--he bent across the table and repeated them with an exasperating turn to his imperfect accent. "Foolish boy!" he said, and awaited, not for long, the event. "A fool's lie," retorted Gering, in a low, angry voice, and spilled his wine. At that Iberville's heart thumped in his throat with anger, and the roof of his mouth became dry; never in his life had he been called a liar. The first time that insult strikes a youth of spirit he goes a little mad. But he was very quiet--an ominous sort of quietness, even in a boy. He got to his feet and leaned over the table, speaking in words that dropped on the silence like metal: "Monsieur, there is but one answer." At this point Morris, roused from his elaborate musings, caught, not very clearly, at the meaning of it all. But he had not time to see more, for just then he was called by the governor, and passed into the room where Mammon, for the moment, perched like a leering, little dwarf upon the shoulders of adventurous gentlemen grown avaricious on a sudden. "Monsieur, there is but one way. Well?" repeated Iberville. "I am ready," replied Gering, also getting to his feet. The Frenchman was at once alive to certain difficulties. He knew that an envoy should not fight, and that he could ask no one to stand his second; also that it would not be possible to arrange a formal duel between opposites so young as Gering and himself. He sketched this briefly, and the Bostonian nodded moody assent. "Come, then," said Iberville, "let us find a place. My sword is at my hand. Yours?" "Mine is not far off," answered Gering sullenly. Iberville forbore to point a moral, but walked to the mantel, above which hung two swords of finest steel, with richly-chased handles. He had noted them as soon as he had entered the room. "By the governor's leave," he said, and took them down. "Since we are to ruffle him let him furnish the spurs--eh? Shall we use these, and so be even as to weapons? But see," he added, with a burst of frankness, "I am in a--a trouble." It was not easy on the instant to find the English word. He explained the duties of his mission. It was singular to ask his enemy that he should see his papers handed to Count Frontenac if he were killed, but it was characteristic of him. "I will see the papers delivered," said Gering, with equal frankness. "That is, if by some miraculous chance I should be killed," added Iberville. "But I have other ends in view." "I have only one end in view," retorted Gering. "But wait," he said, as they neared the door leading into the main hall; "we may be seen. There is another way into the grounds through a little hall here." He turned and opened a door almost as small as a panel. "I was shown this secret door the other day, and since ours is a secret mission let us use it." "Very well. But a minute more," said Iberville. He went and unhooked a fine brass lantern, of old Dutch workmanship, swung from the ceiling by a chain. "We shall need a light," he remarked. They passed into the musty little hallway, and Gering with some difficulty drew back the bolts. The door creaked open and they stepped out into the garden, Iberville leading the way. He had not conned his surroundings that afternoon for nothing, and when they had reached a quiet place among some firs he hung the lantern to the branch of a tree, opening the little ornamental door so that the light streamed out. There was not much of it, but it would serve, and without a word, like two old warriors, they took off their coats. Meanwhile Morris had returned to the dining-room to find Jessica standing agaze there. She had just come in; for, chancing to be in her bed- chamber, which was just over the secret hallway, she had heard Gering shoot the bolts. Now, the chamber was in a corner, so that the window faced another way, but the incident seemed strange to her, and she stood for a moment listening. Then hearing the door shut, she ran down the stairs, knocked at the dining-room door and, getting no answer, entered, meeting Morris as he came from the governor's room. "Morris, Morris," she said, "where are they all?" "The governor is in his room, mistress." "Who are with him?" He told her. "Where are the others?" she urged. "Mr. Gering and Monsieur Iberville --where are they?" The man's eyes had flashed to the place where the swords were used to hang. "Lord God!" he said under his breath. Her eyes had followed his. She ran forward to the wall and threw up her hands against it. "Oh Morris," she said distractedly, "they have taken the swords!" Then she went past him swiftly through the panel and the outer door. She glanced around quickly, running, as she did so, with a kind of blind instinct towards the clump of firs. Presently she saw a little stream of light in the trees. Always a creature of abundant energy and sprightliness, she swept through the night, from the comedy behind to the tragedy in front; the grey starlight falling about her white dress and making her hair seem like a cloud behind her as she ran. Suddenly she came in on the two sworders with a scared, transfigured face. Iberville had his man at an advantage, and was making the most of it when she came in at an angle behind the other, and the sight of her stayed his arm. It was but for a breath, but it served. Gering had not seen, and his sword ran up Iberville's arm, making a little trench in the flesh. She ran in on them from the gloom, saying in a sharp, aching voice: "Stop, stop! Oh, what madness!" The points dropped and they stepped back. She stood between them, looking from one to the other. At that moment Morris burst in also. "In God's name," he said, "is this your honouring of the king's governor! Ye that have eat and drunk at his table the night! Have ye nae sense o' your manhood, young gentlemen, that for a mad gossip ower the wine ye wend into the dark to cut each other's throats? Think--think shame, baith o' ye, being as ye are of them that should know better." Gering moodily put on his coat and held his peace. Iberville tossed his sword aside, and presently wrung the blood from his white sleeve. The girl saw him, and knew that he was wounded. She snatched a scarf from her waist and ran towards him. "You are wounded," she said. "Oh, take this!" "I am so much sorry, indeed," he answered coolly, winding the scarf about his arm. "Mistress Leveret came too soon." His face wore a peculiar smile, but his eyes burned with anger; his voice was not excited. Immediately, however, as he looked at Jessica, his mood seemed to change. "Morris," he said, "I am sorry. Mademoiselle," he added, "pardon! I regret whatever gives you pain." Gering came near to her, and Iberville could see that a flush stole over Jessica's face as he took her hand and said: "I am sorry--that you should have known." "Good!" said Iberville, under his breath. "Good! he is worth fighting again." A moment afterwards Morris explained to them that if the matter could be hushed he would not impart it to the governor--at least, not until Iberville had gone. Then they all started back towards the house. It did not seem incongruous to Iberville and Gering to walk side by side; theirs was a superior kind of hate. They paused outside the door, on Morris's hint, that he might see if the coast was clear, and return the swords to their place on the wall. Jessica turned in the doorway. "I shall never forgive you," she said, and was swallowed by the darkness. "Which does she mean?" asked Iberville, with a touch of irony. The other was silent. In a moment Morris came back to tell them that they might come, for the dining-room was empty still. CHAPTER V THE FRUITS OF THE LAW Bucklaw having convinced the governor and his friends that down in the Spaniards' country there was treasure for the finding, was told that he might come again next morning. He asked if it might not be late afternoon instead, because he had cargo from the Indies for sale, and in the morning certain merchants were to visit his vessel. Truth to tell he was playing a deep game. He wanted to learn the governor's plans for the next afternoon and evening, and thought to do so by proposing this same change. He did not reckon foolishly. The governor gave him to understand that there would be feasting next day: first, because it was the birthday of the Duke of York; secondly, because it was the anniversary of the capture from the Dutch; and, last of all, because there were Indian chiefs to come from Albany to see New York and himself for the first time. The official celebration would begin in the afternoon and last till sundown, so that all the governor's time must be fully occupied. But Bucklaw said, with great candour, that unfortunately he had to sail for Boston within thirty-six hours, to keep engagements with divers assignees for whom he had special cargo. If his excellency, he said, would come out to his ship the next evening when the shows were done, he would be proud to have him see his racketing little craft; and it could then be judged if, with furbishing and armaments, she could by any means be used for the expedition. Nicholls consented, and asked the king's officers if they would accompany him. This they were exceedingly glad to do: so that the honest shipman's good nature and politeness were vastly increased, and he waved his hook in so funny and so boyish a way it set them all a-laughing. So it was arranged forthwith that he should be at a quiet point on the shore at a certain hour to row the governor and his friends to the Nell Gwynn. And, this done, he was bade to go to the dining-room and refresh himself. He obeyed with cheerfulness, and was taken in charge by Morris, who, having passed on Iberville and Gering to the drawing-room, was once more at his post, taciturn as ever. The governor and his friends had gone straight to the drawing-room, so that Morris and he were alone. Wine was set before the sailor and he took off a glass with gusto, his eye cocked humorously towards his host. "No worse fate for a sinner," quoth he; "none better for a saint." Morris's temper was not amiable. He did not like the rascal. "Ay," said he, "but many's the sinner has wished yon wish, and footed it from the stocks to the gallows." Bucklaw laughed up at him. It was not a pretty laugh, and his eyes were insolent and hard. But that, changed almost on the instant. "A good thrust, mighty Scot," he said. "Now what say you to a pasty, or a strip of beef cut where the juice runs, and maybe the half of a broiled fowl?" Morris, imperturbably deliberate, left the room to seek the kitchen. Bucklaw got instantly to his feet. His eye took in every window and door, and ran along the ceiling and the wall. There was a sudden click in the wall before him. It was the door leading to the unused hallway, which had not been properly closed and had sprung open. He caught up a candle, ran over, entered the hallway, and gave a grunt of satisfaction. He hastily and softly drew the bolts of the outer door, so that any one might come in from the garden, then stepped back into the dining-room and closed the panel tight behind him, remarking with delight that it had no spring-lock, and could be opened from the hallway. He came back quickly to the table, put down the candle, took his seat, stroked his chin with his hook, and chuckled. When Morris came back, he was holding his wine with one hand while he hummed a snatch of song and drummed lightly on the table with the hook. Immediately after came a servant with a tray, and the Scotsman was soon astonished, not only at the buxomness of his appetite, but at the deftness with which he carved and handled things with what he called his "tiger." And so he went on talking and eating, and he sat so long that Jessica, as she passed into the corridor and up the stairs, wearied by the day, heard his voice uplifted in song. It so worked upon her that she put her hands to her ears, hurried to her room, and threw herself upon the bed in a distress she could set down to no real cause. Before the governor and his guests parted for the night, Iberville, as he made his adieus to Gering, said in a low voice: "The same place and time to-morrow night, and on the same conditions?" "I shall be happy," said Gering, and they bowed with great formality. The governor had chanced to hear a word or two and, thinking it was some game of which they spoke, said: "Piquet or a game of wits, gentlemen?" "Neither, your excellency," quoth Gering--"a game called fox and goose." "Good," said Iberville, under his breath; "my Puritan is waking." The governor was in ripe humour. "But it is a game of wits, then, after all. Upon my soul, you two should fence like a pair of veterans." "Only for a pass or two," said Iberville dryly. "We cannot keep it up." All this while a boat was rowing swiftly from the shore of the island towards a craft carrying Nell Gwynn beneath the curious, antique figurehead. There were two men in her, and they were talking gloatingly and low. "See, bully, how I have the whole thing in my hands. Ha! Received by the governor and his friends! They are all mad for the doubloons, which are not for them, my Radisson, but for you and me, and for a greater than Colonel Richard Nicholls. Ho, ho! I know him--the man who shall lead the hunt and find the gold--the only man in all that cursed Boston whose heart I would not eat raw, so help me Judas! And his name--no. That is to come. I will make him great." Again he chuckled. "Over in London they shall take him to their bosoms. Over in London his blessed majesty shall dub him knight--treasure-trove is a fine reason for the touch of a royal sword--and the king shall say: 'Rise, Sir William'--No, it is not time for the name; but it is not Richard Nicholls, it is not Hogarth Leveret." He laughed like a boy. "I have you, Hogarth Leveret, in my hand, and by God I will squeeze you until there is a drop of heart's blood at every pore of your skin!" Now and again Radisson looked sideways at him, a sardonic smile at his lip. At last: "Bien," he said, "you are merry. So--I shall be merry too, for I have scores to wipe away, and they shall be wiped clean-- clean." "You are with me, then," the pirate asked; "even as to the girl?" "Even as to the girl," was the reply, with a brutal oath. "That is good, dear lad. Blood of my soul, I have waited twelve years-- twelve years." "You have not told me," rejoined the Frenchman; "speak now." "There is not much to tell, but we are to be partners once and for all. See, my beauty. He was a kite-livered captain. There was gold on board. We mutinied and put him and four others--their livers were like his own-- in a boat with provisions plenty. Then we sailed for Boston. We never thought the crew of skulkers would reach land, but by God they drifted in again the very hour we found port. We were taken and condemned. First, I was put into the stocks, hands and feet, till I was fit for the pillory; from the pillory to the wooden horse." Here he laughed, and the laugh was soft and womanlike. "Then the whipping-post, when I was made pulp from my neck to my loins. After that I was to hang. I was the only one they cooked so; the rest were to hang raw. I did not hang; I broke prison and ran. For years I was a slave among the Spaniards. Years more--in all, twelve--and then I came back with the little chart for one thing, this to do for another. Who was it gave me that rogues' march from the stocks to the gallows's foot? It was Hogarth Leveret, who deals out law in Massachusetts in the king's name, by the grace of God. It was my whim to capture him and take him on a journey--such a journey as he would go but once. Blood of my soul, the dear lad was gone. But there was his child. See this: when I stood in the pillory a maid one day brought the child to the foot of the platform, lifted it up in her arms and said: 'Your father put that villain there.' That woman was sister to one of the dogs we'd set adrift. The child stared at me hard, and I looked at her, though my eyes were a little the worse for wear, so that she cried out in great fright--the sweet innocent! and then the wench took her away. When she saw my face to-night--to-day--it sent her wild, but she did not remember." He rubbed his chin in ecstasy and drummed his knee. "Ha! I cannot have the father--so I'll have the goodly child, and great will be the ransom. Great will be the ransom, my Frenchman!" And once more he tapped Radisson with the tiger. CHAPTER VI THE KIDNAPPING The rejoicing had reached its apogee, and was on the wane. The Puritan had stretched his austereness to the point of levity; the Dutchman had comfortably sweated his obedience and content; the Cavalier had paced it with a pretty air of patronage and an eye for matron and maid; the Indian, come from his far hunting-grounds, bivouacked in the governor's presence as the pipe of peace went round. About twilight the governor and his party had gone home. Deep in ceremonial as he had been, his mind had run upon Bucklaw and the Spaniards' country. So, when the dusk was growing into night, the hour came for his visit to the Nell Gwynn. With his two soldier friends and Councillor Drayton, he started by a roundabout for the point where he looked to find Bucklaw. Bucklaw was not there: he had other fish to fry, and the ship's lights were gone. She had changed her anchorage since afternoon. "It's a bold scheme," Bucklaw was saying to his fellow-ruffian in the governor's garden, "and it may fail, yet 'twill go hard, but we'll save our skins. No pluck, no pence. Once again, here's the trick of it. I'll go in by the side door I unlocked last night, hide in the hallway, then enter the house quietly or boldly, as the case may be. Plan one: a message from his excellency to Miss Leveret, that he wishes her to join him on the Nell Gwynn. Once outside it's all right. She cannot escape us. We have our cloaks and we have the Spanish drug. Plan two: make her ours in the house. Out by this hall door-through the grounds--to the beach--the boat in waiting--and so, up anchor and away! Both risky, as you see, but the bolder the game the sweeter the spoil. You're sure her chamber is above the hallway, and that there's a staircase to it from the main hall?" "I am very well sure. I know the house up-stairs and down." Bucklaw looked to his arms. He was about starting on his quest when they heard footsteps, and two figures appeared. It was Iberville and Gering. They paused a moment not far from where the rogues were hid. "I think you will agree," said Iberville, "that we must fight." "I have no other mind." "You will also be glad if we are not come upon, as last night; though, confess, the lady gave you a lease of life?" "If she comes to-night, I hope it will be when I have done with you," answered Gering. Iberville laughed a little, and the laugh had fire in it--hatred, and the joy of battle. "Shall it be here or yonder in the pines, where we were in train last night?" "Yonder." "So." Then Iberville hummed ironically a song: "Oh, bury me where I have fought and fallen, Your scarf across my shoulder, lady mine." They passed on. "The game is in our hands," said Bucklaw. "I understand this thing. That's a pair of gallant young sprigs, but the choice is your Frenchman, Radisson." "I'll pink his breast-bone full of holes if the other doesn't-- curse him." A sweet laugh trickled from Bucklaw's lips like oil. "That's neither here nor there. I'd like to have him down Acapulco way, dear lad. . . And now, here's my plan all changed. I'll have my young lady out to stop the duel, and, God's love, she'll come alone. Once here she's ours, and they may cut each other's throats as they will, sweetheart." He crossed the yard, tried the door,--unlocked, as he had left it,-- pushed it open, and went in, groping his way to the door of the dining- room. He listened, and there was no sound. Then he heard some one go in. He listened again. Whoever it was had sat down. Very carefully he felt for the spring and opened the door. Jessica was seated at the table with paper and an ink-horn before her. She was writing. Presently she stopped--the pen was bad. She got up and went away to her room. Instantly Bucklaw laid his plan. He entered as she disappeared, went to the table and looked at the paper on which she had been writing. It bore but the words, "Dear Friend." He caught up the quill and wrote hurriedly beneath them, this: "If you'd see two gentlemen fighting, go now where you stopped them last night. The wrong one may be killed unless." With a quick flash of malice he signed, in half a dozen lightning-like strokes, with a sketch of his hook. Then he turned, hurried into the little hall, and so outside, and posted himself beside a lilac bush, drawing down a bunch of the flowers to drink in their perfume. Jessica, returning, went straight to the table. Before she sat down she looked up to the mantel, but the swords were there. She sighed, and a tear glistened on her eyelashes. She brushed it away with her dainty fingertips and, as she sat down, saw the paper. She turned pale, caught it up, read it with a little cry, and let it drop with a shudder of fear and dismay. She looked round the room. Everything was as she had left it. She was dazed. She stared at the paper again, then ran and opened the panel through which Bucklaw had passed, and found the outer door ajar. With a soft, gasping moan she passed into the garden, went swiftly by the lilac bush and on towards the trees. Bucklaw let her do so; it was his design that she should be some way from the house. But, hidden by the bushes, he was running almost parallel with her. On the other side of her was Radisson, also running. She presently heard them and swerved, poor child, into the gin of the fowler! But as the cloak was thrown over her head she gave a cry. The firs, where Iberville and Gering had just plucked out their swords, were not far, and both men heard. Gering, who best knew the voice, said hurriedly: "It is Jessica!" Without a word Iberville leaped to the open, and came into it ahead of Gering. They saw the kidnappers and ran. Iberville was the first to find what Bucklaw was carrying. "Mother of God," he called, "they're taking her off!" "Help! help!" cried Gering, and they pushed on. The two ruffians were running hard, but it had been an unequal race at the best, and Jessica lay unconscious in Bucklaw's arms, a dead weight. Presently they plunged into the bushes and disappeared. Iberville and Gering passed through the bushes also, but could neither see nor hear the quarry. Gering was wild with excitement and lost his presence of mind. Meanwhile Iberville went beating for a clue. He guessed that he was dealing with good woodsmen, and that the kidnappers knew some secret way out of the garden. It was so. The Dutch governor had begun to build an old-fashioned wall with a narrow gateway, so fitted as to seem part of it. Through this the two had vanished. Iberville was almost in despair. "Go back," he suddenly said to Gering, "and rouse the house and the town. I will get on the trail again if I can." Gering started away. In this strange excitement their own foolish quarrel was forgotten, and the stranger took on himself to command; he was, at least, not inexperienced in adventure and the wiles of desperate men. All at once he came upon the wall. He ran along it, and presently his fingers felt the passage. An instant and he was outside and making for the shore, in the sure knowledge that the ruffians would take to the water. He thought of Bucklaw, and by some impossible instinct divined the presence of his hand. Suddenly he saw something flash on the ground. He stooped and picked it up. It was a shoe with a silver buckle. He thrilled to the finger-tips as he thrust it in his bosom and pushed on. He was on the trail now. In a few moments he came to the waterside. He looked to where he had seen the Nell Gwynn in the morning, and there was never a light in view. Then a twig snapped, and Bucklaw, the girl in his arms, came bundling out of the trees upon the bank. He had sent Radisson on ahead to warn his boat's crew. He saw Iberville as soon as Iberville saw him. He knew that the town would be roused by this time and the governor on fire for revenge. But there was nothing for it but fight. He did not fear the result. Time was life to him, and he swung the girl half behind him with his hook-hand as Iberville came on, and, whipping out his hanger, caught the Frenchman's thrust. Instantly he saw that his opposite was a swordsman, so he let the girl slip to the ground, and suddenly closing with Iberville, lunged desperately and expertly at him, straight for a mortal part. But the Frenchman was too agile and adroit for him: he took the thrust in the flesh of his ribs and riposted like lightning. The pirate staggered back, but pulled himself together instantly, lunged, and took his man in the flesh of his upper sword arm. Iberville was bleeding from the wound in his side and slightly stiff from the slash of the night before, but every fibre of his hurt body was on the defensive. Bucklaw knew it, and seemed to debate if the game were worth the candle. The town was afoot, and he had earned a halter for his pains. He was by no means certain that he could kill this champion and carry off the girl. Moreover, he did not want Iberville's life, for such devils have their likes and dislikes, and he had fancied the chivalrous youngster from the first. But he doubted only for an instant. What was such a lad's life compared with his revenge? It was madness, as he knew, for a shot would guide the pursuit: none the less, did he draw a pistol from his belt and fire. The bullet grazed the lad's temple, carrying away a bit of his hair. Iberville staggered forwards, so weak was he from loss of blood, and, with a deep instinct of protection and preservation, fell at Jessica's feet. There was a sound of footsteps and crackling of brush. Bucklaw stooped to pick up his prey, but a man burst on him from the trees. He saw that the game was up and he half raised his knife, but that was only the mad rage of the instant. His revenge did not comprise so unheard-of a crime. He thought he had killed Iberville: that was enough. He sprang away towards the spot where his comrades awaited him. Escape was his sole ambition now. The new-comer ran forwards, and saw the boy and girl lying as they were dead. A swift glance at Iberville, and he slung his musket shoulderwards and fired at the retreating figure. It was a chance shot, for the light was bad and Bucklaw was already indistinct. Now the man dropped on his knee and felt Iberville's heart. "Alive!" he said. "Alive, thank the mother of God! Mon brave! It is ever the same --the great father, the great son." As he withdrew his hand it brushed against the slipper. He took it out, glanced at it, and turned to the cloaked figure. He undid the cloak and saw Jessica's pale face. He shook his head. "Always the same," he said, "always the same: for a king, for a friend, for a woman! That is the Le Moyne." But he was busy as he spoke. With the native chivalry of the woodsman, he cared first for the girl. Between her lips he thrust his drinking- horn and held her head against his shoulder. "My little ma'm'selle-ma'm'selle!" he said. "Wake up. It is nothing-- you are safe. Ah, the sweet lady! Come, let me see the colour of your eyes. Wake up--it is nothing." Presently the girl did open her eyes. He put the drinking-horn again to her lips. She shuddered and took a sip, and then, invigorated, suddenly drew away from him. "There, there," he said; "it is all right. Now for my poor Iberville." He took Iberville's head to his knee and thrust the drinking-horn between his teeth, as he had done with Jessica, calling him in much the same fashion. Iberville came to with a start. For a moment he stared blindly at his rescuer, then a glad intelligence flashed into his eyes. "Perrot! dear Nick Perrot!" he cried. "Oh, good--good," he added softly. Then with sudden anxiety: "Where is she? Where is she?" "I am safe, monsieur," Jessica said gently; "but you--you are wounded." She came over and dropped on her knees beside him. "A little," he said; "only a little. You cared for her first?" he asked of Perrot. Perrot chuckled. "These Le Moynes!" he said: under his breath. Then aloud: "The lady first, monsieur." "So," answered Iberville. "And Bucklaw--the devil, Bucklaw?" "If you mean the rogue who gave you these," said Perrot, touching the wounds, which he had already begun to bind, "I think he got away--the light was bad." Jessica would have torn her frock for a bandage, but Perrot said in his broken English: "No, pardon. Not so. The cloak la-bas." She ran and brought it to him. As she did so Perrot glanced down at her feet, and then, with a touch of humour, said: "Pardon, but you have lost your slipper, ma'm'selle?" He foresaw the little comedy, which he could enjoy even in such painful circumstances. "It must have dropped off," said Jessica, blushing. "But it does not matter." Iberville blushed too, but a smile also flitted across his lips. "If you will but put your hand into my waistcoat here," he said to her, "you will find it." Timidly she did as she was bid, drew forth the slipper, and put it on. "You see," said Iberville, still faint from loss of blood, "a Frenchman can fight and hunt too--hunt the slipper." Suddenly a look of pain crossed her face. "Mr. Gering, you--you did not kill him?" she asked. "Oh no, mademoiselle," said Iberville; "you stopped the game again." Presently he told her what had happened, and how Gering was rousing the town. Then he insisted upon getting on his feet, that they might make their way to the governor's house. Stanchly he struggled on, his weight upon Perrot, till presently he leaned a hand also on Jessica's shoulder- she had insisted. On the way, Perrot told how it was he chanced to be there. A band of coureurs du bois, bound for Quebec, had come upon old Le Moyne and himself in the woods. Le Moyne had gone on with these men, while Perrot pushed on to New York, arriving at the very moment of the kidnapping. He heard the cry and made towards it. He had met Gering, and the rest they knew. Certain things did not happen. The governor of New York did not at once engage in an expedition to the Spaniards' country. A brave pursuit was made, but Bucklaw went uncaptured. Iberville and Gering did not make a third attempt to fight; Perrot prevented that. Iberville left, however, with a knowledge of three things: that he was the first Frenchman from Quebec who had been, or was likely to be, popular in New York; that Jessica Leveret had shown a tender gratitude towards him--naive, candid-- which set him dreaming gaily of the future; that Gering and he, in spite of outward courtesy, were still enemies; for Gering could not forget that, in the rescue of Jessica, Iberville had done the work while he merely played the crier. "We shall meet again, monsieur," said Iberville at last; "at least, I hope so." "I shall be glad," answered Gering mechanically. "But 'tis like I shall come to you before you come to me," added Iberville, with meaning. Jessica was standing not far away, and Gering did not instantly reply. In the pause, Iberville said: "Au revoir! A la bonne heure!" and walked away. Presently he turned with a little ironical laugh and waved his hand at Gering; and laugh and gesture rankled in Gering for many a day. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Love, too, is a game, and needs playing To die without whining THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD By Gilbert Parker EPOCH THE SECOND VII. FRIENDS IN COUNCIL VIII. AS SEEN THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY IX. TO THE PORCH OF THE WORLD X. QUI VIVE! XI. WITH THE STRANGE PEOPLE XII. OUT OF THE NET CHAPTER VII FRIENDS IN COUNCIL Montreal and Quebec, dear to the fortunes of such men as Iberville, were as cheerful in the still iron winter as any city under any more cordial sky then or now: men loved, hated, made and broke bargains, lied to women, kept a foolish honour with each other, and did deeds of valour for a song, as ever they did from the beginning of the world. Through the stern soul of Nature ran the temperament of men who had hearts of summer; and if, on a certain notable day in Iberville's life, one could have looked through the window of a low stone house in Notre Dame Street, Montreal, one could have seen a priest joyously playing a violin; though even in Europe, Maggini and Stradivarius were but little known, and the instrument itself was often called an invention of the devil. The room was not ornamented, save by a crucifix, a pleasant pencil- drawing of Bishop Laval, a gun, a pair of snow-shoes, a sword, and a little shrine in one corner, wherein were relics of a saint. Of necessaries even there were few. They were unremarkable, save in the case of two tall silver candlesticks, which, with their candles at an angle from the musician, gave his face strange lights and shadows. The priest was powerfully made; so powerful indeed, so tall was he, that when, in one of the changes of the music, a kind of exaltation filled him, and he came to his feet, his head almost touched the ceiling. His shoulders were broad and strong, and though his limbs were hid by his cassock, his arms showed almost huge, and the violin lay tucked under his chin like a mere toy. In the eye was a penetrating but abstracted look, and the countenance had the gravity of a priest lighted by a cheerful soul within. It had been said of Dollier de Casson that once, attacked by two renegade Frenchmen, he had broken the leg of one and the back of the other, and had then picked them up and carried them for miles to shelter and nursing. And it was also declared by the romantic that the man with the broken back recovered, while he with the shattered leg, recovering also, found that his foot, pointing backwards, "made a fool of his nose." The Abbe de Casson's life had one affection, which had taken the place of others, now almost lost in the distance of youth, absence, and indifference. For France lay far from Montreal, and the priest-musician was infinitely farther off: the miles which the Church measures between the priest and his lay boyhood are not easily reckoned. But such as Dollier de Casson must have a field for affection to enrich. You cannot drive the sap of the tree in upon itself. It must come out or the tree must die-burst with the very misery of its richness. This night he was crowding into the music four years of events: of memory, hope, pride, patience, and affection. He was waiting for some one whom he had not seen for these four years. Time passed. More and more did the broad sonorous notes fill the room. At length they ceased, and with a sigh he pressed the violin once, twice, thrice to his lips. "My good Stradivarius," he said, "my pearless one!" Once again he kissed it, and then, drawing his hand across his eyes, he slowly wrapped the violin in a velvet cloth, put it away in an iron box, and locked it up. But presently he changed his mind, took it out again, and put it on the table, shaking his head musingly. "He will wish to see it, maybe to hear it," he said half aloud. Then he turned and went into another room. Here there was a prie-dieu in a corner, and above it a crucifix. He knelt and was soon absorbed. For a time there was silence. At last there was a crunching of moccasined feet upon the crisp snow, then a slight tap at the outer door, and immediately it was opened. A stalwart young man stepped inside. He looked round, pleased, astonished, and glanced at the violin, then meaningly towards the nearly closed door of the other room. After which he pulled off his gloves, threw his cap down, and with a significant toss of the head, picked up the violin. He was a strong, handsome man of about twenty-two, with a face at once open and inscrutable: the mouth with a trick of smiling, the eyes fearless, convincing, but having at the same time a look behind this--an alert, profound speculation, which gave his face singular force. He was not so tall as the priest in the next room, but still he was very tall, and every movement had a lithe, supple strength. His body was so firm that, as he bent or turned, it seemed as of soft flexible metal. Despite his fine manliness, he looked very boylike as he picked up the violin, and with a silent eager laugh put it under his chin, nodding gaily, as he did so, towards the other room. He bent his cheek to the instrument--almost as brown as the wood itself--and made a pass or two in the air with the bow, as if to recall a former touch and tune. A satisfied look shot up in his face, and then with an almost impossible softness he drew the bow across the strings, getting a distant delicate note, which seemed to float and tenderly multiply upon itself--a variation, indeed, of the tune which De Casson had played. A rapt look came into his eyes. And all that look behind the general look of his face--the look which has to do with a man's past or future--deepened and spread, till you saw, for once in a way, a strong soldier turned artist, yet only what was masculine and strong. The music deepened also, and, as the priest opened the door, swept against him like a wind so warm that a moisture came to his eyes. "Iberville!" he said, in a glad voice. "Pierre!" The violin was down on the instant. "My dear abbe!" he cried. And then the two embraced. "How do you like my entrance?" said the young man. "But I had to provide my own music!" He laughed, and ran his hands affectionately down the arms of the priest. "I had been playing the same old chansonette--" "With your original variations?" "With my poor variations, just before you came in; and that done--" "Yes, yes, abbe, I know the rest: prayers for the safe return of the sailor, who for four years or nearly has been learning war in King Louis's ships, and forgetting the good old way of fighting by land, at which he once served his prentice time--with your blessing, my old tutor, my good fighting abbe! Do you remember when we stopped those Dutchmen on the Richelieu, and you--" The priest interrupted with a laugh. "But, my dear Iberville--" "It was 'Pierre' a minute gone; 'twill be 'Monsieur Pierre le Moyne of Iberville' next," the other said in mock reproach, as he went to the fire. "No, no; I merely--" "I understand. Pardon the wild youth who plagues his old friend and teacher, as he did long ago--so much has happened since." His face became grave and a look of trouble came. Presently the priest said: "I never had a pupil whose teasing was so pleasant, poor humourist that I am. But now, Pierre, tell me all, while I lay out what the pantry holds." The gay look came back into Iberville's face. "Ahem," he said--"which is the way to begin a wonderful story: Once upon a time a young man, longing to fight for his king by land alone, and with special fighting of his own to do hard by"--(here De Casson looked at him keenly and a singular light came into his eyes)--"was wheedled away upon the king's ships to France, and so 'Left the song of the spinning-wheel, The hawk and the lady fair, And sailed away--' But the song is old and so is the story, abbe; so here's the brief note of it. After years of play and work,--play in France and stout work in the Spaniards' country,--he was shipped away to 'Those battle heights, Quebec heights, our own heights, The citadel our golden lily bears, And Frontenac--' But I babble again. And at Quebec he finds the old song changed. The heights and the lilies are there, but Frontenac, the great, brave Frontenac, is gone: confusion lives where only conquest and honest quarrelling were--" "Frontenac will return--there is no other way!" interposed De Casson. "Perhaps. And the young man looked round and lo! old faces and places had changed. Children had grown into women, with children at their breasts; young wives had become matronly; and the middle-aged were slaving servants and apothecaries to make them young again. And the young man turned from the world he used to know, and said: 'There are but three things in the world worth doing--loving, roaming, and fighting.' Therefore, after one day, he turned from the poor little Court-game at Quebec, travelled to Montreal, spent a few hours with his father and his brothers, Bienville, Longueil, Maricourt, and Sainte-Helene, and then, having sent word to his dearest friend, came to see him, and found him --his voice got softer--the same as of old: ready with music and wine and aves for the prodigal." He paused. The priest had placed meat and wine on the table, and now he came and put his hand on Iberville's shoulder. "Pierre," he said, "I welcome you as one brother might another, the elder foolishly fond." Then he added: "I was glad you remembered our music." "My dear De Casson, as if I could forget! I have yet the Maggini you gave me. It was of the things for remembering. If we can't be loyal to our first loves, why to anything?" "Even so, Pierre; but few at your age arrive at that. Most people learn it when they have bartered away every dream. It is enough to have a few honest emotions--very few--and stand by them till all be done." "Even hating?" Iberville's eyes were eager. "There is such a thing as a noble hate." "How every inch of you is man!" answered the other, clasping the priest's arms. Then he added: "Abbe, you know what I long to hear. You have been to New York twice; you were there within these three months--" "And was asked to leave within these three months--banished, as it were." "I know. You said in your letter that you had news. You were kind to go--" "Perrot went too." "My faithful Perrot! I was about to ask of him. I had a birch-bark letter from him, and he said he would come--Ah, here he is!" He listened. There was a man's voice singing near by. They could even hear the words: "'O the young seigneur! O the young seigneur! A hundred bucks in a day he slew; And the lady gave him a ribbon to wear, And a shred of gold from her golden hair O the way of a maid was the way he knew; O the young seigneur! O the young seigneur!'" "Shall we speak freely before him?" said the priest. "As freely as you will. Perrot is true. He was with me, too, at the beginning." At that moment there came a knock, and in an instant the coureur du bois had caught the hands of the young man, and was laughing up in his face. "By the good Sainte Anne, but you make Nick Perrot a dwarf, dear monsieur!" "Well, well, little man, I'll wager neither the great abbe here nor myself could bring you lower than you stand, for all that. Comrade, 'tis kind of you to come so prompt." "What is there so good as the face of an old friend!" said Perrot, with a little laugh. "You will drink with a new, and eat with a coming friend, and quarrel with either; but 'tis only the old friend that knows the old trail, and there's nothing to a man like the way he has come in the world." "The trail of the good comrade," said the priest softly. "Ah!" responded Perrot, "I remember, abbe, when we were at the Portneuf you made some verses of that--eh! eh! but they were good!" "No fitter time," said Iberville; "come, abbe, the verses!" "No, no; another day," answered the priest. It was an interesting scene. Perrot, short, broad, swarthy, dressed in rude buckskin gaudily ornamented, bandoleer and belt garnished with silver,--a recent gift of some grateful merchant, standing between the powerful black-robed priest and this gallant sailor-soldier, richly dressed in fine skins and furs, with long waving hair, more like a Viking than a man of fashion, and carrying a courtly and yet sportive look, as though he could laugh at the miseries of the sinful world. Three strange comrades were these, who knew each other so far as one man can know another, yet each knowing from a different stand-point. Perrot knew certain traits of Iberville of which De Casson was ignorant, and the abbe knew many depths which Perrot never even vaguely plumbed. And yet all could meet and be free in speech, as though each read the other thoroughly. "Let us begin," said Iberville. "I want news of New York." "Let us eat as we talk," urged the abbe. They all sat and were soon eating and drinking with great relish. Presently the abbe began: "Of my first journey you know by the letter I sent you: how I found that Mademoiselle Leveret was gone to England with her father. That was a year after you left, now about three years gone. Monsieur Gering entered the navy of the English king, and went to England also." Iberville nodded. "Yes, yes, in the English navy I know very well of that." The abbe looked up surprised. "From my letter?" "I saw him once in the Spaniards' country," said Iberville, "when we swore to love each other less and less." "What was the trouble?" asked the priest. "Pirates' booty, which he, with a large force, seized as a few of my men were carrying it to the coast. With his own hand he cut down my servant, who had been with me since from the first. Afterwards in a parley I saw him, and we exchanged--compliments. The sordid gentleman thought I was fretting about the booty. Good God, what are some thousand pistoles to the blood of one honest friend!" "And in your mind another leaven worked," ventured the priest. "Another leaven, as you say," responded Iberville. "So, for your story, abbe." "Of the first journey there is nothing more to tell, save that the English governor said you were as brave a gentleman as ever played ambassador--which was, you remember, much in Count Frontenac's vein." Iberville nodded and smiled. "Frontenac railed at my impertinence also." "But gave you a sword when you told him the news of Radisson," interjected Perrot. "And by and by I've things to say of him." The abbe continued: "For my second visit, but a few months ago. We priests have gone much among the Iroquois, even in the English country, and, as I promised you, I went to New York. There I was summoned to the governor. He commanded me to go back to Quebec. I was about to ask him of Mademoiselle when there came a tap at the door. The governor looked at me a little sharply. 'You are,' said he, 'a friend of Monsieur Iberville. You shall know one who keeps him in remembrance.' Then he let the lady enter. She had heard that I was there, having seen Perrot first." Here Perrot, with a chuckle, broke in: "I chanced that way, and I had a wish to see what was for seeing; for here was our good abbe alone among the wolves, and there were Radisson and the immortal Bucklaw, of whom there was news." De Casson still continued: "When I was presented she took my hand and said: 'Monsieur l'Abbe, I am glad to meet a friend--an old friend--of Monsieur Iberville. I hear that he has been in France and elsewhere.'" Here the abbe paused, smiling as if in retrospect, and kept looking into the fire and turning about in his hand his cassock-cord. Iberville had sat very still, his face ruled to quietness; only his eyes showing the great interest he felt. He waited, and presently said: "Yes, and then?" The abbe withdrew his eyes from the fire and turned them upon Iberville. "And then," he said, "the governor left the room. When he had gone she came to me, and, laying her hand upon my arm, said: 'Monsieur, I know you are to be trusted. You are the friend of a brave man.'" The abbe paused, and smiled over at Iberville. "You see," he said, "her trust was in your friend, not in my office. Well, presently she added: 'I know that Monsieur Iberville and Mr. Gering, for a foolish quarrel of years ago, still are cherished foes. I wish your help to make them both happier; for no man can be happy and hate.' And I gave my word to do so." Here Perrot chuckled to himself and interjected softly: "Mon Dieu! she could make a man say anything at all. I would have sworn to her that while I lived I never should fight. Eh, that's so!" "Allons!" said Iberville impatiently, yet grasping the arm of the woodsman kindly. The abbe once more went on: "When she had ended questioning I said to her: 'And what message shall I give from you?' 'Tell him,' she answered, 'by the right of lifelong debt I ask for peace.' 'Is that all?' said I. 'Tell him,' she added, 'I hope we may meet again.' 'For whose sake,' said I, 'do you ask for peace?' 'I am a woman,' she answered, 'I am selfish--for my own sake.'" Again the priest paused, and again Iberville urged him. "I asked if she had no token. There was a flame in her eye, and she begged me to excuse her. When she came back she handed me a little packet. 'Give it to Monsieur Iberville,' she said, 'for it is his. He lent it to me years ago. No doubt he has forgotten.'" At that the priest drew from his cassock a tiny packet, and Iberville, taking, opened it. It held a silver buckle tied by a velvet ribbon. A flush crept slowly up Iberville's face from his chin to his hair, then he sighed, and presently, out of all reason, laughed. "Indeed, yes; it is mine," he said. "I very well remember when I found it." Here Perrot spoke. "I very well remember, monsieur, when she took it from your doublet; but it was on a slipper then." Iberville did not answer, but held the buckle, rubbing it on his sleeve as though to brighten it. "So much for the lady," he said at last; "what more?" "I learned," answered the abbe, "that Monsieur Gering was in Boston, and that he was to go to Fort Albany at Hudson's Bay, where, on our territory, the English have set forts." Here Perrot spoke. "Do you know, monsieur, who are the poachers? No? Eh? No? Well, it is that Radisson." Iberville turned sharply upon Perrot. "Are you sure of that?" he said. "Are you sure, Nick?" "As sure as I've a head. And I will tell you more: Radisson was with Bucklaw at the kidnapping. I had the pleasure to kill a fellow of Bucklaw, and he told me that before he died. He also told how Bucklaw went with Radisson to the Spaniards' country treasure-hunting. Ah! there are many fools in the world. They did not get the treasure. They quarreled, and Radisson went to the far north, Bucklaw to the far south. The treasure is where it was. Eh bien, such is the way of asses." Iberville was about to speak. "But wait," said Perrot, with a slow, tantalising smile; "it is not wise to hurry. I have a mind to know; so while I am at New York I go to Boston. It makes a man's mind great to travel. I have been east to Boston; I have been west beyond the Ottawa and the Michilimackinac, out to the Mississippi. Yes. Well, what did I find in Boston? Peste! I found that they were all like men in purgatory--sober and grave. Truly. And so dull! Never a saint-day, never a feast, never a grand council when the wine, the rum, flow so free, and you shall eat till you choke. Nothing. Everything is stupid; they do not smile. And so the Indians make war! Well, I have found this. There is a great man from the Kennebec called William Phips. He has traded in the Indies. Once while he was there he heard of that treasure. Ha! ha! There have been so many fools on that trail. The governor of New York was a fool when Bucklaw played his game; he would have been a greater if he had gone with Bucklaw." Here Iberville would have spoken, but Perrot waved his hand. "De grace, a minute only. Monsieur Gering, the brave English lieutenant, is at Hudson's Bay, and next summer he will go with the great William Phips-- Tonnerre, what a name--William Phips! Like a pot of herring! He will go with him after the same old treasure. Boston is a big place, but I hear these things." Usually a man of few words, Perrot had bursts of eloquence, and this was one of them. But having made his speech, he settled back to his tobacco and into the orator's earned repose. Iberville looked up from the fire and said: "Perrot, you saw her in New York. What speech was there between you?" Perrot's eyes twinkled. "There was not much said. "I put myself in her way. When she saw me her cheek came like a peach- blossom. 'A very good morning, ma'm'selle,' said I, in English. She smiled and said the same. 'And your master, where is he?' she asked with a fine smile. 'My friend Monsieur Iberville?' I said; 'ah! he will be in Quebec soon.' Then I told her of the abbe, and she took from a chain a little medallion and gave it me in memory of the time we saved. her. And before I could say Thank you, she had gone--Well, that is all --except this." He drew from his breast a chain of silver, from which hung the gold medallion, and shook his head at it with good-humour. But presently a hard look came on his face, and he was changed from the cheerful woodsman into the chief of bushrangers. Iberville read the look, and presently said: "Perrot, men have fought for less than gold from a woman's chain and a buckle from her shoe." "I have fought from Trois Pistoles to Michilimackinac for the toss of a louis-d'or." "As you say. Well, what think you--" He paused, rose, walked up and down the room, caught his moustache between his teeth once or twice, and seemed buried in thought. Once or twice he was about to speak, but changed his mind. He was calculating many things: planning, counting chances, marshalling his resources. Presently he glanced round the room. His eyes fell on a map. That was it. It was a mere outline, but enough. Putting his finger on it, he sent it up, up, up, till it settled on the shores of Hudson's Bay. Again he ran the finger from the St. Lawrence up the coast and through Hudson's Straits, but shook his head in negation. Then he stood, looked at the map steadily, and presently, still absorbed, turned to the table. He saw the violin, picked it up, and handed it to De Casson: "Something with a smack of war," he said. "And a woman for me," added Perrot. The abbe shook his head musingly at Perrot, took the violin, and gathered it to his chin. At first he played as if in wait of something that eluded him. But all at once he floated into a powerful melody, as a stream creeps softly through a weir, and after many wanderings broadens suddenly into a great stream. He had found his theme. Its effect was striking. Through Iberville's mind there ran a hundred incidents of his life, one chasing upon the other without sequence--phantasmagoria out of the scene--house of memory: The light upon the arms of De Tracy's soldiers when they marched up Mountain Street many years before--The frozen figure of a man standing upright in the plains--A procession of canoes winding down past Two Mountains, the wild chant of the Indians joining with the romantic songs of the voyageurs--A girl flashing upon the drawn swords of two lads--King Louis giving his hand to one of these lads to kiss--A lady of the Court for whom he might easily have torn his soul to rags, but for a fair-faced English girl, ever like a delicate medallion in his eye--A fight with the English in the Spaniards' country--His father blessing him as he went forth to France--A dark figure taking a hundred shapes, and yet always meaning the same as when he--Iberville--said over the governor's table in New York, "Foolish boy!"--A vast stretch of lonely forest, in the white coverlet of winter, through which sounded now and then the boom-boom of a bursting tree--A few score men upon a desolate northern track, silent, desperate, courageous; a forlorn hope on the edge of the Arctic circle, with the joy of conquest in their bones, and at their thighs the swords of men. These are a few of the pictures, but the last of them had not to do with the past: a dream grown into a fact, shaped by the music, become at once an emotion and a purpose. Iberville had now driven home the first tent-peg of a wonderful adventure. Under the spell of that music his body seemed to grow larger. He fingered his sword, and presently caught Perrot by the shoulder and said "We will do it, Perrot." Perrot got to his feet. He understood. He nodded and seized Iberville's hand. "Bravo! There was nothing else to do," he replied. De Casson lowered his violin. "What do you intend?" he asked gravely. Iberville took his great hand and pressed it. "To do what you will commend, abbe: at Hudson's Bay to win back forts the English have taken, and get those they have built." "You have another purpose," added De Casson softly. "Abbe, that is between me and my conscience. I go for my king and country against our foes." "Who will go with you? You will lead?" "Not I to lead--that involves me." Iberville's face darkened. "I wish more freedom, but still to lead in fact." "But who will lead? And who will go?" "De Troyes, perhaps, to lead. To go, my brothers Sainte-Helene and Maricourt, Perrot and a stout company of his men; and then I fear not treble as many English." The priest did not seem satisfied. Presently Iberville, with a winning smile, ran an arm over his shoulder and added: "We cannot go without you, Dollier." The priest's face cleared, and a moment afterwards the three comrades shook hands together. CHAPTER VIII AS SEEN THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY When King Louis and King James called for peace, they could not know that it was as little possible to their two colonies as between rival buccaneers. New France was full of bold spirits who loved conquest for conquest's sake. Besides, in this case there was a force at work, generally unknown, but as powerful as the convincing influence of an army. Behind the worst and the best acts of Charles II was a woman. Behind the glories and follies of Louis XIV was also a woman. Behind some of the most striking incidents in the history of New France, New England, and New York, was a woman. We saw her when she was but a child--the centre of singular events. Years had passed. Not one of those events had gone for nothing; each was bearing fruit after its kind. She is sitting alone in a room of a large unhandsome house, facing on Boston harbour. It is evening. The room itself is of dark wood, and evening has thrown it into gloom. Yet somehow the girl's face has a light of its own. She is turned fair towards the window, and is looking out to sea. A mist is rising from the water, and the shore is growing grey and heavy as the light in the west recedes and night creeps in from the ocean. She watches the waves and the mist till all is mist without; a scene which she had watched, how often she could not count. The night closes in entirely upon her, but she does not move. At last the door of the room opens and some one enters and closes it again. "My daughter!" says an anxious voice. "Are you here, Jessica?" "I am here, father," is the reply. "Shall we have lights?" "As you will." Even as they speak a servant enters, and lighted candles are put upon the table. They are alone again. Both are pale. The girl stands very still, and so quiet is her face, one could never guess that she is passing, through the tragic moment of her life. "What is your answer, Jessica?" he asks. "I will marry him when he comes back." "Thank God!" is the old man's acknowledgment. "You have saved our fortunes." The girl sighs, and then, with a little touch of that demure irony which we had seen in her years before, says: "I trust we have not lost our honour." "Why, you love him, do you not? There is no one you care for more than George Gering?" "I suppose not," is her reply, but the tone is enigmatical. While this scene is on, another appears in Cheapside, London. A man of bold and vigorous bearing comes from the office of a well-known solicitor. That very morning he had had an interview with the King, and had been reminded with more exactness than kindness that he had cost King Charles a ship, scores of men, and thousands of pounds, in a fruitless search for buried treasure in Hispaniola. When he had urged his case upon the basis of fresh information, he was drily told that the security was too scant, even for a king. He had then pleaded his case to the Duke of Albemarle and other distinguished gentlemen. They were seemingly convinced, but withheld their answer till the following morning. But William Phips, stubborn adventurer, destined to receive all sorts of honours in his time, has no intention of quitting London till he has his way; and this is his thought as he steps into Cheapside, having already made preparations upon the chance of success. He has gone so far as to purchase a ship, called the Bridgwater Merchant from an alderman in London, though he has not a hundred guineas at his disposal. As he stands debating, a hand touches his arm and a voice says in his ear: "You were within a mile of it with the Atgier Rose, two years ago." The great adventurer turns. "The devil I was! And who are you?" Satanic humour plays in the stranger's eyes as he answers: "I am Edward Bucklaw, pirate and keeper of the treasure-house in the La Planta River." "Blood of Judas," Phips says, "how dare you speak to me? I'll have you in yon prison for an unhung rascal!" "Ah! you are a great man," is the unmoved reply. "I knew you'd feel that way. But if you'll listen for five minutes, down here at the Bull- and-Daisy, there shall be peace between us." An hour later, Phips, following Bucklaw's instructions, is tracing on a map the true location of the lost galleon's treasure. "Then," says Bucklaw, "we are comrades?" "We are adventurers." Another scene. In a northern inland sea two men are standing on the deck of a ship: the one stalwart, clear-eyed, with a touch of strong reserve in face and manner; the other of middle height, with sinister look. The former is looking out silently upon the great locked hummocks of ice surrounding the vessel. It is the early morning. The sun is shining with that hard brightness only seen in the Arctic world--keen as silver, cold as steel. It plays upon the hummocks, and they send out shafts of light at fantastic angles, and a thin blue line runs between the almost unbearable general radiance and the sea of ice stretching indefinitely away. But to the west is a shore, and on it stands a fort and a few detached houses. Upon the walls of the fort are some guns, and the British flag is flying above. Beyond these again are the plains of the north--the home of the elk, musk-ox, silver fox, the white bear and the lonely races of the Pole. Here and there, in the south-west, an island of pines breaks the monotony, but to the north there is only the white silence, the terrible and yet beautiful trail of the Arctic. The smaller man stands swinging his arms for warmth; the smack of the leather in the clear air like the report of a gun. Presently, stopping his exercise, he says: "Well, monsieur, what do you say?" Slowly the young man withdraws his eyes from the scene and turns. "Radisson," he says, "this is much the same story as Bucklaw told Governor Nicholls. How come you to know of it?" "You remember, I was proclaimed four years ago? Well, afterwards I fell in with Bucklaw. I sailed with him to the Spaniards' country, and we might have got the treasure, but we quarreled; there was a fight, and I--well, we end. Bucklaw was captured by the French and was carried to France. He was a fool to look for the treasure with a poor ship and a worse crew. He was for getting William Phips, a man of Boston, to work with him, for Phips had got something of the secret from an old sailor, but when he would have got him, Phips was on his way with a ship of King Charles. I will tell you something more.' Mademoiselle Leveret's--" "What do you know of Mademoiselle Leveret?" "A little. Mademoiselle's father lost much money in Phips's expedition." "How know you that?" "I have ears. You have promised to go with Phips. Isn't that so?" "What then?" "I will go with you." "Booty?" "No, revenge." "On whom?" "The man you hate--Iberville." Gering's face darkens. "We are not likely to meet." "Pardon! very likely. Six months ago he was coming back from France. He will find you. I know the race." A sneer is on Gering's face. "Freebooters, outlaws like yourself!" "Pardon! gentlemen, monsieur; noble outlaws. What is it that once or twice they have quarreled with the governor, and because they would not yield have been proclaimed? Nothing. Proclaimed yesterday, today at Court. No, no. I hate Iberville, but he is a great man." In the veins of the renegade is still latent the pride of race. He is a villain but he knows the height from which he fell. "He will find you, monsieur," he repeats. "When Le Moyne is the hunter he never will kennel till the end. Besides, there is the lady!" "Silence!" Radisson knows that he has said too much. His manner changes. "You will let me go with you?" The Englishman remembers that this scoundrel was with Bucklaw, although he does not know that Radisson was one of the abductors. "Never!" he says, and turns upon his heel. A moment after and the two have disappeared from the lonely pageant of ice and sun. Man has disappeared, but his works--houses and ships and walls and snow-topped cannon--lie there in the hard grasp of the North, while the White Weaver, at the summit of the world, is shuttling these lives into the woof of battle, murder, and sudden death. On the shore of the La Planta River a man lies looking into the sunset. So sweet, so beautiful is the landscape, the deep foliage, the scent of flowers, the flutter of bright-winged birds, the fern-grown walls of a ruined town, the wallowing eloquence of the river, the sonorous din of the locust, that none could think this a couch of death. A Spanish priest is making ready for that last long voyage, when the soul of man sloughs the dross of earth. Beside him kneels another priest--a Frenchman of the same order. The dying man feebly takes from his breast a packet and hands it to his friend. "It is as I have said," he whispers. "Others may guess, but I know. I know--and another. The rest are all dead. There were six of us, and all were killed save myself. We were poisoned by a Spaniard. He thought he had killed all, but I lived. He also was killed. His murderer's name was Bucklaw--an English pirate. He has the secret. Once he came with a ship to find, but there was trouble and he did not go on. An Englishman also came with the king's ship, but he did not find. But I know that the man Bucklaw will come again. It should not be. Listen: A year ago, and something more, I was travelling to the coast. From there I was to sail for Spain. I had lost the chart of the river then. I was taken ill and I should have died, but a young French officer stayed his men beside me and cared for me, and had me carried to the coast, where I recovered. I did not go to Spain, and I found the chart of the river again." There is a pause, in which the deep breathing of the dying man mingles with the low wash of the river, and presently he speaks again. "I vowed then that he should know. As God is our Father, swear that you will give this packet to himself only." The priest, in reply, lifts the crucifix from the dying man's breast and puts his lips to it. The world seems not to know, so cheerful is it all, that, with a sob, that sob of farewell which the soul gives the body,-- the spirit of a man is passing the mile-posts called Life, Time, and Eternity. Yet another glance into passing incidents before we follow the straight trail of our story. In the city of Montreal fourscore men are kneeling in a little church, as the mass is slowly chanted at the altar. All of them are armed. By the flare of the torches and the candles--for it is not daybreak yet--you can see the flash of a scabbard, the glint of a knife, and the sheen of a bandoleer. Presently, from among them, one man rises, goes to the steps of the sanctuary and kneels. He is the leader of the expedition, the Chevalier de Troyes, the chosen of the governor. A moment, and three other men rise and come and kneel beside him. These are three brothers, and one we know--gallant, imperious, cordial, having the superior ease of the courtier. The four receive a blessing from a massive, handsome priest, whose face, as it bends over Iberville, suddenly flushes with feeling. Presently the others rise, but Iberville remains an instant longer, as if loth to leave. The priest whispers to him: "Be strong, be just, be merciful." The young man lifts his eyes to the priest's: "I will be just, abbe!" Then the priest makes the sacred gesture over him. CHAPTER IX TO THE PORCH OF THE WORLD The English colonies never had a race of woodsmen like the coureurs du bois of New France. These were a strange mixture: French peasants, half- breeds, Canadian-born Frenchmen, gentlemen of birth with lives and fortunes gone askew, and many of the native Canadian noblesse, who, like the nobles of France, forbidden to become merchants, became adventurers with the coureurs du bois, who were ever with them in spirit more than with the merchant. The peasant prefers the gentleman to the bourgeois as his companion. Many a coureur du bois divided his tale of furs with a distressed noble or seigneur, who dare not work in the fields. The veteran Charles le Moyne, with his sons, each of whom played a daring and important part in the history of New France,--Iberville greatest,-- was one of the few merchants in whom was combined the trader and the noble. But he was a trader by profession before he became a seigneur. In his veins was a strain of noble blood; but leaving France and settling in Canada, he avoided the little Court at Quebec, went to Montreal, and there began to lay the foundation of his fame and fortune, and to send forth men who were as the sons of Jacob. In his heart he was always in sympathy with the woodsmen, and when they were proclaimed as perilous to the peace and prosperity of the king's empire, he stood stoutly by them. Adventurers, they traded as they listed; and when the Intendant Duchesnau could not bend them to his greedy will, they were to be caught and hanged wherever found. King Louis hardly guessed that to carry out that order would be to reduce greatly the list of his Canadian noblesse. It struck a blow at the men who, in one of the letters which the grim Frontenac sent to Versailles not long before his death, were rightly called "The King's Traders"--more truly such than any others in New France. Whether or not the old seigneur knew it at the time, three of his own sons were among the coureurs du bois--chieftains by courtesy--when they were proclaimed. And it was like Iberville, that, then only a lad, he came in from the woods, went to his father, and astonished him by asking for his blessing. Then he started for Quebec, and arriving there with Perrot and Du Lhut, went to the citadel at night and asked to be admitted to Count Frontenac. Perhaps the governor-grand half-barbarian as he was at heart-guessed the nature of the visit and, before he admitted Iberville, dismissed those who were with him. There is in an old letter still preserved by an ancient family of France, an account of this interview, told by a cynical young nobleman. Iberville alone was admitted. His excellency greeted his young visitor courteously, yet with hauteur. "You bring strange comrades to visit your governor, Monsieur Iberville," he said. "Comrades in peace, your excellency, comrades in war." "What war?" "The king makes war against the coureurs du bois. There is a price on the heads of Perrot and Du Lhut. We are all in the same boat." "You speak in riddles, sir." "I speak of riddles. Perrot and Du Lhut are good friends of the king. They have helped your excellency with the Indians a hundred times. Their men have been a little roystering, but that's no sin. I am one with them, and I am as good a subject as the king has." "Why have you come here?" "To give myself up. If you shoot Perrot or Du Lhut you will have to shoot me; and, if you carry on the matter, your excellency will not have enough gentlemen to play Tartufe." This last remark referred to a quarrel which Frontenac had had with the bishop, who inveighed against the governor's intention of producing Tartufe at the chateau. Iberville's daring was quite as remarkable as the position in which he had placed himself. With a lesser man than Frontenac it might have ended badly. But himself, courtier as he was, had ever used heroical methods, and appreciated the reckless courage of youth. With grim humour he put all three under arrest, made them sup with him, and sent them away secretly before morning--free. Before Iberville left, the governor had word with him alone. "Monsieur," he said, "you have a keen tongue, but our king needs keen swords, and since you have the advantage of me in this, I shall take care you pay the bill. We have had enough of outlawry. You shall fight by rule and measure soon." "In your excellency's bodyguard, I hope," was the instant reply. "In the king's navy," answered Frontenac, with a smile, for he was pleased with the frank flattery. A career different from that of George Gering, who, brought up with Puritans, had early learned to take life seriously, had little of Iberville's gay spirit, but was just such a determined, self-conscious Englishman as any one could trust and admire, and none but an Englishman love. And Jessica Leveret? Wherever she had been during the past four years, she had stood between these two men, regardful, wondering, waiting; and at last, as we know, casting the die against the enemy of her country. But was it cast after all? Immediately after she made a certain solemn promise, recorded in the last chapter, she went once again to New York to visit Governor Nicholls. She had been there some months before, but it was only for a few weeks, and then she had met Dollier de Casson and Perrot. That her mind was influenced by memory of Iberville we may guess, but in what fashion who can say? It is not in mortal man to resolve the fancies of a woman, or interpret the shadowy inclinations, the timid revulsions, which move them--they cannot tell why, any more than we. They would indeed be thankful to be solved unto themselves. The great moment for a man with a woman is when, by some clear guess or some special providence, he shows her in a flash her own mind. Her respect, her serious wonder, are all then making for his glory. Wise and happy if by a further touch of genius he seizes the situation: henceforth he is her master. George Gering and Jessica had been children together, and he understood her, perhaps, as, did no one else, save her father; though he never made good use of his knowledge, nor did he touch that side of her which was purely feminine--her sweet inconsistency; therefore, he was not her master. But he had appealed to her, for he had courage, strong, ambition, thorough kindness, and fine character, only marred by a want of temperament. She had avoided as long as she could the question which, on his return from service in the navy, he asked her, almost without warning; and with a touch of her old demureness and gaiety she had put him off, bidding him go win his laurels as commander. He was then commissioned for Hudson's Bay, and expected, on his return, to proceed to the Spaniards' country with William Phips, if that brave gentleman succeeded with the king or his nobles. He had gone north with his ship, and, as we have seen, when Iberville started on that almost impossible journey, was preparing to return to Boston. As he waited Iberville came on. CHAPTER X QUI VIVE! From Land's End to John O' Groat's is a long tramp, but that from Montreal to Hudson's Bay is far longer, and yet many have made it; more, however, in the days of which we are writing than now, and with greater hardships also then. But weighed against the greater hardships there was a bolder temper and a more romantic spirit. How strange and severe a journey it was, only those can tell who have travelled those wastes, even in these later days, when paths have been beaten down from Mount Royal to the lodges of the North. When they started, the ice had not yet all left the Ottawa River, and they wound their way through crowding floes, or portaged here and there for miles, the eager sun of spring above with scarcely a cloud to trail behind him. At last the river cleared, and for leagues they travelled to the north- west, and came at last to the Lake of the Winds. They travelled across one corner of it, to a point where they would strike an unknown path to Hudson's Bay. Iberville had never before seen this lake, and, with all his knowledge of great proportions, he was not prepared for its splendid vastness. They came upon it in the evening, and camped beside it. They watched the sun spread out his banners, presently veil his head in them, and sink below the world. And between them and that sunset was a vast rock stretching out from a ponderous shore--a colossal stone lion, resting Sphinxlike, keeping its faith with the ages. Alone, the warder of the West, stormy, menacing, even the vernal sun could give it little cheerfulness. But to Iberville and his followers it brought no gloom at night, nor yet in the morning when all was changed, and a soft silver mist hung over the "great water," like dissolving dew, through which the sunlight came with a strange, solemn delicacy. Upon the shore were bustle, cheerfulness, and song, until every canoe was launched, and then the band of warriors got in, and presently were away in the haze. The long bark canoes, with lofty prows, stained with powerful dyes, slid along this path swiftly, the paddles noiselessly cleaving the water with the precision of a pendulum. One followed the other with a space between, so that Iberville, in the first, looking back, could see a diminishing procession, the last seeming large and weird--almost a shadow--as it were a part of the weird atmosphere. On either side was that soft plumbless diffusion, and ahead the secret of untravelled wilds and the fortunes of war. As if by common instinct, all gossip ceased soon after they left the shore, and, cheerful as was the French Canadian, he was--and is-- superstitious. He saw sermons in stones, books in the running brooks, and the supernatural in everything. Simple, hardy, occasionally bloody, he was ever on the watch for signs and wonders, and a phase of nature influenced him after the manner of a being with a temperament. Often, as some of the woodsmen and river-men had seen this strange effect, they now made the sacred gesture as they ran on. The pure moisture lay like a fine exudation on their brown skins, glistened on their black hair, and hung from their beards, giving them a mysterious look. The colours of their canoes and clothes were softened by the dim air and long use, and there seemed to accompany each boat and each person an atmosphere within this other haze, a spiritual kind of exhalation; so that one might have thought them, with the crucifixes on their breasts, and that unworldly, distinguished look which comes to those who live much with nature, as sons of men going upon such mission as did they who went into the far land with Arthur. But the silence could not be maintained for long. The first flush of the impression gone, these half-barbarians, with the simple hearts of children, must rise from the almost melancholy, somewhat religious mood, into which they had been cast. As Iberville, with Sainte-Helene and Perrot, sat watching the canoes that followed, with voyageurs erect in bow and stern, a voice in the next canoe, with a half-chanting modulation, began a song of the wild-life. Voice after voice slowly took it up, until it ran along the whole procession. A verse was sung, then a chorus altogether, then a refrain of one verse which was sung by each boat in succession to the last. As the refrain of this was sung by the last boat it seemed to come out of the great haze behind. Verses of the old song are still preserved: "Qui vive! Who is it cries in the dawn Cries when the stars go down? Who is it comes through the mist The mist that is fine like lawn, The mist like an angel's gown? Who is it comes in the dawn? Qui vive! Qui vive! in the dawn. "Qui rive! Who is it passeth us by, Still in the dawn and the mist? Tall seigneur of the dawn: A two-edged sword at his thigh, A shield of gold at his wrist: Who is it hurrieth by? Qui vive! Qui vive! in the dawn." Under the influence of this beautiful mystery of the dawn, the slow thrilling song, and the strange, happy loneliness--as though they were in the wash between two worlds, Iberville got the great inspiration of his life. He would be a discoverer, the faithful captain of his king, a trader in provinces. . . . And in that he kept his word--years after, but he kept it. There came with this, what always comes to a man of great ideas: the woman who should share his prowess. Such a man, if forced to choose between the woman and the idea, will ever decide for the woman after he has married her, sacrificing what--however much he hides it--lies behind all. But he alone knows what he has sacrificed. For it is in the order of things that the great man shall be first the maker of kingdoms and homes, and then the husband of his wife and a begetter of children. Iberville knew that this woman was not more to him than the feeling just come to him, but he knew also that while the one remained the other would also. He stood up and folded his arms, looking into the silence and mist. His hand mechanically dropped to his sword, and he glanced up proudly to the silver flag with its golden lilies floating softly on the slight breeze they made as they passed. "The sword!" he said under his breath. "The world and a woman by the sword; there is no other way." He had the spirit of his time. The sword was its faith, its magic. If two men loved a woman, the natural way to make happiness for all was to let the sword do its eager office. For they had one of the least- believed and most unpopular of truths, that a woman's love is more a matter of mastery and possession than instinct, two men being of comparatively equal merit and sincerity. His figure seemed to grow larger in the mist, and the grey haze gave his hair a frosty coating, so that age and youth seemed strangely mingled in him. He stood motionless for a long time as the song went on: "Qui vive! Who saileth into the morn, Out of the wind of the dawn? 'Follow, oh, follow me on!' Calleth a distant horn. He is here--he is there--he is gone, Tall seigneur of the dawn! Qui vive! Qui vive! in the dawn." Some one touched Iberville's arm. It was Dollier de Casson. Iberville turned to him, but they did not speak at first--the priest knew his friend well. "We shall succeed, abbe," Iberville said. "May our quarrel be a just one, Pierre," was the grave reply. "The forts are our king's; the man is with my conscience, my dear friend." "But if you make sorrow for the woman?" "You brought me a gift from her!" His finger touched his doublet. "She is English, my Pierre." "She is what God made her." "She may be sworn to the man." Iberville started, then shook his head incredulously. "He is not worthy of her." "Are you?" "I know her value better and prize it more." "You have not seen her for four years." "I had not seen you for four years--and yet!" "You saw her then only for a few days--and she was so young!" "What are days or years? Things lie deep in us till some great moment, and then they spring into life and are ours for ever. When I kissed King Louis' hand I knew that I loved my king; when De Montespan's. I hated, and shall hate always. When I first saw this English girl I waked from youth, I was born again into the world. I had no doubts, I have none now." "And the man?" "One knows one's enemy even as the other. There is no way but this, Dollier. He is the enemy of my king, and he is greatly in my debt. Remember the Spaniards' country!" He laid a hand upon his sword. The face of the priest was calm and grave, but in his eyes was a deep fire. At heart he was a soldier, a loyalist, a gentleman of France. Perhaps there came to him then the dreams of his youth, before a thing happened which made him at last a servant of the Church after he had been a soldier of the king. Presently the song of the voyageurs grew less, the refrain softened and passed down the long line, and, as it were, from out of far mists came the muffled challenge: "Qui vive! Qui vive! in the dawn." Then a silence fell once more. But presently from out of the mists there came, as it were, the echo of their challenge: "Qui vive! Qui vive! in the dawn." The paddles stilled in the water and a thrill ran through the line of voyageurs--even Iberville and his friends were touched by it. Then there suddenly emerged from the haze on their left, ahead of them, a long canoe with tall figures in bow and stern, using paddles. They wore long cloaks, and feathers waved from their heads. In the centre of the canoe was what seemed a body under a pall, at its head and feet small censers. The smell of the wood came to them, and a little trail of sweet smoke was left behind as the canoe swiftly passed into the mist on the other side and was gone. It had been seen vaguely. No one spoke, no one challenged; it had come and gone like a dream. What it was, no one, not even Iberville, could guess, though he thought it a pilgrimage of burial, such as was sometimes made by distinguished members of Indian tribes. Or it may have been-- which is likely--a dead priest being carried south by Indian friends. The impression left upon the party was, however, characteristic. There was none but, with the smell of the censers in his nostrils, made the sacred gesture; and had the Jesuit Silvy or the Abbe de Casson been so disposed, the event might have been made into the supernatural. After a time the mist cleared away, and nothing could be seen on the path they had travelled but the plain of clear water and the distant shore they had left. Ahead of them was another shore, and they reached this at last. Where the mysterious canoe had vanished, none could tell. Days upon days, they travelled with incredible labour, now portaging over a stubborn country, now, placing their lives in hazard as they shot down untravelled rapids. One day on the Black Wing River a canoe was torn open and its three occupants were thrown into the rapids. Two of them were expert swimmers and were able to catch the stern of another canoe as it ran by, and reached safe water, bruised but alive. The third was a boy, Maurice Joval, the youngest of the party, whom Iberville had been at first loth to bring with him. But he had remembered his own ambitious youth, and had consented, persuading De Troyes that the lad was worth encouragement. His canoe was not far behind when the other ran on the rocks. He saw the lad struggle bravely and strike out, but a cross current caught him and carried him towards the steep shore. There he was thrown against a rock. His strength seemed to fail, but he grasped the rock. It was scraggy, and though it tore and bruised him he clung to it. Iberville threw off his doublet, and prepared to spring as his boat came down. But another had made ready. It was the abbe, with his cassock gone, and his huge form showing finely. He laid his hand upon Iberville's arm. "Stay here," he said, "I go; I am the stronger." But Iberville, as cries of warning and appeal rang out around him, the drowning lad had not cried out at all,--sprang into the water. Not alone. The abbe looked around him, made the sacred gesture, and then sprang also into an eddy a distance below, and at an angle made his way up towards the two. Priest though he was, he was also an expert river- man, and his vast strength served him royally. He saw Iberville tossed here and there, but with impossible strength and good fortune reach the lad. The two grasped each other and then struck out for the high shore. De Casson seemed to know what would happen. He altered his course, and, making for the shore also at a point below, reached it. He saw with a kind of despair that it was steep and had no trees; yet his keen eyes also saw, not far below, the dwarfed bole of a tree jutting out from the rock. There lay the chance. Below this was a great turmoil of rapids. A prayer mechanically passed the priest's lips, though his thoughts were those of a warrior then. He almost enjoyed the danger for himself: his fear was for Iberville and for the motherless boy. He had guessed and hoped aright. Iberville, supporting the now senseless boy, swung down the mad torrent, his eyes blinded with blood so that he could not see. But he heard De Casson's voice, and with a splendid effort threw himself and the lad towards it. The priest also fought upwards to them and caught them as they came, having reserved his great strength until now. Throwing his left arm over the lad he relieved Iberville of his burden, but called to him to hold on. The blood was flowing into Iberville's eyes and he could do nothing else. But now came the fight between the priest and the mad waters. Once--twice--thrice they went beneath, but neither Iberville nor himself let go, and to the apprehensive cries of their friends there succeeded calls of delight, for De Casson had seized the jutting bole and held on. It did not give, and they were safe for a moment. A quarter of a mile below there was smoother water, and soon the canoes were ashore, and Perrot, Sainte-Helene, and others were running to the rescue. They arrived just in time. Ropes were let down, and the lad was drawn up insensible. Then came the priest, for Iberville, battered as he was, would not stir until the abbe had gone up--a stout strain on the rope. Fortunately there were clefts and fissures in the wall, which could be used in the ascent. De Casson had consented to go first, chiefly because he wished to gratify the still youthful pride of Iberville, who thought the soldier should see the priest into safety. Iberville himself came up slowly, for he was stiff and his limbs were shaking. His clothes were in tatters, and his fine face was like that of a warrior defaced by swords. But he refused to be carried, and his first care was for the boy, who had received no mortal injury. "You have saved the boy, Pierre," said the priest, in a low voice. "Self-abasing always, dear abbe; you saved us both. By heaven, but the king lost a great man in you!" "Hush! Mere brawn, Pierre. . . . By the blessing of God," he added quickly. CHAPTER XI WITH THE STRANGE PEOPLE After this came varying days of hardship by land and water, and then another danger. One day they were, crossing a great northern lake. The land was moist with the sweat of quick-springing verdure; flocks of wild fowl rose at all points, and herds of caribou came drinking and feeding at the shore. The cries of herons, loons, and river-hens rose with strange distinctness, so delicate was the atmosphere, and the blue of the sky was exquisite. As they paddled slowly along this lake, keeping time to their songs with the paddles, there suddenly grew out of the distance a great flotilla of canoes with tall prows, and behind them a range of islands which they had not before seen. The canoes were filled with men--Indians, it would seem, by the tall feathers lifting from their heads. A moment before there had been nothing. The sudden appearance was even more startling than the strange canoe that crossed their track on Lake of the Winds. Iberville knew at once that it was a mirage, and the mystery of it did not last long even among the superstitious. But they knew now that somewhere in the north--presumably not far away--was a large band of Indians, possibly hostile; their own numbers were about fourscore. There was the chance that the Indians were following or intercepting them. Yet, since they had left the Ottawa River, they had seen no human being, save in that strange canoe on Lake of the Winds. To the east were the dreary wastes of Labrador, to the west were the desolate plains and hills, stretching to the valley of the Saskatchewan. Practically in command, Iberville advised watchfulness and preparation for attack. Presently the mirage faded away as suddenly as it came. For days again they marched and voyaged on, seeing still no human being. At last they came to a lake, which they crossed in their canoes; then they entered the mouth of a small river, travelling northward. The river narrowed at a short distance from its mouth, and at a certain point the stream turned sharply. As the first canoe rounded the point it came full upon half a hundred canoes blocking the river, filled by Indians with bended bows. They were a northern tribe that had never before seen the white man. Tall and stern, they were stout enemies, but they had no firearms, and, as could be seen, they were astonished at the look of the little band, which, at the command of De Troyes, who with Iberville was in the first boat, came steadily on. Suddenly brought face to face there was a pause, in which Iberville, who knew several Indian languages, called to them to make way. He was not understood, but he had pointed to the white standard of France flaring with the golden lilies; and perhaps the drawn swords and the martial manner of the little band--who had donned gay trappings, it being Iberville's birthday--conveyed in some way his meaning. The bows of the strangers stayed drawn, awaiting word from the leader. Near the chief stood a man seven feet in height, a kind of bodyguard, who presently said something in his ear. He frowned, then seemed to debate, and his face cleared at last. Raising a spear, he saluted the French leaders, and then pointed towards the shore, where there was a space clear of trees, a kind of plateau. De Troyes and Iberville, thinking that a truce and parley were meant, returned the salute with their swords, and presently the canoes of both parties made over to the shore. It was a striking sight: the grave, watchful faces of the Indians, who showed up grandly in the sun, their skin like fine rippling bronze as they moved; their tall feathers tossing, rude bracelets on their wrists, while some wore necklets of brass or copper. The chief was a stalwart savage with a cruel eye, but the most striking figure of all--either French or Indian --was that of the chief's body guard. He was, indeed, the Goliath of the tribe, who, after the manner of other champions, was ever ready for challenge in the name of his master. He was massively built, with long sinewy arms; but Iberville noticed that he was not powerful at the waist in proportion to the rest of his body, and that his neck was thinner than it should be. But these were items, for in all he was a fine piece of humanity, and Iberville said as much to De Casson, involuntarily stretching up as he did so. Tall and athletic himself, he never saw a man of calibre but he felt a wish to measure strength with him, not from vanity, but through the mere instincts of the warrior. Priest as he was, it is possible that De Casson shared the young man's feeling, though chastening years had overcome impulses of youth. It was impossible for the French leaders to guess how this strange parley would end, and when many more Indians suddenly showed on the banks they saw that they might have tough work. "What do you think of it, Iberville?" said De Troyes. "A juggler's puzzle--let us ask Perrot," was the reply. Perrot confessed that he knew nothing of this tribe of Indians. The French leaders, who had never heard of Indians who would fight in the open, were, in spite of great opposing numbers, in warrior mood. Presently all the canoes were got to land, and without any hostile sign the Indians filed out on the centre of the plateau, where were pitched a number of tents. The tents were in a circle, surrounding a clear space of ground, and the chief halted in the middle of this. He and his men had scarcely noticed the Frenchmen as they followed, seemingly trusting the honour of the invaders that they would not attack from behind. It was these Indians who had been seen in the mirage. They had followed the Frenchmen, had gone parallel with them for scores of miles, and had at last at this strategic point waylaid them. The conference was short. The French ranged in column on one side, the Indians on the other, and then the chief stepped forward. De Troyes did the same and not far behind him were Iberville, the other officers, and Perrot. Behind the chief was the champion, then, a little distance away, on either side, the Indian councillors. The chief waved his hand proudly towards the armed warriors behind him, as if showing their strength, speaking meanwhile, and then with effective gesture, remarking the handful of French. Presently, pointing to his fighting man, he seemed to ask that the matter be settled by single combat. The French leaders understood: Goliath would have his David. The champion suddenly began a sing-song challenge, during which Iberville and his comrades conferred. The champion's eyes ran up and down the line and alighted on the large form of De Casson, who calmly watched him. Iberville saw this look and could not help but laugh, though the matter was serious. He pictured the good abbe fighting for the band. At this the champion began to beat his breast defiantly. Iberville threw off his coat, and motioned his friends back. Immediately there was protest. They had not known quite what to do, but Perrot had offered to fight the champion, and they, supposing it was to be a fight with weapons, had hastily agreed. It was clear, however, that it was to be a wrestle to the death. Iberville quelled all protests, and they stepped back. There was a final call from the champion, and then he became silent. From the Indians rose one long cry of satisfaction, and then they too stilled, the chief fell back, and the two men stood alone in the centre. Iberville, whose face had become grave, went to De Casson and whispered to him. The abbe gave him his blessing, and then he turned and went back. He waved his hand to his brothers and his friends,--a gay Cavalier-like motion,--then took off all save his small clothes and stood out. Never was seen, perhaps, a stranger sight: a gentleman of France ranged against a savage wrestler, without weapons, stripped to the waist, to fight like a gladiator. But this was a new land, and Iberville could ever do what another of his name or rank could not. There was only one other man in Canada who could do the same--old Count Frontenac himself, who, dressed in all his Court finery, had danced a war-dance in the torch-light with Iroquois chiefs. Stripped, Iberville's splendid proportions could be seen at advantage. He was not massively made, but from crown to heel there was perfect muscular proportion. His admirable training and his splendidly nourished body--cared for, as in those days only was the body cared for--promised much, though against so huge a champion. Then, too, Iberville in his boyhood had wrestled with Indians and had learned their tricks. Added to this were methods learned abroad, which might prove useful now. Yet any one looking at the two would have begged the younger man to withdraw. Never was battle shorter. Iberville, too proud to give his enemy one moment of athletic trifling, ran in on him. For a time they were locked, straining terribly, and then the neck of the champion went with a snap and he lay dead in the middle of the green. The Indians and the French were both so dumfounded that for a moment no one stirred, and Iberville went back and quietly put on his clothes. But presently cries of rage and mourning came from the Indians, and weapons threatened. But the chief waved aggression down, and came forward to the dead man. He looked for a moment, and then as Iberville and De Troyes came near, he gazed at Iberville in wonder, and all at once reached out both hands to him. Iberville took them and shook them heartily. There was something uncanny in the sudden death of the champion, and Iberville's achievement had conquered these savages, who, after all, loved such deeds, though at the hand of an enemy. And now the whole scene was changed. The French courteously but firmly demanded homage, and got it, as the superior race can get it from the inferior, when events are, even distantly, in their favour; and here were martial display, a band of fearless men, weapons which the savages had never seen before, trumpets, and, most of all, a chief who was his own champion, and who had snapped the neck of their Goliath as one would break a tree- branch. From the moment Iberville and the chief shook hands they were friends, and after two days, when they parted company, there was no Indian among all this strange tribe but would have followed him anywhere. As it was, he and De Troyes preferred to make the expedition with his handful of men, and so parted with the Indians, after having made gifts to the chief and his people. The most important of these presents was a musket, handled by the chief at first as though it were some deadly engine. The tribe had been greatly astonished at hearing a volley fired by the whole band at once, and at seeing caribou shot before their eyes; but when the chief himself, after divers attempts, shot a caribou, they stood in proper awe. With mutual friendliness they parted. Two weeks later, after great trials, the band emerged on the shores of Hudson's Bay, almost without baggage, and starving. CHAPTER XII OUT OF THE NET The last two hundred miles of their journey had been made under trying conditions. Accidents had befallen the canoes which carried the food, and the country through which they passed was almost devoid of game. During the last three days they had little or nothing to eat. When, therefore, at night they came suddenly upon the shores of Hudson's Bay, and Fort Hayes lay silent before them, they were ready for desperate enterprises. The high stockade walls with stout bastions and small cannon looked formidable, yet there was no man of them but was better pleased that the odds were against him than with him. Though it was late spring, the night was cold, and all were wet, hungry, and chilled. Iberville's first glance at the bay and the fort brought disappointment. No vessel lay in the harbour, therefore it was probable Gering was not there. But there were other forts, and this one must be taken meanwhile. The plans were quickly made. Iberville advised a double attack: an improvised battering-ram at the great gate, and a party to climb the stockade wall at another quarter. This climbing-party he would himself lead, accompanied by his brother Sainte-Helene, Perrot, and a handful of agile woodsmen. He had his choice, and his men were soon gathered round him. A tree was cut down in the woods some distance from the shore, shortened, and brought down, ready for its duty of battering-ram. The night was beautiful. There was a bright moon, and the sky by some strange trick of atmosphere had taken on a green hue, against which everything stood out with singular distinctness. The air was placid, and through the stillness came the low humming wash of the water to the hard shore. The fort stood on an upland, looking in its solitariness like some lonely prison-house where men went, more to have done with the world than for punishment. Iberville was in that mood wherein men do stubborn deeds--when justice is more with them than mercy, and selfishness than either. "If you meet the man, Pierre?" De Casson said before the party started. Iberville laughed softly. "If we meet, may my mind be his, abbe! But he is not here--there is no vessel, you see! Still, there are more forts on the bay." The band knelt down before they started. It was strange to hear in that lonely waste, a handful of men, bent on a deadly task, singing a low chant of penitence--a Kyrie eleison. Afterwards came the benediction upon this buccaneering expedition, behind which was one man's personal enmity, a merchant company's cupidity, and a great nation's lust of conquest! Iberville stole across the shore and up the hill with his handful of men. There was no sound from the fort; all were asleep. No musket-shot welcomed them, no cannon roared on the night; there was no sentry. What should people on the outposts of the world need of sentries, so long as there were walls to keep out wild animals! In a few moments Iberville and his companions were over the wall. Already the attack on the gate had begun, a passage was quickly made, and by the time Iberville had forced open the doors of the blockhouse, his followers making a wild hubbub as of a thousand men, De Troyes and his party were at his heels. Before the weak garrison could make resistance they were in the hands of their enemies, and soon were gathered in the yard--men, women, and children. Gering was not there. Iberville was told that he was at one of the other forts along the shore: either Fort Rupert on the east, a hundred and twenty miles away, or at Fort Albany, ninety miles to the north and west. Iberville determined to go to Fort Rupert, and with a few followers, embarking in canoes, assembled before it two nights after. A vessel was in the harbour, and his delight was keen. He divided his men, sending Perrot to take the fort, while himself with a small party moved to the attack of the vessel. Gering had delayed a day too long. He had intended leaving the day before, but the arrival of the governor of the company had induced him to remain another day; entertaining his guest at supper, and toasting him in some excellent wine got in Hispaniola. So palatable was it that all drank deeply, and other liquors found their way to the fo'castle. Thus in the dead of night there was no open eye on the Valiant. The Frenchmen pushed out gently from the shore, paddled noiselessly over to the ship's side, and clambered up. Iberville was the first to step on deck, and he was followed by Perrot and De Casson, who had, against Iberville's will, insisted on coming. Five others came after. Already they could hear the other party at the gate of the fort, and the cries of the besiegers, now in the fortyard, came clearly to them. The watch of the Valiant, waking suddenly, sprang up and ran forward, making no outcry, dazed but bent on fighting. He came, however, on the point of Perrot's sabre and was cut down. Meanwhile Iberville, hot for mischief, stamped upon the deck. Immediately a number of armed men came bundling up the hatch way. Among these appeared Gering and the governor, who thrust themselves forward with drawn swords and pistols. The first two men who appeared above the hatchway were promptly despatched, and Iberville's sword was falling upon Gering, whom he did not recognise, when De Casson's hand diverted the blow. It caught the shoulder of a man at Gering's side. "'Tis Monsieur Gering!" said the priest. "Stop! stop!" cried a voice behind these. "I am the governor. We surrender." There was nothing else to do: in spite of Gering's show of defiance, though death was above him if he resisted. He was but half-way up. "It is no use, Mr. Gering," urged the governor; "they have us like sheep in a pen." "Very well," said Gering suddenly, handing up his, sword and stepping up himself. "To whom do I surrender?" "To an old acquaintance, monsieur," said Iberville, coming near, "who will cherish you for the king of France." "Damnation!" cried Gering, and his eyes hungered for his sword again. "You would not visit me, so I came to look for you; though why, monsieur, you should hide up here in the porch of the world passeth knowledge." "Monsieur is witty," answered Gering stoutly; "but if he will grant me my sword again and an hour alone with him, I shall ask no greater joy in life." By this time the governor was on deck, and he interposed. "I beg, sir," he said to Iberville, "you will see there is no useless slaughter at yon fort; for I guess that your men have their way with it." "Shall my messenger, in your name, tell your people to give in?" "By Heaven, no: I hope that they will fight while remains a chance. And be sure, sir, I should not have yielded here, but that I foresaw hopeless slaughter. Nor would I ask your favour there, but that I know you are like to have bloody barbarians with you--and we have women and children!" "We have no Indians, we are all French," answered Iberville quietly, and sent the messenger away. At that moment Perrot touched his arm, and pointed to a man whose shoulder was being bandaged. It was Radisson, who had caught Iberville's sword when the abbe diverted it. "By the mass," said Iberville; "the gift of the saints!" He pricked Radisson with the point of his sword. "Well, Monsieur Renegade, who holds the spring of the trap now? You have some prayers, I hope. And if there is no priest among your English, we'll find you one before you swing next sundown." Radisson threw up a malignant look, but said nothing; and went on caring for his wound. "At sunset, remember. You will see to it, Perrot," he added. "Pardon me, monsieur," said the governor. "This is an officer of our company, duly surrendered." "Monsieur will know this man is a traitor, and that I have long-standing orders to kill him wherever found. What has monsieur to say for him?" Iberville added, turning to Gering. "As an officer of the company," was the reply, "he has the rights of a prisoner of war." "Monsieur, we have met at the same table, and I cannot think you should plead for a traitor. If you will say that the man--" But here Radisson broke in. "I want no one to speak for me. I hate you all"--he spat at Iberville--"and I will hang when I must, no sooner." "Not so badly said," Iberville responded. "'Tis a pity, Radisson, you let the devil buy you." "T'sh! The devil pays good coin, and I'm not hung yet," he sullenly returned. By this time all the prisoners save Gering, the governor, and Radisson, were secured. Iberville ordered their disposition, and then, having set a guard, went down to deal with the governor for all the forts on the bay. Because the firing had ceased, he knew that the fort had been captured; and, indeed, word soon came to this effect. Iberville then gave orders that the prisoners from the fort should be brought on board next morning, to be carried on to Fort Albany, which was yet for attack. He was ill-content that a hand-to-hand fight with Gering had been prevented. He was now all courtesy to the governor and Gering, and, offering them their own wine, entertained them with the hardships of their travel up. He gave the governor assurance that the prisoners should be treated well, and no property destroyed. Afterwards, with apologies, he saw them bestowed in a cabin, the door fastened, and a guard set. Presently he went on deck, and giving orders that Radisson should be kept safe on the after-deck, had rations served out. Then, after eating, he drew his cloak over him in the cabin and fell asleep. Near daybreak a man came swimming along the side of the ship to the small port-hole of a cabin. He paused before it, took from his pocket a nail, and threw it within. There was no response, and he threw another, and again there was no response. Hearing the step of some one on the deck above he drew in close to the side of the ship, diving under the water and lying still. A moment after he reappeared and moved-almost floated- on to another port-hole. He had only one nail left; he threw it in, and Gering's face appeared. "Hush, monsieur!" Radisson called up. "I have a key which may fit, and a bar of iron. If you get clear, make for this side." He spoke in a whisper. At that moment he again heard steps above, and dived as before. The watch looked over, having heard a slight noise; but not knowing that Gering's cabin was beneath, thought no harm. Presently Radisson came up again. Gering understood, having heard the footsteps. "I will make the trial," he said. "Can you give me no other weapon?" "I have only the one," responded Radisson, not unselfish enough to give it up. His chief idea, after all, was to put Gering under obligation to him. "I will do my best," said Gering. Then he turned to the governor, who did not care to risk his life in the way of escape. Gering tried the key, but it would not turn easily and he took it out again. Rubbing away the rust, he used tallow from the candle, and tried the lock again; still it would not turn. He looked to the fastenings, but they were solid, and he feared noise; he made one more attempt with the lock, and suddenly it turned. He tried the handle, and the door opened. Then he bade goodbye to the governor and stepped out, almost upon the guard, who was sound asleep. Looking round he saw Iberville's cloak, which its owner had thrown off in his sleep. He stealthily picked it up, and then put Iberville's cap on his head. Of nearly the same height, with these disguises he might be able to pass for his captor. He threw the cloak over his shoulders, stole silently to the hatchway, and cautiously climbed up. Thrusting out his head he looked about him, and he saw two or three figures bundled together at the mainmast-- woodsmen who had celebrated victory too sincerely. He looked for the watch, but could not see him. Then he drew himself carefully up, and on his hands and knees passed to the starboard side and moved aft. Doing so he saw the watch start up from the capstan where he had been resting, and walk towards him. He did not quicken his pace. He trusted to his ruse-- he would impersonate Iberville, possessed as he was of the hat and cloak. He moved to the bulwarks and leaned against them, looking into the water. The sentry was deceived; he knew the hat and cloak, and he was only too glad to have, as he thought, escaped the challenge of having slept at his post; so he began resolutely to pace the deck. Gering watched him closely, and moved deliberately to the stern. In doing so he suddenly came upon a body. He stopped and turned round, leaning against the bulwarks as before. This time the watch came within twenty feet of him, saluted and retired. Immediately Gering looked again at the body near him, and started back, for his feet were in a little pool. He understood: Radisson had escaped by killing his guard. It was not possible that the crime and the escape could go long undetected; the watch might at any moment come the full length of the ship. Gering flashed a glance at him again, his back was to him still,--suddenly doffed the hat and cloak, vaulted lightly upon the bulwarks, caught the anchor-chain, slid down it into the water, and struck out softly along the side. Immediately Radisson was beside him. "Can you dive?" the Frenchman whispered. "Can you swim under water?" "A little." "Then with me, quick!" The Frenchman dived and Gering followed him. The water was bitter cold, but when a man is saving his life endurance multiplies. The Fates were with them: no alarm came from the ship, and they reached the bank in safety. Here they were upon a now hostile shore without food, fire, shelter, and weapons; their situation was desperate even yet. Radisson's ingenuity was not quite enough, so Gering solved the problem: there were the Frenchmen's canoes; they must be somewhere on the shore. Because Radisson was a Frenchman, he might be able to impose upon the watch guarding the canoes. If not, they still had weapons of a kind- Radisson a knife, and Gering the bar of iron. They moved swiftly along the shore, fearing an alarm meanwhile. If they could but get weapons and a canoe they would make their way either to Fort Albany, so warning it, or attempt the desperate journey to New York. Again fortune was with them. As it chanced, the watch, suffering from the cold night air, had gone into the bush to bring wood for firing. The two refugees stole near, and in the very first canoe found three muskets, and there were also bags filled with food. They hastily pushed out a canoe, got in, and were miles away before their escape was discovered. Radisson was for going south at once to New York, but Gering would not hear of it, and at the mouth of a musket Radisson obeyed. They reached Fort Albany and warned it. Having thus done his duty towards the Hudson's Bay Company, and knowing that surrender must come, and that in this case his last state would be worse than his first, Gering proceeded with Radisson--hourly more hateful to him, yet to be endured for what had happened--southward upon the trail the Frenchmen had taken northward. A couple of hours after Gering had thrown his hat and cloak into the blood of the coureur du bois, and slid down the anchor-chain, Iberville knew that his quarry was flown. The watch had thought that Iberville had gone below, and he had again relaxed, but presently a little maggot of wonder got into his brain. He then went aft. Dawn was just breaking; the grey moist light shone with a naked coldness on land and water; wild- fowl came fluttering, voiceless, past; night was still drenched in sleep. Suddenly he saw the dead body, and his boots dabbled in wet! In all that concerned the honour of the arms of France and the conquest of the three forts, Hayes, Rupert, and Albany, Iberville might be content, but he chafed at, the escape of his enemies. "I will not say it is better so, Pierre," urged De Casson; "but you have done enough for the king. Let your own cause come later." "And it will come, abbe," he answered, with anger. "His account grows; we must settle all one day. And Radisson shall swing or I am no soldier --so!" ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Often called an invention of the devil (Violin) THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD By Gilbert Parker EPOCH THE THIRD XIII. "AS WATER UNTO WINE" XIV. IN WHICH THE HUNTERS ARE OUT XV. IN THE MATTER OF BUCKLAW XVI. IN THE TREASURE HOUSE XVII. THE GIFT OF A CAPTIVE XVIII. MAIDEN NO MORE CHAPTER XIII "AS WATER UNTO WINE" Three months afterwards George Gering was joyfully preparing to take two voyages. Perhaps, indeed, his keen taste for the one had much to do with his eagerness for the other--though most men find getting gold as cheerful as getting married. He had received a promise of marriage from Jessica, and he was also soon to start with William Phips for the Spaniards' country. His return to New York with the news of the capture of the Hudson's Bay posts brought consternation. There was no angrier man in all America than Colonel Richard Nicholls; there was perhaps no girl in all the world more agitated than Jessica, then a guest at Government House. Her father was there also, cheerfully awaiting her marriage with Gering, whom, since he had lost most traces of Puritanism, he liked. He had long suspected the girl's interest in Iberville; if he had known that two letters from him--unanswered--had been treasured, read, and re-read, he would have been anxious. That his daughter should marry a Frenchman--a filibustering seigneur, a Catholic, the enemy of the British colonies, whose fellow-countrymen incited the Indians to harass and to massacre--was not to be borne. Besides, the Honourable Hogarth Leveret, whose fame in the colony was now often in peril because of his Cavalier propensities, and whose losses had aged him, could not bear that he should sink and carry his daughter with him. Jessica was the apple of his eye; for her he would have borne all, sorts of trials; but he could not bear to see her called on to bear them. Like most people out of the heyday of their own youth, he imagined the way a maid's fancy ought to go. If he had known how much his daughter's promise to marry Gering would cost her, he would not have had it. But indeed she did not herself guess it. She had, with the dreamy pleasure of a young girl, dwelt upon an event which might well hold her delighted memory: distance, difference of race, language, and life, all surrounded Iberville with an engaging fascination. Besides, what woman could forget a man who gave her escape from a fate such as Bucklaw had prepared for her? But she saw the hopelessness of the thing, everything was steadily acting in Gering's favour, and her father's trouble decided her at last. When Gering arrived at New York and told his story--to his credit with no dispraise of Iberville, rather as a soldier--she felt a pang greater than she ever had known. Like a good British maid, she was angry at the defeat of the British, she was indignant at her lover's failure and proud of his brave escape, and she would have herself believe that she was angry at Iberville. But it was no use; she was ill-content while her father and others called him buccaneer and filibuster, and she joyed that old William Drayton, who had ever spoken well of the young Frenchman, laughed at their insults, saying that he was as brave, comely, and fine- tempered a lad as he had ever met, and that the capture of the forts was genius: "Genius and pith, upon my soul!" he said stoutly; "and if he comes this way he shall have a right hearty welcome, though he come to fight." In the first excitement of Gering's return, sorry for his sufferings and for his injured ambition, she had suddenly put her hands in his and had given her word to marry him. She was young, and a young girl does not always know which it is that moves her: the melancholy of the impossible, from which she sinks in a kind of peaceful despair upon the possible, or the flush of a deep desire; she acts in an atmosphere of the emotions, and cannot therefore be sure of herself. But when it was done there came reaction to Jessica. In the solitude of her own room--the room above the hallway, from which she had gone to be captured by Bucklaw--she had misgivings. If she had been asked whether she loved Iberville, she might have answered no. But he was a possible lover; and every woman weighs the possible lover against the accepted one--often, at first, to fluttering apprehensions. In this brief reaction many a woman's heart has been caught away. A few days after Gering's arrival he was obliged to push on to Boston, there to meet Phips. He hoped that Mr. Leveret and Jessica would accompany him, but Governor Nicholls would not hear of it just yet. Truth is, wherever the girl went she was light and cheerfulness, although her ways were quiet and her sprightliness was mostly in her looks. She was impulsive, but impulse was ruled by a reserve at once delicate and unembarrassed. She was as much beloved in the town of New York as in Boston. Two days after Gering left she was wandering in the garden, when the governor joined her. "Well, well, my pretty councillor," he said--"an hour to cheer an old man's leisure?" "As many as you please," she answered daintily, putting her hand within his arm. "I am so very cheerful I need to shower the surplus." There was a smile at her lips, but her eyes were misty. Large, brilliant, gentle, they had now also a bewildered look, which even the rough old soldier saw. He did not understand, but he drew the hand further within his arm and held it, there, and for the instant he knew not what to say. The girl did not speak; she only kept looking at him with a kind of inward smiling. Presently, as if he had suddenly lighted upon a piece of news for the difficulty, he said: "Radisson has come." "Radisson!" she cried. "Yes. You know 'twas he that helped George to escape?" "Indeed, no!" she answered. "Mr. Gering did not tell me." She was perplexed, annoyed, yet she knew not why. Gering had not brought Radisson into New York had indeed forbidden him to come there, or to Boston, until word was given him; for while he felt bound to let the scoundrel go with him to the Spaniards' country, it was not to be forgotten that the fellow had been with Bucklaw. But Radisson had no scruples when Gering was gone, though the proscription had never been withdrawn. "We will have to give him freedom, councillor, eh? even though we proclaimed him, you remember." He laughed, and added: "You would demand that, yea or nay. "Why should I?" she asked. "Now, give me wisdom all ye saints! Why--why? "Faith, he helped your lover from the clutches of the French coxcomb." "Indeed," she answered, "such a villain helps but for absurd benefits. Mr. Gering might have stayed with Monsieur Iberville in honour and safety at least. And why a coxcomb? You thought different once; and you cannot doubt his bravery. Enemy of our country though he be, I am surely bound to speak him well--he saved my life." Anxious to please her, he answered: "Wise as ever, councillor. What an old bear am I: When I called him coxcomb, 'twas as an Englishman hating a Frenchman, who gave our tongues to gall--a handful of posts gone, a ship passed to the spoiler, the governor of the company a prisoner, and our young commander's reputation at some trial! My temper was pardonable, eh, mistress?" The girl smiled, and added: "There was good reason why Mr. Gering brought not Radisson here, and I should beware that man. A traitor is ever a traitor. He is French, too, and as a good Englishman you should hate all Frenchmen, should you not?" "Merciless witch! Where got you that wit? If I must, I kneel;" and he groaned in mock despair. "And if Monsieur Iberville should come knocking at our door you would have me welcome him lovingly?" "Surely; there is peace, is there not? Has not the king, because of his love for Louis commanded all goodwill between us and Canada?" The governor laughed bitterly. "Much pity that he has! how can we live at peace with buccaneers?" Their talk was interrupted here; but a few days later, in the same garden, Morris came to them. "A ship enters harbour," he said, "and its commander sends this letter." An instant after the governor turned a troubled face on the girl and said: "Your counsel of the other day is put to rapid test, Jessica. This comes from monsieur, who would pay his respects to me." He handed the note to her. It said that Iberville had brought prisoners whom he was willing to exchange for French prisoners in the governor's hands. Entering New York harbour with a single vessel showed in a strong light Iberville's bold, almost reckless, courage. The humour of it was not lost on Jessica, though she turned pale, and the paper fluttered in her fingers. "What will you do?" she said. "I will treat him as well as he will let me, sweetheart." Two hours afterwards, Iberville came up the street with Sainte-Helene, De Casson, and Perrot,--De Troyes had gone to Quebec,--courteously accompanied by Morris and an officer of the New York Militia. There was no enmity shown the Frenchmen, for many remembered what had once made Iberville popular in New York. Indeed, Iberville, whose memory was of the best, now and again accosted some English or Dutch resident, whose face he recalled. The governor was not at first cordial; but Iberville's cheerful soldierliness, his courtier spirit, and his treatment of the English prisoners, soon placed him on a footing near as friendly as that of years before. The governor praised his growing reputation, and at last asked him to dine, saying that Mistress Leveret would no doubt be glad to meet her rescuer again. "Still, I doubt not," said the governor, "there will be embarrassment, for the lady can scarce forget that you had her lover prisoner. But these things are to be endured. Besides, you and Mr. Gering seem as easily enemies as other men are friends." Iberville was amazed. So, Jessica and Gering were affianced. And the buckle she had sent him he wore now in the folds of his lace! How could he know what comes from a woman's wavering sympathies, what from her inborn coquetry, and what from love itself? He was merely a man with much to learn. He accepted dinner and said: "As for Monsieur Gering, your excellency, we are as easily enemies as he and Radisson are comrades-in-arms." "Which is harshly put, monsieur. When a man is breaking prison he chooses any tool. You put a slight upon an honest gentleman." "I fear that neither Mr. Gering nor myself is too generous with each other, your excellency," answered Iberville lightly. This frankness was pleasing, and soon the governor took Iberville into the drawing-room, where Jessica was. She was standing by the great fireplace, and she did not move at first, but looked at Iberville in some thing of her old simple way. Then she offered him her hand with a quiet smile. "I fear you are not glad to see me," he said, with a smile. "You cannot have had good reports of me--no?" "Yes, I am glad," she answered gently. "You know, monsieur, mine is a constant debt. You do not come to me, I take it, as the conqueror of Englishmen." "I come to you," he answered, "as Pierre le Moyne of Iberville, who had once the honour to do you slight service. I have never tried to forget that, because by it I hoped I might be remembered--an accident of price to me." She bowed and at first did not speak; then Morris came to say that some one awaited the governor, and the two were left alone. "I have not forgotten," she began softly, breaking a silence. "You will think me bold, but I believe you will never forget," was his meaning reply. "Yes, you are bold," she replied, with the demure smile which had charmed him long ago. Suddenly she looked up at him anxiously, and, "Why did you go to Hudson's Bay?" she asked. "I would have gone ten times as far for the same cause," he answered, and he looked boldly, earnestly, into her eyes. She turned her head away. "You have all your old recklessness," she answered. Then her eyes softened, and, "All your old courage," she added. "I have all my old motive." "What is-your motive?" Does a woman ever know how much such speeches cost? Did Jessica quite know when she asked the question, what her own motive was; how much it had of delicate malice--unless there was behind it a simple sincerity? She was inviting sorrow. A man like Iberville was not to be counted lightly; for every word he sowed, he would reap a harvest of some kind. He came close to her, and looked as though he would read her through and through. "Can you ask that question?" he said most seriously. "If you ask it because from your soul you wish to know, good! But if you ask it as a woman who would read a man's heart, and then--" "Oh, hush!--hush!" she whispered. Her face became pale, and her eyes had a painful brightness. "You must not answer. I had no right to ask. Oh, monsieur!" she added, "I would have you always for my friend if I could, though you are the enemy of my country and of the man--I am to marry." "I am for my king," he replied; "and I am enemy of him who stands between you and me. For see: from the hour that I met you I knew that some day, even as now, I should tell you that--I love you--indeed, Jessica, with all my heart." "Oh, have pity!" she pleaded. "I cannot listen--I cannot." "You shall listen, for you have remembered me and have understood. Voila!" he added, hastily catching her silver buckle from his bosom. "This that you sent me, look where I have kept it--on my heart!" She drew back from him, her face in her hands. Then suddenly she put them out as though to prevent him coming near her, and said: "Oh, no--no! You will spare me; I am an affianced wife." An appealing smile shone through her tears. "Oh, will you not go?" she begged. "Or, will you not stay and forget what you have said? We are little more than strangers; I scarcely know you; I--" "We are no strangers," he broke in. "How can that be, when for years I have thought of you--you of me? But I am content to wait, for my love shall win you yet. You--" She came to him and put her hands upon his arm. "You remember," she said, with a touch of her old gaiety, and with an inimitable grace, "what good friends we were that first day we met? Let us be the same now--for this time at least. Will you not grant me this for to-day?" "And to-morrow?" he asked, inwardly determining to stay in the port of New York and to carry her off as his wife; but, unlike Bucklaw, with her consent. At that moment the governor returned, and Iberville's question was never answered. Nor did he dine at Government House, for word came secretly that English ships were coming from Boston to capture him. He had, therefore, no other resource but to sail out and push on for Quebec. He would not peril the lives of his men merely to follow his will with Jessica. What might have occurred had he stayed is not easy to say--fortunes turn on strange trifles. The girl, under the influence of his masterful spirit and the rare charm of his manner, might have--as many another has --broken her troth. As it was, she wrote Iberville a letter and sent it by a courier, who never delivered it. By the same fatality, of the letters which he wrote her only one was received. This told her that when he returned from a certain cruise he would visit her again, for he was such an enemy to her country that he was keen to win what did it most honour. Gering had pressed for a marriage before he sailed for the Spaniards' country, but she had said no, and when he urged it she had shown a sudden coldness. Therefore, bidding her good-bye, he had sailed away with Phips, accompanied, much against his will, by Radisson. Bucklaw was not with them. He had set sail from England in a trading schooner, and was to join Phips at Port de la Planta. Gering did not know that Bucklaw had share in the expedition, nor did Bucklaw guess the like of Gering. Within two weeks of the time that Phips in his Bridgwater Merchant, manned by a full crew, twenty fighting men, and twelve guns, with Gering in command of the Swallow, a smaller ship, got away to the south, Iberville also sailed in the same direction. He had found awaiting him, on his return to Quebec, a priest bearing messages and a chart from another priest who had died in the Spaniards' country. CHAPTER XIV IN WHICH THE HUNTERS ARE OUT Iberville had a good ship. The Maid of Provence carried a handful of guns and a small but carefully chosen crew, together with Sainte-Helene, Perrot, and the lad Maurice Joval, who had conceived for Iberville friendship nigh to adoration. Those were days when the young were encouraged to adventure, and Iberville had no compunction in giving the boy this further taste of daring. Iberville, thorough sailor as he was, had chosen for his captain one who had sailed the Spanish Main. He had commanded on merchant-ships which had been suddenly turned into men-of-war, and was suited to the present enterprise: taciturn, harsh of voice, singularly impatient, but a perfect seaman and as brave as could be. He had come to Quebec late the previous autumn with the remnants of a ship which, rotten when she left the port of Havre, had sprung a leak in mid-ocean, had met a storm, lost her mainmast, and by the time she reached the St. Lawrence had scarce a stick standing. She was still at Quebec, tied up in the bay of St. Charles, from which she would probably go out no more. Her captain--Jean Berigord --had chafed on the bit in the little Hotel Colbert, making himself more feared than liked, till one day he was taken to Iberville by Perrot. A bargain was soon struck. The nature of the expedition was not known in Quebec, for the sailors were not engaged till the eve of starting, and Perrot's men were ready at his bidding without why or wherefore. Indeed, when the Maid of Provence left the island of Orleans, her nose seawards, one fine July morning, the only persons in Quebec that knew her destination were the priest who had brought Iberville the chart of the river, with its accurate location of the sunken galleon, Iberville's brothers, and Count Frontenac himself--returned again as governor. "See, Monsieur Iberville," said the governor, as, with a fine show of compliment, in full martial dress, with his officers in gold lace, perukes, powder, swords, and ribbons, he bade Iberville good-bye--"See, my dear captain, that you find the treasure, or make these greedy English pay dear for it. They have a long start, but that is nothing, with a ship under you that can show its heels to any craft. I care not so much about the treasure, but I pray you humble those dull Puritans, who turn buccaneers in the name of the Lord." Iberville made a gallant reply, and, with Sainte-Helene, received a hearty farewell from the old soldier, who, now over seventy years of age, was as full of spirit as when he distinguished himself at Arras fifty years before. In Iberville he saw his own youth renewed, and foretold the high part he would yet play in the fortunes of New France. Iberville had got to the door and was bowing himself out when, with a quick gesture, Frontenac stopped him, stepped quickly forward, and clasping his shoulders kissed him on each cheek, and said in a deep, kind voice: "I know, mon enfant, what lies behind this. A man pays the price one time or another: he draws his sword for his mistress and his king; both forget, but one's country remains--remains." Iberville said nothing, but with an admiring glance into the aged, iron face, stooped and kissed Frontenac's hand and withdrew silently. Frontenac, proud, impatient, tyrannical, was the one man in New France who had a powerful idea of the future of the country, and who loved her and his king by the law of a loyal nature. Like Wolsey, he had found his king ungrateful, and had stood almost alone in Canada among his enemies, as at Versailles among his traducers--imperious, unyielding, and yet forgiving. Married, too, at an early age, his young wife, caring little for the duties of maternity and more eager to serve her own ambitions than his, left him that she might share the fortunes of Mademoiselle de Montpensier. Iberville had mastered the chart before he sailed, and when they were well on their way he disclosed to the captain the object of their voyage. Berigord listened to all he had to say, and at first did no more than blow tobacco smoke hard before him. "Let me see the chart," he said at last, and, scrutinising it carefully, added: "Yes, yes, 'tis right enough. I've been in the port and up the river. But neither we nor the Eng lish'll get a handful of gold or silver thereabouts. 'Tis throwing good money after none at all." "The money is mine, my captain," said Iberville good-humouredly. "There will be sport, and I ask but that you give me every chance you can." "Look then, monsieur," replied the smileless man, "I'll run your ship for all she holds from here to hell, if you twist your finger. She's as good a craft as ever I spoke, and I'll swear her for any weather. The fighting and the gold as you and the devil agree!" Iberville wished nothing better--a captain concerned only with his own duties. Berigord gathered the crew and the divers on deck, and in half a dozen words told them the object of the expedition, and was followed by Iberville. Some of the men had been with him to Hudson's Bay, and they wished nothing better than fighting the English, and all were keen with the lust of gold even though it were for another. As it was, Iberville promised them all a share of what was got. On the twentieth day after leaving Quebec they sighted islands, and simultaneously they saw five ships bearing away towards them. Iberville was apprehensive that a fleet of the kind could only be hostile, for merchant-ships would hardly sail together so, and it was not possible that they were French. There remained the probability that they were Spanish or English ships. He had no intention of running away, but at the same time he had no wish to fight before he reached Port de la Planta and had had his hour with Gering and Phips and the lost treasure. Besides, five ships was a large undertaking, which only a madman would willingly engage. However, he kept steadily on his course. But there was one chance of avoiding a battle without running away--the glass had been falling all night and morning. Berigord, when questioned, grimly replied that there was to be trouble, but whether with the fleet or the elements was not clear, and Iberville did not ask. He got his reply effectively and duly however. A wind suddenly sprang up from the north-west, followed by a breaking cross sea. It as suddenly swelled to a hurricane, so that if Berigord had not been fortunate as to his crew, and had not been so fine a sailor, the Maid of Provence might have fared badly, for he kept all sail on as long as he dare, and took it in none too soon. But so thoroughly did he know the craft and trust his men that she did what he wanted; and though she was tossed and hammered by the sea till it seemed that she must, with every next wave, go down, she rode into safety at last, five hundred miles out of their course. The storm had saved them from the hostile fleet, which had fared ill. They were first scattered, then two of them went down, another was so disabled that she had to be turned back to the port they had left, and the remaining two were separated, so that their only course was to return to port also. As the storm came up they had got within fighting distance of the Maid of Provence, and had opened ineffectual fire, which she-- occupied with the impact of the storm--did not return. Escaped the dangers of the storm, she sheered into her course again, and ran away to the south-west, until Hispaniola came in sight. CHAPTER XV IN THE MATTER OF BUCKLAW The Bridgwater Merchant and the Swallow made the voyage down with no set- backs, having fair weather and a sweet wind on their quarter all the way, to the wild corner of an island, where a great mountain stands sentinel and a bay washes upon a curving shore and up the. River de la Planta. There were no vessels in the harbour and there was only a small settlement on the shore, and as they came to anchor well away from the gridiron of reefs known as the Boilers, the prospect was handsome: the long wash of the waves, the curling, white of the breakers, and the rainbow-coloured water. The shore was luxuriant, and the sun shone intemperately on the sea and the land, covering all with a fine beautiful haze, like the most exquisite powder sifted through the air. All on board the Bridgwater Merchant and the Swallow were in hearty spirits. There had been some sickness, but the general health of the expedition was excellent. It was not till the day they started from Boston that Phips told Gering he expected to meet some one at the port who had gone to prepare the way, to warn them by fires in case of danger, and to allay any opposition among the natives--if there were any. But he had not told him who the herald was. Truth is, Phips was anxious that Gering should have no chance of objecting to the scoundrel who had, years before, tried to kidnap his now affianced wife--who had escaped a deserved death on the gallows. It was a rude age, and men of Phips's quality, with no particular niceness as to women, or horror as to mutiny when it was twenty years old, compromised with their conscience for expediency and gain. Moreover, in his humorous way, Bucklaw, during his connection with Phips in England, had made himself agreeable and resourceful. Phips himself had sprung from the lower orders,--the son of a small farmer,--and even in future days when he rose to a high position in the colonies, gaining knighthood and other honours, he had the manners and speech of "a man of the people." Bucklaw understood men: he knew that his only game was that of bluntness. This was why he boarded Phips in Cheapside without subterfuge or disguise. Nor had Phips told Bucklaw of Gering's coming; so that when the Bridgwater Merchant and the Swallow entered Port de la Planta, Bucklaw himself, as he bore out in a small sail-boat, did not guess that he was likely to meet a desperate enemy. He had waited patiently, and had reckoned almost to a day when Phips would arrive. He was alongside before Phips had called anchor. His cheerful countenance came up between the frowning guns, his hook-hand ran over the rail, and in a moment he was on deck facing--Radisson. He was unprepared for the meeting, but he had taken too many chances in his lifetime to show astonishment. He and Radisson had fought and parted; they had been in ugly business together, and they were likely to be, now that they had met, in ugly business again. Bucklaw's tiger ran up to stroke his chin with the old grotesque gesture. "Ha!" he said saucily, "cats and devils have nine lives." There was the same sparkle in the eye as of old, the same buoyant voice. For himself, he had no particular quarrel with Radisson; the more so because he saw a hang-dog sulkiness in Radisson's eye. It was ever his cue when others were angered to be cool. The worst of his crimes had been performed with an air of humorous cynicism. He could have great admiration for an enemy such as Iberville; and he was not a man to fight needlessly. He had a firm belief that he had been intended for a high position--a great admiral, or general, or a notable buccaneer. Before Radisson had a chance to reply came Phips, who could not help but show satisfaction at Bucklaw's presence; and in a moment they were on their way together to the cabin, followed by the eyes of the enraged Radisson. Phips disliked Radisson; the sinister Frenchman, with his evil history, was impossible to the open, bluff captain. He had been placed upon Phips's vessel because he knew the entrance to the harbour; but try as he would for a kind of comradeship, he failed: he had an ugly vanity and a bad heart. There was only one decent thing which still clung to him in rags and tatters--the fact that he was a Frenchman. He had made himself hated on the ship--having none of the cunning tact of Bucklaw. As Phips and Bucklaw went below, a sudden devilry entered into him. He was ripe for quarrel, eager for battle. His two black eyes were like burning beads, his jaws twitched. If Bucklaw had but met him without this rough, bloodless irony, he might have thrown himself with ardour into the work of the expedition; but he stood alone, and hatred and war rioted in him. Below in the cabin Phips and Bucklaw were deep in the chart of the harbour and the river. The plan of action was decided upon. A canoe was to be built out of a cotton-tree large enough to carry eight or ten oars. This and the tender, with men and divers, were to go in search of the wreck under the command of Bucklaw and the captain of the Swallow, whose name Phips did not mention. Phips himself was to remain on the Bridgwater Merchant, the Swallow lying near with a goodly number of men to meet any possible attack from the sea. When all was planned, Phips told Bucklaw who was the commander of the Swallow. For a moment the fellow's coolness was shaken; the sparkle died out of his eye and he shot up a furtive look at Phips, but he caught a grim smile on the face of the sturdy sailor. He knew at once there was no treachery meant, and he guessed that Phips expected no crisis. It was ever his way to act with promptness, being never so resourceful as when his position was most critical: he was in the power of Gering and Phips, and he knew it, but he knew also that his game must be a bold one. "By-gones are by-gones, captain," he said; "and what's done can't be helped, and as it was no harm came anyhow." "By-gones are by-gones," replied the other, "and let's hope that Mr. Gering will say so too." "Haven't you told him, sir?" "Never a word--but I'll send for him now, and bygones let it be." Bucklaw nodded, and drummed the table with his tiger. He guessed why Phips had not told Gering, and he foresaw trouble. He trusted, however, to the time that had passed since the kidnapping, and on Gering's hunger for treasure. Phips had compromised, and why not he? But if Gering was bent on trouble, why, there was the last resource of the peace-lover. He tapped the rapier at his side. He ever held that he was peaceful, and it is recorded that at the death of an agitated victim, he begged him to "sit still and not fidget." He laid no plans as to what he should do when Gering came. Like the true gamester, he waited to see how he should be placed; then he could draw upon his resources. He was puzzled about Radisson, but Radisson could wait; he was so much the superior of the coarser villain that he gave him little thought. As he waited he thought more about the treasure at hand than of either--or all--his enemies. He did not stir, but kept drumming till he knew that Gering was aboard, and heard his footsteps, with the captain's, coming. He showed no excitement, though he knew a crisis was at hand. A cool, healthy sweat stood out on his forehead, cheeks and lips, and his blue eyes sparkled clearly and coldly. He rose as the two men appeared. Phips had not even told his lieutenant. But Gering knew Bucklaw at the first glance, and his eyes flashed and a hand went to his sword. "Captain Phips," he said angrily, "you know who this man is?" "He is the guide to our treasure-house, Mr. Gering." "His name is Bucklaw--a mutineer condemned to death, the villain who tried to kidnap Mistress Leveret." It was Bucklaw that replied. "Right--right you are, Mr. Gering. I'm Bucklaw, mutineer, or what else you please. But that's ancient--ancient. I'm sinner no more. You and Monsieur Iberville saved the maid I meant no harm to her; 'twas but for ransom. I am atoning now--to make your fortune, give you glory. Shall by-gones be by-gones, Mr. Gering? What say you?" Bucklaw stood still at the head of the table. But he was very watchful. What the end might have been it is hard to tell, but a thing occurred which took the affair out of Gering's hands. A shadow darkened the companion-way, and Radisson came quickly down. His face was sinister, and his jaws worked like an animal's. Coming to the table he stood between Gering and Bucklaw, and looked from one to the other. Bucklaw was cool, Gering very quiet, and he misinterpreted. "You are great friends, eh, all together?" he said viciously. "All together you will get the gold. It is no matter what one English do, the other absolve for gold. A buccaneer, a stealer of women--no, it is no matter! All English--all together! But I am French--I am the dirt-- I am for the scuppers. Bah! I will have the same as Bucklaw--you see?" "You will have the irons, fellow!" Phips roared. A knife flashed in the air, and Bucklaw's pistol was out at the same instant. The knife caught Bucklaw in the throat and he staggered against the table like a stuck pig, the bullet hit Radisson in the chest and he fell back against the wall, his pistol dropping from his hand. Bucklaw, bleeding heavily, lurched forwards, pulled himself together, and, stooping, emptied his pistol into the moaning Radisson. Then he sank on his knees, snatched the other's pistol, and fired again into Radisson's belly; after which with a last effort he plunged his own dagger into the throat of the dying man, and, with his fingers still on the handle, fell with a gurgling laugh across the Frenchman's body. Radisson recovered for an instant. He gave a hollow cry, drew the knife from his own throat and, with a wild, shambling motion, struck at the motionless Bucklaw, pinning an arm to the ground. Then he muttered an oath and fell back dead. The tournament of blood was over. So swift had it been there was no chance to interfere. Besides, Gering was not inclined to save the life of either; while Phips, who now knew the chart, as he thought, as well as Bucklaw, was not concerned, though he liked the mutineer. For a moment they both looked at the shambles without speaking. Sailors for whom Phips had whistled crowded the cabin. "A damned bad start, Mr. Gering," Phips said, as he moved towards the bodies. "For them, yes; but they might have given us a bad ending." "For the Frenchman, he's got less than was brewing for him, but Bucklaw was a humorous dog." As he said this he stooped to Bucklaw and turned him over, calling to the sailors to clean the red trough and bring the dead men on deck, but presently he cried: "By the devil's tail, the fellow lives! Here, a hand quick, you lubbers, and fetch the surgeon." Bucklaw was not dead. He had got two ugly wounds and was bleeding heavily, but his heart still beat. Radisson's body was carried on deck, and within half an hour was dropped into the deep. The surgeon, however, would not permit Bucklaw to be removed until he had been cared for, and so Phips and Gering went on deck and made preparations for the treasure- hunt. A canoe was hollowed out by a dozen men in a few hours, the tender was got ready, the men and divers told off, and Gering took command of the searching-party, while Phips remained on the ship. They soon had everything ready for a start in the morning. Word was brought that Bucklaw still lived, but was in a high fever, and that the chances were all against him; and Phips sent cordials and wines from his own stores, and asked that news be brought to him of any change. Early in the morning Gering, after having received instructions from Phips, so far as he knew (for Bucklaw had not told all that was necessary), departed for the river. The canoe and tender went up the stream a distance, and began to work down from the farthest point indicated in the chart. Gering continued in the river nearly all day, and at night camped on the shore. The second day brought no better luck, nor yet the third the divers had seen no vestige of a wreck, nor any sign of treasure--nothing except four skeletons in a heap, tied together with a chain, where the water was deepest. These were the dead priests, for whom Bucklaw could account. The water was calm, the tide rising and falling gently, and when they arrived among what was called the Shallows, they could see plainly to the bottom. They passed over the Boilers, a reef of shoals, and here they searched diligently, but to no purpose; the divers went down frequently, but could find nothing. The handful of natives in the port came out and looked on apathetically; one or two Spaniards also came, but they shrugged their shoulders and pitied the foolish adventurers. Gering had the power of inspiring his men, and Phips was a martinet and was therefore obeyed; but the lifeless days and unrewarded labour worked on the men, and at last the divers shirked their task. Meanwhile, Bucklaw was fighting hard for life. As time passed, the flush of expectancy waned; the heat was great, the waiting seemed endless. Adventure was needed for the spirits of the men, and of this now there was nothing. Morning after morning the sun rose in a moist, heavy atmosphere; day after day went in a quest which became dreary, and night after night settled upon discontent. Then came threats. But this was chiefly upon the Bridgwater Merchant. Phips had picked up his sailors in English ports, and nearly all of them were brutal adventurers. They were men used to desperate enterprises, and they had flocked to him because they smelled excitement and booty. Of ordinary merchant seamen there were only a few. When the Duke of Albemarle had come aboard at Plymouth before they set sail, he had shrugged his shoulders at the motley crew. To his hint Phips had only replied with a laugh: these harum-scarum scamps were more to his mind than ordinary seamen. At heart he himself was half-barbarian. It is possible he felt there might some time be a tug-of-war on board, but he did not borrow trouble. Bucklaw had endorsed every man that he had chosen; indeed, Phips knew that many of them were old friends of Bucklaw. Again, of this he had no fear; Bucklaw was a man of desperate deeds, but he knew that in himself the pirate had a master. Besides, he would pick up in Boston a dozen men upon whom he could depend; and cowardice had no place in him. Again, the Swallow, commanded by Gering, was fitted out with New England seamen; and on these dependence could be put. Therefore, when there came rumblings of mutiny on the Bridgwater Merchant, there was faithful, if gloomy, obedience, on the Swallow. Had there been plenty of work to do, had they been at sea instead of at anchor, the nervousness would have been little; but idleness begot irritation, and irritation mutiny. Or had Bucklaw been on deck, instead of in the surgeon's cabin playing a hard game with death, matters might not have gone so far as they did; for he would have had immediate personal influence repressive of revolt. As it was, Phips had to work the thing out according to his own lights. One afternoon, when Gering was away with the canoes on the long search, the crisis came. It was a day when life seemed to stand still; a creamy haze ingrained with delicate blue had settled on land and sea; the long white rollers slowly travelled over the Boilers, and the sea rocked like a great cradle. Indefiniteness of thought, of time, of event, seemed over all; on board the two ships life swung idly as a hammock; but only so in appearance. Phips was leaning against the deck-house, watching through his glass the search-canoes. Presently he turned and walked aft. As he did so the surgeon and the chief mate came running towards him. They had not time to explain, for came streaming upon deck a crowd of mutineers. Phips did not hesitate an instant; he had no fear--he was swelling with anger. "Why now, you damned dogs," he blurted out, "what mean you by this? What's all this show of cutlasses?" The ringleader stepped forwards. "We're sick of doing nothing," he answered. "We've come on a wild goose chase. There's no treasure here. We mean you no harm; we want not the ship out of your hands." "Then," cried Phips, "in the name of all the devils, what want you?" "Here's as we think: there's nothing to be got out of this hunt, but there's treasure on the high seas all the same. Here's our offer: keep command of your ship and run up the black flag!" Phips's arm shot out and dropped the man to the ground. "That's it, you filthy rogues!" he roared. "Me to turn pirate, eh? You'd set to weaving ropes for the necks of every one of us--blood of my soul!" He seemed not to know that cutlasses were threatening him, not to be aware that the man at his feet, clutching his weapon, was mad with rage. "Now look," he said, in a big loud voice, "I know that treasure is here, and I know we'll find it; if not now, when we get Bucklaw on his feet." "Ay! Bucklaw! Bucklaw!" ran through the throng. "Well, then, Bucklaw, as you say! Now here's what I'll do, scoundrels though you be. Let me hear no more of this foolery. Stick to me till the treasure's found--for God take my soul if I leave this bay till I have found it!--and you shall have good share of booty." He had grasped the situation with such courage that the mutineers hesitated. He saw his advantage and followed it up, asking for three of their number to confer with him as to a bond upon his proposal. After a time the mutineers consented, the bond was agreed to, and the search went on. CHAPTER XVI IN THE TREASURE HOUSE The canoes and tender kept husking up and down among the Shallows, finding nothing. At last one morning they pushed out from the side of the Bridgwater Merchant, more limp than ever. The stroke of the oars was listless, but a Boston sailor of a merry sort came to a cheery song: "I knows a town, an' it's a fine town, And many a brig goes sailin' to its quay; I knows an inn, an' it's a fine inn, An' a lass that's fair to see. I knows a town, an' it's a fine town; I knows an inn, an' it's a fine inn But O my lass! an' O the gay gown, Which I have seen my pretty in! "I knows a port, an' it's a good port, An' many a brig is ridin' easy there; I knows a home, an' it's a good home, An' a lass that's sweet an' fair. I knows a port, an' it's a good port, I knows a home, an' it's a good home But O the pretty that is my sort, That's wearyin' till I come! "I knows a day, an' it's a fine day, The day a sailor man comes back to town. I knows a tide, an' it's a good tide, The tide that gets you quick to anchors down. I knows a day, an' it's a fine day, I knows a tide, an' its' a good tide And God help the lubber, I say, That's stole the sailor man's bride!" The song had its way with them and they joined in and lay to their oars with almost too much goodwill. Gering, his arms upon the side of the canoe, was looking into the water idly. It was clear far down, and presently he saw what seemed a feather growing out of the side of a rock. It struck him as strange, and he gave word to back water. They were just outside the Boilers in deep water. Drawing back carefully, he saw the feather again, and ordered one of the divers to go down. They could see the man descend and gather the feather, then he plunged deeper still and they lost sight of him. But soon he came up rapidly, and was quickly inside the boat, to tell Gering that he had seen several great guns. At this the crew peered over the boat-side eagerly. Gering's heart beat hard. He knew what it was to rouse wild hope and then to see despair follow, but he kept an outward calm and told the diver to go down again. Time seemed to stretch to hours before they saw the man returning with something in his arm. He handed up his prize, and behold it was a pig of silver! The treasure was found; and there went up a great cheer. All was activity, for, apart from the delight of discovery, Phips had promised a share to every man. The place was instantly buoyed, and they hastened back to the port with the grateful tidings to Phips. With his glass he saw them coming and by their hard rowing he guessed that they had news. When they came within hail they cheered, and when they saw the silver the air rang with shouts. As Gering stepped on board with the silver Captain Phips ran forwards, clasped it in both hands, and cried: "We are all made, thanks be to God!" Then all hands were ordered on board, and because the treasure lay in a safe anchorage they got the ships away towards it. Bucklaw, in the surgeon's cabin, was called out of delirium by the noise. He was worn almost to a skeleton, his eyes were big and staring, his face had the paleness of death. The return to consciousness was sudden-- perhaps nothing else could have called him back. He wriggled out of bed and, supporting himself against the wall, made his way to the door, and crawled away, mumbling to himself as he went. A few minutes afterwards Phips and Gering were talking in the cabin. Phips was weighing the silver up and down in his hands. "At least three hundred good guineas here!" he said. There was a shuffling behind them, and, as Phips turned, a figure lunged on him, clutched and hugged the silver. It was Bucklaw. "Mine! mine!" he called in a hoarse voice, with great gluttonous eyes. "All mine!" he cried again. Then he gasped and came to the ground in a heap, with the silver hugged in his arms. All at once he caught at his throat; the bandage of his wound fell away and there was a rush of blood over the silver. With a wild laugh he plunged face forward on the metal --and the blood of the dead Bucklaw consecrated the first-fruits of the treasure. As the vessel rode up the harbour the body was dropped into the deep. "Worse men--worse men, sir, bide with the king," said Phips to Gering. "A merry villain, that Bucklaw." The ship came to anchor at the buoys, and no time was lost. Divers were sent down, and by great good luck found the room where the bullion was stored. The number of divers was increased, and the work of raising the bullion went on all that day. There is nothing like the lust for gold in the hearts of men. From stem to stern of the Bridgwater Merchant and the Swallow, this wild will had its way. Work went on until the last moment of sun. That night talk was long and sleep short, and work was on again at sunrise. In three days they took up thirty-two tons of bullion. In the afternoon of the third day the store-room was cleared, and then they searched the hold. Here they found, cunningly distributed among the ballast, a great many bags of pieces-of-eight. These, having lain in the water so long, were crusted with a strong substance, which they had to break with iron bars. It was reserved for Phips himself to make the grand discovery. He donned a diving-suit and went below to the sunken galleon. Silver and gold had been found, but he was sure there were other treasures. After much searching he found, in a secret place of the captain's cabin, a chest which, on being raised and broken open, was found stocked with pearls, diamonds, and other precious stones. And now the work was complete, and on board the Bridgwater Merchant was treasure to the sum of three hundred thousand pounds, and more. Joyfully did Phips raise anchor. But first he sent to the handful of people in the port a liberal gift of money and wine and provisions from the ship's stores. With a favourable breeze he got away agreeably, and was clear of the harbour and cleaving northwards before sunset--the Swallow leading the treasure-ship like a pilot. All was joy and hilarity; but there remained one small danger yet: they had raised their treasure unmolested, but could they bring it to Boston and on to England? Phips would have asked that question very seriously indeed had he known that the Maid of Provence was bowling out of the nor'-east towards the port which he had just left. The Maid of Provence had had a perilous travel. Escaping the English war-ships, she fell in with a pirate craft. She closed with it, plugged it with cannon-shot, and drew off, then took the wind on her beam and came drifting down on her, boarded her and, after a swift and desperate fight, killed every pirate-rogue save one--the captain--whom for reasons they made a prisoner. Then they sank the rover, and got away to Port de la Planta as fast as they were able. But by reason of the storm and the fighting, and drifting out of their course, they had lost ten days; and thus it was they reached the harbour a few hours after the Bridgwater Merchant and the Swallow had left. They waited till morning and sailed cautiously in to face disappointment. They quickly learned the truth from the natives. There was but one thing to do and Iberville lost no time. A few hours to get fresh water and fruit and to make some repairs, for the pirate had not been idle in the fight--and then Berigord gave the nose of the good little craft to the sea, and drove her on with an honest wind, like a hound upon the scent. Iberville was vexed, but not unduly; he had the temper of a warrior who is both artist and gamester. As he said to Perrot: "Well, Nick, they've saved us the trouble of lifting the treasure; we'll see now who shall beach it." He guessed that the English ships would sail to Boston for better arming ere they ventured to the English Channel. He knew the chances were against him, but it was his cue to keep heart in his followers. For days they sailed without seeing a single ship; then three showed upon the horizon and faded away. They kept on, passing Florida and Carolina, hoping to reach Boston before the treasure-ships, and to rob them at their own door. Their chances were fair, for the Maid of Provence had proved swift, good-tempered, and a sweet sailer in bad waters. Iberville had reckoned well. One evening, after a sail northwards as fine as the voyage down was dirty, they came up gently within forty miles of Boston, and then, because there was nothing else to do, went idling up and down all night, keeping watch. The next morning there was a mist in the air, which might become fog. Iberville had dreaded this; but he was to have his chance, for even when Berigord's face lowered most the look- out from the shrouds called down that he sighted two ships. They were making for the coast. All sail was put on, they got away to meet the newcomers, and they were not long in finding these to be their quarry. Phips did not think that any ship would venture against them so near Boston, and could not believe the Maid of Provence an enemy. He thought her an English ship eager to welcome them, but presently he saw the white ensign of France at the mizzen, and a round shot rattled through the rigging of the Bridgwater Merchant. But he was two to one, and the game seemed with him. No time was wasted. Phips's ships came to and stood alongside, and the gunners got to work. The Bridgwater Merchant was high in the water, and her shot at first did little damage to the Maid of Provence, which, having the advantage of the wind, came nearer and nearer. The Swallow, with her twenty-odd guns, did better work, and carried away the foremast of the enemy, killing several men. But Iberville came on slowly, and, anxious to dispose of the Swallow first, gave her broadsides between wind and water, so that soon her decks were spotted with dying men, her bulwarks broken in, and her mainmast gone. The cannonade was heard in Boston, from which, a few hours later, two merchantmen set out for the scene of action, each carrying good guns. But the wind suddenly sank, and as the Maid of Provence, eager to close with the Bridgwater Merchant, edged slowly down, a fog came between, and the firing ceased on both sides. Iberville let his ship drift on her path, intent on a hand-to-hand fight aboard the Bridgwater Merchant; the grappling-irons were ready, and as they drifted there was silence. Every eye was strained. Suddenly a shape sprang out of the grey mist, and the Maid of Provence struck. There was a crash of timbers as the bows of the Swallow--it was she--were stove in, and then a wild cry. Instantly she began to sink. The grappling-irons remained motionless on the Maid of Provence. Iberville heard a commanding voice, a cheer, and saw a dozen figures jump from the shattered bow towards the bow of his own ship intent on fighting, but all fell short save one. It was a great leap, but the Englishman made it, catching the chains, and scrambling on deck. A cheer greeted him-the Frenchmen could not but admire so brave a feat. The Englishman took no notice, but instantly turned to see his own ship lurch forwards and, without a sound from her decks, sink gently down to her grave. He stood looking at the place where she had been, but there was only mist. He shook his head and a sob rattled in his throat; his brave, taciturn crew had gone down without a cry. He turned and faced his enemies. They had crowded forwards--Iberville, Sainte-Helene, Perrot, Maurice Joval, and the staring sailors. He choked down his emotion and faced them all like an animal at bay as Iberville stepped forwards. Without a word Gering pointed to the empty scabbard at his side. "No, pardon me," said Iberville drily, "not as our prisoner, monsieur. You have us at advantage; you will remain our guest." "I want no quarter," said Gering proudly and a little sullenly. "There can be no question of quarter, monsieur. You are only one against us all. You cannot fight; you saved your life by boarding us. Hospitality is sacred; you may not be a prisoner of war, for there is no war between our countries." "You came upon a private quarrel?" asked Gering. "Truly; and for the treasure--fair bone of fight between us." There was a pause, in which Gering stood half turned from them, listening. But the Bridgwater Merchant had drifted away in the mist. Presently he turned again to Iberville with a smile defiant and triumphant. Iberville understood, but showed nothing of what he felt, and he asked Sainte-Helene to show Gering to the cabin. When the fog cleared away there was no sign of the Bridgwater Merchant and Iberville, sure that she had made the port of Boston, and knowing that there must be English vessels searching for him, bore away to Quebec with Gering on board. He parted from his rival the day they arrived--Perrot was to escort him a distance on his way to Boston. Gering thanked him for his courtesy. "Indeed, then," said Iberville, "this is a debt--if you choose to call it so--for which I would have no thanks--no. For it would please me better to render accounts all at once some day, and get return in different form, monsieur." "Monsieur," said Gering, a little grandly, "you have come to me three times; next time I will come to you." "I trust that you will keep your word," answered Iberville, smiling. That day Iberville, protesting helplessly, was ordered away to France on a man-of-war, which had rocked in the harbour of Quebec for a month awaiting his return. Even Frontenac himself could not help him, for the order had come from the French minister. CHAPTER XVII THE GIFT OF A CAPTIVE Fortune had not been kind to Iberville, but still he kept a stoical cheerfulness. With the pride of a man who feels that he has impressed a woman, and knowing the strength of his purpose, he believed that Jessica should yet be his. Meanwhile matters should not lie still. In those days men made love by proxy, and Iberville turned to De Casson and Perrot. The night before he started for France they sat together in a little house flanking the Chateau St. Louis. Iberville had been speaking. "I know the strength of your feelings, Iberville," said De Casson, "but is it wise, and is it right?" Iberville made an airy motion with his hand. "My dear abbe, there is but one thing worth living for, and that is to follow your convictions. See: I have known you since you took me from my mother's last farewell. I have believed in you, cared for you, trusted you; we have been good comrades. Come, now, tell me: what would you think if my mind drifted! No, no, no! to stand by one's own heart is the gift of an honest man--I am a sad rogue, abbe, as you know, but I swear I would sooner let slip the friendship of King Louis himself than the hand of a good comrade. Well, my sword is for my king. I must obey him, I must leave my comrades behind, but I shall not forget, and they must not forget." At this he got to his feet, came over, laid a hand on the abbe's shoulder, and his voice softened: "Abbe, the woman shall be mine." "If God wills so, Iberville." "He will, He will." "Well," said Perrot, with a little laugh; "I think God will be good to a Frenchman when an Englishman is his foe." "But the girl is English--and a heretic," urged the abbe helplessly. Perrot laughed again. "That will make Him sorry for her." Meanwhile Iberville had turned to the table, and was now reading a letter. A pleased look came on his face, and he nodded in satisfaction. At last he folded it up with a smile and sealed it. "Well," he said, "the English is not good, for I have seen my Shakespeare little this time back, but it will do--it must do. In such things rhetoric is nothing. You will take it, Perrot?" he said, holding up the letter. Perrot reached out for it. "And there is something more." Iberville drew from his finger a costly ring. It had come from the hand of a Spanish noble, whose place he had taken in Spain years before. He had prevented his men from despoiling the castle, and had been bidden to take what he would, and had chosen only this. "Tell her," he said, "that it was the gift of a captive to me, and that it is the gift of a captive to her. For, upon my soul, I am prisoner to none other in God's world." Perrot weighed the ring up and down in his hand. "Bien," he said, "monsieur, it is a fine speech, but I do not understand. A prisoner, eh? I remember when you were a prisoner with me upon the Ottawa. Only a boy --only a boy, but, holy Mother, that was different! I will tell her how you never gave up; how you went on the hunt after Grey Diver, the Iroquois. Through the woods, silent--silent for days and days, Indians all round us. Death in the brush, death in the tree-top, death from the river-bank. I said to you, Give up; but you kept on. Then there were days when there was no sleep--no rest--we were like ghosts. Sometimes we come to a settler's cabin and see it all smoking; sometimes to a fort and find only a heap of bones--and other things! But you would not give up; you kept on. What for? That Indian chief killed your best friend. Well, that was for hate; you keep on and on and on for hate--and you had your way with Grey Diver; I heard your axe crash in his skull. All for hate! And what will you do for love?--I will ask her what will you do for love. Ah, you are a great man--but yes! I will tell her so." "Tell her what you please, Perrot." Iberville hummed an air as at some goodly prospect. Yet when he turned to the others again there grew a quick mist in his eyes. It was not so much the thought of the woman as of the men. There came to him with sudden force how these two comrades had been ever ready to sacrifice themselves for him, and he ready to accept the sacrifice. He was not ashamed of the mist, but he wondered that the thing had come to him all at once. He grasped the hands of both, shook them heartily, then dashed his fingers across his eyes, and with the instinct of every imperfect man,--that touch of the aboriginal in all of us, who must have a sign for an emotion, he went to a cabinet and out came a bottle of wine. An hour after, Perrot left him at the ship's side. They were both cheerful. "Two years, Perrot; two years!" he said. "Ah, mon grand capitaine!" Iberville turned away, then came back again. "You will start at once?" "At once; and the abbe shall write." Upon the lofty bank of the St. Lawrence, at the Sault au Matelot, a tall figure clad in a cassock stood and watched the river below. On the high cliff of Point Levis lights were showing, and fires burning as far off as the island of Orleans. And in that sweet curve of shore, from the St. Charles to Beauport, thousands of stars seemed shining. Nearer still, from the heights, there was the same strange scintillation; the great promontory had a coronet of stars. In the lower town there was like illumination, and out upon the river trailed long processions of light. It was the feast of good Sainte Anne de Beaupre. All day long had there been masses and processions on land. Hundreds of Jesuits, with thousands of the populace, had filed behind the cross and the host. And now there was a candle in every window. Indians, half-breeds, coureurs du bois, native Canadians, seigneurs, and noblesse, were joining in the function. But De Casson's eyes were not for these. He was watching the lights of a ship that slowly made its way down the river among the canoes, and his eyes never left it till it had passed beyond the island of Orleans and was lost in the night. "Mon cher!" he said, "mon enfant! She is not for him; she should not be. As a priest it were my duty to see that he should not marry her. As a man" he sighed--"as a man I would give my life for him." He lifted his hand and made the sign of the cross towards that spot on the horizon whither Iberville had gone. "He will be a great man some day," he added to himself--"a great man. There will be empires here, and when histories are written Pierre's shall be a name beside Frontenac's and La Salle's." All the human affection of the good abbe's life centred upon Iberville. Giant in stature, so ascetic and refined was his mind, his life, that he had the intuition of a woman and, what was more, little of the bigotry of his brethren. As he turned from the heights, made his way along the cliff and down Mountain Street, his thoughts were still upon the same subject. He suddenly paused. "He will marry the sword," he said, "and not the woman." How far he was right we may judge if we enter the house of Governor Nicholls at New York one month later. CHAPTER XVIII MAIDEN NO MORE It was late mid-summer, and just such an evening as had seen the attempted capture of Jessica Leveret years before. She sat at a window, looking out upon the garden and the river. The room was at the top of the house. It had been to her a kind of play-room when she had visited Governor Nicholls years before. To every woman memory is a kind of religion; and to Jessica as much as to any, perhaps more than to most, for she had imagination. She half sat, half knelt, her elbow on her knee, her soft cheek resting upon her firm, delicate hand. Her beauty was as fresh and sweet as on the day we first saw her. More, something deep and rich had entered into it. Her eyes had got that fine steadfastness which only deep tenderness and pride can give a woman: she had lived. She was smiling now, yet she was not merry; her brightness was the sunshine of a nature touched with an Arcadian simplicity. Such an one could not be wholly unhappy. Being made for others more than for herself, she had something of the divine gift of self-forgetfulness. As she sat there, her eyes ever watching the river as though for some one she expected, there came from the garden beneath the sound of singing. It was not loud, but deep and strong: "As the wave to the shore, as the dew to the leaf, As the breeze to the flower, As the scent of a rose to the heart of a child, 343 As the rain to the dusty land-- My heart goeth out unto Thee--unto Thee! The night is far spent and the day is at hand. "As the song of a bird to the call of a star, As the sun to the eye, As the anvil of man to the hammers of God, As the snow to the north Is my word unto Thy word--to Thy word! The night is far spent and the day is at hand." It was Morris who was singing. With growth of years had come increase of piety, and it was his custom once a week to gather about him such of the servants as would for the reading of Scripture. To Jessica the song had no religious significance. By the time it had passed through the atmosphere of memory and meditation, it carried a different meaning. Her forehead dropped forward in her fingers, and remained so until the song ended. Then she sighed, smiled wistfully, and shook her head. "Poor fellow! poor--Iberville!" she said, almost beneath her breath. The next morning she was to be married. George Gering had returned to her, for the second time defeated by Iberville. He had proved himself a brave man, and, what was much in her father's sight, he was to have his share of Phips's booty. And what was still more, Gering had prevailed upon Phips to allow Mr. Leveret's investment in the first expedition to receive a dividend from the second. Therefore she was ready to fulfil her promise. Yet had she misgivings? For, only a few days before, she had sent for the old pastor at Boston, who had known her since she was a child. She wished, she said, to be married by him and no other at Governor Nicholls's house, rather than at her own home at Boston, where there was none other of her name. The old pastor had come that afternoon, and she had asked him to see her that evening. Not long after Morris had done with singing there came a tapping at her door. She answered and old Pastor Macklin entered, a white-haired man of kindly yet stern countenance, by nature a gentleman, by practice a bigot. He came forward and took both her hands as she rose. "My dear young lady!" he said, and smiled kindly at her. After a word of greeting she offered him a chair, and came again to the window. Presently she looked up and said very simply: "I am going to be married. You have known me ever since I was born: do you think I will make a good wife?" "With prayer and chastening of the spirit, my daughter," he said. "But suppose that at the altar I remembered another man?" "A sin, my child, for which should be due sorrow." The girl smiled sadly. She felt poignantly how little he could help her. "And if the man were a Catholic and a Frenchman?" she said. "A papist and a Frenchman!" he cried, lifting up his hands. "My daughter, you ever were too playful. You speak of things impossible. I pray you listen." Jessica raised her hand as if to stop him and to speak herself, but she let him go on. With the least encouragement she might have told him all. She had had her moment of weakness, but now it was past. There are times when every woman feels she must have a confidant, or her heart will burst--have counsel or she will die. Such a time had come to Jessica. But she now learned, as we all must learn, that we live our dark hour alone. She listened as in a dream to the kindly bigot. When he had finished, she knelt and received his blessing. All the time she wore that strange, quiet smile. Soon afterwards he left her. She went again to the window. "A papist and a Frenchman--unpardonable sin!" she said into the distance. "Jessica, what a sinner art thou!" Presently there was a tap, the door opened, and George Gering entered. She turned to receive him, but there was no great lighting of the face. He came quickly to her, and ran his arm round her waist. A great kindness looked out of her eyes. Somehow she felt herself superior to him--her love was less and her nature deeper. He pressed her fingers to his lips. "Of what were you thinking, Jessica?" he asked. "Of what a sinner I am," she answered, with a sad kind of humour. "What a villain must I be, then!" he responded. "Well, yes," she said musingly; "I think you are something of a villain, George." "Well, well, you shall cure me of all mine iniquities," he said. "There will be a lifetime for it. Come, let us to the garden." "Wait," she said. "I told you that I was a sinner, George; I want to tell you how." "Tell me nothing; let us both go and repent," he rejoined, laughing, and he hurried her away. She had lost her opportunity. Next morning she was married. The day was glorious. The town was garlanded, and there was not an English merchant or a Dutch burgher but wore his holiday dress. The ceremony ended, a traveller came among the crowd. He asked a hurried question or two and then edged away. Soon he made a stand under the trees, and, viewing the scene, nodded his head and said: "The abbe was right." It was Perrot. A few hours afterwards the crowd had gone and the governor's garden was empty. Perrot still kept his watch under the tree, though why he could hardly say--his errand was useless now. But he had the gift of waiting. At last he saw a figure issue from a door and go down into the garden. He remembered the secret gate. He made a detour, reached it, and entered. Jessica was walking up and down in the pines. In an hour or so she was to leave for England. Her husband had gone to the ship to do some needful things, and she had stolen out for a moment's quiet. When Perrot faced her, she gave a little cry and started back. But presently she recovered, smiled at him, and said kindly: "You come suddenly, monsieur." "Yet have I travelled hard and long," he answered. "Yes?" "And I have a message for you." "A message?" she said abstractedly, and turned a little pale. "A message and a gift from Monsieur Iberville." He drew the letter and the ring from his pocket and held them out, repeating Iberville's message. There was a troubled look in her eyes and she was trembling a little now, but she spoke clearly. "Monsieur," she said, "you will tell Monsieur Iberville that I may not; I am married." "So, madame," he said. "But I still must give my message." When he had done so he said: "Will you take the letter?" He held it out. There was a moment's doubt and then she took it, but she did not speak. "Shall I carry no message, madame?" She hesitated. Then, at last: "Say that I wish him good fortune--with all my heart." "Good fortune--ah, madame!" he answered, in a meaning tone. "Say that I pray God may bless him, and make him a friend of my country," she added in a low, almost broken voice, and she held out her hand to him. The gallant woodsman pressed it to his lips. "I am sorry, madame," he replied, with an admiring look. She shook her head sadly. "Adieu, monsieur!" she said steadily and very kindly. A moment after he was gone. She looked at the missive steadfastly for a moment, then thrust it into the folds of her dress and, very pale, walked quietly to the house, where, inside her own room, she lighted a candle. She turned the letter over in her hand once or twice, and her fingers hung at the seal. But all at once she raised it to her lips, and then with a grave, firm look, held it in the flame and saw it pass in smoke. It was the last effort for victory. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Aboriginal in all of us, who must have a sign for an emotion Learned, as we all must learn, that we live our dark hour alone TRAIL OF THE SWORD By Gilbert Parker EPOCH THE FOURTH XIX. WHICH TELLS OF A BROTHER'S BLOOD CRYING FROM THE GROUND XX. A TRAP IS SET XXI. AN UNTOWARD MESSENGER XXII. FROM TIGER'S CLAW TO LION'S MOUTH XXIII. AT THE GATES OF MISFORTUNE XXIV. IN WHICH THE SWORD IS SHEATHED CHAPTER XIX WHICH TELLS OF A BROTHER'S BLOOD CRYING FROM THE GROUND Two men stood leaning against a great gun aloft on the heights of Quebec. The air of an October morning fluttered the lace at their breasts and lifted the long brown hair of the younger man from his shoulders. His companion was tall, alert, bronzed, grey-headed, with an eagle eye and a glance of authority. He laid his hand on the shoulder of the younger man and said: "I am glad you have come, Iberville, for I need you, as I need all your brave family--I could spare not one." "You honour me, sir," was the reply; "and, believe me, there is none in Quebec but thanks God that their governor is here before Phips rounds Isle Orleans yonder." "You did nobly while I was away there in Montreal waiting for the New Yorkers to take it--if they could. They were a sorry rabble, for they rushed on La Prairie, that meagre place,--massacred and turned tail." "That's strange, sir, for they are brave men, stupid though they be. I have fought them." "Well, well, as that may be! We will give them chance for bravery. Our forts are strong from the Sault au Matelot round to Champigny's palace, the trenches and embankments are well ended, and if they give me but two days more I will hold the place against twice their thirty-four sail and twenty-five hundred men." "For how long, your excellency?" Count Frontenac nodded. "Spoken like a soldier. There's the vital point. By the mass, just so long as food lasts! But here we are with near two thousand men, and all the people from the villages, besides Callieres's seven or eight hundred, should they arrive in time--and, pray God they may, for there will be work to do. If they come at us in front here and behind from the Saint Charles, shielding their men as they cross the river, we shall have none too many; but we must hold it." The governor drew himself up proudly. He had sniffed the air of battle for over fifty years with all manner of enemies, and his heart was in the thing. Never had there been in Quebec a more moving sight than when he arrived from Montreal the evening before, and climbed Mountain Street on his way to the chateau. Women and children pressed round him, blessing him; priests, as he passed, lifted hands in benediction; men cheered and cried for joy; in every house there was thanksgiving that the imperious old veteran had come in time. Prevost the town mayor, Champigny the Intendant, Sainte-Helene, Maricourt, and Longueil, had worked with the skill of soldiers who knew their duty, and it was incredible what had been done since the alarm had come to Prevost that Phips had entered the St. Lawrence and was anchored at Tadousac. "And how came you to be here, Iberville?" queried the governor pleasantly. "We scarce expected you." "The promptings of the saints and the happy kindness of King Louis, who will send my ship here after me. I boarded the first merchantman with its nose to the sea, and landed here soon after you left for Montreal." "So? Good! See you, see you, Iberville: what of the lady Puritan's marriage with the fire-eating Englishman?" The governor smiled as he spoke, not looking at Iberville. His glance was upon the batteries in lower town. He had inquired carelessly, for he did not think the question serious at this distance of time. Getting no answer, he turned smartly upon Iberville, surprised, and he was struck by the sudden hardness in the sun-browned face and the flashing eyes. Years had deepened the power of face and form. "Your excellency will remember," he answered, in a low, cold tone, "that I once was counselled to marry the sword." The governor laid his hand upon Iberville's shoulder. "Pardon me," he said. "I was not wise or kind. But--I warrant the sword will be your best wife in the end." "I have a favour to ask, your excellency." "You might ask many, my Iberville. If all gentlemen here, clerics and laymen, asked as few as you, my life would be peaceful. Your services have been great, one way and another. Ask, and I almost promise now. "'Tis this. Six months ago you had a prisoner here, captured on the New England border. After he was exchanged you found that he had sent a plan of the fortifications to the Government of Massachusetts. He passed in the name of George Escott. Do you remember?" "Very well indeed." "Suppose he were taken prisoner again?" "I should try him." "And shoot him, if guilty?" "Or hang him." "His name was not Escott. It was Gering--Captain George Gering." The governor looked hard at Iberville for a moment, and a grim smile played upon his lips. "H'm! How do you guess that?" "From Perrot, who knows him well." "Why did Perrot not tell me?" "Perrot and Sainte-Helene had been up at Sault Sainte Marie. They did not arrive until the day he was exchanged, nor did not know till then. There was no grave reason for speaking, and they said nothing." "And what imports this?" "I have no doubt that Mr. Gering is with Sir William Phips below at Tadousac. If he is taken let him be at my disposal." The governor pursed his lips, then flashed a deep, inquiring glance at his companion. "The new mistress turned against the old, Iberville!" he said. "Gering is her husband, eh? Well, I will trust you: it shall be as you wish--a matter for us two alone." At that moment Sainte-Helene and Maricourt appeared and presently, in the waning light, they all went down towards the convent of the Ursulines, and made their way round the rock, past the three gates to the palace of the Intendant, and so on to the St. Charles River. Next morning word was brought that Phips was coming steadily up, and would probably arrive that day. All was bustle in the town, and prayers and work went on without ceasing. Late in the afternoon the watchers from the rock of Quebec saw the ships of the New England fleet slowly rounding the point of the Island of Orleans. To the eyes of Sir William Phips and his men the great fortress, crowned with walls, towers, and guns, rising three hundred feet above the water, the white banner flaunting from the chateau and the citadel, the batteries, the sentinels upon the walls--were suggestive of stern work. Presently there drew away from Phips's fleet a boat carrying a subaltern with a flag of truce, who was taken blindfold to the Chateau St. Louis. Frontenac's final words to the youth were these: "Bid your master do his best, and I will do mine." Disguised as a river-man, Iberville himself, with others, rowed the subaltern back almost to the side of the admiral's ship, for by the freak of some peasants the boat which had brought him had been set adrift. As they rowed from the ship back towards the shore, Iberville, looking up, saw, standing on the deck, Phips and George Gering. He had come for this. He stood up in his boat and took off his cap. His long clustering curls fell loose on his shoulders, and he waved a hand with a nonchalant courtesy. Gering sprang forward. "Iberville!" he cried, and drew his pistol. Iberville saw the motion, but did not stir. He called up, however, in a clear, distinct voice: "Breaker of parole, keep your truce!" "He is right," said Gering quietly; "quite right." Gering was now hot for instant landing and attack. Had Phips acted upon his advice the record of the next few days might have been reversed. But the disease of counsel, deliberation, and prayer had entered into the soul of the sailor and treasure-hunter, now Sir William Phips, governor of Massachusetts. He delayed too long: the tide turned; there could be no landing that night. Just after sundown there was a great noise, and the ringing of bells and sound of singing came over the water to the idle fleet. "What does it mean?" asked Phips of a French prisoner captured at Tadousac. "Ma foi! That you lose the game," was the reply. "Callieres, the governor of Montreal, with his Canadians, and Nicholas Perrot with his coureurs du bois have arrived. You have too much delay, monsieur." In Quebec, when this contingent arrived, the people went wild. And Perrot was never prouder than when, in Mountain Street, Iberville, after three years' absence, threw his arms round him and kissed him on each cheek. It was in the dark hour before daybreak that Iberville and Perrot met for their first talk after the long separation. What had occurred on the day of Jessica's marriage Perrot had, with the Abbe de Casson's help, written to Iberville. But they had had no words together. Now, in a room of the citadel which looked out on the darkness of the river and the deeper gloom of the Levis shore, they sat and talked, a single candle burning, their weapons laid on the table between them. They said little at first, but sat in the window looking down on the town and the river. At last Iberville spoke. "Tell me it all as you remember it, Perrot." Perrot, usually swift of speech when once started, was very slow now. He felt the weight of every word, and he had rather have told of the scalping of a hundred men than of his last meeting with Jessica. When he had finished, Iberville said: "She kept the letter, you say?" Perrot nodded, and drew the ring from a pouch which he carried. "I have kept it safe," he said, and held it out. Iberville took it and turned it over in his hand, with an enigmatical smile. "I will hand it to her myself," he said, half beneath his breath. "You do not give her up, monsieur?" Iberville laughed. Then he leaned forward, and found Perrot's eyes in the half darkness. "Perrot, she kept the letter, she would have kept the ring if she could. Listen: Monsieur Gering has held to his word; he has come to seek me this time. He knows that while I live the woman is not his, though she bears his name. She married him--Why? It is no matter --he was there, I was not. There were her father, her friends! I was a Frenchman, a Catholic--a thousand things! And a woman will yield her hand while her heart remains in her own keeping. Well, he has come. Now, one way or another, he must be mine. We have great accounts to settle, and I want it done between him and me. If he remains in the ship we must board it. With our one little craft there in the St. Charles we will sail out, grapple the admiral's ship, and play a great game: one against thirty-four. It has been done before. Capture the admiral's ship and we can play the devil with the rest of them. If not, we can die. Or, if Gering lands and fights, he also must be ours. Sainte-Helene and Maricourt know him, and they with myself, Clermont, and Saint Denis, are to lead and resist attacks by land--Frontenac has promised that: so he must be ours one way or another. He must be captured, tried as a spy, and then he is mine--is mine!" "Tried as a spy--ah, I see! You would disgrace? Well, but even then he is not yours." Iberville got to his feet. "Don't try to think it out, Perrot. It will come to you in good time. I can trust you--you are with me in all?" "Have I ever failed you?" "Never. You will not hesitate to go against the admiral's ship? Think, what an adventure! Remember Adam Dollard and the Long Sault!" What man in Canada did not remember that handful of men, going out with an antique courage to hold back the Iroquois, and save the colony, and die? Perrot grasped Iberville's hand, and said: "Where you go, I go. Where I go, my men will follow." Their pact was made. They sat there in silence till the grey light of morning crept slowly in. Still they did not lie down to rest; they were waiting for De Casson. He came before a ray of sunshine had pierced the leaden light. Tall, massive, proudly built, his white hair a rim about his forehead, his deep eyes watchful and piercing, he looked a soldier in disguise, as indeed he was to-day as much a soldier as when he fought under Turenne forty years before. The three comrades were together again. Iberville told his plans. The abbe lifted his fingers in admonition once or twice, but his eyes flashed as Iberville spoke of an attempt to capture the admiral on his own ship. When Iberville had finished, he said in a low voice: "Pierre, must it still be so--that the woman shall prompt you to these things?" "I have spoken of no woman, abbe." "Yet you have spoken." He sighed and raised his hand. "The man--the men--down there would destroy our country. They are our enemies, and we do well to slay. But remember, Pierre--'What God hath joined let no man put asunder!' To fight him as an enemy of your country--well; to fight him that you may put asunder is not well." A look, half-pained, half-amused, crossed Iberville's face. "And yet heretics--heretics, abbe" "Marriage is no heresy." "H'm-they say different at Versailles." "Since De Montespan went, and De Maintenon rules?" Iberville laughed. "Well, well, perhaps not." They sat silent for a time, but presently Iberville rose, went to a cupboard, drew forth some wine and meat, and put the coffee on the fire. Then, with a gesture as of remembrance, he went to a box, drew forth his own violin, and placed it in the priest's hands. It seemed strange that, in the midst of such great events, the loss or keeping of an empire, these men should thus devote the few hours granted them for sleep; but they did according to their natures. The priest took the instrument and tuned it softly. Iberville blew out the candle. There was only the light of the fire, with the gleam of the slow-coming dawn. Once again, even as years before in the little house at Montreal, De Casson played--now with a martial air. At last he struck the chords of a song which had been a favourite with the Carignan-Salieres regiment. Instantly Iberville and Perrot responded, and there rang out from three strong throats the words: "There was a king of Normandy, And he rode forth to war, Gai faluron falurette! He had five hundred men-no more! Gai faluron donde! "There was a king of Normandy, Came back from war again; He brought a maid, O, fair was she! And twice five hundred men-- Gai faluron falurette! Gai faluron donde!" They were still singing when soldiers came by the window in the first warm light of sunrise. These caught it up, singing it as they marched on. It was taken up again by other companies, and by the time Iberville presented himself to Count Frontenac, not long after, there was hardly a citizen, soldier, or woodsman, but was singing it. The weather and water were blustering all that day, and Phips did not move, save for a small attempt--repulsed--by a handful of men to examine the landing. The next morning, however, the attack began. Twelve hundred men were landed at Beauport, in the mud and low water, under one Major Walley. With him was Gering, keen for action--he had persuaded Phips to allow him to fight on land. To meet the English, Iberville, Sainte-Helene, and Perrot issued forth with three hundred sharpshooters and a band of Huron Indians. In the skirmish that followed, Iberville and Perrot pressed with a handful of men forward very close to the ranks of the English. In the charge which the New Englander ordered, Iberville and Perrot saw Gering, and they tried hard to reach him. But the movement between made it impossible without running too great risk. For hours the fierce skirmishing went on, but in the evening the French withdrew and the New Englanders made their way towards the St. Charles, where vessels were to meet them, and protect them as they crossed the river and attacked the town in the rear --help that never came. For Phips, impatient, spent his day in a terrible cannonading, which did no great damage to the town--or the cliff. It was a game of thunder, nothing worse, and Walley and Gering with their men were neglected. The fight with the ships began again at daybreak. Iberville, seeing that Walley would not attack, joined Sainte-Helene and Maricourt at the battery, and one of Iberville's shots brought down the admiral's flagstaff, with its cross of St. George. It drifted towards the shore, and Maurice Joval went out in a canoe under a galling fire and brought it up to Frontenac. Iberville and Sainte-Helene concentrated themselves on the Six Friends-- the admiral's ship. In vain Phips's gunners tried to dislodge them and their guns. They sent ball after ball into her hull and through her rigging; they tore away her mainmast, shattered her mizzenmast, and handled her as viciously as only expert gunners could. The New Englander replied bravely, but Quebec was not destined to be taken by bombardment, and Iberville saw the Six Friends drift, a shattered remnant, out of his line of fire. It was the beginning of the end. One by one the thirty-four craft drew away, and Walley and Gering were left with their men, unaided in the siege. There was one moment when the cannonading was greatest and the skirmishers seemed withdrawn, that Gering, furious with the delay, almost prevailed upon the cautious Walley to dash across the river and make a desperate charge up the hill, and in at the back door of the town. But Walley was, after all, a merchant and not a soldier, and would not do it. Gering fretted on his chain, sure that Iberville was with the guns against the ships, and would return to harass his New Englanders soon. That evening it turned bitter cold, and without the ammunition promised by Phips, with little or no food and useless field-pieces, their lot was hard. But Gering had his way the next morning. Walley set out to the Six Friends to represent his case to the admiral. Gering saw how the men chafed, and he sounded a few of them. Their wills were with him they had come to fight, and fight they would, if they could but get the chance. With a miraculous swiftness the whispered word went through the lines. Gering could not command them to it, but if the men went forward he must go with them. The ships in front were silent. Quebec was now interested in these men near the St. Charles River. As Iberville stood with Frontenac near the palace of the Intendant, watching, he saw the enemy suddenly hurry forward. In an instant he was dashing down to join his brothers, Sainte-Helene, Longueil, and Perrot; and at the head of a body of men they pushed on to get over the ford and hold it, while Frontenac, leading three battalions of troops, got away more slowly. There were but a few hundred men with Iberville, arrayed against Gering's many hundreds; but the French were bush-fighters and the New Englanders were only stout sailors and ploughmen. Yet Gering had no reason to be ashamed of his men that day; they charged bravely, but their enemies were hid to deadly advantage behind trees and thickets, the best sharpshooters of the province. Perrot had had his orders from Iberville: Iberville himself was, if possible, to engage Gering in a hand-to-hand fight; Perrot, on the other hand, was to cut Gering off from his men and bring him in a prisoner. More than once both had Gering within range of their muskets, but they held their hands, nor indeed did Gering himself, who once also had a chance of bringing Iberville down, act on his opportunity. Gering's men were badly exposed, and he sent them hard at the thickets, clearing the outposts at some heavy loss. His men were now scattered, and he shifted his position so as to bring him nearer the spot where Sainte-Helene and Longueil were pushing forward fresh outposts. He saw the activity of the two brothers, but did not recognise them, and sent a handful of men to dislodge them. Both Sainte-Helene and Longueil exposed themselves for a moment, as they made for an advantageous thicket. Gering saw his opportunity, took a musket from a soldier, and fired. Sainte-Helene fell mortally wounded. Longueil sprang forward with a cry of rage, but a spent ball struck him. Iberville, at a distance, saw the affair. With a smothered oath he snatched a musket from Maurice Joval, took steady aim and fired. The distance was too great, the wind too strong; he only carried away an epaulet. But Perrot, who was not far from the fallen brothers, suddenly made a dash within easy range of the rifles of the British, and cut Gering and two of his companions off from the main body. It was done so suddenly that Gering found himself between two fires. His companions drew close to him, prepared to sell their lives dearly, but Perrot called to them to surrender. Gering saw the fruitlessness of resistance and, to save his companions' lives, yielded. The siege of Quebec was over. The British contented themselves with holding their position till Walley returned bearing the admiral's orders to embark again for the fleet. And so in due time they did--in rain, cold, and gloom. In a few days Sir William Phips, having patched up his shattered ships, sailed away, with the knowledge that the capture of Quebec was not so easy as finding a lost treasure. He had tried in vain to effect Gering's release. When Gering surrendered, Perrot took his sword with a grim coolness and said: "Come, monsieur, and see what you think your stay with us may be like." In a moment he was stopped beside the dead body of Sainte-Helene. "Your musket did this," said Perrot, pointing down. "Do you know him?" Gering stooped over and looked. "My God-Sainte-Helene!" he cried. Perrot crossed himself and mumbled a prayer. Then he took from his bosom a scarf and drew it over the face of the dead man. He turned to Longueil. "And here, monsieur, is another brother of Monsieur Iberville," he said. Longueil was insensible but not dangerously wounded. Perrot gave a signal and the two brothers were lifted and carried down towards the ford, followed by Perrot and Gering. On their way they met Iberville. All the brother, the comrade, in Iberville spoke first. He felt Longueil's hand and touched his pulse, then turned, as though he had not seen Gering, to the dead body of Sainte-Helene. Motioning to the men to put it down, he stooped and took Perrot's scarf from the dead face. It was yet warm, and the handsome features wore a smile. Iberville looked for a moment with a strange, cold quietness. He laid his hand upon the brow, touched the cheek, gave a great sigh, and made the sacred gesture over the body; then taking his own handkerchief he spread it over the face. Presently he motioned for the bodies to be carried on. Perrot whispered to him, and now he turned and look at Gering with a malignant steadiness. "You have had the great honour, sir," he said, "to kill one of the bravest gentlemen of France. More than once to-day myself and my friend here"--pointing to Perrot "could have killed you. Why did we not? Think you, that you might kill my brother, whose shoe-latchet were too high for you? Monsieur, the sum mounts up." His voice was full of bitterness and hatred. "Why did we spare you?" he repeated, and paused. Gering could understand Iberville's quiet, vicious anger. He would rather have lost a hand than have killed Sainte-Helene, who had, on board the Maid of Provence, treated him with great courtesy. He only shook his head now. "Well, I will tell you," said Iberville. "We have spared you to try you for a spy. And after--after! His laugh was not pleasant to hear. "A spy? It is false!" cried Gering. "You will remember--monsieur, that once before you gave me the lie!" Gering made a proud gesture of defiance, but answered nothing. That night he was lodged in the citadel. CHAPTER XX A TRAP IS SET Gering was tried before Governor Frontenac and the full council. It was certain that he, while a prisoner at Quebec, had sent to Boston plans of the town, the condition of the defences, the stores, the general armament and the approaches, for the letter was intercepted. Gering's defence was straightforward. He held that he had sent the letter at a time when he was a prisoner simply, which was justifiable; not when a prisoner on parole, which was shameless. The temper of the court was against him. Most important was the enmity of the Jesuits, whose hatred of Puritanism cried out for sacrifice. They had seen the work of the saints in every turn of the late siege, and they believed that the Lord had delivered the man into their hands. In secret ways their influence was strong upon many of the council, particularly those who were not soldiers. A soldier can appreciate bravery, and Gering had been courageous. But he had killed one of the most beloved of Canadian officers, the gallant Sainte-Helene! Frontenac, who foresaw an end of which the council could not know, summed up, not unfairly, against Gering. Gering's defence was able, proud, and sometimes passionate. Once or twice his words stung his judges like whips across their faces. He showed no fear; he asked no mercy. He held that he was a prisoner of war, and entitled to be treated as such. So strong, indeed, was his pleading, so well did his stout courage stand by him, that had Count Frontenac balanced in his favour he might have been quit of the charge of spying. But before the trial Iberville had had solitary talk with Frontenac, in which a request was repeated and a promise renewed. Gering was condemned to die. It was perhaps the bravest moment of a brave life. "Gentlemen," he said, "I have heard your sentence, but, careless of military honour as you are, you will not dare put me to death. Do not think because we have failed this once that we shall not succeed again. I tell you, that if, instead of raw Boston sailors, ploughmen and merchant captains, and fishing craft and trading vessels, I had three English war-ships and one thousand men, I would level your town from the citadel to the altar of St. Joseph's. I do not fear to die, nor that I shall die by your will. But, if so, 'twill be with English loathing of injustice." His speech was little like to mollify his judges, and at his reference to St. Joseph's a red spot showed upon many cheeks, while to the charge against their military honour, Frontenac's eyes lighted ominously. But the governor merely said: "You have a raw temper, sir. We will chasten you with bread and water; and it were well for you, even by your strange religion, to qualify for passage from this world." Gering was taken back to prison. As he travelled the streets he needed all his fortitude, for his fiery speech had gone abroad, distorted from its meaning, and the common folk railed at him. As chastening, it was good exercise; but when now and again the name of Sainte-Helene rang towards him, a cloud passed over his face; that touched him in a tender corner. He had not met Iberville since his capture, but now, on entering the prison, he saw his enemy not a dozen paces from the door, pale and stern. Neither made a sign, but with a bitter sigh Gering entered. It was curious how their fortunes had see-sawed, the one against the other, for twelve years. Left alone in his cell with his straw and bread and water, he looked round mechanically. It was yet after noon. All at once it came to him that this was not the cell which he had left that day. He got up and began to examine it. Like every healthy prisoner, he thought upon means and chances of escape. It did not seem a regular cell for prisoners, for there was a second door. This was in one corner and very narrow, the walls not coming to a right angle, but having another little strip of wall between. He tried to settle its position by tracing in his mind the way he had come through the prison. Iberville or Perrot could have done so instinctively, but he was not woodsman enough. He thought, however, that the doorway led to a staircase, like most doors of the kind in old buildings. There was the window. It was small and high up from the floor, and even could he loosen the bars, it were not possible to squeeze through. Besides, there was the yard to cross and the outer wall to scale. And that achieved, with the town still full of armed men, he would have a perilous run. He tried the door: it was stoutly fastened; the bolts were on the other side; the key-hole was filled. Here was sufficient exasperation. He had secreted a small knife on his person, and he now sat down, turned it over in his hand, looked up at the window and the smooth wall below it, at the mocking door, then smiled at his own poor condition and gave himself to cheerless meditation. He was concerned most for his wife. It was not in him to give up till the inevitable was on him and he could not yet believe that Count Frontenac would carry out the sentence. At the sudden thought of the rope--so ignominious, so hateful--he shuddered. But the shame of it was for his wife, who had dissipated a certain selfish and envious strain in him. Jessica had drawn from him the Puritanism which had made him self- conscious, envious, insular. CHAPTER XXI AN UNTOWARD MESSENGER A few days after this, Jessica, at her home in Boston,--in the room where she had promised her father to be George Gering's wife,--sat watching the sea. Its slow swinging music came up to her through the October air. Not far from her sat an old man, his hands clasping a chair-arm, a book in his lap, his chin sunk on his breast. The figure, drooping helplessly, had still a distinguished look, an air of honourable pride. Presently he raised his head, his drowsy eyes lighted as they rested on her, and he said: "The fleet has not returned, my dear? Quebec is not yet taken?" "No, father," she replied, "not yet." "Phips is a great man--a great man!" he said, chuckling. "Ah, the treasure!" Jessica did not reply. Her fingers went up to her eyes; they seemed to cool the hot lids. "Ay, ay, it was good," he added, in a quavering voice, "and I gave you your dowry!" Now there was a gentle, soft laugh of delight and pride, and he reached out a hand towards her. She responded with a little laugh which was not unlike his, but there was something more: that old sweet sprightliness of her youth, shot through with a haunting modulation,--almost pensiveness, but her face was self-possessed. She drew near, pressed the old man's hand, and spoke softly. Presently she saw that he was asleep. She sat for some time, not stirring. At last she was about to rise and take him to his room, but hearing noises in the street she stepped to the window. There were men below, and this made her apprehensive. She hurried over, kissed the old man, passed from the room, and met her old servant Hulm in the passage, who stretched out her hand in distress. "What is it, Hulm?" she asked, a chill at her heart. "Oh, how can I tell you!" was the answer. "Our fleet was beaten, and--and my master is a prisoner." The wife saw that this was not all. "Tell me everything, Hulm," she said trembling, yet ready for the worst. "Oh, my dear, dear mistress, I cannot!" "Hulm, you see that I am calm," she answered. "You are only paining me." "They are to try him for his life!" She caught her mistress by the waist, but Jessica recovered instantly. She was very quiet, very pale, yet the plumbless grief of her eyes brought tears to Hulm's face. She stood for a moment in deep thought. "Is your brother Aaron in Boston, Hulm?" she asked presently. "He is below, dear mistress." "Ask him to step to the dining-room. And that done, please go to my father. And, Hulm, dear creature, you can aid me better if you do not weep." She then passed down a side staircase and entered the dining-room. A moment afterwards Aaron Hulm came in. "Aaron," she said, as he stood confused before her misery, "know you the way to Quebec?" "Indeed, madame, very well. Madame, I am sorry--" "Let us not dwell upon it, Aaron. Can you get a few men together to go there?" "Within an hour." "Very well, I shall be ready." "You, madame--ready? You do not think of going?" "Yes, I am going." "But, madame, it is not safe. The Abenaquis and Iroquois are not friendly, and--" "Is this friendly? Is it like a good friend, Aaron Hulm? Did I not nurse your mother when--" He dropped on one knee, took her hand and kissed it. "Madame," he said loyally, "I will do anything you ask; I feared only for your safety." An hour afterwards she came into the room where her father still slept. Stooping, she kissed his forehead, and fondled his thin grey hair. Then she spoke to Hulm. "Tell him," she said, "that I will come back soon: that my husband needs me, and that I have gone to him. Tell him that we will both come back-- both, Hulm, you understand!" "Dear mistress, I understand." But the poor soul made a gesture of despair. "It is even as I say. We will both come back," was the quiet reply. "Something as truthful as God Himself tells me so. Take care of my dear father--I know you will; keep from him the bad news, and comfort him." Then with an affectionate farewell she went to her room, knelt down and prayed. When she rose she said to herself: "I am thankful now that I have no child." In ten minutes a little company of people, led by Aaron Hulm, started away from Boston, making for a block-house fifteen miles distant, where they were to sleep. The journey was perilous, and more than once it seemed as if they could not reach Quebec alive, but no member of the party was more cheerful than Jessica. Her bravery and spirit never faltered before the others, though sometimes at night, when lying awake, she had a wild wish to cry out or to end her troubles in the fast-flowing Richelieu. But this was only at night. In the daytime action eased the strain, and at last she was rewarded by seeing from the point of Levis, the citadel of Quebec. They were questioned and kept in check for a time, but at length Aaron and herself were let cross the river. It was her first sight of Quebec, and its massive, impregnable form struck a chill to her heart: it suggested great sternness behind it. They were passed on unmolested towards the Chateau St. Louis. The anxious wife wished to see Count Frontenac himself and then to find Iberville. Enemy of her country though he was, she would appeal to him. As she climbed the steep steps of Mountain Street, worn with hard travel, she turned faint. But the eyes of curious folk were on her, and she drew herself up bravely. She was admitted almost at once to the governor. He was at dinner when she came. When her message was brought to him, his brows twitched with surprise and perplexity. He called Maurice Joval, and ordered that she be shown to his study and tendered every courtesy. A few moments later he entered the room. Wonder and admiration crossed his face. He had not thought to see so beautiful a woman. Himself an old courtier, he knew women, and he could understand how Iberville had been fascinated. She had arranged her toilette at Levis, and there were few traces of the long, hard journey, save that her hands and face were tanned. The eloquence of her eyes, the sorrowful, distant smile which now was natural to her, worked upon the old soldier before she spoke a word. And after she had spoken, had pleaded her husband's cause, and appealed to the nobleman's chivalry, Frontenac was moved. But his face was troubled. He drew out his watch and studied it. Presently he went to the door and called Maurice Joval. There was whispering, and then the young man went away. "Madame, you have spoken of Monsieur Iberville," said the governor. "Years ago he spoke to me of you." Her eyes dropped, and then they raised steadily, clearly. "I am sure, sir," she said, "that Monsieur Iberville would tell you that my husband could never be dishonourable. They have been enemies, but noble enemies." "Yet, Monsieur Iberville might be prejudiced," rejoined the governor. "A brother's life has weight." "A brother's life!" she broke in fearfully. "Madame, your husband killed Iberville's brother." She swayed. The governor's arm was as quick to her waist as a gallant's of twenty-five: not his to resist the despair of so noble a creature. He was sorry for her; but he knew that if all had gone as had been planned by Iberville, within a half-hour this woman would be a widow. With some women, perhaps, he would not have hesitated: he would have argued that the prize was to the victor, and that, Gering gone, Jessica would amiably drift upon Iberville. But it came to him that she was not as many other women. He looked at his watch again, and she mistook the action. "Oh, your excellency," she said, "do not grudge these moments to one pleading for a life-for justice." "You mistake, madame," he said; "I was not grudging the time--for myself." At that moment Maurice Joval entered and whispered to the governor. Frontenac rose. "Madame," he said, "your husband has escaped." A cry broke from her. "Escaped! escaped!" She saw a strange look in the governor's eyes. "But you have not told me all," she urged; "there is more. Oh, your excellency, speak!" "Only this, madame: he may be retaken and--" "And then? What then?" she cried. "Upon what happens then," he as drily as regretfully added, "I shall have no power." But to the quick searching prayer, the proud eloquence of the woman, the governor, bound though he was to secresy, could not be adamant. "There is but one thing I can do for you," he said at last. "You know Father Dollier de Casson?" To her assent, he added: "Then go to him. Ask no questions. If anything can be done, he may do it for you; that he will I do not know." She could not solve the riddle, but she must work it out. There was the one great fact: her husband had escaped. "You will do all you can do, your excellency?" she said. "Indeed, madame, I have done all I can," he said. With impulse she caught his hand and kissed it. A minute afterwards she was gone with Maurice Joval, who had orders to bring her to the abbe's house--that, and no more. The governor, left alone, looked at the hand that she had kissed and said: "Well, well, I am but a fool still. Yet--a woman in a million!" He took out his watch. "Too late," he added. "Poor lady!" A few minutes afterwards Jessica met the abbe on his own doorstep. Maurice Joval disappeared, and the priest and the woman were alone together. She told him what had just happened. "There is some mystery," she said, pain in her voice. "Tell me, has my husband been retaken?" "Madame, he has." "Is he in danger?" The priest hesitated, then presently inclined his head in assent. "Once before I talked with you," she said, "and you spoke good things. You are a priest of God. I know that you can help me, or Count Frontenac would not have sent me to you. Oh, will you take me to my husband?" If Count Frontenac had had a struggle, here was a greater. First, the man was a priest in the days when the Huguenots were scattering to the four ends of the earth. The woman and her husband were heretics, and what better were they than thousands of others? Then, Sainte-Helene had been the soldier-priest's pupil. Last of all, there was Iberville, over whom this woman had cast a charm perilous to his soul's salvation. He loved Iberville as his own son. The priest in him decided against the woman; the soldier in him was with Iberville in this event--for a soldier's revenge was its mainspring. But beneath all was a kindly soul which intolerance could not warp, and this at last responded. His first words gave her a touch of hope. "Madame," he said, "I know not that aught can be done, but come." CHAPTER XXII FROM TIGER'S CLAW TO LION'S MOUTH Every nation has its traitors, and there was an English renegade soldier at Quebec. At Iberville's suggestion he was made one of the guards of the prison. It was he that, pretending to let Gering win his confidence, at last aided him to escape through the narrow corner-door of his cell. Gering got free of the citadel--miraculously, as he thought; and, striking off from the road, began to make his way by a roundabout to the St. Charles River, where at some lonely spot he might find a boat. No alarm had been given, and as time passed his chances seemed growing, when suddenly there sprang from the grass round him armed men, who closed in, and at the points of swords and rapiers seized him. Scarcely a word was spoken by his captors, and he did not know who they were, until, after a long detour, he was brought inside a manor-house, and there, in the light of flaring candles, faced Perrot and Iberville. It was Perrot who had seized him. "Monsieur," said Perrot, saluting, "be sure this is a closer prison than that on the heights." This said, he wheeled and left the room. The two gentlemen were left alone. Gering folded his arms and stood defiant. "Monsieur," said Iberville, in a low voice, "we are fortunate to meet so at last." "I do not understand you," was the reply. "Then let me speak of that which was unfortunate. Once you called me a fool and a liar. We fought and were interrupted. We met again, with the same ending, and I was wounded by the man Bucklaw. Before the wound was healed I had to leave for Quebec. Years passed, you know well how. We met in the Spaniards' country, where you killed my servant; and again at Fort Rupert, you remember. At the fort you surrendered before we had a chance to fight. Again, we were on the hunt for treasure. You got it; and almost in your own harbour I found you, and fought you and a greater ship with you, and ran you down. As your ship sank you sprang from it to my own ship--a splendid leap. Then you were my guest, and we could not fight; all--all unfortunate." He paused. Gering was cool; he saw Iberville's purpose, and he was ready to respond to it. "And then?" asked Gering. "Your charge is long--is it finished?" A hard light came into Iberville's eyes. "And then, monsieur, you did me the honour to come to my own country. We did not meet in the fighting, and you killed my brother." Iberville crossed himself. "Then"--his voice was hard and bitter--"you were captured; no longer a prisoner of war, but one who had broken his parole. You were thrown into prison, were tried and condemned to death. There remained two things: that you should be left to hang, or an escape--that we should meet here and now." "You chose the better way, monsieur." "I treat you with consideration, I hope, monsieur." Gering waved his hand in acknowledgment, and said: "What weapons do you choose?" Iberville quietly laid on the table a number of swords. "If I should survive this duel, monsieur," questioned Gering, "shall I be free?" "Monsieur, escape will be unnecessary." "Before we engage, let me say that I regret your brother's death." "Monsieur, I hope to deepen that regret," answered Iberville quietly. Then they took up their swords. CHAPTER XXIII AT THE GATES OF MISFORTUNE Meanwhile the abbe and Jessica were making their way swiftly towards the manor-house. They scarcely spoke as they went, but in Jessica's mind was a vague horror. Lights sparkled on the crescent shore of Beauport, and the torches of fishermen flared upon the St. Charles. She looked back once towards the heights of Quebec and saw the fires of many homes--they scorched her eyes. She asked no questions. The priest beside her was silent, not looking at her at all. At last he turned and said: "Madame, whatever has happened, whatever may happen, I trust you will be brave." "Monsieur l'Abbe" she answered, "I have travelled from Boston here--can you doubt it?" The priest sighed. "May the hope that gave you strength remain, madame!" A little longer and then they stood within a garden thick with plants and trees. As they passed through it, Jessica was vaguely aware of the rich fragrance of fallen leaves and the sound of waves washing the foot of the cliffs. The abbe gave a low call, and almost instantly Perrot stood before them. Jessica recognised him. With a little cry she stepped to him quickly and placed her hand upon his arm. She did not seem conscious that he was her husband's enemy: her husband's life was in danger, and it must be saved at any cost. "Monsieur," she said, "where is my husband? You know. Tell me." Perrot put her hand from his arm gently, and looked at the priest in doubt and surprise. The abbe said not a word, but stood gazing off into the night. "Will you not tell me of my husband?" she repeated. "He is within that house?" She pointed to the manor-house. "He is in danger, I will go to him." She made as if to go to the door, but he stepped before her. "Madame," he said, "you cannot enter." Just then the moon shot from behind a cloud, and all their faces could be seen. There was a flame in Jessica's eyes which Perrot could not stand, and he turned away. She was too much the woman to plead weakly. "Tell me," she said, "whose house this is." "Madame, it is Monsieur Iberville's." She could not check a gasp, but both the priest and the woodsman saw how intrepid was the struggle in her, and they both pitied. "Now I understand! Oh, now I understand!" she cried. "A plot was laid. He was let escape that he might be cornered here--one single man against a whole country. Oh, cowards, cowards!" "Pardon me, madame," said Perrot, bristling up, "not cowards. Your husband has a chance for his life. You know Monsieur Iberville--he is a man all honour. More than once he might have had your husband's life, but he gave it to him." Her foot tapped the ground impatiently, her hands clasped before her. "Go on, oh, go on!" she said. "What is it? why is he here? Have you no pity, no heart?" She turned towards the priest. "You are a man of God. You said once that you would help me make peace between my husband and Monsieur Iberville, but you join here with his enemies." "Madame, believe me, you are wrong. I have done all I could: I have brought you here." "Yes, yes; forgive me," she replied. She turned to Perrot again. "It is with you, then. You helped to save my life once--what right have you to destroy it now? You and Monsieur Iberville gave me the world when it were easy to have lost it; now when the world is everything to me because my husband lives in it, you would take his life and break mine." Suddenly a thought flashed into her mind. Her eyes brightened, her hand trembled towards Perrot, and touched him. "Once I gave you something, monsieur, which I had worn on my own bosom. That little gift--of a grateful girl, tell me, have you it still?" Perrot drew from his doublet the medallion she had given him, and fingered it uncertainly. "Then you value it," she added. "You value my gift, and yet when my husband is a prisoner, to what perilous ends God only knows, you deny me to him. I will not plead; I ask as my right; I have come from Count Frontenac; he sent me to this good priest here. Were my husband in the citadel now I should be admitted. He is here with the man who, you know, once said he loved me. My husband is wickedly held a prisoner; I ask for entrance to him." Pleading, apprehension, seemed gone from her; she stood superior to her fear and sorrow. The priest reached a hand persuasively towards Perrot, and he was about to speak, but Perrot, coming close to the troubled wife, said: "The door is locked; they are there alone. I cannot let you in, but come with me. You have a voice--it may be heard. Come." Presently all three were admitted into the dim hallway. CHAPTER XXIV IN WHICH THE SWORD IS SHEATHED How had it gone with Iberville and Gering? The room was large, scantily, though comfortably, furnished. For a moment after they took up their swords they eyed each other calmly. Iberville presently smiled: he was recalling that night, years ago, when by the light of the old Dutch lantern they had fallen upon each other, swordsmen, even in those days, of more than usual merit. They had practised greatly since. Iberville was the taller of the two, Gering the stouter. Iberville's eye was slow, calculating, penetrating; Gering's was swift, strangely vigilant. Iberville's hand was large, compact, and supple; Gering's small and firm. They drew and fell on guard. Each at first played warily. They were keen to know how much of skill was likely to enter into this duel, for each meant that it should be deadly. In the true swordsman there is found that curious sixth sense, which is a combination of touch, sight, apprehension, divination. They had scarcely made half a dozen passes before each knew that he was pitted against a master of the art--an art partly lost in an age which better loves the talk of swords than the handling of them. But the advantage was with Iberville, not merely because of more practice,--Gering made up for that by a fine certainty of nerve,--but because he had a prescient quality of mind, joined to the calculation of the perfect gamester. From the first Iberville played a waiting game. He knew Gering's impulsive nature, and he wished to draw him on, to irritate him, as only one swordsman can irritate another. Gering suddenly led off with a disengage from the carte line into tierce, and, as he expected, met the short parry and riposte. Gering tried by many means to draw Iberville's attack, and, failing to do so, played more rapidly than he ought, which was what Iberville wished. Presently Iberville's chance came. In the carelessness of annoyance, Gering left part of his sword arm uncovered, while he was meditating a complex attack, and he paid the penalty by getting a sharp prick from Iberville's sword-point. The warning came to Gering in time. When they crossed swords again, Iberville, whether by chance or by momentary want of skill, parried Gering's disengage from tierce to carte on to his own left shoulder. Both had now got a taste of blood, and there is nothing like that to put the lust of combat into a man. For a moment or two the fight went on with no special feat, but so hearty became the action that Iberville, seeing Gering flag a little,--due somewhat to loss of blood, suddenly opened such a rapid attack on the advance that it was all Gering could do to parry, without thought of riposte, the successive lunges of the swift blade. As he retreated, Gering felt, as he broke ground, that he was nearing the wall, and, even as he parried, incautiously threw a half- glance over his shoulder to see how near. Iberville saw his chance, his finger was shaping a fatal lunge, when there suddenly came from the hallway a woman's voice. So weird was it that both swordsmen drew back, and once more Gering's life was waiting in the hazard. Strange to say, Iberville recognised the voice first. He was angered with himself now that he had paused upon the lunge and saved Gering. Suddenly there rioted in him the disappointed vengeance of years. He had lost her once by sparing this man's life. Should he lose her again? His sword flashed upward. At that moment Gering recognised his wife's voice, and he turned pale. "My wife!" he exclaimed. They closed again. Gering was now as cold as he had before been ardent, and he played with malicious strength and persistency. His nerves seemed of iron. But there had come to Iberville the sardonic joy of one who plays for the final hazard, knowing that he shall win. There was one great move he had reserved for the last. With the woman's voice at the door beseeching, her fingers trembling upon the panel, they could not prolong the fight. Therefore, at the moment when Gering was pressing Iberville hard, the Frenchman suddenly, with a trick of the Italian school, threw his left leg en arriere and made a lunge, which ordinarily would have spitted his enemy, but at the critical moment one word came ringing clearly through the locked door. It was his own name, not Iberville, but--"Pierre! Pierre!" He had never heard the voice speak that name. It put out his judgment, and instead of his sword passing through Gering's body it only grazed his ribs. Perhaps there was in him some ancient touch of superstition, some sense of fatalism, which now made him rise to his feet and throw his sword upon the table. "Monsieur," he said cynically, "again we are unfortunate." Then he went to the door, unlocked it, and threw it open upon Jessica. She came in upon them trembling, pale, yet glowing with her anxiety. Instantly Iberville was all courtesy. One could not have guessed that he had just been engaged in a deadly conflict. As his wife entered, Gering put his sword aside. Iberville closed the door, and the three stood looking at each other for a moment. Jessica did not throw herself into her husband's arms. The position was too painful, too tragic, for even the great emotion in her heart. Behind Iberville's courtesy she read the deadly mischief. But she had a power born for imminent circumstances, and her mind was made up as to her course. It had been made up when, at the critical moment, she had called out Iberville's Christian name. She rightly judged that this had saved her husband's life, for she guessed that Iberville was the better swordsman. She placed her hands with slight resistance on the arms of her husband, who was about to clasp her to his breast, and said: "I am glad to find you, George." That was all. He also had heard that cry, "Pierre," and he felt shamed that his life was spared because of it--he knew well why the sword had not gone through his body. She felt less humiliation, because, as it seemed to her, she had a right to ask of Iberville what no other woman could ask for her husband. A moment after, at Iberville's request, they were all seated. Iberville had pretended not to notice the fingers which had fluttered towards him. As yet nothing had been said about the duel, as if by tacit consent. So far as Jessica was concerned it might never have happened. As for the men, the swords were there, wet with the blood they had drawn, but they made no sign. Iberville put meat and wine and fruit upon the table, and pressed Jessica to take refreshment. She responded, for it was in keeping with her purpose. Presently Iberville said, as he poured a glass of wine for her: "Had you been expected, madame, there were better entertainment." "Your entertainment, monsieur," she replied, "has two sides,"--she glanced at the swords,--"and this is the better." "If it pleases you, madame." "I dare not say," she returned, "that my coming was either pleasant or expected." He raised his glass towards her: "Madame, I am proud to pledge you once more. I recall the first time that we met." Her reply was instant. "You came, an ambassador of peace to the governor of New York. Monsieur, I come an ambassador of peace to you." "Yes, I remember. You asked me then what was the greatest, bravest thing I ever did. You ever had a buoyant spirit, madame." "Monsieur," she rejoined, with feeling, "will you let me answer that question for you now? The bravest and greatest thing you ever did was to give a woman back her happiness." "Have I done so?" "In your heart, yes, I believe. A little while ago my husband's life and freedom were in your hands--you will place them in mine now, will you not?" Iberville did not reply directly. He twisted his wineglass round, sipped from it pleasantly, and said: "Pardon me, madame, how were you admitted here?" She told him. "Singular, singular!" he replied; "I never knew Perrot fail me before. But you have eloquence, madame, and he knew, no doubt, that you would always be welcome to my home." There was that in his voice which sent the blood stinging through Gering's veins. He half came to his feet, but his wife's warning, pleading glance brought him to his chair again. "Monsieur, tell me," she said, "will you give my husband his freedom?" "Madame, his life is the State's." "But he is in your hands now. Will you not set him free? You know that the charge against him is false--false. He is no spy. Oh, monsieur, you and he have been enemies, but you know that he could not do a dishonourable thing." "Madame, my charges against him are true." "I know what they are," she said earnestly, "but this strife is not worthy of you, and it is shaming me. Monsieur, you know I speak truly. "You called me Pierre a little while ago," he said; "will you not now?" His voice was deliberate, every word hanging in its utterance. He had a courteous smile, an apparent abandon of manner, but there was devilry behind all, for here, for the first time, he saw this woman, fought for and lost, in his presence with her husband, begging that husband's life of him. Why had she called him Pierre? Was it because she knew it would touch a tender corner of his heart? Should that be so--well, he would wait. "Will you listen to me?" she asked, in a low gentle voice. "I love to hear you speak," was his reply, and he looked into her eyes as he had boldly looked years before, but his gaze made hers drop. There was revealed to her all that was in his mind. "Then, hear me now," she said slowly. "There was a motherless young girl. She had as fresh and cheerful a heart as any in the world. She had not many playmates, but there was one young lad who shared her sports and pleasant hours, who was her good friend. Years passed; she was nearing womanhood, the young man was still her friend, but in his mind there had come something deeper. A young stranger also came, handsome, brave, and brilliant. He was such a man as any girl could like and any man admire. The girl liked him, and she admired him. The two young men quarreled; they fought; and the girl parted them. Again they would have fought, but this time the girl's 'life was in danger. The stranger was wounded in saving her. She owed him a debt--such a debt as only a woman can feel; because a woman loves a noble deed more than she loves her life--a good woman." She paused, and for an instant something shook in her throat. Her husband looked at her with a deep wonder. And although Iberville's eyes played with his glass of wine, they were fascinated by her face, and his ear was strangely charmed by her voice. "Will you go on?" he said. "The three parted. The girl never forgot the stranger. What might have happened if he had always been near her, who can tell--who can tell? Again in later years the two men met, the stranger the aggressor--without due cause." "Pardon me, madame, the deepest cause," said Iberville meaningly. She pretended not to understand, and continued: "The girl, believing that what she was expected to do would be best for her, promised her hand in marriage. At this time the stranger came. She saw him but for a day, for an hour, then he passed away. Time went on again, and the two men met in battle--men now, not boys; once more the stranger was the victor. She married the defeated man. Perhaps she did not love him as much as he loved her, but she knew that the other love, the love of the stranger, was impossible--impossible. She came to care for her husband more and more--she came to love him. She might have loved the stranger--who can tell? But a woman's heart cannot be seized as a ship or a town. Believe me, monsieur, I speak the truth. Years again passed: her husband's life was in the stranger's hand. Through great danger she travelled to plead for her husband's life. Monsieur, she does not plead for an unworthy cause. She pleads for justice, in the name of honourable warfare, for the sake of all good manhood. Will--will you refuse her?" She paused. Gering's eyes were glistening. Her honesty, fine eloquence, and simple sincerity, showed her to him in a new, strong light. Upon Iberville, the greater of the two, it had a greater effect. He sat still for a moment, looking at the woman with the profound gaze of one moved to the soul. Then he got to his feet slowly, opened the door, and quietly calling Perrot, whispered to him. Perrot threw up his hands in surprise, and hurried away. Then Iberville shut the door, and came back. Neither man had made any show of caring for their wounds. Still silent, Iberville drew forth linen and laid it upon the table. Then he went to the window, and as he looked through the parted curtains out upon the water--the room hung over the edge of the cliff-he bound his own shoulder. Gering had lost blood, but weak as he was he carried himself well. For full half an hour Iberville stood motionless while the wife bound her husband's wounds. At length the door opened and Perrot entered. Iberville did not hear him at first, and Perrot came over to him. "All is ready, monsieur," he said. Iberville, nodding, came to the table where stood the husband and wife, and Perrot left the room. He picked up a sword and laid it beside Gering, then waved his hand towards the door. "You are free to go, monsieur," he said. "You will have escort to your country. Go now--pray, go quickly." He feared he might suddenly repent of his action, and going to the door, he held it open for them to pass. Gering picked up the sword, found the belt and sheath, and stepped to the doorway with his wife. Here he paused as if he would speak to Iberville: he was ready now for final peace. But Iberville's eyes looked resolutely away, and Gering sighed and passed into the hallway. Now the wife stood beside Iberville. She looked at him steadily, but at first he would not meet her eye. Presently, however, he did so. "Good-bye," she said brokenly, "I shall always remember--always." His reply was bitter. "Good-bye, madame: I shall forget." She made a sad little gesture and passed on, but presently turned, as if she could not bear that kind of parting, and stretched out her hands to him. "Monsieur--Pierre!" she cried, in a weak, choking voice. With hot frank impulse he caught both her hands in his and kissed them. "I shall--remember," he said, with great gentleness. Then they passed from the hallway, and he was alone. He stood looking at the closed door, but after a moment went to the table, sat down, and threw his head forward in his arms. An hour afterwards, when Count Frontenac entered upon him, he was still in the same position. Frontenac touched him on the arm, and he rose. The governor did not speak, but caught him by the shoulders with both hands, and held him so for a moment, looking kindly at him. Iberville picked up his sword from the table and said calmly: "Once, sir, you made it a choice between the woman and the sword." Then he raised the sword and solemnly pressed his lips against the hilt-cross. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "TRAIL OF THE SWORD": Aboriginal in all of us, who must have a sign for an emotion Learned, as we all must learn, that we live our dark hour alone Love, too, is a game, and needs playing Often called an invention of the devil (Violin) To die without whining THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE, Complete By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS Volume 1. I. HIS GREAT MISTAKE II. A DIFFICULT SITUATION III. OUT OF THE NORTH IV. IN THE NAME OF THE FAMILY V. AN AWKWARD HALF-HOUR Volume 2. VI. THE PASSING OF THE YEARS VII. A COURT-MARTIAL VIII. TO EVERY MAN HIS HOUR Volume 3. IX. THE FAITH OF COMRADES X. "THOU KNOWEST THE SECRETS OF OUR HEARTS" XI. UPON THE HIGHWAY XII. "THE CHASE OF THE YELLOW SWAN" XIII. A LIVING POEM XIV. ON THE EDGE OF A FUTURE XV. THE END OF THE TRAIL INTRODUCTION The Translation of a Savage was written in the early autumn of 1893, at Hampstead Heath, where for over twenty years I have gone, now and then, when I wished to be in an atmosphere conducive to composition. Hampstead is one of the parts of London which has as yet been scarcely invaded by the lodging-house keeper. It is very difficult to get apartments at Hampstead; it is essentially a residential place; and, like Chelsea, has literary and artistic character all its own. I think I have seen more people carrying books in their hands at Hampstead than in any other spot in England; and there it was, perched above London, with eyes looking towards the Atlantic over the leagues of land and the thousand leagues of sea, that I wrote 'The Translation of a Savage'. It was written, as it were, in one concentrated effort, a ceaseless writing. It was, in effect, what the Daily Chronicle said of 'When Valmond Came to Pontiac', a tour de force. It belonged to a genre which compelled me to dispose of a thing in one continuous effort, or the impulse, impetus, and fulness of movement was gone. The writing of a book of the kind admitted of no invasion from extraneous sources, and that was why, while writing 'The Translation of a Savage' at Hampstead, my letters were only delivered to me once a week. I saw no friends, for no one knew where I was; but I walked the heights, I practised with my golf clubs on the Heath, and I sat in the early autumn evenings looking out at London in that agony of energy which its myriad lives represented. It was a good time. The story had a basis of fact; the main incident was true. It happened, however, in Michigan rather than in Canada; but I placed the incident in Canada where it was just as true to the life. I was living in Hertfordshire at the time of writing the story, and that is why the English scenes were worked out in Hertfordshire and in London. When I had finished the tale, there came over me suddenly a kind of feeling that the incident was too bold and maybe too crude to be believed, and I was almost tempted to consign it to the flames; but the editor of 'The English Illustrated Magazine', Sir C. Kinloch-Cooke, took a wholly different view, and eagerly published it. The judgment of the press was favourable,--highly so--and I was as much surprised as pleased when Mr. George Moore, in the Hogarth Club one night, in 1894, said to me: "There is a really remarkable play in that book of yours, 'The Translation, of a Savage'." I had not thought up to that time that my work was of the kind which would appeal to George Moore, but he was always making discoveries. Meeting him in Pall Mall one day, he said to me: "My dear fellow, I have made a great discovery. I have been reading the Old Testament. It is magnificent. In the mass of its incoherence it has a series of the most marvellous stories. Do you remember--" etc. Then he came home and had tea with me, revelling, in the meantime, on having discovered the Bible! I cannot feel that 'The Translation of a Savage' has any significance beyond the truthfulness with which I believe it describes the transformation, or rather the evolution, of a primitive character into a character with an intelligence of perception and a sympathy which is generally supposed to be the outcome of long processes of civilisation and culture. The book has so many friends--this has been sufficiently established by the very large sale it has had in cheap editions--that I am still disposed to feel it was an inevitable manifestation in the progress of my art, such as it is. People of diverse conditions of life have found in it something to interest and to stimulate. One of the most volcanic of the Labour members in the House of Commons told me that the violence of his opposition to me in debate on a certain bill was greatly moderated by the fact that I had written 'The Translation of a Savage'; while a certain rather grave duke remarked to me concerning the character of Lali that "She would have been all right anywhere." I am bound to say that he was a duke who, while a young man, knew the wilds of Canada and the United States almost as well as I know Westminster. THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE CHAPTER I HIS GREAT MISTAKE It appeared that Armour had made the great mistake of his life. When people came to know, they said that to have done it when sober had shown him possessed of a kind of maliciousness and cynicism almost pardonable, but to do it when tipsy proved him merely weak and foolish. But the fact is, he was less tipsy at the time than was imagined; and he could have answered to more malice and cynicism than was credited to him. To those who know the world it is not singular that, of the two, Armour was thought to have made the mistake and had the misfortune, or that people wasted their pity and their scorn upon him alone. Apparently they did not see that the woman was to be pitied. He had married her; and she was only an Indian girl from Fort Charles of the Hudson's Bay Company, with a little honest white blood in her veins. Nobody, not even her own people, felt that she had anything at stake, or was in danger of unhappiness, or was other than a person who had ludicrously come to bear the name of Mrs. Francis Armour. If any one had said in justification that she loved the man, the answer would have been that plenty of Indian women had loved white men, but had not married them, and yet the population of half- breeds went on increasing. Frank Armour had been a popular man in London. His club might be found in the vicinity of Pall Mall, his father's name was high and honoured in the Army List, one of his brothers had served with Wolseley in Africa, and Frank himself, having no profession, but with a taste for business and investment, had gone to Canada with some such intention as Lord Selkirk's in the early part of the century. He owned large shares in the Hudson's Bay Company, and when he travelled through the North-West country, prospecting, he was received most hospitably. Of an inquiring and gregarious nature he went as much among the half-breeds--or 'metis', as they are called--and Indians as among the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company and the white settlers. He had ever been credited with having a philosophical turn of mind; and this was accompanied by a certain strain of impulsiveness or daring. He had been accustomed all his life to make up his mind quickly and, because he was well enough off to bear the consequences of momentary rashness in commercial investments, he was not counted among the transgressors. He had his own fortune; he was not drawing upon a common purse. It was a different matter when he trafficked rashly in the family name so far as to marry the daughter of Eye-of-the-Moon, the Indian chief. He was tolerably happy when he went to the Hudson's Bay country; for Miss Julia Sherwood was his promised wife, and she, if poor, was notably beautiful and of good family. His people had not looked quite kindly on this engagement; they had, indeed, tried in many ways to prevent it; partly because of Miss Sherwood's poverty, and also because they knew that Lady Agnes Martling had long cared for him, and was most happily endowed with wealth and good looks also. When he left for Canada they were inwardly glad (they imagined that something might occur to end the engagement)--all except Richard, the wiseacre of the family, the book- man, the drone, who preferred living at Greyhope, their Hertfordshire home, the year through, to spending half the time in Cavendish Square. Richard was very fond of Frank, admiring him immensely for his buxom strength and cleverness, and not a little, too, for that very rashness which had brought him such havoc at last. Richard was not, as Frank used to say, "perfectly sound on his pins," --that is, he was slightly lame, but he was right at heart. He was an immense reader, but made little use of what he read. He had an abundant humour, and remembered every anecdote he ever heard. He was kind to the poor, walked much, talked to himself as he walked, and was known by the humble sort as "a'centric." But he had a wise head, and he foresaw danger to Frank's happiness when he went away. While others had gossiped and manoeuvred and were busily idle, he had watched things. He saw that Frank was dear to Julia in proportion to the distance between her and young Lord Haldwell, whose father had done something remarkable in guns or torpedoes and was rewarded with a lordship and an uncommonly large fortune. He also saw that, after Frank left, the distance between Lord Haldwell and Julia became distinctly less--they were both staying at Greyhope. Julia Sherwood was a remarkably clever girl. Though he felt it his duty to speak to her for his brother,--a difficult and delicate matter, he thought it would come better from his mother. But when he took action it was too late. Miss Sherwood naively declared that she had not known her own heart, and that she did not care for Frank any more. She wept a little, and was soothed by motherly Mrs. Armour, who was inwardly glad, though she knew the matter would cause Frank pain; and even General Armour could not help showing slight satisfaction, though he was innocent of any deliberate action to separate the two. Straightway Miss Sherwood despatched a letter to the wilds of Canada, and for a week was an unengaged young person. But she was no doubt consoled by the fact that for some time past she had had complete control of Lord Haldwell's emotions. At the end of the week her perceptions were justified by Lord Haldwell's proposal, which, with admirable tact and obvious demureness, was accepted. Now, Frank Armour was wandering much in the wilds, so that his letters and papers went careering about after him, and some that came first were last to reach him. That was how he received a newspaper announcing the marriage of Lord Haldwell and Julia Sherwood at the same time that her letter, written in estimable English and with admirable feeling, came, begging for a release from their engagement, and, towards its close, assuming, with a charming regret, that all was over, and that the last word had been said between them. Armour was sitting in the trader's room at Fort Charles when the carrier came with the mails. He had had some successful days hunting buffalo with Eye-of-the-Moon and a little band of metis, had had a long pow-wow in Eye-of-the-Moon's lodge, had chatted gaily with Lali the daughter, and was now prepared to enjoy heartily the arrears of correspondence and news before him. He ran his hand through the letters and papers, intending to classify them immediately, according to such handwriting as he recognised and the dates on the envelopes. But, as he did so, he saw a newspaper from which the wrapper was partly torn. He also saw a note in the margin directing him to a certain page. The note was in Richard's handwriting. He opened the paper at the page indicated and saw the account of the marriage! His teeth clinched on his cigar, his face turned white, the paper fell from his fingers. He gasped, his hands spread out nervously, then caught the table and held it as though to steady himself. The trader rose. "You are ill," he said. "Have you bad news?" He glanced towards the paper. Slowly Armour folded the paper up, and then rose unsteadily. "Gordon," he said, "give me a glass of brandy." He turned towards the cupboard in the room. The trader opened it, took out a bottle, and put it on the table beside Armour, together with a glass and some water. Armour poured out a stiff draught, added a very little water, and drank it. He drew a great sigh, and stood looking at the paper. "Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Armour?" urged the trader. "Nothing, thank you, nothing at all. Just leave the brandy here, will you? I feel knocked about, and I have to go through the rest of these letters." He ran his fingers through the pile, turning it over hastily, as if searching for something. The trader understood. He was a cool-headed Scotsman; he knew that there were some things best not inquired into, and that men must have their bad hours alone. He glanced at the brandy debatingly, but presently turned and left the room in silence. In his own mind, however, he wished he might have taken the brandy without being discourteous. Armour had discovered Miss Sherwood's letter. Before he opened it he took a little more brandy. Then he sat down and read it deliberately. The liquor had steadied him. The fingers of one hand even drummed on the table. But the face was drawn, the eyes were hard, and the look of him was altogether pinched. After he had finished this, he looked for others from the same hand. He found none. Then he picked out those from his mother and father. He read them grimly. Once he paused as he read his mother's letter, and took a gulp of plain brandy. There was something very like a sneer on his face when he finished reading. He read the hollowness of the sympathy extended to him; he understood the far from adroit references to Lady Agnes Martling. He was very bitter. He opened no more letters, but took up the Morning Post again, and read it slowly through. The look of his face was not pleasant. There was a small looking-glass opposite him. He caught sight of himself in it. He drew his hand across his eyes and forehead, as though he was in a miserable dream. He looked again; he could not recognise himself. He then bundled the letters and papers into his despatch-box. His attention was drawn to one letter. He picked it up. It was from Richard. He started to break the seal, but paused. The strain of the event was too much; he winced. He determined not to read it then, to wait until he had recovered himself. He laughed now painfully. It had been better for him--it had, maybe, averted what people were used to term his tragedy--had he read his brother's letter at that moment. For Richard Armour was a sensible man, notwithstanding his peculiarities; and perhaps the most sensible words he ever wrote were in that letter thrust unceremoniously into Frank Armour's pocket. Armour had received a terrible blow. He read his life backwards. He had no future. The liquor he had drunk had not fevered him, it had not wildly excited him; it merely drew him up to a point where he could put a sudden impulse into practice without flinching. He was bitter against his people; he credited them with more interference than was actual. He felt that happiness had gone out of his life and left him hopeless. As we said, he was a man of quick decisions. He would have made a dashing but reckless soldier; he was not without the elements of the gamester. It is possible that there was in him also a strain of cruelty, undeveloped but radical. Life so far had evolved the best in him; he had been cheery and candid. Now he travelled back into new avenues of his mind and found strange, aboriginal passions, fully adapted to the present situation. Vulgar anger and reproaches were not after his nature. He suddenly found sources of refined but desperate retaliation. He drew upon them. He would do something to humiliate his people and the girl who had spoiled his life. Some one thing! It should be absolute and lasting, it should show how low had fallen his opinion of women, of whom Julia Sherwood had once been chiefest to him. In that he would show his scorn of her. He would bring down the pride of his family, who, he believed, had helped, out of mere selfishness, to tumble his happiness into the shambles. He was older by years than an hour ago. But he was not without the faculty of humour; that was why he did not become very excited; it was also why he determined upon a comedy which should have all the elements of tragedy. Perhaps, however, he would have hesitated to carry his purposes to immediate conclusions, were it not that the very gods seemed to play his game with him. For, while he stood there, looking out into the yard of the fort, a Protestant missionary passed the window. The Protestant missionary, as he is found at such places as Fort Charles, is not a strictly superior person. A Jesuit might have been of advantage to Frank Armour at that moment. The Protestant missionary is not above comfortable assurances of gold. So that when Armour summoned this one in, and told him what was required of him, and slipped a generous gift of the Queen's coin into his hand, he smiled vaguely and was willing to do what he was bidden. Had he been a Jesuit, who is sworn to poverty, and more often than not a man of birth and education, he might have influenced Frank Armour and prevented the notable mishap and scandal. As it was, Armour took more brandy. Then he went down to Eye-of-the-Moon's lodge. A few hours afterwards the missionary met him there. The next morning Lali, the daughter of Eye-of- the-Moon, and the chieftainess of a portion of her father's tribe, whose grandfather had been a white man, was introduced to the Hudson's Bay country as Mrs. Frank Armour. But that was not all. Indeed, as it stood, it was very little. He had only made his comedy possible as yet; now the play itself was to come. He had carried his scheme through boldly so far. He would not flinch in carrying it out to the last letter. He brought his wife down to the Great Lakes immediately, scarcely resting day or night. There he engaged an ordinary but reliable woman, to whom he gave instructions, and sent the pair to the coast. He instructed his solicitor at Montreal to procure passages for Mrs. Francis Armour and maid for Liverpool. Then, by letters, he instructed his solicitor in London to meet Mrs. Francis Armour and maid at Liverpool and take them to Greyhope in Hertfordshire--that is, if General Armour and Mrs. Armour, or some representative of the family, did not meet them when they landed from the steamship. Presently he sat down and wrote to his father and mother, and asked them to meet his wife and her maid when they arrived by the steamer Aphrodite. He did not explain to them in precise detail his feelings on Miss Julia Sherwood's marriage, nor did he go into full particulars as to the personality of Mrs. Frank Armour; but he did say that, because he knew they were anxious that he should marry "acceptably," he had married into the aristocracy, the oldest aristocracy of America; and because he also knew they wished him to marry wealth, he sent them a wife rich in virtues--native, unspoiled virtues. He hoped that they would take her to their hearts and cherish her. He knew their firm principles of honour, and that he could trust them to be kind to his wife until he returned to share the affection which he was sure would be given to her. It was not his intention to return to England for some time yet. He had work to do in connection with his proposed colony; and a wife--even a native wife-- could not well be a companion in the circumstances. Besides, Lali--his wife's name was Lali!--would be better occupied in learning the peculiarities of the life in which her future would be cast. It was possible they would find her an apt pupil. Of this they could not complain, that she was untravelled; for she had ridden a horse, bareback, half across the continent. They could not cavil at her education, for she knew several languages--aboriginal languages--of the North. She had merely to learn the dialect of English society, and how to carry with acceptable form the costumes of the race to which she was going. Her own costume was picturesque, but it might appear unusual in London society. Still, they could use their own judgment about that. Then, when she was gone beyond recall, he chanced one day to put on the coat he wore when the letters and paper declaring his misfortune came to him. He found his brother's letter; he opened it and read it. It was the letter of a man who knew how to appreciate at their proper value the misfortunes, as the fortunes, of life. While Frank Armour read he came to feel for the first time that his brother Richard had suffered, maybe, from some such misery as had come to him through Julia Sherwood. It was a dispassionate, manly letter, relieved by gentle wit, and hinting with careful kindness that a sudden blow was better for a man than a lifelong thorn in his side. Of Julia Sherwood he had nothing particularly bitter to say. He delicately suggested that she had acted according to her nature, and that in the see-saw of life Frank had had a sore blow; but this was to be borne. The letter did not say too much; it did not magnify the difficulty, it did not depreciate it. It did not even directly counsel; it was wholesomely, tenderly judicial. Indirectly, it dwelt upon the steadiness and manliness of Frank's character; directly, lightly, and without rhetoric, it enlarged upon their own comradeship. It ran over pleasantly the days of their boyhood, when they were hardly ever separated. It made distinct, yet with no obvious purpose, how good were friendship and confidence--which might be the most unselfish thing in the world--between two men. With the letter before him Frank Armour saw his act in a new light. As we said, it is possible if he had read it on the day when his trouble came to him, he had not married Lali, or sent her to England on this--to her--involuntary mission of revenge. It is possible, also, that there came to him the first vague conception of the wrong he had done this Indian girl, who undoubtedly married him because she cared for him after her heathen fashion, while he had married her for nothing that was commendable; not even for passion, which may be pardoned, nor for vanity, which has its virtues. He had had his hour with circumstance; circumstance would have its hour with him in due course. Yet there was no extraordinary revulsion. He was still angry, cynical, and very sore. He would see the play out with a consistent firmness. He almost managed a smile when a letter was handed to him some weeks later, bearing his solicitor's assurance that Mrs. Frank Armour and her maid had been safely bestowed on the Aphrodite for England. This was the first act in his tragic comedy. CHAPTER II A DIFFICULT SITUATION When Mrs. Frank Armour arrived at Montreal she still wore her Indian costume of clean, well-broidered buckskin, moccasins, and leggings, all surmounted by a blanket. It was not a distinguished costume, but it seemed suitable to its wearer. Mr. Armour's agent was in a quandary. He had received no instructions regarding her dress. He felt, of course, that, as Mrs. Frank Armour, she should put off these garments, and dress, so far as was possible, in accordance with her new position. But when he spoke about it to Mackenzie, the elderly maid and companion, he found that Mr. Armour had said that his wife was to arrive in England dressed as she was. He saw something ulterior in the matter, but it was not his province to interfere. And so Mrs. Frank Armour was a passenger by the Aphrodite in her buckskin garments. What she thought of it all is not quite easy to say. It is possible that at first she only considered that she was the wife of a white man,-- a thing to be desired, and that the man she loved was hers for ever-- a matter of indefinable joy to her. That he was sending her to England did not fret her, because it was his will, and he knew what was best. Busy with her contented and yet somewhat dazed thoughts of him,--she was too happy to be very active mentally, even if it had been the characteristic of her race,--she was not at first aware how much notice she excited, and how strange a figure she was in this staring city. When it did dawn upon her she shrank a little, but still was placid, preferring to sit with her hands folded in her lap, idly watching things. She appeared oblivious that she was the wife of a man of family and rank; she was only thinking that the man was hers--all hers. He had treated her kindly enough in the days they were together, but she had not been a great deal with him, because they travelled fast, and his duties were many, or he made them so--but the latter possibility did not occur to her. When he had hastily bidden her farewell at Port Arthur he had kissed her and said: "Good-bye, my wife." She was not yet acute enough in the inflections of Saxon speech to catch the satire--almost involuntary--in the last two words. She remembered the words, however, and the kiss, and she was quite satisfied. To what she was going she did not speculate. He was sending her: that was enough. The woman given to her as maid had been well chosen. Armour had done this carefully. She was Scotch, was reserved, had a certain amount of shrewdness, would obey instructions, and do her duty carefully. What she thought about the whole matter she kept to herself; even the solicitor at Montreal could not find out. She had her instructions clear in her mind; she was determined to carry them out to the letter--for which she was already well paid, and was like to be better paid; because Armour had arranged that she should continue to be with his wife after they got to England. She understood well the language of Lali's tribe, and because Lali's English was limited she would be indispensable in England. Mackenzie, therefore, had responsibility, and if she was not elated over it, she still knew the importance of her position, and had enough practical vanity to make her an efficient servant and companion. She already felt that she had got her position in life, from which she was to go out no more for ever. She had been brought up in the shadow of Alnwick Castle, and she knew what was due to her charge--by other people; herself only should have liberty with her. She was taking Lali to the home of General Armour, and that must be kept constantly before her mind. Therefore, from the day they set foot on the Aphrodite, she kept her place beside Mrs. Armour, sitting with her,--they walked very little,-- and scarcely ever speaking, either to her or to the curious passengers. Presently the passengers became more inquisitive, and made many attempts at being friendly; but these received little encouragement. It had become known who the Indian girl was, and many wild tales went about as to her marriage with Francis Armour. Now it was maintained she had saved his life at an outbreak of her tribe; again, that she had found him dying in the woods and had nursed him back to life and health; yet again, that she was a chieftainess, a successful claimant against the Hudson's Bay Company--and so on. There were several on board who knew the Armours well by name, and two who knew them personally. One was Mr. Edward Lambert, a barrister of the Middle Temple, and the other was Mrs. Townley, a widow, a member of a well-known Hertfordshire family, who, on a pleasant journey in Scotland, had met, conquered, and married a wealthy young American, and had been left alone in the world, by no means portionless, eighteen months before. Lambert knew Richard Armour well, and when, from Francis Armour's solicitor, with whom he was acquainted, he heard, just before they started, who the Indian girl was, he was greatly shocked and sorry. He guessed at once the motive, the madness, of this marriage. But he kept his information and his opinions mostly to himself, except in so far as it seemed only due to friendship to contradict the numberless idle stories going about. After the first day at sea he came to know Mrs. Townley, and when he discovered that they had many common friends and that she knew the Armours, he spoke a little more freely to her regarding the Indian wife, and told her what he believed was the cause of the marriage. Mrs. Townley was a woman--a girl--of uncommon gentleness of disposition, and, in spite of her troubles, inclined to view life with a sunny eye. She had known of Frank Armour's engagement with Miss Julia Sherwood, but she had never heard the sequel. If this was the sequel--well, it had to be faced. But she was almost tremulous with sympathy when she remembered Mrs. Armour, and Frank's gay, fashionable sister, Marion, and contemplated the arrival of this Indian girl at Greyhope. She had always liked Frank Armour, but this made her angry with him; for, on second thoughts, she was not more sorry for him and for his people than for Lali, the wife. She had the true instinct of womanhood, and she supposed that a heathen like this could have feelings to be hurt and a life to be wounded as herself or another. At least she saw what was possible in the future when this Indian girl came to understand her position--only to be accomplished by contact with the new life, so different from her past. Both she and Lambert decided that she was very fine-looking, not withstanding her costume. She was slim and well built, with modest bust and shapely feet and ankles. Her eyes were large, meditative, and intelligent, her features distinguished. She was a goodly product of her race, being descended from a line of chiefs and chieftainesses--broken only in the case of her grandfather, as has been mentioned. Her hands (the two kindly inquisitors decided) were almost her best point. They were perfectly made, slim, yet plump, the fingers tapering, the wrist supple. Mrs. Townley then and there decided that the girl had possibilities. But here she was, an Indian, with few signs of civilisation or of that breeding which seems to white people the only breeding fit for earth or heaven. Mrs. Townley did not need Lambert's suggestion that she should try to approach the girl, make friends with her, and prepare her in some slight degree for the strange career before her. Mrs. Townley had an infinite amount of tact. She knew it was best to approach the attendant first. This she did, and, to the surprise of other lady-passengers, received no rebuff. Her advance was not, however, rapid. Mackenzie had had her instructions. When she found that Mrs. Townley knew Francis Armour and his people, she thawed a little more, and then, very hesitatingly, she introduced her to the Indian wife. Mrs. Townley smiled her best--and there were many who knew how attractive she could be at such a moment. There was a slight pause, in which Lali looked at her meditatively, earnestly, and then those beautiful wild fingers glided out, and caught her hand, and held it; but she spoke no word. She only looked inquiringly, seriously, at her new-found friend, and presently dropped the blanket away from her, and sat up firmly, as though she felt she was not altogether an alien now, and had a right to hold herself proudly among white people, as she did in her own country and with her own tribe, who had greatly admired her. Certainly Mrs. Townley could find no fault with the woman as an Indian. She had taste, carried her clothes well, and was superbly fresh in appearance, though her hair still bore very slight traces of the grease which even the most aristocratic Indians use. But Lali would not talk. Mrs. Townley was anxious that the girl should be dressed in European costume, and offered to lend and rearrange dresses of her own, but she came in collision with Mr. Armour's instructions. So she had to assume a merely kind and comforting attitude. The wife had not the slightest idea where she was going, and even when Mackenzie, at Mrs. Townley's oft-repeated request, explained very briefly and unpicturesquely, she only looked incredulous or unconcerned. Yet the ship, its curious passengers, the dining saloon, the music, the sea, and all, had given her suggestions of what was to come. They had expected that at table she would be awkward and ignorant to a degree. But she had at times eaten at the trader's table at Fort Charles, and had learned how to use a knife and fork. She had also been a favourite with the trader's wife, who had taught her very many civilised things. Her English, though far from abundant, was good. Those, therefore, who were curious and rude enough to stare at her were probably disappointed to find that she ate like "any Christom man." "How do you think the Armours will receive her?" said Lambert to Mrs. Townley, of whose judgment on short acquaintance he had come to entertain a high opinion. Mrs. Townley had a pretty way of putting her head to one side and speaking very piquantly. She had had it as a girl; she had not lost it as a woman, any more than she had lost a soft little spontaneous laugh which was one of her unusual charms--for few women can laugh audibly with effect. She laughed very softly now, and, her sense of humour supervening for the moment, she said: "Really, you have asked me a conundrum. I fancy I see Mrs. Armour's face when she gets the news,--at the breakfast-table, of course, and gives a little shriek, and says: 'General! oh, General!' But it is all very shocking, you know," she added, in a lower voice. "Still I think they will receive her and do the best they can for her; because, you see, there she is, married hard and fast. She bears the Armour name, and is likely to make them all very unhappy, indeed, if she determines to retaliate upon them for any neglect." "Yes. But how to retaliate, Mrs. Townley?" Lambert had not a suggestive mind. "Well, for instance, suppose they sent her away into seclusion,--with Frank's consent, another serious question,--and she should take the notion to fly her retirement, and appear inopportunely at some social function clothed as she is now! I fancy her blanket would be a wet one in such a case--if you will pardon the little joke." Lambert sighed. "Poor Frank--poor devil!" he said, almost beneath his breath. "And wherefore poor Frank? Do you think he or the Armours of Greyhope are the only ones at stake in this? What about this poor girl? Just think why he married her, if our suspicions are right,--and then imagine her feelings when she wakes to the truth over there, as some time she is sure to do!" Then Lambert began to see the matter in a different light, and his sympathy for Francis Armour grew less as his pity for the girl increased. In fact, the day before they got to Liverpool he swore at Armour more than once, and was anxious concerning the reception of the heathen wife by her white relatives. Had he been present at a certain scene at Greyhope a day or two before, he would have been still more anxious. It was the custom, at breakfast, for Mrs. Armour to open her husband's letters and read them while he was engaged with his newspaper, and hand to him afterwards those that were important. This morning Marion noticed a letter from Frank amongst the pile, and, without a word, pounced upon it. She was curious--as any woman would be--to see how he took Miss Sherwood's action. Her father was deep in his paper at the time. Her mother was reading other letters. Marion read the first few lines with a feeling of almost painful wonder, the words were so curious, cynical, and cold. Richard sat opposite her. He also was engaged with his paper, but, chancing to glance up, he saw that she was becoming very pale, and that the letter trembled in her fingers. Being a little short-sighted, he was not near enough to see the handwriting. He did not speak yet. He watched. Presently, seeing her grow more excited, he touched her foot under the table. She looked up, and caught his eye. She gasped slightly. She gave him a warning look, and turned away from her mother. Then she went on reading to the bitter end. Presently a little cry escaped her against her will. At that her mother looked up, but she only saw her daughter's back, as she rose hurriedly from the table, saying that she would return in a moment. Mrs. Armour, however, had been startled. She knew that Marion had been reading a letter, and, with a mother's instinct, her thoughts were instantly on Frank. She spoke quickly, almost sharply: "Marion, come here." Richard had risen. He came round the table, and, as the girl obeyed her mother, took the letter from her fingers and hastily glanced over it. Mrs. Armour came forward and took her daughter's arm. "Marion," she said, "there is something wrong--with Frank. What is it?" General Armour was now looking up at them all, curiously, questioningly, through his glasses, his paper laid down, his hands resting on the table. Marion could not answer. She was sick with regret, vexation, and shame; at the first flush, death--for Frank--had been preferable to this. She had a considerable store of vanity; she was not very philosophical. Besides, she was not married; and what Captain Vidall, her devoted admirer and possible husband, would think of this heathenish alliance was not a cheer ful thought to her. She choked down a sob, and waved her hand towards Richard to answer for her. He was pale too, but cool. He understood the case instantly; he made up his mind instantly also as to what ought to be--must be--done. "Well, mother," he said, "it is about Frank. But he is all right; that is, he is alive and well-in body. But he has arranged a hateful little embarrassment for us--he is married." "Married!" exclaimed his mother faintly. "Oh, poor Lady Agnes!" Marion sniffed a little viciously at this. "Married? Married?" said his father. "Well, what about it? eh? what about it?" The mother wrung her hands. "Oh, I know it is something dreadful-- dreadful! He has married some horrible wild person, or something." Richard, miserable as he was, remained calm. "Well," said he, "I don't know about her being horrible. Frank is silent on that point; but she is wild enough--a wild Indian, in fact." "Indian? Indian? Good God--a red nigger!" cried General Armour harshly, starting to his feet. "An Indian? a wild Indian?" Mrs. Armour whispered faintly, as she dropped into a chair. "And she'll be here in two or three days," fluttered Marion hysterically. Meanwhile Richard had hastily picked up the Times. "She is due here the day after to-morrow," he said deliberately. "Frank is as decisive as he is rash. Well, it's a melancholy tit-for-tat." "What do you mean by tit-for-tat?" cried his father angrily. "Oh, I mean that--that we tried to hasten Julia's marriage--with the other fellow, and he is giving us one in return; and you will all agree that it's a pretty permanent one." The old soldier recovered himself, and was beside his wife in an instant. He took her hand. "Don't fret about it, wife," he said; "it's an ugly business, but we must put up with it. The boy was out of his head. We are old, now, my dear, but there was a time when we should have resented such a thing as much as Frank--though not in the same fashion, perhaps-- not in the same fashion." The old man pressed his lips hard to keep down his emotion. "Oh, how could he--how could he!" said his mother: "we meant everything for the best." "It is always dangerous business meddling with lovers' affairs," rejoined Richard. "Lovers take themselves very seriously indeed, and--well, here the thing is! Now, who will go and fetch her from Liverpool? I should say that both my father and my mother ought to go." Thus Richard took it for granted that they would receive Frank's Indian wife into their home. He intended that, so far as he was concerned, there should be no doubt upon the question from the beginning. "Never--she shall never come here!" said Marion, with flashing eyes; "a common squaw, with greasy hair, and blankets, and big mouth, and black teeth, who eats with her fingers and grunts! If she does, if she is brought to Greyhope, I will never show my face in the world again. Frank married the animal: why does he ship her home to us? Why didn't he come with her? Why does he not take her to a home of his own? Why should he send her here, to turn our house into a menagerie?" Marion drew her skirt back, as if the common squaw, with her blankets and grease, was at that moment near her. "Well, you see," continued Richard, "that is just it. As I said, Frank arranged this little complication with a trifling amount of malice. No doubt he didn't come with her because he wished to test the family loyalty and hospitality; but a postscript to this letter says that his solicitor has instructions to meet his wife at Liverpool, and bring her on here in case we fail to show her proper courtesy." General Armour here spoke. "He has carried the war of retaliation very far indeed, but men do mad things when their blood is up, as I have seen often. That doesn't alter our clear duty in the matter. If the woman were bad, or shameful, it would be a different thing; if--" Marion interrupted: "She has ridden bareback across the continent like a jockey,--like a common jockey, and she wears a blanket, and she doesn't know a word of English, and she will sit on the floor!" "Well," said her father, "all these things are not sins, and she must be taught better." "Joseph, how can you?" said Mrs. Armour indignantly. "She cannot, she shall not come here. Think of Marion. Think of our position." She hid her troubled, tear-stained face behind her handkerchief. At the same time she grasped her husband's hand. She knew that he was right. She honoured him in her heart for the position he had taken, but she could not resist the natural impulse of a woman where her taste and convention were shocked. The old man was very pale, but there was no mistaking his determination. He had been more indignant than any of them, at first, but he had an unusual sense of justice when he got face to face with it, as Richard had here helped him to do. "We do not know that the woman has done any wrong," he said. "As for our name and position, they, thank God! are where a mad marriage cannot unseat them. We have had much prosperity in the world, my wife; we have had neither death nor dishonour; we--" "If this isn't dishonour, father, what is?" Marion flashed out. He answered calmly. "My daughter, it is a great misfortune, it will probably be a lifelong trial, but it is not necessarily dishonour." "You never can make a scandal less by trying to hide it," said Richard, backing up his father. "It is all pretty awkward, but I daresay we shall get some amusement out of it in the end." "Richard," said his mother through her tears, "you are flippant and unkind!" "Indeed, mother," was his reply, "I never was more serious in my life. When I spoke of amusement, I meant comedy merely, not fun--the thing that looks like tragedy and has a happy ending. That is what I mean, mother, nothing more." "You are always so very deep, Richard," remarked Marion ironically, "and care so very little how the rest of us feel about things. You have no family pride. If you had married a squaw, we shouldn't have been surprised. You could have camped in the grounds with your wild woman, and never have been missed--by the world," she hastened to add, for she saw a sudden pain in his face. He turned from them all a little wearily, and limped over to the window. He stood looking out into the limes where he and Frank had played when boys. He put his finger up, his unhandsome finger, and caught away some moisture from his eyes. He did not dare to let them see his face, nor yet to speak. Marion had cut deeper than she knew, and he would carry the wound for many a day before it healed. But his sister felt instantly how cruel she had been, as she saw him limp away, and caught sight of the bowed shoulders and the prematurely grey hair. Her heart smote her. She ran over, and impulsively put her hands on his shoulder. "Oh, Dick," she said, "forgive me, Dick! I didn't mean it. I was angry and foolish and hateful." He took one of her hands as it rested on his shoulder, she standing partly behind him, and raised it to his lips, but he did not turn to her; he could not. "It is all right--all right," he said; "it doesn't make any difference. Let us think of Frank and what we have got to do. Let us stand together, Marion; that is best." But her tears were dropping on his shoulder, as her forehead rested on her hand. He knew now that, whatever Frank's wife was, she would not have an absolute enemy here; for when Marion cried her heart was soft. She was clay in the hands of the potter whom we call Mercy--more often a stranger to the hearts of women than of men. At the other side of the room also the father and mother, tearless now, watched these two; and the mother saw her duty better and with less rebelliousness. She had felt it from the first, but she could not bring her mind to do it. They held each other's hands in silence. Presently General Armour said: "Richard, your mother and I will go to Liverpool to meet Frank's wife." Marion shuddered a little, and her hands closed on Richard's shoulder, but she said nothing. CHAPTER III OUT OF THE NORTH It was a beautiful day--which was so much in favour of Mrs. Frank Armour in relation to her husband's people. General Armour and his wife had come down from London by the latest train possible, that their suspense at Liverpool might be short. They said little to each other, but when they did speak it was of things very different from the skeleton which they expected to put into the family cupboard presently. Each was trying to spare the other. It was very touching. They naturally looked upon the matter in its most unpromising light, because an Indian was an Indian, and this unknown savage from Fort Charles was in violent contrast to such desirable persons as Lady Agnes Martling. Not that the Armours were zealous for mere money and title, but the thing itself was altogether a propos, as Mrs. Armour had more naively than correctly put it. The general, whose knowledge of character and the circumstances of life was considerable, had worked out the thing with much accuracy. He had declared to Richard, in their quiet talk upon the subject, that Frank must have been anything but sober when he did it. He had previously called it a policy of retaliation; so that now he was very near the truth. When they arrived at the dock at Liverpool, the Aphrodite was just making into the harbour. "Egad," said General Armour to himself, "Sebastopol was easier than this; for fighting I know, and being peppered I know, by Jews, Greeks, infidels, and heretics; but to take a savage to my arms and do for her what her godfathers and godmothers never did, is worse than the devil's dance at Delhi." What Mrs. Armour, who was not quite so definite as her husband, thought, it would be hard to tell; but probably grief for, and indignation at, her son, were uppermost in her mind. She had quite determined upon her course. None could better carry that high, neutral look of social superiority than she. Please Heaven, she said to herself, no one should see that her equanimity was shaken. They had brought one servant with them, who had been gravely and yet conventionally informed that his young master's wife, an Indian chieftainess, was expected. There are few family troubles but find their way to servants' hall with an uncomfortable speed; for, whether or not stone walls have ears, certainly men-servants and maid-servants have eyes that serve for ears, and ears that do more than their bounden duty. Boulter, the footman, knew his business. When informed of the coming of Mrs. Francis Armour, the Indian chieftainess, his face was absolutely expressionless; his "Yessir" was as mechanical as usual. On the dock he was marble--indifferent. When the passengers began to land, he showed no excitement. He was decorously alert. When the crucial moment came, he was imperturbable. Boulter was an excellent servant. So said Edward Lambert to himself after the event; so, likewise, said Mrs. Townley to herself when the thing was over; so declared General Armour many a time after, and once very emphatically, just before he raised Boulter's wages. As the boat neared Liverpool, Lambert and Mrs. Townley grew nervous. The truth regarding the Indian wife had become known among the passengers, and most were very curious--some in a well-bred fashion, some intrusively, vulgarly. Mackenzie, Lali's companion, like Boulter, was expressionless in face. She had her duty to do, paid for liberally, and she would do it. Lali might have had a more presentable and dignified attendant, but not one more worthy. It was noticeable that the captain of the ship and all the officers had been markedly courteous to Mrs. Armour throughout the voyage, but, to their credit, not ostentatiously so. When the vessel was brought to anchor and the passengers were being put upon the tender, the captain came and made his respectful adieus, as though Lali were a lady of title in her own right, and not an Indian girl married to a man acting under the influence of brandy and malice. General Armour and Mrs. Armour were always grateful to Lambert and Mrs. Townley for the part they played in this desperate little comedy. They stood still and watchful as the passengers came ashore one by one. They saw that they were the centre of unusual interest, but General Armour was used to bearing himself with a grim kind of indifference in public, and his wife was calm, and so somewhat disappointed those who probably expected the old officer and his wife to be distressed. Frank Armour's solicitor was also there, but, with good taste, he held aloof. The two needed all their courage, however, when they saw a figure in buckskin and blanket step upon the deck, attended by a very ordinary, austere, and shabbily-dressed Scotswoman. But immediately behind them were Edward Lambert and Mrs. Townley, and these, with their simple tact, naturalness, and freedom from any sort of embarrassment, acted as foils, and relieved the situation. General Armour advanced, hat in hand. "You are my son's wife?" he said courteously to this being in a blanket. She looked up and shook her head slightly, for she did not quite understand; but she recognised his likeness to her husband, and presently she smiled up musingly. Mackenzie repeated to her what General Armour had said. She nodded now, a flash of pleasure lighting up her face, and she slid out her beautiful hand to him. The general took it and pressed it mechanically, his lips twitching slightly. He pressed it far harder than he meant, for his feelings were at tension. She winced slightly, and involuntarily thrust out her other hand, as if to relieve his pressure. As she did so the blanket fell away from her head and shoulders. Lambert, with excellent intuition, caught it, and threw it across his arm. Then, quickly, and without embarrassment, he and Mrs. Townley greeted General Armour, who returned the greetings gravely, but in a singular, confidential tone, which showed his gratitude. Then he raised his hat again to Lali, and said: "Come and let me introduce you --to your husband's mother." The falling back of that blanket had saved the situation; for when the girl stood without it in her buckskin garments there was a dignity in her bearing which carried off the bizarre event. There was timidity in her face, and yet a kind of pride too, though she was only a savage. The case, even at this critical moment, did not seem quite hopeless. When they came to Mrs. Armour, Lali shrank away timidly from the look in the mother's eyes, and, shivering slightly, looked round for her blanket. But Lambert had deftly passed it on to the footman. Presently Mrs. Armour took both the girl's hands in hers (perhaps she did it because the eyes of the public were on her, but that is neither here nor there--she did it), and kissed her on the cheek. Then they moved away to a closed carriage. And that was the second act in Frank Armour's comedy of errors. CHAPTER IV IN THE NAME OF THE FAMILY The journey from Liverpool to Greyhope was passed in comparative silence. The Armours had a compartment to themselves, and they made the Indian girl as comfortable as possible without self-consciousness, without any artificial politeness. So far, what they had done was a matter of duty, not of will; but they had done their duty naturally all their lives, and it was natural to them now. They had no personal feelings towards the girl one way or another, as yet. It was trying to them that people stared into the compartment at different stations. It presently dawned upon General Armour that it might also be trying to their charge. Neither he nor his wife had taken into account the possibility of the girl having feelings to be hurt. But he had noticed Lali shrink visibly and flush slightly when some one stared harder than usual, and this troubled him. It opened up a possibility. He began indefinitely to see that they were not the only factors in the equation. He was probably a little vexed that he had not seen it before; for he wished to be a just man. He was wont to quote with more or less austerity--chiefly the result of his professional life--this: "For justice, all place a temple, and all season summer." And, man of war as he was, he had another saying which was much in his mouth; and he lived up to it with considerable sincerity: "Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, To silence envious tongues." He whispered to his wife. It would have been hard to tell from her look what she thought of the matter, but presently she changed seats with her husband, that he might, by holding his newspaper at a certain angle, shield the girl from intrusive gazers. At every station the same scene was enacted. And inquisitive people must have been surprised to see how monotonously ordinary was the manner of the three white people in the compartment. Suddenly, at a station near London, General Armour gave a start, and used a strong expression under his breath. Glancing at the "Marriage" column, he saw a notice to the effect that on a certain day of a certain month, Francis Gilbert, the son of General Joseph Armour, C.B., of Greyhope, Hertfordshire, and Cavendish Square, was married to Lali, the daughter of Eye-of-the-Moon, chief of the Bloods, at her father's lodge in the Saskatchewan Valley. This had been inserted by Frank Armour's solicitor, according to his instructions, on the day that the Aphrodite was due at Liverpool. General Armour did not at first intend to show this to his wife, but on second thought he did, because he knew she would eventually come to know of it, and also because she saw that something had moved him. She silently reached out her hand for the paper. He handed it to her, pointing to the notice. Mrs. Armour was unhappy, but her self-possession was admirable, and she said nothing. She turned her face to the window, and sat for a long time looking out. She did not turn to the others, for her eyes were full of tears, and she did not dare to wipe them away, nor yet to let them be seen. She let them dry there. She was thinking of her son, her favourite son, for whom she had been so ambitious, and for whom, so far as she could, and retain her self-respect, she had delicately intrigued, that he might happily and befittingly marry. She knew that in the matter of his engagement she had not done what was best for him, but how could she have guessed that this would be the result? She also was sure that when the first flush of his anger and disappointment had passed, and he came to view this thing with cooler mind, he would repent deeply--for a whole lifetime. She was convinced that he had not married this savage for anything which could make marriage endurable. Under the weight of the thought she was likely to forget that the young alien wife might have lost terribly in the event also. The arrival at Euston and the departure from St. Pancras were rather painful all round, for, though there was no waiting at either place, the appearance of an Indian girl in native costume was uncommon enough, even in cosmopolitan London, to draw much attention. Besides, the placards of the evening papers were blazoned with such announcements as this: A RED INDIAN GIRL MARRIED INTO AN ENGLISH COUNTY FAMILY. Some one had telegraphed particulars--distorted particulars--over from Liverpool, and all the evening sheets had their portion of extravagance and sensation. General Armour became a little more erect and austere as he caught sight of these placards, and Mrs. Armour groaned inwardly; but their faces were inscrutable, and they quietly conducted their charge, minus her blanket, to the train which was to take them to St. Albans, and were soon wheeling homeward. At Euston they parted with Lambert and Mrs. Townley, who quite simply and conventionally bade good-bye to them and their Indian daughter-in-law. Lali had grown to like Mrs. Townley, and when they parted she spoke a few words quickly in her own tongue, and then immediately was confused, because she remembered that she could not be understood. But presently she said in halting English that the face of her white friend was good, and she hoped that she would come one time and sit beside her in her wigwam, for she would be sad till her husband travelled to her. Mrs. Townley made some polite reply in simple English, pressed the girl's hand sympathetically, and hurried away. Before she parted from Mr. Lambert, however, she said, with a pretty touch of cynicism: "I think I see Marion Armour listening to her sister-in-law issue invitations to her wigwam. I am afraid I should be rather depressed myself if I had to be sisterly to a wigwam lady." "But I say, Mrs. Townley," rejoined Lambert seriously, as he loitered at the steps of her carriage, "I shouldn't be surprised if my Lady Wigwam-- a rather apt and striking title, by the way--turned out better than we think. She carried herself rippingly without the blanket, and I never saw a more beautiful hand in my life--but one," he added, as his fingers at that moment closed on hers, and held them tightly, in spite of the indignant little effort at withdrawal. "She may yet be able to give them all points in dignity and that kind of thing, and pay Master Frank back in his own coin. I do not see, after all, that he is the martyr." Lambert's voice got softer, for he still held Mrs. Townley's fingers, the footman not having the matter in his eye,--and then he spoke still more seriously on sentimental affairs of his own, in which he evidently hoped she would take some interest. Indeed, it is hard to tell how far the case might have been pushed if she had not suddenly looked a little forbidding and imperious. For even people of no notable height, with soft features, dark brown eyes, and a delightful little laugh, may appear rather regal at times. Lambert did not quite understand why she should take this attitude. If he had been as keen regarding his own affairs of the affections as in the case of Frank Armour and his Indian bride, he had known that every woman has in her mind the occasion when she should and when she should not be wooed, and nothing disappoints her more than a declaration at a time which is not her time. If it does not fall out as she wishes it, retrospect, a dear thing to a woman, is spoiled. Many a man has been sent to the right-about because he has ventured his proposal at the wrong time. What would have occurred to Lambert it is hard to tell; but he saw that something was wrong, and stopped in time. When General Armour and his party reached Greyhope it was late in the evening. The girl seemed tired and confused by the events of the day, and did as she was directed, indifferently, limply. But when they entered the gates of Greyhope and travelled up the long avenue of limes, she looked round her somewhat eagerly, and drew a long sigh, maybe of relief or pleasure. She presently stretched out a hand almost caressingly to the thick trees and the grass, and said aloud: "Oh, the beautiful trees and the long grass!" There was a whirr of birds' wings among the branches, and then, presently, there rose from a distance the sweet, gurgling whistle of the nightingale. A smile as of reminiscence crossed her face. Then she said, as if to herself: "It is the same. I shall not die. I hear the birds' wings, and one is singing. It is pleasant to sleep in the long grass when the nights are summer, and to hang your cradle in the trees." She had asked for her own blanket, refusing a rug, when they left St. Albans, and it had been given to her. She drew it about her now with a feeling of comfort, and seemed to lose the horrible sense of strangeness which had almost convulsed her when she was put into the carriage at the railway station. Her reserve had hidden much of what she really felt; but the drive through the limes had shown General Armour and his wife that they had to do with a nature having capacities for sensitive feeling; which, it is sometimes thought, is only the prerogative of certain well-bred civilisations. But it was impossible that they should yet, or for many a day, feel any sense of kinship with this aboriginal girl. Presently the carriage drew up to the doorway, which was instantly opened to them. A broad belt of light streamed out upon the stone steps. Far back in the hall stood Marion, one hand upon the balustrade of the staircase, the other tightly held at her side, as if to nerve herself for the meeting. The eyes of the Indian girl pierced the light, and, as if by a strange instinct, found those of Marion, even before she left the carriage. Lali felt vaguely that here was her possible enemy. As she stepped out of the carriage, General Armour's hand under her elbow to assist her, she drew her blanket something more closely about her, and so proceeded up the steps. The composure of the servants was, in the circumstances, remarkable. It needed to have been, for the courage displayed by Lali's two new guardians during the day almost faltered at the threshold of their own home. Any sign of surprise or amusement on the part of the domestics would have given them some painful moments subsequently. But all was perfectly decorous. Marion still stood motionless, almost dazed, The group advanced into the hall, and there paused, as if waiting for her. At that moment Richard came out of the study at her right hand, took her arm, and said quietly: "Come along, Marion. Let us be as brave as our father and mother." She gave a hard little gasp and seemed to awake as from a dream. She quickly glided forwards ahead of him, kissed her mother and father almost abruptly, then turned to the young wife with a scrutinising eye. "Marion," said her father, "this is your sister." Marion stood hesitating, confused. "Marion, dear," repeated her mother ceremoniously, "this is your brother's wife.--Lali, this is your husband's sister, Marion." Mackenzie translated the words swiftly to the girl, and her eyes flashed wide. Then in a low voice she said in English: "Yes, Marion, How!" It is probable that neither Marion nor any one present knew quite the meaning of 'How', save Richard, and he could not suppress a smile, it sounded so absurd and aboriginal. But at this exclamation Marion once more came to herself. She could not possibly go so far as her mother did at the dock and kiss this savage, but, with a rather sudden grasp of the hand, she said, a little hysterically, for her brain was going round like a wheel,--"Wo-won't you let me take your blanket?" and forthwith laid hold of it with tremulous politeness. The question sounded, for the instant, so ludicrous to Richard that, in spite of the distressing situation, he had to choke back a laugh. Years afterwards, if he wished for any momentary revenge upon Marion (and he had a keen sense of wordy retaliation), he simply said: "Wo-won't you let me take your blanket?" Of course the Indian girl did not understand, but she submitted to the removal of this uncommon mantle, and stood forth a less trying sight to Marion's eyes; for, as we said before, her buckskin costume set off softly the good outlines of her form. The Indian girl's eyes wandered from Marion to Richard. They wandered from anxiety, doubt, and a bitter kind of reserve, to cordiality, sympathy, and a grave kind of humour. Instantly the girl knew that she had in eccentric Richard Armour a frank friend. Unlike as he was to his brother, there was still in their eyes the same friendliness and humanity. That is, it was the same look that Frank carried when he first came to her father's lodge. Richard held out his hand with a cordial little laugh and said: "Ah, ah, very glad, very glad! Just in time for supper. Come along. How is Frank, eh? how is Frank? Just so; just so. Pleasant journey, I suppose?" He shook her hand warmly three or four times, and, as he held it, placed his left hand over it and patted it patriarchally, as was his custom with all the children and all the old ladies that he knew. "Richard," said his mother, in a studiously neutral voice, "you might see about the wine." Then Richard appeared to recover himself, and did as he was requested, but not until his brother's wife had said to him in English, as they courteously drew her towards the staircase: "Oh, my brother Richard, How!" But the first strain and suspense were now over for the family, and it is probable that never had they felt such relief as when they sat down behind closed doors in their own rooms for a short respite, while the Indian girl was closeted alone with Mackenzie and a trusted maid, in what she called her wigwam. CHAPTER V AN AWKWARD HALF-HOUR It is just as well, perhaps, that the matter had become notorious. Otherwise the Armours had lived in that unpleasant condition of being constantly "discovered." It was simply a case of aiming at absolute secrecy, which had been frustrated by Frank himself, or bold and unembarrassed acknowledgment and an attempt to carry things off with a high hand. The latter course was the only one possible. It had originally been Richard's idea, appropriated by General Armour, and accepted by Mrs. Armour and Marion with what grace was possible. The publication of the event prepared their friends, and precluded the necessity for reserve. What the friends did not know was whether they ought or ought not to commiserate the Armours. It was a difficult position. A death, an accident, a lost reputation, would have been easy to them; concerning these there could be no doubt. But an Indian daughter-in-law, a person in moccasins, was scarcely a thing to be congratulated upon; and yet sympathy and consolation might be much misplaced; no one could tell how the Armours would take it. For even their closest acquaintances knew what kind of delicate hauteur was possible to them. Even the "'centric" Richard, who visited the cottages of the poor, carrying soup and luxuries of many kinds, accompanying them with the most wholesome advice a single man ever gave to families and the heads of families, whose laugh was so cheery and spontaneous,--and face so uncommonly grave and sad at times,--had a faculty for manner. With astonishing suddenness he could raise insurmountable barriers; and people, not of his order, who occasionally presumed on his simplicity of life and habits, found themselves put distinctly ill at ease by a quiet, curious look in his eye. No man was ever more the recluse and at the same time the man of the world. He had had his bitter little comedy of life, but it was different from that of his brother Frank. It was buried very deep; not one of his family knew of it: Edward Lambert, and one or two others who had good reason never to speak of it, were the only persons possessing his secret. But all England knew of Frank's mesalliance. And the question was, What would people do? They very properly did nothing at first. They waited to see how the Armours would act: they did not congratulate; they did not console; that was left to those papers which chanced to resent General Armour's politics, and those others which were emotional and sensational on every subject--particularly so where women were concerned. It was the beginning of the season, but the Armours had decided that they would not go to town. That is, the general and his wife were not going. They felt that they ought to be at Greyhope with their daughter-in-law --which was to their credit. Regarding Marion they had nothing to say. Mrs. Armour inclined to her going to town for the season, to visit Mrs. Townley, who had thoughtfully written to her, saying that she was very lonely, and begging Mrs. Armour to let her come, if she would. She said that of course Marion would see much of her people in town just the same. Mrs. Townley was a very clever and tactful woman. She guessed that General Armour and his wife were not likely to come to town, but that must not appear, and the invitation should be on a different basis--as it was. It is probable that Marion saw through the delicate plot, but that did not make her like Mrs. Townley less. These little pieces of art make life possible, these tender fictions! Marion was, however, not in good humour; she was nervous and a little petulant. She had a high-strung temperament, a sensitive perception of the fitness of things, and a horror of what was gauche; and she would, in brief, make a rather austere person if the lines of life did not run in her favour. She had something of Frank's impulsiveness and temper; it would have been a great blessing to her if she had had a portion of Richard's philosophical humour also. She was at a point of tension--her mother and Richard could see that. She was anxious--though for the world she would not have had it thought so--regarding Captain Vidall. She had never cared for anybody but him; it was possible she never would. But he did not know this, and she was not absolutely sure that his evident but as yet informal love would stand this strain--which shows how people very honourable and perfect-minded in themselves may allow a large margin to other people who are presumably honourable and perfect-minded also. There was no engagement between them, and he was not bound in any way, and could, therefore, without slashing the hem of the code, retire without any apology; but they had had that unspoken understanding which most people who love each other show even before a word of declaration has passed their lips. If he withdrew because of this scandal there might be some awkward hours for Frank Armour's wife at Greyhope; but, more than that, there would be a very hard-hearted young lady to play her part in the deceitful world; she would be as merciless as she could be. Naturally, being young, she exaggerated the importance of the event, and brooded on it. It was different with her father and mother. They were shocked and indignant at first, but when the first scene had been faced they began to make the best of things all round. That is, they proceeded at once to turn the North American Indian into a European--a matter of no little difficulty. A governess was discussed; but General Armour did not like the idea, and Richard opposed it heartily. She must be taught English and educated, and made possible in "Christian clothing," as Mrs. Armour put it. Of the education they almost despaired--all save Richard; time, instruction, vanity, and a dressmaker might do much as to the other. The evening of her arrival, Lali would not, with any urging, put on clothes of Marion's which had been sent in to her. And the next morning it was still the same. She came into the breakfast-room dressed still in buckskin and moccasins, and though the grease had been taken out of her hair it was still combed flat. Mrs. Armour had tried to influence her through Mackenzie, but to no purpose. She was placidly stubborn. It had been unwisely told her by Mackenzie that they were Marion's clothes. They scarcely took in the fact that the girl had pride, that she was the daughter of a chief, and a chieftainess herself, and that it was far from happy to offer her Marion's clothes to wear. Now, Richard, when he was a lad, had been on a journey to the South Seas, and had learned some of the peculiarities of the native mind, and he did not suppose that American Indians differed very much from certain well- bred Polynesians in little matters of form and good taste. When his mother told him what had occurred before Lali entered the breakfast-room, he went directly to what he believed was the cause, and advised tact with conciliation. He also pointed out that Lali was something taller than Marion, and that she might be possessed of that general trait of humanity-vanity. Mrs. Armour had not yet got used to thinking of the girl in another manner than an intrusive being of a lower order, who was there to try their patience, but also to do their bidding. She had yet to grasp the fact that, being her son's wife, she must have, therefore, a position in the house, exercising a certain authority over the servants, who, to Mrs. Armour, at first seemed of superior stuff. But Richard said to her: "Mother, I fancy you don't quite grasp the position. The girl is the daughter of a chief, and the descendant of a family of chiefs, perhaps through many generations. In her own land she has been used to respect, and has been looked up to pretty generally. Her garments are, I fancy, considered very smart in the Hudson's Bay country; and a finely decorated blanket like hers is expensive up there. You see, we have to take the thing by comparison; so please give the girl a chance." And Mrs. Armour answered wearily, "I suppose you are right, Richard; you generally are in the end, though why you should be I do not know, for you never see anything of the world any more, and you moon about among the cottagers. I suppose it's your native sense and the books you read." Richard laughed softly, but there was a queer ring in the laugh, and he came over stumblingly and put his arm round his mother's shoulder. "Never mind how I get such sense as I have, mother; I have so much time to think, it would be a wonder if I hadn't some. But I think we had better try to study her, and coax her along, and not fob her off as a very inferior person, or we shall have our hands full in earnest. My opinion is, she has got that which will save her and us too--a very high spirit, which only needs opportunity to develop into a remarkable thing; and, take my word for it, mother, if we treat her as a chieftainess, or princess, or whatever she is, and not simply as a dusky person, we shall come off better and she will come off better in the long run. She is not darker than a Spaniard, anyhow." At this point Marion entered the room, and her mother rehearsed briefly to her what their talk had been. Marion had had little sleep, and she only lifted her eyebrows at them at first. She was in little mood for conciliation. She remembered all at once that at supper the evening before her sister-in-law had said How! to the butler, and had eaten the mayonnaise with a dessert spoon. But presently, because she saw they waited for her to speak, she said, with a little flutter of maliciousness: "Wouldn't it be well for Richard- -he has plenty of time, and we are also likely to have it now --to put us all through a course of instruction for the training of chieftainesses? And when do you think she will be ready for a drawing- room--Her Majesty Queen Victoria's, or ours?" "Marion!" said Mrs. Armour severely; but Richard came round to her, and, with his fresh, child-like humour, put his arm round her waist and added "Marion, I'd be willing to bet--if I were in the habit of betting--my shaky old pins here against a lock of your hair that you may present her at any drawing-room--ours or Queen Victoria's--in two years, if we go at it right; and it would serve Master Frank very well if we turned her out something, after all." To which Mrs. Armour responded almost eagerly: "I wish it were only possible, Richard. And what you say is true, I suppose, that she is of rank in her own country, whatever value that may have." Richard saw his advantage. "Well, mother," he said, "a chieftainess is a chieftainess, and I don't know but to announce her as such, and--" "And be proud of it, as it were," put in Marion, "and pose her, and make her a prize--a Pocahontas, wasn't it?--and go on pretending world without end!" Marion's voice was still slightly grating, but there was in it too a faint sound of hope. "Perhaps," she said to herself, "Richard is right." At this point the door opened and Lali entered, shown in by Colvin, her newly-appointed maid, and followed by Mackenzie, and, as we said, dressed still in her heathenish garments. She had a strong sense of dignity, for she stood still and waited. Perhaps nothing could have impressed Marion more. Had Lali been subservient simply, an entirely passive, unintelligent creature, she would probably have tyrannised over her in a soft, persistent fashion, and despised her generally. But Mrs. Armour and Marion saw that this stranger might become very troublesome indeed, if her temper were to have play. They were aware of capacities for passion in those dark eyes, so musing yet so active in expression, which moved swiftly from one object to another and then suddenly became resolute. Both mother and daughter came forward, and held out their hands, wishing her a pleasant good-morning, and were followed by Richard, and immediately by General Armour, who had entered soon after her. She had been keen enough to read (if a little vaguely) behind the scenes, and her mind was wakening slowly to the peculiarity of the position she occupied. The place awed her, and had broken her rest by perplexing her mind, and she sat down to the breakfast-table with a strange hunted look in her face. But opposite to her was a window opening to the ground, and beyond it were the limes and beeches and a wide perfect sward and far away a little lake, on which swans and wild fowl fluttered. Presently, as she sat silent, eating little, her eyes lifted to the window. They flashed instantly, her face lighted up with a weird kind of charm, and suddenly she got to her feet with Indian exclamations on her lips, and, as if unconscious of them all, went swiftly to the window and out of it, waving her hands up and down once or twice to the trees and the sunlight. "What did she say?" said Mrs. Armour, rising with the others. "She said," replied Mackenzie, as she hurried towards the window, "that they were her beautiful woods, and there were wild birds flying and swimming in the water, as in her own country." By this time all were at the window, Richard arriving last, and the Indian girl turned on them, her body all quivering with excitement, laughed a low, bird-like laugh, and then, clapping her hands above her head, she swung round and ran like a deer towards the lake, shaking her head back as an animal does when fleeing from his pursuers. She would scarcely have been recognised as the same placid, speechless woman in a blanket who sat with folded hands day after day on the Aphrodite. The watchers turned and looked at each other in wonder. Truly, their task of civilising a savage would not lack in interest. The old general was better pleased, however, at this display of activity and excitement than at yesterday's taciturnity. He loved spirit, even if it had to be subdued, and he thought on the instant that he might possibly come to look upon the fair savage as an actual and not a nominal daughter-in-law. He had a keen appreciation of courage, and he thought he saw in her face, as she turned upon them, a look of defiance or daring, and nothing could have got at his nature quicker. If the case had not been so near to his own hearthstone he would have chuckled. As it was, he said good- humouredly that Mackenzie and Marion should go and bring her back. But Mackenzie was already at that duty. Mrs. Armour had had the presence of mind to send for Colvin; but presently, when the general spoke, she thought it better that Marion should go, and counselled returning to breakfast and not making the matter of too much importance. This they did, Richard very reluctantly; while Marion, rather pleased than not at the spirit shown by the strange girl, ran away over the grass towards the lake, where Lali had now stopped. There was a little bridge at one point where the lake narrowed, and Lali, evidently seeing it all at once, went towards it, and ran up on it, standing poised above the water about the middle of it. For an instant an unpleasant possibility came into Marion's mind: suppose the excited girl intended suicide! She shivered as she thought of it, and yet--! She put that horribly cruel and selfish thought away from her with an indignant word at herself. She had passed Mackenzie, and came first to the lake. Here she slackened, and waved her hand playfully to the girl, so as not to frighten her; and then with a forced laugh came up panting on the bridge, and was presently by Lali's side. Lali eyed her a little furtively, but, seeing that Marion was much inclined to be pleasant, she nodded to her, said some Indian words hastily, and spread out her hands towards the water. As she did so, Marion noticed again the beauty of those hands and the graceful character of the gesture, so much so that she forgot the flat hair and the unstayed body, and the rather broad feet, and the delicate duskiness, which had so worked upon her in imagination and in fact the evening before. She put her hand kindly on that long slim hand stretched out beside her, and, because she knew not what else to speak, and because the tongue is very perverse at times,--saying the opposite of what is expected,--she herself blundered out, "How! How! Lali." Perhaps Lali was as much surprised at the remark as Marion herself, and certainly very much more delighted. The sound of those familiar words, spoken by accident as they were, opened the way to a better understanding, as nothing else could possibly have done. Marion was annoyed with herself, and yet amused too. If her mind had been perfectly assured regarding Captain Vidall, it is probable that then and there a peculiar, a genial, comradeship would have been formed. As it was, Marion found this little event more endurable than she expected. She also found that Lali, when she laughed in pleasant acknowledgment of that How! had remarkably white and regular teeth. Indeed, Marion Armour began to discover some estimable points in the appearance of her savage sister-in-law. Marion remarked to herself that Lali might be a rather striking person, if she were dressed, as her mother said, in Christian garments, could speak the English language well--and was somebody else's sister-in-law. At this point Mackenzie came breathlessly to the bridge, and called out a little sharply to Lali, rebuking her. In this Mackenzie made a mistake; for not only did Lali draw herself up with considerable dignity, but Marion, noticing the masterful nature of the tone, instantly said: "Mackenzie, you must remember that you are speaking to Mrs. Francis Armour, and that her position in General Armour's house is the same as mine. I hope it is not necessary to say anything more, Mackenzie." Mackenzie flushed. She was a sensible woman, she knew that she had done wrong, and she said very promptly: "I am very sorry, miss. I was flustered, and I expect I haven't got used to speaking to--to Mrs. Armour as I'll be sure to do in the future." As she spoke, two or three deer came trotting out of the beeches down to the lake side. If Lali was pleased and excited before, she was overwhelmed now. Her breath came in quick little gasps; she laughed; she tossed her hands; she seemed to become dizzy with delight; and presently, as if this new link with, and reminder of, her past, had moved her as one little expects a savage heart to be moved, two tears gathered in her eyes, then slid down her cheek unheeded, and dried there in the sunlight, as she still gazed at the deer. Marion, at first surprised, was now touched, as she could not have thought it possible concerning this wild creature, and her hand went out and caught Lali's gently. At this genuine act of sympathy, instinctively felt by Lali, the stranger in a strange land, husbanded and yet a widow, there came a flood of tears, and, dropping on her knees, she leaned against the low railing of the bridge and wept silently. So passionless was her grief it seemed the more pathetic, and Marion dropped on her knees beside her, put her arm round her shoulder, and said: "Poor girl! Poor girl!" At that Lali caught her hand, and held it, repeating after her the words: "Poor girl! Poor girl!" She did not quite understand them, but she remembered that once just before she parted from her husband at the Great Lakes he had said those very words. If the fates had apparently given things into Frank Armour's hands when he sacrificed this girl to his revenge, they were evidently inclined to play a game which would eventually defeat his purpose, wicked as it had been in effect if not in absolute motive. What the end of this attempt to engraft the Indian girl upon the strictest convention of English social life would have been had her introduction not been at Greyhope, where faint likenesses to her past surrounded her, it is hard to conjecture. But, from present appearances, it would seem that Richard Armour was not wholly a false prophet; for the savage had shown herself that morning to possess, in their crudeness, some striking qualities of character. Given character, many things are possible, even to those who are not of the elect. This was the beginning of better things. Lali seemed to the Armours not quite so impossible now. Had she been of the very common order of Indian "pure and simple," the task had resolved itself into making a common savage into a very common European. But, whatever Lali was, it was abundantly evident that she must be reckoned with at all points, and that she was more likely to become a very startling figure in the Armour household than a mere encumbrance to be blushed for, whose eternal absence were preferable to her company. Years after that first morning Marion caught herself shuddering at the thought that came to her when she saw Lali hovering on the bridge. Whatever Marion's faults were, she had a fine dislike of anything that seemed unfair. She had not ridden to hounds for nothing. She had at heart the sportsman's instinct. It was upon this basis, indeed, that Richard appealed to her in the first trying days of Lali's life among them. To oppose your will to Marion on the basis of superior knowledge was only to turn her into a rebel; and a very effective rebel she made; for she had a pretty gift at the retort courteous, and she could take as much, and as well, as she gave. She rebelled at first at assisting in Lali's education, though by fits and starts she would teach her English words, and help her to form long sentences, and was, on the whole, quite patient. But Lali's real instructors were Mrs. Armour and Richard--, her best, Richard. The first few days she made but little progress, for everything was strange to her, and things made her giddy--the servants, the formal routine, the handsome furnishings, Marion's music, the great house, the many precise personal duties set for her, to be got through at stated times; and Mrs. Armour's rather grand manner. But there was the relief to this, else the girl had pined terribly for her native woods and prairies; this was the park, the deer, the lake, the hares, and birds. While she sat saying over after Mrs. Armour words and phrases in English, or was being shown how she must put on and wear the clothes which a dressmaker from Regent Street had been brought to make, her eyes would wander dreamily to the trees and the lake and the grass. They soon discovered that she would pay no attention and was straightway difficult to teach if she was not placed where she could look out on the park. They had no choice, for though her resistance was never active it was nevertheless effective. Presently she got on very swiftly with Richard. For he, with instinct worthy of a woman, turned their lessons upon her own country and Frank. This cost him something, but it had its reward. There was no more listlessness. Previously Frank's name had scarcely been spoken to her. Mrs. Armour would have hours of hesitation and impotent regret before she brought herself to speak of her son to his Indian wife. Marion tried to do it a few times and failed; the general did it with rather a forced voice and manner, because he saw that his wife was very tender upon the point. But Richard, who never knew self-consciousness, spoke freely of Frank when he spoke at all; and it was seeing Lali's eyes brighten and her look earnestly fixed on him when he chanced to mention Frank's name, that determined him on his new method of instruction. It had its dangers, but he had calculated them all. The girl must be educated at all costs. The sooner that occurred the sooner would she see her own position and try to adapt herself to her responsibilities, and face the real state of her husband's attitude towards her. He succeeded admirably. Striving to tell him about her past life, and ready to talk endlessly about her husband, of his prowess in the hunt, of his strength and beauty, she also strove to find English words for the purpose, and Richard supplied them with uncommon willingness. He humoured her so far as to learn many Indian words and phrases, but he was chary of his use of them, and tried hard to make her appreciative of her new life and surroundings. He watched her waking slowly to an understanding of the life, and of all that it involved. It gave him a kind of fear, too, because she was sensitive, and there was the possible danger of her growing disheartened or desperate, and doing some mad thing in the hour that she wakened to the secret behind her marriage. His apprehensions were not without cause. For slowly there came into Lali's mind the element of comparison. She became conscious of it one day when some neighbouring people called at Greyhope. Mrs. Armour, in her sense of duty, which she had rigidly set before her, introduced Lali into the drawing-room. The visitors veiled their curiosity and said some pleasant casual things to the young wife, but she saw the half-curious, half-furtive glances, she caught a sidelong glance and smile, and when they were gone she took to looking at herself in a mirror, a thing she could scarcely be persuaded to do before. She saw the difference between her carriage and theirs, her manner of wearing her clothes and theirs, her complexion and theirs. She exaggerated the difference. She brooded on it. Now she sat downcast and timid, and hunted in face, as on the first evening she came; now she appeared restless and excited. If Mrs. Armour was not exactly sympathetic with her, she was quiet and forbearing, and General Armour, like Richard, tried to draw her out--but not on the same subjects. He dwelt upon what she did; the walks she took in the park, those hours in the afternoon when, with Mackenzie or Colvin, she vanished into the beeches, making friends with the birds and deer and swans. But most of all she loved to go to the stables. She was, however, asked not to go unless Richard or General Armour was with her. She loved horses, and these were a wonder to her. She had never known any but the wild, ungroomed Indian pony, on which she had ridden in every fashion and over every kind of country. Mrs. Armour sent for a riding- master, and had riding-costumes made for her. It was intended that she should ride every day as soon as she seemed sufficiently presentable. This did not appear so very far off, for she improved daily in appearance. Her hair was growing finer, and was made up in the modest prevailing fashion; her skin, no longer exposed to an inclement climate, and subject to the utmost care, was smoother and fairer; her feet, encased in fine, well-made boots, looked much smaller; her waist was shaped to fashion, and she was very straight and lissom. So many things she did jarred on her relatives, that they were not fully aware of the great improvement in her appearance. Even Richard admitted her trying at times. Marion went up to town to stay with Mrs. Townley, and there had to face a good deal of curiosity. People looked at her sometimes as if it was she and not Lali that was an Indian. But she carried things off bravely enough, and answered those kind inquiries, which one's friends make when we are in embarrassing situations, with answers so calm and pleasant that people did not know what to think. "Yes," she said, in reply to Lady Balwood, "her sister-in-law might be in town later in the year, perhaps before the season was over: she could not tell. She was tired after her long voyage, and she preferred the quiet of Greyhope; she was fond of riding and country-life; but still she would come to town for a time." And so on. "Ah, dear me, how charming! And doesn't she resent her husband's absence--during the honeymoon? or did the honeymoon occur before she came over to England?" And Lady Balwood tried to say it all playfully, and certainly said it something loudly. She had daughters. But Marion was perfectly prepared. Her face did not change expression. "Yes, they had had their honeymoon on the prairies; Frank was so fascinated with the life and the people. He had not come home at once, because he was making she did not know how great a fortune over there in investments, and so Mrs. Armour came on before him, and, of course, as soon as he could get away from his business, he would follow his wife." And though Marion smiled, her heart was very hot, and she could have slain Lady Balwood in her tracks. Lady Balwood then nodded a little patronisingly, and babbled that "she hoped so much to see Mrs. Francis Armour. She must be so very interesting, the papers said so much about her." Now, while this conversation was going on, some one stood not far behind Marion, who seemed much interested in her and what she said. But Marion did not see this person. She was startled presently, however, to hear a strong voice say softly over her shoulder: "What a charming woman Lady Balwood is! And so ingenuous!" She was grateful, tremulous, proud. Why had he--Captain Vidall--kept out of the way all these weeks, just when she needed him most, just when he should have played the part of a man? Then she was feeling twinges at the heart, too. She had seen Lady Agnes Martling that afternoon, and had noticed how the news had worn on her. She felt how much better it had been had Frank come quietly home and married her, instead of doing the wild, scandalous thing that was making so many heart-burnings. A few minutes ago she had longed for a chance to say something delicately acid to Lady Haldwell, once Julia Sherwood, who was there. Now there was a chance to give her bitter spirit tongue. She was glad--she dared not think how glad--to hear that voice again; but she was angry too, and he should suffer for it--the more so because she recognised in the tone, and afterwards in his face, that he was still absorbingly interested in her. There was a little burst of thanksgiving in her heart, and then she prepared a very notable commination service in her mind. This meeting had been deftly arranged by Mrs. Townley, with the help of Edward Lambert, who now held her fingers with a kind of vanity of possession whenever he bade her good-bye or met her. Captain Vidall had, in fact, been out of the country, had only been back a week, and had only heard of Frank Armour's mesalliance from Lambert at an At Home forty- eight hours before. Mrs. Townley guessed what was really at the bottom of Marion's occasional bitterness, and, piecing together many little things dropped casually by her friend, had come to the conclusion that the happiness of two people was at stake. When Marion shook hands with Captain Vidall she had herself exceedingly well under control. She looked at him in slight surprise, and casually remarked that they had not chanced to meet lately in the run of small- and-earlies. She appeared to be unconscious that he had been out of the country, and also that she had been till very recently indeed at Greyhope. He hastened to assure her that he had been away, and to lay siege to this unexpected barrier. He knew all about Frank's affair, and, though it troubled him, he did not see why it should make any difference in his regard for Frank's sister. Fastidious as he was in all things, he was fastidiously deferential. Not an exquisite, he had all that vanity as to appearance so usual with the military man; himself of the most perfect temper and sweetness of manner and conduct, the unusual disturbed him. Not possessed of a vivid imagination, he could scarcely conjure up this Indian bride at Greyhope. But face to face with Marion Armour he saw what troubled his mind, and he determined he would not meet her irony with irony, her assumed indifference with indifference. He had learned one of the most important lessons of life--never to quarrel with a woman. Whoever has so far erred has been foolish indeed. It is the worst of policy, to say nothing of its being the worst of art; and life should never be without art. It is absurd to be perfectly natural; anything, anybody can be that. Well, Captain Hume Vidall was something of an artist, more, however, in principle than by temperament. He refused to recognise the rather malicious adroitness with which Marion turned his remarks again upon himself, twisted out of all semblance. He was very patient. He inquired quietly, and as if honestly interested, about Frank, and said--because he thought it safest as well as most reasonable--that, naturally, they must have been surprised at his marrying a native; but he himself had seen some such marriages turn out very well--in Japan, India, the South Sea Islands, and Canada. He assumed that Marion's sister-in-law was beautiful, and then disarmed Marion by saying that he thought of going down to Greyhope immediately, to call on General Armour and Mrs. Armour, and wondered if she was going back before the end of the season. Quick as Marion was, this was said so quietly that she did not quite see the drift of it. She had intended staying in London to the end of the season, not because she enjoyed it, but because she was determined to face Frank's marriage at every quarter, and have it over, once for all, so far as herself was concerned. But now, taken slightly aback, she said, almost without thinking, that she would probably go back soon--she was not quite sure; but certainly her father and mother would be glad to see Captain Vidall at any time. Then, without any apparent relevancy, he asked her if Mrs. Frank Armour still wore her Indian costume. In any one else the question had seemed impertinent; in him it had a touch of confidence, of the privilege of close friendship. Then he said, with a meditative look and a very calm, retrospective voice, that he was once very much in love with a native girl in India, and might have become permanently devoted to her, were it not for the accident of his being ordered back to England summarily. This was a piece of news which cut two ways. In the first place it lessened the extraordinary character of Frank's marriage, and it roused in her an immediate curiosity--which a woman always feels in the past "affairs" of her lover, or possible lover. Vidall did not take pains to impress her with the fact that the matter occurred when he was almost a boy; and it was when her earnest inquisition had drawn from him, bit by bit, the circumstances of the case, and she had forgotten many parts of her commination service and to preserve an effective neutrality in tone, that she became aware he was speaking ancient history. Then it was too late to draw back. They had threaded their way through the crowd into the conservatory, where they were quite alone, and there, with only a little pyramid of hydrangeas between them, which she could not help but notice chimed well with the colour of her dress, he dropped his voice a little lower, and then suddenly said, his eyes hard on her: "I want your permission to go to Greyhope." The tone drew her eyes hastily to his, and, seeing, she dropped them again. Vidall had a strong will, and, what is of more consequence, a peculiarly attractive voice. It had a vibration which made some of his words organ-like in sound. She felt the influence of it. She said a little faintly, her fingers toying with a hydrangea: "I am afraid I do not understand. There is no reason why you should not go to Greyhope without my permission." "I cannot go without it," he persisted. "I am waiting for my commission from you." She dropped her hand from the flower with a little impatient motion. She was tired, her head ached, she wanted to be alone. "Why are you enigmatical?" she said. Then quickly: "I wish I knew what is in your mind. You play with words so." She scarcely knew what she said. A woman who loves a man very much is not quick to take in the absolute declaration of that man's love on the instant; it is too wonderful for her. He felt his check flush with hers, he drew her look again to his. "Marion! Marion!" he said. That was all. "Oh, hush, some one is coming!" was her quick, throbbing reply. When they parted a half-hour later, he said to her: "Will you give me my commission to go to Greyhope?" "Oh no, I cannot," she said very gravely; "but come to Greyhope-when I go back." "And when will that be?" he said, smiling, yet a little ruefully too. "Please ask Mrs. Townley," she replied; "she is coming also." Marion, knew what that commission to go to Greyhope meant. But she determined that he should see Lali first, before anything irrevocable was done. She still looked upon Frank's marriage as a scandal. Well, Captain Vidall should face it in all its crudeness. So, in a week or less, Marion and Mrs. Townley were in Greyhope. Two months had gone since Lali arrived in England, and yet no letter had come to her, or to any of them, from Frank. Frank's solicitor in London had written him fully of her arrival, and he had had a reply, with further instructions regarding money to be placed to General Armour's credit for the benefit of his wife. Lali, as she became Europeanised, also awoke to the forms and ceremonies of her new life. She had overheard Frank's father and mother wondering, and fretting as they wondered, why they had not received any word from him. General Armour had even called him a scoundrel, which sent Frank's mother into tears. Then Lali had questioned Mackenzie and Colvin, for she had increasing shrewdness, and she began to feel her actual position. She resented General Armour's imputation, but in her heart she began to pine and wonder. At times, too, she was fitful, and was not to be drawn out. But she went on improving in personal appearance and manner and in learning the English language. Mrs. Townley's appearance marked a change in her. When they met she suddenly stood still and trembled. When Mrs. Townley came to her and took her hand and kissed her, she shivered, and then caught her about the shoulders lightly, but was silent. After a little she said: "Come--come to my wigwam, and talk with me." She said it with a strange little smile, for now she recognised that the word wigwam was not to be used in her new life. But Mrs. Townley whispered: "Ask Marion to come too." Lali hesitated, and then said, a little maliciously: "Marion, will you come to my wigwam?" Marion ran to her, caught her about the waist, and replied gaily: "Yes, we will have a pow-wow--is that right--is pow-wow right?" The Indian girl shook her head with a pretty vagueness, and vanished with them. General Armour walked up and down the room briskly, then turned on his wife and said: "Wife, it was a brutal thing: Frank doesn't deserve to be--the father of her child." But Lali had moods--singular moods. She indulged in one three days after the arrival of Marion and Mrs. Townley. She had learned to ride with the side-saddle, and wore her riding-dress admirably. Nowhere did she show to better advantage. She had taken to riding now with General Armour on the country roads. On this day Captain Vidall was expected, he having written to ask that he might come. What trouble Lali had with one of the servants that morning was never thoroughly explained, but certain it is, she came to have a crude notion of why Frank Armour married her. The servant was dismissed duly, but that was after the contre-temps. It was late afternoon. Everybody had been busy, because one or two other guests were expected besides Captain Vidall. Lali had kept to herself, sending word through Richard that she would not "be English," as she vaguely put it, that day. She had sent Mackenzie on some mission. She sat on the floor of her room, as she used to sit on the ground in her father's lodge. Her head was bowed in her hands, and her arms rested on her knees. Her body swayed to and fro. Presently all motion ceased. She became perfectly still. She looked before her as if studying something. Her eyes immediately flashed. She rose quickly to her feet, went to her wardrobe, and took out her Indian costume and blanket, with which she could never be induced to part. Almost feverishly she took off the clothes she wore and hastily threw them from her. Then she put on the buckskin clothes in which she had journeyed to England, drew down her hair as she used to wear it, fastened round her waist a long red sash which had been given her by a governor of the Hudson's Bay Company when he had visited her father's country, threw her blanket round her shoulders, and then eyed herself in the great mirror in the room. What she saw evidently did not please her perfectly, for she stretched out her hands and looked at them; she shook her head at herself and put her hand to her cheeks and pinched them, they were not so brown as they once were, then she thrust out her foot. She drew it back quickly in disdain. Immediately she caught the fashionable slippers from her feet and threw them among the discarded garments. She looked at herself again. Still she was not satisfied, but she threw up her arms, as with a sense of pleasure and freedom, and laughed at herself. She pushed out her moccasined foot, tapped the floor with it, nodded towards it, and said a word or two in her own language. She heard some one in the next room, possibly Mackenzie. She stepped to the door leading into the hall, opened it, went out, travelled its length, ran down a back hallway, out into the park, towards the stables, her blanket, as her hair, flying behind her. She entered the stables, made for a horse that she had ridden much, put a bridle on him, led him out before any one had seen her, and, catching him by the mane, suddenly threw herself on him at a bound, and, giving him a tap with a short whip she had caught up in the stable, headed him for the main avenue and the open road. Then a stableman saw her and ran after, but he might as well have tried to follow the wind. He forthwith proceeded to saddle another horse. Boulter also saw her as she passed the house, and, running in, told Mrs. Armour and the general. They both ran to the window and saw dashing down the avenue--a picture out of Fenimore Cooper; a saddleless horse with a rider whose fingers merely touched the bridle, riding as on a journey of life and death. "My God, it's Lali! She's mad--she's mad! She is striking that horse! It will bolt! It will kill her!" cried the general. Then he rushed for a horse to follow her. Mrs. Armour's hands clasped painfully. For an instant she had almost the same thought as had Marion on the first morning of Lali's coming; but that passed, and left her gazing helplessly after the horse-woman. The flying blanket had frightened the blooded horse, and he made desperate efforts to fulfil the general's predictions. Lali soon found that she had miscalculated. She was not riding an Indian pony, but a crazed, high-strung horse. As they flew, she sitting superbly and tugging at the bridle, the party coming from the railway station entered the great gate, accompanied by Richard and Marion. In a moment they sighted this wild pair bearing down upon them with a terrible swiftness. As Marion recognised Lali she turned pale and cried out, rising in her seat. Instinctively Captain Vidall knew who it was, though he could not guess the cause of the singular circumstance. He saw that the horse had bolted, but also that the rider seemed entirely fearless. "Why, in Heaven's name," he said between his teeth, "doesn't she let go that blanket!" At that moment Lali did let it go, and the horse dashed by them, making hard for the gate. "Turn the horses round and follow her," said Vidall to the driver. While this was doing, Marion caught sight of her father riding hard down the avenue. He passed them, and called to them to hurry on after him. Lali had not the slightest sense of fear, but she knew that the horse had gone mad. When they passed through the gate and swerved into the road, a less practised rider would have been thrown. She sat like wax. The pace was incredible for a mile, and though General Armour rode well, he was far behind. Suddenly a trap appeared in the road in front of them, and the driver, seeing the runaway, set his horses at right angles to the road. It served the purpose only to provide another danger. Not far from where the trap was drawn, and between it and the runaway, was a lane, which ended at a farmyard in a cul-de-sac. The horse swerved into it, not slacking its pace, and in the fraction of a minute came to the farmyard. But now the fever was in Lali's blood. She did not care whether she lived or died. A high hedge formed the cul-de-sac. When she saw the horse slacking she cut it savagely across the head twice with a whip, and drove him at the green wall. He was of too good make to refuse it, stiff as it was. He rose to it magnificently, and cleared it; but almost as he struck the ground squarely, he staggered and fell--the girl beneath him. He had burst a blood-vessel. The ground was soft and wet; the weight of the horse prevented her from getting free. She felt its hoof striking in its death-struggles, and once her shoulder was struck. Instinctively she buried her face in the mud, and her arms covered her head. And then she knew no more. When she came to, she was in the carriage within the gates of Greyhope, and Marion was bending over her. She suddenly tried to lift herself, but could not. Presently she saw another face--that of General Armour. It was stern, and yet his eyes were swimming as he looked at her. "How!" she said to him--"How!" and fainted again. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Being young, she exaggerated the importance of the event His duties were many, or he made them so Men must have their bad hours alone Most important lessons of life--never to quarrel with a woman Sympathy and consolation might be much misplaced These little pieces of art make life possible Think of our position Who never knew self-consciousness You never can make a scandal less by trying to hide it THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. VI. THE PASSING OF THE YEARS VII. A COURT-MARTIAL VIII. TO EVERY MAN HIS HOUR IX. THE FAITH OF COMRADES CHAPTER VI THE PASSING OF THE YEARS Lali's recovery was not rapid. A change had come upon her. With that strange ride had gone the last strong flicker of the desire for savage life in her. She knew now the position she held towards her husband: that he had never loved her; that she was only an instrument for unworthy retaliation. So soon as she could speak after her accident, she told them that they must not write to him and tell him of it. She also made them promise that they would give him no news of her at all, save that she was well. They could not refuse to promise; they felt she had the right to demand much more than that. They had begun to care for her for herself, and when the months went by, and one day there was a hush about her room, and anxiety, and then relief, in the faces of all, they came to care for her still more for the sake of her child. As the weeks passed, the fair-haired child grew more and more like his father; but if Lali thought of her husband they never knew it by anything she said, for she would not speak of him. She also made them promise that they would not write to him of the child's birth. Richard, with his sense of justice, and knowing how much the woman had been wronged, said that in all this she had done quite right; that Frank, if he had done his duty after marrying her, should have come with her. And because they all felt that Richard had been her best friend as well as their own, they called the child after him. This also was Lali's wish. Coincident with her motherhood there came to Lali a new purpose. She had not lived with the Armours without absorbing some of their fine social sense and dignity. This, added to the native instinct of pride in her, gave her a new ambition. As hour by hour her child grew dear to her, so hour by hour her husband grew away from her. She schooled herself against him. --At times she thought she hated him. She felt she could never forgive him, but she would prove to him that it was she who had made the mistake of her life in marrying him; that she had been wronged, not he; and that his sin would face him with reproach and punishment one day. Richard's prophecy was likely to come true: she would defeat very perfectly indeed Frank's intentions. After the child was born, so soon as she was able, she renewed her studies with Richard and Mrs. Armour. She read every morning for hours; she rode; she practised all those graceful arts of the toilet which belong to the social convention; she showed an unexpected faculty for singing, and practised it faithfully; and she begged Mrs. Armour and Marion to correct her at every point where correction seemed necessary. When the child was two years old, they all went to London, something against Lali's personal feelings, but quite in accord with what she felt her duty. Richard was left behind at Greyhope. For the first time in eighteen months he was alone with his old quiet duties and recreations. During that time he had not neglected his pensioners,--his poor, sick, halt, and blind, but a deeper, larger interest had come into his life in the person of Lali. During all that time she had seldom been out of his sight, never out of his influence and tutelage. His days had been full, his every hour had been given a keen, responsible interest. As if by tacit consent, every incident or development of Lali's life was influenced by his judgment and decision. He had been more to her than General Armour, Mrs. Armour, or Marion. Schooled as he was in all the ways of the world, he had at the same time a mind as sensitive as a woman's, an indescribable gentleness, a persuasive temperament. Since, years before, he had withdrawn from the social world and become a recluse, many of his finer qualities had gone into an indulgent seclusion. He had once loved the world and the gay life of London, but some untoward event, coupled with a radical love of retirement, had sent him into years of isolation at Greyhope. His tutelar relations with Lali had reopened many an old spring of sensation and experience. Her shy dependency, her innocent inquisitiveness, had searched out his remotest sympathies. In teaching her he had himself been re-taught. Before she came he had been satisfied with the quiet usefulness and studious ease of his life. But in her presence something of his old youthfulness came back, some reflection of the ardent hopes of his young manhood. He did not notice the change in himself. He only knew that his life was very full. He read later at nights, he rose earlier in the morning. But unconsciously to himself, he was undergoing a change. The more a man's sympathies and emotions are active, the less is he the philosopher. It is only when one has withdrawn from the more personal influence of the emotions that one's philosophy may be trusted. One may be interested in mankind and still be philosophical--may be, as it were, the priest and confessor to all comers. But let one be touched in some vital corner in one's nature, and the high, faultless impartiality is gone. In proportion as Richard's interest in Lali had grown, the universal quality of his sympathy had declined. Man is only man. Not that his benefactions as lord-bountiful in the parish had grown perfunctory, but the calm detail of his interest was not so definite. He was the same, yet not the same. He was not aware of any difference in himself. He did not know that he looked younger by ten years. Such is the effect of mere personal sympathy upon a man's look and bearing. When, therefore, one bright May morning, the family at Greyhope, himself excluded, was ready to start for London, he had no thought but that he would drop back into his old silent life, as it was before Lali came, and his brother's child was born. He was not conscious that he was very restless that morning; he scarcely was aware that he had got up two hours earlier than usual. At the breakfast- table he was cheerful and alert. After breakfast he amused himself in playing with the child till the carriage was brought round. It was such a morning as does not come a dozen times a year in England. The sweet, moist air blew from the meadows and up through the lime trees with a warm, insinuating gladness. The lawn sloped delightfully away to the flowered embrasures of the park, and a fragrant abundance of flowers met the eye and cheered the senses. While Richard loitered on the steps with the child and its nurse, more excited than he knew, Lali came out and stood beside him. At the moment Richard was looking into the distance. He did not hear her when she came. She stood near him for a moment, and did not speak. Her eyes followed the direction of his look, and idled tenderly with the prospect before her. She did not even notice the child. The same thought was in the mind of both--with a difference. Richard was wondering how any one could choose to change the sweet dignity of that rural life for the flaring, hurried delights of London and the season. He had thought this a thousand times, and yet, though he would have been little willing to acknowledge it, his conviction was not so impregnable as it had been. Mrs. Francis Armour was stepping from the known to the unknown. She was leaving the precincts of a life in which, socially, she had been born again. Its sweetness and benign quietness had all worked upon her nature and origin to change her. In that it was an out-door life, full of freshness and open-air vigour, it was not antagonistic to her past. Upon this sympathetic basis had been imposed the conditions of a fine social decorum. The conditions must still exist. But how would it be when she was withdrawn from this peaceful activity of nature and set down among "those garish lights" in Cavendish Square and Piccadilly? She hardly knew to what she was going as yet. There had been a few social functions at Greyhope since she had come, but that could give her, after all, but little idea of the swing and pressure of London life. At this moment she was lingering over the scene before her. She was wondering with the naive wonder of an awakened mind. She had intended many times of late saying to Richard all the native gratitude she felt; yet somehow she had never been able to say it. The moment of parting had come. "What are you thinking of, Richard?" she said now. He started and turned towards her. "I hardly know," he answered. "My thoughts were drifting." "Richard," she said abruptly," I want to thank you." "Thank me for what, Lali?" he questioned. "To thank you, Richard, for everything--since I came, over three years ago." He broke out into a soft little laugh, then, with his old good-natured manner, caught her hand as he did the first night she came to Greyhope, patted it in a fatherly fashion, and said: "It is the wrong way about, Lali; I ought to be thanking you, not you me. Why, look what a stupid old fogy I was then, toddling about the place with too much time on my hands, reading a lot and forgetting everything; and here you came in, gave me something to do, made the little I know of any use, and ran a pretty gold wire down the rusty fiddle of life. If there are any speeches of gratitude to be made, they are mine, they are mine." "Richard," she said very quietly and gravely, "I owe you more than I can ever say--in English. You have taught me to speak in your tongue enough for all the usual things of life, but one can only speak from the depths of one's heart in one's native tongue. And see," she added, with a painful little smile, "how strange it would sound if I were to tell you all I thought in the language of my people--of my people, whom I shall never see again. Richard, can you understand what it must be to have a father whom one is never likely to see again--whom, if one did see again, something painful would happen? We grow away from people against our will; we feel the same towards them, but they cannot feel the same towards us; for their world is in another hemisphere. We want to love them, and we love, remember, and are glad to meet them again, but they feel that we are unfamiliar, and, because we have grown different outwardly, they seem to miss some chord that used to ring. Richard, I-- I--" She paused. "Yes, Lali," he assented--"yes, I understand you so far; but speak out." "I am not happy," she said. "I never shall be happy. I have my child, and that is all I have. I cannot go back to the life in which I was born; I must go on as I am, a stranger among a strange people, pitied, suffered, cared for a little--and that is all." The nurse had drawn away a little distance with the child. The rest of the family were making their preparations inside the house. There was no one near to watch the singular little drama. "You should not say that," he added; "we all feel you to be one of us." "But all your world does not feel me to be one of them," she rejoined. "We shall see about that when you go up to town. You are a bit morbid, Lali. I don't wonder at your feeling a little shy; but then you will simply carry things before you--now you take my word for it! For I know London pretty well." She held out her ungloved hands. "Do they compare with the white hands of the ladies you know?" she said. "They are about the finest hands I have ever seen," he replied. "You can't see yourself, sister of mine." "I do not care very much to see myself," she said. "If I had not a maid I expect I should look very shiftless, for I don't care to look in a mirror. My only mirror used to be a stream of water in summer," she added, "and a corner of a looking-glass got from the Hudson's Bay fort in the winter." "Well, you are missing a lot of enjoyment," he said, "if you do not use your mirror much. The rest of us can appreciate what you would see there." She reached out and touched his arm. "Do you like to look at me?" she questioned, with a strange simple candour. For the first time in many a year, Richard Armour blushed like a girl fresh from school. The question had come so suddenly, it had gone so quickly into a sensitive corner of his nature, that he lost command of himself for the instant, yet had little idea why the command was lost. He touched the fingers on his arm affectionately. "Like to look at you--like to look at you? Why, of course we all like to look at you. You are very fine and handsome and interesting." "Richard," she said, drawing her hands away, "is that why you like to look at me?" He had recovered himself. He laughed in his old hearty way, and said: "Yes, yes; why, of course! Come, let us go and see the boy," he added, taking her arm and hurrying her down the steps. "Come and let us see Richard Joseph, the pride of all the Armours." She moved beside him in a kind of dream. She had learned much since she came to Greyhope, and yet she could not at that moment have told exactly why she asked Richard the question that had confused him, nor did she know quite what lay behind the question. But every problem which has life works itself out to its appointed end, if fumbling human fingers do not meddle with it. Half the miseries of this world are caused by forcing issues, in every problem of the affections, the emotions, and the soul. There is a law working with which there should be no tampering, lest in foolish interruption come only confusion and disaster. Against every such question there should be written the one word, "Wait." Richard Armour stooped over the child. "A beauty," he said, "a perfect little gentleman. Like Richard Joseph Armour there is none," he added. "Whom do you think he looks like, Richard?" she asked. This was a question she had never asked before since the child was born. Whom the child looked like every one knew; but within the past year and a half Francis Armour's name had seldom been mentioned, and never in connection with the child. The child's mother asked the question with a strange quietness. Richard answered it without hesitation. "The child looks like Frank," he said. "As like him as can be." "I am glad," she said, "for all your sakes." "You are very deep this morning, Lali," Richard said, with a kind of helplessness. "Frank will be pretty proud of the youngster when he comes back. But he won't be prouder of him than I am." "I know that," she said. "Won't you be lonely without the boy--and me, Richard?" Again the question went home. "Lonely? I should think I would," he said. "I should think I would. But then, you see, school is over, and the master stays behind and makes up the marks. You will find London a jollier master than I am, Lali. There'll be lots of shows, and plenty to do, and smart frocks, and no end of feeds and frolics; and that is more amusing than studying three hours a day with a dry old stick like me. I tell you what, when Frank comes--" She interrupted him. "Do not speak of that," she said. Then, with a sudden burst of feeling, though her words were scarcely audible: "I owe you everything, Richard--everything that is good. I owe him nothing, Richard--nothing but what is bitter." "Hush, hush," he said; "you must not speak that way. Lali, I want to say to you--" At that moment General Armour, Mrs. Armour, and Marion appeared on the door-step, and the carriage came wheeling up the drive. What Richard intended to say was left unsaid. The chances were it never would be said. "Well, well," said General Armour, calling down at them, "escort his imperial highness to the chariot which awaits him, and then ho! for London town. Come along, my daughter," he said to Lali; "come up here and take the last whiff of Greyhope that you will have for six months. Dear, dear, what lunatics we all are, to be sure! Why, we're as happy as little birds in their nests out in the decent country, and yet we scamper off to a smoky old city by the Thames to rush along with the world, instead of sitting high and far away from it and watching it go by. God bless my soul, I'm old enough to know better! Well, let me help you in, my dear," he added to his wife; "and in you go, Marion; and in you go, your imperial highness"--he passed the child awkwardly in to Marion; "and in you go, my daughter," he added, as he handed Lali in, pressing her hand with a brusque fatherliness as he did so. He then got in after them. Richard came to the side of the carriage and bade them all good-bye one by one. Lali gave him her hand, but did not speak a word. He called a cheerful adieu, the horses were whipped up, and in a moment Richard was left alone on the steps of the house. He stood for a time looking, then he turned to go into the house, but changed his mind, sat down, lit a cigar, and did not move from his seat until he was summoned to his lonely luncheon. Nobody thought much of leaving Richard behind at Greyhope. It seemed the natural thing to do. But still he had not been left alone--entirely alone--for three years or more. The days and weeks went on. If Richard had been accounted eccentric before, there was far greater cause for the term now. Life dragged. Too much had been taken out of his life all at once; for, in the first place, the family had been drawn together more during the trouble which Lali's advent had brought; then the child and its mother, his pupil, were gone also. He wandered about in a kind of vague unrest. The hardest thing in this world to get used to is the absence of a familiar footstep and the cheerful greeting of a familiar eye. And the man with no chick or child feels even the absence of his dog from the hearth-rug when he returns from a journey or his day's work. It gives him a sense of strangeness and loss. But when it is the voice of a woman and the hand of a child that is missed, you can back no speculation upon that man's mood or mind or conduct. There is no influence like the influence of habit, and that is how, when the minds of people are at one, physical distances and differences, no matter how great, are invisible, or at least not obvious. Richard Armour was a sensible man; but when one morning he suddenly packed a portmanteau and went up to town to Cavendish Square, the act might be considered from two sides of the equation. If he came back to enter again into the social life which, for so many years, he had abjured, it was not very sensible, because the world never welcomes its deserters; it might, if men and women grew younger instead of older. If he came to see his family, or because he hungered for his godchild, or because--but we are hurrying the situation. It were wiser not to state the problem yet. The afternoon that he arrived at Cavendish Square all his family were out except his brother's wife. Lali was in the drawing- room, receiving a visitor who had asked for Mrs. Armour and Mrs. Francis Armour. The visitor was received by Mrs. Francis Armour. The visitor knew that Mrs. Armour was not at home. She had by chance seen her and Marion in Bond Street, and was not seen by them. She straightway got into her carriage and drove up to Cavendish Square, hoping to find Mrs. Francis Armour at home. There had been house-parties at Greyhope since Lali had come there to live, but this visitor, though once an intimate friend of the family, had never been a guest. The visitor was Lady Haldwell, once Miss Julia Sherwood, who had made possible what was called Francis Armour's tragedy. Since Lali had come to town Lady Haldwell had seen her, but had never met her. She was not at heart wicked, but there are few women who can resist an opportunity of anatomising and reckoning up the merits and demerits of a woman who has married an old lover. When that woman is in the position of Lali, the situation has an unusual piquancy and interest. Hence Lady Haldwell's journey of inquisition to Cavendish Square. As Richard passed the drawing-room door to ascend the stairs, he recognised the voices. Once a sort of heathen, as Mrs. Francis Armour had been, she still could grasp the situation with considerable clearness. There is nothing keener than one woman's instinct regarding another woman, where a man is concerned. Mrs. Francis Armour received Lady Haldwell with a quiet stateliness, which, if it did not astonish her, gave her sufficient warning that matters were not, in this little comedy, to be all her own way. Thrown upon the mere resources of wit and language, Mrs. Francis Armour must have been at a disadvantage. For Lady Haldwell had a good gift of speech, a pretty talent for epithet, and no unnecessary tenderness. She bore Lali no malice. She was too decorous and high for that. In her mind the wife of the man she had discarded was a mere commonplace catastrophe, to be viewed without horror, maybe with pity. She had heard the alien spoken well of by some people; others had seemed indignant that the Armours should try to push "a red woman" into English society. Truth is, the Armours did not try at all to push her. For over three years they had let society talk. They had not entertained largely in Cavendish Square since Lali came, and those invited to Greyhope had a chance to refuse the invitations if they chose. Most people did not choose to decline them. But Lady Haldwell was not of that number. She had never been invited. But now in town, when entertainment must be more general, she and the Armours were prepared for social interchange. Behind Lady Haldwell's visit curiosity chiefly ran. She was in a way sorry for Frank Armour, for she had been fond of him after a fashion, always fonder of him than of Lord Haldwell. She had married with her fingers holding the scales of advantage; and Lord Haldwell dressed well, was immensely rich, and the title had a charm. When Mrs. Francis Armour met her with her strange, impressive dignity, she was the slightest bit confused, but not outwardly. She had not expected it. At first Lali did not know who her visitor was. She had not caught the name distinctly from the servant. Presently Lady Haldwell said, as Lali gave her hand "I am Lady Haldwell. As Miss Sherwood I was an old friend of your husband." A scornful glitter came into Mrs. Armour's eyes--a peculiar touch of burnished gold, an effect of the light at a certain angle of the lens. It gave for the instant an uncanny look to the face, almost something malicious. She guessed why this woman had come. She knew the whole history of the past, and it touched her in a tender spot. She knew she was had at an advantage. Before her was a woman perfectly trained in the fine social life to which she was born, whose equanimity was as regular as her features. Herself was by nature a creature of impulse, of the woods and streams and open life. The social convention had been engrafted. As yet she was used to thinking and speaking with all candour. She was to have her training in the charms of superficiality, but that was to come; and when it came she would not be an unskilful apprentice. Perhaps the latent subtlety of her race came to help her natural candour at the moment. For she said at once, in a slow, quiet tone: "I never heard my husband speak of you. Will you sit down?" "And Mrs. Armour and Marion are not in? No, I suppose your husband did not speak much of his old friends." The attack was studied and cruel. But Lady Haldwell had been stung by Mrs. Armour's remark, and it piqued her that this was possible. "Well, yes, he spoke of some of his friends, but not of you." "Indeed! That is strange." "There was no necessity," said Mrs. Armour quietly. "Of discussing me? I suppose not. But by some chance--" "It was just as well, perhaps, not to anticipate the pleasure of our meeting." Lady Haldwell was surprised. She had not expected this cleverness. They talked casually for a little time, the visitor trying in vain to delicately give the conversation a personal turn. At last, a little foolishly, she grew bolder, with a needless selfishness. "So old a friend of your husband as I am, I am hopeful you and I may be friends also." Mrs. Armour saw the move. "You are very kind," she said conventionally, and offered a cup of tea. Lady Haldwell now ventured unwisely. She was nettled at the other's self-possession. "But then, in a way, I have been your friend for a long time, Mrs. Armour." The point was veiled in a vague tone, but Mrs. Armour understood. Her reply was not wanting. "Any one who has been a friend to my husband has, naturally, claims upon me." Lady Haldwell, in spite of herself, chafed. There was a subtlety in the woman before her not to be reckoned with lightly. "And if an enemy?" she said, smiling. A strange smile also flickered across Mrs. Armour's face as she said: "If an enemy of my husband called, and was penitent, I should--offer her tea, no doubt." "That is, in this country; but in your own country, which, I believe, is different, what would you do?" Mrs. Armour looked steadily and coldly into her visitor's eyes. "In my country enemies do not compel us to be polite." "By calling on you?" Lady Haldwell was growing a little reckless. "But then, that is a savage country. We are different here. I suppose, however, your husband told you of these things, so that you were not surprised. And when does he come? His stay is protracted. Let me see, how long is it? Ah yes, near four years." Here she became altogether reckless, which she regretted afterwards, for she knew, after all, what was due herself. "He will comeback, I suppose?" Lady Haldwell was no coward, else she had hesitated before speaking in that way before this woman, in whose blood was the wildness of the heroical North. Perhaps she guessed the passion in Lali's breast, perhaps not. In any case she would have said what she listed at the moment. Wild as were the passions in Lali's breast, she thought on the instant of her child, of what Richard Armour would say; for he had often talked to her about not showing her emotions and passions, had told her that violence of all kinds was not wise or proper. Her fingers ached to grasp this beautiful, exasperating woman by the throat. But after an effort at calmness she remained still and silent, looking at her visitor with a scornful dignity. Lady Haldwell presently rose,--she could not endure the furnace of that look,--and said good-bye. She turned towards the door. Mrs. Armour remained immovable. At that instant, however, some one stepped from behind a large screen just inside the door. It was Richard Armour. He was pale, and on his face was a sternness the like of which this and perhaps only one other woman had ever seen on him. He interrupted her. "Lady Haldwell has a fine talent for irony," he said, "but she does not always use it wisely. In a man it would bear another name, and from a man it would be differently received." He came close to her. "You are a brave woman," he said, "or you would have been more careful. Of course you knew that my mother and sister were not at home?" She smiled languidly. "And why 'of course'?" "I do not know that; only I know that I think so; and I also think that my brother Frank's worst misfortune did not occur when Miss Julia Sherwood trafficked without compunction in his happiness." "Don't be oracular, my dear Richard Armour," she replied. "You are trying, really. This seems almost melodramatic; and melodrama is bad enough at Drury Lane." "You are not a good friend even to yourself," he answered. "What a discoverer you are! And how much in earnest! Do come back to the world, Mr. Armour; you would be a relief, a new sensation." "I fancy I shall come back, if only to see the 'engineer hoist with his own'--torpedo." He paused before the last word to give it point, for her husband's father had made his money out of torpedoes. She felt the sting in spite of herself, and she saw the point. "And then we will talk it over at the end of the season," he added, "and compare notes. Good-afternoon." "You stake much on your hazard," she said, glancing back at Lali, who still stood immovable. "Au revoir!" She left the room. Richard heard the door close after her and the servant retire. Then he turned to Lali. As he did so, she ran forward to him with a cry. "Oh, Richard, Richard!" she exclaimed, with a sob, threw her arms over his shoulder, and let her forehead drop on his breast. Then came a sudden impulse in his blood. Long after he shuddered when he remembered what he thought at that instant; what he wished to do; what rich madness possessed him. He knew now why he had come to town; he also knew why he must not stay, or, if staying, what must be his course. He took her gently by the arm and led her to a chair, speaking cheerily to her. Then he sat down beside her, and all at once again, her face wet and burning, she flung herself forward on her knees beside him, and clung to him. "Oh, Richard, I am glad you have come," she said. "I would have killed her if I had not thought of you. I want you to stay; I am always better when you are with me. I have missed you, and I know that baby misses you too." He had his cue. He rose, trembling a little. "Come, come," he said heartily, "it's all right, it's all right-my sister. Let us go and see the youngster. There, dry your eyes, and forget all about that woman. She is only envious of you. Come, for his imperial highness!" She was in a tumult of feeling. It was seldom that she had shown emotion in the past two years, and it was the more ample when it did break forth. But she dried her eyes, and together they went to the nursery. She dismissed the nurse and they were left alone by the sleeping child. She knelt at the head of the little cot, and touched the child's forehead with her lips. He stooped down also beside it. "He's a grand little fellow," he said. "Lali," he continued presently, "it is time Frank came home. I am going to write for him. If he does not come at once, I shall go and fetch him." "Never! never!" Her eyes flashed angrily. "Promise that you will not. Let him come when he is ready. "He does not, care." She shuddered a little. "But he will care when he comes, and you--you care for him, Lali?" Again she shuddered, and a whiteness ran under the hot excitement of her cheeks. She said nothing, but looked up at him, then dropped her face in her hands. "You do care for him, Lali," he said earnestly, almost solemnly, his lips twitching slightly. "You must care for him; it is his right; and he will--I swear to you I know he will--care for you." In his own mind there was another thought, a hard, strange thought; and it had to do with the possibility of his brother not caring for this wife. Still she did not speak. "To a good woman, with a good husband," he continued, "there is no one-- there should be no one--like the father of her child. And no woman ever loved her child more than you do yours." He knew that this was special pleading. She trembled, and then dropped her cheek beside the child's. "I want Frank to be happy," he went on; "there is no one I care more for than for Frank." She lifted her face to him now, in it a strange light. Then her look ran to confusion, and she seemed to read all that he meant to convey. He knew she did. He touched her shoulder. "You must do the best you can every way, for Frank's sake, for all our sakes. I will help you--God knows I will--all I can." "Ah, yes, yes," she whispered, from the child's pillow. He could see the flame in her cheek. "I understand." She put out her hand to him, but did not look up. "Leave me alone with my baby, Richard," she pleaded. He took her hand and pressed it again and again in his old, unconscious way. Then he let it go, and went slowly to the door. There he turned and looked back at her. He mastered the hot thought in him. "God help me!" she murmured from the cot. The next morning Richard went back to Greyhope. CHAPTER VII A COURT-MARTIAL It was hard to tell, save for a certain deliberateness of speech and a colour a little more pronounced than that of a Spanish woman, that Mrs. Frank Armour had not been brought up in England. She had a kind of grave sweetness and distant charm which made her notable at any table or in any ballroom. Indeed, it soon became apparent that she was to be the pleasant talk, the interest of the season. This was tolerably comforting to the Armours. Again Richard's prophecy had been fulfilled, and as he sat alone at Greyhope and read the Morning Post, noticing Lali's name at distinguished gatherings, or, picking up the World, saw how the lion- hunters talked extravagantly of her, he took some satisfaction to himself that he had foreseen her triumph where others looked for her downfall. Lali herself was not elated; it gratified her, but she had been an angel, and a very unsatisfactory one, if it had not done so. As her confidence grew (though outwardly she had never appeared to lack it greatly), she did not hesitate to speak of herself as an Indian, her country as a good country, and her people as a noble if dispossessed race; all the more so if she thought reference to her nationality and past was being rather conspicuously avoided. She had asked General Armour for an interview with her husband's solicitor. This was granted. When she met the solicitor, she asked him to send no newspaper to her husband containing any reference to herself, nor yet to mention her in his letters. She had never directly received a line from him but once, and that was after she had come to know the truth about his marriage with her. She could read in the conventional sentences, made simple as for a child, the strained politeness, and his absolute silence as to whether or not a child had been born to them, the utter absence of affection for her. She had also induced General Armour and his wife to give her husband's solicitor no information regarding the birth of the child. There was thus apparently no more inducement for him to hurry back to England than there was when he had sent her off on his mission of retaliation, which had been such an ignominious failure. For the humiliation of his family had been short-lived, the affront to Lady Haldwell nothing at all. The Armours had not been human if they had failed to enjoy their daughter-in -law's success. Although they never, perhaps, would quite recover the disappointment concerning Lady Agnes Martling, the result was so much better than they in their cheerfulest moments dared hope for, that they appeared genuinely content. To their grandchild they were devotedly attached. Marion was his faithful slave and admirer, so much so that Captain Vidall, who now and then was permitted to see the child, declared himself jealous. He and Marion were to be married soon. The wedding had been delayed owing to his enforced absence abroad. Mrs. Edward Lambert, once Mrs. Townley, shyly regretted in Lali's presence that the child, or one as sweet, was not hers. Her husband evidently shared her opinion, from the extraordinary notice he took of it when his wife was not present. Not that Richard Joseph Armour, Jun., was always en evidence, but when asked for by his faithful friends and admirers he was amiably produced. Meanwhile, Frank Armour across the sea was engaged with many things. His business concerns had not prospered prodigiously, chiefly because his judgment, like his temper, had grown somewhat uncertain. His popularity in the Hudson's Bay country had been at some tension since he had shipped his wife away to England. Even the ordinary savage mind saw something unusual and undomestic in it, and the general hospitality declined a little. Armour did not immediately guess the cause; but one day, about a year after his wife had gone, he found occasion to reprove a half-breed, by name Jacques Pontiac; and Jacques, with more honesty than politeness, said some hard words, and asked how much he paid for his English hired devils to kill his wife. Strange to say, he did not resent this startling remark. It set him thinking. He began to blame himself for not having written oftener to his people--and to his wife. He wondered how far his revenge had succeeded. He was most ashamed of it now. He knew that he had done a dishonourable thing. The more he thought upon it the more angry with himself he became. Yet he dreaded to go back to England and face it all: the reproach of his people; the amusement of society; his wife herself. He never attempted to picture her as a civilised being. He scarcely knew her when he married her. She knew him much better, for primitive people are quicker in the play of their passions, and she had come to love him before he had begun to notice her at all. Presently he ate his heart out with mortification. To be yoked for ever to--a savage! It was horrible. And their children? It was strange he had not thought of that before. Children? He shrugged his shoulders. There might possibly be a child, but children--never! But he doubted even regarding a child, for no word had come to him concerning that possibility. He was even most puzzled at the tone and substance of their letters. From the beginning there had been no reproaches, no excitement, no railing, but studied kindness and conventional statements, through which Mrs. Armour's solicitous affection scarcely ever peeped. He had shot his bolt, and got--consideration, almost imperturbability. They appeared to treat the matter as though he were a wild youth who would not yet mend his ways. He read over their infrequent letters to him; his to them had been still more infrequent. In one there was the statement that "she was progressing favourably with her English"; in another, that "she was riding a good deal"; again, that "she appeared anxious to adapt herself to her new life." At all these he whistled a little to himself, and smiled bitterly. Then, all at once, he got up and straightway burned them all. He again tried to put the matter behind him for the present, knowing that he must face it one day, and staving off its reality as long as possible. He did his utmost to be philosophical and say his quid refert, but it was easier tried than done; for Jacques Pontiac's words kept rankling in his mind, and he found himself carrying round a vague load, which made him abstracted occasionally, and often a little reckless in action and speech. In hunting bear and moose he had proved himself more daring than the oldest hunter, and proportionately successful. He paid his servants well, but was sharp with them. He made long, hard expeditions, defying the weather as the hardiest of prairie and mountain men mostly hesitate to defy it; he bought up much land, then, dissatisfied, sold it again at a loss, but subsequently made final arrangements for establishing a very large farm. When he once became actually interested in this he shook off something of his moodiness and settled himself to develop the thing. He had good talent for initiative and administration, and at last, in the time when his wife was a feature of the London season, he found his scheme in working order, and the necessity of going to England was forced upon him. Actually he wished that the absolute necessity had presented itself before. There was always the moral necessity, of course--but then! Here now was a business need; and he must go. Yet he did not fix a day or make definite arrangements. He could hardly have believed himself such a coward. With liberal emphasis he called himself a sneak, and one day at Fort Charles sat down to write to his solicitor in Montreal to say that he would come on at once. Still he hesitated. As he sat there thinking, Eye-of-the-Moon, his father-in-law, opened the door quietly and entered. He had avoided the chief ever since he had come back to Fort Charles, and practically had not spoken to him for a year. Armour flushed slightly with annoyance. But presently, with a touch of his old humour, he rose, held out his hand, and said ironically: "Well, father- in-law, it's about time we had a big talk, isn't it? We're not very intimate for such close relatives." The old Indian did not fully understand the meaning or the tone of Armour's speech, but he said "How!" and, reaching out his hand for the pipe offered him, lighted it, and sat down, smoking in silence. Armour waited; but, seeing that the other was not yet moved to talk, he turned to his letter again. After a time, Eye-of-the-Moon said gravely, getting to his feet: "Brother!" Armour looked up, then rose also. The Indian bowed to him courteously, then sat down again. Armour threw a leg over a corner of the table and waited. "Brother," said the Indian presently, "you are of the great race that conquers us. You come and take our land and our game, and we at last have to beg of you for food and shelter. Then you take our daughters, and we know not where they go. They are gone like the down from the thistle. We see them not, but you remain. And men say evil things. There are bad words abroad. Brother, what have you done with my daughter?" Had the Indian come and stormed, begged money of him, sponged on him, or abused him, he had taken it very calmly--he would, in fact, have been superior. But there was dignity in the chief's manner; there was solemnity in his speech; his voice conveyed resoluteness and earnestness, which the stoic calm of his face might not have suggested; and Armour felt that he had no advantage at all. Besides, Armour had a conscience, though he had played some rare tricks with it of late, and it needed more hardihood than he possessed to face this old man down. And why face him down? Lali was his daughter, blood of his blood, the chieftainess of one branch of his people, honoured at least among these poor savages, and the old man had a right to ask, as asked another more famous, "Where is my daughter?" His hands in his pockets, Armour sat silent for a minute, eyeing his boot, as he swung his leg to and fro. Presently he said: "Eye-of-the- Moon, I don't think I can talk as poetically as you, even in my own language, and I shall not try. But I should like to ask you this: Do you believe any harm has come to your daughter--to my wife?" The old Indian forgot to blow the tobacco-smoke from his mouth, and, as he sat debating, lips slightly apart, it came leaking out in little trailing clouds and gave a strange appearance to his iron-featured face. He looked steadily at Armour, and said: "You are of those who rule in your land,"--here Armour protested, "you have much gold to buy and sell. I am a chief, "he drew himself up,--"I am poor: we speak with the straight tongue; it is cowards who lie. Speak deep as from the heart, my brother, and tell me where my daughter is." Armour could not but respect the chief for the way this request was put, but still it galled him to think that he was under suspicion of having done any bodily injury to his wife, so he quietly persisted: "Do you think I have done Lali any harm?" "The thing is strange," replied the other. "You are of those who are great among your people. You married a daughter of a red man. Then she was yours for less than one moon, and you sent her far away, and you stayed. Her father was as a dog in your sight. Do men whose hearts are clear act so? They have said strange things of you. I have not believed; but it is good I know all, that I may say to the tale-bearers, 'You have crooked tongues.'" Armour sat for a moment longer, his face turned to the open window. He was perfectly still, but he had become grave. He was about to reply to the chief, when the trader entered the room hurriedly with a newspaper in his hand. He paused abruptly when he saw Eye-of-the-Moon. Armour felt that the trader had something important to communicate. He guessed it was in the paper. He mutely held out his hand for it. The trader handed it to him hesitatingly, at the same time pointing to a paragraph, and saying: "It is nearly two years old, as you see. I chanced upon it by accident to-day." It was a copy of a London evening paper, containing a somewhat sensational account of Lali's accident. It said that she was in a critical condition. This time Armour did not ask for brandy, but the trader put it out beside him. He shook his head. "Gordon," he said presently, "I shall leave here in the morning. Please send my men to me." The trader whispered to him: "She was all right, of course, long ago, Mr. Armour, or you would have heard." Armour looked at the date of the paper. He had several letters from England of a later date, and these said nothing of her illness. It bewildered him, made him uneasy. Perhaps the first real sense of his duty as a husband came home to him there. For the first time he was anxious about the woman for her own sake. The trader had left the room. "What a scoundrel I've been!" said Armour between his teeth, oblivious, for the moment, of Eye-of-the-Moon's presence. Presently, bethinking himself, he turned to the Indian. "I've been debating," he said. "Eye- of-the-Moon, my wife is in England, at my father's home. I am going to her. Men have lied in thinking I would do her any injury, but--but-- never mind, the harm was of another kind. It isn't wise for a white man and an Indian to marry, but when they are married--well, they must live as man and wife should live, and, as I said, I am going to my wife." To say all this to a common Indian, whose only property was a dozen ponies and a couple of tepees, required something very like moral courage; but then Armour had not been exercising moral courage during the last year or so, and its exercise was profitable to him. The next morning he was on his way to Montreal, and Eye-of-the-Moon was the richest chief in British North America, at that moment, by five thousand dollars or so. CHAPTER VIII TO EVERY MAN HIS HOUR It was the close of the season: many people had left town, but festivities were still on. To a stranger the season might have seemed at its height. The Armours were giving a large party in Cavendish Square before going back again to Greyhope, where, for the sake of Lali and her child, they intended to remain during the rest of the summer, in preference to going on the Continent or to Scotland. The only unsatisfactory feature of Lali's season was the absence of her husband. Naturally there were those who said strange things regarding Frank Armour's stay in America; but it was pretty generally known that he was engaged in land speculations, and his club friends, who perhaps took the pleasantest view of the matter, said that he was very wise indeed, if a little cowardly, in staying abroad until his wife was educated and ready to take her position in society. There was one thing on which they were all agreed: Mrs. Frank Armour either had a mind superior to the charms of their sex, or was incapable of that vanity which hath many suitors, and says: "So far shalt thou go, and--" The fact is, Mrs. Frank Armour's mind was superior. She had only one object--to triumph over her husband grandly, as a woman righteously might. She had vanity, of course, but it was not ignoble. She kept one thing in view; she lived for it. Her translation had been successful. There were times when she remembered her father, the wild days on the prairies, the buffalo-hunt, tracking the deer, tribal battles, the long silent hours of the winter, and the warm summer nights when she slept in the prairie grass or camped with her people in the trough of a great landwave. Sometimes the hunger for its freedom, and its idleness, and its sport, came to her greatly; but she thought of her child, and she put it from her. She was ambitious for him; she was keen to prove her worth as a wife against her husband's unworthiness. This perhaps saved her. She might have lost had her life been without this motive. The very morning of this notable reception, General Armour had received a note from Frank Armour's solicitor, saying that his son was likely to arrive in London from America that day or the next. Frank had written to his people no word of his coming; to his wife, as we have said, he had not written for months; and before he started back he would not write, because he wished to make what amends he could in person. He expected to find her improved, of course, but still he could only think of her as an Indian, showing her common prairie origin. His knowledge of her before their marriage had been particularly brief; she was little more in his eyes than a thousand other Indian women, save that she was better- looking, was whiter than most, and had finer features. He could not very clearly remember the tones of her voice, because after marriage, and before he had sent her to England, he had seen little or nothing of her. When General Armour received the news of Frank's return he told his wife and Marion, and they consulted together whether it were good to let Lali know at once. He might arrive that evening. If so, the position would be awkward, because it was impossible to tell how it might affect her. If they did tell her, and Frank happened not to arrive, it might unnerve her so as to make her appearance in the evening doubtful. Richard, the wiseacre, the inexhaustible Richard, was caring for his cottagers and cutting the leaves of new books--his chiefest pleasure--at Greyhope. They felt it was a matter they ought to be able to decide for themselves, but still it was the last evening of Lali's stay in town, and they did not care to take any risk. Strange to say, they had come to take pride in their son's wife; for even General and Mrs. Armour, high-minded and of serene social status as they were, seemed not quite insensible to the pleasure of being an axle on which a system of social notoriety revolved. At the opportune moment Captain Vidall was announced, and, because he and Marion were soon to carry but one name between them, he was called into family consultation. It is somewhat singular that in this case the women were quite wrong and the men were quite right. For General Armour and Captain Vidall were for silence until Frank came, if he came that day, or for telling her the following morning, when the function was over. And the men prevailed. Marion was much excited all day; she had given orders that Frank's room should be made ready, but for whom she gave no information. While Lali was dressing for the evening, something excited and nervous, she entered her room. They were now the best of friends. The years had seen many shifting scenes in their companionship; they had been as often at war as at peace; but they had respected each other, each after her own fashion; and now they had a real and mutual regard. Lali's was a slim, lithe figure, wearing its fashionable robes with an air of possession; and the face above it, if not entirely beautiful, had a strange, warm fascination. The girl had not been a chieftainess for nothing. A look of quiet command was there, but also a far-away expression which gave a faint look of sadness even when a smile was at the lips. The smile itself did not come quickly, it grew; but above it all was hair of perfect brown, most rare,--setting off her face as a plume does a helmet. She showed no surprise when Marion entered. She welcomed her with a smile and outstretched hand, but said nothing. "Lali," said Marion somewhat abruptly,--she scarcely knew why she said it,--"are you happy?" It was strange how the Indian girl had taken on those little manners of society which convey so much by inflection. She lifted her eyebrows at Marion, and said presently, in a soft, deliberate voice, "Come, Marion, we will go and see little Richard; then I shall be happy." She linked her arm through Marion's. Marion drummed her fingers lightly on the beautiful arm, and then fell to wondering what she should say next. They passed into the room where the child lay sleeping; they went to his little bed, and Lali stretched out her hand gently, touching the curls of the child. Running a finger through one delicately, she said, with a still softer tone than before: "Why should not one be happy?" Marion looked up slowly into her eyes, let a hand fall on her shoulder gently, and replied: "Lali, do you never wish Frank to come?" Lali's fingers came from the child, the colour mounted slowly to her forehead, and she drew the girl away again into the other room. Then she turned and faced Marion, a deep fire in her eyes, and said, in a whisper almost hoarse in its intensity: "Yes; I wish he would come to-night." She looked harder yet at Marion; then, with a flash of pride and her hands clasping before her, she drew herself up, and added: "Am I not worthy to be his wife now? Am I not beautiful--for a savage?" There was no common vanity in the action. It had a noble kind of wistfulness, and a serenity that entirely redeemed it. Marion dated her own happiness from the time when Lali met her accident, for in the evening of that disastrous day she issued to Captain Hume Vidall a commission which he could never--wished never--to resign. Since then she had been at her best,--we are all more or less selfish creatures,-- and had grown gentler, curbing the delicate imperiousness of her nature, and frankly, and without the least pique, taken a secondary position of interest in the household, occasioned by Lali's popularity. She looked Lali up and down with a glance in which many feelings met, and then, catching her hands warmly, she lifted them, put them on her own shoulders, and said: "My dear beautiful savage, you are fit and worthy to be Queen of England; and Frank, when he comes--" "Hush!" said the other dreamily, and put a finger on Marion's lips. "I know what you are going to say, but I do not wish to hear it. He did not love me then. He used me--" She shuddered, put her hands to her eyes with a pained, trembling motion, then threw her head back with a quick sigh. "But I will not speak of it. Come, we are for the dance, Marion. It is the last, to-night. To-morrow--" She paused, looking straight before her, lost in thought. "Yes, to-morrow, Lali?" "I do not know about to-morrow," was the reply. "Strange things come to me." Marion longed to tell her then and there the great news, but she was afraid to do so, and was, moreover, withheld by the remembrance that it had been agreed she should not be told. She said nothing. At eleven o'clock the rooms were filled. For the fag end of the season, people seemed unusually brilliant. The evening itself was not so hot as common, and there was an extra array of distinguished guests. Marion was nervous all the evening, though she showed little of it, being most prettily employed in making people pleased with themselves. Mrs. Armour also was not free from apprehension. In reply to inquiries concerning her son she said, as she had often said during the season, that he might be back at any time now. Lali had answered always in the same fashion, and had shown no sign that his continued absence was singular. As the evening wore on, the probability of Frank's appearance seemed less; and the Armours began to breathe more freely. Frank had, however, arrived. He had driven straight from Euston to Cavendish Square, but, seeing the house lighted up, and guests arriving, he had a sudden feeling of uncertainty. He ordered the cabman to take him to his club. There he put himself in evening-dress, and drove back again to the house. He entered quietly. At the moment the hall was almost deserted; people were mostly in the ballroom and supper-room. He paused a moment, biting his moustache as if in perplexity. A strange timidity came on him. All his old dash and self-possession seemed to have forsaken him. Presently, seeing a number of people entering the hall, he made for the staircase, and went hastily up. Mechanically he went to his own room, and found it lighted. Flowers were set about, and everything was made ready as for a guest. He sat down, not thinking, but dazed. Glancing up, he saw his face in a mirror. It was bronzed, but it looked rather old and careworn. He shrugged a shoulder at that. Then, in the mirror, he saw also something else. It startled him so that he sat perfectly still for a moment looking at it. It was some one laughing at him over his shoulder--a child! He got to his feet and turned round. On the table was a very large photograph of a smiling child--with his eyes, his face. He caught the chair-arm, and stood looking at it a little wildly. Then he laughed a strange laugh, and the tears leaped to his eyes. He caught the picture in his hands, and kissed it,--very foolishly, men not fathers might think,--and read the name beneath, Richard Joseph Armour; and again, beneath that, the date of birth. He then put it back on the table and sat looking at it-looking, and forgetting, and remembering. Presently, the door opened, and some one entered. It was Marion. She had seen him pass through the hall; she had then gone and told her father and mother, to prepare them, and had followed him upstairs. He did not hear her. She stepped softly forwards. "Frank!" she said--"Frank!" and laid a hand on his shoulder. He started up and turned his face on her. Then he caught her hands and kissed her. "Marion!" he said, and he could say no more. But presently he pointed towards the photograph. She nodded her head. "Yes, it is your child, Frank. Though, of course, you don't deserve it. . . . Frank dear," she added, "I am glad--we shall all be glad-to have you back; but you are a wicked man." She felt she must say that. Now he only nodded, and still looked at the portrait. "Where is--my wife?" he added presently. "She is in the ballroom." Marion was wondering what was best to do. He caught his thumb-nail in his teeth. He winced in spite of himself. "I will go to her," he said, "and then--the baby." "I am glad," she replied, "that you have so much sense of justice left, Frank: the wife first, the baby afterwards. But do you think you deserve either?" He became moody, and made an impatient gesture. "Lady Agnes Martling is here, and also Lady Haldwell," she persisted cruelly. She did not mind, because she knew he would have enough to compensate him afterwards. "Marion," he said, "say it all, and let me have it over. Say what you like, and I'll not whimper. I'll face it. But I want to see my child." She was sorry for him. She had really wanted to see how much he was capable of feeling in the matter. "Wait here, Frank," she said. "That will be best; and I will bring your wife to you." He said nothing, but assented with a motion of the hand, and she left him where he was. He braced himself for the interview. Assuredly a man loses something of natural courage and self-confidence when he has done a thing of which he should be, and is, ashamed. It seemed a long time (it was in reality but a couple of minutes) before the door opened again, and Marion said: "Frank, your wife!" and then retreated. The door closed, leaving a stately figure standing just inside it. The figure did not move forwards, but stood there, full of life and fine excitement, but very still also. Frank Armour was confounded. He came forwards slowly, looking hard. Was this distinguished, handsome, reproachful woman his wife--Lali, the Indian girl, whom he had married in a fit of pique and brandy? He could hardly believe his eyes; and yet hers looked out at him with something that he remembered too, together with something which he did not remember, making him uneasy. Clearly, his great mistake had turned from ashes into fruit. "Lali!" he said, and held out his hand. She reached out hers courteously, but her fingers gave him no response. "We have many things to say to each other," she said, "but they cannot be said now. I shall be missed from the ballroom." "Missed from the ballroom!" He almost laughed to think how strange this sounded in his ears. As if interpreting his thought, she added: "You see, it is our last affair of the season, and we are all anxious to do our duty perfectly. Will you go down with me? We can talk afterwards." Her continued self-possession utterly confused him. She had utterly confused Marion also, when told that her husband was in the house. She had had presentiments, and, besides, she had been schooling herself for this hour for a long time. She turned towards the door. "But," he asked, like a supplicant, "our child! I want to see the boy." She lifted her eyebrows, then, seeing the photograph of the baby on the table, understood how he knew. "Come with me, then," she said, with a little more feeling. She led the way along the landing, and paused at her door. "Remember that we have to appear amongst the guests directly," she said, as though to warn him against any demonstration. Then they entered. She went over to the cot and drew back the fleecy curtain from over the sleeping boy's head. His fingers hungered to take his child to his arms. "He is magnificent--magnificent!" he said, with a great pride. "Why did you never let me know of it?" "How could I tell what you would do?" she calmly replied. "You married me--wickedly, and used me wickedly afterwards; and I loved the child." "You loved the child," he repeated after her. "Lali," he added, "I don't deserve it, but forgive me, if you can--for the child's sake." "We had better go below," she calmly replied. "We have both duties to do. You will of course--appear with me--before them?" The slight irony in the tone cut him horribly. He offered his arm in silence. They passed on to the staircase. "It is necessary," she said, "to appear cheerful before one's guests." She had him at an advantage at every point. "We will be cheerful, then," was his reply, spoken with a grim kind of humour. "You have learned it all, haven't you?" he added. They were just entering the ballroom. "Yes, with your kind help--and absence," she replied. The surprise of the guests was somewhat diminished by the fact that Marion, telling General Armour and his wife first of Frank's return, industriously sent the news buzzing about the room. The two went straight to Frank's father and mother. Their parts were all excellently played. Then Frank mingled among the guests, being very heartily greeted, and heard congratulations on all sides. Old club friends rallied him as a deserter, and new acquaintances flocked about him; and presently he awakened to the fact that his Indian wife had been an interest of the season, was not the least admired person present. It was altogether too good luck for him; but he had an uncomfortable conviction that he had a long path of penance to walk before he could hope to enjoy it. All at once he met Lady Haldwell, who, in spite of all, still accepted invitations to General Armour's house--the strange scene between Lali and herself never having been disclosed to the family. He had nothing but bitterness in his heart for her, but he spoke a few smooth words, and she languidly congratulated him on his bronzed appearance. He asked for a dance, but she had not one to give him. As she was leaving, she suddenly turned as though she had forgotten something, and looking at him, said: "I forgot to congratulate you on your marriage. I hope it is not too late?" He bowed. "Your congratulations are so sincere," he said, "that they would be a propos late or early." When he stood with his wife whilst the guests were leaving, and saw with what manner she carried it all off,--as though she had been born in the good land of good breeding,--he was moved alternately with wonder and shame--shame that he had intended this noble creature as a sacrifice to his ugly temper and spite. When all the guests were gone and the family stood alone in the drawing- room, a silence suddenly fell amongst them. Presently Marion said to her mother in a half-whisper, "I wish Richard were here." They all felt the extreme awkwardness of the situation, especially when Lali bade General Armour, Mrs. Armour, and Marion good-night, and then, turning to her husband, said, "Good-night"--she did not even speak his name. "Perhaps you would care to ride to-morrow morning? I always go to the Park at ten, and this will be my last ride of the season." Had she written out an elaborate proclamation of her intended attitude towards her husband, it could not have more clearly conveyed her mind than this little speech, delivered as to a most friendly acquaintance. General Armour pulled his moustache fiercely, and, it is possible, enjoyed the situation, despite its peril. Mrs. Armour turned to the mantel and seemed tremulously engaged in arranging some bric-a-brac. Marion, however, with a fine instinct, slid her arm through that of Lali, and gently said: "Yes, of course Frank will be glad of a ride in the Park. He used to ride with me every morning. But let us go, us three, and kiss the baby good-night--'good-night till we meet in the morning.'" She linked her arm now through Frank's, and as she did so he replied to Lali: "I shall be glad to ride in the morning, but--" "But we can arrange it at breakfast," said his wife hurriedly. At the same time she allowed herself to be drawn away to the hall with her husband. He was very angry, but he knew he had no right to be so. He choked back his wrath and moved on amiably enough, and suddenly the fashion in which the tables had been turned on him struck him with its tragic comedy, and he involuntarily smiled. His sense of humour saved him from words and acts which might possibly have made the matter a pure tragedy after all. He loosed his arm from Marion's. "I must bid father and mother good-night. Then I will join you both-- 'in the court of the king.'" And he turned and went back, and said to his father as he kissed his mother: "I am had at an advantage, General." "And serves you right, my boy. You had the odds with you, but she has captured them like a born soldier." His mother said to him gently: "Frank, you blamed us, but remember that we wished only your good. Take my advice, dear, and try to love your wife and win her confidence." "Love her--try to love her!" he said. "I shall easily do that. But the other--?" He shook his head a little, though what he meant perhaps he did not know quite himself, and then followed Marion and Lali upstairs. Marion had tried to escape from Lali, but was told that she must stay; and the three met at the child's cot. Marion stooped down and kissed its forehead. Frank stooped also and kissed its cheek. Then the wife kissed the other cheek. The child slept peacefully on. "You can always see the baby here before breakfast, if you choose," said Lali; and she held out her hand again in good-night. At this point Marion stole away, in spite of Lah's quick little cry of "Wait, Marion!" and the two were left alone again. "I am very tired," she said. "I would rather not talk to-night." The dismissal was evident. He took her hand, held it an instant, and presently said: "I will not detain you, but I would ask you, Lali, to remember that you are my wife. Nothing can alter that." "Still we are only strangers, as you know," she quietly rejoined. "You forget the days we were together--after we were married," he cautiously urged. "I am not the same girl, . . . you killed her. . . We have to start again. . . . I know all." "You know that in my wretched anger and madness I--" "Oh, please do not speak of it," she said; "it is so bad even in thought." "But will you never forgive me, and care for me? We have to live our lives together." "Pray let us not speak of it now," she said, in a weary voice; then, breathlessly: "It is of much more consequence that you should love me --and the child." He drew himself up with a choking sigh, and spread out his arms to her. "Oh, my wife!" he exclaimed. "No, no," she cried, "this is unreasonable; we know so little of each other. . . . Good-night, again." He turned at the door, came back, and, stooping, kissed the child on the lips. Then he said: "You are right. I deserve to suffer. . . . Good-night." But when he was gone she dropped on her knees, and kissed the child many times on the lips also. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: If fumbling human fingers do not meddle with it Miseries of this world are caused by forcing issues Reading a lot and forgetting everything The world never welcomes its deserters There is no influence like the influence of habit There should be written the one word, "Wait." Training in the charms of superficiality We grow away from people against our will We speak with the straight tongue; it is cowards who lie THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE By Gilbert Parker Volume 3. IX. THE FAITH OF COMRADES X. "THOU KNOWEST THE SECRETS OF OUR HEARTS" XI. UPON THE HIGHWAY XII. "THE CHASE OF THE YELLOW SWAN" XIII. A LIVING POEM XIV. ON THE EDGE OF A FUTURE XV. THE END OF THE TRAIL CHAPTER IX THE FAITH OF COMRADES When Francis Armour left his wife's room he did not go to his own, but quietly descended the stairs, went to the library, and sat down. The loneliest thing in the world is to be tete-a-tete with one's conscience. A man may have a bad hour with an enemy, a sad hour with a friend, a peaceful hour with himself, but when the little dwarf, conscience, perches upon every hillock of remembrance and makes slow signs--those strange symbols of the language of the soul--to him, no slave upon the tread-mill suffers more. The butler came in to see if anything was required, but Armour only greeted him silently and waved him away. His brain was painfully alert, his memory singularly awake. It seemed that the incident of this hour had so opened up every channel of his intelligence that all his life ran past him in fantastic panorama, as by that illumination which comes to the drowning man. He seemed under some strange spell. Once or twice he rose, rubbed his eyes, and looked round the room--the room where as a boy he had spent idle hours, where as a student he had been in the hands of his tutor, and as a young man had found recreations such as belong to ambitious and ardent youth. Every corner was familiar. Nothing was changed. The books upon the shelves were as they were placed twenty years ago. And yet he did not seem a part of it. It did not seem natural to him. He was in an atmosphere of strangeness--that atmosphere which surrounds a man, as by a cloud, when some crisis comes upon him and his life seems to stand still, whirling upon its narrow base, while the world appears at an interminable distance, even as to a deaf man who sees yet cannot hear. There came home to him at that moment with a force indescribable the shamelessness of the act he committed four years ago. He had thought to come back to miserable humiliation. For four years he had refused to do his duty as a man towards an innocent woman,--a woman, though in part a savage,--now transformed into a gentle, noble creature of delight and goodness. How had he deserved it? He had sown the storm, it was but just that he should reap the whirlwind; he had scattered thistles, could he expect to gather grapes? He knew that the sympathy of all his father's house was not with him, but with the woman he had wronged. He was glad it was so. Looking back now, it seemed so poor and paltry a thing that he, a man, should stoop to revenge himself upon those who had given him birth, as a kind of insult to the woman who had lightly set him aside, and should use for that purpose a helpless, confiding girl. To revenge one's self for wrong to one's self is but a common passion, which has little dignity; to avenge some one whom one has loved, man or woman, --and, before all, woman,--has some touch of nobility, is redeemed by loyalty. For his act there was not one word of defence to be made, and he was not prepared to make it. The cigars and liquors were beside him, but he did not touch them. He seemed very far away from the ordinary details of his life: he knew he had before him hard travel, and he was not confident of the end. He could not tell how long he sat there. --After, a time the ticking of the clock seemed painfully loud to him. Now and again he heard a cab rattling through the Square, and the foolish song of some drunken loiterer in the night caused him to start painfully. Everything jarred on him. Once he got up, went to the window, and looked out. The moon was shining full on the Square. He wondered if it would be well for him to go out and find some quiet to his nerves in walking. He did so. Out in the Square he looked up to his wife's window. It was lighted. Long time he walked up and down, his eyes on the window. It held him like a charm. Once he leaned against the iron railings of the garden and looked up, not moving for a time. Presently he saw the curtain of the window raised, and against the dim light of the room was outlined the figure of his wife. He knew it. She stood for a moment looking out into the night. She could not see him, nor could he see her features at all plainly, but he knew that she, like him, was alone with the catastrophe which his wickedness had sent upon her. Soon the curtain was drawn down again, and then he went once more to the house and took his old seat beside the table. He fell to brooding, and at last, exhausted, dropped to a troubled sleep. He woke with a start. Some one was in the room. He heard a step behind him. He came to his feet quickly, a wild light in his eyes. He faced his brother Richard. Late in the afternoon Marion had telegraphed to Richard that Frank was coming. He had been away visiting some poor and sick people, and when he came back to Greyhope it was too late to catch the train. But the horses were harnessed straightway, and he was driven into town, a three-hours' drive. He had left the horses at the stables, and, having a latch-key, had come in quietly. He had seen the light in the study, and guessed who was there. He entered, and saw his brother asleep. He watched him for a moment and studied him. Then he moved away to take off his hat, and, as he did so, stumbled slightly. Then it was Frank waked, and for the first time in five years they looked each other in the eyes. They both stood immovable for a moment, and then Richard caught Frank's hand in both of his and said: "God bless you, my boy! I am glad you are back." "Dick! Dick!" was the reply, and Frank's other hand clutched Richard's shoulder in his strong emotion. They stood silent for a moment longer, and then Richard recovered himself. He waved his hand to the chairs. The strain of the situation was a little painful for them both. Men are shy with each other where their emotions are in play. "Why, my boy," he said, waving a hand to the spirits and liqueurs, "full bottles and unopened boxes? Tut, tut! here's a pretty how-d'ye-do. Is this the way you toast the home quarters? You're a fine soldier for an old mess!" So saying, he poured out some whiskey, then opened the box of cigars and pushed them towards his brother. He did not care particularly to drink or smoke himself, but a man--an Englishman--is a strange creature. He is most natural and at ease when he is engaged in eating and drinking. He relieves every trying situation by some frivolous and selfish occupation, as of dismembering a partridge, or mixing a punch. "Well, Frank," said his brother, "now what have you to say for yourself? Why didn't you come long ago? You have played the adventurer for five years, and what have you to show for it? Have you a fortune?" Frank shook his head, and twisted a shoulder. "What have you done that is worth the doing, then?" "Nothing that I intended to do, Dick," was the grave reply. "Yes, I imagined that. You have seen them, have you?" he added, in a softer voice. Frank blew a great cloud of smoke about his face, and through it he said: "Yes, I have seen a damned sight more than I deserved to see." "Oh, of course; I know that, my boy; but, so far as I can see, in another direction you are getting quite what you deserve: your wife and child are upstairs--you are here." He paused, was silent for a moment, then leaned over, caught his brother's arm, and said, in a low, strenuous voice: "Frank Armour, you laid a hateful little plot for us. It wasn't manly, but we forgave it and did the best we could. But see here, Frank, take my word for it, you have had a lot of luck. There isn't one woman out of ten thousand that would have stood the test as your wife has stood it; injured at the start, constant neglect, temptation--" he paused. "My boy, did you ever think of that, of the temptation to a woman neglected by her husband? The temptation to men? Yes, you have had a lot of luck. There has been a special providence for you, my boy; but not for your sake. God doesn't love neglectful husbands, but I think He is pretty sorry for neglected wives." Frank was very still. His head drooped, the cigar hung unheeded in his fingers for a moment, and he said at last: "Dick, old boy, I've thought it all over to-night since I came back--everything that you've said. I have not a word of defence to make, but, by heaven! I'm going to win my wife's love if I can, and when I do it I'll make up for all my cursed foolishness--see if I don't." "That sounds well, Frank," was the quiet reply. "I like to hear you talk that way. You would be very foolish if you did not. What do you think of the child?" "Can you ask me what I think? He is a splendid little fellow." "Take care of him, then--take good care of him: you may never have another," was the grim rejoinder. Frank winced. His brother rose, took his arm, and said: "Let us go to our rooms, Frank. There will be time enough to talk later, and I am not so young as I once was." Truth to say, Richard Armour was not so young as he seemed a few months before. His shoulders were a little stooped, he was greyer about the temples. The little bit of cynicism which had appeared in that remark about the care of the child showed also in the lines of his mouth; yet his eyes had the same old true, honest look. But a man cannot be hit in mortal places once or twice in his life without its being etched on his face or dropped like a pinch of aloe from his tongue. Still they sat and talked much longer, Frank showing better than when his brother came, Richard gone grey and tired. At last Richard rose and motioned towards the window. "See, Frank," he said, "it is morning." Then he went and lifted the blind. The grey, unpurged air oozed on the glass. The light was breaking over the tops of the houses. A crossing- sweeper early to his task, or holding the key of the street, went pottering by, and a policeman glanced up at them as he passed. Richard drew down the curtain again. "Dick," said Frank suddenly, "you look old. I wonder if I have changed as much?" Six months before, Frank Armour would have said hat his brother looked young. "Oh, you look young enough, Frank," was the reply. "But I am a good deal older than I was five years ago. . . Come, let us go to bed." CHAPTER X THOU KNOWEST THE SECRETS OF OUR HEARTS And Lali? How had the night gone for her? When she rose from the child's cot, where her lips had caught the warmth that her husband had left on them, she stood for a moment bewildered in the middle of the room. She looked at the door out of which he had gone, her bosom beating hard, her heart throbbing so that it hurt her--that she could have cried out from mere physical pain. The wifedom in her was plundering the wild stores of her generous soul for the man, for--as Richard had said that day, that memorable day!--the father of her child. But the woman, the pure translated woman, who was born anew when this frail life in its pink and white glory crept out into the dazzling world, shrank back, as any girl might shrink that had not known marriage. This child had come--from what?--She shuddered now--how many times had she done so since she first waked to the vulgar sacrilege of her marriage? She knew now that every good mother, when her first child is born, takes it in her arms, and, all her agony gone, and the ineffable peace of delivered motherhood come, speaks the name of its father, and calls it his child. But--she remembered it now--when her child was born, this little waif, the fruit of a man's hot, malicious hour, she wrapped it in her arms, pressed its delicate flesh to the silken folds of her bosom, and weeping, whispered only: "My child, my little, little child!" She had never, as many a wife far from her husband has done, talked to her child of its father, told it of his beauty and his virtues, arrayed it day by day in sweet linen and pretty adornments, as if he were just then knocking at her door; she had never imagined what he would say when he did come. What could such a father think of his child, born of a woman whose very life he had intended as an insult? No, she had loved it for father and mother also. She had tried to be good, a good mother, living a life unutterably lonely, hard in all that it involved of study, new duty, translation, and burial of primitive emotions. And with all the care and tearful watchfulness that had been needed, she had grown so proud, so exacting--exacting for her child, proud for herself. How could she know now that this hasty declaration of affection was anything more than the mere man in him? Years ago she had not been able to judge between love and insult--what guarantee had she here? Did he think that she could believe in him? She was not the woman he had married, he was not the man she had married. He had deceived her basely --she had been a common chattel. She had been miserable enough--could she give herself over to his flying emotions again so suddenly? She paced the room, her face now in her hands, her hands now clasping and wringing before her. Her wifely duty? She straightened to that. Duty! She was first and before all a good, unpolluted woman. No, no, it could not be. Love him? Again she shrank. Then came flooding on her that afternoon when she had flung herself on Richard's breast, and all those hundred days of happiness in Richard's company--Richard the considerate, the strong, who had stood so by his honour in an hour of peril. Now as she thought of it a hot wave shivered through all her body, and tingled to her hair. Her face again dropped in her hands, and, as on that other day, she knelt beside the cot, and, bursting into tears, said through her sobs: "My baby, my own dear baby! Oh, that we could go away--away--and never come back again!" She did not know how intense her sobs were. They waked the child from its delicate sleep; its blue eyes opened wide and wise all on the instant, its round soft arm ran up to its mother's neck, and it said: "Don't c'y! I want to s'eep wif you! I'se so s'eepy!" She caught the child to her wet face, smiled at it through her tears, went with it to her own bed, put it away in the deep whiteness, kissed it, and fondled it away again into the heaven of sleep. When this was done she felt calmer. How she hungered over it! This--this could not be denied her. This, at least, was all hers, without clause or reservation, an absolute love, and an absolute right. She disrobed and drew in beside the child, and its little dewy cheek touching her breast seemed to ease the ache in her soul. But sleep would not come. All the past four years trooped by, with their thousand incidents magnified in the sharp, throbbing light of her mind, and at last she knew and saw clearly what was before her, what trials, what duty, and what honour demanded--her honour. Richard? Once for all she gently put him away from her into that infinite distance of fine respect which a good woman can feel, who has known what she and Richard had known--and set aside. But he had made for her so high a standard, that for one to be measured thereby was a severe challenge. Could Frank come even to that measure? She dared not try to answer the question. She feared, she shrank, she grew sick at heart. She did not reckon with that other thing, that powerful, infinite influence which ties a woman, she knows not how or why, to the man who led her to the world of motherhood. Through all the wrongs which she may suffer by him, there runs this cable of unhappy attraction, testified to by how many sorrowful lives! But Lali was trying to think it out, not only to feel, and she did not count that subterranean force which must play its part in this new situation in her drama of life. Could she love him? She crept away out of the haven where her child was, put on her dressing-gown, went to the window, and looked out upon the night, all unconscious that her husband was looking at her from the Square below. Love him?--Love him?--Love him? Could she? Did he love her? Her eyes wandered over the Square. Nowhere else was there a light, but a chimney-flue was creaking somewhere. It jarred on her so that she shrank. Then all at once she smiled to think how she had changed. Four years ago she could have slept amid the hammers of a foundry. The noise ceased. Her eyes passed from the cloud of trees in the Square to the sky-all stars, and restful deep blue. That--that was the same. How she knew it! Orion and Ashtaroth, and Mars and the Pleiades, and the long trail of the Milky Way. As a little child hanging in the trees, or sprawled beside a tepee, she had made friends with them all, even as she learned and loved all the signs of the earth beneath--the twist of a blade of grass, the portent in the cry of a river-hen, the colour of a star, the smell of a wind. She had known Nature then, now she knew men. And knowing them, and having suffered, and sick at heart as she was, standing by this window in the dead of night, the cry that shook her softly was not of her new life, but of the old, primitive, child-like. 'Pasagathe, omarki kethose kolokani vorgantha pestorondikat Oni.' "A spear hath pierced me, and the smart of the nettle is in my wound. Maker of the soft night, bind my wounds with sleep, lest I cry out and be a coward and unworthy." Again and again, unconsciously, the words passed from her lips 'Vorganthe, pestorondikat Oni.' At last she let down the blind, came to the bed, and once more gathered her child in her arms with an infinite hunger. This love was hers--rich, untrammelled, and so sacred. No matter what came, and she did not know what would come, she had the child. There was a kind of ecstasy in it, and she lay and trembled with the feeling, but at last fell into a troubled sleep. She waked suddenly to hear footsteps passing her door. She listened. One footstep was heavier than the other--heavier and a little stumbling; she recognised them, Frank and Richard. In that moment her heart hardened. Frank Armour must tread a difficult road. CHAPTER XI UPON THE HIGHWAY Frank visited the child in the morning, and was received with a casual interest. Richard Joseph Armour was fastidious, was not to be won at the grand gallop. Besides, he had just had a visit from his uncle, and the good taste of that gay time was yet in his mouth. He did not resent the embraces, but he did not respond to them, and he straightened himself with relief when the assault was over. Some one was paying homage to him, that was all he knew; but for his own satisfaction and pleasure he preferred as yet his old comrades, Edward Lambert, Captain Vidall, General Armour, and, above all, Richard. He only showed real interest at the last, when he asked, as it were in compromise, if his father would give him a sword. No one had ever talked to him of his father, and he had no instinct for him so far as could be seen. The sword was, therefore, after the manner of a concession. Frank rashly promised it, and was promptly told by Marion that it couldn't be; and she was backed by Captain Vidall, who said it had already been tabooed, and Frank wasn't to come in and ask for favours or expect them. The husband and wife met at breakfast. He was down first. When his wife entered, he came to her, they touched hands, and she presently took a seat beside him. More than once he paused suddenly in his eating, when he thought of his inexplicable case. He was now face to face with a reversed situation. He had once picked up a pebble from the brown dirt of a prairie, that he might toss it into the pool of this home life; and he had tossed it, and from the sweet bath there had come out a precious stone, which he longed to wear, and knew that he could not--not yet. He could have coerced a lower being, but for his manhood's sake--he had risen to that now, it is curious how the dignity of fatherhood helps to make a man--he could not coerce here, and if he did, he knew that the product would be disaster. He listened to her talk with Marion and Captain Vidall. Her voice was musical, balanced, her language breathed; it had manner, and an indescribable cadence of intelligence, joined to a deliberation, which touched her off with distinction. When she spoke to him--and she seemed to do that as by studied intention and with tact at certain intervals-- her manner was composed and kind. She had resolved on her part. She asked him about his journey over, about his plans for the day, and if he had decided to ride with her in the Park,--he could have the general's mount, she was sure, for the general was not going that day,--and would he mind doing a little errand for her afterwards in Regent Street, for the child--she feared she herself would not have time? Just then General Armour entered, and, passing behind her, kissed her on the cheek, dropping his hand on Frank's shoulder at the same time with a hearty greeting. Of course, Frank could have his mount, he said. Mrs. Armour did not come down, but she sent word by Richard, who entered last, that she would be glad to see Frank for a moment before he left for the Park. As of old, Richard took both Lali's hands in his, patted them, and cheerily said: "Well, well, Lali, we've got the wild man home again safe and sound, haven't we--the same old vagabond? We'll have to turn him into a Christian again--'For while the lamp holds out to burn'--" He did not give her time to reply, but their eyes met honestly, kindly, and from the look they both passed into life and time again with a fresh courage. She did not know, nor did he, how near they had been to an abyss; and neither ever knew. One furtive glance at the moment, one hesitating pressure of the hand, one movement of the head from each other's gaze, and there had been unhappiness for them all. But they were safe. In the Park, Frank and his wife talked little. They met many who greeted them cordially, and numbers of Frank's old club friends summoned him to the sacred fires at his earliest opportunity. The two talked chiefly of the people they met, and Frank thrilled with admiration at his wife's gentle judgment of everybody. "The true thing, absolutely the true thing," he said; and he was conscious, too, that her instincts were right and searching, for once or twice he saw her face chill a little when they met one or two men whose reputations as chevaliers des dames were pronounced. These men had had one or two confusing minutes with Lali in their time. "How splendidly you ride!" he said, as he came up swiftly to her, after having chatted for a moment with Edward Lambert. "You sit like wax, and so entirely easy." "Thank you," she said. "I suppose I really like it too well to ride badly, and then I began young on horses not so good as Musket here-- bareback, too!" she added, with a little soft irony. He thought--she did not, however--that she was referring to that first letter he sent home to his people, when he consigned her, like any other awkward freight, to their care. He flushed to his eyes. It cut him deep, but her eyes only had a distant, dreamy look which conveyed nothing of the sting in her words. Like most men, he had a touch of vanity too, and he might have resented the words vaguely, had he not remembered his talk with his mother an hour before. She had begged him to have patience, she had made him promise that he would not in any circumstance say an ungentle or bitter thing, that he would bide the effort of constant devotion, and his love of the child. Especially must he try to reach her through love of the child. By which it will be seen that Mrs. Armour had come to some wisdom by reason of her love for Frank's wife and child. "My son," she had said, "through the child is the surest way, believe me; for only a mother can understand what that means, how much and how far it goes. You are a father, but until last night you never had the flush of that love in your veins. You stand yet only at the door of that life which has done more to guide, save, instruct, and deepen your wife's life than anything else, though your brother Richard--to whom you owe a debt that you can never repay--has done much in deed. Be wise, my dear, as I have learned a little to be since first your wife came. All might easily have gone wrong. It has all gone well; and we, my son, have tried to do our duty lovingly, consistently, to dear Lali and the child." She made him promise that he would wait, that he would not try to hurry his wife's affection for him by any spoken or insistent claim. "For, Frank dear," she said, "you are only legally married, not morally, not as God can bless--not yet. But I pray that what will sanctify all may come soon, very soon, to the joy of us all. But again--and I cannot say it too prayerfully--do not force one little claim that your marriage gave you, but prove yourself to her, who has cause to distrust you so much. Will you forgive your mother, my dear, for speaking to you?" He had told her then that what she had asked he had intended as his own course, yet what she had said would keep it in his mind always, for he was sure it was right. Mrs. Armour had then embraced him, and they parted. Dealing with Lali had taught them all much of the human heart that they had never known before, and the result thereof was wisdom. They talked casually enough for the rest of the ride, and before they parted at the door Frank received his commission for Regent Street, and accepted it with delight, as a schoolboy might a gift. He was absurdly grateful for any favours from her, any sign of her companionship. They met at luncheon; then, because Lali had to keep an engagement in Eaton Square, they parted again, and Frank and Richard took a walk, after a long hour with the child, who still so hungered for his sword that Frank disobeyed orders, and dragged Richard off to Oxford Street to get one. He was reduced to a beatific attitude of submission, for he knew that he had few odds with him now, and that he must live by virtue of new virtues. He was no longer proud of himself in any way, and he knew that no one else was, or rather he felt so, and that was just the same. He talked of the boy, he talked of his wife, he laid plans, he tore them down, he built them up again, he asked advice, he did not wait to hear it, but rambled on, excited, eager. Truth is, there had suddenly been lifted from his mind the dread and shadow of four years. Wherever he had gone, whatever he had been or done, that dread shadow had followed him, and now to know that instead of having to endure a hell he had to win a heaven, and to feel as if his brain had been opened and a mass of vapours and naughty little mannikins of remorse had been let out, was a trifle intoxicating even to a man of his usual vigour and early acquaintance with exciting things. "Dick, Dick!" he said enthusiastically, "you've been royal. You always were better than any chap I ever knew. You're always doing for others. Hang it, Dick, where does your fun come in? Nobody seems ever to do anything for you." Richard gave his arm a squeeze. "Never mind about me, boy. I've had all the fun I want, and all I'm likely to get, and so long as you're all willing to have me around, I'm satisfied. There's always a lot to do among the people in the village, one way and another, and I've a heap of reading on, and what more does a fellow want?" "You didn't always feel that way, Dick?" "No. You see, at different times in life you want different kinds of pleasures. I've had a good many kinds, and the present kind is about as satisfactory as any." "But, Dick, you ought to get married. You've got coin, you've got sense, you're a bit distinguished-looking, and I'll back your heart against a thousand bishops. You've never been in danger of making a fool of yourself as I have. Why didn't you--why don't you--get married?" Richard patted his brother's shoulder. "Married, boy? Married? I've got too much on my hands. I've got to bring you up yet. And when that's done I shall have to write a book called 'How to bring up a Parent.' Then I've got to help bring your boy up, as I've done these last three years and more. I've got to think of that boy for a long while yet, for I know him better than you do, and I shall need some of my coin to carry out my plans." "God bless you, Dick! Bring me up as you will, only bring her along too; and as for the boy, you're far more his father than I am. And mother says that it's you that's given me the wife I've got now--so what can I say?--what can I say?" It was the middle of the Green Park, and Richard turned and clasped Frank by both shoulders. "Say? Say that you'll stand by the thing you swore to one mad day in the West as well as any man that ever lived--'to have and to hold, to love and to cherish from this day forth till death us do part, Amen.'" Richard's voice was low and full of a strange, searching something. Frank, wondering at this great affection and fondness of his brother, looked him in the eyes warmly, solemnly, and replied: "For richer or for poorer, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health--so help me God, and her kindness and forgiveness!" CHAPTER XII "THE CHASE OF THE YELLOW SWAN" Frank and Lali did not meet until dinner was announced. The conversation at dinner was mainly upon the return to Greyhope, which was fixed for the following morning, and it was deftly kept gay and superficial by Marion and Richard and Captain Vidall, until General Armour became reminiscent, and held the interest of the table through a dozen little incidents of camp and barrack life until the ladies rose. There had been an engagement for late in the evening, but it had been given up because of Frank's home-coming, and there was to be a family gathering merely-- for Captain Vidall was now as much one of the family as Frank or Richard, by virtue of his approaching marriage with Marion. The men left alone, General Armour questioned Frank freely about life in the Hudson's Bay country, and the conversation ran on idly till it was time to join the ladies. When they reached the drawing-room, Marion was seated at the piano, playing a rhapsody of Raff's, and Mrs. Armour and Lali were seated side by side. Frank thrilled at seeing his wife's hand in his mother's. Marion nodded over the piano at the men, and presently played a snatch of Carmen, then wandered off into the barbaric strength of Tannhauser, and as suddenly again into the ballet music of Faust. "Why so wilful, my girl?" asked her father, who had a keen taste for music. "Why this tangle? Let us have something definite." Marion sprang up from the piano. "I can't. I'm not definite myself to-night." Then, turning to Lali: "Lali dear, sing something--do! Sing my favourite, 'The Chase of the Yellow Swan.'" This was a song which in the later days at Greyhope, Lali had sung for Marion, first in her own language, with the few notes of an Indian chant, and afterwards, by the help of the celebrated musician who had taught her both music and singing, both of which she had learned but slowly, it was translated and set to music. Lali looked Marion steadily in the eyes for a moment and then rose. It cost her something to do this thing, for while she had often talked much and long with Richard about that old life, it now seemed as if she were to sing it to one who would not quite understand why she should sing it at all, or what was her real attitude towards her past--that she looked upon it from the infinite distance of affectionate pity, knowledge, and indescribable change, and yet loved the inspiring atmosphere and mystery of that lonely North, which once in the veins never leaves it--never. Would he understand that she was feeling, not the common detail of the lodge and the camp-fire and the Company's post, but the deep spirit of Nature, filtering through the senses in a thousand ways--the wild ducks' flight, the sweet smell of the balsam, the exquisite gallop of the deer, the powder of the frost, the sun and snow and blue plains of water, the thrilling eternity of plain and the splendid steps of the hills, which led away by stair and entresol to the Kimash Hills, the Hills of the Mighty Men? She did not know what he would think, and again on second thought she determined to make him, by this song, contrast her as she was when he married her, and now--how she herself could look upon that past unabashed, speak of it without blushing, sing of it with pride, having reached a point where she could look down and say: "This was the way by which I came." She rose, and was accompanied to the piano by General Armour, Frank admiring her soft, springing steps, her figure so girlish and lissom. She paused for a little before she began. Her eyes showed for a moment over the piano, deep, burning, in-looking; then they veiled; her fingers touched the keys, wandered over them in a few strange, soft chords, paused, wandered again, more firmly and very intimately, and then she sang. Her voice was a good contralto, well balanced, true, of no great range, but within its compass melodious, and having some inexpressible charm of temperament. Frank did not need to strain his ears to hear the words; every one came clear, searching, delicately valued: "In the flash of the singing dawn, At the door of the Great One, The joy of his lodge knelt down, Knelt down, and her hair in the sun Shone like showering dust, And her eyes were as eyes of the fawn. And she cried to her lord, 'O my lord, O my life, From the desert I come; From the hills of the Dawn.' And he lifted the curtain and said, 'Hast thou seen It, the Yellow Swan?' "And she lifted her head, and her eyes Were as lights in the dark, And her hands folded slow on her breast, And her face was as one who has seen The gods and the place where they dwell; And she said: 'Is it meet that I kneel, That I kneel as I speak to my lord?' And he answered her: 'Nay, but to stand, And to sit by my side; But speak, thou hast followed the trail, Hast thou found It, the Yellow Swan?' "And she stood as a queen, and her voice Was as one who hath seen the Hills, The Hills of the Mighty Men, And hath heard them cry in the night, Hath heard them call in the dawn, Hath seen It, the Yellow Swan. And she said: 'It is not for my lord;' And she murmured, 'I cannot tell, But my lord must go as I went, And my lord must come as I came, And my lord shall be wise.' "And he cried in his wrath, 'What is thine, it is mine, And thine eyes are my eyes Thou shalt speak of the Yellow Swan!' But she answered him: 'Nay, though I die. I have lain in the nest of the Swan, I have heard, I have known; When thine eyes too have seen, When thine ears too have heard, Thou shalt do with me then as thou wilt!' "And he lifted his hand to strike, And he straightened his spear to slay, But a great light struck on his eyes, And he heard the rushing of wings, And his long spear fell from his hand, And a terrible stillness came. And when the spell passed from his eyes, He stood in his doorway alone, And gone was the queen of his soul, And gone was the Yellow Swan." Frank Armour listened as in a dream. The song had the wild swing of savage life, the deep sweetness of a monotone, but it had also the fine intelligence, the subtle allusiveness of romance. He could read between the lines. The allegory touched him where his nerves were sensitive. Where she had gone he could not go until his eyes had seen and known what hers had seen and known; he could not grasp his happiness all in a moment; she was no longer at his feet, but equal with him, and wiser than he. She had not meant the song to be allusive when she began, but to speak to him through it by singing the heathen song as his own sister might sing it. As the song went on, however, she felt the inherent suggestion in it, so that when she had finished it required all her strength to get up calmly, come among them again, and listen to their praises and thanks. She had no particular wish to be alone with Frank just yet, but the others soon arranged themselves so that the husband and wife were left in a cosey corner of the room. Lali's heart fluttered a little at first, for the day had been trying, and she was not as strong as she could wish. Admirably as she had gone through the season, it had worn on her, and her constitution had become sensitive and delicate, while yet strong. The life had almost refined her too much. Always on the watch that she should do exactly as Marion or Mrs. Armour, always so sensitive as to what was required of her, always preparing for this very time, now that it had come, and her heart and mind were strong, her body seemed to weaken. Once or twice during the day she had felt a little faint, but it had passed off, and she had scolded herself. She did not wish a serious talk with her husband to-night, but she saw now that it was inevitable. He said to her as he sat down beside her: "You sing very well indeed. The song is full of meaning, and you bring it all out." "I am glad you like it," she responded conventionally. "Of course it's an unusual song for an English drawing-room." "As you sing it, it would be beautiful and acceptable anywhere, Lali." "Thank you again," she answered, closing and unclosing her fan, her eyes wandering to where Mrs. Armour was. She wished she could escape, for she did not feel like talking, and yet though the man was her husband she could not say that she was too tired to talk; she must be polite. Then, with a little dainty malice: "It is more interesting, though, in the vernacular--and costume!" "Not unless you sang it so," he answered gallantly, and with a kind of earnestness. "You have not forgotten the way of London men," she rejoined. "Perhaps that is well, for I do not know the way of women," he said, with a faint bitterness. "Yet, I don't speak unadvisedly in this,"--here he meant to be a little bold and bring the talk to the past,--"for I heard you sing that song once before." She turned on him half puzzled, a little nervous. "Where did you hear me sing it?" He had made up his mind, wisely enough, to speak with much openness and some tact also, if possible. "It was on the Glow Worm River at the Clip Claw Hills. I came into your father's camp one evening in the autumn, hungry and tired and knocked about. I was given the next tent to yours. It was night, and just before I turned in I heard your voice singing. I couldn't understand much of the language, but I had the sense of it, and I know it when I hear it again." "Yes, I remember singing it that night," she said. "Next day was the Feast of the Yellow Swan." Her eyes presently became dreamy, and her face took on a distant, rapt look. She sat looking straight before her for a moment. He did not speak, for he interpreted the look aright, and he was going to be patient, to wait. "Tell me of my father," she said. "You have been kind to him?" He winced a little. "When I left Fort Charles he was very well," he said, "and he asked me to tell you to come some day. He also has sent you a half-dozen silver-fox skins, a sash, and moccasins made by his own hands. The things are not yet unpacked." Moccasins?--She remembered when last she had moccasins on her feet--the day she rode the horse at the quick-set hedge, and nearly lost her life. How very distant that all was, and yet how near too! Suddenly she remembered also why she took that mad ride, and her heart hardened a little. "You have been kind to my father since I left?" she asked. He met her eyes steadily. "No, not always; not more than I have been kind to you. But at the last, yes." Suddenly his voice became intensely direct and honest. "Lali," he continued, "there is much that I want to say to you." She waved her hand in a wearied fashion. "I want to tell you that I would do the hardest penance if I could wipe out these last four years." "Penance?" she said dreamily--"penance? What guarantee of happiness would that be? One would not wish another to do penance if--" She paused. "I understand," he said--"if one cared--if one loved. Yes, I understand. But that does not alter the force or meaning of the wish. I swear to you that I repent with all my heart--the first wrong to you, the long absence--the neglect--everything." She turned slowly to him. "Everything-Everything?" she repeated after him. "Do you understand what that means? Do you know a woman's heart? No. Do you know what a shameful neglect is at the most pitiful time in your life? No. How can a man know! He has a thousand things--the woman has nothing, nothing at all except the refuge of home, that for which she gave up everything!" Presently she broke off, and something sprang up and caught her in the throat. Years of indignation were at work in her. "I have had a home," she said, in a low, thrilling voice--"a good home; but what did that cost you? Not one honest sentiment of pity, kindness, or solicitude. You clothed me, fed me, abandoned me, as--how can one say it? Do I not know, if coming back you had found me as you expected to find me, what the result would have been? Do I not know? You would have endured me if I did not thrust myself upon you, for you have after all a sense of legal duty, a kind of stubborn honour. But you would have made my life such that some day one or both of us would have died suddenly. For"--she looked him with a hot clearness in the eyes--"for there is just so much that a woman can bear. I wish this talk had not come now, but, since it has come, it is better to speak plainly. You see, you misunderstand. A heathen has a heart as another--has a life to be spoiled or made happy as another. Had there been one honest passion in your treatment of me-- in your marrying me--there would be something on which to base mutual respect, which is more or less necessary when one is expected to love. But--but I will not speak more of it, for it chokes me, the insult to me, not as I was, but as I am. Then it would probably have driven me mad, if I had known; now it eats into my life like rust." He made a motion as if to take her hands, but lifting them away quietly she said: "You forget that there are others present, as well as the fact that we can talk better without demonstration." He was about to speak, but she stopped him. "No, wait," she said; "for I want to say a little more. I was only an Indian girl, but you must remember that I had also in my veins good white blood, Scotch blood. Perhaps it was that which drew me to you then--for Lali the Indian girl loved you. Life had been to me pleasant enough--without care, without misery, open, strong and free; our people were not as those others which had learned the white man's vices. We loved the hunt, the camp-fires, the sacred feasts, the legends of the Mighty Men; and the earth was a good friend, whom we knew as the child knows its mother." She paused. Something seemed to arrest her attention. Frank followed her eyes. She was watching Captain Vidall and Marion. He guessed what she was thinking--how different her own wooing had been from theirs, how concerning her courtship she had not one sweet memory--the thing that keeps alive more love and loyalty in this world than anything else. Presently General Armour joined them, and Frank's opportunity was over for the present. Captain Vidall and Marion were engaged in a very earnest conversation, though it might not appear so to observers. "Come, now, Marion," he said protestingly, "don't be impossible. Please give the day a name. Don't you think we've waited about long enough?" "There was a man in the Bible who served seven years." "I've served over three in India since I met you at the well, and that counts double. Why so particular to a day? It's a bit Jewish. Anyhow, that seven years was rough on Rachel." "How, Hume? Because she got passee?" "Well, that counted; but do you suppose that Jew was going to put in those seven years without interest? Don't you believe it. Rachel paid capital and interest back, or Jacob was no Jew. Tell me, Marion, when shall it be?" "Hume, for a man who has trifled away years in India, you are strangely impatient." "Mrs. Lambert says that I have the sweetest disposition." "My dear sir!" "Don't look at me like that at this distance, or I shall have to wear goggles, as the man did who went courting the Sun." "How supremely ridiculous you are! And I thought you such a sensible, serious man." "Mrs. Lambert put that in your head. We used to meet at the annual dinners of the Bible Society." "Why do you tell me such stuff?" "It's a fact. Her father and my aunt were in that swim, and we were sympathisers." "Mercenary people!" "It worked very well in her case; not so well in mine. But we conceived a profound respect for each other then. But tell me, Marion, when is it to be? Why put off the inevitable?" "It isn't inevitable--and I'm only twenty-three." "Only twenty-three, And as good fish in the sea" he responded, laughing. "Yes, but you've set the precedent for a courtship of four years and a bit, and what man could face it?" "You did." "Yes, but I wasn't advertised of the fact beforehand. Suppose I had seen the notice at the start: 'This mortgage cannot be raised inside of four years--and a bit!' There's a limit to human endurance." "Why shouldn't I hold to the number, but alter the years to days?" "You wouldn't dare. A woman must live up to her reputation." "Indeed? What an ambition!" "And a man to his manners." "An unknown quantity." "And a lover to his promises." "A book of jokes." Marion had developed a taste for satire. "Which reminds me of Lady Halwood and Mrs. Lambert. Lady Halwood was more impertinent than usual the other day at the Sinclairs' show, and had a little fling at Mrs. Lambert. The talk turned on gowns. Lady Halwood was much interested at once. She has a weakness that way. 'Why,' said she, 'I like these fashions this year, but I'm not sure that they suit me. They're the same as when the Queen came to the throne.' 'Well,' said Mrs. Lambert sweetly, 'if they suited you then--' There was an audible titter, and Mrs. Lambert had an enemy for life." "I don't see the point of your story in this connection." "No? Well, it was merely to suggest that if you had to live up to this scheme of four-years' probation, other people besides lovers would make up books of jokes, and--" "That's like a man--to threaten." "Yes, I threaten--on my knees." "Hume, how long do you think Frank will have to wait?" They were sitting where they had a good view of the husband and wife, and Vidall, after a moment, said: "I don't know. She has waited four years, too; now it looks as if, like Jacob, she was going to gather in her shekels of interest compounded." "It isn't going to be a bit pleasant to watch." "But you won't be here to see." Marion ignored the suggestion. "She seems to have hardened since he came yesterday. I hardly know her; and yet she looks awfully worn to-night, don't you think?" "Yes, as if she had to keep a hand on herself. But it'll come out all right in the end, you'll see." "Yes, of course; but she might be sensible and fall in love with Frank at once. That's what she did when--" "When she didn't know man." "Yes, but where would you all be if we women acted on what we know of you?" "On our knees chiefly, as I am. Remember this, Marion, that half a sinner is better than no man." "You mean that no man is better than half a saint?" "How you must admire me!" "Why?" "As you are about to name the day, I assume that I'm a whole saint in your eyes." "St. Augustine!" "Who was he?" "A man that reformed." "Before or after marriage?" "Before, I suppose." "I don't think he died happy." "Why not?" "I've a faint recollection that he was boiled." "Don't be horrid. What has that to do with it?" "Nothing, perhaps. But he probably broke out again after marriage, and sank at last into that caldron. That's what it means by being-steeped in crime." "How utterly nonsensical you are!" "I feel light-headed. You've been at sea, on a yacht becalmed, haven't you? when along comes a groundswell, and as you rock in the sun there comes trouble, and your head goes round like a top? Now, that's my case. I've been becalmed four years, and while I pray for a little wind to take me--home, you rock me in the trough of uncertainty. Suspense is very gall and wormwood. You know what the jailer said to the criminal who was hanging on a reprieve: 'Rope deferred maketh the heart sick.' Marion, give me the hour, or give me the rope." "The rope enough to hang yourself?" She suddenly reached up and pulled a hair from her head. She laid it in his hand-a long brown silken thread. "Hume," she said airily yet gently, "there is the rope. Can you love me for a month of Sundays?" "Yes, for ever and a day!" "I will cancel the day, and take your bond for the rest. I will be generous. I will marry you in two months-and a day." "My dearest girl!"--he drew her hand into both of his--"I can't have you more generous than myself, I'll throw off the month." But his eyes were shining very seriously, though his mouth smiled. "Two months and a day," she repeated. "We must all bundle off to Greyhope to-morrow," came General Armour's voice across the room. "Down comes the baby, cradle and all." Lali rose. "I am very tired," she said; "I think I will say good-night." "I'll go and see the boy with you," Frank said, rising also. Lali turned towards Marion. Marion's face was flushed, and had a sweet, happy confusion. With a low, trembling good-night to Captain Vidall, a hurried kiss on her mother's cheek, and a tip-toed caress on her father's head, she ran and linked her arm in Lali's, and together they proceeded to the child's room. Richard was there when they arrived, mending a broken toy. Two hours later, the brothers parted at Frank's door. "Reaping the whirlwind, Dick?" Frank said, dropping his hand on his brother's arm. Richard pointed to the child's room. "Nonsense! Do you want all the world at once? You are reaping the forgiveness of your sins." Somehow Richard's voice was a little stern. "I was thinking of my devilry, Dick. That's the whirlwind--here!" His hand dropped on his breast. "That's where it ought to be. Good-night." "Good-night." CHAPTER XIII A LIVING POEM Part of Frank's most trying interview, next to the meeting with his wife, was that with Mackenzie, who had been his special commissioner in the movement of his masquerade. Mackenzie also had learned a great deal since she had brought Lali--home. She, like others, had come to care truly for the sweet barbarian, and served her with a grim kind of reverence. Just in proportion as this had increased, her respect for Frank had decreased. No man can keep a front of dignity in the face of an unbecoming action. However, Mackenzie had her moment, and when it was over, the new life began at no general disadvantage to Frank. To all save the immediate family Frank and Lali were a companionable husband and wife. She rode with him, occasionally walked with him, now and again sang to him, and they appeared in the streets of St. Albans and at the Abbey together, and oftener still in the village church near, where the Armours of many generations were proclaimed of much account in the solid virtues of tomb and tablet. The day had gone by when Lali attracted any especial notice among the villagers, and she enjoyed the quiet beauty and earnestness of the service. But she received a shock one Sunday. She had been nervous all the week, she could not tell why, and others remarked how her face had taken on a new sensitiveness, a delicate anxiety, and that her strength was not what it had been. As, for instance, after riding she required to rest, a thing before unknown, and she often lay down for an hour before dinner. Then, too, at table once she grew suddenly pale and swayed against Edward Lambert, who was sitting next to her. She would not, however, leave the table, but sat the dinner out, to Frank's apprehension. He was devoted, but it was clear to Marion and her mother at least that his attentions were trying to her. They seemed to put her under an obligation which to meet was a trial. There is nothing more wearing to a woman than affectionate attentions from a man who has claims upon her, but whom she does not love. These same attentions from one who has no claims give her a thrill of pleasure. It is useless to ask for justice in such a matter. These things are governed by no law; and rightly so, else the world would be in good time a loveless multitude, held together only by the hungering ties of parent and child. But this Sunday wherein Lali received a shock. She did not know that the banns for Marion's and Captain Vidall's marriage were to be announced, and at the time her thoughts were far away. She was recalled to herself by the clergyman's voice pronouncing their names, and saying: "If any of you do know cause or just impediment why these two people should not be joined together in the bonds of holy matrimony, ye are to declare it." All at once there came back to her her own marriage when the Protestant missionary, in his nasal monotone, mumbled these very words, not as if he expected that any human being would, or could, offer objection. She almost sprang from her seat now. Her nerves all at once came to such a tension that she could have cried out. Why had there been no one there at her marriage to say: "I forbid it"? How shameful it had all been! And the first kiss her husband had given her had the flavour of brandy! If she could but turn back the hands upon the clock of Time! Under the influence of the music and the excited condition of her nerves, the event became magnified, distorted; it burned into her brain. It was not made less poignant by the sermon from the text: "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin." When the words were first announced in the original, it sounded like her own language, save that it was softer, and her heart throbbed fast. Then came the interpretation: "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting." Then suddenly swept over her a new feeling, one she had never felt before. Up to this point a determination to justify her child, to reverse the verdict of the world, to turn her husband's sin upon himself, had made her defiant, even bitter; in all things eager to live up to her new life, to the standard that Richard had by manner and suggestion, rather than by words, laid down for her. But now there came in upon her a flood of despair. At best she was only of this race through one-third of her parentage, and education and refinement and all things could do no more than make her possible. There must always be in the record: "She was of a strange people. She was born in a wigwam." She did not know that failing health was really the cause of this lapse of self- confidence, this growing self-depreciation, this languor for which she could not account. She found that she could not toss the child and frolic with it as she had done; she was conscious that within a month there had stolen upon her the desire to be much alone, to avoid noises and bustle--it irritated her. She found herself thinking more and more of her father, her father to whom she had never written one line since she had left the North. She had had good reasons for not writing-- writing could do no good whatever, particularly to a man who could not read, and who would not have understood her new life if he had read. Yet now she seemed not to know why she had not written, and to blame herself for neglect and forgetfulness. It weighed on her. Why had she ever been taken from the place of tamarack-trees and the sweeping prairie grass? No, no, she was not, after all, fit for this life. She had been mistaken, and Richard had been mistaken--Richard, who was so wise. The London season? Ah! that was because people had found a novelty, and herself of better manners than had been expected. The house was now full of preparations for the wedding. It stared her in the face every day, almost every hour. Dressmakers, milliners, tailors, and all those other necessary people. Did the others think what all this meant to her? It was impossible that they should. When Marion came back from town at night and told of her trials among the dressmakers, when she asked the general opinion and sometimes individual judgment, she could not know that it was at the expense of Lali's nerves. Lali, when she married, had changed her moccasins, combed her hair, and put on a fine red belt, and that was all. She was not envious now, not at all. But somehow it all was a deadly kind of evidence against herself and her marriage. Her reproach was public, the world knew it, and no woman can forgive a public shame, even was it brought about by a man she loved, or loves. Her chiefest property in life is her self-esteem and her name before the world. Rob her of these, and her heaven has fallen, and if a man has shifted the foundations of her peace, there is no forgiveness for him till her Paradise has been reconquered. So busy were all the others that they did not see how her strength was failing. There were three weeks between the day the banns were announced and the day of the wedding, which was to be in the village church, not in town; for, as Marion said, she had seen too many marriages for one day's triumph and criticism; she wanted hers where there would be neither triumph nor criticism, but among people who had known her from her childhood up. A happy romance had raised Marion's point of view. Meanwhile Frank was winning the confidence of his own child, who, however, ranked Richard higher always, and became to a degree his father's tyrant. But Frank's nature was undergoing a change. His point of view also had enlarged. The suffering, bitterness, and humiliation of his life in the North had done him good. He was being disciplined to take his position as a husband and father, but he sometimes grew heavy- hearted when he saw how his attentions oppressed his wife, and had it not been for Richard he might probably have brought on disaster, for the position was trying to all concerned. A few days before the wedding Edward Lambert and his wife arrived, and he, Captain Vidall, and Frank Armour took rides and walks together, or set the world right in the billiard-room. Richard seldom joined them, though their efforts to induce him to do so were many. He had his pensioners, his books, his pipe, and "the boy," and he had returned in all respects, in so far as could be seen, to his old life, save for the new and larger interest of his nephew. One evening the three men with General Armour were all gathered in the billiard-room. Conversation had been general and without particular force, as it always is when merely civic or political matters are under view. But some one gave a social twist to the talk, and presently they were launched upon that sea where every man provides his own chart, or he is a very worm and no man. Each man had been differently trained, each viewed life from a different stand-point, and yet each had been brought up in the same social atmosphere, in the same social sets, had imbibed the same traditions, been moved generally by the same public considerations. "But there's little to be said for a man who doesn't, outwardly at least, live up to the social necessity," said Lambert. "And keep the Ten Commandments in the vulgar tongue," rejoined Vidall. "I've lived seventy-odd years, and I've knocked about a good deal in my time," said the general, "but I've never found that you could make a breach of social necessity, as you call it, without paying for it one way or another. The trouble with us when we're young is that we want to get more out of life than there really is in it. There is not much in it, after all. You can stand just so much fighting, just so much work, just so much emotion--and you can stand less emotion than anything else. I'm sure more men and women break up from a hydrostatic pressure of emotion than from anything else. Upon my soul, that's so." "You are right, General," said Lambert. "The steady way is the best way. The world is a passable place, if a fellow has a decent income by inheritance, or can earn a big one, but to be really contented to earn money it must be a big one, otherwise he is far better pleased to take the small inherited income. It has a lot of dignity, which the other can only bring when it is large." "That's only true in this country; it's not true in America," said Frank, "for there the man who doesn't earn money is looked upon as a muff, and is treated as such. A small inherited income is thought to be a trifle enervating. But there is a country of emotions, if you like. The American heart is worn upon the American sleeve, and the American mind is the most active thing in this world. That's why they grow old so young." "I met a woman a year or so ago at dinner," said Vidall, "who looked forty. She looked it, and she acted it. She was younger than any woman present, but she seemed older. There was a kind of hopeless languor about her which struck me as pathetic. Yet she had been beautiful, and might even have been so when I saw her, if it hadn't been for that look. It was the look of a person who had no interest in things. And the person who has no interest in things is the person who once had a great deal of interest in things, who had too passionate an interest. The revulsion is always terrible. Too much romance is deadly. It is as false a stimulant as opium or alcohol, and leaves a corresponding mark. Well, I heard her history. She was married at fifteen--ran away to be married; and in spite of the fact that a railway accident nearly took her husband from her on the night of her marriage--one would have thought that would make a strong bond--she was soon alive to the attentions that are given a pretty and--considerate woman. At a ball at Naples, her husband, having in vain tried to induce her to go home, picked her up under his arm and carried her out of the ballroom. Then came a couple of years of opium-eating, fierce social excitement, divorce, new marriage, and so on, until her husband agreeably decided to live in Nice, while she lived somewhere else. Four days after I had met her at the dinner I saw her again. I could scarcely believe my eyes. The woman had changed completely. She was young again-twenty-five, in face and carriage, in the eye and hand, in step and voice." "Who was the man?" suggested Frank Armour. "A man about her own age, or a little more, but who was an infant beside her in knowledge of the world." "She was in love with the fellow? It was a grande passion?" asked Lambert. "In love with him? No, not at all. It was a momentary revival of an old-possibility." "You mean that such women never really love?" "Perhaps once, Frank, but only after a fashion. The rest was mere imitation of their first impulses." "And this woman?" "Well, the end came sooner than I expected. I tell you I was shocked at the look in her face when I saw it again. That light had flickered out; the sensitive alertness of hand, eye, voice, and carriage had died away; lines had settled in the face, and the face itself had gone cold, with that hard, cold passiveness which comes from exhausted emotions and a closed heart. The jewels she wore might have been put upon a statue with equal effect." "It seems to me that we might pitch into men in these things and not make women the dreadful examples," said a voice from the corner. It was the voice of Richard, who had but just entered. "My dear Dick," said his father, "men don't make such frightful examples, because these things mean less to men than they do to women. Romance is an incident to a man; he can even come through an affaire with no ideals gone, with his mental fineness unimpaired; but it is different with a woman. She has more emotion than mind, else there were no cradles in the land. Her standards are set by the rules of the heart, and when she has broken these rules she has lost her standard too. But to come back, it is true, I think, as I said, that man or woman must not expect too much out of life, but be satisfied with what they can get within the normal courses of society and convention and home, and the end thereof is peace --yes, upon my soul, it's peace." There was something very fine in the blunt, honest words of the old man, whose name had ever been sweet with honour. "And the chief thing is that a man live up to his own standard," said Lambert. "Isn't that so, Dick?--you're the wise man." "Every man should have laws of his own, I should think; commandments of his own, for every man has a different set of circumstances wherein to work--or worry." "The wisest man I ever knew," said Frank, dropping his cigar, "was a little French-Canadian trapper up in the Saskatchewan country. A priest asked him one day what was the best thing in life, and he answered: 'For a young man's mind to be old, and an old man's heart to be young.' The priest asked him how that could be. And he said: 'Good food, a good woman to teach him when he is young, and a child to teach him when he is old.' Then the priest said: 'What about the Church and the love of God?' The little man thought a little, and then said: 'Well, it is the same-- the love of man and woman came first in the world, then the child, then God in the garden.' Afterwards he made a little speech of good-bye to us, for we were going to the south while he remained in a fork of the Far Off River. It was like some ancient blessing: that we should always have a safe tent and no sorrow as we travelled; that we should always have a cache for our food, and food for our cache; that we should never find a tree that would not give sap, nor a field that would not grow grain; that our bees should not freeze in winter, and that the honey should be thick, and the comb break like snow in the teeth; that we keep hearts like the morning, and that we come slow to the Four Corners where man says Good- night." Each of the other men present wondered at that instant if Frank Armour would, or could, have said this with the same feelings two months before. He seemed almost transformed. "It reminds me," said the general, "of an inscription from an Egyptian monument which an officer of the First put into English verse for me years ago: "Fair be the garden where their loves shall dwell, Safe be the highway where their feet may go, Rich be the fields wherein their hands may toil, The fountains many where their good wines flow. Full be their harvest-bins with corn and oil, To sorrow may their humour be a foil; Quick be their hearts all wise delights to know, Tardy their footsteps to the gate Farewell." There was a moment's silence after he had finished, and then there was noise without, a sound of pattering feet; the door flew open, and in ran a little figure in white--young Richard in his bed-gown, who had broken away from his nurse, and had made his way to the billiard-room, where he knew his uncle had gone. The child's face was flashing with mischief and adventure. He ran in among the group, and stretched out his hands with a little fighting air. His uncle Richard made a step towards him, but he ran back; his father made as if to take him in his arms, but he evaded him. Presently the door opened, the nurse entered, the child sprang from among the group, and ran with a laughing defiance to the farthest end of the room, and, leaning his chin on the billiard-table, flashed a look of defiant humour at his pursuer. Presently the door opened again, and the figure of the mother appeared. All at once the child's face altered; he stood perfectly still, and waited for his mother to come to him. Lali had not spoken, and she did not speak until, lifting the child, she came the length of the billiard-table and faced them. "I beg your pardon," she said, "for intruding; but Richard has led us a dance, and I suppose the mother may go where her child goes." "The mother and the child are always welcome wherever they go," said General Armour quietly. All the men had risen to their feet, and they made a kind of semicircle before her. The white-robed child had clasped its arms about her neck, and nestled its face against hers, as if, with perfect satisfaction, it had got to the end of its adventure; but the look of humour was still in the eyes as they ran from Richard to his father and back again. Frank Armour stepped forwards and took the child's hand, as it rested on the mother's shoulder. Lali's face underwent a slight change as her husband's fingers touched her neck. "I must go," she said. "I hope I have not broken up a serious conversation--or were you not so serious after all?" she said, glancing archly at General Armour. "We were talking of women," said Lambert. "The subject is wide," replied Lali, "and the speakers many. One would think some wisdom might be got in such a case." "Believe me, we were not trying to understand the subject," said Captain Vidall; "the most that a mere man can do is to appreciate it." "There are some things that are hidden from the struggling mind of man, and are revealed unto babes and the mothers of babes," said General Armour gravely, as, reaching out his hands, he took the child from the mother's arms, kissed it full upon the lips, and added: "Men do not understand women, because men's minds have not been trained in the same school. When once a man has mastered the very alphabet of motherhood, then he shall have mastered the mind of woman; but I, at least, refuse to say that I do not understand, from the stand-point of modern cynicism." "Ah, General, General!" said Lambert, "we have lost the chivalric way of saying things, which belongs to your generation." By this time the wife had reached the door. She turned and held out her arms for the child. General Armour came and placed the boy where he had found it, and, with eyes suddenly filling, laid both his hands upon Lali's and they clasped the child, and said: "It is worth while to have lived so long and to have seen so much." Her eyes met his in a wistful, anxious expression, shifted to those of her husband, dropped to the cheeks of the child, and with the whispered word, which no one, not even the general, heard, she passed from the room, the nurse following her. Perhaps some of the most striking contrasts are achieved in the least melodramatic way. The sudden incursion of the child and its mother into the group, the effect of their presence, and their soft departure, leaving behind them, as it were, a trail of light, changed the whole atmosphere of the room, as though some new life had been breathed into it, charged each mind with new sensations, and gave each figure new attitude. Not a man present but had had his full swing with the world, none worse than most men, none better than most, save that each had latent in him a good sense of honour concerning all civic and domestic virtues. They were not men of sentimentality; they were not accustomed to exposing their hearts upon their sleeve, but each, as the door closed, recognised that something for one instant had come in among them, had made their past conversation to appear meagre, crude, and lacking in both height and depth. Somehow, they seemed to feel, although no words expressed the thought, that for an instant they were in the presence of a wisdom greater than any wisdom of a man's smoking-room. "It is wonderful, wonderful," said the general slowly, and no man asked him why he said it, or what was wonderful. But Richard, sitting apart, watched Frank's face acutely, himself wondering when the hour would come that the wife would forgive her husband, and this situation so fraught with danger would be relieved. CHAPTER XIV ON THE EDGE OF A FUTURE At last the day of the wedding came, a beautiful September day, which may be more beautiful in uncertain England than anywhere else. Lali had been strangely quiet all the day before, and she had also seemed strangely delicate. Perhaps, or perhaps not, she felt the crisis was approaching. It is probable that when the mind has been strained for a long time, and the heart and body suffered much, one sees a calamity vaguely, and cannot define it; appreciates it, and does not know it. She came to Marion's room about a half-hour before they were to start for the church. Marion was already dressed and ready, save for the few final touches, which, though they have been given a dozen times, must still again be given just before the bride starts for the church. Such is the anxious mind of women on these occasions. The two stood and looked at each other a moment, each wondering what were the thoughts of the other. Lali was struck by that high, proud look over which lay a glamour of infinite satisfaction, of sweetness, which comes to every good woman's face when she goes to the altar in a marriage which is not contingent on the rise or fall in stocks, or a satisfactory settlement. Marion, looking, saw, as if it had been revealed to her all at once, the intense and miraculous change which had come over the young wife, even within the past two months. Indeed, she had changed as much within that time as within all the previous four years--that is, she had been brought to a certain point in her education and experience, where without a newer and deeper influence she could go no further. That newer and deeper influence had come, and the result thereof was a woman standing upon the verge of the real tragedy to her life, which was not in having married the man, but in facing that marriage with her new intelligence and a transformed soul. Men can face that sort of thing with a kind of philosophy, not because men are better or wiser, but because it really means less to them. They have resources of life, they can bury themselves in their ambitions good or bad, but a woman can only bury herself in her affections, unless her heart has been closed; and in that case she herself has lost much of what made her adorable. And while she may go on with the closed heart and become a saint, even saintship is hardly sufficient to compensate any man or woman for a half-lived life. The only thing worth doing in this world is to live life according to one's convictions--and one's heart. He or she who sells that fine independence for a mess of pottage, no matter if the mess be spiced, sells, as the Master said, the immortal part of him. And so Lali, just here on the edge of Marion's future, looking into that mirror, was catching the reflection of her own life. When two women come so near that, like the lovers in the Tempest, they have changed eyes, in so far as to read each other's hearts, even indifferently, which is much where two women are concerned, there is only one resource, and that is to fall into each other's arms, and to weep if it be convenient, or to hold their tears for a more fitting occasion; and most people will admit that tears need not add to a bride's beauty. Marion might, therefore, be pardoned if she had her tears in her throat and not in her eyes, and Lali, if they arose for a moment no higher than her heart. But they did fall into each other's arms despite veils and orange blossoms, and somehow Marion had the feeling for Lali that she had on that first day at Greyhope, four years ago, when standing on the bridge, the girl looked down into the water, tears dropping on her hands, and Marion said to her: "Poor girl! poor girl!" The situations were the same, because Lali had come to a new phase of her life, and what that phase would be who could tell-happiness or despair? The usual person might think that Lali was placing herself and her wifely affection at a rather high price, but then it is about the only thing that a woman can place high, even though she be one-third a white woman and two-thirds an Indian. Here was a beautiful woman, who had run the gamut of a London season, who had played a pretty social part, admirably trained therefor by one of the best and most cultured families of England. Besides, why should any woman sell her affections even to her husband, bargain away her love, the one thing that sanctifies "what God hath joined let no man put asunder"? Lali was primitive, she was unlike so many in a trivial world, but she was right. She might suffer, she might die, but, after all, there are many things worse than that. Man is born in a day, and he dies in a day, and the thing is easily over; but to have a sick heart for three-fourths of one's lifetime is simply to have death renewed every morning; and life at that price is not worth living. In this sensitive age we are desperately anxious to save life, as if it was the really great thing in the world; but in the good, strong times of the earth--and in these times, indeed, when necessity knows its hour--men held their lives as lightly as a bird upon the housetop which any chance stone might drop. It is possible that at this moment the two women understood each other better than they had ever done, and respected each other more. Lali, recovering herself, spoke a few soft words of congratulation, and then appeared to busy herself in putting little touches to Marion's dress, that soft persuasion of fingers which does so much to coax mere cloth into a sort of living harmony with the body. They had no more words of confidence, but in the porch of the church, Marion, as she passed Lali, caught the slender fingers in her own and pressed them tenderly. Marion was giving comfort, and yet if she had been asked why she could not have told. She did not try to define it further than to say to herself that she herself was having almost too much happiness. The village was en fete, and peasants lined the street leading to the church, ready with their hearty God-bless-you's. Lali sat between her husband and Mrs. Armour, apparently impassive until there came the question: "Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" and General Armour's voice came clear and strong: "I do." Then a soft little cry broke from her, and she shivered slightly. Mrs. Armour did not notice, but Frank and Mrs. Lambert heard and saw, and both were afterwards watchful and solicitous. Frank caught Mrs. Lambert's eye, and it said, to a little motion of the head: "Do not appear to notice." Lali was as if in a dream. She never took her eyes from the group at the altar until the end, and the two, now man and wife, turned to go into the vestry. Then she appeared to sink away into herself for a moment, before she fell into conversation with the others, as they moved towards the vestry. "It was beautiful, wasn't it?" ventured Edward Lambert. "The most beautiful wedding I ever saw," she answered, with a little shadow of meaning; and Lambert guessed that it was the only one she had seen since she came to England. "How well Vidall looked," said Frank, "and as proud as a sultan. Did you hear what he said, as Marion came up the aisle?" "No," responded Lambert. "He said, 'By Jove, isn't she fine!' He didn't seem conscious that other people were present." "Well, if a man hasn't some inspirations on his wedding-day when is he to have them?" said Mrs. Lambert. "For my part, I think that the woman always does that sort of thing better than a man. It is her really great occasion, and she masters it--the comedy is all hers." They were just then entering the vestry. "Or the tragedy, as the case may be," said Lali quietly, smiling at Marion. She had, as it were, recovered herself, and her words had come with that airy, impersonal tone which permits nothing of what is said in it to be taken seriously. Something said by the others had recalled her to herself, and she was now returned very suddenly to the old position of alertness and social finesse. Something icy seemed to pass over her, and she immediately lost all self-consciousness, and began to speak to her husband with less reserve than she had shown since he had come. But he was not deceived. He saw that at that very instant she was further away from him than she had ever been. He sighed, in spite of himself, as Lali, with well-turned words, said some loving greetings to Marion, and then talked a moment with Captain Vidall. "Who can understand a woman?" said Lambert to his wife meaningly. "Whoever will," she answered. "How do you mean?" "Whoever will wait like the saint upon the pillar, will suffer like the traveller in the desert; serve like a slave, and demand like a king; have patience greater than Job; love ceaseless as a fountain in the hills; who sees in the darkness and is not afraid of light; who distrusts not, neither believes, but stands ready to be taught; who is prepared for a kiss this hour and a reproach the next; who turneth neither to right nor left at her words, but hath an unswerving eye--these shall understand a woman." "I never knew you so philosophical. Where did you get this deliverance on the subject?" "May not even a woman have a moment of inspiration?" "I should expect that of my wife." "And I should expect that of my husband. It is trite to say that men are vain; I shall remark that they sit so much in their own light that they are surprised if another being crosses their disc." "You always were clever, my dear, and you always were twice too good for me." "Well, every woman--worth the knowing--is a missionary." "Where does Lali come in?" "Can you ask? To justify the claims of womanhood in spite of race--and all." "To bring one man to a sense of the duty of sex to sex, eh?" "Truly. And is she not doing it well? See her now." They were now just leaving the church, and Lali had taken General Armour's arm, while Richard led his mother to the carriage. Lali was moving with a little touch of grandeur in her manner and a more than ordinary deliberation. She had had a moment of great weakness, and then there had come the reaction--carried almost too far by the force of the will. She was indeed straining herself too far. Four years of tension were culminating. "See her now, Edward," repeated Mrs. Lambert. "Yes, but if I'm not mistaken, my dear, she is doing so well that she's going to pieces. She's overstrung to-day. If it were you, you'd be in hysterics." "I believe you are right," was the grave reply. "There will be an end to this comedy one way or another very soon." A moment afterwards they were in a carriage rolling away to Greyhope. CHAPTER XV THE END OF THE TRAIL When Marion was about leaving with her husband for the railway station, she sought out Lali, and found her standing half hidden by the curtains of a window, looking out at little Richard, who was parading his pony up and down before the house. An unutterable sweetness looked out of Marion's eyes. She had found, as it seemed to her, and as so many have believed until their lives' end, the secret of existence. Lali saw the glistening joy, and responded to it, just as it was in her being to respond to every change of nature--that sensitiveness was in her as deep as being. "You are very happy, dear?" she said to Marion. "You cannot think how happy, Lali. And I want to say that I feel sure that you will yet be as happy, even happier than I. Oh, it will come--it will come. And you have the boy now-so fine, so good." Lali looked out to where little Richard disported himself; her eyes shone, and she turned with a responsive but still sad smile to Marion. "Marion," she said gently, "the other should have come before he came." "Frank loves you, Lali." "Who knows? And then, oh, I cannot tell! How can one force one's heart? No, no! One has to wait, and wait, even if the heart grows harder, and one gets hopeless." Marion kissed her on the cheek and smiled. "Some day soon the heart will open up, and then such a flood will pour out! See, Lali. I am going now, and our lives won't run together so much again ever, perhaps. But I want to tell you now that your coming to us has done me a world of good-- helped me to be a wiser girl; and I ought to be a better woman for it. Good-bye." They were calling to her, and with a hurried embrace the two parted, and in a few moments the bride and bridegroom were on their way to the new life. As the carriage disappeared in a turn of the limes, Lali vanished also to her room. She was not seen at dinner. Mackenzie came to say that she was not very well, and that she would keep to her room. Frank sent several times during the evening to inquire after her, and was told that she was resting comfortably. He did not try to see her, and in this was wise. He had now fallen into a habit of delicate consideration, which brought its own reward. He had given up hope of winning her heart or confidence by storm, and had followed his finer and better instincts-- had come to the point where he made no claims, and even in his own mind stood upon no rights. His mother brought him word from Lali before he retired, to say that she was sorry she could not see him, but giving him a message and a commission into town the following morning for their son. Her tact had grown is her strength had declined. There is something in failing health--ill-health without disease--which sharpens and refines the faculties, and makes the temper exquisitely sensitive--that is, with people of a certain good sort. The aplomb and spirited manner in which Lali had borne herself at the wedding and after, was the last flicker of her old strength, and of the second phase in her married life. The end of the first phase came with the ride at the quick-set hedge, this with a less intent but as active a temper. The next morning she did not appear at breakfast, but sent a message to Frank to say that she was better, and adding another commission for town. All day, save for an hour on the balcony, she kept to her room, and lay down for the greater part of the afternoon. In the evening, when Frank returned, his mother sent for him, and frankly told him that she thought it would be better for him to go away for a few weeks or so; that Lali was in a languid, nervous state, and she thought that by the time he got back--if he would go--she would be better, and that better things would come for him. Frank was no longer the vain, selfish fellow who had married Lali-- something of the best in him was at work. He understood, and suggested a couple of weeks with Richard at their little place in Scotland. Also, he saw his wife for a little while that evening. She had been lying down, but she disposed herself in a deep chair before he entered. He was a little shocked to see, as it were all at once, how delicate she looked. He came and sat down near her, and after a few moments of friendly talk, in which he spoke solicitously of her health, he told her that he thought of going up to Scotland with Richard for a few weeks, if she saw no objection. She did not quite understand why he was going. She thought that perhaps he felt the strain of the situation, and that a little absence would be good for both. This pleased her. She did not shrink, as she had so often done since his return, when he laid his hand on hers for an instant, as he asked her if she were willing that he should go. Sometimes in the past few weeks she had almost hated him. Now she was a little sorry for him, but she said that of course he must go; that no doubt it was good that he should go, and so on, in gentle, allusive phrases. The next evening she came down to dinner, and was more like herself as she was before Frank came back, but she ate little, and before the men came into the drawing-room she had excused herself, and retired; at which Mrs. Lambert shook her head apprehensively at herself, and made up her mind to stay at Greyhope longer than she intended. Which was good for all concerned; for, two nights after Frank and Richard had gone, Mackenzie hurried down to the drawing-room with the news that Lali had been found in a faint on her chamber floor. That was the beginning of weeks of anxiety, in which Mrs. Lambert was to Mrs. Armour what Marion would have been, and more; and both to Lali all that mother and sister could be. Their patient was unlike any other that they had known. Feverish, she had no fever; with a gentle, hacking cough, she had no lung trouble; nervous, she still was oblivious to very much that went on around her; hungering often for her child, she would not let him remain long with her when he came. Her sleep was broken, and she sometimes talked to herself, whether consciously or unconsciously they did not know. The doctor had no remedies but tonics--he did not understand the case; but he gently ventured the opinion that it was mostly a matter of race, that she was pining because civilisation had been infused into her veins--the old insufficient theory. "Stuff and nonsense!" said General Armour, when his wife told him. "The girl bloomed till Frank came back. God bless my soul! she's falling in love, and doesn't know what it is." He was only partly right, perhaps, but he was nearer the truth than the dealer in quinine and a cheap philosophy of life. "She'll come around all right, you'll see. Decline--decline be hanged! The girl shall live, --damn it, she shall!" he blurted out, as his wife's eyes filled with tears. Mrs. Lambert was much of the same mind as the general, but went further. She said to Mrs. Armour that in all her life she had never seen so sweet a character, so sensitive a mind--a mind whose sorrow was imagination. And therein the little lady showed herself a person of wisdom. For none of them had yet reckoned with that one great element in Lali's character --that thing which is the birthright of all who own the North for a mother, the awe of imagination, the awe and the pain, which in its finest expression comes near, very near, to the supernatural. Lali's mind was all pictures; she never thought of things in words, she saw them; and everything in her life arrayed itself in a scene before her, made vivid by her sensitive soul, so much more sensitive now with health failing, the spirit wearing out the body. There was her malady--the sick heart and mind. A new sickness wore upon her. It had not touched her from the day she left the North until she sang "The Chase of the Yellow Swan" that first evening after Frank's return. Ever since then her father was much in her mind--the memory of her childhood, and its sweet, inspiring friendship with Nature. All the roughness and coarseness of the life was refined in her memory by the exquisite atmosphere of the North, the good sweet earth, the strong bracing wind, the camaraderie of trees and streams and grass and animals. And in it all stood her father, whom she had left alone, in that interminable interval between the old life and the new. Had she done right? She had cut him off, as if he had never been--her people, her country also; and for what? For this--for this sinking sense, this failing body, this wear and tear of mind and heart, this constant study to be possible where she had once been declared by the world to be impossible. One night she lay sleeping after a rather feverish day, when it was thought best to keep the child from her. Suddenly she waked, and sat up. Looking straight before her, she said: "I will arise, and will go to my Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son." She said nothing more than this, and presently lay back, with eyes wide open, gazing before her. Like this she lay all night long, a strange, aching look in her face. There had come upon her the sudden impulse to leave it all, and go back to her father. But the child--that gave her pause. Towards morning she fell asleep, and slept far on into the day, a thing that had not occurred for a long time. At noon a letter arrived for her. It came into General Armour's hands, and he, seeing that it bore the stamp of the Hudson's Bay Company, with the legend, From Fort St. Charles, concluded that it was news of Lali's father. Then came the question whether the letter should be given to her. The general was for doing so, and he prevailed. If it were bad news, he said, it might raise her out of her present apathy and by changing the play of her emotions do her good in the end. The letter was given to her in the afternoon. She took it apathetically, but presently, seeing where it was from, she opened it hurriedly with a little cry which was very like a moan too. There were two letters inside one from the factor at Fort Charles in English, and one from her father in the Indian language. She read her father's letter first, the other fluttered to her feet from her lap. General Armour, looking down, saw a sentence in it which, he felt, warranted him in picking it up, reading it, and retaining it, his face settling into painful lines as he did so. Days afterwards, Lali read her father's letter to Mrs. Armour. It ran: My daughter, Lali, the sweet noise of the Spring: Thy father speaks. I have seen more than half a hundred moons come like the sickle and go like the eye of a running buck, swelling with fire, but I hear not thy voice at my tent door since the first one came and went. Thou art gone. Thy face was like the sun on running water; thy hand hung on thy wrists like the ear of a young deer; thy foot was as soft on the grass as the rain on a child's cheek; thy words were like snow in summer, which melts in richness on the hot earth. Thy bow and arrow hang lonely upon the wall, and thy empty cup is beside the pot. Thou art gone. Thou hast become great with a great race, and that is well. Our race is not great, and shall not be, until the hour when the Mighty Men of the Kimash Hills arise from their sleep and possess the land again. Thou art gone. But thou hast seen many worlds, and thou hast learned great things, and thou and I shall meet no more; for how shall the wise kneel at the feet of the foolish, as thou didst kneel once at thy father's feet? Thou art gone. High on the Clip Claw Hills the trees are green, in the Plain of the Rolling Stars the wings of the wild fowl are many, and fine is the mist upon Goldfly Lake; and the heart of Eye-of-the-Moon is strong. Thou art here. The trail is open to the White Valley, and the Scarlet Hunter hath saved me, when my feet strayed in the plains and my eyes were blinded. Thou art here. I have friends on the Far Off River who show me the yards where the musk-ox gather; I have found the gardens of the young sable, and my tents are full of store. Thou art here. In the morning my spirit is light, and I have harvest where I would gather, and the stubble is for my foes. In the evening my limbs are heavy, and I am at rest in my blanket. The hunt is mine and sleep is mine, and my soul is cheerful when I remember thee. Thou art here. I have built for thee a place where thy spirit comes. I hear thee when thou callest to me, and I kneel outside the door, for thou art wise, and thou speakest to me; but thee as thou art in a far land I shall see no more. This is my word to thee, that thou mayst know that I am not alone. Thou shalt not come again, as thou once went; it is not meet. But by these other ways I will speak to thee. Thou art here. Farewell. I have spoken. Lali finished reading, and then slowly folded up the letter. The writing was that of the wife of the factor at Fort Charles--she knew it. She sat for a minute looking straight before her. She read her father's allegory. Barbarian in so much as her father was, he had beaten this thing out with the hammer of wisdom. He missed her, but she must not come back; she had outgrown the old life--he knew it and she was with him in spirit, in his memory; she understood his picturesque phrases, borrowed from the large, affluent world about him. Something of the righteousness and magnanimity of this letter passed into her, giving her for an instant a sort of peace. She had needed it--needed it to justify herself, and she had been justified. To return was impossible--she had known that all along, though she had not admitted it; the struggle had been but a kind of remorse, after all. That her father should come to her was also impossible--it was neither for her happiness nor his. She had been two different persons in her life, and the first was only a memory to the second. The father had solved the problem for her. He too was now a memory that she could think on with pleasure, as associated with the girl she once was. He had been well provided for by her husband, and General Armour put his hand on hers gently and said: "Lali, without your permission I have read this other letter." She did not appear curious. She was thinking still of her father's letter to her. She nodded abstractedly. "Lali," he continued, "this says that your father wished that letter to be written to you just as he said it at the Fort, on the day of the Feast of the Yellow Swan. He stood up--the factor writes so here--and said that he had been thinking much for years, and that the time had come when he must speak to his daughter over the seas--" General Armour paused. Lali inclined her head, smiled wistfully, and held up the letter for him to see. The general continued: "So he spoke as has been written to you, and then they had the Feast of the Yellow Swan, and that night--" He paused again, but presently, his voice a little husky, he went on: "That night he set out on a long journey,"--he lifted the letter and looked at it, then met the serious eyes of his daughter-in-law," on a long journey to the Hills of the Mighty Men; and, my dear, he never came back; for, as he said, there was peace in the White Valley, and he would rest till the world should come to its Spring again, and the noise of its coming should be in his ears. Those, Lali, are his very words." His hand closed on hers, he reached out and took the other hand, from which the paper fluttered, and clasped both tight in his own firm grasp. "My daughter," he said, "you have another father." With a low cry, like that of a fawn struck in the throat, she slid forward on her knees beside him, and buried her face on his arm. She understood. Her father was dead. Mrs. Armour came forward, and, kneeling also, drew the dark head to her bosom. Then that flood came which sweeps away the rust that gathers in the eyes and breaks through the closed dikes of the heart. Hours after, when she had fallen into a deep sleep, General Armour and his wife met outside her bedroom door. "I shall not leave her," Mrs. Armour said. "Send for Frank. His time has almost come." But it would not have come so soon had not something else occurred. The day that he came back from Scotland he entered his wife's room, prepared for a change in her, yet he did not find so much to make him happy as he had hoped. She received him with a gentleness which touched him, she let her hand rest in his, she seemed glad to have him with her. All bars had been cast down between them, but he knew that she had not given him all, and she knew it also. But she hoped he did not know, and she dreaded the hour when he would speak out of his now full heart. He did not yet urge his affection on her, he was simply devoted, and watchful, and tender, and delightedly hopeful. But one night she came tapping at his door. When he opened it, she said: "Oh come, come! Richard is ill! I have sent for the doctor." Henceforth she was her old self again, with a transformed spirit, her motherhood spending itself in a thousand ways. She who was weak bodily became now much stronger; the light of new vigour came to her eyes; she and her husband, in the common peril, worked together, thinking little of themselves, and all of the child. The last stage of the journey to happiness was being passed, and if it was not obvious to themselves, the others, Marion and Captain Vidall included, saw it. One anxious day, after the family doctor had left the sick child's room, Marion, turning to the father and mother, said: "Greyhope will be itself again. I will go and tell Richard that the danger is over." As she turned to do so, Richard entered the room. "I have seen the doctor," he began, "and the little chap is going to pull along like a house afire." Tapping Frank affectionately on the arm, he was about to continue, but he saw what stopped him. He saw the last move in Frank Armour's tragic- comedy. He and Marion left the room as quickly as was possible to him, for, as he said himself, he was "slow at a quick march"; and a moment afterwards the wife heard without demur her husband's tale of love for her. Yet, as if to remind him of the wrong he had done, Heaven never granted Frank Armour another child. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Every man should have laws of his own Flood came which sweeps away the rust that gathers in the eyes How can one force one's heart? No, no! One has to wait Man or woman must not expect too much out of life May be more beautiful in uncertain England than anywhere else Men are shy with each other where their emotions are in play Prepared for a kiss this hour and a reproach the next Romance is an incident to a man Simply to have death renewed every morning To sorrow may their humour be a foil We want to get more out of life than there really is in it Who can understand a woman? Worth while to have lived so long and to have seen so much ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE": Being young, she exaggerated the importance of the event Every man should have laws of his own Flood came which sweeps away the rust that gathers in the eyes His duties were many, or he made them so How can one force one's heart? No, no! One has to wait If fumbling human fingers do not meddle with it Man or woman must not expect too much out of life May be more beautiful in uncertain England than anywhere else Men must have their bad hours alone Men are shy with each other where their emotions are in play Miseries of this world are caused by forcing issues Most important lessons of life--never to quarrel with a woman Prepared for a kiss this hour and a reproach the next Reading a lot and forgetting everything Romance is an incident to a man Simply to have death renewed every morning Sympathy and consolation might be much misplaced The world never welcomes its deserters There should be written the one word, "Wait." There is no influence like the influence of habit These little pieces of art make life possible Think of our position To sorrow may their humour be a foil Training in the charms of superficiality We grow away from people against our will We want to get more out of life than there really is in it We speak with the straight tongue; it is cowards who lie Who never knew self-consciousness Who can understand a woman? Worth while to have lived so long and to have seen so much You never can make a scandal less by trying to hide it THE POMP OF THE LAVILETTES By Gilbert Parker INTRODUCTION I believe that 'The Pomp of the Lavilettes' has elements which justify consideration. Its original appearance was, however, not made under wholly favourable conditions. It is the only book of mine which I ever sold outright. This was in 1896. Mr. Lamson, of Messrs. Lamson & Wolffe, energetic and enterprising young publishers of Boston, came to see me at Atlantic City (I was on a visit to the United States at the time), and made a gallant offer for the English, American and colonial book and serial rights. I felt that some day I could get the book back under my control if I so desired, while the chances of the book making an immediate phenomenal sale were not great. There is something in the nature of a story which determines its popularity. I knew that 'The Seats of the Mighty' and 'The Right of Way' would have a great sale, and after they were written I said as much to my publishers. There was the element of general appeal in the narratives and the characters. Without detracting from the character-drawing, the characters, or the story in 'The Pomp of the Lavilettes', I was convinced that the book would not make the universal appeal. Yet I should have written the story, even if it had been destined only to have a hundred readers. It had to be written. I wanted to write what was in me, and that invasion of a little secluded French-Canadian society by a ne'er-do-well of the over-sea aristocracy had a psychological interest, which I could not resist. I thought it ought to be worked out and recorded, and particularly as the time chosen--1837--marked a large collision between the British and the French interests in French Canada, or rather of French political interests and the narrow administrative prejudices and nepotism of the British executive in Quebec. It is a satisfaction to include this book in a definitive edition of my works, for I think that, so far as it goes, it is truthfully characteristic of French life in Canada, that its pictures are faithful, and that the character-drawing represents a closer observation than any of the previous works, slight as the volume is. It holds the same relation to 'The Right of Way' that 'The Trail of the Sword' holds to 'The Seats of the Mighty', that 'A Ladder of Swords' holds to 'The Battle of the Strong', that 'Donovan Pasha' holds to 'The Weavers'. Instinctively, and, as I believe, naturally, I gave to each ambitious, and--so far as conception goes--to each important novel of mine, an avant coureur. 'The Trail of the Sword, A Ladder of Swords, Donovan Pasha and The Pomp of the Lavilettes', are all very short novels, not exceeding in any case sixty thousand words, while the novels dealing in a larger way with the same material--the same people and environment, with the same mise-en-scene, were each of them at least one hundred and forty thousand words in length, or over two and a half times as long. I do not say that this is a system which I devised; but it was, from the first, the method I pursued instinctively; on the basis that dealing with a smaller subject--with what one might call a genre picture first, I should get well into my field, and acquire greater familiarity with my material than I should have if I attempted the larger work at once. This is not to say that the smaller work was immature. On the contrary, I believe that at least these shorter works are quite mature in their treatment and in their workmanship and design. Naturally, however, they made less demand on all one's resources, they were narrower in scope and less complicated, than the longer works, like 'The Seats of the Mighty', which made heavier call upon the capacities of one's art. The only occasion on which I have not preceded a very long novel of life in a new field, by a very short one, is in the writing of 'The Judgment House'. For this book, however, it might be said, that all the last twenty years was a preparation, since the scenes were scenes in which I had lived and moved, and in a sense played a part; while the ten South African chapters of the book placed in the time of the Natal campaign needed no pioneer narrative to increase familiarity with the material, the circumstances and the country itself. I knew it all from study on the spot. From The 'Pomp of the Lavilettes', with which might be associated 'The Lane That Had no Turning', to 'The Right of Way', was a natural progression; it was the emergence of a big subject which must be treated in a large bold way, if it was to succeed. It succeeded to a degree which could not fail to gratify any one who would rather have a wide audience than a contracted one, who believes that to be popular is not necessarily to be contemptible--as the ancient Pistol put it, "base, common and popular." THE POMP OF THE LAVILETTES CHAPTER I You could not call the place a village, nor yet could it be called a town. Viewed from the bluff, on the English side of the river, it was a long stretch of small farmhouses--some painted red, with green shutters, some painted white, with red shutters--set upon long strips of land, green, yellow, and brown, as it chanced to be pasture land, fields of grain, or "plough-land." These long strips of property, fenced off one from the other, so narrow and so precise, looked like pieces of ribbon laid upon a wide quilt of level country. Far back from this level land lay the dark, limestone hills, which had rambled down from Labrador, and, crossing the River St. Lawrence, stretched away into the English province. The farmhouses and the long strips of land were in such regular procession, it might almost have seemed to the eye of the whimsical spectator that the houses and the ribbon were of a piece, and had been set down there, sentinel after sentinel, like so many toy soldiers, along the banks of the great river. There was one important break in the long line of precise settlement, and that was where the Parish Church, about the middle of the line, had gathered round it a score or so of buildings. But this only added to the strength of the line rather than broke its uniformity. Wide stretches of meadow-land reached back from the Parish Church until they were lost in the darker verdure of the hills. On either side of the Parish Church, with its tall, stone tower, were two stout-built houses, set among trees and shrubbery. They were low set, broad and square, with heavy-studded, old-fashioned doors. The roofs were steep and high, with dormer windows and a sort of shelf at the gables. They were both on the highest ground in the whole settlement, a little higher than the site of the Parish Church. The one was the residence of the old seigneur, Monsieur Duhamel; the other was the Manor Casimbault, empty now of all the Casimbaults. For a year it had lain idle, until the only heir of the old family, which was held in high esteem as far back as the time of Louis Quinze, returned from his dissipations in Quebec to settle in the old place or sell it to the highest bidder. Behind the Manor Casimbault and the Seigneury, thus flanking the church at reverential distance, another large house completed the acute triangle, forming the apex of the solid wedge of settlement drawn about the church. This was the great farmhouse of the Lavilettes, one of the most noticeable families in the parish. Of the little buildings bunched beside the church, not the least important was the post-office, kept by Papin Baby, who was also keeper of the bridge which was almost at the door of the office. This bridge crossed a stream that ran into the large river, forming a harbour. It opened in the middle, permitting boats and vessels to go through. Baby worked it by a lever. A hundred yards or so above the bridge was the parish mill, and between were the Hotel France, the little house of Doctor Montmagny, the Regimental Surgeon (as he was called), the cooper shop, the blacksmith, the tinsmith and the grocery shops. Just beyond the mill, upon the banks of the river, was the most notorious, if not the most celebrated, house in the settlement. Shangois, the travelling notary, lived in it--when he was not travelling. When he was, he left it unlocked, all save one room; and people came and went through the house as they pleased, eyeing with curiosity the dusty, tattered books upon the shelves, the empty bottles in the corner, the patchwork of cheap prints, notices of sales, summonses, accounts, certificates of baptism, memoranda, receipted bills--though they were few--tacked or stuck to the wall. No grown-up person of the village meddled with anything, no matter how curious; for this consistent, if unspoken, trust displayed by Shangois appealed to their better instincts. Besides, they, like the children, had a wholesome fear of the disreputable, shrunken, dishevelled little notary, with the bead-like eyes, yellow stockings, hooked nose and palsied left hand. Also the knapsack and black bag he carried under his arms contained more secrets than most people wished to tempt or challenge forth. Few cared to anger the little man, whose father and grandfather had been notaries here before him. Like others in the settlement, Shangois was the last of his race. He could put his finger upon the secret history and private lives of nearly every person in a dozen parishes, but most of all in Bonaventure--for such this long parish was called. He knew to a hair's breadth the social value of every human being in the parish. He was too cunning and acute to be a gossip, but by direct and indirect ways he made every person feel that the Cure and the Lord might forgive their pasts, but he could never forget them, nor wished to do so. For Monsieur Duhamel, the old seigneur, for the drunken Philippe Casimbault, for the Cure, and for the Lavilettes, who owned the great farmhouse at the apex of that wedge of village life, he had a profound respect. The parish generally did not share his respect for the Lavilettes. Once upon a time, beyond the memories of any in the parish, the Lavilettes of Bonaventure were a great people. Disaster came, debt and difficulty followed, fire consumed the old house in which their dignity had been cherished, and at last they had no longer their seigneurial position, but that of ordinary farmers who work and toil in the field like any of the fifty-acre farmers on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. Monsieur Louis Lavilette, the present head of the house, had not married well. At the time when the feeling against the English was the strongest, and when his own fortunes were precarious, he had married a girl somewhat older than himself, who was half English and half French, her father having been a Hudson's Bay Company factor on the north coast of the river. In proportion as their fortunes and their popularity declined, and their once notable position as an old family became scarce a memory even, the pride of the Lavilettes increased. Madame Lavilette made strong efforts to secure her place; but she was not of an old French family, and this was an easy and convenient weapon against her. Besides, she had no taste, and her manners were much inferior to those of her husband. What impression he managed to make by virtue of a good deal of natural dignity, she soon unmade by her lack of tact. She had no innate breeding, though she was not vulgar. She lacked sense a little and sensitiveness much. The Casimbaults and the wife of the old seigneur made no friends of the Lavilettes, but the old seigneur kept up a formal habit of calling twice a year at the Lavilettes' big farmhouse, which, in spite of all misfortune, grew bigger as the years went on. Probably, in spite of everything, Monsieur Lavilette and his family would have succeeded better socially had it not been for one or two unpopular lawsuits brought by the Lavilettes against two neighbours, small farmers, one of whom was clearly in the wrong, and the other as clearly in the right. When, after years had gone by, and the children of the Lavilettes had grown up, young Monsieur Casimbault came from Quebec to sell his property (it seemed to the people of Bonaventure like selling his birthright), he was greatly surprised to find Monsieur Lavilette ready with ten thousand dollars, to purchase the Manor Casimbault. Before the parish had time to take breath Monsieur Casimbault had handed over the deed, pocketed the money, and leaving the ancient heritage of his family in the hands of the Lavilettes, (who forthwith prepared to enter upon it, house and land), had hurried away to Quebec again without any pangs of sentiment. It was a little before this time that impertinent peasants in the parish began to sing: "O when you hear my little silver drum, And when I blow my little gold trompette-a, You must drop your work and come, You must leave your pride at home, And duck your heads before the Lavilette-a!" Gatineau the miller, and Baby the keeper of the bridge, gave their own reasons for the renewed progress of the Lavilettes. They met in conference at the mill on the eve of the marriage of Sophie Lavilette to Magon Farcinelle, farrier, farmer and member of the provincial legislature, whose house lay behind the piece of maple wood, a mile or so to the right of the Lavilettes' farmhouse. Farcinelle's engagement to Sophie had come as a surprise to all, for, so far as people knew, there had been no courting. Madame Lavilette had encouraged, had even tempted, the spontaneous and jovial Farcinelle. Though he had never made a speech in the House of Assembly, and it was hard to tell why he was elected, save because everybody liked him, his official position and his popularity held an important place in Madame Lavilette's long-developed plans, which at last were to place her in a position equal to that of the old seigneur, and launch her upon society at the capital. They had gone more than once to the capital, where their family had been well-known fifty years before, but few doors had been opened to them. They were farmers--only farmers--and Madame Lavilette made no remarkable impression. Her dress was florid and not in excellent taste, and her accent was rather crude. Sophie had gone to school at the convent in the city, but she had no ambition. She had inherited the stolid simplicity of her English grandfather. When her schooling was finished she let her school friends drop, and came back to Bonaventure, rather stately, given to reading, and little inclined to bother her head about anybody. Christine, the younger sister, had gone to Quebec also, but after a week of rebellion, bad temper and sharp speaking, had come home again without ceremony, and refused to return. Despite certain likenesses to her mother, she had a deep, if unintelligible, admiration for her father, and she never tired looking at the picture of her great-grandfather in the dress of a chevalier of St. Louis--almost the only thing that had been saved from the old Manor House, destroyed so long before her time. Perhaps it was the importance she attached to her ancestry which made her impatient with their present position, and with people in the parish who would not altogether recognise their claims. It was that which made her give a little jerky bow to the miller and the postmaster when she passed the mill. "Come, dusty-belly," said Baby, "what's all this pom-pom of the Lavilettes?" The miller pursed out his lips, contracted his brows, and arranged his loose waistcoat carefully on his fat stomach. "Money," said he, oracularly, as though he had solved the great question of the universe. "La! la! But other folks have money; and they step about Bonaventure no more louder than a cat." "Blood," added Gatineau, corrugating his brows still more. "Bosh!" "Both together--money and blood," rejoined the miller. Overcome by his exertions, he wheezed so tremendously that great billows of excitement raised his waistcoat, and a perspiration broke out upon his mealy face, making a paste which the sun, through the open doorway, immediately began to bake into a crust. "Pah, the airs they have always had, those Lavilettes!" said Baby. "They will not do this because it is not polite, they will not do that because they are too proud. They say that once there was a baron in their family. Who can tell how long ago! Perhaps when John the Baptist was alive. What is that? Nothing. There is no baron now. All at once somebody die a year ago, and leave them ten thousand dollars; and then-- mais, there is the grand difference! They have save and save twenty years to pay their debts and to buy a seigneury, like that baron who live in the time of John the Baptist. Now it is to stand on a ladder to speak to them. And when all's done, they marry Ma'm'selle Sophie to a farrier, to that Magon Farcinelle--bah!" "Magon was at the Laval College in Quebec; he has ten thousand dollars; he is the best judge of horses in the province, and he's a Member of Parliament to boot," said the miller, puffing. "He is a great man almost." "He's no better judge of horses than M'sieu' Nic Lavilette--eh, that's a bully bad scamp, my Gatineau!" responded Baby. "He's the best in the family. He is a grand sport; yes. It's he that fetched Ma'm'selle Sophie to the hitching-post. Voila, he can wind them all round his finger!" Baby looked round to see if any one was near; then he drew the miller's head down by pulling at his collar, and whispered in his ear: "He's hot foot for the Rebellion; that's one good thing," he said. "If he wipes out the English--" "Hold your tongue," nervously interrupted Gatineau, for just then two or three loiterers of the parish came shambling around the corner of the mill. Baby stopped short, and as they greeted the newcomers their attention was drawn to the stage-coach from St. Croix coming over the little hill near by. "Here's M'sieu' Nic now--and who's with him?" said Baby, stepping about nervously in his excitement. "I knew there was something up. M'sieu' Nic's been writing long letters from Montreal." Baby's look suggested that he knew more than his position as postmaster entitled him to know; but the furtive droop at the corner of his eyes showed also that his secretiveness was equal to his cowardice. On the seat, beside the driver of the coach, was Nicolas Lavilette, black-haired, brown-eyed, athletic, reckless-looking, with a cast in his left eye, which gave him a look of drollery, in keeping with his buoyant, daring nature. Beside him was a figure much more noticeable and unusual. Lean, dark-featured, with keen-glancing eyes, and a body with a faculty for finding corners of ease; waving hair, streaked with grey, black moustache, and a hectic flush on the cheeks, lending to the world-wise face a wistful look-that, with near six feet of height, was the picture of his friend. "Who is it?" asked the miller, with bulging eyes. "An English nobleman," answered Baby. "How do you know?" asked Gatineau. "How do I know you are a fat, cheating miller?" replied the postmaster, with cunning care and a touch of malice. Malice was the only power Baby knew. CHAPTER II In the matter of power, Baby, the inquisitive postmaster and keeper of the bridge, was unlike the new arrival in Bonaventure. The abilities of the Honourable Tom Ferrol lay in a splendid plausibility, a spontaneous blarney. He could no more help being spendthrift of his affections and his morals than of his money, and many a time he had wished that his money was as inexhaustible as his emotions. In point of morals, any of the Lavilettes presented a finer average than their new guest, who had come to give their feasting distinction, and what more time was to show. Indeed, the Hon. Mr. Ferrol had no morals to speak of, and very little honour. He was the penniless son of an Irish peer, who was himself well-nigh penniless; and he and his sister, whose path of life at home was not easy after her marriageable years had passed, drew from the consols the small sum of money their mother had left them, and sailed away for New York. Six months of life there, with varying fortune in which a well-to-do girl in society gave him a promise of marriage, and then Ferrol found himself jilted for a baronet, who owned a line of steamships and could give the ambitious lady a title. In his sick heart he had spoken profanely of the future Lady of Title, had bade her good-bye with a smile and an agreeable piece of wit, and had gone home to his flat and sobbed like a schoolboy; for, as much as he could love anybody, he loved this girl. He and the faithful sister vanished from New York and appeared in Quebec, where they were made welcome in Government House, at the citadel, and among all who cared to know the weight of an inherited title. For a time, the fact that he had little or no money did not temper their hospitality with niggardliness or caution. But their cheery and witty guest began to take more wine than was good for him or comfortable for others; his bills at the clubs remained unpaid, his landlord harried him, his tailors pursued him; and then he borrowed cheerfully and well. However, there came an end to this, and to the acceptance of his I O U's. Following the instincts of his Irish ancestors, he then leagued with a professional smuggler, and began to deal in contraband liquors and cigars. But before this occurred, he had sent his sister to a little secluded town, where she should be well out of earshot of his doings or possible troubles. He would have shielded her from harm at the cost of his life. His loyalty to her was only limited by the irresponsibility of his nature and a certain incapacity to see the difference between radical right and radical wrong. His honour was a matter of tradition, such as it was, and in all else he had the inherent invalidity of some of his distant forebears. For a time all went well, then discovery came, and only the kind intriguing of as good friends as any man deserved prevented his arrest and punishment. But it all got whispered about; and while some ladies saw a touch of romance in his doing professionally and wholesale what they themselves did in an amateurish way with laces, gloves and so on, men viewed the matter more seriously, and advised Ferrol to leave Quebec. Since that time he had lived by his wits--and pleasing, dangerous wits they were--at Montreal and elsewhere. But fatal ill-luck pursued him. Presently a cold settled on his lungs. In the dead of winter, after sending what money he had to his sister, he had lived a week or more in a room, with no fire and little food. As time went on, the cold got no better. After sundry vicissitudes and twists of fortune, he met Nicolas Lavilette at a horse race, and a friendship was struck up. He frankly and gladly accepted an invitation to attend the wedding of Sophie Lavilette, and to make a visit at the farm, and at the Manor Casimbault afterwards. Nicolas spoke lightly of the Manor Casimbault, yet he had pride in it also; for, scamp as he was, and indifferent to anything like personal dignity or self-respect, he admired his father and had a natural, if good-natured, arrogance akin to Christine's self-will. It meant to Ferrol freedom from poverty, misery and financial subterfuge for a moment; and he could be quiet--for, as he said, "This confounded cold takes the iron out of my blood." Like all people stricken with this disease, he never called it anything but a cold. All those illusions which accompany the malady were his. He would always be better "to-morrow." He told the two or three friends who came from their beds in the early morning to see him safely off from Montreal to Bonaventure that he would be all right as soon as he got out into the country; that he sat up too late in the town; and that he had just got a new prescription which had cured a dozen people "with colds and hemorrhages." His was only a cold--just a cold; that was all. He was a bit weak sometimes, and what he needed was something to pull up his strength. The country would do this-plenty of fresh air, riding, walking, and that sort of thing. He had left Montreal behind in gay spirits, and he continued gay for several hours, holding himself' erect in the seat, noting the landscape, telling stories; but he stumbled with weakness as they got out of the coach for luncheon. He drank three full portions of whiskey at table, and ate nothing. The silent landlady who waited on them at last brought a huge bowl of milk, and set it before him without a word. A flush passed swiftly across his face and faded away, as, with quick sensitiveness, he glanced at Nicolas and another passenger, a fat priest. They took no notice, and, reassured, he said, with a laugh, that the landlady knew exactly what he wanted. Lifting the dish, he drained it at a gasp, though the milk almost choked him, and, to the apprehension of his hostess, set the bowl spinning on the table like a top. Another illusion of the disease was his: that he succeeded perfectly in deceiving everybody round him with his pathetic make-believe; and, unlike most deceivers, he deceived himself as well. The two actions, inconsistent as they were, were reconciled in him, as in all the race of consumptives, by some strange chemistry of the mind and spirit. He was on the broad, undiverging highway to death; yet, with every final token about him that he was in the enemy's country, surrounded, trapped, soon to be passed unceremoniously inside the citadel at the end of the avenue, he kept signalling back to old friends that all was well, and he told himself that to-morrow the king should have his own again--"To-morrow, and to- morrow, and to-morrow!" He was not very thin in body; his face was full, and at times his eyes were singularly and fascinatingly bright. He had colour--that hectic flush which, on his cheek, was almost beautiful. One would have turned twice to see. The quantities of spirits that he drank (he ate little) would have killed a half-dozen healthy men. To him it was food, taken up, absorbed by the fever of his disease, giving him a real, not a fictitious strength; and so it would continue to do till some artery burst and choked him, or else, by some miracle of air and climate, the hole in his lung healed up again; which he, in his elation, believed would be "to-morrow." Perhaps the air, the food, and life of Bonaventure were the one medicine he needed! But, in the moment Nicolas said to him that Bonaventure was just over the hill, that they would be able to see it now, he had a sudden feeling of depression. He felt that he would give anything to turn back. A perspiration broke out on his forehead and his cheek. His eyes had a wavering, anxious look. Some of that old sanity of the once healthy man was making a last effort for supremacy, breaking in upon illusive hopes and irresponsible deceptions. It was only for a moment. Presently, from the top of the hill, they looked down upon the long line of little homes lying along the banks of the river like peaceful watchmen in a pleasant land, with corn and wine and oil at hand. The tall cross on the spire of the Parish Church was itself a message of hope. He did not define it so; but the impression vaguely, perhaps superstitiously, possessed him. It was this vague influence, perhaps (for he was not a Catholic), which made him involuntarily lift his hat, as did Nicolas, when they passed a calvary; which induced him likewise to make the sacred gesture when they met a priest, with an acolyte and swinging censer, hurrying silently on to the home of some dying parishioner. The sensations were different from anything he had known. He had been used to the Catholic religion in Ireland; he had seen it in France, Spain, Italy and elsewhere; but here was something essentially primitive, archaically touching and convincing. His spirits came back with a rush; he had a splendid feeling of exaltation. He was not religious, never could be, but he felt religious; he was ill, but he felt that he was on the open highway to health; he was dishonest, but he felt an honest man; he was the son of a peer, but he felt himself brother to the fat miller by the roadway, to Baby, the postmaster and keeper of the bridge, to the Regimental Surgeon, who stood in his doorway, pulling at his moustache and blowing clouds of tobacco smoke into the air. Shangois, the notary, met his eye as they dashed on. A new sensation-- not a change in the elation he felt, but an instant's interruption-- came to him. He asked who Shangois was, and Nicolas told him. "A notary, eh?" he remarked gaily. "Well, why does he disguise himself? He looks like a ragpicker, and has the eye of Solomon and the devil in one. He ought to be in some Star Chamber--Palmerston could make use of him." "Oh, he's kept busy enough with secrets here!" was Nicolas's laughing reply. "It's only a difference of size in the secrets anyhow," was Ferrol's response in the same vein; and in a few moments they had passed the Seigneury, and were drawn up before the great farmhouse. Its appearance was rather comfortable and commodious than impressive, but it had the air of home and undepreciating use. There was one beautiful clump of hollyhocks and sunflowers in the front garden; a corner of the main building was covered with morning-glories; a fence to the left was overgrown with grape-vines, making it look like a hedge; a huge pear tree occupied a spot opposite to the pretty copse of sunflowers and hollyhocks; and the rest of the garden was green, save just round a little "summer-house," in the corner, with its back to the road, near which Sophie had set a palisade of the golden-rod flower. Just beside the front door was a bush of purple lilac; and over the door, in copper, was the coat-of-arms of the Lavilettes, placed there, at Madame's insistence, in spite of the dying wish of Lavilette's father, a feeble, babbling old gentleman in knee-breeches, stock, and swallow-tailed coat, who, broken down by misfortune, age and loneliness, had gathered himself together for one last effort for becomingness against his daughter-in- law's false tastes--and had died the day after. He was spared the indignity of the coat-of-arms on the tombstone only by the fierce opposition of Louis Lavilette, who upon this point had his first quarrel with his wife. Ferrol saw no particular details in his first view of the house. The picture was satisfying to a tired man--comfort, quiet, the bread of idleness to eat, and welcome, admiring faces round him. Monsieur Lavilette stood in the doorway, and behind him, at a carefully disposed distance, was Madame, rather more emphatically dressed than necessary. As he shook hands genially with Madame he saw Sophie and Christine in the doorway of the parlour. His spirits took another leap. His inexhaustible emotions were out upon cheerful parade at once. The Lavilettes immediately became pensioners of his affections. The first hour of his coming he himself did not know which sister his ample heart was spending itself on most--Sophie, with her English face, and slow, docile, well-bred manner, or Christine, dark, petite, impertinent, gay-hearted, wilful, unsparing of her tongue for others--or for herself. Though Christine's lips and cheeks glowed, and her eyes had wonderful warm lights, incredulity was constantly signalled from both eyes and lips. She was a fine, daring little animal, with as great a talent for untruth as truth, though, to this point in her life, truth had been more with her. Her temptations had been few. CHAPTER III Mr. Ferrol seemed honestly to like the old farmhouse, with its low ceilings, thick walls, big beams and wide chimneys, and he showed himself perfectly at home. He begged to be allowed to sit for an hour in the kitchen, beside the great fireplace. He enjoyed this part of his first appearance greatly. It was like nothing he had tasted since he used, as a boy, to visit the huntsman's home on his father's estate, and gossip and smoke in that Galway chimney-corner. It was only when he had to face the too impressive adoration of Madame Lavilette that his comfort got a twist. He made easy headway into the affections of his hostess; for, besides all other predilections, she had an adoring awe of the nobility. It rather surprised her that Ferrol seemed almost unaware of his title. He was quite without self-consciousness, although there was that little touch of irresponsibility in him which betrayed a readiness to sell his dignity for a small compensation. With a certain genial capacity for universal blarney, he was at first as impressive with Sophie as he was attentive to Christine. It was quite natural that presently Madame Lavilette should see possibilities beyond all her past imaginations. It would surely advance her ambitions to have him here for Sophie's wedding; but even as she thought that, she had twinges of disappointment, because she had promised Farcinelle to have the wedding as simple and bourgeois as possible. Farcinelle did not share the social ambitions of the Lavilettes. He liked his political popularity, and he was only concerned for that. He had that touch of shrewdness to save him from fatuity where the Lavilettes were concerned. He was determined to associate with the ceremony all the primitive customs of the country. He had come of a race of simple farmers, and he was consistent enough to attempt to live up to the traditions of his people. He was entirely too good-natured to take exception to Ferrol's easy-going admiration of Sophie. Ferrol spoke excellent French, and soon found points of pleasant contact with Monsieur Lavilette, who, despite the fact that he had coarsened as the years went on, had still upon him the touch of family tradition, which may become either offensive pride or defensive self-respect. With the Cure, Ferrol was not quite so successful. The ascetic, prudent priest, with that instinctive, long-sighted accuracy which belongs to the narrow-minded, scented difficulty. He disliked the English exceedingly; and all Irishmen were English men to him. He resisted Ferrol's blarney. His thin lips tightened, his narrow forehead seemed to grow narrower, and his very cassock appeared to contract austerely on his figure as he talked to the refugee of misfortune. When the most pardonable of gossips, the Regimental Surgeon, asked him on his way home what he thought of Ferrol, he shrugged his shoulders, tightened his lips again, and said: "A polite, designing heretic." The Regimental Surgeon, though a Frenchman, had once belonged to a British battery of artillery stationed at Quebec, and there he had acquired an admiration for the English, which betrayed itself in his curious attempts to imitate Anglo-Saxon bluffness and blunt spontaneity. When the Cure had gone, he flung back his shoulders, with a laugh, as he had seen the major-general do at the officers' mess at the citadel, and said in English: "Heretics are damn' funny. I will go and call. I have also some Irish whiskey. He will like that; and pipes--pipes, plenty of them!" The pipe he was smoking at the moment had been given to him by the major- general, and he polished the silver ferrule, with its honourable inscription, every morning of his life. On the morning of the second day after Ferrol came, he was carried off to the Manor Casimbault to see the painful alterations which were being made there under the direction of Madame Lavilette. Sophie, who had a good deal of natural taste, had in the old days fought against her mother's incongruous ideas, and once, when the rehabilitation of the Manor Casimbault came up, she had made a protest; but it was unavailing, and it was her last effort. The Manor Casimbault was destined to be an example of ancient dignity and modern bad taste. Alterations were going on as Madame Lavilette, Ferrol and Christine entered. For some time Ferrol watched the proceedings with a casual eye, but presently he begged his hostess that she would leave the tall, old oak clock where it was in the big hall, and that the new, platter-faced office clock, intended for its substitute, be hung up in the kitchen. He eyed the well-scraped over-mantel askance and saw, with scarcely concealed astonishment, a fine, old, carved wooden seat carried out of doors to make room for an American rocking-chair. He turned his head away almost in anger when he saw that the beautiful brown wainscoting was being painted an ultra-marine blue. His partly disguised astonishment and dissent were not lost upon the crude but clever Christine. A new sense was opened up in her, and she felt somehow that the ultra-marine blue was not right, that the over-mantel had been spoiled, that the new walnut table was too noticeable, and that the American rocking-chair looked very common. Also she felt that the plush, with which her mother and the dressmaker at St. Croix had decorated her bodice, was not the thing. Presently this made her angry. "Won't you sit down?" she asked a little maliciously, pointing to the rocking-chair in the salon. "I prefer standing--with you," he answered, eyeing the chair with a sly twinkle. "No, that isn't it," she rejoined sharply. "You don't like the chair." Then suddenly breaking into English--"Ah! I know, I know. You can't fool me. I see de leetla look in your eye; and you not like the paint, and you'd pitch that painter, Alcide, out into the snow if it is your house." "I wouldn't, really," he answered--he coughed a little--"Alcide is doing his work very well. Couldn't you give me a coat of blue paint, too?" The piquant, intelligent, fiery peasant face interested him. It had warmth, natural life and passion. She flushed and stamped her foot, while he laughed heartily; and she was about to say something dangerous, when the laugh suddenly stopped and he began coughing. The paroxysm increased until he strained and caught at his breast with his hand. It seemed as if his chest and throat must burst. She instantly changed. The flush of anger passed from her face, and something else came into it. She caught his hand. "Oh! what can I do, what can I do to help you?" she asked pitifully. "I did not know you were so ill. Tell me, what can I do?" He made a gentle, protesting motion of his free arm--he could not speak yet--while she held and clasped his other hand. "It's the worst I ever had," he said, after a moment "the very worst!" He sat down, and again he had a fit of coughing, and the sweat started out violently upon his forehead and cheek. When his head at last lay back against the chair, the paroxysm over, a little spot of blood showed and spread upon his white lips. With a pained, shuddering little gasp she caught her handkerchief from her bosom, and, running one hand round his shoulder, quickly and gently caught away the spot of blood, and crumpled the handkerchief in her hand to hide it from him. "Oh! poor fellow, poor fellow!" she said. "Oh! poor fellow!" Her eyes filled with tears, and she looked at him with that look which is not the love of a woman for a man, or of a lover for a lover, but that latent spirit of care and motherhood which is in every woman who is more woman than man. For there are women who are more men than women. For himself, a new fact struck home in him. For the first time since his illness he felt that he was doomed. That little spot of blood in the crumpled handkerchief which had flashed past his eye was the fatal message he had sought to elude for months past. A hopeless and ironical misery shot through him. But he had humour too, and, with the taste of the warm red drop in his mouth still, his tongue touched his lips swiftly, and one hand grasping the arm of the chair, and the fingers of the other dropping on the back of her hand lightly, he said in a quaint, ironical tone: "'Dead for a ducat!'" When he saw the look of horror in her face, his eyes lifted almost gaily to hers, as he continued: "A little brandy, if you can get it, mademoiselle." "Yes, yes. I'll get some for you--some whiskey!" she said, with frightened, terribly eager eyes. "Alcide always has some. Don't stir. Sit just where you are." She ran out of the room swiftly--a light-footed, warm-spirited, dramatic little thing, set off so garishly in the bodice with the plush trimming; but she had a big heart, and the man knew it. It was the big-heartedness which was the touch of the man in her that made her companionable to him. He said to himself when she left him: "What cursed luck!" And after a pause, he added: "Good-hearted little body, how sorry she looked!" Then he settled back in his chair, his eyes fixed upon her as she entered the room, eager, pale and solicitous. A half-hour later they two were on their way to the farmhouse, the work of despoiling going on in the Manor behind them. Ferrol walked with an easy, half-languid step, even a gay sort of courage in his bearing. The liquor he had drunk brought the colour to his lips. They were now hot and red, and his eyes had a singular feverish brilliancy, in keeping with the hectic flush on his cheek. He had dismissed the subject of his illness almost immediately, and Christine's adaptable nature had instantly responded to his mood. He asked her questions about the country-side, of their neighbours, of the way they lived, all in an easy, unintrusive way, winning her confidence and provoking her candour. Two or three times, however, her face suddenly flushed with the memory of the scene in the Manor, and her first real awakening to her social insufficiency; for she of all the family had been least careful to see herself as others might see her. She was vain; she was somewhat of a barbarian; she loved nobody and nobody's opinion as she loved herself and her own opinion. Though, if any people really cared for her, and she for them, they were the Regimental Surgeon and Shangois the notary. Once, as they walked on, she turned and looked back at the Manor House, but only for an instant. He caught the glance, and said: "You'll like to live there, won't you?" "I don't know," she answered almost sharply. "But if the Casimbaults liked it, I don't see why we shouldn't." There was a challenge in her voice, defiance in the little toss of her head. He liked her spirit in spite of the vanity. Her vanity did not concern him greatly; for, after all, what was he doing here? Merely filling in dark days, living a sober-coloured game out. He had one solitary hundred dollars--no more; and half of that he had borrowed, and half of it he got from selling his shooting-traps and his hunting-watch. He might worry along on that till the end of the game; but he had no money to send his sister in that secluded village two hundred miles away. She had never known how really poor he was; and she had lived in her simple way without want and without any unusual anxiety, save for his health. More than once he had practically starved himself to send money to her. Perhaps also he would have starved others for the same purpose. "I'll warrant the Casimbaults never enjoyed the Manor as much as I've done that big kitchen in your house," he said, "and I can't see why you want to leave it. Don't you feel sorry you are going to leave the old place? Hadn't you got your own little spots there, and made friends with them? I feel as if I should like to sit down by the side of your big, warm chimney-corner, till the wind came along that blows out the candle." "What do you mean by 'blowing out the candle'?" she asked. "Well," he answered, "it means, shut up shop, drop the curtain, or anything you like. It means X Y Z and the grand finale!" "Oh!" she said, with a little start, as the thing dawned upon her. "Don't speak like that; you're not going to die." "Give me your handkerchief," he answered. "Give it to me, and I'll tell you--how soon." She jammed her hand down in her pocket. "No, I won't," she answered. "I won't!" She never did, and he liked her none the less for that. Somehow, up to this time, he had always thought that he would get well, and to-morrow he would probably think so again; but just for the moment he felt the real truth. Presently she said (they spoke in French): "Why is it you like our old kitchen so much? It isn't nearly as nice as the parlour." "Well, it's a place to live in, anyhow; and I fancy you all feel more at home there than anywhere else." "I feel just as much at home in the parlour as there," she retorted. "Oh, no, I think not. The room one lives in the most is the room for any one's money." She looked at him in a puzzled way. Too many sensations were being born in her all at once; but she did recognise that he was not trying to subtract anything from the pomp of the Lavilettes. He belonged to a world that she did not know--and yet he was so perfectly at home with her, so idly easygoing. "Did you ever live in a castle?" she asked eagerly. "Yes," he said, with a dry little laugh. Then, after a moment, with the half-abstracted manner of a man who is recalling a long-forgotten scene, he added: "I lived in the North Tower, looking out on Farcalladen Moor. When I wasn't riding to the hounds myself I could see them crossing to or from the meet. The River Stavely ran between; and just under the window of the North Tower is the prettiest copse you ever saw. That was from one side of the tower. From the other side you looked into the court-yard. As a boy, I liked the court-yard just as well as the moor; for the pigeons, the sparrows, the horses and the dogs were all there. As a man, I liked the moor better. Well, I had jolly good times in Castle Stavely--once upon a time." "Yet, you like our kitchen!" she again urged, in a maze of wonderment. "I like everything here," he answered; "everything--everything, you understand!" he said, looking meaningly into her eyes. "Then you'll like the wedding--Sophie's wedding," she answered, in a little confusion. A half-hour later, he said much the same sort of thing to Sophie, with the same look in his eyes, and only the general purpose, in either case, of being on easy terms with them. CHAPTER IV The day of the wedding there was a gay procession through the parish of the friends and constituents of Magon Farcinelle. When they came to his home he joined them, and marched at the head of the procession as had done many a forefather of his, with ribbons on his hat and others at his button-hole. After stopping for exchange of courtesies at several houses in the parish, the procession came to the homestead of the Lavilettes, and the crowd were now enough excited to forget the pride which had repelled and offended them for many years. Monsieur Lavilette made a polite speech, sending round cider and "white wine" (as native whiskey was called) when he had finished. Later, Nicolas furnished some good brandy, and Farcinelle sent more. A good number of people had come out of curiosity to see what manner of man the Englishman was, well prepared to resent his overbearing snobbishness-- they were inclined to believe every Englishman snobbish. But Ferrol was so entirely affable, and he drank so freely with everyone that came to say "A votre sante, M'sieu' le Baron," and kept such a steady head in spite of all those quantities of white wine, brandy and cider, that they were almost ready to carry him on their shoulders; though, with their racial prejudice, they would probably have repented of that indiscretion on the morrow. Presently, dancing began in a paddock just across the road from the house; and when Madame Lavilette saw that Mr. Ferrol gave such undisguised countenance to the primitive rejoicings, she encouraged the revellers and enlarged her hospitality, sending down hampers of eatables. She preened with pleasure when she saw Ferrol walking up and down in very confidential conversation with Christine. If she had been really observant she would have seen that Ferrol's tendency was towards an appearance of confidential friendliness with almost everybody. Great ideas had entered Madame's head, but they were vaguely defining themselves in Christine's mind also. Where might not this friendship with Ferrol lead her? Something occurred in the midst of the dancing which gave a new turn to affairs. In one of the pauses a song came monotonously lilting down the street; yet it was not a song, it was only a sort of humming or chanting. Immediately there was a clapping of hands, a flutter of female voices, and delighted exclamations of children. "Oh, it's a dancing bear, it's a dancing bear!" they cried. "Is it Pito?" asked one. "Is it Adrienne?" cried another. "But no; I'll bet it's Victor!" exclaimed a third. As the man and the bear came nearer, they saw it was neither of these. The man's voice was not unpleasant; it had a rolling, crooning sort of sound, a little weird, as though he had lived where men see few of their kind and have much to do with animals. He was bearded, but young; his hair grew low on his forehead, and, although it was summer time, a fur cap was set far back, like a fez, upon his black curly hair. His forehead was corrugated, like that of a man of sixty who had lived a hard life; his eyes were small, black and piercing. He wore a thick, short coat, a red sash about his waist, a blue flannel shirt, and a loose red scarf, like a handkerchief, at his throat. His feet were bare, and his trousers were rolled half way up to his knee. In one hand he carried a short pole with a steel pike in it, in the other a rope fastened to a ring in the bear's nose. The bear, a huge brown animal, upright on his hind legs, was dancing sideways along the road, keeping time to the lazy notes of his leader's voice. In front of the Hotel France they halted, and the bear danced round and round in a ring, his eyes rolling savagely, his head shaking from side to side in a bad-tempered way. Suddenly some one cried out: "It's Vanne Castine! It's Vanne!" People crowded nearer: there was a flurry of exclamations, and then Christine took a few steps forward where she could see the man's face, and as swiftly drew back into the crowd, pale and distraite. The man watched her until she drew away behind a group, which was composed of Ferrol, her brother and her sister Sophie. He dropped no note of his song, and the bear kept jigging on. Children and elders threw coppers, which he picked up, with a little nod of his head, a malicious sort of smile on his lips. He kept a vigilant eye on the bear, however, and his pole was pointed constantly towards it. After about five minutes of this entertainment he moved along up the road. He spoke no word to anybody though there were some cries of greeting, but passed on, still singing the monotonous song, followed by a crowd of children. Presently he turned a corner, and was lost to sight. For a moment longer the lullaby floated across the garden and the green fields, then the cornet and the concertina began again, and Ferrol turned towards Christine. He had seen her paleness and her look of consternation, had observed the sulky, penetrating look of the bear-leader's eye, and he knew that he was stumbling upon a story. Her eye met his, then swiftly turned away. When her look came to his face again it was filled with defiant laughter, and a hot brilliancy showed where the paleness had been. "Will you dance with me?" Ferrol asked. "Dance with you here?" she responded incredulously. "Yes, just here," he said, with a dry little laugh, as he ran his arm round her waist and drew her out upon the green. "And who is Vanne Castine?" he asked as they swung away in time with the music. The rest stopped dancing when they saw these two appear in the ring- through curiosity or through courtesy. She did not answer immediately. They danced a little longer, then he said: "An old friend, eh?" After a moment, with a masked defiance still, and a hard laugh, she answered in English, though his question had been in French: "De frien' of an ol frien'." "You seem to be strangers now," he suggested. She did not answer at all, but suddenly stopped dancing, saying: "I'm tired." The dance went on without them. Sophie and Farcinelle presently withdrew also. In five minutes the crowd had scattered, and the Lavilettes and Mr. Ferrol returned to the house. Meanwhile, as they passed up the street, the droning, vibrating voice of the bear-leader came floating along the air and through the voices of the crowd like the thread of motive in the movement of an opera. CHAPTER V That night, while gaiety and feasting went on at the Lavilettes', there was another sort of feasting under way at the house of Shangois, the notary. On one side of a tiny fire in the chimney, over which hung a little black kettle, sat Shangois and Vanne Castine. Castine was blowing clouds of smoke from his pipe, and Shangois was pouring some tea leaves into a little tin pot, humming to himself snatches of an old song as he did so: "What shall we do when the King comes home? What shall we do when he rides along With his slaves of Greece and his serfs of Rome? What shall we sing for a song-- When the King comes home? "What shall we do when the King comes home? What shall we do when he speaks so fair? Shall we give him the house with the silver dome And the maid with the crimson hair When the King comes home?" A long, heavy sigh filled the room, but it was not the breath of Vanne Castine. The sound came from the corner where the huge brown bear huddled in savage ease. When it stirred, as if in response to Shangois's song, the chains rattled. He was fastened by two chains to a staple driven into the foundation timbers of the house. Castine's bear might easily be allowed too much liberty! Once he had killed a man in the open street of the City of Quebec, and once also he had nearly killed Castine. They had had a fight and struggle, out of which the man came with a lacerated chest; but since that time he had become the master of the bear. It feared him; yet, as he travelled with it, he scarcely ever took his eyes off it, and he never trusted it. That was why, although Michael was always near him, sleeping or waking, he kept him chained at night. As Shangois sang, Castine's brow knotted and twitched and his hand clinched on his pipe with a sudden ferocity. "Name of a black cat, what do you sing that song for, notary?" he broke out peevishly. "Nose of a little god, are you making fun of me?" Shangois handed him some tea. "There's no one to laugh--why should I make fun of you?" he asked, jeeringly, in English, for his English was almost as good as his French, save in the turn of certain idioms. "Come, my little punchinello, tell me, now, why have you come back?" Castine laughed bitterly. "Ha, ha, why do I come back? I'll tell you." He sucked at his pipe. "Bon'venture is a good place to come to-yes. I have been to Quebec, to St. John, to Fort Garry, to Detroit, up in Maine and down to New York. I have ride a horse in a circus, I have drive a horse and sleigh in a shanty, I have play in a brass band, I have drink whiskey every night for a month--enough whiskey. I have drink water every night for a year--it is not enough. I have learn how to speak English; I have lose all my money when I go to play a game of cards. I go back to de circus; de circus smash; I have no pay. I take dat damn bear Michael as my share-- yes. I walk trough de State of New York, all trough de State of Maine to Quebec, all de leetla village, all de big city--yes. I learn dat damn funny song to sing to Michael. Ha, why do I come to Bon'venture? What is there to Bon'venture? Ha! you ask that? I know and you know, M'sieu' Shangois. There is nosing like Bon'venture in all de worl'. "What is it you would have? Do you want nice warm house in winter, plenty pork, molass', patat, leetla drop whiskey 'hind de door in de morning? Ha! you come to Bon'venture. Where else you fin' it? You want people say: 'How you do, Vanne Castine--how you are? Adieu, Vanne Castine; to see you again ver' happy, Vanne Castine.' Ha, that is what you get in Bon'venture. Who say 'God bless you' in New York! They say 'Damn you!'--yes, I know. "Where have you a church so warm, so ver' nice, and everybody say him mass and God-have-mercy? Where you fin' it like that leetla place on de hill in Bon'venture? Yes. There is anoser place in Bon'venture, ver' nice place--yes, ha! On de side of de hill. You have small-pox, scarlet fev', difthere; you get smash your head, you get break your leg, you fall down, you go to die. Ha, who is there in all de worl' like M'sieu' Vallier, the Cure? Who will say to you like him: 'Vanne Castine, you have break all de commandments: you have swear, you have steal, you have kill, you have drink. Ver' well, now, you will be sorry for dat, and say your prayer. Perhaps, after hunder fifty tousen' years of purgator', you will be forgive and go to Heaven. But first, when you die, we will put you way down in de leetla warm house in de ground, on de side of de hill, in de Parish of Bon'venture, because it is de only place for a gipsy like Vanne Castine.' "You ask me-ah! I see you look at me, M'sieu' le Notaire, you look at me like a leetla dev'. You t'ink I come for somet'ing else"--his black eyes flashed under his brow, he shook his head, and his hands clinched--"You ask me why I come back? I come back because there is one thing I care for mos' in all de worl'. You t'ink I am happy to go about with a damn brown bear and dance trough de village? Moi?--no, no, no! What a Jack I look when I sing--ah, that fool's song all down de street! I come back for one thing only, M'sieu' Shangois. "You know that night--ah, four, five years ago? You remember, M'sieu' Shangois? Ah! she was so beautiful, so sweet; her hair it fall down about her face, her eyes all black, her cheeks like the snow, her lips, her lips!--You rememb' her father curse me, tell me to go. Why? Because I have kill a man! Eh bien, what if I kill a man! He would have kill me: I do it to save myself. I say I am not guilty; but her father say I am a sc'undrel, and turn me out de house. "De girl, Christine, she love me. Yes, she love Vanne Castine. She say to me, 'I will go with you. Go anywhere, and I will go!' "It is night and it is all dark. I wait at de place, an' she come. We start to walk to Montreal. Ah! dat night, it is like fire in my heart. Well, a great storm come down, and we have to come back. We come to your house here, light a fire, and sit just in de spot where I am, one hour, two hour, three hour. Saprie, how I love her! She is in me like fire, like de wind and de sea. Well, I am happy like no other man. I sit here and look at her, and t'ink of to-morrow-for ever. She look at me; oh, de love of God, she look at me! So I kneel down on de floor here beside her and say, 'Who shall take you from me, Christine, my leetla Christine?' "She look at me and say: 'Who shall take you from me, my big Vanne?' "All at once the door open, and--" "And a little black notary take her from you," said Shangois, dryly, and with a touch of malice also. "You, yes, you lawyer dev', you take her from me! You say to her it is wicked. You tell her how her father will weep and her mother's heart will break. You tell her how she will be ashame', and a curse will fall on her. Then she begin to cry, for she is afraid. Ah, where is de wrong? I love her; I would go to marry her--but no, what is that to you! She turn on me and say, 'I will go back to my father.' And she go back. After that I try to see her; but she will not see me. Then I go away, and I am gone five years; yes." Shangois came over, and with his thin beautiful hand (for despite the ill-kept finger nails, it was the one fine feature of his body-long, shapely, artistic) tapped Castine's knee. "I did right to save Christine. She hates you now. If she had gone with you that night, do you suppose she would have been happy as your wife? No, she is not for Vanne Castine." Suddenly Shangois's manner changed; he laid his hand upon the other's shoulder. "My poor, wicked, good-for-nothing Vanne Castine, Christine Lavilette was not made for you. You are a poor vaurien, always a poor vaurien. I knew your father and your two grandfathers. They were all vauriens; all as handsome as you can think, and all died, not in their beds. Your grandfather killed a man, your father drank and killed a man. Your grandfather drove his wife to her grave, your father broke your mother's heart. Why should you break the heart of any girl in the world? Leave her alone. Is it love to a woman when you break all the commandments, and shame her and bring her down to where you are--a bad vaurien? When a man loves a woman with the true love, he will try to do good for her sake. Go back to that crazy New York--it is the place for you. Ma'm'selle Christine is not for you." "Who is she for, m'sieu' le dev'?" "Perhaps for the English Irishman," answered Shangois, in a low suggestive tone, as he dropped a little brandy in his tea with light fingers. "Ah, sacre! we shall see. There is vaurien in her too," was the half- triumphant reply. "There is more woman," retorted Shangois; "much more." "We'll see about that, m'sieu'!" exclaimed Castine, as he turned towards the bear, which was clawing at his chain. An hour later, a scene quite as important occurred at Lavilette's great farmhouse. CHAPTER VI It was about ten o'clock. Lights were burning in every window. At a table in the dining-room sat Monsieur and Madame Lavilette, the father of Magon Farcinelle, and Shangois, the notary. The marriage contract was before them. They had reached a point of difficulty. Farcinelle was stipulating for five acres of river-land as another item in Sophie's dot. The corners tightened around Madame's mouth. Lavilette scratched his head, so that the hair stood up like flying tassels of corn. The land in question lay next a portion of Farcinelle's own farm, with a river frontage. On it was a little house and shed, and no better garden-stuff grew in the parish than on this same five acres. "But I do not own the land," said Lavilette. "You've got a mortgage on it," answered Farcinelle. "Foreclose it." "Suppose I did foreclose; you couldn't put the land in the marriage contract until it was mine." The notary shrugged his shoulder ironically, and dropped his chin in his hand as he furtively eyed the two men. Farcinelle was ready for the emergency. He turned to Shangois. "I've got everything ready for the foreclosure," said he. "Couldn't it be done to-night, Shangois?" "Hardly to-night. You might foreclose, but the property couldn't be Monsieur Lavilette's until it is duly sold under the mortgage." "Here, I'll tell you what can be done," said Farcinelle. "You can put the mortgage in the contract as her dot, and, name of a little man! I'll foreclose it, I can tell you. Come, now, Lavilette, is it a bargain?" Shangois sat back in his chair, the fingers of both hands drumming on the table before him, his head twisted a little to one side. His little reflective eyes sparkled with malicious interest, and his little voice said, as though he were speaking to himself: "Excuse, but the land belongs to the young Vanne Castine--eh?" "That's it," exclaimed Farcinelle. "Well, why not give the poor vaurien a chance to take up the mortgage?" "Why, he hasn't paid the interest in five years!" said Lavilette. "But--ah--you have had the use of the land, I think, monsieur. That should meet the interest." Lavilette scowled a little; Farcinelle grunted and laughed. "How can I give him a chance to pay the mortgage?" said Lavilette. "He never had a penny. Besides, he hasn't been seen for five years." A faint smile passed over Shangois's face. "Yesterday," he said, "he had not been seen for five years, but to-day he is in Bonaventure." "The devil!" said Lavilette, dropping a fist on the table, and staring at the notary; for he was not present in the afternoon when Castine passed by. "What difference does that make?" snarled Farcinelle. "I'll bet he's got nothing more than what he went away with, and that wasn't a sou markee!" A provoking smile flickered at the corners of Shangois's mouth, and he said, with a dry inflection, as he dipped and redipped his quill pen in the inkhorn: "He has a bear, my friends, which dances very well." Farcinelle guffawed. "St. Mary!" said he, slapping his leg, "we'll have the bear at the wedding, and I'll have that farm of Vanne Castine's. What does he want of a farm? He's got a bear. Come, is it a bargain? Am I to have the mortgage? If you don't stick it in, I'll not let my boy marry your girl, Lavilette. There, now, that's my last word." "'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, nor his wife, nor his maid, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his,"' said the notary, abstractedly, drawing the picture of a fat Jew on the paper before him. The irony was lost upon his hearers. Madame Lavilette had been thinking, however, and she saw further than her husband. "It amounts to the same thing," she said. "You see it doesn't go away from Sophie; so let him have it, Louis." "All right," responded monsieur at last, "Sophie gets the acres and the house in her dot." "You won't give young Vanne Castine a chance?" asked the notary. "The mortgage is for four hundred dollars and the place is worth seven hundred!" No one replied. "Very well, my Israelites," added Shangois, bending over the contract. An hour later, Nicolas Lavilette was in the big storeroom of the farmhouse, which was reached by a covered passage from the hall between the kitchen and the dining-room. In his off-hand way he was getting out some flour, dried fruit and preserves for the cook, who stood near as he loaded up her arms. He laughingly thrust a string of green peppers under her chin, and added a couple of sprigs of summer-savoury, then suddenly turned round, with a start, for a peculiar low whistle came to him through the half-open window. It was followed by heavy stertorous breathing. He turned back again to the cook, gaily took her by the shoulders, and pushed her to the door. Closing it behind her, he shot the bolt and ran back to the window. As he did so, a hand appeared on the windowsill, and a face followed the hand. "Ha! Nicolas Lavilette, is that you? So, you know my leetla whistle again!" Nicolas's brow darkened. In old days he and this same Vanne Castine had been in many a scrape together, and Vanne, the elder, had always borne the responsibility of their adventures. Nicolas had had enough of those old days; other ambitions and habits governed him now. He was not exactly the man to go back on a friend, but Castine no longer had any particular claims to friendship. The last time he had heard Vanne's whistle was a night five years before, when they both joined a gang of river-drivers, and made a raid on some sham American speculators and surveyors and labourers, who were exploiting an oil-well on the property of the old seigneur. The two had come out of the melee with bruised heads, and Vanne with a bullet in his calf. But soon afterwards came Christine's elopement with Vanne, of which no one knew save her father, Nicolas, Shangois and Vanne himself. That ended their compact, and, after a bitter quarrel, they had parted and had never met nor seen each other till this very afternoon. "Yes, I know your whistle all right," answered Nicolas, with a twist of the shoulder. "Aren't you going to shake hands?" asked Castine, with a sort of sneer on his face. Nicolas thrust his hands down in his pockets. "I'm not so glad to see you as all that," he answered, with a contemptuous laugh. The black eyes of the bear-leader were alive with anger. "You're a damn' fool, Nic Lavilette. You think because I lead a bear-- eh? Pshaw! you shall see. I am nothing, eh? I am to walk on! Nic Lavilette, once he steal the Cure's pig and--" "See you there, Castine, I've had enough of that," was the half-angry, half-amused interruption. "What are you after here?" "What was I after five years ago?" was the meaning reply. Lavilette's face suddenly flushed with fury. He gripped the window with both hands, and made as if he would leap out; but beside Castine's face there appeared another, with glaring eyes, red tongue, white vicious teeth, and two huge claws which dropped on the ledge of the window in much the same way as did Lavilette's. There was a moment's silence as the man and the beast looked at each other, and then Castine began laughing in a low, sneering sort of way. "I'll shoot the beast, and I'll break your neck if ever I see you on this farm again," said Lavilette, with wild anger. "Break my neck--that's all right; but shoot this leetla Michael! When you do that you will not have to wait for a British bullet to kill you. I will do it with a knife--just where you can hear it sing under your ear!" "British bullet!" said Lavilette, excitedly; "what about a British bullet--eh--what?" "Only that the Rebellion's coming quick now," answered Castine, his manner changing, and a look of cunning crossing his face. "You've given your name to the great Papineau, and I am here, as you see." "You--you--what have you got to do with the Revolution? with Papineau?" "Pah! do you think a Lavilette is the only patriot! Papineau is my friend, and--" "Your friend--" "My friend. I am carrying his message all through the parishes. Bon'venture is the last--almost. The great General Papineau sends you a word, Nic Lavilette--here." He drew from his pocket a letter and handed it over. Lavilette tore it open. It was a captain's commission for M. Nicolas Lavilette, with a call for money and a company of men and horses. "Maybe there's a leetla noose hanging from the tail of that, but then-- it is the glory--eh? Captain Lavilette--eh?" There was covert malice in Castine's voice. "If the English whip us, they won't shoot us like grand seigneurs, they will hang us like dogs." Lavilette scarcely noticed the sneer. He was seeing visions of a captain's sword and epaulettes, and planning to get men, money and horses together--for this matter had been brooding for nearly a year, and he had been the active leader in Bonaventure. "We've been near a hundred years, we Frenchmen, eating dirt in the country we owned from the start; and I'd rather die fighting to get back the old citadel than live with the English heel on my nose," said Lavilette, with a play-acting attempt at oratory. "Yes, an' dey call us Johnny Pea-soups," said Castine, with a furtive grin. "An' perhaps that British Colborne will hang us to our barn doors --eh?" There was silence for a moment, in which Lavilette read the letter over again with gloating eyes. Presently Castine started and looked round. "What's that?" he said in a whisper. "I heard nothing." "I heard the feet of a man--yes." They both stood moveless, listening. There was no sound; but, at the same time, the Hon. Mr. Ferrol had the secret of the Rebellion in his hands. A moment later Castine and his bear were out in the road. Lavilette leaned out of the window and mused. Castine's words of a few moments before came to him: "That British Colborne will hang us to our barn doors--eh?" He shuddered, and struck a light. CHAPTER VII Mr. Ferrol slept in the large guest-chamber of the house. Above it was Christine's bedroom. Thick as were the timbers and boards of the floor, Christine could hear one sound, painfully monotonous and frequent, coming from his room the whole night--the hacking, rending cough which she had heard so often since he came. The fear of Vanne Castine, the memories of the wild, half animal-like love she had had for him in the old days, the excitement of the new events which had come into her life; these kept her awake, and she tossed and turned in feverish unrest. All that had happened since Ferrol had arrived, every word that he had spoken, every motion that he had made, every look of his face, she recalled vividly. All that he was, which was different from the people she had known, she magnified, so that to her he had a distant, overwhelming sort of grandeur. She beat the bedclothes in her restlessness. Suddenly she sat up straight in bed. "Oh, if I hadn't been a Lavilette! If I'd only been born and brought up with the sort of people he comes from, I'd not have been ashamed of myself or him of me." The plush bodice she had worn that day danced before her eyes. She knew how horribly ugly it was. Her fingers ran over the patchwork quilt on her bed; and although she could not see it, she loathed it, because she knew it was a painful mess of colours. With a little touch of dramatic extravagance, she leaned over and down, and drew her fingers contemptuously along the rag-carpet on the floor. Then she cried a little hysterically: "He never saw anything like that before. How he must laugh as he sits there in that room!" As if in reply, the hacking cough came faintly through the time-worn floor. "That cough's going to kill him, to kill him," she said. Then, with a little start and with a sort of cry, which she stopped by putting both hands over her mouth, she said to herself, brokenly: "Why shouldn't he--why shouldn't he love me! I could take care of him; I could nurse him; I could wait on him; I could be better to him than any one else in the world. And it wouldn't make any difference to him at all in the end. He's going to die before long--I know it. Well, what does it matter what becomes of me afterwards? I should have had him; I should have loved him; he should have been mine for a little while anyway. I'd be good to him; oh, I'd be good to him! Who else is there? He'll get worse and worse; and what will any of the fine ladies do for him then, I'd like to know. Why aren't they here? Why isn't he with them? He's poor--Nic says so--and they're rich. Why don't they help him? I would. I'd give him my last penny and the last drop of blood in my heart. What do they know about love?" Her little teeth clinched, she shook her brown hair back in a sort of fury. "What do they know about love? What would they do for it? I'd have my fingers chopped off one by one for it. I'd break every one of the ten commandments for it. I'd lose my soul for it. "I've got twenty times as much heart as any one of them, I don't care who they are. I'd lie for him; I'd steal for him; I'd kill for him. I'd watch everything that he says, and I'd say it as he says it. I'd be angry when he was angry, miserable when he was miserable, happy when he was happy. Vanne Castine--what was he! What was it that made me care for him then? And now--now he travels with a bear, and they toss coppers to him; a beggar, a tramp--a dirty, lazy tramp! He hates me, I know--or else he loves me, and that's worse. And I'm afraid of him; I know I'm afraid of him. Oh, how will it all end? I know there's going to be trouble. I could see it in Vanne's face. But I don't care, I don't care, if Mr. Ferrol--" The cough came droning through the floor. "If he'd only--ah! I'd do anything for him, anything; anybody would. I saw Sophie look at him as she never looked at Magon. If she did-- if she dared to care for him--" All at once she shivered as if with shame and fright, drew the bedclothes about her head, and burst into a fit of weeping. When it passed, she lay still and nerveless between the coarse sheets, and sank into a deep sleep just as the dawn crept through the cracks of the blind. CHAPTER VIII The weeks went by. Sophie had become the wife of the member for the country, and had instantly settled down to a quiet life. This was disconcerting to Madame Lavilette, who had hoped that out of Farcinelle's official position she might reap some praise and pence of ambition. Meanwhile, Ferrol became more and more a cherished and important figure in the Manor Casimbault, where the Lavilettes had made their home soon after the wedding. The old farmhouse had also secretly become a rendezvous for the mysterious Nicolas Lavilette and his rebel comrades. This was known to Mr. Ferrol. One evening he stopped Nic as he was leaving the house, and said: "See, Nic, my boy, what's up? I know a thing or so--what's the use of playing peek-a-boo?" "What do you know, Ferrol?" "What's between you and Vanne Castine, for instance. Come, now, own up and tell me all about it. I'm British; but I'm Nic Lavilette's friend anyhow." He insinuated into his tone that little touch of brogue which he used when particularly persuasive. Nic put out his hand with a burst of good- natured frankness. "Meet me in the store-room of the old farmhouse at nine o'clock, and I'll tell you. Here's a key." Handing over the key, he grasped Ferrol's hand with an effusive confidence, and hurried out. Nic Lavilette was now an important person in his own sight and in the sight of others in Bonaventure. In him the pomp of his family took an individual form. Earlier than the appointed time, Ferrol turned the key and stepped inside the big despoiled hallway of the old farmhouse. His footsteps sounded hollow in the empty rooms. Already dust had gathered, and an air of desertion and decay filled the place in spite of the solid timbers and sound floors and window-sills. He took out his watch; it was ten minutes to nine. Passing through the little hallway to the store-room, he opened the door. It was dark inside. Striking a match, he saw a candle on the window-sill, and, going to it, he lighted it with a flint and steel lying near. The window was shut tight. From curiosity only he tried to open the shutter, but it was immovable. Looking round, he saw another candle on the window-sill opposite. He lighted it also, and mechanically tried to force the shutters of the window, but they were tight also. Going to the door, which opened into the farmyard, he found it securely fastened. Although he turned the lock, the door would not open. Presently his attention was drawn by the glitter of something upon one of the crosspieces of timber halfway up the wall. Going over, he examined it, and found it to be a broken bayonet--left there by a careless rebel. Placing the steel again upon the ledge, he began walking up and down thoughtfully. Presently he was seized with a fit of coughing. The paroxysm lasted a minute or more, and he placed his arm upon the window-sill, leaning his head upon it. Presently, as the paroxysm lessened, he thought he heard the click of a lock. He raised his head, but his eyes were misty, and, seeing nothing, he leaned his head on his arm again. Suddenly he felt something near him. He swung round swiftly, and saw Vanne Castine's bear not fifteen-feet away from him! It raised itself on its hind legs, its red eyes rolling, and started towards him. He picked up the candle from the window-sill, threw it in the animal's face, and dashed towards the door. It was locked. He swung round. The huge beast, with a loud snarl, was coming down upon him. Here he was, shut within four solid walls, with a wild beast hungry for his life. All his instincts were alive. He had little hope of saving himself, but he was determined to do what lay in his power. His first impulse was to blow out the other candle. That would leave him in the dark, and it struck him that his advantage would be greater if there were no light. He came straight towards the bear, then suddenly made a swift movement to the left, trusting to his greater quickness of movement. The beast was nearly as quick as he, and as he dashed along the wall towards the candle, he could hear its breath just behind him. As he passed the window, he caught the candle in his hands, and was about to throw it on the floor or in the bear's face, when he remembered that, in the dark, the bear's sense of smell would be as effective as eyesight, while he himself would be no better off. He ran suddenly to the centre of the room, the candle still in his hand, and turned to meet his foe. It came savagely at him. He dodged, ran past it, turned, doubled on it, and dodged again. A half-dozen times this was repeated, the candle still flaring. It could not last long. The bear was enraged. Its movements became swifter, its vicious teeth and lips were covered with froth, which dripped to the floor, and sometimes spattered Ferrol's clothes as he ran past. No matador ever played with the horns of a mad bull as Ferrol played his deadly game with Michael, the dancing bear. His breath was becoming shorter and shorter; he had a stifling sensation, a terrible tightness across his chest. He did not cough, however, but once or twice he tasted warm drops of his heart's blood in his mouth. Once he drew the back of his hand across his lips mechanically, and a red stain showed upon it. In his boyhood and early manhood he had been a good sportsman; had been quick of eye, swift of foot, and fearless. But what could fearlessness avail him in this strait? With the best of rifles he would have felt himself at a disadvantage. He was certain his time had come; and with that conviction upon him, the terror of the thing and the horrible physical shrinking almost passed away from him. The disease, eating away his life, had diminished that revolt against death which is in the healthy flesh of every man. He was levying upon the vital forces remaining in him, which, distributed naturally, might cover a year or so, to give him here and now a few moments of unnatural strength for the completion of a hopeless struggle. It was also as if two brains in him were working: one busy with all the chances and details of his wild contest, the other with the events of his life. Pictures flashed before him. Some having to do with the earliest days of his childhood; some with fighting on the Danube, before he left the army, impoverished and ashamed; some with idle hours in the North Tower in Stavely Castle; and one with the day he and his sister left the old castle, never to return, and looked back upon it from the top of Farcalladen Moor, waving a "God bless you" to it. The thought of his sister filled him with a desire, a pitiful desire to live. Just then another picture flashed before his eyes. It was he himself, riding the mad stallion, Bolingbroke, the first year he followed the hounds: how the brute tried to smash his leg against a stone wall; how it reared until it almost toppled over and backwards; how it jibbed at a gate, and nearly dashed its own brains out against a tree; and how, after an hour's hard fighting, he made it take the stiffest fence and water- course in the county. This thought gave him courage now. He suddenly remembered the broken bayonet upon the ledge against the wall. If he could reach it there might be a chance--chance to strike one blow for life. As his eye glanced towards the wall he saw the steel flash in the light of the candle. The bear was between him and it. He made a feint towards the left, then as quickly to the right. But doing so, he slipped and fell. The candle dropped to the floor and went out. With a lightning-like instinct of self-preservation he swung over upon his face just as the bear, in its wild rush, passed over his head. He remembered afterwards the odour of the hot, rank body, and the sprawling huge feet and claws. Scrambling to his feet swiftly, he ran to the wall. Fortune was with him. His hand almost instantly clutched the broken bayonet. He whipped out his handkerchief, tore the scarf from his neck, and wound them around his hand, that the broken bayonet should not tear the flesh as he fought for his life; then, seizing it, he stood waiting for the bear to come on. His body was bent forwards, his eyes straining into the dark, his hot face dripping, dripping sweat, his breath coming hard and laboured from his throat. For a minute there was absolute silence, save for the breathing of the man and the savage panting of the beast. Presently he felt exactly where the bear was, and listened intently. He knew that it was now but a question of minutes, perhaps seconds. Suddenly it occurred to him that if he could but climb upon the ledge where the bayonet had been, there might be safety. Yet again, in getting up, the bear might seize him, and there would be an end to all immediately. It was worth trying, however. Two things happened at that moment to prevent the trial: the sound of knocking on a door somewhere, and the roaring rush of the bear upon him. He sprang to one side, striking at the beast as he did so. The bayonet went in and out again. There came voices from the outside; evidently somebody was trying to get in. The bear roared again and came on. It was all a blind man's game. But his scent, like the animal's, was keen. He had taken off his coat, and he now swung it out before him in a half-circle, and as it struck the bear it covered his own position. He swung aside once more and drove his arm into the dark. The bayonet struck the nose of the beast. Now there was a knocking and a hammering at the window, and the wrenching of the shutters. He gathered himself together for the next assault. Suddenly he felt that every particle of strength had gone out of him. He pulled himself up with a last effort. His legs would not support him; he shivered and swayed. God, would they never get that window open! His senses were abnormally acute. Another sound attracted him: the opening of the door, and a voice--Vanne Castine's--calling to the bear. His heart seemed to give a leap, then slowly to roll over with a thud, and he fell to the floor as the bear lunged forwards upon him. A minute afterwards Vanne Castine was goading the savage beast through the door and out to the hallway into the yard as Nic swung through the open window into the room. Castine's lantern stood in the middle of the floor, and between it and the window lay Ferrol, the broken bayonet still clutched in his right hand. Lavilette dropped on his knees beside him and felt his heart. It was beating, but the shirt and the waistcoat were dripping with blood where the bear had set its claws and teeth in the shoulder of its victim. An hour later Nic Lavilette stood outside the door of Ferrol's bedroom in the Manor Casimbault, talking to the Regimental Surgeon, as Christine, pale and wildeyed, came running towards them. CHAPTER IX "Is he dead? is he dead?" she asked distractedly. "I've just come from the village. Why didn't you send for me? Tell me, is he dead? Oh, tell me at once!" She caught the Regimental Surgeon's arm. He looked down at her, over his glasses, benignly, for she had always been a favourite of his, and answered: "Alive, alive, my dear. Bad rip in the shoulder--worn out--weak-- shattered--but good for a while yet--yes, yes--certainement!" With a wayward impulse, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. The embrace disarranged his glasses and flushed his face like a schoolgirl's, but his eyes were full of embarrassed delight. "There, there," he said, "we'll take care of him--!" Then suddenly he paused, for the real significance of her action dawned upon him. "Dear me," he said in disturbed meditation; "dear me!" She suddenly opened the bedroom door and went in, followed by Nic. The Regimental Surgeon dropped his mouth and cheeks in his hand reflectively, his eyes showing quaintly and quizzically above the glasses and his fingers. "Well, well! Well, well!" he said, as if he had encountered a difficulty. "It--it will never be possible. He would not marry her," he added, and then, turning, went abstractedly down the stairs. Ferrol was in a deep sleep when Christine and her brother entered the chamber. Her face turned still more pale when she saw him, flushed, and became pale again. There were leaden hollows round his eyes, and his hair was matted with perspiration. Yet he was handsome--and helpless. Her eyes filled with tears. She turned her head away from her brother and went softly to the window, but not before she had touched the pale hand that lay nerveless upon the coverlet. "It's not feverish," she said to Nic, as if in necessary explanation of the act. She stood at the window for a moment, looking out, then said: "Come here, Nic, and tell me all about it." He told her all he knew: how he had come to the old house by appointment with Ferrol; had tried to get into the store-room; had found the doors bolted; had heard the noise of a wild animal inside; had run out, tried a window, at last wrenched it open and found Ferrol in a dead faint. He went to the table and brought back the broken bayonet. "That's all he had to fight with," he said. "Fire of a little hell, but he had grit--after all!" "That's all he had to fight with!" she repeated, as she untwisted the handkerchief from the hilt end. "Why did you say he had true grit-- 'after all'? What do you mean by that 'after all'?" "Well, you don't expect much from a man with only one lung--eh?" "Courage isn't in the lungs," she answered. Then she added: "Go and fetch me a bottle of brandy--I'm going to bathe his hands and feet in brandy and hot water as soon as he's awake." "Better let mother do that, hadn't you?" he asked rather hesitatingly, as he moved towards the door. Her eyes snapped fire. "Nic--mon Dieu, hear the nice Nic!" she said. "The dear Nic, who went in swimming with--" She said no more, for he had no desire to listen to an account of his misdeeds, which were not a few,--and Christine had a galling tongue. When the door was shut she went to the bed, sat down on a chair beside it, and looked at Ferrol earnestly and sadly. "My dear! my dear, dear, dear!" she said in a whisper, "you look so handsome and so kind as you lie there--like no man I ever saw in my life. Who'd have fought as you fought--and nearly dead! Who'd have had brains enough to know just what to do! My darling, that never said 'my darling' to me, nor heard me call you so. Suppose you haven't a dollar, not a cent, in the world, and suppose you'll never earn a dollar or a cent in the world, what difference does that make to me? I could earn it; and I'd give more for a touch of your finger than a thousand dollars; and more for a month with you than for a lifetime with the richest man in the world. You never looked cross at me, or at any one, and you never say an unkind thing, and you never find fault when you suffer so. You never hurt any one, I know. You never hurt Vanne Castine--" Her fingers twitched in her lap, and then clasped very tight, as she went on: "You never hurt him, and yet he's tried to kill you in the most awful way. Perhaps you'll die now--perhaps you'll die to-night--but no, no, you shall not!" she cried in sudden fright and eagerness, as she got up and leaned over him. "You shall not die; you shall live--for a while-- oh! yes, for a while yet," she added, with a pitiful yearning in her voice; "just for a little while--till you love me, and tell me so! Oh, how could that devil try to kill you!" She suddenly drew herself up. "I'll kill him and his bear too--now, now, while you lie there sleeping. And when you wake I'll tell you what I've done, and you'll--you'll love me then, and tell me so, perhaps. Yes, yes, I'll--" She said no more, for her brother entered with the brandy. "Put it there," she said, pointing to the table. "You watch him till I come. I'll be back in an hour; and then, when he wakes, we'll bathe him in the hot water and brandy." "Who told you about hot water and brandy?" he asked her, curiously. She did not answer him, but passed through the door and down the hall till she came to Nic's bedroom; she went in, took a pair of pistols from the wall, examined them, found they were fully loaded, and hurried from the room. About a half-hour later she appeared before the house which once had belonged to Vanne Castine. The mortgage had been foreclosed, and the place had passed into the hands of Sophie and Magon Farcinelle; but Castine had taken up his abode in the house a few days before, and defied anyone to put him out. A light was burning in the kitchen of the house. There were no curtains to the window, but an old coat had been hung up to serve the purpose, and light shone between a sleeve of it and the window-sill. Putting her face close to the window, the girl could see the bear in the corner, clawing at its chain and tossing its head from side to side, still panting and angry from the fight. Now and again, also, it licked the bayonet-wound between its shoulders, and rubbed its lacerated nose on its paw. Castine was mixing some tar and oil in a pan by the fire, to apply to the still bleeding wounds of his Michael. He had an ugly grin on his face. He was dressed just as in the first day he appeared in the village, even to the fur cap; and presently, as he turned round, he began to sing the monotonous measure to which the bear had danced. It had at once a soothing effect upon the beast. After he had gone from the store-room, leaving Ferrol dead, as he thought, it was this song alone which had saved himself from peril; for the beast was wild from pain, fury and the taste of blood. As soon as they had cleared the farmyard, he had begun this song, and the bear, cowed at first by the thrusts of its master's pike, quieted to the well- known ditty. He approached the bear now, and, stooping, put some of the tar and oil upon its nose. It sniffed and rubbed off the salve, but he put more on; then he rubbed it into the wound of the breast. Once the animal made a fierce snap at his shoulder, but he deftly avoided it, gave it a thrust with a sharp-pointed stick, and began the song again. Presently he rose and came towards the fire. As he did so he heard the door open. Turning round quickly, he saw Christine standing just inside. She had a shawl thrown round her, and one hand was thrust in the pocket of her dress. She looked from him to the bear, then back again to him. He did not realise why she had come. For a moment, in his excited state, he almost thought she had come because she loved him. He had seen her twice since his return; but each time she would say nothing to him further than that she wished not to meet or to speak to him at all. He had pleaded with her, had grown angry, and she had left him. Who could tell--perhaps she had come to him now as she had come to him in the old days. He dropped the pan of tar and oil. "Chris!" he said, and started forward to her. At that moment the bear, as if it knew the girl's mission, sprang forward, with a growl. Its huge mouth was open, and all its fierce lust for killing showed again in its wild lunges. Castine turned, with an oath, and thrust the steel-set pike into its leg. It cowered at the voice and the punishment for an instant, but came on again. Castine saw the girl raise a pistol and fire at the beast. He was so dumfounded that at first he did not move. Then he saw her raise another pistol. The wounded bear lunged heavily on its chain--once--twice--in a devilish rage, and as Christine prepared to fire, snapped the staple loose and sprang forward. At the same moment Castine threw himself in front of the girl, and caught the onward rush. Calling the beast by its name, he grappled with it. They were man and servant no longer, but two animals fighting for their lives. Castine drew out his knife, as the bear, raised on its hind legs, crushed him in its immense arms, and still calling, half crazily, "Michael! Michael! down, Michael!" he plunged the knife twice in the beast's side. The bear's teeth fastened in his shoulder; the horrible pressure of its arms was turning his face black; he felt death coming, when another pistol shot rang out close to his own head, and his breath suddenly came back. He staggered to the wall, and then came to the floor in a heap as the bear lurched downwards and fell over on its side, dead. Christine had come to kill the beast and, perhaps, the man. The man had saved her life, and now she had saved his; and together they had killed the bear which had maltreated Tom Ferrol. Castine's eyes were fixed on the dead beast. Everything was gone from him now--even the way to his meagre livelihood; and the cause of it all, as he in his blind, unnatural way thought, was this girl before him--this girl and her people. Her back was towards the door. Anger and passion were both at work in him at once. "Chris," he said, "Chris, let's call it even-eh? Let's make it up. Chris, ma cherie, don't you remember when we used to meet, and was fond of each other? Let's make it up and leave here--now--to-night-eh? "I'm not so poor, after all. I'll be paid by Papineau, the leader of the Rebellion--" He made a couple of unsteady steps towards her, for he was weak yet. "What's the good--you're bound to come to me in the end! You've got the same kind of feelings in you; you've--" She had stood still at first, dazed by his words; but she grew angry quickly, and was about to speak as she felt, when he went on: "Stay here now with me. Don't go back. Don't you remember Shangois's house? Don't you remember that night--that night when--ah! Chris, stay here--" Her face was flaming. "I'd rather stay in a room full of wild beasts like that"--she pointed to the bear" than be with you one minute--you murderer!" she said, with choking anger. He started towards her, saying: "By the blood of Joseph! but you'll stay just the same; and--" He got no further, for she threw the pistol in his face with all her might. It struck between his eyes with a thud, and he staggered back, blind, bleeding and faint, as she threw open the door and sped away in the darkness. Reaching the Manor safely, she ran up to her room, arranged her hair, washed her hands, and came again to Ferrol's bedroom. Knocking softly she was admitted by Nic. There was an unnatural brightness in her eyes. "Where've you been?" he asked, for he noticed this. "What've you been doing?" "I've killed the bear that tried to kill him," she answered. She spoke louder than she meant. Her voice awakened Ferrol. "Eh, what?" he said, "killed the bear, mademoiselle,--my dear friend," he added, "killed the bear!" He coughed a little, and a twinge of pain crossed over his face. She nodded, and her face was alight with pleasure. She lifted up his head and gave him a little drink of brandy. His fingers closed on hers that held the glass. His touch thrilled her. "That's good, that's easier," he remarked. "We're going to bathe you in brandy and hot water, now--Nic and I," she said. "Bathe me! Bathe me!" he said, in amused consternation. "Hands and feet," Nic explained. A few minutes later as she lifted up his head, her face was very near him; her breath was in his face. Her eyes half closed, her fingers trembled. He suddenly drew her to him and kissed her. She looked round swiftly, but her brother had not noticed. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Illusive hopes and irresponsible deceptions She lacked sense a little and sensitiveness much To be popular is not necessarily to be contemptible Who say 'God bless you' in New York! They say 'Damn you!' POMP OF THE LAVILETTES By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. CHAPTER X Ferrols's recovery from his injuries was swifter than might have been expected. As soon as he was able to move about Christine was his constant attendant. She had made herself his nurse, and no one had seriously interfered, though the Cure had not at all vaguely offered a protest to Madame Lavilette. But Madame Lavilette was now in the humour to defy or evade the Cure, whichever seemed the more convenient or more necessary. To be linked by marriage with the nobility would indeed be the justification of all her long-baffled hopes. Meanwhile, the parish gossiped, though little of that gossip was heard at the Manor Casimbault. By and by the Cure ceased to visit the Manor, but the Regimental Surgeon came often, and sometimes stayed late. He, perhaps, could have given Madame Lavilette the best advice and warning; but, in truth, he enjoyed what he considered a piquant position. Once, drawing at his pipe, as little like an Englishman as possible, he tried to say with an English accent, "Amusing and awkward situation!" but he said, "Damn funny and chic!" instead. He had no idea that any particular harm would be done-- either by love or marriage; and neither seemed certain. One day as Ferrol, entirely convalescent, was sitting in an arbour of the Manor garden, half asleep, he was awakened by voices near him. He did not recognise one of the voices; the other was Nic Lavilette's. The strange voice was saying: "I have collected five thousand dollars-- all that can be got in the two counties. It is at the Seigneury. Here is an order on the Seigneur Duhamel. Go there in two days and get the money. You will carry it to headquarters. These are General Papineau's orders. You will understand that your men--" Ferrol heard no more, for the two rebels passed on, their voices becoming indistinct. He sat for a few moments moveless, for an idea had occurred to him even as Papineau's agent spoke. If that money were only his! Five thousand dollars--how that would ease the situation! The money belonged to whom? To a lot of rebels: to be used for making war against the British Government. After the money left the hands of the men who gave it--Lavilette and the rest--it wasn't theirs. It belonged to a cause. Well, he was the enemy of that cause. All was fair in love and war! There were two ways of doing it. He could waylay Nicolas as he came from the house of the old seigneur, could call to him to throw up his hands in good highwayman fashion, and, well disguised, could get away with the money without being discovered. Or again, he could follow Nic from the Seigneury to the Manor, discover where he kept the money, and devise a plan to steal it. For some time he had given up smoking; but now, as a sort of celebration of his plan, he opened his cigar case, and finding two cigars left, took one out and lighted it. "By Jove," he said to himself, "thieving is a nice come-down, I must say! But a man has to live, and I'm sick of charity--sick of it. I've had enough." He puffed his cigar briskly, and enjoyed the forbidden and deadly luxury to the full. Presently he got up, took his stick, came down-stairs, and passed out into the garden. The shoulder which had been lacerated by the bear drooped forward some what, and seemed smaller than the other. Although he held himself as erect as possible, you still could have laid your hand in the hollow of his left breast, and it would have done no more than give it a natural fulness. Perhaps it was a sort of vanity, perhaps a kind of courage, which made him resolutely straighten himself, in spite of the deadly weight dragging his shoulder down. He might be melancholy in secret, but in public he was gay and hopeful, and talked of everything except himself. On that interesting topic he would permit no discussion. Yet there often came jugs and jars from friendly people, who never spoke to him of his disease--they were polite and sensitive, these humble folk --but sent him their home-made medicines, with assurances scrawled on paper that "it would cure Mr. Ferrol's cold, oh, absolutely." Before the Lavilettes he smiled, and received the gifts in a debonair way, sometimes making whimsical remarks. At the same time the jugs and jars of cordial (whose contents varied from whiskey, molasses and boneset, to rum, licorice, gentian and sarsaparilla roots) he carried to his room; and he religiously tried them all by turn. Each seemed to do him good for a few days, then to fail of effect; and he straightway tried another, with renewed hope on every occasion, and subsequent disappointment. He also secretly consulted the Regimental Surgeon, who was too kindhearted to tell him the truth; and he tried his hand at various remedies of his own, which did no more than to loosen the cough which was breaking down his strength. As now, he often walked down the street swinging his cane, not as though he needed it for walking, but merely for occupation and companionship. He did not delude the villagers by these sorrowful deceptions, but they made believe he did. There were a few people who did not like him; but they were of that cantankerous minority who put thorns in the bed of the elect. To-day, occupied with his thoughts, he walked down the main road, then presently diverged on a side road which led past Magon Farcinelle's house to an old disused mill, owned by Magon's father. He paused when he came opposite Magon's house, and glanced up at the open door. He was tired, and the coolness of the place looked inviting. He passed through the gate, and went lightly up the path. He could see straight through the house into the harvest-fields at the back. Presently a figure crossed the lane of light, and made a cheerful living foreground to the blue sky beyond the farther door. The light and ardour of the scene gave him a thrill of pleasure, and hurried his footsteps. The air was palpitating with sleepy comfort round him, and he felt a new vitality pass into him: his imagination was feeding his enfeebled body; his active brain was giving him a fresh counterfeit of health. The hectic flush on his pale face deepened. He came to the wooden steps of the piazza, or stoop, and then paused a moment, as if for breath; but, suddenly conscious of what he was doing, he ran briskly up the steps, knocked with his cane upon the door jamb, and, without waiting, stepped inside. Between him and the outer door, against the ardent blue background, stood Sophie Farcinelle--the English faced Sophie--a little heavy, a little slow, but with the large, long profile which is the type of English beauty--docile, healthy, cow-like. Her face, within her sunbonnet, caught the reflected light, and the pink calico of her dress threw a glow over her cheeks and forehead, and gave a good gleam to her eyes. She had in her hands a dish of strawberries. It was a charming picture in the eyes of a man to whom the feelings of robustness and health were mostly a reminiscence. Yet, while the first impression was on him, he contrasted Sophie with the impetuous, fiery-hearted Christine, with her dramatic Gallic face and blood, to the latter's advantage, in spite of the more harmonious setting of this picture. Sophie was in place in this old farmhouse, with its dormer windows, with the weaver's loom in the large kitchen, the meat-block by the fireplace, and the big bread-tray by the stove, where the yeast was as industrious as the reapers beyond in the fields. She was in keeping with the chromo of the Madonna and the Child upon the wall, with the sprig of holy palm at the shrine in the corner, with the old King Louis blunderbuss above the chimney. Sophie tried to take off her sunbonnet with one hand, but the knot tightened, and it tipped back on her head, giving her a piquant air. She flushed. "Oh, m'sieu'!" she said in English, "it's kind of you to call. I am quite glad--yes." Then she turned round to put the strawberries upon a table, but he was beside her in an instant and took the dish out of her hands. Placing it on the table, he took a couple of strawberries in his fingers. "May I?" he asked in French. She nodded as she whipped off the sunbonnet, and replied in her own language: "Certainly, as many as you want." He bit into one, but got no further with it. Her back was turned to him, and he threw the berry out of the window. She felt rather than saw what he had done. She saw that he was fagged. She instantly thought of a cordial she had in the house, the gift of a nun from the Ursuline Convent in Quebec; a precious little bottle which she had kept for the anniversary of her wedding day. If she had been told in the morning that she would open that bottle now, and for a stranger, she probably would have resented the idea with scorn. His disguised weariness still exciting her sympathy, she offered him a chair. "You will sit down, m'sieu'?" she asked. "It is very warm." She did not say: "You look very tired." She instinctively felt that it would suggest the delicate state of his health. The chair was inviting enough, with its chintz cover and wicker seat, but he would never admit fatigue. He threw his leg half jauntily over the end of the table and said: "No--no, thanks; I'd rather not sit." His forehead was dripping with perspiration. He took out his handkerchief and dried it. His eyes were a little heavy, but his complexion was a delicate and unnatural pink and white-like a piece of fine porcelain. It was a face without care, without vice, without fear, and without morals. For the absence of vice with the absence of morals are not incongruous in a human face. Sophie went into another room for a moment, and brought back a quaint cut-glass bottle of cordial. "It is very good," she said, as she took the cork out; "better than peach brandy or things like that." He watched her pour it out into a wine-glass, and as soon as he saw the colour and the flow of it he was certain of its quality. "That looks like good stuff," he said, as she handed him a glass brimming over; "but you must have one with me. I can't drink alone, you know." "Oh, m'sieu', if you please, no," she answered half timidly, flattered by the glance of his eye--a look of flattery which was part of his stock-in- trade. It had got him into trouble all his life. "Ah, madame, but I plead yes!" he answered, with a little encouraging nod towards her. "Come, let me pour it for you." He took the odd little bottle and poured her glass as full as his own. "If Magon were only here--he'd like some, I know," she said, vaguely struggling with a sense of impropriety, though why, she did not know; for, on the surface, this was only dutiful hospitality to a distinguished guest. The impropriety probably lay in the sensations roused by this visit and this visitor. "I intended--" "Oh, we must try to get along without monsieur," he said, with a little cough; "he's a busy gentleman." The rather rude and flippant sentiment seemed hardly in keeping with the fatal token of his disease. "Of course, he's far away out there in the field, mowing," she said, as if in apology for something or other. "Yes, he's ever so far away," was his reply, as he turned half lazily to the open doorway. Neither spoke for a moment. The eyes of both were on the distant harvest-fields. Vaguely, not decisively, the hazy, indolent air of summer was broken by the lazy droning of the locusts and grasshoppers. A driver was calling to his oxen down the dusty road, the warning bark of a dog came across the fields from the gap in the fence which he was tending, and the blades of tho scythes made three-quarter circles of light as the mowers travelled down the wheat-fields. When their eyes met again, the glasses of cordial were at their lips. He held her look by the intentional warmth and meaning of his own, drinking very slowly to the last drop; and then, like a bon viveur, drew a breath of air through his open mouth, and nodded his satisfaction. "By Jove, but it is good stuff!" he said. "Here's to the nun that made it," he added, making a motion to drink from the empty glass. Sophie had not drunk all her cordial. At least one third of it was still in the glass. She turned her head away, a little dismayed by his toast. "Come, that's not fair," he said. "That elixir shouldn't be wasted. Voila, every drop of it now!" he added, with an insinuating smile and gesture. "Oh, m'sieu'!" she said in protest, but drank it off. He still held the empty glass in his hand, twisting it round musingly. "A little more, m'sieu'?" she asked, "just a little?" Perhaps she was surprised that he did not hesitate. He instantly held out his glass. "It was made by a saint; the result should be health and piety--I need both," he added, with a little note of irony in his voice. "So, once again, my giver of good gifts--to you!" He raised his glass again, toasting her, but paused. "No, this won't do; you must join me," he added. "Oh, no, m'sieu', no! It is not possible. I feel it now in my head and in all of me. Oh, I feel so warm all, through, and my heart it beats so very fast! Oh, no, m'sieu', no more!" Her cheeks were glowing, and her eyes had become softer and more brilliant under the influence of the potent liqueur. "Well, well, I'll let you off this time; but next time--next time, remember." He raised the glass once more, and let the cordial drain down lazily. He had said, "next time"--she noticed that. He seemed very fond of this strong liqueur. She placed the bottle on the table, her own glass beside it. "For a minute, a little minute," she said suddenly, and went quickly into the other room. He coolly picked up the bottle of liqueur, poured his glass full once more, and began drinking it off in little sips. Presently he stood up, and throwing back his shoulder, with a little ostentation of health, he went over to the chintz-covered chair, and sat down in it. His mood was contented and brisk. He held up the glass of liqueur against the sunlight. "Better than any Benedictine I ever tasted," he said. "A dozen bottles of that would cure this beastly cold of mine. By Jove! it would. It's as good as the Gardivani I got that blessed day when we chaps of the Ninetieth breakfasted with the King of Savoy." He laughed to himself at the reminiscence. "What a day that was, what a stunning day that was!" He was still smiling, his white teeth showing humorously, when Sophie again entered the room. He had forgotten her, forgotten all about her. As she came in he made a quick, courteous movement to rise--too quick; for a sharp pain shot through his breast, and he grew pale about the lips. But he made essay to stand up lightly, nevertheless. She saw his paleness, came quickly to him, and put out her hand to gently force him back into his seat, but as instantly decided not to notice his indisposition, and turned towards the table instead. Taking the bottle of cordial, she brought it over, and not looking at him, said: "Just one more little glass, m'sieu'?" She had in her other hand a plate of seed-cakes. "But yes, you must sit down and eat a cake," she added adroitly. "They are very nice, and I made them myself. We are very fond of them; and once, when the bishop stayed at our house, he liked them too." Before he sat down he drank off the whole of the cordial in the glass. She took a chair near him, and breaking a seed-cake began eating it. His tongue was loosened now, and he told her what he was smiling at when she came into the room. She was amused, and there was a little awe to her interest also. To think--she was sitting here, talking easily to a man who had eaten at kings' tables--with the king! Yet she was at ease too-- since she had drunk the cordial. It had acted on her like some philtre. He begged that she would go on with her work; and she got the dish of strawberries, and began stemming them while he talked. It was much easier talking or listening to him while she was so occupied. She had never enjoyed anything so much in her life. She was not clever, like Christine, but she had admiration of ability, and was obedient to the charm of temperament. Whenever Ferrol had met her he had lavished little attentions on her, had said things to her that carried weight far beyond their intention. She had been pleased at the time, but they had had no permanent effect. Now everything he said had a different influence: she felt for the first time that it was not easy to look into his eyes, and as if she never could again without betraying--she knew not what. So they sat there, he talking, she listening and questioning now and then. She had placed the bottle of liqueur and the seed-cakes at his elbow on the windowsill; and as if mechanically, he poured out a glassful, and after a little time, still another, and at last, apparently unconsciously, poured her out one also, and handed it to her. She shook her head; he still held the glass poised; her eyes met his; she made a feeble sort of protest, then took the glass and drank off the liqueur in little sips. "Gad, that puts fat on the bones, and gives the gay heart!" he said. "Doesn't it, though?" She laughed quietly. Her nature was warm, and she had the animal-like fondness for physical ease and content. "It's as if there wasn't another stroke of work to do in the world," she answered, and sat contentedly back in her chair, the strawberries in her lap. Her fingers, stained with red, lay beside the bowl. All the strings of conscious duty were loose, and some of them were flying. The bumble-bee that flew in at the door and boomed about the room contributed to the day-dream. She never quite knew how it happened that a moment later he was bending over the back of her chair, with her face upturned to his, and his lips-- With that touch thrilling her, she sprang to her feet, and turned away from him towards the table. Her face was glowing like a peony, and a troubled light came into her eyes. He came over to her, after a moment, and spoke over her shoulders as he just touched her waist with his fingers. "A la bonne heure--Sophie!" "Oh, it isn't--it isn't right," she said, her body slightly inclining from him. "One minute out of a whole life--What does it matter! Ce ne fait rien! Good-bye-Sophie." Now she inclined towards him. He was about to put his arms round her, when he heard the distant sound of a horse's hoofs. He let her go, and turned towards the front door. Through it he saw Christine driving up the road. She would pass the house. "Good-bye-Sophie," he said again over her shoulder, softly; and, picking up his hat and stick, he left the house. Her eyes followed him dreamily as he went up the road. She sat down in a chair, the trance of the passionate moment still on her, and began to brood. She vaguely heard the rattle of a buggy--Christine's--as it passed the house, and her thoughts drifted into a new-discovered hemisphere where life was all a somnolent sort of joy and bodily love. She was roused at last by a song which came floating across the fields. The air she knew, and the voice she knew. The chanson was, "Le Voleur de grand Chemin!" The voice was her husband's. She knew the words, too; and even before she could hear them, they were fitting into the air: "Qui va la! There's some one in the orchard, There's a robber in the apple-trees; Qui va la! He is creeping through the doorway. Ah, allez-vous-en! Va-t'-en!" She hurriedly put away the cordial and the seed-cakes. She picked up the bottle. It was empty. Ferrol had drunk near half a pint of the liqueur! She must get another bottle of it somehow. It would never do for Magon to know that the precious anniversary cordial was all gone--in this way. She hurried towards the other room. The voice of the farrier-farmer was more distinct now. She could hear clearly the words of the song. She looked out. The square-shouldered, blue-shirted Magon was skirting the turnip field, making a short cut home. His straw hat was pushed back on his head, his scythe was over his shoulder. He had cut the last swathe in the field--now for Sophie. He was not handsome, and she had known that always; but he seemed rough and coarse to-day. She did not notice how well he fitted in with everything about him; and he was so healthy that even three glasses of that cordial would have sent him reeling to bed. As she passed into the dining-room, the words of the song followed her: "Qui va la! If you please, I own the mansion, And this is my grandfather's gun! Qui va la! Now you're a dead man, robber Ah, allez-vous-en! Va-t'-en!" CHAPTER XI "I saw you coming," Ferrol said, as Christine stopped the buggy. "You have been to see Magon and Sophie?" she asked. "Yes, for a minute," he answered. "Where are you going?" "Just for a drive," she replied. "Come, won't you?" He got in, and she drove on. "Where were you going?" she asked. "Why, to the old mill," was his reply. "I wanted a little walk, then a rest." Ten minutes later they were looking from a window of the mill, out upon the great wheel which had done all the work the past generations had given it to do, and was now dropping into decay as it had long dropped into disuse. Moss had gathered on the great paddles; many of them were broken, and the debris had been carried away by the freshets of spring and the floods of autumn. They were silent for a time. Presently she looked up at him. "You're much better to-day, "she said; "better than you've been since-- since that night!" "Oh, I'm all right," he answered; "right as can be." He suddenly turned on her, put his hand upon her arm, and said: "Come, now, tell me what there was between you and Vanne Castine--once upon a time. "He was in love with me five years ago," she said. "And five years ago you were in love with him, eh?" "How dare you say that to me!" she answered. "I never was. I always hated him." She told her lie with unscrupulous directness. He did not believe her; but what did that matter! It was no reason why he should put her at a disadvantage, and, strangely enough, he did not feel any contempt for her because she told the lie, nor because she had once cared for Castine. Probably in those days she had never known anybody who was very much superior to Castine. She was in love with himself now; that was enough, or nearly enough, and there was no particular reason why he should demand more from her than she demanded from him. She was lying to him now because--well, because she loved him. Like the majority of men, when women who love them have lied to them so, they have seen in it a compliment as strong as the act was weak. It was more to him now that this girl should love him than that she should be upright, or moral, or truthful. Such is the egotism and vanity of such men. "Well, he owes me several years of life. I put in a bad hour that night." He knew that "several years of life" was a misstatement; but, then, they were both sinners. Her eyes flashed, she stamped her foot, and her fingers clinched. "I wish I'd killed him when I killed his bear!" she said. Then excitedly she described the scene exactly as it occurred. He admired the dramatic force of it. He thrilled at the direct simplicity of the tale. He saw Vanne Castine in the forearms of the huge beast, with his eyes bulging from his head, his face becoming black, and he saw blind justice in that death grip; Christine's pistol at the bear's head, and the shoulder in the teeth of the beast, and then! "By the Lord Harry," he said, as she stood panting, with her hands fixed in the last little dramatic gesture, "what a little spitfire and brick you are!" All at once he caught her away from the open window and drew her to him. Whether what he said that moment, and what he did then, would have been said and done if it were not for the liqueur he had drunk at Sophie's house would be hard to tell; but the sum of it was that she was his and he was hers. She was to be his until the end of all, no matter what the end might be. She looked up at him, her face glowing, her bosom beating --beating, every pulse in her tingling. "You mean that you love me, and that--that you want-to marry me?" she said; and then, with a fervent impulse, she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him again and again. The directness of her question dumfounded him for the moment; but what she suggested (though it might be selfish in him to agree to it) would be the best thing that could happen to him. So he lied to her, and said: "Yes, that's what I meant. But, then, to tell you the sober truth, I'm as poor as a church mouse." He paused. She looked up at him with a sudden fear in her face. "You're not married?" she asked, "you're not married?" then, breaking off suddenly: "I don't care if you are, I don't! I love you--love you! Nobody would look after you as I would. I don't; no, I don't care." She drew up closer and closer to him. "No, I don't mean that I was married," he said. "I meant--what you know --that my life isn't worth, perhaps, a ten-days' purchase." Her face became pale again. "You can have my life," she said; "have it just as long as you live, and I'll make you live a year--yes, I'll make you live ten years. Love can do anything; it can do everything. We'll be married to-morrow." "That's rather difficult," he answered. "You see, you're a Catholic, and I'm a Protestant, and they wouldn't marry us here, I'm afraid; at least not at once, perhaps not at all. You see, I--I've only one lung." He had never spoken so frankly of his illness before. "Well, we can go over the border into the English province--into Upper Canada," she answered. "Don't you see? It's only a few miles' drive to a village. I can go over one day, get the licence; then, a couple of days after, we can go over together and be married. And then, then--" He smiled. "Well, then it won't make much difference, will it? We'll have to fit in one way or another, eh?" "We could be married afterwards by the Cure, if everybody made a fuss. The bishop would give us a dispensation. It's a great sin to marry a heretic, but--" "But love--eh, ma cigale!" Then he took her eagerly, tenderly into his arms; and probably he had then the best moment in his life. Sophie Farcinelle saw them driving back together. She was sitting at early supper with Magon, when, raising her head at the sound of wheels, she saw Christine laughing and Ferrol leaning affectionately towards her. Ferrol had forgotten herself and the incident of the afternoon. It meant nothing to him. With her, however, it was vital: it marked a change in her life. Her face flushed, her hands trembled, and she arose hurriedly and went to get something from the kitchen, that Magon might not see her face. CHAPTER XII Twenty men had suddenly disappeared from Bonaventure on the day that Ferrol visited Sophie Farcinelle, and it was only the next morning that the cause of their disappearance was generally known. There had been many rumours abroad that a detachment of men from the parish were to join Papineau. The Rebellion was to be publicly declared on a certain date near at hand, but nothing definite was known; and because the Cure condemned any revolt against British rule, in spite of the evils the province suffered from bad government, every recruit who joined Nic Lavilette's standard was sworn to secrecy. Louis Lavilette and his wife knew nothing of their son's complicity in the rumoured revolt--one's own people are generally the last to learn of one's misdeeds. Madame would have been sorely frightened and chagrined if she had known the truth, for she was partly English. Besides, if the Rebellion did not succeed, disgrace must come, and then good-bye to the progress of the Lavilettes, and goodbye, maybe, to her son! In spite of disappointments and rebuffs in many quarters, she still kept faith with her ambitions, and, fortunately for herself, she did not see the abject failure of many of her schemes. Some of the gentry from the neighbouring parishes had called, chiefly, she was aware, because of Mr. Ferrol. She was building the superstructure of her social ambitions on that foundation for the present. She told Louis sometimes, with tears of joy in her eyes, that a special Providence had sent Mr. Ferrol to them, and she did not know how to be grateful enough. He suggested a gift to the church in token of gratitude, but her thanksgiving did not take that form. Nic was entirely French at heart, and ignored his mother's nationality. He resented the English blood in his veins, and atoned for it by increased loyalty to his French origin. This was probably not so much a principle as a fancy. He had a kind of importance also in the parish, and in his own eyes, because he made as much in three months by buying and selling horses as most people did in a year. The respect of Bonaventure for his ability was considerable; and though it had no marked admiration for his character, it appreciated his drolleries, and was attracted by his high spirits. He had always been erratic, so that when he disappeared for days at a time no one thought anything of it, and when he came home to the Manor at unearthly hours it created no peculiar notice. He had chosen very good men for his recruits; for, though they talked much among themselves, they drew a cordon of silence round their little society of revolution. They vanished in the night, and Nic with them; but he returned the next afternoon when the fire of excitement was at its height. As he rode through the streets, people stopped him and poured out questions; but he only shrugged his shoulders, and gave no information, and neither denied nor affirmed anything. Acting under orders, he had marched his company to make conjunction with other companies at a point in the mountains twenty miles away, but had himself returned to get the five thousand dollars gathered by Papineau's agent. Now that the Rebellion was known, Nicolas intended to try and win his father and his father's money and horses over to the cause. Because Ferrol was an Englishman he made no confidant of him, and because he was a dying man he saw in him no menace to the cause. Besides, was not Ferrol practically dependent upon their hospitality? If he had guessed that his friend knew accurately of his movements since the night he had seen Vanne Castine hand him his commission from Papineau, he would have felt less secure: for, after all, love--or prejudice--of country is a principle in the minds of most men deeper than any other. When all other morals go, this latent tendency to stand by the blood of his clan is the last moral in man that bears the test without treason. If he had known that Ferrol had written to the Commandant at Quebec, telling him of the imminence of the Rebellion, and the secret recruiting and drilling going on in the parishes, his popular comrade might have paid a high price for his disclosure. That morning at sunrise, Christine, saying she was going upon a visit to the next parish, started away upon her mission to the English province. Ferrol had urged her to let him go, but she had refused. He had not yet fully recovered from his adventure with the bear, she said. Then he said they might go together; but she insisted that she must make the way clear, and have everything ready. They might go and find the minister away, and then--voila, what a chance for cancan! So she went alone. From his window he watched her depart; and as she drove away in the fresh morning he fell to thinking what it might seem like if he had to look forward to ten, twenty, or forty years with just such a woman as his wife. Now she was at her best (he did not deceive himself), but in ten years or less the effects of her early life would show in many ways. She had once loved Vanne Castine! and now vanity and cowardice, or unscrupulousness, made her lie about it. He would have her at her best --a young, vigorous radiant nature--for his short life, and then, good- bye, my lover, good-bye! Selfish? Of course. But she would rather-- she had said it--have him for the time he had to live than not at all. Position? What was his position? Cast off by his family, forgotten by his old friends, in debt, penniless--let position be hanged! Self- preservation was the first law. What was the difference between this girl and himself? Morals? She was better than himself, anyhow. She had genuine passions, and her sins would be in behalf of those genuine passions. He had kicked over the moral traces many a time from absolute selfishness. She had clean blood in her veins, she was good-looking, she had a quick wit, she was an excellent horse-woman--what then? If she wasn't so "well bred," that was a matter of training and opportunity which had never quite been hers. What was he himself? A loafer, "a deuced unfortunate loafer," but still a loafer. He had no trade and no profession. Confound it! how much better off, and how much better in reality, were these people who had trades and occupations. In the vigour and lithe activity of that girl's body was the force of generations of honest workers. He argued and thought--as every intelligent man in his position would have done--until he had come into the old life again, and into the presence of the old advantages and temptations! Christine pulled up for a moment on a little hill, and waved her whip. He shook his handkerchief from the window. That was their prearranged signal. He shook it until she had driven away beyond the hill and was lost to sight, and still stood there at the window looking out. Presently Madame Lavilette appeared in the garden below, and he was sure, from the way she glanced up at the window, and from her position in the shrubbery, that she had seen the signal. Madame did not look displeased. On the contrary, though an alliance with Christine now seemed unlikely, because of the state of Ferrol's health and his religion and nationality, it pleased her to think that it might have been. When she had passed into the house, Ferrol sat down on the broad window- sill, and looked out the way Christine had gone. He was thinking of the humiliation of his position, and how it would be more humiliating when he married Christine, should the Lavilettes turn against them--which was quite possible. And from outside: the whole parish--a few excepted-- sympathised with the Rebellion, and once the current of hatred of the English set in, he would be swept down by it. There were only three English people in the place. Then, if it became known that he had given information to the authorities, his life would be less uncertain than it was just now. Yet, confound the dirty lot of little rebels, it served them right! He couldn't sit by and see a revolt against British rule without raising a hand. Warn Nic? To what good? The result would be just the same. But if harm came to this intended brother-in-law-well, why borrow trouble? He was not the Lord in Heaven, that he could have everything as he wanted it! It was a toss-up, and he would see the sport out. "Have to cough your way through, my boy!" he said, as he swayed back and forth, the hard cough hacking in his throat. As he had said yesterday, there was only one thing to do: he must have that five thousand dollars which was to be handed over by the old seigneur. This time he did not attempt to find excuses; he called the thing by its proper name. "Well, it's stealing, or it's highway robbery, no matter how one looks at it," he said to himself. "I wonder what's the matter with me. I must have got started wrong somehow. Money to spend, playing at soldiering, made to believe I'd have a pot of money and an estate, and then told one fine day that a son and heir, with health in form and feature, was come, and Esau must go. No profession, except soldiering, debt staring me in the face, and a nasty mess of it all round. I wonder why it is that I didn't pull myself together, be honest to a hair, and fight my way through? I suppose I hadn't it in me. I wasn't the right metal at the start. There's always been a black sheep in our family, a gentleman or a lady, born without morals, and I happen to be the gentleman this generation. I always knew what was right, and liked it, and I always did what was wrong, and liked it--nearly always. But I suppose I was fated. I was bound to get into a hole, and I'm in it now, with one lung, and a wife in prospect to support. I suppose if I were to write down all the decent things I've thought in my life, and put them beside the indecent things I've done, nobody would believe the same man was responsible for them. I'm one of the men who ought to be put above temptation; be well bridled, well fed, and the mere cost of comfortable living provided, and then I'd do big things. But that isn't the way of the world; and so I feel that a morning like this, and the love of a girl like that" (he nodded towards the horizon into which Christine had gone) "ought to make a man sing a Te Deum. And yet this evening, or to-morrow evening, or the next, I'll steal five thousand dollars, if it can be done, and risk my neck in doing it--to say nothing of family honour, and what not." He got up from the window, went to his trunk, opened it, and, taking out a pistol, examined it carefully, cocking and uncorking it, and after loading it, and again trying the trigger, put it back again. There came a tap at the door, and to his call a servant entered with a glass of milk and whiskey, with which he always began the day. The taste of the liquid brought back the afternoon of the day before, and he suddenly stopped drinking, threw back his head, and laughed softly. "By Jingo, but that liqueur was stunning--and so was-Sophie . . . Sophie! That sounds compromisingly familiar this morning, and very improper also! But Sophie is a very nice person, and I ought to be well ashamed of myself. I needed the bit and curb both yesterday. It'll never do at all. If I'm going to marry Christine, we must have no family complications. 'Must have'!" he exclaimed. "But what if Sophie already?--good Lord!" It was a strange sport altogether, in which some people were bound to get a bad fall, himself probably among the rest. He intended to rob the brother, he had set the government going against the brother's revolutionary cause, he was going to marry one sister, and the other --the less thought and said about that matter the better. The afternoon brought Nic, who seemed perplexed and excited, but was most friendly. It seemed to Ferrol as if Nic wished to disclose something; but he gave him no opportunity. What he knew he knew, and he could make use of; but he wanted no further confidences. Ever since the night of the fight with the bear there had been nothing said on matters concerning the Rebellion. If Nicolas disclosed any secret now, it must surely be about the money, and that must not be if he could prevent it. But he watched his friend, nevertheless. Night came, and Christine did not return; eight o'clock, nine o'clock. Lavilette and his wife were a little anxious; but Ferrol and Nicolas made excuses for her, and, in the wild talk and gossip about the Rebellion, attention was easily shifted from her. Besides, Christine was well used to taking care of herself. Lavilette flatly refused to give Nic a penny for "the cause," and stormed at his connection with it; but at last became pacified, and agreed it was best that Madame Lavilette should know nothing about Nic's complicity just yet. At half past nine o'clock Nic left the house and took the road towards the Seigneury. CHAPTER XIII About half-way between the Seigneury and the main street of the village there was a huge tree, whose limbs stretched across the road and made a sort of archway. In the daytime, during the summer, foot travellers, carts and carriages, with their drivers, loitered in its shade as they passed, grateful for the rest it gave; but at night, even when it was moonlight, the wide branches threw a dark and heavy shadow, and the passage beneath them was gloomy travel. Many a foot traveller hesitated to pass into that umbrageous circle, and skirted the fence beyond the branches on the further side of the road instead. When Nicolas Lavilette, returning from the Seigneury with the precious bag of gold for Papineau, came hurriedly along the road towards the village, he half halted, with sudden premonition of danger, a dozen feet or so from the great tree. But like most young people, who are inclined to trust nothing but their own strong arms and what their eyes can see, he withstood the temptation to skirt the fence; and with a little half- scornful laugh at himself, yet a little timidity also (or he would not have laughed at all), he hurried under the branches. He had not gone three steps when the light of a dark lantern flashed suddenly in his face, and a pistol touched his forehead. All he could see was a figure clothed entirely in black, even to hands and face, with only holes for eyes, nose and mouth. He stood perfectly still; the shock was so sudden. There was something determined and deadly in the pose of the figure before him, in the touch of the weapon, in the clearness of the light. His eyes dropped, and fixed involuntarily upon the lantern. He had a revolver with him; but it was useless to attempt to defend himself with it. Not a word had been spoken. Presently, with the fingers that held the lantern, his assailant made a motion of Hands up! There was no reason why he should risk his life without a chance of winning, so he put up his hands. At another motion he drew out the bag of gold with his left hand, and, obeying the direction of another gesture, dropped it on the ground. There was a pause, then another gesture, which he pretended not to understand. "Your pistol!" said the voice in a whisper through the mask. He felt the cold steel at his forehead press a little closer; he also felt how steady it was. He was no fool. He had been in trouble before in his lifetime; he drew out the pistol, and passed it, handle first, to three fingers stretched out from the dark lantern. The figure moved to where the money and the pistol were, and said, in a whisper still: "Go!" He had one moment of wild eagerness to try his luck in a sudden assault, but that passed as suddenly as it came; and with the pistol still covering him, he moved out into the open road, with a helpless anger on him. A crescent moon was struggling through floes of fleecy clouds, the stars were shining, and so the road was not entirely dark. He went about thirty steps, then turned and looked back. The figure was still standing there, with the pistol and the light. He walked on another twenty or thirty steps, and once again looked back. The light and the pistol were still there. Again he walked on. But now he heard the rumble of buggy wheels behind. Once more he looked back: the figure and the light had gone. The buggy wheels sounded nearer. With a sudden feeling of courage, he turned round and ran back swiftly. The light suddenly flashed again. "It's no use," he said to himself, and turned and walked slowly along the road. The sound of the buggy wheels came still nearer. Presently it was obscured by passing under the huge branches of the tree. Then the horse, buggy and driver appeared at the other side, and in a few moments had overtaken him. He looked up sharply, scrutinisingly. Suddenly he burst out: "Holy mother, Chris, is that you! Where've you been? Are you all right?" She had whipped up her horse at first sight of him, thinking he might be some drunken rough. "Mais, mon dieu, Nic, is that you? I thought at first you were a highwayman!" "No, you've passed the highwayman! Come, let me get in." Five minutes afterwards she knew exactly what had happened to him. "Who could it be?" she asked. "I thought at first it was that beast Vanne Castine!" he answered; "he's the only one that knew about the money, besides the agent and the old seigneur. He brought word from Papineau. But it was too tall for him, and he wouldn't have been so quiet about it. Just like a ghost. It makes my flesh creep now!" It did not seem such a terrible thing to her at the moment, for she had in her pocket the licence to marry the Honourable Tom Ferrol upon the morrow, and she thought, with joy, of seeing him just as soon as she set foot in the doorway of the Manor Casimbault. It was something of a shock to her that she did not see him for quite a half hour after she arrived home, and that was half past ten o'clock. But women forget neglect quickly in the delight of a lover's presence; so her disappointment passed. Yet she could not help speaking of it. "Why weren't you at the door to meet me when I came back to-night with that-that in my pocket?" she asked him, his arm round her. "I've got a kicking lung, you know," he said, with a half ironical, half self-pitying smile. "Oh, forgive me, forgive me, Tom, my love!" she said as she buried her face on his breast. CHAPTER XIV Before he left for the front next morning to join his company and march to Papineau's headquarters, Nic came to Ferrol, told him, with rage and disappointment, the story of the highway robbery, and also that he hoped Ferrol would not worry about the Rebellion, and would remain at the Manor Casimbault in any case. "Anyhow," said he, "my mother's half English; so you're not alone. We're going to make a big fight for it. We've stood it as long as we can. But we're friends in this, aren't we, Ferrol?" There was a pause, in which Ferrol sipped his whiskey and milk, and continued dressing. He set the glass down, and looked towards the open window, through which came the smell of the ripe orchard and the fragrance of the pines. He turned to. Lavilette at last and said, as he fastened his collar: "Yes, you and I are friends, Nic; but I'm a Britisher, and my people have been Britishers since Edward the Third's time; and for this same Quebec two of my great-grand-uncles fought and lost their lives. If I were sound of wind and limb I'd fight, like them, to keep what they helped to get. You're in for a rare good beating, and, see, my friend--while I wouldn't do you any harm personally, I'd crawl on my knees from here to the citadel at Quebec to get a pot-shot at your rag-tag-and-bobtail 'patriots.' You can count me a first-class enemy to your 'cause,' though I'm not a first-class fighting man. And now, Nic, give me a lift with my coat. This shoulder jibs a bit since the bear-baiting." Lavilette was naturally prejudiced in Ferrol's favour; and this deliberate and straightforward patriotism more pleased than offended him. His own patriotism was not a deep or lasting thing: vanity and a restless spirit were its fountains of inspiration. He knew that Ferrol was penniless--or he was so yesterday--and this quiet defiance of events in the very camp of the enemy could not but appeal to his ebullient, Gallic chivalry. Ferrol did not say these things because he had five thousand dollars behind him, for he would have said them if he were starving and dying--perhaps out of an inherent stubbornness, perhaps because this hereditary virtue in him would have been as hard to resist as his sins. "That's all right, Ferrol," answered Lavilette. "I hope you'll stay here at the Manor, no matter what comes. You're welcome. Will you?" "Yes, I'll stay, and glad to. I can't very well do anything else. I'm bankrupt. Haven't got a penny--of my own," he added, with daring irony. "Besides, it's comfortable here, and I feel like one of the family; and, anyhow, Life is short and Time is a pacer!" His wearing cough emphasised the statement. "It won't be easy for you in Bonaventure," said Nicolas, walking restlessly up and down. "They're nearly all for the cause, all except the Cure. But he can't do much now, and he'll keep out of the mess. By the time he has a chance to preach against it, next Sunday, every man that wants to 'll be at the front, and fighting. But you'll be all right, I think. They like you here." "I've a couple of good friends to see me through," was the quiet reply. "Who are they?" Ferrol went to his trunk, took out a pair of pistols, and balanced them lightly in his hands. "Good to confuse twenty men," he said. "A brace of 'em are bound to drop, and they don't know which one." He raised a pistol lazily, and looked out along its barrel through the open, sunshiny window. Something in the pose of the body, in the curve of the arm, struck Nicolas strangely. He moved almost in front of Ferrol. There came back to him mechanically the remembrance of a piece of silver on the butt of one of the highwayman's pistols! The same piece of silver was on the butt of Ferrol's pistol. It startled him; but he almost laughed to him self at the absurdity of the suggestion. Ferrol was the last man in the world to play a game like that, and with him. Still he could not resist a temptation. He stepped in front of the pistol, almost touching it with his forehead, looking at Ferrol as he had looked at the highwayman last night. "Look out, it's loaded!" said Ferrol, lowering the weapon coolly, and not showing by sign or muscle that he understood Lavilette's meaning. "I should think you'd had enough of pistols for one twenty-four hours." "Do you know, Ferrol, you looked just then so like the robber last night that, for one moment, I half thought!--And the pistol, too, looks just the same--that silver piece on the butt!" "Oh, yes, this piece for the name of the owner!" said Ferrol, in a laughing brogue, and he coughed a little. "Well, maybe some one did use this pistol last night. It wouldn't be hard to open my trunk. Let's see; whom shall we suspect?" Lavilette was entirely reassured, if indeed he needed reassurance. Ferrol coughed still more, and was obliged to sit down on the side of the bed and rest himself against the foot-board. "There's a new jug of medicine or cordial come this morning from Shangois, the notary," said Lavilette. "I just happened to think of it. What he does counts. He knows a lot." Ferrol's eyes showed interest at once. "I'll try it. I'll try it. The stuff Gatineau the miller sent doesn't do any good now." "Shangois is here--he's downstairs--if you want to see him." Ferrol nodded. He was tired of talking. "I'm going," said Lavilette, holding out his hand. "I'll join my company to-day, and the scrimmage 'll begin as soon as we reach Papineau. We've got four hundred men." Ferrol tried to say something, but he was struggling with the cough in his throat. He held out his hand, and Nicolas took it. At last he was able to say: "Good luck to you, Nic, and to the devil with the Rebellion! You're in for a bad drubbing." Nicolas had a sudden feeling of anger. This superior air of Ferrol's was assumed by most Englishmen in the country, and it galled him. "We'll not ask quarter of Englishmen; no-sacre!" he said in a rage. "Well, Nic, I'm not so sure of that. Better do that than break your pretty neck on a taut rope," was the lazy reply. With an oath, Lavilette went out, banging the door after him. Ferrol shrugged his shoulder with a stoic ennui, and put away the pistols in the trunk. He was thinking how reckless he had been to take them out; and yet he was amused, too, at the risk he had run. A strange indifference possessed him this morning--indifference to everything. He was suffering reaction from the previous day's excitement. He had got the five thousand dollars, and now all interest in it seemed to have departed. Suddenly he said to himself, as he ran a brush around his coat-collar: "'Pon my soul, I forgot; this is my wedding day!--the great day in a man's life, the immense event, after which comes steady happiness or the devil to pay." He stepped to the window and looked out. It was only six o'clock as yet. He could see the harvesters going to their labours in the fields of wheat and oats, the carters already bringing in little loads of hay. He could hear their marche-'t'-en! to the horses. Over by a little house on the river bank stood an old woman sharpening a sickle. He could see the flash of the steel as the stone and metal gently clashed. Presently a song came up to him, through the garden below, from the house. The notes seemed to keep time to the hand of the sickle- sharpener. He had heard it before, but only in snatches. Now it seemed to pierce his senses and to flood his nerves with feeling. The air was sensuous, insinuating, ardent. The words were full of summer and of that dramatic indolence of passion which saved the incident at Magon Farcinelle's from being as vulgar as it was treacherous. The voice was Christine's, on her wedding day. "Oh, hark how the wind goes, the wind goes (And dark goes the stream by the mill!) Oh, see where the storm blows, the storm blows (There's a rider comes over the hill!) "He went with the sunshine one morning (Oh, loud was the bugle and drum!) My soldier, he gave me no warning (Oh, would that my lover might come!) "My kisses, my kisses are waiting (Oh, the rider comes over the hill!) In summer the birds should be mating (Oh, the harvest goes down to the mill!) "Oh, the rider, the rider he stayeth (Oh, joy that my lover hath come!) We will journey together he sayeth (No more with the bugle and drum!)" He caught sight of Christine for a moment as she passed through the garden towards the stable. Her gown was of white stuff, with little spots of red in it, and a narrow red ribbon was shot through the collar. Her hat was a pretty white straw, with red artificial flowers upon it. She wore at her throat a medallion brooch: one of the two heirlooms of the Lavilette family. It had belonged to the great-grandmother of Monsieur Louis Lavilette, and was the one security that this ambitious family did not spring up, like a mushroom, in one night. It had always touched Christine's imagination as a child. Some native instinct in, her made her prize it beyond everything else. She used to make up wonderful stories about it, and tell them to Sophie, who merely wondered, and was not sure but that Christine was wicked; for were not these little romances little lies? Sophie's imagination was limited. As the years went on Christine finally got possession of the medallion, and held it against all opposition. Somehow, with it on this morning, she felt diminish the social distance between herself and Ferrol. Ferrol himself thought nothing of social distance. Men, as a rule, get rather above that sort of thing. The woman: that was all that was in his mind. She was good to look at: warm, lovable, fascinating in her little daring wickednesses; a fiery little animal, full of splendid impulses, gifted with a perilous temperament: and she loved him. He had a kind of exultation at the very fierceness of her love for him, of what she had done to prove her love: her fury at Vanne Castine, the slaughter of the bear, and the intention to kill Vanne himself; and he knew that she would do more than that, if a great test came. Men feel surer of women than women feel of men. He sat down on the broad window-ledge, still sipping his whiskey and milk, as he looked at her. She was very good to see. Presently she had to cross a little plot of grass. The dew was still on it. She gathered up her skirts and tip-toed quickly across it. The action was attractive enough, for she had a lithe smoothness of motion. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation of surprise. "White stockings--humph!" he said. Somehow those white stockings suggested the ironical comment of the world upon his proposed mesalliance; then he laughed good-humouredly. "Taste is all a matter of habit, anyhow," said he to himself. "My own sister wouldn't have had any better taste if she hadn't been taught. And what am I? "What am I? I drink more whiskey in a day than any three men in the country. I don't do a stroke of work; I've got debts all over the world; I've mulcted all my friends; I've made fools of two or three women in my time; I've broken every commandment except--well, I guess I've broken every one, if it comes to that, in spirit, anyhow. I'm a thief, a fire- eating highwayman, begad, and here I am, with a perforated lung, going to marry a young girl like that, without one penny in the world except what I stole! What beasts men are! The worst woman may be worse than the worst man, but all men are worse than most women. But she wants to marry me. She knows exactly what I am in health and prospects; so why shouldn't I?" He drew himself up, thinking honestly. He believed that he would live if he married Christine; that his "cold" would get better; that the hole in his lung would heal. It was only a matter of climate; he was sure of it. Christine had a few hundred dollars--she had told him so. Suppose he took three hundred dollars of the five thousand dollars: that would leave four thousand seven hundred dollars for his sister. He could go away south with Christine, and could live on five or six hundred dollars a year; then he'd be fit for something. He could go to work. He could join the Militia, if necessary. Anyhow, he could get something to do when he got well. He drank some more whiskey and milk. "Self-preservation, that's the thing; that's the first law," he said. "And more: if the only girl I ever loved, ever really loved--loved from the crown of her head to the sole of her feet--were here to-day, and Christine stood beside her, little plebeian with a big heart, by Heaven, I'd choose Christine. I can trust her, though she is a little liar. She loves, and she'll stick; and she's true where she loves. Yes; if all the women in the world stood beside Christine this morning, I'd look them all over, from duchess to danseuse, and I'd say, 'Christine Lavilette, I'm a scoundrel. I haven't a penny in the world. I'm a thief; a thief who believes in you. You know what love is; you know what fidelity is. No matter what I did, you would stand by me to the end. To the last day of my life, I'll give you my heart and my hand; and as you are faithful to me, so I will be faithful to you, so help me God!' "I don't believe I ever could have run straight in life. I couldn't have been more than four years old when I stole the peaches from my mother's dressing-table; and I lied just as coolly then as I could now. I made love to a girl when I was ten years old." He laughed to himself at the remembrance. "Her father had a foundry. She used to wear a red dress, I remember, and her hair was brown. She sang like a little lark. I was half mad about her; and yet I knew that I didn't really love her. Still, I told her that I did. I suppose it was the cursed falseness of my whole nature. I know that whenever I have said most, and felt most, something in me kept saying all the time: 'You're lying, you're lying, you're lying!' Was I born a liar? I wonder if the first words I ever spoke were a lie? I wonder, when I kissed my mother first, and knew that I was kissing her, if the same little devil that sits up in my head now, said then: 'You're lying, you're lying, you're lying.' It has said so enough times since. I loved to be with my mother; yet I never felt, even when she died--and God knows I felt bad enough then! I never felt that my love was all real. It had some infernal note of falseness somewhere, some miserable, hollow place where the sound of my own voice, when I tried to speak the truth, mocked me! I wonder if the smiles I gave, before I was able to speak at all, were only blarney? I wonder, were they only from the wish to stand well with everybody, if I could? It must have been that; and how much I meant, and how much I did not mean, God alone knows! "What a sympathy I have always had for criminals! I have always wanted, or, anyhow, one side of me has always wanted, to do right, and the other side has always done wrong. I have sympathised with the just, but I have always felt that I'd like to help the criminal to escape his punishment. If I had been more real with that girl in New York, I wonder whether she wouldn't have stuck to me? When I was with her I could always convince her; but, I remember, she told me once that, when I was away from her, she somehow felt that I didn't really love her. That's always been the way. When I was with people, they liked me; when I was away from them, I couldn't depend upon them. No; upon my soul, of all the friends I've ever had, there's not one that I know of that I could go to now--except my sister, poor girl!--and feel sure that no matter what I did, they'd stick to me to the end. I suppose the fault is mine. If I'd been worth the standing by, I'd have been the better stood by. But this girl, this little French provincial, with a heart of fire and gold, with a touch of sin in her, and a thumping artery of truth, she would walk with me to the gallows, and give her life to save my life--yes, a hundred times. Well, then, I'll start over again; for I've found the real thing. I'll be true to her just as long as she's true to me. I'll never lie to her; and I'll do something else--something else. I'll tell her--" He reached out, picked a wild rose from the vine upon the wall, and fastened it in his button-hole, with a defiant sort of smile, as there came a tap to his door. "Come in," he said. The door opened, and in stepped Shangois, the notary. He carried a jug under his arm, which, with a nod, he set down at the foot of the bed. "M'sieu'," said he, "it is a thing that cured the bishop; and once, when a prince of France was at Quebec, and had a bad cold, it cured him. The whiskey in it I made myself--very good white wine." Ferrol looked at the little man curiously. He had only spoken with him once or twice, but he had heard the numberless legends about him, and the Cure had told him many of his sayings, a little weird and sometimes maliciously true to the facts of life. Ferrol thanked the little man, and motioned to a chair. There was, however, a huge chest against the wall near the window, and Shangois sat down on this, with his legs hunched up to his chin, looking at Ferrol with steady, inquisitive eyes. Ferrol laughed outright. A grotesque thought occurred to him. This little black notary was exactly like the weird imp which, he had always imagined, sat high up in his brain, dropping down little ironies and devilries--his personified conscience; or, perhaps, the truth left out of him at birth and given this form, to be with him, yet not of him. Shangois did not stir, nor show by even the wink of an eyelid that he recognised the laughter, or thought that he was being laughed at. Presently Ferrol sat down and looked at Shangois without speaking, as Shangois looked at him. He smiled more than once, however, as the thought recurred to him. "Well?" he said at last. "What if she finds out about the five thousand dollars--eh, m'sieu'?" Ferrol was completely dumfounded. The brief question covered so much ground--showed a knowledge of the whole case. Like Conscience itself, the little black notary had gone straight to the point, struck home. He was keen enough, however, had sufficient self-command, not to betray himself, but remained unmoved outwardly, and spoke calmly. "Is that your business--to go round the parish asking conundrums?" he said coolly. "I can't guess the answer to that one, can you?" Shangois hated cowards, and liked clever people--people who could answer him after his own fashion. Nearly everybody was afraid of his tongue and of him. He knew too much; which was a crime. "I can find out," he replied, showing his teeth a little. "Then you're not quite sure yourself, little devilkin?" "The girl is a riddle. I am not the great reader of riddles." "I didn't call you that. You're only a common little imp." Shangois showed his teeth in a malicious smile. "Why did you set me the riddle, then?" Ferrol continued, his eyes fixed with apparent carelessness on the other's face. "I thought she might have told you the answer." "I never asked her the puzzle. Have you?" By instinct, and from the notary's reputation, Ferrol knew that he was in the presence of an honest man at least, and he waited most anxiously for an answer, for his fate might hang on it. "M'sieu', I have not seen her since yesterday morning." "Well, what would you do if you found out about the five thousand dollars?" "I would see what happened to it; and afterwards I would see that a girl of Bonaventure did not marry a Protestant, and a thief." Ferrol rose from his chair, coughing a little. Walking over to Shangois, he caught him by both ears and shook the shaggy head back and forth. "You little scrap of hell," he said in a rage, "if you ever come within fifty feet of me again I'll send you where you came from!" Though Shangois's eyes bulged from his head, he answered: "I was only ten feet away from you last night under the elm!" Suddenly Ferrol's hand slipped down to Shangois's throat. Ferrol's fingers tightened, pressed inwards. "Now, see, I know what you mean. Some one has robbed Nicolas Lavilette of five thousand dollars. You dare to charge me with it, curse you. Let me see if there's any more lies on your tongue!" With the violence of the pressure Shangois's tongue was forced out of his mouth. Suddenly a paroxysm of coughing seized Ferrol, and he let go and staggered back against the window ledge. Shangois was transformed--an animal. No human being had ever seen him as he was at this moment. The fingers of his one hand opened and shut convulsively, his arms worked up and down, his face twitched, his teeth showed like a beast's as he glared at Ferrol. He looked as though he were about to spring upon the now helpless man. But up from the garden below there came the sound of a voice--Christine's--singing. His face quieted, and his body came to its natural pose again, though his eyes retained an active malice. He turned to go. "Remember what I tell you," said Ferrol: "if you publish that lie, you'll not live to hear it go about. I mean what I say." Blood showed upon his lips, and a tiny little stream flowed down the corner of his mouth. Whenever he felt that warm fluid on his tongue he was certain of his doom, and the horror of slowly dying oppressed him, angered him. It begot in him a desire to end it all. He had a hatred of suicide; but there were other ways. "I'll have your life, or you'll have mine. I'm not to be played with," he added. The sentences were broken by coughing, and his handkerchief was wet and red. "It is no concern of the world," answered Shangois, stretching up his throat, for he still felt the pressure of Ferrol's fingers--"only of the girl and her brother. The girl--I saved her once before from your friend Vanne Castine, and I will save her from you--but, yes! It is nothing to the world, to Bonaventure, that you are a robber; it is everything to her. You are all robbers--you English--cochons!" He opened the door and went out. Ferrol was about to follow him, but he had a sudden fit of weakness, and he caught up a pillow, and, throwing it on the chest where Shangois had sat, stretched himself upon it. He lay still for quite a long time, and presently fell into a doze. In those days no event made a lasting impression on him. When it was over it ended, so far as concerned any disturbing remembrances of it. He was awakened (he could not have slept for more than fifteen minutes) by a tapping at his door, and his name spoken softly. He went to the door and opened it. It was Christine. He thought she seemed pale, also that she seemed nervous; but her eyes were full of light and fire, and there was no mistaking the look in her face: it was all for him. He set down her agitation to the adventure they were about to make together. He stepped back, as if inviting her to enter, but she shook her head. "No, not this morning. I will meet you at the old mill in half an hour. The parish is all mad about the Rebellion, and no one will notice or talk of anything else. I have the best pair of horses in the stable; and we can drive it in two hours, easy." She took a paper from her pocket. "This is--the--license," she added, and she blushed. Then, with a sudden impulse, she stepped inside the room, threw her arms about his neck and kissed him, and he clasped her to his breast. "My darling Tom!" she said, and then hastened away, with tears in her eyes. He saw the tears. "I wonder what they were for?" he said musingly, as he opened up the official blue paper. "For joy?" He laughed a little uneasily as he said it. His eyes ran through the document. "The Honourable Tom Ferrol, of Stavely Castle, County Galway, Ireland, bachelor, and Christine Marie Lavilette, of the Township of Bonaventure, in the Province of Lower Canada, spinster, Are hereby granted," etc., etc., etc., "according to the laws of the Province of Upper Canada," etc., etc., etc. He put it in his pocket. "For better or for worse, then," he said, and descended the stairs. Presently, as he went through the village, he noticed signs of hostility to himself. Cries of Vive la Canada! Vive la France! a bas l'Anglais! came to him out of the murmuring and excitement. But the Regimental Surgeon took off his cap to him, very conspicuously advancing to meet him, and they exchanged a few words. "By the way, monsieur," the Regimental Surgeon added, as he took his leave, "I knew of this some days ago, and, being a justice of the peace, it was my duty to inform the authorities--yes of course! One must do one's duty in any case," he said, in imitation of English bluffness, and took his leave. Ten minutes later Christine and Ferrol were on their way to the English province to be married. That afternoon at three o'clock, as they left the little English-speaking village man and wife, they heard something which startled them both. It was a bear-trainer, singing to his bear the same weird song, without words, which Vanne Castine sang to Michael. Over in another street they could see the bear on his hind feet, dancing, but they could not see the man. Christine glanced at Ferrol anxiously, for she was nervous and excited, though her face had also a look of exultant happiness. "No, it's not Castine!" he said, as if in reply to her look. In a vague way, however, she felt it to be ominous. CHAPTER XV The village had no thought or care for anything except the Rebellion and news of it; and for several days Ferrol and Christine lived their new life unobserved by the people of the village, even by the household of Manor Casimbault. It almost seemed that Ferrol's prophecy regarding himself was coming true, for his cheek took on a heightened colour, his step a greater elasticity, and he flung his shoulders out with a little of the old military swagger: cheerful, forgetful of all the world, and buoyant in what he thought to be his new-found health and permanent happiness. Vague reports came to the village concerning the Rebellion. There were not a dozen people in the village who espoused the British cause; and these few were silent. For the moment the Lavilettes were popular. Nicolas had made for them a sort of grand coup. He had for the moment redeemed the snobbishness of two generations. After his secret marriage, Ferrol was not seen in the village for some days, and his presence and nationality were almost forgotten by the people: they only thought of what was actively before their eyes. On the fifth day after his marriage, which was Saturday, he walked down to the village, attracted by shouting and unusual excitement. When he saw the cause of the demonstration he had a sudden flush of anger. A flag-staff had been erected in the centre of the village, and upon it had been run up the French tricolour. He stood and looked at the shouting crowd a moment, then swung round and went to the office of the Regimental Surgeon, who met him at the door. When he came out again he carried a little bundle under his left arm. He made straight for the crowd, which was scattered in groups, and pushed or threaded his way to the flag- staff. He was at least a head taller than any man there, and though he was not so upright as he had been, the lines of his figure were still those of a commanding personality. A sort of platform had been erected around the flag-staff and on it a drunken little habitant was talking treason. Without a word, Ferrol stepped upon the platform, and, loosening the rope, dropped the tricolour half-way down the staff before his action was quite comprehended by the crowd. Presently a hoarse shout proclaimed the anger and consternation of the habitants. "Leave that flag alone," shouted a dozen voices. "Leave it where it is!" others repeated with oaths. He dropped it the full length of the staff, whipped it off the string, and put his foot upon it. Then he unrolled the bundle which he had carried under his arm. It was the British flag. He slipped it upon the string, and was about to haul it up, when the drunken orator on the platform caught him by the arm with fiery courage. "Here, you leave that alone: that's not our flag, and if you string it up, we'll string you up, bagosh!" he roared. Ferrol's heavy walking-stick was in his right hand. "Let go my arm- quick!" he said quietly. He was no coward, and these people were, and he knew it. The habitant drew back. "Get off the platform," he said with quiet menace. He turned quickly to the crowd, for some had sprung towards the platform to pull him off. Raising his voice, he said: "Stand back, and hear what I've got to say. You're a hundred to one. You can probably kill me; but before you do that I shall kill three or four of you. I've had to do with rioters before. You little handful of people here--little more than half a million--imagine that you can defeat thirty-five millions, with an army of half a million, a hundred battle- ships, ten thousand cannon and a million rifles. Come now, don't be fools. The Governor alone up there in Montreal has enough men to drive you all into the hills of Maine in a week. You think you've got the start of Colborne? Why, he has known every movement of Papineau and your rebels for the last two months. You can bluster and riot to-day, but look out for to-morrow. I am the only Englishman here among you. Kill me; but watch what your end will be! For every hair of my head there will be one less habitant in this province. You haul down the British flag, and string up your tricolour in this British village while there is one Britisher to say, 'Put up that flag again!'--You fools!" He suddenly gave the rope a pull, and the flag ran up half-way; but as he did so a stone was thrown. It flew past his head, grazing his temple. A sharp point lacerated the flesh, and the blood flowed down his cheek. He ran the flag up to its full height, swiftly knotted the cord and put his back against the pole. Grasping his stick he prepared himself for an attack. "Mind what I say," he cried; "the first man that comes will get what for!" There was a commotion in the crowd; consternation and dismay behind Ferrol, and excitement and anger in front of him. Three men were pushing their way through to him. Two of them were armed. They reached the platform and mounted it. It was the Regimental Surgeon and two British soldiers. The Regimental Surgeon held a paper in his hand. "I have here," he said to the crowd, "a proclamation by Sir John Colborne. The rebels have been defeated at three points, and half of the men from Bonaventure who joined Papineau have been killed. The ringleader, Nicolas Lavilette, when found, will be put on trial for his life. Now, disperse to your homes, or every man of you will be arrested and tried by court-martial." The crowd melted away like snow, and they hurried not the less because the stone which some one had thrown at Ferrol had struck a lad in the head, and brought him senseless and bleeding to the ground. Ferrol picked up the tricolour and handed it to the Regimental Surgeon. "I could have done it alone, I believe," he said; "and, upon my soul, I'm sorry for the poor devils. Suppose we were Englishmen in France, eh?" CHAPTER XVI The fight was over. The childish struggle against misrule had come to a childish end. The little toy loyalists had been broken all to pieces. A few thousand Frenchmen, with a vague patriotism, had shied some harmless stones at the British flag-staff on the citadel: that was all. Obeying the instincts of blood, religion, race, and language, they had made a haphazard, sidelong charge upon their ancient conquerors, had spluttered and kicked a little, and had then turned tail upon disaster and defeat. An incoherent little army had been shattered into fugitive factors, and every one of these hurried and scurried for a hole of safety into which he could hide. Some were mounted, but most were on foot. Officers fared little better than men. It was "Save who can": they were all on a dead level of misfortune. Hundreds reached no cover, but were overtaken and driven back to British headquarters. In their terror, twenty brave rebels of two hours ago were to be captured by a single British officer of infantry speaking bad French. Two of these hopeless fugitives were still fortunate enough to get a start of the hounds of retaliation and revenge. They were both mounted, and had far to go to reach their destination. Home was the one word in the mind of each; and they both came from Bonaventure. The one was a tall, athletic young man, who had borne a captain's commission in Papineau's patriot army. He rode a sorel horse--a great, wiry raw-bone, with a lunge like a moose, and legs that struck the ground with the precision of a piston-rod. As soon as his nose was turned towards Bonaventure he smelt the wind of home in his nostrils; his hatchet head jerked till he got the bit straight between his teeth; then, gripping it as a fretful dog clamps the bone which his master pretends to wrest from him, he leaned down to his work, and the mud, the new-fallen snow and the slush flew like dirty sparks, and covered man and horse. Above, an uncertain, watery moon flew in and out among the shifting clouds; and now and then a shot came through the mist and the half dusk, telling of some poor fugitive fighting, overtaken, or killed. The horse neither turned head nor slackened gait. He was like a living machine, obeying neither call nor spur, but travelling with an unchanging speed along the level road, and up and down hill, mile after mile. In the rider's heart were a hundred things; among them fear, that miserable depression which comes with the first defeats of life, the falling of the mercury from passionate activity to that frozen numbness which betrays the exhausted nerve and despairing mind. The horse could not go fast enough; the panic of flight was on him. He was conscious of it, despised himself for it; but he could not help it. Yet, if he were overtaken, he would fight; yes, fight to the end, whatever it might be. Nicolas Lavilette had begun to unwind the coil of fortune and ambition which his mother had long been engaged in winding. A mile or two behind was another horse and another rider. The animal was clean of limb, straight and shapely of body, with a leg like a lady's, and heart and wind to travel till she dropped. This mare the little black notary, Shangois, had cheerfully stolen from beside the tent of the English general. The bridle-rein hung upon the wrist of the notary's palsied left hand, and in his right hand he carried the long sabre of an artillery officer, which he had picked up on the battlefield. He rode like a monkey clinging to the back of a hound, his shoulder hunched, his body bent forward even with the mare's neck, his knees gripping the saddle with a frightened tenacity, his small, black eyes peering into the darkness before him, and his ears alert to the sound of pursuers. Twenty men of the British artillery were also off on a chase that pleased them well. The hunt was up. It was not only the joy of killing, but the joy of gain, that spurred them on; for they would have that little black thief who stole the general's brown mare, or they would know the reason why. As the night wore on, Lavilette could hear hoof-beats behind him; those of the mare growing clearer and clearer, and those of the artillerymen remaining about the same, monotonously steady. He looked back, and saw the mare lightly leaning to her work, and a little man hanging to her back. He did not know who it was; and if he had known he would have wondered. Shangois had ridden to camp to fetch him back to Bonaventure for two purposes: to secure the five thousand dollars from Ferrol, and to save Nic's sister from marrying a highwayman. These reasons he would have given to Nic Lavilette, but other ulterior and malicious ideas were in his mind. He had no fear, no real fear. His body shrank, but that was because he had been little used to rough riding and to peril. But he loved this game too, though there was a troop of foes behind him; and as long as they rode behind him he would ride on. He foresaw a moment when he would stop, slide to the ground, and with his sabre kill one man--or more. Yes, he would kill one man. He had a devilish feeling of delight in thinking how he would do it, and how red the sabre would look when he had done it. He wished he had a hundred hands and a hundred sabres in those hands. More than once he had been in danger of his life, and yet he had had no fear. He had in him the power of hatred; and he hated Ferrol as he had never hated anything in his life. He hated him as much as, in a furtive sort of way, he loved the rebellious, primitive and violent Christine. As he rode on a hundred fancies passed through his brain, and they all had to do with killing or torturing. As a boy dreams of magnificent deeds of prowess, so he dreamed of deeds of violence and cruelty. In his life he had been secret, not vicious; he had enjoyed the power which comes from holding the secrets of others, and that had given him pleasure enough. But now, as if the true passion, the vital principle, asserted itself at the very last, so with the shadow of death behind him, his real nature was dominant. He was entirely sane, entirely natural, only malicious. The night wore on, and lifted higher into the sky, and the grey dawn crept slowly up: first a glimmer, then a neutral glow, then a sort of darkness again, and presently the candid beginning of day. As they neared the Parish of Bonaventure, Lavilette looked back again, and saw the little black notary a few hundred yards behind. He recognised him this time, waved a hand, and then called to his own fagged horse. Shangois's mare was not fagged; her heart and body were like steel. Not a quarter of a mile behind them both were three of the twenty artillerymen. Lavilette came to the bridge shouting for Baby, the keeper. Baby recognised him, and ran to the lever even as the sorel galloped up. For the first time in the ride, Nic stuck spurs harshly into the sorel's side. With a grunt of pain the horse sprang madly on. A half-dozen leaps more and they were across, even as the bridge began to turn; for Baby had not recognised the little black notary, and supposed him to be one of Nic's pursuers; the others he saw further back in the road. It was only when Shangois was a third of the way across, that he knew the mare's rider. There was no time to turn the bridge back, and there was no time for Shangois to stop the headlong pace of the mare. She gave a wild whinny of fright, and jumped cornerwise, clear out across the chasm, towards the moving bridge. Her front feet struck the timbers, and then, without a cry, mare and rider dropped headlong down to the river beneath, swollen by the autumn rains. Baby looked down and saw the mare's head thrust above the water, once, twice; then there was a flash of a sabre--and nothing more. Shangois, with his dreams of malice and fighting, and the secrets of a half-dozen parishes strapped to his back, had dropped out of Bonaventure, as a stone crumbles from a bank into a stream, and many waters pass over it, and no one inquires whither it has gone, and no one mourns for it. CHAPTER XVII ON Sunday morning Ferrol lay resting on a sofa in a little room off the saloon. He had suffered somewhat from the bruise on his head, and while the Lavilettes, including Christine, were at mass, he remained behind, alone in the house, save for two servants in the kitchen. From where he lay he could look down into the village. He was thinking of the tangle into which things had got. Feeling was bitter against him, and against the Lavilettes also, now that the patriots were defeated. It had gone about that he had warned the Governor. The habitants, in their blind way, blamed him for the consequences of their own misdoing. They blamed Nicolas Lavilette. They blamed the Lavilettes for their friend ship with Ferrol. They talked and blustered, yet they did not interfere with the two soldiers who kept guard at the home of the Regimental Surgeon. It was expected that the Cure would speak of the Rebellion from the altar this morning. It was also rumoured that he would have something to say about the Lavilettes; and Christine had insisted upon going. He laughed to think of her fury when he suggested that the Cure would probably have something unpleasant to say about himself. She would go and see to that herself, she said. He was amused, and yet he was not in high spirits, for he had coughed a great deal since the incident of the day before, and his strength was much weakened. Presently he heard a footstep in the room, and turned over so that he might see. It was Sophie Farcinelle. Before he had time to speak or to sit up, she had dropped a hand on his shoulder. Her face was aflame. "You have been badly hurt, and I'm very sorry," she said. "Why haven't you been to see me? I looked for you. I looked every day, and you didn't come, and--and I thought you had forgotten. Have you? Have you, Mr. Ferrol?" He had raised himself on his elbow, and his face was near hers. It was not in him to resist the appealing of a pretty woman, and he had scarcely grasped the fact that he was a married man, his clandestine meetings with his wife having had, to this point, rather an air of adventure and irresponsibility. It is hard to say what he might have done or left undone; but, as Sophie's face was within an inch of his own, the door of the room suddenly opened, and Christine appeared. The indignation that had sent her back from mass to Ferrol was turned into another indignation now. Sophie, frightened, turned round and met her infuriated look. She did not move, however. "Leave this room at once. What do you want here?" Christine said, between gasps of anger. "The room is as much mine as yours," answered Sophie, sullenly. "The man isn't," retorted Christine, with a vicious snap of her teeth. "Come, come," said Ferrol, in a soothing tone, rising from the sofa and advancing. "What's he to you?" said Sophie, scornfully. "My husband: that's all!" answered Christine. "And now, if you please, will you go to yours? You'll find him at mass. He'll have plenty of praying to do if he prays for you both--voila!" "Your husband!" said Sophie, in a husky voice, dumfounded and miserable. "Is that so?" she added to Ferrol. "Is she-your wife?" "That's the case," he answered, "and, of course," he added in a mollifying tone, "being my sister as well as Christine's, there's no reason why you shouldn't be alone with me in the room a few moments. Is there now?" he added to Christine. The acting was clever enough, but not quite convincing, and Christine was too excited to respond to his blarney. "He can't be your real husband," said Sophie, hardly above a whisper. "The Cure didn't marry you, did he?" She looked at Ferrol doubtfully. "Well, no," he said; "we were married over in Upper Canada." "By a Protestant?" asked Sophie. Christine interrrupted. "What's that to you? I hope I'll never see your face again while I live. I want to be alone with my husband, and your husband wants to be alone with his wife: won't you oblige us and him-- Hein?" Sophie gave Ferrol a look which haunted him while he lived. One idle afternoon he had sowed the seeds of a little storm in the heart of a woman, and a whirlwind was driving through her life to parch and make desolate the green fields of her youth and womanhood. He had loitered and dallied without motive; but the idle and unmeaning sinner is the most dangerous to others and to himself, and he realised it at that moment, so far as it was in him to realise anything of the kind. Sophie's figure as it left the room had that drooping, beaten look which only comes to the stricken and the incurably humiliated. "What have you said to her?" asked Christine of Ferrol, "what have you done to her?" "I didn't do a thing, upon my soul. I didn't say a thing. She'd only just come in." "What did she say to you?" "As near as I can remember, she said: 'You have been hurt, and I'm very sorry. Why haven't you been to see me? I looked for you; but you didn't come, and I thought you had forgotten me.'" "What did she mean by that? How dared she!" "See here, Christine," he said, laying his hand on her quivering shoulder, "I didn't say much to her. I was over there one afternoon, the afternoon I asked you to marry me. I drank a lot of liqueur; she looked very pretty, and before she had a chance to say yes or no about it I kissed her. Now that's a fact. I've never spent five minutes with her alone since; I haven't even seen her since, until this morning. Now that's the honest truth. I know it was scampish; but I never pretended to be good. It is nothing for you to make a fuss about, because, whatever I am--and it isn't much one way or another--I am all yours, straight as a die, Christine. I suppose, if we lived together fifty years, I'd probably kiss fifty women--once a year isn't a high average; but those kisses wouldn't mean anything; and you, you, my girl"--he bent his head down to her "why, you mean everything to me, and I wouldn't give one kiss of yours for a hundred thousand of any other woman's in the world! What you've done for me, and what you'd do for me--" There was a strange pathos in his voice, an uncommon thing, because his usual eloquence was, as a rule, more pleasing than touching. A quick change of feeling passed over her, and her eyes filled with tears. He ran his arm round her shoulder. "Ah, come, come!" he said, with a touch of insinuating brogue, and kissed her. "Come, it's all right. I didn't mean anything, and she didn't mean anything; and let's start fresh again." She looked up at him with quick intelligence. "That's just what we'll have to do," she said. "The Cure this morning at mass scolded the people about the Rebellion, and said that Nic and you had brought all this trouble upon Bonaventure; and everybody looked at our pew and snickered. Oh, how I hate them all! Then I jumped up--" "Well?" asked Ferrol, "and what then?" "I told them that my brother wasn't a coward, and that you were my husband." "And then--then what happened?" "Oh, then there was a great fuss in the church, and the Cure said ugly things, and I left and came home quick. And now--" "Well, and now?" Ferrol interrupted. "Well, now we'll have to do something." "You mean, to go away?" he asked, with a little shrug of his shoulder. She nodded her head. He was depressed: he had had a hemorrhage that morning, and the road seemed to close in on him on all sides. "How are we to live?" he asked, with a pitiful sort of smile. She looked up at him steadily for a moment, without speaking. He did not understand the look in her eyes, until she said: "You have that five thousand dollars!" He drew back a step from her, and met her unwavering look a little fearfully. She knew that--she--! "When did you find it out?" he asked. "The morning we were married," she replied. "And you--you, Christine, you married me, a thief!" She nodded again. "What difference could it make?" she asked. "I wouldn't have been happy if I hadn't married you. And I loved you!" "Look here, Christine," he said, "that five thousand dollars is not for you or for me. You will be safe enough if anything should happen to me; your people would look after you, and you have some money in your own right. But I've a sister, and she's lame. She never had to do a stroke of work in her life, and she can't do it now. I have shared with her anything I have had since times went wrong with us and our family. I needed money badly enough, but I didn't care very much whether I got it for myself or not--only for her. I wanted that five thousand dollars for her, and to her it shall go; not one penny to you, or to me, or to any other human being. The Rebellion is over: that money wouldn't have altered things one way or another. It's mine, and if anything happens to me--" He suddenly stooped down and caught her hands, looking her in the eyes steadily. "Christine," he said, "I want you never to ask me to spend a penny of that money; and I want you to promise me, by the name of the Virgin Mary, that you'll see my sister gets it, and that you'll never let her or any one else know where it came from. Come, Christine, will you do it for me? I know it's very little indeed I give you, and you're giving me everything; but some people are born to be debtors in this world, and some to be creditors, and some give all and get little, because--" She interrupted him. "Because they love as I love you," she said, throwing her arms round his neck. "Show me where the money is, and I'll do all you say, if--" "Yes, if anything happens to me," he said, and dropped his hand caressingly upon her head. He loved her in that moment. She raised her eyes to his. He stooped and kissed her. She was still in his arms as the door opened and Monsieur and Madame Lavilette entered, pale and angry. CHAPTER XVIII That night the British soldiers camped in the village. All over the country the rebels had been scattered and beaten, and Bonaventure had been humbled and injured. After the blind injustice of the fearful and the beaten, Nicolas Lavilette and his family were blamed for the miseries which had come upon the place. They had emerged from their isolation to tempt popular favour, had contrived many designs and ambitions, and in the midst of their largest hopes were humiliated, and were followed by resentment. The position was intolerable. In happy circumstances, Christine's marriage with Ferrol might have been a completion of their glory, but in reality it was the last blow to their progress. In the dusk, Ferrol and Christine sat in his room: she, defiant, indignant, courageous; he hiding his real feelings, and knowing that all she now planned and arranged would come to naught. Three times that day he had had violent paroxysms of coughing; and at last had thrown himself on his bed, exhausted, helplessly wishing that something would end it all. Illusion had passed for ever. He no longer had a cold, but a mortal trouble that was killing him inch by inch. He remembered how a brother officer of his, dying of an incurable disease, and abhorring suicide, had gone into a cafe and slapped an unoffending bully and duellist in the face, inviting a combat. The end was sure, easy and honourable. For himself--he looked at Christine. Not all her abounding vitality, her warm, healthy body, or her overwhelming love, could give him one extra day of life, not one day. What a fool he had been to think that she could do so! And she must sit and watch him--she, with her primitive fierceness of love, must watch him sinking, fading helplessly out of life, sight and being. A bottle of whiskey was beside him. During the two hours just gone he had drunk a whole pint of it. He poured out another half-glass, filled it up with milk, and drank it off slowly. At that moment a knock came to the door. Christine opened it, and admitted one of the fugitives of Nicolas's company of rebels. He saw Ferrol, and came straight to him. "A letter for M'sieu' the Honourable," said he "from M'sieu' le Capitaine Lavilette." Ferrol opened the paper. It contained only a few lines. Nicolas was hiding in the store-room of the vacant farmhouse, and Ferrol must assist him to escape to the State of New York. He had stolen into the village from the north, and, afraid to trust any one except this faithful member of his company, had taken refuge in a place where, if the worst came to the worst, he could defend himself, for a time at least. Twenty rifles of the rebels had been stored in the farmhouse, and they were all loaded! Ferrol, of course, could go where he liked, being a Britisher, and nobody would notice him. Would he not try to get him away? While Christine questioned the fugitive, Ferrol thought the matter over. One thing he knew: the solution of the great problem had come; and the means to the solution ran through his head like lightning. He rose to his feet, drank off a few mouthfuls of undiluted whiskey, filled a flask and put it in his pocket. Then he found his pistols, and put on his greatcoat, muffler and cap, before he spoke a word. Christine stood watching him intently. "What are you going to do, Tom?" she said quietly. "I am going to save your brother, if I can," was his reply, as he handed her Nic's letter. CHAPTER XIX Half an hour later, as Ferrol was passing from Louis Lavilette's stables into the road leading to the Seigneury he met Sophie Farcinelle, face to face. In a vague sort of way he was conscious that a look of despair and misery had suddenly wasted the bloom upon her cheek, and given to the large, cow-like eyes an expression of child-like hopelessness. An apathy had settled upon his nerves. He saw things as in a dream. His brain worked swiftly, but everything that passed before his eyes was, as it were, in a kaleidoscope, vivid and glowing, but yet intangible. His brain told him that here before him was a woman into whose life he had brought its first ordeal and humiliation. But his heart only felt a reflective sort of pity: it was not a personal or immediate realisation, that is, not at first. He was scarcely conscious that he stood and looked at her for quite two minutes, without motion or speech on the part of either; but the dumb, desolate look in her eyes--a look of appeal, astonishment, horror and shame combined, presently clarified his senses, and he slowly grew to look at her as at his punishment, the punishment of his life. Before --always before--Sophie had been vague and indistinct: seen to-day, forgotten tomorrow; and previous to meeting her scores had affected his senses, affected them not at all deeply. She was like a date in history to a boy who remembers that it meant something, but what, is not quite sure. But the meaning and definiteness were his own. Out of the irresponsibility of his nature, out of the moral ineptitude to which he had been born, moral knowledge came to him at last. Love had not done it; neither the love of Christine, as strong as death, nor the love of his sister, the deepest thing he ever knew--but the look of a woman wronged. He had inflicted on her the deepest wrong that may be done a woman. A woman can forgive passion and ruin, and worse, if the man loves her, and she can forgive herself, remembering that to her who loved much, much was forgiven. But out of wilful idleness, the mere flattery of the senses, a vampire feeding upon the spirits and souls of others, for nothing save emotion for emotion's sake --that was shameless, it was the last humiliation of a woman. As it were, to lose joy, and glow, and fervour of young, sincere and healthy life, to whip up the dying vitality and morbid brain of a consumptive! All in a flash he saw it, realised it, and hated himself for it. He knew that as long as he lived, an hour or ten years, he never could redeem himself; never could forgive himself, and never buy back the life that he had injured. Many a time in his life he had kissed and ridden away, and had been unannoyed by conscience. But in proportion as conscience had neglected him before, it ground him now between the stones, and he saw himself as he was. Come of a gentleman's family, he knew he was no gentleman. Having learned the forms and courtesies of life, having infused his whole career with a spirit of gay bonhomie, he knew that in truth he was a swaggerer; that bad taste, infamous bad taste, had marked almost everything that he had done in his life. He had passed as one of the nobility, but he knew that all true men, all he had ever met, must have read him through and through. He had understood this before to a certain point, had read himself to a certain mark of gauge, but he had never been honestly and truly a man until this moment. His soul was naked before his eyes. It had been naked before, but he had laughed. Born without real remorse, he felt it at last. The true thing started within him. God, the avenger, the revealer and the healer, had held up this woman as a glass to him that he might see himself. He saw her as she had been, a docile, soft-eyed girl, untouched by anything that defames or shames, and all in a moment the man that had never been in him until now, from the time he laughed first into his mother's eyes as a babe, spoke out as simply as a child would have spoken, and told the truth. There were no ameliorating phrases to soften it to her ears; there was no tact, there was no blarney, there was no suave suggestion now, no cheap gaiety, no cynicism of the social vampire --only the direct statement of a self-reproachful, dying man. "I didn't fully know what I was doing," he said to her. "If I had understood then as I do now, I would never have come near you. It was the worst wickedness I ever did." The new note in his voice, the new fashion of his words, the new look of his eyes, startled her, confused her. She could scarcely believe he was the same man. The dumb desolation lifted a little, and a look of under standing seemed to pierce her tragic apathy. As if a current of thought had been suddenly sent through her, she drew herself up with a little shiver, and looked at him as if she were about to speak; but instead of doing so, a strange, unhappy smile passed across her lips. He saw that all the goodness of her nature was trying to arouse itself and assure him of forgiveness. It did not deceive him in the least. "I won't be so mean now as to say I was weak," he added. "I was not weak; I was bad. I always felt I was born a liar and a thief. I've lied to myself all my life; and I've lied to other people because I never was a true man." "A thief!" she said at last, scarcely above a whisper, and looking at him with a flash of horror in her eyes. "A thief!" It was no use; he could not allow her to think he meant a thief in the vulgar, common sense, though that was what he was: just a common criminal. "I have stolen the kind thoughts and love of people to whom I gave nothing in return," he said steadily. "There is nothing good in me. I used to think I was good-natured; but I was not, or I wouldn't have brought misery to a girl like you." His truth broke down the barriers of her anger and despair. Something welled up in her heart: it may have been love, it may have been inherent womanliness. "Why did you marry Christine?" she asked. All at once he saw that she never could quite understand. Her stand- point would still, in the end, be the stand-point of a woman. He saw that she would have forgiven him, even had he not loved her, if he had not married Christine. For the first time he knew something, the real something, of a woman's heart. He had never known it before, because he had been so false himself. He might have been evil and had a conscience too; then he would have been wise. But he had been evil, and had had no conscience or moral mentor from the beginning; so he had never known anything real in his life. He thought he had known Christine, but now he saw her in a new light, through the eyes of her sister from whose heart he had gathered a harvest of passion and affection, and had burnt the stubble and seared the soil forever. Sophie could never justify herself in the eyes of her husband, or in her own eyes, because this man did not love her. Even as he stood before her there, declaring himself to her as wilfully wicked in all that he had said and done, she still longed passionately for the thing that was denied her: not her lost truth back, but the love that would have compensated for her suffering, and in some poor sense have justified her in years to come. She did not put it into words, but the thought was bluntly in her mind. She looked at him, and her eyes filled with tears, which dropped down her cheek to the ground. He was about to answer her question, when, all at once, her honest eyes looked into his mournfully, and she said with an incredible pathos and simplicity: "I don't know how I am going to live on with Magon. I suppose I'll have to keep pretending till I die!" The bell in the church was ringing for vespers. It sounded peaceful and quiet, as though no war, or rebellion, or misery and shame, were anywhere within the radius of its travel. Just where they stood there was a tall calvary. Behind it was some shrubbery. Ferrol was going to answer her, when he saw, coming along the road, the Cure in his robes, bearing the host. In front of him trotted an acolyte, swinging the censer. Ferrol quickly drew Sophie aside behind the bushes, where they should not be seen; for he was no longer reckless. He wished to be careful for the woman's sake. The Curb did not turn his head to the right or left, but came along chanting something slowly. The smell of the incense floated past them. When the priest and the lad reached the calvary they turned towards it, bowed, crossed themselves, and the lad rang a little silver bell. Then the two passed on, the lad still ringing. When they were out of sight the sound of the bell came softly, softly up the road, while the bell in the church tower still called to prayer. The words the priest chanted seemed to ring through the air after he had gone. "God have mercy upon the passing soul! God have mercy upon the passing soul! Hear the prayer of the sinner, O Lord; Listen to the voice of those that mourn; Have mercy upon the sinner, O Lord!" When Ferrol turned to Sophie again, both her hands were clasping the calvary, and she had dropped her head upon them. "I must go," he said. She did not move. Again he spoke to her; but she did not lift her head. Presently, however, as he stood watching her, she moved away from the calvary, and, with her back still turned to him, stepped out into the road and hurried on towards her home, never once turning her head. He stood looking after her for a moment, then turned and, sitting on a log behind the shrubbery, he tore a few pieces of paper out of a note- book and began writing. He wrote swiftly for about twenty minutes or more, then, arising, he moved on towards the village, where crowds had gathered--excited, fearful, tumultuous; for the British soldiers had just entered the place. Ferrol seemed almost oblivious of the threatening crowd, which once or twice jostled him more than was accidental. He came into the post- office, got an envelope, put his letter inside it, stamped it, addressed it to Christine, and dropped it into the letter-box. CHAPTER XX An hour later he stood among a few companies of British soldiers in front of the massive stone store-house of the Lavilettes' abandoned farmhouse, with its thick shuttered windows and its solid oak doors. It was too late to attempt the fugitive's escape, save by strategy. Over half an hour Nic had kept them at bay. He had made loopholes in the shutters and the door, and from these he fired upon his assailants. Already he had wounded five and killed two. Men had been sent for timber to batter down the door and windows. Meanwhile, the troops stood at a respectful distance, out of the range of Nic's firing, awaiting developments. Ferrol consulted with the officers, advising a truce and parley, offering himself as mediator to induce Nic to surrender. To this the officers assented, but warned him that his life might pay the price of his temerity. He laughed at this. He had been talking, with his head and throat well muffled, and the collar of his greatcoat drawn about his ears. Once or twice he coughed, a hacking, wrenching cough, which struck the ears of more than one of the officers painfully; for they had known him in his best and gayest days at Quebec. It was arranged that he should advance, holding out a flag of truce. Before he went he drew aside one of the younger lieutenants, in whose home at Quebec his sister had always been a welcome visitor, and told him briefly the story of his marriage, of his wife and of Nicolas. He sent Christine a message, that she should not forget to carry his last token to his sister! Then turning, he muffled up his face against the crisp, harsh air (there was design in this also), and, waving a white handkerchief, advanced to the door of the store-room. The soldiers waited anxiously, fearing that Nic would fire, in spite of all; but presently a spot of white appeared at one of the loopholes; then the door was slowly opened. Ferrol entered, and it was closed again. Nicolas Lavilette grasped his hand. "I knew you wouldn't go back on me," said he. "I knew you were my friend. What the devil do they want out there?" "I am more than your friend: I'm your brother," answered Ferrol, meaningly. Then, quickly taking off his greatcoat, cap, muffler and boots: "Quick, on with these!" he said. "There's no time to lose!" "What's all this?" asked Nic. "Never mind; do exactly as I say, and there's a chance for you." Nic put on the overcoat. Ferrol placed the cap on his head, and muffled him up exactly as he himself had been, then made him put on his own top- boots. "Now, see," he said, "everything depends upon how you do this thing. You are about my height. Pass yourself off for me. Walk loose and long as I do, and cough like me as you go." There was no difficulty in showing him what the cough was like: he involuntarily offered an illustration as he spoke. "As soon as I shut the door and you start forward, I'll fire on them. That'll divert their attention from you. They'll take you for me, and think I've failed in persuading you to give yourself up. Go straight on- don't hurry--coughing all the time; and if you can make the dark, just beyond the soldiers, by the garden bench, you'll find two men. They'll help you. Make for the big tree on the Seigneury road--you know: where you were robbed. There you'll find the fastest horse from your father's stables. Then ride, my boy, ride for your life to the State of New York!" "And you--you?" asked Nicolas. Ferrol laughed. "You needn't worry about me, Nic. I'll get out of this all right; as right as rain! Are you ready? Steady now, steady. Let me hear you cough." Nic coughed. "No, that isn't it. Listen and watch." Ferrol coughed. "Here," he said, taking something from his pocket, "open your mouth." He threw some pepper down the other's throat. "Now try it." Nic coughed almost convulsively. "Yes, that's it, that's it! Just keep that up. Come along now. Quick- not a moment to lose! Steady! You're all right, my boy; you've got nerve, and that's the thing. Good-bye, Nic, good luck to you!" They grasped hands: the door opened swiftly, and Nic stepped outside. In an instant Ferrol was at the loophole. Raising a rifle, he fired, then again and again. Through the loophole he could see a half-dozen men lift a log to advance on the door as Nic passed a couple of officers, coughing hard, and making spasmodic motions with his hand, as though exhausted and unable to speak. He fired again, and a soldier fell. The lust of fighting was on him now. It was not a question of country or of race, but only a man crowding the power of old instincts into the last moments of his life. The vigour and valour of a reconquered youth seemed to inspire him; he felt as he did when a mere boy fighting on the Danube. His blood rioted in his veins; his eyes flashed. He lifted the flask of whiskey and gulped down great mouthfuls of it, and fired again and again, laughing madly. "Let them come on, let them come on," he cried. "By God, I'll settle them!" The frenzy of war possessed him. He heard the timber crash against the door--once, twice, thrice, and then give away. He swung round and saw men's faces glowing in the light of the fire, and then another face shot in before the others--that of Vanne Castine. With a cry of fury he ran forward into the doorway. Castine saw him at the same moment. With a similar instinct each sprang for the other's throat, Castine with a knife in his hand. A cry of astonishment went up from the officers and the men without. They had expected to see Nic; but Nic was on his way to the horse beneath the great elm tree, and from the elm tree to the State of New York--and safety. The men and the officers fell back as Castine and Ferrol clinched in a death struggle. Ferrol knew that his end had come. He had expected it, hoped for it. But, before the end, he wanted to kill this man, if he could. He caught Castine's head in his hands, and, with a last effort, twisted it back with a sudden jerk. All at once, with the effort, blood spurted from his mouth into the other's face. He shivered, tottered and fell back, as Castine struck blindly into space. For a moment Ferrol swayed back and forth, stretched out his hands convulsively and gasped, trying to speak, the blood welling from his lips. His eyes were wild, anxious and yearning, his face deadly pale and covered with a cold sweat. Presently he collapsed, like a loosened bundle, upon the steps. Castine, blinded with blood, turned round, and the light of the fire upon his open mouth made him appear to grin painfully--an involuntary grimace of terror. At that instant a rifle shot rang out from the shrubbery, and Castine sprang from the ground and fell at Ferrol's feet. Then, with a contortive shudder, he rolled over and over the steps, and lay face downward upon the ground-dead. A girl ran forward from the trees, with a cry, pushing her way through to Ferrol's body. Lifting up his head, she called to him in an agony of entreaty. But he made no answer. "That's the woman who fired the shot!" said a subaltern officer excitedly. "I saw her!" "Shut up, you fool--it was his wife!" exclaimed the young captain to whom Ferrol had given his last message for Christine. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: After which comes steady happiness or the devil to pay (wedding) All men are worse than most women I always did what was wrong, and liked it--nearly always Men feel surer of women than women feel of men ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "POMP OF THE LAVILETTES": After which comes steady happiness or the devil to pay (wedding) All men are worse than most women I always did what was wrong, and liked it--nearly always Illusive hopes and irresponsible deceptions Men feel surer of women than women feel of men She lacked sense a little and sensitiveness much To be popular is not necessarily to be contemptible Who say 'God bless you', in New York! they say 'Damn you!' AT THE SIGN OF THE EAGLE By Gilbert Parker "Life in her creaking shoes Goes, and more formal grows, A round of calls and cues: Love blows as the wind blows. Blows! . . . " "Well, what do you think of them, Molly?" said Sir Duke Lawless to his wife, his eyes resting with some amusement on a big man and a little one talking to Lord Hampstead. "The little man is affected, gauche, and servile. The big one picturesque and superior in a raw kind of way. He wishes to be rude to some one, and is disappointed because, just at the moment, Lord Hampstead is too polite to give him his cue. A dangerous person in a drawing-room, I should think; but interesting. You are a bold man to bring them here, Duke. Is it not awkward for our host?" "Hampstead did it with his eyes open. Besides, there is business behind it--railways, mines, and all that; and Hampstead's nephew is going to the States fortune-hunting. Do you see?" Lady Lawless lifted her eyebrows. "'To what base uses are we come, Horatio!' You invite me to dinner and--'I'll fix things up right.' That is the proper phrase, for I have heard you use it. Status for dollars. Isn't it low? I know you do not mean what you say, Duke." Sir Duke's eyes were playing on the men with a puzzled expression, as though trying to read the subject of their conversation; and he did not reply immediately. Soon, however, he turned and looked down at his wife genially, and said: "Well, that's about it, I suppose. But really there is nothing unusual in this, so far as Mr. John Vandewaters is concerned, for in his own country he travels 'the parlours of the Four Hundred,' and is considered 'a very elegant gentleman.' We must respect a man according to the place he holds in his own community. Besides, as you suggest, Mr. Vandewaters is interesting. I might go further, and say that he is a very good fellow indeed." "You will be asking him down to Craigruie next," said Lady Lawless, inquisition in her look. "That is exactly what I mean to do, with your permission, my dear. I hope to see him laying about among the grouse in due season." "My dear Duke, you are painfully Bohemian. I can remember when you were perfectly precise and exclusive, and--" "What an awful prig I must have been!" "Don't interrupt. That was before you went aroving in savage countries, and picked up all sorts of acquaintances, making friends with the most impossible folk. I should never be surprised to see you drive Shon McGann--and his wife, of course--and Pretty Pierre--with some other man's wife--up to the door in a dogcart; their clothes in a saddle-bag, or something less reputable, to stay a month. Duke, you have lost your decorum; you are a gipsy." "I fear Shon McGann and Pierre wouldn't enjoy being with us as I should enjoy having them. You can never understand what a life that is out in Pierre's country. If it weren't for you and the bairn, I should be off there now. There is something of primeval man in me. I am never so healthy and happy, when away from you, as in prowling round the outposts of civilisation, and living on beans and bear's meat." He stretched to his feet, and his wife rose with him. There was a fine colour on his cheek, and his eye had a pleasant fiery energy. His wife tapped him on the arm with her fan. She understood him very well, though pretending otherwise. "Duke, you are incorrigible. I am in daily dread of your starting off in the middle of the night, leaving me--" "Watering your couch with your tears?" "--and hearing nothing more from you till a cable from Quebec or Winnipeg tells me that you are on your way to the Arctic Circle with Pierre or some other heathen. But, seriously, where did you meet Mr. Vandewaters --Heavens, what a name!--and that other person? And what is the other person's name?" "The other person carries the contradictory name of Stephen Pride." "Why does he continually finger his face, and show his emotions so? He assents to everything said to him by an appreciative exercise of his features." "My dear, you ask a great and solemn question. Let me introduce the young man, that you may get your answer at the fountain-head." "Wait a moment, Duke. Sit down and tell me when and where you met these men, and why you have continued the acquaintance." "Molly," he said, obeying her, "you are a terrible inquisitor, and the privacy of one's chamber were the kinder place to call one to account. But I bend to your implacability. . . . Mr. Vandewaters, like myself, has a taste for roving, though our aims are not identical. He has a fine faculty for uniting business and pleasure. He is not a thorough sportsman--there is always a certain amount of enthusiasm, even in the unrewarded patience of the true hunter; but he sufficeth. Well, Mr. Vandewaters had been hunting in the far north, and looking after a promising mine at the same time. He was on his way south at one angle, I at another angle, bound for the same point. Shon McGann was with me; Pierre with Vandewaters. McGann left me, at a certain point, to join his wife at a Barracks of the Riders of the Plains. I had about a hundred miles to travel alone. Well, I got along the first fifty all right. Then came trouble. In a bad place of the hills I fell and broke an ankle bone. I had an Eskimo dog of the right sort with me. I wrote a line on a bit of birch bark, tied it round his neck, and started him away, trusting my luck that he would pull up somewhere. He did. He ran into Vandewaters's camp that evening. Vandewaters and Pierre started away at once. They had dogs, and reached me soon. "It was the first time I had seen Pierre for years. They fixed me up, and we started south. And that's as it was in the beginning with Mr. John Vandewaters and me." Lady Lawless had been watching the two strangers during the talk, though once or twice she turned and looked at her husband admiringly. When he had finished she said: "That is very striking. What a pity it is that men we want to like spoil all by their lack of form!" "Don't be so sure about Vandewaters. Does he look flurried by these surroundings?" "No. He certainly has an air of contentment. It is, I suppose, the usual air of self-made Americans." "Go to London, E.C., and you will find the same, plus smugness. Now, Mr. Vandewaters has real power--and taste too, as you will see. Would you think Mr. Stephen Pride a self-made man?" "I cannot think of any one else who would be proud of the patent. Please to consider the seals about his waistcoat, and the lady-like droop of his shoulders." "Yet he is thought to be a young man of parts. He has money, made by his ancestors; he has been round the world; he belongs to societies for culture and--" "And he will rave of the Poet's Corner, ask if one likes Pippa Passes, and expect to be introduced to every woman in the room at a tea-party, to say nothing of proposing impossible things, such as taking one's girl friends to the opera alone, sending them boxes of confectionery, and writing them dreadfully reverential notes at the same time. Duke, the creature is impossible, believe me. Never, never, if you love me, invite him to Craigruie. I met one of his tribe at Lady Macintyre's when I was just out of school; and at the dinner-table, when the wine went round, he lifted his voice and asked for a cup of tea, saying he never 'drank.' Actually he did, Duke." Her husband laughed quietly. He had a man's enjoyment of a woman's dislike of bad form. "A common criminal man, Molly. Tell me, which is the greater crime: to rob a bank or use a fish-knife for asparagus?" Lady Lawless fanned herself. "Duke, you make me hot. But if you will have the truth: the fish-knife business by all means. Nobody need feel uncomfortable about the burglary, except the burglar; but see what a position for the other person's hostess." "My dear, women have no civic virtues. Their credo is, 'I believe in beauty and fine linen, and the thing that is not gauche.'" His wife was smiling. "Well, have it your own way. It is a creed of comfort, at any rate. And now, Duke, if I must meet the man of mines and railways and the spare person making faces at Lord Hampstead, let it be soon, that it may be done with; and pray don't invite them to Craigruie till I have a chance to speak with you again. I will not have impossible people at a house-party." "What a difficult fellow your husband is, Molly!" "Difficult; but perfectly possible. His one fault is a universal sympathy which shines alike on the elect--and the others." "So. Well, this is our dance. After it is over, prepare for the Americanos." Half-an-hour later Mr. Vandewaters was standing in a conspicuous corner talking to Lady Lawless. "It is, then, your first visit to England?" she asked. He had a dry, deliberate voice, unlike the smooth, conventional voices round him. "Yes, Lady Lawless," he replied: "it's the first time I've put my foot in London town, and--perhaps you won't believe it of an American--I find it doesn't take up a very conspicuous place." The humour was slightly accentuated, and Lady Lawless shrank a little, as if she feared the depths of divertisement to which this speech might lead; but a quick look at the man assured her of his common-sense, and she answered: "It is of the joys of London that no one is so important but finds the space he fills a small one, which may be filled acceptably by some one else at any moment. It is easy for kings and princes even-- we have secluded princes here now--to get lost and forgotten in London." "Well, that leaves little chance for ordinary Americans, who don't bank on titles." She looked up, puzzled in spite of herself. But she presently said, with frankness and naivete: "What does 'bank on titles' mean?" He stroked his beard, smiling quaintly, and said: "I don't know how to put the thing better-it seems to fill the bill. But, anyway, Americans are republicans; and don't believe in titles, and--" "O, pardon me," she interrupted: "of course, I see." "We've got little ways of talking not the same as yours. You don't seem to have the snap to conversation that we have in the States. But I'll say here that I think you have got a better style of talking. It isn't exhausting." "Mr. Pride said to me a moment ago that they spoke better English in Boston than any other place in the world." "Did he, though, Lady Lawless? That's good. Well, I guess he was only talking through his hat." She was greatly amused. Her first impressions were correct. The man was interesting. He had a quaint, practical mind. He had been thrown upon his own resources, since infancy almost, in a new country; and he had seen with his own eyes, nakedly, and without predisposition or instruction. From childhood thoroughly adaptable, he could get into touch with things quickly, and instantly like or dislike them. He had been used to approach great concerns with fearlessness and competency. He respected a thing only for its real value, and its intrinsic value was as clear to him as the market value. He had, perhaps, an exaggerated belief in the greatness of his own country, because he liked eagerness and energy and daring. The friction and hurry of American life added to his enjoyment. They acted on him like a stimulating air, in which he was always bold, collected, and steady. He felt an exhilaration in being superior to the rustle of forces round him. It had been his habit to play the great game of business with decision and adroitness. He had not spared his opponent in the fight; he had crushed where his interests were in peril and the sport played into his hands; comforting himself, if he thought of the thing, with the knowledge that he himself would have been crushed if the other man had not. He had never been wilfully unfair, nor had he used dishonourable means to secure his ends: his name stood high in his own country for commercial integrity; men said: he "played square." He had, maybe, too keen a contempt for dulness and incompetency in enterprise, and he loathed red-tape; but this was racial. His mind was as open as his manners. He was utterly approachable. He was a millionaire, and yet in his own offices in New York he was as accessible as a President. He handled things without gloves, and this was not a good thing for any that came to him with a weak case. He had a penetrating intelligence; and few men attempted, after their first sophistical statements, to impose upon him: he sent them away unhappy. He did not like England altogether: first, because it lacked, as he said, enterprise; and because the formality, decorum and excessive convention fretted him. He saw that in many things the old land was backward, and he thought that precious time was being wasted. Still, he could see that there were things, purely social, in which the Londoners were at advantage; and he acknowledged this when he said, concerning Stephen Pride's fond boast, that he was "talking through his hat." Lady Lawless smiled, and after a moment rejoined: "Does it mean that he was mumming, as it were, like a conjurer?" "Exactly. You are pretty smart, Lady Lawless; for I can see that, from your stand-point, it isn't always easy to catch the meaning of sayings like that. But they do hit the case, don't they?" "They give a good deal of individuality to conversation," was the vague reply. "What, do you think, is the chief lack in England?" "Nerve and enterprise. But I'm not going to say you ought to have the same kind of nerve as ours. We are a different tribe, with different surroundings, and we don't sit in the same kind of saddle. We ride for all we're worth all the time. You sit back and take it easy. We are never satisfied unless we are behind a fast trotter; you are content with a good cob that steps high, tosses its head, and has an aristocratic stride." "Have you been in the country much?" she asked, without any seeming relevancy. He was keen enough. He saw the veiled point of her question. "No: I've never been in the country here," he said. "I suppose you mean that I don't see or know England till I've lived there." "Quite so, Mr. Vandewaters." She smiled to think what an undistinguished name it was. It suggested pumpkins in the front garden. Yet here its owner was perfectly at his ease, watching the scene before him with good- natured superiority. "London is English; but it is very cosmopolitan, you know," she added; "and I fancy you can see it is not a place for fast trotters. The Park would be too crowded for that--even if one wished to drive a Maud S." He turned his slow keen eyes on her, and a smile broadened into a low laugh, out of which he said: "What do you know of Maud S? I didn't think you would be up in racing matters." "You forget that my husband is a traveller, and an admirer of Americans and things American." "That's so," he answered; "and a staving good traveller he is. You don't catch him asleep, I can tell you, Lady Lawless. He has stuff in him." "The stuff to make a good American?" "Yes; with something over. He's the kind of Englishman that can keep cool when things are ticklish, and look as if he was in a parlour all the time. Americans keep cool, but look cheeky. O, I know that. We square our shoulders and turn out our toes, and push our hands into our pockets, and act as if we owned the world. Hello--by Jingo!" Then, apologetically: "I beg your pardon, Lady Lawless; it slipped." Lady Lawless followed Mr. Vandewaters's glance, and saw, passing on her husband's arm, a tall, fascinating girl. She smiled meaningly to herself, as she sent a quick quizzical look at the American, and said, purposely misinterpreting his exclamation: "I am not envious, Mr. Vandewaters." "Of course not. That's a commoner thing with us than with you. American girls get more notice and attention from their cradles up, and they want it all along the line. You see, we've mostly got the idea that an Englishman expects from his wife what an American woman expects from her husband." "How do Americans get these impressions about us?" "From our newspapers, I guess; and the newspapers take as the ground-work of their belief the Bow Street cases where Englishmen are cornered for beating their wives." "Suppose we were to judge of American Society by the cases in a Chicago Divorce Court?" "There you have me on toast. That's what comes of having a husband who takes American papers. Mind you, I haven't any idea that the American papers are right. I've had a lot to do with newspapers, and they are pretty ignorant, I can tell you--cheap all round. What's a newspaper, anyway, but an editor, more or less smart and overworked, with an owner behind him who has got some game on hand? I know: I've been there." "How have you 'been there'?" "I've owned four big papers all at once, and had fifty others under my thumb." Lady Lawless caught her breath; but she believed him. "You must be very rich." "Owning newspapers doesn't mean riches. It's a lever, though, for tipping the dollars your way." "I suppose they have--tipped your way?" "Yes: pretty well. But, don't follow this lead any farther, Lady Lawless, or you may come across something that will give you a start. I should like to keep on speaking terms with you." "You mean that a man cannot hold fifty newspapers under his thumb, and live in the glare of a search-light also?" "Exactly. You can't make millions without pulling wires." She saw him watching the girl on her husband's arm. She had the instinct of her sex. She glanced at the stately girl again; then at Mr. Vandewaters critically, and rejoined, quizzically: "Did you--make millions?" His eyes still watching, he replied abstractedly. "Yes: a few handfuls, and lost a few--'that's why I'm here.'" "To get them back on the London market?" "That's why I am here." "You have not come in vain?" "I could tell you better in a month or so from now. In any case, I don't stand to lose. I've come to take things away from England." "I hope you will take away a good opinion of it." "If there'd been any doubt of it half an hour ago, it would be all gone this minute." "Which is nice of you; and not in your usual vein, I should think. But, Mr. Vandewaters, we want you to come to Craigruie, our country place, to spend a week. Then you will have a chance to judge us better, or rather more broadly and effectively." She was looking at the girl, and at that moment she caught Sir Duke's eye. She telegraphed to him to come. "Thank you, Lady Lawless, I'm glad you have asked me. But--" He glanced to where Mr. Pride was being introduced to the young lady on Sir Duke's arm, and paused. "We are hoping," she added, interpreting his thought, and speaking a little dryly, "that your friend, Mr. Stephen Pride"--the name sounded so ludicrous--"will join us." "He'll be proud enough, you may be sure. It's a singular combination, Pride and myself, isn't it? But, you see, he has a fortune which, as yet, he has never been able to handle for himself; and I do it for him. We are partners, and, though you mightn't think it, he has got more money now than when he put his dollars at my disposal to help me make a few millions at a critical time." Lady Lawless let her fan touch Mr. Vandewaters's arm. "I am going to do you a great favour. You see that young lady coming to us with my husband? Well, I am going to introduce you to her. It is such as she-- such women--who will convince you--" "Yes?" "--that you have yet to make your--what shall I call it?--Ah, I have it: your 'biggest deal,'--and, in truth, your best." "Is that so?" rejoined Vandewaters musingly. "Is that so? I always thought I'd make my biggest deal in the States. Who is she? She is handsome." "She is more than handsome, and she is the Honourable Gracia Raglan." "I don't understand about 'The Honourable.'" "I will explain that another time." A moment later Miss Raglan, in a gentle bewilderment, walked down the ballroom on the arm of the millionaire, half afraid that something gauche would happen; but by the time she had got to the other end was reassured, and became interested. Sir Duke said to his wife in an aside, before he left her with Mr. Vandewaters's financial partner: "What is your pretty conspiracy, Molly?" "Do talk English, Duke, and do not interfere." A few hours later, on the way home, Sir Duke said: "You asked Mr. Pride too?" "Yes; I grieve to say." "Why grieve?" "Because his experiences with us seem to make him dizzy. He will be terribly in earnest with every woman in the house, if--" "If you do not keep him in line yourself?" "Quite so. And the creature is not even interesting." "Cast your eye about. He has millions; you have cousins." "You do not mean that, Duke? I would see them in their graves first. He says 'My lady' every other sentence, and wants to send me flowers, and a box for the opera, and to drive me in the Park." Her husband laughed. "I'll stake my life he can't ride. You will have him about the place like a tame cat." Then, seeing that his wife was annoyed: "Never mind, Molly, I will help you all I can. I want to be kind to them." "I know you do. But what is your 'pretty conspiracy,' Duke?" "A well-stocked ranche in Colorado." He did not mean it. And she knew it. "How can you be so mercenary?" she replied. Then they both laughed, and said that they were like the rest of the world. II Lady Lawless was an admirable hostess, and she never appeared to better advantage in the character than during the time when Miss Gracia Raglan, Mr. John Vandewaters, and Mr. Stephen Pride were guests at Craigruie. The men accepted Mr. Vandewaters at once as a good fellow and a very sensible man. He was a heavy-weight for riding; but it was not the hunting season, and, when they did ride, a big horse carried him very well. At grouse-shooting he showed to advantage. Mr. Pride never rode. He went shooting only once, and then, as Mr. Vandewaters told him, he got "rattled." He was then advised by his friend to remain at home and cultivate his finer faculties. At the same time, Mr. Vandewaters parenthetically remarked to Sir Duke Lawless that Mr. Pride knew the poets backwards, and was smart at French. He insisted on bringing out the good qualities of his comrade; but he gave him much strong advice privately. He would have done it just the same at the risk of losing a fortune, were it his whim--he would have won the fortune back in due course. At the present time Mr. Vandewaters was in the heat of some large commercial movements. No one would have supposed it, save for the fact that telegrams and cablegrams were brought to him day and night. He had liberally salaried the telegraph-clerk to work after hours, simply to be at his service. The contents of these messages never shook his equanimity. He was quiet, urbane, dry-mannered, at all times. Mr. Pride, however, was naturally excitable. He said of himself earnestly that he had a sensitive nature. He said it to Mrs. Gregory Thorne, whose reply was: "Dear me, and when things are irritating and painful to you do you never think of suicide?" Then she turned away to speak to some one, as if she had been interrupted, and intended to take up the subject again; but she never did. This remark caused Mr. Pride some nervous moments. He was not quite sure how she meant it. But it did not depress him as it might otherwise have done, for his thoughts were running much in another channel with a foolish sort of elation. As Lady Lawless had predicted, he was assiduously attentive to her, and it needed all her tact and cheerful frankness to keep him in line. She managed it very well: Mr. Pride's devotion was not too noticeable to the other guests. She tried to turn his attentions to some pretty girls; but, although there were one or two who might, in some weak moments, have compromised with his millions, he did no more than saunter with them on the terrace and oppress them with his lisping egotism. Every one hinted that he seemed an estimable, but trying, young man; and, as Sir Duke said to his wife, the men would not have him at any price. As for Mr. Vandewaters and Gracia Raglan, Lady Lawless was not very sure that her delicate sympathy was certain of reward. The two were naturally thrown together a good deal; but Miss Raglan was a girl of singular individuality and high-mindedness, and she was keen enough to see from the start what Lady Lawless suspected might happen. She did not resent this,--she was a woman; but it roused in her a spirit of criticism, and she threw up a barrier of fine reserve, which puzzled Mr. Vandewaters. He did not see that Lady Lawless was making a possible courtship easy for him. If he had, it would have made no difference: he would have looked at it as at most things, broadly. He was not blind to the fact that his money might be a "factor", but, as he said to himself, his millions were a part of him--they represented, like whist-counters, so much pluck and mother-wit. He liked the general appreciation of them: he knew very well that people saw him in them and them in him. Miss Raglan attracted him from the moment of meeting. She was the first woman of her class that he had ever met closely; and the possibility of having as his own so adorable a comrade was inspiring. He sat down sometimes as the days went on--it was generally when he was shaving--and thought upon his intention regarding Miss Raglan, in relation to his humble past; for he had fully made up his mind to marry her, if she would have him. He wondered what she would think when he told her of his life; and he laughed at the humour of the situation. He had been into Debrett, and he knew that she could trace her family back to the Crusades. He determined to make a clean breast of it. One day he was obliged to remain at the house in expectation of receiving important telegrams, and the only people who appeared at lunch were Lady Lawless, Mrs. Gregory Thorne (who was expecting her husband), Miss Raglan; Pride, and himself. While at luncheon he made up his mind to have a talk with Miss Raglan. In the library after luncheon the opportunity was given. It was a warm, pleasant day, and delightful in the grounds. After one or two vain efforts to escape, Mrs. Gregory Thorne and Lady Lawless resigned themselves to the attentions of Mr. Pride; and for once Lady Lawless did not check Mrs. Thorne's irony. It was almost a satisfaction to see Mr. Pride's bewildered looks, and his inability to know whether or not he should resent (whether it would be proper to resent) this softly-showered satire. Mr. Vandewaters and Gracia Raglan talked more freely than they had ever done before. "Do you really like England?" she said to him; then, waving her hand lightly to the beeches and the clean-cropped grass through the window, "I mean do you like our 'trim parterres,' our devotion to mere living, pleasure, sport, squiring, and that sort of thing?" He raised his head, glanced out, drew in a deep breath, thrust his hands down in the pockets of his coat, and looking at her with respectful good humour, said: "Like it? Yes, right down to the ground. Why shouldn't I! It's the kind of place I should like to come to in my old days. You needn't die in a hurry here. See?" "Are you sure you would not be like the old sailors who must live where they can scent the brine? You have been used to an active, adventurous, hurried life. Do you think you could endure this humdrum of enjoyment?" It would be hard to tell quite what was running in Gracia Raglan's mind, and, for the moment, she herself hardly knew; but she had a sudden, overmastering wish to make the man talk: to explore and, maybe, find surprising--even trying--things. She was astonished that she enjoyed his society so keenly. Even now, as she spoke, she remembered a day and a night since his coming, when he was absent in London; also how the party seemed to have lost its character and life, and how, when Mr. Pride condescended, for a few moments, to decline from Lady Lawless upon herself, she was even pleasant to him, making him talk about Mr. Vandewaters, and relishing the enthusiastic loyalty of the supine young man. She, like Lady Lawless, had learned to see behind the firm bold exterior, not merely a notable energy, force, self-reliance, and masterfulness, but a native courtesy, simplicity, and refinement which surprised her. Of all the men she knew not a half-dozen had an appreciation of nature or of art. They affected art, and some of them went to the Academy or the private views in Bond Street; but they had little feeling for the business. They did it in a well-bred way, with taste, but not with warmth. Mr. Vandewaters now startled her by quoting suddenly lines from an English poet unknown to her. By chance she was turning over the Academy pictures of the year, and came at last to one called "A Japanese Beauty of Old Days"--an exquisite thing. "Is it not fascinating?" she said. "So piquant and fresh." He gave a silent laugh, as was his custom when he enjoyed anything, and then replied: "I came across a little book of verses one day in the States. A friend of mine, the president of a big railway, gave it to me. He does some painting himself when he travels in his Pullman in the Rockies. Well, it had some verses on just such a picture as that. Hits it off right, Miss Raglan." "Verses?" she remarked, lifting her eyebrows. She expected something out of the "poet's corner" of a country newspaper. "What are they?" "Well, one's enough to show the style. This is it: "'Was I a Samurai renowned, Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow? A histrion angular and profound? A priest? or porter? Child, although I have forgotten clean, I know That in the shade of Fujisan, What time the cherry-orchards blow, I loved you once in old Japan.'" The verse on the lips of Mr. Vandewaters struck her strangely. He was not like any man she had known. Most self-made Englishmen, with such a burly exterior and energy, and engaged in such pursuits, could not, to save themselves from hanging, have impressed her as Mr. Vandewaters did. There was a big round sympathy in the tone, a timbre in the voice, which made the words entirely fitting. Besides, he said them without any kind of affectation, and with a certain turn of dry humour, as if he were inwardly laughing at the idea of the poem. "The verses are charming," she said, musingly; "and the idea put that way is charming also. But do you think there would be much amusement in living half-a-dozen times, or even twice, unless you were quite sure that you remembered everything? This gentleman was peculiarly fortunate to recall Fujisan, and the orange orchards--and the girl." "I believe you are right. One life is about enough for most of us. Memory is all very fine; but you'd want a life set apart for remembering the others after awhile." "Why do you not add, 'And that would bore one?' Most of the men I know would say so." "Well, I never used the word that way in my life. When I don't like a thing, that ends it--it has got to go." "You cannot do that with everything." "Pretty much, if I set my mind to it. It is astonishing how things'll come round your way if you keep on thinking and willing them so." "Have you always got everything you wanted?" He had been looking off into the grounds through the open window. Now he turned slowly upon her. "So far I have got everything I set my mind to get. Little things don't count. You lose them sometimes because you want to work at something else; sometimes because, as in cards, you are throwing a few away to save the whole game." He looked at her, as she thought, curiously. In his mind he was wondering if she knew that he had made up his mind to marry her. She was suddenly made aware of the masterfulness of his spirit, which might, she knew, be applied to herself. "Let us go into the grounds," he added, all at once. Soon after, in the shade of the trees, she broke in upon the thread of their casual conversation. "A few moments ago," she murmured, "you said: 'One life is about enough for most of us.' Then you added a disparaging remark about memory. Well, that doesn't seem like your usual point of view--more like that of Mr. Pride; but not so plaintive, of course. Pray do smoke," she added, as, throwing back his coat, he exposed some cigars in his waistcoat pocket. "I am sure you always smoke after lunch." He took out a cigar, cut off the end, and put it in his mouth. But he did not light it. Then he glanced up at her with a grave quizzical look as though wondering what would be the effect of his next words, and a smile played at his lips. "What I meant was this. I think we get enough out of our life to last us for centuries. It's all worth doing from the start, no matter what it is: working, fighting, marching and countermarching, plotting and counterplotting, backing your friends and hating your foes, playing big games and giving others a chance to, standing with your hand on the lynch-pin, or pulling your head safe out of the hot-pot. But I don't think it is worth doing twice. The interest wouldn't be fresh. For men and women and life, with a little different dress, are the same as they always were; and there's only the same number of passions working now, as at the beginning. I want to live life up to the hilt; because it is all new as I go on; but never twice." "Indeed?" She looked at him earnestly for a moment, and then added: "I should think you would have seen lost chances; and doing things a second time might do them better." "I never missed chances," he replied, simply: "never except twice, and then--" "And then?" "Then it was to give the other fellow a chance." "Oh!" There was a kind of dubiousness in her tone. He noticed it. "You can hardly understand, Miss Raglan. Fact is, it was one of those deals when you can make a million, in a straight enough game; but it comes out of another man--one, maybe, that you don't know; who is playing just the same as you are. I have had a lot of sport; but I've never crippled any one man, when my engine has been dead on him. I have played more against organisations than single men." "What was the most remarkable chance you ever had to make a million, and did not?" He threw back his head, smiling shrewdly. "When by accident my enemy got hold of a telegram meant for me. I was standing behind a frosted glass door, and through the narrow bevel of clear glass I watched him read it. I never saw a struggle like that. At last he got up, snatched an envelope, put the telegram inside, wrote my name, and called a messenger. I knew what was in the message. I let the messenger go, and watched that man for ten minutes. It was a splendid sight. The telegram had given him a big chance to make a million or two, as he thought. But he backed himself against the temptation, and won. That day I could have put the ball into his wicket; but I didn't. That's a funny case of the kind." "Did he ever know?" "He didn't. We are fighting yet. He is richer than I am now, and at this moment he's playing a hard game straight at several interests of mine. But I reckon I can stop him." "You must get a great deal out of life," she said. "Have you always enjoyed it so?" She was thinking it would be strange to live in contact with such events very closely. It was so like adventure. "Always--from the start." "Tell me something of it all, won't you?" He did not hesitate. "I was born in a little place in Maine. My mother was a good woman, they said--straight as a die all her life. I can only remember her in a kind of dream, when she used to gather us children about the big rocking- chair, and pray for us, and for my father, who was away most of the time, working in the timber-shanties in the winter, and at odd things in the summer. My father wasn't much of a man. He was kind-hearted, but shiftless, but pretty handsome for a man from Maine. "My mother died when I was six years old. Things got bad. I was the youngest. The oldest was only ten years old. She was the head of the house. She had the pluck of a woman. We got along somehow, until one day, when she and I were scrubbing the floor, she caught cold. She died in three days." Here he paused; and, without glancing at Miss Raglan, who sat very still, but looking at him, he lighted his cigar. "Then things got worse. My father took to drinking hard, and we had mighty little to eat. I chored around, doing odd things in the village. I have often wondered that people didn't see the stuff that was in me, and give me a chance. They didn't, though. As for my relatives: one was a harness-maker. He sent me out in the dead of winter to post bills for miles about, and gave me ten cents for it. Didn't even give me a meal. Twenty years after he came to me and wanted to borrow a hundred dollars. I gave him five hundred on condition that he'd not come near me for the rest of his natural life. "The next thing I did was to leave home--'run away,' I suppose, is the way to put it. I got to Boston, and went for a cabin-boy on a steamer; travelled down to Panama, and from there to Brazil. At Brazil I got on another ship, and came round to San Francisco. I got into trouble in San Francisco with the chief mate of the Flying Polly, because I tried to teach him his business. One of the first things I learned in life was not to interfere with people who had a trade and didn't understand it. In San Francisco I got out of the situation. I took to selling newspapers in the streets. "There wasn't enough money in it. I went for a cabin-boy again, and travelled to Australia. There, once more, I resigned my position, chiefly because I wouldn't cheerfully let the Mate bang me about the quarter-deck. I expect I was a precocious youth, and wasn't exactly the kind for Sunday-school prizes. In Melbourne I began to speculate. I found a ticket for the theatre where an American actor--our biggest actor today--was playing, and I tried to sell it outside the door of the theatre where they were crowding to see him. The man who bought it was the actor himself. He gave me two dollars more than the regular price. I expect he knew from my voice I was an American. Is there anything peculiar about my voice, Miss Raglan?" She looked at him quickly, smiled, and said in a low tone: "Yes, something peculiar. Please go on." "Well, anyway, he said to me: 'Look here, where did you come from, my boy?' I told him the State of Maine. 'What are you doing here?' he asked. 'Speculating, said I, and seeing things.' He looked me up and down. 'How are you getting on?' 'Well. I've made four dollars to-day,' I answered. 'Out of this ticket?' I expect I grinned. He suddenly caught me by the arm and whisked me inside the theatre--the first time I'd ever been in a theatre in my life. I shall never forget it. He took me around to his dressing-room, stuck me in a corner, and prodded me with his forefinger. 'Look here,' he said, 'I guess I'll hire you to speculate for me.' And that's how I came to get twenty-five dollars a month and my living from a great American actor. When I got back to America--with him--I had two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and good clothes. I started a peanut-stand, and sold papers and books, and became a speculator. I heard two men talking one day at my stall about a railway that was going to run through a certain village, and how they intended to buy up the whole place. I had four hundred and fifty dollars then. I went down to that village, and bought some lots myself. I made four thousand dollars. Then I sold more books, and went on speculating." He paused, blew his cigar-smoke slowly from him a moment; then turned with a quick look to Miss Raglan, and smiled as at some incongruous thing. He was wondering what would be the effect of his next words. "When I was about twenty-two, and had ten thousand dollars, I fell in love. She was a bright-faced, smart girl. Her mother kept a boarding- house in New York; not an up-town boarding-house. She waited on table. I suppose a man can be clever in making money, and knowing how to handle men, and not know much about women. I thought she was worth a good deal more to me than the ten thousand dollars. She didn't know I had that money. A drummer--that's a commercial traveller--came along, who had a salary of, maybe, a thousand dollars a year. She jilted me. She made a mistake. That year I made twenty-five thousand dollars. I saw her a couple of years ago. She was keeping a boarding-house too, and her daughter was waiting on table. I'm sorry for that girl: it isn't any fun being poor. I didn't take much interest in women after that. I put my surplus affections into stocks and shares, and bulling and bearing. . . Well, that is the way the thing has gone till now." "What became of your father and your brother?" she asked in a neutral tone. "I don't know anything about my father. He disappeared after I left, and never turned up again. And Jim--poor Jim!--he was shiftless. Jim was a tanner. It was no good setting him up in business. Steady income was the cheapest way. But Jim died of too much time on his hands. His son is in Mexico somewhere. I sent him there, and I hope he'll stay. If he doesn't, his salary stops: he is shiftless too. That is not the kind of thing, and they are not the kind of people you know best, Miss Raglan." He looked at her, eyes full-front, bravely, honestly, ready to face the worst. Her head was turned away. He nodded to himself. It was as he feared. At that moment a boy came running along the walk towards them, and handed Mr. Vandewaters a telegram. He gave the lad a few pence, then, with an apology, opened the telegram. Presently he whistled softly, in a quick surprised way. Then he stuffed the paper into his waistcoat pocket, threw away his cigar, and turned to Gracia Raglan, whose face as yet was only half towards him. "I hope your news is good," she said very quietly. "Pretty bad, in a way," he answered. "I have lost a couple of millions-- maybe a little more." She gasped, and turned an astonished face on him. He saw her startled look, and laughed. "Does it not worry you?" she asked. "I have got more important things on hand just now," he answered. "Very much more important," he added, and there was that in his voice which made her turn away her head again. "I suppose," he went on, "that the story you have just heard is not the kind of an autobiography you would care to have told in your drawing- room?" Still she did not reply; but her hands were clasped tightly in front of her. "No: I suppose not," he went on--"I--I suppose not. And yet, do you know, Miss Raglan, I don't feel a bit ashamed of it, after all: which may be evidence of my lost condition." Now she turned to him with a wonderful light in her eyes, her sweet, strong face rich with feeling. She put out her hand to his arm, and touched it quickly, nervously. "Your story has touched me inexpressibly," she said. "I did not know that men could be so strong and frank and courageous as you. I did not know that men could be so great; that any man could think more of what a woman thought of--of his life's story--than of"--she paused, and then gave a trembling little laugh--"of two millions or more." He got to his feet, and faced her. "You--you are a woman, by heaven!" he said. "You are finer even than I thought you. I am not worthy to ask you what I had in my mind to ask you; but there is no man in God's universe who would prize you as I do. I may be a poor man before sundown. If that happens, though, I shall remember the place where I had the biggest moment of my life, and the woman who made that moment possible." Now she also rose. There was a brave high look in her face; but her voice shook a little as she said: "You have never been a coward, why be a coward now?" Smiling, he slowly answered: "I wouldn't if I were sure about my dollars." She did not reply, but glanced down, not with coquetry, but because she could not stand the furnace of his eyes. "You said a moment ago," she ventured, "that you have had one big moment in your life. Oughtn't it to bring you good fortune?" "It will--it will," he said, reaching his hand towards hers. "No, no," she rejoined archly. "I am going. Please do not follow me." Then, over her shoulder, as she left him: "If you have luck, I shall want a subscription for my hospital." "As many thousands as you like," he answered: then, as she sped away: "I will have her, and the millions too!" adding reminiscently: "Yes, Lady Lawless, this is my biggest deal." He tramped to the stables, asked for and got a horse, and rode away to the railway station. It was dinner time when he got back. He came down to dinner late, apologising to Lady Lawless as he did so. Glancing across the table at Mr. Pride, he saw a peculiar excited look in the young man's face. "The baby fool!" he said to himself. "He's getting into mischief. I'll startle him. If he knows that an army of his dollars is playing at fox- and-geese, he'll not make eyes at Lady Lawless this way--little ass." Lady Lawless appeared oblivious of the young man's devotional exercises. She was engaged on a more congenial theme. In spite of Miss Raglan's excellent acting, she saw that something had occurred. Mr. Vandewaters was much the same as usual, save that his voice had an added ring. She was not sure that all was right; but she was determined to know. Sir Duke was amused generally. He led a pretty by-play with Mrs. Gregory Thorne, of whom he asked the details of the day, much to the confusion, not admirably hid, of Mr. Pride; lamenting now and then Mr. Vandewaters's absence from the shooting. Mr. Vandewaters was cool enough. He said that he had been playing at nine-pins with railways, which was good enough sport for him. Soon after dinner, he was handed two telegrams. He glanced slowly up at Pride, as if debating whether to tell him something. He evidently decided against it, and, excusing himself by saying he was off to take a little walk in Wall Street, went away to the telegraph office, where he stayed three hours. The magnitude of the concerns, the admirable stoicism with which he received alarming news, his dry humour while they waited between messages--all were so unlike anything the telegraph-clerk had ever seen, or imagined, that the thing was like a preposterous dream. Even when, at last, a telegram came which the clerk vaguely felt was, somehow, like the fall of an empire, Mr. Vandewaters remained unmoved. Then he sent one more telegram, gave the clerk a pound, asked that the reply be sent to him as soon as it came, and went away, calmly smoking his cigar. It was a mild night. When he got to the house he found some of the guests walking on the veranda. He joined them; but Miss Raglan was not with them; nor were Lady Lawless and Mr. Pride. He wanted to see all three, and so he went into the house. There was no one in the drawing- room. He reached the library in time to hear Lady Lawless say to Mr. Pride, who was disappearing through another door: "You had better ask advice of Mr. Vandewaters." The door closed. Mr. Vandewaters stepped forward. He understood the situation. "I guess I know how to advise him, Lady Lawless," he said. She turned on him quietly, traces of hauteur in her manner. Her self- pride had been hurt. "You have heard?" she asked. "Only your last words, Lady Lawless. They were enough. I feel guilty in having brought him here." "You need not. I was glad to have your friend. He is young and effusive. Let us say no more about it. "He is tragically repentant; which is a pity. There is no reason why he should not stay, and be sensible. Why should young men lose their heads, and be so absurdly earnest?" "Another poser, Lady Lawless." "In all your life you never misunderstood things so, I am sure." "Well, there is no virtue in keeping your head steady. I have spent most of my life wooing Madame Fortune; I find that makes a man canny." "She has been very kind to you." "Perhaps it would surprise you if I told you that at this moment I am not worth ten thousand dollars." She looked greatly astonished. "I do not understand," she said. She was thinking of what this might mean to Gracia Raglan. "You see I've been playing games at a disadvantage with some ruffians at New York. They have combined and got me into a corner. I have made my last move. If it comes out right I shall be richer than ever; if not I must begin all over again." Lady Lawless looked at him curiously. She had never met a man like him before. His power seemed almost Napoleonic; his imperturbability was absolute. Yet she noticed something new in him. On one side a kind of grim forcefulness; on the other, a quiet sort of human sympathy. The one, no doubt, had to do with the momentous circumstances amid which he was placed; the other, with an event which she had, perhaps prematurely, anticipated. "I wonder--I wonder at you," she said. "How do you keep so cool while such tremendous things are happening?" "Because I believe in myself, Lady Lawless. I have had to take my measure a good many times in this world. I never was defeated through my own stupidity. It has been the sheer luck of the game." "You do not look like a gamester," she said. "I guess it's all pretty much a game in life, if you look at it right. It is only a case of playing fair or foul." "I never heard any Englishmen talk as you do." "Very likely not," he responded. "I don't want to be unpleasant; but most Englishmen work things out by the rule their fathers taught them, and not by native ingenuity. It is native wit that tells in the end, I'm thinking." "Perhaps you are right," she rejoined. "There must be a kind of genius in it." Here her voice dropped a little lower. "I do not believe there are many Englishmen, even if they had your dollars--" "The dollars I had this morning," he interposed. "--who could have so strongly impressed Gracia Raglan." He looked thoughtfully on the ground; then raised his eyes to Lady Lawless, and said in a low, ringing tone: "Yes, I am going to do more than 'impress': I am going to convince her." "When?" she asked. "To-morrow morning, I hope," was the reply. "I believe I shall have my millions again." "If you do," she said slowly, "do you not think that you ought to run no more risks--for her sake?" "That is just what I mean to do, Lady Lawless. I'll settle millions where they ought to be settled, drop Wall Street, and--go into training." "Into training?" she asked. "Yes, for a house on the Hudson, a villa at Cannes, a residence in Grosvenor Square, and a place in Devonshire--or somewhere else. Then," he added, with a twinkle in his eye, "I shall need a good deal of time to cultivate accent." "Don't!" she said. "You are much more charming as you are." They passed into the drawing-room. "Are these things to be told?" she asked, with a little suggestion in her voice. "I can trust your discretion." "Even in such circumstances?" she asked. She paused, with a motion of her fan back towards the room they had left. "You have taught him a lesson, Lady Lawless. It is rough on him; but he needs it." "I hope he will do nothing rash," she said. "Perhaps he'll write some poetry, and refuse to consider his natural appetite." "Will you go and see him now?" she asked. "Immediately. Good night, Lady Lawless." His big hand swallowed hers in a firm, friendly clasp, and he shook it once or twice before he parted from her. He met Sir Duke Lawless in the doorway. They greeted cheerfully, and then Lawless came up to his wife. "Well, my dear," he said, with an amused look in his face, "well, what news?" She lifted her eyebrows at him. "Something has happened, Molly, I can see it in your face." She was very brief. "Gracia Raglan has been conquered; the young man from Boston has been foolish; and Mr. Vandewaters has lost millions." "Eh? That's awkward," said Sir Duke. "Which?" asked his wife. Vandewaters found Mr. Pride in his bedroom, a waif of melancholy. He drew a chair up, lighted a cigar, eyed the young man from head to foot, and then said: "Pride, have you got any backbone? If you have, brace up. You are ruined. That's about as mild as I can put it." "You know all?"--said the young man helplessly, his hands clasped between his knees in aesthetic agony. "Yes; I know more than you do, as you will find out. You're a nice sort of man, to come into a man's house, in a strange land, and make love to his wife. Now, what do you think of yourself? You're a nice representative of the American, aren't you?" "I--I didn't mean any harm--I--couldn't help it," replied the stricken boy. "O, for God's sake, drop that bib-and-tucker twaddle! Couldn't help it! Every scoundrel, too weak to face the consequences of his sin, says he couldn't help it. So help me, Joseph, I'd like to thrash you. Couldn't help it! Now, sit up in your chair, take this cigar, drink this glass of whiskey I'm pouring for you, and make up your mind that you're going to be a man and not a nincompoop--sit still! Don't fly up. I mean what I say. I've got business to talk to you. And make up your mind that, for once, you have got to take life seriously." "What right have you to speak to me like this?" demanded the young man with an attempt at dignity. Vandewaters laughed loudly. "Right? Great Scott! The right of a man who thinks a damned sight more of your reputation than you do yourself, and of your fortune than you would ever have wits to do. I am the best friend you've got, and not the less your friend because I feel like breaking your ribs. Now, enough of that. This is what I have to say, Pride: to-night you and I are beggars. You understand? Beggars. Out in the cold world, out in the street. Now, what do you think of that?" The shock to Mr. Pride was great. Mr. Vandewaters had exaggerated the disaster; but he had done it with a purpose. The youth gasped "My God!" and dropped his glass. Vandewaters picked it up, and regarded him a moment in silence. Then he began to explain their financial position. He did not explain the one bold stroke which he was playing to redeem their fortunes: if possible. When he had finished the story, he said, "I guess that's a bit more serious than the little affair in the library half an hour ago?" He rose to his feet. "Look here, Pride, be a man. You've never tried it yet. Let me teach you how to face the world without a dollar; how to make a fortune. Then, when you've made it, you'll get what you've never had yet--the pleasure of spending money dug out of your own wits." He carried conviction into a mind not yet all destroyed by effeminacy and indulgence of the emotions. Something of the iron of his own brain got into the brain of the young man, who came to his feet trembling a little, and said: "I don't mind it so much, if you only stick to me, Vandewaters." A smile flickered about the corners of Vandewaters's mouth. "Take a little more whiskey," he said; "then get into bed, and go to sleep. No nonsense, remember; go to sleep. To-morrow morning we will talk. And see here, my boy,"--he caught him by both arms and fastened his eyes,--"you have had a lesson: learn it backwards. Good night." Next morning Mr. Vandewaters was early in the grounds. He chatted with the gardener, and discussed the merits of the horses with the groom, apparently at peace with the world. Yet he was watching vigilantly the carriage-drive from the public-road. Just before breakfast-time a telegraph messenger appeared. Vandewaters was standing with Sir Duke Lawless when the message was handed to him. He read it, put it into his pocket, and went on talking. Presently he said: "My agent is coming from town this morning, Sir Duke. I may have to leave to-night." Then he turned, and went to his room. Lady Lawless had heard his last words. "What about your ranche in Colorado, Duke?" "About as sure, I fancy, as your millionaire for Gracia." Miss Raglan did not appear at breakfast with the rest. Neither did Mr. Pride, who slept late that morning. About ten o'clock Mr. Vandewaters's agent arrived. About twelve o'clock Mr. Vandewaters saw Miss Raglan sitting alone in the library. He was evidently looking for her. He came up to her quietly, and put a piece of paper in her lap. "What is this?" she asked, a little startled. "A thousand for your hospital," was the meaning reply. She flushed, and came to her feet. "I have won," he said. And then he reached out and took both her hands. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: But I don't think it is worth doing twice He wishes to be rude to some one, and is disappointed I--couldn't help it Interfere with people who had a trade and didn't understand it Lose their heads, and be so absurdly earnest Scoundrel, too weak to face the consequences of his sin THE TRESPASSER By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS: Volume 1 I. ONE IN SEARCH OF A KINGDOM II. IN WHICH HE CLAIMS HIS OWN III. HE TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE IV. AN HOUR WITH HIS FATHER'S PAST V. WHEREIN HE FINDS HIS ENEMY Volume 2. VI. WHICH TELLS OF STRANGE ENCOUNTERS VII. WHEREIN THE SEAL OF HIS HERITAGE IS SET VIII. HE ANSWERS AN AWKWARD QUESTION IX. HE FINDS NEW SPONSORS X. HE COMES TO "THE WAKING OF THE FIRE" XI. HE MAKES A GALLANT CONQUEST Volume 3. XII. HE STANDS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS XIII. HE JOURNEYS AFAR XIV. IN WHICH THE PAST IS REPEATED XV. WHEREIN IS SEEN THE OLD ADAM AND THE GARDEN XVI. WHEREIN LOVE SNOWS NO LAW SAVE THE MAN'S XVII. THE MAN AND THE WOMAN FACE THE INTOLERABLE XVIII. "RETURN, O SHULAMITE!" INTRODUCTION While I was studying the life of French Canada in the winter of 1892, in the city of Quebec or in secluded parishes, there was forwarded to me from my London home a letter from Mr. Arrowsmith, the publisher, asking me to write a novel of fifty thousand or sixty thousand words for what was called his Annual. In this Annual had appeared Hugh Conway's 'Called Back' and Anthony Hope's 'Prisoner of Zenda', among other celebrated works of fiction. I cabled my acceptance of the excellent offer made me, and the summer of 1893 found me at Audierne, in Brittany, with some artist friends--more than one of whom has since come to eminence--living what was really an out-door literary life; for the greater part of 'The Trespasser' was written in a high-walled garden on a gentle hill, and the remainder in a little tower-like structure of the villa where I lodged, which was all windows. The latter I only used when it rained, and the garden was my workshop. There were peaches and figs on the walls, pleasant shrubs surrounded me, and the place was ideally quiet and serene. Coffee or tea and toast was served me at 6.30 o'clock A.M., my pad was on my knee at 8, and then there was practically uninterrupted work till 12, when 'dejeuner a la fourchette', with its fresh sardines, its omelettes, and its roast chicken, was welcome. The afternoon was spent on the sea-shore, which is very beautiful at Audierne, and there I watched my friends painting sea-scapes. In the late afternoon came letter-writing and reading, and after a little and simple dinner at 6.30 came bed at 9.45 or thereabouts. In such conditions for many weeks I worked on The Trespasser; and I think the book has an outdoor spirit which such a life would inspire. It was perhaps natural that, having lived in Canada and Australia, and having travelled greatly in all the outer portions of the Empire, I should be interested in and impelled to write regarding the impingement of the outer life of our far dominions, through individual character, upon the complicated, traditional, orderly life of England. That feeling found expression in The Translation of a Savage, and I think that in neither case the issue of the plot or the plot--if such it may be called --nor the main incident, was exaggerated. Whether the treatment was free from exaggeration, it is not my province to say. I only know what I attempted to do. The sense produced by the contact of the outer life with a refined, and perhaps overrefined, and sensitive, not to say meticulous, civilisation, is always more sensational than the touch of the representative of "the thousand years" with the wide, loosely organised free life of what is still somewhat hesitatingly called the Colonies, though the same remark could be applied to all new lands, such as the United States. The representative of the older life makes no signs, or makes little collision at any rate, when he touches the new social organisms of the outer circle. He is not emphatic; he is typical, but not individual; he seeks seclusion in the mass. It is not so with the more dynamic personality of the over-sea citizen. For a time at least he remains in the old civilisation an entity, an isolated, unabsorbed fact which has capacities for explosion. All this was in my mind when The Trespasser was written, and its converse was 'The Pomp of the Lavilettes', which showed the invasion of the life of the outer land by the representative of the old civilisation. I do not know whether I had the thought that the treatment of such themes was interesting or not. The idea of The Trespasser was there in my mind, and I had to use it. At the beginning of one's career, if one were to calculate too carefully, impulse, momentum, daring, original conception would be lost. To be too audacious, even to exaggerate, is no crime in youth nor in the young artist. As a farmer once said to me regarding a frisky mount, it is better to smash through the top bar than to have spring-halt. The Trespasser took its place, and, as I think, its natural place, in the development of my literary life. I did not stop to think whether it was a happy theme or not, or whether it had popular elements. These things did not concern me. When it was written I should not have known what was a popular theme. It was written under circumstances conducive to its artistic welfare; if it has not as many friends as 'The Right of Way' or 'The Seats of the Mighty' or 'The Weavers' or 'The Judgment House', that is not the fault of the public or of the critics. TO DOUGLAS ROBINSON, Esq., AND FRANK A. HILTON, Esq. My dear Douglas and Frank: I feel sure that this dedication will give you as much pleasure as it does me. It will at least be evidence that I do not forget good days in your company here and there in the world. I take pleasure in linking your names; for you, who have never met, meet thus in the porch of a little house that I have built. You, my dear Douglas, will find herein scenes, times, and things familiar to you; and you, my dear Frank, reflections of hours when we camped by an idle shore, or drew about the fire of winter nights, and told tales worth more than this, for they were of the future, and it is of the past. Always sincerely yours, GILBERT PARKER. THE TRESPASSER CHAPTER I ONE IN SEARCH OF A KINGDOM Why Gaston Belward left the wholesome North to journey afar, Jacques Brillon asked often in the brawling streets of New York, and oftener in the fog of London as they made ready to ride to Ridley Court. There was a railway station two miles from the Court, but Belward had had enough of railways. He had brought his own horse Saracen, and Jacques's broncho also, at foolish expense, across the sea, and at a hotel near Euston Station master and man mounted and set forth, having seen their worldly goods bestowed by staring porters, to go on by rail. In murky London they attracted little notice; but when their hired guide left them at the outskirts, and they got away upon the highway towards the Court, cottagers stood gaping. For, outside the town there was no fog, and the fresh autumn air drew the people abroad. "What is it makes 'em stare, Jacques?!" asked Belward, with a humorous sidelong glance. Jacques looked seriously at the bright pommel of his master's saddle and the shining stirrups and spurs, dug a heel into the tender skin of his broncho, and replied: "Too much silver all at once." He tossed his curling black hair, showing up the gold rings in his ears, and flicked the red-and-gold tassels of his boots. "You think that's it, eh?!" rejoined Belward, as he tossed a shilling to a beggar. "Maybe, too, your great Saracen to this tot of a broncho, and the grand homme to little Jacques Brillon." Jacques was tired and testy. The other laid his whip softly on the half-breed's shoulder. "See, my peacock: none of that. You're a spanking good servant, but you're in a country where it's knuckle down man to master; and what they do here you've got to do, or quit--go back to your pea-soup and caribou. That's as true as God's in heaven, little Brillon. We're not on the buffalo trail now. You understand?" Jacques nodded. "Hadn't you better say it?" The warning voice drew up the half-breed's face swiftly, and he replied: "I am to do what you please." "Exactly. You've been with me six years--ever since I turned Bear Eye's moccasins to the sun; and for that you swore you'd never leave me. Did it on a string of holy beads, didn't you, Frenchman?" "I do it again." He drew out a rosary, and disregarding Belward's outstretched hand, said: "By the Mother of God, I will never leave you!" There was a kind of wondering triumph in Belward's eyes, though he had at first shrunk from Jacques's action, and a puzzling smile came. "Wherever I go, or whatever I do?" "Whatever you do, or wherever you go." He put the rosary to his lips, and made the sign of the cross. His master looked at him curiously, intently. Here was a vain, naturally indolent half-breed, whose life had made for selfishness and independence, giving his neck willingly to a man's heel, serving with blind reverence, under a voluntary vow. "Well, it's like this, Jacques," Belward said presently; "I want you, and I'm not going to say that you'll have a better time than you did in the North, or on the Slope; but if you'd rather be with me than not, you'll find that I'll interest you. There's a bond between us, anyway. You're half French, and I'm one-fourth French, and more. You're half Indian, and I'm one-fourth Indian--no more. That's enough. So far, I haven't much advantage. But I'm one-half English--King's English, for there's been an offshoot of royalty in our family somewhere, and there's the royal difference. That's where I get my brains--and manners." "Where did you get the other?!" asked Jacques, shyly, almost furtively. "Money?" "Not money--the other." Belward spurred, and his horse sprang away viciously. A laugh came back on Jacques, who followed as hard as he could, and it gave him a feeling of awe. They were apart for a long time, then came together again, and rode for miles without a word. At last Belward, glancing at a sign-post before an inn door, exclaimed at the legend--"The Whisk o' Barley,"--and drew rein. He regarded the place curiously for a minute. The landlord came out. Belward had some beer brought. A half-dozen rustics stood gaping, not far away. He touched his horse with a heel. Saracen sprang towards them, and they fell back alarmed. Belward now drank his beer quietly, and asked question after question of the landlord, sometimes waiting for an answer, sometimes not--a kind of cross-examination. Presently he dismounted. As he stood questioning, chiefly about Ridley Court and its people, a coach showed on the hill, and came dashing down and past. He lifted his eyes idly, though never before had he seen such a coach as swings away from Northumberland Avenue of a morning. He was not idle, however; but he had not come to England to show surprise at anything. As the coach passed his face lifted above the arm on the neck of the horse, keen, dark, strange. A man on the box-seat, attracted at first by the uncommon horses and their trappings, caught Belward's eyes. Not he alone, but Belward started then. Some vague intelligence moved the minds of both, and their attention was fixed till the coach rounded a corner and was gone. The landlord was at Belward's elbow. "The gentleman on the box-seat be from Ridley Court. That's Maister Ian Belward, sir." Gaston Belward's eyes half closed, and a sombre look came, giving his face a handsome malice. He wound his fingers in his horse's mane, and put a foot in the stirrup. "Who is 'Maister Ian'?" "Maister Ian be Sir William's eldest, sir. On'y one that's left, sir. On'y three to start wi': and one be killed i' battle, and one had trouble wi' his faither and Maister Ian; and he went away and never was heard on again, sir. That's the end on him." "Oh, that's the end on him, eh, landlord? And how long ago was that?" "Becky, lass," called the landlord within the door, "wheniver was it Maister Robert turned his back on the Court--iver so while ago? Eh, a fine lad that Maister Robert as iver I see!" Fat laborious Becky hobbled out, holding an apple and a knife. She blinked at her husband, and then at the strangers. "What be askin' o' the Court?!" she said. Her husband repeated the question. She gathered her apron to her eyes with an unctuous sob: "Doan't a' know when Maister Robert went! He comes, i' the house 'ere and says, 'Becky, gie us a taste o' the red-top-and where's Jock?' He was always thinkin' a deal o' my son Jock. 'Jock be gone,' I says, 'and I knows nowt o' his comin' back'--meanin', I was, that day. 'Good for Jock!' says he, 'and I'm goin' too, Becky, and I knows nowt o' my comin' back.' 'Where be goin', Maister Robert?' I says. 'To hell, Becky,' says he, and he laughs. 'From hell to hell. I'm sick to my teeth o' one, I'll try t'other'--a way like that speaks he." Belward was impatient, and to hurry the story he made as if to start on. Becky, seeing, hastened. "Dear a' dear! The red-top were afore him, and I tryin' to make what become to him. He throws arm 'round me, smacks me on the cheek, and says he: 'Tell Jock to keep the mare, Becky.' Then he flings away, and never more comes back to the Court. And that day one year my Jock smacks me on the cheek, and gets on the mare; and when I ask: 'Where be goin'?' he says: 'For a hunt i' hell wi' Maister Robert, mother.' And from that day come back he never did, nor any word. There was trouble wi' the lad-wi' him and Maister Robert at the Court; but I never knowed nowt o' the truth. And it's seven-and-twenty years since Maister Robert went." Gaston leaned over his horse's neck, and thrust a piece of silver into the woman's hands. "Take that, Becky Lawson, and mop your eyes no more." She gaped. "How dost know my name is Becky Lawson? I havena been ca'd so these three-and-twenty years--not since a' married good man here, and put Jock's faither in 's grave yander." "The devil told me," he answered, with a strange laugh, and, spurring, they were quickly out of sight. They rode for a couple of miles without speaking. Jacques knew his master, and did not break the silence. Presently they came over a hill, and down upon a little bridge. Belward drew rein, and looked up the valley. About two miles beyond the roofs and turrets of the Court showed above the trees. A whimsical smile came to his lips. "Brillon," he said, "I'm in sight of home." The half-breed cocked his head. It was the first time that Belward had called him "Brillon"--he had ever been "Jacques." This was to be a part of the new life. They were not now hunting elk, riding to "wipe out" a camp of Indians or navvies, dining the owner of a rancho or a deputation from a prairie constituency in search of a member, nor yet with a senator at Washington, who served tea with canvas-back duck and tooth-picks with dessert. Once before had Jacques seen this new manner--when Belward visited Parliament House at Ottawa, and was presented to some notable English people, visitors to Canada. It had come to these notable folk that Mr. Gaston Belward had relations at Ridley Court, and that of itself was enough to command courtesy. But presently, they who would be gracious for the family's sake, were gracious for the man's. He had that which compelled interest--a suggestive, personal, distinguished air. Jacques knew his master better than any one else knew him; and yet he knew little, for Belward was of those who seem to give much confidence, and yet give little--never more than he wished. "Yes, monsieur, in sight of home," Jacques replied, with a dry cadence. "Say 'sir,' not 'monsieur,' Brillon; and from the time we enter the Court yonder, look every day and every hour as you did when the judge asked you who killed Tom Daly." Jacques winced, but nodded his head. Belward continued: "What you hear me tell is what you can speak of; otherwise you are blind and dumb. You understand?" Jacques's face was sombre, but he said quickly: "Yes--sir." He straightened himself on his horse, as if to put himself into discipline at once--as lead to the back of a racer. Belward read the look. He drew his horse close up. Then he ran an arm over the other's shoulder. "See here, Jacques. This is a game that's got to be played up to the hilt. A cat has nine lives, and most men have two. We have. Now listen. You never knew me mess things, did you? Well, I play for keeps in this; no monkeying. I've had the life of Ur of the Chaldees; now for Babylon. I've lodged with the barbarian; here are the roofs of ivory. I've had my day with my mother's people; voila! for my father's. You heard what Becky Lawson said. My father was sick of it at twenty-five, and got out. We'll see what my father's son will do. . . . I'm going to say my say to you, and have done with it. As like as not there isn't another man that I'd have brought with me. You're all right. But I'm not going to rub noses. I stick when I do stick, but I know what's got to be done here; and I've told you. You'll not have the fun out of it that I will, but you won't have the worry. Now, we start fresh. I'm to be obeyed; I'm Napoleon. I've got a devil, yet it needn't hurt you, and it won't. But if I make enemies here--and I'm sure to--let them look out. Give me your hand, Jacques; and don't you forget that there are two Gaston Belwards, and the one you have hunted and lived with is the one you want to remember when you get raw with the new one. For you'll hear no more slang like this from me, and you'll have to get used to lots of things." Without waiting reply, Belward urged on his horse, and at last paused on the top of a hill, and waited for Jacques. It was now dusk, and the landscape showed soft, sleepy, and warm. "It's all of a piece," Belward said to himself, glancing from the trim hedges, the small, perfectly-tilled fields and the smooth roads, to Ridley Court itself, where many lights were burning and gates opening and shutting. There was some affair on at the Court, and he smiled to think of his own appearance among the guests. "It's a pity I haven't clothes with me, Brillon; they have a show going there." He had dropped again into the new form of master and man. His voice was cadenced, gentlemanly. Jacques pointed to his own saddle-bag. "No, no, they are not the things needed. I want the evening-dress which cost that cool hundred dollars in New York." Still Jacques was silent. He did not know whether, in his new position, he was expected to suggest. Belward understood, and it pleased him. "If we had lost the track of a buck moose, or were nosing a cache of furs, you'd find a way, Brillon." "Voila," said Jacques; "then, why not wear the buckskin vest, the red- silk sash, and the boots like these?"--tapping his own leathers. "You look a grand seigneur so." "But I am here to look an English gentleman, not a grand seigneur, nor a company's trader on a break. Never mind, the thing will wait till we stand in my ancestral halls," he added, with a dry laugh. They neared the Court. The village church was close by the Court-wall. It drew Belward's attention. One by one lights were springing up in it. It was a Friday evening, and the choir were come to practise. They saw buxom village girls stroll in, followed by the organist, one or two young men and a handful of boys. Presently the horsemen were seen, and a staring group gathered at the church door. An idea came to Belward. "Kings used to make pilgrimages before they took their crowns, why shouldn't I?!" he said half-jestingly. Most men placed similarly would have been so engaged with the main event that they had never thought of this other. But Belward was not excited. He was moving deliberately, prepared for every situation. He had a great game in hand, and he had no fear of his ability to play it. He suddenly stopped his horse, and threw the bridle to Jacques, saying: "I'll be back directly, Brillon." He entered the churchyard, and passed to the door. As he came the group under the crumbling arch fell back, and at the call of the organist went to the chancel. Belward came slowly up the aisle, and paused about the middle. Something in the scene gave him a new sensation. The church was old, dilapidated; but the timbered roof, the Norman and Early English arches incongruously side by side, with patches of ancient distemper and paintings, and, more than all, the marble figures on the tombs, with hands folded so foolishly,--yet impressively too, brought him up with a quick throb of the heart. It was his first real contact with England; for he had not seen London, save at Euston Station and in the north-west district. But here he was in touch with his heritage. He rested his hand upon a tomb beside him, and looked around slowly. The choir began the psalm for the following Sunday. At first he did not listen; but presently the organist was heard alone, and then the choir afterwards sang: "Woe is me, that I am constrained to dwell with Mesech: And to have my habitation among the tents of Kedar." Simple, dusty, ancient church, thick with effigies and tombs; with inscriptions upon pillars to virgins departed this life; and tablets telling of gentlemen gone from great parochial virtues: it wakened in Belward's brain a fresh conception of the life he was about to live--he did not doubt that he would live it. He would not think of himself as inacceptable to old Sir William Belward. He glanced to the tomb under his hand. There was enough daylight yet to see the inscription on the marble. Besides, a single candle was burning just over his head. He stooped and read: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF SIR GASTON ROBERT BELWARD, BART., OF RIDLEY COURT, IN THIS PARISH OF GASTONBURY, WHO, AT THE AGE OF ONE AND FIFTY YEARS, AFTER A LIFE OF DISTINGUISHED SERVICE FOR HIS KING AND COUNTRY, AND GRAVE AND CONSTANT CARE OF THOSE EXALTED WORKS WHICH BECAME A GENTLEMAN OF ENGLAND; MOST NOTABLE FOR HIS LOVE OF ARTS AND LETTERS; SENSIBLE IN ALL GRACES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS; GIFTED WITH SINGULAR VIRTUES AND INTELLECTS; AND DELIGHTING AS MUCH IN THE JOYS OF PEACE AS IN THE HEAVY DUTIES OF WAR: WAS SLAIN BY THE SIDE OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS, THE BELOVED AND ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE RUPERT, AT THE BATTLE OF NASEBY, IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD MDCXLV. "A Sojourner as all my Fathers were." "'Gaston Robert Belward'!" He read the name over and over, his fingers tracing the letters. His first glance at the recumbent figure had been hasty. Now, however, he leaned over and examined it. It lay, hands folded, in the dress of Prince Rupert's cavaliers, a sword at side, and great spurs laid beside the heels. "'Gaston Robert Belward'!" As this other Gaston Robert Belward looked at the image of his dead ancestor, a wild thought came: Had he himself not fought with Prince Rupert? Was he not looking at himself in stone? Was he not here to show England how a knight of Charles's time would look upon the life of the Victorian age? Would not this still cold Gaston be as strange at Ridley Court as himself fresh from tightening a cinch on the belly of a broncho? Would he not ride from where he had been sojourning as much a stranger in his England as himself? For a moment the idea possessed him. He was Sir Gaston Robert Belward, Baronet. He remembered now how, at Prince Rupert's side, he had sped on after Ireton's horse, cutting down Roundheads as he passed, on and on, mad with conquest, yet wondering that Rupert kept so long in pursuit while Charles was in danger with Cromwell: how, as the word came to wheel back, a shot tore away the pommel of his saddle; then another, and another, and with a sharp twinge in his neck he fell from his horse. He remembered how he raised himself on his arm and shouted "God save the King!" How he loosed his scarf and stanched the blood at his neck, then fell back into a whirring silence, from which he was roused by feeling himself in strong arms, and hearing a voice say: "Courage, Gaston." Then came the distant, very distant, thud of hoofs, and he fell asleep; and memory was done. He stood for a moment oblivious to everything: the evening bird fluttering among the rafters, the song of the nightingale without, the sighing wind in the tower entry, the rustics in the doorway, the group in the choir. Presently he became conscious of the words sung: "A thousand ages in Thy sight Are like an evening gone; Short as the watch that ends the night Before the rising sun. "Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away; They fly, forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day." He was himself again in an instant. He had been in a kind of dream. It seemed a long time since he had entered the church--in reality but a few moments. He caught his moustache in his fingers, and turned on his heel with a musing smile. His spurs clinked as he went down the aisle; and, involuntarily, he tapped a boot-leg with his riding-whip. The singing ceased. His spurs made the only sound. The rustics at the door fell back before him. He had to go up three steps to reach the threshold. As he stood on the top one he paused and turned round. So, this was home: this church more so even than the Court hard by. Here his ancestors--for how long he did not know, probably since the time of Edward III--idled time away in the dust; here Gaston Belward had been sleeping in effigy since Naseby Field. A romantic light came into his face. Again, why not? Even in the Hudson's Bay country and in the Rocky Mountains, he had been called, "Tivi, The Man of the Other." He had been counted the greatest of Medicine Men--one of the Race: the people of the Pole, who lived in a pleasant land, gifted as none others of the race of men. Not an hour before Jacques had asked him where he got "the other." No man can live in the North for any time without getting the strain of its mystery and romance in him. Gaston waved his hand to the tomb, and said half-believingly: "Gaston Robert Belward, come again to your kingdom." He turned to go out, and faced the rector of the parish,--a bent, benign- looking man,--who gazed at him astonished. He had heard the strange speech. His grave eyes rested on the stalwart stranger with courteous inquiry. Gaston knew who it was. Over his left brow there was a scar. He had heard of that scar before. When the venerable Archdeacon Varcoe was tutor to Ian and Robert Belward, Ian, in a fit of anger, had thrown a stick at his brother. It had struck the clergyman, leaving a scar. Gaston now raised his hat. As he passed, the rector looked after him, puzzled; the words he had heard addressed to the effigy returning. His eyes followed the young man to the gate, and presently, with a quick lifting of the shoulders, he said: "Robert Belward!" Then added: "Impossible! But he is a Belward." He saw Gaston mount, then entered and went slowly up the aisle. He paused beside the tomb of that other Belward. His wrinkled hand rested on it. "That is it," he said at last. "He is like the picture of this Sir Gaston. Strange." He sighed, and unconsciously touched the scar on his brow. His dealings with the Belwards had not been all joy. Begun with youthful pride and affectionate interest, they had gone on into vexation, sorrow, failure, and shame. While Gaston was riding into his kingdom, Lionel Henry Varcoe was thinking how poor his life had been where he had meant it to be useful. As he stood musing and listening to the music of the choir, a girl came softly up the aisle, and touched him on the arm. "Grandfather, dear," she said, "aren't you going to the Court? You have a standing invitation for this night in the week. You have not been there for so long." He fondled the hand on his arm. "My dearest, they have not asked me for a long time." "But why not to-night? I have laid out everything nicely for you--your new gaiters, and your D. C. L. coat with the pretty buttons and cord." "How can I leave you, my dear? And they do not ask you!" The voice tried for playfulness, but the eyes had a disturbed look. "Me? Oh! they never ask me to dinner-you know that. Tea and formal visits are enough for Lady Belward, and almost too much for me. There is yet time to dress. Do say you will go. I want you to be friendly with them." The old man shook his head. "I do not care to leave you, my dearest." "Foolish old fatherkins! Who would carry me off?--'Nobody, no, not I, nobody cares for me.'" Suddenly a new look shot up in her face. "Did you see that singular handsome man who came from the church--like some one out of an old painting? Not that his dress was so strange; but there was something in his face--something that you would expect to find in--in a Garibaldi. Silly, am I not? Did you see him?" He looked at her gravely. "My dear," he said at last, "I think I will go after all, though I shall be a little late." "A sensible grandfather. Come quickly, dear." He paused again. "But I fear I sent a note to say I could not dine." "No, you did not. It has been lying on your table for two days." "Dear me--dear me! I am getting very old." They passed out of the church. Presently, as they hurried to the rectory near by, the girl said: "But you haven't answered. Did you see the stranger? Do you know who he is?" The rector turned, and pointed to the gate of Ridley Court. Gaston and Brillon were just entering. "Alice," he said, in a vague, half-troubled way, "the man is a Belward, I think." "Why, of course!" the girl replied with a flash of excitement. "But he's so dark, and foreign-looking! What Belward is he?" "I do not know yet, my dear." "I shall be up when you come back. But mind, don't leave just after dinner. Stay and talk; you must tell me everything that's said and done --and about the stranger." CHAPTER II IN WHICH HE CLAIMS HIS OWN Meanwhile, without a word, Gaston had mounted, ridden to the castle, and passed through the open gates into the court-yard. Inside he paused. In the main building many lights were burning. There came a rattle of wheels behind him, and he shifted to let a carriage pass. Through the window of the brougham he could see the shimmer of satin, lace, and soft white fur, and he had an instant's glance of a pretty face. The carriage drew up to the steps, and presently three ladies and a brusque gentleman passed into the hall-way, admitted by powdered footmen. The incident had a manner, an air, which struck Gaston, he knew not why. Perhaps it was the easy finesse of ceremonial. He looked at Brillon. He had seen him sit arms folded like that, looking from the top of a bluff down on an Indian village or a herd of buffaloes. There was wonder, but no shyness or agitation, on his face; rather the naive, naked look of a child. Belward laughed. "Come, Brillon; we are at home." He rode up to the steps, Jacques following. A foot man appeared and stared. Gaston looked down on him neutrally, and dismounted. Jacques did the same. The footman still stared. Another appeared behind. Gaston eyed the puzzled servant calmly. "Why don't you call a groom?!" he presently said. There was a cold gleam in his eye. The footman shrank. "Yessir, yessir," he said confusedly, and signalled. The other footman came down, and made as if to take the bridle. Gaston waved him back. None too soon, for the horse lunged at him. "A rub down, a pint of beer, and water and feed in an hour, and I'll come to see him myself late to-night." Jacques had loosened the saddle-bags and taken them off. Gaston spoke to the horse, patted his neck, and gave him to the groom. Then he went up the steps, followed by Jacques. He turned at the door to see the groom leading both horses off, and eyeing Saracen suspiciously. He laughed noiselessly. "Saracen 'll teach him things," he said. "I might warn him, but it's best for the horses to make their own impressions." "What name, sir?!" asked a footman. "You are--?" "Falby, Sir." "Falby, look after my man Brillon here, and take me to Sir William." "What name, sir?" Gaston, as if with sudden thought, stepped into the light of the candles, and said in a low voice: "Falby, don't you know me?" The footman turned a little pale, as his eyes, in spite of themselves, clung to Gaston's. A kind of fright came, and then they steadied. "Oh yes, sir," he said mechanically. "Where have you seen me?" "In the picture on the wall, sir." "Whose picture, Falby?" "Sir Gaston Belward, Sir." A smile lurked at the corners of Gaston's mouth. "Gaston Belward. Very well, then you know what to say to Sir William. Show me into the library." "Or the justices' room, sir?" "The justices' room will do." Gaston wondered what the justices' room was. A moment after he stood in it, and the dazed Falby had gone, trying vainly to reconcile the picture on the wall, which, now that he could think, he knew was very old, with this strange man who had sent a curious cold shiver through him. But, anyhow, he was a Belward, that was certain: voice, face, manner showed it. But with something like no Belward he had ever seen. Left to himself, Gaston looked round on a large, severe room. Its use dawned on him. This was part of the life: Sir William was a Justice of the Peace. But why had he been brought here? Why not to the library as himself had suggested? There would be some awkward hours for Falby in the future. Gaston had as winning a smile, as sweet a manner, as any one in the world, so long as a straight game was on; but to cross his will with the other--he had been too long a power in that wild country where his father had also been a power! He did not quite know how long he waited, for he was busy with plans as to his career at Ridley Court. He was roused at last by Falby's entrance. A keen, cold look shot from under his straight brows. "Well?!" he asked. "Will you step into the library, sir? Sir William will see you there." Falby tried to avoid his look, but his eyes were compelled, and Gaston said: "Falby, you will always hate to enter this room." Falby was agitated. "I hope not, sir." "But you will, Falby, unless--" "Yessir?" "Unless you are both the serpent and the dove, Falby." "Yessir." As they entered the hall, Brillon with the saddle-bags was being taken in charge, and Gaston saw what a strange figure he looked beside the other servants and in these fine surroundings. He could not think that himself was so bizarre. Nor was he. But he looked unusual; as one of high civilisation might, through long absence in primitive countries, return in uncommon clothing, and with a manner of distinguished strangeness: the barbaric to protect the refined, as one has seen a bush of firs set to shelter a wheat-field from a seawind, or a wind-mill water cunningly- begotten flowers. As he went through the hall other visitors were entering. They passed him, making for the staircase. Ladies with the grand air looked at him curiously, and two girls glanced shyly from the jingling spurs and tasselled boots to his rare face. One of the ladies suddenly gave a little gasping cry, and catching the arm of her companion, said: "Reine, how like Robert Belward! Who--who is he?" The other coolly put up her pince-nez. She caught Gaston's profile and the turn of his shoulder. "Yes, like, Sophie; but Robert never had such a back, nor anything like the face." She spoke with no attempt to modulate her voice, and it carried distinctly to Gaston. He turned and glanced at them. "He's a Belward, certainly, but like what one I don't know; and he's terribly eccentric, my dear! Did you see the boots and the sash? Why, bless me, if you are not shaking! Don't be silly--shivering at the thought of Robert Belward after all these years." So saying, Mrs. Warren Gasgoyne tapped Lady Dargan on the arm, and then turned sharply to see if her daughters had been listening. She saw that they had; and though herself and not her sister was to blame, she said: "Sophie, you are very indiscreet! If you had daughters of your own, you would probably be more careful--though Heaven only knows, for you were always difficult!" With this they vanished up the staircase, Mrs. Gasgoyne's daughters, Delia and Agatha, smiling at each other and whispering about Gaston. Meanwhile the seeker after a kingdom was shown into Sir William Belward's study. No one was there. He walked to the mantelpiece, and, leaning his arm on it, looked round. Directly in front of him on the wall was the picture of a lady in middle-life, sitting in an arbour. A crutch lay against one arm of her chair, and her left hand leaned on an ebony silver-topped cane. There was something painful, haunting, in the face --a weirdness in the whole picture. The face was looking into the sunlight, but the effect was rather of moonlight--distant, mournful. He was fascinated; why, he could not tell. Art to him was an unknown book, but he had the instinct, and he was quick to feel. This picture struck him as being out of harmony with everything else in the room. Yet it had, a strange compelling charm. Presently he started forward with an exclamation. Now he understood the vague, eerie influence. Looking out from behind the foliage was a face, so dim that one moment it seemed not to be there, and then suddenly to flash in--as a picture from beyond sails, lightning-like, across the filmy eyes of the dying. It was the face of a youth, elf-like, unreal, yet he saw his father's features in it. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. It seemed very dim. Indeed, so delicately, vaguely, had the work been done that only eyes like Gaston's, trained to observe, with the sight of a hawk and a sense of the mysterious, could have seen so quickly or so distinctly. He drew slowly back to the mantel again, and mused. What did it mean? He was sure that the woman was his grandmother. At that moment the door opened, and an alert, white-haired man stepped in quickly, and stopped in the centre of the room, looking at his visitor. His deep, keen eyes gazed out with an intensity that might almost be fierceness, and the fingers of his fine hands opened and shut nervously. Though of no great stature, he had singular dignity. He was in evening- dress, and as he raised a hand to his chin quickly, as if in surprise or perplexity, Gaston noticed that he wore a large seal-ring. It is singular that while he was engaged with his great event, he was also thinking what an air of authority the ring gave. For a moment the two men stood at gaze without speaking, though Gaston stepped forward respectfully. A bewildered, almost shrinking look came into Sir William's eyes, as the other stood full in the light of the candles. Presently the old man spoke. In spite of conventional smoothness, his voice had the ring of distance, which comes from having lived through and above painful things. "My servant announced you as Sir Gaston Belward. There is some mistake?" "There is a mistake," was the slow reply. "I did not give my name as Sir Gaston Belward. That was Falby's conclusion, sir. But I am Gaston Robert Belward, just the same." Sir William was dazed, puzzled. He presently made a quick gesture, as if driving away some foolish thought, and, motioning to a chair, said: "Will you be seated?" They both sat, Sir William by his writing-table. His look was now steady and penetrating, but he met one just as firm. "You are--Gaston Robert Belward? May I ask for further information?" There was furtive humour playing at Gaston's mouth. The old man's manner had been so unlike anything he had ever met, save, to an extent, in his father, that it interested him. He replied, with keen distinctness: "You mean, why I have come--home?" Sir William's fingers trembled on a paper-knife. "Are you-at home?" "I have come home to ask for my heritage--with interest compounded, sir." Sir William was now very pale. He got to his feet, came to the young man, peered into his face, then drew back to the table and steadied himself against it. Gaston rose also: his instinct of courtesy was acute--absurdly civilised--that is, primitive. He waited. "You are Robert's son?" "Robert Belward was my father." "Your father is dead?" "Twelve years ago." Sir William sank back in his chair. His thin fingers ran back and forth along his lips. Presently he took out his handkerchief and coughed into it nervously. His lips trembled. With a preoccupied air he arranged a handful of papers on the table. "Why did you not come before?!" he asked at last, in a low, mechanical voice. "It was better for a man than a boy to come." "May I ask why?" "A boy doesn't always see a situation--gives up too soon--throws away his rights. My father was a boy." "He was twenty-five when he went away." "I am fifty!" Sir William looked up sharply, perplexed. "Fifty?" "He only knew this life: I know the world." "What world?" "The great North, the South, the seas at four corners of the earth." Sir William glanced at the top-boots, the peeping sash, the strong, bronzed face. "Who was your mother?!" he asked abruptly. "A woman of France." The baronet made a gesture of impatience, and looked searchingly at the young man. All at once Gaston shot his bolt, to have it over. "She had Indian blood also." He stretched himself to his full height, easily, broadly, with a touch of defiance, and leaned an arm against the mantel, awaiting Sir William's reply. The old man shrank, then said coldly: "Have you the marriage- certificate?" Gaston drew some papers from his pockets. "Here, sir, with a letter from my father, and one from the Hudson's Bay Company." His grandfather took them. With an effort he steadied himself, then opened and read them one by one, his son's brief letter last--it was merely a calm farewell, with a request that justice should be done his son. At that moment Falby entered and said: "Her ladyship's compliments, and all the guests have arrived, sir." "My compliments to her ladyship, and ask her to give me five minutes yet, Falby." Turning to his grandson, there seemed to be a moment's hesitation, then he reached out his hand. "You have brought your luggage? Will you care to dine with us?" Gaston took the cold outstretched fingers. "Only my saddle-bag, and I have no evening-dress with me, else I should be glad." There was another glance up and down the athletic figure, a half- apprehensive smile as the baronet thought of his wife, and then he said: "We must see if anything can be done." He pulled a bell-cord. A servant appeared. "Ask the housekeeper to come for a moment, please." Neither spoke till the housekeeper appeared. "Hovey," he said to the grim woman, "give Mr. Gaston the room in the north tower. Then, from the press in the same room lay out the evening-dress which you will find there.... They were your father's," he added, turning to the young man. "It was my wife's wish to keep them. Have they been aired lately, Hovey?" "Some days ago, sir." "That will do." The housekeeper left, agitated. You will probably be in time for the fish," he added, as he bowed to Robert. "If the clothes do not fit, sir?" "Your father was about your height and nearly as large, and fashions have not changed much." A few moments afterwards Gaston was in the room which his father had occupied twenty-seven years before. The taciturn housekeeper, eyeing him excitedly the while, put out the clothes. He did not say anything till she was about to go. Then: "Hovey, were you here in my father's time?" "I was under-parlourmaid, sir," she said. "And you are housekeeper now--good!" The face of the woman crimsoned, hiding her dour wrinkles. She turned away her head. "I'd have given my right hand if he hadn't gone, sir." Gaston whistled softly, then: "So would he, I fancy, before he died. But I shall not go, so you will not need to risk a finger for me. I am going to stay, Hovey. Good- night. Look after Brillon, please." He held out his hand. Her fingers twitched in his, then grasped them nervously. "Yes, sir. Good-night, Sir. It's--it's like him comin' back, sir." Then she suddenly turned and hurried from the room, a blunt figure to whom emotion was not graceful. "H'm!" said Gaston, as he shut the door. "Parlourmaid then, eh? History at every turn! 'Voici le sabre de mon pere!'" CHAPTER III HE TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE Gaston Belward was not sentimental: that belongs to the middle-class Englishman's ideal of civilisation. But he had a civilisation akin to the highest; incongruous, therefore, to the general as the sympathy between the United States and Russia. The highest civilisation can be independent. The English aristocrat is at home in the lodge of a Sioux chief or the bamboo-hut of a Fijian, and makes brothers of "savages," when those other formal folk, who spend their lives in keeping their dignity, would be lofty and superior. When Gaston looked at his father's clothes and turned them over, he had a twinge of honest emotion; but his mind was on the dinner and his heritage, and he only said, as he frowned at the tightness of the waistband: "Never mind, we'll make 'em pay, shot and wadding, for what you lost, Robert Belward; and wherever you are, I hope you'll see it." In twelve minutes from the time he entered the bedroom he was ready. He pulled the bell-cord, and then passed out. A servant met him on the stairs, and in another minute he was inside the dining-room. Sir William's eyes flashed up. There was smouldering excitement in his face, but one could not have guessed at anything unusual. A seat had been placed for Gaston beside him. The situation was singular and trying. It would have been easier if he had merely come into the drawing-room after dinner. This was in Sir William's mind when he asked him to dine; but it was as it was. Gaston's alert glance found the empty seat. He was about to make towards it, but he caught Sir William's eye and saw it signal him to the end of the table near him. His brain was working with celerity and clearness. He now saw the woman whose portrait had so fascinated him in the library. As his eyes fastened on her here, he almost fancied he could see the boy's--his father's-face looking over her shoulder. He instantly went to her, and said: "I am sorry to be late." His first impulse had been to offer his hand, as, naturally, he would have done in "barbaric" lands, but the instinct of this other civilisation was at work in him. He might have been a polite casual guest, and not a grandson, bringing the remembrance, the culmination of twenty-seven years' tragedy into a home; she might have been a hostess with whom he wished to be on terms: that was all. If the situation was trying for him, it was painful for her. She had had only a whispered announcement before Sir William led the way to dinner. Yet she was now all her husband had been, and more. Repression had been her practice for unnumbered years, and the only heralds of her feelings were the restless wells of her dark eyes: the physical and mental misery she had endured lay hid under the pale composure of her face. She was now brought suddenly before the composite image of her past. Yet she merely lifted a slender hand with long, fine fingers, which, as they clasped his, all at once trembled, and then pressed them hotly, nervously. To his surprise, it sent a twinge of colour to his cheek. "It was good of you to come down after such a journey," she said. Nothing more. Then he passed on, and sat down to Sir William's courteous gesture. The situation had its difficulties for the guests--perfect guests as they were. Every one was aware of a dramatic incident, for which there had been no preparation save Sir William's remark that a grandson had arrived from the North Pole or thereabouts; and to continue conversation and appear casual put their resources to some test. But they stood it well, though. their eyes were busy, and the talk was cheerfully mechanical. So occupied were they with Gaston's entrance, that they did not know how near Lady Dargan came to fainting. At the button-hole of the coat worn by Gaston hung a tiny piece of red ribbon which she had drawn from her sleeve on the terrace twenty-seven years ago, and tied there with the words: "Do you think you will wear it till we meet again?" And the man had replied: "You'll not see me without it, pretty girl--pretty girl." A woman is not so unaccountable after all. She has more imagination than a man; she has not many resources to console her for disappointments, and she prizes to her last hour the swift moments when wonderful things seemed possible. That man is foolish who shows himself jealous of a woman's memories or tokens--those guarantees of her womanliness. When Lady Dargan saw the ribbon, which Gaston in his hurry had not disturbed, tied exactly as she had tied it, a weird feeling came to her, and she felt choking. But her sister's eyes were on her, and Mrs. Gasgoyne's voice came across the table clearly: "Sophie, what were Fred Bideford's colours at Sandown? You always remember that kind of thing." The warning was sufficient. Lady Dargan could make no effort of memory, but she replied without hesitation--or conscience: "Yellow and brown." "There," said Mrs. Gasgoyne, "we are both wrong, Captain Maudsley. Sophie never makes a mistake." Maudsley assented politely, but, stealing a look at Lady Dargan, wondered what the little by-play meant. Gaston was between Sir William and Mrs. Gasgoyne. He declined soup and fish, which had just been served, because he wished for time to get his bearings. He glanced at the menu as if idly interested, conscious that he was under observation. He felt that he had, some how, the situation in his hands. Everything had gone well, and he knew that his part had been played with some aplomb--natural, instinctive. Unlike most large men, he had a mind always alert, not requiring the inspiration of unusual moments. What struck him most forcibly now was the tasteful courtesy which had made his entrance easy. He instinctively compared it to the courtesy in the lodge of an Indian chief, or of a Hudson's Bay factor who has not seen the outer world for half a century. It was so different, and yet it was much the same. He had seen a missionary, a layreader, come intoxicated into a council of chiefs. The chiefs did not show that they knew his condition till he forced them to do so. Then two of the young men rose, suddenly pinned him in their arms, carried him out, and tied him in a lodge. The next morning they sent him out of their country. Gaston was no philosopher, but he could place a thing when he saw it: which is a kind of genius. Presently Sir William said quietly: "Mrs. Gasgoyne, you knew Robert well; his son ought to know you." Gaston turned to Mrs. Gasgoyne, and said in his father's manner as much as possible, for now his mind ran back to how his father talked and acted, forming a standard for him: "My father once told me a tale of the Keithley Hunt--something 'away up,' as they say in the West--and a Mrs. Warren Gasgoyne was in it." He made an instant friend of Mrs. Gasgoyne--made her so purposely. This was one of the few things from his father's talks upon his past life. He remembered the story because it was interesting, the name because it had a sound. She flushed with pleasure. That story of the Hunt was one of her sweetest recollections. For her bravery then she had been voted by the field "a good fellow," and an admiral present declared that she had a head "as long as the maintop bow-line." She loved admiration, though she had no foolish sentiment; she called men silly creatures, and yet would go on her knees across country to do a deserving man-friend a service. She was fifty and over, yet she had the springing heart of a girl--mostly hid behind a brusque manner and a blunt, kindly tongue. "Your father could always tell a good story," she said. "He told me one of you: what about telling me one of him?" Adaptable, he had at once fallen in with her direct speech; the more so because it was his natural way; any other ways were "games," as he himself said. She flashed a glance at her sister, and smiled half-ironically. "I could tell you plenty," she said softly. "He was a startling fellow, and went far sometimes; but you look as if you could go farther." Gaston helped himself to an entree, wondering whether a knife was used with sweetbreads. "How far could he go?!" he asked. "In the hunting-field with anybody, with women endlessly, with meanness like a snail, and when his blood was up, to the most nonsensical place you can think of." Forks only for sweetbreads! Gaston picked one up. "He went there." "Who told you?" "I came from there." "Where is it?" "A few hundred miles from the Arctic circle." "Oh, I didn't think it was that climate!" "It never is till you arrive. You are always out in the cold there." "That sounds American." "Every man is a sinner one way or another." "You are very clever--cleverer than your father ever was. "I hope so." "Why?" "He went--there. I've come--from there." "And you think you will stay--never go back?" "He was out of it for twenty years, and died. If I am in it for that long, I shall have had enough." Their eyes met. The woman looked at him steadily. "You won't be," she replied, this time seriously, and in a very low voice. "No? Why?" "Because you will tire of it all--though you've started very well." She then answered a question of Captain Maudsley's and turned again to Gaston. "What will make me tire of it?!" he inquired. She sipped her champagne musingly. "Why, what is in you deeper than all this; with the help of some woman probably." She looked at him searchingly, then added: "You seem strangely like and yet unlike your father to-night." "I am wearing his clothes," he said. She had plenty of nerve, but this startled her. She shrank a little: it seemed uncanny. Now she remembered that ribbon in the button-hole. "Poor Sophie!" she thought. "And this one will make greater mischief here." Then, aloud to him: "Your father was a good fellow, but he did wild things." "I do not see the connection," he answered. "I am not a good man, and I shall do wilder things--is that it?" "You will do mad things," she replied hardly above a whisper, and talked once more with Captain Maudsley. Gaston now turned to his grandfather, who had heard a sentence here and there, and felt that the young man carried off the situation well enough. He then began to talk in a general way about Gaston's voyage, of the Hudson's Bay Company, and expeditions to the Arctic, drawing Lady Dargan into the conversation. Whatever might be said of Sir William Belward he was an excellent host. He had a cool, unmalicious wit, but that man was unwise who offered himself to its severity. To-night he surpassed himself in suggestive talk, until, all at once, seeing Lady Dargan's eyes fixed on Gaston, he went silent, sitting back in his chair abstracted. Soon, however, a warning glance from his wife brought him back and saved Lady Dargan from collapse; for it seemed impossible to talk alone to this ghost of her past. At this moment Gaston heard a voice near: "As like as if he'd stepped out of the picture, if it weren't for the clothes. A Gaston too!" The speaker was Lord Dargan. He was talking to Archdeacon Varcoe. Gaston followed Lord Dargan's glance to the portrait of that Sir Gaston Belward whose effigy he had seen. He found himself in form, feature, expression; the bold vigilance of eye, the primitive activity of shoulder, the small firm foot, the nervous power of the hand. The eyes seemed looking at him. He answered to the look. There was in him the romantic strain, and something more! In the remote parts of his being there was the capacity for the phenomenal, the strange. Once again, as in the church, he saw the field of Naseby, King Charles, Ireton's men, Cromwell and his Ironsides, Prince Rupert and the swarming rush of cavalry, and the end of it all! Had it been a tale of his father's at camp-fire? Had he read it somewhere? He felt his blood thump in his veins. Another half-hour, wherein he was learning every minute, nothing escaping him, everything interesting him; his grandfather and Mrs. Gasgoyne especially, then the ladies retired slowly with their crippled hostess, who gave Gaston, as she rose, a look almost painfully intense. It haunted him. Now Gaston had his chance. He had no fear of what he could do with men: he had measured himself a few times with English gentlemen as he travelled, and he knew where his power lay--not in making himself agreeable, but in imposing his personality. The guests were not soon to forget the talk of that hour. It played into Gaston's hands. He pretended to nothing; he confessed ignorance here and there with great simplicity; but he had the gift of reducing things, as it were, to their original elements. He cut away to the core of a matter, and having simple, fixed ideas, he was able to focus the talk, which had begun with hunting stories, and ended with the morality of duelling. Gaston's hunting stories had made them breathless, his views upon duelling did not free their lungs. There were sentimentalists present; others who, because it had become etiquette not to cross swords, thought it indecent. Archdeacon Varcoe would not be drawn into discussion, but sipped his wine, listened, and watched Gaston. The young man measured his grandfather's mind, and he drove home his points mercilessly. Captain Maudsley said something about "romantic murder." "That's the trouble," Gaston said. "I don't know who killed duelling in England, but behind it must have been a woman or a shopkeeper: sentimentalism, timidity, dead romance. What is patriotism but romance? Ideals is what they call it somewhere. I've lived in a land full of hard work and dangers, but also full of romance. What is the result? Why, a people off there whom you pity, and who don't need pity. Romance? See: you only get square justice out of a wise autocrat, not out of your 'twelve true men'; and duelling is the last decent relic of autocracy. Suppose the wronged man does get killed; that is all right: it wasn't merely blood he was after, but the right to hit a man in the eye for a wrong done. What is all this hullaballoo--about saving human life? There's as much interest--and duty--in dying as living, if you go the way your conscience tells you." A couple of hours later, Gaston, after having seen to his horse, stood alone in the drawing-room with his grandfather and grandmother. As yet Lady Belward had spoken not half a dozen words to him. Sir William presently said to him: "Are you too tired to join us in the library?" "I'm as fresh as paint, sir," was the reply. Lady Belward turned without a word, and slowly passed from the room. Gaston's eyes followed the crippled figure, which yet had a rare dignity. He had a sudden impulse. He stepped to her and said with an almost boyish simplicity: "You are very tired; let me carry you--grandmother." He could hear Sir William gasp a little as he laid a quick warm hand on hers that held the cane. She looked at him gravely, sadly, and then said: "I will take your arm, if you please." He took the cane, and she put a hand towards him. He ran his strong arm around her waist with a little humouring laugh, her hand rested on his shoulder, and he timed his step to hers. Sir William was in an eddy of wonder--a strong head was "mazed." He had looked for a different reception of this uncommon kinsman. How quickly had the new-comer conquered himself! And yet he had a slight strangeness of accent--not American, but something which seemed unusual. He did not reckon with a voice which, under cover of easy deliberation, had a convincing quality; with a manner of old-fashioned courtesy and stateliness. As Mrs. Gasgoyne had said to the rector, whose eyes had followed Gaston everywhere in the drawing-room: "My dear archdeacon, where did he get it? Why, he has lived most of his life with savages!" "Vandyke might have painted the man," Lord Dargan had added. "Vandyke did paint him," had put in Delia Gasgoyne from behind her mother. "How do you mean, Delia?!" Mrs. Gasgoyne had added, looking curiously at her. "His picture hangs in the dining-room." Then the picture had been discussed, and the girl's eyes had followed Gaston--followed him until he had caught their glance. Without an introduction, he had come and dropped into conversation with her, till her mother cleverly interrupted. Inside the library Lady Belward was comfortably placed, and looking up at Gaston, said: "You have your father's ways: I hope that you will be wiser." "If you will teach me!" he answered gently. There came two little bright spots on her cheeks, and her hands clasped in her lap. They all sat down. Sir William spoke: "It is much to ask that you should tell us of your life now, but it is better that we should start with some knowledge of each other." At that moment Gaston's eyes caught the strange picture on the wall. "I understand," he answered. "But I would be starting in the middle of a story." "You mean that you wish to hear your father's history? Did he not tell you?" "Trifles--that is all." "Did he ever speak of me?!" asked Lady Belward with low anxiety. "Yes, when he was dying." "What did he say?" "He said: 'Tell my mother that Truth waits long, but whips hard. Tell her that I always loved her.'" She shrank in her chair as if from a blow, and then was white and motionless. "Let us hear your story," Sir William said with a sort of hauteur. "You know your own, much of your father's lies buried with him." "Very well, sir." Sir William drew a chair up beside his wife. Gaston sat back, and for a moment did not speak. He was looking into distance. Presently the blue of his eyes went all black, and with strange unwavering concentration he gazed straight before him. A light spread over his face, his hands felt for the chair-arms and held them firmly. He began: "I first remember swinging in a blanket from a pine-tree at a buffalo- hunt while my mother cooked the dinner. There were scores of tents, horses, and many Indians and half-breeds, and a few white men. My father was in command. I can see my mother's face as she stood over the fire. It was not darker than mine; she always seemed more French than Indian, and she was thought comely." Lady Belward shuddered a little, but Gaston did not notice. "I can remember the great buffalo-hunt. You heard a heavy rumbling sound; you saw a cloud on the prairie. It heaved, a steam came from it, and sometimes you caught the flash of ten thousand eyes as the beasts tossed their heads and then bent them again to the ground and rolled on, five hundred men after them, our women shouting and laughing, and arrows and bullets flying. . . . I can remember a time also when a great Indian battle happened just outside the fort, and, with my mother crying after him, my father went out with a priest to stop it. My father was wounded, and then the priest frightened them, and they gathered their dead together and buried them. We lived in a fort for a long time, and my mother died there. She was a good woman, and she loved my father. I have seen her on her knees for hours praying when he was away.--I have her rosary now. They called her Ste. Heloise. Afterwards I was always with my father. He was a good man, but he was never happy; and only at the last would he listen to the priest, though they were always great friends. He was not a Catholic of course, but he said that didn't matter." Sir William interrupted huskily. "Why did he never come back?" "I do not know quite, but he said to me once, 'Gaston, you'll tell them of me some day, and it will be a soft pillow for their heads! You can mend a broken life, but the ring of it is gone.' I think he meant to come back when I was about fourteen; but things happened, and he stayed." There was a pause. Gaston seemed brooding, and Lady Belward said: "Go on, please." "There isn't so very much to tell. The life was the only one I had known, and it was all right. But my father had told me of this life. He taught me himself--he and Father Decluse and a Moravian missionary for awhile. I knew some Latin and history, a bit of mathematics, a good deal of astronomy, some French poets, and Shakespere. Shakespere is wonderful. . . . My father wanted me to come here at once after he died, but I knew better--I wanted to get sense first. So I took a place in the Company. It wasn't all fun. "I had to keep my wits sharp. I was only a youngster, and I had to do with men as crafty and as silly as old Polonius. I was sent to Labrador. That was not a life for a Christian. Once a year a ship comes to the port, bringing the year's mail and news from the world. When you watch that ship go out again, and you turn round and see the filthy Esquimaux and Indians, and know that you've got to live for another year with them, sit in their dirty tepees, eat their raw frozen meat, with an occasional glut of pemmican, and the thermometer 70 degrees below zero, you get a lump in your throat. "Then came one winter. I had one white man, two half-breeds, and an Indian with me. There was darkness day after day, and because the Esquimaux and Indians hadn't come up to the fort that winter, it was lonely as a tomb. One by one the men got melancholy and then went mad, and I had to tie them up, and care for them and feed them. The Indian was all right, but he got afraid, and wanted to start to a mission station three hundred miles on. It was a bad look-out for me, but I told him to go. I was left alone. I was only twenty-one, but I was steel to my toes--good for wear and tear. Well, I had one solid month all alone with my madmen. Their jabbering made me sea-sick some times. At last one day I felt I'd go staring mad myself if I didn't do something exciting to lift me, as it were. I got a revolver, sat at the opposite end of the room from the three lunatics, and practised shooting at them. I had got it into my head that they ought to die, but it was only fair, I thought, to give them a chance. I would try hard to shoot all round them--make a halo of bullets for the head of every one, draw them in silhouettes of solid lead on the wall. "I talked to them first, and told them what I was going to do. They seemed to understand, and didn't object. I began with the silhouettes, of course. I had a box of bullets beside me. They never squealed. I sent the bullets round them as pretty as the pattern of a milliner. Then I began with their heads. I did two all right. They sat and never stirred. But when I came to the last something happened. It was Jock Lawson." Sir William interposed: "Jock Lawson--Jock Lawson from here?" "Yes. His mother keeps 'The Whisk o' Barley.'" "So, that is where Jock Lawson went? He followed your father?" "Yes. Jock was mad enough when I began--clean gone. But, somehow, the game I was playing cured him. 'Steady, Jock!' I said. 'Steady!' for I saw him move. I levelled for the second bead of the halo. My finger was on the trigger. 'My God, don't shoot!' he called. It startled me, my hand shook, the thing went off, and Jock had a bullet through his brain. ". . . Then I waked up. Perhaps I had been mad myself--I don't know. But my brain never seemed clearer than when I was playing that game. It was like a magnifying glass: and my eyes were so clear and strong that I could see the pores on their skin, and the drops of sweat breaking out on Jock's forehead when he yelled." A low moan came from Lady Belward. Her face was drawn and pale, but her eyes were on Gaston with a deep fascination. Sir William whispered to her. "No," she said, "I will stay." Gaston saw the impression he had made. "Well, I had to bury poor Jock all alone. I don't think I should have minded it so much, if it hadn't been for the faces of those other two crazy men. One of them sat still as death, his eyes following me with one long stare, and the other kept praying all the time--he'd been a lay preacher once before he backslided, and it came back on him now naturally. Now it would be from Revelation, now out of the Psalms, and again a swingeing exhortation for the Spirit to come down and convict me of sin. There was a lot of sanity in it too, for he kept saying at last: 'O shut not up my soul with the sinners: nor my life with the bloodthirsty.' I couldn't stand it, with Jock dead there before me, so I gave him a heavy dose of paregoric out of the Company's stores. Before he took it he raised his finger and said to me, with a beastly stare: 'Thou art the man!' But the paregoric put him to sleep. . . . "Then I gave the other something to eat, and dragged Jock out to bury him. I remembered then that he couldn't be buried, for the ground was too hard and the ice too thick; so I got ropes, and, when he stiffened, slung him up into a big cedar tree, and then went up myself and arranged the branches about him comfortably. It seemed to me that Jock was a baby and I was his father. You couldn't see any blood, and I fixed his hair so that it covered the hole in the forehead. I remember I kissed him on the cheek, and then said a prayer--one that I'd got out of my father's prayer-book: 'That it may please Thee to preserve all that travel by land or by water, all women labouring of child, all sick persons and young children; and to show Thy pity upon all prisoners and captives.' Somehow I had got it into my head that Jock was going on a long journey, and that I was a prisoner and a captive." Gaston broke off, and added presently: "Perhaps this is all too awful to hear, but it gives you an idea of what kind of things went to make me." Lady Belward answered for both: "Tell us all--everything." "It is late," said Sir William, nervously. "What does it matter? It is once in a lifetime," she answered sadly. Gaston took up the thread: "Now I come to what will shock you even more, perhaps. So, be prepared. I don't know how many days went, but at last I had three visitors--in time I should think: a Moravian missionary, and an Esquimaux and his daughter. I didn't tell the missionary about Jock--there was no use, it could do no good. They stayed four weeks, and during that time one of the crazy men died. The other got better, but had to be watched. I could do anything with him, if I got my eye on him. Somehow, I must tell you, I've got a lot of power that way. I don't know where it comes from. Well, the missionary had to go. The old Esquimaux thought that he and his daughter would stay on if I'd let them. I was only too glad. But it wasn't wise for the missionary to take the journey alone--it was a bad business in any case. I urged the man that had been crazy to go, for I thought activity would do him good. He agreed, and the two left and got to the Mission Station all right, after wicked trouble. I was alone with the Esquimaux and his daughter. You never know why certain things happen, and I can't tell why that winter was so weird; why the old Esquimaux should take sick one morning, and in the evening should call me and his daughter Lucy--she'd been given a Christian name, of course-- and say that he was going to die, and he wanted me to marry her" (Lady Belward exclaimed, Sir William's hands fingered the chair-arm nervously) "there and then, so that he'd know she would be cared for. He was a heathen, but he had been primed by the missionaries about his daughter. She was a fine, clever girl, and well educated--the best product of their mission. So he called for a Bible. There wasn't one in the place, but I had my mother's Book of the Mass. I went to get it, but when I set my eyes on it, I couldn't--no, I couldn't do it, for I hadn't the least idea but what I should bid my lady good-bye when it suited, and I didn't want any swearing at all--not a bit. I didn't do any. But what happened had to be with or without any ring or book and 'Forasmuch as.' There had been so much funeral and sudden death that a marriage would be a godsend anyhow. So the old Esquimaux got our two hands in his, babbled away in half-English, half-Esquimaux, with the girl's eyes shining like a she- moose over a dying buck, and about the time we kissed each other, his head dropped back--and that is all there was about that." Gaston now kept his eyes on his listeners. He was aware that his story must sound to them as brutal as might be, but it was a phase of his life, and, so far as he could, he wanted to start with a clean sheet; not out of love of confidence, for he was self-contained, but he would have enough to do to shepherd his future without shepherding his past. He saw that Lady Belward had a sickly fear in her face, while Sir William had gone stern and hard. He went on: "It saved the situation, did that marriage; though it was no marriage you will say. Neither was it one way, and I didn't intend at the start to stand by it an hour longer than I wished. But she was more than I looked for, and it seems to me that she saved my life that winter, or my reason anyhow. There had been so much tragedy that I used to wonder every day what would happen before night; and that's not a good thing for the brain of a chap of twenty-one or two. The funny part of it is that she wasn't a pagan--not a bit. She could read and speak English in a sweet old- fashioned way, and she used to sing to me--such a funny, sorry little voice she had--hymns the Moravians had taught her, and one or two English songs. I taught her one or two besides, 'Where the Hawthorn Tree is Blooming,' and 'Allan Water'--the first my father had taught me, the other an old Scotch trader. It's different with a woman and a man in a place like that. Two men will go mad together, but there's a saving something in the contact of a man's brain with a woman's. I got fond of her, any man would have, for she had something that I never saw in any heathen, certainly in no Indian; you'll see it in women from Iceland. I determined to marry her in regular style when spring and a missionary came. You can't understand, maybe, how one can settle to a life where you've got companionship, and let the world go by. About that time, I thought that I'd let Ridley Court and the rest of it go as a boy's dreams go. I didn't seem to know that I was only satisfied in one set of my instincts. Spring came, so did a missionary, and for better or worse it was." Sir William came to his feet. "Great Heaven!" he broke out. His wife tried to rise, but could not. "This makes everything impossible," added the baronet shortly. "No, no, it makes nothing impossible--if you will listen." Gaston was cool. He had begun playing for the stakes from one stand- point, and he would not turn back. He continued: "I lived with her happily: I never expect to have happiness like that again,--never,--and after two years at another post in Labrador, came word from the Company that I might go to Quebec, there to be given my choice of posts. I went. By this time I had again vague ideas that sometime I should come here, but how or why I couldn't tell; I was drifting, and for her sake willing to drift. I was glad to take her to Quebec, for I guessed she would get ideas, and it didn't strike me that she would be out of place. So we went. But she was out of place in many ways. It did not suit at all. We were asked to good houses, for I believe I have always had enough of the Belward in me to keep my end up anywhere. The thing went on pretty well, but at last she used to beg me to go without her to excursions and parties. There were always one or two quiet women whom she liked to sit with, and because she seemed happier for me to go, I did. I was popular, and got along with women well; but I tell you honestly I loved my wife all the time; so that when a Christian busy-body poured into her ears some self-made scandal, it was a brutal, awful lie--brutal and awful, for she had never known jealousy; it did not belong to her old social creed. But it was in the core of her somewhere, and an aboriginal passion at work naked is a thing to be remembered. I had to face it one night. . . . "I was quiet, and did what I could. After that I insisted on her going with me wherever I went, but she had changed, and I saw that, in spite of herself, the thing grew. One day we went on an excursion down the St. Lawrence. We were merry, and I was telling yarns. We were just nearing a landing-stage, when a pretty girl, with more gush than sense, caught me by the arm and begged some ridiculous thing of me--an autograph, or what not. A minute afterwards I saw my wife spring from the bulwarks down on the landing-stage, and rush up the shore into the woods. . . . We were two days finding her. That settled it. I was sick enough at heart, and I determined to go back to Labrador. We did so. Every thing had gone on the rocks. My wife was not, never would be, the same again. She taunted me and worried me, and because I would not quarrel, seemed to have a greater grievance--jealousy is a kind of madness. One night she was most galling, and I sat still and said nothing. My life seemed gone of a heap: I was sick--sick to the teeth; hopeless, looking forward to nothing. I imagine my hard quietness roused her. She said something hateful--something about having married her, and not a woman from Quebec. I smiled--I couldn't help it; then I laughed, a bit wild, I suppose. I saw the flash of steel. . . . I believe I laughed in her face as I fell. When I came to she was lying with her head on my breast--dead-- stone dead." Lady Belward sat with closed eyes, her fingers clasping and unclasping on the top of her cane; but Sir William wore a look half-satisfied, half- excited. He now hurried his story. "I got well, and after that stayed in the North for a year. Then I passed down the continent to Mexico and South America. There I got a commission to go to New Zealand and Australia to sell a lot of horses. I did so, and spent some time in the South Sea Islands. Again I drifted back to the Rockies and over into the plains; found Jacques Brillon, my servant, had a couple of years' work and play, gathered together some money, as good a horse and outfit as the North could give, and started with Brillon and his broncho--having got both sense and experience, I hope--for Ridley Court. And here I am. There's a lot of my life that I haven't told you of, but it doesn't matter, because it's adventure mostly, and it can be told at any time; but these are essential facts, and it is better that you should hear them. And that is all, grandfather and grandmother." After a minute Lady Belward rose, leaned on her crutch, and looked at him wistfully. Sir William said: "Are you sure that you will suit this life, or it you?" "It is the only idea I have at present; and, anyhow, it is my rightful home, sir." "I was not thinking of your rights, but of the happiness of us all." Lady Belward limped to him, and laid a hand on his shoulder. "You have had one great tragedy, so have we: neither could bear another. Try to be worthy--of your home." Then she solemnly kissed him on the cheek. Soon afterwards they went to their rooms. CHAPTER IV AN HOUR WITH HIS FATHER'S PAST In his bedroom Gaston made a discovery. He chanced to place his hand in the tail-pocket of the coat he had worn. He drew forth a letter. The ink was faded, and the lines were scrawled. It ran: It's no good. Mr. Ian's been! It's face the musik now. If you want me, say so. I'm for kicks or ha'pence--no diffrense. Yours, J. He knew the writing very well--Jock Lawson's. There had been some trouble, and Mr. Ian had "been," bringing peril. What was it? His father and Jock had kept the secret from him. He put his hand in the pocket again. There was another note--this time in a woman's handwriting: Oh, come to me, if you would save us both! Do not fail. God help us! Oh, Robert! It was signed "Agnes." Well, here was something of mystery; but he did not trouble himself about that. He was not at Ridley Court to solve mysteries, to probe into the past, to set his father's wrongs right; but to serve himself, to reap for all those years wherein his father had not reaped. He enjoyed life, and he would search this one to the full of his desires. Before he retired he studied the room, handling things that lay where his father placed them so many years before. He was not without emotions in this, but he held himself firm. As he stood ready to get into bed, his eyes chanced upon a portrait of his uncle Ian. "There's where the tug comes!" he said, nodding at it. "Shake hands, and ten paces, Uncle Ian?" Then he blew out the candle, and in five minutes was sound asleep. He was out at six o'clock. He made for the stables, and found Jacques pacing the yard. He smiled at Jacques's dazed look. "What about the horse, Brillon?!" he said, nodding as he came up. "Saracen's had a slice of the stable-boy's shoulder--sir." Amusement loitered in Gaston's eyes. The "sir" had stuck in Jacques's throat. "Saracen has established himself, then? Good! And the broncho?" "Bien, a trifle only. They laugh much in the kitchen--" "The hall, Brillon." "--in the hall last night. That hired man over there--" "That groom, Brillon." "--that groom, he was a fool, and fat. He was the worst. This morning he laugh at my broncho. He say a horse like that is nothing: no pace, no travel. I say the broncho was not so ver' bad, and I tell him try the paces. I whisper soft, and the broncho stand like a lamb. He mount, and sneer, and grin at the high pommel, and start. For a minute it was pretty; and then I give a little soft call, and in a minute there was the broncho bucking--doubling like a hoop, and dropping same as lead. Once that--groom--come down on the pommel, then over on the ground like a ball, all muck and blood." The half-breed paused, looking innocently before him. Gaston's mouth quirked. "A solid success, Brillon. Teach them all the tricks you can. At ten o'clock come to my room. The campaign begins then." Jacques ran a hand through his long black hair, and fingered his sash. Gaston understood. "The hair and ear-rings may remain, Brillon; but the beard and clothes must go--except for occasions. Come along." For the next two hours Gaston explored the stables and the grounds. Nothing escaped him. He gathered every incident of the surroundings, and talked to the servants freely, softly, and easily, yet with a superiority, which suddenly was imposed in the case of the huntsman at the kennels--for the Whipshire hounds were here. Gaston had never ridden to hounds. It was not, however, his cue to pretend knowledge. He was strong enough to admit ignorance. He stood leaning against the door of the kennels, arms folded, eyes half-closed, with the sense of a painter, before the turning bunch of brown and white, getting the charm of distance and soft tones. His blood beat hard, for suddenly he felt as if he had been behind just such a pack one day, one clear desirable day of spring. He saw people gathering at the kennels; saw men drink beer and eat sandwiches at the door of the huntsman's house,--a long, low dwelling, with crumbling arched doorways like those of a monastery, watched them get away from the top of the moor, he among them; heard the horn, the whips; and saw the fox break cover. Then came a rare run for five sweet miles--down a long valley--over quick-set hedges, with stiffish streams--another hill--a great combe-- a lovely valley stretching out--a swerve to the right--over a gate-- and the brush got at a farmhouse door. Surely, he had seen it all; but what kink of the brain was it that the men wore flowing wigs and immense boot-legs, and sported lace in the hunting-field? And why did he see within that picture another of two ladies and a gentleman hawking? He was roused from his dream by hearing the huntsman say in a quizzical voice: "How do you like the dogs, sir?" To his last day Lugley, the huntsman, remembered the slow look of cold surprise, of masterful malice, scathing him from head to foot. The words that followed the look, simple as they were, drove home the naked reproof: "What is your name, my man?" "Lugley, sir." "Lugley! Lugley! H'm! Well, Lugley, I like the hounds better than I like you. Who is Master of the Hounds, Lugley?" "Captain Maudsley, sir." "Just so. You are satisfied with your place, Lugley?" "Yes, sir," said the man in a humble voice, now cowed. The news of the arrival of the strangers had come to him late at night, and, with Whipshire stupidity, he had thought that any one coming from the wilds of British America must be but a savage after all. "Very well; I wouldn't throw myself out of a place, if I were you." "Oh, no, sir! Beg pardon, sir, I--" "Attend to your hounds there, Lugley." So saying, Gaston nodded Jacques away with him, leaving the huntsman sick with apprehension. "You see how it is to be done, Brillon?!" said Gaston. Jacques's brown eyes twinkled. "You have the grand trick, sir." "I enjoy the game; and so shall you, if you will. You've begun well. I don't know much of this life yet; but it seems to me that they are all part of a machine, not the idea behind the machine. They have no invention. Their machine is easy to learn. Do not pretend; but for every bit you learn show something better, something to make them dizzy now and then." He paused on a knoll and looked down. The castle, the stables, the cottages of labourers and villagers lay before them. In a certain highly-cultivated field, men were working. It was cut off in squares and patches. It had an air which struck Gaston as unusual; why, he could not tell. But he had a strange divining instinct, or whatever it may be called. He made for the field and questioned the workmen. The field was cut up into allotment gardens. Here, at a nominal rent, the cottager could grow his vegetables; a little spot of the great acre of England, which gave the labourer a tiny sense of ownership, of manhood. Gaston was interested. More, he was determined to carry that experiment further, if he ever got the chance. There was no socialism in him. The true barbarian is like the true aristocrat: more a giver of gifts than a lover of co-operation; conserving ownership by right of power and superior independence, hereditary or otherwise. Gaston was both barbarian and aristocrat. "Brillon," he said, as they walked on, "do you think they would be happier on the prairies with a hundred acres of land, horses, cows, and a pen of pigs?" "Can I be happy here all at once, sir?" "That's just it. It's too late for them. They couldn't grasp it unless they went when they were youngsters. They'd long for 'Home and Old England' and this grub-and-grind life. Gracious heaven, look at them-- crumpled-up creatures! And I'll stake my life, they were as pretty children as you'd care to see. They are out of place in the landscape, Brillon; for it is all luxury and lush, and they are crumples--crumples! But yet there isn't any use being sorry for them, for they don't grasp anything outside the life they are living. Can't you guess how they live? Look at the doors of the houses shut, and the windows sealed; yet they've been up these three hours! And they'll suck in bad air, and bad food; and they'll get cancer, and all that; and they'll die and be trotted away to the graveyard for 'passun' to hurry them into their little dark cots, in the blessed hope of everlasting life! I'm going to know this thing, Brillon, from tooth to ham-string; and, however it goes, we'll have lived up and down the whole scale; and that's something." He suddenly stopped, and then added: "I'm likely to go pretty far in this. I can't tell how or why, but it's so. Now, once more, as yesterday afternoon, for good or for bad, for long or for short, for the gods or for the devil, are you with me? There's time to turn back even yet, and I'll say no word to your going." "But no, no! a vow is a vow. When I cannot run I will walk, when I cannot walk I will crawl after you--comme ca!" Lady Belward did not appear at breakfast. Sir William and Gaston breakfasted alone at half past nine o'clock. The talk was of the stables and the estate generally. The breakfast-room looked out on a soft lawn, stretching away into a broad park, through which a stream ran; and beyond was a green hillside. The quiet, the perfect order and discipline, gave a pleasant tingle to Gaston's veins. It was all so easy, and yet so admirable--elegance without weight. He felt at home. He was not certain of some trifles of etiquette; but he and Sir William were alone, and he followed his instincts. Once he frankly asked his grandfather of a matter of form, of which he was uncertain the evening before. The thing was done so naturally that the conventional mind of the baronet was not disturbed. The Belwards were notable for their brains, and Sir William saw that the young man had an unusual share. He also felt that this startling individuality might make a hazardous future; but he liked the fellow, and he had a debt to pay to the son of his own dead son. Of course, if their wills came into conflict, there could be but one thing--the young man must yield; or, if he played the fool, there must be an end. Still, he hoped the best. When breakfast was finished, he proposed going to the library. There Sir William talked of the future, asked what Gaston's ideas were, and questioned him as to his present affairs. Gaston frankly said that he wanted to live as his father would have done, and that he had no property, and no money beyond a hundred pounds, which would last him a couple of years on the prairies, but would be fleeting here. Sir William at once said that he would give him a liberal allowance, with, of course, the run of his own stables and their house in town: and when he married acceptably, his allowance would be doubled. "And I wish to say, Gaston," he added, "that your uncle Ian, though heir to the title, does not necessarily get the property, which is not entailed. Upon that point I need hardly say more. He has disappointed us. "Through him Robert left us. Of his character I need not speak. Of his ability the world speaks variably: he is an artist. Of his morals I need only say that they are scarcely those of an English gentleman, though whether that is because he is an artist, I cannot say--I really cannot say. I remember meeting a painter at Lord Dunfolly's,--Dunfolly is a singular fellow--and he struck me chiefly as harmless, distinctly harmless. I could not understand why he was at Dunfolly's, he seemed of so little use, though Lady Malfire, who writes or something, mooned with him a good deal. I believe there was some scandal or something afterwards. I really do not know. But you are not a painter, and I believe you have character--I fancy so." "If you mean that I don't play fast and loose, sir, you are right. What I do, I do as straight as a needle." The old man sighed carefully. "You are very like Robert, and yet there is something else. I don't know, I really don't know what!" "I ought to have more in me than the rest of the family, sir." This was somewhat startling. Sir William's fingers stroked his beardless cheek uncertainly. "Possibly--possibly." "I've lived a broader life, I've got wider standards, and there are three races at work in me." "Quite so, quite so;" and Sir William fumbled among his papers nervously. "Sir," said Gaston suddenly, "I told you last night the honest story of my life. I want to start fair and square. I want the honest story of my father's life here; how and why he left, and what these letters mean." He took from his pocket the notes he had found the night before, and handed them. Sir William read them with a disturbed look, and turned them over and over. Gaston told where he had found them. Sir William spoke at last. "The main story is simple enough. Robert was extravagant, and Ian was vicious and extravagant also. Both got into trouble. I was younger then, and severe. Robert hid nothing, Ian all he could. One day things came to a climax. In his wild way, Robert--with Jock Lawson--determined to rescue a young man from the officers of justice, and to get him out of the country. There were reasons. He was the son of a gentleman; and, as we discovered afterwards, Robert had been too intimate with the wife--his one sin of the kind, I believe. Ian came to know, and prevented the rescue. Meanwhile, Robert was liable to the law for the attempt. There was a bitter scene here, and I fear that my wife and I said hard things to Robert." Gaston's eyes were on Lady Belward's portrait. "What did my grandmother say?" There was a pause, then: "That she would never call him son again, I believe; that the shadow of his life would be hateful to her always. I tell you this because I see you look at that portrait. What I said, I think, was no less. So, Robert, after a wild burst of anger, flung away from us out of the house. His mother, suddenly repenting, ran to follow him, but fell on the stone steps at the door, and became a cripple for life. At first she remained bitter against Robert, and at that time Ian painted that portrait. It is clever, as you may see, and weird. But there came a time when she kept it as a reproach to herself, not Robert. She is a good woman--a very good woman. I know none better, really no one." "What became of the arrested man?!" Gaston asked quietly, with the oblique suggestiveness of a counsel. "He died of a broken blood-vessel on the night of the intended rescue, and the matter was hushed up." "What became of the wife?" "She died also within a year." "Were there any children?" "One--a girl." "Whose was the child?" "You mean--?" "The husband's or the lover's?" There was a pause. "I cannot tell you." "Where is the girl?" "My son, do not ask that. It can do no good--really no good." "Is it not my due?" "Do not impose your due. Believe me, I know best. If ever there is need to tell you, you shall be told. Trust me. Has not the girl her due also?" Gaston's eyes held Sir William's a moment. "You are right, sir," he said, "quite right. I shall not try to know. But if--" He paused. Sir William spoke: "There is but one person in the world who knows the child's father; and I could not ask him, though I have known him long and well--indeed, no." "I do not ask to understand more," Gaston replied. "I almost wish I had known nothing. And yet I will ask one thing: is the girl in comfort and good surroundings?" "The best--ah, yes, the very best." There was a pause, in which both sat thinking; then Sir William wrote out a cheque and offered it, with a hint of emotion. He was recalling how he had done the same with this boy's father. Gaston understood. He got up, and said: "Honestly, sir, I don't know how I shall turn out here; for, if I didn't like it, it couldn't hold me, or, if it did, I should probably make things uncomfortable. But I think I shall like it, and I will do my best to make things go well. Good- morning, sir." With courteous attention Sir William let his grandson out of the room. And thus did a young man begin his career as Gaston Belward, gentleman. CHAPTER V. WHEREIN HE FINDS HIS ENEMY How that career was continued there are many histories: Jock Lawson's mother tells of it in her way, Mrs. Gasgoyne in hers, Hovey in hers, Captain Maudsley in his; and so on. Each looks at it from an individual stand-point. But all agree on two matters: that he did things hitherto unknown in the countryside; and that he was free and affable, but could pull one up smartly if necessary. He would sit by the hour and talk with Bimley, the cottager; with Rosher, the hotel-keeper, who when young had travelled far; with a sailorman, home for a holiday, who said he could spin a tidy yarn; and with Pogan, the groom, who had at last won Saracen's heart. But one day when the meagre village chemist saw him cracking jokes with Beard, the carpenter, and sidled in with a silly air of equality, which was merely insolence, Gaston softly dismissed him, with his ears tingling. The carpenter proved his right to be a friend of Gaston's by not changing countenance and by never speaking of the thing afterwards. His career was interesting during the eighteen months wherein society papers chatted of him amiably and romantically. He had entered into the joys of hunting with enthusiasm and success, and had made a fast and admiring friend of Captain Maudsley; while Saracen held his own grandly. He had dined with country people, and had dined them; had entered upon the fag-end of the London season with keen, amused enjoyment; and had engrafted every little use of the convention. The art was learned, but the man was always apart from it; using it as a toy, yet not despising it; for, as he said, it had its points, it was necessary. There was yachting in the summer; but he was keener to know the life of England and his heritage than to roam afar, and most of the year was spent on the estate and thereabouts: with the steward, with the justices of the peace, in the fields, in the kennels, among the accounts. To-day he was in London, haunting Tattersall's, the East End, the docks, his club, the London Library--he had a taste for English history, especially for that of the seventeenth century; he saturated himself with it: to-morrow he would present to his grandfather a scheme for improving the estate and benefiting the cottagers. Or he would suddenly enter the village school, and daze and charm the children by asking them strange yet simple questions, which sent a shiver of interest to their faces. One day at the close of his second hunting-season there was to be a ball at the Court, the first public declaration of acceptance by his people; for, at his wish, they did not entertain for him in town the previous season--Lady Belward had not lived in town for years. But all had gone so well, if not with absolute smoothness, and with some strangeness,-- that Gaston had become an integral part of their life, and they had ceased to look for anything sensational. This ball was to be the seal of their approval. It had been mentioned in 'Truth' with that freshness and point all its own. What character than Gaston's could more appeal to his naive imagination? It said in a piquant note that he did not wear a dagger and sombrero. Everything was ready. Decorations were up, the cook and the butler had done their parts. At eleven in the morning Gaston had time on his hands. Walking out, he saw two or three children peeping in at the gateway. He would visit the village school. He found the junior curate troubling the youthful mind with what their godfathers and godmothers did for them, and begging them to do their duty "in that state of life," etc. He listened, wondering at the pious opacity, and presently asked the children to sing. With inimitable melancholy they sang: "Oh, the Roast Beef of Old England!" Gaston sat back and laughed softly till the curate felt uneasy, till the children, waking to his humour, gurgled a little in the song. With his thumbs caught lightly in his waistcoat pockets, he presently began to talk with the children in an easy, quiet voice. He asked them little out-of-the-way questions, he lifted the school-room from their minds, and then he told them a story, showing them on the map where the place was, giving them distances, the kind of climate, and a dozen other matters of information, without the nature of a lesson. Then he taught them the chorus--the Board forbade it afterwards--of a negro song, which told how those who behaved themselves well in this world should ultimately: "Blow on, blow on, blow on dat silver horn!" It was on this day that, as he left the school, he saw Ian Belward driving past. He had not met his uncle since his arrival,--the artist had been in Morocco,--nor had he heard of him save through a note in a newspaper which said that he was giving no powerful work to the world, nor, indeed, had done so for several years; and that he preferred the purlieus of Montparnasse to Holland Park. They recognised each other. Ian looked his nephew up and down with a cool kind of insolence as he passed, but did not make any salutation. Gaston went straight to the castle. He asked for his uncle, and was told that he had gone to Lady Belward. He wandered to the library: it was empty. He lit a cigar, took down a copy of Matthew Arnold's poems, opening at "Sohrab and Rustum," read it with a quick-beating heart, and then came to "Tristram and Iseult." He knew little of "that Arthur" and his knights of the Round Table, and Iseult of Brittany was a new figure of romance to him. In Tennyson, he had got no further than "Locksley Hall," which, he said, had a right tune and wrong words; and "Maud," which "was big in pathos." The story and the metre of "Tristram and Iseult" beat in his veins. He got to his feet, and, standing before the window, repeated a verse aloud: "Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake, O hunter! and without a fear Thy golden-tassell'd bugle blow, And through the glades thy pasture take For thou wilt rouse no sleepers here! For these thou seest are unmoved; Cold, cold as those who lived and loved A thousand years ago." He was so engrossed that he did not hear the door open. He again repeated the lines with the affectionate modulation of a musician. He knew that they were right. They were hot with life--a life that was no more a part of this peaceful landscape than a palm-tree would be. He felt that he ought to read the poem in a desert, out by the Polar Sea, down on the Amazon, yonder at Nukualofa; that it would fit in with bearding the Spaniards two hundred years ago. Bearding the Spaniards-- what did he mean by that? He shut his eyes and saw a picture: A Moorish castle, men firing from the battlements under a blazing sun, a multitude of troops before a tall splendid-looking man, in armour chased with gold and silver, and fine ribbons flying. A woman was lifted upon the battlements. He saw the gold of her necklace shake on her flesh like sunlight on little waves. He heard a cry: At that moment some one said behind him: "You have your father's romantic manner." He quietly put down the book, and met the other's eyes with a steady directness. "Your memory is good, sir." "Less than thirty years--h'm, not so very long!" "Looking back--no. You are my father's brother, Ian Belward?" "Your uncle Ian." There was a kind of quizzical loftiness in Ian Belward's manner. "Well, Uncle Ian, my father asked me to say that he hoped you would get as much out of life as he had, and that you would leave it as honest." "Thank you. That is very like Robert. He loved making little speeches. It is a pity we did not pull together; but I was hasty, and he was rash. He had a foolish career, and you are the result. My mother has told me the story--his and yours." He sat down, ran his fingers through his grey-brown hair, and looking into a mirror, adjusted the bow of his tie, and flipped the flying ends. The kind of man was new to Gaston: self-indulgent, intelligent, heavily nourished, nonchalant, with a coarse kind of handsomeness. He felt that here was a man of the world, equipped mentally cap-a-pie, as keen as cruel. Reading that in the light of the past, he was ready. "And yet his rashness will hurt you longer than your haste hurt him." The artist took the hint bravely. "That you will have the estate, and I the title, eh? Well, that looks likely just now; but I doubt it all the same. You'll mess the thing one way or another." He turned from the contemplation of himself, and eyed Gaston lazily. Suddenly he started. "Begad," he said, "where did you get it?" He rose. Gaston understood that he saw the resemblance to Sir Gaston Belward. "Before you were, I am. I am nearer the real stuff." The other measured his words insolently: "But the Pocahontas soils the stream--that's plain." A moment after Gaston was beside the prostrate body of his uncle, feeling his heart. "Good God," he said, "I didn't think I hit so hard!" He felt the pulse, looked at the livid face, then caught open the waistcoat and put his ear to the chest. He did it all coolly, though swiftly--he was' born for action and incident. And during that moment of suspense he thought of a hundred things, chiefly that, for the sake of the family--the family! --he must not go to trial. There were easier ways. But presently he found that the heart beat. "Good! good!" he said, undid the collar, got some water, and rang a bell. Falby came. Gaston ordered some brandy, and asked for Sir William. After the brandy had been given, consciousness returned. Gaston lifted him up. He presently swallowed more brandy, and while yet his head was at Gaston's shoulder, said: "You are a hard hitter. But you've certainly lost the game now." Here he made an effort, and with Gaston's assistance got to his feet. At that moment Falby entered to say that Sir William was not in the house. With a wave of the hand Gaston dismissed him. Deathly pale, his uncle lifted his eyebrows at the graceful gesture. "You do it fairly, nephew," he said ironically yet faintly,--"fairly in such little things; but a gentleman, your uncle, your elder, with fists --that smacks of low company!" Gaston made a frank reply as he smothered his pride "I am sorry for the blow, sir; but was the fault all mine?" "The fault? Is that the question? Faults and manners are not the same. At bottom you lack in manners; and that will ruin you at last." "You slighted my mother!" "Oh, no! and if I had, you should not have seen it." "I am not used to swallow insults. It is your way, sir. I know your dealings with my father." "A little more brandy, please. But your father had manners, after all. You are as rash as he; and in essential matters clownish--which he was not." Gaston was well in hand now, cooler even than his uncle. "Perhaps you will sum up your criticism now, sir, to save future explanation; and then accept my apology." "To apologise for what no gentleman pardons or does, or acknowledges openly when done--H'm! Were it not well to pause in time, and go back to your wild North? Why so difficult a saddle--Tartarin after Napoleon? Think--Tartarin's end!" Gaston deprecated with a gesture: "Can I do anything for you, sir?" His uncle now stood up, but swayed a little, and winced from sudden pain. A wave of malice crossed his face. "It's a pity we are relatives, with France so near," he said, "for I see you love fighting." After an instant he added, with a carelessness as much assumed as natural: "You may ring the bell, and tell Falby to come to my room. And because I am to appear at the flare-up to-night--all in honour of the prodigal's son--this matter is between us, and we meet as loving relatives. You understand my motives, Gaston Robert Belward?" "Thoroughly." Gaston rang the bell, and went to open the door for his uncle to pass out. Ian Belward buttoned his close-fitting coat, cast a glance in the mirror, and then eyed Gaston's fine figure and well-cut clothes. In the presence of his nephew, there grew the envy of a man who knew that youth was passing while every hot instinct and passion remained. For his age he was impossibly young. Well past fifty he looked thirty-five, no more. His luxurious soul loathed the approach of age. Unlike many men of indulgent natures, he loved youth for the sake of his art, and he had sacrificed upon that altar more than most men-sacrificed others. His cruelty was not as that of the roughs of Seven Dials or Belleville, but it was pitiless. He admitted to those who asked him why and wherefore when his selfishness became brutality, that everything had to give way for his work. His painting of Ariadne represented the misery of two women's lives. And of such was his kingdom of Art. As he now looked at Gaston he was again struck with the resemblance to the portrait in the dining-room, with his foreign out-of-the-way air: something that should be seen beneath the flowing wigs of the Stuart period. He had long wanted to do a statue of the ill-fated Monmouth, and another greater than that. Here was the very man: with a proud, daring, homeless look, a splendid body, and a kind of cavalier conceit. It was significant of him, of his attitude towards himself where his work was concerned, that he suddenly turned and shut the door again, telling Falby, who appeared, to go to his room; and then said: "You are my debtor, Cadet--I shall call you that: you shall have a chance of paying." "How?" In a few concise words he explained, scanning the other's face eagerly. Gaston showed nothing. He had passed the apogee of irritation. "A model?!" he questioned drily. "Well, if you put it that way. 'Portrait' sounds better. It shall be Gaston Belward, gentleman; but we will call it in public, 'Monmouth the Trespasser.'" Gaston did not wince. He had taken all the revenge he needed. The idea rather pleased him than other wise. He had instincts about art, and he liked pictures; statuary, poetry, romance; but he had no standards. He was keen also to see the life of the artist, to touch that aristocracy more distinguished by mind than manners. "If that gives 'clearance,' yes. And your debt to me?" "I owe you nothing. You find your own meaning in my words. I was railing, you were serious. Do not be serious. Assume it sometimes, if you will; be amusing mostly. So, you will let me paint you--on your own horse, eh?" "That is asking much. Where?" "Well, a sketch here this afternoon, while the thing is hot--if this damned headache stops! Then at my studio in London in the spring, or" --here he laughed--"in Paris. I am modest, you see." "As you will." Gaston had had a desire for Paris, and this seemed to give a cue for going. He had tested London nearly all round. He had yet to be presented at St. James's, and elected a member of the Trafalgar Club. Certainly he had not visited the Tower, Windsor Castle, and the Zoo; but that would only disqualify him in the eyes of a colonial. His uncle's face flushed slightly. He had not expected such good fortune. He felt that he could do anything with this romantic figure. He would do two pictures: Monmouth, and an ancient subject--that legend of the ancient city of Ys, on the coast of Brittany. He had had it in his mind for years. He came back and sat down, keen, eager. "I've a big subject brewing," he said; "better than the Monmouth, though it is good enough as I shall handle it. It shall be royal, melancholy, devilish: a splendid bastard with creation against him; the best, most fascinating subject in English history. The son dead on against the father--and the uncle!" He ceased for a minute, fashioning the picture in his mind; his face pale, but alive with interest, which his enthusiasm made into dignity. Then he went on: "But the other: when the king takes up the woman--his mistress--and rides into the sea with her on his horse, to save the town! By Heaven, with you to sit, it's my chance! You've got it all there in you--the immense manner. You, a nineteenth century gentleman, to do this game of Ridley Court, and paddle round the Row? Not you! You're clever, and you're crafty, and you've a way with you. But you'll come a cropper at this as sure as I shall paint two big pictures--if you'll stand to your word." "We need not discuss my position here. I am in my proper place--in my father's home. But for the paintings and Paris, as you please." "That is sensible--Paris is sensible; for you ought to see it right, and I'll show you what half the world never see, and wouldn't appreciate if they did. You've got that old, barbaric taste, romance, and you'll find your metier in Paris." Gaston now knew the most interesting side of his uncle's character--which few people ever saw, and they mostly women who came to wish they had never felt the force of that occasional enthusiasm. He had been in the National Gallery several times, and over and over again he had visited the picture places in Bond Street as he passed; but he wanted to get behind art life, to dig out the heart of it. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: He was strong enough to admit ignorance Not to show surprise at anything Truth waits long, but whips hard THE TRESPASSER By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. VI. WHICH TELLS OF STRANGE ENCOUNTERS VII. WHEREIN THE SEAL OF HIS HERITAGE IS SET VIII. HE ANSWERS AN AWKWARD QUESTION IX. HE FINDS NEW SPONSORS X. HE COMES TO "THE WAKING OF THE FIRE" XI. HE MAKES A GALLANT CONQUEST CHAPTER VI WHICH TELLS OF STRANGE ENCOUNTERS A few hours afterwards Gaston sat on his horse, in a quiet corner of the grounds, while his uncle sketched him. After a time he said that Saracen would remain quiet no longer. His uncle held up the sketch. Gaston could scarcely believe that so strong and life-like a thing were possible in the time. It had force and imagination. He left his uncle with a nod, rode quietly through the park, into the village, and on to the moor. At the top he turned and looked down. The perfectness of the landscape struck him; it was as if the picture had all grown there--not a suburban villa, not a modern cottage, not one tall chimney of a manufactory, but just the sweet common life. The noises of the village were soothing, the soft smell of the woodland came over. He watched a cart go by idly, heavily clacking. As he looked, it came to him: was his uncle right after all? Was he out of place here? He was not a part of this, though he had adapted himself and had learned many fine social ways. He knew that he lived not exactly as though born here and grown up with it all. But it was also true that he had a native sense of courtesy which people called distinguished. There was ever a kind of mannered deliberation in his bearing--a part of his dramatic temper, and because his father had taught him dignity where there were no social functions for its use. His manner had, therefore, a carefulness which in him was elegant artifice. It could not be complained that he did not act after the fashion of gentle people when with them. But it was equally true that he did many things which the friends of his family could not and would not have done. For instance, none would have pitched a tent in the grounds, slept in it, read in it, and lived in it--when it did not rain. Probably no one of them would have, at individual expense, sent the wife of the village policeman to a hospital in London, to be cured--or to die--of cancer. None would have troubled to insist that a certain stagnant pool in the village be filled up. Nor would one have suddenly risen in court and have acted as counsel for a gipsy! At the same time, all were too well- bred to think that Gaston did this because the gipsy had a daughter with him, a girl of strong, wild beauty, with a look of superiority over her position. He thought of all the circumstances now. It was very many months ago. The man had been accused of stealing and assault, but the evidence was unconvincing to Gaston. The feeling in court was against the gipsy. Fearing a verdict against him, Gaston rose and cross-examined the witnesses, and so adroitly bewildered both them and the justices who sat with his grandfather on the case, that, at last, he secured the man's freedom. The girl was French, and knew English imperfectly. Gaston had her sworn, and made the most of her evidence. Then, learning that an assault had been made on the gipsy's van by some lads who worked at mills in a neighbouring town, he pushed for their arrest, and himself made up the loss to the gipsy. It is possible that there was in the mind of the girl what some common people thought: that the thing was done for her favour; for she viewed it half-gratefully, half-frowningly, till, on the village green, Gaston asked her father what he wished to do--push on or remain to act against the lads. The gipsy, angry as he was, wished to move on. Gaston lifted his hat to the girl and bade her good-bye. Then she saw that his motives had been wholly unselfish--even quixotic, as it appeared to her--silly, she would have called it, if silliness had not seemed unlikely in him. She had never met a man like him before. She ran her fingers through her golden- brown hair nervously, caught at a flying bit of old ribbon at her waist, and said in French: "He is honest altogether, sir. He did not steal, and he was not there when it happened." "I know that, my girl. That is why I did it." She looked at him keenly. Her eyes ran up and down his figure, then met his curiously. Their looks swam for a moment. Something thrilled in them both. The girl took a step nearer. "You are as much a Romany here as I am," she said, touching her bosom with a quick gesture. "You do not belong; you are too good for it. How do I know? I do not know; I feel. I will tell your fortune," she suddenly added, reaching for his hand. "I have only known three that I could do it with honestly and truly, and you are one. It is no lie. There is something in it. My mother had it; but it's all sham mostly." Then, under a tree on the green, he indifferent to village gossip, she took his hand and told him--not of his fortune alone. In half-coherent fashion she told him of the past--of his life in the North. She then spoke of his future. She told him of a woman, of another, and another still; of an accident at sea, and of a quarrel; then, with a low, wild laugh, she stopped, let go his hand, and would say no more. But her face was all flushed, and her eyes like burning beads. Her father stood near, listening. Now he took her by the arm. "Here, Andree, that's enough," he said, with rough kindness; "it's no good for you or him." He turned to Gaston, and said in English: "She's sing'lar, like her mother afore her. But she's straight." Gaston lit a cigar. "Of course." He looked kindly at the girl. "You are a weird sort, Andree, and perhaps you are right that I'm a Romany too; but I don't know where it begins and where it ends. You are not English gipsies?!" he added, to the father. "I lived in England when I was young. Her mother was a Breton--not a Romany. We're on the way to France now. She wants to see where her mother was born. She's got the Breton lingo, and she knows some English; but she speaks French mostly." "Well, well," rejoined Gaston, "take care of yourself, and good luck to you. Good-bye--good-bye, Andree." He put his hand in his pocket to give her some money, but changed his mind. Her eye stopped him. He shook hands with the man, then turned to her again. Her eyes were on him--hot, shining. He felt his blood throb, but he returned the look with good- natured nonchalance, shook her hand, raised his hat, and walked away, thinking what a fine, handsome creature she was. Presently he said: "Poor girl, she'll look at some fellow like that one day, with tragedy the end thereof!" He then fell to wondering about her almost uncanny divination. He knew that all his life he himself had had strange memories, as well as certain peculiar powers which had put the honest phenomena and the trickery of the Medicine Men in the shade. He had influenced people by the sheer force of presence. As he walked on, he came to a group of trees in the middle of the common. He paused for a moment, and looked back. The gipsy's van was moving away, and in the doorway stood the girl, her hand over her eyes, looking towards him. He could see the raw colour of her scarf. "She'll make wild trouble," he said to himself. As Gaston thought of this event, he moved his horse slowly towards a combe, and looked out over a noble expanse--valley, field, stream, and church-spire. As he gazed, he saw seated at some distance a girl reading. Not far from her were two boys climbing up and down the combe. He watched them. Presently he saw one boy creep along a shelf of rock where the combe broke into a quarry, let himself drop upon another shelf below, and then perch upon an overhanging ledge. He presently saw that the lad was now afraid to return. He heard the other lad cry out, saw the girl start up, and run forward, look over the edge of the combe, and then make as if to go down. He set his horse to the gallop, and called out. The girl saw him, and paused. In two minutes he was off his horse and beside her. It was Alice Wingfield. She had brought out three boys, who had come with her from London, where she had spent most of the year nursing their sick mother, her relative. "I'll have him up in a minute," he said, as he led Saracen to a sapling near. "Don't go near the horse." He swung himself down from ledge to ledge, and soon was beside the boy. In another moment he had the youngster on his back, came slowly up, and the adventurer was safe. "Silly Walter," the girl said, "to frighten yourself and give Mr. Belward trouble." "I didn't think I'd be afraid," protested the lad; "but when I looked over the ledge my head went round, and I felt sick--like with the channel." Gaston had seen Alice Wingfield several times at church and in the village, and once when, with Lady Belward, he had returned the archdeacon's call; but she had been away most of the time since his arrival. She had impressed him as a gentle, wise, elderly little creature, who appeared to live for others, and chiefly for her grandfather. She was not unusually pretty, nor yet young,--quite as old as himself,--and yet he wondered what it was that made her so interesting. He decided that it was the honesty of her nature, her beautiful thoroughness; and then he thought little more about her. But now he dropped into quiet, natural talk with her, as if they had known each other for years. But most women found that they dropped quickly into easy talk with him. That was because he had not learned the small gossip which varies little with a thousand people in the same circumstances. But he had a naive fresh sense, everything interested him, and he said what he thought with taste and tact, sometimes with wit, and always in that cheerful contemplative mood which influences women. Some of his sayings were so startling and heretical that they had gone the rounds, and certain crisp words out of the argot of the North were used by women who wished to be chic and amusing. Not quite certain why he stayed, but talking on reflectively, Gaston at last said: "You will be coming to us to-night, of course? We are having a barbecue of some kind." "Yes, I hope so; though my grandfather does not much care to have me go." "I suppose it is dull for him." "I am not sure it is that." "No? What then?" She shook her head. "The affair is in your honour, Mr. Belward, isn't it? "Does that answer my question?!" he asked genially. She blushed. "No, no, no! That is not what I meant." "I was unfair. Yes, I believe the matter does take that colour; though why, I don't know." She looked at him with simple earnestness. "You ought to be proud of it; and you ought to be glad of such a high position where you can do so much good, if you will." He smiled, and ran his hand down his horse's leg musingly before he replied: "I've not thought much of doing good, I tell you frankly. I wasn't brought up to think about it; I don't know that I ever did any good in my life. I supposed it was only missionaries and women who did that sort of thing." "But you wrong yourself. You have done good in this village. Why, we all have talked of it; and though it wasn't done in the usual way--rather irregularly--still it was doing good." He looked down at her astonished. "Well, here's a pretty libel! Doing good 'irregularly'? Why, where have I done good at all?" She ran over the names of several sick people in the village whose bills he had paid, the personal help and interest he had given to many, and, last of all, she mentioned the case of the village postmaster. Since Gaston had come, postmasters had been changed. The little pale- faced man who had first held the position disappeared one night, and in another twenty-four hours a new one was in his place. Many stories had gone about. It was rumoured that the little man was short in his accounts, and had been got out of the way by Gaston Belward. Archdeacon Varcoe knew the truth, and had said that Gaston's sin was not unpardonable, in spite of a few squires and their dames who declared it was shocking that a man should have such loose ideas, that no good could come to the county from it, and that he would put nonsense into the heads of the common people. Alice Wingfield was now to hear Gaston's view of the matter. "So that's it, eh? Live and let live is doing good? In that case it is easy to be a saint. What else could a man do? You say that I am generous--How? What have I spent out of my income on these little things? My income--how did I get it? I didn't earn it; neither did my father. Not a stroke have I done for it. I sit high and dry there in the Court, they sit low there in the village; and you know how they live. Well, I give away a little money which these people and their fathers earned for my father and me; and for that you say I am doing good, and some other people say I am doing harm--'dangerous charity,' and all that! I say that the little I have done is what is always done where man is most primitive, by people who never heard 'doing good' preached." "We must have names for things, you know," she said. "I suppose so, where morality and humanity have to be taught as Christian duty, and not as common manhood." "Tell me," she presently said, "about Sproule, the postmaster." "Oh, that? Well, I will. The first time I entered the post-office I saw there was something on the man's mind. A youth of twenty-three oughtn't to look as he did--married only a year or two also, with a pretty wife and child. I used to talk to them a good deal, and one day I said to him: 'You look seedy; what's the matter?' He flushed, and got nervous. I made up my mind it was money. If I had been here longer, I should have taken him aside and talked to him like a father. As it was, things slid along. I was up in town, and here and there. One evening as I came back from town I saw a nasty-looking Jew arrive. The little postmaster met him, and they went away together. He was in the scoundrel's hands; had been betting, and had borrowed first from the Jew, then from the Government. The next evening I was just starting down to have a talk with him, when an official came to my grandfather to swear out a warrant. I lost no time; got my horse and trap, went down to the office, gave the boy three minutes to tell me the truth, and then I sent him away. I fixed it up with the authorities, and the wife and child follow the youth to America next week. That's all." "He deserved to get free, then?" "He deserved to be punished, but not as he would have been. There wasn't really a vicious spot in the man. And the wife and child--what was a little justice to the possible happiness of those three? Discretion is a part of justice, and I used it, as it is used every day in business and judicial life, only we don't see it. When it gets public, why, some one gets blamed. In this case I was the target; but I don't mind in the least--not in the least. . . . Do you think me very startling or lawless?" "Never lawless; but one could not be quite sure what you would do in any particular case." She looked up at him admiringly. They had not noticed the approach of Archdeacon Varcoe till he was very near them. His face was troubled. He had seen how earnest was their conversation, and for some reason it made him uneasy. The girl saw him first, and ran to meet him. He saw her bright delighted look, and he sighed involuntarily. "Something has worried you," she said caressingly. Then she told him of the accident, and they all turned and went back towards the Court, Gaston walking his horse. Near the church they met Sir William and Lady Belward. There were salutations, and presently Gaston slowly followed his grandfather and grandmother into the courtyard. Sir William, looking back, said to his wife: "Do you think that Gaston should be told?" "No, no, there is no danger. Gaston, my dear, shall marry Delia Gasgoyne." "Shall marry? wherefore 'shall'? Really, I do not see." "She likes him, she is quite what we would have her, and he is interested in her. My dear, I have seen--I have watched for a year." He put his hand on hers. "My wife, you are a goodly prophet." When Archdeacon Varcoe entered his study on returning, he sat down in a chair, and brooded long. "She must be told," he said at last, aloud. "Yes, yes, at once. God help us both!" CHAPTER VII WHEREIN THE SEAL OF HIS HERITAGE IS SET "Sophie, when you talk with the man, remember that you are near fifty, and faded. Don't be sentimental." So said Mrs. Gasgoyne to Lady Dargan, as they saw Gaston coming down the ballroom with Captain Maudsley. "Reine, you try one's patience. People would say you were not quite disinterested." "You mean Delia! Now, listen. I haven't any wish but that Gaston Belward shall see Delia very seldom indeed. He will inherit the property no doubt, and Sir William told me that he had settled a decent fortune on him; but for Delia--no--no--no. Strange, isn't it, when Lady Harriet over there aches for him, Indian blood and all? And why? Because this is a good property, and the fellow is distinguished and romantic-looking: but he is impossible--perfectly impossible. Every line of his face says shipwreck." "You are not usually so prophetic." "Of course. But I am prophetic now, for Delia is more than interested, silly chuck! Did you ever read the story of the other Gaston--Sir Gaston--whom this one resembles? No? Well, you will find it thinly disguised in The Knight of Five Joys. He was killed at Naseby, my dear; killed, not by the enemy, but by a page in Rupert's cavalry. The page was a woman! It's in this one too. Indian and French blood is a sad tincture. He is not wicked at heart, not at all; but he will do mad things yet, my dear. For he'll tire of all this, and then--half-mourning for some one!" Gaston enjoyed talking with Mrs. Gasgoyne as to no one else. Other women often flattered him, she never did. Frankly, crisply, she told him strange truths, and, without mercy, crumbled his wrong opinions. He had a sense of humour, and he enjoyed her keen chastening raillery. Besides, her talk was always an education in the fine lights and shadows of this social life. He came to her now with a smile, greeted her heartily, and then turned to Lady Dargan. Captain Maudsley carried off Mrs. Gasgoyne, and the two were left together--the second time since the evening of Gaston's arrival, so many months before. Lady Dargan had been abroad, and was just returned. They talked a little on unimportant things, and presently Lady Dargan said: "Pardon my asking, but will you tell me why you wore a red ribbon in your button-hole the first night you came?" He smiled, and then looked at her a little curiously. "My luggage had not come, and I wore an old suit of my father's." Lady Dargan sighed deeply. "The last night he was in England he wore that coat at dinner," she murmured. "Pardon me, Lady Dargan--you put that ribbon there?" "Yes." Her eyes were on him with a candid interest and regard. "I suppose," he went on, "that his going was abrupt to you?" "Very--very!" she answered. She longed to ask if his father ever mentioned her name, but she dared not. Besides, as she said to herself, to what good now? But she asked him to tell her something about his father. He did so quietly, picking out main incidents, and setting them forth, as he had the ability, with quiet dramatic strength. He had just finished when Delia Gasgoyne came up with Lord Dargan. Presently Lord Dargan asked Gaston if he would bring Lady Dargan to the other end of the room, where Miss Gasgoyne was to join her mother. As they went, Lady Dargan said a little breathlessly: "Will you do something for me?" "I would do much for you," was his reply, for he understood! "If ever you need a friend, if ever you are in trouble, will you let me know? I wish to take an interest in you. Promise me." "I cannot promise, Lady Dargan," he answered, "for such trouble as I have had before I have had to bear alone, and the habit is fixed, I fear. Still, I am grateful to you just the same, and I shall never forget it. But will you tell me why people regard me from so tragical a stand- point?" "Do they?" "Well, there's yourself, and there's Mrs. Gasgoyne, and there's my uncle Ian." "Perhaps we think you may have trouble because of your uncle Ian." Gaston shook his head enigmatically, and then said ironically: "As they would put it in the North, Lady Dargan, he'll cut no figure in that matter. I remember for two." "That is right--that is right. Always think that Ian Belward is bad--bad at heart. He is as fascinating as--" "As the Snake?" "--as the Snake, and as cruel! It is the cruelty of wicked selfishness. Somehow, I forget that I am talking to his nephew. But we all know Ian Belward--at least, all women do." "And at least one man does," he answered gravely. The next minute Gaston walked down the room with Delia Gasgoyne on his arm. The girl delicately showed her preference, and he was aware of it. It pleased him--pleased his unconscious egoism. The early part of his life had been spent among Indian women, half-breeds, and a few dull French or English folk, whose chief charm was their interest in that wild, free life, now so distant. He had met Delia many times since his coming; and there was that in her manner--a fine high-bred quality, a sweet speaking reserve--which interested him. He saw her as the best product of this convention. She was no mere sentimental girl, for she had known at least six seasons, and had refused at least six lovers. She had a proud mind, not wide, suited to her position. Most men had flattered her, had yielded to her; this man, either with art or instinctively, mastered her, secured her interest by his personality. Every woman worth the having, down in her heart, loves to be mastered: it gives her a sense of security, and she likes to lean; for, strong as she may be at times, she is often singularly weak. She knew that her mother deprecated "that Belward enigma," but this only sent her on the dangerous way. To-night she questioned him about his life, and how he should spend the summer. Idling in France, he said. And she? She was not sure; but she thought that she also would be idling about France in her father's yacht. So they might happen to meet. Meanwhile? Well, meanwhile, there were people coming to stay at Peppingham, their home. August would see that over. Then freedom. Was it freedom, to get away from all this--from England and rule and measure? No, she did not mean quite that. She loved the life with all its rules; she could not live without it. She had been brought up to expect and to do certain things. She liked her comforts, her luxuries, many pretty things about her, and days without friction. To travel? Yes, with all modern comforts, no long stages, a really good maid, and some fresh interesting books. What kind of books? Well, Walter Pater's essays; "The Light of Asia"; a novel of that wicked man Thomas Hardy; and something light--"The Innocents Abroad"--with, possibly, a struggle through De Musset, to keep up her French. It did not seem exciting to Gaston, but it did sound honest, and it was in the picture. He much preferred Meredith, and Swinburne, and Dumas, and Hugo; but with her he did also like the whimsical Mark Twain. He thought of suggestions that Lady Belward had often thrown out; of those many talks with Sir William, excellent friends as they were, in which the baronet hinted at the security he would feel if there was a second family of Belwards. What if he--? He smiled strangely, and shrank. Marriage? There was the touchstone. After the dance, when he was taking her to her mother, he saw a pale intense face looking out to him from a row of others. He smiled, and the smile that came in return was unlike any he had ever seen Alice Wingfield wear. He was puzzled. It flashed to him strange pathos, affection, and entreaty. He took Delia Gasgoyne to her mother, talked to Lady Belward a little, and then went quietly back to where he had seen Alice. She was gone. Just then some people from town came to speak to him, and he was detained. When he was free he searched, but she was nowhere to be found. He went to Lady Belward. Yes, Miss Wingfield had gone. Lady Belward looked at Gaston anxiously, and asked him why he was curious. "Because she's a lonely-looking little maid," he said, "and I wanted to be kind to her. She didn't seem happy a while ago." Lady Belward was reassured. "Yes, she is a sweet creature, Gaston," she said, and added: "You are a good boy to-night, a very good host indeed. It is worth the doing," she went on, looking out on the guests proudly. "I did not think I should ever come to it again with any heart, but I do it for you gladly. Now, away to your duty," she added, tapping his breast affectionately with her fan, "and when everything is done, come and take me to my room." Ian Belward passed Gaston as he went. He had seen the affectionate passages. "'For a good boy!' 'God bless our Home!"' he said, ironically. Gaston saw the mark of his hand on his uncle's chin, and he forbore ironical reply. "The home is worth the blessing," he rejoined quietly, and passed on. Three hours later the guests had all gone, and Lady Belward, leaning on her grandson's arm, went to her boudoir, while Ian and his father sought the library. Ian was going next morning. The conference was not likely to be cheerful. Inside her boudoir, Lady Belward sank into a large chair, and let her head fall back and her eyes close. She motioned Gaston to a seat. Taking one near, he waited. After a time she opened her eyes and drew herself up. "My dear," she said, "I wish to talk with you." "I shall be very glad; but isn't it late? and aren't you tired, grandmother?" "I shall sleep better after," she responded, gently. She then began to review the past; her own long unhappiness, Robert's silence, her uncertainty as to his fate, and the after hopelessness, made greater by Ian's conduct. In low, kind words she spoke of his coming and the renewal of her hopes, coupled with fear also that he might not fit in with his new life, and--she could say it now--do something unbearable. Well, he had done nothing unworthy of their name; had acted, on the whole, sensibly; and she had not been greatly surprised at certain little oddnesses, such as the tent in the grounds, an impossible deer-hunt, and some unusual village charities and innovations on the estate. Nor did she object to Brillon, though he had sometimes thrown servants'-hall into disorder, and had caused the stablemen and the footmen to fight. His ear-rings and hair were startling, but they were not important. Gaston had been admired by the hunting-field--of which they were glad, for it was a test of popularity. She saw that most people liked him. Lord Dunfolly and Admiral Highburn were enthusiastic. For her own part, she was proud and grateful. She could enjoy every grain of comfort he gave them; and she was thankful to make up to Robert's son what Robert himself had lost--poor boy--poor boy! Her feelings were deep, strong, and sincere. Her grandson had come, strong, individual, considerate, and had moved the tender courses of her nature. At this moment Gaston had his first deep feeling of responsibility. "My dear," she said at last, "people in our position have important duties. Here is a large estate. Am I not clear? You will never be quite part of this life till you bring a wife here. That will give you a sense of responsibility. You will wake up to many things then. Will you not marry? There is Delia Gasgoyne. Your grandfather and I would be so glad. She is worthy in every way, and she likes you. She is a good girl. She has never frittered her heart away; and she would make you proud of her." She reached out an anxious hand, and touched his shoulder. His eyes were playing with the pattern of the carpet; but he slowly raised them to hers, and looked for a moment without speaking. Suddenly, in spite of himself, he laughed--laughed outright, but not loudly. Marriage? Yes, here was the touchstone. Marry a girl whose family had been notable for hundreds of years? For the moment he did not remember his own family. This was one of the times when he was only conscious that he had savage blood, together with a strain of New World French, and that his life had mostly been a range of adventure and common toil. This new position was his right, but there were times when it seemed to him that he was an impostor; others, when he felt himself master of it all, when he even had a sense of superiority--why he could not tell; but life in this old land of tradition and history had not its due picturesqueness. With his grandmother's proposal there shot up in him the thought that for him this was absurd. He to pace the world beside this fine queenly creature--Delia Gasgoyne--carrying on the traditions of the Belwards! Was it, was it possible? "Pardon me," he said at last gently, as he saw Lady Belward shrink and then look curiously at him, "something struck me, and I couldn't help it." "Was what I said at all ludicrous?" "Of course not; you said what was natural for you to say, and I thought what was natural for me to think, at first blush." "There is something wrong," she urged fearfully. "Is there any reason why you cannot marry? Gaston,"--she trembled towards him,--"you have not deceived us--you are not married?" "My wife is dead, as I told you," he answered gravely, musingly. "Tell me: there is no woman who has a claim on you?" "None that I know of--not one. My follies have not run that way." "Thank God! Then there is no reason why you should not marry. Oh, when I look at you I am proud, I am glad that I live! You bring my youth, my son back; and I long for a time when I may clasp your child in my arms, and know that Robert's heritage will go on and on, and that there will be made up to him, somehow, all that he lost. Listen: I am an old, crippled, suffering woman; I shall soon have done with all this coming and going, and I speak to you out of the wisdom of sorrow. Had Robert married, all would have gone well. He did not: he got into trouble, then came Ian's hand in it all; and you know the end. I fear for you, I do indeed. You will have sore temptations. Marry--marry soon, and make us happy." He was quiet enough now. He had seen the grotesque image, now he was facing the thing behind it. "Would it please you so very much?!" he said, resting a hand gently on hers. "I wish to see a child of yours in my arms, dear." "And the woman you have chosen is Delia Gasgoyne?" "The choice is for you; but you seem to like each other, and we care for her." He sat thinking for a time, then he got up, and said slowly: "It shall be so, if Miss Gasgoyne will have me. And I hope it may turn out as you wish." Then he stooped and kissed her on the cheek. The proud woman, who had unbent little in her lifetime, whose eyes had looked out so coldly on the world, who felt for her son Ian an almost impossible aversion, drew down his head and kissed it. "Indian and all?!" he asked, with a quaint bitterness. "Everything, my dear," she answered. "God bless you! Good-night." A few moments after, Gaston went to the library. He heard the voices of Sir William and his uncle. He knocked and entered. Ian, with exaggerated courtesy, rose. Gaston, with easy coolness, begged him to sit, lit a cigar, and himself sat. "My father has been feeding me with raw truths, Cadet," said his uncle; "and I've been eating them unseasoned. We have not been, nor are likely to be, a happy family, unless in your saturnian reign we learn to say, pax vobiscum--do you know Latin? For I'm told the money-bags and the stately pile are for you. You are to beget children before the Lord, and sit in the seat of Justice: 'tis for me to confer honour on you all by my genius!" Gaston sat very still, and, when the speech was ended, said tentatively: "Why rob yourself?" "In honouring you all?" "No, sir; in not yourself having 'a saturnian reign'." "You are generous." "No: I came here to ask for a home, for what was mine through my father. I ask, and want, nothing more--not even to beget children before the Lord!" "How mellow the tongue! Well, Cadet, I am not going to quarrel. Here we are with my father. See, I am willing to be friends. But you mustn't expect that I will not chasten your proud spirit now and then. That you need it, this morning bears witness." Sir William glanced from one to the other curiously. He was cold and calm, and looked worn. He had had a trying half-hour with his son, and it had told on him. Gaston at once said to his grandfather: "Of this morning, sir, I will tell you. I--" Ian interrupted him. "No, no; that is between us. Let us not worry my father." Sir William smiled ironically. "Your solicitude is refreshing, Ian." "Late fruit is the sweetest, sir." Presently Sir William asked Gaston the result of the talk with Lady Belward. Gaston frankly said that he was ready to do as they wished. Sir William then said they had chosen this time because Ian was there, and it was better to have all open and understood. Ian laughed. "Taming the barbarian! How seriously you all take it. I am the jester for the King. In the days of the flood I'll bring the olive leaf. You are all in the wash of sentiment: you'll come to the wicked uncle one day for common-sense. But, never mind, Cadet; we are to be friends. Yes, really. I do not fear for my heritage, and you'll need a helping hand one of these days. Besides, you are an interesting fellow. So, if you will put up with my acid tongue, there's no reason why we shouldn't hit it off." To Sir William's great astonishment, Ian held out his hand with a genial smile, which was tolerably honest, for his indulgent nature was as capable of great geniality as incapable of high moral conceptions. Then, he had before his eye, "Monmouth" and "The King of Ys." Gaston took his hand, and said: "I have no wish to be an enemy." Sir William rose, looking at them both. He could not understand Ian's attitude, and he distrusted. Yet peace was better than war. Ian's truce was also based on a belief that Gaston would make skittles of things. A little while afterwards Gaston sat in his room, turning over events in his mind. Time and again his thoughts returned to the one thing-- marriage. That marriage with his Esquimaux wife had been in one sense none at all, for the end was sure from the beginning. It was in keeping with his youth, the circumstances, the life, it had no responsibilities. But this? To become an integral part of the life--the English country gentleman; to be reduced, diluted, to the needs of the convention, and no more? Let him think of the details:--a justice of the peace: to sit on a board of directors; to be, perhaps, Master of the Hounds; to unite with the Bishop in restoring the cathedral; to make an address at the annual flower show. His wife to open bazaars, give tennis-parties, and be patron to the clergy; himself at last, no doubt, to go into Parliament; to feel the petty, or serious, responsibilities of a husband and a landlord. Monotony, extreme decorum, civility to the world; endless politeness to his wife; with boys at Eton and girls somewhere else; and the kind of man he must be to do his duty in all and to all! It seemed impossible. He rose and paced the floor. Never till this moment had the full picture of his new life come close. He felt stifled. He put on a cap, and, descending the stairs, went out into the court-yard and walked about, the cool air refreshing him. Gradually there settled upon him a stoic acceptance of the conditions. But would it last? He stood still and looked at the pile of buildings before him; then he turned towards the little church close by, whose spire and roof could be seen above the wall. He waved his hand, as when within it on the day of his coming, and said with irony: "Now for the marriage-linen, Sir Gaston!" He heard a low knocking at the gate. He listened. Yes, there was no mistake. He went to it, and asked quietly: "Who is there?" There was no reply. Still the knocking went on. He quietly opened the gate, and threw it back. A figure in white stepped through and slowly passed him. It was Alice Wingfield. He spoke to her. She did not answer. He went close to her and saw that she was asleep! She was making for the entrance door. He took her hand gently, and led her into a side door, and on into the ballroom. She moved towards a window through which the moonlight streamed, and sat on a cushioned bench beneath it. It was the spot where he had seen her at the dance. She leaned forward, looking into space, as she did at him then. He moved and got in her line of vision. The picture was weird. She wore a soft white chamber-gown, her hair hung loose on her shoulders, her pale face cowled it in. The look was inexpressibly sad. Over her fell dim, coloured lights from the stained- glass windows; and shadowy ancestors looked silently down from the armour-hung walls. To Gaston, collected as he was, it gave an ominous feeling. Why did she come here even in her sleep? What did that look mean? He gazed intently into her eyes. All at once her voice came low and broken, and a sob followed the words: "Gaston, my brother, my brother!" He stood for a moment stunned, gazing helplessly at her passive figure. "Gaston, my brother!" he repeated to himself. Then the painful matter dawned upon him. This girl, the granddaughter of the rector of the parish, was his father's daughter--his own sister. He had a sudden spring of new affection--unfelt for those other relations, his by the rights of the law and the gospel. The pathos of the thing caught him in the throat--for her how pitiful, how unhappy! He was sure that, somehow, she had only come to know of it since the afternoon. Then there had been so different a look in her face! One thing was clear: he had no right to this secret, and it must be for now as if it had never been. He came to her, and took her hand. She rose. He led her from the room, out into the court-yard, and from there through the gate into the road. All was still. They passed over to the rectory. Just inside the gate, Gaston saw a figure issue from the house, and come quickly towards them. It was the rector, excited, anxious. Gaston motioned silence, and pointed to her. Then he briefly whispered how she had come. The clergyman said that he had felt uneasy about her, had gone to her room, and was just issuing in search of her. Gaston resigned her, softly advised not waking her, and bade the clergyman good- night. But presently he turned, touched the arm of the old man, and said meaningly: "I know." The rector's voice shook as he replied: "You have not spoken to her?" "No." "You will not speak of it?" "No." "Unless I should die, and she should wish it?" "Always as she wishes." They parted, and Gaston returned to the Court. CHAPTER VIII HE ANSWERS AN AWKWARD QUESTION The next morning Brillon brought a note from Ian Belward, which said that he was starting, and asked Gaston to be sure and come to Paris. The note was carelessly friendly. After reading it, he lay thinking. Presently he chanced to see Jacques look intently at him. "Well, Brillon, what is it?!" he asked genially. Jacques had come on better than Gaston had hoped for, but the light play of his nature was gone--he was grave, almost melancholy; and, in his way, as notable as his master. Their life in London had changed him much. A valet in St. James's Street was not a hunting comrade on the Coppermine River. Often when Jacques was left alone he stood at the window looking out on the gay traffic, scarcely stirring; his eyes slow, brooding. Occasionally, standing so, he would make the sacred gesture. One who heard him swear now and then, in a calm, deliberate way,--at the cook and the porter,-- would have thought the matters in strange contrast. But his religion was a central habit, followed as mechanically as his appetite or the folding of his master's clothes. Besides, like most woodsmen, he was superstitious. Gaston was kind with him, keeping, however, a firm hand till his manner had become informed by the new duties. Jacques's greatest pleasure was his early morning visits to the stables. Here were Saracen and Jim the broncho-sleek, savage, playful. But he touched the highest point of his London experience when they rode in the Park. In this Gaston remained singular. He rode always with Jacques. Perhaps he wished to preserve one possible relic of the old life, perhaps he liked this touch of drama; or both. It created notice, criticism, but he was superior to that. Time and again people asked him to ride, but he always pleaded another engagement. He would then be seen with Jacques plus Jacques's earrings and the wonderful hair, riding grandly in the Row. Jacques's eyes sparkled and a snatch of song came to his lips at these times. No figures in the Park were so striking. There was nothing bizarre, but Gaston had a distinguished look, and women who had felt his hand at their waists in the dance the night before, now knew him, somehow, at a grave distance. Though Gaston did not say it to himself, these were the hours when he really was with the old life--lived it again--prairie, savannah, ice-plain, alkali desert. When, dismounting, the horses were taken and they went up the stairs, Gaston would softly lay his whip across Jacques's shoulders without speaking. This was their only ritual of camaraderie, and neglect of it would have fretted the half-breed. Never had man such a servant. No matter at what hour Gaston returned, he found Jacques waiting; and when he woke he found him ready, as now, on this morning, after a strange night. "What is it, Jacques?!" he repeated. The old name! Jacques shivered a little with pleasure. Presently he broke out with: "Monsieur, when do we go back?" "Go back where?" "To the North, monsieur." "What's in your noddle now, Brillon?" The impatient return to "Brillon" cut Jacques like a whip. "Monsieur," he suddenly said, his face glowing, his hands opening nervously, "we have eat, we have drunk, we have had the dance and the great music here: is it enough? Sometimes as you sleep you call out, and you toss to the strokes of the tower-clock. When we lie on the Plains of Yath from sunset to sunrise, you never stir then. You remember when we sleep on the ledge of the Voshti mountain--so narrow that we were tied together? Well, we were as babes in blankets. In the Prairie of the Ten Stars your fingers were on the trigger firm as a bolt; here I have watch them shake with the coffee-cup. Monsieur, you have seen: is it enough? You have lived here: is it like the old lodge and the long trail?" Gaston sat up in bed, looked in the mirror opposite, ran his fingers through his hair, regarded his hands, turning them over, and then, with sharp impatience, said: "Go to hell!" The little man's face flushed to his hair; he sucked in the air with a gasp. Without a word, he went to the dressing-table, poured out the shaving-water, threw a towel over his arm, and turned to come to the bed; but, all at once, he sidled back, put down the water, and furtively drew a sleeve across his eyes. Gaston saw, and something suddenly burned in him. He dropped his eyes, slid out of bed, into his dressing-gown, and sat down. Jacques made ready. He was not prepared to have Gaston catch him by the shoulders with a nervous grip, search his eyes, and say: "You damned little fool, I'm not worth it!" Jacques's face shone. "Every great man has his fool--alors!" was the happy reply. "Jacques," Gaston presently said, "what's on your mind?" "I saw--last night, monsieur," he said. "You saw what?" "I saw you in the court-yard with the lady." Gaston was now very grave. "Did you recognise her?" "No: she moved all as a spirit." "Jacques, that matter is between you and me. I'm going to tell you, though, two things; and--where's your string of beads?" Jacques drew out his rosary. "That's all right. Mum as Manitou! She was asleep; she is my sister. And that is all, till there's need for you to know more." In this new confidence Jacques was content. The life was a gilded mess, but he could endure it now. Three days passed. During that time Gaston was up to town twice; lunched at Lady Dargan's, and dined at Lord Dunfolly's. For his grandfather, who was indisposed, he was induced to preside at a political meeting in the interest of a wealthy local brewer, who confidently expected the seat, and, through gifts to the party, a knighthood. Before the meeting, in the gush of--as he put it "kindred aims," he laid a finger familiarly in Gaston's button-hole. Jacques, who was present, smiled, for he knew every change in his master's face, and he saw a glitter in his eye. He remembered when they two were in trouble with a gang of river-drivers, and one did this same thing rudely: how Gaston looked down, and said, with a devilish softness: "Take it away." And immediately after the man did so. Mr. Sylvester Gregory Babbs, in a similar position, heard a voice say down at him, with a curious obliqueness: "If you please!" The keenest edge of it was lost on the flaring brewer, but his fingers dropped, and he twisted his heavy watchchain uneasily. The meeting began. Gaston in a few formal words, unconventional in idea, introduced Mr. Babbs as "a gentleman whose name was a household word in the county, who would carry into Parliament the civic responsibility shown in his private life, who would render his party a support likely to fulfil its purpose." When he sat down, Captain Maudsley said: "That's a trifle vague, Belward." "How can one treat him with importance?" "He's the sort that makes a noise one way or another." "Yes. Obituary: 'At his residence in Babbslow Square, yesterday, Sir S. G. Babbs, M. P., member of the London County Council. Sir S. G. Babbs, it will be remembered, gave L100,000 to build a home for the propagation of Vice, and--'" "That's droll!" "Why not Vice? 'Twould be just the same in his mind. He doesn't give from a sense of moral duty. Not he; he's a bungowawen!" "What is that?" "That's Indian. You buy a lot of Indian or halfbreed loafers with beaver-skins and rum, go to the Mount of the Burning Arrows, and these fellows dance round you and call you one of the lost race, the Mighty Men of the Kimash Hills. And they'll do that while the rum lasts. Meanwhile you get to think yourself a devil of a swell--you and the gods! . . . And now we had better listen to this bungowawen, hadn't we?" The room was full, and on the platform were gentlemen come to support Sir William Belward. They were interested to see how Gaston would carry it off. Mr. Babbs's speech was like a thousand others by the same kind of man. More speeches--some opposing--followed, and at last came the chairman to close the meeting. He addressed himself chiefly to a bunch of farmers, artisans, and labouring-men near. After some good-natured raillery at political meetings in general, the bigotry of party, the difficulty in getting the wheat from the chaff, and some incisive thrusts at those who promised the moon and gave a green cheese, who spent their time in berating their opponents, he said: "There's a game that sailors play on board ship--men-o'-war and sailing- ships mostly. I never could quite understand it, nor could any officers ever tell me--the fo'castle for the men and the quarter-deck for the officers, and what's English to one is Greek to the other. Well, this was all I could see in the game. They sat about, sometimes talking, sometimes not. All at once a chap would rise and say, 'Allow me to speak, me noble lord,' and follow this by hitting some one of the party wherever the blow got in easiest--on the head, anywhere! [Laughter.] Then he would sit down seriously, and someone else spoke to his noble lordship. Nobody got angry at the knocks, and Heaven only knows what it was all about. That is much the way with politics, when it is played fair. But here is what I want particularly to say: We are not all born the same, nor can we live the same. One man is born a brute, and another a good sort; one a liar, and one an honest man; one has brains, and the other hasn't. Now, I've lived where, as they say, one man is as good as another. But he isn't, there or here. A weak man can't run with a strong. We have heard to-night a lot of talk for something and against something. It is over. Are you sure you have got what was meant clear in your mind? [Laughter, and 'Blowed if we'ave!'] Very well; do not worry about that. We have been playing a game of 'Allow me to speak, me noble lord!' And who is going to help you to get the most out of your country and your life isn't easy to know. But we can get hold of a few clear ideas, and measure things against them. I know and have talked with a good many of you here ['That's so! That's so!'], and you know my ideas pretty well--that they are honest at least, and that I have seen the countries where freedom is 'on the job,' as they say. Now, don't put your faith in men and in a party that cry, 'We will make all things new,' to the tune of, 'We are a band of brothers.' Trust in one that says, 'You cannot undo the centuries. Take off the roof, remove a wall, let in the air, throw out a wing, but leave the old foundations.' And that is the real difference between the other party and mine; and these political games of ours come to that chiefly." Presently he called for the hands of the meeting. They were given for Mr. Babbs. Suddenly a man's strong, arid voice came from the crowd: "'Allow me to speak, me noble lord!' [Great laughter. Then a pause.] Where's my old chum, Jock Lawson?" The audience stilled. Gaston's face went grave. He replied, in a firm, clear voice. "In Heaven, my man. You'll never see him more." There was silence for a moment, a murmur, then a faint burst of applause. Presently John Cawley, the landlord of "The Whisk o' Barley," made towards Gaston. Gaston greeted him, and inquired after his wife. He was told that she was very ill, and had sent her husband to beg Gaston to come. Gaston had dreaded this hour, though he knew it would come one day. A woman on a death-bed has a right to ask for and get the truth. He had forborne telling her of her son; and she, whenever she had seen him, had contented herself with asking general questions, dreading in her heart that Jock had died a dreadful or shameful death, or else this gentleman would, voluntarily, say more. But, herself on her way out of the world, as she feared, wished the truth, whatever it might be. Gaston told Cawley that he would drive over at once, and then asked who it was had called out at him. A drunken, poaching fellow, he was told, who in all the years since Jock had gone, had never passed the inn without stopping to say: "Where's my old chum, Jock Lawson?" In the past he and Jock had been in more than one scrape together. He had learned from Mrs. Cawley that Gaston had known Jock in Canada. When Cawley had gone, Gaston turned to the other gentlemen present. "An original speech, upon my word, Belward," said Captain Maudsley. Mr. Warren Gasgoyne came. "You are expected to lunch or something to-morrow, Belward, you remember? Devil of a speech that! But, if you will 'allow me to speak, me noble lord,' you are the rankest Conservative of us all." "Don't you know that the easiest constitutional step is from a republic to an autocracy, and vice versa?" "I don't know it, and I don't know how you do it." "Do what?" "Make them think as you do." He waved his hand to the departing crowd. "I don't. I try to think as they do. I am always in touch with the primitive mind." "You ought to do great things here, Belward," said the other seriously. "You have the trick; and we need wisdom at Westminster." "Don't be mistaken; I am only adaptable. There's frank confession." At this point Mr. Babbs came up and said good-night in a large, self- conscious way. Gaston hoped that his campaign would not be wasted, and the fluffy gentleman retired. When he got out of earshot in the shadows, he turned and shook his fist towards Gaston, saying: "Half-breed upstart!" Then he refreshed his spirits by swearing at his coachman. Gaston and Jacques drove quickly over to "The Whisk o' Barley." Gaston was now intent to tell the whole truth. He wished that he had done it before; but his motives had been good--it was not to save himself. Yet he shrank. Presently he thought: "What is the matter with me? Before I came here, if I had an idea I stuck to it, and didn't have any nonsense when I knew I was right. I am getting sensitive--the thing I find everywhere in this country: fear of feeling or giving pain; as though the bad tooth out isn't better than the bad tooth in. When I really get sentimental I'll fold my Arab tent--so help me, ye seventy Gods of Yath!" A little while after he was at Mrs. Cawley's bed, the landlord handing him a glass of hot grog, Jock's mother eyeing him feverishly from the quilt. Gaston quietly felt her wrist, counting the pulse-beats; then told Cawley to wet a cloth and hand it to him. He put it gently on the woman's head. The eyes of the woman followed him anxiously. He sat down again, and in response to her questioning gaze, began the story of Jock's life as he knew it. Cawley stood leaning on the foot-board; the woman's face was cowled in the quilt with hungry eyes; and Gaston's voice went on in a low monotone, to the ticking of the great clock in the next room. Gaston watched her face, and there came to him like an inspiration little things Jock did, which would mean more to his mother than large adventures. Her lips moved now and again, even a smile flickered. At last Gaston came to his father's own death and the years that followed; then the events in Labrador. He approached this with unusual delicacy: it needed bravery to look into the mother's eyes, and tell the story. He did not know how dramatically he told it--how he etched it without a waste word. When he came to that scene in the Fort, the three men sitting, targets for his bullets,--he softened the details greatly. He did not tell it as he told it at the Court, but the simpler, sparser language made it tragically clear. There was no sound from the bed, none from the foot-board, but he heard a door open and shut without, and footsteps somewhere near. How he put the body in the tree, and prayed over it and left it there, was all told; and then he paused. He turned a little sick as he saw the white face before him. She drew herself up, her fingers caught away the night-dress at her throat; she stared hard at him for a moment, and then, with a wild, moaning voice, cried out: "You killed my boy! You killed my boy! You killed my boy!" Gaston was about to take her hand, when he heard a shuffle and a rush behind him. He rose, turned swiftly, saw a bottle swinging, threw up his hand . . . and fell backwards against the bed. The woman caught his bleeding head to her breast and hugged it. "My Jock, my poor boy!" she cried in delirium now. Cawley had thrown his arms about the struggling, drunken assailant--Jock's poaching friend. The mother now called out to the pinioned man, as she had done to Gaston: "You have killed my boy!" She kissed Gaston's bloody face. A messenger was soon on the way to Ridley Court, and in a little upper room Jacques was caring for his master. CHAPTER IX HE FINDS NEW SPONSORS Gaston lay for many days at "The Whisk o' Barley." During that time the inn was not open to customers. The woman also for two days hung at the point of death, and then rallied. She remembered the events of the painful night, and often asked after Gaston. Somehow, her horror of her son's death at his hands was met by the injury done him now. She vaguely felt that there had been justice and punishment. She knew that in the room at Labrador Gaston Belward had been scarcely less mad than her son. Gaston, as soon as he became conscious, said that his assailant must be got out of the way of the police, and to that end bade Jacques send for Mr. Warren Gasgoyne. Mr. Gasgoyne and Sir William arrived at the same time, but Gaston was unconscious again. Jacques, however, told them what his master's wishes were, and they were carried out; Jock's friend secretly left England forever. Sir William and Mr. Gasgoyne got the whole tale from the landlord, whom they asked to say nothing publicly. Lady Belward drove down each day, and sat beside him for a couple of hours-silent, solicitous, smoothing his pillow or his wasting hand. The brain had been injured, and recovery could not be immediate. Hovey the housekeeper had so begged to be installed as nurse, that her wish was granted, and she was with him night and day. Now she shook her head at him sadly, now talked in broken sentences to herself, now bustled about silently, a tyrant to the other servants sent down from the Court. Every day also the headgroom and the huntsman came, and in the village Gaston's humble friends discussed the mystery, stoutly defending him when some one said it was "more nor gabble, that theer saying o' the poacher at the meetin.'" But the landlord and his wife kept silence, the officers of the law took no action, and the town and country newspapers could do no more than speak of "A vicious assault upon the heir of Ridley Court." It had become the custom now to leave Ian out of that question. But the wonder died as all wonders do, and Gaston made his fight for health. The day before he was removed to the Court, Mrs. Cawley was helped up- stairs to see him. She was gaunt and hollow-eyed. Lady Belward and Mrs. Gasgoyne were present. The woman made her respects, and then stood at Gaston's bedside. He looked up with a painful smile. "Do you forgive me?!" he asked. "I've almost paid!" He touched his bandaged head. "It ain't for mothers to forgi'e the thing," she replied, in a steady voice, "but I can forgi'e the man. 'Twere done i' madness--there beant the will workin' i' such. 'Twere a comfort that he'd a prayin' over un." Gaston took the gnarled fingers in his. It had never struck him how dreadful a thing it was--so used had he been to death in many forms--till he had told the story to this mother. "Mrs. Cawley," he said, "I can't make up to you what Jock would have been; but I can do for you in one way as much as Jock. This house is yours from to-day." He drew a deed from the coverlet, and handed it to her. He had got it from Sir William that morning. The poor and the crude in mind can only understand an objective emotion, and the counters for these are this world's goods. Here was a balm in Gilead. The love of her child was real, but the consolation was so practical to Mrs. Cawley that the lips which might have cursed, said: "Ah, sir, the wind do be fittin' the shore lamb! I' the last Judgen, I'll no speak agen 'ee. I be sore fretted harm come to 'ee." At this Mrs. Gasgoyne rose, and in her bustling way dismissed the grateful peasant, who fondled the deed and called eagerly down the stairs to her husband as she went. Mrs. Gasgoyne then came back, sat down, and said: "Now you needn't fret about that any longer--barbarian!" she added, shaking a finger. "Didn't I say that you would get into trouble? that you would set the country talking? Here you were, in the dead of night, telling ghost stories, and raking up your sins, with no cause whatever, instead of in your bed. You were to have lunched with us the next day--I had asked Lady Harriet to meet you, too!--and you didn't; and you have wretched patches where your hair ought to be. How can you promise that you'll not make a madder sensation some day?" Gaston smiled up at her. Her fresh honesty, under the guise of banter, was always grateful to him. He shook his head, smiled, and said nothing. She went on. "I want a promise that you will do what your godfather and godmother will swear for you." She acted on him like wine. "Of course, anything. Who are my godfather and godmother?" She looked him steadily, warmly in the eyes: "Warren and myself." Now he understood: his promise to his grandmother and grandfather. So, they had spoken! He was sure that Mrs. Gasgoyne had objected. He knew that behind her playful treatment of the subject there was real scepticism of himself. It put him on his mettle, and yet he knew she read him deeper than any one else, and flattered him least. He put out his hand, and took hers. "You take large responsibilities," he said, "but I will try and justify you--honestly, yes." In her hearty way, she kissed him on the cheek. "There," she responded, "if you and Delia do make up your minds, see that you treat her well. And you are to come, just as soon as you are able, to stay at Peppingham. Delia, silly child, is anxious, and can't see why she mustn't call with me now." In his room at the Court that night, Gaston inquired of Jacques about Alice Wingfield, and was told that on the day of the accident she had left with her grandfather for the Continent. He was not sorry. For his own sake he could have wished an understanding between them. But now he was on the way to marriage, and it was as well that there should be no new situations. The girl could not wish the thing known. There would be left him, in this case, to befriend her should it ever be needed. He remembered the spring of pleasure he felt when he first saw other faces like his father's--his grandfather's, his grandmother's. But this girl's was so different to him; having the tragedy of the lawless, that unconscious suffering stamped by the mother upon the child. There was, however, nothing to be done. He must wait. Two days later Lady Dargan called to inquire after him. He was lying in his study with a book, and Lady Belward sent to ask him if he would care to see her and Lord Dargan's nephew, Cluny Vosse. Lady Belward did not come; Sir William brought them. Lady Dargan came softly to him, smiled more with her eyes than her lips, and told him how sorry she had been to hear of his illness. Some months before Gaston had met Cluny Vosse, who at once was his admirer. Gaston liked the youth. He was fresh, high- minded, extravagant, idle; but he had no vices, and no particular vanity save for his personal appearance. His face was ever radiant with health, shining with satisfaction. People liked him, and did not discount it by saying that he had nothing in him. Gaston liked him most because he was so wholly himself, without guile, beautifully honest. Now Cluny sat down, tapped the crown of his hat, looked at him cheerily, and said: "Got in a cracker, didn't he?" Gaston nodded, amused. "The fellows at Brooke's had a talkee-talkee, and they'd twenty different stories. Of course it was rot. We were all cut up though and hoped you'd pull through. Of course there couldn't be any doubt of that-- you've been through too many, eh?" Cluny always assumed that Gaston had had numberless tragical adventures which, if told, must make Dumas turn in his grave with envy. Gaston smiled, and laid a hand upon the other's knee. "I'm not shell- proof, Vosse, and it was rather a narrow squeak, I'm told. But I'm kept, you see, for a worse fate and a sadder." "I say, Belward, you don't mean that! Your eyes go so queer sometimes, that a chap doesn't know what to think. You ought to live to a hundred. You'll have to. You've got it all--" "Oh no, my boy, I haven't got anything." He waved his hand pleasantly towards his grandfather. "I'm on the knees of the gods merely." Cluny turned on Sir William. "It isn't any secret, is it, sir? He gets the lot, doesn't he?" Sir William's occasional smile came. "I fancy there's some condition about the plate, the pictures, and the title; but I do not suppose that matters meanwhile." He spoke half-musingly and with a little unconscious irony, and the boy, vaguely knowing that there was a cross-current somewhere, drifted. "No, of course not; he can have fun enough without them, can't he?" Lady Dargan here soothingly broke in, inquiring about Gaston's illness, and showing a tactful concern. But the nephew persisted: "I say, Belward, Aunt Sophie was cut up no end when she heard of it. She wouldn't go out to dinner that night at Lord Dunfolly's, and, of course, I didn't go. And I wanted to; for Delia Gasgoyne was to be there, and she's ripping." Lady Dargan, in spite of herself, blushed, but without confusion, and Gaston adroitly led the conversation otherwhere. Presently she said that they were to be at their villa in France during the late summer, and if he chanced to be abroad would he come? He said that he intended to visit his uncle in Paris, but that afterwards he would be glad to visit them for a short time. She looked astonished. "With your uncle Ian!" "Yes. He is to show me art-life, and all that." She looked troubled. He saw that she wished to say something. "Yes, Lady Dargan?!" he asked. She spoke with fluttering seriousness. "I asked you once to come to me if you ever needed a friend. I do not wait for that. I ask you not to go to your uncle." "Why?" He was thinking that, despite social artifice and worldliness, she was sentimental. "Because there will be trouble. I can see it. You may trust a woman's instinct; and I know that man!" He did not reply at once, but presently said: "I fancy I must keep my promise." "What is the book you are reading?!" she said, changing the subject, for Sir William was listening. He opened it, and smiled musingly. "It is called Affairs of Some Consequence in the Reign of Charles I. In reading it I seemed to feel that it was incorrect, and my mind kept wandering away into patches of things--incidents, scenes, bits of talk --as I fancied they really were, not apocryphal or 'edited' as here." "I say," said Cluny, "that's rum, isn't it?" "For instance," Gaston continued, "this tale of King Charles and Buckingham." He read it. "Now here is the scene as I picture it." In quick elliptical phrases he gave the tale from a different stand-point. Sir William stared curiously at Gaston, then felt for some keys in his pocket. He got up and rang the bell. Gaston was still talking. He gave the keys to Falby with a whispered word. In a few moments Falby placed a small leather box beside Sir William, and retired at a nod. Sir William presently said: "Where did you read those things?" "I do not know that I ever read them." "Did your father tell you them?" "I do not remember so, though he may have." "Did you ever see this box?" "Never before." "You do not know what is in it?" "Not in the least." "And you have never seen this key?" "Not to my knowledge." "It is very strange." He opened the box. "Now, here are private papers of Sir Gaston Belward, more than two hundred years old, found almost fifty years ago by myself in the office of our family solicitor. Listen." He then began to read from the faded manuscript. A mysterious feeling pervaded the room. Once or twice Cluny gave a dry nervous kind of laugh. Much of what Gaston had said was here in stately old-fashioned language. At a certain point the MS. ran: "I drew back and said, 'As your grace will have it, then--"' Here Gaston came to a sitting posture, and interrupted. "Wait, wait!" He rose, caught one of two swords that were crossed on the wall, and stood out. "This is how it was. 'As your grace will have it, then, to no waste of time!' We fell to. First he came carefully and made strange feints, learned at King Louis's Court, to try my temper. But I had had these tricks of my cousin Secord, and I returned his sport upon him. Then he came swiftly, and forced me back upon the garden wall. I gave to him foot by foot, for he was uncommon swift and dexterous. He pinched me sorely once under the knee, and I returned him one upon the wrist, which sent a devilish fire into his eyes. At that his play became so delicate and confusing that I felt I should go dizzy if it stayed; so I tried the one great trick cousin Secord taught me, making to run him through, as a last effort. The thing went wrong, but checking off my blunder he blundered too,--out of sheer wonder, perhaps, at my bungling,--and I disarmed him. So droll was it that I laughed outright, and he, as quick in humour as in temper, stood hand on hip, and presently came to a smile. With that my cousin Secord cried: 'The king! the king!' I got me up quickly--" Here Gaston, who had in a kind of dream acted the whole scene, swayed with faintness, and Cluny caught him, saving him from a fall. Cluny's colour was all gone. Lady Dargan had sat dazed, and Sir William's face was anxious, puzzled. A few hours later Sir William was alone with Gaston, who was recovered and cool. "Gaston," he said, "I really do not understand this faculty of memory, or whatever it is. Have you any idea how you come by it?" "Have we any idea how life comes and goes, sir?" "I confess not. I confess not, really." "Well, I'm in the dark about it too; but I sometimes fancy that I'm mixed up with that other Gaston." "It sounds fantastic." "It is fantastic. Now, here is this manuscript, and here is a letter I wrote this morning. Put them together." Sir William did so. "The handwriting is singularly like." "Well," continued Gaston, smiling whimsically, "suppose that I am Sir Gaston Belward, Baronet, who is thought to lie in the church yonder, the title is mine, isn't it?" Sir William smiled also. "The evidence is scarce enough to establish succession." "But there would be no succession. A previous holder of the title isn't dead: ergo, the present holder, has no right." Gaston had shaded his eyes with his hand, and he was watching Sir William's face closely, out of curiosity chiefly. Sir William regarded the thing with hesitating humour. "Well, well, suppose so. The property was in the hands of a younger branch of the family then. There was no entail, as now." "Wasn't there?!" said Gaston enigmatically. He was thinking of some phrases in a manuscript which he had found in this box. "Perhaps where these papers came from there are others," he added. Sir William lifted his eyebrows ironically. "I hardly think so." Gaston laughed, not wishing him to take the thing at all seriously. He continued airily: "It would be amusing if the property went with the title after all, wouldn't it, sir?" Sir William got to his feet and said testily: "That should never be while I lived!" "Of course not, sir." Sir William saw the bull, and laughed, heartily for him. They bade each other good-night. "I'll have a look in the solicitor's office all the same," said Gaston to himself. CHAPTER X HE COMES TO "THE WAKING OF THE FIRE" A few days afterwards Gaston joined a small party at Peppingham. Without any accent life was made easy for him. He was alone much, and yet, to himself, he seemed to have enough of company. The situation did not impose itself conspicuously. Delia gave him no especial reason to be vain. She had not an exceeding wit, but she had charm, and her talk was interesting to Gaston, who had come, for the first time, into somewhat intimate relations with an English girl. He was struck with her conventional delicacy and honour on one side, and the limitation of her ideas on the other. But with it all she had some slight touch of temperament which lifted her from the usual level. And just now her sprightliness was more marked than it had ever been. Her great hour seemed come to her. She knew that there had been talk among the elders, and what was meant by Gaston's visit. Still, they were not much alone together. Gaston saw her mostly with others. Even a woman with a tender strain for a man knows what will serve for her ascendancy: the graciousness of her disposition, the occasional flash of her mother's temper, and her sense of being superior to a situation--the gift of every well-bred English girl. Cluny Vosse was also at the house, and his devotion was divided between Delia and Gaston. Cluny was a great favourite, and Agatha Gasgoyne, who had a wild sense of humour, egged him on with her sister, which gave Delia enough to do. At last Cluny, in a burst of confidence, declared that he meant to propose to Delia. Agatha then became serious, and said that Delia was at least four years older than himself, that he was just her--Agatha's--age, and that the other match would be very unsuitable. This put Cluny on Delia's defence, and he praised her youth, and hinted at his own elderliness. He had lived, he had seen It (Cluny called the world and all therein "It"), he was aged; he was in the large eye of experience; he had outlived the vices and the virtues of his time, which, told in his own naive staccato phrases, made Agatha hug herself. She advised him to go and ask Mr. Belward's advice; begged him not to act until he had done so. And Cluny, who was blind as a bat when a woman mocked him, went to Gaston and said: "See, old chap,--I know you don't mind my calling you that--I've come for advice. Agatha said I'd better. A fellow comes to a time when he says, 'Here, I want a shop of my own,' doesn't he? He's seen It, he's had It all colours, he's ready for family duties, and the rest. That's so, isn't it?" Gaston choked back a laugh, and, purposely putting himself on the wrong scent, said: "And does Agatha agree?" "Agatha? Come, Belward, that youngster! Agatha's only in on a sisterly- brotherly basis. Now, see I've got a little load of L s. d., and I'm to get more, especially if Uncle Dick keeps on thinking I am artless. Well, why shouldn't I marry?" "No reason against it, if husband and father in you yearn for bibs and petticoats." "I say, Belward, don't laugh!" "I never was more serious. Who is the girl?" "She looks up to you as I do-of course that's natural; and if it comes off, no one'll have a jollier corner chez nous. It's Delia." "Delia? Delia who?" "Why, Delia Gasgoyne. I haven't done the thing quite regular, I know. I ought to have gone to her people first; but they know all about me, and so does Delia, and I'm on the spot, and it wouldn't look well to be taking advantage of that with her father and mother-they'd feel bound to be hospitable. So I've just gone on my own tack, and I've come to Agatha and you. Agatha said to ask you if I'd better speak to Delia now." "My dear Cluny, are you very much in love?" "That sounds religious, doesn't it--a kind of Nonconformist business? I think she's the very finest. A fellow'd hold himself up, 'd be a deuce of a swell--and, hang it all, I hate breakfasting alone!" "Yes, yes, Cluny; but what about a pew in church, with regular attendance, and a justice of the peace, and little Cluny Vosses on the carpet?" Cluny's face went crimson. "I say, Belward, I've seen It all, of course; I know It backwards, and I'm not squeamish, but that sounds--flippant-that, with her." Gaston reached out and caught the boy's shoulder. "Don't do it, Cluny. Spare yourself. It couldn't come off. Agatha knows that, I fancy. She is a little sportsman. I might let you go and speak; but I think my chances are better than yours, Cluny. Hadn't you better let me try first? Then, if I fail, your chances are still the same, eh?" Cluny gasped. His warm face went pale, then shot to purple, and finally settled into a grey ruddiness. "Belward," he said at last, "I didn't know; upon my soul, I didn't know, or I'd have cut off my head first." "My dear Cluny, you shall have your chance; but let me go first, I'm older." "Belward, don't take me for a fool. Why, my trying what you go to do is like--is like--" Cluny's similes failed to come. "Like a fox and a deer on the same trail?" "I don't understand that. Like a yeomanry steeplechase to Sandown--is that it? Belward, I'm sorry. Playing it so low on a chap you like!" "Don't say a word, Cluny; and, believe me, you haven't yet seen all of It. There's plenty of time. When you really have had It, you will learn to say of a woman, not that she's the very finest, and that you hate breakfasting alone, but something that'll turn your hair white, or keep you looking forty when you're sixty." That evening Gaston dressed with unusual care. When he entered the drawing-room, he looked as handsome as a man need in this world. His illness had refined his features and form, and touched off his cheerfulness with a fine melancholy. Delia glowed as she saw the admiring glances sent his way, but burned with anger when she also saw that he was to take in Lady Gravesend to dinner; for Lady Gravesend had spoken slightingly of Gaston--had, indeed, referred to his "nigger blood!" And now her mother had sent her in to dinner on his arm, she affable, too affable by a great deal. Had she heard the dry and subtle suggestion of Gaston's talk, she would, however, have justified her mother. About half past nine Delia was in the doorway, talking to one of the guests, who, at the call of some one else, suddenly left her. She heard a voice behind her. "Will you not sing?" She thrilled, and turned to say: "What shall I sing, Mr. Belward?" "The song I taught you the other day--'The Waking of the Fire.'" "But I've never sung it before anybody." "Do I not count?--But, there, that's unfair! Believe me, you sing it very well." She lifted her eyes to his: "You do not pay compliments, and I believe you. Your 'very well' means much. If you say so, I will do my best." "I say so. You are amenable. Is that your mood to-night?" He smiled brightly. Her eyes flashed with a sweet malice. "I am not at all sure. It depends on how your command to sing is justified." "You cannot help but sing well." "Why?" "Because I will help you--make you." This startled her ever so little. Was there some fibre of cruelty in him, some evil in this influence he had over her? She shrank, and yet again she said that she would rather have his cruelty than another man's tenderness, so long as she knew that she had his-- She paused, and did not say the word. She met his eyes steadily--their concentration dazed her--then she said almost coldly, her voice sounding far away: "How, make me?" "How fine, how proud!" he said to himself, then added: "I meant 'make' in the helpful sense. I know the song: I've heard it sung, I've sung it; I've taught you; my mind will act on yours, and you will sing it well." "Won't you sing it yourself? Do, please." "No; to-night I wish to hear you." "Why?" "I will tell you later. Can you play the accompaniment? If not, I--" "Oh, will you? I could sing it then, I think. You played it so beautifully the other day--with all those strange chords." He smiled. "It is one of the few things that I can play. I always had a taste for music; and up in one of the forts there was an old melodeon, so I hammered away for years. I had to learn difficult things at the start, or none at all, or else those I improvised; and that's how I can play one or two of Beethoven's symphonies pretty well, and this song, and a few others, and go a cropper with a waltz. Will you come?" They moved to the piano. No one at first noticed them. When he sat down, he said: "You remember the words?" "Yes, I learned them by heart." "Good!" He gently struck the chords. His gentleness had, however, a firmness, a deep persuasiveness, which drew every face like a call. A few chords waving, as it were, over the piano, and then he whispered: "Now." "Please go on for a minute longer," she begged. "My throat feels dry all at once." "Face away from the rest, towards me," he said gently. She did so. His voice took a note softly, and held it. Presently her voice as softly joined it, his stopped, and hers went on: "In the lodge of the Mother of Men, In the land of Desire, Are the embers of fire, Are the ashes of those who return, Who return to the world: Who flame at the breath Of the Mockers of Death. O Sweet, we will voyage again To the camp of Love's fire, Nevermore to return!" "How am I doing?!" she said at the end of this verse. She really did not know--her voice seemed an endless distance away. But she felt the stillness in the drawing-room. "Well," he said. "Now for the other. Don't be afraid; let your voice, let yourself, go." "I can't let myself go." "Yes, you can: just swim with the music." She did swim with it. Never before had Peppingham drawing-room heard a song like this; never before, never after, did any of Delia Gasgoyne's friends hear her sing as she did that night. And Lady Gravesend whispered for a week afterwards that Delia Gasgoyne sang a wild love song in the most abandoned way with that colonial Belward. Really a song of the most violent sentiment! There had been witchery in it all. For Gaston lifted the girl on the waves of his music, and did what he pleased with her, as she sang: "O love, by the light of thine eye We will fare oversea, We will be As the silver-winged herons that rest By the shallows, The shallows of sapphire stone; No more shall we wander alone. As the foam to the shore Is my spirit to thine; And God's serfs as they fly,-- The Mockers of Death They will breathe on the embers of fire: We shall live by that breath,-- Sweet, thy heart to my heart, As we journey afar, No more, nevermore, to return!" When the song was ended there was silence, then an eager murmur, and requests for more; but Gaston, still lengthening the close of the accompaniment, said quietly: "No more. I wanted to hear you sing that song only." He rose. "I am so very hot," she said. "Come into the hall." They passed into the long corridor, and walked up and down, for a time in silence. "You felt that music?!" he asked at last. "As I never felt music before," she replied. "Do you know why I asked you to sing it?" "How should I know?" "To see how far you could go with it." "How far did I go?" "As far as I expected." "It was satisfactory?" "Perfectly." "But why--experiment--on me?" "That I might see if you were not, after all, as much a barbarian as I." "Am I?" "No. That was myself singing as well as you. You did not enjoy it altogether, did you?" "In a way, yes. But--shall I be honest? I felt, too, as if, somehow, it wasn't quite right; so much--what shall I call it?" "So much of old Adam and the Garden? Sit down here for a moment, will you?" She trembled a little, and sat. "I want to speak plainly and honestly to you," he said, looking earnestly at her. "You know my history--about my wife who died in Labrador, and all the rest?" "Yes, they have told me." "Well, I have nothing to hide, I think; nothing more that you ought to know: though I've been a scamp one way and another." "'That I ought to know'?!" she repeated. "Yes: for when a man asks a woman to be his wife, he should be prepared to open the cupboard of skeletons." She was silent; her heart was beating so hard that it hurt her. "I am going to ask you to be my wife, Delia." She was silent, and sat motionless, her hands clasped in her lap. He went on "I don't know that you will be wise to accept me, but if you will take the risk--" "Oh, Gaston, Gaston!" she said, and her hands fluttered towards his. An hour later, he said to her, as they parted for the night: "I hope, with all my heart, that you will never repent of it, Delia." "You can make me not repent of it. It rests with you, Gaston; indeed, indeed, all with you." "Poor girl!" he said, unconsciously, as he entered his room. He could not have told why he said it. "Why will you always sit up for me, Brillon?!" he asked a moment afterwards. Jacques saw that something had occurred. "I have nothing else to do, sir," he replied. "Brillon," Gaston added presently, "we're in a devil of a scrape now." "What shall we do, monsieur?" "Did we ever turn tail?" "Yes, from a prairie fire." "Not always. I've ridden through." "Alors, it's one chance in ten thousand!" "There's a woman to be thought of--Jacques." "There was that other time." "Well, then?" Presently Jacques said: "Who is she, monsieur?" Gaston did not answer. He was thinking hard. Jacques said no more. The next morning early the guests knew who the woman was, and by noon Jacques also. CHAPTER XI HE MAKES A GALLANT CONQUEST Gaston let himself drift. The game of love and marriage is exciting, the girl was affectionate and admiring, the world was genial, and all things came his way. Towards the end of the hunting season Captain Maudsley had an accident. It would prevent him riding to hounds again, and at his suggestion, backed by Lord Dunfolly and Lord Dargan, Gaston became Master of the Hounds. His grandfather and great-grandfather had been Master of the Hounds before him. Hunting was a keen enjoyment--one outlet for wild life in him--and at the last meet of the year he rode in Captain Maudsley's place. They had a good run, and the taste of it remained with Gaston for many a day; he thought of it sometimes as he rode in the Park now every morning--with Delia and her mother. Jacques and his broncho came no more, or if they did it was at unseasonable hours, and then to be often reprimanded (and twice arrested) for furious riding. Gaston had a bad moment when he told Jacques that he need not come with him again. He did it casually, but, cool as he was, a cold sweat came on his cheek. He had to take a little brandy to steady himself--yet he had looked into menacing rifle-barrels more than once without a tremor. It was clear, on the face of it, that Delia and her mother should be his companions in the Park, and not this grave little half-breed; but, somehow, it got on his nerves. He hesitated for days before he could cast the die against Jacques. It had been the one open bond of the old life; yet the man was but a servant, and to be treated as such, and was, indeed, except on rarest occasions. If Delia had known that Gaston balanced the matter between her and Jacques, her indignation might perhaps have sent matters to a crisis. But Gaston did the only possible thing; and the weeks drifted on. Happy? It was inexplicable even to himself that at times, when he left Delia, he said unconsciously: "Well, it's a pity!" But she was happy in her way. His dark, mysterious face with its background of abstraction, his unusual life, distinguished presence, and the fact that people of great note sought his conversation, all strengthened the bonds, and deepened her imagination; and imagination is at the root of much that passes for love. Gaston was approached at Lord Dargan's house by the Premier himself. It was suggested that he should stand for a constituency in the Conservative interest. Lord Faramond, himself picturesque, acute, with a keen knowledge of character and a taste for originality, saw material for a useful supporter--fearless, independent, with a gift for saying ironical things, and some primitive and fundamental principles well digested. Gaston, smiling, said that he would only be a buffalo fretting on a chain. Lord Faramond replied: "And why the chain?" He followed this up by saying: "It is but a case of playing lion-tamer down there. Have one little gift all your own, know when to impose it, and you have the pleasure of feeling that your fingers move a great machine, the greatest in the world--yes the very greatest. There is Little Grapnel just vacant: the faithful Glynn is gone. Come: if you will, I'll send my secretary to-morrow morning-eh?" "You are not afraid of the buffalo, sir?" Lord Faramond's fingers touched his arm, drummed it "My greatest need-- one to roar as gently as the sucking-dove." "But what if I, not knowing the rules of the game, should think myself on the corner of the veldt or in an Indian's tepee, and hit out?" "You do not carry derringers?" He smiled. "No; but--" He glanced down at his arms. "Well, well; that will come one day, perhaps!" Lord Faramond paused, abstracted, then added: "But not through you. Good-bye, then, good-bye. Little Grapnel in ten days!" And it was so. Little Grapnel was Conservative. It was mostly a matter of nomination, and in two weeks Gaston, in a kind of dream, went down to Westminster, lunched with Lord Faramond, and was introduced to the House. The Ladies Gallery was full, for the matter was in all the papers, and a pretty sensation had been worked up one way and another. That night, after dinner, Gaston rose to make his maiden speech on a bill dealing with an imminent social question. He was not an amateur. Time upon time he had addressed gatherings in the North, and had once stood at the bar of the Canadian Commons to plead the cause of the half-breeds. He was pale, but firm, and looked striking. His eyes went slowly round the House, and he began in a low, clear, deliberate voice, which got attention at once. The first sentence was, however, a surprise to every one, and not the least to his own party, excepting Lord Faramond. He disclaimed detailed and accurate knowledge of the subject. He said this with an honesty which took away the breath of the House. In a quiet, easy tone he then referred to what had been previously said in the debate. The first thing he did was to crumble away with a regretful kind of superiority the arguments of two Conservative speakers, to the sudden amusement of the Opposition, who presently cheered him. He looked up as though a little surprised, waited patiently, and went on. The iconoclasm proceeded. He had one or two fixed ideas in his mind, simple principles on social questions of which he had spoken to his leader, and he never wavered from the sight of them, though he had yet to state them. The Premier sat, head cocked, with an ironical smile at the cheering, but he was wondering whether, after all, his man was sure; whether he could stand this fire, and reverse his engine quite as he intended. One of the previous speakers was furious, came over and appealed to Lord Faramond, who merely said, "Wait." Gaston kept on. The flippant amusement of the Opposition continued. Something, however, in his grim steadiness began to impress his own party as the other, while from more than one quarter of the House there came a murmur of sympathy. His courage, his stone-cold strength, the disdain which was coming into his voice, impressed them, apart from his argument or its bearing on the previous debate. Lord Faramond heard the occasional murmurs of approval and smiled. Then there came a striking silence, for Gaston paused. He looked towards the Ladies Gallery. As if in a dream--for his brain was working with clear, painful power--he saw, not Delia nor her mother, nor Lady Dargan, but Alice Wingfield! He had a sting, a rush in his blood. He felt that none had an interest in him such as she: shamed, sorrowful, denied the compensating comfort which his brother's love might give her. Her face, looking through the barriers, pale, glowing, anxious, almost weird, seemed set to the bars of a cage. Gaston turned upon the House, and flashed a glance towards Lord Faramond, who, turned round on the Treasury Bench, was looking up at him. He began slowly to pit against his former startling admissions the testimony of his few principles, and to buttress them on every side with apposite observations, naive, pungent. Presently there came a poignant edge to his trailing tones. After giving the subject new points of view, showing him to have studied Whitechapel as well as Kicking Horse Pass, he contended that no social problem could be solved by a bill so crudely radical, so impractical. He was saying: "In the history of the British Parliament--" when some angry member cried out, "Who coached you?" Gaston's quick eye found the man. "Once," he answered instantly, "one honourable gentleman asked that of another in King Charles's Parliament, and the reply then is mine now-- 'You, sir!'" "How?!" returned the puzzled member. Gaston smiled: "The nakedness of the honourable gentleman's mind!" The game was in his hands. Lord Faramond twisted a shoulder with satisfaction, tossed a whimsical look down the line of the Treasury Bench, and from that Bench came unusual applause. "Where the devil did he get it?!" queried a Minister. "Out on the buffalo-trail," replied Lord Faramond. "Good fellow!" In the Ladies Gallery, Delia clasped her mother's hand with delight; in the Strangers Gallery, a man said softly, "Not so bad, Cadet." Alice Wingfield's face had a light of aching pleasure. "Gaston, Gaston!" she said, in a whisper heard only by the woman sitting next to her, who though a stranger gave a murmur of sympathy. Gaston made his last effort in a comparison of the state of the English people now and before she became Cromwell's Commonwealth, and then incisively traced the social development onwards. It was the work of a man with a dramatic nature and a mathematical turn. He put the time, the manners, the movements, the men, as in a picture. Presently he grew scornful. His words came hotly, like whip-lashes. He rose to force and power, though his voice was never loud, rather concentrated, resonant. It dropped suddenly to a tone of persuasiveness and conciliation, and declaring that the bill would be merely vicious where it meant to be virtuous, ended with the question: "Shall we burn the house to roast the pig?" "That sounds American," said the member for Burton-Halsey, "but he hasn't an accent. Pig is vulgar though--vulgar." "Make it Lamb--make it Lamb!" urged his neighbour. Meanwhile both sides applauded. Maiden speeches like this were not common. Lord Faramond turned round to him. Another member made way and Gaston leaned towards the Premier, who nodded and smiled. "Most excellent buffalo!" he said. "One day we will chain you--to the Treasury Bench." Gaston smiled. "You are thought prudent, sir!" "Ah! an enemy hath said this." Gaston looked towards the Ladies Gallery. Delia's eyes were on him; Alice was gone. A half-hour later he stood in the lobby, waiting for Mrs. Gasgoyne, Lady Dargan, and Delia to come. He had had congratulations in the House; he was having them now. Presently some one touched him on the arm. "Not so bad, Cadet." Gaston turned and saw his uncle. They shook hands. "You've a gift that way," Ian Belward continued, "but to what good? Bless you, the pot on the crackling thorns! Don't you find it all pretty hollow?" Gaston was feeling reaction from the nervous work. "It is exciting." "Yes, but you'll never have it again as to-night. The place reeks with smugness, vanity, and drudgery. It's only the swells--Derby, Gladstone, and the few--who get any real sport out of it. I can show you much more amusing things." "For instance?" "'Hast thou forgotten me?' You hungered for Paris and Art and the joyous life. Well, I'm ready. I want you. Paris, too, is waiting, and a good cuisine in a cheery menage. Sup with me at the Garrick, and I'll tell you. Come along. Quis separabit?" "I have to wait for Mrs. Gasgoyne--and Delia." "Delia! Delia! Goddess of proprieties, has it come to that!" He saw a sudden glitter in Gaston's eyes, and changed his tone. "Well, an' a man will he will, and he must be wished good-luck. So, good-luck to you! I'm sorry, though, for that cuisine in Paris, and the grand picnic at Fontainebleau, and Moban and Cerise. But it can't be helped." He eyed Gaston curiously. Gaston was not in the least deceived. His uncle added presently, "But you will have supper with me just the same?" Gaston consented, and at this point the ladies appeared. He had a thrill of pleasure at hearing their praises, but, somehow, of all the fresh experiences he had had in England, this, the weightiest, left him least elated. He had now had it all: the reaction was begun, and he knew it. "Well, Ian Belward, what mischief are you at now?!" said Mrs. Gasgoyne. "A picture merely, and to offer homage. How have you tamed our lion, and how sweetly does he roar! I feed him at my Club to-night." "Ian Belward, you are never so wicked as when you ought most to be decent.--I wish I knew your place in this picture," she added brusquely. "Merely a little corner at their fireside." He nodded towards Delia and Gaston. "The man has sense, and Delia is my daughter!" "Precisely why I wish a place in their affections." "Why don't you marry one of the women you have--spoiled, and spend the rest of your time in living yourself down? You are getting old." "For their own sakes, I don't. Put that to my credit. I'll have but one mistress only as the sand gets low. I've been true to her." "You, true to anything!" "The world has said so." "Nonsense! You couldn't be." "Visit my new picture in three months--my biggest thing. You will say my mistress fares well at my hands." "Mere talk. I have seen your mistress, and before every picture I have thought of those women! A thing cannot be good at your price: so don't talk that sentimental stuff to me." "Be original; you said that to me thirty years ago." "I remember perfectly: that did not require much sense." "No; you tossed it off, as it were. Yet I'd have made you a good husband. You are the most interesting woman I've ever met." "The compliment is not remarkable. Now, Ian Belward, don't try to say clever things. And remember that I will have no mischief-making." "At thy command--" "Oh, cease acting, and take Sophie to her carriage." Two hours later, Delia Gasgoyne sat in her bedroom wondering at Gaston's abstraction during the drive home. Yet she had a proud elation at his success, and a happy tear came to her eye. Meanwhile Gaston was supping with his uncle. Ian was in excellent spirits: brilliant, caustic, genial, suggestive. After a little while Gaston rose to the temper of his host. Already the scene in the Commons was fading from him, and when Ian proposed Paris immediately, he did not demur. The season was nearly over, Ian said; very well, why remain? His attendance at the House? Well, it would soon be up for the session. Besides, the most effective thing he could do was to disappear for the time. Be unexpected--that was the key to notoriety. Delia Gasgoyne? Well, as Gaston had said, they were to meet in the Mediterranean in September; meanwhile a brief separation would be good for both. Last of all--he did not wish to press it--but there was a promise! Gaston answered quietly, at last: "I will redeem the promise." "When?" "Within thirty-six hours." "That is, you will be at my studio in Paris within thirty-six hours from now?" "That is it." "Good! I shall start at eight to-morrow morning. You will bring your horse, Cadet?" "Yes, and Brillon." "He isn't necessary." Ian's brow clouded slightly. "Absolutely necessary." "A fantastic little beggar. You can get a better valet in France. Why have one at all?" "I shall not decline from Brillon on a Parisian valet. Besides, he comes as my camarade." "Goth! Goth! My friend the valet! Cadet, you're a wonderful fellow, but you'll never fit in quite." "I don't wish to fit in; things must fit me." Ian smiled to himself. "He has tasted it all--it's not quite satisfying--revolution next! What a smash-up there'll be! The romantic, the barbaric overlaps. Well, I shall get my picture out of it, and the estate too." Gaston toyed with his wine-glass, and was deep in thought. Strange to say, he was seeing two pictures. The tomb of Sir Gaston in the little church at Ridley: A gipsy's van on the crest of a common, and a girl standing in the doorway. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Down in her heart, loves to be mastered I don't wish to fit in; things must fit me Imagination is at the root of much that passes for love Live and let live is doing good THE TRESPASSER By Gilbert Parker Volume 3. XII. HE STANDS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS XIII. HE JOURNEYS AFAR XIV. IN WHICH THE PAST IS REPEATED XV. WHEREIN IS SEEN THE OLD ADAM AND THE GARDEN XVI. WHEREIN LOVE SNOWS NO LAW SAVE THE MAN'S XVII. THE MAN AND THE WOMAN FACE THE INTOLERABLE XVIII. "RETURN, O SHULAMITE!" CHAPTER XII HE STANDS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS The next morning he went down to the family solicitor's office. He had done so, off and on, for weeks. He spent the time in looking through old family papers, fishing out ancient documents, partly out of curiosity, partly from an unaccountable presentiment. He had been there about an hour this morning when a clerk brought him a small box, which, he said, had been found inside another box belonging to the Belward-Staplings, a distant branch of the family. These had asked for certain ancient papers lately, and a search had been made, with this result. The little box was not locked, and the key was in it. How the accident occurred was not difficult to imagine. Generations ago there had probably been a conference of the two branches of the family, and the clerk had inadvertently locked the one box within the other. This particular box of the Belward-Staplings was not needed again. Gaston felt that here was something. These hours spent among old papers had given him strange sensations, had, on the one hand, shown him his heritage; but had also filled him with the spirit of that by-gone time. He had grown further away from the present. He had played his part as in a drama: his real life was in the distant past and out in the land of the heathen. Now he took out a bundle of papers with broken seals, and wound with a faded tape. He turned the rich important parchments over in his hands. He saw his own name on the outside of one: "Sir Gaston Robert Belward." And there was added: "Bart." He laughed. Well, why not complete the reproduction? He was an M. P.--why not a, Baronet? He knew how it was done. There were a hundred ways. Throw himself into the arbitration question between Canada and the United States: spend ten thousand pounds of--his grandfather's--money on the Party? His reply to himself was cynical: the game was not worth the candle. What had he got out of it all? Money? Yes: and he enjoyed that--the power that it gave-- thoroughly. The rest? He knew that it did not strike as deep as it ought: the family tradition, the social scheme--the girl. "What a brute I am!" he said. "I'm never wholly of it. I either want to do as they did when George Villiers had his innings, or play the gipsy as I did so many years." The gipsy! As he held the papers in his hand he thought as he had done last night, of the gipsy-van on Ridley Common, and of--how well he remembered her name!--of Andree. He suddenly threw his head back, and laughed. "Well, well, but it is droll! Last night, an English gentleman, an honourable member with the Treasury Bench in view; this morning an adventurer, a Romany. I itch for change. And why? Why? I have it all, yet I could pitch it away this moment for a wild night on the slope, or a nigger hunt on the Rivas. Chateau-Leoville, Goulet, and Havanas at a bob?--Jove, I thirst for a swig of raw Bourbon and the bite of a penny Mexican! Games, Gaston, games! Why the devil did little Joe worry at being made 'move on'? I've got 'move on' in every pore: I'm the Wandering Jew. Oh, a gentleman born am I! But the Romany sweats from every inch of you, Gaston Belward! What was it that sailor on the Cyprian said of the other? 'For every hair of him was rope-yarn, and every drop of blood Stockholm tar!'" He opened a paper. Immediately he was interested. Another; then, quickly, two more; and at last, getting to his feet with an exclamation, he held a document to the light, and read it through carefully. He was alone in the room. He calmly folded it up, put it in his pocket, placed the rest of the papers back, locked the box, and passing into the next room, gave it to the clerk. Then he went out, a curious smile on his face. He stopped presently on the pavement. "But it wouldn't hold good, I fancy, after all these years. Yet Law is a queer business. Anyhow, I've got it." An hour later he called on Mrs. Gasgoyne and Delia. Mrs. Gasgoyne was not at home. After a little while, Gaston, having listened to some extracts from the newspapers upon his "brilliant, powerful, caustic speech, infinite in promise of an important career," quietly told her that he was starting for Paris, and asked when they expected to go abroad in their yacht. Delia turned pale, and could not answer for a moment. Then she became very still, and as quietly answered that they expected to get away by the middle of August. He would join them? Yes, certainly, at Marseilles, or perhaps, Gibraltar. Her manner, so well-controlled, though her features seemed to shrink all at once, if it did not deceive him, gave him the wish to say an affectionate thing. He took her hand and said it. She thanked him, then suddenly dropped her fingers on his shoulder, and murmured with infinite gentleness and pride: "You will miss me; you ought to!" He drew the hand down. "I could not forget you, Delia," he said. Her eyes came up quickly, and she looked steadily, wonderingly at him. "Was it necessary to say that?" She was hurt--inexpressibly,--and she shrank. He saw that she misunderstood him; but he also saw that, on the face of it, the phrase was not complimentary. His reply was deeply kind, effective. There was a pause--and the great moment for them both passed. Something ought to have happened. It did not. If she had had that touch of abandon shown when she sang "The Waking of the Fire," Gaston might, even at this moment, have broken his promise to his uncle; but, somehow, he knew himself slipping away from her. With the tenderness he felt, he still knew that he was acting; imitating, reproducing other, better, moments with her. He felt the disrespect to her, but it could not be helped--it could not be helped. He said that he would call and say good-bye to her and Mrs. Gasgoyne at four o'clock. Then he left. He went to his chambers, gave Jacques instructions, did some writing, and returned at four. Mrs. Gasgoyne had not come back. She had telegraphed that she would not be in for lunch. There was nothing remarkable in Gaston's and Delia's farewell. She thought he looked worn, and ought to have change, showing in every word that she trusted him, and was anxious that he should be, as she put it gaily, "comfy." She was composed. The cleverest men are blind in the matter of a woman's affections; and Gaston was only a mere man, after all. He thought that she had gone about as far in the way of feeling as she could go. Nevertheless, in his hansom, he frowned, and said: "I oughtn't to go. But I'm choking here. I can't play the game an hour longer without a change. I'll come back all right. I'll meet her in the Mediterranean after my kick-up, and it'll be all O. K. Jacques and I will ride down through Spain to Gibraltar, and meet the Kismet there. I shall have got rid of this restlessness then, and I'll be glad enough to settle down, pose for throne and constitution, cultivate the olive branch, and have family prayers." At eight o'clock he appeared at Ridley Court, and bade his grandfather and grandmother good-bye. They were full of pride, and showed their affection in indirect ways--Sir William most by offering his opinion on the Bill and quoting Gaston frequently; Lady Belward, by saying that next year she would certainly go up to town--she had not done so for five years! They both agreed that a scamper on the Continent would now be good for him. At nine o'clock he passed the rectory, on his way, strange to note, to the church. There was one light burning, but it was not in the study nor in Alice's window. He supposed they had not returned. He paused and thought. If anything happened, she should know. But what should happen? He shook his head. He moved on to the church. The doors were unlocked. He went in, drew out a little pocket-lantern, lit it, and walked up the aisle. "A sentimental business this: I don't know why I do it," he thought. He stopped at the tomb of Sir Gaston Belward, put his hand on it, and stood looking at it. "I wonder if there is anything in it?!" he said aloud: "if he does influence me? if we've got anything to do with each other? What he did I seem to know somehow, more or less. A little dwarf up in my brain drops the nuts down now and then. Well, Sir Gaston Belward, what is going to be the end of all this? If we can reach across the centuries, why, good-night and goodbye to you. Good-bye." He turned and went down the aisle. At the door a voice, a whispering voice, floated to him: "Good-bye." He stopped short and listened. All was still. He walked up the aisle, and listened again.-Nothing! He stood before the tomb, looking at it curiously. He was pale, but collected. He raised the light above his head, and looked towards the altar.--Nothing! Then he went to the door again, and paused.--Nothing! Outside he said "I'd stake my life I heard it!" A few minutes afterwards, a girl rose up from behind the organ in the chancel, and felt her way outside. It was Alice Wingfield, who had gone to the church to pray. It was her good-bye which had floated down to Gaston. CHAPTER XIII HE JOURNEYS AFAR Politicians gossiped. Where was the new member? His friends could not tell, further than that he had gone abroad. Lord Faramond did not know, but fetched out his lower lip knowingly. "The fellow has instinct for the game," he said. Sketches, portraits were in the daily and weekly journals, and one hardy journalist even gave an interview--which had never occurred. But Gaston remained a picturesque nine-days' figure, and then Parliament rose for the year. Meanwhile he was in Paris, and every morning early he could be seen with Jacques riding up the Champs Elysee and out to the Bois de Boulogne. Every afternoon at three he sat for "Monmouth" or the "King of Ys" with his horse in his uncle's garden. Ian Belward might have lived in a fashionable part; he preferred the Latin Quarter, with incursions into the other at fancy. Gaston lived for three days in the Boulevard Haussman, and then took apartments, neither expensive nor fashionable, in a quiet street. He was surrounded by students and artists, a few great men and a host of small men: Collarossi's school here and Delacluse's there: models flitting in and out of the studios in his court-yard, who stared at him as he rode, and sought to gossip with Jacques--accomplished without great difficulty. Jacques was transformed. A cheerful hue grew on his face. He had been an exile, he was now at home. His French tongue ran, now with words in the patois of Normandy, now of Brittany; and all with the accent of French Canada, an accent undisturbed by the changes and growths of France. He gossiped, but no word escaped him which threw any light on his master's history. Soon, in the Latin Quarter, they were as notable as they had been at Ridley Court or in London. On the Champs Elysee side people stared at the two: chiefly because of Gaston's splendid mount and Jacques's strange broncho. But they felt that they were at home. Gaston's French was not perfect, but it was enough for his needs. He got a taste of that freedom which he had handed over to the dungeons of convention two years before. He breathed. Everything interested him so much that the life he had led in England seemed very distant. He wrote to Delia, of course. His letters were brief, most interesting, not tenderly intimate, and not daily. From the first they puzzled her a little, and continued to do so; but because her mother said, "What an impossible man!" she said, "Perfectly possible! Of course he is not like other men; he is a genius." And the days went on. Gaston little loved the purlieus of the Place de l'Opera. One evening at a club in the Boulevard Malesherbes bored him. It was merely Anglo- American enjoyment, dashed with French drama. The Bois was more to his taste, for he could stretch his horse's legs; but every day he could be found before some simple cafe in Montparnasse, sipping vermouth, and watching the gay, light life about him. He sat up with delight to see an artist and his "Madame" returning from a journey in the country, seated upon sheaves of corn, quite unregarded by the world; doing as they listed with unabashed simplicity. He dined often at the little Hotel St. Malo near the Gare Montparnasse, where the excellent landlord played the host, father, critic, patron, comrade--often benefactor--to his bons enfants. He drank vin ordinaire, smoked caporal cigarettes, made friends, and was in all as a savage--or a much-travelled English gentleman. His uncle Ian had introduced him here as at other places of the kind, and, whatever his ulterior object was, had an artist's pleasure at seeing a layman enjoy the doings of Paris art life. Himself lived more luxuriously. In an avenue not far from the Luxembourg he had a small hotel with a fine old-fashioned garden behind it, and here distinguished artists, musicians, actors, and actresses came at times. The evening of Gaston's arrival he took him to a cafe and dined him, and afterwards to the Boullier--there, merely that he might see; but this place had nothing more than a passing interest for him. His mind had the poetry of a free, simple--even wild-life, but he had no instinct for vice in the name of amusement. But the later hours spent in the garden under the stars, the cheerful hum of the boulevards coming to them distantly, stung his veins like good wine. They sat and talked, with no word of England in it at all, Jacques near, listening. Ian Belward was at his best: genial, entertaining, with the art of the man of no principles, no convictions, and a keen sense of life's sublime incongruities. Even Jacques, whose sense of humour had grown by long association with Gaston, enjoyed the piquant conversation. The next evening the same. About ten o'clock a few men dropped in: a sculptor, artists, and Meyerbeer, an American newspaper correspondent--who, however, was not known as such to Gaston. This evening Ian determined to make Gaston talk. To deepen a man's love for a thing, get him to talk of it to the eager listener--he passes from the narrator to the advocate unconsciously. Gaston was not to talk of England, but of the North, of Canada, of Mexico, the Lotos Isles. He did so picturesquely, yet simply too, in imperfect but sufficient French. But as he told of one striking incident in the Rockies, he heard Jacques make a quick expression of dissent. He smiled. He had made some mistake in detail. Now, Jacques had been in his young days in Quebec the village story-teller; one who, by inheritance or competency, becomes semi- officially a raconteur for the parish; filling in winter evenings, nourishing summer afternoons, with tales, weird, childlike, daring. Now Gaston turned and said to Jacques: "Well, Brillon, I've forgotten, as you see; tell them how it was." Two hours later when Jacques retired on some errand, amid ripe applause, Ian said: "You've got an artist there, Cadet: that description of the fight with the loop garoo was as good as a thing from Victor Hugo. Hugo must have heard just such yarns, and spun them on the pattern. Upon my soul, it's excellent stuff. You've lived, you two." Another night Ian Belward gave a dinner, at which were present an actress, a singer of some repute, the American journalist, and others. Something that was said sent Gaston's mind to the House of Commons. Presently he saw himself in a ridiculous picture: a buffalo dragging the Treasury Bench about the Chamber; as one conjures things in an absurd dream. He laughed outright, at a moment when Mademoiselle Cerise was telling of a remarkable effect she produced one night in "Fedora," unpremeditated, inspired; and Mademoiselle Cerise, with smiling lips and eyes like daggers, called him a bear. This brought him to him self, and he swam with the enjoyment. He did enjoy it, but not as his uncle wished and hoped. Gaston did not respond eagerly to the charms of Mademoiselle Cerise and Madame Juliette. Was Delia, then, so strong in the barbarian's mind? He could not think so, but Gaston had not shown yet, either for model, for daughter of joy, or for the mademoiselles of the stage any disposition to an amour or a misalliance; and either would be interesting and sufficient! Models went in and out of Ian's studio and the studios of others, and Gaston chatted with them at times; and once he felt the bare arm and bare breast of a girl as she sat for a nymph, and said in an interested way that her flesh was as firm and fine as a Tongan's. He even disputed with his uncle on the tints of her skin, on seeing him paint it in, showing a fine eye for colour. But there was nothing more; he was impressed, observant, interested--that was all. His uncle began to wonder if the Englishman was, after all, deeper in the grain than the savage. He contented himself with the belief that the most vigorous natures are the most difficult to rouse. Mademoiselle Cerise sang, with chic and abandon very fascinating to his own sensuous nature, a song with a charming air and sentiment. It was after a night at the opera when they had seen her in "Lucia," and the contrast, as she sang in his garden, softly lighted, showed her at the most attractive angles. She drifted from a sparkling chanson to the delicate pathos of a song of De Musset's. Gaston responded to the artist; but to the woman--no. He had seen a new life, even in its abandon, polite, fresh. It amused him, but he could still turn to the remembrance of Delia without blushing, for he had come to this in the spirit of the idler, not the libertine. Mademoiselle Cerise said to Ian at last: "Enfin, is the man stone? As handsome as a leopard, too! But, it is no matter." She made another effort to interest him, however. It galled her that he did not fall at her feet as others had done. Even Ian had come there in his day, but she knew him too well. She had said to him at the time: "You, monsieur? No, thank you. A week, a month, and then the brute in you would out. You make a woman fond, and then--a mat for your feet, and your wicked smile, and savage English words to drive her to the vitriol or the Seine. Et puis, dear monsieur, accept my good friendship; nothing more. I will sing to you, dance to you, even pray for you--we poor sinners do that sometimes, and go on sinning; but, again, nothing more." Ian admired her all the more for her refusal of him, and they had been good friends. He had told her of his nephew's coming, had hinted at his fortune, at his primitive soul, at the unconventional strain in him, even at marriage. She could not read his purpose, but she knew there was something, and answering him with a yes, had waited. Had Gaston have come to her feet she would probably have got at the truth somehow, and have worked in his favour--the joy vice takes to side with virtue, at times--when it is at no personal sacrifice. But Gaston was superior in a grand way. He was simple, courteous, interested only. This stung her, and she would bring him to his knees, if she could. This night she had rung all the changes, and had done no more than get his frank applause. She became petulant in an airy, exacting way. She asked him about his horse. This interested him. She wanted to see it. To-morrow? No, no, now. Perhaps to-morrow she would not care to; there was no joy in deliberate pleasure. Now--now--now! He laughed. Well then, now, as she wished! Jacques was called. She said to him: "Come here, little comrade." Jacques came. "Look at me," she added. She fixed her eyes on him, and smiled. She was in the soft flare of the lights. "Well," she said after a moment, "what do you think of me?" Jacques was confused. "Madame is beautiful." "The eyes?!" she urged. "I have been to Gaspe, and west to Esquimault, and in England, but I have never seen such as those," he said. Race and primitive man spoke there. She laughed. "Come closer, little man." He did so. She suddenly rose, dropped her hands on his shoulders, and kissed his cheek. "Now bring the horse, and I will kiss him too." Did she think she could rouse Gaston by kissing his servant? Yet it did not disgust him. He knew it was a bit of acting, and it was well done. Besides, Jacques Brillon was not a mere servant, and he, too, had done well. She sat back and laughed lightly when Jacques was gone. Then she said: "The honest fellow!" and hummed an air: "'The pretty coquette Well she needs to be wise, Though she strike to the heart By a glance of her eyes. "'For the daintiest bird Is the sport of the storm, And the rose fadeth most When the bosom is warm.'" In twenty minutes the gate of the garden opened, and Jacques appeared with Saracen. The horse's black skin glistened in the lights, and he tossed his head and champed his bit. Gaston rose. Mademoiselle Cerise sprang to her feet and ran forward. Jacques put out his hand to stop her, and Gaston caught her shoulder. "He's wicked with strangers," Gaston said. "Chat!" she rejoined, stepped quickly to the horse's head and, laughing, put out her hand to stroke him. Jacques caught the beast's nose, and stopped a lunge of the great white teeth. "Enough, madame, he will kill you!" "Yet I am beautiful--is it not so?" "The poor beast is ver' blind." "A pretty compliment," she rejoined, yet angry at the beast. Gaston came, took the animal's head in his hands, and whispered. Saracen became tranquil. Gaston beckoned to Mademoiselle Cerise. She came. He took her hand in his and put it at the horse's lips. The horse whinnied angrily at first, but permitted a caress from the actress's fingers. "He does not make friends easily," said Gaston. "Nor does his master." Her eyes lifted to his, the lids drooping suggestively. "But when the pact is made--!" "Till death us do part?" "Death or ruin." "Death is better." "That depends!" "Ah! I understand," she said. "On--the woman?" "Yes." Then he became silent. "Mount the horse," she urged. Gaston sprang at one bound upon the horse's bare back. Saracen reared and wheeled. "Splendid!" she said; then, presently: "Take me up with you." He looked doubting for a moment, then whispered to the horse. "Come quickly," he said. She came to the side of the horse. He stooped, caught her by the waist, and lifted her up. Saracen reared, but Gaston had him down in a moment. Ian Belward suddenly called out: "For God's sake, keep that pose for five minutes--only five!" He caught up some canvas. "Hold candles near them," he said to the others. They did so. With great swiftness he sketched in the strange picture. It looked weird, almost savage: Gaston's large form, his legs loose at the horse's side, the woman in her white drapery clinging to him. In a little time the artist said: "There; that will do. Ten such sittings and my 'King of Ys' will have its day with the world. I'd give two fortunes for the chance of it." The woman's heart had beat fast with Gaston's arm around her. He felt the thrill of the situation. Man, woman, and horse were as of a piece. But Cerise knew, when Gaston let her to the ground again, that she had not conquered. CHAPTER XIV IN WHICH THE PAST IS REPEATED Next morning Gaston was visited by Meyerbeer the American journalist, of whose profession he was still ignorant. He saw him only as a man of raw vigour of opinion, crude manners, and heavy temperament. He had not been friendly to him at night, and he was surprised at the morning visit. The hour was such that Gaston must ask him to breakfast. The two were soon at the table of the Hotel St. Malo. Meyerbeer sniffed the air when he saw the place. The linen was ordinary, the rooms small; but all--he did not take this into account--irreproachably clean. The walls were covered with pictures; some taken for unpaid debts, gifts from students since risen to fame or gone into the outer darkness,--to young artists' eyes, the sordid moneymaking world,--and had there been lost; from a great artist or two who remembered the days of his youth and the good host who had seen many little colonies of artists come and go. They sat down to the table, which was soon filled with students and artists. Then Meyerbeer began to see, not only an interesting thing, but "copy." He was, in fact, preparing a certain article which, as he said to himself, would "make 'em sit up" in London and New York. He had found out Gaston's history, had read his speech in the Commons, had seen paragraphs speculating as to where he was; and now he, Salem Meyerbeer, would tell them what the wild fellow was doing. The Bullier, the cafes in the Latin Quarter, apartments in a humble street, dining for one- franc-fifty, supping with actresses, posing for the King of Ys with that actress in his arms--all excellent in their way. But now there was needed an entanglement, intrigue, amour, and then America should shriek at his picture of one of the British aristocracy, and a gentleman of the Commons, "on the loose," as he put it. He would head it: "ARISTOCRAT, POLITICIAN, LIBERTINE!" Then, under that he would put: "CAN THE ETHIOPIAN CHANGE HIS SKIN, OR THE LEOPARD HIS SPOTS?" Jer. xi. 23. The morality of such a thing? Morality only had to do with ruining a girl's name, or robbery. How did it concern this? So Mr. Meyerbeer kept his ears open. Presently one of the students said to Bagshot, a young artist: "How does the dompteuse come on?" "Well, I think it's chic enough. She's magnificent. The colour of her skin against the lions was splendid to-day: a regular rich gold with a sweet stain of red like a leaf of maize in September. There's never been such a Una. I've got my chance; and if I don't pull it off, 'Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket, And say a poor buffer lies low!'" "Get the jacket ready," put in a young Frenchman, sneering. The Englishman's jaw hardened, but he replied coolly "What do you know about it?" "I know enough. The Comte Ploare visits her." "How the devil does that concern my painting her?" There was iron in Bagshot's voice. "Who says you are painting her?" The insult was conspicuous. Gaston quickly interposed. His clear strong voice rang down the table: "Will you let me come and see your canvas some day soon, Mr. Bagshot? I remember your picture 'A Passion in the Desert,' at the Academy this year. A fine thing: the leopard was free and strong. As an Englishman, I am proud to meet you." The young Frenchman stared. The quarrel had passed to a new and unexpected quarter. Gaston's large, solid body, strong face, and penetrating eyes were not to be sneered out of sight. The Frenchman, an envious, disappointed artist, had had in his mind a bloodless duel, to give a fillip to an unacquired fame. He had, however, been drinking. He flung an insolent glance to meet Gaston's steady look, and said: "The cock crows of his dunghill!" Gaston looked at the landlord, then got up calmly and walked down the table. The Frenchman, expecting he knew not what, sprang to his feet, snatching up a knife; but Gaston was on him like a hawk, pinioning his arms and lifting him off the ground, binding his legs too, all so tight that the Frenchman squealed for breath. "Monsieur," said Gaston to the landlord, "from the door or the window?" The landlord was pale. It was in some respects a quarrel of races. For, French and English at the tables had got up and were eyeing each other. As to the immediate outcome of the quarrel, there could be no doubt. The English and Americans could break the others to pieces; but neither wished that. The landlord decided the matter: "Drop him from this window." He pushed a shutter back, and Gaston dropped the fellow on the hard pavement--a matter of five feet. The Frenchman got up raging, and made for the door; but this time he was met by the landlord, who gave him his hat, and bade him come no more. There was applause from both English and French. The journalist chuckled--another column! Gaston had acted with coolness and common-sense; and when he sat down and began talking of the Englishman's picture again as if nothing had happened, the others followed, and the meal went on cheerfully. Presently another young English painter entered, and listened to the conversation, which Gaston brought back to Una and the lions. It was his way to force things to his liking, if possible; and he wanted to hear about the woman--why, he did not ask himself. The new arrival, Fancourt by name, kept looking at him quizzically. Gaston presently said that he would visit the menagerie and see this famous dompteuse that afternoon. "She's a brick," said Bagshot. "I was in debt, a year behind with my Pelletier here, and it took all I got for 'A Passion in the Desert' to square up. I'd nothing to go on with. I spent my last sou in visiting the menagerie. There I got an idea. I went to her, told her how I was fixed, and begged her to give me a chance. By Jingo! she brought the water to my eyes. Some think she's a bit of a devil; but she can be a devil of a saint, that's all I've got to say." "Zoug-Zoug's responsible for the devil," said Fancourt to Bagshot. "Shut up, Fan," rejoined Bagshot, hurriedly, and then whispered to him quickly. Fancourt sent self-conscious glances down the table towards Gaston; and then a young American, newly come to Paris, said: "Who's Zoug-Zoug, and what's Zoug-Zoug?" "It's milk for babes, youngster," answered Bagshot quickly, and changed the conversation. Gaston saw something strange in the little incident; but he presently forgot it for many a day, and then remembered it for many a day, when the wheel had spun through a wild arc. When they rose from the table, Meyerbeer went to Bagshot, and said: "Say, who's Zoug-Zoug, anyway?!" Bagshot coolly replied: "I'm acting for another paper. What price?" "Fifty dollars," in a low voice, eagerly. Bagshot meditated. "H'm, fifty dollars! Two hundred and fifty francs, or thereabouts. Beggarly!" "A hundred, then." Bagshot got to his feet, lighting a cigarette. "Want to have a pretty story against a woman, and to smutch a man, do you? Well, I'm hard up; I don't mind gossip among ourselves; but sell the stuff to you--I'll see you damned first!" This was said sufficiently loud; and after that, Meyerbeer could not ask Fancourt, so he departed with Gaston, who courteously dismissed him, to his astonishment and regret, for he had determined to visit the menagerie with his quarry. Gaston went to his apartments, and cheerily summoned Jacques. "Now, little man, for a holiday! The menagerie: lions, leopards, and a grand dompteuse; and afterwards dinner with me at the Cafe Blanche. I want a blow-out of lions and that sort. I'd like to be a lion-tamer myself for a month, or as long as might be." He caught Jacques by the shoulders--he had not done so since that memorable day at Ridley Court. "See, Jacques, we'll do this every year. Six months in England, and three months on the Continent,--in your France, if you like,--and three months in the out-of-the-wayest place, where there'll be big game. Hidalgos for six months, Goths for the rest." A half-hour later they were in the menagerie. They sat near the doors where the performers entered. For a long time they watched the performance with delight, clapping and calling bravo like boys. Presently the famous dompteuse entered,--Mademoiselle Victorine,--passing just below Gaston. He looked down, interested, at the supple, lithe creature making for the cages of lions in the amphitheatre. The figure struck him as familiar. Presently the girl turned, throwing a glance round the theatre. He caught the dash of the dark, piercing eyes, the luminous look, the face unpainted--in its own natural colour: neither hot health nor paleness, but a thing to bear the light of day. "Andree the gipsy!" he exclaimed in a low tone. In less than two years this! Here was fame. A wanderer, an Ishmael then, her handful of household goods and her father in the grasp of the Law: to-day, Mademoiselle Victorine, queen of animal-tamers! And her name associated with the Comte Ploare! With the Comte Ploare? Had it come to that? He remembered the look in her face when he bade her good-bye. Impossible! Then, immediately he laughed. Why impossible? And why should he bother his head about it? People of this sort: Mademoiselle Cerise, Madame Juliette, Mademoiselle Victorine-- what were they to him, or to themselves? There flashed through his brain three pictures: when he stood by the bedside of the old dying Esquimaux in Labrador, and took a girl's hand in his; when among the flowers at Peppingham he heard Delia say: "Oh, Gaston! Gaston!" and Alice's face at midnight in the moonlit window at Ridley Court. How strange this figure--spangled, gaudy, standing among her lions-- seemed by these. To think of her, his veins thumping thus, was an insult to all three: to Delia, one unpardonable. And yet he could not take his eyes off her. Her performance was splendid. He was interested, speculative. She certainly had flown high; for, again, why should not a dompteuse be a decent woman? And here were money, fame of a kind, and an occupation that sent his blood bounding. A dompteur! He had tamed moose, and young mountain lions, and a catamount, and had had mad hours with pumas and arctic bears; and he could understand how even he might easily pass from M.P. to dompteur. It was not intellectual, but it was power of a kind; and it was decent, and healthy, and infinitely better than playing the Jew in business, or keeping a tavern, or "shaving" notes, and all that. Truly, the woman was to be admired, for she was earning an honest living; and no doubt they lied when they named her with Count Ploare. He kept coming back to that--Count Ploare! Why could they not leave these women alone? Did they think none of them virtuous? He would stake his life that Andree--he would call her that--was as straight as the sun. "What do you think of her, Jacques?!" he said suddenly. "It is grand. Mon Dieu, she is wonderful--and a face all fire!" Presently she came out of the cage, followed by two great lions. She walked round the ring, a hand on the head of each: one growling, the other purring against her, with a ponderous kind of affection. She talked to them as they went, giving occasionally a deep purring sound like their own. Her talk never ceased. She looked at the audience, but only as in a dream. Her mind was all with the animals. There was something splendid in it: she, herself, was a noble animal; and she seemed entirely in place where she was. The lions were fond of her, and she of them; but the first part of her performance had shown that they could be capricious. A lion's love is but a lion's love after all--and hers likewise, no doubt! The three seemed as one in their beauty, the woman superbly superior. Meyerbeer, in a far corner, was still on the trail of his sensation. He thought that he might get an article out of it--with the help of Count Ploare and Zoug-Zoug. Who was Zoug-Zoug? He exulted in her picturesqueness, and he determined to lie in wait. He thought it a pity that Comte Ploare was not an Englishman or an American; but it couldn't be helped. Yes, she was, as he said to himself, "a stunner." Meanwhile he watched Gaston, noted his intense interest. Presently the girl stopped beside the cage. A chariot was brought out, and the two lions were harnessed to it. Then she called out another larger lion, which came unwillingly at first. She spoke sharply, and then struck him. He growled, but came on. Then she spoke softly to him, and made that peculiar purr, soft and rich. Now he responded, walked round her, coming closer, till his body made a half-circle about her, and his head was at her knees. She dropped her hand on it. Great applause rang through the building. This play had been quite accidental. But there lay one secret of the girl's success. She was original; she depended greatly on the power of the moment for her best effects, and they came at unexpected times. It was at this instant that, glancing round the theatre in acknowledgment of the applause, her eyes rested mechanically on Gaston's box. There was generally some one important in that box: from a foreign prince to a young gentleman whose proudest moment was to take off his hat in the Bois to the queen of a lawless court. She had tired of being introduced to princes. What could it mean to her? And for the young bloods, whose greatest regret was that they could not send forth a daughter of joy into the Champs Elysee in her carriage, she had ever sent them about their business. She had no corner of pardon for them. She kissed her lions, she hugged the lion's cub that rode back and forth with her to the menagerie day by day--her companion in her modest apartments; but sell one of these kisses to a young gentleman of Paris, whose ambition was to master all the vices, and then let the vices master him!--she had not come to that, though, as she said in some bitter moments, she had come far. Count Ploare--there was nothing in that. A blase man of the world, who had found it all not worth the bothering about, neither code nor people-- he saw in this rich impetuous nature a new range of emotions, a brief return to the time when he tasted an open strong life in Algiers, in Tahiti. And he would laugh at the world by marrying her--yes, actually marrying her, the dompteuse! Accident had let him render her a service, not unimportant, once at Versailles, and he had been so courteous and considerate afterwards, that she had let him see her occasionally, but never yet alone. He soon saw that an amour was impossible. At last he spoke of marriage. She shook her head. She ought to have been grateful, but she was not. Why should she be? She did not know why he wished to marry her; but, whatever the reason, he was selfish. Well, she would be selfish. She did not care for him. If she married him, it would be because she was selfish: because of position, ease; for protection in this shameless Paris; and for a home, she who had been a wanderer since her birth. It was mere bargaining. But at last her free, independent nature revolted. No: she had had enough of the chain, and the loveless hand of man, for three months that were burned into her brain--no more! If ever she loved--all; but not the right for Count Ploare to demand the affection she gave her lions freely. The manager of the menagerie had tried for her affections, had offered a price for her friendship; and failing, had become as good a friend as such a man could be. She even visited his wife occasionally, and gave gifts to his children; and the mother trusted her and told her her trials. And so the thing went on, and the people talked. As we said, she turned her eyes to Gaston's box. Instantly they became riveted, and then a deep flush swept slowly up her face and burned into her splendid hair. Meyerbeer was watching through his opera-glasses. He gave an exclamation of delight: "By the holy smoke, here's something!" he said aloud. For an instant Gaston and the girl looked at each other intently. He made a slight sign of recognition with his hand, and then she turned away, gone a little pale now. She stood looking at her lions, as if trying to recollect herself. The lion at her feet helped her. He had a change of temper, and, possibly fretting under inaction, growled. At once she summoned him to get into the chariot. He hesitated, but did so. She put the reins in his paws and took her place behind. Then a robe of purple and ermine was thrown over her shoulders by an attendant; she gave a sharp command, and the lions came round the ring, to wild applause. Even a Parisian audience had never seen anything like this. It was amusing too; for the coachman-lion was evidently disgusted with his task, and growled in a helpless kind of way. As they passed Gaston's box, they were very near. The girl threw one swift glance; but her face was well controlled now. She heard, however, a whispered word come to her: "Andree!" A few moments afterwards she retired, and the performance was in other and less remarkable hands. Presently the manager himself came, and said that Mademoiselle Victorine would be glad to see Monsieur Belward if he so wished. Gaston left Jacques, and went. Meyerbeer noticed the move, and determined to see the meeting if possible. There was something in it, he was sure. He would invent an excuse, and make his way behind. Gaston and the manager were in the latter's rooms waiting for Victorine. Presently a messenger came, saying that Monsieur Belward would find Mademoiselle in her dressing-room. Thither Gaston went, accompanied by the manager, who, however, left him at the door, nodding good-naturedly to Victorine, and inwardly praying that here was no danger to his business, for Victorine was a source of great profit. Yet he had failed himself, and all others had failed in winning her--why should this man succeed, if that was his purpose? There was present an elderly, dark-featured Frenchwoman, who was always with Victorine, vigilant, protective, loving her as her own daughter. "Monsieur!" said Andree, a warm colour in her cheek. Gaston shook her hand cordially, and laughed. "Mademoiselle--Andree?" He looked inquiringly. "Yes, to you," she said. "You have it all your own way now--isn't it so?" "With the lions, yes. Please sit down. This is my dear keeper," she said, touching the woman's shoulder. Then, to the woman: "Annette, you have heard me speak of this gentleman?" The woman nodded, and modestly touched Gaston's outstretched hand. "Monsieur was kind once to my dear Mademoiselle," she said. Gaston cheerily smiled: "Nothing, nothing, upon my word!" Presently he continued: "Your father, what of him?" She sighed and shivered a little. "He died in Auvergne three months after you saw him." "And you?" He waved a hand towards the menagerie. "It is a long story," she answered, not meeting his eyes. "I hated the Romany life. I became an artist's model; sickened of that,"--her voice went quickly here, "joined a travelling menagerie, and became what I am. That in brief." "You have done well," he said admiringly, his face glowing. "I am a successful dompteuse," she replied. She then asked him who was his companion in the box. He told her. She insisted on sending for Jacques. Meanwhile they talked of her profession, of the animals. She grew eloquent. Jacques arrived, and suddenly remembered Andree--stammered, was put at his ease, and dropped into talk with Annette. Gaston fell into reminiscences of wild game, and talked intelligently, acutely of her work. He must wait, she said, until the performance closed, and then she would show him the animals as a happy family. Thus a half-hour went by. Meanwhile, Meyerbeer had asked the manager to take him to Mademoiselle; but was told that Victorine never gave information to journalists, and would not be interviewed. Besides, she had a visitor. Yes, Meyerbeer knew it--Mr. Gaston Belward; but that did not matter. The manager thought it did matter. Then, with an idea of the future, Meyerbeer asked to be shown the menagerie thoroughly--he would write it up for England and America. And so it happened that there were two sets of people inspecting the menagerie after the performance. Andree let a dozen of the animals out-- lions, leopards, a tiger, and a bear,--and they gambolled round her playfully, sometimes quarrelling with each other, but brought up smartly by her voice and a little whip, which she always carried--the only sign of professional life about her, though there was ever a dagger hid in her dress. For the rest, she looked a splendid gipsy. Gaston suddenly asked if he might visit her. At the moment she was playing with the young tiger. She paused, was silent, preoccupied. The tiger, feeling neglected, caught her hand with its paw, tearing the skin. Gaston whipped out his handkerchief, and stanched the blood. She wrapped the handkerchief quickly round her hand, and then, recovering herself, ordered the animals back into their cages. They trotted away, and the attendant locked them up. Meanwhile Jacques had picked up and handed to Gaston a letter, dropped when he drew out his handkerchief. It was one received two days before from Delia Gasgoyne. He had a pang of confusion, and hastily put it into his pocket. Up to this time there had been no confusion in his mind. He was going back to do his duty; to marry the girl, union with whom would be an honour; to take his place in his kingdom. He had had no minute's doubt of that. It was necessary, and it should be done. The girl? Did he not admire her, honour her, care for her? Why, then, this confusion? Andree said to him that he might come the next morning for breakfast. She said it just as the manager and Meyerbeer passed her. Meyerbeer heard it, and saw the look in the faces of both: in hers, bewildered, warm, penetrating; in Gaston's, eager, glowing, bold, with a distant kind of trouble. Here was a thickening plot for Paul Pry. He hugged himself. But who was Zoug-Zoug? If he could but get at that! He asked the manager, who said he did not know. He asked a dozen men that evening, but none knew. He would ask Ian Belward. What a fool not to have thought of him at first. He knew all the gossip of Paris, and was always communicative--but was he, after all? He remembered now that the painter had a way of talking at discretion: he had never got any really good material from him. But he would try him in this. So, as Gaston and Jacques travelled down the Boulevard Montparnasse, Meyerbeer was not far behind. The journalist found Ian Belward at home, in a cynical indolent mood. "Wherefore Meyerbeer?!" he said, as he motioned the other to a chair, and pushed over vermouth and cigarettes. "To ask a question." "One question? Come, that's penance. Aren't you lying as usual?" "No; one only. I've got the rest of it." "Got the rest of it, eh? Nasty mess you've got, whatever it is, I'll be bound. What a nice mob you press fellows are--wholesale scavengers!" "That's all right. This vermouth is good enough. Well, will you answer my question?" "Possibly, if it's not personal. But Lord knows where your insolence may run! You may ask if I'll introduce you to a decent London club!" Meyerbeer flushed at last. "You're rubbing it in," he said angrily. He did wish to be introduced to a good London club. "The question isn't personal, I guess. It's this: Who's Zoug-Zoug?" Smoke had come trailing out of Belward's nose, his head thrown back, his eyes on the ceiling. It stopped, and came out of his mouth on one long, straight whiff. Then the painter brought his head to a natural position slowly, and looking with a furtive nonchalance at Meyerbeer, said: "Who is what?" "Who's Zoug-Zoug?" "That is your one solitary question, is it?" "That's it." "Very well. Now, I'll be scavenger. What is the story? Who is the woman--for you've got a woman in it, that's certain?" "Will you tell me, then, whether you know Zoug-Zoug?" "Yes." "The woman is Mademoiselle Victorine, the dompteuse." "Ah, I've not seen her yet. She burst upon Paris while I was away. Now, straight: no lies: who are the others?" Meyerbeer hesitated; for, of course, he did not wish to speak of Gaston at this stage in the game. But he said: "Count Ploare--and Zoug-Zoug." "Why don't you tell me the truth?" "I do. Now, who is Zoug-Zoug?" "Find out." "You said you'd tell me." "No. I said I'd tell you if I knew Zoug-Zoug. I do." "That's all you'll tell me?" "That's all. And see, scavenger, take my advice and let Zoug-Zoug alone. He's a man of influence; and he's possessed of a devil. He'll make you sorry, if you meddle with him!" He rose, and Meyerbeer did the same, saying: "You'd better tell me." "Now, don't bother me. Drink your vermouth, take that bundle of cigarettes, and hunt Zoug-Zoug else where. If you find him, let me know. Good-bye." Meyerbeer went out furious. The treatment had been too heroic. "I'll give a sweet savour to your family name," he said with an oath, as he shook his fist at the closed door. Ian Belward sat back and looked at the ceiling reflectively. "H'm!" he said at last. "What the devil does this mean? Not Andree, surely not Andree! Yet I wasn't called Zoug-Zoug before that. It was Bagshot's insolent inspiration at Auvergne. Well, well!" He got up, drew over a portfolio of sketches, took out two or three, put them in a row against a divan, sat down, and looked at them half quizzically. "It was rough on you, Andree; but you were hard to please, and I am constant to but one. Yet, begad, you had solid virtues; and I wish, for your sake, I had been a different kind of fellow. Well, well, we'll meet again some time, and then we'll be good friends, no doubt." He turned away from the sketches and picked up some illustrated newspapers. In one was a portrait. He looked at it, then at the sketches again and again. "There's a resemblance," he said. "But no, it's not possible. Andree- Mademoiselle Victorine! That would be amusing. I'd go to-morrow and see, if I weren't off to Fontainebleau. But there's no hurry: when I come back will do." CHAPTER XV WHEREIN IS SEEN THE OLD ADAM AND THE GARDEN At Ridley Court and Peppingham all was serene to the eye. Letters had come to the Court at least once every two weeks from Gaston, and the minds of the Baronet and his wife were at ease. They even went so far as to hope that he would influence his uncle; for it was clear to them both that whatever Gaston's faults were, they were agreeably different from Ian's. His fame and promise were sweet to their nostrils. Indeed, the young man had brought the wife and husband nearer than they had been since Robert vanished over-sea. Each had blamed the other in an indefinite, secret way; but here was Robert's son, on whom they could lavish--as they did--their affection, long since forfeited by Ian. Finally, one day, after a little burst of thanksgiving, on getting an excellent letter from Gaston, telling of his simple, amusing life in Paris, Sir William sent him one thousand pounds, begging him to buy a small yacht, or to do what he pleased with it. "A very remarkable man, my dear," Sir William said, as he enclosed the cheque. "Excellent wisdom--excellent!" "Who could have guessed that he knew so much about the poor and the East End, and all those social facts and figures?!" Lady Belward answered complacently. "An unusual mind, with a singular taste for history, and yet a deep observation of the present. I don't know when and how he does it. I really do not know." "It is nice to think that Lord Faramond approves of him." "Most noticeable. And we have not been a Parliamentary family since the first Charles's time. And then it was a Gaston. Singular--quite singular! Coincidences of looks and character. Nature plays strange games. Reproduction--reproduction!" "The Pall Mall Gazette says that he may soon reach the Treasury Bench." Sir William was abstracted. He was thinking of that afternoon in Gaston's bedroom, when his grandson had acted, before Lady Dargan and Cluny Vosse, Sir Gaston's scene with Buckingham. "Really, most mysterious, most unaccountable. But it's one of the virtues of having a descent. When it is most needed, it counts, it counts." "Against the half-breed mother!" Lady Belward added. "Quite so, against the--was it Cree or Blackfoot? I've heard him speak of both, but which is in him I do not remember." "It is very painful; but, poor fellow, it is not his fault, and we ought to be content." "Indeed, it gives him great originality. Our old families need refreshing now and then." "Ah, yes, I said so to Mrs. Gasgoyne the other day, and she replied that the refreshment might prove intoxicating. Reine was always rude." Truth is, Mrs. Gasgoyne was not quite satisfied. That very day she said to her husband: "You men always stand by each other; but I know you, and you know that I know." "'Thou knowest the secrets of our hearts'; well, then, you know how we love you. So, be merciful." "Nonsense, Warren! I tell you he oughtn't to have gone when he did. He has the wild man in him, and I am not satisfied." "What do you want--me to play the spy?" "Warren, you're a fool! What do I want? I want the first of September to come quickly, that we may have him with us. With Delia he must go straight. She influences him, he admires her--which is better than mere love. Away from her just now, who can tell what mad adventure--! You see, he has had the curb so long!" But in a day or two there came a letter-unusually long for Gaston-- to Mrs. Gasgoyne herself. It was simple, descriptive, with a dash of epigram. It acknowledged that he had felt the curb, and wanted a touch of the unconventional. It spoke of Ian Belward in a dry phrase, and it asked for the date of the yacht's arrival at Gibraltar. "Warren, the man is still sensible," she said. "This letter is honest. He is much a heathen at heart, but I believe he hasn't given Delia cause to blush--and that's a good deal! Dear me, I am fond of the fellow-- he is so clever. But clever men are trying." As for Delia, like every sensible English girl, she enjoyed herself in the time of youth, drinking in delightedly the interest attaching to Gaston's betrothed. His letters had been regular, kind yet not emotionally affectionate, interesting, uncommon. He had a knack of saying as much in one page as most people did in five. Her imagination was not great, but he stimulated it. If he wrote a pungent line on Daudet or Whistler, on Montaigne or Fielding, she was stimulated to know them. One day he sent her Whitman's Leaves of Grass, which he had picked up in New York on his way to England. This startled her. She had never heard of Whitman. To her he seemed coarse, incomprehensible, ungentlemanly. She could not understand how Gaston could say beautiful things about Montaigne and about Whitman too. She had no conception how he had in him the strain of that first Sir Gaston Belward, and was also the son of a half-heathen. He interested her all the more. Her letters were hardly so fascinating to him. She was beautifully correct, but she could not make a sentence breathe. He was grateful, but nothing stirred in him. He could live without her--that he knew regretfully. But he did his part with sincere intention. That was up to the day when he saw Andree as Mademoiselle Victorine. Then came a swift change. Day after day he visited her, always in the presence of Annette. Soon they dined often together, still in Annette's presence, and the severity of that rule was never relaxed. Count Ploare came no more; he had received his dismissal. Occasionally Gaston visited the menagerie, but generally after the performance, when Victorine had a half-hour's or an hour's romp with her animals. This was a pleasant time to Gaston. The wild life in him responded. These were hours when the girl was quite naive and natural, when she spent herself in ripe enjoyment--almost child-like, healthy. At other times there was an indefinable something which Gaston had not noticed in England. But then he had only seen her once. She, too, saw something in him unnoticed before. It was on his tongue a hundred times to tell her that that something was Delia Gasgoyne. He did not. Perhaps because it seemed so grotesque, perhaps because it was easier to drift. Besides, as he said to himself, he would soon go to join the yacht at Gibraltar, and all this would be over-over. All this? All what? A gipsy, a dompteuse --what was she to him? She interested him, he liked her, and she liked him, but there had been nothing more between them. Near as he was to her now, he very often saw her in his mind's eye as she passed over Ridley Common, looking towards him, her eyes shaded by her hand. She, too, had continually said to herself that this man could be nothing to her--nothing, never! Yet, why not? Count Ploare had offered her his hand. But she knew what had been in Count Ploare's mind. Gaston Belward was different--he had befriended her father. She had not singular scruples regarding men, for she despised most of them. She was not a Mademoiselle Cerise, nor a Madame Juliette, though they were higher on the plane of art than she; or so the world put it. She had not known a man who had not, one time or another, shown himself common or insulting. But since the first moment she had seen Gaston, he had treated her as a lady. A lady? She had seen enough to smile at that. She knew that she hadn't it in her veins, that she was very much an actress, except in this man's company, when she was mostly natural--as natural as one can be who has a painful secret. They had talked together--for how many hours? She knew exactly. And he had never descended to that which--she felt instinctively--he would not have shown to the ladies of his English world. She knew what ladies were. In her first few weeks in Paris, her fame mounting, she had lunched with some distinguished people, who entertained her as they would have done one of her lions, if that were possible. She understood. She had a proud, passionate nature; she rebelled at this. Invitations were declined at first on pink note-paper with gaudy flowers in a corner, afterwards on cream-laid vellum, when she saw what the great folk did. And so the days went on, he telling her of his life from his boyhood up --all but the one thing! But that one thing she came to know, partly by instinct, partly by something he accidentally dropped, partly from something Jacques once said to him. Well, what did it matter to her? He would go back; she would remain. It didn't matter.--Yet, why should she lie to herself? It did matter. And why should she care about that girl in England? She was not supposed to know. The other had everything in her favour; what had Andree the gipsy girl, or Mademoiselle Victorine, the dompteuse? One Sunday evening, after dining together, she asked him to take her to see Saracen. It was a long-standing promise. She had never seen him riding; for their hours did not coincide until the late afternoon or evening. Taking Annette, they went to his new apartments. He had furnished a large studio as a sitting-room, not luxuriantly but pleasantly. It opened into a pretty little garden, with a few plants and trees. They sat there while Jacques went for the horse. Next door a number of students were singing a song of the boulevards. It was followed by one in a woman's voice, sweet and clear and passionate, pitifully reckless. It was, as if in pure contradiction, the opposite of the other--simple, pathetic. At first there were laughing interruptions from the students; but the girl kept on, and soon silence prevailed, save for the voice: "And when the wine is dry upon the lip, And when the flower is broken by the hand, And when I see the white sails of thy ship Fly on, and leave me there upon the sand: Think you that I shall weep? Nay, I shall smile: The wine is drunk, the flower it is gone, One weeps not when the days no more beguile, How shall the tear-drops gather in a stone?" When it was ended, Andree, who had listened intently, drew herself up with a little shudder. She sat long, looking into the garden, the cub playing at her feet. Gaston did not disturb her. He got refreshments and put them on the table, rolled a cigarette, and regarded the scene. Her knee was drawn up slightly in her hands, her hat was off, her rich brown hair fell loosely about her head, framing it, her dark eyes glowed under her bent brows. The lion's cub crawled up on the divan, and thrust its nose under an arm. Its head clung to her waist. Who was she? thought Gaston. Delilah, Cleopatra--who? She was lost in thought. She remained so until the garden door opened, and Jacques entered with Saracen. She looked. Suddenly she came to her feet with a cry of delight, and ran out towards the horse. There was something essentially child-like in her, something also painfully wild-an animal, and a philosopher, and twenty-three. Jacques put out his hand as he had done with Mademoiselle Cerise. "No, no; he is savage." "Nonsense!" she rejoined, and came closer. Gaston watched, interested. He guessed what she would do. "A horse!" she added. "Why, you have seen my lions! Leave him free: stand away from him." Her words were peremptory, and Jacques obeyed. The horse stood alone, a hoof pawing the ground. Presently it sprang away, then half-turned towards the girl, and stood still. She kept talking to him and calling softly, making a coaxing, animal-like sound, as she always did with her lions. She stepped forward a little and paused. The horse suddenly turned straight towards her, came over slowly, and, with arched neck, dropped his head on her shoulder. She felt the folds of his neck and kissed him. He followed her about the garden like a dog. She brought him to Gaston, locked up, and said with a teasing look, "I have conquered him: he is mine!" Gaston looked her in her eyes. "He is yours." "And you?" "He is mine." His look burned into her soul-how deep, how joyful! She turned away, her face going suddenly pale. She kept the horse for some time, but at last gave him up again to Jacques. Gaston stepped from the doorway into the garden and met her. It was now dusk. Annette was inside. They walked together in silence for a time. Presently she drew close to him. He felt his veins bounding. Her hand slid into his arm, and, dark as it was, he could see her eyes lifting to his, shining, profound. They had reached the end of the garden, and now turned to come back again. Suddenly he said, his eyes holding hers: "The horse is yours--and mine." She stood still; but he could see her bosom heaving hard. She threw up her head with a sound half sob, half laugh. . . . "You are mad!" she said a moment afterwards, as she lifted her head from his breast. He laughed softly, catching her cheek to his. "Why be sane? It was to be." "The gipsy and the gentleman?" "Gipsies all!" "And the end of it?" "Do you not love me, Andree?" She caught her hands over her eyes. "I do not know what it is--only that it is madness! I see, oh, I see a hundred things." Her hot eyes were on space. "What do you see?!" he urged. She gave a sudden cry: "I see you at my feet--dead." "Better than you at mine, Andree." "Let us go," she said hurriedly. "Wait," he whispered. They talked for a little time. Then they entered the studio. Annette was asleep in her chair. Andree waked her, and they bade Gaston good- night. CHAPTER XVI WHEREIN LOVE KNOWS NO LAW SAVE THE MAN'S WILL In another week it was announced that Mademoiselle Victorine would take a month's holiday; to the sorrow of her chief, and to the delight of Mr. Meyerbeer, who had not yet discovered his man, though he had a pretty scandal well-nigh brewed. Count Ploare was no more, Gaston Belward was. Zoug-Zoug was in the country at Fontainebleau, working at his picture. He had left on the morning after Gaston discovered Andree. He had written, asking his nephew to come for some final sittings. Possibly, he said, Mademoiselle Cerise and others would be down for a Sunday. Gaston had not gone, had briefly declined. His uncle shrugged his shoulders, and went on with other work. It would end in his having to go to Paris and finish the picture there, he said. Perhaps the youth was getting into mischief? So much the better. He took no newspapers.--What did an artist need of them? He did not even read the notices sent by a press-cutting agency. He had a model with him. She amused him for the time, but it was unsatisfactory working on "The King of Ys" from photographs. He loathed it, and gave it up. One evening Gaston and Andree met at the Gare Montparnasse. Jacques was gone on, but Annette was there. Meyerbeer was there also, at a safe distance. He saw Gaston purchase tickets, arrange his baggage, and enter the train. He passed the compartment, looking in. Besides the three, there was a priest and a young soldier. Gaston saw him, and guessed what brought him there. He had an impulse to get out and shake him as would Andree's cub a puppy. But the train moved off. Meyerbeer found Gaston's porter. A franc did the business. "Douarnenez, for Audierne, Brittany," was the legend written in Meyerbeer's note-book. And after that: "Journey twenty hours--change at Rennes, Redon, and Quimpere." "Too far. I've enough for now," said Meyerbeer, chuckling, as he walked away. "But I'd give five hundred dollars to know who Zoug-Zoug is. I'll make another try." So he held his sensation back for a while yet. Of the colony at the Hotel St. Malo, not one of the three who knew would tell him. Bagshot had sworn the others to secrecy. Jacques had gone on with the horses. He was to rent a house, or get rooms at a hotel. He did very well. The horses were stalled at the Hotel de France. He had rented an old chateau perched upon a hill, with steps approaching, steps flanking; near it strange narrow alleys, leading where one cared not to search; a garden of pears and figs, and grapes, and innumerable flowers and an arbour; a pavilion, all windows, over an entranceway, with a shrine in it--a be-starred shrine below it; bare floors, simple furniture, primitiveness at every turn. Gaston and Andree came, of choice, with a courier in a racketing old diligence from Douarnenez, and they laughed with delight, tired as they were, at the new quarters. It must be a gipsy kind of existence at the most. There were rooms for Jacques and Annette, who at once set to work with the help of a little Breton maid. Jacques had not ordered a dinner at the hotel, but had got in fresh fish, lobsters, chickens, eggs, and other necessaries; and all was ready for a meal which could be got in an hour. Jacques had now his hour of happiness. He knew not of these morals-- they were beyond him; but after a cheerful dinner in the pavilion, with an omelette made by Andree herself, Annette went to her room and cried herself to sleep. She was civilised, poor soul, and here they were a stone's throw from the cure and the church! Gaston and Andree, refreshed, travelled down the long steps to the village, over the place, along the quay, to the lighthouse and the beach, through crowds of sardine fishers and simple hard-tongued Bretons. Cheerful, buoyant at dinner, there now came upon the girl an intense quiet and fatigue. She stood and looked long at the sea. Gaston tried to rouse her. "This is your native Brittany, Andree," he said. She pointed far over the sea: "Near that light at Penmark I was born." "Can you speak the Breton language?" "Far worse than you speak Parisian French." He laughed. "You are so little like these people!" She had vanity. That had been part of her life. Her beauty had brought trade when she was a gipsy; she had been the admired of Paris: she was only twenty three. Presently she became restless, and shrank from him. Her eyes had a flitting hunted look. Once they met his with a wild sort of pleading or revolt, he could not tell which, and then were continually turned away. If either could have known how hard the little dwarf of sense and memory was trying to tell her something. This new phase stunned him. What did it mean? He touched her hand. It was hot, and withdrew from his. He put his arm around her, and she shivered, cringed. But then she was a woman, he thought. He had met one unlike any he had ever known. He would wait. He would be patient. Would she come--home? She turned passively and took his arm. He talked, but he knew he was talking poorly, and at last he became silent also. But when they came to the steep steps leading to the chateau, he lifted her in his arms, carried her to the house, and left her at their chamber- door. Then he went to the pavilion to smoke. He had no wish to think-- at least of anything but the girl. It was not a time for retrospect, but to accept a situation. The die had been cast. He had followed what --his nature, his instincts? The consequence? He heard Andree's voice. He went to her. The next morning they were in the garden walking about. They had been speaking, but now both were silent. At last he turned again to her. "Andree, who was the other man?!" he asked quietly, but with a strange troubled look in his eyes. She shrank away confused, a kind of sickness in her eyes. "What does it matter?!" she said. "Of course, of course," he returned in a low, nerveless tone. They were silent for a long time. Meanwhile, she seemed to beat up a feverish cheerfulness. At last she said: "Where do we go this afternoon, Gaston?" "We will see," he replied. The day passed, another, and another. The same: she shrank from him, was impatient, agitated, unhappy, went out alone. Annette saw, and mourned, entreated, prayed; Jacques was miserable. There was no joyous passion to redeem the situation for which Gaston had risked so much. They rode, they took excursions in fishing-boats and little sail-boats. Andree entered into these with zest: talked to the sailors, to Jacques, caressed children, and was not indifferent to the notice she attracted in the village; but was obviously distrait. Gaston was patient--and unhappy. So, this was the merchandise for which he had bartered all! But he had a will, he was determined; he had sowed, he would reap his harvest to the useless stubble. "Do you wish to go back to your work?!" he said quietly, once. "I have no work," she answered apathetically. He said no more just then. The days and weeks went by. The situation was impossible, not to be understood. Gaston made his final move. He hoped that perhaps a forced crisis might bring about a change. If it failed--he knew not what! She was sitting in the garden below--he alone in the window, smoking. A bundle of letters and papers, brought by the postman that evening, were beside him. He would not open them yet. He felt that there was trouble in them--he saw phrases, sentences flitting past him. But he would play this other bitter game out first. He let them lie. He heard the bells in the church ringing the village commerce done--it was nine o'clock. The picture of that other garden in Paris came to him: that night when he had first taken this girl into his arms. She sat below talking to Annette and singing a little Breton chanson: "Parvondt varbondt anan oun, Et die don la lire! Parvondt varbondt anan oun, Et die don la, la!" He called down to her presently. "Andree!" "Yes." "Will you come up for a moment, please?" "Surely." She came up, leaving the room door open, and bringing the cub with her. He called Jacques. "Take the cub to its quarters, Jacques," he said, quietly. She seemed about to protest, but sat back and watched him. He shut the door--locked it. Then he came and sat down before her. "Andree," he said, "this is all impossible." "What is impossible?" "You know well. I am not a mere brute. The only thing that can redeem this life is love." "That is true," she said, coldly. "What then?" "You do not redeem it. We must part." She laughed fitfully. "We must--?" She leaned towards him. "To-morrow evening you will go back to Paris. To-night we part, however: that is, our relations cease." "I shall go from here when it pleases me, Gaston!" His voice came low and stern, but courteous: "You must go when I tell you. Do you think I am the weaker?" He could see her colour flying, her fingers lacing and interlacing. "Aren't you afraid to tell me that?!" she asked. "Afraid? Of my life--you mean that? That you will be as common as that? No: you will do as I tell you." He fixed his eyes on hers, and held them. She sat, looking. Presently she tried to take her eyes away. She could not. She shuddered and shrank. He withdrew his eyes for a moment. "You will go?!" he asked. "It makes no difference," she answered; then added sharply: "Who are you, to look at me like that, to--!" She paused. "I am your friend and your master!" He rose. "Good-night," he said, at the door, and went out. He heard the key turn in the lock. He had forgotten his papers and letters. It did not matter. He would read them when she was gone--if she did go. He was far from sure that he had succeeded. He went to bed in another room, and was soon asleep. He was waked in the very early morning by feeling a face against his, wet, trembling. "What is it, Andree?!" he asked. Her arms ran round his neck. "Oh, mon amour! Mon adore! Je t'aime! Je t'aime!" In the evening of this day she said she knew not how it was, but on that first evening in Audierne there suddenly came to her a strange terrible feeling, which seemed to dry up all the springs of her desire for him. She could not help it. She had fought against it, but it was no use; yet she knew that she could not leave him. After he had told her to go, she had had a bitter struggle: now tears, now anger, and a wish to hate. At last she fell asleep. When she awoke she had changed, she was her old self, as in Paris, when she had first confessed her love. She felt that she must die if she did not go to him. All the first passion returned, the passion that began on the common at Ridley Court. "And now--now," she said, "I know that I cannot live without you." It seemed so. Her nature was emptying itself. Gaston had got the merchandise for which he had given a price yet to be known. "You asked me of the other man," she said. "I will tell you." "Not now," he said. "You loved him?" "No--ah God, no!" she answered. An hour after, when she was in her room, he opened the little bundle of correspondence.--A memorandum with money from his bankers. A letter from Delia, and also one from Mrs. Gasgoyne, saying that they expected to meet him at Gibraltar on a certain day, and asking why he had not written; Delia with sorrowful reserve, Mrs. Gasgoyne with impatience. His letters had missed them--he had written on leaving Paris, saying that his plans were indefinite, but he would write them definitely soon. After he came to Audierne it seemed impossible to write. How could he? No, let the American journalist do it. Better so. Better himself in the worst light, with the full penalty, than his own confession--in itself an insult. So it had gone on. He slowly tore up the letters. The next were from his grandfather and grandmother--they did not know yet. He could not read them. A few loving sentences, and then he said: "What's the good! Better not." He tore them up also. Another--from his uncle. It was brief: You've made a sweet mess of it, Cadet. It's in all the papers to- day. Meyerbeer telegraphed it to New York and London. I'll probably come down to see you. I want to finish my picture on the site of the old City of Ys, there at Point du Raz. Your girl can pose with you. I'll do all I can to clear the thing up. But a British M.P.--that's a tough pill for Clapham! Gaston's foot tapped the floor angrily. He scattered the pieces of the letter at his feet. Now for the newspapers. He opened Le Petit Journal, Coil Blas, Galignani, and the New York Tom-Tom, one by one. Yes, it was there, with pictures of himself and Andree. A screaming sensation. Extracts, too, from the English papers by telegram. He read them all unflinchingly. There was one paragraph which he did not understand: There was a previous friend of the lady, unknown to the public, called Zoug-Zoug. He remembered that day at the Hotel St. Malo! Well, the bolt was shot: the worst was over. Quid refert? Justify himself? Certainly, to all but Delia Gasgoyne. Thousands of men did the same--did it in cold blood, without one honest feeling. He did it, at least under a powerful influence. He could not help but smile now at the thought of how he had filled both sides of the equation. On his father's side, bringing down the mad record from Naseby; on his mother's, true to the heathen, by following his impulses --sacred to primitive man, justified by spear, arrow, and a strong arm. Why sheet home this as a scandal? How did they--the libellers--know but that he had married the girl? Exactly. He would see to that. He would play his game with open sincerity now. He could have wished secrecy for Delia Gasgoyne, and for his grandfather and grandmother,--he was not wilfully brutal,--but otherwise he had no shame at all; he would stand openly for his right. Better one honest passion than a life of deception and miserable compromise. A British M.P.?--He had thrown away his reputation, said the papers. By this? The girl was no man's wife, he was no woman's husband! Marry her? Yes, he would marry her; she should be his wife. His people? It was a pity. Poor old people--they would fret and worry. He had been selfish, had not thought of them? Well, who could foresee this outrage of journalism? The luck had been dead against him. Did he not know plenty of men in London--he was going to say the Commons, but he was fairer to the Commons than it, as a body, would be to him--who did much worse? These had escaped: the hunters had been after him. What would he do? Take the whip? He got to his feet with an oath. Take the whip? Never--never! He would fight this thing tooth and nail. Had he come to England to let them use him for a sensation only--a sequence of surprises, to end in a tragedy, all for the furtive pleasure of the British breakfast-table? No, by the Eternal! What had the first Gaston done? He had fought--fought Villiers and others, and had held up his head beside his King and Rupert till the hour of Naseby. When the summer was over he would return to Paris, to London. The journalist--punish him? No; too little--a product of his time. But the British people he would fight, and he would not give up Ridley Court. He could throw the game over when it was all his, but never when it was going dead against him. That speech in the Commons? He remembered gladly that he had contended for conceptions of social miseries according to surrounding influences of growth and situation. He had not played the hypocrite. No, not even with Delia. He had acted honestly at the beginning, and afterwards he had done what he could so long as he could. It was inevitable that she must be hurt, even if he had married, not giving her what he had given this dompteuse. After all, was it so terrible? It could not affect her much in the eyes of the world. And her heart? He did not flatter himself. Yet he knew that it would be the thing--the fallen idol--that would grieve her more than thought of the man. He wished that he could have spared her in the circumstances. But it had all come too suddenly: it was impossible. He had spared, he could spare, nobody. There was the whole situation. What now to do?--To remain here while it pleased them, then Paris, then London for his fight. Three days went round. There were idle hours by the sea, little excursions in a sail-boat to Penmark, and at last to Point du Raz. It was a beautiful day, with a gentle breeze, and the point was glorified. The boat ran in lightly between the steep dark shore and the comb of reef that looked like a host of stealthy pumas crumbling the water. They anchored in the Bay des Trepasses. An hour on shore exploring the caves, and lunching, and then they went back to the boat, accompanied by a Breton sailor, who had acted as guide. Gaston lay reading,--they were in the shade of the cliff,--while Andree listened to the Breton tell the legends of the coast. At length Gaston's attention was attracted. The old sailor was pointing to the shore, and speaking in bad French. "Voila, madame, where the City of Ys stood long before the Bretons came. It was a foolish ride." "I do not know the story. Tell me." "There are two or three, but mine is the oldest. A flood came--sent by the gods, for the woman was impious. The king must ride with her into the sea and leave her there, himself to come back, and so save the city." The sailor paused to scan the sea--something had struck him. He shook his head. Gaston was watching Andree from behind his book. "Well, well," she said, impatiently, "what then? What did he do?" "The king took up the woman, and rode into the water as far as where you see the great white stone--it has been there ever since. There he had a fight--not with the woman, but in his heart. He turned to the people, and cried: 'Dry be your streets, and as ashes your eyes for your king!' And then he rode on with the woman till they saw him no more--never!" Andree said instantly: "That was long ago. Now the king would ride back alone." She did not look at Gaston, but she knew that his eyes were on her. He closed the book, got up, came forward to the sailor, who was again looking out to sea, and said carelessly over his shoulder: "Men who lived centuries ago would act the same now, if they were here." Her response seemed quite as careless as his: "How do you know?" "Perhaps I had an innings then," he answered, smiling whimsically. She was about to speak again, but the guide suddenly said: "You must get away. There'll be a change of wind and a bad cross-current soon." In a few minutes the two were bearing out--none too soon, for those pumas crowded up once or twice within a fathom of their deck, devilish and devouring. But they wore away with a capricious current, and down a tossing sea made for Audierne. CHAPTER XVII THE MAN AND THE WOMAN FACE THE INTOLERABLE In a couple of hours they rounded Point de Leroily, and ran for the harbour. By hugging the quay in the channel to the left of the bar, they were sure of getting in, though the tide was low. The boat was docile to the lug-sail and the helm. As they were beating in they saw a large yacht running straight across a corner of the bar for the channel. It was Warren Gasgoyne's Kismet. The Kismet had put into Audierne rather than try to pass Point du Raz at night. At Gibraltar a telegram had come telling of the painful sensation, and the yacht was instantly headed for England; Mrs. Gasgoyne crossing the Continent, Delia preferring to go back with her father--his sympathy was more tender. They had seen no newspapers, and they did not know that Gaston was at Audierne. Gasgoyne knowing, as all the world knew, that there was a bar at the mouth of the harbour, allowed himself, as he thought, sufficient room, but the wind had suddenly drawn ahead, and he was obliged to keep away. Presently the yacht took the ground with great force. Gasgoyne put the helm hard down, but she would not obey. He tried at once to get in his sails, but the surf was running very strong, and presently a heavy sea broke clean over her. Then came confusion and dismay: the flapping of the wet, half-lowered sails, and the whipping of the slack ropes, making all effort useless. There was no chance of her- holding. Foot by foot she was being driven towards the rocks. Sailors stood motionless on the shore. The lifeboat would be of little use: besides, it could not arrive for some time. Gaston had recognised the Kismet. He turned to Andree. "There's danger, but perhaps we can do it. Will you go?" She flushed. "Have I ever been a coward, Gaston? Tell me what to do." "Keep the helm firm, and act instantly on my orders." Instead of coming round into the channel, he kept straight on past the lighthouse towards the yacht, until he was something to seaward of her. Then, luffing quickly, he dropped sail, let go the anchor, and unshipped the mast, while Andree got the oars into the rowlocks. It was his idea to dip under the yacht's stern, but he found himself drifting alongside, and in danger of dashing broadside on her. He got an oar and backed with all his strength towards the stern, the anchor holding well. Then he called to those on board to be ready to jump. Once in line with the Kismet's counter, he eased off the painter rapidly, and now dropped towards the stern of the wreck. Gaston was quite cool. He did not now think of the dramatic nature of this meeting, apart from the physical danger. Delia also had recognised him, and guessed who the girl was. Not to respond to Gaston's call was her first instinct. But then, life was sweet. Besides, she had to think of others. Her father, too, was chiefly concerned for her safety and for his yacht. He had almost determined to get Delia on Gaston's boat, and himself take the chances with the Kismet; but his sailors dissuaded him, declaring that the chances were against succour. The only greetings were words of warning and direction from Gaston. Presently there was an opportunity. Gaston called sharply to Delia, and she, standing ready, jumped. He caught her in his arms as she came. The boat swayed as the others leaped, and he held her close meanwhile. Her eyes closed, she shuddered and went white. When he put her down, she covered her face with her hands, trembling. Then, suddenly she came huddling in a heap, and burst into tears. They slipped the painter, a sailor took Andree's place at the helm, the oars were got out, and they made over to the channel, grazing the bar once or twice, by reason of the now heavy load. Warren Gasgoyne and Gaston had not yet spoken in the way of greeting. The former went to Delia now and said a few cheery words, but, from behind her handkerchief, she begged him to leave her alone for a moment. "Nerves, all nerves, Mr. Belward," he said, turning towards Gaston. "But, then, it was ticklish-ticklish." They did not shake hands. Gaston was looking at Delia, and he did not reply. Mr. Gasgoyne continued: "Nasty sea coming on--afraid to try Point du Raz. Of course we didn't know you were here." He looked at Andree curiously. He was struck by the girl's beauty and force. But how different from Delia! He suddenly turned, and said bluntly, in a low voice: "Belward, what a fool--what a fool! You had it all at your feet: the best--the very best." Gaston answered quietly: "It's an awkward time for talking. The rocks will have your yacht in half an hour." Gasgoyne turned towards it. "Yes, she'll get a raking fore and aft." Then, he added, suddenly: "Of course you know how we feel about our rescue. It was plucky of you." "Pluckier in the girl," was the reply. "Brave enough," the honest rejoinder. Gaston had an impulse to say, "Shall I thank her for you?" but he was conscious how little right he had to be ironical with Warren Gasgoyne, and he held his peace. While the two were now turned away towards the Kismet, Andree came to Delia. She did not quite know how to comfort her, but she was a woman, and perhaps a supporting arm would do something. "There, there," she said, passing a hand round her shoulder, "you are all right now. Don't cry!" With a gasp of horror, Delia got to her feet, but swayed, and fell fainting--into Andree's arms. She awoke near the landing-place, her father beside her. Meanwhile Andree had read the riddle. As Mr. Gasgoyne bathed Delia's face, and Gaston her wrists, and gave her brandy, she sat still and intent, watching. Tears and fainting! Would she--Andree-have given way like that in the same circumstances? No. But this girl--Delia--was of a different order: was that it? All nerves and sentiment! At one of those lunches in the grand world she had seen a lady burst into tears suddenly at some one's reference to Senegal. She herself had only cried four times, that she remembered; when her mother died; when her father was called a thief; when, one day, she suffered the first great shame of her life in the mountains of Auvergne; and the night when she waked a second time to her love for Gaston. She dared to call it love, though good Annette had called it a mortal sin. What was to be done? The other woman must suffer. The man was hers--hers for ever. He had said it: for ever. Yet her heart had a wild hunger for that something which this girl had and she had not. But the man was hers; she had won him away from this other. Delia came upon the quay bravely, passing through the crowd of staring fishermen, who presently gave Gaston a guttural cheer. Three of them, indeed, had been drinking his health. They embraced him and kissed him, begging him to come with them for absinthe. He arranged the matter with a couple of francs. Then he wondered what now was to be done. He could not insult the Gasgoynes by asking them to come to the chateau. He proposed the Hotel de France to Mr. Gasgoyne, who assented. It was difficult to separate here on the quay: they must all walk together to the hotel. Gaston turned to speak to Andree, but she was gone. She had saved the situation. The three spoke little, and then but formally, as they walked to the hotel. Mr. Gasgoyne said that they would leave by train for Paris the next day, going to Douarnenez that evening. They had saved nothing from the yacht. Delia did not speak. She was pale, composed now. In the hotel Mr. Gasgoyne arranged for rooms, while Gaston got some sailors together, and, in Mr. Gasgoyne's name, offered a price for the recovery of the yacht or of certain things in her. Then he went into the hotel to see if he could do anything further. The door of the sitting-room was open, and no answer coming to his knock, he entered. Delia was standing in the window. Against her will her father had gone to find a doctor. Gaston would have drawn back if she had not turned round wearily to him. Perhaps it were well to get it over now. He came forward. She made no motion. "I hope you feel better?!" he said. "It was a bad accident." "I am tired and shaken, of course," she responded. "It was very brave of you." He hesitated, then said: "We were more fortunate than brave." He was determined to have Andree included. She deserved that; the wrong to Delia was not hers. But she answered after the manner of a woman: "The girl--ah, yes, please thank her for us. What is her name?" "She is known in Audierne as Madame Belward." The girl started. Her face had a cold, scornful pride. "The Bretons, then, have a taste for fiction?" "No, they speak as they are taught." "They understand, then, as little as I." How proud, how ineffaceably superior she was! "Be ignorant for ever," he answered quietly. "I do not need the counsel, believe me." Her hand trembled, though it rested against the window-trembled with indignation: the insult of his elopement kept beating up her throat in spite of her. At that moment a servant knocked, entered, and said that a parcel had been brought for mademoiselle. It was laid upon the table. Delia, wondering, ordered it to be opened. A bundle of clothes was disclosed-- Andree's! Gaston recognised them, and caught his breath with wonder and confusion. "Who has sent them?!" Delia said to the servant. "They come from the Chateau Ronan, mademoiselle." Delia dismissed the servant. "The Chateau Ronan?!" she asked of Gaston. "Where I am living." "It is not necessary to speak of this?" She flushed. "Not at all. I will have them sent back. There is a little shop near by where you can get what you may need." Andree had acted according to her lights. It was not an olive-branch, but a touch of primitive hospitality. She was Delia's enemy at sight, but a woman must have linen. Mr. Gasgoyne entered. Gaston prepared to go. "Is there anything more that I can do?!" he said, as it were, to both. The girl replied. "Nothing at all, thank you." They did not shake hands. Mr. Gasgoyne could not think that all had necessarily ended. The thing might be patched up one day yet. This affair with the dompteuse was mad sailing, but the man might round-to suddenly and be no worse for the escapade. "We are going early in the morning," he said. "We can get along all right. Good-bye. When do you come to England?" The reply was prompt. "In a few weeks." He looked at both. The girl, seeing that he was going to speak further, bowed and left the room. His eyes followed her. After a moment, he said firmly "Mr. Gasgoyne, I am going to face all." "To live it down, Belward?" "I am going to fight it down." "Well, there's a difference. You have made a mess of things, and shocked us all. I needn't say what more. It's done, and now you know what such things mean to a good woman--and, I hope also, to the father of a good woman." The man's voice broke a little. He added: "They used to come to swords or pistols on such points. We can't settle it in that way. Anyhow, you have handicapped us to-day." Then, with a burst of reproach, indignation, and trouble: "Great God, as if you hadn't been the luckiest man on earth! Delia, the estate, the Commons--all for a dompteuse!" "Let us say nothing more," said Gaston, choking down wrath at the reference to Andree, but sorrowful, and pitying Mr. Gasgoyne. Besides, the man had a right to rail. Soon after they parted courteously. Gaston went to the chateau. As he came up the stone steps he met a procession--it was the feast-day of the Virgin--of priests and people and little children, filing up from the village and the sea, singing as they came. He drew up to the wall, stood upon the stone seat, and took off his hat while the procession passed. He had met the cure, first accidentally on the shore, and afterwards in the cure's house, finding much in common--he had known many priests in the North, known much good of them. The cure glanced up at him now as they passed, and a half-sad smile crossed his face. Gaston caught it as it passed. The cure read his case truly enough and gently enough too. In some wise hour he would plead with Gaston for the woman's soul and his own. Gaston did not find Andree at the chateau. She had gone out alone towards the sea, Annette said, by a route at the rear of the village. He went also, but did not find her. As he came again to the quay he saw the Kismet beating upon the rocks--the sailors had given up any idea of saving her. He stood and watched the sea breaking over her, and the whole scene flashed back on him. He thought how easily he could be sentimental over the thing. But that was not his nature. He had made his bed, but he would not lie in it--he would carry it on his back. They all said that he had gone on the rocks. He laughed. "I can turn that tide: I can make things come my way," he said. "All they want is sensation, it isn't morals that concerns them. Well, IT give them sensation. They expect me to hide, and drop out of the game. Never--so help me Heaven! I'll play it so they'll forget this!" He rolled and lighted a cigarette, and went again to the chateau. Dinner was ready--had been ready for some time. He sat down, and presently Andree came. There was a look in her face that he could not understand. They ate their dinner quietly, not mentioning the events of the afternoon. Presently a telegram was brought to him. It read: "Come. My office, Downing Street, Friday. Expect you." It was signed "Faramond." At the same time came letters: from his grandfather, from Captain Maudsley. The first was stern, imperious, reproachful.--Shame for those that took him in and made him, a ruined reputation, a spoiled tradition: he had been but a heathen after all! There was only left to bid him farewell, and to enclose a cheque for two thousand pounds. Captain Maudsley called him a fool, and asked him what he meant to do --hoped he would give up the woman at once, and come back. He owed something to his position as Master of the Hounds--a tradition that oughtn't to be messed about. There it all was: not a word about radical morality or immorality; but the tradition of Family, the Commons, Master of the Hounds! But there was another letter. He did not recognise the handwriting, and the envelope had a black edge. He turned it over and over, forgetting that Andree was watching him. Looking up, he caught her eyes, with their strange, sad look. She guessed what was in these letters. She knew English well enough to under stand them. He interpreted her look, and pushed them over. "You may read them, if you wish; but I wouldn't, if I were you." She read the telegram first, and asked who "Faramond" was. Then she read Sir William Belward's letter, and afterwards Captain Maudsley's. "It has all come at once," she said: "the girl and these! What will you do? Give 'the woman' up for the honour of the Master of the Hounds?" The tone was bitter, exasperating. Gaston was patient. "What do you think, Andree?" "It has only begun," she said. "Wait, King of Ys. Read that other letter." Her eyes were fascinated by the black border. He opened it with a strange slowness. It began without any form of address, it had the superscription of a street in Manchester Square: If you were not in deep trouble I would not write. But because I know that more hard things than kind will be said by others, I want to say what is in my heart, which is quick to feel for you. I know that you have sinned, but I pray for you every day, and I cannot believe that God will not answer. Oh! think of the wrong that you have done: of the wrong to the girl, to her soul's good. Think of that, and right the wrong in so far as you can. Oh, Gaston, my brother, I need not explain why I write thus. My grandfather, before he died, three weeks ago, told me that you know!--and I also have known ever since the day you saved the boy. Ah, think of one who would give years of her life to see you good and noble and happy. . . . Then followed a deep, sincere appeal to his manhood, and afterwards a wish that their real relations should be made known to the world if he needed her, or if disaster came; that she might share and comfort his life, whatever it might be. Then again: If you love her, and she loves you, and is sorry for what she has done, marry her and save her from everlasting shame. I am staying with my grandfather's cousin, the Dean of Dighbury, the father of the boy you saved. He is very kind, and he knows all. May God guide you aright, and may you believe that no one speaks more truthfully to you than your sorrowful and affectionate sister, ALICE WINGFIELD. He put the letter down beside him, made a cigarette, and poured out some coffee for them both. He was holding himself with a tight hand. This letter had touched him as nothing in his life had done since his father's death. It had nothing of noblesse oblige, but straight statement of wrong, as she saw it. And a sister without an open right to the title: the mere fidelity of blood! His father had brought this sorrowful life into the world and he had made it more sorrowful--poor little thing--poor girl! "What are you going to do?!" asked Andree. "Do you go back--with Delia?" He winced. Yet why should he expect of her too great refinement? She had not had a chance, she had not the stuff for it in her veins; she had never been taught. But behind it all was her passion--her love--for him. "You know that's altogether impossible!" he answered. "She would not take you back." "Probably not. She has pride." "Pride-chat! She'd jump at the chance!" "That sounds rude, Andree; and it is contradictory." "Rude! Well, I'm only a gipsy and a dompteuse!" "Is that all, my girl?" "That's all, now." Then, with a sudden change and a quick sob: "But I may be-- Oh, I can't say it, Gaston!" She hid her face for a moment on his shoulder. "My God!" He got to his feet. He had not thought of that--of another besides themselves. He had drifted. A hundred ideas ran back and forth. He went to the window and stood looking out. Alice's letter was still in his fingers. She came and touched his shoulder. "Are you going to leave me, Gaston? What does that letter say?" He looked at her kindly, with a protective tenderness. "Read the letter, Andree," he said. She did so, at first slowly, then quickly, then over and over again. He stood motionless in the window. She pushed the letter between his fingers. He did not turn. "I cannot understand everything, but what she says she means. Oh, Gaston, what a fool, what a fool you've been!" After a moment, however, she threw her arms about him with animal-like fierceness. "But I can't give you up--I can't." Then, with another of those sudden changes, she added, with a wild little laugh: "I can't, I can't, O Master of the Hounds!" There came a knock at the door. Annette entered with a letter. The postman had not delivered it on his rounds, because the address was not correct. It was for madame. Andree took it, started at the handwriting, tore open the envelope, and read: Zoug-Zoug congratulates you on the conquest of his nephew. Zoug- Zoug's name is not George Maur, as you knew him. Allah's blessing, with Zoug-Zoug's! What fame you've got now--dompteuse, and the sweet scandal! The journalist had found out Zoug-Zoug at last, and Ian Belward had talked with the manager of the menagerie. Andree shuddered and put the letter in her pocket. Now she understood why she had shrunk from Gaston that first night and those first days in Audierne: that strange sixth sense, divination--vague, helpless prescience. And here, suddenly, she shrank again, but with a different thought. She hurriedly left the room and went to her chamber. In a few moments he came to her. She was sitting upright in a chair, looking straight before her. Her lips were bloodless, her eyes were burning. He came and took her hands. "What is it, Andree?!" he said. "That letter, what is it?" She looked at him steadily. "You'll be sorry if you read it." But she gave it to him. He lighted a candle, put it on a little table, sat down, and read. The shock went deep; so deep that it made no violent sign on the surface. He spread the letter out before him. The candle showed his face gone grey and knotted with misery. He could bear all the rest: fight, do all that was right to the coming mother of his child; but this made him sick and dizzy. He felt as he did when he waked up in Labrador, with his wife's dead lips pressed to his neck. It was strange too that Andree was as quiet as he: no storm-misery had gone deep with her also. "Do you care to tell me about it?!" he asked. She sat back in her chair, her hands over her eyes. Presently, still sitting so, she spoke. Ian Belward had painted them and their van in the hills of Auvergne, and had persuaded her to sit for a picture. He had treated her courteously at first. Her father was taken ill suddenly, and died. She was alone for a few days afterwards. Ian Belward came to her. Of that miserable, heart-rending, cruel time,--the life-sorrow of a defenceless girl,-- Gaston heard with a hard sort of coldness. The promised marriage was a matter for the man's mirth a week later. They came across three young artists from Paris--Bagshot, Fancourt, and another--who camped one night beside them. It was then she fully realised the deep shame of her position. The next night she ran away and joined a travelling menagerie. The rest he knew. When she had ended there was silence for a time, broken only by one quick gasping sob from Gaston. The girl sat still as death, her eyes on him intently. "Poor Andree! Poor girl!" he said at last. She sighed pitifully. "What shall we do?!" she asked. He scarcely spoke above a whisper: "There must be time to think. I will go to London." "You will come back?" "Yes--in five days, if I live." "I believe you," she said quietly. "You never lied to me. When you return we will know what to do." Her manner was strangely quiet. "A little trading schooner goes from Douarnenez to England to-morrow morning," she went on. "There is a notice of it in the market-place. That would save the journey to Paris.'" "Yes, that will do very well. I will start for Douarnenez at once." "Will Jacques go too?" "No." An hour later he passed Delia and her father on the road to Douarnenez. He did not recognise them, but Delia, seeing him, shrank away in a corner of the carriage, trembling. Jacques had wished to go to London with Gaston, but had been denied. He was to care for the horses. When he saw his master ride down over the place, waving a hand back towards him, he came in and said to Andree: "Madame, there is trouble--I do not know what. But I once said I would never leave him, wherever he go or whatever he did. Well, I never will leave him--or you, madame--no." "That is right, that is right," she said earnestly; "you must never leave him, Jacques. He is a good man." When Jacques had gone she shut herself up in her room. She was gathering all her life into the compass of an hour. She felt but one thing: the ruin of her happiness and Gaston's. "He is a good man," she said over and over to herself. And the other-- Ian Belward? All the barbarian in her was alive. The next morning she started for Paris, saying to Jacques and Annette that she would return in four days. CHAPTER XVIII "RETURN, O SHULAMITE!" Almost the first person that Gaston recognised in London was Cluny Vosse. He had been to Victoria Station to see a friend off by the train, and as he was leaving, Gaston and he recognised each other. The lad's greeting was a little shy until he saw that Gaston was cool and composed as usual --in effect, nothing had happened. Cluny was delighted, and opened his mind: "They'd kicked up a deuce of a row in the papers, and there'd been no end of talk; but he didn't see what all the babble was about, and he'd said so again and again to Lady Dargan." "And Lady Dargan, Cluny?!" asked Gaston quietly. Cluny could not be dishonest, though he would try hard not to say painful things. "Well, she was a bit fierce at first--she's a woman, you know; but afterwards she went like a baby; cried, and wouldn't stay at Cannes any longer: so we're back in town. We're going down to the country, though, to-morrow or next day." "Do you think I had better call, Cluny?!" Gaston ventured suggestively. "Yes, yes, of course," Cluny replied, with great eagerness, as if to justify the matter to himself. Gaston smiled, said that he might,-- he was only in town for a few days, and dropped Cluny in Pall Mall. Cluny came running back. "I say, Belward, things'll come around just as they were before, won't they? You're going to cut in, and not let 'em walk on you?" "Yes, I'm 'going to cut in,' Cluny boy." Cluny brightened. "And of course it isn't all over with Delia, is it?" He blushed. Gaston reached out and dropped a hand on Cluny's shoulder. "I'm afraid it is all over, Cluny." Cluny spoke without thinking. "I say, it's rough on her, isn't it?" Then he was confused, hurriedly offered Gaston a cigarette, a hasty good- bye was said, and they parted. Gaston went first to Lord Faramond. He encountered inquisition, cynical humour, flashes of sympathy, with a general flavour of reproach. The tradition of the Commons! Ah, one way only: he must come back alone--alone--and live it down. Fortunately, it wasn't an intrigue--no matter of divorce--a dompteuse, he believed. It must end, of course, and he would see what could be done. Such a chance --such a chance as he had had! Make it up with his grandfather, and reverse the record--reverse the record: that was the only way. This meeting must, of course, be strictly between themselves. But he was really interested for him, for his people, and for the tradition of the Commons. "I am Master of the Hounds too," said Gaston dryly. Lord Faramond caught the meaning, and smiled grimly. Then came Gaston's decision--he would come back--not to live the thing down, but to hold his place as long as he could: to fight. Lord Faramond shrugged a shoulder. "Without her?" "I cannot say that." "With her, I can promise nothing--nothing. You cannot fight it so. No one man is stronger than massed opinion. It is merely a matter of pressure. No, no; I can promise nothing in that case." The Premier's face had gone cold and disdainful. Why should a clever man like Belward be so infatuated? He rose, Gaston thanked him for the meeting, and was about to go, when the Prime Minister, tapping his shoulder kindly, said: "Mr. Belward, you are not playing to the rules of the game." He waved his hand towards the Chamber of the House. "It is the greatest game in the world. She must go! Do not reply. You will come back without her --good-bye!" Then came Ridley Court. He entered on Sir William and Lady Belward without announcement. Sir William came to his feet, austere and pale. Lady Belward's fingers trembled on the lace she held. They looked many years older. Neither spoke his name, nor did they offer their hands. Gaston did not wince, he had expected it. He owed these old people something. They lived according to their lights, they had acted righteously as by their code, they had used him well--well always. "Will you hear the whole story?!" he said. He felt that it would be best to tell them all. "Can it do any good?!" asked Sir William. He looked towards his wife. "Perhaps it is better to hear it," she murmured. She was clinging to a vague hope. Gaston told the story plainly, briefly, as he had told his earlier history. Its concision and simplicity were poignant. From the day he first saw Andree in the justice's room till the hour when she opened Ian Belward's letter, his tale went. Then he paused. "I remember very well," Sir William said, with painful meditation: "a strange girl, with a remarkable face. You pleaded for her father then. Ah, yes, an unhappy case!" "There is more?!" asked Lady Belward, leaning on her cane. She seemed very frail. Then with a terrible brevity Gaston told them of his uncle, of the letter to Andree: all, except that Andree was his wife. He had no idea of sparing Ian Belward now. A groan escaped Lady Belward. "And now--now, what will you do?!" asked the baronet. "I do not know. I am going back first to Andree." Sir William's face was ashy. "Impossible!" "I promised, and I will go back." Lady Belward's voice quivered: "Stay, ah, stay, and redeem the past! You can, you can outlive it." Always the same: live it down! "It is no use," he answered; "I must return." Then in a few words he thanked them for all, and bade them good-bye. He did not offer his hand, nor did they. But at the door he heard Lady Belward say in a pleading voice: "Gaston!" He returned. She held out her hand. "You must not do as your father did," she said. "Give the woman up, and come back to us. Am I nothing to you--nothing?" "Is there no other way?!" he asked, gravely, sorrowfully. She did not reply. He turned to his grandfather. "There is no other way," said the old man, sternly. Then in a voice almost shrill with pain and indignation, he cried out as he had never done in his life: "Nothing, nothing, nothing but disgrace! My God in heaven! a lion-tamer--a gipsy! An honourable name dragged through the mire! Go back," he said grandly; "go back to the woman and her lions--savages, savages, savages!" "Savages after the manner of our forefathers," Gaston answered quietly. "The first Gaston showed us the way. His wife was a strolling player's daughter. Good-bye, sir." Lady Belward's face was in her hands. "Good-bye-grandmother," he said at the door, and then he was gone. At the outer door the old housekeeper stepped forward, her gloomy face most agitated. "Oh, sir, oh, sir, you will come back again? Oh, don't go like your father!" He suddenly threw an arm about her shoulder, and kissed her on the cheek. "I'll come back--yes I'll come back here--if I can. Good-bye, Hovey." In the library Sir William and Lady Belward sat silent for a time. Presently Sir William rose, and walked up and down. He paused at last, and said, in a strange, hesitating voice, his hands chafing each other: "I forgot myself, my dear. I fear I was violent. I would like to ask his pardon. Ah, yes, yes!" Then he sat down and took her hand, and held it long in the silence. "It all feels so empty--so empty," she said at last, as the tower-clock struck hollow on the air. The old man could not reply, but he drew her close to him, and Hovey, from the door, saw his tears dropping on her white hair. Gaston went to Manchester Square. He half dreaded a meeting with Alice, and yet he wished it. He did not find her. She had gone to Paris with her uncle, the servant said. He got their address. There was little left to do but to avoid reporters, two of whom almost forced themselves in upon him. He was to go back to Douarnenez by the little boat that brought him, and at seven o'clock in the morning he watched the mists of England recede. He chanced to put his hand into a light overcoat which he had got at his chambers before he started. He drew out a paper, the one discovered in the solicitor's office in London. It was an ancient deed of entail of the property, drawn by Sir Gaston Belward, which, through being lost, was never put into force. He was not sure that it had value. If it had, all chance of the estate was gone for him; it would be his uncle's. Well, what did it matter? Yes, it did matter: Andree! For her? No, not for her. He would play straight. He would take his future as it came: he would not drop this paper into the water. He smiled bitterly, got an envelope at a publichouse on the quay, wrote a few words in pencil on the document, and in a few moments it was on its way to Sir William Belward, who when he received it said: "Worthless, quite worthless, but he has an honest mind--an honest mind!" Meanwhile, Andree was in Paris. Leaving her bag at the Gare Montparnasse, she had gone straight to Ian Belward's house. She had lived years in the last few hours. She had had no sleep on the journey, and her mind had been strained unbearably. It had, however, a fixed idea, which shuttled in and out in a hundred shapes, but ever pointing to one end. She had determined on a painful thing--the only way. She reached the house, and was admitted. In answer to questions, she had an appointment with monsieur. He was not within. Well, she would wait. She was motioned into the studio. She was outwardly calm. The servant presently recognised her. He had been to the menagerie, and he had seen her with Gaston. His manner changed instantly. Could he do anything? No, nothing. She was left alone. For a long time she sat motionless, then a sudden restlessness seized her. Her brain seemed a burning atmosphere, in which every thought, every thing showed with an unbearable intensity. The terrible clearness of it all--how it made her eyes, her heart ache! Her blood was beating hard against every pore. She felt that she would go mad if he did not come. Once she took out the stiletto she had concealed in the bosom of her cloak, and looked at it. She had always carried it when among the beasts at the menagerie, but had never yet used it. Time passed. She felt ill; she became blind with pain. Presently the servant entered with a telegram. His master would not be back until the next morning. Very well, she would return in the morning. She gave him money. He was not to say that she had called. In the Boulevard Montparnasse she took a cab. To the menagerie, she said to the driver. How strange it all looked: the Invalides, Notre Dame, the Tuileries Gardens, the Place de la Concorde! The innumerable lights were so near and yet so far: it was a kink of the brain, but she seemed withdrawn from them, not they from her. A woman passed with a baby in her arms. The light from a kiosk fell on it as she passed. What a pretty, sweet face it had. Why did it not have a pretty, delicate Breton cap? As she went on, that kept beating in her brain--why did not the child wear a dainty Breton cap--a white Breton cap? The face kept peeping from behind the lights--without the dainty Breton cap. The menagerie at last. She dismissed the cab, went to a little door at the back of the building, and knocked. She was admitted. The care-taker exclaimed with pleasure. She wished to visit the animals? He would go with her; and he picked up a light. No, she would go alone. How were Hector and Balzac, and Antoinette? She took the keys. How cool and pleasant they were to the touch! The steel of the lantern too--how exquisitely soothing! He must lie down again: she would wake him as she came out. No, no, she would go alone. She went to cage after cage. At last to that of the largest lions. There was a deep answering purr to her soft call. As she entered, she saw a heap moving in one corner--a lion lately bought. She spoke, and there was an angry growl. She wheeled to leave the cage, but her cloak caught the door, and it snapped shut. Too late. A blow brought her to the ground. She had made no cry, and now she lay so still! The watchman had fallen asleep again. In the early morning he remembered. The greyish golden dawn was creeping in, when he found her with two lions protecting, keeping guard over her, while another crouched snarling in a corner. There was no mark on her face. The point of the stiletto which she had carried in her cloak had pierced her when she fell. In a hotel near the Arc de Triomphe Alice Wingfield read the news. It was she who tenderly prepared the body for burial, who telegraphed to Gaston at Audierne, getting a reply from Jacques that he was not yet back from London. The next day Andree was found a quiet place in the cemetery at Montmartre. In the evening Alice and her relative started for Audierne. ......................... On board the Fleur d'Orange Gaston struggled with the problem. There was one thought ever coming. He shut it out at this point, and it crept in at that. He remembered when two men, old friends, discovered that one, unknowingly, had been living with the wife of the other. There was one too many--the situation was impossible. The men played a game of cards to see which should die. But they did not reckon with the other factor. It was the woman who died. Was not his own situation far worse? With his uncle living--but no, no, it was out of the question! Yet Ian Belward had been shameless, a sensualist, who had wrecked the girl's happiness and his. He himself had done a mad thing in the eyes of the world, but it was more mad than wicked. Had this happened in the North with another man, how easily would the problem have been solved! Go to his uncle and tell him that he must remove himself for ever from the situation? Demand it, force it? Impossible--this was Europe. They arrived at Douarnenez. The diligence had gone. A fishing-boat was starting for Audierne. He decided to go by it. Breton fishermen are usually shy of storm to foolishness, and one or two of the crew urged the drunken skipper not to start, for there were signs of a south-west wind, too friendly to the Bay des Trepasses. The skipper was, however, cheerfully reckless, and growled down objection. The boat came on with a sweet wind off the land for a time. Suddenly, when in the neighbourhood of Point du Raz, the wind drew ahead very squally, with rain in gusts out of the south-west. The skipper put the boat on the starboard tack, close-hauled and close-reefed the sails, keeping as near the wind as possible, with the hope of weathering the rocky point at the western extremity of the Bay des Trepasses. By that time there was a heavy sea running; night came on, and the weather grew very thick. They heard the breakers presently, but they could not make out the Point. Old sailor as he was, and knowing as well as any man the perilous ground, the skipper lost his drunken head this time, and presently lost his way also in the dark and murk of the storm. At eight o'clock she struck. She was thrown on her side, a heavy sea broke over her, and they were all washed off. No one raised a cry. They were busy fighting Death. Gaston was a strong swimmer. It did not occur to him that perhaps this was the easiest way out of the maze. He had ever been a fighter. The seas tossed him here and there. He saw faces about him for an instant-- shaggy wild Breton faces--but they dropped away, he knew not where. The current kept driving him inshore. As in a dream, he could hear the breakers--the pumas on their tread-mill of death. How long would it last? How long before he would be beaten upon that tread-mill--fondled to death by those mad paws? Presently dreams came-kind, vague, distant dreams. His brain flew like a drunken dove to far points of the world and back again. A moment it rested. Andree! He had made no provision for her, none at all. He must live, he must fight on for her, the homeless girl, his wife. He fought on and on. No longer in the water, as it seemed to him. He had travelled very far. He heard the clash of sabres, the distant roar of cannon, the beating of horses' hoofs--the thud-thud, tread-tread of an army. How reckless and wild it was! He stretched up his arm to strike- what was it? Something hard that bruised: then his whole body was dashed against the thing. He was back again, awake. With a last effort he drew himself up on a huge rock that stands lonely in the wash of the bay. Then he cried out, "Andree!" and fell senseless--safe. The storm went down. The cold, fast-travelling moon came out, saw the one living thing in that wild bay, and hurried on into the dark again; but came and went so till morning, playing hide-and-seek with the man and his Ararat. Daylight saw him, wet, haggard, broken, looking out over the waste of shaken water. Upon the shore glared the stone of the vanished City of Ys in the warm sun, and the fierce pumas trod their grumbling way. Sea- gulls flew about the quiet set figure, in whose brooding eyes there were at once despair and salvation. He was standing between two worlds. He had had his great crisis, and his wounded soul rested for a moment ere he ventured out upon the highways again. He knew not how it was, but there had passed into him the dignity of sorrow and the joy of deliverance at the same time. He saw life's responsibilities clearer, duties swam grandly before him. It was a large dream, in which, for the time, he was not conscious of those troubles which, yesterday, had clenched his hands and knotted his forehead. He had come a step higher in the way of life, and into his spirit had flowed a new and sobered power. His heart was sore, but his mind was lifted up. The fatal wrangle of the pumas there below, the sound of it, would be in his ears for ever, but he had come above it; the searching vigour of the sun entered into his bones. He knew that he was going back to England--to ample work and strong days, but he did not know that he was going alone. He did not know that Andree was gone forever; that she had found her true place: in his undying memory. So intent was he, that at first he did not see a boat making into the bay towards him. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Clever men are trying He had no instinct for vice in the name of amusement What a nice mob you press fellows are--wholesale scavengers ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR ENTIRE "THE TRESPASSER": Clever men are trying Down in her heart, loves to be mastered He had no instinct for vice in the name of amusement He was strong enough to admit ignorance I don't wish to fit in; things must fit me Imagination is at the root of much that passes for love Live and let live is doing good Not to show surprise at anything Truth waits long, but whips hard What a nice mob you press fellows are--wholesale scavengers THE MARCH OF THE WHITE GUARD By Gilbert Parker "Ask Mr. Hume to come here for a moment, Gosse," said Field, the chief factor, as he turned from the frosty window of his office at Fort Providence, one of the Hudson's Bay Company's posts. The servant, or more properly, Orderly-Sergeant Gosse, late of the Scots Guards, departed on his errand, glancing curiously at his master's face as he did so. The chief factor, as he turned round, unclasped his hands from behind him, took a few steps forward, then standing still in the centre of the room, read carefully through a letter which he had held in the fingers of his right hand for the last ten minutes as he scanned the wastes of snow stretching away beyond Great Slave Lake to the arctic circle. He meditated a moment, went back to the window, looked out again, shook his head negatively, and with a sigh, walked over to the huge fireplace. He stood thoughtfully considering the floor until the door opened and sub- factor Jaspar Hume entered. The factor looked up and said: "Hume, I've something here that's been worrying me a bit. This letter came in the monthly batch this morning. It is from a woman. The company sends another commending the cause of the woman and urging us to do all that is possible to meet her wishes. It seems that her husband is a civil engineer of considerable fame. He had a commission to explore the Coppermine region and a portion of the Barren Grounds. He was to be gone six months. He has been gone a year. He left Fort Good Hope, skirted Great Bear Lake, and reached the Coppermine River. Then he sent back all of the Indians who accompanied him but two, they bearing the message that he would make the Great Fish River and come down by Great Slave Lake to Fort Providence. That was nine months ago. He has not come here, nor to any other of the forts, so far as is known, nor has any word been received from him. His wife, backed by the H.B.C., urges that a relief party be sent to look for him. They and she forget that this is the arctic region, and that the task is a well-nigh hopeless one. He ought to have been here six months ago. Now how can we do anything? Our fort is small, and there is always danger of trouble with the Indians. We can't force men to join a relief party like this, and who will volunteer? Who would lead such a party and who will make up the party to be led?" The brown face of Jaspar Hume was not mobile. It changed in expression but seldom; it preserved a steady and satisfying character of intelligence and force. The eyes, however, were of an inquiring, debating kind, that moved from one thing to another as if to get a sense of balance before opinion or judgment was expressed. The face had remained impassive, but the eyes had kindled a little as the factor talked. To the factor's despairing question there was not an immediate reply. The eyes were debating. But they suddenly steadied and Jaspar Hume said sententiously: "A relief party should go." "Yes, yes, but who is to lead them?" Again the eyes debated. "Read her letter," said the factor, handing it over. Jaspar Hume took it and mechanically scanned it. The factor had moved towards the table for his pipe or he would have seen the other start, and his nostrils slightly quiver, as his eyes grew conscious of what they were seeing. Turning quickly, Hume walked towards the window as though for more light, and with his back to the factor he read the letter. Then he turned and said: "I think this thing should be done." The factor shrugged his shoulders slightly. "Well, as to that, I think so too, but thinking and doing are two different things, Hume." "Will you leave the matter in my hands until the morning?" "Yes, of course, and glad to do so. You are the only man who can arrange the affair, if it is to be done at all. But I tell you, as you know, that everything will depend upon a leader, even if you secure the men.... So you had better keep the letter for to-night. It may help you to get the men together. A woman's handwriting will do more than a man's word any time." Jaspar Hume's eyes had been looking at the factor, but they were studying something else. His face seemed not quite so fresh as it was a few minutes before. "I will see you at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, Mr. Field," he said quietly. "Will you let Gosse come to me in an hour?" "Certainly. Good-night." Jaspar Hume let himself out. He walked across a small square to a log house and opened a door which creaked and shrieked with the frost. A dog sprang upon him as he did so, and rubbed its head against his breast. He touched the head as if it had been that of a child, and said: "Lie down, Bouche." It did so, but it watched him as he doffed his dogskin cap and buffalo coat. He looked round the room slowly once as though he wished to fix it clearly and deeply in his mind. Then he sat down and held near the firelight the letter the factor had given him. His features grew stern and set as he read it. Once he paused in the reading and looked into the fire, drawing his breath sharply between his teeth. Then he read it to the end without a sign. A pause, and he said aloud: "So this is how the lines meet again, Varre Lepage!" He read the last sentence of the letter aloud: In the hope that you may soon give me good news of my husband, I am, with all respect, Faithfully yours, ROSE LEPAGE. Again he repeated: "With all respect, faithfully yours, Rose Lepage." The dog Bouche looked up. Perhaps it detected something unusual in the voice. It rose, came over, and laid its head on its master's knee. Hume's hand fell gently on the head, and he said to the fire: "Ah, Rose Lepage, you can write to Factor Field what you dare not write to your husband if you knew. You might say to him then, 'With all love,' but not 'With all respect.'" He folded the letter and put it in his pocket. Then he took the dog's head between his hands and said: "Listen, Bouche, and I will tell you a story." The dog blinked, and pushed its nose against his arm. "Ten years ago two young men who had studied and graduated together at the same college were struggling together in their profession as civil engineers. One was Clive Lepage and the other was Jaspar Hume. The one was brilliant and persuasive, the other, persistent and studious. Lepage could have succeeded in any profession; Hume had only heart and mind for one. "Only for one, Bouche, you understand. He lived in it, he loved it, he saw great things to be achieved in it. He had got an idea. He worked at it night and day, he thought it out, he developed it, he perfected it, he was ready to give it to the world. But he was seized with illness, became blind, and was ordered to a warm climate for a year. He left his idea, his invention, behind him--his complete idea. While he was gone his bosom friend stole his perfected idea--yes, stole it, and sold it for twenty thousand dollars. He was called a genius, a great inventor. And then he married her. You don't know her, Bouche. You never saw beautiful Rose Varcoe, who, liking two men, chose the one who was handsome and brilliant, and whom the world called a genius. Why didn't Jaspar Hume expose him, Bouche? Proof is not always easy, and then he had to think of her. One has to think of a woman in such a case, Bouche. Even a dog can see that." He was silent for a moment, and then he said: "Come, Bouche. You will keep secret what I show you." He went to a large box in the corner, unlocked it, and took out a model made of brass and copper and smooth but unpolished wood. "After ten years of banishment, Bouche, Hume has worked out another idea, you see. It should be worth ten times the other, and the world called the other the work of a genius, dog." Then he became silent, the animal watching him the while. It had seen him working at this model for many a day, but had never heard him talk so much at a time as he had done this last ten minutes. He was generally a silent man--decisive even to severity, careless carriers and shirking under-officers thought. Yet none could complain that he was unjust. He was simply straight-forward, and he had no sympathy with those who had not the same quality. He had carried a drunken Indian on his back for miles, and from a certain death by frost. He had, for want of a more convenient punishment, promptly knocked down Jeff Hyde, the sometime bully of the fort, for appropriating a bundle of furs belonging to a French half-breed, Gaspe Toujours. But he nursed Jeff Hyde through an attack of pneumonia, insisting at the same time that Gaspe Toujours should help him. The result of it all was that Jeff Hyde and Gaspe Toujours became constant allies. They both formulated their oaths by Jaspar Hume. The Indian, Cloud-in-the-Sky, though by word never thanking his rescuer, could not be induced to leave the fort, except on some mission with which Jaspar Hume was connected. He preferred living an undignified, un-Indian life, and earning food and shelter by coarsely labouring with his hands. He came at least twice a week to Hume's log house, and, sitting down silent and cross-legged before the fire, watched the sub-factor working at his drawings and calculations. Sitting so for perhaps an hour or more, and smoking all the time, he would rise, and with a grunt, which was answered by a kindly nod, would pass out as silently as he came. And now as Jaspar Hume stood looking at his "Idea," Cloud-in-the-Sky entered, let his blanket fall by the hearthstone and sat down upon it. If Hume saw him or heard him, he at least gave no sign at first. But he said at last in a low tone to the dog: "It is finished, Bouche; it is ready for the world." Then he put it back, locked the box, and turned towards Cloud-in-the-Sky and the fireplace. The Indian grunted; the other nodded with the debating look again dominant in his eyes. The Indian met the look with satisfaction. There was something in Jaspar Hume's habitual reticence and decisiveness in action which appealed more to Cloud-in-the-Sky than any freedom of speech could possibly have done. Hume sat down, handed the Indian a pipe and tobacco, and, with arms folded, watched the fire. For half an hour they sat so, white man, Indian, and dog. Then Hume rose, went to a cupboard, took out some sealing wax and matches, and in a moment melted wax was dropping upon the lock of the box containing his Idea. He had just finished this as Sergeant Gosse knocked at the door, and immediately afterwards entered the room. "Gosse," said the sub-factor, "find Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late Carscallen, and bring them here." Sergeant Gosse immediately departed upon this errand. Hume then turned to the Indian, and said "Cloud-in- the-Sky, I want you to go a long journey hereaway to the Barren Grounds. Have twelve dogs ready by nine to-morrow morning." Cloud-in-the-Sky shook his head thoughtfully, and then after a pause said: "Strong-back go too?" Strongback was his name for the sub-factor. But the other either did not or would not hear. The Indian, however, appeared satisfied, for he smoked harder afterwards, and grunted to himself many times. A few moments passed, and then Sergeant Gosse entered, followed by Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late Carscallen. Late Carscallen had got his name "Late" from having been called "The Late Mr. Carscallen" by the chief factor because of his slowness. Slow as he was, however, the stout Scotsman had more than once proved himself a man of rare merit according to Hume's ideas. He was, of course, the last to enter. The men grouped themselves about the fire, Late Carscallen getting the coldest corner. Each man drew his tobacco from his pocket, and, cutting it, waited for Hume to speak. His eyes were debating as they rested on the four. Then he took out Mrs. Lepage's letter, and, with the group looking at him, he read it aloud. When it was finished, Cloud-in-the-Sky gave a guttural assent, and Gaspe Toujours, looking at Jeff Hyde, said: "It is cold in the Barren Grounds. We shall need much tabac." These men could read without difficulty Hume's reason for summoning them. To Gaspe Toujours' remark Jeff Hyde nodded affirmatively, and then all looked at Late Carscallen. He opened his heavy jaws once or twice with an animal- like sound, and then he said, in a general kind of way: "To the Barren Grounds. But who leads?" Hume was writing on a slip of paper, and he did not reply. The faces of three of them showed just a shade of anxiety. They guessed who it would be, but they were not sure. Cloud-in-the-Sky, however, grunted at them, and raised the bowl of his pipe towards the subfactor. The anxiety then seemed to disappear. For ten minutes more they sat so, all silent. Then Hume rose, handed the slip of paper to Sergeant Gosse, and said: "Attend to that at once, Gosse. Examine the food and blankets closely." The five were left alone. Then Hume spoke: "Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, Late Carscallen, and Cloud- in-the-Sky, this man, alive or dead, is between here and the Barren Grounds. He must be found--for his wife's sake." He handed Jeff Hyde her letter. Jeff rubbed his fingers before he touched the delicate and perfumed missive. Its delicacy seemed to bewilder him. He said: in a rough but kindly way: "Hope to die if I don't," and passed it on to Gaspe Toujours, who did not find it necessary to speak. His comrade had answered for him. Late Carscallen held it inquisitively for a moment, and then his jaws opened and shut as if he were about to speak. But before he did so Hume said: "It is a long journey and a hard one. Those who go may never come back. But this man was working for his country, and he has got a wife--a good wife." He held up the letter. "Late Carscallen wants to know who will lead you. Can't you trust me? I will give you a leader that you will follow to the Barren Grounds. To-morrow you will know who he is. Are you satisfied? Will you do it?" The four rose, and Cloud-in-the-Sky nodded approvingly many times. Hume held out his hand. Each man shook it, Jeff Hyde first. Then he said: "Close up ranks for the H.B.C.!" (H.B.C. meaning, of course, Hudson's Bay Company.) With a good man to lead them, these four would have stormed, alone, the Heights of Balaklava. Once more Hume spoke. "Go to Gosse and get your outfits at nine to- morrow morning. Cloud-in-the-Sky, have your sleds at the store at eight o'clock, to be loaded. Then all meet me at 10.15 at the office of the chief factor. Good night." As they passed out into the semi-arctic night, Late Carscallen with an unreal obstinacy said: "Slow march to the Barren Grounds--but who leads?" Left alone Hume sat down to the pine table at one end of the room and after a short hesitation began to write. For hours he sat there, rising only to put wood on the fire. The result was three letters: the largest addressed to a famous society in London, one to a solicitor in Montreal, and one to Mr. Field, the chief factor. They were all sealed carefully. Then he rose, took out his knife, and went over to the box as if to break the red seal. He paused, however, sighed, and put the knife back again. As he did so he felt something touch his leg. It was the dog. Hume drew in a sharp breath and said: "It was all ready, Bouche; and in another six months I should have been in London with it. But it will go whether I go or not--whether I go or not, Bouche." The dog sprang up and put his head against his master's breast. "Good dog, good dog, it's all right, Bouche; however it goes, it's all right," said Hume. Then the dog lay down and watched his master until he drew the blankets to his chin, and sleep drew oblivion over a fighting soul. II At ten o'clock next morning Jaspar Hume presented himself at the chief factor's office. He bore with him the letters he had written the night before. The factor said: "Well, Hume, I am glad to see you. That woman's letter was on my mind all night. Have you anything to propose? I suppose not," he added despairingly, as he looked closely into the face of the other. "Yes, Mr. Field, I propose that the expedition start at noon to-day." "Start-at noon-to-day?" "In two hours." "Who are the party?" "Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, Late Carscallen, and Cloud-in-the-Sky." "Who leads them, Hume? Who leads?" "With your permission, I do." "You? But, man, consider the danger and--your invention!" "I have considered all. Here are three letters. If we do not come back in three months, you will please send this one, with the box in my room, to the address on the envelope. This is for a solicitor in Montreal, which you will also forward as soon as possible; and this last one is for yourself; but you will not open it until the three months have passed. Have I your permission to lead these men? They would not go without me." "I know that, I know that, Hume. I can't say no. Go, and good luck go with you." Here the manly old factor turned away his head. He knew that Hume had done right. He knew the possible sacrifice this man was making of all his hopes, of his very life; and his sound Scotch heart appreciated the act to the full. But he did not know all. He did not know that Jaspar Hume was starting to search for the man who had robbed him of youth and hope and genius and home. "Here is a letter that the wife has written to her husband on the chance of his getting it. You will take it with you, Hume. And the other she wrote to me--shall I keep it?" He held out his hand. "No, sir, I will keep it, if you will allow me. It is my commission, you know." The shadow of a smile hovered about Hume's lips. The factor smiled kindly as he replied: "Ah, yes, your commission-- Captain Jaspar Hume of--of what?" Just then the door opened and there entered the four men who had sat before the sub-factor's fire the night before. They were dressed in white blanket costumes from head to foot, white woollen capotes covering the grey fur caps they wore. Jaspar Hume ran his eye over them and then answered the factor's question: "Of the White Guard, sir." "Good," was the reply. "Men, you are going on a relief expedition. There will be danger. You need a good leader. You have one in Captain Hume." Jeff Hyde shook his head at the others with a pleased I-told-you-so expression; Cloud-in-the-Sky grunted his deep approval; and Late Carscallen smacked his lips in a satisfied manner and rubbed his leg with a schoolboy sense of enjoyment. The factor continued: "In the name of the Hudson's Bay Company I will say that if you come back, having done your duty faithfully, you shall be well rewarded. And I believe you will come back, if it is in human power to do so." Here Jeff Hyde said: "It isn't for reward we're doin' it, Mr. Field, but because Mr. Hume wished it, because we believed he'd lead us; and for the lost fellow's wife. We wouldn't have said we'd do it, if it wasn't for him that's just called us the White Guard." Under the bronze of the sub-factor's face there spread a glow more red than brown, and he said simply: "Thank you, men"--for they had all nodded assent to Jeff Hyde's words--"come with me to the store. We will start at noon." At noon the White Guard stood in front of the store on which the British flag was hoisted with another beneath it bearing the magic letters, H.B.C.: magic, because they opened to the world regions that seemed destined never to know the touch of civilisation. The few inhabitants of the fort were gathered at the store; the dogs and loaded sleds were at the door. It wanted but two minutes to twelve when Hume came from his house, dressed also in the white blanket costume, and followed by his dog, Bouche. In a moment more he had placed Bouche at the head of the first team of dogs. They were to have their leader too. Punctually at noon, Hume shook hands with the factor, said a quick good-bye to the rest, called out a friendly "How!" to the Indians standing near, and to the sound of a hearty cheer, heartier perhaps because none had a confident hope that the five would come back, the march of the White Guard began. III It was eighteen days after. In the shadow of a little island of pines, that lies in a shivering waste of ice and snow, the White Guard were camped. They were able to do this night what they had not done for days --dig a great grave of snow, and building a fire of pine wood at each end of this strange house, get protection and something like comfort. They sat silent close to the fires. Jaspar Hume was writing with numbed fingers. The extract that follows is taken from his diary. It tells that day's life, and so gives an idea of harder, sterner days that they had spent and must yet spend, on this weary journey. December 25th.--This is Christmas Day and Camp twenty-seven. We have marched only five miles to-day. We are eighty miles from Great Fish River, and the worst yet to do. We have discovered no signs. Jeff Hyde has had a bad two days with his frozen foot. Gaspe Toujours helps him nobly. One of the dogs died this morning. Bouche is a great leader. This night's shelter is a god-send. Cloud-in-the-Sky has a plan whereby some of us will sleep well. We are in latitude 63deg 47' and longitude 112deg 32' 14". Have worked out lunar observations. Have marked a tree JH/27 and raised cairn No. 3. We are able to celebrate Christmas Day with a good basin of tea and our stand-by of beans cooked in fat. I was right about them: they have great sustaining power. To-morrow we will start at ten o'clock. The writing done, Jaspar Hume put his book away and turned towards the rest. Cloud-in-the-Sky and Late Carscallen were smoking. Little could be seen of their faces; they were snuffled to the eyes. Gaspe Toujours was drinking a basin of tea, and Jeff Hyde was fitfully dozing by the fire. The dogs were above in the tent--all but Bouche, who was permitted to be near his master. Presently the sub-factor rose, took from a knapsack a small tin pail, and put it near the fire. Then he took five little cups that fitted snugly into each other, separated them, and put them also near the fire. None of the party spoke. A change seemed to pass over the faces of all except Cloud-in-the-Sky. He smoked on unmoved. At length Hume spoke cheerily: "Now, men, before we turn in we'll do something in honour of the day. Liquor we none of us have touched since we started; but back there in the fort, and maybe in other places too, they will be thinking of us; so we'll drink a health to them, though it's but a spoonful, and to the day when we see them again!" The cups were passed round. The sub-factor measured out a very small portion to each. They were not men of uncommon sentiment; their lives were rigid and isolated and severe. Fireside comforts under fortunate conditions they saw but seldom, and they were not given to expressing their feelings demonstratively. But each man then, save Cloud-in-the- Sky, had some memory worth a resurrection. Jaspar Hume raised his cup; the rest followed his example. "To absent friends and the day when we see them again!" he said; and they all drank. Gaspe Toujours drank solemnly, and, as though no one was near, made the sign of the cross; for his memory was with a dark-eyed, soft- cheeked habitant girl of the parish of Saint Gabrielle, whom he had left behind seven years before, and had never seen since. Word had come from the parish priest that she was dying, and though he wrote back in his homely patois of his grief, and begged that the good father would write again, no word had ever come. He thought of her now as one for whom the candles had been lighted and masses had been said. But Jeff Hyde's eyes were bright, and suffering as he was, the heart in him was brave and hopeful. He was thinking of a glorious Christmas Day upon the Madawaska River three years agone; of Adam Henry, the blind fiddler; of bright, warm-hearted Pattie Chown, the belle of the ball, and the long drive home in the frosty night. Late Carscallen was thinking of a brother whom he had heard preach his first sermon in Edinburgh twenty years before. And Late Carscallen, slow of speech and thought, had been full of pride and love of that brilliant brother. In the natural course of things, they had drifted apart, the slow and uncouth one to make his home at last in the Far North, and to be this night on his way to the Barren Grounds. But as he stood with the cup to his lips he recalled the words of a newspaper paragraph of a few months before. It stated that "the Reverend James Carscallen, D.D., preached before Her Majesty on Whitsunday, and had the honour of lunching with Her Majesty afterwards." Remembering that, Late Carscallen rubbed his left hand joyfully against his blanketed leg and drank. Cloud-in-the-Sky's thoughts were with the present, and his "Ugh!" of approval was one of the senses purely. Instead of drinking to absent friends he looked at the sub-factor and said: "How!" He drank to the subfactor. Jaspar Hume had a memory of childhood; of a house beside a swift-flowing river, where a gentle widowed mother braced her heart against misfortune and denied herself and slaved that her son might be educated. He had said to her that some day he would be a great man, and she would be paid back a hundredfold. And he had worked hard at school, very hard. But one cold day of spring a message came to the school, and he sped homewards to the house beside the dark river down which the ice was floating,--he would remember that floating ice to his last day, and entered a quiet room where a white-faced woman was breathing away her life. And he fell at her side and kissed her hand and called to her; and she waked for a moment only and smiled on him, and said: "Be good, my boy, and God will make you great." Then she said she was cold, and some one felt her feet--a kind old soul who shook her head sadly at him; and a voice, rising out of a strange smiling languor, murmured: "I'll away, I'll away to the Promised Land--to the Promised Land. . . . It is cold--so cold--God keep my boy!" Then the voice ceased, and the kind old soul who had looked at him, pityingly folded her arms about him, and drawing his brown head to her breast, kissed him with flowing eyes and whispered: "Come away, laddie, come away." But he came back in the night and sat beside her, and remained there till the sun grew bright, and then through another day and night, until they bore her out of the little house by the river to the frozen hill-side. Sitting here in this winter desolation Jaspar Hume once more beheld these scenes of twenty years before and followed himself, a poor dispensing clerk in a doctor's office, working for that dream of achievement in which his mother believed; for which she hoped. And following further the boy that was himself, he saw a friendless first-year man at college, soon, however, to make a friend of Clive Lepage, and to see always the best of that friend, being himself so true. At last the day came when they both graduated together in science, a bright and happy day, succeeded by one still brighter, when they both entered a great firm as junior partners. Afterwards befell the meeting with Rose Varcoe; and he thought of how he praised his friend Lepage to her, and brought him to be introduced to her. He recalled all those visions that came to him when, his professional triumphs achieved, he should have a happy home, and happy faces by his fireside. And the face was to be that of Rose Varcoe, and the others, faces of those who should be like her and like himself. He saw, or rather felt, that face clouded and anxious when he went away ill and blind for health's sake. He did not write to her. The doctors forbade him that. He did not ask her to write, for his was so steadfast a nature that he did not need letters to keep him true; and he thought she must be the same. He did not understand a woman's heart, how it needs remembrances, and needs to give remembrances. Hume's face in the light of this fire seemed calm and cold, yet behind it was an agony of memory--the memory of the day when he discovered that Lepage was married to Rose, and that the trusted friend had grown famous and well-to-do on the offspring of his brain. His first thought had been one of fierce determination to expose this man who had falsified all trust. But then came the thought of the girl, and, most of all, there came the words of his dying mother, "Be good, my boy, and God will make you great"; and for his mother's sake he had compassion on the girl, and sought no restitution from her husband. And now, ten years later, he did not regret that he had stayed his hand. The world had ceased to call Lepage a genius. He had not fulfilled the hope once held of him. Hume knew this from occasional references in scientific journals. And now he was making this journey to save, if he could, Lepage's life. Though just on the verge of a new era in his career--to give to the world the fruit of ten years' thought and labour, he had set all behind him, that he might be true to the friendship of his youth, that he might be clear of the strokes of conscience to the last hour of his life. Looking round him now, the debating look came again into his eyes. He placed his hand in his breast, and let it rest there for a moment. The look became certain and steady, the hand was drawn out, and in it was a Book of Common Prayer. Upon the fly-leaf was written: "Jane Hume, to her dear son Jaspar, on his twelfth birthday." These men of the White Guard were not used to religious practices, whatever their past had been in that regard, and at any other time they might have been surprised at this action of their leader. Under some circumstances it might have lessened their opinion of him; but his influence over them now was complete. They knew they were getting nearer to him than they had ever done; even Cloud-in-the-Sky appreciated that. Hume spoke no word to them, but looked at them and stood up. They all did the same, Jeff Hyde leaning on the shoulders of Gaspe Toujours. He read first, four verses of the Thirty-first Psalm, then followed the prayer of St. Chrysostom, and the beautiful collect which appeals to the Almighty to mercifully look upon the infirmities of men, and to stretch forth His hand to keep and defend them in all dangers and necessities. Late Carscallen, after a long pause, said "Amen," and Jeff said in a whisper to Gaspe Toujours: "That's to the point. Infirmities and dangers and necessities is what troubles us." Immediately after, at a sign from the sub-factor, Cloud-in-the-Sky began to transfer the burning wood from one fire to the other until only hot ashes were left where a great blaze had been. Over these ashes pine twigs and branches were spread, and over them again blankets. The word was then given to turn in, and Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late Carscallen lay down in this comfortable bed. Each wished to give way to their captain, but he would not consent. He and Cloud-in-the-Sky wrapped themselves in their blankets like mummies, covering the head completely, and under the arctic sky they slept alone in an austere and tenantless world. They never know how loftily sardonic Nature can be who have not seen that land where the mercury freezes in the tubes, and there is light but no warmth in the smile of the sun. Not Sturt in the heart of Australia with the mercury bursting the fevered tubes, with the finger- nails breaking like brittle glass, with the ink drying instantly on the pen, with the hair fading and falling off, would, if he could, have exchanged his lot for that of the White Guard. They were in a frozen endlessness that stretched away to a world where never voice of man or clip of wing or tread of animal is heard. It is the threshold to the undiscovered country, to that untouched north whose fields of white are only furrowed by the giant forces of the elements; on whose frigid hearthstone no fire is ever lit; where the electric phantoms of a nightless land pass and repass, and are never still; where the magic needle points not towards the north but darkly downward; where the sun never stretches warm hands to him who dares confront the terrors of eternal snow. The White Guard slept. IV "No, Captain; leave me here and push on to Manitou Mountain. You ought to make it in two days. I'm just as safe here as on the sleds, and less trouble. A blind man's no good. I'll have a good rest while you're gone, and then perhaps my eyes will come out right. My foot's nearly well now." Jeff Hyde was snow-blind. The giant of the party had suffered most. But Hume said in reply: "I won't leave you alone. The dogs can carry you as they've done for the last ten days." But Jeff replied: "I'm as safe here as marching, and safer. When the dogs are not carrying me, nor any one leading me, you can get on faster; and that means everything to us, now don't it?" Hume met the eyes of Gaspe Toujours. He read them. Then he said to Jeff: "It shall be as you wish. Late Carscallen, Cloud-in-the-Sky, and myself will push on to Manitou Mountain. You and Gaspe Toujours will remain here." Jeff Hyde's blind eyes turned towards Gaspe Toujours, who said: "Yes. We have plenty tabac." A tent was set up, provisions were put in it, a spirit-lamp and matches were added, and the simple menage was complete. Not quite. Jaspar Hume looked round. There was not a tree in sight. He stooped and cut away a pole that was used for strengthening the runners of the sleds, fastened it firmly in the ground, and tied to it a red woollen scarf, used for tightening his white blankets round him. Then he said: "Be sure and keep that flying." Jeff's face was turned towards the north. The blindman's instinct was coming to him. Far off white eddying drifts were rising over long hillocks of snow. When he turned round again his face was troubled. It grew more troubled, then it brightened up again, and he said to Hume: "Captain, would you leave that book with me till you come back--that about infirmities, dangers, and necessities? I knew a river-boss who used to carry an old spelling-book round with him for luck. It seems to me as if that book of yours, Captain, would bring luck to this part of the White Guard, that bein' out at heels like has to stay behind." Hume had borne the sufferings of his life with courage; he had led this terrible tramp with no tremor at his heart for himself; he was seeking to perform a perilous act without any inward shrinking; but Jeff's request was the greatest trial of this critical period in his life. Jeff felt, if he could not see, the hesitation of his chief. His rough but kind instincts told him something was wrong, and he hastened to add: "Beg your pardon, Mr. Hume, it ain't no matter. I oughtn't have asked you for it. But it's just like me. I've been a chain on the leg of the White Guard this whole tramp." The moment of hesitation had passed before Jeff had said half-a-dozen words, and Hume put the book in his hands with the words: "No, Jeff, take it. It will bring luck to the White Guard. Keep it safe until I come back." Jeff took the book, but hearing a guttural "Ugh" behind him, he turned round defiantly. Cloud-in-the-Sky touched his arm and said: "Good! Strong-back book--good!" Jeff was satisfied. At this point they parted, Jeff and Gaspe Toujours remaining, and Hume and his two followers going on towards Manitou Mountain. There seemed little probability that Clive Lepage would be found. In their progress eastward and northward they had covered wide areas of country, dividing and meeting again after stated hours of travel, but not a sign had been seen; neither cairn nor staff nor any mark of human presence. Hume had noticed Jeff Hyde's face when it was turned to the eddying drifts of the north, and he understood what was in the experienced huntsman's mind. He knew that severe weather was before them, and that the greatest danger of the journey was to be encountered. That night they saw Manitou Mountain, cold, colossal, harshly calm; and jointly with that sight there arose a shrieking, biting, fearful north wind. It blew upon them in cruel menace of conquest, in piercing inclemency. It struck a freezing terror to their hearts, and grew in violent attack until, as if repenting that it had foregone its power to save, the sun suddenly grew red and angry, and spread out a shield of blood along the bastions of the west. The wind shrank back and grew less murderous, and ere the last red arrow shot up behind the lonely western wall of white, the three knew that the worst of the storm had passed and that death had drawn back for a time. What Hume thought may be gathered from his diary; for ere he crawled in among the dogs and stretched himself out beside Bouche, he wrote these words with aching fingers: January 10th: Camp 39.--A bitter day. We are facing three fears now: the fate of those we left behind; Lepage's fate; and the going back. We are twenty miles from Manitou Mountain. If he is found, I should not fear the return journey; success gives hope. But we trust in God. Another day passed and at night, after a hard march, they camped five miles from Manitou Mountain. And not a sign! But Hume felt there was a faint chance of Lepage being found at this mountain. His iron frame had borne the hardships of this journey well; his strong heart better. But this night an unaccountable weakness possessed him. Mind and body were on the verge of helplessness. Bouche seemed to understand this, and when he was unhitched from the team of dogs, now dwindled to seven, he leaped upon his master's breast. It was as if some instinct of sympathy, of prescience, was passing between the man and the dog. Hume bent his head down to Bouche for an instant and rubbed his side kindly; then he said, with a tired accent: "It's all right, old dog, it's all right." Hume did not sleep well at first, but at length oblivion came. He waked to feel Bouche tugging at his blankets. It was noon. Late Carscallen and Cloud-in-the-Sky were still sleeping--inanimate bundles among the dogs. In an hour they were on their way again, and towards sunset they had reached the foot of Manitou Mountain. Abruptly from the plain rose this mighty mound, blue and white upon a black base. A few straggling pines grew near its foot, defying latitude, as the mountain itself defied the calculations of geographers and geologists. A halt was called. Late Carscallen and Cloud-in-the-Sky looked at the chief. His eyes were scanning the mountain closely. Suddenly he motioned. A hundred feet up there was a great round hole in the solid rock, and from this hole there came a feeble cloud of smoke! The other two saw also. Cloud-in-the-Sky gave a wild whoop, and from the mountain there came, a moment after, a faint replica of the sound. It was not an echo, for there appeared at the mouth of the cave an Indian, who made feeble signs for them to come. In a little while they were at the cave. As Jaspar Hume entered, Cloud- in-the-Sky and the stalwart but emaciated Indian who had beckoned to them spoke to each other in the Chinook language, the jargon common to all Indians of the West. Jaspar Hume saw a form reclining on a great bundle of pine branches, and he knew what Rose Lepage had prayed for was come to pass. By the flickering light of a handful of fire he saw Lepage--rather what was left of him--a shadow of energy, a heap of nerveless bones. His eyes were shut, but as Hume, with a quiver of memory and sympathy at his heart, stood for an instant, and looked at the man whom he had cherished as a friend and found an enemy, Lepage's lips moved and a weak voice said: "Who is there?" "A friend." "Come-near-me,--friend." Hume made a motion to Late Carscallen, who was heating some liquor at the fire, and then he stooped and lifted up the sick man's head, and took his hand. "You have come--to save me!" whispered the weak voice again. "Yes; I've come to save you." This voice was strong and clear and true. "I seem--to have--heard--your voice before--somewhere before--I seem to-- have--" But he had fainted. Hume poured a little liquor down the sick man's throat, and Late Carscallen chafed the delicate hand--delicate in health, it was like that of a little child now. When breath came again Hume whispered to his helper "Take Cloud-in-the-Sky and get wood; bring fresh branches. Then clear one of the sleds, and we will start back with him in the early morning." Late Carscallen, looking at the skeleton-like figure, said: "He will never get there." "Yes, he will get there," was Hume's reply. "But he is dying." "He goes with me to Fort Providence." "Ay, to Providence he goes, but not with you," said Late Carscallen, doggedly. Anger flashed in Hume's eye, but he said quietly "Get the wood, Carscallen." Hume was left alone with the starving Indian, who sat beside the fire eating voraciously, and with the sufferer, who now was taking mechanically a little biscuit sopped in brandy. For a few moments thus, then his sunken eyes opened, and he looked dazedly at the man bending above him. Suddenly there came into them a look of terror. "You--you --are Jaspar Hume," his voice said in an awed whisper. "Yes." The hands of the sub-factor chafed those of the other. "But you said you were a friend, and come to save me." "I have come to save you." There was a shiver of the sufferer's body. This discovery would either make him stronger or kill him. Hume knew this, and said: "Lepage, the past is past and dead to me; let it be so to you." There was a pause. "How--did you know--about me?" "I was at Fort Providence. There came letters from the Hudson's Bay Company, and from your wife, saying that you were making this journey, and were six months behind--" "My wife--Rose!" "I have a letter for you from her. She is on her way to Canada. We are to take you to her." "To take me--to her." Lepage shook his head sadly, but he pressed to his lips the letter that Hume had given him. "To take you to her, Lepage." "No, I shall never see her again." "I tell you, you shall. You can live if you will. You owe that to her --to me--to God." "To her--to you--to God. I have been true to none. I have been punished. I shall die here." "You shall go to Fort Providence. Do that in payment of your debt to me, Lepage. I demand that." In this transgressor there was a latent spark of honour, a sense of justice that might have been developed to great causes, if some strong nature, seeing his weaknesses, had not condoned them, but had appealed to the natural chivalry of an impressionable, vain, and weak character. He struggled to meet Hume's eyes, and doing so, he gained confidence and said: "I will try to live. I will do you justice--yet." "Your first duty is to eat and drink. We start for Fort Providence to-morrow." The sick man stretched out his hand. "Food! Food!" he said. In tiny portions food and drink were given to him, and his strength sensibly increased. The cave was soon aglow with the fire kindled by Late Carscallen and Cloud-in-the-Sky. There was little speaking, for the sick man soon fell asleep. Lepage's Indian told Cloud-in-the-Sky the tale of their march--how the other Indian and the dogs died; how his master became ill as they were starting towards Fort Providence from Manitou Mountain in the summer weather; how they turned back and took refuge in this cave; how month by month they had lived on what would hardly keep a rabbit alive; and how, at last, his master urged him to press on with his papers; but he would not, and stayed until this day, when the last bit of food had been eaten, and they were found. V The next morning Lepage was placed upon a sled, and they started back, Bouche barking joyfully as he led off, with Cloud-in-the-Sky beside him. There was light in the faces of all, though the light could not be seen by reason of their being muffled so. All day they travelled, scarcely halting, Lepage's Indian marching well. Often the corpse-like bundle on the sled was disturbed, and biscuits wet in brandy and bits of preserved venison were given. That night Hume said to Late Carscallen: "I am going to start at the first light of the morning to get to Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde as soon as possible. Follow as fast as you can. He will be safe, if you give him food and drink often. I shall get to the place where we left them about noon; you should reach there at night or early the next morning." "Hadn't you better take Bouche with you?" said Late Carscallen. The sub-factor thought a moment, and then said: "No, he is needed most where he is." At noon the next day Jaspar Hume looked round upon a billowy plain of sun and ice, but saw no staff, no signal, no tent, no sign of human life: of Gaspe Toujours or of Jeff Hyde. His strong heart quailed. Had he lost his way? He looked at the sun. He was not sure. He consulted his compass, but it quivered hesitatingly. For awhile that wild bewilderment which seizes upon the minds of the strongest, when lost, mastered him, in spite of his struggles against it. He moved in a maze of half-blindness, half-delirium. He was lost in it, swayed by it. He began to wander about; and there grew upon his senses strange delights and reeling agonies. He heard church bells, he caught at butterflies, he tumbled in new-mown hay, he wandered in a tropic garden. But in the hay a wasp stung him, and the butterfly changed to a curling black snake that struck at him and glided to a dark-flowing river full of floating ice, and up from the river a white hand was thrust, and it beckoned him--beckoned him. He shut his eyes and moved towards it, but a voice stopped him, and it said, "Come away, come away," and two arms folded him round, and as he went back from the shore he stumbled and fell, and . . . What is this? A yielding mass at his feet--a mass that stirs! He clutches at it, he tears away the snow, he calls aloud--and his voice has a faraway unnatural sound--"Gaspe Toujours! Gaspe Toujours!" Then the figure of a man shakes itself in the snow, and a voice says: "Ay, ay, sir!" Yes, it is Gaspe Toujours! And beside him lies Jeff Hyde, and alive. "Ay, ay, sir, alive!" Jaspar Hume's mind was itself again. It had but suffered for a moment the agony of delirium. Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde had lain down in the tent the night of the great wind, and had gone to sleep at once. The staff had been blown down, the tent had fallen over them, the drift had covered them, and for three days they had slept beneath the snow, never waking. Jeff Hyde's sight was come again to him. "You've come back for the book," he said. "You couldn't go on without it. You ought to have taken it yesterday." He drew it from his pocket. He was dazed. "No, Jeff, I've not come back for that, and I did not leave you yesterday: it is three days and more since we parted. The book has brought us luck, and the best. We have found our man; and they'll be here to-night with him. I came on ahead to see how you fared." In that frost-bitten world Jeff Hyde uncovered his head for a moment. "Gaspe Toujours is a papist," he said, "but he read me some of that book the day you left, and one thing we went to sleep on: it was that about 'Lightenin' the darkness, and defendin' us from all the perils and dangers of this night.'" Here Gaspe Toujours made the sign of the cross. Jeff Hyde continued half apologetically for his comrade: "That comes natural to Gaspe Toujours--I guess it always does to papists. But I never had any trainin' that way, and I had to turn the thing over and over, and I fell asleep on it. And when I wake up three days after, here's my eyes as fresh as daisies, and you back, sir, and the thing done that we come to do." He put the Book into Hume's hands and at that moment Gaspe Toujours said: "See!" Far off, against the eastern horizon, appeared a group of moving figures. That night the broken segments of the White Guard were reunited, and Clive Lepage slept by the side of Jaspar Hume. VI Napoleon might have marched back from Moscow with undecimated legions safely enough, if the heart of those legions had not been crushed. The White Guard, with their faces turned homeward, and the man they had sought for in their care, seemed to have acquired new strength. Through days of dreadful cold, through nights of appalling fierceness, through storm upon the plains that made for them paralysing coverlets, they marched. And if Lepage did not grow stronger, life at least was kept in him. There was little speech among them, but once in a while Gaspe Toujours sang snatches of the songs of the voyageurs of the great rivers; and the hearts of all were strong. Between Bouche and his master there was occasional demonstration. On the twentieth day homeward, Hume said with his hand on the dog's head "It had to be done, Bouche; even a dog could see that." And so it was "all right" for the White Guard. One day when the sun was warmer than usual over Fort Providence, and just sixty-five days since that cheer had gone up from apprehensive hearts for brave men going out into the Barren Grounds, Sergeant Gosse, who, every day, and of late many times a day, had swept the north-east with a field-glass, rushed into the chief-factor's office, and with a broken voice cried: "They've all come! They've come!" Then he leaned his arm and head against the wall and sobbed. And the old factor rose from his chair tremblingly, and said his thank-god, and went hurriedly into the square. He did not go steadily, however, the joyous news had shaken him, sturdy old pioneer as he was. A fringe of white had grown about his temples in the last two months. The people of the fort had said they had never seen him so irascible, yet so gentle; so uneasy, yet so reserved; so stern about the mouth, yet so kind about the eyes as he had been since Hume had gone on this desperate errand. Already the handful of people at the fort had gathered. Indians left the store, and joined the rest; the factor and Sergeant Gosse set out to meet the little army of relief. To the factor's "In the name of the Hudson's Bay Company, Mr. Hume," when they met there came "By the help of God, sir," and he pointed to the sled whereon Lepage lay. A feeble hand was clasped in the burly hand of the factor, and then they all fell into line again, Cloud-in-the-Sky running ahead of the dogs. Snow had fallen on them, and as they entered the stockade, men and dogs were white from head to foot. The White Guard had come back. Jaspar Hume as simply acknowledged his strident welcome as he had done the God-speed two months and more ago. With the factor he bore the sick man in, and laid him on his own bed. Then he came outside again, and when they cheered him once more, he said: "We have come safe through, and I'm thankful. But remember that my comrades in this march deserve your cheers more than I. Without them I couldn't have done anything." "In our infirmities and in all our dangers and necessities," added Jeff Hyde. "The luck of the world was in that book!" In another half-hour the White Guard was at ease, and four of them were gathered about the great stove in the store, Cloud-in-the-Sky smoking placidly, and full of guttural emphasis; Late Carscallen moving his animal-like jaws with a sense of satisfaction; Gaspe Toujours talking in Chinook to the Indians, in patois to the French clerk, and in broken English to them all; and Jeff Hyde exclaiming on the wonders of the march, the finding of Lepage at Manitou Mountain, and of himself and Gaspe Toujours buried in the snow. VII In Hume's house at midnight Lepage lay asleep with his wife's letters-- received through the factor--in his hand. The firelight played upon a dark, disappointed face--a doomed, prematurely old face, as it seemed to the factor. "You knew him, then," the factor said, after a long silence, with a gesture towards the bed. "Yes, well, years ago," replied Hume. Just then the sick man stirred in his sleep, and he said disjointedly: "I'll make it all right to you, Hume." Then came a pause, and a quicker utterance: "Forgive--forgive me, Rose." The factor got up, and turned to go, and Hume, with a sorrowful gesture, went over to the bed. Again the voice said: "Ten years--I have repented ten years--I dare not speak--" The factor touched Hume's arm. "He has fever. You and I must nurse him, Hume. You can trust me--you understand." "Yes, I can trust you," was the reply. "But I can tell you nothing." "I do not want to know anything. If you can watch till two o'clock I will relieve you. I'll send the medicine chest over. You know how to treat him." The factor passed out, and the other was left alone with the man who had wronged him. The feeling most active in his mind was pity, and, as he prepared a draught from his own stock of medicines, he thought the past and the present all over. He knew that however much he had suffered, this man had suffered more. In this silent night there was broken down any barrier that may have stood between Lepage and his complete compassion. Having effaced himself from the calculation, justice became forgiveness. He moistened the sick man's lips, and bathed his forehead, and roused him once to take a quieting powder. Then he sat down and wrote to Rose Lepage. But he tore the letter up again and said to the dog: "No, Bouche, I can't; the factor must do it. She needn't know yet that it was I who saved him. It doesn't make any burden of gratitude, if my name is kept out of it. The factor mustn't mention me, Bouche--not yet. When he is well we will go to London with It, Bouche, and we needn't meet her. It will be all right, Bouche, all right!" The dog seemed to understand; for he went over to the box that held It; and looked at his master. Then Jaspar Hume rose, broke the seal, unlocked the box and opened it; but he heard the sick man moan, and he closed it again and went over to the bed. The feeble voice said: "I must speak--I cannot die so--not so." Hume moistened the lips once, put a cold cloth on the fevered head, and then sat down by the fire again. Lepage slept at last. The restless hands grew quiet, the breath became more regular, the tortured mind found a short peace. With the old debating look in his eyes, Hume sat there watching until the factor relieved him. VIII February and March and April were past, and May was come. Lepage had had a hard struggle for life, but he had survived. For weeks every night there was a repetition of that first night after the return: delirious self-condemnation, entreaty, appeal to his wife, and Hume's name mentioned in shuddering remorse. With the help of the Indian who had shared the sick man's sufferings in the Barren Grounds, the factor and Hume nursed him back to life. After the first night no word had passed between the two watchers regarding the substance of Lepage's delirium. But one evening the factor was watching alone, and the repentant man from his feverish sleep cried out: "Hush, hush! don't let them know--I stole them both, and Rose did not know. Rose did not know!" The factor rose and walked away. The dog was watching him. He said to Bouche: "You have a good master, Bouche." IX In an arm-chair made of hickory and birch-bark by Cloud-in-the-Sky, Lepage sat reading a letter from his wife. She was at Winnipeg, and was coming west as far as Regina to meet him on his way down. He looked a wreck; but a handsome wreck. His refined features, his soft black beard and blue eyes, his graceful hand and gentle manners, seemed not to belong to an evil-hearted man. He sat in the sunlight at the door, wrapped about in moose and beaver skins. The world of plain and wood was glad. Not so Lepage. He sat and thought of what was to come. He had hoped at times that he would die, but twice Hume had said: "I demand your life. You owe it to your wife--to me." He had pulled his heart up to this demand and had lived. But what lay before him? He saw a stony track, and he shuddered. As he sat there facing the future, Hume came to him and said: "If you feel up to it, Lepage, we will start for Edmonton on Monday. I think it will be quite safe, and your wife is anxious. I shall accompany you as far as Edmonton; you can then proceed by easy stages, in this pleasant weather. Are you ready to go?" "Quite ready," was the reply. X On a beautiful May evening Lepage, Hume, and the White Guard were welcomed at Fort Edmonton by the officer in command of the Mounted Police. They were to enjoy the hospitality of the fort for a couple of days. Hume was to go back with Cloud-in-the-Sky and Late Carscallen, and a number of Indian carriers; for this was a journey of business too. Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde were to press on with Lepage, who was now much stronger and better. One day passed, and on the following morning Hume gave instructions to Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde, and made preparations for his going back. He was standing in the Barracks Square, when a horseman rode in and made inquiry of a sergeant standing near, if Lepage had arrived at the fort. A few words brought out the fact that Rose Lepage was nearing the fort from the south. The trooper had been sent on ahead the day before, but his horse having met with a slight accident, he had been delayed. He had seen the party, however, a long distance back in the early morning. He must now ride away and meet Mrs. Lepage, he said. He was furnished with a fresh horse, and he left, bearing a message from Lepage. Hume decided to leave Fort Edmonton at once, and to take all the White Guard back with him; and gave orders to that effect. Entering the room where Lepage sat alone, he said: "Lepage, the time has come for good-bye. I am starting for Fort Providence." But the other replied: "You will wait until my wife comes. You must." There was trouble in his voice. "I must not." Lepage braced himself for a heavy task and said: "Hume, if the time has come to say good-bye, it has also come when we should speak together for once openly: to settle, in so far as can be done, a long account. You have not let my wife know who saved me. That appears from her letters. She asks the name of my rescuer. I have not yet told her. But she will know that to-day when I tell her all." "When you tell her all?" "When I tell her all." "But you shall not do that." "I will. It will be the beginning of the confession which I shall afterwards make to the world." "By Heaven you shall not do it. Do you want to wreck her life?" Jaspar Hume's face was wrathful, and remained so till the other sank back in the chair with his forehead in his hands; but it softened as he saw this remorse and shame. He began to see that Lepage had not clearly grasped the whole situation. He said in quieter but still firm tones: "No, Lepage, that matter is between us two, and us alone. She must never know--the world therefore must never know. You did an unmanly thing; you are suffering a manly remorse. Now let it end here--but I swear it shall," he said in sharp tones, as the other shook his head negatively: "I would have let you die at Manitou Mountain, if I had thought you would dare to take away your wife's peace--your children's respect." "I have no children; our baby died." Hume softened again. "Can you not see, Lepage? The thing cannot be mended. I bury it all, and so must you. You will begin the world again, and so shall I. Keep your wife's love. Henceforth you will deserve it." Lepage raised moist eyes to the other and said: "But you will take back the money I got for that?" There was a pause, then Hume replied: "Yes, upon such terms, times, and conditions as I shall hereafter fix. You have no child, Lepage?" he gently added. "We have no child; it died with my fame." Hume looked steadily into the eyes of the man who had wronged him. "Remember, Lepage, you begin the world again. I am going now. By the memory of old days, good-bye." He held out his hand. Lepage took it, rose tremblingly to his feet, and said, "You are a good man, Hume. Good- bye." The sub-factor turned at the door. "If it will please you, tell your wife that I saved you. Some one will tell her; perhaps I would rather-- at least it would be more natural, if you did it." He passed out into the sunshine that streamed into the room and fell across the figure of Lepage, who murmured dreamily: "And begin the world again." Time passed. A shadow fell across the sunlight that streamed upon Lepage. He looked up. There was a startled cry of joy, an answering exclamation of love, and Rose was clasped in her husband's arms. A few moments afterwards the sweet-faced woman said: "Who was that man who rode away to the north as I came up, Clive? He reminded me of some one." "That was the leader of the White Guard, the man who saved me, Rose." He paused a moment and then solemnly said: "It was Jaspar Hume." The wife came to her feet with a spring. "He saved you--Jaspar Hume! Oh, Clive!" "He saved me, Rose." Her eyes were wet: "And he would not stay and let me thank him! Poor fellow, poor Jaspar Hume! Has he been up here all these years?" Her face was flushed, and pain was struggling with the joy she felt in seeing her husband again. "Yes, he has been here all the time." "Then he has not succeeded in life, Clive!" Her thoughts went back to the days when, blind and ill, Hume went away for health's sake, and she remembered how sorry then she felt for him, and how grieved she was that when he came back strong and well, he did not come near her or her husband, and offered no congratulations. She had not deliberately wronged him. She knew he cared for her: but so did Lepage. A promise had been given to neither when Jaspar Hume went away; and after that she grew to love the successful, kind-mannered genius who became her husband. No real pledge had been broken. Even in this happiness of hers, sitting once again at her husband's feet, she thought with tender kindness of the man who had cared for her eleven years ago; and who had but now saved her husband. "He has not succeeded in life," she repeated softly. Looking down at her, his brow burning with a white heat, Lepage said: "He is a great man, Rose." "I am sure he is a good man," she added. Perhaps Lepage had borrowed some strength not all his own, for he said almost sternly: "He is a great man." His wife looked up half-startled and said: "Very well, dear; he is a good man--and a great man." The sunlight still came in through the open door. The Saskatchewan flowed swiftly between its verdant banks, an eagle went floating away to the west, robins made vocal a solitary tree a few yards away, troopers moved backwards and forwards across the square, and a hen and her chickens came fluttering to the threshold. The wife looked at the yellow brood drawing close to their mother, and her eyes grew wistful. She thought of their one baby asleep in an English grave. But thinking of the words of the captain of the White Guard, Lepage said firmly: "We will begin the world again." She smiled, and rose to kiss him as the hen and chickens hastened away from the door, and a clear bugle call sounded in the square. XI Eleven years have gone since that scene was enacted at Edmonton. A great gathering is dispersing from a hall in Piccadilly. It has been drawn together to do honour to a man who has achieved a triumph in engineering science. As he steps from the platform to go, he is greeted by a fusilade of cheers. He bows calmly and kindly. He is a man of vigorous yet reserved aspect; he has a rare individuality. He receives with a quiet cordiality the personal congratulations of his friends. He remains for some time in conversation with a royal duke, who takes his arm, and with him passes into the street. The duke is a member of this great man's club, and offers him a seat in his brougham. Amid the cheers of the people they drive away together. Inside the club there are fresh congratulations, and it is proposed to arrange an impromptu dinner, at which the duke will preside. But with modesty and honest thanks the great man declines. He pleads an engagement. He had pleaded this engagement the day before to a well-known society. After his health is proposed, he makes his adieux, and leaving the club, walks away towards a West-end square. In one of its streets he pauses, and enters a building called "Providence Chambers." His servant hands him a cablegram. He passes to his library, and, standing before the fire, opens it. It reads: "My wife and I send congratulations to the great man." Jaspar Hume stands for a moment looking at the fire, and then says simply: "I wish poor old Bouche were here." He then sits down and writes this letter: My dear Friends,--Your cablegram has made me glad. The day is over. My latest idea was more successful than I even dared to hope; and the world has been kind. I went down to see your boy, Jaspar, at Clifton last week. It was his birthday, you know--nine years old, and a clever, strong-minded little fellow. He is quite contented. As he is my god-child, I again claimed the right of putting a thousand dollars to his credit in the bank,--I have to speak of dollars to you people living in Canada--which I have done on his every birthday. When he is twenty-one he will have twenty-one thousand dollars--quite enough for a start in life. We get along well together, and I think he will develop a fine faculty for science. In the summer, as I said, I will bring him over to you. There is nothing more to say to-night except that I am as always, Your faithful and loving friend, JASPAR HUME. A moment after the letter was finished, the servant entered and announced "Mr. Late Carscallen." With a smile and hearty greeting the great man and this member of the White Guard met. It was to entertain his old arctic comrade that Jaspar Hume had declined to be entertained by society or club. A little while after, seated at the table, the ex-sub-factor said: "You found your brother well, Carscallen?" The jaws moved slowly as of old. "Ay, that, and a grand meenister, sir." "He wanted you to stay in Scotland, I suppose?" "Ay, that, but there's no place for me like Fort Providence." "Try this pheasant. And you are sub-factor now, Carscallen?" "There's two of us sub-factors--Jeff Hyde and myself. Mr. Field is old, and can't do much work, and trade's heavy now." "I know. I hear from the factor now and then. And Gaspe Toujours, what of him?" "He went away three years ago, and he said he'd come back. He never did though. Jeff Hyde believes he will. He says to me a hundred times, 'Carscallen, he made the sign of the cross that he'd come back from Saint Gabrielle; and that's next to the Book with a papist. If he's alive he'll come.'" "Perhaps he will, Carscallen. And Cloud-in-the-Sky?" "He's still there, and comes in and smokes with Jeff Hyde and me, as he used to do with you; but he doesn't obey our orders as he did yours, sir. He said to me when I left: 'You see Strong-back, tell him Cloud-in-the- Sky good Injun--he never forget. How!'" Jaspar Hume raised his glass with smiling and thoughtful eyes: "To Cloud- in-the-Sky and all who never forget!" he said. This eBook was produced by Andrew Sly THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY BEING THE MEMOIRS OF CAPTAIN ROBERT MORAY, SOMETIME AN OFFICER IN THE VIRGINIA REGIMENT, AND AFTERWARDS OF AMHERST'S REGIMENT By Gilbert Parker To the Memory of Madge Henley. CONTENTS Chapter Introduction to the Imperial Edition Prefatory note to First Edition I An escort to the citadel II The master of the King's magazine III The wager and the sword IV The rat in the trap V The device of the dormouse VI Moray tells the story of his life VII "Quoth little Garaine" VIII As vain as Absalom IX A little concerning the Chevalier de la Darante X An officer of marines XI The coming of Doltaire XII "The point envenomed too!" XIII A little boast XIV Argand Cournal XV In the chamber of torture XVI Be saint or imp XVII Through the bars of the cage XVIII The steep path of conquest XIX A Danseuse and the Bastile XX Upon the ramparts XXI La Jongleuse XXII The lord of Kamaraska XXIII With Wolfe at Montmorenci XXIV The sacred countersign XXV In the cathedral XXVI The secret of the tapestry XXVII A side-wind of revenge XXVIII "To cheat the Devil yet" XXIX "Master Devil" Doltaire XXX "Where all the lovers can hide" Appendix--Excerpt from 'The Scot in New France' INTRODUCTION TO THE IMPERIAL EDITION It was in the winter of 1892, when on a visit to French Canada, that I made up my mind I would write the volume which the public knows as 'The Seats of the Mighty,' but I did not begin the composition until early in 1894. It was finished by the beginning of February, 1895, and began to appear in 'The Atlantic Monthly' in March of that year. It was not my first attempt at historical fiction, because I had written 'The Trail of the Sword' in the year 1893, but it was the first effort on an ambitious scale, and the writing of it was attended with as much searching of heart as enthusiasm. I had long been saturated by the early history of French Canada, as perhaps 'The Trail of the Sword' bore witness, and particularly of the period of the Conquest, and I longed for a subject which would, in effect, compel me to write; for I have strong views upon this business of compulsion in the mind of the writer. Unless a thing has seized a man, has obsessed him, and he feels that it excludes all other temptations to his talent or his genius, his book will not convince. Before all else he must himself be overpowered by the insistence of his subject, then intoxicated with his idea, and, being still possessed, become master of his material while remaining the slave of his subject. I believe that every book which has taken hold of the public has represented a kind of self-hypnotism on the part of the writer. I am further convinced that the book which absorbs the author, which possesses him as he writes it, has the effect of isolating him into an atmosphere which is not sleep, and which is not absolute wakefulness, but a place between the two, where the working world is indistinct and the mind is swept along a flood submerging the self-conscious but not drowning into unconsciousness. Such, at any rate, is my own experience. I am convinced that the books of mine which have had so many friends as this book, 'The Seats of the Mighty', has had in the English-speaking world were written in just such conditions of temperamental isolation or absorption. First the subject, which must of itself have driving power, then the main character, which becomes a law working out its own destiny; and the subject in my own work has always been translatable into a phrase. Nearly every one of my books has always been reducible to its title. For years I had wished to write an historical novel of the conquest of Canada or the settlement of the United Empire loyalists and the subsequent War of 1812, but the central idea and the central character had not come to me; and without both and the driving power of a big idea and of a big character, a book did not seem to me possible. The human thing with the grip of real life was necessary. At last, as pointed out in the prefatory note of the first edition, published in the spring of 1896 by Messrs. D. Appleton & Co., of New York, and Messrs. Methuen & Co., of London, I ran across a tiny little volume in the library of Mr. George M. Fairchild, Jr., of Quebec, called the Memoirs of Major Robert Stobo. It was published by John S. Davidson, of Market Street, Pittsburgh, with an introduction by an editor who signed himself "N. B.C." The Memoirs proper contained about seventeen thousand words, the remaining three thousand words being made up of abstracts and appendices collected by the editor. The narrative was written in a very ornate and grandiloquent style, but the hero of the memoirs was so evidently a man of remarkable character, enterprise and adventure, that I saw in the few scattered bones of the story which he unfolded the skeleton of an ample historical romance. There was necessary to offset this buoyant and courageous Scotsman, adventurous and experienced, a character of the race which captured him and held him in leash till just before the taking of Quebec. I therefore found in the character of Doltaire--which was the character of Voltaire spelled with a big D--purely a creature of the imagination, one who, as the son of a peasant woman and Louis XV, should be an effective offset to Major Stobo. There was no hint of Doltaire in the Memoirs. There could not be, nor of the plot on which the story was based, because it was all imagination. Likewise, there was no mention of Alixe Duvarney in the Memoirs, nor of Bigot or Madame Cournal and all the others. They too, when not characters of the imagination, were lifted out of the history of the time; but the first germ of the story came from 'The Memoirs of Robert Stobo', and when 'The Seats of the Mighty' was first published in 'The Atlantic Monthly' the subtitle contained these words: "Being the Memoirs of Captain Robert Stobo, sometime an officer in the Virginia Regiment, and afterwards of Amherst's Regiment." When the book was published, however, I changed the name of Robert Stobo to Robert Moray, because I felt I had no right to saddle Robert Stobo's name with all the incidents and experiences and strange enterprises which the novel contained. I did not know then that perhaps it might be considered an honour by Robert Stobo's descendants to have his name retained. I could not foresee the extraordinary popularity of 'The Seats of the Mighty', but with what I thought was a sense of honour I eliminated his name and changed it to Robert Moray. 'The Seats of the Mighty' goes on, I am happy to say, with an ever-increasing number of friends. It has a position perhaps not wholly deserved, but it has crystallised some elements in the life of the continent of America, the history of France and England, and of the British Empire which may serve here and there to inspire the love of things done for the sake of a nation rather than for the welfare of an individual. I began this introduction by saying that the book was started in the summer of 1894. That was at a little place called Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire, on the east coast of England. For several months I worked in absolute seclusion in that out-of-the-way spot which had not then become a Mecca for trippers, and on the wonderful sands, stretching for miles upon miles coastwise and here and there as much as a mile out to the sea, I tried to live over again the days of Wolfe and Montcalm. Appropriately enough the book was begun in a hotel at Mablethorpe called "The Book in Hand." The name was got, I believe, from the fact that, in a far-off day, a ship was wrecked upon the coast at Mablethorpe, and the only person saved was the captain, who came ashore with a Bible in his hands. During the writing now and again a friend would come to me from London or elsewhere, and there would be a day off, full of literary tattle, but immediately my friends were gone I was lost again in the atmosphere of the middle of the eighteenth century. I stayed at Mablethorpe until the late autumn, and then I went to Harrogate, exchanging the sea for the moors, and there, still living the open-air life, I remained for several months until I had finished the book. The writing of it knew no interruption and was happily set. It was a thing apart, and not a single untoward invasion of other interests affected its course. The title of the book was for long a trouble to me. Months went by before I could find what I wanted. Scores of titles occurred to me, but each was rejected. At last, one day when I was being visited by Mr. Grant Richards, since then a London publisher, but at that time a writer, who had come to interview me for 'Great Thoughts', I told him of my difficulties regarding the title. I was saying that I felt the title should be, as it were, the kernel of a book. I said: "You see, it is a struggle of one simple girl against principalities and powers; it is the final conquest of the good over the great. In other words, the book will be an illustration of the text, 'He has put down the mighty from their seats, and has exalted the humble and meek.'" Then, like a flash, the title came 'The Seats of the Mighty'. Since the phrase has gone into the language and was from the very first a popular title, it seems strange that the literary director of the American firm that published the book should take strong exception to it on the ground that it was grandiloquent. I like to think that I was firm, and that I declined to change the title. I need say no more save that the book was dramatised by myself, and produced, first at Washington by Herbert (now Sir Herbert) Beerbohm Tree in the winter of 1897 and 1898, and in the spring of 1898 it opened his new theatre in London. PREFATORY NOTE TO FIRST EDITION This tale would never have been written had it not been for the kindness of my distinguished friend Dr. John George Bourinot, C.M.G., of Ottawa, whose studies in parliamentary procedure, the English and Canadian Constitutions, and the history and development of Canada have been of singular benefit to the Dominion and to the Empire. Through Dr. Bourinot's good offices I came to know Mr. James Lemoine, of Quebec, the gifted antiquarian, and President of the Royal Society of Canada. Mr. Lemoine placed in my hands certain historical facts suggestive of romance. Subsequently, Mr. George M. Fairchild, Jr., of Cap Rouge, Quebec, whose library contains a valuable collection of antique Canadian books, maps, and prints, gave me generous assistance and counsel, allowing me "the run" of all his charts, prints, histories, and memoirs. Many of these prints, and a rare and authentic map of Wolfe's operations against Quebec are now reproduced in this novel, and may be considered accurate illustrations of places, people, and events. By the insertion of these faithful historical elements it is hoped to give more vividness to the atmosphere of the time, and to strengthen the verisimilitude of a piece of fiction which is not, I believe, out of harmony with fact. Gilbert Parker PRELUDE To Sir Edward Seaforth, Bart., of Sangley Hope in Derbyshire, and Seaforth House in Hanover Square. Dear Ned: You will have them written, or I shall be pestered to my grave! Is that the voice of a friend of so long standing? And yet it seems but yesterday since we had good hours in Virginia together, or met among the ruins of Quebec. My memoirs--these only will content you? And to flatter or cajole me, you tell me Mr. Pitt still urges on the matter. In truth, when he touched first upon this, I thought it but the courtesy of a great and generous man. But indeed I am proud that he is curious to know more of my long captivity at Quebec, of Monsieur Doltaire and all his dealings with me, and the motions he made to serve La Pompadour on one hand, and, on the other, to win from me that most perfect of ladies, Mademoiselle Alixe Duvarney. Our bright conquest of Quebec is now heroic memory, and honour and fame and reward have been parcelled out. So I shall but briefly, in these memoirs (ay, they shall be written, and with a good heart), travel the trail of history, or discourse upon campaigns and sieges, diplomacies and treaties. I shall keep close to my own story; for that, it would seem, yourself and the illustrious minister of the King most wish to hear. Yet you will find figuring in it great men like our flaming hero General Wolfe, and also General Montcalm, who, I shall ever keep on saying, might have held Quebec against us, had he not been balked by the vain Governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil; together with such notorious men as the Intendant Bigot, civil governor of New France, and such noble gentlemen as the Seigneur Duvarney, father of Alixe. I shall never view again the citadel on those tall heights where I was detained so barbarously, nor the gracious Manor House at Beauport, sacred to me because of her who dwelt therein--how long ago, how long! Of all the pictures that flash before my mind when I think on those times, one is most with me: that of the fine guest-room in the Manor House, where I see moving the benign maid whose life and deeds alone can make this story worth telling. And with one scene therein, and it the most momentous in all my days, I shall begin my tale. I beg you convey to Mr. Pitt my most obedient compliments, and say that I take his polite wish as my command. With every token of my regard, I am, dear Ned, affectionately your friend, Robert Moray I AN ESCORT TO THE CITADEL When Monsieur Doltaire entered the salon, and, dropping lazily into a chair beside Madame Duvarney and her daughter, drawled out, "England's Braddock--fool and general--has gone to heaven, Captain Moray, and your papers send you there also," I did not shift a jot, but looked over at him gravely--for, God knows, I was startled--and I said, "The General is dead?" I did not dare to ask, Is he defeated? though from Doltaire's look I was sure it was so, and a sickness crept through me, for at the moment that seemed the end of our cause. But I made as if I had not heard his words about my papers. "Dead as a last years courtier, shifted from the scene," he replied; "and having little now to do, we'll go play with the rat in our trap." I would not have dared look towards Alixe, standing beside her mother then, for the song in my blood was pitched too high, were it not that a little sound broke from her. At that, I glanced, and saw that her face was still and quiet, but her eyes were shining, and her whole body seemed listening. I dared not give my glance meaning, though I wished to do so. She had served me much, had been a good friend to me, since I was brought a hostage to Quebec from Fort Necessity. There, at that little post on the Ohio, France threw down the gauntlet, and gave us the great Seven Years War. And though it may be thought I speak rashly, the lever to spring that trouble had been within my grasp. Had France sat still while Austria and Prussia quarreled, that long fighting had never been. The game of war had lain with the Grande Marquise--or La Pompadour, as she was called--and later it may be seen how I, unwillingly, moved her to set it going. Answering Monsieur Doltaire, I said stoutly, "I am sure he made a good fight; he had gallant men." "Truly gallant," he returned--"your own Virginians among others" (I bowed); "but he was a blunderer, as were you also, monsieur, or you had not sent him plans of our forts and letters of such candour. They have gone to France, my captain." Madame Duvarney seemed to stiffen in her chair, for what did this mean but that I was a spy? and the young lady behind them now put her handkerchief to her mouth as if to stop a word. To make light of the charges against myself was the only thing, and yet I had little heart to do so. There was that between Monsieur Doltaire and myself--a matter I shall come to by-and-bye--which well might make me apprehensive. "My sketch and my gossip with my friends," said I, "can have little interest in France." "My faith, the Grande Marquise will find a relish for them," he said pointedly at me. He, the natural son of King Louis, had played the part between La Pompadour and myself in the grave matter of which I spoke. "She loves deciding knotty points of morality," he added. "She has had chance and will enough," said I boldly, "but what point of morality is here?" "The most vital--to you," he rejoined, flicking his handkerchief a little, and drawling so that I could have stopped his mouth with my hand. "Shall a hostage on parole make sketches of a fort and send them to his friends, who in turn pass them on to a foolish general?" "When one party to an Article of War brutally breaks his sworn promise, shall the other be held to his?" I asked quietly. I was glad that, at this moment, the Seigneur Duvarney entered, for I could feel the air now growing colder about Madame his wife. He, at least, was a good friend; but as I glanced at him, I saw his face was troubled and his manner distant. He looked at Monsieur Doltaire a moment steadily, stooped to his wife's hand, and then offered me his own without a word; which done, he went to where his daughter stood. She kissed him, and, as she did so, whispered something in his ear, to which he nodded assent. I knew afterwards that she had asked him to keep me to dinner with them. Presently turning to Monsieur Doltaire, he said inquiringly, "You have a squad of men outside my house, Doltaire?" Doltaire nodded in a languid way, and answered, "An escort--for Captain Moray--to the citadel." I knew now, as he had said, that I was in the trap; that he had begun the long sport which came near to giving me the white shroud of death, as it turned white the hair upon my head ere I was thirty-two. Do I not know, the indignities, the miseries I suffered, I owed mostly to him, and that at the last he nearly robbed England of her greatest pride, the taking of New France?--For chance sometimes lets humble men like me balance the scales of fate; and I was humble enough in rank, if in spirit always something above my place. I was standing as he spoke these words, and I turned to him and said, "Monsieur, I am at your service." "I have sometimes wished," he said instantly, and with a courteous if ironical gesture, "that you were in my service--that is, the King's." I bowed as to a compliment, for I would not see the insolence, and I retorted, "Would I could offer you a company in my Virginia regiment!" "Delightful! delightful!" he rejoined. "I should make as good a Briton as you a Frenchman, every whit." I suppose he would have kept leading to such silly play, had I not turned to Madame Duvarney and said, "I am most sorry that this mishap falls here; but it is not of my doing, and in colder comfort, Madame, I shall recall the good hours spent in your home." I think I said it with a general courtesy, yet, feeling the eyes of the young lady on me, perhaps a little extra warmth came into my voice, and worked upon Madame, or it may be she was glad of my removal from contact with her daughter; but kindness showed in her face, and she replied gently, "I am sure it is only for a few days till we see you again." Yet I think in her heart she knew my life was perilled: those were rough and hasty times, when the axe or the rope was the surest way to deal with troubles. Three years before, at Fort Necessity, I had handed my sword to my lieutenant, bidding him make healthy use of it, and, travelling to Quebec on parole, had come in and out of this house with great freedom. Yet since Alixe had grown towards womanhood there had been strong change in Madame's manner. "The days, however few, will be too long until I tax your courtesy again," I said. "I bid you adieu, Madame." "Nay, not so," spoke up my host; "not one step: dinner is nearly served, and you must both dine with us. Nay, but I insist," he added, as he saw me shake my head. "Monsieur Doltaire will grant you this courtesy, and me the great kindness. Eh, Doltaire?" Doltaire rose, glancing from Madame to her daughter. Madame was smiling, as if begging his consent; for, profligate though he was, his position, and more than all, his personal distinction, made him a welcome guest at most homes in Quebec. Alixe met his look without a yes or no in her eyes--so young, yet having such control and wisdom, as I have had reason beyond all men to know. Something, however, in the temper of the scene had filled her with a kind of glow, which added to her beauty and gave her dignity. The spirit of her look caught the admiration of this expatriated courtier, and I knew that a deeper cause than all our past conflicts--and they were great--would now, or soon, set him fatally against me. "I shall be happy to wait Captain Moray's pleasure," he said presently, "and to serve my own by sitting at your table. I was to have dined with the Intendant this afternoon, but a messenger shall tell him duty stays me.... If you will excuse me!" he added, going to the door to find a man of his company. He looked back for an instant, as if it struck him I might seek escape, for he believed in no man's truth; but he only said, "I may fetch my men to your kitchen, Duvarney? 'Tis raw outside." "Surely. I shall see they have some comfort," was the reply. Doltaire then left the room, and Duvarney came to me. "This is a bad business, Moray," he said sadly. "There is some mistake, is there not?" I looked him fair in the face. "There is a mistake," I answered. "I am no spy, and I do not fear that I shall lose my life, my honour, or my friends by offensive acts of mine." "I believe you," he responded, "as I have believed since you came, though there has been gabble of your doings. I do not forget you bought my life back from those wild Mohawks five years ago. You have my hand in trouble or out of it." Upon my soul, I could have fallen on his neck, for the blow to our cause and the shadow on my own fate oppressed me for the moment. At this point the ladies left the room to make some little toilette before dinner, and as they passed me the sleeve of Alixe's dress touched my arm. I caught her fingers for an instant, and to this day I can feel that warm, rich current of life coursing from finger-tips to heart. She did not look at me at all, but passed on after her mother. Never till that moment had there been any open show of heart between us. When I first came to Quebec (I own it to my shame) I was inclined to use her youthful friendship for private and patriotic ends; but that soon passed, and then I wished her companionship for true love of her. Also, I had been held back because when I first knew her she seemed but a child. Yet how quickly and how wisely did she grow out of her childhood! She had a playful wit, and her talents were far beyond her years. It amazed me often to hear her sum up a thing in some pregnant sentence which, when you came to think, was the one word to be said. She had such a deep look out of her blue eyes that you scarcely glanced from them to see the warm sweet colour of her face, the fair broad forehead, the brown hair, the delicate richness of her lips, which ever were full of humour and of seriousness--both running together, as you may see a laughing brook steal into the quiet of a river. Duvarney and I were thus alone for a moment, and he straightway dropped a hand upon my shoulder. "Let me advise you," he said, "be friendly with Doltaire. He has great influence at the Court and elsewhere. He can make your bed hard or soft at the citadel." I smiled at him, and replied, "I shall sleep no less sound because of Monsieur Doltaire." "You are bitter in your trouble," said he. I made haste to answer, "No, no, my own troubles do not weigh so heavy--but our General's death!" "You are a patriot, my friend," he added warmly. "I could well have been content with our success against your English army without this deep danger to your person." I put out my hand to him, but I did not speak, for just then Doltaire entered. He was smiling at something in his thought. "The fortunes are with the Intendant always," said he. "When things are at their worst, and the King's storehouse, the dear La Friponne, is to be ripped by our rebel peasants like a sawdust doll, here comes this gay news of our success on the Ohio; and in that Braddock's death the whining beggars will forget their empty bellies, and bless where they meant to curse. What fools, to be sure! They had better loot La Friponne. Lord, how we love fighting, we French! And 'tis so much easier to dance, or drink, or love." He stretched out his shapely legs as he sat musing. Duvarney shrugged a shoulder, smiling. "But you, Doltaire--there's no man out of France that fights more." He lifted an eyebrow. "One must be in the fashion; besides, it does need some skill to fight. The others--to dance, drink, love: blind men's games!" He smiled cynically into the distance. I have never known a man who interested me so much--never one so original, so varied, and so uncommon in his nature. I marvelled at the pith and depth of his observations; for though I agreed not with him once in ten times, I loved his great reflective cleverness and his fine penetration--singular gifts in a man of action. But action to him was a playtime; he had that irresponsibility of the Court from which he came, its scornful endurance of defeat or misery, its flippant look upon the world, its scoundrel view of women. Then he and Duvarney talked, and I sat thinking. Perhaps the passion of a cause grows in you as you suffer for it, and I had suffered, and suffered most by a bitter inaction. Governor Dinwiddie, Mr. Washington (alas that, as I write the fragment chapters of my life, among the hills where Montrose my ancestor fought, George leads the colonists against the realm of England!), and the rest were suffering, but they were fighting too. Brought to their knees, they could rise again to battle; and I thought then, How more glorious to be with my gentlemen in blue from Virginia, holding back death from the General, and at last falling myself, than to spend good years a hostage at Quebec, knowing that Canada was for our taking, yet doing nothing to advance the hour! In the thick of these thoughts I was not conscious of what the two were saying, but at last I caught Madame Cournal's name; by which I guessed Monsieur Doltaire was talking of her amours, of which the chief and final was with Bigot the Intendant, to whom the King had given all civil government, all power over commerce and finance in the country. The rivalry between the Governor and the Intendant was keen and vital at this time, though it changed later, as I will show. At her name I looked up and caught Monsieur Doltaire's eye. He read my thoughts. "You have had blithe hours here, monsieur," he said--"you know the way to probe us; but of all the ladies who could be most useful to you, you left out the greatest. There you erred. I say it as a friend, not as an officer, there you erred. From Madame Cournal to Bigot, from Bigot to Vaudreuil the Governor, from the Governor to France. But now--" He paused, for Madame Duvarney and her daughter had come, and we all rose. The ladies had heard enough to know Doltaire's meaning. "But now--Captain Moray dines with us," said Madame Duvarney quietly and meaningly. "Yet I dine with Madame Cournal," rejoined Doltaire, smiling. "One may use more option with enemies and prisoners," she said keenly, and the shot ought to have struck home. In so small a place it was not easy to draw lines close and fine, and it was in the power of the Intendant, backed by his confederates, to ruin almost any family in the province if he chose; and that he chose at times I knew well, as did my hostess. Yet she was a woman of courage and nobility of thought, and I knew well where her daughter got her good flavor of mind. I could see something devilish in the smile at Doltaire's lip's, but his look was wandering between Alixe and me, and he replied urbanely, "I have ambition yet--to connive at captivity"; and then he looked full and meaningly at her. I can see her now, her hand on the high back of a great oak chair, the lace of her white sleeve falling away, and her soft arm showing, her eyes on his without wavering. They did not drop, nor turn aside; they held straight on, calm, strong--and understanding. By that look I saw she read him; she, who had seen so little of the world, felt what he was, and met his invading interest firmly, yet sadly; for I knew long after that a smother was at her heart then, foreshadowings of dangers that would try her as few women are tried. Thank God that good women are born with greater souls for trial than men; that, given once an anchor for their hearts, they hold until the cables break. When we were about to enter the dining-room, I saw, to my joy, Madame incline towards Doltaire, and I knew that Alixe was for myself--though her mother wished it little, I am sure. As she took my arm, her finger-tips plunged softly into the velvet of my sleeve, giving me a thrill of courage. I felt my spirits rise, and I set myself to carry things off gaily, to have this last hour with her clear of gloom, for it seemed easy to think that we should meet no more. As we passed into the dining-room, I said, as I had said the first time I went to dinner in her father's house, "Shall we be flippant, or grave?" I guessed that it would touch her. She raised her eyes to mine and answered, "We are grave; let us seem flippant." In those days I had a store of spirits. I was seldom dismayed, for life had been such a rough-and-tumble game that I held to cheerfulness and humour as a hillsman to his broadsword, knowing it the greatest of weapons with a foe, and the very stone and mortar of friendship. So we were gay, touching lightly on events around us, laughing at gossip of the doorways (I in my poor French), casting small stones at whatever drew our notice, not forgetting a throw or two at Chateau Bigot, the Intendant's country house at Charlesbourg, five miles away, where base plots were hatched, reputations soiled, and all clean things dishonoured. But Alixe, the sweetest soul France ever gave the world, could not know all I knew; guessing only at heavy carousals, cards, song, and raillery, with far-off hints of feet lighter than fit in cavalry boots dancing among the glasses on the table. I was never before so charmed with her swift intelligence, for I never had great nimbleness of thought, nor power to make nice play with the tongue. "You have been three years with us," suddenly said her father, passing me the wine. "How time has flown! How much has happened!" "Madame Cournal's husband has made three million francs," said Doltaire, with dry irony and truth. Duvarney shrugged a shoulder, stiffened; for, oblique as the suggestion was, he did not care to have his daughter hear it. "And Vaudreuil has sent bees buzzing to Versailles about Bigot and Company," added the impish satirist. Madame Duvarney responded with a look of interest, and the Seigneur's eyes steadied to his plate. All at once by that I saw the Seigneur had known of the Governor's action, and maybe had counseled with him, siding against Bigot. If that were so--as it proved to be--he was in a nest of scorpions; for who among them would spare him: Marin, Cournal, Rigaud, the Intendant himself? Such as he were thwarted right and left in this career of knavery and public evils. "And our people have turned beggars; poor and starved, they beg at the door of the King's storehouse--it is well called La Friponne," said Madame Duvarney, with some heat; for she was ever liberal to the poor, and she had seen manor after manor robbed, and peasant farmers made to sell their corn for a song, to be sold to them again at famine prices by La Friponne. Even now Quebec was full of pilgrim poor begging against the hard winter, and execrating their spoilers. Doltaire was too fond of digging at the heart of things not to admit she spoke truth. "La Pompadour et La Friponne! Qu'est que cela, mon petit homme?" "Les deux terribles, ma chere mignonne, Mais, c'est cela-- La Pompadour et La Friponne!" He said this with cool drollery and point, in the patois of the native, so that he set us all laughing, in spite of our mutual apprehensions. Then he continued, "And the King has sent a chorus to the play, with eyes for the preposterous make-believe, and more, no purse to fill." We all knew he meant himself, and we knew also that so far as money went he spoke true; that though hand-in-glove with Bigot, he was poor, save for what he made at the gaming-table and got from France. There was the thing that might have clinched me to him, had matters been other than they were; for all my life I have loathed the sordid soul, and I would rather, in these my ripe years, eat with a highwayman who takes his life in his hands than with the civilian who robs his king and the king's poor, and has no better trick than false accounts, nor better friend than the pettifogging knave. Doltaire had no burning love for France, and little faith in anything; for he was of those Versailles water-flies who recked not if the world blackened to cinders when their lights went out. As will be seen by-and-bye, he had come here to seek me, and to serve the Grande Marquise. More speech like this followed, and amid it all, with the flower of the world beside me at this table, I remembered my mother's words before I bade her good-bye and set sail from Glasgow for Virginia. "Keep it in mind, Robert," she said, "that an honest love is the thing to hold you honest with yourself. 'Tis to be lived for, and fought for, and died for. Ay, be honest in your loves. Be true." And there I took an oath, my hand clenched beneath the table, that Alixe should be my wife if better days came; when I was done with citadel and trial and captivity, if that might be. The evening was well forward when Doltaire, rising from his seat in the drawing-room, bowed to me, and said, "If it pleases you, monsieur?" I rose also, and prepared to go. There was little talk, yet we all kept up a play of cheerfulness. When I came to take the Seigneur's hand, Doltaire was a distance off, talking to Madame. "Moray," said the Seigneur quickly and quietly, "trials portend for both of us." He nodded towards Doltaire. "But we shall come safe through," said I. "Be of good courage, and adieu," he answered, as Doltaire turned towards us. My last words were to Alixe. The great moment of my life was come. If I could but say one thing to her out of earshot, I would stake all on the hazard. She was standing beside a cabinet, very still, a strange glow in her eyes, a new, fine firmness at the lips. I felt I dared not look as I would; I feared there was no chance now to speak what I would. But I came slowly up the room with her mother. As we did so, Doltaire exclaimed and started to the window, and the Seigneur and Madame followed. A red light was showing on the panes. I caught Alixe's eye, and held it, coming quickly to her. All backs were on us. I took her hand and pressed it to my lips suddenly. She gave a little gasp, and I saw her bosom heave. "I am going from prison to prison," said I, "and I leave a loved jailer behind." She understood. "Your jailer goes also," she answered, with a sad smile. "I love you! I love you!" I urged. She was very pale. "Oh, Robert!" she whispered timidly; and then, "I will be brave, I will help you, and I will not forget. God guard you." That was all, for Doltaire turned to me then and said, "They've made of La Friponne a torch to light you to the citadel, monsieur." A moment afterwards we were outside in the keen October air, a squad of soldiers attending, our faces towards the citadel heights. I looked back, doffing my cap. The Seigneur and Madame stood at the door, but my eyes were for a window where stood Alixe. The reflection of the far-off fire bathed the glass, and her face had a glow, the eyes shining through, intent and most serious. Yet how brave she was, for she lifted her handkerchief, shook it a little, and smiled. As though the salute were meant for him, Doltaire bowed twice impressively, and then we stepped forward, the great fire over against the Heights lighting us and hurrying us on. We scarcely spoke as we went, though Doltaire hummed now and then the air La Pompadour et La Friponne. As we came nearer I said, "Are you sure it is La Friponne, monsieur?" "It is not," he said, pointing. "See!" The sky was full of shaking sparks, and a smell of burning grain came down the wind. "One of the granaries, then," I added, "not La Friponne itself?" To this he nodded assent, and we pushed on. II THE MASTER OF THE KING'S MAGAZINE "What fools," said Doltaire presently, "to burn the bread and oven too! If only they were less honest in a world of rogues, poor moles!" Coming nearer, we saw that La Friponne itself was safe, but one warehouse was doomed and another threatened. The streets were full of people, and thousands of excited peasants, laborers, and sailors were shouting, "Down with the palace! Down with Bigot!" We came upon the scene at the most critical moment. None of the Governors soldiers were in sight, but up the Heights we could hear the steady tramp of General Montcalm's infantry as they came on. Where were Bigot's men? There was a handful--one company--drawn up before La Friponne, idly leaning on their muskets, seeing the great granary burn, and watching La Friponne threatened by the mad crowd and the fire. There was not a soldier before the Intendant's palace, not a light in any window. "What is this weird trick of Bigot's?" said Doltaire, musing. The Governor, we knew, had been out of the city that day. But where was Bigot? At a word from Doltaire we pushed forward towards the palace, the soldiers keeping me in their midst. We were not a hundred feet from the great steps when two gates at the right suddenly swung open, and a carriage rolled out swiftly and dashed down into the crowd. I recognized the coachman first--Bigot's, an old one-eyed soldier of surpassing nerve, and devoted to his master. The crowd parted right and left. Suddenly the carriage stopped, and Bigot stood up, folding his arms, and glancing round with a disdainful smile without speaking a word. He carried a paper in one hand. Here were at least two thousand armed and unarmed peasants, sick with misery and oppression, in the presence of their undefended tyrant. One shot, one blow of a stone, one stroke of a knife--to the end of a shameless pillage. But no hand was raised to do the deed. The roar of voices subsided--he waited for it--and silence was broken only by the crackle of the burning building, the tramp of Montcalm's soldiers in Mountain Street, and the tolling of the cathedral bell. I thought it strange that almost as Bigot came out the wild clanging gave place to a cheerful peal. After standing for a moment, looking round him, his eye resting on Doltaire and myself (we were but a little distance from him), Bigot said in a loud voice: "What do you want with me? Do you think I may be moved by threats? Do you punish me by burning your own food, which, when the English are at our doors, is your only hope? Fools! How easily could I turn my cannon and my men upon you! You think to frighten me. Who do you think I am?--a Bostonnais or an Englishman? You--revolutionists! T'sh! You are wild dogs without a leader. You want one that you can trust; you want no coward, but one who fears you not at your wildest. Well, I will be your leader. I do not fear you, and I do not love you, for how have you deserved my love? By ingratitude and aspersion? Who has the King's favour? Francois Bigot. Who has the ear of the Grande Marquise? Francois Bigot. Who stands firm while others tremble lest their power pass to-morrow? Francois Bigot. Who else dare invite revolution, this danger"--his hand sweeping to the flames--"who but Francois Bigot?" He paused for a moment, and looking up to the leader of Montcalm's soldiers on the Heights, waved him back; then he continued: "And to-day, when I am ready to give you great news, you play the mad dog's game; you destroy what I had meant to give you in our hour of danger, when those English came. I made you suffer a little, that you might live then. Only to-day, because of our great and glorious victory--" He paused again. The peal of bells became louder. Far up on the Heights we heard the calling of bugles and the beating of drums; and now I saw the whole large plan, the deep dramatic scheme. He had withheld the news of the victory that he might announce it when it would most turn to his own glory. Perhaps he had not counted on the burning of the warehouse, but this would tell now in his favour. He was not a large man, but he drew himself up with dignity, and continued in a contemptuous tone: "Because of our splendid victory, I designed to tell you all my plans, and, pitying your trouble, divide among you at the smallest price, that all might pay, the corn which now goes to feed the stars." At that moment some one from the Heights above called out shrilly, "What lie is in that paper, Francois Bigot?" I looked up, as did the crowd. A woman stood upon a point of the great rock, a red robe hanging on her, her hair free over her shoulders, her finger pointing at the Intendant. Bigot only glanced up, then smoothed out the paper. He said to the people in a clear but less steady voice, for I could see that the woman had disturbed him, "Go pray to be forgiven for your insolence and folly. His most Christian Majesty is triumphant upon the Ohio. The English have been killed in thousands, and their General with them. Do you not hear the joy-bells in the Church of Our Lady of the Victories? and more--listen!" There burst from the Heights on the other side a cannon shot, and then another and another. There was a great commotion, and many ran to Bigot's carriage, reached in to touch his hand, and called down blessings on him. "See that you save the other granaries," he urged, adding, with a sneer, "and forget not to bless La Friponne in your prayers!" It was a clever piece of acting. Presently from the Heights above came the woman's voice again, so piercing that the crowd turned to her. "Francois Bigot is a liar and a traitor!" she cried. "Beware of Francois Bigot! God has cast him out." A dark look came upon Bigot's face; but presently he turned, and gave a sign to some one near the palace. The doors of the courtyard flew open, and out came squad after squad of soldiers. In a moment, they, with the people, were busy carrying water to pour upon the side of the endangered warehouse. Fortunately the wind was with them, else it and the palace also would have been burned that night. The Intendant still stood in his carriage watching and listening to the cheers of the people. At last he beckoned to Doltaire and to me. We both went over. "Doltaire, we looked for you at dinner," he said. "Was Captain Moray"--nodding towards me--"lost among the petticoats? He knows the trick of cup and saucer. Between the sip and click he sucked in secrets from our garrison--a spy where had been a soldier, as we thought. You once wore a sword, Captain Moray--eh?" "If the Governor would grant me leave, I would not only wear, but use one, your excellency knows well where," said I. "Large speaking, Captain Moray. They do that in Virginia, I am told." "In Gascony there's quiet, your excellency." Doltaire laughed outright, for it was said that Bigot, in his coltish days, had a shrewish Gascon wife, whom he took leave to send to heaven before her time. I saw the Intendant's mouth twitch angrily. "Come," he said, "you have a tongue; we'll see if you have a stomach. You've languished with the girls; you shall have your chance to drink with Francois Bigot. Now, if you dare, when we have drunk to the first cockcrow, should you be still on your feet, you'll fight some one among us, first giving ample cause." "I hope, your excellency," I replied, with a touch of vanity, "I have still some stomach and a wrist. I will drink to cockcrow, if you will. And if my sword prove the stronger, what?" "There's the point," he said. "Your Englishman loves not fighting for fighting's sake, Doltaire; he must have bonbons for it. Well, see: if your sword and stomach prove the stronger, you shall go your ways to where you will. Voila!" If I could but have seen a bare portion of the craftiness of this pair of devils artisans! They both had ends to serve in working ill to me, and neither was content that I should be shut away in the citadel, and no more. There was a deeper game playing. I give them their due: the trap was skillful, and in those times, with great things at stake, strategy took the place of open fighting here and there. For Bigot I was to be a weapon against another; for Doltaire, against myself. What a gull they must have thought me! I might have known that, with my lost papers on the way to France, they must hold me tight here till I had been tried, nor permit me to escape. But I was sick of doing nothing, thinking with horror on a long winter in the citadel, and I caught at the least straw of freedom. "Captain Moray will like to spend a couple of hours at his lodgings before he joins us at the palace," the Intendant said, and with a nod to me he turned to his coachman. The horses wheeled, and in a moment the great doors opened, and he had passed inside to applause, though here and there among the crowd was heard a hiss, for the Scarlet Woman had made an impression. The Intendant's men essayed to trace these noises, but found no one. Looking again to the Heights, I saw that the woman had gone. Doltaire noted my glance and the inquiry in my face, and he said: "Some bad fighting hours with the Intendant at Chateau Bigot, and then a fever, bringing a kind of madness: so the story creeps about, as told by Bigot's enemies." Just at this point I felt a man hustle me as he passed. One of the soldiers made a thrust at him, and he turned round. I caught his eye, and it flashed something to me. It was Voban the barber, who had shaved me every day for months when I first came, while my arm was stiff from a wound got fighting the French on the Ohio. It was quite a year since I had met him, and I was struck by the change in his face. It had grown much older; its roundness was gone. We had had many a talk together; he helping me with French, I listening to the tales of his early life in France, and to the later tale of a humble love, and of the home which he was fitting up for his Mathilde, a peasant girl of much beauty, I was told, but whom I had never seen. I remembered at that moment, as he stood in the crowd looking at me, the piles of linen which he had bought at Ste. Anne de Beaupre, and the silver pitcher which his grandfather had got from the Duc de Valois for an act of merit. Many a time we had discussed the pitcher and the deed, and fingered the linen, now talking in French, now in English; for in France, years before, he had been a valet to an English officer at King Louis's court. But my surprise had been great when I learned that this English gentleman was no other than the best friend I ever had, next to my parents and my grandfather. Voban was bound to Sir John Godric by as strong ties of affection as I. What was more, by a secret letter I had sent to George Washington, who was then as good a Briton as myself, I had been able to have my barber's young brother, a prisoner of war, set free. I felt that he had something to say to me. But he turned away and disappeared among the crowd. I might have had some clue if I had known that he had been crouched behind the Intendant's carriage while I was being bidden to the supper. I did not guess then that there was anything between him and the Scarlet Woman who railed at Bigot. In a little while I was at my lodgings, soldiers posted at my door and one in my room. Doltaire gone to his own quarters promising to call for me within two hours. There was little for me to do but to put in a bag the fewest necessaries, to roll up my heavy cloak, to stow safely my pipes and two goodly packets of tobacco, which were to be my chiefest solace for many a long day, and to write some letters--one to Governor Dinwiddie, one to George Washington, and one to my partner in Virginia, telling them my fresh misfortunes, and begging them to send me money, which, however useless in my captivity, would be important in my fight for life and freedom. I did not write intimately of my state, for I was not sure my letters would ever pass outside Quebec. There were only two men I could trust to do the thing. One was a fellow-countryman, Clark, a ship-carpenter, who, to save his neck and to spare his wife and child, had turned Catholic, but who hated all Frenchmen barbarously at heart, remembering two of his bairns butchered before his eyes. The other was Voban. I knew that though Voban might not act, he would not betray me. But how to reach either of them? It was clear that I must bide my chances. One other letter I wrote, brief but vital, in which I begged the sweetest girl in the world not to have uneasiness because of me; that I trusted to my star and to my innocence to convince my judges; and begging her, if she could, to send me a line at the citadel. I told her I knew well how hard it would be, for her mother and her father would not now look upon my love with favour. But I trusted all to time and Providence. I sealed my letters, put them in my pocket, and sat down to smoke and think while I waited for Doltaire. To the soldier on duty, whom I did not notice at first, I now offered a pipe and a glass of wine, which he accepted rather gruffly, but enjoyed, if I might judge by his devotion to them. By-and-bye, without any relevancy at all, he said abruptly, "If a little sooner she had come--aho!" For a moment I could not think what he meant; but soon I saw. "The palace would have been burnt if the girl in scarlet had come sooner--eh?" I asked. "She would have urged the people on?" "And Bigot burnt, too, maybe," he answered. "Fire and death--eh?" I offered him another pipeful of tobacco. He looked doubtful, but accepted. "Aho! And that Voban, he would have had his hand in," he growled. I began to get more light. "She was shut up at Chateau Bigot--hand of iron and lock of steel--who knows the rest! But Voban was for always," he added presently. The thing was clear. The Scarlet Woman was Mathilde. So here was the end of Voban's little romance--of the fine linen from Ste. Anne de Beaupre and the silver pitcher for the wedding wine. I saw, or felt, that in Voban I might find now a confederate, if I put my hard case on Bigot's shoulders. "I can't see why she stayed with Bigot," I said tentatively. "Break the dog's leg, it can't go hunting bones--mais, non! Holy, how stupid are you English!" "Why doesn't the Intendant lock her up now? She's dangerous to him. You remember what she said?" "Tonnerre, you shall see to-morrow," he answered; "now all the sheep go bleating with the bell. Bigot--Bigot--Bigot--there is nothing but Bigot! But, pish! Vaudreuil the Governor is the great man, and Montcalm, aho! son of Mahomet! You shall see. Now they dance to Bigot's whistling; he will lock her safe enough to-morrow, 'less some one steps in to help her. Before to-night she never spoke of him before the world--but a poor daft thing, going about all sad and wild. She missed her chance to-night--aho!" "Why are you not with Montcalm's soldiers?" I asked. "You like him better." "I was with him, but my time was out, and I left him for Bigot. Pish! I left him for Bigot, for the militia!" He raised his thumb to his nose, and spread out his fingers. Again light dawned on me. He was still with the Governor in all fact, though soldiering for Bigot--a sort of watch upon the Intendant. I saw my chance. If I could but induce this fellow to fetch me Voban! There was yet an hour before I was to go to the intendance. I called up what looks of candour were possible to me, and told him bluntly that I wished Voban to bear a letter for me to the Seigneur Duvarney's. At that he cocked his ear and shook his bushy head, fiercely stroking his mustaches. I knew that I should stake something if I said it was a letter for Mademoiselle Duvarney, but I knew also that if he was still the Governor's man in Bigot's pay he would understand the Seigneur's relations with the Governor. And a woman in the case with a soldier--that would count for something. So I said it was for her. Besides, I had no other resource but to make a friend among my enemies, if I could, while yet there was a chance. It was like a load lifted from me when I saw his mouth and eyes open wide in a big soundless laugh, which came to an end with a voiceless aho! I gave him another tumbler of wine. Before he took it, he made a wide mouth at me again, and slapped his leg. After drinking, he said, "Poom--what good? They're going to hang you for a spy." "That rope's not ready yet," I answered. "I'll tie a pretty knot in another string first, I trust." "Damned if you haven't spirit!" said he. "That Seigneur Duvarney, I know him; and I know his son the ensign--whung, what saltpetre is he! And the ma'm'selle--excellent, excellent; and a face, such a face, and a seat like leeches in the saddle. And you a British officer mewed up to kick your heels till gallows day! So droll, my dear!" "But will you fetch Voban?" I asked. "To trim your hair against the supper to-night--eh, like that?" As he spoke he puffed out his red cheeks with wide boylike eyes, burst his lips in another soundless laugh, and laid a finger beside his nose. His marvellous innocence of look and his peasant openness hid, I saw, great shrewdness and intelligence--an admirable man for Vaudreuil's purpose, as admirable for mine. I knew well that if I had tried to bribe him he would have scouted me, or if I had made a motion for escape he would have shot me off-hand. But a lady--that appealed to him; and that she was the Seigneur Duvarney's daughter did the rest. "Yes, yes," said I, "one must be well appointed in soul and body when one sups with his Excellency and Monsieur Doltaire." "Limed inside and chalked outside," he retorted gleefully. "But M'sieu' Doltaire needs no lime, for he has no soul. No, by Sainte Helois! The good God didn't make him. The devil laughed, and that laugh grew into M'sieu' Doltaire. But brave!--no kicking pulse is in his body." "You will send for Voban--now?" I asked softly. He was leaning against the door as he spoke. He reached and put the tumbler on a shelf, then turned and opened the door, his face all altered to a grimness. "Attend here, Labrouk!" he called; and on the soldier coming, he blurted out in scorn, "Here's this English captain can't go to supper without Voban's shears to snip him. Go fetch him, for I'd rather hear a calf in a barn-yard than this whing-whanging for 'M'sieu' Voban!'" He mocked my accent in the last two words, so that the soldier grinned, and at once started away. Then he shut the door, and turned to me again, and said more seriously, "How long have we before Monsieur comes?"--meaning Doltaire. "At least an hour," said I. "Good," he rejoined, and then he smoked while I sat thinking. It was near an hour before we heard footsteps outside; then came a knock, and Voban was shown in. "Quick, m'sieu'," he said. "M'sieu' is almost at our heels." "This letter," said I, "to Mademoiselle Duvarney," and I handed four: hers, and those to Governor Dinwiddie, to Mr. Washington, and to my partner. He quickly put them in his coat, nodding. The soldier--I have not yet mentioned his name--Gabord, did not know that more than one passed into Voban's hands. "Off with your coat, m'sieu'," said Voban, whipping out his shears, tossing his cap aside, and rolling down his apron. "M'sieu' is here." I had off my coat, was in a chair in a twinkling, and he was clipping softly at me as Doltaire's hand turned the handle of the door. "Beware--to-night!" Voban whispered. "Come to me in the prison," said I. "Remember your brother!" His lips twitched. "M'sieu', I will if I can." This he said in my ear as Doltaire entered and came forward. "Upon my life!" Doltaire broke out. "These English gallants! They go to prison curled and musked by Voban. VOBAN--a name from the court of the King, and it garnishes a barber. Who called you, Voban?" "My mother, with the cure's help, m'sieu'." Doltaire paused, with a pinch of snuff at his nose, and replied lazily, "I did not say 'Who called you VOBAN?' Voban, but who called you here, Voban?" I spoke up testily then of purpose: "What would you have, monsieur? The citadel has better butchers than barbers. I sent for him." He shrugged his shoulders and came over to Voban. "Turn round, my Voban," he said. "Voban--and such a figure! a knee, a back like that!" Then, while my heart stood still, he put forth a finger and touched the barber on the chest. If he should touch the letters! I was ready to seize them--but would that save them? Twice, thrice, the finger prodded Voban's breast, as if to add an emphasis to his words. "In Quebec you are misplaced, Monsieur le Voban. Once a wasp got into a honeycomb and died." I knew he was hinting at the barber's resentment of the poor Mathilde's fate. Something strange and devilish leapt into the man's eyes, and he broke out bitterly, "A honey-bee got into a nest of wasps--and died." I thought of the Scarlet Woman on the hill. Voban looked for a moment as if he might do some wild thing. His spirit, his devilry, pleased Doltaire, and he laughed. "Who would have thought our Voban had such wit? The trade of barber is double-edged. Razors should be in fashion at Versailles." Then he sat down, while Voban made a pretty show of touching off my person. A few minutes passed so, in which the pealing of bells, the shouting of the people, the beating of drums, and the calling of bugles came to us clearly. A half hour afterwards, on our way to the Intendant's palace, we heard the Benedictus chanted in the Church of the Recollets as we passed--hundreds kneeling outside, and responding to the chant sung within: "That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hands of all that hate us." At the corner of a building which we passed, a little away from the crowd, I saw a solitary cloaked figure. The words of the chant, following us, I could hear distinctly: "That we, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, might serve Him without fear." And then, from the shadowed corner came in a high, melancholy voice the words: "To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace." Looking closer, I saw it was Mathilde. Doltaire smiled as I turned and begged a moment's time to speak to her. "To pray with the lost angel and sup with the Intendant, all in one night--a liberal taste, monsieur; but who shall stay the good Samaritan!" They stood a little distance away, and I went over to her and said, "Mademoiselle--Mathilde, do you not know me?" Her abstracted eye fired up, as there ran to her brain some little sprite out of the House of Memory and told her who I was. "There were two lovers in the world," she said: "the Mother of God forgot them, and the devil came. I am the Scarlet Woman," she went on; "I made this red robe from the curtains of Hell--" Poor soul! My own trouble seemed then as a speck among the stars to hers. I took her hand and held it, saying again, "Do you not know me? Think, Mathilde!" I was not sure that she had ever seen me, to know me, but I thought it possible; for, as a hostage, I had been much noticed in Quebec, and Voban had, no doubt, pointed me out to her. Light leapt from her black eye, and then she said, putting her finger on her lips, "Tell all the lovers to hide. I have seen a hundred Francois Bigots." I looked at her, saying nothing--I knew not what to say. Presently her eye steadied to mine, and her intellect rallied. "You are a prisoner, too," she said; "but they will not kill you: they will keep you till the ring of fire grows in your head, and then you will make your scarlet robe, and go out, but you will never find It--never. God hid first, and then It hides.... It hides, that which you lost--It hides, and you can not find It again. You go hunting, hunting, but you can not find It." My heart was pinched with pain. I understood her. She did not know her lover now at all. If Alixe and her mother at the Manor could but care for her, I thought. But alas! what could I do? It were useless to ask her to go to the Manor; she would not understand. Perhaps there come to the disordered mind flashes of insight, illuminations and divinations, greater than are given to the sane, for she suddenly said in a whisper, touching me with a nervous finger, "I will go and tell her where to hide. They shall not find her. I know the woodpath to the Manor. Hush! she shall own all I have--except the scarlet robe. She showed me where the May-apples grew. Go,"--she pushed me gently away--"go to your prison, and pray to God. But you can not kill Francois Bigot, he is a devil." Then she thrust into my hands a little wooden cross, which she took from many others at her girdle. "If you wear that, the ring of fire will not grow," she said. "I will go by the woodpath, and give her one, too. She shall live with me: I will spread the cedar branches and stir the fire. She shall be safe. Hush! Go, go softly, for their wicked eyes are everywhere, the were-wolves!" She put her fingers on my lips for an instant, and then, turning, stole softly away towards the St. Charles River. Doltaire's mockery brought me back to myself. "So much for the beads of the addled; now for the bowls of sinful man," said he. III THE WAGER AND THE SWORD As I entered the Intendant's palace with Doltaire I had a singular feeling of elation. My spirits rose unaccountably, and I felt as though it were a fete night, and the day's duty over, the hour of play was come. I must needs have felt ashamed of it then, and now, were I not sure it was some unbidden operation of the senses. Maybe a merciful Spirit sees how, left alone, we should have stumbled and lost ourselves in our own gloom, and so gives us a new temper fitted to our needs. I remember that at the great door I turned back and smiled upon the ruined granary, and sniffed the air laden with the scent of burnt corn--the peoples bread; that I saw old men and women who could not be moved by news of victory, shaking with cold, even beside this vast furnace, and peevishly babbling of their hunger, and I did not say, "Poor souls!" that for a time the power to feel my own misfortunes seemed gone, and a hard, light indifference came on me. For it is true I came into the great dining-hall, and looked upon the long loaded table, with its hundred candles, its flagons and pitchers of wine, and on the faces of so many idle, careless gentlemen bid to a carouse, with a manner, I believe, as reckless and jaunty as their own. And I kept it up, though I saw it was not what they had looked for. I did not at once know who was there, but presently, at a distance from me, I saw the face of Juste Duvarney, the brother of my sweet Alixe, a man of but twenty or so, who had a name for wildness, for no badness that I ever heard of, and for a fiery temper. He was in the service of the Governor, an ensign. He had been little at home since I had come to Quebec, having been employed up to the past year in the service of the Governor of Montreal. We bowed, but he made no motion to come to me, and the Intendant engaged me almost at once in gossip of the town; suddenly, however, diverging upon some questions of public tactics and civic government. He much surprised me, for though I knew him brave and able, I had never thought of him save as the adroit politician and servant of the King, the tyrant and the libertine. I might have known by that very scene a few hours before that he had a wide, deep knowledge of human nature, and despised it; unlike Doltaire, who had a keener mind, was more refined even in wickedness, and, knowing the world, laughed at it more than he despised it, which was the sign of the greater mind. And indeed, in spite of all the causes I had to hate Doltaire, it is but just to say he had by nature all the great gifts--misused and disordered as they were. He was the product of his age; having no real moral sense, living life wantonly, making his own law of right or wrong. As a lad, I was taught to think the evil person carried evil in his face, repelling the healthy mind. But long ago I found that this was error. I had no reason to admire Doltaire, and yet to this hour his handsome face, with its shadows and shifting lights, haunts me, charms me. The thought came to me as I talked with the Intendant, and I looked round the room. Some present were of coarse calibre--bushranging sons of seigneurs and petty nobles, dashing and profane, and something barbarous; but most had gifts of person and speech, and all seemed capable. My spirits continued high. I sprang alertly to meet wit and gossip, my mind ran nimbly here and there, I filled the role of honoured guest. But when came the table and wine, a change befell me. From the first drop I drank, my spirits suffered a decline. On one side the Intendant rallied me, on the other Doltaire. I ate on, drank on; but while smiling by the force of will, I grew graver little by little. Yet it was a gravity which had no apparent motive, for I was not thinking of my troubles, not even of the night's stake and the possible end of it all; simply a sort of gray colour of the mind, a stillness in the nerves, a general seriousness of the senses. I drank, and the wine did not affect me, as voices got loud and louder, and glasses rang, and spurs rattled on shuffling heels, and a scabbard clanged on a chair. I seemed to feel and know it all in some far-off way, but I was not touched by the spirit of it, was not a part of it. I watched the reddened cheeks and loose scorching mouths around me with a sort of distant curiosity, and the ribald jests flung right and left struck me not at all acutely. It was as if I were reading a Book of Bacchus. I drank on evenly, not doggedly, and answered jest for jest without a hot breath of drunkenness. I looked several times at Juste Duvarney, who sat not far away, on the other side of the table, behind a grand piece of silver filled with October roses. He was drinking hard, and Doltaire, sitting beside him, kept him at it. At last the silver piece was shifted, and he and I could see each other fairly. Now and then Doltaire spoke across to me, but somehow no word passed between Duvarney and myself. Suddenly, as if by magic--I know it was preconcerted--the talk turned on the events of the evening and on the defeat of the British. Then, too, as strangely I began to be myself again, amid a sense of my position grew upon me. I had been withdrawn from all real feeling and living for hours, but I believe that same suspension was my salvation. For with every man present deeply gone in liquor round me--every man save Doltaire--I was sane and steady, and settling into a state of great alertness, determined on escape, if that could be, and bent on turning every chance to serve my purposes. Now and again I caught my own name mentioned with a sneer, then with remarks of surprise, then with insolent laughter. I saw it all. Before dinner some of the revellers had been told of the new charge against me, and, by instruction, had kept it till the inflammable moment. Then, when the why and wherefore of my being at this supper were in the hazard, the stake, as a wicked jest of Bigot's, was mentioned. I could see the flame grow inch by inch, fed by the Intendant and Doltaire, whose hateful final move I was yet to see. For one instant I had a sort of fear, for I was sure they meant I should not leave the room alive; but anon I felt a river of fiery anger flow through me, rousing me, making me loathe the faces of them all. Yet not all, for in one pale face, with dark, brilliant eyes, I saw the looks of my flower of the world: the colour of her hair in his, the clearness of the brow, the poise of the head--how handsome he was!--the light, springing step, like a deer on the sod of June. I call to mind when I first saw him. He was sitting in a window of the Manor, just after he had come from Montreal, playing a violin which had once belonged to De Casson, the famous priest whose athletic power and sweet spirit endeared him to New France. His fresh cheek was bent to the brown, delicate wood, and he was playing to his sister the air of the undying chanson, "Je vais mourir pour ma belle reine." I loved the look of his face, like that of a young Apollo, open, sweet, and bold, all his body having the epic strength of life. I wished that I might have him near me as a comrade, for out of my hard experience I could teach him much, and out of his youth he could soften my blunt nature, by comradeship making flexuous the hard and ungenial. I went on talking to the Intendant, while some of the guests rose and scattered about the rooms, at tables, to play picquet, the jesting on our cause and the scorn of myself abating not at all. I would not have it thought that anything was openly coarse or brutal; it was all by innuendo, and brow-lifting, and maddening, allusive phrases such as it is thought fit for gentlefolk to use instead of open charge. There was insult in a smile, contempt in the turn of a shoulder, challenge in the flicking of a handkerchief. With great pleasure I could have wrung their noses one by one, and afterwards have met them tossing sword-points in the same order. I wonder now that I did not tell them so, for I was ever hasty; but my brain was clear that night, and I held myself in proper check, letting each move come from my enemies. There was no reason why I should have been at this wild feast at all, I a prisoner, accused falsely of being a spy, save because of some plot by which I was to have fresh suffering and some one else be benefited--though how that could be I could not guess at first. But soon I understood everything. Presently I heard a young gentleman say to Duvarney over my shoulder: "Eating comfits and holding yarn--that was his doing at your manor when Doltaire came hunting him." "He has dined at your table, Lancy," broke out Duvarney hotly. "But never with our ladies," was the biting answer. "Should prisoners make conditions?" was the sharp, insolent retort. The insult was conspicuous, and trouble might have followed, but that Doltaire came between them, shifting the attack. "Prisoners, my dear Duvarney," said he, "are most delicate and exacting; they must be fed on wine and milk. It is an easy life, and hearts grow soft for them. As thus-- Indeed, it is most sad: so young and gallant; in speech, too, so confiding! And if we babble all our doings to him, think you he takes it seriously? No, no--so gay and thoughtless, there is a thoroughfare from ear to ear, and all's lost on the other side. Poor simple gentleman, he is a claimant on our courtesy, a knight without a sword, a guest without the power to leave us--he shall make conditions, he shall have his caprice. La, la! my dear Duvarney and my Lancy!" He spoke in a clear, provoking tone, putting a hand upon the shoulder of each young gentleman as he talked, his eyes wandering over me idly, and beyond me. I saw that he was now sharpening the sickle to his office. His next words made this more plain to me: "And if a lady gives a farewell sign to one she favours for the moment, shall not the prisoner take it as his own?" (I knew he was recalling Alixe's farewell gesture to me at the manor.) "Who shall gainsay our peacock? Shall the guinea cock? The golden crumb was thrown to the guinea cock, but that's no matter. The peacock clatters of the crumb." At that he spoke an instant in Duvarney's ear. I saw the lad's face flush, and he looked at me angrily. Then I knew his object: to provoke a quarrel between this young gentleman and myself, which might lead to evil ends; and the Intendant's share in the conspiracy was to revenge himself upon the Seigneur for his close friendship with the Governor. If Juste Duvarney were killed in the duel which they foresaw, so far as Doltaire was concerned I was out of the counting in the young lady's sight. In any case my life was of no account, for I was sure my death was already determined on. Yet it seemed strange that Doltaire should wish me dead, for he had reasons for keeping me alive, as shall be seen. Juste Duvarney liked me once, I knew, but still he had the Frenchman's temper, and had always to argue down his bias against my race, and to cherish a good heart towards me; for he was young, and most sensitive to the opinions of his comrades. I can not express what misery possessed me when I saw him leave Doltaire, and, coming to me where I stood alone, say-- "What secrets found you at our seigneury, monsieur?" I understood the taunt--as though I were the common interrogation mark, the abuser of hospitality, the abominable Paul Pry. But I held my wits together. "Monsieur," said I, "I found the secret of all good life: a noble kindness to the unfortunate." There was a general laugh, led by Doltaire, a concerted influence on the young gentleman. I cursed myself that I had been snared to this trap. "The insolent," responded Duvarney, "not the unfortunate." "Insolence is no crime, at least," I rejoined quietly, "else this room were a penitentiary." There was a moment's pause, and presently, as I kept my eye on him, he raised his handkerchief and flicked me across the face with it, saying, "Then this will be a virtue, and you may have more such virtues as often as you will." In spite of will, my blood pounded in my veins, and a devilish anger took hold of me. To be struck across the face by a beardless Frenchman, scarce past his teens!--it shook me more than now I care to own. I felt my cheek burn, my teeth clinched, and I know a kind of snarl came from me; but again, all in a moment, I caught a turn of his head, a motion of the hand, which brought back Alixe to me. Anger died away, and I saw only a youth flushed with wine, stung by suggestions, with that foolish pride the youngster feels--and he was the youngest of them all--in being as good a man as the best, and as daring as the worst. I felt how useless it would be to try the straightening of matters there, though had we two been alone a dozen words would have been enough. But to try was my duty, and I tried with all my might; almost, for Alixe's sake, with all my heart. "Do not trouble to illustrate your meaning," said I patiently. "Your phrases are clear and to the point." "You bolt from my words," he retorted, "like a shy mare on the curb; you take insult like a donkey on a well-wheel. What fly will the English fish rise to? Now it no more plays to my hook than an August chub." I could not help but admire his spirit and the sharpness of his speech, though it drew me into a deeper quandary. It was clear that he would not be tempered to friendliness; for, as is often so, when men have said things fiercely, their eloquence feeds their passion and convinces them of holiness in their cause. Calmly, but with a heavy heart, I answered: "I wish not to find offense in your words, my friend, for in some good days gone you and I had good acquaintance, and I can not forget that the last hours of a light imprisonment before I entered on a dark one were spent in the home of your father--of the brave Seigneur whose life I once saved." I am sure I should not have mentioned this in any other situation--it seemed as if I were throwing myself on his mercy; but yet I felt it was the only thing to do--that I must bridge this affair, if at cost of some reputation. It was not to be. Here Doltaire, seeing that my words had indeed affected my opponent, said: "A double retreat! He swore to give a challenge to-night, and he cries off like a sheep from a porcupine; his courage is so slack, he dares not move a step to his liberty. It was a bet, a hazard. He was to drink glass for glass with any and all of us, and fight sword for sword with any of us who gave him cause. Having drunk his courage to death, he'd now browse at the feet of those who give him chance to win his stake." His words came slowly and bitingly, yet with an air of damnable nonchalance. I looked round me. Every man present was full-sprung with wine; and a distance away, a gentleman on either side of him, stood the Intendant, smiling detestably, a keen, houndlike look shooting out of his small round eyes. I had had enough; I could bear no more. To be baited like a bear by these Frenchmen--it was aloes in my teeth! I was not sorry then that these words of Juste Duvarney's gave me no chance of escape from fighting; though I would it had been any other man in the room than he. It was on my tongue to say that if some gentleman would take up his quarrel I should be glad to drive mine home, though for reasons I cared not myself to fight Duvarney. But I did not, for I knew that to carry that point farther might rouse a general thought of Alixe, and I had no wish to make matters hard for her. Everything in its own good time, and when I should be free! So, without more ado, I said to him: "Monsieur, the quarrel was of your choosing, not mine. There was no need for strife between us, and you have more to lose than I: more friends, more years of life, more hopes. I have avoided your bait, as you call it, for your sake, not mine own. Now I take it, and you, monsieur, show us what sort of fisherman you are." All was arranged in a moment. As we turned to pass from the room to the courtyard, I noted that Bigot was gone. When we came outside, it was just one, as I could tell by a clock striking in a chamber near. It was cold, and some of the company shivered as we stepped upon the white, frosty stones. The late October air bit the cheek, though now and then a warm, pungent current passed across the courtyard--the breath from the people's burnt corn. Even yet upon the sky was the reflection of the fire, and distant sounds of singing, shouting, and carousal came to us from the Lower Town. We stepped to a corner of the yard and took off our coats; swords were handed us--both excellent, for we had had our choice of many. It was partial moonlight, but there were flitting clouds. That we should have light, however, pine torches had been brought, and these were stuck in the wall. My back was to the outer wall of the courtyard, and I saw the Intendant at a window of the palace looking down at us. Doltaire stood a little apart from the other gentlemen in the courtyard, yet where he could see Duvarney and myself at advantage. Before we engaged, I looked intently into my opponent's face, and measured him carefully with my eye, that I might have his height and figure explicit and exact; for I know how moonlight and fire distort, how the eye may be deceived. I looked for every button; for the spot in his lean, healthy body where I could disable him, spit him, and yet not kill him--for this was the thing furthest from my wishes, God knows. Now the deadly character of the event seemed to impress him, for he was pale, and the liquor he had drunk had given him dark hollows round the eyes, and a gray shining sweat was on his cheek. But his eyes themselves were fiery and keen and there was reckless daring in every turn of his body. I was not long in finding his quality, for he came at me violently from the start, and I had chance to know his strength and weakness also. His hand was quick, his sight clear and sure, his knowledge to a certain point most definite and practical, his mastery of the sword delightful; but he had little imagination, he did not divine, he was merely a brilliant performer, he did not conceive. I saw that if I put him on the defensive I should have him at advantage, for he had not that art of the true swordsman, the prescient quality which foretells the opponents action and stands prepared. There I had him at fatal advantage--could, I felt, give him last reward of insult at my pleasure. Yet a lust of fighting got into me, and it was difficult to hold myself in check at all, nor was it easy to meet his breathless and adroit advances. Then, too, remarks from the bystanders worked me up to a deep sort of anger, and I could feel Doltaire looking at me with that still, cold face of his, an ironical smile at his lips. Now and then, too, a ribald jest came from some young roisterer near, and the fact that I stood alone among sneering enemies wound me up to a point where pride was more active than aught else. I began to press him a little, and I pricked him once. Then a singular feeling possessed me. I would bring this to an end when I had counted ten; I would strike home when I said "ten." So I began, and I was not aware then that I was counting aloud. "One--two--three!" It was weird to the onlookers, for the yard grew still, and you could hear nothing but maybe a shifting foot or a hard breathing. "Four--five--six!" There was a tenseness in the air, and Juste Duvarney, as if he felt a menace in the words, seemed to lose all sense of wariness, and came at me lunging, lunging with great swiftness and heat. I was incensed now, and he must take what fortune might send; one can not guide one's sword to do the least harm fighting as did we. I had lost blood, and the game could go on no longer. "Eight!" I pressed him sharply now. "Nine!" I was preparing for the trick which would end the matter, when I slipped on the frosty stones, now glazed with our tramping back and forth, and, trying to recover myself, left my side open to his sword. It came home, though I partly diverted it. I was forced to my knees, but there, mad, unpardonable youth, he made another furious lunge at me. I threw myself back, deftly avoided the lunge, and he came plump on my upstretched sword, gave a long gasp, and sank down. At that moment the doors of the courtyard opened, and men stepped inside, one coming quickly forward before the rest. It was the Governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil. He spoke, but what he said I knew not, for the stark upturned face of Juste Duvarney was there before me, there was a great buzzing in my ears, and I fell back into darkness. IV THE RAT IN THE TRAP When I waked I was alone. At first nothing was clear to me; my brain was dancing in my head, my sight was obscured, my body painful, my senses were blunted. I was in darkness, yet through an open door there showed a light, which, from the smell and flickering, I knew to be a torch. This, creeping into my senses, helped me to remember that the last thing I saw in the Intendant's courtyard was a burning torch, which suddenly multiplied to dancing hundreds and then went out. I now stretched forth a hand, and it touched a stone wall; I moved, and felt straw under me. Then I fixed my eyes steadily on the open door and the shaking light, and presently it all came to me: the events of the night, and that I was now in a cell of the citadel. Stirring, I found that the wound in my body had been bound and cared for. A loosely tied scarf round my arm showed that some one had lately left me, and would return to finish the bandaging. I raised myself with difficulty, and saw a basin of water, a sponge, bits of cloth, and a pocket-knife. Stupid and dazed though I was, the instinct of self-preservation lived, and I picked up the knife and hid it in my coat. I did it, I believe, mechanically, for a hundred things were going through my mind at the time. All at once there rushed in on me the thought of Juste Duvarney as I saw him last--how long ago was it?--his white face turned to the sky, his arms stretched out, his body dabbled in blood. I groaned aloud. Fool, fool! to be trapped by these lying French! To be tricked into playing their shameless games for them, to have a broken body, to have killed the brother of the mistress of my heart, and so cut myself off from her and ruined my life for nothing--for worse than nothing! I had swaggered, boasted, had taken a challenge for a bout and a quarrel like any hanger-on of a tavern. Suddenly I heard footsteps and voices outside; then one voice, louder than the other, saying, "He hasn't stirred a peg--lies like a log!" It was Gabord. Doltaire's voice replied, "You will not need a surgeon--no?" His tone, as it seemed to me, was less careless than usual. Gabord answered, "I know the trick of it all--what can a surgeon do? This brandy will fetch him to his intellects. And by-and-bye crack'll go his spine--aho!" You have heard a lion growling on a bone. That is how Gabord's voice sounded to me then--a brutal rawness; but it came to my mind also that this was the man who had brought Voban to do me service! "Come, come, Gabord, crack your jaws less, and see you fetch him on his feet again," said Doltaire. "From the seats of the mighty they have said that he must live--to die another day; and see to it, or the mighty folk will say that you must die to live another day--in a better world, my Gabord." There was a moment in which the only sound was that of tearing linen, and I could see the shadows of the two upon the stone wall of the corridor wavering to the light of the torch; then the shadows shifted entirely, and their footsteps came on towards my door. I was lying on my back as when I came to, and, therefore, probably as Gabord had left me, and I determined to appear still in a faint. Through nearly closed eyelids however I saw Gabord enter. Doltaire stood in the doorway watching as the soldier knelt and lifted my arm to take off the bloody scarf. His manner was imperturbable as ever. Even then I wondered what his thoughts were, what pungent phrase he was suiting to the time and to me. I do not know to this day which more interested him--that very pungency of phrase, or the critical events which inspired his reflections. He had no sense of responsibility; his mind loved talent, skill, and cleverness, and though it was scathing of all usual ethics, for the crude, honest life of the poor it had sympathy. I remember remarks of his in the market-place a year before, as he and I watched the peasant in his sabots and the good-wife in her homespun cloth. "These are they," said he, "who will save the earth one day, for they are like it, kin to it. When they are born they lie close to it, and when they die they fall no height to reach their graves. The rest--the world--are like ourselves in dreams: we do not walk; we think we fly, over houses, over trees, over mountains; and then one blessed instant the spring breaks, or the dream gets twisted, and we go falling, falling, in a sickening fear, and, waking up, we find we are and have been on the earth all the while, and yet can make no claim on it, and have no kin with it, and no right to ask anything of it--quelle vie--quelle vie!" Sick as I was, I thought of that as he stood there, looking in at me; and though I knew I ought to hate him, I admired him in spite of all. Presently he said to Gabord, "You'll come to me at noon to-morrow, and see you bring good news. He breathes?" Gabord put a hand on my chest and at my neck, and said at once, "Breath for balloons--aho!" Doltaire threw his cloak over his shoulder and walked away, his footsteps sounding loud in the passages. Gabord began humming to himself as he tied the bandages, and then he reached down for the knife to cut the flying strings. I could see this out of a little corner of my eye. When he did not find it, he settled back on his haunches and looked at me. I could feel his lips puffing out, and I was ready for the "Poom!" that came from him. Then I could feel him stooping over me, and his hot strong breath in my face. I was so near to unconsciousness at that moment by a sudden anxiety that perhaps my feigning had the look of reality. In any case, he thought me unconscious and fancied that he had taken the knife away with him; for he tucked in the strings of the bandage. Then, lifting my head, he held the flask to my lips; for which I was most grateful--I was dizzy and miserably faint. I think I came to with rather more alacrity than was wise, but he was deceived, and his first words were, "Ho, ho! the devil's knocking; who's for home, angels?" It was his way to put all things allusively, using strange figures and metaphors. Yet, when one was used to him and to them, their potency seemed greater than polished speech and ordinary phrase. He offered me more brandy, and then, without preface, I asked him the one question which sank back on my heart like a load of ice even as I sent it forth. "Is he alive?" I inquired. "Is Monsieur Juste Duvarney alive?" With exasperating coolness he winked an eye, to connect the event with what he knew of the letter I had sent to Alixe, and, cocking his head, he blew out his lips with a soundless laugh, and said: "To whisk the brother off to heaven is to say good-bye to sister and pack yourself to Father Peter." "For God's sake, tell me, is the boy dead?" I asked, my voice cracking in my throat. "He's not mounted for the journey yet," he answered, with a shrug, "but the Beast is at the door." I plied my man with questions, and learned that they had carried Juste into the palace for dead, but found life in him, and straightway used all means to save him. A surgeon came, his father and mother were sent for, and when Doltaire had left there was hope that he would live. I learned also that Voban had carried word to the Governor of the deed to be done that night; had for a long time failed to get admittance to him, but was at last permitted to tell his story; and Vaudreuil had gone to Bigot's palace to have me hurried to the citadel, and had come just too late. After answering my first few questions, Gabord say nothing more, and presently he took the torch from the wall and with a gruff good-night prepared to go. When I asked that a light be left, he shook his head, said he had no orders. Whereupon he left me, the heavy door clanging to, the bolts were shot, and I was alone in darkness with my wounds and misery. My cloak had been put into the cell beside my couch, and this I now drew over me, and I lay and thought upon my condition and my prospects, which, as may be seen, were not cheering. I did not suffer great pain from my wounds--only a stiffness that troubled me not at all if I lay still. After an hour or so passed--for it is hard to keep count of time when one's thoughts are the only timekeeper--I fell asleep. I know not how long I slept, but I awoke refreshed. I stretched forth my uninjured arm, moving it about. In spite of will a sort of hopelessness went through me, for I could feel long blades of corn grown up about my couch, an unnatural meadow, springing from the earth floor of my dungeon. I drew the blades between my fingers, feeling towards them as if they were things of life out of place like myself. I wondered what colour they were. Surely, said I to myself, they can not be green, but rather a yellowish white, bloodless, having only fibre, the heart all pinched to death. Last night I had not noted them, yet now, looking back, I saw, as in a picture, Gabord the soldier feeling among them for the knife that I had taken. So may we see things, and yet not be conscious of them at the time, waking to their knowledge afterwards. So may we for years look upon a face without understanding, and then, suddenly, one day it comes flashing out, and we read its hidden story like a book. I put my hand out farther, then brought it back near to my couch, feeling towards its foot mechanically, and now I touched an earthen pan. A small board lay across its top, and moving my fingers along it I found a piece of bread. Then I felt the jar, and knew it was filled with water. Sitting back, I thought hard for a moment. Of this I was sure: the pan and bread were not there when I went to sleep, for this was the spot where my eyes fell naturally while I lay in bed looking towards Doltaire; and I should have remembered it now, even if I had not noted it then. My jailer had brought these while I slept. But it was still dark. I waked again as though out of sleep, startled: I was in a dungeon that had no window! Here I was, packed away in a farthest corner of the citadel, in a deep hole that maybe had not been used for years, to be, no doubt, denied all contact with the outer world--I was going to say FRIENDS, but whom could I name among them save that dear soul who, by last night's madness, should her brother be dead, was forever made dumb and blind to me? Whom had I but her and Voban!--and Voban was yet to be proved. The Seigneur Duvarney had paid all debts he may have owed me, and he now might, because of the injury to his son, leave me to my fate. On Gabord the soldier I could not count at all. There I was, as Doltaire had said, like a rat in a trap. But I would not let panic seize me. So I sat and ate the stale but sweet bread, took a long drink of the good water from the earthen jar, and then, stretching myself out, drew my cloak up to my chin, and settled myself for sleep again. And that I might keep up a kind delusion that I was not quite alone in the bowels of the earth, I reached out my hand and affectionately drew the blades of corn between my fingers. Presently I drew my chin down to my shoulder, and let myself drift out of painful consciousness almost as easily as a sort of woman can call up tears at will. When I waked again, it was without a start or moving, without confusion, and I was bitterly hungry. Beside my couch, with his hands on his hips and his feet thrust out, stood Gabord, looking down at me in a quizzical and unsatisfied way. A torch was burning near him. "Wake up, my dickey-bird," said he in his rough, mocking voice, "and we'll snuggle you into the pot. You've been long hiding; come out of the bush--aho!" I drew myself up painfully. "What is the hour?" I asked, and meanwhile I looked for the earthen jar and the bread. "Hour since when?" said he. "Since it was twelve o'clock last night," I answered. "Fourteen hours since THEN," said he. The emphasis arrested my attention. "I mean," I added, "since the fighting in the courtyard." "Thirty-six hours and more since then, m'sieu' the dormouse," was his reply. I had slept a day and a half since the doors of this cell closed on me. It was Friday then; now it was Sunday afternoon. Gabord had come to me three times, and seeing how sound asleep I was had not disturbed me, but had brought bread and water--my prescribed diet. He stood there, his feet buried in the blanched corn--I could see the long yellowish-white blades--the torch throwing shadows about him, his back against the wall. I looked carefully round my dungeon. There was no a sign of a window; I was to live in darkness. Yet if I were but allowed candles, or a lantern, or a torch, some books, paper, pencil, and tobacco, and the knowledge that I had not killed Juste Duvarney, I could abide the worst with some sort of calmness. How much might have happened, must have happened, in all these hours of sleep! My letter to Alixe should have been delivered long ere this; my trial, no doubt, had been decided on. What had Voban done? Had he any word for me? Dear Lord! here was a mass of questions tumbling one upon the other in my head, while my heart thumped behind my waistcoat like a rubber ball to a prize-fighter's fist. Misfortunes may be so great and many that one may find grim humour and grotesqueness in their impossible conjunction and multiplicity. I remembered at that moment a friend of mine in Virginia, the most unfortunate man I ever knew. Death, desertion, money losses, political defeat, flood, came one upon the other all in two years, and coupled with this was loss of health. One day he said to me: "Robert, I have a perforated lung, my liver is a swelling sponge, eating crowds my waistband like a balloon, I have a swimming in my head and a sinking at my heart, and I can not say litany for happy release from these for my knees creak with rheumatism. The devil has done his worst, Robert, for these are his--plague and pestilence, being final, are the will of God--and, upon my soul, it is an absurd comedy of ills!" At that he had a fit of coughing, and I gave him a glass of spirits, which eased him. "That's better," said I cheerily to him. "It's robbing Peter to pay Paul," he answered; "for I owed it to my head to put the quid refert there, and here it's gone to my lungs to hurry up my breathing. Did you ever think, Robert," he added, "that this breathing of ours is a labor, and that we have to work every second to keep ourselves alive? We have to pump air in and out like a blacksmith's boy." He said it so drolly, though he was deadly ill, that I laughed for half an hour at the stretch, wiping away my tears as I did it; for his pale gray face looked so sorry, with its quaint smile and that odd, dry voice of his. As I sat there in my dungeon, with Gabord cocking his head and his eyes rolling, that scene flashed on me, and I laughed freely--so much so that Gabord sulkily puffed out his lips, and flamed like bunting on a coast-guard's hut. The more he scowled and spluttered, the more I laughed, till my wounded side hurt me and my arm had twinges. But my mood changed suddenly, and I politely begged his pardon, telling him frankly then and there what had made me laugh, and how I had come to think of it. The flame passed out of his cheeks, the revolving fire of his eyes dimmed, his lips broke into a soundless laugh, and then, in his big voice, he said: "You've got your knees to pray on yet, and crack my bones, but you'll have need to con your penitentials if tattle in the town be true." "Before you tell of that," said I, "how is young Monsieur Duvarney? Is--is he alive?" I added, as I saw his face look lower. "The Beast was at door again last night, wild to be off, and foot of young Seigneur was in the stirrup, when along comes sister with drug got from an Indian squaw who nursed her when a child. She gives it him, and he drinks; they carry him back, sleeping, and Beast must stand there tugging at the leathers yet." "His sister--it was his sister," said I, "that brought him back to life?" "Like that--aho! They said she must not come, but she will have her way. Straight she goes to the palace at night, no one knowing but--guess who? You can't--but no!" A light broke in on me. "With the Scarlet Woman--with Mathilde," I said, hoping in my heart that it was so, for somehow I felt even then that she, poor vagrant, would play a part in the history of Alixe's life and mine. "At the first shot," he said. "'Twas the crimson one, as quiet as a baby chick, not hanging to ma'm'selle's skirts, but watching and whispering a little now and then--and she there in Bigot's palace, and he not knowing it! And maids do not tell him, for they knew the poor wench in better days--aho!" I got up with effort and pain, and made to grasp his hand in gratitude, but he drew back, putting his arms behind him. "No, no," said he, "I am your jailer. They've put you here to break your high spirits, and I'm to help the breaking." "But I thank you just the same," I answered him; "and I promise to give you as little trouble as may be while you are my jailer--which, with all my heart, I hope may be as long as I'm a prisoner." He waved out his hands to the dungeon walls, and lifted his shoulders as if to say that I might as well be docile, for the prison was safe enough. "Poom!" said he, as if in genial disdain of my suggestion. I smiled, and then, after putting my hands on the walls here and there to see if they were, as they seemed, quite dry, I drew back to my couch and sat down. Presently I stooped to tip the earthen jar of water to my lips, for I could not lift it with one hand, but my humane jailer took it from me and held it to my mouth. When I had drunk, "Do you know," asked I as calmly as I could, "if our barber gave the letter to Mademoiselle?" "M'sieu', you've travelled far to reach that question," said he, jangling his keys as if he enjoyed it. "And if he had--?" I caught at his vague suggestion, and my heart leaped. "A reply," said I, "a message or a letter," though I had not dared to let myself even think of that. He whipped a tiny packet from his coat. "'Tis a sparrow's pecking--no great matter here, eh?"--he weighed it up and down on his fingers--"a little piping wren's par pitie." I reached out for it. "I should read it," said he. "There must be no more of this. But new orders came AFTER I'd got her dainty a m'sieu'! Yes, I must read it," said he--"but maybe not at first," he added, "not at first, if you'll give word of honour not to tear it." "On my sacred honour," said I, reaching out still. He looked it all over again provokingly, and then lifted it to his nose, for it had a delicate perfume. Then he gave a little grunt of wonder and pleasure, and handed it over. I broke the seal, and my eyes ran swiftly through the lines, traced in a firm, delicate hand. I could see through it all the fine, sound nature, by its healthy simplicity mastering anxiety, care, and fear. "Robert," she wrote, "by God's help my brother will live, to repent with you, I trust, of Friday night's ill work. He was near gone, yet we have held him back from that rough-rider, Death. "You will thank God, will you not, that my brother did not die? Indeed, I feel you have. I do not blame you; I know--I need not tell you how--the heart of the affair; and even my mother can see through the wretched thing. My father says little, and he has not spoken harshly; for which I gave thanksgiving this morning in the chapel of the Ursulines. Yet you are in a dungeon, covered with wounds of my brother's making, both of you victims of others' villainy, and you are yet to bear worse things, for they are to try you for your life. But never shall I believe that they will find you guilty of dishonour. I have watched you these three years; I do not, nor ever will, doubt you, dear friend of my heart. "You would not believe it, Robert, and you may think it fanciful, but as I got up from my prayers at the chapel I looked towards a window, and it being a little open, for it is a sunny day, there sat a bird on the sill, a little brown bird that peeped and nodded. I was so won by it that I came softly over to it. It did not fly away, but hopped a little here and there. I stretched out my hand gently on the stone, and putting its head now this side, now that, at last it tripped into it, and chirped most sweetly. After I had kissed it I placed it back on the window-sill, that it might fly away again. Yet no, it would not go, but stayed there, tipping its gold-brown head at me as though it would invite me to guess why it came. Again I reached out my hand, and once more it tripped into it. I stood wondering and holding it to my bosom, when I heard a voice behind me say, 'The bird would be with thee, my child. God hath many signs.' I turned and saw the good Mere St. George looking at me, she of whom I was always afraid, so distant is she. I did not speak, but only looked at her, and she nodded kindly at me and passed on. "And, Robert, as I write to you here in the Intendant's palace (what a great wonderful place it is! I fear I do not hate it and its luxury as I ought!), the bird is beside me in a cage upon the table, with a little window open, so that it may come out if it will. My brother lies in the bed asleep; I can touch him if I but put out my hand, and I am alone save for one person. You sent two messengers: can you not guess the one that will be with me? Poor Mathilde, she sits and gazes at me till I almost fall weeping. But she seldom speaks, she is so quiet--as if she knew that she must keep a secret. For, Robert, though I know you did not tell her, she knows--she knows that you love me, and she has given me a little wooden cross which she said will make us happy. "My mother did not drive her away, as I half feared she would, and at last she said that I might house her with one of our peasants. Meanwhile she is with me here. She is not so mad but that she has wisdom too, and she shall have my care and friendship. "I bid thee to God's care, Robert. I need not tell thee to be not dismayed. Thou hast two jails, and one wherein I lock thee safe is warm and full of light. If the hours drag by, think of all thou wouldst do if thou wert free to go to thine own country--yet alas that thought!--and of what thou wouldst say if thou couldst speak to thy ALIXE. "Postscript.--I trust that they have cared for thy wounds, and that thou hast light and food and wine. Voban hath promised to discover this for me. The soldier Gabord, at the citadel, he hath a good heart. Though thou canst expect no help from him, yet he will not be rougher than his orders. He did me a good service once, and he likes me, and I him. And so fare thee well, Robert. I will not languish; I will act, and not be weary. Dost thou really love me?" V THE DEVICE OF THE DORMOUSE When I had read the letter, I handed it up to Gabord without a word. A show of trust in him was the only thing, for he had enough knowledge of our secret to ruin us, if he chose. He took the letter, turned it over, looking at it curiously, and at last, with a shrug of the shoulders, passed it back. "'Tis a long tune on a dot of a fiddle," said he, for indeed the letter was but a small affair in bulk. "I'd need two pairs of eyes and telescope! Is it all Heart-o'-my-heart, and Come-trip-in-dewy-grass--aho? Or is there knave at window to bear m'sieu' away?" I took the letter from him. "Listen," said I, "to what the lady says of you." And then I read him that part of her postscript which had to do with himself. He put his head on one side like a great wise magpie, and "H'm--ha!" said he whimsically, "aho! Gabord the soldier, Gabord, thou hast a good heart--and the birds fed the beast with plums and froth of comfits till he died, and on his sugar tombstone they carved the words, 'Gabord had a good heart.'" "It was spoken out of a true spirit," said I petulantly, for I could not bear from a common soldier even a tone of disparagement, though I saw the exact meaning of his words. So I added, "You shall read the whole letter, or I will read it to you and you shall judge. On the honour of a gentleman, I will read all of it!" "Poom!" said he, "English fire-eater! corn-cracker! Show me the 'good heart' sentence, for I'd see how it is written--how GABORD looks with a woman's whimsies round it." I traced the words with my fingers, holding the letter near the torch. "'Yet he will not be rougher than his orders,'" said he after me, and "'He did me a good service once.'" "Comfits," he continued; "well, thou shalt have comfits, too," and he fished from his pocket a parcel. It was my tobacco and my pipe. Truly, my state might have been vastly worse. Little more was said between Gabord and myself, but he refused bluntly to carry message or letter to anybody, and bade me not to vex him with petitions. But he left me the torch and a flint and steel, so I had light for a space, and I had my blessed tobacco and pipe. When the doors clanged shut and the bolts were shot, I lay back on my couch. I was not all unhappy. Thank God, they had not put chains on me, as Governor Dinwiddie had done with a French prisoner at Williamsburg, for whom I had vainly sought to be exchanged two years before, though he was my equal in all ways and importance. Doltaire was the cause of that, as you shall know. Well, there was one more item to add to his indebtedness. My face flushed and my fingers tingled at thought of him, and so I resolutely turned my meditations elsewhere, and again in a little while I seemed to think of nothing, but lay and bathed in the silence, and indulged my eyes with the good red light of the torch, inhaling its pitchy scent. I was conscious, yet for a time I had no thought: I was like something half animal, half vegetable, which feeds, yet has no mouth, nor sees, nor hears, nor has sense, but only lives. I seemed hung in space, as one feels when going from sleep to waking--a long lane of half-numb life, before the open road of full consciousness is reached. At last I was aroused by the sudden cracking of a knot in the torch. I saw that it would last but a few hours more. I determined to put it out, for I might be allowed no more light, and even a few minutes of this torch every day would be a great boon. So I took it from its place, and was about to quench it in the moist earth at the foot of the wall, when I remembered my tobacco and my pipe. Can you think how joyfully I packed full the good brown bowl, delicately filling in every little corner, and at last held it to the flame, and saw it light? That first long whiff was like the indrawn breath of the cold, starved hunter, when, stepping into his house, he sees food, fire, and wife on his hearthstone. Presently I put out the torchlight, and then went back to my couch and sat down, the bowl shining like a star before me. There and then a purpose came to me--something which would keep my brain from wandering, my nerves from fretting and wearing, for a time at least. I determined to write to my dear Alixe the true history of my life, even to the point--and after--of this thing which now was bringing me to so ill a pass. But I was in darkness, I had no paper, pens, nor ink. After a deal of thinking I came at last to the solution. I would compose the story, and learn it by heart, sentence by sentence, as I so composed it. So there and then I began to run back over the years of my life, even to my first remembrances, that I might see it from first to last in a sort of whole and with a kind of measurement. But when I began to dwell upon my childhood, one little thing gave birth to another swiftly, as you may see one flicker in the heaven multiply and break upon the mystery of the dark, filling the night with clusters of stars. As I thought, I kept drawing spears of the dungeon corn between my fingers softly (they had come to be like comrades to me), and presently there flashed upon me the very first memory of my life. It had never come to me before, and I knew now that it was the beginning of conscious knowledge: for we can never know till we can remember. When a child remembers what it sees or feels, it has begun life. I put that recollection into the letter which I wrote Alixe, and it shall be set down forthwith and in little space, though it took me so very many days and weeks to think it out, to give each word a fixed place, so that it should go from my mind no more. Every phrase of that story as I told it is as fixed as stone in my memory. Yet it must not be thought I can give it all here. I shall set down only a few things, but you shall find in them the spirit of the whole. I will come at once to the body of the letter. VI MORAY TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE "...I would have you know of what I am and whence I came, though I have given you glimpses in the past. That done, I will make plain why I am charged with this that puts my life in danger, which would make you blush that you ever knew me if it were true. And I will show you first a picture as it runs before me, sitting here, the corn of my dungeon garden twining in my fingers:-- "A multiplying width of green grass spotted with white flowers, an upland where sheep browsed on a carpet of purple and gold and green, a tall rock on a hill where birds perched and fluttered, a blue sky arching over all. There, sprawling in a garden, a child pulled at long blades of grass, as he watched the birds flitting about the rocks, and heard a low voice coming down the wind. Here in my dungeon I can hear the voice as I have not heard it since that day in the year 1730--that voice stilled so long ago. The air and the words come floating down (for the words I knew years afterwards): 'Did ye see the white cloud in the glint o' the sun? That's the brow and the eye o' my bairnie. Did ye ken the red bloom at the bend o' the crag? That's the rose in the cheek o' my bairnie. Did ye hear the gay lilt o' the lark by the burn? That's the voice of my bairnie, my dearie. Did ye smell the wild scent in the green o' the wood? That's the breath o' my ain, o' my bairnie. Sae I'll gang awa' hame, to the shine o' the fire, To the cot where I lie wi' my bairnie.' "These words came crooning over the grass of that little garden at Balmore which was by my mother's home. There I was born one day in June, though I was reared in the busy streets of Glasgow, where my father was a prosperous merchant and famous for his parts and honesty. "I see myself, a little child of no great strength, for I was, indeed, the only one of my family who lived past infancy, and my mother feared she should never bring me up. She, too, is in that picture, tall, delicate, kind yet firm of face, but with a strong brow, under which shone grave gray eyes, and a manner so distinguished that none might dispute her kinship to the renowned Montrose, who was lifted so high in dying, though his gallows was but thirty feet, that all the world has seen him there. There was one other in that picture, standing near my mother, and looking at me, who often used to speak of our great ancestor--my grandfather, John Mitchell, the Gentleman of Balmore, as he was called, out of regard for his ancestry and his rare merits. "I have him well in mind: his black silk breeches and white stockings and gold seals, and two eyes that twinkled with great humour when, as he stooped over me, I ran my head between his calves and held him tight. I recall how my mother said, 'I doubt that I shall ever bring him up,' and how he replied (the words seem to come through great distances to me), 'He'll live to be Montrose the second, rascal laddie! Four seasons at the breast? Tut, tut! what o' that? 'Tis but his foolery, his scampishness! Nae, nae! his epitaph's no for writing till you and I are tucked i' the sod, my Jeanie. Then, like Montrose's, it will be-- 'Tull Edinburrow they led him thair, And on a gallows hong; They hong him high abone the rest, He was so trim a boy.' "I can hear his laugh this minute, as he gave an accent to the words by stirring me with his stick, and I caught the gold head of it and carried it off, trailing it through the garden, till I heard my mother calling, and then forced her to give me chase, as I pushed open a little gate and posted away into that wide world of green, coming quickly to the river, where I paused and stood at bay. I can see my mother's anxious face now, as she caught me to her arms; and yet I know she had a kind of pride, too, when my grandfather said, on our return, 'The rascal's at it early. Next time he'll ford the stream and skirl at ye, Jeanie, from yonder bank.' "This is the first of my life that I remember. It may seem strange to you that I thus suddenly recall not only it, but the words then spoken too. It is strange to me, also. But here it comes to me all on a sudden in this silence, as if another self of me were speaking from far places. At first all is in patches and confused, and then it folds out--if not clearly, still so I can understand--and the words I repeat come as if filtered through many brains to mine. I do not say that it is true--it may be dreams; and yet, as I say, it is firmly in my mind. "The next that I remember was climbing upon a chair to reach for my grandfather's musket, which hung across the chimney. I got at last upon the mantelshelf, and my hands were on the weapon, when the door opened, and my grandfather and my father entered. I was so busy I did not hear them till I was caught by the legs and swung to a shoulder, where I sat kicking. 'You see his tastes, William,' said my grandfather to my father; 'he's white o' face and slim o' body, but he'll no carry on your hopes.' And more he said to the point, though what it was I knew not. But I think it to have been suggestion (I heard him say it later) that I would bring Glasgow up to London by the sword (good doting soul!) as my father brought it by manufactures, gaining honour thereby. "However that may be, I would not rest till my grandfather had put the musket into my arms. I could scarcely lift it, but from the first it had a charm for me, and now and then, in spite of my mother's protests, I was let to handle it, to learn its parts, to burnish it, and by-and-bye--I could not have been more than six years old--to rest it on a rock and fire it off. It kicked my shoulder roughly in firing, but I know I did not wink as I pulled the trigger. Then I got a wild hunger to fire it at all times; so much so, indeed, that powder and shot were locked up, and the musket was put away in my grandfather's chest. But now and again it was taken out, and I made war upon the unresisting hillside, to the dismay of our neighbours in Balmore. Feeding the fever in my veins, my grandfather taught me soldiers' exercises and the handling of arms: to my dear mother's sorrow, for she ever fancied me as leading a merchant's quiet life like my father's, hugging the hearthstone, and finding joy in small civic duties, while she and my dear father sat peacefully watching me in their decline of years. "I have told you of that river which flowed near my father's house. At this time most of my hours were spent by it in good weather, for at last my mother came to trust me alone there, having found her alert fears of little use. But she would very often come with me and watch me as I played there. I loved to fancy myself a miller, and my little mill-wheel, made by my own hands, did duty here and there on the stream, and many drives of logs did I, in fancy, saw into piles of lumber, and loads of flour sent away to the City of Desire. Then, again, I made bridges, and drove mimic armies across them; and if they were enemies, craftily let them partly cross, to tumble them in at the moment when part of the forces were on one side of the stream and part on the other, and at the mercy of my men. "My grandfather taught me how to build forts and breastworks, and I lay in ambush for the beadle, who was my good friend, for my grandfather, and for half a dozen other village folk, who took no offense at my sport, but made believe to be bitterly afraid when I surrounded them and drove them, shackled, to my fort by the river. Little by little the fort grew, until it was a goodly pile; for now and then a village youth helped me, or again an old man, whose heart, maybe, rejoiced to play at being child again with me. Years after, whenever I went back to Balmore, there stood the fort, for no one ever meddled with it, nor tore it down. "And I will tell you one reason why this was, and you will think it strange that it should have played such a part in the history of the village, as in my own life. You must know that people living in secluded places are mostly superstitious. Well, when my fort was built to such proportions that a small ladder must be used to fix new mud and mortar in place upon it, something happened. "Once a year there came to Balmore--and he had done so for a generation--one of those beings called The Men, who are given to prayer, fasting, and prophesying, who preach the word of warning ever, calling even the ministers of the Lord sharply to account. One day this Man came past my fort, folk with him, looking for preaching or prophesy from him. Suddenly turning he came inside my fort, and, standing upon the ladder against the wall, spoke to them fervently. His last words became a legend in Balmore, and spread even to Glasgow and beyond. "'Hear me!' cried he. 'As I stand looking at ye from this wall, calling on ye in your natural bodies to take refuge in the Fort of God, the Angel of Death is looking ower the battlements of heaven, choosing ye out, the sheep frae the goats; calling the one to burning flames, and the other into peaceable habitations. I hear the voice now,' cried he, 'and some soul among us goeth forth. Flee ye to the Fort of Refuge.' I can see him now, his pale face shining, his eyes burning, his beard blowing in the wind, his grizzled hair shaking on his forehead. I had stood within the fort watching him. At last he turned, and, seeing me intent, stooped, caught me by the arms, and lifted me upon the wall. 'See you,' said he, 'yesterday's babe a warrior to-day. Have done, have done, ye quarrelsome hearts. Ye that build forts here shall lie in darksome prisons; there is no fort but the Fort of God. The call comes frae the white ramparts. Hush!' he added solemnly, raising a finger. 'One of us goeth hence this day; are ye ready to walk i' the fearsome valley?' "I have heard my mother speak these words over often, and they were, as I said, like an old song in Balmore and Glasgow. He set me down, and then walked away, waving the frightened people back; and there was none of them that slept that night. "Now comes the stranger thing. In the morning The Man was found dead in my little fort, at the foot of the wall. Henceforth the spot was sacred, and I am sure it stands there as when last I saw it twelve years ago, but worn away by rains and winds. "Again and again my mother said over to me his words, 'Ye that build forts here shall lie in darksome prisons'; for always she had fear of the soldier's life, and she was moved by signs and dreams. "But this is how the thing came to shape my life: "About a year after The Man died, there came to my grandfather's house, my mother and I being present, a gentleman, by name Sir John Godric, and he would have my mother tell the whole story of The Man. That being done, he said that The Man was his brother, who had been bad and wild in youth, a soldier; but repenting had gone as far the other way, giving up place and property, and cutting off from all his kin. "This gentleman took much notice of me and said that he should be glad to see more of me. And so he did, for in the years that followed he would visit at our home in Glasgow when I was at school, or at Balmore until my grandfather died. "My father liked Sir John greatly, and they grew exceedingly friendly, walking forth in the streets of Glasgow, Sir John's hand upon my father's arm. One day they came to the school in High Street, where I learned Latin and other accomplishments, together with fencing from an excellent master, Sergeant Dowie of the One Hundredth Foot. They found me with my regiment at drill; for I had got full thirty of my school-fellows under arms, and spent all leisure hours in mustering, marching, and drum-beating, and practising all manner of discipline and evolution which I had been taught by my grandfather and Sergeant Dowie. "Those were the days soon after which came Dettingen and Fontenoy and Charles Edward the Pretender, and the ardour of arms ran high. Sir John was a follower of the Stuarts, and this was the one point at which he and my father paused in their good friendship. When Sir John saw me with my thirty lads marching in fine order, all fired with the little sport of battle--for to me it was all real, and our sham fights often saw broken heads and bruised shoulders--he stamped his cane upon the ground, and said in a big voice, 'Well done! well done! For that you shall have a hundred pounds next birthday, and as fine a suit of scarlet as you please, and a sword from London too.' "Then he came to me and caught me by both shoulders. 'But alack, alack! there needs some blood and flesh here, Robert Moray,' said he. 'You have more heart than muscle.' "This was true. I had ever been more eager than my strength--thank God, that day is gone!--and sometimes, after Latin and the drill of my Lightfoots, as I called them, I could have cried for weakness and weariness, had I been a girl and not a proud lad. And Sir John kept his word, liking me better from that day forth, and coming now and again to see me at the school,--though he was much abroad in France--giving many a pound to my Lightfoots, who were no worse soldiers for that. His eye ran us over sharply, and his head nodded, as we marched past him; and once I heard him say, 'If they had had but ten years each on their heads, my Prince!' "About this time my father died--that is, when I was fourteen years old. Sir John became one of the executors with my mother, and at my wish, a year afterwards, I was sent to the university, where at least fifteen of my Lightfoots went also; and there I formed a new battalion of them, though we were watched at first, and even held in suspicion, because of the known friendship of Sir John for me; and he himself had twice been under arrest for his friendship to the Stuart cause. That he helped Prince Charles was clear: his estates were mortgaged to the hilt. "He died suddenly on that day of January when Culloden was fought, before he knew of the defeat of the Prince. I was with him at the last. After some most serious business, which I shall come to by-and-bye, 'Robert,' said he, 'I wish thou hadst been with my Prince. When thou becomest a soldier, fight where thou hast heart to fight; but if thou hast conscience for it, let it be with a Stuart. I thought to leave thee a good moiety of my fortune, Robert, but little that's free is left for giving. Yet thou hast something from thy father, and down in Virginia, where my friend Dinwiddie is Governor, there's a plantation for thee, and a purse of gold, which was for me in case I should have cause to flee this troubled realm. But I need it not; I go for refuge to my Father's house. The little vineyard and the purse of gold are for thee, Robert. If thou thinkest well of it, leave this sick land for that new one. Build thyself a name in that great young country, wear thy sword honourably and bravely, use thy gifts in council and debate--for Dinwiddie will be thy friend--and think of me as one who would have been a father to thee if he could. Give thy good mother my loving farewells.... Forget not to wear my sword--it has come from the first King Charles himself, Robert.' "After which he raised himself upon his elbow and said, 'Life--life, is it so hard to untie the knot?' Then a twinge of agony crossed over his face, and afterwards came a great clearing and peace, and he was gone. "King George's soldiers entered with a warrant for him even as he died, and the same moment dropped their hands upon my shoulder. I was kept in durance for many days, and was not even at the funeral of my benefactor; but through the efforts of the provost of the university and some good friends who could vouch for my loyal principles, I was released. But my pride had got a setback, and I listened with patience to my mother's prayers that I would not join the King's men. With the anger of a youth, I now blamed his Majesty for the acts of Sir John Godric's enemies. And though I was a good soldier of the King at heart, I would not serve him henceforth. We threshed matters back and forth, and presently it was thought I should sail to Virginia to take over my estate. My mother urged it, too, for she thought if I were weaned from my old comrades, military fame would no longer charm. So she urged me, and go I did, with a commission from some merchants of Glasgow, to give my visit to the colony more weight. "It was great pain to leave my mother, but she bore the parting bravely, and away I set in a good ship. Arrived in Virginia, I was treated with great courtesy in Williamsburg, and the Governor gave me welcome to his home for the sake of his old friend; and yet a little for my own, I think, for we were of one temper, though he was old and I young. We were both full of impulse and proud, and given to daring hard things, and my military spirit suited him. "In Virginia I spent a gay and busy year, and came off very well with the rough but gentlemanly cavaliers, who rode through the wide, sandy streets of the capital on excellent horses, or in English coaches, with a rusty sort of show and splendour, but always with great gallantry. The freedom of the life charmed me, and with rumours of war with the French there seemed enough to do, whether with the sword or in the House of Burgesses, where Governor Dinwiddie said his say with more force than complaisance. So taken was I with the life--my first excursion into the wide working world--that I delayed my going back to Glasgow, the more so that some matters touching my property called for action by the House of Burgesses, and I had to drive the affair to the end. Sir John had done better by me than he thought, and I thanked him over and over again for his good gifts. "Presently I got a letter from my father's old partner to say that my dear mother was ill. I got back to Glasgow only in time--but how glad I was of that!--to hear her last words. When my mother was gone I turned towards Virginia with longing, for I could not so soon go against her wishes and join the King's army on the Continent, and less desire had I to be a Glasgow merchant. Gentlemen merchants had better times in Virginia. So there was a winding-up of the estate, not greatly to my pleasure; for it was found that by unwise ventures my father's partner had perilled the whole, and lost part of the property. But as it was, I had a competence and several houses in Glasgow, and I set forth to Virginia with a goodly sum of money and a shipload of merchandise, which I should sell to merchants, if it chanced I should become a planter only. I was warmly welcomed by old friends and by the Governor and his family, and I soon set up an establishment of my own in Williamsburg, joining with a merchant there in business, while my land was worked by a neighbouring planter. "Those were hearty days, wherein I made little money, but had much pleasure in the giving and taking of civilities, in throwing my doors open to acquaintances, and with my young friend, Mr. Washington, laying the foundation for a Virginian army, by drill and yearly duty in camp, with occasional excursions against the Indians. I saw very well what the end of our troubles with the French would be, and I waited for the time when I should put to keen use the sword Sir John Godric had given me. Life beat high then, for I was in the first flush of manhood, and the spirit of a rich new land was waking in us all, while in our vanity we held to and cherished forms and customs that one would have thought to see left behind in London streets and drawing-rooms. These things, these functions in a small place, kept us a little vain and proud, but, I also hope it gave us some sense of civic duty. "And now I come to that which will, comrade of my heart, bring home to your understanding what lies behind the charges against me: "Trouble came between Canada and Virginia. Major Washington, one Captain Mackaye, and myself marched out to the Great Meadows, where at Fort Necessity we surrendered, after hard fighting, to a force three times our number. I, with one Captain Van Braam, became a hostage. Monsieur Coulon Villiers, the French commander, gave his bond that we should be delivered up when an officer and two cadets, who were prisoners with us, should be sent on. It was a choice between Mr. Mackaye of the Regulars and Mr. Washington, or Mr. Van Braam and myself. I thought of what would be best for the country; and besides, Monsieur Coulon Villiers pitched upon my name at once, and held to it. So I gave up my sword to Charles Bedford, my lieutenant, with more regret than I can tell, for it was sheathed in memories, charging him to keep it safe--that he would use it worthily I knew. And so, sorrowfully bidding my friends good-by, away we went upon the sorry trail of captivity, arriving in due time at Fort Du Quesne, at the junction of the Ohio and the Monongahela, where I was courteously treated. There I bettered my French and made the acquaintance of some ladies from Quebec city, who took pains to help me with their language. "Now, there was one lady to whom I talked with some freedom of my early life and of Sir John Godric. She was interested in all, but when I named Sir John she became at once much impressed, and I told her of his great attachment to Prince Charles. More than once she returned to the subject, begging me to tell her more; and so I did, still, however, saying nothing of certain papers Sir John had placed in my care. A few weeks after the first occasion of my speaking, there was a new arrival at the fort. It was--can you guess?--Monsieur Doltaire. The night after he came he visited me in my quarters, and after courteous passages, of which I need not speak, he suddenly said, 'You have the papers of Sir John Godric--those bearing on Prince Charles's invasion of England?' "I was stunned by the question, for I could not guess his drift or purpose, though presently it dawned upon me.--Among the papers were many letters from a great lady in France, a growing rival with La Pompadour in the counsels and favour of the King. She it was who had a secret passion for Prince Charles, and these letters to Sir John, who had been with the Pretender at Versailles, must prove her ruin if produced. I had promised Sir John most solemnly that no one should ever have them while I lived, except the great lady herself, and that I would give them to her some time, or destroy them. It was Doltaire's mission to get these letters, and he had projected a visit to Williamsburg to see me, having just arrived in Canada, after a search for me in Scotland, when word came from the lady gossip at Fort Du Quesne (with whom he had been on most familiar terms in Quebec) that I was there. "When I said I had the papers, he asked me lightly for 'those compromising letters,' remarking that a good price would be paid, and adding my liberty as a pleasant gift. I instantly refused, and told him I would not be the weapon of La Pompadour against her rival. With cool persistence he begged me to think again, for much depended on my answer. "'See, monsieur le capitaine,' said he, 'this little affair at Fort Necessity, at which you became a hostage, shall or shall not be a war between England and France as you shall dispose.' When I asked him how that was, he said, 'First, will you swear that you will not, to aid yourself, disclose what I tell you? You can see that matters will be where they were an hour ago in any case.' "I agreed, for I could act even if I might not speak. So I gave my word. Then he told me that if those letters were not put into his hands, La Pompadour would be enraged, and fretful and hesitating now, would join Austria against England, since in this provincial war was convenient cue for battle. If I gave the letters up, she would not stir, and the disputed territory between us should be by articles conceded by the French. "I thought much and long, during which he sat smoking and humming, and seeming to care little how my answer went. At last I turned on him, and told him I would not give up the letters, and if a war must hang on a whim of malice, then, by God's help, the rightness of our cause would be our strong weapon to bring France to her knees. "'That is your final answer?' asked he, rising, fingering his lace, and viewing himself in a looking-glass upon the wall. "'I will not change it now or ever,' answered I. "'Ever is a long time,' retorted he, as one might speak to a wilful child. 'You shall have time to think and space for reverie. For if you do not grant this trifle you shall no more see your dear Virginia; and when the time is ripe you shall go forth to a better land, as the Grande Marquise shall give you carriage.' "'The Articles of Capitulation!' I broke out protestingly. "He waved his fingers at me. 'Ah, that,' he rejoined--'that is a matter for conning. You are a hostage. Well, we need not take any wastrel or nobody the English offer in exchange for you. Indeed, why should we be content with less than a royal duke? For you are worth more to us just now than any prince we have; at least so says the Grande Marquise. Is your mind quite firm to refuse?' he added, nodding his head in a bored sort of way. "'Entirely,' said I. 'I will not part with those letters.' "'But think once again,' he urged; 'the gain of territory to Virginia, the peace between our countries!' "'Folly!' returned I. 'I know well you overstate the case. You turn a small intrigue into a game of nations. Yours is a schoolboy's tale, Monsieur Doltaire.' "'You are something of an ass,' he mused, and took a pinch of snuff. "'And you--you have no name,' retorted I. "I did not know, when I spoke, how this might strike home in two ways or I should not have said it. I had not meant, of course, that he was King Louis's illegitimate son. "'There is some truth in that,' he replied patiently, though a red spot flamed high on his cheeks. 'But some men need no christening for their distinction, and others win their names with proper weapons. I am not here to quarrel with you. I am acting in a large affair, not in a small intrigue; a century of fate may hang on this. Come with me,' he added. 'You doubt my power, maybe.' "He opened the door of the cell, and I followed him out, past the storehouse and the officers' apartments, to the drawbridge. Standing in the shadow by the gate, he took keys from his pocket. 'Here,' said he, 'are what will set you free. This fort is all mine: I act for France. Will you care to free yourself? You shall have escort to your own people. You see I am most serious,' he added, laughing lightly. 'It is not my way to sweat or worry. You and I hold war and peace in our hands. Which shall it be? In this trouble France or England will be mangled. It tires one to think of it when life can be so easy. Now, for the last time,' he urged, holding out the keys. 'Your word of honour that the letters shall be mine--eh?' "'Never,' I concluded. 'England and France are in greater hands than yours or mine. The God of battles still stands beside the balances.' "He shrugged a shoulder. 'Oh well,' said he, 'that ends it. It will be interesting to watch the way of the God of battles. Meanwhile you travel to Quebec. Remember that however free you may appear you will have watchers, that when you seem safe you will be in most danger, that in the end we will have those letters or your life; that meanwhile the war will go on, that you shall have no share in it, and that the whole power of England will not be enough to set her hostage free. That is all there is to say, I think.... Will you have a glass of wine with me?' he added courteously, waving a hand towards the commander's quarters. "I assented, for why, thought I, should there be a personal quarrel between us? We talked on many things for an hour or more, and his I found the keenest mind that ever I have met. There was in him a dispassionateness, a breadth, which seemed most strange in a trifler of the Court, in an exquisite--for such he was. I sometimes think that his elegance and flippancy were deliberate, lest he should be taking himself or life too seriously. His intelligence charmed me, held me, and, later, as we travelled up to Quebec, I found my journey one long feast of interest. He was never dull, and his cynicism had an admirable grace and cordiality. A born intriguer, he still was above intrigue, justifying it on the basis that life was all sport. In logic a leveller, praising the moles, as he called them, the champion of the peasant, the apologist for the bourgeois--who always, he said, had civic virtues--he nevertheless held that what was was best, that it could not be altered, and that it was all interesting. 'I never repent,' he said to me one day. 'I have done after my nature, in the sway and impulse of our time, and as the King has said, After us the deluge. What a pity it is we shall see neither the flood nor the ark! And so, when all is done, we shall miss the most interesting thing of all: ourselves dead and the gap and ruin we leave behind us. By that, from my standpoint,' he would add, 'life is a failure as a spectacle.' "Talking in this fashion and in a hundred other ways, we came to Quebec. And you know in general what happened. I met your honoured father, whose life I had saved on the Ohio some years before, and he worked for my comfort in my bondage. You know how exchange after exchange was refused, and that for near three years I have been here, fretting my soul out, eager to be fighting in our cause, yet tied hand and foot, wasting time and losing heart, idle in an enemy's country. As Doltaire said, war was declared, but not till he had made here in Quebec last efforts to get those letters. I do not complain so bitterly of these lost years, since they have brought me the best gift of my life, your love and friendship; but my enemies here, commanded from France, have bided their time, till an accident has given them a cue to dispose of me without openly breaking the accepted law of nations. They could not decently hang a hostage, for whom they had signed articles; but they have got their chance, as they think, to try me for a spy. "Here is the case. When I found that they were determined and had ever determined to violate their articles, that they never intended to set me free, I felt absolved from my duty as an officer on parole, and I therefore secretly sent to Mr. Washington in Virginia a plan of Fort Du Quesne and one of Quebec. I knew that I was risking my life by so doing, but that did not deter me. By my promise to Doltaire, I could not tell of the matter between us, and whatever he has done in other ways, he has preserved my life; for it would have been easy to have me dropped off by a stray bullet, or to have accidentally drowned me in the St. Lawrence. I believe this matter of the letters to be between myself and him and Bigot--and perhaps not even Bigot, though he must know that La Pompadour has some peculiar reason for interesting herself in a poor captain of provincials. You now can see another motive for the duel which was brought about between your brother and myself. "My plans and letters were given by Mr. Washington to General Braddock, and the sequel you know: they have fallen into the hands of my enemies, copies have gone to France, and I am to be tried for my life. Preserving faith with my enemy Doltaire, I can not plead the real cause of my long detention; I can only urge that they had not kept to their articles, and that I, therefore, was free from the obligations of parole. I am sure they have no intention of giving me the benefit of any doubt. My real hope lies in escape and the intervention of England, though my country, alas! has not concerned herself about me, as if indeed she resented the non-delivery of those letters to Doltaire, since they were addressed to one she looked on as a traitor, and held by one whom she had unjustly put under suspicion. "So, dear Alixe, from that little fort on the banks of the river Kelvin have come these strange twistings of my life, and I can date this dismal fortune of a dungeon from that day The Man made his prophecy from the wall of my mud fort. "Whatever comes now, if you have this record, you will know the private history of my life.... I have told all, with unpractised tongue, but with a wish to be understood, and to set forth a story of which the letter should be as true as the spirit. Friend beyond all price to me, some day this tale will reach your hands, and I ask you to house it in your heart, and, whatever comes, let it be for my remembrance. God be with you, and farewell!" VII "QUOTH LITTLE GARAINE" I have given the whole story here as though it had been thought out and written that Sunday afternoon which brought me good news of Juste Duvarney. But it was not so. I did not choose to break the run of the tale to tell of other things and of the passing of time. The making took me many, many weeks, and in all that time I had seen no face but Gabord's, and heard no voice but his, when he came twice a day to bring me bread and water. He would answer no questions concerning Juste Duvarney, or Voban, or Monsieur Doltaire, nor tell me anything of what was forward in the town. He had had his orders precise enough, he said. At the end of my hints and turnings and approaches, stretching himself up, and turning the corn about with his foot (but not crushing it, for he saw that I prized the poor little comrades), he would say: "Snug, snug, quiet and warm! The cosiest nest in the world--aho!" There was no coaxing him, and at last I desisted. I had no light. With resolution I set my mind to see in spite of the dark, and at the end of a month I was able to note the outlines of my dungeon; nay, more, I was able to see my field of corn; and at last what joy I had when, hearing a little rustle near me, I looked closely and beheld a mouse running across the floor! I straightway began to scatter crumbs of bread, that it might, perhaps, come near me--as at last it did. I have not spoken at all of my wounds, though they gave me many painful hours, and I had no attendance but my own and Gabord's. The wound in my side was long healing, for it was more easily disturbed as I turned in my sleep, while I could ease my arm at all times, and it came on slowly. My sufferings drew on my flesh, my blood, and my spirits, and to this was added that disease inaction, the corrosion of solitude, and the fever of suspense and uncertainty as to Alixe and Juste Duvarney. Every hour, every moment that I had ever passed in Alixe's presence, with many little incidents and scenes in which we shared, passed before me--vivid and cherished pictures of the mind. One of those incidents I will set down here. A year or so before, soon after Juste Duvarney came from Montreal, he brought in one day from hunting a young live hawk, and put it in a cage. When I came the next morning, Alixe met me, and asked me to see what he had brought. There, beside the kitchen door, overhung with morning-glories and flanked by hollyhocks, was a large green cage, and in it the gray-brown hawk. "Poor thing, poor prisoned thing!" she said. "Look how strange and hunted it seems! See how its feathers stir! And those flashing, watchful eyes, they seem to read through you, and to say, 'Who are you? What do you want with me? Your world is not my world; your air is not my air; your homes are holes, and mine hangs high up between you and God. Who are you? Why do you pen me? You have shut me in that I may not travel, not even die out in the open world. All the world is mine; yours is only a stolen field. Who are you? What do you want with me? There is a fire within my head, it eats to my eyes, and I burn away. What do you want with me?'" She did not speak these words all at once as I have written them here, but little by little, as we stood there beside the cage. Yet, as she talked with me, her mind was on the bird, her fingers running up and down the cage bars soothingly, her voice now and again interjecting soft reflections and exclamations. "Shall I set it free?" I asked her. She turned upon me and replied, "Ah, monsieur, I hoped you would--without my asking. You are a prisoner too," she added; "one captive should feel for another." "And the freeman for both," I answered meaningly, as I softly opened the cage. She did not drop her eyes, but raised them shining honestly and frankly to mine, and said, "I wished you to think that." Opening the cage door wide, I called the little captive to freedom. But while we stood close by it would not stir, and the look in its eyes became wilder. I moved away, and Alixe followed me. Standing beside an old well we waited and watched. Presently the hawk dropped from the perch, hopped to the door, then with a wild spring was gone, up, up, up, and was away over the maple woods beyond, lost in the sun and the good air. I know not quite why I dwell on this scene, save that it throws some little light upon her nature, and shows how simple and yet deep she was in soul, and what was the fashion of our friendship. But I can perhaps give a deeper insight of her character if I here set down the substance of a letter written about that time, which came into my possession long afterwards. It was her custom to write her letters first in a book, and afterwards to copy them for posting. This she did that they might be an impulse to her friendships and a record of her feelings. ALIXE DUVARNEY TO LUCIE LOTBINIERE. QUEBEC CITY, the 10th of May, 1756. MY DEAR LUCIE: I wish I knew how to tell you all I have been thinking since we parted at the door of the Ursulines a year ago. Then we were going to meet again in a few weeks, and now twelve months have gone! How have I spent them? Not wickedly, I hope, and yet sometimes I wonder if Mere St. George would quite approve of me; for I have such wild spirits now and then, and I shout and sing in the woods and along the river as if I were a mad youngster home from school. But indeed, that is the way I feel at times, though again I am so quiet that I am frightened of myself. I am a hawk to-day and a mouse to-morrow, and fond of pleasure all the time. Ah, what good days I have had with Juste! You remember him before he went to Montreal? He is gay, full of fancies, as brave as can be, and plays and sings well, but he is very hot-headed, and likes to play the tyrant. We have some bad encounters now and then. But we love each other better for it; he respects me, and he does not become spoiled, as you will see when you come to us. I have had no society yet. My mother thinks seventeen years too few to warrant my going into the gay world. I wonder will my wings be any stronger, will there be less danger of scorching them at twenty-six? Years do not make us wise; one may be as wise at twenty as at fifty. And they do not save us from the scorching. I know more than they guess how cruel the world may be to the innocent as to--the other. One can not live within sight of the Intendant's palace and the Chateau St. Louis without learning many things; and, for myself, though I hunger for all the joys of life, I do not fret because my mother holds me back from the gay doings in the town. I have my long walks, my fishing and rowing, and sometimes hunting, with Juste and my sweet sister Georgette, my drawing, painting, music, and needlework, and my housework. Yet I am not entirely happy, I do not know quite why. Do you ever feel as if there were some sorrow far back in you, which now and then rushed in and flooded your spirits, and then drew back, and you could not give it a name? Well, that is the way with me. Yesterday, as I stood in the kitchen beside our old cook Jovin, she said a kind word to me, and my eyes filled, and I ran up to my room, and burst into tears as I lay upon my bed. I could not help it. I thought at first it was because of the poor hawk that Captain Moray and I set free yesterday morning; but it could not have been that, for it was FREE when I cried, you see. You know, of course, that he saved my father's life, some years ago? That is one reason why he has been used so well in Quebec, for otherwise no one would have lessened the rigours of his captivity. But there are tales that he is too curious about our government and state, and so he may be kept close jailed, though he only came here as a hostage. He is much at our home, and sometimes walks with Juste and me and Georgette, and accompanies my mother in the streets. This is not to the liking of the Intendant, who loves not my father because he is such a friend of our cousin the Governor. If their lives and characters be anything to the point the Governor must be in the right. In truth, things are in a sad way here, for there is robbery on every hand, and who can tell what the end may be? Perhaps that we go to the English after all. Monsieur Doltaire--you do not know him, I think--says, "If the English eat us, as they swear they will, they'll die of megrims, our affairs are so indigestible." At another time he said, "Better to be English than to be damned." And when some one asked him what he meant, he said, "Is it not read from the altar, 'Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man'? The English trust nobody, and we trust the English." That was aimed at Captain Moray, who was present, and I felt it a cruel thing for him to say; but Captain Moray, smiling at the ladies, said, "Better to be French and damned than not to be French at all." And this pleased Monsieur Doltaire, who does not love him. I know not why, but there are vague whispers that he is acting against the Englishman for causes best known at Versailles, which have nothing to do with our affairs here. I do believe that Monsieur Doltaire would rather hear a clever thing than get ten thousand francs. At such times his face lights up, he is at once on his mettle, his eyes look almost fiendishly beautiful. He is a handsome man, but he is wicked, and I do not think he has one little sense of morals. I do not suppose he would stab a man in the back, or remove his neighbour's landmark in the night, though he'd rob him of it in open daylight, and call it "enterprise"--a usual word with him. He is a favourite with Madame Cournal, who influences Bigot most, and one day we may see the boon companions at each other's throats; and if either falls, I hope it maybe Bigot, for Monsieur Doltaire is, at least, no robber. Indeed, he is kind to the poor in a disdainful sort of way. He gives to them and scoffs at them at the same moment; a bad man, with just enough natural kindness to make him dangerous. I have not seen much of the world, but some things we know by instinct; we feel them; and I often wonder if that is not the way we know everything in the end. Sometimes when I take my long walks, or go and sit beside the Falls of Montmorenci, looking out to the great city on the Heights, to dear Isle Orleans, where we have our pretty villa (we are to go there next week for three months--happy summer months), up at the blue sky and into the deep woods, I have strange feelings, which afterwards become thoughts; and sometimes they fly away like butterflies, but oftener they stay with me, and I give them a little garden to roam in--you can guess where. Now and then I call them out of the garden and make them speak, and then I set down what they say in my journal; but I think they like their garden best. You remember the song we used to sing at school? "'Where do the stars grow, little Garaine? The garden of moons, is it far away? The orchard of suns, my little Garaine, Will you take us there some day?' "'If you shut your eyes,' quoth little Garaine, 'I will show you the way to go To the orchard of suns, and the garden of moons, And the field where the stars do grow. "'But you must speak soft,' quoth little Garaine, 'And still must your footsteps be, For a great bear prowls in the field of the stars, And the moons they have men to see. "'And the suns have the Children of Signs to guard, And they have no pity at all-- You must not stumble, you must not speak, When you come to the orchard wall. "'The gates are locked,' quoth little Garaine, 'But the way I am going to tell? The key of your heart it will open them all: And there's where the darlings dwell!'" You may not care to read these lines again, but it helps to show what I mean: that everything is in the heart, and that nothing is at all if we do not feel it. Sometimes I have spoken of these things to my mother, but she does not see as I do. I dare not tell my father all I think, and Juste is so much a creature of moods that I am never sure whether he will be sensible and kind, or scoff. One can not bear to be laughed at. And as for my sister, she never thinks; she only lives; and she looks it--looks beautiful. But there, dear Lucie, I must not tire you with my childish philosophy, though I feel no longer a child. You would not know your friend. I can not tell what has come over me. Voila! To-morrow we go to visit General Montcalm, who has just arrived in the colony. Bigot and his gay set are not likely to be there. My mother insists that I shall never darken the doors of the Intendant's palace. Do you still hold to your former purpose of keeping a daily journal? If so, I beg you to copy into it this epistle and your answer; and when I go up to your dear manor house at Beauce next summer, we will read over our letters and other things set down, and gossip of the changes come since we met last. Do sketch the old place for me (as will I our new villa on dear Isle Orleans), and make interest with the good cure to bring it to me with your letter, since there are no posts, no postmen, yet between here and Beauce. The cure most kindly bears this to you, and says he will gladly be our messenger. Yesterday he said to me, shaking his head in a whimsical way, "But no treason, mademoiselle, and no heresy or schism." I am not quite sure what he meant. I dare hardly think he had Captain Moray in his mind. I would not for the world so lessen my good opinion of him as to think him suspicious of me when no other dare; and so I put his words down to chance hitting, to a humorous fancy. Be sure, dear Lucie, I shall not love you less for giving me a prompt answer. Tell me of what you are thinking and what doing. If Juste can be spared from the Governor's establishment, may I bring him with me next summer? He is a difficult, sparkling sort of fellow, but you are so steady-tempered, so full of tact, getting your own way so quietly and cleverly, that I am sure I should find plenty of straw for the bricks of my house of hope, my castle in Spain! Do not give too much of my share of thy heart elsewhere, and continue to think me, my dear Lucie, thy friend, loyal and loving, ALIXE DUVARNEY. P.S.--Since the above was written we have visited the General. Both Monsieur Doltaire and Captain Moray were there, but neither took much note of me--Monsieur Doltaire not at all. Those two either hate each other lovingly, or love hatefully, I know not which, they are so biting, yet so friendly to each other's cleverness, though their style of word-play is so different: Monsieur Doltaire's like a bodkin-point, Captain Moray's like a musket-stock a-clubbing. Be not surprised to see the British at our gates any day. Though we shall beat them back, I shall feel no less easy because I have a friend in the enemy's camp. You may guess who. Do not smile. He is old enough to be my father. He said so himself six months ago. ALIXE. VIII AS VAIN AS ABSALOM Gabord, coming in to me one day after I had lain down to sleep, said, "See, m'sieu' the dormouse, 'tis holiday-eve; the King's sport comes to-morrow." I sat up in bed with a start, for I knew not but that my death had been decided on without trial; and yet on second thought I was sure this could not be, for every rule of military conduct was against it. "Whose holiday?" asked I after a moment; "and what is King's sport?" "You're to play bear in the streets to-morrow--which is sport for the King," he retorted; "we lead you by a rope, and you dance the quickstep to please our ladies all the way to the Chateau, where they bring the bear to drum-head." "Who sits behind the drum?" I questioned. "The Marquis de Vaudreuil," he replied, "the Intendant, Master Devil Doltaire, and the little men." By these last he meant officers of the colonial soldiery. So then, at last I was to be tried, to be dealt with definitely on the abominable charge. I should at least again see light and breathe fresh air, and feel about me the stir of the world. For a long year I had heard no voice but my own and Gabord's, had had no friends but my pale blades of corn and a timid mouse, day after day no light at all; and now winter was at hand again, and without fire and with poor food my body was chilled and starved. I had had no news of the world, nor of her who was dear to me, nor of Juste Duvarney save that he lived, nor of our cause. But succeeding the thrill of delight I had at thought of seeing the open world again there came a feeling of lassitude, of indifference; I shrank from the jar of activity. But presently I got upon my feet, and with a little air of drollery straightened out my clothes and flicked a handkerchief across my gaiters. Then I twisted my head over my shoulder as if I were noting the shape of my back and the set of my clothes in a mirror, and thrust a leg out in the manner of an exquisite. I had need to do some mocking thing at the moment, or I should have given way to tears like a woman, so suddenly weak had I become. Gabord burst out laughing. An idea came to me. "I must be fine to-morrow," said I. "I must not shame my jailer." I rubbed my beard--I had none when I came into this dungeon first. "Aho!" said he, his eyes wheeling. I knew he understood me. I did not speak, but went on running my fingers through my beard. "As vain as Absalom," he added. "Do you think they'll hang you by the hair?" "I'd have it off," said I, "to be clean for the sacrifice." "You had Voban before," he rejoined; "we know what happened--a dainty bit of a letter all rose-lily scented, and comfits for the soldier. The pretty wren perches now in the Governor's house--a-cousining, a-cousining. Think you it is that she may get a glimpse of m'sieu' the dormouse as he comes to trial? But 'tis no business o' mine; and if I bring my prisoner up when called for, there's duty done!" I saw the friendly spirit in the words. "Voban," urged I, "Voban may come to me?" "The Intendant said no, but the Governor yes," was the reply; "and that M'sieu' Doltaire is not yet come back from Montreal, so he had no voice. They look for him here to-morrow." "Voban may come?" I asked again. "At daybreak Voban--aho!" he continued. "There's milk and honey to-morrow," he added, and then, without a word, he drew forth from his coat, and hurriedly thrust into my hands, a piece of meat and a small flask of wine, and, swinging round like a schoolboy afraid of being caught in a misdemeanor, he passed through the door and the bolts clanged after him. He left the torch behind him, stuck in the cleft of the wall. I sat down on my couch, and for a moment gazed almost vacantly at the meat and wine in my hands. I had not touched either for a year, and now I could see that my fingers, as they closed on the food nervously, were thin and bloodless, and I realized that my clothes hung loose upon my person. Here were light, meat, and wine, and there was a piece of bread on the board covering my water-jar. Luxury was spread before me, but although I had eaten little all day I was not hungry. Presently, however, I took the knife which I had hidden a year before, and cut pieces of the meat and laid them by the bread. Then I drew the cork from the bottle of wine, and, lifting it towards that face which was always visible to my soul, I drank--drank--drank! The rich liquor swam through my veins like glorious fire. It wakened my brain and nerved my body. The old spring of life came back. This wine had come from the hands of Alixe--from the Governor's store, maybe; for never could Gabord have got such stuff. I ate heartily of the rich beef and bread with a new-made appetite, and drank the rest of the wine. When I had eaten and drunk the last, I sat and looked at the glowing torch, and felt a sort of comfort creep through me. Then there came a delightful thought. Months ago I had put away one last pipeful of tobacco, to save it till some day when I should need it most. I got it, and no man can guess how lovingly I held it to a flying flame of the torch, saw it light, and blew out the first whiff of smoke into the sombre air; for November was again piercing this underground house of mine, another winter was at hand. I sat and smoked, and--can you not guess my thoughts? For have you all not the same hearts, being British born and bred? When I had taken the last whiff, I wrapped myself in my cloak and went to sleep. But twice or thrice during the night I waked to see the torch still shining, and caught the fragrance of consuming pine, and minded not at all the smoke the burning made. IX A LITTLE CONCERNING THE CHEVALIER DE LA DARANTE I was wakened completely by the shooting of bolts. With the opening of the door I saw the figures of Gabord and Voban. My little friend the mouse saw them also, and scampered from the bread it had been eating, away among the corn, through which my footsteps had now made two rectangular paths, not disregarded by Gabord, who solicitously pulled Voban into the narrow track, that he should not trespass on my harvest. I rose, showed no particular delight at seeing Voban, but greeted him easily--though my heart was bursting to ask him of Alixe--and arranged my clothes. Presently Gabord said, "Stools for barber," and, wheeling, he left the dungeon. He was gone only an instant, but long enough for Voban to thrust a letter into my hand, which I ran into the lining of my waistcoat as I whispered, "Her brother--he is well?" "Well, and he have go to France," he answered. "She make me say, look to the round window in the Chateau front." We spoke in English--which, as I have said, Voban understood imperfectly. There was nothing more said, and if Gabord, when he returned, suspected, he showed no sign, but put down two stools, seating himself on one, as I seated myself on the other for Voban's handiwork. Presently a soldier appeared with a bowl of coffee. Gabord rose, took it from him, waved him away, and handed it to me. Never did coffee taste so sweet, and I sipped and sipped till Voban had ended his work with me. Then I drained the last drop and stood up. He handed me a mirror, and Gabord, fetching a fine white handkerchief from his pocket, said, "Here's for your tears, when they drum you to heaven, dickey-bird." But when I saw my face in the mirror, I confess I was startled. My hair, which had been black, was plentifully sprinkled with white, my face was intensely pale and thin, and the eyes were sunk in dark hollows. I should not have recognized myself. But I laughed as I handed back the glass, and said, "All flesh is grass, but a dungeon's no good meadow." "'Tis for the dry chaff," Gabord answered, "not for young grass--aho!" He rose and made ready to leave, Voban with him. "The commissariat camps here in an hour or so," he said, with a ripe chuckle. It was clear the new state of affairs was more to his mind than the long year's rigour and silence. It seemed to me strange then, and it has seemed so ever since, that during all that time I never was visited by Doltaire but once, and of that event I am going to write briefly here. It was about two months before this particular morning that he came, greeting me courteously enough. "Close quarters here," said he, looking round as if the place were new to him and smiling to himself. "Not so close as we all come to one day," said I. "Dismal comparison!" he rejoined; "you've lost your spirits." "Not so," I retorted; "nothing but my liberty." "You know the way to find it quickly," he suggested. "The letters for La Pompadour?" I asked. "A dead man's waste papers," responded he; "of no use to him or you, or any one save the Grande Marquise." "Valuable to me," said I. "None but the Grande Marquise and the writer would give you a penny for them!" "Why should I not be my own merchant?" "You can--to me. If not to me, to no one. You had your chance long ago, and you refused it. You must admit I dealt fairly with you. I did not move till you had set your own trap and fallen into it. Now, if you do not give me the letters--well, you will give them to none else in this world. It has been a fair game, and I am winning now. I've only used means which one gentleman might use with another. Had you been a lesser man I should have had you spitted long ago. You understand?" "Perfectly. But since we have played so long, do you think I'll give you the stakes now--before the end?" "It would be wiser," he answered thoughtfully. "I have a nation behind me," urged I. "It has left you in a hole here to rot." "It will take over your citadel and dig me out some day," I retorted hotly. "What good that? Your life is more to you than Quebec to England." "No, no," said I quickly; "I would give my life a hundred times to see your flag hauled down!" "A freakish ambition," he replied; "mere infatuation!" "You do not understand it, Monsieur Doltaire," I remarked ironically. "I love not endless puzzles. There is no sport in following a maze that leads to nowhere save the grave." He yawned. "This air is heavy," he added; "you must find it trying." "Never as trying as at this moment," I retorted. "Come, am I so malarious?" "You are a trickster," I answered coldly. "Ah, you mean that night at Bigot's?" He smiled. "No, no, you were to blame--so green. You might have known we were for having you between the stones." "But it did not come out as you wished?" hinted I. "It served my turn," he responded; and he gave me such a smiling, malicious look that I knew sought to convey he had his way with Alixe; and though I felt that she was true to me, his cool presumption so stirred me I could have struck him in the face. I got angrily to my feet, but as I did so I shrank a little, for at times the wound in my side, not yet entirely healed, hurt me. "You are not well," he said, with instant show of curiosity; "your wounds still trouble you? They should be healed. Gabord was ordered to see you cared for." "Gabord has done well enough," answered I. "I have had wounds before, monsieur." He leaned against the wall and laughed. "What braggarts you English are!" he said. "A race of swashbucklers--even on bread and water!" He had me at advantage, and I knew it, for he had kept his temper. I made an effort. "Both excellent," rejoined I, "and English too." He laughed again. "Come, that is better. That's in your old vein. I love to see you so. But how knew you our baker was English?--which he is, a prisoner like yourself." "As easily as I could tell the water was not made by Frenchmen." "Now I have hope of you," he broke out gaily; "you will yet redeem your nation." At that moment Gabord came with a message from the Governor to Doltaire, and he prepared to go. "You are set on sacrifice?" he asked. "Think--dangling from Cape Diamond!" "I will meditate on your fate instead," I replied. "Think!" he said again, waving off my answer with his hand. "The letters I shall no more ask for; and you will not escape death?" "Never by that way," rejoined I. "So. Very good. Au plaisir, my captain. I go to dine at the Seigneur Duvarney's." With that last thrust he was gone, and left me wondering if the Seigneur had ever made an effort to see me, if he had forgiven the duel with his son. That was the incident. * * * * * When Gabord and Voban were gone, leaving the light behind, I went over to where the torch stuck in the wall, and drew Alixe's letter from my pocket with eager fingers. It told the whole story of her heart. CHATEAU ST. LOUIS, 27th November, 1757. Though I write you these few words, dear Robert, I do not know that they will reach you, for as yet it is not certain they will let Voban visit you. A year, dear friend, and not a word from you! I should have broken my heart if I had not heard of you one way and another. They say you are much worn in body, though you have always a cheerful air. There are stories of a visit Monsieur Doltaire paid you, and how you jested. He hates you, and yet he admires you too. And now listen, Robert, and I beg you not to be angry--oh, do not be angry, for I am all yours; but I want to tell you that I have not repulsed Monsieur Doltaire when he has spoken flatteries to me. I have not believed them, and I have kept my spirits strong against the evil in him. I want to get you free of prison, and to that end I have to work through him with the Intendant, that he will not set the Governor more against you. With the Intendant himself I will not deal at all. So I use the lesser villain, and in truth the more powerful, for he stands higher at Versailles than any here. With the Governor I have influence, for he is, as you know, a kinsman of my mother's, and of late he has shown a fondness for me. Yet you can see that I must act most warily, that I must not seem to care for you, for that would be your complete undoing. I rather seem to scoff. (Oh, how it hurts me! how my cheeks tingle when I think of it alone! and how I clench my hands, hating them all for oppressing you!) I do not believe their slanders--that you are a spy. It is I, Robert, who have at last induced the Governor to bring you to trial. They would have put it off till next year, but I feared you would die in that awful dungeon, and I was sure that if your trial came on there would be a change, as there is to be for a time, at least. You are to be lodged in the common jail during the sitting of the court; and so that is one step gained. Yet I had to use all manner of device with the Governor. He is sometimes so playful with me that I can pretend to sulkiness; and so one day I said that he showed no regard for our family or for me in not bringing you, who had nearly killed my brother, to justice. So he consented, and being of a stubborn nature, too, when Monsieur Doltaire and the Intendant opposed the trial, he said it should come off at once. But one thing grieves me: they are to have you marched through the streets of the town like any common criminal, and I dare show no distress nor plead, nor can my father, though he wishes to move for you in this; and I dare not urge him, for then it would seem strange the daughter asked your punishment, and the father sought to lessen it. When you are in the common jail it will be much easier to help you. I have seen Gabord, but he is not to be bent to any purpose, though he is kind to me. I shall try once more to have him take some wine and meat to you to-night. If I fail, then I shall only pray that you may be given strength in body for your time of trouble equal to your courage. It may be I can fix upon a point where you may look to see me as you pass to-morrow to the Chateau. There must be a sign. If you will put your hand to your forehead-- But no, they may bind you, and your hands may not be free. When you see me, pause in your step for an instant, and I shall know. I will tell Voban where you shall send your glance, if he is to be let in to you, and I hope that what I plan may not fail. And so, Robert, adieu. Time can not change me, and your misfortunes draw me closer to you. Only the dishonourable thing could make me close the doors of my heart, and I will not think you, whate'er they say, unworthy of my constant faith. Some day, maybe, we shall smile at, and even cherish, these sad times. In this gay house I must be flippant, for I am now of the foolish world! But under all the trivial sparkle a serious heart beats. It belongs to thee, if thou wilt have it, Robert, the heart of thy ALIXE. An hour after getting this good letter Gabord came again, and with him breakfast--a word which I had almost dropped from my language. True, it was only in a dungeon, on a pair of stools, by the light of a torch, but how I relished it!--a bottle of good wine, a piece of broiled fish, the half of a fowl, and some tender vegetables. When Gabord came for me with two soldiers, an hour later--I say an hour, but I only guess so, for I had no way of noting time--I was ready for new cares, and to see the world again. Before the others Gabord was the rough, almost brutal soldier, and soon I knew that I was to be driven out upon the St. Foye Road and on into the town. My arms were well fastened down, and I was tied about till I must have looked like a bale of living goods of no great value. Indeed, my clothes were by no means handsome, and save for my well-shaven face and clean handkerchief I was an ill-favoured spectacle; but I tried to bear my shoulders up as we marched through dark reeking corridors, and presently came suddenly into well-lighted passages. I had to pause, for the light blinded my eyes, and they hurt me horribly, so delicate were the nerves. For some minutes I stood there, my guards stolidly waiting, Gabord muttering a little and stamping upon the floor as if in anger, though I knew he was merely playing a small part to deceive his comrades. The pain in my eyes grew less, and, though they kept filling with moisture from the violence of the light, I soon could see without distress. I was led into the yard of the citadel, where was drawn up a company of soldiers. Gabord bade me stand still, and advanced towards the officers' quarters. I asked him if I might not walk to the ramparts and view the scene. He gruffly assented, bidding the men watch me closely, and I walked over to a point where, standing three hundred feet above the noble river, I could look out upon its sweet expanse, across to the Levis shore, with its serried legions of trees behind, and its bold settlement in front upon the Heights. There, eastward lay the well-wooded Island of Orleans, and over all the clear sun and sky, enlivened by a crisp and cheering air. Snow had fallen, but none now lay upon the ground, and I saw a rare and winning earth. I stood absorbed. I was recalling that first day that I remember in my life, when at Balmore my grandfather made prophecies upon me, and for the first time I was conscious of the world. As I stood lost to everything about me, I heard Doltaire's voice behind, and presently he said over my shoulder, "To wish Captain Moray a good-morning were superfluous!" I smiled at him: the pleasure of that scene had given me an impulse towards good nature even with my enemies. "The best I ever had," I answered quietly. "Contrasts are life's delights," he said. "You should thank us. You have your best day because of our worst dungeon." "But my thanks shall not be in words; you shall have the same courtesy at our hands one day." "I had the Bastile for a year," he rejoined, calling up a squad of men with his finger as he spoke. "I have had my best day. Two would be monotony. You think your English will take this some time?" he asked, waving a finger towards the citadel. "It will need good play to pluck that ribbon from its place." He glanced up, as he spoke, at the white flag with its golden lilies. "So much the better sport," I answered. "We will have the ribbon and its heritage." "You yourself shall furnish evidence to-day. Gabord here will see you temptingly disposed--the wild bull led peaceably by the nose!" "But one day I will twist your nose, Monsieur Doltaire." "That is fair enough, if rude," he responded. "When your turn comes, you twist and I endure. You shall be nourished well like me, and I shall look a battered hulk like you. But I shall never be the fool that you are. If I had a way to slip the leash, I'd slip it. You are a dolt." He was touching upon the letters again. "I weigh it all," said I. "I am no fool--anything else you will." "You'll be nothing soon, I fear--which is a pity." What more he might have said I do not know, but there now appeared in the yard a tall, reverend old gentleman, in the costume of the coureur de bois, though his belt was richly chased, and he wore an order on his breast. There was something more refined than powerful in his appearance, but he had a keen, kindly eye, and a manner unmistakably superior. His dress was a little barbarous, unlike Doltaire's splendid white uniform, set off with violet and gold, the lace of a fine handkerchief sticking from his belt, and a gold-handled sword at his side; but the manner of both was distinguished. Seeing Doltaire, he came forward and they embraced. Then he turned towards me, and as they walked off a little distance I could see that he was curious concerning me. Presently he raised his hand, and, as if something had excited him, said, "No, no, no; hang him and have done with it, but I'll have nothing to do with it--not a thing. 'Tis enough for me to rule at--" I could hear no further, but I was now sure that he was some one of note who had retired from any share in state affairs. He and Doltaire then moved on to the doors of the citadel, and, pausing there, Doltaire turned round and made a motion of his hand to Gabord. I was at once surrounded by the squad of men, and the order to march was given. A drum in front of me began to play a well-known derisive air of the French army, The Fox and the Wolf. We came out on the St. Foye Road and down towards the Chateau St. Louis, between crowds of shouting people who beat drums, kettles, pans, and made all manner of mocking noises. It was meant not only against myself, but against the British people. The women were not behind the men in violence; from them at first came handfuls of gravel and dust which struck me in the face; but Gabord put a stop to that. It was a shameful ordeal, which might have vexed me sorely if I had not had greater trials and expected worse. Now and again appeared a face I knew--some lady who turned her head away, or some gentleman who watched me curiously, but made no sign. When we came to the Chateau, I looked up as if casually, and there in the little round window I saw Alixe's face--for an instant only. I stopped in my tracks, was prodded by a soldier from behind, and I then stepped on. Entering, we were taken to the rear of the building, where, in an open courtyard, were a company of soldiers, some seats, and a table. On my right was the St. Lawrence swelling on its course, hundreds of feet beneath, little boats passing hither and thither on its flood. We were waiting about half an hour, the noises of the clamoring crowd coming to us, as they carried me aloft in effigy, and, burning me at the cliff edge, fired guns and threw stones at me, till, rags, ashes, and flame, I was tumbled into the river far below. At last, from the Chateau came the Marquis de Vaudreuil, Bigot, and a number of officers. The Governor looked gravely at me, but did not bow; Bigot gave me a sneering smile, eying me curiously the while, and (I could feel) remarking on my poor appearance to Cournal beside him--Cournal, who winked at his wife's dishonour for the favour of her lover, who gave him means for public robbery. Presently the Governor was seated, and he said, looking round, "Monsieur Doltaire--he is not here?" Bigot shook his head, and answered, "No doubt he is detained at the citadel." "And the Seigneur Duvarney?" the Governor added. At that moment the Governor's secretary handed him a letter. The Governor opened it. "Listen," said he. He read to the effect that the Seigneur Duvarney felt he was hardly fitted to be a just judge in this case, remembering the conflict between his son and the notorious Captain Moray. And from another standpoint, though the prisoner merited any fate reserved for him, if guilty of spying, he could not forget that his life had been saved by this British captain--an obligation which, unfortunately, he could neither repay nor wipe out. After much thought, he must disobey the Governor's summons, and he prayed that his Excellency would grant his consideration thereupon. I saw the Governor frown, but he made no remark, while Bigot said something in his ear which did not improve his humour, for he replied curtly, and turned to his secretary. "We must have two gentlemen more," he said. At that moment Doltaire entered with the old gentleman of whom I have written. The Governor instantly brightened, and gave the stranger a warm greeting, calling him his "dear Chevalier;" and, after a deal of urging, the Chevalier de la Darante was seated as one of my judges: which did not at all displease me, for I liked his face. I do not need to dwell upon the trial here. I have set down the facts before. I had no counsel and no witnesses. There seemed no reason why the trial should have dragged on all day, for I soon saw it was intended to find me guilty. Yet I was surprised to see how Doltaire brought up a point here and a question there in my favour, which served to lengthen out the trial; and all the time he sat near the Chevalier de la Darante, now and again talking with him. It was late evening before the trial came to a close. The one point to be established was that the letters taken from General Braddock were mine, and that I had made the plans while a hostage. I acknowledged nothing, and would not do so unless I was allowed to speak freely. This was not permitted until just before I was sentenced. Then Doltaire's look was fixed on me, and I knew he waited to see if I would divulge the matter private between us. However, I stood by my compact with him. Besides, it could not serve me to speak of it here, or use it as an argument, and it would only hasten an end which I felt he could prevent if he chose. So when I was asked if I had aught to say, I pleaded only that they had not kept the Articles of War signed at Fort Necessity, which provided I should be free within two months and a half--that is, when prisoners in our hands should be delivered up to them, as they were. They had broken their bond, though we had fulfilled ours, and I held myself justified in doing what I had done for our cause and for my own life. I was not heard patiently, though I could see that the Governor and the Chevalier were impressed; but Bigot instantly urged the case hotly against me, and the end came very soon. It was now dark; a single light had been brought and placed beside the Governor, while a soldier held a torch at a distance. Suddenly there was a silence; then, in response to a signal, the sharp ringing of a hundred bayonets as they were drawn and fastened to the muskets, and I could see them gleaming in the feeble torchlight. Presently, out of the stillness, the Governor's voice was heard condemning me to death by hanging, thirty days hence, at sunrise. Silence fell again instantly, and then a thing occurred which sent a thrill through us all. From the dark balcony above us came a voice, weird, high, and wailing: "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! He is guilty, and shall die! Francois Bigot shall die!" The voice was Mathilde's, and I saw Doltaire shrug a shoulder and look with malicious amusement at the Intendant. Bigot himself sat pale and furious. "Discover the intruder," he said to Gabord, who was standing near, "and have--him--jailed." But the Governor interfered. "It is some drunken creature," he urged quietly. "Take no account of it." X AN OFFICER OF MARINES What was my dismay to know that I was to be taken back again to my dungeon, and not lodged in the common jail, as I had hoped and Alixe had hinted! When I saw whither my footsteps were directed I said nothing, nor did Gabord speak at all. We marched back through a railing crowd as we had come, all silent and gloomy. I felt a chill at my heart when the citadel loomed up again out of the November shadow, and I half paused as I entered the gates. "Forward!" said Gabord mechanically, and I moved on into the yard, into the prison, through the dull corridors, the soldiers' heels clanking and resounding behind, down into the bowels of the earth, where the air was moist and warm, and then into my dungeon home! I stepped inside, and Gabord ordered the ropes off my person somewhat roughly, watched the soldiers till they were well away, and then leaned against the wall, waiting for me to speak. I had no impulse to smile, but I knew how I could most touch him, and so I said lightly, "You've got dickey-bird home again." He answered nothing and turned towards the door, leaving the torch stuck in the wall. But he suddenly stopped short, and suddenly thrust out to me a tiny piece of paper. "A hand touched mine as I went through the Chateau," said he, "and when out I came, look you, this here! I can't see to read. What does it say?" he added, with a shrewd attempt at innocence. I opened the little paper, held it towards the torch, and read: "Because of the storm there is no sleeping. Is there not the watcher aloft? Shall the sparrow fall unheeded? The wicked shall be confounded." It was Alixe's writing. She had hazarded this in the hands of my jailer as her only hope, and, knowing that he might not serve her, had put her message in vague sentences which I readily interpreted. I read the words aloud to him, and he laughed, and remarked, "'Tis a foolish thing that--The Scarlet Woman, mast like." "Most like," I answered quietly; "yet what should she be doing there at the Chateau?" "The mad go everywhere," he answered, "even to the intendance!" With that he left me, going, as he said, "to fetch crumbs and wine." Exhausted with the day's business, I threw myself upon my couch, drew my cloak over me, composed myself, and in a few minutes was sound asleep. I waked to find Gabord in the dungeon, setting out food upon a board supported by two stools. "'Tis custom to feed your dickey-bird ere you fetch him to the pot." he said, and drew the cork from a bottle of wine. He watched me as I ate and talked, but he spoke little. When I had finished, he fetched a packet of tobacco from his pocket. I offered him money, but he refused it, and I did not press him, for he said the food and wine were not of his buying. Presently he left, and came back with pens, ink, paper, and candles, which be laid out on my couch without words. After a little he came again, and laid a book on the improvised table before me. It was an English Bible. Opening it, I found inscribed on the fly-leaf, Charles Wainfleet, Chaplain to the British Army. Gabord explained that this chaplain had been in the citadel for some weeks; that he had often inquired about me; that he had been brought from the Ohio; and had known of me, having tended the lieutenant of my Virginian infantry in his last hours. Gabord thought I should now begin to make my peace with Heaven, and so had asked for the chaplain's Bible, which was freely given. I bade him thank the chaplain for me, and opening the book, I found a leaf turned down at the words, "In the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast." When I was left alone, I sat down to write diligently that history of myself which I had composed and fixed in my memory during the year of my housing in this dungeon. The words came from my pen freely, and hour after hour through many days, while no single word reached me from the outside world, I wrote on; carefully revising, but changing little from that which I had taken so long to record in my mind. I would not even yet think that they would hang me; and if they did, what good could brooding do? When the last word of the memoirs (I may call them so), addressed to Alixe, had been written, I turned my thoughts to other friends. The day preceding that fixed for my execution came, yet there was no sign from friend or enemy without. At ten o'clock of that day Chaplain Wainfleet was admitted to me in the presence of Gabord and a soldier. I found great pleasure in his company, brief as his visit was; and after I had given him messages to bear for me to old friends, if we never met again and he were set free, he left me, benignly commending me to Heaven. There was the question of my other letters. I had but one desire--Voban again, unless at my request the Seigneur Duvarney would come, and they would let him come. If it were certain that I was to go to the scaffold, then I should not hesitate to tell him my relations with his daughter, that he might comfort her when, being gone from the world myself, my love could do her no harm. I could not think that he would hold against me the duel with his son, and I felt sure he would come to me if he could. But why should I not try for both Voban and the Seigneur? So I spoke to Gabord. "Voban! Voban!" said he. "Does dickey-bird play at peacock still? Well, thou shalt see Voban. Thou shalt go trimmed to heaven--aho!" Presently I asked him if he would bear a message to the Governor, asking permission for the Seigneur Duvarney to visit me, if he were so inclined. At his request I wrote my petition out, and he carried it away with him, saying that I should have Voban that evening. I waited hour after hour, but no one came. As near as I could judge it was now evening. It seemed strange to think that, twenty feet above me, the world was all white with snow; the sound of sleigh-bells and church-bells, and the cries of snowshoers ringing on the clear, sharp air. I pictured the streets of Quebec alive with people: the young seigneur set off with furs and silken sash and sword or pistols; the long-haired, black-eyed woodsman in his embroidered moccasins and leggings with flying thrums; the peasant farmer slapping his hands cheerfully in the lighted market-place; the petty noble, with his demoiselle, hovering in the precincts of the Chateau St. Louis and the intendance. Up there were light, freedom, and the inspiriting frost; down here in my dungeon, the blades of corn, which, dying, yet never died, told the story of a choking air, wherein the body and soul of a man droop and take long to die. This was the night before Christmas Eve, when in England and Virginia they would be preparing for feasting and thanksgiving. The memories of past years crowded on me. I thought of feastings and spendthrift rejoicings in Glasgow and Virginia. All at once the carnal man in me rose up and damned these lying foes of mine. Resignation went whistling down the wind. Hang me! Hang me! No, by the God that gave me breath! I sat back and laughed--laughed at my own insipid virtue, by which, to keep faith with the fanatical follower of Prince Charlie, I had refused my liberty; cut myself off from the useful services of my King; wasted good years of my life, trusting to pressure and help to come from England, which never came; twisted the rope for my own neck to keep honour with the dishonourable Doltaire, who himself had set the noose swinging; and, inexpressible misery! involved in my shame and peril a young blithe spirit, breathing a miasma upon the health of a tender life. Every rebellious atom in my blood sprang to indignant action. I swore that if they fetched me to the gallows to celebrate their Noel, other lives than mine should go to keep me company on the dark trail. To die like a rat in a trap, oiled for the burning, and lighted by the torch of hatred! No, I would die fighting, if I must die. I drew from its hiding-place the knife I had secreted the day I was brought into that dungeon--a little weapon, but it would serve for the first blow. At whom? Gabord? It all flashed through my mind how I might do it when he came in again: bury this blade in his neck or heart--it was long enough for the work; then, when he was dead, change my clothes for his, take his weapons, and run my chances to get free of the citadel. Free? Where should I go in the dead of winter? Who would hide me, shelter me? I could not make my way to an English settlement. Ill clad, exposed to the merciless climate, and the end death. But that was freedom--freedom! I could feel my body dilating with the thought, as I paced my dungeon like an ill-tempered beast. But kill Gabord, who had put himself in danger to serve me, who himself had kept the chains from off my ankles and body, whose own life depended upon my security--"Come, come, Robert Moray," said I, "what relish have you for that? That's an ill game for a gentleman. Alixe Duvarney would rather see you dead than get your freedom over the body of this man." That was an hour of storm. I am glad that I conquered the baser part of me; for, almost before I had grown calm again, the bolts of the dungeon doors shot back, and presently Gabord stepped inside, followed by a muffled figure. "Voban the barber," said Gabord in a strange voice, and stepping again outside, he closed the door, but did not shoot the bolts. I stood as one in a dream. Voban the barber? In spite of cap and great fur coat, I saw the outline of a figure that no barber ever had in this world. I saw two eyes shining like lights set in a rosy sky. A moment of doubt, of impossible speculation, of delicious suspense, and then the coat of Voban the barber opened, dropped away from the lithe, graceful figure of a young officer of marines, the cap flew off, and in an instant the dear head, the blushing, shining face of Alixe was on my breast. In that moment, stolen from the calendar of hate, I ran into the haven where true hearts cast anchor and bless God that they have seen upon the heights, to guide them, the lights of home. The moment flashed by and was gone, but the light it made went not with it. When I drew her blushing face up, and stood her off from me that I might look at her again, the colour flew back and forth on her cheek, as you may see the fire flutter in an uncut ruby when you turn it in the sun. Modestly drawing the cloak she wore more closely about her, she hastened to tell me how it was she came in such a guise; but I made her pause for a moment while I gave her a seat and sat down beside her. Then by the light of the flickering torch and flaring candles I watched her feelings play upon her face as the warm light of autumn shifts upon the glories of ripe fruits. Her happiness was tempered by the sadness of our position, and my heart smote me that I had made her suffer, had brought care to her young life. I could see that in the year she had grown older, yet her beauty seemed enhanced by that and by the trouble she had endured. I shall let her tell her story here unbroken by my questions and those interruptions which Gabord made, bidding her to make haste. She spoke without faltering, save here and there; but even then I could see her brave spirit quelling the riot of her emotions, shutting down the sluice-gate of tears. "I knew," she said, her hand clasped in mine, "that Gabord was the only person like to be admitted to you, and so for days, living in fear lest the worst should happen, I have prepared for this chance. I have grown so in height that I knew an old uniform of my brothers would fit me, and I had it ready--small sword and all," she added, with a sad sort of humour, touching the weapon at her side. "You must know that we have for the winter a house here upon the ramparts near the Chateau. It was my mother's doings, that my sister Georgette and I might have no great journeyings in the cold to the festivities hereabouts. So I, being a favourite with the Governor, ran in and out of the Chateau at my will; of which my mother was proud, and she allowed me much liberty, for to be a favourite of the Governor is an honour. I knew how things were going, and what the chances were of the sentence being carried out on you. Sometimes I thought my heart would burst with the anxiety of it all, but I would not let that show to the world. If you could but have seen me smile at the Governor and Monsieur Doltaire--nay, do not press my hand so, Robert; you know well you have no need to fear monsieur--while I learned secrets of state, among them news of you. Three nights ago Monsieur Doltaire was talking with me at a ball--ah, those feastings while you were lying in a dungeon, and I shutting up my love and your danger close in my heart, even from those who loved me best! Well, suddenly he said, 'I think I will not have our English captain shifted to a better world.' "My heart stood still; I felt an ache across my breast so that I could hardly breathe. 'Why will you not?' said I; 'was not the sentence just?' He paused a minute, and then replied, 'All sentences are just when an enemy is dangerous.' Then said I as in surprise, 'Why, was he no spy, after all?' He sat back, and laughed a little. 'A spy according to the letter of the law, but you have heard of secret history--eh?' I tried to seem puzzled, for I had a thought there was something private between you and him which has to do with your fate. So I said, as if bewildered, 'You mean there is evidence which was not shown at the trial?' He answered slowly, 'Evidence that would bear upon the morals, not the law of the case.' Then said I, 'Has it to do with you, monsieur?' 'It has to do with France,' he replied. 'And so you will not have his death?' I asked. 'Bigot wishes it,' he replied, 'for no other reason than that Madame Cournal has spoken nice words for the good-looking captain, and because that unsuccessful duel gave Vaudreuil an advantage over himself. Vaudreuil wishes it because he thinks it will sound well in France, and also because he really believes the man a spy. The Council do not care much; they follow the Governor and Bigot, and both being agreed, their verdict is unanimous.' He paused, then added, 'And the Seigneur Duvarney--and his daughter--wish it because of a notable injury to one of their name.' At that I cautiously replied, 'No, my father does not wish it, for my brother gave the offense, and Captain Moray saved his life, as you know. I do not wish it, Monsieur Doltaire, because hanging is a shameful death, and he is a gentle man, not a ruffian. Let him be shot like a gentleman. How will it sound at the Court of France that, on insufficient evidence, as you admit, an English gentleman was hanged for a spy? Would not the King say (for he is a gentleman), Why was not this shown me before the man's death? Is it not a matter upon which a country would feel as gentlemen feel?' "I knew it the right thing to say at the moment, and it seemed the only way to aid you, though I intended, if the worst came to the worst, to go myself to the Governor at the last and plead for your life, at least for a reprieve. But it had suddenly flashed upon me that a reference to France was the thing, since the Articles of War which you are accused of dishonouring were signed by officers from France and England. "Presently he turned to me with a look of curiosity, and another sort of look also that made me tremble, and said, 'Now, there you have put your finger on the point--my point, the choice weapon I had reserved to prick the little bubble of Bigot's hate and the Governor's conceit, if I so chose, even at the last. And here is a girl, a young girl just freed from pinafores, who teaches them the law of nations! If it pleased me I should not speak, for Vaudreuil's and Bigot's affairs are none of mine; but, in truth, why should you kill your enemy? It is the sport to keep him living; you can get no change for your money from a dead man. He has had one cheerful year; why not another, and another, and another? And so watch him fretting to the slow-coming end, while now and again you give him a taste of hope, to drop him back again into the pit which has no sides for climbing.' He paused a minute, and then added, 'A year ago I thought he had touched you, this Britisher, with his raw humour and manners; but, my faith, how swiftly does a woman's fancy veer!' At that I said calmly to him, 'You must remember that then he was not thought so base.' 'Yes, yes,' he replied; 'and a woman loves to pity the captive, whatever his fault, if he be presentable and of some notice or talent. And Moray has gifts,' he went on. I appeared all at once to be offended. 'Veering, indeed! a woman's fancy! I think you might judge women better. You come from high places, Monsieur Doltaire, and they say this and that of your great talents and of your power at Versailles, but what proof have we had of it? You set a girl down with a fine patronage, and you hint at weapons to cut off my cousin the Governor and the Intendant from their purposes; but how do we know you can use them, that you have power with either the unnoticeable woman or the great men?' I knew very well it was a bold move. He suddenly turned to me, in his cruel eyes a glittering kind of light, and said, 'I suggest no more than I can do with those "great men"; and as for the woman, the slave can not be patron--I am the slave. I thought not of power before; but now that I do, I will live up to my thinking. I seem idle, I am not; purposeless, I am not; a gamester, I am none. I am a sportsman, and I will not leave the field till all the hunt be over. I seem a trifler, yet I have persistency. I am no romanticist, I have no great admiration for myself, and yet when I set out to hunt a woman honestly, be sure I shall never back to kennel till she is mine or I am done for utterly. Not by worth nor by deserving, but by unending patience and diligence--that shall be my motto. I shall devote to the chase every art that I have learned or known by nature. So there you have me, mademoiselle. Since you have brought me to the point, I will unfurl my flag.... I am--your--hunter,' he went on, speaking with slow, painful emphasis, 'and I shall make you mine. You fight against me, but it is no use.' I got to my feet, and said with coolness, though I was sick at heart and trembling, 'You are frank. You have made two resolves. I shall give weight to one as you fulfill the other'; and, smiling at him, I moved away towards my mother. "Masterful as he is, I felt that this would touch his vanity. There lay my great chance with him. If he had guessed the truth of what's between us, be sure, Robert, your life were not worth one hour beyond to-morrow's sunrise. You must know how I loathe deceitfulness, but when one weak girl is matched against powerful and evil men, what can she do? My conscience does not chide me, for I know my cause is just. Robert, look me in the eyes.... There, like that.... Now tell me. You are innocent of the dishonourable thing, are you not? I believe with all my soul, but that I may say from your own lips that you are no spy, tell me so." When I had said as she had wished, assuring her she should know all, carrying proofs away with her, and that hidden evidence of which Doltaire had spoken, she went on: "'You put me to the test,' said monsieur. 'Doing one, it will be proof that I shall do the other.' He fixed his eyes upon me with such a look that my whole nature shrank from him, as if the next instant his hateful hands were to be placed on me. Oh, Robert, I know how perilous was the part I played, but I dared it for your sake. For a whole year I have dissembled to every one save to that poor mad soul Mathilde, who reads my heart in her wild way, to Voban, and to the rough soldier outside your dungeon. But they will not betray me. God has given us these rough but honest friends. "Well, monsieur left me that night, and I have not seen him since, nor can I tell where he is, for no one knows, and I dare not ask too much. I did believe he would achieve his boast as to saving your life, and so, all yesterday and to-day, I have waited with most anxious heart; but not one word! Yet there was that in all he said which made me sure he meant to save you, and I believe he will. Yet think: if anything happened to him! You know what wild doings go on at Bigot's chateau out at Charlesbourg; or, again, in the storm of yesterday he may have been lost. You see, there are the hundred chances; so I determined not to trust wholly to him. There was one other way--to seek the Governor myself, open my heart to him, and beg for a reprieve. To-night at nine o'clock--it is now six, Robert--we go to the Chateau St. Louis, my mother and my father and I, to sup with the Governor. Oh, think what I must endure, to face them with this awful shadow on me! If no word come of the reprieve before that hour, I shall make my own appeal to the Governor. It may ruin me, but it may save you; and that done, what should I care for the rest? Your life is more to me than all the world beside." Here she put both hands upon my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. I did not answer yet, but took her hands in mine, and she continued: "An hour past, I told my mother I should go to see my dear friend Lucie Lotbiniere. Then I stole up to my room, put on my brother's uniform, and came down to meet Voban near the citadel, as we had arranged. I knew he was to have an order from the Governor to visit you. He was waiting, and to my great joy he put the order in my hands. I took his coat and wig and cap, a poor disguise, and came straight to the citadel, handing the order to the soldiers at the gate. They gave it back without a word, and passed me on. I thought this strange, and looked at the paper by the light of the torches. What was my surprise to see that Voban's name had been left out! It but gave permission to the bearer. That would serve with the common soldier, but I knew well it would not with Gabord or with the commandant of the citadel. All at once I saw the great risk I was running, the danger to us both. Still I would not turn back. But how good fortune serves us when we least look for it! At the commandant's very door was Gabord. I did not think to deceive him. It was my purpose from the first to throw myself upon his mercy. So there, that moment, I thrust the order into his hand. He read it, looked a moment, half fiercely and half kindly, at me, then turned and took the order to the commandant. Presently he came out, and said to me, 'Come, m'sieu', and see you clip the gentleman dainty fine for his sunrise travel. He'll get no care 'twixt posting-house and end of journey, m'sieu'.' This he said before two soldiers, speaking with harshness and a brutal humour. But inside the citadel he changed at once, and, taking from my head this cap and wig, he said quite gently, yet I could see he was angry, too, 'This is a mad doing, young lady.' He said no more, and led me straight to you. If I had told him I was coming, I know he would have stayed me. But at the dangerous moment he had not heart to drive me back.... And that is all my story, Robert." As I have said, this tale was broken often by little questionings and exclamations, and was not told in one long narrative as I have written it here. When she had done I sat silent and overcome for a moment. There was one thing now troubling me sorely, even in the painful joy of having her here close by me. She had risked all to save my life--reputation, friends, even myself, the one solace in her possible misery. Was it not my duty to agree to Doltaire's terms, for her sake, if there was yet a chance to do so? I had made a solemn promise to Sir John Godric that those letters, if they ever left my hands, should go to the lady who had written them; and to save my own life I would not have broken faith with my benefactor. But had I the right to add to the misery of this sweet, brave spirit? Suppose it was but for a year or two: had I the right to give her sorrow for that time, if I could prevent it, even at the cost of honour with the dead? Was it not my duty to act, and at once? Time was short. While in a swift moment I was debating, Gabord opened the door, and said, "Come, end it, end it. Gabord has a head to save!" I begged him for one minute more, and then giving Alixe the packet which held my story, I told her hastily the matter between Doltaire and myself, and said that now, rather than give her sorrow, I was prepared to break my word with Sir John Godric. She heard me through with flashing eyes, and I could see her bosom heave. When I had done, she looked me straight in the eyes. "Is all that here?" she said, holding up the packet. "All," I answered. "And you would not break your word to save your own life?" I shook my head in negation. "Now I know that you are truly honourable," she answered, "and you shall not break your promise for me. No, no, you shall not; you shall not stir. Tell me that you will not send word to Monsieur Doltaire--tell me!" When, after some struggle, I had consented, she said, "But I may act. I am not bound to secrecy. I have given no word or bond. I will go to the Governor with my love, and I do not fear the end. They will put me in a convent, and I shall see you no more, but I shall have saved you." In vain I begged her not to do so; her purpose was strong, and I could only get her promise that she would not act till midnight. This was hardly achieved when Gabord entered quickly, saying, "The Seigneur Duvarney! On with your coat, wig, and cap! Quick, mademoiselle!" Swiftly the disguise was put on, and I clasped her to my breast with a joyful agony, while Gabord hastily put out the candles and torch, and drew Alixe behind the dungeon door. Then standing himself in the doorway, he loudly commended me to sleep sound and be ready for travel in the morning. Taking the hint, I threw myself upon my couch, and composed myself. An instant afterwards the Seigneur appeared with a soldier, and Gabord met him cheerfully, looked at the order from the Governor, and motioned the Seigneur in and the soldier away. As Duvarney stepped inside, Gabord followed, holding up a torch. I rose to meet my visitor, and as I took his hand I saw Gabord catch Alixe by the sleeve and hurry her out with a whispered word, swinging the door behind her as she passed. Then he stuck the torch in the wall, went out, shut and bolted the dungeon door, and left us two alone. I was glad that Alixe's safety had been assured, and my greeting of her father was cordial. But he was more reserved than I had ever known him. The duel with his son, which had sent the youth to France and left him with a wound which would trouble him for many a day, weighed heavily against me. Again, I think that he guessed my love for Alixe, and resented it with all his might. What Frenchman would care to have his daughter lose her heart to one accused of a wretched crime, condemned to death, an enemy of his country, and a Protestant? I was sure that should he guess at the exact relations between us, Alixe would be sent behind the tall doors of a convent, where I should knock in vain. "You must not think, Moray," said he, "that I have been indifferent to your fate, but you can not guess how strong the feeling is against you, how obdurate is the Governor, who, if he should appear lax in dealing with you, would give a weapon into Bigot's hands which might ruin him in France one day. I have but this moment come from the Governor, and there seems no way to move him." I saw that he was troubled greatly, and I felt his helplessness. He went on: "There is but one man who could bend the Governor, but he, alas! is no friend of yours. And what way there is to move him I know not; he has no wish, I fancy, but that you shall go to your fate." "You mean Monsieur Doltaire?" said I quietly. "Doltaire," he answered. "I have tried to find him, for he is the secret agent of La Pompadour, and if I had one plausible reason to weigh with him--- But I have none, unless you can give it. There are vague hints of things between you and him, and I have come to ask if you can put any fact, any argument, in my hands that would aid me with him. I would go far to serve you." "Think not, I pray you," returned I, "that there is any debt unsatisfied between us." He waved his hand in a melancholy way. "Indeed, I wish to serve you for the sake of past friendship between us, not only for that debt's sake." "In spite of my quarrel with your son?" asked I. "In spite of that, indeed," he said slowly, "though a great wedge was driven between us there." "I am truly sorry for it," said I, with some pride. "The blame was in no sense mine. I was struck across the face; I humbled myself, remembering you, but he would have me out yes or no." "Upon a wager!" he urged, somewhat coldly. "With the Intendant, monsieur," I replied, "not with your son." "I can not understand the matter," was his gloomy answer. "I beg you not to try," I rejoined; "it is too late for explanations, and I have nothing to tell you of myself and Monsieur Doltaire. Only, whatever comes, remember I have begged nothing of you, have desired nothing but justice--that only. I shall make no further move; the axe shall fall if it must. I have nothing now to do but set my house in order, and live the hours between this and sunrise with what quiet I may. I am ready for either freedom or death. Life is not so incomparable a thing that I can not give it up without pother." He looked at me a moment steadily. "You and I are standing far off from each other," he remarked. "I will say one last thing to you, though you seem to wish me gone and your own grave closing in. I was asked by the Governor to tell you that if you would put him in the way of knowing the affairs of your provinces from the letters you have received, together with estimate of forces and plans of your forts, as you have known them, he will spare you. I only tell you this because you close all other ways to me." "I carry," said I, with a sharp burst of anger, "the scars of wounds an insolent youth gave me. I wish now that I had killed the son of the man who dares bring me such a message." For a moment I had forgotten Alixe, everything, in the wildness of my anger. I choked with rage; I could have struck him. "I mean nothing against you," he urged, with great ruefulness. "I suggest nothing. I bring the Governor's message, that is all. And let me say," he added, "that I have not thought you a spy, nor ever shall think so." I was trembling with anger still, and I was glad that at the moment Gabord opened the door, and stood waiting. "You will not part with me in peace, then?" asked the Seigneur slowly. "I will remember the gentleman who gave a captive hospitality," I answered. "I am too near death to let a late injury outweigh an old friendship. I am ashamed, but not only for myself. Let us part in peace--ay, let us part in peace," I added with feeling, for the thought of Alixe came rushing over me, and this was her father! "Good-by, Moray," he responded gravely. "You are a soldier, and brave; if the worst comes, I know how you will meet it. Let us waive all bitter thoughts between us. Good-by." We shook hands then, without a word, and in a moment the dungeon door closed behind him, and I was alone; and for a moment my heart was heavy beyond telling, and a terrible darkness settled on my spirit. I sat on my couch and buried my head in my hands. XI THE COMING OF DOLTAIRE At last I was roused by Gabord's voice. He sat down, and drew the leaves of faded corn between his fingers. "'Tis a poor life, this in a cage, after all--eh, dickey-bird? If a soldier can't stand in the field fighting, if a man can't rub shoulders with man, and pitch a tent of his own somewhere, why not go travelling with the Beast--aho? To have all the life sucked out like these--eh? To see the flesh melt and the hair go white, the eye to be one hour bright like a fire in a kiln, and the next like mother on working vinegar--that's not living at all--no." The speech had evidently cost him much thinking, and when he ended, his cheeks puffed out and a soundless laugh seemed to gather, but it burst in a sort of sigh. I would have taken his hand that moment, if I had not remembered when once he drew back from such demonstrations. I did not speak, but nodded assent, and took to drawing the leaves of corn between my fingers as he was doing. After a moment, cocking his head at me as might a surly schoolmaster in a pause of leniency, he added, "As quiet, as quiet, and never did he fly at door of cage, nor peck at jailer--aho!" I looked at him a minute seriously, and then, feeling in my coat, handed to him the knife which I had secreted, with the words, "Enough for pecking with, eh?" He looked at me so strangely, as he weighed the knife up and down in his hand, that I could not at first guess his thought; but presently I understood it, and I almost could have told what he would say. He opened the knife, felt the blade, measured it along his fingers, and then said, with a little bursting of the lips, "Poom! But what would ma'm'selle have thought if Gabord was found dead with a hole in his neck--behind? Eh?" He had struck the very note that had sung in me when the temptation came; but he was gay at once again, and I said to him, "What is the hour fixed?" "Seven o'clock," he answered, "and I will bring your breakfast first." "Good-night, then," said I. "Coffee and a little tobacco will be enough." When he was gone, I lay down on my bag of straw, which, never having been renewed, was now only full of worn chaff, and, gathering myself in my cloak, was soon in a dreamless sleep. I waked to the opening of the dungeon door, to see Gabord entering with a torch and a tray that held my frugal breakfast. He had added some brandy, also, of which I was glad, for it was bitter cold outside, as I discovered later. He was quiet, seeming often to wish to speak, but pausing before the act, never getting beyond a stumbling aho! I greeted him cheerfully enough. After making a little toilette, I drank my coffee with relish. At last I asked Gabord if no word had come to the citadel for me; and he said, none at all, nothing save a message from the Governor, before midnight, ordering certain matters. No more was said, until, turning to the door, he told me he would return to fetch me forth in a few minutes. But when halfway out he suddenly wheeled, came back, and blurted out, "If you and I could only fight it out, m'sieu'! 'Tis ill for a gentleman and a soldier to die without thrust or parry." "Gabord," said I, smiling at him, "you preach good sermons always, and I never saw a man I'd rather fight and be killed by than you!" Then, with an attempt at rough humour, I added, "But as I told you once, the knot is'nt at my throat, and I'll tie another one yet elsewhere, if God loves honest men." I had no hope at all, yet I felt I must say it. He nodded, but said nothing, and presently I was alone. I sat down on my straw couch and composed myself to think; not upon my end, for my mind was made up as to that, but upon the girl who was so dear to me, whose life had crept into mine and filled it, making it of value in the world. It must not be thought that I no longer had care for our cause, for I would willingly have spent my life a hundred times for my country, as my best friends will bear witness; but there comes a time when a man has a right to set all else aside but his own personal love and welfare, and to me the world was now bounded by just so much space as my dear Alixe might move in. I fastened my thought upon her face as I had last seen it. My eyes seemed to search for it also, and to find it in the torch which stuck out, softly sputtering, from the wall. I do not pretend, even at this distance of time, after having thought much over the thing, to give any good reason for so sudden a change as took place in me there. All at once a voice appeared to say to me, "When you are gone, she will be Doltaire's. Remember what she said. She fears him. He has a power over her." Now, some will set it down to a low, unmanly jealousy and suspicion; it is hard to name it, but I know that I was seized with a misery so deep that all my past sufferings and disappointments, and even this present horror were shadowy beside it. I pictured to myself Alixe in Doltaire's arms, after I had gone beyond human call. It is strange how an idea will seize us and master us, and an inconspicuous possibility suddenly stand out with huge distinctness. All at once I felt in my head "the ring of fire" of which Mathilde had warned me, a maddening heat filled my veins, and that hateful picture grew more vivid. Things Alixe had said the night before flashed to my mind, and I fancied that, unknown to herself even, he already had a substantial power over her. He had deep determination, the gracious subtlety which charms a woman, and she, hemmed in by his devices, overcome by his pleadings, attracted by his enviable personality, would come at last to his will. The evening before I had seen strong signs of the dramatic qualities of her nature. She had the gift of imagination, the epic spirit. Even three years previous I felt how she had seen every little incident of her daily life in a way which gave it vividness and distinction. All things touched her with delicate emphasis--were etched upon her brain--or did not touch her at all. She would love the picturesque in life, though her own tastes were so simple and fine. Imagination would beset her path with dangers; it would be to her, with her beauty, a fatal gift, a danger to herself and others. She would have power, and feeling it, womanlike, would use it, dissipating her emotions, paying out the sweetness of her soul, till one day a dramatic move, a strong picturesque personality like Doltaire's, would catch her from the moorings of her truth, and the end must be tragedy to her. Doltaire! Doltaire! The name burnt into my brain. Some prescient quality in me awaked, and I saw her the sacrifice of her imagination, of the dramatic beauty of her nature, my enemy her tyrant and destroyer. He would leave nothing undone to achieve his end, and do nothing that would not in the end poison her soul and turn her very glories into miseries. How could she withstand the charm of his keen knowledge of the world, the fascination of his temperament, the alluring eloquence of his frank wickedness? And I should rather a million times see her in her grave than passed through the atmosphere of his life. This may seem madness, selfish and small; but after-events went far to justify my fears and imaginings, for behind there was a love, an aching, absorbing solicitude. I can not think that my anxiety was all vulgar smallness then. I called him by coarse names, as I tramped up and down my dungeon; I cursed him; impotent contempt was poured out on him; in imagination I held him there before me, and choked him till his eyes burst out and his body grew limp in my arms. The ring of fire in my head scorched and narrowed till I could have shrieked in agony. My breath came short and labored, and my heart felt as though it were in a vise and being clamped to nothing. For an instant, also, I broke out in wild bitterness against Alixe. She had said she would save me, and yet in an hour or less I should be dead. She had come to me last night ah--true; but that was in keeping with her dramatic temperament; it was the drama of it that had appealed to her; and to-morrow she would forget me, and sink her fresh spirit in the malarial shadows of Doltaire's. In my passion I thrust my hand into my waistcoat and unconsciously drew out something. At first my only feeling was that my hand could clench it, but slowly a knowledge of it travelled to my brain, as if through clouds and vapours. Now I am no Catholic, I do not know that I am superstitious, yet when I became conscious that the thing I held was the wooden cross that Mathilde had given me, a weird feeling passed through me, and there was an arrest of the passions of mind and body; a coolness passed over all my nerves, and my brain got clear again, the ring of fire loosing, melting away. It was a happy, diverting influence, which gave the mind rest for a moment, till the better spirit, the wiser feeling, had a chance to reassert itself; but then it seemed to me almost supernatural. One can laugh when misery and danger are over, and it would be easy to turn this matter into ridicule, but from that hour to this the wooden cross which turned the flood of my feelings then into a saving channel has never left me. I keep it, not indeed for what it was, but for what it did. As I stood musing, there came to my mind suddenly the words of a song which I had heard some voyageurs sing on the St. Lawrence, as I sat on the cliff a hundred feet above them and watched them drift down in the twilight: "Brothers, we go to the Scarlet Hills: (Little gold sun, come out of the dawn!) There we will meet in the cedar groves; (Shining white dew, come down!) There is a bed where you sleep so sound, The little good folk of the hills will guard, Till the morning wakes and your love comes home. (Fly away, heart, to the Scarlet Hills!)" Something in the half-mystical, half-Arcadian spirit of the words soothed me, lightened my thoughts, so that when, presently, Gabord opened the door, and entered with four soldiers, I was calm enough for the great shift. Gabord did not speak, but set about pinioning me himself. I asked him if he could not let me go unpinioned, for it was ignoble to go to ones death tied like a beast. At first he shook his head, but as if with a sudden impulse lie cast the ropes aside, and, helping me on with my cloak, threw again over it a heavier cloak he had brought, gave me a fur cap to wear, and at last himself put on me a pair of woollen leggings, which, if they were no ornament, and to be of but transitory use (it seemed strange to me then that one should be caring for a body so soon to be cut off from all feeling), were most comforting when we came into the bitter, steely air. Gabord might easily have given these last tasks to the soldiers, but he was solicitous to perform them himself. Yet with surly brow and a rough accent he gave the word to go forward, and in a moment we were marching through the passages, up frosty steps, in the stone corridors, and on out of the citadel into the yard. I remember that as we passed into the open air I heard the voice of a soldier singing a gay air of love and war. Presently he came in sight. He saw me, stood still for a moment looking curiously, and then, taking up the song again at the very line where he had broken off, passed round an angle of the building and was gone. To him I was no more than a moth fluttering in the candle, to drop dead a moment later. It was just on the verge of sunrise. There was the grayish-blue light in the west, the top of a long range of forest was sharply outlined against it, and a timorous darkness was hurrying out of the zenith. In the east a sad golden radiance was stealing up and driving back the mystery of the night, and that weird loneliness of an arctic world. The city was hardly waking as yet, but straight silver columns of smoke rolled up out of many chimneys, and the golden cross on the cathedral caught the first rays of the sun. I was not interested in the city; I had now, as I thought, done with men. Besides the four soldiers who had brought me out, another squad surrounded me, commanded by a young officer whom I recognized as Captain Lancy, the rough roysterer who had insulted me at Bigot's palace over a year ago. I looked with a spirit absorbed upon the world about me, and a hundred thoughts which had to do with man's life passed through my mind. But the young officer, speaking sharply to me, ordered me on, and changed the current of my thoughts. The coarseness of the man and his insulting words were hard to bear, so that I was constrained to ask him if it were not customary to protect a condemned man from insult rather than to expose him to it. I said that I should be glad of my last moments in peace. At that he asked Gabord why I was unbound, and my jailer answered that binding was for criminals who were to be HANGED! I could scarcely believe my ears. I was to be shot, not hanged. I had a thrill of gratitude which I can not describe. It may seem a nice distinction, but to me there were whole seas between the two modes of death. I need not blush in advance for being shot--my friends could bear that without humiliation; but hanging would have always tainted their memory of me, try as they would against it. "The gallows is ready, and my orders were to see him hanged," Mr. Lancy said. "An order came at midnight that he should be shot," was Gabord's reply, producing the order, and handing it over. The officer contemptuously tossed it back, and now, a little more courteous, ordered me against the wall, and I let my cloak fall to the ground. I was placed where, looking east, I could see the Island of Orleans, on which was the summer-house of the Seigneur Duvarney. Gabord came to me and said, "M'sieu', you are a brave man"--then, all at once breaking off, he added in a low, hurried voice, "'Tis not a long flight to heaven, m'sieu'!" I could see his face twitching as he stood looking at me. He hardly dared to turn round to his comrades, lest his emotion should be seen. But the officer roughly ordered him back. Gabord coolly drew out his watch, and made a motion to me not to take off my cloak yet. "'Tis not the time by six minutes," he said. "The gentleman is to be shot to the stroke--aho!" His voice and manner were dogged. The officer stepped forward threateningly; but Gabord said something angrily in an undertone, and the other turned on his heel and began walking up and down. This continued for a moment, in which we all were very still and bitter cold--the air cut like steel--and then my heart gave a great leap, for suddenly there stepped into the yard Doltaire. Action seemed suspended in me, but I know I listened with singular curiosity to the shrill creaking of his boots on the frosty earth, and I noticed that the fur collar of the coat he wore was all white with the frozen moisture of his breath, also that tiny icicles hung from his eyelashes. He came down the yard slowly, and presently paused and looked at Gabord and the young officer, his head laid a little to one side in a quizzical fashion, his eyelids drooping. "What time was monsieur to be shot?" he asked of Captain Lancy. "At seven o'clock, monsieur," was the reply. Doltaire took out his watch. "It wants three minutes of seven," said he. "What the devil means this business before the stroke o' the hour?" waving a hand towards me. "We were waiting for the minute, monsieur," was the officer's reply. A cynical, cutting smile crossed Doltaire's face. "A charitable trick, upon my soul, to fetch a gentleman from a warm dungeon and stand him against an icy wall on a deadly morning to cool his heels as he waits for his hour to die! You'd skin your lion and shoot him afterwards--voila!" All this time he held the watch in his hand. "You, Gabord," he went on, "you are a man to obey orders--eh?" Gabord hesitated a moment as if waiting for Lancy to speak, and then said, "I was not in command. When I was called upon I brought him forth." "Excuses! excuses! You sweated to be rid of your charge." Gabord's face lowered. "M'sieu' would have been in heaven by this if I had'nt stopped it," he broke out angrily. Doltaire turned sharply on Lancy. "I thought as much," said he, "and you would have let Gabord share your misdemeanor. Yet your father was a gentleman! If you had shot monsieur before seven, you would have taken the dungeon he left. You must learn, my young provincial, that you are not to supersede France and the King. It is now seven o'clock; you will march your men back into quarters." Then turning to me, he raised his cap. "You will find your cloak more comfortable, Captain Moray," said he, and he motioned Gabord to hand it to me, as he came forward. "May I breakfast with you?" he added courteously. He yawned a little. "I have not risen so early in years, and I am chilled to the bone. Gabord insists that it is warm in your dungeon; I have a fancy to breakfast there. It will recall my year in the Bastile." He smiled in a quaint, elusive sort of fashion, and as I drew the cloak about me, I said through chattering teeth, for I had suffered with the brutal cold, "I am glad to have the chance to offer breakfast." "To me or any one?" he dryly suggested. "Think! by now, had I not come, you might have been in a warmer world than this--indeed, much warmer," he suddenly said, as he stooped, picked up some snow in his bare hand, and clapped it to my cheek, rubbing it with force and swiftness. The cold had nipped it, and this was the way to draw out the frost. His solicitude at the moment was so natural and earnest that it was hard to think he was my enemy. When he had rubbed awhile, he gave me his own handkerchief to dry my face; and so perfect was his courtesy, it was impossible to do otherwise than meet him as he meant and showed for the moment. He had stepped between me and death, and even an enemy who does that, no matter what the motive, deserves something at your hands. "Gabord," he said, as we stepped inside the citadel, "we will breakfast at eight o'clock. Meanwhile, I have some duties with our officers here. Till we meet in your dining-hall, then, monsieur," he added to me, and raised his cap. "You must put up with frugal fare," I answered, bowing. "If you but furnish locusts," he said gaily, "I will bring the wild honey.... What wonderful hives of bees they have at the Seigneur Duvarney's!" he continued musingly, as if with second thought; "a beautiful manor--a place for pretty birds and honey-bees!" His eyelids drooped languidly, as was their way when he had said something a little carbolic, as this was to me, because of its hateful suggestion. His words drew nothing from me, not even a look of understanding, and, again bowing, we went our ways. At the door of the dungeon Gabord held the torch up to my face. His own had a look which came as near to being gentle as was possible to him. Yet he was so ugly that it looked almost ludicrous in him. "Poom!" said he. "A friend at court. More comfits." "You think Monsieur Doltaire gets comfits, too?" asked I. He rubbed his cheek with a key. "Aho!" mused he--"aho! M'sieu' Doltaire rises not early for naught." XII "THE POINT ENVENOMED TOO!" I was roused by the opening of the door. Doltaire entered. He advanced towards me with the manner of an admired comrade, and, with no trace of what would mark him as my foe, said, as he sniffed the air: "Monsieur, I have been selfish. I asked myself to breakfast with you, yet, while I love the new experience, I will deny myself in this. You shall breakfast with me, as you pass to your new lodgings. You must not say no," he added, as though we were in some salon. "I have a sleigh here at the door, and a fellow has already gone to fan my kitchen fires and forage for the table. Come," he went on, "let me help you with your cloak." He threw my cloak around me, and turned towards the door. I had not spoken a word, for what with weakness, the announcement that I was to have new lodgings, and the sudden change in my affairs, I was like a child walking in its sleep. I could do no more than bow to him and force a smile, which must have told more than aught else of my state, for he stepped to my side and offered me his arm. I drew back from that with thanks, for I felt a quick hatred of myself that I should take favours of the man who had moved for my destruction, and to steal from me my promised wife. Yet it was my duty to live if I could, to escape if that were possible, to use every means to foil my enemies. It was all a game; why should I not accept advances at my enemy's hands, and match dissimulation with dissimulation? When I refused his arm, he smiled comically, and raised his shoulders in deprecation. "You forget your dignity, monsieur," I said presently as we walked on, Gabord meeting us and lighting us through the passages; "you voted me a villain, a spy, at my trial!" "Technically and publicly, you are a spy, a vulgar criminal," he replied; "privately, you are a foolish, blundering gentleman." "A soldier, also, you will admit, who keeps his compact with his enemy." "Otherwise we should not breakfast together this morning," he answered. "What difference would it make to this government if our private matter had been dragged in? Technically, you still would have been the spy. But I will say this, monsieur, to me you are a man better worth torture than death." "Do you ever stop to think of how this may end for you?" I asked quietly. He seemed pleased with the question. "I have thought it might be interesting," he answered; "else, as I said, you should long ago have left this naughty world. Is it in your mind that we shall cross swords one day?" "I feel it in my bones," said I, "that I shall kill you." At that moment we stood at the entrance to the citadel, where a good pair of horses and a sleigh awaited us. We got in, the robes were piled around us, and the horses started off at a long trot. I was muffled to the ears, but I could see how white and beautiful was the world, how the frost glistened in the trees, how the balsams were weighted down with snow, and how snug the chateaux looked with the smoke curling up from their hunched chimneys. Presently Doltaire replied to my last remark. "Conviction is the executioner of the stupid," said he. "When a man is not great enough to let change and chance guide him, he gets convictions, and dies a fool." "Conviction has made men and nations strong," I rejoined. "Has made men and nations asses," he retorted. "The Mohammmedan has conviction, so has the Christian: they die fighting each other, and the philosopher sits by and laughs. Expediency, monsieur, expediency is the real wisdom, the true master of this world. Expediency saved your life to-day; conviction would have sent you to a starry home." As he spoke a thought came in on me. Here we were in the open world, travelling together, without a guard of any kind. Was it not possible to make a dash for freedom? The idea was put away from me, and yet it was a fresh accent of Doltaire's character that he tempted me in this way. As if he divined what I thought, he said to me--for I made no attempt to answer his question: "Men of sense never confuse issues or choose the wrong time for their purposes. Foes may have unwritten truces." There was the matter in a nutshell. He had done nothing carelessly; he was touching off our conflict with flashes of genius. He was the man who had roused in me last night the fiercest passions of my life, and yet this morning he had saved me from death, and, though he was still my sworn enemy, I was about to breakfast with him. Already the streets of the town were filling; for it was the day before Christmas, and it would be the great market-day of the year. Few noticed us as we sped along down Palace Street and I could not conceive whither we were going, until, passing the Hotel Dieu, I saw in front the Intendance. I remembered the last time I was there, and what had happened then, and a thought flashed through me that perhaps this was another trap. But I put it from me, and soon afterwards Doltaire said: "I have now a slice of the Intendance for my own, and we shall breakfast like squirrels in a loft." As we drove into the open space before the palace, a company of soldiers standing before the great door began marching up to the road by which we came. With them was a prisoner. I saw at once that he was a British officer, but I did not recognize his face. I asked his name of Doltaire, and found it was one Lieutenant Stevens, of Rogers' Rangers, those brave New Englanders. After an interview with Bigot he was being taken to the common jail. To my request that I might speak with him Doltaire assented, and at a sign from my companion the soldiers stopped. Stevens's eyes were fixed on me with a puzzled, disturbed expression. He was well built, of intrepid bearing, with a fine openness of manner joined to handsome features. But there was a recklessness in his eye which seemed to me to come nearer the swashbuckling character of a young French seigneur than the wariness of a British soldier. I spoke his name and introduced myself. His surprise and pleasure were pronounced, for he had thought (as he said) that by this time I would be dead. There was an instant's flash of his eye, as if a suspicion of my loyalty had crossed his mind; but it was gone on the instant, and immediately Doltaire, who also had interpreted the look, smiled, and said he had carried me off to breakfast while the furniture of my former prison was being shifted to my new one. After a word or two more, with Stevens's assurance that the British had recovered from Braddock's defeat and would soon be knocking at the portals of the Chateau St. Louis, we parted, and soon Doltaire and I got out at the high stone steps of the palace. Standing there a moment, I looked round. In this space surrounding the Intendance was gathered the history of New France. This palace, large enough for the king of a European country with a population of a million, was the official residence of the commercial ruler of a province. It was the house of the miller, and across the way was the King's storehouse, La Friponne, where poor folk were ground between the stones. The great square was already filling with people who had come to trade. Here were barrels of malt being unloaded; there, great sacks of grain, bags of dried fruits, bales of home-made cloth, and loads of fine-sawn boards and timber. Moving about among the peasants were the regular soldiers in their white uniforms faced with blue, red, yellow, or violet, with black three-cornered hats, and black gaiters from foot to knee, and the militia in coats of white with black facings. Behind a great collar of dogskin a pair of jet-black eyes flashed out from under a pretty forehead; and presently one saw these same eyes grown sorrowful or dull under heavy knotted brows, which told of a life too vexed by care and labour to keep alive a spark of youth's romance. Now the bell in the tower above us rang a short peal, the signal for the opening of La Friponne, and the bustling crowd moved towards its doors. As I stood there on the great steps, I chanced to look along the plain, bare front of the palace to an annex at the end, and standing in a doorway opening on a pair of steps was Voban. I was amazed that he should be there--the man whose life had been spoiled by Bigot. At the same moment Doltaire motioned to him to return inside; which he did. Doltaire laughed at my surprise, and as he showed me inside the palace said: "There is no barber in the world like Voban. Interesting interesting! I love to watch his eye when he draws the razor down my throat. It would be so easy to fetch it across; but Voban, as you see, is not a man of absolute conviction. It will be sport, some day, to put Bigot's valet to bed with a broken leg or a fit of spleen, and send Voban to shave him." "Where is Mathilde?" I asked, as though I knew naught of her whereabouts. "Mathilde is where none may touch her, monsieur; under the protection of the daintiest lady of New France. It is her whim; and when a lady is charming, an Intendant, even, must not trouble her caprice." He did not need to speak more plainly. It was he who had prevented Bigot from taking Mathilde away from Alixe, and locking her up, or worse. I said nothing, however, and soon we were in a large room, sumptuously furnished, looking out on the great square. The morning sun stared in, some snowbirds twittered on the window-sill, and inside, a canary, in an alcove hung with plants and flowers, sang as if it were the heart of summer. All was warm and comfortable, and it was like a dream that I had just come from the dismal chance of a miserable death. My cloak and cap and leggings had been taken from me when I entered, as courteously as though I had been King Louis himself, and a great chair was drawn solicitously to the fire. All this was done by the servant, after one quick look from Doltaire. The man seemed to understand his master perfectly, to read one look as though it were a volume-- "The constant service of the antique world." Such was Doltaire's influence. The closer you came to him, the more compelling was he--a devilish attraction, notably selfish, yet capable of benevolence. Two years before this time I saw him lift a load from the back of a peasant woman and carry it home for her, putting into her hand a gold piece on leaving. At another time, an old man had died of a foul disease in a miserable upper room of a warehouse. Doltaire was passing at the moment when the body should be carried to burial. The stricken widow of the dead man stood below, waiting, but no one would fetch the body down. Doltaire stopped and questioned her kindly, and in another minute he was driving the carter and another upstairs at the point of his sword. Together they brought the body down, and Doltaire followed it to the burying-ground; keeping the gravedigger at his task when he would have run away, and saying the responses to the priest in the short service read above the grave. I said to him then, "You rail at the world and scoff at men and many decencies, and yet you do these things!" To this he replied--he was in my own lodgings at the time--"The brain may call all men liars and fools, but the senses feel the shock of misery which we do not ourselves inflict. Inflicting, we are prone to cruelty, as you have seen a schoolmaster begin punishment with tears, grow angry at the shrinking back under his cane, and give way to a sudden lust of torture. I have little pity for those who can help themselves--let them fight or eat the leek; but the child and the helpless and the sick it is a pleasure to aid. I love the poor as much as I love anything. I could live their life, if I were put to it. As a gentleman, I hate squalor and the puddles of wretchedness but I could have worked at the plough or the anvil; I could have dug in the earth till my knuckles grew big and my shoulders hardened to a roundness, have eaten my beans and pork and pea-soup, and have been a healthy ox, munching the bread of industry and trailing the puissant pike, a diligent serf. I have no ethics, and yet I am on the side of the just when they do not put thorns in my bed to keep me awake at night!" Upon the walls hung suits of armour, swords of beautiful make, spears, belts of wonderful workmanship, a tattered banner, sashes knit by ladies' fingers, pouches, bandoleers, and many strong sketches of scenes that I knew well. Now and then a woman's head in oils or pencil peeped out from the abundant ornaments. I recalled then another thing he said at that time of which I write: "I have never juggled with my conscience--never 'made believe' with it. My will was always stronger than my wish for anything, always stronger than temptation. I have chosen this way or that deliberately. I am ever ready to face consequences, and never to cry out. It is the ass who does not deserve either reward or punishment who says that something carried him away, and, being weak, he fell. That is a poor man who is no stronger than his passions. I can understand the devil fighting God, and taking the long punishment without repentance, like a powerful prince as he was. I could understand a peasant, killing King Louis in the palace, and being ready, if he had a hundred lives, to give them all, having done the deed he set out to do. If a man must have convictions of that sort, he can escape everlasting laughter--the final hell--only by facing the rebound of his wild deeds." These were strange sentiments in the mouth of a man who was ever the mannered courtier, and as I sat there alone, while he was gone elsewhere for some minutes, many such things he had said came back to me, suggested, no doubt, by this new, inexplicable attitude towards myself. I could trace some of his sentiments, perhaps vaguely, to the fact that--as I had come to know through the Seigneur Duvarney--his mother was of peasant blood, the beautiful daughter of a farmer of Poictiers, who had died soon after giving birth to Doltaire. His peculiar nature had shown itself in his refusal to accept a title. It was his whim to be the plain "Monsieur"; behind which was, perhaps, some native arrogancy which made him prefer that to being a noble whose origin, well known, must ever interfere with his ambitions. Then, too, maybe, the peasant in him--never in his face or form, which were patrician altogether--spoke for more truth and manliness than he was capable of, and so he chose to be the cynical, irresponsible courtier, while many of his instincts had urged him to the peasant's integrity. He had undisturbed, however, one instinct of the peasant--a directness, which was evident chiefly in the clearness of his thoughts. As these things hurried through my mind, my body sunk in a kind of restfulness before the great fire, Doltaire came back. "I will not keep you from breakfast," said he. "Voban must wait, if you will pass by untidiness." A thought flashed through my mind. Maybe Voban had some word for me from Alixe! So I said instantly, "I am not hungry. Perhaps you will let me wait yonder while Voban tends you. As you said, it should be interesting." "You will not mind the disorder of my dressing-room? Well, then, this way, and we can talk while Voban plays with temptation." So saying, he courteously led the way into another chamber, where Voban stood waiting. I spoke to him, and he bowed, but did not speak; and then Doltaire said: "You see, Voban, your labour on Monsieur was wasted so far as concerns the world to come. You trimmed him for the glorious company of the apostles, and see, he breakfasts with Monsieur Doltaire--in the Intendance, too, my Voban, which, as you know, is wicked--a very nest of wasps!" I never saw more hate than shot out of Voban's eyes at that moment; but the lids drooped over them at once, and he made ready for his work, as Doltaire, putting aside his coat, seated himself, laughing. There was no little daring, as there was cruelty, in thus torturing a man whose life had been broken by Doltaire's associate. I wondered now and then if Doltaire were not really putting acid on the barber's bare nerves for some other purpose than mere general cruelty. Even as he would have understood the peasant's murder of King Louis, so he would have seen a logical end to a terrible game in Bigot's death at the hand of Voban. Possibly he wondered that Voban did not strike, and he himself took a delight in showing him his own wrongs occasionally. Then, again, Doltaire might wish for Bigot's death, to succeed him in his place! But this I put by as improbable, for the Intendant's post was not his ambition, or, favourite of La Pompadour as he was, he would, desiring, have long ago achieved that end. Moreover, every evidence showed that he would gladly return to France, for his clear brain foresaw the final ruin of the colony and the triumph of the British. He had once said in my hearing: "Those swaggering Englishmen will keep coming on. They are too stupid to turn back. The eternal sameness of it all will so distress us we shall awake one morning, find them at our bedsides, give a kick, and die from sheer ennui. They'll use our banners to boil their fat puddings in, they'll roast oxen in the highways, and after our girls have married them they'll turn them into kitchen wenches with frowsy skirts and ankles like beeves!" But, indeed, beneath his dangerous irony there was a strain of impishness, and he would, if need be, laugh at his own troubles, and torture himself as he had tortured others. This morning he was full of a carbolic humour. As the razor came to his neck he said: "Voban, a barber must have patience. It is a sad thing to mistake friend for enemy. What is a friend? Is it one who says sweet words?" There was a pause, in which the shaving went on, and then he continued: "Is it he who says, I have eaten Voban's bread, and Voban shall therefore go to prison, or be hurried to Walhalla? Or is it he who stays the iron hand, who puts nettles in Voban's cold, cold bed, that he may rise early and go forth among the heroes?" I do not think Voban understood that, through some freak of purpose, Doltaire was telling him thus obliquely he had saved him from Bigot's cruelty, from prison or death. Once or twice he glanced at me, but not meaningly, for Doltaire was seated opposite a mirror, and could see each motion made by either of us. Presently Doltaire said to me idly: "I dine to-day at the Seigneur Duvarney's. You will be glad to hear that mademoiselle bids fair to rival the charming Madame Cournal. Her followers are as many, so they say, and all in one short year she has suddenly thrown out a thousand new faculties and charms. Doubtless you remember she was gifted, but who would have thought she could have blossomed so! She was all light and softness and air; she is now all fire and skill as well. Matchless! matchless! Every day sees her with some new capacity, some fresh and delicate aplomb. She has set the town admiring, and jealous mothers prophesy trist ending for her. Her swift mastery of the social arts is weird, they say. La! la! The social arts! A good brain, a gift of penetration, a manner--which is a grand necessity, and it must be with birth--no heart to speak of, and the rest is easy. No heart--there is the thing; with a good brain and senses all warm with life--to feel, but never to have the arrow strike home. You must never think to love and be loved, and be wise too. The emotions blind the judgment. Be heartless, be perfect with heavenly artifice, and, if you are a woman, have no vitriol on your tongue--and you may rule at Versailles or Quebec. But with this difference: in Quebec you may be virtuous; at Versailles you must not. It is a pity that you may not meet Mademoiselle Duvarney. She would astound you. She was a simple ballad a year ago; to-morrow she may be an epic." He nodded at me reflectively, and went on: "'Mademoiselle,' said the Chevalier de la Darante to her at dinner, some weeks ago, 'if I were young, I should adore you.' 'Monsieur,' she answered, 'you use that "if" to shirk the responsibility.' That put him on his mettle. 'Then, by the gods, I adore you now,' he answered. 'If I were young, I should blush to hear you say so,' was her reply. 'I empty out my heart, and away trips the disdainful nymph with a laugh,' he rejoined gaily, the rusty old courtier; 'there's nothing left but to fall upon my sword!' 'Disdainful nymphs are the better scabbards for distinguished swords,' she said, with charming courtesy. Then, laughing softly, 'There is an Egyptian proverb which runs thus: "If thou, Dol, son of Hoshti, hast emptied out thy heart, and it bring no fruit in exchange, curse not thy gods and die, but build a pyramid in the vineyard where thy love was spent, and write upon it, Pride hath no conqueror."' It is a mind for a palace, is it not?" I could see in the mirror facing him the provoking devilry of his eyes. I knew that he was trying how much he could stir me. He guessed my love for her, but I could see he was sure that she no longer--if she ever had--thought of me. Besides, with a lover's understanding, I saw also that he liked to talk of her. His eyes, in the mirror, did not meet mine, but were fixed, as on some distant and pleasing prospect, though there was, as always, a slight disdain at his mouth. But the eyes were clear, resolute, and strong, never wavering--and I never saw them waver--yet in them something distant and inscrutable. It was a candid eye, and he was candid in his evil; he made no pretense; and though the means to his ends were wicked, they were never low. Presently, glancing round the room, I saw an easel on which was a canvas. He caught my glance. "Silly work for a soldier and a gentleman," he said, "but silliness is a great privilege. It needs as much skill to carry folly as to be an ambassador. Now, you are often much too serious, Captain Moray." At that he rose, and, after putting on his coat, came over to the easel and threw up the cloth, exposing a portrait of Alixe! It had been painted in by a few bold strokes, full of force and life, yet giving her face more of that look which comes to women bitterly wise in the ways of this world than I cared to see. The treatment was daring, and it cut me like a knife that the whole painting had a red glow: the dress was red, the light falling on the hair was red, the shine of the eyes was red also. It was fascinating, but weird, and, to me, distressful. There flashed through my mind the remembrance of Mathilde in her scarlet robe as she stood on the Heights that momentous night of my arrest. I looked at the picture in silence. He kept gazing at it with a curious, half-quizzical smile, as if he were unconscious of my presence. At last he said, with a slight knitting of his brows: "It is strange--strange. I sketched that in two nights ago, by the light of the fire, after I had come from the Chateau St. Louis--from memory, as you see. It never struck me where the effect was taken from, that singular glow over all the face and figure. But now I see it; it returns: it is the impression of colour in the senses, left from the night that lady-bug Mathilde flashed out on the Heights! A fine--a fine effect! H'm! for another such one might give another such Mathilde!" At that moment we were both startled by a sound behind us, and, wheeling, we saw Voban, a mad look in his face, in the act of throwing at Doltaire a short spear which he had caught up from a corner. The spear flew from his hand even as Doltaire sprang aside, drawing his sword with great swiftness. I thought he must have been killed, but the rapidity of his action saved him, for the spear passed his shoulder so close that it tore away a shred of his coat, and stuck in the wall behind him. In another instant Doltaire had his sword-point at Voban's throat. The man did not cringe, did not speak a word, but his hands clinched, and the muscles of his face worked painfully. There was at first a fury in Doltaire's face and a metallic hardness in his eyes, and I was sure he meant to pass his sword through the other's body; but after standing for a moment, death hanging on his sword-point, he quietly lowered his weapon, and, sitting on a chair-arm, looked curiously at Voban, as one might sit and watch a mad animal within a cage. Voban did not stir, but stood rooted to the spot, his eyes, however, never moving from Doltaire. It was clear that he had looked for death, and now expected punishment and prison. Doltaire took out his handkerchief and wiped a sweat from his cheeks. He turned to me soon, and said, in a singularly impersonal way, as though he were speaking of some animal: "He had great provocation. The Duchess de Valois had a young panther once which she had brought up from the milk. She was inquisitive, and used to try its temper. It was good sport, but one day she took away its food, gave it to the cat, and pointed her finger at monsieur the panther. The Duchess de Valois never bared her breast thereafter to an admiring world--a panther's claws leave scars." He paused, and presently continued: "You remember it, Voban; you were the Duke's valet then--you see I recall you! Well, the panther lost his head, both figuratively and in fact. The panther did not mean to kill, maybe, but to kill the lady's beauty was death to her.... Voban, yonder spear was poisoned!" He wiped his face, and said to me, "I think you saw that at the dangerous moment I had no fear; yet now when the game is in my own hands, my cheek runs with cold sweat. How easy to be charged with cowardice! Like evaporation, the hot breath of peril passing suddenly into the cold air of safety leaves this!"--he wiped his cheek again. He rose, moved slowly to Voban, and, pricking him with his sword, said, "You are a bungler, barber. Now listen. I never wronged you; I have only been your blister. I prick your sores at home. Tut! tut! they prick them openly in the market-place. I gave you life a minute ago; I give you freedom now. Some day I may ask that life for a day's use, and then, Voban, then will you give it?" There was a moment's pause, and the barber answered, "M'sieu', I owe you nothing. I would have killed you then; you may kill me, if you will." Doltaire nodded musingly. Something was passing through his mind. I judged he was thinking that here was a man who as a servant would be invaluable. "Well, well, we can discuss the thing at leisure, Voban," he said at last. "Meanwhile you may wait here till Captain Moray has breakfasted, and then you shall be at his service; and I would have a word with you, also." Turning with a polite gesture to me, he led the way into the breakfast-room, and at once, half famished, I was seated at the table, drinking a glass of good wine, and busy with a broiled whitefish of delicate quality. We were silent for a time, and the bird in the alcove kept singing as though it were in Eden, while chiming in between the rhythms there came the silvery sound of sleigh-bells from the world without. I was in a sort of dream, and I felt there must be a rude awakening soon. After a while, Doltaire, who seemed thinking keenly, ordered the servant to take in a glass of wine to Voban. He looked up at me after a little, as if he had come back from a long distance, and said, "It is my fate to have as foes the men I would have as friends, and as friends the men I would have as foes. The cause of my friends is often bad; the cause of my enemies is sometimes good. It is droll. I love directness, yet I have ever been the slave of complication. I delight in following my reason, yet I have been of the motes that stumble in the sunlight. I have enough cruelty in me, enough selfishness and will, to be a ruler, and yet I have never held an office in my life. I love true diplomacy, yet I have been comrade to the official liar, and am the captain of intrigue--la! la!" "You have never had an enthusiasm, a purpose?" said I. He laughed, a dry, ironical laugh. "I have both an enthusiasm and a purpose," he answered, "or you would by now be snug in bed forever." I knew what he meant, though he could not guess I understood. He was referring to Alixe and the challenge she had given him. I did not feel that I had anything to get by playing a part of friendliness, and besides, he was a man to whom the boldest speaking was always palatable, even when most against himself. "I am sure neither would bear daylight," said I. "Why, I almost blush to say that they are both honest--would at this moment endure a moral microscope. The experience, I confess, is new, and has the glamour of originality." "It will not stay honest," I retorted. "Honesty is a new toy with you. You will break it on the first rock that shows." "I wonder," he answered, "I wonder, ... and yet I suppose you are right. Some devilish incident will twist things out of gear, and then the old Adam must improvise for safety and success. Yes, I suppose my one beautiful virtue will get a twist." What he had said showed me his mind as in a mirror. He had no idea that I had the key to his enigmas. I felt as had Voban in the other room. I could see that he had set his mind on Alixe, and that she had roused in him what was perhaps the first honest passion of his life. What further talk we might have had I can not tell, but while we were smoking and drinking coffee the door opened suddenly, and the servant said, "His Excellency the Marquis de Vaudreuil!" Doltaire got to his feet, a look of annoyance crossing his face; but he courteously met the Governor, and placed a chair for him. The Governor, however, said frostily, "Monsieur Doltaire, it must seem difficult for Captain Moray to know who is Governor in Canada, since he has so many masters. I am not sure who needs assurance most upon the point, you or he. This is the second time he has been feasted at the Intendance when he should have been in prison. I came too late that other time; now it seems I am opportune." Doltaire's reply was smooth: "Your Excellency will pardon the liberty. The Intendance was a sort of halfway house between the citadel and the jail." "There is news from France," the Governor said, "brought from Gaspe. We meet in council at the Chateau in an hour. A guard is without to take Captain Moray to the common jail." In a moment more, after a courteous good-by from Doltaire, and a remark from the Governor to the effect that I had spoiled his night's sleep to no purpose, I was soon on my way to the common jail, where arriving, what was my pleased surprise to see Gabord! He had been told off to be my especial guard, his services at the citadel having been deemed so efficient. He was outwardly surly--as rough as he was ever before the world, and without speaking a word to me, he had a soldier lock me in a cell. XIII "A LITTLE BOAST" My new abode was more cheerful than the one I had quitted in the citadel. It was not large, but it had a window, well barred, through which came the good strong light of the northern sky. A wooden bench for my bed stood in one corner, and, what cheered me much, there was a small iron stove. Apart from warmth, its fire would be companionable, and to tend it a means of passing the time. Almost the first thing I did was to examine it. It was round, and shaped like a small bulging keg on end. It had a lid on top, and in the side a small door with bars for draught, suggesting to me in little the delight of a fireplace. A small pipe from the side carried away the smoke into a chimney in the wall. It seemed to me luxurious, and my spirits came back apace. There was no fire yet, and it was bitter cold, so that I took to walking up and down to keep warmth in me. I was ill nourished, and I felt the cold intensely. But I trotted up and down, plans of escape already running through my head. I was as far off as you can imagine from that event of the early morning, when I stood waiting, half frozen, to be shot by Lancy's men. After I had been walking swiftly up and down for an hour or more, slapping my hands against my sides to keep them warm--for it was so cold I ached and felt a nausea--I was glad to see Gabord enter with a soldier carrying wood and shavings. I do not think I could much longer have borne the chilling air--a dampness, too, had risen from the floor, which had been washed that morning--for my clothes were very light in texture and much worn. I had had but the one suit since I entered the dungeon, for my other suit, which was by no means smart, had been taken from me when I was first imprisoned the year before. As if many good things had been destined to come at once, soon afterwards another soldier entered with a knapsack, which he laid down on the bench. My delight was great when I saw it held my other poor suit of clothes, together with a rough set of woollens, a few handkerchiefs, two pairs of stockings, and a wool cap for night wear. Gabord did not speak to me at all, but roughly hurried the soldier at his task of fire-lighting, and ordered the other to fetch a pair of stools and a jar of water. Meanwhile I stood near, watching, and stretched out my skinny hands to the grateful heat as soon as the fire was lighted. I had a boy's delight in noting how the draught pumped the fire into violence, shaking the stove till it puffed and roared. I was so filled, that moment, with the domestic spirit that I thought a steaming kettle on the little stove would give me a tabby-like comfort. "Why not a kettle on the hob?" said I gaily to Gabord. "Why not a cat before the fire, a bit of bacon on the coals, a pot of mulled wine at the elbow, and a wench's chin to chuck, baby-bumbo!" said Gabord in a mocking voice, which made the soldiers laugh at my expense. "And a spinet, too, for ducky dear, Scarrat; a piece of cake and cherry wine, and a soul to go to heaven! Tonnerre!" he added, with an oath, "these English prisoners want the world for a sou, and they'd owe that till judgment day." I saw at once the meaning of his words, for he turned his back on me and went to the window and tried the stanchions, seeming much concerned about them, and muttering to himself. I drew out from my pocket two gold pieces, and gave them to the soldier Scarrat; and the other soldier coming in just then, I did the same with him; and I could see that their respect for me mightily increased. Gabord, still muttering, turned to us again, and began to berate the soldiers for their laziness. As the two men turned to go, Scarrat, evidently feeling that something was due for the gold I had given, said to Gabord, "Shall m'sieu' have the kettle?" Gabord took a step forward as if to strike the soldier, but stopped short, blew out his cheeks, and laughed in a loud, mocking way. "Ay, ay, fetch m'sieu' the kettle, and fetch him flax to spin, and a pinch of snuff, and hot flannels for his stomach, and every night at sundown you shall feed him with pretty biscuits soaked in milk. Ah, go to the devil and fetch the kettle, fool!" he added roughly again, and quickly the place was empty save for him and myself. "Those two fellows are to sit outside your cage door, dickey-bird, and two are to march beneath your window yonder, so you shall not lack care if you seek to go abroad. Those are the new orders." "And you, Gabord," said I, "are you not to be my jailer?" I said it sorrowfully, for I had a genuine feeling for him, and I could not keep that from my voice. When I had spoken so feelingly, he stood for a moment, flushing and puffing, as if confused by the compliment in the tone, and then he answered, "I'm to keep you safe till word comes from the King what's to be done with you." Then he suddenly became surly again, standing with legs apart and keys dangling; for Scarrat entered with the kettle, and put it on the stove. "You will bring blankets for m'sieu'," he added, "and there's an order on my table for tobacco, which you will send your comrade for." In a moment we were left alone. "You'll live like a stuffed pig here," he said, "though 'twill be cold o' nights." After another pass or two of words he left me, and I hastened to make a better toilet than I had done for a year. My old rusty suit which I exchanged for the one I had worn seemed almost sumptuous, and the woollen wear comforted my weakened body. Within an hour my cell looked snug, and I sat cosily by the fire, feeding it lazily. It must have been about four o'clock when there was a turning of keys and a shooting of bolts, the door opened, and who should step inside but Gabord, followed by Alixe! I saw Alixe's lips frame my name thrice, though no word came forth, and my heart was bursting to cry out and clasp her to my breast. But still with a sweet, serious look cast on me, she put out her hand and stayed me. Gabord, looking not at us at all, went straight to the window, and, standing on a stool, busied himself with the stanchions and to whistle. I took Alixe's hands and held them, and spoke her name softly, and she smiled up at me with so perfect a grace that I thought there never was aught like it in the world. She was the first to break the good spell. I placed a seat for her, and sat down by her. She held out her fingers to the fire, and then, after a moment, she told me the story of last night's affair. First she made me tell her briefly of the events of the morning, of which she knew, but not fully. This done, she began. I will set down her story as a whole, and you must understand as you read that it was told as women tell a story, with all little graces and diversions, and those small details with which even momentous things are enveloped in their eyes. I loved her all the more because of these, and I saw, as Doltaire had said, how admirably poised was her intellect, how acute her wit, how delicate and astute a diplomatist she was becoming; and yet, through all, preserving a simplicity of character almost impossible of belief. Such qualities, in her directed to good ends, in lesser women have made them infamous. Once that day Alixe said to me, breaking off as her story went on, "Oh, Robert, when I see what power I have to dissimulate--for it is that, call it by what name you will--when I see how I enjoy accomplishing against all difficulty, how I can blind even so skilled a diplomatist as Monsieur Doltaire, I almost tremble. I see how, if God had not given me something here"--she placed her hand upon her heart--"that saves me, I might be like Madame Cournal, and far worse, far worse than she. For I love power--I do love it; I can see that!" She did not realize that it was her strict honesty with herself that was her true safeguard. But here is the story she told me: "When I left you, last night, I went at once to my home, and was glad to get in without being seen. At nine o'clock we were to be at the Chateau, and while my sister Georgette was helping me with my toilette--oh, how I wished she would go and leave me quite alone!--my head was in a whirl, and now and then I could feel my heart draw and shake like a half-choked pump, and there was a strange pain behind my eyes. Georgette is of such a warm disposition, so kind always to me, whom she would yield to in everything, so simple in her affections, that I seemed standing there by her like an intrigante, as one who had got wisdom at the price of a good something lost. But do not think, Robert, that for one instant I was sorry I played a part, and have done so for a long year and more. I would do it and more again, if it were for you. "Georgette could not understand why it was I stopped all at once and caught her head to my breast, as she sat by me where I stood arranging my gown. I do not know quite why I did it, but perhaps it was from my yearning that never should she have a lover in such sorrow and danger as mine, and that never should she have to learn to mask her heart as I have done. Ah, sometimes I fear, Robert, that when all is over, and you are free, and you see what the world and all this playing at hide-and-seek have made me, you will feel that such as Georgette, who have never looked inside the hearts of wicked people, and read the tales therein for knowledge to defeat wickedness--that such as she were better fitted for your life and love. No, no, please do not take my hand--not till you have heard all I am going to tell." She continued quietly; yet her eye flashed out now and then, and now and then, also, something in her thoughts as to how she, a weak, powerless girl, had got her ends against astute evil men, sent a little laugh to her lips; for she had by nature as merry a heart as serious. "At nine o'clock we came to the Chateau St. Louis from Ste. Anne Street, where our winter home is--yet how much do I prefer the Manor House! There were not many guests to supper, and Monsieur Doltaire was not among them. I affected a genial surprise, and asked the Governor if one of the two vacant chairs at the table was for monsieur; and looking a little as though he would reprove me--for he does not like to think of me as interested in monsieur--he said it was, but that monsieur was somewhere out of town, and there was no surety that he would come. The other chair was for the Chevalier de la Darante, one of the oldest and best of our nobility, who pretends great roughness and barbarism, but is a kind and honourable gentleman, though odd. He was one of your judges, Robert; and though he condemned you, he said that you had some reason on your side. And I will show you how he stood for you last night. "I need not tell you how the supper passed, while I was planning--planning to reach the Governor if monsieur did not come; and if he did come, how to play my part so he should suspect nothing but a vain girl's caprice, and maybe heartlessness. Moment after moment went by, and he came not. I almost despaired. Presently the Chevalier de la Darante entered, and he took the vacant chair beside me. I was glad of this. I had gone in upon the arm of a rusty gentleman of the Court, who is over here to get his health again, and does it by gaming and drinking at the Chateau Bigot. The Chevalier began at once to talk to me, and he spoke of you, saying that he had heard of your duel with my brother, and that formerly you had been much a guest at our house. I answered him with what carefulness I could, and brought round the question of your death, by hint and allusion getting him to speak of the mode of execution. "Upon this point he spoke his mind strongly, saying that it was a case where the penalty should be the musket, not the rope. It was no subject for the supper table, and the Governor felt this, and I feared he would show displeasure; but other gentlemen took up the matter, and he could not easily change the talk at the moment. The feeling was strong against you. My father stayed silent, but I could see he watched the effect upon the Governor. I knew that he himself had tried to get the mode of execution changed, but the Governor had been immovable. The Chevalier spoke most strongly, for he is afraid of no one, and he gave the other gentlemen raps upon the knuckles. "'I swear,' he said at last, 'I am sorry now I gave in to his death at all, for it seems to me that there is much cruelty and hatred behind the case against him. He seemed to me a gentleman of force and fearlessness, and what he said had weight. Why was the gentleman not exchanged long ago? He was here three years before he was tried on this charge. Ay, there's the point. Other prisoners were exchanged--why not he? If the gentleman is not given a decent death, after these years of captivity, I swear I will not leave Kamaraska again to set foot in Quebec.' "At that the Governor gravely said, 'These are matters for our Council, dear Chevalier.' To this the Chevalier replied, 'I meant no reflection on your Excellency, but you are good enough to let the opinions of gentlemen not so wise as you weigh with you in your efforts to be just; and I have ever held that one wise autocrat was worth a score of juries.' There was an instant's pause, and then my father said quietly, 'If his Excellency had always councillors and colleagues like the Chevalier de la Darante, his path would be easier, and Canada happier and richer.' This settled the matter, for the Governor, looking at them both for a moment, suddenly said, 'Gentlemen, you shall have your way, and I thank you for your confidence.--If the ladies will pardon a sort of council of state here!' he added. The Governor called a servant, and ordered pen, ink, and paper; and there before us all he wrote an order to Gabord, your jailer, to be delivered before midnight. "He had begun to read it aloud to us, when the curtains of the entrance-door parted, and Monsieur Doltaire stepped inside. The Governor did not hear him, and monsieur stood for a moment listening. When the reading was finished, he gave a dry little laugh, and came down to the Governor, apologizing for his lateness, and bowing to the rest of us. He did not look at me at all, but once he glanced keenly at my father, and I felt sure that he had heard my father's words to the Governor. "'Have the ladies been made councillors?' he asked lightly, and took his seat, which was opposite to mine. 'Have they all conspired to give a criminal one less episode in his life for which to blush? ... May I not join the conspiracy?' he added, glancing round, and lifting a glass of wine. Not even yet had he looked at me. Then he waved his glass the circuit of the table, and said, 'I drink to the councillors and applaud the conspirators,' and as he raised his glass to his lips his eyes came abruptly to mine and stayed, and he bowed profoundly and with an air of suggestion. He drank, still looking, and then turned again to the Governor. I felt my heart stand still. Did he suspect my love for you, Robert? Had he discovered something? Was Gabord a traitor to us? Had I been watched, detected? I could have shrieked at the suspense. I was like one suddenly faced with a dreadful accusation, with which was a great fear. But I held myself still--oh, so still, so still--and as in a dream I heard the Governor say pleasantly, 'I would I had such conspirators always by me. I am sure you would wish them to take more responsibility than you will now assume in Canada.' Doltaire bowed and smiled, and the Governor went on: 'I am sure you will approve of Captain Moray being shot instead of hanged. But indeed it has been my good friend the Chevalier here who has given me the best council I have held in many a day.' "To this Monsieur Doltaire replied: 'A council unknown to statute, but approved of those who stand for etiquette with ones foe's at any cost. For myself, it is so unpleasant to think of the rope'" (here Alixe hid her face in her hands for a moment) "'that I should eat no breakfast to-morrow, if the gentleman from Virginia were to hang.' It was impossible to tell from his tone what was in his mind, and I dared not think of his failure to interfere as he had promised me. As yet he had done nothing, I could see, and in eight or nine hours more you were to die. He did not look at me again for some time, but talked to my mother and my father and the Chevalier, commenting on affairs in France and the war between our countries, but saying nothing of where he had been during the past week. He seemed paler and thinner than when I last saw him, and I felt that something had happened to him. You shall hear soon what it was. "At last he turned from the Chevalier to me, and, said, 'When did you hear from your brother, mademoiselle?' I told him; and he added, 'I have had a letter since, and after supper, if you will permit me, I will tell you of it.' Turning to my father and my mother, he assured them of Juste's well-being, and afterwards engaged in talk with the Governor, to whom he seemed to defer. When we all rose to go to the salon, he offered my mother his arm, and I went in upon the arm of the good Chevalier. A few moments afterwards he came to me, and remarked cheerfully, 'In this farther corner where the spinet sounds most we can talk best'; and we went near to the spinet, where Madame Lotbiniere was playing. 'It is true,' he began, 'that I have had a letter from your brother. He begs me to use influence for his advancement. You see he writes to me instead of to the Governor. You can guess how I stand in France. Well, we shall see what I may do.... Have you not wondered concerning me this week?' he asked. I said to him, 'I scarce expected you till after to-morrow, when you would plead some accident as cause for not fulfilling your pretty little boast.' He looked at me sharply for a minute, and then said: 'A pretty LITTLE boast, is it? H'm! you touch great things with light fingers.' I nodded. 'Yes,' said I, 'when I have no great faith.' 'You have marvellous coldness for a girl that promised warmth in her youth,' he answered. 'Even I, who am old in these matters, can not think of this Moray's death without a twinge, for it is not like an affair of battle; but you seem to think of it in its relation to my "little boast," as you call it. Is it not so?' "'No, no,' said I, with apparent indignation, 'you must not make me out so cruel. I am not so hard-hearted as you think. My brother is well--I have no feeling against Captain Moray on his account; and as for spying--well, it is only a painful epithet for what is done here and everywhere all the time.' 'Dear me, dear me,' he remarked lightly, 'what a mind you have for argument!--a born casuist; and yet, like all women, you would let your sympathy rule you in matters of state. But come,' he added, 'where do you think I have been?' It was hard to answer him gaily, and yet it must be done, and so I said, 'You have probably put yourself in prison, that you should not keep your tiny boast.' 'I have been in prison,' he answered, 'and I was on the wrong side, with no key--even locked in a chest-room of the Intendance,' he explained, 'but as yet I do not know by whom, nor am I sure why. After two days without food or drink, I managed to get out through the barred window. I spent three days in my room, ill, and here I am. You must not speak of this--you will not?' he asked me. 'To no one,' I answered gaily, 'but my other self.' 'Where is your other self?' he asked. 'In here,' said I, touching my bosom. I did not mean to turn my head away when I said it, but indeed I felt I could not look him in the eyes at the moment, for I was thinking of you. "He mistook me; he thought I was coquetting with him, and he leaned forward to speak in my ear, so that I could feel his breath on my cheek. I turned faint, for I saw how terrible was this game I was playing; but oh, Robert, Robert,"--her hands fluttered towards me, then drew back--"it was for your sake, for your sake, that I let his hand rest on mine an instant, as he said: 'I shall go hunting THERE to find your other self. Shall I know the face if I see it?' I drew my hand away, for it was torture to me, and I hated him, but I only said a little scornfully, 'You do not stand by your words. You said'--here I laughed a little disdainfully--'that you would meet the first test to prove your right to follow the second boast.' "He got to his feet, and said in a low, firm voice: 'Your memory is excellent, your aplomb perfect. You are young to know it all so well. But you bring your own punishment,' he added, with a wicked smile, 'and you shall pay hereafter. I am going to the Governor. Bigot has arrived, and is with Madame Cournal yonder. You shall have proof in half an hour.' "Then he left me. An idea occurred to me. If he succeeded in staying your execution, you would in all likelihood be placed in the common jail. I would try to get an order from the Governor to visit the jail to distribute gifts to the prisoners, as my mother and I had done before on the day before Christmas. So, while Monsieur Doltaire was passing with Bigot and the Chevalier de la Darante into another room, I asked the Governor; and that very moment, at my wish, he had his secretary write the order, which he countersigned and handed me, with a gift of gold for the prisoners. As he left my mother and myself, Monsieur Doltaire came back with Bigot, and, approaching the Governor, they led him away, engaging at once in serious talk. One thing I noticed: as monsieur and Bigot came up, I could see monsieur eying the Intendant askance, as though he would read treachery; for I feel sure that it was Bigot who contrived to have monsieur shut up in the chest-room. I can not quite guess the reason, unless it be true what gossips say, that Bigot is jealous of the notice Madame Cournal has given Doltaire, who visits much at her house. "Well, they asked me to sing, and so I did; and can you guess what it was? Even the voyageurs' song,-- 'Brothers, we go to the Scarlet Hills, (Little gold sun, come out of the dawn!)' I know not how I sang it, for my heart, my thoughts, were far away in a whirl of clouds and mist, as you may see a flock of wild ducks in the haze upon a river, flying they know not whither, save that they follow the sound of the stream. I was just ending the song when Monsieur Doltaire leaned over me, and said in my ear, 'To-morrow I shall invite Captain Moray from the scaffold to my breakfast-table--or, better still, invite myself to his own.' His hand caught mine, as I gave a little cry; for when I felt sure of your reprieve, I could not, Robert, I could not keep it back. He thought I was startled at his hand-pressure, and did not guess the real cause. "'I have met one challenge, and I shall meet the other,' he said quickly. 'It is not so much a matter of power, either; it is that engine opportunity. You and I should go far in this wicked world,' he added. 'We think together, we see through ladders. I admire you, mademoiselle. Some men will say they love you; and they should, or they have no taste; and the more they love you, the better pleased am I--if you are best pleased with me. But it is possible for men to love and not to admire. It is a foolish thing to say that reverence must go with love. I know men who have lost their heads and their souls for women whom they knew infamous. But when one admires where one loves, then in the ebb and flow of passion the heart is safe, for admiration holds when the sense is cold.' "You know well, Robert, how clever he is; how, listening to him, you must admit his talent and his power. But oh, believe that, though I am full of wonder at his cleverness, I can not bear him very near me." She paused. I looked most gravely at her, as well one might who saw so sweet a maid employing her heart thus, and the danger that faced her. She misread my look a little, maybe, for she said at once: "I must be honest with you, and so I tell you all--all, else the part I play were not possible to me. To you I can speak plainly, pour out my soul. Do not fear for me. I see a battle coming between that man and me, but I shall fight it stoutly, worthily, so that in this, at least, I shall never have to blush for you that you loved me. Be patient, Robert, and never doubt me; for that would make me close the doors of my heart, though I should never cease to aid you, never weary in labor for your well-being. If these things, and fighting all these wicked men, to make Doltaire help me to save you, have schooled to action some worse parts of me, there is yet in me that which shall never be brought low, never be dragged to the level of Versailles or the Chateau Bigot--never!" She looked at me with such dignity and pride that my eyes filled with tears, and, not to be stayed, I reached out and took her hands, and would have clasped her to my breast, but she held back from me. "You believe in me, Robert?" she said most earnestly. "You will never doubt me? You know that I am true and loyal." "I believe in God, and you," I answered reverently, and I took her in my arms and kissed her. I did not care at all whether or no Gabord saw; but indeed he did not, as Alixe told me afterwards, for, womanlike, even in this sweet crisis she had an eye for such details. "What more did he say?" I asked, my heart beating hard in the joy of that embrace. "No more, or little more, for my mother came that instant and brought me to talk with the Chevalier de la Darante, who wished to ask me for next summer to Kamaraska or Isle aux Coudres, where he has manorhouses. Before I left Monsieur Doltaire, he said, 'I never made a promise but I wished to break it. This one shall balance all I've broken, for I'll never unwish it.' "My mother heard this, and so I summoned all my will, and said gaily, 'Poor broken crockery! You stand a tower among the ruins.' This pleased him, and he answered, 'On the tower base is written, This crockery outserves all others.' My mother looked sharply at me, but said nothing, for she has come to think that I am heartless and cold to men and to the world, selfish in many things." At this moment Gabord turned round, saying, "'Tis time to be done. Madame comes." "It is my mother," said Alixe, standing up, and hastily placing her hands in mine. "I must be gone. Good-bye, good-bye." There was no chance for further adieu, and I saw her pass out with Gabord; but she turned at the last, and said in English, for she spoke it fairly now, "Believe, and remember." XIV ARGAND COURNAL The most meagre intelligence came to me from the outer world. I no longer saw Gabord; he had suddenly been with drawn and a new jailer substituted, and the sentinels outside my door and beneath the window of my cell refused all information. For months I had no news whatever of Alixe or of those affairs nearest my heart. I heard nothing of Doltaire, little of Bigot, and there was no sign of Voban. Sometimes I could see my new jailer studying me, if my plans were a puzzle to his brain. At first he used regularly to try the bars of the window, and search the wall as though he thought my devices might be found there. Scarrat and Flavelle, the guards at my door, set too high a price on their favours, and they talked seldom, and then with brutal jests and ribaldry, of matters in the town which were not vital to me. Yet once or twice, from things they said, I came to know that all was not well between Bigot and Doltaire on one hand, and Doltaire and the Governor on the other. Doltaire had set the Governor and the Intendant scheming against him because of his adherence to the cause of neither, and his power to render the plans of either of no avail when he chose, as in my case. Vaudreuil's vanity was injured, and besides, he counted Doltaire too strong a friend of Bigot. Bigot, I doubted not, found in Madame Cournal's liking for Doltaire all sorts of things of which he never would have dreamed; for there is no such potent devilry in this world as the jealousy of such a sort of man over a woman whose vanity and cupidity are the springs of her affections. Doltaire's imprisonment in a room of the Intendance was not so mysterious as suggestive. I foresaw a strife, a complication of intrigues, and internal enmities which would be (as they were) the ruin of New France. I saw, in imagination, the English army at the gates of Quebec, and those who sat in the seats of the mighty, sworn to personal enmities--Vaudreuil through vanity, Bigot through cupidity, Doltaire by the innate malice of his nature--sacrificing the country; the scarlet body of British power moving down upon a dishonoured city, never to take its foot from that sword of France which fell there on the soil of the New World. But there was another factor in the situation which I have not dwelt on before. Over a year earlier, when war was being carried into Prussia by Austria and France, and against England, the ally of Prussia, the French Minister of War, D'Argenson, had, by the grace of La Pompadour, sent General the Marquis de Montcalm to Canada, to protect the colony with a small army. From the first, Montcalm, fiery, impetuous, and honourable, was at variance with Vaudreuil, who, though honest himself, had never dared to make open stand against Bigot. When Montcalm came, practically taking the military command out of the hands of the Governor, Vaudreuil developed a singular jealous spirit against the General. It began to express itself about the time I was thrown into the citadel dungeon, and I knew from what Alixe had told me, and from the gossip of the soldiers, that there was a more open show of disagreement now. The Governor, seeing how ill it was to be at variance with both Montcalm and Bigot, presently began to covet a reconciliation with the latter. To this Bigot was by no means averse, for his own position had danger. His followers and confederates, Cournal, Marin, Cadet, and Rigaud, were robbing the King with a daring and effrontery which must ultimately bring disaster. This he knew, but it was his plan to hold on for a time longer, and then to retire before the axe fell, with an immense fortune. Therefore, about the time set for my execution, he began to close with the overtures of the Governor, and presently the two formed a confederacy against the Marquis de Montcalm. Into it they tried to draw Doltaire, and were surprised to find that he stood them off as to anything more than outward show of friendliness. Truth was, Doltaire, who had no sordid feeling in him, loathed alike the cupidity of Bigot and the incompetency of the Governor, and respected Montcalm for his honour, and reproached him for his rashness. From first to last, he was, without show of it, the best friend Montcalm had in the province; and though he held aloof from bringing punishment to Bigot, he despised him and his friends, and was not slow to make that plain. D'Argenson made inquiry of Doltaire when Montcalm's honest criticisms were sent to France in cipher, and Doltaire returned the reply that Bigot was the only man who could serve Canada efficiently in this crisis; that he had abounding fertility of resource, a clear head, a strong will, and great administrative faculty. This was all he would say, save that when the war was over other matters might be conned. Meanwhile France must pay liberally for the Intendant's services. Through a friend in France, Bigot came to know that his affairs were moving to a crisis, and saw that it would be wise to retire; but he loved the very air of crisis, and Madame Cournal, anxious to keep him in Canada, encouraged him in his natural feeling to stand or fall with the colony. He never showed aught but a hold and confident face to the public, and was in all regards the most conspicuous figure in New France. When, two years before, Montcalm took Oswego from the English, Bigot threw open his palace to the populace for two days' feasting, and every night during the war he entertained lavishly, though the people went hungry, and their own corn, bought for the King, was sold back to them at famine prices. As the Governor amid the Intendant grew together in friendship, Vaudreuil sinking past disapproval in present selfish necessity, they quietly combined against Doltaire as against Montcalm. Yet at this very time Doltaire was living in the Intendance, and, as he had told Alixe, not without some personal danger. He had before been offered rooms at the Chateau St. Louis; but these he would not take, for he could not bear to be within touch of the Governor's vanity and timidity. He would of preference have stayed in the Intendance had he known that pitfalls and traps were at every footstep. Danger gave a piquancy to his existence. I think he did not greatly value Madame Cournal's admiration of himself; but when it drove Bigot to retaliation, his imagination got an impulse, and he entered upon a conflict which ran parallel with the war, and with that delicate antagonism which Alixe waged against him, long undiscovered by himself. At my wits' end for news, at last I begged my jailer to convey a message for me to the Governor, asking that the barber be let come to me. The next day an answer arrived in the person of Voban himself, accompanied by the jailer. For a time there was little speech between us, but as he tended me we talked. We could do so with safety, for Voban knew English; and though he spoke it brokenly, he had freedom in it, and the jailer knew no word of it. At first the fellow blustered, but I waved him off. He was a man of better education than Gabord, but of inferior judgment and shrewdness. He made no trial thereafter to interrupt our talk, but sat and drummed upon a stool with his keys, or loitered at the window, or now and again thrust his hand into my pockets, as if to see if weapons were concealed in them. "Voban," said I, "what has happened since I saw you at the Intendance? Tell me first of mademoiselle. You have nothing from her for me?" "Nothing," he answered. "There is no time. A soldier come an hour ago with an order from the Governor, and I must go all at once. So I come as you see. But as for the ma'm'selle, she is well. Voila, there is no one like her in New France. I do not know all, as you can guess, but they say she can do what she will at the Chateau. It is a wonder to see her drive. A month ago, a droll thing come to pass. She is driving on the ice with ma'm'selle Lotbiniere and her brother Charles. M'sieu' Charles, he has the reins. Soon, ver' quick, the horses start with all their might. M'sieu' saw and pull, but they go the faster. Like that for a mile or so; then ma'm'selle remember there is a great crack in the ice a mile farther on, and beyond the ice is weak and rotten, for there the curren' is ver' strongest. She see that M'sieu' Charles, he can do nothing, so she reach and take the reins. The horses go on; it make no diff'rence at first. But she begin to talk to them so sof', and to pull ver' steady, and at last she get them shaping to the shore. She have the reins wound on her hands, and people on the shore, they watch. Little on little the horses pull up, and stop at last not a hunder' feet from the great crack and the rotten ice. Then she turn them round and drive them home. "You should hear the people cheer as she drive up Mountain Street. The bishop stand at the window of his palace and smile at her as she pass, and m'sieu'"--he looked at the jailer and paused--"m'sieu' the gentleman we do not love, he stand in the street with his cap off for two minutes as she come, and after she go by, and say a grand compliment to her, so that her face go pale. He get froze ears for his pains--that was a cold day. Well, at night there was a grand dinner at the Intendance, and afterwards a ball in the splendid room which that man" (he meant Bigot: I shall use names when quoting him further, that he may be better understood) "built for the poor people of the land for to dance down their sorrows. So you can guess I would be there--happy. Ah yes, so happy! I go and stand in the great gallery above the hall of dance, with crowd of people, and look down at the grand folk. "One man come to me and say, 'Ah, Voban, is it you here? Who would think it!'--like that. Another, he come and say, 'Voban, he can not keep away from the Intendance. Who does he come to look for? But no, SHE is not here--no.' And again, another, 'Why should not Voban be here? One man has not enough bread to eat, and Bigot steals his corn. Another hungers for a wife to sit by his fire, and Bigot takes the maid, and Voban stuffs his mouth with humble pie like the rest. Chut! shall not Bigot have his fill?' And yet another, and voila, she was a woman, she say, 'Look at the Intendant down there with madame. And M'sieu' Cournal, he also is there. What does M'sieu' Cournal care? No, not at all. The rich man, what he care, if he has gold? Virtue! ha, ha! what is that in your wife if you have gold for it? Nothing. See his hand at the Intendant's arm. See how M'sieu' Doltaire look at them, and then up here at us. What is it in his mind, you think? Eh? You think he say to himself, A wife all to himself is the poor man's one luxury? Eh? Ah, M'sieu' Doltaire, you are right, you are right. You catch up my child from its basket in the market-place one day, and you shake it ver' soft, an' you say, "Madame, I will stake the last year of my life that I can put my finger on the father of this child." And when I laugh in his face, he say again, "And if he thought he wasn't its father, he would cut out the liver of the other--eh?" And I laugh, and say, "My Jacques would follow him to hell to do it." Then he say, Voban, he say to me, "That is the difference between you and us. We only kill men who meddle with our mistresses!" Ah, that M'sieu' Doltaire, he put a louis in the hand of my babe, and he not even kiss me on the cheek. Pshaw! Jacques would sell him fifty kisses for fifty louis. But sell me, or a child of me? Well, Voban, you can guess! Pah, barber, if you do not care what he did to the poor Mathilde, there are other maids in St. Roch.'" Voban paused a moment then added quietly, "How do you think I bear it all? With a smile? No, I hear with my ears open and my heart close tight. Do they think they can teach me? Do they guess I sit down and hear all without a cry from my throat or a will in my body? Ah, m'sieu' le Capitaine, it is you who know. You saw what I would have go to do with M'sieu' Doltaire before the day of the Great Birth. You saw if I am coward--if I not take the sword when it was at my throat without a whine. No, m'sieu', I can wait. Then is a time for everything. At first I am all in a muddle, I not how what to do; but by-and-bye it all come to me, and you shall one day what I wait for. Yes, you shall see. I look down on that people dancing there, quiet and still, and I hear some laugh at me, and now and then some one say a good word to me that make me shut my hands tight, so the tears not come to my eyes. But I felt alone--so much alone. The world does not want a sad man. In my shop I try to laugh as of old, and I am not sour or heavy, but I can see men do not say droll things to me as once back time. No, I am not as I was. What am I to do? There is but one way. What is great to one man is not to another. What kills the one does not kill the other. Take away from some people one thing, and they will not care; from others that same, and there is nothing to live for, except just to live, and because a man does not like death." He paused. "You are right, Voban," said I. "Go on." He was silent again for a time, and then he moved his hand in a helpless sort of way across his forehead. It had become deeply lined and wrinkled all in a couple of years. His temples were sunken, his cheeks hollow, and his face was full of those shadows which lend a sort of tragedy to even the humblest and least distinguished countenance. His eyes had a restlessness, anon an intense steadiness almost uncanny, and his thin, long fingers had a stealthiness of motion, a soft swiftness, which struck me strangly. I never saw a man so changed. He was like a vessel wrested from its moorings; like some craft, filled with explosives, set loose along a shore lined with fishing-smacks, which might come foul of one, and blow the company of men and boats into the air. As he stood there, his face half turned to me for a moment, this came to my mind, and I said to him, "Voban, you look like some wicked gun which would blow us all to pieces." He wheeled, and came to me so swiftly that I shrank back in my chair with alarm, his action was so sudden, and, peering into my face, he said, glancing, as I thought, anxiously at the jailer, "Blow--blow--how blow us all to pieces, m'sieu'?" He eyed me with suspicion, and I could see that he felt like some hurt animal among its captors, ready to fight, yet not knowing from what point danger would come. Something pregnant in what I said had struck home, yet I could not guess then what it was, though afterwards it came to me with great force and vividness. "I meant nothing, Voban," answered I, "save that you look dangerous." I half put out my hand to touch his arm in a friendly way, but I saw that the jailer was watching, and I did not. Voban felt what I was about to do, and his face instantly softened, and his blood-shot eyes gave me a look of gratitude. Then he said: "I will tell you what happen next I know the palace very well, and when I see the Intendant and M'sieu' Doltaire and others leave the ballroom I knew that they go to the chamber which they call 'la Chambre de la Joie,' to play at cards. So I steal away out of the crowd into a passage which, as it seem, go nowhere, and come quick, all at once, to a bare wall. But I know the way. In one corner of the passage I press a spring, and a little panel open. I crawl through and close it behin'. Then I feel my way along the dark corner till I come to another panel. This I open, and I see light. You ask how I can do this? Well, I tell you. There is the valet of Bigot, he is my friend. You not guess who it is? No? It is a man whose crime in France I know. He was afraid when he saw me here, but I say to him, 'No, I will not speak--never'; and he is all my friend just when I most need. Eh, voila, I see light, as I said, and I push aside heavy curtains ver' little, and there is the Chamber of the Joy below. There they all are, the Intendant and the rest, sitting down to the tables. There was Capitaine Lancy, M'sieu' Cadet, M'sieu' Cournal, M'sieu' le Chevalier de Levis, and M'sieu' le Generale, le Marquis de Montcalm. I am astonish to see him there, the great General, in his grand coat of blue and gold and red, and laces tres beau at his throat, with a fine jewel. Ah, he is not ver' high on his feet, but he has an eye all fire, and a laugh come quick to his lips, and he speak ver' galant, but he never let them, Messieurs Cadet, Marin, Lancy, and the rest, be thick friends with him. They do not clap their hands on his shoulder comme le bon camarade--non! "Well, they sit down to play, and soon there is much noise and laughing, and then sometimes a silence, and then again the noise, and you can see one snuff a candle with the points of two rapiers, or hear a sword jangle at a chair, or listen to some one sing ver' soft a song as he hold a good hand of cards, or the ring of louis on the table, or the sound of glass as it break on the floor. And once a young gentleman--alas! he is so young--he get up from his chair, and cry out, 'All is lost! I go to die!' He raise a pistol to his head; but M'sieu' Doltaire catch his hand, and say quite soft and gentle, 'No, no, mon enfant, enough of making fun of us. Here is the hunder' louis I borrow of you yesterday. Take your revenge.' The lad sit down slow, looking ver' strange at M'sieu' Doltaire. And it is true: he took his revenge out of M'sieu' Cadet, for he win--I saw it--three hunder' louis. Then M'sieu' Doltaire lean over to him and say, 'M'sieu', you will carry for me a message to the citadel for M'sieu' Ramesay, the commandant.' Ah, it was a sight to see M'sieu' Cadet's face, going this way and that. But it was no use: the young gentleman pocket his louis, and go away with a letter from M'sieu' Doltaire. But M'sieu' Doltaire, he laugh in the face of M'sieu' Cadet, and say ver' pleasant, 'That is a servant of the King, m'sieu', who live by his sword alone. Why should civilians be so greedy? Come, play, M'sieu' Cadet. If M'sieu' the General will play with me, we two will what we can do with you and his Excellency the Intendant.' "They sit just beneath me, and I hear all what is said, I see all the looks of them, every card that is played. M'sieu' the General have not play yet, but watch M'sieu' Doltaire and the Intendant at the cards. With a smile he now sit down. Then M'sieu' Doltaire, he say, 'M'sieu' Cadet, let us have no mistake--let us be commercial.' He take out his watch. 'I have two hours to spare; are you dispose to play for that time only? To the moment we will rise, and there shall be no question of satisfaction, no discontent anywhere--eh, shall it be so, if m'sieu' the General can spare the time also?' It is agree that the General play for one hour and go, and that M'sieu' Doltaire and the Intendant play for the rest of the time. "They begin, and I hide there and watch. The time go ver' fast, and my breath catch in my throat to see how great the stakes they play for. I hear M'sieu' Doltaire say at last, with a smile, taking out his watch, 'M'sieu' the General, your time is up, and you take with you twenty thousan' francs.' "The General, he smile and wave his hand, as if sorry to take so much from M'sieu' Cadet and the Intendant. M'sieu' Cadet sit dark, and speak nothing at first, but at last he get up and turn on his heel and walk away, leaving what he lose on the table. M'sieu' the General bow also, and go from the room. Then M'sieu' Doltaire and the Intendant play. One by one the other players stop, and come and watch these. Something get into the two gentlemen, for both are pale, and the face of the Intendant all of spots, and his little round eyes like specks of red fire; but M'sieu' Doltaire's face, it is still, and his brows bend over, and now and then he make a little laughing out of his lips. All at once I hear him say, 'Double the stakes, your Excellency!' The Intendant look up sharp and say, 'What! Two hunder' thousan' francs!'--as if M'sieu' Doltaire could not pay such a like that. M'sieu' Doltaire smile ver' wicked, and answer, 'Make it three hunder' thousan' francs, your Excellency.' It is so still in the Chamber of the Joy that all you hear for a minute was the fat Monsieur Varin breathe like a hog, and the rattle of a spur as some one slide a foot on the floor. "The Intendant look blank; then he nod his head for answer, and each write on a piece of paper. As they begin, M'sieu' Doltaire take out his watch and lay it on the table, and the Intendant do the same, and they both look at the time. The watch of the Intendant is all jewels. 'Will you not add the watches to the stake?' say M'sieu' Doltaire. The Intendant look, and shrug a shoulder, and shake his head for no, and M'sieu' Doltaire smile in a sly way, so that the Intendant's teeth show at his lips and his eyes almost close, he is so angry. "Just this minute I hear a low noise behind me, and then some one give a little cry. I turn quick and Madame Cournal. She stretch her hand, and touch my lips, and motion me not to stir. I look down again, and I see that M'sieu' Doltaire look up to the where I am, for he hear that sound, I think--I not know sure. But he say once more, 'The watch, the watch, your Excellency! I have a fancy for yours!' I feel madame breathe hard beside me, but I not like to look at her. I am not afraid of men, but a woman that way--ah, it make me shiver! She will betray me, I think. All at once I feel her hand at my belt, then at my pocket, to see if I have a weapon; for the thought come to her that I am there to kill Bigot. But I raise my hands and say, 'No,' ver' quiet, and she nod her head all right. "The Intendant wave his hand at M'sieu' Doltaire to say he would not stake the watch, for I know it is one madame give him; and then they begin to play. No one stir. The cards go out flip, flip, on the table, and with a little soft scrape in the hands, and I hear Bigot's hound much a bone. All at once M'sieu' Doltaire throw down his cards, and say, 'Mine, Bigot! Three hunder' thousan' francs, and the time is up!' The other get from his chair, and say, 'How would you have pay if you had lost, Doltaire?' And m'sieu' answer, 'From the coffers of the King, like you, Bigot' His tone is odd. I feel madame's breath go hard. Bigot turn round and say to the others, 'Will you take your way to the great hall, messieurs, and M'sieu' Doltaire and I will follow. We have some private conf'rence.' They all turn away, all but M'sieu' Cournal, and leave the room, whispering. 'I will join you soon, Cournal,' say his Excellency. M'sieu' Cournal not go, for he have been drinking, and something stubborn got into him. But the Intendant order him rough, and he go. I can hear madame gnash her teeth sof' beside me. "When the door close, the Intendant turn to M'sieu' Doltaire and say, 'What is the end for which you play?' M'sieu' Doltaire make a light motion of his hand, and answer, 'For three hunder' thousan' francs.' 'And to pay, m'sieu', how to pay if you have lost?' M'sieu' Doltaire lay his hand on his sword sof'. 'From the King's coffers, as I say; he owes me more than he has paid. But not like you, Bigot. I have earned, this way and that, all that I might ever get from the King's coffers--even this three hunder' thousan' francs, ten times told. But you, Bigot--tush! why should we make bubbles of words?' The Intendant get white in the face, but there are spots on it like on a late apple of an old tree. 'You go too far, Doltaire,' he say. 'You have hint before my officers and my friends that I make free with the King's coffers.' M'sieu' answer, 'You should see no such hints, if your palms were not musty.' 'How know you,' ask the Intendant, 'that my hands are musty from the King's coffers?' M'sieu' arrange his laces, and say light, 'As easy from the must as I tell how time passes in your nights by the ticking of this trinket here.' He raise his sword and touch the Intendant's watch on the table. "I never hear such silence as there is for a minute, and then the Intendant say, 'You have gone one step too far. The must on my hands, seen through your eyes, is no matter, but when you must the name of a lady there is but one end. You understan', m'sieu', there is but one end.' M'sieu' laugh. 'The sword, you mean? Eh? No, no, I will not fight with you. I am not here to rid the King of so excellent an officer, however large fee he force for his services.' 'And I tell you,' say the Intendant, 'that I will not have you cast a slight upon a lady.' Madame beside me start up, and whisper to me, 'If you betray me, you shall die. If you be still, I too will say nothing.' But then a thing happen. Another voice sound from below, and there, coming from behind a great screen of oak wood, is M'sieu' Cournal, his face all red with wine, his hand on his sword. 'Bah!' he say, coming forward--'bah! I will speak for madame. I will speak. I have been silent long enough.' He come between the two, and, raising his sword, he strike the time-piece and smash it. 'Ha! ha!' he say, wild with drink, 'I have you both here alone.' He snap his fingers under the Intendant's nose. 'It is time I protect my wife's name from you, and by God, I will do it!' At that M'sieu' Doltaire laugh, and Cournal turn to him, and say, 'Batard!' The Intendant have out his sword, and he roar in a hoarse voice, 'Dog, you shall die!' But M'sieu' Doltaire strike up his sword, and face the drunken man. 'No, leave that to me. The King's cause goes shipwreck; we can't change helmsman now. Think--scandal and your disgrace!' Then he make a pass at m'sieu' Cournal, who parry quick. Another, and he prick his shoulder. Another, and then madame beside me, as I spring back, throw aside the curtains, and cry out, 'No, m'sieu'! no! For shame!' "I kneel in a corner behind the curtains, and wait and listen. There is not a sound for a moment; then I hear a laugh from M'sieu' Cournal, such a laugh make me sick--loud, and full of what you call not care and the devil. Madame speak down at them. 'Ah,' she say, 'it is so fine a sport to drag a woman's name in the mire!' Her voice is full of spirit. and she look beautiful--beautiful. I never guess how a woman like that look; so full of pride, and to speak like you could think knives sing as they strike steel--sharp and cold. 'I came to see how gentlemen look at play, and they end in brawling over a lady!' "M'sieu' Doltaire speak to her, and they all put up their swords, and M'sieu' Cournal sit down at a table, and he stare and stare up at the balcony, and make a motion now and then with his hand. M'sieu' Doltaire say to her, 'Madame, you must excuse our entertainment; we did not know we had an audience so distinguished.' She reply, 'As scene-shifter and prompter, M'sieu' Doltaire, you have a gift. Your Excellency,' she say to the Intendant, 'I will wait for you at the top of the great staircase, if you will be so good as to take me to the ballroom.' The Intendant and M'sieu' Doltaire bow, and turn to the door, and M'sieu' Cournal scowl, and make as if to follow; but madame speak down at him, 'M'sieu'--Argand'--like that! and he turn back, and sit down. I think she forget me, I keep so still. The others bow and scrape, and leave the room, and the two are alone--alone, for what am I? What if a dog hear great people speak? No, it is no matter! "There is all still for a little while, and I watch her face as she lean over the rail and look down at him; it is like stone, like stone that aches, and her eyes stare and stare at him. He look up at her and scowl; then he laugh, with a toss of the finger, and sit down. All at once he put his hand on his sword, and gnash his teeth. "Then she speak down to him, her voice ver' quiet. 'Argand,' she say, 'you are more a man drunk than sober. Argand,' she go on, 'years ago, they said you were a brave man; you fight well, you do good work for the King, your name goes with a sweet sound to Versailles. You had only your sword and my poor fortune and me then--that is all; but you were a man. You had ambition, so had I. What can a woman do? You had your sword, your country, the King's service. I had beauty; I wanted power--ah yes, power, that was the thing! But I was young and a fool; you were older. You talked fine things then, but you had a base heart, so much baser than mine.... I might have been a good woman. I was a fool, and weak, and vain, but you were base--so base--coward and betrayer, you!' "At that m'sieu' start up and snatch at his sword, and speak out between his teeth, 'By God, I will kill you to-night!' She smile cold and hard, and say, 'No, no, you will not; it is too late for killing; that should have been done before. You sold your right to kill long ago, Argand Cournal. You have been close friends with the man who gave me power, and you gold.' Then she get fierce. 'Who gave you gold before he gave me power, traitor?' Like that she speak. 'Do you never think of what you have lost?' Then she break out in a laugh. 'Pah! Listen: if there must be killing, why not be the great Roman--drunk!' "Then she laugh so hard a laugh, and turn away, and go quick by me and not see me. She step into the dark, and he sit down in the chair, and look straight in front of him. I do not stir, and after a minute she come back sof', and peep down, her face all differen'. 'Argand! Argand!' she say ver' tender and low, 'if--if--if'--like that. But just then he see the broken watch on the floor, and he stoop, with a laugh, and pick up the pieces; then he get a candle and look on the floor everywhere for the jewels, and he pick them up, and put them away one by one in his purse like a miser. He keep on looking, and once the fire of the candle burn his beard, and he swear, and she stare and stare at him. He sit down at the table, and look at the jewels and laugh to himself. Then she draw herself up, and shake, and put her hands to her eyes, and 'C'est fini! c'est fini!' she whisper, and that is all. "When she is gone, after a little time he change--ah, he change much, he go to a table and pour out a great bowl of wine, and then another, and he drink them both, and he begin to walk up and down the floor. He sway now and then, but he keep on for a long time. Once a servant come, but he wave him away, and he scowl and talk to himself, and shut the doors and lock them. Then he walk on and on. At last he sit down, and he face me. In front of him are candles, and he stare between them, and stare and stare. I sit and watch, and I feel a pity. I hear him say, 'Antoinette! Antoinette! My dear Antoinette! We are lost forever, my Antoinette!' Then he take the purse from his pocket, and throw it up to the balcony where I am. 'Pretty sins,' he say, 'follow the sinner!' It lie there, and it have sprung open, and I can see the jewels shine, but I not touch it--no. Well, he sit there long--long, and his face get gray and his cheeks all hollow. "I hear the clock strike one! two! three! four! Once some one come and try the door, but go away again, and he never stir; he is like a dead man. At last I fall asleep. When I wake up, he still sit there, but his head lie in his arms. I look round. Ah, it is not a fine sight--no. The candles burn so low, and there is a smell of wick, and the grease runs here and there down the great candlesticks. Upon the floor, this place and that, is a card, and pieces of paper, and a scarf, and a broken glass, and something that shine by a small table. This is a picture in a little gold frame. On all the tables stand glasses, some full, and some empty of wine. And just as the dawn come in through the tall windows, a cat crawl out from somewhere, all ver' thin and shy, and walk across the floor; it make the room look so much alone. At last it come and move against m'sieu's legs, and he lift his head and look down at it, and nod, and say something which I not hear. After that he get up, and pull himself together with a shake, and walk down the room. Then he see the little gold picture on the floor which some drunk young officer drop, and he pick it up and look at it, and walk again. 'Poor fool!' he say, and look at the picture again. 'Poor fool! Will he curse her some day--a child with a face like that? Ah!' And he throw the picture down. Then he walk away to the doors, unlock them, and go out. Soon I steal away through the panels, and out of the palace ver' quiet, and go home. But I can see that room in my mind." Again the jailer hurried Voban; There was no excuse for him to remain longer; so I gave him a message to Alixe, and slipped into his hand a transcript from my journal. Then he left me, and I sat and thought upon the strange events of the evening which he had described to me. That he was bent on mischief I felt sure, but how it would come, what were his plans, I could not guess. Then suddenly there flashed into my mind my words to him, "blow us all to pieces," and his consternation and strange eagerness. It came to me suddenly: he meant to blow up the Intendance. When? And how? It seemed absurd to think of it. Yet--yet-- The grim humour of the thing possessed me, and I sat back and laughed heartily. In the midst of my mirth the cell door opened and let in Doltaire. XV IN THE CHAMBER OF TORTURE I started from my seat; we bowed, and, stretching out a hand to the fire, Doltaire said, "Ah, my Captain, we meet too seldom. Let me see: five months--ah yes, nearly five months. Believe me, I have not breakfasted so heartily since. You are looking older--older. Solitude to the active mind is not to be endured alone--no." "Monsieur Doltaire is the surgeon to my solitude," said I. "H'm!" he answered, "a jail surgeon merely. And that brings me to a point, monsieur. I have had letters from France. The Grande Marquise--I may as well be frank with you--womanlike, yearns violently for those silly letters which you hold. She would sell our France for them. There is a chance for you who would serve your country so. Serve it, and yourself--and me. We have no news yet as to your doom, but be sure it is certain. La Pompadour knows all, and if you are stubborn, twenty deaths were too few. I can save you little longer, even were it my will so to do. For myself, the great lady girds at me for being so poor an agent. You, monsieur"--he smiled whimsically--"will agree that I have been persistent--and intelligent." "So much so," rejoined I, "as to be intrusive." He smiled again. "If La Pompadour could hear you, she would understand why I prefer the live amusing lion to the dead dog. When you are gone, I shall be inconsolable. I am a born inquisitor." "You were born for better things than this," I answered. He took a seat and mused for a moment. "For larger things, you mean," was his reply. "Perhaps--perhaps. I have one gift of the strong man--I am inexorable when I make for my end. As a general, I would pour men into the maw of death as corn into the hopper, if that would build a bridge to my end. You call to mind how those Spaniards conquered the Mexique city which was all canals like Venice? They filled the waterways with shattered houses and the bodies of their enemies, as they fought their way to Montezuma's palace. So I would know not pity if I had a great cause. In anything vital I would have success at all cost, and to get, destroy as I went--if I were a great man." I thought for a moment with horror of his pursuit of my dear Alixe. "I am your hunter," had been his words to her, and I knew not what had happened in all these months. "If you were a great man, you should have the best prerogative of greatness," I remarked quietly. "And what is that? Some excellent moral, I doubt not," was the rejoinder. "Mercy," I replied. "Tush!" he retorted, "mercy is for the fireside, not for the throne. In great causes, what is a screw of tyranny here, a bolt of oppression there, or a few thousand lives!" He suddenly got to his feet, and, looking into the distance, made a swift motion of his hand, his eyes half closed, his brows brooding and firm. "I should look beyond the moment, the year, or the generation. Why fret because the hour of death comes sooner than we looked for? In the movement of the ponderous car, some honest folk must be crushed by the wicked wheels. No, no, in large affairs there must be no thought of the detail of misery, else what should be done in the world! He who is the strongest shall survive, and he alone. It is all conflict--all. For when conflict ceases, and those who could and should be great spend their time chasing butterflies among the fountains, there comes miasma and their doom. Mercy? Mercy? No, no: for none but the poor and sick and overridden, in time of peace; in time of war, mercy for none, pity nowhere, till the joybells ring the great man home." "But mercy to women always," said I, "in war or peace." He withdrew his eyes as if from a distant prospect, and they dropped to the stove, where I had corn parching. He nodded, as if amused, but did not answer at once, and taking from my hand the feather with which I stirred the corn, softly whisked some off for himself, and smiled at the remaining kernels as they danced upon the hot iron. After a little while he said, "Women? Women should have all that men can give them. Beautiful things should adorn them; no man should set his hand in cruelty on a woman--after she is his. Before--before? Woman is wilful, and sometimes we wring her heart that we may afterwards comfort it." "Your views have somewhat changed," I answered. "I mind when you talked less sweetly." He shrugged a shoulder. "That man is lost who keeps one mind concerning woman. I will trust the chastity of no woman, yet I will trust her virtue--if I have her heart. They a foolish tribe, and all are vulnerable in their vanity. They of consequence to man, of no consequence in state matters. When they meddle there, we have La Pompadour and war with England, and Captain Moray in the Bastile of New France." "You come from a court, monsieur, which believes in nothing, not even in itself." "I come from a court," he rejoined, "which has made a gospel of artifice, of frivolity a creed; buying the toys for folly with the savings of the poor. His most Christian Majesty has set the fashion of continual silliness and universal love. He begets children in the peasant's oven and in the chamber of Charlemagne alike. And we are all good subjects of the King. We are brilliant, exquisite, brave, and naughty; and for us there is no to-morrow." "Nor for France," I suggested. He laughed, as he rolled a kernel of parched corn on his tongue. "Tut, tut! that is another thing. We the fashion of an hour, but France is a fact as stubborn as the natures of you English; for beyond stubbornness and your Shakespeare you have little. Down among the moles, in the peasants' huts, the spirit of France never changes--it is always the same; it is for all time. You English, nor all others, you can not blow out that candle which is the spirit of France. I remember of the Abbe Bobon preaching once upon the words, 'The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord'; well, the spirit of France is the candle of Europe, and you English will be its screen against the blowing out, though in spasms of stupidity you flaunt the extinguisher. You--you have no imagination, no passion, no temperament, no poetry. Yet I am wrong. The one thing you have--" He broke off, nodding his head in amusement. "Yes, you have, but it is a secret. You English are the true lovers, we French the true poets; and I will tell you why. You are a race of comrades, the French of gentlemen; you cleave to a thing, we to an idea; you love a woman best when she is near, we when she is away; you make a romance of marriage, we of intrigue; you feed upon yourselves, we upon the world; you have fever in your blood, we in our brains; you believe the world was made in seven days, we have no God; you would fight for the seven days, we would fight for the danseuse on a bonbon box. The world will say 'fie!' at us and love us; it will respect you and hate you. That is the law and the gospel," he added, smiling. "Perfect respect casteth out love" said I ironically. He waved his fingers in approval. "By the Lord, but you are pungent now and then!" he answered; "cabined here you are less material. By the time you are chastened unto heaven you will be too companionable to lose." "When is that hour of completed chastening?" I asked. "Never," he said, "if you will oblige me with those letters." "For a man of genius you discern but slowly," retorted I. "Discern your amazing stubbornness?" he asked. "Why should you play at martyr, when your talent is commercial? You have no gifts for martyrdom but wooden tenacity. Pshaw! the leech has that. You mistake your calling." "And you yours," I answered. "This is a poor game you play, and losing it you lose all. La Pompadour will pay according to the goods you bring." He answered with an amusing candour: "Why, yes, you are partly in the right. But when La Pompadour and I come to our final reckoning, when it is a question who can topple ruins round the King quickest, his mistress or his 'cousin,' there will be tales to tell." He got up, and walked to and fro in the cell, musing, and his face grew dark and darker. "Your Monmouth was a fool," he said. "He struck from the boundaries; the blow should fall in the very chambers of the King." He put a finger musingly upon his lip. "I see--I see how it could be done. Full of danger, but brilliant, brilliant and bold! Yes, yes...yes!" Then all at once he seemed to come out of a dream, and laughed ironically. "There it is," he said; "there is my case. I have the idea, but I will not strike; it is not worth the doing unless I am driven to it. We are brave enough, we idlers," he went on; "we die with an air--all artifice, artifice! ... Yet of late I have had dreams. Now that is not well. It is foolish to dream, and I had long since ceased to do so. But somehow all the mad fancies of my youth come back. This dream will go, it will not last; it is--my fate, my doom," he added lightly, "or what you will!" I knew, alas, too well where his thoughts were hanging, and I loathed him anew; for, as he hinted, his was a passion, not a deep abiding love. His will was not stronger than the general turpitude of his nature. As if he had divined my thought, he said, "My will is stronger than any passion that I have; I can never plead weakness in the day of my judgment. I am deliberate. When I choose evil it is because I love it. I could be an anchorite; I am, as I said--what you will." "You are a conscienceless villain, monsieur." "Who salves not his soul," he added, with a dry smile, "who will play his game out as he began; who repents nor ever will repent of anything; who for him and you some interesting moments yet. Let me make one now," and he drew from his pocket a packet. He smiled hatefully as he handed it to me, and said, "Some books which monsieur once lent Mademoiselle Duvarney--poems, I believe. Mademoiselle found them yesterday, and desired me to fetch them to you; and I obliged her. I had the pleasure of glancing through the books before she rolled them up. She bade me say that monsieur might find them useful in his captivity. She has a tender heart--even to the worst of criminals." I felt a strange churning in my throat, but with composure I took the books, and said, "Mademoiselle Duvarney chooses distinguished messengers." "It is a distinction to aid her in her charities," he replied. I could not at all conceive what was meant. The packet hung in my hands like lead. There was a mystery I could not solve. I would not for an instant think what he meant to convey by a look--that her choice of him to carry back my gift to her was a final repulse of past advances I had made to her, a corrective to my romantic memories. I would not believe that, not for one fleeting second. Perhaps, I said to myself, it was a ruse of this scoundrel. But again, I put that from me, for I did not think he would stoop to little meannesses, no matter how vile he was in great things. I assumed indifference to the matter, laying the packet down upon my couch, and saying to him, "You will convey my thanks to Mademoiselle Duvarney for these books, whose chief value lies in the honourable housing they have had." He smiled provokingly; no doubt he was thinking that my studied compliment smelt of the oil of solitude. "And add--shall I--your compliments that they should have their airing at the hands of Monsieur Doltaire?" "I shall pay those compliments to Monsieur Doltaire himself one day," I replied. He waved his fingers. "The sentiments of one of the poems were commendable, fanciful. I remember it"--he put a finger to his lip--"let me see." He stepped towards the packet, but I made a sign of interference--how grateful was I of this afterwards!--and he drew back courteously. "Ah well," he said, "I have a fair memory; I can, I think, recall the morsel. It impressed me. I could not think the author an Englishman. It runs thus," and with admirable grace he recited the words: "O flower of all the world, O flower of all! The garden where thou dwellest is so fair, Thou art so goodly and so queenly tall, Thy sweetness scatters sweetness everywhere, O flower of all! "O flower of all the years, O flower of all! A day beside thee is a day of days; Thy voice is softer than the throstle's call, There is not song enough to sing thy praise, O flower of all! "O flower of all the years, O flower of all! I seek thee in thy garden, and I dare To love thee; and though my deserts be small, Thou art the only flower I would wear, O flower of all!" "Now that," he said, "is the romantic, almost the Arcadian spirit. We have lost it, but it lingers like some rare scent in the folds of lace. It is also but artifice, yet so is the lingering perfume. When it hung in the flower it was lost after a day's life, but when gathered and distilled into an essence it becomes, through artifice, an abiding sweetness. So with your song there. It is the spirit of devotion, gathered, it may be, from a thousand flowers, and made into an essence, which is offered to one only. It is not the worship of this one, but the worship of a thousand distilled at last to one delicate liturgy. So much for sentiment," he continued. "Upon my soul, Captain Moray, you are a boon. I love to have you caged. I shall watch your distressed career to its close with deep scrutiny. You and I are wholly different, but you are interesting. You never could be great. Pardon the egotism, but it is truth. Your brain works heavily, you are too tenacious of your conscience, you are a blunderer. You will always sow, and others will reap." I waved my hand in deprecation, for I was in no mood for further talk, and I made no answer. He smiled at me, and said, "Well, since you doubt my theories, let us come, as your Shakespeare says, to Hecuba.... If you will come with me," he added, as he opened my cell door, and motioned me courteously to go outside. I drew back, and he said, "There is no need to hesitate; I go to show you merely what will interest you." We passed in silence through the corridors, two sentinels attending, and at last came into a large square room, wherein stood three men with hands tied over their heads against the wall, their faces twitching with pain. I drew back in astonishment, for there, standing before them, were Gabord and another soldier. Doltaire ordered from the room the soldier with Gabord, and my two sentinels, and motioned me to one of two chairs set in the middle of the floor. Presently his face became hard and cruel, and he said to the tortured prisoners, "You will need to speak the truth, and promptly. I have an order to do with you what I will, and I will do it without pause. Hear me. Three nights ago, as Mademoiselle Duvarney was returning from the house of a friend living near the Intendance, she was set upon by you. A cloak was thrown over her head, she was carried to a carriage, where two of you got inside with her. Some gentlemen and myself were coming that way. We heard the lady's cries, and two gave chase to the carriage, while one followed the others. By the help of soldier Gabord here you all were captured. You have hung where you are for two days, and now I shall have you whipped. When that is done, you shall tell your story. If you do not speak truth, you shall be whipped again, and then hung. Ladies shall have safety from rogues like you." Alixe's danger told in these concise words made me, I am sure, turn pale; but Doltaire did not see it, he was engaged with the prisoners. As I thought and wondered, four soldiers were brought in, and the men were made ready for the lash. In vain they pleaded they would tell their story at once. Doltaire would not listen; the whipping first, and their story after. Soon their backs were bared, their faces were turned to the wall, and, as Gabord with harsh voice counted, the lashes were mercilessly laid on. There was a horrible fascination in watching the skin corrugate under the lashes, rippling away in red and purple blotches, the grooves in the flesh crossing and recrossing, the raw misery spreading from the hips to the shoulders. Now and again Doltaire drew out a box and took a pinch of snuff, and once, coolly and curiously, he walked up to the most stalwart prisoner and felt his pulse, then to the weakest, whose limbs and body had stiffened as though dead. "Ninety-seven! Ninety-eight! Ninety-nine!" growled Gabord, and then came Doltaire's voice: "Stop! Now fetch some brandy." The prisoners were loosened, and Doltaire spoke sharply to a soldier who was roughly pulling one man's shirt over the excoriated back. Brandy was given by Gabord, and the prisoners stood, a most pitiful sight, the weakest livid. "Now tell your story," said Doltaire to this last. The man, with broken voice and breath catching, said that they had erred. They had been hired to kidnap Madame Cournal, not Mademoiselle Duvarney. Doltaire's eyes flashed. "I see, I see," he said aside to me. "The wretch speaks truth." "Who was your master?" he asked of the sturdiest of the villains; and he was told that Monsieur Cournal had engaged them. To the question what was to be done with Madame Cournal, another answered that she was to be waylaid as she was coming from the Intendance, kidnapped, and hurried to a nunnery to be imprisoned for life. Doltaire sat for a moment, looking at the men in silence. "You are not to hang," he said at last; "but ten days hence, when you have had one hundred lashes more, you shall go free. Fifty for you," he continued to the weakest who had first told the story. "Not fifty nor one!" was the shrill reply, and, being unbound, the prisoner snatched something from a bench near; there was a flash of steel, and he came huddling in a heap on the floor, muttering a malediction on the world. "There was some bravery in that," said Doltaire, looking at the dead man. "If he has friends, hand over the body to them. This matter must not be spoken of--at your peril," he added sternly. "Give them food and brandy." Then he accompanied me to my cell, and opened the door. I passed in, and he was about going without a word, when on a sudden his old nonchalance came back, and he said: "I promised you a matter of interest. You have had it. Gather philosophy from this: you may with impunity buy anything from a knave and fool except his nuptial bed. He throws the money in your face some day." So saying he plunged in thought again, and left me. XVI BE SAINT OR IMP Immediately I opened the packet. As Doltaire had said, the two books of poems I had lent Alixe were there, and between the pages of one lay a letter addressed to me. It was, indeed, a daring thing to make Doltaire her messenger. But she trusted to his habits of courtesy; he had no small meannesses--he was no spy or thief. DEAR ROBERT (the letter ran): I know not if this will ever reach you, for I am about to try a perilous thing, even to make Monsieur Doltaire my letter-carrier. Bold as it is, I hope to bring it through safely. You must know that my mother now makes Monsieur Doltaire welcome to our home, for his great talents and persuasion have so worked upon her that she believes him not so black as he is painted. My father, too, is not unmoved by his amazing address and complaisance. I do not think he often cares to use his arts--he is too indolent; but with my father, my mother, and my sister he has set in motion all his resources. Robert, all Versailles is here. This Monsieur Doltaire speaks for it. I know not if all courts in the world are the same, but if so, I am at heart no courtier; though I love the sparkle, the sharp play of wit and word, the very touch-and-go of weapons. I am in love with life, and I wish to live to be old, very old, that I will have known it all, from helplessness to helplessness again, missing nothing, even though much be sad to feel and bear. Robert, I should have gone on many years, seeing little, knowing little, I think, if it had not been for you and for your troubles, which are mine, and for this love of ours, builded in the midst of sorrows. Georgette is now as old as when I first came to love you, and you were thrown into the citadel, and yet in feeling and experience, I am ten years older than she; and necessity has made me wiser. Ah, if necessity would but make me happy too, by giving you your liberty, that on these many miseries endured we might set up a sure home. I wonder if you think--if you think of that: a little home away from all these wars, aloof from vexing things. But there! all too plainly I am showing you my heart. Yet it is so great a comfort to speak on paper to you, in this silence here. Can you guess where is that HERE, Robert? It is not the Chateau St. Louis--no. It is not the Manor. It is the chateau, dear Chateau Alixe--my father has called it that--on the Island of Orleans. Three days ago I was sick at heart, tired of all the junketings and feastings, and I begged my mother to fetch me here, though it is yet but early spring, and snow is on the ground. First, you must know that this new chateau is built upon, and is joined to, the ruins of an old one, owned long years ago by the Baron of Beaugard, whose strange history you must learn some day, out of the papers we have found here. I begged my father not to tear the old portions of the manor down, but, using the first foundations, put up a house half castle and half manor. Pictures of the old manor were found, and so we have a place that is no patchwork, but a renewal. I made my father give me the old surviving part of the building for my own, and so it is. It is all set on high ground abutting on the water almost at the point where I am, and I have the river in my sight all day. Now, think yourself in the new building. You come out of a dining-hall, hung all about with horns and weapons and shields and such bravery, go through a dark, narrow passage, and then down a step or two. You open a door, bright light breaks on your eyes, then two steps lower, and you are here with me. You might have gone outside the dining-hall upon a stone terrace, and so have come along to the deep window where I sit so often. You may think of me hiding in the curtains, watching you, though you knew it not till you touched the window and I came out quietly, startling you, so that your heart would beat beyond counting. As I look up towards the window, the thing first in sight is the cage, with the little bird which came to me in the cathedral the morning my brother got lease of life again: you DO remember--is it not so? It never goes from my room, and though I have come here but for a week I muffled the cage well and brought it over; and there the bird swings and sings the long day through. I have heaped the window-seats with soft furs, and one of these I prize most rarely. It was a gift--and whose, think you? Even a poor soldier's. You see I have not all friends among the great folk. I often lie upon that soft robe of sable--ay, sable, Master Robert--and think of him who gave it to me. Now I know you are jealous, and I can see your eyes flash up. But you shall at once be soothed. It is no other than Gabord's gift. He is now of the Governor's body-guard, and I think is by no means happy, and would prefer service with the Marquis de Montcalm, who goes not comfortably with the Intendant and the Governor. One day Gabord came to our house on the ramparts, and, asking for me, blundered out, "Aho, what shall a soldier do with sables? They are for gentles and for wrens to snuggle in. Here comes a Russian count oversea, and goes mad in tavern. Here comes Gabord, and saves count from ruddy crest for kissing the wrong wench. Then count falls on Gabord's neck, and kisses both his ears, and gives him sables, and crosses oversea again; and so good-bye to count and his foolery. And sables shall be ma'm'selle's, if she will have them." He might have sold the thing for many louis, and yet he brought it to me; and he would not go till he had seen me sitting on it, muffling my hands and face in the soft fur. Just now, as I am writing, I glance at the table where I sit--a small brown table of oak, carved with the name of Felise, Baroness of Beaugard. She sat here; and some day, when you hear her story, you will know why I begged Madame Lotbiniere to give it to me in exchange for another, once the King's. Carved, too, beneath her name, are the words, "Oh, tarry thou the Lord's leisure." And now you shall laugh with me at a droll thing Georgette has given me to wipe my pen upon. There are three little circles of deerskin and one of ruby velvet, stitched together in the centre. Then, standing on the velvet is a yellow wooden chick, with little eyes of beads, and a little wooden bill stuck in most quaintly, and a head that twists like a weathercock. It has such a piquant silliness of look that I laugh at it most heartily, and I have an almost elfish fun in smearing its downy feathers. I am sure you did not think I could be amused so easily. You shall see this silly chick one day, humorously ugly and all daubed with ink. There is a low couch in one corner of the room, and just above hangs a picture of my mother. In another corner is a little shelf of books, among them two which I have studied constantly since you were put in prison--your great Shakespeare, and the writings of one Mr. Addison. I had few means of studying at first, so difficult it seemed, and all the words sounded hard; but there is your countryman, one Lieutenant Stevens of Rogers' Rangers, a prisoner, and he has helped me, and is ready to help you when the time comes for stirring. I teach him French; and though I do not talk of you, he tells me in what esteem you are held in Virginia and in England, and is not slow to praise you on his own account, which makes me more forgiving when he would come to sentiment! In another corner is my spinning-wheel, and there stands a harpsichord, just where the soft sun sends in a ribbon of light; and I will presently play for you a pretty song. I wonder if you can hear it? Where I shall sit at the harpsichord the belt of sunlight will fall across my shoulder, and, looking through the window, I shall see your prison there on the Heights; the silver flag with its gold lilies on the Chateau St. Louis; the great guns of the citadel; and far off at Beauport the Manor House and garden which you and I know so well, and the Falls of Montmorenci, falling like white flowing hair from the tall cliff. You will care to know of how these months have been spent, and what news of note there is of the fighting between our countries. No matters of great consequence have come to our ears, save that it is thought your navy may descend on Louisburg; that Ticonderoga is also to be set upon, and Quebec to be besieged in the coming summer. From France the news is various. Now, Frederick of Prussia and England defeat the allies, France, Russia, and Austria; now, they, as Monsieur Doltaire says, "send the great Prussian to verses and the megrims." For my own part, I am ever glad to hear that our cause is victorious, and letters that my brother writes me rouse all my ardour for my country. Juste has grown in place and favour, and in his latest letter he says that Monsieur Doltaire's voice has got him much advancement. He also remarks that Monsieur Doltaire has reputation for being one of the most reckless, clever, and cynical men in France. Things that he has said are quoted at ball and rout. Yet the King is angry with him, and La Pompadour's caprice may send him again to the Bastile. These things Juste heard from D'Argenson, Minister of War, through his secretary, with whom he is friendly. I will now do what I never thought to do: I will send you here some extracts from my journal, which will disclose to you the secrets of a girl's troubled heart. Some folk might say that I am unmaidenly in this. But I care not, I fear not. December 24. I was with Robert to-day. I let him see what trials I had had with Monsieur Doltaire, and what were like to come. It hurt me to tell him, yet it would have hurt me more to withhold them. I am hurt whichever way it goes. Monsieur Doltaire rouses the worst parts of me. On the one hand I detest him for his hatred of Robert and for his evil life, yet on the other I must needs admire him for his many graces--why are not the graces of the wicked horrible?--for his singular abilities, and because, gamester though he may be, he is no public robber. Then, too, the melancholy of his birth and history claims some sympathy. Sometimes when I listen to him speak, hear the almost piquant sadness of his words, watch the spirit of isolation which, by design or otherwise, shows in him, for the moment I am conscious of a pity or an interest which I flout in wiser hours. This is his art, the potent danger of his personality. To-night he came, and with many fine phrases wished us a happy day to-morrow, and most deftly worked upon my mother and Georgette by looking round and speaking with a quaint sort of raillery--half pensive, it was--of the peace of this home-life of ours; and indeed, he did it so inimitably that I was not sure how much was false and how much true. I tried to avoid him to-day, but my mother as constantly made private speech between us easy. At last he had his way, and then I was not sorry; for Georgette was listening to him with more colour than she is wont to wear. I would rather see her in her grave than with her hand in his, her sweet life in his power. She is unschooled in the ways of the world, and she never will know it as I now do. How am I sounding all the depths! Can a woman walk the dance with evil, and be no worse for it by-and-bye? Yet for a cause, for a cause! What can I do? I can not say, "Monsieur Doltaire, you must not speak with me, or talk with me; you are a plague-spot." No, I must even follow this path, so it but lead at last to Robert and his safety. Monsieur, having me alone at last, said to me, "I have kept my word as to the little boast: this Captain Moray still lives." "You are not greater than I thought," said I. He professed to see but one meaning in my words, and answered, "It was then mere whim to see me do this thing, a lady's curious mind, eh? My faith, I think your sex are the true scientists: you try experiment for no other reason than to see effect." "You forget my deep interest in Captain Moray," said I, with airy boldness. He laughed. He was disarmed. How could he think I meant it! "My imagination halts," he rejoined. "Millennium comes when you are interested. And yet," he continued, "it is my one ambition to interest you, and I will do it, or I will say my prayers no more." "But how can that be done no more, Which ne'er was done before?" I retorted, railing at him, for I feared to take him seriously. "There you wrong me," he said. "I am devout; I am a lover of the Scriptures--their beauty haunts me; I go to mass--its dignity affects me; and I have prayed, as in my youth I wrote verses. It is not a matter of morality, but of temperament. A man may be religious and yet be evil. Satan fell, but he believed and he admired, as the English Milton wisely shows it." I was most glad that my father came between us at that moment; but before Monsieur left, he said to me, "You have challenged me. Beware: I have begun this chase. Yet I would rather be your follower, rather have your arrow in me, than be your hunter." He said it with a sort of warmth, which I knew was a glow in his senses merely; he was heated with his own eloquence. "Wait," returned I. "You have heard the story of King Artus?" He thought a moment. "No, no. I never was a child as other children. I was always comrade to the imps." "King Artus," said I, "was most fond of hunting." (It is but a legend with its moral, as you know.) "It was forbidden by the priests to hunt while mass was being said. One day, at the lifting of the host, the King, hearing a hound bay, rushed out, and gathered his pack together; but as they went, a whirlwind caught them up into the air, where they continue to this day, following a lonely trail, never resting, and all the game they get is one fly every seventh year. And now, when all on a sudden at night you hear the trees and leaves and the sleepy birds and crickets stir, it is the old King hunting--for the fox he never gets." Monsieur looked at me with curious intentness. "You have a great gift," he said; "you make your point by allusion. I follow you. But see: when I am blown into the air I shall not ride alone. Happiness is the fox we ride to cover, you and I, though we find but a firefly in the end." "A poor reply," I remarked easily; "not worthy of you." "As worthy as I am of you," he rejoined; then he kissed my hand. "I will see you at mass to-morrow." Unconsciously, I rubbed the hand he kissed with my handkerchief. "I am not to be provoked," he said. "It is much to have you treat my kiss with consequence." March 25. No news of Robert all this month. Gabord has been away in Montreal. I see Voban only now and then, and he is strange in manner, and can do nothing. Mathilde is better--so still and desolate, yet not wild; but her memory is all gone, all save for that "Francois Bigot is a devil." My father has taken anew a strong dislike to Monsieur Doltaire, because of talk that is abroad concerning him and Madame Cournal. I once thought she was much sinned against, but now I am sure she is not to be defended. She is most defiant, though people dare not shut their doors against her. A change seemed to come over her all at once, and over her husband also. He is now gloomy and taciturn, now foolishly gay, yet he is little seen with the Intendant, as before. However it be, Monsieur Doltaire and Bigot are no longer intimate. What should I care for that, if Monsieur Doltaire had no power, if he were not the door between Robert and me? What care I, indeed, how vile he is, so he but serve my purpose? Let him try my heart and soul and senses as he will; I will one day purify myself of his presence and all this soiling, and find my peace in Robert's arms--or in the quiet of a nunnery. This morning I got up at sunrise, it being the Annunciation of the Virgin, and prepared to go to mass in the chapel of the Ursulines. How peaceful was the world! So still, so still. The smoke came curling up here and there through the sweet air of spring, a snowbird tripped along the white coverlet of the earth, and before a Calvary, I saw a peasant kneel and say an Ave as he went to market. There was springtime in the sun, in the smell of the air; springtime everywhere but in my heart, which was all winter. I seemed alone--alone--alone. I felt the tears start. But that was for a moment only, I am glad to say, for I got my courage again, as I did the night before when Monsieur Doltaire placed his arm at my waist, and poured into my ears a torrent of protestations. I did not move at first. But I could feel my cheeks go to stone, and something clamp my heart. Yet had ever man such hateful eloquence! There is that in him--oh, shame! oh, shame!--which goes far with a woman. He has the music of passion, and though it is lower than love, it is the poetry of the senses. I spoke to him calmly, I think, begging him place his merits where they would have better entertainment; but I said hard, cold things at last, when other means availed not; which presently made him turn upon me in another fashion. His words dropped slowly, with a consummate carefulness, his manner was pointedly courteous, yet there was an underpressure of force, of will, which made me see the danger of my position. He said that I was quite right; that he would wish no privilege of a woman which was not given with a frank eagerness; that to him no woman was worth the having who did not throw her whole nature into the giving. Constancy--that was another matter. But a perfect gift while there was giving at all--that was the way. "There is something behind all this," he said. "I am not so vain as to think any merits of mine would influence you. But my devotion, my admiration of you, the very force of my passion, should move you. Be you ever so set against me--and I do not think you are--you should not be so strong to resist the shock of feeling. I do not know the cause, but I will find it out; and when I do, I shall remove it or be myself removed." He touched my arm with his fingers. "When I touch you like that," he said, "summer riots in my veins. I will not think that this which rouses me so is but power upon one side, and effect upon the other. Something in you called me to you, something in me will wake you yet. Mon Dieu, I could wait a score of years for my touch to thrill you as yours does me! And I will--I will." "You think it suits your honour to force my affections?" I asked; for I dared not say all I wished. "What is there in this reflecting on my honour?" he answered. "At Versailles, believe me, they would say I strive here for a canonizing. No, no; think me so gallant that I follow you to serve you, to convince you that the way I go is the way your hopes will lie. Honour? To fetch you to the point where you and I should start together on the Appian Way, I would traffic with that, even, and say I did so, and would do so a thousand times, if in the end it put your hand in mine. Who, who can give you what I offer, can offer? See: I have given myself to a hundred women in my time--but what of me? That which was a candle in a wind, and the light went out. There was no depth, no life, in that; only the shadow of a man was there those hundred times. But here, now, the whole man plunges into this sea, and he will reach the lighthouse on the shore, or be broken on the reefs. Look in my eyes, and see the furnace there, and tell me if you think that fire is for cool corners in the gardens at Neuilly or for the Hills of--" He suddenly broke off, and a singular smile followed. "There, there," he said, "I have said enough. It came to me all at once how droll my speech would sound to our people at Versailles. It is an elaborate irony that the occasional virtues of certain men turn and mock them. That is the penalty of being inconsistent. Be saint or imp; it is the only way. But this imp that mocks me relieves you of reply. Yet I have spoken truth, and again and again I will tell it you, till you believe according to my gospel." How glad I was that he himself lightened the situation! I had been driven to despair, but this strange twist in his mood made all smooth for me. "That 'again and again' sounds dreary," said I. "It might almost appear I must sometime accept your gospel, to cure you of preaching it, and save me from eternal drowsiness." We were then most fortunately interrupted. He made his adieus, and I went to my room, brooded till my head ached, then fell a-weeping, and wished myself out of the world, I was so sick and weary. Now and again a hot shudder of shame and misery ran through me, as I thought of monsieur's words to me. Put them how he would, they sound an insult now, though as he spoke I felt the power of his passion. "If you had lived a thousand years ago, you would have loved a thousand times," he said to me one day. Sometimes I think he spoke truly; I have a nature that responds to all eloquence in life. Robert, I have bared my heart to thee. I have hidden nothing. In a few days I shall go back to the city with my mother, and when I can I will send news; and do thou send me news also, if thou canst devise a safe way. Meanwhile, I have written my brother Juste to be magnanimous, and to try for thy freedom. He will not betray me, and he may help us. I have begged him to write to thee a letter of reconcilement. And now, comrade of my heart, do thou have courage. I also shall be strong as I am ardent. Having written thee, I am cheerful once more; and when again I may, I will open the doors of my heart that thou mayst come in. That heart is thine, Robert. Thy ALIXE, who loves thee all her days. P.S.--I have found the names and places of the men who keep the guard beneath thy window. If there is chance for freedom that way, fix the day some time ahead, and I will see what may be done. Voban fears nothing; he will act secretly for me. The next day I arranged for my escape, which had been long in planning. XVII THROUGH THE BARS OF THE CAGE I should have tried escape earlier but that it was little use to venture forth in the harsh winter in a hostile country. But now April had come, and I was keen to make a trial of my fortune. I had been saving food for a long time, little by little, and hiding it in the old knapsack which had held my second suit of clothes. I had used the little stove for parching my food--Indian corn, for which I had professed a fondness to my jailer, and liberally paid for out of funds which had been sent me by Mr. George Washington in answer to my letter, and other moneys to a goodly amount in a letter from Governor Dinwiddie. These letters had been carefully written, and the Marquis de Vaudreuil, into whose hands they had first come, was gallant enough not to withhold them--though he read them first. Besides Indian corn, the parching of which amused me, I had dried ham and tongue, and bread and cheese, enough, by frugal use, to last me a month at least. I knew it would be a journey of six weeks or more to the nearest English settlement, but if I could get that month's start I should forage for the rest, or take my fate as I found it: I was used to all the turns of fortune now. My knapsack gradually filled, and meanwhile I slowly worked my passage into the open world. There was the chance that my jailer would explore the knapsack; but after a time I lost that fear, for it lay untouched with a blanket in a corner, and I cared for my cell with my own hands. The true point of danger was the window. There lay my way. It was stoutly barred with iron up and down, and the bars were set in the solid limestone. Soon after I entered this prison, I saw that I must cut a groove in the stone from stanchion to stanchion, and then, by drawing one to the other, make an opening large enough to let my body through. For tools I had only a miserable knife with which I cut my victuals, and the smaller but stouter one which Gabord had not taken from me. There could be no pounding, no chiselling, but only rubbing of the hard stone. So hour after hour I rubbed away, in constant danger of discovery however. My jailer had a trick of sudden entrance, which would have been grotesque if it had not been so serious to me. To provide against the flurried inquisition of his eye, I kept near me bread well chewed, with which I filled the hole, covering it with the sand I had rubbed or the ashes of my pipe. I lived in dread of these entrances, but at last I found that they chanced only within certain hours, and I arranged my times of work accordingly. Once or twice, however, being impatient, I scratched the stone with some asperity and noise, and was rewarded by hearing my fellow stumbling in the hall; for he had as uncertain limbs as ever I saw. He stumbled upon nothing, as you have seen a child trip itself up by tangling of its feet. The first time that he came, roused by the grating noise as he sat below, he stumbled in the very centre of the cell, and fell upon his knees. I would have laughed if I had dared, but I yawned over the book I had hastily snatched up, and puffed great whiffs from my pipe. I dreaded lest he should go to the window. He started for it, but suddenly made for my couch, and dragged it away, as if looking to find a hole dug beneath it. Still I did not laugh at him, but gravely watched him; and presently he went away. At another time I was foolishly harsh with my tools; but I knew now the time required by him to come upstairs, and I swiftly filled the groove with bread, strewed ashes and sand over it, rubbed all smooth, and was plunged in my copy of Montaigne when he entered. This time he went straight to the window, looked at it, tried the stanchions, and then, with an amused attempt at being cunning and hiding his own vigilance, he asked me, with laborious hypocrisy, if I had seen Captain Lancy pass the window. And so for weeks and weeks we played hide-and-seek with each other. At last I had nothing to do but sit and wait, for the groove was cut, the bar had room to play. I could not bend it, for it was fast at the top; but when my hour of adventure was come, I would tie a handkerchief round the two bars and twist it with the piece of hickory used for stirring the fire. Here was my engine of escape, and I waited till April should wind to its close, when I should, in the softer weather, try my fortune outside these walls. So time went on until one eventful day, even the 30th of April of that year 1758. It was raining and blowing when I waked, and it ceased not all the day, coming to a hailstorm towards night. I felt sure that my guards without would, on such a day, relax their vigilance. In the evening I listened, and heard no voices nor any sound of feet, only the pelting rain and the whistling wind. Yet I did not stir till midnight. Then I slung the knapsack in front of me, so that I could force it through the window first, and tying my handkerchief round the iron bars, I screwed it up with my stick. Presently the bars came together, and my way was open. I got my body through by dint of squeezing, and let myself go plump into the mire below. Then I stood still a minute, and listened again. A light was shining not far away. Drawing near, I saw that it came from a small hut or lean-to. Looking through the cracks, I observed my two gentlemen drowsing in the corner. I was eager for their weapons, but I dared not make the attempt to get them, for they were laid between their legs, the barrels resting against their shoulders. I drew back, and for a moment paused to get my bearings. Then I made for a corner of the yard where the wall was lowest, and, taking a run at it, caught the top, with difficulty scrambled up, and speedily was over and floundering in the mud. I knew well where I was, and at once started off in a northwesterly direction, toward the St. Charles River, making for a certain farmhouse above the town. Yet I took care, though it was dangerous, to travel a street in which was Voban's house. There was no light in the street nor in his house, nor had I seen any one abroad as I came, not even a sentinel. I knew where was the window of the barber's bedroom, and I tapped upon it softly. Instantly I heard a stir; then there came the sound of flint and steel, then a light, and presently a hand at the window, and a voice asking who was there. I gave a quick reply; the light was put out, the window opened, and there was Voban staring at me. "This letter," said I, "to Mademoiselle Duvarney," and I slipped ten louis into his hand, also. This he quickly handed back. "M'sieu'," said he, "if I take it I would seem to myself a traitor--no, no. But I will give the letter to ma'm'selle." Then he asked me in; but I would not, yet begged him, if he could, to have a canoe at my disposal at a point below the Falls of Montmorenci two nights hence. "M'sieu'," said he, "I will do so if I can, but I am watched. I would not pay a sou for my life--no. Yet I will serve you, if there is a way." Then I told him what I meant to do, and bade him repeat it exactly to Alixe. This he swore to do, and I cordially grasped the good wretch's shoulder, and thanked him with all my heart. I got from him a weapon, also, and again I put gold louis into his hand, and bade him keep it, for I might need his kind offices to spend it for me. To this he consented, and I plunged into the dark again. I had not gone far when I heard footsteps coming, and I drew aside into the corner of a porch. A moment, then the light flashed full upon me. I had my hand upon the hanger I had got from Voban, and I was ready to strike if there were need, when Gabord's voice broke on my ear, and his hand caught at the short sword by his side. "'Tis dickey-bird, aho!" cried he. There was exultation in his eye and voice. Here was a chance for him to prove himself against me; he had proved himself for me more than once. "Here was I," added he, "making for M'sieu' Voban, that he might come and bleed a sick soldier, when who should come running but our English captain! Come forth, aho!" "No, Gabord," said I, "I'm bound for freedom." I stepped forth. His sword was poised against me. I was intent to make a desperate fight. "March on," returned he gruffly, and I could feel the iron in his voice. "But not with you, Gabord. My way lies towards Virginia." I did not care to strike the first blow, and I made to go past him. His lantern came down, and he made a catch at my shoulder. I swung back, threw off my cloak and up my weapon. Then we fought. My knapsack troubled me, for it was loose, and kept shifting. Gabord made stroke after stroke, watchful, heavy, offensive, muttering to himself as he struck and parried. There was no hatred in his eyes, but he had the lust of fighting on him, and he was breathing easily, and could have kept this up for hours. As we fought I could hear a clock strike one in a house near. Then a cock crowed. I had received two slight wounds, and I had not touched my enemy. But I was swifter, and I came at him suddenly with a rush, and struck for his left shoulder when I saw my chance. I felt the steel strike the bone. As I did so, he caught my wrist and lunged most fiercely at me, dragging me to him. The blow struck straight at my side, but it went through the knapsack, which had swung loose, and so saved my life; for another instant and I had tripped him down, and he lay bleeding badly. "Aho! 'twas a fair fight," said he. "Now get you gone. I call for help." "I can not leave you so, Gabord," said I. I stooped and lifted up his head. "Then you shall go to citadel," said he, feeling for his small trumpet. "No, no," I answered; "I'll go fetch Voban." "To bleed me more!" quoth he whimsically; and I knew well he was pleased that I did not leave him. "Nay, kick against yon door. It is Captain Lancy's." At that moment a window opened, and Lancy's voice was heard. Without a word I seized the soldier's lantern and my cloak, and made away as hard as I could go. "I'll have a wing of you for lantern there!" roared Gabord, swearing roundly as I ran off with it. With all my might I hurried, and was soon outside the town, and coming fast to the farmhouse about two miles beyond. Nearing it, I hid the lantern beneath my cloak and made for an outhouse. The door was not locked, and I passed in. There was a loft nearly full of hay, and I crawled up, and dug a hole far down against the side of the building, and climbed in, bringing with me for drink a nest of hen's eggs which I found in a corner. The warmth of the dry hay was comforting, and after caring for my wounds, which I found were but scratches, I had somewhat to eat from my knapsack, drank up two eggs, and then coiled myself for sleep. It was my purpose, if not discovered, to stay where I was two days, and then to make for the point below the Falls of Montmorenci where I hoped to find a canoe of Voban's placing. When I waked it must have been near noon, so I lay still for a time, listening to the cheerful noise of fowls and cattle in the yard without, and to the clacking of a hen above me. The air smelt very sweet. I also heard my unknowing host, at whose table I had once sat, two years before, talking with his son, who had just come over from Quebec, bringing news of my escape, together with a wonderful story of the fight between Gabord and myself. It had, by his calendar, lasted some three hours, and both of us, in the end, fought as we lay upon the ground. "But presently along comes a cloaked figure, with horses, and he lifts m'sieu' the Englishman upon one, and away they ride like the devil towards St. Charles River and Beauport. Gabord was taken to the hospital, and he swore that Englishman would not have got away if stranger had not fetched him a crack with a pistol-butt which sent him dumb and dizzy. And there M'sieu' Lancy sleep snug through all until the horses ride away!" The farmer and his son laughed heartily, with many a "By Gar!" their sole English oath. Then came the news that six thousand livres were offered for me, dead or living, the drums beating far and near to tell the people so. The farmer gave a long whistle, and in a great bustle set to calling all his family to arm themselves and join with him in this treasure-hunting. I am sure at least a dozen were at the task, searching all about; nor did they neglect the loft where I lay. But I had dug far down, drawing the hay over me as I went, so that they must needs have been keen to smell me out. After about three hours' poking about over all the farm, they met again outside this building, and I could hear their gabble plainly. The smallest among them, the piping chore-boy, he was for spitting me without mercy; and the milking-lass would toast me with a hay-fork, that she would, and six thousand livres should set her up forever. In the midst of their rattling came two soldiers, who ordered them about, and with much blustering began searching here and there, and chucking the maids under the chins, as I could tell by their little bursts of laughter, and the "La M'sieu's!" which trickled through the hay. I am sure that one such little episode saved me. For I heard a soldier just above me poking and tossing hay with uncomfortable vigour. But presently the amorous hunter turned his thoughts elsewhere, and I was left to myself, and to a late breakfast of parched beans and bread and raw eggs, after which I lay and thought; and the sum of the thinking was that I would stay where I was till the first wave of the hunt had passed. Near midnight of the second day I came out secretly from my lurking-place, and faced straight for the St. Charles River. Finding it at high water, I plunged in, with my knapsack and cloak on my head, and made my way across, reaching the opposite shore safely. After going two miles or so, I discovered friendly covert in the woods, where, in spite of my cloak and dry cedar boughs wrapped round, I shivered as I lay until the morning. When the sun came up, I drew out, that it might dry me; after which I crawled back into my nest and fell into a broken sleep. Many times during the day I heard the horns of my hunters, and more than once voices near me. But I had crawled into the hollow of a half-uprooted stump, and the cedar branches, which had been cut off a day or two before, were a screen. I could see soldiers here and there, armed and swaggering, and faces of peasants and shopkeepers whom I knew. A function was being made of my escape; it was a hunting-feast, in which women were as eager as their husbands and their brothers. There was something devilish in it, when I came to think of it: a whole town roused and abroad to hunt down one poor fugitive, whose only sin was, in themselves, a virtue--loyalty to his country. I saw women armed with sickles and iron forks, and lads bearing axes and hickory poles cut to a point like a spear, while blunderbusses were in plenty. Now and again a weapon was fired, and, to watch their motions and peepings, it might have been thought I was a dragon, or that they all were hunting La Jongleuse, their fabled witch, whose villainies, are they not told at every fireside? Often I shivered violently, and anon I was burning hot; my adventure had given me a chill and fever. Late in the evening of this day, my hunters having drawn off with as little sense as they had hunted me, I edged cautiously down past Beauport and on to the Montmorenci Falls. I came along in safety, and reached a spot near the point where Voban was to hide the boat. The highway ran between. I looked out cautiously. I could hear and see nothing, and so ran out and crossed the road, and pushed for the woods on the banks of the river. I had scarcely got across when I heard a shout, and looking round I saw three horsemen, who instantly spurred towards me. I sprang through the underbrush and came down roughly into a sort of quarry, spraining my ankle on a pile of stones. I got up quickly; but my ankle hurt me sorely, and I turned sick and dizzy. Limping a little way, I set my back against a tree, and drew my hanger. As I did so, the three gentlemen burst in upon me. They were General Montcalm, a gentleman of the Governor's household, and Doltaire! "It is no use, dear Captain," said Doltaire. "Yield up your weapon." General Montcalm eyed me curiously, as the other gentleman talked in low, excited tones; and presently he made a gesture of courtesy, for he saw that I was hurt. Doltaire's face wore a malicious smile; but when he noted how sick I was, he came and offered me his arm, and was constant in courtesy till I was set upon a horse; and with him and the General riding beside me I came to my new imprisonment. They both forbore to torture me with words, for I was suffering greatly; but they fetched me to the Chateau St. Louis, followed by a crowd, who hooted at me. Doltaire turned on them at last, and stopped them. The Governor, whose petty vanity was roused, showed a foolish fury at seeing me, and straightway ordered me to the citadel again. "It's useless kicking 'gainst the pricks," said Doltaire to me cynically, as I passed out limping between two soldiers; but I did not reply. In another half hour of most bitter journeying I found myself in my dungeon. I sank upon the old couch of straw, untouched since I had left it; and when the door shut upon me, desponding, aching in all my body, now feverish and now shivering, my ankle in great pain, I could bear up no longer, and I bowed my head and fell a-weeping like a woman. XVIII THE STEEP PATH OF CONQUEST Now I am come to a period on which I shall not dwell, nor repeat a tale of suffering greater than that I had yet endured. All the first night of this new imprisonment I tossed on my wretched bed in pain and misery. A strange and surly soldier came and went, bringing bread and water; but when I asked that a physician be sent me, he replied, with a vile oath, that the devil should be my only surgeon. Soon he came again, accompanied by another soldier, and put irons on me. With what quietness I could I asked him by whose orders this was done; but he vouchsafed no reply save that I was to "go bound to fires of hell." "There is no journeying there," I answered; "here is the place itself." Then a chain was roughly put round my injured ankle, and it gave me such agony that I turned sick, but I kept back groaning, for I would not have these varlets catch me quaking. "I'll have you grilled for this one day," said I. "You are no men, but butchers. Can you not see my ankle has been sorely hurt?" "You are for killing," was the gruff reply, "and here's a taste of it." With that he drew the chain with a jerk round the hurt member, so that it drove me to madness. I caught him by the throat and hurled him back against the wall, and snatching a pistol from his comrade's belt aimed it at his head. I was beside myself with pain, and if he had been further violent I should have shot him. His fellow dared not stir in his defence, for the pistol was trained on him too surely; and so at last the wretch, promising better treatment, crawled to his feet, and made motion for the pistol to be given him. But I would not yield it, telling him it should be a guarantee of truce. Presently the door closed behind them, and I sank back upon the half-fettered chains. I must have sat for more than an hour, when there was a noise without, and there entered the Commandant, the Marquis de Montcalm, and the Seigneur Duvarney. The pistol was in my hand, and I did not put it down, but struggled to my feet, and waited for them to speak. For a moment there was silence, and then the Commandant said, "Your guards have brought me word, Monsieur le Capitaine, that you are violent. You have resisted them, and have threatened them with their own pistols." "With one pistol, monsieur le commandant," answered I. Then, in bitter words, I told them of my treatment by those rascals, and I showed them how my ankle had been tortured. "I have no fear of death," said I, "but I will not lie and let dogs bite me with 'I thank you.' Death can come but once, it is a damned brutality to make one die a hundred and yet live--the work of Turks, not Christians. If you want my life, why, take it and have done." The Marquis de Montcalm whispered to the Commandant. The Seigneur Duvarney, to whom I had not yet spoken, nor he to me, stood leaning against the wall, gazing at me seriously and kindly. Presently Ramesay, the Commandant, spoke, not unkindly: "It was ordered you should wear chains, but not that you should be maltreated. A surgeon shall be sent to you, and this chain shall be taken from your ankle. Meanwhile, your guards shall be changed." I held out the pistol, and he took it. "I can not hope for justice here," said I, "but men are men, and not dogs, and I ask for human usage till my hour comes and my country is your jailer." The Marquis smiled, and his gay eyes sparkled. "Some find comfort in daily bread, and some in prophecy," he rejoined. "One should envy your spirit, Captain Moray." "Permit me, your Excellency," replied I; "all Englishmen must envy the spirit of the Marquis de Montcalm, though none is envious of his cause." He bowed gravely. "Causes are good or bad as they are ours or our neighbours'. The lion has a good cause when it goes hunting for its young; the deer has a good cause when it resists the lion's leap upon its fawn." I did not reply, for I felt a faintness coming; and at that moment the Seigneur Duvarney came to me, and put his arm through mine. A dizziness seized me, my head sank upon his shoulder, and I felt myself floating away into darkness, while from a great distance came a voice: "It had been kinder to have ended it last year." "He nearly killed your son, Duvarney." This was the voice of the Marquis in a tone of surprise. "He saved my life, Marquis," was the sorrowful reply. "I have not paid back those forty pistoles, nor ever can, in spite of all." "Ah, pardon me, seigneur," was the courteous rejoinder of the General. That was all I heard, for I had entered the land of complete darkness. When I came to, I found that my foot had been bandaged, there was a torch in the wall, and by my side something in a jug, of which I drank, according to directions in a surgeon's hand on a paper beside it. I was easier in all my body, yet miserably sick still, and I remained so, now shivering and now burning, a racking pain in my chest. My couch was filled with fresh straw, but in no other wise was my condition altered from the first time I had entered this place. My new jailer was a man of no feeling that I could see, yet of no violence or cruelty; one whose life was like a wheel, doing the eternal round. He did no more nor less than his orders, and I made no complaint nor asked any favour. No one came to me, no message found its way. Full three months went by in this fashion, and then, one day, who should step into my dungeon, torch in hand, but Gabord! He raised the light above his head, and looked down at me most quizzically. "Upon my soul--Gabord!" said I. "I did not kill you, then?" "Upon your soul and upon your body, you killed not Gabord." "And what now, quarrelsome Gabord?" I questioned cheerfully. He shook some keys. "Back again to dickey-bird's cage. 'Look you,' quoth Governor, 'who will guard and bait this prisoner like the man he mauled?' 'No one,' quoth a lady who stands by Governor's chair. And she it was who had Governor send me here--even Ma'm'selle Duvarney. And she it was who made the Governor loose off these chains." He began to free me from the chains. I was in a vile condition. The irons had made sores upon my wrists and legs, my limbs now trembled so beneath me that I could scarcely walk, and my head was very light and dizzy at times. Presently Gabord ordered a new bed of straw brought in; and from that hour we returned to our old relations, as if there had not been between us a fight to the death. Of what was going on abroad he would not tell me, and soon I found myself in as ill a state as before. No Voban came to me, no Doltaire, no one at all. I sank into a deep silence, dropped out of a busy world, a morsel of earth slowly coming to Mother Earth again. A strange apathy began to settle on me. All those resources of my first year's imprisonment had gone, and I was alone: my mouse was dead; there was no history of my life to write, no incident to break the pitiful monotony. There seemed only one hope: that our army under Amherst would invest Quebec and take it. I had no news of any movement, winter again was here, and it must be five or six months before any action could successfully be taken; for the St. Lawrence was frozen over in winter, and if the city was to be seized it must be from the water, with simultaneous action by land. I knew the way, the only way, to take the city. At Sillery, west of the town, there was a hollow in the cliffs, up which men, secretly conveyed above the town by water, could climb. At the top was a plateau, smooth and fine as a parade-ground, where battle could be given, or move be made upon the city and citadel, which lay on ground no higher. Then, with the guns playing on the town from the fleet, and from the Levis shore with forces on the Beauport side, attacking the lower town where was the Intendant's palace, the great fortress might be taken, and Canada be ours. This passage up the cliff side at Sillery I had discovered three years before. When winter set well in Gabord brought me a blanket, and though last year I had not needed it, now it was most grateful. I had been fed for months on bread and water, as in my first imprisonment, but at last--whether by orders or not, I never knew--he brought me a little meat every day, and some wine also. Yet I did not care for them, and often left them untasted. A hacking cough had never left me since my attempt at escape, and I was miserably thin, and so weak that I could hardly drag myself about my dungeon. So, many weeks of the winter went on, and at last I was not able to rise from my bed of straw, and could do little more than lift a cup of water to my lips and nibble at some bread. I felt that my hours were numbered. At last, one day, I heard commotion at my dungeon door; it opened, and Gabord entered and closed it after him. He came and stood over me, as with difficulty I lifted myself upon my elbow. "Come, try your wings," said he. "It is the end, Gabord?" asked I. "Not paradise yet!" said he. "Then I am free?" I asked. "Free from this dungeon," he answered cheerily. I raised myself and tried to stand upon my feet, but fell back. He helped me to rise, and I rested an arm on his shoulder. I tried to walk, but faintness came over me, and I sank back. Then Gabord laid me down, went to the door, and called in two soldiers with a mattress. I was wrapped in my cloak and blankets, laid thereon, and so was borne forth, all covered even to my weak eyes. I was placed in a sleigh, and as the horses sprang away, the clear sleigh-bells rang out, and a gun from the ramparts was fired to give the noon hour, I sank into unconsciousness. XIX A DANSEUSE AND THE BASTILE Recovering, I found myself lying on a couch, in a large, well-lighted room hung about with pictures and adorned with trophies of the hunt. A wide window faced the foot of the bed where I lay, and through it I could see--though the light hurt my eyes greatly--the Levis shore, on the opposite side of the St. Lawrence. I lay and thought, trying to discover where I was. It came to me at last that I was in a room of the Chateau St. Louis. Presently I heard breathing near me, and, looking over, I saw a soldier sitting just inside the door. Then from another corner of the room came a surgeon with some cordial in a tumbler, and, handing it to me, he bade me drink. He felt my pulse; then stopped and put his ear to my chest, and listened long. "Is there great danger?" asked I. "The trouble would pass," said he, "if you were stronger. Your life is worth fighting for, but it will be a struggle. That dungeon was slow poison. You must have a barber," added he; "you are a ghost like this." I put my hand up, and I found my hair and beard were very long and almost white. Held against the light, my hands seemed transparent. "What means my coming here?" asked I. He shook his head. "I am but a surgeon," he answered shortly, meanwhile writing with a flourish on a piece of paper. When he had finished, he handed the paper to the soldier, with an order. Then he turned to go, politely bowing to me, but turned again and said, "I would not, were I you, trouble to plan escape these months yet. This is a comfortable prison, but it is easier coming in than going out. Your mind and body need quiet. You have, we know, a taste for adventure"--he smiled--"but is it wise to fight a burning powder magazine?" "Thank you, monsieur," said I, "I am myself laying the fuse to that magazine. It fights for me by-and-bye." He shrugged a shoulder. "Drink," said he, with a professional air which almost set me laughing, "good milk and brandy, and think of nothing but that you are a lucky man to have this sort of prison." He bustled out in an important way, shaking his head and talking to himself. Tapping the chest of a bulky soldier who stood outside, he said brusquely, "Too fat, too fat; you'll come to apoplexy. Go fight the English, lazy ruffian!" The soldier gave a grunt, made a mocking gesture, and the door closed on me and my attendant. This fellow would not speak at all, and I did not urge him, but lay and watched the day decline and night come down. I was taken to a small alcove which adjoined the room, where I slept soundly. Early the next morning I waked, and there was Voban sitting just outside the alcove, looking at me. I sat up in bed and spoke to him, and he greeted me in an absent sort of way. He was changed as much as I; he moved as one in a dream; yet there was the ceaseless activity of the eye, the swift, stealthy motion of the hand. He began to attend me, and I questioned him; but he said he had orders from mademoiselle that he was to tell nothing--that she, as soon as she could, would visit me. I felt at once a new spring of life. I gave him the letter I had written, and bade him deliver it, which he promised to do; for though there was much in it not vital now, it was a record of my thoughts and feelings, and she would be glad of it, I knew. I pressed Voban's hand in leaving, and he looked at me as if he would say something; but immediately he was abstracted, and left me like one forgetful of the world. About three hours after this, as I lay upon the couch in the large room, clean and well shaven, the door opened, and some one entered, saying to my guard, "You will remain outside. I have the Governor's order." I knew the voice; an instant, and I saw the face shining with expectancy, the eyes eager, yet timid, a small white hand pressed to a pulsing breast--my one true friend, the jailer of my heart. For a moment she was all trembling and excited, her hand softly clutching at my shoulder, tears dripping from her eyes and falling on my cheek, as hers lay pressed to mine; but presently she grew calm, and her face was lifted with a smile, and, brushing back some flying locks of hair, she said in a tone most quaint and touching too, "Poor gentleman! poor English prisoner! poor hidden lover! I ought not, I ought not," she added, "show my feelings thus, nor excite you so." My hand was trembling on hers, for in truth I was very weak. "It was my purpose," she continued, "to come most quietly to you; but there are times when one must cry out, or the heart will burst." I spoke then as a man may who has been delivered from bondage into the arms of love. She became very quiet, looking at me in her grave, sweet way, her deep eyes shining with a sincerity. "Honest, honest eyes," said I--"eyes that never deceive, and never were deceived." "All this in spite of what you do not know," she answered. For an instant a look elfish and childlike came into her eyes, and she drew back from me, stood in the middle of the floor, and caught her skirts in her fingers. "See," she said, "is there no deceit here?" Then she began to dance softly, her feet seeming hardly to touch the ground, her body swaying like a tall flower in the wind, her face all light and fire. I was charmed, fascinated. I felt my sleepy blood stirring to the delicate rise and fall of her bosom, the light of her eyes flashing a dozen colours. There was scarce a sound her steps could not be heard across the room. All at once she broke off from this, and stood still. "Did my eyes seem all honest then?" she asked, with a strange, wistful expression. Then she came to the couch where I was. "Robert," said she, "can you, do you trust me, even when you see me at such witchery?" "I trust you always," answered I. "Such witcheries are no evils that I can see." She put her finger upon my lips, with a kind of bashfulness. "Hush, till I tell you where and when I danced like that, and then, and then--" She settled down in a low chair. "I have at least an hour," she continued. "The Governor is busy with my father and General Montcalm, and they will not be free for a long time. For your soldiers, I have been bribing them to my service these weeks past, and they are safe enough for to-day. Now I will tell you of that dancing. "One night last autumn there was a grand dinner at the Intendance. Such gentlemen as my father were not asked; only the roisterers and hard drinkers, and gambling friends of the Intendant. You would know the sort of upspring it would be. Well, I was sitting in my window, looking down into the garden; for the moon was shining. Presently I saw a man appear below, glance up towards me, and beckon. It was Voban. I hurried down to him, and he told me that there had been a wild carousing at the palace, and that ten gentlemen had determined, for a wicked sport, to mask themselves, go to the citadel at midnight, fetch you forth, and make you run the gauntlet in the yard of the Intendance, and afterwards set you fighting for your life with another prisoner, a common criminal. To this, Bigot, heated with wine, made no objection. Monsieur Doltaire was not present; he had, it was said, taken a secret journey into the English country. The Governor was in Montreal, where he had gone to discuss matters of war with the Council. "There was but one thing to do--get word to General Montcalm. He was staying at the moment with the Seigneur Pipon at his manor by the Montmorenci Falls. He must needs be sought there: he would never allow this shameless thing. So I bade Voban go thither at once, getting a horse from any quarter, and to ride as if for his life. He promised, and left me, and I returned to my room to think. Voban had told me that his news came from Bigot's valet, who is his close friend. This I knew, and I knew the valet too, for I had seen something of him when my brother lay wounded at the palace. Under the best circumstances General Montcalm could not arrive within two hours. Meanwhile, these miserable men might go on their dreadful expedition. Something must be done to gain time. I racked my brain for minutes, till the blood pounded at my temples. Presently a plan came to me. "There is in Quebec one Madame Jamond, a great Parisian dancer, who, for reasons which none knows save perhaps Monsieur Doltaire, has been banished from France. Since she came to Canada, some nine months ago, she has lived most quietly and religiously, though many trials have been made to bring her talents into service; and the Intendant has made many efforts have her dance in the palace for his guests. But she would not. "Madame Lotbiniere had come to know Jamond, and she arranged, after much persuasion, for lessons in dancing to be given to Lucy, myself, and Georgette. To me the dancing was a keen delight, a passion. As I danced I saw and felt a thousand things, I can not tell you how. Now my feet appeared light as air, like thistledown, my body to float. I was as a lost soul flying home, flocks of birds singing me to come with them into a pleasant land. "Then all that changed, and I was passing through a bitter land, with harsh shadows and tall cold mountains. From clefts and hollows figures flew out and caught at me with filmy hands. These melancholy things pursued me as I flew, till my wings drooped, and I felt that I must drop into the dull marsh far beneath, round which travelled a lonely mist. "But this too passed, and I came through a land all fire, so that, as I flew swiftly, my wings were scorched, and I was blinded often, and often missed my way, and must change my course of flight. It was all scarlet, all that land--scarlet sky and scarlet sun, and scarlet flowers, and the rivers running red, and men and women in long red robes, with eyes of flame, and voices that kept crying, 'The world is mad, and all life is a fever!'" She paused for a moment, seeming to come out of a dream, and then she laughed a little. "Will you not go on?" I asked gently. "Sometimes, too," she continued, "I fancied I was before a king and his court, dancing for my life or for another's. Oh, how I scanned the faces of my judges, as they sat there watching me; some meanwhile throwing crumbs to fluttering birds that whirled round me, some stroking the ears of hounds that gaped at me, while the king's fool at first made mock at me, and the face of a man behind the king's chair smiled like Satan--or Monsieur Doltaire! Ah, Robert, I know you think me fanciful and foolish, as indeed I am; but you must bear with me. "I danced constantly, practising hour upon hour with Jamond, who came to be my good friend; and you shall hear from me some day her history--a sad one indeed; a woman sinned against, not sinning. But these special lessons went on secretly, for I was sure, if people knew how warmly I followed this recreation, they would set it down to wilful desire to be singular--or worse. It gave me new interest in lonely days. So the weeks went on. "Well, that wicked night I sent Voban to General Montcalm, and, as I said, a thought came to me: I would find Jamond, beg her to mask herself, go to the Intendance, and dance before the gentlemen there, keeping them amused till the General came, as I was sure he would at my suggestion, for he is a just man and a generous. All my people, even Georgette, were abroad at a soiree, and would not be home till late. So I sought Mathilde, and she hurried with me, my poor daft protector, to Jamond's, whose house is very near the bishop's palace. "We were at once admitted to Jamond, who was lying upon a couch. I hurriedly told her what I wished her to do, what was at stake, everything but that I loved you; laying my interest upon humanity and to your having saved my father's life. She looked troubled at once, then took my face in her hands. 'Dear child,' she said, 'I understand. You have sorrow too young--too young.' 'But you will do this for me?' I cried. She shook her head sadly. 'I can not. I am lame these two days,' she answered. 'I have had a sprain.' I sank on the floor beside her, sick and dazed. She put her hand pitifully on my head, then lifted up my chin. Looking into her eyes, I read a thought there, and I got to my feet with a spring. 'I myself will go,' said I; 'I will dance there till the General comes.' She put out her hand in protest. 'You must not,' she urged. 'Think: you may be discovered, and then the ruin that must come!' "'I shall put my trust in God,' said I. 'I have no fear. I will do this thing.' She caught me to her breast. 'Then God be with you, child,' was her answer; 'you shall do it.' In ten minutes I was dressed in a gown of hers, which last had been worn when she danced before King Louis. It fitted me well, and with a wig the colour of her hair, brought quickly from her boxes, and use of paints which actors use, I was transformed. Indeed, I could scarce recognize myself without the mask, and with it on my mother would not have known me. 'I will go with you,' she said to me, and she hurriedly put on an old woman's wig and a long cloak, quickly lined her face, and we were ready. She walked lame, and must use a stick, and we issued forth towards the Intendance, Mathilde remaining behind. "When we got to the palace, and were admitted, I asked for the Intendant's valet, and we stood waiting in the cold hall until he was brought. 'We come from Voban, the barber,' I whispered to him, for there were servants near; and he led us at once to his private room. He did not recognize me, but looked at us with sidelong curiosity. 'I am,' said I, throwing back my cloak, 'a dancer, and I have come to dance before the Intendant and his guests.' 'His Excellency does not expect you?' be asked. 'His Excellency has many times asked Madame Jamond to dance before him,' I replied. He was at once all complaisance, but his face was troubled. 'You come from Monsieur Voban?' he inquired. 'From Monsieur Voban,' answered I. 'He has gone to General Montcalm.' His face fell, and a kind of fear passed over it. 'There is no peril to any one save the English gentleman,' I urged. A light dawned on him. 'You dance until the General comes?' he asked, pleased at his own penetration. 'You will take me at once to the dining-hall,' said I, nodding. 'They are in the Chambre de la Joie,' he rejoined. 'Then the Chambre de la Joie,' said I; and he led the way. When we came near the chamber, I said to him, 'You will tell the Intendant that a lady of some gifts in dancing would entertain his guests; but she must come and go without exchange of individual courtesies, at her will. "He opened the door of the chamber, and we followed him; for there was just inside a large oak screen, and from its shadow we could see the room and all therein. At the first glance I shrank back, for, apart from the noise and the clattering of tongues, such a riot of carousal I have never seen. I was shocked to note gentlemen whom I had met in society, with the show of decorum about them, loosed now from all restraint, and swaggering like woodsmen at a fair. I felt a sudden fear, and drew back sick; but that was for an instant, for even as the valet came to the Intendant's chair a dozen or more men, who were sitting near together in noisy yet half-secret conference, rose to their feet, each with a mask in his hand, and started towards the door. I felt my blood fly back and forth in my heart with great violence, and I leaned against the oak screen for support. 'Courage,' said the voice of Jamond in my ear, and I ruled myself to quietness. "Just then the Intendant's voice stopped the men in their movement towards the great entrance door, and drew the attention of the whole company. 'Messieurs,' said he, 'a lady has come to dance for us. She makes conditions which must be respected. She must be let come and go without individual courtesies. Messieurs,' he added, 'I grant her request in your name and my own.' "There was a murmur of 'Jamond! Jamond!' and every man stood looking towards the great entrance door. The Intendant, however, was gazing towards the door where I was, and I saw he was about to come, as if to welcome me. Welcome from Francois Bigot to a dancing-woman! I slipped off the cloak, looked at Jamond, who murmured once again, 'Courage,' and then I stepped out swiftly, and made for a low, large dais at one side of the room. I was so nervous that I knew not how I went. The faces and forms of the company were blurred before me, and the lights shook and multiplied distractedly. The room shone brilliantly, yet just under the great canopy, over the dais; there were shadows, and they seemed to me, as I stepped under the red velvet, a relief, a sort of hiding-place from innumerable candles and hot unnatural eyes. "Once there I was changed. I did not think of the applause that greeted me, the murmurs of surprise, approbation, questioning, rising round me. Suddenly, as I paused and faced them all, nervousness passed out of me, and I saw nothing--nothing but a sort of far-off picture. My mind was caught away into that world which I had created for myself when I danced, and these rude gentlemen were but visions. All sense of indignity passed from me. I was only a woman fighting for a life and for her own and her another's happiness. "As I danced I did not know how time passed--only that I must keep those men where they were till General Montcalm came. After a while, when the first dazed feeling had passed, I could see their faces plainly through my mask, and I knew that I could hold them; for they ceased to lift their glasses, and stood watching me, sometimes so silent that I could hear their breathing only, sometimes making a great applause, which passed into silence again quickly. Once, as I wheeled, I caught the eyes of Jamond watching me closely. The Intendant never stirred from his seat, and scarcely moved, but kept his eyes fixed on me. Nor did he applaud. There was something painful in his immovability. "I saw it all as in a dream, yet I did see it, and I was resolute to triumph over the wicked designs of base and abandoned men. I feared that my knowledge and power to hold them might stop before help came. Once, in a slight pause, when a great noise of their hands and a rattling of scabbards on the table gave me a short respite, some one--Captain Lancy, I think--snatched up a glass, and called on all to drink my health. "'Jamond! Jamond!' was the cry, and they drank; the Intendant himself standing up, and touching the glass to his lips, then sitting down again, silent and immovable as before. One gentleman, a nephew of the Chevalier de la Darante, came swaying towards me with a glass of wine, begging me in a flippant courtesy to drink; but I waved him back, and the Intendant said most curtly, 'Monsieur de la Darante will remember my injunction.' "Again I danced, and I can not tell you with what anxiety and desperation--for there must be an end to it before long, and your peril, Robert, come again, unless these rough fellows changed their minds. Moment after moment went, and though I had danced beyond reasonable limits, I still seemed to get new strength, as I have heard men say, in fighting, they 'come to their second wind.' At last, at the end of the most famous step that Jamond had taught me, I stood still for a moment to renewed applause; and I must have wound these men up to excitement beyond all sense, for they would not be dissuaded, but swarmed towards the dais where I was, and some called for me to remove my mask. "Then the Intendant came down among them, bidding them stand back, and himself stepped towards me. I felt affrighted, for I liked not the look in his eyes, and so, without a word, I stepped down from the dais--I did not dare to speak, lest they should recognize my voice--and made for the door with as much dignity as I might. But the Intendant came to me with a mannered courtesy, and said in my ear, 'Madame, you have won all our hearts; I would you might accept some hospitality--a glass of wine, a wing of partridge, in a room where none shall disturb you?' I shuddered, and passed on. 'Nay, nay, madame, not even myself with you, unless you would have it otherwise,' he added. "Still I did not speak, but put out my hand in protest, and moved on towards the screen, we two alone, for the others had fallen back with whisperings and side-speeches. Oh, how I longed to take the mask from my face and spurn them! The hand that I put out in protest the Intendant caught within his own, and would have held it, but that I drew it back with indignation, and kept on towards the screen. Then I realized that a new-corner had seen the matter, and I stopped short, dumfounded--for it was Monsieur Doltaire! He was standing beside the screen, just within the room, and he sent at the Intendant and myself a keen, piercing glance. "Now he came forward quickly, for the Intendant also half stopped at sight of him, and a malignant look shot from his eyes; hatred showed in the profane word that was chopped off at his teeth. When Monsieur Doltaire reached us, he said, his eyes resting on me with intense scrutiny, 'His Excellency will present me to his distinguished entertainer?' He seemed to read behind my mask. I knew he had discovered me, and my heart stood still. But I raised my eyes and met his gaze steadily. The worst had come. Well, I would face it now. I could endure defeat with courage. He paused an instant, a strange look passed over his face, his eyes got hard and very brilliant, and he continued (oh, what suspense that was!): 'Ah yes, I see--Jamond, the perfect and wonderful Jamond, who set us all a-kneeling at Versailles. If Madame will permit me?' He made to take my hand. Here the Intendant interposed, putting out his hand also. 'I have promised to protect Madame from individual courtesy while here,' he said. Monsieur Doltaire looked at him keenly. 'Then your Excellency must build stone walls about yourself,' he rejoined, with cold emphasis. 'Sometimes great men are foolish. To-night your Excellency would have let'--here he raised his voice so that all could hear--'your Excellency would have let a dozen cowardly gentlemen drag a dying prisoner from his prison, forcing back his Majesty's officers at the dungeon doors, and, after baiting, have matched him against a common criminal. That was unseemly in a great man and a King's chief officer, the trick of a low law-breaker. Your Excellency promised a lady to protect her from individual courtesy, if she gave pleasure--a pleasure beyond price--to you and your guests, and you would have broken your word without remorse. General Montcalm has sent a company of men to set your Excellency right in one direction, and I am come to set you right in the other.' "The Intendant was white with rage. He muttered something between his teeth, then said aloud, 'Presently we will talk more of this, monsieur. You measure strength with Francois Bigot: we will see which proves the stronger in the end.' 'In the end the unjust steward kneels for mercy to his master,' was Monsieur Doltaire's quiet answer; and then he made a courteous gesture towards the door, and I went to it with him slowly, wondering what the end would be. Once at the other side of the screen, he peered into Jamond's face for an instant, then he gave a low whistle. 'You have an apt pupil, Jamond, one who might be your rival one day,' said he. Still there was a puzzled look on his face, which did not leave it till he saw Jamond walking. 'Ah yes,' he added, 'I see now. You are lame. This was a desperate yet successful expedient.' "He did not speak to me, but led the way to where, at the great door, was the Intendant's valet standing with my cloak. Taking it from him, he put it round my shoulders. 'The sleigh by which I came is at the door,' he said, 'and I will take you home.' I knew not what to do, for I feared some desperate act on his part to possess me. I determined that I would not leave Jamond, in any case, and I felt for a weapon which I had hidden in my dress. We had not, however, gone a half dozen paces in the entrance hall when there were quick steps behind, and four soldiers came towards us, with an officer at their head--an officer whom I had seen in the chamber, but did not recognize. "'Monsieur Doltaire,' the officer said; and monsieur stopped. Then he cried in surprise, 'Legrand, you here!' To this the officer replied by handing monsieur a paper. Monsieur's hand dropped to his sword, but in a moment he gave a short, sharp laugh, and opened up the packet. 'H'm,' he said, 'the Bastile! The Grande Marquise is fretful--eh, Legrand? You will permit me some moments with these ladies?' he added. 'A moment only,' answered the officer. 'In another room?' monsieur again asked. 'A moment where you are, monsieur,' was the reply. Making a polite gesture for me to step aside, Monsieur Doltaire said, in a voice which was perfectly controlled and courteous, though I could hear behind all a deadly emphasis, 'I know everything now. You have foiled me, blindfolded me and all others, these three years past. You have intrigued against the captains of intrigue, you have matched yourself against practised astuteness. On one side, I resent being made a fool and tool of; on the other, I am lost in admiration of your talent. But henceforth there is no such thing as quarter between us. Your lover shall die, and I will come again. This whim of the Grande Marquise will last but till I see her; then I will return to you--forever. Your lover shall die, your love's labour for him shall be lost. I shall reap where I did not sow--his harvest and my own. I am as ice to you, mademoiselle, at this moment; I have murder in my heart. Yet warmth will come again. I admire you so much that I will have you for my own, or die. You are the high priestess of diplomacy; your brain is a statesman's, your heart is a vagrant; it goes covertly from the sweet meadows of France to the marshes of England, a taste unworthy of you. You shall be redeemed from that by Tinoir Doltaire. Now thank me for all I have done for you, and let me say adieu.' He stooped and kissed my hand. 'I can not thank you for what I myself achieved,' I said. 'We are, as in the past, to be at war, you threaten, and I have no gratitude.' 'Well, well, adieu and au revoir, sweetheart,' he answered. 'If I should go to the Bastile, I shall have food for thought; and I am your hunter to the end. In this good orchard I pick sweet fruit one day.' His look fell on me in such a way that shame and anger were at equal height in me. Then he bowed again to me and to Jamond, and, with a sedate gesture, walked away with the soldiers and the officer. "You can guess what were my feelings. You were safe for the moment--that was the great thing. The terror I had felt when I saw Monsieur Doltaire in the Chambre de la Joie had passed, for I felt he would not betray me. He is your foe, and he would kill you; but I was sure he would not put me in danger while he was absent in France--if he expected to return--by making public my love for you and my adventure at the palace. There is something of the noble fighter in him, after all, though he is so evil a man. A prisoner himself now, he would have no immediate means to hasten your death. But I can never forget his searching, cruel look when he recognized me! Of Jamond I was sure. Her own past had been full of sorrow, and her life was now so secluded and religious that I could not doubt her. Indeed, we have been blessed with good, true friends, Robert, though they are not of those who are powerful, save in their loyalty." Alixe then told me that the officer Legrand had arrived from France but two days before the eventful night of which I have just written, armed with an order from the Grande Marquise for Doltaire's arrest and transportation. He had landed at Gaspe, and had come on to Quebec overland. Arriving at the Intendance, he had awaited Doltaire's coming. Doltaire had stopped to visit General Montcalm at Montmorenci Falls, on his way back from an expedition to the English country, and had thus himself brought my protection and hurried to his own undoing. I was thankful for his downfall, though I believed it was but for a moment. I was curious to know how it chanced I was set free of my dungeon, and I had the story from Alixe's lips; but not till after I had urged her, for she was sure her tale had wearied me, and she was eager to do little offices of comfort about me; telling me gaily, while she shaded the light, freshened my pillow, and gave me a cordial to drink, that she would secretly convey me wines and preserves and jellies and such kickshaws, that I should better get my strength. "For you must know," she said, "that though this gray hair and transparency of flesh become you, making your eyes look like two jets of flame and your face to have shadows most theatrical, a ruddy cheek and a stout hand are more suited to a soldier. When you are young again in body, these gray hairs shall render you distinguished." Then she sat down beside me, and clasped my hand, now looking out into the clear light of afternoon to the farther shores of Levis, showing green here and there from a sudden March rain, the boundless forests beyond, and near us the ample St. Lawrence still covered with its vast bridge of ice; anon into my face, while I gazed into those deeps of her blue eyes that I had drowned my heart in. I loved to watch her, for with me she was ever her own absolute self, free from all artifice, lost in her perfect naturalness: a healthy, perfect soundness, a primitive simplicity beneath the artifice of usual life. She had a beautiful hand, long, warm, and firm, and the fingers, when they clasped, seemed to possess and inclose your own--the tenderness of the maidenly, the protectiveness of the maternal. She carried with her a wholesome fragrance and beauty as of an orchard, and while she sat there I thought of the engaging words: "Thou art to me like a basket of summer fruit, and I seek thee in thy cottage by the vineyard, fenced about with good commendable trees." Of my release she spoke thus: "Monsieur Doltaire is to be conveyed overland to the coast en route for France, and he sent me by his valet a small arrow studded with emeralds and pearls, and a skull all polished, with a message that the arrow was for myself, and the skull for another--remembrances of the past, and earnests of the future--truly an insolent and wicked man. When he was gone I went to the Governor, and, with great show of interest in many things pertaining to the government (for he has ever been flattered by my attentions--me, poor little bee in the buzzing hive!), came to the question of the English prisoner. I told him it was I that prevented the disgrace to his good government by sending to General Montcalm to ask for your protection. "He was deeply impressed, and he opened out his vain heart in divers ways. But I may not tell you of these--only what concerns yourself; the rest belongs to his honour. When he was in his most pliable mood, I grew deeply serious, and told him there was a danger which perhaps he did not see. Here was this English prisoner, who, they said abroad in the town, was dying. There was no doubt that the King would approve the sentence of death, and if it were duly and with some display enforced, it would but add to the Governor's reputation in France. But should the prisoner die in captivity, or should he go an invalid to the scaffold, there would only be pity excited in the world for him. For his own honour, it were better the Governor should hang a robust prisoner, who in full blood should expiate his sins upon the scaffold. The advice went down like wine; and when he knew not what to do, I urged your being brought here, put under guard, and fed and nourished for your end. And so it was. "The Governor's counsellor in the matter will remain a secret, for by now he will be sure that he himself had the sparkling inspiration. There, dear Robert, is the present climax to many months of suspense and persecution, the like of which I hope I may never see again. Some time I will tell you all: those meetings with Monsieur Doltaire, his designs and approaches, his pleadings and veiled threats, his numberless small seductions of words, manners, and deeds, his singular changes of mood, when I was uncertain what would happen next; the part I had to play to know all that was going on in the Chateau St. Louis, in the Intendance, and with General Montcalm; the difficulties with my own people; the despair of my poor father, who does not know that it is I who have kept him from trouble by my influence with the Governor. For since the Governor and the Intendant are reconciled, he takes sides with General Montcalm, the one sound gentleman in office in this poor country--alas!" Soon afterwards we parted. As she passed out she told me I might at any hour expect a visit from the Governor. XX UPON THE RAMPARTS The Governor visited me. His attitude was marked by nothing so much as a supercilious courtesy, a manner which said, You must see I am not to be trifled with; and though I have you here in my chateau, it is that I may make a fine scorching of you in the end. He would make of me an example to amaze and instruct the nations--when I was robust enough to die. I might easily have flattered myself on being an object of interest to the eyes of nations. I almost pitied him; for he appeared so lost in self-admiration and the importance of his office that he would never see disaster when it came. "There is but one master here in Canada," he said, "and I am he. If things go wrong it is because my orders are not obeyed. Your people have taken Louisburg; had I been there, it should never have been given up. Drucour was hasty--he listened to the women. I should allow no woman to move me. I should be inflexible. They might send two Amhersts and two Wolfes against me, I would hold my fortress." "They will never send two, your Excellency," said I. He did not see the irony, and he prattled on: "That Wolfe, they tell me, is bandy-legged; is no better than a girl at sea, and never well ashore. I am always in raw health--the strong mind in the potent body. Had I been at Louisburg, I should have held it, as I held Ticonderoga last July, and drove the English back with monstrous slaughter." Here was news. I had had no information in many months, and all at once two great facts were brought to me. "Your Excellency, then, was at Ticonderoga?" said I. "I sent Montcalm to defend it," he replied pompously. "I told him how he must act; I was explicit, and it came out as I had said: we were victorious. Yet he would have done better had he obeyed me in everything. If I had been at Louisburg--" I could not at first bring myself to flatter the vice-regal peacock; for it had been my mind to fight these Frenchmen always; to yield in nothing; to defeat them like a soldier, not like a juggler. But I brought myself to say half ironically, "If all great men had capable instruments, they would seldom fail." "You have touched the heart of the matter," he said credulously. "It is a pity," he added, with complacent severity, "that you have been so misguided and criminal; you have, in some things, more sense than folly." I bowed as to a compliment from a great man. Then, all at once, I spoke to him with an air of apparent frankness, and said that if I must die, I cared to do so like a gentleman, with some sort of health, and not like an invalid. He must admit that at least I was no coward. He might fence me about with what guards he chose, but I prayed him to let me walk upon the ramparts, when I was strong enough to be abroad, under all due espionage. I had already suffered many deaths, I said, and I would go to the final one looking like a man, and not like an outcast of humanity. "Ah, I have heard this before," said he. "Monsieur Doltaire, who is in prison here, and is to fare on to the Bastile, was insolent enough to send me message yesterday that I should keep you close in your dungeon. But I had had enough of Monsieur Doltaire; and indeed it was through me that the Grande Marquise had him called to durance. He was a muddler here. They must not interfere with me; I am not to be cajoled or crossed in my plans. We shall see, we shall see about the ramparts," he continued. "Meanwhile prepare to die." This he said with such importance that I almost laughed in his face. But I bowed with a sort of awed submission, and he turned and left the room. I grew stronger slowly day by day, but it was quite a month before Alixe came again. Sometimes I saw her walking on the banks of the river, and I was sure she was there that I might see her, though she made no sign towards me, nor ever seemed to look towards my window. Spring was now fully come. The snow had gone from the ground, the tender grass was springing, the air was so soft and kind. One fine day, at the beginning of May, I heard the booming of cannons and a great shouting, and, looking out, I could see crowds of people upon the banks, and many boats in the river, where yet the ice had not entirely broken up. By stretching from my window, through the bars of which I could get my head, but not my body, I noted a squadron sailing round the point of the Island of Orleans. I took it to be a fleet from France bearing re-enforcements and supplies--as indeed afterwards I found was so; but the re-enforcements were so small and the supplies so limited that it is said Montcalm, when he knew, cried out, "Now is all lost! Nothing remains but to fight and die. I shall see my beloved Candiac no more." For the first time all the English colonies had combined against Canada. Vaudreuil and Montcalm were at variance, and Vaudreuil had, through his personal hatred and envy of Montcalm, signed the death-warrant of the colony by writing to the colonial minister that Montcalm's agents, going for succour, were not to be trusted. Yet at that moment I did not know these things, and the sight made me grave, though it made me sure also that this year would find the British battering this same Chateau. Presently there came word from the Governor that I might walk upon the ramparts, and I was taken forth for several hours each day; always, however, under strict surveillance, my guards, well armed, attending, while the ramparts were, as usual, patrolled by soldiers. I could see that ample preparations were being made against a siege, and every day the excitement increased. I got to know more definitely of what was going on, when, under vigilance, I was allowed to speak to Lieutenant Stevens, who also was permitted some such freedom as I had enjoyed when I first came to Quebec. He had private information that General Wolfe or General Amherst was likely to proceed against Quebec from Louisburg, and he was determined to join the expedition. For months he had been maturing plans for escape. There was one Clark, a ship-carpenter (of whom I have before written), and two other bold spirits, who were sick of captivity, and it was intended to fare forth one night and make a run for freedom. Clark had had a notable plan. A wreck of several transports had occurred at Belle Isle, and it was thought to send him down the river with a sloop to bring back the crew, and break up the wreck. It was his purpose to arm his sloop with Lieutenant Stevens and some English prisoners the night before she was to sail, and steal away with her down the river. But whether or not the authorities suspected him, the command was given to another. It was proposed, however, on a dark night, to get away to some point on the river, where a boat should be stationed--though that was a difficult matter, for the river was well patrolled and boats were scarce--and drift quietly down the stream, till a good distance below the city. Mr. Stevens said he had delayed the attempt on the faint hope of fetching me along. Money, he said, was needed, for Clark and all were very poor, and common necessaries were now at exorbitant prices in the country. Tyranny and robbery had made corn and clothing luxuries. All the old tricks of Bigot and his La Friponne, which, after the outbreak the night of my arrest at the Seigneur Duvarney's, had been somewhat repressed, were in full swing again, and robbery in the name of providing for defense was the only habit. I managed to convey to Mr. Stevens a good sum of money, and begged him to meet me every day upon the ramparts, until I also should see my way to making a dart for freedom. I advised him in many ways, for he was more bold than shrewd, and I made him promise that he would not tell Clark or the others that I was to make trial to go with them. I feared the accident of disclosure, and any new failure on my part to get away would, I knew, mean my instant death, consent of King or no consent. One evening, a soldier entered my room, whom in the half-darkness I did not recognize, till a voice said, "There's orders new! Not dungeon now, but this room Governor bespeaks for gentlemen from France." "And where am I to go, Gabord?" "Where you will have fighting," he answered. "With whom?" "Yourself, aho!" A queer smile crossed his lips, and was followed by a sort of sternness. There was something graver in his manner than I had ever seen. I could not guess his meaning. At last he added, pulling roughly at his mustache, "And when that's done, if not well done, to answer to Gabord the soldier; for, God take my soul without bed-going, but I will call you to account! That Seigneur's home is no place for you." "You speak in riddles," said I. Then all at once the matter burst upon me. "The Governor quarters me at the Seigneur Duvarney's?" I asked. "No other," answered he. "In three days to go." I understood him now. He had had a struggle, knowing of the relations between Alixe and myself, to avoid telling the Governor all. And now, if I involved her, used her to effect my escape from her father's house! Even his peasant brain saw my difficulty, the danger to my honour--and hers. In spite of the joy I felt at being near her, seeing her, I shrank from the situation. If I escaped from the Seigneur Duvarney's, it would throw suspicion upon him, upon Alixe, and that made me stand abashed. Inside the Seigneur Duvarney's house I should now feel unhappy, bound to certain calls of honour concerning his daughter and himself. I stood long, thinking, Gabord watching me. Finally, "Gabord," said I, "I give you my word of honour that I will not put Mademoiselle or Monsieur Duvarney in peril." "You will not try to escape?" "Not to use them for escape. To elude my guards, to fight my way to liberty--yes--yes--yes!" "But that mends not. Who's to know the lady did not help you?" "You. You are to be my jailer again there?" He nodded, and fell to pulling his mustache. "'Tis not enough," he said decisively. "Come, then," said I, "I will strike a bargain with you. If you will grant me one thing, I will give my word of honour not to escape from the seigneur's house." "Say on." "You tell me I am not to go to the seigneur's for three days yet. Arrange that mademoiselle may come to me to-morrow at dusk--at six o'clock, when all the world dines--and I will give my word. No more do I ask you--only that." "Done," said he. "It shall be so." "You will fetch her yourself?" I asked. "On the stroke of six. Guard changes then." Here our talk ended. He went, and I plunged deep into my great plan; for all at once, as we had talked, came a thing to me which I shall make clear ere long. I set my wits to work. Once since my coming to the chateau I had been visited by the English chaplain who had been a prisoner at the citadel the year before. He was now on parole, and had freedom to come and go in the town. The Governor had said he might visit me on a certain day every week, at a fixed hour, and the next day at five o'clock was the time appointed for his second visit. Gabord had promised to bring Alixe to me at six. The following morning I met Mr. Stevens on the ramparts. I told him it was my purpose to escape the next night, if possible. If not, I must go to the Seigneur Duvarney's, where I should be on parole--to Gabord. I bade him fulfill my wishes to the letter, for on his boldness and my own, and the courage of his men, I depended for escape. He declared himself ready to risk all, and die in the attempt, if need be, for he was sick of idleness. He could, he said, mature his plans that day, if he had more money. I gave him secretly a small bag of gold, and then I made explicit note of what I required of him: that he should tie up in a loose but safe bundle a sheet, a woman's skirt, some river grasses and reeds, some phosphorus, a pistol and a knife, and some saltpetre and other chemicals. That evening, about nine o'clock, which was the hour the guard changed, he was to tie this bundle to a string which I let down from my window, and I would draw it up. Then, the night following, the others must steal away to that place near Sillery--the west side of the town was always ill guarded--and wait there with a boat. He should see me at a certain point on the ramparts, and, well armed, we also would make our way to Sillery, and from the spot called the Anse du Foulon drift down the river in the dead of night. He promised to do all as I wished. The rest of the day I spent in my room fashioning strange toys out of willow rods. I had got these rods from my guards, to make whistles for their children, and they had carried away many of them. But now, with pieces of a silk handkerchief tied to the whistle and filled with air, I made a toy which, when squeezed, sent out a weird lament. Once when my guard came in, I pressed one of these things in my pocket, and it gave forth a sort of smothered cry, like a sick child. At this he started, and looked round the room in trepidation; for, of all peoples, these Canadian Frenchmen are the most superstitious, and may be worked on without limit. The cry had seemed to come from a distance. I looked around, also, and appeared serious, and he asked me if I had heard the thing before. "Once or twice," said I. "Then you are a dead man," said he; "'tis a warning, that!" "Maybe it is not I, but one of you," I answered. Then, with a sort of hush, "Is't like the cry of La Jongleuse?" I added. (La Jongleuse is their fabled witch, or spirit, of disaster.) He nodded his head, crossed himself, mumbled a prayer, and turned to go, but came back. "I'll fetch a crucifix," he said. "You are a heathen, and you bring her here. She is the devil's dam." He left with a scared face, and I laughed to myself quietly, for I saw success ahead of me. True to his word, he brought a crucifix and put it up--not where he wished, but, at my request, opposite the door, upon the wall. He crossed himself before it, and was most devout. It looked singular to see this big, rough soldier, who was in most things a swaggerer, so childlike in all that touched his religion. With this you could fetch him to his knees; with it I would cow him that I might myself escape. At half past five the chaplain came, having been delayed by the guard to have his order indorsed by Captain Lancy of the Governor's household. To him I told my plans so far as I thought he should know them, and then I explained what I wished him to do. He was grave and thoughtful for some minutes, but at last consented. He was a pious man, and of as honest a heart as I have known, albeit narrow and confined, which sprang perhaps from his provincial practice and his theological cutting and trimming. We were in the midst of a serious talk, wherein I urged him upon matters which shall presently be set forth, when there came a noise outside. I begged him to retire to the alcove where my bed was, and draw the curtain for a few moments, nor come forth until I called. He did so, yet I thought it hurt his sense of dignity to be shifted to a bedroom. As he disappeared the door opened, and Gabord and Alixe entered. "One half hour," said Gabord, and went out again. Presently Alixe told me her story. "I have not been idle, Robert, but I could not act, for my father and mother suspect my love for you. I have come but little to the chateau without them, and I was closely watched. I knew not how the thing would end, but I kept up my workings with the Governor, which is easier now Monsieur Doltaire is gone, and I got you the freedom to walk upon the ramparts. Well, once before my father suspected me, I said that if his Excellency disliked your being in the Chateau, you could be as well guarded in my father's house, with sentinels always there, until you could, in better health, be taken to the common jail again. What was my surprise when yesterday came word to my father that he should make ready to receive you as a prisoner; being sure that he, his Excellency's cousin, the father of the man you had injured, and the most loyal of Frenchmen, would guard you diligently; he now needed all extra room in the Chateau for the entertainment of gentlemen and officers lately come from France. "When my father got the news, he was thrown into dismay. He knew not what to do. On what ground could he refuse the Governor? Yet when he thought of me he felt it his duty to do so. Again, on what ground could he refuse this boon to you, to whom we all owe the blessing of his life? On my brother's account? But my brother has written to my father justifying you, and magnanimously praising you as a man, while hating you as an English soldier. On my account? But he could not give this reason to the Governor. As for me, I was silent, I waited--and I wait; I know not what will be the end. Meanwhile preparations go on to receive you." I could see that Alixe's mood was more tranquil since Doltaire was gone. A certain restlessness had vanished. Her manner had much dignity, and every movement a peculiar grace and elegance. She was dressed in a soft cloth of a gray tone, touched off with red and slashed with gold, and a cloak of gray, trimmed with fur, with bright silver buckles, hung loosely on her, thrown off at one shoulder. There was a sweet disorder in the hair, which indeed was prettiest when freest. When she had finished speaking, she looked at me, as I thought, with a little anxiety. "Alixe," I said, "we have come to the cross-roads, and the way we choose now is for all time." She looked up, startled, yet governing herself, and her hand sought mine and nestled there. "I feel that, too," she replied. "What is it, Robert?" "I can not in honour escape from your father's house. I can not steal his daughter and his safety too--" "You must escape," she interrupted firmly. "From here, from the citadel, from anywhere but your house; and so I will not go to it." "You will not go to it?" she repeated slowly and strangely. "How may you not? You are a prisoner. If they make my father your jailer--" She laughed. "I owe that jailer and that jailer's daughter--" "You owe them your safety and your freedom. Oh, Robert, I know, I know what you mean. But what care I what the world may think by-and-bye, or to-morrow, or to-day? My conscience is clear." "Your father--" I persisted. She nodded. "Yes, yes, you speak truth, alas! And yet you must be freed. And"--here she got to her feet, and with flashing eyes spoke out--"and you shall be set free. Let come what will, I owe my first duty to you, though all the world chatter; and I will not stir from that. As soon as I can make it possible, you shall escape." "You shall have the right to set me free," said I, "if I must go to your father's house. And if I do not go there, but out to my own good country, you shall still have the right before all the world to follow, or to wait till I come to fetch you." "I do not understand you, Robert," said she. "I do not--" Here she broke off, looking, looking at me, and trembling a little. Then I stooped and whispered softly in her ear. She gave a little cry, and drew back from me; yet instantly her hand came out and caught my arm. "Robert, Robert! I can not, I dare not!" she cried softly. "No, no, it may not be," she added in a whisper of fear. I went to the alcove, drew back the curtain, and asked Mr. Wainfleet to step forth. "Sir," said I, picking up my Prayer Book and putting it in his hands, "I beg you to marry this lady and myself." He paused, dazed. "Marry you--here--now?" he asked shakingly. "Before ten minutes go round, this lady must be my wife," said I. "Mademoiselle Duvarney, you--" he began. "Be pleased, dear sir, to open the book at 'Wilt thou have,'" said I. "The lady is a Catholic; she has not the consent of her people; but when she is my wife, made so by you, whose consent need we ask? Can you not tie us fast enough, a man and woman of sense sufficient, but you must pause here? Is the knot you tie safe against picking and stealing?" I had touched his vanity and his ecclesiasticism. "Married by me," he replied, "once chaplain to the Bishop of London, you have a knot that no sword can cut. I am in full orders. My parish is in Boston itself." "You will hand a certificate to my wife to-morrow, and you will uphold this marriage against all gossip?" asked I. "Against all France and all England," he answered, roused now. "Then come," I urged. "But I must have a witness," he interposed, opening the book. "You shall have one in due time," said I. "Go on. When the marriage is performed, and at the point where you shall proclaim us man and wife, I will have a witness." I turned to Alixe, and found her pale and troubled. "Oh, Robert, Robert!" she cried, "it can not be. Now, now I am afraid, for the first time in my life, clear, the first time!" "Dearest lass in the world," I said, "it must be. I shall not go to your father's. To-morrow night, I make my great stroke for freedom, and when I am free I shall return to fetch my wife." "You will try to escape from here to-morrow?" she asked, her face flushing finely. "I will escape or die," I answered; "but I shall not think of death. Come--come and say with me that we shall part no more--in spirit no more; that, whatever comes, you and I have fulfilled our great hope, though under the shadow of the sword." At that she put her hand in mine with pride and sweetness, and said, "I am ready, Robert. I give my heart, my life, and my honour to you--forever." Then, with great sweetness and solemnity she turned to the clergyman: "Sir, my honour is also in your hands. If you have mother or sister, or any care of souls upon you, I pray you, in the future act as becomes good men." "Mademoiselle," he said earnestly, "I am risking my freedom, maybe my life, in this; do you think--" Here she took his hand and pressed it. "Ah, I ask your pardon. I am of a different faith from you, and I have known how men forget when they should remember." She smiled at him so perfectly that he drew himself up with pride. "Make haste, sir," said I. "Jailers are curious folk." The room was not yet lighted, the evening shadows were creeping in, and up out of the town came the ringing of the vesper bell from the church of the Recollets. For a moment there was stillness in the room and all around us, and then the chaplain began in a low voice: "I require and charge you both--" and so on. In a few moments I had made the great vow, and had put on Alixe's finger a ring which the clergyman drew from his own hand. Then we knelt down, and I know we both prayed most fervently with the good man that we might "ever remain in perfect love and perfect peace together." Rising, he paused, and I went to the door and knocked upon it. It was opened by Gabord. "Come in, Gabord," said I. "There is a thing that you must hear." He stepped back and got a light, and then entered, holding it up, and shutting the door. A strange look came upon his face when he saw the chaplain, and a stranger when, stepping beside Alixe, I took her hand, and Mr. Wainfleet declared us man and wife. He stood like one dumfounded, and he did not stir as Alixe, turning to me, let me kiss her on the lips, and then went to the crucifix on the wall and embraced the feet of it, and stood for a moment, praying. Nor did he move or make a sign till she came back and stood beside me. "A pretty scene!" he burst forth then with anger. "But, by God! no marriage is it!" Alixe's hand tightened on my arm, and she drew close to me. "A marriage that will stand at Judgment Day, Gabord," said I. "But not in France or here. 'Tis mating wild, with end of doom." "It is a marriage our great Archbishop at Lambeth Palace will uphold against a hundred popes and kings," said the chaplain with importance. "You are no priest, but holy peddler!" cried Gabord roughly. "This is not mating as Christians, and fires of hell shall burn--aho! I will see you all go down, and hand of mine shall not be lifted for you!" He puffed out his cheeks, and his great eyes rolled so like fire-wheels. "You are a witness to this ceremony," said the chaplain. "And you shall answer to your God, but you must speak the truth for this man and wife." "Man and wife?" laughed Gabord wildly. "May I die and be damned to--" Like a flash Alixe was beside him, and put to his lips most swiftly the little wooden cross that Mathilde had given her. "Gabord, Gabord," she said in a sweet, sad voice, "when you may come to die, a girl's prayers will be waiting at God's feet for you." He stopped, and stared at her. Her hand lay on his arm, and she continued: "No night gives me sleep, Gabord, but I pray for the jailer who has been kind to an ill-treated gentleman." "A juggling gentleman, that cheats Gabord before his eyes, and smuggles in a mongrel priest!" he blustered. I waved my hand at the chaplain, or I think he would have put his Prayer Book to rougher use than was its wont, and I was about to answer, but Alixe spoke instead, and to greater purpose than I could have done. Her whole mood changed, her face grew still and proud, her eyes flashed bravely. "Gabord," she said, "vanity speaks in you there, not honesty. No gentleman here is a juggler. No kindness you may have done warrants insolence. You have the power to bring great misery on us, and you may have the will, but, by God's help, both my husband and myself shall be delivered from cruel hands. At any moment I may stand alone in the world, friends, people, the Church, and all the land against me: if you desire to haste that time, to bring me to disaster, because you would injure my husband,"--how sweet the name sounded on her lips!--"then act, but do not insult us. But no, no," she broke off softly, "you spoke in temper, you meant it not, you were but vexed with us for the moment. Dear Gabord," she added, "did we not know that if we had asked you first, you would have refused us? You care so much for me, you would have feared my linking my life and fate with one--" "With one the death-man has in hand, to pay price for wicked deed," he interrupted. "With one innocent of all dishonour, a gentleman wronged every way. Gabord, you know it so, for you have guarded him and fought with him, and you are an honourable gentleman," she added gently. "No gentleman I," he burst forth, "but jailer base, and soldier born upon a truss of hay. But honour is an apple any man may eat since Adam walked in garden.... 'Tis honest foe, here," he continued magnanimously, and nodded towards me. "We would have told you all," she said, "but how dare we involve you, or how dare we tempt you, or how dare we risk your refusal? It was love and truth drove us to this; and God will bless this mating as the birds mate, even as He gives honour to Gabord who was born upon a truss of hay." "Poom!" said Gabord, puffing out his cheeks, and smiling on her with a look half sour, and yet with a doglike fondness, "Gabord's mouth is shut till 's head is off, and then to tell the tale to Twelve Apostles!" Through his wayward, illusive speech we found his meaning. He would keep faith with us, and be best proof of this marriage, at risk of his head even. As we spoke, the chaplain was writing in the blank fore-pages of the Prayer Book. Presently he said to me, handing me the pen, which he had picked from a table, "Inscribe your names here. It is a rough record of the ceremony, but it will suffice before all men, when to-morrow I have given Mistress Moray another record." We wrote our names, and then the pen was handed to Gabord. He took it, and at last, with many flourishes and ahos, and by dint of puffings and rolling eyes, he wrote his name so large that it filled as much space as the other names and all the writing, and was indeed like a huge indorsement across the record. When this was done, Alixe held out her hand to him. "Will you kiss me, Gabord?" she said. The great soldier was all taken back. He flushed like a schoolboy, yet a big humour and pride looked out of his eyes. "I owe you for the sables, too," she said. "But kiss me--not on my ears, as the Russian count kissed Gabord, but on both cheek." This won him to our cause utterly, and I never think of Gabord, as I saw him last in the sway and carnage of battle, fighting with wild uproar and covered with wounds, but the memory of that moment, when he kissed my young wife, comes back to me. At that he turned to leave. "I'll hold the door for ten minutes," he added; and bowed to the chaplain, who blessed us then with tears in his eyes, and smiled a little to my thanks and praises and purse of gold, and to Alixe's sweet gratitude. With lifting chin--good honest gentleman, who afterwards proved his fidelity and truth--he said that he would die to uphold this sacred ceremony. And so he made a little speech, as if he had a pulpit round him, and he wound up with a benediction which sent my dear girl to tears and soft trembling: "The Lord bless you and keep you: the Lord make his face to shine upon you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace now and for evermore." A moment afterwards the door closed, and for ten minutes I looked into my wife's face, and told her my plans for escape. When Gabord opened the door upon us, we had passed through years of understanding and resolve. Our parting was brave--a bravery on her side that I do not think any other woman could match. She was quivering with the new life come upon her, yet she was self-controlled; she moved as in a dream, yet I knew her mind was alert, vigilant, and strong; she was aching with thought of this separation, with the peril that faced us both, yet she carried a quiet joy in her face, a tranquil gravity of bearing. "Whom God hath joined--" said I gravely at the last. "Let no man put asunder," she answered softly and solemnly. "Aho!" said Gabord, and turned his head away. Then the door shut upon me, and though I am no Catholic, I have no shame in saying that I kissed the feet on the crucifix which her lips had blessed. XXI LA JONGLEUSE At nine o'clock I was waiting by the window, and even as a bugle sounded "lights out" in the barracks and change of guard, I let the string down. Mr. Stevens shot round the corner of the chateau, just as the departing sentinel disappeared, and attached a bundle to the string, and I drew it up. "Is all well?" I called softly down. "All well," said Mr. Stevens, and, hugging the wall of the chateau, he sped away. In another moment a new sentinel began pacing up and down, and I shut the window and untied my bundle. All that I had asked for was there. I hid the things away in the alcove and went to bed at once, for I knew that I should have no sleep on the following night. I did not leave my bed till the morning was well advanced. Once or twice during the day I brought my guards in with fear on their faces, the large fat man more distorted than his fellow, by the lamentable sounds I made with my willow toys. They crossed themselves again and again, and I myself appeared devout and troubled. When we walked abroad during the afternoon, I chose to saunter by the river rather than walk, for I wished to conserve my strength, which was now vastly increased, though, to mislead my watchers and the authorities, I assumed the delicacy of an invalid, and appeared unfit for any enterprise--no hard task, for I was still very thin and worn. So I sat upon a favourite seat on the cliff, set against a solitary tree, fixed in the rocks. I gazed long on the river, and my guards, stoutly armed, stood near, watching me, and talking in low tones. Eager to hear their gossip, I appeared to sleep. They came nearer, and, facing me, sat upon a large stone, and gossiped freely concerning the strange sounds heard in my room at the chateau. "See you, my Bamboir," said the lean to the fat soldier, "the British captain, he is to be carried off in burning flames by that La Jongleuse. We shall come in one morning and find a smell of sulphur only, and a circle of red on the floor where the imps danced before La Jongleuse said to them, 'Up with him, darlings, and away!'" At this Bamboir shook his head, and answered, "To-morrow I'll to the Governor, and tell him what's coming. My wife, she falls upon my neck this morning. 'Argose,' she says, ''twill need the bishop and his college to drive La Jongleuse out of the grand chateau.'" "No less," replied the other. "A deacon and sacred palm and sprinkle of holy water would do for a cottage, or even for a little manor house, with twelve candles burning, and a hymn to the Virgin. But in a king's house--" "It's not the King's house." "But yes, it is the King's house, though his Most Christian Majesty lives in France. The Marquis de Vaudreuil stands for the King, and we are sentinels in the King's house. But, my faith, I'd rather be fighting against Frederick, the Prussian boar, than watching this mad Englishman." "But see you, my brother, that Englishman's a devil. Else how has he not been hanged long ago? He has vile arts to blind all, or he would not be sitting there. It is well known that M'sieu' Doltaire, even the King's son--his mother worked in the fields like your Nanette, Bamboir--" "Or your Lablanche, my friend. She has hard hands, with warts, and red knuckles therefrom--" "Or your Nanette, Bamboir, with nose that blisters in the summer, as she goes swingeing flax, and swelling feet that sweat in sabots, and chin thrust out from carrying pails upon her head--" "Ay, like Nanette and like Lablanche, this peasant mother of M'sieu' Doltaire, and maybe no such firm breasts like Nanette--" "Nor such an eye as has Lablanche. Well, M'sieu' Doltaire, who could override them all, he could not kill this barbarian. And Gabord--you know well how they fought, and the black horse and his rider came and carried him away. Why, the young M'sieu' Duvarney had him on his knees, the blade at his throat, and a sword flashed out from the dark--they say it was the devil's--and took him in the ribs and well-nigh killed him." "But what say you to Ma'm'selle Duvarney coming to him that day, and again yesterday with Gabord?" "Well, well, who knows, Bamboir? This morning I said to Nanette, 'Why is't, all in one moment, you send me to the devil, and pray to meet me in Abraham's bosom too?' What think you she answered me? Why, this, my Bamboir: 'Why is't Adam loved his wife and swore her down before the Lord also, all in one moment?' Why Ma'm'selle Duvarney does this or that is not for muddy brains like ours. It is some whimsy. They say that women are more curious about the devil than about St. Jean Baptiste. Perhaps she got of him a magic book." "No, no! If he had the magic Petit Albert, he would have turned us into dogs long ago. But I do not like him. He is but thirty years, they say, and yet his hair is white as a pigeon's wing. It is not natural. Nor did he ever, says Gabord, do aught but laugh at everything they did to him. The chains they put would not stay, and when he was set against the wall to be shot, the watches stopped--the minute of his shooting passed. Then M'sieu' Doltaire came, and said a man that could do a trick like that should live to do another. And he did it, for M'sieu' Doltaire is gone to the Bastile. Voyez, this Englishman is a damned heretic, and has the wicked arts." "But see, Bamboir, do you think he can cast spells?" "What mean those sounds from his room?" "So, so. But if he be a friend of the devil, La Jongleuse would not come for him, but--" Startled and excited, they grasped each other's arms. "But for us--for us!" "It would be a work of God to send him to the devil," said Bamboir in a loud whisper. "He has given us trouble enough. Who can tell what comes next? Those damned noises in his room, eh--eh?" Then they whispered together, and presently I caught a fragment, by which I understood that, as we walked near the edge of the cliff, I should be pushed over, and they would make it appear that I had drowned myself. They talked in low tones again, but soon got louder, and presently I knew that they were speaking of La Jongleuse; and Bamboir--the fat Bamboir, who the surgeon had said would some day die of apoplexy--was rash enough to say that he had seen her. He described her accurately, with the spirit of the born raconteur: "Hair so black as the feather in the Governor's hat, and green eyes that flash fire, and a brown face with skin all scales. Oh, my saints of Heaven, when she pass I hide my head, and I go cold like stone. She is all covered with long reeds and lilies about her head and shoulders, and blue-red sparks fly up at every step. Flames go round her, and she burns not her robe--not at all. And as she go, I hear cries that make me sick, for it is, I said, some poor man in torture, and I think, perhaps it is Jacques Villon, perhaps Jean Rivas, perhaps Angele Damgoche. But no, it is a young priest of St. Clair, for he is never seen again--never!" In my mind I commended this fat Bamboir as an excellent story-teller, and thanked him for his true picture of La Jongleuse, whom, to my regret, I had never seen. I would not forget his stirring description, as he should see. I gave point to the tale by squeezing an inflated toy in my pocket, with my arm, while my hands remained folded in front of me; and it was as good as a play to see the faces of these soldiers, as they sprang to their feet, staring round in dismay. I myself seemed to wake with a start, and, rising to my feet, I asked what meant the noise and their amazement. We were in a spot where we could not easily be seen from any distance, and no one was in sight, nor were we to be remarked from the fort. They exchanged looks, as I started back towards the chateau, walking very near the edge of the cliff. A spirit of bravado came on me, and I said musingly to them as we walked: "It would be easy to throw you both over the cliff, but I love you too well. I have proved that by making toys for your children." It was as cordial to me to watch their faces. They both drew away from the cliff, and grasped their firearms apprehensively. "My God," said Bamboir, "those toys shall be burned to-night. Alphonse has the smallpox and Susanne the croup--damned devil!" he added furiously, stepping forward to me with gun raised, "I'll--" I believe he would have shot me, but that I said quickly, "If you did harm to me you'd come to the rope. The Governor would rather lose a hand than my life." I pushed his musket down. "Why should you fret? I am leaving the chateau to-morrow for another prison. You fools, d'ye think I'd harm the children? I know as little of the devil or La Jongleuse as do you. We'll solve the witcheries of these sounds, you and I, to-night. If they come, we'll say the Lord's Prayer, and make the sacred gesture, and if it goes not, we will have one of your good priests to drive out this whining spirit." This quieted them much, and I was glad of it, for they had looked bloodthirsty enough, and though I had a weapon on me, there was little use in seeking fighting or flight till the auspicious moment. They were not satisfied, however, and they watched me diligently as we came on to the chateau. I could not bear that they should be frightened about their children, so I said: "Make for me a sacred oath, and I will swear by it that those toys will do your children no harm." I drew out the little wooden cross that Mathilde had given me, and held it up. They looked at me astonished. What should I, a heretic and a Protestant, do with this sacred emblem? "This never leaves me," said I; "it was a pious gift." I raised the cross to my lips, and kissed it. "That's well," said Bamboir to his comrade. "If otherwise, he should have been struck down by the Avenging Angel." We got back to the chateau without more talk, and I was locked in, while my guards retired. As soon as they had gone I got to work, for my great enterprise was at hand. At ten o'clock I was ready for the venture. When the critical moment came, I was so arrayed that my dearest friend would not have known me. My object was to come out upon my guards as La Jongleuse, and, in the fright and confusion which should follow, make my escape through the corridors and to the entrance doors, past the sentinels, and so on out. It may be seen now why I got the woman's garb, the sheet, the horsehair, the phosphorus, the reeds, and such things; why I secured the knife and pistol may be guessed likewise. Upon the lid of a small stove in the room I placed my saltpetre, and I rubbed the horsehair on my head with phosphorus, also on my hands, and face, and feet, and on many objects in the room. The knife and pistol were at my hand, and when the clock struck ten, I set my toys to wailing. Then I knocked upon the door with solemn taps, hurried back to the stove, and waited for the door to open before I applied the match. I heard a fumbling at the lock, then the door was thrown wide open. All was darkness in the hall without, save for a spluttering candle which Bamboir held over his head, as he and his fellow, deadly pale, stood peering forward. Suddenly they gave a cry, for I threw the sheet from my face and shoulders, and to their excited imagination La Jongleuse stood before them, all in flames. As I started down on them, the coloured fire flew up, making the room all blue and scarlet for a moment, in which I must have looked devilish indeed, with staring eyes, and outstretched chalky hands, and wailing cries coming from my robe. I moved swiftly, and Bamboir, without a cry, dropped like a log (poor fellow, he never rose again! the apoplexy which the surgeon promised had come), his comrade gave a cry, and sank in a heap in a corner, mumbling a prayer, and making the sign of the cross, his face stark with terror. I passed him, came along the corridor and down one staircase, without seeing any one; then two soldiers appeared in the half-lighted hallway. Presently also a door opened behind me, and some one came out. By now the phosphorus light diminished a little, but still I was a villainous picture, for in one hand I held a small cup from which suddenly sprang red and blue fires. The men fell back, and I sailed past them, but I had not gone far down the lower staircase when a shot rang after me, and a bullet passed by my head. Now I came rapidly to the outer door, where two more sentinels stood. They shrank back, and suddenly one threw down his musket and ran; the other, terrified, stood stock-still. I passed him, opened the door, and came out upon the Intendant, who was just alighting from his carriage. The horses sprang away, frightened at sight of me, and nearly threw Bigot to the ground. I tossed the tin cup with its chemical fires full in his face, as he made a dash for me. He called out, and drew his sword. I wished not to fight, and I sprang aside; but he made a pass at me, and I drew my pistol and was about to fire, when another shot came from the hallway and struck him. He fell, almost at my feet, and I dashed away into the darkness. Fifty feet ahead I cast one glance hack, and saw Monsieur Cournal standing in the doorway. I was sure that his second shot had not been meant for me, but for the Intendant--a wild attempt at a revenge, long delayed, for the worst of wrongs. I ran on, and presently came full upon five soldiers, two of whom drew their pistols, fired, and missed. Their comrades ran away howling. They barred my path, and now I fired, too, and brought one down; then came a shot from behind them, and another fell. The last one took to his heels, and a moment later I had my hand in that of Mr. Stevens. It was he who had fired the opportune shot that rid me of one foe. We came quickly along the river brink, and, skirting the citadel, got clear of it without discovery, though we could see soldiers hurrying past, roused by the firing at the chateau. In about half an hour of steady running, with a few bad stumbles and falls, we reached the old windmill above the Anse du Foulon at Sillery, and came plump upon our waiting comrades. I had stripped myself of my disguise, and rubbed the phosphorus from my person as we came along, but enough remained to make me an uncanny figure. It had been kept secret from these people that I was to go with them, and they sullenly kept their muskets raised and cocked; but when Mr. Stevens told them who I was, they were agreeably surprised. I at once took command of the enterprise, saying firmly at the same time that I would shoot the first man who disobeyed my orders. I was sure that I could bring them to safety, but my will must be law. They took my terms like men, and swore to stand by me. XXII THE LORD OF KAMARSKA We were five altogether--Mr. Stevens, Clark, the two Boston soldiers, and myself; and presently we came down the steep passage in the cliff to where our craft lay, secured by my dear wife--a birch canoe, well laden with necessaries. Our craft was none too large for our party, but she must do; and safely in, we pushed out upon the current, which was in our favour, for the tide was going out. My object was to cross the river softly, skirt the Levis shore, pass the Isle of Orleans, and so steal down the river. There was excitement in the town, as we could tell from the lights flashing along the shore, and boats soon began to patrol the banks, going swiftly up and down, and extending a line round to the St. Charles River towards Beauport. It was well for us the night was dark, else we had run that gantlet. But we were lucky enough, by hard paddling, to get past the town on the Levis side. Never were better boatmen. The paddles dropped with agreeable precision, and no boatswain's rattan was needed to keep my fellows to their task. I, whose sight was long trained to darkness, could see a great distance round us, and so could prevent a trap, though once or twice we let our canoe drift with the tide, lest our paddles should be heard. I could not paddle long, I had so little strength. After the Isle of Orleans was passed, I drew a breath of relief, and played the part of captain and boatswain merely. Yet when I looked back at the town on those strong heights, and saw the bonfires burn to warn the settlers of our escape, saw the lights sparkling in many homes, and even fancied I could make out the light shining in my dear wife's window, I had a strange feeling of loneliness. There in the shadow of my prison walls, was the dearest thing on earth to me. Ought she not to be with me? She had begged to come, to share with me these dangers and hardships; but that I could not, would not grant. She would be safer with her people. As for us desperate men bent on escape, we must face hourly peril. Thank God, there was work to do. Hour after hour the swing and dip of the paddles went on. No one showed weariness, and when the dawn broke slow and soft over the eastern hills, I motioned my good boatmen towards the shore, and landed safely. We lifted our frigate up, and carried her into a thicket, there to rest with us till night, when we would sally forth again into the friendly darkness. We were in no distress all that day, for the weather was fine, and we had enough to eat; and in such case were we for ten days and nights, though indeed some of the nights were dreary and very cold, for it was yet but the beginning of May. It might thus seem that we were leaving danger well behind, after having travelled so many heavy leagues, but it was yet several hundred miles to Louisburg, our destination; and we had escaped only immediate danger. We passed Isle aux Coudres and the Isles of Kamaraska, and now we ventured by day to ramble the woods in search of game, which was most plentiful. In this good outdoor life my health came slowly back, and I should soon be able to bear equal tasks with any of my faithful comrades. Never man led better friends, though I have seen adventurous service near and far since that time. Even the genial ruffian Clark was amenable, and took sharp reprimand without revolt. On the eleventh night after our escape, our first real trial came. We were keeping the middle of the great river, as safest from detection, and when the tide was with us we could thus move more rapidly. We had had a constant favouring wind, but now suddenly, though we were running with the tide, the wind turned easterly, and blew up the river against the ebb. Soon it became a gale, to which was added snow and sleet, and a rough, choppy sea followed. I saw it would be no easy task to fetch our craft to the land. The waves broke in upon us, and presently, while half of us were paddling with laboured and desperate stroke, the other half were bailing. Lifted on a crest, our canoe, heavily laden, dropped at both ends; and again, sinking into the hollows between the short, brutal waves, her gunwales yielded outward, and her waist gaped in a dismal way. We looked to see her with a broken back at any moment. To add to our ill fortune, a violent current set in from the shore, and it was vain to attempt a landing. Spirits and bodies flagged, and it needed all my cheerfulness to keep my good fellows to their tasks. At last, the ebb of tide being almost spent, the waves began to fall, the wind shifted a little to the northward, and a piercing cold instantly froze our drenched clothes on our backs. But with the current changed there was a good chance of reaching the shore. As daylight came we passed into a little sheltered cove, and sank with exhaustion on the shore. Our frozen clothes rattled like tin, and we could scarce lift a leg. But we gathered a fine heap of wood, flint and steel were ready, and the tinder was sought; which, when found, was soaking. Not a dry stitch or stick could we find anywhere, till at last, within a leather belt, Mr. Stevens found a handkerchief, which was, indeed, as he told me afterwards, the gift and pledge of a lady to him; and his returning to her with out it nearly lost him another and better gift and pledge, for this went to light our fire. We had had enough danger and work in one night to give us relish for some days of rest, and we piously took them. The evening of the second day we set off again, and had a good night's run, and in the dawn, spying a snug little bay, we stood in, and went ashore. I sent my two Provincials foraging with their guns, and we who remained set about to fix our camp for the day and prepare breakfast. A few minutes only passed, and the two hunters came running back with rueful faces to say they had seen two Indians near, armed with muskets and knives. My plans were made at once. We needed their muskets, and the Indians must pay the price of their presence here, for our safety should be had at any cost. I urged my men to utter no word at all, for none but Clark could speak French, and he but poorly. For myself, my accent would pass after these six years of practice. We came to a little river, beyond which we could observe the Indians standing on guard. We could only cross by wading, which we did; but one of my Provincials came down, wetting his musket and himself thoroughly. Reaching the shore, we marched together, I singing the refrain of an old French song as we went, En roulant, ma boule roulant, En roulant, ma boule so attracting the attention of the Indians. The better to deceive, we all were now dressed in the costume of the French peasant--I had taken pains to have Mr. Stevens secure these for us before starting; a pair of homespun trousers, a coarse brown jacket, with thrums like waving tassels, a silk handkerchief about the neck, and a strong thick worsted wig on the head; no smart toupet, nor buckle; nor combed, nor powdered; and all crowned by a dull black cap. I myself was, as became my purpose, most like a small captain of militia, doing wood service, and in the braver costume of the coureur de bois. I signalled to the Indians, and, coming near, addressed them in French. They were deceived, and presently, abreast of them, in the midst of apparent ceremony, their firelocks were seized, and Mr. Stevens and Clark had them safe. I said we must be satisfied as to who they were, for English prisoners escaped from Quebec were abroad, and no man could go unchallenged. They must at once lead me to their camp. So they did, and at their bark wigwam they said they had seen no Englishman. They were guardians of the fire; that is, it was their duty to light a fire on the shore when a hostile fleet should appear; and from another point farther up, other guardians, seeing, would do the same, until beacons would be shining even to Quebec, three hundred leagues away. While I was questioning them, Clark rifled the wigwam; and presently, the excitable fellow, finding some excellent stores of skins, tea, maple sugar, coffee, and other things, broke out into English expletives. Instantly the Indians saw they had been trapped, and he whom Mr. Stevens held made a great spring from him, caught up a gun, and gave a wild yell which echoed far and near. Mr. Stevens, with great rapidity, leveled his pistol and shot him in the heart, while I, in a close struggle with my captive, was glad--for I was not yet strong--that Clark finished my assailant: and so both lay there dead, two foes less of our good King. Not far from where we stood was a pool of water, black and deep, and we sank the bodies there; but I did not know till long afterwards that Clark, with a barbarous and disgusting spirit, carried away their scalps to sell them in New York, where they would bring, as he confided to one of the Provincials, twelve pounds each. Before we left, we shot a poor howling dog that mourned for his masters, and sank him also in the dark pool. We had but got back to our camp, when, looking out, we saw a well-manned four-oared boat making for the shore. My men were in dismay until I told them that, having begun the game of war, I would carry it on to the ripe end. This boat and all therein should be mine. Safely hidden, we watched the rowers draw in to shore, with brisk strokes, singing a quaint farewell song of the voyageurs, called La Pauvre Mere, of which the refrain is: "And his mother says, 'My dear, For your absence I shall grieve; Come you home within the year.'" They had evidently been upon a long voyage, and by their toiling we could see their boat was deep loaded; but they drove on, like a horse that, at the close of day, sees ahead the inn where he is to bait and refresh, and, rousing to the spur, comes cheerily home. The figure of a reverend old man was in the stern, and he sent them in to shore with brisk words. Bump came the big shallop on the beach, and at that moment I ordered my men to fire, but to aim wide, for I had another end in view than killing. We were exactly matched as to numbers, so that a fight would be fair enough, but I hoped for peaceful conquest. As we fired I stepped out of the thicket, and behind me could be seen the shining barrels of our threatening muskets. The old gentleman stood up while his men cried for quarter. He waved them down with an impatient gesture, and stepped out on the beach. Then I recognized him. It was the Chevalier de la Darante. I stepped towards him, my sword drawn. "Monsieur the Chevalier de la Darante, you are my prisoner," said I. He started, then recognized me. "Now, by the blood of man! now, by the blood of man!" he said, and paused, dumfounded. "You forget me, monsieur?" asked I. "Forget you, monsieur?" said he. "As soon forget the devil at mass! But I thought you dead by now, and--" "If you are disappointed," said I, "there is a way"; and I waved towards his men, then to Mr. Stevens and my own ambushed fellows. He smiled an acid smile, and took a pinch of snuff. "It is not so fiery-edged as that," he answered; "I can endure it." "You shall have time too for reverie," answered I. He looked puzzled. "What is't you wish?" he asked. "Your surrender first," said I, "and then your company at breakfast." "The latter has meaning and compliment," he responded, "the former is beyond me. What would you do with me?" "Detain you and your shallop for the services of my master, the King of England, soon to be the master of your master, if the signs are right." "All signs fail with the blind, monsieur." "I will give you good reading of those signs in due course," retorted I. "Monsieur," he added, with great, almost too great dignity, "I am of the family of the Duc de Mirepoix. The whole Kamaraska Isles are mine, and the best gentlemen in this province do me vassalage. I make war on none, I have stepped aside from all affairs of state, I am a simple gentleman. I have been a great way down this river, at large expense and toil, to purchase wheat, for all the corn of these counties goes to Quebec to store the King's magazine, the adored La Friponne. I know not your purposes, but I trust you will not push your advantage"--he waved towards our muskets--"against a private gentleman." "You forget, Chevalier," said I, "that you gave verdict for my death." "Upon the evidence," he replied. "And I have no doubt you deserve hanging a thousand times." I almost loved him for his boldness. I remembered also that he had no wish to be one of my judges, and that he spoke for me in the presence of the Governor. But he was not the man to make a point of that. "Chevalier," said I, "I have been foully used in yonder town; by the fortune of war you shall help me to compensation. We have come a long, hard journey; we are all much overworked; we need rest, a better boat, and good sailors. You and your men, Chevalier, shall row us to Louisburg. When we are attacked, you shall be in the van; when we are at peace, you shall industriously serve under King George's flag. Now will you give up your men, and join me at breakfast?" For a moment the excellent gentleman was mute, and my heart almost fell before his venerable white hair and his proud bearing; but something a little overdone in his pride, a little ludicrous in the situation, set me smiling; there came back on me the remembrance of all I had suffered, and I let no sentiment stand between me and my purposes. "I am the Chevalier de la--" he began. "If you were King Louis himself, and every man there in your boat a peer of his realm, you should row a British subject now," said I; "or, if you choose, you shall have fighting instead." I meant there should be nothing uncertain in my words. "I surrender," said he; "and if you are bent on shaming me, let us have it over soon." "You shall have better treatment than I had in Quebec," answered I. A moment afterwards, his men were duly surrendered, disarmed, and guarded, and the Chevalier breakfasted with me, now and again asking me news of Quebec. He was much amazed to hear that Bigot had been shot, and distressed that I could not say whether fatally or not. I fixed on a new plan. We would now proceed by day as well as by night, for the shallop could not leave the river, and, besides, I did not care to trust my prisoners on shore. I threw from the shallop into the stream enough wheat to lighten her, and now, well stored and trimmed, we pushed away upon our course, the Chevalier and his men rowing, while my men rested and tended the sail, which was now set. I was much loath to cut our good canoe adrift, but she stopped the shallop's way, and she was left behind. After a time, our prisoners were in part relieved, and I made the Chevalier rest also, for he had taken his task in good part, and had ordered his men to submit cheerfully. In the late afternoon, after an excellent journey, we saw a high and shaggy point of land, far ahead, which shut off our view. I was anxious to see beyond it, for ships of war might appear at any moment. A good breeze brought up this land, and when we were abreast of it a lofty frigate was disclosed to view--a convoy (so the Chevalier said) to a fleet of transports which that morning had gone up the river. I resolved instantly, since fight was useless, to make a run for it. Seating myself at the tiller, I declared solemnly that I would shoot the first man who dared to stop the shallop's way, to make sign, or speak a word. So, as the frigate stood across the river, I had all sail set, roused the men at the oars, and we came running by her stern. Our prisoners were keen enough to get by in safety, for they were between two fires, and the excellent Chevalier was as alert and laborious as the rest. They signalled us from the frigate by a shot to bring to, but we came on gallantly. Another shot whizzed by at a distance, but we did not change our course, and then balls came flying over our heads, dropping round us, cooling their hot protests in the river. But none struck us, and presently all fell short. We durst not slacken pace that night, and by morning, much exhausted, we deemed ourselves safe, and rested for a while, making a hearty breakfast, though a sombre shadow had settled on the face of the good Chevalier. Once more he ventured to protest, but I told him my resolution was fixed, and that I would at all costs secure escape from my six years' misery. He must abide the fortune of this war. For several days we fared on, without more mishap. At last, one morning, we hugged the shore, I saw a large boat lying on the beach. On landing we found the boat of excellent size, and made for swift going, and presently Clark discovered the oars. Then I turned to the Chevalier, who was watching me curiously, yet hiding anxiety, for he had upheld his dignity with some accent since he had come into my service: "Chevalier," said I, "you shall find me more humane than my persecutors at Quebec. I will not hinder your going, if you will engage on your honour--as would, for instance, the Duc de Mirepoix!"--he bowed to my veiled irony--"that you will not divulge what brought you back thus far, till you shall reach your Kamaraska Isles; and you must undertake the same for your fellows here." He consented, and I admired the fine, vain old man, and lamented that I had had to use him so. "Then," said I, "you may depart with your shallop. Your mast and sail, however, must be ours; and for these I will pay. I will also pay for the wheat which was thrown into the river, and you shall have a share of our provisions, got from the Indians." "Monsieur," said he, "I shall remember with pride that I have dealt with so fair a foe. I can not regret the pleasure of your acquaintance, even at the price. And see, monsieur, I do not think you the criminal they have made you out, and so I will tell a lady--" I raised my hand at him, for I saw that he knew something, and Mr. Stevens was near us at the time. "Chevalier," said I, drawing him aside, "if, as you say, you think I have used you honourably, then, if trouble falls upon my wife before I see her again, I beg you to stand her friend. In the sad fortunes of war and hate of me, she may need a friend--even against her own people, on her own hearthstone." I never saw a man so amazed; and to his rapid questionings I gave the one reply, that Alixe was my wife. His lip trembled. "Poor child! poor child!" he said; "they will put her in a nunnery. You did wrong, monsieur." "Chevalier," said I, "did you ever love a woman?" He made a motion of the hand, as if I had touched upon a tender point, and said, "So young, so young!" "But you will stand by her," I urged, "by the memory of some good woman you have known!" He put out his hand again with a chafing sort of motion. "There, there," said he, "the poor child shall never want a friend. If I can help it, she shall not be made a victim of the Church or of the State, nor yet of family pride--good God, no!" Presently we parted, and soon we lost our grateful foes in the distance. All night we jogged along with easy sail, but just at dawn, in a sudden opening of the land, we saw a sloop at anchor near a wooded point, her pennant flying. We pushed along, unheeding its fiery signal to bring to; and declining, she let fly a swivel loaded with grape, and again another, riddling our sail; but we were travelling with wind and tide, and we soon left the indignant patrol behind. Towards evening came a freshening wind and a cobbling sea, and I thought it best to make for shore. So, easing the sail, we brought our shallop before the wind. It was very dark, and there was a heavy surf running; but we had to take our fortune as it came, and we let drive for the unknown shore, for it was all alike to us. Presently, as we ran close in, our boat came hard upon a rock, which bulged her bows open. Taking what provisions we could, we left our poor craft upon the rocks, and fought our way to safety. We had little joy that night in thinking of our shallop breaking on the reefs, and we discussed the chances of crossing overland to Louisburg; but we soon gave up that wild dream: this river was the only way. When daylight came, we found our boat, though badly wrecked, still held together. Now Clark rose to the great necessity, and said that he would patch her up to carry us on, or never lift a hammer more. With labour past reckoning we dragged her to shore, and got her on the stocks, and then set about to find materials to mend her. Tools were all too few--a hammer, a saw, and an adze were all we had. A piece of board or a nail were treasures then, and when the timbers of the craft were covered, for oakum we had resort to tree-gum. For caulking, one spared a handkerchief, another a stocking, and another a piece of shirt, till she was stuffed in all her fissures. In this labour we passed eight days, and then were ready for the launch again. On the very afternoon fixed for starting, we saw two sails standing down the river, and edging towards our shore. One of them let anchor go right off the place where our patched boat lay. We had prudently carried on our work behind rocks and trees, so that we could not be seen, unless our foes came ashore. Our case seemed desperate enough, but all at once I determined on a daring enterprise. The two vessels--convoys, I felt sure--had anchored some distance from each other, and from their mean appearance I did not think that they would have a large freight of men and arms; for they seemed not ships from France, but vessels of the country. If I could divide the force of either vessel, and quietly, under cover of night, steal on her by surprise, then I would trust our desperate courage, and open the war which soon General Wolfe and Admiral Saunders were to wage up and down this river. I had brave fellows with me, and if we got our will it would be a thing worth remembrance. So I disclosed my plan to Mr. Stevens and the others, and, as I looked for, they had a fine relish for the enterprise. I agreed upon a signal with them, bade them to lie close along the ground, picked out the nearer (which was the smaller) ship for my purpose, and at sunset, tying a white handkerchief to a stick, came marching out of the woods, upon the shore, firing a gun at the same time. Presently a boat was put out from the sloop, and two men and a boy came rowing towards me. Standing off a little distance from the shore, they asked what was wanted. "The King's errand," was my reply in French, and I must be carried down the river by them, for which I would pay generously. Then, with idle gesture, I said that if they wished some drink, there was a bottle of rum near my fire, above me, to which they were welcome; also some game, which they might take as a gift to their captain and his crew. This drew them like a magnet, and, as I lit my pipe, their boat scraped the sand, and, getting out, they hauled her up and came towards me. I met them, and, pointing towards my fire, as it might appear, led them up behind the rocks, when, at a sign, my men sprang up, the fellows were seized, and were forbidden to cry out on peril of their lives. I compelled them to tell what hands and what arms were left on board. The sloop from which they came, and the schooner, its consort, were bound for Gaspe, to bring provisions for several hundred Indians assembled at Miramichi and Aristiguish, who were to go by these same vessels to re-enforce the garrison of Quebec. The sloop, they said, had six guns and a crew of twenty men; but the schooner, which was much larger, had no arms save muskets, and a crew and guard of thirty men. In this country there is no twilight, and with sunset came instantly the dusk. Already silence and dark inclosed the sloop. I had the men bound to a tree, and gagged also, engaging to return and bring them away safe and unhurt when our task was over. I chose for pilot the boy, and presently, with great care, launching our patched shallop from the stocks--for the ship-boat was too small to carry six safely--we got quietly away. Rowing with silent stroke, we came alongside the sloop. No light burned save that in the binnacle, and all hands, except the watch, were below at supper and at cards. I could see the watch forward as we dropped silently alongside the stern. My object was to catch this fellow as he came by. This I would trust to no one but myself; for now, grown stronger, I had the old spring in my blood, and I had also a good wish that my plans should not go wrong through the bungling of others. I motioned my men to sit silent, and then, when the fellow's back was toward me, coming softly up the side, I slid over quietly, and drew into the shadow of a boat that hung near. He came on lazily, and when just past me I suddenly threw my arms about him, clapping my hand upon his mouth. He was stoutly built, and he began at once to struggle. He was no coward, and feeling for his knife, he drew it, and would have had it in me but that I was quicker, and, with a desperate wrench, my hand still over his mouth, half swung him round, and drove my dagger home. He sank in my arms with a heaving sigh, and I laid him down, still and dead, upon the deck. Then I whispered up my comrades, the boy leading. As the last man came over, his pistol, stuck in his belt, caught the ratlings of the shrouds, and it dropped upon the deck. This gave the alarm, but I was at the companion-door on the instant, as the first master came bounding up, sword showing, and calling to his men, who swarmed after him. I fired; the bullet travelled his spine, and he fell back stunned. A dozen others came on. Some reached the deck and grappled with my men. I never shall forget with what fiendish joy Clark fought that night--those five terrible minutes. He was like some mad devil, and by his imprecations I knew that he was avenging the brutal death of his infant daughter some years before. He was armed with a long knife, and I saw four men fall beneath it, while he himself got but one bad cut. Of the Provincials, one fell wounded, and the other brought down his man. Mr. Stevens and myself held the companion-way, driving the crew back, not without hurt, for my wrist was slashed by a cutlass, and Mr. Stevens had a bullet in his thigh. But presently we had the joy of having those below cry quarter. We were masters of the sloop. Quickly battening down the prisoners, I had the sails spread, the windlass going, and the anchor apeak quickly, and we soon were moving down upon the schooner, which was now all confusion, commands ringing out on the quiet air. But when, laying alongside, we gave her a dose, and then another, from all our swivels at once, sweeping her decks, the timid fellows cried quarter, and we boarded her. With my men's muskets cocked, I ordered her crew and soldiers below, till they were all, save two lusty youths, stowed away. Then I had everything of value brought from the sloop, together with the swivels, which we fastened to the schooner's side; and when all was done, we set fire to the sloop, and I stood and watched her burn with a proud--too proud--spirit. Having brought our prisoners from the shore, we placed them with the rest below. At dawn I called a council with Mr. Stevens and the others--our one wounded Provincial was not omitted--and we all agreed that some of the prisoners should be sent off in the long boat, and a portion of the rest be used to work the ship. So we had half the fellows up, and giving them fishing-lines, rum, and provisions, with a couple of muskets and ammunition, we sent them off to shift for themselves, and, raising anchor, got on our way down the broad river, in perfect weather. The days that followed are like a good dream to me, for we came on all the way without challenge and with no adventure, even round Gaspe, to Louisburg, thirty-eight days after my escape from the fortress. XXIII WITH WOLFE AT MONTMORENCI At Louisburg we found that Admiral Saunders and General Wolfe were gone to Quebec. They had passed us as we came down, for we had sailed inside some islands of the coast, getting shelter and better passage, and the fleet had, no doubt, passed outside. This was a blow to me, for I had hoped to be in time to join General Wolfe and proceed with him to Quebec, where my knowledge of the place should be of service to him. It was, however, no time for lament, and I set about to find my way back again. Our prisoners I handed over to the authorities. The two Provincials decided to remain and take service under General Amherst; Mr. Stevens would join his own Rangers at once, but Clark would go back with me to have his hour with his hated foes. I paid Mr. Stevens and the two Provincials for their shares in the schooner, and Clark and I manned her afresh, and prepared to return instantly to Quebec. From General Amherst I received correspondence to carry to General Wolfe and Admiral Saunders. Before I started back, I sent letters to Governor Dinwiddie and to Mr. (now Colonel) George Washington, but I had no sooner done so than I received others from them through General Amherst. They had been sent to him to convey to General Wolfe at Quebec, who was, in turn, to hand them to me, when, as was hoped, I should be released from captivity, if not already beyond the power of men to free me. The letters from these friends almost atoned for my past sufferings, and I was ashamed that ever I had thought my countrymen forgot me in my worst misery; for this was the first matter I saw when I opened the Governor's letter: By the House of Burgesses. Resolved, That the sum of three hundred pounds be paid to Captain Robert Moray, in consideration of his services to the country, and his singular sufferings in his confinement, as a hostage, in Quebec. This, I learned, was one of three such resolutions. But there were other matters in his letter which much amazed me. An attempt, he said, had been made one dark night upon his strong-room, which would have succeeded but for the great bravery and loyalty of an old retainer. Two men were engaged in the attempt, one of whom was a Frenchman. Both men were masked, and, when set upon, fought with consummate bravery, and escaped. It was found the next day that the safe of my partner had also been rifled and all my papers stolen. There was no doubt in my mind what this meant. Doltaire, with some renegade Virginian who knew Williamsburg and myself, had made essay to get my papers. But they had failed in their designs, for all my valuable documents--and those desired by Doltaire among them--remained safe in the Governor's strong-room. I got away again for Quebec five days after reaching Louisburg. We came along with good winds, having no check, though twice we sighted French sloops, which, however, seemed most concerned to leave us to ourselves. At last, with colours flying, we sighted Kamaraska Isles, which I saluted, remembering the Chevalier de la Darante; then Isle aux Coudres, below which we poor fugitives came so near disaster. Here we all felt new fervour, for the British flag flew from a staff on a lofty point, tents were pitched thereon in a pretty cluster, and, rounding a point, we came plump upon Admiral Durell's little fleet, which was here to bar advance of French ships and to waylay stragglers. On a blithe summer day we sighted, far off, the Island of Orleans and the tall masts of two patrol ships of war, which in due time we passed, saluting, and ran abreast of the island in the North Channel. Coming up this passage, I could see on an eminence, far distant, the tower of the Chateau Alixe. Presently there opened on our sight the great bluff at the Falls of Montmorenci, and, crowning it, tents and batteries, the camp of General Wolfe himself, with the good ship Centurion standing off like a sentinel at a point where the Basin, the River Montmorenci, and the North Channel seem to meet. To our left, across the shoals, was Major Hardy's post, on the extreme eastern point of the Isle Orleans; and again beyond that, in a straight line, Point Levis on the south shore, where Brigadier-General Monckton's camp was pitched; and farther on his batteries, from which shell and shot were poured into the town. How all had changed in the two months since I left there! Around the Seigneur Duvarney's manor, in the sweet village of Beauport, was encamped the French army, and redoubts and batteries were ranged where Alixe and I and her brother Juste had many a time walked in a sylvan quiet. Here, as it were, round the bent and broken sides of a bowl, war raged, and the centre was like some caldron out of which imps of ships sprang and sailed to hand up fires of hell to the battalions on the ledges. Here swung Admiral Saunders's and Admiral Holmes's divisions, out of reach of the French batteries, yet able to menace and destroy, and to feed the British camps with men and munitions. There was no French ship in sight--only two old hulks with guns in the mouth of the St. Charles River, to protect the road to the palace gate--that is, at the Intendance. It was all there before me, the investment of Quebec, for which I had prayed and waited seven long years. All at once, on a lull in the fighting which had lasted twenty-four hours, the heavy batteries from the Levis shore opened upon the town, emptying therein the fatal fuel. Mixed feelings possessed me. I had at first listened to Clark's delighted imprecations and devilish praises with a feeling of brag almost akin to his own--that was the soldier and the Briton in me. But all at once the man, the lover, and the husband spoke: my wife was in that beleaguered town under that monstrous shower! She had said that she would never leave it till I came to fetch her. For I knew well that our marriage must become known after I had escaped; that she would not, for her own good pride and womanhood, keep it secret then; that it would be proclaimed while yet Gabord and the excellent chaplain were alive to attest all. Summoned by the Centurion, we were passed on beyond the eastern point of the Isle of Orleans to the admiral's ship, which lay in the channel off the point, with battleships in front and rear, and a line of frigates curving towards the rocky peninsula of Quebec. Then came a line of buoys beyond these, with manned boats moored alongside to protect the fleet from fire rafts, which once already the enemy had unavailingly sent down to ruin and burn our fleet. Admiral Saunders received me with great cordiality, thanked me for the dispatches, heard with applause of my adventures with the convoy, and at once, with dry humour, said he would be glad, if General Wolfe consented, to make my captured schooner one of his fleet. Later, when her history and doings became known in the fleet, she was at once called the Terror of France; for she did a wild thing or two before Quebec fell, though from first to last she had but her six swivel guns, which I had taken from the burnt sloop. Clark had command of her. From Admiral Saunders I learned that Bigot had recovered from his hurt, which had not been severe, and of the death of Monsieur Cournal, who had ridden his horse over the cliff in the dark. From the Admiral I came to General Wolfe at Montmorenci. I shall never forget my first look at my hero, my General, that flaming, exhaustless spirit, in a body so gauche and so unshapely. When I was brought to him, he was standing on a knoll alone, looking through a glass towards the batteries of Levis. The first thing that struck me, as he lowered the glass and leaned against a gun, was the melancholy in the lines of his figure. I never forget that, for it seemed to me even then that, whatever glory there was for British arms ahead, there was tragedy for him. Yet, as he turned at the sound of our footsteps, I almost laughed; for his straight red hair, his face defying all regularity, with the nose thrust out like a wedge and the chin falling back from an affectionate sort of mouth, his tall straggling frame and far from athletic shoulders, challenged contrast with the compact, handsome, graciously shaped Montcalm. In Montcalm was all manner of things to charm--all save that which presently filled me with awe, and showed me wherein this sallow-featured, pain-racked Briton was greater than his rival beyond measure: in that searching, burning eye, which carried all the distinction and greatness denied him elsewhere. There resolution, courage, endurance, deep design, clear vision, dogged will, and heroism, lived: a bright furnace of daring resolves and hopes, which gave England her sound desire. An officer of his staff presented me. He looked at me with piercing intelligence, and then, presently, his long hand made a swift motion of knowledge and greeting, and he said: "Yes, yes, and you are welcome, Captain Moray. I have heard of you, of much to your credit. You were for years in durance there." He pointed towards the town, where we could see the dome of the cathedral shine, and the leaping smoke and flame of the roaring batteries. "Six years, your Excellency," said I. "Papers of yours fell into General Braddock's hands, and they tried you for a spy--a curious case--a curious case! Wherein were they wrong and you justified, and why was all exchange refused?" I told him the main, the bare facts, and how, to force certain papers from me, I had been hounded to the edge of the grave. He nodded, and seemed lost in study of the mud-flats at the Beauport shore, and presently took to beating his foot upon the ground. After a minute, as if he had come back from a distance, he said: "Yes, yes, broken articles. Few women have a sense of national honour, such as La Pompadour none! An interesting matter." Then, after a moment: "You shall talk with our chief engineer; you know the town you should be useful to me, Captain Moray. What do you suggest concerning this siege of ours?" "Has any attack been made from above the town, your Excellency?" He lifted his eyebrows. "Is it vulnerable from there? From Cap Rouge, you mean?" "They have you at advantage everywhere, sir," I said. "A thousand men could keep the town, so long as this river, those mud-flats, and those high cliffs are there." "But above the town--" "Above the citadel there is a way--the only way: a feint from the basin here, a sham menace and attack, and the real action at the other door of the town." "They will, of course, throw fresh strength and vigilance above, if our fleet run their batteries and attack there; the river at Cap Rouge is like this Montmorenci for defense." He shook his head. "There is no way, I fear." "General," said I, "if you will take me into your service, and then give me leave to handle my little schooner in this basin and in the river above, I will prove that you may take your army into Quebec by entering it myself, and returning with something as precious to me as the taking of Quebec to you." He looked at me piercingly for a minute, then a sour sort of smile played at his lips. "A woman!" he said. "Well, it were not the first time the love of a wench opened the gates to a nation's victory." "Love of a wife, sir, should carry a man farther." He turned on me a commanding look. "Speak plainly," said he. "If we are to use you, let us know you in all." He waved farther back the officers with him. "I have no other wish, your Excellency," I answered him. Then I told him briefly of the Seigneur Duvarney, Alixe, and of Doltaire. "Duvarney! Duvarney!" he said, and a light came into his look. Then he called an officer. "Was it not one Seigneur Duvarney who this morning prayed protection for his chateau on the Isle of Orleans?" he asked. "Even so, your Excellency," was the reply; "and he said that if Captain Moray was with us, he would surely speak for the humanity and kindness he and his household had shown to British prisoners." "You speak, then, for this gentleman?" he asked, with a dry sort of smile. "With all my heart," I answered. "But why asks he protection at this late day?" "New orders are issued to lay waste the country; hitherto all property was safe," was the General's reply. "See that the Seigneur Duvarney's suit is granted," he added to his officer, "and say it is by Captain Moray's intervention.--There is another matter of this kind to be arranged this noon," he continued: "an exchange of prisoners, among whom are some ladies of birth and breeding, captured but two days ago. A gentleman comes from General Montcalm directly upon the point. You might be useful herein," he added, "if you will come to my tent in an hour." He turned to go. "And my ship, and permission to enter the town, your Excellency?" I asked. "What do you call your--ship?" he asked a little grimly. I told him how the sailors had already christened her. He smiled. "Then let her prove her title to Terror of France," he said, "by being pilot to the rest of our fleet, up the river, and you, Captain Moray, be guide to a footing on those heights"--he pointed to the town. "Then this army and its General, and all England, please God, will thank you. Your craft shall have commission as a rover--but if she gets into trouble?" "She will do as her owner has done these six years, your Excellency: she will fight her way out alone." He gazed long at the town and at the Levis shore. "From above, then, there is a way?" "For proof, if I come back alive--" "For proof that you have been--" he answered meaningly, with an amused flash of his eyes, though at the very moment a spasm of pain crossed his face, for he was suffering from incurable disease, and went about his great task in daily misery, yet cheerful and inspiring. "For proof, my wife, sir," said I. He nodded, but his thoughts were diverted instantly, and he went from me at once abstracted. But again he came back. "If you return," said he, "you shall serve upon my staff. You will care to view our operations," he added, motioning towards the intrenchments at the river. Then he stepped quickly away, and I was taken by an officer to the river, and though my heart warmed within me to hear that an attack was presently to be made from the shore not far distant from the falls, I felt that the attempt could not succeed: the French were too well intrenched. At the close of an hour I returned to the General's tent. It was luncheon-time, and they were about to sit as I was announced. The General motioned me to a seat, and then again, as if on second thought, made as though to introduce me to some one who stood beside him. My amazement was unbounded when I saw, smiling cynically at me, Monsieur Doltaire. He was the envoy from Quebec. I looked him in the eyes steadily for a moment, into malicious, unswerving eyes, as maliciously and unswervingly myself, and then we both bowed. "Captain Moray and I have sat at meat together before," he said, with mannered coolness. "We have played host and guest also: but that was ere he won our hearts by bold, romantic feats. Still, I dared scarcely hope to meet him at this table." "Which is sacred to good manners," said I meaningly and coolly, for my anger and surprise were too deep for excitement. I saw the General look at both of us keenly, then his marvellous eyes flashed intelligence, and a grim smile played at his lips a moment. After a little general conversation Doltaire addressed me: "We are not yet so overwhelmed with war but your being here again will give a fillip to our gossip. It must seem sad to you--you were so long with us--you have broken bread with so many of us--to see us pelted so. Sometimes a dinner-table is disordered by a riotous shell." He bent on torturing me. And it was not hard to do that, for how knew I what had happened? How came he back so soon from the Bastile? It was incredible. Perhaps he had never gone, in spite of all. After luncheon, the matter of exchange of prisoners was gone into, and one by one the names of the French prisoners in our hands--ladies and gentlemen apprehended at the chateau were ticked off, and I knew them all save two. The General deferred to me several times as to the persons and positions of the captives, and asked my suggestions. Immediately I proposed Mr. Wainfleet, the chaplain, in exchange for a prisoner, though his name was not on the list, but Doltaire shook his head in a blank sort of way. "Mr. Wainfleet! Mr. Wainfleet! There was no such prisoner in the town," he said. I insisted, but he stared at me inscrutably, and said that he had no record of the man. Then I spoke most forcibly to the General, and said that Mr. Wainfleet should be produced, or an account of him be given by the French Governor. Doltaire then said: "I am only responsible for these names recorded. Our General trusts to your honour, and you to ours, Monsieur le General." There was nothing more to say, and presently the exchanges were arranged, and, after compliments, Doltaire took his leave. I left the Governor also, and followed Doltaire. He turned to meet me. "Captain Moray and I," he remarked to the officers near, "are old--enemies; and there is a sad sweetness in meetings like these. May I--" The officers drew away at a little distance at once before the suggestion was made, and we were left alone. I was in a white heat, but yet in fair control. "You are surprised to see me here," he said. "Did you think the Bastile was for me? Tut! I had not got out of the country when we a packet came, bearing fresh commands. La Pompadour forgave me, and in the King's name bade me return to New France, and in her own she bade me get your papers, or hang you straight. And--you will think it singular--if need be, I was to relieve the Governor and Bigot also, and work to save New France with the excellent Marquis de Montcalm." He laughed. "You can see how absurd that is. I have held my peace, and I keep my commission in my pocket." I looked at him amazed that he should tell me this. He read my look, and said: "Yes, you are my confidant in this. I do not fear you. Your enemy is bound in honour, your friend may seek to serve himself." Again he laughed. "As if I, Tinoir Doltaire--note the agreeable combination of peasant and gentleman in my name--who held his hand from ambition for large things in France, should stake a lifetime on this foolish hazard! When I play, Captain Moray, it is for things large and vital. Else I remain the idler, the courtier--the son of the King." "Yet you lend your vast talent, the genius of those unknown possibilities, to this, monsieur--this little business of exchange of prisoners," I retorted ironically. "That is my whim--a social courtesy." "You said you knew nothing of the chaplain," I broke out. "Not so. I said he was on no record given me. Officially I know nothing of him." "Come," said I, "you know well how I am concerned for him. You quibble; you lied to our General." A wicked light shone in his eyes. "I choose to pass that by, for the moment," said he. "I am sorry you forget yourself; it were better for you and me to be courteous till our hour of reckoning, Shall we not meet some day?" he said, with a sweet hatred in his tone. "With all my heart." "But where?" "In yonder town," said I, pointing. He laughed provokingly. "You are melodramatic," he rejoined. "I could hold that town with one thousand men against all your army and five times your fleet." "You have ever talked and nothing done," said I. "Will you tell me the truth of the chaplain?" "Yes, in private the truth you shall hear," he said. "The man is dead." "If you speak true, he was murdered," I broke out. "You know well why." "No, no," he answered. "He was put in prison, escaped, made for the river, was pursued, fought, and was killed. So much for serving you." "Will you answer me one question?" said I. "Is my wife well? Is she safe? She is there set among villainies." "Your wife?" he answered, sneering. "If you mean Mademoiselle Duvarney, she is not there." Then he added solemnly and slowly: "She is in no fear of your batteries now--she is beyond them. When she was there, she was not child enough to think that foolish game with the vanished chaplain was a marriage. Did you think to gull a lady so beyond the minute's wildness? She is not there," he added again in a low voice. "She is dead?" I gasped. "My wife is dead?" "Enough of that," he answered with cold fierceness. "The lady saw the folly of it all, before she had done with the world. You--you, monsieur! It was but the pity of her gentle heart, of a romantic nature. You--you blundering alien, spy, and seducer!" With a gasp of anger I struck him in the face, and whipped out my sword. But the officers near came instantly between us, and I could see that they thought me gross, ill-mannered, and wild, to do this thing before the General's tent, and to an envoy. Doltaire stood still a moment. Then presently wiped a little blood from his mouth, and said: "Messieurs, Captain Moray's anger was justified; and for the blow he will justify that in some happier time--for me. He said that I had lied, and I proved him wrong. I called him a spy and a seducer--he sought to shame, he covered with sorrow, one of the noblest families of New France--and he has yet to prove me wrong. As envoy I may not fight him now, but I may tell you that I have every cue to send him to hell one day. He will do me the credit to say that it is not cowardice that stays me." "If no coward in the way of fighting, coward in all other things," I retorted instantly. "Well, well, as you may think." He turned to go. "We will meet there, then?" he said, pointing to the town. "And when?" "To-morrow," said I. He shrugged his shoulder as to a boyish petulance, for he thought it an idle boast. "To-morrow? Then come and pray with me in the cathedral, and after that we will cast up accounts--to-morrow," he said, with a poignant and exultant malice. A moment afterwards he was gone, and I was left alone. Presently I saw a boat shoot out from the shore below, and he was in it. Seeing me, he waved a hand in an ironical way. I paced up and down, sick and distracted, for half an hour or more. I knew not whether he lied concerning Alixe, but my heart was wrung with misery, for indeed he spoke with an air of truth. Dead! dead! dead! "In no fear of your batteries now," he had said. "Done with the world!" he had said. What else could it mean? Yet the more I thought, there came a feeling that somehow I had been tricked. "Done with the world!" Ay, a nunnery--was that it? But then, "In no fear of your batteries now"--that, what did that mean but death? At this distressful moment a message came from the General, and I went to his tent, trying to calm myself, but overcome with apprehension. I was kept another half hour waiting, and then, coming in to him, he questioned me closely for a little about Doltaire, and I told him the whole story briefly. Presently his secretary brought me the commission for my appointment to special service on the General's own staff. "Your first duty," said his Excellency, "will be to--reconnoitre; and if you come back safe, we will talk further." While he was speaking I kept looking at the list of prisoners which still lay upon his table. It ran thus: Monsieur and Madame Joubert. Monsieur and Madame Carcanal. Madame Rousillon. Madame Champigny. Monsieur Pipon. Mademoiselle La Rose. L'Abbe Durand. Monsieur Halboir. La Soeur Angelique. La Soeur Seraphine. I know not why it was, but the last three names held my eyes. Each of the other names I knew, and their owners also. When I looked close, I saw that where "La Soeur Angelique" now was another name had been written and then erased. I saw also that the writing was recent. Again, where "Halboir" was written there had been another name, and the same process of erasure and substitution had been made. It was not so with "La Soeur Seraphine." I said to the General at once, "Your excellency, it is possible you have been tricked." Then I pointed out what I had discovered. He nodded. "Will you let me go, sir?" said I. "Will you let me see this exchange?" "I fear you will be too late," he answered. "It is not a vital matter, I fancy." "Perhaps to me most vital," said I, and I explained my fears. "Then go, go," he said kindly. He quickly gave directions to have me carried to Admiral Saunders's ship, where the exchange was to be effected, and at the same time a general passport. In a few moments we were hard on our way. Now the batteries were silent. By the General's orders, the bombardment ceased while the exchange was being effected, and the French batteries also were still. A sudden quietness seemed to settle on land and sea, and there was only heard, now and then, the note of a bugle from a ship of war. The water in the basin was moveless, and the air was calm and quiet. This heraldry of war was all unnatural in the golden weather and sweet-smelling land. I urged the rowers to their task, and we flew on. We passed another boat loaded with men, singing boisterously a disorderly sort of song, called "Hot Stuff," set to the air "Lilies of France." It was out of touch with the general quiet: "When the gay Forty-Seventh is dashing ashore, While bullets are whistling and cannons do roar, Says Montcalm, 'Those are Shirleys--I know the lapels.' 'You lie,' says Ned Botwood, 'we swipe for Lascelles! Though our clothing is changed, and we scout powder-puff, Here's at you, ye swabs--here's give you Hot Stuff!'" While yet we were about two miles away, I saw a boat put out from the admiral's ship, then, at the same moment, one from the Lower Town, and they drew towards each other. I urged my men to their task, and as we were passing some of Admiral Saunders's ships, their sailors cheered us. Then came a silence, and it seemed to me that all our army and fleet, and that at Beauport, and the garrison of Quebec, were watching us; for the ramparts and shore were crowded. We drove on at an angle, to intercept the boat that left the admiral's ship before it reached the town. War leaned upon its arms and watched a strange duel. There was no authority in any one's hands save my own to stop the boat, and the two armies must avoid firing, for the people of both nations were here in this space between--ladies and gentlemen in the French boat going to the town, Englishmen and a poor woman or two coming to our own fleet. My men strained every muscle, but the pace was impossible--it could not last; and the rowers in the French boat hung over their oars also with enthusiasm. With the glass of the officer near me--Kingdon of Anstruther's Regiment--I could now see Doltaire standing erect in the boat, urging the boatmen on. All round that basin, on shore and cliff and mountains, thousands of veteran fighters--Fraser's, Otway's, Townsend's, Murray's; and on the other side the splendid soldiers of La Sarre, Languedoc, Bearn, and Guienne--watched in silence. Well they might, for in this entr'acte was the little weapon forged which opened the door of New France to England's glory. So may the little talent or opportunity make possible the genius of the great. The pain of this suspense grew so, that I longed for some sound to break the stillness; but there was nothing for minute after minute. Then, at last, on the halcyon air of that summer day floated the Angelus from the cathedral tower. Only a moment, in which one could feel, and see also, the French army praying, then came from the ramparts the sharp inspiring roll of a drum, and presently all was still again. Nearer and nearer the boat of prisoners approached the stone steps of the landing, and we were several hundred yards behind. I motioned to Doltaire to stop, but he made no sign. I saw the cloaked figures of the nuns near him, and I strained my eyes, but I could not note their faces. My men worked on ardently, and presently we gained. But I saw that it was impossible to reach them before they set foot on shore. Now their boat came to the steps, and one by one they hastily got out. Then I called twice to Doltaire to stop. The air was still, and my voice carried distinctly. Suddenly one of the cloaked figures sprang towards the steps with arms outstretched, calling aloud, "Robert! Robert!" After a moment, "Robert, my husband!" rang out again, and then a young officer and the other nun took her by the arm to force her away. At the sharp instigation of Doltaire, instantly some companies of marines filed in upon the place where they had stood, leveled their muskets on us, and hid my beloved wife from my view. I recognized the young officer who had put a hand upon Alixe. It was her brother Juste. "Alixe! Alixe!" I called, as my boat still came on. "Save me, Robert!" came the anguished reply, a faint but searching sound, and then no more. Misery and mystery were in my heart all at once. Doltaire had tricked me. "Those batteries can not harm her now!" Yes, yes, they could not while she was a prisoner in our camp. "Done with the world!" Truly, when wearing the garb of the Sister Angelique. But why that garb? I swore that I would be within that town by the morrow, that I would fetch my wife into safety, out from the damnable arts and devices of Master Devil Doltaire, as Gabord had called him. The captain of the marines called to us that another boat's length would fetch upon us the fire of his men. There was nothing to do, but to turn back, while from the shore I was reviled by soldiers and by the rabble. My marriage with Alixe had been made a national matter--of race and religion. So, as my men rowed back towards our fleet, I faced my enemies, and looked towards them without moving. I was grim enough that moment, God knows; I felt turned to stone. I did not stir when--ineffaceable brutality--the batteries on the heights began to play upon us, the shot falling round us, and passing over our heads, and musket-firing followed. "Damned villains! Faithless brutes!" cried Kingdon beside me. I did not speak a word, but stood there defiant, as when we first had turned back. Now, sharply, angrily, from all our batteries, there came reply to the French; and as we came on with only one man wounded and one oar broken, the whole fleet cheered us. I steered straight for the Terror of France, and there Clark and I, he swearing violently, laid plans. XXIV THE SACRED COUNTERSIGN That night, at nine o'clock, the Terror of France, catching the flow of the tide, with one sail set and a gentle wind, left the fleet, and came slowly up the river, under the batteries of the town. In the gloom we passed lazily on with the flow of the tide, unquestioned, soon leaving the citadel behind, and ere long came softly to that point called Anse du Foulon, above which Sillery stood. The shore could not be seen distinctly, but I knew by a perfect instinct the cleft in the hillside where was the path leading up the mountain. I bade Clark come up the river again two nights hence to watch for my signal, which was there agreed upon. If I did not come, then, with General Wolfe's consent, he must show the General this path up the mountain. He swore that all should be as I wished; and indeed you would have thought that he and his Terror of France were to level Quebec to the water's edge. I stole softly to the shore in a boat, which I drew up among the bushes, hiding it as well as I could in the dark, and then, feeling for my pistols and my knife, I crept upwards, coming presently to the passage in the mountain. I toiled on to the summit without a sound of alarm from above. Pushing forward, a light flashed from the windmill, and a man, and then two men, appeared in the open door. One of them was Captain Lancy, whom I had very good reason to remember. The last time I saw him was that famous morning when he would have had me shot five minutes before the appointed hour, rather than endure the cold and be kept from his breakfast. I itched to call him to account then and there, but that would have been foolish play. I was outside of the belt of light falling from the door, and stealing round I came near to the windmill on the town side. I was not surprised to see such poor watch kept. Above the town, up to this time, the guard was of a perfunctory sort, for the great cliffs were thought impregnable; and even if surmounted, there was still the walled town to take, surrounded by the St. Lawrence, the St. Charles, and these massive bulwarks. Presently Lancy stepped out into the light, and said, with a hoarse laugh, "Blood of Peter, it was a sight to-day! She has a constant fancy for the English filibuster. 'Robert! my husband!' she bleated like a pretty lamb, and Doltaire grinned at her." "But Doltaire will have her yet." "He has her pinched like a mouse in a weasel's teeth." "My faith, mademoiselle has no sweet road to travel since her mother died," was the careless reply. I almost cried out. Here was a blow which staggered me. Her mother dead! Presently the scoffer continued: "The Duvarneys would remain in the city, and on that very night, as they sit at dinner, a shell disturbs them, a splinter strikes Madame, and two days after she is carried to her grave." They linked arms and walked on. It was a dangerous business I was set on, for I was sure that I would be hung without shrift if captured. As it proved afterwards, I had been proclaimed, and it was enjoined on all Frenchmen and true Catholics to kill me if the chance showed. Only two things could I depend on: Voban and my disguise, which was very good. From the Terror of France I had got a peasant's dress, and by rubbing my hands and face with the stain of butternut, cutting again my new-grown beard, and wearing a wig, I was well guarded against discovery. How to get into the city was the question. By the St. Charles River and the Palace Gate, and by the St. Louis Gate, not far from the citadel, were the only ways, and both were difficult. I had, however, two or three plans, and these I chewed as I went across Maitre Abraham's fields, and came to the main road from Sillery to the town. Soon I heard the noise of clattering hoofs, and jointly with this I saw a figure rise up not far ahead of me, as if waiting for the coming horseman. I drew back. The horseman passed me, and, as he came on slowly, I saw the figure spring suddenly from the roadside and make a stroke at the horseman. In a moment they were a rolling mass upon the ground, while the horse trotted down the road a little, and stood still. I never knew the cause of that encounter--robbery, or private hate, or paid assault; but there was scarcely a sound as the two men struggled. Presently, there was groaning, and both lay still. I hurried to them, and found one dead, and the other dying, and dagger wounds in both, for the assault had been at such close quarters that the horseman had had no chance to use a pistol. My plans were changed on the instant. I drew the military coat, boots, and cap off the horseman, and put them on myself; and thrusting my hand into his waistcoat--for he looked like a courier--I found a packet. This I put into my pocket, and then, making for the horse which stood quiet in the road, I mounted it and rode on towards the town. Striking a light, I found that the packet was addressed to the Governor. A serious thought disturbed me: I could not get into the town through the gates without the countersign. I rode on, anxious and perplexed. Presently a thought pulled me up. The courier was insensible when I left him, and he was the only one who could help me in this. I greatly reproached myself for leaving him while he was still alive. "Poor devil," thought I to myself, "there is some one whom his death will hurt. He must not die alone. He was no enemy of mine." I went back, and, getting from the horse, stooped to him, lifted up his head, and found that he was not dead. I spoke in his ear. He moaned, and his eyes opened. "What is your name?" said I. "Jean--Labrouk," he whispered. Now I remembered him. He was the soldier whom Gabord had sent as messenger to Voban the night I was first taken to the citadel. "Shall I carry word for you to any one?" asked I. There was a slight pause; then he said, "Tell my--Babette--Jacques Dobrotte owes me ten francs--and--a leg--of mutton. Tell--my Babette--to give my coat of beaver fur to Gabord the soldier. Tell"...he sank back, but raised himself, and continued: "Tell my Babette I weep with her.... Ah, mon grand homme de Calvaire--bon soir!" He sank back again, but I roused him with one question more, vital to me. I must have the countersign. "Labrouk! Labrouk!" said I sharply. He opened his dull, glazed eyes. "Qui va la?" said I, and I waited anxiously. Thought seemed to rally in him, and, staring--alas! how helpless and how sad: that look of a man brought back for an instant from the Shadows!--his lips moved. "France," was the whispered reply. "Advance and give the countersign!" I urged. "Jesu--" he murmured faintly. I drew from my breast the cross that Mathilde had given me, and pressed it to his lips. He sighed softly, lifted his hand to it, and then fell back, never to speak again. After covering his face and decently laying the body out, I mounted the horse again. Glancing up, I saw that this bad business had befallen not twenty feet from a high Calvary at the roadside. I was in a painful quandary. Did Labrouk mean that the countersign was "Jesu," or was that word the broken prayer of his soul as it hurried forth? So strange a countersign I had never heard, and yet it might be used in this Catholic country. This day might be some great feast of the Church--possibly that of the naming of Christ (which was the case, as I afterwards knew). I rode on, tossed about in my mind. So much hung on this. If I could not give the countersign, I should have to fight my way back again the road I came. But I must try my luck. So I went on, beating up my heart to confidence; and now I came to the St. Louis Gate. A tiny fire was burning near, and two sentinels stepped forward as I rode boldly on the entrance. "Qui va la?" was the sharp call. "France," was my reply, in a voice as like the peasant's as possible. "Advance and give the countersign," came the demand. Another voice called from the darkness of the wall: "Come and drink, comrade; I've a brother with Bougainville." "Jesu," said I to the sentinel, answering his demand for the countersign, and I spurred on my horse idly, though my heart was thumping hard, for there were several sturdy fellows lying beyond the dull handful of fire. Instantly the sentinel's hand came to my bridle-rein. "Halt!" roared he. Surely some good spirit was with me then to prompt me, for, with a careless laugh, as though I had not before finished the countersign, "Christ," I added--"Jesu Christ!" With an oath the soldier let go the bridle-rein, the other opened the gates, and I passed through. I heard the first fellow swearing roundly to the others that he would "send yon courier to fires of hell, if he played with him again so." The gates closed behind me, and I was in the town which had seen the worst days and best moments of my life. I rode along at a trot, and once again beyond the citadel was summoned by a sentinel. Safely passed on, I came down towards the Chateau St. Louis. I rode boldly up to the great entrance door, and handed the packet to the sentinel. "From whom?" he asked. "Look in the corner," said I. "And what business is't of yours?" "There is no word in the corner," answered he doggedly. "Is't from Monsieur le General at Cap Rouge?" "Bah! Did you think it was from an English wolf?" I asked. His dull face broke a little. "Is Jean Labrouk with Bougainville yet?" "He's done with Bougainville; he's dead," I answered. "Dead! dead!" said he, a sort of grin playing on his face. I made a shot at a venture. "But you're to pay his wife Babette the ten francs and the leg of mutton in twenty-four hours, or his ghost will follow you. Swallow that, pudding-head! And see you pay it, or every man in our company swears to break a score of shingles on your bare back." "I'll pay, I'll pay," he said, and he took to trembling. "Where shall I find Babette?" asked I. "I come from Isle aux Coudres; I know not this rambling town." "A little house hugging the cathedral rear," he explained. "Babette sweeps out the vestry, and fetches water for the priests." "Good," said I. "Take that to the Governor at once, and send the corporal of the guard to have this horse fed and cared for, and he's to carry back the Governor's messenger. I've further business for the General in the town. And tell your captain of the guard to send and pick up two dead men in the highway, just against the first Calvary beyond the town." He did my bidding, and I dismounted, and was about to get away, when I saw the Chevalier de la Darante and the Intendant appear at the door. They paused upon the steps. The Chevalier was speaking most earnestly: "To a nunnery--a piteous shame! it should not be, your Excellency." "To decline upon Monsieur Doltaire, then?" asked Bigot, with a sneer. "Your Excellency believes in no woman," responded the Chevalier stiffly. "Ah yes, in one!" was the cynical reply. "Is it possible? And she remains a friend of your Excellency?" came back in irony. "The very best; she finds me unendurable." "Philosophy shirks the solving of that problem, your Excellency," was the cold reply. "No, it is easy. The woman to be trusted is she who never trusts." "The paragon--or prodigy--who is she?" "Even Madame Jamond." "She danced for you once, your Excellency, they tell me." "She was a devil that night; she drove us mad." So Doltaire had not given up the secret of that affair! There was silence for a moment, and then the Chevalier said, "Her father will not let her go to a nunnery--no, no. Why should he yield to the Church in this?" Bigot shrugged a shoulder. "Not even to hide--shame?" "Liar--ruffian!" said I through my teeth. The Chevalier answered for me: "I would stake my life on her truth and purity." "You forget the mock marriage, dear Chevalier." "It was after the manner of his creed and people." "It was after a manner we all have used at times." "Speak for yourself, your Excellency," was the austere reply. Nevertheless, I could see that the Chevalier was much troubled. "She forgot race, religion, people--all, to spend still hours with a foreign spy in prison," urged Bigot, with damnable point and suggestion. "Hush, sir!" said the Chevalier. "She is a girl once much beloved and ever admired among us. Let not your rancour against the man be spent upon the maid. Nay, more, why should you hate the man so? It is said, your Excellency, that this Moray did not fire the shot that wounded you, but one who has less reason to love you." Bigot smiled wickedly, but said nothing. The Chevalier laid a hand on Bigot's arm. "Will you not oppose the Governor and the bishop? Her fate is sad enough." "I will not lift a finger. There are weightier matters. Let Doltaire, the idler, the Don Amato, the hunter of that fawn, save her from the holy ambush. Tut, tut, Chevalier. Let her go. Your nephew is to marry her sister; let her be swallowed up--a shame behind the veil, the sweet litany of the cloister." The Chevalier's voice set hard as he said in quick reply, "My family honour, Francois Bigot, needs no screen. And if you doubt that, I will give you argument at your pleasure;" so saying, he turned and went back into the chateau. Thus the honest Chevalier kept his word, given to me when I released him from serving me on the St. Lawrence. Bigot came down the steps, smiling detestably, and passed me with no more than a quick look. I made my way cautiously through the streets towards the cathedral, for I owed a duty to the poor soldier who had died in my arms, through whose death I had been able to enter the town. Disarray and ruin met my sight at every hand. Shot and shell had made wicked havoc. Houses where, as a hostage, I had dined, were battered and broken; public buildings were shapeless masses, and dogs and thieves prowled among the ruins. Drunken soldiers staggered past me; hags begged for sous or bread at corners; and devoted priests and long-robed Recollet monks, cowled and alert, hurried past, silent, and worn with labours, watchings, and prayers. A number of officers in white uniforms rode by, going towards the chateau, and a company of coureurs de bois came up from Mountain Street, singing: "Giron, giran! le canon grand-- Commencez-vous, commencez-vous!" Here and there were fires lighted in the streets, though it was not cold, and beside them peasants and soldiers drank and quarreled over food--for starvation was abroad in the land. By one of these fires, in a secluded street--for I had come a roundabout way--were a number of soldiers of Languedoc's regiment (I knew them by their trick of headgear and their stoutness), and with them reckless girls, who, in their abandonment, seemed to me like those revellers in Herculaneum, who danced their way into the Cimmerian darkness. I had no thought of staying there to moralize upon the theme; but, as I looked, a figure came out of the dusk ahead, and moved swiftly towards me. It was Mathilde. She seemed bent on some errand, but the revellers at the fire caught her attention, and she suddenly swerved towards them, and came into the dull glow, her great black eyes shining with bewildered brilliancy and vague keenness, her long fingers reaching out with a sort of chafing motion. She did not speak till she was among them. I drew into the shade of a broken wall, and watched. She looked all round the circle, and then, without a word, took an iron crucifix which hung upon her breast, and silently lifted it above their heads for a moment. I myself felt a kind of thrill go through me, for her wild beauty was almost tragical. Her madness was not grotesque, but solemn and dramatic. There was something terribly deliberate in her strangeness; it was full of awe to the beholder, more searching and painfully pitiful than melancholy. Coarse hands fell away from wanton waists; ribaldry hesitated; hot faces drew apart; and all at once a girl with a crackling laugh threw a tin cup of liquor into the fire. Even as she did it, a wretched dwarf sprang into the circle without a word, and, snatching the cup out of the flames, jumped back again into the darkness, peering into it with a hollow laugh. As he did so a soldier raised a heavy stick to throw at him; but the girl caught him by the arms, and said, with a hoarse pathos, "My God, no, Alphonse! It is my brother!" Here Mathilde, still holding out the cross, said in a loud whisper, "'Sh, 'sh! My children, go not to the palace, for there is Francois Bigot, and he has a devil. But if you have no cottage, I will give you a home. I know the way to it up in the hills. Poor children, see, I will make you happy." She took a dozen little wooden crosses from her girdle, and, stepping round the circle, gave each person one. No man refused, save a young militiaman; and when, with a sneering laugh, he threw his into the fire, she stooped over him and said, "Poor boy! poor boy!" She put her fingers on her lips, and whispered, "Beati immaculati--miserere mei, Deus," stray phrases gathered from the liturgy, pregnant to her brain, order and truth flashing out of wandering and fantasy. No one of the girls refused, but sat there, some laughing nervously, some silent; for this mad maid had come to be surrounded with a superstitious reverence in the eyes of the common people. It was said she had a home in the hills somewhere, to which she disappeared for days and weeks, and came back hung about the girdle with crosses; and it was also said that her red robe never became frayed, shabby, or disordered. Suddenly she turned and left them. I let her pass, unchecked, and went on towards the cathedral, humming an old French chanson. I did this because now and then I met soldiers and patrols, and my free and careless manner disarmed notice. Once or twice drunken soldiers stopped me and threw their arms about me, saluting me on the cheeks a la mode, asking themselves to drink with me. Getting free of them, I came on my way, and was glad to reach the cathedral unchallenged. Here and there a broken buttress or a splintered wall told where our guns had played upon it, but inside I could hear an organ playing and a Miserere being chanted. I went round to its rear, and there I saw the little house described by the sentinel at the chateau. Coming to the door, I knocked, and it was opened at once by a warm-faced, woman of thirty or so, who instantly brightened on seeing me. "Ah, you come from Cap Rouge, m'sieu'," she said, looking at my clothes--her own husband's, though she knew it not. "I come from Jean," said I, and stepped inside. She shut the door, and then I saw, sitting in a corner, by a lighted table, an old man, bowed and shrunken, white hair and white beard falling all about him, and nothing of his features to be seen save high cheek-bones and two hawklike eyes which peered up at me. "So, so, from Jean," he said in a high, piping voice. "Jean's a pretty boy--ay, ay, Jean's like his father, but neither with a foot like mine--a foot for the Court, said Frotenac to me--yes, yes, I knew the great Frotenac--" The wife interrupted his gossip. "What news from Jean?" said she. "He hoped to come one day this week." "He says," responded I gently, "that Jacques Dobrotte owes you ten francs and a leg of mutton, and that you are to give his great beaver coat to Gabord the soldier." "Ay, ay, Gabord the soldier, he that the English spy near sent to heaven." quavered the old man. The bitter truth was slowly dawning upon the wife. She was repeating my words in a whisper, as if to grasp their full meaning. "He said also," I continued, "'Tell Babette I weep with her.'" She was very still and dazed; her fingers went to her white lips, and stayed there for a moment. I never saw such a numb misery in any face. "And last of all, he said, 'Ah, mon grand homme de Calvaire--bon soir!'" She turned round, and went and sat down beside the old man, looked into his face for a minute silently, and then said, "Grandfather, Jean is dead; our Jean is dead." The old man peered at her for a moment, then broke into a strange laugh, which had in it the reflection of a distant misery, and said, "Our little Jean, our little Jean Labrouk! Ha! ha! There was Villon, Marmon, Gabriel, and Gouloir, and all their sons; and they all said the same at the last, 'Mon grand homme--de Calvaire--bon soir!' Then there was little Jean, the pretty little Jean. He could not row a boat, but he could ride a horse, and he had an eye like me. Ha, ha! I have seen them all say good-night. Good-morning, my children, I will say one day, and I will give them all the news, and I will tell them all I have done these hundred years. Ha, ha, ha--" The wife put her fingers on his lips, and, turning to me, said with a peculiar sorrow, "Will they fetch him to me?" I assured her that they would. The old man fixed his eyes on me most strangely, and then, stretching out his finger and leaning forward, he said, with a voice of senile wildness, "Ah, ah, the coat of our little Jean!" I stood there like any criminal caught in his shameful act. Though I had not forgotten that I wore the dead man's clothes, I could not think that they would be recognized, for they seemed like others of the French army--white, with violet facings. I can not tell to this day what it was that enabled them to detect the coat; but there I stood condemned before them. The wife sprang to her feet, came to me with a set face, and stared stonily at the coat for an instant. Then, with a cry of alarm, she made for the door; but I stepped quickly before her, and bade her wait till she heard what I had to say. Like lightning it all went through my brain. I was ruined if she gave an alarm: all Quebec would be at my heels, and my purposes would be defeated. There was but one thing to do--tell her the whole truth, and trust her; for I had at least done fairly by her and by the dead man. So I told them how Jean Labrouk had met his death; told them who I was, and why I was in Quebec--how Jean died in my arms; and, taking from my breast the cross that Mathilde had given me, I swore by it that every word which I said was true. The wife scarcely stirred while I spoke, but with wide dry eyes and hands clasping and unclasping heard me through. I told her how I might have left Jean to die without a sign or message to them, how I had put the cross to his lips as he went forth, and how by coming here at all I placed my safety in her hands, and now, by telling my story, my life itself. It was a daring and a difficult task. When I had finished, both sat silent for a moment, and then the old man said, "Ay, ay, Jean's father and his uncle Marmon were killed a-horseback, and by the knife. Ay, ay, it is our way. Jean was good company--none better, mass over, on a Sunday. Come, we will light candles for Jean, and comb his hair back sweet, and masses shall be said, and--" Again the woman interrupted, quieting him. Then she turned to me, and I awaited her words with a desperate sort of courage. "I believe you," she said. "I remember you now. My sister was the wife of your keeper at the common jail. You shall be safe. Alas! my Jean might have died without a word to me all alone in the night. Merci mille fois, monsieur!" Then she rocked a little to and fro, and the old man looked at her like a curious child. At last, "I must go to him," she said. "My poor Jean must be brought home." I told her I had already left word concerning the body at headquarters. She thanked me again. Overcome as she was, she went and brought me a peasant's hat and coat. Such trust and kindness touched me. Trembling, she took from me the coat and hat I had worn, and she put her hands before her eyes when she saw a little spot of blood upon the flap of a pocket. The old man reached out his hands, and, taking them, he held them on his knees, whispering to himself. "You will be safe here," the wife said to me. "The loft above is small, but it will hide you, if you have no better place." I was thankful that I had told her all the truth. I should be snug here, awaiting the affair in the cathedral on the morrow. There was Voban, but I knew not of him, or whether he was open to aid or shelter me. His own safety had been long in peril; he might be dead, for all I knew. I thanked the poor woman warmly, and then asked her if the old man might not betray me to strangers. She bade me leave all that to her--that I should be safe for a while, at least. Soon afterwards I went abroad, and made my way by a devious route to Voban's house. As I did so, I could see the lights of our fleet in the Basin, and the camp-fires of our army on the Levis shore, on Isle Orleans, and even at Montmorenci, and the myriad lights in the French encampment at Beauport. How impossible it all looked--to unseat from this high rock the Empire of France! Ay, and how hard it would be to get out of this same city with Alixe! Voban's house stood amid a mass of ruins, itself broken a little, but still sound enough to live in. There was no light. I clambered over debris, made my way to his bedroom window, and tapped on the shutter. There was no response. I tried to open it, but it would not stir. So I thrust beneath it, on the chance of his finding it if he opened the casement in the morning, a little piece of paper, with one word upon it--the name of his brother. He knew my handwriting, and he would guess where to-morrow would find me, for I had also hastily drawn upon the paper the entrance of the cathedral. I went back to the little house by the cathedral, and was admitted by the stricken wife. The old man was abed. I climbed up to the small loft, and lay there wide-awake for hours. At last came the sounds that I had waited for, and presently I knew by the tramp beneath, and by low laments floating up, that a wife was mourning over the dead body of her husband. I lay long and listened to the varying sounds, but at last all became still, and I fell asleep. XXV IN THE CATHEDRAL I awoke with the dawn, and, dressing, looked out of the window, seeing the brindled light spread over the battered roofs and ruins of the Lower Town. A bell was calling to prayers in the Jesuit College not far away, and bugle-calls told of the stirring garrison. Soldiers and stragglers passed down the street near by, and a few starved peasants crept about the cathedral with downcast eyes, eager for crumbs that a well-fed soldier might cast aside. Yet I knew that in the Intendant's Palace and among the officers of the army there was abundance, with revelry and dissipation. Presently I drew to the trap-door of my loft, and, raising it gently, came down the ladder to the little hallway, and softly opened the door of the room where Labrouk's body lay. Candles were burning at his head and his feet, and two peasants sat dozing in chairs near by. I could see Labrouk's face plainly in the flickering light: a rough, wholesome face it was, refined by death, yet unshaven and unkempt, too. Here was work for Voban's shears and razor. Presently there was a footstep behind me, and, turning, I saw in the half-light the widowed wife. "Madame," said I in a whisper, "I too weep with you. I pray for as true an end for myself." "He was of the true faith, thank the good God," she said sincerely. She passed into the room, and the two watchers, after taking refreshment, left the house. Suddenly she hastened to the door, called one back, and, pointing to the body, whispered something. The peasant nodded and turned away. She came back into the room, stood looking at the face of the dead man for a moment, and bent over and kissed the crucifix clasped in the cold hands. Then she stepped about the room, moving a chair and sweeping up a speck of dust in a mechanical way. Presently, as if she again remembered me, she asked me to enter the room. Then she bolted the outer door of the house. I stood looking at the body of her husband, and said, "Were it not well to have Voban the barber?" "I have sent for him and for Gabord," she replied. "Gabord was Jean's good friend. He is with General Montcalm. The Governor put him in prison because of the marriage of Mademoiselle Duvarney, but Monsieur Doltaire set him free, and now he serves General Montcalm. "I have work in the cathedral," continued the poor woman, "and I shall go to it this morning as I have always gone. There is a little unused closet in a gallery where you may hide, and still see all that happens. It is your last look at the lady, and I will give it to you, as you gave me to know of my Jean." "My last look?" I asked eagerly. "She goes into the nunnery to-morrow, they say," was the reply. "Her marriage is to be set aside by the bishop to-day--in the cathedral. This is her last night to live as such as I--but no, she will be happier so." "Madame," said I, "I am a heretic, but I listened when your husband said, 'Mon grand homme de Calvaire, bon soir!' Was the cross less a cross because a heretic put it to his lips? Is a marriage less a marriage because a heretic is the husband? Madame, you loved your Jean; if he were living now, what would you do to keep him. Think, madame, is not love more than all?" She turned to the dead body. "Mon petit Jean!" she murmured, but made no reply to me, and for many minutes the room was silent. At last she turned, and said, "You must come at once, for soon the priests will be at the church. A little later I will bring you some breakfast, and you must not stir from there till I come to fetch you--no." "I wish to see Voban," said I. She thought a moment. "I will try to fetch him to you by-and-bye," she said. She did not speak further, but finished the sentence by pointing to the body. Presently, hearing footsteps, she drew me into another little room. "It is the grandfather," she said. "He has forgotten you already, and he must not see you again." We saw the old man hobble into the room we had left, carrying in one arm Jean's coat and hat. He stood still, and nodded at the body and mumbled to himself; then he went over and touched the hands and forehead, nodding wisely; after which he came to his armchair, and, sitting down, spread the coat over his knees, put the cap on it, and gossiped with himself: "In eild our idle fancies all return, The mind's eye cradled by the open grave." A moment later, the woman passed from the rear of the house to the vestry door of the cathedral. After a minute, seeing no one near, I followed, came to the front door, entered, and passed up a side aisle towards the choir. There was no one to be seen, but soon the woman came out of the vestry and beckoned to me nervously. I followed her quick movements, and was soon in a narrow stairway, coming, after fifty steps or so, to a sort of cloister, from which we went into a little cubiculum, or cell, with a wooden lattice door which opened on a small gallery. Through the lattices the nave amid choir could be viewed distinctly. Without a word the woman turned and left me, and I sat down on a little stone bench and waited. I saw the acolytes come and go, and priests move back and forth before the altar; I smelt the grateful incense as it rose when mass was said; I watched the people gather in little clusters at the different shrines, or seek the confessional, or kneel to receive the blessed sacrament. Many who came were familiar--among them Mademoiselle Lucie Lotbiniere. Lucie prayed long before a shrine of the Virgin, and when she rose at last her face bore signs of weeping. Also I noticed her suddenly start as she moved down the aisle, for a figure came forward from seclusion and touched her arm. As he half turned I saw that it was Juste Duvarney. The girl drew back from him, raising her hand as if in protest, and it struck me that her grief and her repulse of him had to do with putting Alixe away into a nunnery. I sat hungry and thirsty for quite three hours, and then the church became empty, and only an old verger kept a seat by the door, half asleep, though the artillery of both armies was at work, and the air was laden with the smell of powder. (Until this time our batteries had avoided firing on the churches.) At last I heard footsteps near me in the dark stairway, and I felt for my pistols, for the feet were not those of Labrouk's wife. I waited anxiously, and was overjoyed to see Voban enter my hiding-place, bearing some food. I greeted him warmly, but he made little demonstration. He was like one who, occupied with some great matter, passed through the usual affairs of life with a distant eye. Immediately he handed me a letter, saying: "M'sieu', I give my word to hand you this--in a day or a year, as I am able. I get your message to me this morning, and then I come to care for Jean Labrouk, and so I find you here, and I give the letter. It come to me last night." The letter was from Alixe. I opened it with haste, and, in the dim light, read: MY BELOVED HUSBAND: Oh, was there no power in earth or heaven to bring me to your arms to-day? To-morow they come to see my marriage annulled by the Church. And every one will say it is annulled--every one but me. I, in God's name, will say no, though it break my heart to oppose myself to them all. Why did my brother come back? He has been hard--O, Robert, he has been hard upon me, and yet I was ever kind to him! My father, too, he listens to the Church, and, though he likes not Monsieur Doltaire, he works for him in a hundred ways without seeing it. I, alas! see it too well, and my brother is as wax in monsieur's hands. Juste loves Lucie Lotbiniere--that should make him kind. She, sweet friend, does not desert me, but is kept from me. She says she will not yield to Juste's suit until he yields to me. If--oh, if Madame Jamond had not gone to Montreal! ...As I was writing the foregoing sentence, my father asked to see me, and we have had a talk--ah, a most bitter talk! "Alixe," said he, "this is our last evening together, and I would have it peaceful." "My father," said I, "it is not my will that this evening be our last; and for peace, I long for it with all my heart." He frowned, and answered, "You have brought me trouble and sorrow. Mother of God! was it not possible for you to be as your sister Georgette? I gave her less love, yet she honours me more." "She honours you, my father, by a sweet, good life, and by marriage into an honourable family, and at your word she gives her hand to Monsieur Auguste de la Darante. She marries to your pleasure, therefore she has peace and your love. I marry a man of my own choosing, a bitterly wronged gentleman, and you treat me as some wicked thing. Is that like a father who loves his child?" "The wronged gentleman, as you call him, invaded that which is the pride of every honest gentleman," he said. "And what is that?" asked I quietly, though I felt the blood beating at my temples. "My family honour, the good name and virtue of my daughter." I got to my feet, and looked my father in the eyes with an anger and a coldness that hurts me now when I think of it, and I said, "I will not let you speak so to me. Friendless though I be, you shall not. You have the power to oppress me, but you shall not slander me to my face. Can not you leave insults to my enemies?" "I will never leave you to the insults of this mock marriage," answered he, angrily also. "Two days hence I take command of five thousand burghers, and your brother Juste serves with General Montcalm. There is to be last fighting soon between us and the English. I do not doubt of the result, but I may fall, and your brother also, and, should the English win, I will not leave you to him you call your husband. Therefore you shall be kept safe where no alien hands may reach you. The Church will hold you close." I calmed myself again while listening to him, and I asked, "Is there no other way?" He shook his head. "Is there no Monsieur Doltaire?" said I. "He has a king's blood in his veins!" He looked sharply at me. "You are mocking," he replied. "No, no, that is no way, either. Monsieur Doltaire must never mate with daughter of mine. I will take care of that; the Church is a perfect if gentle jailer." I could bear it no longer. I knelt to him. I begged him to have pity on me. I pleaded with him; I recalled the days when, as a child, I sat upon his knee and listened to the wonderful tales he told; I begged him, by the memory of all the years when he and I were such true friends to be kind to me now, to be merciful--even though he thought I had done wrong--to be merciful. I asked him to remember that I was a motherless girl, and that if I had missed the way to happiness he ought not to make my path bitter to the end. I begged him to give me back his love and confidence, and, if I must for evermore be parted from you, to let me be with him, not to put me away into a convent. Oh, how my heart leaped when I saw his face soften! "Well, well," he said, "if I live, you shall be taken from the convent; but for the present, till this fighting is over, it is the only safe place. There, too, you shall be safe from Monsieur Doltaire." It was poor comfort. "But should you be killed, and the English take Quebec?" said I. "When I am dead," he answered, "when I am dead, then there is your brother." "And if he speaks for Monsieur Doltaire?" asked I. "There is the Church and God always," he answered. "And my own husband, the man who saved your life, my father," I urged gently; and when he would have spoken I threw myself into his arms--the first time in such long, long weeks!--and, stopping his lips with my fingers, burst into tears on his breast. I think much of his anger against me passed, yet before he left he said he could not now prevent the annulment of the marriage, even if he would, for other powers were at work; which powers I supposed to be the Governor, for certain reasons of enmity to my father and me--alas! how changed is he, the vain old man!--and Monsieur Doltaire, whose ends I knew so well. So they will unwed us to-morrow, Robert; but be sure that I shall never be unwed in my own eyes, and that I will wait till I die, hoping you will come and take me--oh, Robert, my husband--take me home. If I had one hundred men, I would fight my way out of this city, and to you; but, dear, I have none, not even Gabord, who is not let come near me. There is but Voban. Yet he will bear you this, if it be possible, for he comes to-night to adorn my fashionable brother. The poor Mathilde I have not seen of late. She has vanished. When they began to keep me close, and carried me off at last into the country, where we were captured by the English, I could not see her, and my heart aches for her. God bless you, Robert, and farewell. How we shall smile, when all this misery is done! Oh, say we shall, say we shall smile, and all this misery cease. Will you not take me home? Do you still love thy wife, thy ALIXE? I bade Voban come to me at the little house behind the church that night at ten o'clock, and by then I should have arranged some plan of action. I knew not whether to trust Gabord or no. I was sorry now that I had not tried to bring Clark with me. He was fearless, and he knew the town well; but he lacked discretion, and that was vital. Two hours of waiting, then came a scene which is burned into my brain. I looked down upon a mass of people, soldiers, couriers of the woods, beggars, priests, camp followers, and anxious gentlefolk, come from seclusion, or hiding, or vigils of war, to see a host of powers torture a young girl who by suffering had been made a woman long before her time. Out in the streets was the tramping of armed men, together with the call of bugles and the sharp rattle of drums. Presently I heard the hoofs of many horses, and soon afterwards there entered the door, and way was made for him up the nave, the Marquis de Vaudreuil and his suite, with the Chevalier de la Darante, the Intendant, and--to my indignation--Juste Duvarney. They had no sooner taken their places than, from a little side door near the vestry, there entered the Seigneur Duvarney and Alixe, who, coming down slowly, took places very near the chancel steps. The Seigneur was pale and stern, and carried himself with great dignity. His glance never shifted from the choir, where the priests slowly entered and took their places, the aged and feeble bishop going falteringly to his throne. Alixe's face was pale and sorrowful, and yet it had a dignity and self-reliance that gave it a kind of grandeur. A buzz passed through the building, yet I noted, too, with gladness that there were tears on many faces. A figure stole in beside Alixe. It was Mademoiselle Lotbiniere, who immediately was followed by her mother. I leaned forward, perfectly hidden, and listened to the singsong voices of the priests, the musical note of the responses, heard the Kyrie Eleison, the clanging of the belfry bell as the host was raised by the trembling bishop. The silence which followed the mournful voluntary played by the organ was most painful to me. At that moment a figure stepped from behind a pillar, and gave Alixe a deep, scrutinizing look. It was Doltaire. He was graver than I had ever seen him, and was dressed scrupulously in black, with a little white lace showing at the wrists and neck. A handsomer figure it would be hard to see; and I hated him for it, and wondered what new devilry was in his mind. He seemed to sweep the church with a glance. Nothing could have escaped that swift, searching look. His eyes were even raised to where I was, so that I involuntarily drew back, though I knew he could not see me. I was arrested suddenly by a curious disdainful, even sneering smile which played upon his face as he looked at Vaudreuil and Bigot. There was in it more scorn than malice, more triumph than active hatred. All at once I remembered what he had said to me the day before: that he had commission from the King through La Pompadour to take over the reins of government from the two confederates, and send them to France to answer the charges made against them. At last the bishop came forward, and read from a paper as follows: "Forasmuch as a well-beloved child of our Holy Church, Mademoiselle Alixe Duvarney, of the parish of Beauport and of this cathedral parish, in this province of New France, forgetting her manifest duty and our sacred teaching, did illegally and in sinful error make feigned contract of marriage with one Robert Moray, captain in a Virginian regiment, a heretic, a spy, and an enemy to our country; and forasmuch as this was done in violence of all nice habit and commendable obedience to Mother Church and our national uses, we do hereby declare and make void this alliance until such time as the Holy Father at Rome shall finally approve our action and proclaiming. And it is enjoined upon Mademoiselle Alixe Duvarney, on peril of her soul's salvation, to obey us in this matter, and neither by word or deed or thought have commerce more with this notorious and evil heretic and foe of our Church and of our country. It is also the plain duty of the faithful children of our Holy Church to regard this Captain Moray with a pious hatred, and to destroy him without pity; and any good cunning or enticement which should lure him to the punishment he so much deserves shall be approved. Furthermore, Mademoiselle Alixe Duvarney shall, until such times as there shall be peace in this land, and the molesting English are driven back with slaughter--and for all time, if the heart of our sister incline to penitence and love of Christ--be confined within the Convent of the Ursulines, and cared for with great tenderness." He left off reading, and began to address himself to Alixe directly; but she rose in her place, and while surprise and awe seized the congregation, she said: "Monseigneur, I must needs, at my father's bidding, hear the annulment of my marriage, but I will not hear this public exhortation. I am but a poor girl, unlearned in the law, and I must needs submit to your power, for I have no one here to speak for me. But my soul and my conscience I carry to my Saviour, and I have no fear to answer Him. I am sorry that I have offended against my people and my country and Holy Church, but I repent not that I love and hold to my husband. You must do with me as you will, but in this I shall never willingly yield." She turned to her father, and all the people breathed hard; for it passed their understanding, and seemed most scandalous that a girl could thus defy the Church, and answer the bishop in his own cathedral. Her father rose, and then I saw her sway with faintness. I know not what might have occurred, for the bishop stood with hand upraised and a great indignation in his face, about to speak, when out of the desultory firing from our batteries there came a shell, which burst even at the cathedral entrance, tore away a portion of the wall, and killed and wounded a number of people. Then followed a panic which the priests in vain tried to quell. The people swarmed into the choir and through the vestry. I saw Doltaire with Juste Duvarney spring swiftly to the side of Alixe, and, with her father, put her and Mademoiselle Lotbiniere into the pulpit, forming a ring round it, and preventing the crowd from trampling on them, as, suddenly gone mad, they swarmed past. The Governor, the Intendant, and the Chevalier de la Darante did as much also for Madame Lotbiniere; and as soon as the crush had in a little subsided, a number of soldiers cleared the way, and I saw my wife led from the church. I longed to leap down there among them and claim her, but that thought was madness, for I should have been food for worms in a trice, so I kept my place. XXVI THE SECRET OF THE TAPESTRY That evening, at eight o'clock, Jean Labrouk was buried. A shell had burst not a dozen paces from his own door, within the consecrated ground of the cathedral, and in a hole it had made he was laid, the only mourners his wife and his grandfather, and two soldiers of his company sent by General Bougainville to bury him. I watched the ceremony from my loft, which had one small dormer window. It was dark, but burning buildings in the Lower Town made all light about the place. I could hear the grandfather mumbling and talking to the body as it was lowered into the ground. While yet the priest was hastily reading prayers, a dusty horseman came riding to the grave, and dismounted. "Jean," he said, looking at the grave, "Jean Labrouk, a man dies well that dies with his gaiters on, aho! ... What have you said for Jean Labrouk, m'sieu'?" he added to the priest. The priest stared at him, as though he had presumed. "Well?" said Gabord. "Well?" The priest answered nothing, but prepared to go, whispering a word of comfort to the poor wife. Gabord looked at the soldiers, looked at the wife, at the priest, then spread out his legs and stuck his hands down into his pockets, while his horse rubbed its nose against his shoulder. He fixed his eyes on the grave, and nodded once or twice musingly. "Well," he said at last, as if he had found a perfect virtue, and the one or only thing that could be said, "well, he never eat his words, that Jean." A moment afterwards he came into the house with Babette, leaving one of the soldiers holding his horse. After the old man had gone, I heard him say, "Were you at mass to-day? And did you see all?" And when she had answered yes, he continued: "It was a mating as birds mate, but mating was it, and holy fathers and Master Devil Doltaire can't change it till cock-pheasant Moray come rocketing to 's grave. They would have hanged me for my part in it, but I repent not, for they have wickedly hunted this little lady." "I weep with her," said Jean's wife. "Ay, ay, weep on, Babette," he answered. "Has she asked help of you?" said the wife. "Truly; but I know not what says she, for I read not, but I know her pecking. Here it is. But you must be secret." Looking through a crack in the floor, I could plainly see them. She took the letter from him and read aloud: "If Gabord the soldier have a good heart still, as ever he had in the past, he will again help a poor friendless woman. She needs him, for all are against her. Will he leave her alone among her enemies? Will he not aid her to fly? At eight o'clock to-morrow night she will be taken to the Convent of the Ursulines, to be there shut in. Will he not come to her before that time?" For a moment after the reading there was silence, and I could see the woman looking at him curiously. "What will you do?" she asked. "My faith, there's nut to crack, for I have little time. This letter but reached me with the news of Jean, two hours ago, and I know not what to do, but, scratching my head, here comes word from General Montcalm that I must ride to Master Devil Doltaire with a letter, and I must find him wherever he may be, and give it straight. So forth I come; and I must be at my post again by morn, said the General." "It is now nine o'clock, and she will be in the convent," said the woman tentatively. "Aho!" he answered, "and none can enter there but Governor, if holy Mother say no. So now goes Master Devil there? 'Gabord,' quoth he, 'you shall come with me to the convent at ten o'clock, bringing three stout soldiers of the garrison. Here's an order on Monsieur Ramesay, the Commandant. Choose you the men, and fail me not, or you shall swing aloft, dear Gabord.' Sweet lovers of hell, but Master Devil shall have swinging too one day." He put his thumb to his nose, and spread his fingers out. Presently he seemed to note something in the woman's eyes, for he spoke almost sharply to her: "Jean Labrouk was honest man, and kept faith with comrades." "And I keep faith too, comrade," was the answer. "Gabord's a brute to doubt you," he rejoined quickly, and he drew from his pocket a piece of gold, and made her take it, though she much resisted. Meanwhile my mind was made up. I saw, I thought, through "Master Devil's" plan, and I felt, too, that Gabord would not betray me. In any case, Gabord and I could fight it out. If he opposed me, it was his life or mine, for too much was at stake, and all my plans were now changed by his astounding news. At that moment Voban entered the room without knocking. Here was my cue, and so, to prevent explanations, I crept quickly down, opened the door, came in on them. They wheeled at my footsteps; the woman gave a little cry, and Gabord's hand went to his pistol. There was a wild sort of look in his face, as though he could not trust his eyes. I took no notice of the menacing pistol, but went straight to him and held out my hand. "Gabord," said I, "you are not my jailer now." "I'll be your guard to citadel," said he, after a moment's dumb surprise, refusing my outstretched hand. "Neither guard nor jailer any more, Gabord," said I seriously. "We've had enough of that, my friend." The soldier and the jailer had been working in him, and his fingers trifled with the trigger. In all things he was the foeman first. But now something else was working in him. I saw this, and added pointedly, "No more cage, Gabord, not even for reward of twenty thousand livres and at command of Holy Church." He smiled grimly, too grimly, I thought, and turned inquiringly to Babette. In a few words she told him all, tears dropping from her eyes. "If you take him, you betray me," she said; "and what would Jean say, if he knew?" "Gabord," said I, "I come not as a spy; I come to seek my wife, and she counts you as her friend. Do harm to me, and you do harm to her. Serve me, and you serve her. Gabord, you said to her once that I was an honourable man." He put up his pistol. "Aho, you've put your head in the trap. Stir, and click goes the spring." "I must have my wife," I continued. "Shall the nest you helped to make go empty?" I worked upon him to such purpose that, all bristling with war at first, he was shortly won over to my scheme, which I disclosed to him while the wife made us a cup of coffee. Through all our talk Voban had sat eying us with a covert interest, yet showing no excitement. He had been unable to reach Alixe. She had been taken to the convent, and immediately afterwards her father and brother had gone their ways--Juste to General Montcalm, and the Seigneur to the French camp. Thus Alixe did not know that I was in Quebec. An hour after this I was marching, with two other men and Gabord, to the Convent of the Ursulines, dressed in the ordinary costume of a French soldier, got from the wife of Jean Labrouk. In manner and speech though I was somewhat dull, my fellows thought, I was enough like a peasant soldier to deceive them, and my French was more fluent than their own. I was playing a desperate game; yet I liked it, for it had a fine spice of adventure apart from the great matter at stake. If I could but carry it off, I should have sufficient compensation for all my miseries, in spite of their twenty thousand livres and Holy Church. In a few minutes we came to the convent, and halted outside, waiting for Doltaire. Presently he came, and, looking sharply at us all, he ordered two to wait outside, and Gabord and myself to come with him. Then he stood looking at the building curiously for a moment. A shell had broken one wing of it, and this portion had been abandoned; but the faithful Sisters clung still to their home, though urged constantly by the Governor to retire to the Hotel Dieu, which was outside the reach of shot and shell. This it was their intention soon to do, for within the past day or so our batteries had not sought to spare the convent. As Doltaire looked he laughed to himself, and then said, "Too quiet for gay spirits, this hearse. Come, Gabord, and fetch this slouching fellow," nodding towards me. Then he knocked loudly. No one came, and he knocked again and again. At last the door was opened by the Mother Superior, who was attended by two others. She started at seeing Doltaire. "What do you wish, monsieur?" she asked. "I come on business of the King, good Mother," he replied seriously, and stepped inside. "It is a strange hour for business," she said severely. "The King may come at all hours," he answered soothingly: "is it not so? By the law he may enter when he wills." "You are not the King, monsieur," she objected, with her head held up sedately. "Or the Governor may come, good Mother?" "You are not the Governor, Monsieur Doltaire," she said, more sharply still. "But a Governor may demand admittance to this convent, and by the order of his Most Christian Majesty he may not be refused: is it not so?" "Must I answer the catechism of Monsieur Doltaire?" "But is it not so?" he asked again urbanely. "It is so, yet how does that concern you, monsieur?" "In every way," and he smiled. "This is unseemly, monsieur. What is your business?" "The Governor's business, good Mother." "Then let the Governor's messenger give his message and depart in peace," she answered, her hand upon the door. "Not the Governor's messenger, but the Governor himself," he rejoined gravely. He turned and was about to shut the door, but she stopped him. "This is no house for jesting, monsieur," she said. "I will arouse the town if you persist.--Sister," she added to one standing near, "the bell!" "You fill your office with great dignity and merit, Mere St. George," he said, as he put out his hand and stayed the Sister. "I commend you for your discretion. Read this," he continued, handing her a paper. A Sister held a light, and the Mother read it. As she did so Doltaire made a motion to Gabord, and he shut the door quickly on us. Mere St. George looked up from the paper, startled and frightened too. "Your Excellency!" she exclaimed. "You are the first to call me so," he replied. "I thought to leave untouched this good gift of the King, and to let the Marquis de Vaudreuil and the admirable Bigot untwist the coil they have made. But no. After some too generous misgivings, I now claim my own. I could not enter here, to speak with a certain lady, save as the Governor, but as the Governor I now ask speech with Mademoiselle Duvarney. Do you hesitate?" he added. "Do you doubt that signature of his Majesty? Then see this. Here is a line from the Marquis de Vaudreuil, the late Governor. It is not dignified, one might say it is craven, but it is genuine." Again the distressed lady read, and again she said, "Your Excellency!" Then, "You wish to see her in my presence, your Excellency?" "Alone, good Mother," he softly answered. "Your Excellency, will you, the first officer in the land, defy our holy rules, and rob us of our privilege to protect and comfort and save?" "I defy nothing," he replied. "The lady is here against her will, a prisoner. She desires not your governance and care. In any case, I must speak with her; and be assured, I honour you the more for your solicitude, and will ask your counsel when I have finished talk with her." Was ever man so crafty? After a moment's thought she turned, dismissed the others, and led the way, and Gabord and I followed. We were bidden to wait outside a room, well lighted but bare, as I could see through the open door. Doltaire entered, smiling, and then bowed the nun on her way to summon Alixe. Gabord and I stood there, not speaking, for both were thinking of the dangerous game now playing. In a few minutes the Mother returned, bringing Alixe. The light from the open door shone upon her face. My heart leaped, for there was in her look such a deep sorrow. She was calm, save for those shining yet steady eyes; they were like furnaces, burning up the colour of her cheeks. She wore a soft black gown, with no sign of ornament, and her gold-brown hair was bound with a piece of black velvet ribbon. Her beauty was deeper than I had ever seen it; a peculiar gravity seemed to have added years to her life. As she passed me her sleeve brushed my arm, as it did that day I was arrested in her father's house. She started, as though I had touched her fingers, but only half turned toward me, for her mind was wholly occupied with the room where Doltaire was. At that moment Gabord coughed slightly, and she turned quickly to him. Her eyes flashed intelligence, and presently, as she passed in, a sort of hope seemed to have come on her face to lighten its painful pensiveness. The Mother Superior entered with her, the door closed, and then, after a little, the Mother came out again. As she did so I saw a look of immediate purpose in her face, and her hurrying step persuaded me she was bent on some project of espial. So I made a sign to Gabord and followed her. As she turned the corner of the hallway just beyond, I stepped forward silently and watched her enter a room that would, I knew, be next to this we guarded. Listening at the door for a moment, I suddenly and softly turned the handle and entered, to see the good Mother with a panel drawn in the wall before her, and her face set to it. She stepped back as I shut the door and turned the key in the lock. I put my finger to my lips, for she seemed about to cry out. "Hush!" said I. "I watch for those who love her. I am here to serve her--and you." "You are a servant of the Seigneur's?" she said, the alarm passing out of her face. "I served the Seigneur, good Mother," I answered, "and I would lay down my life for ma'm'selle." "You would hear?" she asked, pointing to the panel. I nodded. "You speak French not like a Breton or Norman," she added. "What is your province?" "I am an Auvergnian." She said no more, but motioned to me, enjoining silence also by a sign, and I stood with her beside the panel. Before it was a piece of tapestry which was mere gauze in one place, and I could see through and hear perfectly. The room we were in was at least four feet higher than the other, and we looked down on its occupants. "Presently, holy Mother," said I, "all shall be told true to you, if you wish it. It is not your will to watch and hear; it is because you love the lady. But I love her, too, and I am to be trusted. It is not business for such as you." She saw my implied rebuke, and said, as I thought a little abashed, "You will tell me all? And if he would take her forth, give me alarm in the room opposite yonder door, and stay them, and--" "Stay them, holy Mother, at the price of my life. I have the honour of her family in my hands." She looked at me gravely, and I assumed a peasant openness of look and honesty. She was deceived completely, and, without further speech, she stepped to the door like a ghost and was gone. I never saw a human being so noiseless, so uncanny. Our talk had been carried on silently, and I had closed the panel quietly, so that we could not be heard by Alixe or Doltaire. Now I was alone, to see and hear my wife in speech with my enemy, the man who had made a strong, and was yet to make a stronger fight to unseat me in her affections. There was a moment's compunction, in which I hesitated to see this meeting; but there was Alixe's safety to be thought on, and what might he not here disclose of his intentions!--knowing which, I should act with judgment, and not in the dark. I trusted Alixe, though I knew well that this hour would see the great struggle in her between this scoundrel and myself. I knew that he had ever had a sort of power over her, even while she loathed his character; that he had a hundred graces I had not, place which I had not, an intellect that ever delighted me, and a will like iron when it was called into action. I thought for one moment longer ere I moved the panel. My lips closed tight, and I felt a pang at my heart. Suppose, in this conflict, this singular man, acting on a nature already tried beyond reason, should bend it to his will, to which it was, in some radical ways, inclined? Well, if that should be, then I would go forth and never see her more. She must make her choice out of her own heart and spirit, and fight this fight alone, and having fought, and lost or won, the result should be final, should stand, though she was my wife, and I was bound in honour to protect her from all that might invade her loyalty, to cherish her through all temptation and distress. But our case was a strange one, and it must be dealt with according to its strangeness--our only guides our consciences. There were no precedents to meet our needs; our way had to be hewn out of a noisome, pathless wood. I made up my mind: I would hear and see all. So I slid the panel softly, and put my eyes to the tapestry. How many times did I see, in the next hour, my wife's eyes upraised to this very tapestry, as if appealing to the Madonna upon it! How many times did her eyes look into mine without knowing it! And more than once Doltaire followed her glance, and a faint smile passed over his face, as if he saw and was interested in the struggle in her, apart from his own passion and desires. When first I looked in, she was standing near a tall high-backed chair, in almost the same position as on the day when Doltaire told me of Braddock's death, accused me of being a spy, and arrested me. It gave me, too, a thrill to see her raise her handkerchief to her mouth as if to stop a cry, as she had done then, the black sleeve falling away from her perfect rounded arm, now looking almost like marble against the lace. She held her handkerchief to her lips for quite a minute; and indeed it covered more than a little of her face, so that the features most showing were her eyes, gazing at Doltaire with a look hard to interpret, for there seemed in it trouble, entreaty, wonder, resistance, and a great sorrow--no fear, trepidation, or indirectness. His disturbing words were these: "To-night I am the Governor of this country. You once doubted my power--that was when you would save your lover from death. I proved it in that small thing--I saved him. Well, when you saw me carried off to the Bastile--it looked like that--my power seemed to vanish: is it not so? We have talked of this before, but now is a time to review all things again. And once more I say I am the Governor of New France. I have had the commission in my hands ever since I came back. But I have spoken of it to no one--except your lover." "My husband!" she said steadily, crushing the handkerchief in her hand, which now rested upon the chair-arm. "Well, well, your husband--after a fashion. I did not care to use this as an argument. I chose to win you by personal means alone, to have you give yourself to Tinoir Doltaire because you set him before any other man. I am vain, you see; but then vanity is no sin when one has fine aspirations, and I aspire to you!" She made a motion with her hand. "Oh, can you not spare me this to-day of all days in my life--your Excellency?" "Let it be plain 'monsieur,'" he answered. "I can not spare you, for this day decides all. As I said, I desired you. At first my wish was to possess you at any cost: I was your hunter only. I am still your hunter, but in a different way. I would rather have you in my arms than save New France; and with Montcalm I could save it. Vaudreuil is a blunderer and a fool; he has sold the country. But what ambition is that? New France may come and go, and be forgotten, and you and I be none the worse. There are other provinces to conquer. But for me there is only one province, and I will lift my standard there, and build a grand chateau of my happiness there. That is my hope, and that is why I come to conquer it, and not the English. Let the English go--all save one, and he must die. Already he is dead; he died to-day at the altar of the cathedral--" "No, no, no!" broke in Alixe, her voice low and firm. "But yes," he said; "but yes, he is dead to you forever. The Church has said so; the state says so; your people say so; race and all manner of good custom say so; and I, who love you better--yes, a hundred times better than he--say so." She made a hasty, deprecating gesture with her hand. "Oh, carry this old song elsewhere," she said, "for I am sick of it." There were now both scorn and weariness in her tone. He had a singular patience, and he resented nothing. "I understand," he went on, "what it was sent your heart his way. He came to you when you were yet a child, before you had learnt the first secret of life. He was a captive, a prisoner, he had a wound got in fair fighting, and I will do him the credit to say he was an honest man; he was no spy." She looked up at him with a slight flush, almost of gratitude. "I know that well," she returned. "I knew there was other cause than spying at the base of all ill treatment of him. I know that you, you alone, kept him prisoner here five long years." "Not I; the Grande Marquise--for weighty reasons. You should not fret at those five years, since it gave you what you have cherished so much, a husband--after a fashion. But yet we will do him justice: he is an honourable fighter, he has parts and graces of a rude order. But he will never go far in life; he has no instincts and habits common with you; it has been, so far, a compromise, founded upon the old-fashioned romance of ill-used captive and soft-hearted maid; the compassion, too, of the superior for the low, the free for the caged." "Compassion such as your Excellency feels for me, no doubt," she said, with a slow pride. "You are caged, but you may be free," he rejoined meaningly. "Yes, in the same market open to him, and at the same price of honour," she replied, with dignity. "Will you not sit down?" he now said, motioning her to a chair politely, and taking one himself, thus pausing before he answered her. I was prepared to see him keep a decorous distance from her. I felt he was acting upon deliberation; that he was trusting to the power of his insinuating address, his sophistry, to break down barriers. It was as if he felt himself at greater advantage, making no emotional demonstrations, so allaying her fears, giving her time to think; for it was clear he hoped to master her intelligence, so strong a part of her. She sat down in the high-backed chair, and I noted that our batteries began to play upon the town--an unusual thing at night. It gave me a strange feeling--the perfect stillness of the holy place, the quiet movement of this tragedy before me, on which broke, with no modifying noises or turmoil, the shouting cannonade. Nature, too, it would have seemed, had forged a mood in keeping with the time, for there was no air stirring when we came in, and a strange stillness had come upon the landscape. In the pause, too, I heard a long, soft shuffling of feet in the corridor--the evening procession from the chapel--and a slow chant: "I am set down in a wilderness, O Lord, I am alone. If a strange voice call, O teach me what to say; if I languish, O give me Thy cup to drink; O strengthen Thou my soul. Lord, I am like a sparrow far from home; O bring me to Thine honourable house. Preserve my heart, encourage me, according to Thy truth." The words came to us distinctly yet distantly, swelled softly, and died away, leaving Alixe and Doltaire seated and looking at each other. Alixe's hands were clasped in her lap. "Your honour is above all price," he said at last in reply to her. "But what is honour in this case of yours, in which I throw the whole interest of my life, stake all? For I am convinced that, losing, the book of fate will close for me. Winning, I shall begin again, and play a part in France which men shall speak of when I am done with all. I never had ambition for myself; for you, Alixe Duvarney, a new spirit lives in me.... I will be honest with you. At first I swore to cool my hot face in your bosom; and I would have done that at any price, and yet I would have stood by that same dishonour honourably to the end. Never in my whole life did I put my whole heart in any--episode--of admiration: I own it, for you to think what you will. There never was a woman whom, loving to-day,"--he smiled--"I could not leave to-morrow with no more than a pleasing kind of regret. Names that I ought to have recalled I forgot; incidents were cloudy, like childish remembrances. I was not proud of it; the peasant in me spoke against it sometimes. I even have wished that I, half peasant, had been--" "If only you had been all peasant, this war, this misery of mine, had never been," she interrupted. He nodded with an almost boyish candour. "Yes, yes, but I was half prince also; I had been brought up, one foot in a cottage and another in a palace. But for your misery: is it, then, misery? Need it be so? But lift your finger and all will be well. Do you wish to save your country? Would that be compensation? Then I will show you the way. We have three times as many soldiers as the English, though of poorer stuff. We could hold this place, could defeat them, if we were united and had but two thousand men. We have fifteen thousand. As it is now, Vaudreuil balks Montcalm, and that will ruin us in the end unless you make it otherwise. You would be a patriot? Then shut out forever this English captain from your heart, and open its doors to me. To-morrow I will take Vaudreuil's place, put your father in Bigot's, your brother in Ramesay's--they are both perfect and capable; I will strengthen the excellent Montcalm's hands in every way, will inspire the people, and cause the English to raise this siege. You and I will do this: the Church will bless us, the State will thank us; your home and country will be safe and happy, your father and brother honoured. This, and far, far greater things I will do for your sake." He paused. He had spoken with a deep power, such as I knew he could use, and I did not wonder that she paled a little, even trembled before it. "Will you not do it for France?" she said. "I will not do it for France," he answered. "I will do it for you alone. Will you not be your country's friend? It is no virtue in me to plead patriotism--it is a mere argument, a weapon that I use; but my heart is behind it, and it is a means to that which you will thank me for one day. I would not force you to anything, but I would persuade your reason, question your foolish loyalty to a girl's mistake. Can you think that you are right? You have no friend that commends your cause; the whole country has upbraided you, the Church has cut you off from the man. All is against reunion with him, and most of all your own honour. Come with me, and be commended and blessed here, while over in France homage shall be done you. For you I would take from his Majesty a dukedom which he has offered me more than once." Suddenly, with a passionate tone, he continued: "Your own heart is speaking for me. Have I not seen you tremble when I come near you?" He rose and came forward a step or two. "You thought it was fear of me. It was fear, but fear of that in you which was pleading for me, while you had sworn yourself away to him who knows not and can never know how to love you, who has nothing kin with you in mind or heart--an alien of poor fortune, and poorer birth and prospects." He fixed his eyes upon her, and went on, speaking with forceful quietness: "Had there been cut away that mistaken sense of duty to him, which I admire unspeakably--yes, though it is misplaced--you and I would have come to each other's arms long ago. Here in your atmosphere I feel myself possessed, endowed. I come close to you, and something new in me cries out simply, 'I love you, Alixe, I love you!' See, all the damnable part of me is burned up by the clear fire of your eyes; I stand upon the ashes, and swear that I can not live without you. Come--come--" He stepped nearer still, and she rose like one who moves under some fascination, and I almost cried out, for in that moment she was his, his--I felt it; he possessed her like some spirit; and I understood it, for the devilish golden beauty of his voice was like music, and he had spoken with great skill. "Come," he said, "and know where all along your love has lain. That other way is only darkness--the convent, which will keep you buried, while you will never have heart for the piteous seclusion, till your life is broken all to pieces; till you have no hope, no desire, no love, and at last, under a cowl, you look out upon the world, and, with a dead heart, see it as in a pale dream, and die at last: you, born to be a wife, without a husband; endowed to be the perfect mother, without a child; to be the admired of princes, a moving, powerful figure to influence great men, with no salon but the little bare cell where you pray. With me all that you should be you will be. You have had a bad, dark dream; wake, and come into the sun with me. Once I wished for you as the lover only; now, by every hope I ever might have had, I want you for my wife." He held out his arms to her and smiled, and spoke one or two low words which I could not hear. I had stood waiting death against the citadel wall, with the chance of a reprieve hanging between uplifted muskets and my breast; but that suspense was less than this, for I saw him, not moving, but standing there waiting for her, the warmth of his devilish eloquence about him, and she moving toward him. "My darling," I heard him say, "come, till death...us do part, and let no man put asunder." She paused, and, waking from the dream, drew herself together, as though something at her breast hurt her, and she repeated his words like one dazed--"Let no man put asunder!" With a look that told of her great struggle, she moved to a shrine of the Virgin in the corner, and, clasping her hands before her breast for a moment, said something I could not hear, before she turned to Doltaire, who had now taken another step towards her. By his look I knew that he felt his spell was broken; that his auspicious moment had passed; that now, if he won her, it must be by harsh means. For she said: "Monsieur Doltaire, you have defeated yourself. 'Let no man put asunder' was my response to my husband's 'Whom God hath joined,' when last I met him face to face. Nothing can alter that while he lives, nor yet when he dies, for I have had such a sorrowful happiness in him that if I were sure he were dead I would never leave this holy place--never. But he lives, and I will keep my vow. Holy Church has parted us, but yet we are not parted. You say that to think of him now is wrong, reflects upon me. I tell you, monsieur, that if it were a wrong a thousand times greater I would do it. To me there can be no shame in following till I die the man who took me honourably for his wife." He made an impatient gesture and smiled ironically. "Oh, I care not what you say or think," she went on. "I know not of things canonical and legal; the way that I was married to him is valid in his country and for his people. Bad Catholic you call me, alas! But I am a true wife, who, if she sinned, sinned not knowingly, and deserves not this tyranny and shame." "You are possessed with a sad infatuation," he replied persuasively. "You are not the first who has suffered so. It will pass, and leave you sane--leave you to me. For you are mine; what you felt a moment ago you will feel again, when this romantic martyrdom of yours has wearied you." "Monsieur Doltaire," she said, with a successful effort at calmness, though I could see her trembling too, "it is you who are mistaken, and I will show you how. But first: You have said often that I have unusual intelligence. You have flattered me in that, I doubt not, but still here is a chance to prove yourself sincere. I shall pass by every wicked means that you took first to ruin me, to divert me to a dishonest love (though I knew not what you meant at the time), and, failing, to make me your wife. I shall not refer to this base means to reach me in this sacred place, using the King's commission for such a purpose." "I would use it again and do more, for the same ends," he rejoined, with shameless candour. She waved her hand impatiently. "I pass all that by. You shall listen to me as I have listened to you, remembering that what I say is honest, if it has not your grace and eloquence. You say that I will yet come to you, that I care for you and have cared for you always, and that--that this other--is a sad infatuation. Monsieur, in part you are right." He came another step forward, for he thought he saw a foothold again; but she drew back to the chair, and said, lifting her hand against him, "No, no, wait till I have done. I say that you are right in part. I will not deny that, against my will, you have always influenced me; that, try as I would, your presence moved me, and I could never put you out of my mind, out of my life. At first I did not understand it, for I knew how bad you were. I was sure you did evil because you loved it; that to gratify yourself you would spare no one: a man without pity--" "On the contrary," he interrupted, with a sour sort of smile, "pity is almost a foible with me." "Not real pity," she answered. "Monsieur, I have lived long enough to know what pity moves you. It is the moment's careless whim; a pensive pleasure, a dramatic tenderness. Wholesome pity would make you hesitate to harm others. You have no principles--" "Pardon me, many," he urged politely, as he eyed her with admiration. "Ah no, monsieur; habits, not principles. Your life has been one long irresponsibility. In the very maturity of your powers, you use them to win to yourself, to your empty heart, a girl who has tried to live according to the teachings of her soul and conscience. Were there not women elsewhere to whom it didn't matter--your abandoned purposes? Why did you throw your shadow on my path? You are not, never were, worthy of a good woman's love." He laughed with a sort of bitterness. "Your sinner stands between two fires--" he said. She looked at him inquiringly, and he added, "the punishment he deserves and the punishment he does not deserve. But it is interesting to be thus picked out upon the stone, however harsh the picture. You said I influenced you--well?" "Monsieur," she went on, "there were times when, listening to you, I needed all my strength to resist. I have felt myself weak and shaking when you came into the room. There was something in you that appealed to me, I know not what; but I do know that it was not the best of me, that it was emotional, some strange power of your personality--ah yes, I can acknowledge all now. You had great cleverness, gifts that startled and delighted; but yet I felt always, and that feeling grew and grew, that there was nothing in you wholly honest, that by artifice you had frittered away what once may have been good in you. Now all goodness in you was an accident of sense and caprice, not true morality." "What has true morality to do with love of you?" he said. "You ask me hard questions," she replied. "This it has to do with it: We go from morality to higher things, not from higher things to morality. Pure love is a high thing; yours was not high. To have put my life in your hands--ah no, no! And so I fought you. There was no question of yourself and Robert Moray--none. Him I knew to possess fewer gifts, but I knew him also to be what you could never be. I never measured him against you. What was his was all of me worth the having, and was given always; there was no change. What was yours was given only when in your presence, and then with hatred of myself and you--given to some baleful fascination in you. For a time, the more I struggled against it the more it grew, for there was nothing that could influence a woman which you did not do. Monsieur, if you had had Robert Moray's character and your own gifts, I could--monsieur, I could have worshiped you!" Doltaire was in a kind of dream. He was sitting now in the high-backed chair, his mouth and chin in his hand, his elbow resting on the chair-arm. His left hand grasped the other arm, and he leaned forward with brows bent and his eyes fixed on her intently. It was a figure singularly absorbed, lost in study of some deep theme. Once his sword clanged against the chair as it slipped a little from its position, and he started almost violently, though the dull booming of a cannon in no wise seemed to break the quietness of the scene. He was dressed, as in the morning, in plain black, but now the star of Louis shone on his breast. His face was pale, but his eyes, with their swift-shifting lights, lived upon Alixe, devoured her. She paused for an instant. "Thou shalt not commit--idolatry," he remarked in a low, cynical tone, which the repressed feeling in his face and the terrible new earnestness of his look belied. She flushed a little, and continued: "Yet all the time I was true to him, and what I felt concerning you he knew--I told him enough." Suddenly there came into Doltaire's looks and manner an astounding change. Both hands caught the chair-arm, his lips parted with a sort of snarl, and his white teeth showed maliciously. It seemed as if, all at once, the courtier, the flaneur, the man of breeding, had gone, and you had before you the peasant, in a moment's palsy from the intensity of his fury. "A thousand hells for him!" he burst out in the rough patois of Poictiers, and got to his feet. "You told him all, you confessed your fluttering fears and desires to him, while you let me play upon those ardent strings of feelings, that you might save him! You used me, Tinoir Doltaire, son of a king, to further your amour with a bourgeois Englishman! And he laughed in his sleeve, and soothed away those dangerous influences of the magician. By the God of heaven, Robert Moray and I have work to do! And you--you, with all the gifts of the perfect courtesan--" "Oh, shame! shame!" she said, breaking in. "But I speak the truth. You berate me, but you used incomparable gifts to hold me near you, and the same gifts to let me have no more of you than would keep me. I thought you the most honest, the most heavenly of women, and now--" "Alas!" she interrupted, "what else could I have done? To draw the line between your constant attention and my own necessity! Ah, I was but a young girl; I had no friend to help me; he was condemned to die; I loved him; I did not believe in you, not in ever so little. If I had said, 'You must not speak to me again,' you would have guessed my secret, and all my purposes would have been defeated. So I had to go on; nor did I think that it ever would cause you aught but a shock to your vanity." He laughed hatefully. "My faith, but it has, shocked my vanity," he answered. "And now take this for thinking on: Up to this point I have pleaded with you, used persuasion, courted you with a humility astonishing to myself. Now I will have you in spite of all. I will break you, and soothe your hurt afterwards. I will, by the face of the Madonna, I will feed where this Moray would pasture, I will gather this ripe fruit!" With a devilish swiftness he caught her about the waist, and kissed her again and again upon the mouth. The blood was pounding in my veins, and I would have rushed in then and there, have ended the long strife, and have dug revenge for this outrage from his heart, but that I saw Alixe did not move, nor make the least resistance. This struck me with horror, till, all at once, he let her go, and I saw her face. It was very white and still, smooth and cold as marble. She seemed five years older in the minute. "Have you quite done, monsieur?" she said, with infinite quiet scorn. "Do you, the son of a king, find joy in kissing lips that answer nothing, a cheek from which the blood flows in affright and shame? Is it an achievement to feed as cattle feed? Listen to me, Monsieur Doltaire. No, do not try to speak till I have done, if your morality--of manners--is not all dead. Through this cowardly act of yours, the last vestige of your power over me is gone. I sometimes think that, with you, in the past, I have remained true and virtuous at the expense of the best of me; but now all that is over, and there is no temptation--I feel beyond it: by this hour here, this hour of sore peril, you have freed me. I was tempted--Heaven knows, a few minutes ago I was tempted, for everything was with you; but God has been with me, and you and I are no nearer than the poles." "You doubt that I love you?" he said in an altered voice. "I doubt that any man will so shame the woman he loves," she answered. "What is insult to-day may be a pride to-morrow," was his quick reply. "I do not repent of it, I never will, for you and I shall go to-night from here, and you shall be my wife; and one day, when this man is dead, when you have forgotten your bad dream, you will love me as you can not love him. I have that in me to make you love me. To you I can be loyal, never drifting, never wavering. I tell you, I will not let you go. First my wife you shall be, and after that I will win your love; in spite of all, mine now, though it is shifted for the moment. Come, come, Alixe"--he made as if to take her hand--"you and I will learn the splendid secret--" She drew back to the shrine of the Virgin. "Mother of God! Mother of God!" I heard her whisper, and then she raised her hand against him. "No, no, no," she said, with sharp anguish, "do not try to force me to your wishes--do not; for I, at least, will never live to see it. I have suffered more than I can bear I will end this shame, I will--" I had heard enough. I stepped back quickly, closed the panel, and went softly to the door and into the hall, determined to bring her out against Doltaire, trusting to Gabord not to oppose me. XXVII A SIDE-WIND OF REVENGE I knew it was Doltaire's life or mine, and I shrank from desecrating this holy place; but our bitter case would warrant this, and more. As I came quickly through the hall, and round the corner where stood Gabord, I saw a soldier talking with the Mother Superior. "He is not dead?" I heard her say. "No, holy Mother," was the answer, "but sorely wounded. He was testing the fire-organs for the rafts, and one exploded too soon." At that moment the Mother turned to me, and seemed startled by my look. "What is it?" she whispered. "He would carry her off," I replied. "He shall never do so," was her quick answer. "Her father, the good Seigneur, has been wounded, and she must go to him." "I will take her," said I at once, and I moved to open the door. At that moment I caught Gabord's eye. There I read what caused me to pause. If I declared myself now, Gabord's life would pay for his friendship to me--even if I killed Doltaire; for the matter would be open to all then just the same. That I could not do, for the man had done me kindnesses dangerous to himself. Besides, he was a true soldier, and disgrace itself would be to him as bad as the drum-head court-martial. I made up my mind to another course even as the perturbed "aho" which followed our glance fell from his puffing lips. "But no, holy Mother," said I, and I whispered in her ear. She opened the door and went in, leaving it ajar. I could hear only a confused murmur of voices, through which ran twice, "No, no, monsieur," in Alixe's soft, clear voice. I could scarcely restrain myself, and I am sure I should have gone in, in spite of all, had it not been for Gabord, who withstood me. He was right, and as I turned away I heard Alixe cry, "My father, my poor father!" Then came Doltaire's voice, cold and angry: "Good Mother, this is a trick." "Your Excellency should be a better judge of trickery," she replied quietly. "Will not your Excellency leave an unhappy lady to her trouble and the Church's care?" "If the Seigneur is hurt, I will take mademoiselle to him," was his instant reply. "It may not be, your Excellency," she said. "I will furnish her with other escort." "And I, as Governor of this province, as commander-in-chief of the army, say that only with my escort shall the lady reach her father." At this Alixe spoke: "Dear Mere St. George, do not fear for me; God will protect me--" "And I also, mademoiselle, with my life," interposed Doltaire. "God will protect me," Alixe repeated; "I have no fear." "I will send two of our Sisters with mademoiselle to nurse the poor Seigneur," said Mere St. George. I am sure Doltaire saw the move. "A great kindness, holy Mother," he said politely, "and I will see they are well cared for. We will set forth at once. The Seigneur shall be brought to the Intendance, and he and his daughter shall have quarters there." He stepped towards the door where we were. I fell back into position as he came. "Gabord," said he, "send your trusted fellow here to the General's camp, and have him fetch to the Intendance the Seigneur Duvarney, who has been wounded. Alive or dead, he must be brought," he added in a lower voice. Then he turned back into the room. As he did so, Gabord looked at me inquiringly. "If you go, you put your neck into the gin," said he; "some one in camp will know you." "I will not leave my wife," I answered in a whisper. Thus were all plans altered on the instant. Gabord went to the outer door and called another soldier, to whom he gave this commission. A few moments afterwards, Alixe, Doltaire, and the Sisters of Mercy were at the door ready to start. Doltaire turned and bowed with a well-assumed reverence to the Mother Superior. "To-night's affairs here are sacred to ourselves, Mere St. George," he said. She bowed, but made no reply. Alixe turned and kissed her hand. But as we stepped forth, the Mother said suddenly, pointing to me, "Let the soldier come back in an hour, and mademoiselle's luggage shall go to her, your Excellency." Doltaire nodded, glancing at me. "Surely he shall attend you, Mere St. George," he said, and then stepped on with Alixe, Gabord and the other soldier ahead, the two Sisters behind, and myself beside these. Going quietly through the disordered Upper Town, we came down Palace Street to the Intendance. Here Doltaire had kept his quarters despite his growing quarrel with Bigot. As we entered he inquired of the servant where Bigot was, and was told he was gone to the Chateau St. Louis. Doltaire shrugged a shoulder and smiled--he knew that Bigot had had news of his deposition through the Governor. He gave orders for rooms to be prepared for the Seigneur and for the Sisters; mademoiselle meanwhile to be taken to hers, which had, it appeared, been made ready. Then I heard him ask in an undertone if the bishop had come, and he was answered that Monseigneur was at Charlesbourg, and could not be expected till the morning. I was in a most dangerous position, for, though I had escaped notice, any moment might betray me; Doltaire himself might see through my disguise. We all accompanied Alixe to the door of her apartments, and there Doltaire with courtesy took leave of her, saying that he would return in a little time to see if she was comfortable, and to bring her any fresh news of her father. The Sisters were given apartments next her own, and they entered her room with her, at her own request. When the door closed, Doltaire turned to Gabord, and said, "You shall come with me to bear letters to General Montcalm, and you shall send one of these fellows also for me to General Bougainville at Cap Rouge." Then he spoke directly to me, and said, "You shall guard this passage till morning. No one but myself may pass into this room or out of it, save the Sisters of Mercy, on pain of death." I saluted, but spoke no word. "You understand me?" he repeated. "Absolutely, monsieur," I answered in a rough peasantlike voice. He turned and walked in a leisurely way through the passage, and disappeared, telling Gabord to join him in a moment. As he left, Gabord said to me in a low voice, "Get back to General Wolfe, or wife and life will both be lost." I caught his hand and pressed it, and a minute afterwards I was alone before Alixe's door. An hour later, knowing Alixe to be alone, I tapped on her door and entered. As I did so she rose from a priedieu where she had been kneeling. Two candles were burning on the mantel, but the room was much in shadow. "What is't you wish?" she asked, approaching. I had off my hat; I looked her direct in the eyes and put my fingers on my lips. She stared painfully for a moment. "Alixe," said I. She gave a gasp, and stood transfixed, as though she had seen a ghost, and then in an instant she was in my arms, sobs shaking her. "Oh, Robert! oh my dear, dear husband!" she cried again and again. I calmed her, and presently she broke into a whirl of questions. I told her of all I had seen at the cathedral and at the convent, what my plans had been, and then I waited for her answer. A new feeling took possession of her. She knew that there was one question at my lips which I dared not utter. She became very quiet, and a sweet, settled firmness came into her face. "Robert," she said, "you must go back to your army without me. I can not leave my father now. Save yourself alone, and if--and if you take the city, and I am alive, then we shall be reunited. If you do not take the city, then, whether father lives or dies, I will come to you. Of this be sure, that I shall never live to be the wife of any other man--wife or aught else. You know me. You know all, you trust me, and, my dear husband, my own love, we must part once more. Go, go, and save yourself, keep your life safe for my sake, and may God in heaven, may God--" Here she broke off and started back from my embrace, staring hard a moment over my shoulder; then her face became deadly pale, and she fell back unconscious. Supporting her, I turned round, and there, inside the door, with his back to it, was Doltaire. There was a devilish smile on his face, as wicked a look as I ever saw on any man. I laid Alixe down on a sofa without a word, and faced him again. "As many coats as Joseph's coat had colours," he said. "And for once disguised as an honest man--well, well!" "Beast" I hissed, and I whipped out my short sword. "Not here," he said, with a malicious laugh. "You forget your manners: familiarity"--he glanced towards the couch--"has bred--" "Coward!" I cried. "I will kill you at her feet." "Come, then," he answered, and stepped away from the door, drawing his sword, "since you will have it here. But if I kill you, as I intend--" He smiled detestably, and motioned towards the couch, then turned to the door again as if to lock it. I stepped between, my sword at guard. At that the door opened. A woman came in quickly, and closed it behind her. She passed me, and faced Doltaire. It was Madame Cournal. She was most pale, and there was a peculiar wildness in her eyes. "You have deposed Francois Bigot," she said. "Stand back, madame; I have business with this fellow," said Doltaire, waving his hand. "My business comes first," she replied. "You--you dare to depose Francois Bigot!" "It needs no daring," he said nonchalantly. "You shall put him back in his place." "Come to me to-morrow morning, dear madame." "I tell you he must be put back, Monsieur Doltaire." "Once you called me Tinoir," he said meaningly. Without a word she caught from her cloak a dagger and struck him in the breast, though he threw up his hand and partly diverted the blow. Without a cry he half swung round, and sank, face forward, against the couch where Alixe lay. Raising himself feebly, blindly, he caught her hand and kissed it; then he fell back. Stooping beside him, I felt his heart. He was alive. Madame Cournal now knelt beside him, staring at him as in a kind of dream. I left the room quickly, and met the Sisters of Mercy in the hall. They had heard the noise, and were coming to Alixe. I bade them care for her. Passing rapidly through the corridors, I told a servant of the household what had occurred, bade him send for Bigot, and then made for my own safety. Alixe was safe for a time, at least--perhaps forever, thank God!--from the approaches of Monsieur Doltaire. As I sped through the streets, I could not help but think of how he had kissed her hand as he fell, and I knew by this act, at such a time, that in very truth he loved her after his fashion. I came soon to the St. John's Gate, for I had the countersign from Gabord, and, dressed as I was, I had no difficulty in passing. Outside I saw a small cavalcade arriving from Beauport way. I drew back and let it pass me, and then I saw that it was soldiers bearing the Seigneur Duvarney to the Intendance. An hour afterwards, having passed the sentries, I stood on a lonely point of the shore of Lower Town, and, seeing no one near, I slid into the water. As I did so I heard a challenge behind me, and when I made no answer there came a shot, another, and another; for it was thought, I doubt not, that I was a deserter. I was wounded in the shoulder, and had to swim with one arm; but though boats were put out, I managed to evade them and to get within hail of our fleet. Challenged there, I answered with my name. A boat shot out from among the ships, and soon I was hauled into it by Clark himself; and that night I rested safe upon the Terror of France. XXVIII "TO CHEAT THE DEVIL YET." My hurt proved more serious than I had looked for, and the day after my escape I was in a high fever. General Wolfe himself, having heard of my return, sent to inquire after me. He also was ill, and our forces were depressed in consequence; for he had a power to inspire them not given to any other of our accomplished and admirable generals. He forbore to question me concerning the state of the town and what I had seen; for which I was glad. My adventure had been of a private nature, and such I wished it to remain. The general desired me to come to him as soon as I was able, that I might proceed with him above the town to reconnoitre. But for many a day this was impossible, for my wound gave me much pain and I was confined to my bed. Yet we on the Terror of France served our good general, too; for one dark night, when the wind was fair, we piloted the remaining ships of Admiral Holmes's division above the town. This move was made on my constant assertion that there was a way by which Quebec might be taken from above; and when General Wolfe made known my representations to his general officers, they accepted it as a last resort; for otherwise what hope had they? At Montmorenci our troops had been repulsed, the mud flats of the Beauport shore and the St. Charles River were as good as an army against us; the Upper Town and citadel were practically impregnable; and for eight miles west of the town to the cove and river at Cap Rouge there was one long precipice, broken in but one spot; but just there, I was sure, men could come up with stiff climbing as I had done. Bougainville came to Cap Rouge now with three thousand men, for he thought that this was to be our point of attack. Along the shore from Cap Rouge to Cape Diamond small batteries were posted, such as that of Lancy's at Anse du Foulon; but they were careless, for no conjectures might seem so wild as that of bringing an army up where I had climbed. "Tut, tut," said General Murray, when he came to me on the Terror of France, after having, at my suggestion, gone to the south shore opposite Anse du Foulon, and scanned the faint line that marked the narrow cleft on the cliff side--"tut, tut, man," said he, "'tis the dream of a cat or a damned mathematician." Once, after all was done, he said to me that cats and mathematicians were the only generals. With a belligerent pride Clark showed the way up the river one evening, the batteries of the town giving us plunging shots as we went, and ours at Point Levis answering gallantly. To me it was a good if most anxious time: good, in that I was having some sort of compensation for my own sufferings in the town; anxious, because no single word came to me of Alixe or her father, and all the time we were pouring death into the place. But this we knew from deserters, that Vaudreuil was Governor and Bigot Intendant still; by which it would seem that, on the momentous night when Doltaire was wounded by Madame Cournal, he gave back the governorship to Vaudreuil and reinstated Bigot. Presently, from an officer who had been captured as he was setting free a fire-raft upon the river to run among the boats of our fleet, I heard that Doltaire had been confined in the Intendance from a wound given by a stupid sentry. Thus the true story had been kept from the public. From him, too, I learned that nothing was known of the Seigneur Duvarney and his daughter; that they had suddenly disappeared from the Intendance, as if the earth had swallowed them; and that even Juste Duvarney knew nothing of them, and was, in consequence, much distressed. This officer also said that now, when it might seem as if both the Seigneur and his daughter were dead, opinion had turned in Alixe's favour, and the feeling had crept about, first among the common folk and afterwards among the people of the garrison, that she had been used harshly. This was due largely, he thought, to the constant advocacy of the Chevalier de la Darante, whose nephew had married Mademoiselle Georgette Duvarney. This piece of news, in spite of the uncertainty of Alixe's fate, touched me, for the Chevalier had indeed kept his word to me. At last all of Admiral Holmes's division was got above the town, with very little damage, and I never saw a man so elated, so profoundly elated as Clark over his share in the business. He was a daredevil, too; for the day that the last of the division was taken up the river, without my permission or the permission of the admiral or any one else, he took the Terror of France almost up to Bougainville's earthworks in the cove at Cap Rouge and insolently emptied his six swivels into them, and then came out and stood down the river. When I asked what he was doing--for I was now well enough to come on deck--he said he was going to see how monkeys could throw nuts; when I pressed him, he said he had a will to hear the cats in the eaves; and when I became severe, he added that he would bring the Terror of France up past the batteries of the town in broad daylight, swearing that they could no more hit him than a woman could a bird on a flagstaff. I did not relish this foolish bravado, and I forbade it; but presently I consented, on condition that he take me to General Wolfe's camp at Montmorenci first; for now I felt strong enough to be again on active service. Clark took the Terror of France up the river in midday, running perilously close to the batteries; and though they pounded at him petulantly, foolishly angry at his contemptuous defiance, he ran the gauntlet safely, and coming to the flagship, the Sutherland, saluted with his six swivels, to the laughter of the whole fleet and his own profane joy. "Mr. Moray," said General Wolfe, when I saw him, racked with pain, studying a chart of the river and town which his chief engineer had just brought him, "show me here this passage in the hillside." I did so, tracing the plains of Maitre Abraham, which I assured him would be good ground for a pitched battle. He nodded; then rose, and walked up and down for a time, thinking. Suddenly he stopped, and fixed his eyes upon me. "Mr. Moray," said he, "it would seem that you, angering La Pompadour, brought down this war upon us." He paused, smiling in a dry way, as if the thought amused him, as if indeed he doubted it; but for that I cared not, it was an honour I could easily live without. I bowed to his words, and said, "Mine was the last straw, sir." Again he nodded, and replied, "Well, well, you got us into trouble; you must show us the way out," and he looked at the passage I had traced upon the chart. "You will remain with me until we meet our enemy on these heights." He pointed to the plains of Maitre Abraham. Then he turned away, and began walking up and down again. "It is the last chance!" he said to himself in a tone despairing and yet heroic. "Please God, please God!" he added. "You will speak nothing of these plans," he said to me at last, half mechanically. "We must make feints of landing at Cap Rouge--feints of landing everywhere save at the one possible place; confuse both Bougainville and Montcalm; tire out their armies with watchings and want of sleep; and then, on the auspicious night, make the great trial." I had remained respectfully standing at a little distance from him. Now he suddenly came to me, and, pressing my hand, said quickly, "You have trouble, Mr. Moray. I am sorry for you. But maybe it is for better things to come." I thanked him stumblingly, and a moment later left him, to serve him on the morrow, and so on through many days, till, in divers perils, the camp at Montmorenci was abandoned, the troops were got aboard the ships, and the general took up his quarters on the Sutherland; from which, one notable day, I sallied forth with him to a point at the south shore opposite the Anse du Foulon, where he saw the thin crack in the cliff side. From that moment instant and final attack was his purpose. The great night came, starlit and serene. The camp-fires of two armies spotted the shores of the wide river, and the ships lay like wild fowl in convoys above the town from where the arrow of fate should be sped. Darkness upon the river, and fireflies upon the shore. At Beauport, an untiring general, who for a hundred days had snatched sleep, booted and spurred, and in the ebb of a losing game, longed for his adored Candiac, grieved for a beloved daughter's death, sent cheerful messages to his aged mother and to his wife, and by the deeper protests of his love foreshadowed his own doom. At Cap Rouge, a dying commander, unperturbed and valiant, reached out a finger to trace the last movements in a desperate campaign of life that opened in Flanders at sixteen; of which the end began when he took from his bosom the portrait of his affianced wife, and said to his old schoolfellow, "Give this to her, Jervis, for we shall meet no more." Then, passing to the deck, silent and steady, no signs of pain upon his face, so had the calm come to him, as to Nature and this beleaguered city, before the whirlwind, he looked out upon the clustered groups of boats filled with the flower of his army, settled in a menacing tranquillity. There lay the Light Infantry, Bragg's, Kennedy's, Lascelles's, Anstruther's Regiment, Fraser's Highlanders, and the much-loved, much-blamed, and impetuous Louisburg Grenadiers. Steady, indomitable, silent as cats, precise as mathematicians, he could trust them, as they loved his awkward pain-twisted body and ugly red hair. "Damme, Jack, didst thee ever take hell in tow before?" said a sailor from the Terror of France to his fellow once, as the marines grappled with a flotilla of French fire-ships, and dragged them, spitting destruction, clear of the fleet, to the shore. "Nay, but I've been in tow of Jimmy Wolfe's red head; that's hell-fire, lad!" was the reply. From boat to boat the General's eye passed, then shifted to the ships--the Squirrel, the Leostaff, the Seahorse, and the rest--and lastly to where the army of Bougainville lay. Then there came towards him an officer, who said quietly, "The tide has turned, sir." For reply the general made a swift motion towards the maintop shrouds, and almost instantly lanterns showed in them. In response the crowded boats began to cast away, and, immediately descending, the General passed into his own boat, drew to the front, and drifted in the current ahead of his gallant men, the ships following after. It was two by the clock when the boats began to move, and slowly we ranged down the stream, silently steered, carried by the current. No paddle, no creaking oarlock, broke the stillness. I was in the next boat to the General's, for, with Clark and twenty-two other volunteers to the forlorn hope, I was to show the way up the heights, and we were near to his person for over two hours that night. No moon was shining, but I could see the General plainly; and once, when our boats almost touched, he saw me, and said graciously, "If they get up, Mr. Moray, you are free to serve yourself." My heart was full of love of country then, and I answered, "I hope, sir, to serve you till your flag is hoisted in the citadel." He turned to a young midshipman beside him, and said, "How old are you, sir?" "Seventeen, sir," was the reply. "It is the most lasting passion," he said, musing. It seemed to me then, and I still think it, that the passion he meant was love of country. A moment afterwards I heard him recite to the officers about him, in a low clear tone, some verses by Mr. Gray, the poet, which I had never then read, though I have prized them since. Under those frowning heights, and the smell from our roaring thirty-two-pounders in the air, I heard him say: "The curfew tolls, the knell of parting day; The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me." I have heard finer voices than his--it was as tin beside Doltaire's--but something in it pierced me that night, and I felt the man, the perfect hero, when he said: "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour-- The paths of glory lead but to the grave." Soon afterwards we neared the end of our quest, the tide carrying us in to shore; and down from the dark heights there came a challenge, satisfied by an officer who said in French that we were provision-boats for Montcalm: these, we knew, had been expected! Then came the batteries of Samos. Again we passed with the same excuse, and we rounded a headland, and the great work was begun. The boats of the Light Infantry swung in to shore. No sentry challenged, but I knew that at the top Lancy's tents were set. When the Light Infantry had landed, we twenty-four volunteers stood still for a moment, and I pointed out the way. Before we started, we stooped beside a brook that leaped lightly down the ravine, and drank a little rum and water. Then I led the way, Clark at one side of me, and a soldier of the Light Infantry at the other. It was hard climbing, but, following in our careful steps as silently as they might, the good fellows came eagerly after. Once a rock broke loose and came tumbling down, but plunged into a thicket, where it stayed; else it might have done for us entirely. I breathed freely when it stopped. Once, too, a branch cracked loudly, and we lay still; but hearing nothing above, we pushed on, and, sweating greatly, came close to the top. Here I drew back with Clark, for such honour as there might be in gaining the heights first I wished to go to these soldiers who had trusted their lives to my guidance. I let six go by and reach the heights, and then I drew myself up. We did not stir till all twenty-four were safe; then we made a dash for the tents of Lancy, which now showed in the first gray light of morning. We made a dash for them, were discovered, and shots greeted us; but we were on them instantly, and in a moment I had the pleasure of putting a bullet in Lancy's heel, and brought him down. Our cheers told the general the news, and soon hundreds of soldiers were climbing the hard way that we had come. And now while an army climbed to the heights of Maitre Abraham, Admiral Saunders in the gray dawn was bombarding Montcalm's encampment, and boats filled with marines and soldiers drew to the Beauport flats, as if to land there; while shots, bombs, shells, and carcasses were hurled from Levis upon the town, deceiving Montcalm. At last, however, suspecting, he rode towards the town at six o'clock, and saw our scarlet ranks spread across the plains between him and Bougainville, and on the crest, nearer to him, eying us in amazement, the white-coated battalion of Guienne, which should the day before have occupied the very ground held by Lancy. A slight rain falling added to their gloom, but cheered us. It gave us a better light to fight by, for in the clear September air, the bright sun shining in our faces, they would have had us at advantage. In another hour the gates of St. John and St. Louis emptied out upon this battlefield a warring flood of our foes. It was a handsome sight: the white uniforms of the brave regiments, Roussillon, La Sarre, Guienne, Languedoc, Bearn, mixed with the dark, excitable militia, the sturdy burghers of the town, a band of coureurs de bois in their rough hunter's costume, and whooping Indians, painted and furious, ready to eat us. At last here was to be a test of fighting in open field, though the French had in their whole army twice the number of our men, a walled and provisioned city behind them, and field-pieces in great number to bring against us. But there was bungling with them. Vaudreuil hung back or came tardily from Beauport; Bougainville had not yet arrived; and when they might have pitted twice our number against us, they had not many more than we. With Bougainville behind us and Montcalm in front, we might have been checked, though there was no man in all our army but believed that we should win the day. I could plainly see Montcalm, mounted on a dark horse, riding along the lines as they formed against us, waving his sword, a truly gallant figure. He was answered by a roar of applause and greeting. On the left their Indians and burghers overlapped our second line, where Townsend with Amherst's and the Light Infantry, and Colonel Burton with the Royal Americans and Light Infantry, guarded our flank, prepared to meet Bougainville. In vain our foes tried to get between our right flank and the river; Otway's Regiment, thrown out, defeated that. It was my hope that Doltaire was with Montcalm, and that we might meet and end our quarrel. I came to know afterwards that it was he who had induced Montcalm to send the battalion of Guienne to the heights above the Anse du Foulon. The battalion had not been moved till twenty-four hours after the order was given, or we should never have gained those heights; stones rolled from the cliff would have destroyed an army. We waited, Clark and I, with the Louisburg Grenadiers while they formed. We made no noise, but stood steady and still, the bagpipes of the Highlanders shrilly challenging. At eight o'clock sharpshooters began firing on us from the left, and skirmishers were thrown out to hold them in check, or dislodge them and drive them from the houses where they sheltered and galled Townsend's men. Their field-pieces opened on us, too, and yet we did nothing, but at nine o'clock, being ordered, lay down and waited still. There was no restlessness, no anxiety, no show of doubt, for these men of ours were old fighters, and they trusted their leaders. From bushes, trees, coverts, and fields of grain there came that constant hail of fire, and there fell upon our ranks a doggedness, a quiet anger, which grew into a grisly patience. The only pleasure we had in two long hours was in watching our two brass six-pounders play upon the irregular ranks of our foes, making confusion, and Townsend drive back a detachment of cavalry from Cap Rouge, which sought to break our left flank and reach Montcalm. We had seen the stars go down, the cold, mottled light of dawn break over the battered city and the heights of Charlesbourg; we had watched the sun come up, and then steal away behind slow-travelling clouds and hanging mist; we had looked across over unreaped cornfields and the dull, slovenly St. Charles, knowing that endless leagues of country, north and south, east and west, lay in the balance for the last time. I believed that this day would see the last of the strife between England and France for dominion here; of La Pompadour's spite which I had roused to action against my country; of the struggle between Doltaire and myself. The public stake was worthy of our army--worthy of the dauntless soldier, who had begged his physicians to patch him up long enough to fight this fight, whereon he staked reputation, life, all that a man loves in the world; the private stake was more than worthy of my long sufferings. I thought that Montcalm would have waited for Vaudreuil, but no. At ten o'clock his three columns moved down upon us briskly, making a wild rattle; two columns moving upon our right and one upon our left, firing obliquely and constantly as they marched. Then came the command to rise, and we stood up and waited, our muskets loaded with an extra ball. I could feel the stern malice in our ranks, as we stood there and took, without returning a shot, that damnable fire. Minute after minute passed; then came the sharp command to advance. We did so, and again halted, and yet no shot came from us. We stood there, a long palisade of red. At last I saw our general raise his sword, a command rang down the long line of battle, and, like one terrible cannon-shot, our muskets sang together with as perfect a precision as on a private field of exercise. Then, waiting for the smoke to clear a little, another volley came with almost the same precision; after which the firing came in choppy waves of sound, and again in a persistent clattering. Then a light breeze lifted the smoke and mist well away, and a wayward sunlight showed us our foe, like a long white wave retreating from a rocky shore, bending, crumpling, breaking, and, in a hundred little billows, fleeing seaward. Thus checked, confounded, the French army trembled and fell back. Then I heard the order to charge, and from near four thousand throats there came for the first time our exultant British cheer, and high over all rang the slogan of Fraser's Highlanders. To my left I saw the flashing broadswords of the clansmen, ahead of all the rest. Those sickles of death clove through and broke the battalions of La Sarre, and Lascelles scattered the good soldiers of Languedoc into flying columns. We on the right, led by Wolfe, charged the desperate and valiant men of Roussillon and Guienne and the impetuous sharpshooters of the militia. As we came on, I observed the general sway and push forward again, and then I lost sight of him, for I saw what gave the battle a new interest to me: Doltaire, cool and deliberate, animating and encouraging the French troops. I moved in a shaking hedge of bayonets, keeping my eye on him; and presently there was a hand-to-hand melee, out of which I fought to reach him. I was making for him, where he now sought to rally the retreating columns, when I noticed, not far away, Gabord, mounted, and attacked by three grenadiers. Looking back now, I see him, with his sabre cutting right and left, as he drove his horse at one grenadier, who slipped and fell on the slippery ground, while the horse rode on him, battering him. Obliquely down swept the sabre, and drove through the cheek and chin of one foe; another sweep, and the bayonet of the other was struck aside; and another, which was turned aside as Gabord's horse came down, bayoneted by the fallen grenadier. But Gabord was on his feet again, roaring like a bull, with a wild grin on his face, as he partly struck aside the bayonet of the last grenadier. It caught him in the flesh of the left side. He grasped the musket-barrel, and swung his sabre with fierce precision. The man's head dropped back like the lid of a pot, and he tumbled into a heap of the faded golden-rod flower which spattered the field. It was at this moment I saw Juste Duvarney making towards me, hatred and deadly purpose in his eyes. I had will enough to meet him, and to kill him too, yet I could not help but think of Alixe. Gabord saw him, also, and, being nearer, made for me as well. For that act I cherish his memory. The thought was worthy of a gentleman of breeding; he had the true thing in his heart. He would save us--two brothers--from fighting, by fighting me himself. He reached me first, and with an "Au diable!" made a stroke at me. It was a matter of sword and sabre now. Clark met Juste Duvarney's rush; and there we were, at as fine a game of cross-purposes as you can think: Clark hungering for Gabord's life (Gabord had once been his jailer, too), and Juste Duvarney for mine; the battle faring on ahead of us. Soon the two were clean cut off from the French army, and must fight to the death or surrender. Juste Duvarney spoke only once, and then it was but the rancorous word "Renegade!" nor did I speak at all; but Clark was blasphemous, and Gabord, bleeding, fought with a sputtering relish. "Fair fight and fowl for spitting," he cried. "Go home to heaven, dickey-bird." Between phrases of this kind we cut and thrust for life, an odd sort of fighting. I fought with a desperate alertness, and presently my sword passed through his body, drew out, and he shivered--fell--where he stood, collapsing suddenly like a bag. I knelt beside him, and lifted up his head. His eyes were glazing fast. "Gabord! Gabord!" I called, grief-stricken, for that work was the worst I ever did in this world. He started, stared, and fumbled at his waistcoat. I quickly put my hand in, and drew out--one of Mathilde's wooden crosses. "To cheat--the devil--yet--aho!" he whispered, kissed the cross, and so was done with life. When I turned from him, Clark stood beside me. Dazed as I was, I did not at first grasp the significance of that fact. I looked towards the town, and saw the French army hustling into the St. Louis Gate; saw the Highlanders charging the bushes at the Cote Ste. Genevieve, where the brave Canadians made their last stand; saw, not fifty feet away, the noblest soldier of our time, even General Wolfe, dead in the arms of Mr. Henderson, a volunteer in the Twenty-Second; and then, almost at my feet, stretched out as I had seen him lie in the Palace courtyard two years before, Juste Duvarney. But now he was beyond all friendship or reconciliation--forever. XXIX "MASTER DEVIL" DOLTAIRE The bells of some shattered church were calling to vespers, the sun was sinking behind the flaming autumn woods, as once more I entered the St. Louis Gate, with the grenadiers and a detachment of artillery, the British colours hoisted on a gun-carriage. Till this hour I had ever entered and left this town a captive, a price set on my head, and in the very street where now I walked I had gone with a rope round my neck, abused and maltreated. I saw our flag replace the golden lilies of France on the citadel where Doltaire had baited me, and at the top of Mountain Street, near to the bishop's palace, our colours also flew. Every step I took was familiar, yet unfamiliar too. It was a disfigured town, where a hungry, distracted people huddled among ruins, and begged for mercy and for food, nor found time in the general overwhelming to think of the gallant Montcalm, lying in his shell-made grave at the chapel of the Ursulines, not fifty steps from where I had looked through the tapestry on Alixe and Doltaire. The convent was almost deserted now, and as I passed it, on my way to the cathedral, I took off my hat; for how knew I but that she I loved best lay there, too, as truly a heroine as the admirable Montcalm was hero! A solitary bell was clanging on the chapel as I went by, and I saw three nuns steal past me with bowed heads. I longed to stop them and ask them of Alixe, for I felt sure that the Church knew where she was, living or dead, though none of all I asked knew aught of her, not even the Chevalier de la Darante, who had come to our camp the night before, accompanied by Monsieur Joannes, the town major, with terms of surrender. I came to the church of the Recollets as I wandered; for now, for a little time, I seemed bewildered and incapable, lost in a maze of dreadful imaginings. I entered the door of the church, and stumbled upon a body. Hearing footsteps ahead in the dusk, I passed up the aisle, and came upon a pile of debris. Looking up, I could see the stars shining through a hole in the roof, Hearing a noise beyond, I went on, and there, seated on the high altar, was the dwarf who had snatched the cup of rum out of the fire the night that Mathilde had given the crosses to the revellers. He gave a low, wild laugh, and hugged a bottle to his breast. Almost at his feet, half naked, with her face on the lowest step of the altar, her feet touching the altar itself, was the girl--his sister--who had kept her drunken lover from assaulting him. The girl was dead--there was a knife-wound in her breast. Sick at the sight I left the place, and went on, almost mechanically, to Voban's house. It was level with the ground, a crumpled heap of ruins. I passed Lancy's house, in front of which I had fought with Gabord; it too was broken to pieces. As I turned away I heard a loud noise, as of an explosion, and I supposed it to be some magazine. I thought of it no more at the time. Voban must be found; that was more important. I must know of Alixe first, and I felt sure that if any one guessed her whereabouts it would be he: she would have told him where she was going, if she had fled; if she were dead, who so likely to know, this secret, elusive, vengeful watcher? Of Doltaire I had heard nothing; I would seek him out when I knew of Alixe. He could not escape me in this walled town. I passed on for a time without direction, for I seemed not to know where I might find the barber. Our sentries already patrolled the streets, and our bugles were calling on the heights, with answering calls from the fleet in the basin. Night came down quickly, the stars shone out in the perfect blue, and, as I walked along, broken walls, shattered houses, solitary pillars, looked mystically strange. It was painfully quiet, as if a beaten people had crawled away into the holes our shot and shell had made, to hide their misery. Now and again a gaunt face looked out from a hiding-place, and drew back again in fear at sight of me. Once a drunken woman spat at me and cursed me; once I was fired at; and many times from dark corners I heard voices crying, "Sauvez-moi--ah, sauvez-moi, bon Dieu!" Once I stood for many minutes and watched our soldiers giving biscuits and their own share of rum to homeless French peasants hovering round the smouldering ruins of a house which carcasses had destroyed. And now my wits came back to me, my purposes, the power to act, which for a couple of hours had seemed to be in abeyance. I hurried through narrow streets to the cathedral. There it stood, a shattered mass, its sides all broken, its roof gone, its tall octagonal tower alone substantial and unchanged. Coming to its rear, I found Babette's little house, with open door, and I went in. The old grandfather sat in his corner, with a lighted candle on the table near him, across his knees Jean's coat that I had worn. He only babbled nonsense to my questioning, and, after calling aloud to Babette and getting no reply, I started for the Intendance. I had scarcely left the house when I saw some French peasants coming towards me with a litter. A woman, walking behind the litter, carried a lantern, and one of our soldiers of artillery attended and directed. I ran forward, and discovered Voban, mortally hurt. The woman gave a cry, and spoke my name in a kind of surprise and relief; and the soldier, recognizing me, saluted. I sent him for a surgeon, and came on with the hurt man to the little house. Soon I was alone with him save for Babette, and her I sent for a priest. As soon as I had seen Voban I guessed what had happened: he had tried for his revenge at last. After a little time he knew me, but at first he could not speak. "What has happened--the Palace?" said I. He nodded. "You blew it up--with Bigot?" I asked. His reply was a whisper, and his face twitched with pain: "Not--with Bigot." I gave him some cordial, which he was inclined to refuse. It revived him, but I saw he could live only a few hours. Presently he made an effort. "I will tell you," he whispered. "Tell me first of my wife," said I. "Is she alive?--is she alive?" If a smile could have been upon his lips then, I saw one there--good Voban! I put my ear down, and my heart almost stopped beating, until I heard him say, "Find Mathilde." "Where?" asked I. "In the Valdoche Hills," he answered, "where the Gray Monk lives--by the Tall Calvary." He gasped with pain. I let him rest awhile, and eased the bandages on him, and at last he told his story: "I am to be gone soon. For two years I have wait for the good time to kill him--Bigot--to send him and his palace to hell. I can not tell you how I work to do it. It is no matter--no. From an old cellar I mine, and at last I get the powder lay beneath him--his palace. So. But he does not come to the Palace much this many months, and Madame Cournal is always with him, and it is hard to do the thing in other ways. But I laugh when the English come in the town, and when I see Bigot fly to his palace alone to get his treasure-chest I think it is my time. So I ask the valet, and he say he is in the private room that lead to the treasure-place. Then I come back quick to the secret spot and fire my mine. In ten minutes all will be done. I go at once to his room again, alone. I pass through the one room, and come to the other. It is a room with one small barred window. If he is there, I will say a word to him that I have wait long to say, then shut the door on us both--for I am sick of life--and watch him and laugh at him till the end comes. If he is in the other room, then I have another way as sure--" He paused, exhausted, and I waited till he could again go on. At last he made a great effort, and continued: "I go back to the first room, and he is not there. I pass soft, to the treasure-room, and I see him kneel beside a chest, looking in. His back is to me. I hear him laugh to himself. I shut the door, turn the key, go to the window and throw it out, and look at him again. But now he stand and turn to me, and then I see--I see it is not Bigot, but M'sieu' Doltaire! "I am sick when I see that, and at first I can not speak, my tongue stick in my mouth so dry. 'Has Voban turn robber?' m'sieu' say. I put out my hand and try to speak again--but no. 'What did you throw from the window?' he ask. 'And what's the matter, my Voban?' 'My God,' I say at him now, 'I thought you are Bigot!' I point to the floor. 'Powder!' I whisper. "His eyes go like fire so terrible; he look to the window, take a quick angry step to me, but stand still. Then he point to the window. 'The key, Voban?' he say; and I answer, 'Yes.' He get pale; then he go and try the door, look close at the walls, try them--quick, quick, stop, feel for a panel, then try again, stand still, and lean against the table. It is no use to call; no one can hear, for it is all roar outside, and these walls are solid and very thick. "'How long?' he say, and take out his watch. 'Five minutes--maybe,' I answer. He put his watch on the table, and sit down on a bench by it, and for a little minute he do not speak, but look at me close, and not angry, as you would think. 'Voban,' he say in a low voice, 'Bigot was a thief.' He point to the chest. 'He stole from the King--my father. He stole your Mathilde from you! He should have died. We have both been blunderers, Voban, blunderers,' he say; 'things have gone wrong with us. We have lost all.' There is little time. 'Tell me one thing,' he go on: 'Is Mademoiselle Duvarney safe--do you know?' I tell him yes, and he smile, and take from his pocket something, and lay it against his lips, and then put it back in his breast. "'You are not afraid to die, Voban?' he ask. I answer no. 'Shake hands with me, my friend,' he speak, and I do so that. 'Ah, pardon, pardon, m'sieu',' I say. 'No, no, Voban; it was to be,' he answer. 'We shall meet again, comrade--eh, if we can?' he speak on, and he turn away from me and look to the sky through the window. Then he look at his watch, and get to his feet, and stand there still. I kiss my crucifix. He reach out and touch it, and bring his fingers to his lips. 'Who can tell--perhaps--perhaps!' he say. For a little minute--ah, it seem like a year, and it is so still, so still he stand there, and then he put his hand over the watch, lift it up, and shut his eyes, as if time is all done. While you can count ten it is so, and then the great crash come." For a long time Voban lay silent again. I gave him more cordial, and he revived and ended his tale. "I am a blunderer, as m'sieu' say," he went on, "for he is killed, not Bigot and me, and only a little part of the palace go to pieces. And so they fetch me here, and I wish--my God in Heaven, I wish I go with M'sieu' Doltaire." But he followed him a little later. Two hours afterwards I went to the Intendance, and there I found that the body of my enemy had been placed in the room where I had last seen him with Alixe. He lay on the same couch where she had lain. The flag of France covered his broken body, but his face was untouched--as it had been in life, haunting, fascinating, though the shifting lights were gone, the fine eyes closed. A noble peace hid all that was sardonic; not even Gabord would now have called him "Master Devil." I covered up his face and left him there-- peasant and prince--candles burning at his head and feet, and the star of Louis on his shattered breast; and I saw him no more. All that night I walked the ramparts, thinking, remembering, hoping, waiting for the morning; and when I saw the light break over those far eastern parishes, wasted by fire and sword, I set out on a journey to the Valdoche Hills. XXX "WHERE ALL THE LOVERS CAN HIDE" It was in the saffron light of early morning that I saw it, the Tall Calvary of the Valdoche Hills. The night before I had come up through a long valley, overhung with pines on one side and crimsoning maples on the other, and, travelling till nearly midnight, had lain down in the hollow of a bank, and listened to a little river leap over cascades, and, far below, go prattling on to the greater river in the south. My eyes closed, but for long I did not sleep. I heard a night-hawk go by on a lonely mission, a beaver slide from a log into the water, and the delicate humming of the pine needles was a drowsy music, through which broke by-and-bye the strange crying of a loon from the water below. I was neither asleep nor awake, but steeped in this wide awe of night, the sweet smell of earth and running water in my nostrils. Once, too, in a slight breeze, the scent of some wild animal's nest near by came past, and I found it good. I lifted up a handful of loose earth and powdered leaves, and held it to my nose--a good, brave smell--all in a sort of drowsing. While I mused, Doltaire's face passed before me as it was in life, and I heard him say again of the peasants, "These shall save the earth some day, for they are of it, and live close to it, and are kin to it." Suddenly there rushed before me that scene in the convent, when all the devil in him broke loose upon the woman I loved. But, turning on my homely bed, I looked up and saw the deep quiet of the skies, the stable peace of the stars, and I was a son of the good Earth again, a sojourner in the tents of Home. I did not doubt that Alixe was alive or that I should find her. There was assurance in this benignant night. In that thought, dreaming that her cheek lay close to mine, her arm around my neck, I fell asleep. I waked to bear the squirrels stirring in the trees, the whir of the partridge, and the first unvarying note of the oriole. Turning on my dry, leafy bed, I looked down, and saw in the dark haze of dawn the beavers at their house-building. I was at the beginning of a deep gorge or valley, on one side of which was a steep sloping hill of grass and trees, and on the other a huge escarpment of mossed and jagged rocks. Then, farther up, the valley seemed to end in a huge promontory. On this great wedge grim shapes loomed in the mist, uncouth and shadowy and unnatural--a lonely, mysterious Brocken, impossible to human tenantry. Yet as I watched the mist slowly rise, there grew in me the feeling that there lay the end of my quest. I came down to the brook, bathed my face and hands, ate my frugal breakfast of bread, with berries picked from the hillside, and, as the yellow light of the rising sun broke over the promontory, I saw the Tall Calvary upon a knoll, strange comrade to the huge rocks and monoliths--as it were vast playthings of the Mighty Men, the fabled ancestors of the Indian races of the land. I started up the valley, and presently all the earth grew blithe, and the birds filled the woods and valleys with jocund noise. It was near noon before I knew that my pilgrimage was over. Coming round a point of rock, I saw the Gray Monk, of whom strange legends had lately travelled to the city. I took off my hat to him reverently; but all at once he threw back his cowl, and I saw--no monk, but, much altered, the good chaplain who had married me to Alixe in the Chateau St. Louis. He had been hurt when he was fired upon in the water; had escaped, however, got to shore, and made his way into the woods. There he had met Mathilde, who led him to her lonely home in this hill. Seeing the Tall Calvary, he had conceived the idea of this disguise, and Mathilde had brought him the robe for the purpose. In a secluded cave I found Alixe with her father, caring for him, for he was not yet wholly recovered from his injuries. There was no waiting now. The ban of Church did not hold my dear girl back, nor did her father do aught but smile when she came laughing and weeping into my arms. "Robert, O Robert, Robert!" she cried, and at first that was all she could say. The good Seigneur put out his hand to me beseechingly. I took it, clasped it. "The city?" he asked. "Is ours," I answered. "And my son--my son?" I told him how, the night that the city was taken, the Chevalier de la Darante and I had gone a sad journey in a boat to the Isle of Orleans, and there, in the chapel yard, near to his father's chateau, we had laid a brave and honest gentleman who died fighting for his country. By-and-bye, when their grief had a little abated, I took them out into the sunshine. A pleasant green valley lay to the north, and to the south, far off, was the wall of rosy hills that hid the captured town. Peace was upon it all, and upon us. As we stood there, a scarlet figure came winding in and out among the giant stones, crosses hanging at her girdle. She approached us, and, seeing me, she said: "Hush! I know a place where all the lovers can hide." And she put a little wooden cross into my hands. APPENDIX The following is an excerpt from 'The Scot in New France' (1880) by J.M. Lemoine. It is an account of Robert Stobo, the man whose life this text is loosely based upon. Five years previous to the battle of the Plains of Abraham, one comes across three genuine Scots in the streets of Quebec--all however prisoners of war, taken in the border raids--as such under close surveillance. One, a youthful and handsome officer of Virginia riflemen, aged 27 years, a friend of Governor Dinwiddie, had been allowed the range of the fortress, on parole. His good looks, education, smartness (we use the word advisedly) and misfortunes seem to have created much sympathy for the captive, but canny Scot. He has a warm welcome in many houses--the French ladies even plead his cause; le beau capitaine is asked out; no entertainment at last is considered complete, without Captain--later on Major Robert Stobo. The other two are: Lieutenant Stevenson of Rogers' Rangers, another Virginia corps, and a Leith carpenter of the name of Clarke. Stobo, after more attempts than one, eluded the French sentries, and still more dangerous foes to the peace of mind of a handsome bachelor--the ladies of Quebec. He will re-appear on the scene, the advisor of General Wolfe, as to the best landing place round Quebec. Doubtless you wish to hear more about the adventurous Scot. A plan of escape between him, Stevenson and Clarke, was carried out on 1st May, 1759. Major Stobo met the fugitives under a wind-mill, probably the old wind-mill on the grounds of the General Hospital Convent. Having stolen a birch canoe, the party paddled it all night, and, after incredible fatigue and danger, they passed Isle-aux-Coudres, Kamouraska, and landed below this spot, shooting two Indians in self-defence, whom Clarke buried after having scalped them, saying to the Major: "Good sir, by your permission, these same two scalps, when I come to New York, will sell for twenty-four good pounds: with this I'll be right merry, and my wife right beau." They then murdered the Indians' faithful dog, because he howled, and buried him with his masters. It was shortly after this that they met the laird of the Kamouraska Isles, le Chevalier de la Durantaye, who said that the best Canadian blood ran in his veins, and that he was of kin with the mighty Duc de Mirapoix. Had the mighty Duke, however, at that moment seen his Canadian cousin steering the four-oared boat, loaded with wheat, he might have felt but a very qualified admiration for the majesty of his stately demeanor and his nautical savoir faire. Stobo took possession of the Chevalier's pinnace, and made the haughty laird, nolens volens, row him with the rest of the crew, telling him to row away, and that, had the Great Louis himself been in the boat at that moment, it would be his fate to row a British subject thus. "At these last mighty words," says the Memoirs, "a stern resolution sat upon his countenance, which the Canadian beheld and with reluctance temporized." After a series of adventures, and dangers of every kind, the fugitives succeeded in capturing a French boat. Next, they surprised a French sloop, and, after a most hazardous voyage, they finally, in their prize, landed at Louisbourg, to the general amazement. Stobo missed the English fleet; but took passage two days after in a vessel leaving for Quebec, where he safely arrived to tender his services to the immortal Wolfe, who gladly availed himself of them. According to the Memoirs, Stobo used daily to set out to reconnoitre with Wolfe on the deck of a frigate, opposite the Falls of Montmorency, some French shots were nigh carrying away his "decorated" and gartered legs. We next find the Major, on the 21st July, 1759, piloting the expedition sent to Deschambault to seize, as prisoners, the Quebec ladies who had taken refuge there during the bombardment--"Mesdames Duchesnay and Decharnay; Mlle. Couillard; the Joly, Malhiot and Magnan families." "Next day, in the afternoon, les belles captives, who had been treated with every species of respect, were put on shore and released at Diamond Harbour. The English admiral, full of gallantry, ordered the bombardment of the city to be suspended, in order to afford the Quebec ladies time to seek places of safety." The incident is thus referred to in a letter communicated to the Literary and Historical Society by Capt. Colin McKenzie. Stobo next points out the spot, at Sillery, where Wolfe landed, and soon after was sent with despatches, via the St. Lawrence, to General Amherst; but, during the trip, the vessel was overhauled and taken by a French privateer, the despatches having been previously consigned to the deep. Stobo might have swung at the yard-arm in this new predicament, had his French valet divulged his identity with the spy of Fort du Quesne; but fortune again stepped in to preserve the adventurous Scot. There were already too many prisoners on board of the French privateer. A day's provision is allowed the English vessel, which soon landed Stobo at Halifax, from whence he joined General Amherst, "many a league across the country." He served under Amherst on his Lake Champlain expedition, and there he finished the campaign; which ended, he begs to go to Williamsburg, the then capital of Virginia. It seems singular that no command of any importance appears to have been given to the brave Scot; but, possibly, the part played by the Major when under parole at Fort du Quesne, was weighed by the Imperial authorities. There certainly seems to be a dash of the Benedict Arnold in this transaction. However, Stobo was publicly thanked by a committee of the Assembly of Virginia, and was allowed his arrears of pay for the time of his captivity. On the 30th April, 1756, he had also been presented by the Assembly of Virginia with 300 pounds, in consideration of his services to the country and his sufferings in his confinement as a hostage in Quebec. On the 19th November, 1759, he was presented with 1,000 pounds as "a reward for his zeal to his country and the recompense for the great hardships he has suffered during his confinement in the enemy's country." On the 18th February, 1760, Major Stobo embarked from New York for England, on board the packet with Colonel West and several other gentlemen. One would imagine that he had exhausted the vicissitudes of fortune. But no. A French privateer boards them in the midst of the English channel. The Major again consigns to the deep all his letters, all except one which he forgot, in the pocket of his coat, under the arm pit. This escaped the general catastrophe; and will again restore him to notoriety; it is from General A. Monckton to Mr. Pitt. The passengers of the packet were assessed 2,500 pounds to be allowed their liberty, and Stobo had to pay 125 pounds towards the relief fund. The despatch forgotten in his coat on delivery to the great Pitt brought back a letter from Pitt to Amherst. With this testimonial, Stobo sailed for New York, 24th April, 1760, to rejoin the army engaged in the invasion of Canada; here end the Memoirs. Though Stobo's conduct at Fort du Quesne and at Quebec can never be defended or palliated, all will agree that he exhibited, during his eventful career, most indomitable fortitude, a boundless ingenuity, and great devotion to his country--the whole crowned with final success. THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG, Complete [A ROMANCE OF TWO KINGDOMS] By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS: THE INVASION ELEVEN YEARS AFTER IN FRANCE--NEAR FIVE MONTHS AFTER IN JERSEY FIVE YEARS LATER DURING ONE YEAR LATER IN JERSEY--A YEAR LATER INTRODUCTION This book is a protest and a deliverance. For seven years I had written continuously of Canada, though some short stories of South Sea life, and the novel Mrs. Falchion, had, during that time, issued from my pen. It looked as though I should be writing of the Far North all my life. Editors had begun to take that view; but from the start it had never been my view. Even when writing Pierre and His People I was determined that I should not be cabined, cribbed, and confined in one field; that I should not, as some other men have done, wind in upon myself, until at last each succeeding book would be but a variation of some previous book, and I should end by imitating myself, become the sacrifice to the god of the pin-hole. I was warned not to break away from Canada; but all my life I had been warned, and all my life I had followed my own convictions. I would rather not have written another word than be corralled, bitted, saddled, and ridden by that heartless broncho-buster, the public, which wants a man who has once pleased it, to do the same thing under the fret of whip and spur for ever. When I went to the Island of Jersey, in 1897, it was to shake myself free of what might become a mere obsession. I determined that, as wide as my experiences had been in life, so would my writing be, whether it pleased the public or not. I was determined to fulfil myself; and in doing so to take no instructions except those of my own conscience, impulse, and conviction. Even then I saw fields of work which would occupy my mind, and such skill as I had, for many a year to come. I saw the Channel Islands, Egypt, South Africa, and India. In all these fields save India, I have given my Pegasus its bridle-rein, and, so far, I have no reason to feel that my convictions were false. I write of Canada still, but I have written of the Channel Islands, I have written of Egypt, I have written of England and South Africa, and my public--that is, those who read my books--have accepted me in all these fields without demur. I believe I have justified myself in not accepting imprisonment in the field where I first essayed to turn my observation of life to account. I went to Jersey, therefore, with my teeth set, in a way; yet happily and confidently. I had been dealing with French Canada for some years, and a step from Quebec, which was French, to Jersey, which was Norman French, was but short. It was a question of atmosphere solely. Whatever may be thought of The 'Battle of the Strong' I have not yet met a Jerseyman who denies to it the atmosphere of the place. It could hardly have lacked it, for there were twenty people, deeply intelligent, immensely interested in my design, and they were of Jersey families which had been there for centuries. They helped me, they fed me with dialect, with local details, with memories, with old letters, with diaries of their forebears, until, if I had gone wrong, it would have been through lack of skill in handling my material. I do not think I went wrong, though I believe that I could construct the book more effectively if I had to do it again. Yet there is something in looseness of construction which gives an air of naturalness; and it may be that this very looseness which I notice in 'The Battle of the Strong' has had something to do with giving it such a great circle of readers; though this may appear paradoxical. When it first appeared, it did not make the appeal which 'The Right of Way' or 'The Seats of the Mighty' made, but it justified itself, it forced its way, it assured me that I had done right in shaking myself free from the control of my own best work. The book has gone on increasing its readers year by year, and when it appeared in Nelson's delightful cheap edition in England it had an immediate success, and has sold by the hundred thousand in the last four years. One of the first and most eager friends of 'The Battle of the Strong' was Mrs. Langtry, now Lady de Bathe, who, born in Jersey, and come of an old Jersey family, was well able to judge of the fidelity of the life and scene which it depicted. She greatly desired the novel to be turned into a play, and so it was. The adaptation, however, was lacking in much, and though Miss Marie Burroughs and Maurice Barrymore played in it, success did not attend its dramatic life. 'The Battle of the Strong' was called an historical novel by many critics, but the disclaimer which I made in the first edition I make again. 'The Seats of the Mighty' came nearer to what might properly be called an historical novel than any other book which I have written save, perhaps, 'A Ladder of Swords'. 'The Battle of the Strong' is not without faithful historical elements, but the book is essentially a romance, in which character was not meant to be submerged by incident; and I do not think that in this particular the book falls short of the design of its author. There was this enormous difference between life in the Island of Jersey and life in French Canada, that in Jersey, tradition is heaped upon tradition, custom upon custom, precept upon precept, until every citizen of the place is bound by innumerable cords of a code from which he cannot free himself. It is a little island, and that it is an island is evidence of a contracted life, though, in this case, a life which has real power and force. The life in French Canada was also traditional, and custom was also somewhat tyrannous, but it was part of a great continent in which the expansion of the man and of a people was inevitable. Tradition gets somewhat battered in a new land, and even where, as in French Canada, the priest and the Church have such supervision, and can bring such pressure to bear that every man must feel its influence; yet there is a happiness, a blitheness, and an exhilaration even in the most obscure quarter of French Canada which cannot be observed in the Island of Jersey. In Jersey the custom of five hundred years ago still reaches out and binds; and so small is the place that every square foot of it almost--even where the potato sprouts, and the potato is Jersey's greatest friend--is identified with some odd incident, some naive circumstance, some big, vivid, and striking historical fact. Behind its rugged coasts a little people proudly hold by their own and to their own, and even a Jersey criminal has more friends in his own environment than probably any other criminal anywhere save in Corsica; while friendship is a passion even with the pettiness by which it is perforated. Reading this book again now after all these years, I feel convinced that the book is truly Jersiais, and I am grateful to it for having brought me out from the tyranny of the field in which I first sought for a hearing. NOTE A list of Jersey words and phrases used herein, with their English or French equivalents, will be found at the end of the book. The Norman and patois words are printed as though they were English, some of them being quite Anglicised in Jersey. For the sake of brevity I have spoken of the Lieutenant-Bailly throughout as Bailly; and, in truth, he performed all the duties of Bailly in those days when this chief of the Jurats of the Island usually lived in England. PROEM There is no man living to-day who could tell you how the morning broke and the sun rose on the first day of January 1800; who walked in the Mall, who sauntered in the Park with the Prince: none lives who heard and remembers the gossip of the moment, or can give you the exact flavour of the speech and accent of the time. Down the long aisle of years echoes the air but not the tone; the trick of form comes to us but never the inflection. The lilt of the sensations, the idiosyncrasy of voice, emotion, and mind of the first hour of our century must now pass from the printed page to us, imperfectly realised; we may not know them through actual retrospection. The more distant the scene, the more uncertain the reflection; and so it must needs be with this tale, which will take you back to even twenty years before the century began. Then, as now, England was a great power outside these small islands. She had her foot firmly planted in Australia, in Asia, and in America-- though, in bitterness, the American colonies had broken free, and only Canada was left to her in that northern hemisphere. She has had, in her day, to strike hard blows even for Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. But among her possessions is one which, from the hour its charter was granted it by King John, has been loyal, unwavering, and unpurchasable. Until the beginning of the century the language of this province was not our language, nor is English its official language to-day; and with a pretty pride oblivious of contrasts, and a simplicity unconscious of mirth, its people say: "We are the conquering race; we conquered England, England did not conquer us." A little island lying in the wash of St. Michael's Basin off the coast of France, Norman in its foundations and in its racial growth, it has been as the keeper of the gate to England; though so near to France is it, that from its shores on a fine day may be seen the spires of Coutances, from which its spiritual welfare was ruled long after England lost Normandy. A province of British people, speaking still the Norman-French that the Conqueror spoke; such is the island of Jersey, which, with Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, Herm, and Jethou, form what we call the Channel Isles, and the French call the Iles de la Manche. Volume 1. CHAPTER I In all the world there is no coast like the coast of Jersey; so treacherous, so snarling; serrated with rocks seen and unseen, tortured by currents maliciously whimsical, encircled by tides that sweep up from the Antarctic world with the devouring force of a monstrous serpent projecting itself towards its prey. The captain of these tides, travelling up through the Atlantic at a thousand miles an hour, enters the English Channel, and drives on to the Thames. Presently retreating, it meets another pursuing Antarctic wave, which, thus opposed in its straightforward course, recoils into St. Michael's Bay, then plunges, as it were, upon a terrible foe. They twine and strive in mystic conflict, and, in rage of equal power, neither vanquished nor conquering, circle, mad and desperate, round the Channel Isles. Impeded, impounded as they riot through the flumes of sea, they turn furiously, and smite the cliffs and rocks and walls of their prison-house. With the frenzied winds helping them, the island coasts and Norman shores are battered by their hopeless onset: and in that channel between Alderney and Cap de la Hague man or ship must well beware, for the Race of Alderney is one of the death-shoots of the tides. Before they find their way to the main again, these harridans of nature bring forth a brood of currents which ceaselessly fret the boundaries of the isles. Always, always the white foam beats the rocks, and always must man go warily along these coasts. The swimmer plunges into a quiet pool, the snowy froth that masks the reefs seeming only the pretty fringe of sentient life to a sleeping sea; but presently an invisible hand reaches up and grasps him, an unseen power drags him exultingly out to the main-- and he returns no more. Many a Jersey boatman, many a fisherman who has lived his whole life in sight of the Paternosters on the north, the Ecrehos on the east, the Dog's Nest on the south, or the Corbiere on the west, has in some helpless moment been caught by the unsleeping currents which harry his peaceful borders, or the rocks that have eluded the hunters of the sea, and has yielded up his life within sight of his own doorway, an involuntary sacrifice to the navigator's knowledge and to the calm perfection of an admiralty chart. Yet within the circle of danger bounding this green isle the love of home and country is stubbornly, almost pathetically, strong. Isolation, pride of lineage, independence of government, antiquity of law and custom, and jealousy of imperial influence or action have combined to make a race self-reliant even to perverseness, proud and maybe vain, sincere almost to commonplaceness, unimaginative and reserved, with the melancholy born of monotony--for the life of the little country has coiled in upon itself, and the people have drooped to see but just their own selves reflected in all the dwellers of the land, whichever way they turn. A hundred years ago, however, there was a greater and more general lightness of heart and vivacity of spirit than now. Then the song of the harvester and the fisherman, the boat-builder and the stocking-knitter, was heard on a summer afternoon, or from the veille of a winter night when the dim crasset hung from the roof and the seaweed burned in the chimney. Then the gathering of the vraic was a fete, and the lads and lasses footed it on the green or on the hard sand, to the chance flageolets of sportive seamen home from the war. This simple gaiety was heartiest at Christmastide, when the yearly reunion of families took place; and because nearly everybody in Jersey was "couzain" to his neighbour these gatherings were as patriarchal as they were festive. .......................... The new year of seventeen hundred and eighty-one had been ushered in by the last impulse of such festivities. The English cruisers lately in port had vanished up the Channel; and at Elizabeth Castle, Mont Orgueil, the Blue Barracks and the Hospital, three British regiments had taken up the dull round of duty again; so that by the fourth day a general lethargy, akin to content, had settled on the whole island. On the morning of the fifth day a little snow was lying upon the ground, but the sun rose strong and unclouded, the whiteness vanished, and there remained only a pleasant dampness which made sod and sand firm yet springy to the foot. As the day wore on, the air became more amiable still, and a delicate haze settled over the water and over the land, making softer to the eye house and hill and rock and sea. There was little life in the town of St. Heliers, there were few people upon the beach; though now and then some one who had been praying beside a grave in the parish churchyard came to the railings and looked out upon the calm sea almost washing its foundations, and over the dark range of rocks, which, when the tide was out, showed like a vast gridiron blackened by fires. Near by, some loitering sailors watched the yawl- rigged fishing craft from Holland, and the codfish-smelling cul-de-poule schooners of the great fishing company which exploited the far-off fields of Gaspe in Canada. St. Heliers lay in St. Aubin's Bay, which, shaped like a horseshoe, had Noirmont Point for one end of the segment and the lofty Town Hill for another. At the foot of this hill, hugging it close, straggled the town. From the bare green promontory above might be seen two-thirds of the south coast of the island--to the right St. Aubin's Bay, to the left Greve d'Azette, with its fields of volcanic-looking rocks, and St. Clement's Bay beyond. Than this no better place for a watchtower could be found; a perfect spot for the reflective idler and for the sailorman who, on land, must still be within smell and sound of the sea, and loves that place best which gives him widest prospect. This day a solitary figure was pacing backwards and forwards upon the cliff edge, stopping now to turn a telescope upon the water and now upon the town. It was a lad of not more than sixteen years, erect, well- poised, having an air of self-reliance, even of command. Yet it was a boyish figure too, and the face was very young, save for the eyes; these were frank but still sophisticated. The first time he looked towards the town he laughed outright, freely, spontaneously; threw his head back with merriment, and then glued his eye to the glass again. What he had seen was a girl of about five years of age with a man, in La Rue d'Egypte, near the old prison, even then called the Vier Prison. Stooping, the man had kissed the child, and she, indignant, snatching the cap from his head, had thrown it into the stream running through the street. Small wonder that the lad on the hill grinned, for the man who ran to rescue his hat from the stream was none other than the Bailly of the island, next in importance to the Lieutenant-Governor. The lad could almost see the face of the child, its humorous anger, its wilful triumph, and also the enraged look of the Bailly as he raked the stream with his long stick, tied with a sort of tassel of office. Presently he saw the child turn at the call of a woman in the Place du Vier Prison, who appeared to apologise to the Bailly, busy now drying his recovered hat by whipping it through the air. The lad on the hill recognised the woman as the child's mother. This little episode over, he turned once more towards the sea, watching the sun of late afternoon fall upon the towers of Elizabeth Castle and the great rock out of which St. Helier the hermit once chiselled his lofty home. He breathed deep and strong, and the carriage of his body was light, for he had a healthy enjoyment of all physical sensations and all the obvious drolleries of life. A broad sort of humour was written upon every feature; in the full, quizzical eye, in the width of cheek- bone, in the broad mouth, and in the depth of the laugh, which, however, often ended in a sort of chuckle not entirely pleasant. It suggested a selfish enjoyment of the odd or the melodramatic side of other people's difficulties. At last the youth encased his telescope, and turned to descend the hill to the town. As he did so, a bell began to ring. From where he was he could look down into the Vier Marchi, or market-place, where stood the Cohue Royale and house of legislature. In the belfry of this court- house, the bell was ringing to call the Jurats together for a meeting of the States. A monstrous tin pan would have yielded as much assonance. Walking down towards the Vier Marchi the lad gleefully recalled the humour of a wag who, some days before, had imitated the sound of the bell with the words: "Chicane--chicane! Chicane--chicane!" The native had, as he thought, suffered somewhat at the hands of the twelve Jurats of the Royal Court, whom his vote had helped to elect, and this was his revenge--so successful that, for generations, when the bell called the States or the Royal Court together, it said in the ears of the Jersey people--thus insistent is apt metaphor: "Chicane--chicane! Chicane--chicane!" As the lad came down to the town, trades-people whom he met touched their hats to him, and sailors and soldiers saluted respectfully. In this regard the Bailly himself could not have fared better. It was not due to the fact that the youth came of an old Jersey family, nor by reason that he was genial and handsome, but because he was a midshipman of the King's navy home on leave; and these were the days when England's sailors were more popular than her soldiers. He came out of the Vier Marchi into La Grande Rue, along the stream called the Fauxbie flowing through it, till he passed under the archway of the Vier Prison, making towards the place where the child had snatched the hat from the head of the Bailly. Presently the door of a cottage opened, and the child came out, followed by her mother. The young gentleman touched his cap politely, for though the woman was not fashionably dressed, she was distinguished in appearance, with an air of remoteness which gave her a kind of agreeable mystery. "Madame Landresse--" said the young gentleman with deference. "Monsieur d'Avranche--" responded the lady softly, pausing. "Did the Bailly make a stir? I saw the affair from the hill, through my telescope," said young d'Avranche, smiling. "My little daughter must have better manners," responded the lady, looking down at her child reprovingly yet lovingly. "Or the Bailly must--eh, Madame?" replied d'Avranche, and, stooping, he offered his hand to the child. Glancing up inquiringly at her mother, she took it. He held hers in a clasp of good nature. The child was so demure, one could scarcely think her capable of tossing the Bailly's hat into the stream; yet looking closely, there might be seen in her eyes a slumberous sort of fire, a touch of mystery. They were neither blue nor grey, but a mingling of both, growing to the most tender, greyish sort of violet. Down through generations of Huguenot refugees had passed sorrow and fighting and piety and love and occasional joy, until in the eyes of this child they all met, delicately vague, and with the wistfulness of the early morning of life. "What is your name, little lady?" asked d'Avranche of the child. "Guida, sir," she answered simply. "Mine is Philip. Won't you call me Philip?" She flashed a look at her mother, regarded him again, and then answered: "Yes, Philip--sir." D'Avranche wanted to laugh, but the face of the child was sensitive and serious, and he only smiled. "Say 'Yes, Philip', won't you?" he asked. "Yes, Philip," came the reply obediently. After a moment of speech with Madame Landresse, Philip stooped to say good-bye to the child. "Good-bye, Guida." A queer, mischievous little smile flitted over her face--a second, and it was gone. "Good-bye, sir--Philip," she said, and they parted. Her last words kept ringing in his ears as he made his way homeward. "Good-bye, sir--Philip" --the child's arrangement of words was odd and amusing, and at the same time suggested something more. "Good-bye, Sir Philip," had a different meaning, though the words were the same. "Sir Philip--eh?" he said to himself, with a jerk of the head--"I'll be more than that some day." CHAPTER II The night came down with leisurely gloom. A dim starlight pervaded rather than shone in the sky; Nature seemed somnolent and gravely meditative. It brooded as broods a man who is seeking his way through a labyrinth of ideas to a conclusion still evading him. This sense of cogitation enveloped land and sea, and was as tangible to feeling as human presence. At last the night seemed to wake from reverie. A movement, a thrill, ran through the spangled vault of dusk and sleep, and seemed to pass over the world, rousing the sea and the earth. There was no wind, apparently no breath of air, yet the leaves of the trees moved, the weather-vanes turned slightly, the animals in the byres roused themselves, and slumbering folk opening their eyes, turned over in their beds, and dropped into a troubled doze again. Presently there came a long moaning sound from the tide, not loud but rather mysterious and distant--a plaint, a threatening, a warning, a prelude? A dull labourer, returning from late toil, felt it, and raised his head in a perturbed way, as though some one had brought him news of a far-off disaster. A midwife, hurrying to a lowly birth-chamber, shivered and gathered her mantle more closely about her. She looked up at the sky, she looked out over the sea, then she bent her head and said to herself that this would not be a good night, that ill-luck was in the air. "The mother or the child will die," she said to herself. A 'longshoreman, reeling home from deep potations, was conscious of it, and, turning round to the sea, snarled at it and said yah! in swaggering defiance. A young lad, wandering along the deserted street, heard it, began to tremble, and sat down on a block of stone beside the doorway of a baker's shop. He dropped his head on his arms and his chin on his knees, shutting out the sound and sobbing quietly. Yesterday his mother had been buried; to-night his father's door had been closed in his face. He scarcely knew whether his being locked out was an accident or whether it was intended. He thought of the time when his father had ill-treated his mother and himself. That, however, had stopped at last, for the woman had threatened the Royal Court, and the man, having no wish to face its summary convictions, thereafter conducted himself towards them both with a morose indifference. The boy was called Ranulph, a name which had passed to him through several generations of Jersey forebears--Ranulph Delagarde. He was being taught the trade of ship-building in St. Aubin's Bay. He was not beyond fourteen years of age, though he looked more, so tall and straight and self-possessed was he. His tears having ceased soon, he began to think of what he was to do in the future. He would never go back to his father's house, or be dependent on him for aught. Many plans came to his mind. He would learn his trade of ship-building, he would become a master-builder, then a shipowner, with fishing-vessels like the great company sending fleets to Gaspe. At the moment when these ambitious plans had reached the highest point of imagination, the upper half of the door beside him opened suddenly, and he heard men's voices. He was about to rise and disappear, but the words of the men arrested him, and he cowered down beside the stone. One of the men was leaning on the half-door, speaking in French. "I tell you it can't go wrong. The pilot knows every crack in the coast. I left Granville at three; Rulle cour left Chaussey at nine. If he lands safe, and the English troops ain't roused, he'll take the town and hold the island easy enough." "But the pilot, is he certain safe?" asked another voice. Ranulph recognised it as that of the baker Carcaud, who owned the shop. "Olivier Delagarde isn't so sure of him." Olivier Delagarde! The lad started. That was his father's name. He shrank as from a blow--his father was betraying Jersey to the French! "Of course, the pilot, he's all right," the Frenchman answered the baker. "He was to have been hung here for murder. He got away, and now he's having his turn by fetching Rullecour's wolves to eat up your green- bellies. By to-morrow at seven Jersey 'll belong to King Louis." "I've done my promise," rejoined Carcaud the baker; "I've been to three of the guard-houses on St. Clement's and Grouville. In two the men are drunk as donkeys; in another they sleep like squids. Rullecour he can march straight to the town and seize it--if he land safe. But will he stand by 's word to we? You know the saying: 'Cadet Roussel has two sons; one's a thief, t'other's a rogue.' There's two Rullecours-- Rullecour before the catch and Rullecour after!" "He'll be honest to us, man, or he'll be dead inside a week, that's all." "I'm to be Connetable of St. Heliers, and you're to be harbour-master-- eh?" "Naught else: you don't catch flies with vinegar. Give us your hand-- why, man, it's doggish cold." "Cold hand, healthy heart. How many men will Rullecour bring?" "Two thousand; mostly conscripts and devil's beauties from Granville and St. Malo gaols." "Any signals yet?" "Two--from Chaussey at five o'clock. Rullecour 'll try to land at Gorey. Come, let's be off. Delagarde's there now." The boy stiffened with horror--his father was a traitor! The thought pierced his brain like a hot iron. He must prevent this crime, and warn the Governor. He prepared to steal away. Fortunately the back of the man's head was towards him. Carcaud laughed a low, malicious laugh as he replied to the Frenchman. "Trust the quiet Delagarde! There's nothing worse nor still waters. He'll do his trick, and he'll have his share if the rest suck their thumbs. He doesn't wait for roasted larks to drop into his mouth--what's that!" It was Ranulph stealing away. In an instant the two men were on him, and a hand was clapped to his mouth. In another minute he was bound, thrown onto the stone floor of the bakehouse, his head striking, and he lost consciousness. When he came to himself, there was absolute silence round him-deathly, oppressive silence. At first he was dazed, but at length all that had happened came back to him. Where was he now? His feet were free; he began to move them about. He remembered that he had been flung on the stone floor of the bakeroom. This place sounded hollow underneath--it certainly was not the bakeroom. He rolled over and over. Presently he touched a wall--it was stone. He drew himself up to a sitting posture, but his head struck a curved stone ceiling. Then he swung round and moved his foot along the wall--it touched iron. He felt farther with his foot-something clicked. Now he understood; he was in the oven of the bakehouse, with his hands bound. He began to think of means of escape. The iron door had no inside latch. There was a small damper covering a barred hole, through which perhaps he might be able to get a hand, if only it were free. He turned round so that his fingers might feel the grated opening. The edge of the little bars was sharp. He placed the strap binding his wrists against these sharp edges, and drew his arms up and down, a difficult and painful business. The iron cut his hands and wrists at first, so awkward was the movement. But, steeling himself, he kept on steadily. At last the straps fell apart, and his hands were free. With difficulty he thrust one through the bars. His fingers could just lift the latch. Now the door creaked on its hinges, and in a moment he was out on the stone flags of the bakeroom. Hurrying through an unlocked passage into the shop, he felt his way to the street door, but it was securely fastened. The windows? He tried them both, one on either side, but while he could free the stout wooden shutters on the inside, a heavy iron bar secured them without, and it was impossible to open them. Feverish with anxiety, he sat down on the low counter, with his hands between his knees, and tried to think what to do. In the numb hopelessness of the moment he became very quiet. His mind was confused, but his senses were alert; he was in a kind of dream, yet he was acutely conscious of the smell of new-made bread. It pervaded the air of the place; it somehow crept into his brain and his being, so that, as long as he might live, the smell of new-made bread would fetch back upon him the nervous shiver and numbness of this hour of danger. As he waited, he heard a noise outside, a clac-clac! clac-clac! which seemed to be echoed back from the wood and stone of the houses in the street, and then to be lifted up and carried away over the roofs and out to sea---clac-clac! clac-clac! It was not the tap of a blind man's staff--at first he thought it might be; it was not a donkey's foot on the cobbles; it was not the broom-sticks of the witches of St. Clement's Bay, for the rattle was below in the street, and the broom-stick rattle is heard only on the roofs as the witches fly across country from Rocbert to Bonne Nuit Bay. This clac-clac came from the sabots of some nightfarer. Should he make a noise and attract the attention of the passer-by? No, that would not do. It might be some one who would wish to know whys and wherefores. He must, of course, do his duty to his country, but he must save his father too. Bad as the man was, he must save him, though, no matter what happened, he must give the alarm. His reflections tortured him. Why had he not stopped the nightfarer? Even as these thoughts passed through the lad's mind, the clac-clac had faded away into the murmur of the stream flowing by the Rue d'Egypte to the sea, and almost beneath his feet. There flashed on him at that instant what little Guida Landresse had said a few days before as she lay down beside this very stream, and watched the water wimpling by. Trailing her fingers through it dreamily, the child had said to him: "Ro, won't it never come back?" She always called him "Ro," because when beginning to talk she could not say Ranulph. Ro, won't it never come back? But while yet he recalled the words, another sound mingled again with the stream-clac-clac! clac-clac! Suddenly it came to him who was the wearer of the sabots making this peculiar clatter in the night. It was Dormy Jamais, the man who never slept. For two years the clac-clac of Dormy Jamais's sabots had not been heard in the streets of St. Heliers--he had been wandering in France, a daft pilgrim. Ranulph remembered how these sabots used to pass and repass the doorway of his own home. It was said that while Dormy Jamais paced the streets there was no need of guard or watchman. Many a time had Ranulph shared his supper with the poor beganne whose origin no one knew, whose real name had long since dropped into oblivion. The rattle of the sabots came nearer, the footsteps were now in front of the window. Even as Ranulph was about to knock and call the poor vagrant's name, the clac-clac stopped, and then there came a sniffing at the shutters as a dog sniffs at the door of a larder. Following the sniffing came a guttural noise of emptiness and desire. Now there was no mistake; it was the half-witted fellow beyond all doubt, and he could help him--Dormy Jamais should help him: he should go and warn the Governor and the soldiers at the Hospital, while he himself would speed to Gorey in search of his father. He would alarm the regiment there at the same time. He knocked and shouted. Dormy Jamais, frightened, jumped back into the street. Ranulph called again, and yet again, and now at last Dormy recognised the voice. With a growl of mingled reassurance and hunger, he lifted down the iron bar from the shutters. In a moment Ranulph was outside with two loaves of bread, which he put into Dormy Jamais's arms. The daft one whinnied with delight. "What's o'clock, bread-man?" he asked with a chuckle. Ranulph gripped his shoulders. "See, Dormy Jamais, I want you to go to the Governor's house at La Motte, and tell them that the French are coming, that they're landing at Gorey now. Then to the Hospital and tell the sentry there. Go, Dormy--allez kedainne!" Dormy Jamais tore at a loaf with his teeth, and crammed a huge crust into his mouth. "Come, tell me, will you go, Dormy?" the lad asked impatiently. Dormy Jamais nodded his head, grunted, and, turning on his heel with Ranulph, clattered up the street. The lad sprang ahead of him, and ran swiftly up the Rue d'Egypte, into the Vier Marchi, and on over the Town Hill along the road to Grouville. CHAPTER III Since the days of Henry III of England the hawk of war that broods in France has hovered along that narrow strip of sea dividing the island of Jersey from the duchy of Normandy. Eight times has it descended, and eight times has it hurried back with broken pinion. Among these truculent invasions two stand out boldly: the spirited and gallant attack by Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable of France; and the freebooting adventure of Rullecour, with his motley following of gentlemen and criminals. Rullecour it was, soldier of fortune, gambler, ruffian, and embezzler, to whom the King of France had secretly given the mission to conquer the unconquerable little island. From the Chaussey Isles the filibuster saw the signal light which the traitor Olivier Delagarde had set upon the heights of Le Couperon, where, ages ago, Caesar built fires to summon from Gaul his devouring legions. All was propitious for the attack. There was no moon--only a meagre starlight when they set forth from Chaussey. The journey was made in little more than an hour, and Rullecour himself was among the first to see the shores of Jersey loom darkly in front. Beside him stood the murderous pilot who was leading in the expedition, the colleague of Olivier Delagarde. Presently the pilot gave an exclamation of surprise and anxiety--the tides and currents were bearing them away from the intended landing- place. It was now almost low water, and instead of an immediate shore, there lay before them a vast field of scarred rocks, dimly seen. He gave the signal to lay-to, and himself took the bearings. The tide was going out rapidly, disclosing reefs on either hand. He drew in carefully to the right of the rock known as L'Echiquelez, up through a passage scarce wide enough for canoes, and to Roque Platte, the south-eastern projection of the island. You may range the seas from the Yugon Strait to the Erebus volcano, and you will find no such landing-place for imps or men as that field of rocks on the southeast corner of Jersey called, with a malicious irony, the Bane des Violets. The great rocks La Coniere, La Longy, Le Gros Etac, Le Teton, and the Petite Sambiere, rise up like volcanic monuments from a floor of lava and trailing vraic, which at half-tide makes the sea a tender mauve and violet. The passages of safety between these ranges of reef are but narrow at high tide; at half-tide, when the currents are changing most, the violet field becomes the floor of a vast mortuary chapel for unknowing mariners. A battery of four guns defended the post on the landward side of this bank of the heavenly name. Its guards were asleep or in their cups. They yielded, without resistance, to the foremost of the invaders. But here Rullecour and his pilot, looking back upon the way they had come, saw the currents driving the transport boats hither and thither in confusion. Jersey was not to be conquered without opposition--no army of defence was abroad, but the elements roused themselves and furiously attacked the fleet. Battalions unable to land drifted back with the tides to Granville, whence they had come. Boats containing the heavy ammunition and a regiment of conscripts were battered upon the rocks, and hundreds of the invaders found an unquiet grave upon the Banc des Violets. Presently the traitor Delagarde arrived and was welcomed warmly by Rullecour. The night wore on, and at last the remaining legions were landed. A force was left behind to guard La Roque Platte, and then the journey across country to the sleeping town began. With silent, drowsing batteries in front and on either side of them, the French troops advanced, the marshes of Samares and the sea on their left, churches and manor houses on their right, all silent. Not yet had a blow been struck for the honour of this land and of the Kingdom. But a blind injustice was, in its own way, doing the work of justice. On the march, Delagarde, suspecting treachery to himself, not without reason, required of Rullecour guarantee for the fulfilment of his pledge to make him Vicomte of the Island when victory should be theirs. Rullecour, however, had also promised the post to a reckless young officer, the Comte de Tournay, of the House of Vaufontaine, who, under the assumed name of Yves Savary dit Detricand, marched with him. Rullecour answered Delagarde churlishly, and would say nothing till the town was taken--the ecrivain must wait. But Delagarde had been drinking, he was in a mood to be reckless; he would not wait, he demanded an immediate pledge. "By and by, my doubting Thomas," said Rullecour. "No, now, by the blood of Peter!" answered Delagarde, laying a hand upon his sword. The French leader called a sergeant to arrest him. Delagarde instantly drew his sword and attacked Rullecour, but was cut down from behind by the scimitar of a swaggering Turk, who had joined the expedition as aide- de-camp to the filibustering general, tempted thereto by promises of a harem of the choicest Jersey ladies, well worthy of this cousin of the Emperor of Morocco. The invaders left Delagarde lying where he fell. What followed this oblique retribution could satisfy no ordinary logic, nor did it meet the demands of poetic justice. For, as a company of soldiers from Grouville, alarmed out of sleep by a distracted youth, hurried towards St. Heliers, they found Delagarde lying by the roadside, and they misunderstood what had happened. Stooping over him an officer said pityingly: "See--he got this wound fighting the French!" With the soldiers was the youth who had warned them. He ran forward with a cry, and knelt beside the wounded man. He had no tears, he had no sorrow. He was only sick and dumb, and he trembled with misery as he lifted up his father's head. The eyes of Olivier Delagarde opened. "Ranulph--they've killed--me," gasped the stricken man feebly, and his head fell back. An officer touched the youth's arm. "He is gone," said he. "Don't fret, lad, he died fighting for his country." The lad made no reply, and the soldiers hurried on towards the town. He died fighting for his country! So that was to be the legend, Ranulph meditated: his father was to have a glorious memory, while he himself knew how vile the man was. One thing however: he was glad that Olivier Delagarde was dead. How strangely had things happened! He had come to stay a traitor in his crime, and here he found a martyr. But was not he himself likewise a traitor? Ought not he to have alarmed the town first before he tried to find his father? Had Dormy Jamais warned the Governor? Clearly not, or the town bells would be ringing and the islanders giving battle. What would the world think of him! Well, what was the use of fretting here? He would go on to the town, help to fight the French, and die that would be the best thing. He knelt, and unclasped his father's fingers from the handle of the sword. The steel was cold, it made him shiver. He had no farewell to make. He looked out to sea. The tide would come and carry his father's body out, perhaps-far out, and sink it in the deepest depths. If not that, then the people would bury Olivier Delagarde as a patriot. He determined that he himself would not live to see such mockery. As he sped along towards the town he asked himself why nobody suspected the traitor. One reason for it occurred to him: his father, as the whole island knew, had a fishing-hut at Gorey. They would imagine him on the way to it when he met the French, for he often spent the night there. He himself had told his tale to the soldiers: how he had heard the baker and the Frenchman talking at the shop in the Rue d'Egypte. Yes, but suppose the French were driven out, and the baker taken prisoner and should reveal his father's complicity! And suppose people asked why he himself did not go at once to the Hospital Barracks in the town and to the Governor, and afterwards to Gorey? These were direful imaginings. He felt that it was no use; that the lie could not go on concerning his father. The world would know; the one thing left for him was to die. He was only a boy, but he could fight. Had not young Philip d'Avranche; the midshipman, been in deadly action many times? He was nearly as old as Philip d'Avranche--yes, he would fight, and, fighting, he would die. To live as the son of such a father was too pitiless a shame. He ran forward, but a weakness was on him; he was very hungry and thirsty-and the sword was heavy. Presently, as he went, he saw a stone well near a cottage by the roadside. On a ledge of the well stood a bucket of water. He tilted the bucket and drank. He would have liked to ask for bread at the cottage-door, but he said to himself, Why should he eat, for was he not going to die? Yet why should he not eat, even if he were going to die? He turned his head wistfully, he was so faint with hunger. The force driving him on, however, was greater than hunger--he ran harder. . . . But undoubtedly the sword was heavy! CHAPTER IV In the Vier Marchi the French flag was flying, French troops occupied it, French sentries guarded the five streets entering into it. Rullecour, the French adventurer, held the Lieutenant-Governor of the isle captive in the Cohue Royale; and by threats of fire and pillage thought to force capitulation. For his final argument he took the Governor to the doorway, and showed him two hundred soldiers with lighted torches ready to fire the town. When the French soldiers first entered the Vier Marchi there was Dormy Jamais on the roof of the Cohue Royale, calmly munching his bread. When he saw Rullecour and the Governor appear, he chuckled to himself, and said, in Jersey patois: "I vaut mux alouonyi l'bras que l'co," which is to say: It is better to stretch the arm than the neck. The Governor would have done more wisely, he thought, to believe the poor beganne, and to have risen earlier. Dormy Jamais had a poor opinion of a governor who slept. He himself was not a governor, yet was he not always awake? He had gone before dawn to the Governor's house, had knocked, had given Ranulph Delagarde's message, had been called a dirty buzard, and been sent away by the crusty, incredulous servant. Then he had gone to the Hospital Barracks, was there iniquitously called a lousy toad, and had been driven off with his quartern loaf, muttering through the dough the island proverb "While the mariner swigs the tide rises." Had the Governor remained as cool as the poor vagrant, he would not have shrunk at the sight of the incendiaries, yielded to threats, and signed the capitulation of the island. But that capitulation being signed, and notice of it sent to the British troops, with orders to surrender and bring their arms to the Cohue Royale, it was not cordially received by the officers in command. "Je ne comprends pas le francais," said Captain Mulcaster, at Elizabeth Castle, as he put the letter into his pocket unread. "The English Governor will be hanged, and the French will burn the town," responded the envoy. "Let them begin to hang and burn and be damned, for I'll not surrender the castle or the British flag so long as I've a man to defend it, to please anybody!" answered Mulcaster. "We shall return in numbers," said the Frenchman, threateningly. "I shall be delighted: we shall have the more to kill," Mulcaster replied. Then the captive Lieutenant-Governor was sent to Major Peirson at the head of his troops on the Mont es Pendus, with counsel to surrender. "Sir," said he, "this has been a very sudden surprise, for I was made prisoner before I was out of my bed this morning." "Sir," replied Peirson, the young hero of twenty-four, who achieved death and glory between a sunrise and a noontide, "give me leave to tell you that the 78th Regiment has not yet been the least surprised." From Elizabeth Castle came defiance and cannonade, driving back Rullecour and his filibusters to the Cohue Royale: from Mont Orgueil, from the Hospital, from St. Peter's came the English regiments; from the other parishes swarmed the militia, all eager to recover their beloved Vier Marchi. Two companies of light infantry, leaving the Mont es Pendus, stole round the town and placed themselves behind the invaders on the Town Hill; the rest marched direct upon the enemy. Part went by the Grande Rue, and part by the Rue d'Driere, converging to the point of attack; and as the light infantry came down from the hill by the Rue des Tres Pigeons, Peirson entered the Vier Marchi by the Route es Couochons. On one side of the square, where the Cohue Royale made a wall to fight against, were the French. Radiating from this were five streets and passages like the spokes of a wheel, and from these now poured the defenders of the isle. A volley came from the Cohue Royale, then another, and another. The place was small: friend and foe were crowded upon each other. The fighting became at once a hand-to-hand encounter. Cannon were useless, gun-carriages overturned. Here a drummer fell wounded, but continued beating his drum to the last; there a Glasgow soldier struggled with a French officer for the flag of the invaders; yonder a handful of Malouins doggedly held the foot of La Pyramide, until every one was cut down by overpowering numbers of British and Jersiais. The British leader was conspicuous upon his horse. Shot after shot was fired at him. Suddenly he gave a cry, reeled in his saddle, and sank, mortally wounded, into the arms of a brother officer. For a moment his men fell back. In the midst of the deadly turmoil a youth ran forward from a group of combatants, caught the bridle of the horse from which Peirson had fallen, mounted, and, brandishing a short sword, called upon his dismayed and wavering followers to advance; which they instantly did with fury and courage. It was Midshipman Philip d'Avranche. Twenty muskets were discharged at him. One bullet cut the coat on his shoulder, another grazed the back of his hand, a third scarred the pommel of the saddle, and still another wounded his horse. Again and again the English called upon him to dismount, for he was made a target, but he refused, until at last the horse was shot under him. Then once more he joined in the hand-to-hand encounter. Windows near the ground, such as were not shattered, were broken by bullets. Cannon-balls embedded themselves in the masonry and the heavy doorways. The upper windows were safe, however: the shots did not range so high. At one of these, over a watchmaker's shop, a little girl was to be seen, looking down with eager interest. Presently an old man came in view and led her away. A few minutes of fierce struggle passed, and then at another window on the floor below the child appeared again. She saw a youth with a sword hurrying towards the Cohue Royale from a tangled mass of combatants. As he ran, a British soldier fell in front of him. The youth dropped the sword and grasped the dead man's musket. The child clapped her hands on the window. "It's Ro--it's Ro!" she cried, and disappeared again. "Ro," with white face, hatless, coatless, pushed on through the melee. Rullecour, the now disheartened French general, stood on the steps of the Cohue Royale. With a vulgar cruelty and cowardice he was holding the Governor by the arm, hoping thereby to protect his own person from the British fire. Here was what the lad had been trying for--the sight of this man Rullecour. There was one small clear space between the English and the French, where stood a gun-carriage. He ran to it, leaned the musket on the gun, and, regardless of the shots fired at him, took aim steadily. A French bullet struck the wooden wheel of the carriage, and a splinter gashed his cheek. He did not move, but took sight again, and fired. Rullecour fell, shot through the jaw. A cry of fury and dismay went up from the French at the loss of their leader, a shout of triumph from the British. The Frenchmen had had enough. They broke and ran. Some rushed for doorways and threw themselves within, many scurried into the Rue des Tres Pigeons, others madly fought their way into Morier Lane. At this moment the door of the watchmaker's shop opened and the little girl who had been seen at the window ran into the square, calling out: "Ro! Ro!" It was Guida Landresse. Among the French flying for refuge was the garish Turk, Rullecour's ally. Suddenly the now frightened, crying child got into his path and tripped him up. Wild with rage he made a stroke at her, but at that instant his scimitar was struck aside by a youth covered with the smoke and grime of battle. He caught up the child to his arms, and hurried with her through the melee to the watchmaker's doorway. There stood a terror-stricken woman--Madame Landresse, who had just made her way into the square. Placing the child, in her arms, Philip d'Avranche staggered inside the house, faint and bleeding from a wound in the shoulder. The battle of Jersey was over. "Ah bah!" said Dormy Jamais from the roof of the Cohue Royale; "now I'll toll the bell for that achocre of a Frenchman. Then I'll finish my supper." Poising a half-loaf of bread on the ledge of the roof, he began to slowly toll the cracked bell at his hand for Rullecour the filibuster. The bell clanged out: Chicane-chicane! Chicane-chicane! Another bell answered from the church by the square, a deep, mournful note. It was tolling for Peirson and his dead comrades. Against the statue in the Vier Marchi leaned Ranulph Delagarde. An officer came up and held out a hand to him. "Your shot ended the business," said he. "You're a brave fellow. What is your name?" "Ranulph Delagarde, sir." "Delagarde--eh? Then well done, Delagardes! They say your father was the first man killed. We won't forget that, my lad." Sinking down upon the base of the statue, Ranulph did not stir or reply, and the officer, thinking he was grieving for his father, left him alone. ELEVEN YEARS AFTER CHAPTER V The King of France was no longer sending adventurers to capture the outposts of England. He was rather, in despair, beginning to wind in again the coil of disaster which had spun out through the helpless fingers of Neckar, Calonne, Brienne and the rest, and was in the end to bind his own hands for the guillotine. The Isle of Jersey, like a scout upon the borders of a foeman's country, looked out over St. Michael's Basin to those provinces where the war of the Vendee was soon to strike France from within, while England, and presently all Europe, should strike her from without. War, or the apprehension of war, was in the air. The people of the little isle, living always within the influence of natural wonder and the power of the elements, were deeply superstitious; and as news of dark deeds done in Paris crept across from Carteret or St. Malo, as men-of-war anchored in the tide-way, and English troops, against the hour of trouble, came, transport after transport, into the harbour of St. Heliers, they began to see visions and dream dreams. One peasant heard the witches singing a chorus of carnage at Rocbert; another saw, towards the Minquiers, a great army like a mirage upon the sea; others declared that certain French refugees in the island had the evil eye and bewitched their cattle; and a woman, wild with grief because her child had died of a sudden sickness, meeting a little Frenchman, the Chevalier du Champsavoys, in the Rue des Tres Pigeons, thrust at his face with her knitting-needle, and then, Protestant though she was, made the sacred sign, as though to defeat the evil eye. This superstition and fanaticism so strong in the populace now and then burst forth in untamable fury and riot. So that when, on the sixteenth of December 1792, the gay morning was suddenly overcast, and a black curtain was drawn over the bright sun, the people of Jersey, working in the fields, vraicking among the rocks, or knitting in their doorways, stood aghast, and knew not what was upon them. Some began to say the Lord's Prayer, some in superstitious terror ran to the secret hole in the wall, to the chimney, or to the bedstead, or dug up the earthen floor, to find the stocking full of notes and gold, which might, perchance, come with them safe through any cataclysm, or start them again in business in another world. Some began fearfully to sing hymns, and a few to swear freely. These latter were chiefly carters, whose salutations to each other were mainly oaths, because of the extreme narrowness of the island roads, and sailors to whom profanity was as daily bread. In St. Heliers, after the first stupefaction, people poured into the streets. They gathered most where met the Rue d'Driere and the Rue d'Egypte. Here stood the old prison, and the spot was called the Place du Vier Prison. Men and women with breakfast still in their mouths mumbled their terror to each other. A lobster-woman shrieking that the Day of Judgment was come, instinctively straightened her cap, smoothed out her dress of molleton, and put on her sabots. A carpenter, hearing her terrified exclamations, put on his sabots also, stooped whimpering to the stream running from the Rue d'Egypte, and began to wash his face. A dozen of his neighbours did the same. Some of the women, however, went on knitting hard, as they gabbled prayers and looked at the fast-blackening sun. Knitting was to Jersey women, like breathing or tale-bearing, life itself. With their eyes closing upon earth they would have gone on knitting and dropped no stitches. A dusk came down like that over Pompeii and Herculaneum. The tragedy of fear went hand in hand with burlesque commonplace. The grey stone walls of the houses grew darker and darker, and seemed to close in on the dumfounded, hysterical crowd. Here some one was shouting command to imaginary militia; there an aged crone was offering, without price, simnels and black butter, as a sort of propitiation for an imperfect past; and from a window a notorious evil-liver was frenziedly crying that she had heard the devil and his Rocbert witches revelling in the prison dungeons the night before. Thereupon a long-haired fanatic, once a barber, with a gift for mad preaching, sprang upon the Pompe des Brigands, and declaring that the Last Day was come, shrieked: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me! He hath sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound!" Some one thrust into his hand a torch. He waved it to and fro in his wild harangue; he threw up his arms towards the ominous gloom, and with blatant fury ordered open the prison doors. Other torches and candles appeared, and the mob trembled to and fro in delirium. "The prison! Open the Vier Prison! Break down the doors! Gatd'en'ale-- drive out the devils! Free the prisoners--the poor vauriens!" the crowd shouted, rushing forward with sticks and weapons. The prison arched the street as Temple Bar once spanned the Strand. They crowded under the archway, overpowered the terror-stricken jailer, and, battering open the door in frenzy, called the inmates forth. They looked to see issue some sailor seized for whistling of a Sabbath, some profane peasant who had presumed to wear pattens in church, some profaner peasant who had not doffed his hat to the Connetable, or some slip-shod militiaman who had gone to parade in his sabots, thereby offending the red-robed dignity of the Royal Court. Instead, there appeared a little Frenchman of the most refined and unusual appearance. The blue cloth of his coat set off the extreme paleness of a small but serene face and high round forehead. The hair, a beautiful silver grey which time only had powdered, was tied in a queue behind. The little gentleman's hand was as thin and fine as a lady's, his shoulders were narrow and slightly stooped, his eye was eloquent and benign. His dress was amazingly neat, but showed constant brushing and signs of the friendly repairing needle. The whole impression was that of a man whom a whiff of wind would blow away; with the body of an ascetic and the simplicity of a child. The face had some particular sort of wisdom, difficult to define and impossible to imitate. He held in his hand a tiny cane of the sort carried at the court of Louis Quinze. Louis Capet himself had given it to him; and you might have had the life of the little gentleman, but not this cane with the tiny golden bust of his unhappy monarch. He stood on the steps of the prison and looked serenely on the muttering, excited crowd. "I fear there is a mistake," said he, coughing a little into his fingers. "You do not seek me. I--I have no claim upon your kindness; I am only the Chevalier Orvilliers du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir." For a moment the mob had been stayed in amazement by this small, rare creature stepping from the doorway, like a porcelain coloured figure from some dusky wood in a painting by Claude. In the instant's pause the Chevalier Orvilliers du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir took from his pocket a timepiece and glanced at it, then looked over the heads of the crowd towards the hooded sun, which now, a little, was showing its face again. "It was due at eight, less seven minutes," said he; "clear sun again was set for ten minutes past. It is now upon the stroke of the hour." He seemed in no way concerned with the swaying crowd before him-- undoubtedly they wanted naught of him, and therefore he did not take their presence seriously; but, of an inquiring mind, he was absorbed in the eclipse. "He's a French sorcerer! He has the evil eye! Away with him to the sea!" shouted the fanatical preacher from the Pompe des Brigands. "It's a witch turned into a man!" cried a drunken woman from her window. "Give him the wheel of fire at the blacksmith's forge." "That's it! Gad'rabotin--the wheel of fire'll turn him back to a hag again!" The little gentleman protested, but they seized him and dragged him from the steps. Tossed like a ball, so light was he, he grasped the gold- headed cane as one might cling to life, and declared that he was no witch, but a poor French exile, arrested the night before for being abroad after nine o'clock, against the orders of the Royal Court. Many of the crowd knew him well enough by sight, but they were too delirious to act with intelligence now. The dark cloud was lifting a little from the sun, and dread of the Judgment Day was declining; but as the pendulum swung back towards normal life again, it carried with it the one virulent and common prejudice of the country--radical hatred of the French--which often slumbered but never died. The wife of an oyster-fisher from Rozel Bay, who lived in hourly enmity with the oyster-fishers of Carteret, gashed his cheek with the shell of an ormer. A potato-digger from Grouville parish struck at his head with a hoe, for the Granvillais had crossed the strait to the island the year before, to work in the harvest fields for a lesser wage than the Jersiais, and this little French gentleman must be held responsible for that. The weapon missed the Chevalier, but laid low a centenier, who, though a municipal officer, had in the excitement lost his head like his neighbours. This but increased the rage against the foreigner, and was another crime to lay to his charge. A smuggler thereupon kicked him in the side. At that moment there came a cry of indignation from a girl at an upper window of the Place. The Chevalier evidently knew her, for even in his hard case he smiled; and then he heard another voice ring out over the heads of the crowd, strong, angry, determined. From the Rue d'Driere a tall athletic man was hurrying. He had on his shoulders a workman's han basket, from which peeped a ship-builder's tools. Seeing the Chevalier's danger, he dropped his tool-basket through the open window of a house and forced his way through the crowd, roughly knocking from under them the feet of two or three ruffians who opposed him. He reproached the crowd, he berated them, he handled them fiercely. By a dexterous strength he caught the little gentleman up in his arms, and, driving straight on to the open door of the smithy, placed him inside, then blocked the passage with his own body. It was a strange picture: the preacher in an ecstasy haranguing the foolish rabble, who now realised, with an unbecoming joy, that the Last Day was yet to face; the gaping, empty prison; the open windows crowded with excited faces; the church bell from the Vier Marchi ringing an alarm; Norman lethargy roused to froth and fury: one strong man holding two hundred back! Above them all, at a hus in the gable of a thatched cottage, stood the girl whom the Chevalier had recognised, anxiously watching the affray. She was leaning across the lower closed half of the door, her hands in apprehensive excitement clasping her cheeks. The eyes were bewildered, and, though alive with pain, watched the scene below with unwavering intensity. Like all mobs this one had no reason, no sense. They were baulked in their malign intentions, and this man, Maitre Ranulph Delagarde, was the cause of it--that was all they knew. A stone was thrown at Delagarde as he stood in the doorway, but it missed him. "Oh-oh-oh!" the girl exclaimed, shrinking. "O shame! O you cowards!" she added, her hands now indignantly beating on the hus. Three or four men rushed forward on Ranulph. He hurled them back. Others came on with weapons. The girl fled for an instant, then reappeared with a musket, as the people were crowding in on Delagarde with threats and execrations. "Stop! stop!" cried the girl from above, as Ranulph seized a black- smith's hammer to meet the onset. "Stop, or I'll fire!" she called again, and she aimed her musket at the foremost assailants. Every face turned in her direction, for her voice had rung out clear as music. For an instant there was silence--the levelled musket had a deadly look, and the girl seemed determined. Her fingers, her whole body, trembled; but there was no mistaking the strong will, the indignant purpose. All at once in the pause another sound was heard. It was a quick tramp, tramp, tramp! and suddenly under the prison archway came running an officer of the King's navy with a company of sailors. The officer, with drawn sword, his men following with cutlasses, drove a way through the mob, who scattered before them like sheep. Delagarde threw aside his hammer, and saluted the officer. The little Chevalier made a formal bow, and hastened to say that he was not at all hurt. With a droll composure he offered snuff to the officer, who declined politely. Turning to the window where the girl stood, the new- comer saluted with confident gallantry. "Why, it's little Guida Landresse!" he said under his breath--"I'd know her anywhere. Death and Beauty, what a face!" Then he turned to Ranulph in recognition. "Ranulph Delagarde, eh?" said he good-humouredly. "You've forgotten me, I see. I'm Philip d'Avranche, of the Narcissus." Ranulph had forgotten. The slight lad Philip had grown bronzed, and stouter of frame. In the eleven years since they had been together at the Battle of Jersey, events, travel, and responsibility had altered him vastly. Ranulph had changed only in growing very tall and athletic and strong; the look of him was still that of the Norman lad of the isle, though the power and intelligence of his face were unusual. The girl in the cottage doorway had not forgotten at all. The words that d'Avranche had said to her years before, when she was a child, came to her mind: "My name is Philip; call me Philip." The recollection of that day when she snatched off the Bailly's hat brought a smile to her lips now, so quickly were her feelings moved one way or another. Then she grew suddenly serious, for the memory of the hour when he saved her from the scimitar of the Turk came to her, and her heart throbbed hotly. But she smiled again, though more gently and a little wistfully now. Philip d'Avranche looked up towards her once more, and returned her smile. Then he addressed the awed crowd. He did not spare his language; he unconsciously used an oath or two. He ordered them off to their homes. When they hesitated (for they were slow to acknowledge any authority save their own sacred Royal Court) the sailors advanced on them with drawn cutlasses, and a moment later the Place du Vier Prison was clear. Leaving a half-dozen sailors on guard till the town corps should arrive, d'Avranche prepared to march, and turned to Delagarde. "You've done me a good turn, Monsieur d'Avranche," said Ranulph. "There was a time you called me Philip," said d'Avranche, smiling. "We were lads together." "It's different now," answered Delagarde. "Nothing is different at all, of course," returned d'Avranche carelessly, yet with the slightest touch of condescension, as he held out his hand. Turning to the Chevalier, he said: "Monsieur, I congratulate you on having such a champion"--with a motion towards Ranulph. "And you, monsieur, on your brave protector"--he again saluted the girl at the window above. "I am the obliged and humble servant of monsieur, and monsieur," responded the little gentleman, turning from one to the other with a courtly bow, the three-cornered hat under his arm, the right foot forward, the thin fingers making a graceful salutation. "But I--I think --I really think I must go back to prison. I was not formally set free. I was out last night beyond the hour set by the Court. I lost my way, and--" "Not a bit of it," d'Avranche interrupted. "The centeniers are too free with their jailing here. I'll be guarantee for you, monsieur." He turned to go. The little man shook his head dubiously. "But, as a point of honour, I really think--" D'Avranche laughed. "As a point of honour, I think you ought to breakfast. A la bonne heure, monsieur le chevalier!" He turned again to the cottage window. The girl was still there. The darkness over the sun was withdrawn, and now the clear light began to spread itself abroad. It was like a second dawn after a painful night. It tinged the face of the girl; it burnished the wonderful red-brown hair falling loosely and lightly over her forehead; it gave her beauty a touch of luxuriance. D'Avranche thrilled at the sight of her. "It's a beautiful face," he said to himself as their eyes met and he saluted once more. Ranulph had seen the glances passing between the two, and he winced. He remembered how, eleven years ago, Philip d'Avranche had saved the girl from death. It galled him that then and now this young gallant should step in and take the game out of his hands--he was sure that himself alone could have mastered this crowd. "Monsieur--monsieur le chevalier!" the girl called down from the window, "grandpethe says you must breakfast with us. Oh, but come you must, or we shall be offended!" she added, as Champsavoys shook his head in hesitation and glanced towards the prison. "As a point of honour--" the little man still persisted, lightly touching his breast with the Louis Quinze cane, and taking a step towards the sombre prison archway. But Ranulph interfered, drew him gently inside the cottage, and, standing in the doorway, said to some one within: "May I come in also, Sieur de Mauprat?" Above the pleasant welcome of a quavering voice came another, soft and clear, in pure French: "Thou art always welcome, without asking, as thou knowest, Ro." "Then I'll go and fetch my tool-basket first," Ranulph said cheerily, his heart beating more quickly, and, turning, he walked across the Place. CHAPTER VI The cottage in which Guida lived at the Place du Vier Prison was in jocund contrast to the dungeon from which the Chevalier Orvilliers du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir had complacently issued. Even in the hot summer the prison walls dripped moisture, for the mortar had been made of wet sea-sand, which never dried, and beneath the gloomy tenement of crime a dark stream flowed to the sea. But the walls of the cottage were dry, for, many years before, Guida's mother had herself seen it built from cellar-rock to the linked initials over the doorway, stone by stone, and every corner of it was as free from damp as the mielles stretching in sandy desolation behind to the Mont es Pendus, where the law had its way with the necks of criminals. In early childhood Madame Landresse had come with her father into exile from the sunniest valley in the hills of Chambery, where flowers and trees and sunshine had been her life. Here, in the midst of blank and grim stone houses, her heart travelled back to the chateau where she lived before the storm of persecution drove her forth; and she spent her heart and her days in making this cottage, upon the western border of St. Heliers, a delight to the quiet eye. The people of the island had been good to her and her dead husband during the two short years of their married life, and had caused her to love the land which necessity made her home. Her child was brought up after the fashion of the better class of Jersey children, wore what they wore, ate what they ate, lived as they lived. She spoke the country patois in the daily life, teaching it to Guida at the same time that she taught her pure French and good English, which she herself had learned as a child, and cultivated later here. She had done all in her power to make Guida Jersiaise in instinct and habit, and to beget in her a contented disposition. There could be no future for her daughter outside this little green oasis of exile, she thought. Not that she lacked ambition, but in the circumstances she felt that ambition could yield but one harvest to her child, which was marriage. She herself had married a poor man, a master builder of ships, like Maitre Ranulph Delagarde, but she had been very happy while he lived. Her husband had come of an ancient Jersey family, who were in Normandy before the Conqueror was born; a man of genius almost in his craft, but scarcely a gentleman according to the standard of her father, the distinguished exile and now retired watchmaker. If Guida should chance to be as fortunate as herself, she could ask no more. She had watched the child anxiously, for the impulses of Guida's temperament now and then broke forth in indignation as wild as her tears and in tears as wild as her laughter. As the girl grew in health and stature, she tried, tenderly, strenuously, to discipline the sensitive nature, bursting her heart with grief at times because she knew that these high feelings and delicate powers came through a long line of ancestral tendencies, as indestructible as perilous and joyous. Four things were always apparent in the girl's character: sympathy with suffering, kindness without partiality, a love of nature, and an intense candour. Not a stray cat wandering into the Place du Vier Prison but found an asylum in the garden behind the cottage. Not a dog hungry for a bone, stopping at Guida's door, but was sure of one from a hiding-place in the hawthorn hedge of the garden. Every morning you might have seen the birds in fluttering, chirping groups upon the may-tree or the lilac- bushes, waiting for the tiny snow-storm of bread to fall from her hand. Was he good or bad, ragged or neat, honest or a thief, not a deserting sailor or a homeless lad, halting at the cottage, but was fed from the girl's private larder behind the straw beehives among the sweet lavender and the gooseberry-bushes. No matter how rough the vagrant, the sincerity and pure impulse of the child seemed to throw round him a sunshine of decency and respect. The garden behind the house was the girl's Eden. She had planted upon the hawthorn hedge the crimson monthly rose, the fuchsia, and the jonquil, until at last the cottage was hemmed in by a wall of flowers; and here she was ever as busy as the bees which hung humming on the sweet scabious. In this corner was a little hut for rabbits; in that, there was a hole dug in the bank for a hedgehog; in the middle a little flower-grown enclosure for cats in various stages of health or convalescence, and a small pond for frogs; and in the midst of all wandered her faithful dog, Biribi by name, as master of the ceremonies. Madame Landresse's one ambition had been to live long enough to see her child's character formed. She knew that her own years were numbered, for month by month she felt her strength going. And yet a beautiful tenacity kept her where she would be until Guida was fifteen years of age. Her great desire had been to live till the girl was eighteen. Then--well, then might she not perhaps leave her to the care of a husband? At best, M. de Mauprat could not live long. He had at last been forced to give up the little watchmaker's shop in the Vier Marchi, where for so many years, in simple independence, he had wrought, always putting by, from work done after hours, Jersey bank-notes and gold, to give Guida a dot, if not worthy of her, at least a guarantee against reproach when some great man should come seeking her in marriage. But at last his hands trembled among the tiny wheels, and his eyes failed. He had his dark hour by himself, then he sold the shop to a native, who thenceforward sat in the ancient exile's place; and the two brown eyes of the stooped, brown old man looked out no more from the window in the Vier Marchi: and then they all made their new home in the Place du Vier Prison. Until she was fifteen Guida's life was unclouded. Once or twice her mother tried to tell her of a place that must soon be empty, but her heart failed her. So at last the end came like a sudden wind out of the north; and it was left to Guida Landresse de Landresse to fight the fight and finish the journey of womanhood alone. This time was the turning-point in Guida's life. What her mother had been to the Sieur de Mauprat, she soon became. They had enough to live on simply. Every week her grandfather gave her a fixed sum for the household. Upon this she managed, that the tiny income left by her mother might not be touched. She shrank from using it yet, and besides, dark times might come when it would be needed. Death had once surprised her, but it should bring no more amazement. She knew that M. de Mauprat's days were numbered, and when he was gone she would be left without one near relative in the world. She realised how unprotected her position would be when death came knocking at the door again. What she would do she knew not. She thought long and hard. Fifty things occurred to her, and fifty were set aside. Her mother's immediate relatives in France were scattered or dead. There was no longer any interest at Chambery in the watchmaking exile, who had dropped like a cherry-stone from the beak of the blackbird of persecution upon one of the Iles de la Manche. There remained the alternative more than once hinted by the Sieur de Mauprat as the months grew into years after the mother died--marriage; a husband, a notable and wealthy husband. That was the magic destiny de Mauprat figured for her. It did not elate her, it did not disturb her; she scarcely realised it. She loved animals, and she saw no reason to despise a stalwart youth. It had been her fortune to know two or three in the casual, unconventional manner of villages, and there were few in the land, great or humble, who did not turn twice to look at her as she passed through the Vier Marchi, so noble was her carriage, so graceful and buoyant her walk, so lacking in self-consciousness her beauty. More than one young gentleman of family had been known to ride through the Place du Vier Prison, hoping to get sight of her, and to offer the view of a suggestively empty pillion behind him. She had, however, never listened to flatterers, and only one youth of Jersey had footing in the cottage. This was Ranulph Delagarde, who had gone in and out at his will, but that was casually and not too often, and he was discreet and spoke no word of love. Sometimes she talked to him of things concerning the daily life with which she did not care to trouble Sieur de Mauprat. In ways quite unknown to her he had made her life easier for her. She knew that her mother had thought of Ranulph for her husband, although she blushed whenever--but it was not often--the idea came to her. She remembered how her mother had said that Ranulph would be a great man in the island some day; that he had a mind above all the youths in St. Heliers; that she would rather see Ranulph a master ship-builder than a babbling ecrivain in the Rue des Tres Pigeons, a smirking leech, or a penniless seigneur with neither trade nor talent. Guida was attracted to Ranulph through his occupation, for she loved strength, she loved all clean and wholesome trades; that of the mason, of the carpenter, of the blacksmith, and most of the ship-builder. Her father, whom she did not remember, had been a ship-builder, and she knew that he had been a notable man; every one had told her that. ......................... "She has met her destiny," say the village gossips, when some man in the dusty procession of life sees a woman's face in the pleasant shadow of a home, and drops out of the ranks to enter at her doorway. Was Ranulph to be Guida's destiny? Handsome and stalwart though he looked as he entered the cottage in the Place du Vier Prison, on that September morning after the rescue of the chevalier, his tool-basket on his shoulder, and his brown face enlivened by one simple sentiment, she was far from sure that he was--far from sure. CHAPTER VII The little hall-way into which Ranulph stepped from the street led through to the kitchen. Guida stood holding back the door for him to enter this real living-room of the house, which opened directly upon the garden behind. It was so cheerful and secluded, looking out from the garden over the wide space beyond to the changeful sea, that since Madame Landresse's death the Sieur de Mauprat had made it reception-room, dining-room, and kitchen all in one. He would willingly have slept there too, but noblesse oblige and the thought of what the Chevalier Orvilliers du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir might think prevented him. Moreover, there was something patriarchal in a kitchen as a reception-room; and both he and the chevalier loved to watch Guida busy with her household duties: at one moment her arms in the dough of the kneading trough; at another picking cherries for a jelly, or casting up her weekly accounts with a little smiling and a little sighing. If, by chance, it had been proposed by the sieur to adjourn to the small sitting-room which looked out upon the Place du Vier Prison, a gloom would instantly have settled upon them both; though in this little front room there was an ancient arm-chair, over which hung the sword that the Comte Guilbert Mauprat de Chambery had used at Fontenoy against the English. So it was that this spacious kitchen, with its huge chimney, and paved with square flagstones and sanded, became like one of those ancient corners of camaraderie in some exclusive inn where gentlemen of quality were wont to meet. At the left of the chimney was the great settle, or veille, covered with baize, "flourished" with satinettes, and spread with ferns and rushes, and above it a little shelf of old china worth the ransom of a prince at least. Opposite the doorway were two great armchairs, one for the sieur and the other for the Chevalier, who made his home in the house of one Elie Mattingley, a fisherman by trade and by practice a practical smuggler, with a daughter Carterette whom he loved passing well. These, with a few constant visitors, formed a coterie: the huge, grizzly- bearded boatman, Jean Touzel, who wore spectacles, befriended smugglers, was approved of all men, and secretly worshipped by his wife; Amice Ingouville, the fat avocat with a stomach of gigantic proportions, the biggest heart and the tiniest brain in the world; Maitre Ranulph Delagarde, and lastly M. Yves Savary dit Detricand, that officer of Rullecour's who, being released from the prison hospital, when the hour came for him to leave the country was too drunk to find the shore. By some whim of negligence the Royal Court was afterwards too lethargic to remove him, and he stayed on, vainly making efforts to leave between one carousal and another. In sober hours, none too frequent, he was rather sorrowfully welcomed by the sieur and the chevalier. When Ranulph entered the kitchen his greeting to the sieur and the chevalier was in French, but to Guida he said, rather stupidly in the patois--for late events had embarrassed him--"Ah bah! es-tu gentiment?" "Gentiment," she answered, with a queer little smile. "You'll have breakfast?" she said in English. "Et ben!" Ranulph repeated, still embarrassed, "a mouthful, that's all." He laid aside his tool-basket, shook hands with the sieur, and seated himself at the table. Looking at du Champsavoys, he said: "I've just met the connetable. He regrets the riot, chevalier, and says the Royal Court extends its mercy to you." "I prefer to accept no favours," answered the chevalier. "As a point of honour, I had thought that, after breakfast, I should return to prison, and--" "The connetable said it was cheaper to let the chevalier go free than to feed him in the Vier Prison," dryly explained Ranulph, helping himself to roasted conger eel and eyeing hungrily the freshly-made black butter Guida was taking from a wooden trencher. "The Royal Court is stingy," he added. "'It's nearer than Jean Noe, who got married in his red queminzolle,' as we say on Jersey--" But he got no further at the moment, for shots rang out suddenly before the house. They all started to their feet, and Ranulph, running to the front door, threw it open. As he did so a young man, with blood flowing from a cut on the temple, stepped inside. CHAPTER VIII It was M. Savary dit Detricand. "Whew--what fools there are in the world! Pish, you silly apes!" the young man said, glancing through the open doorway again to where the connetable's men were dragging two vile-looking ruffians into the Vier Prison. "What's happened, monsieur?" said Ranulph, closing the door and bolting it. "What was it, monsieur?" asked Guida anxiously, for painful events had crowded too fast that morning. Detricand was stanching the blood at his temple with the scarf from his neck. "Get him some cordial, Guida--he's wounded!" said de Mauprat. Detricand waved a hand almost impatiently, and dropped upon the veille, swinging a leg backwards and forwards. "It's nothing, I protest--nothing whatever, and I'll have no cordial, not a drop. A drink of water--a mouthful of that, if I must drink." Guida caught up a hanap of water from the dresser, and passed it to him. Her fingers trembled a little. His were steady enough as he took the hanap and drank off the water at a gulp. Again she filled it and again he drank. The blood was running in a tiny little stream down his cheek. She caught her handkerchief from her girdle impulsively, and gently wiped it away. "Let me bandage the wound," she said eagerly. Her eyes were alight with compassion, certainly not because it was the dissipated French invader, M. Savary dit Detricand,--no one knew that he was the young Comte de Tournay of the House of Vaufontaine, but because he was a wounded fellow- creature. She would have done the same for the poor beganne, Dormy Jamais, who still prowled the purlieus of St. Heliers. It was clear, however, that Detricand felt differently. The moment she touched him he became suddenly still. He permitted her to wash the blood from his temple and forehead, to stanch it first with brandied jeru- leaves, then with cobwebs, and afterwards to bind it with her own kerchief. Detricand thrilled at the touch of the warm, tremulous fingers. He had never been quite so near her before. His face was not far from hers. Now her breath fanned him. As he bent his head for the bandaging, he could see the soft pulsing of her bosom, and hear the beating of her heart. Her neck was so full and round and soft, and her voice--surely he had never heard a voice so sweet and strong, a tone so well poised, so resonantly pleasant. When she had finished, he had an impulse to catch the hand as it dropped away from his forehead, and kiss it; not as he had kissed many a hand, hotly one hour and coldly the next, but with an unpurchasable kind of gratitude characteristic of this especial sort of sinner. He was just young enough, and there was still enough natural health in him, to know the healing touch of a perfect decency, a pure truth of spirit. Yet he had been drunk the night before, drunk with three noncommissioned officers--and he a gentleman, in spite of all, as could be plainly seen. He turned his head away from the girl quickly, and looked straight into the eyes of her grandfather. "I'll tell you how it was, Sieur de Mauprat," said he. "I was crossing the Place du Vier Prison when a rascal threw a cleaver at me from a window. If it had struck me on the head--well, the Royal Court would have buried me, and without a slab to my grave like Rullecour. I burst open the door of the house, ran up the stairs, gripped the ruffian, and threw him through the window into the street. As I did so a door opened behind, and another cut-throat came at me with a pistol. He fired--fired wide. I ran in on him, and before he had time to think he was out of the window too. Then the other brute below fired up at me. The bullet gashed my temple, as you see. After that, it was an affair of the connetable and his men. I had had enough fighting before breakfast. I saw your open door, and here I am--monsieur, monsieur, monsieur, mademoiselle!" He bowed to each of them and glanced towards the table hungrily. Ranulph placed a seat for him. He viewed the conger eel and limpets with an avid eye, but waited for the chevalier and de Mauprat to sit. He had no sooner taken a mouthful, however, and thrown a piece of bread to Biribi the dog, than, starting again to his feet, he said: "Your pardon, monsieur le chevalier, that brute in the Place has knocked all sense from my head! I've a letter for you, brought from Rouen by one of the refugees who came yesterday." He drew from his breast a packet and handed it over. "I went out to their ship last night." The chevalier looked with surprise and satisfaction at the seal on the letter, and, breaking it, spread open the paper, fumbled for the eye- glass which he always carried in his waistcoat, and began reading diligently. Meanwhile Ranulph turned to Guida. "To-morrow Jean Touzel and his wife and I go to the Ecrehos Rocks in Jean's boat," said he. "A vessel was driven ashore there three days ago, and my carpenters are at work on her. If you can go and the wind holds fair, you shall be brought back safe by sundown--Jean says so too." Of all boatmen and fishermen on the coast, Jean Touzel was most to be trusted. No man had saved so many shipwrecked folk, none risked his life so often; and he had never had a serious accident. To go to sea with Jean Touzel, folk said, was safer than living on land. Guida loved the sea; and she could sail a boat, and knew the tides and currents of the south coast as well as most fishermen. M. de Mauprat met her inquiring glance and nodded assent. She then said gaily to Ranulph: "I shall sail her, shall I not?" "Every foot of the way," he answered. She laughed and clapped her hands. Suddenly the little chevalier broke in. "By the head of John the Baptist!" said he. Detricand put down his knife and fork in amazement, and Guida coloured, for the words sounded almost profane upon the chevalier's lips. Du Champsavoys held up his eye-glass, and, turning from one to the other, looked at each of them imperatively yet abstractedly too. Then, pursing up his lower lip, and with a growing amazement which carried him to distant heights of reckless language, he said again: "By the head of John the Baptist on a charger!" He looked at Detricand with a fierceness which was merely the tension of his thought. If he had looked at a wall it would have been the same. But Detricand, who had an almost whimsical sense of humour, felt his neck in affected concern as though to be quite sure of it. "Chevalier," said he, "you shock us--you shock us, dear chevalier." "The most painful things, and the most wonderful too," said the chevalier, tapping the letter with his eye-glass; "the most terrible and yet the most romantic things are here. A drop of cider, if you please, mademoiselle, before I begin to read it to you, if I may--if I may--eh?" They all nodded eagerly. Guida handed him a mogue of cider. The little grey thrush of a man sipped it, and in a voice no bigger than a bird's began: "From Lucillien du Champsavoys, Comte de Chanier, by the hand of a faithful friend, who goeth hence from among divers dangers, unto my cousin, the Chevalier du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir, late Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the best of monarchs, Louis XV, this writing: "MY DEAR AND HONOURED Cousin"--The chevalier paused, frowned a trifle, and tapped his lips with his finger in a little lyrical emotion--"My dear and honoured cousin, all is lost. The France we loved is no more. The twentieth of June saw the last vestige of Louis's power pass for ever. That day ten thousand of the sans- culottes forced their way into the palace to kill him. A faithful few surrounded him. In the mad turmoil, we were fearful, he was serene. 'Feel,' said Louis, placing his hand on his bosom, 'feel whether this is the beating of a heart shaken by fear.' Ah, my friend, your heart would have clamped in misery to hear the Queen cry: 'What have I to fear? Death? it is as well to-day as to- morrow; they can do no more!' Their lives were saved, the day passed, but worse came after. "The tenth of August came. With it too, the end-the dark and bloody end-of the Swiss Guard. The Jacobins had their way at last. The Swiss Guard died in the Court of the Carrousel as they marched to the Assembly to save the King. Thus the last circle of defence round the throne was broken. The palace was given over to flame and the sword. Of twenty nobles of the court I alone escaped. France is become a slaughter-house. The people cried out for more liberty, and their liberators gave them the freedom of death. A fortnight ago, Danton, the incomparable fiend, let loose his assassins upon the priests of God. Now Paris is made a theatre where the people whom Louis and his nobles would have died to save have turned every street into a stable of carnage, every prison and hospital into a vast charnel-house. One last revolting thing alone remains to be done--the murder of the King; then this France that we have loved will have no name and no place in our generation. She will rise again, but we shall not see her, for our eyes have been blinded with blood, for ever darkened by disaster. Like a mistress upon whom we have lavished the days of our youth and the strength of our days, she has deceived us; she has stricken us while we slept. Behold a Caliban now for her paramour! "Weep with me, for France despoils me. One by one my friends have fallen beneath the axe. Of my four sons but one remains. Henri was stabbed by Danton's ruffians at the Hotel de Ville; Gaston fought and died with the Swiss Guard, whose hacked and severed limbs were broiled and eaten in the streets by these monsters who mutilate the land. Isidore, the youngest, defied a hundred of Robespierre's cowards on the steps of the Assembly, and was torn to pieces by the mob. Etienne alone is left. But for him and for the honour of my house I too would find a place beside the King and die with him. Etienne is with de la Rochejaquelein in Brittany. I am here at Rouen. "Brittany and Normandy still stand for the King. In these two provinces begins the regeneration of France: we call it the War of the Vendee. On that Isle of Jersey there you should almost hear the voice of de la Rochejaquelein and the marching cries of our loyal legions. If there be justice in God we shall conquer. But there will be joy no more for such as you or me, nor hope, nor any peace. We live only for those who come after. Our duty remains, all else is dead. You did well to go, and I do well to stay. "By all these piteous relations you shall know the importance of the request I now set forth. "My cousin by marriage of the House of Vaufontaine has lost all his sons. With the death of the Prince of Vaufontaine, there is in France no direct heir to the house, nor can it, by the law, revert to my house or my heirs. Now of late the Prince hath urged me to write to you--for he is here in seclusion with me--and to unfold to you what has hitherto been secret. Eleven years ago the only nephew of the Prince, after some naughty escapades, fled from the Court with Rullecour the adventurer, who invaded the Isle of Jersey. From that hour he has been lost to France. Some of his companions in arms returned after a number of years. All with one exception declared that he was killed in the battle at St. Heliers. One, however, maintains that he was still living and in the prison hospital when his comrades were set free. "It is of him I write to you. He is--as you will perchance remember--the Comte de Tournay. He was then not more than seventeen years of age, slight of build, with brownish hair, dark grey eyes, and had over the right shoulder a scar from a sword thrust. It seemeth little possible that, if living, he should still remain in that Isle of Jersey. He may rather have returned to obscurity in France or have gone to England to be lost to name and remembrance --or even indeed beyond the seas. "That you may perchance give me word of him is the object of my letter, written in no more hope than I live; and you can well guess how faint that is. One young nobleman preserved to France may yet be the great unit that will save her. "Greet my poor countrymen yonder in the name of one who still waits at a desecrated altar; and for myself you must take me as I am, with the remembrance of what I was, even "Your faithful friend and loving kinsman, "CHANIER." "All this, though in the chances of war you read it not till wintertide, was told you at Rouen this first day of September 1792." During the reading, broken by feeling and reflective pauses on the chevalier's part, the listeners showed emotion after the nature of each. The Sieur de Mauprat's fingers clasped and unclasped on the top of his cane, little explosions of breath came from his compressed lips, his eyebrows beetled over till the eyes themselves seemed like two glints of flame. Delagarde dropped a fist heavily upon the table, and held it there clinched, while his heel beat a tattoo of excitement upon the floor. Guida's breath came quick and fast--as Ranulph said afterwards, she was "blanc comme un linge." She shuddered painfully when the slaughter and burning of the Swiss Guards was read. Her brain was so swimming with the horrors of anarchy that the latter part of the letter dealing with the vanished Count of Tournay passed by almost unheeded. But this particular matter greatly interested Ranulph and de Mauprat. They leaned forward eagerly, seizing every word, and both instinctively turned towards Detricand when the description of de Tournay was read. As for Detricand himself, he listened to the first part of the letter like a man suddenly roused out of a dream. For the first time since the Revolution had begun, the horror of it and the meaning of it were brought home to him. He had been so long expatriated, had loitered so long in the primrose path of daily sleep and nightly revel, had fallen so far, that he little realised how the fiery wheels of Death were spinning in France, or how black was the torment of her people. His face turned scarlet as the thing came home to him now. He dropped his head in his hand as if to listen more attentively, but it was in truth to hide his emotion. When the names of Vaufontaine and de Tournay were mentioned, he gave a little start, then suddenly ruled himself to a strange stillness. His face seemed presently to clear; he even smiled a little. Conscious that de Mauprat and Delagarde were watching him, he appeared to listen with a keen but impersonal interest, not without its effect upon his scrutinisers. He nodded his head as though he understood the situation. He acted very well; he bewildered the onlookers. They might think he tallied with the description of the Comte de Tournay, yet he gave the impression that the matter was not vital to himself. But when the little Chevalier stopped and turned his eye-glass upon him with sudden startled inquiry, he found it harder to keep composure. "Singular--singular!" said the old man, and returned to the reading of the letter. When he ended there was absolute silence for a moment. Then the chevalier lifted his eye-glass again and looked at Detricand intently. "Pardon me, monsieur," he said, "but you were with Rullecour--as I was saying." Detricand nodded with a droll sort of helplessness, and answered: "In Jersey I never have chance to forget it, Chevalier." Du Champsavoys, with a naive and obvious attempt at playing counsel, fixed him again with the glass, pursed his lips, and with the importance of a greffier at the ancient Cour d'Heritage, came one step nearer to his goal. "Have you knowledge of the Comte de Tournay, monsieur?" "I knew him--as you were saying, Chevalier," answered Detricand lightly. Then the Chevalier struck home. He dropped his fingers upon the table, stood up, and, looking straight into Detricand's eyes, said: "Monsieur, you are the Comte de Tournay!" The Chevalier involuntarily held the silence for an instant. Nobody stirred. De Mauprat dropped his chin upon his hands, and his eyebrows drew down in excitement. Guida gave a little cry of astonishment. But Detricand answered the Chevalier with a look of blank surprise and a shrug of the shoulder, which had the effect desired. "Thank you, Chevalier," said he with quizzical humour. "Now I know who I am, and if it isn't too soon to levy upon the kinship, I shall dine with you today, chevalier. I paid my debts yesterday, and sous are scarce, but since we are distant cousins I may claim grist at the family mill, eh?" The Chevalier sat, or rather dropped into his chair again. "Then you are not the Comte de Tournay, monsieur," said he hopelessly. "Then I shall not dine with you to-day," retorted Detricand gaily. You fit the tale," said de Mauprat dubiously, touching the letter with his finger. "Let me see," rejoined Detricand. "I've been a donkey farmer, a shipmaster's assistant, a tobacco pedlar, a quarryman, a wood merchant, an interpreter, a fisherman--that's very like the Comte de Tournay! On Monday night I supped with a smuggler; on Tuesday I breakfasted on soupe a la graisse with Manon Moignard the witch; on Wednesday I dined with Dormy Jamais and an avocat disbarred for writing lewd songs for a chocolate-house; on Thursday I went oyster-fishing with a native who has three wives, and a butcher who has been banished four times for not keeping holy the Sabbath Day; and I drank from eleven o'clock till sunrise this morning with three Scotch sergeants of the line--which is very like the Comte de Tournay, as you were saying, Chevalier! I am five feet eleven, and the Comte de Tournay was five feet ten--which is no lie," he added under his breath. "I have a scar, but it's over my left shoulder and not over my right--which is also no lie," he added under his breath. "De Tournay's hair was brown, and mine, you see, is almost a dead black--fever did that," he added under his breath. "De Tournay escaped the day after the Battle of Jersey from the prison hospital, I was left, and here I've been ever since--Yves Savary dit Detricand at your service, chevalier." A pained expression crossed over the Chevalier's face. "I am most sorry; I am most sorry," he said hesitatingly. "I had no wish to wound your feelings." "Ah, it is de Tournay to whom you must apologise," said Detricand musingly, with a droll look. "It is a pity," continued the Chevalier, "for somehow all at once I recalled a resemblance. I saw de Tournay when he was fourteen--yes, I think it was fourteen--and when I looked at you, monsieur, his face came back to me. It would have made my cousin so happy if you had been the Comte de Tournay and I had found you here." The old man's voice trembled a little. "We are growing fewer every day, we Frenchmen of the ancient families. And it would have made my cousin so happy, as I was saying, monsieur." Detricand's manner changed; he became serious. The devil-may-care, irresponsible shamelessness of his face dropped away like a mask. Something had touched him. His voice changed too. "De Tournay was a much better fellow than I am, chevalier," said he--" and that's no lie," he added under his breath. "De Tournay was a fiery, ambitious, youngster with bad companions. De Tournay told me he repented of coming with Rullecour, and he felt he had spoilt his life--that he could never return to France again or to his people." The old Chevalier shook his head sadly. "Is he dead?" he asked. There was a slight pause, and then Detricand answered: "No, still living." "Where is he?" "I promised de Tournay that I would never reveal that." "Might I not write to him?" asked the old man. "Assuredly, Chevalier." "Could you--will you--despatch a letter to him from me, monsieur?" "Upon my honour, yes." "I thank you--I thank you, monsieur; I will write it to-day." "As you will, Chevalier. I will ask you for the letter to-night," rejoined Detricand. "It may take time to reach de Tournay; but he shall receive it into his own hands." De Mauprat trembled to his feet to put the question he knew the Chevalier dreaded to ask: "Do you think that monsieur le comte will return to France?" "I think he will," answered Detricand slowly. "It will make my cousin so happy--so happy," quavered the little Chevalier. "Will you take snuff with me, monsieur?" He offered his silver snuff-box to his vagrant countryman. This was a mark of favour he showed to few. Detricand bowed, accepted, and took a pinch. "I must be going," he said. CHAPTER IX At eight o'clock the next morning, Guida and her fellow-voyagers, bound for the Ecrehos Rocks, had caught the first ebb of the tide, and with a fair wind from the sou'-west had skirted the coast, ridden lightly over the Banc des Violets, and shaped their course nor'-east. Guida kept the helm all the way, as she had been promised by Ranulph. It was still more than half tide when they approached the rocks, and with a fair wind there should be ease in landing. No more desolate spot might be imagined. To the left, as you faced towards Jersey, was a long sand-bank. Between the rocks and the sand- bank shot up a tall, lonely shaft of granite with an evil history. It had been chosen as the last refuge of safety for the women and children of a shipwrecked vessel, in the belief that high tide would not reach them. But the wave rose up maliciously, foot by foot, till it drowned their cries for ever in the storm. The sand-bank was called "Ecriviere," and the rock was afterwards known as the "Pierre des Femmes." Other rocks less prominent, but no less treacherous, flanked it--the Noir Sabloniere and the Grande Galere. To the right of the main island were a group of others, all reef and shingle, intersected by treacherous channels; in calm lapped by water with the colours of a prism of crystal, in storm by a leaden surf and flying foam. These were known as the Colombiere, the Grosse Tete, Tas de Pois, and the Marmotiers; each with its retinue of sunken reefs and needles of granitic gneiss lying low in menace. Happy the sailor caught in a storm and making for the shelter the little curves in the island afford, who escapes a twist of the current, a sweep of the tide, and the impaling fingers of the submarine palisades. Beyond these rocks lay Maitre Ile, all gneiss and shingle, a desert in the sea. The holy men of the early Church, beholding it from the shore of Normandy, had marked it for a refuge from the storms of war and the follies of the world. So it came to pass, for the honour of God and the Virgin Mary, the Abbe of Val Richer builded a priory there: and there now lie in peace the bones of the monks of Val Richer beside the skeletons of unfortunate gentlemen of the sea of later centuries--pirates from France, buccaneers from England, and smugglers from Jersey, who kept their trysts in the precincts of the ancient chapel. The brisk air of early autumn made the blood tingle in Guida's cheeks. Her eyes were big with light and enjoyment. Her hair was caught close by a gay cap of her own knitting, but a little of it escaped, making a pretty setting to her face. The boat rode under all her courses, until, as Jean said, they had put the last lace on her bonnet. Guida's hands were on the tiller firmly, doing Jean's bidding promptly. In all they were five. Besides Guida and Ranulph, Jean and Jean's wife, there was a young English clergyman of the parish of St. Michael's, who had come from England to fill the place of the rector for a few months. Word had been brought to him that a man was dying on the Ecrehos. He had heard that the boat was going, he had found Jean Touzel, and here he was with a biscuit in his hand and a black-jack of French wine within easy reach. Not always in secret the Reverend Lorenzo Dow loved the good things of this world. The most notable characteristic of the young clergyman's appearance was his outer guilelessness and the oddness of his face. His head was rather big for his body; he had a large mouth which laughed easily, a noble forehead, and big, short-sighted eyes. He knew French well, but could speak almost no Jersey patois, so, in compliment to him, Jean Touzel, Ranulph, and Guida spoke in English. This ability to speak English--his own English--was the pride of Jean's life. He babbled it all the way, and chiefly about a mythical Uncle Elias, who was the text for many a sermon. "Times past," said he, as they neared Maitre Ile, "mon onc' 'Lias he knows these Ecrehoses better as all the peoples of the world--respe d'la compagnie. Mon onc' 'Lias he was a fine man. Once when there is a fight between de Henglish and de hopping Johnnies," he pointed towards France, "dere is seven French ship, dere is two Henglish ship--gentlemen-of-war dey are call. Eh ben, one of de Henglish ships he is not a gentleman-of- war, he is what you call go-on-your-own-hook--privator. But it is all de same--tres-ba, all right! What you t'ink coum to pass? De big Henglish ship she is hit ver' bad, she is all break-up. Efin, dat leetle privator he stan' round on de fighting side of de gentleman-of-war and take de fire by her loneliness. Say, then, wherever dere is troub' mon onc' 'Lias he is there, he stan' outside de troub' an' look on--dat is his hobby. You call it hombog? Oh, nannin-gia! Suppose two peoples goes to fight, ah bah, somebody must pick up de pieces--dat is mon onc' 'Lias! He have his boat full of hoysters; so he sit dere all alone and watch dat great fight, an' heat de hoyster an' drink de cider vine. "Ah, bah! mon onc' 'Lias he is standin' hin de door dat day. Dat is what we say on Jersey--when a man have some ver' great luck we say he stan' hin de door. I t'ink it is from de Bible or from de helmanac--sacre moi, I not know.... If I talk too much you give me dat black-jack." They gave him the black-jack. After he had drunk and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, he went on: "O my good-ma'm'selle, a leetle more to de wind. Ah, dat is right-- trejous! . . . Dat fight it go like two bulls on a vergee--respe d'la compagnie. Mon onc' 'Lias he have been to Hengland, he have sing 'God save our greshus King'; so he t'ink a leetle--Ef he go to de French, likely dey will hang him. Mon onc' 'Lias, he is what you call patreeteesm. He say, 'Hengland, she is mine--trejous.' Efin, he sail straight for de Henglish ships. Dat is de greates' man, mon onc' 'Lias --respe d'la compagnie! he coum on de side which is not fighting. Ah bah, he tell dem dat he go to save de gentleman-of-war. He see a hofficier all bloodiness and he call hup: 'Es-tu gentiment?' he say. 'Gentiment,' say de hofficier; 'han' you?' 'Naicely, yank you!' mon onc' 'Lias he say. 'I will save you,' say mon onc' 'Lias--'I will save de ship of God save our greshus King.' De hofficier wipe de tears out of his face. 'De King will reward you, man alive,' he say. Mon onc' 'Lias he touch his breast and speak out. 'Mon hofficier, my reward is here-- trejous. I will take you into de Ecrehoses.' 'Coum up and save de King's ships,' says de hofficier. 'I will take no reward,' say mon onc' 'Lias, 'but, for a leetle pourboire, you will give me de privator --eh?' 'Milles sacres'--say de hofficier, 'mines saeres--de privator!' he say, ver' surprise'. 'Man doux d'la vie--I am damned!' 'You are damned trulee, if you do not get into de Ecrehoses,' say mon onc' 'Lias --'A bi'tot, good-bye!' he say. De hofficier call down to him: 'Is dere nosing else you will take?' 'Nannin, do not tempt me,' say mon onc' 'Lias. 'I am not a gourman'. I will take de privator--dat is my hobby.' All de time de cannons grand--dey brow-brou! boum-boum!--what you call discomfortable. Time is de great t'ing, so de hofficier wipe de tears out of his face again. 'Coum up,' he say; 'de privator is yours.' "Away dey go. You see dat spot where we coum to land, Ma'm'selle Landresse--where de shingle look white, de leetle green grass above? Dat is where mon onc' 'Lias he bring in de King's ship and de privator. Gatd'en'ale--it is a journee awful! He twist to de right, he shape to de left trough de teeth of de rocks--all safe--vera happee--to dis nice leetle bay of de Maitre Ile dey coum. De Frenchies dey grind dere teeth and spit de fire. But de Henglish laugh at demdey are safe. 'Frien' of my heart,' say de hofficier to mon onc' 'Lias, 'pilot of pilots,' he say, 'in de name of our greshus King I t'ank you--A bi'tot, good-bye!' he say. 'Tres-ba,' mon onc' 'Lias he say den, 'I will go to my privator.' 'You will go to de shore,' say de hofficier. 'You will wait on de shore till de captain and his men of de privator coum to you. When dey coum, de ship is yours--de privator is for you.' Mon onc' 'Lias he is like a child--he believe. He 'bout ship and go shore. Misery me, he sit on dat rocking-stone you see tipping on de wind. But if he wait until de men of de privator coum to him, he will wait till we see him sitting there now. Gache-a-penn, you say patriote? Mon onc' 'Lias he has de patreeteesm, and what happen? He save de ship of de greshus King God save--and dey eat up his hoysters! He get nosing. Gad'rabotin--respe d'la compagnie-- if dere is a ship of de King coum to de Ecrehoses, and de hofficier say to me"--he tapped his breast--"'Jean Touzel, tak de ships of de King trough de rocks,'--ah bah, I would rememb' mon onc' 'Lias. I would say, 'A bi'tot-good-bye.' . . . Slowlee--slowlee! We are at de place. Bear wif de land, ma'm'selle! Steadee! As you go! V'la! hitch now, Maitre Ranulph." The keel of the boat grated on the shingle. The air of the morning, the sport of using the elements for one's pleasure, had given Guida an elfish sprightliness of spirits. Twenty times during Jean's recital she had laughed gaily, and never sat a laugh better on any one's countenance than on hers. Her teeth were strong, white, and regular; in themselves they gave off a sort of shining mirth. At first the lugubrious wife of the happy Jean was inclined to resent Guida's gaiety as unseemly, for Jean's story sounded to her as serious statement of fact; which incapacity for humour probably accounted for Jean's occasional lapses from domestic grace. If Jean had said that he had met a periwinkle dancing a hornpipe with an oyster she would have muttered heavily "Think of that!" The most she could say to any one was: "I believe you, ma couzaine." Some time in her life her voice had dropped into that great well she called her body, and it came up only now and then like an echo. There never was anything quite so fat as she. She was found weeping one day on the veille because she was no longer able to get her shoulders out of the window to use the clothes-lines stretching to her neighbour's over the way. If she sat down in your presence, it was impossible to do aught but speculate as to whether she could get up alone. Yet she went abroad on the water a great deal with Jean. At first the neighbours gave out sinister suspicions as to Jean's intentions, for sea-going with your own wife was uncommon among the sailors of the coast. But at last these dark suggestions settled down into a belief that Jean took her chiefly for ballast; and thereafter she was familiarly called "Femme de Ballast." Talking was no virtue in her eyes. What was going on in her mind no one ever knew. She was more phlegmatic than an Indian; but the tails of the sheep on the Town Hill did not better show the quarter of the wind than the changing colour of Aimable's face indicated Jean's coming or going. For Mattresse Aimable had one eternal secret, an unwavering passion for Jean Touzel. If he patted her on the back on a day when the fishing was extra fine, her heart pumped so hard she had to sit down; if, passing her lonely bed of a morning, he shook her great toe to wake her, she blushed, and turned her face to the wall in placid happiness. She was so credulous and matter-of-fact that if Jean had told her she must die on the spot, she would have said "Think of that!" or "Je te crais," and died. If in the vague dusk of her brain the thought glimmered that she was ballast for Jean on sea and anchor on land, she still was content. For twenty years the massive, straight-limbed Jean had stood to her for all things since the heavens and the earth were created. Once, when she had burnt her hand in cooking supper for him, his arm made a trial of her girth, and he kissed her. The kiss was nearer her ear than her lips, but to her mind it was the most solemn proof of her connubial happiness and of Jean's devotion. She was a Catholic, unlike Jean and most people of her class in Jersey, and ever since that night he kissed her she had told an extra bead on her rosary and said another prayer. These were the reasons why at first she was inclined to resent Guida's laughter. But when she saw that Maitre Ranulph and the curate and Jean himself laughed, she settled down to a grave content until they landed. They had scarce reached the deserted chapel where their dinner was to be cooked by Maitresse Aimable, when Ranulph called them to note a vessel bearing in their direction. "She's not a coasting craft," said Jean. "She doesn't look like a merchant vessel," said Ranulph, eyeing her through his telescope. "Why, she's a warship!" he added. Jean thought she was not, but Maitre Ranulph said "Pardi, I ought to know, Jean. Ship-building is my trade, to say nothing of guns--I wasn't two years in the artillery for nothing. See the low bowsprit and the high poop. She's bearing this way. She'll be Narcissus!" he said slowly. That was Philip d'Avranche's ship. Guida's face lighted, her heart beat faster. Ranulph turned on his heel. "Where are you going, Ro?" Guida said, taking a step after him. "On the other side, to my men and the wreck," he said, pointing. Guida glanced once more towards the man-o'-war: and then, with mischief in her eye, turned towards Jean. "Suppose," she said to him archly, "suppose the ship should want to come in, of course you'd remember your onc' 'Lias, and say, 'A bi'tot, good-bye!"' An evasive "Ah bah!" was the only reply Jean vouchsafed. Ranulph joined his men at the wreck, and the Reverend Lorenzo Dow went about the Lord's business in the little lean-to of sail-cloth and ship's lumber which had been set up near to the toil of the carpenters. When the curate entered the but the sick man was in a doze. He turned his head from side to side restlessly and mumbled to himself. The curate, sitting on the ground beside the man, took from his pocket a book, and began writing in a strange, cramped hand. This book was his journal. When a youth he had been a stutterer, and had taken refuge from talk in writing, and the habit stayed even as his affliction grew less. The important events of the day or the week, the weather, the wind, the tides, were recorded, together with sundry meditations of the Reverend Lorenzo Dow. The pages were not large, and brevity was Mr. Dow's journalistic virtue. Beyond the diligent keeping of this record, he had no habits, certainly no precision, no remembrance, no system: the business of his life ended there. He had quietly vacated two curacies because there had been bitter complaints that the records of certain baptisms, marriages, and burials might only be found in the chequered journal of his life, sandwiched between fantastic reflections and remarks upon the rubric. The records had been exact enough, but the system was not canonical, and it rested too largely upon the personal ubiquity of the itinerary priest, and the safety of his journal--and of his life. Guida, after the instincts of her nature, had at once sought the highest point on the rocky islet, and there she drank in the joy of sight and sound and feeling. She could see--so perfect was the day--the line marking the Minquiers far on the southern horizon, the dark and perfect green of the Jersey slopes, and the white flags of foam which beat against the Dirouilles and the far-off Paternosters, dissolving as they flew, their place taken by others, succeeding and succeeding, as a soldier steps into a gap in the line of battle. Something in these rocks, something in the Paternosters--perhaps their distance, perhaps their remoteness from all other rocks--fascinated her. As she looked at them, she suddenly felt a chill, a premonition, a half-spiritual, half- material telegraphy of the inanimate to the animate: not from off cold stone to sentient life; but from that atmosphere about the inanimate thing, where the life of man has spent itself and been dissolved, leaving--who can tell what? Something which speaks but yet has no sound. The feeling which possessed Guida as she looked at the Paternosters was almost like blank fear. Yet physical fear she had never felt, not since that day when the battle raged in the Vier Marchi, and Philip d'Avranche had saved her from the destroying scimitar of the Turk. Now that scene all came back to her in a flash, as it were; and she saw again the dark snarling face of the Mussulman, the blue-and-white silk of his turban, the black and white of his waistcoat, the red of the long robe, and the glint of his uplifted sword. Then in contrast, the warmth, brightness, and bravery on the face of the lad in blue and gold who struck aside the descending blade and caught her up in his arms; and she had nestled there--in those arms of Philip d'Avranche. She remembered how he had kissed her, and how she had kissed him--he a lad and she a little child --as he left her with her mother in the watchmaker's shop in the Vier Marchi that day. . . . And she had never seen him again until yesterday. She looked from the rocks to the approaching frigate. Was it the Narcissus coming--coming to this very island? She recalled Philip--how gallant he was yesterday, how cool, with what an air of command! How light he had made of the riot! Ranulph's strength and courage she accepted as a matter of course, and was glad that he was brave, generous, and good; but the glamour of distance and mystery were around d'Avranche. Remembrance, like a comet, went circling through the firmament of eleven years, from the Vier Marchi to the Place du Vier Prison. She watched the ship slowly bearing with the land. The Jack was flying from the mizzen. They were now taking in her topsails. She was so near that Guida could see the anchor a-cockbell, and the poop lanthorns. She could count the guns like long black horns shooting out from a rhinoceros hide: she could discern the figurehead lion snarling into the spritsail. Presently the ship came up to the wind and lay to. Then she signalled for a pilot, and Guida ran towards the ruined chapel, calling for Jean Touzel. In spite of Jean's late protests as to piloting a "gentleman-of-war," this was one of the joyful moments of his life. He could not loosen his rowboat quick enough; he was away almost before you could have spoken his name. Excited as Guida was, she could not resist calling after him: "'God save our greshus King! A bi'tot--goodbye!'" ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: A sort of chuckle not entirely pleasant Sacrifice to the god of the pin-hole What fools there are in the world THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG [A ROMANCE OF TWO KINGDOMS] By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. CHAPTER X As Ranulph had surmised, the ship was the Narcissus, and its first lieutenant was Philip d'Avranche. The night before, orders had reached the vessel from the Admiralty that soundings were to be taken at the Ecrehos. The captain had at once made inquiries for a pilot, and Jean Touzel was commended to him. A messenger sent to Jean found that he had already gone to the Ecrehos. The captain had then set sail, and now, under Jean's skilful pilotage, the Narcissus twisted and crept through the teeth of the rocks at the entrance, and slowly into the cove, reefs on either side gaping and girding at her, her keel all but scraping the serrated granite beneath. She anchored, and boats put off to take soundings and explore the shores. Philip was rowed in by Jean Touzel. Stepping out upon the beach of Mattre 'Ile, Philip slowly made his way over the shingle to the ruined chapel, in no good humour with himself or with the world, for exploring these barren rocks seemed a useless whim of the Admiralty, and he could not conceive of any incident rising from the monotony of duty to lighten the darkness of this very brilliant day. His was not the nature to enjoy the stony detail of his profession. Excitement and adventure were as the breath of life to him, and since he had played his little part at the Jersey battle in a bandbox eleven years before, he had touched hands with accidents of flood and field in many countries. He had been wrecked on the island of Trinidad in a tornado, losing his captain and his ship; had seen active service in America and in India; won distinction off the coast of Arabia in an engagement with Spanish cruisers; and was now waiting for his papers as commander of a ship of his own, and fretted because the road of fame and promotion was so toilsome. Rumours of war with France had set his blood dancing a little, but for him most things were robbed of half their pleasure because they did not come at once. This was a moody day with him, for he had looked to spend it differently. As he walked up the shingle his thoughts were hanging about a cottage in the Place du Vier Prison. He had hoped to loiter in a doorway there, and to empty his sailor's heart in well-practised admiration before the altar of village beauty. The sight of Guida's face the day before had given a poignant pulse to his emotions, unlike the broken rhythm of past comedies of sentiment and melodramas of passion. According to all logic of custom, the acuteness of yesterday's impression should have been followed up by today's attack; yet here he was, like another Robinson Crusoe, "kicking up the shingle of a cursed Patmos"--so he grumbled aloud. Patmos was not so wild a shot after all, for no sooner had he spoken the word than, looking up, he saw in the doorway of the ruined chapel the gracious figure of a girl: and a book of revelations was opened and begun. At first he did not recognise Guida. There was only a picture before him which, by some fantastic transmission, merged into his reveries. What he saw was an ancient building--just such a humble pile of stone and rough mortar as one might see on some lone cliff of the AEgean or on abandoned isles of the equatorial sea. The gloom of a windowless vault was behind the girl, but the filtered sunshine of late September fell on her head. It brightened the white kerchief, and the bodice and skirt of a faint pink, throwing the face into a pleasing shadow where the hand curved over the forehead. She stood like some Diana of a ruined temple looking out into the staring day. At once his pulses beat faster, for to him a woman was ever the fountain of adventure, and an unmanageable heart sent him headlong to the oasis where he might loiter at the spring of feminine vanity, or truth, or impenitent gaiety, as the case might be. In proportion as his spirits had sunk into sour reflection, they now shot up rocket-high at the sight of a girl's joyous pose of body and the colour and form of the picture she made. In him the shrewdness of a strong intelligence was mingled with wild impulse. In most, rashness would be the outcome of such a marriage of characteristics; but clear-sightedness, decision, and a little unscrupulousness had carried into success many daring actions of his life. This very quality of resolute daring saved him from disaster. Impulse quickened his footsteps now. It quickened them to a run when the hand was dropped from the girl's forehead, and he saw again the face whose image and influence had banished sleep from his eyes the night before. "Guida!" broke from his lips. The man was transfigured. Brightness leaped into his look, and the greyness of his moody eye became as blue as the sea. The professional straightness of his figure relaxed into the elastic grace of an athlete. He was a pipe to be played on: an actor with the ambitious brain of a diplomatist; as weak as water, and as strong as steel; soft-hearted to foolishness or unyielding at will. Now, if the devil had sent a wise imp to have watch and ward of this man and this maid, and report to him upon the meeting of their ways, the moment Philip took Guida's hand, and her eyes met his, monsieur the reporter of Hades might have clapped-to his book and gone back to his dark master with the message and the record: "The hour of Destiny is struck." When the tide of life beats high in two mortals, and they meet in the moment of its apogee, when all the nature is sweeping on without command, guilelessly, yet thoughtlessly, the mere lilt of existence lulling to sleep wisdom and tried experience--speculation points all one way. Many indeed have been caught away by such a conjunction of tides, and they mostly pay the price. But paying is part of the game of life: it is the joy of buying that we crave. Go down into the dark markets of the town. See the long, narrow, sordid streets lined with the cheap commodities of the poor. Mark how there is a sort of spangled gaiety, a reckless swing, a grinning exultation in the grimy, sordid caravanserai. The cheap colours of the shoddy open-air clothing-house, the blank faded green of the coster's cart; the dark bluish-red of the butcher's stall--they all take on a value not their own in the garish lights flaring down the markets of the dusk. Pause to the shrill music of the street musician, hear the tuneless voice of the grimy troubadour of the alley-ways; and then hark to the one note that commands them all--the call which lightens up faces sodden with base vices, eyes bleared with long looking into the dark caverns of crime: "Buy--buy--buy--buy--buy!" That is the tune the piper pipes. We would buy, and behold, we must pay. Then the lights go out, the voices stop, and only the dark tumultuous streets surround us, and the grime of life is ours again. Whereupon we go heavily to hard beds of despair, having eaten the cake we bought, and now must pay for unto Penalty, the dark inordinate creditor. And anon the morning comes, and then, at last, the evening when the triste bazaars open again, and the strong of heart and nerve move not from their doorways, but sit still in the dusk to watch the grim world go by. But mostly they hurry out to the bazaars once more, answering to the fevered call: "Buy--buy--buy--buy--buy!" And again they pay the price: and so on to the last foreclosure and the immitigable end. One of the two standing in the door of the ruined chapel on the Ecrehos had the nature of those who buy but once and pay the price but once; the other was of those who keep open accounts in the markets of life. The one was the woman and the other was the man. There was nothing conventional in their greeting. "You remembered me!" he said eagerly, in English, thinking of yesterday. "I shouldn't deserve to be here if I had forgotten," she answered meaningly. "Perhaps you forget the sword of the Turk?" she added. He laughed a little, his cheek flushed with pleasure. "I shouldn't deserve to be here if I remembered--in the way you mean," he answered. Her face was full of pleasure. "The worst of it is," she said, "I never can pay my debt. I have owed it for eleven years, and if I should live to be ninety I should still owe it." His heart was beating hard and he became daring. "So, thou shalt save my life," he said, speaking in French. "We shall be quits then, thou and I." The familiar French thou startled her. To hide the instant's confusion she turned her head away, using a hand to gather in her hair, which the wind was lifting lightly. "That wouldn't quite make us quits," she rejoined; "your life is important, mine isn't. You"--she nodded towards the Narcissus--"you command men." "So dost thou," he answered, persisting in the endearing pronoun. He meant it to be endearing. As he had sailed up and down the world, a hundred ports had offered him a hundred adventures, all light in the scales of purpose, but not all bad. He had gossiped and idled and coquetted with beauty before; but this was different, because the nature of the girl was different from all others he had met. It had mostly been lightly come and lightly go with himself, as with the women it had been easily won and easily loosed. Conscience had not smitten him hard, because beauty, as he had known it, though often fair and of good report, had bloomed for others before he came. But here was a nature fresh and unspoiled from the hand of the potter Life. As her head slightly turned from him again, he involuntarily noticed the pulse beating in her neck, the rise and fall of her bosom. Life--here was life unpoisoned by one drop of ill thought or light experience. "Thou dost command men too," he repeated. She stepped forward a little from the doorway and beyond him, answering back at him: "Oh, no, I only knit, and keep a garden, and command a little home, that's all. . . . Won't you let me show you the island?" she added quickly, pointing to a hillock beyond, and moving towards it. He followed, speaking over her shoulder: "That's what you seem to do," he answered, "not what you do." Then he added rhetorically: "I've seen a man polishing the buckle of his shoe, and he was planning to take a city or manoeuvre a fleet." She noticed that he had dropped the thou, and, much as its use had embarrassed her, the gap left when the boldness was withdrawn became filled with regret, for, though no one had dared to say it to her before, somehow it seemed not rude on Philip's lips. Philip? Yes, Philip she had called him in her childhood, and the name had been carried on into her girlhood--he had always been Philip to her. "No, girls don't think like that, and they don't do big things," she replied. "When I polish the pans"--she laughed--"and when I scour my buckles, I just think of pans and buckles." She tossed up her fingers lightly, with a perfect charm of archness. He was very close to her now. "But girls have dreams, they have memories." "If women hadn't memory," she answered, "they wouldn't have much, would they? We can't take cities and manoeuvre fleets." She laughed a little ironically. "I wonder that we think at all or have anything to think about, except the kitchen and the garden, and baking and scouring and spinning"--she paused slightly, her voice lowered a little--"and the sea, and the work that men do round us. . . . Do you ever go into a market?" she added suddenly. Somehow she could talk easily and naturally to him. There had been no leading up to confidence. She felt a sudden impulse to tell him all her thoughts. To know things, to understand, was a passion with her. It seemed to obliterate in her all that was conventional, it removed her far from sensitive egotism. Already she had begun "to take notice" in the world, and that is like being born again. As it grows, life ceases to be cliche; and when the taking notice is supreme we call it genius; and genius is simple and believing: it has no pride, it is naive, it is childlike. Philip seemed to wear no mark of convention, and Guida spoke her thoughts freely to him. "To go into a market seems to me so wonderful," she continued. "There are the cattle, the fruits, the vegetables, the flowers, the fish, the wood; the linen from the loom, the clothes that women's fingers have knitted. But it isn't just those things that you see, it's all that's behind them--the houses, the fields, and the boats at sea, and the men and women working and working, and sleeping and eating, and breaking their hearts with misery, and wondering what is to be the end of it all; yet praying a little, it may be, and dreaming a little--perhaps a very little." She sighed, and continued: "That's as far as I get with thinking. What else can one do in this little island? Why, on the globe Maitre Damian has at St. Aubin's, Jersey is no bigger than the head of a pin. And what should one think of here?" Her eyes were on the sea. Its mystery was in them, the distance, the ebb and flow, the light of wonder and of adventure too. "You--you've been everywhere," she went on. "Do you remember you sent me once from Malta a tiny silver cross? That was years ago, soon after the Battle of Jersey, when I was a little bit of a girl. Well, after I got big enough I used to find Malta and other places on Maitre Damian's globe. I've lived always there, on that spot"--she pointed towards Jersey--"on that spot one could walk round in a day. What do I know! You've been everywhere --everywhere. When you look back you've got a thousand pictures in your mind. You've seen great cities, temples, palaces, great armies, fleets; you've done things: you've fought and you've commanded, though you're so young, and you've learned about men and about many countries. Look at what you know, and then, if you only think, you'll laugh at what I know." For a moment he was puzzled what to answer. The revelation of the girl's nature had come so quickly upon him. He had looked for freshness, sweetness, intelligence, and warmth of temperament, but it seemed to him that here were flashes of power. Yet she was only seventeen. She had been taught to see things with her own eyes and not another's, and she spoke of them as she saw them; that was all. Yet never but to her mother had Guida said so much to any human being as within these past few moments to Philip d'Avranche. The conditions were almost maliciously favourable, and d'Avranche was simple and easy as a boy, with his sailor's bonhomie and his naturally facile spirit. A fateful adaptability was his greatest weapon in life, and his greatest danger. He saw that Guida herself was unconscious of the revelation she was making, and he showed no surprise, but he caught the note of her simplicity, and responded in kind. He flattered her deftly--not that she was pressed unduly, he was too wise for that. He took her seriously; and this was not all dissimulation, for her every word had glamour, and he now exalted her intellect unduly. He had never met girl or woman who talked just as she did; and straightway, with the wild eloquence of his nature, he thought he had discovered a new heaven and a new earth. A spell was upon him. He knew what he wanted when he saw it. He had always made up his mind suddenly, always acted on the intelligent impulse of the moment. He felt things, he did not study them--it was almost a woman's instinct. He came by a leap to the goal of purpose, not by the toilsome steps of reason. On the instant his headlong spirit declared his purpose: this was the one being for him in all the world: at this altar he would light a lamp of devotion, and keep it burning forever. "This is my day," he said to himself. "I always knew that love would come down on me like a storm." Then, aloud, he said to her: "I wish I knew what you know; but I can't, because my mind is different, my life has been different. When you go into the world and see a great deal, and loosen a little the strings of your principles, and watch how sins and virtues contradict themselves, you see things after a while in a kind of mist. But you, Guida, you see them clearly because your heart is clear. You never make a mistake, you are always right because your mind is right." She interrupted him, a little troubled and a good deal amazed: "Oh, you mustn't, mustn't speak like that. It's not so. How can one see and learn unless one sees and knows the world? Surely one can't think wisely if one doesn't see widely?" He changed his tactics instantly. The world--that was the thing? Well, then, she should see the world, through him, with him. "Yes, yes, you're right," he answered. "You can't know things unless you see widely. You must see the world. This island, what is it? I was born here, don't I know! It's a foothold in the world, but it's no more; it's not afield to walk in, why, it's not even a garden. No, it's the little patch of green we play in in front of a house, behind the railings, before we go out into the world and learn how to live." They had now reached the highest point on the island, where a flagstaff stood. Guida was looking far beyond Jersey to the horizon line. There was little haze, the sky was inviolably blue. Far off against the horizon lay the low black rocks of the Minquiers. They seemed to her, on the instant, like stepping-stones. Beyond would be other stepping- stones, and others and others still again, and they would all mark the way and lead to what Philip called the world. The world! She felt a sudden little twist of regret at her heart. Here she was like a cow grazing within the circle of its tether--like a lax caterpillar on its blade of grass. Yet it had all seemed so good to her in the past; broken only by little bursts of wonder and wish concerning that outside world. "Do we ever learn how to live?" she asked. "Don't we just go on from one thing to another, picking our way, but never knowing quite what to do, because we don't know what's ahead? I believe we never do learn how to live," she added, half-smiling, yet a little pensive too; "but I am so very ignorant, and--" She stopped, for suddenly it flashed upon her: here she was baring her childish heart--he would think it childish, she was sure he would-- everything she thought, to a man she had never known till to-day. No, no, she was wrong; she had known him, but it was only as Philip, the boy who had saved her life. And the Philip of her memory was only a picture, not a being; something to think about, not something to speak with, to whom she might show her heart. She flushed hotly and turned her shoulder on him. Her eyes followed a lizard creeping up the stones. As long as she lived she remembered that lizard, its colour changing in the sun. She remembered the hot stones, and how warm the flag-staff was when she stretched out her hand to it mechanically. But the swift, noiseless lizard running in and out of the stones, it was ever afterwards like a coat-of-arms upon the shield of her life. Philip came close to her. At first he spoke over her shoulder, then he faced her. His words forced her eyes up to his, and he held them. "Yes, yes, we learn how to live," he said. "It's only when we travel alone that we don't see before us. I will teach you how to live--we will learn the way together! Guida! Guida!"--he reached out his hands to wards her--"don't start so! Listen to me. I feel for you what I have felt for no other being in all my life. It came upon me yesterday when I saw you in the window at the Vier Prison. I didn't understand it. All night I walked the deck thinking of you. To-day as soon as I saw your face, as soon as I touched your hand, I knew what it was, and--" He attempted to take her hand now. "Oh, no, no!" she exclaimed, and drew back as if terrified. "You need not fear me," he burst out. "For now I know that I have but two things to live for: for my work"--he pointed to the Narcissus--"and for you. You are frightened of me? Why, I want to have the right to protect you, to drive away all fear from your life. You shall be the garden and I shall be the wall; you the nest and I the rock; you the breath of life and I the body that breathes it. Guida, my Guida, I love you!" She drew back, leaning against the stones, her eyes riveted upon his, and she spoke scarcely above a whisper. "It is not true--it is not true. You've known me only for one day--only for one hour. How can you say it!" There was a tumult in her breast; her eyes shone and glistened; wonder, embarrassed yet happy wonder, looked at him from her face, which was touched with an appealing, as of the heart that dares not believe and yet must believe or suffer. "It is madness," she added. "It is not true--how can it be true!" Yet it all had the look of reality--the voice had the right ring, the face had truth, the bearing was gallant; the force and power of the man overwhelmed her. She reached out her hand tremblingly as though to push him back. "It cannot be true," she said. "To think--in one day!" "It is true," he answered, "true as that I stand here. One day--it is not one day. I knew you years ago. The seed was sown then, the flower springs up to-day, that is all. You think I can't know that it is love I feel for you? It is admiration; it is faith; it is desire too; but it is love. When you see a flower in a garden, do you not know at once if you like it or no? Don't you know the moment you look on a landscape, on a splendid building, whether it is beautiful to you? If, then, with these things one knows--these that haven't any speech, no life like yours or mine--how much more when it is a girl with a face like yours, when it is a mind noble like yours, when it is a touch that thrills, and a voice that drowns the heart in music! Guida, believe that I speak the truth. I know, I swear, that you are the one passion, the one love of my life. All others would be as nothing, so long as you live, and I live to look upon you, to be beside you." "Beside me!" she broke in, with an incredulous irony fain to be contradicted, "a girl in a village, poor, knowing nothing, seeing no farther"--she looked out towards Jersey--"seeing no farther than the little cottage in the little country where I was born." "But you shall see more," he said, "you shall see all, feel all, if you will but listen to me. Don't deny me what is life and breathing and hope to me. I'll show you the world; I'll take you where you may see and know. We will learn it all together. I shall succeed in life. I shall go far. I've needed one thing to make me do my best for some one's sake beside my own; you will make me do it for your sake. Your ancestors were great people in France; and you know that mine, centuries ago, were great also--that the d'Avranches were a noble family in France. You and I will win our place as high as the best of them. In this war that's coming between England and France is my chance. Nelson said to me the other day--you have heard of him, of young Captain Nelson, the man they're pointing to in the fleet as the one man of them all?--he said to me: 'We shall have our chance now, d'Avranche.' And we shall. I have wanted it till to-day for my own selfish ambition--now I want it for you. When I landed on this islet a half-hour ago, I hated it, I hated my ship, I hated my duty, I hated everything, because I wanted to go where you were, to be with you. It was Destiny that brought us both to this place at one moment. You can't escape Destiny. It was to be that I should love you, Guida." He reached out to take her hands, but she put them behind her against the stones, and drew back. The lizard suddenly shot out from a hole and crossed over her fingers. She started, shivered at the cold touch, and caught the hand away. A sense of foreboding awaked in her, and her eyes followed the lizard's swift travel with a strange fascination. But she lifted them to Philip's, and the fear and premonition passed. "Oh, my brain is in a whirl!" she said. "I do not understand. I know so little. No one has ever spoken to me as you have done. You would not dare"--she leaned forward a little, looking into his face with that unwavering gaze which was the best sign of her straight-forward mind-- "you would not dare to deceive--you would not dare. I have--no mother," she added with simple pathos. The moisture came into his eyes. He must have been stone not to be touched by the appealing, by the tender inquisition, of that look. "Guida," he said impetuously, "if I deceive you, may every fruit of life turn to dust and ashes in my mouth! If ever I deceive you, may I die a black, dishonourable death, abandoned and alone! I should deserve that if I deceived you, Guida." For the first time since he had spoken she smiled, yet her eyes filled with tears too. "You will let me tell you that I love you, Guida--it is all I ask now: that you will listen to me?" She sighed, but did not answer. She kept looking at him, looking as though she would read his inmost soul. Her face was very young, though the eyes were so wise in their simplicity. "You will give me my chance--you will listen to me, Guida, and try to understand--and be glad?" he asked, leaning closer to her and holding out his hands. She drew herself up slightly as with an air of relief and resolve. She put a hand in his. "I will try to understand--and be glad," she answered. "Won't you call me Philip?" he said. The same slight, mischievous smile crossed her lips now as eleven years ago in the Rue d'Egypte, and recalling that moment, she replied: "Yes, sir--Philip!" At that instant the figure of a man appeared on the shingle beneath, looking up towards them. They did not see him. Guida's hand was still in Philip's. The man looked at them for a moment, then started and turned away. It was Ranulph Delagarde. They heard his feet upon the shingle now. They turned and looked; and Guida withdrew her hand. CHAPTER XI There are moments when a kind of curtain seems dropped over the brain, covering it, smothering it, while yet the body and its nerves are tingling with sensation. It is like the fire-curtain of a theatre let down between the stage and the audience, a merciful intervention between the mind and the disaster which would consume it. As the years had gone on Maitre Ranulph's nature had grown more powerful, and his outdoor occupation had enlarged and steadied his physical forces. His trouble now was in proportion to the force of his character. The sight of Guida and Philip hand in hand, the tender attitude, the light in their faces, was overwhelming and unaccountable. Yesterday these two were strangers--to-day it was plain to be seen they were lovers, and lovers who had reached a point of confidence and revelation. Nothing in the situation tallied with Ranulph's ideas of Guida and his knowledge of life. He had, as one might say, been eye to eye with this girl for fifteen years: he had told his love for her in a thousand little ways, as the ant builds its heap to a pyramid that becomes a thousand times greater than itself. He had followed her footsteps, he had fetched and carried, he had served afar off, he had ministered within the gates. He had, unknown to her, watched like the keeper of the house over all who came and went, neither envious nor over-zealous, neither intrusive nor neglectful; leaving here a word and there an act to prove himself, above all, the friend whom she could trust, and, in all, the lover whom she might wake to know and reward. He had waited with patience, hoping stubbornly that she might come to put her hand in his one day. Long ago he would have left the island to widen his knowledge, earn experience in his craft, or follow a career in the army--he had been an expert gunner when he served in the artillery four years ago--and hammer out fame upon the anvils of fortune in England or in France; but he had stayed here that he might be near her. His love had been simple, it had been direct, and wise in its consistent reserve. He had been self- obliterating. His love desired only to make her happy: most lovers desire that they themselves shall be made happy. Because of the crime his father committed years ago--because of the shame of that hidden crime--he had tried the more to make himself a good citizen, and had formed the modest ambition of making one human being happy. Always keeping this near him in past years, a supreme cheerfulness of heart had welled up out of his early sufferings and his innate honesty. Hope had beckoned him on from year to year, until it seemed at last that the time had almost come when he might speak, might tell her all--his father's crime and the manner of his father's death; of his own devoted purpose in trying to expiate that crime by his own uprightness; and of his love for her. Now, all in a minute, his horizon was blackened. This adventurous gallant, this squire of dames, had done in a day what he had worked, step by step, to do through all these years. This skipping seafarer, with his powder and lace, his cocked hat and gold-handled sword, had whistled at the gates which he had guarded and by which he had prayed, and all in a minute every defence had been thrown down, and Guida--his own Guida--had welcomed the invader with shameless eagerness. He crossed the islet slowly. It seemed to him--and for a moment it was the only thing of which he was conscious--that the heels of his boots shrieked in the shingle, and with every step he was raising an immense weight. He paused behind the chapel. After a little the smother lifted slowly from his brain. "I'll believe in her still," he said aloud. "It's all his cursed tongue. As a boy he could make every other boy do what he wanted because his tongue knows how to twist words. She's been used to honest people; he's talked a new language to her--tricks caught in his travels. But she shall know the truth. She shall find out what sort of a man he is. I'll make her see under his pretty foolings." He turned, and leaned against the wall of the chapel. "Guida, Guida," he said, speaking as if she were there before him, "you won't--you won't go to him, and spoil your life, and mine too. Guida, ma couzaine, you'll stay here, in the land of your birth. You'll make your home here--here with me, ma chere couzaine. Ah, but then you shall be my wife in spite of him, in spite of a thousand Philip d'Avranches!" He drew himself up firmly, for a great resolve was made. His path was clear. It was a fair fight, he thought; the odds were not so much against him after all, for his birth was as good as Philip d'Avranche's, his energy was greater, and he was as capable and as clever in his own way. He walked quickly down the shingle towards the wreck on the other side of the islet. As he passed the hut where the sick man lay, he heard a querulous voice. It was not that of the Reverend Lorenzo Dow. Where had he heard that voice before? A shiver of fear ran through him. Every sense and emotion in him was arrested. His life seemed to reel backward. Curtain after curtain of the past unfolded. He hurried to the door of the hut and looked in. A man with long white hair and straggling grey beard turned to him a haggard face, on which were written suffering, outlawry, and evil. "Great God--my father!" Ranulph said. He drew back slowly like a man who gazes upon some horrible fascinating thing, and then turned heavily towards the sea, his face set, his senses paralysed. "My father not dead! My father--the traitor!" he groaned. CHAPTER XII Philip d'Avranche sauntered slowly through the Vier Marchi, nodding right and left to people who greeted him. It was Saturday and market day in Jersey. The square was crowded with people. All was a cheerful babel; there was movement, colour everywhere. Here were the high and the humble, hardi vlon and hardi biaou--the ugly and the beautiful, the dwarfed and the tall, the dandy and the dowdy, the miser and the spendthrift; young ladies gay in silks, laces, and scarfs from Spain, and gentlemen with powdered wigs from Paris; sailors with red tunics from the Mediterranean, and fishermen with blue and purple blouses from Brazil; man-o'-war's-men with Greek petticoats, Turkish fezzes, and Portuguese espadras. Jersey housewives, in bedgones and white caps, with molleton dresses rolled up to the knees, pushed their way through the crowd, jars of black butter, or jugs of cinnamon brandy on their heads. From La Pyramide--the hospitable base of the statue of King George II--fishwives called the merits of their conger-eels and ormers; and the clatter of a thousand sabots made the Vier Marchi sound like a ship-builder's yard. In this square Philip had loitered and played as a child. Down there, leaning against a pillar of the Corn Market piazza was Elie Mattingley, the grizzly-haired seller of foreign silks and droll odds and ends, who had given him a silver flageolet when he was a little lad. There were the same swaggering manners, the big gold rings in his ears; there was the same red sash about the waist, the loose unbuttoned shirt, the truculent knifebelt; there were the same keen brown eyes looking you through and through, and the mouth with a middle tooth in both jaws gone. Elie Mattingley, pirate, smuggler, and sometime master of a privateer, had had dealings with people high and low in the island, and they had not always, nor often, been conducted in the open Vier Marchi. Fifteen years ago he used to have his little daughter Carterette always beside him when he sold his wares. Philip wondered what had become of her. He glanced round. . . . Ah, there she was, not far from her father, over in front of the guard-house, selling, at a little counter with a canopy of yellow silk (brought by her father from that distant land called Piracy), mogues of hot soupe a la graisse, simnels, curds, coffee, and Jersey wonders, which last she made on the spot by dipping the little rings of dough in a bashin of lard on a charcoal fire at her side. Carterette was short and spare, with soft yet snapping eyes as black as night--or her hair; with a warm, dusky skin, a tongue which clattered pleasantly, and very often wisely. She had a hand as small and plump as a baby's, and a pretty foot which, to the disgust of some mothers and maidens of greater degree, was encased in a red French slipper, instead of the wooden sabot stuffed with straw, while her ankles were nicely dressed in soft black stockings, in place of the woolen native hose, as became her station. Philip watched Carterette now for a moment, a dozen laughing memories coming back to him; for he had teased her and played with her when she was a child, had even called her his little sweetheart. Looking at her he wondered what her fate would be: To marry one of these fishermen or carters? No, she would look beyond that. Perhaps it would be one of those adventurers in bearskin cap and buckskin vest, home from Gaspe, where they had toiled in the great fisheries, some as common fishermen, some as mates and maybe one or two as masters. No, she would look beyond that. Perhaps she would be carried off by one of those well-to-do, black-bearded young farmers in the red knitted queminzolle, blue breeches, and black cocked hat, with his kegs of cider and bunches of parsley. That was more likely, for among the people there was every prejudice in her favour. She was Jersey born, her father was reputed to have laid by a goodly sum of money--not all got in this Vier Marchi; and that he was a smuggler and pirate roused a sentiment in their bosoms nearer to envy than aught else. Go away naked and come back clothed, empty and come back filled, simple and come back with a wink of knowledge, penniless and come back with the price of numerous vergees of land, and you might answer the island catechism without fear. Be lambs in Jersey, but harry the rest of the world with a lion's tooth, was the eleventh commandment in the Vier Marchi. Yes, thought Philip idly now, as he left the square, the girl would probably marry a rich farmer, and when he came again he should find her stout of body, and maybe shrewish of face, crying up the virtues of her black butter and her knitted stockings, having made the yellow silk canopy above her there into a gorgeous quilt for the nuptial bed. Yet the young farmers who hovered near her now, buying a glass of cider or a mogue of soup, received but scant notice. She laughed with them, treated them lightly, and went about her business again with a toss of the head. Not once did she show a moment's real interest, not until a fine upstanding fellow came round the corner from the Rue des Vignes, and passed her booth. She was dipping a doughnut into the boiling lard, but she paused with it suspended. The little dark face took on a warm glow, the eyes glistened. "Maitre Ranulph!" called the girl softly. Then as the tall fellow turned to her and lifted his cap she added briskly: "Where away so fast with face hard as hatchet?" "Garcon Cart'rette!" he said abstractedly--he had always called her that. He was about to move on. She frowned in vexation, yet she saw that he was pale and heavy-eyed, and she beckoned him to come to her. "What's gone wrong, big wood-worm?" she said, eyeing him closely, and striving anxiously to read his face. He looked at her sharply, but the softness in her black eyes somehow reassured him, and he said quite kindly: "Nannin, 'tite garcon, nothing's matter." "I thought you'd be blithe as a sparrow with your father back from the grave!" Then as Ranulph's face seemed to darken, she added: "He's not worse--he's not worse?" "No, no, he's well enough now," he said, forcing a smile. She was not satisfied, but she went on talking, intent to find the cause of his abstraction. "Only to think," she said--"only to think that he wasn't killed at all at the Battle of Jersey, and was a prisoner in France, and comes back here--and we all thought him dead, didn't we?" "I left him for dead that morning on the Grouville road," he answered. Then, as if with a great effort, and after the manner of one who has learned a part, he went on: "As the French ran away mad, paw of one on tail of other, they found him trying to drag himself along. They nabbed him, and carried him aboard their boats to pilot them out from the Rocque Platte, and over to France. Then because they hadn't gobbled us up here, what did the French Gover'ment do? They clapped a lot of 'em in irons and sent 'em away to South America, and my father with 'em. That's why we heard neither click nor clack of him all this time. He broke free a year ago. Then he fell sick. When he got well he set sail for Jersey, was wrecked off the Ecrehos, and everybody knows the rest. Diantre, he's had a hard time!" The girl had listened intently. She had heard all these things in flying rumours, and she had believed the rumours; but now that Maitre Ranulph told her--Ranulph, whose word she would have taken quicker than the oath of a Jurat--she doubted. With the doubt her face flushed as though she herself had been caught in a lie, had done a mean thing. Somehow her heart was aching for him, she knew not why. All this time she had held the doughnut poised; she seemed to have forgotten her work. Suddenly the wooden fork holding the cake was taken from her fingers by the daft Dormy Jamais who had crept near. "Des monz a fou," said he, "to spoil good eating so! What says fishing- man: When sails flap, owner may whistle for cargo. Tut, tut, goose Carterette!" Carterette took no note, but said to Ranulph: "Of course he had to pilot the Frenchmen back, or they'd have killed him, and it'd done no good to refuse. He was the first man that fought the French on the day of the battle, wasn't he? I've always heard that." Unconsciously she was building up a defence for Olivier Delagarde. She was, as it were, anticipating insinuation from other quarters. She was playing Ranulph's game, because she instinctively felt that behind this story there was gloom in his mind and mystery in the tale itself. She noticed too that he shrank from her words. She was not very quick of intellect, so she had to feel her way fumblingly. She must have time to think, but she said tentatively: "I suppose it's no secret? I can tell any one at all what happened to your father?" she asked. "Oh so--sure so!" he said rather eagerly. "Tell every one about it. He doesn't mind." Maitre Ranulph deceived but badly. Bold and convincing in all honest things, he was, as yet, unconvincing in this grave deception. All these years he had kept silence, enduring what he thought a buried shame; but that shame had risen from the dead, a living agony. His father had betrayed the island to the French: if the truth were known to-day they would hang him for a traitor on the Mont es Pendus. No mercy and scant shrift would be shown him. Whatever came, he must drink this bitter cup to the dregs. He could never betray his own father. He must consume with inward disgust while Olivier Delagarde shamelessly babbled his monstrous lies to all who would listen. And he must tell these lies too, conceal, deceive, and live in hourly fear of discovery. He must sit opposite his father day by day at table, talk with him, care for him, shrinking inwardly at every knock at the door lest it should be an officer come to carry the pitiful traitor off to prison. And, more than all, he must give up for ever the thought of Guida. Here was the acid that ate home, the black hopelessness, the machine of fate clamping his heart. Never again could he rise in the morning with a song on his lips; never again his happy meditations go lilting with the clanging blows of the adze and the singing of the saws. All these things had vanished when he looked into a tent-door on the Ecrehos. Now, in spite of himself, whenever he thought upon Guida's face, this other fateful figure, this Medusan head of a traitor, shot in between. Since his return his father had not been strong enough to go abroad; but to-day he meant to walk to the Vier Marchi. At first Ranulph had decided to go as usual to his ship-yard at St. Aubin's, but at last in anxious fear he too had come to the Vier Marchi. There was a horrible fascination in being where his father was, in listening to his falsehoods, in watching the turns and twists of his gross hypocrisies. But yet at times he was moved by a strange pity, for Olivier Delagarde was, in truth, far older than his years: a thin, shuffling, pallid invalid, with a face of mingled sanctity and viciousness. If the old man lied, and had not been in prison all these years, he must have had misery far worse, for neither vice nor poverty alone could so shatter a human being. The son's pity seemed to look down from a great height upon the contemptible figure with the beautiful white hair and the abominable mouth. This compassion kept him from becoming hard, but it would also preserve him to hourly sacrifice--Prometheus chained to his rock. In the short fortnight that had gone since the day upon the Ecrehos, he had changed as much as do most people in ten years. Since then he had seen neither Philip nor Guida. To Carterette he seemed not the man she had known. With her woman's instinct she knew that he loved Guida, but she also knew that nothing which might have happened between them could have brought this look of shame and shrinking into his face. As these thoughts flashed through her mind her heart grew warmer. Suppose Ranulph was in some trouble--well, now might be her great chance. She might show him that he could not live without her friendship, and then perhaps, by-and-bye, that he could not live without her love. Ranulph was about to move on. She stopped him. "When you need me, Maitre Ranulph, you know where to find me," she said scarce above a whisper. He looked at her sharply, almost fiercely, but again the tenderness of her eyes, the directness of her gaze, convinced him. She might be, as she was, variable with other people; with himself she was invincibly straightforward. "P'raps you don't trust me?" she added, for she read his changing expression. "I'd trust you quick enough," he said. "Then do it now--you're having some bad trouble," she rejoined. He leaned over her stall and said to her steadily and with a little moroseness: "See you, ma garche, if I was in trouble I'd bear it by myself. I'd ask no one to help me. I'm a man, and I can stand alone. Don't go telling folks I look as if I was in trouble. I'm going to launch to-morrow the biggest ship ever sent from a Jersey building yard--that doesn't look like trouble, does it? Turn about is fair play, garcon Cart'rette: so when you're in trouble come to me. You're not a man, and it's a man's place to help a woman, all the more when she's a fine and good little stand-by like you." He forced a smile, turned upon his heel, and threaded his way through the square, keeping a look-out for his father. This he could do easily, for he was the tallest man in the Vier Marchi by at least three inches. Carterette, oblivious of all else, stood gazing after him. She was only recalled to herself by Dormy Jamais. He was diligently cooking her Jersey wonders, now and then turning his eyes up at her--eyes which were like spots of greyish, yellowish light in a face of putty and flour; without eyelashes, without eyebrows, a little like a fish's, something like a monkey's. They were never still. They were set in the face like little round glow worms in a mould of clay. They burned on night and day--no man had ever seen Dormy Jamais asleep. Carterette did not resent his officiousness. He had a kind of kennel in her father's boat-house, and he was devoted to her. More than all else, Dormy Jamaas was clean. His clothes were mostly rags, but they were comely, compact rags. When he washed them no one seemed to know, but no languid young gentleman lounging where the sun was warmest in the Vier Marchi was better laundered. As Carterette turned round to him he was twirling a cake on the wooden fork, and trolling: "Caderoussel he has a coat, All lined with paper brown; And only when it freezes hard He wears it in the town. What do you think of Caderoussel? Ah, then, but list to me: Caderoussel is a bon e'fant--" "Come, come, dirty-fingers," she said. "Leave my work alone, and stop your chatter." The daft one held up his fingers, but to do so had to thrust a cake into his mouth. "They're as clean as a ha'pendy," he said, mumbling through the cake. Then he emptied his mouth of it, and was about to place it with the others. "Black beganne," she cried; "how dare you! V'la--into your pocket with it!" He did as he was bid, humming to himself again: "M'sieu' de la Palisse is dead, Dead of a maladie; Quart' of an hour before his death He could breathe like you and mel Ah bah, the poor M'sieu' De la Palisse is dead!" "Shut up! Man doux d'la vie, you chatter like a monkey!" "That poor Maitre Ranulph," said Dormy, "once he was lively as a basket of mice; but now--" "Well, now, achocre?" she said irritably, stamping her foot. "Now the cat's out of the bag--oui-gia!" "You're as cunning as a Norman--you've got things in your noddee!" she cried with angry impatience. He nodded, grinning. "As thick as haws," he answered. She heard behind her a laugh of foolish good-nature, which made her angry too, for it seemed to be making fun of her. She wheeled to see M. Savary dit Detricand leaning with both elbows on the little counter, his chin in his hand, grinning provokingly, "Oh, it's you!" she said snappishly; "I hope you're pleased." "Don't be cross," he answered, his head swinging unsteadily. "I wasn't laughing at you, heaven-born Jersienne. I wasn't, 'pon honour! I was laughing at a thing I saw five minutes ago." He nodded in gurgling enjoyment now. "You mustn't mind me, seraphine," he added, "I'd a hot night, and I'm warm as a thrush now. But I saw a thing five minutes ago!"--he rolled on the stall. "'Sh!" he added in a loud mock whisper, "here he comes now. Milles diables, but here's a tongue for you, and here's a royal gentleman speaking truth like a travelling dentist!" Carterette followed his gesture and saw coming out of the Route es Couochons, where the brave Peirson issued to his death eleven years before, Maitre Ranulph's father. He walked with the air of a man courting observation. He imagined himself a hero; he had told his lie so many times now that he almost believed it himself. He was soon surrounded. Disliked when he lived in Jersey before the invasion years ago, that seemed forgotten now; for word had gone abroad that he was a patriot raised from the dead, an honour to his country. Many pressed forward to shake hands with him. "Help of heaven, is that you, m'sieu'?" asked one. "You owed me five chelins, but I wiped it out, O my good!" cried another generously. "Shaken," cried a tall tarter holding out his hand. He had lived in England, and now easily made English verbs into French. One after another called on him to tell his story; some tried to hurry him to La Pyramide, but others placed a cider-keg near, and almost lifted him on to it. "Go on, go on, tell us the story," they cried. To the devil with the Frenchies!" "Here--here's a dish of Adam's ale," cried an old woman, handing him a bowl of water. They cheered him lustily. The pallor of his face changed to a warmth. He had the fatuousness of those who deceive with impunity. With confidence he unreeled the dark line out to the end. When he had told his story, still hungry for applause, he repeated the account of how the tatterdemalion brigade of Frenchmen came down upon him out of the night, and how he should have killed Rullecour himself had it not been for an officer who struck him down from behind. During the recital Ranulph had drawn near. He watched the enthusiasm with which the crowd received every little detail of the egregious history. Everybody believed the old man, who was safe, no matter what happened to himself, Ranulph Delagarde, ex-artilleryman, ship-builder-- and son of a criminal. At any rate the worst was over now, the first public statement of the lifelong lie. He drew a sigh of relief and misery in one. At that instant he caught sight of the flushed face of Detricand, who broke into a laugh of tipsy mirth when Olivier Delagarde told how the French officer had stricken him down as he was about finishing off Rullecour. All at once the whole thing rushed upon Ranulph. What a fool he had been! He had met this officer of Rullecour's these ten years past, and never once had the Frenchman, by so much as a hint, suggested that he knew the truth about his father. Here and now the contemptuous mirth upon the Frenchman's face told the whole story. The danger and horror of the situation descended on him. Instantly he started towards Detricand. At that moment his father caught sight of Detricand also, saw the laugh, the sneer, and recognised him. Halting short in his speech he turned pale and trembled, staring as at a ghost. He had never counted on this. His breath almost stopped as he saw Ranulph approach Detricand. Now the end was come. His fabric of lies would be torn down; he would be tried and hanged on the Mont es Pendus, or even be torn to pieces by this crowd. Yet he could not have moved a foot from where he was if he had been given a million pounds. The sight of Ranulph's face revealed to Detricand the true meaning of this farce and how easily it might become a tragedy. He read the story of the son's torture, of his sacrifice; and his decision was instantly made: he would befriend him. Looking straight into his eyes, his own said he had resolved to know nothing whatever about this criminal on the cider-cask. The two men telegraphed to each other a perfect understanding, and then Detricand turned on his heel, and walked away into the crowd. The sudden change in the old man's appearance had not been lost on the spectators, but they set it down to weakness or a sudden sickness. One ran for a glass of brandy, another for cider, and an old woman handed up to him a mogue of cinnamon drops. The old man tremblingly drank the brandy. When he looked again Detricand had disappeared. A dark, sinister expression crossed his face, an evil thought pulled down the corners of his mouth as he stepped from the cask. His son went to him and taking his arm, said: "Come, you've done enough for to-day." The old man made no reply, but submissively walked away into the Coin & Anes. Once however he turned and looked the way Detricand had gone, muttering. The peasants cheered him as he passed. Presently, free of the crowd and entering the Rue d'Egypte, he said to Ranulph: "I'm going alone; I don't need you." "Where are you going?" asked Ranulph. "Home," answered the old man gloomily. Ranulph stopped. "All right; better not come out again to-day." "You're not going to let that Frenchman hurt me?" suddenly asked Delagarde with morose anxiety. "You're going to stop that? They'd put me in prison." Ranulph stooped over his father, his eyes alive with anger, his face blurred with disgust. "Go home," said he, "and never mention this again while you live, or I'll take you to prison myself." Ranulph watched his father disappear down the Rue d'Egypte, then he retraced his steps to the Vier Marchi. With a new-formed determination he quickened his walk, ruling his face to a sort of forced gaiety, lest any one should think his moodiness strange. One person after another accosted him. He listened eagerly, to see if anything were said which might show suspicion of his father. But the gossip was all in old Delagarde's favour. From group to group he went, answering greetings cheerily and steeling himself to the whole disgusting business. Presently he saw the Chevalier du Champsavoys with the Sieur de Mauprat. This was the first public appearance of the chevalier since the sad business at the Vier Prison a fortnight before. The simple folk had forgotten their insane treatment of him then, and they saluted him now with a chirping: "Es-tu biaou, chevalier?" and "Es-tu gentiment, m'sieu'?" to which he responded with amiable forgiveness. To his idea they were only naughty children, their minds reasoning no more clearly than they saw the streets through the tiny little squares of bottle-glass in the windows of their homes. All at once they came face to face with Detricand. The chevalier stopped short with pleased yet wistful surprise. His brow knitted when he saw that his compatriot had been drinking again, and his eyes had a pained look as he said eagerly: "Have you heard from the Comte de Tournay, monsieur? I have not seen you these days past. You said you would not disappoint me." Detricand drew from his pocket a letter and handed it over, saying: "This comes from the comte." The old gentleman took the letter, nervously opened it, and read it slowly, saying each sentence over twice as though to get the full meaning. "Ah," he exclaimed, "he is going back to France to fight for the King!" Then he looked at Detricand sadly, benevolently. "Mon cher," said he, "if I could but persuade you to abjure the wine-cup and follow his example!" Detricand drew himself up with a jerk. "You can persuade me, chevalier," said he. "This is my last bout. I had sworn to have it with--with a soldier I knew, and I've kept my word. But it's the last, the very last in my life, on the honour of--the Detricands. And I am going with the Comte de Tournay to fight for the King." The little chevalier's lips trembled, and taking the young man by the collar of his coat, he stood tiptoed, and kissed him on both cheeks. "Will you accept something from me?" asked M. de Mauprat, joining in his friend's enthusiasm. He took from his pocket a timepiece he had worn for fifty years. "It is a little gift to my France, which I shall see no more," he added. "May no time be ill spent that it records for you, monsieur." Detricand laughed in his careless way, but the face, seamed with dissipation, took on a new and better look, as with a hand-grasp of gratitude he put the timepiece in his pocket. "I'll do my best," he said simply. "I'll be with de la Rochejaquelein and the army of the Vendee to-morrow night." Then he shook hands with both little gentlemen and moved away towards the Rue des Tres Pigeons. Presently some one touched his arm. He looked round. It was Ranulph. "I stood near," said Ranulph; "I chanced to hear what you said to them. You've been a friend to me today--and these eleven years past. You knew about my father, all the time." Before replying Detricand glanced round to see that no one was listening. "Look you, monsieur, a man must keep some decencies in his life, or cut his own throat. What a ruffian I'd be to do you or your father harm! I'm silent, of course. Let your mind rest about me. But there's the baker Carcaud--" "The baker?" asked Ranulph dumfounded. "I thought he was tied to a rock and left to drown, by Rullecour's orders." "I had him set free after Rullecour had gone on to the town. He got away to France." Ranulph's anxiety deepened. "He might come back, and then if anything happened to him--" "He'd try and make things happen to others, eh? But there's little danger of his coming back. They know he's a traitor, and he knows he'd be hung. If he's alive he'll stay where he is. Cheer up! Take my word, Olivier Delagarde has only himself to fear." He put out his hand. "Good-bye. If ever I can do anything for you, if you ever want to find me, come or send to--no, I'll write it," he suddenly added, and scribbling something on a piece of paper he handed it over. They parted with another handshake, Detricand making his way into the Rue d'Egypte, and towards the Place du Vier Prison. Ranulph stood looking dazedly at the crowd before him, misery, revolt, and bitterness in his heart. This French adventurer, Detricand, after years of riotous living, could pick up the threads of life again with a laugh and no shame, while he felt himself going down, down, down, with no hope of ever rising again. As he stood buried in his reflections the town crier entered the Vier Marchi, and, going to La Pyramide, took his place upon the steps, and in a loud voice began reading a proclamation. It was to the effect that the great Fishing Company trading to Gaspe needed twenty Jersiais to go out and replace a number of the company's officers and men who had been drowned in a gale off the rock called Perch. To these twenty, if they went at once, good pay would be given. But they must be men of intelligence and vigour, of well-known character. The critical moment in Maitre Ranulph's life came now. Here he was penned up in a little island, chained to a criminal having the fame of a martyr. It was not to be borne. Why not leave it all behind? Why not let his father shift for himself, abide his own fate? Why not leave him the home, what money he had laid by, and go-go-go where he could forget, go where he could breathe. Surely self-preservation, that was the first law; surely no known code of human practice called upon him to share the daily crimes of any living soul--it was a daily repetition of his crime for this traitor to carry on the atrocious lie of patriotism. He would go. It was his right. Taking a few steps towards the officer of the company standing by the crier, he was about to speak. Some one touched him. He turned and saw Carterette. She had divined his intention, and though she was in the dark as to the motive, she saw that he meant to go to Gaspe. Her heart seemed to contract till the pain of it hurt her; then, as a new thought flashed into her mind, it was freed again and began pounding hard against her breast. She must prevent him from leaving Jersey, from leaving her. What she might feel personally would have no effect upon him; she would appeal to him from a different stand-point. "You must not go," she said. "You must not leave your father alone, Maitre Ranulph." For a minute he did not reply. Through his dark wretchedness one thought pierced its way: this girl was his good friend. "Then I'll take him with me," he said. "He would die in the awful cold," she answered. "Nannin-gia, you must stay." "Eh ben, I will think!" he said presently, with an air of heavy resignation, and, turning, walked away. Her eyes followed him. As she went back to her booth she smiled: he had come one step her way. He would not go. CHAPTER XIII When Detricand left the Vier Marchi he made his way along the Rue d'Egypte to the house of M. de Mauprat. The front door was open, and a nice savour of boiling fruit came from within. He knocked, and instantly Guida appeared, her sleeves rolled back to her elbows, her fingers stained with the rich red of the blackberries on the fire. A curious shade of disappointment came into her face when she saw who it was. It was clear to Detricand that she expected some one else; it was also clear that his coming gave no especial pleasure to her, though she looked at him with interest. She had thought of him more than once since that day when the famous letter from France to the chevalier was read. She had instinctively compared him, this roystering, notorious fellow, with Philip d'Avranche, Philip the brave, the ambitious, the conquering. She was sure that Philip had never over-drunk himself in his life; and now, looking into the face of Detricand, she could tell that he had been drinking again. One thing was apparent, however: he was better dressed than she ever remembered seeing him, better pulled together, and bearing himself with an air of purpose. "I've fetched back your handkerchief--you tied up my head with it, you know," he said, taking it from his pocket. "I'm going away, and I wanted to thank you." "Will you not come in, monsieur?" she said. He readily entered the kitchen, still holding the handkerchief in his hand, but he did not give it to her. "Where will you sit?" she said, looking round. "I'm very busy. You mustn't mind my working," she added, going to the brass bashin at the fire. "This preserve will spoil if I don't watch it." He seated himself on the veille, and nodded his head. "I like this," he said. "I'm fond of kitchens. I always was. When I was fifteen I was sent away from home because I liked the stables and the kitchen too well. Also I fell in love with the cook." Guida flushed, frowned, her lips tightened, then presently a look of amusement broke over her face, and she burst out laughing. "Why do you tell me these things?" she said. "Excuse me, monsieur, but why do you always tell unpleasant things about yourself? People think ill of you, and otherwise they might think--better." "I don't want them to think better till I am better," he answered. "The only way I can prevent myself becoming a sneak is by blabbing my faults. Now, I was drunk last night--very, very drunk." A look of disgust came into her face. "Why do you relate this sort of thing to me, monsieur? Do--do I remind you of the cook at home, or of an oyster-girl in Jersey?" She was flushing, but her voice was clear and vibrant, the look of the eyes direct and fearless. How dared he hold her handkerchief like that! "I tell you them," he answered slowly, looking at the handkerchief in his hand, then raising his eyes to hers with whimsical gravity, "because I want you to ask me never to drink again." She looked at him scarce comprehending, yet feeling a deep compliment somewhere, for this man was a gentleman by birth, and his manner was respectful, and had always been respectful to her. "Why do you want me to ask you that?" she said. "Because I'm going to France to join the war of the Vendee, and--" "With the Comte de Tournay?" she interrupted. He nodded his head. "And if I thought I was keeping a promise to--to you, I'd not break it. Will you ask me to promise?" he persisted, watching her intently. "Why, of course," she answered kindly, almost gently; the compliment was so real, he could not be all bad. "Then say my name, and ask me," he said. "Monsieur--" "Leave out the monsieur," he interrupted. "Yves Savary dit Detricand, will you promise me, Guida Landresse--" "De Landresse," he interposed courteously. "--Guida Landresse de Landresse, that you will never again drink wine to excess, and that you will never do anything that"--she paused confused. "That you would not wish me to do," he said in a low voice. "That I should not wish you to do," she repeated in a half-embarrassed way. "On my honour I promise," he said slowly. A strange feeling came over her. She had suddenly, in some indirect, allusive way, become interested in a man's life. Yet she had done nothing, and in truth she cared nothing. They stood looking at each other, she slightly embarrassed, he hopeful and eager, when suddenly a step sounded without, a voice called "Guida!" and as Guida coloured and Detricand turned towards the door, Philip d'Avranche entered impetuously. He stopped short on seeing Detricand. They knew each other slightly, and they bowed. Philip frowned. He saw that something had occurred between the two. Detricand on his part realised the significance of that familiar "Guida!" called from outside. He took up his cap. "It is greeting and good-bye, I am just off for France," he said. Philip eyed him coldly, and not a little maliciously, for he knew Detricand's reputation well, the signs of a hard life were thick on him, and he did not like to think of Guida being alone with him. "France should offer a wide field for your talents just now," he answered drily; "they seem wasted here." Detricand's eye flashed, but he answered coolly: "It wasn't talent that brought me here, but a boy's folly; it's not talent that's kept me from starving here, I'm afraid, but the ingenuity of the desperate." "Why stay here? The world was wide, and France but a step away. You would not have needed talents there. You would no doubt have been rewarded by the Court which sent you and Rullecour to ravage Jersey--" "The proper order is Rullecour and me, monsieur." Detricand seemed suddenly to have got back a manner to which he had been long a stranger. His temper became imperturbable, and this was not lost on Philip; his manner had a balanced serenity, while Philip himself had no such perfect control; which made him the more impatient. Presently Detricand added in a composed and nonchalant tone: "I've no doubt there were those at Court who'd have clothed me in purple and fine linen, and given me wine and milk, but it was my whim to work in the galleys here, as it were." "Then I trust you've enjoyed your Botany Bay," answered Philip mockingly. "You've been your own jailer, you could lay the strokes on heavy or light." He moved to the veille, and sat down. Guida busied herself at the fireplace, but listened intently. "I've certainly been my own enemy, whether the strokes were heavy or light," replied Detricand, lifting a shoulder ironically. "And a friend to Jersey at the same time, eh?" was the sneering reply. Detricand was in the humour to tell the truth even to this man who hated him. He was giving himself the luxury of auricular confession. But Philip did not see that when once such a man has stood in his own pillory, sat in his own stocks, voluntarily paid the piper, he will take no after insult. Detricand still would not be tempted out of his composure. "No," he answered, "I've been an enemy to Jersey too, both by act and example; but people here have been kind enough to forget the act, and the example I set is not unique." "You've never thought that you've outstayed your welcome, eh?" "As to that, every country is free to whoever wills, if one cares to pay the entrance fee and can endure the entertainment. One hasn't to apologise for living in a country. You probably get no better treatment than you deserve, and no worse. One thing balances another." The man's cool impeachment and defence of himself irritated Philip, the more so because Guida was present, and this gentlemanly vagrant had him at advantage. "You paid no entrance fee here; you stole in through a hole in the wall. You should have been hanged." "Monsieur d'Avranche!" said Guida reproachfully, turning round from the fire. Detricand's answer came biting and dry. "You are an officer of your King, as was I. You should know that hanging the invaders of Jersey would have been butchery. We were soldiers of France; we had the distinction of being prisoners of war, monsieur." This shot went home. Philip had been touched in that nerve called military honour. He got to his feet. "You are right," he answered with reluctant frankness. "Our grudge is not individual, it is against France, and we'll pay it soon with good interest, monsieur." "The individual grudge will not be lost sight of in the general, I hope?" rejoined Detricand with cool suggestion, his clear, persistent grey eye looking straight into Philip's. "I shall do you that honour," said Philip with mistaken disdain. Detricand bowed low. "You will always find me in the suite of the Prince of Vaufontaine, monsieur, and ready to be so distinguished by you." Turning to Guida, he added: "Mademoiselle will perhaps do me the honour to notice me again one day?" then, with a mocking nod to Philip, he left the house. Guida and Philip stood looking after him in silence for a minute. Suddenly Guida said to herself: "My handkerchief--why did he take my handkerchief? He put it in his pocket again." Philip turned on her impatiently. "What was that adventurer saying to you, Guida? In the suite of the Prince of Vaufontaine, my faith! What did he come here for?" Guida looked at him in surprise. She scarcely grasped the significance of the question. Before she had time to consider, he pressed it again, and without hesitation she told him all that had happened--it was so very little, of course--between Detricand and herself. She omitted nothing save that Detricand had carried off the handkerchief, and she could not have told, if she had been asked, why she did not speak of it. Philip raged inwardly. He saw the meaning of the whole situation from Detricand's stand-point, but he was wise enough from his own stand-point to keep it to himself; and so both of them reserved something, she from no motive that she knew, he from an ulterior one. He was angry too: angry at Detricand, angry at Guida for her very innocence, and because she had caught and held even the slight line of association Detricand had thrown. In any case, Detricand was going to-morrow, and to-day-to-day should decide all between Guida and himself. Used to bold moves, in this affair of love he was living up to his custom; and the encounter with Detricand here added the last touch to his resolution, nerved him to follow his strong impulse to set all upon one hazard. A month ago he had told Guida that he loved her; to-day there should be a still more daring venture. A thing not captured by a forlorn hope seemed not worth having. The girl had seized his emotions from the first moment, and had held them. To him she was the most original creature he had ever met, the most natural, the most humorous of temper, the most sincere. She had no duplicity, no guile, no arts. He said to himself that he knew his own mind always. He believed in inspirations, and he would back his knowledge, his inspiration, by an irretrievable move. Yesterday had come an important message from his commander. That had decided him. To-day Guida should hear a message beyond all others in importance. "Won't you come into the garden?" he said presently. "A moment--a moment," she answered him lightly, for the frown had passed from his face, and he was his old buoyant self again. "I'm to make an end to this bashin of berries first," she added. So saying, she waved him away with a little air of tyranny; and he perched himself boyishly on the big chair in the corner, and with idle impatience began playing with the flax on the spinning-wheel near by. Then he took to humming a ditty the Jersey housewife used to sing as she spun, while Guida disposed of the sweet-smelling fruit. Suddenly she stopped and stamped her foot. "No, no, that's not right, stupid sailor-man," she said, and she sang a verse at him over the last details of her work: "Spin, spin, belle Mergaton! The moon wheels full, and the tide flows high, And your wedding-gown you must put it on Ere the night hath no moon in the sky-- Gigoton Mergaton, spin!" She paused. He was entranced. He had never heard her sing, and the full, beautiful notes of her contralto voice thrilled him like organ music. His look devoured her, her song captured him. "Please go on," he said, "I never heard it that way." She was embarrassed yet delighted by his praise, and she threw into the next verse a deep weirdness: "Spin, spin, belle Mergaton! Your gown shall be stitched ere the old moon fade: The age of a moon shall your hands spin on, Or a wife in her shroud shall be laid-- Gigoton Mergaton, spin!" "Yes, yes, that's it!" he exclaimed with gay ardour. "That's it. Sing on. There are two more verses." "I'll only sing one," she answered, with a little air of wilfulness. "Spin, spin, belle Mergaton! The Little Good Folk the spell they have cast; By your work well done while the moon hath shone, Ye shall cleave unto joy at last-- Gigoton Mergaton, spin!" As she sang the last verse she seemed in a dream, and her rich voice, rising with the spirit of the concluding lines, poured out the notes like a bird drunk with the air of spring. "Guida," he cried, springing to his feet, "when you sing like that it seems to me I live in a world that has nothing to do with the sordid business of life, with my dull trade--with getting the weather-gauge or sailing in triple line. You're a planet all by yourself, Mistress Guida! Are you ready to come into the garden?" "Yes, yes, in a minute," she answered. "You go out to the big apple- tree, and I'll come in a minute." The apple-tree was in the farthest corner of the large garden. Near it was the summer-house where Guida and her mother used to sit and read, Guida on the three-legged stool, her mother on the low, wide seat covered with ferns. This spot Guida used to "flourish" with flowers. The vines, too, crept through the rough latticework, and all together made the place a bower, secluded and serene. The water of the little stream outside the hedge made music too. Philip placed himself on the bench beneath the appletree. What a change was all this, he thought to himself, from the staring hot stones of Malta, the squalor of Constantinople, the frigid cliffs of Spitzbergen, the noisome tropical forests of the Indies! This was Arcady. It was peace, it was content. His life was sure to be varied and perhaps stormy--here would be the true change, the spirit of all this. Of course he would have two sides to his life like most men: that lived before the world, and that of the home. He would have the fight for fame. He would have to use, not duplicity, but diplomacy, to play a kind of game; but this other side to his life, the side of love and home, should be simple, direct--all genuine and strong and true. In this way he would have a wonderful career. He heard Guida's footstep now, and standing up he parted the apple boughs for her entrance. She was dressed all in white, without a touch of colour save in the wild rose at her throat and the pretty red shoes with the broad buckles which the Chevalier had given her. Her face, too, had colour--the soft, warm tint of the peach-blossom--and her auburn hair was like an aureole. Philip's eyes gleamed. He stretched out both his hands in greeting and tenderness. "Guida--sweetheart!" he said. She laughed up at him mischievously, and put her hands behind her back. "Ma fe, you are so very forward," she said, seating herself on the bench. "And you must not call me Guida, and you've no right to call me sweetheart." "I know I've no right to call you anything, but to myself I always call you Guida, and sweetheart too, and I've liked to think that you would care to know my thoughts," he answered. "Yes, I wish I knew your thoughts," she responded, looking up at him intently; "I should like to know every thought in your mind. . . . Do you know--you don't mind my saying just what I think?--I find myself feeling that there's something in you that I never touch; I mean, that a friend ought to touch, if it's a real friendship. You appear to be so frank, and I know you are frank and good and true, and yet I seem always to be hunting for something in your mind, and it slips away from me always--always. I suppose it's because we're two different beings, and no two beings can ever know each other in this world, not altogether. We're what the Chevalier calls 'separate entities.' I seem to understand his odd, wise talk better lately. He said the other day: 'Lonely we come into the world, and lonely we go out of it.' That's what I mean. It makes me shudder sometimes, that part of us which lives alone for ever. We go running on as happy as can be, like Biribi there in the garden, and all at once we stop short at a hedge, just as he does there--a hedge just too tall to look over and with no foothold for climbing. That's what I want so much; I want to look over the Hedge." When she spoke like this to Philip, as she sometimes did, she seemed quite unconscious that he was a listener, it was rather as if he were part of her and thinking the same thoughts. To Philip she seemed wonderful. He had never bothered his head in that way about abstract things when he was her age, and he could not understand it in her. What was more, he could not have thought as she did if he had tried. She had that sort of mind which accepts no stereotyped reflection or idea; she worked things out for herself. Her words were her own, and not another's. She was not imitative, nor yet was she bizarre; she was individual, simple, inquiring. "That's the thing that hurts most in life," she added presently; "that trying to find and not being able to--voila, what a child I am to babble so!" she broke off with a little laugh, which had, however, a plaintive note. There was a touch of undeveloped pathos in her character, for she had been left alone too young, been given responsibility too soon. He felt he must say something, and in a sympathetic tone he replied: "Yes, Guida, but after a while we stop trying to follow and see and find, and we walk in the old paths and take things as they are." "Have you stopped?" she said to him wistfully. "Oh, no, not altogether," he replied, dropping his tones to tenderness, "for I've been trying to peep over a hedge this afternoon, and I haven't done it yet." "Have you?" she rejoined, then paused, for the look in his eyes embarrassed her. . . . "Why do you look at me like that?" she added tremulously. "Guida," he said earnestly, leaning towards her, "a month ago I asked you if you would listen to me when I told you of my love, and you said you would. Well, sometimes when we have met since, I have told you the same story, and you've kept your promise and listened. Guida, I want to go on telling you the same story for a long time--even till you or I die." "Do you--ah, then, do you?" she asked simply. "Do you really wish that?" "It is the greatest wish of my life, and always will be," he added, taking her unresisting hands. "I like to hear you say it," she answered simply, "and it cannot be wrong, can it? Is there any wrong in my listening to you? Yet why do I feel that it is not quite right?--sometimes I do feel that." "One thing will make all right," he said eagerly; "one thing. I love you, Guida, love you devotedly. Do you--tell me if you love me? Do not fear to tell me, dearest, for then will come the thing that makes all right." "I do not know," she responded, her heart beating fast, her eyes drooping before him; "but when you go from me, I am not happy till I see you again. When you are gone, I want to be alone that I may remember all you have said, and say it over to myself again. When I hear you speak I want to shut my eyes, I am so happy; and every word of mine seems clumsy when you talk to me; and I feel of how little account I am beside you. Is that love, Philip--Philip, do you think that is love?" They were standing now. The fruit that hung above Guida's head was not fairer and sweeter than she. Philip drew her to him, and her eyes lifted to his. "Is that love, Philip?" she repeated. "Tell me, for I do not know--it has all come so soon. You are wiser; do not deceive me; you understand, and I do not. Philip, do not let me deceive myself." "As the Judgment of Life is before us, I believe you love me, Guida-- though I don't deserve it," he answered with tender seriousness. "And it is right that you should love me; that we should love each other, Philip?" "It will be right soon," he said, "right for ever. Guida mine, I want you to marry me." His arm tightened round her waist, as though he half feared she would fly from him. He was right; she made a motion backward, but he held her firmly, tenderly. "Marry--marry you, Philip!" she exclaimed in trembling dismay. "Marry--yes, marry me, Guida. That will make all right; that will bind us together for ever. Have you never thought of that?" "Oh, never, never!" she answered. It was true, she had never thought of that; there had not been time. Too much had come all at once. "Why should I? I cannot--cannot. Oh, it could not be--not at least for a long, long time, not for years and years, Philip." "Guida," he answered gravely and persistently, "I want you to marry me-- to-morrow." She was overwhelmed. She could scarcely speak. "To-morrow--to-morrow, Philip? You are laughing at me. I could not--how could I marry you to-morrow?" "Guida, dearest,"--he took her hands more tightly now--"you must indeed. The day after to-morrow my ship is going to Portsmouth for two months. Then we return again here, but I will not go now unless I go as your husband!" "Oh, no, I could not--it is impossible, Philip! It is madness--it is wrong. My grandfather--" "Your grandfather need not know, sweetheart." "How can you say such wicked things, Philip?" "My dearest, it is not necessary for him to know. I don't want any one to know until I come back from Portsmouth. Then I shall have a ship of my own--commander of the Araminta I shall be then. I have word from the Admiralty to that effect. But I dare not let them know that I am married until I get commissioned to my ship. The Admiralty has set its face against lieutenants marrying." "Then do not marry, Philip. You ought not, you see." Her pleading was like the beating of helpless wings against the bars of a golden cage. "But I must marry you, Guida. A sailor's life is uncertain, and what I want I want now. When I come back from Portsmouth every one shall know, but if you love me--and I know you do--you must marry me to-morrow. Until I come back no one shall know about it except the clergyman, Mr. Dow of St. Michael's--I have seen him--and Shoreham, a brother officer of mine. Ah, you must, Guida, you must! Whatever is worth doing is better worth doing in the time one's own heart says. I want it more, a thousand times more, than I ever wanted anything in my life." She looked at him in a troubled sort of way. Somehow she felt wiser than he at that moment, wiser and stronger, though she scarcely defined the feeling to herself, though she knew that in the end her brain would yield to her heart in this. "Would it make you so much happier, Philip?" she said more kindly than joyfully, more in grave acquiescence than delighted belief. "Yes, on my honour--supremely happy." "You are afraid that otherwise, by some chance, you might lose me?" she said it tenderly, yet with a little pain. "Yes, yes, that is it, Guida dearest," he replied. "I suppose women are different altogether from men," she answered. "I could have waited ever so long, believing that you would come again, and that I should never lose you. But men are different; I see, yes, I see that, Philip." "We are more impetuous. We know, we sailors, that now-to-day-is our time; that to-morrow may be Fate's, and Fate is a fickle jade: she beckons you up with one hand to-day, and waves you down with the other to-morrow." "Philip," she said, scarcely above a whisper, and putting her hands on his arms, as her head sank towards him, "I must be honest with you-- I must be that or nothing at all. I do not feel as you do about it; I can't. I would much--much--rather everybody knew. And I feel it almost wrong that they do not." She paused a minute, her brow clouded slightly, then cleared again, and she went on bravely: "Philip, if--if I should, you must promise me that you will leave me as soon as ever we are married, and that you will not try to see me until you come again from Portsmouth. I am sure that is right, for the deception will not be so great. I should be better able then to tell the poor grandpethe. Will you promise me, Philip-dear? It--it is so hard for me. Ah, can't you understand?" This hopeless everlasting cry of a woman's soul! He clasped her close. "Yes, Guida, my beloved, I understand, and I promise you--I do promise you." Her head dropped on his breast, her arms ran round his neck. He raised her face; her eyes were closed; they were dropping tears. He tenderly kissed the tears away. CHAPTER XIV "Oh, give to me my gui-l'annee, I pray you, Monseigneur; The king's princess doth ride to-day, And I ride forth with her. Oh! I will ride the maid beside Till we come to the sea, Till my good ship receive my bride, And she sail far with me. Oh, donnez-moi ma gui-l'annee, Monseigneur, je vous prie!" The singer was perched on a huge broad stone, which, lying athwart other tall perpendicular stones, made a kind of hut, approached by a pathway of upright narrow pillars, irregular and crude. Vast must have been the labour of man's hands to lift the massive table of rock upon the supporting shafts--relics of an age when they were the only architecture, the only national monuments; when savage ancestors in lion skins, with stone weapons, led by white-robed Druid priests, came solemnly here and left the mistletoe wreath upon these Houses of Death for their adored warriors. Even the words sung by Shoreham on the rock carried on the ancient story, the sacred legend that he who wore in his breast this mistletoe got from the Druids' altar, bearing his bride forth by sea or land, should suffer no mischance; and for the bride herself, the morgen-gifn should fail not, but should attest richly the perfect bliss of the nuptial hours. The light was almost gone from the day, though the last crimson petals had scarce dropped from the rose of sunset. Upon the sea beneath there was not a ripple; it was a lake of molten silver, shading into a leaden silence far away. The tide was high, and the ragged rocks of the Banc des Violets in the south and the Corbiore in the west were all but hidden. Below the mound where the tuneful youth loitered was a path, leading down through the fields and into the highway. In this path walked lingeringly a man and a maid. Despite the peaceful, almost dormant life about them, the great event of their lives had just occurred, that which is at once a vast adventure and a simple testament of nature: they had been joined in marriage privately in the parish church of St. Michael's near by. As Shoreham's voice came down the cotil, the two looked up, then passed on out of view. But still the voice followed them, and the man looked down at the maid, repeating the refrain of the song: "Oh, give to me my gui-l'annee, Monseigneur, je vous prie!" The maid looked up at the man tenderly, almost devoutly. "I have no Druid's mistletoe from the Chapel of St. George, but I will give you--stoop down, Philip," she added softly, "I will give you the first kiss I have ever given to any man." He stooped. She kissed him on the forehead, then upon the lips. "Guida, my wife," Philip said, and drew her to his breast. "My Philip," she answered softly. "Won't you say, 'Philip, my husband'?" She shyly did as he asked in a voice no louder than a bee's. She was only seventeen. Presently she looked up at him with a look a little abashed, a little anxious, yet tender withal. "Philip," she said, "I wonder what we will think of this day a year from now--no, don't frown, Philip," she added. "You look at things so differently from me. To-day is everything to you; to-morrow is very much to me. It isn't that I am afraid, it is that thoughts of possibilities will come whether or no. If I couldn't tell you everything I feel I should be most unhappy. You see, I want to be able to do that, to tell you everything." "Of course, of course," he said, not quite comprehending her, for his thoughts were always more material. He was revelling in the beauty of the girl before him, in her perfect outward self, in her unique personality. The more subtle, the deeper part of her, the searching soul never to be content with superficial reasons and the obvious cause, these he did not know--was he ever to know? It was the law of her nature that she was never to deceive herself, to pretend anything, nor to forgive pretence. To see things, to look beyond the Hedge, that was to be a passion with her; already it was nearly that. "Of course," Philip continued, "you must tell me everything, and I'll understand. And as for what we'll think of this in another year, why, doesn't it hold to reason that we'll think it the best day of our lives-- as it is, Guida?" He smiled at her, and touched her shining hair. "Evil can't come out of good, can it? And this is good, as good as anything in the world can be. . . . There, look into my eyes that way--just that way." "Are you happy--very, very happy, Philip?" she asked, lingering on the words. "Perfectly happy, Guida," he answered; and in truth he seemed so, his eyes were so bright, his face so eloquent, his bearing so buoyant. "And you think we have done quite right, Philip?" she urged. "Of course, of course we have. We are honourably disposing of our own fates. We love each other, we are married as surely as others are married. Where is the wrong? We have told no one, simply because for a couple of months it is best not to do so. The parson wouldn't have married us if there'd been anything wrong." "Oh, it isn't what the clergyman might think that I mean; it's what we ourselves think down, down deep in our hearts. If you, Philip--if you say it is all right, I will believe that it is right, for you would never want your wife to have one single wrong thing like a dark spot on her life with you--would you? If it is all right to you, it must be all right for me, don't you see?" He did see that, and it made him grave for an instant, it made him not quite so sure. "If your mother were alive," he answered, "of course she should have known; but it isn't necessary for your grandfather to know. He talks; he couldn't keep it to himself even for a month. But we have been regularly married, we have a witness--Shoreham over there "he pointed towards the Druid's cromlech where the young man was perched--" and it only concerns us now--only you and me." "Yet if anything happened to you during the next two months, Philip, and you did not come back!" "My dearest, dearest Guida," he answered, taking her hands in his, and laughing boyishly, "in that case you will announce the marriage. Shoreham and the clergyman are witnesses; besides, there's the certificate which Mr. Dow will give you to-morrow; and, above all, there's the formal record on the parish register. There, sweetest interrogation mark in the world, there is the law and the gospel! Come, come, let us be gay, let this be the happiest hour we've yet had in all our lives." "How can I be altogether gay, Philip, when we part now, and I shall not see you for two whole long months?" "Mayn't I come to you for just a minute to-morrow morning, before I go?" "No, no, no, you must not, indeed you must not. Remember your promise, remember that you are not to see me again until you come back from Portsmouth. Even this is not quite what we agreed, for you are still with me, and we've been married nearly half an hour!" "Perhaps we were married a thousand years ago--I don't know," he answered, drawing her to him. "It's all a magnificent dream so far." "You must go, you must keep your word. Don't break the first promise you ever made me, Philip." She did not say it very reproachfully, for his look was ardent and worshipful, and she could not be even a little austere in her new joy. "I am going," he answered. "We will go back to the town, I by the road, you by the shore, so no one will see us, and--" "Philip," said Guida suddenly, "is it quite the same being married without banns?" His laugh had again a youthful ring of delight. "Of course, just the same, my doubting fay," said he. "Don't be frightened about anything. Now promise me that--will you promise me?" She looked at him a moment steadily, her eyes lingering on his face with great tenderness, and then she said: "Yes, Philip, I will not trouble or question any longer. I will only believe that everything is all right. Say good-bye to me, Philip. I am happy now, but if--if you stay any longer--ah, please, please go, Philip!" A moment afterwards Philip and Shoreham were entering the high road, waving their handkerchiefs to her as they went. She had gone back to the Druid's cromlech where Philip's friend had sat, and with smiling lips and swimming eyes she watched the young men until they were lost to view. Her eyes wandered over the sea. How immense it was, how mysterious, how it begot in one feelings both of love and of awe! At this moment she was not in sympathy with its wonderful calm. There had been times when she seemed of it, part of it, absorbed by it, till it flowed over her soul and wrapped her in a deep content. Now all was different. Mystery and the million happenings of life lay hidden in that far silver haze. On the brink of such a sea her mind seemed to be hovering now. Nothing was defined, nothing was clear. She was too agitated to think; life, being, was one wide, vague sensation, partly delight, partly trepidation. Everything had a bright tremulousness. This mystery was no dark cloud, it was a shaking, glittering mist, and yet there rose from it an air which made her pulse beat hard, her breath come with joyous lightness. She was growing to a new consciousness; a new glass, through which to see life, was quickly being adjusted to her inner sight. Many a time, with her mother, she had sat upon the shore at St. Aubin's Bay, and looked out where white sails fluttered like the wings of restless doves. Nearer, maybe just beneath her, there had risen the keen singing of the saw, and she could see the white flash of the adze as it shaped the beams; the skeleton of a noble ship being covered with its flesh of wood, and veined with iron; the tall masts quivering to their places as the workmen hauled at the pulleys, singing snatches of patois rhymes. She had seen more than one ship launched, and a strange shiver of pleasure and of pain had gone through her; for as the water caught the graceful figure of the vessel, and the wind bellied out the sails, it seemed to her as if some ship of her own hopes were going out between the reefs to the open sea. What would her ship bring back again to her? Or would anything ever come back? The books of adventure, poetry, history, and mythology she had read with her mother had quickened her mind, sharpened her intuition, had made her temperament still more sensitive--and her heart less peaceful. In her was almost every note of human feeling: home and duty, song and gaiety, daring and neighbourly kindness, love of sky and sea and air and orchards, of the good-smelling earth and wholesome animal life, and all the incidents, tragic, comic, or commonplace, of human existence. How wonderful love was, she thought! How wonderful that so many millions who had loved had come and gone, and yet of all they felt they had spoken no word that laid bare the exact feeling to her or to any other. The barbarians who raised these very stones she sat on, they had loved and hated, and everything they had dared or suffered was recorded--but where? And who could know exactly what they felt? She realised the almost keenest pain of life, that universal agony, the trying to speak, to reveal; and the proof, the hourly proof even the wisest and most gifted have, that what they feel they can never quite express, by sound, or by colour, or by the graven stone, or by the spoken word. . . . But life was good, ah yes! and all that might be revealed to her she would pray for; and Philip--her Philip--would help her to the revelation. Her Philip! Her heart gave a great throb, for the knowledge that she was a wife came home to her with a pleasant shock. Her name was no longer Guida Landresse de Landresse, but Guida d'Avranche. She had gone from one tribe to another, she had been adopted, changed. A new life was begun. She rose, slowly made her way down to the sea, and proceeded along the sands and shore-paths to the town. Presently a large vessel, with new sails, beautiful white hull, and gracious form, came slowly round a point. She shaded her eyes to look at it. "Why, it's the boat Maitre Ranulph was to launch to-day," she said. Then she stopped suddenly. "Poor Ranulph--poor Ro!" she added gently. She knew that he cared for her--loved her. Where had he been these weeks past? She had not seen him once since that great day when they had visited the Ecrehos. CHAPTER XV The house of Elie Mattingley the smuggler stood in the Rue d'Egypte, not far east of the Vier Prison. It had belonged to a jurat of repute, who parted with it to Mattingley not long before he died. There was no doubt as to the validity of the transfer, for the deed was duly registered au greffe, and it said: "In consideration of one livre turnois," etc. Possibly it was a libel against the departed jurat that he and Mattingley had had dealings unrecognised by customs law, crystallising at last into this legacy to the famous pirate-smuggler. Unlike any other in the street, this house had a high stone wall in front, enclosing a small square paved with flat stones. In one corner was an ivy-covered well, with an antique iron gate, and the bucket, hanging on a hook inside the fern-grown hood, was an old wine-keg-- appropriate emblem for a smuggler's house. In one corner, girdled by about five square feet of green earth, grew a pear tree, bearing large juicy pears, reserved for the use of a distinguished lodger, the Chevalier du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir. In the summer the Chevalier always had his breakfast under this tree. Occasionally one other person breakfasted with him, even Savary dit Detricand, whom however he met less frequently than many people of the town, though they lived in the same house. Detricand was but a fitful lodger, absent at times for a month or so, and running up bills for food and wine, of which payment was never summarily demanded by Mattingley, for some day or other he always paid. When he did, he never questioned the bill, and, what was most important, whether he was sober or "warm as a thrush," he always treated Carterette with respect, though she was not unsparing with her tongue under slight temptation. Despite their differences and the girl's tempers, when the day came for Detricand to leave for France, Carterette was unhappy. Several things had come at once: his going,--on whom should she lavish her good advice and biting candour now?--yesterday's business in the Vier Marchi with Olivier Delagarde, and the bitter change in Ranulph. Sorrowful reflections and as sorrowful curiosity devoured her. All day she tortured herself. The late afternoon came, and she could bear it no longer--she would visit Guida. She was about to start, when the door in the garden wall opened and Olivier Delagarde entered. As he doffed his hat to her she thought she had never seen anything more beautiful than the smooth forehead, white hair, and long beard of the returned patriot. That was the first impression; but a closer scrutiny detected the furtive, watery eye, the unwholesome, drooping mouth, the vicious teeth, blackened and irregular. There was, too, something sinister in the yellow stockings, luridly contrasting with the black knickerbockers and rusty blue coat. At first Carterette was inclined to run towards the prophet-like figure --it was Ranulph's father; next she drew back with dislike--his smile was leering malice under the guise of amiable mirth. But he was old, and he looked feeble, so her mind instantly changed again, and she offered him a seat on a bench beside the arched doorway with the superscription: "Nor Poverty nor Riches, but Daily Bread Under Mine Own Fig Tree." After the custom of the country, Carterette at once offered him refreshment, and brought him brandy--good old brandy was always to be got at the house of Elie Mattingley! As he drank she noticed a peculiar, uncanny twitching of the fingers and eyelids. The old man's eyes were continually shifting from place to place. He asked Carterette many questions. He had known the house years before--did the deep stream still run beneath it? Was the round hole still in the floor of the back room, from which water used to be drawn in old days? Carterette replied that it was M. Detricand's bedroom now, and you could plainly hear the stream running beneath the house. Did not the noise of the water worry poor M. Detricand then? And so it still went straight on to the sea-- and, of course, much swifter after such a heavy rain as they had had the day before. Carterette took him into every room in the house save her own and the Chevalier's. In the kitchen and in Detricand's bedroom Olivier Delagarde's eyes were very busy. He saw that the kitchen opened on the garden, which had a gate in the rear wall. He also saw that the lozenge- paned windows swung like doors, and were not securely fastened; and he tried the trap-door in Detricand's bedroom to see the water flowing beneath, just as it did when he was young--Yes, there it was running swiftly away to the sea! Then he babbled all the way to the door that led into the street; for now he would stay no longer. When he had gone, Carterette sat wondering why it was that Ranulph's father should inspire her with such dislike. She knew that at this moment no man in Jersey was so popular as Olivier Delagarde. The longer she thought the more puzzled she became. No sooner had she got one theory than another forced her to move on. In the language of her people, she did not know on which foot to dance. As she sat and thought, Detricand entered, loaded with parcels and bundles. These were mostly gifts for her father and herself; and for du Champsavoys there was a fine delft shaving-dish, shaped like a quartermoon to fit the neck. They were distributed, and by the time supper was over, it was quite dark. Then Detricand said his farewells, for it was ten o'clock, and he must be away at three, when his boat was to steal across to Brittany, and land him near to the outposts of the Royalist army under de la Rochejaquelein. There were letters to write and packing yet to do. He set to work gaily. At last everything was done, and he was stooping over a bag to fasten it. The candle was in the window. Suddenly a hand--a long, skinny hand-- reached softly out from behind a large press, and swallowed and crushed out the flame. Detricand raised his head quickly, astonished. There was no wind blowing--the candle had not even flickered when burning. But then, again, he had not heard a sound; perhaps that was because his foot was scraping the floor at the moment the light went out. He looked out of the window, but there was only starlight, and he could not see distinctly. Turning round he went to the door of the outer hall-way, opened it, and stepped into the garden. As he did so, a figure slipped from behind the press in the bedroom, swiftly raised the trap-door in the flooring, then, shadowed by the door leading into the hall-way, waited for him. Presently his footstep was heard. He entered the hall, stood in the doorway of the bedroom for a moment, while he searched in his pockets for a light, then stepped inside. Suddenly his attention was arrested. There was the sound of flowing water beneath his feet. This could always be heard in his room, but now how loud it was! Realising that the trap-door must be open, he listened for a second and was instantly conscious of some one in the room. He made a step towards the door, but it suddenly closed softly. He moved swiftly to the window, for the presence was near the door. What did it mean? Who was it? Was there one, or more? Was murder intended? The silence, the weirdness, stopped his tongue--besides, what was the good of crying out? Whatever was to happen would happen at once. He struck a light, and held it up. As he did so some one or something rushed at him. What a fool he had been--the light had revealed his position! But at the same moment came the instinct to throw himself to one side; which he did as the rush came. In that one flash he had seen --a man's white beard. Next instant there was a sharp sting in his right shoulder. The knife had missed his breast--the sudden swerving had saved him. Even as it struck, he threw himself on his assailant. Then came a struggle. The long fingers of the man with the white beard clove to the knife like a dead soldier's to the handle of a sword. Twice Detricand's hand was gashed slightly, and then he pinioned the wrist of his enemy, and tripped him up. The miscreant fell half across the opening in the floor. One foot, hanging down, almost touched the running water. Detricand had his foe at his mercy. There was the first inclination to drop him into the stream, but that was put away as quickly as it came. He gave the wretch a sudden twist, pulling him clear of the hole, and wrenched the knife from his fingers at the same moment. "Now, monsieur," said he, feeling for a light, "now we'll have a look at you." The figure lay quiet beneath him. The nervous strength was gone, the body was limp, the breathing was laboured. The light flared. Detricand held it down, and there was revealed the haggard, malicious face of Olivier Delagarde. "So, monsieur the traitor," said Detricand--" so you'd be a murderer too --eh?" The old man mumbled an oath. "Hand of the devil," continued Detricand, "was there ever a greater beast than you! I held my tongue about you these eleven years past, I held it yesterday and saved your paltry life, and you'd repay me by stabbing me in the dark--in a fine old-fashioned way too, with your trap-doors, and blown-out candle, and Italian tricks--" He held the candle down near the white beard as though he would singe it. "Come, sit up against the wall there and let me look at you." Cringing, the old man drew himself over to the wall. Detricand, seating himself in a chair, held the candle up before him. After a moment he said: "What I want to know is, how could a low-flying cormorant like you beget a gull of the cliffs like Maitre Ranulph?" The old man did not answer, but sat blinking with malignant yet fearful eyes at Detricand, who continued: "What did you come back for? Why didn't you stay dead? Ranulph had a name as clean as a piece of paper from the mill, and he can't write it now without turning sick, because it's the same name as yours. You're the choice blackamoor of creation, aren't you? Now what have you got to say?" "Let me go," whined the old man with the white beard. "Let me go, monsieur. Don't send me to prison." Detricand stirred him with his foot, as one might a pile of dirt. "Listen," said he. "In the Vier Marchi they're cutting off the ear of a man and nailing it to a post, because he ill-used a cow. What do you suppose they'd do to you, if I took you down there and told them it was through you Rullecour landed, and that you'd have seen them all murdered --eh, maitre cormorant?" The old man crawled towards Detricand on his knees. "Let me go, let me go," he whined. "I was mad; I didn't know what I was doing; I've not been right in the head since I was in the Guiana prison." At that moment it struck Detricand that the old man must have had some awful experience in prison, for now his eyes had the most painful terror, the most abject fear. He had never seen so craven a sight. "What were you in prison for in Guiana, and what did they do to you there?" asked Detricand sternly. Again the old man shivered horribly, and tears streamed down his cheeks, as he whined piteously: "Oh no, no, no--for the mercy of Christ, no!" He threw up his hands as if to ward off a blow. Detricand saw that this was not acting, that it was a supreme terror, an awful momentary aberration; for the traitor's eyes were wildly staring, the mouth was drawn in agony, the hands were now rigidly clutching an imaginary something, the body stiffened where it crouched. Detricand understood now. The old man had been tied to a triangle and whipped--how horribly who might know? His mood towards the miserable creature changed: he spoke to him in a firm, quiet tone. "There, there, you're not going to be hurt. Be quiet now, and you shall not be touched." Then he stooped over, and quickly undoing the old man's waistcoat, he pulled down the coat and shirt and looked at his back. As far as he could see it was scarred as though by a red-hot iron, and the healed welts were like whipcords on the shrivelled skin. The old man whimpered yet, but he was growing quieter. Detricand lifted him up, and buttoning the shirt and straightening the coat again, he said: "Now, you're to go home and sleep the sleep of the unjust, and you're to keep the sixth commandment, and you're to tell no more lies. You've made a shameful mess of your son's life, and you're to die now as soon as you can without attracting notice. You're to pray for an accident to take you out of the world: a wind to blow you over a cliff, a roof to fall on you, a boat to go down with you, a hole in the ground to swallow you up, a fever or a plague to end you in a day." He opened the door to let him go; but suddenly catching his arms held him in a close grip. "Hark!" he said in a mysterious whisper. There was only the weird sound of the running water through the open trap-door of the floor. He knew how superstitious was every Jerseyman, from highest to lowest, and he would work upon that weakness now. "You hear that water running to the sea?" he said solemnly. "You tried to kill and drown me to-night. You've heard how when one man has drowned another an invisible stream follows the murderer wherever he goes, and he hears it, hour after hour, month after month, year after year, until suddenly one day it comes on him in a huge flood, and he is found, whether in the road, or in his bed, or at the table, or in the field, drowned, and dead?" The old man shivered violently. "You know Manon Moignard the witch? Well, if you don't do what I say-- and I shall find out, mind you--she shall bewitch the flood on you. Be still . . . listen! That's the sound you'll hear every day of your life, if you break the promise you've got to make to me now." He spoke the promise with ghostly deliberation, and the old man, all the desperado gone out of him, repeated it in a husky voice. Whereupon Detricand led him into the garden, saw him safe out on the road and watched him disappear. Then rubbing his fingers, as though to rid them of pollution, with an exclamation of disgust he went back to the house. By another evening--that is, at the hour when Guida arrived home after her secret marriage with Philip d'Avranche--he saw the lights of the army of de la Rochejaquelein in the valley of the Vendee. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Adaptability was his greatest weapon in life He felt things, he did not study them If women hadn't memory, she answered, they wouldn't have much Lilt of existence lulling to sleep wisdom and tried experience Lonely we come into the world, and lonely we go out of it Never to be content with superficial reasons and the obvious THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG [A ROMANCE OF TWO KINGDOMS] By Gilbert Parker Volume 3. CHAPTER XVI The night and morning after Guida's marriage came and went. The day drew on to the hour fixed for the going of the Narcissus. Guida had worked all forenoon with a feverish unrest, not trusting herself, though the temptation was sore, to go where she might see Philip's vessel lying in the tide-way. She had resolved that only at the moment fixed for sailing would she go to the shore; yet from her kitchen door she could see a wide acreage of blue water and a perfect sky; and out there was Noirmont Point, round which her husband's ship would go, and be lost to her vision thereafter. The day wore on. She got her grandfather's dinner, saw him bestowed in the great arm-chair for his afternoon sleep, and, when her household work was done, settled herself at the spinning wheel. The old man loved to have her spin and sing as he drowsed. To-day his eyes had followed her everywhere. He could not have told why it was, but somehow all at once he seemed to deeply realise her--her beauty, the joy of this innocent living intelligence moving through his home. She had always been necessary to him, but he had taken her presence as a matter of course. She had always been to him the most wonderful child ever given to comfort an old man's life, but now as he abstractedly took a pinch of snuff from the silver box and then forgot to put it to his nose, he seemed suddenly to get that clearness of sight, that perspective, from which he could see her as she really was. He took another pinch of snuff, and again forgot to put it to his nose, but brushed imaginary dust from his coat, as was his wont, and whispered to himself: "Why now, why now, I had not thought she was so much a woman. Flowers of the sea, but what eyes, what carriage, and what an air! I had not thought--h'm--blind old bat that I am--I had not thought she was grown such a lady. It was only yesterday, surely but yesterday, since I rocked her to sleep. Francois de Mauprat"--he shook his head at himself--"you are growing old. Let me see--why, yes, she was born the day I sold the blue enamelled timepiece to his Highness the Duc de Mauban. The Duc was but putting the watch to his ear when a message comes to say the child there is born. 'Good,' says the Duc de Mauban, when he hears, 'give me the honour, de Mauprat,' says he, 'for the sake of old days in France, to offer a name to the brave innocent--for the sake of old associations,' says de Mauban. 'You knew my wife, de Mauprat,' says he; 'you knew the Duchesse Guida-Guidabaldine. She's been gone these ten years, alas! You were with me when we were married, de Mauprat,' says the Duc; 'I should care to return the compliment if you will allow me to offer a name, eh?' 'Duc,' said I, 'there is no honour I more desire for my grandchild.' 'Then let the name of Guidabaldine be somewhere among others she will carry, and--and I'll not forget her, de Mauprat, I'll not forget her.'... Eh, eh, I wonder--I wonder if he has forgotten the little Guidabaldine there? He sent her a golden cup for the christening, but I wonder-- I wonder--if he has forgotten her since? So quick of tongue, so bright of eye, so light of foot, so sweet a face--if one could but be always young! When her grandmother, my wife, my Julie, when she was young--ah, she was fair, fairer than Guida, but not so tall--not quite so tall. Ah! . . . " He was slipping away into sleep when he realised that Guida was singing "Spin, spin, belle Mergaton! The moon wheels full, and the tide flows high, And your wedding-gown you must put it on Ere the night hath no moon in the sky-- Gigoton Mergaton, spin!" "I had never thought she was so much a woman," he said drowsily; "I-- I wonder why--I never noticed it." He roused himself again, brushed imaginary snuff from his coat, keeping time with his foot to the wheel as it went round. "I--I suppose she will wed soon. . . . I had forgotten. But she must marry well, she must marry well--she is the godchild of the Duc de Mauban. How the wheel goes round! I used to hear--her mother--sing that song, 'Gigoton, Mergaton spin-spin-spin.'" He was asleep. Guida put by the wheel, and left the house. Passing through the Rue des Sablons, she came to the shore. It was high tide. This was the time that Philip's ship was to go. She had dressed herself with as much care as to what might please his eye as though she were going to meet him in person. Not without reason, for, though she could not see him from the land, she knew he could see her plainly through his telescope, if he chose. She reached the shore. The time had come for him to go, but there was his ship at anchor in the tide-way still. Perhaps the Narcissus was not going; perhaps, after all, Philip was to remain! She laughed with pleasure at the thought of that. Her eyes wandered lovingly over the ship which was her husband's home upon the sea. Just such another vessel Philip would command. At a word from him those guns, like long, black, threatening arms thrust out, would strike for England with thunder and fire. A bugle call came across the still water, clear, vibrant, and compelling. It represented power. Power--that was what Philip, with his ship, would stand for in the name of England. Danger--oh yes, there would be danger, but Heaven would be good to her; Philip should go safe through storm and war, and some day great honours would be done him. He should be an admiral, and more perhaps; he had said so. He was going to do it as much for her as for himself, and when he had done it, to be proud of it more for her than for himself; he had said so: she believed in him utterly. Since that day upon the Ecrehos it had never occurred to her not to believe him. Where she gave her faith she gave it wholly; where she withdrew it-- The bugle call sounded again. Perhaps that was the signal to set sail. No, a boat was putting out from the Narcissus. It was coming landward. As she watched its approach she heard a chorus of boisterous voices behind her. She turned and saw nearing the shore from the Rue d'Egypte a half-dozen sailors, singing cheerily: "Get you on, get you on, get you on, Get you on to your fo'c'stle'ome; Leave your lassies, leave your beer, For the bugle what you 'ear Pipes you on to your fo'c'stle 'ome-- 'Ome--'ome--'ome, Pipes you on to your fo'c'stle 'ome." Guida drew near. "The Narcissus is not leaving to-day?" she asked of the foremost sailor. The man touched his cap. "Not to-day, lady." "When does she leave?" "Well, that's more nor I can say, lady, but the cap'n of the main-top, yander, 'e knows." She approached the captain of the main-top. "When does the Narcissus leave?" she asked. He looked her up and down, at first glance with something like boldness, but instantly he touched his hat. "To-morrow, mistress--she leaves at 'igh tide tomorrow." With an eye for a fee or a bribe, he drew a little away from the others, and said to her in a low tone: "Is there anything what I could do for you, mistress? P'r'aps you wanted some word carried aboard, lady?" She hesitated an instant, then said: "No-no, thank you." He still waited, however, rubbing his hand on his hip with mock bashfulness. There was an instant's pause, then she divined his meaning. She took from her pocket a shilling. She had never given away so much money in her life before, but she seemed to feel instinctively that now she must give freely--now that she was the wife of an officer of the navy. Strange how these sailors to-day seemed so different to her from ever before--she felt as if they all belonged to her. She offered the shilling to the captain of the main-top. His eyes gloated, but he said with an affected surprise: "No, I couldn't think of it, yer leddyship." "Ah, but you will take it!" she said. "I--I have a r-relative"--she hesitated at the word--" in the navy." "'Ave you now, yer leddyship?" he said. "Well, then, I'm proud to 'ave the shilling to drink 'is 'ealth, yer leddyship." He touched his hat, and was about to turn away. "Stay a little," she said with bashful boldness. The joy of giving was rapidly growing to a vice. "Here's something for them," she added, nodding towards his fellows, and a second shilling came from her pocket. "Just as you say, yer leddyship," he said with owlish gravity; "but for my part I think they've 'ad enough. I don't 'old with temptin' the weak passions of man." A moment afterwards the sailors were in the boat, rowing towards the Narcissus. Their song came back across the water: ". . . O you A.B. sailor-man, Wet your whistle while you can, For the piping of the bugle calls you 'ome! 'Ome--'ome--'ome, Calls you on to your fo'c'stle 'ome!" The evening came down, and Guida sat in the kitchen doorway looking out over the sea, and wondering why Philip had sent her no message. Of course he would not come himself, he must not: he had promised her. But how much she would have liked to see him for just one minute, to feel his arms about her, to hear him say good-bye once more. Yet she loved him the better for not coming. By and by she became very restless. She would have been almost happier if he had gone that day: he was within call of her, still they were not to see each other. She walked up and down the garden, Biribi the dog by her side. Sitting down on the bench beneath the appletree, she recalled every word that Philip had said to her two days before. Every tone of his voice, every look he had given her, she went over in her thoughts. There is no reporting in the world so exact, so perfect, as that in a woman's mind, of the words, looks, and acts of her lover in the first days of mutual confession and understanding. It can come but once, this dream, fantasy, illusion--call it what you will: it belongs to the birth hour of a new and powerful feeling; it is the first sunrise of the heart. What comes after may be the calmer joy of a more truthful, a less ideal emotion, but the transitory glory of the love and passion of youth shoots higher than all other glories into the sky of time. The splendour of youth is its madness, and the splendour of that madness is its unconquerable belief. And great is the strength of it, because violence alone can destroy it. It does not yield to time nor to decay, to the long wash of experience that wears away the stone, nor to disintegration. It is always broken into pieces at a blow. In the morning all is well, and ere the evening come the radiant temple is in ruins. At night when Guida went to bed she could not sleep at first. Then came a drowsing, a floating between waking and sleeping, in which a hundred swift images of her short past flashed through her mind: A butterfly darting in the white haze of a dusty road, and the cap of the careless lad that struck it down.... Berry-picking along the hedges beyond the quarries of Mont Mado, and washing her hands in the strange green pools at the bottom of the quarries. . . . Stooping to a stream and saying of it to a lad: "Ro, won't it never come back?" . . . From the front doorway watching a poor criminal shrink beneath the lash with which he was being flogged from the Vier Marchi to the Vier Prison. . . Seeing a procession of bride and bridegroom with young men and women gay in ribbons and pretty cottons, calling from house to house to receive the good wishes of their friends, and drinking cinnamon wine and mulled cider--the frolic, the gaiety of it all. Now, in a room full of people, she was standing on a veille flourished with posies of broom and wildflowers, and Philip was there beside her, and he was holding her hand, and they were waiting and waiting for some one who never came. Nobody took any notice of her and Philip, she thought; they stood there waiting and waiting--why, there was M. Savary dit Detricand in the doorway, waving a handkerchief at her, and saying: "I've found it--I've found it!"--and she awoke with a start. Her heart was beating hard, and for a moment she was dazed; but presently she went to sleep again, and dreamed once more. This time she was on a great warship, in a storm which was driving towards a rocky shore. The sea was washing over the deck. She recognised the shore: it was the cliff at Plemont in the north of Jersey, and behind the ship lay the awful Paternosters. They were drifting, drifting on the wall of rock. High above on the land there was a solitary stone hut. The ship came nearer and nearer. The storm increased in strength. In the midst of the violence she looked up and saw a man standing in the doorway of the hut. He turned his face towards her: it was Ranulph Delagarde, and he had a rope in his hand. He saw her and called to her, making ready to throw the rope, but suddenly some one drew her back. She cried aloud, and then all grew black. . . . And then, again, she knew she was in a small, dark cabin of the ship. She could hear the storm breaking over the deck. Now the ship struck. She could feel her grinding upon the rocks. She seemed to be sinking, sinking--There was a knocking, knocking at the door of the cabin, and a voice calling to her--how far away it seemed! . . . Was she dying, was she drowning? The words of a nursery rhyme rang in her ears distinctly, keeping time to the knocking. She wondered who should be singing a nursery rhyme on a sinking ship: "La main morte, La main morte, Tapp' a la porte, Tapp' a la porte." She shuddered. Why should the dead hand tap at her door? Yet there it was tapping louder, louder. . . . She struggled, she tried to cry out, then suddenly she grew quiet, and the tapping got fainter and fainter--her eyes opened: she was awake. For an instant she did not know where she was. Was it a dream still? For there was a tapping, tapping at her door--no, it was at the window. A shiver ran through her from head to foot. Her heart almost stopped beating. Some one was calling to her. "Guida! Guida!" It was Philip's voice. Her cheek had been cold the moment before; now she felt the blood tingling in her face. She slid to the floor, threw a shawl round her, and went to the casement. The tapping began again. For a moment she could not open the window. She was trembling from head to foot. Philip's voice reassured her a little. "Guida, Guida, open the window a moment." She hesitated. She could not--no--she could not do it. He tapped still louder. "Guida, don't you hear me?" he asked. She undid the catch, but she had hardly the courage even yet. He heard her now, and pressed the window a little. Then she opened it slowly, and her white face showed. "O Philip," she said breathlessly, "why have you frightened me so?" He caught her hand in his own. "Come out into the garden, sweetheart," he said, and he kissed the hand. "Put on a dress and your slippers and come," he urged again. "Philip," she said, "O Philip, I cannot! It is too late. It is midnight. Do not ask me. Why, why did you come?" "Because I wanted to speak with you for one minute. I have only a little while. Please come outside and say good-bye to me again. We are sailing to-morrow--there's no doubt about it this time." "O Philip," she answered, her voice quivering, "how can I? Say good-bye to me here, now." "No, no, Guida, you must come. I can't kiss you good-bye where you are." "Must I come to you?" she said helplessly. "Well, then, Philip," she added, "go to the bench by the apple-tree, and I shall be there in a moment." "Beloved!" he exclaimed ardently. She shut the window slowly. For a moment he looked about him; then went lightly through the garden, and sat down on the bench under the apple-tree, near to the summer-house. At last he heard her footstep. He rose quickly to meet her, and as she came timidly to him, clasped her in his arms. "Philip," she said, "this isn't right. You ought not to have come; you have broken your promise." "Are you not glad to see me?" "Oh, you know, you know that I'm glad to see you, but you shouldn't have come--hark! what's that?" They both held their breath, for there was a sound outside the garden wall. Clac-clac! clac-clac!--a strange, uncanny footstep. It seemed to be hurrying away--clac-clac! clac-clac! "Ah, I know," whispered Guida: "it is Dormy Jamais. How foolish of me to be afraid!" "Of course, of course," said Philip--"Dormy Jamais, the man who never sleeps." "Philip--if he saw us!" "Foolish child, the garden wall is too high for that. Besides--" "Yes, Philip?" "Besides, you are my wife, Guida!" "No, no, Philip, no; not really so until all the world is told." "My beloved Guida, what difference can that make?" She sighed and shook her head. "To me, Philip, it is only that which makes it right--that the whole world knows. Philip, I am so afraid of--of secrecy, and cheating." "Nonsense-nonsense!" he answered. "Poor little wood-bird, you're frightened at nothing at all. Come and sit by me." He drew her close to him. Her trembling presently grew less. Hundreds of glow-worms were shimmering in the hedge. The grass-hoppers were whirring in the mielles beyond; a flutter of wings went by overhead. The leaves were rustling gently; a fresh wind was coming up from the sea upon the soft, fragrant dusk. They talked a little while in whispers, her hands in his, his voice soothing her, his low, hurried words giving her no time to think. But presently she shivered again, though her heart was throbbing hotly. "Come into the summer-house, Guida; you are cold, you are shivering." He rose, with his arm round her waist, raising her gently at the same time. "Oh no, Philip dear," she said, "I'm not really cold--I don't know what it is--" "But indeed you are cold," he answered. "There's a stiff south-easter rising, and your hands are like ice. Come into the arbour for a minute. It's warm there, and then--then we'll say good-bye, sweetheart." His arm round her, he drew her with him to the summer-house, talking to her tenderly all the time. There was reassurance, comfort, loving care in his very tones. How brightly the stars shone, how clearly the music of the stream came over the hedge! With what lazy restfulness the distant All's well floated across the mielles from a ship at anchor in the tide-way, how like a slumber-song the wash of the sea rolled drowsily along the wind! How gracious the smell of the earth, drinking up the dew of the affluent air, which the sun, on the morrow, should turn into life-blood for the grass and trees and flowers! CHAPTER XVII Philip was gone. Before breakfast was set upon the table, Guida saw the Narcissus sail round Noirmont Point and disappear. Her face had taken on a new expression since yesterday. An old touch of dreaminess, of vague anticipation was gone--that look which belongs to youth, which feels the confident charm of the unknown future. Life was revealed; but, together with joy, wonder and pain informed the revelation. A marvel was upon her. Her life was linked to another's, she was a wife. She was no longer sole captain of herself. Philip would signal, and she must come until either he or she should die. He had taken her hand, and she must never let it go; the breath of his being must henceforth give her new and healthy life, or inbreed a fever which should corrode the heart and burn away the spirit. Young though she was, she realised it-- but without defining it. The new-found knowledge was diffused in her character, expressed in her face. Seldom had a day of Guida's life been so busy. It seemed to her that people came and went far more than usual. She talked, she laughed a little, she answered back the pleasantries of the seafaring folk who passed her doorway or her garden. She was attentive to her grandfather; exact with her household duties. But all the time she was thinking-- thinking--thinking. Now and again she smiled, but at times too tears sprang to her eyes, to be quickly dried. More than once she drew in her breath with a quick, sibilant sound, as though some thought wounded her; and she flushed suddenly, then turned pale, then came to her natural colour again. Among those who chanced to visit the cottage was Maitresse Aimable. She came to ask Guida to go with her and Jean to the island of Sark, twelve miles away, where Guida had never been. They would only be gone one night, and, as Maitresse Aimable said, the Sieur de Mauprat could very well make shift for once. The invitation came to Guida like water to thirsty ground. She longed to get away from the town, to be where she could breathe; for all this day the earth seemed too small for breath: she gasped for the sea, to be alone there. To sail with Jean Touzel was practically to be alone, for Maitresse Aimable never talked; and Jean knew Guida's ways, knew when she wished to be quiet. In Jersey phrase, he saw beyond his spectacles-- great brass-rimmed things, giving a droll, childlike kind of wisdom to his red rotund face. Having issued her invitation, Maitresse Aimable smiled placidly and seemed about to leave, when, all at once, without any warning, she lowered herself like a vast crate upon the veille, and sat there looking at Guida. At first the grave inquiry of her look startled Guida. She was beginning to know that sensitive fear assailing those tortured by a secret. How she loathed this secrecy! How guilty she now felt, where, indeed, no guilt was! She longed to call aloud her name, her new name, from the housetops. The voice of Maitresse Aimable roused her. Her ponderous visitor had made a discovery which had yet been made by no other human being. Her own absurd romance, her ancient illusion, had taught her to know when love lay behind another woman's face. And after her fashion, Maitresse Aimable loved Jean Touzel as it is given to few to love. "I was sixteen when I fell in love; you're seventeen--you," she said. "Ah bah, so it goes!" Guida's face crimsoned. What--how much did Maitresse Aimable know? By what necromancy had this fat, silent fisher-wife learned the secret which was the heart of her life, the soul of her being--which was Philip? She was frightened, but danger made her cautious. "Can you guess who it is?" she asked, without replying directly to the oblique charge. "It is not Maitre Ranulph," answered her friendly inquisitor; "it is not that M'sieu' Detricand, the vaurien." Guida flushed with annoyance. "It is not that farmer Blampied, with fifty vergees, all potatoes; it is not M'sieu' Janvrin, that bat'd'lagoule of an ecrivain. Ah bah, so it goes!" "Who is it, then?" persisted Guida. "Eh ben, that is the thing!" "How can you tell that one is in love, Maitresse Aimable? "persisted Guida. The other smiled with a torturing placidity, then opened her mouth; but nothing came of it. She watched Guida moving about the kitchen abstractedly. Her eye wandered to the racllyi, with its flitches of bacon, to the dreschiaux and the sanded floor, to the great Elizabethan oak chair, and at last back to Guida, as though through her the lost voice might be charmed up again. The eyes of the two met now, fairly, firmly; and Guida was conscious of a look in the other's face which she had never seen before. Had then a new sight been given to herself? She saw and understood the look in Maitresse Aimable's face, and instantly knew it to be the same that was in her own. With a sudden impulse she dropped the bashin she was polishing, and, going over quickly, she silently laid her cheek against her old friend's. She could feel the huge breast heave, she felt the vast face turn hot, she was conscious of a voice struggling back to life, and she heard it say at last: "Gatd'en'ale, rosemary tea cures a cough, but nothing cures the love--ah bah, so it goes!" "Do you love Jean?" whispered Guida, not showing her face, but longing to hear the experience of another who suffered that joy called love. Maitresse Aimable's face grew hotter; she did not speak, but patted Guida's back with her heavy hand and nodded complacently. "Have you always loved him?" asked Guida again, with an eager inquisition, akin to that of a wayside sinner turned chapel-going saint, hungry to hear what chanced to others when treading the primrose path. Maitresse Aimable again nodded, and her arm drew closer about Guida. There was a slight pause, then came an unsophisticated question: "Has Jean always loved you?" A short silence, and then the voice said with the deliberate prudence of an unwilling witness: "It is not the man who wears the wedding-ring." Then, as if she had been disloyal in even suggesting that Jean might hold her lightly, she added, almost eagerly--an enthusiasm tempered by the pathos of a half-truth: "But my Jean always sleeps at home." This larger excursion into speech gave her courage, and she said more; and even as Guida listened hungrily--so soon had come upon her the apprehensions and wavering moods of loving woman!--she was wondering to hear this creature, considered so dull by all, speak as though out of a watchful and capable mind. What further Maitresse Aimable said was proof that if she knew little and spake little, she knew that little well; and if she had gathered meagrely from life, she had at least winnowed out some small handfuls of grain from the straw and chaff. At last her sagacity impelled her to say: "If a man's eyes won't see, elder-water can't make him; if he will--ah bah, glad and good!" Both arms went round Guida, and hugged her awkwardly. Her voice came up but once more that morning. As she left Guida in the doorway, she said with a last effort: "I will have one bead to pray for you, trejous." She showed her rosary, and, Huguenot though she was, Guida touched the bead reverently. "And if there is war, I will have two beads, trejous. A bi'tot--good-bye!" Guida stood watching her from the doorway, and the last words of the fisher-wife kept repeating themselves through her brain: "And if there is war, I will have two beads, trejous." So, Maitresse Aimable knew she loved Philip! How strange it was that one should read so truly without words spoken, or through seeing acts which reveal. She herself seemed to read Maitresse Aimable all at once--read her by virtue, and in the light, of true love, the primitive and consuming feeling in the breast of each for a man. Were not words necessary for speech after all? But here she stopped short suddenly; for if love might find and read love, why was it she needed speech of Philip? Why was it her spirit kept beating up against the hedge beyond which his inner self was, and, unable to see that beyond, needed reassurance by words, by promises and protestations? All at once she was angry with herself for thinking thus concerning Philip. Of course Philip loved her deeply. Had she not seen the light of true love in his eyes, and felt the arms of love about her? Suddenly she shuddered and grew bitter, and a strange rebellion broke loose in her. Why had Philip failed to keep his promise not to see her again after the marriage, till he should return from Portsmouth? It was selfish, painfully, terribly selfish of him. Why, even though she had been foolish in her request--why had he not done as she wished? Was that love--was it love to break the first promise he had ever made to his wife? Yet she excused him to herself. Men were different from women, and men did not understand what troubled a woman's heart and spirit; they were not shaken by the same gusts of emotion; they--they were not so fine; they did not think so deeply on what a woman, when she loves, thinks always, and acts upon according to her thought. If Philip were only here to resolve these fears, these perplexities, to quiet the storm in her! And yet, could he--could he? For now she felt that this storm was rooting up something very deep and radical in her. It frightened her, but for the moment she fought it passionately. She went into her garden; and here among her animals and her flowers it seemed easier to be gay of heart; and she laughed a little, and was most tender and pretty with her grandfather when he came home from spending the afternoon with the Chevalier. In this manner the first day of her marriage passed--in happy reminiscence and in vague foreboding; in affection yet in reproach as the secret wife; and still as the loving, distracted girl, frightened at her own bitterness, but knowing it to be justified. The late evening was spent in gaiety with her grandfather and the Chevalier; but at night when she went to bed she could not sleep. She tossed from side to side; a hundred thoughts came and went. She grew feverish, her breath choked her, and she got up and opened the window. It was clear, bright moonlight, and from where she was she could see the mielles and the ocean and the star-sown sky above and beyond. There she sat and thought and thought till morning. CHAPTER XVIII At precisely the same moment in the morning two boats set sail from the south coast of Jersey: one from Grouville Bay, and one from the harbour of St. Heliers. Both were bound for the same point; but the first was to sail round the east coast of the island, and the second round the west coast. The boat leaving Grouville Bay would have on her right the Ecrehos and the coast of France, with the Dirouilles in her course; the other would have the wide Atlantic on her left, and the Paternosters in her course. The two converging lines should meet at the island of Sark. The boat leaving Grouville Bay was a yacht carrying twelve swivel-guns, bringing Admiralty despatches to the Channel Islands. The boat leaving St. Heliers harbour was a new yawl-rigged craft owned by Jean Touzel. It was the fruit of ten years' labour, and he called her the Hardi Biaou, which, in plain English, means "very beautiful." This was the third time she had sailed under Jean's hand. She carried two carronades, for war with France was in the air, and it was Jean's whim to make a show of preparation, for, as he said: "If the war-dogs come, my pups can bark too. If they don't, why, glad and good, the Hardi Biaou is big enough to hold the cough-drops." The business of the yacht Dorset was important that was why so small a boat was sent on the Admiralty's affairs. Had she been a sloop she might have attracted the attention of a French frigate or privateer wandering the seas in the interests of Vive la Nation! The business of the yawl was quite unimportant. Jean Touzel was going to Sark with kegs of wine and tobacco for the seigneur, and to bring over whatever small cargo might be waiting for Jersey. The yacht Dorset had aboard her the Reverend Lorenzo Dow, an old friend of her commander. He was to be dropped at Sark, and was to come back with Jean Touzel in the Hardi Biaou, the matter having been arranged the evening before in the Vier Marchi. The saucy yawl had aboard Maitresse Aimable, Guida, and a lad to assist Jean in working the sails. Guida counted as one of the crew, for there was little in the handling of a boat she did not know. As the Hardi Biaou was leaving the harbour of St. Heliers, Jean told Guida that Mr. Dow was to join them on the return journey. She had a thrill of excitement, for this man was privy to her secret, he was connected with her life history. But before the little boat passed St. Brelade's Bay she was lost in other thoughts: in picturing Philip on the Narcissus, in inwardly conning the ambitious designs of his career. What he might yet be, who could tell? She had read more than a little of the doings of great naval commanders, both French and British. She knew how simple midshipmen had sometimes become admirals, and afterwards peers of the realm. Suddenly a new thought came to her. Suppose that Philip should rise to high places, would she be able to follow? What had she seen--what did she know--what social opportunities had been hers? How would she fit with an exalted station? Yet Philip had said that she could take her place anywhere with grace and dignity; and surely Philip knew. If she were gauche or crude in manners, he would not have cared for her; if she were not intelligent, he would scarcely have loved her. Of course she had read French and English to some purpose; she could speak Spanish--her grandfather had taught her that; she understood Italian fairly--she had read it aloud on Sunday evenings with the Chevalier. Then there were Corneille, Shakespeare, Petrarch, Cervantes--she had read them all; and even Wace, the old Norman trouvere, whose Roman de Rou she knew almost by heart. Was she so very ignorant? There was only one thing to do: she must interest herself in what interested Philip; she must read what he read; she must study naval history; she must learn every little thing about a ship of war. Then Philip would be able to talk with her of all he did at sea, and she would understand. When, a few days ago, she had said to him that she did not know how she was going to be all that his wife ought to be, he had answered her: "All I ask is that you be your own sweet self, for it is just you that I want, you with your own thoughts and imaginings, and not a Guida who has dropped her own way of looking at things to take on some one else's--even mine. It's the people who try to be clever who never are; the people who are clever never think of trying to be." Was Philip right? Was she really, in some way, a little bit clever? She would like to believe so, for then she would be a better companion for him. After all, how little she knew of Philip--now, why did that thought always come up! It made her shudder. They two would really have to begin with the A B C of understanding. To understand was a passion, it was breathing and life to her. She would never, could never, be satisfied with skimming the surface of life as the gulls out there skimmed the water. . . . Ah, how beautiful the morning was, and how the bracing air soothed her feverishness! All this sky, and light, and uplifting sea were hers, they fed her with their strength--they were all so companionable. Since Philip had gone--and that was but four days ago--she had sat down a dozen times to write to him, but each time found she could not. She, drew back from it because she wanted to empty out her heart, and yet, somehow, she dared not. She wanted to tell Philip all the feelings that possessed her; but how dared she write just what she felt: love and bitterness, joy and indignation, exaltation and disappointment, all in one? How was it these could all exist in a woman's heart at once? Was it because Love was greater than all, deeper than all, overcame all, forgave all? and was that what women felt and did always? Was that their lot, their destiny? Must they begin in blind faith, then be plunged into the darkness of disillusion, shaken by the storm of emotion, taste the sting in the fruit of the tree of knowledge--and go on again the same, yet not the same? More or less incoherently these thoughts flitted through Guida's mind. As yet her experiences were too new for her to fasten securely upon their meaning. In a day or two she would write to Philip freely and warmly of her love and of her hopes; for, maybe, by that time nothing but happiness would be left in the caldron of feeling. There was a packet going to England in three days--yes, she would wait for that. And Philip--alas! a letter from him could not reach her for at least a fortnight yet; and then in another month after that he would be with her, and she would be able to tell the whole world that she was the wife of Captain Philip d'Avranche, of the good ship Araminta--for that he was to be when he came again. She was not sad now, indeed she was almost happy, for her thoughts had brought her so close to Philip that she could feel his blue eyes looking at her, the strong clasp of his hand. She could almost touch the brown hair waving back carelessly from the forehead, untouched by powder, in the fashion of the time; and she could hear his cheery laugh quite plainly, so complete was the illusion. St. Ouen's Bay, l'Etacq, Plemont, dropped behind them as they sailed. They drew on to where the rocks of the Paternosters foamed to the unquiet sea. Far over between the Nez du Guet and the sprawling granite pack of the Dirouilles, was the Admiralty yacht winging to the nor'-west. Beyond it again lay the coast of France, the tall white cliffs, the dark blue smoky curve ending in Cap de la Hague. To-day there was something new in this picture of the coast of France. Against the far-off sands were some little black spots, seemingly no bigger than a man's hand. Again and again Jean Touzel had eyed these moving specks with serious interest; and Maitresse Aimable eyed Jean, for Jean never looked so often at anything without good reason. If, perchance, he looked three times at her consecutively, she gaped with expectation, hoping that he would tell her that her face was not so red to-day as usual--a mark of rare affection. At last Guida noticed Jean's look. "What is it that you see, Maitre Jean?" she said. "Little black wasps, I think, ma'm'selle-little black wasps that sting." Guida did not understand. Jean gave a curious cackle, and continued: "Ah, those wasps--they have a sting so nasty!" He paused an instant, then he added in a lower voice, and not quite so gaily: "Yon is the way that war begins." Guida's fingers suddenly clinched rigidly upon the tiller. "War? Do--do you think that's a French fleet, Maitre Jean?" "Steadee--steadee-keep her head up, ma'm'selle," he answered, for Guida had steered unsteadily for the instant. "Steadee--shale ben! that's right--I remember twenty years ago the black wasps they fly on the coast of France like that. Who can tell now?" He shrugged his shoulders. "P'rhaps they are coum out to play, but see you, when there is trouble in the nest it is my notion that wasps come out to sting. Look at France now, they all fight each other there, ma fuifre! When folks begin to slap faces at home, look out when they get into the street. That is when the devil have a grand fete." Guida's face grew paler as he spoke. The eyes of Maitresse Aimable were fixed on her now, and unconsciously the ponderous good-wife felt in that warehouse she called her pocket for her rosary. An extra bead was there for Guida, and one for another than Guida. But Maltresse Aimable did more: she dived into the well of silence for her voice; and for the first time in her life she showed anger with Jean. As her voice came forth she coloured, her cheeks expanded, and the words sallied out in puffs: "Nannin, Jean, you smell shark when it is but herring. You cry wasp when the critchett sing. I will believe war when I see the splinters fly-- me!" Jean looked at his wife in astonishment. That was the longest speech he had ever heard her make. It was also the first time that her rasp of criticism had ever been applied to him, and with such asperity too. He could not make it out. He looked from his wife to Guida; then, suddenly arrested by the look in her face, he scratched his shaggy head in despair, and moved about in his seat. "Sit you still, Jean," said his wife sharply; "you're like peas on a hot griddle." This confused Jean beyond recovery, for never in his life had Aimable spoken to him like that. He saw there was something wrong, and he did not know whether to speak or hold his tongue; or, as he said to himself, he "didn't know which eye to wink." He adjusted his spectacles, and, pulling himself together, muttered: "Smoke of thunder, what's all this?" Guida wasn't a wisp of quality to shiver with terror at the mere mention of war with France; but ba su, thought Jean, there was now in her face a sharp, fixed look of pain, in her eyes a bewildered anxiety. Jean scratched his head still more. Nothing particular came of that. There was no good trying to work the thing out suddenly, he wasn't clever enough. Then out of an habitual good-nature he tried to bring better weather fore and aft. "Eh ben," said he, "in the dark you can't tell a wasp from a honey-bee till he lights on you; and that's too far off there"--he jerked a finger towards the French shore--"to be certain sure. But if the wasp nip, you make him pay for it, the head and the tail--yes, I think -me. . . . There's the Eperquerie," he added quickly, nodding in front of him. The island of Sark lifted a green bosom above her perpendicular cliffs, with the pride of an affluent mother among her brood. Dowered by sun and softened by a delicate haze like an exquisite veil of modesty, this youngest daughter of the isles clustered with her kinsfolk in the emerald archipelago between the great seas. The outlines of the coast grew plainer as the Hardi Biaou drew nearer and nearer. From end to end there was no harbour upon this southern side. There was no roadway, as it seemed no pathway at all up the overhanging cliffs-ridges of granite and grey and green rock, belted with mist, crowned by sun, and fretted by the milky, upcasting surf. Little islands, like outworks before it, crouched slumberously to the sea, as a dog lays its head in its paws and hugs the ground close, with vague, soft-blinking eyes. By the shore the air was white with sea-gulls flying and circling, rising and descending, shooting up straight into the air; their bodies smooth and long like the body of a babe in white samite, their feathering tails spread like a fan, their wings expanding on the ambient air. In the tall cliffs were the nests of dried seaweed, fastened to the edge of a rocky bracket on lofty ledges, the little ones within piping to the little ones without. Every point of rock had its sentinel gull, looking-looking out to sea like some watchful defender of a mystic city. Piercing might be the cries of pain or of joy from the earth, more piercing were their cries; dark and dreadful might be the woe of those who went down to the sea in ships, but they shrilled on unheeding, their yellow beaks still yellowing in the sun, keeping their everlasting watch and ward. Now and again other birds, dark, quick-winged, low-flying, shot in among the white companies of sea-gulls, stretching their long necks, and turning their swift, cowardly eyes here and there, the cruel beak extended, the body gorged with carrion. Black marauders among blithe birds of peace and joy, they watched like sable spirits near the nests, or on some near sea rocks, sombre and alone, blinked evilly at the tall bright cliffs and the lightsome legions nestling there. These swart loiterers by the happy nests of the young were like spirits of fate who might not destroy, who had no power to harm the living, yet who could not be driven forth: the ever-present death-heads at the feast, the impressive acolytes by the altars of destiny. As the Hardi Biaou drew near the lofty, inviolate cliffs, there opened up sombre clefts and caverns, honeycombing the island at all points of the compass. She slipped past rugged pinnacles, like buttresses to the island, here trailed with vines, valanced with shrubs of unnameable beauty, and yonder shrivelled and bare like the skin of an elephant. Some rocks, indeed, were like vast animals round which molten granite had been poured, preserving them eternally. The heads of great dogs, like the dogs of Ossian, sprang out in profile from the repulsing mainland; stupendous gargoyles grinned at them from dark points of excoriated cliff. Farther off, the face of a battered sphinx stared with unheeding look into the vast sea and sky beyond. From the dark depths of mystic crypts came groanings, like the roaring of lions penned beside the caves of martyrs. Jean had startled Guida with his suggestions of war between England and France. Though she longed to have Philip win glory in some great battle, yet her first natural thought was of danger to the man she loved--and the chance too of his not coming back to her from Portsmouth. But now as she looked at this scene before her, there came again to her face the old charm of blitheness. The tides of temperament in her were fast to flow and quick to ebb. The reaction from pain was in proportion to her splendid natural health. Her lips smiled. For what can long depress the youthful and the loving when they dream that they are entirely beloved? Lands and thrones may perish, plague and devastation walk abroad with death, misery and beggary crawl naked to the doorway, and crime cower in the hedges; but to the egregious egotism of young love there are only two identities bulking in the crowded universe. To these immensities all other beings are audacious who dream of being even comfortable and obscure--happiness would be a presumption; as though Fate intended each living human being at some one moment to have the whole world to himself. And who shall cry out against that egotism with which all are diseased? So busy was Guida with her own thoughts that she scarcely noticed they had changed their course, and were skirting the coast westerly, whereby to reach Havre Gosselin on the other side of the island. There on the shore above lay the seigneurie, the destination of the Hardi Biaou. As they passed the western point of the island, and made their course easterly by a channel between rocky bulwarks opening Havre Gosselin, they suddenly saw a brig rounding the Eperquerie. She was making to the south-east under full sail. Her main and mizzen masts were not visible, and her colours could not be seen, but Jean's quick eye had lighted on something which made him cast apprehensive glances at his wife and Guida. There was a gun in the stern port-hole of the vanishing brig; and he also noted that it was run out for action. His swift glance at his wife and Guida assured him that they had not noticed the gun. Jean's brain began working with unusual celerity. He was certain that the brig was a French sloop or a privateer. In other circumstances, that in itself might not have given him much trouble of mind, for more than once French frigates had sailed round the Channel Isles in insulting strength and mockery; but at this moment every man knew that France and England were only waiting to see who should throw the ball first and set the red game going. Twenty French frigates could do little harm to the island of Sark; a hundred men could keep off an army and navy there; but Jean knew that the Admiralty yacht Dorset was sailing at this moment within half a league of the Eperquerie. He would stake his life that the brig was French and hostile and knew it also. At all costs he must follow and learn the fate of the yacht. If he landed at Havre Gosselin and crossed the island on foot, whatever was to happen would be over and done, and that did not suit the book of Jean Touzel. More than once he had seen a little fighting, and more than once shared in it. If there was to be a fight--he looked affectionately at his carronades--then he wanted to be within seeing or striking distance. Instead of running into Havre Gosselin, he set for the Bec du Nez, the eastern point of the island. His object was to land upon the rocks of the Eperquerie, where the women would be safe whatever befell. The tide was running strong round the point, and the surf was heavy, so that once or twice the boat was almost overturned; but Jean had measured well the currents and the wind. This was one of the most exciting moments in his life, for, as they rounded the Bec du Nez, there was the Dorset going about to make for Guernsey, and the brig, under full sail, bearing down upon her. Even as they rounded the point, up ran the tricolour to the brig's mizzen-mast, and the militant shouts of the French sailors came over the water. Too late had the little yacht with her handful of guns seen the danger and gone about. The wind was fair for her; but it was as fair for the brig, able to outsail her twice over. As the Hardi Biaou neared the landing-place of the Eperquerie, a gun was fired from the privateer across the bows of the Dorset, and Guida realised what was happening. As they landed another shot was fired, then came a broadside. Guida put her hands before her eyes, and when she looked again the main-mast of the yacht was gone. And now from the heights of Sark above there rang out a cry from the lips of the affrighted islanders: "War--war--war--war!" Guida sank down upon the rock, and her face dropped into her hands. She trembled violently. Somehow all at once, and for the first time in her life, there was borne in upon her a feeling of awful desolation and loneliness. She was alone--she was alone--she was alone that was the refrain of her thoughts. The cry of war rang along the cliff tops; and war would take Philip from her. Perhaps she would never see him again. The horror of it, the pity of it, the peril of it. Shot after shot the twelve-pounders of the Frenchman drove like dun hail at the white timbers of the yacht, and her masts and spars were flying. The privateer now came drawing down to where she lay lurching. A hand touched Guida upon the shoulder. "Cheer thee, my dee-ar," said Maitresse Aimable's voice. Below, Jean Touzel had eyes only for this sea-fight before him, for, despite the enormous difference, the Englishmen were now fighting their little craft for all that she was capable. But the odds were terribly against her, though she had the windward side, and the firing of the privateer was bad. The carronades on her flush decks were replying valiantly to the twelve-pounders of the brig. At last a chance shot carried away her mizzenmast, and another dismounted her single great gun, killing a number of men. The carronades, good for only a few discharges, soon left her to the fury of her assailant, and presently the Dorset was no better than a battered raisin-box. Her commander had destroyed his despatches, and nothing remained now but to be sunk or surrender. In not more than twenty minutes from the time the first shot was fired, the commander and his brave little crew yielded to the foe, and the Dorset's flag was hauled down. When her officers and men were transferred to the Frenchman, her one passenger and guest, the Rev. Lorenzo Dow, passed calmly from the gallant little wreck to the deck of the privateer, with a finger between the leaves of his book of meditations. With as much equanimity as he would have breakfasted with a bishop, made breaches of the rubric, or drunk from a sailor's black-jack, he went calmly into captivity in France, giving no thought to what he left behind; quite heedless that his going would affect for good or ill the destiny of the young wife of Philip d'Avranche. Guida watched the yacht go down, and the brig bear away towards France where those black wasps of war were as motes against the white sands. Then she remembered that there had gone with it one of the three people in the world who knew her secret, the man who had married her to Philip. She shivered a little, she scarcely knew why, for it did not then seem of consequence to her whether Mr. Dow went or stayed, though he had never given her the marriage certificate. Indeed, was it not better he should go? Thereby one less would know her secret. But still an undefined fear possessed her. "Cheer thee, cheer thee, my dee-ar, my sweet dormitte," said Maitresse Aimable, patting her shoulder. "It cannot harm thee, ba su! 'Tis but a flash in the pan." Guida's first impulse was to throw herself into the arms of the slow- tongued, great-hearted woman who hung above her like a cloud of mercy, and tell her whole story. But no, she would keep her word to Philip, till Philip came again. Her love--the love of the young, lonely wife, must be buried deep in her own heart until he appeared and gave her the right to speak. Jean was calling to them. They rose to go. Guida looked about her. Was it all a dream-all that had happened to her, and around her? The world was sweet to look upon, and yet was it true that here before her eyes there had been war, and that out of war peril must come to her. A week ago she was free as air, happy as healthy body, truthful mind, simple nature, and tender love can make a human being. She was then only a young, young girl. To-day-she sighed. Long after they put out to sea again she could still hear the affrighted cry of the peasants from the cliff-or was it only the plaintive echo of her own thoughts? "War--war--war--war!" IN FRANCE--NEAR FIVE MONTHS AFTER CHAPTER XIX "A moment, monsieur le duc." The Duke turned at the door, and looked with listless inquiry into the face of the Minister of Marine, who, picking up an official paper from his table, ran an eye down it, marked a point with the sharp corner of his snuff-box, and handed it over to his visitor, saying: "Our roster of English prisoners taken in the action off Brest." The Duke, puzzled, lifted his glass and scanned the roll mechanically. "No, no, Duke, just where I have marked," interposed the Minister. "My dear Monsieur Dalbarade," remarked the Duke a little querulously, "I do not see what interest--" He stopped short, however, looked closer at the document, and then lowering it in a sort of amazement, seemed about to speak; but, instead, raised the paper again and fixed his eyes intently on the spot indicated by the Minister. "Most curious," he said after a moment, making little nods of his head towards Dalbarade; "my own name--and an English prisoner, you say?" "Precisely so; and he gave our fellows some hard knocks before his frigate went on the reefs." "Strange that the name should be my own. I never heard of an English branch of our family." A quizzical smile passed over the face of the Minister, adding to his visitor's mystification. "But suppose he were English, yet French too?" he rejoined. "I fail to understand the entanglement," answered the Duke stiffly. "He is an Englishman whose name and native language are French--he speaks as good French as your own." The Duke peevishly tapped a chair with his stick. "I am no reader of riddles, monsieur," he said acidly, although eager to know more concerning this Englishman of the same name as himself, ruler of the sovereign duchy of Bercy. "Shall I bid him enter, Prince?" asked the Minister. The Duke's face relaxed a little, for the truth was, at this moment of his long life he was deeply concerned with his own name and all who bore it. "Is he here then?" he asked, nodding assent. "In the next room," answered the Minister, turning to a bell and ringing. "I have him here for examination, and was but beginning when I was honoured by your Highness's presence." He bowed politely, yet there was, too, a little mockery in the bow, which did not escape the Duke. These were days when princes received but little respect in France. A subaltern entered, received an order, and disappeared. The Duke withdrew to the embrasure of a window, and immediately the prisoner was gruffly announced. The young Englishman stood quietly waiting, his quick eyes going from Dalbarade to the wizened figure by the window, and back again to the Minister. His look carried both calmness and defiance, but the defiance came only from a sense of injury and unmerited disgrace. "Monsieur," said the Minister with austerity, "in your further examination we shall need to repeat some questions." The prisoner nodded indifferently, and for a brief space there was silence. The Duke stood by the window, the Minister by his table, the prisoner near the door. Suddenly the prisoner, with an abrupt motion of the hand towards two chairs, said with an assumption of ordinary politeness: "Will you not be seated?" The remark was so odd in its coolness and effrontery, that the Duke chuckled audibly. The Minister was completely taken aback. He glanced stupidly at the two chairs--the only ones in the room--and at the prisoner. Then the insolence of the thing began to work upon him, and he was about to burst forth, when the Duke came forward, and politely moving a chair near to the young commander, said: "My distinguished compliments, monsieur le capitaine. I pray you accept this chair." With quiet self-possession and a matter-of-course air the prisoner bowed politely, and seated himself, then with a motion of the hand backward towards the door, said to the Duke: "I've been standing five hours with some of those moutons in the ante-room. My profound thanks to monseigneur." Touching the angry Minister on the arm, the Duke said quietly: "Dear monsieur, will you permit me a few questions to the prisoner?" At that instant there came a tap at the door, and an orderly entered with a letter to the Minister, who glanced at it hurriedly, then turned to the prisoner and the Duke, as though in doubt what to do. "I will be responsible for the prisoner, if you must leave us," said the Duke at once. "For a little, for a little--a matter of moment with the Minister of War," answered Dalbarade, nodding, and with an air of abstraction left the room. The Duke withdrew to the window again, and seated himself in the embrasure, at some little distance from the Englishman, who at once got up and brought his chair closer. The warm sunlight of spring, streaming through the window, was now upon his pale face, and strengthened it, giving it fulness and the eye fire. "How long have you been a prisoner, monsieur?" asked the Duke, at the same time acknowledging the other's politeness with a bow. "Since March, monseigneur." "Monseigneur again--a man of judgment," said the Duke to himself, pleased to have his exalted station recognised. "H'm, and it is now June--four months, monsieur. You have been well used, monsieur?" "Vilely, monseigneur," answered the other; "a shipwrecked enemy should never be made prisoner, or at least he should be enlarged on parole; but I have been confined like a pirate in a sink of a jail." "Of what country are you?" Raising his eyebrows in amazement the young man answered: "I am an Englishman, monseigneur." "Monsieur is of England, then?" "Monseigneur, I am an English officer." "You speak French well, monsieur." "Which serves me well in France, as you see, monseigneur." The Duke was a trifle nettled. "Where were you born, monsieur?" There was a short pause, and then the prisoner, who had enjoyed the other's perplexity, said: "On the Isle of Jersey, monseigneur." The petulant look passed immediately from the face of the Duke; the horizon was clear at once. "Ah, then, you are French, monsieur!" "My flag is the English flag; I was born a British subject, and I shall die one," answered the other steadily. "The sentiment sounds estimable," answered the Duke; "but as for life and death, and what we are or what we may be, we are the sport of Fate." His brow clouded. "I myself was born under a monarchy; I shall probably die under a Republic. I was born a Frenchman; I may die--" His tone had become low and cynical, and he broke off suddenly, as though he had said more than he meant. "Then you are a Norman, monsieur," he added in a louder tone. "Once all Jerseymen were Normans, and so were many Englishmen, monseigneur." "I come of Norman stock too, monsieur," remarked the Duke graciously, yet eyeing the young man keenly. "Monseigneur has not the kindred advantage of being English?" added the prisoner dryly. The Duke protested with a deprecatory wave of the fingers and a flash of the sharp eyes, and then, after a slight pause, said: "What is your name, monsieur?" "Philip d'Avranche," was the brief reply; then with droll impudence: "And monseigneur's, by monseigneur's leave?" The Duke smiled, and that smile relieved the sourness, the fret of a face which had care and discontent written upon every line of it. It was a face that had never known happiness. It had known diversion, however, and unusual diversion it knew at this moment. "My name," he answered with a penetrating quizzical look, "--my name is Philip d'Avranche." The young man's quick, watchful eyes fixed themselves like needles on the Duke's face. Through his brain there ran a succession of queries and speculations, and dominating them all one clear question-was he to gain anything by this strange conversation? Who was this great man with a name the same as his own, this crabbed nobleman with skin as yellow as an orange, and body like an orange squeezed dry? He surely meant him no harm, however, for flashes of kindliness had lighted the shrivelled face as he talked. His look was bent in piercing comment upon Philip, who, trying hard to solve the mystery, now made a tentative rejoinder to his strange statement. Rising from his chair and bowing, he said, with shrewd foreknowledge of the effect of his words: "I had not before thought my own name of such consequence." The old man grunted amiably. "My faith, the very name begets a towering conceit wherever it goes," he answered, and he brought his stick down on the floor with such vehemence that the emerald and ruby rings rattled on his shrunken fingers. "Be seated--cousin," he said with dry compliment, for Philip had remained standing, as if with the unfeigned respect of a cadet in the august presence of the head of his house. It was a sudden and bold suggestion, and it was not lost on the Duke. The aged nobleman was too keen an observer not to see the designed flattery, but he was in a mood when flattery was palatable, seeing that many of his own class were arrayed against him for not having joined the army of the Vendee; and that the Revolutionists, with whom he had compromised, for the safety of his lands of d'Avranche and his duchy of Bercy, regarded him with suspicion. Between the two, the old man--at heart most profoundly a Royalist--bided his time, in some peril but with no fear. The spirit of this young Englishman of his own name pleased him; the flattery, patent as it was, gratified him, for in revolutionary France few treated him with deference now. Even the Minister of Marine, with whom he was on good terms, called him "citizen" at times. All at once it flashed on the younger man that this must be the Prince d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy, of that family of d'Avranche from which his own came in long descent--even from the days of Rollo, Duke of Normandy. He recalled on the instant the token of fealty of the ancient House of d'Avranche--the offering of a sword. "Your Serene Highness," he said with great deference and as great tact, "I must first offer my homage to the Prince d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy--" Then with a sudden pause, and a whimsical look, he added: "But, indeed, I had forgotten, they have taken away my sword!" "We shall see," answered the Prince, well pleased, "we shall see about that sword. Be seated." Then, after a short pause: "Tell me now, monsieur, of your family, of your ancestry." His eyes were bent on Philip with great intentness, and his thin lips tightened in some unaccountable agitation. Philip instantly responded. He explained how in the early part of the thirteenth century, after the great crusade against the Albigenses, a cadet of the house of d'Avranche had emigrated to England, and had come to place and honour under Henry III, who gave to the son of this d'Avranche certain tracts of land in Jersey, where he settled. Philip was descended in a direct line from this same receiver of king's favours, and was now the only representative of his family. While Philip spoke the Duke never took eyes from his face--that face so facile in the display of feeling or emotion. The voice also had a lilt of health and vitality which rang on the ears of age pleasantly. As he listened he thought of his eldest son, partly imbecile, all but a lusus naturae, separated from his wife immediately after marriage, through whom there could never be succession--he thought of him, and for the millionth time in his life winced in impotent disdain. He thought too of his beloved second son, lying in a soldier's grave in Macedonia; of the buoyant resonance of that by-gone voice, of the soldierly good spirits like to the good spirits of the prisoner before him, and "his heart yearned towards the young man exceedingly." If that second son had but lived there would be now no compromising with this Republican Government of France; he would be fighting for the white flag with the golden lilies over in the Vendee. "Your ancestors were mine, then," remarked the Duke gravely, after a pause, "though I had not heard of that emigration to England. However --however! Come, tell me of the engagement in which you lost your ship," he added hurriedly in a low tone. He was now so intent that he did not stir in his seat, but sat rigidly still, regarding Philip kindly. Something in the last few moments' experience had loosened the puckered skin, softened the crabbed look in the face, and Philip had no longer doubt of his friendly intentions. "I had the frigate Araminta, twenty-four guns, a fortnight out from Portsmouth," responded Philip at once. "We fell in with a French frigate, thirty guns. She was well to leeward of us, and the Araminta bore up under all sail, keen for action. The Frenchman was as ready as ourselves for a brush, and tried to get the weather of us, but, failing, she shortened sail and gallantly waited for us. The Araminta overhauled her on the weather quarter, and hailed. She responded with cheers and defiance--as sturdy a foe as man could wish. We lost no time in getting to work, and, both running before the wind, we fired broadsides as we cracked on. It was tit-for-tat for a while with splinters flying and neither of us in the eye of advantage, but at last the Araminta shot away the main-mast and wheel of the Niobe, and she wallowed like a tub in the trough of the sea. We bore down on her, and our carronades raked her like a comb. Then we fell thwart her hawse, and tore her up through her bowline-ports with a couple of thirty-two-pounders. But before we could board her she veered, lurched, and fell upon us, carrying away our foremast. We cut clear of the tangle, and were making once more to board her, when I saw to windward two French frigates bearing down on us under full sail. And then--" The Prince exclaimed in surprise: "I had not heard of this," he said. "They did not tell the world of those odds against you." "Odds and to spare, monsieur le due! We had had all we could manage in the Niobe, though she was now disabled, and we could hurt her no more. If the others came up on our weather we should be chewed like a bone in a mastiff's jaws. If she must fight again, the Araminta would be little fit for action till we cleared away the wreckage; so I sheered off to make all sail. We ran under courses with what canvas we had, and got away with a fair breeze and a good squall whitening to windward, while our decks were cleared for action again. The guns on the main-deck had done good service and kept their places. On the quarter-deck and fo'castle there was more amiss, but as I watched the frigates overhauling us I took heart of grace still. There was the creaking and screaming of the carronade-slides, the rattling of the carriages of the long twelve- pounders amidships as they were shotted and run out again, the thud of the carpenters' hammers as the shot-holes were plugged--good sounds in the ears of a fighter--" "Of a d'Avranche--of a d'Avranche!" interposed the Prince. "We were in no bad way, and my men were ready for another brush with our enemies, everything being done that could be done, everything in its place," continued Philip. "When the frigates were a fair gunshot off, I saw that the squall was overhauling us faster than they. This meant good fortune if we wished escape, bad luck if we would rather fight. But I had no time to think of that, for up comes Shoreham, my lieutenant, with a face all white. 'For God's sake, sir,' says he, 'shoal water-shoal water! We're ashore.' So much, monsieur le prince, for Admiralty charts and soundings! It's a hateful thing to see--the light green water, the deadly sissing of the straight narrow ripple like the grooves of a wash- board: and a ship's length ahead the water breaking over the reefs, two frigates behind ready to eat us. "Up we came to the wind, the sheets were let run, and away flew the halyards. All to no purpose, for a minute later we came broadside on the reef, and were gored on a pinnacle of rock. The end wasn't long in coming. The Araminta lurched off the reef on the swell. We watched our chance as she rolled, and hove overboard our broadside of long twelve- pounders. But it was no use. The swishing of the water as it spouted from the scuppers was a deal louder than the clang of the chain-pumps. It didn't last long. The gale spilled itself upon us, and the Araminta, sick and spent, slowly settled down. The last I saw of her"--Philip raised his voice as though he would hide what he felt behind an unsentimental loudness--"was the white pennant at the main-top gallant masthead. A little while, and then I didn't see it, and--and so good-bye to my first command! Then"--he smiled ironically--"then I was made prisoner by the French frigates, and have been closely confined ever since, against every decent principle of warfare. And now here I am, monsieur le duc." The Duke had listened with an immovable attention, the grey eyebrows twitching now and then, the arid face betraying a grim enjoyment. When Philip had finished, he still sat looking at him with steady slow- blinking eyes, as though unwilling to break the spell the tale had thrown round him. But an inquisition in the look, a slight cocking of the head as though weighing important things, the ringed fingers softly drumming on the stick before him--all these told Philip that something was at stake concerning himself. The Duke seemed about to speak, when the door of the room opened and the Minister of Marine entered. The Duke, rising and courteously laying a hand on his arm, drew him over to the window, and engaged him in whispered conversation, of which the subject seemed unwelcome to the Minister, for now and then he interrupted sharply. As the two stood fretfully debating, the door of the room again opened. There appeared an athletic, adventurous-looking officer in brilliant uniform who was smiling at something called after him from the antechamber. His blue coat was spick and span and very gay with double embroidery at the collar, coat-tails, and pockets. His white waistcoat and trousers were spotless; his netted sash of blue with its stars on the silver tassels had a look of studied elegance. The black three-cornered hat, broidered with gold, and adorned with three ostrich tips of red and a white and blue aigrette, was, however, the glory of his bravery. He seemed young to be a General of Division, for such his double embroideries and aigrette proclaimed him. He glanced at Philip, and replied to his salute with a half-quizzical smile on his proud and forceful face. "Dalbarade, Dalbarade," said he to the Minister, "I have but an hour--ah, monsieur le prince!" he added suddenly, as the latter came hurriedly towards him, and, grasping his hand warmly, drew him over to Dalbarade at the window. Philip now knew beyond doubt that he was the subject of debate, for all the time that the Duke in a low tone, half cordial, half querulous, spoke to the new-comer, the latter let his eyes wander curiously towards Philip. That he was an officer of great importance was to be seen from the deference paid him by Dalbarade. All at once he made a polite gesture towards the Duke, and, facing the Minister, said in a cavalier-like tone, and with a touch of patronage: "Yes, yes, Dalbarade; it is of no consequence, and I myself will be surety for both." Then turning to the nobleman, he added: "We are beginning to square accounts, Duke. Last time we met I had a large favour of you, and to-day you have a small favour of me. Pray introduce your kinsman here, before you take him with you," and he turned squarely towards Philip. Philip could scarcely believe his ears. The Duke's kinsman! Had the Duke then got his release on the ground that they were of kin--a kinship which, even to be authentic, must go back seven centuries for proof? Yet here he was being introduced to the revolutionary general as "my kinsman of the isles of Normandy." Here, too, was the same General Grandjon-Larisse applauding him on his rare fortune to be thus released on parole through the Duc de Bercy, and quoting with a laugh, half sneer and half raillery, the old Norman proverb: "A Norman dead a thousand years cries Haro! Haro! if you tread on his grave." So saying, he saluted the Duke with a liberal flourish of the hand and a friendly bow, and turned away to Dalbarade. A half-hour later Philip was outside with the Duke, walking slowly through the court-yard to an open gateway, where waited a carriage with unliveried coachman and outriders. No word was spoken till they entered the carriage and were driven swiftly away. "Whither now, your Highness?" asked Philip. "To the duchy," answered the other shortly, and relapsed into sombre meditation. CHAPTER XX The castle of the Prince d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy, was set upon a vast rock, and the town of Bercy huddled round the foot of it and on great granite ledges some distance up. With fifty defenders the castle, on its lofty pedestal, might have resisted as many thousands; and, indeed, it had done so more times than there were rubies in the rings of the present Duke, who had rescued Captain Philip d'Avranche from the clutches of the Red Government. Upon the castle, with the flag of the duchy, waved the republican tricolour, where for a thousand years had floated a royal banner. When France's great trouble came to her, and the nobles fled, or went to fight for the King in the Vendee, the old Duke, with a dreamy indifference to the opinion of Europe, had proclaimed alliance with the new Government. He felt himself privileged in being thus selfish; and he had made the alliance that he might pursue, unchecked, the one remaining object of his life. This object had now grown from a habit into a passion. It was now his one ambition to arrange a new succession excluding the Vaufontaines, a detested branch of the Bercy family. There had been an ancient feud between his family and the Vaufontaines, whose rights to the succession, after his eldest son, were to this time paramount. For three years past he had had a whole monastery of Benedictine monks at work to find some collateral branch from which he might take a successor to Leopold John, his imbecile heir--but to no purpose. In more than a little the Duke was superstitious, and on the day when he met Philip d'Avranche in the chamber of M. Dalbarade he had twice turned back after starting to make the visit, so great was his dislike to pay homage to the revolutionary Minister. He had nerved himself to the distasteful duty, however, and had gone. When he saw the name of the young English prisoner--his own name--staring him in the face, he had had such a thrill as a miracle might have sent through the veins of a doubting Christian. Since that minute he, like Philip, had been in a kind of dream; on his part, to find in the young man, if possible, an heir and successor; on Philip's to make real exalted possibilities. There had slipped past two months, wherein Philip had seen a new and brilliant avenue of life opening out before him. Most like a dream indeed it seemed. He had been shut out from the world, cut off from all connection with England and his past, for M. Dalbarade made it a condition of release that he should send no message or correspond with any one outside Castle Bercy. He had not therefore written to Guida. She seemed an interminable distance away. He was as completely in a new world as though he had been transplanted; he was as wholly in the air of fresh ambitions as though he were beginning the world again--ambitions as gorgeous as bewildering. For, almost from the first, the old nobleman treated him like a son. He spoke freely to him of the most private family matters, of the most important State affairs. He consulted with him, he seemed to lean upon him. He alluded often, in oblique phrase, to adoption and succession. In the castle Philip was treated as though he were in truth a high kinsman of the Duke. Royal ceremony and state were on every hand. He who had never had a servant of his own, now had a score at his disposal. He had spent his early days in a small Jersey manor-house; here he was walking the halls of a palace with the step of assurance, the most honoured figure in a principality next to the sovereign himself. "Adoption and succession" were words that rang in his ears day and night. The wild dream had laid feverish hands upon him. Jersey, England, the Navy, seemed very far away. Ambition was the deepest passion in him, even as defeating the hopes of the Vaufontaines was more than a religion with the Duke. By no trickery, but by a persistent good-nature, alertness of speech, avoidance of dangerous topics, and aptness in anecdote, he had hourly made his position stronger, himself more honoured at the Castle Bercy. He had also tactfully declined an offer of money from the Prince--none the less decidedly because he was nearly penniless. The Duke's hospitality he was ready to accept, but not his purse--not yet. Yet he was not in all acting a part. He was sincere in his liking for the soured, bereaved sovereign, forced to endure alliance with a Government he loathed. He even admired the Duke for his vexing idiosyncrasies, for they came of a strong individuality which, in happier case, should have made him a contented and beloved monarch. As it was, the people of his duchy were loyal to him beyond telling, doing his bidding without cavil: standing for the King of France at his will, declaring for the Republic at his command; for, whatever the Duke was to the world outside, within his duchy he was just and benevolent, if imperious. All these things Philip had come to know in his short sojourn. He had, with the Duke, mingled freely, yet with great natural dignity, among the people of the duchy, and was introduced everywhere, and at all times, as the sovereign's kinsman--"in a direct line from an ancient branch," as his Highness declared. He had been received gladly, and had made himself an agreeable figure in the duchy, to the delight of the Duke, who watched his every motion, every word, and their effect. He came to know the gossip gone abroad that the Duke had already chosen him for heir. A fantastic rumour, maybe, yet who could tell? One day the Duke arranged a conference of the civil and military officers of his duchy. He chuckled to see how reluctant they all were at first to concede their homage to his favourite, and how soon they fell under that favourite's influence--all save one man, the Intendant of the duchy. Philip himself was quick to see that this man, Count Carignan Damour, apprehensive for his own selfish ends, was bitterly opposed to him. But Damour was one among many, and the Duke was entirely satisfied, for the common people received Philip with applause. On this very day was laid before the Duke the result of the long researches of the monks into the genealogy of the d'Avranches, and there, clearly enough, was confirmation of all Philip had said about his ancestors and their relation to the ancient house of d'Avranche. The Duke was overjoyed, and thereupon secretly made ready for Philip's formal adoption and succession. It never occurred to him that Philip might refuse. On the same afternoon he sent for Philip to come to him in the highest room of the great tower. It was in this room that, many years ago, the Duke's young and noble wife, from the province of Aquitaine, had given birth to the second son of the house of Bercy, and had died a year later, happy that she should at last leave behind a healthy, beautiful child, to do her honour in her lord's eyes. In this same room the Duke and the brave second son had spent unnumbered hours; and here it had come home to him that the young wife was faultless as to the elder, else she had not borne him this perfect younger son. Thus her memory came to be adored; and thus, when the noble second son, the glory of his house and of his heart, was killed in Macedonia, the Duke still came to the little upper room for his communion of remembrance. Hour after hour he would sit looking from the great window out over the wide green valley, mourning bitterly, and feeling his heart shrivel up within him, his body grow crabbed and cold, and his face sour and scornful. When Philip now entered this sanctuary, the Duke nodded and motioned him to a chair. In silence he accepted, and in silence they sat for a time. Philip knew the history of this little room--he had learned it first from Frange Pergot, the porter at the castle gates with whom he had made friends. The silence gave him opportunity to recall the whole story. At length the motionless brown figure huddled in the great chair, not looking at Philip but out over the wide green valley, began to speak in a low, measured tone, as a dreamer might tell his dream, or a priest his vision: "A breath of life has come again to me through you. Centuries ago our ancestors were brothers--far back in the direct line, brothers--the monks have proved it. "Now I shall have my spite of the Vaufoutaines, and now shall I have another son--strong, and with good blood in him to beget good blood." A strange, lean sort of smile passed over his lips, his eyebrows twitched, his hands clinched the arm of the chair wherein he sat, and he made a motion of his jaws as though enjoying a toothsome morsel. "H'm, Henri Vaufontaine shall see--and all his tribe! They shall not feed upon these lands of the d'Avranches, they shall not carouse at my table when I am gone and the fool I begot has returned to his Maker. The fault of him was never mine, but God's--does the Almighty think we can forget that? I was ever sound and strong. When I was twenty I killed two men with my own sword at a blow; when I was thirty, to serve the King I rode a hundred and forty miles in one day--from Paris to Dracourt it was. We d'Avranches have been men of power always. We fought for Christ's sepulchre in the Holy Land, and three bishops and two archbishops have gone from us to speak God's cause to the world. And my wife, she came of the purest stock of Aquitaine, and she was constant, in her prayers. What discourtesy was it then, for God, who hath been served well by us, to serve me in return with such mockery: to send me a bloodless zany, whom his wife left ere the wedding meats were cold." His foot tapped the floor in anger, his eyes wandered restlessly out over the green expanse. Suddenly a dove perched upon the window-sill before him. His quick, shifting gaze settled on it and stayed, softening and quieting. After a slight pause, he turned to Philip and spoke in a still lower tone. "Last night in the chapel I spake to God and I said: 'Lord God, let there be fair speech between us. Wherefore hast Thou nailed me like a malefactor to the tree? Why didst Thou send me a fool to lead our house, and afterwards a lad as fine and strong as Absalom, and then lay him low like a wisp of corn in the wind, leaving me wifeless--with a prince to follow me, the by-word of men, the scorn of women--and of the Vaufontaines?"' He paused again, and his eyes seemed to pierce Philip's, as though he would read if each word was burning its way into his brain. "As I stood there alone, a voice spoke to me as plainly as now I speak to you, and it said: 'Have done with railing. That which was the elder's shall be given to the younger. The tree hath grown crabbed and old, it beareth no longer. Behold the young sapling by thy door--I have planted it there. The seed is the seed of the old tree. Cherish it, lest a grafted tree flourish in thy house.'" . . . . His words rose triumphantly. "Yes, yes, I heard it with my own ears, the Voice. The crabbed tree, that is the main line, dying in me; the grafted tree is the Vaufontaine, the interloper and the mongrel; and the sapling from the same seed as the crabbed old tree"--he reached out as though to clutch Philip's arm, but drew back, sat erect in his chair, and said with ringing decision: "the sapling is Philip d'Avranche, of the Jersey Isle." For a moment there was silence between the two. A strong wind came rushing up the valley through the clear sunlight, the great trees beneath the castle swayed, and the flapping of the tricolour could be heard within. From the window-sill the dove, caught up on the wave of wind, sailed away down the widening glade. Philip's first motion was to stand up and say: "I dare not think your Highness means in very truth to make me your kinsman in the succession." "And why not, why not?" testily answered the Duke, who liked not to be imperfectly apprehended. Then he added more kindly: "Why not--come, tell me that, cousin? Is it then distasteful?" Philip's heart gave a leap and his face flushed. "I have no other kinsman," he answered in a low tone of feeling. "I knew I had your august friendship--else all the tokens of your goodness to me were mockery; but I had scarce let myself count on the higher, more intimate honour--I, a poor captain in the English navy." He said the last words slowly, for, whatever else he was, he was a loyal English sailor, and he wished the Duc de Bercy to know it, the more convincingly the better for the part he was going to play in this duchy, if all things favoured. "Tut, tut, what has that to do with it?" answered the Duke. "What has poverty to do with blood? Younger sons are always poor, younger cousins poorer. As for the captaincy of an English warship, that's of no consequence where greater games are playing--eh?" He eyed Philip keenly, yet too there was an unasked question in his look. He was a critic of human nature, he understood the code of honour, none better; his was a mind that might be wilfully but never crassly blind. He was selfish where this young gentleman was concerned, yet he knew well how the same gentleman ought to think, speak, and act. The moment of the great test was come. Philip could not read behind the strange, shrivelled face. Instinct could help him much, but it could not interpret that parchment. He did not know whether his intended reply would alienate the Duke or not, but if it did, then he must bear it. He had come, as he thought, to the crux of this adventure. All in a moment he was recalled again to his real position. The practical facts of his life possessed him. He was standing between a garish dream and commonplace realities. Old feelings came back--the old life. The ingrain loyalty of all his years was his again. Whatever he might be, he was still an English officer, and he was not the man to break the code of professional honour lightly. If the Duke's favour and adoption must depend on the answer he must now give, well, let it be; his last state could not be worse than his first. So, still standing, he answered the Duke boldly, yet quietly, his new kinsman watching him with a grim curiosity. "Monsieur le prince," said Philip, "I am used to poverty, that matters little; but whatever you intend towards me--and I am persuaded it is to my great honour and happiness--I am, and must still remain, an officer of the English navy." The Duke's brow contracted, and his answer came cold and incisive: "The navy--that is a bagatelle; I had hoped to offer you heritage. Pooh, pooh, commanding a frigate is a trade--a mere trade!" Philip's face did not stir a muscle. He was in spirit the born adventurer, the gamester who could play for life's largest stakes, lose all, draw a long breath--and begin the world again. "It's a busy time in my trade now, as Monsieur Dalbarade would tell you, Duke." The Duke's lips compressed as though in anger. "You mean to say, monsieur, that you would let this wretched war between France and England stand before our own kinship and alliance? What are you and I in this great shuffle of events? Have less egotism, less vanity, monsieur. You are no more than a million others--and I--I am nothing. Come, come, there is more than one duty in the life of every man, and sometime he must choose between one and the other. England does not need you"--his voice and manner softened, he leaned towards Philip, the eyes almost closing as he peered into his face--"but you are needed by the House of Bercy." "I was commissioned to a warship in time of war," answered Philip quietly, "and I lost that warship. When I can, it is my duty to go back to the powers that sent me forth. I am still an officer in full commission. Your Highness knows well what honour claims of me." "There are hundreds of officers to take your place; in the duchy of Bercy there is none to stand for you. You must choose between your trade and the claims of name and blood, older than the English navy, older than Norman England." Philip's colour was as good, his manner as easy as if nothing were at stake; but in his heart he felt that the game was lost--he saw a storm gathering in the Duke's eyes, the disappointment presently to break out into wrath, the injured vanity to burst into snarling disdain. But he spoke boldly nevertheless, for he was resolved that, even if he had to return from this duchy to prison, he would go with colours flying. "The proudest moment of my life was when the Duc de Bercy called me kinsman," he responded; "the best" (had he then so utterly forgotten the little church of St. Michael's?) "was when he showed me friendship. Yet, if my trade may not be reconciled with what he may intend for me, I must ask to be sent back to Monsieur Dalbarade." He smiled hopelessly, yet with stoical disregard of consequences, and went on: "For my trade is in full swing these days, and I stand my chance of being exchanged and earning my daily bread again. At the Admiralty I am a master workman on full pay, but I'm not earning my salt here. With Monsieur Dalbarade my conscience would be easier." He had played his last card. Now he was prepared for the fury of a jaundiced, self-willed old man, who could ill brook being thwarted. He had quickly imagined it all, and not without reason, for surely a furious disdain was at the grey lips, lines of anger were corrugating the forehead, the rugose parchment face was fiery with distemper. But what Philip expected did not come to pass. Rising quickly to his feet, the Duke took him by the shoulders, kissed him on both cheeks, and said: "My mind is made up--is made up. Nothing can change it. You have no father, cousin--well, I will be your father. You shall retain your post in the English navy-officer and patriot you shall be if you choose. A brave man makes a better ruler. But now there is much to do. There is the concurrence of the English King to secure; that shall be--has already been--my business. There is the assent of Leopold John to achieve; that I shall command. There are the grave formalities of adoption to arrange; these I shall expedite. You shall see, Master Insolence--you, who'd throw me and my duchy over for your trade; you shall see how the Vaufontaines will gnash their teeth!" In his heart Philip was exultant, though outwardly he was calm. He was, however, unprepared for what followed. Suddenly the Duke, putting a hand on his shoulder, said: "One thing, cousin, one thing: you must marry in our order, and at once. There shall be no delay. Succession must be made sure. I know the very woman--the Comtesse Chantavoine--young, rich, amiable. You shall meet her to-morrow-to-morrow." CHAPTER XXI "The Comtesse Chantavoine, young, rich, amiable. You shall meet her to-morrow " . . . !--Long after Philip left the Duke to go to his own chamber, these words rang in his ears. He suddenly felt the cords of fate tightening round him. So real was the momentary illusion that, as he passed through the great hall where hung the portraits of the Duke's ancestors, he made a sudden outward motion of his arms as though to free himself from a physical restraint. Strange to say, he had never foreseen or reckoned with this matter of marriage in the designs of the Duke. He had forgotten that sovereign dukes must make sure their succession even unto the third and fourth generation. His first impulse had been to tell the Duke that to introduce him to the Countess would be futile, for he was already married. But the instant warning of the mind that his Highness could never and would never accept the daughter of a Jersey ship-builder restrained him. He had no idea that Guida's descent from the noble de Mauprats of Chambery would weigh with the Duke, who would only see in her some apple-cheeked peasant stumbling over her court train. It was curious that the Duke had never even hinted at the chance of his being already married--yet not so curious either, since complete silence concerning a wife was in itself declaration enough that he was unmarried. He felt in his heart that a finer sense would have offered Guida no such humiliation, for he knew the lie of silence to be as evil as the lie of speech. He had not spoken, partly because he had not yet become used to the fact that he really was married. It had never been brought home to him by the ever-present conviction of habit. One day of married life, or, in reality, a few hours of married life, with Guida had given the sensation more of a noble adventure than of a lasting condition. With distance from that noble adventure, something of the glow of a lover's relations had gone, and the subsequent tender enthusiasm of mind and memory was not vivid enough to make him daring or--as he would have said--reckless for its sake. Yet this same tender enthusiasm was sincere enough to make him accept the fact of his marriage without discontent, even in the glamour of new and alluring ambitions. If it had been a question of giving up Guida or giving up the duchy of Bercy--if that had been put before him as the sole alternative, he would have decided as quickly in Guida's favour as he did when he thought it was a question between the duchy and the navy. The straightforward issue of Guida or the duchy he had not been called upon to face. But, unfortunately for those who are tempted, issues are never put quite so plainly by the heralds of destiny and penalty. They are disguised as delectable chances: the toss-up is always the temptation of life. The man who uses trust-money for three days, to acquire in those three days a fortune, certain as magnificent, would pull up short beforehand if the issue of theft or honesty were put squarely before him. Morally he means no theft; he uses his neighbour's saw until his own is mended: but he breaks his neighbour's saw, his own is lost on its homeward way; and having no money to buy another, he is tried and convicted on a charge of theft. Thus the custom of society establishes the charge of immorality upon the technical defect. But not on that alone; upon the principle that what is committed in trust shall be held inviolate, with an exact obedience to the spirit as to the letter of the law. The issue did not come squarely to Philip. He had not openly lied about Guida: so far he had had no intention of doing so. He even figured to himself with what surprise Guida would greet his announcement that she was henceforth Princesse Guida d'Avranche, and in due time would be her serene highness the Duchesse de Bercy. Certainly there was nothing immoral in his ambitions. If the reigning Prince chose to establish him as heir, who had a right to complain? Then, as to an officer of the English navy accepting succession in a sovereign duchy in suzerainty to the present Government of France, while England was at war with her, the Duke had more than once, in almost so many words, defined the situation. Because the Duke himself, with no successor assured, was powerless to side with the Royalists against the Red Government, he was at the moment obliged, for the very existence of his duchy, to hoist the tricolour upon the castle with his own flag. Once the succession was secure beyond the imbecile Leopold John, then he would certainly declare against the present fiendish Government and for the overthrown dynasty. Now England was fighting France, not only because she was revolutionary France, but because of the murder of Louis XVI and for the restoration of the overthrown dynasty. Also she was in close sympathy with the war of the Vendee, to which she would lend all possible assistance. Philip argued that if it was his duty, as a captain in the English navy, to fight against the revolutionaries from without, he would be beyond criticism if, as the Duc de Bercy, he also fought against them from within. Indeed, it was with this plain statement of the facts that the second military officer of the duchy had some days before been sent to the Court of St. James to secure its intervention for Philip's freedom by exchange of prisoners. This officer was also charged with securing the consent of the English King for Philip's acceptance of succession in the duchy, while retaining his position in the English navy. The envoy had been instructed by the Duke to offer his sympathy with England in the war and his secret adherence to the Royalist cause, to become open so soon as the succession through Philip was secured. To Philip's mind all that side of the case was in his favour, and sorted well with his principles of professional honour. His mind was not so acutely occupied with his private honour. To tell the Duke now of his marriage would be to load the dice against himself: he felt that the opportunity for speaking of it had passed. He seated himself at a table and took from his pocket a letter of Guida's written many weeks before, in which she had said firmly that she had not announced the marriage, and would not; that he must do it, and he alone; that the letter written to her grandfather had not been received by him, and that no one in Jersey knew their secret. In reading this letter again a wave of feeling rushed over him. He realised the force and strength of her nature: every word had a clear, sharp straightforwardness and the ring of truth. A crisis was near, and he must prepare to meet it. The Duke had said that he must marry; a woman had already been chosen for him, and he was to meet her to-morrow. But, as he said to himself, that meant nothing. To meet a woman was not of necessity to marry her. Marry--he could feel his flesh creeping! It gave him an ugly, startled sensation. It was like some imp of Satan to drop into his ear the suggestion that princes, ere this, had been known to have two wives-- one of them unofficial. He could have struck himself in the face for the iniquity of the suggestion; he flushed from the indecency of it; but so have sinners ever flushed as they set forth on the garish road to Avernus. Yet--yet somehow he must carry on the farce of being single until the adoption and the succession had been formally arranged. Vexed with these unbidden and unwelcome thoughts, he got up and walked about his chamber restlessly. "Guida--poor Guida!" he said to himself many times. He was angry, disgusted that those shameful, irresponsible thoughts should have come to him. He would atone for all that--and more --when he was Prince and she Princess d'Avranche. But, nevertheless, he was ill at ease with himself. Guida was off there alone in Jersey-- alone. Now, all at once, another possibility flashed into his mind. Suppose, why, suppose--thoughtless scoundrel that he had been--suppose that there might come another than himself and Guida to bear his name! And she there alone, her marriage still kept secret--the danger of it to her good name. But she had said nothing in her letters, hinted nothing. No, in none had there been the most distant suggestion. Then and there he got them, one and all, and read every word, every line, all through to the end. No; there was not one hint. Of course it could not be so; she would have--but no, she might not have! Guida was unlike anybody else. He read on and on again. And now, somehow, he thought he caught in one of the letters a new ring, a pensive gravity, a deeper tension, which were like ciphers or signals to tell him of some change in her. For a moment he was shaken. Manhood, human sympathy, surged up in him. The flush of a new sensation ran through his veins like fire. The first instinct of fatherhood came to him, a thrilling, uplifting feeling. But as suddenly there shot through his mind a thought which brought him to his feet with a spring. But suppose--suppose that it was so--suppose that through Guida the further succession might presently be made sure, and suppose he went to the Prince and told him all; that might win his favour for her; and the rest would be easy. That was it, as clear as day. Meanwhile he would hold his peace, and abide the propitious hour. For, above all else--and this was the thing that clinched the purpose in his mind--above all else, the Duke had, at best, but a brief time to live. Only a week ago the Court physician had told him that any violence or mental shock might snap the thread of existence. Clearly, the thing was to go on as before, keep his marriage secret, meet the Countess, apparently accede to all the Duke proposed, and wait--and wait. With this clear purpose in his mind colouring all that he might say, yet crippling the freedom of his thought, he sat down to write to Guida. He had not yet written to her, according to his parole: this issue was clear; he could not send a letter to Guida until he was freed from that condition. It had been a bitter pill to swallow; and many times he had had to struggle with himself since his arrival at the castle. For whatever the new ambitions and undertakings, there was still a woman in the lonely distance for whose welfare he was responsible, for whose happiness he had yet done nothing, unless to give her his name under sombre conditions was happiness for her. All that he had done to remind him of the wedded life he had so hurriedly, so daringly, so eloquently entered upon, was to send his young wife fifty pounds. Somehow, as this fact flashed to his remembrance now, it made him shrink; it had a certain cold, commercial look which struck him unpleasantly. Perhaps, indeed, the singular and painful shyness--chill almost--with which Guida had received the fifty pounds now communicated itself to him by the intangible telegraphy of the mind and spirit. All at once that bare, glacial fact of having sent her fifty pounds acted as an ironical illumination of his real position. He felt conscious that Guida would have preferred some simple gift, some little thing that women love, in token and remembrance, rather than this contribution to the common needs of existence. Now that he came to think of it, since he had left her in Jersey, he had never sent her ever so small a gift. He had never given her any gifts at all save the Maltese cross in her childhood --and her wedding-ring. As for the ring, it had never occurred to him that she could not wear it save in the stillness of the night, unseen by any eye save her own. He could not know that she had been wont to go to sleep with the hand clasped to her breast, pressing close to her the one outward token she had of a new life, begun with a sweetness which was very bitter and a bitterness only a little sweet. Philip was in no fitting mood to write a letter. Too many emotions were in conflict in him at once. They were having their way with him; and, perhaps, in this very complexity of his feelings he came nearer to being really and acutely himself than he had ever been in his life. Indeed, there was a moment when he was almost ready to consign the Duke and all that appertained to the devil or the deep sea, and to take his fate as it came. But one of the other selves of him calling down from the little attic where dark things brood, told him that to throw up his present chances would bring him no nearer and no sooner to Guida, and must return him to the prison whence he came. Yet he would write to Guida now, and send the letter when he was released from parole. His courage grew as the sentences spread out before him; he became eloquent. He told her how heavily the days and months went on apart from her. He emptied out the sensations of absence, loneliness, desire, and affection. All at once he stopped short. It flashed upon him now that always his letters had been entirely of his own doings; he had pictured himself always: his own loneliness, his own grief at separation. He had never yet spoken of the details of her life, questioned her of this and of that, of all the little things which fill the life of a woman--not because she loves them, but because she is a woman, and the knowledge and governance of little things is the habit of her life. His past egotism was borne in upon him now. He would try to atone for it. Now he asked her many questions in his letter. But one he did not ask. He knew not how to speak to her of it. The fact that he could not was a powerful indictment of his relations towards her, of his treatment of her, of his headlong courtship and marriage. So portions of this letter of his had not the perfect ring of truth, not the conviction which unselfish love alone can beget. It was only at the last, only when he came to a close, that the words went from him with the sharp photography of his own heart. It came, perhaps, from a remorse which, for the instant, foreshadowed danger ahead; from an acute pity for her; or perchance from a longing to forego the attempt upon an exalted place, and get back to the straightforward hours, such as those upon the Ecrehos, when he knew that he loved her. But the sharpness of his feelings rendered more intense now the declaration of his love. The phrases were wrung from him. "Good-bye--no, a la bonne heure, my dearest," he wrote. "Good days are coming--brave, great days, when I shall be free to strike another blow for England, both from within and from without France; when I shall be, if all go well, the Prince d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy, and you my perfect Princess. Good-bye! Thy Philip, qui t'aime toujours." He had hardly written the last words when there came a knocking at his door, and a servant entered. "His Highness offers his compliments to monsieur, and will monsieur descend to meet the Marquis Grandjon-Larisse and the Comtesse Chantavoine, who have just arrived." For an instant Philip could scarce compose himself, but he sent a message of obedience to the Duke's command, and prepared to go down. So it was come--not to-morrow, but to-day. Already the deep game was on. With a sigh which was half bitter and mocking laughter, he seized the pouncebox, dried his letter to Guida, and put it in his pocket. As he descended the staircase, the last words of it kept assailing his mind, singing in his brain: "Thy Philip, qui t'aime toujours!" CHAPTER XXII Not many evenings after Philip's first interview with the Comtesse Chantavoine, a visitor arrived at the castle. From his roundabout approach up the steep cliff in the dusk it was clear he wished to avoid notice. Of gallant bearing, he was attired in a fashion unlike the citizens of Bercy, or the Republican military often to be seen in the streets of the town. The whole relief of the costume was white: white sash, white cuffs turned back, white collar, white rosette and band, white and red bandeau, and the faint glitter of a white shirt. In contrast were the black hat and plume, black top boots with huge spurs, and yellow breeches. He carried a gun and a sword, and a pistol was stuck in the white sash. But one thing caught the eye more than all else: a white square on the breast of the long brown coat, strangely ornamented with a red heart and a cross. He was evidently a soldier of high rank, but not of the army of the Republic. The face was that of a devotee, not of peace but of war--of some forlorn crusade. It had deep enthusiasm, which yet to the trained observer would seem rather the tireless faith of a convert than the disposition of the natural man. It was somewhat heavily lined for one so young, and the marks of a hard life were on him, but distinction and energy were in his look and in every turn of his body. Arriving at the castle, he knocked at the postern. At first sight of him the porter suspiciously blocked the entrance with his person, but seeing the badge upon his breast, stood at gaze, and a look of keen curiosity crossed over his face. On the visitor announcing himself as a Vaufontaine, this curiosity gave place to as keen surprise; he was admitted with every mark of respect, and the gates closed behind him. "Has his Highness any visitors?" he asked as he dismounted. The porter nodded assent. "Who are they?" He slipped a coin into the porter's hand. "One of the family--for so his Serene Highness calls him." "H'm, indeed! A Vaufontaine, friend?" "No, monsieur, a d'Avranche." "What d'Avranche? Not Prince Leopold John?" "No, monsieur, the name is the same as his Highness's." "Philip d'Avranche? Ah, from whence?" "From Paris, monsieur, with his Highness." The visitor, whistling softly to himself, stood thinking a moment. Presently he said: "How old is he?" "About the same age as monsieur." "How does he occupy himself?" "He walks, rides, talks with his Highness, asks questions of the people, reads in the library, and sometimes shoots and fishes." "Is he a soldier?" "He carries no sword, and he takes long aim with a gun." A sly smile was lurking about the porter's mouth. The visitor drew from his pocket a second gold piece, and, slipping it into the other's hand, said: "Tell it all at once. Who is the gentleman, and what is his business here? Is he, perhaps, on the side of the Revolution, or does he--keep better company?" He looked keenly into the eyes of the porter, who screwed up his own, returning the gaze unflinchingly. Handing back the gold piece, the man answered firmly: "I have told monsieur what every one in the duchy knows; there's no charge for that. For what more his Highness and--and those in his Highness's confidence know," he drew himself up with brusque importance, "there's no price, monsieur." "Body o' me, here's pride and vainglory!" answered the other. "But I know you, my fine Pergot, I knew you almost too well years ago; and then you were not so sensitive; then you were a good Royalist like me, Pergot." This time he fastened the man's look with his own and held it until Pergot dropped his head before it. "I don't remember monsieur," he answered, perturbed. "Of course not. The fine Pergot has a bad memory, like a good Republican, who by law cannot worship his God, or make the sign of the Cross, or, ask the priest to visit him when he's dying. A red Revolutionist is our Pergot now!" "I'm as good a Royalist as monsieur," retorted the man with some asperity. "So are most of us. Only--only his Highness says to us--" "Don't gossip of what his Highness says, but do his bidding, Pergot. What a fool are you to babble thus! How d'ye know but I'm one of Fouche's or Barere's men? How d'ye know but there are five hundred men beyond waiting for my whistle?" The man changed instantly. His hand was at his side like lightning. "They'd never hear that whistle, monsieur, though you be Vaufontaine or no Vaufontaine!" The other, smiling, reached out and touched him on the shoulder kindly. "My dear Frange Pergot," said he, "that's the man I knew once, and the sort of man that's been fighting with me for the Church and for the King these months past in the Vendee. Come, come, don't you know me, Pergot? Don't you remember the scapegrace with whom, for a jape, you waylaid my uncle the Cardinal and robbed him, then sold him back his jewelled watch for a year's indulgences?" "But no, no," answered the man, crossing himself quickly, and by the dim lanthorn light peering into the visitor's face, "it is not possible, monsieur. The Comte Detricand de Tournay--God rest him!--died in the Jersey Isle, with him they called Rullecour." "Well, well, you might at least remember this," rejoined the other, and with a smile he showed an old scar in the palm of his hand. A little later was ushered into the library of the castle the Comte Detricand de Tournay, who, under the name of Savary dit Detricand, had lived in the Isle of Jersey for many years. There he had been a dissipated idler, a keeper of worthless company, an alien coolly accepting the hospitality of a country he had ruthlessly invaded as a boy. Now, returned from vagabondage, he was the valiant and honoured heir of the House of Vaufontaine, and heir-presumptive of the House of Bercy. True to his intention, Detricand had joined de la Rochejaquelein, the intrepid, inspired leader of the Vendee, whose sentiments became his own --"If I advance, follow me; if I retreat, kill me; if I fall, avenge me." He had proven himself daring, courageous, resourceful. His unvarying gaiety of spirits infected the simple peasants with a rebounding energy; his fearlessness inspired their confidence; his kindness to the wounded, friend or foe, his mercy to prisoners, the respect he showed devoted priests who shared with the peasants the perils of war, made him beloved. From the first all the leaders trusted him, and he sprang in a day, as had done the peasants Cathelineau, d'Elbee, and Stofflet, or gentlemen like Lescure and Bonchamp, and noble fighters like d'Antichamp and the Prince of Talmont, to an outstanding position in the Royalist army. Again and again he had been engaged in perilous sorties and leading forlorn hopes. He had now come from the splendid victory at Saumur to urge his kinsman, the Duc de Bercy, to join the Royalists. He had powerful arguments to lay before a nobleman the whole traditions of whose house were of constant alliance with the Crown of France, whose very duchy had been the gift of a French monarch. Detricand had not seen the Duke since he was a lad at Versailles, and there would be much in his favour, for of all the Vaufontaines the Duke had reason to dislike him least, and some winning power in him had of late grown deep and penetrating. When the Duke entered upon him in the library, he was under the immediate influence of a stimulating talk with Philip d'Avranche and the chief officers of the duchy. With the memory of past feuds and hatreds in his mind, and predisposed against any Vaufontaine, his greeting was courteously disdainful, his manner preoccupied. Remarking that he had but lately heard of monsieur le comte's return to France, he hoped he had enjoyed his career in--was it then England or America? But yes, he remembered, it began with an expedition to take the Channel Isles from England, an insolent, a criminal business in time of peace, fit only for boys or buccaneers. Had monsieur le comte then spent all these years in the Channel Isles--a prisoner perhaps? No? Fastening his eyes cynically on the symbol of the Royalist cause on Detricand's breast, he asked to what he was indebted for the honour of this present visit. Perhaps, he added drily, it was to inquire after his own health, which, he was glad to assure monsieur le comte and all his cousins of Vaufontaine, was never better. The face was like a leather mask, telling nothing of the arid sarcasm in the voice. The shoulders were shrunken, the temples fallen in, the neck behind was pinched, and the eyes looked out like brown beads alive with fire, and touched with the excitement of monomania. His last word had a delicate savagery of irony, though, too, there could be heard in the tone a defiance, arguing apprehension, not lost upon his visitor. Detricand had inwardly smiled during the old man's monologue, broken only by courteous, half-articulate interjections on his own part. He knew too well the old feud between their houses, the ambition that had possessed many a Vaufontaine to inherit the dukedom of Bercy, and the Duke's futile revolt against that possibility. But for himself, now heir to the principality of Vaufontaine, and therefrom, by reversion, to that of Bercy, it had no importance. He had but one passion now, and it burned clear and strong, it dominated, it possessed him. He would have given up any worldly honour to see it succeed. He had idled and misspent too many years, been vaurien and ne'er-do-well too long to be sordid now. Even as the grievous sinner, come from dark ways, turns with furious and tireless strength to piety and good works, so this vagabond of noble family, wheeling suddenly in his tracks, had thrown himself into a cause which was all sacrifice, courage, and unselfish patriotism--a holy warfare. The last bitter thrust of the Duke had touched no raw flesh, his withers were unwrung. Gifted to thrust in return, and with warrant to do so, he put aside the temptation, and answered his kinsman with daylight clearness. "Monsieur le duc," said he, "I am glad your health is good--it better suits the purpose of this interview. I am come on business, and on that alone. I am from Saumur, where I left de la Rochejaquelein, Stofflet, Cathelineau, and Lescure masters of the city and victors over Coustard's army. We have taken eleven thousand prisoners, and--" "I have heard a rumour--" interjected the Duke impatiently. "I will give you fact," continued Detricand, and he told of the series of successes lately come to the army of the Vendee. It was the heyday of the cause. "And how does all this concern me?" asked the Duke. "I am come to beg you to join us, to declare for our cause, for the Church and for the King. Yours is of the noblest names in France. Will you not stand openly for what you cannot waver from in your heart? If the Duc de Bercy declares for us, others will come out of exile, and from submission to the rebel government, to our aid. My mission is to beg you to put aside whatever reasons you may have had for alliance with this savage government, and proclaim for the King." The Duke never took his eyes from Detricand's. What was going on behind that parchment face, who might say? "Are you aware," he answered Detricand at last, "that I could send you straight from here to the guillotine?" "So could the porter at your gates, but he loves France almost as well as does the Duc de Bercy." "You take refuge in the fact that you are my kinsman," returned the Duke acidly. "The honour is stimulating, but I should not seek salvation by it. I have the greater safety of being your guest," answered Detricand with dignity. "Too premature a sanctuary for a Vaufontaine!" retorted the Duke, fighting down growing admiration for a kinsman whose family he would gladly root out, if it lay in his power. Detricand made a gesture of impatience, for he felt that his appeal had availed nothing, and he had no heart for a battle of words. His wit had been tempered in many fires, his nature was non-incandescent to praise or gibe. He had had his share of pastime; now had come his share of toil, and the mood for give and take of words was not on him. He went straight to the point now. Hopelessly he spoke the plain truth. "I want nothing of the Prince d'Avranche but his weight and power in a cause for which the best gentlemen of France are giving their lives. I fasten my eyes on France alone: I fight for the throne of Louis, not for the duchy of Bercy. The duchy of Bercy may sink or swim for all of me, if so be it does not stand with us in our holy war." The Duke interjected a disdainful laugh. Suddenly there shot into Detricand's mind a suggestion, which, wild as it was, might after all belong to the grotesque realities of life. So he added with deliberation: "If alliance must still be kept with this evil government of France, then be sure there is no Vaufontaine who would care to inherit a duchy so discredited. To meet that peril the Duc de Bercy will do well to consult his new kinsman--Philip d'Avranche." For a moment there was absolute silence in the room. The old nobleman's look was like a flash of flame in a mask of dead flesh. The short upper lip was arrested in a sort of snarl, the fingers, half-closed, were hooked like talons, and the whole man was a picture of surprise, fury, and injured pride. The Duc de Bercy to be harangued to his duty, scathed, measured, disapproved, and counselled, by a stripling Vaufontaine--it was monstrous. It had the bitterness of aloes also, for in his own heart he knew that Detricand spoke truth. The fearless appeal had roused him, for a moment at least, to the beauty and righteousness of a sombre, all but hopeless, cause, while the impeachment had pierced every sore in his heart. He felt now the smarting anger, the outraged vanity of the wrong-doer who, having argued down his own conscience, and believing he has blinded others as himself, suddenly finds that himself and his motives are naked before the world. Detricand had known regretfully, even as he spoke, that the Duke, no matter what the reason, would not now ally himself with the Royalists; though, had his life been in danger, he still would have spoken the truth. So he had been human enough to try and force open the door of mystery by a biting suggestion; for he had a feeling that in the presence of the mysterious kinsman, Philip d'Avranche, lay the cause of the Duke's resistance to his prayer. Who was this Philip d'Avranche? At the moment it seemed absurd to him that his mind should travel back to the Isle of Jersey. The fury of the Duke was about to break forth, when the door of the chamber opened and Philip stepped inside. The silence holding two men now held three, and a curious, cold astonishment possessed the two younger. The Duke was too blind with anger to see the start of recognition his visitors gave at sight of each other, and by a concurrence of feeling neither Detricand nor Philip gave sign of acquaintance. Wariness was Philip's cue, wondering caution Detricand's attitude. The Duke spoke first. Turning from Philip, he said to Detricand with malicious triumph: "It will disconcert your pious mind to know I have yet one kinsman who counts it no shame to inherit Bercy. Monsieur le comte, I give you here the honour to know Captain Philip d'Avranche." Something of Detricand's old buoyant self came back to him. His face flushed with sudden desire to laugh, then it paled in dumb astonishment. So this man, Philip d'Avranche, was to be set against him even in the heritage of his family, as for one hour in a Jersey kitchen they had been bitter opposites. For the heritage of the Houses of Vaufontaine and Bercy he cared little--he had deeper ambitions; but this adventuring sailor roused in him again the private grudge he had once begged him to remember. Recovering himself, he answered meaningly, bowing low: "The honour is memorable--and monstrous." Philip set his teeth, but replied: "I am overwhelmed to meet one whose reputation is known--in every taproom." Neither had chance to say more, for the Duke, though not conceiving the cause or meaning of the biting words, felt the contemptuous suggestion in Detricand's voice, and burst out in anger: "Go tell the prince of Vaufontaine that the succession is assured to my house. Monsieur my cousin, Captain Philip d'Avranche, is now my adopted son; a wife is chosen for him, and soon, monsieur le comte, there will be still another successor to the title." "The Duc de Bercy should add inspired domestic prophecy to the family record in the 'Almanach de Gotha,"' answered Detricand. "God's death!" cried the old nobleman, trembling with rage, and stretching towards the bell-rope, "you shall go to Paris and the Temple. Fouche will take care of you." "Stop, monsieur le duc!" Detricand's voice rang through the room. "You shall not betray even the humblest of your kinsmen, like that monster d'Orleans who betrayed the highest of his. Be wise: there are hundreds of your people who still will pass a Royalist on to safety." The Duke's hand dropped from the bell-rope. He knew that Detricand's words were true. Ruling himself to quiet, he said with cold hatred: "Like all your breed, crafty and insolent. But I will make you pay for it one day." Glancing towards Philip as though to see if he could move him, Detricand answered: "Make no haste on my behalf; years are not of such moment to me as to your Highness." Philip saw Detricand's look, and felt his moment and his chance had come. "Monsieur le comte!" he exclaimed threateningly. The Duke glanced proudly at Philip. "You will collect the debt, cousin," said he, and the smile on his face was wicked as he again turned towards Detricand. "With interest well compounded," answered Philip firmly. Detricand smiled. "I have drawn the Norman-Jersey cousin, then?" said he. "Now we can proceed to compliments." Then with a change of manner he added quietly: "Your Highness, may the House of Bercy have no worse enemy than I! I came only to plead the cause which, if it give death, gives honour too. And I know well that at least you are not against us in heart. Monsieur d'Avranche"--he turned to Philip, and his words were slow and deliberate--"I hope we may yet meet in the Place du Vier Prison --but when and where you will; and you shall find me in the Vendee when you please." So saying, he bowed, and, turning, left the room. "What meant the fellow by his Place du Vier Prison?" asked the Duke. "Who knows, monsieur le duc?" answered Philip. "A fanatic like all the Vaufontaines--a roysterer yesterday, a sainted chevalier to-morrow," said the Duke irritably. "But they still have strength and beauty--always!" he added reluctantly. Then he looked at the strong and comely frame before him, and was reassured. He laid a hand on Philip's broad shoulder, and said admiringly: "You will of course have your hour with him, cousin: but not--not till you are a d'Avranche of Bercy." "Not till I am a d'Avranche of Bercy," responded Philip in a low voice. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Egotism with which all are diseased Egregious egotism of young love there are only two identities Follow me; if I retreat, kill me; if I fall, avenge me It's the people who try to be clever who never are Knew the lie of silence to be as evil as the lie of speech People who are clever never think of trying to be THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG [A ROMANCE OF TWO KINGDOMS] By Gilbert Parker Volume 4. CHAPTER XXIII With what seemed an unnecessary boldness Detricand slept that night at the inn, "The Golden Crown," in the town of Bercy: a Royalist of the Vendee exposing himself to deadly peril in a town sworn to alliance with the Revolutionary Government. He knew that the town, even the inn, might be full of spies; but one other thing he also knew: the innkeeper of "The Golden Crown" would not betray him, unless he had greatly changed since fifteen years ago. Then they had been friends, for his uncle of Vaufontaine had had a small estate in Bercy itself, in ironical proximity to the castle. He walked boldly into the inn parlour. There were but four men in the room--the landlord, two stout burghers, and Frange Pergot, the porter of the castle, who had lost no time carrying his news: not to betray his old comrade in escapade, but to tell a chosen few, Royalists under the rose, that he had seen one of those servants of God, an officer of the Vendee. At sight of the white badge with the red cross on Detricand's coat, the four stood up and answered his greeting with devout respect; and he had speedy assurance that in this inn he was safe from betrayal. Presently he learned that three days hence a meeting of the States of Bercy was to be held for setting the seal upon the Duke's formal adoption of Philip, and to execute a deed of succession. It was deemed certain that, ere this, the officer sent to England would have returned with Philip's freedom and King George's licence to accept the succession in the duchy. From interest in these matters alone Detricand would not have remained at Bercy, but he thought to use the time for secretly meeting officers of the duchy likely to favour the cause of the Royalists. During these three days of waiting he heard with grave concern a rumour that the great meeting of the States would be marked by Philip's betrothal with the Comtesse Chantavoine. He cared naught for the succession, but there was ever with him the remembrance of Guida Landresse de Landresse, and what touched Philip d'Avranche he had come to associate with her. Of the true relations between Guida and Philip he knew nothing, but from that last day in Jersey he did know that Philip had roused in her emotions, perhaps less vital than love but certainly less equable than friendship. Now in his fear that Guida might suffer, the more he thought of the Comtesse Chantavoine as the chosen wife of Philip the more it troubled him. He could not shake off oppressive thoughts concerning Guida and this betrothal. They interwove themselves through all his secret business with the Royalists of Bercy. For his own part, he would have gone far and done much to shield her from injury. He had seen and known in her something higher than Philip might understand--a simple womanliness, a profound depth of character. His pledge to her had been the key-note of his new life. Some day, if he lived and his cause prospered, he would go back to Jersey--too late perhaps to tell her what was in his heart, but not too late to tell her the promise had been kept. It was a relief when the morning of the third day came, bright and joyous, and he knew that before the sun went down he should be on his way back to Saumur. His friend the innkeeper urged him not to attend the meeting of the States of Bercy, lest he should be recognised by spies of government. He was, however, firm in his will to go, but he exchanged his coat with the red cross for one less conspicuous. With this eventful morn came the news that the envoy to England had returned with Philip's freedom by exchange of prisoners, and with the needful licence from King George. But other news too was carrying through the town: the French Government, having learned of the Duke's intentions towards Philip, had despatched envoys from Paris to forbid the adoption and deed of succession. Though the Duke would have defied them, it behoved him to end the matter, if possible, before these envoys' arrival. The States therefore was hurriedly convened two hours before the time appointed, and the race began between the Duke and the emissaries of the French Government. It was a perfect day, and as the brilliant procession wound down the great rock from the castle, in ever-increasing, glittering line, the effect was mediaeval in its glowing splendour. All had been ready for two days, and the general enthusiasm had seized upon the occasion with an adventurous picturesqueness, in keeping with this strange elevation of a simple British captain to royal estate. This buoyant, clear-faced, stalwart figure had sprung suddenly out of the dark into the garish light of sovereign place, and the imagination of the people had been touched. He was so genial too, so easy-mannered, this d'Avranche of Jersey, whose genealogy had been posted on a hundred walls and carried by a thousand mouths through the principality. As Philip rode past on the left of the exulting Duke, the crowds cheered him wildly. Only on the faces of Comte Carignan Damour and his friends was discontent, and they must perforce be still. Philip himself was outwardly calm, with that desperate quiet which belongs to the most perilous, most adventurous achieving. Words he had used many years ago in Jersey kept ringing in his ears--"'Good-bye, Sir Philip'--I'll be more than that some day." The Assembly being opened, in a breathless silence the Governor-General of the duchy read aloud the licence of the King of England for Philip d'Avranche, an officer in his navy, to assume the honours to be conferred upon him by the Duke and the States of Bercy. Then, by command of the Duke, the President of the States read aloud the new order of succession: "1. To the Hereditary Prince Leopold John and his heirs male; in default of which to "2. The Prince successor, Philip d'Avranche and his heirs male; in default of which to "3. The heir male of the House of Vaufontaine." Afterwards came reading of the deed of gift by which the Duke made over to Prince Philip certain possessions in the province of d'Avranche. To all this the assent of Prince Leopold John had been formally secured. After the Assembly and the chief officers of the duchy should have ratified these documents and the Duke signed them, they were to be enclosed in a box with three locks and deposited with the Sovereign Court at Bercy. Duplicates were also to be sent to London and registered in the records of the College of Arms. Amid great enthusiasm, the States, by unanimous vote, at once ratified the documents. The one notable dissentient was the Intendant, Count Carignan Damour, the devout ally of the French Government. It was he who had sent Fouche word concerning Philip's adoption; it was also he who had at last, through his spies, discovered Detricand's presence in the town, and had taken action thereupon. In the States, however, he had no vote, and wisdom kept him silent, though he was watchful for any chance to delay events against the arrival of the French envoys. They should soon be here, and, during the proceedings in the States, he watched the doors anxiously. Every minute that passed made him more restless, less hopeful. He had a double motive in preventing this new succession. With Philip as adopted son and heir there would be fewer spoils of office; with Philip as duke there would be none at all, for the instinct of distrust and antipathy was mutual. Besides, as a Republican, he looked for his reward from Fouche in good time. Presently it was announced by the President that the signatures to the acts of the States would be set in private. Thereupon, with all the concourse standing, the Duke, surrounded by the law, military, and civil officers of the duchy, girded upon Philip the jewelled sword which had been handed down in the House of d'Avranche from generation to generation. The open function being thus ended, the people were enjoined to proceed at once to the cathedral, where a Te Deum would be sung. The public then retired, leaving the Duke and a few of the highest officials of the duchy to formally sign and seal the deeds. When the outer doors were closed, one unofficial person remained--Comte Detricand de Tournay, of the House of Vaufontaine. Leaning against a pillar, he stood looking calmly at the group surrounding the Duke at the great council-table. Suddenly the Duke turned to a door at the right of the President's chair, and, opening it, bowed courteously to some one beyond. An instant afterwards there entered the Comtesse Chantavoine, with her uncle the Marquis Grandjon-Larisse, an aged and feeble but distinguished figure. They advanced towards the table, the lady on the Duke's arm, and Philip, saluting them gravely, offered the Marquis a chair. At first the Marquis declined it, but the Duke pressed him, and in the subsequent proceedings he of all the number was seated. Detricand apprehended the meaning of the scene. This was the lady whom the Duke had chosen as wife for the new Prince. The Duke had invited the Comtesse to witness the final act which was to make Philip d'Avranche his heir in legal fact as by verbal proclamation; not doubting that the romantic nature of the incident would impress her. He had even hoped that the function might be followed by a formal betrothal in the presence of the officials; and the situation might still have been critical for Philip had it not been for the pronounced reserve of the Comtesse herself. Tall, of gracious and stately carriage, the curious quietness of the face of the Comtesse would have been almost an unbecoming gravity were it not that the eyes, clear, dark, and strong, lightened it. The mouth had a somewhat set sweetness, even as the face was somewhat fixed in its calm. In her bearing, in all her motions, there was a regal quality; yet, too, something of isolation, of withdrawal, in her self-possession and unruffled observation. She seemed, to Detricand, a figure apart, a woman whose friendship would be everlasting, but whose love would be more an affectionate habit than a passion; and in whom devotion would be strong because devotion was the key-note of her nature. The dress of a nun would have turned her into a saint; of a peasant would have made her a Madonna; of a Quaker, would have made her a dreamer and a devote; of a queen, would have made her benign yet unapproachable. It struck him all at once as he looked, that this woman had one quality in absolute kinship with Guida Landresse--honesty of mind and nature; only with this young aristocrat the honesty would be without passion. She had straight- forwardness, a firm if limited intellect, a clear-mindedness belonging somewhat to narrowness of outlook, but a genuine capacity for understanding the right and the wrong of things. Guida, so Detricand thought, might break her heart and live on; this woman would break her heart and die: the one would grow larger through suffering, the other shrink to a numb coldness. So he entertained himself by these flashes of discernment, presently merged in wonderment as to what was in Philip's mind as he stood there, destiny hanging in that drop of ink at the point of the pen in the Duke's fingers! Philip was thinking of the destiny, but more than all else just now he was thinking of the woman before him and the issue to be faced by him regarding her. His thoughts were not so clear nor so discerning as Detricand's. No more than he understood Guida did he understand this clear-eyed, still, self-possessed woman. He thought her cold, unsympathetic, barren of that glow which should set the pulses of a man like himself bounding. It never occurred to him that these still waters ran deep, that to awaken this seemingly glacial nature, to kindle a fire on this altar, would be to secure unto his life's end a steady, enduring flame of devotion. He revolted from her; not alone because he had a wife, but because the Comtesse chilled him, because with her, in any case, he should never be able to play the passionate lover as he had done with Guida; and with Philip not to be the passionate lover was to be no lover at all. One thing only appealed to him: she was the Comtesse Chantavoine, a fitting consort in the eyes of the world for a sovereign duke. He was more than a little carried off his feet by the marvel of the situation. He could think of nothing quite clearly; everything was confused and shifting in his mind. The first words of the Duke were merely an informal greeting to his council and the high officers present. He was about to speak further when some one drew his attention to Detricand's presence. An order was given to challenge the stranger, but Detricand, without waiting for the approach of the officer, advanced towards the table, and, addressing the Duke, said: "The Duc de Bercy will not forbid the presence of his cousin, Detricand de Tournay, at this impressive ceremony?" The Duke, dumfounded, though he preserved an outward calm, could not answer for an instant. Then with a triumphant, vindictive smile which puckered his yellow cheeks like a wild apple, he said: "The Comte de Tournay is welcome to behold an end of the ambitions of the Vaufontaines." He looked towards Philip with an exulting pride. "Monsieur le Comte is quite right," he added, turning to his council-- "he may always claim the privileges of a relative of the Bercys; but the hospitality goes not beyond my house and my presence, and monsieur le comte will understand my meaning." At that moment Detricand caught the eye of Damour the Intendant, and he understood perfectly. This man, the innkeeper had told him, was known to be a Revolutionary, and he felt he was in imminent danger. He came nearer, however, bowing to all present, and, making no reply to the Duke save a simple, "I thank your Highness," took a place near the council-table. The short ceremony of signing the deeds immediately followed. A few formal questions were asked of Philip, to which he briefly replied, and afterwards he made the oath of allegiance to the Duke, with his hand upon the ancient sword of the d'Avranches. These preliminaries ended, the Duke was just stooping to put his pen to the paper for signature, when the Intendant, as much to annoy Philip as still to stay the proceedings against the coming of Fouche's men, said: "It would appear that one question has been omitted in the formalities of this Court." He paused dramatically. He was only aiming a random shot; he would make the most of it. The Duke looked up perturbed, and said sharply: "What is that--what is that, monsieur?" "A form, monsieur le duc, a mere form. Monsieur"--he bowed towards Philip politely--"monsieur is not already married? There is no--" He paused again. For an instant there was absolute stillness. Philip had felt his heart give one great thump of terror: Did the Intendant know anything? Did Detricand know anything. Standing rigid for a moment, his pen poised, the Duke looked sharply at the Intendant and then still more sharply at Philip. The progress of that look had granted Philip an instant's time to recover his composure. He was conscious that the Comtesse Chantavoine had given a little start, and then had become quite still and calm. Now her eyes were intently fixed upon him. He had, however, been too often in physical danger to lose his nerve at this moment. The instant was big with peril; it was the turning point of his life, and he felt it. His eyes dropped towards the spot of ink at the point of the pen the Duke held. It fascinated him, it was destiny. He took a step nearer to the table, and, drawing himself up, looked his princely interlocutor steadily in the eyes. "Of course there is no marriage--no woman?" asked the Duke a little hoarsely, his eyes fastened on Philip's. With steady voice Philip replied: "Of course, monsieur le duc." There was another stillness. Some one sighed heavily. It was the Comtesse Chantavoine. The next instant the Duke stooped, and wrote his signature three times hurriedly upon the deeds. A moment afterwards, Detricand was in the street, making towards "The Golden Crown." As he hurried on he heard the galloping of horses ahead of him. Suddenly some one plucked him by the arm from a doorway. "Quick--within!" said a voice. It was that of the Duke's porter, Frange Pergot. Without hesitation or a word, Detricand did as he was bid, and the door clanged to behind him. "Fouche's men are coming down the street; spies have betrayed you," whispered Pergot. "Follow me. I will hide you till night, and then you must away." Pergot had spoken the truth. But Detricand was safely hidden, and Fouche's men came too late to capture the Vendean chief or to forbid those formal acts which made Philip d'Avranche a prince. Once again at Saumur, a week later, Detricand wrote a long letter to Carterette Mattingley, in Jersey, in which he set forth these strange events at Bercy, and asked certain questions concerning Guida. CHAPTER XXIV Since the day of his secret marriage with Guida, Philip had been carried along in the gale of naval preparation and incidents of war as a leaf is borne onward by a storm--no looking back, to-morrow always the goal. But as a wounded traveller nursing carefully his hurt seeks shelter from the scorching sun and the dank air, and travels by little stages lest he never come at all to friendly hostel, so Guida made her way slowly through the months of winter and of spring. In the past, it had been February to Guida because the yellow Lenten lilies grew on all the sheltered cotils; March because the periwinkle and the lords-and-ladies came; May when the cliffs were a blaze of golden gorse and the perfume thereof made all the land sweet as a honeycomb. Then came the other months, with hawthorn trees and hedges all in blow; the honeysuckle gladdening the doorways, the lilac in bloomy thickets; the ox-eyed daisy of Whitsuntide; the yellow rose of St. Brelade that lies down in the sand and stands up in the hedges; the "mergots" which, like good soldiers, are first in the field and last out of it; the unscented dog-violets, orchises and celandines; the osier beds, the ivy on every barn; the purple thrift in masses on the cliff; the sea-thistle in its glaucous green--"the laughter of the fields whose laugh was gold." And all was summer. Came a time thereafter, when the children of the poor gathered blackberries for preserves and home made wine; when the wild stock flowered in St. Ouen's Bay; when the bracken fern was gathered from every cotil, and dried for apple-storing, for bedding for the cherished cow, for back-rests for the veilles, and seats round the winter fire; when peaches, apricots, and nectarines made the walls sumptuous red and gold; when the wild plum and crab-apple flourished in secluded roadways, and the tamarisk dropped its brown pods upon the earth. And all this was autumn. At last, when the birds of passage swept aloft, snipe and teal and barnacle geese, and the rains began; when the green lizard with its turquoise-blue throat vanished; when the Jersey crapaud was heard croaking no longer in the valleys and the ponds; and the cows were well blanketed--then winter had come again. Such was the association of seasons in Guida's mind until one day of a certain year, when for a few hours a man had called her his wife, and then had sailed away. There was no log that might thereafter record the days and weeks unwinding the coils of an endless chain into that sea whither Philip had gone. Letters she had had, two letters, one in January, one in March. How many times, when a Channel-packet came in, did she go to the doorway and watch for old Mere Rossignol, making the rounds with her han basket, chanting the names of those for whom she had letters; and how many times did she go back to the kitchen, choking down a sob! The first letter from Philip was at once a blessing and a blow; it was a reassurance and it was a misery. It spoke of bread, as it were, yet offered a stone. It eloquently, passionately told of his love; but it also told, with a torturing ease, that the Araminta was commissioned with sealed orders, and he did not know when he should see her nor when he should be able to write again. War had been declared against France, and they might not touch a port nor have chance to send a letter by a homeward vessel for weeks, and maybe months. This was painful, of course, but it was fate, it was his profession, and it could not be helped. Of course--she must understand--he would write constantly, telling her, as through a kind of diary, what he was doing every day, and then when the chance came the big budget should go to her. A pain came to Guida's heart as she read the flowing tale of his buoyant love. Had she been the man and he the woman, she could never have written so smoothly of "fate," and "profession," nor told of this separation with so complaisant a sorrow. With her the words would have been wrenched forth from her heart, scarred into the paper with the bitterness of a spirit tried beyond enduring. With what enthusiasm did Philip, immediately after his heart-breaking news, write of what the war might do for him; what avenues of advancement it might open up, what splendid chances it would offer for success in his career! Did he mean that to comfort her, she asked herself. Did he mean it to divert her from the pain of the separation, to give her something to hope for? She read the letter over and over again--yet no, she could not, though her heart was so willing, find that meaning in it. It was all Philip, Philip full of hope, purpose, prowess, ambition. Did he think--did he think that that could ease the pain, could lighten the dark day settling down on her? Could he imagine that anything might compensate for his absence in the coming months, in this year of all years in her life? His lengthened absence might be inevitable, it might be fate, but could he not see the bitter cruelty of it? He had said that he would be back with her again in two months; and now--ah, did he not know! As the weeks came and went again she felt that indeed he did not know-- or care, maybe. Some natures cling to beliefs long after conviction has been shattered. These are they of the limited imagination, the loyal, the pertinacious, and the affectionate, the single-hearted children of habit; blind where they do not wish to see, stubborn where their inclinations lie, unamenable to reason, wholly held by legitimate obligations. But Guida was not of these. Her brain and imagination were as strong as her affections. Her incurable honesty was the deepest thing in her; she did not know even how to deceive herself. As her experience deepened under the influence of a sorrow which still was joy, and a joy that still was sorrow, her vision became acute and piercing. Her mind was like some kaleidoscope. Pictures of things, little and big, which had happened to her in her life, flashed by her inner vision in furious procession. It was as if, in the photographic machinery of the brain, some shutter had slipped from its place, and a hundred orderless and ungoverned pictures, loosed from natural restraint, rushed by. Five months had gone since Philip had left her: two months since she had received his second letter, months of complexity of feeling; of tremulousness of discovery; of hungry eagerness for news of the war; of sudden little outbursts of temper in her household life--a new thing in her experience; of passionate touches of tenderness towards her grandfather; of occasional biting comments in the conversations between the Sieur and the Chevalier, causing both gentlemen to look at each other in silent amaze; of as marked lapses into listless disregard of any talk going on around her. She had been used often to sit still, doing nothing, in a sort of physical content, as the Sieur and his visitors talked; now her hands were always busy, knitting, sewing, or spinning, the steady gaze upon the work showing that her thoughts were far away. Though the Chevalier and her grandfather vaguely noted these changes, they as vaguely set them down to her growing womanhood. In any case, they held it was not for them to comment upon a woman or upon a woman's ways. And a girl like Guida was an incomprehensible being, with an orbit and a system all her own; whose sayings and doings were as little to be reduced to their understandings as the vagaries of any star in the Milky Way or the currents in St. Michael's Basin. One evening she sat before the fire thinking of Philip. Her grandfather had retired earlier than usual. Biribi lay asleep on the veille. There was no sound save the ticking of the clock on the mantel above her head, the dog's slow breathing, the snapping of the log on the fire, and a soft rush of heat up the chimney. The words of Philip's letters, from which she had extracted every atom of tenderness they held, were always in her ears. At last one phrase kept repeating itself to her like some plaintive refrain, torturing in its mournful suggestion. It was this: "But you see, beloved, though I am absent from you I shall have such splendid chances to get on. There's no limit to what this war may do for me." Suddenly Guida realised how different was her love from Philip's, how different her place in his life from his place in her life. She reasoned with herself, because she knew that a man's life was work in the world, and that work and ambition were in his bones and in his blood, had been carried down to him through centuries of industrious, ambitious generations of men: that men were one race and women were another. A man was bound by the conditions governing the profession by which he earned his bread and butter and played his part in the world, while striving to reach the seats of honour in high places. He must either live by the law, fulfil to the letter his daily duties in the business of life, or drop out of the race; while a woman, in the presence of man's immoderate ambition, with bitterness and tears, must learn to pray, "O Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law." Suddenly the whole thing resolved itself in Guida's mind, and her thinking came to a full stop. She understood now what was the right and what the wrong; and, child as she was in years, woman in thought and experience, yielding to the impulse of the moment, she buried her face in her hands and burst into tears. "O Philip, Philip, Philip," she sobbed aloud, "it was not right of you to marry me; it was wicked of you to leave me!" Then in her mind she carried on the impeachment and reproach. If he had married her openly and left her at once, it would have been hard to bear, but in the circumstances it might have been right. If he had married her secretly and left her at the altar, so keeping the vow he had made her when she promised to become his wife, that might have been pardonable. But to marry her as he did, and then, breaking his solemn pledge, leave her--it was not right in her eyes; and if not right in the eyes of her who loved him, in whose would it be right? To these definitions she had come at last. It is an eventful moment, a crucial ordeal for a woman, when she forces herself to see the naked truth concerning the man she has loved, yet the man who has wronged her. She is born anew in that moment: it may be to love on, to blind herself, and condone and defend, so lowering her own moral tone; or to congeal in heart, become keener in intellect, scornful and bitter with her own sex and merciless towards the other, indifferent to blame and careless of praise, intolerant, judging all the world by her own experience, incredulous of any true thing. Or again she may become stronger, sadder, wiser; condoning nothing, minimising nothing, deceiving herself in nothing, and still never forgiving at least one thing--the destruction of an innocent faith and a noble credulity; seeing clearly the whole wrong; with a strong intelligence measuring perfectly the iniquity; but out of a largeness of nature and by virtue of a high sense of duty, devoting her days to the salvation of a man's honour, to the betterment of one weak or wicked nature. Of these last would have been Guida. "O Philip, Philip, you have been wicked to me!" she sobbed. Her tears fell upon the stone hearth, and the fire dried them. Every teardrop was one girlish feeling and emotion gone, one bright fancy, one tender hope vanished. She was no longer a girl. There were troubles and dangers ahead of her, but she must now face them dry-eyed and alone. In his second letter Philip had told her to announce the marriage, and said that he would write to her grandfather explaining all, and also to the Rev. Lorenzo Dow. She had waited and watched for that letter to her grandfather, but it had not come. As for Mr. Dow, he was a prisoner with the French; and he had never given her the marriage certificate. There was yet another factor in the affair. While the island was agog over Mr. Dow's misfortune, there had been a bold robbery at St. Michael's Rectory of the strong-box containing the communion plate, the parish taxes for the year, and--what was of great moment to at least one person --the parish register of deaths, baptisms, and marriages. Thus it was that now no human being in Jersey could vouch that Guida had been married. Yet these things troubled her little. How easily could Philip set all right! If he would but come back--that at first was her only thought; for what matter a ring, or any proof or proclamation without Philip! It did not occur to her at first that all these things were needed to save her from shame in the eyes of the world. If she had thought of them apprehensively, she would have said to herself, how easy to set all right by simply announcing the marriage! And indeed she would have done so when war was declared and Philip received his new command, but that she had wished the announcement to come from him. Well, that would come in any case when his letter to her grandfather arrived. No doubt it had missed the packet by which hers came, she thought. But another packet and yet another arrived; and still there was no letter from Philip for the Sieur de Mauprat. Winter had come, and spring had gone, and now summer was at hand. Haymaking was beginning, the wild strawberries were reddening among the clover, and in her garden, apples had followed the buds on the trees beneath which Philip had told his fateful tale of love. At last a third letter arrived, but it brought little joy to her heart. It was extravagant in terms of affection, but somehow it fell short of the true thing, for its ardour was that of a mind preoccupied, and underneath all ran a current of inherent selfishness. It delighted in the activity of his life, it was full of hope, of promise of happiness for them both in the future, but it had no solicitude for Guida in the present. It chilled her heart--so warm but a short season ago--that Philip to whom she had once ascribed strength, tenderness, profound thoughtfulness, should concern himself so little in the details of her life. For the most part, his letters seemed those of an ardent lover who knew his duty and did it gladly, but with a self-conscious and flowing eloquence, costing but small strain of feeling. In this letter he was curious to know what the people in Jersey said about their marriage. He had written to Lorenzo Dow and her grandfather, he said, but had heard afterwards that the vessel carrying the letters had been taken by a French privateer; and so they had not arrived in Jersey. But of course she had told her grandfather and all the island of the ceremony performed at St. Michael's. He was sending her fifty pounds, his first contribution to their home; and, the war over, a pretty new home she certainly should have. He would write to her grandfather again, though this day there was no time to do so. Guida realised now that she must announce the marriage at once. But what proofs of it had she? There was the ring Philip had given her, inscribed with their names; but she was sophisticated enough to know that this would not be adequate evidence in the eyes of her Jersey neighbours. The marriage register of St. Michael's, with its record, was stolen, and that proof was gone. Lastly, there were Philip's letters; but no--a thousand times no!--she would not show Philip's letters to any human being; even the thought of it hurt her delicacy, her self-respect. Her heart burned with fresh bitterness to think that there had been a secret marriage. How hard it was at this distance of time to tell the world the tale, and to be forced to prove it by Philip's letters. No, no, in spite of all, she could not do it--not yet. She would still wait the arrival of his letter to her grandfather. If it did not come soon, then she must be brave and tell her story. She went to the Vier Marchi less now. Also fewer folk stood gossiping with her grandfather in the Place du Vier Prison, or by the well at the front door--so far he had not wondered why. To be sure, Maitresse Aimable came oftener; but, since that notable day at Sark, Guida had resolutely avoided reference, however oblique, to Philip and herself. In her dark days the one tenderly watchful eye upon her was that of the egregiously fat old woman called the "Femme de Ballast," whose thick tongue clave to the roof of her mouth, whose outer attractions were so meagre that even her husband's chief sign of affection was to pull her great toe, passing her bed of a morning to light the fire. Carterette Mattingley also came, but another friend who had watched over Guida for years before Philip appeared in the Place du Vier Prison never entered her doorway now. Only once or twice since that day on the Ecrehos, so fateful to them both, had Guida seen Ranulph. He had withdrawn to St. Aubin's Bay, where his trade of ship-building was carried on, and having fitted up a small cottage, lived a secluded life with his father there. Neither of them appeared often in St. Heliers, and they were seldom or never seen in the Vier Marchi. Carterette saw Ranulph little oftener than did Guida, but she knew what he was doing, being anxious to know, and every one's business being every one else's business in Jersey. In the same way Ranulph knew of Guida. What Carterette was doing Ranulph was not concerned to know, and so knew little; and Guida knew and thought little of how Ranulph fared: which was part of the selfishness of love. But one day Carterette received a letter from France which excited her greatly, and sent her off hot-foot to Guida. In the same hour Ranulph heard a piece of hateful gossip which made him fell to the ground the man who told him, and sent him with white face, and sick, yet indignant heart, to the cottage in the Place du Vier Prison. CHAPTER XXV Guida was sitting on the veille reading an old London paper she had bought of the mate of the packet from Southampton. One page contained an account of the execution of Louis XVI; another reported the fight between the English thirty-six gun frigate Araminta and the French Niobe. The engagement had been desperate, the valiant Araminta having been fought, not alone against odds as to her enemy, but against the irresistible perils of a coast upon which the Admiralty charts gave cruelly imperfect information. To the Admiralty we owed the fact, the journal urged, that the Araminta was now at the bottom of the sea, and its young commander confined in a French fortress, his brave and distinguished services lost to the country. Nor had the government yet sought to lessen the injury by arranging a cartel for the release of the unfortunate commander. The Araminta! To Guida the letters of the word seemed to stand out from the paper like shining hieroglyphs on a misty grey curtain. The rest of the page was resolved into a filmy floating substance, no more tangible than the ashy skeleton on which writing still lives when the paper itself has been eaten by flame, and the flame swallowed by the air. Araminta--this was all her eyes saw, that familiar name in the flaring handwriting of the Genius of Life, who had scrawled her destiny in that one word. Slowly the monstrous ciphers faded from the grey hemisphere of space, and she saw again the newspaper in her trembling fingers, the kitchen into which the sunlight streamed from the open window, the dog Biribi basking in the doorway. That living quiet which descends upon a house when the midday meal and work are done came suddenly home to her, in contrast to the turmoil in her mind and being. So that was why Philip had not written to her! While her heart was daily growing more bitter against him, he had been fighting his vessel against great odds, and at last had been shipwrecked and carried off a prisoner. A strange new understanding took possession of her. Her life suddenly widened. She realised all at once how the eyes of the whole world might be fixed upon a single ship, a few cannon, and some scores of men. The general of a great army leading tens of thousands into the clash of battle--that had been always within her comprehension; but this was almost miraculous, this sudden projection of one ship and her commander upon the canvas of fame. Philip had left her, unknown save to a few. With the nations turned to see, he had made a gallant and splendid fight, and now he was a prisoner in a French fortress. This then was why her grandfather had received no letter from him concerning the marriage. Well, now she must speak for herself; she must announce it. Must she show Philip's letters?--No, no, she could not.... Suddenly a new suggestion came to her: there was one remaining proof. Since no banns had been published, Philip must have obtained a license from the Dean of the island, and he would have a record of it. All she had to do now was to get a copy of this record--but no, a license to marry was no proof of marriage; it was but evidence of intention. Still, she would go to the Dean this very moment. It was not right that she should wait longer: indeed, in waiting so long she had already done great wrong to herself--and to Philip perhaps. She rose from the veille with a sense of relief. No more of this secrecy, making her innocence seem guilt; no more painful dreams of punishment for some intangible crime; no starting if she heard a sudden footstep; no more hurried walk through the streets, looking neither to right nor to left; no more inward struggles wearing away her life. To-morrow--to-morrow--no, this very night, her grandfather and one other, even Maitresse Aimable, should know all; and she should sleep quietly-- oh, so quietly to-night! Looking into a mirror on the wall--it had been a gift from her grandfather--she smiled at herself. Why, how foolish of her it had been to feel so much and to imagine terrible things! Her eyes were shining now, and her hair, catching the sunshine from the window, glistened like burnished copper. She turned to see how it shone on the temple and the side of her head. Philip had praised her hair. Her look lingered for a moment placidly on herself-then she started suddenly. A wave of feeling, a shiver, passed through her, her brow gathered, she flushed deeply. Turning away from the mirror, she went and sat down again on the edge of the veille. Her mind had changed. She would go to the Dean's--but not till it was dark. She suddenly thought it strange that the Dean had never said anything about the license. Why, again, perhaps he had. How should she know what gossip was going on in the town! But no, she was quick to feel, and if there had been gossip she would have felt it in the manner of her neighbours. Besides, gossip as to a license to marry was all on the right side. She sighed--she had sighed so often of late--to think what a tangle it all was, of how it would be smoothed out tomorrow, of what-- There was a click of the garden-gate, a footstep on the walk, a half- growl from Biribi, and the face of Carterette Mattingley appeared in the kitchen doorway. Seeing Guida seated on the veille, she came in quickly, her dancing dark eyes heralding great news. "Don't get up, ma couzaine," she said, "please no. Sit just there, and I'll sit beside you. Ah, but I have the most wonderfuls!" Carterette was out of breath. She had hurried here from her home. As she said herself, her two feet weren't in one shoe on the way, and that with her news made her quiver with excitement. At first, bursting with mystery, she could do no more than sit and look in Guida's face. Carterette was quick of instinct in her way, but yet she had not seen any marked change in her friend during the past few months. She had been so busy thinking of her own particular secret that she was not observant of others. At times she met Ranulph, and then she was uplifted, to be at once cast down again; for she saw that his old cheerfulness was gone, that a sombreness had settled on him. She flattered herself, however, that she could lighten his gravity if she had the right and the good opportunity; the more so that he no longer visited the cottage in the Place du Vier Prison. This drew her closer to Guida also, for, in truth, Carterette had no loftiness of nature. Like most people, she was selfish enough to hold a person a little dearer for not standing in her own especial light. Long ago she had shrewdly guessed that Guida's interest lay elsewhere than with Ranulph, and a few months back she had fastened upon Philip as the object of her favour. That seemed no weighty matter, for many sailors had made love to Carterette in her time, and knowing it was here to-day and away to-morrow with them, her heart had remained untouched. Why then should she think Guida would take the officer seriously where she herself held the sailor lightly? But at the same time she felt sure that what concerned Philip must interest Guida, she herself always cared to hear the fate of an old admirer, and this was what had brought her to the cottage to-day. "Guess who's wrote me a letter?" she asked of Guida, who had taken up some sewing, and was now industriously regarding the stitches. At Carterette's question, Guida looked up and said with a smile, "Some one you like, I see." Carterette laughed gaily. "Ba su, I should think I did--in a way. But what's his name? Come, guess, Ma'm'selle Dignity." "Eh ben, the fairy godmother," answered Guida, trying not to show an interest she felt all too keenly; for nowadays it seemed to her that all news should be about Philip. Besides, she was gaining time and preparing herself for--she knew not what. "O my grief!" responded the brown-eyed elf, kicking off a red slipper, and thrusting her foot into it again, "never a fairy godmother had I, unless it's old Manon Moignard the witch: "'Sas, son, bileton, My grand'methe a-fishing has gone: She'll gather the fins to scrape my jowl, And ride back home on a barnyard fowl!' "Nannin, ma'm'selle, 'tis plain to be seen you can't guess what a cornfield grows besides red poppies." Laughing in sheer delight at the mystery she was making, she broke off again into a whimsical nursery rhyme: "'Coquelicot, j'ai mal au de Coquelicot, qu'est qui l'a fait? Coquelicot, ch'tai mon valet.'" She kicked off the red slipper again. Flying half-way across the room, it alighted on the table, and a little mud from the heel dropped on the clean scoured surface. With a little moue of mockery, she got slowly up and tiptoed across the floor, like a child afraid of being scolded. Gathering the dust carefully, and looking demurely askance at Guida the while, she tiptoed over again to the fireplace and threw it into the chimney. "Naughty Carterette," she said at herself with admiring reproach, as she looked in Guida's mirror, and added, glancing with farcical approval round the room, "and it all shines like peacock's feather, too!" Guida longed to snatch the letter from Carterette's hand and read it, but she only said calmly, though the words fluttered in her throat: "You're as gay as a chaffinch, Garcon Carterette." Garcon Carterette! Instantly Carterette sobered down. No one save Ranulph ever called her Garcon Carterette. Guida used Ranulph's name for Carterette, knowing that it would change the madcap's mood. Carterette, to hide a sudden flush, stooped and slowly put on her slipper. Then she came back to the veille, and sat down again beside Guida, saying as she did so: "Yes, I'm gay as a chaffinch--me." She unfolded the letter slowly, and Guida stopped sewing, but mechanically began to prick the linen lying on her knee with the point of the needle. "Well," said Carterette deliberately, "this letter's from a pend'loque of a fellow--at least, we used to call him that--though if you come to think, he was always polite as mended porringer. Often he hadn't two sous to rub against each other. And--and not enough buttons for his clothes." Guida smiled. She guessed whom Carterette meant. "Has Monsieur Detricand more buttons now?" she asked with a little whimsical lift of the eyebrows. "Ah bidemme, yes, and gold too, all over him--like that!" She made a quick sweeping gesture which would seem to make Detricand a very spangle of buttons. "Come, what do you think--he's a general now. "A general!" Instantly Guida thought of Philip and a kind of envy shot into her heart that this idler Detricand should mount so high in a few months--a man whose past had held nothing to warrant such success. "A general--where?" she asked. "In the Vendee army, fighting for the new King of France--you know the rebels cut off the last King's head." At another time Guida's heart would have throbbed with elation, for the romance of that Vendee union of aristocrat and peasant fired her imagination; but she only said in the tongue of the people: "Ma fuifre, yes, I know!" Carterette was delighted to thus dole out her news, and get due reward of astonishment. "And he's another name," she added. "At least it's not another, he always had it, but he didn't call himself by it. Pardi, he's more than the Chevalier; he's the Comte Detricand de Tournay--ah, then, believe me if you choose, there it is!" She pointed to the signature of the letter, and with a gush of eloquence explained how it all was about Detricand the vaurien and Detricand the Comte de Tournay. "Good riddance to Monsieur Savary dit Detricand, and good welcome to the Comte de Tournay," answered Guida, trying hard to humour Carterette, that she should sooner hear the news yet withheld. "And what follows after?" Carterette was half sorry that her great moment had come. She wished she could have linked out the suspense longer. But she let herself be comforted by the anticipated effect of her "wonderfuls." "I'll tell you what comes after--ah, but see then what a news I have for you! You know that Monsieur d'Avranche--well, what do you think has come to him?" Guida felt as if a monstrous hand had her heart in its grasp, crushing it. Presentiment seized her. Carterette was busy running over the pages of the letter, and did not notice her colourless face. She had no thought that Guida had any vital interest in Philip, and ruthlessly, though unconsciously, she began to torture the young wife as few are tortured in this world. She read aloud Detricand's description of his visit to the Castle of Bercy, and of the meeting with Philip. "'See what comes of a name!'" wrote Detricand. "'Here was a poor prisoner whose ancestor, hundreds of years ago, may or mayn't have been a relative of the d'Avranches of Clermont, when a disappointed duke, with an eye open for heirs, takes a fancy to the good-looking face of the poor prisoner, and voila! you have him whisked off to a palace, fed on milk and honey, and adopted into the family. Then a pedigree is nicely grown on a summer day, and this fine young Jersey adventurer is found to be a green branch from the old root; and there's a great blare of trumpets, and the States of the duchy are called together to make this English officer a prince--and that's the Thousand and One Nights in Arabia, Ma'm'selle Carterette.'" Guida was sitting rigid and still. In the slight pause Carterette made, a hundred confused torturing thoughts swam through her mind and presently floated into the succeeding sentences of the letter: "'As for me, I'm like Rabot's mare, I haven't time to laugh at my own foolishness. I'm either up to my knees in grass or clay fighting Revolutionists, or I'm riding hard day and night till I'm round-backed like a wood-louse, to make up for all the good time I so badly lost in your little island. You wouldn't have expected that, my friend with the tongue that stings, would you? But then, Ma'm'selle of the red slippers, one is never butted save by a dishorned cow--as your father used to say."' Carterette paused again, saying in an aside: "That is M'sieu' all over, all so gay. But who knows? For he says, too, that the other day a- fighting Fontenay, five thousand of his men come across a cavalry as they run to take the guns that eat them up like cabbages, and they drop on their knees, and he drops with them, and they all pray to God to help them, while the cannon balls whiz-whiz over their heads. And God did hear them, for they fell down flat when the guns was fired and the cannon balls never touched 'em." During this interlude, Guida, sick with anxiety, could scarcely sit still. She began sewing again, though her fingers trembled so she could hardly make a stitch. But Carterette, the little egoist, did not notice her agitation; her own flurry dimmed her sight. She began reading again. The first few words had little or no significance for Guida, but presently she was held as by the fascination of a serpent. "'And Ma'm'selle Carterette, what do you think this young captain, now Prince Philip d'Avranche, heir to the title of Bercy--what do you think he is next to do? Even to marry a countess of great family the old Duke has chosen for him; so that the name of d'Avranche may not die out in the land. And that is the way that love begins. . . . Wherefore, I want you to write and tell me--'" What he wanted Carterette to tell him Guida never heard, though it concerned herself, for she gave a moan like a dumb animal in agony, and sat rigid and blanched, the needle she had been using embedded in her finger to the bone, but not a motion, not a sign of animation in face or figure. All at once, some conception of the truth burst upon the affrighted Carterette. The real truth she imagined as little as had Detricand. But now when she saw the blanched face, the filmy eyes and stark look, the finger pierced by the needle, she knew that a human heart had been pierced too, with a pain worse than death--truly it was worse, for she had seen death, and she had never seen anything like this in its dire misery and horror. She caught the needle quickly from the finger, wrapped her kerchief round the wound, threw away the sewing from Guida's lap, and running an arm about her waist, made as if to lay a hot cheek against the cold brow of her friend. Suddenly, however, with a new and painful knowledge piercing her intelligence, and a face as white and scared as Guida's own, she ran to the dresser, caught up a hanap, and brought some water. Guida still sat as though life had fled, and the body, arrested in its activity, would presently collapse. Carterette, with all her seeming lightsomeness, had sense and self- possession. She tenderly put the water to Guida's lips, with comforting words, though her own brain was in a whirl, and dark forebodings flashed through her mind. "Ah, man gui, man pethe!" she said in the homely patois. "There, drink, drink, dear, dear couzaine." Guida's lips opened, and she drank slowly, putting her hand to her heart with a gesture of pain. Carterette put down the hanap and caught her hands. "Come, come, these cold hands-- pergui, but we must stop that! They are so cold." She rubbed them hard. "The poor child of heaven--what has come over you? Speak to me . . . ah, but see, everything will come all right by and by! God is good. Nothing's as bad as what it seems. There was never a grey wind but there's a greyer. Nanningia, take it not so to heart, my couzaine; thou shalt have love enough in the world.... Ah, grand doux d'la vie, but I could kill him!" she added under her breath, and she rubbed Guida's hands still, and looked frankly, generously into her eyes. Yet, try as she would in that supreme moment, Carterette could not feel all she once felt concerning Guida. There is something humiliating in even an undeserved injury, something which, to the human eye, lessens the worthiness of its victim. To this hour Carterette had looked upon her friend as a being far above her own companionship. All in a moment, in this new office of comforter the relative status was altered. The plane on which Guida had moved was lowered. Pity, while it deepened Carterette's tenderness, lessened the gap between them. Perhaps something of this passed through Guida's mind, and the deep pride and courage of her nature came to her assistance. She withdrew her hands and mechanically smoothed back her hair, then, as Carterette sat watching her, folded up the sewing and put it in the work-basket hanging on the wall. There was something unnatural in her governance of herself now. She seemed as if doing things in a dream, but she did them accurately and with apparent purpose. She looked at the clock, then went to the fire to light it, for it was almost time to get her grandfather's tea. She did not seem conscious of the presence of Carterette, who still sat on the veille, not knowing quite what to do. At last, as the flame flashed up in the chimney, she came over to her friend, and said: "Carterette, I am going to the Dean's. Will you run and ask Maitresse Aimable to come here to me soon?" Her voice had the steadiness of despair--that steadiness coming to those upon whose nerves has fallen a great numbness, upon whose sensibilities has settled a cloud that stills them as the thick mist stills the ripples on the waters of a fen. All the glamour of Guida's youth had dropped away. She had deemed life good, and behold, it was not good; she had thought her dayspring was on high, and happiness had burnt into darkness like quick-consuming flax. But all was strangely quiet in her heart and mind. Nothing more that she feared could happen to her; the worst had fallen, and now there came down on her the impermeable calm of the doomed. Carterette was awed by her face, and saying that she would go at once to Maitresse Aimable, she started towards the door, but as quickly stopped and came back to Guida. With none of the impulse that usually marked her actions, she put her arms round Guida's neck and kissed her, saying with a subdued intensity: "I'd go through fire and water for you. I want to help you every way I can--me." Guida did not say a word, but she kissed the hot cheek of the smuggler- pirate's daughter, as in dying one might kiss the face of a friend seen with filmy eyes. When she had gone Guida drew herself up with a shiver. She was conscious that new senses and instincts were born in her, or were now first awakened to life. They were not yet under control, but she felt them, and in so far as she had power to think, she used them. Leaving the house and stepping into the Place du Vier Prison, she walked quietly and steadily up the Rue d'Driere. She did not notice that people she met glanced at her curiously, and turned to look after her as she hurried on. CHAPTER XXVI It had been a hot, oppressive day, but when, a half-hour later, Guida hastened back from a fruitless visit to the house of the Dean, who was absent in England, a vast black cloud had drawn up from the south-east, dropping a curtain of darkness upon the town. As she neared the doorway of the cottage, a few heavy drops began to fall, and, in spite of her bitter trouble, she quickened her footsteps, fearing that her grandfather had come back, to find the house empty and no light or supper ready. M. de Mauprat had preceded her by not more than five minutes. His footsteps across the Place du Vier Prison had been unsteady, his head bowed, though more than once he raised it with a sort of effort, as it were in indignation or defiance. He muttered to himself as he opened the door, and he paused in the hall-way as though hesitating to go forward. After a moment he made a piteous gesture of his hand towards the kitchen, and whispered to himself in a kind of reassurance. Then he entered the room and stood still. All was dark save for the glimmer of the fire. "Guida! Guida!" he said in a shaking, muffled voice. There was no answer. He put by his hat and stick in the corner, and felt his way to the great chair-he seemed to have lost his sight. Finding the familiar, worn arm of the chair, he seated himself with a heavy sigh. His lips moved, and he shook his head now and then, as though in protest against some unspoken thought. Presently he brought his clinched hand down heavily on the table, and said aloud: "They lie--they lie! The Connetable lies! Their tongues shall be cut out. . . . Ah, my little, little child! . . . The Connetable dared--he dared--to tell me this evil gossip--of the little one--of my Guida!" He laughed contemptuously, but it was a crackling, dry laugh, painful in its cheerlessness. He drew his snuff-box from his pocket, opened it, and slowly taking a pinch, raised it towards his nose, but the hand paused half-way, as though a new thought arrested it. In the pause there came the sound of the front door opening, and then footsteps in the hall. The pinch of snuff fell from the fingers of the old man on to the white stuff of his short-clothes, but as Guida entered the room and stood still a moment, he did not stir in his seat. The thundercloud had come still lower and the room was dark, the coals in the fireplace being now covered with grey ashes. "Grandpethe! Grandpethe!" Guida said. He did not answer. His heart was fluttering, his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, dry and thick. Now he should know the truth, now he should be sure that they had lied about his little Guida, those slanderers of the Vier Marchi. Yet, too, he had a strange, depressing fear, at variance with his loving faith and belief that in Guida there was no wrong: such belief as has the strong swimmer that he can reach the shore through wave and tide; yet also with strange foreboding, prelude to the cramp that makes powerless, defying youth, strength, and skill. He could not have spoken if it had been to save his own life--or hers. Getting no answer to her words, Guida went first to the hearth and stirred the fire, the old man sitting rigid in his chair and regarding her with fixed, watchful eyes. Then she found two candles and lighted them, placing them on the mantel, and turning to the crasset hanging by its osier rings from a beam, slowly lighted it. Turning round, she was full in the light of the candles and the shooting flames of the fire. De Mauprat's eyes had followed her every motion, unconscious of his presence as she was. This--this was not the Guida he had known! This was not his grandchild, this woman with the pale, cold face, and dark, unhappy eyes; this was not the laughing girl who but yesterday was a babe at his knee. This was not-- The truth, which had yet been before his blinded eyes how long! burst upon him. The shock of it snapped the filmy thread of being. As the escaping soul found its wings, spread them, and rose from that dun morass called Life, the Sieur de Mauprat, giving a long, deep sigh, fell back in his great arm-chair dead, and the silver snuff-box rattled to the floor. Guida turned round with a sharp cry. Running to him, she lifted up the head that lay over on his shoulder. She felt his pulse, she called to him. Opening his waistcoat, she put her ear to his heart; but it was still--still. A mist, a blackness, came over her own eyes, and without a cry or a word, she slid to the floor unconscious, as the black thunderstorm broke upon the Place du Vier Prison. The rain was like a curtain let down between the prying, clattering world without and the strange peace within: the old man in his perfect sleep; the young, misused wife in that passing oblivion borrowed from death and as tender and compassionate while it lasts. As though with merciful indulgence, Fate permitted no one to enter upon the dark scene save a woman in whom was a deep motherhood which had never nourished a child, and to whom this silence and this sorrow gave no terrors. Silence was her constant companion, and for sorrow she had been granted the touch that assuages the sharpness of pain and the love called neighbourly kindness. Maitresse Aimable came. Unto her it was given to minister here. As the night went by, and the offices had been done for the dead, she took her place by the bedside of the young wife, who lay staring into space, tearless and still, the life consuming away within her. In the front room of the cottage, his head buried in his hands, Ranulph Delagarde sat watching beside the body of the Sieur de Mauprat. CHAPTER XXVII In the Rue d'Driere, the undertaker and his head apprentice were right merry. But why should they not be? People had to die, quoth the undertaker, and when dead they must be buried. Burying was a trade, and wherefore should not one--discreetly--be cheerful at one's trade? In undertaking there were many miles to trudge with coffins in a week, and the fixed, sad, sympathetic look long custom had stereotyped was wearisome to the face as a cast of plaster-of-paris. Moreover, the undertaker was master of ceremonies at the house of bereavement as well. He not only arranged the funeral, he sent out the invitations to the "friends of deceased, who are requested to return to the house of the mourners after the obsequies for refreshment." All the preparations for this feast were made by the undertaker--Master of Burials he chose to be called. Once, after a busy six months, in which a fever had carried off many a Jersiais, the Master of Burials had given a picnic to his apprentices, workmen, and their families. At this buoyant function he had raised his glass and with playful plaintiveness proposed: "The day we celebrate!" He was in a no less blithesome mood this day. The head apprentice was reading aloud the accounts for the burials of the month, while the master checked off the items, nodding approval, commenting, correcting or condemning with strange expletives. "Don't gabble, gabble next one slowlee!" said the Master of Burials, as the second account was laid aside, duly approved. "Eh ben, now let's hear the next--who is it?" "That Josue Anquetil," answered the apprentice. The Master of Burials rubbed his hands together with a creepy sort of glee. "Ah, that was a clever piece of work! Too little of a length and a width for the box, but let us be thankful--it might have been too short, and it wasn't." "No danger of that, pardingue!" broke in the apprentice. "The first it belonged to was a foot longer than Josue--he." "But I made the most of Josue," continued the Master. "The mouth was crooked, but he was clean, clean--I shaved him just in time. And he had good hair for combing to a peaceful look, and he was light to carry--O my good! Go on, what has Josue the centenier to say for himself?" With a drawling dull indifference, the lank, hatchet-faced servitor of the master servitor of the grave read off the items: The Relict of Josue Anquetil, Centenier, in account with Etienne Mahye, Master of Burials. Item: Livres. Sols. Farth. Paid to Gentlemen of Vingtaine, who carried him to his grave .................. 4 4 0 Ditto to me, Etienne Mahye, for proper gloves of silk and cotton ................. 1 0 0 Ditto to me, E. M., for laying of him out and all that appertains ............... 0 7 0 Ditto to me, E. M., for coffin ............ 4 0 0 Ditto to me, E. M., for divers ............ 0 4 0 The Master of Burials interrupted. "Bat'dlagoule, you've forgot blacking for coffin!" The apprentice made the correction without deigning reply, and then went on Livres. Sols. Farth. Ditto to me, E. M., for black for blacking coffin .................................... 0 3 0 Ditto to me, E. M., paid out for supper after obs'quies ........................... 3 2 0 Ditto to me, E. M., paid out for wine (3 pots and 1 pt. at a shilling) for ditto ..................................... 2 5 6 Ditto to me, E. M., paid out for oil and candle .................................... 0 7 0 Ditto to me, E. M., given to the poor, as fitting station of deceased ............... 4 0 0 The apprentice stopped. "That's all," he said. There was a furious leer on the face of the Master of Burials. So, after all his care, apprentices would never learn to make mistakes on his side. "O my grief, always on the side of the corpse, that can thank nobody for naught!" was his snarling comment. "What about those turnips from Denise Gareau, numskull?" he grunted, in a voice between a sneer and a snort. The apprentice was unmoved. He sniffed, rubbed his nose with a forefinger, laboriously wrote for a moment, and then added: Ditto to Madame Denise Gareau for turnips for supper after obs'quies ...................... 10 sols "Saperlote, leave out the Madame, calf-lugs--, you!" The apprentice did not move a finger. Obstinacy sat enthroned on him. In a rage, the Master made a snatch at a metal flower-wreath to throw at him. "Shan't! She's my aunt. I knows my duties to my aunt--me," said the apprentice stolidly. The Master burst out in a laugh of scorn. "Gaderabotin, here's family pride for you! I'll go stick dandelines in my old sow's ear--respe d'la compagnie." The apprentice was still calm. "If you want to flourish yourself, don't mind me," said he, and picking up the next account, he began reading: Mademoiselle Landresse, in the matter of the Burial of the Sieur de Mauprat, to Etienne Mahye, &c. Item-- The first words read by the apprentice had stilled the breaking storm of the Master's anger. It dissolved in a fragrant dew of proud reminiscence, profit, and scandal. He himself had no open prejudices. He was an official of the public--or so he counted himself--and he very shrewdly knew his duty in that walk of life to which it had pleased Heaven to call him. The greater the notoriety of the death, the more in evidence was the Master and all his belongings. Death with honour was an advantage to him; death with disaster a boon; death with scandal was a godsend. It brought tears of gratitude to his eyes when the death and the scandal were in high places. These were the only real tears he ever shed. His heart was in his head, and the head thought solely of Etienne Mahye. Though he wore an air of sorrow and sympathy in public, he had no more feeling than a hangman. His sympathy seemed to say to the living, "I wonder how soon you'll come into my hands," and to the dead, "What a pity you can only die once--and second-hand coffins so hard to get!" Item: paid to me, Etienne Mahye, droned the voice of the apprentice, for rosewood coffin-- "O my good," interrupted the Master of Burials with a barren chuckle, and rubbing his hands with glee, "O my good, that was a day in a lifetime! I've done fine work in my time, but upon that day--not a cloud above, no dust beneath, a flowing tide, and a calm sea. The Royal Court, too, caught on a sudden marching in their robes, turns to and joins the cortegee, and the little birds a-tweeting-tweeting, and two parsons at the grave. Pardingue, the Lord was--with me that day, and--" The apprentice laughed--a dry, mirthless laugh of disbelief and ridicule. "Ba su, master, the Lord was watching you. There was two silver bits inside that coffin, on Sieur's eyes." "Bigre!" The Master was pale with rage. His lips drew back, disclosing long dark teeth and sickly gums, in a grimace of fury. He reached out to seize a hammer lying at his hand, but the apprentice said quickly: "Sapri--that's the cholera hammer!" The Master of Burials dropped the hammer as though it were at white heat, and eyed it with scared scrutiny. This hammer had been used in nailing down the coffins of six cholera patients who had died in one house at Rozel Bay a year before. The Master would not himself go near the place, so this apprentice had gone, on a promise from the Royal Court that he should have for himself--this he demanded as reward--free lodging in two small upper rooms of the Cohue Royale, just under the bell which said to the world, "Chicane--chicane! Chicane--chicane!" This he asked, and this he got, and he alone of all Jersey went out to bury three people who had died of cholera; and then to watch three others die, to bury them scarce cold, and come back, with a leer of satisfaction, to claim his price. At first people were inclined to make a hero of him, but that only made him grin the more, and at last the island reluctantly decided that he had done the work solely for fee and reward. The hammer used in nailing the coffins, he had carried through the town like an emblem of terror and death, and henceforth he only, in the shop of the Master, touched it. "It won't hurt you if you leave it alone," said the apprentice grimly to the Master of Burials. "But, if you go bothering, I'll put it in your bed, and it'll do after to nail down your coffin." Then he went on reading with a malicious calmness, as though the matter were the dullest trifle: Item: one dozen pairs of gloves for mourners. "Par made, that's one way of putting it!" commented the apprentice, "for what mourners was there but Ma'm'selle herself, and she quiet as a mice, and not a teardrop, and all the island necks end to end for look at her, and you, master, whispering to her: 'The Lord is the Giver and Taker,' and the Femme de Ballast t'other side, saying 'My dee-ar, my dee-ar, bear thee up, bear thee up--thee.'" "And she looking so steady in front of her, as if never was shame about her--and her there soon to be; and no ring of gold upon her hand, and all the world staring!" broke in the Master, who, having edged away from the cholera hammer, was launched upon a theme that stirred his very soul. "All the world staring, and good reason," he added. "And she scarce winking, eh?" said the apprentice. "True that--her eyes didn't feel the cold," said the Master of Burials with a leer, for to his sight as to that of others, only as boldness had been Guida's bitter courage, the blank, despairing gaze, coming from eyes that turn their agony inward. The apprentice took up the account again, and prepared to read it. The Master, however, had been roused to a genial theme. "Poor fallen child of Nature!" said he. "For what is birth or what is looks of virtue like a summer flower! It is to be brought down by hand of man." He was warmed to his text. Habit had long made him so much hypocrite, that he was sentimentalist and hard materialist in one. "Some pend'loque has brought her beauty to this pass, but she must suffer--and also his time will come, the sulphur, the torment, the worm that dieth not--and no Abraham for parched tongue--misery me! They that meet in sin here shall meet hereafter in burning fiery furnace." The cackle of the apprentice rose above the whining voice. "Murder, too --don't forget the murder, master. The Connetable told the old Sieur de Mauprat what people were blabbing, and in half-hour dead he is--he." "Et ben, the Sieur's blood it is upon their heads," continued the Master of Burials; "it will rise up from the ground--" The apprentice interrupted. "A good thing if the Sieur himself doesn't rise, for you'd get naught for coffin or obs'quies. It was you tells the Connetable what folks babbled, and the Connetable tells the Sieur, and the Sieur it kills him dead. So if he rised, he'd not pay you for murdering him--no, bidemme! And 'tis a gobbly mouthful--this," he added, holding up the bill. The undertaker's lips smacked softly, as though in truth he were waiting for the mouthful. Rubbing his hands, and drawing his lean leg up till it touched his nose, he looked over it with avid eyes, and said: "How much-- don't read the items, but come to total debit--how much she pays me?" Ma'm'selle Landresse, debtor in all for one hundred and twenty livres, eleven sols and two farthings. Shan't you make it one hundred and twenty-one livres?" added the apprentice. "God forbid, the odd sols and farthings are mine--no more!" returned the Master of Burials. "Also they look exact; but the courage it needs to be honest! O my grief, if--" "'Sh!" said the apprentice, pointing, and the Master of Burials, turning, saw Guida pass the window. With a hungry instinct for the morbid they stole to the doorway and looked down the Rue d'Driere after her. The Master was sympathetic, for had he not in his fingers at that moment a bill for a hundred and twenty livres odd? The way the apprentice craned his neck, and tightened the forehead over his large, protuberant eyes, showed his intense curiosity, but the face was implacable. It was like that of some strong fate, superior to all influences of sorrow, shame, or death. Presently he laughed--a crackling cackle like new-lighted kindling wood; nothing could have been more inhuman in sound. What in particular aroused this arid mirth probably he himself did not know. Maybe it was a native cruelty which had a sort of sardonic pleasure in the miseries of the world. Or was it only the perception, sometimes given to the dullest mind, of the futility of goodness, the futility of all? This perhaps, since the apprentice shared with Dormy Jamais his rooms at the top of the Cohue Royale; and there must have been some natural bond of kindness between the blank, sardonic undertaker's apprentice and the poor beganne, who now officially rang the bell for the meetings of the Royal Court. The dry cackle of the apprentice as he looked after Guida roused a mockery of indignation in the Master. "Sacre matin, a back-hander on the jaw'd do you good, slubberdegullion--you! Ah, get go scrub the coffin blacking from your jowl!" he rasped out with furious contempt. The apprentice seemed not to hear, but kept on looking after Guida, a pitiless leer on his face. "Dame, lucky for her the Sieur died before he had chance to change his will. She'd have got ni fiche ni bran from him." "Support d'en haut, if you don't stop that I'll give you a coffin before your time, keg of nails--you. Sorrow and prayer at the throne of grace that she may have a contrite heart"--he clutched the funeral bill tighter in his fingers--"is what we must feel for her. The day the Sieur died and it all came out, I wept. Bedtime come I had to sop my eyes with elder-water. The day o' the burial mine eyes were so sore a-draining I had to put a rotten sweet apple on 'em over-night--me." "Ah bah, she doesn't need rosemary wash for her hair!" said the apprentice admiringly, looking down the street after Guida as she turned into the Rue d'Egypte. Perhaps it was a momentary sympathy for beauty in distress which made the Master say, as he backed from the doorway with stealthy step: "Gatd'en'ale, 'tis well she has enough to live on, and to provide for what's to come!" But if it was a note of humanity in the voice it passed quickly, for presently, as he examined the bill for the funeral of the Sieur de Mauprat, he said shrilly: "Achocre, you've left out the extra satin for his pillow--you." "There wasn't any extra satin," drawled the apprentice. With a snarl the Master of Burials seized a pen and wrote in the account: Item: To extra satin for pillow, three livres. CHAPTER XXVIII Guida's once blithe, rose-coloured face was pale as ivory, the mouth had a look of deep sadness, and the step was slow; but the eye was clear and steady, and her hair, brushed under the black crape of the bonnet as smoothly as its nature would admit, gave to the broad brow a setting of rare attraction and sombre nobility. It was not a face that knew inward shame, but it carried a look that showed knowledge of life's cruelties and a bitter sensitiveness to pain. Above all else it was fearless, and it had no touch of the consciousness or the consequences of sin; it was purity itself. It alone should have proclaimed abroad her innocence, though she said no word in testimony. To most people, however, her dauntless sincerity only added to her crime and to the scandalous mystery. Yet her manner awed some, while her silence held most back. The few who came to offer sympathy, with curiousness in their eyes and as much inhumanity as pity in their hearts, were turned back gently but firmly, more than once with proud resentment. So it chanced that soon only Maitresse Aimable came--she who asked no questions, desired no secrets--and Dormy Jamais. Dormy had of late haunted the precincts of the Place du Vier Prison, and was the only person besides Maitresse Aimable whom Guida welcomed. His tireless feet went clac-clac past her doorway, or halted by it, or entered in when it pleased him. He was more a watch-dog than Biribi; he fetched and carried; he was silent and sleepless--always sleepless. It was as if some past misfortune had opened his eyes to the awful bitterness of life, and they had never closed again. The Chevalier had not been with her, for on the afternoon of the very day her grandfather died, he had gone a secret voyage to St. Malo, to meet the old solicitor of his family. He knew nothing of his friend's death or of Guida's trouble. As for Carterette, Guida would not let her come --for her own sake. Nor did Maitre Ranulph visit her after the funeral of the Sieur de Mauprat. The horror of the thing had struck him dumb, and his mind was one confused mass of conflicting thoughts. There--there were the terrifying facts before him; yet, with an obstinacy peculiar to him, he still went on believing in her goodness and in her truth. Of the man who had injured her he had no doubt, and his course was clear, in the hour when he and Philip d'Avranche should meet. Meanwhile, from a spirit of delicacy, avoiding the Place du Vier Prison, he visited Maitresse Aimable, and from day to day learned all that happened to Guida. As of old, without her knowledge, he did many things for her through the same Maitresse Aimable. And it quickly came to be known in the island that any one who spoke ill of Guida in his presence did so at no little risk. At first there had been those who marked him as the wrongdoer, but somehow that did not suit with the case, for it was clear he loved Guida now as he had always done; and this the world knew, as it had known that he would have married her all too gladly. Presently Detricand and Philip were the only names mentioned, but at last, as by common consent, Philip was settled upon, for such evidence as there was pointed that way. The gossips set about to recall all that had happened when Philip was in Jersey last. Here one came forward with a tittle of truth, and there another with tattle of falsehood, and at last as wild a story was fabricated as might be heard in a long day. But in bitterness Guida kept her own counsel. This day when she passed the undertaker's shop she had gone to visit the grave of her grandfather. He had died without knowing the truth, and her heart was hardened against him who had brought misery upon her. Reaching the cottage in the Place du Vier Prison now, she took from a drawer the letter Philip had written her on the day he first met the Comtesse Chantavoine. She had received it a week ago. She read it through slowly, shuddering a little once or twice. When she had finished, she drew paper to her and began a reply. The first crisis of her life was passed. She had met the shock of utter disillusion; her own perfect honesty now fathomed the black dishonesty of the man she had loved. Death had come with sorrow and unmerited shame. But an innate greatness, a deep courage supported her. Out of her wrongs and miseries now she made a path for her future, and in that path Philip's foot should never be set. She had thought and thought, and had come to her decision. In one month she had grown years older in mind. Sorrow gave her knowledge, it threw her back on her native strength and goodness. Rising above mere personal wrongs she grew to a larger sense of womanhood, to a true understanding of her position and its needs. She loved no longer, but Philip was her husband by the law, and even as she had told him her whole mind and heart in the days of their courtship and marriage, she would tell him her whole mind and heart now. Once more, to satisfy the bond, to give full reasons for what she was about to do, she would open her soul to her husband, and then no more! In all she wrote she kept but two things back, her grandfather's death--and one other. These matters belonged to herself alone. No, Philip d'Avranche, [she wrote], your message came too late. All that you might have said and done should have been said and done long ago, in that past which I believe in no more. I will not ask you why you acted as you did towards me. Words can alter nothing now. Once I thought you true, and this letter you send would have me still believe so. Do you then think so ill of my intelligence? In the light of the past it may be you have reason, for you know that I once believed in you! Think of it--believed in you! How bad a man are you! In spite of all your promises; in spite of the surrender of honest heart and life to you; in spite of truth and every call of honour, you denied me--dared to deny me, at the very time you wrote this letter. For the hopes and honours of this world, you set aside, first by secrecy, and then by falsehood, the helpless girl to whom you once swore undying love. You, who knew the open book of her heart, you threw it in the dust. "Of course there is no wife?" the Duc de Bercy said to you before the States of Bercy. "Of course," you answered. You told your lie without pity. Were you blind that you did not see the consequences? Or did you not feel the horror of your falsehood?--to play shuttlecock with a woman's life, with the soul of your wife; for that is what your conduct means. Did you not realise it, or were you so wicked that you did not care? For I know that before you wrote me this letter, and afterwards when you had been made prince, and heir to the duchy, the Comtesse Chantavoine was openly named by the Duc de Bercy for your wife. Now read the truth. I understand all now. I am no longer the thoughtless, believing girl whom you drew from her simple life to give her so cruel a fate. Yesterday I was a child, to-day----Oh, above all else, do you think I can ever forgive you for having killed the faith, the joy of life that was in me! You have spoiled for me for ever my rightful share of the joyous and the good. My heart is sixty though my body is not twenty. How dared you rob me of all that was my birthright, of all that was my life, and give me nothing--nothing in return! Do you remember how I begged you not to make me marry you; but you urged me, and because I loved you and trusted you, I did? how I entreated you not to make me marry you secretly, but you insisted, and loving you, I did? how you promised you would leave me at the altar and not see me till you came again to claim me openly for your wife, and you broke that sacred promise? Do you remember--my husband! Do you remember that night in the garden when the wind came moaning up from the sea? Do you remember how you took me in your arms, and even while I listened to your tender and assuring words, in that moment--ah, the hurt and the wrong and the shame of it! Afterwards in the strange confusion, in my blind helplessness I tried to say, "But he loved me," and I tried to forgive you. Perhaps in time I might have made myself believe I did; for then I did not know you as you are--and were; but understanding all now I feel that in that hour I really ceased to love you; and when at last I knew you had denied me, love was buried for ever. Your worst torment is to come, mine has already been with me. When my miseries first fell upon me, I thought that I must die. Why should I live on--why should I not die? The sea was near, and it buries deep. I thought of all the people that live on the great earth, and I said to myself that the soul of one poor girl could not count, that it could concern no one but myself. It was clear to me --I must die and end all. But there came to me a voice in the night which said: "Is thy life thine own to give or to destroy?" It was clearer than my own thinking. It told my heart that death by one's own hand meant shame; and I saw then that to find rest I must drag unwilling feet over the good name and memory of my dead loved ones. Then I remembered my mother. If you had remembered her perhaps you would have guarded the gift of my love and not have trampled it under your feet--I remembered my mother, and so I live still. I must go on alone, with naught of what makes life bearable; you will keep climbing higher by your vanity, your strength, and your deceit. But yet I know however high you climb you will never find peace. You will remember me, and your spirit will seek in vain for rest. You will not exist for me, you will not be even a memory; but even against your will I shall always be part of you: of your brain, of your heart, of your soul--the thought of me your torment in your greatest hour. Your passion and your cowardice have lost me all; and God will punish you, be sure of that. There is little more to say. If it lies in my power I shall never see you again while I live. And you will not wish it. Yes, in spite of your eloquent letter lying here beside me, you do not wish it, and it shall not be. I am not your wife save by the law; and little have you cared for law! Little, too, would the law help you in this now; for which you will rejoice. For the ease of your mind I hasten to tell you why. First let me inform you that none in this land knows me to be your wife. Your letter to my grandfather never reached him, and to this hour I have held my peace. The clergyman who married us is a prisoner among the French, and the strong-box which held the register of St. Michael's Church was stolen. The one other witness, Mr. Shoreham, your lieutenant--as you tell me--went down with the Araminta. So you are safe in your denial of me. For me, I would endure all the tortures of the world rather than call you husband ever again. I am firmly set to live my own life, in my own way, with what strength God gives. At last I see beyond the Hedge. Your course is clear. You cannot turn back now. You have gone too far. Your new honours and titles were got at the last by a falsehood. To acknowledge it would be ruin, for all the world knows that Captain Philip d'Avranche of the King's navy is now the adopted son of the Duc de Bercy. Surely the house of Bercy has cause for joy, with an imbecile for the first in succession and a traitor for the second! I return the fifty pounds you sent me--you will not question why ....And so all ends. This is a last farewell between us. Do you remember what you said to me on the Ecrehos? "If ever I deceive you, may I die a black, dishonourable death, abandoned and alone. I should deserve that if ever I deceived you, Guida." Will you ever think of that, in your vain glory hereafter? GUIDA LANDRESSE DE LANDRESSE. IN JERSEY FIVE YEARS LATER CHAPTER XXIX On a map the Isle of Jersey has the shape and form of a tiger on the prowl. The fore-claws of this tiger are the lacerating pinnacles of the Corbiere and the impaling rocks of Portelet Bay and Noirmont; the hind-claws are the devastating diorite reefs of La Motte and the Banc des Violets. The head and neck, terrible and beautiful, are stretched out towards the west, as it were to scan the wild waste and jungle of the Atlantic seas. The nose is L'Etacq, the forehead Grosnez, the ear Plemont, the mouth the dark cavern by L'Etacq, and the teeth are the serried ledges of the Foret de la Brequette. At a discreet distance from the head and the tail hover the jackals of La Manche: the Paternosters, the Dirouilles, and the Ecrehos, themselves destroying where they may, or filching the remains of the tiger's feast of shipwreck and ruin. In truth, the sleek beast, with its feet planted in fearsome rocks and tides, and its ravening head set to defy the onslaught of the main, might, but for its ensnaring beauty, seem some monstrous foot-pad of the deep. To this day the tiger's head is the lonely part of Jersey; a hundred years ago it was as distant from the Vier Marchi as is Penzance from Covent Garden. It would almost seem as if the people of Jersey, like the hangers-on of the king of the jungle, care not to approach too near the devourer's head. Even now there is but a dwelling here and there upon the lofty plateau, and none at all near the dark and menacing headland. But as if the ancient Royal Court was determined to prove its sovereignty even over the tiger's head, it stretched out its arms from the Vier Marchi to the bare neck of the beast, putting upon it a belt of defensive war; at the nape, a martello tower and barracks; underneath, two other martello towers like the teeth of a buckle. The rest of the island was bristling with armament. Tall platforms were erected at almost speaking distance from each other, where sentinels kept watch for French frigates or privateers. Redoubts and towers were within musket-shot of each other, with watch-houses between, and at intervals every able-bodied man in the country was obliged to leave his trade to act as sentinel, or go into camp or barracks with the militia for months at a time. British cruisers sailed the Channel: now a squadron under Barrington, again under Bridport, hovered upon the coast, hoping that a French fleet might venture near. But little of this was to be seen in the western limits of the parish of St. Ouen's. Plemont, Grosnez, L'Etacq, all that giant headland could well take care of itself--the precipitous cliffs were their own defence. A watch-house here and there sufficed. No one lived at L'Etacq, no one at Grosnez; they were too bleak, too distant and solitary. There were no houses, no huts. If you had approached Plemont from Vinchelez-le-Haut, making for the sea, you would have said that it also had no habitation. But when at last you came to a hillock near Plemont point, looking to find nothing but sky and sea and distant islands, suddenly at your very feet you saw a small stone dwelling. Its door faced the west, looking towards the Isles of Guernsey and Sark. Fronting the north was a window like an eye, ever watching the tireless Paternosters. To the east was another tiny window like a deep loop-hole or embrasure set towards the Dirouilles and the Ecrehos. The hut had but one room, of moderate size, with a vast chimney. Between the chimney and the western wall was a veille, which was both lounge and bed. The eastern side was given over to a few well-polished kitchen utensils, a churn, and a bread-trough. The floor was of mother earth alone, but a strip of handmade carpet was laid down before the fireplace, and there was another at the opposite end. There were also a table, a spinning-wheel, and a shelf of books. It was not the hut of a fisherman, though upon the wall opposite the books there hung fishing-tackle, nets, and cords, while outside, on staples driven in the jutting chimney, were some lobster-pots. Upon two shelves were arranged a carpenter's and a cooper's tools, polished and in good order. And yet you would have said that neither a cooper nor a carpenter kept them in use. Everywhere there were signs of man's handicraft as well as of woman's work, but upon all was the touch of a woman. Moreover, apart from the tools there was no sign of a man's presence in the hut. There was no coat hanging behind the door, no sabots for the fields or oilskins for the sands, no pipe laid upon a ledge, no fisherman's needle holding a calendar to the wall. Whatever was the trade of the occupant, the tastes were above those of the ordinary dweller in the land. That was to be seen in a print of Raphael's "Madonna and Child" taking the place of the usual sampler upon the walls of Jersey homes; in the old clock nicely bestowed between a narrow cupboard and the tool shelves; in a few pieces of rare old china and a gold-handled sword hanging above a huge, well-carved oak chair. The chair relieved the room of anything like commonness, and somehow was in sympathy with the simple surroundings, making for dignity and sweet quiet. It was clear that only a woman could have arranged so perfectly this room and all therein. It was also clear that no man lived here. Looking in at the doorway of this hut on a certain autumn day of the year 1797, the first thing to strike your attention was a dog lying asleep on the hearth. Then a suit of child's clothes on a chair before the fire of vraic would have caught the eye. The only thing to distinguish this particular child's dress from that of a thousand others in the island was the fineness of the material. Every thread of it had been delicately and firmly knitted, till it was like perfect soft blue cloth, relieved by a little red silk ribbon at the collar. The hut contained as well a child's chair, just so high that when placed by the windows commanding the Paternosters its occupant might see the waves, like panthers, beating white paws against the ragged granite pinnacles; the currents writhing below at the foot of the cliffs, or at half-tide rushing up to cover the sands of the Greve aux Langons, and like animals in pain, howling through the caverns in the cliffs; the great nor'wester of November come battering the rocks, shrieking to the witches who boiled their caldrons by the ruins of Grosnez Castle that the hunt of the seas was up. Just high enough was the little chair that of a certain day in the year its owner might look out and see mystic fires burning round the Paternosters, and lighting up the sea with awful radiance. Scarce a rock to be seen from the hut but had some legend like this: the burning Russian ship at the Paternosters, the fleet of boats with tall prows and long oars drifting upon the Dirouilles and going down to the cry of the Crusaders' Dahindahin! the Roche des Femmes at the Ecrehos, where still you may hear the cries of women in terror of the engulfing sea. On this particular day, if you had entered the hut, no one would have welcomed you; but had you tired of waiting, and followed the indentations of the coast for a mile or more by a deep bay under tall cliffs, you would have seen a woman and a child coming quickly up the sands. Slung upon the woman's shoulders was a small fisherman's basket. The child ran before, eager to climb the hill and take the homeward path. A man above was watching them. He had ridden along the cliff, had seen the woman in her boat making for the shore, had tethered his horse in the quarries near by, and now awaited her. He chuckled as she came on, for he had ready a surprise for her. To make it more complete he hid himself behind some boulders, and as she reached the top sprang out with an ugly grinning. The woman looked at him calmly and waited for him to speak. There was no fear on her face, not even surprise; nothing but steady inquiry and quiet self-possession. With an air of bluster the man said: "Aha, my lady, I'm nearer than you thought--me!" The child drew in to its mother's side and clasped her hand. There was no fear in the little fellow's look, however; he had something of the same self-possession as the woman, and his eyes were like hers, clear, unwavering, and with a frankness that consumed you. They were wells of sincerity; open-eyed, you would have called the child, wanting a more subtle description. "I'm not to be fooled-me! Come now, let's have the count," said the man, as he whipped a greasy leather-covered book from his pocket. "Sapristi, I'm waiting. Stay yourself!" he added roughly as she moved on, and his greyish-yellow face had an evil joy at thought of the brutal work in hand. "Who are you?" she asked, but taking her time to speak. "Dame! you know who I am." "I know what you are," she answered quietly. He did not quite grasp her meaning, but the tone sounded contemptuous, and that sorted little with his self-importance. "I'm the Seigneur's bailiff--that's who I am. Gad'rabotin, don't you put on airs with me! I'm for the tribute, so off with the bag and let's see your catch." "I have never yet paid tribute to the seigneur of the manor." "Well, you'll begin now. I'm the new bailiff, and if you don't pay your tale, up you come to the court of the fief to-morrow." She looked him clearly in the eyes. "If I were a man, I should not pay the tribute, and I should go to the court of the fief to-morrow, but being a woman--" She clasped the hand of the child tightly to her for an instant, then with a sigh she took the basket from her shoulders and, opening it, added: "But being a woman, the fish I caught in the sea that belongs to God and to all men I must divide with the Seigneur whose bailiff spies on poor fisher-folk." The man growled an oath and made a motion as though he would catch her by the shoulder in anger, but the look in her eyes stopped him. Counting out the fish, and giving him three out of the eight she had caught, she said: "It matters not so much to me, but there are others poorer than I, they suffer." With a leer the fellow stooped, and, taking up the fish, put them in the pockets of his queminzolle, all slimy from the sea as they were. "Ba su, you haven't got much to take care of, have you? It don't take much to feed two mouths--not so much as it does three, Ma'm'selle." Before he had ended, the woman, without reply to the insult, took the child by the hand and moved along her homeward path towards Plemont. "A bi'tot, good-bye!" the bailiff laughed brutally. Standing with his legs apart and his hands fastened on the fish in the pockets of his long queminzolle, he called after her in sneering comment: "Ma fistre, your pride didn't fall--ba su!" Then he turned on his heel. "Eh ben, here's mackerel for supper," he added as he mounted his horse. The woman was Guida Landresse, the child was her child, and they lived in the little house upon the cliff at Plemont. They were hastening thither now. CHAPTER XXX A visitor was awaiting Guida and the child: a man who, first knocking at the door, then looking in and seeing the room empty, save for the dog lying asleep by the fire, had turned slowly away, and going to the cliff edge, looked out over the sea. His movements were deliberate, his body moved slowly; the whole appearance was of great strength and nervous power. The face was preoccupied, the eyes were watchful, dark, penetrating. They seemed not only to watch but to weigh, to meditate, even to listen--as it were, to do the duty of all the senses at once. In them worked the whole forces of his nature; they were crucibles wherein every thought and emotion were fused. The jaw was set and strong, yet it was not hard. The face contradicted itself. While not gloomy it had lines like scars telling of past wounds. It was not despairing, it was not morbid, and it was not resentful; it had the look of one both credulous and indomitable. Belief was stamped upon it; not expectation or ambition, but faith and fidelity. You would have said he was a man of one set idea, though the head had a breadth sorting little with narrowness of purpose. The body was too healthy to belong to a fanatic, too powerful to be that of a dreamer alone, too firm for other than a man of action. Several times he turned to look towards the house and up the pathway leading from the hillock to the doorway. Though he waited long he did not seem impatient; patience was part of him, and not the least part. At last he sat down on a boulder between the house and the shore, and scarcely moved, as minute after minute passed, and then an hour and more, and no one came. Presently there was a soft footstep beside him, and he turned. A dog's nose thrust itself into his hand. "Biribi, Biribi!" he said, patting its head with his big hand. "Watching and waiting, eh, old Biribi?" The dog looked into his eyes as if he knew what was said, and would speak--or, indeed, was speaking in his own language. "That's the way of life, Biribi--watching and waiting, and watching--always watching." Suddenly the dog caught its head away from his hand, gave a short joyful bark, and ran slowly up the hillock. "Guida and the child," the man said aloud, moving towards the house-- "Guida and the child!" He saw her and the little one before they saw him. Presently the child said: "See, maman," and pointed. Guida started. A swift flush passed over her face, then she smiled and made a step forward to meet her visitor. "Maitre Ranulph--Ranulph!" she said, holding out her hand. "It's a long time since we met." "A year," he answered simply, "just a year." He looked down at the child, then stooped, caught him up in his arms and said: "He's grown. Es-tu gentiment?" he added to the child--"es-tu gentiment, m'sieu'?" The child did not quite understand. "Please?" it said in true Jersey fashion--at which the mother was troubled. "O Guilbert, is that what you should say?" she asked. The child looked up quaintly at her, and with the same whimsical smile which Guida had given to another so many years ago, he looked at Ranulph and said: "Pardon, monsieur." "Coum est qu'on etes, m'sieu'?" said Ranulph in another patois greeting. Guida shook her head reprovingly. The child glanced swiftly at his mother as though asking permission to reply as he wished, then back at Ranulph, and was about to speak, when Guida said: "I have not taught him the Jersey patois, Ranulph; only English and French." Her eyes met his clearly, meaningly. Her look said to him as plainly as words, The child's destiny is not here in Jersey. But as if he knew that in this she was blinding herself, and that no one can escape the influences of surroundings, he held the child back from him, and said with a smile: "Coum est qu'on vos portest?" Now the child with elfish sense of the situation replied in Jersey English: "Naicely, thenk you." "You see," said Ranulph to Guida, "there are things in us stronger than we are. The wind, the sea, and people we live with, they make us sing their song one way or another. It's in our bones." A look of pain passed over Guida's face, and she did not reply to his remark, but turned almost abruptly to the doorway, saying, with just the slightest hesitation: "You will come in?" There was no hesitation on his part. "Oui-gia!" he said, and stepped inside. She hastily hung up the child's cap and her own, and as she gathered in the soft, waving hair, Ranulph noticed how the years had only burnished it more deeply and strengthened the beauty of the head. She had made the gesture unconsciously, but catching the look in his eye a sudden thrill of anxiety ran through her. Recovering herself, however, and with an air of bright friendliness, she laid a hand upon the great arm-chair, above which hung the ancient sword of her ancestor, the Comte Guilbert Mauprat de Chambery, and said: "Sit here, Ranulph." Seating himself he gave a heavy sigh--one of those passing breaths of content which come to the hardest lives now and then: as though the Spirit of Life itself, in ironical apology for human existence, gives moments of respite from which hope is born again. Not for over four long years had Ranulph sat thus quietly in the presence of Guida. At first, when Maitresse Aimable had told him that Guida was leaving the Place du Vier Prison to live in this lonely place with her newborn child, he had gone to entreat her to remain; but Maitresse Aimable had been present then, and all that he could say--all that he might speak out of his friendship, out of the old love, now deep pity and sorrow--was of no avail. It had been borne in upon him then that she was not morbid, but that her mind had a sane, fixed purpose which she was intent to fulfil. It was as though she had made some strange covenant with a little helpless life, with a little face that was all her face; and that covenant she would keep. So he had left her, and so to do her service had been granted elsewhere. The Chevalier, with perfect wisdom and nobility, insisted on being to Guida what he had always been, accepting what was as though it had always been, and speaking as naturally of her and the child as though there had always been a Guida and the child. Thus it was that he counted himself her protector, though he sat far away in the upper room of Elie Mattingley's house in the Rue d'Egypte, thinking his own thoughts, biding the time when she should come back to the world, and mystery be over, and happiness come once more; hoping only that he might live to see it. Under his directions, Jean Touzel had removed the few things that Guida took with her to Plemont; and instructed by him, Elie Mattingley sold her furniture. Thus Guida had settled at Plemont, and there over four years of her life were passed. "Your father--how is he?" she asked presently. "Feeble," replied Ranulph; "he goes abroad but little now." "It was said the Royal Court was to make him a gift, in remembrance of the Battle of Jersey." Ranulph turned his head away from her to the child, and beckoned him over. The child came instantly. As Ranulph lifted him on his knee he answered Guida: "My father did not take it." "Then they said you were to be connetable--the grand monsieur. "She smiled at him in a friendly way. "They said wrong," replied Ranulph. "Most people would be glad of it," rejoined Guida. "My mother used to say you would be Bailly one day." "Who knows--perhaps I might have been!" She looked at him half sadly, half curiously. "You--you haven't any ambitions now, Maitre Ranulph?" It suddenly struck her that perhaps she was responsible for the maiming of this man's life--for clearly it was maimed. More than once she had thought of it, but it came home to her to-day with force. Years ago Ranulph Delagarde had been spoken of as one who might do great things, even to becoming Bailly. In the eyes of a Jerseyman to be Bailly was to be great, with jurats sitting in a row on either side of him and more important than any judge in the Kingdom. Looking back now Guida realised that Ranulph had never been the same since that day on the Ecrehos when his father had returned and Philip had told his wild tale of love. A great bitterness suddenly welled up in her. Without intention, without blame, she had brought suffering upon others. The untoward happenings of her life had killed her grandfather, had bowed and aged the old Chevalier, had forced her to reject the friendship of Carterette Mattingley, for the girl's own sake; had made the heart of one fat old woman heavy within her; and, it would seem, had taken hope and ambition from the life of this man before her. Love in itself is but a bitter pleasure; when it is given to the unworthy it becomes a torture--and so far as Ranulph and the world knew she was wholly unworthy. Of late she had sometimes wondered if, after all, she had had the right to do as she had done in accepting the public shame, and in not proclaiming the truth: if to act for one's own heart, feelings, and life alone, no matter how perfect the honesty, is not a sort of noble cruelty, or cruel nobility; an egotism which obeys but its own commandments, finding its own straight and narrow path by first disbarring the feelings and lives of others. Had she done what was best for the child? Misgiving upon this point made her heart ache bitterly. Was life then but a series of trist condonings at the best, of humiliating compromises at the worst? She repeated her question to Ranulph now. "You haven't ambition any longer?" "I'm busy building ships," he answered evasively. "I build good ships, they tell me, and I am strong and healthy. As for being connetable, I'd rather help prisoners free than hale them before the Royal Court. For somehow when you get at the bottom of most crimes--the small ones leastways--you find they weren't quite meant. I expect--I expect," he added gravely, "that half the crimes oughtn't to be punished at all; for it's queer that things which hurt most can't be punished by law." "Perhaps it evens up in the long end," answered Guida, turning away from him to the fire, and feeling her heart beat faster as she saw how the child nestled in Ranulph's arms--her child which had no father. "You see," she added, "if some are punished who oughtn't to be, there are others who ought to be that aren't, and the worst of it is, we care so little for real justice that we often wouldn't punish if we could. I have come to feel that. Sometimes if you do exactly what's right, you hurt some one you don't wish to hurt, and if you don't do exactly what's right, perhaps that some one else hurts you. So, often, we would rather be hurt than hurt." With the last words she turned from the fire and involuntarily faced him. Their eyes met. In hers were only the pity of life, the sadness, the cruelty of misfortune, and friendliness for him. In his eyes was purpose definite, strong. He went over and put the child in its high chair. Then coming a little nearer to Guida, he said: "There's only one thing in life that really hurts--playing false." Her heart suddenly stopped beating. What was Ranulph going to say? After all these years was he going to speak of Philip? But she did not reply according to her thought. "Have people played false in your life--ever?" she asked. "If you'll listen to me I'll tell you how," he answered. "Wait, wait," she said in trepidation. "It--it has nothing to do with me?" He shook his head. "It has only to do with my father and myself. When I've told you, then you must say whether you will have anything to do with it, or with me.... You remember," he continued, without waiting for her to speak, "you remember that day upon the Ecrehos--five years ago? Well, that day I had made up my mind to tell you in so many words what I hoped you had always known, Guida. I didn't--why? Not because of another man--no, no, I don't mean to hurt you, but I must tell you the truth now--not because of another man, for I should have bided my chance with him." "Ranulph, Ranulph," she broke in, "you must not speak of this now! Do you not see it hurts me? It is not like you. It is not right of you--" A sudden emotion seized him, and his voice shook. "Not right! You should know that I'd never say one word to hurt you, or do one thing to wrong you. But I must speak to-day-I must tell you everything. I've thought of it for four long years, and I know now that what I mean to do is right." She sat down in the great arm-chair. A sudden weakness came upon her: she was being brought face to face with days of which she had never allowed herself to think, for she lived always in the future now. "Go on," she said helplessly. "What have you to say, Ranulph?" "I will tell you why I didn't speak of my love to you that day we went to the Ecrehos. My father came back that day." "Yes, yes," she said; "of course you had to think of him." "Yes, I had to think of him, but not in the way you mean. Be patient a little while," he added. Then in a few words he told her the whole story of his father's treachery and crime, from the night before the Battle of Jersey up to their meeting again upon the Ecrehos. Guida was amazed and moved. Her heart filled with pity. "Ranulph--poor Ranulph!" she said, half rising in her seat. "No, no--wait," he rejoined. "Sit where you are till I tell you all. Guida, you don't know what a life it has been for me these four years. I used to be able to look every man in the face without caring whether he liked me or hated me, for then I had never lied, I had never done a mean thing to any man; I had never deceived--nannin-gia, never! But when my father came back, then I had to play a false game. He had lied, and to save him I either had to hold my peace or tell his story. Speaking was lying or being silent was lying. Mind you, I'm not complaining, I'm not saying it because I want any pity. No, I'm saying it because it's the truth, and I want you to know the truth. You understand what it means to feel right in your own mind--if you feel that way, the rest of life is easy. Eh ben, what a thing it is to get up in the morning, build your fire, make your breakfast, and sit down facing a man whose whole life's a lie, and that man your own father! Some morning perhaps you forget, and you go out into the sun, and it all seems good; and you take your tools and go to work, and the sea comes washing up the shingle, and you think that the shir-r-r-r of the water on the pebbles and the singing of the saw and the clang of the hammer are the best music in the world. But all at once you remember--and then you work harder, not because you love work now for its own sake, but because it uses up your misery and makes you tired; and being tired you can sleep, and in sleep you can forget. Yet nearly all the time you're awake it fairly kills you, for you feel some one always at your elbow whispering, 'you'll never be happy again, you'll never be happy again!' And when you tell the truth about anything, that some one at your elbow laughs and says: 'Nobody believes--your whole life's a lie!' And if the worst man you know passes you by, that some one at your elbow says: 'You can wear a mask, but you're no better than he, no better, no--"' While Ranulph spoke Guida's face showed a pity and a kindness as deep as the sorrow which had deepened her nature. She shook her head once or twice as though to say, Surely, what suffering! and now this seemed to strike Ranulph, to convict him of selfishness, for he suddenly stopped. His face cleared, and, smiling with a little of his old-time cheerfulness, he said: "Yet one gets used to it and works on because one knows it will all come right sometime. I'm of the kind that waits." She looked up at him with her old wide-eyed steadfastness and replied: "You are a good man, Ranulph." He stood gazing at her a moment without remark, then he said: "No, ba su, no! but it's like you to say I am." Then he added suddenly: "I've told you the whole truth about myself and about my father. He did a bad thing, and I've stood by him. At first, I nursed my troubles and my shame. I used to think I couldn't live it out, that I had no right to any happiness. But I've changed my mind about that-oui-gia! As I hammered away at my ships month in month out, year in year out, the truth came home to me at last. What right had I to sit down and brood over my miseries? I didn't love my father, but I've done wrong for him, and I've stuck to him. Well, I did love--and I do love--some one else, and I should only be doing right to tell her, and to ask her to let me stand with her against the world." He was looking down at her with all his story in his face. She put out her hand quickly as if in protest and said: "Ranulph--ah no, Ranulph--" "But yes, Guida," he replied with stubborn tenderness, "it is you I mean --it is you I've always meant. You have always been a hundred times more to me than my father, but I let you fight your fight alone. I've waked up now to my mistake. But I tell you true that though I love you better than anything in the world, if things had gone well with you I'd never have come to you. I never came, because of my father, and I'd never have come because you are too far above me always--too fine, too noble for me. I only come now because we're both apart from the world and lonely beyond telling; because we need each other. I have just one thing to say: that we two should stand together. There's none ever can be so near as those that have had hard troubles, that have had bitter wrongs. And when there's love too, what can break the bond! You and I are apart from the world, a black loneliness no one understands. Let us be lonely no longer. Let us live our lives together. What shall we care for the rest of the world if we know we mean to do good and no wrong? So I've come to ask you to let me care for you and the child, to ask you to make my home your home. My father hasn't long to live, and when he is gone we could leave this island for ever. Will you come, Guida?" She had never taken her eyes from his face, and as his story grew her face lighted with emotion, the glow of a moment's content, of a fleeting joy. In spite of all, this man loved her, he wanted to marry her--in spite of all. Glad to know that such men lived--and with how dark memories contrasting with this bright experience-she said to him once again: "You are a good man, Ranulph." Coming near to her, he said in a voice husky with feeling: "Will you be my wife, Guida?" She stood up, one hand resting on the arm of the great chair, the other half held out in pitying deprecation. "No, Ranulph, no; I can never, never be your wife--never in this world." For an instant he looked at her dumfounded, then turned away to the fireplace slowly and heavily. "I suppose it was too much to hope for," he said bitterly. He realised now how much she was above him, even in her sorrow and shame. "You forget," she answered quietly, and her hand went out suddenly to the soft curls of the child, "you forget what the world says about me." There was a kind of fierceness in his look as he turned to her again. "Me--I have always forgotten--everything," he answered. "Have you thought that for all these years I've believed one word? Secours d'la vie, of what use is faith, what use to trust, if you thought I believed! I do not know the truth, for you have not told me; but I do know, as I know I have a heart in me--I do know that there never was any wrong in you. It is you who forget," he added quickly--"it is you who forget. I tried to tell you all this before; three years ago I tried to tell you. You stopped me, you would not listen. Perhaps you've thought I did not know what has happened to you every week, almost every day of your life? A hundred times I have walked here and you haven't seen me--when you were asleep, when you were fishing, when you were working like a man in the fields and the garden; you who ought to be cared for by a man, working like a slave at man's work. But, no, no, you have not thought well of me, or you would have known that every day I cared, every day I watched, and waited, and hoped--and believed!" She came to him slowly where he stood, his great frame trembling with his passion and the hurt she had given him, and laying her hand upon his arm, she said: "Your faith was a blind one, Ro. I was either a girl who--who deserved nothing of the world, or I was a wife. I had no husband, had I? Then I must have been a girl who deserved nothing of the world, or of you. Your faith was blind, Ranulph, you see it was blind." "What I know is this," he repeated with dogged persistence--"what I know is this: that whatever was wrong, there was no wrong in you. My life a hundred times on that!" She smiled at him, the brightest smile that had been on her face these years past, and she answered softly: "'I did not think there was so great faith--no, not in Israel!'" Then the happiness passed from her lips to her eyes. "Your faith has made me happy, Ro--I am selfish, you see. Your love in itself could not make me happy, for I have no right to listen, because--" She paused. It seemed too hard to say: the door of her heart enclosing her secret opened so slowly, so slowly. A struggle was going on in her. Every feeling, every force of her nature was alive. Once, twice, thrice she tried to speak and could not. At last with bursting heart and eyes swimming with tears she said solemnly: "I can never marry you, Ranulph, and I have no right to listen to your words of love, because--because I am a wife." Then she gave a great sigh of relief; like some penitent who has for a lifetime hidden a sin or a sorrow and suddenly finds the joy of a confessional which relieves the sick heart, takes away the hand of loneliness that clamps it, and gives it freedom again; lifting the poor slave from the rack of secrecy, the cruelest inquisition of life and time. She repeated the words once more, a little louder, a little clearer. She had vindicated herself to God, now she vindicated herself to man--though to but one. "I can never marry you; because I am a wife," she said again. There was a slight pause, and then the final word was said: "I am the wife of Philip d'Avranche." Ranulph did not speak. He stood still and rigid, looking with eyes that scarcely saw. "I had not intended telling any one until the time should come"--once more her hand reached out and tremblingly stroked the head of the child --"but your faith has forced it from me. I couldn't let you go from me now, ignorant of the truth, you whose trust is beyond telling. Ranulph, I want you to know that I am at least no worse than you thought me." The look in his face was one of triumph, mingled with despair, hatred, and purpose--hatred of Philip d'Avranche, and purpose concerning him. He gloried now in knowing that Guida might take her place among the honest women of this world,--as the world terms honesty,--but he had received the death-blow to his every hope. He had lost her altogether, he who had watched and waited; who had served and followed, in season and out of season; who had been the faithful friend, keeping his eye fixed only upon her happiness; who had given all; who had poured out his heart like water, and his life like wine before her. At first he only grasped the fact that Philip d'Avranche was the husband of the woman he loved, and that she had been abandoned. Then sudden remembrance stunned him: Philip d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy, had another wife. He remembered--it had been burned into his brain the day he saw it first in the Gazette de Jersey--that he had married the Comtesse Chantavoine, niece of the Marquis Grandjon-Larisse, upon the very day, and but an hour before, the old Duc de Bercy suddenly died. It flashed across his mind now what he had felt then. He had always believed that Philip had wronged Guida; and long ago he would have gone in search of him--gone to try the strength of his arm against this cowardly marauder, as he held him--but his father's ill-health had kept him where he was, and Philip was at sea upon the nation's business. So the years had gone on until now. His brain soon cleared. All that he had ever thought upon the matter now crystallised itself into the very truth of the affair. Philip had married Guida secretly; but his new future had opened up to him all at once, and he had married again--a crime, but a crime which in high places sometimes goes unpunished. How monstrous it was that such vile wickedness should be delivered against this woman before him, in whom beauty, goodness, power were commingled! She was the real Princess Philip d'Avranche, and this child of hers--now he understood why she allowed Guilbert to speak no patois. They scarcely knew how long they stood silent, she with her hand stroking the child's golden hair, he white and dazed, looking, looking at her and the child, as the thing resolved itself to him. At last, in a voice which neither he nor she could quite recognise as his own, he said: "Of course you live now only for Guilbert." How she thanked him in her heart for the things he had left unsaid, those things which clear-eyed and great-minded folk, high or humble, always understand. There was no selfish lamenting, no reproaches, none of the futile banalities of the lover who fails to see that it is no crime for a woman not to love him. The thing he had said was the thing she most cared to hear. "Only for that, Ranulph," she answered. "When will you claim the child's rights?" She shook her head sadly. "I do not know," she answered with hesitation. "I will tell you all about it." Then she told him of the lost register of St. Michael's, and about the Reverend Lorenzo Dow, but she said nothing as to why she had kept silence. She felt that, man though he was, he might divine something of the truth. In any case he knew that Philip had deserted her. After a moment he said: "I'll find Mr. Dow if he is alive, and the register too. Then the boy shall have his rights." "No, Ranulph," she answered firmly, "it shall be in my own time. I must keep the child with me. I know not when I shall speak; I am biding my day. Once I thought I never should speak, but then I did not see all, did not wholly see my duty towards Guilbert. It is so hard to find what is wise and just." "When the proofs are found your child shall have his rights," he said with grim insistence. "I would never let him go from me," she answered, and, leaning over, she impulsively clasped the little Guilbert in her arms. "There'll be no need for Guilbert to go from you," he rejoined, "for when your rights come to you, Philip d'Avranche will not be living." "Will not be living!" she said in amazement. She did not understand. "I mean to kill him," he answered sternly. She started, and the light of anger leaped into her eyes. "You mean to kill Philip d'Avranche--you, Maitre Ranulph Delagarde!" she exclaimed. "Whom has he wronged? Myself and my child only--his wife and his child. Men have been killed for lesser wrongs, but the right to kill does not belong to you. You speak of killing Philip d'Avranche, and yet you dare to say you are my friend!" In that moment Ranulph learned more than he had ever guessed of life's subtle distinctions and the workings of a woman's mind; and he knew that she was right. Her father, her grandfather, might have killed Philip d'Avranche--any one but himself, he the man who had but now declared his love for her. Clearly his selfishness had blinded him. Right was on his side, but not the formal codes by which men live. He could not avenge Guida's wrongs upon her husband, for all men knew that he himself had loved her for years. "Forgive me," he said in a low tone. Then a new thought came to him. "Do you think your not speaking all these years was best for the child?" he asked. Her lips trembled. "Oh, that thought," she said, "that thought has made me unhappy so often! It comes to me at night as I lie sleepless, and I wonder if my child will grow up and turn against me one day. Yet I did what I thought was right, Ranulph, I did the only thing I could do. I would rather have died than--" She stopped short. No, not even to this man who knew all could she speak her whole mind; but sometimes the thought came to her with horrifying acuteness: was it possible that she ought to have sunk her own disillusions, misery, and contempt of Philip d'Avranche, for the child's sake? She shuddered even now as the reflection of that possibility came to her--to live with Philip d'Avranche! Of late she had felt that a crisis was near. She had had premonitions that her fate, good or bad, was closing in upon her; that these days in this lonely spot with her child, with her love for it and its love for her, were numbered; that dreams must soon give way for action, and this devoted peace would be broken, she knew not how. Stooping, she kissed the little fellow upon the forehead and the eyes, and his two hands came up and clasped both her cheeks. "Tu m'aimes, maman?" the child asked. She had taught him the pretty question. "Comme la vie, comme la vie!" she answered with a half sob, and caught up the little one to her bosom. Now she looked towards the window. Ranulph followed her look, and saw that the shades of night were falling. "I have far to walk," he said; "I must be going." As he held out his hand to Guida the child leaned over and touched him on the shoulder. "What is your name, man?" he asked. He smiled, and, taking the warm little hand in his own, he said: "My name is Ranulph, little gentleman. Ranulph's my name, but you shall call me Ro." "Good-night, Ro, man," the child answered with a mischievous smile. The scene brought up another such scene in Guida's life so many years ago. Instinctively she drew back with the child, a look of pain crossing her face. But Ranulph did not see; he was going. At the doorway he turned and said: "You know you can trust me. Good-bye." ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Being tired you can sleep, and in sleep you can forget Cling to beliefs long after conviction has been shattered Futility of goodness, the futility of all Her voice had the steadiness of despair Joy of a confessional which relieves the sick heart Often, we would rather be hurt than hurt Queer that things which hurt most can't be punished by law Rack of secrecy, the cruelest inquisition of life Sardonic pleasure in the miseries of the world Sympathy, with curiousness in their eyes and as much inhumanity Thanked him in her heart for the things he had left unsaid There is something humiliating in even an undeserved injury There was never a grey wind but there's a greyer Uses up your misery and makes you tired (Work) We care so little for real justice THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG [A ROMANCE OF TWO KINGDOMS] By Gilbert Parker Volume 5. CHAPTER XXXI When Ranulph returned to his little house at St. Aubin's Bay night had fallen. Approaching he saw there was no light in the windows. The blinds were not drawn, and no glimmer of fire came from the chimney. He hesitated at the door, for he instinctively felt that something must have happened to his father. He was just about to enter, however, when some one came hurriedly round the corner of the house. "Whist, boy," said a voice; "I've news for you." Ranulph recognised the voice as that of Dormy Jamais. Dormy plucked at his sleeve. "Come with me, boy," said he. "Come inside if you want to tell me something," answered Ranulph. "Ah bah, not for me! Stone walls have ears. I'll tell only you and the wind that hears and runs away." "I must speak to my father first," answered Ranulph. "Come with me, I've got him safe," Dormy chuckled to himself. Ranulph's heavy hand dropped on his shoulder. "What's that you're saying--my father with you! What's the matter?" As though oblivious of Ranulph's hand Dormy went on chuckling. "Whoever burns me for a fool 'll lose their ashes. Des monz a fous--I have a head! Come with me." Ranulph saw that he must humour the shrewd natural, so he said: "Et ben, put your four shirts in five bundles and come along." He was a true Jerseyman at heart, and speaking to such as Dormy Jamais he used the homely patois phrases. He knew there was no use hurrying the little man, he would take his own time. "There's been the devil to pay," said Dormy as he ran towards the shore, his sabots going clac--clac, clac--clac. "There's been the devil to pay in St. Heliers, boy." He spoke scarcely above a whisper. "Tcheche--what's that?" said Ranulph. But Dormy was not to uncover his pot of roses till his own time. "That connetable's got no more wit than a square bladed knife," he rattled on. "But gache-a-penn, I'm hungry!" And as he ran he began munching a lump of bread he took from his pocket. For the next five minutes they went on in silence. It was quite dark, and as they passed up Market Hill--called Ghost Lane because of the Good Little People who made it their highway--Dormy caught hold of Ranulph's coat and trotted along beside him. As they went, tokens of the life within came out to them through doorway and window. Now it was the voice of a laughing young mother: "Si tu as faim Manges ta main Et gardes l'autre pour demain; Et ta tete Pour le jour de fete; Et ton gros ortee Pour le Jour Saint Norbe" And again: "Let us pluck the bill of the lark, The lark from head to tail--" He knew the voice. It was that of a young wife of the parish of St. Saviour: married happily, living simply, given a frugal board, after the manner of her kind, and a comradeship for life. For the moment he felt little but sorrow for himself. The world seemed to be conspiring against him: the chorus of Fate was singing behind the scenes, singing of the happiness of others in sardonic comment on his own final unhappiness. Yet despite the pain of finality there was on him something of the apathy of despair. From another doorway came fragments of a song sung at a veille. The door was open, and he could see within the happy gathering of lads and lassies in the light of the crasset. There was the spacious kitchen, its beams and rafters dark with age, adorned with flitches of bacon, huge loaves resting in the racllyi beneath the centre beam, the broad open hearth, the flaming fire of logs, and the great brass pan shining like fresh- coined gold, on its iron tripod over the logs. Lassies in their short woollen petticoats, and bedgones of blue and lilac, with boisterous lads, were stirring the contents of the vast bashin--many cabots of apples, together with sugar, lemon-peel, and cider; the old ladies in mob-caps tied under the chin, measuring out the nutmeg and cinnamon to complete the making of the black butter: a jocund recreation for all, and at all times. In one corner was a fiddler, and on the veille, flourished for the occasion with satinettes and fern, sat two centeniers and the prevot, singing an old song in the patois of three parishes. Ranulph looked at the scene lingeringly. Here he was, with mystery and peril to hasten his steps, loitering at the spot where the light of home streamed out upon the roadway. But though he lingered, somehow he seemed withdrawn from all these things; they were to him now as pictures of a distant past. Dormy plucked at his coat. "Come, come, lift your feet, lift your feet," said he; "it's no time to walk in slippers. The old man will be getting scared, oui-gia!" Ranulph roused himself. Yes, yes, he must hurry on. He had not forgotten his father, but something held him here; as though Fate were whispering in his ear. What does it matter now? While yet you may, feed on the sight of happiness. So the prisoner going to execution seizes one of the few moments left to him for prayer, to look lingeringly upon what he leaves, as though to carry into the dark a clear remembrance of it all. Moving on quietly in a kind of dream, Ranulph was roused again by Dormy's voice: "On Sunday I saw three magpies, and there was a wedding that day. Tuesday I saw two--that's for joy--and fifty Jersey prisoners of the French comes back on Jersey that day. This morning one I saw. One magpie is for trouble, and trouble's here. One doesn't have eyes for naught--no, bidemme!" Ranulph's patience was exhausted. "Bachouar," he exclaimed roughly, "you make elephants out of fleas! You've got no more news than a conch-shell has music. A minute and you'll have a back-hander that'll put you to sleep, Maitre Dormy." If he had been asked his news politely Dormy would have been still more cunningly reticent. To abuse him in his own argot was to make him loose his bag of mice in a flash. "Bachouar yourself, Maitre Ranulph! You'll find out soon. No news--no trouble--eh! Par made, Mattingley's gone to the Vier Prison--he! The baker's come back, and the Connetable's after Olivier Delagarde. No trouble, pardingue, if no trouble, Dormy Jamais's a batd'lagoule and no need for father of you to hide in a place that only Dormy knows--my good!" So at last the blow had fallen; after all these years of silence, sacrifice, and misery. The futility of all that he had done and suffered for his father's sake came home to Ranulph. Yet his brain was instantly alive. He questioned Dormy rapidly and adroitly, and got the story from him in patches. The baker Carcaud, who, with Olivier Delagarde, betrayed the country into the hands of Rullecour years ago, had, with a French confederate of Mattingley's, been captured in attempting to steal Jean Touzel's boat, the Hardi Biaou. At the capture the confederate had been shot. Before dying he implicated Mattingley in several robberies, and a notorious case of piracy of three months before, committed within gunshot of the men-of- war lying in the tide-way. Carcaud, seriously wounded, to save his life turned King's evidence, and disclosed to the Royal Court in private his own guilt and Olivier Delagarde's treason. Hidden behind the great chair of the Bailly himself, Dormy Jamais had heard the whole business. This had brought him hot-foot to St. Aubin's Bay, whence he had hurried Olivier Delagarde to a hiding-place in the hills above the bay of St. Brelade. The fool had travelled more swiftly than Jersey justice, whose feet are heavy. Elie Mattingley was now in the Vier Prison. There was the whole story. The mask had fallen, the game was up. Well, at least there would be no more lying, no more brutalising inward shame. All at once it appeared to Ranulph madness that he had not taken his father away from Jersey long ago. Yet too he knew that as things had been with Guida he could never have stayed away. Nothing was left but action. He must get his father clear of the island and that soon. But how? and where should they go? He had a boat in St. Aubin's Bay: getting there under cover of darkness he might embark with his father and set sail--whither? To Sark--there was no safety there. To Guernsey--that was no better. To France--yes, that was it, to the war of the Vendee, to join Detricand. No need to find the scrap of paper once given him in the Vier Marchi. Wherever Detricand might be, his fame was the highway to him. All France knew of the companion of de la Rochejaquelein, the fearless Comte de Tournay. Ranulph made his decision. Shamed and dishonoured in Jersey, in that holy war of the Vendee he would find something to kill memory, to take him out of life without disgrace. His father must go with him to France, and bide his fate there also. By the time his mind was thus made up, they had reached the lonely headland dividing Portelet Bay from St. Brelade's. Dark things were said of this spot, and the country folk of the island were wont to avoid it. Beneath the cliffs in the sea was a rocky islet called Janvrin's Tomb. One Janvrin, ill of a fell disease, and with his fellows forbidden by the Royal Court to land, had taken refuge here, and died wholly neglected and without burial. Afterwards his body lay exposed till the ravens and vultures devoured it, and at last a great storm swept his bones off into the sea. Strange lights were to be seen about this rock, and though wise men guessed them mortal glimmerings, easily explained, they sufficed to give the headland immunity from invasion. To a cave at this point Dormy Jamais had brought the trembling Olivier Delagarde, unrepenting and peevish, but with a craven fear of the Royal Court and a furious populace quickening his footsteps. This hiding-place was entered at low tide by a passage from a larger cave. It was like a little vaulted chapel floored with sand and shingle. A crevice through rock and earth to the world above let in the light and out the smoke. Here Olivier Delagarde sat crouched over a tiny fire, with some bread and a jar of water at his hand, gesticulating and talking to himself. The long white hair and beard, with the benevolent forehead, gave him the look of some latter-day St. Helier, grieving for the sins and praying for the sorrows of mankind; but from the hateful mouth came profanity fit only for the dreadful communion of a Witches' Sabbath. Hearing the footsteps of Ranulph and Dormy, he crouched and shivered in terror, but Ranulph, who knew too well his revolting cowardice, called to him reassuringly. On their approach he stretched out his talon-like fingers in a gesture of entreaty. "You'll not let them hang me, Ranulph--you'll save me," he whimpered. "Don't be afraid, they shall not hang you," Ranulph replied quietly, and began warming his hands at the fire. "You'll swear it, Ranulph--on the Bible?" "I've told you they shall not hang you. You ought to know by now whether I mean what I say," his son answered more sharply. Assuredly Ranulph meant that his father should not be hanged. Whatever the law was, whatever wrong the old man had done, it had been atoned for; the price had been paid by both. He himself had drunk the cup of shame to the dregs, but now he would not swallow the dregs. An iron determination entered into him. He had endured all that he would endure from man. He had set out to defend Olivier Delagarde from the worst that might happen, and he was ready to do so to the bitter end. His scheme of justice might not be that of the Royal Court, but he would defend it with his life. He had suddenly grown hard--and dangerous. CHAPTER XXXII The Royal Court was sitting late. Candles had been brought to light the long desk or dais where sat the Bailly in his great chair, and the twelve scarlet-robed jurats. The Attorney-General stood at his desk, mechanically scanning the indictment read against prisoners charged with capital crimes. His work was over, and according to his lights he had done it well. Not even the Undertaker's Apprentice could have been less sensitive to the struggles of humanity under the heel of fate and death. A plaintive complacency, a little righteous austerity, and an agreeable expression of hunger made the Attorney-General a figure in godly contrast to the prisoner awaiting his doom in the iron cage opposite. There was a singular stillness in this sombre Royal Court, where only a tallow candle or two and a dim lanthorn near the door filled the room with flickering shadows-great heads upon the wall drawing close together, and vast lips murmuring awful secrets. Low whisperings came through the dusk like mournful nightwinds carrying tales of awe through a heavy forest. Once in the long silence a figure rose up silently, and stealing across the room to a door near the jury box, tapped upon it with a pencil. A moment's pause, the door opened slightly, and another shadowy figure appeared, whispered, and vanished. Then the first figure closed the door again silently, and came and spoke softly up to the Bailly, who yawned in his hand, sat back in his chair, and drummed his fingers upon the arm. Thereupon the other--the greffier of the court--settled down at his desk beneath the jurats, and peered into an open book before him, his eyes close to the page, reading silently by the meagre light of a candle from the great desk behind him. Now a fat and ponderous avocat rose up and was about to speak, but the Bailly, with a peevish gesture, waved him down, and he settled heavily into place again. At last the door at which the greffier had tapped opened, and a gaunt figure in a red robe came out. Standing in the middle of the room he motioned towards the great pew opposite the Attorney-General. Slowly the twenty-four men of the grand jury following him filed into place and sat themselves down in the shadows. Then the gaunt figure--the Vicomte or high sheriff--bowing to the Bailly and the jurats, went over and took his seat beside the Attorney-General. Whereupon the Bailly leaned forward and droned a question to the Grand Enquete in the shadow. One rose up from among the twenty-four, and out of the dusk there came in reply to the Judge a squeaking voice: "We find the Prisoner at the Bar more Guilty than Innocent." A shudder ran through the court. But some one not in the room shuddered still more violently. From the gable window of a house in the Rue des Tres Pigeons, a girl had sat the livelong day, looking, looking into the court-room. She had watched the day decline, the evening come, and the lighting of the crassets and the candles, and had waited to hear the words that meant more to her than her own life. At last the great moment came, and she could hear the foreman's voice whining the fateful words, "More Guilty than Innocent." It was Carterette Mattingley, and the prisoner at the bar was her father. CHAPTER XXXIII Mattingley's dungeon was infested with rats and other vermin, he had only straw for his bed, and his food and drink were bread and water. The walls were damp with moisture from the Fauxbie running beneath, and a mere glimmer of light came through a small barred window. Superstition had surrounded the Vier Prison with horrors. As carts passed under the great archway, its depth multiplied the sounds so powerfully, the echoes were so fantastic, that folk believed them the roarings of fiendish spirits. If a mounted guard hurried through, the reverberation of the drum-beats and the clatter of hoofs were so uncouth that children stopped their ears and fled in terror. To the ignorant populace the Vier Prison was the home of noisome serpents and the rendezvous of the devil and his witches of Rocbert. When therefore the seafaring merchant of the Vier Marchi, whose massive, brass-studded bahue had been as a gay bazaar where the gentry of Jersey refreshed their wardrobes, with one eye closed--when he was transferred to the Vier Prison, little wonder he should become a dreadful being round whom played the lightnings of dark fancy. Elie Mattingley the popular sinner, with insolent gold rings in his ears, unchallenged as to how he came by his merchandise, was one person; Elie Mattingley, a torch for the burning, and housed amid the terrors of the Vier Prison, was another. Few people in Jersey slept the night before his execution. Here and there kind-hearted women or unimportant men lay awake through pity, and a few through a vague sense of loss; for, henceforth, the Vier Marchi would lack a familiar interest; but mostly the people of Mattingley's world were wakeful through curiosity. Morbid expectation of the hanging had for them a gruesome diversion. The thing itself would break the daily monotony of life and provide hushed gossip for vraic gatherings and veilles for a long time to come. Thus Elie Mattingley would not die in vain! Here was one sensation, but there was still another. Olivier Delagarde had been unmasked, and the whole island had gone tracking him down. No aged toothless tiger was ever sported through the jungle by an army of shikarris with hungrier malice than was this broken traitor by the people he had betrayed. Ensued, therefore, a commingling of patriotism with lust of man-hunting and eager expectation of to-morrow's sacrifice. Nothing of this excitement disturbed Mattingley. He did not sleep, but that was because he was still watching for a means of escape. He felt his chances diminish, however, when about midnight an extra guard was put round the prison. Something had gone amiss in the matter of his rescue. Three things had been planned. Firstly, he was to try escape by the small window of the dungeon. Secondly, Carterette was to bring Sebastian Alixandre to the prison disguised as a sorrowing aunt of the condemned. Alixandre was suddenly to overpower the jailer, Mattingley was to make a rush for freedom, and a few bold spirits without would second his efforts and smuggle him to the sea. The directing mind and hand in the business were Ranulph Delagarde's. He was to have his boat waiting to respond to a signal from the shore, and to make sail for France, where he and his father were to be landed. There he was to give Mattingley, Alixandre, and Carterette his craft to fare across the seas to the great fishing-ground of Gaspe in Canada. Lastly, if these plans failed, the executioner was to be drugged with liquor, his besetting weakness, on the eve of the hanging. The first plan had been found impossible, the window being too small for even Mattingley's head to get through. The second had failed because the righteous Royal Court forbade Carterette the prison, intent that she should no longer be contaminated by so vile a wretch as her father. For years this same Christian solicitude had looked down from the windows of the Cohue Royale upon this same criminal in the Vier Marchi, with one blind eye for himself the sinner and an open one for his merchandise. Mattingley could hear the hollow sound of the sentinels' steps under the archway of the Vier Prison. He was quite stoical. If he had to die, then he had to die. Death could only be a little minute of agony; and for what came after--well, he had not thought fearfully of that, and he had no wish to think of it at all. The visiting chaplain had talked, and he had not listened. He had his own ideas about life, and death, and the beyond, and they were not ungenerous. The chaplain had found him patient but impossible, kindly but unresponsive, sometimes even curious, but without remorse. "You should repent with sorrow and a contrite heart," said the clergyman. "You have done many evil things in your life, Mattingley." Mattingley had replied: "Ma fuifre, I can't remember them! I know I never done them, for I never done anything but good all my life--so much for so much." He had argued it out with himself and he believed he was a good man. He had been open-handed, had stood by his friends, and, up to a few days ago, was counted a good citizen; for many had come to profit through him. His trade--a little smuggling, a little piracy? Was not the former hallowed by distinguished patronage, and had it not existed from immemorial time? It was fair fight for gain, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. If he hadn't robbed others on the high seas, they would probably have robbed him--and sometimes they did. His spirit was that of the Elizabethan admirals; he belonged to a century not his own. As for the crime for which he was to suffer, it had been the work of another hand, and very bad work it was, to try and steal Jean Touzel's Hardi Biaou, and then bungle it. He had had nothing to do with it, for he and Jean Touzel were the best of friends, as was proved by the fact that while he lay in his dungeon, Jean wandered the shore sorrowing for his fate. Thinking now of the whole business and of his past life, Mattingley suddenly had a pang. Yes, remorse smote him at last. There was one thing on his conscience--only one. He had respect for the feelings of others, and where the Church was concerned this was mingled with a droll sort of pity, as of the greater for the lesser, the wise for the helpless. For clergymen he had a half-affectionate contempt. He remembered now that when, five years ago, his confederate who had turned out so badly--he had trusted him, too! had robbed the church of St. Michael's, carrying off the great chest of communion plate, offertories, and rents, he had piously left behind in Mattingley's house the vestry-books and parish-register; a nice definition in rogues' ethics. Awaiting his end now, it smote Mattingley's soul that these stolen records had not been returned to St. Michael's. Next morning he must send word to Carterette to restore the books. Then his conscience would be clear once more. With this resolve quieting his mind, he turned over on his straw and went peacefully to sleep. Hours afterwards he waked with a yawn. There was no start, no terror, but the appearance of the jailer with the chaplain roused in him disgust for the coming function at the Mont es Pendus. Disgust was his chief feeling. This was no way for a man to die! With a choice of evils he should have preferred walking the plank, or even dying quietly in his bed, to being stifled by a rope. To dangle from a cross-tree like a half-filled bag offended all instincts of picturesqueness, and first and last he had been picturesque. He asked at once for pencil and paper. His wishes were obeyed with deference. On the whole he realised by the attentions paid him--the brandy and the food offered by the jailer, the fluttering kindness of the chaplain--that in the life of a criminal there is one moment when he commands the situation. He refused the brandy, for he was strongly against spirits in the early morning, but asked for coffee. Eating seemed superfluous--and a man might die more gaily on an empty stomach. He assured the chaplain that he had come to terms with his conscience and was now about to perform the last act of a well-intentioned life. There and then he wrote to Carterette, telling her about the vestry-books of St. Michael's, and begging that she should restore them secretly. There were no affecting messages; they understood each other. He knew that when it was possible she would never fail to come to the mark where he was concerned, and she had equal faith in him. So the letter was sealed, addressed with flourishes, he was proud of his handwriting, and handed to the chaplain for Carterette. He had scarcely drunk his coffee when there was a roll of drums outside. Mattingley knew that his hour was come, and yet to his own surprise he had no violent sensations. He had a shock presently, however, for on the jailer announcing the executioner, who should be there before him but the Undertaker's Apprentice! In politeness to the chaplain Mattingley forbore profanity. This was the one Jerseyman for whom he had a profound hatred, this youth with the slow, cold, watery blue eye, a face that never wrinkled either with mirth or misery, the square-set teeth always showing a little--an involuntary grimace of cruelty. Here was insult. "Devil below us, so you're going to do it--you!" broke out Mattingley. "The other man was drunk," said the Undertaker's Apprentice. "He's been full as a jug three days. He got drunk too soon." The grimace seemed to widen. "O my good!" said Mattingley, and he would say no more. To him words were like nails--of no use unless they were to be driven home by acts. To Mattingley the procession of death was stupidly slow. As it issued from the archway of the Vier Prison between mounted guards, and passed through a long lane of moving spectators, he looked round coolly. One or two bold spirits cried out: "Head up to the wind, Maitre Elie!" "Oui-gia," he replied; "devil a top-sail in!" and turned a look of contempt on those who hooted him. He realised now that there was no chance of rescue. The militia and the town guard were in ominous force, and although his respect for the island military was not devout, a bullet from the musket of a fool might be as effective as one from Bonapend's-- as Napoleon Bonaparte was disdainfully called in Jersey. Yet he could not but wonder why all the plans of Alixandre, Carterette, and Ranulph had gone for nothing; even the hangman had been got drunk too soon! He had a high opinion of Ranulph, and that he should fail him was a blow to his judgment of humanity. He was thoroughly disgusted. Also they had compelled him to put on a white shirt, he who had never worn linen in his life. He was ill at ease in it. It made him conspicuous; it looked as though he were aping the gentleman at the last. He tried to resign himself, but resignation was hard to learn so late in life. Somehow he could not feel that this was really the day of his death. Yet how could it be otherwise? There was the Vicomte in his red robe, there was the sinister Undertaker's Apprentice, ready to do his hangman's duty. There, as they crossed the mielles, while the sea droned its sing-song on his left, was the parson droning his sing-song on the right "In the midst of life we are in death," etc. There were the grumbling drums, and the crowd morbidly enjoying their Roman holiday; and there, looming up before him, were the four stone pillars on the Mont es Pendus from which he was to swing. His disgust deepened. He was not dying like a seafarer who had fairly earned his reputation. His feelings found vent even as he came to the foot of the platform where he was to make his last stand, and the guards formed a square about the great pillars, glooming like Druidic altars. He burst forth in one phrase expressive of his feelings. "Sacre matin--so damned paltry!" he said, in equal tribute to two races. The Undertaker's Apprentice, thinking this a reflection upon his arrangements, said, with a wave of the hand to the rope: "Nannin, ch'est tres ship-shape, Maitre!" The Undertaker's Apprentice was wrong. He had made everything ship- shape, as he thought, but a gin had been set for him. The rope to be used at the hanging had been measured and approved by the Vicomte, and the Undertaker's Apprentice had carried it to his room at the top of the Cohue Royale. In the dead of night, however, Dormy Jamais drew it from under the mattress whereon the deathman slept, and substituted one a foot longer. This had been Ranulph's idea as a last resort, for he had a grim wish to foil the law even at the twelfth hour. The great moment had come. The shouts and hootings ceased. Out of the silence there arose only the champing of a horse's bit or the hysterical giggle of a woman. The high painful drone of the chaplain's voice was heard. Then came the fatal "Maintenant!" from the Vicomte, the platform fell, and Elie Mattingley dropped the length of the rope. What was the consternation of the Vicomte and the hangman, and the horror of the crowd, to see that Mattingley's toes just touched the ground! The body shook and twisted. The man was being slowly strangled, not hanged. The Undertaker's Apprentice was the only person who kept a cool head. The solution of the problem of the rope for afterwards, but he had been sent there to hang a man, and a man he would hang somehow. Without more ado he jumped upon Mattingley's shoulders and began to drag him down. That instant Ranulph Delagarde burst through the mounted guard and the militia. Rushing to the Vicomte, he exclaimed: "Shame! The man was to be hung, not strangled. This is murder. Stop it, or I'll cut the rope." He looked round on the crowd. "Cowards-- cowards," he cried, "will you see him murdered?" He started forward to drag away the deathmann, but the Vicomte, thoroughly terrified at Ranulph's onset, himself seized the Undertaker's Apprentice, who, drawing off with unruffled malice, watched what followed with steely eyes. Dragged down by the weight of the Apprentice, Mattingley's feet were now firmly on the ground. While the excited crowd tried to break through the cordon of mounted guards, Mattingley, by a twist and a jerk, freed his corded hands. Loosing the rope at his neck he opened his eyes and looked around him, dazed and dumb. The Apprentice came forward. "I'll shorten the rope oui-gia! Then you shall see him swing," he grumbled viciously to the Vicomte. The gaunt Vicomte was trembling with excitement. He looked helplessly around him. The Apprentice caught hold of the rope to tie knots in it and so shorten it, but Ranulph again appealed to the Vicomte. "You've hung the man," said he; "you've strangled him and you didn't kill him. You've got no right to put that rope round his neck again." Two jurats who had waited on the outskirts of the crowd, furtively watching the effect of their sentence, burst in, as distracted as the Vicomte. "Hang the man again and the whole world will laugh at you," Ranulph said. "If you're not worse than fools or Turks you'll let him go. He has had death already. Take him back to the prison then, if you're afraid to free him." He turned on the crowd fiercely. "Have you nothing to say to this butchery?" he cried. "For the love of God, haven't you anything to say?" Half the crowd shouted "Let him go free!" and the other half, disappointed in the working out of the gruesome melodrama, groaned and hooted. Meanwhile Mattingley stood as still as ever he had stood by his bahue in the Vier Marchi, watching--waiting. The Vicomte conferred nervously with the jurats for a moment, and then turned to the guard. "Take the prisoner to the Vier Prison," he said. Mattingley had been slowly solving the problem of his salvation. His eye, like a gimlet, had screwed its way through Ranulph's words into what lay behind, and at last he understood the whole beautiful scheme. It pleased him: Carterette had been worthy of herself, and of him. Ranulph had played his game well too. He only failed to do justice to the poor beganne, Dormy Jamais. But then the virtue of fools is its own reward. As the procession started back with the Undertaker's Apprentice now following after Mattingley, not going before, Mattingley turned to him, and with a smile of malice said: "Ch'est tres ship-shape, Maitre-eh!" and he jerked his head back towards the inadequate rope. He was not greatly troubled about the rest of this grisly farce. He was now ready for breakfast, and his appetite grew as he heard how the crowd hooted and snarled yah! at the Undertaker's Apprentice. He was quite easy about the future. What had been so well done thus far could not fail in the end. CHAPTER XXXIV Events proved Mattingley right. Three days after, it was announced that he had broken prison. It is probable that the fury of the Royal Court at the news was not quite sincere, for it was notable that the night of his evasion, suave and uncrestfallen, they dined in state at the Tres Pigeons. The escape gave them happy issue from a quandary. The Vicomte officially explained that Mattingley had got out by the dungeon window. People came to see the window, and there, ba su, the bars were gone! But that did not prove the case, and the mystery was deepened by the fact that Jean Touzel, whose head was too small for Elie's hat, could not get that same head through the dungeon window. Having proved so much, Jean left the mystery there, and returned to his Hardi Biaou. This happened on the morning after the dark night when Mattingley, Carterette, and Alixandre hurried from the Vier Prison, through the Rue des Sablons to the sea, and there boarded Ranulph's boat, wherein was Olivier Delagarde the traitor. Accompanying Carterette to the shore was a little figure that moved along beside them like a shadow, a little grey figure that carried a gold- headed cane. At the shore this same little grey figure bade Mattingley good-bye with a quavering voice. Whereupon Carterette, her face all wet with tears, kissed him upon both cheeks, and sobbed so that she could scarcely speak. For now when it was all done--all the horrible ordeal over--the woman in her broke down before the little old gentleman, who had been like a benediction in the house where the ten commandments were imperfectly upheld. But she choked down her sobs, and thinking of another more than of herself, she said: "Dear Chevalier, do not forget the book--that register--I gave you to-night. Read it--read the last writing in it, and then you will know-- ah, bidemme--but you will know that her we love--ah, but you must read it and tell nobody till--till the right time comes! She hasn't held her tongue for naught, and it's only fair to do as she's done all along, and hold ours. Pardingue, but my heart hurts me!" she added suddenly, and catching the hand that held the little gold cane she kissed it with impulsive ardour. "You have been so good to me--oui-gia!" she said with a gulp, and then she dropped the hand and turned and fled to the boat rocking in the surf. The little Chevalier watched the boat glide out into the gloom of night, and waited till he knew that they must all be aboard Ranulph's schooner and making for the sea. Then he turned and went back to the empty house in the Rue d'Egypte. Opening the book Carterette had placed in his hands before they left the house, he turned up and scanned closely the last written page. A moment after, he started violently, his eyes dilating, first with wonder, then with a bewildered joy; and then, Protestant though he was, with the instinct of long-gone forefathers, he made the sacred gesture, and said: "Now I have not lived and loved in vain, thanks be to God!" Even as joy opened wide the eyes of the Chevalier, who had been sorely smitten through the friends of his heart, out at sea Night and Death were closing the eyes of another wan old man who had been a traitor to his country. For the boat of the fugitives had scarcely cleared reefs and rocks, and reached the open Channel, when Olivier Delagarde, uttering the same cry as when Ranulph and the soldiers had found him wounded in the Grouville road sixteen years before, suddenly started up from where he had lain mumbling, and whispering incoherently, "Ranulph--they've killed me!" fell back dead. True to the instinct which had kept him faithful to one idea for sixteen years, and in spite of the protests of Mattingley and Carterette--of the despairing Carterette who felt the last thread of her hopes snap with his going--Ranulph made ready to leave them. Bidding them good-bye, he placed his father's body in the rowboat, and pulling back to the shore of St. Aubin's Bay with his pale freight, carried it on his shoulders up to the little house where he had lived so many years. There he kept the death-watch alone. CHAPTER XXXV Guida knew nothing of the arrest and trial of Mattingley until he had been condemned to death. Nor until then did she know anything of what had happened to Olivier Delagarde; for soon after her interview with Ranulph she had gone a-marketing to the Island of Sark, with the results of half a year's knitting. Her return had been delayed by ugly gales from the south east. Several times a year she made this journey, landing at the Eperquerie Rocks as she had done one day long ago, and selling her beautiful wool caps and jackets to the farmers and fisher-folk, getting in kind for what she gave. When she made these excursions to Sark, Dormy Jamais had always remained at the little house, milking her cow, feeding her fowls, and keeping all in order--as perfect a sentinel as old Biribi, and as faithful. For the first time in his life, however, Dormy Jamais was unfaithful. On the day that Carcaud the baker and Mattingley were arrested, he deserted the hut at Plemont to exploit, with Ranulph, the adventure which was at last to save Olivier Delagarde and Mattingley from death. But he had been unfaithful only in the letter of his bond. He had gone to the house of Jean Touzel, through whose Hardi Biaou the disaster had come, and had told Mattresse Aimable that she must go to Plemont in his stead--for a fool must keep his faith whate'er the worldly wise may do. So the fat Femme de Ballast, puffing with every step, trudged across the island to Plemont, and installed herself as keeper of the house. One day Mattresse Aimable's quiet was invaded by two signalmen who kept watch, not far from Guida's home, for all sail, friend or foe, bearing in sight. They were now awaiting the new Admiral of the Jersey station and his fleet. With churlish insolence they entered Guida's hut before Maitresse Aimable could prevent it. Looking round, they laughed meaningly, and then told her that the commander coming presently to lie with his fleet in Grouville Bay was none other than the sometime Jersey midshipman, now Admiral Prince Philip d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy. Understanding then the meaning of their laughter, and the implied insult to Guida, Maitresse Aimable's voice came ravaging out of the silence where it lay hid so often and so long, and the signalmen went their ways shamefacedly. She could not make head or tail of her thoughts now, nor see an inch before her nose; all she could feel was an aching heart for Guida. She had heard strange tales of how Philip had become Prince Philip d'Avranche, and husband of the Comtesse Chantavoine, and afterwards Duc de Bercy. Also she had heard how Philip, just before he became the Duc de Bercy, had fought his ship against a French vessel off Ushant, and, though she had heavier armament than his own, had destroyed her. For this he had been made an admiral. Only the other day her Jean had brought the Gazette de Jersey in which all these things were related, and had spelled them out for her. And now this same Philip d'Avranche with his new name and fame was on his way to defend the Isle of Jersey. Mattresse Aimable's muddled mind could not get hold of this new Philip. For years she had thought him a monster, and here he was, a great and valiant gentleman to the world. He had done a thing that Jean would rather have cut off his hand--both hands--than do, and yet here he was, an admiral, a prince, and a sovereign duke, and men like Jean were as dust beneath his feet. The real Philip she knew: he was the man who had spoiled the life of a woman; this other Philip--she could read about him, she could think about him, just as she could think about William and his horse' in Boulay Bay, or the Little Bad Folk of Rocbert; but she could not realise him as a thing of flesh and blood and actual being. The more she tried to realise him the more mixed she became. As in her mental maze she sat panting her way to enlightenment, she saw Guida's boat entering the little harbour. Now the truth must be told-- but how? After her first exclamation of welcome to mother and child, Maitresse Aimable struggled painfully for her voice. She tried to find words in which to tell Guida the truth, but, stopping in despair, she suddenly began rocking the child back and forth, saying only: "Prince Admiral he --and now to come! O my good--O my good!" Guida's sharp intuition found the truth. "Philip d'Avranche!" she said to herself. Then aloud, in a shaking voice--"Philip d'Avranche!" She could not think clearly for a moment. It was as if her brain had received a blow, and in her head was a singing numbness, obscuring eyesight, hearing, speech. When she had recovered a little she took the child from Maitresse Aimable, and pressing him to her bosom placed him in the Sieur de Mauprat's great arm-chair. This action, ordinary as it seemed, was significant of what was in her mind. The child himself realised something unusual, and he sat perfectly still, two small hands spread out on the big arms. "You always believed in me, 'tresse Aimable," Guida said at last in a low voice. "Oui-gia, what else?" was the instant reply. The quick responsiveness of her own voice seemed to confound the Femme de Ballast, and her face suffused. Guida stooped quickly and kissed her on the cheek. "You'll never regret that. And you will have to go on believing still, but you'll not be sorry in the end, 'tresse Aimable," she said, and turned away to the fireplace. An hour afterwards Mattresse Aimable was upon her way to St. Heliers, but now she carried her weight more easily and panted less. Twice within the last month Jean had given her ear a friendly pinch, and now Guida had kissed her--surely she had reason to carry her weight more lightly. That afternoon and evening Guida struggled with herself: the woman in her shrinking from the ordeal at hand. But the mother in her pleaded, commanded, ruled confused emotions to quiet. Finality of purpose once determined, a kind of peace came over her sick spirit, for with finality there is quiescence if not peace. When she looked at the little Guilbert, refined and strong, curiously observant, and sensitive in temperament like herself, her courage suddenly leaped to a higher point than it had ever known. This innocent had suffered enough. What belonged to him he had not had. He had been wronged in much by his father, and maybe--and this was the cruel part of it--had been unwittingly wronged, alas! how unwilling, by her! If she gave her own life many times, it still could be no more than was the child's due. A sudden impulse seized her, and with a quick explosion of feeling she dropped on her knees, and looking into his eyes, as though hungering for the words she so often yearned to hear, she said: "You love your mother, Guilbert? You love her, little son?" With a pretty smile and eyes brimming with affectionate fun, but without a word, the child put out a tiny hand and drew the fingers softly down his mother's face. "Speak, little son, tell your mother that you love her." The tiny hand pressed itself over her eyes, and a gay little laugh came from the sensitive lips, then both arms ran round her neck. The child drew her head to him impulsively, and kissing her, a little upon the hair and a little upon the forehead, so indefinite was the embrace, he said: "Si, maman, I loves you best of all," then added: "Maman, can't I have the sword now?" "You shall have the sword too some day," she answered, her eyes flashing. "But, maman, can't I touch it now?" Without a word she took down the sheathed goldhandled sword and laid it across the chair-arms. "I can't take the sword out, can I, maman?" he asked. She could not help smiling. "Not yet, my son, not yet." "I has to be growed up so the blade doesn't hurt me, hasn't I, maman?" She nodded and smiled again, and went about her work. He nodded sagely. "Maman--" he said. She turned to him; the little figure was erect with a sweet importance. "Maman, what am I now--with the sword?" he asked, with wide-open, amazed eyes. A strange look passed across her face. Stooping, she kissed his curly hair. "You are my prince," she said. A little later the two were standing on that point of land called Grosnez--the brow of the Jersey tiger. Not far from them was a signal- staff which telegraphed to another signal-staff inland. Upon the staff now was hoisted a red flag. Guida knew the signals well. The red flag meant warships in sight. Then bags were hoisted that told of the number of vessels: one, two, three, four, five, six, then one next the upright, meaning seven. Last of all came the signal that a flag-ship was among them. This was a fleet in command of an admiral. There, not far out, between Guernsey and Jersey, was the squadron itself. Guida watched it for a long while, her heart hardening; but seeing that the men by the signal- staff were watching her, she took the child and went to a spot where they were shielded from any eyes. Here she watched the fleet draw nearer and nearer. The vessels passed almost within a stone's throw of her. She could see the St. George's Cross flying at the fore of the largest ship. That was the admiral's flag--that was the flag of Admiral Prince Philip d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy. She felt her heart stand still suddenly, and with a tremor, as of fear, she gathered her child close to her. "What is all those ships, maman?" asked the child. "They are ships to defend Jersey," she said, watching the Imperturbable and its flotilla range on. "Will they affend us, maman?" "Perhaps-at the last," she said. CHAPTER XXXVI Off Grouville Bay lay the squadron of the Jersey station. The St. George's Cross was flying at the fore of the Imperturbable, and on every ship of the fleet the white ensign flapped in the morning wind. The wooden-walled three-decked flag-ship, with her 32-pounders, and six hundred men, was not less picturesque and was more important than the Castle of Mont Orgueil near by, standing over two hundred feet above the level of the sea: the home of Philip d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy, and the Comtesse Chantavoine, now known to the world as the Duchesse de Bercy. The Comtesse had arrived in the island almost simultaneously with Philip, although he had urged her to remain at the ducal palace of Bercy. But the duchy of Bercy was in hard case. When the imbecile Duke Leopold John died and Philip succeeded, the neutrality of Bercy had been proclaimed, but this neutrality had since been violated, and there was danger at once from the incursions of the Austrians and the ravages of the French troops. In Philip's absence the valiant governor-general of the duchy, aided by the influence and courage of the Comtesse Chantavoine, had thus far saved it from dismemberment, in spite of attempted betrayals by Damour the Intendant, who still remained Philip's enemy. But when the Marquis Grandjon-Larisse, the uncle of the Comtesse, died, her cousin, General Grandjon-Larisse of the Republican army--whose word with Dalbarade had secured Philip's release years before for her own safety, first urged and then commanded her temporary absence from the duchy. So far he had been able to protect it from the fury of the Republicans and the secret treachery of the Jacobins. But a time of great peril was now at hand. Under these anxieties and the lack of other inspiration than duty, her health had failed, and at last she obeyed her cousin, joining Philip at the Castle of Mont Orgueil. More than a year had passed since she had seen him, but there was no emotion, no ardour in their present greeting. From the first there had been nothing to link them together. She had married, hoping that she might love thereafter; he in choler and bitterness, and in the stress of a desperate ambition. He had avoided the marriage so long as he might, in hope of preventing it until the Duke should die, but with the irony of fate the expected death had come two hours after the ceremony. Then, shortly afterwards, came the death of the imbecile Leopold John; and Philip found himself the Duc de Bercy, and within a year, by reason of a splendid victory for the Imperturbable, an admiral. Truth to tell, in this battle he had fought for victory for his ship and a fall for himself: for the fruit he had plucked was turning to dust and ashes. He was haunted by the memory of a wronged woman, as she herself had foretold. Death, with the burial of private dishonour under the roses of public victory--that had come to be his desire. But he had found that Death is wilful and chooseth her own time; that she may be lured, but she will not come with shouting. So he had stoically accepted his fate, and could even smile with a bitter cynicism when ordered to proceed to the coast of Jersey, where collision with a French squadron was deemed certain. Now, he was again brought face to face with his past; with the imminent memory of Guida Landresse de Landresse. Where was Guida now? What had happened to her? He dared not ask, and none told him. Whichever way he turned--night or day--her face haunted him. Looking out from the windows of Mont Orgueil Castle, or from the deck of the Imperturbable, he could see--and he could scarce choose but see--the lonely Ecrehos. There, with a wild eloquence, he had made a girl believe he loved her, and had taken the first step in the path which should have led to true happiness and honour. From this good path he had violently swerved--and now? From all that could be seen, however, the world went very well with him. He was the centre of authority. Almost any morning one might have seen a boat shoot out from below the Castle wall, carrying a flag with the blue ball of a Vice-Admiral of the White in the canton, and as the Admiral himself stepped upon the deck of the Imperturbable between saluting guards, across the water came a gay march played in his honour. Jersey herself was elate, eager to welcome one of her own sons risen to such high estate. When, the very day after his arrival, he passed through the Vier Marchi on his way to visit the Lieutenant-Governor, the redrobed jurats impulsively turned out to greet him. They were ready to prove that memory is a matter of will and cultivation. There is no curtain so opaque as that which drops between the mind of man and the thing it is advantageous to forget. But how closely does the ear of self-service listen for the footfall of a most distant memory, when to do so is to share even a reflected glory! A week had gone since Philip had landed on the island. Memories pursued him. If he came by the shore of St. Clement's Bay, he saw the spot where he had stood with her the evening he married her, and she said to him: "Philip, I wonder what we will think of this day a year from now!...... To-day is everything to you, but to-morrow is very much to me." He remembered Shoreham sitting upon the cromlech above singing the legend of the gui-l'annee--and Shoreham was lying now a hundred fathoms deep. As he walked through the Vier Marchi with his officers, there flashed before his eyes the scene of sixteen years ago, when, through the grime and havoc of battle, he had run to save Guida from the scimitar of the garish Turk. Walking through the Place du Vier Prison, he recalled the morning when he had rescued Ranulph from the hands of the mob. Where was Ranulph now? If he had but known it, that very morning as he passed Mattingley's house Ranulph had looked down at him with infinite scorn and loathing--but with triumph too, for the Chevalier had just shown him a certain page in a certain parish-register long lost, left with him by Carterette Mattingley. Philip knew naught of Ranulph save the story babbled by the islanders. He cared to hear of no one but Guida, and who was now to mention her name to him? It was long--so long since he had seen her face. How many years ago was it? Only five, and yet it seemed twenty. He was a boy then; now his hair was streaked with grey. He was light- hearted then, and he was still buoyant with his fellows, still alert and vigorous, quick of speech and keen of humour--but only before the world. In his own home he was fitful of mood, impatient of the grave, meditative look of his wife, of her resolute tenacity of thought and purpose, of her unvarying evenness of mood, through which no warmth played. It seemed to him that if she had defied him--given him petulance for petulance, impatience for impatience, it would have been easier to bear. If--if he could only read behind those passionless eyes, that clear, unwrinkled forehead! But he knew her no better now than he did the day he married her. Unwittingly she chilled him, and he felt he had no right to complain, for he had done her the greatest wrong which can be done a woman. Whatever chanced, Guida was still his wife; and there was in him yet the strain of Calvinistic morality of the island race that bred him. He had shrunk from coming here, but it had been far worse than he had looked for. One day, in a nervous, bitter moment, after an impatient hour with the Comtesse, he had said: "Can you--can you not speak? Can you not tell me what you think?" She had answered quietly: "It would do no good. You would not understand. I know you in some ways better than you know yourself. I cannot tell what it is, but there is something wrong in your nature, something that poisons your life. And not myself only has felt that. I never told you--but you remember the day the old Duke died, the day we were married? You had gone from the room a moment. The Duke beckoned me to him, and whispered 'Don't be afraid--don't be afraid--' and then he died. That meant that he was afraid, that death had cleared his sight as to you in some way. He was afraid--of what? And I have been afraid--of what? I do not know. Things have not gone well somehow. You are strong, you are brave, and I come of a family that have been strong and brave. We ought to be near: yet, yet we are lonely and far apart, and we shall never be nearer or less lonely. That I know." To this he had made no reply and this anger vanished. Something in her words had ruled him to her own calmness, and at that moment he had the first flash of understanding of her nature and its true relation to his own. Passing through the Rue d'Egypte this day he met Dormy Jamais. Forgetful of everything save that this quaint foolish figure had interested him when a boy, he called him by name; but Dormy Jamais swerved away, eyeing him askance. At that instant he saw Jean Touzel standing in the doorway of his house. A wave of remorseful feeling rushed over him. He could wait no longer: he would ask Jean Touzel and his wife about Guida. He instantly bethought him of an excuse for the visit. His squadron needed another pilot; he would approach Jean in the matter. Bidding his flag-lieutenant go on to Elizabeth Castle whither they were bound, and await him there, he crossed over to Jean. By the time he reached the doorway, however, Jean had retreated to the veille by the chimney behind Maitresse Aimable, who sat in a great stave-chair mending a net. Philip knocked and stepped inside. When Mattresse Aimable saw who it was she was so startled that she dropped her work, and made vague clutches to recover it. Stooping, however, was a great effort for her. Philip instantly stepped forward and picked up the net. Politely handing it to her, he said: "Ah, Maitresse Aimable, it is as if you had never stirred all these years!" Then turning to her husband "I have come looking for a good pilot, Jean." Mattresse Aimable had at first flushed to a purple, had afterwards gone pale, then recovered herself, and now returned Philip's look with a downright steadiness. Like Jean, she knew well enough he had not come for a pilot--that was not the business of a Prince Admiral. She did not even rise. Philip might be whatever the world chose to call him, but her house was her own, and he had come uninvited, and he was unwelcome. She kept her seat, but her fat head inclined once in greeting, and she waited for him to speak again. She knew why he had come; and somehow the steady look in these slow, brown eyes, and the blinking glance behind Jean's brass-rimmed spectacles, disconcerted Philip. Here were people who knew the truth about him, knew the sort of man he really was. These poor folk who had had nothing of the world but what they earned, they would never hang on any prince's favours. He read the situation rightly. The penalties of his life were teaching him a discernment which could never have come to him through good fortune alone. Having at last discovered his real self a little, he was in the way of knowing others. "May I shut the door?" he asked quietly. Jean nodded. Closing it he turned to them again. "Since my return I have heard naught concerning Mademoiselle Landresse," he said. "I want to ask you about her now. Does she still live in the Place du Vier Prison?" Both Jean and Aimable shook their heads. They had spoken no word since his entrance. "She--she is not dead?" he asked. They shook their heads again. "Her grandfather"--he paused--"is he living?" Once more they shook their heads in negation. "Where is mademoiselle?" he asked, sick at heart. Jean looked at his wife; neither moved nor answered. "Where does she live?" urged Philip. Still there was no motion, no reply. "You might as well tell me." His tone was half pleading, half angry--little like a sovereign duke, very like a man in trouble. "You must know I shall find out from some one else, then," he continued. "But it is better for you to tell me. I mean her no harm, and I would rather know about her from her friends." He took off his hat now. Something in the dignity of these two honest folk rebuked the pride of place and spirit in him. As plainly as though heralds had proclaimed it, he understood that these two knew the abatements on the shield of his honour-argent, a plain point tenne, due to him "that tells lyes to his Prince or General," and argent, a gore sinister tenne, due for flying from his colours. Maitresse Aimable turned and looked towards Jean, but Jean turned away his head. Then she did not hesitate. The voice so oft eluding her will responded readily now. Anger--plain primitive rage-possessed her. She had had no child, but as the years had passed all the love that might have been given to her own was bestowed upon Guida, and in that mind she spoke. "O my grief, to think you have come here-you!" she burst forth. "You steal the best heart in the world--there is none like her, nannin-gia. You promise her, you break her life, you spoil her, and then you fly away --ah coward you! Man pethe benin, was there ever such a man like you! If my Jean there had done a thing as that I would sink him in the sea-- he would sink himself, je me crais! But you come back here, O my Mother of God, you come back here with your sword, with your crown-ugh, it is like a black cat in heaven--you!" She got to her feet more nimbly than she had ever done in her life, and the floor seemed to heave as she came towards Philip. "You speak to me with soft words," she said harshly--"but you shall have the good hard truth from me. You want to know now where she is--I ask where you have been these five years? Your voice it tremble when you speak of her now. Oh ho! it has been nice and quiet these five years. The grand pethe of her drop dead in his chair when he know. The world turn against her, make light of her, when they know. All alone--she is all alone, but for one fat old fool like me. She bear all the shame, all the pain, for the crime of you. All alone she take her child and go on to the rock of Plemont to live these five years. But you, you go and get a crown and be Amiral and marry a grande comtesse--marry, oh, je crais ben! This is no world for such men like you. You come to my house, to the house of Jean Touzel, to ask this and that--well, you have the truth of God, ba su! No good will come to you in the end, nannin-gia! When you go to die, you will think and think and think of that beautiful Guida Landresse; you will think and think of the heart you kill, and you will call, and she will not come. You will call till your throat rattle, but she will not come, and the child of sorrow you give her will not come--no, bidemme! E'fin, the door you shut you can open now, and you can go from the house of Jean Touzel. It belong to the wife of an honest man-- maint'nant!" In the moment's silence that ensued, Jean took a step forward. "Ma femme, ma bonne femme!" he said with a shaking voice. Then he pointed to the door. Humiliated, overwhelmed by the words of the woman, Philip turned mechanically towards the door without a word, and his fingers fumbled for the latch, for a mist was before his eyes. With a great effort he recovered himself, and passed slowly out into the Rue d'Egypte. "A child--a child!" he said brokenly. "Guida's child--my God! And I --have never--known. Plemont--Plemont, she is at Plemont!" He shuddered. "Guida's child--and mine," he kept saying to himself, as in a painful dream he passed on to the shore. In the little fisherman's cottage he had left, a fat old woman sat sobbing in the great chair made of barrel-staves, and a man, stooping, kissed her twice on the cheek--the first time in fifteen years. And then she both laughed and cried. CHAPTER XXXVII Guida sat by the fire sewing, Biribi the dog at her feet. A little distance away, to the right of the chimney, lay Guilbert asleep. Twice she lowered the work to her lap to look at the child, the reflected light of the fire playing on his face. Stretching out her hand, she touched him, and then she smiled. Hers was an all-devouring love; the child was her whole life; her own present or future was as nothing; she was but fuel for the fire of his existence. A storm was raging outside. The sea roared in upon Plemont and Grosnez, battering the rocks in futile agony. A hoarse nor'-easter ranged across the tiger's head in helpless fury: a night of awe to inland folk, and of danger to seafarers. To Guida, who was both of the sea and of the land, fearless as to either, it was neither terrible nor desolate to be alone with the storm. Storm was but power unshackled, and power she loved and understood. She had lived so long in close commerce with storm and sea that something of their keen force had entered into her, and she was kin with them. Each wind to her was intimate as a friend, each rock and cave familiar as her hearthstone; and the ungoverned ocean spoke in terms intelligible. So heavy was the surf that now and then the spray of some foiled wave broke on the roof, but she only nodded at that, as though the sea were calling her to come forth, tapping on her rooftree in joyous greeting. But suddenly she started and bent her head. It seemed as if her whole body were hearkening. Now she rose quickly to her feet, dropped her work upon the table near by, and rested herself against it, still listening. She was sure she heard a horse's hoofs. Turning swiftly, she drew the curtain of the bed before her sleeping child, and then stood quiet waiting--waiting. Her hand went to her heart once as though its fierce throbbing hurt her. Plainly as though she could look through these stone walls into clear sunlight, she saw some one dismount, and she heard a voice. The door of the but was unlocked and unbarred. If she feared, it was easy to shoot the bolt and lock the door, to drop the bar across the little window, and be safe and secure. But no bodily fear possessed her- -only that terror of the spirit when its great trial comes suddenly and it shrinks back, though the mind be of faultless courage. She waited. There came a knocking at the door. She did not move from where she stood. "Come in," she said. She was composed and resolute now. The latch clicked, the door opened, and a cloaked figure entered, the shriek of the storm behind. The door closed again. The intruder took a step forward, his hat came off, the cloak was loosed and dropped upon the floor. Guida's premonition had been right: It was Philip. She did not speak. A stone could have been no colder as she stood in the light of the fire, her face still and strong, the eyes darkling, luminous. There was on her the dignity of the fearless, the pure in heart. "Guida!" Philip said, and took a step nearer, and paused. He was haggard, he had the look of one who had come upon a desperate errand. When she did not answer he said pleadingly: "Guida, won't you speak to me?" "The Duc de Bercy chooses a strange hour for his visit," she said quietly. "But see," he answered hurriedly; "what I have to say to you--" he paused, as though to choose the thing he should say first. "You can say nothing I need hear," she answered, looking him steadily in the eyes. "Ah, Guida," he cried, disconcerted by her cold composure, "for God's sake listen to me! To-night we have to face our fate. To-night you have to say--" "Fate was faced long ago. I have nothing to say." "Guida, I have repented of all. I have come now only to speak honestly of the wrong I did you. I have come to--" Scorn sharpened her words, though she spoke calmly: "You have forced yourself upon a woman's presence--and at this hour!" "I chose the only hour possible," he answered quickly. "Guida, the past cannot be changed, but we have the present and the future still. I have not come to justify myself, but to find a way to atone." "No atonement is possible." "You cannot deny me the right to confess to you that--" "To you denial should not seem hard usage," she answered slowly, "and confession should have witnesses--" She paused suggestively. The imputation that he of all men had the least right to resent denial; that, dishonest still, he was willing to justify her privately though not publicly; that repentance should have been open to the world--it all stung him. He threw out his hands in a gesture of protest. "As many witnesses as you will, but not now, not this hour, after all these years. Will you not at least listen to me, and then judge and act? Will you not hear me, Guida?" She had not yet even stirred. Now that it had come, this scene was all so different from what she might have imagined. But she spoke out of a merciless understanding, an unchangeable honesty. Her words came clear and pitiless: "If you will speak to the point and without a useless emotion, I will try to listen. Common kindness should have prevented this intrusion-- by you!" Every word she said was like a whip-lash across his face. A devilish light leapt into his eye, but it faded as quickly as it came. "After to-night, to the public what you will," he repeated with dogged persistence, "but it was right we should speak alone to each other at least this once before the open end. I did you wrong, yet I did not mean to ruin your life, and you should know that. I ought not to have married you secretly; I acknowledge that. But I loved you--" She shook her head, and with a smile of pitying disdain--he could so little see the real truth, his real misdemeanour--she said: "Oh no, never--never! You were not capable of love; you never knew what it means. From the first you were too untrue ever to love a woman. There was a great fire of emotion, you saw shadows on the wall, and you fell in love with them. That was all." "I tell you that I loved you," he answered with passionate energy. "But as you will. Let it be that it was not real love: at least it was all there was in me to give. I never meant to desert you. I never meant to disavow our marriage. I denied you, you will say. I did. In the light of what came after, it was dishonourable--I grant that; but I did it at a crisis and for the fulfilment of a great ambition--and as much for you as for me." "That was the least of your evil work. But how little you know what true people think or feel!" she answered with a kind of pain in her voice, for she felt that such a nature could never even realise its own enormities. Well, since it had gone so far she would speak openly, though it hurt her sense of self-respect. "For that matter, do you think that I or any good woman would have had place or power, been princess or duchess, at the price? What sort of mind have you?" She looked him straight in the eyes. "Put it in the clear light of right and wrong, it was knavery. You--you talk of not meaning to do me harm. You were never capable of doing me good. It was not in you. From first to last you are untrue. Were it otherwise, were you not from first to last unworthy, would you have--but no, your worst crime need not be judged here. Yet had you one spark of worthiness would you have made a mock marriage--it is no more--with the Comtesse Chantavoine? No matter what I said or what I did in anger, or contempt of you, had you been an honest man you would not have so ruined another life. Marriage, alas! You have wronged the Comtesse worse than you have wronged me. One day I shall be righted, but what can you say or do to right her wrongs?" Her voice had now a piercing indignation and force. "Yes, Philip d'Avranche, it is as I say, justice will come to me. The world turned against me because of you; I have been shamed and disgraced. For years I have suffered in silence. But I have waited without fear for the end. God is with me. He is stronger than fortune or fate. He has brought you to Jersey once more, to right my wrongs, mine and my child's." She saw his eyes flash to the little curtained bed. They both stood silent and still. He could hear the child breathing. His blood quickened. An impulse seized him. He took a step towards the bed, as though to draw the curtain, but she quickly moved between. "Never," she said in a low stern tone; "no touch of yours for my Guilbert--for my son! Every minute of his life has been mine. He is mine--all mine--and so he shall remain. You who gambled with the name, the fame, the very soul of your wife, you shall not have one breath of her child's life." It was as if the outward action of life was suspended in them for a moment, and then came the battle of two strong spirits: the struggle of fretful and indulged egotism, the impulse of a vigorous temperament, against a deep moral force, a high purity of mind and conscience, and the invincible love of the mother for the child. Time, bitterness, and power had hardened Philip's mind, and his long-restrained emotions, breaking loose now, made him a passionate and wilful figure. His force lay in the very unruliness of his spirit, hers in the perfect command of her moods and emotions. Well equipped by the thoughts and sufferings of five long years, her spirit was trained to meet this onset with fiery wisdom. They were like two armies watching each other across a narrow stream, between one conflict and another. For a minute they stood at gaze. The only sounds in the room were the whirring of the fire in the chimney and the child's breathing. At last Philip's intemperate self-will gave way. There was no withstanding that cold, still face, that unwavering eye. Only brutality could go further. The nobility of her nature, her inflexible straight-forwardness came upon him with overwhelming force. Dressed in molleton, with no adornment save the glow of a perfect health, she seemed at this moment, as on the Ecrehos, the one being on earth worth living and caring for. What had he got for all the wrong he had done her? Nothing. Come what might, there was one thing that he could yet do, and even as the thought possessed him he spoke. "Guida," he said with rushing emotion, "it is not too late. Forgive the past-the wrong of it, the shame of it. You are my wife; nothing can undo that. The other woman--she is nothing to me. If we part and never meet again she will suffer no more than she suffers to go on with me. She has never loved me, nor I her. Ambition did it all, and of ambition God knows I have had enough! Let me proclaim our marriage, let me come back to you. Then, happen what will, for the rest of our lives I will try to atone for the wrong I did you. I want you, I want our child. I want to win your love again. I can't wipe out what I have done, but I can put you right before the world, I can prove to you that I set you above place and ambition. If you shrink from doing it for me, do it"--he glanced towards the bed--"do it for our child. To-morrow--to-morrow it shall be, if you will forgive. To-morrow let us start again--Guida--Guida!" She did not answer at once; but at last she said "Giving up place and ambition would prove nothing now. It is easy to repent when our pleasures have palled. I told you in a letter four years ago that your protests came too late. They are always too late. With a nature like yours nothing is sure or lasting. Everything changes with the mood. It is different with me: I speak only what I truly mean. Believe me, for I tell you the truth, you are a man that a woman could forget but could never forgive. As a prince you are much better than as a plain man, for princes may do what other men may not. It is their way to take all and give nothing. You should have been born a prince, then all your actions would have seemed natural. Yet now you must remain a prince, for what you got at such a price to others you must pay for. You say you would come down from your high place, you would give up your worldly honours, for me. What madness! You are not the kind of man with whom a woman could trust herself in the troubles and changes of life. Laying all else aside, if I would have had naught of your honours and your duchy long ago, do you think I would now share a disgrace from which you could never rise? For in my heart I feel that this remorse is but caprice. It is to-day; it may not--will not--be tomorrow." "You are wrong, you are wrong. I am honest with you now," he broke in. "No," she answered coldly, "it is not in you to be honest. Your words have no ring of truth in my ears, for the note is the same as I heard once upon the Ecrehos. I was a young girl then and I believed; I am a woman now, and I should still disbelieve though all the world were on your side to declare me wrong. I tell you"--her voice rose again, it seemed to catch the note of freedom and strength of the storm without-- "I tell you, I will still live as my heart and conscience prompt me. The course I have set for myself I will follow; the life I entered upon when my child was born I will not leave. No word you have said has made my heart beat faster. You and I can never have anything to say to each other in this life, beyond"--her voice changed, she paused--"beyond one thing--" Going to the bed where the child lay, she drew the curtain softly, and pointing, she said: "There is my child. I have set my life to the one task, to keep him to myself, and yet to win for him the heritage of the dukedom of Bercy. You shall yet pay to him the price of your wrong-doing." She drew back slightly so that he could see the child lying with its rosy face half buried in its pillow, the little hand lying like a flower upon the coverlet. Once more with a passionate exclamation he moved nearer to the child. "No farther!" she said, stepping before him. When she saw the wild impulse in his face to thrust her aside, she added: "It is only the shameless coward that strikes the dead. You had a wife-- Guida d'Avranche, but Guida d'Avranche is dead. There only lives the mother of this child, Guida Landresse de Landresse." She looked at him with scorn, almost with hatred. Had he touched her-- but she would rather pity than loathe! Her words roused all the devilry in him. The face of the child had sent him mad. "By Heaven, I will have the child--I will have the child!" he broke out harshly. "You shall not treat me like a dog. You know well I would have kept you as my wife, but your narrow pride, your unjust anger threw me over. You have wronged me. I tell you you have wronged me, for you held the secret of the child from me all these years." "The whole world knew!" she exclaimed indignantly. "I will break your pride," he said, incensed and unable to command himself. "Mark you, I will break your pride. And I will have my child too!" "Establish to the world your right to him," she answered keenly. "You have the right to acknowledge him, but the possession shall be mine." He was the picture of impotent anger and despair. It was the irony of penalty that the one person in the world who could really sting him was this unacknowledged, almost unknown woman. She was the only human being that had power to shatter his egotism and resolve him into the common elements of a base manhood. Of little avail his eloquence now! He had cajoled a sovereign dukedom out of an aged and fatuous prince; he had cajoled a wife, who yet was no wife, from among the highest of a royal court; he had cajoled success from Fate by a valour informed with vanity and ambition; years ago, with eloquent arts he had cajoled a young girl into a secret marriage--but he could no longer cajole the woman who was his one true wife. She knew him through and through. He was so wild with rage he could almost have killed her as she stood there, one hand stretched out to protect the child, the other pointing to the door. He seized his hat and cloak and laid his hand upon the latch, then suddenly turned to her. A dark project came to him. He himself could not prevail with her; but he would reach her yet, through the child. If the child were in his hands, she would come to him. "Remember, I will have the child," he said, his face black with evil purpose. She did not deign reply, but stood fearless and still, as, throwing open the door, he rushed out into the night. She listened until she heard his horse's hoofs upon the rocky upland. Then she went to the door, locked it, and barred it. Turning, she ran with a cry as of hungry love to the little bed. Crushing the child to her bosom, she buried her face in his brown curls. "My son, my own, own son!" she said. CHAPTER XXXVIII If at times it would seem that Nature's disposition of the events of a life or a series of lives is illogical, at others she would seem to play them with an irresistible logic--loosing them, as it were, in a trackless forest of experience, and in some dramatic hour, by an inevitable attraction, drawing them back again to a destiny fulfilled. In this latter way did she seem to lay her hand upon the lives of Philip d'Avranche and Guida Landresse. At the time that Elie Mattingley, in Jersey, was awaiting hanging on the Mont es Pendus, and writing his letter to Carterette concerning the stolen book of church records, in a town of Brittany the Reverend Lorenzo Dow lay dying. The army of the Vendee, under Detricand Comte de Tournay, had made a last dash at a small town held by a section of the Republican army, and captured it. On the prisons being opened, Detricand had discovered in a vile dungeon the sometime curate of St. Michael's Church in Jersey. When they entered on him, wasted and ragged he lay asleep on his bed of rotten straw, his fingers between the leaves of a book of meditations. Captured five years before and forgotten alike by the English and French Governments, he had apathetically pined and starved to these last days of his life. Recognising him, Detricand carried him in his strong arms to his own tent. For many hours the helpless man lay insensible, but at last the flickering spirit struggled back to light for a little space. When first conscious of his surroundings, the poor captive felt tremblingly in the pocket of his tattered vest. Not finding what he searched for, he half started up. Detricand hastened forward with a black leather-covered book in his hand. Mr. Dow's thin trembling fingers clutched eagerly--it was his only passion--at this journal of his life. As his grasp closed on it, he recognised Detricand, and at the same time he saw the cross and heart of the Vendee on his coat. A victorious little laugh struggled in his throat. "The Lord hath triumphed gloriously--I could drink some wine, monsieur," he added in the same quaint clerical monotone. Having drunk the wine he lay back murmuring thanks and satisfaction, his eyes closed. Presently they opened. He nodded at Detricand. "I have not tasted wine these five years," he said; then added, "You--you took too much wine in Jersey, did you not, monsieur? I used to say an office for you every Litany day, which was of a Friday." His eyes again caught the cross and heart on Detricand's coat, and they lighted up a little. "The Lord hath triumphed gloriously," he repeated, and added irrelevantly, "I suppose you are almost a captain now?" "A general--almost," said Detricand with gentle humour. At that moment an orderly appeared at the tent-door, bearing a letter for Detricand. "From General Grandjon-Larisse of the Republican army, your highness," said the orderly, handing the letter. "The messenger awaits an answer." As Detricand hastily read, a look of astonishment crossed over his face, and his brows gathered in perplexity. After a minute's silence he said to the orderly: "I will send a reply to-morrow." "Yes, your highness." The orderly saluted and retired. Mr. Dow half raised himself on his couch, and the fevered eyes swallowed Detricand. "You--you are a prince, monsieur?" he said. Detricand glanced up from the letter he was reading again, a grave and troubled look on his face. "Prince of Vaufontaine they call me, but, as you know, I am only a vagabond turned soldier," he said. The dying man smiled to himself,-- a smile of the sweetest vanity this side of death,--for it seemed to him that the Lord had granted him this brand from the burning, and in supreme satisfaction, he whispered: "I used to say an office for you every Litany--which was a Friday, and twice, I remember, on two Saints' days." Suddenly another thought came to him, and his lips moved--he was murmuring to himself. He would leave a goodly legacy to the captive of his prayers. Taking the leather-covered journal of his life in both hands, he held it out. "Highness, highness--" said he. Death was breaking the voice in his throat. Detricand stooped and ran an arm round his shoulder, but raising himself up Mr. Dow gently pushed him back. The strength of his supreme hour was on him. "Highness," said he, "I give you the book of five years of my life--not of its every day, but of its moments, its great days. Read it," he added, "read it wisely. Your own name is in it--with the first time I said an office for you." His breath failed him, he fell back, and lay quiet for several minutes. "You used to take too much wine," he said half wildly, starting up again. "Permit me your hand, highness." Detricand dropped on his knee and took the wasted hand. Mr. Dow's eyes were glazing fast. With a last effort he spoke--his voice like a squeaking wind in a pipe: "The Lord hath triumphed gloriously--" and he leaned forward to kiss Detricand's hand. But Death intervened, and his lips fell instead upon the red cross on Detricand's breast, as he sank forward lifeless. That night, after Lorenzo Dow was laid in his grave, Detricand read the little black leather-covered journal bequeathed to him. Of the years of his captivity the records were few; the book was chiefly concerned with his career in Jersey. Detricand read page after page, more often with a smile than not; yet it was the smile of one who knew life and would scarce misunderstand the eccentric and honest soul of the Reverend Lorenzo Dow. Suddenly, however, he started, for he came upon these lines: I have, in great privacy and with halting of spirit, married, this twenty-third of January, Mr. Philip d'Avranche of His Majesty's ship "Narcissus," and Mistress Guida Landresse de Landresse, both of this Island of Jersey; by special license of the Bishop of Winchester. To this was added in comment: Unchurchmanlike, and most irregular. But the young gentleman's tongue is gifted, and he pressed his cause heartily. Also Mr. Shoreham of the Narcissus--"Mad Shoreham of Galway" his father was called--I knew him--added his voice to the request also. Troubled in conscience thereby, yet I did marry the twain gladly, for I think a worthier maid never lived than this same Mistress Guida Landresse de Landresse, of the ancient family of the de Mauprats. Yet I like not secrecy, though it be but for a month or two months--on my vow, I like it not for one hour. Note: At leisure read of the family history of the de Mauprats and the d'Avranches. N.: No more secret marriages nor special licenses--most uncanonical privileges! N.: For ease of conscience write to His Grace at Lambeth upon the point. Detricand sprang to his feet. So this was the truth about Philip d'Avranche, about Guida, alas! He paced the tent, his brain in a whirl. Stopping at last, he took from his pocket the letter received that afternoon from General Grandjon- Larisse, and read it through again hurriedly. It proposed a truce, and a meeting with himself at a village near, for conference upon the surrender of Detricand's small army. "A bitter end to all our fighting," said Detricand aloud at last. "But he is right. It is now a mere waste of life. I know my course. . . . Even to-night," he added, "it shall be to-night." Two hours later Detricand, Prince of Vaufontaine, was closeted with General Grandjon-Larisse at a village half-way between the Republican army and the broken bands of the Vendee. As lads Detricand and Grandjon-Larisse had known each other well. But since the war began Grandjon-Larisse had gone one way, and he had gone the other, bitter enemies in principle but friendly enough at heart. They had not seen each other since the year before Rullecour's invasion of Jersey. "I had hoped to see you by sunset, monseigneur," said Grandjon-Larisse after they had exchanged greetings. "It is through a melancholy chance you see me at all," replied Detricand heavily. "To what piteous accident am I indebted?" Grandjon-Larisse replied in an acid tone, for war had given his temper an edge. "Were not my reasons for surrender sound? I eschewed eloquence--I gave you facts." Detricand shook his head, but did not reply at once. His brow was clouded. "Let me speak fully and bluntly now," Grandjon-Larisse went on. "You will not shrink from plain truths, I know. We were friends ere you went adventuring with Rullecour. We are soldiers too; and you will understand I meant no bragging in my letter." He raised his brows inquiringly, and Detricand inclined his head in assent. Without more ado, Grandjon-Larisse laid a map on the table. "This will help us," he said briefly, then added: "Look you, Prince, when war began the game was all with you. At Thouars here"--his words followed his finger--"at Fontenay, at Saumur, at Torfou, at Coron, at Chateau- Gonthier, at Pontorson, at Dol, at Antrain, you had us by the heels. Victory was ours once to your thrice. Your blood was up. You had great men--great men," he repeated politely. Detricand bowed. "But see how all is changed," continued the other. "See: by this forest of Vesins de la Rochejaquelein fell. At Chollet"-- his finger touched another point--"Bonchamp died, and here d'Elbee and Lescure were mortally wounded. At Angers Stofflet was sent to his account, and Charette paid the price at Nantes." He held up his fingers. "One--two--three--four--five--six great men gone!" He paused, took a step away from the table, and came back again. Once more he dropped his finger on the map. "Tinteniac is gone, and at Quiberon Peninsula your friend Sombreuil was slain. And look you here," he added in a lower voice, "at Laval my old friend the Prince of Talmont was executed at his own chateau, where I had spent many an hour with him." Detricand's eyes flashed fire. "Why then permit the murder, monsieur le general?" Grandjon-Larisse started, his voice became hard at once. "It is not a question of Talmont, or of you, or of me, monseigneur. It is not a question of friendship, not even of father, or brother, or son--but of France." "And of God and the King," said Detricand quickly. Grandjon-Larisse shrugged his shoulders. "We see with different eyes. We think with different minds," and he stooped over the map again. "We feel with different hearts," said Detricand. "There is the difference between us--between your cause and mine. You are all for logic and perfection in government, and to get it you go mad, and France is made a shambles--" "War is cruelty, and none can make it gentle," interrupted Grandjon- Larisse. He turned to the map once more. "And see, monseigneur, here at La Vie your uncle the Prince of Vaufontaine died, leaving you his name and a burden of hopeless war. Now count them all over--de la Rochejaquelein, Bonchamp, d'Elbee, Lescure, Stofflet, Charette, Talmont, Tinteniac, Sombreuil, Vaufontaine--they are all gone, your great men. And who of chieftains and armies are left? Detricand of Vaufontaine and a few brave men--no more. Believe me, monseigneur, your game is hopeless--by your grace, one moment still," he added, as Detricand made an impatient gesture. "Hoche destroyed your army and subdued the country two years ago. You broke out again, and Hoche and I have beaten you again. Fight on, with your doomed followers--brave men I admit--and Hoche will have no mercy. I can save your peasants if you will yield now. "We have had enough of blood. Let us have peace. To proceed is certain death to all, and your cause worse lost. On my honour, monseigneur, I do this at some risk, in memory of old days. I have lost too many friends," he added in a lower voice. Detricand was moved. "I thank you for this honest courtesy. I had almost misread your letter," he answered. "Now I will speak freely. I had hoped to leave my bones in Brittany. It was my will to fight to the last, with my doomed followers as you call them--comrades and lovers of France I say. And it was their wish to die with me. Till this afternoon I had no other purpose. Willing deaths ours, for I am persuaded, for every one of us that dies, a hundred men will rise up again and take revenge upon this red debauch of government!" "Have a care," said Grandjon-Larisse with sudden anger, his hand dropping upon the handle of his sword. "I ask leave for plain beliefs as you asked leave for plain words. I must speak my mind, and I will say now that it has changed in this matter of fighting and surrender. I will tell you what has changed it," and Detricand drew from his pocket Lorenzo Dow's journal. "It concerns both you and me." Grandjon-Larisse flashed a look of inquiry at him. "It concerns your cousin the Comtesse Chantavoine and Philip d'Avranche, who calls himself her husband and Duc de Bercy." He opened the journal, and handed it to Grandjon-Larisse. "Read," he said. As Grandjon-Larisse read, an oath broke from him. "Is this authentic, monseigneur?" he said in blank astonishment "and the woman still lives?" Detricand told him all he knew, and added: "A plain duty awaits us both, monsieur le general. You are concerned for the Comtesse Chantavoine; I am concerned for the Duchy of Bercy and for this poor lady--this poor lady in Jersey," he added. Grandjon-Larisse was white with rage. "The upstart! The English brigand!" he said between his teeth. "You see now," said Detricand, "that though it was my will to die fighting your army in the last trench--" "Alone, I fear," interjected Grandjon-Larisse with curt admiration. "My duty and my purpose go elsewhere," continued Detricand. "They take me to Jersey. And yours, monsieur?" Grandjon-Larisse beat his foot impatiently on the floor. "For the moment I cannot stir in this, though I would give my life to do so," he answered bitterly. "I am but now recalled to Paris by the Directory." He stopped short in his restless pacing and held out his hand. "We are at one," he said--"friends in this at least. Command me when and how you will. Whatever I can I will do, even at risk and peril. The English brigand!" he added bitterly. "But for this insult to my blood, to the noble Chantavoine, he shall pay the price to me--yes, by the heel of God!" "I hope to be in Jersey three days hence," said Detricand. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: It is easy to repent when our pleasures have palled Kissed her twice on the cheek--the first time in fifteen years No news--no trouble War is cruelty, and none can make it gentle THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG [A ROMANCE OF TWO KINGDOMS] By Gilbert Parker Volume 6. CHAPTER XXXIX The bell on the top of the Cohue Royale clattered like the tongue of a scolding fishwife. For it was the fourth of October, and the opening of the Assise d'Heritage. This particular session of the Court was to proceed with unusual spirit and importance, for after the reading of the King's Proclamation, the Royal Court and the States were to present the formal welcome of the island to Admiral Prince Philip d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy; likewise to offer a bounty to all Jerseymen enlisting under him. The island was en fete. There had not been such a year of sensations since the Battle of Jersey. Long before chicane--chicane ceased clanging over the Vier Marchi the body of the Court was filled. The Governor, the Bailly, the jurats, the seigneurs and the dames des fiefs, the avocats with their knowledge of the ancient custom of Normandy and the devious inroads made upon it by the customs of Jersey, the military, all were in their places; the officers of the navy had arrived, all save one and he was to be the chief figure of this function. With each arrival the people cheered and the trumpets blared. The islanders in the Vier Marchi turned to the booths for refreshments, or to the printing-machine set up near La Pyramide, and bought halfpenny chapsheets telling of recent defeats of the French; though mostly they told in ebullient words of the sea-fight which had made Philip d'Avranche an admiral, and of his elevation to a sovereign dukedom. The crowds restlessly awaited his coming now. Inside the Court there was more restlessness still. It was now many minutes beyond the hour fixed. The Bailly whispered to the Governor, the Governor to his aide, and the aide sought the naval officers present; but these could give no explanation of the delay. The Comtesse Chantavoine was in her place of honour beside the Attorney-General--but Prince Philip and his flag-lieutenant came not. The Comtesse Chantavoine was the one person outwardly unmoved. What she thought, who could tell? Hundreds of eyes scanned her face, yet she seemed unconscious of them, indifferent to them. What would not the Bailly have given for her calmness! What would not the Greffier have given for her importance! She drew every eye by virtue of something which was more than the name of Duchesse de Bercy. The face, the bearing, had an unconscious dignity, a living command and composure: the heritage, perhaps, of a race ever more fighters than courtiers, rather desiring good sleep after good warfare than luxurious peace. The silence, the tension grew painful. A whole half hour had the Court waited beyond its time. At last, however, cheers arose outside, and all knew that the Prince was coming. Presently the doors were thrown open, two halberdiers stepped inside, and an officer of the Court announced Admiral his Serene Highness Prince Philip d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy. "Oui-gia, think of that!" said a voice from somewhere in the hall. Philip heard it, and he frowned, for he recognised Dormy Jamais's voice. Where it came from he knew not, nor did any one; for the daft one was snugly bestowed above a middle doorway in what was half balcony, half cornice. When Philip had taken his place beside the Comtesse Chantavoine, came the formal opening of the Cour d'Heritage. The Comtesse's eyes fixed themselves upon Philip. There was that in his manner which puzzled and evaded her clear intuition. Some strange circumstance must have delayed him, for she saw that his flag-lieutenant was disturbed, and this she felt sure was not due to delay alone. She was barely conscious that the Bailly had been addressing Philip, until he had stopped and Philip had risen to reply. He had scarcely begun speaking when the doors were suddenly thrown open again, and a woman came forward quickly. The instant she entered Philip saw her, and stopped speaking. Every one turned. It was Guida. In the silence, looking neither to right nor left, she advanced almost to where the Greffier sat, and dropping on her knee and looking up to the Bailly and the jurats, stretched out her hands and cried: "Haro, haro! A l'aide, mon Prince, on me fait tort!" If one rose from the dead suddenly to command them to an awed obedience, Jerseymen could not be more at the mercy of the apparition than at the call of one who cries in their midst, "Haro! Haro!"--that ancient relic of the custom of Normandy and Rollo the Dane. To this hour the Jerseyman maketh his cry unto Rollo, and the Royal Court--whose right to respond to this cry was confirmed by King John and afterwards by Charles--must listen, and every one must heed. That cry of Haro makes the workman drop his tools, the woman her knitting, the militiaman his musket, the fisherman his net, the schoolmaster his birch, and the ecrivain his babble, to await the judgment of the Royal Court. Every jurat fixed his eye upon Guida as though she had come to claim his life. The Bailly's lips opened twice as though to speak, but no words came. The Governor sat with hands clinched upon his chairarm. The crowd breathed in gasps of excitement. The Comtesse Chantavoine looked at Philip, looked at Guida, and knew that here was the opening of the scroll she had not been able to unfold. Now she should understand that something which had made the old Duc de Bercy with his last breath say, Don't be afraid! Philip stood moveless, his eyes steady, his face bitter, determined. Yet there was in his look, fixed upon Guida, some strange mingling of pity and purpose. It was as though two spirits were fighting in his face for mastery. The Countess touched him upon the arm, but he took no notice. Drawing back in her seat she looked at him and at Guida, as one might watch the balances of justice weighing life and death. She could not read this story, but one glance at the faces of the crowd round her made her aware that here was a tale of the past which all knew in little or in much. "Haro! haro! A l'aide, mon Prince, on me fait tort!" What did she mean, this woman with the exquisite face, alive with power and feeling, indignation and appeal? To what prince did she cry?--for what aid? who trespassed upon her? The Bailly now stood up, a frown upon his face. He knew what scandal had said concerning Guida and Philip. He had never liked Guida, for in the first days of his importance she had, for a rudeness upon his part meant as a compliment, thrown his hat--the Lieutenant-Bailly's hat--into the Fauxbie by the Vier Prison. He thought her intrusive thus to stay these august proceedings of the Royal Court, by an appeal for he knew not what. "What is the trespass, and who the trespasser?" asked the Bailly sternly. Guida rose to her feet. "Philip d'Avranche has trespassed," she said. "What Philip d'Avranche, mademoiselle?" asked the Bailly in a rough, ungenerous tone. "Admiral Philip d'Avranche, known as his Serene Highness the Duc de Bercy, has trespassed on me," she answered. She did not look at Philip, her eyes were fixed upon the Bailly and the jurats. The Bailly whispered to one or two jurats. "Wherein is the trespass?" asked the Bailly sharply. "Tell your story." After an instant's painful pause, Guida told her tale. "Last night at Plemont," she said in a voice trembling a little at first but growing stronger as she went on, "I left my child, my Guilbert, in his bed, with Dormy Jamais to watch beside him, while I went to my boat which lies far from my hut. I left Dormy Jamais with the child because I was afraid--because I had been afraid, these three days past, that Philip d'Avranche would steal him from me. I was gone but half an hour; it was dark when I returned. I found the door open, I found Dormy Jamais lying unconscious on the floor, and my child's bed empty. My child was gone. He was stolen from me by Philip d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy." "What proof have you that it was the Duc de Bercy?" asked the Bailly. "I have told your honour that Dormy Jamais was there. He struck Dormy Jamais to the ground, and rode off with my child." The Bailly sniffed. "Dormy Jamais is a simpleton--an idiot." "Then let the Prince speak," she answered quickly. She turned and looked Philip in the eyes. He did not answer a word. He had not moved since she entered the court-room. He kept his eyes fixed on her, save for one or two swift glances towards the jurats. The crisis of his life had come. He was ready to meet it now: anything would be better than all he had gone through during the past ten days. In mad impulse he had stolen the child, with the wild belief that through it he could reach Guida, could bring her to him. For now this woman who despised him, hated him, he desired more than all else in the world. Ambition has her own means of punishing. For her gifts of place or fortune she puts some impossible hunger in the soul of the victim which leads him at last to his own destruction. With all the world conquered there is still some mystic island of which she whispers, and to gain this her votary risks all--and loses all. The Bailly saw by Philip's face that Guida had spoken truth. But he whispered with the jurats eagerly, and presently he said with brusque decision: "Our law of Haro may only apply to trespass upon property. Its intent is merely civil." Which having said he opened and shut his mouth with gusto, and sat back as though expecting Guida to retire. "Your law of Haro, monsieur le Bailly!" Guida answered with flashing eyes, her voice ringing out fearlessly. "Your law of Haro! The law of Haro comes from the custom of Normandy, which is the law of Jersey. You make its intent this, you make it that, but nothing can alter the law, and what has been done in its name for generations. Is it so, that if Philip d'Avranche trespass on my land, or my hearth, I may cry Haro, haro! and you will take heed? But when it is blood of my blood, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh that he has wickedly seized; when it is the head I have pillowed on my breast for four years--the child that has known no father, his mother's only companion in her unearned shame, the shame of an outcast--then is it so that your law of Haro may not apply? Messieurs, it is the justice of Haro that I ask, not your lax usage of it. From this Prince Philip I appeal to the spirit of Prince Rollo who made this law. I appeal to the law of Jersey which is the Custom of Normandy. There are precedents enough, as you well know, messieurs. I demand--I demand--my child." The Bailly and the jurats were in a hopeless quandary. They glanced furtively at Philip. They were half afraid that she was right, and yet were timorous of deciding against the Prince. She saw their hesitation. "I call on you to fulfil the law. I have cried Haro, haro! and what I have cried men will hear outside this Court, outside this Isle of Jersey; for I appeal against a sovereign duke of Europe." The Bailly and the jurats were overwhelmed by the situation. Guida's brain was a hundred times clearer than theirs. Danger, peril to her child, had aroused in her every force of intelligence; she had the daring, the desperation of the lioness fighting for her own. Philip himself solved the problem. Turning to the bench of jurats, he said quietly: "She is quite right; the law of Haro is with her. It must apply." The Court was in a greater maze than ever. Was he then about to restore to Guida her child? After an instant's pause Philip continued: "But in this case there was no trespass, for the child--is my own." Every eye in the Cohue Royale fixed itself upon him, then upon Guida, then upon her who was known as the Duchesse de Bercy. The face of the Comtesse Chantavoine was like snow, white and cold. As the words were spoken a sigh broke from her, and there came to Philip's mind that distant day in the council chamber at Bercy when for one moment he was upon his trial; but he did not turn and look at her now. It was all pitiable, horrible; but this open avowal, insult as it was to the Comtesse Chantavoine, could be no worse than the rumours which would surely have reached her one day. So let the game fare on. He had thrown down the glove now, and he could not see the end; he was playing for one thing only--for the woman he had lost, for his own child. If everything went by the board, why, it must go by the board. It all flashed through his brain: to-morrow he must send in his resignation to the Admiralty-- so much at once. Then Bercy--come what might, there was work for him to do at Bercy. He was a sovereign duke of Europe, as Guida had said. He would fight for the duchy for his son's sake. Standing there he could feel again the warm cheek of the child upon his own, as last night he felt it riding across the island from Plemont to the village near Mont Orgueil. That very morning he had hurried down to a little cottage in the village and seen it lying asleep, well cared for by a peasant woman. He knew that to-morrow the scandal of the thing would belong to the world, but he was not dismayed. He had tossed his fame as an admiral into the gutter, but Bercy still was left. All the native force, the stubborn vigour, the obdurate spirit of the soil of Jersey of which he was, its arrogant self-will, drove him straight into this last issue. What he had got at so much cost he would keep against all the world. He would-- But he stopped short in his thoughts, for there now at the court-room door stood Detricand, the Chouan chieftain. He drew his hand quickly across his eyes. It seemed so wild, so fantastic, that of all men, Detricand should be there. His gaze was so fixed that every one turned to see--every one save Guida. Guida was not conscious of this new figure in the scene. In her heart was fierce tumult. Her hour had come at last, the hour in which she must declare that she was the wife of this man. She had no proofs. No doubt he would deny it now, for he knew how she loathed him. But she must tell her tale. She was about to address the Bailly, but, as though a pang of pity shot, through her heart, she turned instead and looked at the Comtesse Chantavoine. She could find it in her to pause in compassion for this poor lady, more wronged than herself had been. Their eyes met. One instant's flash of intelligence between the souls of two women, and Guida knew that the look of the Comtesse Chantavoine had said: "Speak for your child." Thereupon she spoke. "Messieurs, Prince Philip d'Avranche is my husband." Every one in the court-room stirred with excitement. Some weak-nerved woman with a child at her breast began to cry, and the little one joined its feeble wail to hers. "Five years ago," Guida continued, "I was married to Philip d'Avranche by the Reverend Lorenzo Dow in the church of St. Michael's--" The Bailly interrupted with a grunt. "H'm--Lorenzo Dow is well out of the way-have done." "May I not then be heard in my own defence?" Guida cried in indignation. "For years I have suffered silently slander and shame. Now I speak for myself at last, and you will not hear me! I come to this court of justice, and my word is doubted ere I can prove the truth. Is it for judges to assail one so? Five years ago I was married secretly, in St. Michael's Church--secretly, because Philip d'Avranche urged it, pleaded for it. An open marriage, he said, would hinder his promotion. We were wedded, and he left me. War broke out. I remained silent according to my promise to him. Then came the time when in the States of Bercy he denied that he had a wife. From the hour I knew he had done so I denied him. My child was born in shame and sorrow, I myself was outcast in this island. But my conscience was clear before Heaven. I took myself and my child out from among you and went to Plemont. I waited, believing that God's justice was surer than man's. At last Philip d'Avranche--my husband--returned here. He invaded my home, and begged me to come with my child to him as his wife--he who had so evilly wronged me, and wronged another more than me. I refused. Then he stole my child from me. You ask for proofs of my marriage. Messieurs, I have no proofs. "I know not where Lorenzo Dow may be found. The register of St. Michael's Church, as you all know, was stolen. Mr. Shoreham, who witnessed the marriage, is dead. But you must believe me. There is one witness left, if he will but speak--even the man who married me, the man that for one day called me his wife. I ask him now to tell the truth." She turned towards Philip, her clear eyes piercing him through and through. What was going on in his mind neither she nor any in that Court might ever know, for in the pause, the Comtesse Chantavoine rose up, and passing steadily by Philip, came to Guida. Looking her in the eyes with an incredible sorrow, she took her hand, and turned towards Philip with infinite scorn. A strange, thrilling silence fell upon all the Court. The jurats shifted in their seats with excitement. The Bailly, in a hoarse, dry voice, said: "We must have proof. There must be record as well as witness." From near the great doorway came a voice saying: "The record is here," and Detricand stepped forward, in his uniform of the army of the Vendee. A hushed murmur ran round the room. The jurats whispered to each other. "Who are you, monsieur?" said the Bailly. "I am Detricand, Prince of Vaufontaine," he replied, "for whom the Comtesse Chantavoine will vouch," he added in a pained voice, and bowed low to her and to Guida. "I am but this hour landed. I came to Jersey on this very matter." He did not wait for the Bailly to reply, but began to tell of the death of Lorenzo Dow, and, taking from his pocket the little black journal, opened it and read aloud the record written therein by the dead clergyman. Having read it, he passed it on to the Greffier, who handed it up to the Bailly. Another moment's pause ensued. To the most ignorant and casual of the onlookers the strain was great; to those chiefly concerned it was supreme. The Bailly and the jurats whispered together. Now at last a spirit of justice was roused in them. But the law's technicalities were still to rule. The Bailly closed the book, and handed it back to the Greffier with the words: "This is not proof though it is evidence." Guida felt her heart sink within her. The Comtesse Chantavoine, who still held her hand, pressed it, though herself cold as ice with sickness of spirit. At that instant, and from Heaven knows where--as a bird comes from a bush--a little grey man came quickly among them all, carrying spread open before him a book almost as big as himself. Handing it up to the Bailly, he said: "Here is the proof, Monsieur le Bailly--here is the whole proof." The Bailly leaned over and drew up the book. The jurats crowded near and a dozen heads gathered about the open volume. At last the Bailly looked up and addressed the Court solemnly. "It is the lost register of St. Michael's," he said. "It contains the record of the marriage of Lieutenant Philip d'Avranche and Guida Landresse de Landresse, both of the Isle of Jersey, by special license of the Bishop of Winchester." "Precisely so, precisely so," said the little grey figure--the Chevalier Orvillier du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir. Tears ran down his cheeks as he turned towards Guida, but he was smiling too. Guida's eyes were upon the Bailly. "And the child?" she cried with a broken voice--"the child?" "The child goes with its mother," answered the Bailly firmly. DURING ONE YEAR LATER CHAPTER XL The day that saw Guida's restitution in the Cohue Royale brought but further trouble to Ranulph Delagarde. The Chevalier had shown him the lost register of St. Michael's, and with a heart less heavy, he left the island once more. Intending to join Detricand in the Vendee, he had scarcely landed at St. Malo when he was seized by a press-gang and carried aboard a French frigate commissioned to ravage the coasts of British America. He had stubbornly resisted the press, but had been knocked on the head, and there was an end on it. In vain he protested that he was an Englishman. They laughed at him. His French was perfect, his accent Norman, his was a Norman face-- evidence enough. If he was not a citizen of France he should be, and he must be. Ranulph decided that it was needless to throw away his life. It was better to make a show of submission. So long as he had not to fight British ships, he could afford to wait. Time enough then for him to take action. When the chance came he would escape this bondage; meanwhile remembering his four years' service with the artillery at Elizabeth Castle, he asked to be made a gunner, and his request was granted. The Victoire sailed the seas battle-hungry, and presently appeased her appetite among Dutch and Danish privateers. Such excellent work did Ranulph against the Dutchmen, that Richambeau, the captain, gave him a gun for himself, and after they had fought the Danes made him a master- gunner. Of the largest gun on the Victoire Ranulph grew so fond that at last he called her ma couzaine. Days and weeks passed, until one morning came the cry of "Land! Land!" and once again Ranulph saw British soil--the tall cliffs of the peninsula of Gaspe. Gaspe--that was the ultima Thule to which Mattingley and Carterette had gone. Presently, as the Victoire came nearer to the coast, he could see a bay and a great rock in the distance, and, as they bore in now, the rock seemed to stretch out like a vast wall into the gulf. As he stood watching and leaning on ma couzaine, a sailor near him said that the bay and the rock were called Perce. Perce Bay--that was the exact point for which Elie Mattingley and Carterette had sailed with Sebastian Alixandre. How strange it was! He had bidden Carterette good-bye for ever, yet fate had now brought him to the very spot whither she had gone. The Rock of Perce was a wall, three hundred feet high, and the wall was an island that had once been a long promontory like a battlement, jutting out hundreds of yards into the gulf. At one point it was pierced by an archway. It was almost sheer; its top was flat and level. Upon the sides there was no verdure; upon the top centuries had made a green field. The wild geese as they flew northward, myriad flocks of gulls, gannets, cormorants, and all manner of fowl of the sea, had builded upon the summit until it was rich with grass and shrubs. The nations of the air sent their legions here to bivouac, and the discord of a hundred languages might be heard far out to sea, far in upon the land. Millions of the races of the air swarmed there; at times the air above was darkened by clouds of them. No fog-bell on a rock-bound coast might warn mariners more ominously than these battalions of adventurers on the Perce Rock. No human being had ever mounted to this eyrie. Generations of fishermen had looked upon the yellowish-red limestone of the Perce Rock with a valorous eye, but it would seem that not even the tiny clinging hoof of a chamois or wild goat might find a foothold upon the straight sides of it. Ranulph was roused out of the spell Perce cast over him by seeing the British flag upon a building by the shore of the bay they were now entering. His heart gave a great bound. Yes, it was the English flag defiantly flying. And more--there were two old 12 pounders being trained on the French squadron. For the first time in years a low laugh burst from his lips. "O mai grand doux," he said in the Jersey patois, "only one man in the world would do that. Only Elie Mattingley!" At that moment, Mattingley now issued from a wooden fishing-shed with Sebastian Alixandre and three others armed with muskets, and passed to the little fort on which flew the British and Jersey flags. Ranulph heard a guffaw behind. Richambeau, the captain, confronted him. "That's a big splutter in a little pot, gunner," said he. He put his telescope to his eye. "The Lord protect us," he cried, "they're going to fight my ship!" He laughed again till the tears came. "Son of Peter, but it is droll that--a farce au diable! They have humour, these fisher- folk, eh, gunner?" "Mattingley will fight you just the same," answered Ranulph coolly. "Oh ho, you know these people, my gunner?" asked Richambeau. "All my life," answered Ranulph, "and, by your leave, I will tell you how." Not waiting for permission, after the manner of his country, he told Richambeau of his Jersey birth and bringing up, and how he was the victim of the pressgang. "Very good," said Richambeau. "You Jersey folk were once Frenchmen, and now that you're French again, you shall do something for the flag. You see that 12-pounder yonder to the right? Very well, dismount it. Then we'll send in a flag of truce, and parley with this Mattingley, for his jests are worth attention and politeness. There's a fellow at the gun-- no, he has gone. Dismount the right-hand gun at one shot. Ready now. Get a good range." The whole matter went through Ranulph's mind as the captain spoke. If he refused to fire, he would be strung up to the yardarm; if he fired and missed, perhaps other gunners would fire, and once started they might raze the fishing-post. If he dismounted the gun, the matter would probably remain only a jest, for such as yet Richambeau regarded it. Ranulph ordered the tackle and breechings cast away, had off the apron, pricked a cartridge, primed, bruised the priming, and covered the vent. Then he took his range steadily, quietly. There was a brisk wind blowing from the south--he must allow for that; but the wind was stopped somewhat in its course by the Perch Rock--he must allow for that. All was ready. Suddenly a girl came running round the corner of the building. It was Carterette. She was making for the right-hand gun. Ranulph started, the hand that held the match trembled. "Fire, you fool, or you'll kill the girl!" cried Richambeau. Ranulph laid a hand on himself as it were. Every nerve in his body tingled, his legs trembled, but his eye was steady. He took the sight once more coolly, then blew on the match. Now the girl was within thirty feet of the gun. He quickly blew on the match again, and fired. When the smoke cleared away he saw that the gun was dismounted, and not ten feet from it stood Carterette looking at it dazedly. He heard a laugh behind him. There was Richambeau walking away, telescope under arm, even as the other 12-pounder on shore replied impudently to the gun he had fired. "A good aim," he heard Richambeau say, jerking a finger backward towards him. Was it then? said Ranulph to himself; was it indeed? Ba su, it was the last shot he would ever fire against aught English, here or elsewhere. Presently he saw a boat drawing away with the flag of truce in the hands of a sous-lieutenant. His mind was made up; he would escape to-night. His place was there beside his fellow-countrymen. He motioned away the men of the gun. He would load ma couzaine himself for the last time. As he sponged the gun he made his plans. Swish-swash the sponge-staff ran in and out--he would try to steal away at dog-watch. He struck the sponge smartly on ma couzaine's muzzle, cleansing it--he would have to slide into the water like a rat and swim very softly to the shore. He reached for a fresh cartridge, and thrust it into the throat of the gun, and as the seam was laid downwards he said to himself that he could swim under water, if discovered as he left the Victoire. As he unstopped the touch-hole and tried with the priming-wire whether the cartridge was home, he was stunned by a fresh thought. Richambeau would send a squad of men to search for him, and if he was not found they would probably raze the Post, or take its people prisoners. As he put the apron carefully on ma couzaine, he determined that he could not take refuge with the Mattingleys. Neither would it do to make for the woods of the interior, for still Richambeau might revenge himself on the fishing-post. What was to be done? He turned his eyes helplessly on Perce Rock. As he looked, a new idea came to him. If only he could get to the top of that massive wall, not a hundred fleets could dislodge him. One musket could defeat the forlorn hope of any army. Besides, if he took refuge on the rock, there could be no grudge against Perce village or the Mattingleys, and Richambeau would not injure them. He eyed the wall closely. The blazing sunshine showed it up in a hard light, and he studied every square yard of it with a telescope. At one point the wall was not quite perpendicular. There were also narrow ledges, lumps of stone, natural steps and little pinnacles which the fingers could grip and where man might rest. Yes, he would try it. It was the last quarter of the moon, and the neaptide was running low when he let himself softly down into the water from the Victoire. The blanket tied on his head held food kept from his rations, with stone and flint and other things. He was not seen, and he dropped away quietly astern, getting clear of the Victoire while the moon was partially obscured. Now it was a question when his desertion would be discovered. All he asked was two clear hours. By that time the deed would be done, if he could climb Perce Rock at all. He touched bottom. He was on Perce sands. The blanket on his head was scarcely wetted. He wrung the water out of his clothes, and ran softly up the shore. Suddenly he was met by a cry of Qui va la! and he stopped short at the point of Elie Mattingley's bayonet. "Hush!" said Ranulph, and gave his name. Mattingley nearly dropped his musket in surprise. He soon knew the tale of Ranulph's misfortunes, but he had not yet been told of his present plans when there came a quick footstep, and Carterette was at her father's side. Unlike Mattingley, she did drop her musket at the sight of Ranulph. Her lips opened, but at first she could not speak--this was more than she had ever dared hope for, since those dark days in Jersey. Ranulph here! She pressed her hands to her heart to stop its throbbing. Presently she was trembling with excitement at the story of how Ranulph had been pressed at St. Malo, and, all that came after until this very day. "Go along with Carterette," said Mattingley. "Alixandre is at the house; he'll help you away into the woods." As Ranulph hurried away with Carterette, he told her his design. Suddenly she stopped short, "Ranulph Delagarde," she said vehemently, "you can't climb Perch Rock. No one has ever done it, and you must not try. Oh, I know you are a great man, but you mustn't think you can do this. You will be safe where we shall hide you. You shall not climb the rock-ah no, ba su!" He pointed towards the Post. "They wouldn't leave a stick standing there if you hid me. No, I'm going to the top of the rock." "Man doux terrible!" she said in sheer bewilderment, and then was suddenly inspired. At last her time had come. "Pardingue," she said, clutching his arm, "if you go to the top of Perch Rock, so will I!" In spite of his anxiety he almost laughed. "But see--but see," he said, and his voice dropped; "you couldn't stay up there with me all alone, garcon Carterette. And Richambeau would be firing on you too!" She was very angry, but she made no reply, and he continued quickly: "I'll go straight to the rock now. When they miss me there'll be a pot boiling, you may believe. If I get up," he added, "I'll let a string down for a rope you must get for me. Once on top they can't hurt me.... Eh ben, A bi'tot, gargon Carterette!" "O my good! O my good!" said the girl with a sudden change of mood. "To think you have come like this, and perhaps--" But she dashed the tears from her eyes, and bade him go on. The tide was well out, the moon shining brightly. Ranulph reached the point where, if the rock was to be scaled at all, the ascent must be made. For a distance there was shelving where foothold might be had by a fearless man with a steady head and sure balance. After that came about a hundred feet where he would have to draw himself up by juttings and crevices hand over hand, where was no natural pathway. Woe be to him if head grew dizzy, foot slipped, or strength gave out; he would be broken to pieces on the hard sand below. That second stage once passed, the ascent thence to the top would be easier; for though nearly as steep, it had more ledges, and offered fair vantage to a man with a foot like a mountain goat. Ranulph had been aloft all weathers in his time, and his toes were as strong as another man's foot, and surer. He started. The toes caught in crevices, held on to ledges, glued themselves on to smooth surfaces; the knees clung like a rough-rider's to a saddle; the big hands, when once they got a purchase, fastened like an air-cup. Slowly, slowly up, foot by foot, yard by yard, until one-third of the distance was climbed. The suspense and strain were immeasurable. But he struggled on and on, and at last reached a sort of flying pinnacle of rock, like a hook for the shields of the gods. Here he ventured to look below, expecting to see Carterette, but there was only the white sand, and no sound save the long wash of the gulf. He drew a horn of arrack from his pocket and drank. He had two hundred feet more to climb, and the next hundred would be the great ordeal. He started again. This was travail indeed. His rough fingers, his toes, hard as horn almost, began bleeding. Once or twice he swung quite clear of the wall, hanging by his fingers to catch a surer foothold to right or left, and just getting it sometimes by an inch or less. The tension was terrible. His head seemed to swell and fill with blood: on the top it throbbed till it was ready to burst. His neck was aching horribly with constant looking up, the skin of his knees was gone, his ankles bruised. But he must keep on till he got to the top, or until he fell. He was fighting on now in a kind of dream, quite apart from all usual feelings of this world. The earth itself seemed far away, and he was toiling among vastnesses, himself a giant with colossal frame and huge, sprawling limbs. It was like a gruesome vision of the night, when the body is an elusive, stupendous mass that falls into space after a confused struggle with immensities. It was all mechanical, vague, almost numb, this effort to overcome a mountain. Yet it was precise and hugely expert too; for though there was a strange mist on the brain, the body felt its way with a singular certainty, as might some molluscan dweller of the sea, sensitive like a plant, intuitive like an animal. Yet at times it seemed that this vast body overcoming the mountain must let go its hold and slide away into the darkness of the depths. Now there was a strange convulsive shiver in every nerve--God have mercy, the time was come! . . . No, not yet. At the very instant when it seemed the panting flesh and blood would be shaken off by the granite force repelling it, the fingers, like long antennae, touched horns of rock jutting out from ledges on the third escarpment of the wall. Here was the last point of the worst stage of the journey. Slowly, heavily, the body drew up to the shelf of limestone, and crouched in an inert bundle. There it lay for a long time. While the long minutes went by, a voice kept calling up from below; calling, calling, at first eagerly, then anxiously, then with terror. By and by the bundle of life stirred, took shape, raised itself, and was changed into a man again, a thinking, conscious being, who now understood the meaning of this sound coming up from the earth below--or was it the sea? A human voice had at last pierced the awful exhaustion of the deadly labour, the peril and strife, which had numbed the brain while the body, in its instinct for existence, still clung to the rocky ledges. It had called the man back to earth--he was no longer a great animal, and the rock a monster with skin and scales of stone. "Ranulph! Maitre Ranulph! Ah, Ranulph!" called the voice. Now he knew, and he answered down: "All right, all right, garche Carterette!" "Are you at the top?" "No, but the rest is easy." "Hurry, hurry, Ranulph. If they should come before you reach the top!" "I'll soon be there." "Are you hurt, Ranulph?" "No, but my fingers are in rags. I am going now. A bi'tot, Carterette!" "Ranulph!" "'Sh, 'sh, do not speak. I am starting." There was silence for what seemed hours to the girl below. Foot by foot the man climbed on, no less cautious because the ascent was easier, for he was now weaker. But he was on the monster's neck now, and soon he should set his heel on it: he was not to be shaken off. At last the victorious moment came. Over a jutting ledge he drew himself up by sheer strength and the rubber-like grip of his lacerated fingers, and now he lay flat and breathless upon the ground. How soft and cool it was! This was long sweet grass touching his face, making a couch like down for the battered, wearied body. Surely such travail had been more than mortal. And what was this vast fluttering over his head, this million-voiced discord round him, like the buffetings and cries of spirits welcoming another to their torment? He raised his head and laughed in triumph. These were the cormorants, gulls, and gannets on the Perch Rock. Legions of birds circled over him with cries so shrill that at first he did not hear Carterette's voice calling up to him. At last, however, remembering, he leaned over the cliff and saw her standing in the moonlight far below. Her voice came up to him indistinctly because of the clatter of the birds. "Maitre Ranulph! Ranulph!" She could not see him, for this part of the rock was in shadow. "Ah bah, all right!" he said, and taking hold of one end of the twine he had brought, he let the roll fall. It dropped almost at Carterette's feet. She tied to the end of it three loose ropes she had brought from the Post. He drew them up quickly, tied them together firmly, and let the great coil down. Ranulph's bundle, a tent and many things Carterette had brought were drawn up. "Ranulph! Ranulph!" came Carterette's voice again. "Garcon Carterette!" "You must help Sebastian Alixandre up," she said. "Sebastian Alixandre--is he there? Why does he want to come?" "That is no matter," she called softly. "He is coming. He has the rope round his waist. Pull away!" It was better, Ranulph thought to himself, that he should be on Perch Rock alone, but the terrible strain had bewildered him, and he could make no protest now. "Don't start yet," he called down; "I'll pull when all's ready." He fell back from the edge to a place in the grass where, tying the rope round his body, and seating himself, he could brace his feet against a ledge of rock. Then he pulled on the rope. It was round Carterette's waist! Carterette had told her falsehood without shame, for she was of those to whom the end is more than the means. She began climbing, and Ranulph pulled steadily. Twice he felt the rope suddenly jerk when she lost her footing, but it came in evenly still, and he used a nose of rock as a sort of winch. The climber was nearly two-thirds of the way up when a cannon-shot boomed out over the water, frightening again the vast covey of birds which shrieked and honked till the air was a maelstrom of cries. Then came another cannon-shot. Ranulph's desertion was discovered. The fight was begun between a single Jersey shipwright and a French war-ship. His strength, however, could not last much longer. Every muscle of his body had been strained and tortured, and even this lighter task tried him beyond endurance. His legs stiffened against the ledge of rock, the tension numbed his arms. He wondered how near Alixandre was to the top. Suddenly there was a pause, then a heavy jerk. Love of God--the rope was shooting through his fingers, his legs were giving way! He gathered himself together, and then with teeth, hands, and body rigid with enormous effort, he pulled and pulled. Now he could not see. A mist swam before his eyes. Everything grew black, but he pulled on and on. He never knew how the climber reached the top. But when the mist cleared away from his eyes, Carterette was bending over him, putting rum to his lips. "Carterette-garcon Carterette!" he murmured, amazed. Then as the truth burst upon him he shook his head in a troubled sort of way. "What a cat I was!" said Carterette. "What a wild cat I was to make you haul me up! It was bad for me with the rope round me, it must have been awful for you, my poor esmanus--poor scarecrow Ranulph." Scarecrow indeed he looked. His clothes were nearly gone, his hair was tossed and matted, his eyes bloodshot, his big hands like pieces of raw meat, his feet covered with blood. "My poor scarecrow!" she repeated, and she tenderly wiped the blood from his face where his hands had touched it. Meanwhile bugle-calls and cries of command came up to them, and in the first light of morning they could see French officers and sailors, Mattingley, Alixandre, and others, hurrying to and fro. When day came clear and bright, it was known that Carterette as well as Ranulph had vanished. Mattingley shook his head stoically, but Richambeau on the Victoire was as keen to hunt down one Jersey-Englishman as he had ever been to attack an English fleet. More so, perhaps. Meanwhile the birds kept up a wild turmoil and shrieking. Never before had any one heard them so clamorous. More than once Mattingley had looked at Perch Rock curiously, but whenever the thought of it as a refuge came to him, he put it away. No, it was impossible. Yet, what was that? Mattingley's heart thumped. There were two people on the lofty island wall--a man and a woman. He caught' the arm of a French officer near him. "Look, look!" he said. The officer raised his glass. "It's the gunner," he cried and handed the glass to the old man. "It's Carterette," said Mattingley in a hoarse voice. "But it's not possible. It's not possible," he added helplessly. "Nobody was ever there. My God, look at it--look at it!" It was a picture indeed. A man and a woman were outlined against the clear air, putting up a tent as calmly as though on a lawn, thousands of birds wheeling over their heads, with querulous cries. A few moments later, Elie Mattingley was being rowed swiftly to the Victoire, where Richambeau was swearing viciously as he looked through his telescope. He also had recognised the gunner. He was prepared to wipe out the fishing-post if Mattingley did not produce Ranulph--well, "here was Ranulph duly produced and insultingly setting up a tent on this sheer rock, with some snippet of the devil," said Richambeau, and defying a great French war-ship. He would set his gunners to work. If he only had as good a marksman as Ranulph himself, the deserter should drop at the first shot "death and the devil take his impudent face!" He was just about to give the order when Mattingley was brought to him. The old man's story amazed him beyond measure. "It is no man, then!" said Richambeau, when Mattingley had done. "He must be a damned fly to do it. And the girl--sacre moi! he drew her up after him. I'll have him down out of that though, or throw up my flag," he added, and turning fiercely, gave his orders. For hours the Victoire bombarded the lonely rock from the north. The white tent was carried away, but the cannon-balls flew over or merely battered the solid rock, the shells were thrown beyond, and no harm was done. But now and again the figure of Ranulph appeared, and a half-dozen times he took aim with his musket at the French soldiers on the shore. Twice his shots took effect; one man was wounded, and one killed. Then whole companies of marines returned a musketry fire at him, to no purpose. At his ease he hid himself in the long grass at the edge of the cliff, and picked off two more men. Here was a ridiculous thing: one man and a slip of a girl fighting and defying a battle-ship. The smoke of battle covered miles of the great gulf. Even the seabirds shrieked in ridicule. This went on for three days at intervals. With a fine chagrin Richambeau and his men saw a bright camp-fire lighted on the rock, and knew that Ranulph and the girl were cooking their meals in peace. A flag-staff too was set up, and a red cloth waved defiantly in the breeze. At last Richambeau, who had watched the whole business from the deck of the Victoire, burst out laughing, and sent for Elie Mattingley. "Come, I've had enough," said Richambeau. "There never was a wilder jest, and I'll not spoil the joke. He has us on his toasting-fork. He shall have the honour of a flag of truce." And so it was that the French battle-ship sent a flag of truce to the foot of Perch Rock, and a French officer, calling up, gave his captain's word of honour that Ranulph should suffer nothing at the hands of a court-martial, and that he should be treated as an English prisoner of war, not as a French deserter. There was no court-martial. After Ranulph, at Richambeau's command, had told the tale of the ascent, the Frenchman said: "No one but an Englishman could be fool enough to try such a thing, and none but a fool could have had the luck to succeed. But even a fool can get a woman to follow him, and so this flyaway followed you, and--" Carterette made for Richambeau as though to scratch his eyes out, but Ranulph held her back. "--And you are condemned, gunner," continued Richambeau dryly, "to marry the said maid before sundown, or be carried out to sea a prisoner of war." So saying, he laughed, and bade them begone to the wedding. Ranulph left Richambeau's ship bewildered and perturbed. For hours he paced the shore, and at last his thoughts began to clear. The new life he had led during the last few months had brought many revelations. He had come to realise that there are several sorts of happiness, but that all may be divided into two kinds: the happiness of doing good to ourselves, and that of doing good to others. It opened out clearly to him now as he thought of Carterette in the light of Richambeau's coarse jest. For years he had known in a sort of way that Carterette preferred him to any other man. He knew now that she had remained single because of him. For him her impatience had been patience, her fiery heart had spilled itself in tenderness for his misfortunes. She who had lightly tossed lovers aside, her coquetry appeased, had to himself shown sincerity without coquetry, loyalty without selfishness. He knew well that she had been his champion in dark days, that he had received far more from her than he had ever given--even of friendship. In his own absorbing love for Guida Landresse, during long years he had been unconsciously blind to a devotion which had lived on without hope, without repining, with untiring cheerfulness. In those three days spent on the top of the Perch Rock how blithe garcon Carterette had been! Danger had seemed nothing to her. She had the temper of a man in her real enjoyment of the desperate chances of life. He had never seen her so buoyant; her animal spirits had never leapt so high. And yet, despite the boldness which had sent her to the top of Perch Rock with him, there had been in her whole demeanour a frank modesty free from self-consciousness. She could think for herself, she was sure of herself, and she would go to the ends of the earth for him. Surely he had not earned such friendship, such affection. He recalled how, the night before, as he sat by their little camp-fire, she had come and touched him on the shoulder, and, looking down at him, said: "I feel as if I was beginning my life all over again, don't you, Maitre Ranulph?" Her black eyes had been fixed on his, and the fire in them was as bright and full of health and truth as the fire at his feet. And he had answered her: "I think I feel that too, garcon Carterette." To which she had replied: "It isn't hard to forget here--not so very hard, is it?" She did not mean Guida, nor what he had felt for Guida, but rather the misery of the past. He had nodded his head in reply, but had not spoken; and she, with a quick: "A bi'tot," had taken her blanket and gone to that portion of the rock set apart for her own. Then he had sat by the fire thinking through the long hours of night until the sun rose. That day Richambeau had sent his flag of truce, and the end of their stay on Perch Rock was come. Yes, he would marry Carterette. Yet he was not disloyal, even in memory. What had belonged to Guida belonged to her for ever, belonged to a past life with which henceforth he should have naught to do. What had sprung up in his heart for Carterette belonged to the new life. In this new land there was work to do--what might he not accomplish here? He realised that within one life a man may still live several lives, each loyal and honest after its kind. A fate stronger than himself had brought him here; and here he would stay with fate. It had brought him to Carterette, and who could tell what good and contentment might not yet come to him, and how much to her! That evening he went to Carterette and asked her to be his wife. She turned pale, and, looking up into his eyes with a kind of fear, she said brokenly: "It's not because you feel you must? It's not because you know I love you, Ranulph--is it? It's not for that alone?" "It is because I want you, garcon Carterette," he answered tenderly, "because life will be nothing without you." "I am so happy--par made, I am so happy!" she answered, and she hid her face on his breast. CHAPTER XLI Detricand, Prince of Vaufontaine, was no longer in the Vendee. The whole of Brittany was in the hands of the victorious Hoche, the peasants were disbanded, and his work for a time at least was done. On the same day of that momentous scene in the Cohue Royale when Guida was vindicated, Detricand had carried to Granville the Comtesse Chantavoine, who presently was passed over to the loving care of her kinsman General Grandjon-Larisse. This done, he proceeded to England. From London he communicated with Grandjon-Larisse, who applied himself to secure from the Directory leave for the Chouan chieftain to return to France, with amnesty for his past "rebellion." This was got at last through the influence of young Bonaparte himself. Detricand was free now to proceed against Philip. He straightway devoted himself to a thing conceived on the day that Guida was restored to her rightful status as a wife. His purpose now was to wrest from Philip the duchy of Bercy. Philip was heir by adoption only, and the inheritance had been secured at the last by help of a lie--surely his was a righteous cause! His motives had not their origin in hatred of Philip alone, nor in desire for honours and estates for himself, nor in racial antagonism, for had he not been allied with England in this war against the Government? He hated Philip the man, but he hated still more Philip the usurper who had brought shame to the escutcheon of Bercy. There was also at work another and deeper design to be shown in good time. Philip had retired from the English navy, and gone back to his duchy of Bercy. Here he threw himself into the struggle with the Austrians against the French. Received with enthusiasm by the people, who as yet knew little or nothing of the doings in the Cohue Royale, he now took over command of the army and proved himself almost as able in the field as he had been at sea. Of these things Detricand knew, and knew also that the lines were closing in round the duchy; that one day soon Bonaparte would send a force which should strangle the little army and its Austrian allies. The game then would be another step nearer the end. Free to move at will, he visited the Courts of Prussia, Russia, Spain, Italy, and Austria, and laid before them his claims to the duchy, urging an insistence on its neutrality, and a trial of his cause against Philip. Ceaselessly, adroitly, with persistence and power, he toiled towards his end, the way made easier by tales told of his prowess in the Vendee. He had offers without number to take service in foreign armies, but he was not to be tempted. Gossip of the Courts said that there was some strange romance behind this tireless pursuit of an inheritance, but he paid no heed. If at last there crept over Europe wonderful tales of Detricand's past life in Jersey, of the real Duchesse de Bercy, and of the new Prince of Vaufontaine, Detricand did not, or feigned not to, hear them; and the Comtesse Chantavoine had disappeared from public knowledge. The few who guessed his romance were puzzled to understand his cause: for if he dispossessed Philip, Guida must also be dispossessed. This, certainly, was not lover-like or friendly. But Detricand was not at all puzzled; his mind and purpose were clear. Guida should come to no injury through him--Guida who, as they left the Cohue Royale that day of days, had turned on him a look of heavenly trust and gratitude; who, in the midst of her own great happenings, found time to tell him by a word how well she knew he had kept his promise to her, even beyond belief. Justice for her was now the supreme and immediate object of his life. There were others ready also to care for France, to fight for her, to die for her, to struggle towards the hour when the King should come to his own; but there was only one man in the world who could achieve Guida's full justification, and that was himself, Detricand of Vaufontaine. He was glad to turn to the Chevalier's letters from Jersey. It was from the Chevalier's lips he had learned the whole course of Guida's life during the four years of his absence from the island. It was the Chevalier who drew for him pictures of Guida in her new home, none other than the house of Elie Mattingley, which the Royal Court having confiscated now handed over to her as an act of homage. The little world of Jersey no longer pointed the finger of scorn at Guida Landresse de Landresse, but bent the knee to Princess Guida d'Avranche. Detricand wrote many letters to the Chevalier, and they with their cheerful and humorous allusions were read aloud to Guida--all save one concerning Philip. Writing of himself to the Chevalier on one occasion, he laid bare with a merciless honesty his nature and his career. Concerning neither had he any illusions. I do not mistake myself, Chevalier [he wrote], nor these late doings of mine. What credit shall I take to myself for coming to place and some little fame? Everything has been with me: the chance of inheritance, the glory of a cause as hopeless as splendid, and more splendid because hopeless; and the luck of him who loads the dice-- for all my old comrades, the better men, are dead, and I, the least of them all, remain, having even outlived the cause. What praise shall I take for this? None--from all decent fellows of the earth, none at all. It is merely laughable that I should be left, the monument of a sacred loyalty greater than the world has ever known. I have no claims--But let me draw the picture, dear Chevalier. Here was a discredited, dissolute fellow whose life was worth a pin to nobody. Tired of the husks and the swine, and all his follies grown stale by over-use, he takes the advice of a good gentleman, and joins the standard of work and sacrifice. What greater luxury shall man ask? If this be not running the full scale of life's enjoyment, pray you what is? The world loves contrasts. The deep-dyed sinner raising the standard of piety is picturesque. If, charmed by his own new virtues, he is constant in his enthusiasm, behold a St. Augustine! Everything is with the returned prodigal--the more so if he be of the notorious Vaufontaines, who were ever saints turned sinners, or sinners turned saints. Tell me, my good friend, where is room for pride in me? I am getting far more out of life than I deserve; it is not well that you and others should think better of me than I do of myself. I do not pretend that I dislike it, it is as balm to me. But it would seem that the world is monstrously unjust. One day when I'm grown old--I cannot imagine what else Fate has spared me for--I shall write the Diary of a Sinner, the whole truth. I shall tell how when my peasant fighters were kneeling round me praying for success, even thanking God for me, I was smiling in my glove--in scorn of myself, not of them, Chevalier, no,--no, not of them! The peasant's is the true greatness. Everything is with the aristocrat; he has to kick the great chances from his path; but the peasant must go hunting them in peril. Hardly snatching sustenance from Fate, the peasant fights into greatness; the aristocrat may only win to it by rejecting Fate's luxuries. The peasant never escapes the austere teaching of hard experience, the aristocrat the languor of good fortune. There is the peasant and there am I. Voila! enough of Detricand of Vaufontaine. . . . The Princess Guida and the child, are they-- So the letter ran, and the Chevalier read it aloud to Guida up to the point where her name was writ. Afterwards Guida would sit and think of what Detricand had said, and of the honesty of nature that never allowed him to deceive himself. It pleased her also to think she had in some small way helped a man to the rehabilitation of his life. He had said that she had helped him, and she believed him; he had proved the soundness of his aims and ambitions; his career was in the world's mouth. The one letter the Chevalier did not read to Guida referred to Philip. In it Detricand begged the Chevalier to hold himself in readiness to proceed at a day's notice to Paris. So it was that when, after months of waiting, the Chevalier suddenly left St. Heliers to join Detricand, Guida did not know the object of his journey. All she knew was that he had leave from the Directory to visit Paris. Imagining this to mean some good fortune for him, with a light heart she sent him off in charge of Jean Touzel, who took him to St. Malo in the Hardi Biaou, and saw him safely into the hands of an escort from Detricand. CHAPTER XLII Three days later there was opened in one of the chambers of the Emperor's palace at Vienna a Congress of four nations--Prussia, Russia, Austria, and Sardinia. Detricand's labours had achieved this result at last. Grandjon-Larisse, his old enemy in battle, now his personal friend and colleague in this business, had influenced Napoleon, and the Directory through him, to respect the neutrality of the duchy of Bercy, for which the four nations of this Congress declared. Philip himself little knew whose hand had secured the neutrality until summoned to appear at the Congress, to defend his rights to the title and the duchy against those of Detricand Prince of Vaufontaine. Had he known that Detricand was behind it all he would have fought on to the last gasp of power and died on the battle-field. He realised now that such a fate was not for him-- that he must fight, not on the field of battle like a prince, but in a Court of Nations like a doubtful claimant of sovereign honours. His whole story had become known in the duchy, and though it begot no feeling against him in war-time, now that Bercy was in a neutral zone of peace there was much talk of the wrongs of Guida and the Countess Chantavoine. He became moody and saturnine, and saw few of his subjects save the old Governor-General and his whilom enemy, now his friend, Count Carignan Damour. That at last he should choose to accompany him to Vienna the man who had been his foe during the lifetime of the old Duke, seemed incomprehensible. Yet, to all appearance, Damour was now Philip's zealous adherent. He came frankly repenting his old enmity, and though Philip did not quite believe him, some perverse temper, some obliquity of vision which overtakes the ablest minds at times, made him almost eagerly accept his new partisan. One thing Philip knew: Damour had no love for Detricand, who indeed had lately sent him word that for his work in sending Fouche's men to attempt his capture in Bercy, he would have him shot, if the Court of Nations upheld his rights to the duchy. Damour was able, even if Damour was not honest. Damour, the able, the implacable and malignant, should accompany him to Vienna. The opening ceremony of the Congress was simple, but it was made notable by the presence of the Emperor of Austria, who addressed a few words of welcome to the envoys, to Philip, and, very pointedly, to the representative of the French Nation, the aged Duc de Mauban, who, while taking no active part in the Congress, was present by request of the Directory. The Duke's long residence in Vienna and freedom from share in the civil war in France had been factors in the choice of him when the name was submitted to the Directory by General Grandjon-Larisse, upon whom in turn it had been urged by Detricand. The Duc de Mauban was the most marked figure of the Court, the Emperor not excepted. Clean shaven, with snowy linen and lace, his own natural hair, silver white, tied in a queue behind, he had large eloquent wondering eyes that seemed always looking, looking beyond the thing he saw. At first sight of him at his court, the Emperor had said: "The stars have frightened him." No fanciful supposition, for the Duc de Mauban was as well known an astronomer as student of history and philanthropist. When the Emperor mentioned de Mauban's name Philip wondered where he had heard it before. Something in the sound of it was associated with his past, he knew not how. He had a curious feeling too that those deliberate, searching dark eyes saw the end of this fight, this battle of the strong. The face fascinated him, though it awed him. He admired it, even as he detested the ardent strength of Detricand's face, where the wrinkles of dissipation had given way to the bronzed carven look of the war-beaten soldier. It was fair battle between these two, and there was enough hatred in the heart of each to make the fight deadly. He knew--and he had known since that day, years ago, in the Place du Vier Prison--that Detricand loved the girl whom he himself had married and dishonoured. He felt also that Detricand was making this claim to the duchy more out of vengeance than from desire to secure the title for himself. He read the whole deep scheme: how Detricand had laid his mine at every Court in Europe to bring him to this pass. For hours Philip's witnesses were examined, among them the officers of his duchy and Count Carignan Damour. The physician of the old Duke of Bercy was examined, and the evidence was with Philip. The testimony of Dalbarade, the French ex-Minister of Marine, was read and considered. Philip's story up to the point of the formal signature by the old Duke was straightforward and clear. So far the Court was in his favour. Detricand, as natural heir of the duchy, combated each step in the proceedings from the stand-point of legality, of the Duke's fatuity concerning Philip, and his personal hatred of the House of Vaufontaine. On the third day, when the Congress would give its decision, Detricand brought the Chevalier to the palace. At the opening of the sitting he requested that Damour be examined again. The Count was asked what question had been put to Philip immediately before the deeds of inheritance were signed. It was useless for Damour to evade the point, for there were other officers of the duchy present who could have told the truth. Yet this truth, of itself, need not ruin Philip. It was no phenomenon for a prince to have one wife unknown, and, coming to the throne, to take to himself another more exalted. Detricand was hoping that the nice legal sense of mine and thine should be suddenly weighted in his favour by a prepared tour de force. The sympathies of the Congress were largely with himself, for he was of the order of the nobility, and Philip's descent must be traced through centuries of yeoman blood; yet there was the deliberate adoption by the Duke to face, with the formal assent of the States of Bercy, but little lessened in value by the fact that the French Government had sent its emissaries to Bercy to protest against it. The Court had come to a point where decision upon the exact legal merits of the case was difficult. After Damour had testified to the question the Duke asked Philip when signing the deeds at Bercy, Detricand begged leave to introduce another witness, and brought in the Chevalier. Now he made his great appeal. Simply, powerfully, he told the story of Philip's secret marriage with Guida, and of all that came after, up to the scene in the Cohue Royale when the marriage was proved and the child given back to Guida; when the Countess Chantavoine, turning from Philip, acknowledged to Guida the justice of her claim. He drove home the truth with bare unvarnished power--the wrong to Guida, the wrong to the Countess, the wrong to the Dukedom of Bercy, to that honour which should belong to those in high estate. Then at the last he told them who Guida was: no peasant girl, but the granddaughter of the Sieur Larchant de Mauprat of de Mauprats of Chambery: the granddaughter of an exile indeed, but of the noblest blood of France. The old Duc de Mauban fixed his look on him intently, and as the story proceeded his hand grasped the table before him in strong emotion. When at last Detricand turned to the Chevalier and asked him to bear witness to the truth of what he had said, the Duke, in agitation, whispered to the President. All that Detricand had said moved the Court powerfully, but when the withered little flower of a man, the Chevalier, told in quaint brief sentences the story of the Sieur de Mauprat, his sufferings, his exile, and the nobility of his family, which had indeed, far back, come of royal stock, and then at last of Guida and the child, more than one member of the Court turned his head away with misty eyes. It remained for the Duc de Mauban to speak the word which hastened and compelled the end. Rising in his place, he addressed to the Court a few words of apology, inasmuch as he was without real power there, and then he turned to the Chevalier. "Monsieur le chevalier," said he, "I had the honour to know you in somewhat better days for both of us. You will allow me to greet you here with my profound respect. The Sieur Larchant de Mauprat"--he turned to the President, his voice became louder--"the Sieur de Mauprat was my friend. He was with me upon the day I married the Duchess Guidabaldine. Trouble, exile came to him. Years passed, and at last in Jersey I saw him again. It was the very day his grandchild was born. The name given to her was Guidabaldine--the name of the Duchese de Mauban. She was Guidabaldine Landresse de Landresse, she is my godchild. There is no better blood in France than that of the de Mauprats of Chambery, and the grandchild of my friend, her father being also of good Norman blood, was worthy to be the wife of any prince in Europe. I speak in the name of our order, I speak for Frenchmen, I speak for France. If Detricand, Prince of Vaufontaine, be not secured in his right of succession to the dukedom of Bercy, France will not cease to protest till protest hath done its work. From France the duchy of Bercy came. It was the gift of a French king to a Frenchman, and she hath some claims upon the courtesy of the nations." For a moment after he took his seat there was absolute silence. Then the President wrote upon a paper before him, and it was passed to each member of the Court sitting with him. For a moment longer there was nothing heard save the scratching of a quill. Philip recalled that day at Bercy when the Duke stooped and signed his name upon the deed of adoption and succession three times-three fateful times. At last the President, rising in his place, read the pronouncement of the Court: that Detricand, Prince of Vaufontaine, be declared true inheritor of the duchy of Bercy, the nations represented here confirming him in his title. The President having spoken, Philip rose, and, bowing to the Congress with dignity and composure, left the chamber with Count Carignan Damour. As he passed from the portico into the grounds of the palace, a figure came suddenly from behind a pillar and touched him on the arm. He turned quickly, and received upon the face a blow from a glove. The owner of the glove was General Grandjon-Larisse. CHAPTER XLIII "You understand, monsieur?" said Grandjon-Larisse. "Perfectly--and without the glove, monsieur le general," answered Philip quietly. "Where shall my seconds wait upon you?" As he spoke he turned with a slight gesture towards Damour. "In Paris, monsieur, if it please you." "I should have preferred it here, monsieur le general--but Paris, if it is your choice." "At 22, Rue de Mazarin, monsieur." Then he made an elaborate bow to Philip. "I bid you good-day, monsieur." "Monseigneur, not monsieur," Philip corrected. "They may deprive me of my duchy, but I am still Prince Philip d'Avranche. I may not be robbed of my adoption." There was something so steady, so infrangible in Philip's composure now, that Grandjon-Larisse, who had come to challenge a great adventurer, a marauder of honour, found his furious contempt checked by some integral power resisting disdain. He intended to kill Philip--he was one of the most expert swordsmen in France--yet he was constrained to respect a composure not sangfroid and a firmness in misfortune not bravado. Philip was still the man who had valiantly commanded men; who had held of the high places of the earth. In whatever adventurous blood his purposes had been conceived, or his doubtful plans accomplished, he was still, stripped of power, a man to be reckoned with: resolute in his course once set upon, and impulsive towards good as towards evil. He was never so much worth respect as when, a dispossessed sovereign with an empty title, discountenanced by his order, disbarred his profession, he held himself ready to take whatever penalty now came. In the presence of General Grandjon-Larisse, with whom was the might of righteous vengeance, he was the more distinguished figure. To Philip now there came the cold quiet of the sinner, great enough to rise above physical fear, proud enough to say to the world: "Come, I pay the debt I owe. We are quits. You have no favours to give, and I none to take. You have no pardon to grant, and I none to ask." At parting Grandjon-Larisse bowed to Philip with great politeness, and said: "In Paris then, monsieur le prince." Philip bowed his head in assent. When they met again, it was at the entrance to the Bois de Boulogne near the Maillot gate. It was a damp grey morning immediately before sunrise, and at first there was scarce light enough for the combatants to see each other perfectly, but both were eager and would not delay. As they came on guard the sun rose. Philip, where he stood, was full in its light. He took no heed, and they engaged at once. After a few passes Grandjon-Larisse said: "You are in the light, monseigneur; the sun shines full upon you," and he pointed to the shade of a wall near by. "It is darker there." "One of us must certainly be in the dark-soon," answered Philip grimly, but he removed to the wall. From the first Philip took the offensive. He was more active, and he was quicker and lighter of fence than his antagonist. But Grandjon-Larisse had the surer eye, and was invincibly certain of hand and strong of wrist. At length Philip wounded his opponent slightly in the left breast, and the seconds came forward to declare that honour was satisfied. But neither would listen or heed; their purpose was fixed to fight to the death. They engaged again, and almost at once the Frenchman was slightly wounded in the wrist. Suddenly taking the offensive and lunging freely, Grandjon-Larisse drove Philip, now heated and less wary, backwards upon the wall. At last, by a dexterous feint, he beat aside Philip's guard and drove the sword through his right breast at one fierce lunge. With a moan Philip swayed and fell forward into the arms of Damour, still grasping his weapon. Grandjon-Larisse stooped to the injured man. Unloosing his fingers from the sword, Philip stretched up a hand to his enemy. "I am hurt to death," he said. "Permit my compliments to the best swordsman I have ever known." Then with a touch of sorry humour he added: "You cannot doubt their sincerity." Grandjon-Larisse was turning away when Philip called him back. "Will you carry my profound regret to the Countess Chantavoine?" he whispered. "Say that it lies with her whether Heaven pardon me." Grandjon-Larisse hesitated an instant, then answered: "Those who are in heaven, monseigneur, know best what Heaven may do." Philip's pale face took on a look of agony. "She is dead--she is dead!" he gasped. Grandjon-Larisse inclined his head, then after a moment, gravely said: "What did you think was left for a woman--for a Chantavoine? It is not the broken heart that kills, but broken pride, monseigneur." So saying, he bowed again to Philip and turned upon his heel. CHAPTER XLIV Philip lay on a bed in the unostentatious lodging in the Rue de Vaugirard where Damour had brought him. The surgeon had pronounced the wound mortal, giving him but a few hours to live. For long after he was gone Philip was silent, but at length he said "You heard what Grandjon-Larisse said--It is broken pride that kills, Damour." Then he asked for pen, ink, and paper. They were brought to him. He tried the pen upon the paper, but faintness suddenly seized him, and he fell back unconscious. When he came to himself he was alone in the room. It was cold and cheerless--no fire on the hearth, no light save that flaring from a lamp in the street outside his window. He rang the bell at his hand. No one answered. He called aloud: "Damour! Damour!" Damour was far beyond earshot. He had bethought him that now his place was in Bercy, where he might gather up what fragments of good fortune remained, what of Philip's valuables might be secured. Ere he had fallen back insensible, Philip, in trying the pen, had written his own name on a piece of paper. Above this Damour wrote for himself an order upon the chamberlain of Bercy to enter upon Philip's private apartments in the castle; and thither he was fleeing as Philip lay dying in the dark room of the house in the Rue de Vaugirard. The woman of the house, to whose care Philip was passed over by Damour, had tired of watching, and had gone to spend one of his gold pieces for supper with her friends. Meanwhile in the dark comfortless room, the light from without flickering upon his blanched face, Philip was alone with himself, with memory, and with death. As he lay gasping, a voice seemed to ring through the silent room, repeating the same words again and again--and the voice was his own voice. It was himself--some other outside self of him--saying, in tireless repetition: "May I die a black, dishonourable death, abandoned and alone, if ever I deceive you. I should deserve that if I deceived you, Guida!...." "A black, dishonourable death, abandoned and alone": it was like some horrible dirge chanting in his ear. Pictures flashed before his eyes, strange imaginings. Now he was passing through dark corridors, and the stone floor beneath was cold--so cold! He was going to some gruesome death, and monks with voices like his own voice were intoning: "Abandoned and alone. Alone--alone--abandoned and alone." . . . And now he was fighting, fighting on board the Araminta. There was the roar of the great guns, the screaming of the carronade slides, the rattle of musketry, the groans of the dying, the shouts of his victorious sailors, the crash of the main-mast as it fell upon the bulwarks. Then the swift sissing ripple of water, the thud of the Araminta as she struck, and the cold chill of the seas as she went down. How cold was the sea--ah, how it chilled every nerve and tissue of his body! He roused to consciousness again. Here was still the blank cheerless room, the empty house, the lamplight flaring through the window upon his stricken face, upon the dark walls, upon the white paper lying on the table beside him. Paper--that was it--he must write, he must write while he had strength. With the last courageous effort of life, his strenuous will forcing the declining powers into obedience for a final combat, he drew the paper near, and began to write. The light flickered, wavered, he could just see the letters that he formed--no more. Guida [he began], on the Ecrehos I said to you: "If I deceive you may I die a black, dishonourable death, abandoned and alone!" It has all come true. You were right, always right, and I was always wrong. I never started fair with myself or with the world. I was always in too great a hurry; I was too ambitious, Guida. Ambition has killed me, and it has killed her--the Comtesse. She is gone. What was it he said--if I could but remember what Grandjon-Larisse said--ah yes, yes!--after he had given me my death-wound, he said: "It is not the broken heart that kills, but broken pride." There is the truth. She is in her grave, and I am going out into the dark. He lay back exhausted for a moment, in desperate estate. The body was fighting hard that the spirit might confess itself before the vital spark died down for ever. Seizing a glass of cordial near, he drank of it. The broken figure in its mortal defeat roused itself again, leaned over the paper, and a shaking hand traced on the brief piteous record of a life. I climbed too fast. Things dazzled me. I thought too much of myself--myself, myself was everything always; and myself has killed me. In wanton haste I came to be admiral and sovereign duke, and it has all come to nothing--nothing. I wronged you, I denied you, there was the cause of all. There is no one to watch with me now to the one moment of life that counts. In this hour the clock of time fills all the space between earth and heaven. It will strike soon-- the awful clock. It will soon strike twelve: and then it will be twelve of the clock for me always--always. I know you never wanted revenge on me, Guida, but still you have it here. My life is no more now than vraic upon a rock. I cling, I cling, but that is all, and the waves break over me. I am no longer an admiral, I am no more a duke--I am nothing. It is all done. Of no account with men I am going to my judgment with God. But you remain, and you are Princess Philip d'Avranche, and your son--your son--will be Prince Guilbert d'Avranche. But I can leave him naught, neither estates nor power. There is little honour in the title now. So it may be you will not use it. But you will have a new life: with my death happiness may begin again for you. That thought makes death easier. I was never worthy of you, never. I understand myself now, and I know that you have read me all these years, read me through and through. The letter you wrote me, never a day or night has passed but, one way or another, it has come home to me. There was a footfall outside his window. A roysterer went by in the light of the flaring lamp. He was singing a ribald song. A dog ran barking at his heels. The reveller turned, drew his sword, and ran the dog through, then staggered on with his song. Philip shuddered, and with a supreme effort bent to the table again, and wrote on. You were right: you were my star, and I was so blind with selfishness and vanity I could not see. I am speaking the truth to you now, Guida. I believe I might have been a great man if I had thought less of myself and more of others, more of you. Greatness, I was mad for that, and my madness has brought me to this desolate end--alone. Go tell Maitresse Aimable that she too was a good prophet. Tell her that, as she foresaw, I called your name in death, and you did not come. One thing before all: teach your boy never to try to be great, but always to live well and to be just. Teach him too that the world means better by him than he thinks, and that he must never treat it as his foe; he must not try to force its benefits and rewards. He must not approach it like the highwayman. Tell him never to flatter. That is the worst fault in a gentleman, for flattery makes false friends and the flatterer himself false. Tell him that good address is for ease and courtesy of life, but it must not be used to one's secret advantage as I have used mine to mortal undoing. If ever Guilbert be in great temptation, tell him his father's story, and read him these words to you, written, as you see, with the cramped fingers of death. He could scarcely hold the pen now, and his eyes were growing dim. . . . I am come to the end of my strength. I thought I loved you, Guida, but I know now that it was not love--not real love. Yet it was all a twisted manhood had to give. There are some things of mine that you will keep for your son, if you forgive me dead whom you despised living. Detricand Duke of Bercy will deal honourably by you. All that is mine at the Castle of Bercy he will secure to you. Tell him I have written it so; though he will do it of himself, I know. He is a great man. As I have gone downwards he has come upwards. There has been a star in his sky too. I know it, I know it, Guida, and he--he is not blind. The light is going, I cannot see. I can only-- He struggled fiercely for breath, but suddenly collapsed upon the table, and his head fell forward upon the paper; one cheek lying in the wet ink of his last written words, the other, cold and stark, turned to the window. The light from the lamp without flickered on it in gruesome sportiveness. The eyes stared and stared from the little dark room out into the world. But they did not see. The night wore on. At last came a knocking, knocking at the door-tap! tap! tap! But he did not hear. A moment of silence, and again came a knocking--knocking--knocking . . . ! CHAPTER XLV The white and red flag of Jersey was flying half-mast from the Cohue Royale, and the bell of the parish church was tolling. It was Saturday, but little business was being done in the Vier Marchi. Chattering people were gathered at familiar points, and at the foot of La Pyramide a large group surrounded two sailor-men just come from Gaspe, bringing news of adventuring Jersiais--Elie Mattingley, Carterette and Ranulph Delagarde. This audience quickly grew, for word was being passed on from one little group to another. So keen was interest in the story told by the home- coming sailors, that the great event which had brought them to the Vier Marchi was, for the moment, almost neglected. Presently, however, a cannon-shot, then another, and another, roused the people to remembrance. The funeral cortege of Admiral Prince Philip d'Avranche was about to leave the Cohue Royale, and every eye was turned to the marines and sailors lining the road from the court-house to the church. The Isle of Jersey, ever stubbornly loyal to its own--even those whom the outside world contemned or cast aside--jealous of its dignity even with the dead, had come to bury Philip d'Avranche with all good ceremony. There had been abatements to his honour, but he had been a strong man and he had done strong things, and he was a Jerseyman born, a Norman of the Normans. The Royal Court had judged between him and Guida, doing tardy justice to her, but of him they had ever been proud; and where conscience condemned here, vanity commended there. In any event they reserved the right, independent of all non-Jersiais, to do what they chose with their dead. For what Philip had been as an admiral they would do his body reverence now; for what he had done as a man, that belonged to another tribunal. It had been proposed by the Admiral of the station to bury him from his old ship, the Imperturbable, but the Royal Court made its claim, and so his body had lain in state in the Cohue Royale. The Admiral joined hands with the island authorities. In both cases it was a dogged loyalty. The sailors of England knew Philip d'Avranche as a fighter, even as the Royal Court knew him as a famous and dominant Jerseyman. A battle-ship is a world of its own, and Jersey is a world of its own. They neither knew nor cared for the comment of the world without; or, knowing, refused to consider it. When the body of Philip was carried from the Cohue Royale signals were made to the Imperturbable in the tide-way. From all her ships in company forty guns were fired funeral-wise and the flags were struck halfmast. Slowly the cortege uncoiled itself to one long unbroken line from the steps of the Cohue Royale to the porch of the church. The Jurats in their red robes, the officers, sailors, and marines, added colour to the pageant. The coffin was covered by the flag of Jersey with the arms of William the Conqueror in the canton. Of the crowd some were curious, some stoical; some wept, some essayed philosophy. "Et ben," said one, "he was a brave admiral!" "Bravery was his trade," answered another: "act like a sheep and you'll be eaten by the wolf." "It was a bad business about her that was Guida Landresse," remarked a third. "Every man knows himself, God knows all men," snuffled the fanatical barber who had once delivered a sermon from the Pompe des Brigands. "He made things lively while he lived, ba su!" droned the jailer of the Vier Prison. "But he has folded sails now." "Ma fe, yes, he sleeps like a porpoise now, and white as a wax he looked up there in the Cohue Royale," put in a centenier standing by. A voice came shrilly over the head of the centenier. "As white as you'll look yellow one day, bat'd'lagoule! Yellow and green, oui-gia--yellow like a bad apple, and cowardly green as a leek." This was Manon Moignard the witch. "Man doux d'la vie, where's the Master of Burials?" babbled the jailer. "The apprentice does the obs'quies to-day." "The Master's sick of a squinzy," grunted the centenier. "So hatchet- face and bundle-o'-nails there brings dust to dust, amen." All turned now to the Undertaker's Apprentice, a grim, saturnine figure with his grey face, protuberant eyes, and obsequious solemnity, in which lurked a callous smile. The burial of the great, the execution of the wicked, were alike to him. In him Fate seemed to personify life's revenges, its futilities, its calculating ironies. The flag-draped coffin was just about to pass, and the fanatical barber harked back to Philip. "They say it was all empty honours with him afore he died abroad." "A full belly's a full belly if it's only full of straw," snapped Manon Moignard. "Who was it brought him home?" asked the jailer. "None that was born on Jersey, but two that lived here," remarked Maitre Damian, the schoolmaster from St. Aubins. "That Chevalier of Champsavoys and the other Duc de Bercy," interposed the centenier. Maitre Damian tapped his stick upon the ground, and said oracularly: "It is not for me to say, but which is the rightful Duke and which is not, there is the political question!" "Pardi, that's it," answered the centenier. "Why did Detricand Duke turn Philip Duke out of duchy, see him killed, then fetch him home to Jersey like a brother? Ah, man pethe benin, that's beyond me! "Those great folks does things their own ways; oui-gia," remarked the jailer. "Why did Detricand Duke go back to France?" asked Maitre Damian, cocking his head wisely; "why did he not stay for obsequies--he?" "That's what I say," answered the jailer, "those great folks does things their own ways." "Ma fistre, I believe you," ejaculated the centenier. "But for the Chevalier there, for a Frenchman, that is a man after God's own heart-- and mine." "Ah then, look at that," said Manon Moignard, with a sneer, "when one pleases you and God it is a ticket to heaven, diantre!" But in truth what Detricand and the Chevalier had done was but of human pity. The day after the duel, Detricand had arrived in Paris to proceed thence to Bercy. There he heard of Philip's death and of Damour's desertion. Sending officers to Bercy to frustrate any possible designs of Damour, he, with the Chevalier, took Philip's body back to Jersey, delivering it to those who would do it honour. Detricand did not see Guida. For all that might be said to her now the Chevalier should be his mouthpiece. In truth there could be no better mouthpiece for him. It was Detricand--Detricand--Detricand, like a child, in admiration and in affection. If Guida did not understand all now, there should come a time when she would understand. Detricand would wait. She should find that he was just, that her honour and the honour of her child were safe with him. As for Guida, it was not grief she felt in the presence of this tragedy. No spark of love sprang up, even when remembrance was now brought to its last vital moment. But a fathomless pity stirred her heart, that Philip's life had been so futile and that all he had done was come to naught. His letter, blotched and blotted by his own dead cheek, she read quietly. Yet her heart ached bitterly--so bitterly that her face became pinched with pain; for here in this letter was despair, here was the final agony of a broken life, here were the last words of the father of her child to herself. She saw with a sudden pang that in writing of Guilbert he only said your child, not ours. What a measureless distance there was between them in the hour of his death, and how clearly the letter showed that he understood at last! The evening before the burial she went with the Chevalier to the Cohue Royale. As she looked at Philip's dead face bitterness and aching compassion were quieted within her. The face was peaceful--strong. There was on it no record of fret or despair. Its impassive dignity seemed to say that all accounts had been settled, and in this finality there was quiet; as though he had paid the price, as though the long account against him in the markets of life was closed and cancelled, and the debtor freed from obligation for ever. Poignant impulses in her stilled, pity lost its wounding acuteness. She shed no tears, but at last she stretched out her hand and let it rest upon his forehead for a moment. "Poor Philip!" she said. Then she turned and slowly left the room, followed by the Chevalier, and by the noiseless Dormy Jamais, who had crept in behind them. As Dormy Jamais closed the door, he looked back to where the coffin lay, and in the compassion of fools he repeated Guida's words: "Poor Philip!" he said. Now, during Philip's burial, Dormy Jamais sat upon the roof of the Cohue Royale, as he had done on the day of the Battle of Jersey, looking down on the funeral cortege and the crowd. He watched it all until the ruffle of drums at the grave told that the body was being lowered--four ruffles for an admiral. As the people began to disperse and the church bell ceased tolling, Dormy turned to another bell at his elbow, and set it ringing to call the Royal Court together. Sharp, mirthless, and acrid it rang: Chicane--chicane! Chicane--chicane! Chicane--chicane! IN JERSEY-A YEAR LATER CHAPTER XLVI "What is that for?" asked the child, pointing. Detricand put the watch to the child's ear. "It's to keep time. Listen. Do you hear it-tic- tic, tic-tic?"' The child nodded his head gleefully, and his big eyes blinked with understanding. "Doesn't it ever stop?" he asked. "This watch never stops," replied Detricand. "But there are plenty of watches that do." "I like watches," said the child sententiously. "Would you like this one?" asked Detricand. The child drew in a gurgling breath of pleasure. "I like it. Why doesn't mother have a watch?" The man did not answer the last question. "You like it?" he said again, and he nodded his head towards the little fellow. "H'm, it keeps good time, excellent time it keeps," and he rose to meet the child's mother, who having just entered the room, stood looking at them. It was Guida. She had heard the last words, and she glanced towards the watch curiously. Detricand smiled in greeting, and said to her: "Do you remember it?" He held up the watch. She came forward eagerly. "Is it--is it that indeed, the watch that the dear grandpethe--?" He nodded and smiled. "Yes, it has never once stopped since the moment he gave it me in the Vier-Marchi seven years ago. It has had a charmed existence amid many rough doings and accidents. I was always afraid of losing it, always afraid of an accident to it. It has seemed to me that if I could keep it things would go right with me, and things come out right in the end. Superstition, of course, but I lived a long time in Jersey. I feel more a Jerseyman than a Frenchman sometimes." Although his look seemed to rest but casually on her face, it was evident he was anxious to feel the effect of every word upon her, and he added: "When the Sieur de Mauprat gave me the watch he said, 'May no time be ill spent that it records for you.'" "Perhaps he knows his wish was fulfilled," answered Guida. "You think, then, that I've kept my promise?" "I am sure he would say so," she replied warmly. "It isn't the promise I made to him that I mean, but the promise I made to you." She smiled brightly. "You know what I think of that. I told you long ago." She turned her head away, for a bright colour had come to her cheek. "You have done great things, Prince," she added in a low tone. He flashed a look of inquiry at her. To his ear there was in her voice a little touch--not of bitterness, but of something, as it were, muffled or reserved. Was she thinking how he had robbed her child of the chance of heritage at Bercy? He did not reply, but, stooping, put the watch again to the child's ear. "There you are, monseigneur!" "Why do you call him monseigneur?" she asked. "Guilbert has no title to your compliment." A look half-amused, half-perplexed, crossed over Detricand's face. "Do you think so?" he said musingly. Stooping once more, he said to the child: "Would you like the watch?" and added quickly, "you shall have it when you're grown up." "Do you really mean it?" asked Guida, delighted; "do you really mean to give him the grandpethe's watch one day?" "Oh yes, at least that--one day. But I have something more," he added quickly--" something more for you;" and he drew from his pocket a miniature set in rubies and diamonds. "I have brought you this from the Duc de Mauban--and this," he went on, taking a letter from his pocket, and handing it with the gift. "The Duke thought you might care to have it. It is the face of your godmother, the Duchess Guidabaldine." Guida looked at the miniature earnestly, and then said a little wistfully: "How beautiful a face--but the jewels are much too fine for me! What should one do here with rubies and diamonds? How can I thank the Duke!" "Not so. He will thank you for accepting it. He begged me to say--as you will find by his letter to you--that if you will but go to him upon a visit with this great man here"--pointing to the child with a smile-- "he will count it one of the greatest pleasures of his life. He is too old to come to you, but he begs you to go to him--the Chevalier, and you, and Guilbert here. He is much alone now, and he longs for a little of that friendship which can be given by but few in this world. He counts upon your coming, for I said I thought you would." "It would seem so strange," she answered, "to go from this cottage of my childhood, to which I have come back in peace at last--from this kitchen, to the chateau of the Duc de Mauban." "But it was sure to come," he answered. "This kitchen to which I come also to redeem my pledge after seven years, it belongs to one part of your life. But there is another part to fulfil,"--he stooped and passed his hands over the curls of the child," and for your child here you should do it." "I do not find your meaning," she said after a moment's deliberation. "I do not know what you would have me understand." "In some ways you and I would be happier in simple surroundings," he replied gravely, "but it would seem that to play duly our part in the world, we must needs move in wider circles. To my mind this kitchen is the most delightful spot in the world. Here I took a fresh commission of life. I went out, a sort of battered remnant, to a forlorn hope; and now I come back to headquarters once again--not to be praised," he added in an ironical tone, and with a quick gesture of almost boyish shyness-- "not to be praised; only to show that from a grain of decency left in a man may grow up some sheaves of honest work and plain duty." "No, it is much more than that, it is much, much more than that," she broke in. "No, I am afraid it is not," he answered; "but that is not what I wished to say. I wished to say that for monseigneur here--" A little flash of anger came into her eyes. He is no monseigneur, he is Guilbert d'Avranche," she said bitterly. "It is not like you to mock my child, Prince. Oh, I know you mean it playfully," she hurriedly added, "but--but it does not sound right to me." "For the sake of monseigneur the heir to the duchy of Bercy," he added, laying his hand upon the child's head, "these things your devout friends suggest, you should do, Princess." Her clear unwavering eye looked steadfastly at him, but her face turned pale. "Why do you call him monseigneur the heir to the duchy of Bercy?" she said almost coldly, and with a little fear in her look too. "Because I have come here to tell you the truth, and to place in your hands the record of an act of justice." Drawing from his pocket a parchment gorgeous with seals, he stooped, and taking the hands of the child, he placed it in them. "Hold it tight, hold it tight, my little friend, for it is your very own," he said to the child with cheerful kindliness. Then stepping back a little, and looking earnestly at Guida, he added with a motion of the hand towards the child: "You must learn the truth from him." "Oh, what can you mean--what can you mean?" she exclaimed. Dropping upon her knees, and running an arm round the child, she opened the parchment and read. "What--what right has he to this?" she cried in a voice of dismay. "A year ago you dispossessed his father from the duchy. Ah, I do not understand it! You--only you are the Duc de Bercy." Her eyes were shining with a happy excitement and tenderness. No such look had been in them for many a day. Something that had long slept was waking in her, something long voiceless was speaking. This man brought back to her heart a glow she had never thought to feel again, the glow of the wonder of life and of a girlish faith. "I am only Detricand of Vaufontaine," he answered. "What, did you--could you think that I would dispossess your child? His father was the adopted son of the Duc de Bercy. Nothing could wipe that out, neither law nor nations. You are always Princess Guida, and your child is always Prince Guilbert d'Avranche--and more than that." His voice became lower, his war-beaten face lighted with that fire and force which had made him during years past a figure in the war records of Europe. "I unseated Philip d'Avranche," he continued, "because he acquired the duchy through--a misapprehension; because the claims of the House of Vaufontaine were greater. We belonged; he was an alien. He had a right to his adoption, he had no right to his duchy--no real right in the equity of nations. But all the time I never forgot that the wife of Philip d'Avranche and her child had rights infinitely beyond his own. All that he achieved was theirs by every principle of justice. My plain duty was to win for your child that succession belonging to him by all moral right. When Philip d'Avranche was killed, I set to work to do for your child what had been done by another for Philip d'Avranche. I have made him my heir. When he is of age I shall abdicate from the duchy in his favour. This deed, countersigned by the Powers that dispossessed his father, secures to him the duchy when he is old enough to govern." Guida had listened like one in a dream. A hundred feelings possessed her, and one more than all. She suddenly saw all Detricand's goodness to her stretch out in a long line of devoted friendship, from this day to that far-off hour seven years before, when he had made a vow to her-- kept how nobly! Devoted friendship--was it devoted friendship alone, even with herself? In a tumult of emotions she answered him hurriedly. "No, no, no, no! I cannot accept it. This is not justice, this is a gift for which there is no example in the world's history." "I thought it best," he went on quietly, "to govern Bercy myself during these troubled years. So far its neutrality has been honoured, but who can tell what may come! As a Vaufontaine it is my duty to see that Bercy's interests are duly protected amidst the troubles of Europe." Guida got to her feet now and stood looking dazedly at the parchment in her hand. The child, feeling himself neglected, ran out into the garden. There was moisture in Guida's eyes as she presently said: "I had not thought that any man could be so noble--no, not even you." "You should not doubt yourself so," he answered meaningly. "I am the work of your hands. If I have fought my way back to reputable life again--" He paused, and took from his pocket a handkerchief. "This was the gage," he said, holding it up. "Do you remember the day I came to return it to you, and carried it off again?" "It was foolish of you to keep it," she answered softly, "as foolish of you as to think that I shall accept for my child these great honours." "But suppose the child in after years should blame you?" he answered slowly and with emphasis. "Suppose that Guilbert should say, What right had you, my mother, to refuse what was my due?" This was the question she had asked herself long, long ago. It smote her heart now. What right had she to reject this gift of Fate to her child? Scarcely above a whisper she replied: "Of course he might say that, but how, oh, how should we simple folk, he and I, be fitted for these high places--yet? Now that what I desired all these years for him has come, I have not the courage." "You have friends to help you in all you do," he answered meaningly. "But friends cannot always be with one," she answered. "That depends upon the friends. There is one friend of yours who has known you for eighteen years. Eighteen years' growth should make a strong friendship--there was always friendship on his part at least. He can be a still stronger and better friend. He comes now to offer you the remainder of a life for which your own goodness is the guarantee. He comes to offer you a love of which your own soul must be the only judge, for you have eyes that see and a spirit that knows. The Chevalier needs you, and the Duc de Mauban needs you, but Detricand of Vaufontaine needs you a thousand times more." "Oh, hush--but no, you must not!" she broke in, her face all crimson, her lips trembling. "But yes, I must," he answered quickly. "You find peace here, but it is the peace of inaction. It dulls the brain, and life winds in upon itself wearily at the last. But out there is light and fire and action and the quick-beating pulse, and the joy of power wisely used, even to the end. You come of a great people, you were born to great things; your child has rights accorded now by every Court of Europe. You must act for him. For your child's sake, for my sake come out into the great field of life with me--as my wife, Guida." She turned to him frankly, she looked at him steadfastly, the colour in her face came and went, but her eyes glowed with feeling. "After all that has happened?" she asked in a low tone. "It could only be because of all that has happened," he answered. "No, no, you do not understand," she said quickly, a great pain in her voice. "I have suffered so, these many, many years! I shall never be light-hearted again. And I am not fitted for such high estate. Do you not see what you ask of me--to go from this cottage to a palace?" "I love you too well to ask you to do what you could not. You must trust me," he answered, "you must give your life its chance, you must--" "But listen to me," she interjected with breaking tones; "I know as surely as I know--as I know the face of my child, that the youth in me is dead. My summer came--and went--long ago. No, no, you do not understand--I would not make you unhappy. I must live only to make my child happy. That love has not been marred." "And I must be judge of what is for my own happiness. And for yours--if I thought my love would make you unhappy for even one day, I should not offer it. I am your lover, but I am also your friend. Had it not been for you I might have slept in a drunkard's grave in Jersey. Were it not for you, my bones would now be lying in the Vendee. I left my peasants, I denied myself death with them to serve you. The old cause is gone. You and your child are now my only cause--" "You make it so hard for me," she broke in. "Think of the shadows from the past always in my eyes, always in my heart--you cannot wear the convict's chain without the lagging footstep afterwards." "Shadows--friend of my soul, how should I dare come to you if there had never been shadows in your life! It is because you--you have suffered, because you know, that I come. Out of your miseries, the convict's lagging step, you say? Think what I was. There was never any wrong in you, but I was sunk in evil depths of folly--" "I will not have you say so," she interrupted; "you never in your life did a dishonourable thing." "Then again I say, trust me. For, on the honour of a Vaufontaine, I believe that happiness will be yours as my wife. The boy, you see how he and I--" "Ah, you are so good to him!" "You must give me chance and right to serve him. What else have you or I to look forward to? The honours of this world concern us little. The brightest joys are not for us. We have work before us, no rainbow ambitions. But the boy--think for him---" he paused. After a little, she held out her hand towards him. "Good-bye," she said softly. "Good-bye--you say good-bye to me!" he exclaimed in dismay. "Till--till to-morrow," she answered, and she smiled. The smile had a little touch of the old archness which was hers as a child, yet, too, a little of the sadness belonging to the woman. But her hand-clasp was firm and strong; and her touch thrilled him. Power was there, power with infinite gentleness. And he understood her; which was more than all. He turned at the door. She was standing very still, the parchment with the great seals yet in her hand. Without speaking, she held it out to him, as though uncertain what to do with it. As he passed through the doorway he smiled, and said: "To-morrow--to-morrow!" EPILOGUE St. John's Eve had passed. In the fields at Bonne-Nuit Bay the "Brow- brow! ben-ben!" of the Song of the Cauldron had affrighted the night; riotous horns, shaming the blare of a Witches' Sabbath, had been blown by those who, as old Jean Touzel said, carried little lead under their noses. The meadows had been full of the childlike islanders welcoming in the longest day of the year. Mid-summer Day had also come and gone, but with less noise and clamour, for St. John's Fair had been carried on with an orderly gaiety--as the same Jean Touzel said, like a sheet of music. Even the French singers and dancers from St. Malo had been approved in Norman phrases by the Bailly and the Jurats, for now there was no longer war between England and France, Napoleon was at St. Helena, and the Bourbons were come again to their own. It had been a great day, and the roads were cloudy with the dust of Mid- summer revellers going to their homes. But though some went many stayed, camping among the booths, since the Fair was for tomorrow and for other to-morrows after. And now, the day's sport being over, the superstitious were making the circle of the rock called William's Horse in Boulay Bay, singing the song of William, who, with the fabled sprig of sacred mistletoe, turned into a rock the kelpie horse carrying him to death. There was one boat, however, which putting out into the Bay did not bear towards William's Horse, but, catching the easterly breeze, bore away westward towards the point of Plemont. Upon the stern of the boat was painted in bright colours, Hardi Biaou. "We'll be there soon after sunset," said the grizzled helmsman, Jean Touzel, as he glanced from the full sail to the setting sun. Neither of his fellow-voyagers made reply, and for a time there was silence, save for the swish of the gunwale through the water. But at last Jean said: "Su' m'n ame, but it is good this, after that!" and he jerked his head back towards the Fair-ground on the hill. "Even you will sleep to-night, Dormy Jamais, and you, my wife of all." Maitresse Aimable shook her great head slowly on the vast shoulders, and shut her heavy eyelids. "Dame, but I think you are sleeping now--you," Jean went on. Maitresse Aimable's eyes opened wide, and again she shook her head. Jean looked a laugh at her through his great brass-rimmed spectacles and added: "Ba su, then I know. It is because we go to sleep in my hut at Plemont where She live so long. I know, you never sleep there." Maitresse Aimable shook her head once more, and drew from her pocket a letter. At sight of it Dormy Jamais crawled quickly over to where the Femme de Ballast sat, and, 'reaching out, he touched it with both hands. "Princess of all the world--bidemme," he said, and he threw out his arms and laughed. Two great tears were rolling down Maitresse Aimable's cheeks. "How to remember she, ma fuifre!" said Jean Touzel. "But go on to the news of her." Maitresse Aimable spread the letter out and looked at it lovingly. Her voice rose slowly up like a bubble from the bottom of a well, and she spoke. "Ah man pethe benin, when it come, you are not here, my Jean. I take it to the Greffier to read for me. It is great news, but the way he read so sour I do not like, ba su! I see Maitre Damian the schoolmaster pass my door. I beckon, and he come. I take my letter here, I hold it close to his eyes. 'Read on that for me, Maitre Damian--you,' I say. O my good, when he read it, it sing sweet like a song, pergui! Once, two, three times I make him read it out--he has the voice so soft and round, Maitre Damian there." "Glad and good!" interrupted Jean. "What is the news, my wife? What is the news of highnesss--he?" Maitresse Aimable smiled, then she tried to speak, but her voice broke. "The son--the son--at last he is the Duke of Bercy. E'fin, it is all here. The new King of France, he is there at the palace when the child which it have sleep on my breast, which its mother I have love all the years, kiss her son as the Duke of Bercy." "Ch'est ben," said Jean, "you can trust the good God in the end." Dormy Jamais did not speak. His eyes were fastened upon the north, where lay the Paternoster Rocks. The sun had gone down, the dusk was creeping on, and against the dark of the north there was a shimmer of fire--a fire that leapt and quivered about the Paternoster Rocks. Dormy pointed with his finger. Ghostly lights or miracle of Nature, these fitful flames had come and gone at times these many years, and now again the wonder of the unearthly radiance held their eyes. "Gatd'en'ale, I don't understand you--you!" said Jean, speaking to the fantastic fires as though they were human. "There's plenty things we see we can't understand, and there's plenty we understand we can't never see. Ah bah, so it goes!" said Maitresse Aimable, and she put Guida's letter in her bosom. ....................... Upon the hill of Plemont above them, a stone taken from the chimney of the hut where Guida used to live, stood upright beside a little grave. Upon it was carved: BIRIBI, Fidele ami De quels jours! In the words of Maitresse Aimable, "Ah bah, so it goes." FINIS NOTE: IT is possible that students of English naval history may find in the life of Philip d'Avranche, as set forth in this book, certain resemblances to the singular and long forgotten career of the young Jerseyman, Philip d'Auvergne of the "Arethusa," who in good time became Vice-Admiral of the White and His Serene Highness the Duke of Bouillon. Because all the relatives and direct descendants of Admiral Prince Philip d'Auvergne are dead, I am the more anxious to state that, apart from one main incident, the story here-before written is not taken from the life of that remarkable man. Yet I will say also that I have drawn upon the eloquence, courage, and ability of Philip d'Auvergne to make the better part of Philip d'Avranche, whose great natural fault, an overleaping ambition, was the same fault that brought the famous Prince Admiral to a piteous death in the end. In any case, this tale has no claim to be called a historical novel. JERSEY WORDS AND PHRASES WITH THEIR EQUIVALENTS IN ENGLISH OR FRENCH A bi'tot = a bientot. Achocre = dolt, ass. Ah bah! (Difficult to render in English, but meaning much the same as "Well! well!") Ah be! = eh bien. Alles kedainne = to go quickly, to skedaddle. Bachouar = a fool. Ba su! = bien sur. Bashin = large copper-lined stew-pan. Batd'lagoule = chatterbox. Bedgone = shortgown or deep bodice of print. Beganne = daft fellow. Biaou = beau. Bidemme! = exclamation of astonishment. Bouchi = mouthful. Bilzard = idiot. Chelin = shilling. Ch'est ben = c'est bien. Cotil = slope of a dale. Coum est qu'on etes? } Coum est qu'ou vos portest? } Comment vous portez-vous! Couzain or couzaine = cousin. Crasset = metal oil-lamp of classic shape. Critchett = cricket. Diantre = diable. Dreschiaux = dresser. E'fant = enfant. E'fin = enfin. Eh ben = eh bien. Esmanus = scarecrow. Es-tu gentiment? = are you well? Et ben = and now. Gache-a-penn! = misery me! Gaderabotin! = deuce take it! Garche = lass. Gatd'en'ale! = God be with us! Grandpethe = grandpere. Han = kind of grass for the making of ropes, baskets, etc. Hanap = drinking-cup. Hardi = very. Hus = lower half of a door. (Doors of many old Jersey houses were divided horizontally, for protection against cattle, to let out the smoke, etc.) Je me crais; je to crais; je crais ben! = I believe it; true for you; I well believe it! Ma fe! } Ma fistre! }= ma foi! Ma fuifre! } Mai grand doux! = but goodness gracious! Man doux! = my good, oh dear! (Originally man Dieu!) Man doux d'la vie! = upon my life! Man gui, mon pethe! = mon Dieu, mon pere! Man pethe benin! = my good father! Marchi = marche. Mogue = drinking-cup. Nannin; nannin-gia! = no; no indeed! Ni bouf ni baf } Expression of absolute negation, untranslatable. Ni fiche ni bran } Oui-gia! = yes indeed! Par made = par mon Dieu. Pardi! } Pardingue! }= old forms of par Dieul Pergui! } Pend'loque = ragamuffin. Queminzolle = overcoat. Racllyi = hanging rack from the rafters of a kitchen. Respe d'la compagnie! = with all respect for present company. Shale ben = very well. Simnel = a sort of biscuit, cup-shaped, supposed to represent unleavened bread, specially eaten at Easter. Soupe a la graisse = very thin soup, chiefly made of water, with a few vegetables and some dripping. Su' m'n ame = sur mon ame! Tcheche? = what's that you say? Trejous = toujours. Tres-ba = tres bien. Veille = a wide low settle. (Probably from lit de fouaille.) Also applied to evening gatherings, when, sitting cross-legged on the veille, the neighbours sang, talked, and told stories. Verges = the land measure of Jersey, equal to forty perches. Two and a quarter vergees are equivalent to the English acre. Vier = vieux. Vraic = a kind of sea-weed. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: It is not the broken heart that kills, but broken pride ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "BATTLE OF THE STRONG": A sort of chuckle not entirely pleasant Adaptability was his greatest weapon in life Being tired you can sleep, and in sleep you can forget Cling to beliefs long after conviction has been shattered Egotism with which all are diseased Egregious egotism of young love there are only two identities Follow me; if I retreat, kill me; if I fall, avenge me Futility of goodness, the futility of all He felt things, he did not study them Her voice had the steadiness of despair If women hadn't memory, she answered, they wouldn't have much It is not the broken heart that kills, but broken pride It is easy to repent when our pleasures have palled It's the people who try to be clever who never are Joy of a confessional which relieves the sick heart Kissed her twice on the cheek--the first time in fifteen years Knew the lie of silence to be as evil as the lie of speech Lilt of existence lulling to sleep wisdom and tried experience Lonely we come into the world, and lonely we go out of it Never to be content with superficial reasons and the obvious No news--no trouble Often, we would rather be hurt than hurt People who are clever never think of trying to be Queer that things which hurt most can't be punished by law Rack of secrecy, the cruelest inquisition of life Sacrifice to the god of the pin-hole Sardonic pleasure in the miseries of the world Sympathy, with curiousness in their eyes and as much inhumanity Thanked him in her heart for the things he had left unsaid There was never a grey wind but there's a greyer There is something humiliating in even an undeserved injury Uses up your misery and makes you tired (Work) War is cruelty, and none can make it gentle We care so little for real justice What fools there are in the world THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS Volume 1. THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING Volume 2. THE ABSURD ROMANCE OF P'TITE LOUISON THE LITTLE BELL OF HONOUR A SON OF THE WILDERNESS A WORKER IN STONE Volume 3. THE TRAGIC COMEDY OF ANNETTE THE MARRIAGE OF THE MILLER MATHURIN THE STORY OF THE LIME-BURNER THE WOODSMAN'S STORY OF THE GREAT WHITE CHIEF UNCLE JIM THE HOUSE WITH THE TALL PORCH PARPON THE DWARF Volume 4. TIMES WERE HARD IN PONTIAC MEDALLION'S WHIM THE PRISONER AN UPSET PRICE A FRAGMENT OF LIVES THE MAN THAT DIED AT ALMA THE BARON OF BEAUGARD THE TUNE McGILVERAY PLAYED The Right Hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier G.C.M.G. Dear Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Since I first began to write these tales in 1892, I have had it in my mind to dedicate to you the "bundle of life" when it should be complete. It seemed to me--and it seems so still--that to put your name upon the covering of my parcel, as one should say, "In care of," when it went forth, was to secure its safe and considerate delivery to that public of the Empire which is so much in your debt. But with other feelings also do I dedicate this volume to yourself. For many years your name has stood for a high and noble compromise between the temperaments and the intellectual and social habits of two races; and I am not singular in thinking that you have done more than most other men to make the English and French of the Dominion understand each other better. There are somewhat awkward limits to true understanding as yet, but that sympathetic service which you render to both peoples, with a conscientious striving for impartiality, tempers even the wind of party warfare to the shorn lamb of political opposition. In a sincere sympathy with French life and character, as exhibited in the democratic yet monarchical province of Quebec, or Lower Canada (as, historically, I still love to think of it), moved by friendly observation, and seeking to be truthful and impartial, I have made this book and others dealing with the life of the proud province, which a century and a half of English governance has not Anglicised. This series of more or less connected stories, however, has been the most cherished of all my labours, covering, as it has done, so many years, and being the accepted of my anxious judgment out of a much larger gathering, so many numbers of which are retired to the seclusion of copyright, while reserved from publication. In passing, I need hardly say that the "Pontiac" of this book is an imaginary place, and has no association with the real Pontiac of the Province. I had meant to call the volume, "Born with a Golden Spoon," a title stolen from the old phrase, "Born with a golden spoon in the mouth"; but at the last moment I have given the book the name of the tale which is, chronologically, the climax of the series, and the end of my narratives of French Canadian life and character. I had chosen the former title because of an inherent meaning in it relation to my subject. A man born in the purple--in comfort wealth, and secure estate--is said to have the golden spoon in his mouth. In the eyes of the world, however, the phrase has a some what ironical suggestiveness, and to have luxury, wealth, and place as a birthright is not thought to be the most fortunate incident of mortality. My application of the phrase is, therefore, different. I have, as you know, travelled far and wide during the past seventeen years, and though I have seen people as frugal and industrious as the French Canadians, I have never seen frugality and industry associated with so much domestic virtue, so much education and intelligence, and so deep and simple a religious life; nor have I ever seen a priesthood at once so devoted and high-minded in all the concerns the home life of their people, as in French Canada. A land without poverty and yet without riches, French Canada stands alone, too well educated to have a peasantry, too poor to have an aristocracy; as though in her the ancient prayer had been answered "Give me neither poverty nor riches, but feed me with food convenient for me." And it is of the habitant of Quebec, before a men else, I should say, "Born with the golden spoon in his mouth." To you I come with this book, which contains the first thing I ever wrote out of the life of the Province so dear to you, and the last things also that I shall ever write about it. I beg you to receive it as the loving recreation of one who sympathises with the people of who you come, and honours their virtues, and who has no fear for the unity, and no doubt as to the splendid future, of the nation, whose fibre is got of the two great civilising races of Europe. Lastly, you will know with what admiration and regard I place your name on the fore page of my book, and greet in you the statesman, the litterateur, and the personal friend. Believe me, Dear Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Yours very sincerely, GILBERT PARKER. 20 CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE, LONDON, S. W., 14th August, 1900. INTRODUCTION The story with which this book opens, 'The Lane That Had No Turning', gives the title to a collection which has a large share in whatever importance my work may possess. Cotemporaneous with the Pierre series, which deal with the Far West and the Far North, I began in the 'Illustrated London News', at the request of the then editor, Mr. Clement K. Shorter, a series of French Canadian sketches of which the first was 'The Tragic Comedy of Annette'. It was followed by 'The Marriage of the Miller, The House with the Tall Porch, The Absurd Romance of P'tite Louison, and The Woodsman's Story of the Great White Chief'. They were begun and finished in the autumn of 1892 in lodgings which I had taken on Hampstead Heath. Each--for they were all very short--was written at a sitting, and all had their origin in true stories which had been told me in the heart of Quebec itself. They were all beautifully illustrated in the Illustrated London News, and in their almost monosyllabic narrative, and their almost domestic simplicity, they were in marked contrast to the more strenuous episodes of the Pierre series. They were indeed in keeping with the happily simple and uncomplicated life of French Canada as I knew it then; and I had perhaps greater joy in writing them and the purely French Canadian stories that followed them, such as 'Parpon the Dwarf, A Worker in Stone, The Little Bell of Honour, and The Prisoner', than in almost anything else I have written, except perhaps 'The Right of Way and Valmond', so far as Canada is concerned. I think the book has harmony, although the first story in it covers eighty-two pages, while some of the others, like 'The Marriage of the Miller', are less than four pages in length. At the end also there are nine fantasies or stories which I called 'Parables of Provinces'. All of these, I think, possessed the spirit of French Canada, though all are more or less mystical in nature. They have nothing of the simple realism of 'The Tragic Comedy of Annette', and the earlier series. These nine stories could not be called popular, and they were the only stories I have ever written which did not have an immediate welcome from the editors to whom they were sent. In the United States I offered them to 'Harper's Magazine', but the editor, Henry M. Alden, while, as I know, caring for them personally, still hesitated to publish them. He thought them too symbolic for the every-day reader. He had been offered four of them at once because I declined to dispose of them separately, though the editor of another magazine was willing to publish two of them. Messrs. Stone & Kimball, however, who had plenty of fearlessness where literature was concerned, immediately bought the series for The Chap Book, long since dead, and they were published in that wonderful little short-lived magazine, which contained some things of permanent value to literature. They published four of the series, namely: 'The Golden Pipes, The Guardian of the Fire, By that Place Called Peradventure, The Singing of the Bees, and The Tent of the Purple Mat'. In England, because I would not separate the first five, and publish them individually, two or three of the editors who were taking the Pierre series and other stories appearing in this volume would not publish them. They, also, were frightened by the mystery and allusiveness of the tales, and had an apprehension that they would not be popular. Perhaps they were right. They were all fantasies, but I do not wish them other than they are. One has to write according to the impulse that seizes one and after the fashion of one's own mind. This at least can be said of all my books, that not a page of them has ever been written to order, and there is not a story published in all the pages bearing my name which does not represent one or two other stories rejected by myself. The art of rejection is the hardest art which an author has to learn; but I have never had a doubt as to my being justified in publishing these little symbolic things. Eventually the whole series was published in England. W. E. Henley gave 'There Was a Little City' a home in 'The New Review', and expressed himself as happy in having it. 'The Forge in the Valley' was published by Sir Wemyss Reid in the weekly paper called 'The Speaker', now known as 'The Nation', in which 'Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch' made his name and helped the fame of others. 'There Was a Little City' was published in 'The Chap Book' in the United States, but 'The Forge in the Valley' had (I think) no American public until it appeared within the pages of 'The Lane That Had No Turning'. The rest of the series were published in the 'English Illustrated Magazine', which was such a good friend to my work at the start. As was perhaps natural, there was some criticism, but very little, in French Canada itself, upon the stories in this volume. It soon died away, however, and almost as I write these words there has come to me an appreciation which I value as much as anything that has befallen me in my career, and that is, the degree of Doctor of Letters from the French Catholic University of Laval at Quebec. It is the seal of French Canada upon the work which I have tried to do for her and for the whole Dominion. THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING CHAPTER I THE RETURN OF MADELINETTE His Excellency the Governor--the English Governor of French Canada--was come to Pontiac, accompanied by a goodly retinue; by private secretary, military secretary, aide-de-camp, cabinet minister, and all that. He was making a tour of the Province, but it was obvious that he had gone out of his way to visit Pontiac, for there were disquieting rumours in the air concerning the loyalty of the district. Indeed, the Governor had arrived but twenty-four hours after a meeting had been held under the presidency of the Seigneur, at which resolutions easily translatable into sedition were presented. The Cure and the Avocat, arriving in the nick of time, had both spoken against these resolutions; with the result that the new- born ardour in the minds of the simple habitants had died down, and the Seigneur had parted from the Cure and the Avocat in anger. Pontiac had been involved in an illegal demonstration once before. Valmond, the bizarre but popular Napoleonic pretender, had raised his standard there; the stones before the parish church had been stained with his blood; and he lay in the churchyard of St. Saviour's forgiven and unforgotten. How was it possible for Pontiac to forget him? Had he not left his little fortune to the parish? and had he not also left twenty thousand francs for the musical education of Madelinette Lajeunesse, the daughter of the village forgeron, to learn singing of the best masters in Paris? Pontiac's wrong-doings had brought it more profit than penalty, more praise than punishment: for, after five years in France in the care of the Little Chemist's widow, Madelinette Lajeunesse had become the greatest singer of her day. But what had put the severest strain upon the modesty of Pontiac was the fact that, on the morrow of Madelinette's first triumph in Paris, she had married M. Louis Racine, the new Seigneur of Pontiac. What more could Pontiac wish? It had been rewarded for its mistakes; it had not even been chastened, save that it was marked Suspicious as to its loyalty, at the headquarters of the English Government in Quebec. It should have worn a crown of thorns, but it flaunted a crown of roses. A most unreasonable good fortune seemed to pursue it. It had been led to expect that its new Seigneur would be an Englishman, one George Fournel, to whom, as the late Seigneur had more than once declared, the property was devised by will; but at his death no will had been found, and Louis Racine, the direct heir in blood, had succeeded to the property and the title. Brilliant, enthusiastic, fanatically French, the new Seigneur had set himself to revive certain old traditions, customs, and privileges of the Seigneurial position. He was reactionary, seductive, generous, and at first he captivated the hearts of Pontiac. He did more than that. He captivated Madelinette Lajeunesse. In spite of her years in Paris-- severe, studious years, which shut out the social world and the temptations of Bohemian life--Madelinette retained a strange simplicity of heart and mind, a desperate love for her old home which would not be gainsaid, a passionate loyalty to her past, which was an illusory attempt to arrest the inevitable changes that come with growth; and, with a sudden impulse, she had sealed herself to her past at the very outset of her great career by marriage with Louis Racine. On the very day of their marriage Louis Racine had made a painful discovery. A heritage of his fathers, which had skipped two generations, suddenly appeared in himself: he was becoming a hunchback. Terror, despair, gloom, anxiety had settled upon him. Three months later Madelinette had gone to Paris alone. The Seigneur had invented excuses for not accompanying her, so she went instead in the care of the Little Chemist's widow, as of old Louis had promised to follow within another three months, but had not done so. The surgical operation performed upon him was unsuccessful; the strange growth increased. Sensitive, fearful, and morose, he would not go to Europe to be known as the hunchback husband of Lajeunesse, the great singer. He dreaded the hour when Madelinette and he should meet again. A thousand times he pictured her as turning from him in loathing and contempt. He had married her because he loved her, but he knew well enough that ten thousand other men could love her just as well, and be something more than a deformed Seigneur of an obscure manor in Quebec. As his gloomy imagination pictured the future, when Madelinette should return and see him as he was and cease to love him--to build up his Seigneurial honour to an undue importance, to give his position a fictitious splendour, became a mania with him. No ruler of a Grand Duchy ever cherished his honour dearer or exacted homage more persistently than did Louis Racine in the Seigneury of Pontiac. Coincident with the increase of these futile extravagances was the increase of his fanatical patriotism, which at last found vent in seditious writings, agitations, the purchase of rifles, incitement to rebellion, and the formation of an armed, liveried troop of dependants at the Manor. On the very eve of the Governor's coming, despite the Cure's and the Avocat's warnings, he had held a patriotic meeting intended to foster a stubborn, if silent, disregard of the Governor's presence amongst them. The speech of the Cure, who had given guarantee for the good behaviour of his people to the Government, had been so tinged with sorrowful appeal, had recalled to them so acutely the foolish demonstration which had ended in the death of Valmond; that the people had turned from the exasperated Seigneur with the fire of monomania in his eyes, and had left him alone in the hall, passionately protesting that the souls of Frenchmen were not in them. Next day, upon the church, upon the Louis Quinze Hotel, and elsewhere, the Union Jack flew--the British colours flaunted it in Pontiac with welcome to the Governor. But upon the Seigneury was another flag--it of the golden-lilies. Within the Manor House M. Louis Racine sat in the great Seigneurial chair, returned from the gates of death. As he had come home from the futile public meeting, galloping through the streets and out upon the Seigneury road in the dusk, his horse had shied upon a bridge, where mischievous lads waylaid travellers with ghostly heads made of lighted candles in hollowed pumpkins, and horse and man had been plunged into the stream beneath. His faithful servant Havel had seen the accident and dragged his insensible master from the water. Now the Seigneur sat in the great arm-chair glowering out upon the cheerful day. As he brooded, shaken and weak and bitter--all his thoughts were bitter now--a flash of scarlet, a glint of white plumes crossed his line of vision, disappeared, then again came into view, and horses' hoofs rang out on the hard road below. He started to his feet, but fell back again, so feeble was he, then rang the bell at his side with nervous insistence. A door opened quickly behind him, and his voice said imperiously: "Quick, Havel--to the door. The Governor and his suite have come. Call Tardif, and have wine and cake brought at once. When the Governor enters, let Tardif stand at the door, and you beside my chair. Have the men-at-arms get into livery, and make a guard of honour for the Governor when he leaves. Their new rifles too--and let old Fashode wear his medal! See that Lucre is not filthy--ha! ha! very good. I must let the Governor hear that. Quick--quick, Havel. They are entering the grounds. Let the Manor bell be rung, and every one mustered. He shall see that to be a Seigneur is not an empty honour. I am something in the state, something by my own right." His lips moved restlessly; he frowned; his hands nervously clasped the arms of the chair. "Madelinette too shall see that I am to be reckoned with, that I am not a nobody. By God, then, but she shall see it!" he added, bringing his clasped hand down hard upon the wood. There was a stir outside, a clanking of chains, a champing of bits, and the murmurs of the crowd who were gathering fast in the grounds. Presently the door was thrown open and Havel announced the Governor. Louis Racine got to his feet, but the Governor hastened forward, and, taking both his hands, forced him gently back into the chair. "No, no, my dear Seigneur. You must not rise. This is no state visit, but a friendly call to offer congratulations on your happy escape, and to inquire how you are." The Governor said his sentences easily, but he suddenly flushed and was embarrassed, for Louis Racine's deformity, of which he had not known-- Pontiac kept its troubles to itself--stared him in the face; and he felt the Seigneur's eyes fastened on him with strange intensity. "I have to thank your Excellency," the Seigneur said in a hasty nervous voice. "I fell on my shoulders--that saved me. If I had fallen on my head I should have been killed, no doubt. My shoulders saved me!" he added, with a petulant insistence in his voice, a morbid anxiety in his face. "Most providential," responded the Governor. "It grieves me that it should have happened on the occasion of my visit. I missed the Seigneur's loyal public welcome. But I am happy," he continued, with smooth deliberation, "to have it here in this old Manor House, where other loyal French subjects of England have done honour to their Sovereign's representative." "This place is sacred to hospitality and patriotism, your Excellency," said Louis Racine, nervousness passing from his voice and a curious hard look coming into his face. The Governor was determined not to see the double meaning. "It is a privilege to hear you say so. I shall recall the fact to her Majesty's Government in the report I shall make upon my tour of the province. I have a feeling that the Queen's pleasure in the devotion of her distinguished French subjects may take some concrete form." The Governor's suite looked at each other significantly, for never before in his journeys had his Excellency hinted so strongly that an honour might be conferred. Veiled as it was, it was still patent as the sun. Spots of colour shot into the Seigneur's cheeks. An honour from the young English Queen--that would mate with Madelinette's fame. After all, it was only his due. He suddenly found it hard to be consistent. His mind was in a whirl. The Governor continued: "It must have given you great pleasure to know that at Windsor her Majesty has given tokens of honour to the famous singer, the wife of a notable French subject, who, while passionately eager to keep alive French sentiment, has, as we believe, a deep loyalty to England." The Governor had said too much. He had thought to give the Seigneur an opportunity to recede from his seditious position there and then, and to win his future loyalty. M. Racine's situation had peril, and the Governor had here shown him the way of escape. But he had said one thing that drove Louis Racine mad. He had given him unknown information about his own wife. Louis did not know that Madelinette had been received by the Queen, or that she had received "tokens of honour." Wild with resentment, he saw in the Governor's words a consideration for himself based only on the fact that he was the husband of the great singer. He trembled to his feet. At that moment there was a cheering outside--great cheering--but he did not heed it; he was scarcely aware of it. If it touched his understanding at all, it only meant to him a demonstration in honour of the Governor. "Loyalty to the flag of England, your Excellency!" he said, in a hoarse acrid voice--"you speak of loyalty to us whose lives for two centuries--" He paused, for he heard a voice calling his name. "Louis! Louis! Louis!" The fierce words he had been about to utter died on his lips, his eyes stared at the open window, bewildered and even frightened. "Louis! Louis!" Now the voice was inside the house. He stood trembling, both hands grasping the arms of the chair. Every eye in the room was now turned towards the door. As it opened, the Seigneur sank back in the chair, a look of helpless misery, touched by a fierce pride, covering his face. "Louis!" It was Madelinette, who, disregarding the assembled company, ran forward to him and caught both his hands in hers. "O Louis, I have heard of your accident, and--" she stopped suddenly short. The Governor turned away his head. Every person in the room did the same. For as she bent over him--she saw. She saw for the first time; for the first time knew! A look of horrified amazement, of shrinking anguish, crossed over her face. He felt the lightning-like silence, he knew that she had seen; he struggled to his feet, staring fiercely at her. That one torturing instant had taken all the colour from her face, but there was a strange brightness in her eyes, a new power in her bearing. She gently forced him into the seat again. "You are not strong enough, Louis. You must be tranquil." She turned now to the Governor. He made a sign to his suite, who, bowing, slowly left the room. "Permit me to welcome you to your native land again, Madame," he said. "You have won for it a distinction it could never have earned, and the world gives you many honours." She was smiling and still, and with one hand clasping her husband's, she said: "The honour I value most my native land has given me: I am lady of the Manor here, and wife of the Seigneur Racine." Agitated triumph came upon Louis Racine's face; a weird painful vanity entered into him. He stood up beside his wife, as she turned and looked at him, showing not a sign that what she saw disturbed her. "It is no mushroom honour to be Seigneur of Pontiac, your Excellency," he said, in a tone that jarred. "The barony is two hundred years old. By rights granted from the crown of France, I am Baron of Pontiac." "I think England has not yet recognised the title," said the Governor suggestively, for he was here to make peace, and in the presence of this man, whose mental torture was extreme, he would not allow himself to be irritated. "Our baronies have never been recognised," said the Seigneur harshly. "And yet we are asked to love the flag of England and--" "And to show that we are too proud to ask for a right that none can take away," interposed Madelinette graciously and eagerly, as though to prevent Louis from saying what he intended. All at once she had had to order her life anew, to replace old thoughts by new ones. "We honour and obey the rulers of our land, and fly the English flag, and welcome the English Governor gladly when he comes to us--will your Excellency have some refreshment?" she added quickly, for she saw the cloud on the Seigneur's brow. "Louis," she added quickly, "will you--" "I have ordered refreshment," said the Seigneur excitedly, the storm passing from his face, however. "Havel, Tardif--where are you, fellows!" He stamped his foot imperiously. Havel entered with a tray of wine and glasses, followed by Tardif loaded with cakes and comfits, and set them on the table. Ten minutes later the Governor took his leave. At the front door he stopped surprised, for a guard of honour of twenty men were drawn up. He turned to the Seigneur. "What soldiers are these?" he asked. "The Seigneury company, your Excellency," replied Louis. "What uniform is it they wear?" he asked in an even tone, but with a black look in his eye, which did not escape Madelinette. "The livery of the Barony of Pontiac," answered the Seigneur. The Governor looked at them a moment without speaking. "It is French uniform of the time of Louis Quinze," he said. "Picturesque, but informal," he added. He went over, and taking a carbine from one of the men, examined it. "Your carbines are not so unconventional and antique," he said meaningly, and with a frosty smile. "The compromise of the centuries--hein?" he added to the Cure, who, with the Avocat, was now looking on with some trepidation. "I am wondering if it is quite legal. It is charming to have such a guard of honour, but I am wondering--wondering--eh, monsieur l'avocat, is it legal?" The Avocat made no reply, but the Cure's face was greatly troubled. The Seigneur's momentary placidity passed. "I answer for their legality, your Excellency," he said, in a high, assertive voice. "Of course, of course, you will answer for it," said the Governor, smiling enigmatically. He came forward and held out his hand to Madelinette. "Madame, I shall remember your kindness, and I appreciate the simple honours done me here. Your arrival at the moment of my visit is a happy circumstance." There was a meaning in his eye--not in his voice--which went straight to Madelinette's understanding. She murmured something in reply, and a moment afterwards the Governor, his suite, and the crowd were gone; and the men-at-arms-the fantastic body of men in their antique livery-armed with the latest modern weapons, had gone back to civic life again. Inside the house once more, Madelinette laid her hand upon Louis' arm with a smile that wholly deceived him for a moment. He thought now that she must have known of his deformity before she came--the world was so full of tale-bearers--and no doubt had long since reconciled herself to the painful fact. She had shown no surprise, no shrinking. There had been only the one lightning instant in which he had felt a kind of suspension of her breath and being, but when he had looked her in the face, she was composed and smiling. After all his frightened anticipation the great moment had come and gone without tragedy. With satisfaction he looked in the mirror in the hall as they passed inside the house. He saw no reason to quarrel with his face. Was it possible that the deformity did not matter after all? He felt Madelinette's hand on his arm. He turned and clasped her to his breast. He did not notice that she kept her hands under her chin as he drew her to him, that she did not, as had been her wont, put them on his shoulders. He did not feel her shrink, and no one, seeing, could have said that she shrank from him in ever so little. "How beautiful you are!" he said, as he looked into her face. "How glad I am to be here again, and how tired I am, Louis!" she said. "I've driven thirty miles since daylight." She disengaged herself. "I am going to sleep now," she added. "I am going to turn the key in my door till evening. Please tell Madame Marie so, Louis." Inside her room alone she flung herself on her bed in agony and despair. "Louis--Oh, my God!" she cried, and sobbed and sobbed her strength away. CHAPTER II WHEN THE RED-COATS CAME A month later there was a sale of the household effects, the horses and general possessions of Medallion the auctioneer, who, though a Protestant and an Englishman, had, by his wits and goodness of heart, endeared himself to the parish. Therefore the notables among the habitants had gathered in his empty house for a last drink of good-fellowship--Muroc the charcoalman, Duclosse the mealman, Benoit the ne'er-do-weel, Gingras the one-eyed shoemaker, and a few others. They had drunk the health of Medallion, they had drunk the health of the Cure, and now Duclosse the mealman raised his glass. "Here's to--" "Wait a minute, porridge-pot," cried Muroc. "The best man here should raise the glass first and say the votre sante. 'Tis M'sieu' Medallion should speak and sip now." Medallion was half-sitting on the window-sill, abstractedly listening. He had been thinking that his ships were burned behind him, and that in middle-age he was starting out to make another camp for himself in the world, all because of the new Seigneur of Pontiac. Time was when he had been successful here, but Louis Racine had changed all that. His hand was against the English, and he had brought a French auctioneer to Pontiac. Medallion might have divided the parish as to patronage, but he had other views. So he was going. Madelinette had urged him to stay, but he had replied that it was too late. The harm was not to be undone. As Muroc spoke, every one turned towards Medallion. He came over and filled a glass at the table, and raised it. "I drink to Madelinette, daughter of that fine old puffing forgeron Lajeunesse," he added, as the big blacksmith now entered the room. Lajeunesse grinned and ducked his head. "I knew Madelinette, as did you all, when I could take her on my knee and tell her English stories, and listen to her sing French chansons--the best in the world. She has gone on; we stay where we were. But she proves her love to us, by taking her husband from Pontiac and coming back to us. May she never find a spot so good to come to and so hard to leave as Pontiac!" He drank, and they all did the same. Draining his glass, Medallion let it fall on the stone floor. It broke into a score of pieces. He came and shook hands with Lajeunesse. "Give her my love," he said. "Tell her the highest bidder on earth could not buy one of the kisses she gave me when she was five and I was twenty." Then he shook hands with them all and went into the next room. "Why did he drop his glass?" asked Gingras the shoemaker. "That's the way of the aristocrats when it's the damnedest toast that ever was," said Duclosse the mealman. "Eh, Lajeunesse, that's so, isn't it?" "What the devil do I know about aristocrats!" said Lajeunesse. "You're among the best of the land, now that Madelinette's married to the Seigneur. You ought to wear a collar every day." "Bah!" answered the blacksmith. "I'm only old Lajeunesse the blacksmith, though she's my girl, dear lads. I was Joe Lajeunesse yesterday, and I'll be Joe Lajeunesse to-morrow, and I'll die Joe Lajeunesse the forgeron--bagosh! So you take me as you find me. M'sieu' Racine doesn't marry me. And Madelinette doesn't take me to Paris and lead me round the stage and say, 'This is M'sieu' Lajeunesse, my father.' No. I'm myself, and a damn good blacksmith and nothing else am I" "Tut, tut, old leather-belly," said Gingras the shoemaker, whose liquor had mounted high, "you'll not need to work now. Madelinette's got double fortune. She gets thousands for a song, and she's lady of the Manor here. What's too good for you, tell me that, my forgeron?" "Not working between meals--that's too good for me, Gingras. I'm here to earn my bread with the hands I was born with, and to eat what they earn, and live by it. Let a man live according to his gifts--bagosh! Till I'm sent for, that's what I'll do; and when time's up I'll take my hand off the bellows, and my leather apron can go to you, Gingras, for boots for a bigger fool than me." "There's only one," said Benolt, the ne'er-do-weel, who had been to college as a boy. "Who's that?" said Muroc. "You wouldn't know his name. He's trying to find eggs in last year's nest," answered Benolt with a leer. "He means the Seigneur," said Muroc. "Look to your son-in-law, Lajeunesse. He's kicking up a dust that'll choke Pontiac yet. It's as if there was an imp in him driving him on." "We've had enough of the devil's dust here," said Lajeunesse. "Has he been talking to you, Muroc?" Muroc nodded. "Treason, or thereabouts. Once, with him that's dead in the graveyard yonder, it was France we were to save and bring back the Napoleons--I have my sword yet. Now it's save Quebec. It's stand alone and have our own flag, and shout, and fight, maybe, to be free of England. Independence--that's it! One by one the English have had to go from Pontiac. Now it's M'sieu' Medallion." "There's Shandon the Irishman gone too. M'sieu' sold him up and shipped him off," said Gingras the shoemaker. "Tiens! the Seigneur gave him fifty dollars when he left, to help him along. He smacks and then kisses, does M'sieu' Racine." "We've to pay tribute to the Seigneur every year, as they did in the days of Vaudreuil and Louis the Saint," said Duclosse. "I've got my notice--a bag of meal under the big tree at the Manor door." "I've to bring a pullet and a bag of charcoal," said Muroc. "'Tis the rights of the Seigneur as of old." "Tiens! it is my mind," said Benoit, "that a man that nature twists in back, or leg, or body anywhere, gets a twist in's brain too. There's Parpon the dwarf--God knows, Parpon is a nut to crack!" "But Parpon isn't married to the greatest singer in the world, though she's only the daughter of old leather-belly there," said Gingras. "Something doesn't come of nothing, snub-nose," said Lajeunesse. "Mark you, I was born a man of fame, walking bloody paths to glory; but, by the grace of Heaven and my baptism, I became a forgeron. Let others ride to glory, I'll shoe their horses for the gallop." "You'll be in Parliament yet, Lajeunesse," said Duclosse the mealman, who had been dozing on a pile of untired cart-wheels. "I'll be hanged first, comrade." "One in the family at a time," said Muroc. "There's the Seigneur. He's going into Parliament." "He's a magistrate--that's enough," said Duclosse. "He's started the court under the big tree, as the Seigneurs did two hundred years ago. He'll want a gibbet and a gallows next." "I should think he'd stay at home and not take more on his shoulders!" said the one-eyed shoemaker. Without a word, Lajeunesse threw a dish of water in Gingras's face. This reference to the Seigneur's deformity was unpalatable. Gingras had not recovered from his discomfiture when all were startled by the distant blare of a bugle. They rushed to the door, and were met by Parpon the dwarf, who announced that a regiment of soldiers was marching on the village. "'Tis what I expected after that meeting, and the Governor's visit, and the lily-flag of France on the Manor, and the body-guard and the carbines," said Muroc nervously. "We're all in trouble again-sure," said Benoit, and drained his glass to the last drop. "Some of us will go to gaol." The coming of the militia had been wholly unexpected by the people of Pontiac, but the cause was not far to seek. Ever since the Governor's visit there had been sinister rumours abroad concerning Louis Racine, which the Cure and the Avocat and others had taken pains to contradict. It was known that the Seigneur had been requested to disband his so-called company of soldiers with their ancient livery and their modern arms, and to give them up. He had disbanded the corps, but he had not given up the arms, and, for reasons unknown, the Government had not pressed the point, so far as the world knew. But it had decided to hold a district drill in this far-off portion of the Province; and this summer morning two thousand men marched 'upon the town and through it, horse, foot, and commissariat, and Pontiac was roused out of the last-century romance the Seigneur had sought to continue, to face the actual presence of modern force and the machinery of war. Twice before had British soldiers marched into the town, the last time but a few years agone, when blood had been shed on the stones in front of the parish church. But here were large numbers of well-armed men from the Eastern parishes, English and French, with four hundred regulars to leaven the mass. Lajeunesse knew only too well what this demonstration meant. Before the last soldier had passed through the street, he was on his way to the Seigneury. He found Madelinette alone in the great dining-room, mending a rent in the British flag, which she was preparing for a flag-staff. When she saw him, she dropped the flag, as if startled, came quickly to him, took both his hands in hers, and kissed his cheek. "Wonder of wonders!" she said. "It's these soldiers," he replied shortly. "What of them?" she asked brightly. "Do you mean to say you don't know what their coming here means?" he asked. "They must drill somewhere, and they are honouring Pontiac," she replied gaily, but her face flushed as she bent over the flag again. He came and stood in front of her. "I don't know what's in your mind; I don't know what you mean to do; but I do know that M'sieu' Racine is making trouble here, and out of it you'll come more hurt than anybody." "What has Louis done?" "What has he done! He's been stirring up feeling against the British. What has he done!--Look at the silly customs he's got out of old coffins, to make us believe they're alive. Why did he ever try to marry you? Why did you ever marry him? You are the great singer of the world. He's a mad hunchback habitant seigneur!" She stamped her foot indignantly, but presently she ruled herself to composure, and said quietly: "He is my husband. He is a brave man, with foolish dreams." Then with a sudden burst of tender feeling, she said: "Oh, father, father, can't you see, I loved him--that is why I married him. You ask me what I am going to do? I am going to give the rest of my life to him. I am going to stay with him, and be to him all that he may never have in this world, never--never. I am going to be to him what my mother was to you, a slave to the end--a slave who loved you, and who gave you a daughter who will do the same for her husband--" "No matter what he does or is--eh?" "No matter what he is." Lajeunesse gasped. "You will give up singing! Not sing again before kings and courts, and not earn ten thousand dollars a month--more than I've earned in twenty years? You don't mean that, Madelinette." He was hoarse with feeling, and he held out his hand pleadingly. To him it seemed that his daughter was mad; that she was throwing her life away. "I mean that, father," she answered quietly. "There are things worth more than money." "You don't mean to say that you can love him as he is. It isn't natural. But no, it isn't." "What would you have said, if any one had asked you if you loved my mother that last year of her life, when she was a cripple, and we wheeled her about in a chair you made for her?" "Don't say any more," he said slowly, and took up his hat, and kept turning it round in his hand. "But you'll prevent him getting into trouble with the Gover'ment?" he urged at last. "I have done what I could," she answered. Then with a little gasp: "They came to arrest him a fortnight ago, but I said they should not enter the house. Havel and I prevented them--refused to let them enter. The men did not know what to do, and so they went back. And now this--!" she pointed to where the soldiers were pitching their tents in the valley below. "Since then Louis has done nothing to give trouble. He only writes and dreams. If he would but dream and no more--!" she added, half under her breath. "We've dreamt too much in Pontiac already," said Lajeunesse, shaking his head. Madelinette reached up her hand and laid it on his shaggy black hair. "You are a good little father, big smithy-man," she said lovingly. "You make me think of the strong men in the Niebelungen legends. It must be a big horse that will take you to Walhalla with the heroes," she added. "Such notions--there in your head," he laughed. "Try to frighten me with your big names-hein?" There was a new look in the face of father and of daughter. No mist or cloud was between them. The things they had long wished to say were uttered at last. A new faith was established between them. Since her return they had laughed and talked as of old when they had met, though her own heart was aching, and he was bitter against the Seigneur. She had kept him and the whole parish in good humour by her unconventional ways, as though people were not beginning to make pilgrimages to Pontiac to see her--people who stared at the name over the blacksmith's door, and eyed her curiously, or lay in wait about the Seigneury, that they might get a glimpse of Madame and her deformed husband. Out in the world where she was now so important, the newspapers told strange romantic tales of the great singer, wove wild and wonderful legends of her life. To her it did not matter. If she knew, she did not heed. If she heeded it--even in her heart--she showed nothing of it before the world. She knew that soon there would be wilder tales still when it was announced that she was bidding farewell to the great working world, and would live on in retirement. She had made up her mind quite how the announcement should read, and, once it was given out, nothing would induce her to change her mind. Her life was now the life of the Seigneur. A struggle in her heart went on, but she fought it down. The lure of a great temptation from that far-off outside world was before her, but she had resolved her heart against it. In his rough but tender way her father now understood, and that was a comfort to her. He felt what he could not reason upon or put into adequate words. But the confidence made him happy, and his eyes said so to her now. "See, big smithy-man," she said gaily, "soon will be the fete of St. Jean Baptiste, and we shall all be happy then. Louis has promised me to make a speech that will not be against the English, but only words which will tell how dear the old land is to us." "Ten to one against it!" said Lajeunesse anxiously. Then he brightened as he saw a shadow cross her face. "But you can make him do anything--as you always made me," he added, shaking his tousled head and taking with a droll eagerness the glass of wine she offered him. CHAPTER III "MAN TO MAN AND STEEL TO STEEL" One evening a fortnight later Louis Racine and George Fournel, the Englishman, stood face to face in the library of the Manor House. There was antagonism and animosity in the attitude of both. Apart from the fact that Louis had succeeded to the Seigneury promised to Fournel, and sealed to him by a reputed will which had never been found, there was cause for hatred on the Englishman's part. Fournel had been an incredibly successful man. Things had come his way--wealth, and the power that wealth brings. He had but two set-backs, and the man before him in the Manor House of Pontiac was the cause of both. The last rebuff had been the succession to the Seigneury, which, curious as it might seem, had been the cherished dream of the rich man's retirement. It had been his fancy to play the Seigneur, the lord magnificent and bountiful, and he had determined to use wealth and all manner of influence to have the title of Baron of Pontiac revived--it had been obsolete for a hundred years. He leaned towards the grace of an hereditary dignity, as other retired millionaires cultivate art and letters, vainly imagining that they can wheedle civilisation and the humanities into giving them what they do not possess by nature, and fool the world at the same time. The loss of the Seigneury had therefore cut deep, but there had been a more hateful affront still. Four years before, Louis Racine, when spasmodically practising law in Quebec, had been approached by two poor Frenchmen, who laid claim to thousands of acres of land which a Land Company, whereof George Fournel was president, was publicly exploiting for the woods and valuable minerals discovered on it. The Land Company had been composed of Englishmen only. Louis Racine, reactionary and imaginative, brilliant and free from sordidness, and openly hating the English, had taken up the case, and for two years fought it tooth and nail without pay or reward. The matter had become a cause celebre, the Land Company engaging the greatest lawyers in both the English and French province. In the Supreme Court the case was lost to Louis' clients. Louis took it over to the Privy Council in London, and carried it through triumphantly and alone, proving his clients' title. His two poor Frenchmen regained their land. In payment he would accept nothing save the ordinary fees, as though it were some petty case in a county court. He had, however, made a reputation, which he had seemed not to value, save as a means of showing hostility to the governing race, and the Seigneury of Pontiac, when it fell to him, had more charms for him than any celebrity to be won at the bar. His love of the history of his country was a mania with him, and he looked forward, on arriving at Pontiac, to being the apostle of French independence on the continent. Madelinette had crossed his path in his most enthusiastic moment, when his brilliant tongue and great dreams surrounded him with a kind of glamour. He had caught her to himself out of the girl's first triumph, when her nature, tried by the strain of her first challenge to the judgment of the world, cried out for rest, for Pontiac and home, and all that was of the old life among her people. Fournel's antipathy had only been increased by the fact that Louis Racine had married the now famous Madelinette, and his animosity extended to her. It was not in him to understand the nature of the Frenchman, volatile, moody, chivalrous, unreasonable, the slave of ideas, the victim of sentiment. Not understanding, when he began to see that he could not attain the object of his visit, which was to secure some relics of the late Seigneur's household, he chose to be disdainful. "You are bound to give me these things I ask for, as a matter of justice --if you know what justice means," he said at last. "You should be aware of that," answered the Seigneur, with a kindling look. He felt every glance of Fournel's eye a contemptuous comment upon his deformity, now so egregious and humiliating. "I taught you justice once." Fournel was not to be moved from his phlegm. He knew he could torture the man before him, and he was determined to do so, if he did not get his way upon the matter of his visit. "You can teach me justice twice and be thanked once," he answered. "These things I ask for were much prized by my friend, the late Seigneur. I was led to expect that this Seigneury and all in it and on it should be mine. I know it was intended so. The law gives it you instead. Your technical claim has overridden my rights--you have a gift for making successful technical claims. But these old personal relics, of no monetary value--you should waive your avaricious and indelicate claim to them." He added the last words with a malicious smile, for the hardening look in Racine's face told him his request was hopeless, and he could not resist the temptation to put the matter with cutting force. Racine rose to the bait with a jump. "Not one single thing--not one single solitary thing--!" "The sentiment is strong if the grammar is bad," interrupted Fournel, meaning to wound wherever he found an opportunity, for the Seigneur's deformity excited in him no pity; it rather incensed him against the man, as an affront to decency and to his own just claims to the honours the Frenchman enjoyed. It was a petty resentment, but George Fournel had set his heart upon playing the grand-seigneur over the Frenchmen of Pontiac, and of ultimately leaving his fortune to the parish, if they all fell down and worshipped him and his "golden calf." "The grammar is suitable to the case," retorted the Seigneur, his voice rising. "Everything is mine by law, and everything I will keep. If you think different, produce a will--produce a will!" Truth was, Louis Racine would rather have parted with the Seigneury itself than with these relics asked for. They were reminiscent of the time when France and her golden-lilies brooded over his land, of the days when Louis Quatorze was king. He cherished everything that had association with the days of the old regime, as a miner hugs his gold, or a woman her jewels. The request to give them up to this unsympathetic Englishman, who valued them because they had belonged to his friend the late Seigneur, only exasperated him. "I am ready to pay the highest possible price for them, as I have said," urged the Englishman, realising as he spoke that it was futile to urge the sale upon that basis. "Money cannot buy the things that Frenchmen love. We are not a race of hucksters," retorted the Seigneur. "That accounts for your envious dispositions then. You can't buy what you want--you love such curious things, I assume. So you play the dog in the manger, and won't let other decent folk buy what they want." He wilfully distorted the other's meaning, and was delighted to see the Seigneur's fingers twitch with fury. "But since you can't buy the things you love--and you seem to think you should--how do you get them? Do you come by them honestly? or do you work miracles? When a spider makes love to his lady he dances before her to infatuate her, and then in a moment of her delighted aberration snatches at her affections. Is it the way of the spider then?" With a snarl as of a wild beast, Louis Racine sprang forward and struck Fournel in the face with his clinched fist. Then, as Fournel, blinded, staggered back upon the book-shelves, he snatched two antique swords from the wall. Throwing one on the floor in front of the Englishman, he ran to the door and locked it, and turned round, the sword grasped firmly in his hand, and white with rage. "Spider! Spider! By Heaven, you shall have the spider dance before you!" he said hoarsely. He had mistaken Fournel's meaning. He had put the most horrible construction upon it. He thought that Fournel referred to his deformity, and had ruthlessly dragged in Madelinette as well. He was like a being distraught. His long brown hair was tossed over his blanched forehead and piercing black eyes. His head was thrown forward even more than his deformity compelled, his white teeth showed in a grimace of hatred; he was half-crouched, like an animal ready to spring. "Take up the sword, or I'll run you through the heart where you stand," he continued, in a hoarse whisper. "I will give you till I can count three. Then by the God in Heaven--!" Fournel felt that he had to deal with a man demented. The blow he had received had laid open the flesh on his cheek-bone, and blood was flowing from the wound. Never in his life before had he been so humiliated. And by a Frenchman--it roused every instinct of race-hatred in him. Yet he wanted not to go at him with a sword, but with his two honest hands, and beat him into a whining submission. But the man was deformed, he had none of his own robust strength--he was not to be struck, but to be tossed out of the way like an offending child. He staunched the blood from his face and made a step forward without a word, determined not to fight, but to take the weapon from the other's hands. "Coward!" said the Seigneur. "You dare not fight with the sword. With the sword we are even. I am as strong as you there-- stronger, and I will have your blood. Coward! Coward! Coward! I will give you till I count three. One! . . . Two! . . ." Fournel did not stir. He could not make up his mind what to do. Cry out? No one could come in time to prevent the onslaught--and onslaught there would be, he knew. There was a merciless hatred in the Seigneur's face, a deadly purpose in his eyes; the wild determination of a man who did not care whether he lived or died, ready to throw himself upon a hundred in his hungry rage. It seemed so mad, so monstrous, that the beautiful summer day through which came the sharp whetting of the scythe, the song of the birds, and the smell of ripening fruit and grain, should be invaded by this tragic absurdity, this human fury which must spend itself in blood. Fournel's mind was conscious of this feeling, this sense of futile, foolish waste and disfigurement, even as the Seigneur said "Three!" and, rushing forward, thrust. As Fournel saw the blade spring at him, he dropped on one knee, caught it with his left hand as it came, and wrenched it aside. The blade lacerated his fingers and his palm, but he did not let go till he had seized the sword at his feet with his right hand. Then, springing up with it, he stepped back quickly and grasped his weapon fiercely enough now. Yet, enraged as he was, he had no wish to fight; to involve himself in a fracas which might end in tragedy and the courts of the land. It was a high price to pay for any satisfaction he might have in this affair. If the Seigneur were killed in the encounter--he must defend himself now-- what a miserable notoriety and possible legal penalty and public punishment! For who could vouch for the truth of his story? Even if he wounded Racine only, what a wretched story to go abroad: that he had fought with a hunchback--a hunchback who knew the use of the sword, which he did not, but still a hunchback! "Stop this nonsense," he said, as Louis Racine prepared to attack again. "Don't be a fool. The game isn't worth the candle." "One of us does not leave this room alive," said the Seigneur. "You care for life. You love it, and you can't buy what you love from me. I don't care for life, and I would gladly die, to see your blood flow. Look, it's flowing down your face; it's dripping from your hand, and there shall be more dripping soon. On guard!" He suddenly attacked with a fierce energy, forcing Fournel back upon the wall. He was not a first-class swordsman, but he had far more knowledge of the weapon than his opponent, and he had no scruple about using his knowledge. Fournel fought with desperate alertness, yet awkwardly, and he could not attack; it was all that he could do, all that he knew how to do, to defend himself. Twice again did the Seigneur's weapon draw blood, once from the shoulder and once from the leg of his opponent, and the blood was flowing from each wound. After the second injury they stood panting for a moment. Now the outside world was shut out from Fournel's senses as it was from Louis Racine's. The only world they knew was this cool room, whose oak floors were browned by the slow searching stains of Time, and darkened by the footsteps of six generations that had come and gone through the old house. The books along the walls seemed to cry out against the unseemly and unholy strife. But now both men were in that atmosphere of supreme egoism where only their two selves moved, and where the only thing that mattered on earth was the issue of this strife. Fournel could only think of how to save his life, and to do that he must become the aggressor, for his wounds were bleeding hard, and he must have more wounds, if the fight went on without harm to the Seigneur. "You know now what it is to insult a Frenchman--On guard!" again cried the Seigneur, in a shriller voice, for everything in him was pitched to the highest note. He again attacked, and the sound of the large swords meeting clashed on the soft air. As they struggled, a voice came ringing through the passages, singing a bar from an opera: "Oh eager golden day, Oh happy evening hour, Behold my lover cometh from fields of wrath and hate! Sheathed is his sword; he cometh to my bower; In war he findeth honour, and love within the gate." The voice came nearer and nearer. It pierced the tragic separateness of the scene of blood. It reached the ears of the Seigneur, and a look of pain shot across his face. Fournel was only dimly aware of the voice, for he was hard pressed, and it seemed to come from infinite distances. Presently the voice stopped, and some one tried the door of the room. It was Madelinette. Astonished at finding it locked, she stood still a moment uncertain what to do. Then the sounds of the struggle within came to her ears. She shook the door, leaned her shoulders against it, and called, "Louis! Louis!" Suddenly she darted away, found Havel the faithful servant in the passage, and brought him swiftly to the door. The man sprang upon it, striking with his shoulder. The lock gave, the door flew open, and Madelinette stepped swiftly into the room, in time to see George Fournel sway and fall, his sword rattling on the hard oak floor. "Oh, what have you done, Louis!" she cried, then added hurriedly to Havel: "Draw the blind there, shut the door, and tell Madame Marie to bring some water quickly." The silent servant vanished, and she dropped on her knees beside the bleeding and insensible man, and lifted his head. "He insulted you and me, and I've killed him, Madelinette," said Louis hoarsely. A horrified look came to her face, and she hurriedly and tremblingly opened Fournel's waistcoat and shirt, and felt his heart. She was freshly startled by a struggle behind her, and, turning quickly, she saw Madame Marie holding the Seigneur's arm to prevent him from ending his own life. She sprang up and laid her hand upon her husband's arm. "He is not dead- -you need not do it, Louis," she said quietly. There was no alarm, no undue excitement in her face now. She was acting with good presence of mind. A new sense was working in her. Something had gone from her suddenly where her husband was concerned, and something else had taken its place. An infinite pity, a bitter sorrow, and a gentle command were in her eyes all at once--new vistas of life opened before her, all in an instant. "He is not dead, and there is no need to kill yourself, Louis," she repeated, and her voice had a command in it that was not to be gainsaid. "Since you have vindicated your honour, you will now help me to set this business right." Madame Marie was on her knees beside the insensible man. "No, he is not dead, thank God!" she murmured, and while Havel stripped the arm and leg, she poured some water between Fournel's lips. Her long experience as the Little Chemist's wife served her well now. Now that the excitement was over, Louis collapsed. He swayed and would have fallen, but Madelinette caught him, helped him to the sofa, and, forcing him gently down on his side, adjusted a pillow for him, and turned to the wounded man again. An hour went busily by in the closely-curtained room, and at last George Fournel, conscious, and with wounds well bandaged, sat in a big arm- chair, glowering round him. At his first coming-to, Louis Racine, at his wife's insistence, had come and offered his hand, and made apology for assaulting him in his own house. Fournel's reply had been that he wanted to hear no more fool's talk and to have no more fool's doings, and that one day he hoped to take his pay for the day's business in a satisfactory way. Madelinette made no apology, said nothing, save that she hoped he would remain for a few days till he was recovered enough to be moved. He replied that he would leave as soon as his horses were ready, and refused to take food or drink from their hands. His servant was brought from the Louis Quinze Hotel, and through him he got what was needed for refreshment, and requested that no one of the household should come near him. At night, in the darkness, he took his departure, no servant of the household in attendance. But as he got into the carriage, Madelinette came quickly to him, and said: "I would give ten years of my life to undo to-day's work." "I have no quarrel with you, Madame," he said gloomily, raised his hat, and was driven away. CHAPTER IV MADELINETTE MAKES A DISCOVERY The national fete of the summer was over. The day had been successful, more successful indeed than any within the memory of the inhabitants; for the English and French soldiers joined in the festivities without any intrusion of racial spirit, but in the very essence and soul of good- fellowship. The General had called at the Manor, and paid his respects to the Seigneur, who received him abstractedly if not coolly, but Madelinette had captured his imagination and his sympathies. He was fond of music for an Englishman, and with a ravishing charm she sang for him a bergerette of the eighteenth century and then a ballad of Shakespeare's set to her own music. She was so anxious that the great holiday should pass off without one untoward incident, that she would have resorted to any fair device to attain the desired end. The General could help her by his influence and instructions, and if the soldiers--regulars and militia--joined in the celebrations harmoniously, and with goodwill, a long step would be made towards undoing the harm that Louis had done, and maybe influencing him towards a saner, wiser view of things. He had changed much since the fateful day when he had forced George Fournel to fight him; had grown more silent, and had turned grey. His eyes had become by turns watchful and suspicious, gloomy and abstracted; and his speech knew the same variations; now bitter and cynical, now sad and distant, and all the time his eyes seemed to grow darker and his face paler. But however moody and variable and irascible he might be with others, however unappeasable, with Madelinette he struggled to be gentle, and his petulance gave way under the intangible persuasiveness of her words and will, which had the effect of command. Under this influence he had prepared the words which he was to deliver at the Fete. They were full of veneration for past traditions, but were not at variance with a proper loyalty to the flag under which they lived, and if the English soldiery met the speech with genial appreciation the day might end in a blessing--and surely blessings were overdue in Madelinette's life in Pontiac. It had been as she worked for and desired, thanks to herself and the English General's sympathetic help. Perhaps his love of music made him better understand what she wanted, made him even forgiving of the Seigneur's strained manner; but certain it is that the day, begun with uneasiness on the part of the people of Pontiac, who felt themselves under surveillance, ended in great good-feeling and harmless revelry; and it was also certain that the Seigneur's speech gained him an applause that surprised him and momentarily appeased his vanity. The General gave him a guard of honour of the French Militia in keeping with his position as Seigneur; and this, with Madelinette's presence at his elbow, restrained him in his speech when he would have broken from the limits of propriety in the intoxication of his eager eloquence. But he spoke with moderation, standing under the British Flag on the platform, and at the last he said: "A flag not our own floats over us now; guarantees us against the malice of the world and assures us in our laws and religion; but there is another flag which in our tearful memories is as dear to us now as it was at Carillon and Levis. It is the flag of memory--of language and of race, the emblem of our past upon our hearthstones; and the great country that rules us does not deny us reverence to it. Seeing it, we see the history of our race from Charlemagne to this day, and we have a pride in that history which England does not rebuke, a pride which is just and right. It is fitting that we should have a day of commemoration. Far off in France burns the light our fathers saw and were glad. And we in Pontiac have a link that binds us to the old home. We have ever given her proud remembrance--we now give her art and song." With these words, and turning to his wife, he ended, and cries of "Madame Madelinette! Madame Madelinette!" were heard everywhere. Even the English soldiers cheered, and Madelinette sang a la Claire Fontaine, three verses in French and one in English, and the whole valley rang with the refrain sung at the topmost pitch by five thousand voices: "I'ya longtemps que je t'aime, Jamais je ne t'oublierai." The day of pleasure done and dusk settled on Pontiac and on the encampment of soldiers in the valley, a light still burned in the library at the Manor House long after midnight. Madelinette had gone to bed, but, excited by the events of the day, she could not sleep, and she went down to the library to read. But her mind wandered still, and she sat mechanically looking before her at a picture of the father of the late Seigneur, which was let into the moulding of the oak wall. As she looked abstractedly and yet with the intensity of the preoccupied mind, her eye became aware of a little piece of wood let into the moulding of the frame. The light of the hanging lamp was full on it. This irregularity began to perplex her eye. Presently it intruded on her reverie. Still busy with her thoughts, she knelt upon the table beneath the picture and pressed the irregular piece of wood. A spring gave, the picture came slowly away from the frame, and disclosed a small cupboard behind. In this cupboard were a few books, an old silver-handled pistol, and a packet. Madelinette's reverie was broken now. She was face to face with discovery and mystery. Her heart stood still with fear. After an instant of suspense, she took out the packet and held it to the light. She gave a smothered cry. It was the will of the late Seigneur. CHAPTER V WHAT WILL SHE DO WITH IT? George Fournel was the heir to the Seigneury of Pontiac, not Louis Racine. There it was in the will of Monsieur de la Riviere, duly signed and attested. Madelinette's heart stood still. Louis was no longer--indeed, never had been--Seigneur of Pontiac, and they had no right there, had never had any right there. They must leave this place which was to Louis the fetich of his soul, the small compensation fate had made him for the trouble nature had cynically laid upon him. He had clung to it as a drowning man clings to a spar. To him it was the charter from which he could appeal to the world as the husband of Madelinette Lajeunesse. To him it was the name, the dignity, and the fortune he brought her. It was the one thing that saved him from a dire humiliation; it was the vantage-ground from which he appealed to her respect, the flaming testimony of his own self-esteem. Every hour since his trouble had come upon him, since Madelinette's great fame had come to her, he had protested to himself that it was honour for honour; and every day he had laboured, sometimes how fantastically, how futilely! to dignify his position, to enhance his importance in her eyes. She had understood it all, had read him to the last letter in the alphabet of his mind and heart. She had realised the consternation of the people, and she knew that, for her sake, and because the Cure had commanded, all the obsolete claims he had made were responded to by the people. Certainly he had affected them by his eloquence and his fiery kindness, but at the same time they had shrewdly smelt the treason underneath his ardour. There was a definite limit to their loyalty to him; and, deprived of the Seigneury, he would count for nothing. A hundred thoughts like these went through her mind as she stood by the table under the hanging lamp, her face white as the loose robe she wore, her eyes hot and staring, her figure rigid as stone. To-morrow--how could she face to-morrow, and Louis! How could she tell him this! How could she say to him, "Louis, you are no longer Seigneur. The man you hate, he who is your inveterate enemy, who has every reason to exact from you the last tribute of humiliation, is Seigneur here!" How could she face the despair of the man whose life was one inward fever, one long illusion, which was yet only half an illusion, since he was forever tortured by suspicion; whose body was wearing itself out, and spirit was destroying itself in the struggle of a vexed imagination! She knew that Louis' years were numbered. She knew that this blow would break him body and soul. He could never survive the humiliation. His sensitiveness was a disease, his pride was the only thing that kept him going; his love of her, strong as it was, would be drowned in an imagined shame! It was midnight. She was alone with this secret. She held the paper in her hand, which was at once Louis' sentence or his charter of liberty. A candle was at her hand, the doors were shut, the blinds drawn, the house a frozen silence--how cold she was, though it was the deep of summer! She shivered from head to foot, and yet all day the harvest sun had drenched the room in its heat. Yet her blood might run warm again, her cold cheeks might regain their colour, her heart beat quietly, if this paper were no more! The thought made her shrink away from herself, as it were, yet she caught up the candle and lighted it. For Louis. For Louis, though she would rather have died than do it for herself. To save to Louis what was, to his imagination, the one claim he had upon her respect and the world's. After all, how little was it in value or in dignity! How little she cared for it! One year of her voice could earn two such Seigneuries as this. And the honour--save that it was Pontiac-it was naught to her. In all her life she had never done or said a dishonourable thing. She had never lied, she had never deceived, she had never done aught that might not have been written down and published to all the world. Yet here, all at once, she was faced with a vast temptation, to do a deed, the penalty of which was an indelible shame. What injury would it do to George Fournel! He was used now to his disappointment; he was rich; he had no claims upon Pontiac; there was no one but himself to whom it mattered, this little Seigneury. What he did not know did not exist, so far as himself was concerned. How easily could it all be made right some day! She felt as though she were suffocating, and she opened the window a little very softly. Then she lit the candle tremblingly, watched the flame gather strength, and opened out the will. As she did so, however, the smell of a clover field, which is as honey, came stealing through the room, and all at once a strange association of ideas flashed into her brain. She recalled one summer day long ago, when, in the church of St. Saviour's, the smell of the clover fields came through the open doors and windows, and her mind had kept repeating mechanically, till she fell asleep, the text of the Curb's sermon--"As ye sow, so also shall ye reap." That placid hour which had no problems, no cares, no fears, no penalties in view, which was filled with the richness of a blessed harvest and the plenitude of innocent youth, came back on her now in the moment of her fierce temptation. She folded up the paper slowly, a sob came in her throat, she blew out the candle, and put the will back in the cupboard. The faint click of the spring as she closed the panel seemed terribly loud to her. She started and looked timorously round. The blood came back to her face-- she flushed crimson with guilt. Then she turned out the lighted lamp and crept away up the stairs to her room. She paused beside Louis' bed. He was moving restlessly in his sleep; he was murmuring her name. With a breaking sigh she crept into bed slowly and lay like one who had been beaten, bruised, and shamed. At last, before the dawn, she fell asleep. She dreamed that she was in prison and that George Fournel was her jailor. She waked to find Louis at her bedside. "I am holding my seigneurial court to-day," he said. CHAPTER VI THE ONE WHO SAW All day and every day Madelinette's mind kept fastening itself upon one theme, kept turning to one spot. In her dreams she saw the hanging lamp, the moving panel, the little cupboard, the fatal paper. Waking and restlessly busy, she sometimes forgot it for a moment, but remembrance would come back with painful force, and her will must govern her hurt spirit into quiet resolution. She had such a sense of humiliation as though some one dear to her had committed a crime against herself. Two persons were in her--Madelinette Lajeunesse, the daughter of the village blacksmith, brought up in the peaceful discipline of her religion, shunning falsehood and dishonour with a simple proud self-respect; and Madame Racine, the great singer, who had touched at last the heart of things; and, with the knowledge, had thrown aside past principles and convictions to save her stricken husband from misery and humiliation-- to save his health, his mind, his life maybe. The struggle of conscience and expediency, of principle and womanliness wore upon her, taking away the colour from her cheeks, but spiritualising her face, giving the large black eyes an expression of rare intensity, so that the Avocat in his admiration called her Madonna, and the Cure came oftener to the Manor House with a fear in his heart that all was not well. Yet he was met by her cheerful smile, by her quiet sense of humour, by the touching yet not demonstrative devotion of the wife to the husband, and a varying and impulsive adoration of the wife by the husband. One day when the Cure was with the Seigneur, Madelinette entered upon them. Her face was pale though composed, yet her eyes had a look of abstraction or detachment. The Cure's face brightened at her approach. She wore a simple white gown with a bunch of roses at the belt, and a broad hat lined with red that shaded her face and gave it a warmth it did not possess. "Dear Madame!" said the Cure, rising to his feet and coming towards her. "I have told you before that I will have nothing but 'Madelinette,' dear Cure," she replied, with a smile, and gave him her hand. She turned to Louis, who had risen also, and putting a hand on his arm pressed him gently into his chair, then, with a swift, almost casual, caress of his hair, placed on the table the basket of flowers she was carrying, and began to arrange them. "Dear Louis," she said presently, and as though en passant, "I have dismissed Tardif to-day--I hope you won't mind these dull domestic details, Cure," she added. The Cure nodded and turned his head towards the window musingly. He was thinking that she had done a wise thing in dismissing Tardif, for the man had evil qualities, and he was hoping that he would leave the parish now. The Seigneur nodded. "Then he will go. I have dismissed him--I have a temper--many times, but he never went. It is foolish to dismiss a man in a temper. He thinks you do not mean it. But our Madelinette there"-- he turned towards the Cure now--"she is never in a temper, and every one always knows she means what she says; and she says it as even as a clock." Then the egoist in him added: "I have power and imagination and the faculty for great things; but Madelinette has serene judgment --a tribute to you, Cure, who taught her in the old days." "In any case, Tardif is going," she repeated quietly. "What did he do?" said the Seigneur. "What was your grievance, beautiful Madame?" He was looking at her with unfeigned admiration--with just such a look as was in his face the first day they met in the Avocat's house on his arrival in Pontiac. She turned and saw it, and remembered. The scene flashed before her mind. The thought of herself then, with the flush of a sunrise love suddenly rising in her heart, roused a torrent of feeling now, and it required every bit of strength she had to prevent her bursting into a passion of tears. In imagination she saw him there, a straight, slim, handsome figure, with the very vanity of proud health upon him, and ambition and passionate purpose in every line of his figure, every glance of his eyes. Now--there he was, bent, frail, and thin, with restless eyes and deep discontent in voice and manner; the curved shoulder and the head grown suddenly old; the only thing, speaking of the past, the graceful hand, filled with the illusory courage of a declining vitality. But for the nervous force in him, the latent vitality which renewed with stubborn persistence the failing forces, he was dead. The brain kept commanding the body back to life and manhood daily. "What did Tardif do?" the Seigneur again questioned, holding out a hand to her. She did not dare to take his hand lest her feelings should overcome her; so with an assumed gaiety she put in it a rose from her basket and said: "He has been pilfering. Also he was insolent. I suppose he could not help remembering that I lived at the smithy once--the dear smithy," she added softly. "I will go at once and pay the scoundrel his wages," said the Seigneur, rising, and with a nod to the Cure and his wife opened the door. "Do not see him yourself, Louis," said Madelinette. "Not I. Havel shall pay him and he shall take himself off to-morrow morning." The door closed, and Madelinette was left alone with the Cure. She came to him and said with a quivering in her voice: "He mocked Louis." "It is well that he should go. He is a bad man and a bad servant. I know him too well." "You see, he keeps saying"--she spoke very slowly--"that he witnessed a will the Seigneur made in favour of Monsieur Fournel. He thinks us interlopers, I suppose." The Cure put a hand on hers gently. "There was a time when I felt that Monsieur Fournel was the legal heir to the Seigneury, for Monsieur de la Riviere had told me there was such a will; but since then I have changed my mind. Your husband is the natural heir, and it is only just that the Seigneury should go on in the direct line. It is best." "Even with all Louis' mistakes?" "Even with them. You have set them right, and you will keep him within the bounds of wisdom and prudence. You are his guardian angel, Madelinette." She looked up at him with a pensive smile and a glance of gratitude. "But suppose that will--if there is one--exists, see how false our position!" "Do you think it is mere accident that the will has never been found--if it was not destroyed by the Seigneur himself before he died? No, there is purpose behind it, with which neither you or I or Louis have anything to do. Ah, it is good to have you here in this Seigneury, my child! What you give us will return to you a thousandfold. Do not regret the world and your work there. You will go back all too soon." She was about to reply when the Seigneur again entered the room. "I made up my mind that he should go at once, and so I've sent him word --the rat!" "I will leave you two to be drowned in the depths of your own intelligence," said Madelinette; and taking her empty basket left the room. A strange compelling feeling drove her to the library where the fateful panel was. With a strange sense that her wrong-doing was modified by the fact, she had left the will where she had found it. She had a superstition that fate would deal less harshly with her if she did. It was not her way to temporise. She had concealed the discovery of the will with an unswerving determination. It was for Louis, it was for his peace, for the ease of his fading life, and she had no repentance. Yet there it was, that curious, useless concession to old prejudices, the little touch of hypocrisy--she left the will where she had found it. She had never looked at it since, no matter how great the temptation, and sometimes this was overpowering. To-day it overpowered her. The house was very still and the blinds were drawn to shut out the heat, but the soft din of the locusts came through the windows. Her household were all engaged elsewhere. She shut the doors of the little room, and kneeling on the table touched the spring. The panel came back and disclosed the cupboard. There lay the will. She took it up and opened it. Her eyes went dim on the instant, and she leaned her forehead against the wall sick at heart. As she did so a sudden gust of wind drove in the blind of the window. She started, but saw what it was, and hastily putting the will back, closed the panel, and with a fast-beating heart, left the room. Late that evening she found a letter on her table addressed to herself. It ran: You've shipped me off like dirt. You'll be shipped off, Madame, double quick. I've got what'll bring the right owner here. You'll soon hear from Tardif. In terror she hastened to the library and sprung the panel. The will was gone. Tardif was on his way with it to George Fournel. CHAPTER VII THE PURSUIT There was but one thing to do. She must go straight to George Fournel at Quebec. She knew only too well that Tardif was speeding thither as fast as horses could carry him. He had had several hours' start, but there was still a chance of overtaking him. And suppose she overtook him? She could not decide definitely what she should do, but she would do anything, sacrifice anything, to secure again that fatal document which, in George Fournel's hands, must bring a collapse worse than death. A dozen plans flashed before her, and now that her mind was set upon the thing, compunction would not stay her. She had gone so far, she was prepared to go further to save this Seigneury to Louis. She put in her pocket the silver-handled pistol from the fatal cupboard. In an hour from the time she found the note, the horses and coach were at the door, and the faithful Havel, cloaked and armed, was ready for the journey. A note to Louis, with the excuse of a sudden and important call to Quebec, which he was to construe into business concerning her profession; hurried yet careful arrangements for his comfort during her absence; a letter to the Cure begging of him a daily visit to the Manor House; and then, with the flurried Madame Marie, she entered the coach with Havel on the box, and they were off. The coach rattled through the village and stopped for a moment at the smithy. A few words of cheerful good-bye to her father--she carried the spring in her face and the summer of gaiety in her face however sore her heart was--and they were once more upon the road. Their first stage was twenty-five miles, and it led through the ravine where Parpon and his comrades had once sought to frighten George Fournel. As they passed the place Madelinette shuddered, and she remembered Fournel's cynical face as he left the house three months ago. She felt that it would not easily soften to mercy or look upon her trouble with a human eye, if once the will were in his hands. It was a silent journey, but Madame Marie asked no questions, and there was comfort in her unspoken sympathy. Five hours, and at midnight they arrived at the end of the first stage of their journey, at the village tavern of St. Stanislaus. Here Madame Marie urged Madelinette to stay and sleep, but this she refused to do, if horses could be got to go forward. The sight of two gold pieces made the thing possible in the landlord's eyes, and Madame Marie urged no more, but found some refreshment, of which she gently insisted that Madelinette should partake. In another hour from their arrival they were on the road again, with the knowledge that Tardif had changed horses and gone forward four hours before, boasting as he went that when the bombshell he was carrying should burst, the country would stay awake o' nights for a year. Madelinette herself had made the inquiries of the landlord, whose easily- bought obsequiousness now knew no bounds, and he gave a letter to Havel to hand to his cousin the landlord at the next change, which, he said, would be sure to secure them the best of accommodation and good horses. As the night grew to morning, Madelinette drooped a little, and Madame Marie, who had, to her own anger and disgust, slept three hours or more, quietly drew Madelinette towards her. With a little sob the girl--for what was she but a girl--let her head drop on the old woman's shoulder, and she fell into a troubled sleep, which lasted till, in the flush of sunrise, they drew up at the solitary inn on the outskirts of the village of Beaugard. They had come fifty miles since the evening before. Here Madelinette took Havel into her confidence, in so far as to tell him that Tardif had stolen a valuable paper from her, the loss of which might bring most serious consequences. Whatever Havel had suspected he was the last man in the world to show or tell. But before leaving the Manor House of Pontiac he had armed himself with pistols, in the grim hope that he might be required to use them. Havel had been used hard in the world, Madelinette had been kind to him, and he was ready to show his gratitude--and he little recked what form it might take. When he found that they were following Tardif, and for what purpose, an ugly joy filled his heart, and he determined on revenge-- so long delayed--on the scoundrel who had once tried to turn the parish against him by evil means. He saw that his pistols were duly primed, he learned that Tardif had passed but two hours before, boasting again that Europe would have gossip for a year, once he reached Quebec. Tardif too had paid liberally for his refreshment and his horses, for here he had taken a carriage, and had swaggered like a trooper in a conquered country. Havel had every hope of overtaking Tardif, and so he told Madelinette, adding that he would secure the paper for her at any cost. She did not quite know what Havel meant, but she read purpose in his eye, and when Havel said: "I won't say 'Stop thief' many times," she turned away without speaking--she was choked with anxiety. Yet in her own pocket was a little silver-handled pistol. It was true that Tardif was a thief, but she knew that his theft would be counted a virtue before the world. This she could not tell Havel, but when the critical moment came--if it did come--she would then act upon the moment's inspiration. If Tardif was a thief, what was she!--But this she could not tell Havel or the world. Even as she thought it for this thousandth time, her face flushed deeply, and a mist came before her eyes. But she hardened her heart and gave orders to proceed as soon as the horses were ready. After a hasty breakfast they were again on their way, and reached the third stage of their journey by eleven o'clock. Tardif had passed two hours before. So, for two days they travelled, with no sleep save what they could catch as the coach rolled on. They were delayed three hours at one inn because of the trouble in getting horses, since it appeared that Tardif had taken the only available pair in the place; but a few gold pieces brought another pair galloping from a farm two miles away, and they were again on the road. Fifty miles to go, and Tardif with three hours' start of them! Unless he had an accident there was faint chance of overtaking him, for at this stage he had taken to the saddle again. As time had gone on, and the distance between them and Quebec had decreased, Madelinette had grown paler and stiller. Yet she was considerate of Madame Marie, and more than once insisted on Havel lying down for a couple of hours, and herself made him a strengthening bowl of soup at the kitchen fire of the inn. Meanwhile she inquired whether it might be possible to get four horses at the next change, and she offered five gold pieces to a man who would ride on ahead of them and secure the team. Some magic seemed to bring her the accomplishment of the impossible, for even as she made the offer, and the downcast looks of the landlord were assuring her that her request was futile, there was the rattle of hoofs without, and a petty Government official rode up. He had come a journey of three miles only, and his horse was fresh. Agitated, yet ruling herself to composure, Madelinette approached him and made her proposal to him. He was suspicious, as became a petty Government official, and replied sullenly. She offered him money--before the landlord, unhappily --and his refusal was now unnecessarily bitter. She turned away sadly, but Madame Marie had been roused by the official's churlishness, and for once the placid little body spoke in that vulgar tongue which needs no interpretation. She asked the fellow if he knew to whom he had been impolite, to whom he had refused a kindly act. "You--you, a habitant road-watcher, a pound-keeper, a village tax- collector, or something less!" she said. "You to refuse the great singer Madelinette Lajeunesse, the wife of the Seigneur of Pontiac, the greatest patriot in the land; to refuse her whom princes are glad to serve--" She stopped and gasped her indignation. A hundred speeches and a hundred pounds could not have done so much. The habitant official stared in blank amazement, the landlord took a glass of brandy to steady himself. "The Lajeunesse--the Lajeunesse, the singer of all the world--ah, why did she not say so then!" said the churl. "What would I not do for her! Money--no, it is nothing, but the Lajeunesse, I myself would give my horse to hear her sing." "Tell her she can have M'sieu's horse," said the landlord, excitedly interposing. "Tiens, who the devil--the horse is mine! If Madame--if she will but let me offer it to her myself!" said the agitated official. "I sing myself --I know what singing is. I have sung in an opera--a sentinel in armour I was. Ah, but bring me to her, and you shall see what I will do, by grace of heaven! I will marry you if you haven't a husband," he added with ardour to the dumfounded Madame Marie, who hurried to the adjoining room. An instant afterwards the official was making an oration in tangled sentences which brought him a grateful smile and a hand-clasp from Madelinette. She could not prevent him from kissing her hand, she could not refrain from laughing when, outside the room, he tried to kiss Madame Marie. She was astounded, however, an hour later, to see him still at the inn door, marching up and down, a whip in his hand. She looked at him reproachfully, indignantly. "Why are you not on the way?" she asked. "Your man, that M'sieu' Havel, has rode on; I am to drive," he said. "Yes, Madame, it is my everlasting honour that I am to drive you. Havel has a good horse, the horse has a good rider, you have a good servant in me. I, Madame, have a good mistress in you--I am content. I am overjoyed--I am proud--I am ready, I, Pierre Lapierre." The churlish official had gone back to the natural state of an excitable habitant, ready to give away his heart or lose his head at an instant's notice, the temptation being sufficient. Madelinette was frightened. She knew well why Havel had ridden on ahead without her permission, and shaking hands with the landlord and getting into the coach, she said hastily to her new coachman: "Lose not an instant. Drive hard." They reached the next change by noon, and here they found four horses awaiting them. Tardif, and Havel also, had come and gone. An hour's rest, and they were away again upon the last stage of the journey. They should reach Quebec soon after dusk, all being well. At first, Lapierre the official had been inclined to babble, but at last he relieved his mind by interjections only. He kept shaking his head wisely, as though debating on great problems, and he drove his horses with a master-hand-- he had once been a coach driver on that long river-road, which in summer makes a narrow ribbon of white, mile for mile with the St. Lawrence from east to west. This was the proudest moment of his life. He knew great things were at stake, and they had to do with the famous singer, Lajeunesse; and what tales for his grandchildren in years to come! The flushed and comfortable Madame Marie sat upright in the coach, holding the hand of her mistress, and Madelinette grew paler as the miles diminished between her and Quebec. Yet she was quiet and unmoving, now and then saying an encouraging word to Lapierre, who smacked his lips for miles afterwards, and took out of his horses their strength and paces by masterly degrees. So that when, at last, on the hill they saw far off the spires of Quebec, the team was swinging as steadily on as though they had not come twenty-five miles already. This was a moment of pride for Lapierre, but of apprehension for Madelinette. At the last two inns on the road she had got news of both Tardif and Havel. Tardif had had the final start of half-an-hour. A half-hour's start, and fifteen miles to go! But one thing was sure, Havel, the wiry Havel, was the better man, with sounder nerve and a fostered strength. Yet, as they descended the hill and plunged into the wild wooded valley, untenanted and uncivilised, where the road wound and curved among giant boulders and twisted through ravines and gorges, her heart fell within her. Evening was at hand, and in the thick forest the shadows were heavy, and night was settling upon them before its time. They had not gone a mile, however, when, as they swung creaking round a great boulder, Lapierre pulled up his horses with a loud exclamation, for almost under his horses' feet lay a man apparently dead, his horse dead beside him. It was Havel. In an instant Madelinette and Ma dame Marie were bending over him. The widow of the Little Chemist had skill and presence of mind. "He is not dead, dear mine," said she in a low voice, feeling Havel's heart. "Thank God," was all that Madelinette could say. "Let us lift him into the coach." Now Lapierre was standing beside them, the reins in his hand. "Leave that to me," he said, and passed the reins into Madame Marie's hands, then with muttered imprecations on persons unmentioned he lifted up the slight form of Havel, and carried him to the coach. Meanwhile Madelinette had stooped to a little stream at the side of the road, and filled her silver drinking-cup with water. As she bent over Havel and sprinkled his face, Lapierre examined the insensible man. "He is but stunned," he said. "He will come to in a moment." Then he went to the spot where Havel had lain, and found a pistol lying at the side of the road. Examining it, he found it had been discharged- both barrels. Rustling with importance he brought it to Madelinette, nodding and looking wise, yet half timorous too in sharing in so remarkable a business. Madelinette glanced at the pistol, her lips tightened, and she shuddered. Havel had evidently failed, and she must face the worst. Yet now that it had come, she was none the less determined to fight on. Havel opened his eyes and looked round in a startled way. He saw Madelinette. "Ah, Madame, Madame, pardon! He got away. I fired twice and winged him, but he shot my horse and I fell on my head. He has got away. What time is it, Madame?" he suddenly asked. She told him. "Ah, it is too late," he added. "It happened over half-an-hour ago. Unless he is badly hurt and has fallen by the way, he is now in the city. Madame, I have failed you--pardon, Madame!" She helped him to sit up, and made a cushion of her cloak for his head, in a corner of the coach. "There is nothing to ask pardon for, Havel," she said; "you did your best. It was to be--that's all. Drink the brandy now." A moment afterwards Lapierre was on the box, Madame Marie was inside, and Madelinette said to the coachman: "Drive hard--the White Calvary by the church of St. Mary Magdalene." In another hour the coach drew up by the White Calvary, where a soft light burned in memory of some departed soul. The three alighted. Madelinette whispered to Havel, he got up on the box beside Lapierre, and the coach rattled away to a tavern, as the two women disappeared swiftly into the darkness. CHAPTER VIII FACE TO FACE As the two approached the mansion where George Fournel lived, they saw the door open and a man come hurriedly out into the street. He wore his wrist in a sling. Madelinette caught Madame Marie's arm. She did not speak, but her heart sank within her. The man was Tardif. He saw them and shuffled over. "Ha, Madame," he said, "he has the will, and I've not done with you yet --you'll see." Then, shaking a fist in Madelinette's face, he clattered off into the darkness. They crossed the street, and Madame Marie knocked at Fournel's door. It was at once opened, and Madelinette announced herself. The servant stared stonily at first, then, as she mentioned her name and he saw her face, he suddenly became servile, and asked them into a small waiting- room. Monsieur Fournel was at home, and should be informed at once of Madame's arrival. A few moments later the servant, somewhat graver, but as courteous still, came to say that Monsieur would receive her in his library. Madelinette turned towards Madame Marie. The servant understood. "I shall see that the lady has refreshment," he said. "Will Madame perhaps care for refreshment--and a mirror, before Monsieur has the honour?--Madame has travelled far." In spite of the anxiety of the moment and the great matters at stake, Madelinette could not but smile. "Thank you," she said, "I hope I'm not so unpresentable." "A little dust here and there perhaps, Madame," he said, with humble courtesy. Madelinette was not so heroical as to undervalue the suggestion. Lives perhaps were in the balance, but she was a woman, and who could tell what slight influences might turn the scale! The servant saw her hesitation. "If Madame will but remain here, I will bring what is necessary," he said, and was gone. In a moment he appeared again with a silver basin, a mirror, and a few necessaries of the toilet. "I suppose, Madame," said the servant, with fluttered anxiety, to show that he knew who she was, "I suppose you have had sometimes to make rough shifts, even in palaces." She gave him a gold piece. It cheered her in the moment to think that in this forbidding house, on a forbidding mission, to a forbidding man, she had one friend. She made a hasty toilet, and but for the great paleness of her cheeks, no traces remained of the three days' travel with their hardship and anxiety. Presently, as the servant ushered her into the presence of George Fournel, even the paleness was warmed a little by the excitement of the moment. Fournel was standing with his back to the door, looking out into the moonlit night. As she entered he quickly drew the curtains of the windows and turned towards his visitor, a curious, hard, disdainful look in his face. In his hands he held a paper which she knew only too well. "Madame," he said, and bowed. Then he motioned her to a chair. He took one himself and sat down beside the great oak writing-desk and waited for her to speak--waited with a look which sent the blood from her heart to colour her cheeks and forehead. She did not speak, however, but looked at him fearlessly. It was impossible for her to humble herself before the latent insolence of his look. It seemed to degrade her out of all consideration. He felt the courage of her defiance, and it moved him. Yet he could but speak in cynical suggestion. "You had a long, hard, and adventurous journey," he said. He rose suddenly and drew a tray towards him. "Will you not have some refreshment?" he added, in an even voice. "I fear you have not had time to seek it at an inn. Your messenger has but just gone." It was impossible for him to do justice to himself, or to let his hospitality rest upon its basis of natural courtesy. It was clear that he was moved with accumulated malice, and he could not hide it. "Your servant has been hospitable," she said, her voice trembling a little. She plunged at once into the business of her visit. "Monsieur, that paper you hold--" she stopped for an instant, able to go no further. "Ah, this--this document you have sent me," he said, opening it with an assumed carelessness. "Your servant had an accident--I suppose we may call it that privately--as he came. He was fired at--was wounded. You will share with me the hope that the highwayman who stopped him may be brought to justice, though, indeed, your man Tardif left him behind in the dust. Perhaps you came upon him, Madame--hein?" She steeled herself. Too much was at stake; she could not resent his hateful implications now. "Tardif was not my messenger, Monsieur, as you know. Tardif was the thief of that document in your hands." "Yes, this--will!" he said musingly, an evil glitter in his eyes. "Its delivery has been long delayed. Posts and messengers are slow from Pontiac." "Monsieur will hear what I have to say? You have the will, your rights are in your hands. Is not that enough?" "It is not enough," he answered, in a grating voice. "Let us be plain then, Madame, and as simple as you please. You concealed this will. Not Tardif but yourself is open to the law." She shrank under the brutality of his manner, but she ruled herself to outward composure. She was about to reply when he added, with a sneer: "Avarice is a debasing vice--Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house! Thou shalt not steal!" "Monsieur," she said calmly, "it would have been easy to destroy the will. Have you not thought of that?" For a moment he was taken aback, but he said harshly: "If crime were always intelligent, it would have fewer penalties." She shrank again under the roughness of his words. But she was fighting for an end that was dear to her soul, and she answered: "It was not lack of intelligence, but a sense of honour--yes, a sense of honour," she insisted, as he threw back his head and laughed. "What do you think might be my reason for concealing the will--if I did conceal it?" "The answer seems obvious. Why does the wild ass forage with a strange herd, or the pig put his feet in the trough? Not for his neighbour's gain, Madame, not in a thousand years." "Monsieur, I have never been spoken to so coarsely. I am a blacksmith's daughter, and I have heard rough men talk in my day, but I have never heard a man--of my own race at least--so rude to a woman. But I am here not for my own sake; I will not go till I have said and done all I have come to say and do. Will you listen to me, Monsieur?" "I have made my charges--answer them. Disprove this theft"--he held up the will--"of concealment, and enjoyment of property not your own, and then ask of me that politeness which makes so beautiful stable and forge at Pontiac." "Monsieur, you cannot think that the will was concealed for profit, for the value of the Seigneury of Pontiac. I can earn two such seigneuries in one year, Monsieur." "Nevertheless you do not." "For the same reason that I did not bring or send that will to you when I found it, Monsieur. And for that same reason I have come to ask you not to take advantage of that will." He was about to interpose angrily, but she continued: "Whatever the rental may be that you in justice feel should be put upon the Seigneury, I will pay--from the hour my husband entered on the property, its heir as he believed. Put such rental on the property, do not disturb Monsieur Racine in his position as it is, and I will double that rental." "Do not think, Madame, that I am as avaricious as you." "Is it avaricious to offer double the worth of the rental?" "There is the title and distinction. You married a mad nobody; you wish to retain an honour that belongs to me." "I am asking it for my husband's sake, not my own, believe me, Monsieur." "And what do you expect me to do for his sake, Madame?" "What humanity would suggest. Ah, I know what you would say: he tried to kill you; he made you fight him. But, Monsieur, he has repented of that. He is ill, he is--crippled, he cherishes the Seigneury beyond its worth a thousand times." "He cherishes it at my expense. So, you must not disturb the man who robs you of house and land, and tries to murder you, lest he should be disturbed and not sleep o' nights. Come, Madame, that is too thin." "He might kill you, but he would not rob you, Monsieur. Do you think that if he knew that will existed, he would be now at the Seigneury, or I here? I know you hate Louis Racine." "With ample reason." "You hate him more because he defeated you than because he once tried to kill you. Oh, I do not know the rights or wrongs of that great case at law; I only know that Louis Racine was not the judge or jury, but the avocat only, whose duty it was to do as he did. That he did it the more gladly because he was a Frenchman and you an Englishman, is not his fault or yours either. Louis Racine's people came here two hundred years ago, yours not sixty years ago. You, the great business man, have had practical power which gave you riches. You have sacrificed all for power. Louis Racine has only genius, and no practical power." "A dangerous fanatic and dreamer," he interjected. "A dreamer, if you will, with no practical power, for he never thought of himself, and 'practical power' is usually all self. He dreamed--he gave his heart and soul up for ideas. Englishmen do not understand that. Do you not know-- you do know--that, had he chosen, he might have been rich too, for his brains would have been of great use to men of practical power like yourself." She paused; Fournel did not answer, but sat as though reading the will intently. "Was it strange that he should dream of a French sovereign state here, where his people came and first possessed the land? Can you wonder that this dreamer, when the Seigneury of Pontiac came to him, felt as if a new life were opened up to him, and saw a way to some of his ambitions. They were sad, mistaken ambitions, doomed to failure, but they were also his very heart, which he would empty out gladly for an idea. The Seigneury of Pontiac came to him, and I married him." "Evidently bent upon wrecking the chances of a great career," interrupted Fournel over the paper. "But no; I also cared more for ideas than for the sordid things of life. It is in our blood, you see" she was talking with less restraint now, for she saw he was listening, despite assumed indifference--"and Pontiac was dearer to me than all else in the world. Louis Racine belonged there. You--what sort of place would you, an Englishman, have occupied at the Seigneury of Pontiac! What kind--" He got suddenly to his feet. He was a man of strange whims and vanities, and his resentment at his exclusion from the Seigneury of Pontiac had become a fixed idea. He had hugged the thought of its possession before M. de la Riviere died, as a man humbly born prides himself on the distinguished lineage of his wife. His great schemes were completed, he was a rich man, and he had pictured himself retiring to this Seigneury, a peaceful and practical figure, living out his days in a refined repose which his earlier life had never known. She had touched the raw nerves of his secret vanity. "What kind of Seigneur would I make, eh? What sort of figure would I cut in Pontiac!" He laughed loudly. "By heaven, Madame, you shall see! I did not move against his outrage and assault, but I will move to purpose now. For you and he shall leave there in disgrace before another week goes round. I have you both in my 'practical power,' and I will squeeze satisfaction out of you. He is a ruffianly interloper, and you, Madame, the law would call by another name." She got quickly to her feet and came a step nearer to him. Leaning a hand on the table, she bent towards him slightly. Something seemed to possess her that transfigured her face, and gave it a sense of power and confidence. Her eyes fixed themselves steadily on him. "Monsieur," she said, "you may call me what you will, and I will bear it, for you have been sorely injured. You are angry because I seemed to think an Englishman was not fitted to be Seigneur of Pontiac. We French are a people of sentiments and ideas; we make idols of trifles, and we die for fancies. We dream, we have shrines for memories. These things you despise. You would give us justice and make us rich by what you call progress. Monsieur, that is not enough. We are not born to appreciate you. Our hearts are higher than our heads, and, under a flag that conquered us, they cling together. Was it strange that I should think Louis Racine better suited to be Seigneur at Pontiac?" She paused as though expecting him to answer, but he only looked inquiringly at her, and she continued "My husband used you ill, but he is no interloper. He took what the law gave him, what has been in his family for over two hundred years. Monsieur, it has meant more to him than a hundred times greater honour could to you. When his trouble came, when--" she paused, as though it was difficult to speak--"when the other --legacy--of his family descended on him, that Seigneury became to him the one compensation of his life. By right of it only could he look the world in the face--or me." She stopped suddenly, for her voice choked her. "Will you please continue?" said Fournel, opening and shutting the will in his hand, and looking at her with a curious new consideration. "Fame came to me as his trouble came to him. It was hard for him to go among men, but, ah, can you think how he dreaded the day when I should return to Pontiac ! . . . I will tell you the whole truth, Monsieur." She drew herself up proudly. "I loved--Louis. He came into my heart with its first great dream, and before life--the business of life--really began. He was one with the best part of me, the girlhood in me which is dead." Fournel rose and in a low voice said: "Will you not sit down?" He motioned to a chair. She shook her head. "Ah no, please! Let me say all quickly and while I have the courage. I loved him, and he loved and loves me. I love that love in which I married him, and I love his love for me. It is indestructible, because it is in the fibre of my life. It has nothing to do with ugliness or beauty, or fortune or misfortune, or shame or happiness, or sin or holiness. When it becomes part of us, it must go on in one form or another, but it cannot die. It lives in breath and song and thought and work and words. That is the wonder of it, the pity of it, and the joy of it. Because it is so, because love would shield the beloved from itself if need be, and from all the terrors of the world at any cost, I have done what I have done. I did it at cost of my honour, but it was for his sake; at the price of my peace, but to spare him. Ah, Monsieur, the days of life are not many for him: his shame and his futile aims are killing him. The clouds will soon close over, and his vexed brain and body will be still. To spare him the last turn of the wheel of torture, to give him the one bare honour left him yet a little while, I have given up my work of life to comfort him. I concealed, I stole, if you will, the document you hold. And, God help me! I would do it again and yet again, if I lost my soul for ever, Monsieur. Monsieur, I know that in his madness he would have killed you, but it was his suffering, not a bad heart, that made him do it. Do a sorrowful woman a great kindness and spare him, Monsieur." She had held the man motionless and staring. When she ended, he got to his feet and came near to her. There was a curious look in his face, half struggle, half mysterious purpose. "The way is easy to a hundred times as much," he said, in a low meaning voice, and his eyes boldly held hers. "You are doing a chivalrous sort of thing that only a woman would do--for duty; do something for another reason: for what a woman would do --for the blood of youth that is in her." He reached out a hand to lay it on her arm. "Ask of me what you will, if you but put your hand in mine and--" "Monsieur," she said, pale and gasping, "do you think so ill of me then? Do I seem to you like--!" She turned away, her eyes dry and burning, her body trembling with shame. "You are here alone with me at night," he persisted. "It would not be easy to--" "Death would be easy, Monsieur," she said calmly and coldly. "My husband tried to kill you. You would do--ah, but let me pass!" she said, with a sudden fury. "You--if you were a million times richer, if you could ruin me for ever, do you think--" "Hush, Madame," he said, with a sudden change of voice and a manner all reverence. "I do not think. I spoke only to hear you speak in reply: only to know to the uttermost what you were. Madame," he added, in a shaking voice, "I did not know that such a woman lived. Madame, I could have sworn there was none in the world." Then in a quicker, huskier note he added: "Eighteen years ago a woman nearly spoiled my life. She was as beautiful as you, but her heart was tainted. Since then I have never believed in any woman--never till now. I have said that all were purchasable--at a price. I unsay that now. I have not believed in any one--" "Oh, Monsieur!" she said, with a quick impulsive gesture towards him, and her face lighting with sympathy. "I was struck too hard--" She touched his arm and said gently: "Some are hurt in one way and some in another; all are hurt some time, but--" "You shall have your way," he interrupted, and moved apart. "Ah, Monsieur, Monsieur, it is a noble act!--" she hurriedly rejoined, then with a sudden cry rushed towards him, for he was lighting the will at the flame of a candle near him. "But no, no, no, you shall not do it," she cried. "I only asked it for while he lives--ah!" She collapsed with a cry of despair, for he had held the flaming paper above her reach, and its ashes were now scattering on the floor. "You will let me give you some wine?" he said quietly, and poured out a glassful. CHAPTER IX THE BITER BITTEN Madelinette was faint, and, sitting down, she drank the wine feebly, then leaned her head against the back of the chair, her face turned from Fournel. "Forgive me, if you can," he said. "You have this to comfort you, that if friendship is a boon in this world you have an honest friend in George Fournel." She made a gesture of assent with her hand, but she did not speak. Tears were stealing quietly down her cold face. For a moment so, in silence, and then she rose to her feet, and pulled down over her face the veil she wore. She was about to hold out her hand to him to say good-bye, when there was a noise without, a knocking at the door, then it was flung open, and Tardif, intoxicated, entered followed by two constables, with Fournel's servant vainly protesting. "Here she is," Tardif said to the officers of the law, pointing to Madelinette. "It was her set the fellow on to shoot me. I had the will she stole from him," he added, pointing to Fournel. Distressed as Madelinette was, she was composed and ready. "The man was dismissed my employ--" she began, but Fournel interposed. "What is this I hear about shooting and a will?" he said sternly. "What will!" cried Tardif. "The will I brought you from Pontiac, and Madame there followed, and her servant shot me. The will I brought you, M'sieu'. The will leaving the Manor of Pontiac to you!" Fournel turned as though with sudden anger to the officers. "You come here--you enter my house to interfere with a guest of mine, on the charge of a drunken scoundrel like this! What is this talk of wills! The vapourings of his drunken brain. The Seigneury of Pontiac belongs to Monsieur Racine, and but three days since Madame here dismissed this fellow for pilfering and other misdemeanours. As for shooting--the man is a liar, and--" "Ah, do you deny that I came to you?--" began Tardif. "Constables," said Fournel, "I give this fellow in charge. Take him to gaol, and I will appear at court against him when called upon." Tardif's rage choked him. He tried to speak once or twice, then began to shriek an imprecation at Fournel; but the constables clapped hands on his mouth, and dragged him out of the room and out of the house. Fournel saw him safely out, then returned to Madelinette. "Do not fear for the fellow. A little gaol will do him good. I will see to it that he gives no trouble, Madame," he said. "You may trust me." "I do trust you, Monsieur," Madelinette answered quietly. "I pray that you may be right, and that--" "It will all come out right," he firmly insisted. "Will you ask for Madame Marie?" she said. Then with a smile: "We will go happier than we came." As she and Madame Marie passed from the house, Fournel shook Madelinette's hand warmly, and said: "'All's well that ends well.'" "That ends well," answered Madelinette, with a sorrowful questioning in her voice. "We will make it so," he rejoined, and then they parted. CHAPTER X THE DOOR THAT WOULD NOT OPEN The old Manor House of Pontiac was alive with light and merriment. It was the early autumn; not cool enough for the doors and windows to be shut, but cool enough to make dancing a pleasure, and to give spirit to the gaiety that filled the old house. The occasion was a notable one for Pontiac. An address of congratulation and appreciation and a splendid gift of silver had been brought to the Manor from the capital by certain high officials of the Government and the Army, representing the people of the Province. At first Madelinette had shrunk from the honour to be done her, and had so written to certain quarters whence the movement had proceeded; but a letter had come to her which had changed her mind. This letter was signed George Fournel. Fournel had a right to ask a favour of her; and one that was to do her honour seemed the least that she might grant. He had suffered much at Louis' hands; he had forborne much; and by an act of noble forgiveness and generosity, had left Louis undisturbed in an honour which was not his, and the enjoyment of an estate to which he had no claim. He had given much, suffered much, and had had nothing in return save her measureless and voiceless gratitude. Friendship she could give him; but it was a silent friendship, an incompanionable friendship, founded upon a secret and chivalrous act. He was in Quebec and she in Pontiac; and since that day when he had burned the will before her eyes she had not seen him. She had heard from him but twice; once to tell her that she need have no fear of Tardif, and again, when he urged her to accept the testimonial and the gift to be offered by her grateful fellow-citizens. The deputation, distinguished and important, had been received by the people of Pontiac with the flaunting of flags, playing of bands, and every demonstration of delight. The honour done to Madelinette was an honour done to Pontiac, and Pontiac had never felt itself so important. It realised that this kind of demonstration was less expensive, and less dangerous, than sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion. The vanity of the habitants could be better exercised in applauding Madelinette and in show of welcome to the great men of the land, than in cultivating a dangerous patriotism under the leadership of Louis Racine. Temptations to conspiracy had been few since the day George Fournel, wounded and morose, left the Manor House secretly one night, and carried back to Quebec his resentment and his injuries. Treasonable gossip filtered no longer from doorway to doorway; carbines were not to be had for a song; no more nightly drills and weekly meetings gave a spice of great expectations to their life. Their Seigneur, silent, and pale, and stooped, lived a life apart. If he walked through the town, it was with bitter, abstracted eyes that took little heed of their presence. If he drove, his horses travelled like the wind. At Mass, he looked at no one, saw no one, and, as it would seem, heard no one. But Madelinette--she was the Madelinette of old, simple, gracious, kind, with a smile here and a kind word there: a little child to be caressed or an old woman to be comforted; the sick to be fed and doctored; the poor to be helped; the idle to be rebuked with a persuasive smile; the angry to be coaxed by a humorous word; the evil to be reproved by a fearless friendliness; the spiteful to be hushed by a still, commanding presence. She never seemed to remember that she was the daughter of old Joe Lajeunesse the blacksmith, yet she never seemed to forget it. She was the wife of the Seigneur, and she was the daughter of the smithy-man too. She sat in the smithy-man's doorway with her hand in his; and she sat at the Manor table with its silver glitter, and its antique garnishings, with as real an unconsciousness. Her influence seemed to pierce far and wide. The Cure and the Avocat adored her; and the proudest, happiest moment of their lives was when they sat at the Manor table, or, in the sombre drawing-room, watched her give it light and grace and charm, and fill their hearts with the piercing delight of her song. So her life had gone on; to the outward world serene and happy, full of simplicity, charity, and good works. What it was in reality no one could know, not even herself. Since the day when Louis had tried to kill George Fournel, life had been a different thing for them both. On her part she had been deeply hurt; wounded beyond repair. He had failed her from every vital stand-point, he had not fulfilled one hope she had ever had of him. But she laid the blame not at his door; she rather shrank with inner bitterness from the cynical cruelty of nature, which, in deforming the body, with a merciless cruelty had deformed a noble mind. These things were between her and her inmost soul. To Louis she was ever the same, affectionate, gentle, and unselfish; but her stronger soul ruled him without his knowledge, commanded his perturbed spirit into the abstracted quiet and bitter silence wherein he lived, and which she sought to cheer by a thousand happy devices. She did not let him think that she was giving up anything for him; no word or act of hers could have suggested to him the sacrifices she had made. He knew them, still he did not know them in their fulness; he was grateful, but his gratitude did not compass the splendid self-effacing devotion with which she denied herself the glorious career that had lain before her. Morbid and self-centred, he could not understand. Since her return from Quebec she had sought to give a little touch of gaiety to their life, and she had not the heart to interfere with his constant insistence on the little dignities of the position of Seigneur, ironical as they all were in her eyes. She had sacrificed everything; and since another also had sacrificed himself to give her husband the honours and estate he possessed, the game should be delicately played to the unseen end. So it had gone on until the coming of the deputation with the testimonial and the gift. She had proposed the gaieties of the occasion to Louis with so simple a cheerfulness, that he had no idea of the torture it meant to her; no realisation of how she would be brought face to face with the life that she had given up for his sake. But neither he nor she was aware of one thing, that the beautiful embossed address contained an appeal to her to return to the world of song which she had renounced, to go forth once more and contribute to the happiness of humanity. When, therefore, in the drawing-room of the Manor, the address was read to her, and this appeal rang upon her ears, she felt herself turn dizzy and faint: her whole life seemed to reel backwards to all she had lost, and the tyranny of the present bore down upon her with a cruel weight. It needed all her courage and all her innate strength to rule herself to composure. For an instant the people in the room were a confused mass, floating away into a blind distance. She heard, however, the quick breathing of the Seigneur beside her, and it called her back to an active and necessary confidence. With a smile she received the address, and, turning, handed it to Louis, smiling at him too with a winning duplicity, for which she might never have to ask forgiveness in this world or the next. Then she turned and spoke. Eloquently, simply, she gave out her thanks for the gift of silver and the greater gift of kind words; and said that in her quiet life, apart from that active world of the stage, where sorrow and sordid experience went hand in hand with song, where the delights of home were sacrificed to the applause of the world, she would cherish their gift as a reward that she might have earned, had she chosen the public instead of the private way of life. They had told her of the paths of glory, but she was walking the homeward way. Thus deftly, and without strain, and with an air of happiness even, did she set aside the words and the appeal which had created a storm in her soul. A few moments afterwards, as the old house rang to the laughter of old and young, with dancing well begun, no one would have thought that the Manor of Pontiac was not the home of peace and joy. Even Louis himself, who had had his moments of torture and suspicion when the appeal was read, was now in a kind of happy reaction. He moved about among the guests with less abstraction and more cheerfulness than he had shown for months. He carried in his hand the address which Madelinette had handed him. Again and again he showed it to eager guests. Suddenly, as he was about to fold it up for the last time and carry it to the library, he saw the name of George Fournel among the signatures. Stunned, dumfounded, he left the room. George Fournel, whom he had tried to kill, had signed this address of congratulation to his wife! Was it Fournel's intention thus to show that he had forgiven and forgotten? It was not like the man to either forgive or forget. What did it mean? He left the house buried in morbid speculation, and involuntarily made his way to a little hut of two rooms which he had built in the Seigneury grounds. Here it was he read and wrote, here he had spent moody hours alone, day after day, for months past. He was not aware that some one left the crowd about the house and followed him. Arrived at the hut, he entered and shut the door; lighted candles, and spread the embossed parchment out before him upon the table. As he stood looking at it, he heard the door open behind him. Tardif stood before him. The face of Tardif had an evil hunted look. Before the astonished and suspicious Seigneur had chance to challenge him, he said in a low insolent tone: "Good evening, M'sieu'! Fine doings at the Manor--eh? "What are you doing at the Manor, and what are you doing here?" asked the Seigneur, scanning the face of the man closely; for there was a look in it he did not understand. "I have as much right to be here as you, M'sieu'." "You have no right at all to be here. You were dismissed your place by the mistress of this Manor." "There is no mistress of this Manor." "Madame Racine dismissed you." "And I dismissed Madame Racine," answered the man with a sneer. "You are training for the horsewhip. You forget that, as Seigneur, I have power to give you summary punishment." "You haven't power to do anything at all, M'sieu'!" The Seigneur started. He thought the remark had reference to his physical disability. His fingers itched to take the creature by the throat, and choke the tongue from his mouth. Before he could speak, the man continued with a half-drunken grimace: "You, with your tributes, and your courts, and your body-guards! Bah! You'd have a gibbet if you could, wouldn't you? You with your rebellion and your tinpot honours! A puling baby could conspire as well as you. And all the world laughing at you--v'la!" "Get out of this room and take your feet from my Manor, Tardif," said the Seigneur with a deadly quietness, "or it will be the worse for you." "Your Manor--pish!" The man laughed a hateful laugh. "Your Manor? You haven't any Manor. You haven't anything but what you carry on your back." A flush passed swiftly over the Seigneur's face, then left it cold and white, and the eyes shone fiery in his head. He felt some shameful meaning in the man's words, beyond this gross reference to his deformity. "I am Seigneur of this Manor, and you have taken wages from me, and eaten my bread, slept under my roof, and--" "I've no more eaten your bread and slept under your roof than you have. Pish! You were living then on another man's fortune, now you're living on what your wife earns." The Seigneur did not understand yet. But there was a strange light of suspicion in his eyes, a nervous rage knotting his forehead. "My land and my earnings are my own, and I have never lived on another man's fortune. If you mean that the late Seigneur made a will--that canard--" "It was no canard." Tardif laughed hatefully. "There was a will right enough." "Where is it? I've heard that fool's gossip before." "Where is it? Ask your wife; she knows. Ask your loving Tardif, he knows." "Where is the will, Tardif?" asked the Seigneur in a voice that, in his own ears, seemed to come from an infinite distance; to Tardif's ears it was merely tuneless and harsh. "In M'sieu' Fournel's pocket, or Madame's. What's the difference? The price is the same, and you keep your eyes shut and play the Seigneur, and eat and drink what they give you just the same." Now the Seigneur understood. His eyes went blind for a moment, and his hands twitched convulsively on the embossed address he had been rolling and unrolling. A terror, a shame, a dreadful cruelty entered into him, but he was still and numb, and his tongue was thick. He spoke heavily. "Tell me all," he said. "You shall be well paid." "I don't want your money. I want to see you squirm. I want to see her put where she deserves. Bah! Do you think Fournel forgave you for putting his feet in his shoes, and for that case at law, for nothing? Why should he? He hated you, and you hated him. His name's on that paper in your hand among all the rest. Do you think he eats humble pie and crawls to Madame and lets you stay here for nothing?" The Seigneur was painfully quiet and intent, yet his brain was like some great lens, refracting and magnifying things to monstrous proportions. "A will was found?" he asked. "By Madame in the library. She left it where she found it--behind the picture over the Louis Seize table. The day you dismissed me, I saw her at the cupboard. I found the will and started with it to M'sieu' Fournel. She followed. You remember when she went--eh? On business-- and such business! she and Havel and the old slut Marie. You remember, eh; Louis?" he added with unnamable insolence. The Seigneur inclined his head. "V'la! they followed me, overtook me, and Havel shot me in the wrist. See there!"--he held out his wrist. The Seigneur nodded. "But I got to Fournel's first. I put the will into his hands. "I told him Madame Madelinette was following. Then I went to bring the constables to his house to arrest her when he had finished with her." He laughed a brutal laugh, which deepened the strange glittering look in Louis' eyes. "When I came an hour later, she was there. But--now you shall see what stuff they are both made of! He laughed at me, said I had lied; that there was no will; that I was a thief; and had me locked up in gaol. For a month I was in gaol without trial. Then one day I was let out without trial. His servant met me and brought me to his house. He gave me money and told me to leave the country. If I didn't, I would be arrested again for trying to shoot Havel, and for blackmail. They could all swear me off my feet and into prison--what was I to do! I took the money and went. But I came back to have my revenge. I could cut their hearts out and eat them." "You are drunk," said the Seigneur quietly. "You don't know what you're saying." "I'm not drunk. I'm always trying to get drunk now. I couldn't have come here if I hadn't been drinking. I couldn't have told you the truth, if I hadn't been drinking. But I'm sober enough to know that I've done for him and for her! And I'm even with you too--bah! Did you think she cared a fig for you? She's only waiting till you die. Then she'll go to her lover. He's a man of life and limb. Youpish! a hunchback, that all the world laughs at, a worm--" he turned towards the door laughing hideously, his evil face gloating. "You've not got a stick or stone. She"--jerking a finger towards the house--"she earns what you eat, she--" It was the last word he ever spoke, for, with a low terrible cry, the Seigneur snatched up a knife from the table and sprang upon him, catching him by the throat. Once, twice, thrice, the knife went home, and the ruffian collapsed under it with one loud cry. Not letting go his grasp of the dying man's collar, the Seigneur dragged him across the floor, and, opening the door of the small inner room, pulled him inside. For a moment he stood beside the body, panting, then he went to the other room and, bringing a candle, looked at the dead thing in silence. Presently he stooped, held the candle to the wide-staring eyes, then felt the heart. "He is gone," he said in an even voice. Stooping for the knife he had dropped on the floor, he laid it on the body. He looked at his hands. There was one spot of blood on his fingers. He wiped it off with his handkerchief, then blowing out the light, he calmly opened the door of the hut, locked it, went out, and moved on slowly towards the house. As he left the hut he was conscious that some one was moving under the trees by the window, but his mind was not concerned with things outside himself and the one other thing left for him to do. He entered the house and went in search of Madelinette. When he reached the drawing-room, surrounded by eager listeners, she was beginning to sing. Her bearing was eager and almost tremulous, for, with this crowd round her and in the flush of this gaiety and excitement, there was something of that exhilarating air that greets the singer upon the stage. Her eyes were shining with a look, half-sorrowful, half-triumphant. Within the past half-hour she had overcome herself; she had fought down the blind, wild rebellion that, for one moment as it were, had surged up in her heart. She was proud and glad, and piteous and triumphant and deeply womanly all at once. Going to the piano she had looked round for Louis, but he was not visible. She smiled to herself, however, for she knew that her singing would bring him--he worshipped it. Her heart was warm towards him, because of that moment when she rebelled and was hard at soul. She played her own accompaniment, and he was hidden from her by the piano as she sang--sang more touchingly and more humanly, if not more artistically, than she had ever done in her life. The old art was not so perfect, perhaps, but there was in the voice all that she had learned and loved and suffered and hoped. When she rose from the piano to a storm of applause, and saw the shining faces and tearful eyes round her, her own eyes filled with tears. These people--most of them--had known and loved her since she was a child, and loved her still without envy or any taint. Her father was standing near, and with smiling face she caught from his hand the handkerchief with which he was mopping his eyes, and kissed him, saying: "I learned that from the tunes you played on your anvil, dear smithy- man." Then she turned again to look for Louis. Near the door she saw him, and with so strange a face, so wild a look, that, unheeding eager requests to sing again, she responded to the gesture he made, made her way through the crowd to the hall-way, and followed him up the stairs, and to the little boudoir beside her bedroom. As she entered and shut the door, a low sound like a moan broke from him. She went quickly to lay a hand upon his arm, but he waved her back. "What is it, Louis?" she asked, in a bewildered voice. "Where is the will?" he said. "Where is the will, Louis," she repeated after him mechanically, staring at his face, ghostly in the moonlight. "The will you found behind the picture in the library." "O Louis!" she cried, and made a gesture of despair. "O Louis!" "You found it, and Tardif stole it and took it to Quebec." "Yes, Louis, but Louis--ah, what is the matter, dear! I cannot bear that look in your face. What is the matter, Louis?" "Tardif took it to Fournel, and you followed. And I have been living in another man's house, on another's bread--" "O Louis, no--no--no! Our money has paid for all." "Your money, Madelinette!" His voice rose. "Ah, don't speak like that! See, Louis. It can make no difference. How you have found out I do not know, but it can make no difference. I did not want you to know--you loved the Seigneury so. I concealed the will; Tardif found it, as you say. But, Louis, dear, it is all right. Monsieur Fournel would not take the place, and--and I have bought it." She told her falsehood fearlessly. This man's trouble, this man's peace, if she might but win it, was the purpose of her life. "Tardif said that--he said that you--that you and Fournel--" She read his meaning in his tone, and shrank back in terror, then with a flush, straightened herself, and took a step towards him. "It was natural that you should not care for a hunchback like me," he continued, "but--" "Louis!" she cried, in a voice of anguish and reproach. "But I did not doubt you. I believed in you when he said it, as I believe in you now when you stand there like that. I know what you have done for me--" "I pleaded with Monsieur Fournel, knowing how you loved the Seigneury-- pleaded and offered to pay three times the price--" "Yourself would have been a hundred million times the price. Ah, I know you, Madelinette--I know you now! I have been selfish, but I see all now. Now when all is over--" he seemed listening to noises with out-- "I see what you have done for me. I know how you have sacrificed all for me--all but honour--all but honour," he added, a wild fire in his eyes, a trembling seizing him. "Your honour is yours forever. I say so. I say so, and I have proved it. Kiss me, Madelinette--kiss me once," he added, in a quick whisper. "My poor, poor Louis!" she said, laid a soothing hand upon his arm, and leaned towards him. He snatched her to his breast, and kissed her twice in a very agony of joy, then let her go. He listened for an instant to the growing noise without, then said in a hoarse voice: "Now, I will tell you, Madelinette. They are coming for me--don't you hear them? They are coming to take me; but they shall not have me. They shall not have me--" he glanced to a little door that led into a bath- room at his right. "Louis-Louis!" she said in a sudden fright, for though his words seemed mad, a strange quiet sanity was in all he did. "What have you done? Who are coming?" she asked in agony, and caught him by the arm. "I killed Tardif. He is there in the hut in the garden--dead! I was seen, and they are coming to take me." With a cry she ran to the door that led into the hall, and locked it. She listened, then turned her face to Louis. "You killed him!" she gasped. "Louis! Louis!" Her face was like ashes. "I stabbed him to death. It was all I could do, and I did it. He slandered you. I went mad, and did it. Now--" There was a knocking at the door, and a voice calling--a peremptory voice. "There is only one way," he said. "They shall not take me. I will not be dragged to gaol for crowds to jeer at. I will not be sent to the scaffold, to your shame." He ran to the door of the bath-room and flung it open. "If my life is to pay the price, then--!" She came blindly towards him, stretching out her hands. "Louis! Louis!" was all that she could say. He caught her hands and kissed them, then stepped swiftly back into the little bath-room, and locked the door, as the door of the room she was in was burst open, and two constables and a half-dozen men crowded into the room. She stood with her back to the bath-room door, panting, and white, and anguished, and her ears strained to the terrible thing inside the place behind her. The men understood, and came towards her. "Stand back," she said. "You shall not have him. You shall not have him. Ah, don't you hear? He is dying--O God, O God!" she cried, with tearless eyes and upturned face-- "Ah, let it be soon! Ah, let him die soon!" The men stood abashed before her agony. Behind the little door where she stood there was a muffled groaning. She trembled, but her arms were spread out before the door as though on a cross, and her lips kept murmuring: "O God, let him die! Let him die! Oh spare him agony!" Suddenly she stood still and listened-listened, with staring eyes that saw nothing. In the room men shrank back, for they knew that death was behind the little door, and that they were in the presence of a sorrow greater than death. Suddenly she turned upon them with a gesture of piteous triumph and said: "You cannot have him now." Then she swayed and fell forward to the floor as the Cure and George Fournel entered the room. The Cure hastened to her side and lifted up her head. George Fournel pushed the men back who would have entered the bath-room, and himself, bursting the door open, entered. Louis lay dead upon the floor. He turned to the constables. "As she said, you cannot have him now. You have no right here. Go. I had a warning from the man he killed. I knew there would be trouble. But I have come too late," he added bitterly. An hour later the house was as still as the grave. Madame Marie sat with the doctor beside the bed of her dear mistress, and in another room, George Fournel, with the Avocat, kept watch beside the body of the Seigneur of Pontiac. The face of the dead man was as peaceful as that of a little child. ......................... At ninety years of age, the present Seigneur of Pontiac, one Baron Fournel, lives in the Manor House left him by Madelinette Lajeunesse the great singer, when she died a quarter of a century ago. For thirty years he followed her from capital to capital of Europe and America to hear her sing; and to this day he talks of her in language more French than English in its ardour. Perhaps that is because his heart beats in sympathy with the Frenchmen he once disdained. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Ah, let it be soon! Ah, let him die soon! All are hurt some time Did not let him think that she was giving up anything for him Duplicity, for which she might never have to ask forgiveness Frenchman, slave of ideas, the victim of sentiment Frenchman, volatile, moody, chivalrous, unreasonable Her stronger soul ruled him without his knowledge I love that love in which I married him Let others ride to glory, I'll shoe their horses for the gallop Lighted candles in hollowed pumpkins Love has nothing to do with ugliness or beauty, or fortune Nature twists in back, or anywhere, gets a twist in's brain too Rewarded for its mistakes Some are hurt in one way and some in another Struggle of conscience and expediency THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. THE ABSURD ROMANCE OF P'TITE LOUISON THE LITTLE BELL OF HONOUR A SON OF THE WILDERNESS A WORKER IN STONE THE ABSURD ROMANCE OF P'TITE LOUISON The five brothers lived with Louison, three miles from Pontiac, and Medallion came to know them first through having sold them, at an auction, a slice of an adjoining farm. He had been invited to their home, intimacy had grown, and afterwards, stricken with a severe illness, he had been taken into the household and kept there till he was well again. The night of his arrival, Louison, the sister, stood with a brother on either hand--Octave and Florian--and received him with a courtesy more stately than usual, an expression of the reserve and modesty of her single state. This maidenly dignity was at all times shielded by the five brothers, who treated her with a constant and reverential courtesy. There was something signally suggestive in their homage, and Medallion concluded at last that it was paid not only to the sister, but to something that gave her great importance in their eyes. He puzzled long, and finally decided that Louison had a romance. There was something which suggested it in the way they said "P'tite Louison"; in the manner they avoided all gossip regarding marriages and marriage- feasting; in the way they deferred to her on questions of etiquette (as, for instance, Should the eldest child be given the family name of the wife or a Christian name from her husband's family?). And P'tite Louison's opinion was accepted instantly as final, with satisfied nods on the part of all the brothers, and whispers of "How clever! how adorable!" P'tite Louison affected never to hear these remarks, but looked complacently straight before her, stirring the spoon in her cup, or benignly passing the bread and butter. She was quite aware of the homage paid to her, and she gracefully accepted the fact that she was an object of interest. Medallion had not the heart to laugh at the adoration of the brothers, or at the outlandish sister, for, though she was angular, and sallow, and thin, and her hands were large and red, there was a something deep in her eyes, a curious quality in her carriage commanding respect. She had ruled these brothers, had been worshipped by them, for near half a century, and the romance they had kept alive had produced a grotesque sort of truth and beauty in the admiring "P'tite Louison"--an affectionate name for her greatness, like "The Little Corporal" for Napoleon. She was not little, either, but above the middle height, and her hair was well streaked with grey. Her manner towards Medallion was not marked by any affectation. She was friendly in a kind, impersonal way, much as a nurse cares for a patient, and she never relaxed a sort of old-fashioned courtesy, which might have been trying in such close quarters, were it not for the real simplicity of the life and the spirit and lightness of their race. One night Florian--there were Florian and Octave and Felix and Isidore and Emile --the eldest, drew Medallion aside from the others, and they walked together by the river. Florian's air suggested confidence and mystery, and soon, with a voice of hushed suggestion, he told Medallion the romance of P'tite Louison. And each of the brothers at different times during the next fortnight did the same, differing scarcely at all in details, or choice of phrase or meaning, and not at all in general facts and essentials. But each, as he ended, made a different exclamation. "Voila, so sad, so wonderful! She keeps the ring--dear P'tite Louison!" said Florian, the eldest. "Alors, she gives him a legacy in her will! Sweet P'tite Louison," said Octave. "Mais, the governor and the archbishop admire her--P'tite Louison:" said Felix, nodding confidently at Medallion. "Bien, you should see the linen and the petticoats!" said Isidore, the humorous one of the family. "He was great--she was an angel, P'tite Louison!" "Attends! what love--what history--what passion!--the perfect P'tite Louison!" cried Emile, the youngest, the most sentimental. "Ah, Moliere!" he added, as if calling on the master to rise and sing the glories of this daughter of romance. Isidore's tale was after this fashion: "I ver' well remember the first of it; and the last of it--who can tell? He was an actor--oh, so droll, that! Tall, ver' smart, and he play in theatre at Montreal. It is in the winter. P'tite Louison visit Montreal. She walk past the theatre and, as she go by, she slip on the snow and fall. Out from a door with a jomp come M'sieu' Hadrian, and pick her up. And when he see the purty face of P'tite Louison, his eyes go all fire, and he clasp her hand to his breast. "'Ma'm'selle, Ma'm'selle,' he say, 'we must meet again!' "She thank him and hurry away queeck. Next day we are on the river, and P'tite Louison try to do the Dance of the Blue Fox on the ice. While she do it, some one come up swift, and catch her hand and say: 'Ma'm'selle, let's do it together'--like that! It take her breath away. It is M'sieu' Hadrian. He not seem like the other men she know; but he have a sharp look, he is smooth in the face, and he smile kind like a woman. P'tite Louison, she give him her hand, and they run away, and every one stop to look. It is a gran' sight. M'sieu' Hadrian laugh, and his teeth shine, and the ladies say things of him, and he tell P'tite Louison that she look ver' fine, and walk like a queen. I am there that day, and I see all, and I think it dam good. I say: 'That P'tite Louison, she beat them all'--I am only twelve year old then. When M'sieu' Hadrian leave, he give her two seats for the theatre, and we go. Bagosh! that is grand thing that play, and M'sieu' Hadrian, he is a prince; and when he say to his minister, 'But no, my lord, I will marry out of my star, and where my heart go, not as the State wills,' he look down at P'tite Louison, and she go all red, and some of the women look at her, and there is a whisper all roun'. "Nex' day he come to the house where we stay, but the Cure come also pretty soon and tell her she must go home--he say an actor is not good company. Never mind. And so we come out home. Well, what you think? Nex' day M'sieu' Hadrian come, too, and we have dam good time--Florian, Octave, Felix, Emile, they all sit and say bully-good to him all the time. Holy, what fine stories he tell! And he talk about P'tite Louison, and his eyes get wet, and Emile he say his prayers to him-- bagosh! yes, I think. Well, at last, what you guess? M'sieu' he come and come, and at last one day, he say that he leave Montreal and go to New York, where he get a good place in a big theatre--his time in Montreal is finish. So he speak to Florian and say he want marry P'tite Louison, and he say, of course, that he is not marry and he have money. But he is a Protestan', and the Cure at first ver' mad, bagosh! "But at las' when he give a hunder' dollars to the Church, the Cure say yes. All happy that way for while. P'tite Louison, she get ready quick- sapre, what fine things had she--and it is all to be done in a week, while the theatre in New York wait for M'sieu'. He sit there with us, and play on the fiddle, and sing songs, and act plays, and help Florian in the barn, and Octave to mend the fence, and the Cure to fix the grape- vines on his wall. He show me and Emile how to play sword-sticks; and he pick flowers and fetch them to P'tite Louison, and teach her how to make an omelette and a salad like the chef of the Louis Quinze Hotel, so he say. Bagosh, what a good time we have! But first one, then another, he get a choke-throat when he think that P'tite Louison go to leave us, and the more we try, the more we are bagosh fools. And that P'tite Louison, she kiss us hevery one, and say to M'sieu' Hadrian, 'Charles, I love you, but I cannot go.' He laugh at her, and say, 'Voila! we will take them all with us:' and P'tite Louison she laugh. That night a thing happen. The Cure come, and he look ver' mad, and he frown and he say to M'sieu' Hadrian before us all, 'M'sieu', you are married.' "Sapre! that P'tite Louison get pale like snow, and we all stan' roun' her close and say to her quick, 'Courage, P'tite Louison!' M'sieu' Hadrian then look at the priest and say: 'No, M'sieu', I was married ten years ago; my wife drink and go wrong, and I get divorce. I am free like the wind.' "'You are not free,' the Cure say quick. 'Once married, married till death. The Church cannot marry you again, and I command Louison to give you up.' "P'tite Louison stan' like stone. M'sieu' turn to her. 'What shall it be, Louison?' he say. 'You will come with me?' "'Kiss me, Charles,' she say, 'and tell me good-bye till--till you are free.' "He look like a madman. 'Kiss me once, Charles,' she say, 'and let me go.' "And he come to her and kiss her on the lips once, and he say, 'Louison, come with me. I will never give you up.' "She draw back to Florian. 'Good-bye, Charles,' she say. 'I will wait as long as you will. Mother of God, how hard it is to do right!' she say, and then she turn and leave the room. "M'sieu' Hadrian, he give a long sigh. 'It was my one chance,' he say. 'Now the devil take it all!' Then he nod and say to the Cure: 'We'll thrash this out at Judgment Day, M'sieu'. I'll meet you there--you and the woman that spoiled me.' "He turn to Florian and the rest of us, and shake hands, and say: 'Take care of Louison. Thank you. Good-bye.' Then he start towards the door, but stumble, for he look sick. 'Give me a drink,' he say, and begin to cough a little--a queer sort of rattle. Florian give him big drink, and he toss it off-whiff! 'Thank you,' he say, and start again, and we see him walk away over the hill ver' slow--an' he never come back. But every year there come from New York a box of flowers, and every year P'tite Louison send him a 'Merci, Charles, mille fois. Dieu to garde.' It is so every year for twenty-five year." "Where is he now?" asked Medallion. Isidore shook his head, then lifted his eyes religiously. "Waiting for Judgment Day and P'tite Louison," he answered. "Dead!" said Medallion. "How long?" "Twenty year." "But the flowers--the flowers?" "He left word for them to be sent just the same, and the money for it." Medallion turned and took off his hat reverently, as if a soul were passing from the world; but it was only P'tite Louison going out into the garden. "She thinks him living?" he asked gently as he watched Louison. "Yes; we have no heart to tell her. And then he wish it so. And the flowers kep' coming." "Why did he wish it so?" Isidore mused a while. "Who can tell? Perhaps a whim. He was a great actor--ah, yes, sublime!" he said. Medallion did not reply, but walked slowly down to where P'tite Louison was picking berries. His hat was still off. "Let me help you, Mademoiselle," he said softly. And henceforth he was as foolish as her brothers. THE LITTLE BELL OF HONOUR "Sacre bapteme!" "What did he say?" asked the Little Chemist, stepping from his doorway. "He cursed his baptism," answered tall Medallion, the English auctioneer, pushing his way farther into the crowd. "Ah, the pitiful vaurien!" said the Little Chemist's wife, shudderingly; for that was an oath not to be endured by any one who called the Church mother. The crowd that had gathered at the Four Corners were greatly disturbed, for they also felt the repulsion that possessed the Little Chemist's wife. They babbled, shook their heads, and waved their hands excitedly, and swayed and craned their necks to see the offender. All at once his voice, mad with rage, was heard above the rest, shouting frenziedly a curse which was a horribly grotesque blasphemy upon the name of God. Men who had used that oath in their insane anger had been known to commit suicide out of remorse afterwards. For a moment there was a painful hush. The crowd drew back involuntarily and left a clear space, in which stood the blasphemer--a middle-sized, athletic fellow, with black beard, thick, waving hair, and flashing brown eyes. His white teeth were showing now in a snarl like a dog's, his cap was on the ground, his hair was tumbled, his hands were twitching with passion, his foot was stamping with fury, and every time it struck the ground a little silver bell rang at his knee--a pretty sylvan sound, in no keeping with the scene. It heightened the distress of the fellow's blasphemy and ungovernable anger. For a man to curse his baptism was a wicked thing; but the other oath was not fit for human ears, and horror held the crowd moveless for a moment. Then, as suddenly as the stillness came, a low, threatening mumble of voices rose, and a movement to close in on the man was made; but a figure pushed through the crowd, and, standing in front of the man, waved the people back. It was the Cure, the beloved M. Fabre, whose life had been spent among them, whom they obeyed as well as they could, for they were but frail humanity, after all--crude, simple folk, touched with imagination. "Luc Pomfrette, why have you done this? What provocation had you?" The Cure's voice was stern and cold, his usually gentle face had become severe, his soft eyes were piercing and determined. The foot of the man still beat the ground angrily, and the little bell kept tinkling. He was gasping with passion, and he did not answer yet. "Luc Pomfrette, what have you to say?" asked the Cure again. He motioned back Lacasse, the constable of the parish, who had suddenly appeared with a rusty gun and a more rusty pair of handcuffs. Still the voyageur did not answer. The Cure glanced at Lajeunesse the blacksmith, who stood near. "There was no cause--no," sagely shaking his head said Lajeunesse, "Here stand we at the door of the Louis Quinze in very good humour. Up come the voyageurs, all laughing, and ahead of them is Luc Pomfrette, with the little bell at his knee. Luc, he laugh the same as the rest, and they stand in the door, and the garcon bring out the brandy--just a little, but just enough too. I am talking to Henri Beauvin. I am telling him Junie Gauloir have run away with Dicey the Protestant, when all very quick Luc push between me and Henri, jump into the street, and speak like that!" Lajeunesse looked around, as if for corroboration; Henri and others nodded, and some one said: "That's true; that's true. There was no cause." "Maybe it was the drink," said a little hunchbacked man, pushing his way in beside the Cure. "It must have been the drink; there was nothing else--no." The speaker was Parpon the dwarf, the oddest, in some ways the most foolish, in others the wisest man in Pontiac. "That is no excuse," said the Cure. "It is the only one he has, eh?" answered Parpon. His eyes were fixed meaningly on those of Pomfrette. "It is no excuse," repeated the Cure sternly. "The blasphemy is horrible, a shame and stigma upon Pontiac for ever." He looked Pomfrette in the face. "Foul-mouthed and wicked man, it is two years since you took the Blessed Sacrament. Last Easter day you were in a drunken sleep while Mass was being said; after the funeral of your own father you were drunk again. When you went away to the woods you never left a penny for candles, nor for Masses to be said for your father's soul; yet you sold his horse and his little house, and spent the money in drink. Not a cent for a candle, but--" "It's a lie," cried Pomfrette, shaking with rage from head to foot. A long horror-stricken "Ah!" broke from the crowd. The Cure's face became graver and colder. "You have a bad heart," he answered, "and you give Pontiac an evil name. I command you to come to Mass next Sunday, to repent and to hear your penance given from the altar. For until--" "I'll go to no Mass till I'm carried to it," was the sullen, malevolent interruption. The Cure turned upon the people. "This is a blasphemer, an evil-hearted, shameless man," he said. "Until he repents humbly, and bows his vicious spirit to holy Church, and his heart to the mercy of God, I command you to avoid him as you would a plague. I command that no door be opened to him; that no one offer him comfort or friendship; that not even a bon jour or a bon soir pass between you. He has blasphemed against our Father in heaven; to the Church he is a leper." He turned to Pomfrette. "I pray God that you have no peace in mind or body till your evil life is changed, and your black heart is broken by sorrow and repentance." Then to the people he said again: "I have commanded you for your souls' sake; see that you obey. Go to your homes. Let us leave the leper-- alone." He waved the awed crowd back. "Shall we take off the little bell?" asked Lajeunesse of the Cure. Pomfrette heard, and he drew himself together, his jaws shutting with ferocity, and his hand flying to the belt where his voyageur's case-knife hung. The Cure did not see this. Without turning his head towards Pomfrette, he said: "I have commanded you, my children. Leave the leper alone." Again he waved the crowd to be gone, and they scattered, whispering to each other; for nothing like this had ever occurred in Pontiac before, nor had they ever seen the Cure with this granite look in his face, or heard his voice so bitterly hard. He did not move until he had seen them all started homewards from the Four Corners. One person remained beside him--Parpon the dwarf. "I will not obey you, M'sieu' le Cure," said he. "I'll forgive him before he repents." "You will share his sin," answered the Cure sternly. "No; his punishment, M'sieu'," said the dwarf; and turning on his heel, he trotted to where Pomfrette stood alone in the middle of the road, a dark, morose figure, hatred and a wild trouble in his face. Already banishment, isolation, seemed to possess Pomfrette, to surround him with loneliness. The very effort he made to be defiant of his fate appeared to make him still more solitary. All at once he thrust a hand inside his red shirt, and, giving a jerk which broke a string tied round his neck, he drew forth a little pad--a flat bag of silk, called an Agnus Dei, worn as a protection and a blessing by the pious, and threw it on the ground. Another little parcel he drew from his belt, and ground it into the dirt with his heel. It contained a woman's hair. Then, muttering, his hands still twitching with savage feeling, he picked up his cap, covered with dirt, put it on, and passed away down the road towards the river, the little bell tinkling as he went. Those who heard it had a strange feeling, for already to them the man was as if he had some baleful disease, and this little bell told of the passing of a leper. Yet some one man had worn just such a bell every year in Pontiac. It was the mark of honour conferred upon a voyageur by his fellows, the token of his prowess and his skill. This year Luc Pomfrette had won it, and that very day it had been buckled round his leg with songs and toasts. For hours Pomfrette walked incessantly up and down the river-bank, muttering and gesticulating, but at last came quietly to the cottage which he shared with Henri Beauvin. Henri had removed himself and his belongings: already the ostracising had begun. He went to the bedroom of old Mme. Burgoyne, his cousin; she also was gone. He went to a little outhouse and called. For reply there was a scratching at the door. He opened it, and a dog leaped out and upon him. With a fierce fondness he snatched at the dog's collar, and drew the shaggy head to his knee; then as suddenly shoved him away with a smothered oath, and going into the house, shut the door. He sat down in a chair in the middle of the room, and scarcely stirred for half an-hour. At last, with a passionate jerk of the head, he got to his feet, looking about the room in a half-distracted way. Outside, the dog kept running round and round the house, silent, watchful, waiting for the door to open. As time went by, Luc became quieter, but the look of his face was more desolate. At last he almost ran to the door, threw it open, and called. The dog sprang into the room, went straight to the fireplace, lay down, and with tongue lolling and body panting looked at Pomfrette with blinking, uncomprehending eyes. Pomfrette went to a cupboard, brought back a bone well covered with meat, and gave it to the dog, which snatched it and began gnawing it, now and again stopping to look up at his master, as one might look at a mountain moving, be aware of something singular, yet not grasp the significance of the phenomenon. At last, worn out, Pomfrette threw himself on his bed, and fell into a sound sleep. When he awoke, it was far into the morning. He lighted a fire in the kitchen, got a "spider," fried himself a piece of pork, and made some tea. There was no milk in the cupboard; so he took a pitcher and walked down the road a few rods to the next house, where lived the village milkman. He knocked, and the door was opened by the milkman's wife. A frightened look came upon her when she saw who it was. "Non, non!" she said, and shut the door in his face. He stared blankly at the door for a moment, then turned round and stood looking down into the road, with the pitcher in his hand. The milkman's little boy, Maxime, came running round the corner of the house. "Maxime," he said involuntarily and half-eagerly, for he and the lad had been great friends. Maxime's face brightened, then became clouded; he stood still an instant, and presently, turning round and looking at Pomfrette askance, ran away behind the house, saying: "Non, non!" Pomfrette drew his rough knuckles across his forehead in a dazed way; then, as the significance of the thing came home to him, he broke out with a fierce oath, and strode away down the yard and into the road. On the way to his house he met Duclosse the mealman and Garotte the lime- burner. He wondered what they would do. He could see the fat, wheezy Duclosse hesitate, but the arid, alert Garotte had determination in every motion and look. They came nearer; they were about to pass; there was no sign. Pomfrette stopped short. "Good-day, lime-burner; good-day, Duclosse," he said, looking straight at them. Garotte made no reply, but walked straight on. Pomfrette stepped swiftly in front of the mealman. There was fury in his face-fury and danger; his hair was disordered, his eyes afire. "Good-day, mealman," he said, and waited. "Duclosse," called Garotte warningly, "remember!" Duclosse's knees shook, and his face became mottled like a piece of soap; he pushed his fingers into his shirt and touched the Agnus Dei that he carried there. That and Garotte's words gave him courage. He scarcely knew what he said, but it had meaning. "Good-bye-leper," he answered. Pomfrette's arm flew out to throw the pitcher at the mealman's head, but Duclosse, with a grunt of terror, flung up in front of his face the small bag of meal that he carried, the contents pouring over his waistcoat from a loose corner. The picture was so ludicrous that Pomfrette laughed with a devilish humour, and flinging the pitcher at the bag, he walked away towards his own house. Duclosse, pale and frightened, stepped from among the fragments of crockery, and with backward glances towards Pomfrette joined his comrade. "Lime-burner," he said, sitting down on the bag of meal, and mechanically twisting tight the loose, leaking corner, "the devil's in that leper." "He was a good enough fellow once," answered Garotte, watching Pomfrette. "I drank with him at five o'clock yesterday," said Duclosse philosophically. "He was fit for any company then; now he's fit for none." Garotte looked wise. "Mealman," said he, "it takes years to make folks love you; you can make them hate you in an hour. La! La! it's easier to hate than to love. Come along, m'sieu' dusty-belly." Pomfrette's life in Pontiac went on as it began that day. Not once a day, and sometimes not once in twenty days, did any human being speak to him. The village baker would not sell him bread; his groceries he had to buy from the neighbouring parishes, for the grocer's flighty wife called for the constable when he entered the bake-shop of Pontiac. He had to bake his own bread, and do his own cooking, washing, cleaning, and gardening. His hair grew long and his clothes became shabbier. At last, when he needed a new suit--so torn had his others become at woodchopping and many kinds of work--he went to the village tailor, and was promptly told that nothing but Luc Pomfrette's grave-clothes would be cut and made in that house. When he walked down to the Four Corners the street emptied at once, and the lonely man with the tinkling bell of honour at his knee felt the whole world falling away from sight and touch and sound of him. Once when he went into the Louis Quinze every man present stole away in silence, and the landlord himself, without a word, turned and left the bar. At that, with a hoarse laugh, Pomfrette poured out a glass of brandy, drank it off, and left a shilling on the counter. The next morning he found the shilling, wrapped in a piece of paper, just inside his door; it had been pushed underneath. On the paper was written: "It is cursed." Presently his dog died, and the day afterwards he suddenly disappeared from Pontiac, and wandered on to Ste. Gabrielle, Ribeaux, and Ville Bambord. But his shame had gone before him, and people shunned him everywhere, even the roughest. No one who knew him would shelter him. He slept in barns and in the woods until the winter came and snow lay thick upon the ground. Thin and haggard, and with nothing left of his old self but his deep brown eyes and curling hair, and his unhappy name and fame, he turned back again to Pontiac. His spirit was sullen and hard, his heart closed against repentance. Had not the Church and Pontiac and the world punished him beyond his deserts for a moment's madness brought on by a great shock! II One bright, sunshiny day of early winter, he trudged through the snow- banked street of Pontiac back to his home. Men he once knew well, and had worked with, passed him in a sled on their way to the great shanty in the backwoods. They halted in their singing for a moment when they saw him; then, turning their heads from him, dashed off, carolling lustily: "Ah, ah, Babette, We go away; But we will come Again, Babette, Again back home, On Easter Day, Back home to play On Easter Day, Babette! Babette!" "Babette! Babette!" The words followed him, ringing in his ears long after the men had become a mere fading point in the white horizon behind him. This was not the same world that he had known, not the same Pontiac. Suddenly he stopped short in the road. "Curse them! Curse them! Curse them all!" he cried in a cracked, strange voice. A woman hurrying across the street heard him, and went the faster, shutting her ears. A little boy stood still and looked at him in wonder. Everything he saw maddened him. He turned sharp round and hurried to the Louis Quinze. Throwing open the door, he stepped inside. Half-a-dozen men were there with the landlord. When they saw him, they started, confused and dismayed. He stood still for a moment, looking at them with glowering brows. "Good-day," he said. "How goes it?" No one answered. A little apart from the others sat Medallion the auctioneer. He was a Protestant, and the curse on his baptism uttered by Pomfrette was not so heinous in his sight. For the other oath, it was another matter. Still, he was sorry for the man. In any case, it was not his cue to interfere; and Luc was being punished according to his bringing up and to the standards familiar to him. Medallion had never refused to speak to him, but he had done nothing more. There was no reason why he should provoke the enmity of the parish unnecessarily; and up to this-point Pomfrette had shifted for himself after a fashion, if a hard fashion. With a bitter laugh, Pomfrette turned to the little bar. "Brandy," he said; "brandy, my Bourienne." The landlord shrugged his shoulder, and looked the other way. "Brandy," he repeated. Still there was no sign. There was a wicked look in his face, from which the landlord shrank back- shrank so far that he carried himself among the others, and stood there, half frightened, half dumfounded. Pomfrette pulled out a greasy dollar-bill from his pocket--the last he owned in the world--and threw it on the counter. Then he reached over, caught up a brandy-bottle from the shelf, knocked off the neck with a knife, and, pouring a tumblerful, drank it off at a gasp. His head came up, his shoulders straightened out, his eyes snapped fire. He laughed aloud, a sardonic, wild, coarse laugh, and he shivered once or twice violently, in spite of the brandy he had drunk. "You won't speak to me, eh? Won't you? Curse you! Pass me on the other side--so! Look at me. I am the worst man in the world, eh? Judas is nothing--no! Ack, what are you, to turn your back on me? Listen to me! You, there, Muroc, with your charcoal face, who was it walk thirty miles in the dead of winter to bring a doctor to your wife, eh? She die, but that is no matter--who was it? It was Luc Pomfrette. You, Alphonse Durien, who was it drag you out of the bog at the Cote Chaudiere? It was Luc Pomfrette. You, Jacques Baby, who was it that lied for you to the Protestant girl at Faribeau? Just Luc Pomfrette. You two, Jean and Nicolas Mariban, who was it lent you a hunderd dollars when you lose all your money at cards? Ha, ha, ha! Only that beast Luc Pomfrette! Mother of Heaven, such a beast is he--eh, Limon Rouge?--such a beast that used to give your Victorine little silver things, and feed her with bread and sugar and buttermilk pop. Ah, my dear Limon Rouge, how is it all different now!" He raised the bottle and drank long from the ragged neck. When he took it away from his mouth not much more than half remained in the quart bottle. Blood was dripping upon his beard from a cut on his lip, and from there to the ground. "And you, M'sieu' Bourienne," he cried hoarsely, "do I not remember that dear M'sieu' Bourienne, when he beg me to leave Pontiac for a little while that I not give evidence in court against him? Eh bien! you all walk by me now, as if I was the father of smallpox, and not Luc Pomfrette--only Luc Pomfrette, who spits at every one of you for a pack of cowards and hypocrites." He thrust the bottle inside his coat, went to the door, flung it open with a bang, and strode out into the street, muttering as he went. As the landlord came to close the door Medallion said: "The leper has a memory, my friends." Then he also walked out, and went to his office depressed, for the face of the man haunted him. Pomfrette reached his deserted, cheerless house. There was not a stick of fire-wood in the shed, not a thing to eat or drink in cellar or cupboard. The door of the shed at the back was open, and the dog-chains lay covered with frost and half embedded in mud. With a shiver of misery Pomfrette raised the brandy to his mouth, drank every drop, and threw the bottle on the floor. Then he went to the front door, opened it, and stepped outside. His foot slipped, and he tumbled head forward into the snow. Once or twice he half raised himself, but fell back again, and presently lay still. The frost caught his ears and iced them; it began to creep over his cheeks; it made his fingers white, like a leper's. He would soon have stiffened for ever had not Parpon the dwarf, passing along the road, seen the open door and the sprawling body, and come and drawn Pomfrette inside the house. He rubbed the face and hands and ears of the unconscious man with snow till the whiteness disappeared, and, taking off the boots, did the same with the toes; after which he drew the body to a piece of rag carpet beside the stove, threw some blankets over it, and, hurrying out, cut up some fence rails, and soon had a fire going in the stove. Then he trotted out of the house and away to the Little Chemist, who came passively with him. All that day, and for many days, they fought to save Pomfrette's life. The Cure came also; but Pomfrette was in fever and delirium. Yet the good M. Fabre's presence, as it ever did, gave an air of calm and comfort to the place. Parpon's hands alone cared for the house; he did all that was to be done; no woman had entered the place since Pomfrette's cousin, old Mme. Burgoyne, left it on the day of his shame. When at last Pomfrette opened his eyes, and saw the Cure standing beside him, he turned his face to the wall, and to the exhortation addressed to him he answered nothing. At last the Cure left him, and came no more; and he bade Parpon do the same as soon as Pomfrette was able to leave his bed. But Parpon did as he willed. He had been in Pontiac only a few days since the painful business in front of the Louis Quinze. Where he had been and what doing no one asked, for he was mysterious in his movements, and always uncommunicative, and people did not care to tempt his inhospitable tongue. When Pomfrette was so far recovered that he might be left alone, Parpon said to him one evening: "Pomfrette, you must go to Mass next Sunday." "I said I wouldn't go till I was carried there, and I mean it--that's so," was the morose reply. "What made you curse like that--so damnable?" asked Parpon furtively. "That's my own business. It doesn't matter to anybody but me." "And you said the Cure lied--the good M'sieu' Fabre--him like a saint." "I said he lied, and I'd say it again, and tell the truth." "But if you went to Mass, and took your penance, and--" "Yes, I know; they'd forgive me, and I'd get absolution, and they'd all speak to me again, and it would be, 'Good-day, Luc,' and 'Very good, Luc,' and 'What a gay heart has Luc, the good fellow!' Ah, I know. They curse in the heart when the whole world go wrong for them; no one hears. I curse out loud. I'm not a hypocrite, and no one thinks me fit to live. Ack, what is the good!" Parpon did not respond at once. At last, dropping his chin in his hand and his elbow on his knee, as he squatted on the table, he said: "But if the girl got sorry--" For a time there was no sound save the whirring of the fire in the stove and the hard breathing of the sick man. His eyes were staring hard at Parpon. At last he said, slowly and fiercely: "What do you know?" "What others might know if they had eyes and sense; but they haven't. What would you do if that Junie come back?" "I would kill her." His look was murderous. "Bah, you would kiss her first, just the same!" "What of that? I would kiss her because--because there is no face like hers in the world; and I'd kill her for her bad heart." "What did she do?" Pomfrette's hands clinched. "What's in my own noddle, and not for any one else," he answered sulkily. "Tiens, tiens, what a close mouth! What did she do? Who knows? What you think she do, it's this. You think she pretends to love you, and you leave all your money with her. She is to buy masses for your father's soul; she is to pay money to the Cure for the good of the Church; she is to buy a little here, a little there, for the house you and she are going to live in, the wedding and the dancing over. Very well. Ah, my Pomfrette, what is the end you think? She run away with Dicey the Protestant, and take your money with her. Eh, is that so?" For answer there came a sob, and then a terrible burst of weeping and anger and passionate denunciations--against Junie Gauloir, against Pontiac, against the world. Parpon held his peace. The days, weeks, and months went by; and the months stretched to three years. In all that time Pomfrette came and went through Pontiac, shunned and unrepentant. His silent, gloomy endurance was almost an affront to Pontiac; and if the wiser ones, the Cure, the Avocat, the Little Chemist, and Medallion, were more sorry than offended, they stood aloof till the man should in some manner redeem himself, and repent of his horrid blasphemy. But one person persistently defied Church and people, Cure and voyageur. Parpon openly and boldly walked with Pomfrette, talked with him, and occasionally visited his house. Luc made hard shifts to live. He grew everything that he ate, vegetables and grains. Parpon showed him how to make his own flour in primitive fashion, for no miller in any parish near would sell him flour, and he had no money to buy it, nor would any one who knew him give him work. And after his return to Pontiac he never asked for it. His mood was defiant, morbid, stern. His wood he chopped from the common known as No-Man's Land. His clothes he made himself out of the skins of deer that he shot; when his powder and shot gave out, he killed the deer with bow and arrow. III The end came at last. Luc was taken ill. For four days, all alone, he lay burning with fever and inflammation, and when Parpon found him he was almost dead. Then began a fight for life again, in which Parpon was the only physician; for Pomfrette would not allow the Little Chemist or a doctor near him. Parpon at last gave up hope; but one night, when he came back from the village, he saw, to his joy, old Mme. Degardy ("Crazy Joan" she was called) sitting by Pomfrette's bedside. He did not disturb her, for she had no love for him, and he waited till she had gone. When he came into the room again he found Pomfrette in a sweet sleep, and a jug of tincture, with a little tin cup, placed by the bed. Time and again he had sent for Mme. Degardy, but she would not come. She had answered that the dear Luc could go to the devil for all of her; he'd find better company down below than in Pontiac. But for a whim, perhaps, she had come at last without asking, and as a consequence Luc returned to the world, a mere bundle of bones. It was still while he was only a bundle of bones that one Sunday morning, Parpon, without a word, lifted him up in his arms and carried him out of the house. Pomfrette did not speak at first: it seemed scarcely worth while; he was so weak he did not care. "Where are you going?" he said at last, as they came well into the village. The bell in St. Saviour's had stopped ringing for Mass, and the streets were almost empty. "I'm taking you to Mass," said Parpon, puffing under his load, for Pomfrette made an ungainly burden. "Hand of a little devil, no!" cried Pomfrette, startled. "I said I'd never go to Mass again, and I never will. "You said you'd never go to Mass till you were carried; so it's all right." Once or twice Pomfrette struggled, but Parpon held him tight, saying: "It's no use; you must come; we've had enough. Besides--" "Besides what?" asked Pomfrette faintly. "Never mind," answered Parpon. At a word from Parpon the shrivelled old sexton cleared a way through the aisle, making a stir, through which the silver bell at Pomfrette's knee tinkled, in answer, as it were, to the tinkling of the acolyte's bell in the sanctuary. People turned at the sound, women stopped telling their beads, some of the choir forgot their chanting. A strange feeling passed through the church, and reached and startled the Cure as he recited the Mass. He turned round and saw Parpon laying Pomfrette down at the chancel steps. His voice shook a little as he intoned the ritual, and as he raised the sacred elements tears rolled down his cheeks. From a distant corner of the gallery a deeply veiled woman also looked down at Pomfrette, and her hand trembled on the desk before her. At last the Cure came forward to the chancel steps. "What is it, Parpon?" he asked gravely. "It is Luc Pomfrette, M'sieu' le Cure." Pomfrette's eyes were closed. "He swore that he would never come to Mass again," answered the good priest. "Till he was carried, M'sieu' le Cure--and I've carried him." "Did you come of your own free will, and with a repentant heart, Luc Pomfrette?" asked the Cure. "I did not know I was coming--no." Pomfrette's brown eyes met the priest's unflinchingly. "You have defied God, and yet He has spared your life." "I'd rather have died," answered the sick man simply. "Died, and been cast to perdition!" "I'm used to that; I've had a bad time here in Pontiac." His thin hands moved restlessly. His leg moved, and the little bell tinkled--the bell that had been like the bell of a leper these years past. "But you live, and you have years yet before you, in the providence of God. Luc Pomfrette, you blasphemed against your baptism, and horribly against God himself. Luc"--his voice got softer--"I knew your mother, and she was almost too weak to hold you when you were baptised, for you made a great to-do about coming into the world. She had a face like a saint--so sweet, so patient. You were her only child, and your baptism was more to her than her marriage even, or any other thing in this world. The day after your baptism she died. What do you think were her last words?" There was a hectic flush on Pomfrette's face, and his eyes were intense and burning as they looked up fixedly at the Cure. "I can't think any more," answered Pomfrette slowly. "I've no head." "What she said is for your heart, not for your head, Luc," rejoined the Cure gently. "She wandered in her mind, and at the last she raised herself up in her bed, and lifting her finger like this"--he made the gesture of benediction--" she said, 'Luc Michele, I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.' Then she whispered softly: 'God bless my dear Luc Michee! Holy Mother pray for him!' These were her last words, and I took you from her arms. What have you to say, Luc Michee?" The woman in the gallery was weeping silently behind her thick veil, and her worn hand clutched the desk in front of her convulsively. Presently she arose and made her way down the stair, almost unnoticed. Two or three times Luc tried to speak, but could not. "Lift me up," he said brokenly, at last. Parpon and the Little Chemist raised him to his feet, and held him, his shaking hands resting on their shoulders, his lank body tottering above and between them. Looking at the congregation, he said slowly: "I'll suffer till I die for cursing my baptism, and God will twist my neck in purgatory for--" "Luc," the Cure interrupted, "say that you repent." "I'm sorry, and I ask you all to forgive me, and I'll confess to the Cure, and take my penance, and--" he paused, for breathing hurt him. At that moment the woman in black who had been in the gallery came quickly forward. Parpon saw her, frowned, and waved her back; but she came on. At the chancel steps she raised her veil, and a murmur of recognition and wonder ran through the church. Pomfrette's face was pitiful to see--drawn, staring. "Junie!" he said hoarsely. Her eyes were red with weeping, her face was very pale. "M'sieu' le Cure" she said, "you must listen to me"--the Cure's face had become forbidding--"sinner though I am. You want to be just, don't you? Ah, listen! I was to be married to Luc Pomfrette, but I did not love him-- then. He had loved me for years, and his father and my father wished it --as you know, M'sieu' le Cure. So after a while I said I would; but I begged him that he wouldn't say anything about it till he come back from his next journey on the river. I did not love him enough--then. He left all his money with me: some to pay for Masses for his father's soul, some to buy things for--for our home; and the rest to keep till he came back." "Yes, yes," said Pomfrette, his eyes fixed painfully on her face--"yes, yes." "The day after Luc went away John Dicey the Protestant come to me. I'd always liked him; he could talk as Luc couldn't, and it sounded nice. I listened and listened. He knew about Luc and about the money and all. Then he talked to me. I was all wild in the head, and things went round and round, and oh, how I hated to marry Luc--then! So after he had talked a long while I said yes, I would go with him and marry him-- a Protestant--for I loved him. I don't know why or how." Pomfrette trembled so that Parpon and the Little Chemist made him sit down, and he leaned against their shoulders, while Junie went on: "I gave him Luc's money to go and give to Parpon here, for I was too ashamed to go myself. And I wrote a little note to Luc, and sent it with the money. I believed in John Dicey, of course. He came back, and said that he had seen Parpon and had done it all right; then we went away to Montreal and got married. The very first day at Montreal, I found out that he had Luc's money. It was awful. I went mad, and he got angry and left me alone, and didn't come back. A week afterwards he was killed, and I didn't know it for a long time. But I began to work, for I wanted to pay back Luc's money. It was very slow, and I worked hard. Will it never be finished, I say. At last Parpon find me, and I tell him all-- all except that John Dicey was dead; and I did not know that. I made him promise to tell nobody; but he knows all about my life since then. Then I find out one day that John Dicey is dead, and I get from the gover'ment a hundred dollars of the money he stole. It was found on him when he was killed. I work for six months longer, and now I come back--with Luc's money." She drew from her pocket a packet of notes, and put it in Luc's hands. He took it dazedly, then dropped it, and the Little Chemist picked it up; he had no prescription like that in his pharmacopoeia. "That's how I've lived," she said, and she handed a letter to the Cure. It was from a priest in Montreal, setting forth the history of her career in that city, her repentance for her elopement and the sin of marrying a Protestant, and her good life. She had wished to do her penance in Pontiac, and it remained to M'sieu' le Cure; to set it. The Cure's face relaxed, and a rare gentleness came into it. He read the letter aloud. Luc once more struggled to his feet, eagerly listening. "You did not love Luc?" the Cure asked Junie, meaningly. "I did not love Luc--then," she answered, a flush going over her face. "You loved Junie?" the Cure said to Pomfrette. "I could have killed her, but I've always loved her," answered Luc. Then he raised his voice excitedly: "I love her, love her, love her--but what's the good! She'd never 've been happy with me. Look what my love drove her to! What's the good, at all!" "She said she did not love you then, Luc Michee," said Parpon, interrupting. "Luc Michee, you're a fool as well as a sinner. Speak up, Junie." "I used to tell him that I didn't love him; I only liked him. I was honest. Well, I am honest still. I love him now." A sound of joy broke from Luc's lips, and he stretched out his arms to her, but the Cure; stopped that. "Not here," he said. "Your sins must first be considered. For penance--" He paused, looking at the two sad yet happy beings before him. The deep knowledge of life that was in him impelled him to continue gently: "For penance you shall bear the remembrance of each other's sins. And now to God the Father--" He turned towards the altar, and raised his hands in the ascription. As he knelt to pray before he entered the pulpit, he heard the tinkling of the little bell of honour at the knee of Luc, as Junie and Parpon helped him from the church. A SON OF THE WILDERNESS Rachette told the story to Medallion and the Little Chemist's wife on Sunday after Mass, and because he was vain of his English he forsook his own tongue and paid tribute to the Anglo-Saxon. "Ah, she was so purty, that Norinne, when she drive through the parishes all twelve days, after the wedding, a dance every night, and her eyes and cheeks on fire all the time. And Bargon, bagosh! that Bargon, he have a pair of shoulders like a wall, and five hunder' dollars and a horse and wagon. Bagosh, I say that time: 'Bargon he have put a belt round the world and buckle it tight to him--all right, ver' good.' I say to him: 'Bargon, what you do when you get ver' rich out on the Souris River in the prairie west?' He laugh and throw up his hands, for he have not many words any kind. And the dam little dwarf Parpon, he say: 'He will have flowers on the table and ice on the butter, and a wheel in his head.' "And Bargon laugh and say: 'I will have plenty for my friends to eat and drink and a ver' fine time.' "'Good,' we all say-'Bagosh!' So they make the trip through twelve parish, and the fiddles go all the time, and I am what you say 'best man' with Bargon. I go all the time, and Lucette Dargois, she go with me and her brother--holy, what an eye had she in her head, that Lucette! As we go we sing a song all right, and there is no one sing so better as Norinne: "'C'est la belle Francoise, Allons gai! C'est la belle Francoise, Qui veut se marier, Ma luron lurette! Qui veut se marier, Ma luron lure!' "Ver' good, bagosh! Norinne and Bargon they go out to the Souris, and Bargon have a hunder' acre, and he put up a house and a shed not ver' big, and he carry his head high and his shoulders like a wall; yes, yes. First year it is pretty good time, and Norinne's cheeks--ah, like an apple they. Bimeby a baby laugh up at Bargon from Norinne's lap. I am on the Souris at a saw-mill then, and on Sunday sometime I go up to see Bargon and Norinne. I t'ink that baby is so dam funny; I laugh and pinch his nose. His name is Marie, and I say I marry him pretty quick some day. We have plenty hot cake, and beans and pork, and a little how-you- are from a jar behin' the door. "Next year it is not so good. There is a bad crop and hard time, and Bargon he owe two hunder' dollar, and he pay int'rest. Norinne, she do all the work, and that little Marie, there is dam funny in him, and Norinne, she keep go, go, all the time, early and late, and she get ver' thin and quiet. So I go up from the mill more times, and I bring fol- lols for that Marie, for you know I said I go to marry him some day. And when I see how Bargon shoulders stoop and his eye get dull, and there is nothing in the jar behin' the door, I fetch a horn with me, and my fiddle, and, bagosh! there is happy sit-you-down. I make Bargon sing 'La Belle Francoise,' and then just before I go I make them laugh, for I stand by the cradle and I sing to that Marie: "'Adieu, belle Frangoise; Allons gai! Adieu, belle Francoise! Moi, je to marierai, Ma luron lurette! Moi, je to marierai, Ma luron lure!' "So; and another year it go along, and Bargon he know that if there come bad crop it is good-bye-my lover with himselves. He owe two hunder' and fifty dollar. It is the spring at Easter, and I go up to him and Norinne, for there is no Mass, and Pontiac is too far away off. We stan' at the door and look out, and all the prairie is green, and the sun stan' up high like a light on a pole, and the birds fly by ver' busy looking for the summer and the prairie-flower. "'Bargon,' I say--and I give him a horn of old rye--'here's to le bon Dieu!' "'Le bon Dieu, and a good harvest!' he say. "I hear some one give a long breath behin', and I look round; but, no, it is Norinne with a smile--for she never grumble--bagosh! What purty eyes she have in her head! She have that Marie in her arms, and I say to Bargon it is like the Madonne in the Notre Dame at Montreal. He nod his head. 'C'est le bon Dieu--it is the good God,' he say. "Before I go I take a piece of palm--it come from the Notre Dame; it is all bless by the Pope--and I nail it to the door of the house. 'For luck,' I say. Then I laugh, and I speak out to the prairie: 'Come along, good summer; come along, good crop; come two hunder' and fifty dollars for Gal Bargon.' Ver' quiet I give Norinne twenty dollar, but she will not take him. 'For Marie,' then I say: 'I go to marry him, bimeby.' But she say: 'Keep it and give it to Marie yourself some day.' "She smile at me, then she have a little tear in her eye, and she nod to where Bargon stare' houtside, and she say: 'If this summer go wrong, it will kill him. He work and work and fret and worry for me and Marie, and sometimes he just sit and look at me and say not a word.' "I say to her that there will be good crop, and next year we will be ver' happy. So, the time go on, and I send up a leetla snack of pork and molass' and tabac, and sugar and tea, and I get a letter from Bargon bimeby, and he say that heverything go right, he t'ink, this summer. He say I must come up. It is not dam easy to go in the summer, when the mill run night and day; but I say I will go. "When I get up to Bargon's I laugh, for all the hunder' acre is ver' fine, and Bargon stan' hin the door, and stretch out his hand, and say: 'Rachette, there is six hunder' dollar for me.' I nod my head, and fetch out a horn, and he have one, his eyes all bright like a lime-kiln. He is thin and square, and his beard grow ver' thick and rough and long, and his hands are like planks. Norinne, she is ver' happy, too, and Marie bite on my finger, and I give him sugar-stick to suck. "Bimeby Norinne say to me, ver' soft: 'If a hailstorm or a hot wind come, that is the end of it all, and of my poor Gal.' "What I do? I laugh and ketch Marie under the arms, and I sit down, and I put him on my foot, and I sing that dam funny English song--'Here We Go to Banbury Cross.' An' I say: 'It will be all as happy as Marie pretty quick. Bargon he will have six hunder' dollar, and you a new dress and a hired girl to help you.' "But all the time that day I think about a hail-storm or a hot wind whenever I look out on that hunder' acre farm. It is so beautiful, as you can guess--the wheat, the barley, the corn, the potatoes, the turnip, all green like sea-water, and pigeons and wild ducks flying up and down, and the horse and the ox standing in a field ver' comfer'ble. "We have good time that day, and go to bed all happy that night. I get up at five o'clock, an' I go hout. Bargon stan' there looking hout on his field with the horse-bridle in his hand. 'The air not feel right,' he say to me. I t'ink the same, but I say to him: 'Your head not feel right--him too sof'.' He shake his head and go down to the field for his horse and ox, and hitch them up together, and go to work making a road. "It is about ten o'clock when the dam thing come. Piff! go a hot splash of air in my face, and then I know that it is all up with Gal Bargon. A month after it is no matter, for the grain is ripe then, but now, when it is green, it is sure death to it all. I turn sick in my stomich, and I turn round and see Norinne stan' hin the door, all white, and she make her hand go as that, like she push back that hot wind. "'Where is Gal?' she say. 'I must go to him.' 'No,' I say, 'I will fetch him. You stay with Marie.' Then I go ver' quick for Gal, and I find him, his hands all shut like that! and he shake them at the sky, and he say not a word, but his face, it go wild, and his eyes spin round in his head. I put my hand on his arm and say: 'Come home, Gal. Come home, and speak kind to Norinne and Marie.' "I can see that hot wind lean down and twist the grain about--a dam devil thing from the Arzone desert down South. I take Gal back home, and we sit there all day, and all the nex' day, and a leetla more, and when we have look enough, there is no grain on that hunder' acre farm--only a dry-up prairie, all grey and limp. My skin is bake and rough, but when I look at Gal Bargon I know that his heart is dry like a bone, and, as Parpon say that back time, he have a wheel in his head. Norinne she is quiet, and she sit with her hand on his shoulder, and give him Marie to hold. "But it is no good; it is all over. So I say: 'Let us go back to Pontiac. What is the good for to be rich? Let us be poor and happy once more.' "And Norinne she look glad, and get up and say: 'Yes, let us go back.' But all at once she sit down with Marie in her arms, and cry--bagosh, I never see a woman cry like that! "So we start back for Pontiac with the horse and the ox and some pork and bread and molass'. But Gal Bargon never hold up his head, but go silent, silent, and he not sleep at night. One night he walk away on the prairie, and when he come back he have a great pain. So he lie down, and we sit by him, an' he die. But once he whisper to me, and Norinne not hear: 'You say you will marry him, Rachette?' and I say, 'I will.' "'C'est le bon Dieu!' he say at the last, but he say it with a little laugh. I think he have a wheel in his head. But bimeby, yiste'day, Norinne and Marie and I come to Pontiac." The Little Chemist's wife dried her eyes, and Medallion said in French: "Poor Norinne! Poor Norinne! And so, Rachette, you are going to marry Marie, by-and-bye?" There was a quizzical look in Medallion's eyes. Rachette threw up his chin a little. "I'm going to marry Norinne on New Year's Day," he said. "Bagosh, poor Norinne!" said Medallion, in a queer sort of tone. "It is the way of the world," he added. "I'll wait for Marie myself." It looks as if he meant to, for she has no better friend. He talks to her much of Gal Bargon; of which her mother is glad. A WORKER IN STONE At the beginning he was only a tombstone-cutter. His name was Francois Lagarre. He was but twenty years old when he stepped into the shop where the old tombstone-cutter had worked for forty years. Picking up the hammer and chisel which the old man had dropped when he fell dead at the end of a long hot day's labour, he finished the half-carved tombstone, and gave the price of it to the widow. Then, going to the Seigneur and Cure, he asked them to buy the shop and tools for him, and let him pay rent until he could take the place off their hands. They did as he asked, and in two years he had bought and paid for the place, and had a few dollars to the good. During one of the two years a small-pox epidemic passed over Pontiac, and he was busy night and day. It was during this time that some good Catholics came to him with an heretical Protestant suggestion to carve a couplet or verse of poetry on the tombstones they ordered. They themselves, in most cases, knew none, and they asked Francois to supply them--as though he kept them in stock like marble and sand-paper. He had no collection of suitable epitaphs, and, besides, he did not know whether it was right to use them. Like all his race in New France he was jealous of any inroads of Protestantism, or what the Little Chemist called "Englishness." The good M. Fabre, the Cure, saw no harm in it, but said he could not speak for any one's grief. What the bereaved folk felt they themselves must put in words upon the stone. But still Francois might bring all the epitaphs to him before they were carved, and he would approve or disapprove, correct or reject, as the case might be. At first he rejected many, for they were mostly conventional couplets, taken unknowingly from Protestant sources by mourning Catholics. But presently all that was changed, and the Cure one day had laid before him three epitaphs, each of which left his hand unrevised and untouched; and when he passed them back to Francois his eyes were moist, for he was a man truly after God's own heart, and full of humanity. "Will you read them to me, Francois?" he said, as the worker in stone was about to put the paper back in his pocket. "Give the names of the dead at the same time." So Francois read: "Gustave Narrois, aged seventy-two years-" "Yes, yes," interrupted the Cure, "the unhappy yet happy Gustave, hung by the English, and cut down just in time to save him--an innocent man. For thirty years my sexton. God rest his soul! Well now, the epitaph." Francois read it: "Poor as a sparrow was I, Yet I was saved like a king; I heard the death-bells ring, Yet I saw a light in the sky: And now to my Father I wing." The Cure nodded his head. "Go on; the next," he said. "Annette John, aged twenty years--" "So. The daughter of Chief John. When Queen Anne of England was on the throne she sent Chief John's grandfather a gold cup and a hundred pounds. The girl loved, but would not marry, that she might keep Chief John from drinking. A saint, Francois! What have they said of her?" Francois smoothed out the paper and read: "A little while I saw the world go by A little doorway that I called my own, A loaf, a cup of water, and a bed had I, A shrine of Jesus, where I knelt alone: And now alone I bid the world good-bye." The Cure turned his head away. "Go on," he said sadly. "Chief John has lost his right hand. Go on." "Henri Rouget" "Aged thirty years," again interrupted the Cure. "Henri Rouget, idiot; as young as the morning. For man grows old only by what he suffers, and what he forgives, and what he sins. What have you to say for Henri Rouget, my Francois?" And Francois read: "I was a fool; nothing had I to know Of men, and naught to men had I to give. God gave me nothing; now to God I go, Now ask for pain, for bread, Life for my brain: dead, By God's love I shall then begin to live." The priest rose to his feet and put a hand on the young man's shoulder. "Do you know, Francois," he said, half sadly, "do you know, you have the true thing in you. Come often to me, my son, and bring all these things --all you write." While the Cure troubled himself about his future, Francois began to work upon a monument for the grave of a dozen soldiers of Pontiac who were killed in the War of the Patriots. They had died for a mistaken cause, and had been buried on the field of battle. Long ago something would have been done to commemorate them but that three of them were Protestants, and difficulties had been raised by the bigoted. But Francois thought only of the young men in their common grave at St. Eustache. He remembered when they went away one bright morning, full of the joy of an erring patriotism, of the ardour of a weak but fascinating cause: race against race, the conquered against the conquerors, the usurped against the usurpers. In the space before the parish church it stands--a broken shaft, with an unwound wreath straying down its sides; a monument of fine proportions, a white figure of beaten valour and erring ardour of youth and beautiful bad ambition. One Saturday night it was not there, and when next morning the people came to Mass it was there. All night had Francois and his men worked, and the first rays of the morning sun fell on the tall shivered shaft set firmly in its place. Francois was a happy man. All else that he had done had been wholly after a crude, staring convention, after rule and measure--an artisan's, a tombstone-cutter's labour. This was the work of a man with the heart and mind of an artist. When the people came to Mass they gazed and gazed, and now and then the weeping of a woman was heard, for among them were those whose sons and brothers were made memorable by this stone. That day at the close of his sermon the Cure spoke of it, and said at the last: "That white shaft, dear brethren, is for us a sign of remembrance and a warning to our souls. In the name of race and for their love they sinned. But yet they sinned; and this monument, the gift and work of one young like them, ardent and desiring like them, is for ever in our eyes the crucifixion of our wrong ambitions and our selfish aims. "Nay, let us be wise and let us be good. They who rule us speak with foreign tongue, but their hearts desire our peace and a mutual regard. Pray that this be. And pray for the young and the daring and the foolish. And pray also that he who has given us here a good gift may find his thanks in our better-ordered lives, and that he may consecrate his parts and talents to the redeeming actions of this world." And so began the awakening of Francois Lagarre; and so began his ambition and his peril. For, as he passed from the church, the Seigneur touched him on the shoulder and introduced him to his English grandniece, come on a visit for the summer, the daughter of a London baronet. She had but just arrived, and she was feeling that first homesickness which succeeds transplanting. The face of the young worker in stone interested her; the idea of it all was romantic; the possibilities of the young man's life opened out before her. Why should not she give him his real start, win his gratitude, help him to his fame, and then, when it was won, be pointed out as a discoverer and a patron? All these things flashed through her mind as they were introduced. The young man did not read the look in her eyes, but there was one other person in the crowd about the church steps who did read it, whose heart beat furiously, whose foot tapped the ground angrily--a black-haired, brown-eyed farmer's daughter, who instantly hated the yellow hair and rosy and golden face of the blue-eyed London lady; who could, that instant, have torn the silk gown from her graceful figure. She was not disturbed without reason. And for the moment, even when she heard impertinent and incredulous fellows pooh-poohing the monument, and sharpening their rather dull wits upon its corners, she did not open her lips, when otherwise she would have spoken her mind with a vengeance; for Jeanne Marchand had a reputation for spirit and temper, and she spared no one when her blood was up. She had a touch of the vixen--an impetuous, loving, forceful mademoiselle, in marked contrast to the rather ascetic Francois, whose ways were more refined than his origin might seem to warrant. "Sapre!" said Duclosse the mealman of the monument; "it's like a timber of cheese stuck up. What's that to make a fuss about?" "Fig of Eden," muttered Jules Marmotte, with one eye on Jeanne, "any fool could saw a better-looking thing out of ice!" "Fish," said fat Caroche the butcher, "that Francois has a rattle in his capote. He'd spend his time better chipping bones on my meat-block." But Jeanne could not bear this--the greasy whopping butcher-man! "What, what, the messy stupid Caroche, who can't write his name," she said in a fury; "the sausage-potted Caroche, who doesn't remember that Francois Lagarre made his brother's tombstone, and charged him nothing for the verses he wrote for it, nor for the Agnus Dei he carved on it! No, Caroche does not remember his brother Ba'tiste the fighter, as brave as Caroche is a coward! He doesn't remember the verse on Ba'tiste's tombstone, does he?" Francois heard this speech, and his eyes lighted tenderly as he looked at Jeanne: he loved this fury of defence and championship. Some one in the crowd turned to him and asked him to say the verses. At first he would not; but when Caroche said that it was only his fun, that he meant nothing against Francois, the young man recited the words slowly--an epitaph on one who was little better than a prize-fighter, a splendid bully. Leaning a hand against the white shaft of the Patriot's Memory, he said: "Blows I have struck, and blows a-many taken, Wrestling I've fallen, and I've rose up again; Mostly I've stood-- I've had good bone and blood; Others went down, though fighting might and main. Now death steps in-- Death the price of sin. The fall it will be his; and though I strive and strain, One blow will close my eyes, and I shall never waken." "Good enough for Ba'tiste," said Duclosse the mealman. The wave of feeling was now altogether with Francois, and presently he walked away with Jeanne Marchand and her mother, and the crowd dispersed. Jeanne was very happy for a few hours, but in the evening she was unhappy, for she saw Francois going towards the house of the Seigneur; and during many weeks she was still more unhappy, for every three or four days she saw the same thing. Meanwhile Francois worked as he had never before worked in his life. Night and day he was shut in his shop, and for two months he came with no epitaphs for the Cure, and no new tombstones were set up in the graveyard. The influence of the lady at the Seigneury was upon him, and he himself believed it was for his salvation. She had told him of great pieces of sculpture she had seen, had sent and got from Quebec City, where he had never been, pictures of some of the world's masterpieces in sculpture, and he had lost himself in the study of them and in the depths of the girl's eyes. She meant no harm; the man interested her beyond what was reasonable in one of his station in life. That was all, and all there ever was. Presently people began to gossip, and a story crept round that, in a new shed which he had built behind his shop, Francois was chiselling out of stone the nude figure of a woman. There were one or two who professed they had seen it. The wildest gossip said that the figure was that of the young lady at the Seigneury. Francois saw no more of Jeanne Marchand; he thought of her sometimes, but that was all. A fever of work was on him. Twice she came to the shed where he laboured, and knocked at the door. The first time, he asked who was there. When she told him he opened the door just a little way, smiled at her, caught her hand and pressed it, and, when she would have entered, said: "No, no, another day, Jeanne," and shut the door in her face. She almost hated him because he had looked so happy. Still another day she came knocking. She called to him, and this time he opened the door and admitted her. That very hour she had heard again the story of the nude stone woman in the shed, and her heart was full of jealousy, fury, and suspicion. He was very quiet, he seemed tired. She did not notice that. Her heart had throbbed wildly as she stepped inside the shed. She looked round, all delirious eagerness for the nude figure. There it was, covered up with a great canvas! Yes, there were the outlines of the figure. How shapely it seemed, even inside the canvas! She stepped forward without a word, and snatched at the covering. He swiftly interposed and stopped her hand. "I will see it," she said. "Not to-day," he answered. "I tell you I will." She wrenched her hand free and caught at the canvas. A naked foot and ankle showed. He pinioned her wrists with one hand and drew her towards the door, determination and anger in his face. "You beast, you liar!" she said. "You beast! beast! beast!" Then, with a burst of angry laughter, she opened the door herself. "You ain't fit to know," she said; "they told the truth about you. Now you can take the canvas off her. Good-bye!" With that she was gone. The following day was Sunday. Francois did not attend Mass, and such strange scandalous reports had reached the Cure that he was both disturbed and indignant. That afternoon, after vespers (which Francois did not attend), the Cure made his way to the sculptor's workshop, followed by a number of parishioners. The crowd increased, and when the Cure knocked at the door it seemed as if half the village was there. The chief witness against Francois had been Jeanne Marchand. That very afternoon she had told the Cure, with indignation and bitterness, that there was no doubt about it; all that had been said was true. Francois, with wonder and some confusion, admitted the Cure. When M. Fabre demanded that he be taken to the new workshop, Francois led the way. The crowd pushed after, and presently the place was full. A hundred eyes were fastened upon the canvas-covered statue, which had been the means of the young man's undoing. Terrible things had been said--terrible things of Francois, and of the girl at the Seigneury. They knew the girl for a Protestant and an Englishwoman, and that in itself was a sort of sin. And now every ear was alert to hear what the Cure should say, what denunciation should come from his lips when the covering was removed. For that it should be removed was the determination of every man present. Virtue was at its supreme height in Pontiac that day. Lajeunesse the blacksmith, Muroc the charcoal-man, and twenty others were as intent upon preserving a high standard of morality, by force of arms, as if another Tarquin were harbouring shame and crime in this cedar shed. The whole thing came home to Francois with a choking, smothering force. Art, now in its very birth in his heart and life, was to be garroted. He had been unconscious of all the wicked things said about him: now he knew all! "Remove the canvas from the figure," said the Cure sternly. Stubbornness and resentment filled Francois's breast. He did not stir. "Do you oppose the command of the Church?" said the Cure, still more severely. "Remove the canvas." "It is my work--my own: my idea, my stone, and the labour of my hands," said Francois doggedly. The Cure turned to Lajeunesse and made a motion towards the statue. Lajeunesse, with a burning righteous joy, snatched off the canvas. There was one instant of confusion in the faces of all-of absolute silence. Then the crowd gasped. The Cure's hat came off, and every other hat followed. The Cure made the sign of the cross upon his breast and forehead, and every other man, woman, and child present did the same. Then all knelt, save Francois and the Cure himself. What they saw was a statue of Christ, a beautiful benign figure; barefooted, with a girdle about his waist: the very truth and semblance of a man. The type was strong and yet delicate; vigorous and yet refined; crude and yet noble; a leader of men--the God-man, not the man-God. After a moment's silence the Cure spoke. "Francois, my son," said he, "we have erred. 'All we like sheep have gone astray; we have followed each after his own way, but God hath laid on Him'--he looked towards the statue--'the iniquity of us all.'" Francois stood still a moment gazing at the Cure, doggedly, bitterly; then he turned and looked scornfully at the crowd, now risen to their feet again. Among them was a girl crying as if her heart would break. It was Jeanne Marchand. He regarded her coldly. "You were so ready to suspect," he said. Then he turned once more to the Cure. "I meant it as my gift to the Church, monsieur le Cure--to Pontiac, where I was born again. I waked up here to what I might do in sculpture, and you--you all were so ready to suspect! Take it, it is my last gift." He went to the statue, touched the hands of it lovingly, and stooped and kissed the feet. Then, without more words, he turned and left the shed and the house. Pouring out into the street the people watched him cross the bridge that led into another parish--and into another world: for from that hour Francois Lagarre was never seen in Pontiac. The statue that he made stands upon a little hill above the valley where the beaters of flax come in the autumn, through which the woodsmen pass in winter and in spring. But Francois Lagarre, under another name, works in another land. While the Cure lived he heard of him and of his fame now and then, and to the day of his death he always prayed for him. He was wont to say to the little Avocat whenever Francois's name was mentioned: "The spirit of a man will support him, but a wounded spirit who can bear?" ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: But a wounded spirit who can bear Man grows old only by what he suffers, and what he forgives You--you all were so ready to suspect THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING By Gilbert Parker Volume 3. THE TRAGIC COMEDY OF ANNETTE THE MARRIAGE OF THE MILLER MATHURIN THE STORY OF THE LIME-BURNER THE WOODSMAN'S STORY OF THE GREAT WHITE CHIEF UNCLE JIM THE HOUSE WITH THE TALL PORCH PARPON THE DWARF THE TRAGIC COMEDY OF ANNETTE The chest of drawers, the bed, the bedding, the pieces of linen, and the pile of yarn had been ready for many months. Annette had made inventory of them every day since the dot was complete--at first with a great deal of pride, after a time more shyly and wistfully: Benoit did not come. He had said he would be down with the first drive of logs in the summer, and at the little church of St. Saviour's they would settle everything and get the Cure's blessing. Almost anybody would have believed in Benoit. He had the brightest scarf, the merriest laugh, the quickest eyes, and the blackest head in Pontiac; and no one among the river drivers could sing like him. That was, he said gaily, because his earrings were gold, and not brass like those of his comrades. Thus Benoit was a little vain, and something more; but old ladies such as the Little Chemist's wife said he was galant. Probably only Medallion the auctioneer and the Cure did not lose themselves in the general admiration; they thought he was to Annette like a farthing dip to a holy candle. Annette was the youngest of twelve, and one of a family of thirty-for some of her married brothers and sisters and their children lived in her father's long white house' by the river. When Benoit failed to come in the spring, they showed their pity for her by abusing him; and when she pleaded for him they said things which had an edge. They ended by offering to marry her to Farette, the old miller, to whom they owed money for flour. They brought Farette to the house at last, and she was patient while he ogled her, and smoked his strong tabac, and tried to sing. She was kind to him, and said nothing until, one day, urged by her brother Solime, he mumbled the childish chanson Benoit sang the day he left, as he passed their house going up the river: "High in a nest of the tam'rac tree, Swing under, so free, and swing over; Swing under the sun and swing over the world, My snow-bird, my gay little lover My gay little lover, don, don! . . . don, don! "When the winter is done I will come back home, To the nest swinging under and over, Swinging under and over and waiting for me, Your rover, my snow-bird, your rover-- Your lover and rover, don, don! . . . don, don!" It was all very well in the mouth of the sprightly, sentimental Benoit; it was hateful foolishness in Farette. Annette now came to her feet suddenly, her pale face showing defiance, and her big brown eyes flicking anger. She walked up to the miller and said: "You are old and ugly and a fool. But I do not hate you; I hate Solime, my brother, for bringing you here. There is the bill for the flour? Well, I will pay it myself--and you can go as soon as you like." Then she put on her coat and capote and mittens, and went to the door. "Where are you going, Ma'm'selle?" cried Solime, in high rage. "I am going to M'sieu' Medallion," she said. Hard profane words followed her, but she ran, and never stopped till she came to Medallion's house. He was not there. She found him at the Little Chemist's. That night a pony and cart took away from the house of Annette's father the chest of drawers, the bed, the bedding, the pieces of linen, and the pile of yarn which had been made ready so long against Benoit's coming. Medallion had said he could sell them at once, and he gave her the money that night; but this was after he had had a talk with the Cure, to whom Annette had told all. Medallion said he had been able to sell the things at once; but he did not tell her that they were stored in a loft of the Little Chemist's house, and that the Little Chemist's wife had wept over them and carried the case to the shrine of the Blessed Virgin. It did not matter that the father and brothers stormed. Annette was firm; the dot was hers, and she would do as she wished. She carried the money to the miller. He took it grimly and gave her a receipt, grossly mis-spelled, and, as she was about to go, brought his fist heavily down on his leg and said: "Mon Dieu, it is brave--it is grand--it is an angel." Then he chuckled: "So, so! It was true. I am old, ugly, and a fool. Eh, well, I have my money!" Then he took to counting it over in his hand, forgetting her, and she left him growling gleefully over it. She had not a happy life, but her people left her alone, for the Cure had said stern things to them. All during the winter she went out fishing every day at a great hole in the ice--bitter cold work, and fit only for a man; but she caught many fish, and little by little laid aside pennies to buy things to replace what she had sold. It had been a hard trial to her to sell them. But for the kind-hearted Cure she would have repined. The worst thing happened, however, when the ring Benoit had given her dropped from her thin finger into the water where she was fishing. Then a shadow descended on her, and she grew almost unearthly in the anxious patience of her face. The Little Chemist's wife declared that the look was death. Perhaps it would have been if Medallion had not sent a lad down to the bottom of the river and got the ring. He gave it to the Cure, who put it on her finger one day after confession. Then she brightened, and waited on and on patiently. She waited for seven years. Then the deceitful Benoit came pensively back to her, a cripple from a timber accident. She believed what he told her; and that was where her comedy ended and her tragedy began. THE MARRIAGE OF THE MILLER Medallion put it into his head on the day that Benoit and Annette were married. "See," said Medallion, "Annette wouldn't have you--and quite right--and she took what was left of that Benoit, who'll laugh at you over his mush-and-milk." "Benoit will want flour some day, with no money." The old man chuckled and rubbed his hands. "That's nothing; he has the girl--an angel!" "Good enough, that is what I said of her--an angel!" "Get married yourself, Farette." For reply Farette thrust a bag of native tabac into Medallion's hands. Then they went over the names of the girls in the village. Medallion objected to those for whom he wished a better future, but they decided at last on Julie Lachance, who, Medallion thought, would in time profoundly increase Farette's respect for the memory of his first wife; for Julie was not an angel. Then the details were ponderously thought out by the miller, and ponderously acted upon, with the dry approval of Medallion, who dared not tell the Cure of his complicity, though he was without compunction. He had a sense of humour, and knew there could be no tragedy in the thing--for Julie. But the miller was a careful man and original in his methods. He still possessed the wardrobe of the first wife, thoughtfully preserved by his sister, even to the wonderful grey watered-poplin which had been her wedding-dress. These he had taken out, shaken free of cayenne, camphor, and lavender, and sent upon the back of Parpon, the dwarf, to the house where Julie lodged (she was an orphan), following himself with a statement on brown paper, showing the extent of his wealth, and a parcel of very fine flour from the new stones in his mill. All was spread out, and then he made a speech, describing his virtues, and condoning his one offence of age by assuring her that every tooth in his head was sound. This was merely the concession of politeness, for he thought his offer handsome. Julie slyly eyed the wardrobe and as slyly smiled, and then, imitating Farette's manner--though Farette could not see it, and Parpon spluttered with laughter--said: "M'sieu', you are a great man. The grey poplin is noble, also the flour, and the writing on the brown paper. M'sieu', you go to Mass, and all your teeth are sound; you have a dog-churn, also three feather-beds, and five rag carpets; you have sat on the grand jury. "M'sieu', I have a dot; I accept you. M'sieu', I will keep the brown paper, and the grey poplin, and the flour." Then with a grave elaborate bow, "M'sieu'!" That was the beginning and end of the courtship. For though Farette came every Sunday evening and smoked by the fire, and looked at Julie as she arranged the details of her dowry, he only chuckled, and now and again struck his thigh and said: "Mon Dieu, the ankle, the eye, the good child, Julie, there!" Then he would fall to thinking and chuckling again. One day he asked her to make him some potato-cakes of the flour he had given her. Her answer was a catastrophe. She could not cook; she was even ignorant of buttermilk-pudding. He went away overwhelmed, but came back some days afterwards and made another speech. He had laid his plans before Medallion, who approved of them. He prefaced the speech by placing the blank marriage certificate on the table. Then he said that his first wife was such a cook, that when she died he paid for an extra Mass and twelve very fine candles. He called upon Parpon to endorse his words, and Parpon nodded to all he said, but, catching Julie's eye, went off into gurgles of laughter, which he pretended were tears, by smothering his face in his capote. "Ma'm'selle," said the miller, "I have thought. Some men go to the Avocat or the Cure with great things; but I have been a pilgrimage, I have sat on the grand jury. There, Ma'm'selle!" His chest swelled, he blew out his cheeks, he pulled Parpon's ear as Napoleon pulled Murat's. "Ma'm'selle, allons! Babette, the sister of my first wife-ah! she is a great cook also--well, she was pouring into my plate the soup--there is nothing like pea-soup with a fine lump of pork, and thick molasses for the buckwheat cakes. Ma'm'selle, allons! Just then I thought. It is very good; you shall see; you shall learn how to cook. Babette will teach you. Babette said many things. I got mad and spilt the soup. Ma'm'selle--eh, holy, what a turn has your waist!" At length he made it clear to her what his plans were, and to each and all she consented; but when he had gone she sat and laughed till she cried, and for the hundredth time took out the brown paper and studied the list of Farette's worldly possessions. The wedding-day came. Julie performed her last real act of renunciation when, in spite of the protests of her friends, she wore the grey watered- poplin, made modern by her own hands. The wedding-day was the anniversary of Farette's first marriage, and the Cure faltered in the exhortation when he saw that Farette was dressed in complete mourning, even to the crape hat-streamers, as he said, out of respect for the memory of his first wife, and as a kind of tribute to his second. At the wedding-breakfast, where Medallion and Parpon were in high glee, Farette announced that he would take the honeymoon himself, and leave his wife to learn cooking from old Babette. So he went away alone cheerfully, with hymeneal rice falling in showers on his mourning garments; and his new wife was as cheerful as he, and threw rice also. She learned how to cook, and in time Farette learned that he had his one true inspiration when he wore mourning at his second marriage. MATHURIN The tale was told to me in the little valley beneath Dalgrothe Mountain one September morning. Far and near one could see the swinging of the flail, and the laughter of a ripe summer was upon the land. There was a little Calvary down by the riverside, where the flax-beaters used to say their prayers in the intervals of their work; and it was just at the foot of this that Angele Rouvier, having finished her prayer, put her rosary in her pocket, wiped her eyes with the hem of her petticoat, and said to me: "Ah, dat poor Mathurin, I wipe my tears for him!" "Tell me all about him, won't you, Madame Angele? I want to hear you tell it," I added hastily, for I saw that she would despise me if I showed ignorance of Mathurin's story. Her sympathy with Mathurin's memory was real, but her pleasure at the compliment I paid her was also real. "Ah! It was ver' longtime ago--yes. My gran'mudder she remember dat Mathurin ver' well. He is not ver' big man. He has a face-oh, not ver' handsome, not so more handsome as yours--non. His clothes, dey hang on him all loose; his hair, it is all some grey, and it blow about him head. He is clean to de face, no beard--no, nosing like dat. But his eye--la, M'sieu', his eye! It is like a coal which you blow in your hand, whew! --all bright. My gran'mudder, she say, 'Voila, you can light your pipe with de eyes of dat Mathurin!' She know. She say dat M'sieu' Mathurin's eyes dey shine in de dark. My gran'fadder he say he not need any lights on his cariole when Mathurin ride with him in de night. "Ah, sure! it is ver' true what I tell you all de time. If you cut off Mathurin at de chin, all de way up, you will say de top of him it is a priest. All de way down from his neck, oh, he is just no better as yoursel' or my Jean--non. He is a ver' good man. Only one bad ting he do. Dat is why I pray for him; dat is why everybody pray for him--only one bad ting. Sapristi!--if I have only one ting to say God-have-mercy for, I tink dat ver' good; I do my penance happy. Well, dat Mathurin him use to teach de school. De Cure he ver' fond of him. All de leetla children, boys and girls, dey all say: 'C'est bon Mathurin!' He is not ver' cross--non. He have no wife, no child; jes live by himself all alone. But he is ver' good friends with everybody in Pontiac. When he go 'long de street, everybody say, 'Ah, dere go de good Mathurin!' He laugh, he tell story, he smoke leetla tabac, he take leetla white wine behin' de door; dat is nosing--non. "He have in de parish five, ten, twenty children all call Mathurin; he is godfadder with dem--yes. So he go about with plenty of sugar and sticks of candy in his pocket. He never forget once de age of every leetla child dat call him godfadder. He have a brain dat work like a clock. My gran'fadder he say dat Mathurin have a machine in his head. It make de words, make de thoughts, make de fine speech like de Cure, make de gran' poetry--oh, yes! "When de King of Englan' go to sit on de throne, Mathurin write ver' nice verse to him. And by-and-by dere come to Mathurin a letter--voila, dat is a letter! It have one, two, three, twenty seals; and de King he say to Mathurin: 'Merci mille fois, m'sieu'; you are ver' polite. I tank you. I will keep your verses to tell me dat my French subjects are all loyal like M. Mathurin.' Dat is ver' nice, but Mathurin is not proud-- non. He write six verses for my granmudder--hein? Dat is something. He write two verses for de King of Englan' and he write six verses for my granmudder--you see! He go on so, dis week, dat week, dis year, dat year, all de time. "Well, by-and-by dere is trouble on Pontiac. It is ver' great trouble. You see dere is a fight 'gainst de King of Englan', and dat is too bad. It is not his fault; he is ver' nice man; it is de bad men who make de laws for de King in Quebec. Well, one day all over de country everybody take him gun, and de leetla bullets, and say, I will fight de soldier of de King of Englan'--like dat. Ver' well, dere was twenty men in Pontiac, ver' nice men--you will find de names cut in a stone on de church; and den, three times as big, you will find Mathurin's name. Ah, dat is de ting! You see, dat rebellion you English call it, we call it de War of de Patriot--de first War of de Patriot, not de second-well, call it what you like, quelle difference? The King of Englan' smash him Patriot War all to pieces. Den dere is ten men of de twenty come back to Pontiac ver' sorry. Dey are not happy, nobody are happy. All de wives, dey cry; all de children, dey are afraid. Some people say, What fools you are; others say, You are no good; but everybody in him heart is ver' sorry all de time. "Ver' well, by-and-by dere come to Pontiac what you call a colonel with a dozen men--what for, you tink? To try de patriots. He will stan' dem against de wall and shoot dem to death--kill dem dead. When dey come, de Cure he is not in Pontiac--non, not dat day; he is gone to anudder village. De English soldier he has de ten men drew up before de church. All de children and all de wives dey cry and cry, and dey feel so bad. Certainlee, it is a pity. But de English soldier he say he will march dem off to Quebec, and everybody know dat is de end of de patriots. "All at once de colonel's horse it grow ver' wild, it rise up high, and dance on him hind feet, and--voila! he topple him over backwards, and de horse fall on de colonel and smaish him--smaish him till he go to die. Ver' well; de colonel, what does he do? Dey lay him on de steps of de church. Den he say: 'Bring me a priest, quick, for I go to die.' Nobody answer. De colonel he say: 'I have a hunder sins all on my mind; dey are on my heart like a hill. Bring to me de priest,'--he groan like dat. Nobody speak at first; den somebody say de priest is not here. 'Find me a priest,' say de colonel; 'find me a priest.' For he tink de priest will not come, becos' he go to kill de patriots. 'Bring me a priest,' he say again, 'and all de ten shall go free.' He say it over and over. He is smaish to pieces, but his head is all right. All at once de doors of de church open behin' him--what you tink! Everybody's heart it stan' still, for dere is Mathurin dress as de priest, with a leetla boy to swing de censer. Everybody say to himself, What is dis? Mathurin is dress as de priest-ah! dat is a sin. It is what you call blaspheme. "The English soldier he look up at Mathurin and say: 'Ah, a priest at last--ah, M'sieu' le Cure, comfort me!' "Mathurin look down on him and say: 'M'sieu', it is for you to confess your sins, and to have de office of de Church. But first, as you have promise just now, you must give up dese poor men, who have fight for what dey tink is right. You will let dem go free dis women'?'" 'Yes, yes,' say de English colonel; 'dey shall go free. Only give me de help of de Church at my last.' "Mathurin turn to de other soldiers and say: 'Unloose de men.' "De colonel nod his head and say: 'Unloose de men.' Den de men are unloose, and dey all go away, for Mathurin tell dem to go quick. "Everybody is ver' 'fraid becos' of what Mathurin do. Mathurin he say to de soldiers: 'Lift him up and bring him in de church.' Dey bring him up to de steps of de altar. Mathurin look at de man for a while, and it seem as if he cannot speak to him; but de colonel say: 'I have give you my word. Give me comfort of de Church before I die.' He is in ver' great pain, so Mathurin he turn roun' to everybody dat stan' by, and tell dem to say de prayers for de sick. Everybody get him down on his knees and say de prayer. Everybody say: 'Lord have mercy. Spare him, O Lord; deliver him, O Lord, from Thy wrath!' And Mathurin he pray all de same as a priest, ver' soft and gentle. He pray on and on, and de face of de English soldier it get ver; quiet and still, and de tear drop down his cheek. And just as Mathurin say at de last his sins dey are forgive, he die. Den Mathurin, as he go away to take off his robes, he say to himself: 'Miserere mei Deus! miserere mei Deus!' "So dat is de ting dat Mathurin do to save de patriots from de bullets. Ver' well, de men dey go free, and when de Governor at Quebec he hear de truth, he say it is all right. Also de English soldier die in peace and happy, becos' he tink his sins are forgive. But den--dere is Mathurin and his sin to pretend he is a priest! The Cure he come back, and dere is a great trouble. "Mathurin he is ver' quiet and still. Nobody come near him in him house; nobody go near to de school. But he sit alone all day in de school, and he work on de blackboar' and he write on de slate; but dere is no child come, becos' de Cure has forbid any one to speak to Mathurin. Not till de next Sunday, den de Cure send for Mathurin to come to de church. Mathurin come to de steps of de altar; den de Cure say to him: "'Mathurin, you have sin a great sin. If it was two hunderd years ago you would be put to death for dat.' "Mathurin he say ver' soft: 'Dat is no matter. I am ready to die now. I did it to save de fadders of de children and de husbands of de wives. I do it to make a poor sinner happy as he go from de world. De sin is mine.' "Den de Cure he say: 'De men are free, dat is good; de wives have dere husbands and de children dere fadders. Also de man who confess his sins --de English soldier--to whom you say de words of a priest of God, he is forgive. De Spirit of God it was upon him when he die, becos' you speak in de name of de Church. But for you, blasphemer, who take upon you de holy ting, you shall suffer! For penance, all your life you shall teach a chile no more.' "Voila, M'sieu' le Cure he know dat is de greatest penance for de poor Mathurin! Den he set him other tings to do; and every month for a whole year Mathurin come on his knees all de way to de church, but de Cure say: 'Not yet are you forgive.' At de end of de year Mathurin he look so thin, so white, you can blow through him. Every day he go to him school and write on de blackboar', and mark on de slate, and call de roll of de school. But dere is no answer, for dere is no children. But all de time de wives of de men dat he have save, and de children, dey pray for him. And by-and-by all de village pray for him, so sorry. "It is so for two years; and den dey say dat Mathurin he go to die. He cannot come on his knees to de church; and de men whose life he save, dey come to de Cure and ask him to take de penance from Mathurin. De Cure say: 'Wait till nex' Sunday.' So nex' Sunday Mathurin is carry to de church--he is too weak to walk on his knees. De Cure he stan' at de altar, and he read a letter from de Pope, which say dat Mathurin his penance is over, and he is forgive; dat de Pope himself pray for Mathurin, to save his soul. So "Mathurin, all at once he stan' up, and his face it smile and smile, and he stretch out his arms as if dey are on a cross, and he say, 'Lord, I am ready to go,' and he fall down. But de Cure catch him as he fall, and Mathurin say: 'De children--let dem come to me dat I teach dem before I die.' And all de children in de church dey come close to him, and he sit up and smile at dem, and he say: "'It is de class in 'rithmetic. How much is three times four?' And dem all answer: 'T'ree times four is twelve.' And he say: 'May de Twelve Apostles pray for me!' Den he ask: 'Class in geography--how far is it roun' de world?' And dey answer: 'Twenty-four t'ousand miles.' He say: 'Good; it is not so far to God! De school is over all de time,' he say. And dat is only everything of poor Mathurin. He is dead. "When de Cure lay him down, after he make de Sign upon him, he kiss his face and say: 'Mathurin, now you are a priest unto God.'" That was Angele Rouvier's story of Mathurin, the Master of the School, for whom the women and the children pray in the parish of Pontiac, though the school has been dismissed these hundred years and more. THE STORY OF THE LIME-BURNER For a man in whose life there had been tragedy he was cheerful. He had a habit of humming vague notes in the silence of conversation, as if to put you at your ease. His body and face were lean and arid, his eyes oblique and small, his hair straight and dry and straw-coloured; and it flew out crackling with electricity, to meet his cap as he put it on. He lived alone in a little but near his lime-kiln by the river, with no near neighbours, and few companions save his four dogs; and these he fed sometimes at expense of his own stomach. He had just enough crude poetry in his nature to enjoy his surroundings. For he was well placed. Behind the lime-kiln rose knoll on knoll, and beyond these the verdant hills, all converging to Dalgrothe Mountain. In front of it was the river, with its banks dropping forty feet, and below, the rapids, always troubled and sportive. On the farther side of the river lay peaceful areas of meadow and corn land, and low-roofed, hovering farm-houses, with one larger than the rest, having a wind-mill and a flag-staff. This building was almost large enough for a manor, and indeed it was said that it had been built for one just before the conquest in 1759, but the war had destroyed the ambitious owner, and it had become a farm-house. Paradis always knew the time of the day by the way the light fell on the wind-mill. He had owned this farm once, he and his brother Fabian, and he had loved it as he loved Fabian, and he loved it now as he loved Fabian's memory. In spite of all, they were cheerful memories, both of brother and house. At twenty-three they had become orphans, with two hundred acres of land, some cash, horses and cattle, and plenty of credit in the parish, or in the county, for that matter. Both were of hearty dispositions, but Fabian had a taste for liquor, and Henri for pretty faces and shapely ankles. Yet no one thought the worse of them for that, especially at first. An old servant kept house for them and cared for them in her honest way, both physically and morally. She lectured them when at first there was little to lecture about. It is no wonder that when there came a vast deal to reprove, the bonne desisted altogether, overwhelmed by the weight of it. Henri got a shock the day before their father died when he saw Fabian lift the brandy used to mix with the milk of the dying man, and pouring out the third of a tumbler, drink it off, smacking his lips as he did so, as though it were a cordial. That gave him a cue to his future and to Fabian's. After their father died Fabian gave way to the vice. He drank in the taverns, he was at once the despair and the joy of the parish; for, wild as he was, he had a gay temper, a humorous mind, a strong arm, and was the universal lover. The Cure, who did not, of course, know one- fourth of his wildness, had a warm spot for him in his heart. But there was a vicious strain in him somewhere, and it came out one day in a perilous fashion. There was in the hotel of the Louis Quinze an English servant from the west, called Nell Barraway. She had been in a hotel in Montreal, and it was there Fabian had seen her as she waited at table. She was a splendid-looking creature--all life and energy, tall, fair-haired, and with a charm above her kind. She was also an excellent servant, could do as much as any two women in any house, and was capable of more airy diablerie than any ten of her sex in Pontiac. When Fabian had said to her in Montreal that he would come to see her again, he told her where he lived. She came to see him instead, for she wrote to the landlord of the Louis Quinze, enclosed fine testimonials, and was at once engaged. Fabian was stunned when he entered the Louis Quinze and saw her waiting at table, alert, busy, good to behold. She nodded at him with a quick smile as he stood bewildered just inside the door, then said in English: "This way, m'sieu'." As he sat down he said in English also, with a laugh and with snapping eyes: "Good Lord, what brings you here, lady-bird?" As she pushed a chair under him she whispered through his hair: "You!" and then was gone away to fetch pea-soup for six hungry men. The Louis Quinze did more business now in three months than it had done before in six. But it became known among a few in Pontiac that Nell was notorious. How it had crept up from Montreal no one guessed, and, when it did come, her name was very intimately associated with Fabian's. No one could say that she was not the most perfect of servants, and also no one could say that her life in Pontiac had not been exemplary. Yet wise people had made up their minds that she was determined to marry Fabian, and the wisest declared that she would do so in spite of everything-- religion (she was a Protestant), character, race. She was clever, as the young Seigneur found, as the little Avocat was forced to admit, as the Cure allowed with a sigh, and she had no airs of badness at all and very little of usual coquetry. Fabian was enamoured, and it was clear that he intended to bring the woman to the Manor one way or another. Henri admitted the fascination of the woman, felt it, despaired, went to Montreal, got proof of her career, came back, and made his final and only effort to turn his brother from the girl. He had waited an hour outside the hotel for his brother, and when Fabian got in, he drove on without a word. After a while, Fabian, who was in high spirits, said: "Open your mouth, Henri. Come along, sleepyhead." Straightway he began to sing a rollicking song, and Henri joined in with him heartily, for the spirit of Fabian's humour was contagious: "There was a little man, The foolish Guilleri Carabi. He went unto the chase, Of partridges the chase. Carabi. Titi Carabi, Toto Carabo, You're going to break your neck, My lovely Guilleri!" He was about to begin another verse when Henri stopped him, saying: "You're going to break your neck, Fabian." "What's up, Henri?" was the reply. "You're drinking hard, and you don't keep good company." Fabian laughed. "Can't get the company I want, so what I can get I have, Henri, my lad." "Don't drink." Henri laid his freehand on Fabian's knee. "Whiskey-wine is meat and drink to me--I was born on New Year's Day, old coffin-face. Whiskey-wine day, they ought to call it. Holy! the empty jars that day." Henri sighed. "That's the drink, Fabian," he said patiently. "Give up the company. I'll be better company for you than that girl, Fabian." "Girl? What the devil do you mean!" "She, Nell Barraway, was the company I meant, Fabian." "Nell Barraway--you mean her? Bosh! I'm going to marry her, Henri." "You mustn't, Fabian," said Henri, eagerly clutching Fabian's sleeve. "But I must, my Henri. She's the best-looking, wittiest girl I ever saw --splendid. Never lonely with her." "Looks and brains isn't everything, Fabian." "Isn't it, though? Isn't it? Tiens, you try it!" "Not without goodness." Henri's voice weakened. "That's bosh. Of course it is, Henri, my dear. If you love a woman, if she gets hold of you, gets into your blood, loves you so that the touch of her fingers sets your pulses going pom-pom, you don't care a sou whether she is good or not." "You mean whether she was good or not?" "No, I don't. I mean is good or not. For if she loves you she'll travel straight for your sake. Pshaw, you don't know anything about it!" "I know all about it." "Know all about it! You're in love--you?" "Yes." Fabian sat open-mouthed for a minute. "Godam!" he said. It was his one English oath. "Is she good company?" he asked after a minute. "She's the same as you keep--voila, the same." "You mean Nell--Nell?" asked Fabian, in a dry, choking voice. "Yes, Nell. From the first time I saw her. But I'd cut my hand off first. I'd think of you; of our people that have been here for two hundred years; of the rooms in the old house where mother used to be." Fabian laughed nervously. "Holy heaven, and you've got her in your blood, too!" "Yes, but I'd never marry her. Fabian, at Montreal I found out all about her. She was as bad--" "That's nothing to me, Henri," said Fabian, "but something else is. Here you are now. I'll make a bargain." His face showed pale in the moonlight. "If you'll drink with me, do as I do, go where I go, play the devil when I play it, and never squeal, never hang back, I'll give her up. But I've got to have you--got to have you all the time, everywhere, hunting, drinking, or letting alone. You'll see me out, for you're stronger, had less of it. I'm soon for the little low house in the grass. Stop the horses." Henri stopped them and they got out. They were just opposite the lime- kiln, and they had to go a few hundred yards before they came to the bridge to cross the river to their home. The light of the fire shone in their faces as Fabian handed the flask to Henri, and said: "Let's drink to it, Henri. You half, and me half." He was deadly pale. Henri drank to the finger-mark set, and then Fabian lifted the flask to his lips. "Good-bye, Nell!" he said. "Here's to the good times we've had!" He emptied the flask, and threw it over the bank into the burning lime, and Garotte, the old lime-burner, being half asleep, did not see or hear. The next day the two went on a long hunting expedition, and the following month Nell Barraway left for Montreal. Henri kept to his compact, drink for drink, sport for sport. One year the crops were sold before they were reaped, horses and cattle went little by little, then came mortgage, and still Henri never wavered, never weakened, in spite of the Cure and all others. The brothers were always together, and never from first to last did Henri lose his temper, or openly lament that ruin was coming surely on them. What money Fabian wanted he got. The Cure's admonitions availed nothing, for Fabian would go his gait. The end came on the very spot where the compact had been made; for, passing the lime-kiln one dark night, as the two rode home together, Fabian's horse shied, the bank of the river gave way, and with a startled "Ah, Henri!" the profligate and his horse were gone into the river below. Next month the farm and all were sold, Henri Paradis succeeded the old lime-burner at his post, drank no more ever, and lived his life in sight of the old home. THE WOODSMAN'S STORY OF THE GREAT WHITE CHIEF The old woodsman shifted the knife with which he was mending his fishing- rod from one hand to the other, and looked at it musingly, before he replied to Medallion. "Yes, m'sieu', I knew the White Chief, as they called him: this was his"--holding up the knife; "and this"--taking a watch from his pocket. "He gave them to me; I was with him in the Circle on the great journey." "Tell us about him, then," Medallion urged; "for there are many tales, and who knows which is the right one?" "The right one is mine. Holy, he was to me like a father then! I know more of the truth than any one." He paused a moment, looking out on the river where the hot sun was playing with all its might, then took off his cap with deliberation, laid it beside him, and speaking as it were into the distance, began: "He once was a trader of the Hudson's Bay Company. Of his birth some said one thing, some another; I know he was beaucoup gentil, and his heart, it was a lion's! Once, when there was trouble with the Chipp'ways, he went alone to their camp, and say he will fight their strongest man, to stop the trouble. He twist the neck of the great fighting man of the tribe, so that it go with a snap, and that ends it, and he was made a chief, for, you see, in their hearts they all hated their strong man. Well, one winter there come down to Fort o' God two Esquimaux, and they say that three white men are wintering by the Coppermine River; they had travel down from the frozen seas when their ship was lock in the ice, but can get no farther. They were sick with the evil skin, and starving. The White Chief say to me: 'Galloir, will you go to rescue them?' I would have gone with him to the ends of the world--and this was near one end." The old man laughed to himself, tossed his jet-black hair from his wrinkled face, and after a moment, went on: "There never was such a winter as that. The air was so still by times that you can hear the rustle of the stars and the shifting of the northern lights; but the cold at night caught you by the heart and clamp it--Mon Dieu, how it clamp! We crawl under the snow and lay in our bags of fur and wool, and the dogs hug close to us. We were sorry for the dogs; and one died, and then another, and there is nothing so dreadful as to hear the dogs howl in the long night--it is like ghosts crying in an empty world. The circle of the sun get smaller and smaller, till he only tramp along the high edge of the north-west. We got to the river at last and found the camp. There is one man dead--only one; but there were bones--ah, m'sieu', you not guess what a thing it is to look upon the bones of men, and know that--!" Medallion put his hand on the old man's arm. "Wait a minute," he said. Then he poured out coffee for both, and they drank before the rest was told. "It's a creepy story," said Medallion, "but go on." "Well, the White Chief look at the dead man as he sit there in the snow, with a book and a piece of paper beside him, and the pencil in the book. The face is bent forward to the knees. The White Chief pick up the book and pencil, and then kneel down and gaze up in the dead man's face, all hard like stone and crusted with frost. I thought he would never stir again, he look so long. I think he was puzzle. Then he turn and say to me: 'So quiet, so awful, Galloir!' and got up. Well, but it was cold then, and my head seemed big and running about like a ball of air. But I light a spirit-lamp, and make some coffee, and he open the dead man's book--it is what they call a diary--and begin to read. All at once I hear a cry, and I see him drop the book on the ground, and go to the dead man, and jerk his fist as if to strike him in the face. But he did not strike." Galloir stopped, and lighted his pipe, and was so long silent that Medallion had to jog him into speaking. He puffed the smoke so that his face was in the cloud, and he said through it: "No, he did not strike. He get to his feet and spoke: 'God forgive her!' like that, and come and take up the book again, and read. He eat and drunk, and read the book again, and I know by his face that something more than cold was clamp his heart. "'Shall we bury him in the snow?' I say. 'No,' he spoke, 'let him sit there till the Judgmen'. This is a wonderful book, Galloir,' he went on. 'He was a brave man, but the rest--the rest!'--then under his breath almost: 'She was so young--but a child.' I not understand that. We start away soon, leaving the thing there. For four days, and then I see that the White Chief will never get back to Fort Pentecost; but he read the dead man's book much. . . ." "I cannot forget that one day. He lies down looking at the world-- nothing but the waves of snow, shining blue and white, on and on. The sun lift an eye of blood in the north, winking like a devil as I try to drive Death away by calling in his ear. He wake all at once; but his eyes seem asleep. He tell me to take the book to a great man in Montreal--he give me the name. Then he take out his watch--it is stop-- and this knife, and put them into my hands, and then he pat my shoulder. He motion to have the bag drawn over his head. I do it. . . . Of course that was the end!" "But what about the book?" Medallion asked. "That book? It is strange. I took it to the man in Montreal--tonnerre, what a fine house and good wine had he!--and told him all. He whip out a scarf, and blow his nose loud, and say very angry: 'So, she's lost both now! What a scoundrel he was! . . .' Which one did he mean? I not understan' ever since." UNCLE JIM He was no uncle of mine, but it pleased me that he let me call him Uncle Jim. It seems only yesterday that, for the first time, on a farm "over the border," from the French province, I saw him standing by a log outside the wood-house door, splitting maple knots. He was all bent by years and hard work, with muscles of iron, hands gnarled and lumpy, but clinching like a vise; grey head thrust forward on shoulders which had carried forkfuls of hay and grain, and leaned to the cradle and the scythe, and been heaped with cordwood till they were like hide and metal; white straggling beard and red watery eyes, which, to me, were always hung with an intangible veil of mystery--though that, maybe, was my boyish fancy. Added to all this he was so very deaf that you had to speak clear and loud into his ear; and many people he could not hear at all, if their words were not sharp-cut, no matter how loud. A silent, withdrawn man he was, living close to Mother Earth, twin-brother of Labour, to whom Morning and Daytime were sounding-boards for his axe, scythe, saw, flail, and milking-pail, and Night a round hollow of darkness into which he crept, shutting the doors called Silence behind him, till the impish page of Toil came tapping again, and he stepped awkwardly into the working world once more. Winter and summer saw him putting the kettle on the fire a few minutes after four o'clock, in winter issuing with lantern from the kitchen door to the stable and barn to feed the stock; in summer sniffing the grey dawn and looking out on his fields of rye and barley, before he went to gather the cows for milking and take the horses to water. For forty years he and his worn-faced wife bowed themselves beneath the yoke, first to pay for the hundred-acre farm, and then to bring up and educate their seven children. Something noble in them gave them ambitions for their boys and girls which they had never had for themselves; but when had gone the forty years, in which the little farm had twice been mortgaged to put the eldest son through college as a doctor, they faced the bitter fact that the farm had passed from them to Rodney, the second son, who had come at last to keep a hotel in a town fifty miles away. Generous-hearted people would think that these grown- up sons and daughters should have returned the old people's long toil and care by buying up the farm and handing it back to them, their rightful refuge in the decline of life. But it was not so. They were tenants where they had been owners, dependants where they had been givers, slaves where once they were, masters. The old mother toiled without a servant, the old man without a helper, save in harvest time. But the great blow came when Rodney married the designing milliner who flaunted her wares opposite his bar-room; and, somehow, from the date of that marriage, Rodney's good fortune and the hotel declined. When he and his wife first visited the little farm after their marriage the old mother shrank away from the young woman's painted face, and ever afterwards an added sadness showed in her bearing and in her patient smile. But she took Rodney's wife through the house, showing her all there was to show, though that was not much. There was the little parlour with its hair-cloth chairs, rag carpet, centre table, and iron stove with black pipes, all gaily varnished. There was the parlour bedroom off it, with the one feather-bed of the house bountifully piled up with coarse home-made blankets, topped by a silk patchwork quilt, the artistic labour of the old wife's evening hours while Uncle Jim peeled apples and strung them to dry from the rafters. There was a room, dining-room in summer, and kitchen dining-room in winter, as clean as aged hands could scrub and dust it, hung about with stray pictures from illustrated papers, and a good old clock in the corner "ticking" life, and youth, and hope away. There was the buttery off that, with its meagre china and crockery, its window looking out on the field of rye, the little orchard of winter apples, and the hedge of cranberry bushes. Upstairs were rooms with no ceilings, where, lying on a corn-husk bed, you reached up and touched the sloping roof, with windows at the end only, facing the buckwheat field, and looking down two miles towards the main road--for the farm was on a concession or side-road, dusty in summer, and in winter sometimes impassable for weeks together. It was not much of a home, as any one with the mind's eye can see, but four stalwart men and three fine women had been born, raised, and quartered there, until, with good clothes, and speaking decent English and tolerable French, and with money in their pockets, hardly got by the old people, one by one they issued forth into the world. The old mother showed Rodney's wife what there was for eyes to see, not forgetting the three hives of bees on the south side, beneath the parlour window. She showed it with a kind of pride, for it all seemed good to her, and every dish, and every chair, and every corner in the little house had to her a glory of its own, because of those who had come and gone--the firstlings of her flock, the roses of her little garden of love, blooming now in a rougher air than ranged over the little house on the hill. She had looked out upon the pine woods to the east and the meadow-land to the north, the sweet valley between the rye-field and the orchard, and the good honest air that had blown there for forty years, bracing her heart and body for the battle of love and life, and she had said through all, Behold it is very good. But the pert milliner saw nothing of all this; she did not stand abashed in the sacred precincts of a home where seven times the Angel of Death had hovered over a birth-bed. She looked into the face which Time's finger had anointed, and motherhood had etched with trouble, and said: "'Tisn't much, is it? Only a clap-board house, and no ceilings upstairs, and rag carpets-pshaw!" And when she came to wash her hands for dinner, she threw aside the unscented, common bar-soap, and, shrugging her narrow shoulders at the coarse towel, wiped her fingers on her cambric handkerchief. Any other kind of a woman, when she saw the old mother going about with her twisted wrist--a doctor's bad work with a fracture--would have tucked up her dress, and tied on an apron to help. But no, she sat and preened herself with the tissue-paper sort of pride of a vain milliner, or nervously shifted about, lifting up this and that, curiously supercilious, her tongue rattling on to her husband and to his mother in a shallow, foolish way. She couldn't say, however, that any thing was out of order or ill- kept about the place. The old woman's rheumatic fingers made corners clean, and wood as white as snow, the stove was polished, the tins were bright, and her own dress, no matter what her work, neat as a girl's, although the old graceful poise of the body had twisted out of drawing. But the real crisis came when Rodney, having stood at the wood-house door and blown the dinner-horn as he used to do when a boy, the sound floating and crying away across the rye-field, the old man came--for, strange to say, that was the one sound he could hear easily, though, as he said to himself, it seemed as small as a pin, coming from ever so far away. He came heavily up from the barn-yard, mopping his red face and forehead, and now and again raising his hand to shade his eyes, concerned to see the unknown visitors, whose horse and buggy were in the stable-yard. He and Rodney greeted outside warmly enough, but there was some trepidation too in Uncle Jim's face--he felt trouble brewing; and there is no trouble like that which comes between parent and child. Silent as he was, however, he had a large and cheerful heart, and nodding his head he laughed the deep, quaint laugh which Rodney himself of all his sons had-- and he was fonder of Rodney than any. He washed his hands in the little basin outside the wood-house door, combed out his white beard, rubbed his red, watery eyes, tied a clean handkerchief round his neck, put on a rusty but clean old coat, and a minute afterwards was shaking hands for the first time with Rodney's wife. He had lived much apart from his kind, but he had a mind that fastened upon a thought and worked it down until it was an axiom. He felt how shallow was this thin, flaunting woman of flounces and cheap rouge; he saw her sniff at the brown sugar- she had always had white at the hotel; and he noted that she let Rodney's mother clear away and wash the dinner things herself. He felt the little crack of doom before it came. It came about three o'clock. He did not return to the rye-field after dinner, but stayed and waited to hear what Rodney had to say. Rodney did not tell his little story well, for he foresaw trouble in the old home; but he had to face this and all coming dilemmas as best he might. With a kind of shamefacedness, yet with an attempt to carry the thing off lightly, he told Uncle Jim, while, inside, his wife told the old mother, that the business of the hotel had gone to pot (he did not say who was the cause of that), and they were selling out to his partner and coming to live on the farm. "I'm tired anyway of the hotel job," said Rodney. "Farming's a better life. Don't you think so, dad?" "It's better for me, Rod," answered Uncle Jim, "it's better for me." Rodney was a little uneasy. "But won't it be better for me?" he asked. "Mebbe," was the slow answer, "mebbe, mebbe so." "And then there's mother, she's getting too old for the work, ain't she?" "She's done it straight along," answered the old man, "straight along till now." "But Millie can help her, and we'll have a hired girl, eh?" "I dunno, I dunno," was the brooding answer; "the place ain't going to stand it." "We'll get more out of it," answered Rodney. "I'll stock it up, I'll put more under barley. All the thing wants is working, dad. Put more in, get more out. Now ain't that right?" The other was looking off towards the rye-field, where, for forty years, up and down the hillside, he had travelled with the cradle and the scythe, putting all there was in him into it, and he answered, blinking along the avenue of the past: "Mebbe, mebbe!" Rodney fretted under the old man's vague replies, and said: "But darn it all, can't you tell us what you think?" His father did not take his eyes off the rye-field. "I'm thinking," he answered, in the same old-fashioned way, "that I've been working here since you were born, Rod. I've blundered along, somehow, just boggling my way through. I ain't got anything more to say. The farm ain't mine any more, but I'll keep my scythe sharp and my axe ground just as I always did, and I'm for workin' as I've always worked as long as I'm let to stay." "Good Lord, dad, don't talk that way! Things ain't going to be any different for you and mother than they are now. Only, of course--" He paused. The old man pieced out the sentence: "Only, of course, there can't be two women rulin' one house, Rod, and you know it as well as I do." Exactly how Rodney's wife told the old mother of the great change Rodney never'knew; but when he went back to the house the grey look in his mother's face told him more than her words ever told. Before they left that night the pink milliner had already planned the changes which were to celebrate her coming and her ruling. So Rodney and his wife came, all the old man prophesied in a few brief sentences to his wife proving true. There was no great struggle on the mother's part; she stepped aside from governing, and became as like a servant as could be. An insolent servant-girl came, and she and Rodney's wife started a little drama of incompetency, which should end as the hotel-keeping ended. Wastefulness, cheap luxury, tawdry living, took the place of the old, frugal, simple life. But the mother went about with that unchanging sweetness of face, and a body withering about a fretted soul. She had no bitterness, only a miserable distress. But every slight that was put upon her, every change, every new-fangled idea, from the white sugar to the scented soap and the yellow buggy, rankled in the old man's heart. He had resentment both for the old wife and himself, and he hated the pink milliner for the humiliation that she heaped upon them both. Rodney did not see one-fifth of it, and what he did see lost its force, because, strangely enough, he loved the gaudy wife who wore gloves on her bloodless hands as she did the house-work and spent numberless afternoons in trimming her own bonnets. Her peevishness grew apace as the newness of the experience wore off. Uncle Jim seldom spoke to her, as he seldom spoke to anybody, but she had an inkling of the rancour in his heart, and many a time she put blame upon his shoulders to her husband, when some unavoidable friction came. A year, two years, passed, which were as ten upon the shoulders of the old people, and then, in the dead of winter, an important thing happened. About the month of March Rodney's first child was expected. At the end of January Rodney had to go away, expecting to return in less than a month. But, in the middle of February, the woman's sacred trouble came before its time. And on that day there fell such a storm as had not been seen for many a year. The concession road was blocked before day had well set in; no horse could go ten yards in it. The nearest doctor was miles away at Pontiac, and for any man to face the journey was to connive with death. The old mother came to Uncle Jim, and, as she looked out of a little unfrosted spot on the window at the blinding storm, told him that the pink milliner would die. There seemed to be no other end to it, for the chances were a hundred to one against the strongest man making a journey for the doctor, and another hundred to one against the doctor's coming. No one knows whether Uncle Jim could hear the cries from the torture- chamber, but, after standing for a time mumbling to himself, he wrapped himself in a heavy coat, tied a muffler about his face, and went out. If they missed him they must have thought him gone to the barn, or in the drive-shed sharpening his axe. But the day went on and the old mother forgot all the wrongs that she had suffered, and yearned over the trivial woman who was hurrying out into the Great Space. Her hours seemed numbered at noon, her moments measured as it came towards sundown, but with the passing of the sun the storm stopped, and a beautiful white peace fell on the world of snow, and suddenly out of that peace came six men; and the first that opened the door was the doctor. After him came Uncle Jim, supported between two others. Uncle Jim had made the terrible journey, falling at last in the streets of the county town with frozen hands and feet, not a dozen rods from the doctor's door. They brought him to, he told his story, and, with the abating of the storm, the doctor and the villagers drove down to the concession road, and then made their way slowly up across the fields, carrying the old man with them, for he would not be left behind. An hour after the doctor entered the parlour bedroom the old mother came out to where the old man sat, bundled up beside the fire with bandaged hands and feet. "She's safe, Jim, and the child too," she said softly. The old man twisted in his chair, and blinked into the fire. "Dang my soul!" he said. The old woman stooped and kissed his grey tangled hair. She did not speak, and she did not ask him what he meant; but there and then they took up their lives again and lived them out. THE HOUSE WITH THE TALL PORCH No one ever visited the House except the Little Chemist, the Avocat, and Medallion; and Medallion, though merely an auctioneer, was the only person on terms of intimacy with its owner, the old Seigneur, who for many years had never stirred beyond the limits of his little garden. At rare intervals he might be seen sitting in the large stone porch which gave overweighted dignity to the house, itself not very large. An air of mystery surrounded the place: in summer the grass was rank, the trees seemed huddled together in gloom about the houses, the vines appeared to ooze on the walls, and at one end, where the window-shutters were always closed and barred, a great willow drooped and shivered; in winter the stone walls showed naked and grim among the gaunt trees and furtive shrubs. None who ever saw the Seigneur could forget him--a tall figure with stooping shoulders; a pale, deeply lined, clean-shaven face, and a forehead painfully white, with blue veins showing; the eyes handsome, penetrative, brooding, and made indescribably sorrowful by the dark skin around them. There were those in Pontiac, such as the Cure, who remembered when the Seigneur was constantly to be seen in the village; and then another person was with him always, a tall, handsome youth, his son. They were fond and proud of each other, and were religious and good citizens in a highbred, punctilious way. At that time the Seigneur was all health and stalwart strength. But one day a rumour went abroad that he had quarrelled with his son because of the wife of Farette the miller. No one outside knew if the thing was true, but Julie, the miller's wife, seemed rather to plume herself that she had made a stir in her little world. Yet the curious habitants came to know that the young man had gone, and after a few years his having once lived there had become a mere memory. But whenever the Little Chemist set foot inside the tall porch he remembered; the Avocat was kept in mind by papers which he was called upon to read and alter from time to time; the Cure never forgot, because when the young man went he lost not one of his flock but two; and Medallion, knowing something of the story, had wormed a deal of truth out of the miller's wife. Medallion knew that the closed, barred rooms were the young man's; and he knew also that the old man was waiting, waiting, in a hope which he never even named to himself. One day the silent old housekeeper came rapping at Medallion's door, and simply said to him: "Come--the Seigneur!" Medallion went, and for hours sat beside the Seigneur's chair, while the Little Chemist watched and sighed softly in a corner, now and again rising to feel the sick man's pulse or to prepare a cordial. The housekeeper hovered behind the high-backed chair, and when the Seigneur dropped his handkerchief--now, as always, of the exquisite fashion of a past century--she put it gently in his hand. Once when the Little Chemist touched his wrist, his dark eyes rested on him with inquiry, and he said: "Soon?" It was useless trying to shirk the persistency of that look. "Eight hours, perhaps, sir," the Little Chemist answered, with painful shyness. The Seigneur seemed to draw himself up a little, and his hand grasped his handkerchief tightly for an instant; then he said: "Soon. Thank you." After a little, his eyes turned to Medallion and he seemed about to speak, but still kept silent. His chin dropped on his breast, and for a time he was motionless and shrunken; but still there was a strange little curl of pride--or disdain--on his lips. At last he drew up his head, his shoulders came erect, heavily, to the carved back of the chair, where, strange to say, the Stations of the Cross were figured, and he said, in a cold, ironical voice: "The Angel of Patience has lied!" The evening wore on, and there was no sound, save the ticking of the clock, the beat of rain upon the windows, and the deep breathing of the Seigneur. Presently he started, his eyes opened wide, and his whole body seemed to listen. "I heard a voice," he said. "No one spoke, my master," said the housekeeper. "It was a voice without," he said. "Monsieur," said the Little Chemist, "it was the wind in the eaves." His face was almost painfully eager and sensitively alert. "Hush!" he said; "I hear a voice in the tall porch." "Sir," said Medallion, laying a hand respectfully on his arm, "it is nothing." With a light on his face and a proud, trembling energy, he got to his feet. "It is the voice of my son," he said. "Go--go, and bring him in." No one moved. But he was not to be disobeyed. His ears had been growing keener as he neared the subtle atmosphere of that Brink where man strips himself to the soul for a lonely voyaging, and he waved the woman to the door. "Wait," he said, as her hand fluttered at the handle. "Take him to another room. Prepare a supper such as we used to have. When it is ready I will come. But, listen, and obey. Tell him not that I have but four hours of life. Go, good woman, and bring him in." It was as he said. They found the son weak and fainting, fallen within the porch--a worn, bearded man, returned from failure and suffering and the husks of evil. They clothed him and cared for him, and strengthened him with wine, while the woman wept over him and at last set him at the loaded, well-lighted table. Then the Seigneur came in, leaning his arm very lightly on that of Medallion with a kind of kingly air; and, greeting his son before them all, as if they had parted yesterday, sat down. For an hour they sat there, and the Seigneur talked gaily with a colour to his face, and his great eyes glowing. At last he rose, lifted his glass, and said: "The Angel of Patience is wise. I drink to my son!" He was about to say something more, but a sudden whiteness passed over his face. He drank off the wine, and as he put the glass down, shivered, and fell back in his chair. "Two hours short, Chemist!" he said, and smiled, and was Still. PARPON THE DWARF Parpon perched in a room at the top of the mill. He could see every house in the village, and he knew people a long distance off. He was a droll dwarf, and, in his way, had good times in the world. He turned the misery of the world into a game, and grinned at it from his high little eyrie with the dormer window. He had lived with Farette the miller for some years, serving him with a kind of humble insolence. It was not a joyful day for Farette when he married Julie. She led him a pretty travel. He had started as her master; he ended by being her slave and victim. She was a wilful wife. She had made the Seigneur de la Riviere, of the House with the Tall Porch, to quarrel with his son Armand, so that Armand disappeared from Pontiac for years. When that happened she had already stopped confessing to the good Cure; so it may be guessed there were things she did not care to tell, and for which she had no repentance. But Parpon knew, and Medallion the auctioneer guessed; and the Little Chemist's wife hoped that it was not so. When Julie looked at Parpon, as he perched on a chest of drawers, with his head cocked and his eyes blinking, she knew that he read the truth. But she did not know all that was in his head; so she said sharp things to him, as she did to everybody, for she had a very poor opinion of the world, and thought all as flippant as herself. She took nothing seriously; she was too vain. Except that she was sorry Armand was gone, she rather plumed herself on having separated the Seigneur and his son-- it was something to have been the pivot in a tragedy. There came others to the village, as, for instance, a series of clerks to the Avocat; but she would not decline from Armand upon them. She merely made them miserable. But she did not grow prettier as time went on. Even Annette, the sad wife of the drunken Benoit, kept her fine looks; but then, Annette's life was a thing for a book, and she had a beautiful child. You cannot keep this from the face of a woman. Nor can you keep the other: when the heart rusts the rust shows. After a good many years, Armand de la Riviere came back in time to see his father die. Then Julie picked out her smartest ribbons, capered at the mirror, and dusted her face with oatmeal, because she thought that he would ask her to meet him at the Bois Noir, as he had done long ago. The days passed, and he did not come. When she saw Armand at the funeral-- a tall man with a dark beard and a grave face, not like the Armand she had known, he seemed a great distance from her, though she could almost have touched him once as he turned from the grave. She would have liked to throw herself into his arms, and cry before them all: "Mon Armand!" and go away with him to the House with the Tall Porch. She did not care about Farette, the mumbling old man who hungered for money, having ceased to hunger for anything else--even for Julie, who laughed and shut her door in his face, and cowed him. After the funeral Julie had a strange feeling. She had not much brains, but she had some shrewdness, and she felt her romance askew. She stood before the mirror, rubbing her face with oatmeal and frowning hard. Presently a voice behind her said: "Madame Julie, shall I bring another bag of meal?" She turned quickly, and saw Parpon on a table in the corner, his legs drawn up to his chin, his black eyes twinkling. "Idiot!" she cried, and threw the meal at him. He had a very long, quick arm. He caught the basin as it came, but the meal covered him. He blew it from his beard, laughing softly, and twirled the basin on a finger-point. "Like that, there will need two bags!" he said. "Imbecile!" she cried, standing angry in the centre of the room. "Ho, ho, what a big word! See what it is to have the tongue of fashion!" She looked helplessly round the room. "I will kill you!" "Let us die together," answered Parpon; "we are both sad." She snatched the poker from the fire, and ran at him. He caught her wrists with his great hands, big enough for tall Medallion, and held her. "I said 'together,"' he chuckled; "not one before the other. We might jump into the flume at the mill, or go over the dam at the Bois Noir; or, there is Farette's musket which he is cleaning--gracious, but it will kick when it fires, it is so old!" She sank to the floor. "Why does he clean the musket?" she asked; fear, and something wicked too, in her eye. Her fingers ran forgetfully through the hair on her forehead, pushing it back, and the marks of small-pox showed. The contrast with her smooth cheeks gave her a weird look. Parpon got quickly on the table again and sat like a Turk, with a furtive eye on her. "Who can tell!" he said at last. "That musket has not been fired for years. It would not kill a bird; the shot would scatter: but it might kill a man--a man is bigger." "Kill a man!" She showed her white teeth with a savage little smile. "Of course it is all guess. I asked Farette what he would shoot, and he said, 'Nothing good to eat.' I said I would eat what he killed. Then he got pretty mad, and said I couldn't eat my own head. Holy! that was funny for Farette. Then I told him there was no good going to the Bois Noir, for there would be nothing to shoot. Well, did I speak true, Madame Julie?" She was conscious of something new in Parpon. She could not define it. Presently she got to her feet and said: "I don't believe you--you're a monkey." "A monkey can climb a tree quick; a man has to take the shot as it comes." He stretched up his powerful arms, with a swift motion as of climbing, laughed, and added: "Madame Julie, Farette has poor eyes; he could not see a hole in a ladder. But he has a kink in his head about the Bois Noir. People have talked--" "Pshaw!" Julie said, crumpling her apron and throwing it out; "he is a child and a coward. He should not play with a gun; it might go off and hit him." Parpon hopped down and trotted to the door. Then he turned and said, with a sly gurgle: "Farette keeps at that gun. What is the good! There will be nobody at the Bois Noir any more. I will go and tell him." She rushed at him with fury, but seeing Annette Benoit in the road, she stood still and beat her foot angrily on the doorstep. She was ripe for a quarrel, and she would say something hateful to Annette; for she never forgot that Farette had asked Annette to be his wife before herself was considered. She smoothed out her wrinkled apron and waited. "Good day, Annette," she said loftily. "Good day, Julie," was the quiet reply. "Will you come in?" "I am going to the mill for flax-seed. Benoit has rheumatism." "Poor Benoit!" said Julie, with a meaning toss of her head. "Poor Benoit," responded Annette gently. Her voice was always sweet. One would never have known that Benoit was a drunken idler. "Come in. I will give you the meal from my own. Then it will cost you nothing," said Julie, with an air. "Thank you, Julie, but I would rather pay." "I do not sell my meal," answered Julie. "What's a few pounds of meal to the wife of Farette? I will get it for you. Come in, Annette." She turned towards the door, then stopped all at once. There was the oatmeal which she had thrown at Parpon, the basin, and the poker. She wished she had not asked Annette in. But in some things she had a quick wit, and she hurried to say: "It was that yellow cat of Parpon's. It spilt the meal, and I went at it with the poker." Perhaps Annette believed her. She did not think about it one way or the other; her mind was with the sick Benoit. She nodded and said nothing, hoping that the flax-seed would be got at once. But when she saw that Julie expected an answer, she said: "Cecilia, my little girl, has a black cat-so handsome. It came from the house of the poor Seigneur de la Riviere a year ago. We took it back, but it would not stay." Annette spoke simply and frankly, but her words cut like a knife. Julie responded, with a click of malice: "Look out that the black cat doesn't kill the dear Cecilia." Annette started, but she did not believe that cats sucked the life from children's lungs, and she replied calmly: "I am not afraid; the good God keeps my child." She then got up and came to Julie, and said: "It is a pity, Julie, that you have not a child. A child makes all right." Julie was wild to say a fierce thing, for it seemed that Annette was setting off Benoit against Farette; but the next moment she grew hot, her eyes smarted, and there was a hint of trouble at her throat. She had lived very fast in the last few hours, and it was telling on her. She could not rule herself--she could not play a part so well as she wished. She had not before felt the thing that gave a new pulse to her body and a joyful pain at her breasts. Her eyes got thickly blurred so that she could not see Annette, and, without a word, she hurried to get the meal. She was silent when she came back. She put the meal into Annette's hands. She felt that she would like to talk of Armand. She knew now there was no evil thought in Annette. She did not like her more for that, but she felt she must talk, and Annette was safe. So she took her arm. "Sit down, Annette," she said. "You come so seldom." "But there is Benoit, and the child--" "The child has the black cat from the House!" There was again a sly ring to Julie's voice, and she almost pressed Annette into a chair. "Well, it must only be a minute." "Were you at the funeral to-day?" Julie began. "No; I was nursing Benoit. But the poor Seigneur! They say he died without confession. No one was there except M'sieu' Medallion, the Little Chemist, Old Sylvie, and M'sieu' Armand. But, of course, you have heard everything." "Is that all you know?" queried Julie. "Not much more. I go out little, and no one comes to me except the Little Chemist's wife--she is a good woman." "What did she say?" "Only something of the night the Seigneur died. He was sitting in his chair, not afraid, but very sad, we can guess. By-and-by he raised his head quickly. 'I hear a voice in the Tall Porch,' he said. They thought he was dreaming. But he said other things, and cried again that he heard his son's voice in the Porch. They went and found M'sieu' Armand. Then a great supper was got ready, and he sat very grand at the head of the table, but died quickly, when making a grand speech. It was strange he was so happy, for he did not confess-he hadn't absolution." This was more than Julie had heard. She showed excitement. "The Seigneur and M'sieu' Armand were good friends when he died?" she asked. "Quite." All at once Annette remembered the old talk about Armand and Julie. She was confused. She wished she could get up and run away; but haste would look strange. "You were at the funeral?" she added, after a minute. "Everybody was there." "I suppose M'sieu' Armand looks very fine and strange after his long travel," said Annette shyly, rising to go. "He was always the grandest gentleman in the province," answered Julie, in her old vain manner. "You should have seen the women look at him to-day! But they are nothing to him--he is not easy to please." "Good day," said Annette, shocked and sad, moving from the door. Suddenly she turned, and laid a hand on Julie's arm. "Come and see my sweet Cecilia," she said. "She is gay; she will amuse you." She was thinking again what a pity it was that Julie had no child. "To see Cecilia and the black cat? Very well--some day." You could not have told what she meant. But, as Annette turned away again, she glanced at the mill; and there, high up in the dormer window, sat Parpon, his yellow cat on his shoulder, grinning down at her. She wheeled and went into the house. II Parpon sat in the dormer window for a long time, the cat purring against his head, and not seeming the least afraid of falling, though its master was well out on the window-ledge. He kept mumbling to himself: "Ho, ho, Farette is below there with the gun, rubbing and rubbing at the rust! Holy mother, how it will kick! But he will only meddle. If she set her eye at him and come up bold and said: 'Farette, go and have your whiskey-wine, and then to bed,' he would sneak away. But he has heard something. Some fool, perhaps that Benoit--no, he is sick--perhaps the herb-woman has been talking, and he thinks he will make a fuss. But it will be nothing. And M'sieu' Armand, will he look at her?" He chuckled at the cat, which set its head back and hissed in reply. Then he sang something to himself. Parpon was a poor little dwarf with a big head, but he had one thing which made up for all, though no one knew it--or, at least, he thought so. The Cure himself did not know. He had a beautiful voice. Even in speaking it was pleasant to hear, though he roughened it in a way. It pleased him that he had something of which the finest man or woman would be glad. He had said to himself many times that even Armand de la Riviere would envy him. Sometimes Parpon went off away into the Bois Noir, and, perched there in a tree, sang away--a man, shaped something like an animal, with a voice like a muffled silver bell. Some of his songs he had made himself: wild things, broken thoughts, not altogether human; the language of a world between man and the spirits. But it was all pleasant to hear, even when, at times, there ran a weird, dark thread through the woof. No one in the valley had ever heard the thing he sang softly as he sat looking down at Julie: "The little white smoke blows there, blows here, The little blue wolf comes down-- C'est la! And the hill-dwarf laughs in the young wife's ear, When the devil comes back to town-- C'est la!" It was crooned quietly, but it was distinct and melodious, and the cat purred an accompaniment, its head thrust into his thick black hair. From where Parpon sat he could see the House with the Tall Porch, and, as he sang, his eyes ran from the miller's doorway to it. Off in the grounds of the dead Seigneur's manor he could see a man push the pebbles with his foot, or twist the branch of a shrub thoughtfully as he walked. At last another man entered the garden. The two greeted warmly, and passed up and down together. III "My good friend," said the Cure, "it is too late to mourn for those lost years. Nothing can give them back. As Parpon the dwarf said--you remember him, a wise little man, that Parpon--as he said one day, 'For everything you lose you get something, if only how to laugh at yourself."' Armand nodded thoughtfully and answered: "You are right--you and Parpon. But I cannot forgive myself; he was so fine a man: tall, with a grand look, and a tongue like a book. Yes, yes, I can laugh at myself--for a fool." He thrust his hands into his pockets, and tapped the ground nervously with his foot, shrugging his shoulders a little. The priest took off his hat and made the sacred gesture, his lips moving. Armand caught off his hat also, and said: "You pray--for him?" "For the peace of a good man's soul." "He did not confess; he had no rites of the Church; he had refused you many years." "My son, he had a confessor." Armand raised his eyebrows. "They told me of no one." "It was the Angel of Patience." They walked on again for a time without a word. At last the Cure said: "You will remain here?" "I cannot tell. This 'here' is a small world, and the little life may fret me. Nor do I know what I have of this,"--he waved his hands towards the house,--"or of my father's property. I may need to be a wanderer again." "God forbid! Have you not seen the will?" "I have got no farther than his grave," was the sombre reply. The priest sighed. They paced the walk again in silence. At last the Cure said: "You will make the place cheerful, as it once was." "You are persistent," replied the young man, smiling. "Whoever lives here should make it less gloomy." "We shall soon know who is to live here. See, there is Monsieur Garon, and Monsieur Medallion also." "The Avocat to tell secrets, the auctioneer to sell them--eh?" Armand went forward to the gate. Like most people, he found Medallion interesting, and the Avocat and he were old friends. "You did not send for me, monsieur," said the Avocat timidly, "but I thought it well to come, that you might know how things are; and Monsieur Medallion came because he is a witness to the will, and, in a case--"here the little man coughed nervously--"joint executor with Monsieur le Cure." They entered the house. In a business-like way Armand motioned them to chairs, opened the curtains, and rang the bell. The old housekeeper appeared, a sorrowful joy in her face, and Armand said: "Give us a bottle of the white-top, Sylvie, if there is any left." "There is plenty, monsieur," she said; "none has been drunk these twelve years." The Avocat coughed, and said hesitatingly to Armand: "I asked Parpon the dwarf to come, monsieur. There is a reason." Armand raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Very good," he said. "When will he be here?" "He is waiting at the Louis Quinze hotel." "I will send for him," said Armand, and gave the message to Sylvie, who was entering the room. After they had drunk the wine placed before them, there was silence for a moment, for all were wondering why Parpon should be remembered in the Seigneur's Will. "Well," said Medallion at last, "a strange little dog is Parpon. I could surprise you about him--and there isn't any reason why I should keep the thing to myself. One day I was up among the rocks, looking for a strayed horse. I got tired, and lay down in the shade of the Rock of Red Pigeons--you know it. I fell asleep. Something waked me. I got up and heard the finest singing you can guess: not like any I ever heard; a wild, beautiful, shivery sort of thing. I listened for a long time. At last it stopped. Then something slid down the rock. I peeped out, and saw Parpon toddling away." The Cure stared incredulously, the Avocat took off his glasses and tapped his lips musingly, Armand whistled softly. "So," said Armand at last, "we have the jewel in the toad's head. The clever imp hid it all these years--even from you, Monsieur le Cure." "Even from me," said the Cure, smiling. Then, gravely: "It is strange, the angel in the stunted body." "Are you sure it's an angel?" said Armand. "Who ever knew Parpon do any harm?" queried the Cure. "He has always been kind to the poor," put in the Avocat. "With the miller's flour," laughed Medallion: "a pardonable sin." He sent a quizzical look at the Cure. "Do you remember the words of Parpon's song?" asked Armand. "Only a few lines; and those not easy to understand, unless one had an inkling." "Had you the inkling?" "Perhaps, monsieur," replied Medallion seriously. They eyed each other. "We will have Parpon in after the will is read," said Armand suddenly, looking at the Avocat. The Avocat drew the deed from his pocket. He looked up hesitatingly, and then said to Armand: "You insist on it being read now?" Armand nodded coolly, after a quick glance at Medallion. Then the Avocat began, and read to that point where the Seigneur bequeathed all his property to his son, should he return--on a condition. When the Avocat came to the condition Armand stopped him. "I do not know in the least what it may be," he said, "but there is only one by which I could feel bound. I will tell you. My father and I quarrelled"--here he paused for a moment, clinching his hands before him on the table--"about a woman; and years of misery came. I was to blame in not obeying him. I ought not to have given any cause for gossip. Whatever the condition as to that matter may be, I will fulfil it. My father is more to me than any woman in the world; his love of me was greater than that of any woman. I know the world--and women." There was a silence. He waved his hand to the Avocat to go on, and as he did so the Cure caught his arm with a quick, affectionate gesture. Then Monsieur Garon read the conditions: "That Farette the miller should have a deed of the land on which his mill was built, with the dam of the mill --provided that Armand should never so much as by a word again address Julie, the miller's wife. If he agreed to the condition, with solemn oath before the Cure, his blessing would rest upon his dear son, whom he still hoped to see before he died." When the reading ceased there was silence for a moment, then Armand stood up, and took the will from the Avocat; but instantly, without looking at it, handed it back. "The reading is not finished," he said. "And if I do not accept the condition, what then?" Again Monsieur Garon read, his voice trembling a little. The words of the will ran: "But if this condition be not satisfied, I bequeath to my son Armand the house known as the House with the Tall Porch, and the land, according to the deed thereof; and the residue of my property--with the exception of two thousand dollars, which I leave to the Cure of the parish, the good Monsieur Fabre--I bequeath to Parpon the dwarf." Then followed a clause providing that, in any case, Parpon should have in fee simple the land known as the Bois Noir, and the hut thereon. Armand sprang to his feet in surprise, blurting out something, then sat down, quietly took the will, and read it through carefully. When he had finished he looked inquiringly, first at Monsieur Garon, then at the Cure. "Why Parpon?" he said searchingly. The Cure, amazed, spread out his hands in a helpless way. At that moment Sylvie announced Parpon. Armand asked that he should be sent in. "We'll talk of the will afterwards," he added. Parpon trotted in, the door closed, and he stood blinking at them. Armand put a stool on the table. "Sit here, Parpon," he said. Medallion caught the dwarf under the arms and lifted him on the table. Parpon looked at Armand furtively. "The wild hawk comes back to its nest," he said. "Well, well, what is it you want with the poor Parpon?" He sat down and dropped his chin in his hands, looking round keenly. Armand nodded to Medallion, and Medallion to the priest, but the priest nodded back again. Then Medallion said: "You and I know the Rock of Red Pigeons, Parpon. It is a good place to perch. One's voice is all to one's self there, as you know. Well, sing us the song of the little brown diver." Parpon's hands twitched in his beard. He looked fixedly at Medallion. Presently he turned towards the Cure, and shrank so that he looked smaller still. "It's all right, little son," said the Cure kindly. Turning sharply on Medallion, Parpon said: "When was it you heard?" Medallion told him. He nodded, then sat very still. They said nothing, but watched him. They saw his eyes grow distant and absorbed, and his face took on a shining look, so that its ugliness was almost beautiful. All at once he slid from the stool and crouched on his knees. Then he sent out a low long note, like the toll of the bell-bird. From that time no one stirred as he sang, but sat and watched him. They did not even hear Sylvie steal in gently and stand in the curtains at the door. The song was weird, with a strange thrilling charm; it had the slow dignity of a chant, the roll of an epic, the delight of wild beauty. It told of the little good Folk of the Scarlet Hills, in vague allusive phrases: their noiseless wanderings; their sojourning with the eagle, the wolf, and the deer; their triumph over the winds, the whirlpools, and the spirits of evil fame. It filled the room with the cry of the west wind; it called out of the frozen seas ghosts of forgotten worlds; it coaxed the soft breezes out of the South; it made them all to be at the whistle of the Scarlet Hunter who ruled the North. Then, passing through veil after veil of mystery, it told of a grand Seigneur whose boat was overturned in a whirlpool, and was saved by a little brown diver. And the end of it all, and the heart of it all, was in the last few lines, clear of allegory: "And the wheel goes round in the village mill, And the little brown diver he tells the grain. . . And the grand Seigneur he has gone to meet The little good Folk of the Scarlet Hills!" At first, all were so impressed by the strange power of Parpon's voice, that they were hardly conscious of the story he was telling. But when he sang of the Seigneur they began to read his parable. Their hearts throbbed painfully. As the last notes died away Armand got up, and standing by the table, said: "Parpon, you saved my father's life once?" Parpon did not answer. "Will you not tell him, my son?" said the Cure, rising. Still Parpon was silent. "The son of your grand Seigneur asks you a question, Parpon," said Medallion soothingly. "Oh, my grand Seigneur!" said Parpon, throwing up his hands. "Once he said to me, 'Come, my brown diver, and live with me.' But I said, 'No, I am not fit. I will never go to you at the House with the Tall Porch.' And I made him promise that he would never tell of it. And so I have lived sometimes with old Farette." Then he laughed strangely again, and sent a furtive look at Armand. "Parpon," said Armand gently, "our grand Seigneur has left you the Bois Noir for your own. So the hills and the Rock of Red Pigeons are for you --and the little good people, if you like." Parpon, with fiery eyes, gathered himself up with a quick movement, then broke out: "Oh, my grand Seigneur--my grand Seigneur!" and fell forward, his head in his arms, laughing and sobbing together. Armand touched his shoulder. "Parpon!" But Parpon shrank away. Armand turned to the rest. "I do not understand it, gentlemen. Parpon does not like the young Seigneur as he liked the old." Medallion, sitting in the shadow, smiled. He understood. Armand continued: "As for this 'testament, gentlemen, I will fulfil its conditions; though I swear, were I otherwise minded regarding the woman" --here Parpon raised his head swiftly--"I would not hang my hat for an hour in the Tall Porch." They rose and shook hands, then the wine was poured out, and they drank it off in silence. Parpon, however, sat with his head in his hands. "Come, little comrade, drink," said Medallion, offering him a glass. Parpon made no reply, but caught up the will, kissed it, put it into Armand's hand, and then, jumping down from the table, ran to the door and disappeared through it. IV The next afternoon the Avocat visited old Farette. Farette was polishing a gun, mumbling the while. Sitting on some bags of meal was Parpon, with a fierce twinkle in his eye. Monsieur Garon told Farette briefly what the Seigneur had left him. With a quick, greedy chuckle Farette threw the gun away. "Man alive!" said he; "tell me all about it. Ah, the good news!" "There is nothing to tell: he left it; that is all." "Oh, the good Seigneur," cried Farette, "the grand Seigneur!" Some one laughed scornfully in the doorway. It was Julie. "Look there," she cried; "he gets the land, and throws away the gun! Brag and coward, miller! It is for me to say 'the grand Seigneur!'" She tossed her head: she thought the old Seigneur had relented towards her. She turned away to the house with a flaunting air, and got her hat. At first she thought she would go to the House with the Tall Porch, but she changed her mind, and went to the Bois Noir instead. Parpon followed her a distance off. Behind, in the mill, Farette was chuckling and rubbing his hands. Meanwhile, Armand was making his way towards the Bois Noir. All at once, in the shade of a great pine, he stopped. He looked about him astonished. "This is the old place. What a fool I was, then!" he said. At that moment Julie came quickly, and lifted her hands towards him. "Armand--beloved Armand!" she said. Armand looked at her sternly, from her feet to her pitted forehead, then wheeled, and left her without a word. She sank in a heap on the ground. There was a sudden burst of tears, and then she clinched her hands with fury. Some one laughed in the trees above her--a shrill, wild laugh. She looked up frightened. Parpon presently dropped down beside her. "It was as I said," whispered the dwarf, and he touched her shoulder. This was the full cup of shame. She was silent. "There are others," he whispered again. She could not see his strange smile; but she noticed that his voice was not as usual. "Listen," he urged, and he sang softly over her shoulder for quite a minute. She was amazed. "Sing again," she said. "I have wanted to sing to you like that for many years," he replied; and he sang a little more. "He cannot sing like that," he wheedled, and he stretched his arm around her shoulder. She hung her head, then flung it back again as she thought of Armand. "I hate him!" she cried; "I hate him!" "You will not throw meal on me any more, or call me idiot?" he pleaded. "No, Parpon," she said. He kissed her on the cheek. She did not resent it. But now he drew away, smiled wickedly at her, and said: "See, we are even now, poor Julie!" Then he laughed, holding his little sides with huge hands. "Imbecile!" he added, and, turning, trotted away towards the Rock of Red Pigeons. She threw herself, face forward, in the dusty needles of the pines. When she rose from her humiliation, her face was as one who has seen the rags of harlequinade stripped from that mummer Life, leaving only naked being. She had touched the limits of the endurable; her sordid little hopes had split into fragments. But when a human soul faces upon its past, and sees a gargoyle at every milestone where an angel should be, and in one flash of illumination--the touch of genius to the smallest mind--understands the pitiless comedy, there comes the still stoic outlook. Julie was transformed. All the possible years of her life were gathered into the force of one dreadful moment--dreadful and wonderful. Her mean vanity was lost behind the pale sincerity of her face--she was sincere at last. The trivial commonness was gone from her coquetting shoulders and drooping eyelids; and from her body had passed its flexuous softness. She was a woman; suffering, human, paying the price. She walked slowly the way that Parpon had gone. Looking neither to right nor left, she climbed the long hillside, and at last reached the summit, where, bundled in a steep corner, was the Rock of Red Pigeons. As she emerged from the pines, she stood for a moment, and leaned with outstretched hand against a tree, looking into the sunlight. Slowly her eyes shifted from the Rock to the great ravine, to whose farther side the sun was giving bastions of gold. She was quiet. Presently she stepped into the light and came softly to the Rock. She walked slowly round it as though looking for some one. At the lowest side of the Rock, rude narrow hollows were cut for the feet. With a singular ease she climbed to the top of it. It had a kind of hollow, in which was a rude seat, carved out of the stone. Seeing this, a set look came to her face: she was thinking of Parpon, the master of this place. Her business was with him. She got down slowly, and came over to the edge of the precipice. Steadying herself against a sapling, she looked over. Down below was a whirlpool, rising and falling-a hungry funnel of death. She drew back. Presently she peered again, and once more withdrew. She gazed round, and then made another tour of the hill, searching. She returned to the precipice. As she did so she heard a voice. She looked and saw Parpon seated upon a ledge of rock not far below. A mocking laugh floated up to her. But there was trouble in the laugh too--a bitter sickness. She did not notice that. She looked about her. Not far away was a stone, too heavy to carry but perhaps not too heavy to roll! Foot by foot she rolled it over. She looked. He was still there. She stepped back. As she did so a few pebbles crumbled away from her feet and fell where Parpon perched. She did not see or hear them fall. He looked up, and saw the stone creeping upon the edge. Like a flash he was on his feet, and, springing into the air to the right, caught a tree steadfast in the rock. The stone fell upon the ledge, and bounded off again. The look of the woman did not follow the stone. She ran to the spot above the whirlpool, and sprang out and down. From Parpon there came a wail such as the hills of the north never heard before. Dropping upon a ledge beneath, and from that to a jutting tree, which gave way, he shot down into the whirlpool. He caught Julie's body as it was churned from life to death: and then he fought. There was a demon in the whirlpool, but God and demon were working in the man. Nothing on earth could have unloosed that long, brown arm from Julie's drenched body. The sun lifted an eyelid over the yellow bastions of rock, and saw the fight. Once, twice, the shaggy head was caught beneath the surface--but at last the man conquered. Inch by inch, foot by foot, Parpon, with the lifeless Julie clamped in one arm, climbed the rough wall, on, on, up to the Rock of Red Pigeons. He bore her to the top of it. Then he laid her down, and pillowed her head on his wet coat. The huge hands came slowly down Julie's soaked hair, along her blanched cheek and shoulders, caught her arms and held them. He peered into her face. The eyes had the film which veils Here from Hereafter. On the lips was a mocking smile. He stooped as if to kiss her. The smile stopped him. He drew back for a time, then he leaned forward, shut his eyes, and her cold lips were his. Twilight-dusk-night came upon Parpon and his dead--the woman whom an impish fate had put into his heart with mockery and futile pain. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Can't get the company I want, so what I can get I have Capered at the mirror, and dusted her face with oatmeal For everything you lose you get something No trouble like that which comes between parent and child Old clock in the corner "ticking" life, and youth, and hope away She had not much brains, but she had some shrewdness Take the honeymoon himself, and leave his wife to learn cooking The laughter of a ripe summer was upon the land Thought all as flippant as herself Turned the misery of the world into a game, and grinned at it When the heart rusts the rust shows THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING By Gilbert Parker Volume 4. TIMES WERE HARD IN PONTIAC MEDALLION'S WHIM THE PRISONER AN UPSET PRICE A FRAGMENT OF LIVES THE MAN THAT DIED AT ALMA THE BARON OF BEAUGARD THE TUNE McGILVERAY PLAYED TIMES WERE HARD IN PONTIAC It was soon after the Rebellion, and there was little food to be had and less money, and winter was at hand. Pontiac, ever most loyal to old France, though obedient to the English, had herself sent few recruits to be shot down by Colborne; but she had emptied her pockets in sending to the front the fulness of her barns and the best cattle of her fields. She gave her all; she was frank in giving, hid nothing; and when her own trouble came there was no voice calling on her behalf. And Pontiac would rather starve than beg. So, as the winter went on, she starved in silence, and no one had more than sour milk and bread and a potato now and then. The Cure, the Avocat, and the Little Chemist fared no better than the habitants; for they gave all they had right and left, and themselves often went hungry to bed. And the truth is that few outside Pontiac knew of her suffering; she kept the secret of it close. It seemed at last, however, to the Cure that he must, after all, write to the world outside for help. That was when he saw the faces of the children get pale and drawn. There never was a time when there were so few fish in the river and so little game in the woods. At last, from the altar steps one Sunday, the Cure, with a calm, sad voice, told the people that, for "the dear children's sake," they must sink their pride and ask help from without. He would write first to the Bishop of Quebec; "for," said he, "Mother Church will help us; she will give us food, and money to buy seed in the spring; and, please God, we will pay all back in a year or two!" He paused a minute, then continued: "Some one must go, to speak plainly and wisely of our trouble, that there be no mistake--we are not beggars, we are only borrowers. Who will go? I may not myself, for who would give the Blessed Sacrament, and speak to the sick, or say Mass and comfort you?" There was silence in the church for a moment, and many faces meanwhile turned instinctively to M. Garon the Avocat, and some to the Little Chemist. "Who will go?" asked the Cure again. "It is a bitter journey, but our pride must not be our shame in the end. Who will go?" Every one expected that the Avocat or the Little Chemist would rise; but while they looked at each other, waiting and sorrowful, and the Avocat's fingers fluttered to the seat in front of him, to draw himself up, a voice came from the corner opposite, saying: "M'sieu' le Cure, I will go." A strange, painful silence fell on the people for a moment, and then went round an almost incredulous whisper: "Parpon the dwarf!" Parpon's deep eyes were fixed on the Cure, his hunched body leaning on the railing in front of him, his long, strong arms stretched out as if he were begging for some good thing. The murmur among the people increased, but the Cure raised his hand to command silence, and his eyes gazed steadily at the dwarf. It might seem that he was noting the huge head, the shaggy hair, the overhanging brows, the weird face of this distortion of a thing made in God's own image. But he was thinking instead of how the angel and the devil may live side by side in a man, and neither be entirely driven out--and the angel conquer in great times and seasons. He beckoned to Parpon to come over, and the dwarf trotted with a sidelong motion to the chancel steps. Every face in the congregation was eager, and some were mystified, even anxious. They all knew the singular power of the little man--his knowledge, his deep wit, his judgment, his occasional fierceness, his infrequent malice; but he was kind to children and the sick, and the Cure and the Avocat and their little coterie respected him. Once everybody had worshipped him: that was when he had sung in the Mass, the day of the funeral of the wife of Farette the miller, for whom he worked. It had been rumoured that in his hut by the Rock of Red Pigeons, up at Dalgrothe Mountain, a voice of most wonderful power and sweetness had been heard singing; but this was only rumour. Yet when the body of the miller's wife lay in the church, he had sung so that men and women wept and held each other's hands for joy. He had never sung since, however; his voice of silver was locked away in the cabinet of secret purposes which every man has somewhere in his own soul. "What will you say to the Bishop, Parpon?" asked the Cure. The congregation stirred in their seats, for they saw that the Cure intended Parpon to go. Parpon went up two steps of the chancel quietly and caught the arm of the Cure, drawing him down to whisper in his ear. A flush and then a peculiar soft light passed over the Cure's face, and he raised his hand over Parpon's head in benediction and said: "Go, my son, and the blessing of God and of His dear Son be with you." Then suddenly he turned to the altar, and, raising his hands, he tried to speak, but only said: "O Lord, Thou knowest our pride and our vanity, hear us, and--" Soon afterwards, with tearful eyes, he preached from the text: "And the Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not." ....................... Five days later a little, uncouth man took off his hat in the chief street of Quebec, and began to sing a song of Picardy to an air which no man in French Canada had ever heard. Little farmers on their way to the market by the Place de Cathedral stopped, listening, though every moment's delay lessened their chances of getting a stand in the market- place. Butchers and milkmen loitered, regardless of waiting customers; a little company of soldiers caught up the chorus, and, to avoid involuntary revolt, their sergeant halted them, that they might listen. Gentlemen strolling by--doctor, lawyer, officer, idler--paused and forgot the raw climate, for this marvellous voice in the unshapely body warmed them, and they pushed in among the fast-gathering crowd. Ladies hurrying by in their sleighs lost their hearts to the thrilling notes of: "Little grey fisherman, Where is your daughter? Where is your daughter so sweet? Little grey man who comes Over the water, I have knelt down at her feet, Knelt at your Gabrielle's feet---ci ci!" Presently the wife of the governor stepped out from her sleigh, and, coming over, quickly took Parpon's cap from his hand and went round among the crowd with it, gathering money. "He is hungry, he is poor," she said, with tears in her eyes. She had known the song in her childhood, and he who used to sing it to her was in her sight no more. In vain the gentlemen would have taken the cap from her; she gathered the money herself, and others followed, and Parpon sang on. A night later a crowd gathered in the great hall of the city, filling it to the doors, to hear the dwarf sing. He came on the platform dressed as he had entered the city, with heavy, home-made coat and trousers, and moccasins, and a red woollen comforter about his neck--but this comforter he took off when he began to sing. Old France and New France, and the loves and hates and joys and sorrows of all lands, met that night in the soul of this dwarf with the divine voice, who did not give them his name, so that they called him, for want of a better title, the Provencal. And again two nights afterwards it was the same, and yet again a third night and a fourth, and the simple folk, and wise folk also, went mad after Parpon the dwarf. Then, suddenly, he disappeared from Quebec City, and the next Sunday morning, while the Cure was saying the last words of the Mass, he entered the Church of St. Saviour's at Pontiac. Going up to the chancel steps he waited. The murmuring of the people drew the Cure's attention, and then, seeing Parpon, he came forward. Parpon drew from his breast a bag, and put it in his hands, and beckoning down the Cure's head, he whispered. The Cure turned to the altar and raised the bag towards it in ascription and thanksgiving, then he turned to Parpon again, but the dwarf was trotting away down the aisle and from the church. "Dear children," said the Cure, "we are saved, and we are not shamed." He held up the bag. "Parpon has brought us two thousand dollars: we shall have food to eat, and there shall be more money against seed-time. The giver of this good gift demands that his name be not known. Such is all true charity. Let us pray." So hard times passed from Pontiac as the months went on; but none save the Cure and the Avocat knew who had helped her in her hour of need. MEDALLION'S WHIM When the Avocat began to lose his health and spirits, and there crept through his shrewd gravity and kindliness a petulance and dejection, Medallion was the only person who had an inspiriting effect upon him. The Little Chemist had decided that the change in him was due to bad circulation and failing powers: which was only partially true. Medallion made a deeper guess. "Want to know what's the matter with him?" he said. "Ha, I'll tell you! Woman." "Woman--God bless me!" said the Little Chemist, in a frightened way. "Woman, little man; I mean the want of a woman," said Medallion. The Cure, who was present, shrugged his shoulders. "He has an excellent cook, and his bed and jackets are well aired; I see them constantly at the windows." A laugh gurgled in Medallion's throat. He loved these innocent folk; but himself went twice a year to Quebec City and had more expanded views. "Woman, Padre"--nodding to the priest, and rubbing his chin so that it rasped like sand-paper--"Woman, my druggist"--throwing a sly look at the Chemist----"woman, neither as cook nor bottle-washer, is what he needs. Every man-out of holy orders"--this in deference to his good friend the Cure--"arrives at the time when his youth must be renewed or he becomes as dry bones--like an empty house--furniture sold off. Can only be renewed one way--Woman. Well, here's our Avocat, and there's his remedy. He's got the cooking and the clean fresh linen; he must have a wife, the very best." "Ah, my friend, you are droll," said the Cure, arching his long fingers at his lips and blowing gently through them, but not smiling in the least; rather serious, almost reproving. "It is such a whim, such a whim!" said the Little Chemist, shaking his head and looking through his glasses sideways like a wise bird. "Ha--you shall see! The man must be saved; our Cure shall have his fees; our druggist shall provide the finest essences for the feast--no more pills. And we shall dine with our Avocat once a week--with asparagus in season for the Cure, and a little good wine for all. Ha!" His Ha! was never a laugh; it was unctuous, abrupt, an ejaculation of satisfaction, knowledge, solid enjoyment, final solution. The Cure shook his head doubtfully; he did not see the need; he did not believe in Medallion's whim; still he knew that the man's judgment was shrewd in most things, and he would be silent and wait. But he shrank from any new phase of life likely to alter the conditions of that old companionship, which included themselves, the Avocat, and the young Doctor, who, like the Little Chemist, was married. The Chemist sharply said: "Well, well, perhaps. I hope. There is a poetry (his English was not perfect, and at times he mixed it with French in an amusing manner), a little chanson, which runs: "'Sorrowful is the little house, The little house by the winding stream; All the laughter has died away Out of the little house. But down there come from the lofty hills Footsteps and eyes agleam, Bringing the laughter of yesterday Into the little house, By the winding stream and the hills. Di ron, di ron, di ron, di ron-don!'" The Little Chemist blushed faintly at the silence that followed his timid, quaint recital. The Cure looked calm and kind, and drawn away as if in thought; but Medallion presently got up, stooped, and laid his long fingers on the shoulder of the apothecary. "Exactly, little man," he said; "we've both got the same idea in our heads. I've put it hard fact, you've put it soft sentiment; and it's God's truth either way." Presently the Cure asked, as if from a great distance, so meditative was his voice: "Who will be the woman, Medallion?" "I've got one in my eye--the very right one for our Avocat; not here, not out of Pontiac, but from St. Jean in the hills--fulfilling your verses, gentle apothecary. She must bring what is fresh--he must feel that the hills have come to him, she that the valley is hers for the first time. A new world for them both. Ha!" "Regardez Ca! you are a great man," said the Little Chemist. There was a strange, inscrutable look in the kind priest's eyes. The Avocat had confessed to him in his time. Medallion took up his hat. "Where are you going?" said the Little Chemist. "To our Avocat, and then to St. Jean." He opened the door and vanished. The two that were left shook their heads and wondered. Chuckling softly to himself, Medallion strode away through the lane of white-board houses and the smoke of strong tabac from these houses, now and then pulling suddenly up to avoid stumbling over a child, where children are numbered by the dozen to every house. He came at last to a house unlike the others, in that it was of stone and larger. He leaned for a moment over the gate, and looked through a window into a room where the Avocat sat propped up with cushions in a great chair, staring gloomily at two candles burning on the table before him. Medallion watched him for a long time. The Avocat never changed his position; he only stared at the candle, and once or twice his lips moved. A woman came in and put a steaming bowl before him, and laid a pipe and matches beside the bowl. She was a very little, thin old woman, quick and quiet and watchful--his housekeeper. The Avocat took no notice of her. She looked at him several times anxiously, and passed backwards and forwards behind him as a hen moves upon the flank of her brood. All at once she stopped. Her small, white fingers, with their large rheumatic knuckles, lay flat on her lips as she stood for an instant musing; then she trotted lightly to a bureau, got pen and paper and ink, reached down a bunch of keys from the mantel, and came and put them all beside the bowl and the pipe. Still the Avocat did not stir, or show that he recognised her. She went to the door, turned, and looked back, her fingers again at her lips, then slowly sidled out of the room. It was long before the Avocat moved. His eyes had not wavered from the space between the candles. At last, however, he glanced down. His eye caught the bowl, then the pipe. He reached out a slow hand for the pipe, and was taking it up, when his glance fell on the keys and the writing material. He put the pipe down, looked up at the door through which the little old woman had gone, gazed round the room, took up the keys, but soon put them down again with a sigh, and settled back in his chair. Now his gaze alternated between that long lane, sloping into shadow between the candles, and the keys. Medallion threw a leg over the fence and came in a few steps to the door. He opened it quietly and entered. In the dark he felt his way along the wall to the door of the Avocat's room, opened it, and thrust in his ungainly, whimsical face. "Ha!" he laughed with quick-winking eyes. "Evening, Garon. Live the Code Napoleon! Pipes for two." A change came slowly over the Avocat. His eyes drew away from that vista between the candles, and the strange distant look faded out of them. "Great is the Code Napoleon!" he said mechanically. Then, presently: "Ah, my friend, Medallion!" His first words were the answer to a formula which always passed between them on meeting. As soon as Garon had said them, Medallion's lanky body followed his face, and in a moment he had the Avocat's hand in his, swallowing it, of purpose crushing it, so that Monsieur Garon waked up smartly and gave his visitor a pensive smile. Medallion's cheerful nervous vitality seldom failed to inspire whom he chose to inspire with Something of his own life and cheerfulness. In a few moments both the Avocat and himself were smoking, and the contents of the steaming bowl were divided between them. Medallion talked on many things. The little old housekeeper came in, chirped a soft good-evening, flashed a small thankful smile at Medallion, and, after renewing the bowl and lighting two more tall candles, disappeared. Medallion began with the parish, passed to the law, from the law to Napoleon, from Napoleon to France, and from France to the world, drawing out from the Avocat something of his old vivacity and fire. At last Medallion, seeing that the time was ripe, turned his glass round musingly in his fingers before him and said: "Benoit, Annette's husband, died to-day, Garon. You knew him. He went singing--gone in the head, but singing as he used to do before he married--or got drunk! Perhaps his youth came back to him when he was going to die, just for a minute." The Avocat's eye gazed at Medallion earnestly now, and Medallion went on: "As good singing as you want to hear. You've heard the words of the song--the river drivers sing it: "'What is there like to the cry of the bird That sings in its nest in the lilac tree? A voice the sweetest you ever have heard; It is there, it is here, ci ci! It is there, it is here, it must roam and roam, And wander from shore to shore, Till I go forth and bring it home, And enter and close my door Row along, row along home, ci ci!'" When Medallion had finished saying the first verse he waited, but the Avocat said nothing; his eyes were now fastened again on that avenue between the candles leading out into the immortal part of him--his past; he was busy with a life that had once been spent in the fields of Fontainebleau and in the shadow of the Pantheon. Medallion went on: "'What is there like to the laughing star, Far up from the lilac tree? A face that's brighter and finer far; It laughs and it shines, ci, ci! It laughs and it shines, it must roam and roam, And travel from shore to shore, Till I go forth and bring it home, And house it within my door Row along, row along home, ci, ci!'" When Medallion had finished he raised his glass and said: "Garon, I drink to home and woman!" He waited. The Avocat's eyes drew away from the candles again, and he came to his feet suddenly, swaying slightly as he did so. He caught up a glass and, lifting it, said: "I drink to home and--" a little cold burst of laughter came from him, he threw his head back with something like disdain--"and the Code Napoleon!" he added abruptly. Then he put the glass down without drinking, wheeled back, and dropped into his chair. Presently he got up, took his keys, went over, opened the bureau, and brought back a well-worn note-book which looked like a diary. He seemed to have forgotten Medallion's presence, but it was not so; he had reached the moment of disclosure which comes to every man, no matter how secretive, when he must tell what is on his mind or die. He opened the book with trembling fingers, took a pen and wrote, at first slowly, while Medallion smoked: "September 13th.--It is five-and-twenty years ago to-day--Mon Dieu, how we danced that night on the flags before the Sorbonne! How gay we were in the Maison Bleu! We were gay and happy--Lulie and I--two rooms and a few francs ahead every week. That night we danced and poured out the light wine, because we were to be married to-morrow. Perhaps there would be a child, if the priest blessed us, she whispered to me as we watched the soft-travelling moon in the gardens of the Luxembourg. Well, we danced. There was an artist with us. I saw him catch Lulie about the waist, and kiss her on the neck. She was angry, but I did not think of that; I was mad with wine. I quarrelled with her, and said to her a shameful thing. Then I rushed away. We were not married the next day; I could not find her. One night, soon after, there was a revolution of students at Mont Parnasse. I was hurt. I remember that she came to me then and nursed me, but when I got well she was gone. Then came the secret word from the Government that I must leave the country or go to prison. I came here. Alas! it is long since we danced before the Sorbonne, and supped at the Maison Bleu. I shall never see again the gardens of the Luxembourg. Well, that was a mad night five-and-twenty years ago!" His pen went faster and faster. His eyes lighted up, he seemed quite forgetful of Medallion's presence. When he finished, a fresh change came over him. He gathered his thin fingers in a bunch at his lips, and made an airy salute to the warm space between the candles. He drew himself together with a youthful air, and held his grey head gallantly. Youth and age in him seemed almost grotesquely mingled. Sprightly notes from the song of a cafe chantant hovered on his thin, dry lips. Medallion, amused, yet with a hushed kind of feeling through all his nerves, pushed the Avocat's tumbler till it touched his fingers. The thin fingers twined round it, and once more he came to his feet. He raised the glass. "To--" for a minute he got no further--"To the wedding-eve!" he said, and sipped the hot wine. Presently he pushed the little well-worn book over to Medallion. "I have known you fifteen years--read!" he said. He gave Medallion a meaning look out of his now flashing eyes. Medallion's bony face responded cordially. "Of course," he answered, picked up the book, and read what the Avocat had written. It was on the last page. When he had finished reading, he held the book musingly. His whim had suddenly taken on a new colour. The Avocat, who had been walking up and down the room, with the quick step of a young man, stopped before him, took the book from him, turned to the first page, and handed it back silently. Medallion read: Quebec, September 13th, 18-. It is one year since. I shall learn to laugh some day. Medallion looked up at him. The old man threw back his head, spread out the last page in the book which he had just written, and said defiantly, as though expecting contradiction to his self-deception--"I have learned." Then he laughed, but the laugh was dry and hollow and painful. It suddenly passed from his wrinkled lips, and he sat down again; but now with an air as of shy ness and shame. "Let us talk," he said, "of-- of the Code Napoleon." The next morning Medallion visited St. Jean in the hills. Five years before he had sold to a new-comer at St. Jean-Madame Lecyr--the furniture of a little house, and there had sprung up between them a quiet friendship, not the less admiring on Medallion's part because Madame Lecyr was a good friend to the poor and sick. She never tired, when they met, of hearing him talk of the Cure, the Little Chemist, and the Avocat; and in the Avocat she seemed to take the most interest, making countless inquiries--countless when spread over many conversations--upon his life during the time Medallion had known him. He knew also that she came to Pontiac, occasionally, but only in the evening; and once of a moonlight night he had seen her standing before the window of the Avocat's house. Once also he had seen her veiled in the little crowded court-room of Pontiac when an interesting case was being tried, and noticed how she watched Monsieur Garon, standing so very still that she seemed lifeless; and how she stole out as soon as he had done speaking. Medallion had acute instincts, and was supremely a man of self-counsel. What he thought he kept to him self until there seemed necessity to speak. A few days before the momentous one herebefore described he had called at Madame Lecyr's house, and, in course of conversation, told her that the Avocat's health was breaking; that the day before he had got completely fogged in court over the simplest business, and was quite unlike his old, shrewd, kindly self. By this time he was almost prepared to see her turn pale and her fingers flutter at the knitting-needles she held. She made an excuse to leave the room for a moment. He saw a little book lying near the chair from which she had risen. Perhaps it had dropped from her pocket. He picked it up. It was a book of French songs--Beranger's and others less notable. On the fly-leaf was written: "From Victor to Lulie, September 13th, 18-." Presently she came back to him quite recovered and calm, inquired how the Avocat was cared for, and hoped he would have every comfort and care. Medallion grew on the instant bold. He was now certain that Victor was the Avocat, and Lulie was Madame Lecyr. He said abruptly to her: "Why not come and cheer him up--such old friends as you are?" At that she rose with a little cry, and stared anxiously at him. He pointed to the book of songs. "Don't be angry--I looked," he said. She breathed quick and hard, and said nothing, but her fingers laced and interlaced nervously in her lap. "If you were friends why don't you go to him?" he said. She shook her head mournfully. "We were more than friends, and that is different." "You were his wife?" said Medallion gently. "It was different," she replied, flushing. "France is not the same as here. We were to be married, but on the eve of our wedding-day there was an end to it all. Only five years ago I found out he was here." Then she became silent, and would, or could, speak no more; only, she said at last before he went: "You will not tell him, or any one?" She need not have asked Medallion. He knew many secrets and kept them; which is not the usual way of good-humoured people. But now, with the story told by the Avocat himself in his mind, he saw the end of the long romance. He came once more to the house of Madame Lecyr, and being admitted, said to her: "You must come at once with me." She trembled towards him. "He is worse--he is dying!" He smiled. "Not dying at all. He needs you; come along. I'll tell you as we go." But she hung back. Then he told her all he had seen and heard the evening before. Without a word further she prepared to go. On the way he turned to her and said: "You are Madame Lecyr?" "I am as he left me," she replied timidly, but with a kind of pride, too. "Don't mistake me," he said. "I thought perhaps you had been married since." The Avocat sat in his little office, feebly fumbling among his papers, as Medallion entered on him and called to him cheerily: "We are coming to see you to-night, Garon--the Cure, our Little Chemist, and the Seigneur; coming to supper." The Avocat put out his hand courteously; but he said in a shrinking, pained voice: "No, no, not to-night, Medallion. I would wish no visitors this night--of all." Medallion stooped over him, and caught him by both arms gently. "We shall see," he said. "It is the anniversary," he whispered. "Ah, pardon!" said the Avocat, with a reproving pride, and shrank back as if all his nerves had been laid bare. But Medallion turned, opened the door, went out, and let in a woman, who came forward and timidly raised her veil. "Victor!" Medallion heard, then "Lulie!" and then he shut the door, and, with supper in his mind, went into the kitchen to see the housekeeper, who, in this new joy, had her own tragedy--humming to himself: "But down there come from the lofty hills Footsteps and eyes agleam, Bringing the laughter of yesterday Into the little house." THE PRISONER His chief occupation in the daytime was to stand on the bench by the small barred window and watch the pigeons on the roof and in the eaves of the house opposite. For five years he had done this. In the summer a great fire seemed to burn beneath the tin of the roof, for a quivering hot air rose from them, and the pigeons never alighted on them, save in the early morning or in the evening. Just over the peak could be seen the topmost branch of a maple, too slight to bear the weight of the pigeons, but the eaves were dark and cool, and there his eyes rested when he tired of the hard blue sky and the glare of the slates. In winter the roof was covered for weeks and months by a blanket of snow which looked like a shawl of impacted wool, white and restful, and the windows of the house were spread with frost. But the pigeons were always gay, walking on the ledges or crowding on the shelves of the lead pipes. He studied them much, but he loved them more. His prison was less a prison because of them, and during those long five years he found himself more in touch with them than with the wardens of the prison or with any of his fellow-prisoners. To the former he was respectful, and he gave them no trouble at all; with the latter he had nothing in common, for they were criminals, and he--so wild and mad with drink and anger was he at the time, that he had no remembrance, absolutely none, of how Jean Gamache lost his life. He remembered that they had played cards far into the night; that they had quarrelled, then made their peace; that the others had left; that they had begun gaming and drinking and quarrelling again--and then everything was blurred, save for a vague recollection that he had won all Gamache's money and had pocketed it. Afterwards came a blank. He waked to find two officers of the law beside him, and the body of Jean Gamache, stark and dreadful, a few feet away. When the officers put their hands upon him he shook them off; when they did it again he would have fought them to the death, had it not been for his friend, tall Medallion the auctioneer, who laid a strong hand on his arm and said, "Steady, Turgeon, steady!" and he had yielded to the firm friendly pressure. Medallion had left no stone unturned to clear him at the trial, had himself played detective unceasingly. But the hard facts remained, and on a chain of circumstantial evidence Blaze Turgeon was convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison for ten years. Blaze himself had said that he did not remember, but he could not believe that he had committed the crime. Robbery? He shrugged his shoulders at that, he insisted that his lawyer should not reply to the foolish and insulting suggestion. But the evidence went to show that Gamache had all the winnings when the other members of the party retired, and this very money had been found in Blaze's pocket. There was only Blaze's word that they had played cards again. Anger? Possibly. Blaze could not recall, though he knew they had quarrelled. The judge himself, charging the jury, said that he never before had seen a prisoner so frank, so outwardly honest, but he warned them that they must not lose sight of the crime itself, the taking of a human life, whereby a woman was made a widow and a child fatherless. The jury found him guilty. With few remarks the judge delivered his sentence, and then himself, shaken and pale, left the court-room hurriedly, for Blaze Turgeon's father had been his friend from boyhood. Blaze took his sentence calmly, looking the jury squarely in the eyes, and when the judge stopped, he bowed to him, and then turned to the jury and said: "Gentlemen, you have ruined my life. You don't know, and I don't know, who killed the man. You have guessed, and I take the penalty. Suppose I'm innocent--how will you feel when the truth comes out? You've known me more or less these twenty years, and you've said, with evidently no more knowledge than I've got, that I did this horrible thing. I don't know but that one of you did it. But you are safe, and I take my ten years!" He turned from them, and, as he did so, he saw a woman looking at him from a corner of the court-room, with a strange, wild expression. At the moment he saw no more than an excited, bewildered face, but afterwards this face came and went before him, flashing in and out of dark places in a kind of mockery. As he went from the court-room another woman made her way to him in spite of the guards. It was the Little Chemist's wife, who, years before, had been his father's housekeeper, who knew him when his eyes first opened on the world. "My poor Blaze! my poor Blaze!" she said, clasping his manacled hands. In prison he refused to see all visitors, even Medallion, the Little Chemist's wife, and the good Father Fabre. Letters, too, he refused to accept and read. He had no contact, wished no contact with the outer world, but lived his hard, lonely life by himself, silent, studious-- for now books were a pleasure to him. He had entered his prison a wild, excitable, dissipated youth, and he had become a mature brooding man. Five years had done the work of twenty. The face of the woman who looked at him so strangely in the court-room haunted him so that at last it became a part of his real life, lived largely at the window where he looked out at the pigeons on the roof of the hospital. "She was sorry for me," he said many a time to himself. He was shaken with misery often, so that he rocked to and fro as he sat on his bed, and a warder heard him cry out even in the last days of his imprisonment: "O God, canst Thou do everything but speak!" And again: "That hour--the memory of that hour, in exchange for my ruined life!" One day the gaoler came to him and said: "Monsieur Turgeon, you are free. The Governor has cut off five years from your sentence." Then he was told that people were waiting without--Medallion, the Little Chemist and his wife, and others more important. But he would not go to meet them, and he stepped into the open world alone at dawn the next morning, and looked out upon a still sleeping village. Suddenly there stood before him a woman, who had watched by the prison gates all night; and she put out her hand in entreaty, and said with a breaking voice: "You are free at last!" He remembered her--the woman who had looked at him so anxiously and sorrowfully in the court-room. "Why did you come to meet me?" he asked. "I was sorry for you." "But that is no reason." "I once committed a crime," she whispered, with shrinking bitterness. "That's bad," he said. "Were you punished?" He looked at her keenly, almost fiercely, for a curious suspicion shot into his mind. She shook her head and answered no. "That's worse!" "I let some one else take my crime upon him and be punished for it," she said, an agony in her eyes. "Why was that?" "I had a little child," was her reply. "And the man who was punished instead?" "He was alone in the world," she said. A bitter smile crept to his lips, and his face was afire. He shut his eyes, and when they opened again discovery was in them. "I remember you now," he said. "I remember now. "I waked and saw you looking at me that night! Who was the father of your child?" "Jean Gamache," she replied. "He ruined me and left me to starve." "I am innocent of his death!" he said quietly and gladly. She nodded. He was silent for a moment. "The child still lives?" he asked. She nodded again. "Well, let it be so," he said. "But you owe me five years--and a good name." "I wish to God I could give them back!" she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. "It was for my child; he was so young." "It can't be helped now," he said sighing, and he turned away from her. "Won't you forgive me?" she asked bitterly. "Won't you give me back those five years?" "If the child did not need me I would give my life," she answered. "I owe it to you." Her haggard, hunted face made him sorry; he, too, had suffered. "It's all right," he answered gently. "Take care of your child." Again he moved away from her, and went down the little hill, with a cloud gone from his face that had rested there five years. Once he turned to look back. The woman was gone, but over the prison a flock of pigeons were flying. He took off his hat to them. Then he went through the town, looking neither to right nor left, and came to his own house, where the summer morning was already entering the open windows, though he had thought to find the place closed and dark. The Little Chemist's wife met him in the doorway. She could not speak, nor could he, but he kissed her as he had done when he went condemned to prison. Then he passed on to his own room, and entering, sat down before the open window, and peacefully drank in the glory of a new world. But more than once he choked down a sob rising in his throat. AN UPSET PRICE Once Secord was as fine a man to look at as you would care to see: with a large intelligent eye, a clear, healthy skin, and a full, brown beard. He walked with a spring, had a gift of conversation, and took life as he found it, never too seriously, yet never carelessly. That was before he left the village of Pontiac in Quebec to offer himself as a surgeon to the American Army. When he came back there was a change in him. He was still handsome, but something of the spring had gone from his walk, the quick light of his eyes had given place to a dark, dreamy expression, his skin became a little dulled, and his talk slower, though not less musical or pleasant. Indeed, his conversation had distinctly improved. Previously there was an undercurrent of self-consciousness; it was all gone now. He talked as one knowing his audience. His office became again, as it had been before, a rendezvous for the few interesting men of the place, including the Avocat, the Cure, the Little Chemist, and Medallion. They played chess and ecarte for certain hours of certain evenings in the week at Secord's house. Medallion was the first to notice that the wife--whom Secord had married soon after he came back from the war--occasionally put down her work and looked with a curious inquiring expression at her husband as he talked. It struck Medallion that she was puzzled by some change in Secord. Secord was a brilliant surgeon and physician. With the knife or beside a sick-bed, he was admirable. His intuitive perception, so necessary in his work, was very fine: he appeared to get at the core of a patient's trouble, and to decide upon necessary action with instant and absolute confidence. Some delicate operation performed by him was recorded and praised in the Lancet; and he was offered a responsible post in a medical college, and, at the same time, the good-will of a valuable practice. He declined both, to the lasting astonishment, yet personal joy, of the Cure and the Avocat; but, as time went on, not so much to the surprise of the Little Chemist and Medallion. After three years, the sleepy Little Chemist waked up suddenly in his chair one day, and said: "Parbleu, God bless me!" (he loved to mix his native language with English) got up and went over to Secord's office, adjusted his glasses, looked at Secord closely, caught his hand with both of his own, shook it with shy abruptness, came back to his shop, sat down, and said: "God bless my soul! Regardez ca!" Medallion made his discovery sooner. Watching closely he had seen a pronounced deliberation infused through all Secord's indolence of manner, and noticed that often, before doing anything, the big eyes debated steadfastly, and the long, slender fingers ran down the beard softly. At times there was a deep meditativeness in the eye, again a dusky fire. But there was a certain charm through it all--a languid precision, a slumbering look in the face, a vague undercurrent in the voice, a fantastical flavour to the thought. The change had come so gradually that only Medallion and the wife had a real conception of how great it was. Medallion had studied Secord from every stand-point. At the very first he wondered if there was a woman in it. Much thinking on a woman, whose influence on his life was evil or disturbing, might account somewhat for the change in Secord. But, seeing how fond the man was of his wife, Medallion gave up that idea. It was not liquor, for Secord never touched it. One day, however, when Medallion was selling the furniture of a house, he put up a feather bed, and, as was his custom-- for he was a whimsical fellow--let his humour have play. He used many metaphors as to the virtue of the bed, crowning them with the statement that you slept in it dreaming as delicious dreams as though you had eaten poppy, or mandragora, or--He stopped short, said, "By jingo, that's it!" knocked the bed down instantly, and was an utter failure for the rest of the day. The wife was longer in discovering the truth, but a certain morning, as her husband lay sleeping after an all-night sitting with a patient, she saw lying beside him--it had dropped from his waistcoat pocket--a little bottle full of a dark liquid. She knew that he always carried his medicine-phials in a pocket-case. She got the case, and saw that none was missing. She noticed that the cork of the phial was well worn. She took it out and smelled the liquid. Then she understood. She waited and watched. She saw him after he waked look watchfully round, quietly take a wine-glass, and let the liquid come drop by drop into it from the point of his forefinger. Henceforth she read with understanding the changes in his manner, and saw behind the mingled abstraction and fanciful meditation of his talk. She had not yet made up her mind what to do. She saw that he hid it from her assiduously. He did so more because he wished not to pain her than from furtiveness. By nature he was open and brave, and had always had a reputation for plainness and sincerity. She was in no sense his equal in intelligence or judgment, nor even in instinct. She was a woman of more impulse and constitutional good-nature than depth. It is probable that he knew that, and refrained from letting her into the knowledge of this vice, contracted in the war when, seriously ill, he was able to drag himself about from patient to patient only by the help of opium. He was alive to his position and its consequences, and faced it. He had no children, and he was glad of this for one reason. He could do nothing now without the drug; it was as necessary as light to him. The little bottle had been his friend so long, that, with his finger on its smooth- edged cork, it was as though he held the tap of life. The Little Chemist and Medallion kept the thing to themselves, but they understood each other in the matter, and wondered what they could do to cure him. The Little Chemist only shrank back, and said, "No, no, pardon, my friend!" when Medallion suggested that he should speak to Secord. But the Little Chemist was greatly concerned--for had not Secord saved his beloved wife by a clever operation? and was it not her custom to devote a certain hour every week to the welfare of Secord's soul and body, before the shrine of the Virgin? Her husband told her now that Secord was in trouble, and though he was far from being devout himself, he had a shy faith in the great sincerity of his wife. She did her best, and increased her offerings of flowers to the shrine; also, in her simplicity, she sent Secord's wife little jars of jam to comfort him. One evening the little coterie met by arrangement at the doctor's house. After waiting an hour or two for Secord, who had been called away to a critical case, the Avocat and the Cure went home, leaving polite old- fashioned messages for their absent host; but the Little Chemist and Medallion remained. For a time Mrs. Secord remained with them, then retired, begging them to await her husband, who, she knew, would be grateful if they stayed. The Little Chemist, with timid courtesy, showed her out of the room, then came back and sat down. They were very silent. The Little Chemist took off his glasses a half-dozen times, wiped them, and put them back. Then suddenly turned on Medallion. "You mean to speak to-night?" "Yes, that's it." "Regardez ca--well, well!" Medallion never smoked harder than he did then. The Little Chemist looked at him nervously again and again, listened towards the door, fingered with his tumbler, and at last hearing the sound of sleigh-bells, suddenly came to his feet, and said: "Voila, I will go to my wife." And catching up his cap, and forgetting his overcoat, he trotted away home in a fright. What Medallion did or said to Secord that night neither ever told. But it must have been a singular scene, for when the humourist pleads or prays there is no pathos like it; and certainly Medallion's eyes were red when he rapped up the Little Chemist at dawn, caught him by the shoulders, turned him round several times, thumped him on the back, and called him a bully old boy; and then, seeing the old wife in her quaint padded night-gown, suddenly hugged her, threw himself into a chair, and almost shouted for a cup of coffee. At the same time Mrs. Secord was alternately crying and laughing in her husband's arms, and he was saying to her: "I'll make a fight for it, Lesley, a big fight; but you must be patient, for I expect I'll be a devil sometimes without it. Why, I've eaten a drachm a day of the stuff, or drunk its equivalent in the tincture. No, never mind praying; be a brick and fight with me that's the game, my girl." He did make a fight for it, such an one as few men have made and come out safely. For those who dwell in the Pit never suffer as do they who struggle with this appetite. He was too wise to give it up all at once. He diminished the dose gradually, but still very perceptibly. As it was, it made a marked change in him. The necessary effort of the will gave a kind of hard coldness to his face, and he used to walk his garden for hours at night in conflict with his enemy. His nerves were uncertain, but, strange to say, when (it was not often) any serious case of illness came under his hands, he was somehow able to pull himself together and do his task gallantly enough. But he had had no important surgical case since he began his cure. In his heart he lived in fear of one; for he was not quite sure of himself. In spite of effort to the contrary he became irritable, and his old pleasant fantasies changed to gloomy and bizarre imaginings. The wife never knew what it cost her husband thus, day by day, to take a foe by the throat and hold him in check. She did not guess that he knew if he dropped back even once he could not regain himself: this was his idiosyncrasy. He did not find her a great help to him in his trouble. She was affectionate, but she had not much penetration even where he was concerned, and she did not grasp how much was at stake. She thought indeed that he should be able to give it up all at once. He was tender with her, but he wished often that she could understand him without explanation on his part. Many a time he took out the little bottle with a reckless hand, but conquered himself. He got most help, perhaps, from the honest, cheerful eye of Medallion and the stumbling timorous affection of the Little Chemist. They were perfectly disinterested friends--his wife at times made him aware that he had done her a wrong, for he had married her with thus appetite on him. He did not defend himself, but he wished she would--even if she had to act it--make him believe in himself more. One morning against his will he was irritable with her, and she said something that burnt like caustic. He smiled ironically, and pushed his newspaper over to her, pointing to a paragraph. It was the announcement that an old admirer of hers whom she had passed by for her husband, had come into a fortune. "Perhaps you've made a mistake," he said. She answered nothing, but the look she gave was unfortunate for both. He muffled his mouth in his long silken beard as if to smother what he felt impelled to say, then suddenly rose and left the table. At this time he had reduced his dose of the drug to eight drops twice a day. With a grim courage he resolved to make it five all at once. He did so, and held to it. Medallion was much with him in these days. One morning in the spring he got up, went out in his garden, drew in the fresh, sweet air with a great gulp, picked some lovely crab-apple blossoms, and, with a strange glowing look in his eyes, came in to his wife, put them into her hands, and kissed her. It was the anniversary of their wedding-day. Then, without a word, he took from his pocket the little phial that he had carried so long, rolled it for an instant in his palm, felt its worn, discoloured cork musingly, and threw it out of the window. "Now, my dear," he whispered, "we will be happy again." He held to his determination with a stern anxiety. He took a month's vacation, and came back better. He was not so happy as he hoped to be; yet he would not whisper to himself the reason why. He felt that something had failed him somewhere. One day a man came riding swiftly up to his door to say that his wife's father had met with a bad accident in his great mill. Secord told his wife. A peculiar troubled look came into his face as he glanced carefully over his instruments and through his medicine case. "God, I must do it alone!" he said. The old man's injury was a dangerous one: a skilful operation was necessary. As Secord stood beside the sufferer, he felt his nerves suddenly go--just as they did in the war before he first took the drug. His wife was in the next room--he could hear her; he wished she would make no sound at all. Unless this operation was performed successfully the sufferer would die--he might die anyhow. Secord tried to gather himself up to his task, but he felt it was of no use. A month later when he was more recovered physically he would be able to perform the operation, but the old man was dying now, while he stood helplessly stroking his big brown beard. He took up his pocket medicine-case, and went out where his wife was. Excited and tearful, she started up to meet him, painfully inquiring. "Can you save him?" she said. "Oh, James, what is the matter? You are trembling." "It's just this way, Lesley: my nerve is broken; I can't perform the operation as I am, and he will die in an hour if I don't." She caught him by the arm. "Can you not be strong? You have a will. Will you not try to save my father, James? Is there no way?" "Yes, there is one way," he said. He opened the pocket-case and took out a phial of laudanum. "This is the way. I can pull myself together with it. It will save his life." There was a dogged look in his face. "Well? well?" she said. "Oh, my dear father, will you not keep him here?" A peculiar cold smile hovered about his lips. "But there is danger to me in this . . . and remember, he is very old!" "Oh," she cried, "how can you be so shocking, so cruel!" She rocked herself to and fro. "If it will save him--and you need not take it again, ever!" "But, I tell you--" "Do you not hear him--he is dying!" She was mad with grief; she hardly knew what she said. Without a word he dropped the tincture swiftly in a wine-glass of water, drank it off, shivered, drew himself up with a start, gave a sigh as if some huge struggle was over, and went in to where the old man was. Three hours after he told his wife that her father was safe. When, after a hasty kiss, she left him and went into the room of sickness, and the door closed after her, standing where she had left him he laughed a hard crackling laugh, and said between his teeth: "An upset price!" Then he poured out another portion of the dark tincture--the largest he had ever taken--and tossed it off. That night he might have been seen feeling about the grass in a moon-lit garden. At last he put something in his pocket with a quick, harsh chuckle of satisfaction. It was a little black bottle with a well-worn cork. A FRAGMENT OF LIVES They met at last, Dubarre, and Villiard, the man who had stolen from him the woman he loved. Both had wronged the woman, but Villiard most, for he had let her die because of jealousy. They were now in a room alone in the forest of St. Sebastian. Both were quiet, and both knew that the end of their feud was near. Going to a cupboard Dubarre brought out four glasses and put them on the table. Then from two bottles he poured out what looked like red wine, two glasses from each bottle. Putting the bottles back he returned to the table. "Do you dare to drink with me?" Dubarre asked, nodding towards the glasses. "Two of the glasses have poison in them, two have good red wine only. We will move them about and then drink. Both may die, or only one of us." Villiard looked at the other with contracting, questioning eyes. "You would play that game with me?" he asked, in a mechanical voice. "It would give me great pleasure." The voice had a strange, ironical tone. "It is a grand sport--as one would take a run at a crevasse and clear it, or fall. If we both fall, we are in good company; if you fall, I have the greater joy of escape; if I fall, you have the same joy." "I am ready," was the answer. "But let us eat first." A great fire burned in the chimney, for the night was cool. It filled the room with a gracious heat and with huge, comfortable shadows. Here and there on the wall a tin cup flashed back the radiance of the fire, the barrel of a gun glistened soberly along a rafter, and the long, wiry hair of an otter-skin in the corner sent out little needles of light. Upon the fire a pot was simmering, and a good savour came from it. A wind went lilting by outside the but in tune with the singing of the kettle. The ticking of a huge, old-fashioned repeating-watch on the wall was in unison with these. Dubarre rose from the table, threw himself upon the little pile of otter- skins, and lay watching Villiard and mechanically studying the little room. Villiard took the four glasses filled with the wine and laid them on a shelf against the wall, then began to put the table in order for their supper, and to take the pot from the fire. Dubarre noticed that just above where the glasses stood on the shelf a crucifix was hanging, and that red crystal sparkled in the hands and feet where the nails should be driven in. There was a painful humour in the association. He smiled, then turned his head away, for old memories flashed through his brain--he had been an acolyte once; he had served at the altar. Suddenly Dubarre rose, took the glasses from the shelf and placed them in the middle of the table--the death's head for the feast. As they sat down to eat, the eyes of both men unconsciously wandered to the crucifix, attracted by the red sparkle of the rubies. They drank water with the well-cooked meat of the wapiti, though red wine faced them on the table. Each ate heartily; as though a long day were before them and not the shadow of the Long Night. There was no speech save that of the usual courtesies of the table. The fire, and the wind, and the watch seemed the only living things besides themselves, perched there between heaven and earth. At length the meal was finished, and the two turned in their chairs towards the fire. There was no other light in the room, and on the faces of the two, still and cold, the flame played idly. "When?" said Dubarre at last. "Not yet," was the quiet reply. "I was thinking of my first theft--an apple from my brother's plate," said Dubarre, with a dry smile. "You?" "I, of my first lie." "That apple was the sweetest fruit I ever tasted." "And I took the penalty of the lie, but I had no sorrow." Again there was silence. "Now?" asked Villiard, after an hour had passed. "I am ready." They came to the table. "Shall we bind our eyes?" asked Dubarre. "I do not know the glasses that hold the poison." "Nor I the bottle that held it. I will turn my back, and do you change about the glasses." Villiard turned his face towards the timepiece on the wall. As he did so it began to strike--a clear, silvery chime: "One! two! three--!" Before it had finished striking both men were facing the glasses again. "Take one," said Dubarre. Villiard took the one nearest himself. Dubarre took one also. Without a word they lifted the glasses and drank. "Again," said Dubarre. "You choose," responded Villiard. Dubarre lifted the one nearest himself, and Villiard picked up the other. Raising their glasses again, they bowed to each other and drank. The watch struck twelve, and stopped its silvery chiming. They both sat down, looking at each other, the light of an enormous chance in their eyes, the tragedy of a great stake in their clinched hands; but the deeper, intenser power was in the face of Dubarre, the explorer. There was more than power; malice drew down the brows and curled the sensitive upper lip. Each man watched the other for knowledge of his own fate. The glasses lay straggling along the table, emptied of death and life. All at once a horrible pallor spread over the face of Villiard, and his head jerked forward. He grasped the table with both hands, twitching and trembling. His eyes stared wildly at Dubarre, to whose face the flush of wine had come, whose look was now maliciously triumphant. Villiard had drunk both glasses of the poison! "I win!" Dubarre stood up. Then, leaning over the table towards the dying man, he added: "You let her die-well! Would you know the truth? She loved you--always." Villiard gasped, and his look wandered vaguely along the opposite wall. Dubarre went on. "I played the game with you honestly, because--because it was the greatest man could play. And I, too, sinned against her. Now die! She loved you--murderer!" The man's look still wandered distractedly along the wall. The sweat of death was on his face; his lips were moving spasmodically. Suddenly his look became fixed; he found voice. "Pardon--Jesu!" he said, and stiffened where he sat. His eyes were fixed on the jewelled crucifix. Dubarre snatched it from the wall, and hastening to him held it to his lips: but the warm sparkle of the rubies fell on eyes that were cold as frosted glass. Dubarre saw that he was dead. "Because the woman loved him!" he said, gazing curiously at the dead man. He turned, went to the door and opened it, for his breath choked him. All was still on the wooded heights and in the wide valley. "Because the woman loved him he repented," said Dubarre again with a half-cynical gentleness as he placed the crucifix on the dead man's breast. THE MAN THAT DIED AT ALMA The man who died at Alma had a Kilkenny brogue that you could not cut with a knife, but he was called Kilquhanity, a name as Scotch as McGregor. Kilquhanity was a retired soldier, on pension, and Pontiac was a place of peace and poverty. The only gentry were the Cure, the Avocat, and the young Seigneur, but of the three the only one with a private income was the young Seigneur. What should such a common man as Kilquhanity do with a private income! It seemed almost suspicious, instead of creditable, to the minds of the simple folk at Pontiac; for they were French, and poor, and laborious, and Kilquhanity drew his pension from the headquarters of the English Government, which they only knew by legends wafted to them over great tracts of country from the city of Quebec. When Kilquhanity first came with his wife, it was without introductions from anywhere--unlike everybody else in Pontiac, whose family history could be instantly reduced to an exact record by the Cure. He had a smattering of French, which he turned off with oily brusqueness; he was not close-mouthed, he talked freely of events in his past life; and he told some really wonderful tales of his experiences in the British army. He was no braggart, however, and his one great story which gave him the nickname by which he was called at Pontiac, was told far more in a spirit of laughter at himself than in praise of his own part in the incident. The first time he told the story was in the house of Medallion the auctioneer. "Aw the night it was," said Kilquhanity, after a pause, blowing a cloud of tobacco smoke into the air, "the night it was, me darlin's! Bitther cowld in that Roosian counthry, though but late summer, and nothin' to ate but a lump of bread, no bigger than a dickybird's skull; nothin' to drink but wather. Turrible, turrible, and for clothes to wear--Mother of Moses! that was a bad day for clothes! We got betune no barrick quilts that night. No stockin' had I insoide me boots, no shirt had I but a harse's quilt sewed an to me; no heart I had insoide me body; nothin' at all but duty an' shtandin' to orders, me b'ys! "Says Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick to me, 'Kilquhanity,' says he, 'there's betther places than River Alma to live by,' says he. 'Faith, an' by the Liffey I wish I was this moment'--Liffey's in ould Ireland, Frenchies! 'But, Kilquhanity,' says he, 'faith, an' it's the Liffey we'll never see again, an' put that in yer pipe an' smoke it!' And thrue for him. "But that night, aw that night! Ivery bone in me body was achin', and shure me heart was achin' too, for the poor b'ys that were fightin' hard an' gettin' little for it. Bitther cowld it was, aw, bitther cowld, and the b'ys droppin' down, droppin', droppin', droppin', wid the Roosian bullets in thim! "'Kilquhanity,' says Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick to me, 'it's this shtandin' still, while we do be droppin', droppin', that girds the soul av yer.' Aw, the sight it was, the sight it was! The b'ys of the rigimint shtandin' shoulder to shoulder, an' the faces av 'm blue wid powder, an' red wid blood, an' the bits o' b'ys droppin' round me loike twigs of an' ould tree in a shtorm. Just a cry an' a bit av a gurgle tru the teeth, an' divil the wan o' thim would see the Liffey side anny more. "'The Roosians are chargin'!' shouts Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick. 'The Roosians are chargin'--here they come!' Shtandin' besoide me was a bit of a lump of a b'y, as foine a lad as ever shtood in the boots of me rigimint--aw! the look of his face was the look o' the dead. 'The Roosians are comin'--they're chargin'!' says Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick, and the bit av a b'y, that had nothin' to eat all day, throws down his gun and turns round to run. Eighteen years old he was, only eighteen-- just a straight slip of a lad from Malahide. 'Hould on! Teddie,' says I, 'hould on! How'll yer face yer mother if yer turn yer back on the inimy of yer counthry?' The b'y looks me in the eyes long enough to wink three times, picks up his gun, an' shtood loike a rock, he did, till the Roosians charged us, roared on us, an' I saw me slip of a b'y go down under the sabre of a damned Cossack. 'Mother!' I heard him say, 'Mother!' an' that's all I heard him say--and the mother waitin' away aff there by the Liffey soide. Aw, wurra, wurra, the b'ys go down to battle and the mothers wait at home! Some of the b'ys come back, but the most of thim shtay where the battle laves 'em. Wurra, wurra, many's the b'y wint down that day by Alma River, an' niver come back! "There I was shtandin', when hell broke loose on the b'ys of me rigimint, and divil the wan o' me knows if I killed a Roosian that day or not. But Sergeant- Major Kilpatrick--a bit of a liar was the Sergeant-Major--says he: 'It was tin ye killed, Kilquhanity.' He says that to me the noight that I left the rigimint for ever, and all the b'ys shtandin' round and liftin' lasses an' saying, 'Kilquhanity! Kilquhanity! Kilquhanity!' as if it was sugar and honey in their mouths. Aw, the sound of it! 'Kilquhanity,' says he, 'it was tin ye killed;' but aw, b'ys, the Sergeant-Major was an awful liar. If he could be doin' annybody anny good by lyin', shure he would be lyin' all the time. "But it's little I know how many I killed, for I was killed meself that day. A Roosian sabre claved the shoulder and neck of me, an' down I wint, and over me trampled a squadron of Roosian harses, an' I stopped thinkin'. Aw, so aisy, so aisy, I slipped away out av the fight! The shriekin' and roarin' kept dwindlin' and dwindlin', and I dropped all into a foine shlape, so quiet, so aisy. An' I thought that slip av a lad from the Liffey soide was houlding me hand, and sayin' 'Mother! Mother!' and we both wint ashlape; an' the b'ys of the rigimint when Alma was over, they said to each other, the b'ys they said: 'Kilquhanity's dead.' An' the trinches was dug, an' all we foine dead b'ys was laid in long rows loike candles in the trinches. An' I was laid in among thim, and Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick shtandin' there an' looking at me an' sayin': 'Poor b'y--poor b'y!' "But when they threw another man on tap of me, I waked up out o' that beautiful shlape, and give him a kick. 'Yer not polite,' says I to mesilf. Shure, I couldn't shpake--there was no strength in me. An' they threw another man on, an' I kicked again, and the Sergeant-Major he sees it, an' shouts out. 'Kilquhan ity's leg is kickin'!' says he. An' they pulled aff the two poor divils that had been thrown o' tap o' me, and the Sergeant-Major lifts me head, an' he says 'Yer not killed, Kilquhanity?' says he. "Divil a word could I shpake, but I winked at him, and Captain Masham shtandin' by whips out a flask. "'Put that betune his teeth,' says he. Whin I got it there, trust me fur not lettin' it go. An' the Sergeant-Major says to me: 'I have hopes of you, Kilquhanity, when you do be drinkin' loike that.' "'A foine healthy corpse I am; an' a foine thirsty, healthy corpse I am,' says I." A dozen hands stretched out to give Kilquhanity a drink, for even the best story-teller of Pontiac could not have told his tale so well. Yet the success achieved by Kilquhanity at such moments was discounted through long months of mingled suspicion and doubtful tolerance. Although both he and his wife were Catholics (so they said, and so it seemed), Kilquhanity never went to Confession or took the Blessed Sacrament. The Cure spoke to Kilquhanity's wife about it, and she said she could do nothing with her husband. Her tongue once loosed, she spoke freely, and what she said was little to the credit of Kilquhanity. Not that she could urge any horrible things against him; but she railed at minor faults till the Cure dismissed her with some good advice upon wives rehearsing their husband's faults, even to the parish priest. Mrs. Kilquhanity could not get the Cure to listen to her, but she was more successful elsewhere. One day she came to get Kilquhanity's pension, which was sent every three months through M. Garon, the Avocat. After she had handed over the receipt prepared beforehand by Kilquhanity, she replied to M. Garon's inquiry concerning her husband in these words: "Misther Garon, sir, such a man it is--enough to break the heart of anny woman. And the timper of him--Misther Garon, the timper of him's that awful, awful! No conshideration, and that ugly-hearted, got whin a soldier b'y! The things he does--my, my, the things be does!" She threw up her hands with an air of distraction. "Well, and what does he do, Madame?" asked the Avocat simply. "An' what he says, too--the awful of it! Ah, the bad sour heart in him! What's he lyin' in his bed for now--an' the New Year comin' on, whin we ought to be praisin' God an' enjoyin' each other's company in this blessed wurruld? What's he lying betune the quilts now fur, but by token of the bad heart in him! It's a wicked could he has, an' how did he come by it? I'll tell ye, Misther Garon. So wild was he, yesterday it was a week, so black mad wid somethin' I'd said to him and somethin' that shlipped from me hand at his head, that he turns his back on me, throws opin the dure, shteps out into the shnow, and shtandin' there alone, he curses the wide wurruld--oh, dear Misther Garon, he cursed the wide wurruld, shtandin' there in the snow! God forgive the black heart of him, shtandin' out there cursin' the wide wurruld!" The Avocat looked at the Sergeant's wife musingly, the fingers of his hands tapping together, but he did not speak: he was becoming wiser all in a moment as to the ways of women. "An' now he's in bed, the shtrappin' blasphemer, fur the could he got shtandin' there in the snow cursin' the wide wurruld. Ah, Misther Garon, pity a poor woman that has to live wid the loikes o' that!" The Avocat still did not speak. He turned his face away and looked out of the window, where his eyes could see the little house on the hill, which to-day had the Union Jack flying in honour of some battle or victory, dear to Kilquhanity's heart. It looked peaceful enough, the little house lying there in the waste of snow, banked up with earth, and sheltered on the northwest by a little grove of pines. At last M. Garon rose, and lifting himself up and down on his toes as if about to deliver a legal opinion, he coughed slightly, and then said in a dry little voice: "Madame, I shall have pleasure in calling on your husband. You have not seen the matter in the true light. Madame, I bid you good-day." That night the Avocat, true to his promise, called on Sergeant Kilquhanity. Kilquhanity was alone in the house. His wife had gone to the village for the Little Chemist. She had been roused at last to the serious nature of Kilquhanity's illness. M. Garon knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again more loudly, and still no answer. He opened the door and entered into a clean, warm living-room, so hot that the heat came to him in waves, buffeting his face. Dining, sitting, and drawing-room, it was also a sort of winter kitchen; and side by side with relics of Kilquhanity's soldier-life were clean, bright tins, black saucepans, strings of dried fruit, and well- cured hams. Certainly the place had the air of home; it spoke for the absent termagant. M. Garon looked round and saw a half-opened door, through which presently came a voice speaking in a laboured whisper. The Avocat knocked gently at the door. "May I come in, Sergeant?" he asked, and entered. There was no light in the room, but the fire in the kitchen stove threw a glow over the bed where the sick man lay. The big hands of the soldier moved restlessly on the quilt. "Aw, it's the koind av ye!" said Kilquhanity, with difficulty, out of the half shadows. The Avocat took one burning hand in both of his, held it for a moment, and pressed it two or three times. He did not know what to say. "We must have a light," said he at last, and taking a candle from the shelf he lighted it at the stove and came into the bedroom again. This time he was startled. Even in this short illness, Kilquhanity's flesh had dropped away from him, leaving him but a bundle of bones, on which the skin quivered with fever. Every word the sick man tried to speak cut his chest like a knife, and his eyes half started from his head with the agony of it. The Avocat's heart sank within him, for he saw that a life was hanging in the balance. Not knowing what to do, he tucked in the bedclothes gently. "I do be thinkin'," said the strained, whispering voice--"I do be thinkin' I could shmoke." The Avocat looked round the room, saw the pipe on the window, and cutting some tobacco from a "plug," he tenderly filled the old black corn-cob. Then he put the stem in Kilquhanity's mouth and held the candle to the bowl. Kilquhanity smiled, drew a long breath, and blew out a cloud of thick smoke. For a moment he puffed vigorously, then, all at once, the pleasure of it seemed to die away, and presently the bowl dropped down on his chin. M. Garon lifted it away. Kilquhanity did not speak, but kept saying something over and over again to himself, looking beyond M. Garon abstractedly. At that moment the front door of the house opened, and presently a shrill voice came through the door: "Shmokin', shmokin', are ye, Kilquhanity? As soon as me back's turned, it's playin' the fool--" She stopped short, seeing the Avocat. "Beggin' yer pardon, Misther Garon," she said, "I thought it was only Kilquhanity here, an' he wid no more sense than a babby." Kilquhanity's eyes closed, and he buried one side of his head in the pillow, that her shrill voice should not pierce his ears. "The Little Chemist 'll be comin' in a minit, dear Misther Garon," said the wife presently, and she began to fuss with the bedclothes and to be nervously and uselessly busy. "Aw, lave thim alone, darlin'," whispered Kilquhanity, tossing. Her officiousness seemed to hurt him more than the pain in his chest. M. Garon did not wait for the Little Chemist to arrive, but after pressing the Sergeant's hand he left the house and went straight to the house of the Cure, and told him in what condition was the black sheep of his flock. When M. Garon returned to his own home he found a visitor in his library. It was a woman, between forty and fifty years of age, who rose slowly to her feet as the Avocat entered, and, without preliminary, put into his hands a document. "That is who I am," she said. "Mary Muddock that was, Mary Kilquhanity that is." The Avocat held in his hands the marriage lines of Matthew Kilquhanity of the parish of Malahide and Mary Muddock of the parish of St. Giles, London. The Avocat was completely taken aback. He blew nervously through his pale fingers, raised himself up and down on his toes, and grew pale through suppressed excitement. He examined the certificate carefully, though from the first he had no doubt of its accuracy and correctness. "Well?" said the woman, with a hard look in her face and a hard note in her voice. "Well?" The Avocat looked at her musingly for a moment. All at once there had been unfolded to him Kilquhanity's story. In his younger days Kilquhanity had married this woman with a face of tin and a heart of leather. It needed no confession from Kilquhanity's own lips to explain by what hard paths he had come to the reckless hour when, at Blackpool, he had left her for ever, as he thought. In the flush of his criminal freedom he had married again--with the woman who shared his home on the little hillside, behind the Parish Church, she believing him a widower. Mary Muddock, with the stupidity of her class, had never gone to the right quarters to discover his whereabouts until a year before this day when she stood in the Avocat's library. At last, through the War Office, she had found the whereabouts of her missing Matthew. She had gathered her little savings together, and, after due preparation, had sailed away to Canada to find the soldier boy whom she had never given anything but bad hours in all the days of his life with her. "Well," said the woman, "you're a lawyer--have you nothing to say? You pay his pension--next time you'll pay it to me. I'll teach him to leave me and my kid and go off with an Irish cook!" The Avocat looked her steadily in the eyes, and then delivered the strongest blow that was possible from the opposite side of the case. "Madame," said he, "Madame, I regret to inform you that Matthew Kilquhanity is dying." "Dying, is he?" said the woman, with a sudden change of voice and manner, but her whine did not ring true. "The poor darlin', and only that Irish hag to care for him! Has he made a will?" she added eagerly. Kilquhanity had made no will, and the little house on the hillside, and all that he had, belonged to this woman who had spoiled the first part of his life, and had come now to spoil the last part. An hour later the Avocat, the Cure, and the two women stood in the chief room of the little house on the hillside. The door was shut between the two rooms, and the Little Chemist was with Kilquhanity. The Cure's hand was on the arm of the first wife and the Avocat's upon the arm of the second. The two women were glaring eye to eye, having just finished as fine a torrent of abuse of each other and of Kilquhanity as can be imagined. Kilquhanity himself, with the sorrow of death upon him, though he knew it not, had listened to the brawl, his chickens come home to roost at last. The first Mrs. Kilquhanity had sworn, with an oath that took no account of the Cure's presence, that not a stick nor a stone nor a rag nor a penny should that Irish slattern have of Matthew Kilquhanity's! The Cure and the Avocat had quieted them at last, and the Cure spoke sternly now to both women. "In the presence of death," said he, "have done with your sinful clatter. Stop quarrelling over a dying man. Let him go in peace--let him go in peace! If I hear one word more," he added sternly, "I will turn you both out of the house into the night. I will have the man die in peace." Opening the door of the bedroom, the Cure went in and shut the door, bolting it quietly behind him. The Little Chemist sat by the bedside, and Kilquhanity lay as still as a babe upon the bed. His eyes were half closed, for the Little Chemist had given him an opiate to quiet the terrible pain. The Cure saw that the end was near. He touched Kilquhanity's arm: "My son," said he, "look up. You have sinned; you must confess your sins, and repent." Kilquhanity looked up at him with dazed but half smiling eyes. "Are they gone? Are the women gone?" The Cure nodded his head. Kilquhanity's eyes closed and opened again. "They're gone, thin! Oh, the foine of it, the foine of it!" he whispered. "So quiet, so aisy, so quiet! Faith, I'll just be shlaping! I'll be shlaping now." His eyes closed, but the Cure touched his arm again. "My son," said he, "look up. Do you thoroughly and earnestly repent you of your sins?" His eyes opened again. "Yis, father, oh yis! There's been a dale o' noise--there's been a dale o' noise in the wurruld, father," said he. "Oh, so quiet, so quiet now! I do be shlaping." A smile came upon his face. "Oh, the foine of it! I do be shlaping- shlaping." And he fell into a noiseless Sleep. THE BARON OF BEAUGARD "The Manor House at Beaugard, monsieur? Ah, certainlee, I mind it very well. It was the first in Quebec, and there are many tales. It had a chapel and a gallows. Its baron, he had the power of life and death, and the right of the seigneur--you understand?--which he used only once; and then what trouble it made for him and the woman, and the barony, and the parish, and all the country!" "What is the whole story, Larue?" said Medallion, who had spent months in the seigneur's company, stalking game, and tales, and legends of the St. Lawrence. Larue spoke English very well--his mother was English. "Mais, I do not know for sure; but the Abbe Frontone, he and I were snowed up together in that same house which now belongs to the Church, and in the big fireplace, where we sat on a bench, toasting our knees and our bacon, he told me the tale as he knew it. He was a great scholar-- there is none greater. He had found papers in the wall of the house, and from the Gover'ment chest he got more. Then there were the tales handed down, and the records of the Church--for she knows the true story of every man that has come to New France from first to last. So, because I have a taste for tales, and gave him some, he told me of the Baron of Beaugard, and that time he took the right of the seigneur, and the end of it all. "Of course it was a hundred and fifty years ago, when Bigot was Intendant-ah, what a rascal was that Bigot, robber and deceiver! He never stood by a friend, and never fought fair a foe--so the Abbe said. Well, Beaugard was no longer young. He had built the Manor House, he had put up his gallows, he had his vassals, he had been made a lord. He had quarrelled with Bigot, and had conquered, but at great cost; for Bigot had such power, and the Governor had trouble enough to care for himself against Bigot, though he was Beaugard's friend. "Well, there was a good lump of a fellow who had been a soldier, and he picked out a girl in the Seigneury of Beaugard to make his wife. It is said the girl herself was not set for the man, for she was of finer stuff than the peasants about her, and showed it. But her father and mother had a dozen other children, and what was this girl, this Falise, to do? She said yes to the man, the time was fixed for the marriage, and it came along. "So. At the very hour of the wedding Beaugard came by, for, the church was in mending, and he had given leave it should be in his own chapel. Well, he rode by just as the bride was coming out with the man--Garoche. When Beaugard saw Falise, he gave a whistle, then spoke in his throat, reined up his horse, and got down. He fastened his eyes on the girl's. A strange look passed between them--he had never seen her before, but she had seen him often, and when he was gone had helped the housekeeper with his rooms. She had carried away with her a stray glove of his. Of course it sounds droll, and they said of her when all came out that it was wicked; but evil is according to a man's own heart, and the girl had hid this glove as she hid whatever was in her soul--hid it even from the priest. "Well, the Baron looked and she looked, and he took off his hat, stepped forward, and kissed her on the cheek. She turned pale as a ghost, and her eyes took the colour that her cheeks lost. When he stepped back he looked close at the husband. 'What is your name?' he said. 'Garoche, M'sieu' le Baron,' was the reply. 'Garoche, Garoche,' he said, eyeing him up and down. 'You have been a soldier?' 'Yes, M'sieu' le Baron.' 'You have served with me?' 'Against you, M'sieu' le Baron . . . when Bigot came fighting.' 'Better against me than for me,' said the Baron, speaking to himself, though he had so strong a voice that what he said could be heard by those near him-that is, those who were tall, for he was six and a half feet, with legs and shoulders like a bull. "He stooped and stroked the head of his hound for a moment, and all the people stood and watched him, wondering what next. At last he said: 'And what part played you in that siege, Garoche?' Garoche looked troubled, but answered: 'It was in the way of duty, M'sieu' le Baron--I with five others captured the relief-party sent from your cousin the Seigneur of Vadrome.' 'Oh,' said the Baron, looking sharp, 'you were in that, were you? Then you know what happened to the young Marmette?' Garoche trembled a little, but drew himself up and said: 'M'sieu' le Baron, he tried to kill the Intendant--there was no other way.' 'What part played you in that, Garoche?' Some trembled, for they knew the truth, and they feared the mad will of the Baron. 'I ordered the firing-party, M'sieu' le Baron,' he answered. "The Baron's eyes got fierce and his face hardened, but he stooped and drew the ears of the hound through his hand softly. 'Marmette was my cousin's son, and had lived with me,' he said. 'A brave lad, and he had a nice hatred of vileness--else he had not died.' A strange smile played on his lips for a moment, then he looked at Falise steadily. Who can tell what was working in his mind! 'War is war,' he went on, 'and Bigot was your master, Garoche; but the man pays for his master's sins this way or that. Yet I would not have it different, no, not a jot.' Then he turned round to the crowd, raised his hat to the Cure, who stood on the chapel steps, once more looked steadily at Falise, and said: 'You shall all come to the Manor House, and have your feastings there, and we will drink to the home-coming of the fairest woman in my barony.' With that he turned round, bowed to Falise, put on his hat, caught the bridle through his arm, and led his horse to the Manor House. "This was in the afternoon. Of course, whether they wished or not, Garoche and Falise could not refuse, and the people were glad enough, for they would have a free hand at meat and wine, the Baron being liberal of table. And it was as they guessed, for though the time was so short, the people at Beaugard soon had the tables heavy with food and drink. It was just at the time of candle-lighting the Baron came in and gave a toast. 'To the dwellers in Eden to-night,' he said--'Eden against the time of the Angel and the Sword.' I do not think that any except the Cure and the woman understood, and she, maybe, only because a woman feels the truth about a thing, even when her brain does not. After they had done shouting to his toast, he said a good-night to all, and they began to leave, the Cure among the first to go, with a troubled look in his face. "As the people left, the Baron said to Garoche and Falise: 'A moment with me before you go.' The woman started, for she thought of one thing, and Garoche started, for he thought of another--the siege of Beaugard and the killing of young Marmette. But they followed the Baron to his chamber. Coming in, he shut the door on them. Then he turned to Garoche. 'You will accept the roof and bed of Beaugard to-night, my man,' he said, 'and come to me here at nine tomorrow morning.' Garoche stared hard for an instant. 'Stay here!' said Garoche, 'Falise and me stay here in the Manor, M'sieu' le Baron!' 'Here, even here, Garoche; so good-night to you,' said the Baron. Garoche turned towards the girl. 'Then come, Falise,' he said, and reached out his hand. 'Your room, Garoche, shall be shown you at once,' the Baron added softly, 'the lady's at her pleasure.' "Then a cry burst from Garoche, and he sprang forward, but the Baron waved him back. 'Stand off,' he said, 'and let the lady choose between us.' 'She is my wife,' said Garoche. 'I am your Seigneur,' said the other. 'And there is more than that,' he went on; 'for, damn me, she is too fine stuff for you, and the Church shall untie what she has tied to-day!' At that Falise fainted, and the Baron caught her as she fell. He laid her on a couch, keeping an eye on Garoche the while. 'Loose her gown,' he said, 'while I get brandy.' Then he turned to a cupboard, poured liquor, and came over. Garoche had her dress open at the neck and bosom, and was staring at something on her breast. The Baron saw also, stooped with a strange sound in his throat, and picked it up. 'My glove!' he said. 'And on her wedding-day!' He pointed. 'There on the table is its mate, fished this morning from my hunting-coat--a pair the Governor gave me. You see, man, you see her choice!' "At that he stooped and put some brandy to her lips. Garoche drew back sick and numb, and did nothing, only stared. Falise came to herself soon, and when she felt her dress open, gave a cry. Garoche could have killed her then, when he saw her shudder from him, as if afraid, over towards the Baron, who held the glove in his hand, and said: 'See, Garoche, you had better go. In the next room they will tell you where to sleep. To-morrow, as I said, you will meet me here. We shall have things to say, you and I.' Ah, that Baron, he had a queer mind, but in truth he loved the woman, as you shall see! "Garoche got up without a word, went to the door and opened it, the look of the Baron and the woman following him, for there was a devil in his eye. In the other room there were men waiting, and he was taken to a chamber and locked in. You can guess what that night must have been to him!" "What was it to the Baron and Falise?" asked Medallion. "M'sieu', what do you think? Beaugard had never had an eye for women; loving his hounds, fighting, quarrelling, doing wild, strong things. So, all at once, he was face to face with a woman who has the look of love in her face, who was young, and fine of body--so the Abbe said--and was walking to marriage at her father's will and against her own, carrying the Baron's glove in her bosom. What should Beaugard do? But no, ah no, m'sieu', not as you think, not quite! Wild, with the bit in his teeth, yes; but at heart-well, here was the one woman for him. He knew it all in a minute, and he would have her once and for all, and till death should come their way. And so he said to her, as he raised her, she drawing back afraid, her heart hungering for him, yet fear in her eyes, and her fingers trembling as she softly pushed him from her. You see, she did not know quite what was in his heart. She was the daughter of a tenant vassal, who had lived in the family of a grand seigneur in her youth, the friend of his child--that was all, and that was where she got her manners and her mind. "She got on her feet and said: 'M'sieu' le Baron, you will let me go-- to my husband. I cannot stay here. Oh, you are great, you are noble, you would not make me sorry, make me to hate myself--and you! I have only one thing in the world of any price--you would not steal my happiness?' He looked at her steadily in the eyes, and said: 'Will it make you happy to go to Garoche?' She raised her hands and wrung them. 'God knows, God knows, I am his wife,' she said helplessly, 'and he loves me.' 'And God knows, God knows,' said the Baron, 'it is all a question of whether one shall feed and two go hungry, or two gather and one have the stubble! Shall not he stand in the stubble? What has he done to merit you? "What would he do? You are for the master, not the man; for love, not the feeding on; for the Manor House and the hunt, not the cottage and the loom.' "She broke into tears, her heart thumping in her throat. 'I am for what the Church did for me this day,' she said. 'O sir, I pray you, forgive me and let me go. Do not punish me, but forgive me--and let me go. I was wicked to wear your glove-wicked, wicked.' 'But no,' was his reply, 'I shall not forgive you so good a deed, and you shall not go. And what the Church did for you this day she shall undo--by all the saints, she shall! You came sailing into my heart this hour past on a strong wind, and you shall not slide out on an ebb-tide. I have you here, as your Seigneur, but I have you here as a man who will--' "He sat down by her at that point, and whispered softly in her ear; at which she gave a cry which had both gladness and pain. 'Surely, even that,' he said, catching her to his breast. 'And the Baron of Beaugard never broke his word.' What should be her reply? Does not a woman when she truly loves always believe? That is the great sign. She slid to her knees and dropped her head into the hollow of his arm. 'I do not understand these things,' she said, 'but I know that the other was death, and this is life. And yet I know, too, for my heart says so, that the end--the end, will be death.' "'Tut, tut, my flower, my wild-rose!' he said. 'Of course the end of all is death, but we will go a-Maying first, come October, and let the world break over us when it must. We are for Maying now, my rose of all the world!' It was as if he meant more than he said, as if he saw what would come in that October which all New France never forgot, when, as he said, the world broke over them. "The next morning the Baron called Garoche to him. The man was like some mad buck harried by the hounds, and he gnashed his teeth behind his shut lips. The Baron eyed him curiously, yet kindly, too, as well he might, for when was ever man to hear such a speech as came to Garoche the morning after his marriage? 'Garoche,' the Baron said, having waved his men away, 'as you see, the lady made her choice--and for ever. You and she have said your last farewell in this world--for the wife of the Baron of Beaugard can have nothing to say to Garoche the soldier.' At that Garoche snarled out, 'The wife of the Baron of Beaugard, that is a lie to shame all hell.' The Baron wound the lash of a riding-whip round and round his fingers quietly and said: 'It is no lie, my man, but the truth.' Garoche eyed him savagely, and growled: 'The Church made her my wife yesterday; and you--you--you--ah, you who had all--you with your money and place, which could get all easy, you take the one thing I have! You, the grand seigneur, are only a common robber! Ah, Jesu--if you would but fight me!' "The Baron, very calm, said: 'First, Garoche, the lady was only your wife by a form which the Church shall set aside--it could never have been a true marriage. Second, it is no stealing to take from you what you did not have. I took what was mine--remember the glove! For the rest--to fight you? No, my churl, you know that's impossible. You may shoot me from behind a tree or a rock, but swording with you--come, come, a pretty gossip for the Court! Then, why wish a fight? Where would you be, as you stood before me--you!' The Baron stretched himself up, and smiled down at Garoche. 'You have your life, man; take it and go--to the farthest corner of New France, and show not your face here again. If I find you ever again in Beaugard I will have you whipped from parish to parish. Here is money for you--good gold coins. Take them, and go.' "Garoche got still and cold as stone. He said in a low, harsh voice: 'M'sieu' le Baron, you are a common thief, a wolf, a snake. Such men as you come lower than Judas. As God has an eye to see, you shall pay all one day. I do not fear you nor your men nor your gallows. You are a jackal, and the woman has a filthy heart--a ditch of shame.' "The Baron drew up his arm like lightning, and the lash of his whip came singing across Garoche's pale face. Where it passed, a red welt rose, but the man never stirred. The arm came up again, but a voice' behind the Baron said: 'Ah no, no, not again!' There stood Falise. Both men looked at her. 'I have heard Garoche,' she said. 'He does not judge me right. My heart is no filthy ditch of shame; but it was breaking when I came from the altar with him yesterday. Yet I would have been a true wife to him after all. A ditch of shame--ah, Garoche--Garoche! And you said you loved me, and that nothing could change you!' "The Baron said to her: 'Why have you come, Falise? I forbade you.' 'Oh, my lord,' she answered, 'I feared--for you both! When men go mad because of women a devil enters into them.' The Baron, taking her by the hand, said: 'Permit me,' and he led her to the door for her to pass out. She looked back sadly at Garoche, standing for a minute very still. Then Garoche said: 'I command you, come with me; you are my wife.' She did not reply, but shook her head at him. Then he spoke out high and fierce: 'May no child be born to you. May a curse fall on you. May your fields be barren, and your horses and cattle die. May you never see nor hear good things. May the waters leave their courses to drown you, and the hills their bases to bury you, and no hand lay you in decent graves!' "The woman put her hands to her ears and gave a little cry, and the Baron pushed her gently on, and closed the door after her. Then he turned on Garoche. 'Have you said all you wish?' he asked. 'For, if not, say on, and then go; and go so far you cannot see the sky that covers Beaugard. We are even now--we can cry quits. But that I have a little injured you, you should be done for instantly. But hear me: if I ever see you again, my gallows shall end you straight. Your tongue has been gross before the mistress of this Manor; I will have it torn out if it so much as syllables her name to me or to the world again. She is dead to you. Go, and go for ever!' "He put a bag of money on the table, but Garoche turned away from it, and without a word left the room, and the house, and the parish, and said nothing to any man of the evil that had come to him. "But what talk was there, and what dreadful things were said at first- that Garoche had sold his wife to the Baron; that he had been killed and his wife taken; that the Baron kept him a prisoner in a cellar under the Manor House! And all the time there was Falise with the Baron--very quiet and sweet and fine to see, and going to Chapel every day, and to Mass on Sundays--which no one could understand, any more than they could see why she should be called the Baroness of Beaugard; for had they all not seen her married to Garoche? And there were many people who thought her vile. Yet truly, at heart, she was not so--not at all. Then it was said that there was to be a new marriage; that the Church would let it be so, doing and undoing, and doing again. But the weeks and the months went by, and it was never done. For, powerful as the Baron was, Bigot the Intendant was powerful also, and fought the thing with all his might. The Baron went to Quebec to see the Bishop and the Governor, and though promises were made, nothing was done. It must go to the King and then to the Pope, and from the Pope to the King again, and so on. And the months and the years went by as they waited, and with them came no child to the Manor House of Beaugard. That was the only sad thing--that and the waiting, so far as man could see. For never were man and woman truer to each other than these, and never was a lady of the Manor kinder to the poor, or a lord freer of hand to his vassals. He would bluster sometimes, and string a peasant up by the heels, but his gallows was never used; and, what was much in the minds of the people, the Cure did not refuse the woman the sacrament. "At last the Baron, fierce because he knew that Bigot was the cause of the great delay, so that he might not call Falise his wife, seized a transport on the river, which had been sent to brutally levy upon a poor gentleman, and when Bigot's men resisted, shot them down. Then Bigot sent against Beaugard a company of artillery and some soldiers of the line. The guns were placed on a hill looking down on the Manor House across the little river. In the evening the cannons arrived, and in the morning the fight was to begin. The guns were loaded and everything was ready. At the Manor all was making ready also, and the Baron had no fear. "But Falise's heart was heavy, she knew not why. 'Eugene,' she said, 'if anything should happen!' 'Nonsense, my Falise,' he answered; 'what should happen?' 'If--if you were taken--were killed!' she said. 'Nonsense, my rose,' he said again, 'I shall not be killed. But if I were, you should be at peace here.' 'Ah, no, no!' said she. 'Never. Life to me is only possible with you. I have had nothing but you--none of those things which give peace to other women--none. But I have been happy-yes, very happy. And, God forgive me, Eugene, I cannot regret, and I never have! But it has been always and always my prayer that, when you die, I may die with you--at the same moment. For I cannot live without you, and, besides, I would like to go to the good God with you to speak for us both; for oh, I loved you, I loved you, and I love you still, my husband, my adored!' "He stooped--he was so big, and she but of middle height--kissed her, and said: 'See, my Falise, I am of the same mind. We have been happy in life, and we could well be happy in death together.' So they sat long, long into the night and talked to each other--of the days they had passed together, of cheerful things, she trying to comfort herself, and he trying to bring smiles to her lips. At last they said good-night, and he lay down in his clothes; and after a few moments she was sleeping like a child. But he could not sleep, for he lay thinking of her and of her life--how she had come from humble things and fitted in with the highest. At last, at break of day, he arose and went outside. He looked up at the hill where Bigot's two guns were. Men were already stirring there. One man was standing beside the gun, and another not far behind. Of course the Baron could not know that the man behind the gunner said: 'Yes, you may open the dance with an early salute;' and he smiled up boldly at the hill and went into the house, and stole to the bed of his wife to kiss her before he began the day's fighting. He looked at her a moment, standing over her, and then stooped and softly put his lips to hers. "At that moment the gunner up on the hill used the match, and an awful thing happened. With the loud roar the whole hillside of rock and gravel and sand split down, not ten feet in front of the gun, moved with horrible swiftness upon the river, filled its bed, turned it from its course, and, sweeping on, swallowed the Manor House of Beaugard. There had been a crack in the hill, the water of the river had sapped its foundations, and it needed only this shock to send it down. "And so, as the woman wished: the same hour for herself and the man! And when at last their prison was opened by the hands of Bigot's men, they were found cheek by cheek, bound in the sacred marriage of Death. "But another had gone the same road, for, at the awful moment, beside the bursted gun, the dying gunner, Garoche, lifted up his head, saw the loose travelling hill, and said with his last breath: 'The waters drown them, and the hills bury them, and--' "He had his way with them, and after that perhaps the great God had His way with him perhaps." THE TUNE McGILVERAY PLAYED McGilveray has been dead for over a hundred years, but there is a parish in Quebec where his tawny-haired descendants still live. They have the same sort of freckles on their faces as had their ancestor, the bandmaster of Anstruther's regiment, and some of them have his taste for music, yet none of them speak his language or with his brogue, and the name of McGilveray has been gallicised to Magille. In Pontiac, one of the Magilles, the fiddler of the parish, made the following verse in English as a tribute of admiration for an heroic deed of his ancestor, of which the Cure of the parish, the good M. Santonge, had told him: "Piff! poem! ka-zoon, ka-zoon! That is the way of the organ tune-- And the ships are safe that day! Piff! poum! kazoon, kazoon! And the Admiral light his pipe and say: 'Bully for us, we are not kill! Who is to make the organ play Make it say zoon-kazoon? You with the corunet come this way-- You are the man, Magillel Piff! poum! kazoon, kazoon!'" Now, this is the story of McGilveray the bandmaster of Anstruther's regiment: It was at the time of the taking of Quebec, the summer of 1759. The English army had lain at Montmorenci, at the Island of Orleans, and at Point Levis; the English fleet in the basin opposite the town, since June of that great year, attacking and retreating, bombarding and besieging, to no great purpose. For within the walls of the city, and on the shore of Beauport, protected by its mud flats--a splendid moat--the French more than held their own. In all the hot months of that summer, when parishes were ravaged with fire and sword, and the heat was an excuse for almost any lapse of virtue, McGilveray had not been drunk once--not once. It was almost unnatural. Previous to that, McGilveray's career had been chequered. No man had received so many punishments in the whole army, none had risen so superior to them as had he, none had ever been shielded from wrath present and to come as had this bandmaster of Anstruther's regiment. He had no rivals for promotion in the regiment--perhaps that was one reason; he had a good temper and an overwhelming spirit of fun--perhaps that was another. He was not remarkable to the vision--scarcely more than five feet four; with an eye like a gimlet, red hair tied in a queue, a big mouth, and a chest thrown out like the breast of a partridge--as fine a figure of a man in miniature as you should see. When intoxicated, his tongue rapped out fun and fury like a triphammer. Alert-minded drunk or sober, drunk, he was lightning-tongued, and he could play as well drunk as sober, too; but more than once a sympathetic officer altered the tactics that McGilveray might not be compelled to march, and so expose his condition. Standing still he was quite fit for duty. He never got really drunk "at the top." His brain was always clear, no matter how useless were his legs. But the wonderful thing was that for six months McGilveray's legs were as steady as his head was right. At first the regiment was unbelieving, and his resolution to drink no more was scoffed at in the non-com mess. He stuck to it, however, and then the cause was searched for--and not found. He had not turned religious, he was not fanatical, he was of sound mind-- what was it? When the sergeant-major suggested a woman, they howled him down, for they said McGilveray had not made love to women since the day of his weaning, and had drunk consistently all the time. Yet it was a woman. A fortnight or so after Wolfe's army and Saunders's fleet had sat down before Quebec, McGilveray, having been told by a sentry at Montmorenci where Anstruther's regiment was camped, that a French girl on the other side of the stream had kissed her hand to him and sung across in laughing insolence: "Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre," he had forthwith set out to hail this daughter of Gaul, if perchance she might be seen again. At more than ordinary peril he crossed the river on a couple of logs, lashed together, some distance above the spot where the picket had seen Mademoiselle. It was a moonlight night, and he might easily have been picked off by a bullet, if a wary sentry had been alert and malicious. But the truth was that many of these pickets on both sides were in no wise unfriendly to each other, and more than once exchanged tobacco and liquor across the stream. As it chanced, however, no sentry saw McGilveray, and presently, safely landed, he made his way down the stream. Even at the distance he was from the falls, the rumble of them came up the long walls of firs and maples with a strange, half-moaning sound--all else was still. He came down until he was opposite the spot where his English picket was posted, and then he halted and surveyed his ground. Nothing human in sight, no sound of life, no sign of habitation. At this moment, however, his stupidity in thus rushing into danger, the foolishness of pursuing a woman whom he had never seen, and a French woman at that, the punishment that would be meted out to him if his adventure was discovered--all these came to him. They stunned him for a moment, and then presently, as if in defiance of his own thoughts, he began to sing softly: "Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre." Suddenly, in one confused moment, he was seized, and a hand was clapped over his mouth. Three French soldiers had him in their grip-stalwart fellows they were, of the Regiment of Bearn. He had no strength to cope with them, he at once saw the futility of crying out, so he played the eel, and tried to slip from the grasp of his captors. But though he gave the trio an awkward five minutes he was at last entirely overcome, and was carried away in triumph through the woods. More than once they passed a sentry, and more than once campfires round which soldiers slept or dozed. Now and again one would raise his head, and with a laugh, or a "Sapristi!" or a "Sacre bleu!" drop back into comfort again. After about ten minutes' walk he was brought to a small wooden house, the door was thrown open, he was tossed inside, and the soldiers entered after. The room was empty save for a bench, some shelves, a table, on which a lantern burned, and a rude crucifix on the wall. McGilveray sat down on the bench, and in five minutes his feet were shackled, while a chain fastened to a staple in the wall held him in secure captivity. "How you like yourself now?" asked a huge French corporal who had learned English from an English girl at St. Malo years before. "If you'd tie a bit o' pink ribbon round me neck, I'd die wid pride," said McGilveray, spitting on the ground in defiance at the same time. The big soldier laughed, and told his comrades what the bandmaster had said. One of them grinned, but the other frowned sullenly, and said: "Avez vous tabac?" "Havey you to-ba-co?" said the big soldier instantly--interpreting. "Not for a Johnny Crapaud like you, and put that in your pipe and shmoke it!" said McGilveray, winking at the big fellow, and spitting on the ground before the surly one, who made a motion as if he would bayonet McGilveray where he sat. "He shall die--the cursed English soldier," said Johnny Crapaud. "Some other day will do," said McGilveray. "What does he say?" asked Johnny Crapaud. "He says he'll give each of us three pounds of tobacco, if we let him go," answered the corporal. McGilveray knew by the corporal's voice that he was lying, and he also knew that, somehow, he had made a friend. "Y'are lyin', me darlin', me bloody beauty!" interposed McGilveray. "If we don't take him to headquarters now he'll send across and get the tobacco," interpreted the corporal to Johnny Crapaud. "If he doesn't get the tobacco he'll be hung for a spy," said Johnny Crapaud, turning on his heel. "Do we all agree?" said the corporal. The others nodded their heads, and, as they went out, McGilveray said after them: "I'll dance a jig on yer sepulchrees, ye swobs!" he roared, and he spat on the ground again in defiance. Johnny Crapaud turned to the corporal. "I'll kill him very dead," said he, "if that tobacco doesn't come. You tell him so," he added, jerking a thumb towards McGilveray. "You tell him so." The corporal stayed when the others went out, and, in broken English, told McGilveray so. "I'll play a hornpipe, an' his gory shroud is round him," said McGilveray. The corporal grinned from ear to ear. "You like a chew tabac?" said he, pulling out a dirty knob of a black plug. McGilveray had found a man after his own heart. "Sing a song a-sixpence," said he, "what sort's that for a gintleman an' a corporal, too? Feel in me trousies pocket," said he, "which is fur me frinds for iver." McGilveray had now hopes of getting free, but if he had not taken a fancy to "me baby corporal," as he called the Frenchman, he would have made escape or release impossible, by insulting him and every one of them as quick as winking. After the corporal had emptied one pocket, "Now the other, man-o-wee- wee!" said McGilveray, and presently the two were drinking what the flask from the "trousies pocket" contained. So well did McGilveray work upon the Frenchman's bonhomie that the corporal promised he should escape. He explained how McGilveray should be freed--that at midnight some one would come and release him, while he, the corporal, was with his companions, so avoiding suspicion as to his own complicity. McGilveray and the corporal were to meet again and exchange courtesies after the manner of brothers--if the fortunes of war permitted. McGilveray was left alone. To while away the time he began to whistle to himself, and what with whistling, and what with winking and talking to the lantern on the table, and calling himself painful names, he endured his captivity well enough. It was near midnight when the lock turned in the door and presently stepped inside--a girl. "Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre," said she, and nodded her head to him humorously. By this McGilveray knew that this was the maid that had got him into all this trouble. At first he was inclined to say so, but she came nearer, and one look of her black eyes changed all that. "You've a way wid you, me darlin'," said McGilveray, not thinking that she might understand. "A leetla way of my own," she answered in broken English. McGilveray started. "Where did you learn it?" he asked, for he had had two surprises that night. "Of my mother--at St. Malo," she replied. "She was half English--of Jersey. You are a naughty boy," she added, with a little gurgle of laughter in her throat. "You are not a good soldier to go a-chase of the French girls 'cross of the river." "Shure I am not a good soldier thin. Music's me game. An' the band of Anstruther's rigimint's mine." "You can play tunes on a drum?" she asked, mischievously. "There's wan I'd play to the voice av you," he said, in his softest brogue. "You'll be unloosin' me, darlin'?" he added. She stooped to undo the shackles on his ankles. As she did so he leaned over as if to kiss her. She threw back her head in disgust. "You have been drink," she said, and she stopped her work of freeing him. "What'd wet your eye--no more," he answered. She stood up. "I will not," she said, pointing to the shackles, "if you drink some more--nevare some more--nevare!" "Divil a drop thin, darlin', till we fly our flag yander," pointing towards where he supposed the town to be. "Not till then?" she asked, with a merry little sneer. "Ver' well, it is comme ca!" She held out her hand. Then she burst into a soft laugh, for his hands were tied. "Let me kiss it," he said, bending forward. "No, no, no," she said. "We will shake our hands after," and she stooped, took off the shackles, and freed his arms. "Now if you like," she said, and they shook hands as McGilveray stood up and threw out his chest. But, try as he would to look important, she was still an inch taller than he. A few moments later they were hurrying quietly through the woods, to the river. There was no speaking. There was only the escaping prisoner and the gay-hearted girl speeding along in the night, the mumbling of the quiet cascade in their ears, the shifting moon playing hide-and-seek with the clouds. They came out on the bank a distance above where McGilveray had landed, and the girl paused and spoke in a whisper. "It is more hard now," she said. "Here is a boat, and I must paddle--you would go to splash. Sit still and be good." She loosed the boat into the current gently, and, holding it, motioned to him to enter. "You're goin' to row me over?" he asked, incredulously. "'Sh! get in," she said. "Shtrike me crazy, no!" said McGilveray. "Divil a step will I go. Let me that sowed the storm take the whirlwind." He threw out his chest. "What is it you came here for?" she asked, with meaning. "Yourself an' the mockin' bird in yer voice," he answered. "Then that is enough," she said. "You come for me, I go for you. Get in." A moment afterwards, taking advantage of the obscured moon, they were carried out on the current diagonally down the stream, and came quickly to that point on the shore where an English picket was placed. They had scarcely touched the shore when the click of a musket was heard, and a "Qui-va-la?" came from the thicket. McGilveray gave the pass-word, and presently he was on the bank saluting the sentry he had left three hours before. "Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre!" said the girl again with a gay insolence, and pushed the boat out into the stream. "A minnit, a minnit, me darlin'," said McGilveray. "Keep your promise," came back, softly. "Ah, come back wan minnit!" "A flirt!" said the sentry. "You will pay for that," said the girl to the sentry, with quick anger. "Do you love me, Irishman?" she added, to McGilveray. "I do--aw, wurra, wurra, I do!" said McGilveray. "Then you come and get me by ze front door of ze city," said she, and a couple of quick strokes sent her canoe out into the dusky middle of the stream; and she was soon lost to view. "Aw, the loike o' that! Aw, the foine av her-the tip-top lass o' the wide world!" said he. "You're a fool, an' there'll be trouble from this," said the sentry. There was trouble, for two hours later the sentry was found dead; picked off by a bullet from the other shore when he showed himself in the moonlight; and from that hour all friendliness between the pickets of the English and the French ceased on the Montmorenci. But the one witness to McGilveray's adventure was dead, and that was why no man knew wherefore it was that McGilveray took an oath to drink no more till they captured Quebec. From May to September McGilveray kept to his resolution. But for all that time he never saw "the tip-top lass o' the wide world." A time came, however, when McGilveray's last state was worse than his first, and that was the evening before the day Quebec was taken. A dozen prisoners had been captured in a sortie from the Isle of Orleans to the mouth of the St. Charles River. Among these prisoners was the grinning corporal who had captured McGilveray and then released him. Two strange things happened. The big, grinning corporal escaped from captivity the same night, and McGilveray, as a non-com said, "Got shameful drunk." This is one explanation of the two things. McGilveray had assisted the grinning corporal to escape. The other explanation belongs to the end of the story. In any case, McGilveray "got shameful drunk," and "was going large" through the camp. The end of it was his arrest for assisting a prisoner to escape and for being drunk and disorderly. The band of Anstruther's regiment boarded H.M.S. Leostaf without him, to proceed up the river stealthily with the rest of the fleet to Cap Rouge, from whence the last great effort of the heroic Wolfe to effect a landing was to be made. McGilveray, still intoxicated but intelligent, watched them go in silence. As General Wolfe was about to enter the boat which was to convey him to the flag-ship, he saw McGilveray, who was waiting under guard to be taken to Major Hardy's post at Point Levis. The General knew him well, and looked at him half sadly, half sternly. "I knew you were free with drink, McGilveray," he said, "but I did not think you were a traitor to your country too." McGilveray saluted, and did not answer. "You might have waited till after to-morrow, man," said the General, his eyes flashing. "My soldiers should have good music to-morrow." McGilveray saluted again, but made no answer. As if with a sudden thought the General waved off the officers and men near him, and betkcned McGilveray to him. "I can understand the drink in a bad soldier," he said, "but you helped a prisoner to escape. Come, man, we may both be dead to-morrow, and I'd like to feel that no soldier in my army is wilfully a foe of his country." "He did the same for me, whin I was taken prisoner, yer Excillincy, an' --an', yer Excillincy, 'twas a matter of a woman, too." The General's face relaxed a little. "Tell me the whole truth," said he; and McGilveray told him all. "Ah, yer Excillincy," he burst out, at last, "I was no traitor at heart, but a fool I always was! Yer Excillincy, court-martial and death's no matter to me; but I'd like to play wan toon agin, to lead the byes tomorrow. Wan toon, Gineral, an' I'll be dacintly shot before the day's over-ah, yer Excillincy, wan toon more, and to be wid the byes followin' the Gineral!" The General's face relaxed still more. "I take you at your word," said he. He gave orders that McGilveray should proceed at once aboard the flag-ship, from whence he should join Anstruther's regiment at Cap Rouge. The General entered the boat, and McGilveray followed with some non-com. officers in another. It was now quite dark, and their motions, or the motions of the vessels of war, could not be seen from the French encampment or the citadel. They neared the flag-ship, and the General, followed by his officers, climbed up. Then the men in McGilveray's boat climbed up also, until only himself and another were left. At that moment the General, looking down from the side of the ship, said sharply to an officer beside him: "What's that?" He pointed to a dark object floating near the ship, from which presently came a small light with a hissing sound. "It's a fire-organ, sir," was the reply. A fire-organ was a raft, carrying long tubes like the pipes of an organ, and filled with explosives. They were used by the French to send among the vessels of the British fleet to disorganise and destroy them. The little light which the General saw was the burning fuse. The raft had been brought out into the current by French sailors, the fuse had been lighted, and it was headed to drift towards the British ships. The fleet was now in motion, and apart from the havoc which the bursting fire-organ might make, the light from the explosion would reveal the fact that the English men-o'-war were now moving towards Cap Rouge. This knowledge would enable Montcalm to detect Wolfe's purpose, and he would at once move his army in that direction. The west side of the town had meagre military defenses, the great cliffs being thought impregnable. But at this point Wolfe had discovered a narrow path up a steep cliff. McGilveray had seen the fire-organ at the same moment as the General. "Get up the side," he said to the remaining soldier in his boat. The soldier began climbing, and McGilveray caught the oars and was instantly away towards the raft. The General, looking over the ship's side, understood his daring purpose. In the shadow, they saw him near it, they saw him throw a boat-hook and catch it, and then attach a rope; they saw him sit down, and, taking the oars, laboriously row up-stream toward the opposite shore, the fuse burning softly, somewhere among the great pipes of explosives. McGilveray knew that it might be impossible to reach the fuse--there was no time to spare, and he had set about to row the devilish machine out of range of the vessels which were carrying Wolfe's army to a forlorn hope. For minutes those on board the man-o'-war watched and listened. Presently nothing could be seen, not even the small glimmer from the burning fuse. Then, all at once, there was a terrible report, and the organ pipes belched their hellish music upon the sea. Within the circle of light that the explosion made, there was no sign of any ship; but, strangely tall in the red glare, stood McGilveray in his boat. An instant he stood so, then he fell, and presently darkness covered the scene. The furious music of death and war was over. There was silence on the ship for a time as all watched and waited. Presently an officer said to the General: "I'm afraid he's gone, sir." "Send a boat to search," was the reply. "If he is dead"--the General took off his hat "we will, please God, bury him within the French citadel to-morrow." But McGilveray was alive, and in half-an-hour he was brought aboard the flag-ship, safe and sober. The General praised him for his courage, and told him that the charge against him should be withdrawn. "You've wiped all out, McGilveray," said Wolfe. "We see you are no traitor." "Only a fool of a bandmaster who wanted wan toon more, yer Excillincy," said McGilveray. "Beware drink, beware women," answered the General. But advice of that sort is thrown away on such as McGilveray. The next evening after Quebec was taken, and McGilveray went in at the head of his men playing "The Men of Harlech," he met in the streets the woman that had nearly been the cause of his undoing. Indignation threw out his chest. "It's you, thin," he said, and he tried to look scornfully at her. "Have you keep your promise?" she said, hardly above her breath. "What's that to you?" he asked, his eyes firing up. "I got drunk last night--afther I set your husband free--afther he tould me you was his wife. We're aven now, decaver! I saved him, and the divil give you joy of that salvation--and that husband, say I." "Hoosban'--" she exclaimed, "who was my hoosban'?" "The big grinning corporal," he answered. "He is shot this morning," she said, her face darkening, "and, besides, he was--nevare--my hoosban'." "He said he was," replied McGilveray, eagerly. "He was awway a liar," she answered. "He decaved you too, thin?" asked McGilveray, his face growing red. She did not answer, but all at once a change came over her, the half- mocking smile left her lips, tears suddenly ran down her cheeks, and without a word she turned and hurried into a little alley, and was lost to view, leaving McGilveray amazed and confounded. It was days before he found her again, and three things only that they said are of any moment here. "We'll lave the past behind us," he said- "an' the pit below for me, if I'm not a good husband t' ye!" "You will not drink no more?" she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Not till the Frenchies take Quebec again," he answered. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: We'll lave the past behind us The furious music of death and war was over ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "LANE HAD NO TURNING": Ah, let it be soon! Ah, let him die soon! All are hurt some time But a wounded spirit who can bear Did not let him think that she was giving up anything for him Duplicity, for which she might never have to ask forgiveness Frenchman, slave of ideas, the victim of sentiment Frenchman, volatile, moody, chivalrous, unreasonable Her stronger soul ruled him without his knowledge I love that love in which I married him Let others ride to glory, I'll shoe their horses for the gallop Lighted candles in hollowed pumpkins Love has nothing to do with ugliness or beauty, or fortune Man grows old only by what he suffers, and what he forgives Nature twists in back, or anywhere, gets a twist in's brain too Rewarded for its mistakes Some are hurt in one way and some in another Struggle of conscience and expediency The furious music of death and war was over We'll lave the past behind us You--you all were so ready to suspect PARABLES OF A PROVINCE By Gilbert Parker THE GOLDEN PIPES THE GUARDIAN OF THE FIRE BY THAT PLACE CALLED PERADVENTURE THE SINGING OF THE BEES THE WHITE OMEN THE SOJOURNERS THE TENT OF THE PURPLE MAT THERE WAS A LITTLE CITY THE FORGE IN THE VALLEY THE GOLDEN PIPES They hung all bronzed and shining, on the side of Margath Mountain--the tall and perfect pipes of the organ which was played by some son of God when the world was young. At least Hepnon the cripple said this was so, when he was but a child, and when he got older he said that even now a golden music came from the pipes at sunrise and sunset. And no one laughed at Hepnon, for you could not look into the dark warm eyes, dilating with his fancies, or see the transparent temper of his face, the look of the dreamer over all, without believing him, and reproving your own judgment. You felt that he had travelled ways you could never travel, that he had had dreams beyond you, that his fanciful spirit had had adventures you would give years of your dull life to know. And yet he was not made only as women are made, fragile and trembling in his nerves. For he was strong of arm, and there was no place in the hills to be climbed by venturesome man, which he could not climb with crutch and shrivelled leg. Also, he was a gallant horseman, riding with his knees and one foot in stirrup, his crutch slung behind him. It may be that was why rough men listened to his fancies about the Golden Pipes. Indeed they would go out at sunrise and look across to where the pipes hung, taking the rosy glory of the morning, and steal away alone at sunset, and in some lonely spot lean out towards the flaming instrument to hear if any music rose from them. The legend that one of the Mighty Men of the Kimash Hills came here to play, with invisible hands, the music of the first years of the world, became a truth, though a truth that none could prove. And by-and-by, no man ever travelled the valley without taking off his hat as he passed the Golden Pipes--so had a cripple with his whimsies worked upon the land. Then, too, perhaps his music had to do with it. As a child he had only a poor concertina, but by it he drew the traveller and the mountaineer and the worker in the valley to him like a magnet. Some touch of the mysterious, some sweet fantastical melody in all he played, charmed them, even when he gave them old familiar airs. From the concertina he passed to the violin, and his skill and mastery over his followers grew; and then there came a notable day when up over a thousand miles of country a melodeon was brought him. Then a wanderer, a minstrel outcast from a far country, taking refuge in those hills, taught him, and there was one long year of loving labour together, and merry whisperings between the two, and secret drawings, and worship of the Golden Pipes; and then the minstrel died, and left Hepnon alone. And now they said that Hepnon tried to coax out of the old melodeon the music of the Golden Pipes. But a look of sorrow grew upon his face, and stayed for many months. Then there came a change, and he went into the woods, and began working there in the perfect summer weather; and the tale went abroad that he was building an organ, so that he might play for all who came, the music he heard on the Golden Pipes--for they had ravished his ear since childhood, and now he must know the wonderful melodies all by heart, they said. With consummate patience Hepnon dried the wood and fashioned it into long tuneful tubes, beating out soft metal got from the forge in the valley to case the lips of them, tanning the leather for the bellows, stretching it, and exposing all his work to the sun of early morning, which gave every fibre and valve a rich sweetness, like a sound fruit of autumn. People also said that he set all the pieces out at sunrise and sunset that the tone of the Golden Pipes might pass into them, so that when the organ was built, each part should be saturated with such melody as it had drawn in, according to its temper and its fibre. So the building of the organ went on, and a year passed, and then another, and it was summer again; and soon Hepnon began to build also-- while yet it was sweet weather--a home for his organ, a tall nest of cedar added to his father's house. And in it every piece of wood, and every board had been made ready by his own hands, and set in the sun and dried slowly to a healthy soundness; and he used no nails of metal, but wooden pins of the iron-wood or hickory tree, and it was all polished, and there was no paint or varnish anywhere; and when you spoke in this nest your voice sounded pure and strong. At last the time came when, piece by piece, the organ was set up in its home; and as the days and weeks went by, and autumn drew to winter, and the music of the Golden Pipes stole down the flumes of snow to their ardent lover, and spring came with its sap, and small purple blossoms, and yellow apples of mandrake, and summer stole on luxurious and dry; the face of Hepnon became thinner and thinner, a strange deep light shone in his eyes, and all his person seemed to exhale a kind of glow. He ceased to ride, to climb, to lift weights with his strong arms, as he had--poor cripple--been once so proud to do. A delicacy came upon him, and more and more he withdrew himself to his organ, and to those lofty and lonely places where he could see--and hear--the Golden Pipes boom softly over the valley. At last it all was done, even to the fine-carved stool of cedar whereon he should sit when he played his organ. Never yet had he done more than sound each note as he made it, trying it, softening it by tender devices with the wood; but now the hour was come when he should gather down the soul of the Golden Pipes to his fingers, and give to the ears of the world the song of the morning stars, the music of Jubal and his comrades, the affluent melody to which the sons of men, in the first days, paced the world in time with the thoughts of God. For days he lived alone in the cedar-house--and who may know what he was doing dreaming, listening, or praying? Then the word went through the valley and the hills, that one evening he would play for all who came; and that day was "Toussaint," or the Feast of All Souls. So they came both old and young, and they did not enter the house, but waited outside, upon the mossy rocks, or sat among the trees, and watched the heavy sun roll down and the Golden Pipes flame in the light of evening. Far beneath in the valley the water ran lightly on, but there came no sound from it, none from anywhere; only a general pervasive murmur quieting to the heart. Now they heard a note come from the organ--a soft low sound that seemed to rise out of the good earth and mingle with the vibrant air, the song of birds, the whisper of trees, and the murmuring water. Then came another, and another note, then chords, and chords upon these, and by- and-by, rolling tides of melody, until, as it seemed to the listeners, the air ached with the incomparable song; and men and women wept, and children hid their heads in the laps of their mothers, and young men and maidens dreamed dreams never to be forgotten. For one short hour the music went on, then twilight came. Presently the sounds grew fainter, and exquisitely painful, and now a low sob seemed to pass through all the heart of the organ, and then silence fell, and in the sacred pause, Hepnon came out among them all, pale and desolate. He looked at them a minute most sadly, and then lifting up his arms towards the Golden Pipes, now hidden in the dusk, he cried low and brokenly: "O my God, give me back my dream!" Then his crutch seemed to give way beneath him, and he sank upon the ground, faint and gasping. They raised him up, and women and men whispered in his ear "Ah, the beautiful, beautiful music, Hepnon!" But he only said: "O my God, O my God, give me back my dream!" When he had said it thrice, he turned his face to where his organ was in the cedar-house, and then his eyes closed, and he fell asleep: and they could not wake him. But at sunrise the next morning a shiver passed through him, and then a cold quiet stole over him, and Hepnon and the music of the Golden Pipes departed from the Voshti Hills, and came again no more. THE GUARDIAN OF THE FIRE "Height unto height answereth knowledge." His was the first watch, the farthest fire, for Shaknon Hill towered above the great gulf, and looked back also over thirty leagues of country towards the great city. There came a time again when all the land was threatened. From sovereign lands far off, two fleets were sailing hard to reach the wide basin before the walled city, the one to save, the other to destroy. If Tinoir, the Guardian of the Fire, should sight the destroying fleet, he must light two fires on Shaknon Hill, and then, at the edge of the wide basin, in a treacherous channel, the people would send out fire-rafts to burn the ships of the foe. Five times in the past had Tinoir been the Guardian of the Fire, and five times had the people praised him; but praise and his scanty wage were all he got. The hut in which he lived with his wife on another hill, ten miles from Shaknon, had but two rooms, and their little farm and the garden gave them only enough to live--no more. Elsewhere there was good land in abundance, but it had been said years ago to Tinoir by the great men, that he should live not far from Shaknon, so that in times of peril he might guard the fire and be sentinel for all the people. Perhaps Tinoir was too dull to see that he was giving all and getting naught; that while he waited and watched he was always poor, and also was getting old. There was no house or home within fifty miles of them, and only now and then some wandering Indians lifted the latch, and drew in beside their hearth, or a good priest with a soul of love for others, came and said Mass in the room where a little Calvary had been put up. Two children had come and gone, and Tinoir and Dalice had dug their graves and put them in a warm nest of maple leaves, and afterwards lived upon the memories of them. But after these two, children came no more; and Tinoir and Dalice grew closer and closer to each other, coming to look alike in face, as they had long been alike in mind and feeling. None ever lived nearer to nature than they, and wild things grew to be their friends; so that you might see Dalice at her door tossing crumbs with one hand to birds, and with the other bits of meat to foxes, martens, and wild dogs, which came and went unharmed by them. Tinoir shot no wild animals for profit--only for food and for skins and furs to wear. Because of this he was laughed at by all who knew, save the priest of St. Sulpice, who, on Easter Day, when the little man came yearly to Mass over two hundred miles of country, praised him to his people, and made much of him, though Tinoir was not vain enough to see it. When word came down the river, and up over the hills to Tinoir, that war was come and that he must go to watch for the hostile fleet and for the friendly fleet as well, he made no murmur, though it was the time of harvest, and Dalice had had a sickness from which she was not yet recovered. "Go, my Tinoir," said Dalice, with a little smile, "and I will reap the grain. If your eyes are sharp you shall see my bright sickle moving in the sun." "There is the churning of the milk too, Dalice," answered Tinoir; "you are not strong, and sometimes the butter comes slow; and there's the milking also." "Strength is coming to me fast, Tinoir," she said, and drew herself up; but her dress lay almost flat on her bosom. Tinoir took her arm and felt it above the elbow. "It is like the muscle of a little child," he said. "But I will drink those bottles of red wine the Governor sent the last time you watched the fire on Shaknon," she said, brightening up, and trying to cheer him. He nodded, for he saw what she was trying to do, and said: "Also a little of the gentian and orange root three times a day-eh, Dalice?" After arranging for certain signs, by little fires, which they were to light upon the hills and so speak with each other, they said, "Good day, Dalice," and "Good day, Tinoir," drank a glass of the red wine, and added: "Thank the good God;" then Tinoir wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and went away, leaving Dalice with a broken glass at her feet, and a look in her eyes which it was well that Tinoir did not see. But as he went he was thinking how, the night before, Dalice had lain with her arm round his neck hour after hour as she slept, as she did before they ever had a child; and that even in her sleep, she kissed him as she used to kiss him before he brought her away from the parish of Ste. Genevieve to be his wife. And the more he thought about it the happier he became, and more than once he stopped and shook his head in pleased retrospection. And Dalice thought of it too as she hung over the churn, her face drawn and tired and shining with sweat; and she shook her head, and tears came into her eyes, for she saw further into things than Tinoir. And once as she passed his coat on the wall, she rubbed it softly with her hand, as she might his curly head when he lay beside her. From Shaknon Tinoir watched; but of course he could never see her bright sickle shining, and he could not know whether her dress still hung loose upon her breast, or whether the flesh of her arms was still like a child's. If all was well with Dalice a little fire should be lighted at the house door just at the going down of the sun, and it should be at once put out. If she was ill, a fire should be lit and then put out two hours after sundown. If she should be ill beyond any help, this fire should burn on till it went out. Day after day Tinoir, as he watched for the coming fleet, saw the fire lit at sundown, and then put out. But one night the fire did not come till two hours after sundown, and it was put out at once. He fretted much, and he prayed that Dalice might be better, and he kept to his post, looking for the fleet of the foe. Evening after evening was this other fire lighted and then put out at once; and a great longing came to him to leave this guarding of the fire, and go to her--"For half a day," he said--"just for half a day!" But in that half day the fleet might pass, and then it would be said that Tinoir had betrayed his country. At last sleep left him, and he fought a demon night and day; and always he remembered Dalice's arm about his neck, and her kisses that last night they were together. Twice he started away from his post to go to her, but before he had gone a hundred paces he came back. At last one afternoon he saw ships, not far off, rounding the great cape in the gulf, and after a time, at sunset, he knew by their shape it was the fleet of the foe; and so he lighted his great fires, and they were answered leagues away towards the city by another beacon. Two hours after sunset of this day the fire in front of Tinoir's home was lighted, and was not put out, and Tinoir sat and watched it till it died away. So he lay in the light of his own great war-fire till morning, for he could not travel at night, and then, his duty over, he went back to his home. He found Dalice lying beside the ashes of her fire, past hearing all he said in her ear, unheeding the kiss he set upon her lips. Two nights afterwards, coming back from laying her beside her children, he saw a great light in the sky towards the city, as of a huge fire. When the courier came to him bearing the Governor's message and the praise of the people, and told of the enemy's fleet destroyed by the fire-rafts, he stared at the man, then turned his head to a place where a pine cross showed against the green grass, and said: "Dalice--my wife--is dead." "You have saved your country, Tinoir," answered the courier kindly. "I have lost Dalice!" he said, and fondled the rosary Dalice used to carry when she lived; and he would speak to the man no more. BY THAT PLACE CALLED PERADVENTURE By that place called Peradventure in the Voshti Hills dwelt Golgothar the strong man, who, it was said, could break an iron pot with a blow, or pull a tall sapling from the ground. "If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would go and conquer Nooni, the city of our foes." Because he had not the hundred men he did not go; and Nooni still sent insults to the country of Golgothar, and none could travel safe between the capitals. And Golgothar was sorry. "If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would build a dyke to keep the floods back from the people crowded on the lowlands." Because he had not the hundred men, now and again the floods came down, and swept the poor folk out to sea, or laid low their habitations. And Golgothar pitied them. "If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would clear the wild boar from the forests, that the children should not fear to play among the trees." Because he had not the hundred men the graves of children multiplied, and countless mothers sat by empty beds and mourned. And Golgothar put his head between his knees in trouble for them. "If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would with great stones mend the broken pier, and the bridge between the islands should not fall." Because he had not the hundred men, at last the bridge gave way, and a legion of the king's army were carried to the whirlpool, where they fought in vain. And Golgothar made a feast of remembrance to them, and tears dripped on his beard when he said: "Hail and Farewell!" "If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would go against the walls of chains our rebels built, and break them one by one." Because he had not the hundred men, the chain walls blocked the only pass between the hills, and so cut in two the kingdom: and they who pined for corn went wanting, and they who yearned for fish stayed hungry. And Golgothar, brooding, said his heart bled for his country. "If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would go among the thousand brigands of Mirnan, and bring again the beloved daughter of our city." Because he had not the hundred men the beloved lady languished in her prison, for the brigands asked as ransom the city of Talgone which they hated. And Golgothar carried in his breast a stone image she had given him, and for very grief let no man speak her name before him. "If I had a hundred men so strong--" said Golgothar, one day, standing on a great point of land and looking down the valley. As he said it, he heard a laugh, and looking down he saw Sapphire, or Laugh of the Hills, as she was called. A long staff of iron-wood was in her hands, with which she jumped the dykes and streams and rocky fissures; in her breast were yellow roses, and there was a tuft of pretty feathers in her hair. She reached up and touched him on the breast with her staff, then she laughed again, and sang a snatch of song in mockery: "I am a king, I have no crown, I have no throne to sit in--" "Pull me up, boy," she said. She wound a leg about the staff, and, taking hold, he drew her up as if she had been a feather. "If I had a hundred mouths I would kiss you for that," she said, still mocking; "but having only one, I'll give it to the cat, and weep for Golgothar." "Silly jade," he said, and turned towards his tent. As they passed a slippery and dangerous place, where was one strong solitary tree, she suddenly threw a noose over him, drew it fast and sprang far out over the precipice into the air. Even as she did so, he jumped behind the tree, and clasped it, else on the slippery place he would have gone over with her. The rope came taut, and presently he drew her up again to safety, and while she laughed at him and mocked him, he held her tight under his arm, and carried her to his lodge, where he let her go. "Why did you do it, devil's madcap?" he asked. "Why didn't you wait for the hundred men so strong?" she laughed. "Why did you jump behind the tree? "'If I had a hundred men, heigho, I would buy my corn for a penny a gill. If I had a hundred men or so, I would dig a grave for the maid of the hill, heigho!'" He did not answer her, but stirred the soup in the pot and tasted it, and hung a great piece of meat over the fire. Then he sat down, and only once did he show anger as she mocked him, and that was when she thrust her hand into his breast, took out the little stone image, and said: "If a little stone god had a hundred hearts, Would a little stone goddess trust in one?" Then she made as if she would throw it into the fire, but he caught her hand and crushed it, so that she cried out for pain and anger, and said: "Brute of iron, go break the posts in the brigands' prison-house, but leave a poor girl's wrist alone. If I had a hundred men--" she added, mocking wildly again, and then, springing at him, put her two thumbs at the corners of his eyes, and cried: "Stir a hand, and out they will come --your eyes for my bones!" He did not stir till her fury was gone. Then he made her sit down and eat with him, and afterwards she said softly to him, and without a laugh: "Why should the people say, 'Golgothar is our shame, for he has great strength, and yet he does nothing but throw great stones for sport into the sea'?" He had the simple mind of a child, and he listened to her patiently, and at last got up and began preparing for a journey, cleaning all his weapons, and gathering them together. She understood him, and she said, with a little laugh like music: "One strong man is better than a hundred --a little key will open a great door easier than a hundred hammers. What is the strength of a hundred bullocks without this?" she added, tapping him on the forehead. Then they sat down and talked together quietly for a long time; and at sunset she saw him start away upon great errands. Before two years had gone, Nooni, the city of their foes, was taken; the chain wall of the rebels opened to the fish and corn of the poor; the children wandered in the forest without fear of wild boars; the dyke was built to save the people in the lowlands; and Golgothar carried to the castle the King had given him the daughter of the city, freed from Mirnan. "If Golgothar had a hundred wives--" said a voice to the strong man as he entered the castle gates. Looking up he saw Sapphire. He stretched out his hand to her in joy and friendship. "--I would not be one of them," she added, with a mocking laugh, as she dropped from the wall, leaped the moat by the help of her staff, and danced away laughing. There are those who say, however that tears fell down her cheeks as she laughed. THE SINGING OF THE BEES "Mother, didst thou not say thy prayers last night?" "Twice, my child." "Once before the little shrine, and once beside my bed--is it not so?" "It is so, my Fanchon. What hast thou in thy mind?" "Thou didst pray that the storm die in the hills, and the flood cease, and that my father come before it was again the hour of prayer. It is now the hour. Canst thou not hear the storm and the wash of the flood? And my father does not come!" "Dear Fanchon, God is good." "When thou wast asleep I rose from my bed, and in the dark I kissed the feet of--Him--on the little Calvary; and I did not speak, but in my heart I called." "What didst thou call, my child?" "I called to my father: 'Come back-come back!'" "Thou shouldst have called to God, my Fanchon." "I loved my father, and I called to him." "Thou shouldst love God." "I knew my father first. If God loved thee, He would answer thy prayer. Dost thou not hear the cracking of the cedar trees and the cry of the wolves--they are afraid. All day and all night the rain and wind come down, and the birds and wild fowl have no peace. I kissed--His feet, and my throat was full of tears; but I called in my heart. Yet the storm and the dark stay, and my father does not come." "Let us be patient, my Fanchon." "He went to guide the priest across the hills. Why does not God guide him back?" "My Fanchon, let us be patient." "The priest was young, and my father has grey hair." "Wilt thou not be patient, my child?" "He filled the knapsack of the priest with food better than his own, and --thou didst not see it--put money in his hand." "My own, the storm may pass." "He told the priest to think upon our home as a little nest God set up here for such as he." "There are places of shelter in the hills for thy father, my Fanchon." "And when the priest prayed, 'That Thou mayst bring us safely to this place where we would go,' my father said so softly, 'We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!'" "My Fanchon, thy father hath gone this trail many times." "The prayer was for the out-trail, not the in-trail, my mother." "Nay, I do not understand thee." "A swarm of bees came singing through the room last night, my mother. It was dark and I could not see, but there was a sweet smell, and I heard the voices." "My child, thou art tired with watching, and thy mind is full of fancies. Thou must sleep." "I am tired of watching. Through the singing of the bees as they passed over my bed, I heard my father's voice. I could not hear the words, they seemed so far away, like the voices of the bees; and I did not cry out, for the tears were in my throat. After a moment the room was so still that it made my heart ache." "Oh, my Fanchon, my child, thou dost break my heart! Dost thou not know the holy words?" "'And their souls do pass like singing bees, where no man may follow. These are they whom God gathereth out of the whirlwind and the desert, and bringeth home in a goodly swarm.'" Night drew close to the earth, and as suddenly as a sluice-gate drops and holds back a flood the storm ceased. Along the crest of the hills there slowly grew a line of light, and then the serene moon came up and on, persistent to give the earth love where it had had punishment. Divers flocks of clouds, camp-followers of the storm, could not abash her. But once she drew shrinking back behind a slow troop of them; for down at the bottom of a gorge lay a mountaineer, face upward and unmoving, as he had lain since a rock loosened beneath him, and the depths swallowed him. If he had had ears to hear, he would have answered the soft, bitter cries which rose from a but on the Voshti Hills above him: "Michel, Michel, art thou gone?" "Come back, oh, my father, come back!" But perhaps it did avail that there were lighted candles before a little shrine, and that a mother, in her darkness, kissed the feet of One on a Calvary. THE WHITE OMEN "Ah, Monsieur, Monsieur, come quick!" "My son, wilt thou not be patient?" "But she--my Fanchon--and the child!" "I knew thy Fanchon, and her father, when thou wast yet a child." "But they may die before we come, Monsieur." "These things are in God's hands, Gustave." "You are not a father; you have never known what makes the world seem nothing." "I knew thy Fanchon's father." "Is that the same?" "There are those who save and those who die for others. Of thy love thou wouldst save--the woman hath lain in thine arms, the child is of this. But to thy Fanchon's father I was merely a priest--we had not hunted together nor met often about the fire, and drew fast the curtains for the tales which bring men close. He took me safely on the out-trail, but on the home-trail he was cast away. Dost thou not think the love of him that stays as great as the love of him that goes?" "Ah, thou wouldst go far to serve my wife and child!" "Love knows not distance; it hath no continent; its eyes are for the stars, its feet for the swords; it continueth, though an army lay waste the pasture; it comforteth when there are no medicines; it hath the relish of manna; and by it do men live in the desert." "But if it pass from a man, that which he loves, and he is left alone, Monsieur?" "That which is loved may pass, but love hath no end." "Thou didst love my Fanchon's father?" "I prayed him not to go, for a storm was on, but there was the thought of wife and child on him--the good Michel--and he said: 'It is the home- trail, and I must get to my nest.' Poor soul, poor soul! I who carry my life as a leaf in autumn for the west wind was saved, and he--!" "We are on the same trail now, Monsieur?" "See: how soft a night, and how goodly is the moon!" "It is the same trail now as then, Monsieur?" "And how like velvet are the shadows in the gorge there below--like velvet-velvet." "Like a pall. He travelled this trail, Monsieur?" "I remember thy Fanchon that night--so small a child was she, with deep brown eyes, a cloud of hair that waved about her head, and a face that shone like spring. I have seen her but once since then, and yet thou sayest thy Fanchon has now her great hour, that she brings forth?" "Yes. In the morning she cried out to me twice, for I am not easy of waking--shame to me--and said: 'Gustave, thou shalt go for the priest over the hills, for my time is at hand, and I have seen the White Omen on the wall.' The White Omen--you know, Monsieur?" "What does such as she with the legend of the White Omen, Gustave?" "Who can tell what is in the heart of a mother? Their eyes are not the eyes of such as we." "Neither the eyes of man nor priest--thou sayest well. How did she see it?" "She was lying in a soft sleep, when something like a pain struck through her eyes, and she waked. There upon the wall over the shrine was the white arrow with the tuft of fire. It came and went three times, and then she called me." "What tale told the arrow to thy Fanchon, Gustave?" "That for the child which cometh into the world a life must go from the world." "The world is wide and souls are many, Gustave." "Most true; but her heart was heavy, and it came upon her that the child might be spared and herself taken." "Is not that the light of thy home--yonder against the bunch of firs?" "Yes, yes, good father, they have put a light in the window. See, see, there are two lights. Ah, merci, merci, they both live! She hath had her hour! That was the sign our mother promised me." "Michel's wife--ah, yes, Michel's wife! Blessed be God. A moment, Gustave; let us kneel here . . ." . . . "Monsieur, did you not see a white arrow shoot down the sky as the prayer ended?" "My son, it was a falling star." "It seemed to have a tuft of fire." "Hast thou also the mind of a woman, Gustave?" "I cannot tell. If it was not a human soul it was a world, and death is death." "Thou shalt think of life, Gustave. In thy nest there are two birds where was but one. Keep in thy heart the joy of life and the truth of love, and the White Omen shall be naught to thee." "May I say 'thou' as I speak?" "Thou shalt speak as I speak to thee." "Thy face is pale-art thou ill, mon pere?" "I have no beard, and the moon shines in my face." "Thy look is as that of one without sight." "Nay, nay, I can see the two lights in thy window, my son." "Joy--joy, a little while, and I shall clasp my Fanchon in my arms!" "Thy Fanchon, and the child--and the child." The fire sent a trembling glow through the room of a hut on a Voshti hill, and the smell of burning fir and camphire wood filtered through the air with a sleepy sweetness. So delicate and faint between the quilts lay the young mother, the little Fanchon, a shining wonder still in her face, and the exquisite touch of birth on her--for when a child is born the mother also is born again. So still she lay until one who gave her into the world stooped, and drawing open the linen at her breast, nestled a little life there, which presently gave a tiny cry, the first since it came forth. Then Fanchon's arms drew up, and, with eyes all tenderly burning, she clasped the babe to her breast, and as silk breast touched silk cheek, there sprang up in her the delight and knowledge that the doom of the White Omen was not for herself. Then she called the child by its father's name, and said into the distance: "Gustave, Gustave, come back!" And the mother of Fanchon, remembering one night so many years before, said, under her breath: "Michel, Michel, thou art gone so long!" With their speaking, Gustave and the priest entered on them; and Fanchon crying out for joy, said: "Kiss thy child--thy little Gustave, my husband." Then, to the priest: "Last night I saw the White Omen, mon pere; and one could not die, nor let the child die, without a blessing. But we shall both live now." The priest blessed all, and long time he talked with the wife of the lost Michel. When he rose to go to bed she said to him: "The journey has been too long, mon pere. Your face is pale and you tremble. Youth has no patience. Gustave hurried you." "Gustave yearned for thy Fanchon and the child. The White Omen made him afraid." "But the journey was too much. It is a hard, a bitter trail." "I have come gladly as I went once with thy Michel. But, as thou sayest, I am tired--at my heart. I will get to my rest." Near dawn Gustave started from the bed where he sat watching, for he saw the White Omen over against the shrine, and then a voice said, as it were out of a great distance: "Even me also, O my father!" With awed footsteps, going to see, he found that a man had passed out upon that trail by which no hunter from life can set a mark to guide a comrade; leaving behind the bones and flesh which God set up, too heavy to carry on so long a journey. THE SOJOURNERS "My father, shall we soon be there?" The man stopped, and shading his eyes with his hand, looked long before him into the silver haze. They were on the southern bank of a wide valley, flanked by deep hills looking wise as grey-headed youth, a legion of close comrades, showing no gap in their ranks. They seemed to breathe; to sit, looking down into the valley, with heads dropped on their breasts, and deep overshadowed eyes, that never changed, in mist or snow, or sun, or any kind of weather: dark brooding lights that knew the secrets of the world, watchful yet kind. Races, ardent with longing, had come and gone through the valley, had passed the shining porches in the North on the way to the quiet country; and they had never come again, though shadows flitted back and forth when the mists came down: visiting spirits, hungering on the old trail for some that had dropped by the way. As the ages passed, fewer and fewer travelled through the valley-no longer a people or a race, but twos and threes, and sometimes a small company, like soldiers of a battered guard, and oftener still solitary pilgrims, broken with much travel and bowed with loneliness. But they always cried out with joy when they beheld far off in the North, at the end of the long trail, this range of grey and violet hills break into golden gaps with scarlet walls, and rivers of water ride through them pleasantly. Then they hurried on to the opal haze that hung at the end of the valley--and who heard ever of any that wished to leave the Scarlet Hills and the quiet country beyond! The boy repeated his question: "My father, shall we soon be there?" The man withdrew his hand from over his eyes, and a strange smile came to his lips. "My son," he answered, "canst thou not see? Yonder, through the gentle mist, are the Scarlet Hills. Our journey is near done." The boy lifted his head and looked. "I can see nothing but the mist, my father--not the Scarlet Hills. I am tired, I would sleep." "Thou shalt sleep soon. The wise men told us of the Delightful Chateau at the gateway of the hills. Courage, my son! If I gave thee the golden balls to toss, would it cheer thee?" "My father, I care not for the golden balls; but if I had horse and sword and a thousand men, I would take a city." The man laid his hand upon the boy's shoulder. "If I, my son," he said, "had a horse and sword and a thousand men, I would build a city." "Why dost thou not fly thy falcon, or write thy thoughts upon the sand, as thou didst yesterday, my father?" The man loosed the falcon from his wrist, and watched it fly away. "My son, I care not for the falcon, nor any more for writing on the sands." "My father, if thou didst build a city, I would not tear it down, but I would keep it with my thousand men. "Thou hast well said, my son." And the man stooped and kissed the lad on the forehead. And so they travelled on in silence for a long time, and slowly they came to the opal haze, which smelled sweet as floating flowers, and gave their hearts a halcyon restfulness. And glancing down at him many times, the father saw the lad's face look serenely wise, without becoming old, and his brown hair clustered on his forehead with all the life of youth in it. Yet in his eyes the lad seemed as old as himself. "My father," said the lad again, "wouldst thou then build a city?" And the father answered: "Nay, my son, I would sow seed, and gather it into harvest--enough for my needs, no more; and sit quiet in my doorway when my work was done, and be grateful to the gods." The lad waited a moment, then answered: "When thou wast a governor in our own country, thou hadst serfs and retainers without number, and fifty men to beat upon the shields of brass to tell of thy coming through the gates of the King's house; now thou wouldst sow a field and sit quiet in thy doorway, like the blind seller of seed-cakes 'gainst the temple." "Even so, my son." Then he stooped down, knelt upon his knees, and kissed the earth solemnly, and when he rose there was a smile upon his face. Then the lad said: "When I was the son of a governor I loved to play with the golden balls, to shoot at the target for pearls, and to ride the flamingo down; now I would grind the corn which thou didst reap, and with oil make seed-cakes for our supper, and sit quiet with thee in thy doorway." Then he too stooped down and kissed the earth, and rose up again with a smile upon his face. And as they went the earth seemed suddenly to blossom anew, the glory of the Scarlet Hills burst upon them, and they could hear bugles calling far off and see giant figures trooping along the hills, all scarlet too, with streaming hair. And presently, near to a lake, there was a great gateway, and perched upon a rock near it a chateau of divine proportions, on which was written above the perfect doorway: "The Keeper of the House awaits thee. Enter into Quiet." And they entered, and were possessed of an incomparable peace. And then came to them an old man of noble countenance, with eye neither dimmed nor sunken, and cheek dewy as a child's, and his voice was like an organ when it plays the soft thanksgiving of a mother. "Why did ye kiss the earth as ye travelled?" he asked. Then they told him, each with his own tongue, and he smiled upon them and questioned them of all their speech by the way; and they answered him all honestly and with gladness, for the searching of their hearts was a joy and relief. But he looked most lovingly upon the lad. "Wouldst thou, then, indeed enter the quiet country?" he asked. And the lad answered: "I have lived so long in the noise!" "Thou hast learned all, thou hast lived all," he answered the boy. "Beyond the Hills of Scarlet there is quiet, and thou shalt dwell there, thou and he. Ye have the perfect desire--Go in peace, and know that though ye are of different years, as men count time, God's clock strikes the same for both; for both are of equal knowledge, and have the same desire at last." Then, lifting up his hands, he said: "O children of men! O noisy world! when will ye learn the delectable way?" Slowly they all three came from the Chateau, and through the great gateway, and passed to the margin of a shining lake. There the two stepped into a boat that waited for them, of which the rowers were nobly fashioned, like the Keeper of the House, and as they bowed their heads to a melodious blessing, the boat drew away. Soon, in the sweet haze, they looked transfigured and enlarged, majestic figures moving through the Scarlet Hills to the quiet country. Now the valley through which they had passed was the Valley of Death, where the young become old, and the old young, and all become wise. THE TENT OF THE PURPLE MAT The Tent stands on the Mount of Lost Winters, in that bit of hospitable land called the Fair Valley, which is like no other in the North. Whence comes the soft wind that comforts it, who can tell? It swims through the great gap in the mountains, and passing down the valley, sinks upon the prairie of the Ten Stars, where it is lost. What man first placed the Tent on the Mount none knows, though legends are many. It has a clear outlook to the north, whence comes the gracious wind, and it is sheltered at the south by a stout wall of commendable trees; yet these are at some small distance, so that the Tent has a space all about it, and the figure of the general land is as that of an amphitheatre. It is made of deerskin, dyed by a strange process which turned it white, and doctored by some cunning medicine. It is like a perfect parchment, and shows no decay. It has a centre-pole of excellent fir, and from its peak flies a strip of snake-skin, dyed a red which never fades. For the greater part of the year the plateau whereon the Tent stands is covered with a sweet grass, and when the grass dies there comes a fine white frost, ungoverned by the sun, in which the footstep sinks, as into an unfilled honeycomb. The land has few clouds, and no storms, save of the lightest-rain which is as mist, and snow which is as frosty haze. The sun cherishes the place continually, and the moon rises on it with a large rejoicing. Yet no man dwells in the valley. It is many scores of leagues from any habitation, from the lodges of the Indians or the posts of the Company's people. There are few tribes that know of it, and these go not to it as tribes, but as one man or one woman has need. Men say that beyond it, in another amphitheatre of the hills, is the White Valley, the Place of Peace, where the sleepers are, and the Scarlet Hunter is sentinel. Yet who knows--since any that have been there are constrained to be silent, or forget what they have seen? But this valley where the Tent stands is for those who have broken the commandment, "Thou shalt not sell thy soul." Hither they come and wait and desire continually; and this delightful land is their punishment, for they have no relish for goodly things, the power to enjoy going from them when they bargained their souls away. The great peace, the noble pasturage, the equal joy of day and night wherein is neither heat nor cold, where life is like the haze on a harvest-field, are for chastisement, till that by great patience and striving, some one, having the gift of sacrifice, shall give his life to buy back that soul. For it is in the minds of this people of the North that for every life that comes into the world one passes out, and for every soul which is bartered away another must be set free ere it can be redeemed. Men and women whom life and their own sins had battered came seeking the Tent; but they were few and they were chiefly old, for conscience cometh mostly when man can work and wanton no more. Yet one day, when the sight of the valley was most fair to their eyes, there came out of the southmost corner a girl, who, as soon as she set foot in the valley, laid aside her knapsack in the hollow of a tree, also her moccasins and a little cap of fur, and came on with bare head and feet towards the Mount of the Lost Winters. She was of good stature, ripely made, not beautiful of face, but with a look which would make any man turn twice to see, a very glory of fine hair, and a hand which spoke oftener than the lips. She had come a month's travel, scarcely halting from sunrise to sunset, and she was as worn in body as in spirit. Now, as she passed up the valley she stood still several times, and looked round in a kind of dream, as well one might who had come out of an inclement south country to this sweet nourishment. Yet she stood not still for joy and content, but for pain. Once or twice she lifted up her hands above her head as though appealing, but these pauses were only for brief moments, for she kept moving on towards the mountain with a swift step. When she had climbed the plateau where the delicate grass yielded with a tender spring to the feet, she paused long and gazed round, as though to take a last glance at all; then, turning to the Tent, looked steadfastly at it, awe and wonder, and something more difficult of interpretation, in her face. At last she slowly came to the curtain of the Tent, and lifting it, without a pause stepped inside, the curtain falling behind her. The Tent was empty save for the centre-pole, a wooden trough of dried fruit, a jar of water, and a mat of the most gentle purple colour, which was laid between the centre-pole and the tent-curtain. The mat was of exquisite make, as it seemed from the chosen fibres of some perfect wood, and the hue was as that of a Tyrian dye. A soft light pervaded the place, perhaps filtered through the parchment-like white skin of the Tent, for it seemed to have no other fountain. Upon the farther side a token was drawn in purple on the tentskin, and the girl, seeing it, turned quickly to the curtain through which she had passed. Upon the curtain were other signs. She read them slowly, and repeated them out loud in a low uncertain voice, like a bird's note blundering in a flute: "Four hours shalt thou look northward, kneeling on the Mat of Purple, and thinking of the Camp of the Delightful Fires, around which is the Joyous City; four hours shalt thou lie prone, thy face upon the soothing earth, desiring sleep; and four hours shalt thou look within thine own breast, thinking of thy sin; four hours also shalt thou go through the valley, calling out that thou art lost, and praying the Scarlet Hunter to bring thee home. Afterwards thou shalt sleep, and thou shalt comfort thyself with food when thou wilt. If the Scarlet Hunter comes not, and thy life faileth for misery, and none comprehending thy state offereth his life, that thy soul may be free once more--then thou shalt gladly die, and, yielding thine own body, shall purchase back thy soul; but this is not possible until thou hast dwelt here a year and a day." Having read, the girl threw herself face forward on the ground, her body shaking with grief, and she cried out a man's name many times with great bitterness "Ambroise! Ambroise! Ambroise!" A long time she lay prone, crying so; but at last arose and, folding back the curtain with hot hands, began her vigil for the redemption of a soul. And while her sorrow grew, a father mourned for his daughter and called his God to witness that he was guiltless of her loss, though he had said hard words to her by reason of a man called Ambroise. Then, too, the preacher had exhorted her late and early till her mind was in a maze--it is enough to have the pangs of youth and love, to be awakened by the pain of mere growth and knowledge, without the counsel of the overwise to go jolting through the soul. The girl was only eighteen. She had never known her mother, she had lived as the flowers do, and when her hour of trial came she felt herself cast like a wandering bird out of the nest. In her childhood she had known no preachers, no teaching, save the wholesome catechism of a father's love and the sacred intimacy of Nature. Living so, learning by signs the language of law and wisdom, she had indrawn the significance of legend, the power of the awful natural. She had made her own commandments. When Ambroise the courier came, she had looked into his eyes and seen her own--indeed, it was most wonderful, for those two pairs of eyes were as those of one person. And each, as each looked, smiled--that smile which is the coming laughter of a heart at itself. Yet they were different--he a man, she a woman; he versed in evil, she taught in good; he a vagrant of the snows, the fruit of whose life was like the contemptible stones of the desert; she the keeper of a goodly lodge, past which flowed a water that went softly, making rich the land, the fountain of her perfect deeds. He, looking into her eyes, saw himself when he had no sin on his soul; and she into his--as it seemed, her own always--saw herself as it were in a cobweb of evils which she could not understand. As his heart grew lighter, hers grew sick, even when she knew that these were the only eyes in which she could ever see happiness. It grew upon her that Ambroise's sins were hers and not his; that she, not he, had bartered a soul for the wages of sin. When they said at the Fort that her eyes and Ambroise's, and her face and his, were as of one piece, the pain of the thought deepened, and other pains came likewise, for her father and the preacher urged that a man who had sold himself to the devil was no comrade for her in little or much. Yet she loved him as only they can who love for the first time, and with the deep primitive emotions which are out of the core of nature. But her heart had been cloven as by a wedge, and she would not, and could not, lie in his arms, nor rest her cheek to his, nor seek that haven where true love is fastened like a nail on the wall of that inn called home. He was herself, he must be brought back; and so, one night, while yet the winter was on, she stole away out of the Fort, pausing at his door a moment only, laying her hand upon it as one might tenderly lay it on the brow of a sick sleeper. Then she stepped away out on the plains, pointing her course by the moon, for the Mount of Lost Winters and the Tent of the Purple Mat. When the people of the Fort waked, and it was found that she was gone, search parties sallied out, but returned as they went after many days. And at last, because Ambroise suffered as one ground between rolling stones, even the preacher and the father of the girl relented towards him. After some weeks there came word through a wandering tribe that the body of a girl had been found on the Child o' Sin River, and black pelts were hung as mourning on the lodges and houses and walls of the Fort, and the father shut himself in his room, admitting no one. Still, they mourned without great cause. But, if the girl had taken the sins of Ambroise with her, she had left him beside that soft flowing river of her goodness; and the savour of the herbs on its banks was to him like the sun on a patch of pennyroyal, bringing medicine to the sick body through the nostrils. So one morning, after many months, having crept from the covert of remorse, he took a guide to start him in the right trail, and began his journey to the Valley, whither she had gone before him, though he knew it not. From the moment that his guide left him dangers beset him, and those spirits called the Mockers, which are the evil deeds of a man crying to Heaven, came crying about him from the dead white trees, breathing through the powdery air, whistling down the moonlight; so that to cheer him he called out again and again, like any heathen: "Keeper, O Keeper of the Kimash Hills! I am as a dog in the North Sea, I am as a bat in a cave, As a lizard am I on a prison wall, As a tent with no pole, As a bird with one wing; I am as a seal in the desert, I am as a wild horse alone. O Scarlet Hunter of the Kimash Hills! Thou hast an arm like a shooting star, Thou hast an eye like the North Sky fires, Thou hast a pouch for the hungry, Thou hast a tent for the lost: Hear me, O Keeper of the Kimash Hills!" And whether or not this availed him, who can tell? There be many names of the One Thing, and the human soul hath the same north and south, if there be any north and south and east and west, save in the words of men. But something availed; and one day a footworn traveller, entering the Valley at the southmost corner, laid his cap and bag, moccasins, bow and arrow, and an iron weapon away in a hollow log, seeing not that there were also another bag and cap, and a pair of moccasins there. Then, barefooted and bareheaded, he marched slowly up the Valley, and all its loveliness smote him as a red iron is buffeted at the forge; and an exquisite agony coursed through his veins, so that he cried out, hiding his face. And yet he needs must look and look, all his sight aching with this perfection, never overpowering him, but keeping him ever in the relish of his torture. At last he came to the door of the Tent in the late evening, and, intent not only to buy back the soul he had marketed--for the sake of the memory of the woman, and believing that none would die for him and that he must die for himself--he lifted the curtain and entered. Then he gave a great cry, for there she lay asleep, face downward, her forehead on the Purple Mat. "Sherah! Sherah!" he cried, dropping on his knees beside her and lifting up her head. "Ambroise!" she called out faintly, her pale face drawing away from his breast. "Sherah, why didst thou come here?" he said. "Thou! thou!" "To buy back my soul, Ambroise. And this is the last day of the year that I have spent here. Oh, why, why didst thou come? To-morrow all should have been well!" "To buy back thy soul--thou didst no wrong!" But at that moment their eyes drew close, and changed, and he understood. "For me--for me!" he whispered. "Nay, for me!" she replied. Then they noticed that the Purple Mat on which they knelt was red under their knees, and a goodly light shone through the Tent, not of the day or night. And as they looked amazed, the curtain of the Tent drew open, and one entered, clothed in red from head to foot; and they knew him to be the Scarlet Hunter, the lover of the lost, the Keeper of the Kimash Hills. Looking at them steadfastly he said to Sherah: "Thou has prevailed. To-night, at the setting of the sun, an old man died in Syria who uttered thy name as in a dream when he passed. The soul of Ambroise hath been bought back by thee." Then he spoke to Ambroise. "Because thy spirit was willing, and for the woman's sake thou shalt have peace; but this year which she has spent for thee shall be taken from thy life, and added to hers. Come, and I will start ye on the swift trail to your own country, and ye shall come here no more." As they rose, obeying him, they saw that the red of the Mat had gone a perfect white, and they knew not what to think, for they had acted after the manner of the heathen; but that night, as they travelled with joy towards that Inn called Home, down at the Fort, a preacher with rude noise cried to those who would hear him: "Though your sins be as scarlet they shall become whiter than snow." THERE WAS A LITTLE CITY It lay between the mountains and the sea, and a river ran down past it, carrying its good and ill news to a pacific shore, and out upon soft winds, travelling lazily to the scarlet east. All white and a tempered red, it nestled in a valley with other valleys on lower steppes, which seemed as if built by the gods, that they might travel easily from the white-topped mountains, Margath, Shaknon, and the rest, to wash their feet in the sea. In the summer a hot but gracious mistiness softened the green of the valleys, the varying colours of the hills, the blue of the river, the sharp outlines of the cliffs. Along the high shelf of the mountain, muletrains travelled like a procession seen in dreams--slow, hazy, graven yet moving, a part of the ancient hills themselves; upon the river great rafts, manned by scarlet-vested crews, swerved and swam, guided by the gigantic oars which needed five men to lift and swayargonauts they from the sweet-smelling forests to the salt-smelling main. In winter the little city lay still under a coverlet of pure white, with the mists from the river and the great falls above frozen upon the trees, clothing them as graciously as with white samite; so that far as eye could see there was a heavenly purity upon all, covering every mean and distorted thing. There were days when no wind stirred anywhere, and the gorgeous sun made the little city and all the land round about a pretty silver kingdom, where Oberon and his courtiers might have danced and been glad. Often, too, you could hear a distant wood-cutter's axe make a pleasant song in the air, and the wood-cutter himself, as the hickory and steel swung in a shining half-circle to the bole of balsam, was clad in the bright livery of frost, his breath issuing in grey smoke like life itself, mystic and peculiar, man, axe, tree, and breath one common being. And when, by-and-by, the woodcutter added a song of his own to the song his axe made, the illusion was not lost, but rather heightened; for it, too, was part of the unassuming pride of nature, childlike in its simplicity, primeval in its suggestion and expression. The song had a soft monotony, swinging backwards and forwards to the waving axe like the pendulum of a clock. It began with a low humming, as one could think man made before he heard the Voice which taught him how to speak. And then came the words: "None shall stand in the way of the lord, The lord of the Earth--of the rivers and trees, Of the cattle and fields and vines! Hew! Here shall I build me my cedar home, A city with gates, a road to the sea For I am the lord of the Earth! Hew! Hew! Hew and hew, and the sap of the tree Shall be yours, and your bones shall be strong, Shall be yours, and your heart shall rejoice, Shall be yours, and the city be yours, And the key of its gates be the key Of the home where your little ones dwell. Hew and be strong! Hew and rejoice! For man is the lord of the Earth, And God is the Lord over all!" And so long as the little city stands will this same wood-cutter's name and history stand also. He had camped where it stood now, when nothing was there save the wild duck in the reeds, the antelopes upon the hills, and all manner of furred and feathered things; and it all was his. He had seen the yellow flashes of gold in the stream called Pipi, and he had not gathered it, for his life was simple, and he was young enough to cherish in his heart the love of the open world, beyond the desire of cities and the stir of the market-place. In those days there was not a line in his face, not an angle in his body--all smoothly rounded and lithe and alert, like him that was called "the young lion of Dedan." Day by day he drank in the wisdom of the hills and the valleys, and he wrote upon the dried barks of trees the thoughts that came as he lay upon the bearskin in his tent, or cooled his hands and feet, of a hot summer day, in the moist sandy earth, and watched the master of the deer lead his cohorts down the passes of the hills. But by-and-by mule-trains began to crawl along the ledges of Margath Mountain, and over Shaknon came adventurers, and after them, wandering men seeking a new home, women and children coming also. But when these came he had passed the spring-time of his years, and had grown fixed in the love of the valley, where his sole visitors had been passing tribes of Indians, who knew his moods and trespassed not at all on his domain. The adventurers hungered for the gold in the rivers, and they made it one long washing-trough, where the disease that afflicted them passed on from man to man like poison down a sewer. Then the little city grew, and with the search for gold came other seekings and findings and toilings, and men who came as one stops at an inn to feed, stayed to make their home, and women made the valley cheerful, and children were born, and the pride of the place was as great as that of some village of the crimson East, where every man has ancestors to Mahomet and beyond. And he, Felion, who had been lord and master of the valley, worked with them, but did not seek for riches, and more often drew away into the hills to find some newer place unspoiled by man. But again and again he returned; for no fire is like the old fire, and no trail like the old trail. And at last it seemed as if he had driven his tent-peg in the Long Valley for ever; for, from among the women who came, he chose one comely and wise and kind, and for five years the world grew older, and Felion did not know it. When he danced his little daughter on his knee, he felt that he had found a new world. But? a day came when trouble fell upon the little city, for of a sudden the reef of gold was lost, and the great crushing-mills stood idle, and the sound of the hammers was stayed. And they came to Felion, because in his youth he had been of the best of the schoolmen; and he got up from his misery--only the day before his wife had taken a great and lonely journey to that Country which welcomes, but never yields again--and leaving his little child behind, he went down to the mines. And in three days they found the reef once more; for it had curved like the hook of a sickle, and the first arc of the yellow circle had dropped down into the bowels of the earth. And so he saved the little city from disaster, and the people blessed him at the moment; and the years went on. Then there came a time when the little city was threatened with a woeful flood, because of a breaking flume; but by a simple and wise device Felion stayed the danger. And again the people blessed him; and the years went on. By-and-by an awful peril came, for two-score children had set a great raft loose upon the river, and they drifted down towards the rapids in the sight of the people; and mothers and helpless fathers wrung their hands, for on the swift tide no boat could reach them, and none could intercept the raft. But Felion, seeing, ran out upon the girders of a bridge that was being builded, and there, before them all, as the raft passed under, he let himself fall, breaking his leg as he dropped among the timbers of the fore-part of the raft; for the children were all gathered at the back, where the great oars lay motionless, one dragging in the water behind. Felion drew himself over to the huge oar, and with the strength of five men, while the people watched and prayed, he kept the raft straight for the great slide, else it had gone over the dam and been lost, and all that were thereon. A mile below, the raft was brought to shore, and again the people said that Felion had saved the little city from disaster. And they blessed him for the moment; and the years went on. Felion's daughter grew towards womanhood, and her beauty was great, and she was welcome everywhere in the valley, the people speaking well of her for her own sake. But at last a time came when of the men of the valley one called, and Felion's daughter came quickly to him, and with tears for her father and smiles for her husband, she left the valley and journeyed into the east, having sworn to love and cherish him while she lived. And her father, left solitary, mourned for her, and drew away into a hill above the valley in a cedar house that he built; and having little else to love, loved the earth, and sky, and animals, and the children from the little city when they came his way. But his heart was sore; for by-and- by no letters came from his daughter, and the little city, having prospered, concerned it self no more with him. When he came into its streets there were those who laughed, for he was very tall and rude, and his grey hair hung loose on his shoulders, and his dress was still a hunter's. They had not long remembered the time when a grievous disease, like a plague, fell upon the place, and people died by scores, as sheep fall in a murrain. And again they had turned to him, and he, because he knew of a miraculous medicine got from Indian sachems, whose people had suffered of this sickness, came into the little city, and by his medicines and fearless love and kindness stayed the plague. And thus once more he saved the little city from disaster, and they blessed him for the moment; and the years went on. In time they ceased to think of Felion at all, and he was left alone; even the children came no more to visit him; and he had pleasure only in hunting and shooting and in felling trees, with which he built a high stockade and a fine cedar house within it. And all the work of this he did with his own hands, even to the polishing of the floors and the carved work of the large fireplaces. Yet he never lived in the house, nor in any room of it, and the stockade gate was always shut; and when any people passed that way they stared and shrugged their shoulders, and thought Felion mad or a fool. But he was wise in his own way, which was not the way of those who had reason to bless him for ever, and who forgot him, though he had served them through so many years. Against the little city he had an exceeding bitterness; and this grew, and had it not been that his heart was kept young by the love of the earth, and the beasts about him in the hills, he must needs have cursed the place and died. But the sight of a bird in the nest with her young, and the smell of a lair, and the light of the dawn that came out of the east, and the winds that came up from the sea, and the hope that would not die kept him from being of those who love not life for life's sake, be it in ease or in sorrow. He was of those who find all worth the doing, even all worth the suffering; and so, though he frowned and his lips drew tight with anger when he looked down at the little city, he felt that elsewhere in the world there was that which made it worth the saving. If his daughter had been with him he would have laughed at that which his own hands had founded, protected, and saved. But no word came from her, and laughter was never on his lips--only an occasional smile when, perhaps, he saw two sparrows fighting, or watched the fish chase each other in the river, or a toad, too lazy to jump, walk stupidly like a convict, dragging his long, green legs behind him. And when Felion looked up towards Shaknon and Margath, a light came in his eyes, for they were wise and quiet, and watched the world, and something of their grandeur drew about him like a cloak. As age cut deep lines in his face and gave angles to his figure, a strange, settled dignity grew upon him, whether he swung his axe by the balsams or dressed the skins of the animals he had killed, piling up the pelts in a long shed in the stockade, a goodly heritage for his daughter, if she ever came back. Every day at sunrise he walked to the door of his house and looked eastward steadily, and sometimes there broke from his lips the words: "My daughter-Carille!" Again, he would sit and brood with his chin in his hand, and smile, as though remembering pleasant things. One day at last, in the full tide of summer, a man, haggard and troubled, came to Felion's house, and knocked, and, getting no reply, waited; and whenever he looked down at the little city he wrung his hands, and more than once he put them up to his face and shuddered, and again looked for Felion. Just when the dusk was rolling down, Felion came back, and, seeing the man, would have passed him without a word, but that the man stopped with an eager, sorrowful gesture and said: "The plague has come upon us again, and the people, remembering how you healed them long ago, beg you to come." At that Felion leaned his fishing-rod against the door and answered: "What people?" The other then replied: "The people of the little city below, Felion." "I do not know your name," was the reply; "I know naught of you or of your city." "Are you mad?" cried the man. "Do you forget the little city down there? Have you no heart?" A strange smile passed over Felion's face, and he answered: "When one forgets, why should the other remember?" He turned and went into the house and shut the door, and though the man knocked, the door was no opened, and he went back angry and miserable; and the people could not believe that Felion would no come to help them, as he had done all his life. A dawn three others came, and they found Felion looking out towards the east, his lips moving as though he prayed. Yet it was no prayer, only a call, that was on his lips. They felt a sort of awe in his presence, for now he seemed as if he had lived more than a century, so wise and old was the look of his face, so white his hair, so set and distant his dignity. They begged him to come, and, bringing his medicines, save the people, for death was galloping through the town, knocking at many doors. "One came to heal you," he answered--"the young man of the schools, who wrote mystic letters after his name; it swings on a brass by his door- where is he?" "He is dead of the plague," they replied, "and the other also that came with him, who fled before the sickness, fell dead of it on the roadside, going to the sea." "Why should I go?" he replied, and he turned threateningly to his weapon, as if in menace of their presence. "You have no one to leave behind," they answered eagerly, "and you are old." "Liars," he rejoined, "let the little city save itself!" and he wheeled and went into his house, and they saw that they had erred in not remembering his daughter, whose presence they had once prized. They saw that they had angered him beyond soothing; and they went back in grief, for two of them had lost dear relatives by the fell sickness. When they told what had happened, the people said: "We will send the women; he will listen to them--he had a daughter." That afternoon, when all the hills lay still and dead, and nowhere did bird or breeze stir, the women came, and they found him seated with his back turned to the town. He was looking into the deep woods, into the hot shadows of the trees. "We have come to bring you to the little city," they said to him; "the sick grow in numbers every hour." "It is safe in the hills," he answered, not looking at them. "Why do the people stay in the valley?" "Every man has a friend, or a wife, or a child, ill or dying, and every woman has a husband, or a child, or a friend, or a brother. Cowards have fled, and many of them have fallen by the way." "Last summer I lay sick here many weeks and none came near me--why should I go to the little city?" he demanded austerely. "Four times I saved it, and of all that I saved none came to give me water to drink, or food to eat, and I lay burning with fever, and thirsty and hungry--God of heaven, how thirsty!" "We did not know," they answered humbly; "you came to us so seldom, we had forgotten; we were fools." "I came and went fifty years," he answered bitterly, "and I have forgotten how to rid the little city of the plague!" At that one of the women, mad with anger, made as if to catch him by his beard, but she forbore, and said: "Liar--the men shall hang you to your own rooftree!" His eyes had a wild light, but he waved his hand quietly, and answered: "Begone, and learn how great a sin is ingratitude." He turned away from them gloomily, and would have entered his home, but one of the women, who was young, plucked his sleeve, and said sorrowfully: "I loved Carille, your daughter." "And forgot her and her father. I am three-score and ten years, and she has been gone fifteen, and for the first time I see your face," was his scornful reply. She was tempted to say: "I was ever bearing children and nursing them, and the hills were hard to climb, and my husband would not go;" but she saw how dark his look was, and she hid her face in her hands and turned away to follow after the others. She had five little children, and her heart was anxious for them and her eyes full of tears. Anger and remorse seized on the little city, and there were those who would have killed Felion, but others saw that the old man had been sorely wronged in the past, and these said: "Wait until the morrow and we will devise something." That night a mule-train crept slowly down the mountain side and entered the little city, for no one who came with them knew of the plague. The caravan had come from the east across the great plains, and not from the west, which was the travelled highway to the sea. Among them was a woman who already was ill of a fever, and knew naught of what passed round her. She had with her a beautiful child; and one of the women of the place devised a thing. "This woman," she said, "does not belong to the little city, and he can have nothing against her; she is a stranger. Let one of us take this beautiful lad to him, and he shall ask Felion to come and save his mother." Every one approved the woman's wisdom, and in the early morning she herself, with another, took the child and went up the long hillside in the heavy heat; and when they came near Felion's house the women stayed behind, and the child went forward, having been taught what to say to the old man. Felion sat just within his doorway, looking out into the sunlight which fell upon the red and white walls of the little city, flanked by young orchards, with great, oozy meadows beyond these, where cattle ate, knee- deep in the lush grass and cool reed-beds. Along the riverside, far up on the high banks, were the tall couches of dead Indians, set on poles, their useless weapons laid along the deerskin pall. Down the hurrying river there passed a raft, bearing a black flag on a pole, and on it were women and children who were being taken down to the sea from the doomed city. These were they who had lost fathers and brothers; and now were going out alone with the shadow of the plague over them, for there was none to say them nay. The tall oarsmen bent to their task, and Felion felt his blood beat faster when he saw the huge oars swing high, then drop and bend in the water, as the raft swung straight in its course and passed on safe through the narrow slide into the white rapids below, which licked the long timbers as with white tongues, and tossed spray upon the sad voyagers. Felion remembered the day when he left his own child behind and sprang from the bridge to the raft whereon were the children of the little city, and saved them. And when he tried to be angry now, the thought of the children as they watched him, with his broken leg striving against their peril, softened his heart. He shook his head, for suddenly there came to him the memory of a time, three-score years before, when he and the foundryman's daughter had gone hunting flag-flowers by the little trout stream; of the songs they sang together at the festivals, she in her sweet Quaker garb and demure Quaker beauty, he lithe, alert, and full of the joy of life and loving. As he sat so, thinking, he wondered where she was, and why he should be thinking of her now, facing the dreary sorrow of this pestilence and his own anger and vengeance. He nodded softly to the waving trees far down in the valley, for his thoughts had drifted on to his wife as he first saw her. She was standing bare-armed among the grape-vines by a wall of rock, the dew of rich life on her lip and forehead, her grey eyes swimming with a soft light; and looking at her he had loved her at once, as he had loved, on the instant, the little child that came to him later; as he had loved the girl into which the child grew, till she left him and came back no more. Why had he never gone in search of her? He got to his feet involuntarily and stepped towards the door, looking down into the valley. As his eyes rested on the little city his face grew dark, but his eyes were troubled and presently grew bewildered, for out of a green covert near there stepped a pretty boy, who came to him with frank, unabashed face and a half-shy smile. Felion did not speak at first, but stood looking, and presently the child said: "I have come to fetch you." "To fetch me where, little man?" asked Felion, a light coming into his face, his heart beating faster. "To my mother. She is sick." "Where is your mother?" "She's in the village down there," answered the boy, pointing. In spite of himself, Felion smiled in a sour sort of way, for the boy had called the place a village, and he relished the unconscious irony. "What is the matter with her?" asked Felion, beckoning the lad inside. The lad came and stood in the doorway, gazing round curiously, while the old man sat down and looked at him, moved, he knew not why. The bright steel of Felion's axe, standing in the corner, caught the lad's eye and held it. Felion saw, and said: "What are you thinking of?" The lad answered: "Of the axe. When I'm bigger I will cut down trees and build a house, a bridge, and a city. Aren't you coming quick to help my mother? She will die if you don't come." Felion did not answer, and from the trees without two women watched him anxiously. "Why should I come?" asked Felion curiously. "Because she's sick, and she's my mother." "Why should I do it because she's your mother?" "I don't know," the lad answered, and his brow knitted in the attempt to think it out, "but I like you." He came and stood beside the old man and looked into his face with a pleasant confidence. "If your mother was sick, and I could heal her, I would--I know I would--I wouldn't be afraid to go down into the village." Here were rebuke, love, and impeachment, all in one, and the old man half started from his seat. "Did you think I was afraid?" he asked of the boy, as simply as might a child of a child, so near are children and wise men in their thoughts. "I knew if you didn't it'd be because you were angry or were afraid, and you didn't look angry." "How does one look when one is angry?" "Like my father." "And how does your father look?" "My father's dead." "Did he die of the plague?" asked Felion, laying his hand on the lad's shoulder. "No," said the lad quickly, and shut his lips tight. "Won't you tell me?" asked Felion, with a strange inquisitiveness. "No. Mother'll tell you, but I won't." The lad's eyes filled with tears. "Poor boy--poor boy!" said Felion, and his hand tightened on the small shoulder. "Don't be sorry for me; be sorry for mother, please," said the boy, and he laid a hand on the old man's knee, and that touch went to a heart long closed against the little city below; and Felion rose and said: "I will go with you to your mother." Then he went into another room, and the boy came near the axe and ran his fingers along the bright steel, and fondled the handle, as does a hunter the tried weapon which has been his through many seasons. When the old man came back he said to the boy: "Why do you look at the axe?" "I don't know," was the answer; "maybe because my mother used to sing a song about the wood-cutters." Without a word, and thinking much, he stepped out into the path leading to the little city, the lad holding one hand. Years afterwards men spoke with a sort of awe or reverence of seeing the beautiful stranger lad leading old Felion into the plague- stricken place, and how, as they passed, women threw themselves at Felion's feet, begging him to save their loved ones. And a drunkard cast his arm round the old man's shoulder and sputtered foolish pleadings in his ear; but Felion only waved them back gently, and said: "By-and-by, by-and-by--God help us all!" Now a fevered hand snatched at him from a doorway, moanings came from everywhere, and more than once he almost stumbled over a dead body; others he saw being carried away to the graveyard for hasty burial. Few were the mourners that followed, and the faces of those who watched the processions go by were set and drawn. The sunlight and the green trees seemed an insult to the dead. They passed into the house where the sick woman lay, and some met him at the door with faces of joy and meaning; for now they knew the woman and would have spoken to him of her; but he waved them off, and put his fingers upon his lips and went where a fire burned in a kitchen, and brewed his medicines. And the child entered the room where his mother lay, and presently he came to the kitchen and said: "She is asleep--my mother." The old man looked down on him a moment steadily, and a look of bewilderment came into his face. But he turned away again to the simmering pots. The boy went to the window and, leaning upon the sill, began to hum softly a sort of chant, while he watched a lizard running hither and thither in the sun. As he hummed, the old man listened, and presently, with his medicines in his hands and a half- startled look, he came over to the lad. "What are you humming?" he asked. The lad answered: "A song of the wood-cutters." "Sing it again," said Felion. The lad began to sing: "Here shall I build me my cedar house, A city with gates, a road to the sea-- For I am the lord of the Earth! Hew! Hew!" The old man stopped him. "What is your name?" "My name is Felion," answered the lad; and he put his face close to the jug that held the steaming tinctures: but the old man caught the little chin in his huge hand and bent back the head, looking long into the lad's eyes. At last he caught little Felion's hand and hurried into the other room, where the woman lay in a stupor. The old man came quickly to her and looked into her face. Seeing, he gave a broken cry and said: "Carille, my daughter! Carille!" He drew her to his breast, and as he did so he groaned aloud, for he knew that inevitable Death was waiting for her at the door. He straightened himself up, clasped the child to his breast, and said: "I, too, am Felion, my little son." And then he set about to defeat that dark, hovering Figure at the door. For three long hours he sat beside her, giving her little by little his potent medicines; and now and again he stopped his mouth with his hand, lest he should cry out; and his eyes never wavered from her face, not even to the boy, who lay asleep in the corner. At last his look relaxed its vigilance, for a dewy look passed over the woman's face, and she opened her eyes and saw him, and gave a little cry of "Father!" and was straightway lost in his arms. "I have come home to die," she said. "No, no, to live!" he answered firmly. "Why did you not send me word all these long years?" "My husband was in shame, in prison, and I in sorrow," she answered sadly. "I could not." "He did evil? He is--" he paused. "He is dead," she said. "It is better so." Her eyes wandered round the room restlessly, and then fixed upon the sleeping child, and a smile passed over her face. She pointed to the lad. The old man nodded. "He brought me here," he said gently. Then he got to his feet. "You must sleep now," he added, and he gave her a cordial. "I must go forth and save the sick." "Is it a plague?" she asked. He nodded. "They said you would not come to save them," she continued reproachfully. "You came to me because I was your Carille, only for that?" "No, no," he answered; "I knew not who you were. I came to save a mother to her child." "Thank God!" she said. With a happy smile she hid her face in the pillow. At last, leaving her and the child asleep, old Felion went forth into the little city, and the people flocked to him, and for many days he came and went ceaselessly. And once more he saved the city, and the people blessed him: and the years go on. THE FORGE IN THE VALLEY He lay where he could see her working at the forge. As she worked she sang: "When God was making the world, (Swift is the wind and white is the fire) The feet of his people danced the stars; There was laughter and swinging bells, And clanging iron and breaking breath, The hammers of heaven making the hills, The vales on the anvil of God. (Wild is the fire and low is the wind.)" His eyes were shining, and his face had a pale radiance from the reflected light, though he lay in the shadow where he could watch her, while she could not see him. Now her hand was upon the bellows, and the low, white fire seethed hungrily up, and set its teeth upon the iron she held; now it turned the iron about upon the anvil, and the sparks showered about her very softly and strangely. There was a cheerful gravity in her motions, a high, fine look in her face. They two lived alone in the solitudes of Megalon Valley. It was night now, and the pleasant gloom of the valley was not broken by any sound save the hum of the stream near by, and the song, and the ringing anvil. But into the workshop came the moist, fragrant smell of the acacia and the maple, and a long brown lizard stretched its neck sleepily across the threshold of the door opening into the valley. The song went on: "When God had finished the world (Bright was the fire and sweet was the wind) Up from the valleys came song, To answer the morning stars, And the hand of man on the anvil rang; His breath was big in his breast, his life Beat strong on the walls of the world. (Glad is the wind and tall is the fire.)" He put his hands to his eyes, and took them away again, as though to make sure that the song was not a dream. Wonder grew upon his thin, bearded face, he ran his fingers through his thick hair in a dazed way. Then he lay and looked, and a rich warm flush crept over his cheek, and stayed there. There was a great gap in his memory. The evening wore on. Once or twice the woman turned towards the room where the man lay, and listened--she could not see his face from where she stood. At such times he lay still, though his heart beat quickly, like that of an expectant child. His lips opened to speak, but still they remained silent. As yet he was like a returned traveller who does not quickly recognise old familiar things, and who is struggling with vague suggestions and forgotten events. As time went on, the woman turned towards the doorway oftener, and shifted her position so that she faced it, and the sparks, flying up, lighted her face with a wonderful irregular brightness. "Samantha," he said at last, and his voice sounded so strange to him that the word quivered timidly towards her. She paused upon a stroke, and some new note in his voice sent so sudden a thrill to her heart that she caught her breath with a painful kind of joy. The hammer dropped upon the anvil, and, in a moment, she stood in the doorway of his room. "Francis, Francis," she responded in a low whisper. He started up from his couch of skins. "Samantha, my wife!" he cried, in a strong proud voice. She dropped beside him and caught his head, like a mother, to her shoulder, and set her warm lips on his forehead and hair with a kind of hunger; and then he drew her face down and kissed her on the lips. Tears hung at her eyes, and presently dropped on her cheeks, a sob shook her, and then she was still, her hands grasping his shoulders. "Have I been ill?" he asked. "You have been very ill, Francis." "Has it been long?" Her fingers passed tenderly through his grizzled hair. "Too long, too long, my husband," she replied. "Is it summer now?" "Yes, Francis, it is summer." "Was it in the spring, Samantha?--Yes, I think it was in the spring," he added, musing. "It was in a spring." "There was snow still on the mountain-top, the river was running high, and wild fowl were gathered on the island in the lake--yes, I remember, I think." "And the men were working at the mine," she whispered, her voice shaking a little, and her eyes eagerly questioning his face. "Ah, the mine--it was the mine, Samantha!" he said abruptly, his eyes flashing up. "I was working at the forge to make a great bolt for the machinery, and some one forgot and set the engine in motion. I ran out; but it was too late . . . and then . . ." "And then you tried to save them, Francis, and you were hurt." "What month is this, my wife?" "It is December." "And that was in October?" "Yes, in October." "I have been ill since? What happened?" "Many were killed, Francis, and you and I came away." "Where are we now? I do not know the place." "This is Megalon Valley. You and I live alone here." "Why did you bring me here?" "I did not bring you, Francis; you wished me to come. One day you said to me: 'There is a place in Megalon Valley where, long ago, an old man lived, who had become a stranger among men--a place where the blackbird stays, and the wolf-dog troops and hides, and the damson grows as thick as blossoms on the acacia. We will go there.' And I came with you." "I do not remember. What of the mine? Was I a coward and left the mine? There was no one understood the ways of the wheel, and rod, and steam, save me. "The mine is closed, Francis," she answered gently. "You were no coward, but--but you had strange fancies. "When did the mine close?" he said, with a kind of sorrow; "I put hard work and good years into it." At that moment, when her face drew close to his, the vision of her as she stood at the anvil came to him with a new impression, and he said again in a half-frightened way: "When did it close, Samantha?" "The mine was closed--twelve years ago, my own dear husband." He got to his feet and clasped her to his breast. A strength came to him which had eluded him twelve years, and she, womanlike, delighted in that strength, and, with a great gladness, changed eyes and hands with him; keeping her soul still her own, brooding and lofty, as is the soul of every true woman, though, like this one, she labours at a forge, and in a far, untenanted country is faithful friend, ceaseless apothecary to a comrade with a disordered mind; living on savage meats, clothing herself and the other in skins, and, with a divine persistence, keeping a cheerful heart, certain that the intelligence which was frightened from its home would come back one day. It should be hers to watch for the great moment, and give the wanderer loving welcome, lest it should hurry madly away again into the desert, never to return. She had her reward, yet she wept. She had carried herself before him with the bright ways of an unvexed girl these twelve years past; she had earned the salt of her tears. He was dazed still, but, the doublet of his mind no longer unbraced, he understood what she had been to him, and how she had tended him in absolute loneliness, her companions the wild things of the valley--these and God. He drew her into the workshop, and put his hand upon the bellows and churned them, so that the fire roared joyously up, and the place was red with the light. In this light he turned her to him and looked at her. The look was as that of one who had come back from the dead--that naked, profound, unconditional gaze which is as deep and honest as the primeval sense. His eyes fell upon her rich, firm, stately body; it lingered for a moment on the brown fulness of her hair; then her look was gathered to his, and they fell into each other's arms. For long they sat in the solemn silence of their joy, and so awed were they by the thing which had come to them that they felt no surprise when a wolf-dog crawled over the lizard on the threshold, and stole along the wall with shining, bloody eyes to an inner room, and stayed there munching meat to surfeit and drowsiness, and at last crept out and lay beside the forge in a thick sleep. These two had lived so much with the untamed things of nature, the bellows and the fire had been so long there, and the clang of the anvil was so familiar, that there was a kinship among them, man and beast, with the woman as ruler. "Tell me, Samantha," he said at last, "what has happened during these twelve years, all from the first. Keep nothing back. I am strong now." He looked around the workshop, then, suddenly, at her, with a strange pain, and they both turned their heads away for an instant, for the same thought was on them. Then, presently, she spoke, and answered his shy, sorrowful thought before all else. "The child is gone," she softly said. He sat still, but a sob was in his throat. He looked at her with a kind of fear. He wondered if his madness had cost the life of the child. She understood. "Did I ever see the child?" he asked. "Oh yes, I sometimes thought that through the babe you would be yourself again. When you were near her you never ceased to look at her and fondle her, as I thought very timidly; and you would start sometimes and gaze at me with the old wise look hovering at your eyes. But the look did not stay. The child was fond of you, but she faded and pined, and one day as you nursed her you came to me and said: 'See, beloved, the little one will not wake. She pulled at my beard and said, "Daddy," and fell asleep.' And I took her from your arms. . . . There is a chestnut tree near the door of our cottage at the mine. One night you and I buried her there; but you do not remember her, do you?" "My child, my child!" he said, looking out into the night; and he lifted up his arms and looked at them. "I held her here, and still I never held her; I fondled her, and yet I never fondled her; I buried her, yet-- to me--she never was born." "You have been far away, Francis; you have come back home. I waited, and prayed, and worked with you, and was patient. . . . It is very strange," she continued. "In all these twelve years you cannot remember our past, though you remembered about this place--the one thing, as if God had made it so--and now you cannot remember those twelve years." "Tell me now of the twelve years," he urged. "It was the same from day to day. When we came from the mountain, we brought with us the implements of the forge upon a horse. Now and again as we travelled we cut our way through the heavy woods. You were changed for the better then; a dreadful trouble seemed to have gone from your face. There was a strong kind of peace in the valley, and there were so many birds and animals, and the smell of the trees was so fine, that we were not lonely, neither you nor I." She paused, thinking, her eyes looking out to where the Evening Star was sailing slowly out of the wooded horizon, his look on her. In the pause the wolf-dog raised its big, sleepy eyes at them, then plunged its head into its paws, its wildness undisturbed by their presence. Presently the wife continued: "At last we reached here, and here we have lived, where no human being, save one, has ever been. We put up the forge, and in a little hill not far away we found coal for it. The days went on. It was always summer, though there came at times a sharp frost, and covered the ground with a coverlet of white. But the birds were always with us, and the beasts were our friends. I learned to love even the shrill cry of the reed hens, and the soft tap-tap of the wood-pecker is the sweetest music to my ear after the song of the anvil. How often have you and I stood here at the anvil, the fire heating the iron, and our hammers falling constantly! Oh, Francis, I knew that only here with God and His dumb creatures, and His wonderful healing world, all sun, and wind, and flowers, and blossoming trees, working as you used to work, as the first of men worked, would the sane wandering soul return to you. The thought was in you, too, for you led me here, and have been patient also in the awful exile of your mind." "I have been as a child, and not as a man," he said gravely. "Shall I ever again be a man, as I once was, Samantha?" "You cannot see yourself," she said. "A week ago you fell ill, and since then you have been pale and worn; but your body has been, and is, that of a great strong man. In the morning I will take you to a spring in the hills, and you shall see yourself, beloved." He stood up, stretched himself, went to the door, and looked out into the valley flooded with moonlight. He drew in a great draught of air, and said: "The world--the great, wonderful world, where men live, and love work, and do strong things!"--he paused, and turned with a trouble in his face. "My wife," he said, "you have lived with a dead man twelve years, and I have lost twelve years in the world. I had a great thought once-- an invention--but now--" he hung his head bitterly. She came to him, and her hands slid up along his breast to his shoulders, and rested there; and she said, with a glad smile: "Francis, you have lost nothing. The thing--the invention--was all but finished when you fell ill a week ago. We have worked at it for these twelve years; through it, I think, you have been brought back to me. Come, there is a little work yet to, do upon it;" and she drew him to where a machine of iron lay in the corner. With a great cry he fell upon his knees beside it, and fondled it. Then, presently, he rose, and caught his wife to his breast. Together, a moment later, they stood beside the anvil. The wolf-dog fled out into the night from the shower of sparks, as, in the red light, the two sang to the clanging of the hammers: "When God was making the world (Swift is the wind and white is the fire)" ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Counsel of the overwise to go jolting through the soul Love knows not distance; it hath no continent When a child is born the mother also is born again THE RIGHT OF WAY By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS Volume 1. I. THE WAY TO THE VERDICT II. WHAT CAME OF THE TRIAL III. AFTER FIVE YEARS IV. CHARLEY MAKES A DISCOVERY V. THE WOMAN IN HELIOTROPE VI. THE WIND AND THE SHORN LAMB VII. "PEACE, PEACE, AND THERE IS NO PEACE!" VIII. THE COST OF THE ORNAMENT Volume 2. IX. OLD DEBTS FOR NEW X. THE WAY IN AND THE WAY OUT XI. THE RAISING OF THE CURTAIN XII. THE COMING OF ROSALIE XIII. HOW CHARLEY WENT ADVENTURING, AND WHAT HE FOUND XIV. ROSALIE, CHARLEY, AND THE MAN THE WIDOW PLOMONDON JILTED XV. THE MARK IN THE PAPER XVI. MADAME DAUPHIN HAS A MISSION XVII. THE TAILOR MAKES A MIDNIGHT FORAY XVIII. THE STEALING OF THE CROSS Volume 3. XIX. THE SIGN FROM HEAVEN XX. THE RETURN OF THE TAILOR XXI. THE CURE HAS AN INSPIRATION XXII. THE WOMAN WHO SAW XXIII. THE WOMAN WHO DID NOT TELL XXIV. THE SEIGNEUR TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME XXV. THE COLONEL TELLS HIS STORY XXVI. A SONG, A BOTTLE, AND A GHOST XXVII. OUT ON THE OLD TRAIL XXVIII. THE SEIGNEUR GIVES A WARNING Volume 4. XXIX. THE WILD RIDE XXX. ROSALIE WARNS CHARLEY XXXI. CHARLEY STANDS AT BAY XXXII. JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY XXXIII. THE EDGE OF LIFE XXXIV. IN AMBUSH XXXV. THE COMING OF MAXIMILIAN COUR AND ANOTHER XXXVI. BARRIERS SWEPT AWAY XXXVII. THE CHALLENGE OF PAULETTE DUBOIS XXXVIII. THE CURE AND THE SEIGNEUR VISIT THE TAILOR XXXIX. THE SCARLET WOMAN XL. AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING Volume 5. XLI. IT WAS MICHAELMAS DAY XLII. A TRIAL AND A VERDICT XLIII. JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY XLIV. "WHO WAS KATHLEEN?" XLV. SIX MONTHS GO BY XLVI. THE FORGOTTEN MAN XLVII. ONE WAS TAKEN AND THE OTHER LEFT XLVIII. "WHERE THE TREE OF LIFE IS BLOOMING--" XLIX. THE OPEN GATE Volume 6. L. THE PASSION PLAY AT CHAUDIERE LI. FACE TO FACE LII. THE COMING OF BILLY LIII. THE SEIGNEUR AND THE CURE HAVE A SUSPICION LIV. M. ROSSIGNOL SLIPS THE LEASH LV. ROSALIE PLAYS A PART LVI. MRS. FLYNN SPEAKS LVII. A BURNING FIERY FURNACE LVIII. WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL LIX. IN WHICH CHARLEY MEETS A STRANGER LX. THE HAND AT THE DOOR LXI. THE CURE SPEAKS EPILOGUE INTRODUCTION In a book called 'The House of Harper', published in this year, 1912, there are two letters of mine, concerning 'The Right of Way', written to Henry M. Alden, editor of Harper's Magazine. To my mind those letters should never have been published. They were purely personal. They were intended for one man's eyes only, and he was not merely an editor but a beloved and admired personal friend. Only to him and to W. E. Henley, as editors, could I ever have emptied out my heart and brain; and, as may be seen by these two letters, one written from London and the other from a place near Southampton, I uncovered all my feelings, my hopes and my ambitions concerning The Right of Way. Had I been asked permission to publish them I should not have granted it. I may wear my heart upon my sleeve for my friend, but not for the universe. The most scathing thing ever said in literature was said by Robert Buchanan on Dante Gabriel Rossetti's verses--"He has wheeled his nuptial bed into the street." Looking at these letters I have a great shrinking, for they were meant only for the eyes of an aged man for whom I cared enough to let him see behind the curtain. But since they have been printed, and without a "by your leave," I will use one or two passages in them to show in what mood, under what pressure of impulse, under what mental and, maybe, spiritual hypnotism it was written. I first planned it as a story of twenty-five thousand words, even as 'Valmond' was planned as a story of five thousand words, and 'A Ladder of Swords' as a story of twenty thousand words; but I had not written three chapters before I saw what the destiny of the tale was to be. I had gone to Quebec to start the thing in the atmosphere where Charley Steele belonged, and there it was borne in upon me that it must be a three- decker novel, not a novelette. I telegraphed to Harper & Brothers to ask them whether it would suit them just as well if I made it into a long novel. They telegraphed their assent at once; so I went on. At that time Mr. F. N. Doubleday was a sort of director of Harper's firm. To him I had told the tale in a railway train, and he had carried me off at once to Henry M. Alden, to whom I also told it, with the result that Harper's Magazine was wide open to it, and there in Quebec, soon after my interview with Mr. Alden and Mr. Doubleday, the book was begun. The first of the letters published in The House of Harper, however, was apparently written immediately after my return to London when the novel was well on its way. Evidently the first paragraph of the letter was an apology for having suddenly announced the development of the book from a long short story to a long novel; for I used these words: "Yet if you really take an interest in the working of the human mind in its relation to the vicissitudes of life, you will appreciate what I am going to tell you, and will recognise that there is only stability in evolution which the vulgar call chance. . . . Now, sir, perpend. Charley Steele is going to be a novel of one hundred thousand words or one hundred and twenty thousand--a real bang-up heartful of a novel." Then there follows the confidence of a friend to a friend. As I look at the words I am not sorry that I wrote them. They were a part of me. They were the inveterate truth, but I would not willingly have uncovered my inner self to any except the man to whom the words were written. But here is what I wrote: "I am a bit of a fool over this book. It catches me at every tender corner of my nature. It has aroused all the old ardent dreams of youth and springtime puissance. I cannot lay it down, and I cannot shorten it, for story, character, soul and reflection, imagination, observation are dragging me along after them. . . . This novel will make me or break me--prove me human and an artist, or an affected literary bore. If you want it you must take the risk. But, my dear Alden, you will be investing in a man's heart--which may be a fortune or a folly. Why, I ought to have seen--and far back in my brain I did see--that the character of Charley Steele was a type, an idiosyncrasy of modern life, a resultant of forces all round us, and that he would demand space in which to live and tell his story to the world. . . . And behold with what joy I follow him, not only lovingly but sternly and severely, noting him down as he really is, condoning naught, forgiving naught, but above all else, understanding him--his wilful mystification of the world, his shameless disdain of it, but the old law of interrogation, of sad yet eager inquiry and wonder and 'non possumus' with him to the end." This letter was evidently written in December, 1899, and the other went to Mr. Alden on the 7th August, 1900; therefore, eight or nine months later. The work had gone well. Week after week, month after month it had unfolded itself with an almost unpardonable ease. Evidently, the very ease with which the book was written troubled me, because I find that in this letter of the 7th August, 1900, to Mr. Alden, I used these words: "A kind of terror has seized me, and instead of sending a dozen more chapters to you as I proposed to do, I am setting to to break this love story anew under the stones of my most exacting criticism and troubled regard. I go to bury myself at a solitary little seaside place" (it was Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire), "there to live alone with Rosalie and Charley, and if I do not know them hereafter, never ask me to write for 'Harper's' again. . . . This book has been written out of something vital in me--I do not mean the religious part of it, I mean the humanity that becomes one's own and part of one's self, by observation, experience, and understanding got from dead years." Anyhow that shows the spirit in which the book was written, and there must have been something in it that rang true, because not only did it have an enormous sale and therefore a multitude of readers, but I received hundreds of letters from people who in one way or another were deeply interested in the story. The majority of them were inquisitive letters. A great many of them said that the writer had shared in controversy as to what the relations of Charley and Rosalie were, and asked me to set for ever queries and controversies at rest by declaring either that the relations of these two were what, in the way of life's stern conventions, they ought not to be, or that Rosalie passed unscathed through the fire. I had foreseen all this, though I could not have foreseen the passionately intense interest which my readers would take in the life-story of these unhappy yet happy people. I had, however, only one reply. It was that all I had meant to say concerning Charley and Rosalie had been said in the book, to the last word. All I had meant not to say would not be said after the book was written. I asked them to take exactly the same view of Charley and Rosalie as they would in real life regarding two human beings with whom they were acquainted, and concerning whom, to their minds, there was sufficient evidence, or not sufficient evidence, to come to a conclusion as to what their relations were. I added that, as in real life we used our judgment upon such things with a reasonable amount of accuracy, I asked them to apply that judgment to Charley Steele and Rosalie Evanturel. They and their story were there for eyes to see and read, and when I had ended my manuscript in the year 1900 I had said the last word I ever meant to say as to their history. The controversy therefore continues, for the book still makes its appeal to an ever increasing congregation of new readers. But another kind of letter came to me--the letter of some man who had just such a struggle as Charley Steele, or whose father or brother or friend had had such a struggle. Letters came from clergymen who had preached concerning the book; from men who told me in brief their own life problems and tragedies. These letters I prize; most of them had the real thing in them, the human truth. That the book drew wide attention to the Dominion of Canada, particularly to French Canada, and crystallised something of the life of that dear Province, was a deep pleasure to me; and I was glad that I had been able to culminate my efforts to portray the life of the French-Canadian as I saw it, by a book which arrested the attention of so comprehensive a public. I have seen many statements as to the original of Charley Steele, but I have never seen a story which was true. Many people have told me that they had seen the original of Charley Steele in an American lawyer. They knew he was the original, because he himself had said so. The gentleman was mistaken; I have never seen him. As with the purple cow, I never hope to see him. Whoever he is or whatever he is, the original Charley was an abler and a more striking man. I knew him as a boy, and he died while I was yet a boy, taking with him, save in the memory of a few, a rare and wonderful, if not wholly lovable personality. For over twenty years I had carried him in my mind, wondering whether, and when, I should-make use of him. Again and again I was tempted, but was never convinced that his time had come; yet through all the years he was gaining strength, securing possession of my mind, and gathering to him, magnet-like, the thousand observations which my experience sent in his direction. In my mind his life-story ended with his death at the Cote Dorion. For years and years I saw his ending there. Yet it all seemed to me so futile, despite the wonder of his personality, that I could make nothing of him, and though always fascinated by his character I was held back from exploiting it, because of the hopelessness of it all. It led nowhere. It was the 'quid refert' of the philosopher, and I could not bring myself to get any further than an interrogation mark at the end of a life which was all scepticism, mind and matter, and nothing more. There came a day, however, when that all ended, when the doors were flung wide to a new conception of the man, and of what he might have become. I was going to America, and I paid an angry and reluctant visit to my London tailor thirty-six hours before I was to start. A suit of clothes had been sent home which, after an effective trying-on, was a monstrosity. I went straight to my tailor, put on the clothes and bade him look at them. He was a great tailor-he saw exactly what I saw, and what I saw was bad; and when a tailor will do that, you may be quite sure he is a good and a great man. He said the clothes were as bad as they could be, but he added: "You shall have them before you sail, and they shall be exactly as you want them. I'll have the foreman down." He rang a bell. Presently the door swung open and in stepped a man with an eyeglass in his eye. There, with a look at once reflective and penetrating, with a figure at once slovenly and alert, was a caricature of Charley Steele as I had known him, and of all his characteristics. There was such a resemblance as an ugly child in a family may have to his handsome brother. It was Charley Steele with a twist--gone to seed. Looking at him in blank amazement, I burst out: "Good heavens, so you didn't die, Charley Steele! You became a tailor!" All at once the whole new landscape of my story as it eventually became, spread out before me. I was justified in waiting all the years. My discontent with the futile end of the tale as I originally knew it and saw it was justified. Charley Steele, brilliant, enigmatic and epigrammatic, did not die at the Cote Dorion, but lived in that far valley by Dalgrothe Mountain, and became a tailor! So far as I am concerned he became much more. He was the beginning of a new epoch in my literary life. I had got into subtler methods, reached more intimate understandings, had come to a place where analysis of character had shaken itself free--but certainly not quite free--from a natural yet rather dangerous eloquence. As a play The Right of Way, skilfully and sympathetically dramatised by Mr. Eugene Presbery, has had a career extending over several years, and still continues to make its appearance. NOTE It should not be assumed that the "Chaudiere" of this story is the real Chaudiere of Quebec province. The name is characteristic, and for this reason alone I have used it. I must also apologise to my readers for appearing to disregard a statement made in 'The Lane that Had no Turning', that that tale was the last I should write about French Canada. In explanation I would say that 'The Lane that Had no Turning' was written after the present book was finished. G. F. THE RIGHT OF WAY By Gilbert Parker Volume 1. I. THE WAY TO THE VERDICT II. WHAT CAME OF THE TRIAL III. AFTER FIVE YEARS IV. CHARLEY MAKES A DISCOVERY V. THE WOMAN IN HELIOTROPE VI. THE WIND AND THE SHORN LAMB VII. "PEACE, PEACE, AND THERE IS NO PEACE!" VIII. THE COST OF THE ORNAMENT "They had lived and loved, and walked and worked in their own way, and the world went by them. Between them and it a great gulf was fixed: and they met its every catastrophe with the Quid Refert? of the philosophers." "I want to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who lived before the god of love was born." "There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification." CHAPTER I THE WAY TO THE VERDICT "Not guilty, your Honour!" A hundred atmospheres had seemed pressing down on the fretted people in the crowded court-room. As the discordant treble of the huge foreman of the jury squeaked over the mass of gaping humanity, which had twitched at skirts, drawn purposeless hands across prickling faces, and kept nervous legs at a gallop, the smothering weights of elastic air lifted suddenly, a great suspiration of relief swept through the place like a breeze, and in a far corner of the gallery a woman laughed outright. The judge looked up reprovingly at the gallery; the clerk of the court angrily called "Silence!" towards the offending corner, and seven or eight hundred eyes raced between three centres of interest--the judge, the prisoner, and the prisoner's counsel. Perhaps more people looked at the prisoner's counsel than at the prisoner, certainly far more than looked at the judge. Never was a verdict more unexpected. If a poll had been taken of the judgment of the population twenty-four hours before, a great majority would have been found believing that there was no escape for the prisoner, who was accused of murdering a wealthy timber merchant. The minority would have based their belief that the prisoner had a chance of escape, not on his possible innocence, not on insufficient evidence, but on a curious faith in the prisoner's lawyer. This minority would not have been composed of the friends of the lawyer alone, but of outside spectators, who, because Charley Steele had never lost a criminal case, attached to him a certain incapacity for bad luck; and of very young men, who looked upon him as the perfect pattern of the person good to see and hard to understand. During the first two days of the trial the case had gone wholly against the prisoner, who had given his name as Joseph Nadeau. Witnesses had heard him quarrelling with the murdered man, and the next day the body of the victim had been found by the roadside. The prisoner was a stranger in the lumber-camp where the deed was done, and while there had been morose and lived apart; no one knew him; and he refused to tell even his lawyer whence he came, or what his origin, or to bring witnesses from his home to speak for his character. One by one the points had been made against him--with no perceptible effect upon Charley Steele, who seemed the one cool, undisturbed person in the courtroom. Indifferent as he seemed, seldom speaking to the prisoner, often looking out of the windows to the cool green trees far over on the hill, absorbed and unbusinesslike, yet judge and jury came to see, before the second day was done, that he had let no essential thing pass, that the questions he asked had either a pregnant aptness, opened up new avenues of deliberation, or were touched with mystery--seemed to have a longer reach than the moment or the hour. Before the end of this second day, however, more attention was upon him than upon the prisoner, and nine-tenths of the people in the court-room could have told how many fine linen handkerchiefs he used during the afternoon, how many times he adjusted his monocle to look at the judge meditatively. Probably no man, for eight hours a day, ever exasperated and tried a judge, jury, and public, as did this man of twenty-nine years of age, who had been known at college as Beauty Steele, and who was still so spoken of familiarly; or was called as familiarly, Charley Steele, by people who never had attempted to be familiar with him. The second day of the trial had ended gloomily for the prisoner. The coil of evidence had drawn so close that extrication seemed impossible. That the evidence was circumstantial, that no sign of the crime was upon the prisoner, that he was found sleeping quietly in his bed when he was arrested, that he had not been seen to commit the deed, did not weigh in the minds of the general public. The man's guilt was freely believed; not even the few who clung to the opinion that Charley Steele would yet get him off thought that he was innocent. There seemed no flaw in the evidence, once granted its circumstantiality. During the last two hours of the sitting the prisoner had looked at his counsel in despair, for he seemed perfunctorily conducting the case: was occupied in sketching upon the blotting-pad before him, looking out of the window, or turning his head occasionally towards a corner where sat a half-dozen well-dressed ladies, and more particularly towards one lady who watched him in a puzzled way--more than once with a look of disappointment. Only at the very close of the sitting did he appear to rouse himself. Then, for a brief ten minutes, he cross-examined a friend of the murdered merchant in a fashion which startled the court-room, for he suddenly brought out the fact that the dead man had once struck a woman in the face in the open street. This fact, sharply stated by the prisoner's counsel, with no explanation and no comment, seemed uselessly intrusive and malicious. His ironical smile merely irritated all concerned. The thin, clean-shaven face of the prisoner grew more pinched and downcast, and he turned almost pleadingly towards the judge. The judge pulled his long side-whiskers nervously, and looked over his glasses in severe annoyance, then hastily adjourned the sitting and left the bench, while the prisoner saw with dismay his lawyer leave the court- room with not even a glance towards him. On the morning of the third day Charley Steele's face, for the first time, wore an expression which, by a stretch of imagination, might be called anxious. He also took out his monocle frequently, rubbed it with his handkerchief, and screwed it in again, staring straight before him much of the time. But twice he spoke to the prisoner in a low voice, and was hurriedly answered in French as crude as his own was perfect. When he spoke, which was at rare intervals, his voice was without feeling, concise, insistent, unappealing. It was as though the business before him was wholly alien to him, as though he were held there against his will, but would go on with his task bitterly to the bitter end. The court adjourned for an hour at noon. During this time Charley refused to see any one, but sat alone in his office with a few biscuits and an ominous bottle before him, till the time came for him to go back to the court-house. Arrived there he entered by a side door, and was not seen until the court opened once more. For two hours and a half the crown attorney mercilessly made out his case against the prisoner. When he sat down, people glanced meaningly at each other, as though the last word had been said, then looked at the prisoner, as at one already condemned. Yet Charley Steele was to reply. He was not now the same man that had conducted the case during the past two days and a half. Some great change had passed over him. There was no longer abstraction, indifference, or apparent boredom, or disdain, or distant stare. He was human, intimate and eager, yet concentrated and impelling: he was quietly, unnoticeably drunk. He assured the prisoner with a glance of the eye, with a word scarce above a whisper, as he slowly rose to make his speech for the defence. His first words caused a new feeling in the courtroom. He was a new presence; the personality had a changed significance. At first the public, the jury, and the judge were curiously attracted, surprised into a fresh interest. The voice had an insinuating quality, but it also had a measured force, a subterranean insistence, a winning tactfulness. Withal, a logical simplicity governed his argument. The flaneur, the poseur--if such he was--no longer appeared. He came close to the jurymen, leaned his hands upon the back of a chair--as it were, shut out the public, even the judge, from his circle of interest--and talked in a conversational tone. An air of confidence passed from him to the amazed yet easily captivated jury; the distance between them, so gaping during the last two days, closed suddenly up. The tension of the past estrangement, relaxing all at once, surprised the jury into an almost eager friendliness, as on a long voyage a sensitive traveller finds in some exciting accident a natural introduction to an exclusive fellow- passenger, whom he discovers as human as he had thought him offensively distant. Charley began by congratulating the crown attorney on his statement of the case. He called it masterly; he said that in its presentations it was irrefutable; as a precis of evidence purely circumstantial it was-- useful and interesting. But, speech-making aside, and ability--and rhetoric--aside, and even personal conviction aside, the case should stand or fall by its total, not its comparative, soundness. Since the evidence was purely circumstantial, there must be no flaw in its cable of assumption, it must be logically inviolate within itself. Starting with assumption only, there must be no straying possibilities, no loose ends of certainty, no invading alternatives. Was this so in the case of the man before them? They were faced by a curious situation. So far as the trial was concerned, the prisoner himself was the only person who could tell them who he was, what was his past, and, if he committed the crime, what was--the motive of it: out of what spirit--of revenge, or hatred-- the dead man had been sent to his account. Probably in the whole history of crime there never was a more peculiar case. Even himself the prisoner's counsel was dealing with one whose life was hid from him previous to the day the murdered man was discovered by the roadside. The prisoner had not sought to prove an alibi; he had done no more than formally plead not guilty. There was no material for defence save that offered by the prosecution. He had undertaken the defence of the prisoner because it was his duty as a lawyer to see that the law justified itself; that it satisfied every demand of proof to the last atom of certainty; that it met the final possibility of doubt with evidence perfect and inviolate if circumstantial, and uncontradictory if eye-witness, if tell-tale incident, were to furnish basis of proof. Judge, jury, and public riveted their eyes upon Charley Steele. He had now drawn a little farther away from the jury-box; his eye took in the judge as well; once or twice he turned, as if appealingly and confidently, to the people in the room. It was terribly hot, the air was sickeningly close, every one seemed oppressed--every one save a lady sitting not a score of feet from where the counsel for the prisoner stood. This lady's face was not one that could flush easily; it belonged to a temperament as even as her person was symmetrically beautiful. As Charley talked, her eyes were fixed steadily, wonderingly upon him. There was a question in her gaze, which never in the course of the speech was quite absorbed by the admiration--the intense admiration--she was feeling for him. Once as he turned with a concentrated earnestness in her direction his eyes met hers. The message he flashed her was sub- conscious, for his mind never wavered an instant from the cause in hand, but it said to her: "When this is over, Kathleen, I will come to you." For another quarter of an hour he exposed the fallacy of purely circumstantial evidence; he raised in the minds of his hearers the painful responsibility of the law, the awful tyranny of miscarriage of justice; he condemned prejudice against a prisoner because that prisoner demanded that the law should prove him guilty instead of his proving himself innocent. If a man chose to stand to that, to sternly assume this perilous position, the law had no right to take advantage of it. He turned towards the prisoner and traced his possible history: as the sensitive, intelligent son of godly Catholic parents from some remote parish in French Canada. He drew an imaginary picture of the home from which he might have come, and of the parents and brothers and sisters who would have lived weeks of torture knowing that their son and brother was being tried for his life. It might at first glance seem quixotic, eccentric, but was it unnatural that the prisoner should choose silence as to his origin and home, rather than have his family and friends face the undoubted peril lying before him? Besides, though his past life might have been wholly blameless, it would not be evidence in his favour. It might, indeed, if it had not been blameless, provide some element of unjust suspicion against him, furnish some fancied motive. The prisoner had chosen his path, and events had so far justified him. It must be clear to the minds of judge and jury that there were fatally weak places in the circumstantial evidence offered for the conviction of this man. There was the fact that no sign of the crime, no drop of blood, no weapon, was found about him or near him, and that he was peacefully sleeping at the moment the constable arrested him. There was also the fact that no motive for the crime had been shown. It was not enough that he and the dead man had been heard quarrelling. Was there any certainty that it was a quarrel, since no word or sentence of the conversation had been brought into court? Men with quick tempers might quarrel over trivial things, but exasperation did not always end in bodily injury and the taking of life; imprecations were not so uncommon that they could be taken as evidence of wilful murder. The prisoner refused to say what that troubled conversation was about, but who could question his right to take the risk of his silence being misunderstood? The judge was alternately taking notes and looking fixedly at the prisoner; the jury were in various attitudes of strained attention; the public sat open mouthed; and up in the gallery a woman with white face and clinched hands listened moveless and staring. Charley Steele was holding captive the emotions and the judgments of his hearers. All antipathy had gone; there was a strange eager intimacy between the jurymen and himself. People no longer looked with distant dislike at the prisoner, but began to see innocence in his grim silence, disdain only in his surly defiance. But Charley Steele had preserved his great stroke for the psychological moment. He suddenly launched upon them the fact, brought out in evidence, that the dead man had struck a woman in the face a year ago; also that he had kept a factory girl in affluence for two years. Here was motive for murder--if motive were to govern them--far greater than might be suggested by excited conversation which listeners who could not hear a word construed into a quarrel--listeners who bore the prisoner at the bar ill-will because he shunned them while in the lumber-camp. If the prisoner was to be hanged for motive untraceable, why should not these two women be hanged for motive traceable! Here was his chance. He appeared to impeach subtly every intelligence in the room for having had any preconviction about the prisoner's guilt. He compelled the jury to feel that they, with him, had made the discovery of the unsound character of the evidence. The man might be guilty, but their personal guilt, the guilt of the law, would be far greater if they condemned the man on violable evidence. With a last simple appeal, his hands resting on the railing before the seat where the jury sat, his voice low and conversational again, his eyes running down the line of faces of the men who had his client's life in their hands, he said: "It is not a life only that is at stake, it is not revenge for a life snatched from the busy world by a brutal hand that we should heed to-day, but the awful responsibility of that thing we call the State, which, having the power of life and death without gainsay or hindrance, should prove to the last inch of necessity its right to take a human life. And the right and the reason should bring conviction to every honest human mind. That is all I have to say." The crown attorney made a perfunctory reply. The judge's charge was brief, and, if anything, a little in favour of the prisoner--very little, a casuist's little; and the jury filed out of the room. They were gone but ten minutes. When they returned, the verdict was given: "Not guilty, your Honour!" Then it was that a woman laughed in the gallery. Then a whispering voice said across the railing which separated the public from the lawyers: "Charley! Charley!" Though Charley turned and looked at the lady who spoke, he made no response. A few minutes later, outside the court, as he walked quickly away, again inscrutable and debonair, the prisoner, Joseph Nadeau, touched him on the arm and said: "M'sieu', M'sieu', you have saved my life--I thank you, M'sieu'!" Charley Steele drew his arm away with disgust. "Get out of my sight! You're as guilty as hell!" he said. CHAPTER II WHAT CAME OF THE TRIAL "When this is over, Kathleen, I will come to you." So Charley Steele's eyes had said to a lady in the court room on that last day of the great trial. The lady had left the court-room dazed and exalted. She, with hundreds of others, had had a revelation of Charley Steele; had had also the great emotional experience of seeing a crowd make the 'volte face' with their convictions; looking at a prisoner one moment with eyes of loathing and anticipating his gruesome end, the next moment seeing him as the possible martyr to the machinery of the law. She whose heart was used to beat so evenly had felt it leap and swell with excitement, awaiting the moment when the jury filed back into the court-room. Then it stood still, as a wave might hang for an instant at its crest ere it swept down to beat upon the shore. With her as with most present, the deepest feeling in the agitated suspense was not so much that the prisoner should go free, as that the prisoner's counsel should win his case. It was as if Charley Steele were on trial instead of the prisoner. He was the imminent figure; it was his fate that was in the balance--such was the antic irony of suggestion. And the truth was, that the fates of both prisoner and counsel had been weighed in the balance that sweltering August day. The prisoner was forgotten almost as soon as he had left the court-room a free man, but wherever men and women met in Montreal that day, one name was on the lips of all-Charley Steele! In his speech he had done two things: he had thrown down every barrier of reserve--or so it seemed-- and had become human and intimate. "I could not have believed it of him," was the remark on every lip. Of his ability there never had been a moment's doubt, but it had ever been an uncomfortable ability, it had tortured foes and made friends anxious. No one had ever seen him show feeling. If it was a mask, he had worn it with a curious consistency: it had been with him as a child, at school, at college, and he had brought it back again to the town where he was born. It had effectually prevented his being popular, but it had made him--with his foppishness and his originality--an object of perpetual interest. Few men had ventured to cross swords with him. He left his fellow-citizens very much alone. He was uniformly if distantly courteous, and he was respected in his own profession for his uncommon powers and for an utter indifference as to whether he had cases in court or not. Coming from the judge's chambers after the trial he went to his office, receiving as he passed congratulations more effusively offered than, as people presently found, his manner warranted. For he was again the formal, masked Charley Steele, looking calmly through the interrogative eye-glass. By the time he reached his office, greetings became more subdued. His prestige had increased immensely in a few short hours, but he had no more friends than before. Old relations were soon re-established. The town was proud of his ability as it had always been, irritated by his manner as it had always been, more prophetic of his future than it had ever been, and unconsciously grateful for the fact that he had given them a sensation which would outlast the summer. All these things concerned him little. Once the business of the court- room was over, a thought which had quietly lain in waiting behind the strenuous occupations of his brain leaped forward to exclude all others. As he entered his office he was thinking of that girl's face in the court-room, with its flush of added beauty which he and his speech had brought there. "What a perfect loveliness!" he said to himself as he bathed his face and hands, and prepared to go into the street again. "She needed just such a flush to make her supreme Kathleen!" He stood, looking out into the square, out into the green of the trees where the birds twittered. "Faultless--faultless in form and feature. She was so as a child, she is so as a woman." He lighted a cigarette, and blew away little clouds of smoke. "I will do it. I will marry her. She will have me: I saw it in her eye. Fairing doesn't matter. Her uncle will never consent to that, and she doesn't care enough for him. She cares, but she doesn't care enough. . . . I will do it." He turned towards a cupboard into which he had put a certain bottle before he went to the court-room two hours before. He put the key in the lock, then stopped. "No, I think not!" he said. "What I say to her shall not be said forensically. What a discovery I've made! I was dull, blank, all iron and ice; the judge, the jury, the public, even Kathleen, against me; and then that bottle in there--and I saw things like crystal! I had a glow in my brain, I had a tingle in my fingers; and I had success, and"--his face clouded--"He was as guilty as hell!" he added, almost bitterly, as he put the key of the cupboard into his pocket again. There was a knock at the door, and a youth of about nineteen entered. "Hello!" he said. "I say, sir, but that speech of yours struck us all where we couldn't say no. Even Kathleen got in a glow over it. Perhaps Captain Fairing didn't, for he's just left her in a huff, and she's looking--you remember those lines in the school-book: "'A red spot burned upon her cheek, Streamed her rich tresses down--'" He laughed gaily. "I've come to ask you up to tea," he added. "The Unclekins is there. When I told him that Kathleen had sent Fairing away with a flea in his ear, he nearly fell off his chair. He lent me twenty dollars on the spot. Are you coming our way?" he continued, suddenly trying to imitate Charley's manner. Charley nodded, and they left the office together and moved away under a long avenue of maples to where, in the shade of a high hill, was the house of the uncle of Kathleen Wantage, with whom she and her brother Billy lived. They walked in silence for some time, and at last Billy said, 'a propos' of nothing: "Fairing hasn't a red cent." "You have a perambulating mind, Billy," said Charley, and bowed to a young clergyman approaching them from the opposite direction. "What does that mean?" remarked Billy, and said "Hello!" to the young clergyman, and did not wait for Charley's answer. The Rev. John Brown was by no means a conventional parson. He was smoking a cigarette, and two dogs followed at his heels. He was certainly not a fogy. He had more than a little admiration for Charley Steele, but he found it difficult to preach when Charley was in the congregation. He was always aware of a subterranean and half-pitying criticism going on in the barrister's mind. John Brown knew that he could never match his intelligence against Charley's, in spite of the theological course at Durham, so he undertook to scotch the snake by kindness. He thought that he might be able to do this, because Charley, who was known to be frankly agnostical, came to his church more or less regularly. The Rev. John Brown was not indifferent to what men thought of him. He had a reputation for being "independent," but his chief independence consisted in dressing a little like a layman, posing as the athletic parson of the new school, consorting with ministers of the dissenting denominations when it was sufficiently effective, and being a "good fellow" with men easily bored by church and churchmen. He preached theatrical sermons to societies and benevolent associations. He wanted to be thought well of on all hands, and he was shrewd enough to know that if he trimmed between ritualism on one hand and evangelicism on the other, he was on a safe road. He might perforate old dogmatical prejudices with a good deal of freedom so long as he did not begin bringing "millinery" into the service of the church. He invested his own personal habits with the millinery. He looked a picturesque figure with his blond moustache, a little silk-lined brown cloak thrown carelessly over his shoulder, a gold-headed cane, and a brisk jacket half ecclesiastical, half military. He had interested Charley Steele, also he had amused him, and sometimes he had surprised him into a sort of admiration; for Brown had a temperament capable of little inspirations--such a literary inspiration as might come to a second-rate actor--and Charley never belittled any man's ability, but seized upon every sign of knowledge with the appreciation of the epicure. John Brown raised his hat to Charley, then held out a hand. "Masterly- masterly!" he said. "Permit my congratulations. It was the one thing to do. You couldn't have saved him by making him an object of pity, by appealing to our sympathies." "What do you take to be the secret, then?" asked Charley, with a look half abstracted, half quizzical. "Terror--sheer terror. You startled the conscience. You made defects in the circumstantial evidence, the imminent problems of our own salvation. You put us all on trial. We were under the lash of fear. If we parsons could only do that from the pulpit!" "We will discuss that on our shooting-trip next week. Duck-shooting gives plenty of time for theological asides. You are coming, eh?" John Brown scarcely noticed the sarcasm, he was so delighted at the suggestion that he was to be included in the annual duck-shoot of the Seven, as the little yearly party of Charley and his friends to Lake Aubergine was called. He had angled for this invitation for two years. "I must not keep you," Charley said, and dismissed him with a bow. "The sheep will stray, and the shepherd must use his crook." Brown smiled at the badinage, and went on his way rejoicing in the fact that he was to share the amusements of the Seven at Lake Aubergine--the Lake of the Mad Apple. To get hold of these seven men of repute and position, to be admitted into this good presence!--He had a pious exaltation, but whether it was because he might gather into the fold erratic and agnostical sheep like Charley Steele, or because it pleased his social ambitions, he had occasion to answer in the future. He gaily prepared to go to the Lake of the Mad Apple, where he was fated to eat of the tree of knowledge. Charley Steele and Billy Wantage walked on slowly to the house under the hill. "He's the right sort," said Billy. "He's a sport. I can stand that kind. Did you ever hear him sing? No? Well, he can sing a comic song fit to make you die. I can sing a bit myself, but to hear him sing 'The Man Who Couldn't Get Warm' is a show in itself. He can play the banjo too, and the guitar--but he's best on the banjo. It's worth a dollar to listen to his Epha-haam--that's Ephraim, you know--Ephahaam Come Home,' and 'I Found Y' in de Honeysuckle Paitch.'" "He preaches, too!" said Charley drily. They had reached the door of the house under the hill, and Billy had no time for further remark. He ran into the drawing-room, announcing Charley with the words: "I say, Kathleen, I've brought the man that made the judge sit up." Billy suddenly stopped, however, for there sat the judge who had tried the case, calmly munching a piece of toast. The judge did not allow himself the luxury of embarrassment, but bowed to Charley with a smile, which he presently turned on Kathleen, who came as near being disconcerted as she had ever been in her life. Kathleen had passed through a good deal to look so unflurried. She had been on trial in the court-room as well as the prisoner. Important things had been at stake with her. She and Charley Steele had known each other since they were children. To her, even in childhood, he had been a dominant figure. He had judicially and admiringly told her she was beautiful--when he was twelve and she five. But he had said it without any of those glances which usually accompanied the same sentiments in the mouths of other lads. He had never made boy-love to her, and she had thrilled at the praise of less splendid people than Charley Steele. He had always piqued her, he was so superior to the ordinary enchantments of youth, beauty, and fine linen. As he came and went, growing older and more characteristic, more and more "Beauty Steele," accompanied by legends of wild deeds and days at college, by tales of his fopperies and the fashions he had set, she herself had grown, as he had termed it, more "decorative." He had told her so, not in the least patronisingly, but as a simple fact in which no sentiment lurked. He thought her the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, but he had never regarded her save as a creation for the perfect pleasure of the eye; he thought her the concrete glory of sensuous purity, no more capable of sentiment than himself. He had said again and again, as he grew older and left college and began the business of life after two years in Europe, that sentiment would spoil her, would scatter the charm of her perfect beauty; it would vitalise her too much, and her nature would lose its proportion; she would be decentralised! She had been piqued at his indifference to sentiment; she could not easily be content without worship, though she felt none. This pique had grown until Captain Tom Fairing crossed her path. Fairing was the antithesis of Charley Steele. Handsome, poor, enthusiastic, and none too able, he was simple and straightforward, and might be depended on till the end of the chapter. And the end of it was, that in so far as she had ever felt real sentiment for anybody, she felt it for Tom Fairing of the Royal Fusileers. It was not love she felt in the old, in the big, in the noble sense, but it had behind it selection and instinct and natural gravitation. Fairing declared his love. She would give him no answer. For as soon as she was presented with the issue, the destiny, she began to look round her anxiously. The first person to fill the perspective was Charley Steele. As her mind dwelt on him, her uncle gave forth his judgment, that she should never have a penny if she married Tom Fairing. This only irritated her, it did not influence her. But there was Charley. He was a figure, was already noted in his profession because of a few masterly successes in criminal cases, and if he was not popular, he was distinguished, and the world would talk about him to the end. He was handsome, and he was well-to-do-he had a big unoccupied house on the hill among the maples. How many people had said, What a couple they would make-Charley Steele and Kathleen Wantage! So, as Fairing presented an issue to her, she concentrated her thoughts as she had never done before on the man whom the world set apart for her, in a way the world has. As she looked and looked, Charley began to look also. He had not been enamoured of the sordid things of the world; he had been merely curious. He thought vice was ugly; he had imagination and a sense of form. Kathleen was beautiful. Sentiment had, so he thought, never seriously disturbed her; he did not think it ever would. It had not affected him. He did not understand it. He had been born non-intime. He had had acquaintances, but never friendships, and never loves or love. But he had a fine sense of the fitting and the proportionate, and he worshipped beauty in so far as he could worship anything. The homage was cerebral, intellectual, temperamental, not of the heart. As he looked out upon the world half pityingly, half ironically, he was struck with wonder at the disproportion which was engendered by "having heart," as it was called. He did not find it necessary. Now that he had begun to think of marriage, who so suitable as Kathleen? He knew of Fairing's adoration, but he took it as a matter of course that she had nothing to give of the same sort in return. Her beauty was still serene and unimpaired. He would not spoil it by the tortures of emotion. He would try to make Kathleen's heart beat in harmony with his own; it should not thunder out of time. He had made up his mind that he would marry her. For Kathleen, with the great trial, the beginning of the end had come. Charley's power over her was subtle, finely sensuous, and, in deciding, there were no mere heart-impulses working for Charley. Instinct and impulse were working in another direction. She had not committed her mind to either man, though her heart, to a point, was committed to Fairing. On the day of the trial, however, she fell wholly under that influence which had swayed judge, jury, and public. To her the verdict of the jury was not in favour of the prisoner at the bar--she did not think of him. It was in favour of Charley Steele. And so, indifferent as to who heard, over the heads of the people in front of her, to the accused's counsel inside the railings, she had called, softly: "Charley! Charley!" Now, in the house under the hill, they were face to face, and the end was at hand: the end of something and the beginning of something. There was a few moments of casual conversation, in which Billy talked as much as anybody, and then Kathleen said: "What do you suppose was the man's motive for committing the murder?" Charley looked at Kathleen steadily, curiously, through his monocle. It was a singular compliment she paid him. Her remark took no heed of the verdict of the jury. He turned inquiringly towards the judge, who, though slightly shocked by the question, recovered himself quickly. "What do you think it was, sir?" Charley asked quietly. "A woman--and revenge, perhaps," answered the judge, with a matter-of- course air. A few moments afterwards the judge was carried off by Kathleen's uncle to see some rare old books; Billy, his work being done, vanished; and Kathleen and Charley were left alone. "You did not answer me in the court-room," Kathleen said. "I called to you." "I wanted to hear you say them here," he rejoined. "Say what?" she asked, a little puzzled by the tone of his voice. "Your congratulations," he answered. She held out a hand to him. "I offer them now. It was wonderful. You were inspired. I did not think you could ever let yourself go." He held her hand firmly. "I promise not to do it again," he said whimsically. "Why not?" "Have I not your congratulations?" His hand drew her slightly towards him; she rose to her feet. "That is no reason," she answered, confused, yet feeling that there was a double meaning in his words. "I could not allow you to be so vain," he said. "We must be companionable. Henceforth I shall congratulate myself--Kathleen." There was no mistaking now. "Oh, what is it you are going to say to me?" she asked, yet not disengaging her hand. "I said it all in the court-room," he rejoined; "and you heard." "You want me to marry you--Charley?" she asked frankly. "If you think there is no just impediment," he answered, with a smile. She drew her hand away, and for a moment there was a struggle in her mind--or heart. He knew of what she was thinking, and he did not consider it of serious consequence. Romance was a trivial thing, and women were prone to become absorbed in trivialities. When the woman had no brains, she might break her life upon a trifle. But Kathleen had an even mind, a serene temperament. Her nerves were daily cooled in a bath of nature's perfect health. She had never had an hour's illness in her life. "There is no just or unjust impediment, Kathleen," he added presently, and took her hand again. She looked him in the eyes clearly. "You really think so?" she asked. "I know so," he answered. "We shall be two perfect panels in one picture of life." CHAPTER III AFTER FIVE YEARS "You have forgotten me?" Charley Steele's glance was serenely non-committal as he answered drily: "I cannot remember doing so." The other man's eyelids drew down with a look of anger, then the humour of the impertinence worked upon him, and he gave a nervous little laugh and said: "I am John Brown." "Then I'm sure my memory is not at fault," remarked Charley, with an outstretched hand. "My dear Brown! Still preaching little sermons?" "Do I look it?" There was a curious glitter in John Brown's eyes. "I'm not preaching little sermons, and you know it well enough." He laughed, but it was a hard sort of mirth. "Perhaps you forgot to remember that, though," he sneeringly added. "It was the work of your hands." "That's why I should remember to forget it--I am the child of modesty." Charley touched the corners of his mouth with his tongue, as though his lips were dry, and his eyes wandered to a saloon a little farther down the street. "Modesty is your curse," rejoined Brown mockingly. "Once when you preached at me you said that beauty was my curse." Charley laughed a curt, distant little laugh which was no more the spontaneous humour lying for ever behind his thoughts than his eye-glass was the real sight of his eyes, though since childhood this laugh and his eye-glass were as natural to all expression of himself as John Brown's outward and showy frankness did not come from the real John Brown. John Brown looked him up and down quickly, then fastened his eyes on the ruddy cheeks of his old friend. "Do they call you Beauty now as they used to?" he asked, rather insolently. "No. They only say, 'There goes Charley Steele!'" The tongue again touched the corners of the mouth, and the eyes wandered to the doorway down the street, over which was written in French: "Jean Jolicoeur, Licensed to sell wine, beer, and other spirituous and fermented liquors." Just then an archdeacon of the cathedral passed them, bowed gravely to Charley, glanced at John Brown, turned colour slightly, and then with a cold stare passed on too quickly for dignity. "I'm thinking of Bunyan," said the aforetime friend of Charley Steele. "I'll paraphrase him and say: 'There, but for beauty and a monocle, walks John Brown.'" Under the bitter sarcasm of the man, who, five years ago, had gone down at last beneath his agnostic raillery, Charley's blue eye did not waver, not a nerve stirred in his face, as he replied: "Who knows!" "That was what you always said--who knows! That did for John Brown." Charley seemed not to hear the remark. "What are you doing now?" he asked, looking steadily at the face whence had gone all the warmth of manhood, all that courage of life which keeps men young. The lean parchment visage had the hunted look of the incorrigible failure, had written on it self-indulgence, cunning, and uncertainty. "Nothing much," John Brown replied. "What last?" "Floated an arsenic-mine on Lake Superior." "Failed?" "More or less. There are hopes yet. I've kept the wolf from the door." "What are you going to do?" "Don't know--nothing, perhaps; I've not the courage I had." "I'd have thought you might find arsenic a good thing," said Charley, holding out a silver cigarette-case, his eyes turning slowly from the startled, gloomy face of the man before him, to the cool darkness beyond the open doorway of that saloon on the other side of the street. John Brown shivered--there was something so cold-blooded in the suggestion that he might have found arsenic a good thing. The metallic glare of Charley's eye-glass seemed to give an added cruelty to the words. Charley's monocle was the token of what was behind his blue eye- one ceaseless interrogation. It was that everlasting questioning, the ceaseless who knows! which had in the end unsettled John Brown's mind, and driven him at last from the church and the possible gaiters of a dean into the rough business of life, where he had been a failure. Yet as Brown looked at Charley the old fascination came on him with a rush. His hand suddenly caught Charley's as he took a cigarette, and he said: "Perhaps I'll find arsenic a good thing yet." For reply Charley laid a hand on his arm-turned him towards the shade of the houses opposite. Without a word they crossed the street, entered the saloon, and passed to a little back room, Charley giving an unsympathetic stare to some men at the bar who seemed inclined to speak to him. As the two passed into the small back room with the frosted door, one of the strangers said to the other: "What does he come here for, if he's too proud to speak! What's a saloon for! I'd like to smash that eye-glass for him!" "He's going down-hill fast," said the other. "He drinks steady--steady." "Tiens--tiens!" interposed Jean Jolicoeur, the landlord. "It is not harm to him. He drink all day, an' he walk a crack like a bee-line." "He's got the handsomest wife in this city. If I was him, I'd think more of myself," answered the Englishman. "How you think more--hein? You not come down more to my saloon?" "No, I wouldn't come to your saloon, and I wouldn't go to Theophile Charlemagne's shebang at the Cote Dorion." "You not like Charlemagne's hotel?" said a huge black-bearded pilot, standing beside the landlord. "Oh, I like Charlemagne's hotel, and I like to talk to Suzon Charlemagne, but I'm not married, Rouge Gosselin--" "If he go to Charlemagne's hotel, and talk some more too mooch to dat Suzon Charlemagne, he will lose dat glass out of his eye," interrupted Rouge Gosselin. "Who say he been at dat place?" said Jean Jolicoeur. "He bin dere four times las' month, and dat Suzon Charlemagne talk'bout him ever since. When dat Narcisse Bovin and Jacques Gravel come down de river, he better keep away from dat Cote Dorion," sputtered Rouge Gosselin. "Dat's a long story short, all de same for you--bagosh!" Rouge Gosselin flung off his glass of white whiskey, and threw after it a glass of cold water. "Tiens! you know not M'sieu' Charley Steele," said Jean Jolicoeur, and turned on his heel, nodding his head sagely. CHAPTER IV CHARLEY MAKES A DISCOVERY A hot day a month later Charley Steele sat in his office staring before him into space, and negligently smoking a cigarette. Outside there was a slow clacking of wheels, and a newsboy was crying "La Patrie! La Patrie! All about the War in France! All about the massacree!" Bells--wedding- bells--were ringing also, and the jubilant sounds, like the call of the newsboy, were out of accord with the slumberous feeling of the afternoon. Charley Steele turned his head slowly towards the window. The branches of a maple-tree half crossed it, and the leaves moved softly in the shadow they made. His eye went past the tree and swam into the tremulous white heat of the square, and beyond to where in the church-tower the bells were ringing-to the church doors, from which gaily dressed folk were issuing to the carriages, or thronged the pavement, waiting for the bride and groom to come forth into a new-created world--for them. Charley looked through his monocle at the crowd reflectively, his head held a little to one side in a questioning sort of way, on his lips the ghost of a smile--not a reassuring smile. Presently he leaned forward slightly and the monocle dropped from his eye. He fumbled for it, raised it, blew on it, rubbed it with his handkerchief, and screwed it carefully into his eye again, his rather bushy brow gathering over it strongly, his look sharpened to more active thought. He stared straight across the square at a figure in heliotrope, whose face was turned to a man in scarlet uniform taller than herself two glowing figures towards whom many other eyes than his own were directed, some curiously, some disdain fully, some sadly. But Charley did not see the faces of those who looked on; he only saw two people--one in heliotrope, one in scarlet. Presently his white firm hand went up and ran through his hair nervously, his comely figure settled down in the chair, his tongue touched the corners of his red lips, and his eyes withdrew from the woman in heliotrope and the man in scarlet, and loitered among the leaves of the tree at the window. The softness of the green, the cool health of the foliage, changed the look of his eye from something cold and curious to something companionable, and scarcely above a whisper two words came from his lips: "Kathleen! Kathleen!" By the mere sound of the voice it would have been hard to tell what the words meant, for it had an inquiring cadence and yet a kind of distant doubt, a vague anxiety. The face conveyed nothing--it was smooth, fresh, and immobile. The only point where the mind and meaning of the man worked according to the law of his life was at the eye, where the monocle was caught now as in a vise. Behind this glass there was a troubled depth which belied the self-indulgent mouth, the egotism speaking loudly in the red tie, the jewelled finger, the ostentatiously simple yet sumptuous clothes. At last he drew in a sharp, sibilant breath, clicked his tongue--a sound of devil-may-care and hopelessness at once--and turned to a little cupboard behind him. The chair squeaked on the floor as he turned, and he frowned, shivered a little, and kicked it irritably with his heel. From the cupboard he took a bottle of liqueur, and, pouring out a small glassful, drank it off eagerly. As he put the bottle away, he said again, in an abstracted fashion, "Kathleen!" Then, seating himself at the table, as if with an effort towards energy, he rang a bell. A clerk entered. "Ask Mr. Wantage to come for a moment," he said. "Mr. Wantage has gone to the church--to the wedding," was the reply. "Oh, very well. He will be in again this afternoon?" "Sure to, sir." "Just so. That will do." The clerk retired, and Charley, rising, unlocked a drawer, and taking out some books and papers, laid them on the table. Intently, carefully, he began to examine them, referring at the same time to a letter which had lain open at his hand while he had been sitting there. For a quarter of an hour he studied the books and papers, then, all at once, his fingers fastened on a point and stayed. Again he read the letter lying beside him. A flush crimsoned his face to his hair--a singular flush of shame, of embarrassment, of guilt--a guilt not his own. His breath caught in his throat. "Billy!" he gasped. "Billy, by God!" CHAPTER V THE WOMAN IN HELIOTROPE The flush was still on Charley's face when the door opened slowly, and a lady dressed in heliotrope silk entered, and came forward. Without a word Charley rose, and, taking a step towards her, offered a chair; at the same time noticing her heightened colour, and a certain rigid carriage not in keeping with her lithe and graceful figure. There was no mistaking the quiver of her upper lip--a short lip which did not hide a wonderfully pretty set of teeth. With a wave of the hand she declined the seat. Glancing at the books and papers lying on the table, she flashed an inquiry at his flushed face, and, misreading the cause, with slow, quiet point, in which bitterness or contempt showed, she said meaningly: "What a slave you are!" "Behold the white man work!" he said good-naturedly, the flush passing slowly from his face. With apparent negligence he pushed the letter and the books and papers a little to one side, but really to place them beyond the range of her angry eyes. She shrugged her shoulders at his action. "For 'the fatherless children and widows, and all that are desolate and oppressed?'" she said, not concealing her malice, for at the wedding she had just left all her married life had rushed before her in a swift panorama, and the man in scarlet had fixed the shooting pictures in her mind. Again a flush swept up Charley's face and seemed to blur his sight. His monocle dropped the length of its silken tether, and he caught it and slowly adjusted it again as he replied evenly: "You always hit the nail on the head, Kathleen." There was a kind of appeal in his voice, a sort of deprecation in his eye, as though he would be friends with her, as though, indeed, there was in his mind some secret pity for her. Her look at his face was critical and cold. It was plain that she was not prepared for any extra friendliness on his part--there seemed no reason why he should add to his usual courtesy a note of sympathy to the sound of her name on his lips. He had not fastened the door of the cupboard from which he had taken the liqueur, and it had swung open a little, disclosing the bottle and the glass. She saw. Her face took on a look of quiet hardness. "Why did you not come to the wedding? She was your cousin. People asked where you were. You knew I was going." "Did you need me?" he asked quietly, and his eyes involuntarily swept to the place where he had seen the heliotrope and scarlet make a glow of colour on the other side of the square. "You were not alone." She misunderstood him. Her mind had been overwrought, and she caught insinuation in his voice. "You mean Tom Fairing!" Her eyes blazed. "You are quite right--I did not need you. Tom Fairing is a man that all the world trusts save you." "Kathleen!" The words were almost a cry. "For God's sake! I have never thought of 'trusting' men where you are concerned. I believe in no man" --his voice had a sharp bitterness, though his face was smooth and unemotional--"but I trust you, and believe in you. Yes, upon my soul and honour, Kathleen." As he spoke she turned quickly and stepped towards the window, an involuntary movement of agitation. He had touched a chord. But even as she reached the window and glanced down to the hot, dusty street, she heard a loud voice below, a reckless, ribald sort of voice, calling to some one to, "Come and have a drink." "Billy!" she said involuntarily, and looked down, then shrank back quickly. She turned swiftly on her husband. "Your soul and honour, Charley!" she said slowly. "Look at what you've made of Billy! Look at the company he keeps--John Brown, who hasn't even decency enough to keep away from the place he disgraced. Billy is always with him. You ruined John Brown, with your dissipation and your sneers at religion and your- 'I-wonder-nows!' Of what use have you been, Charley? Of what use to anyone in the world? You think of nothing but eating, and drinking, and playing the fop." He glanced down involuntarily, and carefully flicked some cigarette-ash from his waistcoat. The action arrested her speech for a moment, and then, with a little shudder, she continued: "The best they can say of you is, 'There goes Charley Steele!'" "And the worst?" he asked. He was almost smiling now, for he admired her anger, her scorn. He knew it was deserved, and he had no idea of making any defence. He had said all in that instant's cry, "Kathleen!" --that one awakening feeling of his life so far. She had congealed the word on his lips by her scorn, and now he was his old debonair, dissipated self, with the impertinent monocle in his eye and a jest upon his tongue. "Do you want to know the worst they say?" she asked, growing pale to the lips. "Go and stand behind the door of Jolicoeur's saloon. Go to any street corner, and listen. Do you think I don't know what they say? Do you think the world doesn't talk about the company you keep? Haven't I seen you going into Jolicoeur's saloon when I was walking on the other side of the street? Do you think that all the world, and I among the rest, are blind? Oh, you fop, you fool, you have ruined my brother, you have ruined my life, and I hate and despise you for a cold-blooded, selfish coward!" He made a deprecating gesture and stared--a look of most curious inquiry. They had been married for five years, and during that time they had never been anything but persistently courteous to each other. He had never on any occasion seen her face change colour, or her manner show chagrin or emotion. Stately and cold and polite, she had fairly met his ceaseless foppery and preciseness of manner. But people had said of her, "Poor Kathleen Steele!" for her spotless name stood sharply off from his negligence and dissipation. They called her "Poor Kathleen Steele!" in sympathy, though they knew that she had not resisted marriage with the well-to-do Charley Steele, while loving a poor captain in the Royal Fusileers. She preserved social sympathy by a perfect outward decorum, though the man of the scarlet coat remained in the town and haunted the places where she appeared, and though the eyes of the censorious world were watching expectantly. No voice was raised against her. Her cold beauty held the admiration of all women, for she was not eager for men's company, and she kept her poise even with the man in scarlet near her, glacially complacent, beautifully still, disconcertingly emotionless. They did not know that the poise with her was to an extent as much a pose as Charley's manner was to him. "I hate you and despise you for a cold-blooded, selfish coward!" So that was the way Kathleen felt! Charley's tongue touched his lips quickly, for they were arid, and he slowly said: "I assure you I have not tried to influence Billy. I have no remembrance of his imitating me in anything. Won't you sit down? It is very fatiguing, this heat." Charley was entirely himself again. His words concerning Billy Wantage might have been either an impeachment of Billy's character and, by deduction, praise of his own, or it may have been the insufferable egoism of the fop, well used to imitators. The veil between the two, which for one sacred moment had seemed about to lift, was fallen now, leaded and weighted at the bottom. "I suppose you would say the same about John Brown! It is disconcerting at least to think that we used to sit and listen to Mr. Brown as he waved his arms gracefully in his surplice and preached sentimental sermons. I suppose you will say, what we have heard you say before, that you only asked questions. Was that how you ruined the Rev. John Brown-- and Billy?" Charley was very thirsty, and because of that perhaps, his voice had an unusually dry tone as he replied: "I asked questions of John Brown; I answer them to Billy. It is I that am ruined!" There was that in his voice she did not understand, for though long used to his paradoxical phrases and his everlasting pose--as it seemed to her and all the world--there now rang through his words a note she had never heard before. For a fleeting instant she was inclined to catch at some hidden meaning, but her grasp of things was uncertain. She had been thrown off her balance, or poise, as Charley had, for an unwonted second, been thrown off his pose, and her thought could not pierce beneath the surface. "I suppose you will be flippant at Judgment Day," she said with a bitter laugh, for it seemed to her a monstrous thing that they should be such an infinite distance apart. "Why should one be serious then? There will be no question of an alibi, or evidence for the defence--no cross-examination. A cut-and-dried verdict!" She ignored his words. "Shall you be at home to dinner?" she rejoined coldly, and her eyes wandered out of the window again to that spot across the square where heliotrope and scarlet had met. "I fancy not," he answered, his eyes turned away also--towards the cupboard containing the liqueur. "Better ask Billy; and keep him in, and talk to him--I really would like you to talk to him. He admires you so much. I wish--in fact I hope you will ask Billy to come and live with us," he added half abstractedly. He was trying to see his way through a sudden confusion of ideas. Confusion was rare to him, and his senses, feeling the fog, embarrassed by a sudden air of mystery and a cloud of futurity, were creeping to a mind-path of understanding. "Don't be absurd," she said coldly. "You know I won't ask him, and you don't want him." "I have always said that decision is the greatest of all qualities--even when the decision is bad. It saves so much worry, and tends to health." Suddenly he turned to the desk and opened a tin box. "Here is further practice for your admirable gift." He opened a paper. "I want you to sign off for this building--leaving it to my absolute disposal." He spread the paper out before her. She turned pale and her lips tightened. She looked at him squarely in the eyes. "My wedding-gift!" she said. Then she shrugged her shoulders. A moment she hesitated, and in that moment seemed to congeal. "You need it?" she asked distantly. He inclined his head, his eye never leaving hers. With a swift angry motion she caught the glove from her left hand, and, doubling it back, dragged it off. A smooth round ring came off with it and rolled upon the floor. Stooping, he picked up the ring, and handed it back to her, saying: "Permit me." It was her wedding-ring. She took it with a curious contracted look and put it on the finger again, then pulled off the other glove quietly. "Of course one uses the pen with the right hand," she said calmly. "Involuntary act of memory," he rejoined slowly, as she took the pen in her hand. "You had spoken of a wedding, this was a wedding-gift, and-- that's right, sign there!" There was a brief pause, in which she appeared to hesitate, and then she wrote her name in a large firm hand, and, throwing down the pen, caught up her gloves, and began to pull them on viciously. "Thanks. It is very kind of you," he said. He put the document in the tin box, and took out another, as without a word, but with a grave face in which scorn and trouble were mingled, she now turned towards the door. "Can you spare a minute longer?" he said, and advanced towards her, holding the new document in his hand. "Fair exchange is no robbery. Please take this. No, not with the right hand; the left is better luck --the better the hand, the better the deed," he added with a whimsical squint and a low laugh, and he placed the paper in her left hand. "Item No. 2 to take the place of item No. 1." She scrutinised the paper. Wonder filled her face. "Why, this is a deed of the homestead property--worth three times as much!" she said. "Why--why do you do this?" "Remember that questions ruin people sometimes," he answered, and stepped to the door and turned the handle, as though to show her out. She was agitated and embarrassed now. She felt she had been unjust, and yet she felt that she could not say what ought to be said, if all the rules were right. "Thank you," she said simply. "Did you think of this when--when you handed me back the ring?" "I never had an inspiration in my life. I was born with a plan of campaign." "I suppose I ought to--kiss you!" she said in some little confusion. "It might be too expensive," he answered, with a curious laugh. Then he added lightly: "This was a fair exchange"--he touched the papers--"but I should like you to bear witness, madam, that I am no robber!" He opened the door. Again there was that curious penetrating note in his voice, and that veiled look. She half hesitated, but in the pause there was a loud voice below and a quick foot on the stairs. "It's Billy!" she said sharply, and passed out. CHAPTER VI THE WIND AND THE SHORN LAMB A half-hour later Charley Steele sat in his office alone with Billy Wantage, his brother-in-law, a tall, shapely fellow of twenty-four. Billy had been drinking, his face was flushed, and his whole manner was indolently careless and irresponsible. In spite of this, however, his grey eyes were nervously fixed on Charley, and his voice was shaky as he said, in reply to a question as to his finances: "That's my own business, Charley." Charley took a long swallow from the tumbler of whiskey and soda beside him, and, as he drew some papers towards him, answered quietly: "I must make it mine, Billy, without a doubt." The tall youth shifted in his chair and essayed to laugh. "You've never been particular about your own business. Pshaw, what's the use of preaching to me!" Charley pushed his chair back, and his look had just a touch of surprise, a hint of embarrassment. This youth, then, thought him something of a fool: read him by virtue of his ornamentations, his outer idiosyncrasy! This boy, whose iniquity was under his finger on that table, despised him for his follies, and believed in him less than his wife--two people who had lived closer to him than any others in the world. Before he answered he lifted the glass beside him and drank to the last drop, then slowly set it down and said, with a dangerous smile: "I have always been particular about other people's finances, and the statement that you haven't isn't preaching, it's an indictment--so it is, Billy." "An indictment!" Billy bit his finger-nails now, and his voice shook. "That's what the jury would say, and the judge would do the preaching. You have stolen twenty-five thousand dollars of trust-moneys!" For a moment there was absolute silence in the room. From outside in the square came the Marche-t'en! of a driver, and the loud cackling laugh of some loafer at the corner. Charley's look imprisoned his brother-in-law, and Billy's eyes were fixed in a helpless stare on Charley's finger, which held like a nail the record of his infamy. Billy drew himself back with a jerk of recovery, and said with bravado, but with fear in look and motion: "Don't stare like that. The thing's done, and you can't undo it, and that's all there is about it." Charley had been staring at the youth-staring and not seeing him really, but seeing his wife and watching her lips say again: "You are ruining Billy!" He was not sober, but his mind was alert, his eccentric soul was getting kaleidoscopic glances at strange facts of life as they rushed past his mind into a painful red obscurity. "Oh yes, it can be undone, and it's not all there is about it!" he answered quietly. He got up suddenly, went to the door, locked it, put the key in his pocket, and, coming back, sat down again beside the table. Billy watched him with shrewd, hunted eyes. What did Charley mean to do? To give him in charge? To send him to jail? To shut him out from the world where he had enjoyed himself so much for years and years? Never to go forth free among his fellows! Never to play the gallant with all the pretty girls he knew! Never to have any sports, or games, or tobacco, or good meals, or canoeing in summer, or tobogganing in winter, or moose- hunting, or any sort of philandering! The thoughts that filled his mind now were not those of regret for his crime, but the fears of the materialist and sentimentalist, who revolted at punishment and all the shame and deprivation it would involve. "What did you do with the money?" said Charley, after a minute's silence, in which two minds had travelled far. "I put it into mines." "What mines?" "Out on Lake Superior." "What sort of mines?" "Arsenic." Charley's eye-glass dropped, and rattled against the gold button of his white waistcoat. "In arsenic-mines!" He put the monocle to his eye again. "On whose advice?" "John Brown's." "John Brown's!" Charley Steele's ideas were suddenly shaken and scattered by a man's name, as a bolting horse will crumple into confusion a crowd of people. So this was the way his John Brown had come home to roost. He lifted the empty whiskey-glass to his lips and drained air. He was terribly thirsty; he needed something to pull himself together. Five years of dissipation had not robbed him of his splendid native ability, but it had, as it were, broken the continuity of his will and the sequence of his intellect. "It was not investment?" he asked, his tongue thick and hot in his mouth. "No. What would have been the good?" "Of course. Speculation--you bought heavily to sell on an expected rise?" "Yes." There was something so even in Charley's manner and tone that Billy misinterpreted it. It seemed hopeful that Charley was going to make the best of a bad job. "You see," Billy said eagerly, "it seemed dead certain. He showed me the way the thing was being done, the way the company was being floated, how the market in New York was catching hold. It looked splendid. I thought I could use the money for a week or so, then put it back, and have a nice little scoop, at no one's cost. I thought it was a dead-sure thing--and I was hard up, and Kathleen wouldn't lend me any more. If Kathleen had only done the decent thing--" A sudden flush of anger swept over Charley's face--never before in his life had that face been so sensitive, never even as a child. Something had waked in the odd soul of Beauty Steele. "Don't be a sweep--leave Kathleen out of it!" he said, in a sharp, querulous voice--a voice unnatural to himself, suggestive of little use, as though he were learning to speak, using strange words stumblingly through a melee of the emotions. It was not the voice of Charley Steele the fop, the poseur, the idlest man in the world. "What part of the twenty-five thousand went into the arsenic?" he said, after a pause. There was no feeling in the voice now; it was again even and inquiring. "Nearly all." "Don't lie. You've been living freely. Tell the truth, or--or I'll know the reason why, Billy." "About two-thirds-that's the truth. I had debts, and I paid them." "And you bet on the races?" "Yes." "And lost?" "Yes. See here, Charley; it was the most awful luck--" "Yes, for the fatherless children and widows, and all that are oppressed!" Charley's look again went through and beyond the culprit, and he recalled his wife's words and his own reply. A quick contempt and a sort of meditative sarcasm were in the tone. It was curious, too, that he could smile, but the smile did not encourage Billy Wantage now. "It's all gone, I suppose?" he added. "All but about a hundred dollars." "Well, you have had your game; now you must pay for it." Billy had imagination, and he was melodramatic. He felt danger ahead. "I'll go and shoot myself!" he said, banging the table with his fist so that the whiskey-tumbler shook. He was hardly prepared for what followed. Charley's nerves had been irritated; his teeth were on edge. This threat, made in such a cheap, insincere way, was the last thing in the world he could bear to hear. He knew that Billy lied; that if there was one thing Billy would not do, shooting himself was that one thing. His own life was very sweet to Billy Wantage. Charley hated him the more at that moment because he was Kathleen's brother. For if there was one thing he knew of Kathleen, it was that she could not do a mean thing. Cold, unsympathetic she might be, cruel at a pinch perhaps, but dishonourable--never! This weak, cowardly youth was her brother! No one had ever seen such a look on Charley Steele's face as came upon it now--malicious, vindictive. He stooped over Billy in a fury. "You think I'm a fool and an ass--you ignorant, brainless, lying cub! You make me a thief before all the world by forging my name, and stealing the money for which I am responsible, and then you rate me so low that you think you'll bamboozle me by threats of suicide. You haven't the courage to shoot yourself--drunk or sober. And what do you think would be gained by it? Eh, what do you think would be gained? You can't see that you'd insult your sister as well as--as rob me." Billy Wantage cowered. This was not the Charley Steele he had known, not like the man he had seen since a child. There was something almost uncouth in this harsh high voice, these gauche words, this raw accent; but it was powerful and vengeful, and it was full of purpose. Billy quivered, yet his adroit senses caught at a straw in the words, "as rob me!" Charley was counting it a robbery of himself, not of the widows and orphans! That gave him a ray of hope. In a paroxysm of fear, joined to emotional excitement, he fell upon his knees, and pleaded for mercy--for the sake of one chance in life, for the family name, for Kathleen's sake, for the sake of everything he had ruthlessly dishonoured. Tears came readily to his eyes, real tears--of excitement; but he could measure, too, the strength of his appeal. "If you'll stand by me in this, I'll pay you back every cent, Charley," he cried. "I will, upon my soul and honour! You shan't lose a penny, if you'll only see me through. I'll work my fingers off to pay it back till the last hour of my life. I'll be straight till the day I die--so help me God!" Charley's eyes wandered to the cupboard where the liqueurs were. If he could only decently take a drink! But how could he with this boy kneeling before him? His breath scorched his throat. "Get up!" he said shortly. "I'll see what I can do--to-morrow. Go away home. Don't go out again to-night. And come here at ten o'clock in the morning." Billy took up his hat, straightened his tie, carefully brushed the dust from his knees, and, seizing Charley's hand, said: "You're the best fellow in the world, Charley." He went towards the door, dusting his face of emotion as he had dusted his knees. The old selfish, shrewd look was again in his eyes. Charley's gaze followed him gloomily. Billy turned the handle of the door. It was locked. Charley came forward and unlocked it. As Billy passed through, Charley, looking sharply in his face, said hoarsely: "By Heaven, I believe you're not worth it!" Then he shut the door again and locked it. He almost ran back and opened the cupboard. Taking out the bottle of liqueur, he filled a glass and drank it off. Three times he did this, then seated himself at the table with a sigh of relief and no emotion in his face. CHAPTER VII "PEACE, PEACE, AND THERE IS NO PEACE"' The sun was setting by the time Charley was ready to leave his office. Never in his life had he stayed so late in "the halls of industry," as he flippantly called his place of business. The few cases he had won so brilliantly since the beginning of his career, he had studied at night in his luxurious bedroom in the white brick house among the maples on the hill. In every case, as at the trial of Joseph Nadeau, the man who murdered the timber-merchant, the first prejudice of judge and jury had given way slowly before the deep-seeing mind, which had as rare a power of analysis as for generalisation, and reduced masses of evidence to phrases; and verdicts had been given against all personal prejudice--to be followed outside the court by the old prejudice, the old look askance at the man called Beauty Steele. To him it had made no difference at any time. He cared for neither praise nor blame. In his actions a materialist, in his mind he was a watcher of life, a baffled inquirer whose refuge was irony, and whose singular habits had in five years become a personal insult to the standards polite society and Puritan morality had set up. Perhaps the insult had been intended, for irregularities were committed with an insolent disdain for appearances. He did nothing secretly; his page of life was for him who cared to read. He played cards, he talked agnosticism, he went on shooting expeditions which became orgies, he drank openly in saloons, he whose forefathers had been gentlemen of King George, and who sacrificed all in the great American revolution for honour and loyalty--statesmen, writers, politicians, from whom he had direct inheritance, through stirring, strengthening forces, in the building up of laws and civilisation in a new land. Why he chose to be what he was--if he did choose--he alone could answer. His personality had impressed itself upon his world, first by its idiosyncrasies and afterwards by its enigmatical excesses. What was he thinking of as he laid the papers away in the tin box in a drawer, locked it, and put the key in his pocket? He had found to the smallest detail Billy's iniquity, and he was now ready to shoulder the responsibility, to save the man, who, he knew, was scarce worth the saving. But Kathleen--there was what gave him pause. As he turned to the window and looked out over the square he shuddered. He thought of the exchange of documents he had made with her that day, and he had a sense of satisfaction. This defalcation of Billy's would cripple him, for money had flown these last few years. He had had heavy losses, and he had dug deep into his capital. Down past the square ran a cool avenue of beeches to the water, and he could see his yacht at anchor. On the other side of the water, far down the shore, was a house which had been begun as a summer cottage, and had ended in being a mansion. A few Moorish pillars, brought from Algiers for the decoration of the entrance, had necessitated the raising of the roof, and then all had to be in proportion, and the cottage became like an appanage to a palace. So it had gone, and he had cared so little about it all, and for the consequences. He had this day secured Kathleen from absolute poverty, no matter what happened, and that had its comfort. His eyes wandered among the trees. He could see the yellow feathers of the oriole and catch the note of the whippoorwill, and from the great church near the voices of the choir came over. He could hear the words "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word." Depart in peace--how much peace was there in the world? Who had it? The remembrance of what Kathleen said to him at the door--"I suppose I ought to kiss you"--came to him, was like a refrain in his ears. "Peace is the penalty of silence and inaction," he said to himself meditatively. "Where there is action there is no peace. If the brain and body fatten, then there is peace. Kathleen and I have lived at peace, I suppose. I never said a word to her that mightn't be put down in large type and pasted on my tombstone, and she never said a word to me--till to-day--that wasn't like a water-colour picture. Not till to-day, in a moment's strife and trouble, did I ever get near her. And we've lived in peace. Peace? Where is the right kind of peace? Over there is old Sainton. He married a rich woman, he has had the platter of plenty before him always, he wears ribbons and such like baubles given by the Queen, but his son had to flee the country. There's Herring. He doesn't sleep because his daughter is going to marry an Italian count. There's Latouche. His place in the cabinet is begotten in corruption, in the hotbed of faction war. There's Kenealy. His wife has led him a dance of deep damnation. There's the lot of them--every one, not an ounce of peace among them, except with old Casson, who weighs eighteen stone, lives like a pig, grows stuffier in mind and body every day, and drinks half a bottle of whiskey every night. There's no one else--yes, there is!" He was looking at a small black-robed figure with clean-shaven face, white hair, and shovel-hat, who passed slowly along the wooden walk beneath, with meditative content in his face. "There's peace," he said with a laugh. "I've known Father Hallon for twenty-five years, and no man ever worked so hard, ever saw more trouble, ever shared other people's bad luck mere than he; ever took the bit in his teeth, when it was a matter of duty, stronger than he; and yet there's peace; he has it; a peace that passes all understanding--mine anyhow. I've never had a minute's real peace. The World, or Nature, or God, or It, whatever the name is, owes me peace. And how is It to give it? Why, by answering my questions. Now it's a curious thing that the only person I ever met who could answer any questions of mine--answer them in the way that satisfies--is Suzon. She works things down to phrases. She has wisdom in the raw, and a real grip on life, and yet all the men she has known have been river-drivers and farmers, and a few men from town who mistook the sort of Suzon she is. Virtuous and straight, she's a born child of Aphrodite too--by nature. She was made for love. A thousand years ago she would have had a thousand loves! And she thinks the world is a magnificent place, and she loves it, and wallows--fairly wallows--in content. Now which is right: Suzon or Father Hallon-- Aphrodite or the Nazarene? Which is peace--as the bird and the beast of the field get it--the fallow futile content, or--" He suddenly stopped, hiccoughed, then hurriedly drawing paper before him, he sat down. For an hour he wrote. It grew darker. He pushed the table nearer the window, and the singing of the choir in the church came in upon him as his pen seemed to etch words into the paper, firm, eccentric, meaning. What he wrote that evening has been preserved, and the yellow sheets lie loosely in a black despatch-box which contains the few records Charley Steele left behind him. What he wrote that night was the note of his mind, the key to all those strange events through which he began to move two hours after the lines were written: Over thy face is a veil of white sea-mist, Only thine eyes shine like stars; bless or blight me, I will hold close to the leash at thy wrist, O Aphrodite! Thou in the East and I here in the West, Under our newer skies purple and pleasant: Who shall decide which is better--attest, Saga or peasant? Thou with Serapis, Osiris, and Isis, I with Jehovah, in vapours and shadows; Thou with the gods' joy-enhancing devices, Sweet-smelling meadows! What is there given us?--Food and some raiment, Toiling to reach to some Patmian haven, Giving up all for uncertain repayment, Feeding the raven! Striving to peer through the infinite azure, Alternate turning to earthward and falling, Measuring life with Damastian measure, Finite, appalling. What does it matter! They passed who with Homer Poured out the wine at the feet of their idols: Passing, what found they? To-come a misnomer, It and their idols? Sacristan, acolyte, player, or preacher, Each to his office, but who holds the key? Death, only Death--thou, the ultimate teacher Wilt show it to me. And when the forts and the barriers fall, Shall we then find One the true, the almighty, Wisely to speak with the worst of us all-- Ah, Aphrodite! Waiting, I turn from the futile, the human, Gone is the life of me, laughing with youth Steals to learn all in the face of a woman, Mendicant Truth! Rising with a bitter laugh, and murmuring the last lines, he thrust the papers into a drawer, locked it, and going quickly from the room, he went down-stairs. His horse and cart were waiting for him, and he got in. The groom looked at him inquiringly. "The Cote Dorion!" he said, and they sped away through the night. CHAPTER VIII THE COST OF THE ORNAMENT One, two, three, four, five, six miles. The sharp click of the iron hoofs on the road; the strong rush of the river; the sweet smell of the maple and the pungent balsam; the dank rich odour of the cedar swamp; the cry of the loon from the water; the flaming crane in the fishing-boat; the fisherman, spear in hand, staring into the dark waters tinged with sombre red; the voice of a lonely settler keeping time to the ping of the axe as, lengthening out his day to nightly weariness, he felled a tree; river-drivers' camps spotted along the shore; huge cribs or rafts which had swung down the great stream for scores of miles, the immense oars motionless, the little houses on the timbers blinking with light; and from cheerful raftsmen coming the old familiar song of the rivers: "En roulant, ma boule roulant, En roulant ma boule!" Not once had Charley Steele turned his head as the horse sped on. His face was kept straight along the line of the road; he seemed not to see or to hear, to be unresponsive to sound or scene. The monocle at his eye was like a veil to hide the soul, a defence against inquiry, itself the unceasing question, a sort of battery thrown forward, a kind of field- casemate for a lonely besieged spirit. It was full of suggestion. It might have been the glass behind which showed some mediaeval relic, the body of some ancient Egyptian king whose life had been spent in doing wonders and making signs--the primitive, anthropomorphic being. He might have been a stone man, for any motion that he made. Yet looking at him closely you would have seen discontent in the eye, a kind of glaze of the sardonic over the whole face. What is the good! the face asked. What is there worth doing? it said. What a limitless futility! it urged, fain to be contradicted too, as the grim melancholy of the figure suggested. "To be an animal and soak in the world," he thought to himself--" that is natural; and the unnatural is civilisation, and the cheap adventure of the mind into fields of baffling speculation, lighted by the flickering intelligences of dead speculators, whose seats we have bought in the stock-exchange of mortality, and exhaust our lives in paying for. To eat, to drink, to lie fallow, indifferent to what comes after, to roam like the deer, and to fight like the tiger--" He came to a dead stop in his thinking. "To fight like the tiger!" He turned his head quickly now to where upon a raft some river-drivers were singing: "And when a man in the fight goes down, Why, we will carry him home!" "To fight like the tiger!" Ravage--the struggle to possess from all the world what one wished for one's self, and to do it without mercy and without fear-that was the clear plan in the primitive world, where action was more than speech and dominance than knowledge. Was not civilisation a mistake, and religion the insinuating delusion designed to cover it up; or, if not designed, accepted by the original few who saw that humanity could not turn back, and must even go forward with illusions, lest in mere despair all men died and the world died with them? His eyes wandered to the raft where the men were singing, and he remembered the threat made: that if he came again to the Cote Dorion he "would get what for!" He remembered the warning of Rouge Gosselin conveyed by Jolicoeur, and a sinister smile crossed over his face. The contradictions of his own thoughts came home to him suddenly, for was it not the case that his physical strength alone, no matter what his skill, would be of small service to him in a dark corner of contest? Primitive ideas could only hold in a primitive world. His real weapon was his brain, that which civilisation had given him in lieu of primitive prowess and the giant's strength. They had come to a long piece of corduroy-road, and the horse's hoofs struck rumbling hollow sounds from the floor of cedar logs. There was a swamp on one side where fire-flies were flickering, and there flashed into Charley Steele's mind some verses he had once learned at school: "They made her a grave too cold and damp For a soul so warm and true--" It kept repeating itself in his brain in a strange dreary monotone. "Stop the horse. I'll walk the rest of the way," he said presently to the groom. "You needn't come for me, Finn; I'll walk back as far as the Marochal Tavern. At twelve sharp I'll be there. Give yourself a drink and some supper"--he put a dollar into the man's hand--"and no white whiskey, mind: a bottle of beer and a leg of mutton, that's the thing." He nodded his head, and by the light of the moon walked away smartly down the corduroy-road through the shadows of the swamp. Finn the groom looked after him. "Well, if he ain't a queer dick! A reg'lar 'centric--but a reg'lar brick, cutting a wide swathe as he goes. He's a tip-topper; and he's a sort of tough too--a sort of a kind of a tough. Well, it's none of my business. Get up!" he added to the horse, and turning round in the road with difficulty, he drove back a mile to the Tavern Marochal for his beer and mutton--and white whiskey. Charley stepped on briskly, his shining leather shoes, straw hat, and light cane in no good keeping with his surroundings. He was thinking that he had never been in such a mood for talk with Suzon Charlemagne. Charlemagne's tavern of the Cote Dorion was known over half a province, and its patrons carried news of it half across a continent. Suzon Charlemagne--a girl of the people, a tavern-girl, a friend of sulking, coarse river-drivers! But she had an alert precision of brain, an instinct that clove through wastes of mental underbrush to the tree of knowledge. Her mental sight was as keen and accurate as that which runs along the rifle-barrel of the great hunter with the red deer in view. Suzon Charlemagne no company for Charley Steele? What did it matter! He had entered into other people's lives to-day, had played their games with them and for them, and now he would play his own game, live his own life in his own way through the rest of this day. He thirsted for some sort of combat, for the sharp contrasts of life, for the common and the base; he thirsted even for the white whiskey against which he had warned his groom. He was reckless--not blindly, but wilfully, wildly reckless, caring not at all what fate or penalty might come his way. "What do I care!" he said to himself. "I shall never squeal at any penalty. I shall never say in the great round-up that I was weak and I fell. I'll take my gruel expecting it, not fearing it--if there is to be any gruel anywhere, or any round-up anywhere!" A figure suddenly appeared coming round the bend of the road before him. It was Rouge Gosselin. Rouge Gosselin was inclined to speak. Some satanic whim or malicious foppery made Charley stare him blankly in the face. The monocle and the stare stopped the bon soir and the friendly warning on Rouge Gosselin's tongue, and the pilot passed on with a muttered oath. Gosselin had not gone far, however, before he suddenly stopped and laughed outright, for at the bottom he had great good-nature, in keeping with his "six-foot" height, and his temper was friendly if quick. It seemed so absurd, so audacious, that a man could act like Charley Steele, that he at once became interested in the phenomenon, and followed slowly after Charley, saying as he went: "Tiens, there will be things to watch to-night!" Before Charley was within five hundred yards of the tavern he could hear the laughter and song coming from the old seigneury which Theophile Charlemagne called now the Cote Dorion Hotel, after the name given to the point on which the house stood. Low and wide-roofed, with dormer windows and a wide stoop in front, and walls three feet thick, behind, on the river side, it hung over the water, its narrow veranda supported by piles, with steps down to the water-side. Seldom was there an hour when boats were not tied to these steps. Summer and winter the tavern was a place of resort. Inside, the low ceiling, the broad rafters, the great fireplace, the well-worn floor, the deep windows, the wooden cross let into the wall, and the varied and picturesque humanity frequenting this great room, gave it an air of romance. Yet there were people who called the tavern a "shebang"--slander as it was against Suzon Charlemagne, which every river-driver and woodsman and habitant who frequented the place would have resented with violence. It was because they thought Charley Steele slandered the girl and the place in his mind, that the river-drivers had sworn they would make it hot for him if he came again. Charley was the last man in the world to undeceive them by words. When he coolly walked into the great room, where a half-dozen of them were already assembled, drinking white "whiskey-wine," he had no intention of setting himself right. He raised his hat cavalierly to Suzon and shook hands with her. He took no notice of the men around him. "Brandy, please!" he said. "Why do I drink, do you say?" he added, as Suzon placed the bottle and glass before him. She was silent for an instant, then she said gravely: "Perhaps because you like it; perhaps because something was left out of you when you were made, and--" She paused and went no further, for a red-shirted river-driver with brass rings in his ears came close to them, and called gruffly for whiskey. He glowered at Charley, who looked at him indolently, then raised his glass towards Suzon and drank the brandy. "Pish!" said Red Shirt, and, turning round, joined his comrades. It was clear he wanted a pretext to quarrel. "Perhaps because you like it; perhaps because something was left out of you when you were made--" Charley smiled pleasantly as Suzon came over to him again. "You've answered the question," he said, "and struck the thing at the centre. Which is it? The difficulty to decide which has divided the world. If it's only a physical craving, it means that we are materialists naturally, and that the soil from which the grape came is the soil that's in us; that it is the body feeding on itself all the time; that like returns to like, and we live a little together, and then mould together for ever and ever, amen. If it isn't a natural craving-- like to like--it's a proof of immortality, for it represents the wild wish to forget the world, to be in another medium. "I am only myself when I am drunk. Liquor makes me human. At other times I'm merely Charley Steele! Now isn't it funny, this sort of talk here?" "I don't know about that," she answered, "if, as you say, it's natural. This tavern's the only place I have to think in, and what seems to you funny is a sort of ordinary fact to me." "Right again, ma belle Suzon. Nothing's incongruous. I've never felt so much like singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs as when I've been drinking. I remember the last time I was squiffy I sang all the way home that old nursery hymn: "'On the other side of Jordan, In the sweet fields of Eden, Where the tree of life is blooming, There is rest for you. There is rest for the weary, There is rest for the weary, There is rest for the weary, There is rest for you!'" "I should have liked to hear you sing it--sure!" said Suzon, laughing. Charley tossed off a quarter-tumbler of brandy, which, instead of flushing the face, seemed only to deepen the whiteness of the skin, showing up more brightly the spots of colour in the cheeks, that white and red which had made him known as Beauty Steele. With a whimsical humour, behind which was the natural disposition of the man to do what he listed without thinking of the consequences, he suddenly began singing, in a voice shaken a little now by drink, but full of a curious magnetism: "On the other side of Jordan--" "Oh, don't; please don't!" said the girl, in fear, for she saw two river-drivers entering the door, one of whom had sworn he would do for Charley Steele if ever he crossed his path. "Oh, don't--M'sieu' Charley!" she again urged. The "Charley" caught his ear, and the daring in his eye brightened still more. He was ready for any change or chance to-night, was standing on the verge of any adventure, the most reckless soul in Christendom. "On the other side of Jordan, In the sweet fields of Eden, Where the tree of life is blooming, There is rest for you!" What more incongruous thing than this flaneur in patent leathers and red tie, this "hell-of-a-fellow with a pane of glass in his eye," as Jake Hough, the horse-doctor, afterwards said, surrounded by red and blue- shirted river-men, woodsmen, loafers, and toughs, singing a sacred song with all the unction of a choir-boy; with a magnetism, too, that did its work in spite of all prejudice? It was as if he were counsel in one of those cases when, the minds and sympathies of judge and jury at first arrayed against him, he had irresistibly cloven his way to their judgment--not stealing away their hearts, but governing, dominating their intelligences. Whenever he had done this he had been drinking hard, was in a mental world created by drink, serene, clear-eyed, in which his brain worked like an invincible machine, perfect and powerful. Was it the case that, as he himself suggested, he was never so natural as when under this influence? That then and only then the real man spoke, that then and only then the primitive soul awakened, that it supplied the thing left out of him at birth? "There is rest for the weary, There is rest for the weary, There is rest for the weary, There is rest for you!" One, two verses he sang as the men, at first snorting and scornful, shuffled angrily; then Jake Hough, the English horse-doctor, roared in the refrain: "There is rest for the weary, There is rest for you!" Upon which, carried away, every one of them roared, gurgled, or shouted "There is rest for the weary, There is rest for you!" Rouge Gosselin, who had entered during the singing, now spoke up quickly in French: "A sermon now, M'sieu'!" Charley took his monocle out of his eye and put it back again. Now each man present seemed singled out for an attack by this little battery of glass. He did not reply directly to Rouge Gosselin, but standing perfectly still, with one hand resting on the counter at which Suzon stood, he prepared to speak. Suzon did not attempt to stop him now, but gazed at him in a sort of awe. These men present were Catholics, and held religion in superstitious respect, however far from practising its precepts. Many of them had been profane and blasphemous in their time; may have sworn "sacre bapteme!" one of the worst oaths of their race; but it had been done in the wildness of anger, and they were little likely to endure from Charley Steele any word that sounded like blasphemy. Besides, the world said that he was an infidel, and that was enough for bitter prejudice. In the pause--very short--before Charley began speaking, Suzon's fingers stole to his on the counter and pressed them quickly. He made no response; he was scarcely aware of it. He was in a kind of dream. In an even, conversational tone, in French at once idiomatic and very simple, he began: "My dear friends, this is a world where men get tired. If they work they get tired, and if they play they get tired. If they look straight ahead of them they walk straight, but then they get blind by-and-by; if they look round them and get open-eyed, their feet stumble and they fall. It is a world of contradictions. If a man drinks much he loses his head, and if he doesn't drink at all he loses heart. If he asks questions he gets into trouble, and if he doesn't ask them he gets old before his time. Take the hymn we have just sung: "'On the other side of Jordan, In the sweet fields of Eden, Where the tree of life is blooming, There is rest for you!' "We all like that, because we get tired, and it isn't always summer, and nothing blooms all the year round. We get up early and we work late, and we sleep hard, and when the weather is good and wages good, and there's plenty in the house, we stay sober and we sadly sing, 'On the other side of Jordan'; but when the weather's heavy and funds scarce, and the pork and molasses and bread come hard, we get drunk, and we sing the comic chanson 'Brigadier, vows avez raison!' We've been singing a sad song to-night when we're feeling happy. We didn't think whether it was sad or not, we only knew it pleased our ears, and we wanted those sweet fields of Eden, and the blooming tree of life, and the rest under the tree. But ask a question or two. Where is the other side of Jordan? Do you go up to it, or down to it? And how do you go? And those sweet fields of Eden, what do they look like, and how many will they hold? Isn't it clear that the things that make us happiest in this world are the things we go for blind?" He paused. Now a dozen men came a step or two nearer, and crowded close together, looking over each others' shoulders at him with sharp, wondering eyes. "Isn't that so?" he continued. "Do you realise that no man knows where that Jordan and those fields are, and what the flower of the tree of life looks like? Let us ask a question again. Why is it that the one being in all the world who could tell us anything about it, the one being who had ever seen Jordan or Eden or that tree of life-in fact, the one of all creation who could describe heaven, never told? Isn't it queer? Here he was--that one man-standing just as I am among you, and round him were the men who followed him, all ordinary men, with ordinary curiosity. And he said he had come down from heaven, and for years they were with him, and yet they never asked him what that heaven was like: what it looked like, what it felt like, what sort of life they lived there, what manner of folk were the angels, what was the appearance of God. Why didn't they ask, and why didn't he answer? People must have kept asking that question afterwards, for a man called John answered it. He described, as only an oriental Jew would or could, a place all precious stones and gold and jewels and candles, in oriental language very splendid and auriferous. But why didn't those twelve men ask the One Man who knew, and why didn't the One answer? And why didn't the One tell without being asked?" He paused again, and now there came a shuffling and a murmuring, a curious rumble, a hard breathing, for Charley had touched with steely finger the tender places in the natures of these Catholics, who, whatever their lives, held fast to the immemorial form, the sacredness of Mother Church. They were ever ready to step into the galley which should bear them all home, with the invisible rowers of God at the oars, down the wild rapids, to the haven of St. Peter. There was savagery in their faces now. He saw, and he could not refrain from smiling as he stretched out his hand to them again with a little quieting gesture, and continued soothingly: "But why should we ask? There's a thing called electricity. Well, you know that if you take a slice out of anything, less remains behind. We can take the air out of this room, and scarcely leave any in it. "We take a drink out of a bottle, and certainly there isn't as much left in it! But the queer thing is that with this electricity you take it away and just as much remains. It goes out from your toe, rushes away to Timbuctoo, and is back in your toe before you can wink. Why? No one knows. What's the good of asking? You can't see it: you can only see what it does. What good would it do us if we knew all about it? There it is, and it's going to revolutionise the world. It's no good asking-- no one knows what it is and where it comes from, or what it looks like. It's better to go it blind, because you feel the power, though you can't see where it comes from. You can't tell where the fields of Eden are, but you believe they're somewhere, and that you'll get to them some day. So say your prayers, believe all you can, don't ask questions, and don't try to answer 'em; and remember that Charley Steele preached to you the fear of the Lord at the Cote Dorion, and wound up the service with the fine old hymn: "'I'll away, I'll away, to the promised land--'" A whole verse of this camp-meeting hymn he sang in an ominous silence now, for it had crept into their minds that the hymn they had previously sung so loudly was a Protestant hymn, and that this was another Protestant hymn of the rankest sort. When he stopped singing and pushed over his glass for Suzon to fill it, the crowd were noiseless and silent for a moment, for the spell was still on them. They did not recover themselves until they saw him lift his glass to Suzon, his back on them, again insolently oblivious of them all. They could not see his face, but they could see the face of Suzon Charlemagne, and they misunderstood the light in her eye, the flush on her cheek. They set it down to a personal interest in Charley Steele. Charley had, however, thrown a spell over her in another fashion. In her eye, in her face, was admiration, the sympathy of a strong intelligence, the wonder of a mind in the presence of its master, but they thought they saw passion, love, desire, in her face--in the face of their Suzon, the pride of the river, the flower of the Cote Dorion. Not alone because Charley had blasphemed against religion did they hate him at this moment, but because every heart was scorched with envy and jealousy--the black unreasoning jealousy which the unlettered, the dull, the crude, feels for the lettered, the able and the outwardly refined. Charley was back again in the unfriendly climate of his natural life. Suzon felt the troubled air round them, saw the dark looks on the faces of the men, and was at once afraid and elated. She loved the glow of excitement, she had a keen sense of danger, but she also felt that in any possible trouble to-night the chances of escape would be small for the man before her. He pushed out his glass again. She mechanically poured brandy into it. "You've had more than enough," she said, in a low voice. "Every man knows his own capacity, Suzon. Love me little, love me long," he added, again raising his glass to her, as the men behind suddenly moved forward upon the bar. "Don't--for God's sake!" she whispered hastily. "Do go--or there'll be trouble!" The black face of Theophile Charlemagne was also turned anxiously in Charley's direction as he pushed out glasses for those who called for liquor. "Oh, do, do go--like a good soul!" Suzon urged. Charley laughed disdainfully. "Like a good soul!" Had it come to this, that Suzon pleaded with him as if he were a foolish, obstreperous child! "Faithless and unbelieving!" he said to Suzon in English. "Didn't I play my game well a minute ago--eh--eh--eh, Suzon?" "Oh, yes, yes, M'sieu'," she replied in English; "but now you are differen' and so are they. You must goah, so, you must!" He laughed again, a queer sardonic sort of laugh, yet he put out his hand and touched the girl's arm lightly with a forefinger. "I am a Quaker born; I never stir till the spirit moves me," he said. He scented conflict, and his spirits rose at the thought. Some reckless demon of adventure possessed him; some fatalistic courage was upon him. So far as the eye could see, the liquor he had drunk had done no more than darken the blue of his eye, for his hand was steady, his body was well poised, his look was direct; there seemed some strange electric force in leash behind his face, a watchful yet nonchalant energy of spirit, joined to an indolent pose of body. As the girl looked at him something of his unreckoning courage passed into her. Somehow she believed in him, felt that by some wild chance he might again conquer this truculent element now almost surrounding him. She spoke quickly to her step-father. "He won't go. What can we do?" "You go, and he'll follow," said Theophile, who didn't want a row-- a dangerous row-in his house. "No, he won't," she said; "and I don't believe they'd let him follow me." There was no time to say more. The crowd were insistent and restless now. They seemed to have a plan of campaign, and they began to carry it out. First one, then another, brushed roughly against Charley. Cool and collected, he refused to accept the insults. "Pardon," he said, in each case; "I am very awkward." He smiled all the time; he seemed waiting. The pushing and crowding became worse. "Don't mention it," he said. "You should learn how to carry your liquor in your legs." Suddenly he changed from apology to attack. He talked at them with a cheerful scorn, a deprecating impertinence, as though they were children; he chided them with patient imprecations. This confused them for a moment and cleared a small space around him. There was no defiance in his aspect, no aggressiveness of manner; he was as quiet as though it were a drawing-room and he a master of monologues. He hurled original epithets at them in well-cadenced French, he called them what he listed, but in language which half-veiled the insults--the more infuriating to his hearers because they did not perfectly understand. Suddenly a low-set fellow, with brass rings in his ears, pulled off his coat and threw it on the floor. "I'll eat your heart," he said, and rolled up blue sleeves along a hairy arm. "My child," said Charley, "be careful what you eat. Take up your coat again, and learn that it is only dogs that delight to bark and bite. Our little hands were never made to tear each other's eyes." The low-set fellow made a rush forward, but Rouge Gosselin held him back. "No, no, Jougon," he said. "I have the oldest grudge." Jougon struggled with Rouge Gosselin. "Be good, Jougon," said Charley. As he spoke a heavy tumbler flew from the other side of the room. Charley saw the missile thrown and dodged. It missed his temple, but caught the rim of his straw hat, carrying it off his head, and crashed into a lantern hanging against the wall, putting out the light. The room was only lighted now by another lantern on the other side of the room. Charley stooped, picked up his hat, and put it on his head again coolly. "Stop that, or I'll clear the bar!" cried Theophile Charlemagne, taking the pistol Suzon slipped into his hand. The sight of the pistol drove the men wild, and more than one snatched at the knife in his belt. At that instant there pushed forward into the clear space beside Charley Steele the great figure of Jake Hough, the horse-doctor, the strongest man, and the most popular Englishman on the river. He took his stand by Charley, raised his great hand, smote him in the small of his back, and said: "By the Lord, you have sand, and I'll stand by you!" Under the friendly but heavy stroke the monocle shot from Charley's eye the length of the string. Charley lifted it again, put it up, and staring hard at Jake, coolly said: "I beg your pardon--but have I ever--been introduced to you?" What unbelievable indifference to danger, what disdain to friendliness, made Charley act as he did is a matter for speculation. It was throwing away his one chance; it was foppery on the scaffold--an incorrigible affectation or a relentless purpose. Jake Hough strode forward into the crowd, rage in his eye. "Go to the devil, then, and take care of yourself!" he said roughly. "Please," said Charley. They were the last words he uttered that night, for suddenly the other lantern went out, there was a rush and a struggle, a muffled groan, a shrill woman's voice, a scramble and hurrying feet, a noise of a something splashing heavily in the water outside. When the lights were up again the room was empty, save for Theophile Charlemagne, Jake Hough, and Suzon, who lay in a faint on the floor with a nasty bruise on her forehead. A score of river-drivers were scattering into the country-side, and somewhere in the black river, alive or dead, was Charley Steele. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: He had had acquaintances, but never friendships, and never loves He has wheeled his nuptial bed into the street He left his fellow-citizens very much alone I am only myself when I am drunk I should remember to forget it Liquor makes me human Nervous legs at a gallop So say your prayers, believe all you can, don't ask questions Was not civilisation a mistake Who knows! THE RIGHT OF WAY By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. IX. OLD DEBTS FOR NEW X. THE WAY IN AND THE WAY OUT XI. THE RAISING OF THE CURTAIN XII. THE COMING OF ROSALIE XIII. HOW CHARLEY WENT ADVENTURING, AND WHAT HE FOUND XIV. ROSALIE, CHARLEY, AND THE MAN THE WIDOW PLOMONDON JILTED XV. THE MARK IN THE PAPER XVI. MADAME DAUPHIN HAS A MISSION XVII. THE TAILOR MAKES A MIDNIGHT FORAY XVIII. THE STEALING OF THE CROSS CHAPTER IX OLD DEBTS FOR NEW Jo Portugtais was breaking the law of the river--he was running a little raft down the stream at night, instead of tying up at sundown and camping on the shore, or sitting snugly over cooking-pot by the little wooden caboose on his raft. But defiance of custom and tradition was a habit with Jo Portugais. He had lived in his own way many a year, and he was likely to do so till the end, though he was a young man yet. He had many professions, or rather many gifts, which he practised as it pleased him. He was river-driver, woodsman, hunter, carpenter, guide, as whim or opportunity came to him. On the evening when Charley Steele met with his mishap he was a river-driver--or so it seemed. He had been up nor'west a hundred and fifty miles, and he had come down-stream alone with his raft- which in the usual course should take two men to guide it--through slides, over rapids, and in strong currents. Defying the code of the river, with only one small light at the rear of his raft, he voyaged the swift current towards his home, which, when he arrived opposite the Cote Dorion, was still a hundred miles below. He had watched the lights in the river-drivers' camps, had seen the men beside the fires, and had drifted on, with no temptation to join in the songs floating out over the dark water, to share the contents of the jugs raised to boisterous lips, or to thrust his hand into the greasy cooking-pot for a succulent bone. He drifted on until he came opposite Charlemagne's tavern. Here the current carried him inshore. He saw the dim light, he saw dark figures in the bar-room, he even got a glimpse of Suzon Charlemagne. He dropped the house behind quickly, but looked back, leaning on the oar and thinking how swift was the rush of the current past the tavern. His eyes were on the tavern door and the light shining through it. Suddenly the light disappeared, and the door vanished into darkness. He heard a scuffle, and then a heavy splash. "There's trouble there," said Jo Portugais, straining his eyes through the night, for a kind of low roar, dwindling to a loud whispering, and then a noise of hurrying feet, came down the stream, and he could dimly see dark figures running away into the night by different paths. "Some dirty work, very sure," said Jo Portugais, and his eyes travelled back over the dark water like a lynx's, for the splash was in his ear, and a sort of prescience possessed him. He could not stop his raft. It must go on down the current, or be swerved to the shore, to be fastened. "God knows, it had an ugly sound," said Jo Portugais, and again strained his eyes and ears. He shifted his position and took another oar, where the raft-lantern might not throw a reflection upon the water. He saw a light shine again through the tavern doorway, then a dark object block the light, and a head thrust forward towards the river as though listening. At this moment he fancied he saw something in the water nearing him. He stretched his neck. Yes, there was something. "It's a man. God save us--was it murder?" said Jo Portugais, and shuddered. "Was it murder?" The body moved more swiftly than the raft. There was a hand thrust up-- two hands. "He's alive!" said Jo Portugais, and, hurriedly pulling round his waist a rope tied to a timber, jumped into the water. Three minutes later, on the raft, he was examining a wound in the head of an insensible man. As his hand wandered over the body towards the heart, it touched something that rattled against a button. He picked it up mechanically and held it to the light. It was an eye-glass. "My God!" said Jo Portugais, and peered into the man's face. "It's him." Then he remembered the last words the man had spoken to him-- "Get out of my sight. You're as guilty as hell!" But his heart yearned towards the man nevertheless. CHAPTER X THE WAY IN AND THE WAY OUT In his own world of the parish of Chaudiere Jo Portugais was counted a widely travelled man. He had adventured freely on the great rivers and in the forests, and had journeyed up towards Hudson's Bay farther than any man in seven parishes. Jo's father and mother had both died in one year--when he was twenty- five. That year had turned him from a clean-shaven cheerful boy into a morose bearded man who looked forty, for it had been marked by his disappearance from Chaudiere and his return at the end of it, to find his mother dead and his father dying broken-hearted. What had driven Jo from home only his father knew; what had happened to him during that year only Jo himself knew, and he told no one, not even his dying father. A mystery surrounded him, and no one pierced it. He was a figure apart in Chaudiere parish. A dreadful memory that haunted him, carried him out of the village, which clustered round the parish church, into Vadrome Mountain, three miles away, where he lived apart from all his kind. It was here he brought the man with the eye-glass one early dawn, after two nights and two days on the river, pulling him up the long hill in a low cart with his strong faithful dogs, hitching himself with them and toiling upwards through the dark. In his three-roomed hut he laid his charge down upon a pile of bear-skins, and tended him with a strange gentleness, bathing the wound in the head and binding it again and again. The next morning the sick man opened his eyes heavily. He then began fumbling mechanically on his breast. At last his fingers found his monocle. He feebly put it to his eye, and looked at Jo in a strange, questioning, uncomprehending way. "I beg--your pardon," he said haltingly, "have I ever--been intro--" Suddenly his eyes closed, a frown gathered on his forehead. After a minute his eyes opened again, and he gazed with painful, pathetic seriousness at Jo. This grew to a kind of childish terror; then slowly, as a shadow passes, the perplexity, anxiety and terror cleared away, and left his forehead calm, his eyes unvexed and peaceful. The monocle dropped, and he did not heed it. At length he said wearily, and with an incredibly simple dependence: "I am thirsty now." Jo lifted a wooden bowl to his lips, and he drank, drank, drank to repletion. When he had finished he patted Jo's shoulder. "I am always thirsty," he said. "I shall be hungry too. I always am." Jo brought him some milk and bread in a bowl. When the sick man had eaten and drunk the bowlful to the last drop and crumb, he lay back with a sigh of content, but trembling from weakness and the strain, though Jo's hand had been under his head, and he had been fed like a little child. All day he lay and watched Jo as he worked, as he came and went. Sometimes he put his hand to his head and said to Jo: "It hurts." Then Jo would cool the wound with fresh water from the mountain spring, and he would drag down the bowl to drink from it greedily. It was as though he could never get enough water to drink. So the first day in the hut at Vadrome Mountain passed without questioning on the part of either Charley Steele or his host. With good reason. Jo Portugais saw that memory was gone; that the past was blotted out. He had watched that first terrible struggle of memory to reassert itself, as the eyes mechanically looked out upon new and strange surroundings, but it was only the automatic habit of the sight, the fumbling of the blind soul in its cell-fumbling for the latch which it could not find, for the door which would not open. The first day on the raft, as Charley had opened his eyes upon the world again after that awful night at the Cote Dorion, Jo. had seen that same blank uncomprehending look--as it were, the first look of a mind upon the world. This time he saw, and understood what he saw, and spoke as men speak, but with no knowledge or memory behind it--only the involuntary action of muscle and mind repeated from the vanished past. Charley Steele was as a little child, and having no past, and comprehending in the present only its limited physical needs and motions, he had no hope, no future, no understanding. In three days he was upon his feet, and in four he walked out of doors and followed Jo into the woods, and watched him fell a tree and do a woodsman's work. Indoors he regarded all Jo did with eager interest and a pleased, complacent look, and readily did as he was told. He seldom spoke--not above three or four times a day, and then simply and directly, and only concerning his wants. From first to last he never asked a question, and there was never any inquiry by look or word. A hundred and twenty miles lay between him and his old home, between him and Kathleen and Billy and Jean Jolicoeur's saloon, but between him and his past life the unending miles of eternity intervened. He was removed from it as completely as though he were dead and buried. A month went by. Sometimes Jo went down to the village below, and then, at first, he locked the door of the house behind him upon Charley. Against this Charley made no motion and said no word, but patiently awaited Jo's return. So it was that, at last, Jo made no attempt to lock the door, but with a nod or a good-bye left him alone. When Charley saw him returning he would go to meet him, and shake hands with him, and say "Good-day," and then would come in with him and help him get supper or do the work of the house. Since Charley came no one had visited the house, for there were no paths beyond it, and no one came to the Vadrome Mountain, save by chance. But after two months had gone the Cure came. Twice a year the Cure made it a point to visit Jo in the interests of his soul, though the visits came to little, for Jo never went to confession, and seldom to mass. On this occasion the Cure arrived when Jo was out in the woods. He discovered Charley. Charley made no answer to his astonished and friendly greeting, but watched him with a wide-eyed anxiety till the Cure seated himself at the door to await Jo's coming. Presently, as he sat there, Charley, who had studied his face as a child studies the unfamiliar face of a stranger, brought him a bowl of bread and milk and put it in his hands. The Cure smiled and thanked him, and Charley smiled in return and said: "It is very good." As the Cure ate, Charley watched him with satisfaction, and nodded at him kindly. When Jo came he lied to the Cure. He said he had found Charley wandering in the woods, with a wound in his head, and had brought him home with him and cared for him. Forty miles away he had found him. The Cure was perplexed. What was there to do? He believed what Jo said. So far as he knew, Jo had never lied to him before, and he thought he understood Jo's interest in this man with the look of a child and no memory: Jo's life was terribly lonely; he had no one to care for, and no one cared for him; here was what might comfort him! Through this helpless man might come a way to Jo's own good. So he argued with himself. What to do? Tell the story to the world by writing to the newspaper at Quebec? Jo pooh-poohed this. Wait till the man's memory came back? Would it come back--what chance was there of its ever coming back? Jo said that they ought to wait and see--wait awhile, and then, if his memory did not return, they would try to find his friends, by publishing his story abroad. Chaudiere was far from anywhere: it knew little of the world, and the world knew naught of it, and this was a large problem for the Cure. Perhaps Jo was right, he thought. The man was being well cared for, and what more could be wished at the moment? The Cure was a simple man, and when Jo urged that if the sick man could get well anywhere in the world it would be at Vadrome Mountain in Chaudiere, the Cure's parochial pride was roused, and he was ready to believe all Jo said. He also saw reason in Jo's request that the village should not be told of the sick man's presence. Before he left, the Cure knelt down and prayed, "for the good of this poor mortal's soul and body." As he prayed, Charley knelt down also, and kept his eyes-calm unwondering eyes-full fixed on the good M. Loisel, whose grey hair, thin peaceful face, and dark brown eyes made a noble picture of patience and devotion. When the Cure shook him by the hand, murmuring in good-bye, "God be gracious to thee, my son," Charley nodded in a friendly way. He watched the departing figure till it disappeared over the crest of the hill. This day marked an epoch in the solitude of the hut on Vadrome Mountain. Jo had an inspiration. He got a second set of carpenter's tools, and straightway began to build a new room to the house. He gave the extra set of tools to Charley with an encouraging word. For the first time since he had been brought here, Charley's face took on a look of interest. In half-an-hour he was at work, smiling and perspiring, and quickly learning the craft. He seldom spoke, but he sometimes laughed a mirthful, natural boy's laugh of good spirits and contentment. From that day his interest in things increased, and before two months went round, while yet it was late autumn, he looked in perfect health. He ate moderately, drank a great deal of water, and slept half the circle of the clock each day. His skin was like silk; the colour of his face was as that of an apple; he was more than ever Beauty Steele. The Cure came two or three times, and Charley spoke to him but never held conversation, and no word concerning the past ever passed his tongue, nor did he have memory of what was said to him from one day to the next. A hundred ways Jo had tried to rouse his memory. But the words Cote Dorion had no meaning to him, and he listened blankly to all names and phrases once so familiar. Yet he spoke French and English in a slow, passive, involuntary way. All was automatic, mechanical. The weeks again wore on, and autumn became winter, and then at last one day the Cure came, bringing his brother, a great Parisian surgeon lately arrived from France on a short visit. The Cure had told his brother the story, and had been met by a keen, astonished interest in the unknown man on Vadrome Mountain. A slight pressure on the brain from accident had before now produced loss of memory--the great man's professional curiosity was aroused: he saw a nice piece of surgical work ready to his hand; he asked to be taken to Vadrome Mountain. Now the Cure had lived long out of the world, and was not in touch with the swift-minded action and adventuring intellects of such men as his brother, Marcel Loisel. Was it not tempting Providence, a surgical operation? He was so used to people getting ill and getting well without a doctor--the nearest was twenty miles distant--or getting ill and dying in what seemed a natural and preordained way, that to cut open a man's head and look into his brain, and do this or that to his skull, seemed almost sinful. Was it not better to wait and see if the poor man would not recover in God's appointed time? In answer to his sensitively eager and diverse questions, Marcel Loisel replied that his dear Cure was merely mediaeval, and that he had sacrificed his mental powers on the altar of a simple faith, which might remove mountains but was of no value in a case like this, where, clearly, surgery was the only providence. At this the Cure got to his feet, came over, laid his hand on his brother's shoulder, and said, with tears in his eyes: "Marcel, you shock me. Indeed you shock me!" Then he twisted a knot in his cassock cords, and added "Come then, Marcel. We will go to him. And may God guide us aright!" That afternoon the two grey-haired men visited Vadrome Mountain, and there they found Charley at work in the little room that the two men had built. Charley nodded pleasantly when the Cure introduced his brother, but showed no further interest at first. He went on working at the cupboard under his hand. His cap was off and his hair was a little rumpled where the wound had been, for he had a habit of rubbing the place now and then--an abstracted, sensitive motion--although he seemed to suffer no pain. The surgeon's eyes fastened on the place, and as Charley worked and his brother talked, he studied the man, the scar, the contour of the head. At last he came up to Charley and softly placed his fingers on the scar, feeling the skull. Charley turned quickly. There was something in the long, piercing look of the surgeon which seemed to come through limitless space to the sleeping and imprisoned memory of Charley's sick mind. A confused, anxious, half-fearful look crept into the wide blue eyes. It was like a troubled ghost, flitting along the boundaries of sight and sense, and leaving a chill and a horrified wonder behind. The surgeon gazed on, and the trouble in Charley's eye passed to his face, stayed an instant. Then he turned away to Jo Portugais. "I am thirsty now," he said, and he touched his lips in the way he was wont to do in those countless ages ago, when, millions upon millions of miles away, people said: "There goes Charley Steele!" "I am thirsty now," and that touch of the lip with the tongue, were a revelation to the surgeon. A half-hour later he was walking homeward with the Cure. Jo accompanied them for a distance. As they emerged into the wider road-paths that began half-way down the mountain, the Cure, who had watched his brother's face for a long time in silence, said: "What is in your mind, Marcel?" The surgeon turned with a half-smile. "He is happy now. No memory, no conscience, no pain, no responsibility, no trouble--nothing behind or before. Is it good to bring him back?" The Cure had thought it all over, and he had wholly changed his mind since that first talk with his brother. "To save a mind, Marcel!" he said. "Then to save a soul?" suggested the surgeon. "Would he thank me?" "It is our duty to save him." "Body and mind and soul, eh? And if I look after the body and the mind?" "His soul is in God's hands, Marcel." "But will he thank me? How can you tell what sorrows, what troubles, he has had? What struggles, temptations, sins? He has none now, of any sort; not a stain, physical or moral." "That is not life, Marcel." "Well, well, you have changed. This morning it was I who would, and you hesitated." "I see differently now, Marcel." The surgeon put a hand playfully on his brother's shoulder. "Did you think, my dear Prosper, that I should hesitate? Am I a sentimentalist? But what will he say? "We need not think of that, Marcel." "But yet suppose that with memory come again sin and shame--even crime?" "We will pray for him." "But if he isn't a Catholic?" "One must pray for sinners," said the Curb, after a silence. This time the surgeon laid a hand on the shoulder of his brother affectionately. "Upon my soul, dear Prosper, you almost persuade me to be reactionary and mediaeval." The Curb turned half uneasily towards Jo, who was following at a little distance. This seemed hardly the sort of thing for him to hear. "You had better return now, Jo," he said. "As you wish, M'sieu'," Jo answered, then looked inquiringly at the surgeon. "In about five days, Portugais. Have you a steady hand and a quick eye?" Jo spread out his hands in deprecation, and turned to the Curb, as though for him to answer. "Jo is something of a physician and surgeon too, Marcel. He has a gift. He has cured many in the parish with his herbs and tinctures, and he has set legs and arms successfully." The surgeon eyed Jo humorously, but kindly. "He is probably as good a doctor as some of us. Medicine is a gift, surgery is a gift and an art. You shall hear from me, Portugais." He looked again keenly at Jo. "You have not given him 'herbs and tinctures'?" "Nothing, M'sieu'." "Very sensible. Good-day, Portugais." "Good-day, my son," said the priest, and raised his fingers in benediction, as Jo turned and quickly retraced his steps. "Why did you ask him if he had given the poor man any herbs or tinctures, Marcel?" said the priest. "Because those quack tinctures have whiskey in them." "What do you mean?" "Whiskey in any form would be bad for him," the surgeon answered evasively. But to himself he kept saying: "The man was a drunkard--he was a drunkard." CHAPTER XI THE RAISING OF THE CURTAIN M. Marcel Loisel did his work with a masterly precision, with the aid of his brother and Portugais. The man under the instruments, not wholly insensible, groaned once or twice. Once or twice, too, his eyes opened with a dumb hunted look, then closed as with an irresistible weariness. When the work was over, and every stain or sign of surgery removed, sleep came down on the bed--a deep and saturating sleep, which seemed to fill the room with peace. For hours the surgeon sat beside the couch, now and again feeling the pulse, wetting the hot lips, touching the forehead with his palm. At last, with a look of satisfaction, he came forward to where Jo and the Cure sat beside the fire. "It is all right," he said. "Let him sleep as long as he will." He turned again to the bed. "I wish I could stay to see the end of it. Is there no chance, Prosper?" he added to the priest. "Impossible, Marcel. You must have sleep. You have a seventy-mile drive before you to-morrow, and sixty the next day. You can only reach the port now by starting at daylight to-morrow." So it was that Marcel Loisel, the great surgeon, was compelled to leave Chaudiere before he knew that the memory of the man who had been under his knife had actually returned to him. He had, however, no doubt in his own mind, and he was confident that there could be no physical harm from the operation. Sleep was the all-important thing. In it lay the strength for the shock of the awakening--if awakening of memory there was to be. Before he left he stooped over Charley and said musingly: "I wonder what you will wake up to, my friend?" Then he touched the wound with a light caressing finger. "It was well done, well done," he murmured proudly. A moment afterwards he was hurrying down the hill to the open road, where a cariole awaited the Cure and himself. For a day and a half Charley slept, and Jo watched him with an affectionate solicitude. Once or twice, becoming anxious, because of the heavy breathing and the motionless sleep, he had forced open the teeth, and poured a little broth between. Just before dawn on the second morning, worn out and heavy with slumber, Jo lay down by the piled-up fire and dropped into a sleep that wrapped him like a blanket, folding him away into a drenching darkness. For a time there was a deep silence, troubled only by Jo's deep breathing, which seemed itself like the pulse of the silence. Charley appeared not to be breathing at all. He was lying on his back, seemingly lifeless. Suddenly on the snug silence there was a sharp sound. A tree outside snapped with the frost. Charley awoke. The body seemed not to awake, for it did not stir, but the eyes opened wide and full, looking straight before them--straight up to the brown smoke-stained rafters, along which were ranged guns and fishing-tackle, axes and bear-traps. Full clear blue eyes, healthy and untired as a child's fresh from an all-night's drowse, they looked and looked. Yet, at first, the body did not stir; only the mind seemed to be awakening, the soul creeping out from slumber into the day. Presently, however, as the eyes gazed, there stole into them a wonder, a trouble, an anxiety. For a moment they strained at the rafters and the crude weapons and implements there, then the body moved, quickly, eagerly, and turned to see the flickering shadows made by the fire and the simple order of the room. A minute more, and Charley was sitting on the side of his couch, dazed and staring. This hut, this fire, the figure by the hearth in a sound sleep-his hand went to his head: it felt the bandage there! He remembered now! Last night at the Cote Dorion! Last night he had talked with Suzon Charlemagne at the Cote Dorion; last night he had drunk harder than he had ever drunk in his life, he had defied, chaffed, insulted the river-drivers. The whole scene came back: the faces of Suzon and her father; Suzon's fingers on his for an instant; the glass of brandy beside him; the lanterns on the walls; the hymn he sang; the sermon he preached--he shuddered a little; the rumble of angry noises round him; the tumbler thrown; the crash of the lantern, and only one light left in the place! Then Jake Hough and his heavy hand, the flying monocle, and his disdainful, insulting reply; the sight of the pistol in the hand of Suzon's father; then a rush, a darkness, and his own fierce plunge towards the door, beyond which were the stars and the cool night and the dark river. Curses, hands that battered and tore at him, the doorway reached, and then a blow on the head and--falling, falling, falling, and distant noises growing more distant, and suddenly and sweetly--absolute silence. Again he shuddered. Why? He remembered that scene in his office yesterday with Kathleen, and the one later with Billy. A sensitive chill swept all over him, making his flesh creep, and a flush sped over his face from chin to brow. To-day he must pick up all these threads again, must make things right for Billy, must replace the money he had stolen, must face Kathleen again he shuddered. Was he at the Cote Dorion still? He looked round him. No, this was not the sort of house to be found at the Cote Dorion. Clearly this was the hut of a hunter. Probably he had been fished out of the river by this woodsman and brought here. He felt his head. The wound was fresh and very sore. He had played for death, with an insulting disdain, yet here he was alive. Certainly he was not intended to be drowned or knifed--he remembered the knives he saw unsheathed--or kicked or pummelled into the hereafter. It was about ten o'clock when he had had his "accident"--he affected a smile, yet somehow he did not smile easily--it must be now about five, for here was the morning creeping in behind the deer-skin blind at the window. Strange that he felt none the worse for his mishap, and his tongue was as clean and fresh as if he had been drinking milk last night, and not very doubtful brandy at the Cote Dorion. No fever in his hands, no headache, only the sore skull, so well and tightly bandaged but a wonderful thirst, and an intolerable hunger. He smiled. When had he ever been hungry for breakfast before? Here he was with a fine appetite: it was like coals of fire heaped on his head by Nature for last night's business at the Cote Dorion. How true it was that penalties did not always come with-- indiscretions. Yet, all at once, he flushed again to the forehead, for a curious sense of shame flashed through his whole being, and one Charley Steele--the Charley Steele of this morning, an unknown, unadventuring, onlooking Charley Steele--was viewing with abashed eyes the Charley Steele who had ended a doubtful career in the coarse and desperate proceedings of last night. With a nervous confusion he sought refuge in his eye-glass. His fingers fumbled over his waistcoat, but did not find it. The weapon of defence and attack, the symbol of interrogation and incomprehensibility, was gone. Beauty Steele was under the eyes of another self, and neither disdain, nor contempt, nor the passive stare, were available. He got suddenly to his feet, and started forward, as though to find refuge from himself. The abrupt action sent the blood to his head, and feeling a blindness come over him, he put both hands up to his temples, and sank back on the couch, dizzy and faint. His motions waked Jo Portugais, who scrambled from the floor, and came towards him. "M'sieu'," he said, "you must not. You are faint." He dropped his hands supportingly to Charley's shoulders. Charley nodded, but did not yet look up. His head throbbed sorely. "Water--please!" he said. In an instant Jo was beside him again, with a bowl of fresh water at his lips. He drank, drank, drank, until the great bowl was drained to the last drop. "Whew! That was good!" he said, and looked up at Jo with a smile. "Thank you, my friend; I haven't the honour of your acquaintance, but--" He stopped suddenly and stared at Jo. Inquiry, mystification, were in his look. "Have I ever seen you before?" he said. "Who knows, M'sieu'!" Since Jo had stood before Charley in the dock near six years ago he had greatly changed. The marks of smallpox, a heavy beard, grey hair, and solitary life had altered him beyond Charley's recognition. Jo could hardly speak. His legs were trembling under him, for now he knew that Charley Steele was himself again. He was no longer the simple, quiet man-child of three days ago, and of these months past, but the man who had saved him from hanging, to whom he owed a debt he dare not acknowledge. Jo's brain was in a muddle. Now that the great crisis was over, now that the expected thing had come, and face to face with the cure, he had neither tongue, nor strength, nor wit. His words stuck in his throat where his heart was, and for a minute his eyes had a kind of mist before them. Meanwhile Charley's eyes were upon him, curious, fixed, abstracted. "Is this your house?" "It is, M'sieu'." "You fished me out of the river by the Cote Dorion?" He still held his head with his hands, for it throbbed so, but his eyes were intent on his companion. "Yes, M'sieu'." Charley's hand mechanically fumbled for his monocle. Jo turned quickly to the wall, and taking it by its cord from the nail where it had been for these long months, handed it over. Charley took it and mechanically put it in his eye. "Thank you, my friend," he said. "Have I been conscious at all since you rescued me last night?" he asked. "In a way, M'sieu'." "Ah, well, I can't remember, but it was very kind of you--I do thank you very much. Do you think you could find me something to eat? I beg your pardon--it isn't breakfast-time, of course, but I was never so hungry in my life!" "In a minute, M'sieu'--in one minute. But lie down, you must lie down a little. You got up too quick, and it makes your head throb. You have had nothing to eat." "Nothing, since yesterday noon, and very little then. I didn't eat anything at the Cote Dorion, I remember." He lay back on the couch and closed his eyes. The throbbing in his head presently stopped, and he felt that if he ate something he could go to sleep again, it was so restful in this place--a whole day's sleep and rest, how good it would be after last night's racketing! Here was primitive and material comfort, the secret of content, if you liked! Here was this poor hunter-fellow, with enough to eat and to drink, earning it every day by every day's labour, and, like Robinson Crusoe no doubt, living in a serene self- sufficiency and an elysian retirement. Probably he had no responsibilities in the world, with no one to say him nay, himself only to consider in all the universe: a divine conception of adequate life. Yet himself, Charley Steele, an idler, a waster, with no purpose in life, with scarcely the necessity to earn his bread-never, at any rate, until lately--was the slave of the civilisation to which he belonged. Was civilisation worth the game? His hand involuntarily went to his head. It changed the course of his thoughts. He must go back to-day to put Billy's crime right, to replace the trust-moneys Billy had taken by forging his brother-in-law's name. Not a moment must be lost. No doubt he was within driving distance of his office, and, bandaged head or no bandaged head, last night's disgraceful doings notwithstanding, it was his duty to face the wondering eyes--what did he care for wondering eyes? hadn't he been making eyes wonder all his life?--face the wondering eyes in the little city, and set a crooked business straight. Fool and scoundrel certainly Billy was, but there was Kathleen! His lips tightened; he had a strange anxious flutter of the heart. When had his heart fluttered like this? When had he ever before considered Kathleen's feelings as to his personal conduct so delicately? Well, since yesterday he did feel it, and a sudden sense of pity sprang up in him--vague, shamefaced pity, which belied the sudden egotistical flourish with which he put his monocle to his eye and tried futilely to smile in the old way. He had lain with his eyes closed. They opened now, and he saw his host spreading a newspaper as a kind of cloth on a small rough table, and putting some food upon it-bread, meat, and a bowl of soup. It was thoughtful of this man to make his soup overnight-he saw Jo lift it from beside the fire where it had been kept hot. A good fellow-an excellent fellow, this woodsman. His head did not throb now, and he drew himself up slowly on his elbow- then, after a moment, lifted himself to a sitting posture. "What is your name, my friend?" he said. "Jo Portugais, M'sieu'," Jo answered, and brought a candle and put it on the table, then lifted the tin-plate from over the bowl of savoury soup. Never before had Charley Steele sat down to such a breakfast. A roll and a cup of coffee had been enough, and often too much, for him. Yet now he could not wait to eat the soup with a spoon, but lifted the bowl and took a long draught of it, and set it down with a sigh of content. Then he broke bread into the soup--large pieces of black oat bread--until the bowl was a mass of luscious pulp. This he ate almost ravenously, his eye wandering avidly the while to the small piece of meat beside the bowl. What meat was it? It looked like venison, yet summer was not the time for venison. What did it matter! Jo sat on a bench beside the fire, his face turned towards his guest, dreading the moment when the man he had nursed and cared for, with whom he had eaten and drunk for so long, should know the truth about himself. He could not tell him all there was to tell, he was taking another means of letting him know. Charley did not speak. Hunger was a new sensation, a delicious thing, too good to be broken by talking. He ate till he had cleared away the last crumbs of bread and meat and drunk the last drop of soup. He looked at the woodsman as though wondering if he would bring more. Jo evidently thought he had had enough, for he did not move. Charley's glance withdrew from Jo, and busied itself with the few crumbs remaining upon the table. He saw a little piece of bread on the floor. He picked it up and ate it with relish, laughing to himself. "How long will it take us to get to town? Can we do it this morning?" "Not this morning, M'sieu'," said Jo, in a sort of hoarse whisper. "How many hours would it take?" He was gathering the last crumbs of his feast with his hand, and looking casually down at the newspaper spread as a table-cloth. All at once his hand stopped, his eyes became fixed on a spot in the paper. He gave a hoarse, guttural cry, like an animal in agony. His lips became dry, his hand wiped a blinding mist from his eyes. Jo watched him with an intense alarm and a horrified curiosity. He felt a base coward for not having told Charley what this paper contained. Never had he seen such a look as this. He felt his beads, and told them over and over again, as Charley Steele, in a dry, croaking sort of whisper, read, in letters that seemed monstrous symbols of fire, a record of himself: "To-day, by special license from the civil and ecclesiastical courts [the paragraph in the paper began], was married, at St. Theobald's Church, Mrs. Charles Steele, daughter of the late Hon. Julien Wantage, and niece of the late Eustace Wantage, Esq., to Captain Thomas Fairing, of the Royal Fusileers--" Charley snatched at the top of the paper and read the date "Tenth of February, 18-!" It was August when he was at the Cote Dorion, the 5th August, 18-, and this paper was February 10th, 18-. He read on, in the month-old paper, with every nerve in his body throbbing now: a fierce beating that seemed as if it must burst the heart and the veins: "--Captain Thomas Fairing, of the Royal Fusileers, whose career in our midst has been marked by an honourable sense of public and private duty. Our fellow-citizens will unite with us in congratulating the bride, whose previous misfortunes have only increased the respect in which she is held. If all remember the obscure death of her first husband (though the body was not found, there has never been a doubt of his death), and the subsequent discovery that he had embezzled trust-moneys to the extent of twenty-five thousand dollars, thereby setting the final seal of shame upon a misspent life, destined for brilliant and powerful uses, all have conspired to forget the association of our beautiful and admired townswoman with his career. It is painful to refer to these circumstances, but it is only within the past few days that the estate of the misguided man has been wound up, and the money he embezzled restored to its rightful owners; and it is better to make these remarks now than repeat them in the future, only to arouse painful memories in quarters where we should least desire to wound. "In her new life, blessed by a romantic devotion known and admired by all, Mrs. Fairing and her husband will be followed by the affectionate good wishes of the whole community." The man on the hearth-stone shrank back at the sight of the still, white face, in which the eyes were like sparks of fire. His impulse had been to go over and offer the hand of sympathy to the stricken man, but his simple mind grasped the fact that no one might, with impunity, invade this awful quiet. Charley was frozen in body, but his brain was awake with the heat of "a burning fiery furnace." Seven months of unconscious life-seven months of silence--no sight, no seeing, no knowing; seven months of oblivion, in which the world had buried him out of ken in an unknown grave of infamy! Seven months--and Kathleen was married again to the man she had always loved. To the world he himself was a rogue and thief. Billy had remained silent--Billy, whom he had so befriended, had let decent men heap scorn and reproaches on his memory. Here was what the world thought of him--he read the lines over again, his eyes scorching, but his finger steady, as it traced the lines slowly: "the obscure death . . . . ." "embezzled trustmoneys . . . . ." "the final seal of shame upon a misspent life!" These were the epitaphs on the tombstone of Charley Steele; dead and buried, out of sight, out of repute, soon to be out of mind and out of memory, save as a warning to others--an old example raked out of the dust-bin of time by the scavengers of morality, to toss at all who trod the paths of dalliance. What was there to do? Go back? Go back and knock at Kathleen's door, another Enoch Arden, and say: "I have come to my own again?" Return and tell Tom Fairing to go his way and show his face no more? Break up this union, this marriage of love in which these two rejoiced? Summon Kathleen out of her illegal intercourse with the man who had been true to her all these years? To what end? What had he ever done for her that he might destroy her now? What sort of Spartan tragedy was this, that the woman who had been the victim of circumstances, who had been the slave to a tie he never felt, yet which had been as iron-bound to her, should now be brought out to be mangled body and soul for no fault of her own? What had she done? What had she ever done to give him right to touch so much as a hair of her head? Go back, and bring Billy to justice, and clear his own name? Go back, and send Kathleen's brother, the forger, to jail? What an achievement in justice! Would not the world have a right to say that the only decent thing he could do was to eliminate himself from the equation? What profit for him in the great summing-up, that he was technically innocent of this one thing, and that to establish his innocence he broke a woman's heart and destroyed a boy's life? To what end! It was the murderer coming back as a ghost to avenge himself for being hanged. Suppose he went back--the death's-head at the feast--what would there be for himself afterwards; for any one for whom he was responsible? Living at that price? To die and end it all, to disappear from this petty life where he had done so little, and that little ill? To die? No. There was in him some deep, if obscure, fatalism after all. If he had been meant to die now, why had he not gone to the bottom of the river that yesterday at the Cote Dorion? Why had he been saved by this yokel at the fire, and brought here to lie in oblivion in this mountain hut, wrapped in silence and lost to the world? Why had his brain and senses lain fallow all these months, a vacuous vegetation, an empty consciousness? Was it fate? Did it not seem probable that the Great Machine had, in its automatic movement, tossed him up again on the shores of Time because he had not fallen on the trap-door predestined for his eternal exit? It was clear to him that death by his own hand was futile, and that if there were trap-doors set for him alone, it were well to wait until he trod upon them and fell through in his appointed hour in the movement of the Great Machine. What to do--where to live--how to live? He got slowly to his feet and took a step forward half blindly. The man on the bench stirred. Crossing the room he dropped a hand on the man's shoulder. "Open the blind, my friend." Jo Portugais got to his feet quickly, eyes averted--he did not dare look into Charley's face--and went over and drew back the deer-skin blind. The clear, crisp sunlight of a frosty morning broke gladly into the room. Charley turned and blew out the candle on the table where he had eaten, then walked feebly to the window. Standing on the crest of the mountain the hut looked down through a clearing, flanked by forest trees. It was a goodly scene. The green and frosted foliage of the pines and cedars; the flowery tracery of frost hanging like cobwebs everywhere; the poudre sparkle in the air; the hills of silver and emerald sloping down to the valley miles away, where the village clustered about the great old parish church; the smoke from a hundred chimneys, in purple spirals, rising straight up in the windless air; over all peace and a perfect silence. Charley mechanically fixed his eye-glass and stood with hands resting on the window-sill, looking, looking out upon a new world. At length he turned. "Is there anything I can do for you, M'sieu'?" said Jo huskily. Charley held out his hand and clasped Jo's. "Tell me about all these months," he said. CHAPTER XII THE COMING OF ROSALIE Charley Steele saw himself as he had been through the eyes of another. He saw the work that he had done in the carpentering shed, and had no memory of it. The real Charley Steele had been enveloped in oblivion for seven months. During that time a mild phantom of himself had wandered, as it were in a somnambulistic dream, through the purlieus of life. Open-eyed, but with the soul asleep, all idiosyncrasy laid aside, all acquired impressions and influences vanished, he had been walking in the world with no more complexity of mind than a new-born child, nothing intervening between the sight of the eyes and the original sense. Now, when the real Charley Steele emerged again, the folds of mind and soul unrolling to the million-voiced creation and touched by the antenna of a various civilisation, the phantom Charley was gone once more into obscurity. The real Charley could remember naught of the other, could feel naught, save, as in the stirring industrious day, one remembers that he has dreamed a strange dream the night before, and cannot recall it, though the overpowering sense of it remains. He saw the work of his hands, the things he had made with adze and plane, with chisel and hammer, but nothing seemed familiar save the smell of the glue pot, which brought back in a cloudy impression curious unfamiliar feelings. Sights, sounds, motions, passed in a confused way through his mind as the smell of the glue crept through his nostrils; and he struggled hard to remember. But no--seven months of his life were gone for ever. Yet he knew and felt that a vast change had gone over him, had passed through him. While the soul had lain fallow, while the body had been growing back to childlike health again, and Nature had been pouring into his sick senses her healing balm; while the medicaments of peace and sleep and quiet labour had been having their way with him, he had been reorganised, renewed, flushed of the turgid silt of dissipation. For his sins and weaknesses there had been no gall and vinegar to drink. As Charley stood looking round the workshop, Jo entered, shaking the snow from his moccasined feet. "The Cure, M'sieu' Loisel, has come," he said. Charley turned, and, without a word, followed Jo into the house. There, standing at the window and looking down at the village beneath, was the Cure. As Charley entered, M. Loisel carne forward with outstretched hand. "I am glad to see you well again, Monsieur," he said, and his cool thin hand held Charley's for a moment, as he looked him benignly in the eye. With a kind of instinct as to the course he must henceforth pursue, Charley replied simply, dropping his eye-glass as he met that clear soluble look of the priest--such a well of simplicity he had never before seen. Only naked eye could meet that naked eye, imperfect though his own sight was. "It is good of you to feel so, and to come and tell me so," he answered quietly. "I have been a great trouble, I know." There was none of the old pose in his manner, none of the old cryptic quality in his words. "We were anxious for your sake--and for the sake of your friends, Monsieur." Charley evaded the suggestion. "I cannot easily repay your kindness and that of Jo Portugais, my good friend here," he rejoined. "M'sieu'," replied Jo, his face turned away, and his foot pushing a log on the fire, "you have repaid it." Charley shook his head. "I am in a conspiracy of kindness," he said. "It is all a mystery to me. For why should one expect such treatment from strangers, when, besides all, one can never make any real return, not even to pay for board and lodging!" "'I was a stranger and ye took me in,"' said the Cure, smiling by no means sentimentally. "So said the Friend of the World." Charley looked the Curb steadily in the eyes. He was thinking how simply this man had said these things; as if, indeed, they were part of his life; as though it were usual speech with him, a something that belonged, not an acquired language. There was the old impulse to ask a question, and he put the monocle to his eye, but his lips did not open, and the eye-glass fell again. He had seen familiarity with sacred names and things in the uneducated, in excited revivalists, worked up to a state clairvoyant and conversational with the Creator; but he had never heard an educated man speak as this man did. At last Charley said: "Your brother--Portugais tells me that your brother, the surgeon, has gone away. I should have liked to thank him --if no more." "I have written him of your good recovery. He will be glad, I know. But my brother, from one stand-point--a human stand-point--had scruples. These I did not share, but they were strong in him, Monsieur. Marcel asked himself--" He stopped suddenly and looked towards Jo. Charley saw the look, and said quickly: "Speak plainly. Portugais is my friend." Jo turned slowly towards him, and a light seemed to come to his eyes--a shining something that resolved itself into a dog-like fondness, an utter obedience, a strange intense gratitude. "Marcel asked himself," the Cure continued, "whether you would thank him for bringing you back to--to life and memory. I fear he was trying to see what I should say--I fear so. Marcel said, 'Suppose that he should curse me for it? Who knows what he would be brought back to--to what suffering and pain, perhaps?' Marcel said that." "And you replied, Monsieur le Cure?" "I replied that Nature required you to answer that question for yourself, and whether bitterly or gladly, it was your duty to take up your life and live it out. Besides, it was not you alone that had to be considered. One does not live alone or die alone in this world. There were your friends to consider." "And because I had no friends here, you were compelled to think for me!" answered Charley calmly. "Truth is, it was not a question of my friends, for what I was during those seven months, or what I am now, can make no difference to them." He looked the Cure in the eyes steadily, and as though he would convey his intentions without words. The Curb understood. The habit of listening to the revelations of the human heart had given him something of that clairvoyance which can only be pursued by the primitive mind, unvexed by complexity. "It is, then, as though you had not come to life again? It is as though you had no past, Monsieur?" "It is that, Monsieur." Jo suddenly turned and left the room, for he heard a step on the frosty snow without. "You will remain here, Monsieur?" said the Cure. "I cannot tell." The Cure had the bravery of simple souls with a duty to perform. He fastened his eyes on Charley. "Monsieur, is there any reason why you should not stay here? I ask it now, man to man--not as a priest of my people, but as man to man." Charley did not answer for a moment. He was wondering how he should put his reply. But his look did not waver, and the Cure saw the honesty of the gaze. At length he replied: "If you mean, have I committed any crime which the law may punish?--I answer no, Monsieur. If you mean, have I robbed or killed, or forged--or wronged a woman as men wrong women? No. These, I take it, are the things that matter first. For the rest, you can think of me as badly as you will, or as well, for what I do henceforth is the only thing that really concerns the world, Monsieur le Cure." The Cure came forward and put out his hand with a kindly gesture. "Monsieur, you have suffered," he said. "Never, never at all, Monsieur. Never for a moment, until I was dropped down here like a stone from a sling. I had life by the throat; now it has me there--that is all." "You are not a Catholic, Monsieur?" asked the priest, almost pleadingly, and as though the question had been much on his mind. "No, Monsieur." The Cure made no rejoinder. If he was not a Catholic, what matter what he was? If he was not a Catholic, were he Buddhist, pagan, or Protestant, the position for them personally was the same. "I am very sorry," he said gently. "I might have helped you had you been a Catholic." The eye-glass came like lightning to the eye, and a caustic, questioning phrase was on the tongue, but Charley stopped himself in time. For, apart from all else, this priest had been his friend in calamity, had acted with a charming sensibility. The eye-glass troubled the Cure, and the look on Charley's face troubled him still more, but it passed as Charley said, in a voice as simple as the Cure's own: "You may still help me as you have already done. I give you my word, too"--strange that he touched his lips with his tongue as he did in the old days when his mind turned to Jean Jolicoeur's saloon--"that I will do nothing to cause regret for your humanity and--and Christian kindness." Again the tongue touched the lips--a wave of the old life had swept over him, the old thirst had rushed upon him. Perhaps it was the force of this feeling which made him add, with a curious energy, "I give you my word, Monsieur le Cure." At that moment the door opened and Jo entered. "M'sieu'," he said to Charley, "a registered parcel has come for you. It has been brought by the postmaster's daughter. She will give it to no one but yourself." Charley's face paled, and the Cure's was scarcely less pale. In Charley's mind was the question, Who had discovered his presence here? Was he not, then, to escape? Who should send him parcels through the post? The Cure was perturbed. Was he, then, to know who this man was--his name and history? Was the story of his life now to be told? Charley broke the silence. "Tell the girl to come in." Instantly afterwards the postmaster's daughter entered. The look of the girl's face, at once delicate and rosy with health, almost put the question of the letter out of his mind for an instant. Her dark eyes met his as he came forward with outstretched hand. "This is addressed, as you will see, 'To the Sick Man at the House of Jo Portugais, at Vadrome Mountain.' Are you that person, Monsieur?" she asked. As she handed the parcel, Charley's eyes scanned her face quickly. How did this habitant girl come by this perfect French accent, this refined manner? He did not know the handwriting on the parcel; he hastily tore it open. Inside were a few dozen small packets. Here also was a sheet of paper. He opened and read it quickly. It said: Monsieur, I am not sure that you have recovered your memory and your health, and I am also not sure that in such case you will thank me for my work. If you think I have done you an injury, pray accept my profound apologies. Monsieur, you have been a drunkard. If you would reverse the record now, these powders, taken at opportune moments, will aid you. Monsieur, with every expression of my good- will, and the hope that you will convey to me without reserve your feelings on this delicate matter, I append my address in Paris, and I have the honour to subscribe myself, with high consideration, Monsieur, yours faithfully, MARCEL LOISEL. The others looked at him with varied feelings as he read. Curiosity, inquiry, expectation, were common to them all, but with each was a different personal feeling. The Cure's has been described. Jo Portugais' mind was asking if this meant that the man who had come into his life must now go out of it; and the girl was asking who was this mysterious man, like none she had ever seen or known. Without hesitation Charley handed over the letter to the Cure, who took it with surprise, read it with amazement, and handed it back with a flush on his face. "Thank you," said Charley to the girl. "It is good of you to bring it all this way. May I ask--" "She is Mademoiselle Rosalie Evanturel," said the Cure smiling. "I am Charles Mallard," said Charley slowly. "Thank you. I will go now, Monsieur Mallard," the girl said, lifting her eyes to his face. He bowed. As she turned and went towards the door her eyes met his. She blushed. "Wait, Mademoiselle; I will go back with you," said the Cure kindly. He turned to Charley and held out his hand. "God be with you, Monsieur-- Charles," he said. "Come and see me soon." Remembering that his brother had written that the man was a drunkard, his eyes had a look of pity. This was the man's own secret and his. It was a way to the man's heart; he would use it. As the two went out of the door, the girl looked back. Charley was putting the surgeon's letter into the fire, and did not see her; yet she blushed again. CHAPTER XIII HOW CHARLEY WENT ADVENTURING AND WHAT HE FOUND A week passed. Charley's life was running in a tiny circle, but his mind was compassing large revolutions. The events of the last few days had cut deep. His life had been turned upside down. All his predispositions had been suddenly brought to check, his habits turned upon the flank and routed, his mental postures flung into confusion. He had to start life again; but it could not be in the way of any previous travel of mind or body. The line of cleavage was sharp and wide, and the only connection with the past was in the long-reaching influence of evil habits, which crept from their coverts, now and again, to mock him as his old self had mocked life--to mock him and to tempt him. Through seven months of healthy life for his body, while brain and will were sleeping, the whole man had made long strides towards recreation. But with the renewal of will and mind the old weaknesses, roused by memory, began to emerge intermittently, as water rises from a spring. There was something terrible in this repetition of sensation--the law of habit answering to the machine-like throbbing of memory, as, a kaleidoscope turning, turning, its pictures pass a certain point at fixed intervals--an automatic recurrence. He found himself at times touching his lips with his tongue, and with this act came the dry throat, the hot eye, the restless hand feeling for a glass that eluded his fingers. Twice in one week did this fever surge up in him, and it caught him in those moments when, exhausted by the struggle of his mind to adapt itself to the new conditions, his senses were delicately susceptible. Visions of Jolicoeur's saloon came to his mind's eye. With a singular separateness, a new-developed dual sense, he saw himself standing in the summer heat, looking over to the cool dark doorway of the saloon, and he caught again the smell of the fresh-drawn beer. He was conscious of watching himself do this and that, of seeing himself move here and there. He began to look upon Charley Steele as a man he had known--he, Charles Mallard, had known--while he had to suffer for what Charley Steele had done. Then, all at once, as he was thinking and dreaming and seeing, there would seize upon him the old appetite, coincident with the seizure of his brain by the old sense of cynicism at its worst--such a worst as had made him insult Jake Hough when the rough countryman was ready to take his part that wild night at the Cote Dorion. At such moments life became a conflict--almost a terror--for as yet he had not swung into line with the new order of things. In truth, there was no order of things; for one life was behind him and the new one was not yet decided upon, save that here he would stay--here out of the world, out of the game, far from old associations, cut off, and to be for ever cut off, from all that he had ever known or seen or felt or loved! . . . Loved! When did he ever love? If love was synonymous with unselfishness, with the desire to give greater than the desire to get, then he had never known love. He realised now that he had given Kathleen only what might be given across a dinner-table--the sensuous tribute of a temperament, passionate without true passion or faith or friendship. Kathleen had known that he gave her nothing worth the having; for in some meagre sense she knew what love was, and had given it meagrely, after her nature, to another man, preserving meanwhile the letter of the law, respecting that bond which he had shamed by his excesses. Kathleen was now sitting at another man's table--no, probably at his own table--his, Charley Steele's own table in his own house--the house he had given her by deed of gift the day he died. Tom Fairing was sitting where he used to sit, talking across the table--not as he used to talk--looking into Kathleen's face as he had never looked. He was no more to them than a dark memory. "Well, why should I be more?" he asked himself. "I am dead, if not buried. They think me down among the fishes. My game is done; and when she gets older and understands life better, Kathleen will say, 'Poor Charley--he might have been anything!' She'll be sure to say that some day, for habit and memory go round in a circle and pass the same point again and again. For me--they take me by the throat--" He put his hand up as if to free his throat from a grip, his tongue touched his lips, his hands grew restless. "It comes back on me like a fit of ague, this miserable thirst. If I were within sight of Jolicoeur's saloon, I should be drinking hard this minute. But I'm here, and--" His hand felt his pocket, and he took out the powders the great surgeon had sent him. "He knew--how did he know that I was a drunkard? Does a man carry in his face the tale he would not tell? Jo says I didn't talk of the past, that I never had delirium, that I never said a word to suggest who I was, or where I came from. Then how did the doctor--man know? I suppose every particular habit carries its own signal, and the expert knows the ciphers." He opened the paper containing the powders, and looked round for water, then paused, folded the paper up, and put it in his pocket again. He went over to the window and looked out. His shoulders set square. "No, no, no, not a speck on my tongue!" he said. "What I can't do of my own will is not worth doing. It's too foolish, to yield to the shadow of an old appetite. I play this game alone--here in Chaudiere." He looked out and down. The sweet sun of early spring was shining hard, and the snow was beginning to pack, to hang like a blanket on the branches, to lie like a soft coverlet over all the forest and the fields. Far away on the frozen river were saplings stuck up to show where the ice was safe--a long line of poles from shore to shore--and carioles were hurrying across to the village. Being market-day, the place was alive with the cheerful commerce of the habitant. The bell of the parish church was ringing. The sound of it came up distantly and peacefully. Charley drew a long breath, turned away to a pail of water, filled a dipper half full, and drank it off gaspingly. Then he returned to the window with a look of relief. "That does it," he said. "The horrible thing is gone again--out of my brain and out of my throat." As he stood there, Jo came up the hill with a bundle in his arms. Charley watched him for a moment, half whimsically, half curiously. Yet he sighed once too as Portugais opened the door and came into the room. "Well done, Jo!" said he. "You have 'em?" "Yes, M'sieu'. A good suit, and I believe they'll fit. Old Trudel says it's the best suit he's made in a year. I'm afraid he'll not make many more suits, old Trudel. "He's very bad. When he goes there'll be no tailor--ah, old Trudel will be missed for sure, M'sieu'!" Jo spread the clothes out on the table--a coat, waistcoat, and trousers of fulled cloth, grey and bulky, and smelling of the loom and the tailor's iron. Charley looked at them interestedly, then glanced at the clothes he had on, the suit that had belonged to him last year--grave- clothes. He drew himself up as though rousing from a dream. "Come, Jo, clear out, and you shall have your new habitant in a minute," he said. Portugais left the room, and when he came back, Charley was dressed in the suit of grey fulled cloth. It was loose, but comfortable, and save for the refined face--on which a beard was growing now--and the eye-glass, he might easily have passed for a farmer. When he put on the dog-skin fur cap and a small muffler round his neck, it was the costume of the habitant complete. Yet it was no disguise, for it was part of the life that Charles Mallard, once Charley Steele, should lead henceforth. He turned to the door and opened it. "Good-bye, Portugais," he said. Jo was startled. "Where are you going, M'sieu'?" "To the village." "What to do, M'sieu'?" "Who knows?" "You will come back?" Jo asked anxiously. "Before sundown, Jo. Good-bye!" This was the first long walk he had taken since he had become himself again. The sweet, cold air, with a bracing wind in his face, gave peace to the nerves but now strained and fevered in the fight with appetite. His mind cleared, and he drank in the sunny air and the pungent smell of the balsams. His feet light with moccasins, he even ran a distance, enjoying the glow from a fast-beating pulse. As he came into the high-road, people passed him in carioles and sleighs. Some eyed him curiously. What did he mean to do? What object had he in coming to the village? What did he expect? As he entered the village his pace slackened. He had no destination, no object. He was simply aware that his new life was beginning. He passed a little house on which was a sign, "Narcisse Dauphin, Notary." It gave him a curious feeling. It was the old life before him. "Charles Mallard, Notary?"--No, that was not for him. Everything that reminded him of the past, that brought him in touch with it, must be set aside. He moved on. Should he go to the Cure? No; one thing at a time, and today he wanted his thoughts for himself. More people passed him, and spoke of him to each other, though there was no coarse curiosity--the habitant has manners. Presently he passed a low shop with a divided door. The lower half was closed, the upper open, and the winter sun was shining full into the room, where a bright fire burned. Charley looked up. Over the door was painted, in straggling letters: "Louis Trudel, Tailor." He looked inside. There, on a low table, bent over his work, with a needle in his hand, sat Louis Trudel the tailor. Hearing footsteps, feeling a shadow, he looked up. Charley started at the look of the shrunken, yellow face; for if ever death had set his seal, it was on that haggard parchment. The tailor's yellow eyes ran from Charley's face to his clothes. "I knew they'd fit," he said, with a snarl. "Drove me hard, too!" Charley had an inspiration. He opened the halfdoor, and entered. "Do you want help?" he said, fixing his eyes on the tailor's, steady and persistent. "What's the good of wanting--I can't get it," was the irritable reply, as he uncrossed his legs. Charley took the iron out of his hand. "I'll press, if you'll show me how," he said. "I don't want a fiddling ten-minutes' help like that." "It isn't fiddling. I'm going to stay, if you think I'll do." "You are going to stop-every day?" The old man's voice quavered a little. "Precisely that." Charley wetted a seam with water as he had often seen tailors do. He dropped the hot iron on the seam, and sniffed with satisfaction. "Who are you?" said the tailor. "A man who wants work. The Cure knows. It's all right. Shall I stay?" The tailor nodded, and sat down with a colour in his face. CHAPTER XIV ROSALIE, CHARLEY, AND THE MAN THE WIDOW PLOMONDON JILTED From the moment there came to the post-office the letter addressed to "The Sick Man at the House of Jo Portugais at Vadrome Mountain," Rosalie Evanturel dreamed dreams. Mystery, so fascinating a thing in all the experiences of life, took hold of her. The strange man in the lonely hut on the hill, the bandaged head, the keen, piercing blue eyes, the monocle, like a masked battery of the mind, levelled at her--all appealed to that life she lived apart from the people with whom she had daily commerce. Her world was a world of books and dreams, and simple, practical duties of life. Most books were romance to her, for most were of a life to which she had not been educated. Even one or two purely Protestant books of missionary enterprise, found in a box in her dead mother's room, had had all the charms of poetry and adventure. It was all new, therefore all delightful, even when the Protestant sentiments shocked her as being not merely untrue, but hurting that aesthetic sense never remote from the mind of the devout Catholic. She had blushed when monsieur had first looked at her, in the hut on Vadrome Mountain, not because there was any soft sentiment about him in her heart--how could there be for a man she had but just seen!--but because her feelings, her imagination, were all at high temperature; because the man compelled attention. The feeling sprang from a deep sensibility, a natural sense, not yet made incredulous by the ironies of life. These had never presented themselves to her in a country, in a parish, where people said of fortune and misfortune, happiness and sorrow, "C'est le bon Dieu!"--always "C'est le bon Dieu!" In some sense it was a pity that she had brains above the ordinary, that she had had a good education and nice tastes. It was the cultivation of the primitive and idealistic mind, which could not rationalise a sense of romance, of the altruistic, by knowledge of life. As she sat behind the post-office counter she read all sorts of books that came her way. When she learned English so as to read it almost as easily as she read French, her greatest joy was to pore over Shakespeare, with a heart full of wonder, and, very often, eyes full of tears--so near to the eyes of her race. Her imagination inhabited Chaudiere with a different folk, living in homes very unlike these wide, sweeping-roofed structures, with double windows and clean-scrubbed steps, tall doors, and wide, uncovered stoops. Her people--people of bright dreaming--were not quarrelsome, or childish, or merely traditional, like the habitants. They were picturesque and able and simple, doing good things in disguise, succouring distress, yielding their lives without thought for a cause, or a woman, and loving with an undying love. Charley was of these people--from the first instant she saw him. The Cure, the Avocat, and the Seigneur were also of them, but placidly, unimportantly. "The Sick Man at Jo Portugais' House" came out of a mysterious distance. Something in his eyes said, "I have seen, I have known," told her that when he spoke she would answer freely, that they were kinsfolk in some hidden way. Her nature was open and frank; she lived upon the house-tops, as it were, going in and out of the lives of the people of Chaudiere with neighbourly sympathy and understanding. Yet she knew that she was not of them, and they knew that, poor as she was, in her veins flowed the blood of the old nobility of France. For this the Cure could vouch. Her official position made her the servant of the public, and she did her duty with naturalness. She had been a figure in the parish ever since the day she returned from the convent at Quebec, and took her dead mother's place in the home and the parish. She had a quick temper, but there was not a cheerless note in her nature, and there was scarce a dog or a horse in the parish but knew her touch, and responded to it. Squirrels ate out of her hand, she had even tamed two partridges, and she kept in her little garden a bear she had brought up from a cub. Her devotion to her crippled father was in keeping with her quick response to every incident of sorrow or joy in the parish--only modified by wilful prejudices scarcely in keeping with her unselfishness. As Mrs. Flynn, the Seigneur's Irish cook, said of her: "Shure, she's not made all av wan piece, the darlin'! She'll wear like silk, but she's not linen for everybody's washin'." And Mrs. Flynn knew a thing or two, as was conceded by all in Chaudiere. No gossip was Mrs. Flynn, but she knew well what was going on in the parish, and she had strong views upon all subjects, and a special interest in the welfare of two people in Chaudiere. One of these was the Seigneur, who, when her husband died, leaving behind him a name for wit and neighbourliness, and nothing else, proposed that she should come to be his cook. In spite of her protest that what was "fit for Teddy was not fit for a gintleman of quality," the Seigneur had had his way, never repenting of his choice. Mrs. Flynn's cooking was not her only good point. She had the rarest sense and an unfailing spring of good-nature--life bubbled round her. It was she that had suggested the crippled M. Evanturel to the Seigneur when the office of postmaster became vacant, and the Seigneur had acted on her suggestion, henceforth taking greater interest in Rosalie. It was Mrs. Flynn who gave Rosalie information concerning Charley's arrival at the shop of Louis Trudel the tailor. The morning after Charley came, Mrs. Flynn had called for a waistcoat of the Seigneur, who was expected home from a visit to Quebec. She found Charley standing at a table pressing seams, and her quick eye took him in with knowledge and instinct. She was the one person, save Rosalie, who could always divert old Louis, and this morning she puckered his sour face with amusement by the story of the courtship of the widow Plomondon and Germain Boily the horse-trainer, whose greatest gift was animal-training, and greatest weakness a fondness for widows, temporary and otherwise. Before she left the shop, with the stranger's smile answering to her nod, she had made up her mind that Charley was a tailor by courtesy only. So she told Rosalie a few moments afterwards. "'Tis a man, darlin', that's seen the wide wurruld. 'Tis himisperes he knows, not parrishes. Fwhat's he doin' here, I dun'no'. Fwhere's he come from, I dun'no'. French or English, I dun'no'. But a gintleman born, I know. 'Tis no tailor, darlin', but tailorin' he'll do as aisy as he'll do a hunderd other things anny day. But how he shlipped in here, an' when he shlipped in here, an' what's he come for, an' how long he's stayin', an' meanin' well, or doin' ill, I dun'no', darlin', I dun' no'." "I don't think he'll do ill, Mrs. Flynn," said Rosalie, in English. "An' if ye haven't seen him, how d'ye know?" asked Mrs. Flynn, taking a pinch of snuff. "I have seen him--but not in the tailor-shop. I saw him at Jo Portugais' a fortnight ago." "Aisy, aisy, darlin'. At Jo Portugais'--that's a quare place for a stranger. 'Tis not wid Jo's introducshun I'd be comin' to Chaudiere." "He comes with the Cure's introduction." "An' how d'ye know that, darlin'?" "The Curb was at Jo Portugais' with monsieur when I went there." "You wint there!" "To take him a letter--the stranger." "What's his name, darlin'?" "The letter I took him was addressed, 'To the Sick Man at Jo Portugais' House at Vadrome Mountain.'" "Ah, thin, the Cure knows. 'Tis some rich man come to get well, and plays at bein' tailor. But why didn't the letther come to his name, I wander now? That's what I wander." Rosalie shook her head, and looked reflectively through the window towards the tailor-shop. "How manny times have ye seen him?" "Only once;" answered Rosalie truthfully. She did not, however, tell Mrs. Flynn that she had thrice walked nearly to Vadrome Mountain in the hope of seeing him again; and that she had gone to her favourite resort, the Rest of the Flax-Beaters, lying in the way of the riverpath from Vadrome Mountain, on the chance of his passing. She did not tell Mrs. Flynn that there had scarcely been a waking hour when she had not thought of him. "What Portugais knows, he'll not be tellin'," said Mrs. Flynn, after a moment. "An' 'tis no business of ours, is it, darlin'? Shure, there's Jo comin' out of the tailor-shop now!" They both looked out of the window, and saw Jo encounter Filion Lacasse the saddler, and Maximilian Cour the baker. The three stood in the middle of the street for a minute, Jo talking freely. He was usually morose and taciturn, but now he spoke as though eager to unburden his mind--Charley and he had agreed upon what should be said to the people of Chaudiere. The sight of the confidences among the three was too much for Mrs. Flynn. She opened the door of the post office and called to Jo. "Like three crows shtandin' there!" she said. "Come in--ma'm'selle says come in, and tell your tales here, if they're fit to hear, Jo Portugais. Who are you to say no when ma'm'selle bids!" she added. Very soon afterwards Jo was inside the post-office, telling his tale with the deliberation of a lesson learned by heart. "It's all right, as ma'm'selle knows," he said. "The Cure was there when ma'm'selle brought a letter to M'sieu' Mallard. The Cure knows all. M'sieu' come to my house sick-and he stayed there. There is nothing like the pine-trees and the junipers to cure some things. He was with me very quiet some time. The Cure come and come. He knows. When m'sieu' got well, he say, 'I will not go from Chaudiere; I will stay. I am poor, and I will earn my bread here.' At first, when he is getting well, he is carpent'ring. He makes cupboards and picture-frames. The Cure has one of the cupboards in the sacristy; the frames he puts on the Stations of the Cross in the church." "That's good enough for me!" said Maximilian Cour. "Did he make them for nothing?" asked Filion Lacasse solemnly. "Not one cent did he ask. What's more, he's working for Louis Trudel for nothing. He come through the village yesterday; he see Louis old and sick on his bench, and he set down and go to work." "That's good enough for me," said the saddler. "If a man work for the Church for nothing, he is a Christian. If he work for Louis Trudel for nothing, he is a fool--first-class--or a saint. I wouldn't work for Louis Trudel if he give me five dollars a day." "Tiens! the man that work for Louis Trudel work for the Church, for all old Louis makes goes to the Church in the end--that is his will. The Notary knows," said Maximilian Cour. "See there, now," interposed Mrs. Flynn, pointing across the street to the tailor-shop. "Look at that grocer-man stickin' in his head; and there's Magloire Cadoret and that pig of a barber, Moise Moisan, starin' through the dure, an'--" As she spoke, the barber and his companion suddenly turned their faces to the street, and started forward with startled exclamations, the grocer following. They all ran out from the post-office. Not far up the street a crowd was gathering. Rosalie locked the office-door and followed the others quickly. In front of the Hotel Trois Couronnes a painful thing was happening. Germain Boily, the horse-trainer, fresh from his disappointment with the widow Plomondon, had driven his tamed moose up to the Trois Couronnes, and had drunk enough whiskey to make him ill-tempered. He had then begun to "show off" the animal, but the savage instincts of the moose being roused, he had attacked his master, charging with wide-branching horns, and striking with his feet. Boily was too drunk to fight intelligently. He went down under the hoofs of the enraged animal, as his huge boar- hound, always with him, fastened on the moose's throat, dragged him to the ground, and tore gaping wounds in his neck. It was all the work of a moment. People ran from the doorways and sidewalks, but stayed at a comfortable distance until the moose was dragged down; then they made to approach the insensible man. Before any one could reach him, however, the great hound, with dripping fangs, rushed to his master's body, and, standing over it, showed his teeth savagely. The hotel-keeper approached, but the bristles of the hound stood up, he prepared to attack, and the landlord drew back in haste. Then M. Dauphin, the Notary, who had joined the crowd, held out a hand coaxingly, and with insinuating rhetoric drew a little nearer than the landlord had done; but he retreated precipitously as the hound crouched back for a spring. Some one called for a gun, and Filion Lacasse ran into his shop. The animal had now settled down on his master's body, his bloodshot eyes watching in menace. The one chance seemed to be to shoot him, and there must be no bungling, lest his prostrate master suffer at the same time. The crowd had melted away into the houses, and were now standing at doorways and windows, ready for instant retreat. Filion Lacasse's gun was now at disposal, but who would fire it? Jo Portugais was an expert shot, and he reached out a hand for the weapon. As he did so, Rosalie Evanturel cried: "Wait, oh, wait!" Before any one could interfere she moved along the open space to the mad beast, speaking soothingly, and calling his name. The crowd held their breath. A woman fainted. Some wrung their hands, and Jo Portugais, with blanched face, stood with gun half raised. With assured kindness of voice and manner, Rosalie walked deliberately over to the hound. At first the animal's bristles came up, and he prepared to spring, but murmuring to him, she held out her hand, and presently laid it on his huge head. With a growl of subjection, the dog drew from the body of his master, and licked Rosalie's fingers as she knelt beside Boily and felt his heart. She put her arm round the dog's neck, and said to the crowd, "Some one come--only one--ah, yes, you, Monsieur!" she added, as Charley, who had just arrived on the scene, came forward. "Only you, if you can lift him. Take him to my house." Her arm still round the dog, she talked to him, as Charley came forward, and, lifting up the body of the little horse-trainer, drew him across his shoulder. The hound at first resented the act, but under Rosalie's touch became quiet, and followed at their heels towards the post-office, licking the wounded man's hands as they hung down. Inside M. Evanturel's house the injured man was laid upon a couch. Charley examined his wounds, and, finding them severe, advised that the Cure be sent for, while he and Jo Portugais set about restoring him to consciousness. Jo had skill of a sort, and his crude medicaments were efficacious. When the Cure came, the injured man was handed over to his care, and he arranged that in the evening Boily should be removed to his house, to await the arrival of the doctor from the next parish. This was Charley's public introduction to the people of Chaudiere, and it was his second meeting with Rosalie Evanturel. The incident brought him into immediate prominence. Before he left the post-office, Filion Lacasse, Maximilian Cour, and Mrs. Flynn had given forth his history, as related by Jo Portugais. The village was agog with excitement. But attention was not centred on himself, for Rosalie's courage had set the parish talking. When the Notary stood on the steps of the saddler's shop, and with fine rhetoric proposed a vote of admiration for the girl, the cheering could be heard inside the post-office, and it brought Mrs. Flynn outside. "'Tis for her, the darlin'--for Ma'm'selle Rosalie--they're splittin' their throats!" she said to Charley as he was making his way from the sick man's room to the street door. "Did ye iver see such an eye an' hand? That avil baste that's killed two Injins already--an' all the men o' the place sneakin' behind dures, an' she walkin' up cool as leaf in mornin' dew, an' quietin' the divil's own! Did ye iver see annything like it, sir--you that's seen so much?" "Madame, it is not touch of hand alone, or voice alone," answered Charley. "Shure, 'tis somethin' kin in baste an' maid, you're manin' thin?" "Quite so, Madame." "Simple like, an' understandin' what Noah understood in that ark av his --for talk to the bastes he must have, explainin' what was for thim to do." "Like that, Madame." "Thrue for you, sir, 'tis as you say. There's language more than tongue of man can shpake. But listen, thin, to me"--her voice got lower-- "for 'tis not the furst time, a thing like that, the lady she is-- granddaughter of a Seigneur, and descinded from nobility in France! 'Tis not the furst time to be doin' brave things. Just a shlip of a girl she was, three years ago, afther her mother died, an' she was back from convint. A woman come to the parish an' was took sick in the house of her brother--from France she was. Small-pox they said at furst. 'Twas no small-pox, but plague, got upon the seas. Alone she was in the house --her brother left her alone, the black-hearted coward. The people wouldn't go near the place. The Cure was away. Alone the woman was-- poor soul! Who wint--who wint and cared for her? Who do ye think, sir?" "Mademoiselle?" "None other. 'Go tell Mrs. Flynn,' says she, 'to care for my father till I come back,' an' away she wint to the house of plague. A week she stayed, an' no one wint near her. Alone she was with the woman and the plague. 'Lave her be,' said the Cure when he come back; "tis for the love of God. God is with her--lave her be, and pray for her,' says he. An' he wint himself, but she would not let him in. ''Tis my work,' says she. ''Tis God's work for me to do,' says she. 'An' the woman will live if 'tis God's will,' says she. 'There's an agnus dei on her breast,' says she. 'Go an' pray,' says she. Pray the Cure did, an' pray did we all, but the woman died of the plague. All alone did Rosalie draw her to the grave on a stone-boat down the lane, an' over the hill, an' into the churchyard. An' buried her with her own hands at night, no one knowin' till the mornin', she did. So it was. An' the burial over, she wint back an' burned the house to the ground--sarve the villain right that lave the sick woman alone! An' her own clothes she burned, an' put on the clothes I brought her wid me own hand. An' for that thing she did, the love o' God in her heart, is it for Widdy Flynn or Cure or anny other to forgit? Shure the Cure was for iver broken-hearted, for that he was sick abed for days an' could not go to the house when the woman died, an' say to Rosalie, 'Let me in for her last hour.' But the word of Rosalie --shure 'twas as good as the words of a praste, savin' the Cure prisince wheriver he may be!" This was the story of Rosalie which Mrs. Flynn told Charley, as he stood at the street door of the post-office. When she had finished, Charley went back into the room where Rosalie sat beside the sick man's couch, the hound at her feet. She came forward, surprised, for he had bade her good-bye but a few minutes before. "May I sit and watch for an hour longer, Mademoiselle?" he said. "You will have your duties in the post-office." "Monsieur--it is good of you," she answered. For two hours Charley watched her going in and out, whispering directions to Mrs. Flynn, doing household duty, bringing warmth in with her, and leaving light behind her. It was afternoon when he returned to his bench in the tailor-shop, and was received by old Louis Trudel in peevish silence. For an hour they worked in silence, and then the tailor said: "A brave girl--that. We will work till nine to-night!" CHAPTER XV THE MARK IN THE PAPER Chaudiere was nearing the last of its nine-days' wonder. It had filed past the doorway of the tailor-shop; it had loitered on the other side of the street; it had been measured for more clothes than in three months past--that it might see Charley at work in the shop, cross-legged on a bench, or wielding the goose, his eye glass in his eye. Here was sensation indeed, for though old M. Rossignol, the Seigneur, had an eye- glass, it was held to his eye--a large bone-bound thing with a little gold handle; but no one in Chaudiere had ever worn a glass in his eye like that. Also, no one in Chaudiere had ever looked quite like "M'sieu'"--for so it was that, after the first few days (a real tribute to his importance and sign of the interest he created) Charley came to be called "M'sieu'," and the Mallard was at last entirely dropped. Presently people came and stood at the tailor's door and talked, or listened to Louis Trudel and M'sieu' talking. And it came to be noised abroad that the stranger talked as well as the Cure and better than the Notary. By-and-by they associated his eye-glass with his talent, so that it seemed, as it were, to be the cause of it. Yet their talk was ever of simple subjects, of everyday life about them, now and then of politics, occasionally of the events of the world filtered to them through vast tracts of country. There was one subject which, however, was barred; perhaps because there was knowledge abroad that M'sieu' was not a Catholic, perhaps because Charley himself adroitly changed the conversation when it veered that way. Though the parish had not quite made up its mind about him, there were a number of things in his favour. In the first place, the Cure seemed satisfied; secondly, he minded his own business. Also, he was working for Louis Trudel for nothing. These things Jo Portugais diligently impressed on the minds of all who would listen. From above the frosted part of the windows of the post-office, in the corner where she sorted letters, Rosalie could look over at the tailor's shop at an angle; could sometimes even see M'sieu' standing at the long table with a piece of chalk, a pair of shears, or a measure. She watched the tailor-shop herself, but it annoyed her when she saw any one else do so. She resented--she was a woman and loved monopoly--all inquiry regarding M'sieu', so frequently addressed to her. One afternoon, as Charley came out, on his way to the house on Vadrome Mountain, she happened to be outside. He saw her, paused, lifted his fur cap, and crossed the street to her. "Have you, perhaps, paper, pens, and ink for sale, Mademoiselle?" "Yes, oh yes; come in, Monsieur Mallard." "Ah, it is nice of you to remember me," he answered. "I see you every day--often," she answered. "Of course, we are neighbours," he responded. "The man--the horse- trainer--is quite well again?" "He has gone home almost well," she answered. She placed pens, paper, and ink before him. "Will these do?" "Perfectly," he answered mechanically, and laid a few pens and a bottle of ink beside the paper. "You were very brave that day," he said--they had not talked together since, though seeing each other so often. "Oh, no; I knew he would make friends with me--the hound." "Of course," he rejoined. "We should show animals that we trust them," she said, in some confusion, for being near him made her heart throb painfully. He did not answer. Presently his eye glanced at the paper again, and was arrested. He ran his fingers over it, and a curious look flashed across his face. He held the paper up to the light quickly, and looked through it. It was thin, half-foreign paper, without lines, and there was a water-mark in it-large, shadowy, filmy--Kathleen. It was paper made in the mills which had belonged to Kathleen's uncle. This water-mark was made to celebrate their marriage-day. Only for one year had this paper been made, and then the trade in it was stopped. It had gone its ways down the channels of commerce, and here it was in his hand, a reminder, not only of the old life, but, as it were, the parchment for the new. There it was, a piece of plain good paper, ready for pen and ink and his letter to the Cure's brother in Paris--the only letter he would ever write, ever again until he died, so he told himself; but hold it up to the light and there was the name over which his letter must be written--Kathleen, invisible but permanent, obscured, but brought to life by the raising of a hand. The girl caught the flash of feeling in his face, saw him holding the paper up to the light, and then, with an abstracted air, calmly lay it down. "That will do, thank you," he said. "Give me the whole packet." She wrapped it up for him without a word, and he laid down a two-dollar note, the last he had in the world. "How much of this paper have you?" he asked. The girl looked under the counter. "Six packets," she said. "Six, and a few sheets over." "I will take it all. But keep it for me, for a week, or perhaps a fortnight, will you?" He did not need all this paper to write letters upon, yet he meant to buy all the paper of this sort that the shop contained. But he must get money from Louis Trudel--he would speak about it to-morrow. "Monsieur does not want me to sell even the loose sheets?" "No. I like the paper, and I will take it all." "Very good, Monsieur." Her heart was beating hard. All this man did had peculiar significance to her. His look seemed to say: "Do not fear. I will tell you things." She gave him the parcel and the change, and he turned to go. "You read much?" he asked, almost casually, yet deeply interested in the charm and intelligence of her face. "Why, yes, Monsieur," she answered quickly. "I am always reading." He did not speak at once. He was wondering whether, in this primitive place, such a mind and nature would be the wiser for reading; whether it were not better to be without a mental aspiration, which might set up false standards. "What are you reading now?" he asked, with his hand on the door. "Antony and Cleopatra, also Enoch Arden," she answered, in good English, and without accent. His head turned quickly towards her, but he did not speak. "Enoch Arden is terrible," she added eagerly. "Don't you think so, Monsieur?" "It is very painful," he answered. "Good-night." He opened the door and went out. She ran to the door and watched him go down the street. For a little she stood thinking, then, turning to the counter, and snatching up a sheet of the paper he had bought, held it up to the light. She gave a cry of amazement. "Kathleen!" she exclaimed. She thought of the start he gave when he looked at the water-mark; she thought of the look on his face when he said he would buy all this paper she had. "Who was Kathleen?" she whispered, as though she was afraid some one would hear. "Who was Kathleen!" she said again resentfully. CHAPTER XVI MADAME DAUPHIN HAS A MISSION One day Charley began to know the gossip of the village about him from a source less friendly than Jo Portugais. The Notary's wife, bringing her boy to be measured for a suit of broadcloth, asked Charley if the things Jo had told about him were true, and if it was also true that he was a Protestant, and perhaps an Englishman. As yet, Charley had been asked no direct questions, for the people of Chaudiere had the consideration of their temperament; but the Notary's wife was half English, and being a figure in the place, she took to herself more privileges than did old Madame Dugal, the Cure's sister. To her ill-disguised impertinence in English, as bad as her French and as fluent, Charley listened with quiet interest. When she had finished her voluble statement she said, with a simper and a sneer-for, after all, a Notary's wife must keep her position--"And now, what is the truth about it? And are you a Protestant?" There was a sinister look in old Trudel's eyes as, cross-legged on his table, he listened to Madame Dauphin. He remembered the time, twenty- five years ago, when he had proposed to this babbling woman, and had been rejected with scorn--to his subsequent satisfaction; for there was no visible reason why any one should envy the Notary, in his house or out of it. Already Trudel had a respect for the tongue of M'sieu'. He had not talked much the few days he had been in the shop, but, as the old man had said to Filion Lacasse the saddler, his brain was like a pair of shears-- it went clip, clip, clip right through everything. He now hoped that his new apprentice, with the hand of a master-workman, would go clip, clip through madame's inquisitiveness. He was not disappointed, for he heard Charley say: "One person in the witness-box at a time, Madame. Till Jo Portugais is cross-examined and steps down, I don't see what I can do!" "But you are a Protestant!" said the woman snappishly. This man was only a tailor, dressed in fulled cloth, and no doubt his past life would not bear inspection; and she was the Notary's wife, and had said to people in the village that she would find out the man's history from himself. "That is one good reason why I should not go to confession," he replied casually, and turned to a table where he had been cutting a waistcoat-- for the first time in his life. "Do you think I'm going to stand your impertinence? Do you know who I am?" Charley calmly put up his monocle. He looked at the foolish little woman with so cruel a flash of the eye that she shrank back. "I should know you anywhere," he said. "Come, Stephan," she said nervously to her boy, and pulled him towards the door. On the instant Charley's feeling changed. Was he then going to carry the old life into the new, and rebuke a silly garish woman whose faults were generic more than personal? He hurried forward to the door and courteously opened it for her. "Permit me, Madame," he said. She saw that there was nothing ironical in this politeness. She had a sudden apprehension of an unusual quality called "the genteel," for no storekeeper in Chaudiere ever opened or shut a shop-door for anybody. She smiled a vacuous smile; she played "the lady" terribly, as, with a curious conception of dignity, she held her body stiff as a ramrod, and with a prim merci sailed into the street. This gorgeous exit changed her opinion of the man she had been unable to catechise. Undoubtedly he had snubbed her--that was the word she used in her mind--but his last act had enabled her, in the sight of several habitants and even of Madame Dugal, "to put on airs," as the charming Madame Dugal said afterwards. Thinking it better to give the impression that she had had a successful interview, she shook her head mysteriously when asked about M'sieu', and murmured, "He is quite the gentleman!" which she thought a socially distinguished remark. When she had gone, Charley turned to old Louis. "I don't want to turn your customers away," he said quietly, "but there it is! I don't need to answer questions as a part of the business, do I?" There was a sour grin on the face of old Trudel. He grunted some inaudible answer, then, after a pause, added: "I'd have been hung for murder, if she'd answered the question I asked her once as I wanted her to." He opened and shut his shears with a sardonic gesture. Charley smiled, and went to the window. For a minute he stood watching Madame Dauphin and Rosalie at the post-office door. The memory of his talk with Rosalie was vivid to him at the moment. He was thinking also that he had not a penny in the world to pay for the rest of the paper he had bought. He turned round and put on his coat slowly. "What are you doing that for?" asked the old man, with a kind of snarl, yet with trepidation. "I don't think I'll work any more to-day." "Not work! Smoke of the devil, isn't Sunday enough to play in? You're not put out by that fool wife of Dauphin's?" "Oh no--not that! I want an understanding about wages." To Louis the dread crisis had come. He turned a little green, for he was very miserly-for the love of God. He had scarcely realised what was happening when Charley first sat down on the bench beside him. He had been taken by surprise. Apart from the excitement of the new experience, he had profited by the curiosity of the public, for he had orders enough to keep him busy until summer, and he had had to give out work to two extra women in the parish, though he had never before had more than one working for him. But his ruling passion was strong in him. He always remembered with satisfaction that once when the Cure was absent and he was supposed to be dying, a priest from another parish came, and, the ministrations over, he had made an offering of a gold piece. When the young priest hesitated, his fingers had crept back to the gold piece, closed on it, and drawn it back beneath the coverlet again. He had then peacefully fallen asleep. It was a gracious memory. "I don't need much, I don't want a great deal," continued Charley when the tailor did not answer, "but I have to pay for my bed and board, and I can't do it on nothing." "How have you done it so far?" peevishly replied the tailor. "By working after hours at carpentering up there"--he made a gesture towards Vadrome Mountain. "But I can't go on doing that all the time, or I'll be like you too soon." "Be like me!" The voice of the tailor rose shrilly. "Be like me! What's the matter with me?" "Only that you're in a bad way before your time, and that you mayn't get out of this hole without stepping into another. You work too hard, Monsieur Trudel." "What do you want--wages?" Charley inclined his head. "If you think I'm worth them." The tailor viciously snipped a piece of cloth. "How can I pay you wages, if you stand there doing nothing?" "This is my day for doing nothing," Charley answered pleasantly, for the tailor-man amused him, and the whimsical mental attitude of his past life was being brought to the surface by this odd figure, with big spectacles pushed up on a yellow forehead, and shrunken hands viciously clutching the shears. "You don't mean to say you're not going to work to-day, and this suit of clothes promised for to-morrow night--for the Manor House too!" With a piece of chalk Charley idly made heads on brown paper. "After all, why should clothes be the first thing in one's mind--when they are some one else's! It's a beautiful day outside. I've never felt the sun so warm and the air so crisp and sweet--never in all my life." "Then where have you lived?" snapped out the tailor with a sneer. "You must be a Yankee--they have only what we leave over down there!" --he jerked his head southward. "We don't stop to look at weather here. I suppose you did where you come from?" Charley smiled in a distant sort of way. "Where I came from, when we weren't paid for our work we always stopped to consider our health--and the weather. I don't want a great deal. I put it to you honestly. Do you want me? If you do, will you give me enough to live on--enough to buy a suit of clothes a year, to pay for food and a room? If I work for you for nothing, I have to live on others for nothing, or kill myself as you're doing." There was no answer at once, and Charley went on: "I came to you because I saw you wanted help badly. I saw that you were hard-pushed and sick--" "I wasn't sick," interrupted the tailor with a snarl. "Well, overworked, which is the same thing in the end. I did the best I could: I gave you my hands--awkward enough they were at first, I know, but--" "It's a lie. They weren't awkward," churlishly cut in the tailor. "Well, perhaps they weren't so awkward, but they didn't know quite what to do--" "You knew as well as if you'd been taught," came back in a growl. "Well, then, I wasn't awkward, and I had a knack for the work. What was more, I wanted work. I wanted to work at the first thing that appealed to me. I had no particular fancy for tailoring--you get bowlegged in time!"--the old spirit was fighting with the new--"but here you were at work, and there I was idle, and I had been ill, and some one who wasn't responsible for me--a stranger-worked for me and cared for me. Wasn't it natural, when you were playing the devil with yourself, that I should step in and give you a hand? You've been better since--isn't that so?" The tailor did not answer. "But I can't go on as we are, though I want only enough to keep me going," Charley continued. "And if I don't give you what you want, you'll leave?" "No. I'm never going to leave you. I'm going to stay here, for you'll never get another man so cheap; and it suits me to stay--you need some one to look after you." A curious soft look suddenly flashed into the tailor's eyes. "Will you take on the business after I'm gone?" he asked at last. "It's along time to look ahead, I know," he added quickly, for not in words would he acknowledge the possibility of the end. "I should think so," Charley answered, his eyes on the bright sun and the soft snow on the trees beyond the window. The tailor snatched up a pattern and figured on it for a moment. Then he handed it to Charley. "Will that do?" he asked with anxious, acquisitive look, his yellow eyes blinking hard. Charley looked at it musingly, then said "Yes, if you give me a room here." "I meant board and lodging too," said Louis Trudel with an outburst of eager generosity, for, as it was, he had offered about one-half of what Charley was worth to him. Charley nodded. "Very well, that will do," he said, and took off his coat and went to work. For a long time they worked silently. The tailor was in great good-humour; for the terrible trial was over, and he now had an assistant who would be a better tailor than himself. There would be more profit, more silver nails for the church door, and more masses for his soul. "The Cure says you are all right. . . . When will you come here?" he said at last. "To-morrow night I shall sleep here," answered Charley. So it was arranged that Charley should come to live in the tailor's house, to sleep in the room which the tailor had provided for a wife twenty-five years before--even for her that was now known as Madame Dauphin. All morning the tailor chuckled to himself. When they sat down at noon to a piece of venison which Charley had prepared himself--taking the frying-pan out of the hands of Margot Patry, the old servant, and cooking it to a turn--Louis Trudel saw his years lengthen to an indefinite period. He even allowed himself to nervously stand up, bow, shake Charley's hand jerkingly, and say: "M'sieu', I care not what you are or where you come from, or even if you're a Protestant, perhaps an Englishman. You're a gentleman and a tailor, and old Louis Trudel will not forget you. It shall be as you said this morning--it is no day for work. We will play, and the clothes for the Manor can go to the devil. Smoke of hell-fire, I will go and have a pipe with that, poor wretch the Notary!" So, a wonderful thing happened. Louis Trudel, on a week-day and a market-day, went to smoke a pipe with Narcisse Dauphin, and to tell him that M. Mallard was going to stay with him for ever, at fine wages. He also announced that he had paid this whole week's wages in advance; but he did not tell what he did not know--that half the money had already been given to old Margot, whose son lay ill at home with a broken leg, and whose children were living on bread and water. Charley had slowly drawn from the woman the story of her life as he sat by the kitchen fire and talked to her, while her master was talking to the Notary. CHAPTER XVII THE TAILOR MAKES A MIDNIGHT FORAY Since the day Charley had brought home the paper bought at the post- office, and water-marked Kathleen, he had, at odd times, written down his thoughts, and promptly torn the paper up again or put it in the fire. In the repression of the new life, in which he must live wholly alone, so far as all past habits of mind were concerned, it was a relief to record his passing reflections, as he had been wont to do when the necessity for it was less. Writing them here was like the bursting of an imprisoned stream; it was relaxing the ceaseless eye of vigilance; freeing an imprisoned personality. This personality was not yet merged into that which must take its place, must express itself in the involuntary acts which tell of a habit of mind and body--no longer the imitative and the histrionic, but the inherent and the real. On the afternoon of the day that old Louis agreed to give him wages, and went to smoke a pipe with the Notary, Charley scribbled down his thoughts on this matter of personality and habit. "Who knows," he wrote, "which is the real self? A child comes into the world gin-begotten, with the instinct for liquor in his brain, like the scent of the fox in the nostrils of the hound. And that seems the real. But the same child caught up on the hands of chance is carried into another atmosphere, is cared for by ginhating minds and hearts: habit fastens on him--fair, decent, and temperate habit--and he grows up like the Cure yonder, a brother of Aaron. Which is the real? Is the instinct for the gin killed, or covered? Is the habit of good living mere habit and mere acting, in which the real man never lives his real life, or is it the real life? "Who knows! Here am I, born with a question in my mouth, with the ever- present 'non possumus' in me. Here am I, to whom life was one poor futility; to whom brain was but animal intelligence abnormally developed; to whom speechless sensibility and intelligence was the only reality; to whom nothing from beyond ever sent a flash of conviction, an intimation, into my soul--not one. To me God always seemed a being of dreams, the creation of a personal need and helplessness, the despairing cry of the victims of futility--And here am I flung like a stone from a sling into this field where men believe in God as a present and tangible being; who reply to all life's agonies and joys and exultations with the words 'C'est le bon Dieu.' And what shall I become? Will habit do its work, and shall I cease to be me? Shall I, in the permanency of habit, become like unto this tailor here, whose life narrows into one sole cause; whose only wish is to have the Church draw the coverlet of forgiveness and safety over him; who has solved all questions in a blind belief or an inherited predisposition--which? This stingy, hard, unhappy man--how should he know what I am denied! Or does he know? Is it all illusion? If there is a God who receives such devotion, to the exclusion of natural demand and spiritual anxieties, why does not this tailor 'let his light so shine before men that they may see his good works, and glorify his Father which is in heaven?' That is it. Therefore, wherefore, tailor- man? Therefore, wherefore, God? Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor- man!" Seated on his bench in the shop, with his eyes ever and anon raised towards the little post-office opposite, he wrote these words. Afterwards he sat and thought till the shadows deepened, and the tailor came in to supper. Then he took up the pieces of paper, and, going to the fire, which was still lighted of an evening, thrust them inside. Louis Trudel saw the paper burning, and, glancing down, he noticed that one piece--the last--had slipped to the floor and was lying under the table. He saw the pencil still in Charley's hand. Forthwith his natural suspicion leaped up, and the cunning of the monomaniac was upon him. With all his belief in le bon Dieu and the Church, Louis Trudel trusted no one. One eye was ever open to distrust man, while the other was ever closed with blind belief in Heaven. As Charley stooped to put wood in the fire, the tailor thrust a foot forward and pushed the piece of paper further under the table. That night the tailor crept down into the shop, felt for the paper in the dark, found it, and carried it away to his room. All kinds of thoughts had raged through his diseased mind. It was a letter, perhaps, and if a letter, then he would gain some facts about the man's life. But if it was a letter, why did he burn it? It was said that he never received a letter and never sent one, therefore it was little likely to be a letter. if not a letter, then what could it be? Perhaps the man was English and a spy of the English government, for was there not disaffection in some of the parishes? Perhaps it was a plan of robbery. To such a state of hallucination did his weakened mind come, that he forgot the kindly feeling he had had for this stranger who had worked for him without pay. Suspicion, the bane of sick old age, was hot on him. He remembered that M'sieu' had put an arm through his when they went upstairs, and that now increased suspicion. Why should the man have been so friendly? To lull him into confidence, perhaps, and then to rob and murder him in his sleep. Thank God, his ready money was well hid, and the rest was safe in the bank far away! He crept back to his room with the paper in his hand. It was the last sheet of what Charley had written, and had been accidentally brushed off on the floor. It was in French, and, holding the candle close, he slowly deciphered the crabbed, characteristic handwriting. His eyes dilated, his yellow cheeks took on spots of unhealthy red, his hand trembled. Anger seized him, and he mumbled the words over and over again to himself. Twice or thrice, as the paper lay in one hand, he struck it with the clinched fist of the other, muttering and distraught. "This tailor here. . . . This stingy, hard, unhappy man. . . . If there is a God! . . . Therefore, wherefore, tailor-man? . . . Therefore, wherefore, God? . . . Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor- man!" Hatred of himself, blasphemy, the profane and hellish humour of--of the infidel! A Protestant heretic--he was already damned; a robber--you could put him in jail; a spy--you could shoot him or tar and feather him; a murderer--you could hang him. But an infide--this was a deadly poison, a black danger, a being capable of all crimes. An infidel--"Therefore, wherefore, tailor-man? . . . Therefore, wherefore, God? . . . Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!" The devil laughing--the devil incarnate come to mock a poor tailor, to sow plague through a parish where all were at peace in the bosom of the Church. The tailor had three ruling passions--cupidity, vanity, and religion. Charley had now touched the three, and the whole man was alive. His cupidity had been flattered by the unpaid service of a capable assistant, but now he saw that he was paying the devil a wage. His vanity was overwhelmed by a satanic ridicule. His religion and his God had been assaulted in so shameful a way that no punishment could be great enough for the man of hell. In religion he was a fanatic; he was a demented fanatic now. He thrust the paper into his pocket, then crept out into the hall and to the door of Charley's bedroom. He put his ear to the door. After a moment he softly raised the latch, and opened the door and listened again. 'M'sieu' was in a deep sleep. Louis Trudel scarcely knew why he had listened, why he had opened the door and stood looking at the figure in the bed, barely definable in the semi-darkness of the room. If he had meant harm to the helpless man, he had brought no weapon; if he had been curious, there the man was peacefully sleeping! His sick, morbid imagination was so alive, that he scarcely knew what he did. As he stood there listening, hatred and horror in his heart, a voice said to him: "Thou shalt do no murder." The words kept ringing in his ears. Yet he had not thought of murder. The fancied command itself was his first temptation towards such a deed. He had thought of raising the parish, of condign punishment of many sorts, but not this. As he closed the door softly, killing entered his mind and stayed there. "Thou shalt not" had been the first instigation to "Thou shalt." It haunted him as he returned to his room, undressed himself, and went to bed. He could not sleep. "Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!" The challenge had been to himself. He must respond to it. The duty lay with him; he must answer this black infidel for the Church, for faith, for God. The more he thought of it, the more Charley's face came before him, with the monocle shining and hard in the eye. The monocle haunted him. That was the infidel's sign. "Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!" What sign should he show? Presently he sat up straight in bed. In another minute he was out and dressing. Five minutes later he was on his way to the parish church. When he reached it he took a tool from his pocket and unscrewed a small iron cross from the front door. It was a cross which had been blessed by the Pope, and had been brought to Chaudiere by the beloved mother of the Cure, now dead. "When I have done with it I will put it back," he said, as he thrust it inside his shirt, and hurried stealthily back to his house. As he got into bed he gave a noiseless, mirthless laugh. All night he lay with his yellow eyes wide open, gazing at the ceiling. He was up at dawn, hovering about the fire in the shop. CHAPTER XVIII THE STEALING OF THE CROSS If Charley had been less engaged with his own thoughts, he would have noticed the curious baleful look in the eyes of the tailor; but he was deeply absorbed in a struggle that had nothing to do with Louis Trudel. The old fever of thirst and desire was upon him. All morning the door of Jolicoeur's saloon was opening and shutting before his mind's eye, and there was a smell of liquor everywhere. It was in his nostrils when the hot steam rose from the clothes he was pressing, in the thick odour of the fulled cloth, in the melting snow outside the door. Time and again he felt that he must run out of the shop and away to the little tavern where white whiskey was sold to unwise habitants. But he fought on. Here was the heritage of his past, the lengthening chain of slavery to his old self--was it his real self? Here was what would prevent him from forgetting all that he had been and not been, all the happiness he might have had, all that he had lost--the ceaseless reminder. He was still the victim to a poison which gave not only a struggle of body, but a struggle of soul--if he had a soul. "If he had a soul!" The phrase kept repeating itself to him even as he fought the fever in his throat, resisting the temptation to take that medicine which the Curb's brother had sent him. "If he had a soul!" The thinking served as an antidote, for by the ceaseless iteration his mind was lulled into a kind of drowse. Again and again he went to the pail of water that stood on the window-sill, and lifting it to his lips, drank deep and full, to quench the wearing thirst. "If he had a soul!" He looked at Louis Trudel, silent and morose, the clammy yellow of a great sickness in his face and hands, but his mind only intent on making a waistcoat--and the end of all things very near! The words he had written the night before came to him: "Therefore, wherefore, tailor-man? Therefore, wherefore, God? . . . Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!" As if in reply to his thoughts there came the sound of singing, and of bells ringing in the parish church. A procession with banners was coming near. It was a holy day, and Chaudiere was mindful of its duties. The wanderers of the parish had come home for Easter. All who belonged to Chaudiere and worked in the woods or shanties, or lived in big cities far away, were returned--those who could return--to take the holy communion in the parish church. Yesterday the parish had been alive with a pious hilarity. The great church had been crowded beyond the doors, the streets had been full of cheerily dressed habitants. There had, however, come a sudden chill to the seemly rejoicings--the little iron cross blessed by the Pope had been stolen from the door of the church! The fact had been told to the Cure as he said the Mass, and from the altar steps, before going to the pulpit, he referred to the robbery with poignant feeling; for the relic had belonged to a martyr of the Church, who, two centuries before, had laid down his life for the Master on the coast of Africa. Louis Trudel had heard the Cure's words, and in his place at the rear of the church he smiled sourly to himself. In due time the little cross should be returned, but it had work to do first. He did not take the holy communion this Easter day, or go to confession as was his wont. Not, however, until a certain day later did the Cure realise this, though for thirty years the tailor had never omitted his Easter-time duties. The people guessed and guessed, but they knew not on whom to cast suspicion at first. No sane Catholic of Chaudiere could possibly have taken the holy thing. Presently a murmur crept about that M'sieu' might have been the thief. He was not a Catholic, and--who could tell? Who knew where he came from? Who knew what he had been? Perhaps a jail- bird-robber-murderer! Charley, however, stitched on, intent upon his own struggle. The procession passed the doorway: men bearing banners with sacred texts, acolytes swinging censers, a figure of the Saviour carved in wood borne aloft, the Cure under a silk canopy, and a long line of habitants following with sacred song. People fell upon their knees in the street as the procession passed, and the Cure's face was bent here and there, his hand raised in blessing. Old Louis got up from his bench, and, putting on a coat over his wool jacket, hastened to the doorway, knelt down, made the sign of the cross, and said a prayer. Then he turned quickly towards Charley, who, looking at the procession, then at the tailor, then back again at the procession, smiled. Charley was hardly conscious of what he did. His mind had ranged far beyond this scene to the large issues which these symbols represented. Was it one universal self-deception? Was this "religion" the pathetic, the soul-breaking make-believe of mortality? So he smiled--at himself, at his own soul, which seemed alone in this play, the skeleton in armour, the thing that did not belong. His own words written that fateful day before he died at the Cote Dorion came to him: "Sacristan, acolyte, player, or preacher, Each to his office, but who holds the key? Death, only Death, thou, the ultimate teacher, Wilt show it to me!" He was suddenly startled from his reverie, through which the procession was moving--a cloud of witnesses. It was the voice of Louis Trudel, sharp and piercing: "Don't you believe in God and the Son of God?" "God knows!" answered Charley slowly in reply--an involuntary exclamation of helplessness, an automatic phrase deflected from its first significance to meet a casual need of the mind. Yet it seemed like satire, like a sardonic, even vulgar, humour. So it struck Louis Trudel, who snatched up a hot iron from the fire and rushed forward with a snarl. So astounded was Charley that he did not stir. He was not prepared for the sudden onslaught. He did not put up his hand even, but stared at the tailor, who, within a foot of him, stopped short with the iron poised. Louis Trudel repented in time. With the cunning of the monomaniac he realised that an attack now might frustrate his great stroke. It would bring the village to his shop door, precipitate the crisis upon the wrong incident. As it chanced, only one person in Chaudiere saw the act. That was Rosalie Evanturel across the way. She saw the iron raised, and looked for M'sieu' to knock the tailor down; but, instead, she beheld the tailor go back and put the iron on the fire again. She saw also that M'sieu' was speaking, though she could hear no words. Charley's words were simple enough. "I beg your pardon, Monsieur," he said across the room to old Louis; "I meant no offence at all. I was trying to think it out in a human sort of way. I suppose I wanted a sign from Heaven--wanted too much, no doubt." The tailor's lips twitched, and his hand convulsively clutched the shears at his side. "It is no matter now," he answered shortly. "I have had signs from Heaven; perhaps you will have one too!" "It would be worth while," rejoined Charley musingly. Charley wondered bitterly if he had made an irreparable error in saying those ill-chosen words. This might mean a breach between them, and so make his position in the parish untenable. He had no wish to go elsewhere--where could he go? It mattered little what he was, tinker or tailor. He had now only to work his way back to the mind of the peasant; to be an animal with intelligence; to get close to mother earth, and move down the declivity of life with what natural wisdom were possible. It was his duty to adapt himself to the mind of such as this tailor; to acquire what the tailor and his like had found--an intolerant belief and an inexpensive security, to be got through yielding his nature to the great religious dream. And what perfect tranquillity, what smooth travelling found therein. Gazing across the street towards the little post-office, he saw Rosalie Evanturel at the window. He fell to thinking about her. Rosalie, on her part, kept wondering what old Louis' violence meant. Presently she saw a half-dozen men come quickly down the street, and, before they reached the tailorshop, stand in a group talking excitedly. Afterwards one came forward from the others quickly--Filion Lacasse the saddler. He stopped short at the tailor's door. Looking at Charley, he exclaimed roughly: "If you don't hand out the cross you stole from the church door, we'll tar and feather you, M'sieu'." Charley looked up, surprised. It had never occurred to him that they could associate him with the theft. "I know nothing of the cross," he said quietly. "You're the only heretic in the place. You've done it. Who are you? What are you doing here in Chaudiere?" "Working at my trade," was Charley's quiet answer. He looked towards Louis Trudel, as though to see how he took this ugly charge. Old Louis responded at once. "Get away with you, Filion Lacasse," he croaked. "Don't come here with your twaddle. M'sieu' hasn't stole the cross. What does he want with a cross? He's not a Catholic." "If he didn't steal the cross, why, he didn't," answered the saddler; "but if he did, what'll you say for yourself, Louis? You call yourself a good Catholic--bah!--when you've got a heretic living with you." "What's that to you?" growled the tailor, and reached out a nervous hand towards the iron. "I served at the altar before you were born. Sacre! I'll make your grave-clothes yet, and be a good Catholic when you're in the churchyard. Be off with you. Ach," he sharply added, when Filion did not move, "I'll cut your hair for you!" He scrambled off the bench with his shears. Filion Lacasse disappeared with his friends, and the old man settled back on his bench. Charley, looking up quietly from his work, said "Thank you, Monsieur." He did not notice what an evil look was in Louis Trudel's face as it turned towards him, but Rosalie Evanturel, standing outside, saw it; and she stole back to the post-office ill at ease and wondering. All that day she watched the tailor's shop, and even when the door was shut in the evening, her eyes were fastened on the windows. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Is the habit of good living mere habit and mere acting Suspicion, the bane of sick old age THE RIGHT OF WAY By Gilbert Parker Volume 3. XIX. THE SIGN FROM HEAVEN XX. THE RETURN OF THE TAILOR XXI. THE CURE HAS AN INSPIRATION XXII. THE WOMAN WHO SAW XXIII. THE WOMAN WHO DID NOT TELL XXIV. THE SEIGNEUR TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME XXV. THE COLONEL TELLS HIS STORY XXVI. A SONG, A BOTTLE, AND A GHOST XXVII. OUT ON THE OLD TRAIL XXVIII. THE SEIGNEUR GIVES A WARNING CHAPTER XIX THE SIGN FROM HEAVEN The agitation and curiosity possessing Rosalie all day held her in the evening when the wooden shutters of the tailor's shop were closed and only a flickering light showed through the cracks. She was restless and uneasy during supper, and gave more than one unmeaning response to the remarks of her crippled father, who, drawn up for supper in his wheel- chair, was more than usually inclined to gossip. Damase Evanturel's mind was stirred concerning the loss of the iron cross; the threat made by Filion Lacasse and his companions troubled him. The one person beside the Cure, Jo Portugais, and Louis Trudel, to whom M'sieu' talked much, was the postmaster, who sometimes met him of an evening as he was taking the air. More than once he had walked behind the wheel-chair and pushed it some distance, making the little crippled man gossip of village matters. As the two sat at supper the postmaster was inclined to take a serious view of M'sieu's position. He railed at Filion Lacasse; he called the suspicious habitants clodhoppers, who didn't know any better--which was a tribute to his own superior birth; and at last, carried away by a feverish curiosity, he suggested that Rosalie should go and look through the cracks in the shutters of the tailor-shop and find out what was going on within. This was indignantly rejected by Rosalie, but the more she thought, the more uneasy she became. She ceased to reply to her father's remarks, and he at last relapsed into gloom, and said that he was tired and would go to bed. Thereupon she wheeled him inside his bedroom, bade him good-night, and left him to his moodiness, which, however, was soon absorbed in a deep sleep, for the mind of the little grey postmaster could no more hold trouble or thought than a sieve. Left alone, Rosalie began to be tortured. What were they doing in the house opposite? Go and look through the windows? But she had never spied on people in her life! Yet would it be spying? Would it not be pardonable? In the interest of the man who had been attacked in the morning by the tailor, who had been threatened by the saddler, and concerning whom she had seen a signal pass between old Louis and Filion Lacasse, would it not be a humane thing to do? It might be foolish and feminine to be anxious, but did she not mean well, and was it not, therefore, honourable? The mystery inflamed her imagination. Charley's passiveness when he was assaulted by old Louis and afterwards threatened by the saddler seemed to her indifference to any sort of danger--the courage of the hopeless life, maybe. Instantly her heart overflowed with sympathy. Monsieur was not a Catholic perhaps? Well, so much the more he should be befriended, for he was so much the more alone and helpless. If a man was born a Protestant --or English--he could not help it, and should not be punished in this world for it, since he was sure to be punished in the next. Her mind became more and more excited. The postoffice had been long since closed, and her father was asleep--she could hear him snoring. It was ten o'clock, and there was still a light in the tailor's shop. Usually the light went out before nine o'clock. She went to the post- office door and looked out. The streets were empty; there was not a light burning anywhere, save in the house of the Notary. Down towards the river a sleigh was making its way over the thin snow of spring, and screeching on the stones. Some late revellers, moving homewards from the Trois Couronnes, were roaring at the top of their voices the habitant chanson, 'Le Petit Roger Bontemps': "For I am Roger Bontemps, Gai, gai, gai! With drink I am full and with joy content, Gai, gaiment!" The chanson died away as she stood there, and still the light was burning in the shop opposite. A thought suddenly came to her. She would go over and see if the old housekeeper, Margot Patry, had gone to bed. Here was the solution to the problem, the satisfaction of modesty and propriety. She crossed the street quickly, hurried round the corner of the house, and was passing the side-window of the shop, when a crack in the shutters caught her eye. She heard something fall on the floor within. Could it be that the tailor and M'sieu' were working at so late an hour? She had an irresistible impulse, and glued her eye to the crack. But presently she started back with a smothered cry. There by the great fireplace stood Louis Trudel picking up a red-hot cross with a pair of pincers. Grasping the iron firmly just below the arms of the cross, the tailor held it up again. He looked at it with a wild triumph, yet with a malignancy little in keeping with the object he held--the holy relic he had stolen from the door of the parish church. The girl gave a low cry of dismay. She saw old Louis advance stealthily towards the door of the shop leading into the house. In bewilderment, she stood still an instant, then, with a sudden impulse, she ran to the kitchen-door and tried it softly. It was not locked. She opened it, entered quickly, and found old Margot standing in the middle of the room in her night-dress. "Oh, Rosalie, Rosalie!" cried the old woman, "something's going to happen. M'sieu' Trudel has been queer all evening. I peeped in the key- hole of the shop just now, and--" "Yes, yes, I've seen too. Come!" said Rosalie, and going quickly to the door, opened it, and passed through to another room. Here she opened another door, leading into the hall between the shop and the house. Entering the hall, she saw a glimmer of light above. It was the reddish glow of the iron cross held by old Louis. She crept softly up the stone steps. She heard a door open very quietly. She hurried now, and came to the landing. She saw the door of Charley's room open--all the village knew what room he slept in--and the moonlight was streaming in at the window. She saw the sleeping man on the bed, and the tailor standing over him. Charley was lying with one arm thrown above his head; the other lay over the side of the bed. As she rushed forward, divining old Louis' purpose, the fiery cross descended, and a voice cried: "'Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!'" This voice was drowned by that of another, which, gasping with agony out of a deep sleep, as the body sprang upright, cried: "God-oh God!" Rosalie's hand grasped old Louis' arm too late. The tailor sprang back with a horrible laugh, striking her aside, and rushed out to the landing. "Oh, Monsieur, Monsieur!" cried Rosalie, and, snatching a scarf from her bosom, thrust it in upon the excoriated breast, as Charley, hardly realising what had happened, choked back moans of pain. "What did he do?" he gasped. "The iron cross from the church door!" she answered. "A minute, one minute, Monsieur!" She rushed out upon the landing in time to see the tailor stumble on the stairs and fall head forwards to the bottom, at the feet of Margot Patry. Rosalie paid no heed to the fallen man. "Oil! flour! Quick!" she cried. "Quick! Quick!" She stepped over the body of the tailor, snatched at Margot's arm, and dragged her into the kitchen. "Quick-oil and flour!" The old woman showed her where they were, moaning and whining. "He tried to kill Monsieur," cried Rosalie, "burned him on the breast with the holy cross!" With oil and flour she hurried back, over the body of the tailor, up the stairs, and into Charley's room. Charley was now out of bed and half dressed, though choking with pain, and preserving consciousness only by a great effort. "Good Mademoiselle!" he said. She took the scarf off gently, soaked it in oil and splashed it with flour, and laid it quickly back on the burnt flesh. Margot came staggering into the room. "I cannot rouse him. I cannot rouse him. He is dead! He is dead!" she whimpered. "He--" Charley swayed forward towards the woman, recovered himself, and said: "Now not a word of what he did to me, remember. Not one word, or you will go to jail with him. If you keep quiet, I'll say nothing. He didn't know what he was doing." He turned to Rosalie. "Not a word of this, please," he moaned. "Hide the cross." He moved towards the door. Rosalie saw his purpose, and ran out ahead of him and down the stairs to where the tailor lay prone on his face, one hand still holding the pincers. The little iron cross lay in a dark corner. Stooping, she lifted up the tailor's head, then felt his heart. "He is not dead," she cried. "Quick, Margot, some water," she added, to the whimpering woman. Margot tottered away, and came again presently with the water. "I will go for some one to help," Rosalie said, rising to her feet, as she saw Charley come slowly down the staircase, his face white with misery. She ran and took his arm to help him down. "No, no, dear Mademoiselle," he said; "I shall be all right presently. You must get help to carry him up stairs. Bring the Notary; he and I can carry him up." "You, Monsieur! You--it would kill you! You are terribly hurt." "I must help to carry him, else people will be asking questions," he answered painfully. "He is going to die. It must not be known--you understand!" His eyes searched the floor until they found the cross. Rosalie picked it up with the pincers. "It must not be known what he did to me," Charley said to the muttering and weeping old woman. He caught her shoulder with his hand, for she seemed scarcely to heed. She nodded. "Yes, yes, M'sieu', I will never speak." Rosalie was standing in the door. "Go quickly, Mademoiselle," he said. She disappeared with the iron cross, and flying across the street, thrust it inside the post-office, then ran to the house of the Notary. CHAPTER XX THE RETURN OF THE TAILOR Twenty minutes later the tailor was lying in his bed, breathing, but still unconscious, the Notary, M'sieu', and the doctor of the next parish, who by chance was in Chaudiere, beside him. Charley's face was drawn and haggard with pain, for he had helped to carry old Louis to bed, though every motion of his arms gave him untold agony. In the doorway stood Rosalie and Margot Patry. "Will he live?" asked the Notary. The doctor shook his head. "A few hours, perhaps. He fell downstairs?" Charley nodded. There was silence for some time, as the doctor went on with his ministrations, and the Notary sat drumming his fingers on the little table beside the bed. The two women stole away to the kitchen, where Rosalie again pressed secrecy on Margot. In the interest of the cause she had even threatened Margot with a charge of complicity. She had heard the phrase "accessory before the fact," and she used it now with good effect. Then she took some fresh flour and oil, and thrust them inside the bedroom door where Charley now sat clinching his hands and fighting down the pain. Careful as ever of his personal appearance, however, he had brushed every speck of flour from his clothes, and buttoned his coat up to the neck. Nearly an hour passed, and then the Cure appeared. When he entered the sick man's room, Charley followed, and again Rosalie and old Margot came and stood within the doorway. "Peace be to this house!" said the Cure. He had a few minutes of whispered conversation with the doctor, and then turned to Charley. "He fell down-stairs, Monsieur? You saw him fall?" "I was in my room--I heard him fall, Cure." "Had he been ill during the day?" "He appeared to be feeble, and he seemed moody." "More than usual, Monsieur?" The Cure had heard of the incident of the morning when Filion Lacasse accused Charley of stealing the cross. "Rather more than usual, Monsieur." The Cure turned towards the door. "You, Mademoiselle Rosalie, how came you to know?" "I was in the kitchen with Margot, who was not well." The Cure looked at Margot, who tearfully nodded. "I was ill," she said, "and Rosalie was here with me. She helped M'sieu' and me. Rosalie is a good girl, and kind to me," she whimpered. The Cure seemed satisfied, and after looking at the sick man for a moment, he came close to Charley. "I am deeply pained at what happened to-day," he said courteously. "I know you have had nothing to do with the beloved little cross." The Notary tried to draw near and listen, but the Cure's look held him back. The doctor was busy with his patient. "You are only just, Monsieur," said Charley in response, wishing that these kind eyes were fixed anywhere than on his face. All at once the Cure laid a hand upon his arm. "You are ill," he said anxiously. "You look very ill indeed. See, Vaudrey," he added to the doctor, "you have another patient here!" The friendly, oleaginous doctor came over and peered into Charley's face. "Ill-sure enough!" he said. "Look at this sweat!" he pointed to the drops of perspiration on Charley's forehead. "Where do you suffer?" "Severe pains all through my body," Charley answered simply, for it seemed easier to tell the truth, as near as might be. "I must look to you," said the doctor. "Go and lie down, and I will come to you." Charley bowed, but did not move. Just then two things drew the attention of all: the tailor showed returning consciousness, and there was noise of many voices outside the house and the tramping of feet below-stairs. "Go and tell them no one must come up," said the doctor to the Notary, and the Cure made ready to say the last offices for the dying. Presently the noise below-stairs diminished, and the priest's voice rose in the office, vibrating and touching. The two women sank to their knees, the doctor followed, his eyes still fixed on the dying man. Presently, however, Charley did the same; for something penetrating and reasonable in the devotion touched him. All at once Louis Trudel opened his eyes. Staring round with acute excitement, his eyes fell on the Cure, then upon Charley. "Stop--stop, M'sieu' le Cure!" he cried. "There's other work to do." He gasped and was convulsed, but the pallor of his face was alive with fire from the distempered eyes. He snatched from his breast the paper Charley had neglected to burn. He thrust it into the Curb's hand. "See--see!" he croaked. "He is an infidel--black infidel--from hell!" His voice rose in a kind of shriek, piercing to every corner of the house. He pointed at Charley with shaking finger. "He wrote it there--on that paper. He doesn't--believe in God." His strength failed him, his hand clutched tremblingly at the air. He laughed, a dry, crackling laugh, and his mouth opened twice or thrice to speak, but gasping breaths only came forth. With a last effort, however- -as the priest, shocked, stretched out his hand and said: "Have done, have done, Trudel!"--he cried, in a voice that quavered shrilly: "He asked--tailor-man--sign--from--Heaven. Look-look!" He pointed wildly at Charley. "I--gave him--sign of--" But that was the end. With a shudder the body collapsed in a formless heap, and the tailor-man was gone to tell of the work he had done for his faith on earth. CHAPTER XXI THE CURE HAS AN INSPIRATION White and malicious faces peered through the doorway. There was an ugly murmur coming up the staircase. Many habitants had heard Louis Trudel's last words, and had passed them on with vehement exaggeration. Chaudiere had been touched in its most superstitious corner. Protestantism was a sin, but atheism was a crime against humanity. The Protestant might be the victim of a mistake, but the atheist was the deliberate son of darkness, the source of fearful dangers. An atheist in their midst was like a scorpion in a flower-bed--no one could tell when and where he would sting. Rough misdemeanours among them had been many, there had once been a murder in the parish, but the undefined horrors of infidelity were more shameful than crimes the eye could see. To the minds of these excited people the tailor-man's death was due to the infidel before them. They were ready to do all that might become a Catholic intent to avenge the profaned honour of the Church and the faith. Bodily harm was the natural form for their passion to take. "Bring him out--let us have him!" they cried with fierce gestures, to which Rosalie Evanturel turned a pained, indignant face. As the Curb stood with the paper in his hand, his face set and bitter, Rosalie made a step forward. She meant to tell the truth about Louis Trudel, and show how good this man was, who stood charged with an imaginary crime. But she met the warning eye of the man himself, calm and resolute, she saw the suffering in the face, endured with what composure! and she felt instantly that she must obey him, and that--who could tell?--his plan might be the best in the end. She looked at the Cure anxiously. What would he say and do? In the Cure's heart and mind a great struggle was going on. All his inherent prejudice, the hereditary predisposition of centuries, the ingrain hatred of atheism, were alive in him, hardening his mind against the man before him. His first impulse was to let Charley take his fate at the hands of the people of Chaudiere, whatever it might be. But as he looked at the man, as he recalled their first meeting, and remembered the simple, quiet life he had lived among them--charitable, and unselfish--the barriers of creed and habit fell down, and tears unbidden rushed into his eyes. The Cure had, all at once, the one great inspiration of his life--its one beautiful and supreme imagining. For thus he reasoned swiftly: Here he was, a priest who had shepherded a flock of the faithful passed on to him by another priest before him, who again had received them from a guardian of the fold--a family of faithful Catholics whose thoughts never strayed into forbidden realms. He had done no more than keep them faithful and prevent them from wandering--counselling, admonishing, baptising, and burying, giving in marriage and blessing, sending them on their last great journey with the cachet of Holy Church upon them. But never once, never in all his life, had he brought a lost soul into the fold. If he died to-night, he could not say to St. Peter, when he arrived at Heaven's gate: "See, I have saved a soul!" Before the Throne he could not say to Him who cried: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature"--he could not say: "Lord, by Thy grace I found this soul in the wilderness, in the dark and the loneliness, having no God to worship, denial and rebellion in his heart; and behold, I took him to my breast, and taught him in Thy name, and led him home to Thy haven, the Church!" Thus it was that the Cure dreamed a dream. He would set his life to saving this lost soul. He would rescue him from the outer darkness. His face suffused, he handed the paper in his hand back to the man who had written the words upon it. Then he lifted his hand against the people at the door and the loud murmuring behind them. "Peace--peace!" he said, as though from the altar. "Leave this room of death, I command you. Go at once to your homes. This man"--he pointed to Charley--"is my friend. Who seeks to harm him, would harm me. Go hence and pray. Pray for yourselves, pray for him, and for me; and pray for the troubled soul of Louis Trudel. Go in peace." Soon afterwards the house was empty, save for the Cure, Charley, old Margot, and the Notary. That night Charley sat in the tailor's bedroom, rigid and calm, though racked with pain, and watched the candles flickering beside the dead body. He was thinking of the Cure's last words to the people. "I wonder--I wonder," he said, and through his eyeglass he stared at the crucifix that threw a shadow on the dead man's face. Morning found him there. As dawn crept in he rose to his feet. "Whither now?" he said, like one in a dream. CHAPTER XXII THE WOMAN WHO SAW Up to the moment of her meeting with Charley, Rosalie Evanturel's life had been governed by habit, which was lightly coloured by temperament. Since the eventful hour on Vadrome Mountain it had become a life of temperament, in which habit was involuntary and mechanical. She did her daily duties with a good heart, but also with a sense superior to the practical action. This grew from day to day, until, in the tragical days wherein she had secretly played a great part, she moved as in a dream, but a dream so formal that no one saw any change taking place in her, or associated her with the events happening across the way. She had been compelled to answer many questions, for it was known she was in the tailor's house when Louis Trudel fell down-stairs, but what more was there to tell than that she had run for the Notary, and sent word to the Cure, and that she was present when the tailor died, charging M'sieu' with being an infidel? At first she was ill disposed to answer any questions, but she soon felt that attitude would only do harm. For the first time in her life she was face to face with moral problems--the beginning of sorrow, of knowledge, and of life. In all secrets there is a kind of guilt, however beautiful or joyful they may be, or for what good end they may be set to serve. Secrecy means evasion, and evasion means a problem to the moral mind. To the primitive mind, with its direct yes and no, there is danger of it becoming a tragical problem ere it is realised that truth is various and diverse. Perhaps even with that Mary who hid the matter in her heart--the exquisite tragedy and glory of Christendom--there was a delicate feeling of guilt, the guilt of the hidden though lofty and beautiful thing. If secrecy was guilt, then Charley and Rosalie were bound together by a bond as strong as death: Rosalie held the key to a series of fateful days and doings. In ordinary course, they might have known each other for five years and not have come to this sensitive and delicate association. With one great plunge she had sprung into the river of understanding. In the moment that she had thrust her scarf into his scorched breast, in that little upper room, the work of years had been done. As long as he lived, that mark must remain on M'sieu's breast--the red, smooth scar of a cross! She had seen the sort of shining scar a bad burn makes, and at thought of it she flushed, trembled, and turned her head away, as though some one were watching her. Even in the night she flushed and buried her face in the pillow when the thought flashed through her mind; though when she had soaked the scarf in oil and flour and laid it on the angry wound she had not flushed at all, was determined, quiet, and resourceful. That incident had made her from a girl into a woman, from a child of the convent into a child of the world. She no longer thought and felt as she had done before. What she did think or feel could not easily have been set down, for her mind was one tremulous confusion of unusual thoughts, her heart was beset by new feelings, her imagination, suddenly finding itself, was trying its wings helplessly. The past was full of wonder and event, the present full of surprises. There was M'sieu' established already in Louis Trudel's place, having been granted a lease of the house and shop by the Curte, on the part of the parish, to which the property had been left; receiving also a gift of the furniture and of old Margot, who remained where she had been so many years. She could easily see Charley at work--pale and suffering still --for the door was generally open in the sweet April weather, with the birds singing, and the trees bursting into blossom. Her wilful imagination traced the cross upon his breast--it almost seemed as if it were outside upon his clothes, exposed to every eye, a shining thing all fire, not a wound inside, for which old Margot prepared oiled linen now. The parish was as perturbed as her own mind, for the mystery of the stolen cross had never been cleared up, and a few still believed that M'sieu' had taken it. They were of those who kept hinting at dark things which would yet be worked upon the infidel in the tailor's shop. These were they to whom the Curb's beautiful ambition did not appeal. He had said that if the man were an infidel, then they must pray that he be brought into the fold; but a few were still suspicious, and they said in Rosalie's presence: "Where is the little cross? M'sieu' knows." He did know. That was the worst of it. The cross was in her possession. Was it not necessary, then, to quiet suspicion for his sake? She had locked the relic away in a cupboard in her bedroom, and she carried the key of it always in her pocket. Every day she went and looked at it, as at some ghostly token. To her it was a symbol, not of supernatural things, but of life in its new reality to her. It was M'sieu', it was herself, it was their secret--she chafed inwardly that Margot should share a part of that secret. If it were only between their two selves-- between M'sieu' and herself! If Margot--she paused suddenly, for she was going to say, If Margot would only die! She was not wicked enough to wish that; yet in the past few weeks she had found herself capable of thinking things beyond the bounds of any past experience. She found a solution at last. She would go to-night secretly and nail the cross again on the church door, and so stop the chatter of evil tongues. The moon set very early now, and as every one in Chaudiere was supposed to be in bed by ten o'clock, the chances of not being seen were in her favour. She received the final impetus to her resolution by a quarrelsome and threatening remark of Jo Portugais to some sharp-tongued gossip in the post-office. She was glad that Jo should defend M'sieu', but she was jealous of his friendship for the tailor. Besides, did there not appear to be a secret between Jo and M'sieu'? Was it not possible that Jo knew where M'sieu' came from, and all about him? Of late Jo had come in and gone out of the shop oftener than in the past, had even brought her bunches of mosses for her flower-pots, the first budding lilacs, and some maple-sugar made from the trees on Vadrome Mountain. She remembered that when she was a girl at school, years ago--ten years ago--Jo Portugais, then scarcely out of his teens, a cheerful, pleasant, quick-tempered lad, had brought her bunches of the mountain-ash berry; that once he had mended the broken runner of her sled; and yet another time had sent her a birch-bark valentine at the convent, where it was confiscated by the Mother Superior. Since those days he had become a dark morose figure, living apart from men, never going to confession, seldom going to Mass, unloving and unlovable. There was only one other person in the parish more unloved. That was the woman called Paulette Dubois, who lived in the little house at the outer gate of the Manor. Paulette Dubois had a bad name in the parish--so bad that all women shunned her, and few men noticed her. Yet no one could say that at the present time she did not live a careful life, justifying, so far as eye could see, the protection of the Seigneur, M. Rossignol, a man of queer habits and queerer dress, a dabbler in physical science, a devout Catholic, and a constant friend of the Cure. He it was who, when an effort was made to drive Paulette out of the parish, had said that she should not go unless she wished; that, having been born in Chaudiere, she had a right to live there and die there; and if she had sinned there, the parish was in some sense to blame. Though he had no lodge-gates, and though the seigneury was but a great wide low-roofed farmhouse, with an observatory, and a chimney-piece dating from the time of Louis the Fourteenth, the Seigneur gave Paulette Dubois a little hut at his outer gate, which had been there since the great Count Frontenac visited Chaudiere. Probably Rosalie spoke to Paulette Dubois more often than did any one else in the parish, but that was because the woman came for little things at the shop, and asked for letters, and every week sent one--to a man living in Montreal. She sent these letters, but not more than once in six months did she get a reply, and she had not had one in a whole year. Yet every week she asked, and Rosalie found it hard to answer her politely, and sometimes showed it. So it was that the two disliked each other without good cause, save that they were separated by a chasm as wide as a sea. The one disliked the other because she must recognise her; the other chafed because she could be recognised by Rosalie officially only. The late afternoon of the day in which Rosalie decided to nail the cross on the church door again, Paulette arrived to ask for letters at the moment that the office wicket was closed, and Rosalie had answered that it was after office hours, and had almost closed the door in her face. As she turned away Jo Portugais came out of the tailor-shop opposite. He saw Paulette, and stood still an instant. She did the same. A strange look passed across the face of each, then they turned and went in opposite directions. Never in her life had time gone so slowly with Rosalie. She watched the clock. A dozen times she went to the front door and looked out. She tried to read--it was no use; she tried to spin-her fingers trembled; she sorted the letters in the office again, and rearranged every letter and parcel and paper in its little pigeonhole--then did it all over again. She took out again the letter Paulette had dropped in the letter-box; it was addressed in the name of the man at Montreal. She looked at it in a kind of awe, as she had ever done the letters of this woman who was without the pale. They had a sense of mystery, an air of forbidden imagination. She put the letter back, went to the door again, and looked out. It was now time to go. Drawing a hood over her head, she stepped out into the night. There was a little frost, though spring was well forward, and the smell of the rich earth and the budding trees was sweet to the sense. The moon had just set, but the stars were shining, and here and there patches of snow on the hillside and in the fields added to the light. Yet it was not bright enough to see far, and as Rosalie moved down the street she did not notice a figure at a little distance behind, walking on the new-springing grass by the roadside. All was quiet at the tavern; there was no light in the Notary's house--as a rule, he sat up late, reading; and even the fiddle of Maximilian Cour, the baker, was silent. The Cure's windows were dark, and the church with its white tin spire stood up sentinel-like above the village. Rosalie had the fateful cross in her hand as she softly opened the gate of the churchyard and approached the great oak doors. Taking a screw- driver and some screws from her pocket, she felt with a finger for the old screw-holes in the door. Then she began her work, looking fearfully round once or twice at first. Presently, however, because the screws were larger than the old ones, it became much harder; the task called forth more strength, and drove all thought of being seen out of her mind for a space. At last, however, she gave the final turn to the handle, and every screw was in its place, its top level and smooth with the iron of the cross. She stopped and looked round again with an uneasy feeling. She could see no one, hear no one, but she began to tremble, and, overcome, she fell on her knees before the door, and, with her fingers on the foot of the little cross, prayed passionately; for herself, for Monsieur. Suddenly she heard footsteps inside the church. They were coming towards the doorway, nearer and nearer. At first she was so struck with terror that she could not move. Then with a little cry she sprang to her feet, rushed to the gate, threw it open, ran out into the road, ind wildly on towards home. She did not stop for at least three hundred yards. Turning and looking back she saw at the church door a pale round light. With another cry she sped on, and did not pause till she reached the house. Then, bursting in and locking the door, she hurried to her room, undressed quickly, got into bed without saying her prayers, and buried her face in the pillow, shivering and overwrought. The footsteps she had heard were those of the Cure and Jo Portugais. The Cure had sent for Jo to do some last work upon a little altar, to be used the next day for the first time. The carpenter and the carver in wood who were responsible for the work had fallen victims to white whiskey on the very last day of their task, and had been driven from the church by the Cure, who then sent for Jo. Rosalie had not seen the light at the shrine, as it was on the side of the church farthest from the village. Their labour finished, the two came towards the front door, the Cure's lantern in his hand. Opening the door, Jo heard the sound of footsteps and saw a figure flying down the road. As the Cure came out abstractedly, he glanced sorrowfully towards the place where the little cross was used to be. He gave a wondering cry, and almost dropped the lantern. "See, see, Portugais," he said, "our little cross again!" Jo nodded. "So it seems, Monsieur," he said. At that instant he saw a hood lying on the ground, and as the Cure held up the lantern, peering at the little cross, he hastily picked it up and thrust it inside his coat. "Strange--very strange!" said the Cure. "It must have been done while we were inside. It was not there when we entered." "We entered by the vestry door," said Jo. "Ah, true-true," responded the Cure. "It comes as it went," said Jo. "You can't account for some things." The Cure turned and looked at Jo curiously. "Are you then so superstitious, Jo? Nonsense; it is the work of human hands--very human hands," he added sadly. "There is nothing to show," said the Cure, seeing Jo's glance round. "As you see, M'sieu' le Cure." "Well, it is a mystery which time no doubt will clear up. Meanwhile, let us be thankful to God," said the Cure. They parted, the Cure going through a side-gate into his own garden, Jo passing out of the churchyard-gate through which Rosalie had gone. He looked down the road towards the village. "Well!" said a voice in his ear. Paulette Dubois stood before him. "It was you, then," he said, with a glowering look. "What did you want with it?" "What do you want with the hood in your coat there?" She threw her head back with a spiteful laugh. "Whose do you think it is?" he said quietly. "You and the schoolmaster made verses about her once." "It was Rosalie Evanturel?" he asked, with aggravating composure. "You have the hood-look at it! You saw her running down the road; I saw her come, watched her, and saw her go. She is a thief--pretty Rosalie-- thief and postmistress! No doubt she takes letters too." "The ones you wait for, and that never come--eh?" Her face darkened with rage and hatred. "I will tell the world she's a thief," she sneered. "Who will believe you?" "You will." She was hard and fierce, and looked him in the eyes squarely. "You'll give evidence quick enough, if I ask you." "I wouldn't do anything you asked me to-nothing, if it was to save my life." "I'll prove her a thief without you. She can't deny it." "If you try it, I'll--" He stopped, husky and shaking. "You'll kill me, eh? You killed him, and you didn't hang. Oh no, you wouldn't kill me, Jo," she added quickly, in a changed voice. "You've had enough of that kind of thing. If I'd been you, I'd rather have hung --ah, sure!" She suddenly came close to him. "Do you hate me so bad, Jo?" she said anxiously. "It's eight years--do you hate me so bad as then?" "You keep your tongue off Rosalie Evanturel," he said, and turned on his heel. She caught his arm. "We're both bad, Jo. Can't we be friends?" she said eagerly, her voice shaking. He did not reply. "Don't drive a woman too hard," she said between her teeth. "Threats! Pah!" he rejoined. "What do you think I'm made of?" "I'll find that out," she said, and, turning on her heel, ran down the road towards the Manor House. "What had Rosalie to do with the cross?" Jo said to himself. "This is her hood." He took it out and looked at it. "It's her hood--but what did she want with the cross?" He hurried on, and as he neared the post-office he saw the figure of a woman in the road. At first he thought it might be Rosalie, but as he came nearer he saw it was not. The woman was muttering and crying. She wandered to and fro bewilderedly. He came up, caught her by the arm, and looked into her face. It was old Margot Patry. CHAPTER XXIII THE WOMAN WHO DID NOT TELL "Oh, M'sieu', I am afraid." "Afraid of what, Margot?" "Of the last moment, M'sieu' le Cure." "There will be no last moment to your mind--you will not know it when it comes, Margot." The woman trembled. "I am not sorry to die. But I am afraid; it is so lonely, M'sieu' le Cure." "God is with us, Margot." "When we are born we do not know. It is on the shoulders of others. When we die we know, and we have to answer." "Is the answering so hard, Margot?" The woman shook her head feebly and sadly, but did not speak. "You have been a good mother, Margot." She made no sign. "You have been a good neighbour; you have done unto others as you would be done by." She scarcely seemed to hear. "You have been a good servant--doing your duty in season and out of season; honest and just and faithful." The woman's fingers twitched on the coverlet, and she moved her head restlessly. The Curb almost smiled, for it seemed as if Margot were finding herself wanting. Yet none in Chaudiere but knew that she had lived a blameless life--faithful, friendly, a loving and devoted mother, whose health had been broken by sleepless attendance at sick-beds by night, while doing her daily work at the house of the late Louis Trudel. "I will answer for the way you have done your duty, Margot," said the Cure. "You have been a good daughter of the Church." He paused a minute, and in the pause some one rose from a chair by the window and looked out on the sunset sky. It was Charley. The woman heard, and turned her eyes towards him. "Do you wish him to go?" asked the Cure. "No, no--oh no, M'sieu'!" she said eagerly. She had asked all day that either Rosalie or M'sieu' should be in the room with her. It would seem as though she were afraid she had not courage enough to keep the secret of the cross without their presence. Charley had yielded to her request, while he shrank from granting it. Yet, as he said to himself, the woman was keeping his secret--his and Rosalie's--and she had some right to make demand. When the Cure asked the question of old Margot, he turned expectantly, and with a sense of relief. He thought it strange that the Cure should wish him to remain. The Cure, on his part, was well pleased to have him in the influence of a Christian death-bed. A time must come when the last confidences of the dying woman could be given to no ears but his own, but meanwhile it was good that M'sieu' should be there. "M'sieu' le Cure," said the dying woman, "must I tell all?" "All what, Margot?" "All that is sin?" "There is no must, Margot." "If you should ask me, M'sieu'--" She paused, and the man at the window turned and looked curiously at her. He saw the problem in the woman's mind: had she the right to die with the secret of another's crime upon her mind? "The priest does not ask, Margot: it is you who confess your sins. That is between you and God." The Cure spoke firmly, for he wanted the man at the window to clearly understand. "But if there are the sins of others, and you know, and they trouble your soul, M'sieu'?" "You have nothing to do with the sins of others; it is enough to repent of your own sins. The priest has nothing to do with any sins but those confessed by the sinner to himself. Your own sins are your sole concern to-night, Margot." The woman's face seemed to clear a little, and her eyes wandered to the man at the window with less anxiety. Charley was wondering whether, after all, she would have the courage to keep her word, whether spiritual terror would surmount the moral attitude of honour. He was also wondering how much right he had to put the strain upon the woman in her desperate hour. "How long did the doctor say I could live?" the woman asked presently. "Till morning, perhaps, Margot." "I should like to live till sunrise," she answered, "till after breakfast. Rosalie makes good tea," she added musingly. The Cure almost smiled. "There is the Living Bread, my daughter." She nodded. "But I should like to see the sunrise and have Rosalie bring me tea," she persisted. "Very well, Margot. We will ask God for that." Her mind flew back again to the old question. "Is it wrong to keep a secret?" she asked, her face turned away from the man at the window. "If it is the secret of a sin, and the sin is your own--yes, Margot." "And if the sin is not your own?" "If you share the sin, and if the secret means injury to others, and a wrong is being done, and the law can right that wrong, then you must go to the law, not to your priest." The Cure's look was grave, even anxious, for he saw that the old woman's mind was greatly disturbed. But her face cleared now, and stayed so. "It has all been a mix and a muddle," she answered; "and it hurt my poor head, M'sieu' le Cure, but now I think I under stand. I am not afraid; I will confess." The Cure had made it clear to her that she could carry to her grave the secret of the little cross and the work it had done, and so keep her word and still not injure her chances of salvation. She was content. She no longer needed the helpful presence of M'sieu' or Rosalie. Charley instinctively felt what was in her mind, and came towards the bed. "I will tell Mademoiselle Rosalie about the tea," he said to her. She looked up at him, almost smiling. "Thank you, good M'sieu'," she said. "I will confess now, M'sieu' le Cure" she continued. Charley left the room. Towards morning Margot waked out of a brief sleep, and found the Cure and his sister and others about her bed. "Is it near sunrise?" she whispered. "It is just sunrise. See; God has been good," answered the Cure, drawing open the blind and letting in the first golden rays. Rosalie entered the room with a cup of tea, and came towards the bed. Old Margot looked at the girl, at the tea, and then at the Cure. "Drink the tea for me, Rosalie," she whispered. Rosalie did as she was asked. She looked round feebly; her eyes were growing filmy. "I never gave--so much--trouble--before," she managed to say. "I never had--so much-- attention.... I can keep--a secret too," she said, setting her lips feebly with pride. "But I--never--had--so much--attention--before; have I--Rosalie?" Rosalie did not need to answer, for the woman was gone. The crowning interest of her life had come all at the last moment, as it were, and she had gone away almost gladly and with a kind of pride. Rosalie also had a hidden pride: the secret was now her very own--hers and M'sieu's. CHAPTER XXIV THE SEIGNEUR TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME It was St. Jean Baptiste's day, and French Canada was en fete. Every seigneur, every cure, every doctor, every notary--the chief figures in a parish--and every habitant was bent for a happy holiday, dressed in his best clothes, moved in his best spirits, in the sweet summer weather. Bells were ringing, flags were flying, every road and lane was filled with caleches and wagons, and every dog that could draw a cart pulled big and little people, the old and the blind and the mendicant, the happy and the sour, to the village, where there were to be sports and speeches, races upon the river, and a review of the militia, arranged by the member of the Legislature for the Chaudiere-half of the county. French soldiers in English red coats and carrying British flags were straggling along the roads to join the battalion at the volunteers' camp three miles from the town, and singing: "Brigadier, respondez Pandore-- Brigadier, vous avez raison." It was not less incongruous and curious when one group presently broke out into 'God save the Queen', and another into the 'Marseillaise', and another still into 'Malbrouck s'en va t'en guerre'. At last songs and soldiers were absorbed in the battalion at the rendezvous, and 1the long dusty march to the village gave a disciplined note to the gaiety of the militant habitant. At high noon Chaudiere was filled to overflowing. There were booths and tents everywhere--all sorts of cheap-jacks vaunted their wares, merry-go- rounds and swings and shooting-galleries filled the usual spaces in the perspective. The Cure, M. Rossignol the Seigneur, and the Notary stood on the church steps viewing the scene and awaiting the approach of the soldier-citizens. The Seigneur and the Cure had ceased listening to the babble of M. Dauphin, who seemed not to know that his audience closed its ears and found refuge in a "Well, well!" or "Think of that!" or an abstracted "You surprise me!" The Notary talked on with eager gesture and wreathing smile, shaking back his oiled ringlets as though they trespassed on his smooth, somewhat jaundiced cheeks, until it began to dawn upon him that there was no coin of real applause to be got at this mint. Fortune favoured him at the critical juncture, for the tailor walked slowly past them, looking neither to right nor to left, his eyes cast upon the ground, apparently oblivious to all round him. Almost opposite the church door, however, Charley was suddenly stopped by Filion Lacasse, who ran out from a group before the tavern, and, standing in front of him with outstretched hand, said loudly: "M'sieu', it's all right. What you said done it, sure! I'm a thousand dollars richer to-day. You may be an infidel, but you have a head, and you save me money, and you give away your own, and that's good enough for me,"--he wrung Charley's hand,--"and I don't care who knows it--sacre!" Charley did not answer him, but calmly withdrew his hand, smiled, raised his hat at the lonely cheer the saddler raised, and passed on, scarce conscious of what had happened. Indeed he was indifferent to it, for he had a matter on his mind this day which bitterly absorbed him. But the Notary was not indifferent. "Look there, what do you think of that?" he asked querulously. "I am glad to see that Lacasse treats Monsieur well," said the Cure. "What do you think of that, Monsieur?" repeated the Notary excitedly to the Seigneur. The Seigneur put his large gold-handled glass to his eye and looked interestedly after Charley for a moment, then answered: "Well, Dauphin, what?" "He's been giving Filion Lacasse advice about the old legacy business, and Filion's taken it; and he's got a thousand dollars; and now there's all that fuss. And four months ago Filion wanted to tar and feather him for being just what he is to-day--an infidel--an infidel!" He was going to say something else, but he did not like the look the Cure turned on him, and he broke off short. "Do you regret that he gave Lacasse good advice?" asked the Cure. "It's taking bread out of other men's mouths." "It put bread into Filion's mouth. Did you ever give Lacasse advice? The truth now, Dauphin!" said the Seigneur drily. "Yes, Monsieur, and sound advice too, within the law-precedent and code and every legal fact behind." The Seigneur was a man of laconic speech. "Tut, tut, Dauphin; precedent and code and legal fact are only good when there's brain behind 'em. The tailor yonder has brains." "Ah, but what does he know about the law?" answered Dauphin, with acrimonious voice but insinuating manner, for he loved to stand well with the Seigneur. "Enough for the saddler evidently," sharply rejoined the Seigneur. Dauphin was fighting for his life, as it were. His back was to the wall. If this man was to be allowed to advise the habitants of Chaudiere on their disputes and "going to law," where would his own prestige be? His vanity had been deeply wounded. "It's guesswork with him. Let him stick to his trade as I stick to mine. That sort of thing only does harm." "He puts a thousand dollars into the saddler's pocket: that's a positive good. He may or may not take thereby ten dollars out of your pocket: that's a negative injury. In this case there was no injury, for you had already cost Lacasse--how much had you cost him, Dauphin?" continued the Seigneur, with a half-malicious smile. "I've been out of Chaudiere for near a year; I don't know the record--how much, eh, Dauphin?" The Notary was too offended to answer. He shook his ringlets back angrily, and a scarlet spot showed on each straw-coloured cheek. "Twenty dollars is what Lacasse paid our dear Dauphin," said the Cure benignly, "and a very proper charge. Lacasse probably gave Monsieur there quite as much, and Monsieur will give it to the first poor man he meets, or send it to the first sick person of whom he hears." "My own opinion is, he's playing some game here," said the Notary. "We all play games," said the Seigneur. "His seems to give him hard work and little luxury. Will you bring him to see me at the Manor, my dear Cure?" he added. "He will not go. I have asked him." "Then I shall visit him at his tailor-shop," said the Seigneur. "I need a new suit." "But you always had your clothes made in Quebec, Monsieur," said the Notary, still carping. "We never had such a tailor," answered the Seigneur. "We'll hear more of him before we're done with him," obstinately urged the Notary. "It would give Dauphin the greatest pleasure if our tailor proved to be a murderer or a robber. I suppose you believe that he stole our little cross here," the Cure added, turning to the church door, where his eye lingered lovingly on the relic, hanging on a pillar just inside, whither he had had it removed. "I'm not sure yet he hadn't something to do with it," was the stubborn response. "If he did, may it bring him peace at last!" said the Cure piously. "I have set my heart on nailing him to our blessed faith as that cross is fixed to the pillar yonder--'I will fasten him like a nail in a sure place,' says the Book. I take it hard that my friend Dauphin will not help me on the way. Suppose the man were evil, then the Church should try to snatch him like a brand from the burning. But suppose that in his past there was no wrong necessary to be hidden in the present--and this I believe with all my heart; suppose that he was wronged, not wronging: then how much more should the Church strive to win him to the light! Why, man, have you no pride in Holy Church? I am ashamed of you, Dauphin, with your great intelligence, your wide reading. With our knowledge of the world we should be broader." The Seigneur's eyes were turned away, for there was in them at once humour and a suspicious moisture. Of all men in the world he most admired the Cure, for his utter truth and nobility; but he could not help smiling at his enthusiasm--his dear Cure turned evangelist like any "Methody"!--and at the appeal of the Notary on the ground of knowledge of the world. He was wise enough to count himself an old fogy, a provincial, and "a simon-pure habitant," but of the three he only had any knowledge of life. As men of the world the Cure and the Notary were sad failures, though they stood for much in Chaudiere. Yet this detracted nothing from the fine gentlemanliness of the Cure or the melodramatic courtesy of the Notary. Amused and touched as the Seigneur had been at the Cure's words, he turned now and said: "Always on the weaker side, Cure; always hoping the best from the worst of us." "I am only following an example at my door--you taught us all charity and justice," answered M. Loisel, looking meaningly at the Seigneur. There was silence a little while, for all three were thinking of the woman of the hut, at the gate of the Seigneur's manor. On this topic M. Dauphin was not voluble. His original kindness to the woman had given him many troubled hours at home, for Madame Dauphin had construed his human sympathy into the dark and carnal desires of the heart, and his truthful eloquence had made his case the worse. A miserable sentimentalist, the Notary was likely to be misunderstood for ever, and one or two indiscretions of his extreme youth had been a weapon against him through the long years of a blameless married life. He heaved a sigh of sympathy with the Cure now. "She has not come back yet?" he said to the Seigneur. "No sign of her. She locked up and stepped out, so my housekeeper says, about the time--" "The day of old Margot's funeral," interposed the Notary. "She'd had a letter that day, a letter she'd been waiting for, and abroad she went-- alas! the flyaway--from bad to worse, I fear--ah me!" The Seigneur turned sharply on him. "Who told you she had a letter that day, for which she had been waiting?" he said. "Monsieur Evanturel." The Seigneur's face became sterner still. "What business had he to know that she received a letter that day?" "He is postmaster," innocently replied the Notary. "He is the devil!" said the Seigneur tartly. "I beg your pardon, Cure; but it is Evanturel's business not to know what letters go to and fro in that office. He should be blind and dumb, so far as we all are concerned." "Remember that Evanturel is a cripple," the Cure answered gently. "I am glad, very glad it was not Rosalie." "Rosalie has more than usual sense for her sex," gruffly but kindly answered the Seigneur, a look of friendliness in his eyes. "I shall talk to her about her father; I can't trust myself to speak to the man." "Rosalie is down there with Madame Dauphin," said the Notary, pointing. "Shall I ask her to come?" The Seigneur nodded. He was magistrate and magnate, and he was the guarantor of the post-office, and of Rosalie and her father. His eyes fixed in reverie on Rosalie; he and the Cure passively waited her approach. She came over, pale and a little anxious, but with a courageous look. She had a vague sense of trouble, and she feared it might be the little cross, that haunting thing of all these months. When she came near, the Cure greeted her courteously, and then, taking the Notary by the arm, led him away. The Seigneur and Rosalie being left alone, the girl said: "You wish to speak with me, Monsieur?" The Seigneur scrutinised her sharply. Though her colour came and went, her look was frank and fearless. She had had many dark hours since that fateful month of April. At night, trying to sleep, she had heard the ghostly footsteps in the church, which had sent her flying homeward. Then, there was the hood. She had waited on and on, fearing word would come that it had been found in the churchyard, and that she had been seen putting the cross back upon the church door. As day after day passed she had come at length to realise that, whatever had happened to the hood, she was not suspected. Yet the whole train of circumstances had a supernatural air, for the Cure and Jo Portugais had not made public their experience on the eventful night; she had been educated in a land of legend and superstition, and a deep impression had been made upon her mind, giving to her other new emotions a touch of pathos, of imagination, and adding character to her face. The old Seigneur stroked his chin as he looked at her. He realised that a change had come upon her, that she had developed in some surprising way. "What has happened--who has happened, Mademoiselle Rosalie?" he asked. He had suddenly made up his mind about that look in her face--he thought it the woman in her which answers to the call of man, not perhaps any particular man, but man the attractive influence, the complement. Her eyes dropped, then raised frankly to his. "I don't know,"--adding, with a quick humour, for he had been very friendly with her, and joked with her in his dry way all her life; "do you, Monsieur?" He pulled his nose with a quick gesture habitual to him, and answered slowly and meaningly: "The government's a good husband and pays regular wages, Mademoiselle. I'd stick to government." "I am not asking for a divorce, Monsieur." He pulled his nose again delightedly--so many people were pathetically in earnest in Chaudiere--even the Cure's humour was too mediaeval and obvious. He had never before thought Rosalie so separate from them all. All at once he had a new interest in her. His cheek flushed a little, his eye kindled, humour relaxed his lips. "No other husband would intrude so little," he rejoined. "True, there's little love lost between us, Monsieur." She felt exhilaration in talking with him, a kind of joy in measuring word against word; yet a year ago she would have done no more than smile respectfully and give a demure reply if the Seigneur had spoken to her like this. The Seigneur noted the mixed emotions in her face and the delicate alertness of expression. As a man of the world, he was inclined to believe that only one kind of experience can bring such looks to a woman's face. He saw in her the awakening of the deeper interests of life, the tremulous apprehension of nascent emotions and passions which, at some time or other, give beauty and importance to the nature of every human being. It did not occur to him that the tailor--the mysterious figure in the parish--might be responsible. He was observant, but not imaginative; he was moved by what he saw, in a quiet, unexplainable manner. "The government is the best sort of husband. From the other sort you would get more kisses and less ha'pence," he continued. "That might be a satisfactory balance-sheet, Monsieur." "Take care, Mademoiselle Rosalie," he rejoined, half seriously, "that you don't miss the ha'pence before you get the kisses." She turned pale in very fear. What was he going to say? Was the post- office to be taken from them? She came straight to the point. "What have I done wrong, Monsieur? I've never kept the mail-stage waiting; I've never left the mailbag unlocked; I've never been late in opening the wicket; I've never been careless, and no one's ever complained of a lost letter." The Seigneur saw her agitation, and was sorry for her. He came to the point as she had done: "We will have you made postmistress--you alone, Rosalie Evanturel. I've made up my mind to that. But you'll promise not to get married--eh? Anyhow, there's no one in the parish for you to marry. You're too well- born and you've been too well educated for a habitant's wife--and the Cure or I can't marry you." He was not taken back to see her flush deeply, and it pleased him to see this much life rising to his own touch, this much revelation to give his mind a new interest. He had come to that age when the mind is surprised to find that the things that once charmed charm less, and the things once hated are less acutely repulsive. He saw her embarrassment. He did not know that this was the first time that she had ever thought of marriage since it ceased to be a dream of girlhood, and, by reason of thinking much on a man, had become a possibility, which, however, she had never confessed to herself. Here she was faced by it now in the broad open day: a plain, hard statement, unrelieved by aught save the humour of the shrewd eyes bent upon her. She did not answer him at once. "Do you promise not to marry so useless a thing as man, and to remain true to the government?" he continued. "If I wished to marry a man, I should not let the government stand in my way," she said, in brave confusion. "But do you wish to marry any man?" he asked abruptly, even petulantly. "I have not asked myself that question, Monsieur, and--should you ask it, unless--" she said, and paused with as pretty and whimsical a glance of merriment as could well be. He burst out laughing at the swift turn she had given her reply, and at the double suggestion. Then he suddenly changed. A curious expression filled his eyes. A smile, almost beautiful, came to his lips. "'Pon my honour," he said, in a low tone, "you have me caught! And I beg to say--I beg to say," he added, with a flush mounting in his own face, a sudden inspiration in his look, "that if you do not think me too old and crabbed and ugly, and can endure me, I shall be profoundly happy if you will marry me, Rosalie." He stood upright, holding himself very hard, for this idea had shot into his mind all in an instant, though, unknown to himself, it had been growing for years, cherished by many a kind act to her father and by a simple gratitude on her part. He had spoken without feeling the absurdity of the proposal. He had never married, and he was unprepared to make any statement on such a theme; but now, having made it somehow, he would stand by it, in spite of any and all criticism. He had known Rosalie since her birth, her education was as good as a convent could secure, she was the granddaughter of a notable seigneur, and here she was, as fine a type of health, beauty and character as man could wish-- and he was only fifty! Life was getting lonelier for him every day, and, after all, why should he leave distant relations and the Church his worldly goods? All this flashed through his mind as he waited for her answer. Now it seemed to him that he had meant to say this thing for many years. He had seen an awakening in her--he had suddenly been awakened himself. "Monsieur, Monsieur," she said in a bewildered way, "do not amuse yourself at my expense." "Would it be that, then?" he said, with a smile, behind which there was determination and self-will. "I want you to marry me; I do with all my heart. You shall have those ha'pence, and the kisses too, if so be you will take them--or not, as you will, Rosalie." "Monsieur," she gasped, for something caught her in the throat, and the tears started to her eyes, "ask me to forget that you have ever said those words. Oh, Monsieur, it is not possible, it never could be possible! I am only the postmaster's daughter." "You are my wife, if you will but say the word," he answered, "and I as proud a husband as the land holds!" "You were always kind to me, Monsieur," she rejoined, her lips trembling; "won't you be so still?" "I am too old?" he asked. "Oh no, it is not that," she replied. "You have as good manners as my mother had. You need not fear comparison with any lady in the land. Have I not known you all your life? I know the way you have come, and your birth is as good as mine." "Ah, it is not that, Monsieur!" "I give you my word that I do not come to you because no one else would have me," he said with a curious simplicity. "I never asked a woman to marry me--never! You are the first. There was talk once--but it was all false. I never meant to ask any one to marry me. But I have the wish now which I never had in my youth. I thought best of myself always; now, I think--I think better of you than--" "Oh, Monsieur, I beg of you, no more! I cannot; oh, I cannot--" "You--but no; I will not ask you, Mademoiselle. If you have some one else in your heart, or want some one else there, that is your affair, not mine--undoubtedly. I would have tried to make you happy; you would have had peace and comfort all your life; you could have trusted me--but there it is. . . ." He felt all at once that he was unfair to her, that he had thrust upon her too hard a problem in too troubled an hour. "I could trust you with my life, Monsieur Rossignol," she replied. "And I love you in a way that a man may be loved to no one's harm or sorrow: it is true that!" She raised her eyes to his simply, trustingly. He looked at her steadily for a moment. "If you change your mind--" She shook her head sadly. "Good, then," he went on, for he thought it wise not to press her now, though he had no intention of taking her no as final. "I'll keep an eye on you. You'll need me some day soon; I can do things that the Cure can't, perhaps." His manner changed still more. "Now to business," he continued. "Your father has been talking about letters received and sent from the post-office. That is punishable. I am responsible for you both, and if it is reported, if the woman were to report it--you know the letter I mean--there would be trouble. You do not talk. Now I am going to ask the government to make you sole postmistress, with full responsibility. Then you must govern your father--he hasn't as much sense as you." "Monsieur, we owe you so much! I am deeply grateful, and, whatever you do for us, you may rely on me to do my duty." They could scarcely hear each other speak now, for the soldiers were coming nearer, and the fife-and-drum bands were screeching, 'Louis the King was a Soldier'. "Then you will keep the government as your husband?" he asked, with forced humour, as he saw the Cure and the Notary approaching. "It is less trouble, Seigneur," she answered, with a smile of relief. M. Rossignol turned to the Cure and the Notary. "I have just offered Mademoiselle a husband she might rule in place of a government that rules her, and she has refused," he said in the Cure's ear, with a dry laugh. "She's a sensible girl, is Rosalie," said the Cure, not apprehending. The soldiers were now opposite the church, and riding at their head was the battalion Colonel, also member of the Legislature. They all moved down, and Rosalie disappeared in the crowd. As the Seigneur and the Cure greeted the Colonel, the latter said: "At luncheon I'll tell you one of the bravest things ever seen. Happened half-hour ago at the Red Ravine. Man who did it wore an eye-glass--said he was a tailor." CHAPTER XXV THE COLONEL TELLS HIS STORY The Colonel had lunched very well indeed. He had done justice to every dish set before him; he had made a little speech, congratulating himself on having such a well-trained body of men to command, and felicitating Chaudiere from many points of view. He was in great good-humour with himself, and when the Notary asked him--it was at the Manor, with the soldiers resting on the grass without--about the tale of bravery he had promised them, he brought his fist down on the table with great intensity but little noise, and said: "Chaudiere may well be proud of it. I shall refer to it in the Legislature on the question of roads and bridges--there ought to be a stone fence on that dangerous road by the Red Ravine--Have I your attention?" He stood up, for he was an excitable and voluble Colonel, and he loved oration as a cat does milk. With a knife he drew a picture of the locale on the table cloth. "Here I was riding on my sorrel, all my noble fellows behind, the fife and drums going as at Louisburg--that day! Martial ardour united to manliness and local pride--follow me? Here we were, Red Ravine left, stump fences and waving fields of grain right. From military point of view, bad position--ravine, stump fence, brave soldiers in the middle, food for powder--catch it?--see?" He emptied his glass, drew a long breath, and again began, the carving- knife cutting a rhetorical path before him. "I was engaged upon the military problem--demonstration in force, no scouts ahead, no rearguard, ravine on the right, stump fence on the left, red coats, fife-and-drum band, concealed enemy--follow me? Observant mind always sees problems everywhere--unresting military genius accustoms intelligence to all possible contingencies--'stand what I mean?" The Seigneur took a pinch of snuff, and the Cure, whose mind was benevolent, listened with the gravest interest. "At the juncture when, in my mind's eye, I saw my gallant fellows enfiladed with a terrible fire, caught in a trap, and I, despairing, spurring on to die at their headhave I your attention?--just at that moment there appeared between the ravine and the road ahead a man. He wore an eye-glass; he seemed an unconcerned spectator of our movements --so does the untrained, unthinking eye look out upon destiny! Not far away was a wagon, in it a man. Wagon bisecting our course from a cross- road--" He drew a line on the table-cloth with the carvingknife, and the Notary said: "Yes, yes, the concession road." "So, Messieurs. There were we, a battalion and a fife-and-drum band; there was the man with the eyeglass, the indifferent spectator, yet the engine of fate; there was the wagon, a mottled horse, and a man driving-- catch it? The mottled horse took fright at our band, which at that instant strikes up 'The Chevalier Drew his Sabre'. He shies from the road with a leap, the man falls backwards into the wagon, and the reins drop. The horse dashes from the road into the open, and rushes on to the ravine. What good now to stop the fifes and drums-follow me? What can we, an armed force, bandoleered, knapsacked, sworded, rifled, impetuous, brave, what can we do before this tragedy? The man in the wagon senseless, the flying horse, the ravine, death! How futile the power of man--'stand what I mean?" "Why didn't your battalion shoot the horse?" said the Seigneur drily, taking a pinch of snuff. "Monsieur," said the Colonel, "see the irony, the implacable irony of fate--we had only blank cartridge! But see you, here was this one despised man with an eye-glass, a tailor--takes nine tailors to make a man!--between the ravine and the galloping tragedy. His spirit arrayed itself like an army with banners, prepared to wrestle with death as Jacob wrestled with his shadow all the night 'sieur le Cure!" The Cure bowed; the Notary shook back his oiled locks in excitement. "Awoke a whole man--nine-ninths, as in Adam--in the obscure soul of the tailor, and, rushing forward, he seized the mottled horse by the bridle as he galloped upon the chasm: The horse dragged him on--dragged him on --on--on. We, an army, so to speak, stood and watched the Tailor and the Tragedy! All seemed lost, but, by the decree of fate--" "The will of God," said the Cure softly. "By the great decree, the man was able to stop the horse, not a half- dozen feet from the ravine. The horse and the insensible driver were spared death--death. So, Messieurs, does bravery come from unexpected places--see?" The Seigneur, the Cure, and even the Notary clapped their hands, and murmured praises of the tailor-man. But the Colonel did not yet take his seat. "But now, mark the sequel," he said. "As I galloped over, I saw the tailor look into the wagon, and turn away quickly. He waited by the horse till I came near, and then walked off without a word. I rode up, and tapped him with my sword upon the shoulder. 'A noble deed, my good man,' said I. 'I approve of your conduct, and I will remember it in the Legislature when I address the committee of the whole house on roads and bridges.' What do you think was his reply to my affable words? When I tapped him approvingly on the shoulder a second time, he screwed his eye- glass in his eye, and, with no emotion, though my own eyes were full of tears, he said, in a tone of affront, 'Look after the man there, constable,' and pointed to the wagon. Constable--mon Dieu! Gross manners even for a tailor!" "I had not thought his manners bad," said the Cure, as the Colonel sat down, gulped a glass of brandy-andwater, and mopped his forehead. "A most remarkable tailor," said the Seigneur, peering into his snuff- box. "And the driver of the mottled horse?" asked the Notary. "Knocked senseless. One of my captains soon restored him. He followed us into the village. He is a quack-doctor. I suppose he is now selling tinctures, pulling teeth, and driving away rheumatics. He gave me his card. I told him he should leave one on the tailor." With a flourish he threw a professional card upon the table, before the Cure. The Cure picked it up and read: JOHN BROWN, B.A., M.D., Healer of Ailments that Defy the Ordinary Skill of Ordinary Medical Men. Rheumatism, Sciatica, Headache, Toothache, Asthma, Ague, Pleurisy, Gout, and all Chronic Diseases Yield Instantly to the Power of his Medicines. Dr. Brown will publicly treat the most stubborn cases, laying himself open to the derision of mankind if he does not instantly give relief and benefit. His whole career has been a blessing to his fellows, and his journey now through this country, fresh from his studies in the Orient, is to introduce his remedies to a suffering world, for the conquest of malady, not for personal profit. JOHN BROWN, B.A., M.D., Specialist in Chronic Diseases and General Practitioner. CHAPTER XXVI A SONG, A BOTTLE, AND A GHOST All day John Brown, ex-clergyman and quack-doctor, harangued the people of Chaudiere from his gaily-painted wagon. He had the perfect gift of the charlatan, and he had discovered his metier. Inclined to the picturesque by nature, melodramatic and empirical, his earlier career had been the due fruit of habit and education. As a dabbler in mines he had been out of his element. He lacked the necessary reticence, and arsenic had not availed him, though it had tempted Billy Wantage to forgery; and because Billy hid himself behind the dismal opportunity of silence, had ruined the name of a dead man called Charley Steele. Since Charley's death John Brown had never seen Billy: he had left the town one woful day an hour after Billy had told him of the discovery Charley had made. From a far corner of the country he had read the story of Charley's death; of the futile trial of the river-drivers afterwards, ending in acquittal, and the subsequent discovery of the theft of the widows' and orphans' trust-moneys. On this St. Jean Baptiste's day he was thinking of anything and everything else but Charley Steele. Nothing could have been a better advertisement for him than the perilous incident at the Red Ravine. Falling backwards when the horse suddenly bolted, his head had struck the medicine-chest, and he had lain insensible till brought back to consciousness by the good offices of the voluble Colonel. He had not, therefore, seen Charley. It was like him that his sense of gratitude to the unknown tailor should be presently lost in exploiting the interest he created in the parish. His piebald horse, his white "plug" hat, his gaily painted wagon, his flamboyant manner, and, above all, the marvellous tale of his escape from death, were more exciting to the people of Chaudiere than the militia, the dancing-bears, the shooting- galleries, or the boat-races. He could sing extremely well--had he not trained his own choir when he was a parson? had not Billy approved his comic songs?--and these comic songs, now sandwiched between his cures and his sales, created much laughter. He cured headaches, toothaches, rheumatism, and all sorts of local ailments "with despatch." He miraculously juggled away pains by what he called his Pain Paint, and he stopped a cough by a laugh and a dose of his Golden Pectoral. In the exuberance of trade, which steadily increased till sundown, he gave no thought to the tailor, to whom, however, he had sent by a messenger a two-dollar bill and two bottles of Pain Paint, with the lordly announcement that he would call in the evening and "present his compliments and his thanks." The messenger left the Pain Paint on the door-step of the tailor-shop, and the two dollars he promptly spent at the Trois Couronnes. Rosalie Evanturel rescued the bottles from the doorstep and awaited Charley's return to his shop, that she might take them over to him, and so have an excuse to speak with him; for to-day her heart and mind were full of him. He had done a brave thing for the medicine-man, and had then fled from public gaze as a brave man should. There was no one to compare with him. Not even the Cure was his superior in ability, and certainly he was a greater man--though seemingly only a tailor--than M. Rossignol. M. Rossignol--she flushed. Who could have believed that the Seigneur would say those words to her this morning--to her, Rosalie Evanturel, who hadn't five hundred dollars to her name? That she should be asked to be Madame Rossignol! Confusion mingled with her simple pride, and she ran out into the street, to where her father sat listening to the medicine-man singing, in doubtful French: "I am a waterman bold, Oh, I'm a waterman bold: But for my lass I have great fear, Yes, in the isles I have great fear, For she is young, and I am old, And she is bien gentille!" It was night now. The militia had departed, their Colonel roaring commands at them out of a little red drill-book; the older people had gone to their homes, but festive youth hovered round the booths and sideshows, the majority enjoying themselves at some expense in the medicine-man's encampment. As Rosalie ran towards the crowd she turned a wistful glance to the tailor-shop. Not a sign of life there! She imagined M'sieu' to be at Vadrome Mountain, until, glancing round the crowd at the quack-doctor's wagon, she saw Jo Portugais gloomily watching the travelling tinker of human bodies. Evidently M'sieu' was not at Vadrome Mountain. He was not far from her. At the side of the road, under a huge maple- tree with wide-spreading branches, Charley stood and watched John Brown performing behind the flaring oil-lights stuck on poles round his wagon, his hat now on, now off; now singing a comic song in English---'I found Y' in de Honeysuckle Paitch;' now a French chanson--'En Revenant de St. Alban;' now treating a stiff neck or a bent back, or giving momentary help to the palsy of an old man, or again making a speech. Charley was in touch again with the old life, but in a kind of fantasy only--a staring, high-coloured dream. This man--John Brown--had gone down before his old ironical questioning, had been, indirectly, the means of disgracing his name. A step forward to that wagon, a word uttered, a look, and he would have to face again the life he had put by for ever, would have to meet a hard problem and settle it--to what misery and tragedy, who might say? Under this tree he was M. Mallard, the infidel tailor, whose life was slowly entering into the life of this place called Chaudiere, slowly being acted upon by habit, which, automatically repeated, at length becomes character. Out in that red light, before that garish wagon, he would be Charley Steele, barrister, 'flaneur', and fop, who, according to the world, had misused a wife, misled her brother, robbed widows and orphans, squandered a fortune, become drunkard and wastrel, and at last had lost his life in a disorderly tavern at the Cote Dorion. This man before him had contributed to his disgrace; but once he had contributed to John Brown's disgrace; and to-day he had saved John Brown's life. They were even. All the night before, all this morning, he had fought a fierce battle with his past--with a raging thirst. The old appetite had swept over him fiercely. All day he had moved in a fevered conflict, which had lifted him away from the small movements of everyday life into a region where only were himself and one strong foe, who tirelessly strove with him. In his old life he had never had a struggle of any sort. His emotions had been cloaked, his soul masked, there had been a film before his eyes, he had worn an armour of selfishness on a life which had no deep problems, because it had no deep feelings--a life never rising to the intellectual prowess for which it was fitted, save when under the stimulus of liquor. From the moment he had waked from a long seven months' sleep in the hut on Vadrome Mountain, new deep feelings had come to him as he faced problems of life. Fighting had begun from that hour--a fighting which was putting his nature through bitter mortal exercises, yet, too, giving him a sense of being he had never known. He had now the sweetness of earning daily bread by the work of his hands; of giving to the poor, the needy, and the afflicted; of knowing for the first time in his life that he was not alone in the world. Out of the grey dawn of life a woman's voice had called to him; the look of her face had said to him: "Viens ici! Viens ici!"--"Come to me! Come to me!" But with that call there was the answer of his soul, the desolating cry of the dispossessed Lear-" Never--never--never--never--never!" He had not questioned himself concerning Rosalie--had dared not to do so. But now, as he stood under the great tree, within hand-touch of the old life, in imminent danger of being thrust back into it, the question of Rosalie came upon him with all the force of months of feeling behind it. Thus did he argue with himself: "Do I love her? And if I love her, what is to be done? Marry her, with a wife living? Marry her while charged with a wretched crime? Would that be love? But suppose I never were discovered, and we might live here for ever, I as 'Monsieur Mallard,' in peace and quiet all the days of our life? Would that be love? . . . Could there be love with a vital secret, like, a cloud between, out of which, at any hour, might spring discovery? Could I build our life upon a silence which must be a lie? Would I not have to face the question, Does any one know cause or just impediment why this woman should not be married to this man? Tell Rosalie all, and let the law separate myself and Kathleen? That would mean Billy's ruin and imprisonment, and Kathleen's shame, and it might not bring Rosalir. She is a Catholic, and her Church would not listen to it. Would I have the right to bring trouble into her life? To wrong one woman should seem enough for one lifetime!" At that instant Rosalie, who had been on the outskirts of the crowd, moved into his line of vision. The glare from the lights fell on her face as she stood by her father's chair, looking curiously at the quack- doctor who, having sold many bottles of his medicines, noy picked up a guitar and began singing an old dialect chanson of Saintonge: "Voici, the day has come When Rosette leaves her home! With fear she walks in the sun, For Raoul is ninety year, And she not twenty-one. La petit' Rosette, She is not twenty-one. "He takes her by the hand, And to the church they go; By parents 'twas well meant, But is Rosette content? 'Tis gold and ninety year She walks in the sun with fear, La petit' Rosette, Not twenty-one as yet!" Charley's eyes, which had watched her these months past, noted the deepening colour of the face, the glow in the eyes, the glances of keen but agitated interest towards the singer. He could not translate her looks; and she, on her part, had she been compelled to do so, could only have set down a confusion of sensations. In Rosette she saw herself, Rosalie Evanturel; in the man "de quatre- vingt-dix ans," who was to marry this Rosette of Saintonge, she saw M. Rossignol. Disconcerting pictures of a possible life with the Seigneur flitted before her mind. She beheld herself, young, fresh-cheeked, with life beating high and all the impulses of youth panting to use, sitting at the head of the seigneury table. She saw herself in the great pew at Mass, stiff with dignity, old in the way of manorial pride--all laughter dead in her, all spring-time joy overshadowed by the grave decorum of the Manor, all the imagination of her dreaming spirit chilled by the presence of age, however kindly and quaint and cheerful. She shuddered, and dropped her eyes upon the ground, as, to the laughter and giggling of old and young gathered round the wagon, the medicine-man sang: "He takes her by the hand, And to her chamber fair--" Then, suddenly turning, she vanished into the night, followed by the feeble inquiry of her father's eyes, the anxious look in Charley's. Charley could not read her tale. He had, however, a hot impulse to follow and ask her if she would vanish from the scene if the medicine-man should sing of Rosette and a man of thirty, not ninety, years. The fight he had had all day with his craving for drink had made him feverish, and all his emotions--unregulated, under the command of his will only--were in high temperature. A reckless feeling seized him. He would go to Rosalie, look into her eyes, and tell her that he loved her, no matter what the penalty of fate. He had never loved a human being, and the sudden impulse to cry out in the new language was driving him to follow the girl whose spirit for ever called to him. He made a step forward to follow her, but stopped short, recalled to caution and his danger by the voice of the medicine-man: "I had a friend once--good fellow, bad fellow, cleverest chap I ever knew. Tremendous fop--ladies loved him--cheeks like roses--tongue like sulphuric acid. Beautiful to look at. Clothes like a fashion-plate--got any fashion-plates in Chaudiere? 'who's your tailor?'" he added, in the slang of the hour, with a loud laugh, then stopped suddenly and took off his hat. "I forgot," he added, with upturned eyes and a dramatic seriousness, "your tailor saved my life to-day-henceforth I am the friend of all tailors. Well, to continue. My friend that was--I call him my friend, though he ruined me and ruined others,--didn't mean to, but he did just the same,--he came to a bad end. But he was a great man while he lived. And what I'm coming to is this, the song he used to sing when, in youthful exuberance, we went on the war-path like our young friend over there"--he pointed to a young habitant farmer, who was trying hard to preserve equilibrium--"Brown's Golden Pectoral will cure that cough, my friend!" he added, as the young man, gloomily ashamed of the laughter of the crowd, hiccoughed and turned away to the tree under which Charley Steele stood. "Well," he went on, "I was going to say that my friend's name was Charley, and the song he used to sing when the roosters waked the morn was called 'Champagne Charlie.' He was called 'Champagne Charlie'--till he came to a bad end." He twanged his guitar, cleared his throat, winked at Maximilian Cour the baker, and began: "The way I gained my title's by a hobby which I've got Of never letting others pay, however long the shot; Whoever drinks at my expense is treated all the same; Whoever calls himself my friend, I make him drink champagne. Some epicures like Burgundy, Hock, Claret, and Moselle, But Moet's vintage only satisfies this champagne swell. What matter if I go to bed and head is muddled thick, A bottle in the morning sets me right then very quick. Champagne Charlie is my name; Champagne Charlie is my name. Who's the man with the heart so young, Who's the man with the ginger tongue? Champagne Charlie is his name!" Under the tree, Charley Steele listened to this jaunty epitaph on his old self. At the first words of the coarse song there rushed on him the dreaded thirst. He felt his veins beating with desire, with anger, disgust, and shame; for there was John Brown, to the applause of the crowd, imitating his old manner, his voice, his very look. He started forward, but the drunken young habitant lurched sideways under the tree and collapsed upon the ground, a bottle of whiskey falling out of his pocket and rolling almost to his own feet. "Champagne Charlie is my name," sang the medicine-man. All Charley's old life surged up in him as dyked water suddenly bursts bounds and spreads destruction. He had an uncontrollable impulse. As a starving animal snatches at the first food offered it, he stooped, with a rattle in his throat, seized the bottle, uncorked it, put it to his lips, and drank--drank--drank. Then he turned and plunged away into the trees. The sound of the song followed him. It came to him, the last refrain, sung loudly to the laughter of the crowd, in imitation of his own voice as it used to be --it had been a different voice during this past year. He turned with headlong intention, and, as the last notes of the song and the applause that followed it, died away, threw back his head and sang out of the darkness: "Champagne Charlie is my name--" With a shrill laugh, like the half-mad cry of an outcast soul, he flung away farther into the trees. There was a sudden silence. The crowd turned with half-apprehensive laughter to the trees. Upon John Brown the effect was startling. His face blanched, his eyes grew large with terror, his mouth opened in helpless agitation. Charley Steele was lying under the waters of the great river, his bones rotting there for a year, yet here was his voice coming out of the night, in response to his own grotesque imitation of the dead man. Seeing his agitation, women turned pale, men felt their flesh creep, imagination gave a thrilling coldness to the air. For a moment the silence was unbroken. Then John Brown stretched out his hand and said, in a hoarse whisper: "It was his voice--Charley's voice, and he's been dead a year!" Within half-an-hour, in utter collapse and fright, he was being driven to the next parish by two young habitants whom he paid to accompany him. CHAPTER XXVII OUT ON THE OLD TRAIL There was one person in the crowd surrounding the medicine-man's wagon who had none of that superstitious thrill which had scattered the habitants into little awe-stricken groups, and then by twos and threes to their homes; none of that fear which had reduced the quack-doctor to such nervous collapse that he would not spend the night in the village. Jo Portugais had recognised the voice--that of Charley Steele the lawyer who had saved him from hanging years ago. It was little like the voice of M'sieu'! There was that in it which frightened him. He waited until he had seen the quackdoctor start for the next parish, then he went slowly down the street. There were people still about, so he walked on towards the river. When he returned, the street was empty. Keeping in the shadow of the trees, he went to Charley's house. There was a light in a window. He went to the back door and tried it. It was not locked, and, without knocking, he stepped inside the kitchen. Here was no light, and he passed into the hallway and on to a little room opening from the tailorshop. He knocked; then, not waiting for response, opened the door and entered. Charley was standing before a mirror, holding a pair of scissors. He turned abruptly, and said forbiddingly: "I am at my toilet!" Then, turning again to the mirror, with a shrug of the shoulders, he raised the shears to his beard. Before he could use them, Jo's hand was on his arm. "Stop that, M'sieu'!" he said huskily. Charley had drunk nearly a whole bottle of cheap whiskey within an hour. He was intoxicated, but, as had ever been the case with him, his brain was working clearly, his hand was steady; he was in that wide dream of clear-seeing and clear-knowing which, in old days, had given him glimpses of the real life from which, in the egotism of the non-intime, he had been shut out. Looking at Jo now, he was possessed by a composed intoxication like that in which he had moved during that last night at the Cote Dorion. But now, with the baleful crust of egotism gone, with every nerve of life exposed, with conscience struggling to its feet from the torpor of thirty-odd vacant years, he was as two men in one, with different lives and different souls, yet as inseparable in their misery as those poor victims of Gallic tyranny, chained back to back and thrown into the Seine. Jo's words, insistent and eager, suddenly roused in him some old memory, which stayed his hand. "Why should I stop?" he asked quietly, and smiling that smile which had infuriated the river-drivers at the Cote Dorion. "Are you going back, M'sieu?" "Back where?" Charley's eyes were fixed on Jo with a penetrating intensity, heightened to a strange abstraction, as though he saw not Jo alone, but something great distances beyond. Jo did not answer this question directly. "Some one came to-day--he is gone; some one may come to-morrow--and stay," he said meaningly. Charley went over to the fire and sat down on a bench, opening and shutting the scissors mechanically. Jo was in the light, and Charley's eyes again studied him hard. His memory was industriously feeling its way into the baffling distance. "What if some one did come-and stay?" he urged quietly. "You might be recognised without the beard." "What difference would it make?" Charley's memory was creeping close to the hidden door. It was feeling-feeling for the latch. "You know best, M'sieu'." "But what do you know?" Charley's face now had a strained look, and he touched his lips with his tongue. "What John Brown knows, M'sieu'." There flashed across Charley's mind the fatal newspaper he had read on the day he awakened to memory again in the but on Vadrome Mountain. He remembered that he had put it in the fire. But Jo might have read it before it was spread upon the bench-put it there of purpose for him to read. Yet what reason could Jo have for being silent, for hiding his secret? There was silence for a space, in which Charley's eyes were like unmoving sparks of steel. He did not see Jo's face--it was in a mist--he was searching, searching, searching. All at once he felt the latch of the hidden door under his finger; he saw a court-room, a judge and jury, and hundreds of excited faces, himself standing in the midst. He saw twelve men file slowly into the room and take their seats-all save one, who stood still in his place and said: "Not guilty, your Honour!" He saw the prisoner leave the box and step down a free man. He saw himself coming out into the staring summer day. He watched the prisoner come to him and touch his arm, and say: "Thank you, M'sieu'. You have saved my life." He saw himself turn to this man: He roused from his trance, he staggered to his feet, the shears rattled to the floor. Lurching forward, he caught Jo Portugais by the throat, and said, as he had said outside the court-room years ago: "Get out of my sight. You're as guilty as hell!" His grip tightened--tightened on Jo's throat. Jo did not move, though his face grew black. Then, suddenly, the hands relaxed, a bluish paleness swept over the face, and Charley fell sidewise to the floor before Jo could catch him. All night, alone, the murderer struggled with death over the body of the lawyer who had saved his life. CHAPTER XXVIII THE SEIGNEUR GIVES A WARNING Rosalie had watched a shut door for five days--a door from which, for months past, had come all the light and glow of her life. It framed a figure which had come to represent to her all that meant hope and soul and conscience-and love. The morning after St. Jean Baptiste's day she had awaited the opening door, but it had remained closed. Ensued watchful hours, and then from Jo Portugais she had learned that M'sieu' had been ill and near to death. She had been told the weird story of the medicine-man and the ghostly voice, and, without reason, she took the incident as a warning, and associated it with the man across the way. She was come of a superstitious race, and she herself had heard and seen things of which she never had been able to speak--the footsteps in the church the night she had screwed the little cross to the door again; the tiny round white light by the door of the church; the hood which had vanished into the unknown. One mystery fed another. It seemed to her as if some dreadful event were forward; and all day she kept her eyes fixed on the tailor's door. Dead--if M'sieu' should die! If M'sieu' should die--it needed all her will to prevent herself from going over and taking things in her own hands, being his nurse, his handmaid, his slave. Duty--to the government, to her father? Her heart cried out that her duty lay where all her life was eddying to one centre. What would the world say? She was not concerned for that, save for him. What, then, would M'sieu' say? That gave her pause. The Seigneur's words the day before had driven her back upon a tide of emotions which carried her far out upon that sea where reason and life's conventions are derelicts, where Love sails with reckless courage down the shoreless main. "If I could only be near him!" she kept saying to herself. "It is my right. I would give my life, my soul for his. I was with him before when his life was in danger. It was my hand that saved him. It was my love that tended him. It was my soul that kept his secret. It was my faith that spoke for him. It was my heart that ached for him. It is my heart that aches for him now as none other in all the world can. No one on earth could care as I care. Who could there be?" Something whispered in her ear, "Kathleen!" The name haunted her, as the little cross had done. Misery and anger possessed her, and she fought on with herself through dark hours. Thus five days had gone, until at last a wagon was brought to the door of the tailor-shop, and M'sieu' came out, leaning on the arm of Jo Portugais. There were several people in the street at the time, and they kept whispering that M'sieu' had been at death's door. He was pale and haggard, with dark hollows under the eyes. Just as he got into the wagon the Cure came up. They shook hands. The Cure looked him earnestly in the face, his lips moved, but no one could have told what he said. As the wagon started, Charley looked across to the post-office. Rosalie was standing a little back from the door, but she stepped forward now. Their eyes met. Her heart beat faster, for there was a look in his eyes she had never seen before--a look of human helplessness, of deep anxiety. It was meant for her--for herself alone. She could not trust herself to go and speak to him. She felt that she must burst into tears. So, with a look of pity and pain, she watched the wagon go down the street. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!--the Seigneur's gold-headed cane rattled on the front door of the tailor-shop. It was plain to be seen his business was urgent. Madame Dauphin came hurrying from the postoffice, followed by Maximilian Cour and Filion Lacasse. "Ah, M'sieu', the tailor will not answer. There's no use knocking--not a bit, M'sieu' Rossignol," said Madame. The Seigneur turned querulously upon the Notary's wife, yet with a glint of hard humour in his eye. He had no love for Madame Dauphin. He thought she took unfair advantages of M. Dauphin, whom also he did not love, but whose temperament did him credit. "How should Madame know whether or no the gentleman will answer? Does Madame share the gentleman's confidence, perhaps?" he remarked. Madame did not reply at once. She turned on the saddler and the baker. "I hope you'll learn a lesson," she cried triumphantly. "I've always said the tailor was quite the gentleman; and now you see how your betters call him. No, M'sieu', the gentleman will not answer," she added to the Seigneur. "He is in bed yet, Madame?" "His bed is empty there, M'sieu'," she said, impressively, and pointing. "I suppose I should trust you in this matter; I suppose you should know. But, Dauphin--what does Dauphin say?" The saddler laughed outright. Maximilian Cour suddenly blushed in sympathy with Madame Dauphin, who now saw the drift of the Seigneur's remarks, and was sensibly agitated, as the Seigneur had meant her to be. Had she not turned Dauphin's human sympathies into a crime? Had not the Notary supported the Seigneur in his friendly offices to Paulette Dubois; and had not Madame troubled her husband's life because of it? Madame bridled up now--with discretion, for it was not her cue to offend the Seigneur. "All the village knows his bed's empty there, M'sieu'," she said, with tightening lips. "I am subtracted from the total, then?" he asked drily. "You have been away for the last five days--" "Come, now, how did you know that?" "Everybody knows it. You went away with the Colonel and the soldiers on St. Jean Baptiste's day. Since then M'sieu' the tailor has been ill. I should think Mrs. Flynn would have told you that, M'sieu'." "H'm! Would you? Well, Mrs. Flynn has been away too--and you didn't know that! What is the matter with Monsieur Mallard?" "Some kind of fever. On St. Jean Baptiste's day he was taken ill, and that animal Portugais took care of him all night--I wonder how M'sieu' can have the creature about! That St. Jean Baptiste's night was an awful night. Have you heard of what happened, M'sieu'? Ghost or no ghost--" "Come, come, I want to know about the tailor, not of ghosts," impatiently interrupted the Seigneur. "Tiens! M'sieu', the tailor was ill for three days here, and he would let no one except the Cure and Jo Portugais near him. I went myself to clean up and make some broth, but that toad of a Portugais shut the door in my face. The Cure told us to go home and leave M'sieu' with Portugais. He must be very sick to have that black sheep about him--and no doctor either." The saddler spoke up now. "I took him a bottle of good brandy and some buttermilk-pop and seed cake--I would give him a saddle if he had a horse--he got my thousand dollars for me! Well, he took them, but what do you think? He sent them right off to the shantyman, Gugon, who has a broken leg. Infidel or no, I'm on his side for sure. And God blesses a cheerful giver, I'm told." It was the baker's chance, and he took it. "I played 'The Heart Bowed Down'-it is English-under his window, two nights ago, and he sent word for me to come and play it again in the kitchen. Ah, that is a good song, 'The Heart Bowed Down.'" "You'd be a better baker if you fiddled less," said Madame Dauphin, annoyed at being dropped out of the conversation. "The soul must be fed, Madame," rejoined the baker, with asperity. "Where is the tailor now?" said the Seigneur shortly. "At Portugais's on Vadrome Mountain. They say he looked like a ghost when he went. Rosalie Evanturel saw him, but she has no tongue in her head this morning," added Madame. The Seigneur moved away. "Good-bye to you--I am obliged to you, Madame. Good-bye, Lacasse. Come and fiddle to me some night, Cour." He bowed to the obsequious three, and then bent his steps towards the post-office. They seemed about to follow him, but he stopped them with a look. The men raised their bonnets-rouges, the woman bowed low, and the Seigneur entered the post-office door. From the shadows of the office Rosalie had watched the little group before the door of the tailor-shop. She saw the Seigneur coming across the street. Suddenly she flushed deeply, for there came to her mind the song the quack-doctor sang: "Voila, the day has come When Rosette leaves her home! With fear she walks in the sun, For Raoul is ninety year, And she not twenty-one." As M. Rossignol's figure darkened the doorway, she pretended to be busy behind the wicket, and not to see him. He was not sure, but he thought it quite possible that she had seen him coming, and he put her embarrassment down to shyness. Naturally the poor child was not given the chance every day to receive an offer of marriage from a seigneur. He had made up his mind that she would be sure to accept him if he asked her a second time. "Ah, Ma'm'selle Rosalie," he said gaily, "what have you to say that you should not come before a magistrate at once?" "Nothing, if Monsieur Rossignol is to be the magistrate," she replied, with forced lightness. "Good!" He looked at her quizzically through his gold-handled glass. "I can't frighten you, I see. Well, you must wait a little; you shall be sworn in postmistress in three days." His voice lowered, became more serious. "Tell me," he said, "do you know what is the matter with the gentleman across the way?" Turning, he looked across to the tailor-shop, as though he expected "the gentleman" to appear, and he did not see her turn pale. When his look fell on her again, she was self-controlled. "I do not know, Monsieur." "You have been opposite him here these months past--did you ever see anything not--not as it should be?" "With him, Monsieur? Never." "It is as though the infidel behaved like a good Catholic and a Christian?" "There are good Catholics in Chaudiere who do not behave like Christians." "What would you say, for instance, about his past?" "What should I say about his past, Monsieur? What should I know?" "You should know more than any one else in Chaudiere. The secrets of his breast might well be bared to you." She started and crimsoned. Before her eyes there came a mist obscuring the Seigneur, and for an instant shutting out the world. The secrets of his breast--what did he mean? Did he know that on Monsieur's breast was the red scar which . . . M. Rossignol's voice seemed coming from an infinite distance, and as it came, the mist slowly passed from her eyes. "You will know, Mademoiselle Rosalie," he was saying, "that while I suggested that the secrets of his breast might well be bared to you, I meant that as an honest lady and faithful postmistress they were not. It was my awkward joke--a stupid gambolling by an old man who ought to know better." She did not answer, and he continued: "You know that you are trusted. Pray accept my apologies." She was herself again. "Monsieur," she said quietly; "I know nothing of his past. I want to know nothing. It does not seem to me that it is my business. The world is free for a man to come and go in, if he keeps the law and does no ill--is it not? But, in any case, I know nothing. Since you have said so much, I shall say this, and betray no 'secrets of his breast'--that he has received no letter through this office since the day he first came from Vadrome Mountain." The Seigneur smiled. "A wonderful tailor! How does he carry on business without writing letters?" "There was a large stock of everything left by Louis Trudel, and not long ago a commercial traveller was here with everything." "You think he has nothing to hide, then?" "Have not we all something to hide--with or without shame?" she asked simply. "You have more sense than any woman in Chaudiere, Mademoiselle." She shook her head, yet she raised her eyes gratefully to him. "I put faith in what you say," he continued. "Now listen. My brother, the Abbe, chaplain to the Archbishop, is coming here. He has heard of 'the infidel' of our parish. He is narrow and intolerant--the Abbe. He is going to stir up trouble against the tailor. We are a peaceful people here, and like to be left alone. We are going on very well as we are. So I wanted to talk to Monsieur to-day. I must make up my own mind how to act. The tailor-shop is the property of the Church. An infidel occupies it, so it is said; the Abbe does not like that. I believe there are other curious suspicions about Monsieur: that he is a robber, or incendiary, or something of the sort. The Abbe may take a stand, and the Cure's position will be difficult. What is more, my brother has friends here, fanatics like himself. He has been writing to them. They are men capable of doing unpleasant things--the Abbe certainly is. It is fair to warn the tailor. Shall I leave it to you? Do not frighten him. But there is no doubt he should be warned--fair play, fair play! I hear nothing but good of him from those whose opinions I value. But, you see, every man's history in this parish and in every parish of the province is known. This man, for us, has no history. The Cure even admits there are some grounds for calling him an infidel, but, as you know, he would keep the man here, not drive him out from among us. I have not told the Cure about the Abbe yet. I wished first to talk with you. The Abbe may come at any moment. I have been away, and only find his letters to-day." "You wish me to tell Monsieur?" interrupted Rosalie, unable to hold silence any longer. More than once during the Seigneur's disclosure she had felt that she must cry out and fiercely repel the base insinuations against the man she loved. "You would do it with discretion. You are friendly with him, are you not?--you talk with him now and then?" She inclined her head. "Very well, Monsieur. I will go to Vadrome Mountain to-morrow," she said quietly. Anger, apprehension, indignation, possessed her, but she held herself firmly. The Seigneur was doing a friendly thing; and, in any case, she could have no quarrel with him. There was danger to the man she loved, however, and every faculty was alive. "That's right. He shall have his chance to evade the Abbe if he wishes," answered M. Rossignol. There was silence for a moment, in which she was scarcely conscious of his presence; then he leaned over the counter towards her, and spoke in a low voice. "What I said the other day I meant. I do not change my mind--I am too old for that. Yet I'm young enough to know that you may change yours." "I cannot change, Monsieur," she said tremblingly. "But you will change. I knew your mother well, I know how anxious she was for your future. I told her once that I should keep an eye on you always. Her father was my father's good friend. I knew you when you were in the cradle--a little brown-haired babe. I watched you till you went to the convent. I saw you come back to take up the duties which your mother laid down, alas!--" "Monsieur--!" she said choking, and with a troubled little gesture. "You must let me speak, Rosalie. We got your father this post-office. It is a poor living, but it keeps a roof over your head. You have never failed us you have always fulfilled our hopes. But the best years of your life are going, and your education and your nature have not their chance. Oh, I've not watched you all these years for nothing. I never meant to ask you to marry me. It came to me, though, all at once, and I know that it has been in my mind all these years--far back in my mind. I don't ask you for my own sake alone. Your father may grow very ill-- who can tell what may happen!" "I should be postmistress still," she said sadly. "As a young girl you could not have the responsibility here alone. And you should not waste your life it is a fine, full spirit; let the lean, the poor-spirited, go singly. You should be mated. You can't marry any of the young farmers of Chaudiere. 'Tis impossible. I can give you enough for any woman's needs--the world may be yours to see and use to your heart's content. I can give, too"--he drew himself up proudly--" the unused emotions of a lifetime." This struck him as a very fine and important thing to say. "Ah, Monsieur, that is not enough," she responded. "What more can you want?" She looked up with a tearful smile. "I will tell you one day, Monsieur." "What day?" "I have not picked it out in the calendar." "Fix the day, and I will wait till then. I will not open my mouth again till then." "Michaelmas day, then, Monsieur," she answered mechanically and at haphazard, but with an urged gaiety, for a great depression was on her. "Good. Till Michaelmas day, then!" He pulled his long nose, laughing silently. . . . "I leave the tailor in your hands. Give every man his chance, I say. The Abbe is a hard man, but our hearts are soft--eh, eh, very soft!" He raised his hat and turned to the door. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Always hoping the best from the worst of us Have not we all something to hide--with or without shame? In all secrets there is a kind of guilt Pathetically in earnest Things that once charmed charm less THE RIGHT OF WAY By Gilbert Parker Volume 4. XXIX. THE WILD RIDE XXX. ROSALIE WARNS CHARLEY XXXI. CHARLEY STANDS AT BAY XXXII. JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY XXXIII. THE EDGE OF LIFE XXXIV. IN AMBUSH XXXV. THE COMING OF MAXIMILIAN COUR AND ANOTHER XXXVI. BARRIERS SWEPT AWAY XXXVII. THE CHALLENGE OF PAULETTE DUBOIS XXXVIII. THE CURE AND THE SEIGNEUR VISIT THE TAILOR XXXIX. THE SCARLET WOMAN XL. AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING CHAPTER XXIX THE WILD RIDE There had been a fierce thunder-storm in the valley of the Chaudiere. It had come suddenly from the east, had shrieked over the village, levelling fences, carrying away small bridges, and ending in a pelting hail, which whitened the ground with pebbles of ice. It had swept up to Vadrome Mountain, and had marched furiously through the forest, carrying down hundreds of trees, drowning the roars of wild animals and the crying and fluttering of birds. One hour of ravage and rage, and then, spent and bodiless, the storm crept down the other side of the mountain and into the next parish, whither the affrighted quack-doctor had betaken himself. After, a perfect calm, a shining sun, and a sweet smell over all the land, which had thirstily drunk the battering showers. In the house on Vadrome Mountain the tailor of Chaudiere had watched the storm with sympathetic interest. It was in accord with his own feelings. He had had a hard fight for months past, and had gone down in the storm of his emotions one night when a song called Champagne Charlie had had a weird and thrilling antiphonal. There had been a subsequent debacle for himself, and then a revelation concerning Jo Portugais. Ensued hours and days, wherein he had fought a desperate fight with the present--with himself and the reaction from his dangerous debauch. The battle for his life had been fought for him by this gloomy woodsman who henceforth represented his past, was bound to him by a measureless gratitude, almost a sacrament--of the damned. Of himself he had played no conscious part in it till the worst was over. On the one side was the Cure, patient, gentle, friendly, never pushing forward the Faith which the good man dreamed should give him refuge and peace; on the other side was the murderer, who typified unrest, secretiveness, an awful isolation, and a remorse which had never been put into words or acts of restitution. For six days the tailor-shop and the life at Chaudiere had been things almost apart from his consciousness. Ever-recurring memories of Rosalie Evanturel were driven from his mind with a painful persistence. In the shadows where his nature dwelt now he would not allow her good innocence and truth to enter. His self-reproach was the more poignant because it was silent. Watching the tempest-swept valley, the tortured forest, where wild life was in panic, there came upon him the old impulse to put his thoughts into words, "and so be rid of them," as he was wont to say in other days. Taking from his pocket some slips of paper, he laid them on the table before him. Three or four times he leaned over the paper to write, but the noise of the storm again and again drew his look to the window. The tempest ceased almost as suddenly as it had come, and, as the first sunlight broke through the flying clouds, he mechanically lifted a sheet of the paper and held it up to the light. It brought to his eyes the large water-mark, Kathleen! A sombre look passed over his face, he shifted in his chair, then bent over the paper and began to write. Words flowed from his pen. The lines of his face relaxed, his eyes lightened; he was lost in a dream. He thought of the present, and he wrote: "Wave walls to seaward, Storm-clouds to leeward, Beaten and blown by the winds of the West; Sail we encumbered Past isles unnumbered, But never to greet the green island of Rest." He thought of Father Loisel. He had seen the good man's lips tremble at some materialistic words he had once used in their many talks, and he wrote: "Lips that now tremble, Do you dissemble When you deny that the human is best?-- Love, the evangel, Finds the Archangel? Is that a truth when this may be a jest? "Star-drifts that glimmer Dimmer and dimmer, What do ye know of my weal or my woe? Was I born under The sun or the thunder? What do I come from? and where do I go? "Rest, shall it ever Come? Is endeavour But a vain twining and twisting of cords? Is faith but treason; Reason, unreason, But a mechanical weaving of words?" He thought of Louis Trudel, in his grave, and his own questioning: "Show me a sign from Heaven, tailorman!" and he wrote: "What is the token, Ever unbroken, Swept down the spaces of querulous years, Weeping or singing That the Beginning Of all things is with us, and sees us, and hears?" He made an involuntary motion of his hand to his breast, where old Louis Trudel had set a sign. So long as he lived, it must be there to read: a shining smooth scar of excoriation, a sacred sign of the faith he had never been able to accept; of which he had never, indeed, been able to think, so distant had been his soul, until, against his will, his heart had answered to the revealing call in a woman's eyes. He felt her fingers touch his breast as they did that night the iron seared him; and out of this first intimacy of his soul he wrote: "What is the token? Bruised and broken, Bend I my life to a blossoming rod? Shall then the worst things Come to the first things, Finding the best of all, last of all, God?" Like the cry of his "Aphrodite," written that last afternoon of the old life, this plaint ended with the same restless, unceasing question. But there was a difference. There was no longer the material, distant note of a pagan mind; there was the intimate, spiritual note of a mind finding a foothold on the submerged causeway of life and time. As he folded up the paper to put it into his pocket, Jo Portugais entered the room. He threw in a corner the wet bag which had protected his shoulders from the rain, hung his hat on a peg of the chimney-piece, nodded to Charley, and put a kettle on the little fire. "A big storm, M'sieu'," Jo said presently as he put some tea into a pot. "I have never seen a great storm in a forest before," answered Charley, and came nearer to the window through which the bright sun streamed. "It always does me good," said Jo. "Every bird and beast is awake and afraid and trying to hide, and the trees fall, and the roar of it like the roar of the chasse-galerie on the Kimash River." "The Kimash River--where is it?" Jo shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows!" "Is it a legend, then?" "It is a river." "And the chasse-galerie?" "That is true, M'sieu', no matter what any one thinks. I know; I have seen--I have seen with my own eyes." Jo was excited now. "I am listening." He took a cup of tea from Portugais and drank eagerly. "The Kimash River, M'sieu', that is the river in the air. On it is the chasse-galerie. You sell your soul to the devil; you ask him to help you; you deny God. You get into a canoe and call on the devil. You are lifted up, canoe and all, and you rush on down rapids, over falls, on the Kimash River in the air. The devil stands behind you and shouts, and you sing, 'V'la! l'bon vent! V'la l'joli vent!' On and on you go, faster and faster, and you forget the world, and you forget yourself, and the devil is with you in the air--in the chasse-galerie on the Kimash River." "Jo," said Charley Steele, "do you honestly think there's a river like that?" 'M'sieu', I know it. I saw Ignace Latoile, who robbed a priest and got drunk on the communion wine--I saw him with the devil in the Black Canoe at the Saguenay. I could see Ignace; I could see the devil; I could see the Kimash River. I shall ride myself some day. "Ride where?" "What does it matter where?" "Why should you ride?" "Because you ride fast with the devil." "What is the good of riding fast?" "In the rush a man forget." "What does he forget, my friend?" There was a pause, in which a man with a load of crime upon his soul dwelt upon the words my friend, coming from the lips of one who knew the fulness of his iniquity. Then he answered: "In the noise he forget that a voice is calling in his ear, 'You did It!' He forget what he see in his dreams. He forget the hand that touch him on the arm when he walk in the woods alone, or lie down to sleep at night, no one near. He forget that some one wait--wait--wait, till he has suffer long enough, or till, one day, he think he is happy again, and the Thing he did is far off like a dream--to drag him out to the death he did not die. He forget that he is alone--all alone in the world, for ever and ever and ever." He suddenly sank upon the floor beside Charley, and a groan burst from his lips. "To have no friend--ah, it is so awful!" he said. "Never to see a face that look into yours, and know how bad are you, and doesn't mind. For five years I have live like that. I cannot let any one be my friend because I was that! They seem to know--everything, everybody-- what I am. The little children when I pass them run away to hide. I have wake in the night and cry out in fear, it is so lonely. I have hear voices round me in the woods, and I run and run and run from them, and not leave them behind. Three times I go to the jails in Quebec to see the prisoners behind the bars, and watch the pains on their faces, to understand what I escape. Five times have I go to the courts to listen to murderers tried, and watch them when the Jury say Guilty! and the Judge send them to death--that I might know. Twice have I go to see murderers hung. Once I was helper to the hangman, that I might hear and know what the man said, what he felt. When the arms were bound, I felt the straps on my own; when the cap come down, I gasp for breath; when the bolt is shot, I feel the wrench and the choke, and shudder go through myself--feel the world jerk out in the dark. When the body is bundled in the pit, I see myself lie still under the quick-lime with the red mark round my throat." Charley touched him on the shoulder. "Jo--poor Jo, my friend!" he said. Jo raised his eyes, red with an unnatural fire, deep with gratitude. "As I sit at my dinner, with the sun shining and the woods green and glad, and all the world gay, I have see what happened all over again. I have see his strong hands; his bad face laugh at my words; I have see him raise his riding-whip and cut me across the head. I have see him stagger and fall from the blows I give him with the knife--the knife which never was found--why, I not know, for I throw it on the ground beside him! There, as I sit in the open day, a thousand times I have see him shiver and fall, staring, staring at me as if he see a dreadful thing. Then I stand up again and strike at him--at his ghost!--as I did that day in the woods. Again I see him lie in his blood, straight and white--so large, so handsome, so still! I have shed tears--but what are tears! Blind with tears I have call out for the devils of hell to take me with them. I have call on God to give me death. I have prayed, and I have cursed. Twice I have travelled to the grave where he lies. I have knelt there and have beg him to tell the truth to God, and say that he torture me till I kill him. I have beg him to forgive me and to haunt me no more with his bad face. But never--never--never--have I one quiet hour until you come, M'sieu'; nor any joy in my heart till I tell you the black truth--M'sieu'! M'sieu!" He buried his face between Charley's feet, and held them with his hands. Charley laid a hand on the shaggy head as though it were that of a child. "Be still--be still, Jo," he said gently. Since that night of St. Jean Baptiste's festival, no word of the past, of the time when Charley turned aside the revanche of justice from a man called Joseph Nadeau, had been spoken between them. Out of the delirium of his drunken trance had come Charley's recognition of the man he knew now as Jo Portugais. But the recognition had been sent again into the obscurity whence it came, and had not been mentioned since. To outward seeming they had gone on as before. As Charley saw the knotted brows, the staring eyes, the clinched hands, the figure of the woodsman rigid in its agony of remorse, he said to himself: "What right had I to save this man's life? To have paid for his crime would have been easier for him. I knew he was guilty. Perhaps it was my duty to see that every condition, to the last shade of the law, was satisfied, but was it justice to the poor devil himself? There he sits with a load on him that weighs him down every hour of his life. I called him back; I gave him life; but I gave him memory and remorse, and the ghosts that haunt him: the voice in his ear, the touch on his arm, the some one that is 'waiting--waiting--waiting!' That is what I did, and that is what the brother of the Cure did for me. He drew me back. He knew I was a drunkard, but he drew me back. I might have been a murderer like Portugais. The world says I was a thief, and a thief I am until I prove to the world I am innocent--and wreck three lives! How much of Jo's guilt is guilt? How much remorse should a man suffer to pay the debt of a life? If the law is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, how much hourly remorse and torture, such as Jo's, should balance the eye or the tooth or the life? I wonder, now!" He leaned over, and, helping Jo to his feet, gently forced him down upon a bench near. "All right, Jo, my friend," he said. "I understand. We'll drink the gall together." They sat and looked at each other in silence. At length Charley leaned over and touched Jo on the shoulder. "Why did you want to save yourself?" he said. At that instant there was a knock at the door, and a voice said: "Monsieur!--Monsieur!" Jo sprang to his feet with a sharp exclamation, then went heavily to the door and threw it open. CHAPTER XXX ROSALIE WARNS CHARLEY Charley's eyes met Rosalie's with a look the girl had never seen in them before. It gave a glow to his haggard face. Rosalie turned to Jo and greeted him with a friendlier manner than was her wont towards him. The nearer she was to Charley, the farther away from him, to her mind, was Portugais, and she became magnanimous. Jo nodded' awkwardly and left the room. Looking after the departing figure, Rosalie said: "I know he has been good to you, but--but do you trust him, Monsieur?" "Does not everybody in Chaudiere trust him?" "There is one who does not, though perhaps that's of no consequence." "Why do you not trust him?" "I don't know. I never knew him do a bad thing; I never heard of a bad thing he has done; and--he has been good to you." She paused, flushing as she felt the significance of her words, and continued: "Yet there is--I cannot tell what. I feel something. It is not reasonable to go upon one's feelings; but there it is, and so I do not trust him." "It is the way he lives, here in these lonely woods--the mystery around him." A change passed over her. With the first glow of meeting the object of her visit had receded, though since her last interview with the Seigneur she had not rested a moment, in her anxiety to warn him of his danger. "Oh, no," she said, lifting her eyes frankly to his: "oh, no, Monsieur! It is not that. There is mystery about you!" She felt her heart beating hard. It almost choked her, but she kept on bravely. "People say strange and bad things about you. No one knows"--she trembled under the painful inquiry of his eyes. Then she gained courage and went on, for she must make it clear she trusted him, that she took him at his word, before she told him of the peril before him--"No one knows where you came from . . . and it is nobody's business. Some people do not believe in you. But I believe in you--I should believe in you if every one doubted; for there is no feeling in me that says, 'He has done some wicked thing that stands-between us.' It isn't the same as with Portugais, you see-- naturally, it could not be the same." She seemed not to realise that she was telling more of her own heart than she had ever told. It was a revelation, having its origin in an honesty which impelled a pure outspokenness to himself. Reserve, of course, there had been elsewhere, for did not she hold a secret with him? Had she not hidden things, equivocated else where? Yet it had been at his wish, to protect the name of a dead man, for the repose of whose soul masses were now said, with expensive candles burning. For this she had no repentance; she was without logic where this man's good was at stake. Charley had before him a problem, which he now knew he never could evade in the future. He could solve it by none of the old intellectual means, but by the use of new faculties, slowly emerging from the unexplored fastnesses of his nature. "Why should you believe in me?" he asked, forcing himself to smile, yet acutely alive to the fact that a crisis was impending. "You, like all down there in Chaudiere, know nothing of my past, are not sure that I haven't been a hundred times worse than you think poor Jo there. I may have been anything. You may be harbouring a man the law is tracking down." In all that befell Rosalie Evanturel thereafter, never could come such another great resolute moment. There was nothing to support her in the crisis but her own faith. It needed high courage to tell this man who had first given her dreams, then imagination, hope, and the beauty of doing for another's well-being rather than for her own--to tell this man that he was a suspected criminal. Would he hate her? Would his kindness turn to anger? Would he despise her for even having dared to name the suspicion which was bringing hither an austere Abbe and officers of the law? "We are harbouring a man the law is tracking down," she said with an infinite appeal in her eyes. He did not quite understand. He thought that perhaps she meant Jo, and he glanced towards the door; but she kept her eyes on him, and they told him that she meant himself. He chilled, as though ether were being poured through his veins. Did the world know, then, that Charley Steele was alive? Was the law sending its officers to seize the embezzler, the ruffian who had robbed widow and orphan? If it were so. . . . To go back to the world whence he came, with the injury he must do to others, and the punishment also that he must suffer, if he did not tell the truth about Billy! And Chaudiere, which, in spite of all, was beginning to have a real belief in him--where was his contempt for the world now! . . . And Rosalie, who trusted him-- this new element rapidly grew dominant in his thoughts-to be the common criminal in her eyes! His paleness gave way to a flush as like her own as could be. "You mean me?" he asked quietly. She had thought that his flush meant anger, and she was surprised at the quiet tone. She nodded assent. "For what crime?" he asked. "For stealing." His heart seemed to stand still. Then, it had come in spite of all it had come. Here was his resurrection, and the old life to face. "What did I steal?" he asked with dull apathy. "The gold vessels from the Catholic Cathedral of Quebec, after--after trying to blow up Government House with gunpowder." His despair passed. His face suddenly lighted. He smiled. It was so absurd. "Really!" he said. "When was the place blown up?" "Two days before you came here last year--it was not blown up; an attempt was made." "Ah, I did not know. Why was the attempt made to blow it up?" "Some Frenchman's hatred of the English, they say." "But I am not French." "They do not know. You speak French as perfectly as English--ah, Monsieur, Monsieur, I believe you are whatever you say." Pain and appeal rang from her lips. "I am only an honest tailor," he answered gently. He ruled his face to calmness, for he read the agony in the girl's face, and troubled as he was, he wished to show her that he had no fear. "It is for what you were they will arrest you," she said helplessly, and as though he needed to have all made clear to him. "Oh, Monsieur," she continued, in a broken voice, "it would shame me so to have you made a prisoner in Chaudiere--before all these silly people, who turn with the wind. I should not lift my head--but yes, I should lift my head!" she added hurriedly. "I should tell them all they lied--every one--the idiots! The Seigneur--" "Well, what of the Seigneur-Rosalie?" Her own name on his lips--the sound of it dimmed her eyes. "Monsieur Rossignol does not know you. He neither believes nor disbelieves. He said to me that if you wanted consideration, to command him, for in Chaudiere he had heard nothing but good of you. If you stayed, he would see that you had justice--not persecution. I saw him two hours ago." She said the last words shyly, for she was thinking why the Seigneur had spoken as he did--that he had taken her opinion of Monsieur as his guide, and she had not scrupled to impress him with her views. The Seigneur was in danger of becoming prejudiced by his sentiments. A wave of feeling passed over Charley, a rushing wave of sympathy for this simple girl, who, out of a blind confidence, risked so much for him. Risk there certainly was, if she--if she cared for him. It was cruelty not to reassure her. Touching his breast, he said gravely: "By this sign here, I am not guilty of the crime for which they come to seek me, Rosalie. Nor of any other crime for which the law might punish me--dear, noble friend." He did so little to get such rich return. Her eyes leaped up to brighter degrees of light, her face shone with a joy it had never reflected before, her blood rushed to her finger-tips. She abruptly sat down in a chair and buried her face in her hands, trembling. Then, lifting her head slowly, after a moment she spoke in a tone that told him her faith, her gratitude--not for reassurance, but for confidence, which is as water in a thirsty land to a woman. "Oh, Monsieur, I thank you, I thank you from the depth of my heart; and my heart is deep indeed, very, very deep--I cannot find what lies lowest in it! I thank you, because you trust me, because you make it so easy to--to be your friend; to say 'I know' when any one might doubt you. One has no right to speak for another till--till the other has given confidence, has said you may. Ah, Monsieur, I am so happy!" In very abandonment of heart she clasped her hands and came a step nearer to him, but abruptly stopped still; for, realising her action, timidity and embarrassment rushed upon her. Charley understood, and again his impulse was to say what was in his heart and dare all; but resolution possessed him, and he said quickly: "Once, Rosalie, you saved me--from death perhaps. Once your hands helped my pain--here." He touched his breast. "Your words now, and what you do, they still help me--here . . . but in a different way. The trouble is in my heart, Rosalie. You are glad of my confidence? Well, I will give you more. . . . I cannot go back to my old life. To do so would injure others--some who have never injured me and some who have. That is why. That is why I do not wish to be taken to Quebec now on a false charge. That is all I can say. Is it enough?" She was about to answer, but Jo Portugais entered, exclaiming. "M'sieu'," he cried, "men are coming with the Seigneur and Cure." Charley nodded at Jo, then turned to Rosalie. "You need not be seen if you go out by the back way, Mademoiselle." He held aside the bear-skin curtain of the door that led into the next room. There was a frightened look in her face. "Do not fear for me," he continued. "It will come right--somehow. You have done more for me than any one has ever done or ever will do. I will remember till the last moment of my life. Good-bye." He laid a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her from the room. "God protect you! The Blessed Virgin speak for you! I will pray for you," she whispered. CHAPTER XXXI CHARLEY STANDS AT BAY Charley turned quickly to the woodsman. "Listen," he said, and he told Jo how things stood. "You will not hide, M'sieu'? There is time," Jo asked. "I will not hide, Jo." "What will you do?" "I'll decide when they come." There was silence for a moment, then the sound of voices on the hill- side. Charley's soul rose up in revolt against the danger that faced him--not against personal peril, but the danger of being dragged back again into the life he had come from, with all that it involved--the futility of this charge against him! To be the victim of an error--to go to the bar of justice with the hand of injustice on his arm! All at once the love of this new life welled up in him, as a spring of water overflows its bounds. A voice kept ringing in his ears, "I will pray for you." Subconsciously his mind kept saying, "Rosalie--Rosalie-- Rosalie!" There was nothing now that he would not do to avert his being taken away upon this ridiculous charge. Mistaken identity? To prove that, he must at once prove himself--who he was, whence he came. Tell the Cure, and make it a point of honour for his secret to be kept? But once told, the new life would no longer stand by itself as the new life, cut off from all contact with the past. Its success, its possibility, must lie in its absolute separateness, with obscurity behind--as though he had come out of nothing into this very room, on that winter morning when memory returned. It was clear that he must, somehow, evade the issue. He glanced at Jo, whose eyes, strained and painful, were fixed upon the door. Here was a man who suffered for his sake. . . . He took a step forward, as though with sudden resolve, but there came a knocking, and, pausing, he motioned Jo to open the door. Then, turning to a shelf, he took something from it hastily, and kept it in his hand. Jo roused himself with an effort, and opened to the knocking. Three people entered: the Seigneur, the Cure, and the Abbe Rossignol, an ascetic, severe man, with a face of intolerance and inflexibility. Two constables in plain clothes followed; one stolid, one alert, one English and one French, both with grim satisfaction in their faces--the successful exercise of his trade is pleasant to every craftsman. When they entered, Charley was standing with his back to the fireplace, his eye-glass adjusted, one hand stroking his beard, the other held behind his back. The Cure came forward and shook hands in an eager friendly way. "My dear Monsieur," said he, "I hope that you are better." "I am quite well, thank you, Monsieur le Cure," answered Charley. "I shall get back to work on Monday, I hope." "Yes, yes, that is good," responded the Cure, and seemed confused. He turned uneasily to the Seigneur. "You have come to see my friend Portugais," Charley remarked slowly, almost apologetically. "I will take my leave." He made a step forward. The two constables did the same, and would have laid their hands upon his shoulder but that the Seigneur said tartly: "Stand off, Jack-in-boxes!" The two stood aside, and looked covertly at the Seigneur, whose temper seemed unusually irascible. Charley's face showed no surprise, but he looked inquiringly at the Cure. "If they wish to be measured for uniforms--or manners--I will see them at my shop," he said. The Seigneur chuckled. Charley stepped again towards the door. The two constables stood before it. Again he turned inquiringly, this time towards the Cure. The Cure did not speak. "It is you we wish to see, tailor," said the Abbe Rossignol. Soft-tongued irony leaped to Charley's lips: "Have I, then, the honour of including Monsieur among my customers? I cannot recall Monsieur's figure. I think I should not have forgotten it." It was now the old Charley Steele, with the new body, the new spirit, but with the old skilful mind, aggravatingly polite, non-intime--the intolerant face of this father of souls irritated him. "I never forget a figure which has idiosyncrasy," he added, with a bland eye wandering over the priest's gaunt form. It was his old way to strike first and heal after--"a kick and a lick," as old Paddy Wier, whom he once saved from prison, said of him. It was like bygone years of another life to appear in defence when the law was tightening round a victim. The secret spring had been touched, the ancient machinery of his mind was working almost automatically. The illusion was considerable, for the Seigneur had taken the only arm- chair in the room, a little apart, as it were, filling the place of judge. The priest-brother, cold and inveterate, was like the attorney for the crown. The Cure was the clerk of the court, who could only echo the decisions of the Judge. The constables were the machinery of the Law, and Jo Portugais was the unwilling witness, whose evidence would be the crux of the case. The prisoner--he himself was prisoner and prisoner's counsel. A good struggle was forward. He had enraged the Abbe as much as he had delighted the Abbe's brother; for nothing gave the Seigneur such pleasure as the discomfiture of the Abbe Rossignol, chaplain and ordinary to the Archbishop of Quebec. The genial, sympathetic nature of the Seigneur could not even be patient with the excessive piety of the churchman, who, in rigid righteousness, had thrashed him cruelly as a boy. At Charley's words upon the Abbe's figure, gaunt and precise as a swaddled ramrod, he pulled his nose with a grunt of satisfaction. The Cure, the peace-maker, intervened. The tailor's meaning was sufficiently clear: if they had come to see him personally, then it was natural for him to wish to know the names and stations of his guests, and their business. The Seigneur was aware that the tailor did know, and he enjoyed the 'sang-froid' with which he was meeting the situation. "Monsieur," said the Cure, in a mollifying voice, "I have ventured to bring the Seigneur of Chaudiere"--the Seigneur stood up and bowed gravely--"and his brother, the Abbe Rossignol, who would speak with you on private business"--he ignored the presence of the constables. Charley bowed to the Seigneur and the Abbe, then turned inquiringly towards the two constables. "Friends of my brother the Abbe," said the Seigneur maliciously. "Their names, Monsieur?" asked Charley. "They have numbers," answered the Seigneur whimsically--to the Cure's pain, for levity seemed improper at such a time. "Numbers of names are legally suspicious, numbers for names are suspiciously legal," rejoined Charley. "You have pierced the disguise of discourtesy," said the Seigneur, and, on the instant, he made up his mind that whatever the tailor might have been, he was deserving of respect. "You have private business with me, Monsieur?" asked Charley of the Abbe. The Abbe shook his head. "The business is not private, in one sense. These men have come to charge you with having broken into the cathedral at Quebec and stolen the gold vessels of the altar; also with having tried to blow up the Governor's residence." One of the constables handed Charley the warrant. He looked at it with a curious smile. It was so natural, yet so unnatural, to be thus in touch with the habits of far-off times. "On what information is this warrant issued?" he asked. "That is for the law to show in due course," said the priest. "Pardon me; it is for the law to show now. I have a right to know." The constables shifted from one foot to the other, looked at each other meaningly, and instinctively felt their weapons. "I believe," said the Seigneur evenly, "that--" The Abbe interrupted. "He can have information at his trial." "Excuse me, but the warrant has my endorsement," said the Seigneur, "and, as the justice most concerned, I shall give proper information to the gentleman under suspicion." He waved a hand at the Abbe, as at a fractious child, and turned courteously to Charley. "Monsieur," he said, "on the tenth of August last the cathedral at Quebec was broken into, and the gold altar-vessels were stolen. You are suspected. The same day an attempt was made to blow up the Governor's residence. You are suspected." "On what ground, Monsieur?" "You appeared in this vicinity three days afterwards with an injury to the head. Now, the incendiary received a severe blow on the head from a servant of the Governor. You see the connection, Monsieur?" "Where is the servant of the Governor, Monsieur?" "Dead, unfortunately. He told the story so often, to so much hospitality, that he lost his footing on Mountain Street steps--you remember Mountain Street steps possibly, Monsieur?--and cracked his head on the last stone." There was silence for a moment. If the thing had not been so serious, Charley must have laughed outright. If he but disclosed his identity, how easy to dispose of this silly charge! He did not reply at once, but looked calmly at the Abbe. In the pause, the Seigneur added "I forgot to add that the man had a brown beard. You have a brown beard, Monsieur." "I had not when I arrived here." Jo Portugais spoke. "That is true, M'sieu'; and what is more, I know a newly shaved face when I see it, and M'sieu's was tanned with the sun. It is foolish, that!" "This is not the place for evidence," said the Abbe sharply. "Excuse me, Abbe," said his brother; "if Monsieur wishes to have a preliminary trial here, he may. He is in my seigneury; he is a tenant of the Church here--" "It is a grave offence that an infidel, dropping down here from, who knows where--that an acknowledged infidel should be a tenant of the Church!" "The devil is a tenant of the Almighty, if creation is the Almighty's," said Charley. "Satan is a prisoner," snapped the Abbe. "With large domains for exercise," retorted Charley, "and in successful opposition to the Church. If it is true that the man you charge is an infidel, how does that warrant suspicion?" "Other thefts," answered the Abbe. "A sacred iron cross was stolen from the door of the church of Chaudiere. I have no doubt that the thief of the gold vessels of the cathedral was the thief of the iron cross." "It is not true," sullenly broke in Jo Portugais. "What proof have you?" said the Seigneur. Charley waved a deprecating hand towards Jo. "I shall not call Portugais as evidence," he said. "You are conducting your own case?" asked the Seigneur, with a grim smile. "It is dangerous, I believe." "I will take my chances," answered Charley. "Will you tell me what object the criminal could have in stealing the gold vessels from the cathedral?" he added, turning to the Abbe. "They were gold!" "And for taking the cross from the door of the church in Chaudiere?" "It was sacred, and he was an infidel, and hated it." "I do not see the logic of the argument. He stole the vessels because they were valuable, and the iron cross because he was an infidel! Now how do you know that the suspected criminal was an infidel, Monsieur?" "It is well known." "Has he ever said so?" "He does not deny it." "If you were charged with being an opium-eater, does it follow that you are one because you do not deny it? There was a Man who was said to blaspheme, to have all 'the crafts and assaults of the devil'--was it His duty to deny it? Suppose you were accused of being a highwayman, would you be less a highwayman if you denied it? Or would you be less guilty if you denied it?" "That is beside the case," said the priest with acerbity. "Faith, I think it is the case itself," said the Seigneur with a satisfied pull of his nose. "But do you seriously suggest that only infidels rob churches?" Charley persisted. "I am not here to be cross-examined," answered the Abbe harshly. "You are charged with robbing the cathedral and trying to blow up the Governor's residence. Arrest him!" he added, turning to the constables. "Stand where you are, men," sharply threatened the Seigneur. "There are no lettres de cachet nowadays, Francois," he added tartly to his brother. "If it is the exclusive temptation of an infidel to rob a church, has infidelity also an inherent penchant for arson? Is it a patent? Why did the infidel blow up the Governor's residence?" continued Charley. "He did not blow it up, he only tried," interposed the Cure softly. "I was not aware," said Charley. "Well, did the man who stole the patens from the altar--" "They were chalices," again interrupted the Cure, with a faint smile. "Ah, I was not aware!" again rejoined Charley. "I repeat, what reason had the person who stole the chalices to try to blow up the Governor's residence? Is it a sign of infidelity, or--" "You can answer for that yourself," angrily interposed the Abbe. The strain was telling on his nerves. "It is fair to give reasons for the suspicion," urged the Seigneur acidly. "As I said before, Francois, this is not the fifteenth century." "He hated the English government," said the Abbe. "I do not understand," responded Charley. "Am I then to suppose that the alleged criminal was a Frenchman as well as an infidel?" There was silence, and Charley continued. "It is an unusual thing for a French Abbe to be so concerned for the safety of an English Protestant's life and housing . . . the Governor is a Protestant--eh? That is, indeed, a zeal almost Christian--or millennial." The Abby turned to the Seigneur. "Are you going to interfere longer with the process of the law?" "I think Monsieur has not quite finished his argument," said the Seigneur, with a twist of the mouth. "If the man was a Frenchman, why do you suspect the tailor of Chaudiere?" asked Charley softly. "Of course I understand the reason behind all: you have heard that the tailor is an infidel; you have protested to the good Cure here, and the Cure is a man who has a sense of justice, and will not drive a poor man from his parish by Christian persecution--without cause. Since certain dates coincide and impulses urge, you suspect the tailor. Again, according to your mind, a man who steals holy vessels must needs be an infidel; therefore a tailor in Chaudiere, suspected of being an infidel, stole the holy chalices. It might seem a fair case for a grand jury of clericals. But it breaks down in certain places. Your criminal is a Frenchman; the tailor of Chaudiere is an Englishman." The Abbe's face was contracted with stubborn annoyance, though he held his tongue from violence. "Do you deny that you are French?" he asked tartly. "I could almost endure the suspicion because of the compliment to my command of your charming language." "Prove that you are an Englishman. No one knows where you came from; no one knows what you are. You are a fair subject for suspicion, apart from the evidence shown," said the Abbe, trying now to be as polite as the tailor. "This is a free country. So long as the law is obeyed, one can go where one wills without question, I take it." "There is a law of vagrancy." "I am a householder, a tenant of the Church, not a vagrant." "Monsieur, you can have your choice of proving these things here or in Quebec," said the Abbe, with angry impatience again. "I may not be compelled to prove anything. It is the privilege of the law to prove the crime against me." "You are a very remarkable tailor," said the Abbe sarcastically. "I have not had the honour of making you even a cassock, I think. Monsieur le Cure, I believe, approves of those I make for him. He has a good figure, however." "You refuse to identify yourself?" asked the Abbe, with asperity. "I am not aware that you possess any right to ask me to do so." The Abbe's thin lips clipped-to like shears. He turned again towards the officers. "It would relieve the situation," interposed the Seigneur, "if Monsieur could find it possible to grant the Abbe's demand." Charley bowed to the Seigneur. "I do not know why I should be taken for a Frenchman or an infidel. I speak French well, I presume, but I spoke it from the cradle. I speak English with equally good accent," he added, with the glimmer of a smile; for there was a kind of exhilaration in the little contest, even with so much at stake. This miserable, silly charge had that behind it which might open up a grave, make its dead to walk, fright folk from their senses, and destroy their peace for ever. Yet he was cool and thinking clearly. He measured up the Abbe in his mind, analysed him, found the vulnerable spot in his nature, the avenue to the one place lighted by a lamp of humanity. He leaned a hand upon the ledge of the chimney where he stood, and said, in a low voice: "Monsieur l'Abbe, it is sometimes the misfortune of just men to be terribly unjust. 'For conscience sake' is another name for prejudice-- for those antipathies which, natural to us, are, at the same time, trap- doors, for our just intentions. You, Monsieur, have a radical antipathy to those men who are unable to see or to feel what you were privileged to see and feel from the time of your birth. You know that you are right. Do you think that those who do not see as you do are wicked because they were not given what you were given? If you are right, may they, poor folk! not be the victims of their blindness of heart--of the darkness born with them, or of the evils that overtake them? For conscience sake, you would crush out evil. To you an infidel--so called--is an evil-doer, a peril to the peace of God. You drive him out from among the faithful. You heard that a tailor of Chaudiere was an infidel. You did not prove him one, but you, for conscience sake, are trying to remove him, by fixing on him a crime of which he may, with slight show of reason, be suspected. But I ask you, would you have taken the same deep interest in setting the law upon this suspected man did you not believe him to be an infidel?" He paused. The Abbe made no reply. The Cure was bending forward eagerly; the Seigneur sat with his hands over the top of his cane, his chin on his hands, never taking his eyes from him, save to glance once or twice at his brother. Jo Portugais was crouched on the bench, watching. "I do not know what makes an infidel," Charley went on. "Is it an honest mind, a decent life, an austerity of living as great as that of any priest, a neighbourliness that gives and takes in fairness--" "No, no, no," interposed the Cure eagerly. "So you have lived here, Monsieur; I can vouch for that. Charity and a good heart have gone with you always." "Do you mean that a man is an infidel because he cannot say, as Louis Trudel said to me, 'Do you believe in God?' and replies, as I replied, 'God knows!' Is that infidelity? If God is God, He alone knows when the mind or the tongue can answer in the terms of that faith which you profess. He knows the secret desires of our hearts, and what we believe, and what we do not believe; He knows better than we ourselves know--if there is a God. Does a man conjure God, if he does not believe in God? 'God knows!' is not a statement of infidelity. With me it was a phrase --no more. You ask me to bare my inmost soul. I have not learned how to confess. You ask me to lay bare my past, to prove my identity. For conscience sake you ask that, and I for conscience sake say I will not, Monsieur. You, when you enter your priestly life, put all your past behind you. It is dead for ever: all its deeds and thoughts and desires, all its errors--sins. I have entered on a life here which is to me as much a new life as your priesthood is to you. Shall I not have the right to say, that may not be disinterred? Have I not the right to say, Hands off? For the past I am responsible, and for the past I will speak from the past; but for the deeds of the present I will speak only from the present. I am not a Frenchman; I did not steal the little cross from the church door here, nor the golden chalices in Quebec; nor did I seek to injure the Governor's residence. I have not been in Quebec for three years." He ceased speaking, and fixed his eyes on the Abbe, who now met his look fairly. "In the way of justice, there is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed, nor secret that shall not be made known," answered the Abbe. "Prove that you were not in Quebec on the day the robbery was committed." There was silence. The Abbe's pertinacity was too difficult. The Seigneur saw the grim look in Charley's face, and touched the Abbe on the arm. "Let us walk a little outside. Come, Cure" he added. "It is right that Monsieur should have a few minutes alone. It is a serious charge against him, and reflection will be good for us all." He motioned the constables from the room. The Abby passed through the door into the open air, and the Cure and the Seigneur went arm in arm together, talking earnestly. The Cure turned in the doorway. "Courage, Monsieur!" he said to Charley, and bowed himself out. Jo Portugais followed. One officer took his place at the front door and the other at the back door, outside. The Abby, by himself, took to walking backward and forward under the trees, buried in gloomy reflection. Jo Portugais caught his sleeve. "Come with me for a moment, M'sieu'," he said. "It is important." The Abby followed him. CHAPTER XXXII JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY Jo Portugais had fastened down a secret with clasps heavier than iron, and had long stood guard over it. But life is a wheel, and natures move in circles, passing the same points again and again, the points being distant or near to the sense as the courses of life have influenced the nature. Confession was an old principle, a light in the way, a rest- house for Jo and all his race, by inheritance, by disposition, and by practice. Again and again Jo had come round to the rest-house since one direful day, but had not, found his way therein. There were passwords to give at the door, there was the tale of the journey to tell to the door- keeper. And this tale he had not been ready to tell. But the man who knew of the terrible thing he had done, who had saved him from the consequences of that terrible thing, was in sore trouble, and this broke down the gloomy guard he had kept over his dread secret. He fought the matter out with himself, and, the battle ended, he touched the door- keeper on the arm, beckoned him to a lonely place in the trees, and knelt down before him. "What is it you seek?" asked the door-keeper, whose face was set and forbidding. "To find peace," answered the man; yet he was thinking more of another's peril than of his own soul. "What have I to do with the peace of your soul? Yonder is your shepherd and keeper," said the doorkeeper, pointing to where two men walked arm in arm under the trees. "Shall the sinner not choose the keeper of his sins?" said the man huskily. "Who has been the keeper all these years? Who has given you peace?" "I have had no keeper; I have had no peace these many years." "How many years?" The Abbe's voice was low and even, and showed no feeling, but his eyes were keenly inquiring and intent. "Seven years." "Is the sin that held you back from the comfort of the Church a great one?" "The greatest, save one." "What would be the greatest?" "To curse God." "The next?" "To murder." The other's whole manner changed on the instant. He was no longer the stern Churchman, the inveterate friend of Justice, the prejudiced priest, rigid in a pious convention, who could neither bend nor break. The sin of an infidel breaker of the law, that was one thing; the crime of a son of the Church, which a human soul came to relate in its agony, that was another. He had a crass sense of justice, but there was in him a deeper thing still: the revelation of the human soul, the responsibility of speaking to the heart which has dropped the folds of secrecy, exposing the skeleton of truth, grim and staring, to the eye of a secret earthly mentor. "If it has been hidden all these years, why do you tell it now, my son?" "It is the only way." "Why was it hidden?" "I have come to confess," answered the man bitterly. The priest looked at him anxiously. "You have spoken rightly, my son. I am not here to ask, but to receive." "Forgive me, but it is my crime I would speak of now. I choose this moment that another should not suffer for what he did not do." The priest thought of the man they had left in the little house, and the crime with which he was charged, and wondered what the sinner before him was going to say. "Tell your story, my son, and God give your tongue the very spirit of truth, that nothing be forgotten and nothing excused." There was a fleeting pause, in which the colour left the priest's face, and, as he opened the door of his mind--of the Church, secret and inviolate--he had a pain at his heart; for beneath his arrogant churchmanship there was a fanatical spirituality of a mediaeval kind. His sense of responsibility was painful and intense. The same pain possessed him always, were the sin that of a child or a Borgia. As he listened to the broken tale, the forest around was vocal, the chipmunks scampered from tree to tree, the woodpecker's tap-tap, tap-tap, went on over their heads, the leaves rustled and gave forth their divine sweetness, as though man and nature were at peace, and there were no storms in sky above or soul beneath, or in the waters of life that are deeper than "the waters under the earth." It was only a short time, but to the door-keeper and the wayfarer it seemed hours, for the human soul travels far and hard and long in moments of pain and revelation. The priest in his anxiety suffered as much as the man who did the wicked thing. When the man had finished, the priest said: "Is this all?" "It is the great sin of my life." He shuddered, and continued: "I have no love of life; I have no fear of death; but there is the man who saved me years ago, who got me freedom. He has had great sorrow and trouble, and I would live for his sake--because he has no friend." "Who is the man?" The other pointed to where the little house was hidden among the trees. The priest almost gasped his amazement, but waited. Thereupon the woodsman told the whole truth concerning the tailor of Chaudiere. "To save him, I have confessed my own sin. To you I might tell all in confession, and the truth about him would be buried for ever. I might not confess at all unless I confessed my own sin. You will save him, father?" he asked anxiously. "I will save him," was the reply of the priest. "I want to give myself to justice; but he has been ill, and he may be ill again, and he needs me." He told of the tailor's besetting weakness, of his struggles against it, of his fall a few days before, and the cause of it . . . told all to the man of silence. "You wish to give yourself to justice?" "I shall have no peace unless." There was something martyr-like in the man's attitude. It appealed to some stern, martyr-like quality in the priest. If the man would win eternal peace so, then so be it. His grim piety approved. He spoke now with the authority of divine justice. "For one year longer go on as you are, then give yourself to justice--one year from to-day, my son. Is it enough?" "It is enough." "Absolvo te!" said the priest. CHAPTER XXXIII THE EDGE OF LIFE Meantime Charley was alone with his problem. The net of circumstances seemed to have coiled inextricably round him. Once, at a trial in court in other days, he had said in his ironical way: "One hasn't to fear the penalties of one's sins, but the damnable accident of discovery." To try to escape now, or, with the assistance of Jo Portugais, when en route to Quebec in charge of the constables, and find refuge and seclusion elsewhere? There was nothing he might ask of Portugais which he would not do. To escape--and so acknowledge a guilt not his own! Well, what did it matter! Who mattered? He knew only too well. The Cure mattered--that good man who had never intruded his piety on him; who had been from the first a discreet friend, a gentleman,--a Christian gentleman, if there was such a sort of gentleman apart from all others. Who mattered? The Seigneur, whom he had never seen before, yet who had showed that day a brusque sympathy, a gruff belief in him? Who mattered? Above all, Rosalie mattered. To escape, to go from Rosalie's presence by a dark way, as it were, like a thief in the night--was that possible? His escape would work upon her mind. She would first wonder, then doubt, and then believe at last that he was a common criminal. She was the one who mattered in that thought of escape escape to some other parish, to some other province, to some other country--to some other world! To some other world? He looked at a little bottle he held in the palm of his hand. A hand held aside the curtain of the door entering on the next room, and a girl's troubled face looked in, but he did not see. Escape to some other world? And why not, after all? On the day his memory came back he had resisted the idea in this very room. As the fatalist he had resisted it then. Now how poor seemed the reasons for not having ended it all that day! If his appointed time had been come, the river would have ended him then--that had been his argument. Was that argument not belief in Somebody or Something which governed his going or staying? Was it not preordination? Was not fatalism, then, the cheapest sort of belief in an unchangeable Somebody or Something, representing purpose and law and will? Attribute to anything power, and there was God, whatever His qualities, personality, or being. The little phial of laudanum was in his hand to loosen life into knowledge. Was it not his duty to eliminate himself, rather than be an unsolvable quantity in the problem of many lives? It was neither vulgar nor cowardly to pass quietly from forces making for ruin, and so avert ruin and secure happiness. To go while yet there was time, and smooth for ever the way for others by an eternal silence--that seemed well. Punishment thereafter, the Cure would say. But was it not worth while being punished, even should the Cure's fond belief in the noble fable be true, if one saved others here? Who--God or man--had the right to take from him the right to destroy himself, not for fear, not through despair, but for others' sake? Had he not the right to make restitution to Kathleen for having given her nothing but himself, whom she had learned to despise? If he were God, he would say, Do justice and fear not. And this was justice. Suppose he were in a battle, with all these things behind him, and put himself, with daring and great results, in some forlorn hope--to die; and he died, ostensibly a hero for his country, but, in his heart of hearts, to throw his life away to save some one he loved, not his country, which profited by his sacrifice--suppose that were the case, what would the world say? "He saved others, himself he could not save"--flashed through his mind, possessed him. He could save others; but it was clear he could not save himself. It was so simple, so kind, and so decent. And he would be buried here in quiet, unconsecrated ground, a mystery, a tailor who, finding he could not mend the garment of life, cast it away, and took on himself the mantle of eternal obscurity. No reproaches would follow him; and he would not reproach himself, for Kathleen and Billy and another would be safe and free to live their lives. Far, far better for Rosalie! She too would be saved--free from the peril of his presence. For where could happiness come to her from him? He might not love her; he might not marry her; and it were well to go now, while yet love was not a habit, but an awakening, a realisation of life. His death would settle this sad question for ever. To her he would be a softening memory as time went on. The girl who had watched by the curtain stepped softly inside the room . . . . she divined his purpose. He was so intent he did not hear. "I will do it," he said to himself. "It is better to go than to stay. I have never done a good thing for love of any human being. I will do one now." He turned towards the window through which the sunlight streamed. Stepping forward into the sun, he uncorked the bottle. There was a quick step behind him, and the girl's voice said clearly: "If you go, I go also." He turned swiftly, cold with amazement, the blood emptied from his heart. Rosalie stood a little distance from him, her face pale, her hands held hard to her side. "I understand all. I could not go outside, I stayed there"--she pointed to the other room--"and I know why you would die. You would die to save others." "Rosalie!" he protested in a hoarse voice, and could say nothing more. "You think that I will stay, if you go! No, no, no--I will not. You taught me how to live, and I will follow you now." He saw the strange determination of her look. It startled him; he knew not what to say. "Your father, Rosalie--" "My father will be cared for. But who will care for you in the place where you are going? You will have no friends there. You shall not go alone. You will need me--in the dark." "It is good that I go," he said. "It would be wicked, it would be dreadful, for you to go." "I go if you go," she urged. "I will lose my soul to be with you; you will want me--there!" There was no mistaking her intention. Footsteps sounded outside. The others were coming back. To die here before her face? To bring her to death with him? He was sick with despair. "Go into the next room quickly," he said. "No matter what comes, I will not--on my honour!" She threw him a look of gratitude, and, as the bearskin curtain dropped behind her, he put the phial of laudanum in his pocket. The door opened, and the Abbe Rossignol entered, followed by the Seigneur, the Cure, and Jo Portugais. Charley faced them calmly, and waited. The Abbe's face was still cold and severe, but his voice was human as he said quickly: "Monsieur, I have decided to take you at your word. I am assured you are not the man who committed the crime. You probably have reasons for not establishing your identity." Had Charley been a prisoner in the dock, he could not have had a moment of deeper amazement--even if after the jury had said Guilty, a piece of evidence had been handed in, proving innocence, averting the death sentence. A wave of excitement passed over him, leaving him cold and still. In the other room a girl put her hand to her mouth to stifle a cry of joy. Charley bowed. "You made a mistake, Monsieur--pray do not apologise," he said. CHAPTER XXXIV IN AMBUSH Weeks went by. Summer was done, autumn was upon the land. Harvest-home had gone, and the "fall" ploughing was forward. The smell of the burning stubble, of decaying plant and fibre, was mingling with the odours of the orchards and the balsams of the forest. The leafy hill-sides, far and near, were resplendent in scarlet and saffron and tawny red. Over the decline of the year flickered the ruined fires of energy. It had been a prosperous summer in the valley. Harvests had been reaped such as the country had not known for years--and for years there had been great harvests. There had not been a death in the parish all summer, and births had occurred out of all usual proportion. When Filion Lacasse commented thereon, and mentioned the fact that even the Notary's wife had had the gift of twins as the crowning fulness of the year, Maximilian Cour, who was essentially superstitious, tapped on the table three times, to prevent a turn in the luck. The baker was too late, however, for the very next day the Notary was brought home with a nasty gunshot wound in his leg. He had been lured into duck-hunting on a lake twenty miles away, in the hills, and had been accidentally shot on an Indian reservation, called Four Mountains, where the Church sometimes held a mission and presented a primitive sort of passion-play. From there he had been brought home by his comrades, and the doctor from the next parish summoned. The Cure assisted the doctor at first, but the task was difficult to him. At the instant when the case was most critical the tailor of Chaudiere set his foot inside the Notary's door. A moment later he relieved the Cure and helped to probe for shot, and care for an ugly wound. Charley had no knowledge of surgery, but his fingers were skilful, his eye was true, and he had intuition. The long operation over, the rural physician and surgeon washed his hands and then studied Charley with curious admiration. "Thank you, Monsieur," he said, as he dried his hands on a towel. "I couldn't have done it without you. It's a pretty good job; and you share the credit." Charley bowed. "It's a good thing not to halloo till you're out of the woods," he said. "Our friend there has a bad time before him--hein?" "I take you. It is so." The man of knives and tinctures pulled his side-whiskers with smug satisfaction as he looked into a small mirror on the wall. "Do you chance to know if madame has any cordials or spirits?" he added, straightening his waistcoat and adjusting his cravat. "It is likely," answered Charley, and moved away to the window looking upon the street. The doctor turned in surprise. He was used to being waited on, and he had expected the tailor to follow the tradition. "We might--eh?" he said suggestively. "It is usually the custom to provide refreshment, but the poor woman, madame, has been greatly occupied with her husband, and--" "And the twins," Charley put in drily--" and a house full of work, and only one old crone in the kitchen to help. Still, I have no doubt she has thought of the cordials too. Women are the slaves of custom--ah, here they are, as I said, and--" He stopped short, for in the doorway, with a tray, stood Rosalie Evanturel. The surgeon was so intent upon at once fortifying himself that he did not see the look which passed between Rosalie and the tailor. Rosalie had been absent for two months. Her father had been taken seriously ill the day after the critical episode in the but at Vadrome Mountain, and she had gone with him to the hospital at Quebec, for an operation. The Abbe Rossignol had undertaken to see them safely to the hospital, and Jo Portugais, at his own request, was permitted to go in attendance upon M. Evanturel. There had been a hasty leave-taking between Charley and Rosalie, but it was in the presence of others, and they had never spoken a word privately together since the day she had said to him that where he went she would go, in life or out of it. "You have been gone two months," Charley said now, after their touch of hands and voiceless greeting. "Two months yesterday," she answered. "At sundown," he replied, in an even voice. "The Angelus was ringing," she answered calmly, though her heart was leaping and her hands were trembling. The doctor, instantly busy with the cordial, had not noticed what they said. "Won't you join me?" he asked, offering a glass to Charley. "Spirits do not suit me," answered Charley. "Matter of constitution," rejoined the doctor, and buttoned up his coat, preparing to depart. He came close to Charley. "Now, I don't want to put upon you, Monsieur," he said, "but this sick man is valuable in the parish--you take me? Well, it's a difficult, delicate case, and I'd be glad if I could rely on you for a few days. The Cure would do, but you are young, you have a sense of things--take me? Half the fees are yours if you'll keep a sharp eye on him--three times a day, and be with him at night a while. Fever is the thing I'm afraid of--temperature--this way, please!" He went to the window, and for a minute engaged Charley in whispered conversation. "You take me?" he said cheerily at last, as he turned again towards Rosalie. "Quite, Monsieur," answered Charley, and drew away, for he caught the odour of the doctor's breath, and a cold perspiration broke out over him. He felt the old desire for drink sweeping through him. "I will do what I can," he said. "Come, my dear," the doctor said to Rosalie. "We will go and see your father." Charley's eyes had fastened on the bottles avidly. As Rosalie turned to bid him good-bye, he said to her, almost hoarsely: "Take the tray back to Madame Dauphin--please." She flashed a glance of inquiry at him. She was puzzled by the fire in his eyes. With her soul in her face as she lifted the tray, out of the warm-beating life in her, she said in a low tone: "It is good to live, isn't it?" He nodded and smiled, and the trouble slowly passed from his eyes. The woman in her had conquered his enemy. CHAPTER XXXV THE COMING OF MAXIMILIAN COUR AND ANOTHER "It is good to live, isn't it?" In the autumn weather when the air drank like wine, it seemed so indeed, even to Charley, who worked all day in his shop, his door wide open to the sunlight, and sat up half the night with Narcisse Dauphin, sometimes even taking a turn at the cradle of the twins, while madame sat beside her husband's bed. To Charley the answer to Rosalie's question lay in the fact that his eyes had never been so keen, his face so alive, or his step so buoyant as in this week of double duty. His mind was more hopeful than it had ever been since the day he awoke with memory restored in the silence of a mountain hut. He had found the antidote to his great temptation, to the lurking, relentless habit which had almost killed him the night John Brown had sung Champagne Charlie from behind the flaring lights. From a determination to fight his own fight with no material aids, he had never once used the antidote sent him by the Cure's brother. On St. Jean Baptiste's day his proud will had failed him; intellectual force, native power of mind, had broken like reeds under the weight of a cruel temptation. But now a new force had entered into him. As his fingers were about to reach for the spirit-bottle in the house of the Notary, and he had, for the first time in his life, made an appeal for help, a woman's voice had said, "It is good to live, isn't it?" and his hand was stayed. A woman's look had stilled the strife. Never before in his life had he relied on a moral or a spiritual impulse in him. What of these existed in him were in unseen quantities--for which there was neither multiple nor measure--had been primitive and hereditary, flowing in him like a feeble tincture diluted to inefficacy. Rosalie had resolved him back to the original elements. The quiet days he had spent in Chaudiere, the self-sacrifice he had been compelled to make, the human sins, such as those of Jo Portugais and Louis Trudel, with which he had had to do, the simplicity of the life around him--the uncomplicated lie and the unvarnished truth, the obvious sorrow and the patent joy, the childish faith, and the rude wickedness so pardonable because so frankly brutal--had worked upon him. The elemental spirit of it all had so invaded his nature, breaking through the crust of old habit to the new man, that, when he fell before his temptation, and his body became saturated with liquor, the healthy natural being and the growing natural mind were overpowered by the coarse onslaught, and death had nearly followed. It was his first appeal to a force outside himself, to an active principle unfamiliar to the voluntary working of his nature, and the answer had been immediate and adequate. Yet what was it? He did not ask; he had not got beyond the mere experience, and the old questioning habit was in abeyance. Each new and great emotion has its dominating moment, its supreme occasion, before taking its place in the modulated moral mechanism. He was touched with helplessness. As he sat beside Narcisse Dauphin's bedside, one evening, the sick man on his way to recovery, there came to him the text of a sermon he had once heard John Brown preach: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend." He had been thinking of Rosalie and that day at Vadrome Mountain. She would not only have died with him, but she would have died for him, if need had been. What might he give in return for what she gave? The Notary interrupted his thoughts. He had lain watching Charley for a long time, his brow drawn down with thought. At last he said: "Monsieur, you have been good to me." Charley laid a hand on the sick man's arm. "I don't see that. But if you won't talk, I'll believe you think so." The Notary shook his head. "I've not been talking for an hour, I've no fever, and I want to say some things. When I've said them, I'll feel better--voila! I want to make the amende honorable. I once thought you were this and that--I won't say what I thought you. I said you interfered--giving advice to people, as you did to Filion Lacasse, and taking the bread out of my mouth. I said that!" He paused, raised himself on his elbow, smoothed back his grizzled hair behind his ears, looked at himself in the mirror opposite with satisfaction, and added oracularly: "But how prone is the mind of man to judge amiss! You have put bread into my mouth--no, no, Monsieur, you shall hear me! As well as doing your own work, you have done my business since my accident as well as a lawyer could do it; and you've given every penny to my wife." "As for the work I've done," answered Charley, "it was nothing--you notaries have easy times. You may take your turn with my shears and needle one day." With a dash of patronage true to his nature, "You are wonderful for a tailor," the Notary rejoined. Charley laughed--seldom, if ever, had he laughed since coming to Chaudiere. It was, however, a curious fact that he took a real pleasure in the work he did with his hands. In making clothes for habitant farmers, and their sons and their sons' sons, and jackets for their wives and daughters, he had had the keenest pleasure of his life. He had taken his earnings with pride, if not with exultation. He knew the Notary did not mean that he was wonderful as a tailor, but he answered to the suggestion. "You liked that last coat I made for you, then," he said drily; "I believe you wore it when you were shot. It was the thing for your figure, man." The Notary looked in the large mirror opposite with sad content. "Ah, it was a good figure, the first time I went to that hut at Four Mountains!" "We can't always be young. You have a waist yet, and your chest-barrel gives form to a waistcoat. Tut, tut! Think of the twins in the way of vainglory and hypocrisy." "'Twins' and 'hypocrisy'; there you have struck the nail on the head, tailor. There is the thing I'm going to tell you about." After a cautious glance at the door and the window, Dauphin continued in quick, broken sentences: "It wasn't an accident at Four Mountains--not quite. It was Paulette Dubois--you know the woman that lives at the Seigneur's gate? Twelve years ago she was a handsome girl. I fell in love with her, but she left here. There were two other men. There was a timber-merchant,--and there was a lawyer after. The timber-merchant was married; the lawyer wasn't. She lived at first with the timber-merchant. He was killed--murdered in the woods." "What was the timber-merchant's name?" interrupted Charley in an even voice. "Turley--but that doesn't matter!" continued the Notary. "He was murdered, and then the lawyer came on the scene. He lived with her for a year. She had a child by him. One day he sent the child away to a safe place and told her he was going to turn over a new leaf--he was going to stand for Parliament, and she must go. She wouldn't go without the child. At last he said the child was dead; and showed her the certificate of death. Then she came back here, and for a while, alas! she disgraced the parish. But all at once she changed--she got a message that her child was alive. To her it was like being born again. It was at this time they were going to drive her from the parish. But the Seigneur and then the Cure spoke for her, and so did I--at last." He paused and plaintively admired himself in the mirror. He was grateful that he had been clean-shaved that morning, and he was content to catch the citrine odour of the bergamot upon his hair. New phases of the most interesting case Charley had ever defended spread out before him--the case which had given him his friend Jo Portugais, which had turned his own destiny. Yet he could not quite trace in it the vital association of this vain Notary now in the confessional mood. "You behaved very well," said Charley tentatively. "Ah, you say that, knowing so little! What will you say when you know all--ah! That I should take a stand also was important. Neither the Seigneur nor the Cure was married; I was. I have been long-suffering for a cause. My marital felicity has been bruised--bruised--but not broken." "There are the twins," said Charley, with a half-closed eye. "Could woman ask greater proof?" urged the Notary seriously, for the other's voice had been so well masked that he did not catch its satire. "But see my peril, and mark the ground of my interest in this poor wanton! Yet a woman--a woman-frail creatures, as we know, and to be pitied, not made more pitiable by the stronger sex. . . . But, see now! Why should I have perilled mine own conjugal peace, given ground for suspicion even--for I am unfortunate, unfortunate in the exterior with which Dame Nature has honoured me!" Again he looked in the mirror with sad complacency. On these words his listener offered no comment, and he continued: "For this reason I lifted my voice for the poor wanton. It was I who wrote the letter to her that her child was alive. I did it with high purpose--I foresaw that she would change her ways if she thought her child was living. Was I mistaken? No. I am an observer of human nature. Intellect conquered. 'Io triumphe'. The poor fly-away changed, led a new life. Ever since then she has tried to get the man--the lawyer--to tell her where her child is. He has not done so. He has said the child is dead--always. When she seemed to give up belief, then would come another letter to her, telling her the child was living--but not where. So she would keep on writing to the man, and sometimes she would go away searching--searching. To what end? Nothing! She had a letter some months ago, for she had got restless, and a young kinsman of the Seigneur had come to visit at the seigneury for a week, and took much notice of her. There was danger. Voila, another letter." "From you?" "Monsieur, of course! Will you keep a secret--on your sacred honour?" "I can keep a secret without sacred honour." "Ah, yes, of course! You have a secret of your own--pardon me, I am only saying what every one says. Well, this is the secret of the woman Paulette Dubois. My cousin, Robespierre Dauphin, a notary in Quebec, is the agent of the lawyer, the father of the child. He pities the poor woman. But he is bound in professional honour to the lawyer fellow, not to betray. When visiting Robespierre once I found out the truth-by accident. "I told him what I intended. He gave permission to tell the woman her child was alive; and, if need be for her good, to affirm it over and over again--no more." "And this?" said Charley, pointing to the injured leg, for he now associated the accident with the secret just disclosed. "Ah, you apprehend! You have an avocat's mind--almost. It was at Four Mountains. Paulette is superstitious; so not long ago she went to live there alone with an old half-breed woman who has second-sight. Monsieur, it is a gift unmistakably. For as soon as the hag clapped eyes on me in the hut, she said: 'There is the man that wrote you the letters.' Well-- what! Paulette Dubois came down on me like an avalanche--Monsieur, like an avalanche! She believed the old witch; and there was I lying with an unconvincing manner"--he sighed--"lying requires practice, alas! She saw I was lying, and in a rage snatched up my gun. It went off by accident, and brought me down. Did she relent? Not so. She helped to bind me up, and the last words she said to me were: 'You will suffer; you will have time to think. I am glad. You have kept me on the rack. I shall only be sorry if you die, for then I shall not be able to torture you till you tell me where my child is!' Monsieur, I lied to the last, lest she should come here and make a noise; but I'm not sure it wouldn't have been better to break faith with Robespierre, and tell the poor wanton where her child is. What would you do, Monsieur? I cannot ask the Cure or the Seigneur--I have reasons. But you have the head of a lawyer--almost--and you have no local feelings, no personal interest--eh?" "I should tell the truth." "Your reasons, Monsieur?" "Because the lawyer is a scoundrel. Your betrayal of his secret is not a thousandth part so bad as one lie told to this woman, whose very life is her child. Is it a boy or a girl?" "A boy." "Good! What harm can be done? A left-handed boy is all right in the world. Your wife has twins--then think of the woman, the one ewe lamb of 'the poor wanton.' If you do not tell her, you will have her here making a noise, as you say. I wonder she has not been here on your door-step." "I had a letter from her to-day. She is coming-ah, mon dieu!" "When?" There was a tap at the window. The Notary started. "Ah, Heaven, here she is!" he gasped, and drew over to the wall. A voice came from outside. "Shall I play for you, Dauphin? It is as good as medicine." The Notary recovered himself at once. His volatile nature sprang back to its pose. He could forget Paulette Dubois for the moment. "It is Maximilian Cour in the garden," he said happily. Then he raised his voice. "Play on, baker; but something for convalescence--the return of spring, the sweet assonance of memory." "A September air, and a gush of spring," said the baker, trying to crane his long neck through the window. "Ah, there you are, Dauphin! I shall give you a sleep to-night like a balmy eve." He nodded to the tailor. "M'sieu', you shall judge if sentiment be dead. "I have racked my heart to play this time. I have called it, 'The Baffled Quest of Love'. I have taken the music of the song of Alsace, 'Le Jardin d'Amour', and I have made variations on it, keeping the last verse of the song in my mind. You know the song, M'sieu': "'Quand je vais au jardin, Jardin d'amour, Je crois entendu des pas, Je veux fuir, et n'ose pas. Voici la fin du jour . . . Je crains et j'hesite, Mon coeur bat plus vite En ce sejour . . . Quand je vais an jardin, jardin d'amour.'" The baker sat down on a stool he had brought, and began to tune his fiddle. From inside came the voice of the Notary. "Play 'The Woods are Green' first," he said. "Then the other." The Notary possessed the one high-walled garden in the village, and though folk gathered outside and said that the baker was playing for the sick man, there was no one in the garden save the fiddler himself. Once or twice a lad appeared on the top of the wall, looking over, but vanished at once when he saw Charley's face at the window. Long ere the baker had finished, the song was caught up from outside, and before the last notes of the violin had died away, twenty voices were singing it in the street, and forty feet marched away with it into the dusk. Darkness comes quickly in this land of brief twilight. Presently out of the soft shadowed stillness, broken by the note of a vagrant whippoorwill, crept out from Maximilian Cour's old violin the music of 'The Baffled Quest of Love'. The baker was not a great musician, but he had a talent, a rare gift of pathos, and an imagination untrammelled by rigorous rules of harmony and construction. Whatever there was in his sentimental bosom he poured into this one achievement of his life. It brought tears to the eyes of Narcisse Dauphin. It opened a gate of the garden wall, and drew inside a girl's face, shining with feeling. Maximilian Cour spoke for more than himself that night. His philandering spirit had, at middle age, begotten a desire to house itself in a quiet place, where the blinds could be drawn close, and the room of life made ready with all the furniture of love. So he had spoken to his violin, and it had answered as it had never done before. The soul of the lean baker touched the heart of a man whose life had been but a baffled quest, and the spirit of a girl whose love was her sun by day, her moon by night, and the starlight of her dreams. From the shade of the window the man the girl loved watched her as she sank upon the ground and clasped her hands before her in abandonment to the music. He watched her when the baker, at last, overcome by his own feelings--and ashamed of them--got up and stole swiftly out of the garden. He watched her till he saw her drop her face in her hands; then, opening the door and stealing out, he came and laid a hand upon her shoulder, and she heard him say: "Rosalie!" CHAPTER XXXVI BARRIERS SWEPT AWAY Rosalie came to her feet, gasping with pleasure. She had been unhappy ever since she had returned from Quebec, for though she had sometimes been brought in contact with Charley in the Notary's house since the day of the operation, nothing had passed between them save the necessary commonplaces of a sick-room, given a little extra colour, perhaps, by the sense of responsibility which fell upon them both, and by that importance which hidden sentiment gives to every motion. The twins had been troublesome and ill, and Madame Dauphin had begged Rosalie to come in for a couple of hours every evening. Thus the tailor and the girl who, by every rule of wisdom, should have been kept as far apart as the poles, were played into each other's hands by human kindness and damnable propinquity. The man, manlike, felt no real danger, because nothing was said--after everything had been said for all time at the hut on Vadrome Mountain. He had not realised the true situation, because of late her voice, like his, had been even and her hand cool and steady. He had not noticed that her eyes were like hungry fires, eating up her face--eating away its roundness, and leaving a pathetic beauty behind. It seemed to him that because there was silence--neither the written word nor the speaking look--that all was well. He was hugging the chain of denial to his bosom, as though to say, "This way is safety"; he was hiding his face from the beacon-lights of her eyes, which said: "This way is home." Home? Pictures of home, of a home such as Maximilian Cour painted in his music, had passed before him now and then since that great day on Vadrome Mountain. A simple fireside, with frugal but comfortable fare; a few books; the study of the fields and woods; the daily humble task over which he could meditate as his hands worked mechanically; the happy face of a happy woman near--he had thought of home; and he had put it from him. No matter what the temptation, his must be, perhaps for ever, the bed and board unshared. He had had his chance in the old days, and he had thrown it away with insolent indifference, and an unpardonable contempt for the opinion of the world. Now, with a blind fatuousness which had nothing to do with his old intellectual power, but was evidence of a primitive life of feeling, had vaguely imagined that because there were no clinging hands, or stolen looks, or any vow or promise, that all might go on as at present--upon the surface. With a curious absence of his old accuracy of observation he was treating the immediate past--his and Rosalie's past--as if it did not actually exist; as if only the other and farther past was a tragedy, and this nearer one a dream. But the film fell from his eyes as Maximilian Cour played his 'Baffled Quest', with its quaint, searching pathos; and as he saw the figure of the girl alone in the shade of the great rose-bushes, past and present became one, and the whole man was lost in that one word "Rosalie!" which called her to her feet with outstretched hands. The tears sprang to her eyes; her face upturned to his was a mute appeal, a speechless 'Viens ici'. Past, present, future, duty, apprehension, consequences, suddenly fell away from Charley's mind like a garment slipping from the shoulders, and the new man, swept off his feet by the onrush of unused and ungoverned emotions, caught the girl to his arms with a desperate joy. "Oh, do you care, then--for me?" wept the girl, and hid her face in his breast. A voice came from inside the house: "Monsieur, Monsieur--ah, come, if you please, tailor!" The girl drew back quickly, looked up at him for one instant with a triumphant happy daring, then, suddenly covered with confusion, turned, ran to the gate, opened it, passed swiftly out, and was swallowed up in the dusk. CHAPTER XXXVII THE CHALLENGE OF PAULETTE DUBOIS "Monsieur, Monsieur!" came the voice from inside the house, querulously and anxiously. Charley entered the Notary's bedroom. "Monsieur," said the Notary excitedly, "she is here--Paulette is here. My wife is asleep, thank God! but old Sophie has just told me that the woman asks to see me. Ah, Heaven above, what shall I do?" "Will you leave it to me?" "Yes, yes, Monsieur." "You will do exactly as I say?" "Ah, most sure." "Very well. Keep still. I will see her first. Trust to me." He turned and left the room. Charley found the woman in the Notary's office, which, while partly detached from the house, did duty as sitting-room and library. When Charley entered, the room was only lighted by two candles, and Paulette's face was hidden by a veil, but Charley observed the tremulousness of the figure and the nervous decision of manner. He had seen her before several times, and he had always noticed the air, half bravado, half shrinking, marking her walk and movements, as though two emotions were fighting in her. She was now dressed in black, save for one bright red ribbon round her throat, incongruous and garish. When she saw Charley she started, for she had expected the servant with a message from the Notary--her own message had been peremptory. "I wish to see the Notary," she said defiantly. "He is not able to come to you." "What of that?" "Did you expect to go to his bedroom?" "Why not?" She was abrupt to discourtesy. "You are neither physician, nor relative." "I have important business." "I transact his business for him, Madame." "You are a tailor." "I learned that; I am learning to be a notary." "My business is private." "I transact his private business too--that which his wife cannot do. Would you prefer his wife to me? It must be either the one or the other." The woman started towards the door in a rage. He stepped between. "You cannot see the Notary." "I'll see his wife, then--" "That would only put the fat in the fire. His wife would not listen to you. She is quick-tempered, and she fancies she has reasons for not liking you." "She's a fool. I haven't been always particular, but as for Narcisse Dauphin--" "He has been a good friend to you at some expense, the world says." The woman struggled with herself. "The world lies!" she said at last. "But he doesn't. The village was against you once. That was when the Notary, with the Seigneur, was for you--it has cost him something ever since, I'm told. You've never thanked him." "He has tortured me for years, the oily, smirking, lying--" "He has been your best friend," he interrupted. "Please sit down, and listen to me for a moment." She hesitated, then did as he asked. "He tells me that years ago he was in love with you. Hasn't he behaved better than some who said they loved you?" The woman half started up, her eyes flashing, but met a deprecating motion of his hand and sat down again. "He thought that if you knew your child lived, you would think better of life--and of yourself. He has his good points, the Notary." "Why doesn't he tell me where my child is?" "The Notary is in bed--you shot him! Don't you think it is doing you a good turn not to have you arrested?" "It was an accident." "Oh no, it wasn't! You couldn't make a jury believe that. And if you were in prison, how could you find your child? You see, you have treated the Notary very badly." She was silent, and he added, slowly: "He had good reasons for not telling you. It wasn't his own secret, and he hadn't come by it in a strictly professional way. Your child was being well cared for, and he told you simply that it was alive--for your own sake. But he has changed his mind at last, and--" The woman sprang from her seat. "He will tell me--he will tell me?" "I will tell you." "Monsieur-Monsieur--ah, my God, but you are kind! How should you know-- what do you know?" "I give you my word that by to-morrow evening you shall know where your child is." For a moment she was bewildered and overcome, then a look of gratitude, of luminous hope, covered her face, softening the hardness of its contour, and she fell on her knees beside the table, dropped her head in her arms, and sobbed as if her heart would break. "My little lamb, my little, little lamb-my own dearest!" she sobbed. "I shall have you again. I shall have you again--all my own!" He stood and watched her meditatively. He was wondering why it was that grief like this had never touched him so before. His eyes were moist. Though he had been many things in his life, he had never been abashed; but a curious timidity possessed him now. He leaned over and touched her shoulder with a kindly abruptness, a friendly awkwardness. "Cheer up," he said. "You shall have your child, if Dauphin can help you to it." "If he ever tries to take him from me"--she sprang to her feet, her face in a fury--"I will--" For an instant her overpowering passion possessed her, and she stood violent and wilful; then, under his fixed, exacting gaze, her rage ceased; she became still and grey and quiet. "I shall know to-morrow evening, Monsieur? Where?" Her voice was weak and distant. He thought for a time. "At my house-at nine o'clock," he answered at last. "Monsieur," she said, in a choking voice, "if I get my child again, I will bless you to my dying day." "No, no; it will be Dauphin you must bless," he said, and opened the door for her. As she disappeared into the dusk and silence he adjusted his eye-glass, and stared musingly after her, though there was nothing to see save the summer darkness, nothing to hear save the croak of the frogs in the village pond. He was thinking of the trial of Joseph Nadeau, and of a woman in the gallery, who laughed. "Monsieur, Monsieur," called the voice of the Notary from the bedroom. CHAPTER XXXVIII THE CURE AND THE SEIGNEUR VISIT THE TAILOR It had been a perfect September day. The tailor of Chaudiere had been busier than usual, for winter was within hail, and careful habitants were renewing their simple wardrobes. The Seigneur and the Cure arrived together, each to order the making of a greatcoat of the Irish frieze which the Seigneur kept in quantity at the Manor. The Seigneur was in rare spirits. And not without reason; for this was Michaelmas eve, and tomorrow would be Michaelmas day, and there was a promise to be redeemed on Michaelmas day! He had high hopes of its redemption according to his own wishes; for he was a vain Seigneur, and he had had his way in all things all his life, as everybody knew. Importunity with discretion was his motto, and he often vowed to the Cure that there was no other motto for the modern world. The Cure's visit to the tailor's shop on this particular day had unusual interest, for it concerned his dear ambition, the fondest aspiration of his life: to bring the infidel tailor (they could not but call a man an infidel whose soul was negative--the word agnostic had not then become usual) from the chains of captivity into the freedom of the Church. The Cure had ever clung to his fond hope; and it was due to his patient confidence that there were several parishioners who now carried Charley's name before the shrine of the blessed Virgin, and to the little calvaries by the road-side. The wife of Filion Lacasse never failed to pray for him every day. The thousand dollars gained by the saddler on the tailor's advice had made her life happier ever since, for Filion had become saving and prudent, and had even got her a "hired girl." There were at least a half-dozen other women, including Madame Dauphin, who did the same. That he might listen again to the good priest on his holy hobby, inflamed with this passion of missionary zeal, the Seigneur, this morning, had thrown doubt upon the ultimate success of the Cure's efforts. "My dear Cure" said the Seigneur, "it is true, I think, what the tailor suggested to my brother--on my soul, I wonder the Abbe gave in, for a more obstinate fellow I never knew!--that a man is born with the disbelieving maggot in his brain, or the butterfly of belief, or whatever it may be called. It's constitutional--may be criminal, but constitutional. It seems to me you would stand more chance with the Jew, Greek, or heretic, than our infidel. He thinks too much--for a tailor, or for nine tailors, or for one man." He pulled his nose, as if he had said a very good thing indeed. They were walking slowly towards the village during this conversation, and the Cure, stopping short, brought his stick emphatically down in his palm several times, as he said: "Ah, you will not see! You will not understand. With God all things are possible. Were it the devil himself in human form, I should work and pray and hope, as my duty is, though he should still remain the devil to the end. What am I? Nothing. But what the Church has done, the Church may do. Think of Paul and Augustine, and Constantine!" "They were classic barbarians to whom religion was but an emotion. This man has a brain which must be satisfied." "I must count him as a soul to be saved through that very intelligence, as well as through the goodness of his daily life, which, in its charity, shames us all. He gives all he earns to the sick and needy. He lives on fare as poor as the poorest of our people eat; he gives up his hours of sleep to nurse the sick. Dauphin might not have lived but for him. His heart is good, else these things were impossible. He could not act them." "But that's just it, Cure. Doesn't he act them? Isn't it a whim? What more likely than that, tired of the flesh-pots of Egypt, he comes here to live in the desert--for a sensation? We don't know." "We do know. The man has had sorrow and the man has had sin. Yes, believe me, there is none of us that suffers as this man has suffered. I have had many, many talks with him. Believe me, Maurice, I speak the truth. My heart bleeds for him. I think I know the thing that drove him here amongst us. It is a great temptation, which pursues him here--even here, where his life is so commendable. I have seen him fighting it. I have seen his torture, the piteous, ignoble yielding, and the struggle, with more than mortal energy, to be master of himself." "It is--" the Seigneur said, then paused. "No, no; do not ask me. He has not confessed to me, Maurice-naturally, nothing like that. But I know. I know and pity--ah, Maurice, I almost love. You argue, and reason, but I know this, my friend, that something was left out of this man when he was made, and it is that thing that we must find, or he will die among us a ruined soul, and his gravestone will be the monument of our shame. If he can once trust the Church, if he can once say, 'Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,' then his temptation will vanish, and I shall bring him in--I shall lead him home." For an instant the Seigneur looked at him in amazement, for this was a Cure he had never known. "Dear Cure, you are not your old self," he said gently. "I am not myself--yes, that is it, Maurice. I am not the old humdrum Cure you knew. The whole world is my field now. I have sorrowed for sin, within the bounds of this little Chaudiere. Now I sorrow for unbelief. Through this man, through much thinking on him, I have come to feel the woe of all the world. I have come to hear the footsteps of the Master near. My friend, it is not a legend, not a belief now, it is a presence. I owe him much, Maurice. In bringing him home, I shall understand what it all means--the faith that we profess. I shall in truth feel that it is all real. You see how much I may yet owe to him-- to this infidel tailor. I only hope I have not betrayed him," he added anxiously. "I would keep faith with him--ah, yes, indeed!" "I only remember that you have said the man suffers. That is no betrayal." They entered the village in silence. Presently, however, the sound of Maximilian Cour's violin, as they passed the bakery, set the Seigneur's tongue wagging again, and it wagged on till they came to the tailor's shop. "Good-day to you, Monsieur," he said, as they entered. "Have you a hot goose for me?" "I have, but I will not press it on you," replied Charley. "Should you so take my question--eh?" "Should you so take my 'anser'?" The pun was new to the Seigneur, and he turned to the Cure chuckling. "Think of that, Cure! He knows the classics." He laughed till the tears came into his eyes. The next few moments Charley was busy measuring the two potentates for greatcoats. As it was his first work for them, it was necessary for the Cure to write down the Seigneur's measurements, as the tailor called them off, while the Seigneur did the same when the Cure was being measured. So intent were the three it might have been a conference of war. The Seigneur ventured a distant but self-conscious smile when the measurement of his waist was called, for he had by two inches the advantage of the Cure, though they were the same age, while he was one inch better in the chest. The Seigneur was proud of his figure, and, unheeding the passing of fashions, held to the knee-breeches and silk stockings long after they had disappeared from the province. To the Cure he had often said that the only time he ever felt heretical was when in the presence of the gaitered calves of a Protestant dean. He wore his sleeves tight and his stock high, as in the days when William the Sailor was king in England, and his long gold-topped Prince Regent cane was the very acme of dignity. The measurement done, the three studied the fashion plates--mostly five years old--as Von Moltke and Bismarck might have studied the field of Gravelotte. The Seigneur's remarks were highly critical, till, with a few hasty strokes on brown paper, Charley sketched in his figure with a long overcoat in style much the same as his undercoat, stately and flowing and confined at the waist. "Admirable, most admirable!" said the Seigneur. "The likeness is astonishing"--he admired the carriage of his own head in Charley's swift lines--"the garment in perfect taste. Form--there is nothing like form and proportion in life. It is almost a religion." "My dear friend!" said the Cure, in amazement. "I know when I am in the presence of an artist and his work. Louis Trudel had rule and measure, shears and a needle. Our friend here has eye and head, sense of form and creative gift. Ah, Cure, Cure, if I were twenty-five, with the assistance of Monsieur, I would show the bucks in Fabrique Street how to dress. What style is this called, Monsieur?" he suddenly asked, pointing to the drawing. "Style a la Rossignol, Seigneur," said the tailor. The Seigneur was flattered out of all reason. He looked across at the post-office, where he could see Rosalie dimly moving in the shade of the shop. "Ah, if I had but ordered this coat sooner!" he said regretfully. He was thinking that to-morrow was Michaelmas day, when he was to ask Rosalie for her answer again, and he fancied himself appearing before her in the gentle cool of the evening, in this coat, lightly thrown back, disclosing his embroidered waistcoat, seals, and snowy linen. "Monsieur, I am highly complimented, believe me," he said. "Observe, Cure, that this coat is invented for me on the spot." The Cure nodded appreciatively. "Wonderful! Wonderful! But do you not think," he added, a little wistfully--for, was he not a Frenchman, susceptible like all his race to the appearance of things?--"do you not think it might be too fashionable for me?" "Not a whit--not a whit," replied the Seigneur generously. "Should not a Cure look distinguished--be dignified? Consider the length, the line, the eloquence of design! Ah, Monsieur, once again, you are an artist! The Cure shall wear it--indeed but he shall! Then I shall look like him, and perhaps get credit for some of his perfections." "And the Cure?" said Charley. "The Cure?--the Cure? Tiens, a little of my worldliness will do him good. There are no contrasts in him. He must wear the coat." He waved his walking-stick complacently, for he was thinking that the Cure's less perfect figure would set off his own well as they walked together. "May I have the honour to keep this as a souvenir?" he added, picking up the sketch. "With pleasure," answered Charley. "You do not need it?" "Not at all." The Cure looked a little disappointed, and Charley, seeing, immediately sketched on brown paper the priestly figure in the new-created coat, a la Rossignol. On this drawing he was a little longer engaged, with the result that the Cure was reproduced with a singular fidelity--in face, figure, and expression a personality gentle yet important. "On my soul, you shall not have it!" said the Seigneur. "But you shall have me, and I shall have you, lest we both grow vain by looking at ourselves." He thrust the sketch of himself into the Cure's hands, and carefully rolled up that of his friend. The Cure was amazed at this gift of the tailor, and delighted with the picture of himself--his vanity was as that of a child, without guile or worldliness. He was better pleased, however, to have the drawing of his friend by him, that vanity might not be too companionable. He thanked Charley with a beaming face, and then the two friends bowed and moved towards the door. Suddenly the Cure stopped. "My dear Maurice," said he, "we have forgotten the important thing." "Think of that--we two old babblers!" said the Seigneur. He nodded for the Cure to begin. "Monsieur," said the Cure to Charley, "you maybe able to help us in a little difficulty. For a long time we have intended holding a great mission with a kind of religious drama like that performed at Ober-Ammergau, and called The Passion Play. You know of it, Monsieur?" "Very well through reading, Monsieur." "Next Easter we propose having a Passion Play in pious imitation of the famous drama. We will hold it at the Indian reservation of Four Mountains, thus quickening our own souls and giving a good object-lesson of the great History to the Indians." The Cure paused rather anxiously, but Charley did not speak. His eyes were fixed inquiringly on the Cure, and he had a sudden suspicion that some devious means were forward to influence him. He dismissed the thought, however, for this Cure was simple as man ever was made, straightforward as the most heretical layman might demand. The Cure, taking heart, again continued: "Now I possess an authentic description of the Ober-Ammergau drama, giving details of its presentation at different periods, and also a book of the play. But there is no one in the parish who reads German, and it occurred to the Seigneur and myself that, understanding French so well, by chance you may understand German also, and would, perhaps, translate the work for us." "I read German easily and speak it fairly," Charley answered, relieved; "and you are welcome to my services." The Cure's pale face flushed with pleasure. He took the little German book from his pocket, and handed it over. "It is not so very long," he said; "and we shall all be grateful." Then an inspiration came to him; his eyes lighted. "Monsieur," he said, "you will notice that there are no illustrations in the book. It is possible that you might be able to make us a few drawings--if we do not ask too much? It would aid greatly in the matter of costume, and you might use my library--I have a fair number of histories." The Cure was almost breathless, his heart thumped as he made the request. After a slight pause he added, hastily: "You are always doing for others. It is hardly kind to ask you; but we have some months to spare; there need be no haste." Charley hastened to relieve the Cure's anxiety. "Do not apologise," he said. "I will do what I can when I can. But as for drawing, Monsieur, it will be but amateurish." "Monsieur," interposed the Seigneur promptly, "if you're not an artist, I'm damned!" "Maurice!" murmured the Cure reproachfully. "Can't help it, Cure. I've held it in for an hour. It had to come; so there it is exploded. I see no damage either, save to my own reputation. Monsieur," he added to Charley, "if I had gifts like yours, nothing would hold me. I should put on more airs than Beauty Steele." It was fortunate that, at that instant, Charley's face was turned away, or the Seigneur would have seen it go white and startled. Charley did not dare turn his head for the moment. He could not speak. What did the Seigneur know of Beauty Steele? To hide his momentary confusion, he went over to the drawer of a cupboard in the wall, and placed the book inside. It gave him time to recover himself. When he turned round again his face was calm, his manner composed. "And who, may I ask, is Beauty Steele?" he said. "Faith I do not know," answered the Seigneur, taking a pinch of snuff. "It's years since I first read the phrase in a letter a scamp of a relative of mine wrote me from the West. He had met a man of the name, who had a reputation as a clever fop, a very handsome fellow. So I thought it a good phrase, and I've used it ever since on occasions. 'More airs than Beauty Steele.' --It has a sound; it's effective, I fancy, Monsieur?" "Decidedly effective," answered Charley quietly. He picked up his shears. "You will excuse me," he said grimly, "but I must earn my living. I cannot live on my reputation." The Seigneur and the Cure lifted their hats--to the tailor. "Au revoir, Monsieur," they both said, and Charley bowed them out. The two friends turned to each other a little way up the street. "Something will come of this, Cure," said the Seigneur. The Cure, whose face had a look of happiness, pressed his arm in reply. Inside the tailor-shop, a voice kept saying, "More airs than Beauty Steele!" CHAPTER XXXIX THE SCARLET WOMAN Since the evening in the garden when she had been drawn into Charley's arms, and then fled from them in joyful confusion, Rosalie had been in a dream. She had not closed her eyes all night, or, if she closed them, they still saw beautiful things flashing by, to be succeeded by other beautiful things. It was a roseate world. To her simple nature it was not so important to be loved as to love. Selfishness was as yet the minor part of her. She had been giving all her life--to her mother, as a child; to sisters at the convent who had been kind to her; to the poor and the sick of the parish; to her father, who was helpless without her; to the tailor across the way. In each case she had given more than she had got. A nature overflowing with impulsive affection, it must spend itself upon others. The maternal instinct was at the very core of her nature, and care for others was as much a habit as an instinct with her. She had love to give, and it must be given. It had been poured like the rain from heaven on the just and the unjust; on animals as on human beings, and in so far as her nature, in the first spring--the very April --of its powers, could do. Till Charley had come to Chaudiere, it had all been the undisciplined ardour of a girl's nature. A change had begun in the moment when she had tearfully thrust the oil and flour in upon his excoriated breast. Later came real awakening, and a riotous outpouring of herself in sympathy, in observation, in a reckless kindness which must have done her harm but that her clear intelligence balanced her actions, and because secrecy in one thing helped to restrain her in all. Yet with all the fresh overflow of her spirit, which, assisted by her new position as postmistress, made her a conspicuous and popular figure in the parish, where officialdom had rare honour and little labour, she had prejudices almost unworthy of her, due though they were to radical antipathy. These prejudices, one against Jo Portugais and the other against Paulette Dubois, she had never been able entirely to overcome, though she had honestly tried. On the way to the hospital at Quebec, however, Jo had been so careful of her father, so respectful when speaking of M'sieu', so regardful of her own comfort, that her antagonism to him was lulled. But the strong prejudice against Paulette Dubois remained, casting a shadow on her bright spirit. All this day she had moved about in a mellow dream, very busy, scarcely thinking. New feelings dominated her, and she was too primitive to analyse them and too occupied with them to realise acutely the life about her. Work was an abstraction, resting rather than tiring her. Many times she had looked across at the tailor-shop, only seeing Charley once. She did not wish to speak with him now, nor to be near him yet; she wanted this day for herself only. So it was that, soon after the Cure and the Seigneur had bade good-bye to Charley, she left the post-office and went quickly through the village to a spot by the river, where was a place called the Rest of the Flaxbeaters. It was an overhanging rock which made a kind of canopy over a sweet spring, where, in the days when their labours sounded through the valley, the flaxbeaters from the level below came to eat their meals and to rest. This had always been a resort for her in the months when the flax-beaters did not use it. Since a child she had made the place her own. To this day it is called Rosalie's Dell; for are not her sorrows and joys still told by those who knew and loved her? and is not the parish still fragrant with her name? Has not her history become a living legend a thousand times told? Leaving the village behind her, Rosalie passed down the high-road till she came to a path that led off through a grove of scattered pines. There would be yet a half-hour's sun and then a short twilight, and the river and the woods and the Rest of the Flax-beaters would be her own; and she could think of the wonderful thing come upon her. She had brought with her a book of English poems, and as she went through the grove she opened it, and in her pretty English repeated over and over to herself: "My heart is thine, and soul and body render Faith to thy faith; I give nor hold in thrall: Take all, dear love! thou art my life's defender; Speak to my soul! Take life and love; take all!" She was lifted up by the abandonment of the verse, by the fulness of her own feelings, which had only needed a touch of beauty to give it exaltation. The touch had come. She went on abstractedly to the place where she had trysted with her thoughts only, these many years, and, sitting down, watched the sun sink beyond the trees, the shades of evening fall. All that had happened since Charley came to the parish she went over in her mind. She remembered the day he had said this, the day he had said that; she brought back the night--it was etched upon her mind!--when he had said to her, "You have saved my life, Mademoiselle!" She recalled the time she put the little cross back on the church-door, the ghostly footsteps in the church, the light, the lost hood. A shudder ran through her now, for the mystery of that hood had never been cleared up. But the words on the page caught her eye again: "My heart is thine, and soul and body render Faith to thy faith . . ." It swallowed up the moment's agitation. Never till this day, never till last night, had she dared to say to herself, He loves me. He seemed so far above her--she never had thought of him as a tailor!--that she had given and never dared hope to receive, had lived without anticipation lest there should come despair. Even that day at Vadrome Mountain she had not thought he meant love, when he had said to her that he would remember to the last. When he had said that he would die for love's sake, he had not meant her, but others--some one else whom he would save by his death. Kathleen, that name which had haunted her--ah, whoever Kathleen was, or whatever Kathleen had to do with him or his life, she had no reason to fear Kathleen now. She had no reason to fear any one; for had she not heard his words of love as he clasped her in his arms last night? Had she not fled from that enfolding, because her heart was so full in the hour of her triumph that she could not bear more, could not look longer into the eyes to which she had told her love before his was spoken? In the midst of her thoughts she heard footsteps. She started up. Paulette Dubois suddenly appeared in the path below. She had taken the river-path down from Vadrome Mountain, where she had gone to see Jo Portugais, who had not yet returned from Quebec. Paulette's face was agitated, her manner nervous. For nights she had not slept, and her approaching meeting with the tailor had made her tremble all day. Excited as she was, there was a wild sort of beauty in her face, and her figure was lithe and supple. She dressed always a little garishly, but now there was only that band of colour round the throat, worn last night in the talk with Charley. To both women this meeting was as a personal misfortune, a mutual affront. Each had a natural antipathy. To Rosalie the invasion of her beloved retreat was as hateful as though the woman had purposely intruded. For a moment they confronted each other without speaking, then Rosalie's natural courtesy, her instinctive good-heartedness, overcame her irritation, and she said quietly: "Good-evening, Madame." "I am not Madame, and you know it," answered the woman harshly. "I am sorry. Good-evening, Mademoiselle," rejoined Rosalie evenly. "You wanted to insult me. You knew I wasn't Madame." Rosalie shook her head. "How should I know? You have not always lived in Chaudiere, you have lived in Montreal, and people often call you Madame." "You know better. You know that letters come to me from Montreal addressed Mademoiselle." Rosalie turned as if to go. "I do not recall what letters pass through the post-office. I have a good memory for forgetting. Good-evening," she added, with an excess of courtesy. Paulette read the placid scorn in the girl's face; she did not see and would not understand that Rosalie did not scorn her for what she had ever done, but for something that she was. "You think I am the dirt under your feet," she said, now white, now red, and mad with anger. "I'm not fit to speak with you--I'm a rag for the dust pile!" "I have never thought so," answered Rosalie. "I have not liked you, but I am sorry for you, and I never thought those things." "You lie!" was the rejoinder; and Rosalie, turning away quickly with trouble in her face, put her hands to her ears, and, hastening down the hillside, did not hear the words the woman called after her. "To-morrow every one shall know you are a thief. Run, run, run! You can hear what I say, white-face! They shall know about the little cross to-morrow." She followed Rosalie at a distance, her eyes blazing. As fate would have it, she met on the highroad the least scrupulous man in the parish, an inveterate gossip, the keeper of the general store, whose only opposition in business was the post-office shop. He was the centre of the village tittle-tattle, and worse. With malicious speed Paulette told him how she had seen Rosalie Evanturel nailing the little cross on the church door of a certain night. If he wanted proof of what she said, let him ask Jo Portugais. Having spat out her revenge, she went on to the village, and through it to her house, where she prepared to visit the shop of the tailor. Her sense of retaliation satisfied, Rosalie passed from her mind; her child only occupied it. In another hour she would know where her child was-- the tailor had promised that she should. Then perhaps she would be sorry for the accident to the Notary; for it was an accident, in spite of appearances. It was dark when Paulette entered the door of the tailor's house. When she came out, a half-hour later, with elation in her carriage, and tears of joy running down her face, she did not look about her; she did not care whether or not any one saw her: she was possessed with only one thought--her child! She passed like a swift wind down the street, making for home and for her departure to the hiding-place of her child. She had not seen a figure in the shadow of a tree near by as she came from the tailor's door. She had not heard a smothered cry behind her. She was not aware that in unspeakable agony another woman knocked softly at the door of the tailor's house, and, not waiting for an answer, opened it and entered. It was Rosalie Evanturel. CHAPTER XL AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING The kitchen was empty, but light fell through the door of the shop opening upon the little hall between. Rosalie crossed the hall and stood in the doorway of the shop, a figure of concentrated indignation, despair, and shame. Leaning on his elbow Charley was bending over a book in the light of a candle on the bench be side him. He was reading aloud, translating into English the German text of the narrative the Cure had given him: "And because of this divine interposition, consequent upon their faithful prayers and their oblations, they did perform these holy scenes from season to season, with solemn proof of piety and godly living, so that it seemed the life of the Lord our Shepherd was ever present with them, as though, indeed, Ober-Ammergau were Nazareth or Jerusalem. And the hearts of all in the land did answer daily to that sweet and lively faith, insomuch that even in times of war the zeal of the people became an holy zeal, and their warfare noble; so that they did accept both victory and defeat with equal humbleness. Because there was no war in their hearts, but peace, and they did fight to defend and not to acquire, they buried their foe with tears and their own with singleness of heart and quiet joy, for that they did rest from their labours. In this manner was the great tragedy and glory of the world made to the people a present thing, transforming them to the body of the Life that hath neither spot nor blemish nor . . ." Charley had not heard Rosalie enter, nor her footsteps in the hall. But now there ran through his reading a thread of something not of himself or of it. He had thrilled to the archaic but clear-hearted style of the old German chronicler, and the warmth he felt had passed into his voice, so that it became louder. As Rosalie listened to his reading, a hundred thoughts rushed through her mind. Paulette Dubois, the wanton woman, had just left his doorway secretly, yet there he was, instantly after, calmly reading a pious book! Her mind was in tumult. She could not reason, she could not rule her judgment. She only knew that the woman had come from this house, and hurried guiltily away into the dark. She only knew that the man the woman had left here was the man she loved--loved more than her life, for he embodied all her past; all her present--she knew that she could not live without him; all her future--for where he went she would go, whatever the fate. Her judgment had been swept from its moorings. She had been carried on the wave of her heart's fever into this room, not daring to think this or that, not planning this or that, not accusing, not reproaching, not shaming herself and him by black suspicion, but blindly, madly demanding to see him, to look into his eyes, to hear his voice, to know him, whatever he was--man, lover, or devil. She was a child-woman--a child in her primitive feelings that threw aside all convention, because there was no wrong in her heart; a woman, because she was possessed by a jealousy which shamed and angered her, because its very existence put him on trial, condemned him. Her soul was the sport of emotions and passions stronger than herself, because the heritage, the instinct, of all the race of women, the eternal predisposition. At the moment her will was not sufficient to rule them to obedience. She was in the first subservience to that power which feeds the streams of human history. As she now listened to Charley reading, a sudden revulsion of feeling came over her. Some note in his voice reassured her heart--if it needed reassuring. The quiet force of his presence stilled the tumult in her, so that her eyes could see without mist, her heart beat without agony; but every pulse in her was throbbing, every instinct was alive. Presently there rushed upon her the words that had rung in her ears and chimed in her heart at the Rest of the Flax-beaters: "Take all, dear love! thou art my life's defender; Speak to my soul! Take life and love; take all." Feelings lying beneath the mad conflict of emotion which had sent her into this room in such unmaidenly fashion--feelings that were her deepest self-welled up. Her breath came hard and broken. As Charley read on, a breathing seemed to answer his own. It became quicker than his own, it pierced the stillness, it filled the room with feeling, it came calling to him out of the silence. He swung round, and saw the girl in the doorway. "Rosalie!" he cried, and sprang to his feet. With a piteously pathetic cry, she flung herself on her knees beside the tailor's bench where he worked every day, and, burying her face in her arms as they rested on the bench, wept bitterly. "Rosalie!" he said anxiously, leaning over her. "What is the matter? What has happened?" She wept more bitterly still; she made a despairing gesture. His hand touched her hair; he dropped on a knee beside her. "Oh, I am so ashamed, ashamed! I have been so wicked," she murmured. "Rosalie, what has happened?" he urged gently. His own heart was beating hard, his own eyes were responding to hers. The new feelings alive in him, the forces his love had awakened, which, last night, had kept him sleepless, and had been upon him like a dream all day--they were at height in him now. He knew not how to command them. "Rosalie, dearest, tell me all!" he persisted. "I shall never--I have been--oh--you will never forgive me!" she said brokenly. "I knew it wasn't true, but I couldn't help it. I saw her-- the woman--come from your house, and--" "Hush! For God's sake, hush!" he broke in almost harshly. Then a better understanding came upon him, and it made him gentle with her. "Ah, Rosalie, you did not think! But--but it was natural you should wish to see me. . . ." "But, as soon as I saw you, I knew that--that--" She broke down again and wept. "I will tell you about her, Rosalie--" His fingers stroked her hair, and, bending over her, his face was near her hands. "No, no, tell me nothing--oh, if you tell me!--" "She came to hear from me what she ought to have heard from the Notary. She has had great trouble--the man--her child--and I have helped her, told her--" His face was so near now that his breath was on her hair. She suddenly raised her head and clasped his face in her hands. "I knew--oh, I knew, I knew . . . !" she wept, and her eyes drank his. "Rosalie, my life!" he cried, clasping her in his arms. The love that was in him, new-born and but half understood, poured itself out in broken words like her own. For him there was no outside world; no past, no Kathleen, no Billy; no suspicion, or infidelity, or unfaith; no fear of disaster; no terrors of the future. Life was Now to him and to her: nothing brooded behind, nothing lay before. The candle spluttered and burnt low in the socket. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: A left-handed boy is all right in the world Damnable propinquity Hugging the chain of denial to his bosom I have a good memory for forgetting Importunity with discretion was his motto It is good to live, isn't it? Know how bad are you, and doesn't mind Strike first and heal after--"a kick and a lick" THE RIGHT OF WAY By Gilbert Parker Volume 5. XLI. IT WAS MICHAELMAS DAY XLII. A TRIAL AND A VERDICT XLIII. JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY XLIV. "WHO WAS KATHLEEN?" XLV. SIX MONTHS GO BY XLVI. THE FORGOTTEN MAN XLVII. ONE WAS TAKEN AND THE OTHER LEFT XLVIII. "WHERE THE TREE OF LIFE IS BLOOMING--" XLIX. THE OPEN GATE CHAPTER XLI IT WAS MICHAELMAS DAY Not a cloud in the sky, and, ruling all, a sweet sun, liberal in warmth and eager in brightness as its distance from the northern world decreased. As Mrs. Flynn entered the door of the post-office she sang out to Maximilian Cour, with a buoyant lilt: "Oh, isn't it the fun o' the world to be alive!" The tailor over the way heard it, and lifted his head with a smile; Rosalie Evanturel, behind the postal wicket, heard it, and her face swam with colour. Rosalie busied herself with the letters and papers for a moment before she answered Mrs. Flynn's greeting, for there were ringing in her ears the words she herself had said a few days before: "It is good to live, isn't it?" To-day it was so good to live that life seemed an endless being and a tireless happy doing--a gift of labour, an inspiring daytime, and a rejoicing sleep. Exaltation, a painful joy, and a wide embarrassing wonderment possessed her. She met Mrs. Flynn's face at the wicket with shining eyes and a timid smile. "Ah, there y'are, darlin'!" said Mrs. Flynn. "And how's the dear father to-day?" "He seems about the same, thank you." "Ah, that's foine. Shure, if we could always be 'about the same,' we'd do. True for you, darlin', 'tis as you say. If ould Mary Flynn could be always "bout the same,' the clods o' the valley would never cover her bones. But there 'tis--we're here to-day, and away tomorrow. Shure, though, I am not complainin'. Not I--not Mary Flynn. Teddy Flynn used to say to me, says he: 'Niver born to know distress! Happy as worms in a garden av cucumbers. Seventeen years in this country, Mary,' says he, 'an' nivir in the pinitintiary yet.' There y'are. Ah, the birds do be singin' to-day! 'Tis good! 'Tis good, darlin'! You'll not mind Mary Flynn callin' you darlin', though y'are postmistress, an' 'll be more than that--more than that wan day--or Mary Flynn's a fool. Aye, more than that y'll be, darlin', and y're eyes like purty brown topazzes and y're cheeks like roses-shure, is there anny lether for Mary Flynn, darlin'?" she hastily added as she saw the Seigneur standing in the doorway. He had evidently been listening. "Ye didn't hear what y're ould fool of a cook was sayin'," she added to the Seigneur, as Rosalie shook her head and answered: "No letters, Madame--dear." Rosalie timidly added the dear, for there was something so great-hearted in Mrs. Flynn that she longed to clasp her round the neck, longed as she had never done in her life to lay her head upon some motherly breast and pour out her heart. But it was not to be now. Secrecy was her duty still. "Can't ye speak to y're ould fool of a cook, sir?" Mrs. Flynn said again, as the Seigneur made way for her to leave the shop. "How did you guess?" he said to her in a low voice, his sharp eyes peering into hers. "By the looks in y're face these past weeks, and the look in hers," she whispered, and went on her way rejoicing. "I'll wind thim both round me finger like a wisp o' straw," she said, going up the road with a light step, despite her weight, till she was stopped by the malicious grocer-man of the village, whose tongue had been wagging for hours upon an unwholesome theme. Meanwhile, in the post-office, the Seigneur and Rosalie were face to face. "It is Michaelmas day," he said. "May I speak with you, Mademoiselle?" She looked at the clock. It was on the stroke of noon. The shop always closed from twelve till half-past twelve. "Will you step into the parlour, Monsieur?" she said, and coming round the counter, locked the shop-door. She was trembling and confused, and entered the little parlour shyly. Yet her eyes met the Seigneur's bravely. "Your father, how is he?" he said, offering her a chair. The sunlight streaming in the window made a sort of pathway of light between them, while they were in the shade. "He seems no worse, and to-day he is wheeling himself about." "He is stronger, then--that's good. Is there any fear that he must go to the hospital again?" She inclined her head. "The doctor says he may have to go any moment. It may be his one chance. The Cure is very kind, and says that, with your permission, his sister will keep the office here, if--if needed." The Seigneur nodded briskly. "Of course, of course. But have you not thought that we might secure another postmistress?" Her face clouded a little; her heart beat hard. She knew what was coming. She dreaded it, but it was better to have it over now. "We could not live without it," she said helplessly. "What we have saved is not enough. The little my mother had must pay for the visits to the hospital. I have kept it for that. You see, I need the place here." "But you have thought, just the same. Do you not know the day?" he asked meaningly. She was silent. "I have come to ask you to marry me--this is Michaelmas day, Rosalie." She did not speak. He had hopes from her silence. "If anything happened to your father, you could not live here alone--but a young girl! Your father may be in the hospital for a long time. You cannot afford that. If I were to offer you money, you would refuse. If you marry me, all that I have is yours to dispose of at your will: to make others happy, to take you now and then from this narrow place, to see what's going on in the world." "I am happy here," she said falteringly. "Chaudiere is the finest place in the world," he replied proudly, and as a matter of fact. "But, for the sake of knowledge, you should see what the rest of the world is. It helps you to understand Chaudiere better. I ask you to be my wife, Rosalie." She shook her head sorrowfully. "You said before, it was not because I am old, not because I am rich, not because I am Seigneur, not because I am I, that you refused me." She smiled at him now. "That is true," she said. "Then what reason can you have? None, none. 'Pon honour, I believe you are afraid of marriage because it's marriage. By my life, there's naught to dread. A little giving here and taking there, and it's easy. And when a woman is all that's good, to a man, it can be done without fear or trembling. Even the Cure would tell you that." "Ah, I know, I know," she said, in a voice half painful, half joyous. "I know that it is so. But, oh, dear Monsieur, I cannot marry you-- never--never." He hung on bravely. "I want to make life easy and happy for you. I want the right to do so. When trouble comes upon you--" "When it does I will turn to you--ah, yes, I would turn to you without fear, dear Monsieur," she said, and her heart ached within her, for a premonition of sorrow came upon her and filled her eyes, and made her heart like lead within her breast. "I know how true a gentleman you are," she added. "I could give you everything but that which is life to me, which is being, and soul, and the beginning and the end." The weight of the revealing hour of her life, its wonder, its agony, its irrevocability, was upon her. It was giving new meanings to existence- primitive woman, child of nature as she was. All morning she had longed to go out into the woods and bury herself among the ferns and bracken, and laugh and weep for very excess of feeling, downright joy and vague woe possessing her at once. She looked the Seigneur in the eyes with consuming earnestness. "Oh, it is not because I am young," she said, in a low voice, "for I am old--indeed, I am very old. It is because I cannot love you, and never can love you in the one great way; and I will not marry without love. My heart is fixed on that. When I marry, it will be when I love a man so much that I cannot live without him. If he is so poor that each meal is a miracle, it will make no difference. Oh, can't you see, can't you feel, what I mean, Monsieur--you who are so wise and learned, and know the world so well?" "Wise and learned!" he said, a little roughly, for his voice was husky with emotion. "'Pon honour, I think I am a fool! A bewildered fool, that knows no more of woman than my cook knows Sanscrit. Faith, a hundred times less! For Mary Flynn's got an eye to see, and, without telling, she knew I had a mind set on you. But Mary Flynn thought more than that, for she has an idea that you've a mind set on some one, Rosalie. She thought it might be me." "A woman is not so easily read as a man," she replied, half smiling, but with her eyes turned to the street. A few people were gathering in front of the house--she wondered why. "There is some one else--that is it, Rosalie. There is some one else. You shall tell me who it is. You shall--" He stopped short, for there was a loud knocking at the shop-door, and the voice of M. Evanturel calling: "Rosalie! Rosalie! Rosalie! Ah, come quickly--ah, my Rosalie!" Without a look at the Seigneur, Rosalie rushed into the shop and opened the front door. Her father was deathly pale, and was trembling violently. "Rosalie, my bird," he cried indignantly, "they're saying you stole the cross from the church door." He was now wheeled inside the shop, and people gathered round, looking at him and Rosalie, some covertly, some as friends, some in a half- frightened way, as though strange things were about to happen. "Shure, 'tis a lie, or me name's not Mary Flynn--the darlin'!" said the Seigneur's cook, with blazing face. "Who makes this charge?" roared an angry voice. No one had seen the Seigneur enter from the little room beside the shop, and at the sound of the sharp voice the people fell back, for he was as free with his stick as his tongue. "I do," said the grocer, to whom Paulette Dubois had told her story. "Ye shall be tarred and feathered before y'are a day older," said Mary Flynn. Rosalie was very pale. The Seigneur was struck by this and by the strangeness of her look. "Clear the room," he said to Filion Lacasse, who was now a constable of the parish. "Not yet!" said a voice at the doorway. "What is the trouble?" It was the Cure, who had already heard rumours of the scandal, and had come at once to Rosalie. M. Evanturel tried to speak, and could not. But Mary Flynn did, with a face like a piece of scarlet bunting. Having finished with a flourish, she could scarce keep her hands off the cowardly grocer. The Cure turned to Rosalie. "It is absurd," he said. "Forgive me," he added to the Seigneur. "It is better that Rosalie should answer this charge. If she gives her word of honour, I will deny communion to whoever slanders her hereafter." "She did it," said the grocer stubbornly. "She can't deny it." "Answer, Rosalie," said the Cure firmly. "Excuse me; I will answer," said a voice at the door. The tailor of Chaudiere made his way into the shop, through the fast-gathering crowd. CHAPTER XLII A TRIAL AND A VERDICT "What right have you to answer for mademoiselle?" said the Seigneur, with a sudden rush of jealousy. Was not he alone the protector of Rosalie Evanturel? Yet here was mystery, and it was clear the tailor had something important to say. M. Rossignol offered the Cure a chair, seated himself on a small bench, and gently drew Rosalie down beside him. "I will make this a court," said he. "Advance, grocer." The grocer came forward smugly. "On what information do you make this charge against mademoiselle?" The grocer volubly related all that Paulette Dubois had said. As he told his tale the Cure's face was a study, for the night the cross was restored came back to him, and the events, so far as he knew them, were in keeping with the grocer's narrative. He looked at Rosalie anxiously. Monsieur Evanturel moaned, for he remembered he had heard Rosalie come in very late that night. Yet he fixed his eyes on her in dog-like faith. "Mademoiselle will admit that this is true, I presume," said Charley. Rosalie looked at him intently, as though to read his very heart. It was clear that he wished her to say yes; and what he wished was law. "It is quite true," answered Rosalie calmly, and all fear passed from her. "But she did not steal the cross," continued Charley, in a louder voice, that all might hear, for people were gathering fast. "If she didn't steal it, why was she putting it back on the church door in the dark?" said the grocer. "Ah, hould y'r head, ould sand-in-the- sugar!" said Mrs. Flynn, her fingers aching to get into his hair. "Silence!" said the Seigneur severely, and looked inquiringly at Rosalie. Rosalie looked at Charley. "It is not a question of why mademoiselle put the cross back," he said. "It is a question of who took the cross away, is it not? Suppose it was not a theft. Suppose that the person who took the relic thought to do a pious act--for your Church, Monsieur?" "I do not see," the Cure answered helplessly. "It was a secret act, therefore suspicious at least." "'Let your good gifts be in secret, and your Heavenly Father who seeth in secret will reward you openly,"' answered Charley. "That, I believe, is a principle you teach, Monsieur." "At one time Monsieur the tailor was thought to have taken the cross," said the Seigneur suggestively. "Perhaps Monsieur was secretly doing good with it?" he added. It vexed him that there should be a secret between Rosalie and this man. "It had to do with me, not I with it," he answered evenly. He must travel wide at first to convince their narrow brains. "Mademoiselle did a kind act when she nailed that cross on the church door again--to make a dead man rest easier in his grave." A hush fell upon the crowd. Rosalie looked at Charley in surprise; but she saw his meaning presently --that what she did for him must seem to have been done for the dead tailor only. Her heart beat hot with indignation, for she would, if she but might, cry her love gladly from the hill-tops of the world. Alight began to break upon the Cure's mind. "Will Monsieur speak plainly?" he said. "I did not see Louis Trudel take the cross, but I know that he did." "Louis Trudel! Louis Trudel!" interposed the Seigneur anxiously. "What does this mean?" "Monsieur speaks the truth," interposed Rosalie. The Cure recalled the death-bed of Louis Trudel, and the dying man's strange agitation. He also recalled old Margot's death, and her wish to confess some one else's wrong-doing. He was convinced that Charley was speaking the truth. "It is true," added Charley slowly; "but you may think none the worse of him when you know all. He took the cross for temporary use, and before he could replace it he died." "How do you know what he meant, or did not mean?" said the Seigneur in perplexity. "Did he take you into his confidence?" "The very closest," answered Charley grimly. "Yet he looked upon you as an infidel, and said hard things of you on his death-bed," urged the Cure anxiously. He could not see the end of the tale, and he was troubled for both the dead man and the living. "That was why he took me into his confidence. I will explain. I have not the honour to have the fulness of your Christian faith, Monsieur le Cure. I had asked him to show me a sign from heaven, and he showed it by the little iron cross." "I can't make anything of that," said the Seigneur peevishly. Rosalie sprang to her feet. "He will not tell the whole truth, Messieurs, but I will. With that little cross Louis Trudel would have killed Monsieur, had it not been for me." A gasp of excitement went out from those who stood by. "But for you, Rosalie?" asked the Cure. "But for me. I saw Louis Trudel raise an iron against Monsieur that day in the shop. It made me nervous--I thought he was mad. So I watched. That night I saw a light in the tailor-shop late. I thought it strange. I went over and peeped through the cracks of the shutters. I saw old Louis at the fire with the little cross, red-hot. I knew he meant trouble. I ran into the house. Old Margot was beside herself with fear --she had seen also. I ran through the hall and saw old Louis upstairs with the burning cross. I followed. He went into Monsieur's room. When I got to the door"--she paused, trembling, for she saw Charley's reproving eyes upon her--"I saw him with the cross--with the cross raised over Monsieur." "He meant to threaten me," interposed Charley quickly. "We will have the truth!" said the Seigneur, in a husky voice. "The cross came down on Monsieur's bare breast." The grocer laughed vindictively. "Silence!" growled the Seigneur. "Silence!" said Filion Lacasse, and dropped his hand on the grocer's shoulder. "I'll baste you with a stirrup-strap." "The rest is well known," quickly interposed Charley. "The poor man was mad. He thought it a pious act to mark an infidel with the cross." Every eye was fixed upon him. The Cure remembered Louis Trudel's last words: "Look--look--I gave--him--the sign--of . . . !" Old Margot's words also kept ringing in his ears. He turned to the Seigneur. "Monsieur," said he, "we have heard the truth. That act of Louis Trudel was cruel and murderous. May God forgive him! I will not say that mademoiselle did well in keeping silent--" "God bless the darlin'!" cried Mrs. Flynn. "--but I will say that she meant to do a kind act for a man's mortal memory--perhaps at the expense of his soul." "For Monsieur to take his injury in silence, to keep it secret, was kind," said the Seigneur. "It is what our Cure here might call bearing his cross manfully." "Seigneur," said the Cure reproachfully, "Seigneur, it is no subject for jest." "Cure, our tailor here has treated it as a jest." "Let him show his breast, if it's true," said the grocer, who, beneath his smirking, was a malignant soul. The Cure turned on him sharply. Seldom had any one seen the Cure roused. "Who are you, Ba'tiste Maxime, that your base curiosity should be satisfied--you, whose shameless tongue clattered, whose foolish soul rejoiced over the scandal? Must we all wear the facts of our lives--our joys, our sorrows, and our sins--for such eyes as yours to read? Bethink you of the evil things that you would hide--aye, every one here!" he added loudly. "Know, all of you, what goodness of heart towards a wicked man lay behind the secret these two have kept, that old Margot carried to her grave. When you go to your homes, pray for as much human kindness in you as a man of no Church or faith can show. For this child"--he turned to Rosalie-"honour her! Go now--go in peace!" "One moment," said the Seigneur. "I fine Ba'tiste Maxime twenty dollars for defamation of character. The money to go for the poor." "You hear that, ould sand-in-the-sugar!" said Mrs. Flynn. "Will you let me kiss ye, darlin'?" she added to Rosalie, and, waddling over, reached out her hands. Rosalie's eyes were wet as she warmly kissed the old Irishwoman, and thereupon they entered into a friendship which was without end. The Seigneur drove the crowd from the shop, and shut the door. The Cure came to Charley. "Monsieur," said he, "I have no words. When I remember what agonies you suffered in those hours, how bravely you endured them--ah, Monsieur!" he added, with moist eyes, "I shall always feel that--that you are not far from the kingdom of God." A silence fell upon them, for the Cure, the Seigneur, and Rosalie, as they looked at Charley, thought of the scar like a red cross on his breast. It touched Charley with a kind of awe. He smiled painfully. "Shall I give you proof?" he said, making a motion to undo his waistcoat. "Monsieur!" said the Seigneur reprovingly, and holding out his hand. "Monsieur! We are all gentlemen!" CHAPTER XLIII JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY Walking slowly, head bent, eyes unseeing, Charley was on his way to Vadrome Mountain, with the knowledge that Jo Portugais had returned. The hunger for companionship was on him: to touch some mind that could understand the deep loneliness which had settled on him since that scene in the postoffice. It was the loneliness of a new and great separation. He had wakened to it to-day. Once before, in the hut on Vadrome Mountain, he had wakened from a grave, had been born again. Last night had come still another birth, had come, as with Rosalie herself, knowledge, revelation, understanding. To Rosalie the new vision had come with a vague pain of heart, without shame, and with a wonderful happiness. Pain, shame, knowledge, and a happiness that passed suddenly into a despairing sorrow, had come to him. In finding love he had found conscience, and in finding conscience he was on his way to another great discovery. Looking to where Jo Portugais' house was set among the pines, Charley remembered the day--he saw the scene in his mind's eye--when Rosalie entered with the letter addressed "To the sick man at the house of Jo Portugais, at Vadrome Mountain," and he saw again her clear, unsoiled soul in the deep inquiring eyes. "If you but knew"--he turned and looked down at the village below-- "if you but knew!" he said, as though to all the world. "I have the sign from heaven--I know it now. To-day I wake to know what life means, and I see--Rosalie! I know now--but how? In taking all she had to give. What does she get in return? Nothing--nothing. Because I love her, because the whole world is nothing beside her, nor life, nor twenty lives, if I had them to give, I must say to her now: 'Rosalie, it was love that brought you to my arms, it is love that says, Thus far and no farther. Never again--never--never--never!' Yesterday I could have left her--died or vanished, without real hurt to her. She would have mourned and broken her heart and mended it again; and I should have been only a memory--of mystery, of tenderness. Then, one day she would have married, and no sting from my going would have remained. She would have had happiness, and I neither shame nor despair. . . . To-day it is all too late. We have drunk too deep-alas! too deep. She cannot marry another man, for ghosts will not lie for asking, and what is mine may not be another's. She cannot marry me, for what once was mine is mine still by ring and by book, and I should always be haunted by a torturing shadow. Kathleen has the right of way, not Rosalie. Ah, Rosalie, I dare not wrong you further. Yet to marry you, even as things are, if that might be! To live on here unrecognised? I am little like my old self, and year after year I should grow less and less like Charley Steele. . . . But, no, it is not possible!" He stopped short in his thoughts, and his lips tightened in bitterness. "God in heaven, what an impasse!" he said aloud. There was a sudden crackling of twigs as a man rose up from a log by the wayside ahead of him. It was Jo Portugais, who had seen him coming, and had waited for him. He had heard Charley's words. "Do you call me an impasse, M'sieu'?" Charley grasped Portugais' hand. "What has happened, M'sieu'?" Jo asked anxiously. There was a brief silence, and then Charley told him of the events of the morning. "You know of the mark-here?" he asked, touching his breast. Jo nodded. "I saw, when you were ill." "Yet you never asked!" "I studied it out--I knew old Louis Trudel. Also, I saw ma'm'selle nail the cross to the church door. Two and two together in my mind did it. I didn't think Paulette Dubois would tell. I warned her." "She quarrelled with mademoiselle. It was revenge. "She might have been less vindictive. She had had good luck herself lately." "What good luck had she, M'sieu'?" Charley told Jo the story of the Notary, the woman, and the child. Jo made no comment. They relapsed into silence. Arriving at the house, they entered. Jo lighted his pipe, and smoked steadily for a time without speaking. Buried in thought, Charley stood in the doorway looking down at the village. At last he turned. "Where have you been these weeks past, Jo?" "To Quebec first, M'sieu'." Charley looked curiously at Jo, for there was meaning in his tone. "And where last?" "To Montreal." Charley's face became paler, his hands suddenly clinched, for he read the look in Jo's eyes. He knew that Jo had been looking at people and places once so familiar; that he had seen--Kathleen. "Go on. Tell me all," he said heavily. Portugais spoke in English. The foreign language seemed to make the truth less naked and staring to himself. He had a hard story to tell. "It is not to say why I go to Montreal," he began. "But I go. I have my ears open; my eyes, she is not close. No one knows me--I am no account of. Every one is forgot the man, Joseph Nadeau, who was try for his life. Perhaps it is every one is forget the lawyer who save his neck-- perhaps? So I stand by the streetside. I say to a man as I look up at sign-boards,' 'Where is that writing "M'sieu' Charles Steele," and all the res'?' 'He is dead long ago,' say the man to me. 'A good thing too, for he was the very devil.' 'I not understan',' I say. 'I tink that M'sieu' Steele is a dam smart man back time.' 'He was the smartes' man in the country, that Beauty Steele,' the man say. 'He bamboozle the jury hevery time. He cut up bad though.'" Charley raised his hand with a nervous gesture of misery and impatience. "'Where have you been,' that man say--'where have you been all these times not to know 'bout Charley Steele, hein?' 'In the backwoods,' I say. 'What bring you here now?' he ask. 'I have a case,' I say. 'What is it?' he ask. 'It is a case of a man who is punish for another man,' I say. 'That's the thing for Charley Steele,' he laugh. 'He was great man to root things out. Can't fool Charley Steele, we use to say here. But he die a bad death.' 'What was the matter with him?' I say. 'He drink too much, he spend too much, he run after a girl at Cote Dorion, and the river-drivers do for him one night. They say it was acciden', but is there any green on my eye? But he die trump--jus' like him. He have no fear of devil or man,' so the man say. 'But fear of God?' I ask. 'He was hinfidel,' he say. 'That was behin' all. He was crooked all roun'. He rob the widow and horphan?' 'I think he too smart for that,' I speak quick. 'I suppose it was the drink,' he say. 'He loose his grip.' 'He was a smart man, an' he would make you all sit up, if he come back,' I hanswer. 'If he come back!' The man laugh queer at that. 'If he comeback, there would be hell.' 'How is that?' I say. 'Look across the street,' he whisper. 'That was his wife.'" Charley choked back a cry in his throat. Jo had no intention of cutting his story short. He had an end in view. "I look across the street. There she is--' Ah, that is a fine woman to see! I have never seen but one more finer to look at--here in Chaudiere.' The man say: 'She marry first for money, and break her heart; now she marry for love. If Beauty Steele come back-eh! sacra! that would be a mess. But he is at the bottom of the St Lawrence--the courts say so, and the Church say so--and ghosts don't walk here.' 'But if that Beauty Steele come back alive, what would happen it?' I speak. 'His wife is marry, blockhead!' he say. "'But the woman is his,' I hanswer. 'Do you think she would go back to a thief she never love from the man she love?' he speak back. 'She is not marry to the other man,' I say, 'if Beauty Steele is . . .' 'He is dead as a door,' he swear. 'You see that?' he go on, nodding down the street. 'Well, that is Billy.' 'Who is Billy?' I ask. 'The brother of her,' he say. 'Charley, he spoil Billy. Billy, he has not been the same since Charley's death-he is so ashame of Charley. When he get drunk he talk of nothing else. We all remember that Charley spoil him, and that make us sorry for him.' 'Excuse me,' I say. 'I think that Billy is a dam smart man. He is smart as Charley Steele.' 'Charley was the smartes' man in the country,' he say again. 'I've got his practice now, but this town will never be the same without him. Thief or no thief, I wish he is alive here. By the Lord, I'd get drunk with him!' He was all right, that man," Jo added finally. Charley's agitation was hidden. His eyes were fixed on Jo intently. "That was Larry Rockwell. Go on," he said, in a hard metallic voice. "I see--her, the next night again. It is in the white stone house on the hill. All the windows are open, an' I can hear her to sing. I not know that song. It begin, 'Oft in the stilly night'--like that." Charley stiffened. It was the song Kathleen sang for him the night they became engaged. "It is a good voice-that. I see her face, for there is a candle on the piano. I come close and closter to the house. There is big maple-trees --I am well hid. A man is beside her. He lean hover her an' put his hand on her shoulder. 'Sing it again, Kat'leen,' he say. 'I cannot to get enough.'" "Stop!" said Charley, in a strained, harsh voice. "Not yet, M'sieu'," said Portugais. "It is good for you to hear what I say." "'Come, Kat'leen!' the man say, an' he blow hout the candle. I hear them walk away, an' the door shut behin' them. Then I hear anudder voice--ah, that is a baby--very young baby!" Charley quickly got to his feet. "Not another word!" he said. "Yes, yes, but there is one word more, M'sieu'," said Jo, standing up and facing him firmly. "You must go back. You are not a thief. The woman is yours. You throw your life away. What is the man to you--or the man's brat of a child? It is all waiting for you. You mus' go back. You not steal the money, but that Billy--it is that Billy, I know. You can forgive your wife, and take her back, or you can say to both, Go! You can put heverything right and begin again." Anger, wild words, seemed about to break from Charley's lips, but he conquered himself. The old life had been brought back to him with painful acuteness and vividness. The streets of the town, the people in the street, Billy, the mean scoundrel, who could not leave him alone in the grave of obscurity, Kathleen--Fairing. The voice of the child--with her voice--was in his ears. A child! If he had had a child, perhaps----He stopped short in his thinking, his face all at once flooding with colour. For a moment he stood looking out of the window down towards the village. He could see the post-office like a toy house among toy houses. At last he turned to Jo. "Never again while I live, speak of this to me: of the past, of going back, or of--of anything else," he said. "I cannot go back. I am dead and shamed. Let the dust of forgetfulness come and cover the past. I've begun life again here, and here I stay, and see it out. I shall work out the problem here." He dropped a hand on the other's shoulder. "Jo," said he, "we are both shipwrecks. Let us see how long we can float." "M'sieu', is it worth it?" said Portugais, remembering his confession to the Abbe, and seeing the end of it all to himself. "I don't know, Jo. Let us wait and see how Fate will play us." "Or God, M'sieu'?" "God or Fate--who knows" CHAPTER XLIV "WHO WAS KATHLEEN?" The painful incidents of the morning weighed heavily upon Rosalie, and she was glad when Madame Dugal came to talk with her father, who was ailing and irritable, and when Mrs. Flynn drove her away with a kiss on either cheek, saying: "Don't come back, darlin', till there's roses in both cheeks, for y'r eyes are 'atin' up yer face!" She had seen Charley take the path to Vadrome Mountain, and to the Rest of the Flax-beaters she betook herself, in the blind hope that, returning, he might pass that way. Under the influence of the fresh air and the quiet of the woods her spirits rose, her pulse beat faster, though a sense of foreboding and sorrow hovered round her. The two-miles walk to her beloved retreat seemed a matter of minutes only, so busy were her thoughts. Her mind was one luxurious confusion, through which travelled a ghostly little sprite, who kept tumbling her thoughts about, sneering, smirking, whispering--"You dare not go to confession--dare not go to confession. You will never be the same again--never feel the same again--never think the same again; your dreams are done! You can only love. And what will this love do for you? What do you expect to happen--you dare not go to confession!" Her reply had been the one iteration: "I love him--I love him--I love him. We shall be together all our lives, till we are old and grey. I shall watch him at his work, and listen to his voice. I shall read with him and walk with him, and I shall grow to think like him a little --in everything except religion. In everything except that. One day he will come to think like me--to believe in God." In the dreamy happiness of these thoughts the colour came to her cheeks, the roses of light gathered in her eyes. In her tremulous ardour she scarcely realised how time passed, and her reverie deepened as the afternoon shadows grew and the sun made to its covert behind the hills. She was roused by a man's voice singing, just under the bluff where she sat. To her this voice represented the battle-call, the home-call, the life call of the universe. The song it sang was known to her. It was as old as Rizzio. It had come from old France with Mary, had been merged into English words and English music, and had voyaged to New France. There it had been sung by lovers in fair vales, on wide rivers, and in deep forests: "What is not mine I may not hold, (Ah, hark the hunter's horn!), And what is thine may not be sold, (My love comes through the corn!); And none shall buy And none shall sell What Love works well?" In the walk back from Vadrome Mountain, a change--a fleeting change-- had passed over Charley's mind and mood. The quiet of the woodland, the song of the birds, the tumbling brook, the smell of the rich earth, replenishing its strength from the gorgeous falling leaves, had soothed him. Thoughts of Rosalie took a new form. Her image possessed him, excluding the future, the perils that surrounded them. He had gone through so much within the past twenty-four hours that the capacity for suffering had almost exhausted itself, and in the reaction endearing thoughts of Rosalie had dominion over him. It was the reassertion of primitive man, the demands of the first element. The great problem was still in the background. The picture of Kathleen and the other man was pushed into the distance; thoughts of Billy and his infamy were thrust under foot--how futile to think of them! There was Rosalie to be thought of, the to-day and to-morrow of the new life. Rosalie was of to-day. How strong and womanly she had been this morning, the girl whose life had been bounded by this Chaudiere, with a metropolitan convent and hospital as her only glimpses of the busy world. She would fit in anywhere--in the highest places, with her grace, and her nobleness of mind, arcadian, passionate and beautiful. There came upon him again the feeling of the evening before, when he saw her standing in his doorway, the night about them, jealous affection, undying love, in her eyes. It quickened his steps imperceptibly. He passed a stream, and glanced down into a dark pool involuntarily. It reflected himself clearly. He stopped short. "Is this you, Beauty Steele?" he said, and he caught his brown beard in his hand. "Beauty Steele had brains and no heart. You have heart, and your wits have gone wool-gathering. No matter! What is not mine I may not hold, (Ah, hark the hunter's horn!)'" he sang, and came quickly along the stream where the flax-beaters worked in harvest-time, then up the hill, then--Rosalie. She started to her feet. "I knew you would come--I knew you would!" she said. "You have been waiting here for me?" he asked breathless, taking her hand. "I felt you would come. I made you," she added smiling, and, eagerly answering the look in his eyes, threw her arms round his neck. In that moment's joy a fresh realisation of their fate came upon him with dire force, and a bitter protest went up from his heart, that he and she should be sacrificed. Yet the impasse was there, and what could remove it--what clear the way? He looked down at the girl whose head was buried in happy peace on his shoulder. She clung to him, as though in him was everlasting protection from the sprite that kept whispering: "You dare not go to confession-- your dreams are done--you can only love." But she had no fear now. As he looked down at her a swift change passed over him, and, almost for the first time since he was a little child, his eyes filled with tears. He hastily brushed them away, and drew her down on the seat beside him. He was wondering how he should tell her that they must not meet like this, that they must be apart. No matter what had happened, no matter what love there was, it was better that they should die--that he should die--than that they should meet like this. There was only one end to secret meetings, and discovery was inevitable. Then, with discovery, shame to her. For he must either marry her--how could he marry her? --or die. For him to die would but increase her misery. The time had passed when it could be of any use. It passed that day in the hut on Vadrome Mountain when she said that if he died, she would die with him--"Where you are going you will be alone. There will be no one to care for you, no one but me." Last night it passed for ever. She had put her life into his hands; henceforth, there could never be a question of giving or taking, of withdrawing or advancing, for all was irrevocable, sealed with the great seal. Yet she must be saved. But how? She suddenly looked up at him. "I can ask you anything I want now, can't I?" she said. "Anything, Rosalie." "You know that when I ask, it is because I want to know what you know, so that I may feel as you feel. You know that, don't you? "I know it when you tell me, wonderful Rosalie." What a revelation it was, this transmuting power, which could change mortal dross into the coin of immortal wealth! "I want to ask you," she said, "who was Kathleen?" His blood seemed to go cold in his veins, and he sat without answering, shocked and dismayed. What could she know of Kathleen? "Can't you tell me?" she asked anxiously yet fearfully. He looked so strange that she thought she had offended him. "Please don't mind telling me. I should understand everything--everything. Was it some one you loved--once?" It was hard for her to say it, but she said it bravely. "No. I never loved any one in all the world, Rosalie--not till I loved you." She gave a happy sigh. "Oh, it is wonderful!" she said. "It is wonderful and good! Did you--did you love me from the very first?" "I think I did, though I didn't know it from the very first," he answered slowly. His heart beat hard, for he could not guess how she should know of Kathleen. It was absurdly impossible that she should know. "But many have loved you!" she said proudly. "They have not shown it," he answered grimly; then added quickly, and with aching anxiety: "When did you hear of--of Kathleen?" "Oh, you are such a blind huntsman!" she laughed. "Don't you know where my little fox was hiding? Why, in the shop, when you held the note-paper up to the light, and looked startled, and bought all the paper we had that was water-marked Kathleen. Do you think that was clever of me? I don't." "I think it was very clever," he said. "Then she-Kathleen--doesn't really matter?" she asked eagerly. "Of course she can't, if you don't love her. But does she love you? Did she ever love you?" "Never in her life." "So of course it doesn't matter," she rejoined. "Hush!" she added rapidly. "I see some one coming in the trees yonder. It may be some one for me. Father knows I come here sometimes. Go quickly and hide behind the rocks, please. I'll stay and see who it is. Please go--dearest." He kissed her, and, keeping out of sight, got to a place of safety a few hundred feet away. He saw the new-comer run to Rosalie, speak to her, saw Rosalie half turn in his own direction, then go hastily down the hillside with the messenger. "It is her father!" he exclaimed, and followed at a distance. At the village he learned that M. Evanturel had had another seizure. CHAPTER XLV SIX MONTHS GO BY Spring again--budding trees and flowing sap; the earth banks removed from the houses, and outside windows discarded; the ice tumbling and crunching in the river; the dormant farmer raising his head to the energy and delight of April. The winter had been long and hard. Never had there been severer frost or deeper snow, and seldom had big game been so plentiful. In the snug warm stables the cattle munched and chewed the cud; the idle, long-haired horses grew as spirited in the keen air as in summer they were sluggish with hard work; and the farm-hands were abroad in the dark of the early mornings with lanterns, to feed the stock and take them out to water, singing cheerfully. All morning spread the clamour of the flail and the fanning-mill, the swish of the knife through the turnips and the beets, and the sound of the saw and the axe, as the youngest man of the family, muffled to the nose, sawed the wood into lengths or split the knots. Night brought the cutting and stringing of apples, the shelling of the Indian corn, the making of rag carpets. On Saturday came the going to market with grain, or pork, or beef, or fowls frozen like stones; the gossip in the market-place. Then again sounded jingling sleigh-bells as, on the return road, the habitant made for home, a glass of white whiskey inside him, and black-eyed children in the doorway, swarming like bees at the mouth of a hive. This particular winter in Chaudiere had been full of excitement and expectation. At Easter-time there was to be the great Passion Play, after the manner of that known as The Passion Play of Ober-Ammergau. Not one in a hundred habitants had ever heard of Ober-Ammergau, but they had all shared in picturesque processions of the Stations of the Cross to some calvaire; and many had taken part in dramatic scenes arranged from the life of Christ. Drama of a crude kind was deep in them; it showed in gesture, speech, and temperament. In all the preparations Maximilian Cour was a conspicuous and useful official. Gifted with the dramatic temperament to a degree rare in so humble a man, he it was who really educated the people of Chaudiere in the details of the Passion Play to be produced by the good Catholics of the parish and the Indians of the reservation. He had gone to the Cure every day, and the Cure had talked with him, and then had sent him to the tailor, who had, during the past six months, withdrawn more and more from the life about him, practically living with shut door. No one ventured in unless on business, or were in need, or wished advice. These he never turned empty away. Besides Portugais, Maximilian Cour was the one man received constantly by the tailor. With patience and insight Charley taught the baker, by drawings and careful explanations, the outlines of the representation, and the baker grew proud of the association, though Charley's face used to haunt him in his sleep. Excitable, eager, there was an elemental adaptability in the baker, as easily leading to Avernus as to Elysium. This appealed to Charley, realising, as he did, that Maximilian Cour was a reputable citizen by mere accident. The baker's life had run in a sentimental groove of religious duty; that same sentimentality would, in other circumstances, have forced him with equal ardour into the broad primrose path. In the evening hours and on Sunday Charley had worked at his drawings for the scenery and costumes of the Play, and completed his translation of the German text, but there had been days when he could not put pen to paper. Life to him now was one aching emptiness--since that day at the Rest of the Flax-beaters Rosalie had been absent. On the very morning after their meeting by the river she had gone away with her father to the great hospital at Montreal--not Quebec this time, on the advice of the Seigneur--as the one chance of prolonging his life. There had come but one letter from her since that hour when he saw her in the Seigneur's coach with her father, moving away in the still autumn air, a piteous appeal in her eyes. The good-bye look she gave him then was with him day and night. She had written him one letter, and he had written one in reply, and no more. Though he was wholly reckless for himself, for her he was prudent now--there was nothing else to do. To save her--if he could but save her from himself! If he might only put back the clock! In his letter to her he had simply said that it were wiser not to write, since the acting postmistress, the Cure's sister, would note the exchange of letters, and this would arouse suspicion. He could not see what was best to do, what was right to do. To wait seemed the only thing, and his one letter ended with the words: Rosalie, my life is lived only in the thought of you. There is no hour but I think of you, no moment but you are with me. The greatest proof of love that man can give, I will give to you, in the hour fate wills--for us. But now, we must wait--we must wait, Rosalie. Do not write to me, but know that if I could go to you I would go; if I could say to you, Come, I would say it. If the giving of my life would save you any pain or sorrow, I would give it. Sitting on his bench at work, it seemed to Charley that sometimes she was near him, and more than once he turned quickly round as though she were, in very truth, standing beside him. He thought of her continually, and often with an unbearable pain. He figured her in his mind as pale and distressed, and always her eyes had the piteous terror of that last look as she went away over the hills. But the weeks had worn on, then the Seigneur, who had been to Montreal, came back with the news that Rosalie was looking as beautiful as a picture. "Grown a woman in beauty and in stature; comely--comely as a lady in a Watteau picture, my dear messieurs!" he had said to the Cure, standing in the tailor's shop. Replying, the Cure had said: "She is in good hands, with good people, recommended to me by an abbe there; yet I am not wholly happy about her. When her trouble comes to her"--Charley's needle slipped and pierced his finger to the bone--"when her father goes, as he must, I fear, there will be no familiar face; she will hear no familiar voice." "Faith, there you are wrong, my dear Cure" answered the Seigneur; "there'll be a face yonder she likes very well indeed, and a voice she's fond of too." Charley's back was on them at that moment, of which he was glad, for his face was haggard with anxiety, and it seemed hours before the Cure said: "Whom do you mean, Maurice?" and hours before the Seigneur replied: "Mrs. Flynn, of course. I'm sending her tomorrow." Mrs. Flynn had gone, and Charley had, in one sense, been made no happier by that, for it seemed to him that Rosalie would rather that strangers' eyes were on her than the inquisitively friendly eye of Mary Flynn. Weeks had grown into months, and no news came--none save that which the Cure let fall, or was brought by the irresponsible Notary, who heard all gossip. Only the Cure's scant news were authentic, however, and Charley never saw the good priest but he had a secret hope of hearing him say that Rosalie was coming back. Yet when she came back, what would, or could, he do? There was always the crime for which he or Billy must be punished. Concerning this crime his heart was growing harder--for Rosalie's sake. But there was Kathleen--and Rosalie was now in the city where she lived, and they might meet! There was one solution-- if Kathleen should die! It sickened him that he could think of that with a sense of relief, almost of hope. If Kathleen should die, then he would be free to marry Rosalie--into what? He still could only marry her into the peril and menace of the law? Again, even if Kathleen did not stand in the way, neither the Cure nor any other priest would marry him to her without his antecedents being certified. A Protestant minister would, perhaps, but would Rosalie give up her faith? Following him without the blessing of the Church, she would trample under foot every dear tradition of her life, win the scorn of all of her religion, and destroy her own peace; for the faith of her fathers was as the breath of her nostrils. What cruelty to her! But was it, after all, even true that he had but to call and she would come? In truth it well might be that she had learned to despise him; to feel how dastardly he had been to take her love, given in blind simplicity, bestowed like the song of the bird upon the listening fields --to take the plenteous fulness of her life, and give nothing in return save the empty hand, the hopeless hour, the secret sorrow. Nothing could quench his misery. The physical part of him craved without ceasing for something to allay his distress. Again and again he fought his old enemy with desperate resolve. To fall again, to touch liquor once more, was to end all for ever. He fought on tenaciously and gloomily, with little of the pride of life, with nothing of the old stubborn self-will, but with a new-awakened sense. He had found conscience at last--and more. The months went by and still M. Evanturel lingered on, and Rosalie did not come. The strain became too great at last. In the week preceding Easter, when all the parish was busy at Four Mountains, making costumes, rehearsing, building, putting up seats, cutting down trees, and erecting crosses and calvaries, Charley disclosed to Jo a new intention. In the earlier part of the winter Jo and he had met two or three times a week, but now Jo had come to help him with his work in the shop--two silent, devoted companions. They understood each other, and in that understanding were life and death. For never did Jo forget that a year from the day he had confessed his sins he meant to give himself up to justice. This caused him no sleepless nights. He thought more of Charley than of himself, and every month now he went to confession, and every day he said his prayers. He was at his prayers when Charley went to tell him of his purpose. Charley had often seen Jo on his knees of late, and he had wondered, but not with the old pagan mind. "Jo," he said, "I am going away--to Montreal." "To Montreal!" exclaimed Jo huskily. "You are going back--to stay?" "Not that. I am going--to see--Rosalie Evanturel." Jo was troubled but not dumfounded. It had slowly crept into his mind that Charley loved the girl, though he had no real ground for suspicion. His will, however, had been so long the slave of the other man's that he had far-off reflections of his thoughts. He made no reply in words, but nodded his head. "I want you to stay here, Jo. If I don't come back, and--and she does, stand by her, Jo. I can trust you." "You will come back, M'sieu'--but you will come back, then?" Jo asked heavily. "If I can, Jo--if I can," he answered. Long after he had gone, Jo wandered up and down among the trees on the river-road, up which Charley had disappeared with Jo's dogs and sled. He kept shaking his head mournfully. CHAPTER XLVI THE FORGOTTEN MAN It was Easter morning, and the good sunrise of a perfect spring made radiant the high hill above the town. Rosy-fingered morn touched with magic colour the masts and scattered sails of the ships upon the great river, and spires and towers quivered with rainbow light. The city was waking cheerfully, though the only active life was in the pealing bells and on the deep flowing rivers. The streets were empty yet, save for an assiduous priest or the cart of a milkman. Here and there a window opened and a drowsy head was thrust into the eager air. These saw a bearded countryman with his team of six dogs and his little cart going slowly up the street. It was plain the man had come a long distance-- from the mountains in the east or south, no doubt, where horses were few, and dogs, canoes, and oxen the means of transportation. As the man moved slowly through the streets, his dogs still gallantly full of life after their hard journey, he did not stare about him after the manner of countrymen. His movements had intelligence and freedom. He was an unusual figure for a woodsman or river-man--he did not wear ear-rings or a waist-sash as did the river-men, and he did not turn in his toes like a woodsman. Yet he was plainly a man from the far mountains. The man with the dogs did not heed the few curious looks turned his way, but held his head down as though walking in familiar places. Now and then he spoke to his dogs, and once he stopped before a newspaper office, which had a placard bearing these lines: The Coming Passion Play In the Chaudiere Valley. He looked at it mechanically, for, though he was concerned in the Passion Play and the Chaudiere Valley, it was an abstraction to him at this moment. His mind was absorbed by other things. Though he looked neither to right nor to left, he was deeply affected by all round him. At last he came to a certain street, where he and his dogs travelled more quickly. It opened into a square, where bells were booming in the steeple of a church. Shops and offices in the street were shut, but a saloon-door was open, and over the doorway was the legend: Jean Jolicoeur, Licensed to sell Wine, Beer, and other Spirituous and Fermented Liquors. Nearly opposite was a lawyer's office, with a new-painted sign. It had once read, in plain black letters, Charles Steele, Barrister, etc.; now it read, in gold letters and many flourishes of the sign-painter's art, Rockwell and Tremblay, Barristers, Attorneys, etc. Here the man looked up with trouble in his eyes. He could see dimly the desk and the window beside which he had sat for so many years, and on the wall a map of the city glowed with the incoming sun. He moved on, passing the saloon with the open door. The landlord, in his shirt-sleeves, was standing in the doorway. He nodded, then came out to the edge of the board-walk. "Come a long way, M'sieu'?" he asked. "Four days' journey," answered the man gruffly through his beard, looking the landlord in the eyes. If this landlord, who in the past had seen him so often and so closely, did not recognise him, surely no one else would. It was, however, a curious recurrence of habit that, as he looked at the landlord, he instinctively felt for his eye-glass, which he had discarded when he left Chaudiere. For an instant there was an involuntary arrest of Jean Jolicoeur's look, as though memory had been roused, but this swiftly passed, and he said: "Fine dogs, them! We never get that kind hereabouts now, M'sieu'. Ever been to the city before?" "I've never been far from home before," answered the Forgotten Man. "You'd better keep your eyes open, my friend, though you've got a sharp pair in your head--sharp as Beauty Steele's almost. There's rascals in the river-side drinking-places that don't let the left hand know what the right does." "My dogs and I never trust anybody," said the Forgotten Man, as one of the dogs snarled at the landlord's touch. "So I can take care of myself, even if I haven't eyes as sharp as Beauty Steele's, whoever he is." The landlord laughed. "Beauty's only skin-deep, they say. Charley Steele was a lawyer; his office was over there"--he pointed across the street. "He went wrong. He come here too often--that wasn't my fault. He had an eye like a hawk, and you couldn't read it. Now I can read your eye like a book. There's a bit of spring in 'em, M'sieu'. His eyes were hard winter-ice five feet deep and no fishing under--froze to the bed. He had a tongue like a cross-cut saw. He's at the bottom of the St. Lawrence, leaving a bad job behind him. "Have a drink--hein?" He jerked a finger backwards to the saloon door. "It's Sunday, but stolen waters are sweet, sure!" The Forgotten Man shook his head. "I don't drink, thank you." "It'd do you good. You're dead beat. You've been travelling hard--eh?" "I've come a long way, and travelled all night." "Going on?" "I am going back to-morrow." "On business?" Charley nodded--he glanced involuntarily at the sign across the street. Jean Jolicoeur saw the look. "Lawyer's business, p'r'aps?" "A lawyer's business--yes." "Ah, if Charley Steele was here!" "I have as good a lawyer as--" The landlord laughed scornfully. "They're not made. He'd legislate the devil out of the Pit. Where are you going to stay, M'sieu'?" "Somewhere cheap--along the river," answered the Forgotten Man. Jolicoeur's good-natured face became serious. "I'll tell you a place-- it's honest. It's the next street, a few hundred yards down, on the left. There's a wooden fish over the door. It's called The Black Bass --that hotel. Say I sent you. Good luck to you, countryman! Ah, la; la, there's the second bell--I must be getting to Mass!" With a nod he turned and went into the house. The Forgotten Man passed slowly up the street, into the side street, and followed it till he came to The Black Bass, and turned into the small stable-yard. A stable-man was stirring. He at once put his dogs into a little pen set apart for them, saw them fed from the kitchen, and, betaking himself to a little room behind the bar of the hotel, ordered breakfast. The place was empty, save for the servant--the household were at Mass. He looked round the room abstractedly. He was thinking of a crippled man in a hospital, of a girl from a village in the Chaudiere Valley. He thought with a shiver of a white house on the hill. He thought of himself as he had never done before in his life. Passing along the street, he had realised that he had no moral claim upon anything or anybody within these precincts of his past life. The place was a tomb to him. As he sat in the little back parlour of The Black Bass, eating his frugal breakfast of eggs and bread and milk, the meaning of it all slowly dawned upon him. Through his intellect he had known something of humanity, but he had never known men. He had thought of men in the mass, and despised them because of their multitudinous duplication, and their typical weaknesses; but he had never known one man or one woman from the subtler, surer divination of the heart. His intellect had made servants and lures of his emotions and his heart, for even his every case in court had been won by easy and selfish command of all those feelings in mankind which make possible personal understanding. In this little back parlour it came to him with sudden force how, long ago, he had cut himself off from any claim upon his fellows--not only by his conduct, but by his merciless inhuman intelligence working upon the merciful human life about him. He never remembered to have had any real feeling till on that day with Kathleen--the day he died. The bitter complaint of a woman he had wronged cruelly, by having married her, had wrung from him his own first wail of life, in the one cry "Kathleen!" As he sat eating his simple meal his pulses were beating painfully. Every nerve in his body seemed to pluck at the angry flesh. There flashed across his mind in sympathetic sensation a picture. It was the axe-factory on the river, before which he used to stand as a boy, and watch the men naked to the waist, with huge hairy arms and streaming faces, toiling in the red glare, the trip-hammers endlessly pounding upon the glowing metal. In old days it had suggested pictures of gods and demi-gods toiling in the workshops of the primeval world. So the whole machinery of being seemed to be toiling in the light of an awakened conscience, to the making of a man. It seemed to him that all his life was being crowded into these hours. His past was here--its posing, its folly, its pitiful uselessness, and its shame. Kathleen and Billy were here, with all the problems that involved them. Rosalie was here, with the great, the last problem. "Nothing matters but that--but Rosalie," he said to himself as he turned to look out of the window at the wrangling dogs gnawing bones. "Here she is in the midst of all I once knew, and I know that I am no more a part of it than she is. She and Kathleen may have met face to face in these streets--who can tell! The world is large, but there's a sort of whipper-in of Fate, who drives the people wearing the same livery into one corner in the end. If they met"--he rose and walked hastily up and down--"what then? I have a feeling that Rosalie would recognise her as plainly as though the word Kathleen were stitched on her breast." There was a clock on the wall. He looked at it. "It will not be safe to go out until evening. Then I can go to the hospital, and watch her coming out." He realised with satisfaction that many people coming from Mass must pass the inn. There was a chance of his seeing Rosalie, if she had gone to early Mass. This street lay in her way from the hospital. "One look--ah, one look!" For this one look he had come. For this, and to secure that which would save Rosalie from want always, if anything should happen to him. This too had been greatly on his mind. There was a way to give her what was his very own, which would rob no one and serve her well indeed. Looking at his face in the mirror over the mantel, he said to himself "I might have had ten thousand friends, yet I have a thousand enemies, who grin at the memory of the drunken fop down among the eels and the cat-fish. Every chance was with me then. I come back here, and--and Jolicoeur tells me the brutal truth. But if I had had ambition"--a wave of the feeling of the old life passed over him--"if I had had ambition as I was then, I should have been a monster. It was all so paltry that, in sheer disgust, I should have kicked every ladder down that helped me up. I should have sacrificed everything to myself." He stopped short and stared, for, in the mirror, he saw a girl passing through the stable-yard towards the quarrelling dogs in the kennel. He clapped his hand to his mouth to stop a cry. It was Rosalie. He did not turn round but looked at her in the mirror, as though it were the last look he might give on earth. He could hear her voice speaking to the dogs: "Ah, my friends, ah, my dears! I know you every one. Jo Portugais is here. I know your bark, you, Harpy, and you, Lazybones, and you, Cloud and London! I know you every one. I heard you as I came from Mass, beauty dears. Ah, you know me, sweethearts? Ah, God bless you for coming! You have come to bring us home; you have come to fetch us home--father and me." The paws of one of the dogs was on her shoulder, and his nose was in her hair. Charley heard her words, for the window was open, and he listened and watched now with an infinite relief in his look. Her face was half turned towards him. It was pale-very pale and sad. It was Rosalie as of old--thank God, as of old!--but more beautiful in the touching sadness, the far-off longing, of her look. "I must go and see your master," she said to the dogs. "Down--down, Lazybones!" There was no time to lose--he must not meet her ere. He went into the outer hall hastily. The servant was passing through. "If any one asks for Jo Portugais," he said, "say that I'll be back to-morrow morning--I'm going across the river to-day." "Certainly, M'sieu'," said the girl, and smiled because of the piece of silver he put in her hand. As he heard the side door open he stepped through the front doorway into the street, and disappeared round a corner. CHAPTER XLVII ONE WAS TAKEN AND THE OTHER LEFT Rosalie carried to the hospital that afternoon a lighter heart than she had known for many a day. The sight of Jo Portugais' dogs had roused her out of the apathy which had been growing on her in this patient but hopeless watching beside her father. She had always a smile and a cheerful word for the poor man. A settled sorrow hung upon her face, however, taking away its colour, but giving it a sweet gravity which made her slave more than one young doctor of the hospital, for whom, however, she showed no more than a friendly frankness, free from self- consciousness. For hours she would sit in reverie beside her sleeping father, her heart "over the water to Charley." As in a trance, she could see him sitting at his bench, bent over his work, now and again lifting up his head to look across to the post-office, where another hand than hers sorted letters now. Day by day her father weakened and faded away. All that was possible to medical skill had been done. As the money left by her mother dwindled, she had no anxiety, for she knew that the life she so tenderly cherished would not outlast the gold which lengthened out the tenuous chain of being. This last illness of her father's had been the salvation of her mind, the saving of her health. Maybe it had been the saving of her soul; for at times a curious contempt of life came upon her--she who had loved it so eagerly and fully. There descended on her then the bitter conviction that never again would she see the man she loved. Then not even Mrs. Flynn could call back "the fun o' the world" to her step and her tongue and her eye. At first there had been a timid shrinking, but soon her father and herself were brighter and better for the old Irishwoman's presence, and she began to take comfort in Mrs. Flynn. Mrs. Flynn gave hopefulness to whatever life she touched, and Rosalie, buoyant and hopeful enough by nature, responded to the living warmth and the religion of life in the Irishwoman's heart. "'Tis worth the doin', ivery bit of it, darlin', the bither an' the swate, the hard an' the aisy, the rough an' the smooth, the good an' the bad," said Mrs. Flynn to her this very Easter morning. "Even the avil is worth doin', if so be 'twas not mint, an' the good is in yer heart in the ind, an' ye do be turnip' to the Almoighty, repentin' an' glad to be aloive: provin' to Him 'twas worth while makin' the world an' you, to want, an' worry, an' work, an' play, an' pick the flowers, an' bleed o' the thorns, an' dhrink the sun, an' ate the dust, an' be lovin' all the way! Ah, that's it, darlin'," persisted Mrs. Flynn, "'tis lovin' all the way makes it aisier. There's manny kinds o' love. There's lad an' lass, there's maid an' man. An' that last is spring, an' all the birds singin', an' shtorms now an' thin, an' siparations, an' misthrust, an' God in hivin bein' that aisy wid ye for bein' fools an' children, an' bringin' ye thegither in the ind, if so be ye do be lovin' as man an' maid should love, wid all yer heart. Thin there's the love o' man an' wife. Shure, that's the love that lasts, if it shtarts right. Shure, it doesn't always shtart wid the sun shinin.' 'Will ye marry me?' says Teddy Flynn to me. 'I will,' says I. 'Then I'll come back from Canaday to futch ye,' says he, wid a tear in his eye. "'For what's a man in ould Ireland that has a head for annything but puttaties! There's land free in Canaday, an' I'm goin' to make a home for ye, Mary,' says he, wavin' a piece of paper in the air. 'Are ye, thin?' says I. He goes away that night, an' the next mornin' I have a lether from him, sayin' he's shtartin' that day for Canaday. He hadn't the heart to tell me to me face. Fwaht do I do thin? I begs, borrers, an' stales, an' I reached that ship wan minnit before she sailed. There was no praste aboord, but we was married six weeks afther at Quebec. And thegither we lived wid ups an' downs--but no ups an' downs to the love of us for twenty years, blessed be God for all His mercies!" Rosalie had listened with eyes that hungrily watched every expression, ears that weighed eagerly every inflection; for she was hearing the story of another's love, and it did not seem strange to her that a woman, old, red-faced, and fat, should be telling it. Yet there were times when she wept till she was exhausted; when all her girlhood was drowned in the overflow of her eyes; when there was a sense of irrevocable loss upon her. Then it was, in her fear of soul and pitiful loneliness, that her lover--the man she would have died for-- seemed to have deserted her. Then it was that a sudden hatred against him rose up in her--to be swept away as swiftly as it came by the memory of his broken tale of love, his passionate words: "I have never loved any one but you in all my life, Rosalie." And also, there was that letter from Chaudiere, which said that in the hour when the greatest proof of his love must be given he would give it. Reading the letter again, hatred, doubt, even sorrow, passed from her, and her imagination pictured the hour when, disguise and secrecy ended, he would step forward before all the world and say: "I take Rosalie Evanturel to be my wife." Despite the gusts of emotion that swayed her at times, in the deepest part of her being she trusted him completely. When she reached the hospital this Sunday afternoon her step was quick, her smile bright--though she had not been to confession as was her duty on Easter day. The impulse towards it had been great, but her secret was not her own, and the passionate desire to give relief to her full heart was overborne by thought of the man. Her soul was her own, but this secret of their love was his as well as hers. She knew that she was the only just judge between. Soon after she entered the ward, the chief surgeon said that all that could be done for her father had now been done, and that as M. Evanturel constantly asked to be taken back to Chaudiere (he never said to die, though they knew what was in his mind), he might now make the journey, partly by river, partly by land. It seemed to the delighted and excited Rosalie that Jo Portugais had been sent to her as a surprise, and that his team of dogs was to take her father back. She sat by her father's bed this beautiful, wonderful Sunday afternoon, and talked cheerfully, and laughed a little, and told M. Evanturel of the dogs, and together they looked out of the window to the far-off hills, in their golden purple, beyond which, in the valley of the Chaudiere, was their little home. With her father's hand in hers the girl dreamed dreams again, and it seemed to her that she was the very Rosalie Evanturel of old, whose thoughts were bounded by a river and a hill, a post-office and a church, a catechism and a few score of books. Here in the crowded city she had come to be a woman who, bitterly shaken in soul, knew life's sufferings; who had, during the past few months, read with avidity history, poetry, romance, fiction, and the drama, English and French; for in every one she found something that said: "You have felt that." In these long months she had learned more than she had known or learned in all her previous life. As she sat looking out into the eastern sky she became conscious of voices, and of a group of people who came slowly down the ward, sometimes speaking to the sick and crippled. It was not a general visitors' day, but one reserved for the few to come and say a kindly word to the suffering, to bring some flowers and distribute books. Rosalie had always been absent at this hour before, for she shrank from strangers; but to-day she had stayed on unthinking. It mattered nothing to her who came and went. Her heart was over the hills, and the only tie she had here was with this poor cripple whose hand she held. If she did not resent the visit of these kindly strangers, she resolutely held herself apart from the object of their visit with a sense of distance and cold dignity. If she had given Charley something of herself, she had in turn taken something from him, something unlike her old self, delicately non- intime. Knowledge of life had rationalised her emotions to a definite degree, had given her the pride of self-repression. She had had need of it in these surroundings, where her beauty drew not a little dangerous attention, which she had held at arm's-length--her great love for one man made her invulnerable. Now, as the visitors came near, she did not turn towards them, but still sat, her chin on her hand, looking out across the hills, in resolute abstraction. She felt her father's fingers press hers, as if to draw her attention, for he, weak man, was ever ready to open his hand and heart to any friendly soul. She took no notice, but held his hand firmly, as though to say that she had no wish to see. She was conscious now that they were beside her father's bed. She hoped that they would pass. But no, the feet stopped, there was whispering, and then she heard a voice say, "Rather rude!" then another, "Not wanted, that's plain!"--the first a woman's, the second a man's. Then another voice, clear and cold, and well modulated, said to her father: "They tell me you have been here a long time, and have had much pain. You will be glad to go, I am sure." Something in the voice startled her. Some familiar sound or inflection struck upon her ear with a far-off note, some lost tone she knew. Of what, of whom, did this voice remind her? She turned round quickly and caught two cold blue eyes looking at her. The face was older than her own, handsome and still, and happy in a placid sort of way. Few gusts of passion or of pain had passed across that face. The figure was shapely to the newest fashion, the bonnet was perfect, the hand which held two books was prettily gloved. Polite charity was written in her manner and consecrated every motion. On the instant, Rosalie resented this fine epitome of convention, this dutiful charity-monger, herself the centre of an admiring quartet. She saw the whispering, she noted the well-bred disguise of interest, and she met the visitor's gaze with cold courtesy. The other read the look in her face, and a slightly pacifying smile gathered at her lips. "We are glad to hear that your father is better. He has been ill a long time?" Rosalie started again, for the voice perplexed her--rather, not the voice, but the inflection, the deliberation. She bowed, and set her lips, but, chancing to glance at her father, she saw that he was troubled by her manner. Flashing a look of love at him, she adjusted the pillow under his head, and said to her questioner in a low voice: "He is better now, thank you." Encouraged, the other rejoined: "May I leave one or two books for him to read--or for you to read to him?" Then added hastily, for she saw a curious look in Rosalie's eyes: "We can have mutual friends in books, though we cannot be friends with each other. Books are the go-betweens of humanity." Rosalie's heart leapt, she flushed, then grew slightly pale, for it was not tone or inflection alone that disturbed her now, but words themselves. A voice from over the hills seemed to say these things to her. A haunting voice from over the hills had said them to her--these very words. "Friends need no go-betweens," she said quietly, "and enemies should not use them." She heard a voice say, "By Jove!" in a tone of surprise, as though it were wonderful the girl from Chaudiere should have her wits about her. So Rosalie interpreted it. "Have you many friends here?" asked the cold voice, meant to be kindly and pacific. It was schooled to composure, because it gave advantage in life's intercourse, not from any inner urbanity. "Some need many friends, some but a few. I come from a country where one only needs a few." "Where is your country, I wonder?" said the cold echo of another voice. Charley had passed out of Kathleen's life--he was dead to her, his memory scorned and buried. She loved the man to whom she supposed she was married; she was only too glad to let the dust of death and time cover every trace of Charley from her gaze; she would have rooted out every particle of association: yet his influence on her had been so great that she had unconsciously absorbed some of his idiosyncrasies--in the tone of his voice, in his manner of speaking. To-day she had even repeated phrases he had used. "Beyond the hills," said Rosalie, turning away. "Is it not strange?" said the voice. "That is the title of one of the books I have just brought--'Beyond the Hills'. It is by an English writer. This other book is French. May I leave them?" Rosalie inclined her head. It would. make her own position less dignified if she refused them. "Books are always welcome to my father," she said. There was an instant's pause, as though the fashionable lady would offer her hand; but their eyes met, and they only bowed. The lady moved on with a smile, leaving a perfume of heliotrope behind her. "Where is your country, I wonder?"--the voice of the lady rang in Rosalie's ears. As she sat at the window again, long after the visitors had disappeared, the words, "I wonder--I wonder--I wonder!" kept beating in her brain. It was absurd that this woman should remind her of the tailor of Chaudiere. Suddenly she was roused by her father's voice. "This is beautiful--ah, but beautiful, Rosalie!" She turned towards him. He was reading the book in his hand--'Beyond the Hills'. "Listen," he said, and he read, in English: "'Compensation is the other name for God. How often is it that those whom disease or accident has robbed of active life find greater inner rejoicing and a larger spiritual itinerary! It would seem that withdrawal from the ruder activities gives a clearer seeing. Also for these, so often, is granted a greater love, which comes of the consecration of other lives to theirs. And these too have their reward, for they are less encompassed by the vanities of the world, having the joy of self-sacrifice.'" He looked at Rosalie with an unnatural brightness in his eyes, and she smiled at him now and stroked his hand. "It has been all compensation to me," he said, after a moment. "You have been a good daughter to me, Rosalie." She shook her head and smiled. "Good fathers think they have good daughters," she answered, choking back a sob. He closed the book and let it lie upon the coverlet. "I will sleep now," he said, and turned on his side. She arranged his pillow, and adjusted the bedclothes to his comfort. "Good-night," he said, as, with a faint hand, he drew her head down and kissed her. "Good girl! Goodnight!" She patted his hand. "It is not night yet, father." He was already half asleep. "Good-night!" he said again, and fell into a deep sleep. She sat down by the window, in her hand the book he had laid down. A hundred thoughts were busy in her brain--of her father; of the woman who had just left; of her lover over the hills. The woman's voice came to her again--a far-off mockery. She opened the book mechanically and turned over the pages. Presently her eyes were riveted to a page. On it was written the word Kathleen. For a moment she sat transfixed. The word Kathleen and the haunting voice became one, and her mind ran back to the day when she had said to Charley: "Who is Kathleen?" She sprang to her feet. What should she do? Follow the woman? Find out who and what she was? Go to the young surgeon who had accompanied them, ask him who she was, and so learn the clue to the mystery concerning her lover? In the midst of her confusion she became sharply conscious of two things: the approach of Mrs. Flynn, and her father's heavy breathing. Dropping the book, she leaned over her father's bed and looked closely at him. Then she turned to the frightened and anxious Mrs. Flynn. "Go for the priest," she said. "He is dying." "I'll send some one. I'm stayin' here by you, darlin'," said the old woman, and hurried to the room of the young surgeon for a messenger. As the sun went down, the cripple went out upon a long journey alone. CHAPTER XLVIII "WHERE THE TREE OF LIFE IS BLOOMING--" As Charley walked the bank of the great river by the city where his old life lay dead, he struggled with the new life which--long or short--must henceforth belong to the village of the woman he loved. . . . But as he fought with himself in the long night-watch it was borne in upon him that though he had been shown the Promised Land, he might never find there a habitation and a home. The hymn he had mockingly sung the night he had been done to death at the Cote Dorion sang in his senses now, an ever-present mockery: "On the other side of Jordan, In the sweet fields of Eden, Where the tree of life is blooming, There is rest for you. There is rest for the weary, There is rest for the weary, There is rest for the weary, There is rest for you." In the uttermost corner of his intelligence he felt with sure prescience that, however befalling, the end of all was not far off. In the exercise of new faculties, which had more to do with the soul than with reason, he now believed what he could not see, and recognised what was not proved. Labour of the hand, trouble, sorrow, and perplexity, charity and humanity, had cleared and simplified his life, had sweetened his intelligence, and taken the place of ambition. He saw life now through the lens of personal duty, which required that the thing nearest to one's hand should be done first. But as foreboding pressed upon him there came the thought of what should come after--to Rosalie. His thoughts took a practical form--her good was uppermost in his mind. All Rosalie had to live on was her salary as postmistress, for it was in every one's knowledge that the little else she had was being sacrificed to her father's illness. Suppose, then, that through illness or accident she lost her position, what could she do? He might leave her what he had--but what had he? Enough to keep her for a year or two--no more. All his earnings had gone to the poor and the suffering of Chaudiere. There was one way. It had suggested itself to him so often in Chaudiere, and had been one of the two reasons for bringing him here. There were his dead mother's pearls and one thousand dollars in notes behind a secret panel in the white house on the hill, in this very city where he was. The pearls were worth over ten thousand dollars--in all, there would be eleven thousand, enough to secure Rosalie from poverty. What should Kathleen do with his mother's pearls, even if they were found by her? What should she do with his money did she not loathe his memory? Had not all his debts been paid? These pearls and this money were all his own. But to get them. To go now to the white house on the hill; to face that old life even for an hour, a knocking at the door of a haunted house--he shrank from the thought. He would have to enter the place like a thief in the night. Yet for Rosalie he must take the risk--he must go. CHAPTER XLIX THE OPEN GATE It was a still night, and the moon, delicately bright, gave forth that radiance which makes spiritual to the eye the coarsest thing. Inside the white house on the hill all was dark. Sleep had settled on it long before midnight, for, on the morrow, its master and mistress hoped to make a journey to the valley of the Chaudiere, where the Passion Play was being performed by habitants and Indians. The desire to see the play had become an infatuation in the minds of the two, eager for some interest to relieve the monotony of a happy life. But as all slept, a figure in the dress of a habitant moved through the passages of the house stealthily, yet with an assurance unusual in the thief or housebreaker. In the darkest passages his step was sure, and his hand fastened on latch or door-knob with perfect precision. He came at last into a large hallway flooded by the moon, pale, watchful, his beard frosted by the light. In the stillness of his tread and the composed sorrow of his face he seemed like one long dead who "revisits the glimpses of the moon." At last he entered a room the door of which stood wide open. In this room had been begotten, or had had exercise, whatever of him was worth approving in the days before he died. It was a place of books and statues and tapestry, and the dark oak was nobly smutched of Time. This sombre oaken wall had been handed down through four generations from the man's great-grandfather: the breath of generations had steeped it in human association. Entering, he turned for an instant with clinched hands to look at another door across the hall. Behind that door were two people who despised his memory, who conspired to forget his very name. This house was the woman's, for he had given it to her the day he died. But that she could live there with all the old associations, with memories that, however bitter, however shaming, had a sort of sacredness, struck into his soul with a harrowing pain. There she was whom he had spared--himself; whose happiness had lain in his hands, and he had given it to her. Yet her very existence robbed himself of happiness, and made sorrowful a life dearer than his own. Kathleen lay asleep in that room--he fancied he could hear her breathing; and, by the hospital on the hill, up beyond the point of pines, in a little cottage which he could see from the great window, lay Rosalie with sleepless eyes and wan cheeks, longing for morning and the stir of life to help her to forget. For Rosalie he had come to this house once more. For her sake he was revisiting this torture-chamber, from which he knew he must go again, blanched and shaken, as a man goes from a tomb where his dead lie unforgiving. He shut his teeth, went swiftly across the room, and beside a great carved oak table touched a hidden spring in the side of it. The spring snapped; the panel creaked a little and drew back. It seemed to him that the noise he made must be heard in every part of the house, so sensitive was his ear, so deep was the silence on which the sounds had broken. He turned round to the doorway to listen before he put his hand within the secret place. There was no sound. He turned his attention to the table. Drawing forth two packets with a gasp of relief, he put them in his pocket, and, with extreme care, proceeded to close the panel. By rubbing the edges of the wood with grease from a candle on the table, he was able to readjust the panel in silence. But, as the spring came home, he became suddenly conscious of a presence in the room. A shiver passed through him. He turned round-softly, quickly. He was in the shadow and near great window-curtains, and his fingers instinctively clutched them as he saw a figure in white at the door of the room. Slowly, strangely deliberate, the figure moved further into the room. Charley's breath stopped. He felt his face flush, and a strange weakness came on him. There before him stood Kathleen. She was in her night-gown, and she stood still, as though listening; yet, as Charley looked closer, he realised that it was an unconscious, passive listening, and that she did not know he was there. Her mind only was listening. She was asleep. Was it possible that his very presence in the house had touched some old note of memory, which, automatically responding, had carried her from her bed in this somnambulistic trance? That subtle telegraphy between our subconscious selves which we cannot reduce to a law, yet alarming us at times, announced to Kathleen's mind, independent of the waking senses, the presence once familiar to this house for so many years. In her sleep she had involuntarily responded to the call of Charley's approach. Once, in the past, the night her uncle died, she had walked in her sleep, and the memory of this flashed upon Charley now. Silently he came closer to her. The moonlight shone on her face. He could see plainly she was asleep. His position was painful and perilous. If she waked, the shock to herself would be great; if she waked and saw him, what disaster might not occur! Yet he had no agitation now, only clearness of mind and a curious sense of confusion that he should see her en dishabille--the old fastidious sense mingling with the feeling that she was now a stranger to him, and that, waking, she would fly embarrassed from his presence, as he was ready to fly from hers. He was about to steal to the door and escape before she waked, but she turned round, moved through the doorway, and glided down the hall. He followed silently. She moved to the staircase, then slowly down it, and through a passage to a morning-room, where, opening a pair of French windows, she passed out onto the lawn. He followed, not more than a dozen paces behind her. His safety lay in getting outside, where he could easily hide among the bushes, should someone else appear and an alarm be raised. She crossed the lawn swiftly, a white, ghostlike figure. In the middle of the lawn she stopped short once as if in doubt what to do--as a thought-reader pauses in his search for the mental scent again, ere he rushes upon the object of his search with the certainty of instinct. Presently she moved on, going directly towards a gate that opened out on the cliff above the river. In Charley's day this gate had been often used, for it gave upon four steep wooden steps leading to a narrow shelf of rock below. From the edge of this cliff a rope-ladder dropped fifty feet to the river. For years he had used this rope-ladder to get down to his boat, and often, when they were first married, Kathleen used to come and watch him descend, and sometimes, just at the very first, would descend also. As he stole into the grounds this evening he had noticed, however, that the rope-ladder was gone, and that new steps were being built. He had also mechanically observed that the gate was open. For an instant he watched her slowly moving towards the gate. At first he did not realise the situation. Suddenly her danger flashed upon him. Passing through the gateway, she must fall over the cliff. Her life was in his hands. He could rush forward swiftly and close the gate, then, raising an alarm, get away before he was seen; or--he could escape now. What had he to do with her? A weird, painful suggestion crept into his brain: he was not responsible for her, and he was responsible for a woman up there by the hospital, whose home was the valley of the Chaudiere! If Kathleen were gone, what barrier would there be between him and Rosalie? What had he to do with this strange disposition of events? Kathleen was never absent from her church twice on Sundays; she was devoted to work of all sorts for the church on week-days--where was her intervening personal Providence? If Providence permitted her to die?-- well, she had had two years of happiness with the man she loved, at some expense to himself--was it not fair that Rosalie should have her share? Had he the right to call upon Rosalie for constant self-sacrifice, when, by shutting his eyes now, by being dead to Kathleen and her need, as he was dead to the world he once knew, the way would be clear to marry Rosalie? Dead--he was dead to the world and to Kathleen! Should his ghost interpose between her and the death now within two-score feet of her? Who could know? It was grim, it was awful, but was it not a wild kind of justice? Who could blame? It was the old Charley Steele, the Charley Steele of the court-room, who argued back humanity and the inherent rightness of things. But it was only a moment's pause. The thoughts flashed by like the lightning impressions of a dream, and a voice said in his ear, the voice of the new Charley with a conscience: "Save her--save her!" Even as he was conscious of another presence on the lawn, he rushed forward noiselessly. Stealing between Kathleen and the gate-she was within five feet of it he closed and locked it. Then, with a quick glance at her sleeping face-it was engraven on his memory ever after like a dead face in a coffin--he ran along the fence among the shrubbery. A man not fifty feet away called to him. "Hush--she is asleep!" Charley whispered, and disappeared. It was Fairing himself who saw this deed which saved Kathleen's life. Awaking, and not finding her, he had glanced towards the window, and had seen her on the lawn. He had rushed down to her, in time to see her saved by a strange bearded man in habitant dress. His one glance at the man's face, as it turned towards him, produced an extraordinary effect upon his mind, not soon to be dispelled--a haunting, ghostlike apparition, which kept reminding him of something or somebody, he could not tell what or whom. The whispering voice and the breathless words, "Hush--she is asleep!" repeated themselves over and over again in his brain, as, taking Kathleen's hand, he led her, unresisting, and still sleeping, back to her room. In agitated thankfulness he resolved not to speak of the event to Kathleen, or to any one else, lest it should come to her ears and frighten her. He would, however, keep a sharp lookout for the man who had saved her life, and would reward him duly. The face of the bearded habitant came between him and his sleep. Meanwhile this disturber of a woman's dreams and a man's sleep was hurrying to an inn in the town by the waterside, where he met another habitant with a team of dogs--Jo Portugais. Jo had not been able to bear the misery of suspense and anxiety, and had come seeking him. There was little speech between them. "You have not been found out, M'sieu'?" was Jo's anxious question. "No, no, but I have had a bad night, Jo. Get the dogs together." A little later, as Charley made ready to go back to Chaudiere, Jo said: "You look as if you'd had a black dream, M'sieu'." With the river rustling by, and the trees stirring in the first breath of dawn, Charley told Jo what had happened. For a moment the murderer did not speak or stir, for a struggle was going on in his breast also; then he stooped quickly, caught his companion's hand, and kissed it. "I could not have done it, M'sieu'," he said hoarsely. They parted, Jo to remain behind as they had agreed, to be near Rosalie if needed; Charley to return to the valley of the Chaudiere. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Good fathers think they have good daughters Shure, if we could always be 'about the same,' we'd do THE RIGHT OF WAY By Gilbert Parker Volume 6. L. THE PASSION PLAY AT CHAUDIERE LI. FACE TO FACE LII. THE COMING OF BILLY LIII. THE SEIGNEUR AND THE CURE HAVE A SUSPICION LIV. M. ROSSIGNOL SLIPS THE LEASH LV. ROSALIE PLAYS A PART LVI. MRS. FLYNN SPEAKS LVII. A BURNING FIERY FURNACE LVIII. WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL LIX. IN WHICH CHARLEY MEETS A STRANGER LX. THE HAND AT THE DOOR LXI. THE CURE SPEAKS EPILOGUE CHAPTER L THE PASSION PLAY AT CHAUDIERE For the first time in its history Chaudiere was becoming notable in the eyes of the outside world. "We'll have more girth after this," said Filion Lacasse the saddler to the wife of the Notary, as, in front of the post-office, they stood watching a little cavalcade of habitants going up the road towards Four Mountains to rehearse the Passion Play. "If Dauphin's advice had been taken long ago, we'd have had a hotel at Four Mountains, and the city folk would be coming here for the summer," said Madame Dauphin, with a superior air. "Pish!" said a voice behind them. It was the Seigneur's groom, with a straw in his mouth. He had a gloomy mind. "There isn't a house but has two or three boarders. I've got three," said Filion Lacasse. "They come tomorrow." "We'll have ten at the Manor. But no good will come of it," said the groom. "No good! Look at the infidel tailor!" said Madame Dauphin. "He translated all the writing. He drew all the dresses, and made a hundred pictures--there they are at the Cure's house." "He should have played Judas," said the groom malevolently. "That'd be right for him." "Perhaps you don't like the Passion Play," said Madame Dauphin disdainfully. "We ain't through with it yet," said the death's-head groom. "It is a pious and holy mission," said Madame Dauphin. "Even that Jo Portugais worked night and day till he went away to Montreal, and he always goes to Mass now. He's to take Pontius Pilate when he comes back. Then look at Virginie Morrissette, that put her brother's eyes out quarrelling--she's to play Mary Magdalene." "I could fit the parts better," said the groom. "Of course. You'd have played St. John," said the saddler--" or, maybe, Christus himself!" "I'd have Paulette Dubois play Mary the sinner." "Magdalene repented, and knelt at the foot of the cross. She was sorry and sinned no more," said the Notary's wife in querulous reprimand. "Well, Paulette does all that," said the stolid, dark-visaged groom. Filion Lacasse's ears pricked up. "How do you know--she hasn't come back?" "Hasn't she, though! And with her child too--last night." "Her child!" Madame Dauphin was scandalised and amazed. The groom nodded. "And doesn't care who knows it. Seven years old, and as fine a child as ever was!" "Narcisse--Narcisse!" called Madame Dauphin to her husband, who was coming up the street. She hastily repeated the groom's news to him. The Notary stuck his hand between the buttons of his waistcoat. "Well, well, my dear Madame," he said consequentially, "it is quite true." "What do you know about it--whose child is it?" she asked, with curdling scorn. "'Sh-'sh!" said the Notary. Then, with an oratorical wave of his free hand: "The Church opens her arms to all--even to her who sinned much because she loved much, who, through woful years, searched the world for her child and found it not--hidden away, as it was, by the duplicity of sinful man"--and so on through tangled sentences, setting forth in broken terms Paulette Dubois's life. "How do you know all about it?" asked the saddler. "I've known it for years," said the Notary grandly--stoutly too, for he would freely risk his wife's anger that the vain-glory of the moment might be enlarged. "And you keep it even from madame!" said the saddler, with a smile too broad to be sarcastic. "Tiens! if I did that, my wife'd pick my eyes out with a bradawl." "It was a professional secret," said the Notary, with a desperate resolve to hold his position. "I'm going home, Dauphin--are you coming?" questioned his wife, with an air. "You will remain, and hear what I've got to say. This Paulette Dubois-- she should play Mary Magdalene, for--" "Look--look, what's that?" said the saddler. He pointed to a wagon coming slowly up the road. In front of it a team of dogs drew a cart. It carried some thing covered with black. "It's a funeral! There's the coffin. It's on Jo Portugais' little cart," added Filion Lacasse. "Ah, God be merciful, it's Rosalie Evanturel and Mrs. Flynn! And M'sieu' Evanturel in the coffin!" said Madame Dauphin, running to the door of the postoffice to call the Cure's sister. "There'll be use enough for the baker's Dead March now," remarked M. Dauphin sadly, buttoning up his coat, taking off his hat, and going forward to greet Rosalie. As he did so, Charley appeared in the doorway of his shop. "Look, Monsieur," said the Notary. "This is the way Rosalie Evanturel comes home with her father." "I will go for the Cure" Charley answered, turning white. He leaned against the doorway for a moment to steady himself, then hurried up the street. He did not dare meet Rosalie, or go near her yet. For her sake it was better not. "That tailor infidel has a heart. His eyes were leaking," said the Notary to Filion Lacasse, and went on to meet the mournful cavalcade. CHAPTER LI FACE TO FACE "If I could only understand!"--this was Rosalie's constant cry in these weeks wherein she lay ill and prostrate after her father's burial. Once and once only had she met Charley alone, though she knew that he was keeping watch over her. She had first seen him the day her father was buried, standing apart from the people, his face sorrowful, his eyes heavy, his figure bowed. The occasion of their meeting alone was the first night of her return, when the Notary and Charley had kept watch beside her father's body. She had gone into the little hallway, and had looked into the room of death. The Notary was sound asleep in his arm-chair, but Charley sat silent and moveless, his eyes gazing straight before him. She murmured his name, and though it was only to herself, not even a whisper, he got up quickly and came to the hall, where she stood grief-stricken, yet with a smile of welcome, of forgiveness, of confidence. As she put out her hand to him, and his swallowed it, she could not but say to him--so contrary is the heart of woman, so does she demand a Yes by asserting a No, and hunger for the eternal assurance--she could not but say: "You do not love me--now." It was but a whisper, so faint and breathless that only the heart of love could hear it. There was no answer in words, for some one was stirring beyond Rosalie in the dark, and a great figure heaved through the kitchen doorway, but his hand crushed hers in his own; his heart said to her, "My love is an undying light; it will not change for time or tears"--the words they had read together in a little snuff-coloured book on the counter in the shop one summer day a year ago. The words flashed into his mind, and they were carried to hers. Her fingers pressed his, and then Charley said, over her shoulder, to the approaching Mrs. Flynn: "Do not let her come again, Madame. She should get some sleep," and he put her hand in Mrs. Flynn's. "Be good to her, as you know how, Mrs. Flynn," he added gently. He had won the heart of Mrs. Flynn that moment, and it may be she had a conviction or an inspiration, for she said, in a softer voice than she was wont to use to any one save Rosalie: "I'll do by her as you'd do by your own, sir," and tenderly drew Rosalie to her own room. Such had been their first meeting after her return. Afterwards she was taken ill, and the torture of his heart drove him out into the night, to walk the road and creep round her house like a sentinel, Mrs. Flynn's words ringing in his ears to reproach him--"I'll do by her as you would do by your own, sir." Night after night it was the same, and Rosalie heard his footsteps and listened and was less sorrowful, because she knew that she was ever in his thoughts. But one day Mrs. Flynn came to him in his shop. "She's wantin' a word with ye on business," she said, and gestured towards the little house across the way. "'Tis few words ye do be shpakin' to annybody, but if y' have kind words to shpake and good things to say, y' naidn't be bitin' yer tongue," she added in response to his nod, and left him. Charley looked after her with a troubled face. On the instant it seemed to him that Mrs. Flynn knew all. But his second thought told him that it was only an instinct on her part that there was something between them-- the beginning of love, maybe. In another half-hour he was beside Rosalie's chair. "Perhaps you are angry," she said, as he came towards her where she sat in the great arm- chair. She did not give him time to answer, but hurried on. "I wanted to tell you that I have heard you every night outside, and that I have been glad, and sorry too--so sorry for us both." "Rosalie! Rosalie" he said hoarsely, and dropped on a knee beside her chair, and took her hand and kissed it. He did not dare do more. "I wanted to say to you," she said, dropping a hand on his shoulder, "that I do not blame you for anything--not for anything. Yet I want you to be sorry too. I want you to feel as sorry for me as I feel sorry for you." "I am the worst man and you the best woman in the world." She leaned over him with tears in her eyes. "Hush!" she said. "I want to help you--Charles. You are wise. You know ten thousand things more than I; but I know one thing you do not understand." "You know and do whatever is good," he said brokenly. "Oh, no, no, no! But I know one thing, because I have been taught, and because it was born with me. Perhaps much was habit with me in the past, but now I know that one thing is true. It is God." She paused. "I have learned so much since--since then." He looked up with a groan, and put a finger on her lips. "You are feeling bitterly sorry for me," she said. "But you must let me speak-- that is all I ask. It is all love asks. I cannot bear that you should not share my thoughts. That is the thing that has hurt--hurt so all these months, these long hard months, when I could not see you, and did not know why I could not. Don't shake so, please! Hear me to the end, and we shall both be the better after. I felt it all so cruelly, because I did not--and I do not--understand. I rebelled, but not against you. I rebelled against myself, against what you called Fate. Fate is one's self, what one brings on one's self. But I had faith in you--always-- always, even when I thought I hated you." "Ah, hate me! Hate me! It is your loving that cuts me to the quick," he said. "You have the magnanimity of God." Her eyes leapt up. "'Of God'--you believe in God!" she said eagerly. "God is God to you? He is the one thing that has come out of all this to me." She reached out her hand and took her Bible from a table. "Read that to yourself," she said, and, opening the Book, pointed to a passage. He read it: And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And He said, Who told thee that thou wart naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? Closing the Book, Charley said: "I understand--I see." "Will you say a prayer with me?" she urged. "It is all I ask. It is the only--the only thing I want to hurt you, because it may make you happier in the end. What keeps us apart, I do not know. But if you will say one prayer with me, I will keep on trusting, I will never complain, and I will wait--wait." He kissed both her hands, but the look in his eyes was that of a man being broken on the wheel. She slipped to the floor, her rosary in her fingers. "Let us pray," she said simply, and in a voice as clear as a child's, but with the anguish of a woman's struggling heart behind. He did not move. She looked at him, caught his hands in both of hers, and cried: "But you will not deny me this! Haven't I the right to ask it? Haven't I a right to ask of you a thousand times as much?" "You have the right to ask all that is mine to give life, honour, my body in pieces inch by inch, the last that I can call my own. But, Rosalie, this is not mine to give! How can I pray, unless I believe!" "You do--oh, you do believe in God," she cried passionately. "Rosalie--my life," he urged, hoarse misery in his voice, "the only thing I have to give you is the bare soul of a truthful man--I am that now at least. You have made me so. If I deceived the whole world, if I was as the thief upon the cross, I should still be truthful to you. You open your heart to me--let me open mine to you, to see it as it is. Once my soul was like a watch, cased and carried in the pocket of life, uncertain, untrue, because it was a soul made, not born. I must look at the hands to know the time, and because it varied, because the working did not answer to the absolute, I said: 'The soul is a lie.' You--you have changed all that, Rosalie. My soul now is like a dial to the sun. But the clouds are there above, and I do not know what time it is in life. When the clouds break--if they ever break--and the sun shines, the dial will speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth--" He paused, confused, for he had repeated the words of a witness taking the oath in court. "'So help me God!"' she finished the oath for him. Then, with a sudden change of manner, she came to her feet with a spring. She did not quite understand. She was, however, dimly conscious of the power she had over his chivalrous mind: the power of the weak over the strong--the tyranny of the defended over the defender. She was a woman tortured beyond bearing; and she was fighting for her very life, mad with anguish as she struggled. "I do not understand you," she cried, with flashing eyes. "One minute you say you do not believe in anything, and the next you say, 'So help me God!'" "Ah, no, you said that, Rosalie," he interposed gently. "You said I was as magnanimous as God. You were laughing at me then, mocking me, whose only fault is that I loved and trusted you. In the wickedness of your heart you robbed me of happiness, you--" "Don't--don't! Rosalie! Rosalie!" he exclaimed in shrinking protest. That she had spoken to him as her deepest heart abhorred only increased her agitated denunciation. "Yes, yes, in your mad selfishness, you did not care for the poor girl who forgot all, lost all, and now--" She stopped short at the sight of his white, awe stricken face. His eye- glass seemed like a frost of death over an eye that looked upon some shocking scene of woe. Yet he appeared not to see, for his fingers fumbled on his waistcoat for the monocle--fumbled--vaguely, helplessly. It was the realisation of a soul cast into the outer darkness. Her abrupt silence came upon him like the last engulfing wave to a drowning man--the final assurance of the end, in which there is quiet and the deadly smother. "Now--I know-the truth!" he said, in a curious even tone, different from any she had ever heard from him. It was the old Charley Steele who spoke, the Charley Steele in whom the intellect was supreme once more. The judicial spirit, the inveterate intelligence which put justice before all, was alive in him, almost rejoicing in its regained governance. The new Charley was as dead as the old had been of late, and this clarifying moment left the grim impression behind that the old law was not obsolete. He felt that in the abandonment of her indignation she had mercilessly told the truth; and the irreducible quality of mind in him which in the old days made for justice, approved. There was a new element now, however--that conscience which never possessed him fully until the day he saw Rosalie go travelling over the hills with her crippled father. That picture of the girl against the twilight, her figure silhouetted in the clear air, had come to him in sleeping and waking dreams, the type and sign of an everlasting melancholy. As he looked at her blindly now, he saw, not herself, but that melancholy figure. Out of the distance his own voice said again: "Now--I know-the truth!" She had struck with a violence she did not intend, which, she knew, must rend her own heart in the future, which put in the dice-box the last hopes she had. But she could not have helped it--she could not have stayed the words, though a suspended sword were to fall with the saying. It was the cry of tradition and religion, and every home-bred, convent- nurtured habit, the instinct of heredity, the wail of woman, for whom destiny, or man, or nature, has arranged the disproportionate share of life's penalties. It was the impotent rebellion against the first curse, that man in his punishment should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow--which he might do with joy--while the woman must work out her ordained sentence "in sorrow all the days of her life." In her bitter words was the inherent revolt of the race of woman. But now she suddenly felt that she had flung him an infinite distance from her; that she had struck at the thing she most cherished--his belief that she loved him; that even if she had told the truth--and she felt she had not--it was not the truth she wished him most to feel. For an instant she stood looking at him, shocked and confounded, then her changeless love rushed back on her, the maternal and protective spirit welled up, and with a passionate cry she threw herself in the chair again in very weakness, with outstretched hands, saying: "Forgive me--oh, forgive me! I did not mean it--oh, forgive your Rosalie!" Stooping over her, he answered: "It is good for me to know the whole truth. What hurts you may give me will pass--for life must end, and my life cannot be long enough to pay the price of the hurts I have given you. I could bear a thousand--one for every hour--if they could bring back the light to your eye, the joy to your heart. Could prayer, do you think, make me sorrier than I am? I have hurt what I would have spared from hurt at the cost of my life-- and all the lives in all the world!" he added fiercely. "Forgive me--oh, forgive your Rosalie!" she pleaded. "I did not know what I was saying--I was mad." "It was all so sane and true," he said, like one who, on the brink of death, finds a satisfaction in speaking the perfect truth. "I am glad to hear the truth--I have been such a liar." She looked up startled, her tears blinding her. "You have not deceived me?" she asked bitterly. "Oh, you have not deceived me--you have loved me, have you not?" It was that which mattered, that only. Moveless and eager, she looked--looked at him, waiting, as it were, for sentence. "I never lied to you, Rosalie--never!" he answered, and he touched her hand. She gave a moan of relief at his words. "Oh, then, oh, then . . . " she said, in a low voice, and the tears in her eyes dried away. "I meant that until I knew you, I kept deceiving myself and others all my life--" "But without knowing it?" she said eagerly. "Perhaps, without quite knowing it." "Until you knew me?" she asked, in quick, quivering tones. "Till I knew you," he answered. "Then I have done you good--not ill?" she asked, with painful breathlessness. "The only good there may be in me is you, and you only," he said, and he choked something rising in his throat, seeing the greatness of her heart, her dear desire to have entered into his life to his own good. He would have said that there was no good in him at all, but that he wished to comfort her. A little cry of joy broke from her lips. "Oh, that--that!" she cried, with happy tears. "Won't you kiss me now?" she added softly. He clasped her in his arms, and though his eyes were dry, his heart wept tears of blood. CHAPTER LII THE COMING OF BILLY Chaudiere had made--and lost--a reputation. The Passion Play in the valley had become known to a whole country--to the Cure's and the Seigneur's unavailing regret. They had meant to revive the great story for their own people and the Indians--a homely, beautiful object-lesson, in an Eden--like innocence and quiet and repose; but behold the world had invaded them! The vanity of the Notary had undone them. He had written to the great papers of the province, telling of the advent of the play, and pilgrimages had been organised, and excursions had been made to the spot, where a simple people had achieved a crude but noble picture of the life and death of the Hero of Christendom. The Cure viewed with consternation the invasion of their quiet. It was no longer his own Chaudiere; and when, on a Sunday, his dear people were jostled from the church to make room for strangers, his gentle eloquence seemed to forsake him, he spoke haltingly, and his intoning of the Mass lacked the old soothing simplicity. "Ah, my dear Seigneur!" he said, on the Sunday before the playing was to end, "we have overshot the mark." The Seigneur nodded and turned his head away. "There is an English play which says, 'I have shot mine arrow o'er the house and hurt my brother.' That's it--that's it! We began with religion, and we end with greed, and pride, and notoriety." "What do we want of fame! The price is too high, Maurice. Fame is not good for the hearts and minds of simple folk." "It will soon be over." "I dread a sordid reaction." The Seigneur stood thinking for a moment. "I have an idea," he said at last. "Let us have these last days to ourselves. The mission ends next Saturday at five o'clock. We will announce that all strangers must leave the valley by Wednesday night. Then, during those last three days, while yet the influence of the play is on them, you can lead your own people back to the old quiet feelings." "My dear Maurice--it is worthy of you! It is the way. We will announce it to-day. And see now. . . . For those three days we will change the principals; lest those who have taken the parts so long have lost the pious awe which should be upon them. We will put new people in their places. I will announce it at vespers presently. I have in my mind who should play the Christ, and St. John, and St. Peter--the men are not hard to find; but for Mary the Mother and Mary Magdalene--" The eyes of the two men suddenly met, a look of understanding passed between them. "Will she do it?" said the Seigneur. The Cure nodded. "Paulette Dubois has heard the word, 'Go and sin no more'; she will obey." Walking through the village as they talked, the Cure shrank back painfully several times, for voices of strangers, singing festive songs, rolled out upon the road. "Who can they be?" he said distressfully. Without a word the Seigneur went to the door of the inn whence the sounds proceeded, and, without knocking, entered. A moment afterwards the voices stopped, but broke out again, quieted, then once more broke out, and presently the Seigneur issued from the door, white with anger, three strangers behind him. All were intoxicated. One was violent. It was Billy Wantage, whom the years had not improved. He had arrived that day with two companions--an excursion of curiosity as an excuse for a "spree." "What's the matter with you, old stick-in-the-mud?" he shouted. "Mass is over, isn't it? Can't we have a little guzzle between prayers?" By this time a crowd had gathered, among them Filion Lacasse. At a motion from the Seigneur, and a whisper that went round quickly, a dozen habitants swiftly sprang on the three men, pinioned their arms, and carrying them bodily to the pump by the tavern, held them under it, one by one, till each was soaked and sober. Then their horses and wagon were brought, and they were given five minutes to leave the village. With a devilish look in his eye, and drenched and furious, Billy was disposed to resist the command, but the faces around him were determined, and, muttering curses, the three drove away towards the next parish. CHAPTER LIII THE SEIGNEUR AND THE CURE HAVE A SUSPICION Presently the Seigneur and the Cure stood before the door of the tailor- shop. The Cure was about to knock, when the Seigneur laid a hand upon his arm. "There is no use; he has been gone several days," he said. "Gone--gone!" said the Cure. "I came to see him yesterday, and not finding him, I asked at the post- office." M. Rossignol's voice lowered. "He told Mrs. Flynn he was going into the hills, so Rosalie says." The Cure's face fell. "He went away also just before the play began. I almost fear that--that we get no nearer. His mind prompts him to do good and not evil, and yet--and yet. . . . I have dreamed a good dream, Maurice, but I sometimes fear I have dreamed in vain." "Wait-wait!" M. Loisel looked towards the post-office musingly. "I have thought sometimes that what man's prayers may not accomplish a woman's love might do. If--but, alas, what do we know of his past! Nothing. What do we know of his future? Nothing. What do we know of the human heart? Nothing--nothing!" The Seigneur was astounded. The Cure's meaning was plain. "What do you mean?" he asked, almost gruffly. "She--Rosalie--has changed--changed." In his heart he dwelt sorrowfully upon the fact that she had not been to confession to him for many, many months. "Since her father's death--since her illness?" "Since she went to Montreal seven months ago. Even while she was so ill these past weeks, she never asked for me; and when I came . . . Ah, if it is that her heart has gone out to the man, and his does not respond!" "A good thing, too!" said the other gloomily. "We don't know where he came from, and we do know that he is a pagan." "Yet there she sits now, hour after hour, day after day--so changed." "She has lost her father," urged M. Rossignol anxiously. "I know the grief of children--this is not such a grief. There is something more. But I cannot ask. If she were a sinner--but she is without fault. Have we not watched her grow up here, mirthful, brave, pure-souled--" "Fitted for any station," interposed the Seigneur huskily. Presently he laid a hand upon the Cure's arm. "Shall I ask her again?" he said, breathing hard. "Do you think she has found out her mistake?" The Cure was so taken aback that at first he could not speak. When he realised, however, he could scarce suppress a smile at the other's simple vanity. But he mastered himself, and said: "It is not that, Maurice. It is not you." "How did you know I had asked her?" asked his friend querulously. "You have just told me." M. Rossignol felt a kind of reproval in the Cure's tone. It made him a little nervous. "I'm an old fool, but she needed some one," he protested. "At least I am a gentleman, and she would not be thrown away." "Dear Maurice!" said the Cure, and linked his arm in the other's. "In all respects save one, it would have been to her advantage. But youth is the only comrade for youth. All else is evasion of life's laws." The Seigneur pressed his arm. "I thought you less worldly-wise than myself; I find you more," he said. "Not worldly-wise. Life is deeper than the world or worldly wisdom. Come, we will both go and see Rosalie." M. Rossignol suddenly stopped at the post-office door, and half turned towards the tailor-shop. "He is young. Suppose that he drew her love his way, but gave her nothing in return, and--" "If it were so"--the Cure paused, and his face darkened--"if it were so, he should leave her forever; and so my dream would end." "And Rosalie?" "Rosalie would forget. To remember, youth must see and touch and be near, else it wears itself out in excess of feeling. Youth feels more deeply than age, but it must bear daily witness." "Upon my honour, Cure, you shall write your little philosophies for the world," said M. Rossignol, and then knocked at the door. "I will go in alone, Maurice," the Cure urged. "Good-you are right," answered the other. "I will go write the proclamation denying strangers the valley after Wednesday. I will enforce it, too," he added, with vigour, and, turning, walked up the street, as Mrs. Flynn admitted the Cure to the post-office. A half-hour later M. Loisel again appeared at the post-office door, a pale, beautiful face at his shoulder. He had not been brave enough to say what was on his mind. But as he bade her good-bye, he plucked up needful courage. "Forgive me, Rosalie," he said, "but I have sometimes thought that you have more griefs than one. I have thought"--he paused, then went on bravely--"that there might be--there might be unwelcomed love, or love deceived." A mist came before her eyes, but she quietly and firmly answered: "I have never been deceived in love, Monsieur Loisel." "There, there!" he hurriedly and gently rejoined. "Do not be hurt, my child. I only want to help you." A moment afterwards he was gone. As the door closed behind him, she drew herself proudly up. "I have never been deceived," she said aloud. "I love him--love him--love him." CHAPTER LIV M. ROSSIGNOL SLIPS THE LEASH It was the last day of the Passion Play, and the great dramatic mission was drawing to a close. The confidence of the Cure and the Seigneur was restored. The prohibition against strangers had had its effect, and for three whole days the valley had been at rest again. Apparently there was not a stranger within its borders, save the Seigneur's brother, the Abbe Rossignol, who had come to see the moving spectacle. The Abbe, on his arrival, had made inquiries concerning the tailor of Chaudiere and Jo Portugais, as persistently about the one as the other. Their secrets had been kept inviolate by him. It was disconcerting to hear the tales people told of the tailor's charity and wisdom. It was all dangerous, for what was, accidentally, no evil in this particular instance, might be the greatest disaster in another case. Principle was at stake. He heard in stern silence the Cure's happy statement that Jo Portugais had returned to the bosom of the Church, and attended Mass regularly. "So it may be, my dear Abbe," said M. Loisel, "that the friendship between him and our 'infidel' has been the means of helping Portugais. I hope their friendship will go on unbroken for years and years." "I have no idea that it will," said the Abbe grimly. "That rope of friendship may snap untimely." "Upon my soul, you croak like a raven!" testily broke in M. Rossignol, who was present. "I didn't know there was so much in common between you and my surly-jowled groom. He gets his pleasure out of croaking. 'Wait, wait, you'll see--you'll see! Death, death, death--every man must die! The devil has you by the hair--death--death--death!' Bah! I'm heartily sick of croakers. I suppose, like my grunting groom, you'll say about the Passion Play, 'No good will come of it--wait--wait--wait!' Bah!" "It may not be an unmixed good," answered the ascetic. "Well, and is there any such thing on earth as an unmixed good? The play yesterday was worth a thousand sermons. It was meant to serve Holy Church, and it will serve it. Was there ever anything more real--and touching--than Paulette Dubois as Mary Magdalene yesterday?" "I do not approve of such reality. For that woman to play the part is to destroy the impersonality of the scene." "You would demand that the Christus should be a good man, and the St. John blameless--why shouldn't the Magdalene be a repentant woman?" "It might impress the people more, if the best woman in your parish were to play the part. The fall of virtue, the ruin of innocence, would be vividly brought home. It does good to make the innocent feel the terror and shame of sin. That is the price the good pay for the fall of man-- sorrow and shame for those who sin." The Seigneur, rising quickly from the table, and kicking his chair back, said angrily: "Damn your theories!" Then, seeing the frozen look on his brother's face, continued, more excitedly: "Yes, damn, damn, damn your theories! You always took the crass view. I beg your pardon, Cure--I beg your pardon." He then went to the window, threw it open, and called to his groom. "Hi, there, coffin-face," he said, "bring round the horses--the quietest one in the stable for my brother--you hear? He can't ride," he added maliciously. This was his fiercest stroke, for the Abbe's secret vanity was the belief that he looked well on a horse, and rode handsomely. CHAPTER LV ROSALIE PLAYS A PART From a tree upon a little hill rang out a bell--a deep-toned bell, bought by the parish years before for the missions held at this very spot. Every day it rang for an instant at the beginning of each of the five acts. It also tolled slowly when the curtain rose upon the scene of the Crucifixion. In this act no one spoke save the abased Magdalene, who knelt at the foot of the cross, and on whose hair red drops fell when the Roman soldier pierced the side of the figure on the cross. This had been the Cure's idea. The Magdalene should speak for mankind, for the continuing world. She should speak for the broken and contrite heart in all ages, should be the first-fruits of the sacrifice, a flower of the desert earth, bedewed by the blood of the Prince of Peace. So, in the long nights of the late winter and early spring, the Cure had thought and thought upon what the woman should say from the foot of the cross. At last he put into her mouth that which told the whole story of redemption and deliverance, so far as his heart could conceive it--the prayer for all sorts and conditions of men and the general thanksgiving of humanity. During the last three days Paulette Dubois had taken the part of Mary Magdalene. As Jo Portugais had confessed to the Abbe that notable day in the woods at Vadrome Mountain, so she had confessed to the Cure after so many years of agony--and the one confession fitted into the other: Jo had once loved her, she had treated him vilely, then a man had wronged her, and Jo had avenged her--this was the tale in brief. She it was who laughed in the gallery of the court-room the day that Joseph Nadeau was acquitted. It had pained and shocked the Cure more than any he had ever heard, but he urged for her no penalty as Portugais had set for himself with the austere approval of the Abbe. Paulette's presence as the Magdalene had had a deep effect upon the people, so that she shared with Mary the Mother the painfully real interest of the vast audience. Five times had the bell rung out in the perfect spring air, upon which the balm of the forest and the refreshment of the ardent sun were poured. The quick anger of M. Rossignol had passed away long before the Cure, the Abbe, and himself had reached the lake and the great plateau. Between the acts the two brothers walked up and down together, at peace once more, and there was a suspicious moisture in the Seigneur's eyes. The demeanour of the people had been so humble and rapt that the place and the plateau and the valley seemed alone in creation with the lofty drama of the ages. The Cure's eyes shone when he saw on a little knoll in the trees, apart from the worshippers and spectators, Charley and Jo Portugais. His cup of content was now full. He had felt convinced that if the tailor had but been within these bounds during the past three days, a work were begun which should end only at the altar of their parish church. To-day the play became to him the engine of God for the saving of a man's soul. Not long before the last great tableau was to appear he went to his own little tent near the hut where the actors prepared to go upon the stage. As he entered, some one came quickly forward from the shadow of the trees and touched him on the arm. "Rosalie!" he cried in amazement, for she wore the costume of Mary Magdalene. "It is I, not Paulette, who will appear," she said, a deep light in her eyes. "You, Rosalie?" he asked dumfounded. "You are distrait. Trouble and sorrow have put this in your mind. You must not do it." "Yes, I am going there," she said, pointing towards the great stage. "Paulette has given me these to wear"--she touched the robe--"and I only ask your blessing now. Oh, believe, believe me, I can speak for those who are innocent and those who are guilty; for those who pray and those who cannot pray; for those who confess and those who dare not! I can speak the words out of my heart with gladness and agony, Monsieur," she urged, in a voice vibrating with feeling. A luminous look came into the Cure's face. A thought leapt up in his heart. Who could tell!--this pure girl, speaking for the whole sinful, unbelieving, and believing world, might be the one last conquering argument to the man. He could not read the agony of spirit which had driven Rosalie to this --to confess through the words of Mary Magdalene her own woe, to say it out to all the world, and to receive, as did Paulette Dubois, every day after the curtain came down, absolution and blessing. She longed for the old remembered peace. The Cure could not read the struggle between her love for a man and the ineradicable habit of her soul; but he raised his hand, made the sacred gesture over leer, and said: "Go, my child, and God be with you." He could not see her for tears as she hurried away to where Paulette Dubois awaited her--the two at peace now. At the hands of the lately despised and injurious woman Rosalie was made ready to play the part in the last act, none knowing save the few who appeared in the final tableau, and they at the last moment only. The bell began to toll. A thousand people fell upon their knees, and with fascinated yet abashed and awe-struck eyes saw the great tableau of Christendom: the three crosses against the evening sky, the Figure in the centre, the Roman populace, the trembling Jews, the pathetic groups of disciples. A cloud passed across the sky, the illusion grew, and hearts quivered in piteous sympathy. There was no music now--not a sound save the sob of some overwrought woman. The woe of an oppressed world absorbed them. Even the stolid Indians, as Roman soldiers, shrank awe-stricken from the sacred tragedy. Now the eyes of all were upon the central Figure, then they shifted for a moment to John the Beloved, standing with the Mother. "Pauvre Mere! Pauvre Christ!" said a weeping woman aloud. A Roman soldier raised a spear and pierced the side of the Hero of the World. Blood flowed, and hundreds gasped. Then there was silence--a strange hush as of a prelude to some great event. "It is finished. Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit," said the Figure. The hush was broken by such a sound as one hears in a forest when a wind quivers over the earth, flutters the leaves, and then sinks away--neither having come nor gone, but only lived and died. Again there was silence, and then all eyes were fixed upon the figure at the foot of the cross-Mary the Magdalene. Day after day they had seen this figure rise, come forward a step, and speak the epilogue to this moving miracle-drama. For the last three days Paulette Dubois had turned a sorrowful face upon them, and with one hand upraised had spoken the prayer, the prophecy, the thanksgiving, the appeal of humanity and the ages. They looked to see the same figure now, and waited. But as the Magdalene turned, there was a great stir in the multitude, for the face bent upon them was that of Rosalie Evanturel. Awe and wonder moved the people. Apart from the crowd, under a clump of trees, knelt a woodsman from Vadrome Mountain, and the tailor of Chaudiere stood beside him. When Charley, touched by the heavy scene, saw the figure of the Magdalene rise, he felt a curious thrill of fascination. When she turned, and he saw the face of Rosalie, the blood rushed to his face; then his heart seemed to stand still. Pain and shame travelled to the farthest recesses of his nature. Jo Portugais rose to his feet with a startled exclamation. Rosalie began to speak. "This is the day of which the hours shall never cease--in it there shall be no night. He whom ye have crucified hath saved you from the wrath to come. He hath saved others, Himself He would not save. Even for such as I, who have secretly opened, who have secretly entered, the doors of sin--" With a gasp of horror and a mad desire to take her away from the sight of this gaping, fascinated crowd, Charley made to rush forward, but Jo Portugais held him back. "Be still. You will ruin her, M'sieu'!" said Jo. "--even for such as I am," the beautiful voice went on, "hath He died. And in the ages to come, women such as I, and all women who sorrow, and all men who err and are deceived, and all the helpless world, will know that this was the Friend of the human soul." Not a gesture, not a movement, only that slight, pathetic figure, with pale, agonised face, and eyes that looked--looked--looked beyond them, over their heads to the darkening east, the clouded light of evening behind her. Her voice rang out now valiant and clear, now searching and piteous, yet reaching to where the farthermost person knelt, and was lost upon the lake and in the spreading trees. "What ye have done may never be undone; what He hath said shall never be unsaid. His is the Word which shall unite all languages, when ye that are Romans shall be no more Romans, and ye that are Jews shall still be Jews, reproached and alone. No longer shall men faint in the glare--the shadow of the Cross shall screen them. No more shall woman bear her black sorrows, alone; the Light of the World shall cheer her." As she spoke, the cloud drew back from the sunset, and the saffron glow behind lighted the cross, and shone upon her hair, casting her face in a gracious shadow. Her voice rose higher. "I, the Magdalene, am the first-fruits of this sacrifice: from the foot of the cross I come. I have sinned more than all. I have shamed all women. But I have confessed my sin, and He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Her voice now became lower, but clear and even, pathetically exulting: "O world, forgive, as He hath forgiven you! Fall, dark curtain, and hide this pain, and rise again upon forgiven sin and a redeemed people!" She stood still, with her eyes upraised, and the curtain came slowly down. For a long time no one in all the gathered multitude stirred. Far over under the trees a man sat upon the ground, his head upon his arms, and his arms upon his knees, in a misery unmeasurable. Beside him stood a woodsman, who knew of no word to say that might comfort him. A girl, in the garb of the Magdalene, entered the tent of the Cure, and, speaking no word, knelt and received absolution of her sins. CHAPTER LVI MRS. FLYNN SPEAKS CHARLEY left Jo Portugais behind, and went home alone. He watched at a window till he saw Rosalie return. As she passed quickly down the street with Mrs. Flynn to her own door, he observed that her face was happier than he had seen it for many a day. Her step was lighter, there was a freedom in her air, a sense of confidence in her carriage. She bore herself as one who had done a thing which relaxed a painful tension. There was a curious glow in her eyes and face, and this became deeper as, showing himself at the door, she saw him, smiled, and stood still. He came across the street and took her hand. "You have been away," she said softly. "For a few days," he answered. "Far?" "At Vadrome Mountain." "You have missed these last days of the Passion Play," she said, a shadow in her eyes. "I was present to-day," he answered. She turned away her head quickly, for the look in his eyes told her more than any words could have done, and Mrs. Flynn said: "'Tis a day for everlastin' mimory, sir. For the part she played this day, the darlin', only such as she could play! 'Tis the innocent takin' the shame o' the guilty, and the tears do be comin' to me eyes. 'Tis not ould Widdy Flynn's eyes alone that's wet this day, but hearts do be weepin' for the love o' God." Rosalie suddenly opened the door, and, without another look at Charley, entered the house. "'Tis one in a million!" said Mrs. Flynn, in a confidential tone, for she had a fixed idea that Rosalie loved Charley and that he loved her, and that the only thing that stood in the way of their marriage was religion. From the first Charley had conquered Mrs. Flynn. That he was a tailor was a pity and a shame, but love was love, and the man had a head on him and a heart in him; and love was love! So Mrs. Flynn said: "'Tis one that a man that's a man should do annything for, was it havin' the heart cut out uv him, or givin' the last drop uv his blood. Shure, for such as her, murder, or false witness, or givin' up the last wish or thought a man hugged to his boosom, would be as aisy as aisy." Charley laughed to himself, her purpose was so obvious, but his heart went out to her, for she was a friend, and, whatever came to him, Rosalie would not be alone. "I believe every word of yours," he said, shaking her hand, "and we'll see, you and I, that no man marries her who isn't ready to do what you say." "Would you do it yourself--if it was you?" she asked, flushing for her boldness. "I would," he answered. "Then do it," she said, and fled inside the house and shut the door. "Mrs. Flynn--good Mrs. Flynn!" he said, and went back sadly to his house, and shut himself up with his thoughts. When night drew on he went to bed, but he could not sleep. He got up after a time, and taking pen and paper, wrote for a long time. Having finished, he took what he had written, and placing it with the two packets-of money and pearls--which he had brought from his old home, he addressed it to the Cure, and going to the safe in the wall of the shop, placed them inside and locked the door. Then he went to bed, and slept soundly--the deep sleep of the just. CHAPTER LVII A BURNING FIERY FURNACE Every man within the limits of the parish was in his bed, save one. He was a stranger who, once before, had visited Chaudiere for one brief day, when he had been saved from death at the Red Ravine, and had fled the village that night because, as he thought, he had heard the voice of his old friend's ghost in the trees. Since that time he had travelled in many parishes, healing where he could, entertaining where he might, earning money as the charlatan. He was now on his way back through the parishes to Montreal, and his route lay through Chaudiere. He had hoped to reach Chaudiere before nightfall--he remembered with fear the incident from which he had fled many months before; but his horse had broken its leg on a corduroy bridge, a few miles out from the parish in the hills, and darkness came upon him before he could hide his wagon in the woods and proceed afoot to Chaudiere. He had shot his horse, and rolled it into the swift torrent beneath the bridge. Travelling the lonely road, he drank freely from the whiskey-horn he carried, to keep his spirits up, so that by the time he came to the outskirts of Chaudiere he was in a state of intoxication, and reeled impudently along with the "Dutch courage" the liquor had given him. Arrived at the first cluster of houses in the place, he paused uncertain. Should he knock here or go on to the tavern? He shivered at thought of the tavern, for it was near it he had heard Charley Steele's voice calling to him out of the trees. If he knocked here, would the people admit him in his present state?--he had sense enough to know that he was very drunk. As he shook his head in owlish gravity, he saw the church on the hill not far away. He chuckled to himself. The carpet in the chancel and the hassocks at the altar would make a good bed. No fear of Charley's ghost coming inside the church--it wouldn't be that kind of a ghost. As he travelled the intervening space, shrugging his shoulders, staggering serenely, he told himself in confidence that he would leave the church at dawn, go to the tavern, purchase a horse as soon as might be, and get back to his wagon. The church door was unlocked, and he entered and made his way to the chancel, found surplices in the vestry and put a hassock inside one for a pillow. Then he sat down and drew the loose rug of the chancel-floor over him, and took another drink from the whiskey horn. Lighting his pipe, he smoked for a while, but grew drowsy, and his pipe fell into his lap. With eyes nearly shut he struck another match, made to light his pipe again, but threw the match away, still burning. As he did so the pipe dropped again from his mouth, and he fell back on the hassock-pillow he had made. The lighted match fell on a surplice which had dropped from his arms as he came from the vestry, and set it afire. In five minutes the whole chancel was burning, and the sleeping man waked in the midst of smoke and flame. He staggered to his feet with a terror-stricken cry, stumbled down the aisle, through the front door, and out into the night. Reaching the road, he turned his face again to the hill where his wagon lay hid. If he could reach that, he would be safe; nobody would suspect him. He clutched the whiskey-horn tight and broke into a run. As he passed beyond the village his excited imagination heard Charley Steele's ghost calling after him. He ran harder. The voice kept calling from Chaudiere. Not Charley's voice, but the voices of many people in Chaudiere were calling. Some wakeful person had seen the glare in the church windows and had given the alarm, and now there rang through the streets the call- "Fire! Fire! Fire!" Charley and Jo were among the last to wake, for both had slept soundly, but Jo was roused by a handful of gravel thrown at his window and a warning cry, and a few moments later he and Charley were in the street with a hurrying crowd. Over all the village was a red glare, lighting up the sky, burnishing the trees. The church was a mass of flames. Charley was as pale as the rest of the crowd; for he thought of the Cure, he thought of this people to whom their church meant more than home and vastly more than friend and fortune. His heart was with them all: not because it was their church that was burning, but because it was something dear to them. Reaching the hill, he saw the Cure coming from the vestry of the burning church, bearing some vessels of the altar. Depositing them in the arms of his weeping sister, he turned again towards the door. People clung to him, and would not let him go. "See, it is all inflames," they cried. "Your cassock is singed. You shall not go." At that moment Charley and Portugais came up. A hurried question to the Cure from Charley, a key handed over, a nod from Jo, and before the Cure could prevent them the two men had rushed through the smoke and flame into the vestry, Portugais holding Charley's hand. The crowd outside waited in a terrible anxiety. The timbers of the chancel portion of the building seemed about to fall, and still the two men did not appear. The people called; the Cure clinched his hands at his side--he was too fearful even to pray. But now the two men appeared, loaded with the few treasures of the church. They were scorched and singed, and the beards of both were burned, but, stumbling and exhausted, they brought their loads to the eager arms of the waiting habitants. Then from the other end of the church came a cry: "The little cross--the little iron cross!" Then another cry: "Rosalie Evanturel! Rosalie Evanturel!" Some one came running to the Cure. "Rosalie Evanturel has gone inside for the little cross on the pillar. She is in the flames; the door has fallen in. She can't get out again." With a hoarse cry, Charley darted back inside the vestry door. A cry of horror went up. It was only a minute and a half, but it seemed like years, and then a man in flames appeared in the fiery porch--and not alone. He carried a girl in his arms. He wavered even at the threshold with the timbers swaying overhead, but, with a last effort, he plunged forward through the furnace, and was caught by eager hands on the margin of endurable heat. The two were smothered in quilts brought from the Cure's house, and carried swiftly to the cool safety of the grass and trees beyond. The woman had fainted in the flame of the church; the man dropped insensible as they caught her from his arms. As they tore away Charley's coat muffling his face, and opened his shirt, they stared in awe. The cross which Rosalie had torn from the pillar, Charley had thrust into his bosom, and there it now lay on the red scar made by itself in the hands of Louis Trudel. M. Loisel waved the people back. He raised Charley's head. The Abbe Rossignol, who had just arrived with the Seigneur, lifted the cross from the insensible man's breast. He started when he saw the scar. Then he remembered the tale he had heard. He turned away gravely to his brother. "Was it the cross or the woman he went for?" he asked. "Great God--do you ask!" the Seigneur said indignantly. "And he deserves her," he muttered under his breath. Charley opened his eyes. "Is she safe?" he asked, starting up. "Unscathed, my son," the Cure said. Was this tailor-man not his son? Had he not thirsted for his soul as a hart for the water-brooks? "I am very sorry for you, Monsieur," said Charley. "It is God's will," was the reply, in a choking voice. "It will be years before we have another church--many, many years." The roof gave way with a crash, and the spire shot down into the flaming debris. The people groaned. "It will cost sixty thousand dollars to build it up again," said Filion Lacasse. "We have three thousand dollars from the Passion Play," said the Notary. "That could go towards it." "We have another two thousand in the bank," said Maximilian Cour. "But it will take years," said the saddler disconsolately. Charley looked at the Cure, mournful and broken but calm. He saw the Seigneur, gloomy and silent, standing apart. He saw the people in scattered groups, looking more homeless than if they had no homes. Some groups were silent; others discussed angrily the question, who was the incendiary--that it had been set on fire seemed certain. "I said no good would come of the play-acting," said the Seigneur's groom, and was flung into the ditch by Filion Lacasse. Presently Charley staggered to his feet, purpose in his face. These people, from the Cure and Seigneur to the most ignorant habitant, were hopeless and inert. The pride of their lives was gone. "Gather the people together," he said to the Notary and Filion Lacasse. Then he turned to the Cure and the Seigneur. "With your permission, messieurs," he said, "I will do a harder thing than I have ever done. I will speak to them all." Wondering, M. Loisel added his voice to the Notary's, and the word went round. Slowly they all made their way to a spot the Cure indicated. Charley stood on the embankment above the road, the notables of the parish round him. Rosalie had been taken to the Cure's house. In that wild moment in the church when she had fallen insensible in Charley's arms, a new feeling had sprung up in her. She loved him in every fibre, but she had a strange instinct, a prescience, that she was lying on his breast for the last time. She had wound her arms round his neck, and, as his lips closed on hers, she had cried: "We shall die together--together." As she lay in the Cure's house, she thought only of that moment. "What are they cheering for?" she asked, as a great noise came to her through the window. "Run and see," said the Cure's sister to Mrs. Flynn, and the fat woman hurried away. Rosalie raised herself so that she could look out of the window. "I can see him," she cried. "See whom?" asked the Cure's sister. "Monsieur," she answered, with a changed voice. "He is speaking. They are cheering him." Ten minutes later, the Cure and the Notary entered the room. M. Loisel came forward to Rosalie, and took her hands in his. "You should not have done it," he said. "I wanted to do something," she replied. "To get the cross for you seemed the only payment I could make for all your goodness to me." "It nearly cost you your life--and the life of another," he said, shaking his head reproachfully. Cheering came again from the burning church. "Why do they cheer?" she asked. "Why do they cheer? Because the man we have feared, Monsieur Mallard--" "I never feared him," said Rosalie, scarcely above her breath. "Because he has taught them the way to a new church again--and at once, at once, my child." "A remarkable man!" said Narcisse Dauphin. "There never was such a speech. Never in any courtroom was there such an appeal." "What did he do?" asked Mademoiselle Loisel, her hand in Rosalie's. "Everything," answered the Cure. "There he stood in his tattered clothes, the beard burnt to his chin, his hands scorched, his eyes bloodshot, and he spoke--" "'With the tongues of men and of angels,'" said M. Dauphin enthusiastically. The Cure frowned and continued: "'You look on yonder burning walls,' he said, 'and wonder when they will rise again on this hill made sacred by the burial of your beloved, by the christening of your children, the marriages which have given you happy homes, and the sacraments which are to you the laws of your lives. You give one-twentieth of your income yearly towards your church--then give one-fortieth of all you possess today, and your church will be begun in a month. Before a year goes round you will come again to this venerable spot and enter another church here. Your vows, your memories, and your hopes will be purged by fire. All that you possess will be consecrated by your free-will offerings.' --Ah, if I could but remember what came afterwards! It was all eloquence, and generous and noble thought." "He spoke of you," said the Notary--"he spoke the truth; and the people cheered. He said that the man outside the walls could sometimes tell the besieged the way relief would come. Never again shall I hear such a speech." "What are they going to do?" asked Rosalie, and withdrew her trembling hand from that of Madame Dugal. "This very day, at my office, they will bring their offerings, and we will begin at once," answered M. Dauphin. "There is no man in Chaudiere but will take the stocking from the hole, the bag from the chest, the credit from the bank, the grain from the barn for the market, or make the note of hand to contribute one-fortieth of all he is worth for the rebuilding of the church." "Notes of hand are not money," said the Cure's sister, the practical sense ever uppermost. "They shall all be money--hard cash," said the Notary. "The Seigneur is going to open a sort of bank, and take up the notes of hand, and give bank-bills in return. To-day I go with his steward to Quebec to get the money." "What does the Abbe Rossignol say?" said the Cure's sister. "Our church and parish are our own," interposed the Cure proudly. "We do our duty and fear no abbe." "Voila!" said M. Dauphin, "he never can keep hands off. I saw him go to Jo Portugais a little while ago. 'Remember!' he said--I can't make out what he was after. We have enough to remember to-day, for sure." "Good may come of it, perhaps," said M. Loisel, looking sadly out upon the ruins of his church. "See, 'tis the sunrise!" said Mrs. Flynn's voice from the corner, her face towards the eastern window. CHAPTER LVIII WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL In four days ten thousand dollars in notes and gold had been brought to the office of the Notary by the faithful people of Chaudiere. All day in turn M. Loisel and M. Rossignol sat in the office and received that which represented one-fortieth of the value of each man's goods, estate, and wealth--the fortieth value of a woodsawyer's cottage, or a widow's garden. They did it impartially for all, as the Cure and three of the best-to-do habitants had done for the Seigneur, whose four thousand dollars had been paid in first of all. Charley had been confined to his room for three days, because of his injuries and a feverish cold he had caught, and the habitants did not disturb his quiet. But Mrs. Flynn took him broth made by Rosalie's hands, and Rosalie fought with her desire to go to him and nurse him. She was not, however, the Rosalie of the old impulse and impetuous resolve--the arrow had gone too deep; she waited till she could see his face again and look into his eyes. Not apathy, but a sense of the inevitable was upon her, and pale and fragile, but with a calm spirit, she waited for she knew not what. She felt that the day of fate was closing down. She must hold herself ready for the hour when he would need her most. At first, when the conviction had come to her that the end of all was near, she had revolted. She had had impulse to go to him at all hazards, to say to him: "Come away--anywhere, anywhere!" But that had given place to the deeper thing in her, and something of Charley's spirit of stoic waiting had come upon her. She watched the people going to the Notary's office with their tributes and free-will offerings, and they seemed like people in a play--these days she lived no life which was theirs. It was a dream, unimportant and temporary. She was feeling what was behind all life, and permanent. It could not last, but there it was; and she could not return to the transitory till this cloud of fate was lifted. She was much too young to suffer so, but the young ever suffer most. On the fourth day she saw Charley. He came from his shop and went to the Notary's office. At first she was startled, for he was clean-shaven--the fire had burned his beard to the skin. She saw a different man, far removed from this life about them both--individual, singular. He was pale, and his eye-glass, with the cleanshaven face, gave an impression of refined separateness. She did not know that the same look was in both their faces. She watched him till he entered the Notary's shop, then she was called away to her duties. Charley had come to give his one-fortieth with the rest. When he entered the Notary's office, the Seigneur and M. Dauphin stood up to greet him. They congratulated him on his recovery, while feeling also that the change in his personal appearance somehow affected their relations. A crowd gathered round the door of the shop. When Charley made his offering, with a statement of his goods and income, the Seigneur and Notary did not know what to do. They were disposed to decline it, for since Monsieur was no Catholic, it was not his duty to help. At this moment of delicate anxiety M. Loisel entered. With a swift bright flush to his cheek he saw the difficulty, and at once accepted freely. "God bless you," he said, as he took the money, and Charley left. "It shall build the doorway of my church." Later in the day the Cure sent for Charley. There were grave matters to consider, and his counsel was greatly needed. They had all come to depend on the soundness of his judgment. It had never gone astray in Chaudiere, they said. They owed to him this extraordinary scheme, which would be an example to all modern Christianity. They told him so. He said nothing in reply. In an hour he had planned for them a scheme for the consideration of contractors; had drawn, with the help of M. Loisel, an architect's rough plan of the new church, and, his old professional instincts keenly alive, had lucidly suggested the terms and safeguards of the contracts. Then came the question of the money contributed. The day before, M. Dauphin and the Seigneur's steward had arrived in safety from Quebec with twenty thousand dollars in bank-bills. These M. Rossignol had exchanged for the notes of hand of such of the habitants as had not ready cash to give. All of this twenty thousand dollars had been paid over. They had now thirty thousand dollars in cash, besides three thousand which the Cure had at his house, the proceeds of the Passion Play. It was proposed to send this large sum to the bank in Quebec in another two days, when the whole contributions should be complete. As to the safety of the money, the timid M. Dauphin did not care to take responsibility. Strangers were still arriving, ignorant of the fact that the Passion Play had ceased, and some of them must be aware that this large sum of money was in the parish--no doubt also knew that it was in his house. It was therefore better, he urged, that M. Rossignol or the Cure should take charge of it. M. Loisel urged that secrecy as to the resting-place of the money was important. It was better that it should be deposited in the most unlikely place, and with some unofficial person who might not be supposed to have it in charge. "I have it!" said the Seigneur. "The money shall be placed in old Louis Trudel's safe in the wall of the tailor-shop." It was so arranged, after Charley's protests of unwillingness, and counter-appeals from the others. That evening at sundown thirty-three thousand dollars was deposited in the safe in the old stone wall of the tailorshop, and the lock was sealed with the parish seal. But the Notary's wife had wormed the secret from her husband, and she found it hard to keep. She told it to Maximilian Cour, and he kept it. She told it to her cousin, the wife of Filion Lacasse, and she did not keep it. Before twenty-four hours went round, a dozen people knew it. The evening of the second day, another two thousand dollars was added to the treasure, and the lock was again sealed--with the utmost secrecy. Charley and Jo Portugais, the infidel and the murderer, were thus the sentries to the peace of a parish, the bankers of its gifts, the security for the future of the church of Chaudiere. Their weapons of defence were two old pistols belonging to the Seigneur. "Money is the master of the unexpected," the Seigneur had said as he handed them over. He chuckled for hours afterwards as he thought of his epigram. That night, as he turned over in bed for the third time, as was his custom before going to sleep, another epigram came to him--"Money is the only fox hunted night and day." He kept repeating it over and over again with vain pride. The truth of M. Rossignol's aphorisms had been demonstrated several days before. On his return from Quebec with the twenty thousand dollars of the Seigneur's money, M. Dauphin had dwelt with great pride on the discretion and energy he and the steward had shown; had told dramatically of the skill which had enabled them to make a journey of such importance so secretly and safely; had covered himself with blushes for his own coolness and intrepidity. Fortune had, however, favoured his reputation and his intrepidity, for he had been pursued from the hour he and his companion left Quebec. A taste for the picturesque had impelled him to arrange for two relays of horses, and this fact saved him and the twenty thousand dollars he carried. Two hours after he had left Quebec, four determined men had got upon his trail, and had only been prevented from overtaking him by the freshness of the horses which his dramatic foresight had provided. The leader of these four pursuers was Billy Wantage, who had come to know of the curious action of the Seigneur of Chaudiere from an intimate friend, a clerk in the bank. Billy's fortunes were now in a bad way, and, in desperate straits for money, he had planned this bold attempt at the highwayman's art with two gamblers, to whom he owed money, and a certain notorious horse-trader of whom he had made a companion of late. Having escaped punishment for a crime once before, through Charley's supposed death, the immunity nerved him to this later and more dangerous enterprise. The four rode as hard as their horses would permit, but M. Dauphin and his companion kept always an hour or more ahead, and, from the high hills overlooking the village, Billy and his friends saw the two enter it safely in the light of evening. His three friends urged Billy to turn back, since they were out of provisions and had no shelter. It was unwise to go to a tavern or a farmer's house, where they must certainly be suspected. Billy, however, determined to make an effort to find the banking-place of the money, and refused to turn back without a trial. He therefore proposed that they should separate, going different directions, secure accommodation for the night, rest the following day, and meet the next night at a point indicated. This was agreed upon, and they separated. When the four met again, Billy had nothing to communicate, as he had been taken ill during the night before, and had been unable to go secretly into Chaudiere village. They separated once more. When they met the next night Billy was accompanied by an old confederate. As he was entering Chaudiere the previous evening, he had met John Brown, with his painted wagon and a new mottled horse. John Brown had news of importance to give; for, in the stable-yard of the village tavern, he had heard one habitant confide to another that the money for the new church was kept in the safe of the tailor-shop. John Brown was as ready to share in Billy's second enterprise as he had been to incite him to his first crime. So it was that as the Seigneur made his epigram and gloated over it, the five men, with horses at a convenient distance, armed to the teeth, broke stealthily into Charley's house. They entered silently through the kitchen window, and made their way into the little hall. Two stood guard at the foot of the stairs, and three crept into the shop. This night Jo Portugais was sleeping up-stairs, while Charley lay upon the bench in the tailor-shop. Charley heard the door open, heard unfamiliar steps, seized his pistol, and, springing up, with his back to the safe, called out loudly to Jo. As he dimly saw men rush at him, he fired. The bullet reached its mark, and one man fell dead. At that moment a dark-lantern was turned full on Charley, and a pistol was fired pointblank at him. As he fell, shot through the breast, the man who had fired dropped the lantern with a shriek of terror. He had seen the ghost of his brother- in-law-Charley Steele. With a quaking cry of warning to the others, Billy bolted from the house, followed by his companions, two of whom were struggling with Jo Portugais on the stairway. These now also broke and ran. Jo rushed into the shop, and saw, as he thought, Charley lying dead-- saw the robber dead upon the floor. His master and friend gone, the conviction seized him that his own time had come. He would give himself to justice now--but to God's justice, not to man's. The robbers were four to one, and he would avenge his master's death and give his own life to do it! It was all the thought of a second. He rushed out after the robbers, shouting as he ran, to awake the villagers. He heard the marauders ahead of him, and, fleet of foot, rushed on. Reaching them as they mounted, he fired, and brought down his man--a shivering quack- doctor, who, like his leader, had seen a sight in the tailor-shop that struck terror to his soul. Two of the others then fired at Jo, who had caught a horse by the head. He fell without a sound, and lay upon his face--he did not hear the hoofs of the escaping horses nor any other sound. He had fallen without a pang beside the quackdoctor, whose medicines would never again quicken a pulse in his own body or any other. Behind, in the village, frightened people flocked about the tailor-shop. Within, Mrs. Flynn and the Notary crudely but tenderly bound up the dreadful wound in Charley's side, while Rosalie pillowed his head on her bosom. With a strange quietness Rosalie gave orders to the Notary and Mrs. Flynn. There was a light in her eyes--an unnatural light--of strength and presence of mind. Her hand was steady, and as gently as a mother with a child she wiped the moist forehead, and poured a little brandy between the set teeth. "Stand back--give him air," she said, in a voice of authority to those who crowded round. People fell back in awe, for, amid tears and excitement and fear, this girl had a strange convincing calm. By the time Charley's wound was stopped, messengers were on the way to the Cure and the Seigneur. By Rosalie's instructions the dead body of the robber was removed, Charley's bed up-stairs was prepared for him, a fire was lighted, and twenty hands were ready to do accurately her will. Now and again she felt his pulse, and she watched his face intently. In her bitter sorrow her heart had a sort of thankfulness, for his head was on her breast, he was in her arms. It had been given her once more to come first to his rescue, and with one wild cry, unheard by any one, to call out his beloved name. The world of Chaudiere, roused by the shooting, had then burst in upon them; but that one moment had been hers, no matter what came after. She had no illusions--she knew that the end was near: the end of all for him and for them both. The Cure entered and hurried forward. There was the seal of the parish intact on the door of the safe, but at what cost! "He has given his life for the church," he said, then commanded all to leave, save those needed to carry the wounded man up-stairs. Still it was Rosalie that directed the removal. She held his hand; she saw that he was carefully laid down; she raised his head to a proper height; she moistened his lips and fanned him. Meanwhile the Cure fell upon his knees, and the noise of talk and whispering ceased in the house. But presently there was loud murmuring and shuffling of feet outside again, and Rosalie left the room hurriedly and went below to stop it. She met the men who were bringing the body of Jo Portugais into the shop. Up-stairs the Cure's voice prayed: "Of Thy mercy, O Lord, hear our prayer. Grant that he be brought into Thy Church ere his last hour come. Forgive, O Lord--" Charley stirred and opened his eyes. He saw the Cure bowed in prayer; he heard the trembling voice. He touched the white head with his hand. CHAPTER LIX IN WHICH CHARLEY MEETS A STRANGER The Cure came to his feet with a joyful cry. "Monsieur--my son," he said, bending over him. "Is it all over?" Charley asked calmly, almost cheerfully. Death now was the only solution of life's problems, and he welcomed it from the void. The Cure went to the door and locked it. The deepest desire of his life must here be uttered, his great aspiration be realised. "My son," he said, as he came softly to the bedside again, "you have given to us all you had--your charity, your wisdom, your skill. You have "--it was hard, but the man's wound was mortal, and it must be said "you have consecrated our new church with your blood. You have given all to us; we will give all to you--" There was a soft knocking at the door. He went and opened it a very little. "He is conscious, Rosalie," he whispered. "Wait--wait--one moment." Then came the Seigneur's voice saying that Jo was gone, and that all the robbers had escaped, save the two disposed of by Charley and Jo. The Cure turned to the bed once more. "What did he say about Jo?" Charley asked. "He is dead, my son, and the quack-doctor also. The others have escaped." Charley turned his face away. "Au revoir, Jo," he said into the great distance. Then there was silence for a moment, while outside the door a girl prayed, with an old woman's arm around her. The Cure leaned over Charley again. "Shall not the sacraments of the Church comfort you in your last hours?" he said. "It is the way, the truth, and the life. It is the Voice that says: 'Peace' to the vexed mind. Human intellect is vanity; only the soul survives. Will you not hear the Voice? Will you not give us who love and honour you the right to make you ours for ever? Will you not come to the bosom of that Church for which you have given all?" "Tell them so," Charley said, and he motioned towards the window, under which the people were gathered. With a glad exclamation the Cure hastened to the window, and, in a voice of sorrowful exultation, spoke to the people below. Charley reckoned swiftly with his fate. What was there now to do? If his wound was not mortal, what tragedy might now come! For Billy's hand --the hand of Kathleen's brother--had brought him low. If the robbers and murderers were captured, he must be dragged into the old life, and to what an issue--all the old problems carried into more terrible conditions. And Rosalie--in his half-consciousness he had felt her near him; he felt her near him now. Rosalie--in any case, what could there be for her? Nothing. He had heard the Cure whisper her name at the door. She was outside-praying for him. He stretched out a hand as though he saw her, and his lips framed her name. In his weakness and fading life he had no anguish in the thought of her. Life and Love were growing distant though he loved her as few love and live. She would be removed from want by him--there were the pearls and the money in the safe with the money of the Church; there was the letter to the Cure, his last testament, leaving all to her. He, sleeping, would fear no foe; she, awake in the living world, would hold him in dear remembrance. Death were the better thing for all. Then Kathleen in her happiness would be at peace; and even Billy might go unmolested, for, who was there to recognise Billy, now that Portugais was dead? He heard the Cure's voice at the window--"Oh, my dear people, God has given him to us at last. I go now to prepare him for his long journey, to--" Charley realised and shuddered. Receive the sacraments of the Church? Be made ready by the priest for his going hence--end all the soul's interrogations, with the solving of his own mortal problems? Say "I believe," confess his sins, and, receiving absolution, lie down in peace. He suddenly raised himself on his elbow, flinging his body over. The bandage of his wound was displaced, and blood gushed out upon the white clothes of the bed. "Rosalie!" he gasped. "Rosalie, my love! God keep . . . " As he sank back he heard the priest's anguished voice above him, calling for help. He smiled. "Rosalie--" he whispered. The priest ran and unlocked the door, and Rosalie entered, followed by the Seigneur and Mrs. Flynn. "Quick! Quick!" said the priest. "The bandage slipped." The bandage slipped--or was it slipped? Who knows! Blind with agony, and as in a direful dream, Rosalie made her way to the bed. The sight of his ensanguined body roused her, and, murmuring his name--continually murmuring his name--she assisted Mrs. Flynn to bind up the wound again. Standing where she stood when she had stayed Louis Trudel's arm long ago, with an infinite tenderness she touched the scar- the scar of the cross--on his breast. Terrible as was her grief, her heart had its comfort in the thought--who could rob her of that for ever?--that he would die a martyr. It did not matter now who knew the story of her love. It could not do him harm. She was ready to proclaim it to all the world. And those who watched knew that they were in the presence of a great human love. The priest made ready to receive the unconscious man into the Church. Had Charley not said, "Tell them so?" Was it not now his duty to say the sacred offices over a son of the Church in his last bitter hour? So it was done while he lay unconscious. For hours he lay still, and then the fevered blood, poisoned by the bullet which had brought him down, made him delirious, gave him hallucinations--open-eyed illusions. All the time Rosalie knelt at the foot of the bed, her piteous tearless eyes for ever fixed on his face. Towards evening, with an unnatural strength, he sat up in bed. "See," he whispered, "that woman in the corner there. She has come to take me, but I will not go." Fantasy after fantasy possessed him- fantasy, strangely mixed with facts of his own past. Now it was Kathleen, now Billy, now Jo Portugais, now John Brown, now Suzon Charlemagne at the Cote Dorion, again Jo Portugais. In strange, touching sentences he spoke to them, as though they were present before him. At length he stopped abruptly, and gazed straight before him--over the head of Rosalie into the distance. "See," he said, pointing, "who is that? Who? I can't see his face--it is covered. So tall-so white! He is opening his arms to me. He is coming--closer--closer. Who is it?" "It is Death, my son," said the priest in his ear, with a pitying gentleness. The Cure's voice seemed to calm the agitated sense, to bring it back to the outer precincts of understanding. There was an awe-struck silence as the dying man fumbled, fumbled, over his breast, found his eye-glass, and, with a last feeble effort, raised it to his eye, shining now with an unearthly fire. The old interrogation of the soul, the elemental habit outlived all else in him. The idiosyncrasy of the mind automatically expressed itself. "I beg--your--pardon," he whispered to the imagined figure, and the light died out of his eyes, "have I--ever--been--introduced--to you?" "At the hour of your birth, my son," said the priest, as a sobbing cry came from the foot of the bed. But Charley did not hear. His ears were for ever closed to the voices of life and time. CHAPTER LX THE HAND AT THE DOOR The eve of the day of the memorable funeral two belated visitors to the Passion Play arrived in the village, unknowing that it had ended, and of the tragedy which had set a whole valley mourning; unconscious that they shared in the bitter fortunes of the tailor-man, of whom men and women spoke with tears. Affected by the gloom of the place, the two visitors at once prepared for their return journey, but the manner of the tailorman's death arrested their sympathies, touched the humanity in them. The woman was much impressed. They asked to see the body of the man. They were taken to the door of the tailor-shop, while their horses were being brought round. Within the house itself they were met by an old Irishwoman, who, in response to their wish "to see the brave man's body," showed them into a room where a man lay dead with a bullet through his heart. It was the body of Jo Portugais, whose master and friend lay in another room across the hallway. The lady turned back in disappointment--the dead man was little like a hero. The Irishwoman had meant to deceive her, for at this moment a girl who loved the tailor was kneeling beside his body, and, if possible, Mrs. Flynn would have no curious eyes look upon that scene. When the visitors came into the hall again, the man said: "There was another; Kathleen--a woodsman." But standing by the nearly closed door, behind which lay the dead tailor of Chaudiere--they could see the holy candles flickering within--Kathleen whispered "We've seen the tailor-- that's enough. It's only the woodsman there. I prefer not, Tom." With his fingers at the latch, the man hesitated, even as Mrs. Flynn stepped apprehensively forward; then, shrugging a shoulder, he responded to Kathleen's hand on his arm. They went down the stairs together, and out to their carriage. As they drove away, Kathleen said: "It's strange that men who do such fine things should look so commonplace." "The other one might have been more uncommon," he replied. "I wonder!" she said, with a sigh of relief, as they passed the bounds of the village. Then she caught herself flushing, for she suddenly realised that the exclamation was one so often on the lips of a dead, disgraced man whose name she once had borne. If the door of the little room upstairs had opened to the fingers of the man beside her, the tailor of Chaudiere, though dead, would have been dearly avenged. CHAPTER LXI THE CURE SPEAKS The Cure stood with his back to the ruins of the church, at his feet two newly made graves, and all round, with wistful faces, crowds of reverent habitants. A benignant sorrow made his voice in perfect temper with the pensive striving of this latest day of spring. At the close of his address he said: "I owe you much, my people. I owe him more, for it was given him, who knew not God, to teach us how to know Him better. For his past, it is not given you to know. It is hidden in the bosom of the Church. Sinner he once was, criminal never, as one can testify who knows all"--he turned to the Abbe Rossignol, who stood beside him, grave and compassionate-- "and his sins were forgiven him. He is the one sheaf which you and I may carry home rejoicing from the pagan world of unbelief. What he had in life he gave to us, and in death he leaves to our church all that he has not left to a woman he loved--to Rosalie Evanturel." There was a gasping murmur among the people, but they stilled again, and strained to hear. "He leaves her a little fortune, and to us all else he had. Let us pray for his soul, and let us comfort her who, loving deeply, reaped no harvest of love. "The law may never reach his ruthless murderers, for there is none to recognise their faces; and were they ten times punished, how should it avail us now! Let us always remember that, in his grave, our friend bears on his breast the little iron cross we held so dear. That is all we could give--our dearest treasure. I pray God that, scarring his breast in life, it may heal all his woes in death, and be a saving image on his bosom in the Presence at the last." He raised his hands in benediction. EPILOGUE Never again was there a Passion Play in the Chaudiere Valley. Spring- times and harvests and long winters came and went, and a blessing seemed to be upon the valley, for men prospered, and no untoward things befel the people. So it was for twenty years, wherein there had been going and coming in quiet. Some had gone upon short mortal journeys and had come back, some upon long immortal voyages, and had never returned. Of the last were the Seigneur and a woman once a Magdalene; but in a house beside a beautiful church, with a noble doorway, lived the Cure, M. Loisel, aged and serene. There never was a day, come rain or shine, in which he was not visited by a beautiful woman, whose life was one with the people of the valley. There was no sorrow in the parish which the lady did not share, with the help of an old Irishwoman called Mrs. Flynn. Was there sickness in the parish, her hand smoothed the pillow and soothed the pain. Was there trouble anywhere, her face brought light to the door way. Did any suffer ill-repute, her word helped to restore the ruined name. They did not know that she forgave so much in all the world, because she thought she had so much in herself to forgive. She was ever called "Madame Rosalie," and she cherished the name, and gave commands that when her grave came to be made near to a certain other grave, Madame Rosalie should be carved upon the stone. Cheerfulness and serenity were ever with her, undisturbed by wish to probe the mystery of the life which had once absorbed her own. She never sought to know whence the man came; it was sufficient to know whither he had gone, and that he had been hers for a brief dream of life. It was better to have lived the one short thrilling hour with all its pain, than never to have known what she knew or felt what she had felt. The mystery deepened her romance, and she was even glad that the ruffians who slew him were never brought to justice. To her mind they were but part of the mystic machinery of fate. For her the years had given many compensations, and so she told the Cure, one midsummer day, when she brought to visit him the orphaned son of Paulette Dubois, graduated from his college in France and making ready to go to the far East. "I have had more than I deserve--a thousand times," she said. The Cure smiled, and laid a gentle hand upon her own. "It is right for you to think so," he said, "but after a long life, I am ready to say that, one way or another, we earn all the real happiness we have. I mean the real happiness--the moments, my child. I once had a moment full of happiness." "May I ask?" she said. "When my heart first went out to him"--he turned his face towards the churchyard. "He was a great man," she said proudly. The Cure looked at her benignly: she was a woman, and she had loved the man. He had, however, come to a stage of life where greatness alone seemed of little moment. He forbore to answer her, but he pressed her hand. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Youth is the only comrade for youth ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "RIGHT OF WAY": A left-handed boy is all right in the world Always hoping the best from the worst of us Damnable propinquity Good fathers think they have good daughters Have not we all something to hide--with or without shame? He has wheeled his nuptial bed into the street He left his fellow-citizens very much alone He had had acquaintances, but never friendships, and never loves Hugging the chain of denial to his bosom I have a good memory for forgetting I am only myself when I am drunk I should remember to forget it Importunity with discretion was his motto In all secrets there is a kind of guilt Is the habit of good living mere habit and mere acting It is good to live, isn't it? Know how bad are you, and doesn't mind Liquor makes me human Nervous legs at a gallop Pathetically in earnest Shure, if we could always be 'about the same,' we'd do So say your prayers, believe all you can, don't ask questions Strike first and heal after--"a kick and a lick" Suspicion, the bane of sick old age Things that once charmed charm less Was not civilisation a mistake Who knows! Youth is the only comrade for youth MICHEL AND ANGELE, Complete [A Ladder of Swords] By Gilbert Parker INTRODUCTION If it does not seem too childish a candour to say so, 'Michel and Angele' always seems to me like some old letter lifted out of an ancient cabinet with the faint perfume of bygone days upon it. Perhaps that is because the story itself had its origin in a true but brief record of some good Huguenots who fled from France and took refuge in England, to be found, as the book declares, at the Walloon Church, in Southampton. The record in the first paragraphs of the first chapter of the book fascinated my imagination, and I wove round Michel de la Foret and Angele Aubert a soft, bright cloud of romance which would not leave my vision until I sat down and wrote out what, in the writing, seemed to me a true history. It was as though some telepathy between the days of Elizabeth and our own controlled me--self-hypnotism, I suppose; but still, there it was. The story, in its original form, was first published in 'Harper's Weekly' under the name of Michel and Angele, but the fear, I think, that many people would mispronounce the first word of the title, induced me to change it when, double in length, it became a volume called 'A Ladder of Swords'. As it originally appeared, I wrote it in the Island of Jersey, out at the little Bay of Rozel in a house called La Chaire, a few yards away from the bay itself, and having a pretty garden with a seat at its highest point, from which, beyond the little bay, the English Channel ran away to the Atlantic. It was written in complete seclusion. I had no visitors; there was no one near, indeed, except the landlord of the little hotel in the bay, and his wife. All through the Island, however, were people whom I knew, like the Malet de Carterets, the Lemprieres, and old General Pipon, for whom the Jersey of three hundred years ago was as near as the Jersey of to-day, so do the Jersiais prize, cultivate, and conserve every hour of its recorded history. As the sea opens out to a vessel making between the promontories to the main, so, while writing this tale which originally was short, the larger scheme of 'The Battle of the Strong' spread out before me, luring me, as though in the distance were the Fortunate Isles. Eight years after 'Michel and Angele' was written and first published in 'Harper's Weekly', I decided to give it the dignity of a full-grown romance. For years I had felt that it had the essentials for a larger canvas, and at the earnest solicitation of Messrs. Harper & Brothers I settled to do what had long been in my mind. The narrative grew as naturally from what it was to larger stature as anything that had been devised upon a greater scale at the beginning; and in London town I had the same joy in the company of Michel and Angele--and a vastly increased joy in the company of Lempriere, the hulking, joyous giant--as I had years before in Jersey itself when the story first stirred in my mind and reached my pen. While adverse reviews of the book were few if any, it cannot be said that this romance is a companion in popularity with, for instance, 'The Right of Way'. It had its friends, but it has apparently appealed to smaller audiences--to those who watch the world go by; who are not searching for the exposure of life's grim realities; who do not seek the clinic of the soul's tragedies. There was tragedy here, but there was comedy too; there was also joy and faith, patience and courage. The book, taken by itself, could not make a permanent reputation for any man, but it has its place in the scheme of my work, and I would not have it otherwise than it is. A NOTE There will be found a few anachronisms in this tale, but none so important as to give a wrong impression of the events of Queen Elizabeth's reign. MICHEL AND ANGELE CHAPTER I If you go to Southampton and search the register of the Walloon Church there, you will find that in the summer of 157_, "Madame Vefue de Montgomery with all her family and servants were admitted to the Communion"--"Tous ceux cj furent Recus la a Cene du 157_, comme passans, sans avoir Rendu Raison de la foj, mes sur la tesmognage de Mons. Forest, Ministre de Madame, quj certifia quj ne cognoisoit Rien en tout ceux la po' quoy Il ne leur deust administre la Cene s'il estoit en lieu po' a ferre." There is another striking record, which says that in August of the same year Demoiselle Angele Claude Aubert, daughter of Monsieur de la Haie Aubert, Councillor of the Parliament of Rouen, was married to Michel de la Foret, of the most noble Flemish family of that name. When I first saw these records, now grown dim with time, I fell to wondering what was the real life-history of these two people. Forthwith, in imagination, I began to make their story piece by piece; and I had reached a romantic 'denoument' satisfactory to myself and in sympathy with fact, when the Angel of Accident stepped forward with some "human documents." Then I found that my tale, woven back from the two obscure records I have given, was the true story of two most unhappy yet most happy people. From the note struck in my mind, when my finger touched that sorrowful page in the register of the Church of the Refugees at Southampton, had spread out the whole melody and the very book of the song. One of the later-discovered records was a letter, tear-stained, faded, beautifully written in old French, from Demoiselle Angele Claude Aubert to Michel de la Foret at Anvers in March of the year 157_. The letter lies beside me as I write, and I can scarcely believe that three and a quarter centuries have passed since it was written, and that she who wrote it was but eighteen years old at the time. I translate it into English, though it is impossible adequately to carry over either the flavour or the idiom of the language: Written on this May Day of the year 157_, at the place hight Rozel in the Manor called of the same of Jersey Isle, to Michel de la Foret, at Anvers in Flanders. MICHEL, Thy good letter by safe carriage cometh to my hand, bringing to my heart a lightness it hath not known since that day when I was hastily carried to the port of St. Malo, and thou towards the King his prison. In what great fear have I lived, having no news of thee and fearing all manner of mischance! But our God hath benignly saved thee from death, and me He hath set safely here in this isle of the sea. Thou hast ever been a brave soldier, enduring and not fearing; thou shalt find enow to keep thy blood stirring in these days of trial and peril to us who are so opprobriously called Les Huguenots. If thou wouldst know more of my mind thereupon, come hither. Safety is here, and work for thee--smugglers and pirates do abound on these coasts, and Popish wolves do harry the flock even in this island province of England. Michel, I plead for the cause which thou hast nobly espoused, but--alas! my selfish heart, where thou art lie work and fighting, and the same high cause, and sadly, I confess, it is for mine own happiness that I ask thee to come. I wot well that escape from France hath peril, that the way hither from that point upon yonder coast called Carteret is hazardous, but yet-but yet all ways to happiness are set with hazard. If thou dost come to Carteret thou wilt see two lights turning this- wards: one upon a headland called Tour de Rozel, and one upon the great rock called of the Ecrehos. These will be in line with thy sight by the sands of Hatainville. Near by the Tour de Rozel shall I be watching and awaiting thee. By day and night doth my prayer ascend for thee. The messenger who bears this to thee (a piratical knave with a most kind heart, having, I am told, a wife in every port of France and of England the south, a most heinous sin!) will wait for thy answer, or will bring thee hither, which is still better. He is worthy of trust if thou makest him swear by the little finger of St. Peter. By all other swearings he doth deceive freely. The Lord make thee true, Michel. If thou art faithful to me, I shall know how faithful thou art in all; for thy vows to me were most frequent and pronounced, with a full savour that might warrant short seasoning. Yet, because thou mayst still be given to such dear fantasies of truth as were on thy lips in those dark days wherein thy sword saved my life 'twixt Paris and Rouen, I tell thee now that I do love thee, and shall so love when, as my heart inspires me, the cloud shall fall that will hide us from each other forever. ANGELE. An Afterword: I doubt not we shall come to the heights where there is peace, though we climb thereto by a ladder of swords. A. Some years before Angele's letter was written, Michel de la Foret had become an officer in the army of Comte Gabriel de Montgomery, and fought with him until what time the great chief was besieged in the Castle of Domfront in Normandy. When the siege grew desperate, Montgomery besought the intrepid young Huguenot soldier to escort Madame de Montgomery to England, to be safe from the oppression and misery sure to follow any mishap to this noble leader of the Camisards. At the very moment of departure of the refugees from Domfront with the Comtesse, Angele's messenger--the "piratical knave with the most kind heart "presented himself, delivered her letter to De la Foret, and proceeded with the party to the coast of Normandy by St. Brieuc. Embarking there in a lugger which Buonespoir the pirate secured for them, they made for England. Having come but half-way of the Channel, the lugger was stopped by an English frigate. After much persuasion the captain of the frigate agreed to land Madame de Montgomery upon the island of Jersey, but forced De la Foret to return to the coast of France; and Buonespoir elected to return with him. CHAPTER II Meanwhile Angele had gone through many phases of alternate hope and despair. She knew that Montgomery the Camisard was dead, and a rumour, carried by refugees, reached her that De la Foret had been with him to the end. To this was presently added the word that De la Foret had been beheaded. But one day she learned that the Comtesse de Montgomery was sheltered by the Governor, Sir Hugh Pawlett, her kinsman, at Mont Orgueil Castle. Thither she went in fear from her refuge at Rozel, and was admitted to the Comtesse. There she learned the joyful truth that De la Foret had not been slain, and was in hiding on the coast of Normandy. The long waiting was a sore trial, yet laughter was often upon her lips henceforth. The peasants, the farmers and fishermen of Jersey, at first --as they have ever been--little inclined towards strangers, learned at last to look for her in the fields and upon the shore, and laughed in response, they knew not why, to the quick smiling of her eyes. She even learned to speak their unmusical but friendly Norman-Jersey French. There were at least a half-dozen fishermen who, for her, would have gone at night straight to the Witches' Rock in St. Clement's Bay--and this was bravery unmatched. It came to be known along the coast that "Ma'm'selle" was waiting for a lover fleeing from the French coast. This gave her fresh interest in the eyes of the serfs and sailors and their women folk, who at first were not inclined towards the Huguenot maiden, partly because she was French, and partly because she was not a Catholic. But even these, when they saw that she never talked religiously, that she was fast learning to speak their own homely patois, and that in the sickness of their children she was untiring in her kindness, forgave the austerity of the gloomy-browed old man her father, who spoke to them distantly, or never spoke at all; and her position was secure. Then, upon the other hand, the gentry of the manors, seeing the friendship grow between her and the Comtesse de Montgomery at Mont Orgueil Castle, made courteous advances towards her father, and towards herself through him. She could scarce have counted the number of times she climbed the great hill like a fortress at the lift of the little bay of Rozel, and from the Nez du Guet scanned the sea for a sail and the sky for fair weather. When her eyes were not thus busy, they were searching the lee of the hillside round for yellow lilies, and the valley below for the campion, the daffodil, and the thousand pretty ferns growing in profusion there. Every night she looked out to see that her signal fire was lit upon the Nez du Guet, and she never went to bed without taking one last look over the sea, in the restless inveterate hope which at once sustained her and devoured her. But the longest waiting must end. It came on the evening of the very day that the Seigneur of Rozel went to Angele's father and bluntly told him he was ready to forego all Norman-Jersey prejudice against the French and the Huguenot religion, and take Angele to wife without penny or estate. In reply to the Seigneur, Monsieur Aubert said that he was conscious of an honour, and referred Monsieur to his daughter, who must answer for herself; but he must tell Monsieur of Rozel that Monsieur's religion would, in his own sight, be a high bar to the union. To that the Seigneur said that no religion that he had could be a bar to anything at all; and so long as the young lady could manage her household, drive a good bargain with the craftsmen and hucksters, and have the handsomest face and manners in the Channel Islands, he'd ask no more; and she might pray for him and his salvation without let or hindrance. The Seigneur found the young lady in a little retreat among the rocks, called by the natives La Chaire. Here she sat sewing upon some coarse linen for a poor fisherwoman's babe when the Seigneur came near. She heard the scrunch of his heels upon the gravel, the clank of his sword upon the rocks, and looked up with a flush, her needle poised; for none should know of her presence in this place save her father. When she saw who was her visitor, she rose. After greeting and compliment, none too finely put, but more generous than fitted with Jersey parsimony, the gentleman of Rozel came at once to the point. "My name is none too bad," said he--"Raoul Lempriere, of the Lemprieres that have been here since Rollo ruled in Normandy. My estate is none worse than any in the whole islands; I have more horses and dogs than any gentleman of my acres; and I am more in favour at court than De Carteret of St. Ouen's. I am the Queen's butler, and I am the first that royal favour granted to set up three dove-cotes, one by St. Aubin's, one by St. Helier's, and one at Rozel: and--and," he added, with a lumbering attempt at humour--"and, on my oath, I'll set up another dove-cote with out my sovereign's favour, with your leave alone. By our Lady, I do love that colour in yon cheek! Just such a colour had my mother when she snatched from the head of my cousin of Carteret's milk-maid wife the bonnet of a lady of quality and bade her get to her heifers. God's beauty! but 'tis a colour of red primroses in thy cheeks and blue campions in thine eyes. Come, I warrant I can deepen that colour"--he bowed low--"Madame of Rozel, if it be not too soon!" The girl listened to this cheerful and loquacious proposal and courtship all in one, ending with the premature bestowal of a title, in mingled anger, amusement, disdain, and apprehension. Her heart fluttered, then stood still, then flew up in her throat, then grew terribly hot and hurt her, so that she pressed her hand to her bosom as though that might ease it. By the time he had finished, drawn himself up, and struck his foot upon the ground in burly emphasis of his devoted statements, the girl had sufficiently recovered to answer him composedly, and with a little glint of demure humour in her eyes. She loved another man; she did not care so much as a spark for this happy, swearing, swashbuckling gentleman; yet she saw he had meant to do her honour. He had treated her as courteously as was in him to do; he chose her out from all the ladies of his acquaintance to make her an honest offer of his hand--he had said nothing about his heart; he would, should she marry him, throw her scraps of good-humour, bearish tenderness, drink to her health among his fellows, and respect and admire her--even exalt her almost to the rank of a man in his own eyes; and he had the tolerance of the open-hearted and open- handed man. All these things were as much a compliment to her as though she were not a despised Huguenot, an exiled lady of no fortune. She looked at him a moment with an almost solemn intensity, so that he shifted his ground uneasily, but at once smiled encouragingly, to relieve her embarrassment at the unexpected honour done her. She had remained standing; now, as he made a step towards her, she sank down upon the seat, and waved him back courteously. "A moment, Monsieur of Rozel," she ventured. "Did my father send you to me?" He inclined his head and smiled again. "Did you say to him what you have said to me?" she asked, not quite without a touch of malice. "I left out about the colour in the cheek," he answered, with a smirk at what he took to be the quickness of his wit. "You kept your paint-pot for me," she replied softly. "And the dove-cote, too," he rejoined, bowing finely, and almost carried off his feet by his own brilliance. She became serious at once--so quickly that he was ill prepared for it, and could do little but stare and pluck at the tassel of his sword; for he was embarrassed before this maiden, who changed as quickly as the currents change under the brow of the Couperon Cliff, behind which lay his manor-house of Rozel. "I have visited at your manor, Monsieur of Rozel. I have seen the state in which you live, your retainers, your men-at-arms, your farming-folk, and your sailormen. I know how your Queen receives you; how your honour is as stable as your fief." He drew himself up again proudly. He could understand this speech. "Your horses and your hounds I have seen," she added, "your men-servants and your maid-servants, your fields of corn, your orchards, and your larder. I have sometimes broken the Commandment and coveted them and envied you." "Break the Commandment again, for the last time," he cried, delighted and boisterous. "Let us not waste words, lady. Let's kiss and have it over." Her eyes flashed. "I coveted them and envied you; but then, I am but a vain girl at times, and vanity is easier to me than humbleness." "Blood of man, but I cannot understand so various a creature!" he broke in, again puzzled. "There is a little chapel in the dell beside your manor, Monsieur. If you will go there, and get upon your knees, and pray till the candles no more burn, and the Popish images crumble in their places, you will yet never understand myself or any woman." "There's no question of Popish images between us," he answered, vainly trying for foothold. "Pray as you please, and I'll see no harm comes to the Mistress of Rozel." He was out of his bearings and impatient. Religion to him was a dull recreation invented chiefly for women. She became plain enough now. "'Tis no images nor religion that stands between us," she answered, "though they might well do so. It is that I do not love you, Monsieur of Rozel." His face, which had slowly clouded, suddenly cleared. "Love! Love!" He laughed good-humouredly. "Love comes, I'm told, with marriage. But we can do well enough without fugling on that pipe. Come, come, dost think I'm not a proper man and a gentleman? Dost think I'll not use thee well and 'fend thee, Huguenot though thou art, 'gainst trouble or fret or any man's persecutions--be he my Lord Bishop, my Lord Chancellor, or King of France, or any other?" She came a step closer to him, even as though she would lay a hand upon his arm. "I believe that you would do all that in you lay," she answered steadily. "Yours is a rough wooing, but it is honest--" "Rough! Rough!" he protested, for he thought he had behaved like some Adonis. Was it not ten years only since he had been at Court! "Be assured, Monsieur, that I know how to prize the man who speaks after the light given him. I know that you are a brave and valorous gentleman. I must thank you most truly and heartily, but, Monsieur, you and yours are not for me. Seek elsewhere, among your own people, in your own religion and language and position, the Mistress of Rozel." He was dumfounded. Now he comprehended the plain fact that he had been declined. "You send me packing!" he blurted out, getting red in the face. "Ah, no! Say it is my misfortune that I cannot give myself the great honour," she said; in her tone a little disdainful dryness, a little pity, a little feeling that here was a good friend lost. "It's not because of the French soldier that was with Montgomery at Domfront?--I've heard that story. But he's gone to heaven, and 'tis vain crying for last year's breath," he added, with proud philosophy. "He is not dead. And if he were," she added, "do you think, Monsieur, that we should find it easier to cross the gulf between us?" "Tut, tut, that bugbear Love!" he said shortly. "And so you'd lose a good friend for a dead lover? I' faith, I'd befriend thee well if thou wert my wife, Ma'm'selle." "It is hard for those who need friends to lose them," she answered sadly. The sorrow of her position crept in upon her and filled her eyes with tears. She turned them to the sea-instinctively towards that point on the shore where she thought it likely Michel might be; as though by looking she might find comfort and support in this hard hour. Even as she gazed into the soft afternoon light she could see, far over, a little sail standing out towards the Ecrehos. Not once in six months might the coast of France be seen so clearly. One might almost have noted people walking on the beach. This was no good token, for when that coast may be seen with great distinctness a storm follows hard after. The girl knew this; and though she could not know that this was Michel de la Foret's boat, the possibility fixed itself in her mind. She quickly scanned the horizon. Yes, there in the north-west was gathering a dark- blue haze, hanging like small filmy curtains in the sky. The Seigneur of Rozel presently broke the silence so awkward for him. He had seen the tears in her eyes, and though he could not guess the cause, he vaguely thought it might be due to his announcement that she had lost a friend. He was magnanimous at once, and he meant what he said and would stand by it through thick and thin. "Well, well, I'll be thy everlasting friend if not thy husband," he said with ornate generosity. "Cheer thy heart, lady." With a sudden impulse she seized his hand and kissed it, and, turning, ran swiftly down the rocks towards her home. He stood and looked after her, then, dumfounded, at the hand she had kissed. "Blood of my heart!" he said, and shook his head in utter amazement. Then he turned and looked out upon the Channel. He saw the little boat Angele had descried making from France. Glancing at the sky, "What fools come there!" he said anxiously. They were Michel de la Foret and Buonespoir the pirate, in a black- bellied cutter with red sails. CHAPTER III For weeks De la Foret and Buonespoir had lain in hiding at St. Brieuc. At last Buonespoir declared all was ready once again. He had secured for the Camisard the passport and clothes of a priest who had but just died at Granville. Once again they made the attempt to reach English soil. Standing out from Carteret on the Belle Suzanne, they steered for the light upon the Marmotier Rocks of the Ecrehos, which Angele had paid a fisherman to keep going every night. This light had caused the French and English frigates some uneasiness, and they had patrolled the Channel from Cap de la Hague to the Bay of St. Brieuc with a vigilance worthy of a larger cause. One fine day an English frigate anchored off the Ecrehos, and the fisherman was seized. He, poor man, swore that he kept the light burning to guide his brother fishermen to and fro between Boulay Bay and the Ecrehos. The captain of the frigate tried severities; but the fisherman stuck to his tale, and the light burned on as before-- a lantern stuck upon a pole. One day, with a telescope, Buonespoir had seen the exact position of the staff supporting the light, and had mapped out his course accordingly. He would head straight for the beacon and pass between the Marmotier and the Maitre Ile, where is a narrow channel for a boat drawing only a few feet of water. Unless he made this, he must run south and skirt the Ecriviere Rock and bank, where the streams setting over the sandy ridges make a confusing perilous sea to mariners in bad weather. Else, he must sail north between the Ecrehos and the Dirouilles, in the channel called Etoc, a tortuous and dangerous passage save in good weather, and then safe only to the mariner who knows the floor of that strait like his own hand. De la Foret was wholly in the hands of Buonespoir, for he knew nothing of these waters and coasts; also he was a soldier and no sailor. They cleared Cape Carteret with a fair wind from the north-east, which should carry them safely as the bird flies to the haven of Rozel. The high, pinkish sands of Hatainville were behind them; the treacherous Taillepied Rocks lay to the north, and a sweet sea before. Nothing could have seemed fairer and more hopeful. But a few old fishermen on shore at Carteret shook their heads dubiously, and at Port Bail, some miles below, a disabled naval officer, watching through a glass, rasped out, "Criminals or fools!" But he shrugged his shoulders, for if they were criminals he was sure they would expiate their crimes this night, and if they were fools--he had no pity for fools. But Buonespoir knew his danger. Truth is, he had chosen this night because they would be safest from pursuit, because no sensible seafaring man, were he King's officer or another, would venture forth upon the impish Channel, save to court disaster. Pirate, and soldier in priest's garb, had frankly taken the chances. With a fair wind they might, with all canvas set--mainsail, foresail, jib, and fore-topsail--make Rozel Bay within two hours and a quarter. All seemed well for a brief half-hour. Then, even as the passage between the Marmotier and the Ecrehos opened out, the wind suddenly shifted from the north-east to the southwest and a squall came hurrying on them--a few moments too soon; for, had they been clear of the Ecrehos, clear of the Taillepieds, Felee Bank, and the Ecriviere, they could have stood out towards the north in a more open sea. Yet there was one thing in their favour: the tide was now running hard from the north-west, so fighting for them while the wind was against them. Their only safety lay in getting beyond the Ecrehos. If they attempted to run in to the Marmotier for safety, they would presently be at the mercy of the French. To trust their doubtful fortunes and bear on was the only way. The tide was running fast. They gave the mainsail to the wind still more, and bore on towards the passage. At last, as they were opening on it, the wind suddenly veered full north-east. The sails flapped, the boat seemed to hover for a moment, and then a wave swept her towards the rocks. Buonespoir put the helm hard over, she went about, and they close-hauled her as she trembled towards the rocky opening. This was the critical instant. A heavy sea was running, the gale was blowing hard from the north-east, and under the close-hauled sail the Belle Suzanne was lying over dangerously. But the tide, too, was running hard from the south, fighting the wind; and, at the moment when all seemed terribly uncertain, swept them past the opening and into the swift-running channel, where the indraught sucked them through to the more open water beyond. Although the Belle Suzanne was in more open water now, the danger was not over. Ahead lay a treacherous sea, around them roaring winds, and the perilous coast of Jersey beyond all. "Do you think we shall land?" quietly asked De la Foret, nodding towards the Jersey coast. "As many chances 'gainst it as for it, M'sieu'," said Buonespoir, turning his face to the north, for the wind had veered again to north-east, and he feared its passing to the north-west, giving them a head-wind and a swooping sea. Night came down, but with a clear sky and a bright moon; the wind, however, not abating. The next three hours were spent in tacking, in beating towards the Jersey coast under seas which almost swamped them. They were standing off about a mile from the island, and could see lighted fires and groups of people upon the shore, when suddenly a gale came out from the southwest, the wind having again shifted. With an oath, Buonespoir put the helm hard over, the Belle Suzanne came about quickly, but as the gale struck her, the mast snapped like a pencil, she heeled over, and the two adventurers were engulfed in the waves. A cry of dismay went up from the watchers on the shore. They turned with a half-conscious sympathy towards Angele, for her story was known by all, and in her face they read her mortal fear, though she made no cry, but only clasped her hands in agony. Her heart told her that yonder Michel de la Foret was fighting for his life. For an instant only she stood, the terror of death in her eyes, then she turned to the excited fishermen near. "Men, oh men," she cried, "will you not save them? Will no one come with me?" Some shook their heads sullenly, others appeared uncertain, but their wives and children clung to them, and none stirred. Looking round helplessly, Angele saw the tall figure of the Seigneur of Rozel. He had been watching the scene for some time. Now he came quickly to her. "Is it the very man?" he asked her, jerking a finger towards the struggling figures in the sea. "Yes, oh yes," she replied, nodding her head piteously. "God tells my heart it is." Her father drew near and interposed. "Let us kneel and pray for two dying men," said he, and straightway knelt upon the sand. "By St. Martin, we've better medicine than that, apothecary!" said Lempriere of Rozel loudly, and, turning round, summoned two serving-men. "Launch my strong boat," he added. "We will pick these gentlemen from the brine, or know the end of it all." The men hurried gloomily to the long-boat, ran her down to the shore and into the surf. "You are going--you are going to save him, dear Seigneur?" asked the girl tremulously. "To save him--that's to be seen, mistress," answered Lempriere, and advanced to the fishermen. By dint of hard words, and as hearty encouragement and promises, he got a half-dozen strong sailors to man the boat. A moment after, they were all in. At a motion from the Seigneur, the boat was shot out into the surf, and a cheer from the shore gave heart to De la Foret and Buonespoir, who were being driven upon the rocks. The Jerseymen rowed gallantly; and the Seigneur, to give them heart, promised a shilling, a capon, and a gallon of beer to each, if the rescue was made. Again and again the two men seemed to sink beneath the sea, and again and again they came to the surface and battled further, torn, battered, and bloody, but not beaten. Cries of "We're coming, gentles, we're coming!" from the Seigneur of Rozel, came ringing through the surf to the dulled ears of the drowning men, and they struggled on. There never was a more gallant rescue. Almost at their last gasp the two were rescued. "Mistress Aubert sends you welcome, sir, if you be Michel de la Foret," said Lempriere of Rozel, and offered the fugitive his horn of liquor as he lay blown and beaten in the boat. "I am he," De la Foret answered. "I owe you my life, Monsieur," he added. Lempriere laughed. "You owe it to the lady; and I doubt you can properly pay the debt," he answered, with a toss of the head; for had not the lady refused him, the Seigneur of Rozel, six feet six in height, and all else in proportion, while this gentleman was scarce six feet. "We can have no quarrel upon the point," answered De la Foret, reaching out his hand; "you have at least done tough work for her, and if I cannot pay in gold, I can in kind. It was a generous deed, and it has made a friend for ever of Michel de la Foret." "Raoul Lempriere of Rozel they call me, Michel de la Foret, and by Rollo the Duke, but I'll take your word in the way of friendship, as the lady yonder takes it for riper fruit! Though, faith, 'tis fruit of a short summer, to my thinking." All this while Buonespoir the pirate, his face covered with blood, had been swearing by the little finger of St. Peter that each Jerseyman there should have the half of a keg of rum. He went so far in gratitude as to offer the price of ten sheep which he had once secretly raided from the Seigneur of Rozel and sold in France; for which he had been seized on his later return to the island, and had escaped without punishment. Hearing, Lempriere of Rozel roared at him in anger: "Durst speak to me! For every fleece you thieved I'll have you flayed with bow-strings if ever I sight your face within my boundaries." "Then I'll fetch and carry no more for M'sieu' of Rozel," said Buonespoir, in an offended tone, but grinning under his reddish beard. "When didst fetch and carry for me, varlet?" Lempriere roared again. "When the Seigneur of Rozel fell from his horse, overslung with sack, the night of the royal Duke's visit, and the footpads were on him, I carried him on my back to the lodge of Rozel Manor. The footpads had scores to settle with the great Rozel." For a moment the Seigneur stared, then roared again, but this time with laughter. "By the devil and Rollo, I have sworn to this hour that there was no man in the isle could have carried me on his shoulders. And I was right, for Jersiais you're none, neither by adoption nor grace, but a citizen of the sea." He laughed again as a wave swept over them, drenching them, and a sudden squall of wind came out of the north. "There's no better head in the isle than mine for measurement and thinking, and I swore no man under eighteen stone could carry me, and I am twenty-five--I take you to be nineteen stone, eh?" "Nineteen, less two ounces," grinned Buonespoir. "I'll laugh De Carteret of St. Ouen's out of his stockings over this," answered Lempriere. "Trust me for knowing weights and measures! Look you, varlet, thy sins be forgiven thee. I care not about the fleeces, if there be no more stealing. St. Ouen's has no head--I said no one man in Jersey could have done it--I'm heavier by three stone than any man in the island." Thereafter there was little speaking among them, for the danger was greater as they neared the shore. The wind and the sea were against them; the tide, however, was in their favour. Others besides M. Aubert offered up prayers for the safe-landing of the rescued and rescuers. Presently an ancient fisherman broke out into a rude sailor's chanty, and every voice, even those of the two Huguenots, took it up: "When the Four Winds, the Wrestlers, strive with the Sun, When the Sun is slain in the dark; When the stars burn out, and the night cries To the blind sea-reapers, and they rise, And the water-ways are stark-- God save us when the reapers reap! When the ships sweep in with the tide to the shore, And the little white boats return no more; When the reapers reap, Lord give Thy sailors sleep, If Thou cast us not upon the shore, To bless Thee evermore: To walk in Thy sight as heretofore Though the way of the Lord be steep! By Thy grace, Show Thy face, Lord of the land and the deep!" The song stilled at last. It died away in the roar of the surf, in the happy cries of foolish women, and the laughter of men back from a dangerous adventure. As the Seigneur's boat was drawn up the shore, Angele threw herself into the arms of Michel de la Foret, the soldier dressed as a priest. Lempriere of Rozel stood abashed before this rich display of feeling. In his hottest youth he could not have made such passionate motions of affection. His feelings ran neither high nor broad, but neither did they run low and muddy. His nature was a straight level of sensibility--a rough stream between high banks of prejudice, topped with the foam of vanity, now brawling in season, and now going steady and strong to the sea. Angele had come to feel what he was beneath the surface. She felt how unimaginative he was, and how his humour, which was but the horse- play of vanity, helped him little to understand the world or himself. His vanity was ridiculous, his self-importance was against knowledge or wisdom; and Heaven had given him a small brain, a big and noble heart, a pedigree back to Rollo, and the absurd pride of a little lord in a little land. Angele knew all this; but realised also that he had offered her all he was able to offer to any woman. She went now and put out both hands to him. "I shall ever pray God's blessing on the lord of Rozel," she said, in a low voice. "'Twould fit me no better than St. Ouen's sword fits his fingers. I'll take thine own benison, lady--but on my cheek, not on my hand as this day before at four of the clock." His big voice lowered. "Come, come, the hand thou kissed, it hath been the hand of a friend to thee, as Raoul Lempriere of Rozel said he'd be. Thy lips upon his cheek, though it be but a rough fellow's fancy, and I warrant, come good, come ill, Rozel's face will never be turned from thee. Pooh, pooh! let yon soldier-priest shut his eyes a minute; this is 'tween me and thee; and what's done before the world's without shame." He stopped short, his black eyes blazing with honest mirth and kindness, his breath short, having spoken in such haste. Her eyes could scarce see him, so full of tears were they; and, standing on tiptoe, she kissed him upon each cheek. "'Tis much to get for so little given," she said, with a quiver in her voice; "yet this price for friendship would be too high to pay to any save the Seigneur of Rozel." She hastily turned to the men who had rescued Michel and Buonespoir. "If I had riches, riches ye should have, brave men of Jersey," she said; "but I have naught save love and thanks, and my prayers too, if ye will have them." "'Tis a man's duty to save his fellow an' he can," cried a gaunt fisherman, whose daughter was holding to his lips a bowl of conger-eel soup. "'Twas a good deed to send us forth to save a priest of Holy Church," cried a weazened boat-builder with a giant's arm, as he buried his face in a cup of sack, and plunged his hand into a fishwife's basket of limpets. "Aye, but what means she by kissing and arm-getting with a priest?" cried a snarling vraic-gatherer. "'Tis some jest upon Holy Church, or yon priest is no better than common men but an idle shame." By this time Michel was among them. "Priest I am none, but a soldier," he said in a loud voice, and told them bluntly the reasons for his disguise; then, taking a purse from his pocket, thrust into the hands of his rescuers and their families pieces of silver and gave them brave words of thanks. But the Seigneur was not to be outdone in generosity. His vanity ran high; he was fain to show Angele what a gorgeous gentleman she had failed to make her own; and he was in ripe good-humour all round. "Come, ye shall come, all of ye, to the Manor of Rozel, every man and woman here. Ye shall be fed, and fuddled too ye shall be an' ye will; for honest drink which sends to honest sleep hurts no man. To my kitchen with ye all; and you, messieurs"--turning to M. Aubert and De la Fore- "and you, Mademoiselle, come, know how open is the door and full the table at my Manor of Rozel--St. Ouen's keeps a beggarly board." CHAPTER IV Thus began the friendship of the bragging Seigneur of Rozel for the three Huguenots, all because he had seen tears in a girl's eyes and misunderstood them, and because the same girl had kissed him. His pride was flattered that they should receive protection from him, and the flattery became almost a canonising when De Carteret of St. Ouen's brought him to task for harbouring and comforting the despised Huguenots; for when De Carteret railed he was envious. So henceforth Lempriere played Lord Protector with still more boisterous unction. His pride knew no bounds when, three days after the rescue, Sir Hugh Pawlett, the Governor, answering De la Foret's letter requesting permission to visit the Comtesse de Montgomery, sent him word to fetch De la Foret to Mont Orgueil Castle. Clanking and blowing, he was shown into the great hall with De la Foret, where waited Sir Hugh and the widow of the renowned Camisard. Clanking and purring like an enormous cat, he turned his head away to the window when De la Foret dropped on his knees and kissed the hand of the Comtesse, whose eyes were full of tears. Clanking and gurgling, he sat to a mighty meal of turbot, eels, lobsters, ormers, capons, boar's head, brawn, and mustard, swan, curlew, and spiced meats. This he washed down with bastard, malmsey, and good ale, topped with almonds, comfits, perfumed cherries with "ipocras," then sprinkled himself with rose-water and dabbled his face and hands in it. Filled to the turret, he lurched to his feet, and drinking to Sir Hugh's toast, 27 "Her sacred Majesty!" he clanked and roared. "Elizabeth!" as though upon the field of battle. He felt the star of De Carteret declining and Rozel's glory ascending like a comet. Once set in a course, nothing could change him. Other men might err, but once right, the Seigneur of Rozel was everlasting. Of late he had made the cause of Michel de la Foret and Angele Aubert his own. For this he had been raked upon the coals by De Carteret of St. Ouen's and his following, who taunted him with the saying: "Save a thief from hanging and he'll cut your throat." Not that there was ill feeling against De la Foret in person. He had won most hearts by a frank yet still manner, and his story and love for Angele had touched the women folk where their hearts were softest. But the island was not true to itself or its history if it did not divide itself into factions, headed by the Seigneurs, and there had been no ground for good division for five years till De la Foret came. Short of actual battle, this new strife was the keenest ever known, for Sir Hugh Pawlett was ranged on the side of the Seigneur of Rozel. Kinsman of the Comtesse de Montgomery, of Queen Elizabeth's own Protestant religion, and admiring De la Foret, he had given every countenance to the Camisard refugee. He had even besought the Royal Court of Jersey to grant a pardon to Buonespoir the pirate, on condition that he should never commit a depredation upon an inhabitant of the island--this he was to swear to by the little finger of St. Peter. Should he break his word, he was to be banished the island for ten years, under penalty of death if he returned. When the hour had come for Buonespoir to take the oath, he failed to appear; and the next morning the Seigneur of St. Ouen's discovered that during the night his cellar had been raided of two kegs of canary, many flagons of muscadella, pots of anchovies and boxes of candied "eringo," kept solely for the visit which the Queen had promised the island. There was no doubt of the misdemeanant, for Buonespoir returned to De Carteret from St. Brieuc the gabardine of one of his retainers, in which he had carried off the stolen delicacies. This aggravated the feud between the partisans of St. Ouen's and Rozel, for Lempriere of Rozel had laughed loudly when he heard of the robbery, and said "'Tis like St. Ouen's to hoard for a Queen and glut a pirate. We feed as we get at Rozel, and will feed the Court well too when it comes, or I'm no butler to Elizabeth." But trouble was at hand for Michel and for his protector. The spies of Catherine de Medici, mother of the King of France, were everywhere. These had sent word that De la Foret was now attached to the meagre suite of the widow of the great Camisard Montgomery, near the Castle of Mont Orgueil. The Medici, having treacherously slain the chief, became mad with desire to slay the lieutenant. She was set to have the man, either through diplomacy with England, or to end him by assassination through her spies. Having determined upon his death, with relentless soul she pursued the cause as closely as though this exiled soldier were a powerful enemy at the head of an army in France. Thus it was that she wrote to Queen Elizabeth, asking that "this arrant foe of France, this churl, conspirator, and reviler of the Sacraments, be rendered unto our hands for well-deserved punishment as warning to all such evil-doers." She told Elizabeth of De la Foret's arrival in Jersey, disguised as a priest of the Church of France, and set forth his doings since landing with the Seigneur of Rozel. Further she went on to say to "our sister of England" that "these dark figures of murder and revolt be a peril to the soft peace of this good realm." To this, Elizabeth, who had no knowledge of Michel, who desired peace with France at this time, who had favours to ask of Catherine, and who in her own realm had fresh reason to fear conspiracy through the Queen of the Scots and others, replied forthwith that "If this De la Foret falleth into our hands, and if it were found he had in truth conspired against France its throne, had he a million lives, not one should remain." Having despatched this letter, she straightway sent a messenger to Sir Hugh Pawlett in Jersey, making quest of De la Foret, and commanding that he should be sent to her in England at once. When the Queen's messenger arrived at Orgueil Castle, Lempriere chanced to be with Sir Hugh Pawlett, and the contents of Elizabeth's letter were made known to him. At the moment Monsieur of Rozel was munching macaroons and washing them down with canary. The Governor's announcement was such a shock that he choked and coughed, the crumbs flying in all directions; and another pint of canary must be taken to flush his throat. Thus cleared for action, he struck out. "'Tis St. Ouen's work," he growled. "'Tis the work of the Medici," said Sir Hugh. "Read," he added, holding out the paper. Now Lempriere of Rozel had a poor eye for reading. He had wit enough to wind about the difficulty. "If I see not the Queen's commands, I've no warrant but Sir Hugh Pawlett's words, and I'll to London and ask 'fore her Majesty's face if she wrote them, and why. I'll tell my tale and speak my mind, I pledge you, sir." "You'll offend her Majesty. Her commands are here." Pawlett tapped the letter with his finger. "I'm butler to the Queen, and she will list to me. I'll not smirk and caper like St. Ouen's; I'll bear me like a man not speaking for himself. I'll speak as Harry her father spoke--straight to the purpose. . . . No, no, no, I'm not to be wheedled, even by a Pawlett, and you shall not ask me. If you want Michel de la Foret, come and take him. He is in my house. But ye must take him, for come he shall not!" "You will not oppose the Queen's officers?" "De la Foret is under my roof. He must be taken. I will give him up to no one; and I'll tell my sovereign these things when I see her in her palace." "I misdoubt you'll play the bear," said Pawlett, with a dry smile. "The Queen's tongue is none so tame. I'll travel by my star, get sweet or sour." "Well, well, 'give a man luck, and throw him into the sea,' is the old proverb. I'm coming for your friend to-night." "I'll be waiting with my fingers on the door, sir," said Rozel, with a grim vanity and an outrageous pride in himself. CHAPTER V The Seigneur of Rozel found De la Foret at the house of M. Aubert. His face was flushed with hard riding, and perhaps the loving attitude of Michel and Angele deepened it, for at the garden gate the lovers were saying adieu. "You have come for Monsieur de la Foret?" asked Angele anxiously. Her quick look at the Seigneur's face had told her there were things amiss. "There's commands from the Queen. They're for the ears of De la Foret," said the Seigneur. "I will hear them too," said Angele, her colour going, her bearing determined. The Seigneur looked down at her with boyish appreciation, then said to De la Foret: "Two Queens make claim for you. The wolfish Catherine writes to England for her lost Camisard, with much fool's talk about 'dark figures,' and 'conspirators,' 'churls,' and foes of 'soft peace'; and England takes the bait and sends to Sir Hugh Pawlett yonder. And, in brief, Monsieur, the Governor is to have you under arrest and send you to England. God knows why two Queens make such a pother over a fellow with naught but a sword and a lass to love him--though, come to think, 'a man's a man if he have but a hose on his head,' as the proverb runs." De la Foret smiled, then looked grave, as he caught sight of Angele's face. "'Tis arrest, then?" he asked. "'Tis come willy nilly," answered the Seigneur. "And once they've forced you from my doors, I'm for England to speak my mind to the Queen. I can make interest for her presence--I hold court office," he added with puffing confidence. Angele looked up at him with quick tears, yet with a smile on her lips. "You are going to England for Michel's sake?" she said in a low voice. "For Michel, or for you, or for mine honour, what matter, so that I go!" he answered, then added: "there must be haste to Rozel, friend, lest the Governor take Lempriere's guest like a potato-digger in the fields." Putting spurs to his horse, he cantered heavily away, not forgetting to wave a pompous farewell to Angele. De la Foret was smiling as he turned to Angele. She looked wonderingly at him, for she had felt that she must comfort him, and she looked not for this sudden change in his manner. "Is prison-going so blithe, then?" she asked, with a little uneasy laugh which was half a sob. "It will bring things to a head," he answered. "After danger and busy days, to be merely safe, it is scarce the life for Michel de la Foret. I have my duty to the Comtesse; I have my love for you; but I seem of little use by contrast with my past. And yet, and yet," he added, half sadly, "how futile has been all our fighting, so far as human eye can see." "Nothing is futile that is right, Michel," the girl replied. "Thou hast done as thy soul answered to God's messages: thou hast fought when thou couldst, and thou hast sheathed thy blade when there was naught else to do. Are not both right?" He clasped her to his breast; then, holding her from him a little, looked into her eyes steadily a moment. "God hath given thee a true heart, and the true heart hath wisdom," he answered. "You will not seek escape? Nor resist the Governor?" she asked eagerly. "Whither should I go? My place is here by you, by the Comtesse de Montgomery. One day it may be I shall return to France, and to our cause--" "If it be God's will." "If it be God's will." "Whatever comes, you will love me, Michel?" "I will love you, whatever comes." "Listen." She drew his head down. "I am no dragweight to thy life? Thou wouldst not do otherwise if there were no foolish Angele?" He did not hesitate. "What is best is. I might do otherwise if there were no Angele in my life to pilot my heart, but that were worse for me." "Thou art the best lover in all the world." "I hope to make a better husband. To-morrow is carmine-lettered in my calendar, if thou sayst thou wilt still have me under the sword of the Medici." Her hand pressed her heart suddenly. "Under the sword, if it be God's will," she answered. Then, with a faint smile: "But no, I will not believe the Queen of England will send thee, one of her own Protestant faith, to the Medici." "And thou wilt marry me?" "When the Queen of England approves thee," she answered, and buried her face in the hollow of his arm. An hour later Sir Hugh Pawlett came to the manor-house of Rozel with two-score men-at-arms. The Seigneur himself answered the Governor's knocking, and showed himself in the doorway, with a dozen halberdiers behind him. "I have come seeking Michel de la Foret," said the Governor. "He is my guest." "I have the Queen's command to take him." "He is my cherished guest." "Must I force my way?" "Is it the Queen's will that blood be shed?" "The Queen's commands must be obeyed." "The Queen is a miracle of the world, God save her! What is the charge against him?" "Summon Michel de la Foret, 'gainst whom it lies." "He is my guest; ye shall have him only by force." The Governor turned to his men. "Force the passage and search the house," he commanded. The company advanced with levelled pikes, but at a motion from the Seigneur his men fell back before them, and, making a lane, disclosed Michel de la Foret at the end of it. Michel had not approved of Lempriere's mummery of defence, but he understood from what good spirit it sprung, and how it flattered the Seigneur's vanity to make show of resistance. The Governor greeted De la Foret with a sour smile, read to him the Queen's writ, and politely begged his company towards Mont Orgueil Castle. "I'll fetch other commands from her Majesty, or write me down a pedlar of St. Ouen's follies," the Seigneur said from his doorway, as the Governor and De la Foret bade him good-bye and took the road to the Castle. CHAPTER VI Michel de la Foret was gone, a prisoner. From the dusk of the trees by the little chapel of Rozel, Angele had watched his exit in charge of the Governor's men. She had not sought to show her presence: she had seen him--that was comfort to her heart; and she would not mar the memory of that last night's farewell by another before these strangers. She saw with what quiet Michel bore his arrest, and she said to herself, as the last halberdier vanished: "If the Queen do but speak with him, if she but look upon his face and hear his voice, she must needs deal kindly by him. My Michel--ah, it is a face for all men to trust and all women--" But she sighed and averted her head as though before prying eyes. The bell of Rozel Chapel broke gently on the evening air; the sound, softened by the leaves and mellowed by the wood of the great elm-trees, billowed away till it was lost in faint reverberation in the sea beneath the cliffs of the Couperon, where a little craft was coming to anchor in the dead water. At first the sound of the bell soothed her, softening the thought of the danger to Michel. She moved with it towards the sea, the tones of her grief chiming with it. Presently, as she went, a priest in cassock and robes and stole crossed the path in front of her, an acolyte before him swinging a censer, his voice chanting Latin verses from the service for the sick, in his hands the sacred elements of the sacrament for the dying. The priest was fat and heavy, his voice was lazy, his eyes expressionless, and his robes were dirty. The plaintive, peaceful sense which the sound of the vesper bell had thrown over Angele's sad reflections passed away, and the thought smote her that, were it not for such as this black-toothed priest, Michel would not now be on his way to England, a prisoner. To her this vesper bell was the symbol of tyranny and hate. It was fighting, it was martyrdom, it was exile, it was the Medici. All that she had borne, all that her father had borne, the thought of the home lost, the mother dead before her time, the name ruined, the heritage dispossessed, the red war of the Camisards, the rivulets of blood in the streets of Paris and of her loved Rouen, smote upon her mind, and drove her to her knees in the forest glade, her hands upon her ears to shut out the sound of the bell. It came upon her that the bell had said "Peace! Peace!" to her mind when there should be no peace; that it had said "Be patient!" when she should be up and doing; that it had whispered "Stay!" when she should tread the path her lover trod, her feet following in his footsteps as his feet had trod in hers. She pressed her hands tight upon her ears and prayed with a passion and a fervour she had never known before. A revelation seemed to come upon her, and, for the first time, she was a Huguenot to the core. Hitherto she had suffered for her religion because it was her mother's broken life, her father's faith, and because they had suffered, and her lover had suffered. Her mind had been convinced, her loyalty had been unwavering, her words for the great cause had measured well with her deeds. But new senses were suddenly born in her, new eyes were given to her mind, new powers for endurance to her soul. She saw now as the martyrs of Meaux had seen; a passionate faith descended on her as it had descended on them; no longer only patient, she was fain for action. Tears rained from her eyes. Her heart burst itself in entreaty and confession. "Thy light shall be my light, and Thy will my will, O Lord," she cried at the last. "Teach me Thy way, create a right spirit within me. Give me boldness without rashness, and hope without vain thinking. Bear up my arms, O Lord, and save me when falling. A poor Samaritan am I. Give me the water that shall be a well of water springing up to everlasting life, that I thirst not in the fever of doing. Give me the manna of life to eat that I faint not nor cry out in plague, pestilence, or famine. Give me Thy grace, O God, as Thou hast given it to Michel de la Foret, and guide my feet as I follow him in life and in death, for Christ's sake. Amen." As she rose from her knees she heard the evening gun from the castle of Mont Orgueil, whither Michel was being borne by the Queen's men. The vesper bell had stopped. Through the wood came the salt savour of the sea on the cool sunset air. She threw back her head and walked swiftly towards it, her heart beating hard, her eyes shining with the light of purpose, her step elastic with the vigour of youth and health. A quarter-hour's walking brought her to the cliff of the Couperon. As she gazed out over the sea, however, a voice in the bay below caught her ear. She looked down. On the deck of the little craft which had entered the harbour when the vesper bell was ringing stood a man who waved a hand up towards her, then gave a peculiar call. She stared with amazement: it was Buonespoir the pirate. What did this mean? Had God sent this man to her, by his presence to suggest what she should do in this crisis in her life? For even as she ran down the shore towards him, it came to her mind that Buonespoir should take her in his craft to England. What to do in England? Who could tell? She only knew that a voice called her to England, to follow the footsteps of Michel de la Foret, who even this night would be setting forth in the Governor's brigantine for London. Buonespoir met her upon the shore, grinning like a boy. "God save you, lady!" he said. "What brings you hither, friend?" she asked. If he had said that a voice had called him hither as one called her to England, it had not sounded strange; for she was not thinking that this was one who superstitiously swore by the little finger of St. Peter, but only that he was the man who had brought her Michel from France, who had been a faithful friend to her and to her father. "What brings me hither?" Buonespoir laughed low in his chest. "Even to fetch to the Seigneur of Rozel, a friend of mine by every token of remembrance, a dozen flagons of golden muscadella." To Angele no suggestion flashed that these flagons of muscadella had come from the cellar of the Seigneur of St. Ouen's, where they had been reserved for a certain royal visit. Nothing was in her mind save the one thought-that she must follow Michel. "Will you take me to England?" she asked, putting a hand quickly on his arm. He had been laughing hard, picturing to himself what Lempriere of Rozel would say when he sniffed the flagon of St. Ouen's best wine, and for an instant he did not take in the question; but he stared at her now as the laugh slowly subsided through notes of abstraction and her words worked their way into his brain. "Will you take me, Buonespoir?" she urged. "Take you--?" he questioned. "To England." "And myself to Tyburn?" "Nay, to the Queen." "'Tis the same thing. Head of Abel! Elizabeth hath heard of me. The Seigneur of St. Ouen's and others have writ me down a pirate to her. She would not pardon the muscadella," he added, with another laugh, looking down where the flagons lay. "She must pardon more than that," exclaimed Angele, and hastily she told him of what had happened to Michel de la Foret, and why she would go. "Thy father, then?" he asked, scowling hard in his attempt to think it out. "He must go with me--I will seek him now." "It must be at once, i' faith, for how long, think you, can I stay here unharmed? I was sighted off St. Ouen's shore a few hours agone." "To-night?" she asked. "By twelve, when we shall have the moon and the tide," he answered. "But hold!" he hastily added. "What, think you, could you and your father do alone in England? And with me it were worse than alone. These be dark times, when strangers have spies at their heels, and all travellers are suspect." "We will trust in God," she answered. "Have you money?" he questioned--"for London, not for me," he added hastily. "Enough," she replied. "The trust with the money is a weighty matter," he added; "but they suffice not. You must have 'fending." "There is no one," she answered sadly, "no one save--" "Save the Seigneur of Rozel!" Buonespoir finished the sentence. "Good. You to your father, and I to the Seigneur. If you can fetch your father by your pot-of-honey tongue, I'll fetch the great Lempriere with muscadella. Is't a bargain?" "In which I gain all," she answered, and again touched his arm with her finger-tips. "You shall be aboard here at ten, and I will join you on the stroke of twelve," he said, and gave a low whistle. At the signal three men sprang up like magic out of the bowels of the boat beneath them, and scurried over the side; three as ripe knaves as ever cheated stocks and gallows, but simple knaves, unlike their master. Two of them had served with Francis Drake in that good ship of his lying even now not far from Elizabeth's palace at Greenwich. The third was a rogue who had been banished from Jersey for a habitual drunkenness which only attacked him on land--at sea he was sacredly sober. His name was Jean Nicolle. The names of the other two were Herve Robin and Rouge le Riche, but their master called them by other names. "Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego," said Buonespoir in ceremony, and waved a hand of homage between them and Angele. "Kiss dirt, and know where duty lies. The lady's word on my ship is law till we anchor at the Queen's Stairs at Greenwich. So, Heaven help you, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego!" said Buonespoir. A wave of humour passed over Angele's grave face, for a stranger quartet never sailed high seas together: one blind of an eye, one game of a leg, one bald as a bottle and bereft of two front teeth; but Buonespoir was sound of wind and limb, his small face with the big eyes lost in the masses of his red hair, and a body like Hercules. It flashed through Angele's mind even as she answered the gurgling salutations of the triumvirate that they had been got together for no gentle summer sailing in the Channel. Her conscience smote her that she should use such churls; but she gave it comfort by the thought that while serving her they could do naught worse; and her cause was good. Yet they presented so bizarre an aspect, their ugliness was so varied and particular, that she almost laughed. Buonespoir understood her thoughts, for with a look of mocking innocence in his great blue eyes he waved a hand again towards the graceless trio, and said, "For deep-sea fishing." Then he solemnly winked at the three. A moment later Angele was speeding along the shore towards her home on the farther hillside up the little glen; and within an hour Buonespoir rolled from the dusk of the trees by the manor-house of Rozel and knocked at the door. He carried on his head, as a fishwife carries a tray of ormers, a basket full of flagons of muscadella; and he did not lower the basket when he was shown into the room where the Seigneur of Rozel was sitting before a trencher of spiced veal and a great pot of ale. Lempriere roared a hearty greeting to the pirate, for he was in a sour humour because of the taking off of Michel de la Foret; and of all men this pirate-fellow, who had quips and cranks, and had played tricks on his cousin of St. Ouen's, was most welcome. "What's that on your teacup of a head?" he roared again as Buonespoir grinned pleasure at the greeting. "Muscadella," said Buonespoir, and lowered the basket to the table. Lempriere seized a flagon, drew it forth, looked closely at it, then burst into laughter, and spluttered: "St. Ouen's muscadella, by the hand of Rufus!" Seizing Buonespoir by the shoulders, he forced him down upon a bench at the table, and pushed the trencher of spiced meat against his chest. "Eat, my noble lord of the sea and master of the cellar," he gurgled out, and, tipping the flagon of muscadella, took a long draught. "God-a- mercy--but it has saved my life," he gasped in satisfaction as he lay back in his great chair, and put his feet on the bench whereon Buonespoir sat. They raised their flagons and toasted each other, and Lempriere burst forth into song, in the refrain of which Buonespoir joined boisterously: "King Rufus he did hunt the deer, With a hey ho, come and kiss me, Dolly! It was the spring-time of the year, Hey ho, Dolly shut her eyes! King Rufus was a bully boy, He hunted all the day for joy, Sweet Dolly she was ever coy: And who would e'er be wise That looked in Dolly's eyes? "King Rufus he did have his day, With a hey ho, come and kiss me, Dolly! So get ye forth where dun deer play-- Hey ho, Dolly comes again! The greenwood is the place for me, For that is where the dun deer be, 'Tis where my Dolly comes to me: And who would stay at home, That might with Dolly roam? Sing hey ho, come and kiss me, Dolly!" Lempriere, perspiring with the exertion, mopped his forehead, then lapsed into a plaintive mood. "I've had naught but trouble of late," he wheezed. "Trouble, trouble, trouble, like gnats on a filly's flank!" and in spluttering words, twice bracketed in muscadella, he told of Michel de la Foret's arrest, and of his purpose to go to England if he could get a boat to take him. "'Tis that same business brings me here," said Buonespoir, and forthwith told of his meeting with Angele and what was then agreed upon. "You to go to England!" cried Lempriere amazed. "They want you for Tyburn there." "They want me for the gallows here," said Buonespoir. Rolling a piece of spiced meat in his hand, he stuffed it into his mouth and chewed till the grease came out of his eyes, and took eagerly from a servant a flagon of malmsey and a dish of ormers. "Hush, chew thy tongue a minute!" said the Seigneur, suddenly starting and laying a finger beside his nose. "Hush!" he said again, and looked into the flicker of the candle by him with half-shut eyes. "May I have no rushes for a bed, and die like a rat in a moat, if I don't get thy pardon too of the Queen, and bring thee back to Jersey, a thorn in the side of De Carteret for ever! He'll look upon thee assoilzied by the Queen, spitting fire in his rage, and no canary or muscadella in his cellar." It came not to the mind of either that this expedition would be made at cost to themselves. They had not heard of Don Quixote, and their gifts were not imitative. They were of a day when men held their lives as lightly as many men hold their honour now; when championship was as the breath of life to men's nostrils, and to adventure for what was worth having or doing in life the only road of reputation. Buonespoir was as much a champion in his way as Lempriere of Rozel. They were of like kidney, though so far apart in rank. Had Lempriere been born as low and as poor as Buonespoir, he would have been a pirate too, no doubt; and had Buonespoir been born as high as the Seigneur, he would have carried himself with the same rough sense of honour, with as ripe a vanity; have been as naive, as sincere, as true to the real heart of man untaught in the dissimulation of modesty or reserve. When they shook hands across the trencher of spiced veal, it was as man shakes hand with man, not man with master. They were about to start upon their journey when there came a knocking at the door. On its being opened the bald and toothless Abednego stumbled in with the word that immediately after Angele and her father came aboard the Honeyflower some fifty halberdiers suddenly appeared upon the Couperon. They had at once set sail, and got away even before the sailors had reached the shore. As they had rounded the point, where they were hid from view, Abednego dropped overboard and swam ashore on the rising tide, making his way to the manor to warn Buonespoir. On his way hither, stealing through the trees, he had passed a half-score of halberdiers making for the manor, and he had seen others going towards the shore. Buonespoir looked to the priming of his pistols, and buckling his belt tightly about him, turned to the Seigneur and said: "I will take my chances with Abednego. Where does she lie--the Honeyflower, Abednego?" "Off the point called Verclut," answered the little man, who had travelled with Francis Drake. "Good; we will make a run for it, flying dot-and-carry-one as we go." While they had been speaking the Seigneur had been thinking; and now, even as several figures appeared at a little distance in the trees, making towards the manor, he said, with a loud laugh: "No. 'Tis the way of a fool to put his head between the door and the jamb. 'Tis but a hundred yards to safety. Follow me--to the sea-- Abednego last. This way, bullies!" Without a word all three left the house and walked on in the order indicated, as De Carteret's halberdiers ran forward threatening. "Stand!" shouted the sergeant of the halberdiers. "Stand, or we fire!" But the three walked straight on unheeding. When the sergeant of the men-at-arms recognised the Seigneur, he ordered down the blunderbusses. "We come for Buonespoir the pirate," said the sergeant. "Whose warrant?" said the Seigneur, fronting the halberdiers, Buonespoir and Abednego behind him. "The Seigneur of St. Ouen's," was the reply. "My compliments to the Seigneur of St. Ouen's, and tell him that Buonespoir is my guest," he bellowed, and strode on, the halberdiers following. Suddenly the Seigneur swerved towards the chapel and quickened his footsteps, the others but a step behind. The sergeant of the halberdiers was in a quandary. He longed to shoot, but dared not, and while he was making up his mind what to do, the Seigneur had reached the chapel door. Opening it, he quickly pushed Buonespoir and Abednego inside, whispering to them, then slammed the door and put his back against it. There was another moment's hesitation on the sergeant's part, then a door at the other end of the chapel was heard to open and shut, and the Seigneur laughed loudly. The halberdiers ran round the chapel. There stood Buonespoir and Abednego in a narrow roadway, motionless and unconcerned. The halberdiers rushed forward. "Perquage! Perquage! Perquage!" shouted Buonespoir, and the bright moonlight showed him grinning. For an instant there was deadly stillness, in which the approaching footsteps of the Seigneur sounded loud. "Perquage!" Buonespoir repeated. "Perquage! Fall back!" said the Seigneur, and waved off the pikes of the halberdiers. "He has sanctuary to the sea." This narrow road in which the pirates stood was the last of three in the Isle of Jersey running from churches to the sea, in which a criminal was safe from arrest by virtue of an old statute. The other perquages had been taken away; but this one of Rozel remained, a concession made by Henry VIII to the father of this Raoul Lempriere. The privilege had been used but once in the present Seigneur's day, because the criminal must be put upon the road from the chapel by the Seigneur himself, and he had used his privilege modestly. No man in Jersey but knew the sacredness of this perquage, though it was ten years since it had been used; and no man, not even the Governor himself, dare lift his hand to one upon that road. So it was that Buonespoir and Abednego, two fugitives from justice, walked quietly to the sea down the perquage, halberdiers, balked of their prey, prowling on their steps and cursing the Seigneur of Rozel for his gift of sanctuary: for the Seigneur of St. Ouen's and the Royal Court had promised each halberdier three shillings and all the ale he could drink at a sitting, if Buonespoir was brought in alive or dead. In peace and safety the three boarded the Honeyflower off the point called Verclut, and set sail for England, just seven hours after Michel de la Foret had gone his way upon the Channel, a prisoner. CHAPTER VII A fortnight later, of a Sunday morning, the Lord Chamberlain of England was disturbed out of his usual equanimity. As he was treading the rushes in the presence-chamber of the Royal Palace at Greenwich, his eye busy in inspection--for the Queen would soon pass on her way to chapel--his head nodding right and left to archbishop, bishop, councillors of state, courtiers, and officers of the crown, he heard a rude noise at the door leading into the ante-chapel, where the Queen received petitions from the people. Hurrying thither in shocked anxiety, he found a curled gentleman of the guard, resplendent in red velvet and gold chains, in peevish argument with a boisterous Seigneur of a bronzed good-humoured face, who urged his entrance to the presence-chamber. The Lord Chamberlain swept down upon the pair like a flamingo with wings outspread. "God's death, what means this turmoil? Her Majesty comes hither!" he cried, and scowled upon the intruder, who now stepped back a little, treading on the toes of a huge sailor with a small head and bushy red hair and beard. "Because her Majesty comes I come also," the Seigneur interposed grandly. "What is your name and quality?" "Yours first, and I shall know how to answer." "I am the Lord Chamberlain of England." "And I, my lord, am Lempriere, Seigneur of Rozel--and butler to the Queen." "Where is Rozel?" asked my Lord Chamberlain. The face of the Seigneur suddenly flushed, his mouth swelled, and then burst. "Where is Rozel!" he cried in a voice of rage. "Where is Rozel! Have you heard of Hugh Pawlett," he asked, with a huge contempt--" of Governor Hugh Pawlett?" The Lord Chamberlain nodded. "Then ask his Excellency when next you see him, Where is Rozel? But take good counsel and keep your ignorance from the Queen," he added. "She has no love for stupids." "You say you are butler to the Queen? Whence came your commission?" said the Lord Chamberlain, smiling now; for Lempriere's words and ways were of some simple world where odd folk lived, and his boyish vanity disarmed anger. "By royal warrant and heritage. And of all of the Jersey Isle, I only may have dove-totes, which is the everlasting thorn in the side of De Carteret of St. Ouen's. Now will you let me in, my lord?" he said, all in a breath. At a stir behind him the Lord Chamberlain turned, and with a horrified exclamation hurried away, for the procession from the Queen's apartments had already entered the presence-chamber: gentlemen, barons, earls, knights of the garter, in brave attire, with bare heads and sumptuous calves. The Lord Chamberlain had scarce got to his place when the Chancellor, bearing the seals in a red silk purse, entered, flanked by two gorgeous folk with the royal sceptre and the sword of state in a red scabbard, all flourished with fleur-de-lis. Moving in and out among them all was the Queen's fool, who jested and shook his bells under the noses of the highest. It was an event of which the Seigneur of Rozel told to his dying day: that he entered the presence-chamber of the Royal Palace of Greenwich at the same instant as the Queen--"Rozel at one end, Elizabeth at the other, and all the world at gaze," he was wont to say with loud guffaws. But what he spoke of afterwards with preposterous ease and pride was neither pride nor ease at the moment; for the Queen's eyes fell on him as he shoved past the gentlemen who kept the door. For an instant she stood still, regarding him intently, then turned quickly to the Lord Chamberlain in inquiry, and with sharp reproof too in her look. The Lord Chamberlain fell on his knee and with low uncertain voice explained the incident. Elizabeth again cast her eyes towards Lempriere, and the Court, following her example, scrutinised the Seigneur in varied styles of insolence or curiosity. Lempriere drew himself up with a slashing attempt at composure, but ended by flaming from head to foot, his face shining like a cock's comb, the perspiration standing out like beads upon his forehead, his eyes gone blind with confusion. That was but for a moment, however, and then, Elizabeth's look being slowly withdrawn from him, a curious smile came to her lips, and she said to the Lord Chamberlain: "Let the gentleman remain." The Queen's fool tripped forward and tapped the Lord Chamberlain on the shoulder. "Let the gentleman remain, gossip, and see you that remaining he goeth not like a fly with his feet in the porridge." With a flippant step before the Seigneur, he shook his bells at him. "Thou shalt stay, Nuncio, and staying speak the truth. So doing you shall be as noted as a comet with three tails. You shall prove that man was made in God's image. So lift thy head and sneeze--sneezing is the fashion here; but see that thou sneeze not thy head off as they do in Tartary. 'Tis worth remembrance." Rozel's self-importance and pride had returned. The blood came back to his heart, and he threw out his chest grandly; he even turned to Buonespoir, whose great figure might be seen beyond the door, and winked at him. For a moment he had time to note the doings of the Queen and her courtiers with wide-eyed curiosity. He saw the Earl of Leicester, exquisite, haughty, gallant, fall upon his knee, and Elizabeth slowly pull off her glove and with a none too gracious look give him her hand to kiss, the only favour of the kind granted that day. He saw Cecil, her Minister, introduce a foreign noble, who presented his letters. He heard the Queen speak in a half-dozen different languages, to people of various lands, and he was smitten with amazement. But as Elizabeth came slowly down the hall, her white silk gown fronted with great pearls flashing back the light, a marchioness bearing the train, the crown on her head glittering as she turned from right to left, her wonderful collar of jewels sparkling on her uncovered bosom, suddenly the mantle of black, silver-shotted silk upon her shoulders became to Lempriere's heated senses a judge's robe, and Elizabeth the august judge of the world. His eyes blinded again, for it was as if she was bearing down upon him. Certainly she was looking at him now, scarce heeding the courtiers who fell to their knees on either side as she came on. The red doublets of the fifty Gentlemen Pensioners--all men of noble families proud to do this humble yet distinguished service--with battle-axes, on either side of her, seemed to Lempriere on the instant like an army with banners threatening him. From the ante-chapel behind him came the cry of the faithful subjects who, as the gentleman-at-arms fell back from the doorway, had but just caught a glimpse of her Majesty--"Long live Elizabeth!" It seemed to Lempriere that the Gentlemen Pensioners must beat him down as they passed, yet he stood riveted to the spot; and indeed it was true that he was almost in the path of her Majesty. He was aware that two gentlemen touched him on the shoulder and bade him retire; but the Queen motioned to them to desist. So, with the eyes of the whole court on him again, and Elizabeth's calm curious gaze fixed, as it were, on his forehead, he stood still till the flaming Gentlemen Pensioners were within a few feet of him, and the battle-axes were almost over his head. The great braggart was no better now than a wisp of grass in the wind, and it was more than homage that bent him to his knees as the Queen looked him full in the eyes. There was a moment's absolute silence, and then she said, with cold condescension: "By what privilege do you seek our presence?" "I am Raoul Lempriere, Seigneur of Rozel, your high Majesty," said the choking voice of the Jerseyman. The Queen raised her eyebrows. "The man seems French. You come from France?" Lempriere flushed to his hair--the Queen did not know him, then! "From Jersey Isle, your sacred Majesty." "Jersey Isle is dear to us. And what is your warrant here?" "I am butler to your Majesty, by your gracious Majesty's patent, and I alone may have dove-cotes in the isle; and I only may have the perquage- on your Majesty's patent. It is not even held by De Carteret of St. Ouen's." The Queen smiled as she had not smiled since she entered the presence- chamber. "God preserve us," she said--"that I should not have recognised you! It is, of course, our faithful Lempriere of Rozel." The blood came back to the Seigneur's heart, but he did not dare look up yet, and he did not see that Elizabeth was in rare mirth at his words; and though she had no ken or memory of him, she read his nature and was mindful to humour him. Beckoning Leicester to her side, she said a few words in an undertone, to which he replied with a smile more sour than sweet. "Rise, Monsieur of Rozel," she said. The Seigneur stood up, and met her gaze faintly. "And so, proud Seigneur, you must needs flout e'en our Lord Chamberlain, in the name of our butler with three dove-cotes and the perquage. In sooth thy office must not be set at naught lightly--not when it is flanked by the perquage. By my father's doublet, but that frieze jerkin is well cut; it suits thy figure well--I would that my Lord Leicester here had such a tailor. But this perquage--I doubt not there are those here at Court who are most ignorant of its force and moment. My Lord Chamberlain, my Lord Leicester, Cecil here--confusion sits in their faces. The perquage, which my father's patent approved, has served us well, I doubt not, is a comfort to our realm and a dignity befitting the wearer of that frieze jerkin. Speak to their better understanding, Monsieur of Rozel." "Speak, Nuncio, and you shall have comforts, and be given in marriage, multiple or singular, even as I," said the fool, and touched him on the breast with his bells. Lempriere had recovered his heart, and now was set full sail in the course he had charted for himself in Jersey. In large words and larger manner he explained most innocently the sacred privilege of perquage. "And how often have you used the right, friend?" asked Elizabeth. "But once in ten years, your noble Majesty." "When last?" "But yesterday a week, your universal Majesty." Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. "Who was the criminal, what the occasion?" "The criminal was one Buonespoir, the occasion our coming hither to wait upon the Queen of England and our Lady of Normandy, for such is your well-born Majesty to your loyal Jersiais." And thereupon he plunged into an impeachment of De Carteret of St. Ouen's, and stumbled through a blunt broken story of the wrongs and the sorrows of Michel and Angele and the doings of Buonespoir in their behalf. Elizabeth frowned and interrupted him. "I have heard of this Buonespoir, Monsieur, through others than the Seigneur of St. Ouen's. He is an unlikely squire of dames. There's a hill in my kingdom has long bided his coming. Where waits the rascal now?" "In the ante-chapel, your Majesty." "By the rood!" said Elizabeth in sudden amazement. "In my ante-chapel, forsooth!" She looked beyond the doorway and saw the great red-topped figure of Buonespoir, his good-natured, fearless fare, his shock of hair, his clear blue eye--he was not thirty feet away. "He comes to crave pardon for his rank offences, your benignant Majesty," said Lempriere. The humour of the thing rushed upon the Queen. Never before were two such naive folk at court. There was not a hair of duplicity in the heads of the two, and she judged them well in her mind. "I will see you stand together--you and your henchman," she said to Rozel, and moved on to the antechapel, the Court following. Standing still just inside the doorway, she motioned Buonespoir to come near. The pirate, unconfused, undismayed, with his wide blue asking eyes, came forward and dropped upon his knees. Elizabeth motioned Lempriere to stand a little apart. Thereupon she set a few questions to Buonespoir, whose replies, truthfully given, showed that he had no real estimate of his crimes, and was indifferent to what might be their penalties. He had no moral sense on the one hand, on the other, no fear. Suddenly she turned to Lempriere again. "You came, then, to speak for this Michel de la Foret, the exile--?" "And for the demoiselle Angele Aubert, who loves him, your Majesty." "I sent for this gentleman exile a fortnight ago--" She turned towards Leicester inquiringly. "I have the papers here, your Majesty," said Leicester, and gave a packet over. "And where have you De la Foret?" said Elizabeth. "In durance, your Majesty." "When came he hither?" "Three days gone," answered Leicester, a little gloomily, for there was acerbity in Elizabeth's voice. Elizabeth seemed about to speak, then dropped her eyes upon the papers, and glanced hastily at their contents. "You will have this Michel de la Foret brought to my presence as fast as horse can bring him, my Lord," she said to Leicester. "This rascal of the sea--Buonespoir--you will have safe bestowed till I recall his existence again," she said to a captain of men-at-arms; "and you, Monsieur of Rozel, since you are my butler, will get you to my dining- room, and do your duty--the office is not all perquisites," she added smoothly. She was about to move on, when a thought seemed to strike her, and she added, "This Mademoiselle and her father whom you brought hither- where are they?" "They are even within the palace grounds, your imperial Majesty," answered Lempriere. "You will summon them when I bid you," she said to the Seigneur; "and you shall see that they have comforts and housing as befits their station," she added to the Lord Chamberlain. So did Elizabeth, out of a whimsical humour, set the highest in the land to attend upon unknown, unconsidered exiles. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Boldness without rashness, and hope without vain thinking Nothing is futile that is right Religion to him was a dull recreation invented chiefly for women MICHEL AND ANGELE [A Ladder of Swords] By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. CHAPTER VIII Five minutes later, Lempriere of Rozel, as butler to the Queen, saw a sight of which he told to his dying day. When, after varied troubles hereafter set down, he went back to Jersey, he made a speech before the Royal Court, in which he told what chanced while Elizabeth was at chapel. "There stood I, butler to the Queen," he said, with a large gesture, "but what knew I of butler's duties at Greenwich Palace! Her Majesty had given me an office where all the work was done for me. Odds life, but when I saw the Gentleman of the Rod and his fellow get down on their knees to lay the cloth upon the table, as though it was an altar at Jerusalem, I thought it time to say my prayers. There was naught but kneeling and retiring. Now it was the salt-cellar, the plate, and the bread; then it was a Duke's Daughter--a noble soul as ever lived--with a tasting-knife, as beautiful as a rose; then another lady enters who glares at me, and gets to her knees as does the other. Three times up and down, and then one rubs the plate with bread and salt, as solemn as St. Ouen's when he says prayers in the Royal Court. Gentles, that was a day for Jersey. For there stood I as master of all, the Queen's butler, and the greatest ladies of the land doing my will--though it was all Persian mystery to me, save when the kettle-drums began to beat and the trumpet to blow, and in walk bareheaded the Yeomen of the Guard, all scarlet, with a golden rose on their backs, bringing in a course of twenty-four gold dishes; and I, as Queen's butler, receiving them. "Then it was I opened my mouth amazed at the endless dishes filled with niceties of earth, and the Duke's Daughter pops onto my tongue a mouthful of the first dish brought, and then does the same to every Yeoman of the Guard that carried a dish--that her notorious Majesty be safe against the hand of poisoners. There was I, fed by a Duke's Daughter; and thus was Jersey honoured; and the Duke's Daughter whispers to me, as a dozen other unmarried ladies enter, 'The Queen liked not the cut of your frieze jerkin better than do I, Seigneur.' With that she joins the others, and they all kneel down and rise up again, and lifting the meat from the table, bear it into the Queen's private chamber. "When they return, and the Yeomen of the Guard go forth, I am left alone with these ladies, and there stand with twelve pair of eyes upon me, little knowing what to do. There was laughter in the faces of some, and looks less taking in the eyes of others; for my Lord Leicester was to have done the duty I was set to do that day, and he the greatest gallant of the kingdom, as all the world knows. What they said among themselves I know not, but I heard Leicester's name, and I guessed that they were mostly in the pay of his soft words. But the Duke's Daughter was on my side, as was proved betimes when Leicester made trouble for us who went from Jersey to plead the cause of injured folk. Of the Earl's enmity to me--a foolish spite of a great nobleman against a Norman-Jersey gentleman--and of how it injured others for the moment, you all know; but we had him by the heels before the end of it, great earl and favourite as he was." In the same speech Lempriere told of his audience with the Queen, even as she sat at dinner, and of what she said to him; but since his words give but a partial picture of events, the relation must not be his. When the Queen returned from chapel to her apartments, Lempriere was called by an attendant, and he stood behind the Queen's chair until she summoned him to face her. Then, having finished her meal, and dipped her fingers in a bowl of rose-water, she took up the papers Leicester had given her--the Duke's Daughter had read them aloud as she ate--and said: "Now, my good Seigneur of Rozel, answer me these few questions: First, what concern is it of yours whether this Michel de la Foret be sent back to France, or die here in England?" "I helped to save his life at sea--one good turn deserves another, your high-born Majesty." The Queen looked sharply at him, then burst out laughing. "God's life, but here's a bull making epigrams!" she said. Then her humour changed. "See you, my butler of Rozel, you shall speak the truth, or I'll have you where that jerkin will fit you not so well a month hence. Plain answers I will have to plain questions, or De Carteret of St. Ouen's shall have his will of you and your precious pirate. So bear yourself as you would save your head and your honours." Lempriere of Rozel never had a better moment than when he met the Queen of England's threats with faultless intrepidity. "I am concerned about my head, but more about my honours, and most about my honour," he replied. "My head is my own, my honours are my family's, for which I would give my head when needed; and my honour defends both until both are naught--and all are in the service of my Queen." Smiling, Elizabeth suddenly leaned forward, and, with a glance of satisfaction towards the Duke's Daughter, who was present, said: "I had not thought to find so much logic behind your rampant skull," she said. "You've spoken well, Rozel, and you shall speak by the book to the end, if you will save your friends. What concern is it of yours whether Michel de la Foret live or die?" "It is a concern of one whom I've sworn to befriend, and that is my concern, your ineffable Majesty." "Who is the friend?" "Mademoiselle Aubert." "The betrothed of this Michel de la Foret?" "Even so, your exalted Majesty. But I made sure De la Foret was dead when I asked her to be my wife." "Lord, Lord, Lord, hear this vast infant, this hulking baby of a Seigneur, this primeval innocence! Listen to him, cousin," said the Queen, turning again to the Duke's Daughter. "Was ever the like of it in any kingdom of this earth? He chooses a penniless exile--he, a butler to the Queen, with three dove-cotes and the perquage--and a Huguenot withal. He is refused; then comes the absent lover over sea, to shipwreck; and our Seigneur rescues him, 'fends him; and when yon master exile is in peril, defies his Queen's commands"--she tapped the papers lying beside her on the table--"then comes to England with the lady to plead the case before his outraged sovereign, with an outlawed buccaneer for comrade and lieutenant. There is the case, is't not?" "I swore to be her friend," answered Lempriere stubbornly, "and I have done according to my word." "There's not another nobleman in my kingdom who would not have thought twice about the matter, with the lady aboard his ship on the high seas- 'tis a miraculous chivalry, cousin," she added to the Duke's Daughter, who bowed, settled herself again on her velvet cushion, and looked out of the corner of her eyes at Lempriere. "You opposed Sir Hugh Pawlett's officers who went to arrest this De la Foret," continued Elizabeth. "Call you that serving your Queen? Pawlett had our commands." "I opposed them but in form, that the matter might the more surely be brought to your Majesty's knowledge." "It might easily have brought you to the Tower, man." "I had faith that your Majesty would do right in this, as in all else. So I came hither to tell the whole story to your judicial Majesty." "Our thanks for your certificate of character," said the Queen, with amused irony. "What is your wish? Make your words few and plain." "I desire before all that Michel de la Foret shall not be returned to the Medici, most radiant Majesty." "That's plain. But there are weighty matters 'twixt France and England, and De la Foret may turn the scale one way or another. What follows, beggar of Rozel?" "That Mademoiselle Aubert and her father may live without let or hindrance in Jersey." "That you may eat sour grapes ad eternam? Next?" "That Buonespoir be pardoned all offences and let live in Jersey on pledge that he sin no more, not even to raid St. Ouen's cellars of the muscadella reserved for your generous Majesty." There was such humour in Lempriere's look as he spoke of the muscadella that the Queen questioned him closely upon Buonespoir's raid; and so infectious was his mirth, as he told the tale, that Elizabeth, though she stamped her foot in assumed impatience, smiled also. "You shall have your Buonespoir, Seigneur," she said; "but for his future you shall answer as well as he." "For what he does in Jersey Isle, your commiserate Majesty?" "For crime elsewhere, if he be caught, he shall march to Tyburn, friend," she answered. Then she hurriedly added: "Straightway go and bring Mademoiselle and her father hither. Orders are given for their disposal. And to-morrow at this hour you shall wait upon me in their company. I thank you for your services as butler this day, Monsieur of Rozel. You do your office rarely." As the Seigneur left Elizabeth's apartments, he met the Earl of Leicester hurrying thither, preceded by the Queen's messenger. Leicester stopped and said, with a slow malicious smile: "Farming is good, then--you have fine crops this year on your holding?" The point escaped Lempriere at first, for the favourite's look was all innocence, and he replied: "You are mistook, my lord. You will remember I was in the presence-chamber an hour ago, my lord. I am Lempriere, Seigneur of Rozel, butler to her Majesty." "But are you, then? I thought you were a farmer and raised cabbages." Smiling, Leicester passed on. For a moment the Seigneur stood pondering the Earl's words and angrily wondering at his obtuseness. Then suddenly he knew he had been mocked, and he turned and ran after his enemy; but Leicester had vanished into the Queen's apartments. The Queen's fool was standing near, seemingly engaged in the light occupation of catching imaginary flies, buzzing with his motions. As Leicester disappeared he looked from under his arm at Lempriere. "If a bird will not stop for the salt to its tail, then the salt is damned, Nuncio; and you must cry David! and get thee to the quarry." Lempriere stared at him swelling with rage; but the quaint smiling of the fool conquered him, and instead of turning on his heel, he spread himself like a Colossus and looked down in grandeur. "And wherefore cry David! and get quarrying?" he asked. "Come, what sense is there in thy words, when I am wroth with yonder nobleman?" "Oh, Nuncio, Nuncio, thou art a child of innocence and without history. The salt held not the bird for the net of thy anger, Nuncio; so it is meet that other ways be found. David the ancient put a stone in a sling and Goliath laid him down like an egg in a nest--therefore, Nuncio, get thee to the quarry. Obligato, which is to say Leicester yonder, hath no tail--the devil cut it off and wears it himself. So let salt be damned, and go sling thy stone!" Lempriere was good-humoured again. He fumbled in his purse and brought forth a gold-piece. "Fool, thou hast spoken like a man born sensible and infinite. I understand thee like a book. Thou hast not folly and thou shalt not be answered as if thou wast a fool. But in terms of gold shalt thou have reply." He put the gold-piece in the fool's hand and slapped him on the shoulder. "Why now, Nuncio," answered the other, "it is clear that there is a fool at Court, for is it not written that a fool and his money are soon parted? And this gold-piece is still hot with running 'tween thee and me." Lempriere roared. "Why, then, for thy hit thou shalt have another gold- piece, gossip. But see"--his voice lowered--"know you where is my friend, Buonespoir, the pirate? Know you where he is in durance?" "As I know marrow in a bone I know where he hides, Nuncio, so come with me," answered the fool. "If De Carteret had but thy sense, we could live at peace in Jersey," rejoined Lempriere, and strode ponderously after the light-footed fool who capered forth singing: "Come hither, O come hither, There's a bride upon her bed; They have strewn her o'er with roses, There are roses 'neath her head: Life is love and tears and laughter, But the laughter it is dead Sing the way to the Valley, to the Valley! Hey, but the roses they are red!" CHAPTER IX The next day at noon, as her Majesty had advised the Seigneur, De la Foret was ushered into the presence. The Queen's eye quickened as she saw him, and she remarked with secret pleasure the figure and bearing of this young captain of the Huguenots. She loved physical grace and prowess with a full heart. The day had almost passed when she would measure all men against Leicester in his favour; and he, knowing this clearly now, saw with haughty anxiety the gradual passing of his power, and clutched futilely at the vanishing substance. Thus it was that he now spent his strength in getting his way with the Queen in little things. She had been so long used to take his counsel--in some part wise and skilful--that when she at length did without it, or followed her own mind, it became a fever with him to let no chance pass for serving his own will by persuading her out of hers. This was why he had spent an hour the day before in sadly yet vaguely reproaching her for the slight she put upon him in the presence-chamber by her frown; and another in urging her to come to terms with Catherine de Medici in this small affair--since the Frenchwoman had set her revengeful heart upon it--that larger matters might be settled to the gain of England. It was not so much that he had reason to destroy De la Foret, as that he saw that the Queen was disposed to deal friendly by him and protect him. He did not see the danger of rousing in the Queen the same unreasoning tenaciousness of will upon just such lesser things as might well be left to her advisers. In spite of which he almost succeeded, this very day, in regaining, for a time at least, the ground he had lost with her. He had never been so adroit, so brilliant, so witty, so insinuating; and he left her with the feeling that if he had his way concerning De la Foret--a mere stubborn whim, with no fair reason behind it--his influence would be again securely set. The sense of crisis was on him. On Michel de la Foret entering the presence the Queen's attention had become riveted. She felt in him a spirit of mastery, yet of unselfish purpose. Here was one, she thought, who might well be in her household, or leading a regiment of her troops. The clear fresh face, curling hair, direct look, quiet energy, and air of nobility--this sort of man could only be begotten of a great cause; he were not possible in idle or prosperous times. Elizabeth looked him up and down, then affected surprise. "Monsieur de la Foret," she said, "I do not recognise you in this attire"--glancing towards his dress. De la Foret bowed, and Elizabeth continued, looking at a paper in her hand: "You landed on our shores of Jersey in the robes of a priest of France. The passport for a priest of France was found upon your person when our officers in Jersey made search of you. Which is yourself-- Michel de la Foret, soldier, or a priest of France?" De la Foret replied gravely that he was a soldier, and that the priestly dress had been but a disguise. "In which papist attire, methinks, Michel de la Foret, soldier and Huguenot, must have been ill at ease--the eagle with the vulture's wing. What say you, Monsieur?" "That vulture's wing hath carried me to a safe dove-cote, your gracious Majesty," he answered, with a low obeisance. "I'm none so sure of that, Monsieur," was Elizabeth's answer, and she glanced quizzically at Leicester, who made a gesture of annoyance. "Our cousin France makes you to us a dark intriguer and conspirator, a dangerous weed in our good garden of England, a 'troublous, treacherous violence'--such are you called, Monsieur." "I am in your high Majesty's power," he answered, "to do with me as it seemeth best. If your Majesty wills it that I be returned to France, I pray you set me upon its coast as I came from it, a fugitive. Thence will I try to find my way to the army and the poor stricken people of whom I was. I pray for that only, and not to be given to the red hand of the Medici." "Red hand--by my faith, but you are bold, Monsieur!" Leicester tapped his foot upon the floor impatiently, then caught the Queen's eye, and gave her a meaning look. De la Foret saw the look and knew his enemy, but he did not quail. "Bold only by your high Majesty's faith, indeed," he answered the Queen, with harmless guile. Elizabeth smiled. She loved such flattering speech from a strong man. It touched a chord in her deeper than that under Leicester's finger. Leicester's impatience only made her more self-willed on the instant. "You speak with the trumpet note, Monsieur," she said to De la Foret. "We will prove you. You shall have a company in my Lord Leicester's army here, and we will send you upon some service worthy of your fame." "I crave your Majesty's pardon, but I cannot do it," was De la Foret's instant reply. "I have sworn that I will lift my sword in one cause only, and to that I must stand. And more--the widow of my dead chief, Gabriel de Montgomery, is set down in this land unsheltered and alone. I have sworn to one who loves her, and for my dead chief's sake, that I will serve her and be near her until better days be come and she may return in quietness to France. In exile we few stricken folk must stand together, your august Majesty." Elizabeth's eye flashed up. She was impatient of refusal of her favour. She was also a woman, and that De la Foret should flaunt his devotion to another woman was little to her liking. The woman in her, which had never been blessed with a noble love, was roused. The sourness of a childless, uncompanionable life was stronger for the moment than her strong mind and sense. "Monsieur has sworn this, and Monsieur has sworn that," she said petulantly--" and to one who loveth a lady, and for a cause--tut, tut, tut!--" Suddenly a kind of intriguing laugh leaped into her eye, and she turned to Leicester and whispered in his ear. Leicester frowned, then smiled, and glanced up and down De la Foret's figure impertinently. "See, Monsieur de la Foret," she added; "since you will not fight, you shall preach. A priest you came into my kingdom, and a priest you shall remain; but you shall preach good English doctrine and no Popish folly." De la Foret started, then composed himself, and before he had time to reply, Elizabeth continued: "Partly for your own sake am I thus gracious; for as a preacher of the Word I have not need to give you up, according to agreement with our brother of France. As a rebel and conspirator I were bound to do so, unless you were an officer of my army. The Seigneur of Rozel has spoken for you, and the Comtesse de Montgomery has written a pleading letter. Also I have from another source a tearful prayer--the ink is scarce dry upon it--which has been of service to you. But I myself have chosen this way of escape for you. Prove yourself worthy, and all may be well--but prove yourself you shall. You have prepared your own brine, Monsieur; in it you shall pickle." She smiled a sour smile, for she was piqued, and added: "Do you think I will have you here squiring of distressed dames, save as a priest? You shall hence to Madame of Montgomery as her faithful chaplain, once I have heard you preach and know your doctrine." Leicester almost laughed outright in the young man's face now, for he had no thought that De la Foret would accept, and refusal meant the exile's doom. It seemed fantastic that this noble gentleman, this very type of the perfect soldier, with the brown face of a picaroon and an athletic valour of body, should become a preacher even in necessity. Elizabeth, seeing De la Foret's dumb amazement and anxiety, spoke up sharply: "Do this, or get you hence to the Medici, and Madame of Montgomery shall mourn her protector, and Mademoiselle your mistress of the vermilion cheek, shall have one lover the less; which, methinks, our Seigneur of Rozel would thank me for." De la Foret started, his lips pressed firmly together in effort of restraint. There seemed little the Queen did not know concerning him; and reference to Angele roused him to sharp solicitude. "Well, well?" asked Elizabeth impatiently, then made a motion to Leicester, and he, going to the door, bade some one to enter. There stepped inside the Seigneur of Rozel, who made a lumbering obeisance, then got to his knees before the Queen. "You have brought the lady safely--with her father?" she asked. Lempriere, puzzled, looked inquiringly at the Queen, then replied: "Both are safe without, your infinite Majesty." De la Foret's face grew pale. He knew now for the first time that Angele and her father were in England, and he looked Lempriere suspiciously in the eyes; but the swaggering Seigneur met his look frankly, and bowed with ponderous and genial gravity. Now De la Foret spoke. "Your high Majesty," said he, "if I may ask Mademoiselle Aubert one question in your presence--" "Your answer now; the lady in due season," interposed the Queen. "She was betrothed to a soldier, she may resent a priest," said De la Foret, with a touch of humour, for he saw the better way was to take the matter with some outward ease. Elizabeth smiled. "It is the custom of her sex to have a fondness for both," she answered, with an acid smile. "But your answer?" De la Foret's face became exceeding grave. Bowing his head, he said: "My sword has spoken freely for the Cause; God forbid that my tongue should not speak also. I will do your Majesty's behest." The jesting word that was upon the royal lips came not forth, for De la Foret's face was that of a man who had determined a great thing, and Elizabeth was one who had a heart for high deeds. "The man is brave indeed," she said under her breath, and, turning to the dumfounded Seigneur, bade him bring in Mademoiselle Aubert. A moment later Angele entered, came a few steps forward, made obeisance, and stood still. She showed no trepidation, but looked before her steadily. She knew not what was to be required of her, she was a stranger in a strange land; but persecution and exile had gone far to strengthen her spirit and greaten her composure. Elizabeth gazed at the girl coldly and critically. To women she was not over-amiable; but as she looked at the young Huguenot maid, of this calm bearing, warm of colour, clear of eye, and purposeful of face, some thing kindled in her. Most like it was that love for a cause, which was more to be encouraged by her than any woman's love for a man, which as she grew older inspired her with aversion, as talk of marriage brought cynical allusions to her lips. "I have your letter and its protests and its pleadings. There were fine words and adjurations--are you so religious, then?" she asked brusquely. "I am a Huguenot, your noble Majesty," answered the girl, as though that answered all. "How is it, then, you are betrothed to a roistering soldier?" asked the Queen. "Some must pray for Christ's sake, and some must fight, your most christian Majesty," answered the girl. "Some must do both," rejoined the Queen, in a kinder voice, for the pure spirit of the girl worked upon her. "I am told that Monsieur de la Foret fights fairly. If he can pray as well, methinks he shall have safety in our kingdom, and ye shall all have peace. On Trinity Sunday you shall preach in my chapel, Monsieur de la Foret, and thereafter you shall know your fate." She rose. "My Lord," she said to Leicester, on whose face gloom had settled, "you will tell the Lord Chamberlain that Monsieur de la Foret's durance must be made comfortable in the west tower of my palace till chapel-going of Trinity Day. I will send him for his comfort and instruction some sermons of Latimer." She stepped down from the dais. "You will come with me, mistress," she said to Angele, and reached out her hand. Angele fell on her knees and kissed it, tears falling down her cheek, then rose and followed the Queen from the chamber. She greatly desired to look backward towards De la Foret, but some good angel bade her not. She realised that to offend the Queen at this moment might ruin all; and Elizabeth herself was little like to offer chance for farewell and love- tokens. So it was that, with bowed head, Angele left the room with the Queen of England, leaving Lempriere and De la Foret gazing at each other, the one bewildered, the other lost in painful reverie, and Leicester smiling maliciously at them both. CHAPTER X Every man, if you bring him to the right point, if you touch him in the corner where he is most sensitive, where he most lives, as it were; if you prick his nerves with a needle of suggestion where all his passions, ambitions and sentiments are at white heat, will readily throw away the whole game of life in some mad act out of harmony with all he ever did. It matters little whether the needle prick him by accident or blunder or design, he will burst all bounds, and establish again the old truth that each of us will prove himself a fool given perfect opportunity. Nor need the occasion of this revolution be a great one; the most trivial event may produce the great fire which burns up wisdom, prudence and habit. The Earl of Leicester, so long counted astute, clearheaded, and well- governed, had been suddenly foisted out of balance, shaken from his imperious composure, tortured out of an assumed and persistent urbanity, by the presence in Greenwich Palace of a Huguenot exile of no seeming importance, save what the Medici grimly gave him by desiring his head. It appeared absurd that the great Leicester, whose nearness to the throne had made him the most feared, most notable, and, by virtue of his opportunities, the most dramatic figure in England, should have sleepless nights by reason of a fugitive like Michel de la Foret. On the surface it was preposterous that he should see in the Queen's offer of service to the refugee evidence that she was set to grant him special favours; it was equally absurd that her offer of safety to him on pledge of his turning preacher should seem proof that she meant to have him near her. Elizabeth had left the presence-chamber without so much as a glance at him, though she had turned and looked graciously at the stranger. He had hastily followed her, and thereafter impatiently awaited a summons which never came, though he had sent a message that his hours were at her Majesty's disposal. Waiting, he saw Angele's father escorted from the palace by a Gentleman Pensioner to a lodge in the park; he saw Michel de la Foret taken to his apartments; he saw the Seigneur of Rozel walking in the palace grounds with such possession as though they were his own, self-content in every motion of his body. Upon the instant the great Earl was incensed out of all proportion to the affront of the Seigneur's existence. He suddenly hated Lempriere only less than he hated Michel de la Foret. As he still waited irritably for a summons from Elizabeth, he brooded on every word and every look she had given him of late; he recalled her manner to him in the ante-chapel the day before, and the admiring look she cast on De la Foret but now. He had seen more in it than mere approval of courage and the self-reliant bearing of a refugee of her own religion. These were days when the soldier of fortune mounted to high places. He needed but to carry the banner of bravery, and a busy sword, and his way to power was not hindered by poor estate. To be gently born was the one thing needful, and Michel de la Foret was gently born; and he had still his sword, though he chose not to use it in Elizabeth's service. My Lord knew it might be easier for a stranger like De la Foret, who came with no encumbrance, to mount to place in the struggles of the Court, than for an Englishman, whose increasing and ever-bolder enemies were undermining on every hand, to hold his own. He began to think upon ways and means to meet this sudden preference of the Queen, made sharply manifest as he waited in the ante-chamber, by a summons to the refugee to enter the Queen's apartments. When the refugee came forth again he wore a sword the Queen had sent him, and a packet of Latimer's sermons were under his arm. Leicester was unaware that Elizabeth herself did not see De la Foret when he was thus hastily called; but that her lady-in-waiting, the Duke's Daughter, who figured so largely in the pictures Lempriere drew of his experiences at Greenwich Palace, brought forth the sermons and the sword, with this message from the Queen: "The Queen says that it is but fair to the sword to be by Michel de la Foret's side when the sermons are in his hand, that his choice have every seeming of fairness. For her Majesty says it is still his choice between the Sword and the Book till Trinity Day." Leicester, however, only saw the sword at the side of the refugee and the gold-bound book under his arm as he came forth, and in a rage he left the palace and gloomily walked under the trees, denying himself to every one. To seize De la Foret, and send him to the Medici, and then rely on Elizabeth's favour for his pardon, as he had done in the past? That might do, but the risk to England was too great. It would be like the Queen, if her temper was up, to demand from the Medici the return of De la Foret, and war might ensue. Two women, with two nations behind them, were not to be played lightly against each other, trusting to their common sense and humour. As he walked among the trees, brooding with averted eyes, he was suddenly faced by the Seigneur of Rozel, who also was shaken from his discretion and the best interests of the two fugitives he was bound to protect, by a late offence against his own dignity. A seed of rancour had been sown in his mind which had grown to a great size and must presently burst into a dark flower of vengeance. He, Lempriere of Rozel, with three dovecotes, the perquage, and the office of butler to the Queen, to be called a "farmer," to be sneered at--it was not in the blood of man, not in the towering vanity of a Lempriere, to endure it at any price computable to mortal mind. Thus there were in England on that day two fools (there are as many now), and one said: "My Lord Leicester, I crave a word with you." "Crave on, good fellow," responded Leicester with a look of boredom, making to pass by. "I am Lempriere, lord of Rozel, my lord--" "Ah yes, I took you for a farmer," answered Leicester. "Instead of that, I believe you keep doves, and wear a jerkin that fits like a king's. Dear Lord, so does greatness come with girth!" "The King that gave me dove-cotes gave me honour, and 'tis not for the Earl of Leicester to belittle it." "What is your coat of arms?" said Leicester with a faint smile, but in an assumed tone of natural interest. "A swan upon a sea of azure, two stars above, and over all a sword with a wreath around its point," answered Lempriere simply, unsuspecting irony, and touched by Leicester's flint where he was most like to flare up with vanity. "Ah!" said Leicester. "And the motto?" "Mea spes supra stella--my hope is beyond the stars." "And the wreath--of parsley, I suppose?" Now Lempriere understood, and he shook with fury as he roared: "Yes, by God, and to be got at the point of the sword, to put on the heads of insolents like Lord Leicester!" His face was flaming, he was like a cock strutting upon a stable mound. There fell a slight pause, and then Leicester said: "To-morrow at daylight, eh?" "Now, my lord, now!" "We have no seconds." "'Sblood! 'Tis not your way, my lord, to be stickling in detail of courtesy." "'Tis not the custom to draw swords in secret, Lempriere of Rozel. Also my teeth are not on edge to fight you." Lempriere had already drawn his sword, and the look of his eyes was as that of a mad bull in a ring. "You won't fight with me--you don't think Rozel your equal?" His voice was high. Leicester's face took on a hard, cruel look. "We cannot fight among the ladies," he said quietly. Lempriere followed his glance, and saw the Duke's Daughter and another in the trees near by. He hastily put up his sword. "When, my lord?" he asked. "You will hear from me to-night," was the answer, and Leicester went forward hastily to meet the ladies--they had news no doubt. Lempriere turned on his heel and walked quickly away among the trees towards the quarters where Buonespoir was in durance, which was little more severe than to keep him within the palace yard. There he found the fool and the pirate in whimsical converse. The fool had brought a letter of inquiry and warm greeting from Angele to Buonespoir, who was laboriously inditing one in return. When Lempriere entered the pirate greeted him jovially. "In the very pinch of time you come," he said. "You have grammar and syntax and etiquette." "'Tis even so, Nuncio," said the fool. "Here is needed prosody potential. Exhale!" The three put their heads together above the paper. CHAPTER XI "I would know your story. How came you and yours to this pass? Where were you born? Of what degree are you? And this Michel de la Foret, when came he to your feet--or you to his arms? I would know all. Begin where life began; end where you sit here at the feet of Elizabeth. This other cushion to your knees. There--now speak. We are alone." Elizabeth pushed a velvet cushion towards Angele, where she half-knelt, half-sat on the rush-strewn floor of the great chamber. The warm light of the afternoon sun glowed through the thick-tinted glass high up, and, in the gleam, the heavy tapestries sent by an archduke, once suitor for Elizabeth's hand, emerged with dramatic distinctness, and peopled the room with silent watchers of the great Queen and the nobly-born but poor and fugitive Huguenot. A splendid piece of sculpture--Eleanor, wife of Edward--given Elizabeth by another royal suitor, who had sought to be her consort through many years, caught the warm bath of gold and crimson from the clerestory and seemed alive and breathing. Against the pedestal the Queen had placed her visitor, the red cushions making vivid contrast to her white gown and black hair. In the half-kneeling, half-sitting posture, with her hands clasped before her, so to steady herself to composure, Angele looked a suppliant--and a saint. Her pure, straightforward gaze, her smooth, urbane forehead, the guilelessness that spoke in every feature, were not made worldly by the intelligence and humour reposing in the brown depths of her eyes. Not a line vexed her face or forehead. Her countenance was of a singular and almost polished smoothness, and though her gown was severely simple by comparison with silks and velvets, furs and ruffles of a gorgeous Court at its most gorgeous period, yet in it here and there were touches of exquisite fineness. The black velvet ribbon slashing her sleeves, the slight cloud-like gathering of lace at the back of her head, gave a distinguished softness to her appearance. She was in curious contrast to the Queen, who sat upon heaped-up cushions, her rich buff and black gown a blaze of jewels, her yellow hair, now streaked with grey, roped with pearls, her hands heavy with rings, her face past its youth, past its hopefulness, however noble and impressive, past its vivid beauty. Her eyes wore ever a determined look, were persistent and vigilant, with a lurking trouble, yet flooded, too, by a quiet melancholy, like a low, insistent note that floats through an opera of passion, romance, and tragedy; like a tone of pathos giving deep character to some splendid pageant, which praises whilst it commemorates, proclaiming conquest while the grass has not yet grown on quiet houses of the children of the sword who no more wield the sword. Evasive, cautious, secretive, creator of her own policy, she had sacrificed her womanhood to the power she held and the State she served. Vain, passionate, and faithful, her heart all England and Elizabeth, the hunger for glimpses of what she had never known, and was never to know, thrust itself into her famished life; and she was wont to indulge, as now, in fancies and follow some emotional whim with a determination very like to eccentricity. That, at this time, when great national events were forward, when conspiracies abounded, when Parliament was grimly gathering strength to compel her to marry; and her Council were as sternly pursuing their policy for the destruction of Leicester; while that very day had come news of a rising in the North and of fresh Popish plots hatched in France--that in such case, this day she should set aside all business, refuse ambassadors and envoys admission, and occupy herself with two Huguenot refugees seemed incredible to the younger courtiers. To such as Cecil, however, there was clear understanding. He knew that when she seemed most inert, most impassive to turbulent occurrences, most careless of consequences, she was but waiting till, in her own mind, her plans were grown; so that she should see her end clearly ere she spoke or moved. Now, as the great minister showed himself at the door of the chamber and saw Elizabeth seated with Angele, he drew back instinctively, expectant of the upraised hand which told him he must wait. And, in truth, he was nothing loth to do so, for his news he cared little to deliver, important though it was that she should have it promptly and act upon it soon. He turned away with a feeling of relief, however, for this gossip with the Huguenot maid would no doubt interest her, give new direction to her warm sympathies, which if roused in one thing were ever more easily roused in others. He knew that a crisis was nearing in the royal relations with Leicester. In a life of devotion to her service he had seen her before in this strange mood, and he could feel that she was ready for an outburst. As he thought of De la Foret and the favour with which she had looked at him he smiled grimly, for if it meant aught it meant that it would drive Leicester to some act which would hasten his own doom; though, indeed, it might also make another path more difficult for himself, for the Parliament, for the people. Little as Elizabeth could endure tales of love and news of marriage; little as she believed in any vows, save those made to herself; little as she was inclined to adjust the rough courses of true love, she was the surgeon to this particular business, and she had the surgeon's love of laying bare even to her own cynicism the hurt of the poor patient under her knife. Indeed, so had Angele impressed her that for once she thought she might hear the truth. Because she saw the awe in the other's face and a worshipping admiration of the great protectress of Protestantism, who had by large gifts of men and money in times past helped the Cause, she looked upon her here with kindness. "Speak now, mistress fugitive, and I will listen," she added, as Cecil withdrew; and she made a motion to musicians in a distant gallery. Angele's heart fluttered to her mouth, but the soft, simple music helped her, and she began with eyes bent upon the ground, her linked fingers clasping and unclasping slowly. "I was born at Rouen, your high Majesty," she said. "My mother was a cousin of the Prince of Passy, the great Protestant--" "Of Passy--ah!" said Elizabeth amazed. "Then you are Protestants indeed; and your face is no invention, but cometh honestly. No, no, 'tis no accident--God rest his soul, great Passy!" "She died--my mother--when I was a little child. I can but just remember her--so brightly quiet, so quick, so beautiful. In Rouen life had little motion; but now and then came stir and turmoil, for war sent its message into the old streets, and our captains and our peasants poured forth to fight for the King. Once came the King and Queen--Francis and Mary--" Elizabeth drew herself upright with an exclamation. "Ah, you have seen her--Mary of Scots," she said sharply. "You have seen her?" "As near as I might touch her with my hand, as near as is your high Majesty. She spoke to me--my mother's father was in her train;--as yet we had not become Huguenots, nor did we know her Majesty as now the world knows. They came, the King and Queen--and that was the beginning." She paused, and looked shyly at Elizabeth, as though she found it hard to tell her story. "And the beginning, it was--?" said Elizabeth, impatient and intent. "We went to Court. The Queen called my mother into her train. But it was in no wise for our good. At Court my mother pined away--and so she died in durance." "Wherefore in durance?" "To what she saw she would not shut her eyes; to what she heard she would not close her soul; what was required of her she would not do." "She would not obey the Queen?" "She could not obey those whom the Queen favoured. Then the tyranny that broke her heart--" The Queen interrupted her. "In very truth, but 'tis not in France alone that Queen's favourites grasp the sceptre and speak the word. Hath a Queen a thousand eyes--can she know truth where most dissemble?" "There was a man--he could not know there was one true woman there, who for her daughter's sake, for her desired advancement, and because she was cousin of Passy, who urged it, lived that starved life; this man, this prince, drew round her feet snares, set pit-falls for her while my father was sent upon a mission. Steadfast she kept her soul unspotted; but it wore away her life. The Queen would not permit return to Rouen--who can tell what tale was told her by one whom she foiled? And so she stayed. In this slow, savage persecution, when she was like a bird that, thinking it is free, flieth against the window-pane and falleth back beaten, so did she stay, and none could save her. To cry out, to throw herself upon the spears, would have been ruin of herself, her husband and her child; and for these she lived." Elizabeth's eyes had kindled. Perhaps never in her life had the life at Court been so exposed to her. The simple words, meant but to convey the story, and with no thought behind, had thrown a light on her own Court, on her own position. Adept in weaving a sinuous course in her policy, in making mazes for others to tread, the mazes which they in turn prepared had never before been traced beneath her eyes to the same vivid and ultimate effect. "Help me, ye saints, but things are not at such a pass in this place!" she said abruptly, but with weariness in her voice. "Yet sometimes I know not. The Court is a city by itself, walled and moated, and hath a life all its own. 'If there be found ten honest men within the city yet will I save it,' saith the Lord. By my father's head, I would not risk a finger on the hazard if this city, this Court of Elizabeth were set 'twixt the fire from Heaven and eternal peace. In truth, child, I would lay me down and die in black disgust were it not that one might come hereafter would make a very Sodom or Gomorrah of this land: and out yonder--out in all my counties, where the truth of England is among my poor burgesses, who die for the great causes which my nobles profess but risk not their lives--out yonder all that they have won, and for which I have striven, would be lost. . . . Speak on. I have not heard so plain a tongue and so little guile these twenty years." Angele continued, more courage in her voice. "In the midst of it all came the wave of the new faith upon my mother. And before ill could fall upon her from her foes, she died and was at rest. Then we returned to Rouen, my father and I, and there we lived in peril, but in great happiness of soul until the day of massacre. That night in Paris we were given greatly of the mercy of God." "You were there--you were in the massacre at Paris?" In the house of the Duke of Langon, with whom was resting after a hazardous enterprise, Michel de la Foret." "And here beginneth the second lesson," said the Queen with a smile on her lips; but there was a look of scrutiny in her eyes, and something like irony in her tone. "And I will swear by all the stars of Heaven that this Michel saved ye both. Is it not so?" "It is even so. By his skill and bravery we found our way to safety, and in a hiding-place near to our loved Rouen watched him return from the gates of death." "He was wounded then?" "Seven times wounded, and with as little blood left in him as would fill a cup. But it was summer, and we were in the hills, and they brought us, our friends of Rouen, all that we had need of; and so God was with us. "But did he save thy life, except by skill, by indirect and fortunate wisdom? Was there deadly danger upon thee? Did he beat down the sword of death?" "He saved my life thrice directly. The wounds he carried were got by interposing his own sword 'twixt death and me." "And that hath need of recompense?" "My life was little worth the wounds he suffered; but I waited not until he saved it to owe it unto him. All that it is was his before he drew the sword." "And 'tis this ye would call love betwixt ye--sweet givings and takings of looks, and soft sayings, and unchangeable and devouring faith. Is't this--and is this all?" The girl had spoken out of an innocent heart, but the challenge in the Queen's voice worked upon her, and though she shrank a little, the fulness of her soul welled up and strengthened her. She spoke again, and now in her need and in her will to save the man she loved, by making this majesty of England his protector, her words had eloquence. "It is not all, noble Queen. Love is more than that. It is the waking in the poorest minds, in the most barren souls, of something greater than themselves--as a chemist should find a substance that would give all other things by touching of them a new and higher value; as light and sun draw from the earth the tendrils of the seed that else had lain unproducing. 'Tis not alone soft words and touch of hand or lip. This caring wholly for one outside one's self kills that self which else would make the world blind and deaf and dumb. None hath loved greatly but hath helped to love in others. Ah, most sweet Majesty, for great souls like thine, souls born great, this medicine is not needful, for already hath the love of a nation inspired and enlarged it; but for souls like mine and of so many, none better and none worse than me, to love one other soul deeply and abidingly lifts us higher than ourselves. Your Majesty hath been loved by a whole people, by princes and great men in a different sort--is it not the world's talk that none that ever reigned hath drawn such slavery of princes, and of great nobles who have courted death for hopeless love of one beyond their star? And is it not written in the world's book also that the Queen of England hath loved no man, but hath poured out her heart to a people; and hath served great causes in all the earth because of that love which hath still enlarged her soul, dowered at birth beyond reckoning?" Tears filled her eyes. "Ah, your supreme Majesty, to you whose heart is universal, the love of one poor mortal seemeth a small thing, but to those of little consequence it is the cable by which they unsteadily hold over the chasm 'twixt life and immortality. To thee, oh greatest monarch of the world, it is a staff on which thou need'st not lean, which thou hast never grasped; to me it is my all; without it I fail and fall and die." She had spoken as she felt, yet, because she was a woman and guessed the mind of another woman, she had touched Elizabeth where her armour was weakest. She had suggested that the Queen had been the object of adoration, but had never given her heart to any man; that hers was the virgin heart and life; and that she had never stooped to conquer. Without realising it, and only dimly moving with that end in view, she had whetted Elizabeth's vanity. She had indeed soothed a pride wounded of late beyond endurance, suspecting, as she did, that Leicester had played his long part for his own sordid purposes, that his devotion was more alloy than precious metal. No note of praise could be pitched too high for Elizabeth, and if only policy did not intervene, if but no political advantage was lost by saving De la Foret, that safety seemed now secure. "You tell a tale and adorn it with good grace," she said, and held out her hand. Angele kissed it. "And you have said to Elizabeth what none else dared to say since I was Queen here. He who hath never seen the lightning hath no dread of it. I had not thought there was in the world so much artlessness, with all the power of perfect art. But we live to be wiser. Thou shalt continue in thy tale. Thou hast seen Mary, once Queen of France, now Queen of Scots--answer me fairly; without if, or though, or any sort of doubt, the questions I shall put. Which of us twain, this ruin-starred queen or I, is of higher stature?" "She hath advantage in little of your Majesty," bravely answered Angele. "Then," answered Elizabeth sourly, "she is too high, for I myself am neither too high nor too low. . . . And of complexion, which is the fairer?" "Her complexion is the fairer, but your Majesty's countenance hath truer beauty, and sweeter majesty." Elizabeth frowned slightly, then said: "What exercises did she take when you were at the Court?" "Sometimes she hunted, your Majesty, and sometimes she played upon the virginals." "Did she play to effect?" "Reasonably, your noble Majesty." "You shall hear me play, and then speak truth upon us, for I have known none with so true a tongue since my father died." Thereon she called to a lady who waited near in a little room to bring an instrument; but at that moment Cecil appeared again at the door, and his face seeming to show anxiety, Elizabeth, with a sigh, beckoned him to enter. "Your face, Cecil, is as long as a Lenten collect. What raven croaks in England on May Day eve?" Cecil knelt before her, and gave into her hand a paper. "What record runs here?" she asked querulously. "A prayer of your faithful Lords and Commons that your Majesty will grant speech with their chosen deputies to lay before your Majesty a cause they have at heart." "Touching of--?" darkly asked the Queen. "The deputies wait even now--will not your Majesty receive them? They have come humbly, and will go hence as humbly on the instant, if the hour is ill chosen." Immediately Elizabeth's humour changed. A look of passion swept across her face, but her eyes lighted, and her lips smiled proudly. She avoided troubles by every means, fought off by subtleties the issues which she must meet; but when the inevitable hour came none knew so well to meet it as though it were a dearest friend, no matter what the danger, how great the stake. "They are here at my door, these good servants of the State--shall they be kept dangling?" she said loudly. "Though it were time for prayers and God's mercy yet should they speak with me, have my counsel, or my hand upon the sacred parchment of the State. Bring them hither, Cecil. Now we shall see--Now you shall see, Angele of Rouen, now you shall see how queens shall have no hearts to call their own, but be head and heart and soul and body at the will of every churl who thinks he serves the State and knows the will of Heaven. Stand here at my left hand. Mark the players and the play." Kneeling, the deputies presented a resolution from the Lords and Commons that the Queen should, without more delay, in keeping with her oft- expressed resolve and the promise of her Council, appoint one who should succeed to the throne in case of her death "without posterity." Her faithful people pleaded with her gracious Majesty to forego unwillingness to marry and seek a consort worthy of her supreme consideration, to be raised to a place beside her near that throne which she had made the greatest in the world. Gravely, solemnly, the chief members of the Lords and Commons spoke, and with as weighty pauses and devoted protestations as though this were the first time their plea had been urged, this obvious duty had been set out before her. Long ago in the flush and pride of her extreme youth and the full assurance of the fruits of marriage, they had spoken with the same sober responsibility; and though her youth had gone and the old certainty had for ever disappeared, they spoke of her marriage and its consequences as though it were still that far-off yesterday. Well for them that they did so, for though time had flown and royal suitors without number had become figures dim in the people's mind, Elizabeth, fed upon adulation, invoked, admired, besieged by young courtiers, flattered by maids who praised her beauty, had never seen the hands of the clock pass high noon, and still remained under the dearest and saddest illusion which can rest in a woman's mind. Long after the hands of life's clock had moved into afternoon, the ancient prayer was still gravely presented that she should marry and give an heir to England's crown; and she as solemnly listened and dropped her eyes, and strove to hide her virgin modesty behind a high demeanour which must needs sink self in royal duty. "These be the dear desires of your supreme Majesty's faithful Lords and Commons and the people of the shires whose wills they represent. Your Majesty's life, God grant it last beyond that of the youngest of your people so greatly blessed in your rule! But accidents of time be many; and while the world is full of guile, none can tell what peril may beset the crown, if your Majesty's wisdom sets not apart, gives not to her country, one whom the nation can surround with its care, encompass lovingly by its duty." The talk with Angele had had a curious influence upon the Queen. It was plain that now she was moved by real feeling, and that, though she deceived herself, or pretended so to do, shutting her eyes to sober facts, and dreaming old dreams--as it were, in a world where never was a mirror nor a timepiece--yet there was working in her a fresher spirit, urging her to a fairer course than she had shaped for many a day. "My lords and gentlemen and my beloved subjects," she answered presently, and for an instant set her eyes upon Angele, then turned to them again, "I pray you stand and hear me. . . . Ye have spoken fair words to my face, and of my face, and of the person of this daughter of great Henry, from whom I got whatever grace or manner or favour is to me; and by all your reasoning you do flatter the heart of the Queen of England, whose mind indeed sleeps not in deed or desire for this realm. Ye have drawn a fair picture of this mortal me, and though from the grace of the picture the colours may fade by time, may give by weather, may be spoiled by chance, yet my loyal mind, nor time with her swift wings shall overtake, nor the misty clouds may darken, nor chance with her slippery foot may overthrow. It sets its course by the heart of England, and when it passeth there shall be found that one shall be left behind who shall be surety of all that hath been lying in the dim warehouse of fate for England's high future. Be sure that in this thing I have entered into the weigh-house, and I hold the balance, and ye shall be well satisfied. Ye have been fruitful in counsel, ye have been long knitting a knot never tied, ye shall have comfort soon. But know ye beyond peradventure that I have bided my time with good reason. If our loom be framed with rotten hurdles, when our web is well-ny done, our work is yet to begin. Against mischance and dark discoveries my mind, with knowledge hidden from you, hath been firmly arrayed. If it be in your thought that I am set against a marriage which shall serve the nation, purge yourselves, friends, of that sort of heresy, for the belief is awry. Though I think that to be one and always one, neither mated nor mothering, be good for a private woman, for a prince it is not meet. Therefore, say to my Lords and Commons that I am more concerned for what shall chance to England when I am gone than to linger out my living thread. I hope, my lords and gentlemen, to die with a good Nunc Dimittis, which could not be if I did not give surety for the nation after my graved bones. Ye shall hear soon--ye shall hear and be satisfied, and so I give you to the care of Almighty God." Once more they knelt, and then slowly withdrew, with faces downcast and troubled. They had secret knowledge which she did not yet possess, but which at any moment she must know, and her ambiguous speech carried no conviction to their minds. Yet their conference with her was most opportune, for the news she must presently receive, brought by a messenger from Scotland who had outstripped all others, would no doubt move her to action which should set the minds of the people at rest, and go far to stem the tide of conspiracy flowing through the kingdom. Elizabeth stood watching them, and remained gazing after they had disappeared; then rousing herself, she turned to leave the room, and beckoned to Angele to follow. CHAPTER XII As twilight was giving place to night Angele was roused from the reverie into which she had fallen, by the Duke's Daughter, who whispered to her that if she would have a pleasure given to but few, she would come quickly. Taking her hand the Duke's Daughter--as true and whimsical a spirit as ever lived in troubled days and under the aegis of the sword- led her swiftly to the Queen's chamber. They did not enter, but waited in a quiet gallery. "The Queen is playing upon the virginals, and she playeth best when alone; so stand you here by this tapestry, and you shall have pleasure beyond payment," said the Duke's Daughter. Angele had no thought that the Queen of her vanity had commanded that she be placed there as though secretly, and she listened dutifully at first; but presently her ears were ravished; and even the Duke's Daughter showed some surprise, for never had she heard the Queen play with such grace and feeling. The countenance of the musician was towards them, and at last, as though by accident, Elizabeth looked up and saw the face of her lady. "Spy, spy," she cried. "Come hither--come hither, all of you!" When they had descended and knelt to her, she made as if she would punish the Duke's Daughter by striking her with a scarf that lay at her hand, but to Angele she said: "How think you then, hath that other greater skill--Darnley's wife I mean?" "Not she or any other hath so delighted me," said Angele, with worship in her eyes--so doth talent given to majesty become lifted beyond its measure. The Queen's eyes lighted. "We shall have dancing, then," she said. "The dance hath charms for me. We shall not deny our youth. The heart shall keep as young as the body." An instant later the room was full of dancers, and Elizabeth gave her hand to Leicester, who bent every faculty to pleasing her. His face had darkened as he had seen Angele beside her, but the Queen's graciousness, whether assumed or real, had returned, and her face carried a look of triumph and spirit and delight. Again and again she glanced towards Angele, and what she saw evidently gave her pleasure, for she laughed and disported herself with grace and an agreeable temper, and Leicester lent himself to her spirit with adroit wit and humility. He had seen his mistake of the morning, and was now intent to restore himself to favour. He succeeded well, for the emotions roused in Elizabeth during the day, now heightened by vanity and emulation, found in him a centre upon which they could converge; and, in her mind, Angele, for the nonce, was disassociated from any thought of De la Foret. Leicester's undoubted gifts were well and cautiously directed, and his talent of assumed passion--his heart was facile, and his gallantry knew no bounds--was put to dexterous use, convincing for the moment. The Queen seemed all complaisance again. Presently she had Angele brought to her. "How doth her dance compare-she who hath wedded Darnley?" "She danceth not so high nor disposedly, with no such joyous lightness as your high Majesty, but yet she moveth with circumspection." "Circumspection--circumspection, that is no gift in dancing, which should be wilful yet airily composed, thoughtless yet inducing. Circumspection! --in nothing else hath Mary shown it where she should. 'Tis like this Queen perversely to make a psalm of dancing, and then pirouette with sacred duty. But you have spoken the truth, and I am well content. So get you to your rest." She tapped Ange'le's cheek. "You shall remain here to-night. 'Tis too late for you to be sent abroad." She was about to dismiss her, when there was a sudden stir. Cecil had entered and was making his way to the Queen, followed by two strangers. Elizabeth waited their approach. "Your gracious Majesty," said Cecil, in a voice none heard save Elizabeth, for all had fallen back at a wave of her hand, "the Queen of Scots is the mother of a fair son." Elizabeth's face flushed, then became pale, and she struck her knee with her clinched hand. "Who bringeth the news?" she inquired in a sharp voice. "Sir Andrew Melvill here." "Who is with him yonder?" "One who hath been attached to the Queen of Scots." "He hath the ill look of such an one," she answered, and then said below her breath bitterly: "She hath a son--and I am but a barren stock." Rising, she added hurriedly: "We will speak to the people at the May Day sports to-morrow. Let there be great feasting." She motioned to Sir Andrew Melvill to come forward, and with a gesture of welcome and a promise of speech with him on the morrow she dismissed them. Since the two strangers had entered, Angele's eyes had been fastened on the gentleman who accompanied Sir Andrew Melvill. Her first glance at him had sent a chill through her, and she remained confused and disturbed. In vain her memory strove to find where the man was set in her past. The time, the place, the event eluded her, but a sense of foreboding possessed her; and her eyes followed him with strained anxiety as he retired from the presence. CHAPTER XIII As had been arranged when Lempriere challenged Leicester, they met soon after dawn among the trees beside the Thames. A gentleman of the court, to whom the Duke's Daughter had previously presented Lempriere, gaily agreed to act as second, and gallantly attended the lord of Rozel in his adventurous enterprise. There were few at Court who had not some grudge against Leicester, few who would not willingly have done duty at such a time; for Leicester's friends were of fair-weather sort, ready to defend him, to support him, not for friendship but for the crumbs that dropped from the table of his power. The favourite himself was attended by the Earl of Ealing, a youngster who had his spurs to win, who thought it policy to serve the great time-server. Two others also came. It was a morning little made for deeds of rancour or of blood. As they passed, the early morning mists above the green fields of Kent and Essex were being melted by the summer sun. The smell of ripening fruit came on them with pungent sweetness, their feet crashed odorously through clumps of tiger-lilies, and the dew on the ribbon-grass shook glistening drops upon their velvets. Overhead the carolling of the thrush came swimming recklessly through the trees, and far over in the fields the ploughmen started upon the heavy courses of their labour; while here and there poachers with bows and arrows slid through the green undergrowth, like spies hovering on an army's flank. To Lempriere the morning carried no impression save that life was well worth living. No agitation passed across his nerves, no apprehension reached his mind. He had no imagination; he loved the things that his eyes saw because they filled him with enjoyment; but why they were, or whence they came, or what they meant or boded, never gave him meditation. A vast epicurean, a consummate egotist, ripe with feeling and rich with energy, he could not believe that when he spoke the heavens would not fall. The stinging sweetness of the morning was a tonic to all his energies, an elation to his mind; he swaggered through the lush grasses and boskage as though marching to a marriage. Leicester, on his part, no more caught at the meaning of the morning, at the long whisper of enlivened nature, than did his foe. The day gave to him no more than was his right. If the day was not fine, then Leicester was injured; but if the day was fine, then Leicester had his due. Moral blindness made him blind for the million deep teachings trembling round him. He felt only the garish and the splendid. So it was that at Kenilworth, where his Queen had visited him, the fetes that he had held would far outshine the fete which would take place in Greenwich Park on this May Day. The fete of this May Day would take place, but would he see it? The thought flashed through his mind that he might not; but he trod it under foot; not through an inborn, primitive egotism like that of Lempriere, but through an innate arrogance, an unalterable belief that Fate was ever on his side. He had played so many tricks with Fate, had mocked while taking its gifts so often, that, like the son who has flouted his indulgent father through innumerable times, he conceived that he should never be disinherited. It irked him that he should be fighting with a farmer, as he termed the Seigneur of the Jersey Isle; but there was in the event, too, a sense of relief, for he had a will for murder. Yesterday's events were still fresh in his mind; and he had a feeling that the letting of Lempriere's blood would cool his own and be some cure for the choler which the presence of these strangers at the Court had wrought in him. There were better swordsmen in England than he, but his skill was various, and he knew tricks of the trade which this primitive Norman could never have learnt. He had some touch of wit, some biting observation, and, as he neared the place of the encounter, he played upon the coming event with a mordant frivolity. Not by nature a brave man, he was so much a fatalist, such a worshipper of his star, that he had acquired an artificial courage which had served him well. The unschooled gentlemen with him roared with laughter at his sallies, and they came to the place of meeting as though to a summer feast. "Good-morrow, nobility," said Leicester with courtesy overdone, and bowing much too low. "Good-morrow, valentine," answered Lempriere, flushing slightly at the disguised insult, and rising to the moment. "I hear the crop of fools is short this year in Jersey, and through no fault of yours--you've done your best most loyally," jeered Leicester, as he doffed his doublet, his gentlemen laughing in derision. "'Tis true enough, my lord, and I have come to find new seed in England, where are fools to spare; as I trust in Heaven one shall be spared on this very day for planting yonder." He was eaten with rage, but he was cool and steady. He was now in his linen and small clothes and looked like some untrained Hercules. "Well said, nobility," laughed Leicester with an ugly look. "'Tis seed time--let us measure out the seed. On guard!" Never were two men such opposites, never two so seemingly ill-matched. Leicester's dark face and its sardonic look, his lithe figure, the nervous strength of his bearing, were in strong contrast to the bulking breadth, the perspiring robustness of Lempriere of Rozel. It was not easy of belief that Lempriere should be set to fight this toreador of a fighting Court. But there they stood, Lempriere's face with a great-eyed gravity looming above his rotund figure like a moon above a purple cloud. But huge and loose though the Seigneur's motions seemed, he was as intent as though there were but two beings in the universe, Leicester and himself. A strange alertness seemed to be upon him, and, as Leicester found when the swords crossed, he was quicker than his bulk gave warrant. His perfect health made his vision sure; and, though not a fine swordsman, he had done much fighting in his time, had been ever ready for the touch of steel; and had served some warlike days in fighting France, where fate had well befriended him. That which Leicester meant should be by-play of a moment became a full half-hour's desperate game. Leicester found that the thrust--the fatal thrust learned from an Italian master-- he meant to give, was met by a swift precision, responding to quick vision. Again and again he would have brought the end, but Lempriere heavily foiled him. The wound which the Seigneur got at last, meant to be mortal, was saved from that by the facility of a quick apprehension. Indeed, for a time the issue had seemed doubtful, for the endurance and persistence of the Seigneur made for exasperation and recklessness in his antagonist, and once blood was drawn from the wrist of the great man; but at length Lempriere went upon the aggressive. Here he erred, for Leicester found the chance for which he had manoeuvred--to use the feint and thrust got out of Italy. He brought his enemy low, but only after a duel the like of which had never been seen at the Court of England. The toreador had slain his bull at last, but had done no justice to his reputation. Never did man more gallantly sustain his honour with heaviest odds against him than did the Seigneur of Rozel that day. As he was carried away by the merry gentlemen of the Court, he called back to the favourite: "Leicester is not so great a swordsman after all. Hang fast to your honours by the skin of your teeth, my lord." CHAPTER XIV It was Monday, and the eyes of London and the Court were turned towards Greenwich Park, where the Queen was to give entertainment to the French Envoy who had come once more to urge upon the Queen marriage with a son of the Medici, and to obtain an assurance that she would return to France the widow of the great Montgomery and his valiant lieutenant, Michel de la Foret. The river was covered with boats and barges, festooned, canopied, and hung with banners and devices; and from sunrise music and singing conducted down the stream the gaily dressed populace--for those were the days when a man spent on his ruff and his hose and his russet coat as much as would feed and house a family for a year; when the fine- figured ruflier with sables about his neck, corked slipper, trimmed buskin, and cloak of silk or damask furred, carried his all upon his back. Loud-voiced gallants came floating by; men of a hundred guilds bearing devices pompously held on their way to the great pageant; country bumpkins up from Surrey roystered and swore that there was but one land that God had blessed, and challenged the grinning watermen from Gravesend and Hampton Court to deny it; and the sun with ardour drove from the sky every invading cloud, leaving Essex and Kent as far as eye could see perfect green gardens of opulence. Before Elizabeth had left her bed, London had emptied itself into Greenwich Park. Thither the London Companies had come in their varied dazzling accoutrements--hundreds armed in fine corselets bearing the long Moorish pike; tall halberdiers in the unique armour called Almainrivets, and gunners or muleteers equipped in shirts of mail with morions or steel caps. Here too were to come the Gentlemen Pensioners, resplendent in scarlet, to "run with the spear;" and hundreds of men-at-arms were set at every point to give garish bravery to all. Thousands of citizens, openmouthed, gazed down the long arenas of green festooned with every sort of decoration and picturesque invention. Cages of large birds from the Indies, fruits, corn, fishes, grapes, hung in the trees, players perched in the branches discoursed sweet music, and poets recited their verses from rustic bridges or on platforms with weapons and armour hung trophy-wise on ragged staves. Upon a small lake a dolphin four-and- twenty feet in length came swimming, within its belly a lively orchestra; Italian tumblers swung from rope to bar; and crowds gathered at the places where bear and bull-baiting were to excite the none too fastidious tastes of the time. All morning the gay delights went on, and at high noon the cry was carried from mouth to mouth: "The Queen! The Queen!" She appeared on a balcony surrounded by her lords and ladies, and there received the diplomatists, speaking at length to the French Envoy in a tone of lightness and elusive cheerfulness which he was at a loss to understand and tried in vain to pierce by cogent remarks bearing on matters of moment involved in his embassage. Not far away stood Leicester, but the Queen had done no more than note his presence by a glance, and now and again with ostentatious emphasis she spoke to Angele, whom she had had brought to her in the morning before chapel-going. Thus early, after a few questions and some scrutiny, she had sent her in charge of a gentleman-at-arms and a maid of the Duke's Daughter to her father's lodging, with orders to change her robe, to return to the palace in good time before noon, and to bring her father to a safe place where he could watch the pleasures of the people. When Angele came to the presence again she saw that the Queen was wearing a gown of pure white with the sleeves shot with black, such as she herself had worn when admitted to audience yesterday. Vexed, agitated, embittered as Elizabeth had been by the news brought to her the night before, she had kept her wardrobers and seamstresses at work the whole night to alter a white satin habit to the simplicity and style of that which Angele had worn. "What think you of my gown, my lady refugee?" she said to Angele at last, as the Gentlemen Pensioners paraded in the space below, followed by the Knights Tilters--at their head the Queen's Champion, Sir Henry Lee: twenty-five of the most gallant and favoured of the courtiers of Elizabeth, including the gravest of her counsellors and the youngest gallant who had won her smile, Master Christopher Hatton. Some of these brave suitors, taken from the noblest families, had appeared in the tilt- yard every anniversary of the year of her accession, and had lifted their romantic office, which seemed but the service of enamoured knights, into an almost solemn dignity. The vast crowd disposed itself around the great improvised yard where the Knights Tilters were to engage, and the Queen, followed by her retinue, descended to the dais which had been set up near the palace. Her white satin gown, roped with pearls only at the neck and breast, glistened in the bright sun, and her fair hair took on a burnished radiance. As Angele passed with her in the gorgeous procession, she could not but view the scene with admiring eye, albeit her own sweet sober attire, a pearly grey, seemed little in keeping; for the ladies and lords were most richly attired, and the damask and satin cloaks, crimson velvet gowns, silk hoods, and jewelled swords and daggers made a brave show. She was like some moth in a whorl of butterflies. Her face was pale, and her eye had a curious disturbed look, as though they had seen frightening things. The events of last evening had tried her simple spirit, and she shrank from this glittering show; but the knowledge that her lover's life was in danger, and that her happiness was here and now at stake, held her bravely to her place, beset as it was with peril; for the Queen, with that eccentricity which had lifted her up yesterday, might cast her down to-day, and she had good reason to fear the power and influence of Leicester, whom she knew with a sure instinct was intent on Michel's ruin. Behind all her nervous shrinking and her heart's doubt, the memory of the face of the stranger she had seen last night with Sir Andrew Melvill tortured her. She could not find the time and place where she had seen the eyes that, in the palace, had filled her with mislike and abhorrence as they looked upon the Queen. Again and again in her fitful sleep had she dreamt of him, and a sense of foreboding was heavy upon her--she seemed to hear the footfall of coming disaster. The anxiety of her soul lent an unnatural brightness to her eyes; so that more than one enamoured courtier made essay to engage her in conversation, and paid her deferential compliment when the Queen's eyes were not turned her way. Come to the dais, she was placed not far from her Majesty, beside the Duke's Daughter, whose whimsical nature found frequent expression in what the Queen was wont to call "a merry volt." She seemed a privileged person, with whom none ventured to take liberties, and against whom none was entitled to bear offence, for her quips were free from malice, and her ingenuity in humour of mark. She it was who had put into the Queen's head that morning an idea which was presently to startle Angele and all others. Leicester was riding with the Knights Tilters, and as they cantered lightly past the dais, trailing their spears in obeisance, Elizabeth engaged herself in talk with Cecil, who was standing near, and appeared not to see the favourite. This was the first time since he had mounted to good fortune that she had not thrown him a favour to pick up with his spear and wear in her honour, and he could scarce believe that she had meant to neglect him. He half halted, but she only deigned an inclination of the head, and he spurred his horse angrily on with a muttered imprecation, yet, to all seeming, gallantly paying homage. "There shall be doings ere this day is done. 'Beware the Gipsy'!" said the Duke's Daughter in a low tone to Angele, and she laughed. lightly. "Who is the Gipsy?" asked Angele, with good suspicion, however. "Who but Leicester," answered the other. "Is he not black enough?" "Why was he so called? Who put the name upon Who but the Earl of Sussex as he died--as noble a chief, as true a counsellor as ever spoke truth to a Queen. But truth is not all at Court, and Sussex was no flatterer. Leicester bowed under the storm for a moment when Sussex showed him in his true colours; but Sussex had no gift of intrigue, the tide turned, and so he broke his heart, and died. But he left a message which I sometimes remember with my collects. 'I am now passing to another world,' said he, 'and must leave you to your fortunes and to the Queen's grace and goodness; but beware the Gipsy, for he will be too hard for all of you; you know not the beast so well as I do.' But my Lord Sussex was wrong. One there is who knows him through and through, and hath little joy in the knowing." The look in the eyes of the Duke's Daughter became like steel and her voice hardened, and Angele realised that Leicester had in this beautiful and delicate maid-of-honour as bitter an enemy as ever brought down the mighty from their seats; that a pride had been sometime wounded, suffered an unwarrantable affront, which only innocence could feel so acutely. Her heart went out to the Duke's Daughter as it had never gone out to any of her sex since her mother's death, and she showed her admiration in her glance. The other saw it and smiled, slipping a hand in hers for a moment; and then a look, half-debating, half-triumphant, came into her face as her eyes followed Leicester down the green stretches of the tilting-yard. The trumpet sounded, the people broke out in shouts of delight, the tilting began. For an hour the handsome joust went on, the Earl of Oxford, Charles Howard, Sir Henry Lee, Sir Christopher Hatton, and Leicester challenging, and so even was the combat that victory seemed to settle in the plumes of neither, though Leicester of them all showed not the greatest skill, while in some regards greatest grace and deportment. Suddenly there rode into the lists, whence, no one seemed to know, so intent had the public gaze been fixed, so quickly had he come, a mounted figure all in white, and at the moment when Sir Henry Lee had cried aloud his challenge for the last time. Silence fell as the bright figure cantered down the list, lifted the gauge, and sat still upon his black steed. Consternation fell. None among the people or the Knights Tilters knew who the invader was, and Leicester called upon the Masters of the Ceremonies to demand his name and quality. The white horseman made no reply, but sat unmoved, while noise and turmoil suddenly sprang up around him. Presently the voice of the Queen was heard clearly ringing through the lists. "His quality hath evidence. Set on." The Duke's Daughter laughed, and whispered mischievously in Angele's ear. The gentlemen of England fared ill that day in the sight of all the people, for the challenger of the Knights Tilters was more than a match for each that came upon him. He rode like a wild horseman of Yucatan. Wary, resourceful, sudden in device and powerful in onset, he bore all down, until the Queen cried: "There hath not been such skill in England since my father rode these lists. Three of my best gentlemen down, and it hath been but breathing to him. Now, Sir Harry Lee, it is thy turn," she laughed as she saw the champion ride forward; "and next 'tis thine, Leicester. Ah, Leicester would have at him now!" she added sharply, as she saw the favourite spur forward before the gallant Lee. "He is full of choler--it becomes him, but it shall not be; bravery is not all. And if he failed "she smiled acidly--"he would get him home to Kenilworth and show himself no more--if he failed, and the White Knight failed not! What think you, dove?" she cried to the Duke's Daughter. "Would he not fall in the megrims for that England's honour had been over thrown? Leicester could not live if England's honour should be toppled down like our dear Chris Hatton and his gallants yonder." The Duke's Daughter curtsied. "Methinks England's honour is in little peril--your Majesty knows well how to 'fend it. No subject keeps it." "If I must 'fend it, dove, then Leicester there must not fight to-day. It shall surely be Sir Harry Lee. My Lord Leicester must have the place of honour at the last," she called aloud. Leicester swung his horse round and galloped to the Queen. "Your Majesty," he cried in suppressed anger, "must I give place?" "When all have failed and Leicester has won, then all yield place to Leicester," said the Queen drily. The look on his face was not good to see, but he saluted gravely and rode away to watch the encounter between the most gallant Knight Tilter in England and the stranger. Rage was in his heart, and it blinded him to the certainty of his defeat, for he was not expert in the lists. But by a sure instinct he had guessed the identity of the White Horseman, and every nerve quivered with desire to meet him in combat. Last night's good work seemed to have gone for naught. Elizabeth's humour had changed; and to-day she seemed set on humiliating him before the nobles who hated him, before the people who had found in him the cause why the Queen had not married, so giving no heir to the throne. Perturbed and charged with anger as he was, however, the combat now forward soon chained his attention. Not in many a year had there been seen in England such a display of skill and determination. The veteran Knight Tilter, who knew that the result of this business meant more than life to him, and that more than the honour of his comrades was at stake--even the valour of England which had been challenged--fought as he had never fought before, as no man had fought in England for many a year. At first the people cried aloud their encouragement; but as onset and attack after onset and attack showed that two masters of their craft, two desperate men, had met, and that the great sport had become a vital combat between their own champion and the champion of another land--Spain, France, Denmark, Russia, Italy?--a hush spread over the great space, and every eye was strained; men gazed with bated breath. The green turf was torn and mangled, the horses reeked with sweat and foam, but overhead the soaring skylark sang, as it were, to express the joyance of the day. During many minutes the only sound that broke the stillness was the clash of armed men, the thud of hoofs, and the snorting and the wild breathing of the chargers. The lark's notes, however, ringing out over the lists freed the tongue of the Queen's fool, who suddenly ran out into the lists, in his motley and cap and bells, and in his high trilling voice sang a fool's song to the fighting twain: "Who would lie down and close his eyes While yet the lark sings o'er the dale? Who would to Love make no replies, Nor drink the nut-brown ale, While throbs the pulse, and full 's the purse And all the world 's for sale?" Suddenly a cry of relief, of roaring excitement, burst from the people. Both horsemen and their chargers were on the ground. The fight was over, the fierce game at an end. That which all had feared, even the Queen herself, as the fight fared on, had not come to pass--England's champion had not been beaten by the armed mystery, though the odds had seemed against him. "Though wintry blasts may prove unkind, When winter's past we do forget; Love's breast in summer time is kind, And all 's well while life 's with us yet Hey, ho, now the lark is mating, Life's sweet wages are in waiting!" Thus sang the fool as the two warriors were helped to their feet. Cumbered with their armour, and all dust-covered and blood-stained, though not seriously hurt, they were helped to their horses, and rode to the dais where the Queen sat. "Ye have fought like men of old," she said, "and neither had advantage at the last. England's champion still may cry his challenge and not be forsworn, and he who challenged goeth in honour again from the lists. You, sir, who have challenged, shall we not see your face or hear your voice? For what country, for what prince lifted you the gauge and challenged England's honour?" "I crave your high Majesty's pardon"--Angele's heart stood still. Her love had not pierced his disguise, though Leicester's hate had done so on the instant--"I crave your noble Majesty's grace," answered the stranger, "that I may still keep my face covered in humility. My voice speaks for no country and for no prince. I have fought for mine own honour, and to prove to England's Queen that she hath a champion who smiteth with strong arm, as on me and my steed this hath been seen to-day." "Gallantly thought and well said," answered Elizabeth; "but England's champion and his strong arm have no victory. If gifts were given they must needs be cut in twain. But answer me, what is your country? I will not have it that any man pick up the gauge of England for his own honour. What is your country? "I am an exile, your high Majesty; and the only land for which I raise my sword this day is that land where I have found safety from my enemies." The Queen turned and smiled at the Duke's Daughter. "I knew not where my own question might lead, but he hath turned it to full account," she said, under her breath. "His tongue is as ready as his spear. Then ye have both laboured in England's honour, and I drink to you both," she added, and raised to her lips a glass of wine which a page presented. "I love ye both--in your high qualities," she hastened to add with dry irony, and her eye rested mockingly on Leicester. "My lords and gentlemen and all of my kingdom," she added in a clear voice, insistent in its force, "ye have come upon May Day to take delight of England in my gardens, and ye are welcome. Ye have seen such a sight as doeth good to the eyes of brave men. It hath pleased me well, and I am constrained to say to you what, for divers great reasons, I have kept to my own counsels, labouring for your good. The day hath come, however, the day and the hour when ye shall know that wherein I propose to serve you as ye well deserve. It is my will--and now I see my way to its good fulfilment--that I remain no longer in that virgin state wherein I have ever lived." Great cheering here broke in, and for a time she could get no further. Ever alive to the bent of the popular mind, she had chosen a perfect occasion to take them into her confidence--however little or much she would abide by her words, or intended the union of which she spoke. In the past she had counselled with her great advisers, with Cecil and the rest, and through them messages were borne to the people; but now she spoke direct to them all, and it had its immediate reward--the acclamations were as those with which she was greeted when she first passed through the streets of London on inheriting the crown. Well pleased, she continued: "This I will do with expedition and weightiest judgment, for of little account though I am, he that sits with the Queen of England in this realm must needs be a prince indeed.... So be ye sure of this that ye shall have your heart-most wishes, and there shall be one to come after me who will wear this crown even as I have worn, in direct descent, my father's crown. Our dearest sister, the Queen of the Scots, hath been delivered of a fair son; and in high affection the news thereof she hath sent me, with a palfry which I shall ride among you in token of the love I bear her Majesty. She hath in her time got an heir to the throne with which we are ever in kinship and alliance, and I in my time shall give ye your heart's desire." Angele, who had, with palpitating heart and swimming head, seen Michel de la Foret leave the lists and disappear among the trees, as mysteriously as he came, was scarce conscious of the cheers and riotous delight that followed Elizabeth's tactful if delusive speech to the people. A few whispered words from the Duke's Daughter had told her that Michel had obeyed the Queen's command in entering the lists and taking up the challenge; and that she herself, carrying the royal message to him and making arrangements for his accoutrement and mounting, had urged him to obedience. She observed drily that he had needed little pressure, and that his eyes had lighted at the prospect of the combat. Apart from his innate love of fighting, he had realised that in the moment of declining to enter the Queen's service he had been at a disadvantage, and that his courage was open to attack by the incredulous or malicious. This would have mattered little were it not that he had been given unusual importance as a prisoner by the Queen's personal notice of himself. He had, therefore, sprung to the acceptance, and sent his humble duty to the Queen by her winsome messenger, who, with conspicuous dramatic skill, had arranged secretly, with the help of a Gentleman Pensioner and the Master of the Horse, his appearance and his exit. That all succeeded as she had planned quickened her pulses, and made her heart still warmer to Angele, who, now that all was over, and her Huguenot lover had gone his mysterious ways, seemed lost in a troubled reverie. It was a troubled reverie indeed, for Angele's eyes were on the stranger who was present with Sir Andrew Melvill the night before. Her gaze upon him now became fixed and insistent, for the sense of foreboding so heavy on her deepened to a torturing suspense. Where had she seen this man before? To what day or hour in her past did he belong? What was there in his smooth, smiling, malicious face that made her blood run cold? As she watched him, he turned his head. She followed his eyes. The horse which Mary Queen of Scots had sent with the message of the birth of her son was being led to the Queen by the dark browed, pale-faced churl who had brought it from Scotland. She saw a sharp dark look pass between the two. Suddenly her sight swam, she swayed and would have fainted, but resolution steadied her, and a low exclamation broke from her lips. Now she knew! The face that had eluded her was at last in the grasp of horrified memory. It was the face of one who many years ago was known to have poisoned the Due de Chambly by anointing the pommel of his saddle with a delicate poison which the rider would touch, and touching would, perhaps, carry to his nostrils or mouth as he rode, and die upon the instant. She herself had seen the Due de Chambly fall; had seen this man fly from Paris for his life; and had thereafter known of his return to favour at the court of Mary and Francis, for nothing could be proved against him. The memory flashed like lightning through her brain. She moved swiftly forward despite the detaining hand of the Duke's Daughter. The Queen was already mounted, her hand already upon the pommel of the saddle. Elizabeth noted the look of anguished anxiety in Angele's eyes, her face like that of one who had seen souls in purgatory; and some swift instinct, born of years upon years of peril in old days when her life was no boon to her enemies, made her lean towards the girl, whose quick whispered words were to her as loud as thunder. She was, however, composed and still. Not a tremor passed through her. "Your wish is granted, mistress," she said aloud, then addressed a word to Cecil at her side, who passed on her command. Presently she turned slowly to the spot where Sir Andrew Melvill and the other sat upon their horses. She scanned complacently the faces of both, then her eyes settled steadily on the face of the murderer. Still gazing intently she drew the back of her gloved fingers along the pommel. The man saw the motion, unnoted and unsignificant to any other save Angele, meaningless even to Melvill, the innocent and honest gentleman at his side; and he realised that the Queen had had a warning. Noting the slight stir among the gentlemen round him, he knew that his game was foiled, that there was no escape. He was not prepared for what followed. In a voice to be heard only at small distance, the Queen said calmly: "This palfry sent me by my dear sister of Scotland shall bear me among you, friends; and in days to come I will remember how she hath given new life to me by her loving message. Sir Andrew Melvill, I shall have further speech with you; and you, sir,"--speaking to the sinister figure by his side--"come hither." The man dismounted, and with unsteady step came forward. Elizabeth held out her gloved hand for him to kiss. His face turned white. It was come soon, his punishment. None knew save Angele and the Queen the doom that was upon him, if Angele's warning was well-founded. He knelt, and bent his head over her hand. "Salute, sir," she said in a low voice. He touched his lips to her fingers. She pressed them swiftly against his mouth. An instant, then he rose and stepped backwards to his horse. Tremblingly, blindly, he mounted. A moment passed, then Elizabeth rode on with her ladies behind her, her gentlemen beside her. As she passed slowly, the would-be regicide swayed and fell from his horse, and stirred no more. Elizabeth rode on, her hand upon the pommel of the saddle. So she rode for a full half-hour, and came back to her palace. But she raised not her gloved right hand above the pommel, and she dismounted with exceeding care. That night the man who cared for the horse died secretly as had done his master, with the Queen's glove pressed to his nostrils by one whom Cecil could trust. And the matter was hidden from the Court and the people; for it was given out that Melvill's friend had died of some heart trouble. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Each of us will prove himself a fool given perfect opportunity No note of praise could be pitched too high for Elizabeth She had never stooped to conquer MICHEL AND ANGELE [A Ladder of Swords] By Gilbert Parker Volume 3. CHAPTER XV It seemed an unspeakable smallness in a man of such high place in the State, whose hand had tied and untied myriad knots of political and court intrigue, that he should stoop to a game which any pettifogging hanger-on might play-and reap scorn in the playing. By insidious arts, Leicester had in his day turned the Queen's mind to his own will; had foiled the diplomacy of the Spaniard, the German and the Gaul; had by subterranean means checkmated the designs of the Medici; had traced his way through plot and counter-plot, hated by most, loved by none save, maybe, his Royal mistress to whom he was now more a custom than a cherished friend. Year upon year he had built up his influence. None had championed him save himself, and even from the consequences of rashness and folly he had risen to a still higher place in the kingdom. But such as Leicester are ever at last a sacrifice to the laborious means by which they achieve their greatest ends-means contemptible and small. To the great intriguers every little detail, every commonplace insignificance is used--and must be used by them alone--to further their dark causes. They cannot trust their projects to brave lieutenants, to faithful subordinates. They cannot say, "Here is the end; this is the work to be done; upon your shoulders be the burden!" They must "stoop to conquer." Every miserable detail becomes of moment, until by-and-by the art of intrigue and conspiracy begins to lose proportion in their minds. The detail has ever been so important, conspiracy so much second nature, that they must needs be intriguing and conspiring when the occasion is trifling and the end negligible. To all intriguers life has lost romance; there is no poem left in nature; no ideal, personal, public or national, detains them in its wholesome influence; no great purpose allures them; they have no causes for which to die--save themselves. They are so honeycombed with insincerity and the vice of thought, that by-and-by all colours are as one, all pathways the same; because, whichever hue of light breaks upon their world they see it through the grey-cloaked mist of falsehood; and whether the path be good or bad they would still walk in it crookedly. How many men and women Leicester had tracked or lured to their doom; over how many men and women he had stepped to his place of power, history speaks not carefully; but the traces of his deeds run through a thousand archives, and they suggest plentiful sacrifices to a subverted character. Favourite of a Queen, he must now stoop to set a trap for the ruin of as simple a soul as ever stepped upon the soil of England; and his dark purposes had not even the excuse of necessity on the one hand, of love or passion on the other. An insane jealousy of the place the girl had won in the consideration of the Queen, of her lover who, he thought, had won a still higher place in the same influence, was his only motive for action at first. His cruelty was not redeemed even by the sensuous interest the girl might arouse in a reckless nature by her beauty and her charm. So the great Leicester--the Gipsy, as the dead Sussex had called him--lay in wait in Greenwich Park for Angele to pass, like some orchard thief in the blossoming trees. Knowing the path by which she would come to her father's cottage from the palace, he had placed himself accordingly. He had thought he might have to wait long or come often for the perfect opportunity; but it seemed as if Fate played his game for him, and that once again the fruit he would pluck should fall into his palm. Bright- eyed, and elated from a long talk with the Duke's Daughter, who had given her a message from the Queen, Angele had abstractedly taken the wrong path in the wood. Leicester saw that it would lead her into the maze some distance off. Making a detour, he met her at the moment she discovered her mistake. The light from the royal word her friend had brought was still in her face; but it was crossed by perplexity now. He stood still as though astonished at seeing her, a smile upon his face. So perfectly did he play his part that she thought the meeting accidental; and though in her heart she had a fear of the man and knew how bitter an enemy he was of Michel's, his urbane power, his skilful diplomacy of courtesy had its way. These complicated lives, instinct with contradiction, have the interest of forbidden knowledge. The dark experiences of life leave their mark and give such natures that touch of mystery which allures even those who have high instincts and true feelings, as one peeps over a hidden depth and wonders what lies beyond the dark. So Angele, suddenly arrested, was caught by the sense of mystery in the man, by the fascination of finesse, of dark power; and it was womanlike that all on an instant she should dream of the soul of goodness in things evil. Thus in life we are often surprised out of long years of prejudice, and even of dislike and suspicion, by some fortuitous incident, which might have chanced to two who had every impulse towards each other, not such antagonisms as lay between Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and this Huguenot refugee. She had every cue to hate hum. Each moment of her life in England had been beset with peril because of him-peril to the man she loved, therefore peril to herself. And yet, so various is the nature of woman, that, while steering straitly by one star, she levies upon the light of other stars. Faithful and sincere, yet loving power, curious and adventurous, she must needs, without intention, without purpose, stray into perilous paths. As Leicester stepped suddenly into Angele's gaze, she was only, as it were, conscious of a presence in itself alluring by virtue of the history surrounding it. She was surprised out of an instinctive dislike, and the cue she had to loathe him was for the moment lost. Unconsciously, unintentionally, she smiled at him now, then, realising, retreated, shrinking from him, her face averted. Man or woman had found in Leicester the delicate and intrepid gamester, exquisite in the choice of detail, masterful in the breadth of method. And now, as though his whole future depended on this interview, he brought to bear a life-long skill to influence her. He had determined to set the Queen against her. He did not know--not even he--that she had saved the Queen's life on that auspicious May Day when Harry Lee had fought the white knight Michel de la Foret and halved the honours of the lists with him. If he had but known that the Queen had hid from him this fact--this vital thing touching herself and England, he would have viewed his future with a vaster distrust. But there could be no surer sign of Elizabeth's growing coldness and intended breach than that she had hid from him the dreadful incident of the poisoned glove, and the swift execution of the would-be murderer, and had made Cecil her only confidant. But he did know that Elizabeth herself had commanded Michel de la Foret to the lists; and his mad jealousy impelled him to resort to a satanic cunning towards these two fugitives, who seemed to have mounted within a few short days as far as had he in thrice as many years to a high place in the regard of the Majesty of England. To disgrace them both; to sow distrust of the girl in the Queen's mind; to make her seem the opposite of what she was; to drop in her own mind suspicion of her lover; to drive her to some rash act, some challenge of the Queen herself--that was his plan. He knew how little Elizabeth's imperious spirit would brook any challenge from this fearless girl concerning De la Foret. But to convince her that the Queen favoured Michel in some shadowed sense, that De la Foret was privy to a dark compact--so deep a plot was all worthy of a larger end. He had well inspired the Court of France through its ambassador to urge the Medici to press actively and bitterly for De la Foret's return to France and to the beheading sword that waited for him; and his task had been made light by international difficulties, which made the heart of Elizabeth's foreign policy friendship with France and an alliance against Philip of Spain. She had, therefore, opened up, even in the past few days, negotiations once again for the long-talked-of marriage with the Duke of Anjou, the brother of the King, son of the Medici. State policy was involved, and, if De la Foret might be a counter, the pledge of exchange in the game, as it were, the path would once more be clear. He well believed that Elizabeth's notice of De la Foret was but a fancy that would pass, as a hundred times before such fancies had come and gone; but against that brighter prospect there lay the fact that never before had she shown himself such indifference. In the past she had raged against him, she had imprisoned him; she had driven him from her presence in her anger, but always her paroxysms of rage had been succeeded by paroxysms of tenderness. Now he saw a colder light in the sky, a greyer horizon met his eye. So at every corner of the compass he played for the breaking of the spell. Yet as he now bowed low before Angele there seemed to show in his face a very candour of surprise, of pleasure, joined to a something friendly and protective in his glance and manner. His voice insinuated that bygones should be bygones; it suggested that she had misunderstood him. It pleaded against the injustice of her prejudice. "So far from home!" he said with a smile. "More miles from home," she replied, thinking of never-returning days in France, "than I shall ever count again." "But no, methinks the palace is within a whisper," he responded. "Lord Leicester knows well I am a prisoner; that I no longer abide in the palace," she answered. He laughed lightly. "An imprisonment in a Queen's friendship. I bethink me, it is three hours since I saw you go to the palace. It is a few worthless seconds since you have got your freedom." She nettled at his tone. "Lord Leicester takes great interest in my unimportant goings and comings. I cannot think it is because I go and come." He chose to misunderstand her meaning. Drawing closer he bent over her shoulder. "Since your arrival here, my only diary is the tally of your coming and going." Suddenly, as though by an impulse of great frankness, he added in a low tone: "And is it strange that I should follow you--that I should worship grace and virtue? Men call me this and that. You have no doubt been filled with dark tales of my misdeeds. Has there been one in the Court, even one, who, living by my bounty or my patronage, has said one good word of me? And why? For long years the Queen, who, maybe, might have been better counselled, chose me for her friend, adviser--because I was true to her. I have lived for the Queen, and living for her have lived for England. Could I keep--I ask you, could I keep myself blameless in the midst of flattery, intrigue, and conspiracy? I admit that I have played with fiery weapons in my day; and must needs still do so. The incorruptible cannot exist in the corrupted air of this Court. You have come here with the light of innocence and truth about you. At first I could scarce believe that such goodness lived, hardly understood it. The light half-blinded and embarrassed; but, at last, I saw! You of all this Court have made me see what sort of life I might have lived. You have made me dream the dreams of youth and high unsullied purpose once again. Was it strange that in the dark pathways of the Court I watched your footsteps come and go, carrying radiance with you? No--Leicester has learned how sombre, sinister, has been his past, by a presence which is the soul of beauty, of virtue, and of happy truth. Lady, my heart is yours. I worship you." Overborne for the moment by the eager, searching eloquence of his words, she had listened bewildered to him. Now she turned upon him with panting breath and said: "My lord, my lord, I will hear no more. You know I love Monsieur de la Foret, for whose sake I am here in England--for whose sake I still remain." "'Tis a labour of love but ill requited," he answered with suggestion in his tone. "What mean you, my lord?" she asked sharply, a kind of blind agony in her voice; for she felt his meaning, and though she did not believe him, and knew in her soul he slandered, there was a sting, for slander ever scorches where it touches. "Can you not see?" he said. "May Day--why did the Queen command him to the lists? Why does she keep him here-in the palace? Why, against the will of France, her ally, does she refuse to send him forth? Why, unheeding the laughter of the Court, does she favour this unimportant stranger, brave though he be? Why should she smile upon him? . . . Can you not see, sweet lady?" "You know well why the Queen detains him here," she answered calmly now. "In the Queen's understanding with France, exiles who preach the faith are free from extradition. You heard what the Queen required of him-- that on Trinity Day he should preach before her, and upon this preaching should depend his safety." "Indeed, so her Majesty said with great humour," replied Leicester. "So indeed she said; but when we hide our faces a thin veil suffices. The man is a soldier--a soldier born. Why should he turn priest now? I pray you, think again. He was quick of wit; the Queen's meaning was clear to him; he rose with seeming innocence to the fly, and she landed him at the first toss. But what is forward bodes no good to you, dear star of heaven. I have known the Queen for half a lifetime. She has wild whims and dangerous fancies, fills her hours of leisure with experiences--an artist is the Queen. She means no good to you." She had made as if to leave him, though her eyes searched in vain for the path which she should take; but she now broke in impatiently: "Poor, unnoted though I am, the Queen of England is my friend," she answered. "What evil could she wish me? From me she has naught to fear. I am not an atom in her world. Did she but lift her finger I am done. But she knows that, humble though I be, I would serve her to my last breath; because I know, my Lord Leicester, how many there are who serve her foully, faithlessly; and there should be those by her who would serve her singly." His eyes half closed, he beat his toe upon the ground. He frowned, as though he had no wish to hurt her by words which he yet must speak. With calculated thought he faltered. "Yet do you not think it strange," he said at last, "that Monsieur de la Foret should be within the palace ever, and that you should be banished from the palace? Have you never seen the fly and the spider in the web? Do you not know that they who have the power to bless or ban, to give joy or withhold it, appear to give when they mean to withhold? God bless us all--how has your innocence involved your judgment!" She suddenly flushed to the eyes. "I have wit enough," she said acidly, "to feel that truth which life's experience may not have taught me. It is neither age nor evil that teaches one to judge 'twixt black and white. God gives the true divination to human hearts that need." It was a contest in which Leicester revelled--simplicity and single- mindedness against the multifarious and double-tongued. He had made many efforts in his time to conquer argument and prejudice. When he chose, none could be more insinuating or turn the flank of a proper argument by more adroit suggestion. He used his power now. "You think she means well by you? You think that she, who has a thousand ladies of a kingdom at her call, of the best and most beautiful--and even," his voice softened, "though you are more beautiful than all, that beauty would soften her towards you? When was it Elizabeth loved beauty? When was it that her heart warmed towards those who would love or wed? Did she not imprison me, even in these palace grounds, for one whole year because I sought to marry? Has she not a hundred times sent from her presence women with faces like flowers because they were in contrast to her own? Do you see love blossoming at this Court? God's Son! but she would keep us all like babes in Eden an' she could, unmated and unloved." He drew quickly to her and leant over her, whispering down her shoulder. "Do you think there is any reason why all at once she should change her mind and cherish lovers?" She looked up at him fearlessly and firmly. "In truth, I do. My Lord Leicester, you have lived in the circle of her good pleasure, near to her noble Majesty, as you say, for half a lifetime. Have you not found a reason why now or any time she should cherish love and lovers? Ah, no, you have seen her face, you have heard her voice, but you have not known her heart!" "Ah, opportunity lacked," he said in irony and with a reminiscent smile. "I have been busy with State affairs, I have not sat on cushions, listening to royal fingers on the virginals. Still, I ask you, do you think there is a reason why from her height she should stoop down to rescue you or give you any joy? Wherefore should the Queen do aught to serve you? Wherefore should she save your lover?" It was on Angele's lips to answer, "Because I saved her life on May Day." It was on her lips to tell of the poisoned glove, but she only smiled, and said: "But, yes, I think, my lord, there is a reason, and in that reason I have faith." Leicester saw how firmly she was fixed in her idea, how rooted was her trust in the Queen's intentions towards her; and he guessed there was something hidden which gave her such supreme confidence. "If she means to save him, why does she not save him now? Why not end the business in a day--not stretch it over these long mid-summer weeks?" "I do not think it strange," she answered. "He is a political prisoner. Messages must come and go between England and France. Besides, who calleth for haste? Is it I who have most at stake? It is not the first time I have been at Court, my lord. In these high places things are orderly,"--a touch of sarcasm came into her tone,--"life is not a mighty rushing wind, save to those whom vexing passion drives to hasty deeds." She made to move on once more, but paused, still not certain of her way. "Permit me to show you," he said with a laugh and a gesture towards a path. "Not that--this is the shorter. I will take you to a turning which leads straight to your durance--and another which leads elsewhere." She could not say no, because she had, in very truth, lost her way, and she might wander far and be in danger. Also, she had no fear of him. Steeled to danger in the past, she was not timid; but, more than all, the game of words between them had had its fascination. The man himself, by virtue of what he was, had his fascination also. The thing inherent in all her sex, to peep over the hedge, to skirt dangerous fires lightly, to feel the warmth distantly and not be scorched--that was in her, too; and she lived according to her race and the long predisposition of the ages. Most women like her--as good as she--have peeped and stretched out hands to the alluring fire and come safely through, wiser and no better. But many, too, bewildered and confused by what they see--as light from a mirror flashed into the eye half blinds--have peeped over the hedge and, miscalculating their power of self-control, have entered in, and returned no more into the quiet garden of unstraying love. Leicester quickly put on an air of gravity. "I warn you that danger lies before you. If you cross the Queen--and you will cross the Queen when you know the truth, as I know it--you will pay a heavy price for refusing Leicester as your friend." She made a protesting motion and seemed about to speak, but suddenly, with a passionate gesture, Leicester added: "Let them go their way. Monsieur de la Foret will be tossed aside before another winter comes. Do you think he can abide here in the midst of plot and intrigue, and hated by the people of the Court? He is doomed. But more, he is unworthy of you; while I can serve you well, and I can love you well." She shrank away from him. "No, do not turn from me, for in very truth, Leicester's heart has been pierced by the inevitable arrow. You think I mean you evil?" He paused with a sudden impulse continued: "No! no! And if there be a saving grace in marriage, marriage it shall be, if you will but hear me. You shall be my wife--Leicester's wife. As I have mounted to power so I will hold power with you--with you, the brightest spirit that ever England saw. Worthy of a kingdom with you beside me, I shall win to greater, happier days; and at Kenilworth, where kings and queens have lodged, you shall be ruler. We will leave this Court until Elizabeth, betrayed by those who know not how to serve her, shall send for me again. Here--the power behind the throne--you and I will sway this realm through the aging, sentimental Queen. Listen, and look at me in the eyes-- I speak the truth, you read my heart. You think I hated you and hated De la Foret. By all the gods, it's true I hated him, because I saw that he would come between me and the Queen. A man must have one great passion. Life itself must be a passion. Power was my passion--power, not the Queen. You have broken all that down. I yield it all to you--for your sake and my own. I would steal from life yet before my sun goes to its setting a few years of truth and honesty and clear design. At heart I am a patriot--a loyal Englishman. Your cause--the cause of Protestantism-- did I not fight for it at Rochelle? Have I not ever urged the Queen to spend her revenue for your cause, to send her captains and her men to fight for it?" She raised her head in interest, and her lips murmured: "Yes, yes, I know you did that." He saw his advantage and pursued it. "See, I will be honest with you-- honest, at last, as I have wished in vain to be, for honesty was misunderstood. It is not so with you--you understand. Dear, light of womanhood, I speak the truth now. I have been evil in my day I admit it --evil because I was in the midst of evil. I betrayed because I was betrayed; I slew, else I should have been slain. We have had dark days in England, privy conspiracy and rebellion; and I have had to thread my way through dreadful courses by a thousand blind paths. Would it be no joy to you if I, through your influence, recast my life--remade my policy, renewed my youth--pursuing principle where I have pursued opportunity? Angele, come to Kenilworth with me. Leave De la Foret to his fate. The way to happiness is with me. Will you come?" He had made his great effort. As he spoke he almost himself believed that he told the truth. Under the spell of his own emotional power it seemed as though he meant to marry her, as though he could find happiness in the union. He had almost persuaded himself to be what he would have her to believe he might be. Under the warmth and convincing force of his words her pulses had beat faster, her heart had throbbed in her throat, her eyes had glistened; but not with that light which they had shed for Michel de la Foret. How different was this man's wooing--its impetuous, audacious, tender violence, with that quiet, powerful, almost sacred gravity of her Camisard lover! It is this difference--the weighty, emotional difference--between a desperate passion and a pure love which has ever been so powerful in twisting the destinies of a moiety of the world to misery, who otherwise would have stayed contented, inconspicuous and good. Angele would have been more than human if she had not felt the spell of the ablest intriguer, of the most fascinating diplomatist of his day. Before he spoke of marriage the thrill--the unconvincing thrill though it was--of a perilous temptation was upon her; but the very thing most meant to move her only made her shudder; for in her heart of hearts she knew that he was ineradicably false. To be married to one constitutionally untrue would be more terrible a fate for her than to be linked to him in a lighter, more dissoluble a bond. So do the greatest tricksters of this world overdo their part, so play the wrong card when every past experience suggests it is the card to play. He knew by the silence that followed his words, and the slow, steady look she gave him, that she was not won nor on the way to the winning. "My lord," she said at last, and with a courage which steadied her affrighted and perturbed innocence, "you are eloquent, you are fruitful of flattery, of those things which have, I doubt not, served you well in your day. But, if you see your way to a better life, it were well you should choose one of nobler mould than I. I am not made for sacrifice, to play the missioner and snatch brands from the burning. I have enough to do to keep my own feet in the ribbon-path of right. You must look elsewhere for that guardian influence which is to make of you a paragon." "No, no," he answered sharply, "you think the game not worth the candle --you doubt me and what I can do for you; my sincerity, my power you doubt." "Indeed, yes, I doubt both," she answered gravely, "for you would have me believe that I have power to lead you. With how small a mind you credit me! You think, too, that you sway this kingdom; but I know that you stand upon a cliff's edge, and that the earth is fraying 'neath your tread. You dare to think that you have power to drag down with you the man who honours me with--" "With his love, you'd say. Yet he will leave you fretting out your soul until the sharp-edged truth cuts your heart in twain. Have you no pride? I care not what you say of me--say your worst, and I will not resent it, for I will still prove that your way lies with me." She gave a bitter sigh, and touched her forehead with trembling fingers. "If words could prove it, I had been convinced but now, for they are well devised, and they have music too; but such a music, my lord, as would drown the truth in the soul of a woman. Your words allure, but you have learned the art of words. You yourself--oh, my lord, you who have tasted all the pleasures of this world, could you then have the heart to steal from one who has so little that little which gives her happiness?" "You know not what can make you happy--I can teach you that. By God's Son! but you have wit and intellect and are a match for a prince, not for a cast off Camisard. I shall ere long be Lord--Lieutenant of these Isles-of England and Ireland. Come to my nest. We will fly far --ah, your eye brightens, your heart leaps to mine--I feel it now, I--" "Oh, have done, have done," she passionately broke in; "I would rather die, be torn upon the rack, burnt at the stake, than put my hand in yours! And you do not wish it--you speak but to destroy, not to cherish. While you speak to me I see all those"--she made a gesture as though to put something from her "all those to whom you have spoken as you have done to me. I hear the myriad falsehoods you have told--one whelming confusion. I feel the blindness which has crept upon them--those poor women--as you have sown the air with the dust of the passion which you call love. Oh, you never knew what love meant, my lord! I doubt if, when you lay in your mother's arms, you turned to her with love. You never did one kindly act for love, no generous thought was ever born in you by love. Sir, I know it as though it were written in a book; your life has been one long calculation--your sympathy or kindness a calculated thing. Good-nature, emotion you may have had, but never the divine thing by which the world is saved. Were there but one little place where that Eden flower might bloom within your heart, you could not seek to ruin that love which lives in mine and fills it, conquering all the lesser part of me. I never knew of how much love I was capable until I heard you speak today. Out of your life's experience, out of all that you have learned of women good and evil, you--for a selfish, miserable purpose--would put the gyves upon my wrists, make me a pawn in your dark game; a pawn which you would lose without a thought as the game went on. "If you must fight, my lord, if you must ruin Monsieur de la Foret and a poor Huguenot girl, do it by greater means than this. You have power, you say. Use it then; destroy us, if you will. Send us to the Medici: bring us to the block, murder us--that were no new thing to Lord Leicester. But do not stoop to treachery and falsehood to thrust us down. Oh, you have made me see the depths of shame to-day! But yet," her voice suddenly changed, a note of plaintive force filled it--"I have learned much this hour--more than I ever knew. Perhaps it is that we come to knowledge only through fire and tears." She smiled sadly. "I suppose that sometime some day, this page of life would have scorched my sight. Oh, my lord, what was there in me that you dared speak so to me? Was there naught to have stayed your tongue and stemmed the tide in which you would engulf me?" He had listened as in a dream at first. She had read him as he might read himself, had revealed him with the certain truth, as none other had done in all his days. He was silent for a long moment, then raised his hand in protest. "You have a strange idea of what makes offence and shame. I offered you marriage," he said complacently. "And when I come to think upon it, after all that you have said, fair Huguenot, I see no cause for railing. You call me this and that; to you I am a liar, a rogue, a cut-throat, what you will; and yet, and yet, I will have my way--I will have my way in the end." "You offered me marriage--and meant it not. Do I not know? Did you rely so little on your compelling powers, my lord, that you must needs resort to that bait? Do you think that you will have your way to-morrow if you have failed to-day?" With a quick change of tone and a cold, scornful laugh he rejoined: "Do you intend to measure swords with me?" "No, no, my lord," she answered quietly; "what should one poor unfriended girl do in contest with the Earl of Leicester? But yet, in very truth, I have friends, and in my hour of greatest need I shall go seeking." She was thinking of the Queen. He guessed her thought. "You will not be so mad," he said urbanely again. "Of what can you complain to the Queen? Tut, tut, you must seek other friends than the Majesty of England!" "Then, my lord, I will," she answered bravely. "I will seek the help of such a Friend as fails not when all fails, even He who putteth down the mighty from their seats and exalteth the humble." "Well, well, if I have not touched your heart," he answered gallantly, "I at least have touched your wit and intellect. Once more I offer you alliance. Think well before you decline." He had no thought that he would succeed, but it was ever his way to return to the charge. It had been the secret of his life's success so far. He had never taken a refusal. He had never believed that when man or woman said no that no was meant; and, if it were meant, he still believed that constant dropping would wear away the stone. He still held that persistence was the greatest lever in the world, that unswerving persistence was the master of opportunity. They had now come to two paths in the park leading different ways. "This road leads to Kenilworth, this to your prison," he said with a slow gesture, his eyes fixed upon hers. "I will go to my prison, then," she said, stepping forward, "and alone, by your leave." Leicester was a good sportsman. Though he had been beaten all along the line, he hid his deep chagrin, choked down the rage that was in him. Smiling, he bowed low. "I will do myself the honour to visit your prison to-morrow," he said. "My father will welcome you, my lord," she answered, and, gathering up her skirt, ran down the pathway. He stood unmoving, and watched her disappear. "But I shall have my way with them both," he said aloud. The voice of a singer sounded in the green wood. Half consciously Leicester listened. The words came shrilling through the trees: "Oh, love, it is a lily flower, (Sing, my captain, sing, my lady!) The sword shall cleave it, Life shall leave it Who shall know the hour? (Sing, my lady, still!)" Presently the jingling of bells mingled with the song, then a figure in motley burst upon him. It was the Queen's fool. "Brother, well met--most happily met!" he cried. "And why well met, fool?" asked Leicester. "Prithee, my work grows heavy, brother. I seek another fool for the yoke. Here are my bells for you. I will keep my cap. And so we will work together, fool: you for the morning, I for the afternoon, and the devil take the night-time! So God be with you, Obligato!" With a laugh he leaped into the undergrowth, and left Leicester standing with the bells in his hand. CHAPTER XVI Angele had come to know, as others in like case have ever done, how wretched indeed is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours. She had saved the Queen's life upon May Day, and on the evening of that day the Queen had sent for her, had made such high and tender acknowledgment of her debt as would seem to justify for her perpetual honour. And what Elizabeth said she meant; but in a life set in forests of complications and opposing interests the political overlapped the personal in her nature. Thus it was that she had kept the princes of the world dangling, advancing towards marriage with them, retreating suddenly, setting off one house against the other, allying herself to one European power to-day, with another to-morrow, her own person and her crown the pawn with which she played. It was not a beautiful thing in a woman, but it was what a woman could do; and, denied other powers given to men--as to her father--she resorted to astute but doubtful devices to advance her diplomacy. Over all was self-infatuation, the bane of princes, the curse of greatness, the source of wide injustice. It was not to be expected, as Leicester had said, that Elizabeth, save for the whim of the moment, would turn aside to confer benefit upon Angele or to keep her in mind, unless constrained to do so for some political reason. The girl had charmed the Queen, had, by saving her life, made England her long debtor; but Leicester had judged rightly in believing that the Queen might find the debt irksome; that her gratitude would be corroded by other destructive emotions. It was true that Angele had saved her life, but Michel had charmed her eye. He had proved himself a more gallant fighter than any in her kingdom; and had done it, as he had said, in her honour. So, as her admiration for Michel grew, her debt to Angele became burdensome; and, despite her will, there stole into her mind the old petulance and smothered anger against beauty and love and marriage. She could ill bear that one near her person should not be content to flourish in the light and warmth of her own favour, setting aside all other small affections. So it was that she had sent Angele to her father and kept De la Foret in the palace. Perplexed, troubled by new developments, the birth of a son to Mary Queen of Scots, the demand of her Parliament that she should marry, the pressure of foreign policy which compelled her to open up again negotiations for marriage with the Duke of Anjou--all these combined to detach her from the interest she had suddenly felt in Angele. But, by instinct, she knew also that Leicester, through jealousy, had increased the complication; and, fretful under the long influence he had had upon her, she steadily lessened intercourse with him. The duel he fought with Lempriere on May Day came to her ears through the Duke's Daughter, and she seized upon it with sharp petulance. First she ostentatiously gave housing and care to Lempriere, and went to visit him; then, having refused Leicester audience, wrote to him. "What is this I hear," she scrawled upon the paper, "that you have forced a quarrel with the Lord of Rozel, and have well-ny ta'en his life! Is swording then your dearest vice that you must urge it on a harmless gentle man, and my visitor? Do you think you hold a charter of freedom for your self-will? Have a care, Leicester, or, by God! you shall know another sword surer than your own." The rage of Leicester on receiving this knew no bounds; for though he had received from Elizabeth stormy letters before, none had had in it the cold irony of this missive. The cause of it? Desperation seized him. With a mad disloyalty he read in every word of Elizabeth's letter, Michel de la Foret, refugee. With madder fury he determined to strike for the immediate ruin of De la Foret, and Angele with him--for had she not thrice repulsed him as though he had been some village captain? After the meeting in the maze he had kept his promise of visiting her "prison." By every art, and without avail, he had through patient days sought to gain an influence over her; for he saw that if he could but show the Queen that the girl was open to his advances, accepted his protection, her ruin would be certain--in anger Elizabeth would take revenge upon both refugees. But however much he succeeded with Monsieur Aubert, he failed wholly with Angele. She repulsed him still with the most certain courtesy, with the greatest outward composure; but she had to make her fight alone, for the Queen forbade intercourse with Michel, and she must have despaired but for the messages sent now and then by the Duke's Daughter. Through M. Aubert, to whom Leicester was diligently courteous, and whom he sought daily, discussing piously the question of religion so dear to the old man's heart, he strove to foster in Angele's mind the suspicion he had ventured at their meeting in the maze, that the Queen, through personal interest in Michel, was saving his life to keep him in her household. So well did he work on the old man's feelings that when he offered his own protection to M. Aubert and Angele, whatever the issue with De la Foret might be, he was met with an almost tearful response of gratitude. It was the moment to convey a deep distrust of De la Foret to the mind of the old refugee, and it was subtly done. Were it not better to leave the Court where only danger surrounded them, and find safety on Leicester's own estate, where no man living could molest them? Were it not well to leave Michel de la Foret to his fate, what ever it would be? Thrice within a week the Queen had sent for De la Foret--what reason was there for that, unless the Queen had a secret personal interest in him? Did M. Aubert think it was only a rare touch of humour which had turned De la Foret into a preacher, and set his fate upon a sermon to be preached before the Court? He himself had long held high office, had been near to her Majesty, and he could speak with more knowledge than he might use--it grieved him that Mademoiselle Aubert should be placed in so painful a position. Sometimes as the two talked Angele would join them; and then there was a sudden silence, which made her flush with embarrassment, anxiety or anger. In vain did she assume a cold composure, in vain school herself to treat Leicester with a precise courtesy; in vain her heart protested the goodness of De la Foret and high uprightness of the Queen; the persistent suggestions of the dark Earl worked upon her mind in spite of all. Why had the Queen forbidden her to meet Michel, or write to him, or to receive letters from him? Why had the Queen, who had spoken such gratitude, deserted her? And now even the Duke's Daughter wrote to her no more, sent her no further messages. She felt herself a prisoner, and that the Queen had forgotten her debt. She took to wandering to that part of the palace-grounds where she could see the windows of the tower her lover inhabited. Her old habit of cheerful talk deserted her, and she brooded. It was long before she heard of the duel between the Seigneur and Lord Leicester--the Duke's Daughter had kept this from her, lest she should be unduly troubled--and when, in anxiety, she went to the house where Lempriere had been quartered, he had gone, none could tell her whither. Buonespoir was now in close confinement, by secret orders of Leicester, and not allowed to walk abroad; and thus with no friend save her father, now so much under the influence of the Earl, she was bitterly solitary. Bravely she fought the growing care and suspicion in her heart; but she was being tried beyond her strength. Her father had urged her to make personal appeal to the Queen; and at times, despite her better judgment, she was on the verge of doing so. Yet what could she say? She could not go to the Queen of England and cry out, like a silly milk-maid: "You have taken my lover--give him back to me!" What proof had she that the Queen wanted her lover? And if she spoke, the impertinence of the suggestion might send back to the fierce Medici that same lover, to lose his head. Leicester, who now was playing the game as though it were a hazard for states and kingdoms, read the increasing trouble in her face; and waited confidently for the moment when in desperation she would lose her self- control and go to the Queen. But he did not reckon with the depth of the girl's nature and her true sense of life. Her brain told her that what she was tempted to do she should not; that her only way was to wait; to trust that the Queen of England was as much true woman as Queen, and as much Queen as true woman; and that the one was held in high equipoise by the other. Besides, Trinity Day would bring the end of it all, and that was not far off. She steeled her will to wait till then, no matter how dark the sky might be. As time went on, Leicester became impatient. He had not been able to induce M. Aubert to compel Angele to accept a quiet refuge at Kenilworth; he saw that this plan would not work, and he deployed his mind upon another. If he could but get Angele to seek De la Foret in his apartment in the palace, and then bring the matter to Elizabeth's knowledge with sure proof, De la Foret's doom would be sealed. At great expense, however; for, in order to make the scheme effective, Angele should visit De la Foret at night. This would mean the ruin of the girl as well. Still that could be set right; because, once De la Foret was sent to the Medici the girl's character could be cleared; and, if not, so much the surer would she come at last to his protection. What he had professed in cold deliberation had become in some sense a fact. She had roused in him an eager passion. He might even dare, when De la Foret was gone, to confess his own action in the matter to the Queen, once she was again within his influence. She had forgiven him more than that in the past, when he had made his own mad devotion to herself excuse for his rashness or misconduct. He waited opportunity, he arranged all details carefully, he secured the passive agents of his purpose; and when the right day came he acted. About ten o'clock one night, a half-hour before the closing of the palace gates, when no one could go in or go out save by permit of the Lord Chamberlain, a footman from a surgeon of the palace came to Angele, bearing a note which read: "Your friend is very ill, and asks for you. Come hither alone; and now, if you would come at all." Her father was confined to bed with some ailment of the hour, and asleep --it were no good to awaken him. Her mind was at once made up. There was no time to ask permission of the Queen. She knew the surgeon's messengers by sight, this one was in the usual livery, and his master's name was duly signed. In haste she made herself ready, and went forth into the night with the messenger, her heart beating hard, a pitiful anxiety shaking her. Her steps were fleet between the lodge and the palace. They were challenged nowhere, and the surgeon's servant, entering a side door of the palace, led her hastily through gloomy halls and passages where they met no one, though once in a dark corridor some one brushed against her. She wondered why there were no servants to show the way, why the footman carried no torch or candle; but haste and urgency seemed due excuse, and she thought only of Michel, and that she would soon see him-dying, dead perhaps before she could touch his hand! At last they emerged into a lighter and larger hallway, where her guide suddenly paused, and said to Angel, motioning towards a door: "Enter. He is there." For a moment she stood still, scarce able to breathe, her heart hurt her so. It seemed to her as though life itself was arrested. As the servant, without further words, turned and left her, she knocked, opened the door without awaiting a reply, and stepping into semidarkness, said softly: "Michel! Michel!" CHAPTER XVII At Angle's entrance a form slowly raised itself on a couch, and a voice, not Michel's, said: "Mademoiselle--by our Lady, 'tis she!" It was the voice of the Seigneur of Rozel, and Angle started back amazed. "You, Monsieur--you!" she gasped. "It was you that sent for me?" "Send? Not I--I have not lost my manners yet. Rozel at Court is no greater fool than Lempriere in Jersey." Angle wrung her hands. "I thought it De la Foret who was ill. The surgeon said to come quickly." Lempriere braced himself against the wall, for he was weak, and his fever still high. "Ill?--not he. As sound in body and soul as any man in England. That is a friend, that De la Foret lover of yours, or I'm no butler to the Queen. He gets leave and brings me here and coaxes me back to life again--with not a wink of sleep for him these five days past till now." Angel had drawn nearer, and now stood beside the couch, trembling and fearful, for it came to her mind that she had been made the victim of some foul device. The letter had read: "Your friend is ill." True, the Seigneur was her friend, but he had not sent for her. "Where is De la Foret?" she asked quickly. "Yonder, asleep," said the Seigneur, pointing to a curtain which divided the room from one adjoining. Angel ran quickly towards the door, then stopped short. No, she would not waken him. She would go back at once. She would leave the palace by the way she came. Without a word she turned and went towards the door opening into the hallway. With her hand upon the latch she stopped short again; for she realised that she did not know her way through the passages and corridors, and that she must make herself known to the servants of the palace to obtain guidance and exit. As she stood helpless and confused, the Seigneur called hoarsely: "De la Foret--De la Foret!" Before Angele could decide upon her course, the curtain of the other room was thrust aside, and De la Foret entered. He was scarce awake, and he yawned contentedly. He did not see Angele, but turned towards Lempriere. For once the Seigneur had a burst of inspiration. He saw that Angele was in the shadow, and that De la Foret had not observed her. He determined that the lovers should meet alone. "Your arm, De la Foret," he grunted. "I'll get me to the bed in yonder room--'tis easier than this couch." "Two hours ago you could not bear the bed, and must get you to the couch--and now! Seigneur, do you know the weight you are?" he added, laughing, as he stooped, and helping Lempriere gently to his feet, raised him slowly in his arms and went heavily with him to the bedroom. Angele watched him with a strange thrill of timid admiration and delight. Surely it could not be that Michel--her Michel--could be bought from his allegiance by any influence on earth. There was the same old simple laugh on his lips, as, with chaffing words, he carried the huge Seigneur to the other room. Her heart acquitted him then and there of all blame, past or to come. "Michel!" she said aloud involuntarily--the call of her spirit which spoke on her lips against her will. De la Foret had helped Lempriere to the bed again as he heard his name called, and he stood suddenly still, looking straight before him into space. Angele's voice seemed ghostly and unreal. "Michel!" he heard again, and he came forward into the room where she was. Yet once again she said the word scarcely above a whisper, for the look of rapt wonder and apprehension in his manner overcame her. Now he turned towards her, where she stood in the shadow by the door. He saw her, but even yet he did not stir, for she seemed to him still an apparition. With a little cry she came forward to him. "Michel--help me!" she murmured, and stretched out her hands. With a cry of joy he took her in his arms and pressed her to his heart. Then a realisation of danger came to him. "Why did you come?" he asked. She told him hastily. He heard with astonishment, and then said: "There is some foul trick here. Have you the message?" She handed it to him. "It is the surgeon's writing, verily," he said; "but it is still a trick, for the sick man here is Rozel. I see it all. You and I forbidden to meet--it was a trick to bring you here." "Oh, let me go!" she cried. "Michel, Michel, take me hence." She turned towards the door. "The gates are closed," he said, as a cannon boomed on the evening air. Angele trembled violently. "Oh, what will come of this?" she cried, in tearful despair. "Be patient, sweet, and let me think," he answered. At that moment there came a knocking at the door, then it was thrown open, and there stepped inside the Earl of Leicester, preceded by a page bearing a torch. "Is Michel de la Foret within?" he called; then stopped short, as though astonished, seeing Angele. "So! so!" he said, with a contemptuous laugh. Michel de la Foret's fingers twitched. He quickly stepped in front of Angele, and answered: "What is your business here, my lord?" Leicester languorously took off a glove, and seemed to stifle a yawn in it; then said: "I came to take you into my service, to urge upon you for your own sake to join my troops, going upon duty in the North; for I fear that if you stay here the Queen Mother of France will have her way. But I fear I am too late. A man who has sworn himself into service d'amour has no time for service de la guerre." "I will gladly give an hour from any service I may follow to teach the Earl of Leicester that he is less a swordsman than a trickster." Leicester flushed, but answered coolly: "I can understand your chagrin. You should have locked your door. It is the safer custom." He bowed lightly towards Angele. "You have not learned our English habits of discretion, Monsieur de la Foret. I would only do you service. I appreciate your choler. I should be no less indignant. So, in the circumstances, I will see that the gates are opened, of course you did not realise the flight of time,--and I will take Mademoiselle to her lodgings. You may rely on my discretion. I am wholly at your service --tout a vous, as who should say in your charming language." The insolence was so veiled in perfect outward courtesy that it must have seemed impossible for De la Foret to reply in terms equal to the moment. He had, however, no need to reply, for the door of the room suddenly opened, and two pages stepped inside with torches. They were followed by a gentleman in scarlet and gold, who said, "The Queen!" and stepped aside. An instant afterwards Elizabeth, with the Duke's Daughter, entered. The three dropped upon their knees, and Elizabeth waved without the pages and the gentleman-in-waiting. When the doors closed, the Queen eyed the three kneeling figures, and as her glance fell on Leicester a strange glitter came into her eyes. She motioned all to rise, and with a hand upon the arm of the Duke's Daughter, said to Leicester: "What brings the Earl of Leicester here?" "I came to urge upon Monsieur the wisdom of holding to the Sword and leaving the Book to the butter-fingered religious. Your Majesty needs good soldiers." He bowed, but not low, and it was clear he was bent upon a struggle. He was confounded by the Queen's presence, he could not guess why she should have come; and that she was prepared for what she saw was clear. "And brought an eloquent pleader with you?" She made a scornful gesture towards Angele. "Nay, your Majesty; the lady's zeal outran my own, and crossed the threshold first." The Queen's face wore a look that Leicester had never seen on it before, and he had observed it in many moods. "You found the lady here, then?" "With Monsieur alone. Seeing she was placed unfortunately, I offered to escort her hence to her father. But your Majesty came upon the moment." There was a ring of triumph in Leicester's voice. No doubt, by some chance, the Queen had become aware of Angele's presence, he thought. Fate had forestalled the letter he had already written on this matter and meant to send her within the hour. Chance had played into his hands with perfect suavity. The Queen, less woman now than Queen, enraged by the information got he knew not how, had come at once to punish the gross breach of her orders and a dark misconduct-so he thought. The Queen's look, as she turned it on Angele, apparently had in it what must have struck terror to even a braver soul than that of the helpless Huguenot girl. "So it is thus you spend the hours of night? God's faith, but you are young to be so wanton!" she cried in a sharp voice. "Get you from my sight and out of my kingdom as fast as horse and ship may carry you--as feet may bear you." Leicester's face lighted to hear. "Your high Majesty," pleaded the girl, dropping on her knees, "I am innocent. As God lives, I am innocent." "The man, then, only is guilty?" the Queen rejoined with scorn. "Is it innocent to be here at night, my palace gates shut, with your lover- alone?" Leicester laughed at the words. "Your Majesty, oh, your gracious Majesty, hear me. We were not alone-- not alone--" There was a rustle of curtains, a heavy footstep, and Lempriere of Rozel staggered into the room. De la Foret ran to help him, and throwing an arm around him, almost carried him towards the couch. Lempriere, however, slipped from De la Foret's grasp to his knees on the floor before the Queen. "Not alone, your high and sacred Majesty, I am here--I have been here through all. I was here when Mademoiselle came, brought hither by trick of some knave not fit to be your immortal Majesty's subject. I speak the truth, for I am butler to your Majesty and no liar. I am Lempriere of Rozel." No man's self-control could meet such a surprise without wavering. Leicester was confounded, for he had not known that Lempriere was housed with De la Foret. For a moment he could do naught but gaze at Lempriere. Then, as the Seigneur suddenly swayed and would have fallen, the instinct of effective courtesy, strong in him, sent him with arms outstretched to lift him up. Together, without a word, he and De la Foret carried him to the couch and laid him down. That single act saved Leicester's life. There was something so naturally (though, in truth, it was so hypocritically) kind in the way he sprang to his enemy's assistance that an old spirit of fondness stirred in the Queen's breast, and she looked strangely at him. When, however, they had disposed of Lempriere and Leicester had turned again towards her, she said: "Did you think I had no loyal and true gentlemen at my Court, my lord? Did you think my leech would not serve me as fair as he would serve the Earl of Leicester? You have not bought us all, Robert Dudley, who have bought and sold so long. The good leech did your bidding and sent your note to the lady; but there your bad play ended and Fate's began. A rabbit's brains, Leicester--and a rabbit's end. Fate has the brains you need." Leicester's anger burst forth now under the lash of ridicule. "I cannot hope to win when your Majesty plays Fate in caricature." With a little gasp of rage Elizabeth leaned over and slapped his face with her long glove. "Death of my life, but I who made you do unmake you!" she cried. He dropped his hand on his sword. "If you were but a man, and not--" he said, then stopped short, for there was that in the Queen's face which changed his purpose. Anger was shaking her, but there were tears in her eyes. The woman in her was stronger than the Queen. It was nothing to her at this moment that she might have his life as easily as she had struck his face with her glove; this man had once shown the better part of himself to her, and the memory of it shamed her for his own sake now. She made a step towards the door, then turned and spoke: "My Lord, I have no palace and no ground wherein your footstep will not be trespass. Pray you, remember." She turned towards Lempriere, who lay on his couch faint and panting. "For you, my Lord of Rozel, I wish you better health, though you have lost it somewhat in a good cause." Her glance fell on De la Foret. Her look softened. "I will hear you preach next Sunday, sir." There was an instant's pause, and then she said to Angele, with gracious look and in a low voice: "You have heard from me that calumny which the innocent never escape. To try you I neglected you these many days; to see your nature even more truly than I knew it, I accused you but now. You might have been challenged first by one who could do you more harm than Elizabeth of England, whose office is to do good, not evil. Nets are spread for those whose hearts are simple, and your feet have been caught. Be thankful that we understand; and know that Elizabeth is your loving friend. You have had trials--I have kept you in suspense--there has been trouble for us all; but we are better now; our minds are more content; so all may be well, please God! You will rest this night with our lady-dove here, and to-morrow early you shall return in peace to your father. You have a good friend in our cousin." She made a gentle motion towards the Duke's Daughter. "She has proved it so. In my leech she has a slave. To her you owe this help in time of need. She hath wisdom, too, and we must listen to her, even as I have done this day." She inclined her head towards the door. Leicester opened it, and as she passed out she gave him one look which told him that his game was lost, if not for ever, yet for time uncertain and remote. "You must not blame the leech, my lord," she said, suddenly turning back. "The Queen of England has first claim on the duty of her subjects. They serve me for love; you they help at need as time-servers." She stepped on, then paused again and looked back. "Also I forbid fighting betwixt you," she said, in a loud voice, looking at De la Foret and Leicester. Without further sign or look, she moved on. Close behind came Angele and the Duke's Daughter, and Leicester followed at some distance. CHAPTER XVIII Not far from the palace, in a secluded place hidden by laburnum, roses, box and rhododendrons, there was a quaint and beautiful retreat. High up on all sides of a circle of green the flowering trees and shrubs interlaced their branches, and the grass, as smooth as velvet, was of such a note as soothed the eye and quieted the senses. In one segment of the verdant circle was a sort of open bower made of poles, up which roses climbed and hung across in gay festoons; and in two other segments mossy banks made resting-places. Here, in days gone by, when Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, first drew the eyes of his Queen upon him, Elizabeth came to listen to his vows of allegiance, which swam in floods of passionate devotion to her person. Christopher Hatton, Sir Henry Lee, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Sussex, a race of gallants, had knelt upon this pleasant sward. Here they had declared a devotion that, historically platonic, had a personal passion which, if rewarded by no personal requital, must have been an expensive outlay of patience and emotion. But those days had gone. Robert Dudley had advanced far past his fellows, had locked himself into the chamber of the Queen's confidence, had for long proved himself necessary to her, had mingled deference and admiration with an air of monopoly, and had then advanced to an air of possession, of suggested control. Then had begun his decline. England and England's Queen could have but one ruler, and upon an occasion in the past Elizabeth made it clear by the words she used: "God's death, my Lord, I have wished you well; but my favour is not so locked up for you that others shall not partake thereof; and, if you think to rule here, I will take a course to see you forthcoming. I will have here but one mistress and no master." In these words she but declared what was the practice of her life, the persistent passion of her rule. The world could have but one sun, and every man or woman who sought its warmth must be a sun-worshipper. There could be no divided faith, no luminaries in the sky save those which lived by borrowed radiance. Here in this bright theatre of green and roses poets had sung the praises of this Queen to her unblushing and approving face; here ladies thrice as beautiful as she had begged her to tell them the secret of her beauty, so much greater than that of any living woman; and she was pleased even when she knew they flattered but to gain her smile--it was the tribute that power exacts. The place was a cenotaph of past romance and pleasure. Every leaf of every tree and flower had impressions of glories, of love, ambition and intrigue, of tears and laughter, of joyousness and ruin. Never a spot in England where so much had been said and done, so far reaching in effect and influence. But its glory was departed, its day was done, it was a place of dreams and memories: the Queen came here no more. Many years had withered since she had entered this charmed spot; and that it remained so fine was but evidence of the care of those to whom she had given strict orders seven years past, that in and out of season it must be ever kept as it had erstwhile been. She had never entered the place since the day the young Marquis of Wessex, whom she had imprisoned for marrying secretly and without her consent, on his release came here, and, with a concentrated bitterness and hate, had told her such truths as she never had heard from man or woman since she was born. He had impeached her in such cold and murderous terms as must have made wince even a woman with no pride. To Elizabeth it was gall and wormwood. When he at last demanded the life of the young wife who had died in enforced seclusion, because she had married the man she loved, Elizabeth was so confounded that she hastily left the place, saying no word in response. This attack had been so violent, so deadly, that she had seemed unnerved, and forbore to command him to the Tower or to death. "You, in whose breast love never stirred, deny the right to others whom God blessed with it," he cried. "Envious of mortal happiness that dare exist outside your will or gift, you sunder and destroy. You, in whose hands was power to give joy, gave death. What you have sown you shall reap. Here on this spot I charge you with high treason, with treachery to the people over whom you have power as a trust, which trust you have made a scourge." With such words as these he had assailed her, and for the first time in her life she had been confounded. In safety he had left the place, and taken his way to Italy, from which he had never returned, though she had sent for him in kindness. Since that day Elizabeth had never come hither; and by-and-by none of her Court came save the Duke's Daughter, and her fool, who both made it their resort. Here the fool came upon the Friday before Trinity Day, bringing with him Lempriere and Buonespoir, to whom he had much attached himself. It was a day of light and warmth, and the place was like a basket of roses. Having seen the two serving-men dispose, in a convenient place, the refreshment which Lempriere's appetite compelled, the fool took command of the occasion and made the two sit upon a bank, while he prepared the repast. Strangest of the notable trio was the dwarfish fool with his shaggy black head, twisted mouth, and watchful, wandering eye, whose foolishness was but the flaunting cover of shrewd observation and trenchant vision. Going where he would, and saying what he listed, now in the Queen's inner chamber, then in the midst of the Council, unconsidered, and the butt of all, he paid for his bed and bounty by shooting shafts of foolery which as often made his listeners shrink as caused their laughter. The Queen he called Delicio, and Leicester, Obligato--as one who piped to another's dance. He had taken to Buonespoir at the first glance, and had frequented him, and Lempriere had presently been added to his favour. He had again and again been messenger between them, as also of late between Angele and Michel, whose case he viewed from a stand-point of great cheerfulness, and treated them as children playing on the sands-- as, indeed, he did the Queen and all near to her. But Buonespoir, the pirate, was to him reality and the actual, and he called him Bono Publico. At first Lempriere, ever jealous of his importance, was inclined to treat him with elephantine condescension; but he could not long hold out against the boon archness of the jester, and he collapsed suddenly into as close a friendship as that between himself and Buonespoir. A rollicking spirt was his own fullest stock-in-trade, and it won him like a brother. So it was that here, in the very bosom of the forest, lured by the pipe the fool played, Lempriere burst forth into song, in one hand a bottle of canary, in the other a handful of comfits: "Duke William was a Norman (Spread the sail to the breeze!) That did to England ride; At Hastings by the Channel (Drink the wine to the lees!) Our Harold the Saxon died. If there be no cakes from Normandy, There'll be more ale in England!" "Well sung, nobility, and well said," cried Buonespoir, with a rose by the stem in his mouth, one hand beating time to the music, the other clutching a flagon of muscadella; "for the Normans are kings in England, and there's drink in plenty at the Court of our Lady Duchess." "Delicio shall never want while I have a penny of hers to spend," quoth the fool, feeling for another tune. "Should conspirators prevail, and the damnedest be, she hath yet the Manor of Rozel and my larder," urged Lempriere, with a splutter through the canary. "That shall be only when the Fifth wind comes--it is so ordained, Nuncio!" said the fool blinking. Buonespoir set down his flagon. "And what wind is the Fifth wind?" he asked, scratching his bullethead, his child-like, widespread eyes smiling the question. "There be now four winds--the North wind and his sisters, the East, the West, and South. When God sends a Fifth wind, then conspirators shall wear crowns. Till then Delicio shall sow and I shall reap, as is Heaven's will." Lempriere lay back and roared with laughter. "Before Belial, there never was such another as thou, fool. Conspirators shall die and not prevail, for a man may not marry his sister, and the North wind shall have no progeny. So there shall be no Fifth wind." "Proved, proved," cried the fool. "The North wind shall go whistle for a mate--there shall be no Fifth wind. So, Delicio shall still sail by the compass, and shall still compass all, and yet be compassed by none; for it is written, Who compasseth Delicio existeth not." Buonespoir watched a lark soaring, as though its flight might lead him through the fool's argument clearly. Lempriere closed his eye, and struggled with it, his lips outpursed, his head sunk on his breast. Suddenly his eyes opened, he brought the bottle of canary down with a thud on the turf. "'Fore Michael and all angels, I have it, fool; I travel, I conceive. De Carteret of St. Ouen's must have gone to the block ere conceiving so. I must conceive thus of the argument. He who compasseth the Queen existeth not, for compassing, he dieth." "So it is by the hour-glass and the fortune told in the porringer. You have conceived like a man, Nuncio." "And conspirators, I conceive, must die, so long as there be honest men to slay them," rejoined the Seigneur. "Must only honest men slay conspirators? Oh, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego!" wheezed Buonespoir with a grin. He placed his hand upon his head in self-pity. "Buonespoir, art thou damned by muscadella?" he murmured. "But thou art purged of the past, Bono Publico," answered the fool. "Since Delicio hath looked upon thee she hath shredded the Tyburn lien upon thee--thou art flushed like a mountain spring; and conspirators shall fall down by thee if thou, passant, dost fall by conspirators in the way. Bono Publico, thou shalt live by good company. Henceforth contraband shall be spurned and the book of grace opened." Buonespoir's eyes laughed like a summer sky, but he scratched his head and turned over the rose-stem in his mouth reflectively. "So be it, then, if it must be; but yesterday the Devon sea-sweeper, Francis Drake, overhauled me in my cottage, coming from the Queen, who had infused him of me. 'I have heard of you from a high masthead,' said he. 'If the Spanish main allure you, come with me. There be galleons yonder still; they shall cough up doubloons.' 'It hath a sound of piracy,' said I. 'I am expurgated. My name is written on clean paper now, blessed be the name of the Queen!' 'Tut, tut, Buonesperado,' laughed he, 'you shall forget that Tyburn is not a fable if you care to have doubloons reminted at the Queen's mint. It is meet Spanish Philip's head be molted to oblivion, and Elizabeth's raised, so that good silver be purged of Popish alloy.' But that I had sworn by the little finger of St. Peter when the moon was full, never to leave the English seas, I also would have gone with Drake of Devon this day. It is a man and a master of men that Drake of Devon." "'Tis said that when a man hath naught left but life, and hath treated his honour like a poor relation, he goes to the Spanish main with Drake and Grenville," said Lempriere. "Then must Obligato go, for he hath such credentials," said the fool, blowing thistle-down in the air. "Yesterday was no Palm Sunday to Leicester. Delicio's head was high. 'Imperial Majesty,' quoth Obligato, his knees upon the rushes, 'take my life but send me not forth into darkness where I shall see my Queen no more. By the light of my Queen's eyes have I walked, and pains of hell are my Queen's displeasure.' 'Methinks thy humbleness is tardy,' quoth Delicio. 'No cock shall crow by my nest,' said she. 'And, by the mantle of Elijah, I am out with sour faces and men of phlegm and rheum. I will be gay once more. So get thee gone to Kenilworth, and stray not from it on thy peril. Take thy malaise with thee, and I shall laugh again.' Behold he goeth. So that was the end of Obligato, and now cometh another tune." "She hath good cheer?" asked Lempriere eagerly. "I have never seen Delicio smile these seven years as she smiled to-day; and when she kissed Amicitia I sent for my confessor and made my will. Delicio hath come to spring-time, and the voice of the turtle is in her ear." "Amicitia--and who is Amicitia?" asked Lempriere, well flushed with wine. "She who hath brought Obligato to the diminuendo and finale," answered the fool; "even she who hath befriended the Huguenottine of the black eyes." "Ah, she, the Duke's Daughter--v'la, that is a flower of a lady! Did she not say that my jerkin fitted neatly when I did act as butler to her adorable Majesty three months syne? She hath no mate in the world save Mademoiselle Aubert, whom I brought hither to honour and to fame." "To honour and fame, was it--but by the hill of desperandum, Nuncio," said the fool, prodding him with his stick of bells. "'Desperandum'! I know not Latin; it amazes me," said Lempriere, waving a lofty hand. "She--the Huguenottine--was a-mazed also, and from the maze was played by Obligato." "How so! how so!" cried the Seigneur, catching at his meaning. "Did Leicester waylay and siege? 'Sblood, had I known this, I'd have broached him and swallowed him even on crutches." "She made him raise the siege, she turned his own guns upon him, and in the end hath driven him hence." By rough questioning Lempriere got from the fool by snatches the story of the meeting in the maze, which had left Leicester standing with the jester's ribboned bells in his hand. Then the Seigneur got to his feet, and hugged the fool, bubbling with laughter. "By all the blood of all the saints, I will give thee burial in my own grave when all's done," he spluttered; "for there never was such fooling, never such a wise fool come since Confucius and the Khan. Good be with you, fool, and thanks be for such a lady. Thanks be also for the Duke's Daughter. Ah, how she laid Leicester out! She washed him up the shore like behemoth, and left him gaping." Buonespoir intervened. "And what shall come of it? What shall be the end? The Honeyflower lies at anchor--there be three good men in waiting, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and--" The Seigneur interrupted. "There's little longer waiting. All's well! Her high hereditary Majesty smiled on me when she gave Leicester conge and fiery quittance. She hath me in favour, and all shall be well with Michel and Angele. O fool, fool, fantastic and flavoured fool, sing me a song of good content, for if this business ends not with crescendo and bell-ringing, I am no butler to the Queen nor keep good company!" Seating themselves upon the mossy bank, their backs to the westward sun, the fool peered into the green shadows and sang with a soft melancholy an ancient song that another fool had sung to the first Tudor: "When blows the wind and drives the sleet, And all the trees droop down; When all the world is sad, 'tis meet Good company be known: And in my heart good company Sits by the fire and sings to me. "When warriors return, and one That went returns no more; When dusty is the road we run, And garners have no store; One ingle-nook right warm shall be Where my heart hath good company. "When man shall flee and woman fail, And folly mock and hope deceive, Let cowards beat the breast and wail, I'll homeward hie; I will not grieve: I'll draw the blind, I'll there set free My heart's beloved boon company. "When kings shall favour, ladies call My service to their side; When roses grow upon the wall Of life, with love inside; I'll get me home with joy to be In my heart's own good company!" "Oh, fool, oh, beneficent fool, well done! 'Tis a song for a man-- 'twould shame De Carteret of St. Ouen's to his knees," cried Lempriere. "Oh, benignant fool, well done! 'twould draw me from my meals," said a voice behind the three; and, turning hastily about, they saw, smiling and applausive, the Duke's Daughter. Beside her was Angele. The three got to their feet, and each made obeisance after his kind- Buonespoir ducking awkwardly, his blue eyes bulging with pleasure, Lempriere swelling with vanity and spreading wide acknowledgment of their presence, the fool condescending a wave of welcome. "Oh! abundant Amicitia!" cried the fool to the Duke's Daughter, "thou art saved by so doing. So get thee to thanksgiving and God's mercy." "Wherefore am I saved by being drawn from my meals by thy music, fool?" she asked, linking her arm in Angele's. "Because thou art more enamoured of lampreys than of man; and it is written that thou shalt love thy fellow man, and he that loveth not is lost: therefore thou art lost if thou lingerest at meals." "Is it so, then? And this lady--what thinkest thou? Must she also abstain and seek good company?" "No, verily, Amicitia, for she is good company itself, and so she may sleep in the larder and have no fear." "And what think you--shall she be happy? Shall she have gifts of fate?" "Discriminately so, Amicitia. She shall have souvenirs and no suspicions of Fate. But she shall not linger here, for all lingerers in Delicio's Court are spied upon--not for their soul's good. She shall go hence, and--" "Ay, princely lady, she shall go hence," interposed Lempriere, who had panted to speak, and could bear silence no longer. "Her high Majesty will kiss her on the brow, and in Jersey Isle she shall blossom and bloom and know bounty--or never more shall I have privilege and perquage." He lumbered forward and kissed Angele's hand as though conferring distinction, but with great generosity. "I said that all should go well, and so it shall. Rozel shall prevail. The Queen knows on what rock to build, as I made warrant for her, and will still do so." His vanity was incorrigible, but through it ran so child-like a spirit that it bred friendship and repulsed not. The Duke's Daughter pressed the arm of Angele, who replied: "Indeed it has been so according to your word, and we are--I am--shall ever be beholden. In storm you have been with us, so true a pilot and so brave a sailor; and if we come to port and the quiet shore, there shall be spread a feast of remembrance which shall never grow cold, Seigneur." "One ingle-nook right warm shall be Where my heart hath good company," sang the fool, and catching by the arm Buonespoir, who ducked his head in farewell, ran him into the greenwood. Angele came forward as if to stay Buonespoir, but stopped short reflectively. As she did so, the Duke's Daughter whispered quickly into Lempriere's ear. Swelling with pride he nodded, and said: "I will reach him and discover myself to him, and bring him, if he stray, most undoubted and infallible lady," and with an air of mystery he made a heavily respectful exit. Left alone, the two ladies seated themselves in the bower of roses, and for a moment were silent. Presently the Duke's Daughter laughed aloud. "In what seas of dear conceit swims your leviathan Seigneur, heart's- ease?" Angele stole a hand into the cool palm of the other. "He was builded for some lonely sea all his own. Creation cheated him. But God give me ever such friends as he, and I shall indeed 'have good company' and fear no issue." She sighed. "Remains there still a fear? Did you not have good promise in the Queen's words that night?" "Ay, so it seemed, and so it seemed before--on May Day, and yet--" "And yet she banished you, and tried you, and kept you heart-sick? Sweet, know you not how bitter a thing it is to owe a debt of love to one whom we have injured? So it was with her. The Queen is not a saint, but very woman. Marriage she hath ever contemned and hated; men she hath desired to keep her faithful and impassioned servitors. So does power blind us. And the braver the man, the more she would have him in her service, at her feet, the centre of the world." "I had served her in a crisis, an hour of peril. Was naught due me?" The Duke's Daughter drew her close. "She never meant but that all should be well. And because you had fastened on her feelings as never I have seen another of your sex, so for the moment she resented it; and because De la Foret was yours--ah, if you had each been naught to the other, how easy it would have run! Do you not understand?" "Nay, then, and yea, then--and I put it from me. See, am I not happy now? Upon your friendship I build." "Sweet, I did what I could. Leicester filled her ears with poison every day, mixed up your business and great affairs with France, sought to convey that you both were not what you are; until at last I countermarched him." She laughed merrily. "Ay, I can laugh now, but it was all hanging by a thread, when my leech sent his letter that brought you to the palace. It had grieved me that I might not seek you, or write to you in all those sad days; but the only way to save you was by keeping the Queen's command; for she had known of Leicester's visits to you, of your meeting in the maze, and she was set upon it that alone, all alone, you should be tried to the last vestige of your strength. If you had failed--" "If I had failed--" Angele closed her eyes and shuddered. "I had not cared for myself, but Michel--" "If you had failed, there had been no need to grieve for Michel. He then had not grieved for thee. But see, the wind blows fair, and in my heart I have no fear of the end. You shall go hence in peace. This morning the Queen was happier than I have seen her these many years: a light was in her eye brighter than showeth to the Court. She talked of this place, recalled the hours spent here, spoke even softly of Leicester. And that gives me warrant for the future. She has relief in his banishment, and only recalls older and happier days when, if her cares were no greater, they were borne by the buoyancy of girlhood and youth. Of days spent here she talked until mine own eyes went blind. She said it was a place for lovers, and if she knew any two lovers who were true lovers, and had been long parted, she would send them here." "There be two true lovers, and they have been long parted," murmured Angele. "But she commanded these lovers not to meet till Trinity Day, and she brooks not disobedience even in herself. How could she disobey her own commands? But"--her eyes were on the greenwood and the path that led into the circle--"but she would shut her eyes to-day, and let the world move on without her, let lovers thrive, and birds be nesting without heed or hap. Disobedience shall thrive when the Queen connives at it--and so I leave you to your disobedience, sweet." With a laugh she sprang to her feet, and ran. Amazed and bewildered Angele gazed after her. As she stood looking she heard her name called softly. Turning, she saw Michel. They were alone. CHAPTER XIX When De la Foret and Angele saw the Queen again it was in the royal chapel. Perhaps the longest five minutes of M. de la Foret's life were those in which he waited the coming of the Queen on that Trinity Sunday which was to decide his fate. When he saw Elizabeth enter the chapel his eyes swam, till the sight of them was lost in the blur of colour made by the motions of gorgeously apparelled courtiers and the people of the household. When the Queen had taken her seat and all was quiet, he struggled with himself to put on such a front of simple boldness as he would wear upon day of battle. The sword the Queen had given him was at his side, and his garb was still that of a gentleman, not of a Huguenot minister such as Elizabeth in her grim humour, and to satisfy her bond with France, would make of him this day. The brown of his face had paled in the weeks spent in the palace and in waiting for this hour; anxiety had toned the ruddy vigour of his bearing; but his figure was the figure of a soldier, and his hand that of a strong man. He shook a little as he bowed to her Majesty, but that passed, and when at last his eye met that of the Duke's Daughter he grew steady; for she gave him as plainly as though her tongue spoke, a message from Angele. Angele herself he did not see--she was kneeling in an obscure corner, her father's hand in hers, all the passion of her life pouring out in prayer. De la Foret drew himself up with an iron will. No nobler figure of a man ever essayed to preach the Word, and so Elizabeth thought; and she repented of the bitter humour which had set this trial as his chance of life in England and his freedom from the hand of Catherine. The man bulked larger in her eyes than he had ever done, and she struggled with herself to keep the vow she had made to the Duke's Daughter the night that Angele had been found in De la Foret's rooms. He had been the immediate cause, fated or accidental, of the destined breach between Leicester and herself; he had played a significant part in her own life. Glancing at her courtiers, she saw that none might compare with him, the form and being of calm boldness and courage. She sighed she knew scarce why. When De la Foret first opened his mouth and essayed to call the worshippers to prayer, no words came forth--only a dry whisper. Some ladies simpered, and more than one courtier laughed silently. Michel saw, and his face flamed up. But he laid a hand on himself, and a moment afterwards his voice came forth, clear, musical, and resonant, speaking simple words, direct and unlacquered sentences, passionately earnest withal. He stilled the people to a unison of sentiment, none the less interested and absorbed because it was known that he had been the cause of the great breach between the Queen and the favourite. Ere he had spoken far, flippant gallants had ceased to flutter handkerchiefs, to move their swords idly upon the floor. He took for his text: "Stand and search for the old paths." The beginning of all systems of religion, the coming of the Nazarene, the rise and growth of Christianity, the martyrdoms of the early church, the invasion of the truth by false doctrine, the abuses of the Church, the Reformation, the martyrdom of the Huguenots for the return to the early principles of Christianity, the "search for the old paths," he set forth in a tone generous but not fiery, presently powerful and searching, yet not declamatory. At the last he raised the sword that hung by his side, and the Book that lay before him, and said: "And what matter which it is we wield--this steel that strikes for God, or this Book which speaks of Him? For the Book is the sword of the Spirit, and the sword is the life of humanity; for all faith must be fought for, and all that is has been won by strife. But the paths wherein ye go to battle must be the old paths; your sword shall be your staff by day, and the Book your lantern by night. That which ye love ye shall teach, and that which ye teach ye shall defend; and if your love be a true love your teaching shall be a great teaching, and your sword a strong sword which none may withstand. It shall be the pride of sovereign and of people; and so neither 'height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.'" Ere he had ended, some of the ladies were overcome, the eyes of the Duke's Daughter were full of tears, and Elizabeth said audibly, when he ceased speaking: "On my soul, I have no bishop with a tongue like his. Would that my Lord of Ely were here to learn how truth should be spoke. Henceforth my bishops shall first be Camisards." Of that hour's joyful business the Queen wrote thus to the Medici before the day was done: Cancelling all other letters on the matter, this M. de la Foret shall stay in my kingdom. I may not be the headsman of one of my faith--as eloquent a preacher as he was a brave soldier. Abiding by the strict terms of our treaty with my brother of France, he shall stay with us in peace, and in our own care. He hath not the eloquence of a Knox, but he hath the true thing in him, and that speaks. To the Duke's Daughter the Queen said: "On my soul, he shall be married instantly, or my ladies will carry him off and murder him for love." And so it was that the heart of Elizabeth the Queen warmed again and dearly towards two Huguenot exiles, and showed that in doing justice she also had not so sour a heart towards her sex as was set down to her credit. Yet she made one further effort to keep De la Foret in her service. When Michel, once again, declined, dwelt earnestly on his duty towards the widow of his dead chief, and begged leave to share her exile in Jersey, Elizabeth said: "On my soul, but I did not think there was any man on earth so careless of princes' honours!" To this De la Foret replied that he had given his heart and life to one cause, and since Montgomery had lost all, even life, the least Michel de la Foret could do was to see that the woman who loved him be not unprotected in the world. Also, since he might not at this present fight for the cause, he could speak for it; and he thanked the Queen of England for having shown him his duty. All that he desired was to be quiet for a space somewhere in "her high Majesty's good realm," till his way was clear to him. "You would return to Jersey, then, with our friend of Rozel?" Elizabeth said, with a gesture towards Lempriere, who, now recovered from his wound, was present at the audience. De la Foret inclined his head. "If it be your high Majesty's pleasure." And Lempriere of Rozel said: "He would return with myself your noble Majesty's friend before all the world, and Buonespoir his ship the Honeyflower." Elizabeth's lips parted in a smile, for she was warmed with the luxury of doing good, and she answered: "I know not what the end of this will be, whether our loyal Lempriere will become a pirate or Buonespoir a butler to my Court; but it is too pretty a hazard to forego in a world of chance. By the rood, but I have never, since I sat on my father's throne, seen black so white as I have done this past three months. You shall have your Buonespoir, good Rozel; but if he plays pirate any more--tell him this from his Queen--upon an English ship, I will have his head, if I must needs send Drake of Devon to overhaul him." That same hour the Queen sent for Angele, and by no leave, save her own, arranged the wedding-day, and ordained that it should take place at Southampton, whither the Comtesse de Montgomery had come on her way to Greenwich to plead for the life of Michel de la Foret, and to beg Elizabeth to relieve her poverty. Both of which things Elizabeth did, as the annals of her life record. After Elizabeth--ever self-willed--had declared her way about the marriage ceremony, looking for no reply save that of silent obedience, she made Angele sit at her feet and tell her whole story again from first to last. They were alone, and Elizabeth showed to this young refugee more of her own heart than any other woman had ever seen. Not by words alone, for she made no long story; but once she stooped and kissed Angele upon the cheek, and once her eyes filled up with tears, and they dropped upon her lap unheeded. All the devotion shown herself as a woman had come to naught; and it may be that this thought stirred in her now. She remembered how Leicester and herself had parted, and how she was denied all those soft resources of regret which were the right of the meanest women in her realm. For, whatever she might say to her Parliament and people, she knew that all was too late--that she would never marry and that she must go childless and uncomforted to her grave. Years upon years of delusion of her people, of sacrifice to policy, had at last become a self-delusion, to which her eyes were not full opened yet--she sought to shut them tight. But these refugees, coming at the moment of her own struggle, had changed her heart from an ever-growing bitterness to human sympathy. When Angele had ended her tale once more, the Queen said: "God knows, ye shall not linger in my Court. Such lives have no place here. Get you back to my Isle of Jersey, where ye may live in peace. Here all is noise, self-seeking and time-service. If ye twain are not happy I will say the world should never have been made." Before they left Greenwich Palace--M. Aubert and Angele, De la Foret, Lempriere, and Buonespoir--the Queen made Michel de la Foret the gift of a chaplaincy to the Crown. To Monsieur Aubert she gave a small pension, and in Angele's hands she placed a deed of dower worthy of a generosity greater than her own. At Southampton, Michel and Angele were married by royal license, and with the Comtesse de Montgomery set sail in Buonespoir's boat, the Honeyflower, which brought them safe to St. Helier's, in the Isle of Jersey. CHAPTER XX Followed several happy years for Michel and Angele. The protection of the Queen herself, the chaplaincy she had given De la Foret, the friendship with the Governor of the island; and the boisterous tales Lempriere had told of those days at Greenwich Palace quickened the sympathy and held the interest of the people at large; while the simple lives of the two won their way into the hearts of all, even, at last, to that of De Carteret of St. Ouen's. It was Angele herself who brought the two Seigneurs together at her own good table; and it needed all her tact on that occasion to prevent the ancient foes from drinking all the wine in her cellar. There was no parish in Jersey that did not know their goodness, but mostly in the parishes of St. Martin's and Rozel were their faithful labours done. From all parts of the island people came to hear Michel speak, though that was but seldom; and when he spoke he always wore the sword the Queen had given him, and used the Book he had studied in her palace. It was to their home that Buonespoir the pirate--faithful to his promise to the Queen that he would harry English ships no more came wounded, after an engagement with a French boat sent to capture him, carried thither by Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. It was there he died, after having drunk a bottle of St. Ouen's muscadella, brought secretly to him by his unchanging friend, Lempriere, so hastening the end. The Comtesse de Montgomery, who lived in a cottage near by, came constantly to the little house on the hillside by Rozel Bay. She had never loved her own children more than she did the brown-haired child with the deep-blue eyes, which was the one pledge of the great happiness of Michel and Angele. Soon after this child was born, M. Aubert had been put to rest in St. Martin's churchyard, and there his tombstone might be seen so late as a hundred years ago. So things went softly by for seven years, and then Madame de Montgomery journeyed to England, on invitation of the Queen and to better fortune, and Angele and De la Foret were left to their quiet life in Jersey. Sometimes this quiet was broken by bitter news from France, of fresh persecution, and fresh struggle on the part of the Huguenots. Thereafter for hours, sometimes for days, De la Foret would be lost in sorrowful and restless meditation; and then he fretted against his peaceful calling and his uneventful life. But the gracious hand of his wife and the eyes of his child led him back to cheerful ways again. Suddenly one day came the fearful news from England that the plague had broken out, and that thousands were dying. The flight from London was like the flight of the children of Israel into the desert. The dead- carts filled with decaying bodies rattled through the foul streets, to drop their horrid burdens into the great pit at Aldgate; the bells of London tolled all day and all night for the passing of human souls. Hundreds of homes, isolated because of a victim of the plague found therein, became ghastly breeding-places of the disease, and then silent, disgusting graves. If a man shivered in fear, or staggered from weakness, or for very hunger turned sick, he was marked as a victim, and despite his protests was huddled away with the real victims to die the awful death. From every church, where clergy were left to pray, went up the cry for salvation from "plague, pestilence, and famine." Scores of ships from Holland and from France lay in the Channel, not allowed to touch the shores of England, nor permitted to return whence they came. On the very day that news of this reached Jersey, came a messenger from the Queen of England for Michel de la Foret to hasten to her Court for that she had need of him, and it was a need which would bring him honour. Even as the young officer who brought the letter handed it to De la Foret in the little house on the hill-side above Rozel Bay, he was taken suddenly ill, and fell at the Camisard's feet. De la Foret straightway raised him in his arms. He called to his wife, but, bidding her not come near, he bore the doomed man away to the lonely Ecrehos Rocks lying within sight of their own doorway. Suffering no one to accompany him, he carried the sick man to the boat which had brought the Queen's messenger to Rozel Bay. The sailors of the vessel fled, and alone De la Foret set sail for the Ecrehos. There upon the black rocks the young man died, and Michel buried him in the shore-bed of the Maitre Ile. Then, after two days--for he could bear suspense no longer--he set sail for Jersey. Upon that journey there is no need to dwell. Any that hath ever loved a woman and a child must understand. A deep fear held him all the way, and when he stepped on shore at Rozel Bay he was as one who had come from the grave, haggard and old. Hurrying up the hillside to his doorway, he called aloud to his wife, to his child. Throwing open the door, he burst in. His dead child lay upon a couch, and near by, sitting in a chair, with the sweat of the dying on her brow, was Angele. As he dropped on his knee beside her, she smiled and raised her hand as if to touch him, but the hand dropped and the head fell forward on his breast. She was gone into a greater peace. Once more Michel made a journey-alone--to the Ecrehos, and there, under the ruins of the old Abbey of Val Richer, he buried the twain he had loved. Not once in all the terrible hours had he shed a tear; not once had his hand trembled; his face was like stone, and his eyes burned with an unearthly light. He did not pray beside the graves; but he knelt and kissed the earth again and again. He had doffed his robes of peace, and now wore the garb of a soldier, armed at all points fully. Rising from his knees, he turned his face towards Jersey. "Only mine! Only mine!" he said aloud in a dry, bitter voice. In the whole island, only his loved ones had died of the plague. The holiness and charity and love of Michel and Angele had ended so! When once more he set forth upon the Channel, he turned his back on Jersey and shaped his course towards France, having sent Elizabeth his last excuses for declining a service which would have given him honour, fame and regard. He was bent upon a higher duty. Not long did he wait for the death he craved. Next year, in a Huguenot sortie from Anvers, he was slain. He died with these words on his lips: "Maintenant, Angele!" In due time the island people forgot them both, but the Seigneur of Rozel caused a stone to be set up on the highest point of land that faces France, and on the stone were carved the names of Michel and Angele. Having done much hard service for his country and for England's Queen, Lempriere at length hung up his sword and gave his years to peace. From the Manor of Rozel he was wont to repair constantly to the little white house, which remained as the two had left it,--his own by order of the Queen,--and there, as time went on, he spent most of his days. To the last he roared with laughter if ever the name of Buonespoir was mentioned in his presence; he swaggered ever before the Royal Court and De Carteret of St. Ouen's; and he spoke proudly of his friendship with the Duke's Daughter, who had admired the cut of his jerkin at the Court of Elizabeth. But in the house where Angele had lived he moved about as though in the presence of a beloved sleeper he would not awake. Michel and Angele had had their few years of exquisite life and love, and had gone; Lempriere had longer measure of life and little love, and who shall say which had more profit of breath and being? The generations have passed away, and the Angel of Equity hath a smiling pity as she scans the scales and the weighing of the Past. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Never believed that when man or woman said no that no was meant Slander ever scorches where it touches ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "MICHEL AND ANGELE": Boldness without rashness, and hope without vain thinking Each of us will prove himself a fool given perfect opportunity Never believed that when man or woman said no that no was meant No note of praise could be pitched too high for Elizabeth Nothing is futile that is right Religion to him was a dull recreation invented chiefly for women She had never stooped to conquer Slander ever scorches where it touches JOHN ENDERBY By Gilbert Parker I Of all the good men that Lincolnshire gave to England to make her proud, strong and handsome, none was stronger, prouder and more handsome than John Enderby, whom King Charles made a knight against his will. "Your gracious Majesty," said John Enderby, when the King was come to Boston town on the business of draining the Holland fen and other matters more important and more secret, "the honour your Majesty would confer is well beyond a poor man like myself, for all Lincolnshire knows that I am driven to many shifts to keep myself above water. Times have been hard these many years, and, craving your Majesty's pardon, our taxes have been heavy." "Do you refuse knighthood of his Majesty?" asked Lord Rippingdale, with a sneer, patting the neck of his black stallion with a gloved hand. "The King may command my life, my Lord Rippingdale," was Enderby's reply, "he may take me, body and bones and blood, for his service, but my poor name must remain as it is when his Majesty demands a price for honouring it." "Treason," said Lord Rippingdale just so much above his breath as the King might hear. "This in our presence!" said the King, tapping his foot upon the ground, his brows contracting, and the narrow dignity of the divine right lifting his nostrils scornfully. "No treason, may it please your Majesty," said Enderby, "and it were better to speak boldly to the King's face than to be disloyal behind his back. My estates will not bear the tax which the patent of this knighthood involves. I can serve the country no better as Sir John Enderby than as plain John Enderby, and I can serve my children best by shepherding my shattered fortunes for their sakes." For a moment Charles seemed thoughtful, as though Enderby's reasons appealed to him, but Lord Rippingdale had now the chance which for ten years he had invited, and he would not let it pass. "The honour which his Majesty offers, my good Lincolnshire squire, is more to your children than the few loaves and fishes which you might leave them. We all know how miserly John Enderby has grown." Lord Rippingdale had touched the tenderest spot in the King's mind. His vanity was no less than his impecuniosity, and this was the third time in one day he had been defeated in his efforts to confer an honour, and exact a price beyond all reason for that honour. The gentlemen he had sought had found business elsewhere, and were not to be seen when his messengers called at their estates. It was not the King's way to give anything for nothing. Some of these gentlemen had been benefited by the draining of the Holland fens, which the King had undertaken, reserving a stout portion of the land for himself; but John Enderby benefited nothing, for his estates lay further north, and near the sea, not far from the town of Mablethorpe. He had paid all the taxes which the King had levied and had not murmured beyond his own threshold. He spoke his mind with candour, and to him the King was still a man to whom the truth was to be told with directness, which was the highest honour one man might show another. "Rank treason!" repeated Lord Rippingdale, loudly. "Enderby has been in bad company, your Majesty. If you are not wholly with the King, you are against him. 'He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.'" A sudden anger seized the King, and turning, he set foot in the stirrup, muttering something to himself, which boded no good for John Enderby. A gentleman held the stirrup while he mounted, and, with Lord Rippingdale beside him in the saddle, he turned and spoke to Enderby. Self-will and resentment were in his tone. "Knight of Enderby we have made you," he said, "and Knight of Enderby you shall remain. Look to it that you pay the fees for the accolade." "Your Majesty," said Enderby, reaching out his hand in protest, "I will not have this greatness you would thrust upon me. Did your Majesty need, and speak to me as one gentleman to another in his need, then would I part with the last inch of my land; but to barter my estate for a gift that I have no heart nor use for--your Majesty, I cannot do it." The hand of the King twisted in his bridle-rein, and his body stiffened in anger. "See to it, my Lord Rippingdale," he said, "that our knight here pays to the last penny for the courtesy of the accolade. You shall levy upon his estate." "We are both gentlemen, your Majesty, and my rights within the law are no less than your Majesty's," said Enderby stoutly. "The gentleman forgets that the King is the fountain of all law," said Lord Rippingdale obliquely to the King. "We will make one new statute for this stubborn knight," said Charles; "even a writ of outlawry. His estates shall be confiscate to the Crown. Go seek a King and country better suited to your tastes, our rebel Knight of Enderby." "I am still an Enderby of Enderby, and a man of Lincolnshire, your Majesty," answered the squire, as the King rode towards Boston church, where presently he should pray after this fashion with his subjects there assembled: "Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy favour to behold our most gracious sovereign King Charles. Endue him plenteously with Heavenly gifts; grant him in health and wealth long to live; strengthen him that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies; and, finally, after this life, he may attain everlasting joy and felicity." With a heavy heart Enderby turned homewards; that is, towards Mablethorpe upon the coast, which lies between Saltfleet Haven and Skegness, two ports that are places of mark in the history of the kingdom, as all the world knows. He had never been so vexed in his life. It was not so much anger against the King, for he had great reverence for the monarchy of England; but against Lord Rippingdale his mind was violent. Years before, in a quarrel between the Earl of Lindsey and Lord Rippingdale, upon a public matter which Parliament settled afterwards, he had sided with the Earl of Lindsey. The two Earls had been reconciled afterwards, but Lord Rippingdale had never forgiven Enderby. In Enderby's brain ideas worked somewhat heavily; but to-day his slumberous strength was infused with a spirit of action and the warmth of a pervasive idea. There was no darkness in his thoughts, but his pulse beat heavily and he could hear the veins throbbing under his ear impetuously. Once or twice as he rode on in the declining afternoon he muttered to himself. Now it was: "My Lord Rippingdale, indeed!" or "Not even for a King!" or "Sir John Enderby, forsooth! Sir John Enderby, forsooth!" Once again he spoke, reining in his horse beside a tall cross at four corners, near Stickford by the East Fen. Taking off his hat he prayed: "Thou just God, do Thou judge between my King and myself. Thou knowest that I have striven as an honest gentleman to do right before all men. When I have seen my sin, oh, Lord, I have repented! Now I have come upon perilous times, the gins are set for my feet. Oh, Lord, establish me in true strength! Not for my sake do I ask that Thou wilt be with me and Thy wisdom comfort me, but for the sake of my good children. Wilt Thou spare my life in these troubles until they be well formed; till the lad have the bones of a man, and the girl the wise thought of a woman--for she hath no mother to shield and teach her. And if this be a wrong prayer, my God, forgive it: for I am but a blundering squire, whose tongue tells lamely what his heart feels." His head was bowed over his horse's neck, his face turned to the cross, his eyes were shut, and he did not notice the strange and grotesque figure that suddenly appeared from among the low bushes by the fen near by. It was an odd creature perched upon stilts; one of those persons called the stilt-walkers. They were no friends of the King, nor of the Earl of Lindsey, nor of my Lord Rippingdale, for the draining of these fens took from them their means of living. They were messengers, postmen and carriers across the wide stretch of country from Spilsby, even down to the river Witham, and from Boston Deep down to Market Deeping and over to the sea. Since these fens were drained one might travel from Market Deeping to the Wolds without wetting a foot. "Aw'll trooble thee a moment, maister," said the peasant. "A stilt- walker beant nowt i' the woorld. Howsome'er, aw've a worrd to speak i' thy ear." Enderby reined in his horse, and with a nod of complaisance (for he was a man ever kind to the poor, and patient with those who fared ill in the world) he waited for the other to speak. "Thoo'rt the great Enderby of Enderby, maister," said the peasant, ducking his head and then putting on his cap; "aw've known thee sin tha wast no bigger nor a bit grass'opper i' the field. Wilt tha ride long, Sir John Enderby, and aw'll walk aside thee, ma grey nag with thy sorrel." He glanced down humorously at his own long wooden legs. Enderby turned his horse round and proceeded on his way slowly, the old man striding along beside him like a stork. "Why do you dub me Knight?" he asked, his eyes searching the face of the old man. "Why shouldna aw call thee Knight if the King calls thee Knight? It is the dooty of a common man to call thee Sir John, and tak off his hat at saying o' it." His hat came off, and he nodded in such an odd way that Enderby burst out into a good honest laugh. "Dooth tha rememba little Tom Dowsby that went hoonting wi' thee when tha wert not yet come to age?" continued the stilt-walker. "Doost tha rememba when, for a jest, thee and me stopped the lord bishop, tha own uncle, in the highway at midnight, and took his poorse from him, and the rich gold chain from his neck? And doost tha rememba that tha would have his apron too, for tha said that if it kept a bishop clean, wouldna it keep highwaymen clean, whose work was not so clean as a bishop's? Sir John Enderby, aw loove thee better than the King, an' aw loove thee better than my Lord Rippin'dale-ay, theere's a sour heart in a goodly body!" John Enderby reined up his horse and looked the stilt-walker in the face. "Are you little Tom Dowsby?" exclaimed he. "Are you that scamp?" He laughed all at once as though he had not a trouble in the world. "And do you keep up your evil practices? Do you still waylay bishops?" "If aw confessed to Heaven or man, aw would confess to thee, Sir John Enderby; but aw'll confess nowt." "And how know you that I am Sir John Enderby?" "Even in Sleaford town aw kem to know it. Aw stood no further from his Majesty and Lord Rippin'dale than aw stand from you, when the pair talked by the Great Boar inn. Where doos tha sleep to-night?" "At Spilsby." "To-night the King sleeps at Sutterby on the Wolds. 'Tis well for thee tha doost not bide wi' his Majesty. Theer, aw've done thee a service." "What service have you done me?" "Aw've told thee that tha moost sleep by Spilsby when the King sleeps at Sutterby. Fare-thee-well, maister." Doffing his cap once more, the stilt-walker suddenly stopped, and, turning aside, made his way with an almost incredible swiftness across the fen, taking the ditches with huge grotesque strides. Enderby looked back and watched him for a moment curiously. Suddenly the man's words began to repeat themselves in Enderby's head: "To-night the King sleeps at Sutterby on the Wolds. 'Tis well for thee tha doost not bide wi' his Majesty." Presently a dozen vague ideas began to take form. The man had come to warn him not to join the King at Sutterby. There was some plot against Charles! These stiltwalkers were tools in the hands of the King's foes, who were growing more powerful every day. He would sleep to-night, not at Spilsby, but at Sutterby. He was a loyal subject; no harm that he could prevent should come to the King. Before you come to Sutterby on the Wolds, as you travel north to the fenland, there is a combe through which the highway passes, and a stream which has on one side many rocks and boulders, and on the other a sort of hedge of trees and shrubs. It was here that the enemies of the King, that is, some stilt-walkers, with two dishonourable gentlemen who had suffered from the King's oppressions, placed themselves to way lay his Majesty. Lord Rippingdale had published it abroad that the King's route was towards Horncastle, but at Stickney by the fens the royal party separated, most of the company passing on to Horncastle, while Charles, Lord Rippingdale and two other cavaliers proceeded on a secret visit to a gentleman at Louth. It was dark when the King and his company came to the combe. Lord Rippingdale suggested to his Majesty that one of the gentlemen should ride ahead to guard against surprise or ambush, but the King laughed, and said that his shire of Lincoln bred no brigands, and he rode on. He was in the coach with a gentleman beside him, and Lord Rippingdale rode upon the right. Almost as the hoofs of the leaders plunged into the stream there came the whinny of a horse from among the boulders. Alarmed, the coachman whipped up his team and Lord Rippingdale clapped his hand upon his sword. Even as he did it two men sprang out from among the rocks, seized the horses' heads, and a dozen others swarmed round, all masked and armed, and calling upon the King's party to surrender, and to deliver up their valuables. One ruffian made to seize the bridle of Lord Rippingdale's horse, but my lord's sword severed the fellow's hand at the wrist. "Villain," he shouted, "do you know whom you attack?" For answer, shots rang out; and as the King's gentlemen gathered close to the coach to defend him, the King himself opened the door and stepped out. As he did so a stilt struck him on the head. Its owner had aimed it at Lord Rippingdale; but as my lord's horse plunged, it missed him, and struck the King fair upon the crown of the head. He swayed, groaned and fell back into the open door of the coach. Lord Rippingdale was at once beside him, sword drawn, and fighting gallantly. "Scoundrels," he cried, "will you kill your King?" "We will have the money which the King carries," cried one of his assailants. "The price of three knighthoods and the taxes of two shires we will have." One of the King's gentlemen had fallen, and another was wounded. Lord Rippingdale was hard pressed, but in what seemed the last extremity of the King and his party there came a shout from the other side of the stream: "God save the King! For the King! For the King!" A dozen horsemen splashed their way across the stream, and with swords and pistols drove through the King's assailants and surrounded his coach. The ruffians made an attempt to rally and resist the onset, but presently broke and ran, pursued by a half-dozen of his Majesty's defenders. Five of the assailants were killed and several were wounded. As Lord Rippingdale turned to Charles to raise him, the coach-door was opened upon the other side, a light was thrust in, and over the unconscious body of the King my lord recognised John Enderby. "His Majesty"--began John Enderby. "His Majesty is better," replied Lord Rippingdale, as the King's eyes half opened. "You lead these gentlemen? This should bring you a barony,--Sir John," my lord added, half graciously, half satirically; for the honest truth of this man's nature vexed him. "The King will thank you." "John Enderby wants no reward for being a loyal subject, my lord," answered Enderby. Then with another glance at the King, in which he knew that his Majesty was recovered, he took off his hat, bowed, and, mounting his horse, rode away without a word. At Sutterby the gentlemen received gracious thanks of the King who had been here delivered from the first act of violence made against him in his reign. Of the part which Enderby had played Lord Rippingdale said no more to the King than this: "Sir John Enderby was of these gentlemen who saved your Majesty's life. Might it not seem to your Majesty that--" "Was he of them?" interrupted the King kindly; then, all at once, out of his hurt vanity and narrow self-will, he added petulantly: "When he hath paid for the accolade of his knighthood, then will we welcome him to us, and make him Baron of Enderby." Next day when Enderby entered the great iron gates of the grounds of Enderby House the bell was ringing for noon. The house was long and low, with a fine tower in the centre, and two wings ran back, forming the court-yard, which would have been entirely inclosed had the stables moved up to complete the square. When Enderby came out into the broad sweep of grass and lawn, flanked on either side by commendable trees, the sun shining brightly, the rooks flying overhead, and the smell of ripe summer in the air, he drew up his horse and sat looking before him. "To lose it! To lose it!" he said, and a frown gathered upon his forehead. Even as he looked, the figure of a girl appeared in the great doorway. Catching sight of the horseman, she clapped her hands and waved them delightedly. Enderby's face cleared, as the sun breaks through a mass of clouds and lightens all the landscape. The slumberous eyes glowed, the square head came up. In five minutes he had dismounted at the great stone steps and was clasping his daughter in his arms. "Felicity, my dear daughter!" he said, tenderly and gravely. She threw back her head with a gaiety which bespoke the bubbling laughter in her heart, and said: "Booh! to thy solemn voice. Oh, thou great bear, dost thou love me with tears in thine eyes?" She took his hand and drew him inside the house, where, laying aside his hat and gloves and sword, they passed into the great library. "Come, now, tell me all the places thou hast visited," she said, perching herself on his arm-chair. He told her, and she counted them off one by one upon her fingers. "That is ninety miles of travel thou hast had. What is the most pleasing thing thou hast seen?" "It was in Stickford by the fen," he answered, after a perplexed pause. "There was an old man upon the roadside with his head bowed in his hands. Some lads were making sport of him, for he seemed so woe-begone and old. Two cavaliers of the King came by. One of them stopped and drove the lads away, then going to the old man, he said: 'Friend, what is thy trouble?' The old man raised his melancholy face and answered: 'Aw'm afeared, sir.' 'What fear you?' inquired the young gentleman. 'I fear ma wife, sir,' replied the old man. At that the other cavalier sat back in his saddle and guffawed merrily. 'Well, Dick,' said he to his friend, 'that is the worst fear in this world. Ah, Dick, thou hast ne'er been married!' 'Why do you fear your wife?' asked Dick. 'Aw've been robbed of ma horse and saddle and twelve skeins o' wool. Aw'm lost, aw'm ruined and shall raise ma head nevermore. To ma wife aw shall ne'er return.' 'Tut tut, man,' said Dick, 'get back to your wife. You are master of your own house; you rule the roost. What is a wife? A wife's a woman. You are a man. You are bigger and stronger, your bones are harder. Get home and wear a furious face and batter in the door and say: "What, ho, thou huzzy!" Why, man, fear you the wife of your bosom?' The old man raised his head and said: 'Tha doost not know ma wife or tha wouldst not speak like that.' At that Dick laughed and said: 'Fellow, I do pity thee;' and taking the old man by the shoulders, he lifted him on his own horse and took him to the village fair. There he bought him twelve skeins of wool and sent him on his way rejoicing, with a horse worth five times his own." With her chin in her hands the girl had listened intently to the story. When it was finished she said: "What didst thou say was the gentleman's name?" "His friend called him Dick. He is a poor knight, one Sir Richard Mowbray, of Leicester, called at Court and elsewhere Happy Dick Mowbray, for they do say a happier and braver heart never wore the King's uniform." "Indeed I should like to know that Sir Richard Mowbray. And, tell me now, who is the greatest person thou hast seen in thy absence?" "I saw the King--at Boston town." "The King! The King!" Her eyes lightened, her hands clapped merrily. "What did he say to thee? Now, now, there is that dark light in thine eyes again. I will not have it so!" With her thumbs she daintily drew down the eyelids and opened them again. "There, that's better. Now what did the King say to thee?" "He said to me that I should be Sir John Enderby, of Enderby." "A knight! A knight! He made thee a knight?" she asked gaily. She slipped from his knee and courtesied before him, then seeing the heaviness of his look, she added: "Booh, Sir John Enderby, why dost thou look so grave? Is knighthood so big a burden thou dost groan under it?" "Come here, my lass," he said gently. "Thou art young, but day by day thy wisdom grows, and I can trust thee. It is better thou shouldst know from my own lips the peril this knighthood brings, than that trouble should suddenly fall and thou be unprepared." Drawing her closely to him he told her the story of his meeting with the King; of Lord Rippingdale; of the King's threat to levy upon his estates and to issue a writ of outlawry against him. For a moment the girl trembled, and Enderby felt her hands grow cold in his own, for she had a quick and sensitive nature and passionate intelligence and imagination. "Father," she cried pantingly, indignantly, "the King would make thee an outlaw, would seize upon thy estates, because thou wouldst not pay the price of a paltry knighthood!" Suddenly her face flushed, the blood came back with a rush, and she stood upon her feet. "I would follow thee to the world's end rather than that thou shouldst pay one penny for that honour. The King offered thee knighthood? Why, two hundred years before the King was born, an Enderby was promised an earldom. Why shouldst thou take a knighthood now? Thou didst right, thou didst right." Her fingers clasped in eager emphasis. "Dost thou not see, my child," said he, "that any hour the King's troops may surround our house and take me prisoner and separate thee from me? I see but one thing to do; even to take thee at once from here and place thee with thy aunt, Mistress Falkingham, in Shrewsbury." "Father," the girl said, "thou shalt not put me away from thee. Let the King's men surround Enderby House and the soldiers and my Lord Rippingdale levy upon the estates of Enderby. Neither his Majesty nor my Lord Rippingdale dare put a finger upon me--I would tear their eyes out." Enderby smiled half sadly at her, and answered "The fear of a woman is one of the worst fears in this world. Booh!" So ludicrously did he imitate her own manner of a few moments before that humour drove away the flush of anger from her face, and she sat upon his chair-arm and said: "But we will not part; we will stand here till the King and Lord Rippingdale do their worst--is it not so, father?" He patted her head caressingly. "Thou sayest right, my lass; we will remain at Enderby. Where is thy brother Garrett?" "He has ridden over to Mablethorpe, but will return within the hour," she replied. At that moment there was a sound of hoofs in the court-yard. Running to a rear window of the library Mistress Felicity clapped her hands and said: "It is he--Garrett." Ten minutes afterwards the young man entered. He was about two years older than his sister; that is, seventeen. He was very tall for his age, with dark hair and a pale dry face, and of distinguished bearing. Unlike his father, he was slim and gracefully built, with no breadth or power to his shoulders, but with an athletic suppleness and a refinement almost womanlike. He was tenacious, overbearing, self-willed, somewhat silent and also somewhat bad-tempered. There was excitement in his eye as he entered. He came straight to his father, giving only a nod to Mistress Felicity, who twisted her head in a demure little way, as though in mockery of his important manner. "Booh!--my lord duke!" she said almost under her breath. "Well, my son," said Enderby, giving him his hand, "your face has none so cheerful a look. Hast thou no welcome for thy father?" "I am glad you are home again, sir," said young Enderby, more dutifully than cordially. There was silence for a moment. "You do not ask my news," said his father, eyeing him debatingly. "I have your news, sir," was the young man's half sullen reply. His sister came near her father, where she could look her brother straight in the face, and her deep blue eyes fixed upon him intently. The smile almost faded from her lips, and her square chin seemed suddenly to take on an air of seriousness and strength. "Well, sir?" asked his father. "That you, sir, have refused a knighthood of the King; that he insists upon your keeping it; that he is about to levy upon your estates: and that you are outlawed from England." "And what think you about the matter?" asked his father. "I think it is a gentleman's duty to take the King's gifts without question," answered the young man. "Whether the King be just or not, eh? Where would England have been, my son, if the barons had submitted to King John? Where would the Enderbys have been had they not withstood the purposes of Queen Mary? Come, come, the King has a chance to prove himself as John Enderby has proven himself. Midst other news, heard you not that last night I led a dozen gentlemen to the rescue of the King?" "'Twas said in the village that his Majesty would remove his interdict and make you a baron, sir, if you met his levy for the knighthood." "That I shall never do. Answer me, my son, do you stand with the King or with your father in this?" "I am an Enderby," answered the youth, moodily, "and I stand with the head of our house." That night as candles were being lighted, three score of the King's men, headed by Lord Rippingdale, placed themselves before the house, and an officer was sent forward to summon forth John Enderby. Enderby had gathered his men together, and they were posted for defence at the doorways and entrances, and along the battlements. The windows were all heavily shuttered and barred. The young officer commissioned to demand an interview with Enderby came forward and knocked at the great entrance door. It opened presently and showed within the hallway a dozen men well armed. Enderby came forward to meet him. "I am Sir Richard Mowbray," said the newcomer. "I am sent by Lord Rippingdale, who arrives on a mission from his Majesty." Enderby, recognising his visitor, was mild in his reply. "Sir Richard Mowbray, I pray you tell Lord Rippingdale that he is welcome--as commissioner of the King." Mowbray smiled and bowed. "My lord begs me to ask that you will come forth and speak with him, Sir John?" "My compliments to Lord Rippingdale, Sir Richard, and say that I can better entertain his Majesty's commissioner within my own house." "And all who wait with him?" asked the young officer, with a dry sort of smile. "My lord, and his officers and gentlemen, but not his troopers." Mowbray bowed, and as he lifted his head again he saw the face of Mistress Felicity looking through the doorway of the library. Their eyes met. On a sudden a new impulse came to his thoughts. "Sir John Enderby," said he, "I know how honourable a man you are, and I think I know the way you feel. But, as one gentleman to another, permit me a word of counsel. 'Twere better to humour my Lord Rippingdale, and to yield up to the King's demands, than to lose all. Lack of money and estate--that is hard enough on a single man like me, but with a gentleman who has the care of a daughter, perhaps"--his look again met the young lady's face--"the case is harder. A little yielding on your part--" "I will not yield," was Enderby's reply. Mowbray bowed once more, and retired without more speaking. In a few moments he returned, Lord Rippingdale with him. The entrance doors were once more opened, and my lord, in a temper, at once began: "You press your courtesies too far, Sir John Enderby." "Less strenuously than the gentlemen of the road pressed their discourtesies upon his Majesty and yourself last night, my lord." "I am come upon that business. For your bravery and loyalty, if you will accept the knighthood, and pay the sum set as the courtesy of the accolade, his Majesty will welcome you at Court, and raise you to a barony. But his Majesty must see that his dignity be not injured." "The King may have my life and all my goods as a gift, but I will not give either by these indirect means. It does not lie in a poor squire like me to offend the King's dignity." "You are resolved?" "I am resolved," answered Enderby, stubbornly. "Then you must bear the consequences, and yield up your estates and person into my hands. Yourself and your family are under arrest, to be dealt with hereafter as his Majesty sees fit." "I will not yield up my estates, nor my person, nor my son and daughter, of my free will." With an incredulous smile, Rippingdale was about to leave and enter upon a siege of the house, when he saw young Enderby and caught a strange look in his face. "Young gentleman," said he, "are you a cipher in this game? A barony hangs on this. Are you as stubborn and unruly as the head of your house?" Garrett Enderby made no reply, but turned and walked into the library, his father's and sister's eyes following him in doubt and dismay, for the chance was his at that moment to prove himself. A moment afterwards Lord Rippingdale was placing his men to attack the house, disposing of some to secure a timber to batter in the door, and of some to make assaults upon the rear of the building. Enderby had placed his men advantageously to resist attack, giving the defence of the rear of the house to his son. Mistress Felicity he had sent to an upper room in the care of her aunt. Presently the King's men began the action, firing wherever a figure showed itself, and carrying a log to batter in the entrance door. Enderby's men did good work, bringing down four of the besiegers at the first volley. Those who carried the log hesitated for a moment, and Enderby called encouragingly to his men. At this exciting moment, while calling to his men, he saw what struck him dumb--his son hurrying forward with a flag of truce to Lord Rippingdale! Instantly my lord commanded his men to retire. "Great God!" said Sir John, with a groan, "my son--my only son-- a traitor!" Turning to his men he bade them cease firing. Throwing open the entrance doors, he stood upon the steps and waited for Lord Rippingdale. "You see, Sir John Enderby, your son--" began my lord. "It was to maintain my rights, and for my son's sake and my daughter's, that I resisted the command of the King," interrupted the distressed and dishonoured gentleman, "but now--" "But now you yield?" He inclined his head, then looking down to the place where his son stood, he said: "My son--my only son!" And his eyes filled with tears. His distress was so moving that even Rippingdale was constrained to say: "He did it for your sake. His Majesty will--" With a gesture of despair Enderby turned and entered the house, and passed into the library, where he found his daughter. Pale and tearful she threw herself into his arms. At eleven o'clock that night as they sat in the same room, while Lord Rippingdale and his officers supped in the dining-room, Sir Richard Mowbray hurriedly entered. "Come quickly," said he; "the way is clear--here by this window. The sentinels are drunk. You will find horses by the gate of the grape- garden, and two of your serving-men mounted. They will take you to a hiding-place on the coast--I have instructed them." As he talked he helped them through the window, and bade them good-bye hurriedly; but he did not let Mistress Felicity's hand drop till he had kissed it and wished her a whispered God-speed. When they had gone he listened for a time, but hearing no sound of surprise or discovery, he returned to the supper room, where Garrett Enderby sat drinking with Lord Rippingdale and the cavaliers. II Seven years went by before John Enderby saw his son again or set foot in Enderby House. Escaping to Holland on a night when everything was taken from him save his honour and his daughter, he had lived there with Mistress Felicity, taking service in the army of the country. Outlaw as he was, his estates given over to his son who now carried a knighthood bestowed by King Charles, he was still a loyal subject to the dynasty which had dishonoured him. When the King was beheaded at Whitehall he mourned and lamented the miserable crime with the best of his countrymen. It was about this time that he journeyed into France, and there he stayed with his daughter two years. Mistress Falkingham, her aunt, was with her, and watched over her as carefully as when she was a child in Enderby House. About this time, Cromwell, urged by solicitous friends of the outlaw, sent word to him to return to England, that he might employ him in foreign service, if he did not care to serve in England itself. Cromwell's message was full of comforting reflections upon his sufferings and upon the injustice that had been done to him by the late King. For his daughter's sake, who had never been entirely happy out of England, Enderby returned, and was received with marked consideration by Cromwell at Whitehall. "Your son, sir," said Cromwell, "hath been a follower of the man of sin. He was of those notorious people who cried out against the work of God's servants when Charles paid the penalty of his treason at Whitehall. Of late I have received news that he is of those children of Belial who are intriguing to bring back the second Charles. Two days ago he was bidden to leave Enderby House. If he be found among those who join the Scotch army to fight for the Pretender, he shall bear the penalty of his offence." "He has been ill advised, your Highness," said Enderby. "He shall be advised better," was the stern reply. "We will have peace in England, and we will, by the help of the Lord's strong arm, rid this realm of these recalcitrant spirits. For you, sir, you shall return to your estate at Enderby, and we will use you abroad as opportunity shall occur. Your son has taken to himself the title which the man of sin conferred upon you, to your undoing." "Your Highness," replied Enderby, "I have but one desire, and that is peace. I have been outlawed from England so long, and my miseries have been so great, that I accept gladly what the justice of your Highness gives thus freely. But I must tell your Highness that I was no enemy of King Charles, and am no foe to his memory. The wrong was done by him to me, and not returned by me to him, and the issue is between our Maker and ourselves. But it is the pride of all Englishmen that England be well governed, and strong and important in the eyes of the nations; and all these things has your Highness achieved. I will serve my country honourably abroad, or rest peacefully here on my own estate, lifting no hand against your Highness, though I hold to the succession in the monarchy." Cromwell looked at him steadily and frowningly for a minute, then presently, his face clearing, he said: "Your words, detached from your character, sir, would be traitorous; but as we stand, two gentlemen of England face to face, they seem to me like the words of an honest man, and I love honesty before all other, things. Get to your home, sir. You must not budge from it until I send for you. Then, as proof of your fidelity to the ruler of your country, you shall go on whatever mission I send you." "Your Highness, I will do what seems my duty in the hour of your summons." "You shall do the will of the Lord," answered the Protector, and, bowing a farewell, turned upon his heel. Enderby looked after him a moment, then moved towards the door, and as he went out to mount his horse he muttered to himself: "The will of the Lord as ordained by Oliver Cromwell--humph!" Then he rode away up through Trafalgar Square and into the Tottenham Court Road, and so on out into the Shires until he came to Enderby House. Outside all was as he had left it seven years before, though the hedges were not so well kept and the grass was longer before the house. An air of loneliness pervaded all the place. No one met him at the door. He rode round into the court-yard and called. A man-servant came out. From him he learned that four of Cromwell's soldiers were quartered in the house, that all the old servants, save two, were gone, and that his son had been expelled the place by Cromwell's order two days before. Inside the house there was less change. Boon companion of the boisterous cavaliers as his son had been, the young man's gay hours had been spent more away from Enderby House than in it. When young Enderby was driven from his father's house by Cromwell, he determined to join the Scotch army which was expected soon to welcome Charles the Second from France. There he would be in contact with Lord Rippingdale and his Majesty. When Cromwell was driven from his place, great honours might await him. Hearing in London, however, that his father had returned, and was gone on to the estate, he turned his horse about and rode back again, travelling by night chiefly, and reached Enderby House four days after his father's arrival there. He found his father seated alone at the dinner-table. Swinging wide open the door of the dining-room he strode in aggressively. The old man stood up in his place at the table and his eyes brightened expectantly when he saw his son, for his brain was quickened by the thought that perhaps, after all his wrong-doing, the boy had come back to stand by him, a repentant prodigal. He was a man of warm and firm spirit, and now his breast heaved with his emotions. This boy had been the apple of his eye. Since the day of his birth he had looked for great things from him, and had seen in him the refined perpetuation of the sturdy race of the Enderbys. He counted himself but a rough sort of country gentleman, and the courtly face of his son had suggested the country gentleman cast in a finer mould. He was about to speak kindly as of old, but the young man, with clattering spurs, came up to the other end of the table, and with a dry insolence said: "By whose invitation do you come here?" The blood fled from the old man's heart. For a moment he felt sick, and his face turned white. He dropped his head a little and looked at his son steadily and mournfully. "Shall a man need an invitation to his own house, my son?" he said at last. The arrogant lips of the young man tightened; he tossed up his head. "The house is mine. I am the master here. You are an outlaw." "An outlaw no longer," answered the old man, "for the Protector has granted me again the home of which I was cruelly dispossessed." "The Protector is a rebel!" returned the young man, and his knuckles rapped petulantly upon the table. "I stand for the King--for King Charles the Second. When you were dispossessed, his late martyred Majesty made me master of this estate and a knight also." The old man's hands clinched, in the effort to rule himself to quietness. "You are welcome to the knighthood which I have never accepted," said he; "but for these estates--" All at once a fierce anger possessed him, and the great shoulders heaved up and down with emotion--"but for these estates, sir, no law nor king can take them from me. I am John Enderby, the first son of a first son, the owner of these lands since the time my mother gave me birth. You, sir, are the first of our name that ever was a traitor to his house." So intent were the two that they did not see or hear three men who drew aside the curtains at the end of the room and stood spying upon them-- three of Cromwell's men. Young Enderby laughed sneeringly and answered: "It was a King of England that gave Enderby Manor to the Enderbys. The King is the source of all estate and honour, and I am loyal to the King. He is a traitor who spurns the King's honour and defies it. He is a traitor who links his fortunes with that vile, murderous upstart, that blethering hypocrite, Oliver Cromwell. I go to Scotland to join King Charles, and before three months are over his Majesty will have come into his own again and I also into my own here at Enderby." The old man trembled with the fierceness of his emotions. "I only am master here," he said, "and I should have died upon this threshold ere my Lord Rippingdale and the King's men had ever crossed it, but for you, an Enderby, who deserted me in the conflict--a coward who went over to the enemies of our house." The young man's face twitched with a malignant anger. He suddenly started forward, and with a sidelong blow struck his father with the flat of his sword. A red ridge of bruised flesh instantly rose upon the old man's cheek and ear. He caught the arm of the chair by which he stood, staggering back as though he had received a mortal wound. "No, no, no!" he said, his voice gulping with misery and horror. --"No, no! Kill me, if you will--I but cannot fight you. Oh, my God, my God!" he gasped scarcely above a whisper. "Unnatural-unnatural!" He said no more, for, upon the instant, four men entered the room. They were of Cromwell's Ironsides. Young Enderby looked round swiftly, ready to fight, but he saw at once that he was trapped. The old man also laid his hand upon his sword, but he saw that the case was hopeless. He dropped into his chair and leaned his head upon his hands. ...................... Two months went by. The battle of Dunbar was fought, and Charles had lost it. Among the prisoners was Garrett Enderby, who had escaped from his captors on the way from Enderby House to London, and had joined the Scottish army. He was now upon trial for his life. Cromwell's anger against him was violent. The other prisoners of war were treated as such, and were merely confined to prison, but young Enderby was charged with blasphemy and sedition, and with assaulting one of Cromwell's officers--for on the very day that young Enderby made the assault, Cromwell's foreign commission for John Enderby was on its way to Lincolnshire. Of the four men who had captured Garrett Enderby at Enderby House, three had been killed in battle, and the other had deserted. The father was thus the chief witness against his son. He was recalled from Portugal where he had been engaged upon Cromwell's business. The young man's judges leaned forward expectantly as John Enderby took his place. The Protector himself sat among them. "What is your name, sir?" asked Cromwell. "John Enderby, your Highness." "It hath been said that you hold a title given you by the man of sin." "I have never taken a title from any man, your Highness." A look of satisfaction crossed the gloomy and puritanical faces of the officers of the court-martial. Other questions were put, and then came the vital points. To the first of these, as to whether young Enderby had uttered malignant and seditious libels against the Protector, the old man would answer nothing. "What speech hath ever been between my son and myself," he said, "is between my son and myself only." A start of anger travelled round the circle of the court-martial. Young Enderby watched his father curiously and sullenly. "Duty to country comes before all private feeling," said Cromwell. "I command you, sir, on peril of a charge of treason against yourself, to answer the question of the Court. 'If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off; if thy foot cause thee to stumble, heave it to the shambles. The pernicious branch of the just tree shall be cloven and cast into the brush-heap.' You are an officer of this commonwealth, sir?" asked Cromwell, again. "By your Highness's permission," he replied. "Did your son strike you upon the face with the flat of his sword upon the night recorded in this charge against him?" "What acts have passed between my son and myself are between my son and myself only," replied Enderby, steadily. He did not look at his son, but presently the tears rolled down his cheeks, so that more than one of his judges who had sons of their own were themselves moved. But they took their cue from the Protector, and made no motion towards the old man's advantage. Once more Cromwell essayed to get Enderby's testimony, but, "I will not give witness against my son," was his constant and dogged reply. At last Cromwell rose in anger. "We will have justice in this realm of England," said he, "though it turn the father against the son and the son against the father. Though the house be divided against itself yet the Lord's work shall be done." Turning his blazing eyes upon John Enderby, he said: "Troublous and degenerate man, get gone from this country, and no more set foot in it on peril of your life. We recalled you from outlawry, believing you to be a true lover of your country, but we find you malignant, seditious and dangerous." He turned towards the young man. "You, sir, shall get you back to prison until other witnesses be found. Although we know your guilt, we will be formal and just." With an impatient nod to an officer beside him, he waved his hand towards father and son. As he was about to leave the room, John Enderby stretched out a hand to him appealingly. "Your Highness," said he, "I am an old man." "Will you bear witness in this cause?" asked Cromwell, his frown softening a little. "Your Highness, I have suffered unjustly; the lad is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. I cannot--" With an angry wave of the hand Cromwell walked heavily from the room. Some touch of shame came to the young man's cold heart, and he spoke to his father as the officers were about to lead him away. "I have been wrong, I have misunderstood you, sir," he said, and he seemed about to hold out his hand. But it was too late. The old man turned on him, shaking his shaggy head. "Never, sir, while I live. The wrong to me is little. I can take my broken life into a foreign land and die dishonoured and forgotten. But my other child, my one dear child who has suffered year after year with me--for the wrong you have done her, I never, never, never will forgive you. Not for love of you have I spoken as I did to-day, but for the honour of the Enderbys and because you were the child of your mother." Two days later at Southampton the old man boarded a little packet-boat bound for Havre. III The years went by again. At last all was changed in England. The monarchy was restored, and the land was smiling and content. One day there was a private reading in the Queen's chamber of the palace. The voice of the reader moved in pleasant yet vibrant modulations: "The King was now come to a time when his enemies wickedly began to plot against him secretly and to oppose him in his purposes; which, in his own mind, were beneficent and magnanimous. From the shire where his labours had been most unselfish came the first malignant insult to his person and the first peril to his life, prefiguring the hellish plots and violence which drove him to his august martyrdom--" The King had entered quietly as the lady-in-waiting read this passage to the Queen, and, attracted by her voice, continued to listen, signifying to the Queen, by a gesture, that she and her ladies were not to rise. This was in the time when Charles was yet devoted to his Princess of Portugal, and while she was yet happy and undisturbed by rumours--or assurances--of her Lord's wandering affections. "And what shire was that?" asked the King at that point where the chronicler spoke of his royal father's "august martyrdom." "The shire of Lincoln, your Majesty," said the young lady who read, flushing. Then she rose from her footstool at the Queen's feet, and made the King an elaborate courtesy. Charles waved a gentle and playful gesture of dissent from her extreme formality, and, with a look of admiration, continued: "My Lord Rippingdale should know somewhat of that 'first violence' of which you have read, Mistress Falkingham. He is of Lincolnshire." "He knows all, your Majesty; he was present at that 'first violence.'" "It would be amusing for Rippingdale to hear these records--my Lord Clarendon's, are they not? Ah--not in the formal copy of his work? And by order of my Lord Rippingdale? Indeed! And wherefore, my Lord Rippingdale?" "Shall I read on, your Majesty?" asked the young lady, with heightened colour, and a look of adventure and purpose in her eyes. Perhaps, too, there was a look of anger in them--not against the King, for there was a sort of eagerness or appealing in the glance she cast towards his Majesty. The Queen lifted her eyes to the King half doubtfully, for the question seemed to her perilous, Charles being little inclined, as a rule, to listen to serious reading, though he was ever gay in conversation, and alert for witty badinage. His Majesty, however, seemed more than complaisant; he was even boyishly eager. The young lady had been but a short time in the household, having come over with the Queen from Portugal, where she had been brought to the notice of the then Princess by her great coolness and bravery in rescuing a young lady of Lisbon from grave peril. She had told the Princess then that she was the daughter of an exiled English gentleman, and was in the care of her aunt, one Mistress Falkingham, while her father was gone on an expedition to Italy. The Princess, eager to learn English, engaged her, and she had remained in the palace till the Princess left for England. A year passed, and then the Queen of England sent for her, and she had been brought close to the person of her Majesty. At a motion from Charles, who sat upon a couch, idly tapping the buckles on his shoes with a gold-handled staff, the young lady placed herself again at the Queen's feet and continued reading: "It was when the King was come to Boston town upon the business of the Fens and to confer sundry honours and inquire into the taxes, and for further purpose of visiting a good subject at Louth, who knew of the secret plans of Pym and Hampden, that this shameful violence befel our pious and illustrious prince. With him was my Lord Rippingdale and--" "Ah, ah, my Lord Rippingdale!" said Charles, half aloud, "so this is where my lord and secret history meet--my dear, dumb lord." Continuing, the young lady read a fair and just account of the King's meeting with John Enderby, of Enderby's refusal to accept the knighthood, and of his rescue of the King at Sutterby. "Enderby? Enderby?" interjected the King, "that was not one Sir Garrett Enderby who was with the Scottish army at Dunbar?" "No, your Majesty," said the young lady, scarcely looking up from the page she held, "Sir Garrett Enderby died in Portugal, where he fled, having escaped from prison and Cromwell's vengeance." "What Enderby did this fine thing then? My faith, my martyred father had staunch men--even in Lincolnshire." "The father of Sir Garrett Enderby it was, your Majesty." "How came the son by the knighthood? 'S'death, it seems to me I have a memory of this thing somewhere, if I could but find it!" "His gracious Majesty of sacred memory gave him his knighthood." "Let me hear the whole story. Is it all there, Mistress Falkingham?" said the King, nodding towards the pages she held. "It is not all here, your Majesty; but I can tell what so many in England know, and something of what no one in England knows." The Queen put out her hand as if to stay the telling, for she saw what an impression her fair reader had made upon the King. But the young lady saw no one save Charles--she did not note the entrance of two gentle men, one of whom looked at her in surprise. This was Sir Richard Mowbray of Leicester. The other was Lord Rippingdale (now lord chamberlain), who had brought Sir Richard thither at the request of the King. Sir Richard had been momentarily expected on his return from a mission to Spain, and my Lord had orders to bring him to the King on the very instant of his arrival. The King waved his hand when Lord Rippingdale would have come forward, and the young lady continued with the history of John Enderby. She forgot her surroundings. It seemed as though she were giving vent to the suppressed feelings, imaginations, sufferings and wrongs of years. Respectfully, but sadly, when speaking of the dead King; eloquently, tenderly, when speaking of her father; bitterly, when speaking of Oliver Cromwell, she told the story with a point, a force and a passionate intelligence, which brought to the face of Charles a look of serious admiration. He straightened himself where he sat, and did not let his eyes wander from the young lady's face. As she spoke of Sir Garrett Enderby and his acts--his desertion when Lord Rippingdale laid siege to the house, his quarrel with his father, the trial of the son, the father's refusal to testify against him, and the second outlawing by Cromwell--her voice faltered, but she told the tale bravely and determinedly; for she now saw Lord Rippingdale in the chamber. Whenever she had mentioned his name in the narrative, it was with a slight inflection of scorn, which caused the King to smile; and when she spoke of the ruin of Enderby House, her brother's death and her father's years of exile, tears came into the Queen's eyes, and the King nodded his head in sympathy. Sir Richard Mowbray, with face aflame, watched her closely. As she finished her story he drew aside to where she could not see him without turning round. But Lord Rippingdale she saw with ease, and she met his eyes firmly, and one should say, with some malicious triumph, were she not a woman. "My lord Rippingdale," said the King, slowly and bitingly, "what shall be done to the man whom the King delighteth to honour?" "Were I Mordecai I could better answer that question, Sir," was my Lord's reply. "Perhaps my Lord Rippingdale could answer for Haman, then," returned his Majesty. "My imagination is good, but not fifty cubits high, Sir." The answer pleased the King. For he ever turned life into jest--his sorrows and his joys. He rose motioning towards the door, and Lord Rippingdale passed out just behind him, followed by Sir Richard Mowbray, who stole a glance at the young chronicler as he went. She saw him, then recognised him, and flushed scarlet. She did not dare, however, to let him come to her. He understood, and he went his way after the King and Lord Rippingdale. In all the years that had passed since the night he had helped her father and herself to escape from Enderby House; since he aided them to leave their hiding-place on the coast and escape to Holland, she had never forgotten his last words to her, the laughing look of his eyes, the pressure of his hand. Many a time since she had in her own mind thought of him as she had heard her father call him, even as "Happy Dick Mowbray!" and the remembrance of his joyous face had been a help to her in all her sufferings. His brown hair was now streaked with grey, but the light in the face was the same; there was the same alertness and buoyant health in the figure and the same row of laughing white teeth. As she stood watching the departing figure, she scarcely knew that the Queen was preparing to go to her bed-chamber. She became aware of it definitely by the voice of her Majesty, now somewhat petulant. Two hours later she was walking alone in one of the galleries when, hearing a gentle step behind her, she turned and saw the King. She made an obeisance and was about to move on, when he stopped her, speaking kindly to her, and thanking her for the great pleasure she had given him that afternoon. "What should be done for this quasi knight of Enderby?" asked the King. "He saved the life of the King," she said; then boldly, confidently, "your Majesty, for conscience sake he lost all--what can repay him for his dishonoured years and his ruined home!" "What think you, Mistress, should be done with him? Speak freely of the man whom the King delighteth to honour." She felt the sincerity under the indolent courtesy, and spoke as only a woman can speak for those she loves. "Your Majesty, he should have the earldom promised his ancestor by Wolsey, and his estates restored to him as he left them." The King laughed dryly. "He might refuse the large earldom, as he scorned the little knighthood." "If your Majesty secured him estates suitable to his rank he could have no reason to refuse. He was solicitous and firm then for his son--but now!" Her reply was as diplomatic and suggestive as it was sincere, and Charles loved such talents. "Upon my soul, dear Mistress Falkingham, I love your cleverness," said the King, "and I will go further, I--" He stooped and whispered in her ear, but she drew back in affright and anxiety. "Oh, your Majesty, your Majesty," she said, "I had not thought--" She moved on distractedly, but he put out his hand and stayed her. "Ah, a moment, sweetheart," he urged. "I must go to the Queen," she answered hurriedly. "Oh, your Majesty, your Majesty," she repeated, "would you ruin me?" Her eyes filled with tears. "Until the Queen welcomed me here I have had nothing but sorrow. I am friendless and alone." "No, no," said Charles, kindly, "not alone while Charles is King in England." "I am little more than an orphan here," she said, "for my father is now only a common soldier, your Majesty, and--" "A common soldier!" repeated Charles a little stiffly; "they told me he was a gentleman of England doing service in Italy." "My father is in your Majesty's household guard," she answered. "He was John Enderby--alas! none would recognise him now as such." The King stared at her a moment. "You--you--Mistress--you are John Enderby's daughter?" Her reply was scarce above a whisper. "His only child, Sir." "Upon my soul! Upon my soul!" was all Charles said for a moment, and then he added: "Why did you not speak before?" "My father would not permit me, your Majesty. He is only returned to England these few months." "He is here to--?" "To be near to myself, Sir." The King bowed low over her hand. "Mistress Enderby," said he, frankly, "we are honoured by your presence in this place. To-morrow morning at eleven your father shall come to us. You are still but a child in face," he said; "and yet--eh?" "I am twenty-seven years old," she answered frankly. "Quite old enough to be a countess," he said charmingly, "and young enough to enjoy the honours thereof." So saying he bowed again, and with a gracious smile dismissed her. She went so quickly that she did not see two gentlemen almost at her elbow as she left the gallery. One of them was Lord Rippingdale. "Ha," said my lord, with a wicked smile, "a new violet in the King's garden!" His companion turned on him swiftly. "My lord," said he, "this is the second time to-day you have slandered this lady." The other lifted his eyebrows. "Is it a slander to say that the King finds a lady charming at any hour o' the clock?" he rejoined. Sir Richard slapped him across the cheek with his glove. "I take a pleasant duty from John Enderby's shoulders, my lord. I will meet you at your pleasure." The next morning at sunrise Lord Rippingdale declared with his last breath that he did not know the lady was John Enderby's daughter, and he begged Sir Richard to carry to Enderby his regret for all past wrongs. Sir Richard came in upon the King at the moment that his Majesty was receiving John Enderby--a whiteheaded old man, yet hale and strong, and wearing the uniform of the King's Guard. The fire of Enderby's eye was not quenched. The King advanced towards him, and said: "You are welcome to our Court, Squire Enderby. You have been absent too long. You will honour us by accepting a tardy justice--without a price," he added, in a low tone. "Your Majesty," said Enderby, "for me justice comes too late, but for my child--" "An earldom can never come too late--eh?" asked the King, smiling gaily. "For me, your Majesty, all comes too late except--" his voice shook a little--"except the house where I was born." Charles looked at him gravely. "Upon my soul, Enderby," said he, "you are a man to be envied. We will not rob you of your good revenge on our house or of your independence. But still we must have our way. Your daughter,"--he turned lightly towards Felicity,--"if she will not refuse me, and she cannot upon the ground that you refused my father--she shall be Countess of Enderby in her own right; with estates in keeping." Womanlike, Mistress Felicity had no logical argument against an honour so munificently ordained. "And now for your estates--who holds them?" asked the King. "Lord Rippingdale, your Majesty," answered Enderby. "Yes, yes, my lord Haman! We have already sent for him. It is long past the time." His brow darkened. Sir Richard Mowbray stepped forward and said: "Your Majesty, Lord Rippingdale is beyond obedience or reparation;" and then he gave the message of the dead man to John Enderby. A month later Mowbray was permitted to return to Court, and with him came John Enderby and the Countess of Enderby. When Charles was told how matters had gone between the younger two, he gave vent to a mock indignation; and in consequence he made Sir Richard Mowbray an earl also, that, as he said, they might both be at the same nearness to him; for etiquette was tyrannical, and yet he did not know which of them he loved better! As for the man so long dishonoured, Charles swore that since John Enderby came not to the King at Court, the King would go to him at Enderby. And go he did in good temper and in great friendship for many a year. "THERE IS SORROW ON THE SEA" By Gilbert Parker I "YORK FACTORY, HUDSON'S BAY, "23rd September, 1747. "MY DEAR COUSIN FANNY,--It was a year last April Fool's Day, I left you on the sands there at Mablethorpe, no more than a stone's throw from the Book-in-Hand Inn, swearing that you should never see me or hear from me again. You remember how we saw the coast-guards flash their lights here and there, as they searched the sands for me? how one came bundling down the bank, calling, 'Who goes there?' You remember that when I said, 'A friend,' he stumbled, and his light fell to the sands and went out, and in the darkness you and I stole away: you to your home, with a whispering, 'God-bless-you, Cousin Dick,' over your shoulder, and I with a bit of a laugh that, maybe, cut to the heart, and that split in a sob in my own throat--though you didn't hear that. "'Twas a bad night's work that, Cousin Fanny, and maybe I wish it undone, and maybe I don't; but a devil gets into the heart of a man when he has to fly from the lass he loves, while the friends of his youth go hunting him with muskets, and he has to steal out of the backdoor of his own country and shelter himself, like a cold sparrow, up in the eaves of the world. "Ay, lass, that's how I left the fens of Lincolnshire a year last April Fool's Day. There wasn't a dyke from, Lincoln town to Mablethorpe that I hadn't crossed with a running jump; and there wasn't a break in the shore, or a sink-hole in the sand, or a clump of rushes, or a samphire bed, from Skegness to Theddlethorpe, that I didn't know like every line of your face. And when I was a slip of a lad-ay, and later too--how you and I used to snuggle into little nooks of the sand-hills, maybe just beneath the coast-guard's hut, and watch the tide come swilling in-water- daisies you used to call the breaking surf, Cousin Fanny. And that was like you, always with a fancy about everything you saw. And when the ships, the fishing-smacks with their red sails, and the tall-masted brigs went by, taking the white foam on their canvas, you used to wish that you might sail away to the lands you'd heard tell of from old skippers that gathered round my uncle's fire in the Book-in-Hand. Ay, a grand thing I thought it would be, too, to go riding round the world on a well-washed deck, with plenty of food and grog, and maybe, by-and-by, to be first mate, and lord it from fo'castle bunk to stern-rail. "You did not know, did you, who was the coast-guardsman that stumbled as he came on us that night? It looked a stupid thing to do that, and let the lantern fall. But, lass, 'twas done o' purpose. That was the one man in all the parish that would ha' risked his neck to let me free. 'Twas Lancy Doane, who's give me as many beatings in his time as I him. We were always getting foul one o' t'other since I was big enough to shy a bit of turf at him across a dyke, and there isn't a spot on's body that I haven't hit, nor one on mine that he hasn't mauled. I've sat on his head, and he's had his knee in my stomach till I squealed, and we never could meet without back-talking and rasping 'gainst the grain. The night before he joined the coast-guardsmen, he was down at the Book-in-Hand, and 'twas little like that I'd let the good chance pass--I might never have another; for Gover'ment folk will not easy work a quarrel on their own account. I mind him sittin' there on the settle, his shins against the fire, a long pipe going, and Casey of the Lazy Beetle, and Jobbin the mate of the Dodger, and Little Faddo, who had the fat Dutch wife down by the Ship Inn, and Whiggle the preaching blacksmith. And you were standin' with your back to the shinin' pewters, and the great jug of ale with the white napkin behind you; the light o' the fire wavin' on your face, and your look lost in the deep hollow o' the chimney. I think of you most as you were that minute, Cousin Fanny, when I come in. I tell you straight and fair, that was the prettiest picture I ever saw; and I've seen some rare fine things in my travels. 'Twas as if the thing had been set by some one, just to show you off to your best. Here you were, a slip of a lass, straight as a bulrush, and your head hangin' proud on your shoulders; yet modest too, as you can see off here in the North the top of the golden-rod flower swing on its stem. You were slim as slim, and yet there wasn't a corner on you; so soft and full and firm you were, like the breast of a quail; and I mind me how the shine of your cheeks was like the glimmer of an apple after you've rubbed it with a bit of cloth. Well, there you stood in some sort of smooth, plain, clingin' gown, a little bit loose and tumblin' at the throat, and your pretty foot with a brown slipper pushed out, just savin' you from bein' prim. That's why the men liked you--you didn't carry a sermon in your waist-ribbon, and the Lord's Day in the lift o' your chin; but you had a smile to give when 'twas the right time for it, and men never said things with you there that they'd have said before many another maid. "'Twas a thing I've thought on off here, where I've little to do but think, how a lass like you could put a finger on the lip of such rough tykes as Faddo, Jobbin, and the rest, keepin' their rude words under flap and button. Do you mind how, when I passed you comin' in, I laid my hand on yours as it rested on the dresser? That hand of yours wasn't a tiny bit of a thing, and the fingers weren't all taperin' like a simperin' miss from town, worked down in the mill of quality and got from graftin' and graftin', like one of them roses from the flower-house at Mablethorpe Hall--not fit to stand by one o' them that grew strong and sweet with no fancy colour, in the garden o' the Book-in-Hand. Yours was a hand that talked as much as your lips or face, as honest and white; and the palm all pink, and strong as strong could be, and warmin' every thread in a man's body when he touched it. Well, I touched your hand then, and you looked at me and nodded, and went musin' into the fire again, not seemin' to hear our gabble. "But, you remember--don't you?--how Jobbin took to chaffin' of Lancy Doane, and how Faddo's tongue got sharper as the time got on, and many a nasty word was said of coast-guards and excisemen, and all that had to do with law and gover'ment. Cuts there were at some of Laney's wild doings in the past, and now and then they'd turn to me, saying what they thought would set me girdin' Lancy too. But I had my own quarrel, and I wasn't to be baited by such numskulls. And Lancy--that was a thing I couldn't understand--he did no more than shrug his shoulder and call for more ale, and wish them all good health and a hundred a year. I never thought he could ha' been so patient-like. But there was a kind of little smile, too, on his face, showin' he did some thinkin'; and I guessed he was bidin' his time. "I wasn't as sharp as I might ha' been, or I'd ha' seen what he was waitin' for, with that quiet provokin' smile on his face, and his eyes smoulderin' like. I don't know to this day whether you wanted to leave the room when you did, though 'twas about half after ten o'clock, later than I ever saw you there before. But when my uncle come in from Louth, and give you a touch on the shoulder, and said: 'To bed wi' you, my lass,' you waited for a minute longer, glancin' round on all of us, at last lookin' steady at Lancy; and he got up from his chair, and took off his hat to you with a way he had. You didn't stay a second after that, but went away straight, sayin' good-night to all of us, but Lancy was the only one on his feet. "Just as soon as the door was shut behind you, Lancy turned round to the fire, and pushed the log with his feet in a way a man does when he's think-in' a bit. And Faddo give a nasty laugh, and said: "' Theer's a dainty sitovation. Theer's Mr. Thomas Doane, outlaw and smuggler, and theer's Mr. Lancy Doane his brother, coast-guardsman. Now, if them two should 'appen to meet on Lincolnshire coast, Lord, theer's a sitovation for ye--Lord, theer's a cud to chew! 'Ere's one gentleman wants to try 'is 'and at 'elpin' Prince Charlie, and when 'is Up doesn't amount to anythink, what does the King on 'is throne say? He says, "As for Thomas Doane, Esquire, aw've doone wi' 'im." And theer's another gentleman, Mr. Lancy Doane, Esquire. He turns pious, and says, "Aw'm goin' for a coast-guardsman." What does the King on his throne say? 'E says, 'Theer's the man for me.'" But aw says, "Aw've doone, aw've doone wi' Mr. Lancy Doane, Esquire, and be damned to 'im!" He! he! Theer's a fancy sitovation for ye. Mr. Thomas Doane, Esquire, smuggler and outlaw, an' Mr. Lancy Doane, Esquire, coast-guardsman. Aw've doone. Ho! ho! That gits into my crop.' "I tell you these things, Cousin Fanny, because I'm doubtin' if you ever heard them, or knew exactly how things stood that night. I never was a friend of Lancy Doane, you understand, but it's only fair that the truth be told about that quarrel, for like as not he wouldn't speak himself, and your father was moving in and out; and, I take my oath, I wouldn't believe Faddo and the others if they was to swear on the Bible. Not that they didn't know the truth when they saw it, but they did love just to let their fancy run. I'm livin' over all the things that happened that night--livin' them over to-day, when everything's so quiet about me here, so lonesome. I wanted to go over it all, bit by bit, and work it out in my head, just as you and I used to do the puzzle games we played in the sands. And maybe, when you're a long way off from things you once lived, you can see them and understand them better. Out here, where it's so lonely, and yet so good a place to live in, I seem to get the hang o' the world better, and why some things are, and other things aren't; and I thought it would pull at my heart to sit down and write you a long letter, goin' over the whole business again; but it doesn't. I suppose I feel as a judge does when he goes over a lot of evidence, and sums it all up for the jury. I don't seem prejudiced one way or another. But I'm not sure that I've got all the evidence to make me ken everything; and that's what made me bitter wild the last time that I saw you. Maybe you hadn't anything to tell me, and maybe you had, and maybe, if you ever write to me out here, you'll tell me if there's anything I don't know about them days. "Well, I'll go back now to what happened when Faddo was speakin' at my uncle's bar. Lancy Doane was standin' behind the settle, leanin' his arms on it, and smokin' his pipe quiet. He waited patient till Faddo had done, then he comes round the settle, puts his pipe up in the rack between the rafters, and steps in front of Faddo. If ever the devil was in a man's face, it looked out of Lancy Doane's that minute. Faddo had touched him on the raw when he fetched out that about Tom Doane. All of a sudden Lancy swings, and looks at the clock. "'It's half-past ten, Jim Faddo,' said he, 'and aw've got an hour an' a half to deal wi' you as a Lincolnshire lad. At twelve o'clock aw'm the Gover'ment's, but till then aw'm Lancy Doane, free to strike or free to let alone; to swallow dirt or throw it; to take a lie or give it. And now list to me; aw'm not goin' to eat dirt, and aw'm goin' to give you the lie, and aw'm goin' to break your neck, if I swing for it to-morrow, Jim Faddo. And here's another thing aw'll tell you. When the clock strikes twelve, on the best horse in the country aw'll ride to Theddlethorpe, straight for the well that's dug you know where, to find your smuggled stuff, and to run the irons round your wrists. Aw'm dealin' fair wi' you that never dealt fair by no man. You never had an open hand nor soft heart; and because you've made money, not out o' smugglin' alone, but out o' poor devils of smugglers that didn't know rightly to be rogues, you think to fling your dirt where you choose. But aw'll have ye to-night as a man, and aw'll have ye to-night as a King's officer, or aw'll go damned to hell.' "Then he steps back a bit very shiny in the face, and his eyes like torchlights, but cool and steady. 'Come on now,' he says, 'Jim Faddo, away from the Book-in-Hand, and down to the beach under the sand-hills, and we'll see man for man--though, come to think of it, y 'are no man,' he said--'if ye'll have the right to say when aw'm a King's officer that you could fling foul words in the face of Lancy Doane. And a word more,' he says; 'aw wouldn't trust ye if an Angel o' Heaven swore for ye. Take the knife from the belt behind your back there, and throw it on the table, for you wouldn't bide by no fair rules o' fightin'. Throw the knife on the table,' he says, comin' a step forward. "Faddo got on to his feet. He was bigger built than Lancy, and a bit taller, and we all knew he was devilish strong in his arms. There was a look in his face I couldn't understand. One minute I thought it was fear, and another I thought it was daze; and maybe it was both. But all on a sudden something horrible cunnin' come into it, and ugly too. "'Go to the well, then, since ye've found out all about it,' he says, 'but aw've an hour and a half start o' ye, Lancy Doane.' "'Ye've less than that,' says Lancy back to him, 'if ye go with me to the sands first.' "At that my uncle stepped in to say a word for peacemakin', but Lancy would have none of it. 'Take the knife and throw it on the table,' he said to Faddo once more, and Faddo took it out and threw it down. "'Come on, then,' Faddo says, with a sneerin' laugh; 'we'll see by daybreak who has the best o' this night's work,' and he steps towards the door. "'Wait a minute,' says Lancy, gettin' in front of him. 'Now take the knife from your boot. Take it,' he says again, 'or aw will. That's like a man, to go to a fist fight wi' knives. Take it,' he said. 'Aw'll gi' ye till aw count four, and if ye doan't take it, aw'll take it meself. One!' he says steady and soft. 'Two!' Faddo never moved. 'Three!' The silence made me sick, and the clock ticked like hammers. 'Four!' he said, and then he sprang for the boot, but Faddo's hand went down like lightnin' too. I couldn't tell exactly how they clinched but once or twice I saw the light flash on the steel. Then they came down together, Faddo under, and when I looked again Faddo was lying eyes starin' wide, and mouth all white with fear, for Lancy was holding the knife-point at his throat. 'Stir an inch,' says Lancy, 'and aw'll pin ye to the lid o' hell.' "Three minutes by the clock he knelt there on Faddo's chest, the knife- point touching the bone in's throat. Not one of us stirred, but just stood lookin', and my own heart beat so hard it hurt me, and my uncle steadyin' himself against the dresser. At last Lancy threw the knife away into the fire. "'Coward!' he said. 'A man would ha' taken the knife. Did you think aw was goin' to gie my neck to the noose just to put your knife to proper use? But don't stir till aw gie you the word, or aw'll choke the breath o' life out o' ye.' "At that Faddo sprung to clinch Laney's arms, but Laney's fingers caught him in the throat, and I thought surely Faddo was gone, for his tongue stood out a finger-length, and he was black in the face. "'For God's sake, Lancy,' said my uncle, steppin' forward, 'let him go.' "At that Lancy said: 'He's right enough. It's not the first time aw've choked a coward. Throw cold water on him and gi' 'im brandy.' "Sure enough, he wasn't dead. Lancy stood there watchin' us while we fetched Faddo back, and I tell you, that was a narrow squeak for him. When he got his senses again, and was sittin' there lookin' as if he'd been hung and brought back to life, Lancy says to him: 'There, Jim Faddo, aw've done wi' you as a man, and at twelve o'clock aw'll begin wi' you as King's officer.' And at that, with a good-night to my uncle and all of us, he turns on his heels and leaves the Book-in-Hand. "I tell you, Cousin Fanny, though I'd been ripe for quarrel wi' Lancy Doane myself that night, I could ha' took his hand like a brother, for I never saw a man deal fairer wi' a scoundrel than he did wi' Jim Faddo. You see, it wasn't what Faddo said about himself that made Laney wild, but that about his brother Tom; and a man doesn't like his brother spoken ill of by dirt like Faddo, be it true or false. And of Laney's brother I'm goin' to write further on in this letter, for I doubt that you know all I know about him, and the rest of what happened that night and afterwards." "DEAR COUSIN FANNY, I canna write all I set out to, for word come to me, just as I wrote the last sentence above, that the ship was to leave port three days sooner than was fixed for when I began. I have been rare and busy since then, and I have no time to write more. And so 'twill be another year before you get a word from me; but I hope that when this letter comes you'll write one back to me by the ship that sails next summer from London. The summer's short and the winter's long here, Cousin Fanny, and there's more snow than grass; and there's more flowers in a week in Mablethorpe than in a whole year here. But, lass, the sun shines always, and my heart keeps warm in thinkin' of you, and I ask you to forgive me for any harsh word I ever spoke, not forgettin' that last night when I left you on the sands, and stole away like a thief across the sea. I'm going to tell you the whole truth in my next letter, but I'd like you to forgive me before you know it all, for 'tis a right lonely and distant land, this, and who can tell what may come to pass in twice a twelve month! Maybe a prayer on lips like mine doesn't seem in place, for I've not lived as parson says man ought to live, but I think the Lord will have no worse thought o' me when I say, God bless thee, lass, and keep thee safe as any flower in His garden that He watereth with His own hand. Write to me, lass: I love thee still, I do love thee. "DICK ORRY." II THE BOOK-IN-HAND INN, MABLETHORPE, LINCOLNSHIRE. May-Day, 1749. "DEAR COUSIN DICK,--I think I have not been so glad in many years as when I got your letter last Guy Fawkes Day. I was coming from the church where the parson preached on plots and treasons, and obedience to the King, when I saw the old postman coming down the road. I made quickly to him, I know not why, for I had not thought to hear from you, and before I reached him he held up his hand, showing me the stout packet which brought me news of you. I hurried with it to the inn, and went straight to my room and sat down by the window, where I used to watch for your coming with the fishing fleet, down the sea from the Dogger Bank. I was only a girl, a young girl, then, and the Dogger Bank was, to my mind, as far off as that place you call York Factory, in Hudson's Bay, is to me now. And yet I did not know how very far it was until our schoolmaster showed me on a globe how few days' sail it is to the Dogger Bank, and how many to York Factory. "But I will tell you of my reading of your letter, and of what I thought. But first I must go back a little. When you went away that wild, dark night, with bitter words on your lips to me, Cousin Dick, I thought I should never feel the same again. You did not know it, but I was bearing the misery of your trouble and of another's also, and of my own as well; and so I said over and over again, Oh, why will men be hard on women? Why do they look for them to be iron like themselves, bearing double burdens as most women do? But afterwards I settled to a quietness which I would not have you think was happiness, for I have given up thought of that. Nor would I have you think me bearing trouble sweetly, for sometimes I was most hard and stubborn. But I lived on in a sort of stillness till that morning when, sitting by my window, I read all you had written to me. And first of all I must tell you how my heart was touched at your words about our childhood together. I had not thought it lay so deep in your mind, Cousin Dick. It always stays in mine; but then, women have more memories than men. The story of that night I knew; but never fully as you have told it to me in your letter. Of what happened after Lancy Doane left the inn, of which you have not written, but promised the writing in your next letter, I think I know as well as yourself. Nay, more, Cousin Dick. There are some matters concerning what followed that night and after, which I know, and you do not know. But you have guessed there was something which I did not tell you, and so there was. And I will tell you of them now. But I will take up the thread of the story where you dropped it, and reel it out. "You left the inn soon after Lancy Doane, and James Faddo went then too, riding hard for Theddlethorpe, for he knew that in less than an hour the coast-guards would be rifling the hiding places of his smuggled stuff. You did not take a horse, but, getting a musket, you walked the sands hard to Theddlethorpe. "I know it all, though you did not tell me, Cousin Dick. You had no purpose in going, save to see the end of a wretched quarrel and a smuggler's ill scheme. You carried a musket for your own safety, not with any purpose. It was a day of weight in your own life, for on one side you had an offer from the Earl Fitzwilliam to serve on his estate; and on the other to take a share in a little fleet of fishing smacks, of which my father was part owner. I think you know to which side I inclined, but that now is neither here nor there; and, though you did not tell me, as you went along the shore you were more intent on handing backwards and forwards in your mind your own affairs, than of what should happen at Theddlethorpe. And so you did not hurry as you went, and, as things happened, you came to Faddo's house almost at the same moment with Lancy Doane and two other mounted coast-guards. "You stood in the shadow while they knocked at Faddo's door. You were so near, you could see the hateful look in his face. You were surprised he did not try to stand the coast-guards off. You saw him, at their bidding, take a lantern, and march with them to a shed standing off a little from the house, nearer to the shore. Going a roundabout swiftly, you came to the shed first, and posted yourself at the little window on the sea-side. You saw them enter with the lantern, saw them shift a cider press, uncover the floor, and there beneath, in a dry well, were barrels upon barrels of spirits, and crouched among them was a man whom you all knew at once--Laney's brother, Tom. That, Cousin Dick, was Jim Faddo's revenge. Tom Doane had got refuge with him till he should reach his brother, not knowing Lancy was to be coast-guard. Faddo, coming back from Mablethorpe, told Tom the coast-guards were to raid him that night; and he made him hide in this safe place, as he called it, knowing that Lancy would make for it. "For a minute after Tom was found no man stirred. Tom was quick of brain and wit--would it had always been put, to good purposes!--and saw at once Faddo's treachery. Like winking he fired at the traitor, who was almost as quick to return the fire. What made you do it I know not, unless it was you hated treachery; but, sliding in at the open door behind the coast-guards, you snatched the lantern from the hands of one, threw it out of the open door, and, thrusting them aside, called for Tom to follow you. He sprang towards you over Faddo's body, even as you threw the lantern, and, catching his arm, you ran with him towards the dyke. "'Ready for a great jump!' you said. 'Your life hangs on it.' He was even longer of leg than you. 'Is it a dyke?' he whispered, as the shots from three muskets rang after you. 'A dyke. When I count three, jump,' you answered. I have read somewhere of the great leap that one Don Alvarado, a Spaniard, made in Mexico, but surely never was a greater leap than you two made that night, landing safely on the other side, and making for the sea-shore. None of the coast guardsmen, not even Lancy, could make the leap, for he was sick and trembling, though he had fired upon his own brother. And so they made for the bridge some distance above, just as the faint moon slipped behind a cloud and hid you from their sight. "That is no country to hide in, as you know well, no caves, or hills, or mazy coombes, just a wide, flat, reedy place, broken by open woods. The only refuge for both now was the sea. 'Twas a wild run you two made, side by side, down that shore, keeping close within the gloom of the sand-hills, the coast-guards coming after, pressing you closer than they thought at the time, for Tom Doane had been wounded in the leg. But Lancy sent one back for the horses, he and the other coming on; and so, there you were, two and two. 'Twas a cruel task for Lancy that night, enough to turn a man's hair grey. But duty was duty, though those two lads were more to each other than most men ever are. You know how it ended. But I want to go all over it just to show you that I understand. You were within a mile of Mablethorpe, when you saw a little fishing smack come riding in, and you made straight for it. Who should be in the smack but Solby, the canting Baptist, who was no friend to you or my uncle, or any of us. You had no time for bargaining or coaxing, and so, at the musket's mouth, you drove him from the boat, and pushed it out just as Lancy and his men came riding up. Your sail was up, and you turned the lugger to the wind in as little time as could be, but the coast-guardsmen rode after you, calling you to give in. No man will ever know the bitter trouble in Laney's heart when he gave the order to fire on you, though he did not fire himself. And you--do I not know, Cousin Dick, what you did? Tom Doane was not the man to fire at the three dark figures riding you down, not knowing which was his brother. But you, you understood that; and you were in, you said to yourself, and you'd play the game out, come what would. You raised your musket and drew upon a figure. At that moment a coast-guard's musket blazed, and you saw the man you had drawn on was Lancy Doane. You lowered your musket, and as you did a ball struck you on the wrist. "Oh, I have thanked God a hundred times, dear Cousin Dick, that you fired no shot that night, but only helped a hunted, miserable man away, for you did get free. Just in the nick of time your sail caught the wind, and you steered for the open sea. Three days from that, Tom Doane was safe in the Low Country, and you were on your way back to Lincolnshire. You came by a fishing boat to Saltfleet Haven, and made your way down the coast towards Mablethorpe. Passing Theddlethorpe, you went up to Faddo's house, and, looking through the window, you saw Faddo, not dead, but being cared for by his wife. Then you came on to Mablethorpe, and standing under my window, at the very moment when I was on my knees praying for the safety of those who travelled by sea, you whistled like a quail from the garden below--the old signal. Oh, how my heart stood still a moment and then leaped, for I knew it was you! I went down to the garden, and there you were. Oh, but I was glad to see you, Cousin Dick! "You remember how I let you take me in your arms for an instant, and then I asked if he was safe. And when you told me that he was, I burst into tears, and I asked you many questions about him. And you answered them quickly, and then would have taken me in your arms again. But I would not let you, for then I knew--I knew that you loved me, and, oh, a dreadful feeling came into my heart, and I drew back, and could have sunk upon the ground in misery, but that there came a thought of your safety! He was safe, but you--you were here, where reward was posted for you. I begged you to come into the house, that I might hide you there, but you would not. You had come for one thing, you said, and only one. An hour or two, and then you must be gone for London. And so you urged me to the beach. I was afraid we might be seen, but you led me away from the cottages near to the little bridge which crosses the dyke. By that way we came to the sands, as we thought unnoted. But no, who should it be to see us but that canting Baptist, Solby! And so the alarm was given. You had come, dear Cousin Dick, to ask me one thing--if I loved you? and if, should you ever be free to come back, I would be your wife? I did not answer you; I could not answer you; and, when you pressed me, I begged you to have pity on me and not to speak of it. You thought I was not brave enough to love a man open to the law. As if--as if I knew not that what you did came out of a generous, reckless heart. And on my knees-- oh, on my knees--I ought to have thanked you for it! But I knew not what to say; my lips were closed. And just then shots were fired, and we saw the coast-guards' lights. Then came Lancy Doane stumbling down the banks, and our parting--our parting. Your bitter laugh as you left me has rung in my ears ever since. "Do not think we have been idle here in your cause, for I myself went to Earl Fitzwilliam and told him the whole story, and how you had come to help Tom Doane that night. How do I know of it all? Because I have seen a letter from Tom Doane. Well, the Earl promised to lay your case before the King himself, and to speak for you with good eager entreaty. And so, it may be, by next time I write, there will go good news to you, and-- will you then come back, dear Cousin Dick? "And now I want to tell you what I know, and what you do not know. Tom Doane had a wife in Mablethorpe. He married her when she was but sixteen--a child. But she was afraid of her father's anger, and her husband soon after went abroad, became one of Prince Charlie's men, and she's never seen him since. She never really loved him, but she never forgot that she was his wife; and she always dreaded his coming back; as well she might, for you see what happened when he did come. I pitied her, dear Cousin Dick, with all my heart; and when Tom Doane died on the field of battle in Holland last year, I wept with her and prayed for her. And you would have wept too, man though you are, if you had seen how grateful she was that he died in honourable fighting and not in a smuggler's cave at Theddlethorpe. She blessed you for that, and she never ceases to work with me for the King's pardon for you. "There is no more to say now, dear Cousin Dick, save that I would have you know I think of you with great desire of heart for your well-being, and I pray God for your safe return some day to the good country which, pardoning you, will cast you out no more. "I am, dear Cousin Dick, "Thy most affectionate Cousin, "FANNY." "Afterword--Dear Dick, my heart bursts for joy. Enclosed here is thy pardon, sent by the good Earl Fitzwilliam last night. I could serve him on my knees for ever. Dick, she that was Tom Doane's wife, she loves thee. Wilt thou not come back to her? "In truth, she always loved thee. She was thy cousin; she is thy Fanny. Now thou knowest all." DONOVAN PASHA AND SOME PEOPLE OF EGYPT, Complete By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS Volume 1. WHILE THE LAMP HOLDS OUT TO BURN THE PRICE OF THE GRINDSTONE-AND THE DRUM THE DESERTION OF MAHOMMED SELIMON THE REEF OF NORMAN'S WOE Volume 2. FIELDING HAD AN ORDERLY THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE A TREATY OF PEACE AT THE MERCY OF TIBERIUS ALL THE WORLD'S MAD Volume 3. THE MAN AT THE WHEEL A TYRANT AND A LADY Volume 4. A YOUNG LION OF DEDAN HE WOULD NOT BE DENIED THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS INTRODUCTION To the FOREWORD of this book I have practically nothing to add. It describes how the book was planned, and how at last it came to be written. The novel--'The Weavers'--of which it was the herald, as one might say, was published in 1907. The reception of Donovan Pasha convinced me beyond peradventure, that the step I took in enlarging my field of work was as wise in relation to my art as in its effect upon my mind, temperament and faculty for writing. I knew Egypt by study quite as well as I knew the Dominion of Canada, the difference being, of course, that the instinct for the life of Canada was part of my very being itself; but there are great numbers of people who live their lives for fifty or seventy or eighty years in a country, and have no real instinct for understanding. There are numberless Canadians who do not understand Canada, Englishmen who know nothing of England, and Americans who do not understand the United States. If it is so that I have some instinct for the life of Canada, and have expressed it to the world with some accuracy and fidelity, it is apparent that the capacity for understanding could not be limited absolutely to one environment. That I understood Canada could not be established by the fact that I had spent my boyhood there, but only by the fact that some inner vision permitted me to see it as it really was. That inner vision, however, if it was anything at all was not in blinders, seeing only one section of the life of the world. Relatively it might see more deeply, more intimately in that place where habit of life had made the man familiar with all its detail, but the same vision turned elsewhere to fields where study and sympathy played a devoted part, could not fail to see; though the workman's craft, which made material the vision, might fail. The reception given Donovan Pasha convinced me that neither the vision nor the craftsmanship had wholly failed, whatever the degree of success which had been reached. Anglo-Egyptians approved the book. Its pages passed through the hands of an Englishman who had done over twenty years' service in the British army in Egypt and in official positions in the Egyptian administration, and I do not think that he made six corrections in the whole three hundred pages. He had himself a great gift for both music and painting; he was essentially exacting where any literature touching Egypt was concerned; but I am glad to think that, whatever he thought of the book as fiction, he did not find it necessary to grant absolution as to the facts and the details of incidents in character and life pourtrayed in Donovan Pasha. Who the original of 'Donovan Pasha' was I shall never say, but he was real. There is, however, in the House of Commons today a young and active politician once in the Egyptian service, and who bears a most striking resemblance to the purely imaginary portrait which Mr. Talbot Kelly, the artist, drew of the Dicky Donovan of the book. This young politician, with his experience in the diplomatic service, is in manner, disposition, capacity, and in his neat, fine, and alert physical frame, the very image of Dicky Donovan, as in my mind I perceived him; and when I first saw him I was almost thunderstruck, because he was to me Dicky Donovan come to life. There was nothing Dicky Donovan did or said or saw or heard which had not its counterpart in actual things in Egypt. The germ of most of the stories was got from things told me, or things that I saw, heard of, or experienced in Egypt itself. The first story of the book--'While the Lamp Holds out to Burn'--was suggested to me by an incident which I saw at a certain village on the Nile, which I will not name. Suffice it to say that the story in the main was true. Also the chief incident of the story, called 'The Price of the Grindstone--and the Drum', is true. The Mahommed Seti of that story was the servant of a friend of mine, and he did in life what I made him do in the tale. 'On the Reef of Norman's Woe', which more than one journal singled out as showing what extraordinary work was being done in Egypt by a handful of British officials, had its origin in something told me by my friend Sir John Rogers, who at one time was at the head of the Sanitary Department of the Government of Egypt. I could take the stories one by one, and show the seeds from which this little plantation of fiction sprang, but I will not go further than to refer to a story called 'Fielding Had an Orderly', the idea of which was contained in the experience of a British official whose courage was as cool as his wit, and both were extremely dangerous weapons, used at times against those who were opposed to him. When I read a book like 'Said the Fisherman', however, with its wonderfully intimate knowledge of Oriental life and the thousand nuances which only the born Orientalist can give, I look with tempered pride upon Donovan Pasha. Still I think that it caught and held some phases of Egyptian life which the author of 'Said the Fisherman' might perhaps miss, since the observation of every artist has its own idiosyncrasy, and what strikes one observer will not strike another. A FOREWORD It is now twelve years since I began giving to the public tales of life in lands well known to me. The first of them were drawn from Australia and the Islands of the Southern Pacific, where I had lived and roamed in the middle and late Eighties. They appeared in various English magazines, and were written in London far from the scenes which suggested them. None of them were written on the spot, as it were. I did not think then, and I do not think now, that this was perilous to their truthfulness. After many years of travel and home-staying observation I have found that all worth remembrance, the salient things and scenes, emerge clearly out of myriad impressions, and become permanent in mind and memory. Things so emerging are typical at least, and probably true. Those tales of the Far South were given out with some prodigality. They did not appear in book form, however; for, at the time I was sending out these Antipodean sketches, I was also writing--far from the scenes where they were laid--a series of Canadian tales, many of which appeared in the 'Independent' of New York, in the 'National Observer', edited by Mr. Henley, and in the 'Illustrated London News'. By accident, and on the suggestion of my friend Mr. Henley, the Canadian tales 'Pierre and his People' were published first; with the result that the stories of the Southern Hemisphere were withheld from publication, though they have been privately printed and duly copyrighted. Some day I may send them forth, but meanwhile I am content to keep them in my own care. Moved always by deep interest in the varied manifestations of life in different portions of the Empire, five or six years ago I was attracted to the Island of Jersey, in the Channel Sea, by the likeness of the origin of her people with that of the French-Canadians. I went to live at St. Heliers for a time, and there wrote a novel called 'The Battle of the Strong'. Nor would it be thought strange that, having visited another and newer sphere of England's influence, Egypt to wit, in 1889, I should then determine that, when I could study the country at leisure, I should try to write of the life there, so full of splendour and of primitive simplicity; of mystery and guilt; of cruel indolence and beautiful industry; of tyranny and devoted slavery; of the high elements of a true democracy and the shameful practices of a false autocracy; all touched off by the majesty of an ancient charm, the nobility of the remotest history. The years went by, and, four times visiting Egypt, at last I began to write of her. That is now five years ago. From time to time the stories which I offer to the public in this volume were given forth. It is likely that the old Anglo-Egyptian and the historical student may find some anachronisms and other things to criticise; but the anachronisms are deliberate, and even as in writing of Canada and Australia, which I know very well, I have here, perhaps, sacrificed superficial exactness while trying to give the more intimate meaning and spirit. I have never thought it necessary to apologise for this disregard of photographic accuracy,--that may be found in my note-books,--and I shall not begin to do so now. I shall be sufficiently grateful if this series of tales does no more than make ready the way for the novel of Egyptian life on which I have been working for some years. It is an avant courier. I hope, however, that it may be welcomed for its own sake. G. P. NOTE: A Glossary will be found at the end of the volume. WHILE THE LAMP HOLDS OUT TO BURN There is a town on the Nile which Fielding Bey called Hasha, meaning "Heaven Forbid!" He loathed inspecting it. Going up the Nile, he would put off visiting it till he came down; coming down, he thanked his fates if accident carried him beyond it. Convenient accidents sometimes did occur: a murder at one of the villages below it, asking his immediate presence; a telegram from his Minister at Cairo, requiring his return; or a very low Nile, when Hasha suddenly found itself a mile away from the channel and there was no good place to land. So it was that Hasha, with little inspection, was the least reputable and almost the dirtiest town on the Nile; for even in those far-off days the official Englishman had his influence, especially when Kubar Pasha was behind him. Kubar had his good points. There were certain definite reasons, however, why Fielding Bey shrank from visiting Hasha. Donovan Pasha saw something was wrong from the first moment Hasha was mentioned. On a particular day they were lying below at another village, on the Amenhotep. Hasha was the next place marked red on the map, and that meant inspection. When Dicky Donovan mentioned Hasha, Fielding Bey twisted a shoulder and walked nervously up and down the deck. He stayed here for hours: to wait for the next post, he said-serious matters expected from head quarters. He appeared not to realise that letters would get to Hasha by rail as quickly as by the Amenhotep. Every man has a weak spot in his character, a sub-rosa, as it were, in his business of life; and Dicky fancied he had found Fielding Bey's. While they waited, Fielding made a pretence of working hard--for he really was conscientious--sending his orderly for the mamour-- [magistrate]--and the omdah--[head of a village]--, and holding fatuous conferences; turning the hose on the local dairymen and butchers and dategrowers, who came with backsheesh in kind; burying his nose in official papers; or sending for Holgate, the Yorkshire engineer, to find out what the run would be to the next stopping-place beyond Hasha. Twice he did this; which was very little like Fielding Bey. The second time, when Holgate came below to his engine, Dicky was there playing with a Farshoot dog. "We don't stop at Hasha, then?" Dicky asked, and let the Farshoot fasten on his leggings. Holgate swung round and eyed Dicky curiously, a queer smile at his lips. "Not if Goovnur can 'elp, aw give ye ma woord, sir," answered Holgate. Fielding was affectionately called "the Governor" by his subordinates and friends. "We all have our likes and dislikes," rejoined Dicky casually, and blew smoke in the eyes of the Farshoot. "Aye, aw've seen places that bad! but Hasha has taaste of its own in Goovnur's mouth, ma life on't!" "Never can tell when a thing'll pall on the taste. Hasha's turn with the Governor now, eh?" rejoined Dicky. Dicky's way of getting information seemed guileless, and Holgate opened his basket as wide as he knew. "Toorn, didst tha sway" (Holgate talked broadly to Dicky always, for Dicky had told him of his aunt, Lady Carmichael, who lived near Halifax in Yorkshire), "toorn, aw warrant! It be reg'lar as kitchen-fire, this Hasha business, for three years, ever sin' aw been scrapin' mud o' Nile River." "That was a nasty row they had over the cemetery three years ago, the Governor against the lot, from mamour to wekeel!" Holgate's eyes flashed, and he looked almost angrily down at Dicky, whose hand was between the teeth of the playful Farshoot. "Doost think--noa, tha canst not think that Goovnur be 'feared o' Hasha fook. Thinks't tha, a man that told 'em all--a thousand therr--that he'd hang on nearest tree the foorst that disobeyed him, thinks't tha that Goovnur's lost his nerve by that?" "The Governor never loses his nerve, Holgate," said Dicky, smiling and offering a cigar. "There's such a thing as a man being afraid to trust himself where he's been in a mess, lest he hit out, and doesn't want to." Holgate, being excited, was in a fit state to tell the truth, if he knew it; which was what Dicky had worked for; but Holgate only said: "It bean't fear, and it bean't milk o' human kindness. It be soort o' thing a man gets. Aw had it once i' Bradford, in Little Cornish Street. Aw saw a faace look out o' window o' hoose by tinsmith's shop, an' that faace was like hell's picture-aye, 'twas a killiagous faace that! Aw never again could pass that house. 'Twas a woman's faace. Horrible 'twas, an' sore sad an' flootered aw were, for t' faace was like a lass aw loved when aw wur a lad." "I should think it was something like that," answered Dicky, his eyes wandering over the peninsula beyond which lay Hasha. "Summat, aw be sure," answered Holgate, "an' ma woord on't . . . ah, yon coomes orderly wi' post for Goovnur. Now it be Hasha, or it be not Hasha, it be time for steam oop." Holgate turned to his engine as Dicky mounted the stairs and went to Fielding's cabin, where the orderly was untying a handkerchief overflowing with letters. As Fielding read his official letters his face fell more and more. When he had read the last, he sat for a minute without speaking, his brow very black. There was no excuse for pushing past Hasha. He had not been there for over a year. It was his duty to inspect the place: he had a conscience; there was time to get to Hasha that afternoon. With an effort he rose, hurried along the deck, and called down to Holgate: "Full-steam to Hasha!" Then, with a quick command to the reis, who was already at the wheel, he lighted a cigar, and, joining Dicky Donovan, began to smoke and talk furiously. But he did not talk of Hasha. At sunset the Amenhotep drew in to the bank by Hasha, and, from the deck, Fielding Bey saluted the mamour, the omdah and his own subordinates, who, buttoning up their coats as they came, hurried to the bank to make salaams to him. Behind them, at a distance, came villagers, a dozen ghaffirs armed with naboots of dom-wood, and a brace of well-mounted, badly-dressed policemen, with seats like a monkey on a stick. The conferences with the mamour and omdah were short, in keeping with the temper of "Fielding Saadat"; and long into the night Dicky lay and looked out of his cabin window to the fires on the banks, where sat Mahommed Seti the servant, the orderly, and some attendant ghaffirs, who, feasting on the remains of the effendi's supper, kept watch. For Hasha was noted for its robbers. It was even rumoured that the egregious Selamlik Pasha, with the sugar plantation near by--"Trousers," Dicky called him when he saw him on the morrow, because of the elephantine breeks he wore--was not averse to sending his Abyssinian slaves through the sugar-cane to waylay and rob, and worse, maybe. By five o'clock next day the inspection was over. The streets had been swept for the Excellency--which is to say Saadat--the first time in a year. The prison had been cleaned of visible horrors, the first time in a month. The last time it was ordered there had been a riot among the starving, infested prisoners; earth had been thrown over the protruding bones of the dear lamented dead in the cemetery; the water of the ablution places in the mosque had been changed; the ragged policemen had new putties; the kourbashes of the tax-gatherers were hid in their yeleks; the egregious Pasha wore a greasy smile, and the submudir, as he conducted Fielding--"whom God preserve and honour!"--through the prison and through the hospital, where goat's milk had been laid on for this especial day, smirked gently through the bazaar above his Parisian waistcoat. But Fielding, as he rode on Selamlik Pasha's gorgeous black donkey from Assiout, with its crimson trappings, knew what proportion of improvement this "hankypanky," as Dicky called it, bore to the condition of things at the last inspection. He had spoken little all day, and Dicky had noticed that his eye was constantly turning here and there, as though looking for an unwelcome something or somebody. At last the thing was over, and they were just crossing the canal, the old Bahr-el-Yusef, which cuts the town in twain as the river Abana does Damascus, when Dicky saw nearing them a heavily-laden boat, a cross between a Thames house-boat and an Italian gondola, being drawn by one poor raw-bone--raw-bone in truth, for there was on each shoulder a round red place, made raw by the unsheathed ropes used as harness. The beast's sides were scraped as a tree is barked, and the hind quarters gored as though by a harrow. Dicky was riding with the mamour of the district, Fielding was a distance behind with Trousers and the Mudir. Dicky pulled up his donkey, got off and ran towards the horse, pale with fury; for he loved animals better than men, and had wasted his strength beating donkey-boys with the sticks they used on their victims. The boat had now reached a point opposite the mudirieh, its stopping-place; and the raw- bone, reeking with sweat and blood, stood still and trembled, its knees shaking with the strain just taken off them, its head sunk nearly to the ground. Dicky had hardly reached the spot when a figure came running to the poor waler with a quick stumbling motion. Dicky drew back in wonder, for never had he seen eyes so painful as these that glanced from the tortured beast to himself--staring, bulbous, bloodshot, hunted eyes; but they were blue, a sickly, faded blue; and they were English! Dicky's hand was, on his pistol, for his first impulse had been to shoot the rawbone; but it dropped away in sheer astonishment at the sight of this strange figure in threadbare dirty clothes and riding-breeches made by shearing the legs of a long pair--cut with an unsteady hand, for the edges were jagged and uneven, and the man's bare leg showed above the cast-off putties of a policeman. The coat was an old khaki jacket of a Gippy soldier, and, being scant of buttons, doubtful linen showed beneath. Above the hook- nose, once aristocratic, now vulture-like and shrunken like that of Rameses in his glass case at Ghizeh, was a tarboosh tilting forward over the eyes, nearly covering the forehead. The figure must have been very tall once, but it was stooped now, though the height was still well above medium. Hunted, haunted, ravaged and lost, was the face, and the long grey moustache, covering the chin almost, seemed to cover an immeasurable depravity. Dicky took it all in at a glance, and wondered with a bitter wonder; for this was an Englishman, and behind him and around him, though not very near him, were Arabs, Soudanese, and Fellaheen, with sneering yet apprehensive faces. As Dicky's hand dropped away from his pistol, the other shot out trembling, graceful, eager fingers, the one inexpressibly gentlemanly thing about him. "Give it to me--quick!" he said, and he threw a backward glance towards the approaching group--Fielding, the egregious Pasha, and the rest. Dicky did not hesitate; he passed the pistol over. The Lost One took the pistol, cocked it, and held it to the head of the waler, which feebly turned to him in recognition. "Good-bye, old man!" he said, and fired. The horse dropped, kicked, struggled once or twice, and was gone. "If you know the right spot, there's hardly a kick," said the Lost One, and turned to face the Pasha, who had whipped his donkey forward on them, and sat now livid with rage, before the two. He stood speechless for a moment, for his anger had forced the fat of his neck up into his throat. But Dicky did not notice the Pasha. His eye was fixed on Fielding Bey, and the eye of Fielding Bey was on the Lost One. All at once Dicky understood why it was that Fielding Bey had shrunk from coming to Hasha. Fielding might have offered many reasons, but this figure before them was the true one. Trouble, pity, anxiety, pride, all were in Fielding's face. Because the Lost One was an Englishman, and the race was shamed and injured by this outcast? Not that alone. Fielding had the natural pride of his race, but this look was personal. He glanced at the dead horse, at the scarred sides, the raw shoulders, the corrugated haunches, he saw the pistol in the Lost One's hand, and then, as a thread of light steals between the black trees of a jungle, a light stole across Fielding's face for a moment. He saw the Lost One hand the pistol back to Dicky and fix his debauched blue eyes on the Pasha. These blue eyes did not once look at Fielding, though they were aware of his presence. "Son of a dog!" said the Pasha, and his fat forefinger convulsively pointed to the horse. The Lost One's eyes wavered a second, as though their owner had not the courage to abide the effect of his action, then they quickened to a point of steadiness, as a lash suddenly knots for a crack in the hand of a postilion. "Swine!" said the Lost One into the Pasha's face, and his round shoulders drew up a little farther, so that he seemed more like a man among men. His hands fell on his hips as, in his mess, an officer with no pockets drops his knuckles on his waist-line for a stand-at-ease. The egregious Selamlik Pasha stood high in favour with the Khedive: was it not he who had suggested a tax on the earnings of the dancing girls, the Ghazeeyehs, and did he not himself act as the first tax-gatherer? Was it not Selamlik Pasha also who whispered into the ear of the Mouffetish that a birth-tax and a burial-tax should be instituted? And had he not seen them carried out in the mudiriehs under his own supervision? Had he not himself made the Fellaheen pay thrice over for water for their onion-fields? Had he not flogged an Arab to death with his own hand, the day before Fielding's and Dicky's arrival, and had he not tried to get this same Arab's daughter into his harem--this Selamlik Pasha! The voice of the Lost One suddenly rose shrill and excited, and he shouted at the Pasha. "Swine! swine! swine! . . . Kill your slaves with a kourbash if you like, but a bullet's the thing for a waler!--Swine of a leper!" The whole frame of the Lost One was still, but the voice was shaking, querulous, half hysterical; the eyes were lighted with a terrible excitement, the lips under the grey moustache twitched; the nervous slipshod dignity of carriage was in curious contrast to the disordered patchwork dress. The trouble on Fielding's face glimmered with a little ray of hope now. Dicky came over to him, and was about to speak, but a motion of Fielding's hand stopped him. The hand said: "Let them fight it out." In a paroxysm of passion Selamlik Pasha called two Abyssinian slaves standing behind. "This brother of a toad to prison!" he said. The Lost One's eyes sought Dicky like a flash. Without a word, and as quick as the tick of a clock, Dicky tossed over his pistol to the Lost One, who caught it smoothly, turned it in his hand, and levelled it at the Abyssinians. "No more of this damned nonsense, Pasha," said Fielding suddenly. "He doesn't put a high price on his life, and you do on yours. I'd be careful!" "Steady, Trousers!" said Dicky in a soft voice, and smiled his girlish smile. Selamlik Pasha stared for a moment in black anger, then stuttered forth: "Will you speak for a dog of a slave that his own country vomits out?" "Your mother was a slave of Darfur, Pasha," answered Fielding, in a low voice; "your father lost his life stealing slaves. Let's have no airs and graces." Dicky's eyes had been fixed on the Lost One, and his voice now said in its quaint treble: "Don't get into a perspiration. He's from where we get our bad manners, and he messes with us to-night, Pasha." The effect of these words was curious. Fielding's face was a blank surprise, and his mouth opened to say no, but he caught Dicky's look and the word was not uttered. The Pasha's face showed curious incredulity; under the pallor of the Lost One's a purplish flush crept, stayed a moment, then faded away, and left it paler than before. "We've no more business, I think, Pasha," said Fielding brusquely, and turned his donkey towards the river. The Pasha salaamed without a word, his Abyssinian slaves helped him on his great white donkey, and he trotted away towards the palace, the trousers flapping about his huge legs. The Lost One stood fingering the revolver. Presently he looked up at Dicky, and, standing still, held out the pistol. "Better keep it," said Dicky; "I'll give you some peas for it to-night. Speak to the poor devil, Fielding," he added quickly, in a low tone. Fielding turned in his saddle. "Seven's the hour," he said, and rode on. "Thanks, you fellows," said the Lost One, and walked swiftly away. As they rode to the Amenhotep Dicky did not speak, but once he turned round to look after the outcast, who was shambling along the bank of the canal. When Fielding and Dicky reached the deck of the Amenhotep, and Mahommed Seti had brought refreshment, Dicky said: "What did he do?" Fielding's voice was constrained and hard: "Cheated at cards." Dicky's lips tightened. "Where?" "At Hong Kong." "Officer?" "In the Buffs." Dicky drew a long breath. "He's paid the piper." "Naturally. He cheated twice." "Cheated twice--at cards!" Dicky's voice was hard now. "Who was he?" "Heatherby--Bob Heatherby!" "Bob Heatherby--gad! Fielding, I'm sorry--I couldn't have guessed, old man. Mrs. Henshaw's brother!" Fielding nodded. Dicky turned his head away; for Fielding was in love with Mrs. Henshaw, the widow of Henshaw of the Buffs. He realised now why Fielding loathed Hasha so. "Forgive me for asking him to mess, guv'nor." Fielding laughed a little uneasily. "Never mind. You see, it isn't the old scores only that bar him. He's been a sweep out here. Nothing he hasn't done. Gone lower and lower and lower. Tax-gatherer with a kourbash for old Selamlik the beast. Panderer for the same. Sweep of the lowest sort!" Dicky's eyes flashed. "I say, Fielding, it would be rather strange if he hadn't gone down, down, down. A man that's cheated at cards never finds anybody to help him up, up, up. The chances are dead against him. But he stood up well to-day, eh?" "I suppose blood will tell at last in the very worst." "'And while the lamp holds out to burn The vilest sinner may return--'" hummed Dicky musingly. Then he added slowly: "Fielding, fellows of that kind always flare up a bit according to Cavendish, just before the end. I've seen it once or twice before. It's the last clutch at the grass as they go slip--slip--slipping down. Take my word for it, Heatherby's near the finish." "I shouldn't wonder. Selamlik, the old leper, 'll lay in wait for him. He'll get lost in the sugar-cane one of these evenings soon." "Couldn't we . . ." Dicky paused. Fielding started, looked at Dicky intently, and then shook his head sadly. "It's no good, Dicky. It never is." "'While the lamp holds out to burn . . .'" said Dicky, and lighted another cigarette. Precisely at seven o'clock Heatherby appeared. He had on a dress-suit, brown and rusty, a white tie made of a handkerchief torn in two, and a pair of patent leather shoes, scraggy and cracked. Fielding behaved well, Dicky was amiable and attentive, and the dinner being ready to the instant, there was no waiting, there were no awkward pauses. No names of English people were mentioned, England was not named; nor Cairo, nor anything that English people abroad love to discuss. The fellah, the pasha, the Soudan were the only topics. Under Fielding's courtesy and Dicky's acute suggestions, Heatherby's weakened brain awaked, and he talked intelligently, till the moment coffee was brought in. Then, as Mahommed Seti retired, Heatherby suddenly threw himself forward, his arms on the table, and burst into sobs. "Oh, you fellows, you fellows!" he said. There was silence for a minute, then he sobbed out again: "It's the first time I've been treated like a gentleman by men that knew me, these fifteen years. It--it gets me in the throat!" His body shook with sobs. Fielding and Dicky were uncomfortable, for these were not the sobs of a driveller or a drunkard. Behind them was the blank failure of a life--fifteen years of miserable torture, of degradation, of a daily descent lower into the pit, of the servitude of shame. When at last he raised his streaming eyes, Fielding and Dicky could see the haunting terror of the soul, at whose elbow, as it were, every man cried: "You are without the pale!" That look told them how Heatherby of the Buffs had gone from table d'hote to table d'hote of Europe, from town to town, from village to village, to make acquaintances who repulsed him when they discovered who he really was. Shady Heatherby, who cheated at cards! Once Fielding made as if to put a hand on his shoulder and speak to him, but Dicky intervened with a look. The two drank their coffee, Fielding a little uneasily; but yet in his face there was a new look: of inquiry, of kindness, even of hope. Presently Dicky flashed a look and nodded towards the door, and Fielding dropped his cigar and went on deck, and called down to Holgate the engineer: "Get up steam, and make for Luxor. It's moonlight, and we're safe enough in this high Nile, eh, Holgate?" "Safe enough, or aw'm a Dootchman," said Holgate. Then they talked in a low voice together. Down in the saloon, Dicky sat watching Heatherby. At last the Lost One raised his head again. "It's worth more to me, this night, than you fellows know," he said brokenly. "That's all right," said Dicky. "Have a cigar?" He shook his head. "It's come at the right time. I wanted to be treated like an Englishman once more--just once more." "Don't worry. Take in a reef and go steady for a bit. The milk's spilt, but there are other meadows. . . ." Dicky waved an arm up the river, up towards the Soudan! The Lost One nodded, then his eyes blazed up and took on a hungry look. His voice suddenly came in a whisper. "Gordon was a white man. Gordon said to me three years ago: 'Come with me, I'll help you on. You don't need to live, if you don't want to. Most of us will get knocked out up there in the Soudan.' Gordon said that to me. But there was another fellow with Gordon who knew me, and I couldn't face it. So I stayed behind here. I've been everything, anything, to that swine, Selamlik Pasha; but when he told me yesterday to bring him the daughter of the Arab he killed with his kourbash, I jibbed. I couldn't stand that. Her father had fed me more than once. I jibbed --by God, I jibbed! I said I was an Englishman, and I'd see him damned first. I said it, and I shot the horse, and I'd have shot him--what's that?" There was a churning below. The Amenhotep was moving from the bank. "She's going--the boat's going," said the Lost One, trembling to his feet. "Sit down," said Dicky, and gripped him by the arm. "Where are you taking me?" asked Heatherby, a strange, excited look in his face. "Up the river." He seemed to read Dicky's thoughts--the clairvoyance of an overwrought mind: "To--to Assouan?" The voice had a curious far-away sound. "You shall go beyond Assouan," said Dicky. "To--to Gordon?" Heatherby's voice was husky and indistinct. "Yes, here's Fielding; he'll give you the tip. Sit down." Dicky gently forced him down into a chair. Six months later, a letter came to Dicky from an Egyptian officer, saying that Heatherby of the Buffs had died gallantly fighting in a sortie sent by Gordon into the desert. "He had a lot of luck," mused Dicky as he read. "They don't end that way as a rule." Then he went to Fielding, humming a certain stave from one of Watts's hymns. THE PRICE OF THE GRINDSTONE--AND THE DRUM He lived in the days of Ismail the Khedive, and was familiarly known as the Murderer. He had earned his name, and he had no repentance. From the roof of a hut in his native village of Manfaloot he had dropped a grindstone on the head of Ebn Haroun, who contended with him for the affections of Ahassa, the daughter of Haleel the barber, and Ebn Haroun's head was flattened like the cover of a pie. Then he had broken a cake of dourha bread on the roof for the pigeons above him, and had come down grinning to the street, where a hesitating mounted policeman fumbled with his weapon, and four ghaffirs waited for him with their naboots. Seti then had weighed his chances, had seen the avenging friends of Ebn Haroun behind the ghaffirs, and therefore permitted himself to be marched off to the mudirieh. There the Mudir glared at him and had him loaded with chains and flung into the prison, where two hundred convicts arrayed themselves against myriad tribes which, killed individually, made a spot on the wall no bigger than a threepenny-bit! The carnage was great, and though Seti was sleepless night after night it was not because of his crime. He found some solace, however, in provoking his fellow-prisoners to assaults upon each other; and every morning he grinned as he saw the dead and wounded dragged out into the clear sunshine. The end to this came when the father of Seti, Abou Seti, went at night to the Mudir and said deceitfully: "Effendi, by the mercy of Heaven I have been spared even to this day; for is it not written in the Koran that a man shall render to his neighbour what is his neighbour's? What should Abou Seti do with ten feddans of land, while the servant of Allah, the Effendi Insagi, lives? What is honestly mine is eight feddans, and the rest, by the grace of God, is thine, O effendi." Every feddan he had he had honestly earned, but this was his way of offering backsheesh. And the Mudir had due anger and said: "No better are ye than a Frank to have hidden the truth so long and waxed fat as the Nile rises and falls. The two feddans, as thou sayest, are mine." Abou Seti bowed low, and rejoined, "Now shall I sleep in peace, by the grace of Heaven, and all my people under my date-trees--and all my people?" he added, with an upward look at the Mudir. "But the rentals of the two feddans of land these ten years--thou hast eased thy soul by bringing the rentals thereof?" Abou Seti's glance fell and his hands twitched. His fingers fumbled with his robe of striped silk. He cursed the Mudir in his heart for his bitter humour; but was not his son in prison, and did it not lie with the Mudir whether he lived or died? So he answered: "All-seeing and all-knowing art thou, O effendi, and I have reckoned the rentals even to this hour for the ten years--fifty piastres for each feddan--" "A hundred for the five years of high Nile," interposed the Mudir. "Fifty for the five lean years, and a hundred for the five fat years," said Abou Seti, and wished that his words were poisoned arrows, that they might give the Mudir many deaths at once. "And may Allah give thee greatness upon thy greatness!" "God prosper thee also, Abou Seti, and see that thou keep only what is thine own henceforth. Get thee gone in peace." "At what hour shall I see the face of my son alive?" asked Abou Seti in a low voice, placing his hand upon his turban in humility. "To-morrow at even, when the Muezzin calls from the mosque of El Hassan, be thou at the west wall of the prison by the Gate of the Prophet's Sorrow, with thy fastest camel. Your son shall ride for me through the desert even to Farafreh, and bear a letter to the bimbashi there. If he bear it safely, his life is his own; if he fail, look to thy feddans of land!" "God is merciful, and Seti is bone of my bone," said Abou Seti, and laid his hand again upon his turban. That was how Mahommed Seti did not at once pay the price of the grindstone, but rode into the desert bearing the message of the Mudir and returned safely with the answer, and was again seen in the cafes of Manfaloot. And none of Ebn Haroun's friends did aught, for the world knew through whom it was that Seti lived--and land was hard to keep in Manfaloot and the prison near. But one day a kavass of the Khedive swooped down on Manfaloot, and twenty young men were carried off in conscription. Among them was Seti, now married to Ahassa, the fellah maid for whom the grindstone had fallen on Ebn Haroun's head. When the fatal number fell to him and it was ordained that he must go to Dongola to serve in the Khedive's legions, he went to his father, with Ahassa wailing behind him. "Save thyself," said the old man with a frown. "I have done what I could--I have sold my wife's jewels," answered Seti. "Ten piastres!" said old Abou Seti grimly. "Twelve," said Seti, grinning from ear to ear. Thou wilt add four feddans of land to that I will answer for the Mudir." "Thy life only cost me two feddans. Shall I pay four to free thee of serving thy master the Khedive? Get thee gone into the Soudan. I do not fear for thee: thou wilt live on. Allah is thy friend. Peace be with thee!" II So it was that the broad-shouldered Seti went to be a soldier, with all the women of the village wailing behind him, and Ahassa his wife covering her head with dust and weeping by his side as he stepped out towards Dongola. For himself, Seti was a philosopher; that is to say, he was a true Egyptian. Whatever was, was to be; and Seti had a good digestion, which is a great thing in the desert. Moreover, he had a capacity for foraging--or foray. The calmness with which he risked his life for an onion or a water-bag would have done credit to a prince of buccaneers. He was never flustered. He had dropped a grindstone on the head of his rival, but the smile that he smiled then was the same smile with which he suffered and forayed and fought and filched in the desert. With a back like a door, and arms as long and strong as a gorilla's, with no moral character to speak of, and an imperturbable selfishness, even an ignorant Arab like Seti may go far. More than once his bimbashi drew a sword to cut him down for the peaceful insolent grin with which he heard himself suddenly charged with very original crimes; but even the officer put his sword up again, because he remembered that though Seti was the curse of the regiment on the march, there was no man like him in the day of battle. Covered with desert sand and blood, and fighting and raging after the manner of a Sikh, he could hold ten companies together like a wall against a charge of Dervishes. The bimbashi rejoiced at this, for he was a coward; likewise his captain was a coward, and so was his lieutenant: for they were half Turks, half Gippies, who had seen Paris and had not the decency to die there. Also it had been discovered that no man made so good a spy or envoy as Seti. His gift for lying was inexpressible: confusion never touched him; for the flattest contradictions in the matter of levying backsheesh he always found an excuse. Where the bimbashi and his officers were afraid to go lest the bald-headed eagle and the vulture should carry away their heads as tit- bits to the Libyan hills, Seti was sent. In more than one way he always kept his head. He was at once the curse and the pride of the regiment. For his sins he could not be punished, and his virtues were of value only to save his life. In this fashion, while his regiment thinned out by disease, famine, fighting, and the midnight knife, Seti came on to Dongola, to Berber, to Khartoum; and he grinned with satisfaction when he heard that they would make even for Kordofan. He had outlived all the officers who left Manfaloot with the regiment save the bimbashi, and the bimbashi was superstitious and believed that while Seti lived he would live. Therefore, no clansman ever watched his standard flying in the van as the bimbashi--from behind--watched the long arm of Seti slaying, and heard his voice like a brass horn above all others shouting his war-cry. But at Khartoum came Seti's fall. Many sorts of original sin had been his, with profit and prodigious pleasure, but when, by the supposed orders of the bimbashi, he went through Khartoum levying a tax upon every dancing-girl in the place and making her pay upon the spot at the point of a merciless tongue, he went one step too far. For his genius had preceded that of Selamlik Pasha, the friend of the Mouffetish at Cairo, by one day only. Selamlik himself had collected taxes on dancing-girls all the way from Cairo to Khartoum; and to be hoist by an Arab in a foot regiment having no authority and only a limitless insolence, was more than the Excellency could bear. To Selamlik Pasha the bimbashi hastily disowned all knowledge of Seti's perfidy, but both were brought out to have their hands and feet and heads cut off in the Beit-el-Mal, in the presence of the dancing-girls and the populace. In the appointed place, when Seti saw how the bimbashi wept-- for he had been to Paris and had no Arab blood in him; how he wrung his hands--for had not absinthe weakened his nerves in the cafes of St. Michel?--when Seti saw that he was no Arab and was afraid to die, then he told the truth to Selamlik Pasha. He even boldly offered to tell the pasha where half his own ill-gotten gains were hid, if he would let the bimbashi go. Now, Selamlik Pasha was an Egyptian, and is it not written in the Book of Egypt that no man without the most dangerous reason may refuse backsheesh? So it was that Selamlik talked to the Ulema, the holy men, who were there, and they urged him to clemency, as holy men will, even in Egypt--at a price. So it was also that the bimbashi went back to his regiment with all his limbs intact. Seti and the other half of his ill-gotten gains were left. His hands were about to be struck off, when he realised of how little account his gold would be without them; so he offered it to Selamlik Pasha for their sake. The pasha promised, and then, having found the money, serenely prepared the execution. For his anger was great. Was not the idea of taxing the dancing-girls his very own, the most original tax ever levied in Egypt? And to have the honour of it filched from him by a soldier of Manfaloot--no, Mahommed Seti should be crucified! And Seti, the pride and the curse of his regiment, would have been crucified between two palms on the banks of the river had it not been for Fielding Bey, the Englishman--Fielding of St. Bartholomew's--who had burned gloriously to reform Egypt root and branch, and had seen the fire of his desires die down. Fielding Bey saved Seti, but not with backsheesh. Fielding intervened. He knew Selamlik Pasha well, and the secret of his influence over him is for telling elsewhere. But whatever its source, it gave Mahommed Seti his life. It gave him much more, for it expelled him from the Khedive's army. Now soldiers without number, gladly risking death, had deserted from the army of the Khedive; they had bought themselves out with enormous backsheesh, they had been thieves, murderers, panderers, that they might be freed from service by some corrupt pasha or bimbashi; but no one in the knowledge of the world had ever been expelled from the army of the Khedive. There was a satanic humour in the situation pleasant to the soul of Mahommed Seti, if soul his subconsciousness might be called. In the presence of his regiment, drawn up in the Beit-el-Mal, before his trembling bimbashi, whose lips were now pale with terror at the loss of his mascot, Mahommed Seti was drummed out of line, out of his regiment, out of the Beit-el-Mal. It was opera boufe, and though Seti could not know what opera boufe was, he did know that it was a ridiculous fantasia, and he grinned his insolent grin all the way, even to the corner of the camel-market, where the drummer and the sergeant and his squad turned back from ministering a disgrace they would gladly have shared. Left at the corner of the camel-market, Mahommed Seti planned his future. At first it was to steal a camel and take the desert for Berber. Then he thought of the English hakim, Fielding Bey, who had saved his life. Now, a man who has saved your life once may do it again; one favour is always the promise of another. So Seti, with a sudden inspiration, went straight to the house of Fielding Bey and sat down before it on his mat. With the setting of the sun came a clatter of tins and a savoury odour throughout Khartoum to its farthest precincts, for it was Ramadan, and no man ate till sunset. Seti smiled an avid smile, and waited. At last he got up, turned his face towards Mecca, and said his prayers. Then he lifted the latch of Fielding's hut, entered, eyed the medicine bottles and the surgical case with childish apprehension, and made his way to the kitchen. There he foraged. He built a fire; his courage grew; he ran to the bazaar, and came back with an armful of meats and vegetables. So it was that when Fielding returned he found Mahommed Seti and a savoury mess awaiting him. Also there was coffee and a bottle of brandy which Seti had looted in the bazaar. In one doorway stood Fielding; in another stood Mahommed Seti, with the same grin which had served his purpose all the way from Cairo, his ugly face behind it, and his prodigious shoulders below it, and the huge chest from which came forth, like the voice of a dove: "God give thee long life, saadat el bey!" Now an M.D. degree and a course in St. Bartholomew's Hospital do not necessarily give a knowledge of the human soul, though the outlying lands of the earth have been fattened by those who thought there was knowledge and salvation in a conquered curriculum. Fielding Bey, however, had never made pretence of understanding the Oriental mind, so he discreetly took his seat and made no remarks. From sheer instinct, however, when he came to the coffee he threw a boot which caught Mahommed Seti in the middle of the chest, and said roughly: "French, not Turkish, idiot!" Then Mahommed Seti grinned, and he knew that he was happy; for it was deep in his mind that that was the Inglesi's way of offering a long engagement. In any case Seti had come to stay. Three times he made French coffee that night before it suited, and the language of Fielding was appropriate in each case. At last a boot, a native drum, and a wood sculpture of Pabst the lion-headed goddess, established perfect relations between them. They fell into their places of master and man as accurately as though the one had smitten and the other served for twenty years. The only acute differences they had were upon two points--the cleaning of the medicine bottles and surgical instruments, and the looting. But it was wonderful to see how Mahommed Seti took the kourbash at the hands of Fielding, when he shied from the medicine bottles. He could have broken, or bent double with one twist, the weedy, thin-chested Fielding. But though he saw a deadly magic and the evil eye in every stopper, and though to him the surgical instruments were torturing steels which the devil had forged for his purposes, he conquered his own prejudices so far as to assist in certain bad cases which came in Fielding's way on the journey down the Nile. The looting was a different matter. Had not Mahommed Seti looted all his life--looted from his native village to the borders of Kordofan? Did he not take to foray as a wild ass to bersim? Moreover, as little Dicky Donovan said humorously yet shamelessly when he joined them at Korosko: "What should a native do but loot who came from Manfaloot?" Dicky had a prejudice against the Murderer, because he was a murderer; and Mahommed Seti viewed with scorn any white man who was not Fielding; much more so one who was only five feet and a trifle over. So for a time there was no sympathy between the two. But each conquered the other in the end. Seti was conquered first. One day Dicky, with a sudden burst of generosity--for he had a button to his pocket--gave Mahommed Seti a handful of cigarettes. The next day Seti said to Fielding: "Behold, God has given thee strong men for friends. Thou hast Mahommed Seti"--his chest blew out like a bellows-- "and thou hast Donovan Pasha." Fielding grunted. He was not a fluent man, save in forbidden language, and Seti added: "Behold thou, saadat el bey, who opens a man's body and turns over his heart with a sword-point, and sewing him up with silken cords bids him live again, greatness is in thy house! Last night thy friend, Donovan Pasha, gave into my hands a score of those cigarettes which are like the smell of a camel-yard. In the evening, having broken bread and prayed, I sat down at the door of the barber in peace to smoke, as becomes a man who loves God and His benefits. Five times I puffed, and then I stayed my lips, for why should a man die of smoke when he can die by the sword? But there are many men in Korosko whose lives are not as clean linen. These I did not love. I placed in their hands one by one the cigarettes, and with their blessings following me I lost myself in the dusk and waited." Mahommed Seti paused. On his face was a smile of sardonic retrospection. "Go on, you fool!" grunted Fielding. "Nineteen sick men, unworthy followers of the Prophet, thanked Allah in the mosque to-day that their lives were spared. Donovan Pasha is a great man and a strong, effendi! We be three strong men together." Dicky Donovan's conversion to a lasting belief in Mahommed Seti came a year later. The thing happened at a little sortie from the Nile. Fielding was chief medical officer, and Dicky, for the moment, was unattached. When the time came for starting, Mahommed Seti brought round Fielding's horse and also Dicky Donovan's. Now, Mahommed Seti loved a horse as well as a Bagarra Arab, and he had come to love Fielding's waler Bashi-Bazouk as a Farshoot dog loves his master. And Bashi-Bazouk was worthy of Seti's love. The sand of the desert, Seti's breath and the tail of his yelek made the coat of Bashi-Bazouk like silk. It was the joy of the regiment, and the regiment knew that Seti had added a new chapter to the Koran concerning horses, in keeping with Mahomet's own famous passage "By the CHARGERS that pant, And the hoofs that strike fire, And the scourers at dawn, Who stir up the dust with it, And cleave through a host with it!" But Mahomet's phrases were recited in the mosque, and Seti's, as he rubbed Bashi-Bazouk with the tail of his yelek. There was one thing, however, that Seti loved more than horses, or at least as much. Life to him was one long possible Donnybrook Fair. That was why, although he was no longer in the army, when Fielding and Dicky mounted for the sortie he said to Fielding: "Oh, brother of Joshua and all the fighters of Israel, I have a bobtailed Arab. Permit me to ride with thee." And Fielding replied: "You will fight the barn-yard fowl for dinner; get back to your stew-pots." But Seti was not to be fobbed off. "It is written that the Lord, the Great One, is compassionate and merciful. Wilt thou then, O saadat." Fielding interrupted: "Go, harry the onion-field for dinner. You're a dog of a slave, and a murderer too: you must pay the price of that grindstone!" But Seti hung by the skin of his teeth to the fringe of Fielding's good- nature--Fielding's words only were sour and wrathful. So Seti grinned and said: "For the grindstone, behold it sent Ebn Haroun to the mercy of God. Let him rest, praise be to God!" "You were drummed out of the army. You can't fight," said Fielding again; but he was smiling under his long moustache. "Is not a bobtailed nag sufficient shame? Let thy friend ride the bobtailed nag and pay the price of the grindstone and the drum," said Seti. "Fall in!" rang the colonel's command, and Fielding, giving Seti a friendly kick in the ribs, galloped away to the troop. Seti turned to the little onion-garden. His eye harried it for a moment, and he grinned. He turned to the doorway where a stew-pot rested, and his mind dwelt cheerfully on the lamb he had looted for Fielding's dinner. But last of all his eye rested upon his bobtailed Arab, the shameless thing in an Arab country, where every horse rears his tail as a peacock spreads his feathers, as a marching Albanian lifts his foot. The bobtailed Arab's nose was up, his stump was high. A hundred times he had been in battle; he was welted and scarred like a shoe-maker's apron. He snorted his cry towards the dust rising like a surf behind the heels of the colonel's troop. Suddenly Seti answered the cry--he answered the cry and sprang forward. That was how in the midst of a desperate melee twenty miles away on the road to Dongola little Dicky Donovan saw Seti riding into the thick of the fight armed only with a naboot of domwood, his call, "Allala-Akbar!" rising like a hoarse-throated bugle, as it had risen many a time in the old days on the road from Manfaloot. Seti and his bobtailed Arab, two shameless ones, worked their way to the front. Not Seti's strong right arm alone and his naboot were at work, but the bobtailed Arab, like an iron-handed razor toothed shrew, struck and bit his way, his eyes bloodred like Seti's. The superstitious Dervishes fell back before this pair of demons; for their madness was like the madness of those who at the Dosah throw themselves beneath the feet of the Sheikh's horse by the mosque of El Hassan in Cairo. The bobtailed Arab's lips were drawn back over his assaulting teeth in a horrible grin. Seti grinned too, the grin of fury and of death. Fielding did not know how it was that, falling wounded from his horse, he was caught by strong arms, as Bashi-Bazouk cleared him at a bound and broke into the desert. But Dicky Donovan, with his own horse lanced under him, knew that Seti made him mount the bobtailed Arab with Fielding in front of him, and that a moment later they had joined the little band retreating to Korosko, having left sixty of their own dead on the field, and six times that number of Dervishes. It was Dicky Donovan who cooked Fielding's supper that night, having harried the onion-field and fought the barn-yard fowl, as Fielding had commanded Seti. But next evening at sunset Mahommed Seti came into the fort, slashed and bleeding, with Bashi-Bazouk limping heavily after him. Fielding said that Seti's was the good old game for which V.C.'s were the reward--to run terrible risks to save a life in the face of the enemy; but, heretofore, it had always been the life of a man, not of a horse. To this day the Gippies of that regiment still alive do not understand why Seti should have stayed behind and risked his life to save a horse and bring him wounded back to his master. But little Dicky Donovan understood, and Fielding understood; and Fielding never afterwards mounted Bashi-Bazouk but he remembered. It was Mahommed Seti who taught him the cry of Mahomet: "By the CHARGERS that pant, And the hoofs that strike fire, And the scourers at dawn, Who stir up the dust with it, And cleave through a host with it!" And in the course of time Mahommed Seti managed to pay the price of the grindstone and also of the drum. THE DESERTION OF MAHOMMED SELIM The business began during Ramadan; how it ended and where was in the mouth of every soldier between Beni Souef and Dongola, and there was not a mud hut or a mosque within thirty miles of Mahommed Selim's home, not a khiassa or felucca dropping anchor for gossip and garlic below the mudirieh, but knew the story of Soada, the daughter of Wassef the camel- driver. Soada was pretty and upright, with a full round breast and a slim figure. She carried a balass of water on her head as gracefully as a princess a tiara. This was remarked by occasional inspectors making their official rounds, and by more than one khowagah putting in with his dahabeah where the village maidens came to fill their water-jars. Soada's trinkets and bracelets were perhaps no better than those of her companions, but her one garment was of the linen of Beni Mazar, as good as that worn by the Sheikh-Elbeled himself. Wassef the camel-driver, being proud of Soada, gave her the advantage of his frequent good fortune in desert loot and Nile backsheesh. But Wassef was a hard man for all that, and he grew bitter and morose at last, because he saw that camel-driving must suffer by the coming of the railway. Besides, as a man gets older he likes the season of Ramadan less, for he must fast from sunrise to sunset, though his work goes on; and, with broken sleep, having his meals at night, it is ten to one but he gets irritable. So it happened that one evening just at sunset, Wassef came to his hut, with the sun like the red rim of a huge thumb-nail in the sky behind him, ready beyond telling for his breakfast, and found nothing. On his way home he had seen before the houses and cafes silent Mussulmans with cigarettes and matches in their fingers, cooks with their hands on the lids of the cooking pots, where the dourha and onions boiled; but here outside his own doorway there was no odour, and there was silence within. "Now, by the beard of the Prophet," he muttered, "is it for this I have fed the girl and clothed her with linen from Beni Mazar all these years!" And he turned upon his heel, and kicked a yellow cur in the ribs; then he went to the nearest cafe, and making huge rolls of forcemeat with his fingers crammed them into his mouth, grunting like a Berkshire boar. Nor did his anger cease thereafter, for this meal of meat had cost him five piastres--the second meal of meat in a week. As Wassef sat on the mastaba of the cafe sullen and angry, the village barber whispered in his ear that Mahommed Selim and Soada had been hunting jackals in the desert all afternoon. Hardly had the barber fled from the anger of Wassef, when a glittering kavass of the Mouffetish at Cairo passed by on a black errand of conscription. With a curse Wassef felt in his vest for his purse, and called to the kavass--the being more dreaded in Egypt than the plague. That very night the conscription descended upon Mahommed Selim, and by sunrise he was standing in front of the house of the Mamour with twelve others, to begin the march to Dongola. Though the young man's father went secretly to the Mamour, and offered him backsheesh, even to the tune of a feddan of land, the Mamour refused to accept it. That was a very peculiar thing, because every Egyptian official, from the Khedive down to the ghafhr of the cane-fields, took backsheesh in the name of Allah. Wassef the camel-driver was the cause. He was a deep man and a strong; and it was through him the conscription descended upon Mahommed Selim-- "son of a burnt father," as he called him--who had gone shooting jackals in the desert with his daughter, and had lost him his breakfast. Wassef's rage was quiet but effective, for he had whispered to some purpose in the ear of the Mamour as well as in that of the dreaded kavass of conscription. Afterwards, he had gone home and smiled at Soada his daughter when she lied to him about the sunset breakfast. With a placid smile and lips that murmured, "Praise be to God," the malignant camel-driver watched the shrieking women of the village throwing dust on their heads and lamenting loudly for the thirteen young men of Beni Souef who were going forth never to return--or so it seemed to them; for of all the herd of human kine driven into the desert before whips and swords, but a moiety ever returned, and that moiety so battered that their mothers did not know them. Therefore, at Beni Souef that morning women wept, and men looked sullenly upon the ground--all but Wassef the camel-driver. It troubled the mind of Wassef that Mahommed Selim made no outcry at his fate. He was still more puzzled when the Mamour whispered to him that Mahommed Selim had told the kavass and his own father that since it was the will of God, then the will of God was his will, and he would go. Wassef replied that the Mamour did well not to accept the backsheesh of Mahommed Selim's father, for the Mouffetish at the palace of Ismail would have heard of it, and there would have been an end to the Mamour. It was quite a different matter when it was backsheesh for sending Mahommed Selim to the Soudan. With a shameless delight Wassef went to the door of his own home, and, calling to Soada, told her that Mahommed Selim was among the conscripts. He also told her that the young man was willing to go, and that the Mamour would take no backsheesh from his father. He looked to see her burst into tears and wailing, but she only stood and looked at him like one stricken blind. Wassef laughed, and turned on his heel; and went out: for what should he know of the look in a woman's face--he to whom most women were alike, he who had taken dancing-girls with his camels into the desert many a time? What should he know of that love which springs once in every woman's heart, be she fellah or Pharaoh's daughter? When he had gone, Soada groped her way blindly to the door and out into the roadway. Her lips moved, but she only said: "Mahommed--Mahommed Selim!" Her father's words knelled in her ear that her lover was willing to go, and she kept saying brokenly: "Mahommed--Mahommed Selim!" As the mist left her eyes she saw the conscripts go by, and Mahommed Selim was in the rear rank. He saw her also, but he kept his head turned away, taking a cigarette from young Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, as they passed on. Unlike the manner of her people, Soada turned and went back into her house, and threw herself upon the mud floor, and put the folds of her garment in her mouth lest she should cry out in her agony. A whole day she lay there and did not stir, save to drink from the water-bottle which old Fatima, the maker of mats, had placed by her side. For Fatima thought of the far-off time when she loved Hassan the potter, who had been dragged from his wheel by a kavass of conscription and lost among the sands of the Libyan desert; and she read the girl's story. That evening, as Wassef the camel-driver went to the mosque to pray, Fatima cursed him, because now all the village laughed secretly at the revenge that Wassef had taken upon the lover of his daughter. A few laughed the harder because they knew Wassef would come to feel it had been better to have chained Mahommed Selim to a barren fig-tree and kept him there until he married Soada, than to let him go. He had mischievously sent him into that furnace which eats the Fellaheen to the bones, and these bones thereafter mark white the road of the Red Sea caravans and the track of the Khedive's soldiers in the yellow sands. When Fatima cursed Wassef he turned and spat at her; and she went back and sat on the ground beside Soada, and mumbled tags from the Koran above her for comfort. Then she ate greedily the food which Soada should have eaten; snatching scraps of consolation in return for the sympathy she gave. The long night went, the next day came, and Soada got up and began to work again. And the months went by. II One evening, on a day which had been almost too hot for even the seller of liquorice-water to go by calling and clanging, Wassef the camel-driver sat at the door of a malodorous cafe and listened to a wandering welee chanting the Koran. Wassef was in an ill-humour: first, because the day had been so hot; secondly, because he had sold his ten-months' camel at a price almost within the bounds of honesty; and thirdly, because a score of railway contractors and subs. were camped outside the town. Also, Soada had scarcely spoken to him for three days past. In spite of all, Soada had been the apple of his eye, although he had sworn again and again that next to a firman of the Sultan, a ten-months' camel was the most beautiful thing on earth. He was in a bitter humour. This had been an intermittent disease with him almost since the day Mahommed Selim had been swallowed up by the Soudan; for, like her mother before her, Soada had no mind to be a mat for his feet. Was it not even said that Soada's mother was descended from an English slave with red hair, who in the terrible disaster at Damietta in 1805 had been carried away into captivity on the Nile, where he married a fellah woman and died a good Mussulman? Soada's mother had had red-brown hair, and not black as becomes a fellah woman; but Wassef was proud of this ancient heritage of red hair, which belonged to a field-marshal of Great Britain--so he swore by the beard of the Prophet. That is why he had not beaten Soada these months past when she refused to answer him, when with cold stubbornness she gave him his meals or withheld them at her will. He was even a little awed by her silent force of will, and at last he had to ask her humbly for a savoury dish which her mother had taught her to make--a dish he always ate upon the birthday of Mahomet Ali, who had done him the honour to flog him with his own kourbash for filching the rations of his Arab charger. But this particular night Wassef was bitter, and watched with stolid indifference the going down of the sun, the time when he usually said his prayers. He was in so ill a humour that he would willingly have met his old enemy, Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, and settled their long-standing dispute for ever. But Yusef came not that way. He was lying drunk with hashish outside the mosque El Hassan, with a letter from Mahommed Selim in his green turban--for Yusef had been a pilgrimage to Mecca and might wear the green turban. But if Yusef came not by the cafe where Wassef sat glooming, some one else came who quickly roused Wassef from his phlegm. It was Donovan Pasha, the young English official, who had sat with him many a time at the door of his but and asked him questions about Dongola and Berber and the Soudanese. And because Dicky spoke Arabic, and was never known to have aught to do with the women of Beni Souef, he had been welcome; and none the less because he never frowned when an Arab told a lie. "Nehar-ak koom said, Mahommed Wassef," said Dicky; and sat upon a bench and drew a narghileh to him, wiping the ivory mouthpiece with his handkerchief. "Nehar-ak said, saadat el Pasha," answered Wassef, and touched lips, breast, and forehead with his hand. Then they shook hands, thumbs up, after the ancient custom. And once more, Wassef touched his breast, his lips, and his forehead. They sat silent too long for Wassef's pleasure, for he took pride in what he was pleased to call his friendship with Donovan Pasha, and he could see his watchful neighbours gathering at a little distance. It did not suit his book that they two should not talk together. "May Allah take them to his mercy!--A regiment was cut to pieces by the Dervishes at Dongola last quarter of the moon," he said. "It was not the regiment of Mahommed Selim," Dicky answered slowly, with a curious hard note in his voice. "All blessings do not come at once--such is the will of God!" answered Wassef with a sneer. "You brother of asses," said Dicky, showing his teeth a little, "you brother of asses of Bagdad!" "Saadat el basha!" exclaimed Wassef, angry and dumfounded. "You had better have gone yourself, and left Mahommed Selim your camels and your daughter," continued Dicky, his eyes straight upon Wassef's. "God knows your meaning," said Wassef in a sudden fright; for the Englishman's tongue was straight, as he well knew. "They sneer at you behind your back, Mahommed Wassef. No man in the village dare tell you, for you have no friends, but I tell you, that you may save Soada before it is too late. Mahommed Selim lives; or lived last quarter of the moon, so says Yusef the ghaffir. Sell your ten- months' camel, buy the lad out, and bring him back to Soada." "Saadat!" said Wassef, in a quick fear, and dropped the stem of the narghileh, and got to his feet. "Saadat el basha!" "Before the Nile falls and you may plant yonder field with onions," answered Dicky, jerking his head towards the flooded valley, "her time will be come!" Wassef's lips were drawn, like shrivelled parchment over his red gums, the fingers of his right hand fumbled in his robe. "There's no one to kill--keep quiet!" said Dicky, But Wassef saw near by the faces of the villagers, and on every face he thought he read a smile, a sneer; though in truth none sneered, for they were afraid of his terrible anger. Mad with fury he snatched the turban from his head and threw it on the ground. Then suddenly he gave one cry, "Allah!" a vibrant clack like a pistol-shot, for he saw Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, coming down the road. Yusef heard that cry of "Allah!" and he knew that the hour had come for settling old scores. The hashish clouds lifted from his brain, and he gripped his naboot of the hard wood of the dom-palm, and, with a cry like a wolf, came on. It would have been well for Wassef the camel-driver if he had not taken the turban from his head, for before he could reach Yusef with his dagger, he went down, his skull cracking like the top of an egg under a spoon. III Thus it was that Soada was left to fight her battle alone. She did not weep or wail when Wassef's body was brought home and the moghassil and hanouti came to do their offices. She did not smear her hair with mud, nor was she moved by the wailing of the mourning women nor the chanters of the Koran. She only said to Fatima when all was over: "It is well; he is gone from my woe to the mercy of God! Praise be to God!" And she held her head high in the village still, though her heart was in the dust. She would have borne her trouble alone to the end, but that she was bitten on the arm by one of her father's camels the day they were sold in the marketplace. Then, helpless and suffering and fevered, she yielded to the thrice-repeated request of Dicky Donovan, and was taken to the hospital at Assiout, which Fielding Bey, Dicky's friend, had helped to found. But Soada, as her time drew near and the terror of it stirred her heart, cast restless eyes upon the whitewashed walls and rough floors of the hospital. She longed for the mud hut at Beni Souef, and the smell of the river and the little field of onions she planted every year. Day by day she grew harder of heart against those who held her in the hospital--for to her it was but a prison. She would not look when the doctor came, and she would not answer, but kept her eyes closed; and she did not shrink when they dressed the arm so cruelly wounded by the camel's teeth, but lay still and dumb. Now, a strange thing happened, for her hair which had been so black turned brown, and grew browner and browner till it was like the hair of her mother, who, so the Niline folk said, was descended from the English soldier-slave with red hair. Fielding Bey and Dicky came to see her in hospital once before they returned to Cairo; but Soada would not even speak to them, though she smiled when they spoke to her; and no one else ever saw her smile during the days she spent in that hospital with the red floor and white walls and the lazy watchman walking up and down before the door. She kept her eyes closed in the daytime; but at night they were always open--always. Pictures of all she had lived and seen came back to her then--pictures of days long before Mahommed Selim came into her life. Mahommed Selim! She never spoke the words now, but whenever she thought them her heart shrank in pain. Mahommed Selim had gone like a coward into the desert, leaving her alone. Her mind dwelt on the little mud hut and the onion field, and she saw down by the foreshore of the river the great khiassas from Assouan and Luxor laden with cotton or dourha or sugar-cane, their bent prows hooked in the Nile mud. She saw again the little fires built along the shore and atop of the piles of grain, round which sat the white, the black, and the yellow-robed riverine folk in the crimson glare; while from the banks came the cry: "Alla-haly, 'm alla-haly!" as stalwart young Arabs drew in from the current to the bank some stubborn, overloaded khiassa. She heard the snarl of the camels as they knelt down before her father's but to rest before the journey into the yellow plains of sand beyond. She saw the seller of sweetmeats go by calling--calling. She heard the droning of the children in the village school behind the hut, the dull clatter of Arabic consonants galloping through the Koran. She saw the moon--the full moon-upon the Nile, the wide acreage of silver water before the golden-yellow and yellow-purple of the Libyan hills behind. She saw through her tears the sweet mirage of home, and her heart rebelled against the prison where she lay. What should she know of hospitals--she whose medicaments had been herbs got from the Nile valley and the cool Nile mud? Was it not the will of God if we lived or the will of God if we died? Did we not all lie in the great mantle of the mercy of God, ready to be lifted up or to be set down as He willed? They had prisoned her here; there were bars upon the windows, there were watchmen at the door. At last she could bear it no longer; the end of it all came. She stole out over the bodies of the sleeping watchmen, out into the dusty road under the palms, down to the waterside, to the Nile--the path leading homewards. She must go down the Nile, hiding by day, travelling by night--the homing bird with a broken wing-back to the but where she had lived so long with Wassef the camel-driver; back where she could lie in the dusk of her windowless home, shutting out the world from her solitude. There she could bear the agony of her hour. Drinking the water of the Nile, eating the crumbs of dourha bread she had brought from the hospital, getting an onion from a field, chewing shreds of sugarcane, hiding by day and trudging on by night, hourly growing weaker, she struggled towards Beni Souef. Fifty--forty--thirty--ten-- five miles! Oh! the last two days, her head so hot and her brain bursting, and a thousand fancies swimming before her eyes, her heart fluttering, fluttering--stopping, going on--stopping, going on. It was only the sound of the river--the Nile, Mother of Egypt, crooning to her disordered spirit, which kept her on her feet. Five miles, four miles, three miles, two, and then--she never quite remembered how she came to the hut where she was born. Two miles--two hours of incredible agony, now running, now leaning against a palm tree, now dropping to her knees, now fighting on and on, she came at last to the one spot in the world where she could die in peace. As she staggered, stumbled, through the village, Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, saw her. He did not dare speak to her, for had he not killed her father, and had he not bought himself free of punishment from the Mudir? So he ran to old Fatima and knocked upon her door with his naboot, crying: "In the name of Allah get thee to the hut of Wassef the camel-driver!" Thus it was that Soada, in her agony, heard a voice say out of the infinite distance: "All praise to Allah, he hath even now the strength of a year-old child!" IV That night at sunset, as Soada lay upon the sheepskin spread for her, with the child nestled between her arm and her breast, a figure darkened the doorway, and old Fatima cried out: "Mahommed Selim!" With a gasping sound Soada gathered the child quickly to her breast, and shrank back to the wall. This surely was the ghost of Mahommed Selim-- this gaunt, stooping figure covered with dust. "Soada, in the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful, Soada, beautiful one!" Mahommed Selim, once the lithe, the straight, the graceful, now bent, awkward, fevered, all the old daring gone from him, stood still in the middle of the room, humbled before the motherhood in his sight. "Brother of jackals," cried old Fatima, "what dost thou here? What dost thou here, dog of dogs!" She spat at him. He took no notice. "Soada," he said eagerly, prayerfully, and his voice, though hoarse, was softer than she had ever heard it. "Soada, I have come through death to thee--Listen, Soada! At night, when sleep was upon the barrack-house, I stole out to come to thee. My heart had been hard. I had not known how much I loved thee--" Soada interrupted him. "What dost thou know of love, Mahommed Selim? The blood of the dead cries from the ground." He came a step nearer. "The blood of Wassef the camel-driver is upon my head," he said. "In the desert there came news of it. In the desert, even while we fought the wild tribes, one to ten, a voice kept crying in my ear, even as thou hast cried, 'What didst thou know of love, Mahommed Selim!' One by one the men of Beni Souef fell round me; one by one they spoke of their village and of their women, and begged for a drop of water, and died. And my heart grew hot within me, and a spirit kept whispering in my ear: 'Mahommed Selim, think of the village thou hast shamed, of Soada thou hast wronged! No drop of water shall cheer thy soul in dying!'" Fatima and Soada listened now with bated breath, for this was the voice of one who had drunk the vinegar and gall of life. "When the day was done, and sleep was upon the barrack-house, my heart waked up and I knew that I loved Soada as I had never loved her. I ran into the desert, and the jackals flew before me--outcasts of the desert, they and I. Coming to the tomb of Amshar the sheikh, by which was a well, there I found a train of camels. One of these I stole, and again I ran into the desert, and left the jackals behind. Hour after hour, day and night, I rode on. But faintness was upon me, and dreams came. For though only the sands were before me, I seemed to watch the Nile running- -running, and thou beside it, hastening with it, hastening, hastening towards thy home. And Allah put a thorn into my heart, that a sharp pain went through my body--and at last I fell." Soada's eyes were on him now with a strange, swimming brilliancy. "Mahommed--Mahommed Selim, Allah touched thine eyes that thou didst see truly," she said eagerly. "Speak not till I have done," he answered. "When I waked again I was alone in the desert, no food, no water, and the dead camel beside me. But I had no fear. 'If it be God's will,' said I, 'then I shall come unto Soada. If it be not God's will, so be it: for are we not on the cushion of His mercy, to sleep or to wake, to live or to die?'" He paused, tottering, and presently sank upon the ground, his hands drooped before him, his head bent down. Old Fatima touched him on the shoulder. "Brother of vultures didst thou go forth; brother of eagles dost thou return," she said. "Eat, drink, in the house of thy child and its mother." "Shall the unforgiven eat or drink?" he asked, and he rocked his body to and fro, like one who chants the Koran in a corner of El Azhar, forgetting and forgotten. Soada's eyes were on him now as though they might never leave him again; and she dragged herself little by little towards him, herself and the child--little by little, until at last she touched his feet, and the child's face was turned towards him from its mother's breast. "Thou art my love, Mahommed Selim," she said. He raised his head from his hands, a hunger of desire in his face. "Thou art my lord," she added: "art thou not forgiven? The little one is thine and mine," she whispered. "Wilt thou not speak to him?" "Lest Allah should strike me with blindness and dry up the juice of my veins, I will not touch thee or the child until all be righted. Food will I not eat, nor water drink until thou art mine--by the law of the Prophet, mine." Laying down the water-jar, and the plate of dourha bread, old Fatima gathered her robe about her, and cried as she ran from the house: "Marriage and fantasia thou shalt have this hour." The stiffness seemed to pass from her bones as she ran through the village to the house of the Omdah. Her voice, lifting shrilly, sang the Song of Haleel, the song of the newly married, till it met the chant of the Muezzin on the tower of the mosque El Hassan, and mingled with it, dying away over the fields of bersim and the swift-flowing Nile. That night Mahommed Selim and Soada the daughter of Wassef the camel- driver were married, but the only fantasia they held was their own low laughter over the child. In the village, however, people were little moved to smile, for they knew that Mahommed Selim was a deserter from the army of the Khedive at Dongola, and that meant death. But no one told Soada this, and she did not think; she was content to rest in the fleeting dream. "Give them twenty-four hours," said the black-visaged fat sergeant of cavalry come to arrest Mahommed Selim for desertion. The father of Mahommed Selim again offered the Mamour a feddan of land if the young man might go free, and to the sergeant he offered a she-camel and a buffalo. To no purpose. It was Mahommed Selim himself who saved his father's goods to him. He sent this word to the sergeant by Yusef the drunken ghaffir: "Give me to another sunset and sunrise, and what I have is thine--three black donkeys of Assiout rented to old Abdullah the sarraf." Because with this offer he should not only have backsheesh but the man also, the fat sergeant gave him leave. When the time was up, and Mahommed Selim drew Soada's face to his breast, he knew that it was the last look and last embrace. "I am going back," he said; "my place is empty at Dongola." "No, no, thou shalt not go," she cried. "See how the little one loves thee," she urged, and, sobbing, she held the child up to him. But he spoke softly to her, and at last she said: "Kiss me, Mahommed Selim. Behold now thy discharge shall be bought from the palace of the Khedive, and soon thou wilt return," she cried. "If it be the will of God," he answered; "but the look of thine eyes I will take with me, and the face of the child here." He thrust a finger into the palm of the child, and the little dark hand closed round it. But when he would have taken it away, the little hand still clung, though the eyes were scarce opened upon life. "See, Mahommed Selim," Soada cried, "he would go with thee." "He shall come to me one day, by the mercy of God," answered Mahommed Selim. Then he went out into the market-place and gave himself up to the fat sergeant. As they reached the outskirts of the village a sorry camel came with a sprawling gallop after them, and swaying and rolling above it was Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, his naboot of dom-wood across his knees. "What dost thou come for, friend of the mercy of God?" asked Mahommed Selim. "To be thy messenger, praise be to God!" answered Yusef, swinging his water-bottle clear for a drink. V In Egypt, the longest way round is not the shortest way home, and that was why Mahommed Selim's court-martial took just three minutes and a half; and the bimbashi who judged him found even that too long, for he yawned in the deserter's face as he condemned him to death. Mahommed Selim showed no feeling when the sentence was pronounced. His face had an apathetic look. It seemed as if it were all one to him. But when they had turned him round to march to the shed where he was to be kept, till hung like a pig at sunrise, his eyes glanced about restlessly. For even as the sentence had been pronounced a new idea had come into his mind. Over the heads of the Gippy soldiers, with their pipestem legs, his look flashed eagerly, then a little painfully--then suddenly stayed, for it rested on the green turban of Yusef, the drunken ghaffir. Yusef's eyes were almost shut; his face had the grey look of fresh-killed veal, for he had come from an awful debauch of hashish. "Allah! Allah!" cried Mahommed Selim, for that was the sound which always waked the torpid brain of Yusef since Wassef the camel-driver's skull had crackled under his naboot. Yusef's wide shoulders straightened back, his tongue licked his lips, his eyes stared before him, his throat was dry. He licked his lips again. "Allah!" he cried and ran forward. The soldiers thrust Yusef back. Mahommed Selim turned and whispered to the sergeant. "Backsheesh!" he said; "my grey Arab for a word with Yusef the ghaffir." "Malaish!" said the sergeant; and the soldiers cleared a way for Yusef. The palms of the men from Beni Souef met once, twice, thrice; they touched their lips, their breasts, their foreheads, with their hands, three times. Then Mahommed Selim fell upon the breast of Yusef and embraced him. Doing so he whispered in his ear: "In the name of Allah, tell Soada I died fighting the Dervishes!" "So be it, in God's name!" said Yusef. "A safe journey to you, brother of giants." Next morning at sunrise, between two dom-palms, stood Mahommed Selim; but scarce a handful of the soldiers sent to see him die laughed when the rope was thrown over his head. For his story had gone abroad, and it was said that he was mad--none but a madman would throw away his life for a fellah woman. And was it not written that a madman was one beloved of Allah, who had taken his spirit up into heaven, leaving only the disordered body behind? If, at the last moment, Mahommed Selim had but cried out: "I am mad; with my eyes I have seen God!" no man would have touched the rope that hanged him up that day. But, according to the sacred custom, he only asked for a bowl of water, drank it, said "Allah!" and bowed his head three times towards Mecca-- and bowed his head no more. Before another quarter was added to the moon, Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, at the door of Soada's hut in Beni Souef, told old Fatima the most wonderful tale, how Mahommed Selim had died on his sheepskin, having killed ten Dervishes with his own hand; and that a whole regiment had attended his funeral. This is to the credit of Yusef's account, that the last half of his statement was no lie. ON THE REEF OF NORMAN'S WOE "It was the schooner Hesperus That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter To bear him company. ------------------- Such was the wreck of the Hesperus In the midnight and the snow! Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's woe!" Only it was not the schooner Hesperus, and she did not sail the wintry sea. It was the stern-wheeled tub Amenhotep, which churned her way up and down the Nile, scraping over sand banks, butting the shores with gaiety embarrassing--for it was the time of cholera, just before the annual rise of the Nile. Fielding Bey, the skipper, had not taken his little daughter, for he had none; but he had taken little Dicky Donovan, who had been in at least three departments of the Government, with advantage to all. Dicky was dining with Fielding at the Turf Club, when a telegram came saying that cholera had appeared at a certain village on the Nile. Fielding had dreaded this, had tried to make preparation for it, had begged of the Government this reform and that--to no purpose. He knew that the saving of the country from an epidemic lay with his handful of Englishmen and the faithful native officials; but chiefly with the Englishmen. He was prepared only as a forlorn hope is prepared, with energy, with personal courage, with knowledge; and never were these more needed. With the telegram in his hand, he thought of his few English assistants, and sighed; for the game they would play was the game of Hercules and Death over the body of Alcestis. Dicky noted the sigh, read the telegram, drank another glass of claret, lighted a cigarette, drew his coffee to him, and said: "The Khedive is away--I'm off duty; take me." Fielding looked surprised, yet with an eye of hope. If there was one man in Egypt who could do useful work in the business, it was little Dicky Donovan, who had a way with natives such as no man ever had in Egypt; who knew no fear of anything mortal; who was as tireless as a beaver, as keen-minded as a lynx is sharp-eyed. It was said to Dicky's discredit that he had no heart, but Fielding knew better. When Dicky offered himself now, Fielding said, almost feverishly: "But, dear old D., you don't see--" "Don't I?--Well, then, "'What are the blessings of the sight?-- Oh, tell your poor blind boy!'" What Fielding told him did not alter his intention, nor was it Fielding's wish that it should, though he felt it right to warn the little man what sort of thing was in store for them. "As if I don't know, old lime-burner!" answered Dicky coolly. In an hour they were on the Amenhotep, and in two hours they were on the way--a floating hospital--to the infected district of Kalamoun. There the troubles began. It wasn't the heat, and it wasn't the work, and it wasn't the everlasting care of the sick: it was the ceaseless hunt for the disease-stricken, the still, tireless opposition of the natives, the remorseless deception, the hopeless struggle against the covert odds. With nothing behind: no support from the Government, no adequate supplies, few capable men; and all the time the dead, inert, dust- powdered air; the offices of policeman, doctor, apothecary, even undertaker and gravedigger, to perform; and the endless weeks of it all. A handful of good men under two leaders of nerve, conscience and ability, to fight an invisible enemy, which, gaining headway, would destroy its scores of thousands! At the end of the first two months Fielding Bey became hopeless. "We can't throttle it," he said to Dicky Donovan. "They don't give us the ghost of a chance. To-day I found a dead-un hid in an oven under a heap of flour to be used for to-morrow's baking; I found another doubled up in a cupboard, and another under a pile of dourha which will be ground into flour." "With twenty ghaffirs I beat five cane and dourha fields this morning," said Dicky. "Found three cases. They'd been taken out of the village during the night." "Bad ones?" "So so. They'll be worse before they're better. That was my morning's flutter. This afternoon I found the huts these gentlemen call their homes. I knocked holes in the roofs per usual, burnt everything that wasn't wood, let in the light o' heaven, and splashed about limewash and perchloride. That's my day's tot-up. Any particular trouble?" he added, eyeing Fielding closely. Fielding fretfully jerked his foot on the floor, and lighted his pipe, the first that day. "Heaps. I've put the barber in prison, and given the sarraf twenty lashes for certifying that the death of the son of the Mamour was el aadah--the ordinary. It was one of the worst cases I've ever seen. He fell ill at ten and was dead at two, the permis d'inhumation was given at four, and the usual thing occurred: the bodywashers got the bedding and clothing, and the others the coverlet. God only knows who'll wear that clothing, who'll sleep in that bed!" "If the Lord would only send them sense, we'd supply sublimate solution-- douche and spray, and zinc for their little long boxes of bones," mused Dicky, his eyes half shut, as he turned over in his hands some scarabs a place-hunting official had brought him that day. "Well, that isn't all?" he added, with a quick upward glance and a quizzical smile. His eyes, however, as they fell on Fielding's, softened in a peculiar way, and a troubled look flashed through them; for Fielding's face was drawn and cold, though the eyes were feverish, and a bright spot burned on his high cheek-bones. "No, it isn't all, Dicky. The devil's in the whole business. Steady, sullen opposition meets us at every hand. Norman's been here--rode over from Abdallah--twenty-five miles. A report's going through the native villages, started at Abdallah, that our sanitary agents are throwing yellow handkerchiefs in the faces of those they're going to isolate." "That's Hoskai Bey's yellow handkerchief. He's a good man, but he blows his nose too much, and blows it with a flourish. . . . Has Norman gone back?" "No, I've made him lie down in my cabin. He says he can't sleep, says he can only work. He looks ten years older. Abdallah's an awful place, and it's a heavy district. The Mamour there's a scoundrel. He has influenced the whole district against Norman and our men. Norman--you know what an Alexander-Hannibal baby it is, all the head of him good for the best sort of work anywhere, all the fat heart of him dripping sentiment--gave a youngster a comfit the other day. By some infernal accident the child fell ill two days afterwards--it had been sucking its father's old shoe--and Norman just saved its life by the skin of his teeth. If the child had died, there'd have been a riot probably. As it is, there's talk that we're scattering poisoned sweetmeats to spread the disease. He's done a plucky thing, though. . . ." He paused. Dicky looked up inquiringly, and Fielding continued. "There's a fellow called Mustapha Kali, a hanger-on of the Mudir of the province. He spread a report that this business was only a scare got up by us; that we poisoned the people and buried them alive. What does Norman do? He promptly arrests him, takes him to the Mudir, and says that the brute must be punished or he'll carry the matter to the Khedive." "Here's to you, Mr. Norman!" said Dicky, with a little laugh. "What does the Mudir do?" "Doesn't know what to do. He tells Norman to say to me that if he puts the fellow in prison there'll be a riot, for they'll make a martyr of him. If he fines him it won't improve matters. So he asks me to name a punishment which'll suit our case. He promises to give it 'his most distinguished consideration.'" "And what's your particular poison for him?" asked Dicky, with his eyes on the Cholera Hospital a few hundred yards away. "I don't know. If he's punished in the ordinary way it will only make matters worse, as the Mudir says. Something's needed that will play our game and turn the tables on the reptile too." "A sort of bite himself with his own fangs, eh?" Dicky seemed only idly watching the moving figures by the hospital. "Yes, but what is it? I can't inoculate him with bacilli. That's what'd do the work, I fancy." "Pocket your fancy, Fielding," answered Dicky. "Let me have a throw." "Go on. If you can't hit it off, it's no good, for my head doesn't think these days: it only sees, and hears, and burns." Dicky eyed Fielding keenly, and then, pouring out some whiskey for himself, put the bottle on the floor beside him, casually as it were. Then he said, with his girlish laugh, not quite so girlish these days: "I've got his sentence pat--it'll meet the case, or you may say, 'Cassio, never more be officer of mine.'" He drew over a piece of paper lying on the piano--for there was a piano on the Amenhotep, and with what seemed an audacious levity Fielding played in those rare moments when they were not working or sleeping; and Fielding could really play! As Dicky wrote he read aloud in a kind of legal monotone: The citizen Mustapha Kali having asserted that there is no cholera, and circulated various false statements concerning the treatment of patients, is hereby appointed as hospital-assistant for three months, in the Cholera Hospital of Kalamoun, that he may have opportunity of correcting his opinions. --Signed Ebn ben Hari, Mudir of Abdallah. Fielding lay back and laughed--the first laugh on his lips for a fortnight. He laughed till his dry, fevered lips took on a natural moisture, and he said at last: "You've pulled it off, D. That's masterly. You and Norman have the only brains in this show. I get worse every day; I do--upon my soul!" There was a curious anxious look in Dicky's eyes, but he only said: "You like it? Think it fills the bill, eh?" "If the Mudir doesn't pass the sentence I'll shut up shop." He leaned over anxiously to Dicky and gripped his arm. "I tell you this pressure of opposition has got to be removed, or we'll never get this beast of an epidemic under, but we'll go under instead, my boy." "Oh, we're doing all right," Dicky answered, with only apparent carelessness. "We've got inspection of the trains, we've got some sort of command of the foreshores, we've got the water changed in the mosques, we've closed the fountains, we've stopped the markets, we've put Sublimate Pasha and Limewash Effendi on the war-path, and--" "And the natives believe in lighted tar-barrels and a cordon sanitaire! No, D., things must take a turn, or the game's lost and we'll go with it. Success is the only thing that'll save their lives--and ours: we couldn't stand failure in this. A man can walk to the gates of hell to do the hardest trick, and he'll come back one great blister and live, if he's done the thing he set out for; but if he doesn't do it, he falls into the furnace. He never comes back. Dicky, things must be pulled our way, or we go to deep damnation." Dicky turned a little pale, for there was high nervous excitement in Fielding's words; and for a moment he found it hard to speak. He was about to say something, however, when Fielding continued. "Norman there,"--he pointed to the deck-cabin, "Norman's the same. He says it's do or die; and he looks it. It isn't like a few fellows besieged by a host. For in that case you wait to die, and you fight to the last, and you only have your own lives. But this is different. We're fighting to save these people from themselves; and this slow, quiet, deadly work, day in, day out, in the sickening sun and smell- faugh! the awful smell in the air--it kills in the end, if you don't pull your game off. You know it's true." His eyes had an eager, almost prayerful look; he was like a child in his simple earnestness. His fingers moved over the maps on the table, in which were little red and white and yellow flags, the white flags to mark the towns and villages where they had mastered the disease, the red flags to mark the new ones attacked, the yellow to indicate those where the disease was raging. His fingers touched one of the flags, and he looked down. "See, D. Here are two new places attacked to-day. "I must ride over to Abdallah when Norman goes. It's all so hopeless!" "Things will take a turn," rejoined Dicky, with a forced gaiety. "You needn't ride over to Abdallah. I'll go with Norman, and what's more I'll come back here with Mustapha Kali." "You'll go to the Mudir?" asked Fielding eagerly. He seemed to set so much store by this particular business. "I'll bring the Mudir too, if there's any trouble," said Dicky grimly; though it is possible he did not mean what he said. Two hours later Fielding, Dicky, and Norman were in conference, extending their plans of campaign. Fielding and Norman were eager and nervous, and their hands and faces seemed to have taken on the arid nature of the desert. Before they sat down Dicky had put the bottle of whiskey out of easy reach; for Fielding, under ordinary circumstances the most abstemious of men, had lately, in his great fatigue and overstrain, unconsciously emptied his glass more often than was wise for a campaign of long endurance. Dicky noticed now, as they sat round the table, that Norman's hand went to the coffee-pot as Fielding's had gone to his glass. What struck him as odd also was that Fielding seemed to have caught something of Norman's manner. There was the same fever in the eyes, though Norman's face was more worn and the eyes more sunken. He looked like a man that was haunted. There was, too, a certain air of helplessness about him, a primitive intensity almost painful. Dicky saw Fielding respond to this in a curious way--it was the kind of fever that passes quickly from brain to brain when there is not sound bodily health commanded by a cool intelligence to insulate it. Fielding had done the work of four men for over two months, and, like most large men, his nerves had given in before Dicky's, who had done six men's work at least, and, by his power of organisation and his labour-saving intelligence, conserved the work of another fifty. The three were sitting silent, having arranged certain measures, when Norman sprang to his feet excitedly and struck the table with his hand. "It's no use, sir," he said to Fielding, "I'll have to go. I'm no good. I neglect my duty. I was to be back at Abdallah at five. I forgot all about it. A most important thing. A load of fessikh was landed at Minkari, five miles beyond Abdallah. We've prohibited fessikh. I was going to seize it. . . . It's no good. It's all so hopeless here." Dicky knew now that the beginning of the end had come for Norman. There were only two things to do: get him away shooting somewhere, or humour him here. But there was no chance for shooting till things got very much better. The authorities in Cairo would never understand, and the babbling social-military folk would say that they had calmly gone shooting while pretending to stay the cholera epidemic. It wouldn't be possible to explain that Norman was in a bad way, and that it was done to give him half a chance of life. Fielding also ought to have a few days clear away from this constant pressure and fighting, and the sounds and the smells of death; but it could not be yet. Therefore, to humour them both was the only thing, and Norman's was the worse case. After all, they had got a system of sanitary supervision, they had the disease by the throat, and even in Cairo the administration was waking up a little. The crisis would soon pass perhaps, if a riot could be stayed and the natives give up their awful fictions of yellow handkerchiefs, poisoned sweetmeats, deadly limewash, and all such nonsense. So Dicky said now, "All right, Norman; come along. You'll seize that fessikh, and I'll bring back Mustapha Kali. We'll work him as he has never worked in his life. He'll be a living object-lesson. We'll have all Upper Egypt on the banks of the Nile waiting to see what happens to Mustapha." Dicky laughed, and Fielding responded feebly; but Norman was looking at the hospital with a look too bright for joy, too intense for despair. "I found ten in a corner of a cane-field yesterday," he said dreamily. "Four were dead, and the others had taken the dead men's smocks as covering." He shuddered. "I see nothing but limewash, smell nothing but carbolic. It's got into my head. Look here, old man, I can't stand it. I'm no use," he added pathetically to Fielding. "You're right enough, if you'll not take yourself so seriously," said Dicky jauntily. "You mustn't try to say, 'Alone I did it.' Come along. Fill your tobacco-pouch. There are the horses. I'm ready." He turned to Fielding. "It's going to be a stiff ride, Fielding. But I'll do it in twenty-four hours, and bring Mustapha Kali too--for a consideration." He paused, and Fielding said, with an attempt at playfulness: "Name your price." "That you play for me, when I get back, the overture of 'Tannhauser'. Play it, mind; no tuning-up sort of thing, like last Sunday's performance. Practise it, my son! Is it a bargain? I'm not going to work for nothing a day." He watched the effect of his words anxiously, for he saw how needful it was to divert Fielding's mind in the midst of all this "plague, pestilence, and famine." For days Fielding had not touched the piano, the piano which Mrs. Henshaw, widow of Henshaw of the Buffs, had insisted on his taking with him a year before, saying that it would be a cure for loneliness when away from her. During the first of these black days Fielding had played intermittently for a few moments at a time, and Dicky had noticed that after playing he seemed in better spirits. But lately the disease of a ceaseless unrest, of constant sleepless work, was on him. He had not played for near a week, saying, in response to Dicky's urging, that there was no time for music. And Dicky knew that presently there would be no time to eat, and then no time to sleep; and then, the worst! Dicky had pinned his faith and his friendship to Fielding, and he saw no reason why he should lose his friend because Madame Cholera was stalking the native villages, driving the fellaheen before her like sheep to the slaughter. "Is it a bargain?" he added, as Fielding did not at once reply. If Fielding would but play it would take the strain off his mind at times. "All right, D., I'll see what I can do with it," said Fielding, and with a nod turned to the map with the little red and white and yellow flags, and began to study it. He did not notice that one of his crew abaft near the wheel was watching him closely, while creeping along the railing on the pretence of cleaning it. Fielding was absorbed in making notes upon a piece of paper and moving the little flags about. Now he lit a cigar and began walking up and down the deck. The Arab disappeared, but a few minutes afterwards returned. The deck was empty. Fielding had ridden away to the village. The map was still on the table. With a frightened face the Arab peered at it, then going to the side he called down softly, and there came up from the lower deck a Copt, the sarraf of the village, who could read English fairly. The Arab pointed to the map, and the Copt approached cautiously. A few feet away he tried to read what was on the map, but, unable to do so, drew closer, pale-faced and knockkneed, and stared at the map and the little flags. An instant after he drew back, and turned to the Arab. "May God burn his eyes! He sends the death to the village by moving the flags. May God change him into a dog to be beaten to death! The red is to begin, the white flag is for more death, the yellow is for enough. See--may God cut off his hand!--he has moved the white flag to our village." He pointed in a trembling fear, half real, half assumed-- for he was of a nation of liars. During the next half-hour at least a dozen Arabs came to look at the map, but they disappeared like rats in a hole when, near midnight, Fielding's tall form appeared on the bank above. It was counted to him as a devil's incantation, the music that he played that night, remembering his promise to Dicky Donovan. It was music through which breathed the desperate, troubled, aching heart and tortured mind of an overworked strong man. It cried to the night its trouble; but far over in the Cholera Hospital the sick heard it and turned their faces towards it eagerly. It pierced the apathy of the dying. It did more, for it gave Fielding five hours' sleep that night; and though he waked to see one of his own crew dead on the bank, he tackled the day's labour with more hope than he had had for a fortnight. As the day wore on, however, his spirits fell, for on every hand was suspicion, unrest, and opposition, and his native assistants went sluggishly about their work. It was pathetic and disheartening to see people refusing to be protected, the sick refusing to be relieved, all stricken with fear, yet inviting death by disobeying the Inglesi. Kalamoun was hopeless; yet twenty-four hours earlier Fielding had fancied there was a little light in the darkness. That night Fielding's music gave him but two hours' sleep, and he had to begin the day on a brandy- and-soda. Wherever he went open resistance blocked his way, hisses and mutterings followed him, the sick were hid in all sorts of places, and two of his assistants deserted before noon. Things looked ominous enough, and at five o'clock he made up his mind that Egypt would be overrun with cholera, and that he should probably have to defend himself and the Amenhotep from rioters, for the native police would be useless. But at five o'clock Dicky Donovan came in a boat, and with him Mustapha Kali under a native guard of four men. The Mudir's sense of humour had been touched, and this sense of humour probably saved the Mudir from trouble, for it played Dicky's game for him. Mustapha Kali had been sentenced to serve in the Cholera Hospital of Kalamoun, that he might be cured of his unbelief. At first he had taken his fate hardly, but Dicky had taunted him and then had suggested that a man whose conscience was clear and convictions good would carry a high head in trouble. Dicky challenged him to prove his libels by probing the business to the bottom, like a true scientist. All the way from Abdallah Dicky talked to him so, and at last the only answer Mustapha Kali would make was, "Malaish no matter!" Mustapha Kali pricked up his ears with hope as he saw the sullen crowds from Kalamoun gathering on the shore to watch his deportation to the Cholera Hospital; and, as he stepped from the khiassa, he called out loudly: "They are all dogs and sons of dogs, and dogs were their grandsires. No good is in a dog the offspring of a dog. Whenever these dogs scratch the ground the dust of poison is in the air, and we die." "You are impolite, Mustapha Kali," said Dicky coolly, and offered him a cigarette. The next three days were the darkest in Dicky Donovan's career. On the first day there came word that Norman, overwrought, had shot himself. On the next, Mustapha Kali in a fit of anger threw a native policeman into the river, and when his head appeared struck it with a barge-pole, and the man sank to rise no more. The three remaining policemen, two of whom were Soudanese, and true to Dicky, bound him and shut him up in a hut. When that evening Fielding refused to play, Dicky knew that Norman's fate had taken hold of him, and that he must watch his friend every minute-- that awful vigilance which kills the watcher in the end. Dicky said to himself more than once that day: "Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's woe!" But it was not Dicky who saved Fielding. On the third day the long- deferred riot broke out. The Copt and the Arab had spread the report that Fielding brought death to the villages by moving the little flags on his map. The populace rose. Fielding was busy with the map at the dreaded moment that hundreds of the villagers appeared upon the bank and rushed the Amenhotep. Fielding and Dicky were both armed, but Fielding would not fire until he saw that his own crew had joined the rioters on the bank. Then, amid a shower of missiles, he shot the Arab who had first spread the report about the map and the flags. Now Dicky and he were joined by Holgate, the Yorkshire engineer of the Amenhotep, and together the three tried to hold the boat. Every native had left them. They were obliged to retreat aft to the deckcabin. Placing their backs against it, they prepared to die hard. No one could reach them from behind, at least. It was an unequal fight. All three had received slight wounds, but the blood-letting did them all good. Fielding was once more himself; nervous anxiety, unrest, had gone from him. He was as cool as a cucumber. He would not go shipwreck now "on the reef of Norman's woe." Here was a better sort of death. No men ever faced it with quieter minds than did the three. Every instant brought it nearer. All at once there was a cry and a stampede in the rear of the attacking natives. The crowd suddenly parted like two waves, and retreated; and Mustapha Kali, almost naked, and supported by a stolid Soudanese, stood before the three. He was pallid, his hands and brow were dripping sweat, and there was a look of death in his eyes. "I have cholera, effendi!" he cried. "Take me to Abdallah to die, that I may be buried with my people and from mine own house." "Is it not poison?" asked Fielding grimly, yet seeing now a ray of hope in the sickening business. "It is cholera, effendi. Take me home to die." "Very well. Tell the people so, and I will take you home, and I will bury you with your fathers," said Fielding. Mustapha Kali turned slowly. "I am sick of cholera," he said as loudly as he could to the awe-stricken crowd. "May God not cool my resting- place if it be not so!" "Tell the people to go to their homes and obey us," said Dicky, putting away his pistol. "These be good men, I have seen with mine own eyes," said Mustapha hoarsely to the crowd. "It is for your good they do all. Have I not seen? Let God fill both my hands with dust if it be not so! God hath stricken me, and behold I give myself into the hands of the Inglesi, for I believe!" He would have fallen to the ground, but Dicky and the Soudanese caught him and carried him down to the bank, while the crowd scuttled from the boat, and Fielding made ready to bear the dying man to Abdallah--a race against death. Fielding brought Mustapha Kali to Abdallah in time to die there, and buried him with his fathers; and Dicky stayed behind to cleanse Kalamoun with perchloride and limewash. The story went abroad and travelled fast, and the words of Mustapha Kali, oft repeated, became as the speech of a holy man; and the people no longer hid their dead, but brought them to the Amenhotep. This was the beginning of better things; the disease was stayed. And for all the things that these men did--Fielding Bey and Donovan Pasha--they got naught but an Egyptian ribbon to wear on the breast and a laboured censure from the Administration for overrunning the budget allowance. Dicky, however, seemed satisfied, for Fielding's little barque of life had not gone down "On the reef of Norman's woe." Mrs. Henshaw felt so also when she was told all, and she disconcerted Dicky by bursting into tears. "Why those tears?" said Dicky to Fielding afterwards; "I wasn't eloquent." ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: A look too bright for joy, too intense for despair His gift for lying was inexpressible One favour is always the promise of another DONOVAN PASHA AND SOME PEOPLE OF EGYPT By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. FIELDING HAD AN ORDERLY THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE A TREATY OF PEACE AT THE MERCY OF TIBERIUS ALL THE WORLD'S MAD FIELDING HAD AN ORDERLY His legs were like pipe-stems, his body was like a board, but he was straight enough, not unsoldierly, nor so bad to look at when his back was on you; but when he showed his face you had little pleasure in him. It seemed made of brown putty, the nose was like india-rubber, and the eyes had that dull, sullen look of a mongrel got of a fox-terrier and a bull- dog. Like this sort of mongrel also his eyes turned a brownish-red when he was excited. You could always tell when something had gone wrong with Ibrahim the Orderly, by that curious dull glare in his eyes. Selamlik Pasha said to Fielding that it was hashish; Fielding said it was a cross breed of Soudanese and fellah. But little Dicky Donovan said it was something else, and he kept his eye upon Ibrahim. And Dicky, with all his faults, could screw his way from the front of a thing to the back thereof like no other civilised man you ever knew. But he did not press his opinions upon Fielding, who was an able administrator and a very clever fellow also, with a genial habit of believing in people who served him: and that is bad in the Orient. As an orderly Ibrahim was like a clock: stiff in his gait as a pendulum, regular as a minute. He had no tongue for gossip either, so far as Fielding knew. Also, five times a day he said his prayers--an unusual thing for a Gippy soldier-servant; for as the Gippy's rank increases he soils his knees and puts his forehead in the dust with discretion. This was another reason why Dicky suspected him. It was supposed that Ibrahim could not speak a word of English; and he seemed so stupid, he looked so blank, when English was spoken, that Fielding had no doubt the English language was a Tablet of Abydos to him. But Dicky was more wary, and waited. He could be very patient and simple, and his delicate face seemed as innocent as a girl's when he said to Ibrahim one morning: "Ibrahim, brother of scorpions, I'm going to teach you English!" and, squatting like a Turk on the deck of the Amenhotep, the stern-wheeled tub which Fielding called a steamer, he began to teach Ibrahim. "Say 'Good-morning, kind sir,'" he drawled. No tongue was ever so thick, no throat so guttural, as Ibrahim's when he obeyed this command. That was why suspicion grew the more in the mind of Dicky. But he made the Gippy say: "Good-morning, kind sir," over and over again. Now, it was a peculiar thing that Ibrahim's pronunciation grew worse every time; which goes to show that a combination of Soudanese and fellah doesn't make a really clever villain. Twice, three times, Dicky gave him other words and phrases to say, and practice made Ibrahim more perfect in error. Dicky suddenly enlarged the vocabulary thus: "An old man had three sons: one was a thief, another a rogue, and the worst of them all was a soldier. But the soldier died first!" As he said these words he kept his eyes fixed on Ibrahim in a smiling, juvenile sort of way; and he saw the colour--the brownish-red colour-- creep slowly into Ibrahim's eyes. For Ibrahim's father had three sons: and certainly one was a thief, for he had been a tax-gatherer; and one was a rogue, for he had been the servant of a Greek money-lender; and Ibrahim was a soldier! Ibrahim was made to say these words over and over again, and the red fire in his eyes deepened as Dicky's face lighted up with what seemed a mere mocking pleasure, a sort of impish delight in teasing, like that of a madcap girl with a yokel. Each time Ibrahim said the words he jumbled them worse than before. Then Dicky asked him if he knew what an old man was, and Ibrahim said no. Dicky said softly in Arabic that the old man was a fool to have three such sons--a thief and a rogue and a soldier. With a tender patience he explained what a thief and a rogue were, and his voice was curiously soft when he added, in Arabic: "And the third son was like you, Mahommed--and he died first." Ibrahim's eyes gloomed under the raillery--under what he thought the cackle of a detested Inglesi with a face like a girl, of an infidel who had a tongue that handed you honey on the point of a two-edged sword. In his heart he hated this slim small exquisite as he had never hated Fielding. His eyes became like little pots of simmering blood, and he showed his teeth in a hateful way, because he was sure he should glut his hatred before the moon came full. Little Dicky Donovan knew, as he sleepily told Ibrahim to go, that for months the Orderly had listened to the wholesome but scathing talk of Fielding and himself on the Egyptian Government, and had reported it to those whose tool and spy he was. That night, the stern-wheeled tub, the Amenhotep, lurched like a turtle on its back into the sands by Beni Hassan. Of all the villages of Upper Egypt, from the time of Rameses, none has been so bad as Beni Hassan. Every ruler of Egypt, at one time or another, has raided it and razed it to the ground. It was not for pleasure that Fielding sojourned there. This day, and for three days past, Fielding had been abed in his cabin with a touch of Nilotic fever. His heart was sick for Cairo, for he had been three months on the river; and Mrs. Henshaw was in Cairo--Mrs. Henshaw, the widow of Henshaw of the Buffs, who lived with her brother, a stone's-throw from the Esbekieh Gardens. Fielding longed for Cairo, but Beni Hassan intervened. The little man who worried Ibrahim urged him the way his private inclinations ran, but he was obdurate: duty must be done. Dicky Donovan had reasons other than private ones for making haste to Cairo. During the last three days they had stopped at five villages on the Nile, and in each place Dicky, who had done Fielding's work of inspection for him, had been met with unusual insolence from the Arabs and fellaheen, officials and others; and the prompt chastisement he rendered with his riding-whip in return did not tend to ease his mind, though it soothed his feelings. There had been flying up the river strange rumours of trouble down in Cairo, black threats of rebellion-- of a seditious army in the palm of one man's hand. At the cafes on the Nile, Dicky himself had seen strange gatherings, which dispersed as he came on them. For, somehow, his smile had the same effect as other men's frowns. This evening he added a whistle to his smile as he made his inspection of the engine-room and the galley and every corner of the Amenhotep, according to his custom. What he whistled no man knew, not even himself. It was ready-made. It might have been a medley, but, as things happened, it was an overture; and by the eyes, the red-litten windows of the mind of Mahommed Ibrahim, who squatted beside the Yorkshire engineer at the wheel, playing mankalah, he knew it was an overture. As he went to his cabin he murmured to himself "There's the devil to pay: now I wonder who pays?" Because he was planning things of moment, he took a native drum down to Fielding's cabin, and made Fielding play it, native fashion, as he thrummed his own banjo and sang the airy ballad, "The Dragoons of Enniskillen." Yet Dicky was thinking hard all the time. Now there was in Beni Hassan a ghdzeeyeh, a dancing-woman of the Ghawazee tribe, of whom, in the phrase of the moralists, the less said the better. What her name was does not matter. She was well-to-do. She had a husband who played the kemengeh for her dancing. She had as good a house as the Omdah, and she had two female slaves. Dicky Donovan was of that rare type of man who has the keenest desire to know all things, good or evil, though he was fastidious when it came to doing them. He had a gift of keeping his own commandments. If he had been a six-footer and riding eighteen stone--if he hadn't been, as Fielding often said, so "damned finicky," he might easily have come a cropper. For, being absolutely without fear, he did what he listed and went where he listed. An insatiable curiosity was his strongest point, save one. If he had had a headache--though he never had--he would at once have made an inquiry into the various kinds of headache possible to mortal man, with pungent deductions from his demonstrations. So it was that when he first saw a dancing-girl in the streets of Cairo he could not rest until by circuitous routes he had traced the history of dancing- girls back through the ages, through Greece and the ruby East, even to the days when the beautiful bad ones were invited to the feasts of the mighty, to charm the eyes of King Seti or Queen Hatsu. He was an authority on the tribe of the Ghawazee, proving, to their satisfaction and his own, their descent from the household of Haroon al Rashid. He was, therefore, welcome among them. But he had found also, as many another wise man has found in "furrin parts," that your greatest safety lies in bringing tobacco to the men and leaving the women alone. For, in those distant lands, a man may sell you his nuptial bed, but he will pin the price of it to your back one day with the point of a lance or the wedge of a hatchet. Herebefore will be found the reason why Dicky Donovan--twenty-five and no moustache, pink-cheeked and rosy-hearted, and "no white spots on his liver"--went straight, that particular night, to the house of the chief dancing-girl of Beni Hassan for help in his trouble. From her he had learned to dance the dance of the Ghawazee. He had learned it so that, with his insatiable curiosity, his archaeological instinct, he should be able to compare it with the Nautch dance of India, the Hula-Hula of the Sandwich Islanders, the Siva of the Samoans. A half-hour from the time he set his foot in Beni Hassan two dancing- girls issued from the house of the ghdzeeyeh, dressed in shintiydn and muslin tarah, anklets and bracelets, with gold coins about the forehead --and one was Dicky Donovan. He had done the rare thing: he had trusted absolutely that class of woman who is called a "rag" in that far country, and a "drab" in ours. But he was a judge of human nature, and judges of human nature know you are pretty safe to trust a woman who never trusts, no matter how bad she is, if she has no influence over you. He used to say that the better you are and the worse she is, the more you can trust her. Other men may talk, but Dicky Donovan knows. What Dicky's aunt, the Dowager Lady Carmichael, would have said to have seen Dicky flaunting it in the clothes of a dancing-girl through the streets of vile Beni Hassan, must not be considered. None would have believed that his pink-and-white face and slim hands and staringly white ankles could have been made to look so boldly handsome, so impeachable. But henna in itself seems to have certain qualities of viciousness in its brownish-red stain, and Dicky looked sufficiently abandoned. The risk was great, however, for his Arabic was too good and he had to depend upon the ghdzeeyeh's adroitness, on the peculiar advantage of being under the protection of the mistress of the house as large as the Omdah's. From one cafe to another they went. Here a snakecharmer gathered a meagre crowd about him; there an 'A'l'meh, or singing-girl, lilted a ribald song; elsewhere hashish-smokers stretched out gaunt, loathsome fingers towards them; and a Sha'er recited the romance of Aboo Zeyd. But Dicky noticed that none of the sheikhs, none of the great men of the village, were at these cafes; only the very young, the useless, the licentious, or the decrepit. But by flickering fires under the palm- trees were groups of men talking and gesticulating; and now and then an Arab galloped through the street, the point of his long lance shining. Dicky felt a secret, like a troubled wind, stirring through the place, a movement not explainable by his own inner tremulousness. At last they went to the largest cafe beside the Mosque of Hoseyn. He saw the Sheikh-el-beled sitting on his bench, and, grouped round him, smoking, several sheikhs and the young men of the village. Here he and the ghdzeeyeh danced. Few noticed them; for which Dicky was thankful; and he risked discovery by coming nearer the circle. He could, however, catch little that they said, for they spoke in low tones, the Sheikh-el- beled talking seldom, but listening closely. The crowd around the cafe grew. Occasionally an Arab would throw back his head and cry: "Allahu Akbar!" Another drew a sword and waved it in the air. Some one in front of him whispered one startling word to a camel-driver. Dicky had got his cue. To him that whisper was as loud and clear as the "La ilaha illa-llah!" called from the top of a mosque. He understood Ibrahim the Orderly now; he guessed all--rebellion, anarchy, massacre. A hundred thoughts ran through his head: what was Ibrahim's particular part in the swaggering scheme was the first and the last of them. Ibrahim answered for himself, for at that moment he entered the burning circle. A movement of applause ran round, then there was sudden silence. The dancing-girls were bid to stop their dancing, were told to be gone. The ghazeeyeh spat at them in an assumed anger, and said that none but swine of Beni Hassan would send a woman away hungry. And because the dancing-girl has power in the land, the Sheikh-el-beled waved his hand towards the cafe, hastily calling the name of a favourite dish. Eyes turned unconcernedly towards the brown clattering ankles of the two as they entered the cafe and seated themselves immediately behind where the Sheikh-el-beled squatted. Presently Dicky listened to as sombre a tale as ever was told in the darkest night. The voice of the tale-teller was that of Ibrahim, and the story was this: that the citadel at Cairo was to be seized, that the streets of Alexandria were to be swept free of Europeans, that every English official between Cairo and Kordofan was to be slain. Mahommed Ibrahim, the spy, who knew English as well as Donovan Pasha knew Arabic, was this very night to kill Fielding Bey with his own hand! This night was always associated in Dicky's mind with the memory of stewed camel's-meat. At Ibrahim's words he turned his head from the rank steam, and fingered his pistol in the loose folds of his Arab trousers. The dancing-girl saw the gesture and laid a hand upon his arm. "Thou art one against a thousand," she whispered; "wait till thou art one against one." He dipped his nose in the camel-stew, for some one poked a head in at the door--every sense in him was alert, every instinct alive. "To-night," said Mahommed Ibrahim, in the hoarse gutturals of the Bishareen, "it is ordered that Fielding Bey shall die--and by my hand, mine own, by the mercy of God! And after Fielding Bey the clean-faced ape that cast the evil eye upon me yesterday, and bade me die. 'An old man had three sons,' said he, the infidel dog, 'one was a thief, another a rogue, and the third a soldier--and the soldier died first.' 'A camel of Bagdad,' he called me. Into the belly of a dead camel shall he go, be sewn up like a cat's liver in a pudding, and cast into the Nile before God gives tomorrow a sun." Dicky pushed away the camel-stew. "It is time to go," he said. The ghdzeeyeh rose with a laugh, caught Dicky by the hand, sprang out among the Arabs, and leapt over the head of the village barber, calling them all "useless, sodden greybeards, with no more blood than a Nile shad, poorer than monkeys, beggars of Beni Hassan!" Taking from her pocket a handful of quarter-piastres, she turned on her heels and tossed them among the Arabs with a contemptuous laugh. Then she and Dicky disappeared into the night. II When Dicky left her house, clothed in his own garments once more, but the stains of henna still on his face and hands and ankles, he pressed into the ghazeeyeh's hand ten gold-pieces. She let them fall to the ground. "Love is love, effendi," she said. "Money do they give me for what is no love. She who gives freely for love takes naught in return but love, by the will of God!" And she laid a hand upon his arm. "There is work to do!" said Dicky; and his hand dropped to where his pistol lay--but not to threaten her. He was thinking of others. "To-morrow," she said; "to-morrow for that, effendi," and her beautiful eyes hung upon his. "There's corn in Egypt, but who knows who'll reap it to-morrow? And I shall be in Cairo to-morrow." "I also shall be in Cairo to-morrow, O my lord and master!" she answered. "God give you safe journey," answered Dicky, for he knew it was useless to argue with a woman. He was wont to say that you can resolve all women into the same simple elements in the end. Dicky gave a long perplexed whistle as he ran softly under the palms towards the Amenhotep, lounging on the mud bank. Then he dismissed the dancing-girl from his mind, for there was other work to do. How he should do it he planned as he opened the door of Fielding's cabin softly and saw him in a deep sleep. He was about to make haste on deck again, where his own nest was, when, glancing through the window, he saw Mahommed Ibrahim stealing down the bank to the boat's side. He softly drew-to the little curtain of the cabin window, leaving only one small space through which the moonlight streamed. This ray of light fell just across the door through which Mahommed Ibrahim would enter. The cabin was a large one, the bed was in the middle. At the head was a curtain slung to protect the sleeper from the cold draughts of the night. Dicky heard a soft footstep in the companionway, then before the door. He crept behind the curtain. Mahommed Ibrahim was listening without. Now the door opened very gently, for this careful Orderly had oiled the hinges that very day. The long flabby face, with the venomous eyes, showed in the streak of moonlight. Mahommed Ibrahim slid inside, took a step forward and drew a long knife from his sleeve. Another move towards the sleeping man, and he was near the bed; another, and he was beside it, stooping over. . . Now, a cold pistol suddenly thrust in your face is disconcerting, no matter how well laid your plans. It was useless for the Orderly to raise his hand: a bullet is quicker than the muscles of the arm and the stroke of a knife. The two stood silent an instant, the sleeping man peaceful between them. Dicky made a motion of his head towards the door. Mahommed Ibrahim turned. Dicky did not lower his pistol as the Orderly, obeying, softly went as he had softly come. Out through the doorway, up the stairs, then upon the moonlit deck, the cold muzzle of the pistol at the head of Mahommed Ibrahim. Dicky turned now, and faced him, the pistol still pointed. Then Mahommed Ibrahim spoke. "Malaish!" he said. That was contempt. It was Mahommedan resignation; it was the inevitable. "Malaish--no matter!" he said again; and "no matter" was in good English. Dicky's back was to the light, the Orderly's face in the full glow of it. Dicky was standing beside the wire communicating with the engineer's cabin. He reached out his hand and pulled the hook. The bell rang below. The two above stood silent, motionless, the pistol still levelled. Holgate, the young Yorkshire engineer, pulled himself up to the deck two steps of the ladder at a time. "Yes, sir," he said, coming forward quickly, but stopping short when he saw the levelled pistol. "Drop the knife, Ibrahim," said Dicky in a low voice. The Orderly dropped the knife. "Get it, Holgate," said Dicky; and Holgate stooped and picked it up. Then he told Holgate the story in a few words. The engineer's fingers tightened on the knife. "Put it where it will be useful, Holgate," said Dicky. Holgate dropped it inside his belt. "Full steam, and turn her nose to Cairo. No time to lose!" He had told Holgate earlier in the evening to keep up steam. He could see a crowd slowly gathering under the palm-trees between the shore and Beni Hassan. They were waiting for Mahommed Ibrahim's signal. Holgate was below, the sailors were at the cables. "Let go ropes!" Dicky called. A minute later the engine was quietly churning away below; two minutes later the ropes were drawn in; half a minute later still the nose of the Amenhotep moved in the water. She backed from the Nile mud, lunged free. "An old man had three sons; one was a thief, another a rogue, and the worst of the three was a soldier--and he dies first! What have you got to say before you say your prayers?" said Dicky to the Orderly. "Mafish!" answered Mahommed Ibrahim, moveless. "Mafish--nothing!" And he said "nothing" in good English. "Say your prayers then, Mahommed Ibrahim," said Dicky in that voice like a girl's; and he backed a little till he rested a shoulder against the binnacle. Mahommed Ibrahim turned slightly till his face was towards the east. The pistol now fell in range with his ear. The Orderly took off his shoes, and, standing with his face towards the moon, and towards Mecca, he murmured the fatihah from the Koran. Three times he bowed, afterwards he knelt and touched the deck with his forehead three times also. Then he stood up. "Are you ready?" asked Dicky. "Water!" answered Mahommed Ibrahim in English. Dicky had forgotten that final act of devotion of the good Mahommedan. There was a filter of Nile-water near. He had heard it go drip-drip, drip-drip, as Mahommed Ibrahim prayed. "Drink," he said, and pointed with his finger. Mahommed Ibrahim took the little tin cup hanging by the tap, half filled it, drank it off, and noiselessly put the cup back again. Then he stood with his face towards the pistol. "The game is with the English all the time," said Dicky softly. "Malaish!" said Mahommed. "Jump," said Dicky. One instant's pause, and then, without a sound, Ibrahim sprang out over the railing into the hard-running current, and struck out for the shore. The Amenhotep passed him. He was in the grasp of a whirlpool so strong that it twisted the Amenhotep in her course. His head spun round like a water-fly, and out of the range of Dicky's pistol he shrieked to the crowd on the shore. They burst from the palm-trees and rushed down to the banks with cries of rage, murder, and death; for now they saw him fighting for his life. But the Amenhotep's nose was towards Cairo, and steam was full on, and she was going fast. Holgate below had his men within range of a pistol too. Dicky looked back at the hopeless fight as long as he could see. Down in his cabin Fielding Bey slept peacefully, and dreamed of a woman in Cairo. THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE In spite of being an Englishman with an Irish name and a little Irish blood, Dicky Donovan had risen high in the favour of the Khedive, remaining still the same Dicky Donovan he had always been--astute but incorruptible. While he was favourite he used his power wisely, and it was a power which had life and death behind it. When therefore, one day, he asked permission to take a journey upon a certain deadly business of justice, the Khedive assented to all he asked, but fearing for his safety, gave him his own ring to wear and a line under his seal. With these Dicky set forth for El Medineh in the Fayoum, where his important business lay. As he cantered away from El Wasta, out through the green valley and on into the desert where stands the Pyramid of Maydoum, he turned his business over and over in his mind, that he might study it from a hundred sides. For miles he did not see a human being-- only a caravan of camels in the distance, some vultures overhead and the smoke of the train behind him by the great river. Suddenly, however, as he cantered over the crest of a hill, he saw in the desert-trail before him a foot-traveller, who turned round hastily, almost nervously, at the sound of his horse's feet. It was the figure of a slim, handsome youth, perhaps twenty, perhaps thirty. The face was clean-shaven, and though the body seemed young and the face was unlined, the eyes were terribly old. Pathos and fanaticism were in the look, so Dicky Donovan thought. He judged the young Arab to be one of the holy men who live by the gifts of the people, and who do strange acts of devotion; such as sitting in one place for twenty years, or going without clothes, or chanting the Koran ten hours a day, or cutting themselves with knives. But this young man was clothed in the plain blue calico of the fellah, and on his head was a coarse brown fez of raw wool. Yet round the brown fez was a green cloth, which may only be worn by one who has been a pilgrimage to Mecca. "Nehar-ak koom said--God be with you!" said Dicky in Arabic. "Nehar-ak said, efendi--God prosper thy greatness!" was the reply, in a voice as full as a man's, but as soft as a woman's--an unusual thing in an Arab. "Have you travelled far?" asked Dicky. "From the Pyramid of Maydoum, effendi," was the quiet reply. Dicky laughed. "A poor tavern; cold sleeping there, Mahommed." "The breath of Allah is warm," answered the Arab. Dicky liked the lad's answer. Putting a hand in his saddle-bag, he drew out a cake of dourha bread and some onions--for he made shift to live as the people lived, lest he should be caught unawares some time, and die of the remembrance of too much luxury in the midst of frugal fare. "Plenty be in your home, Mahommed!" he said, and held out the bread and onions. The slim hands came up at once and took the food, the eyes flashed a strange look at Dicky. "God give you plenty upon your plenty, effendi, and save your soul and the souls of your wife and children, if it be your will, effendi!" "I have no wife, praise be to God," said Dicky; "but if I had, her soul would be saved before my own, or I'm a dervish!" Then something moved him further, and he unbuttoned his pocket--for there really was a button to Dicky's pocket. He drew out a five-piastre piece, and held it down to the young Arab. "For the home-coming after Mecca," he said, and smiled. The young Arab drew back. "I will eat thy bread, but no more, effendi," he said quickly. "Then you're not what I thought you were," said Dicky under his breath, and, with a quick good-bye, struck a heel into the horse's side and galloped away toward El Medineh. In El Medineh Dicky went about his business--a bitter business it was, as all Egypt came to know. For four days he pursued it, without halting and in some danger, for, disguise himself as he would in his frequenting of the cafes, his Arabic was not yet wholly perfect. Sometimes he went about in European dress, and that was equally dangerous, for in those days the Fayoum was a nest of brigandage and murder, and an European--an infidel dog--was fair game. But Dicky had two friends--the village barber, and the moghassil of the dead, or body-washer, who were in his pay; and for the moment they were loyal to him. For his purpose, too, they were the most useful of mercenaries: for the duties of a barber are those of a valet-de-chambre, a doctor, registrar and sanitary officer combined; and his coadjutor in information and gossip was the moghassil, who sits and waits for some one to die, as a raven on a housetop waits for carrion. Dicky was patient, but as the days went by and nothing came of all his searching, his lips tightened and his eyes became more restless. One day, as he sat in his doorway twisting and turning things in his mind, with an ugly knot in his temper, the barber came to him quickly. "Saadat el basha, I have found the Englishwoman, by the mercy of Allah!" Dicky looked at Achmed Hariri for a moment without stirring or speaking; his lips relaxed, his eyes softening with satisfaction. "She is living?" "But living, saadat el basha." Dicky started to his feet. "At the mudirieh?" "At the house of Azra, the seller of sherbet, saadat el basha." "When did she leave the mudirieh?" "A week past, effendi." "Why did she leave?" "None knows save the sister of Azra, who is in the harem. The Englishwoman was kind to her when she was ill, and she gave her aid." "The Mudir has not tried to find her?" "Will the robber make a noise if the horse he has stolen breaks free, effendi?" "Why has she not flown the place?" "Effendi, can the broken-winged bird fly!" "She is ill?" He caught the barber by the arm. "As a gazelle with an arrow in its breast." Dicky's small hand tightened like a vice on the barber's thin arm. "And he who sped the arrow, Achmed Hariri?" Achmed Hariri was silent. "Shall he not die the death?" Achmed Hariri shrank back. Dicky drew from his pocket a paper with seals, and held it up to the barber's eyes. The barber stared, drew back, salaamed, bowed his head, and put a hand upon his turban as a slave to his master. "Show me the way, Mahommed," said Dicky, and stepped out. Two hours later Dicky, with pale face, and fingers clutching his heavy riding-whip fiercely, came quickly towards the bridge where he must cross to go to the mudirieh. Suddenly he heard an uproar, and saw men hurrying on in front of him. He quickened his footsteps, and presently came to a house on which had been freshly painted those rough, staring pictures of "accidents by flood and field," which Mecca pilgrims paint on their houses like hatchments, on their safe return--proclamation of their prestige. Presently he saw in the grasp of an infuriated crowd the Arab youth he had met in the desert, near the Pyramid of Maydoum. Execrations, murderous cries arose from the mob. The youth's face was deathly pale, but it had no fear. Upon the outskirts of the crowd hung women, their robes drawn half over their faces, crying out for the young man's death. Dicky asked the ghaflir standing by what the youth had done. "It is no youth, but a woman," he answered--"the latest wife of the Mudir. In a man's clothes--" He paused, for the head sheikh of El Medineh, with two Ulema, entered the throng. The crowd fell back. Presently the Sheikh-el-beled mounted the mastaba by the house, the holy men beside him, and pointing to the Arab youth, spoke loudly: "This sister of scorpions and crocodiles has earned a thousand deaths. She was a daughter of a pasha, and was lifted high. She was made the wife of Abbas Bey, our Mudir. Like a wanton beast she cut off her hair, clothed herself as a man, journeyed to Mecca, and desecrated the tomb of Mahomet, who hath written that no woman, save her husband of his goodness bring her, shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven." He paused, and pointed to the rough pictures on the walls. "This morning, dressed as a man, she went in secret to the sacred purple pillar for barren women in the Mosque of Amrar, by the Bahr-el-Yusef, and was found there with her tongue to it. What shall be done to this accursed tree in the garden of Mahomet?" "Cut it down!" shouted the crowd; and the Ulema standing beside the Sheikh-el-beled said: "Cut down for ever the accursed tree." "To-morrow, at sunrise, she shall die as a blasphemer, this daughter of Sheitan the Evil One," continued the holy men. "What saith the Mudir?" cried a tax-gatherer. "The Mudir himself shall see her die at sunrise," answered the chief of the Ulema. Shouts of hideous joy went up. At that moment the woman's eyes met Dicky's, and they suddenly lighted. Dicky picked his way through the crowd, and stood before the Sheikh-el-beled. With an Arab salute, he said: "I am, as you know, my brother, a friend of our master the Khedive, and I carry his ring on my finger." The Sheikh-el-beled salaamed as Dicky held up his hand, and a murmur ran through the crowd. "What you have done to the woman is well done, and according to your law she should die. But will ye not let her tell her story, so it may be written down, that when perchance evil voices carry the tale to the Khedive he shall have her own words for her condemnation?" The Ulema looked at the Sheikh-el-beled, and he made answer: "It is well said; let the woman speak, and her words be written down." "Is it meet that all should hear?" asked Dicky, for he saw the look in the woman's eyes. "Will she not speak more freely if we be few?" "Let her be taken into the house," said the Sheikhel-beled. Turning to the holy men, he added: "Ye and the Inglesi shall hear." When they were within the house, the woman was brought in and stood before them. "Speak," said the Sheikh-el-beled to her roughly. She kept her eyes fixed on Dicky as she spoke: "For the thing I have done I shall answer. I had no joy in the harem. I gave no child to my lord, though often I put my tongue to the sacred pillar of porphyry in the Mosque of Amrar. My lord's love went from me. I was placed beneath another in the harem. . . . Was it well? Did I not love my lord? was the sin mine that no child was born to him? It is written that a woman's prayers are of no avail, that her lord must save her at the last, if she hath a soul to be saved. . . . Was the love of my lord mine?" She paused, caught a corner of her robe and covered her face. "Speak on, O woman of many sorrows," said Dicky. She partly uncovered her face, and spoke again: "In the long night, when he came not and I was lonely and I cried aloud, and only the jackals beyond my window answered, I thought and thought. My brain was wild, and at last I said: 'Behold, I will go to Mecca as the men go, and when the fire rises from the Prophet's tomb, bringing blessing and life to all, it may be that I shall have peace, and win heaven as men win it. For behold! what is my body but a man's body, for it beareth no child. And what is my soul but a man's soul, that dares to do this thing!' . . ." "Thou art a blasphemer," broke in the chief of the Ulema. She gave no heed, but with her eyes on Dicky continued: "So I stole forth in the night with an old slave, who was my father's slave, and together we went to Cairo. . . . Behold, I have done all that Dervishes do: I have cut myself with knives, I have walked the desert alone, I have lain beneath the feet of the Sheikh's horse when he makes his ride over the bodies of the faithful, I have done all that a woman may do and all that a man may do, for the love I bore my lord. Now judge me as ye will, for I may do no more." When she had finished, Dicky turned to the Sheikhel-beled and said: "She is mad. Behold, Allah hath taken her wits! She is no more than a wild bird in the wilderness." It was his one way to save her; for among her people the mad, the blind, and the idiot are reputed highly favoured of God. The Sheikh-el-beled shook his head. "She is a blasphemer. Her words are as the words of one who holds the sacred sword and speaks from the high pulpit," he said sternly; and his dry lean face hungered like a wolf's for the blood of the woman. "She has blasphemed," said the Ulema. Outside the house, quietness had given place to murmuring, murmuring to a noise, and a noise to a tumult, through which the yelping and howling of the village dogs streamed. "She shall be torn to pieces by wild dogs," said the Sheikh-el-beled. "Let her choose her own death," said Dicky softly; and, lighting a cigarette, he puffed it indolently into the face of the Arab sitting beside him. For Dicky had many ways of showing hatred, and his tobacco was strong. The sea has its victims, so had Dicky's tobacco. "The way of her death shall be as we choose," said the Sheikh-el-beled, his face growing blacker, his eyes enlarging in fury. Dicky yawned slightly, his eyes half closed. He drew in a long breath of excoriating caporal, held it for a moment, and then softly ejected it in a cloud which brought water to the eyes of the Sheikh-el-beled. Dicky was very angry, but he did not look it. His voice was meditative, almost languid as he said: "That the woman should die seems just and right--if by your kindness and the mercy of God ye will let me speak. But this is no court, it is no law: it is mere justice ye would do." "It is the will of the people," the chief of the Ulema interjected. "It is the will of Mussulmans, of our religion, of Mahomet," he said. "True, O beloved of Heaven, who shall live for ever," said Dicky, his lips lost in an odorous cloud of 'ordinaire.' "But there be evil tongues and evil hearts; and if some son of liars, some brother of foolish tales, should bear false witness upon this thing before our master the Khedive, or his gentle Mouffetish--" "His gentle Mouffetish" was scarcely the name to apply to Sadik Pasha, the terrible right-hand of the Khedive. But Dicky's tongue was in his cheek. "There is the Mudir," said the Sheikh-el-beled: "he hath said that the woman should die, if she were found." "True; but if the Mudir should die, where would be his testimony?" asked Dicky, and his eyes half closed, as though in idle contemplation of a pleasing theme. "Now," he added, still more negligently, "I shall see our master the Khedive before the moon is full. Were it not well that I should be satisfied for my friends?" Dicky smiled, and looked into the eyes of the Mussulmans with an incorruptible innocence; he ostentatiously waved the cigarette smoke away with the hand on which was the ring the Khedive had given him. "Thy tongue is as the light of a star," said the bright-eyed Sheikh-el- beled; "wisdom dwelleth with thee." The woman took no notice of what they said. Her face showed no sign of what she thought; her eyes were unwaveringly fixed on the distance. "She shall choose her own death," said the Sheikhel-beled; "and I will bear word to the Mudir." "I dine with the Mudir to-night; I will carry the word," said Dicky; "and the death that the woman shall die will be the death he will choose." The woman's eyes came like lightning from the distance, and fastened upon his face. Then he said, with the back of his hand to his mouth to hide a yawn: "The manner of her death will please the Mudir. It must please him." "What death does this vulture among women choose to die?" said the Sheikh-el-beled. Her answer could scarcely be heard in the roar and the riot surrounding the hut. A half-hour later Dicky entered the room where the Mudir sat on his divan drinking his coffee. The great man looked up in angry astonishment--for Dicky had come unannounced-and his fat hands twitched on his breast, where they had been folded. His sallow face turned a little green. Dicky made no salutation. "Dog of an infidel!" said the Mudir under his breath. Dicky heard, but did no more than fasten his eyes upon the Mudir for a moment. "Your business?" asked the Mudir. "The business of the Khedive," answered Dicky, and his riding-whip tapped his leggings. "I have come about the English girl." As he said this, he lighted a cigarette slowly, looking, as it were casually, into the Mudir's eyes. The Mudir's hand ran out like a snake towards a bell on the cushions, but Dicky shot forward and caught the wrist in his slim, steel-like fingers. There was a hard glitter in his eyes as he looked down into the eyes of the master of a hundred slaves, the ruler of a province. "I have a command of the Khedive to bring you to Cairo, and to kill you if you resist," said Dicky. "Sit still--you had better sit still," he added, in a soothing voice behind which was a deadly authority. The Mudir licked his dry, colourless lips, and gasped, for he might make an outcry, but he saw that Dicky would be quicker. He had been too long enervated by indulgence to make a fight. "You'd better take a drink of water," said Dicky, seating himself upon a Louis Quinze chair, a relic of civilisation brought by the Mudir from Paris into an antique barbarism. Then he added sternly: "What have you done with the English girl?" "I know nothing of an English girl," answered the Mudir. Dicky's words were chosen as a jeweller chooses stones for the ring of a betrothed woman. "You had a friend in London, a brother of hell like yourself. He, like you, had lived in Paris; and that is why this thing happened. You had your own women slaves from Kordofan, from Circassia, from Syria, from your own land. It was not enough: you must have an English girl in your harem. You knew you could not buy her, you knew that none would come to you for love, neither the drab nor the lady. None would lay her hand in that of a leprous dog like yourself. So you lied, your friend lied for you--sons of dogs of liars all of you, beasts begotten of beasts! You must have a governess for your children, forsooth! And the girl was told she would come to a palace. She came to a stable, and to shame and murder." Dicky paused. The fat, greasy hands of the Mudir fumbled towards the water-glass. It was empty, but he raised it to his lips and drained the air. Dicky's eyes fastened him like arrows. "The girl died an hour ago," he continued. "I was with her when she died. You must pay the price, Abbas Bey." He paused. There was a moment's silence, and then a voice, dry like that of one who comes out of chloroform, said: "What is the price?" The little touch of cruelty in Dicky's nature, working with a sense of justice and an ever-ingenious mind, gave a pleasant quietness to the inveterate hate that possessed him. He thought of another woman--of her who was to die to-morrow. "There was another woman," said Dicky: "one of your own people. She was given a mind and a soul. You deserted her in your harem--what was there left for her to think of but death? She had no child. But death was a black prospect; for you would go to heaven, and she would be in the outer darkness; and she loved you! A woman's brain thinks wild things. She fled from you, and went the pilgrimage to Mecca. She did all that a man might do to save her soul, according to Mahomet. She is to die to-morrow by the will of the people--and the Mudir of the Fayoum." Dicky paused once more. He did not look at the Mudir, but out of the window towards the Bahr-el-Yusef, where the fellaheen of the Mudir's estate toiled like beasts of burden with the barges and the great khiassas laden with cotton and sugar-cane. "God make your words merciful!" said the Mudir. "What would you have me do?" "The Khedive, our master, has given me your life," said Dicky. "I will make your end easy. The woman has done much to save her soul. She buries her face in the dust because she hath no salvation. It is written in the Koran that a man may save the soul of his wife. You have your choice: will you come to Cairo to Sadik Pasha, and be crucified like a bandit of your own province, or will you die with the woman in the Birket-el-Kurun to-morrow at sunrise, and walk with her into the Presence and save her soul, and pay the price of the English life?" "Malaish!" answered the Mudir. "Water," he added quickly. He had no power to move, for fear had paralysed him. Dicky brought him a goolah of water. The next morning, at sunrise, a strange procession drew near to the Birket-el-Kurun. Twenty ghaffirs went ahead with their naboots; then came the kavasses, then the Mudir mounted, with Dicky riding beside, his hand upon the holster where his pistol was. The face of the Mudir was like a wrinkled skin of lard, his eyes had the look of one drunk with hashish. Behind them came the woman, and now upon her face there was only a look of peace. The distracted gaze had gone from her eyes, and she listened without a tremor to the voices of the wailers behind. Twenty yards from the lake, Dicky called a halt--Dicky, not the Mudir. The soldiers came forward and put heavy chains and a ball upon the woman's ankles. The woman carried the ball in her arms to the very verge of the lake, by the deep pool called "The Pool of the Slaughtered One." Dicky turned to the Mudir. "Are you ready?" he said. "Inshallah!" said the Mudir. The soldiers made a line, but the crowd overlapped the line. The fellaheen and Bedouins looked to see the Mudir summon the Ulema to condemn the woman to shame and darkness everlasting. But suddenly Abbas Bey turned and took the woman's right hand in his left. Her eyes opened in an ecstasy. "O lord and master, I go to heaven with thee!" she said, and threw herself forward. Without a sound the heavy body of the Mudir lurched forward with her, and they sank into the water together. A cry of horror and wonder burst from the crowd. Dicky turned to them, and raised both hands. "In the name of our master the Khedive!" he cried. Above the spot where the two had sunk floated the red tarboosh of the Mudir of the Fayoum. A TREATY OF PEACE Mr. William Sowerby, lieutenant in the Mounted Infantry, was in a difficult situation, out of which he was little likely to come with credit--or his life. It is a dangerous thing to play with fire, so it is said; it is a more dangerous thing to walk rough-shod over Oriental customs. A man ere this has lost his life by carrying his shoe-leather across the threshold of a mosque, and this sort of thing William Sowerby knew, and of his knowledge he heeded. He did not heed another thing, however; which is, that Oriental ladies are at home to but one man in all the world, and that your acquaintance with them must be modified by a mushrabieh screen, a yashmak, a shaded, fast-driving brougham, and a hideous eunuch. William Sowerby had not been long in Egypt, he had not travelled very far or very wide in the Orient; and he was an impressionable and harmless young man whose bark and bite were of equal value. His ideas of a harem were inaccurately based on the legend that it is necessarily the habitation of many wives and concubines and slaves. It had never occurred to him that there might be a sort of family life in a harem; that a pasha or a bey might have daughters as well as wives; or might have only one wife--which is less expensive; and that a harem is not necessarily the heaven of a voluptuary, an elysium of rosy-petalled love and passion. Yet he might have known it all, and should have known it all, if he had taken one-fifth of the time to observe and study Egyptian life which he gave to polo and golf and racquets. Yet even if he had known the life from many stand-points he would still have cherished illusions, for, as Dicky Donovan, who had a sense of satire, said in some satirical lines, the cherished amusements of more than one dinner table: "Oh, William William Sowerby Has come out for to see The way of a bimbashi With Egyptian Cavalree. But William William Sowerby His eyes do open wide When he sees the Pasha's chosen In her "bruggam" and her pride. And William William Sowerby, He has a tender smile, Which will bring him in due season To the waters of the Nile And the cheery crocodile!" It can scarcely be said that Dicky was greatly surprised when Mahommed Yeleb, the servant of "William William Sowerby," came rapping at his door one hot noon-day with a dark tale of disaster to his master. This was the heart of the thing--A languid, bored, inviting face, and two dark curious eyes in a slow-driving brougham out on the Pyramid Road; William's tender, answering smile; his horse galloping behind to within a discreet distance of the palace, where the lady alighted, shadowed by the black-coated eunuch. The same thing for several days, then a device to let the lady know his name, then a little note half in Arabic, half in French, so mysterious, so fascinating--William Sowerby walked on air! Then, a nocturnal going forth, followed by his frightened servant, who dared not give a warning, for fear of the ever-ready belt which had scarred his back erstwhile; the palace wall, an opening door, the figure of his master passing through, the closing gate; and then no more-- nothing more, for a long thirty-six hours! Mahommed Yeleb's face would have been white if his skin had permitted-- it was a sickly yellow; his throat was guttural with anxiety, his eyes furtive and strained, for was he not the servant of his master, and might not he be marked for the early tomb if, as he was sure, his master was gone that way? "Aiwa, efendi, it is sure," he said to Dicky Donovan, who never was surprised at anything that happened. He had no fear of anything that breathed; and he kept his place with Ismail because he told the truth pitilessly, was a poorer man than the Khedive's barber, and a beggar beside the Chief Eunuch; also, because he had a real understanding of the Oriental mind, together with a rich sense of humour. "What is sure?" said Dicky to the Arab with assumed composure; for it was important that he should show neither anxiety nor astonishment, lest panic seize the man, and he should rush abroad with grave scandal streaming from his mouth, and the English fat be in the Egyptian fire for ever. "What is sure, Mahommed Yeleb?" repeated Dicky, lighting a cigarette idly. "It is as God wills; but as the tongue of man speaks, so is he--Bimbashi Sowerby, my master--swallowed up these thirty-six hours in the tomb prepared for him by Selamlik Pasha." Dicky felt his eyelids twitch, and he almost gave a choking groan of anxiety, for Selamlik Pasha would not spare the invader of his harem; an English invader would be a delicate morsel for his pitiless soul. He shuddered inwardly at the thought of what might have occurred, what might occur still. If Sowerby had been trapped and was already dead, the knowledge would creep through the bazaars like a soft wind of the night, and all the Arab world would rejoice that a cursed Inglesi, making the unpardonable breach of their code, had been given to the crocodiles, been smothered, or stabbed, or tortured to death with fire. And, if it were so, what could be done? Could England make a case of it, avenge the life of this young fool who had disgraced her in the eyes of the world, of the envious French in Cairo, and of that population of the palaces who hated her because Englishmen were the enemies of backsheesh, corruption, tyranny, and slavery? And to what good the attempt? Exists the personal law of the Oriental palace, and who may punish any there save by that personal law? What outside law shall apply to anything that happens within those mysterious walls? Who shall bear true witness, when the only judge is he whose palace it is? Though twenty nations should unite to judge, where might proof be found--inside the palace, where all men lie and bear false witness? If Sowerby was not dead, then resort to force? Go to Selamlik Pasha the malignant, and demand the young officer? How easy for Selamlik Pasha to deny all knowledge of his existence! Threaten Selamlik--and raise a Mahommedan crusade? That would not do. Say nought, then, and let Sowerby, who had thrust his head into the jaws of the tiger, get it out as best he might, or not get it out, as the case might be? Neither was that possible to Dicky Donovan, even if it were the more politic thing to do, even if it were better for England's name. Sowerby was his friend, as men of the same race are friends together in a foreign country. Dicky had a poor opinion of Sowerby's sense or ability, and yet he knew that if he were in Sowerby's present situation--living or dead-- Sowerby would spill his blood a hundred useless times, if need be, to save him. He had no idea of leaving Sowerby where he was, if alive; or of not avenging him one way or another if dead. But how that might be he was not on the instant sure. He had been struck as with a sudden blindness by the news, though he showed nothing of this to Mahommed Yeleb. His chief object was to inspire the Arab with confidence, since he was probably the only man outside Selamlik's palace who knew the thing as yet. It was likely that Selamlik Pasha would be secret till he saw whether Sowerby would be missed and what inquiry was made for him. It was important to Dicky, in the first place, that this Mahommed Yeleb be kept quiet, by being made a confidant of his purposes so far as need be, an accomplice in his efforts whatever they should be. Kept busy, with a promise of success and backsheesh when the matter was completed, the Arab would probably remain secret. Besides, as Dicky said to himself, while Mahommed kept his head, he would not risk parading himself as the servant of the infidel who had invaded the Pasha's harem. Again, it was certain that he had an adequate devotion to his master, who had given him as many ha'pence as kicks, and many cast-off underclothes and cigarettes. Thus it was that before Dicky had arranged what he should do, though plans were fusing in his brain, he said to Mahommed Yeleb seriously, as befitting the crime Sowerby had committed--evenly, as befitted the influence he wished to have over the Arab: "Keep your tongue between your teeth, Mahommed. We will pull him through all right." "But, effendi, whom God honour, for greatness is in all thy ways, friend of the Commander of the Faithful as thou art--but, saadat el basha, if he be dead?" "He is not dead. I know it by the eyes of my mind, Mahommed--yea, by the hairs of my head, he is not dead!" "Saadat el basha, thou art known as the truth-teller and the incorruptible--this is the word of the Egyptian and of the infidel concerning thee. I kiss thy feet. For it is true he hath deserved death, but woe be to him by whom his death cometh! And am I not his servant to be with him while he hath life, and hath need of me? If thou sayest he is alive, then is he alive, and my heart rejoices." Dicky scarcely heard what the Arab said, for the quick conviction he had had that Sowerby was alive was based on the fact, suddenly remembered, that Selamlik Pasha had only returned from the Fayoum this very morning, and that therefore he could not as yet have had any share in the fate of Sowerby, but had probably been sent for by the Chief Eunuch. It was but an hour since that he had seen Selamlik Pasha driving hastily towards his palace. His mind was instantly made up, his plans formed to his purpose. "Listen, Mahommed," he said to the Arab. "Listen to each word I say, as though it were the prayer to take thee into Paradise. Go at once to Selamlik Pasha. Carry this ring the Khedive gave to me--he will know it. Do not be denied his presence. Say that it is more than life and death; that it is all he values in the world. Once admitted, say these words: 'Donovan Pasha knows all, and asks an audience at midnight in this palace. Until that hour Donovan Pasha desires peace. For is it not the law, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? Is not a market a place to buy and sell?'" Four times did Dicky make the Arab repeat the words after him, till they ran like water from his tongue, and dismissed him upon the secret errand with a handful of silver. Immediately the Arab had gone, Dicky's face flushed with excitement, in the reaction from his lately assumed composure. For five minutes he walked up and down, using language scarcely printable, reviling Sowerby, and setting his teeth in anger. But he suddenly composed himself, and, sitting down, stared straight before him for a long time without stirring a muscle. There was urgent need of action, but there was more urgent need of his making no mistake, of his doing the one thing necessary, for Sowerby could only be saved in one way, not many. It was useless to ask the Khedive's intervention--Ismail dared not go against Selamlik in this. Whatever was done must be done between Selamlik Pasha, the tigerish libertine, and Richard Donovan, the little man who, at the tail end of Ismail's reign, was helping him hold things together against the black day of reckoning, "prepared for the devil and all his angels," as Dicky had said to Ismail on this very momentous morning, when warning him of the perils in his path. Now Dicky had been at war with Selamlik ever since, one day long ago on the Nile, he and Fielding had thwarted his purposes; and Dicky had earned the Pasha's changeless hatred by calling him "Trousers"--for this name had gone up and down throughout Egypt as a doubtful story travels, drawing easy credit everywhere. Those were the days when Dicky was irresponsible. Of all in Egypt who hated him most, Selamlik Pasha was the chief. But most people hated Selamlik, so the world was not confounded by the great man's rage, nor did they dislike Dicky simply because the Pasha chose to do so. Through years Selamlik had built up his power, until even the Khedive feared him, and would have been glad to tie a stone round his neck and drop him into the Nile. But Ismail could no longer do this sort of thing without some show of reason--Europe was hanging on his actions, waiting for the apt moment to depose him. All this Dicky knew, and five minutes from the time Mahommed Yeleb had left him he was on his way to Ismail's palace, with his kavass behind him, cool and ruminating as usual, now answering a salute in Turkish fashion, now in English, as Egyptians or Europeans passed him. II There was one being in the Khedive's palace whose admiration for Dicky was a kind of fetish, and Dicky loathed him. Twice had Dicky saved this Chief Eunuch's life from Ismail's anger, and once had he saved his fortune--not even from compassion, but out of his inherent love of justice. As Dicky had said: "Let him die--for what he has done, not for something he has not done. Send him to the devil with a true bill of crime." So it was that Dicky, who shrank from the creature whom Ministers and Pashas fawned upon--so powerful was his unique position in the palace--went straight to him now to get his quid-pro-quo, his measure for measure. The tall, black-coated, smooth-faced creature, silent and watchful and lean, stepped through the doorway with the footfall of a cat. He slid forward, salaamed to the floor-Dicky wondered how a body could open and shut so like the blade of a knife--and, catching Dicky's hand, kissed it. "May thy days be watered with the dew of heaven, saadat el basha," said the Chief Eunuch. "Mine eyes have not seen since thy last withdrawal," answered Dicky blandly, in the high-flown Oriental way. "Thou hast sent for me. I am thy slave." "I have sent for thee, Mizraim. And thou shalt prove thyself, once for all, whether thy hand moves as thy tongue speaks." "To serve thee I will lay down my life--I will blow it from me as the wind bloweth the cotton flower. Have I not spoken thus since the Feast of Beiram, now two years gone?" Dicky lowered his voice. "Both Mustapha Bey, that son of the he-wolf Selamlik Pasha, still follow the carriage of the Khedive's favourite, and hang about the walls, and seek to corrupt thee with gold, Mahommed Mizraim?" "Saadat el basha, but for thy word to wait, the Khedive had been told long since." "It is the sport to strike when the sword cuts with the longest arm, O son of Egypt!" The face of Mizraim was ugly with the unnatural cruelty of an unnatural man. "Is the time at hand, saadat el basha?" "You hate Selamlik Pasha?" "As the lion the jackal." Dicky would have laughed in scorn if he might have dared--this being to class himself with lions! But the time was not fit for laughter. "And the son of Selamlik Pasha, the vile Mustapha Bey?" he asked. "I would grind him like corn between the stones! Hath he not sent messages by the women of the bazaar to the harem of my royal master, to whom God give glory in heaven? Hath he not sought to enter the harem as a weasel crawls under a wall? Hath he not sought to steal what I hoard by a mighty hand and the eye of an eagle for Ismail the Great? Shall I love him more than the dog that tears the throat of a gazelle?" The gesture of cruelty he made was disgusting to the eyes of Dicky Donovan, but he had in his mind the peril to Sowerby, and he nodded his head in careless approval, as it were. "Then, Mizraim, thou son of secrecy and keeper of the door, take heed to what I say, and for thine honour and my need do as I will. Thou shalt to-night admit Mustapha Bey to the harem--at the hour of nine o'clock!" "Saadat el basha!" The eunuch's face was sickly in its terrified wonder. "Even so. At nine." "But, saadat--" "Bring him secretly, even to the door of the favourite's room; then, have him seized and carried to a safe place till I send for him." "Ah, saadat el basha--" The lean face of the creature smiled, and the smile was not nice to see. "Let no harm be done him, but await my messenger, Mahommed Yeleb, and whatsoever he bids you to do, do it; for I speak." "Ah, saadat el basha, you would strike Selamlik Pasha so--the great beast, the black river pig, the serpent of the slime....!" "You will do this thing, Mizraim?" "I shall lure him, as the mirage the pilgrim. With joy I will do this, and a hundred times more." "Even if I asked of thee the keys of the harem?" asked Dicky grimly. "Effendi, thou wouldst not ask. All the world knows thee. For thee the harem hath no lure. Thou goest not by dark ways to deeds for thine own self. Thou hast honour. Ismail himself would not fear thee." "See, thou master of many, squeak not thy voice so high. Ismail will take thy head and mine, if he discovers to-night's business. Go then with a soft tread, Mizraim. Let thy hand be quick on his mouth, and beware that no one sees!" III Upon the stroke of midnight Dicky entered the room where Selamlik Pasha awaited him with a malicious and greasy smile, in which wanton cruelty was uppermost. Selamlik Pasha knew well the object of this meeting. He had accurately interpreted the message brought by Mahommed Yeleb. He knew his power; he knew that the Englishman's life was in his hands to do with what he chose, for the law of the harem which defies all outside law was on his side. But here he was come to listen to Dicky Donovan, the arrogant little favourite, pleading for the life of the English boy who had done the thing for which the only penalty was death. Dicky showed no emotion as he entered the room, but salaamed, and said: "Your Excellency is prompt. Honour and peace be upon your Excellency!" "Honour and the bounty of the stars be upon thee, saadat el basha!" There was a slight pause, in which Dicky seated himself, lighted a cigarette, and summoned a servant, of whom he ordered coffee. They did not speak meantime, but Dicky sat calmly, almost drowsily, smoking, and Selamlik Pasha sat with greasy hands clasping and unclasping, his yellow eyes fixed on Dicky with malevolent scrutiny. When the coffee was brought, the door had been shut, and Dicky had drawn the curtain across, Selamlik Pasha said: "What great affair brings us together here, saadat el basha?" "The matter of the Englishman you hold a prisoner, Excellency." "It is painful, but he is dead," said the Pasha, with a grimace of cruelty. Dicky's eyes twitched slightly, but he answered with coolness, thrusting his elbow into the cushions and smoking hard: "But, no, he is not dead. Selamlik Pasha has as great an instinct for a bargain as for revenge. Also Selamlik Pasha would torture before he kills. Is it not so?" "What is your wish?" "That the man be set free, Excellency." "He has trespassed. He has stolen his way into the harem. The infidel dog has defiled the house of my wives." "He will marry the woman, with your permission, Excellency. He loved her--so it would seem." "He shall die--the dog of an infidel!" Dicky was now satisfied that Sowerby was alive, and that the game was fairly begun. He moved slowly towards his purpose. "I ask his life, as a favour to me. The Khedive honours me, and I can serve you betimes, Excellency." "You called me 'Trousers,' and all Egypt laughed," answered the Pasha malignantly. "I might have called you worse, but I did not. You may call me what you will--I will laugh." "I will call you a fool for bringing me here to laugh at you, who now would kiss Selamlik Pasha's shoe. I would he were your brother. I would tear out his fingernails, pierce his eyes, burn him with hot irons, pour boiling oil over him and red cinders down his throat--if he were your brother." "Remember I am in the confidence of the Khedive, Pasha." "Ismail! What dare he do? Every Egyptian in the land would call him infidel. Ismail would dare do nothing." His voice was angrily guttural with triumph. "England will ask the price of the young man's life of you, Excellency." "England dare not move--is thy servant a fool? Every Mussulman in the land would raise the green flag--the Jehad would be upon ye!" "He is so young. He meant no ill. The face of your daughter drew him on. He did not realise his crimen--or its penalty." "It is a fool's reasoning. Because he was a stranger and an infidel, so has he been told of dark things done to those who desecrate our faith." "Had he been an Egyptian or a Turk--" "I should slay him, were he Ismail himself. Mine own is mine own, as Mahomet hath said. The man shall die--and who shall save him? Not even the Sultan himself." "There are concessions in the Fayoum--you have sought them long." "Bah!" "There is the Grand Cordon of the Mejidieh; there is a way to it, Excellency." "The man's blood!" "There is a high office to be vacant soon, near to the person of the Khedive, with divers moneys and loans--" "To see Donovan Pasha cringe and beg is better." "There is that mercy which one day you may have to ask for yourself or for your own--" "The fool shall die. And who shall save him?" "Well, I will save him," said Dicky, rising slowly to his feet. "Pish! Go to the Khedive with the tale, and I will kill the man within the hour, and tell it abroad, and we shall see where Donovan Pasha will stand to-morrow. The Khedive is not stronger than his people--and there are the French, and others!" He spat upon the floor at Dicky's feet. "Go, tell the Khedive what you will, dog of an Englishman, son of a dog with a dog's heart!" Dicky took a step forward, with an ominous flare of colour in his cheek. There was a table between him and Selamlik Pasha. He put both hands upon it, and leaning over said in a voice of steel: "So be it, then. Shall I go to the Khedive and say that this night Mustapha Bey, eldest and chosen son of Selamlik Pasha, the darling of his fat heart, was seized by the Chief Eunuch, the gentle Mizraim, in the harem of his Highness? Shall I tell him that, Trousers?" As Dicky spoke, slowly, calmly, Selamlik Pasha turned a greenish-yellow, his eyes started from his head, his hand chafed the air. "Mustapha Bey--Khedive's harem!" he stammered in a husky voice. "By the gentle Mizraim, I said," answered Dicky. "Is Mustapha Bey's life worth an hour's purchase? Is Selamlik Pasha safe?" "Is--is he dead?" gasped the cowardly Egyptian, furtively glancing towards the door. Suddenly he fell back fainting, and Dicky threw some water in his face, then set a cup of it beside him. "Drink, and pull yourself together, if you would save yourself," said Dicky. "Save--save myself," said Selamlik Pasha, recovering; then, with quick suspicion, and to gain time, added quickly: "Ah, it is a trick! He is not a prisoner--you lie!" "I have not a reputation for lying," rejoined Dicky quietly. "But see!" he added; and throwing open a door, pointed to where the Chief Eunuch stood with Mahommed Yeleb, Mustapha Bey gagged and bound between them. Dicky shut the door again, as Selamlik Pasha shrank back among the cushions, cowardice incarnate. "You thought," said Dicky with a soft fierceness" you thought that I would stoop to bargain with Selamlik Pasha and not know my way out of the bargain? You thought an Englishman would beg, even for a life, of such as you! You thought me, Donovan Pasha, such a fool!" "Mercy, Excellency!" said Selamlik, spreading out his hands. Dicky laughed. "You called me names, Selamlik--a dog, and the son of a dog with a dog's heart. Was it wise?" "Is there no way? Can no bargain be made?" Dicky sat down, lighting a cigarette. "To save a scandal in Egypt," answered Dicky drily, "I am ready to grant you terms." "Speak-Excellency." "The life of the Englishman for the life of your son and your own. Also, the freedom of the six Circassian slaves whom you house now at Beni Hassan, ready to bring to your palace. Also, for these slaves two hundred Turkish pounds apiece. Also, your written word that you will bring no more slaves into Egypt. Is the bargain fair?" "Mizraim may still betray us," said Selamlik, trembling, with relief, but yet apprehensive. "Mizraim is in my power--he acts for me," said Dicky. "Whose life is safe here save my own?" "Malaish! It shall be as your will is, Excellency," answered Selamlik Pasha, in a shaking voice; and he had time to wonder even then how an Englishman could so outwit an Oriental. It was no matter how Mustapha Bey, his son, was lured; he had been seized in the harem, and all truth can be forsworn in Egypt, and the game was with this Donovan Pasha. "Send to your palace, commanding that the Englishman be brought here," said Dicky. Selamlik Pasha did so. Sowerby of the Mounted Infantry was freed that night, and the next day Dicky Donovan had six Circassian slaves upon his hands. He passed them over to the wife of Fielding Bey with whom he had shared past secrets and past dangers. Selamlik Pasha held his peace in fear; and the Khedive and Cairo never knew why there was a truce to battle between Dicky Donovan and that vile Pasha called Trousers. AT THE MERCY OF TIBERIUS In a certain year when Dicky Donovan was the one being in Egypt who had any restraining influence on the Khedive, he suddenly asked leave of absence to visit England. Ismail granted it with reluctance, chiefly because he disliked any interference with his comforts, and Dicky was one of them--in some respects the most important. "My friend," he said half petulantly to Dicky, as he tossed the plans for a new palace to his secretary and dismissed him, are you not happy here? Have you not all a prince can give?" "Highness," answered Dicky, "I have kith and kin in England. Shall a man forget his native land?" The Khedive yawned, lighted a cigarette, and murmured through the smoke: "Inshallah! It might be pleasant--betimes." "I have your Highness's leave to go?" asked Dicky. "May God preserve your head from harm!" answered Ismail in farewell salutation, and, taking a ring from his finger set with a large emerald, he gave it to Dicky. "Gold is scarce in Egypt," he went on, "but there are jewels still in the palace--and the Khedive's promises-to-pay with every money- barber of Europe!" he added, with a cynical sneer, and touched his forehead and his breast courteously as Dicky retired. Outside the presence Dicky unbuttoned his coat like an Englishman again, and ten minutes later flung his tarboosh into a corner of the room; for the tarboosh was the sign of official servitude, and Dicky was never the perfect official. Initiative was his strong point, independence his life; he loathed the machine of system in so far as he could not command it; he revolted at being a cog in the wheel. Ismail had discovered this, and Dicky had been made a kind of confidential secretary who seldom wrote a line. By his influence with Ismail he had even more power at last than the Chief Eunuch or the valet-de-chambre, before whom the highest officials bowed low. He was hated profoundly by many of the household, cultivated by certain of the Ministers, fawned upon by outsiders, trusted by the Khedive, and entirely believed in by the few Englishmen and Frenchmen who worked for decent administration faithfully but without hope and sometimes with nausea. It was nausea that had seized upon Dicky at last, nausea and one other thing--the spirit of adventure, an inveterate curiosity. His was the instinct of the explorer, his feet were the feet of the Wandering Jew. He knew things behind closed doors by instinct; he was like a thought- reader in the sure touch of discovery; the Khedive looked upon him as occult almost and laughed in the face of Sadik the Mouffetish when he said some evil things of Dicky. Also, the Khedive told the Mouffetish that if any harm came to Dicky there would come harm to him. The Khedive loved to play one man off against another, and the death of Sadik or the death of Dicky would have given him no pain, if either seemed necessary. For the moment, however, he loved them both after his fashion; for Sadik lied to him, and squeezed the land dry, and flailed it with kourbashes for gold for his august master and himself; and Dicky told him the truth about everything--which gave the Khedive knowledge of how he really stood all round. Dicky told the great spendthrift the truth about himself; but he did not tell the truth when he said he was going to England on a visit to his kith and kin. Seized by the most irresistible curiosity of his life, moved by desire for knowledge, that a certain plan in his mind might be successfully advanced he went south and east, not west and north. For four months Egypt knew him not. For four months the Khedive was never told the truth save by European financiers, when truths were obvious facts; for four long months never saw a fearless or an honest eye in his own household. Not that it mattered in one sense; but Ismail was a man of ideas, a sportsman of a sort, an Iniquity with points; a man who chose the broad way because it was easier, not because he was remorseless. At the start he meant well by his people, but he meant better by himself; and not being able to satisfy both sides of the equation, he satisfied one at the expense of the other and of that x quantity otherwise known as Europe. Now Europe was heckling him; the settling of accounts was near. Commissioners had been sent to find where were the ninety millions he had borrowed. Only Ismail and Sadik the Mouffetish, once slave and foster-brother, could reply. The Khedive could not long stave off the evil day when he must "pay the debt of the lobster," and Sadik give account of his stewardship. Meanwhile, his mind turned to the resourceful little Englishman with the face of a girl and the tongue of an honest man. But the day Dicky had set for his return had come and gone, and Dicky himself had not appeared. With a grim sort of satisfaction, harmonious with his irritation, Ismail went forth with his retinue to the Dosah, the gruesome celebration of the Prophet's birthday, following on the return of the pilgrimage from Mecca. At noon he entered his splendid tent at one side of a square made of splendid tents, and looked out listlessly, yet sourly, upon the vast crowds assembled--upon the lines of banners, the red and green pennons embroidered with phrases from the Koran. His half-shut, stormy eyes fell upon the tent of the chief of the dervishes, and he scarcely checked a sneer, for the ceremony to be performed appealed to nothing in him save a barbaric instinct, and this barbaric instinct had been veneered by French civilisation and pierced by the criticism of one honest man. His look fell upon the long pathway whereon, for three hundred yards, matting had been spread. It was a field of the cloth of blood; for on this cloth dervishes returned from Mecca, mad with fanaticism and hashish, would lie packed like herrings, while the Sheikh of the Dosah rode his horse over their bodies, a pavement of human flesh and bone. As the Khedive looked, his lip curled a little, for he recalled what Dicky Donovan had said about it; how he had pleaded against it, describing loathsome wounds and pilgrims done to death. Dicky had ended his brief homily by saying: "And isn't that a pretty dish to set before a king!" to Ismail's amusement; for he was no good Mussulman, no Mussulman at all, in fact, save in occasional violent prejudices got of inheritance and association. To-day, however, Ismail was in a bad humour with Dicky and with the world. He had that very morning flogged a soldier senseless with his own hand; he had handed over his favourite Circassian slave to a ruffian Bey, who would drown her or sell her within a month; and he had dishonoured his own note of hand for fifty thousand pounds to a great merchant who had served him not wisely but too well. He was not taking his troubles quietly, and woe be to the man or woman who crossed him this day! Tiberius was an hungered for a victim to his temper. His entourage knew it well, and many a man trembled that day for his place, or his head, or his home. Even Sadik the Mouffetish--Sadik, who had four hundred women slaves dressed in purple and fine linen--Sadik, whose kitchen alone cost him sixty thousand pounds a year, the price of whose cigarette ash-trays was equal to the salary of an English consul--even Sadik, foster-brother, panderer, the Barabbas of his master, was silent and watchful to-day. And Sadik, silent and watchful and fearful, was also a dangerous man. As Sadik's look wandered over the packed crowds, his faded eyes scarce realising the bright-coloured garments of the men, the crimson silk tents and banners and pennons, the gorgeous canopies and trappings and plumes of the approaching dervishes, led by the Amir-el-Haj or Prince of the Pilgrims, returned from Mecca, he wondered what lamb for the sacrifice might be provided to soothe the mind of his master. He looked at the matting in the long lane before them, and he knew that the bodies which would lie here presently, yielding to the hoofs of the Sheikh's horse, were not sufficient to appease the rabid spirit tearing at the Khedive's soul. He himself had been flouted by one ugly look this morning, and one from Ismail was enough. It did his own soul good now to see the dervish fanatics foaming at the mouth, their eyes rolling, as they crushed glass in their mouths and ate it, as they swallowed fire, as they tore live serpents to pieces with their teeth and devoured them, as they thrust daggers and spikes of steel through their cheeks, and gashed their breasts with knives and swords. He watched the effect of it on the Khedive; but Ismail had seen all this before, and he took it in the stride. This was not sufficient. Sadik racked his brain to think who in the palace or in official life might be made the scapegoat, upon whom the dark spirit in the heart of the Khedive might be turned. His mean, colourless eyes wandered inquiringly over the crowd, as the mad dervishes, half-naked, some with masses of dishevelled hair, some with no hair at all, bleached, haggard, moaning and shrieking, threw themselves to the ground on the matting, while attendants pulled off their slippers and placed them under their heads, which lay face downwards. At last Sadik's eyes were arrested by a group of ten dervishes, among them one short in stature and very slight, whose gestures were not so excited as those of his fellows. He also saw that one or two of the dervishes watched the slight man covertly. Five of the little group suddenly threw themselves upon the matting, adding their bodies to the highway of bones and flesh. Then another and another did the same, leaving three who, with the little man, made a fanatical chorus. Now the three near the little man began to cut themselves with steel and knives, and one set fire to his jibbeh and began to chew the flames. Yet the faces of all three were turned towards the little man, who did no more than shriek and gesticulate and sway his body wildly up and down. He was tanned and ragged and bearded and thin, and there was a weird brilliance in his eyes, which watched his companions closely. So fierce and frenzied were the actions of those with him, that the attention of the Khedive was drawn; and Sadik, looking at his master, saw that his eyes also were intently fixed on the little man. At that instant the little man himself caught the eye of the Khedive, and Ismail involuntarily dropped a hand upon his sword, for some gesture of this dervish, some familiar turn of his body, startled him. Where had he seen the gesture before? Who was this pilgrim who did not cut and wound himself like his companions? Suddenly the three mad dervishes waved their hands towards the matting and shrieked something into his ear. The little man's eyes shot a look at the Khedive. Ismail's ferret eye fastened on him, and a quick fear as of assassination crossed his face as the small dervish ran forward with the other three to the lane of human flesh, where there was still a gap to be filled, and the cry rose up that the Sheikh of the Dosah had left his tent and was about to begin his direful ride. Sadik the Mouffetish saw the Khedive's face, and suddenly said in his ear: "Shall my slave seize him, Highness whom God preserve?" The Khedive did not reply, for at that moment he recognised the dervish; and now he understood that Dicky Donovan had made the pilgrimage to Mecca with the Mahmal caravan; that an infidel had desecrated the holy city; and that his Englishman had lied to him. His first impulse was to have Dicky seized and cast to the crowd, to be torn to pieces. Dicky's eyes met his without wavering--a desperate yet resolute look--and Ismail knew that the little man would sell his life dearly, if he had but half a chance. He also saw in Dicky's eyes the old honesty, the fearless straightforwardness--and an appeal too, not humble, but still eager and downright. Ismail's fury was great, for the blue devils had him by the heels that day; but on the instant he saw the eyes of Sadik the Mouffetish, and their cunning, cruelty, and soulless depravity, their present search for a victim to his master's bad temper, acted at once on Ismail's sense of humour. He saw that Sadik half suspected something, he saw that Dicky's three companions suspected, and his mind was made up on the instant--things should take their course--he would not interfere. He looked Dicky squarely in the face, and Dicky knew that the Khedive's glance said as plainly as words: "Fool of an Englishman, go on! I will not kill you, but I will not save you. The game is in your hands alone. You can only avert suspicion by letting the Sheikh of the Dosah make a bridge of your back. Mecca is a jest you must pay for." With the wild cry of a dervish fanatic Dicky threw himself down, his head on his arms, and the vengeful three threw themselves down beside him. The attendants pulled off their slippers and thrust them under their faces, and now the siais of the Sheikh ran over their bodies lightly, calling out for all to lie still--the Sheikh was coming on his horse. Dicky weighed his chances with a little shrinking, but with no fear: he had been in imminent danger for four long months, and he was little likely to give way now. The three men lying beside him had only suspected him for the last three days, and during that time they had never let him out of heir sight. What had roused their suspicion he did not know: probably a hesitation concerning some Arab custom or the pronunciation of some Arab word--the timbre of the Arab voice was rougher and heavier. There had been no chance of escape during these three days, for his three friends had never left his side, and now they were beside him. His chances were not brilliant. If he escaped from the iron hoofs of the Sheikh's horse, if the weight did not crush the life out of his small body, there was a fair chance; for to escape unhurt from the Dosah is to prove yourself for ever a good Mussulman, who has undergone the final test and is saved evermore by the promise of the Prophet. But even if he escaped unhurt, and the suspicions of his comrades were allayed, what would the Khedive do? The Khedive had recognised him, and had done nothing--so far. Yet Ismail, the chief Mussulman in Egypt, should have thrown him like a rat to the terriers! Why he had acted otherwise he was not certain: perhaps to avoid a horrible sensation at the Dosah and the outcry of the newspapers of Europe; perhaps to have him assassinated privately; perhaps, after all, to pardon him. Yet this last alternative was not reasonable, save from the stand-point that Ismail had no religion at all. Whatever it was to be, his fate would soon come, and in any case he had done what only one European before him had done--he had penetrated to the tomb of Mahomet at Mecca. Whatever should come, he had crowded into his short life a thousand unusual and interesting things. His inveterate curiosity had served him well, and he had paid fairly for the candles of his game. He was ready. Low moans came to his ears. He could hear the treading hoofs of the Sheikh's horse. Nearer and nearer the frightened animal came; the shout of those who led the horse was in his ears: "Lie close and still, O brothers of giants!" he heard the ribs of a man but two from him break- he heard the gurgle in the throat of another into whose neck the horse's hoof had sunk. He braced himself and drew his breast close to the ground. He could hear now the heavy breathing of the Sheikh of the Dosah, who, to strengthen himself for his ride, had taken a heavy dose of hashish. The toe of the Arab leading the horse touched his head, then a hoof was on him--between the shoulders, pressing-pressing down, the iron crushing into the flesh--down--down--down, till his eyes seemed to fill with blood. Then another hoof--and this would crush the life out of him. He gasped, and nerved himself. The iron shoe came down, slipped a little, grazed his side roughly, and sank between himself and the dervish next him, who had shrunk away at the last moment. A mad act; for the horse stumbled, and in recovering himself plunged forward heavily. Dicky expected the hind hoofs to crush down on his back or neck, and drew in his breath; but the horse, excited by the cries of the people, drove clear of him, and the hind hoofs fell with a sickening thud on the back and neck of the dervish who had been the cause of the disaster. Dicky lay still for a moment to get his breath, then sprang to his feet lightly, cast a swift glance of triumph towards the Khedive, and turned to the dervishes who had lain beside him. The man who had shrunk away from the horse's hoofs was dead, the one on the other side was badly wounded, and the last, bruised and dazed, got slowly to his feet. "God is great," said Dicky to him: "I have no hurt, Mahommed." "It is the will of God. Extolled be Him who created thee!" answered the dervish, all suspicion gone, and admiration in his eyes, as Dicky cried his Allah Kerim--"God is bountiful!" A kavass touched Dicky on the arm. "His Highness would speak with you," he said. Dicky gladly turned his back on the long lane of frantic immolation and the sight of the wounded and dead being carried away. Coming over to the Khedive he salaamed, and kneeling on the ground touched the toe of Ismail's boot with his forehead. Ismail smiled, and his eyes dropped with satisfaction upon the prostrate Dicky. Never before had an Englishman done this, and that Dicky, of all Englishmen, should do it gave him an ironical pleasure which chased his black humour away. "It is written that the true believer shall come unscathed from the hoofs of the horse. Thou hast no hurt, Mahommed?" "None, Highness, whose life God preserve," said Dicky in faultless Arabic, with the eyes of Sadik upon him searching his mystery. "May the dogs bite the heart of thine enemies! What is thy name?" said Ismail. "Rekab, so God wills, Highness." "Thine occupation?" "I am a poor scribe, Highness," answered Dicky with a dangerous humour, though he had seen a look in the Khedive's face which boded only safety. "I have need of scribes. Get you to the Palace of Abdin, and wait upon me at sunset after prayers," said Ismail. "I am the slave of your Highness. Peace be on thee, O Prince of the Faithful!" "A moment, Mahommed. Hast thou wife or child?" "None, Highness." "Nor kith nor kin?" Ismail's smile was grim. "They be far away, beyond the blessed rule of your Highness." "Thou wilt desire to return to them. How long wilt thou serve me?" asked Ismail slowly. "Till the two Karadh-gatherers return," answered Dicky, quoting the old Arabic saying which means for ever, since the two Karadh-gatherers who went to gather the fruit of the sant and the leaves of the selem never returned. "So be it," said the Khedive, and, rising, waved Dicky away. "At sunset!" "At sunset after prayers, Highness," answered Dicky, and was instantly lost in the throng which now crowded upon the tent to see the Sheikh of the Dosah arrive to make obeisance to Ismail. That night at sunset, Dicky, once more clothed and shaven and well appointed, but bronzed and weatherbeaten, was shown into the presence of the Khedive, whose face showed neither pleasure nor displeasure. "You have returned from your kith and kin in England?" asked Ismail, with malicious irony. "I have no excuses, Highness. I have done what I set out to do." "If I had given you to death as an infidel who had defiled the holy tomb and the sacred city--" "Your Highness would have lost a faithful servant," answered Dicky. "I took my chances." "Even now it would be easy to furnish--accidents for you." "But not wise, Highness, till my story is told." "Sadik Pasha suspects you." "I suspect Sadik Pasha," answered Dicky. "Of what?" inquired Ismail, starting. "He is true to me--Sadik is true to me?" he urged, with a shudder; for if Sadik was false in this crisis, with Europe clamouring for the payment of debts and for reforms, where should he look for faithful knavery? "He will desert your Highness in the last ditch. Let me tell your Highness the truth, in return for saving my life. Your only salvation lies in giving up to the creditors of Egypt your own wealth, and also Sadik's, which is twice your own." "Sadik will not give it up." "Is not Ismail the Khedive master in Egypt?" "Sit down and smoke," said Ismail eagerly, handing Dicky a cigarette. ...................... When Dicky left the Khedive at midnight, he thought he saw a better day dawning for Egypt. He felt also that he had done the land a good turn in trying to break the shameless contract between Ismail and Sadik the Mouffetish; and he had the Khedive's promise that it should be broken, given as Ismail pinned on his breast the Order of the Mejidieh. He was not, however, prepared to hear of the arrest of the Mouffetish before another sunset, and then of his hugger-mugger death, of which the world talks to this day; though the manner of it is only known to a few, and to them it is an ugly memory. ALL THE WORLD'S MAD Up to thirty-two years of age David Hyam, of the village of Framley, in Staffordshire, was not a man of surprises. With enough of this world's goods to give him comfort of body and suave gravity of manner, the figure he cut was becoming to his Quaker origin and profession. No one suspected the dynamic possibilities of his nature till a momentous day in August, in the middle Victorian period, when news from Bristol came that an uncle in chocolate had died and left him the third of a large fortune, without condition or proviso. This was of a Friday, and on the Saturday following David did his first startling act--he offered marriage to Hope Marlowe, the only Quaker girl in Framley who had ever dared to discard the poke bonnet even for a day, and who had been publicly reproved for laughing in meeting--for Mistress Hope had a curious, albeit demure and suggestive, sense of humour; she was, in truth, a kind of sacred minuet in grey. Hope had promptly accepted David, at the same time taunting him softly with the fact that he had recklessly declared he would never marry, even saying profanely that upon his word and honour he never would! She repeated to him what his own mother once replied to his audacious worldly protests: "If thee say thee will never, never, never do a thing, thee will some day surely do it." Then, seeing that David was a bit chagrined, Hope slipped one hand into his, drew him back within the door, lifted the shovel hat off his forehead, and whispered with a coquetry unworthy a Quaker maid: "But thee did not say, friend David, thee would never, never, never smite thy friend on both cheeks after she had flouted thee." Having smitten her on both cheeks, after the manner of foolish men, David gravely got him to his home and to a sound sleep that night. Next morning, the remembrance of the pleasant smiting roused him to an outwardly sedate and inwardly vainglorious courage. Going with steady steps to the Friends' meeting-house at the appointed time, the Spirit moved him, after a decorous pause, to announce his intended marriage to the prettiest Quaker in Framley, even the maid who had shocked the community's sense of decorum and had been written down a rebel--though these things he did not say. From the recesses of her poke bonnet Hope watched the effect of David's words upon the meeting; but when the elders turned and looked at her, as became her judges before the Lord, her eyes dropped; also her heart thumped so hard she could hear it; and in the silence that followed it seemed to beat time to the words like the pendulum of a clock: "Fear not- Love on! Fear not--Love on!" But the heart beat faster still, the eyes came up quickly, and the face flushed a deep, excited red when David, rising again, said that, with the consent of the community--a consent which his voice subtly insisted upon--he would take a long journey into the Holy Land, into Syria, travelling to Baalbec and Damascus, and even beyond as far as the desolate city of Palmyra; and then, afterwards, into Egypt, where Joseph and the sons of Israel were captive aforetime. He would fain visit the Red Sea, and likewise confer with the Coptic Christians in Egypt, "of whom thee and me have read to our comfort," he added piously, looking at friend Fairley, the oldest and heretofore the richest man in the community. Friend Fairley rejoiced now that he had in by-gone days lent David books to read; but he rejoiced secretly, for though his old bookman's heart warmed at the thought that he should in good time hear, from one who had seen with his own eyes, of the wonders of the East, it became him to assume a ponderous placidity--for Framley had always been doubtful of his bookishness and its influence on such as David. They said it boded no good; there were those even who called Fairley "a new light," that schism in a sect. These God-fearing, dull folk were present now, and, disapproving of David's choice in marriage, disapproved far more of its consequence; for so they considered the projected journey into the tumultuous world and the garish Orient. In the end, however, an austere approval was promised, should the solemn commission of men and women appointed to confer with and examine the candidates find in their favour--as in this case they would certainly do; for thirty thousand pounds bulked potently even in this community of unworldly folk, though smacking somewhat of the world, the flesh and the devil. If David, however, would stand to the shovel hat, and if Hope would be faithful for ever to the poke bonnet and grey cloth, all might yet be well. At the same time, they considered that friend David's mind was distracted by the things of this world, and they reasoned with the Lord in prayer upon the point in David's presence. In worldly but religiously controlled dudgeon David left the meeting- house, and inside the door of Hope's cottage said to his own mother and to hers some bitter and un-Quaker-like things against the stupid world-- for to him as yet the world was Framley, though he would soon mend that. When he had done speaking against "the mad wits that would not see," Hope laid her cool fingers on his arm and said, with a demure humour: "All the world's mad but thee and me, David--and thee's a bit mad!" So pleased was David's mother with this speech that then and there she was reconciled to Hope's rebellious instincts, and saw safety for her son in the hands of the quaint, clear-minded daughter of her old friend and kinswoman, Mercy Marlowe. II Within three months David and Hope had seen the hills of Moab from the top of the Mount of Olives; watched the sun go down over the Sea of Galilee; plucked green boughs from the cedars on Lebanon; broken into placid exclamations of delight in the wild orchard of nectarine blossoms by the lofty ruins of Baalbac; walked in that street called Straight at Damascus; journeyed through the desert with a caravan to Palmyra when the Druses were up; and, at last, looked upon the spot where lived that Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. In this land they stayed; and even now far up the Nile you will hear of the Two Strange People who travelled the river even to Dongola and some way back--only some way back, for a long time. In particular you will hear of them from an old dragoman called Mahommed Ramadan Saggara, and a white-haired jeweller of Assiout, called Abdul Huseyn. These two men still tell the tale of the two mad English folk with faces like no English people ever seen in Egypt, who refused protection in their travels, but went fearlessly among the Arabs everywhere, to do good and fear not. The Quaker hat and saddened drab worked upon the Arab mind to advantage. In Egypt, David and Hope found their pious mission--though historians have since called it "whimsical and unpractical": David's to import the great Syrian donkey, which was to banish the shame of grossly burdening the small donkey of the land of Pharaoh; and Hope's to build schools where English should be taught, to exclude "that language of Belial," as David called French. When their schemes came home to Framley, with an order on David's bankers for ten thousand pounds, grey-garbed consternation walked abroad, and in meeting the First Day following no one prayed or spoke for an hour or more. At last, however, friend Fairley rose in his place and said: "The Lord shall deliver the heathen into their hands." Then the Spirit moved freely and severely among them all, and friend Fairley was, as he said himself, "crowded upon the rails by the yearlings of the flock." For he alone of all Framley believed that David and Hope had not thrown away the Quaker drab, the shovel hat and the poke bonnet, and had gone forth fashionable, worldly and an hungered, among the fleshpots of Egypt. There was talk of gilded palaces, Saracenic splendours and dark suggestions from the Arabian Nights. Still, the ten thousand pounds went to David and Hope where they smilingly laboured through the time of high Nile and low Nile, and khamsin and sirocco, and cholera, and, worse than all, the banishments to the hot Siberia of Fazougli. But Mahommed Ramadan Saggara babbles yet of the time when, for one day, David threw away his shovel hat; and Abdul Huseyn, the jeweller, tells how, on the same day, the Sitt--that is, Hope--bought of him a ring of turquoises and put it on her finger with a curious smile. That day David and Hope, the one in a pith helmet, the other with a turquoise ring on her left hand, went to dine with Shelek Pasha, the Armenian Governor of the province, a man of varied talents, not least of which was deceit of an artistic kind. For, being an Armenian, he said he was a true Christian, and David believed him, though Hope did not; and being an Oriental, he said he told the truth; and again David believed him, though Hope did not. He had a red beard, an eye that glinted red also, and fat, smooth fingers which kept playing with a string of beads as though it were a rosary. As hard as he worked to destroy the Quaker in David, she worked against him; and she did not fear the end, for she believed in David Hyam of Framley. It was Shelek Pasha's influence, persistently and adroitly used for two years, which made friend David at last put aside for this one day his Quaker hat. And the Pasha rejoiced; for, knowing human nature after a fashion, he understood that when you throw the outer sign away--the sign to you since your birth, like the fingers of your hand--the inner grace begins decadence and in due time disappears. Shelek Pasha had awaited this with Oriental patience, for he was sure that if David gave way in one thing he would give way in all--and with a rush, some day. Now, at last, he had got David and Hope to dine with him; he had his meshes of deceit around them. When they came to dinner Shelek Pasha saw the turquoise ring upon the finger of friend Hope, and this startled him and pleased him. Here, he knew, was his greatest enemy where David was concerned, and yet this pretty Saint Elizabeth was wearing a fine turquoise ring with a poke bonnet, in a very worldly fashion. He almost rubbed his eyes, it was so hard to believe; for time and again he had offered antichi in bracelets, rings and scarabs, and fine cottons from Beni-Mazar; and had been promptly and firmly told that the Friends wore no jewelry nor gay attire. Shelek Pasha, being a Christian--after the Armenian fashion--then desired to learn of this strange religion, that his own nature might be bettered, for, alas! snares for the soul are many in the Orient. For this Hope had quietly but firmly referred him to David. Then he had tried another tack: he had thrown in his interest with her first school in his mudirieh; he got her Arab teachers from Cairo who could speak English; he opened the large schoolhouse himself with great ceremony, and with many kavasses in blue and gold. He said to himself that you never could tell what would happen in this world, and it was well to wait, and to watch the approach of that good angel Opportunity. With all his devices, however, he could not quite understand Hope, and he walked warily, lest through his lack of understanding he should, by some mischance, come suddenly upon a reef, and his plans go shipwreck. Yet all the time he laughed in his sleeve, for he foresaw the day when all this money the Two Strange People were spending in his mudirieh should become his own. If he could not get their goods and estates peaceably, riots were so easy to arrange; he had arranged them before. Then, when the Two Strange People had been struck with panic, the Syrian donkey- market, and the five hundred feddans of American cotton, and the new schools would be his for a song--or a curse. When he saw the turquoise ring on the finger of the little Quaker lady he fancied he could almost hear the accompaniment of the song. He tore away tender portions of roasted lamb with his fingers, and crammed them into his mouth, rejoicing. With the same greasy fingers he put upon Hope's plate a stuffed cucumber, and would have added a clammy sweet and a tumbler of sickly sherbet at the same moment; but Hope ate nothing save a cake of dourha bread, and drank only a cup of coffee. Meanwhile, Shelek Pasha talked of the school, of the donkey-market, the monopoly of which the Khedive had granted David; and of the new prosperous era opening up in Egypt, due to the cotton David had introduced as an experiment. David's heart waxed proud within him that he had walked out of Framley to the regeneration of a country. He likened himself to Joseph, son of Jacob; and at once the fineness of his first purposes became blunted. As Shelek Pasha talked on, of schools, of taxes, of laws, of government, to David, with no hat on--Samson without his hair--Hope's mind was working as it had never worked before. She realised what a prodigious liar Shelek Pasha was; for, talking benignly of equitable administration as he did, she recalled the dark stories she had heard of rapine and cruel imprisonment in this same mudirieh. Suddenly Shelek Pasha saw the dark-blue eyes fastened upon his face with a curious intentness, a strange questioning; and the blue of the turquoise on the hand folded over the other in the grey lap did not quite reassure him. He stopped talking, and spoke in a low voice to his kavass, who presently brought a bottle of champagne--a final proof that Shelek Pasha was not an ascetic or a Turk. As the bottle was being opened the Pasha took up his string of beads and began to finger them, for the blue eyes in the poke bonnet were disconcerting. He was about to speak when Hope said, in a clear voice: "Thee has a strange people beneath thee. Thee rules by the sword, or the word of peace, friend?" The fat, smooth hands fingered the beads swiftly. Shelek Pasha was disturbed, as he proved by replying in French --he had spent years of his youth in France: "Par la force morale, toujours, madame--by moral force, always," he hastened to add in English. Then, casting down his eyes with truly Armenian modesty, he continued in Arabic: "By the word of peace, oh woman of the clear eyes--to whom God give length of days!" Shelek Pasha smiled a greasy smile, and held the bottle of champagne over the glass set for friend David. Never in his life had David the Quaker tasted champagne. In his eyes, in the eyes of Framley, it had been the brew especially prepared by Sheitan to tempt to ruin the feeble ones of the earth. But the doublet of David's mind was all unbraced now; his hat was off, his Quaker drab was spotted with the grease of a roasted lamb. He had tasted freedom; he was near to license now. He took his hand from the top of the glass, and the amber liquid and the froth poured in. At that instant he saw Hope's eyes upon his, he saw her hand go to the poke bonnet, as it were to unloosen the strings. He saw for the first time the turquoise ring; he saw the eyes of Shelek Pasha on Hope with a look prophesying several kinds of triumph, none palatable to him; and he stopped short on that road easy of gradient, which Shelek Pasha was macadamising for him. He put his hand up as though to pull his hat down over his eyes, as was his fashion when troubled or when he was setting his mind to a task. The hat was not there; but Hope's eyes were on his, and there were a hundred Quaker hats or Cardinals' hats in them. He reached out quickly and caught Hope's hand as it undid the strings of her grey bonnet. "Will thee be mad, Hope?" "All the world's mad but thee and me, David, and thee's a bit mad," she answered in the tongue of Framley. "The gaud upon thy hand?" he asked sternly; and his eyes flashed from her to Shelek Pasha, for a horrible suspicion crept into his brain--a shameless suspicion; but even a Quaker may be human and foolish, as history has shown. "The wine at thine elbow, David, and thine hat!" she answered steadily. David, the friend of peace, was bitterly angry. He caught up the glass of champagne and dashed it upon the fine prayer-rug which Shelek Pasha had, with a kourbash, collected for taxes from a Greek merchant back from Tiflis--the rug worth five hundred English pounds, the taxes but twenty Turkish pounds. "Thee is a villain, friend," he said to Shelek Pasha in a voice like a noise in a barrel; "I read thee as a book." "But through the eyes of your wife, effendi; she read me first--we understand each other!" answered the Governor with a hateful smile, knowing the end of one game was at hand, and beginning another instantly with an intelligent malice. Against all Quaker principles David's sinful arm was lifted to strike, but Hope's hand prevented him, and Shelek Pasha motioned back the Abyssinian slaves who had sprung forward menacingly from behind a screen. Hope led the outraged David, hatless, into the street. III That evening the Two Strange People went to Abdul Huseyn, the jeweller, and talked with him for more than an hour; for Abdul Huseyn, as Egyptians go, was a kindly man. He had taught Arabic to David and Hope. He would have asked more than twelve pieces of silver to betray them. The next afternoon a riot occurred around the house of the Two Strange People and the school they had built; and Shelek Pasha would have had his spite of them, and his will of the donkey-market, the school, and the cotton-fields, but for Abdul Huseyn and three Sheikhs, friends of his--at a price--who addressed the crowd and quieted them. They declared that the Two were mad folk with whom even the English folk would have naught to do; that they were of those from whom God had taken the souls, leaving their foolish bodies on earth, and were therefore to be cared for and protected, as the Koran said, be they infidel or the Faithful. Furthermore, said Abdul Huseyn, in proof of their madness and a certain sort of holiness, they wore hats always, as Arabs wore their turbans, and were as like good Mahommedans as could be, sitting down to speak and standing up to pray. He also added that they could not be enemies of the Faithful, or a Christian Mudir would not have turned against them. And Abdul Huseyn prevailed against Shelek Pasha--at a price; for Hope, seeing no need for martyrdom, had not hesitated to open her purse. Three days afterward, David, with Abdul Huseyn, went to the Palace of the Khedive at Cairo, and within a week Shelek Pasha was on his way to Fazougli, the hot Siberia. For the rage of the Khedive was great when he heard what David and Abdul Huseyn told him of the murderous riot Shelek Pasha had planned. David, being an honest Quaker--for now again he wore his shovel hat--did not realise that the Khedive had only hungered for this chance to confiscate the goods of Shelek Pasha. Was it not justice to take for the chosen ruler of the Faithful the goods an Armenian Christian had stolen from the poor? Before David left the Palace the Khedive gave him the Order of the Mejidfeh, in token of what he had done for Egypt. In the end, however, David took three things only out of Egypt: his wife, the Order of the Mejidfeh, and Shelek Pasha's pardon, which he strove for as hard as he had striven for his punishment, when he came to know the Khedive had sent the Mudir to Fazougli merely that he might despoil him. He only achieved this at last, again on the advice of Abdul Huseyn, by giving the Khedive as backsheesh the Syrian donkey-market, the five hundred feddans of cotton, and Hope's new school. Then, believing in no one in Egypt any more, he himself went with an armed escort and his Quaker hat, and the Order of the Khedive, to Fazougli, and brought Shelek Pasha penniless to Cairo. Nowadays, on the mastaba before his grandson's door, Abdul Huseyn, over ninety "by the grace of Allah," still tells of the backsheesh he secured from the Two Strange People for his help on a certain day. In Framley, where the whole truth never came, David and Hope occasionally take from a secret drawer the Order of the Mejidfeh to look at it, and, as David says, to "learn the lesson of Egypt once again." Having learned it to some purpose--and to the lifelong edification of old friend Fairley, the only one who knew the whole truth--they founded three great schools for Quaker children. They were wont to say to each other, as the hurrying world made inroads on the strict Quaker life to which they had returned: "All the world's mad but thee and me, and thee's a bit mad." ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: All the world's mad but thee and me He had tasted freedom; he was near to license DONOVAN PASHA AND SOME PEOPLE OF EGYPT By Gilbert Parker Volume 3. THE MAN AT THE WHEEL A TYRANT AND A LADY THE MAN AT THE WHEEL Wyndham Bimbashi's career in Egypt had been a series of mistakes. In the first place he was opinionated, in the second place he never seemed to have any luck; and, worst of all, he had a little habit of doing grave things on his own lightsome responsibility. This last quality was natural to him, but he added to it a supreme contempt for the native mind and an unhealthy scorn of the native official. He had not that rare quality, constantly found among his fellow-countrymen, of working the native up through his own medium, as it were, through his own customs and predispositions, to the soundness of Western methods of government. Therefore, in due time he made some dangerous mistakes. By virtue of certain high-handed actions he was the cause of several riots in native villages, and he had himself been attacked at more than one village as he rode between the fields of sugar-cane. On these occasions he had behaved very well--certainly no one could possibly doubt his bravery; but that was a small offset to the fact that his want of tact and his overbearing manner had been the means of turning a certain tribe of Arabs loose upon the country, raiding and killing. But he could not, or would not, see his own vain stupidity. The climax came in a foolish sortie against the Arab tribe he had offended. In that unauthorised melee, in covert disobedience to a general order not to attack, unless at advantage--for the Gippies under him were raw levies-- his troop was diminished by half; and, cut off from the Nile by a flank movement of the Arabs, he was obliged to retreat and take refuge in the well-fortified and walled house which had previously been a Coptic monastery. Here, at last, the truth came home to Wyndham bimbashi. He realised that though in his six years' residence in the land he had acquired a command of Arabic equal to that of others who had been in the country twice that time, he had acquired little else. He awoke to the fact that in his cock-sure schemes for the civil and military life of Egypt there was not one element of sound sense; that he had been all along an egregious failure. It did not come home to him with clear, accurate conviction-- his brain was not a first-rate medium for illumination; but the facts struck him now with a blind sort of force; and he accepted the blank sensation of failure. Also, he read in the faces of those round him an alien spirit, a chasm of black misunderstanding which his knowledge of Arabic could never bridge over. Here he was, shut up with Gippies who had no real faith in him, in the house of a Sheikh whose servants would cut his throat on no provocation at all; and not an eighth of a mile away was a horde of Arabs--a circle of death through which it was impossible to break with the men in his command. They must all die here, if they were not relieved. The nearest garrison was at Kerbat, sixty miles away, where five hundred men were stationed. Now that his cup of mistakes was full, Wyndham bimbashi would willingly have made the attempt to carry word to the garrison there. But he had no right to leave his post. He called for a volunteer. No man responded. Panic was upon the Gippies. Though Wyndham's heart sickened within him, his lips did not frame a word of reproach; but a blush of shame came into his face, and crept up to his eyes, dimming them. For there flashed through his mind what men at home would think of him when this thing, such an end to his whole career, was known. As he stood still, upright and confounded, some one touched his arm. It was Hassan, his Soudanese servant. Hassan was the one person in Egypt who thoroughly believed in him. Wyndham was as a god to Hassan, though this same god had given him a taste of a belt more than once. Hassan had not resented the belt, though once, in a moment of affectionate confidence, he had said to Wyndham that when his master got old and died he would be the servant of an American or a missionary, "which no whack Mahommed." It was Hassan who now volunteered to carry word to the garrison at Kerbat. "If I no carry, you whack me with belt, Saadat," said Hassan, whose logic and reason were like his master's, neither better nor worse. "If you do, you shall have fifty pounds--and the missionary," answered Wyndham, his eyes still cloudy and his voice thick; for it touched him in a tender nerve that this one Soudanese boy should believe in him and do for him what he would give much to do for the men under him. For his own life he did not care--his confusion and shame were so great. He watched Hassan steal out into the white brilliance of the night. "Mind you keep a whole skin, Hassan," he said, as the slim lad with the white teeth, oily hair, and legs like ivory, stole along the wall, to drop presently on his belly and make for some palm-trees a hundred yards away. The minutes went by in silence; an hour went by; the whole night went by; Hassan had got beyond the circle of trenchant steel. They must now abide Hassan's fate; but another peril was upon them. There was not a goolah of water within the walls! It was the time of low Nile when all the land is baked like a crust of bread, when the creaking of the shadoofs and the singing croak of the sakkia are heard the night long like untiring crickets with throats of frogs. It was the time succeeding the khamsin, when the skin dries like slaked lime and the face is for ever powdered with dust; and the fellaheen, in the slavery of superstition, strain their eyes day and night for the Sacred Drop, which tells that the flood is flowing fast from the hills of Abyssinia. It was like the Egyptian that nothing should be said to Wyndham about the dearth of water until it was all gone. The house of the Sheikh, and its garden, where were a pool and a fountain, were supplied from the great Persian wheel at the waterside. On this particular sakkia had been wont to sit all day a patient fellah, driving the blindfolded buffaloes in their turn. It was like the patient fellah, when the Arabs, in pursuit of Wyndham and his Gippies, suddenly cut in between him and the house, to deliver himself over to the conqueror, with his hand upon his head in sign of obedience. It was also like the gentle Egyptian that he eagerly showed the besiegers how the water could be cut off from the house by dropping one of the sluice-gates; while, opening another, all the land around the Arab encampments might be well watered, the pools well filled, and the grass kept green for horses and camels. This was the reason that Wyndham bimbashi and his Gippies, and the Sheikh and his household, faced the fact, the morning after Hassan left, that there was scarce a goolah of water for a hundred burning throats. Wyndham understood now why the Arabs sat down and waited, that torture might be added to the oncoming death of the Englishman, his natives, and the "friendlies." All that day terror and ghastly hate hung like a miasma over the besieged house and garden. Fifty eyes hungered for the blood of Wyndham bimbashi; not because he was Wyndham bimbashi, but because the heathen in these men cried out for sacrifice; and what so agreeable a sacrifice as the Englishman who had led them into this disaster and would die so well --had they ever seen an Englishman who did not die well? Wyndham was quiet and watchful, and he cudgelled his bullet-head, and looked down his long nose in meditation all the day, while his tongue became dry and thick, and his throat seemed to crack like roasting leather. At length he worked the problem out. Then he took action. He summoned his troop before him, and said briefly: "Men, we must have water. The question is, who is going to steal out to the sakkia to- night, to shut the one sluice and open the other?" No one replied. No one understood quite what Wyndham meant. Shutting one sluice and opening the other did not seem to meet the situation. There was the danger of getting to the sakkia, but there was also an after. Would it be possible to shut one sluice and open the other without the man at the wheel knowing? Suppose you killed the man at the wheel--what then? The Gippies and the friendlies scowled, but did not speak. The bimbashi was responsible for all; he was an Englishman, let him get water for them, or die like the rest of them--perhaps before them! Wyndham could not travel the sinuosities of their minds, and it would not have affected his purpose if he could have done so. When no man replied, he simply said: "All right, men. You shall have water before morning. Try and hold out till then." He dismissed them. For a long time he walked up and down the garden of straggling limes, apparently listless, and smoking hard. He reckoned carefully how long it would take Hassan to get to Kerbat, and for relief to come. He was fond of his pipe, and he smoked now as if it were the thing he most enjoyed in the world. He held the bowl in the hollow of his hand almost tenderly. He seemed unconscious of the scowling looks around him. At last he sat down on the ledge of the rude fountain, with his face towards the Gippies and the Arabs squatted on the ground, some playing mankalah, others sucking dry lime leaves, many smoking apathetically. One man with the flicker of insanity in his eyes suddenly ran forward and threw himself on the ground before Wyndham. "In the name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful--water!" he cried. "Water--I am dying, effendi whom God preserve!" "Nile water is sweet; you shall drink it before morning, Mahommed," answered Wyndham quietly. "God will preserve your life till the Nile water cools your throat." "Before dawn, O effendi?" gasped the Arab. "Before dawn, by the mercy of God," answered Wyndham; and for the first time in his life he had a burst of imagination. The Orient had touched him at last. "Is not the song of the sakkia in thine ear, Mahommed?" he said "Turn, O Sakkia, turn to the right, and turn to the left. The Nile floweth by night and the balasses are filled at dawn-- The maid of the village shall bear to thy bed the dewy grey goolah at dawn Turn, O Sakkia!" Wyndham was learning at last the way to the native mind. The man rose from his knees. A vision of his home in the mirkaz of Minieh passed before him. He stretched out his hands, and sang in the vibrating monotone of his people: "Turn, O Sakkia, turn to the right, and turn to the left: Who will take care of me, if my father dies? Who will give me water to drink, and the cucumber vine at my door-- Turn, O Sakkia!" Then he crept back again to the wall of the house, where he huddled between a Berberine playing a darabukkeh and a man of the Fayoum who chanted the fatihah from the Koran. Wyndham looked at them all and pondered. "If the devils out there would only attack us," he said between his teeth, "or if we could only attack them!" he added, and he nervously hastened his footsteps; for to him this inaction was terrible. "They'd forget their thirst if they were fighting," he muttered, and then he frowned; for the painful neighing of the horses behind the house came to his ear. In desperation he went inside and climbed to the roof, where he could see the circle of the enemy. It was no use. They were five to one, and his Gippies were demoralised. It would be a fine bit of pluck to try and cut his way through the Arabs to the Nile--but how many would reach it? No, he had made his full measure of mistakes, he would not add to the list. If Hassan got through to Kerbat his Gippies here would no doubt be relieved, and there would be no more blood on his head. Relieved? And when they were relieved, what of himself, Wyndham bimbashi? He knew what men would say in Cairo, what men would say at the War Office in London town, at "The Rag"--everywhere! He could not look his future in the face. He felt that every man in Egypt, save himself, had known all along that he was a complete failure. It did not matter while he himself was not conscious of it; but now that the armour-plate of conceit protecting his honest mind had been torn away on the reefs of foolish deeds, it mattered everything. For when his conceit was peeled away, there was left a crimson cuticle of the Wyndham pride. Certainly he could not attack the Arabs--he had had his eternal fill of sorties. Also he could not wait for the relief party, for his Gippies and the friendlies were famishing, dying of thirst. He prayed for night. How slowly the minutes, the hours passed; and how bright was the moon when it rose! brighter even than it was when Hassan crept out to steal through the Arab lines. ..................... At midnight, Wyndham stole softly out of a gate in the garden wall, and, like Hassan, dropping to the ground, crept towards a patch of maize lying between the house and the river. He was dressed like a fellah, with the long blue yelek, and a poor wool fez, and round the fez was a white cloth, as it were to protect his mouth from the night air, after the manner of the peasant. The fires of the enemy were dying down, and only here and there Arabs gossiped or drank coffee by the embers. At last Wyndham was able to drop into the narrow channel, now dry, through which, when the sluice was open and the sakkia turned, the water flowed to the house. All went well till he was within a hundred yards of the wheel, though now and again he could hear sentries snoring or talking just above him. Suddenly he heard breathing an arm's length before him, then a figure raised itself and a head turned towards him. The Arab had been asleep, but his hand ran to his knife by instinct--too late, for Wyndham's fingers were at his throat, and he had neither time nor chance to cry Allah! before the breath left him. Wyndham crept on. The sound of the sakkia was in his ears--the long, creaking, crying song, filling the night. And now there arose the Song of the Sakkia from the man at the wheel: "Turn, O Sakkia, turn to the right, and turn to the left; The heron feeds by the water side--shall I starve in my onion-field! Shall the Lord of the World withhold his tears that water the land-- Turn, O Sakkia!" . . . The hard white stars, the cold blue sky, the far-off Libyan hills in a gold and opal glow, the smell of the desert, the deep swish of the Nile, the Song of the Sakkia. . . . Wyndham's heart beat faster, his blood flowed quicker, he strangled a sigh in his breast. Here, with death on every hand, with immediate and fearful peril before him, out of the smell of the desert and the ghostly glow of the Libyan hills there came a memory--the memory of a mistake he had made years before with a woman. She had never forgiven him for the mistake--he knew it at last. He knew that no woman could ever forgive the blunder he had made--not a blunder of love but a blunder of self-will and an unmanly, unmannerly conceit. It had nearly wrecked her life: and he only realised it now, in the moment of clear-seeing which comes to every being once in a lifetime. Well, it was something to have seen the mistake at last. He had come to the sluice-gate. It was impossible to open it without the fellah on the water-wheel seeing him. There was another way. He crept close and closer to the wheel. The breath of the blindfolded buffalo was in his face, he drew himself up lightly and quickly beside the buffalo--he was making no blunder now. Suddenly he leapt from behind the buffalo upon the fellah and smothered his mouth in the white cloth he had brought. There was a moment's struggle, then, as the wheel went slower and slower, and the patient buffalo stopped, Wyndham dropped the gagged, but living, fellah into a trench by the sakkia and, calling to the buffalo, slid over swiftly, opened the sluice-gate of the channel which fed the house, and closed that leading to the Arab encampment. Then he sat down where the fellah had sat, and the sakkia droned its mystic music over the river, the desert, and the plain. But the buffalo moved slowly-the fellah's song had been a spur to its travel, as the camel-driver's song is to the caravan in the waste of sands. Wyndham hesitated an instant, then, as the first trickle of water entered the garden of the house where his Gippies and the friendlies were, his voice rose in the Song of the Sakkia: "Turn, O Sakkia, turn to the right, and turn to the left: Who will take care of me, if my father dies? Who will give me water to drink, and the cucumber vine at my door Turn, O Sakkia!" If he had but one hour longer there would be enough water for men and horses for days, twenty jars of water pouring all the time! Now and again a figure came towards the wheel, but not close enough to see that the one sluice-gate had been shut and the other opened. A half- hour passed, an hour, and then the end came. The gagged fellah had managed to free his mouth, and though his feet were bound also and he could not loose them, he gave a loud call for help. From dying fires here and there Arab sentries sprang to their feet with rifles and lances. Wyndham's work was done. He leapt from the sakkia, and ran towards the house. Shot after shot was fired at him, lances were thrown, and once an Arab barred his way suddenly. He pistoled him and ran on. A lance caught him in the left arm. He tore it out and pushed forward. Stooping once, he caught up a sword from the ground. When he was within fifty yards of the house, four Arabs intercepted him. He slashed through, then turned with his pistol and fired as he ran quickly towards the now open gate. He was within ten yards of it, and had fired his last shot, when a bullet crashed through his jaw. A dozen Gippies ran out, dragged him in, and closed the gate. The last thing Wyndham did before he died in the grey of dawn--and this is told of him by the Gippies themselves-was to cough up the bullet from his throat, and spit it out upon the ground. The Gippies thought it a miraculous feat, and that he had done it in scorn of the Arab foe. Before another sunrise and sunset had come, Wyndham bimbashi's men were relieved by the garrison of Kerbat, after a hard fight. There are Englishmen in Egypt who still speak slightingly of Wyndham bimbashi, but the British officer who buried him hushed a gossiping dinner-party a few months ago in Cairo by saying: "Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him; But little he'll reek, if they let him sleep on In the grave where his Gippies have laid him." And he did not apologise for paraphrasing the famous ballad. He has shamed Egypt at last into admiration for Wyndham bimbashi: to the deep satisfaction of Hassan, the Soudanese boy, who received his fifty pounds, and to this day wears the belt which once kept him in the narrow path of duty. A TYRANT AND A LADY When Donovan Pasha discovered the facts for the first time, he found more difficulty in keeping the thing to himself than he had ever found with any other matter in Egypt. He had unearthed one of those paradoxes which make for laughter--and for tears. It gave him both; he laughed till he cried. Then he went to the Khedivial Club and ordered himself four courses, a pint of champagne and a glass of '48 port, his usual dinner being one course, double portion, and a pint of claret. As he sat eating he kept reading a letter over and over, and each time he read he grinned --he did not smile like a well-behaved man of the world, he did not giggle like a well-veneered Egyptian back from Paris, he chuckled like a cabman responding to a liberal fare and a good joke. A more unconventional little man never lived. Simplicity was his very life, and yet he had a gift for following the sinuosities of the Oriental mind; he had a quality almost clairvoyant, which came, perhaps, from his Irish forebears. The cross-strain of English blood had done him good too; it made him punctilious and kept his impulses within secure bounds. It also made him very polite when he was angry, and very angry when any one tried to impose upon him, or flatter him. The letter he read so often was from Kingsley Bey, the Englishman, who, coming to Egypt penniless, and leaving estates behind him encumbered beyond release, as it would seem, had made a fortune and a name in a curious way. For years he had done no good for himself, trying his hand at many things--sugar, salt, cotton, cattle, but always just failing to succeed, though he came out of his enterprises owing no one. Yet he had held to his belief that he would make a fortune, and he allowed his estates to become still more encumbered, against the advice of his solicitors, who grew more irritable as interest increased and rents further declined. The only European in Egypt who shared his own belief in himself was Dicky Donovan. Something in the unfailing good-humour, the buoyant energy, the wide imagination of the man seized Dicky, warranted the conviction that he would yet make a success. There were reasons why sugar, salt, cotton, cattle and other things had not done well. Taxes, the corvee, undue influence in favour of pashas who could put his water on their land without compensation, or unearthed old unpaid mortgages on his land, or absorbed his special salt concession in the Government monopoly, or suddenly put a tax on all horses and cattle not of native breed; all these and various other imposts, exactions, or interferences engineered by the wily Mamour, the agent of the mouffetish, or the intriguing Pasha, killed his efforts, in spite of labours unbelievable. The venture before the last had been sugar, and when he arrived in Cairo, having seen his fields and factories absorbed in the Khedive's domains, he had but one ten pounds to his name. He went to Dicky Donovan and asked the loan of a thousand pounds. It took Dicky's breath away. His own banking account seldom saw a thousand --deposit. Dicky told Kingsley he hadn't got it. Kingsley asked him to get it--he had credit, could borrow it from the bank, from the Khedive himself! The proposal was audacious--Kingsley could offer no security worth having. His enthusiasm and courage were so infectious, however, though his ventures had been so fruitless, that Dicky laughed in his face. Kingsley's manner then suddenly changed, and he assured Dicky that he would receive five thousand pounds for the thousand within a year. Now, Dicky knew that Kingsley never made a promise to any one that he did not fulfil. He gave Kingsley the thousand pounds. He did more. He went to the Khedive with Kingsley's whole case. He spoke as he had seldom spoken, and he secured a bond from Ismail, which might not be broken. He also secured three thousand pounds of the Khedive's borrowings from Europe, on Kingsley's promise that it should be returned five-fold. That was how Kingsley got started in the world again, how he went mining in the desert afar, where pashas and mamours could not worry him. The secret of his success was purely Oriental. He became a slave-owner. He built up a city of the desert round him. He was its ruler. Slavery gave him steady untaxed labour. A rifle-magazine gave him security against marauding tribes, his caravans were never over powered; his blacks were his own. He had a way with them; they thought him the greatest man in the world. Now, at last, he was rich enough. His mines were worked out, too, and the market was not so good; he had supplied it too well. Dicky's thousand had brought him five thousand, and Ismail's three thousand had become fifteen thousand, and another twenty thousand besides. For once the Khedive had found a kind of taxation, of which he got the whole proceeds, not divided among many as heretofore. He got it all. He made Kingsley a Bey, and gave him immunity from all other imposts or taxation. Nothing but an Egyptian army could have removed him from his desert-city. Now, he was coming back--to-night at ten o'clock he would appear at the Khedivial Club, the first time in seven years. But this was not all. He was coming back to be married as soon as might be. This was the thing which convulsed Dicky. Upon the Nile at Assiout lived a young English lady whose life was devoted to agitation against slavery in Egypt. Perhaps the Civil War in America, not so many years before, had fired her spirit; perhaps it was pious enthusiasm; perhaps it was some altruistic sentiment in her which must find expression; perhaps, as people said, she had had a love affair in England which had turned out badly. At any rate she had come over to Egypt with an elderly companion, and, after a short stay at the Consulate, had begun the career of the evangel. She had now and then created international difficulty, and Ismail, tolerant enough, had been tempted to compel her to leave the country, but, with a zeal which took on an aspect of self-opinionated audacity, she had kept on. Perhaps her beauty helped her on her course--perhaps the fact that her superb egotism kept her from being timorous, made her career possible. In any case, there she was at Assiout, and there she had been for years, and no accident had come to her; and, during the three months she was at Cairo every year, pleading against slavery and the corvee, she increased steadily the respect in which she was held; but she was considered mad as Gordon. So delighted had Ismail been by a quiet, personal attack she made upon him, that without malice, and with an obtuse and impulsive kindness, he sent her the next morning a young Circassian slave, as a mark of his esteem, begging her through the swelling rhetoric of his messenger to keep the girl, and more than hinting at her value. It stupefied her, and the laughter of Cairo added to her momentary embarrassment; but she kept the girl, and prepared to send her back to her people. The girl said she had no people, and would not go; she would stay with "My Lady"--she would stay for ever with "My Lady." It was confusing, but the girl stayed, worshipping the ground "My Lady" walked on. In vain My Lady educated her. Out of hearing, she proudly told whoever would listen that she was "My Lady's slave." It was an Egyptian paradox; it was in line with everything else in the country, part of the moral opera boufe. In due course, the lady came to hear of the English slave-owner, who ruled the desert-city and was making a great fortune out of the labours of his slaves. The desert Arabs who came down the long caravan road, white with bleached bones, to Assiout, told her he had a thousand slaves. Against this Englishman her anger, was great. She unceasingly condemned him, and whenever she met Dicky Donovan she delivered her attack with delicate violence. Did Dicky know him? Why did not he, in favour with Ismail, and with great influence, stop this dreadful and humiliating business? It was a disgrace to the English name. How could we preach freedom and a higher civilisation to the Egyptians while an Englishman enriched himself and ruled a province by slavery? Dicky's invariable reply was that we couldn't, and that things weren't moving very much towards a higher civilisation in Egypt. But he asked her if she ever heard of a slave running away from Kingsley Bey, or had she ever heard of a case of cruelty on his part? Her reply was that he had given slaves the kourbash, and had even shot them. Dicky thereupon suggested that Kingsley Bey was a government, and that the kourbash was not yet abolished in the English navy, for instance; also that men had to be shot sometimes. At last she had made a direct appeal to Kingsley Bey. She sent an embassy to him--Dicky prevented her from going herself; he said he would have her deported straightway, if she attempted it. She was not in such deadly earnest that she did not know he would keep his word, and that the Consulate could not help her would have no time to do so. So, she confined herself to an elaborate letter, written in admirable English and inspired by most noble sentiments. The beauty that was in her face was in her letter in even a greater degree. It was very adroit, too, very ably argued, and the moral appeal was delicate and touching, put with an eloquence at once direct and arresting. The invocation with which the letter ended was, as Kingsley Bey afterwards put it, "a pitch of poetry and humanity never reached except by a Wagner opera." Kingsley Bey's response to the appeal was a letter to the lady, brought by a sarraf, a mamour and six slaves, beautifully mounted and armed, saying that he had been deeply moved by her appeal, and as a proof of the effect of her letter, she might free the six slaves of his embassy. This she straightway did joyfully, and when they said they wished to go to Cairo, she saw them and their horses off on the boat with gladness, and she shook them each by the hand and prayed Heaven in their language to give them long plumes of life and happiness. Arrived at Cairo these freemen of Assiout did as they had been ordered by Kingsley--found Donovan Pasha, delivered a certain letter to him, and then proceeded, also as they had been ordered, to a certain place in the city, even to Ismail's stables, to await their master's coming. This letter was now in Dicky's hand, and his mirth was caused by the statement that Kingsley Bey had declared that he was coming to marry My Lady--she really was "My Lady," the Lady May Harley; that he was coming by a different route from "his niggers," and would be there the same day. Dicky would find him at ten o'clock at the Khedivial Club. My Lady hated slavery--and unconsciously she kept a slave; she regarded Kingsley Bey as an enemy to civilisation and to Egypt, she detested him as strongly as an idealistic nature could and should--and he had set out to marry her, the woman who had bitterly arraigned him at the bar of her judgment. All this play was in Dicky's hands for himself to enjoy, in a perfect dress rehearsal ere ever one of the Cairene public or the English world could pay for admission and take their seats. Dicky had in more senses than one got his money's worth out of Kingsley Bey. He wished he might let the Khedive into the secret at once, for he had an opinion of Ismail's sense of humour; had he not said that very day in the presence of the French Consul, "Shut the window, quick! If the consul sneezes, France will demand compensation!" But Dicky was satisfied that things should be as they were. He looked at the clock--it was five minutes to ten. He rose from the table, and went to the smoking-room. In vain it was sought to draw him into the friendly circles of gossiping idlers and officials. He took a chair at the very end of the room and opposite the door, and waited, watching. Precisely at ten the door opened and a tall, thin, loose-knit figure entered. He glanced quickly round, saw Dicky, and swung down the room, nodding to men who sprang to their feet to greet him. Some of the Egyptians looked darkly at him, but he smiled all round, caught at one or two hands thrust out to him, said: "Business--business first!" in a deep bass voice, and, hastening on, seized both of Dicky's hands in his, then his shoulders, and almost roared: "Well, what do you think of it? Isn't it all right? Am I, or am I not, Dicky Pasha?" "You very much are," answered Dicky, thrust a cigar at him, and set him down in the deepest chair he could find. He sprawled wide, and lighted his cigar, then lay back and looked down his long nose at his friend. "I mean it, too," he said after a minute, and reached for a glass of water the waiter brought. "No, thanks, no whiskey--never touch it--good example to the slaves!" He laughed long and low, and looked at Dicky out of the corner of his eye. "Good-looking lot I sent you, eh?" "Oosters, every one of 'em. Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. I learnt their grin, it suits my style of beauty." Dicky fitted the action to the word. "You'll start with me in the morning to Assiout?" "I can start, but life and time are short." "You think I can't and won't marry her?" "This isn't the day of Lochinvar." "This is the day of Kingsley Bey, Dicky Pasha." Dicky frowned. He had a rare and fine sense where women were concerned, were they absent or present. "How very artless--and in so short a time, too!" he said tartly. Kingsley laughed quietly. "Art is long, but tempers are short!" he retorted. Dicky liked a Roland for his Oliver. "It's good to see you back again," he said, changing the subject. "How long do you mean to stay?" "Here?" Dicky nodded. "Till I'm married." Dicky became very quiet, a little formal, and his voice took on a curious smoothness, through which sharp suggestion pierced. "So long?--Enter our Kingsley Bey into the underground Levantine world." This was biting enough. To be swallowed up by Cairo life and all that it involves, was no fate to suggest to an Englishman, whose opinion of the Levantine needs no defining. "Try again, Dicky," said Kingsley, refusing to be drawn. "This is not one huge joke, or one vast impertinence, so far as the lady is concerned. I've come back-b-a-c-k" (he spelled the word out), "with all that it involves. I've come back, Dicky." He quieted all at once, and leaned over towards his friend. "You know the fight I've had. You know the life I've lived in Egypt. You know what I left behind me in England--nearly all. You've seen the white man work. You've seen the black ooster save him. You've seen the ten-times- a-failure pull out. Have I played the game? Have I acted squarely? Have I given kindness for kindness, blow for blow? Have I treated my slaves like human beings? Have I--have I won my way back to life--life?" He spread out a hand with a little grasping motion. "Have I saved the old stand off there in Cumberland by the sea, where you can see the snow on Skaw Fell? Have I? Do you wonder that I laugh? Ye gods and little fishes! I've had to wear a long face years enough--seven hard years, seven fearful years, when I might be murdered by a slave, and I and my slaves might be murdered by some stray brigade, under some general of Ismail's, working without orders, without orders, of course--oh, very much of course! Why shouldn't I play the boy to-day, little Dicky Donovan? I am a Mahommedan come Christian again. I am a navvy again come gentleman. I am an Arab come Englishman once more. "I am an outcast come home. I am a dead man come to life." Dicky leaned over and laid a hand on his knee. "You are a credit to Cumberland," he said. "No other man could have done it. I won't ask any more questions. Anything you want of me, I am with you, to do, or say, or be." "Good. I want you to go to Assiout to-morrow." "Will you see Ismail first? It might be safer--good policy." "I will see My Lady first. . . . Trust me. I know what I'm doing. You will laugh as I do." Laughter broke from his lips. It was as though his heart was ten years old. Dicky's eyes moistened. He had never seen anything like it--such happiness, such boyish confidence. And what had not this man experienced! How had he drunk misfortune to the dregs! What unbelievable optimism had been his! How had he been at once hard and kind, tyrannical and human, defiant and peaceful, daring yet submissive, fierce yet just! And now, here, with so much done, with a great fortune and great power, a very boy, he was planning to win the heart of, and marry, his avowed foe, the woman who had condemned him without stint. II On her wide veranda, a stone's-throw from the banks of the Nile, My Lady sat pen in hand and paper-pad upon her knee. She had written steadily for an hour, and now she raised her head to look out on the swift- flowing, muddy water, where broad khiassas floated down the stream, laden with bersim; where feluccas covered the river, bearing natives and donkeys; where faithful Moslems performed their ablutions, and other faithful Moslems, their sandals laid aside, said their prayers with their faces towards Mecca, oblivious of all around; where blue-robed women filled their goolahs with water, and bore them away, steady and stately; where a gang of conscripts, chained ankle to ankle, followed by a crowd of weeping and wailing women, were being driven to the anchorage of the stern-wheeled transport-steamer. All these sights she had seen how many hundred times! To her it was all slavery. The laden khiassas represented the fruits of enforced labour; the ablutions and prayers were but signs of submission to the tyranny of a religion designed for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many, a creed and code of gross selfishness--were not women only admitted to Heaven by the intercession of their husbands and after unceasing prayer? Whether beasts of burden, the girl with the goolah, women in the harem, or servants of pleasure, they were all in the bonds of slavery, and the land was in moral darkness. So it seemed to her. How many times had she written these things in different forms and to different people--so often, too often, to the British Consul at Cairo, whose patience waned. At first, the seizure of conscripts, with all that it involved, had excited her greatly. It had required all her common- sense to prevent her, then and there, protesting, pleading, with the kavass, who did the duty of Ismail's Sirdar. She had confined herself, however, to asking for permission to give the men cigarettes and slippers, dates and bread, and bags of lentils for soup. Even this was not unaccompanied by danger, for the Mahommedan mind could not at first tolerate the idea of a lady going unveiled; only fellah women, domestic cattle, bared their faces to the world. The conscripts, too, going to their death--for how few of them ever returned?--leaving behind all hope, all freedom, passing to starvation and cruelty, at last to be cut down by the Arab, or left dying of illness in the desert, they took her gifts with sullen faces. Her beautiful freedom was in such contrast to their torture, slavery of a direful kind. But as again and again the kavasses came and opened midnight doors and snatched away the young men, her influence had grown so fast that her presence brought comfort, and she helped to assuage the grief of the wailing women. She even urged upon them that philosophy of their own, which said "Malaish" to all things-- the "It is no matter," of the fated Hamlet. In time she began to be grateful that an apathetic resignation, akin to the quiet of despair, was the possession of their race. She was far from aware that something in their life, of their philosophy, was affecting her understanding. She had a strong brain and a stronger will, but she had a capacity for feeling greater still, and this gave her imagination, temperament, and-- though it would have shocked her to know it--a certain credulity, easily transmutable into superstition. Yet, as her sympathies were, to some extent, rationalised by stern fact and everlasting custom, her opposition to some things became more active and more fervid. Looking into the distance, she saw two or three hundred men at work on a canal, draining the property of Selamlik Pasha, whose tyrannies, robberies, and intrigues were familiar to all Egypt, whose palaces were almost as many as those of the notorious Mouffetish. These men she saw now working in the dread corvee had been forced from their homes by a counterfeit Khedivial order. They had been compelled to bring their own tools, and to feed and clothe and house themselves, without pay or reward, having left behind them their own fields untilled, their own dourha unreaped, their date-palms, which the tax-gatherer confiscated. Many and many a time--unless she was prevented, and this at first had been often--she had sent food and blankets to these poor creatures who, their day's work done, prayed to God as became good Mahommedans, and, without covering, stretched themselves out on the bare ground to sleep. It suggested that other slavery, which did not hide itself under the forms of conscription and corvee. It was on this slavery her mind had been concentrated, and against it she had turned her energies and her life. As she now sat, pen in hand, the thought of how little she had done, how futile had been all her crusade, came to her. Yet there was, too, a look of triumph in her eyes. Until three days ago she had seen little result from her labours. Then had come a promise of better things. From the Englishman, against whom she had inveighed, had been sent an olive branch, a token--of conversion? Had he not sent six slaves for her to free, and had she not freed them? That was a step. She pictured to herself this harsh expatriated adventurer, this desert ruler, this slave-holder--had he been a slave-dealer she could herself have gladly been his executioner--surrounded by his black serfs, receiving her letter. In her mind's eye she saw his face flush as he read her burning phrases, then turn a little pale, then grow stern. She saw him, after a sleepless night, haunted by her warnings, her appeal to his English manhood. She saw him rise, meditative and relenting, and send forthwith these slaves for her to free. Her eye glistened again, as it had shone while she had written of this thing to the British Consul at Cairo, to her father in England, who approved of her sympathies and lamented her actions. Had her crusade been altogether fruitless, she asked herself. Ismail's freed Circassian was in her household, being educated like an English girl, lifted out of her former degradation, made to understand "a higher life"; and yesterday she had sent away six liberated slaves, with a gold-piece each, as a gift from a free woman to free men. It seemed to her for a moment now, as she sat musing and looking, that her thirty years of life had not been--rather, might not be-in vain. There was one other letter she would write--to Donovan Pasha, who had not been ardent in her cause, yet who might have done so much through his influence with Ismail, who, it was said, liked him better than any Englishman he had known, save Gordon. True, Donovan Pasha had steadily worked for the reduction of the corvee, and had, in the name of the Khedive, steadily reduced private corvee, but he had never set his face against slavery, save to see that no slave-dealing was permitted below Assouan. Yet, with her own eyes she had seen Abyssinian slaves sold in the market-place of Assiout. True, when she appealed to him, Donovan Pasha had seen to it that the slave-dealers were severely punished, but the fact remained that he was unsympathetic on the large issue. When appealed to, the British Consul had petulantly told her that Donovan Pasha was doing more important work. Yet she could only think of England as the engine of civilisation, as an evangelising power, as the John the Baptist of the nations--a country with a mission. For so beautiful a woman, of so worldly a stock, of a society so in the front of things, she had some Philistine notions, some quite middle-class ideals. It was like a duchess taking to Exeter Hall; but few duchesses so afflicted had been so beautiful and so young, so much of the worldly world--her father was high in the household of an illustrious person. . . . If she could but make any headway against slavery--she had as disciples ten Armenian pashas, several wealthy Copts, a number of Arab sheikhs, and three Egyptian princes, sympathetic rather than active--perhaps, through her father, she might be able to move the illustrious person, and so, in time, the Government of England. It was a delightful dream--the best she had imagined for many a day. She was roused from it by the scream of a whistle, and the hoonch-hoonch of a sternwheel steamer. A Government boat was hastening in to the bank, almost opposite her house. She picked up the field-glass from the window-sill behind her, and swept the deck of the steamer. There were two figures in English dress, though one wore the tarboosh. The figure shorter and smaller than the other she recognised. This was Donovan Pasha. She need not write her letter to him, then. He would be sure to visit her. Disapprove of him as she did from one stand-point, he always excited in her feelings of homesickness, of an old life, full of interests--music, drama, art, politics, diplomacy, the court, the hunting-field, the quiet house-party. He troubled her in a way too, for his sane certainty, set against her aspiring credulity, arrested, even commanded, her sometimes. Instinctively she put out her hand to gather in flying threads of hair, she felt at the pearl fastening of her collar, she looked at her brown shoes and her dress, and was satisfied. She was spotless. And never had her face shone--really shone--to such advantage. It had not now the brilliant colours of the first years. The climate, her work in hospital building, her labours against slavery, had touched her with a little whiteness. She was none the less good to see. Who was this striding along with Donovan Pasha, straight towards her house? No one she had ever seen in Egypt, and yet in manner like some one she had seen before--a long time before. Her mind flashed back through the years to the time when she was a girl, and visited old friends of her father in a castle looking towards Skaw Fell, above the long valley of the Nidd. A kind of mist came before her eyes now. When she really saw again, they were at the steps of the veranda, and Donovan Pasha's voice was greeting her. Then, as, without a word but with a welcoming smile, she shook hands with Dicky, her look was held, first by a blank arrest of memory, then by surprise. Dicky turned for his office of introduction but was stayed by the look of amusement in his friend's face, and by the amazed recognition in that of My Lady. He stepped back with an exclamation, partly of chagrin. He saw that this recognition was no coincidence, so far as the man was concerned, though the woman had been surprised in a double sense. He resented the fact that Kingsley Bey had kept this from him--he had the weakness of small-statured men and of diplomatic people who have reputations for knowing and doing. The man, all smiling, held out his hand, and his look was quizzically humorous as he said: "You scarcely looked to see me here, Lady May?" Her voice trembled with pleasure. "No, of course. When did you come, Lord Selden? . . . Won't you sit down?" That high green terrace of Cumberland, the mist on Skaw Fell, the sun out over the sea, they were in her eyes. So much water had gone under the bridges since! "I was such a young girl then--in short frocks--it was a long time ago, I fear," she added, as if in continuation of the thought flashing through her mind. "Let me see," she went on fearlessly; "I am thirty; that was thirteen years ago." "I am thirty-seven, and still it is thirteen years ago." "You look older, when you don't smile," she added, and glanced at his grey hair. He laughed now. She was far, far franker than she was those many years ago, and it was very agreeable and refreshing. "Donovan, there, reproved me last night for frivolity," he said. "If Donovan Pasha has become grave, then there is hope for Egypt," she said, turning to Dicky with a new brightness. "When there's hope for Egypt, I'll have lost my situation, and there'll be reason for drawing a long face," said Dicky, and got the two at such an angle that he could watch them to advantage. "I thrive while it's opera boufe. Give us the legitimate drama, and I go with Ismail." The lady shrank a little. "If it weren't you, Donovan Pasha, I should say that, associated with Ismail, as you are, you are as criminal as he." "What is crime in one country, is virtue in another," answered Dicky. "I clamp the wheel sometimes to keep it from spinning too fast. That's my only duty. I am neither Don Quixote nor Alexander Imperator." She thought he was referring obliquely to the corvee and the other thing in which her life-work was involved. She became severe. "It is compromising with evil," she said. "No. It's getting a breakfast-roll instead of the whole bakery," he answered. "What do you think?" she exclaimed, turning to Kingsley. "I think there's one man in Egypt who keeps the boiler from bursting," he answered. "Oh, don't think I undervalue his Excellency here," she said with a little laugh. "It is because he is strong, because he matters so much, that one feels he could do more. Ismail thinks there is no one like him in the world." "Except Gordon," interrupted Kingsley. "Except Gordon, of course; only Gordon isn't in Egypt. And he would do no good in Egypt. The officials would block his way. It is only in the Soudan that he could have a free hand, be of real use. There, a man, a real man, like Gordon, could show the world how civilisation can be accepted by desert races, despite a crude and cruel religion and low standards of morality." "All races have their social codes--what they call civilisation," rejoined Kingsley. "It takes a long time to get custom out of the blood, especially when it is part of the religion. I'm afraid that expediency isn't the motto of those who try to civilise the Orient and the East." "I believe in struggling openly for principle," she observed a little acidly. "Have you succeeded?" he asked, trying to keep his gravity. "How about your own household, for instance? Have you Christianised and civilised your people--your niggers, and the others?" She flushed indignantly, but held herself in control. She rang a bell. "I have no 'niggers,'" she answered quietly. "I have some Berberine servants, two fellah boatmen, an Egyptian gardener, an Arab cook, and a Circassian maid. They are, I think, devoted to me." A Berberine servant appeared. "Tea, Mahommed," she said. "And tell Madame that Donovan Pasha is here. My cousin admires his Excellency so much," she added to Kingsley, laughing. "I have never had any real trouble with them," she continued with a little gesture of pride towards the disappearing Berberine. "There was the Armenian," put in Dicky slyly; "and the Copt sarraf. They were no credit to their Christian religion, were they?" "That was not the fault of the religion, but of the generations of oppression--they lie as a child lies, to escape consequences. Had they not been oppressed they would have been good Christians in practice as in precept." "They don't steal as a child steals," laughed Dicky. "Armenians are Oriental through and through. They no more understand the Christian religion than the Soudanese understand freedom." He touched the right note this time. Kingsley flashed a half-startled, half-humorous look at him; the face of the lady became set, her manner delicately frigid. She was about to make a quiet, severe reply, but something overcame her, and her eyes, her face, suddenly glowed. She leaned forward, her hands clasped tightly on her knees--Kingsley could not but note how beautiful and brown they were, capable, handsome, confident hands--and, in a voice thrilling with feeling, said: "What is there in the life here that gets into the eyes of Europeans and blinds them? The United States spent scores of thousands of lives to free the African slave. England paid millions, and sacrificed ministries and men, to free the slave; and in England, you--you, Donovan Pasha, and men like you, would be in the van against slavery. Yet here, where England has more influence than any other nation--" "More power, not influence," Dicky interrupted smiling. "Here, you endure, you encourage, you approve of it. Here, an Englishman rules a city of slaves in the desert and grows rich out of their labour. What can we say to the rest of the world, while out there in the desert" --her eyes swept over the grey and violet hills--"that man, Kingsley Bey, sets at defiance his race, his country, civilisation, all those things in which he was educated? Egypt will not believe in English civilisation, Europe will not believe in her humanity and honesty, so long as he pursues his wicked course." She turned with a gesture of impatience, and in silence began to pour the tea the servant had brought, with a message that Madame had a headache. Kingsley Bey was about to speak--it was so unfair to listen, and she would forgive this no more readily than she would forgive slavery. Dicky intervened, however. "He isn't so black as he's painted, personally. He's a rash, inflammable sort of fellow, who has a way with the native--treats him well, too, I believe. Very flamboyant, doomed to failure, so far as his merit is concerned, but with an incredible luck. He gambled, and he lost a dozen times; and then gambled again, and won. That's the truth, I fancy. No real stuff in him whatever." Their hostess put down her tea-cup, and looked at Dicky in blank surprise. Not a muscle in his face moved. She looked at Kingsley. He had difficulty in restraining himself, but by stooping to give her fox- terrier a piece of cake, he was able to conceal his consternation. "I cannot--cannot believe it," she said slowly. "The British Consul does not speak of him like that." "He is a cousin of the Consul," urged Dicky. "Cousin--what cousin? I never heard--he never told me that." "Oh, nobody tells anything in Egypt, unless he's kourbashed or thumb- screwed. It's safer to tell nothing, you know." "Cousin! I didn't know there were Kingsleys in that family. What reason could the Consul have for hiding the relationship?" "Well, I don't know, you must ask Kingsley. Flamboyant and garrulous as he is, he probably won't tell you that." "If I saw Kingsley Bey, I should ask him questions which interest me more. I should prefer, however, to ask them through a lawyer--to him in the prisoner's dock." "You dislike him intensely?" "I detest him for what he has done; but I do not despise him as you suggest I should. Flamboyant, garrulous--I don't believe that. I think him, feel him, to be a hard man, a strong man, and a bad man--if not wholly bad." "Yet you would put him in the prisoner's dock," interposed Kingsley musingly, and wondering how he was to tell her that Lord Selden and Kingsley Bey were one and the same person. "Certainly. A man who commits public wrongs should be punished. Yet I am sorry that a man so capable should be so inhuman." "Your grandfather was inhuman," put in Kingsley. "He owned great West Indian slave properties. "He was culpable, and should have been punished--and was; for we are all poor at last. The world has higher, better standards now, and we should live up to them. Kingsley Bey should live up to them." "I suppose we might be able to punish him yet," said Dicky meditatively. "If Ismail turned rusty, we could soon settle him, I fancy. Certainly, you present a strong case." He peered innocently into the distance. "But could it be done--but would you?" she asked, suddenly leaning forward. "If you would, you could--you could!" "If I did it at all, if I could make up my mind to it, it should be done thoroughly--no half measures." "What would be the whole measures?" she asked eagerly, but with a certain faint shrinking, for Dicky seemed cold-blooded. "Of course you never could tell what would happen when Ismail throws the slipper. This isn't a country where things are cut and dried, and done according to Hoyle. You get a new combination every time you pull a string. Where there's no system and a thousand methods you have to run risks. Kingsley Bey might get mangled in the machinery." She shrank a little. "It is all barbarous." "Well, I don't know. He is guilty, isn't he? You said you would like to see him in the prisoner's dock. You would probably convict him of killing as well as slavery. You would torture him with prison, and then hang him in the end. Ismail would probably get into a rage--pretended, of course--and send an army against him. Kingsley would make a fight for it, and lose his head--all in the interest of a sudden sense of duty on the part of the Khedive. All Europe would applaud--all save England, and what could she do? Can she defend slavery? There'll be no kid-gloved justice meted out to Kingsley by the Khedive, if he starts a campaign against him. He will have to take it on the devil's pitchfork. You must be logical, you know. "You can't have it both ways. If he is to be punished, it must be after the custom of the place. This isn't England." She shuddered slightly, and Dicky went on: "Then, when his head's off, and his desert-city and his mines are no more, and his slaves change masters, comes a nice question. Who gets his money? Not that there's any doubt about who'll get it, but, from your standpoint, who should get it?" She shook her head in something like embarrassment. "Money got by slavery--yes, who should get it?" interposed Kingsley carefully, for her eyes had turned to him for help. "Would you favour his heirs getting it? Should it go to the State? Should it go to the slaves? Should it go to a fund for agitation against slavery? . . . You, for instance, could make use of a fortune like his in a cause like that, could you not?" he asked with what seemed boyish simplicity. The question startled her. "I--I don't know. . . . But certainly not," she hastened to add; "I couldn't touch the money. It is absurd-- impossible." "I can't see that," steadily persisted Kingsley. "This money was made out of the work of slaves. Certainly they were paid--they were, weren't they?" he asked with mock ignorance, turning to Dicky, who nodded assent. "They were paid wages by Kingsley--in kind, I suppose, but that's all that's needed in a country like the Soudan. But still they had to work, and their lives and bodies were Kingsley's for the time being, and the fortune wouldn't have been made without them; therefore, according to the most finely advanced theories of labour and ownership, the fortune is theirs as much as Kingsley's. But, in the nature of things, they couldn't have the fortune. What would they do with it? Wandering tribes don't need money. Barter and exchange of things in kind is the one form of finance in the Soudan. Besides, they'd cut each other's throats the very first day they got the fortune, and it would strew the desert sands. It's all illogical and impossible--" "Yes, yes, I quite see that," she interposed. "But you surely can see how the fortune could be applied to saving those races from slavery. What was wrung from the few by forced labour and loss of freedom could be returned to the many by a sort of national salvation. You could spend the fortune wisely--agents and missionaries everywhere; in the cafes, in the bazaars, in the palace, at court. Judicious gifts: and, at last, would come a firman or decree putting down slavery, on penalty of death. The fortune would all go, of course, but think of the good accomplished!" "You mean that the fortune should be spent in buying the decree--in backsheesh?" she asked bewildered, yet becoming indignant. "Well, it's like company promoting," Dicky interposed, hugely enjoying the comedy, and thinking that Kingsley had put the case shrewdly. It was sure to confuse her. "You have to clear the way, as it were. The preliminaries cost a good deal, and those who put the machinery in working order have to be paid. Then there's always some important person who holds the key of the situation; his counsel has to be asked. Advice is very expensive." "It is gross and wicked!" she flashed out. "But if you got your way? If you suppressed Kingsley Bey, rid the world of him--well, well, say, banished him," he quickly added, as he saw her fingers tremble--" and got your decree, wouldn't it be worth while? Fire is fought with fire, and you would be using all possible means to do what you esteem a great good. Think of it--slavery abolished, your work accomplished, Kingsley Bey blotted out!" Light and darkness were in her face at once. Her eyes were bright, her brows became knitted, her foot tapped the floor. Of course it was all make-believe, this possibility, but it seemed too wonderful to think of --slavery abolished, and through her; and Kingsley Bey, the renegade Englishman, the disgrace to his country, blotted out. "Your argument is not sound in many ways," she said at last, trying to feel her course. "We must be just before all. The whole of the fortune was not earned by slaves. Kingsley Bey's ability and power were the original cause of its existence. Without him there would have been no fortune. Therefore, it would not be justice to give it, even indirectly, to the slaves for their cause." "It would be penalty--Kingsley Bey's punishment," said Dicky slyly. "But I thought he was to be blotted out," she said ironically, yet brightening, for it seemed to her that she was proving herself statesmanlike, and justifying her woman's feelings as well. "When he is blotted out, his fortune should go where it can remedy the evil of his life." "He may have been working for some good cause," quietly put in Kingsley. "Should not that cause get the advantage of his 'ability and power,' as you have called it, even though he was mistaken, or perverted, or cruel? Shouldn't an average be struck between the wrong his 'ability and power' did and the right that same 'ability and power' was intended to advance?" She turned with admiration to Kingsley. "How well you argue--I remember you did years ago. I hate slavery and despise and hate slave-dealers and slave-keepers, but I would be just, too, even to Kingsley Bey. But what cause, save his own comfort and fortune, would he be likely to serve? Do you know him?" she added eagerly. "Since I can remember," answered Kingsley, looking through the field- glasses at a steamer coming up the river. "Would you have thought that he would turn out as he has?" she asked simply. "You see, he appears to me so dark and baleful a figure that I cannot quite regard him as I regard you, for instance. I could not realise knowing such a man." "He had always a lot of audacity," Kingsley replied slowly, "and he certainly was a schemer in his way, but that came from his helpless poverty." "Was he very poor?" she asked eagerly. "Always. And he got his estates heavily encumbered. Then there were people--old ladies--to have annuities, and many to be provided for, and there was little chance in England for him. Good-temper and brawn weren't enough." "Egypt's the place for mother-wit," broke in Dicky. "He had that anyhow. As to his unscrupulousness, of course that's as you may look at it." "Was he always unscrupulous?" she asked. "I have thought him cruel and wicked nationally--un-English, shamefully culpable; but a man who is unscrupulous would do mean low things, and I should like to think that Kingsley is a villain with good points. I believe he has them, and I believe that deep down in him is something English and honourable after all--something to be reckoned with, worked on, developed. See, here is a letter I had from him two days ago"--she drew it from her pocket and handed it over to Dicky. "I cannot think him hopeless altogether . . . I freed the slaves who brought the letter, and sent them on to Cairo. Do you not feel it is hopeful?" she urged, as Dicky read the letter slowly, making sotto voce remarks meanwhile. "Brigands and tyrants can be gallant--there are plenty of instances on record. What are six slaves to him?" "He has a thousand to your one," said Kingsley slowly, and as though not realising his words. She started, sat up straight in her chair, and looked at him indignantly. "I have no slaves," she said. Kingsley Bey had been watching the Circassian girl Mata, in the garden for some time, and he had not been able to resist the temptation to make the suggestion that roused her now. "I think the letter rather high-flown," said Dicky, turning the point, and handing the open page to Kingsley. "It looks to me as though written with a purpose." "What a cryptic remark!" said Kingsley laughing, yet a little chagrined. "What you probably wish to convey is that it says one thing and means another." "Suppose it does," interposed the lady. "The fact remains that he answered my appeal, which did not mince words, in most diplomatic and gentlemanly language. What do you think of the letter?" she asked, turning to Kingsley, and reaching a hand for it. "I'll guarantee our friend here could do no better, if he sat up all night," put in Dicky satirically. "You are safe in saying so, the opportunity being lacking." She laughed, and folded it up. "I believe Kingsley Bey means what he says in that letter. Whatever his purpose, I honestly think that you might have great influence over him," mused Dicky, and, getting up, stepped from the veranda, as though to go to the bank where an incoming steamer they had been watching was casting anchor. He turned presently, however, came back a step and said "You see, all our argument resolves itself into this: if Kingsley is to be smashed only Ismail can do it. If Ismail does it, Kingsley will have the desert for a bed, for he'll not run, and Ismail daren't spare him. Sequel, all his fortune will go to the Khedive. Question, what are we going to do about it?" So saying he left them, laughing, and went down the garden-path to the riverside. The two on the veranda sat silent for a moment, then Kingsley spoke. "These weren't the things we talked about when we saw the clouds gather over Skaw Fell and the sun shine on the Irish Sea. We've done and seen much since then. Multitudes have come and gone in the world--and I have grown grey!" he added with a laugh. "I've done little-nothing, and I meant and hoped to do much," she almost pleaded. "I've grown grey too." "Not one grey hair," he said, with an admiring look. "Grey in spirit sometimes," she reflected with a tired air. "But you--forgive me, if I haven't known what you've done. I've lived out of England so long. You may be at the head of the Government, for all I know. You look to me as though you'd been a success. Don't smile. I mean it. You look as though you'd climbed. You haven't the air of an eldest son whose way is cut out for him, with fifty thousand a year for compensation. What have you been doing? What has been your work in life?" "The opposite of yours." He felt himself a ruffian, but he consoled himself with the thought that the end at which he aimed was good. It seemed ungenerous to meet her simple honesty by such obvious repartee, but he held on to see where the trail would lead. "That doesn't seem very clear," she said in answer. "Since I came out here I've been a sort of riverine missionary, an apostle with no followers, a reformer with a plan of salvation no one will accept." "We are not stronger than tradition, than the long custom of ages bred in the bone and practised by the flesh. You cannot change a people by firmans; you must educate them. Meanwhile, things go on pretty much the same. You are a generation before your time. It is a pity, for you have saddened your youth, and you may never live to see accomplished what you have toiled for." "Oh, as to that--as to that . . ." She smoothed back her hair lightly, and her eyes wandered over the distant hills-mauve and saffron and opal, and tender with the mist of evening. "What does it matter!" she added. "There are a hundred ways to live, a hundred things to which one might devote one's life. And as the years went on we'd realise how every form of success was offset by something undone in another direction, something which would have given us joy and memory and content--so it seems. But-- but we can only really work out one dream, and it is the working out-- a little or a great distance--which satisfies. I have no sympathy with those who, living out their dreams, turn regretfully to another course or another aim, and wonder-wonder, if a mistake hasn't been made. Nothing is a mistake which comes of a good aim, of the desire for wrongs righted, the crooked places made straight. Nothing matters so that the dream was a good one and the heart approves and the eyes see far." She spoke as though herself in a dream, her look intent on the glowing distance, as though unconscious of his presence. "It's good to have lived among mountains and climbed them when you were young. It gives you bigger ideas of things. You could see a long way with the sun behind you, from Skaw Fell." He spoke in a low voice, and her eyes drew back from the distance and turned on him. She smiled. "I don't know. I suppose it gives one proportion, though I've been told by Donovan Pasha and the Consul that I have no sense of proportion. What difference does it make? It is the metier of some people of this world to tell the truth, letting it fall as it will, and offend where it will, to be in a little unjust maybe, measure wrongly here and there, lest the day pass and nothing be done. It is for the world to correct, to adjust, to organise, to regulate the working of the truth. One person cannot do all." Every minute made him more and more regretful, while it deepened his feelings for her. He saw how far removed was her mind from the sordid views of things, and how sincere a philosophy governed her actions and her mission. He was about to speak, but she continued: "I suppose I've done unwise things from a worldly, a diplomatic, and a political point of view. I've--I've broken my heart on the rock of the impossible, so my father says. . . . But, no, I haven't broken my heart. I have only given it a little too much hope sometimes, too much disappointment at others. In any case--can one be pardoned for quoting poetry in these days? I don't know, I've been so long out of the world-- 'Bruised hearts when all is ended, Bear the better all after-stings; Broken once, the citadel mended Standeth through all things.' I'm not--not hopeless, though I've had a long hard fight here in Egypt; and I've done so little." . . . She kept smoothing out the letter she had had from Kingsley Bey, as though unconsciously. "But it is coming, the better day. I know it. Some one will come who will do all that I have pleaded for--stop the corvee and give the peasants a chance; stop slavery, and purify the harem and start the social life on a higher basis; remove a disgrace from the commerce of an afflicted land; remove --remove once for all such men as Kingsley Bey; make it impossible for fortunes to be made out of human flesh and blood." She had the rapt look of the dreamer. Suddenly she recovered her more worldly mood: "What are you doing here?" she added. "Have you come to take up official life? Have you some public position--of responsibility? Ah, perhaps,"--she laughed almost merrily,--"you are the very man; the great reformer. Perhaps you think and feel as I do, though you've argued against me. Perhaps you only wanted to see how real my devotion to this cause is. Tell me, are you only a tourist--I was going to say idler, but I know you are not; you have the face of a man who does things--are you tourist or worker here? What does Egypt mean to you? That sounds rather non- conformist, but Egypt, to me, is the saddest, most beautiful, most mysterious place in the world. All other nations, all other races, every person in the world should be interested in Egypt. Egypt is the lost child of Creation--the dear, pitiful waif of genius and mystery of the world. She has kept the calendar of the ages--has outlasted all other nations, and remains the same as they change and pass. She has been the watcher of the world, the one who looks on, and suffers, as the rest of the nations struggle for and wound her in their turn. What does Egypt mean to you? What would you do for her--anything?" There was no more satirical laughter in his eyes. He was deeply in earnest, disturbed, even excited. "Egypt means everything in the world to me. I would do what I could for her." "What has she done for you?" "She has brought me to you again--to make me know that what you were by Skaw Fell all those years ago, you are now, and a thousand times more." She parried the dangerous meaning in his voice, refused to see the tenderness in his manner. "I'm very sorry to hear that," she added in a tone vainly trying to be unconcerned. "It is a pity that our youth pursues us in forms so little desirable. . . . Who are they?" she added quickly, nodding towards the shore, from which Dicky was coming with an Egyptian officer and a squad of soldiers. "H'm," he responded laughing, "it looks like a matter of consequence. A Pasha, I should think, to travel with an escort like that." "They're coming here," she added, and, calling to her servant, ordered coffee. Suddenly Kingsley got to his feet, with a cry of consternation; but sat down again smiling with a shrug of the shoulders. "What is it?" she asked, with something like anxiety, for she had seen the fleeting suspicion in his look. "I don't know," he answered lightly, and as though the suspicion had gone. He watched Dicky and his companions closely, however, though he chatted unconcernedly while they stood in apparent debate, and presently came on. Dicky was whistling softly, but with an air of perplexity, and he walked with a precision of step which told Kingsley of difficulty ahead. He had not long to wait, and as Dicky drew nearer and looked him in the eyes, he came to his feet again, his long body gathering itself slowly up, as though for deliberate action. He felt trouble in the air, matters of moment, danger for himself, though of precisely what sort was not clear. He took a step forward, as though to shield the lady from possible affront. "I fancy they want to see me," he said. He recognised the officer-- Foulik Pasha of the Khedive's household. The Pasha salaamed. Dicky drew over to the lady, with a keen warning glance at Kingsley. The Pasha salaamed again, and Kingsley responded in kind. "Good-day to you, Pasha," he said. "May the dew of the morning bring flowers to your life, Excellency," was the reply. He salaamed now towards the lady, and Kingsley murmured his name to her. "Will you not be seated," she said, and touched a chair as though to sit down, yet casting a doubtful glance at the squad of men and the brilliant kavass drawn up near by. The Pasha looked from one to the other, and Kingsley spoke. "What is it, Pasha? Her ladyship doesn't know why she should be honoured." "But that makes no difference," she interposed. "Here is coffee--ah, that's right, cigarettes too! But, yes, you will take my coffee, Pasha," she urged. The insolent look which had gathered in the man's face cleared away. He salaamed, hesitated, and took the coffee, then salaamed again to her. She had caught at a difficulty; an instinctive sense of peril had taken possession of her; and, feeling that the danger was for the Englishman who had come to her out of her old life, she had interposed a diplomatic moment. She wanted to gain time before the mystery broke over her. She felt something at stake for herself. Premonition, a troubling of the spirit, told her that she was in the presence of a crisis out of which she would not come unchanged. Dicky was talking now, helping her--asking the Pasha questions of his journey up the river, of the last news from Europe, of the Khedive's health, though he and Kingsley had only left Cairo a half-day before the Pasha. The officer thanked the lady and salaamed again, then turned towards Kingsley. "You wished to speak with me, perhaps, Pasha," said Kingsley. "If a moment of your time may have so little honour, saadat el bey." Kingsley moved down the veranda shoulder to shoulder with the Pasha, and the latter's men, responding to a glance, moved down also. Kingsley saw, but gave no heed. "What's up, Pasha?" he asked in a low voice. "The Khedive commands your return to Cairo." "With you?" "So, effendi." "Compulsion, eh? I don't see quite. I'm an Englishman, not a fellah." "But I have my commands, saadat el bey." "What's the row, Pasha?" "Is it for the servant to know the mind of his master?" "And if I don't go?" The Pasha pointed to his men, and motioned towards the boat where forty or fifty others showed. "Bosh, Pasha! That's no reason. That's flummery, and you know and the Highness knows it. That would have been all very well in the desert, but this is not the desert, and I'm not doing business with the Highness any more. What's the penalty if I don't go?" "Twenty men will lose their heads to-morrow morning, a riot will occur, the bank where much gold is will be broken into, some one will be made poor, and--" "Come, never mind twaddle about my money--we'll see about that. Those twenty men--my men?" "Your men, saadat el bey." "They're seized?" "They are in prison." "Where?" "At Abdin Palace." Kingsley Bey had had a blow, but he was not dumfounded. In Egypt, the wise man is never surprised at anything, and Kingsley had gone from experience to experience without dismay. He realised the situation at once. The Khedive had been worked upon by some one in the circle, and had put on this pressure, for purposes of backsheesh, or blackmail, or whatever it might be called. His mind was made up at once. "Very well, Pasha. Though there's no reason why I should go with you except to suit myself. You'll excuse me for a moment, please." He turned back. Meanwhile, Dicky had been distracting the mind of the lady with evasive and cheerful suggestions of urgent business calling Kingsley to Cairo. He saw the plot that had been laid, and it made him very angry, but nothing could be done until he met the Khedive. He guessed who had filled the Khedive's mind with cupidity. He had seen old Selamlik Pasha, who had lent the Khedive much money, entering the palace as he left with Kingsley Bey thirty-six hours before. He had hope that he could save the situation, but meanwhile he was concerned for the new situation created here at Assiout. What would Kingsley do? He knew what he himself would do in the circumstances, but in crises few men of character do the necessary thing in exactly the same way. Here was comedy of a high order, a mystery and necessary revelation of singular piquancy. To his thinking the revelation was now overdue. He looked at the woman beside him, and he saw in her face a look it never had had before. Revelation of a kind was there; beauty, imagination, solicitude, delicate wonder were there. It touched him. He had never been arrested on his way of life by any dream of fair women, or any dream of any woman. It did not seem necessary--no one was necessary to him; he lived his real life alone, never sharing with any one that of himself which was not part of the life he lived before the world. Yet he had always been liked by men, and he had been agreeable in the sight of more women than he knew, this little man with a will of iron and a friendly heart. But he laughed silently now as he saw Kingsley approaching; the situation was so beautifully invented. It did not seem quite like a thing in real life. In any other country than Egypt it would have been comic opera--Foulik Pasha and his men so egregiously important; Kingsley so overwhelmed by the duty that lay before him; the woman in a whimsically embarrassing position with the odds, the laugh, against her, yet little likely to take the obvious view of things and so make possible a commonplace end. What would she do? What would Kingsley do? What would he, Dicky Donovan, do? He knew by the look in Kingsley's eyes that it was time for him to go. He moved down to Foulik Pasha, and, taking his arm, urged him towards the shore with a whispered word. The Pasha responded, followed by his men, but presently turned and, before Dicky could intervene--for he wanted Kingsley to make his own revelation--said courteously: "May the truth of Allah be with you, I will await you at the boat, Kingsley Bey." Dicky did not turn round, but, with a sharp exclamation of profanity, drew Foulik Pasha on his imbecile way. As for Kingsley Bey, he faced a woman who, as the truth dawned upon her, stared at him in a painful silence for a moment, and then drew back to the doorway of the house as though to find sudden refuge. Kingsley's head went round. Nothing had gone according to his anticipations. Foulik Pasha had upset things. "Now you know--I wished to tell you myself," he said. She answered at once, quietly, coldly, and with an even formal voice: "I did not know your name was Kingsley." "It was my grandmother's name." "I had forgotten--that is of no consequence, however; but--" she stopped. "You realise that I am--" "Yes, of course, Kingsley Bey--I quite understand. I thought you Lord Selden, an English gentleman. You are--" she made an impatient gesture-- "well, you are English still!" He was hit hard. The suggestion of her voice was difficult to bear. "I am not so ungentlemanly as you think. I meant to tell you--almost at once. I thought that as an old friend I might wait a moment or two. The conversation got involved, and it grew harder every minute. Then Foulik Pasha came-and now. . . ." She showed no signs of relenting. "It was taking advantage of an old- acquaintance. Against your evil influence here I have been working for years, while you have grown rich out of the slavery I detest. You will pardon my plain speaking, but this is not London, and one has had to learn new ways in this life here. I do not care for the acquaintance of slave-drivers, I have no wish to offer them hospitality. The world is large and it belongs to other people, and one has to endure much when one walks abroad; but this house is my own place, a little spot all my own, and I cherish it. There are those who come to the back door, and they are fed and clothed and sent away by the hand of charity; there are those who come to the front door, and I welcome them gladly--all that I have is theirs; there are those who come to a side door, when no one sees, and take me unawares, and of them I am afraid, their presence I resent. My doors are not open to slave-drivers." "What is the difference between the letter from the slave-driver's hand and the slave-driver himself?" She started and flushed deeply. She took the letter slowly from her pocket and laid it on the table. "I thought it a letter from a man who was openly doing wrong, and who repented a little of his wrongdoing. I thought it a letter from a stranger, from an Englishman who, perhaps, had not had such advantages of birth and education as came to you." "Yet you had a good opinion of the letter. There seemed no want of education and all that there--won't you be reasonable, and let me explain? Give me half a chance." "I do not see that explanation can mend anything. The men you sent me to free: that was a-well, call it a manoeuvre, to achieve what, I cannot tell. Is it not so? The men are not free. Is it not so?" "I am afraid they are not free," he answered, smiling in spite of himself. "Your coming here was a manoeuvre also--for what purpose I do not know. Yet it was a manoeuvre, and I am--or was to be--the victim of the plot." She smiled scornfully. "I trust you may yet be the victim of your own conduct." "In more ways than one, maybe. Don't you think, now that the tables are turned, that you might have mercy on 'a prisoner and a captive'?" She looked at him inquiringly, then glanced towards the shore where Dicky stood talking with Foulik Pasha. Her eyes came back slowly and again asked a question. All at once intelligence flashed into them. "You wished to see Kingsley Bey a prisoner; you have your wish," he said smiling. "Whose prisoner?" she asked, still coldly. "The Khedive's." A flash of triumph crossed her face. Her heart beat hard. Had it come at last, the edict to put down slavery? Had the Khedive determined to put an end to the work of Kingsley Bey in his desert-city-and to Kingsley Bey himself? . . . Her heart stopped beating now. She glanced towards Dicky Donovan, and her pulses ran more evenly again. Would the Khedive have taken such a step unless under pressure? And who in Egypt could have, would have, persuaded him, save Dicky Donovan? Yet Dicky was here with his friend Kingsley Bey. The mystery troubled her, and the trouble got into her eyes. "You are going to Cairo?" she said, glancing towards the boat. "It would seem so." "And Donovan Pasha goes too?" "I hope so. I am not sure." "But he must go," she said a little sharply. "Yes?" "He--you must have somebody, and he has great power." "That might or might not be to my benefit. After all, what does it matter?"--He saw that she was perturbed, and he pressed his advantage. She saw, however, and retreated. "We reap as we sow," she said, and made as if to go inside the house. "You have had the game, you must pay for the candles out of your earnings." "I don't mind paying what's fair. I don't want other people to pay." She turned angrily on him, he could not tell why. "You don't want others to pay! As if you could do anything that doesn't affect others. Did you learn that selfishness at Skaw Fell, or was it born with you? You are of those who think they earn all their own success and happiness, and then, when they earn defeat and despair, are surprised that others suffer. As if our penalties were only paid by ourselves! Egotism, vanity! So long as you have your dance, it matters little to you who pays for the tune." "I am sorry." He was bewildered; he had not expected this. "Does a man stoop to do in a foreign land what he would not do in his own country--dare not do?--One is so helpless--a woman! Under cover of an old friend ship--ah!" She suddenly turned, and, before he could say a word, disappeared inside the house. He spoke her name once, twice; he ventured inside the house, and called, but she did not come. He made his way to the veranda, and was about to leave for the shore, when he heard a step behind him. He turned quickly. It was the Circassian girl, Mata. He spoke to her in Arabic, and she smiled at him. "What is it?" he asked, for he saw she had come from her mistress. "My Lady begs to excuse--but she is tired," she said in English, which she loved to use. "I am to go on--to prison, then?" "I suppose. It has no matter. My Lady is angry. She has to say, 'Thank you, good-bye.' So, goodbye," she added naively, and held out her hand. Kingsley laughed, in spite of his discomfiture, and shook it. "Who are you?" he asked. "I am My Lady's slave," she said proudly. "No, no--her servant. You can come and go as you like. You have wages." "I am Mata, the slave--My Lady's slave. All the world knows I am her slave. Was I not given her by the Khedive whose slave I was? May the leaves of life be green always, but I am Mata the slave," she said stubbornly, shaking her head. "Do you tell My Lady so?" "Wherefore should I tell My Lady what she knows? Is not the truth the truth? Good-night! I had a brother who went to prison. His grave is by Stamboul. Good-night, effendi. He was too young to die, but he had gold, and the captain of the citadel needed money. So, he had to die. Malaish! He is in the bosom of God, and prison does not last forever. Goodnight, effendi. If you, effendi, are poor, it is well; no man will desire your life. Then you can be a slave, and have quiet nights. If you are rich, effendi, remember my brother. Good-night, effendi. May sacrifices be yours . . . and My Lady says good-night." Kingsley gave her a gold-piece and went down to Foulik Pasha. As they steamed away Kingsley looked in vain to the house on the shore. There was no face at window or door, no sign of life about the place. "Well, my bold bey," said Donovan Pasha to him at last, "what do you think of Egypt now?" "I'm not thinking of Egypt now." "Did the lady deeply sympathise? Did your prescription work?" "You know it didn't. Nothing worked. This fool Foulik came at the wrong moment." "It wouldn't have made any difference. You see you were playing with marked cards, and that is embarrassing. You got a certificate of character by--" "Yes, I know. That's what she said. Never mind. I've played as I meant to play, and I'll abide the result. I said I'd marry her, and I mean to, though she gently showed me the door--beautiful, proud person!" "She is much too good for you." "What does that matter, if she doesn't think so?" "My opinion is she'll never touch you or your slave-gold with a mile- measure." Dicky did not think this, but it was his way of easing his own mind. Inwardly he was studying the situation, and wondering how he could put Kingsley's business straight. "She thinks I'm still a 'slave-driver,' as she calls it--women are so innocent. You did your part, as well as could be expected, I'm bound to say. I only wish I wasn't so much trouble to you. I owe you a lot, Dicky Pasha--everything! You got me the golden shillings to start with; you had faith in me; you opened the way to fortune, to the thing that's more than fortune--to success." "I'm not altogether proud of you. You've messed things to-day." "I'll set them right to-morrow--with your help. Ismail is going a bit large this time." "He is an Oriental. A life or two--think of Sadik Pasha. Your men--" "Well? You think he'd do it--think he'd dare to do it?" "Suppose they disappeared? Who could prove that Ismail did it? And if it could be proved--they're his own subjects, and the Nile is near! Who can say him nay?" "I fancy you could--and I would." "I can do something. I've done a little in my day; but my day, like Ismail's, is declining. They are his subjects, and he needs money, and he puts a price on their heads--that's about the size of it. Question How much will you have to pay? How much have you in Cairo at the bank?" "Only about ten thousand pounds." "He'd take your draft on England, but he'll have that ten thousand pounds, if he can get it." "That doesn't matter, but as for my arrest--" "A trick, on some trumped-up charge. If he can hold you long enough to get some of your cash, that's all he wants. He knows he's got no jurisdiction over you--not a day's hold. He knows you'd give a good deal to save your men." "Poor devils! But to be beaten by this Egyptian bulldozer--not if I know it, Dicky" "Still, it may be expensive." "Ah!" Kingsley Bey sighed, and his face was clouded, but Dicky knew he was not thinking of Ismail or the blackmail. His eyes were on the house by the shore, now disappearing, as they rounded a point of land. "Ah" said Donovan Pasha, but he did not sigh. III "Ah!" said a lady, in a dirty pink house at Assiout, with an accent which betrayed a discovery and a resolution, "I will do it. I may be of use some way or another. The Khedive won't dare--but still the times are desperate. As Donovan Pasha said, it isn't easy holding down the safety- valve all the time, and when it flies off, there will be dark days for all of us. . . . An old friend--bad as he is! Yes, I will go." Within forty-eight hours of Donovan Pasha's and Kingsley Bey's arrival in Cairo the lady appeared there, and made inquiries of her friends. No one knew anything. She went to the Consulate, and was told that Kingsley Bey was still in prison, that the Consulate had not yet taken action. She went to Donovan Pasha, and he appeared far more mysterious and troubled than he really was. Kingsley Bey was as cheerful as might be expected, he said, but the matter was grave. He was charged with the destruction of the desert-city, and maintaining an army of slaves in the Khedive's dominions--a menace to the country. "But it was with the Khedive's connivance," she said. "Who can prove that? It's a difficult matter for England to handle, as you can see." This was very wily of Dicky Donovan, for he was endeavouring to create alarm and sympathy in the woman's mind by exaggerating the charge. He knew that in a few days at most Kingsley Bey would be free. He had himself given Ismail a fright, and had even gone so far as to suggest inside knowledge of the plans of Europe concerning Egypt. But if he could deepen the roots of this comedy for Kingsley's benefit--and for the lady's--it was his duty so to do. "Of course," he made haste to add, "you cannot be expected to feel sympathy for him. In your eyes, he is a criminal. He had a long innings, and made a mint of money. We must do all we can, and, of course, we'll save his life--ah, I'm sure you wouldn't exact the fullest penalty on him!" Dicky was more than wily; he was something wicked. The suggestion of danger to Kingsley's life had made her wince, and he had added another little barbed arrow to keep the first company. The cause was a good one. Hurt now to heal afterwards--and Kingsley was an old friend, and a good fellow. Anyhow, this work was wasting her life, and she would be much better back in England, living a civilised life, riding in the Row, and slumming a little, in the East End, perhaps, and presiding at meetings for the amelioration of the unameliorated. He was rather old-fashioned in his views. He saw the faint trouble in her eyes and face, and he made up his mind that he would work while it was yet the day. He was about to speak, but she suddenly interposed a question. "Is he comfortable? How does he take it?" "Why, all right. You know the kind of thing: mud walls and floor--quite dry, of course--and a sleeping-mat, and a balass of water, and cakes of dourha, and plenty of time to think. After all, he's used to primitive fare." Donovan Pasha was drawing an imaginary picture, and drawing it with effect. He almost believed it as his artist's mind fashioned it. She believed it, and it tried her. Kingsley Bey was a criminal, of course, but he was an old friend; he had offended her deeply also, but that was no reason why he should be punished by any one save herself. Her regimen of punishments would not necessarily include mud walls and floor, and a sleeping-mat and a balass of water; and whatever it included it should not be administered by any hand save her own. She therefore resented, not quite unselfishly, this indignity and punishment the Khedive had commanded. "When is he to be tried?" "Well, that is hardly the way to put it. When he can squeeze the Khedive into a corner he'll be free, but it takes time. We have to go carefully, for it isn't the slave-master alone, it's those twenty slaves of his, including the six you freed. Their heads are worth a good deal to the Khedive, he thinks." She was dumfounded. "I don't understand," she said helplessly. "Well, the Khedive put your six and fourteen others in prison for treason or something--it doesn't matter much here what it is. His game is to squeeze Kingsley's gold orange dry, if he can." A light broke over her face. "Ah, now I see," she said, and her face flushed deeply with anger and indignation. "And you--Donovan Pasha, you who are supposed to have influence with the Khedive, who are supposed to be an English influence over him, you can speak of this quietly, patiently, as a matter possible to your understanding. This barbarous, hideous black mail! This cruel, dreadful tyranny! You, an Englishman, remain in the service of the man who is guilty of such a crime!" Her breath came hard. "Well, it seems the wisest thing to do as yet. You have lived a long time in Egypt, you should know what Oriental rule is. Question: Is one bite of a cherry better than no bite of a cherry? Egypt is like a circus, but there are wild horses in the ring, and you can't ride them just as you like. If you keep them inside the barriers, that's something. Of course, Kingsley made a mistake in a way. He didn't start his desert-city and his slavery without the consent of the Khedive; he shouldn't have stopped it and gone out of business without the same consent. It cut down the Effendina's tribute." He spoke slowly, counting every word, watching the effect upon her. He had much to watch, and he would have seen more if he had known women better. "He has abandoned the mines--his city--and slavery?" she asked chokingly, confusedly. It seemed hard for her to speak. "Yes, yes, didn't you know? Didn't he tell you?" She shook her head. She was thinking back-remembering their last conversation, remembering how sharp and unfriendly she had been with him. He had even then freed his slaves, had given her slaves to free. "I wonder what made him do it?" added Dicky. "He had made a great fortune--poor devil, he needed it, for the estates were sweating under the load. I wonder what made him do it?" She looked at him bewilderedly for a moment, then, suddenly, some faint suspicion struck her. "You should know. You joined with him in deceiving me at Assiout." "But, no," he responded quickly, and with rare innocence, "the situation was difficult. You already knew him very well, and it was the force of circumstances--simply the force of circumstances. Bad luck--no more. He was innocent, mine was the guilt. I confess I was enjoying the thing, because--because, you see he had deceived me, actually deceived me, his best friend. I didn't know he knew you personally, till you two met on that veranda at Assiout, and--" "And you made it difficult for him to explain at once--I remember." "I'm afraid I did. I've got a nasty little temper at times, and I had a chance to get even. Then things got mixed, and Foulik Pasha upset the whole basket of plums. Besides, you see, I'm a jealous man, an envious man, and you never looked so well as you did that day, unless it's to-day." She was about to interrupt him, but he went on. "I had begun to feel that we might have been better friends, you and I; that--that I might have helped you more; that you had not had the sympathy you deserved; that civilisation was your debtor, and that--" "No, no, no, you must not speak that way to me," she interposed with agitation. "It--it is not necessary. It doesn't bear on the matter. And you've always been a good friend--always a good friend," she added with a little friendly quiver in her voice, for she was not quite sure of herself. Dicky had come out in a new role, one wherein he would not have been recognised. It was probably the first time he had ever tried the delicate social art of playing with fire of this sort. It was all true in a way, but only in a way. The truest thing about it was that it was genuine comedy, in which there were two villains, and no hero, and one heroine. "But there it is," he repeated, having gone as far as his cue warranted. "I didn't know he had given up his desert-city till two days before you did, and I didn't know he knew you, and I don't know why he gave up his desert-city--do you?" There was a new light in her eyes, a new look in her face. She was not sure but that she had a glimmering of the reason. It was a woman's reason, and it was not without a certain exquisite egotism and vanity, for she remembered so well the letter she had written him--every word was etched into her mind; and she knew by heart every word of his reply. Then there were the six slaves he sent to her-and his coming immediately afterwards. . . . For a moment she seemed to glow, and then the colour slowly faded and left her face rather grey and very quiet. He might not be a slave-driver now, but he had been one--and the world of difference it made to her! He had made his great fortune out of the work of the men employed as slaves, and--she turned away to the window with a dejected air. For the first time the real weight of the problem pressed upon her heavily. "Perhaps you would like to see him," said Dicky. "It might show that you were magnanimous." "Magnanimous! It will look like that--in a mud-cell, with mud floor, and a piece of matting." "And a balass of water and dourha-cakes," said Dicky in a childlike way, and not daring to meet her eyes. He stroked his moustache with his thumb-nail in a way he had when perplexed. Kingsley Bey was not in a mud-cell, with a mat and a balass of water, but in a very decent apartment indeed, and Dicky was trying to work the new situation out in his mind. The only thing to do was to have Kingsley removed to a mud-cell, and not let him know the author of his temporary misfortune and this new indignity. She was ready to visit him now--he could see that. He made difficulties, however, which would prevent their going at once, and he arranged with her to go to Kingsley in the late afternoon. Her mind was in confusion, but one thing shone clear through the confusion, and it was the iniquity of the Khedive. It gave her a foothold. She was deeply grateful for it. She could not have moved without it. So shameful was the Khedive in her eyes that the prisoner seemed Criminal made Martyr. She went back to her hotel flaming with indignation against Ismail. It was very comforting to her to have this resource. The six slaves whom she had freed--the first-fruits of her labours: that they should be murdered! The others who had done no harm, who had been slaves by Ismail's consent, that they should be now in danger of their lives through the same tyrant! That Kingsley Bey, who had been a slave-master with Ismail's own approval and to his advantage, should now--she glowed with pained anger. . . . She would not wait till she had seen Kingsley Bey, or Donovan Pasha again; she herself would go to Ismail at once. So, she went to Ismail, and she was admitted, after long waiting in an anteroom. She would not have been admitted at all, if it had not been for Dicky, who, arriving just before her on the same mission, had seen her coming, and guessed her intention. He had then gone in to the Khedive with a new turn to his purposes, a new argument and a new suggestion, which widened the scope of the comedy now being played. He had had a struggle with Ismail, and his own place and influence had been in something like real danger, but he had not minded that. He had suggested that he might be of service to Egypt in London and Paris. That was very like a threat, but it was veiled by a look of genial innocence which Ismail admired greatly. He knew that Donovan Pasha could hasten the crisis coming on him. He did not believe that Donovan Pasha would, but that did not alter the astuteness and value of the move; and, besides, it was well to run no foolish risks and take no chances. Also, he believed in Donovan Pasha's honesty. He despised him in a worldly kind of way, because he might have been rich and splendid, and he was poor and unassuming. He wanted Kingsley Bey's fortune, or a great slice of it, but he wanted it without a struggle with Dicky Donovan, and with the British Consulate--for that would come, too, directly. It gave him no security to know that the French would be with him--he knew which country would win in the end. He was preying on Kingsley Bey's humanity, and he hoped to make it well worth while. And all he thought and planned was well understood by Dicky. Over their coffee they both talked from long distances towards the point of attack and struggle, Ismail carelessly throwing in glowing descriptions of the palaces he was building. Dicky never failed to show illusive interest, and both knew that they were not deceiving the other, and both came nearer to the issue by devious processes, as though these processes were inevitable. At last Dicky suddenly changed his manner and came straight to the naked crisis. "Highness, I have an invitation for Kingsley Bey to dine at the British Consulate to-night. You can spare his presence?" "My table is not despicable. Is he not comfortable here?" "Is a mud floor, with bread and water and a sleeping-mat, comfortable?" "He is lodged like a friend." "He is lodged like a slave--in a cell." "They were not my orders." "Effendina, the orders were mine." "Excellency!" "Because there were no orders and Foulik Pasha was sleepless with anxiety lest the prisoner should escape, fearing your Highness's anger, I gave orders and trusted your Highness to approve." Ismail saw a mystery in the words, and knew that it was all to be part of Dicky's argument in the end. "So be it, Excellency," he said, "thou hast breathed the air of knowledge, thine actions shine. In what quarter of the palace rests he? And Foulik Pasha?" "Foulik Pasha sits by his door, and the room is by the doorway where the sarrafs keep the accounts for the palaces your Highness builds. Also, abides near, the Greek, who toils upon the usury paid by your Highness to Europe." Ismail smiled. The allusions were subtle and piercing. There was a short pause. Each was waiting. Dicky changed the attack. "It is a pity we should be in danger of riot at this moment, Highness." "If riots come, they come. It is the will of God, Excellency. But in our hand lies order. We will quiet the storm, if a storm fall." "There will be wreck somewhere." "So be it. There will be salvage." "Nothing worth a riot, Highness." The Khedive eyed Dicky with a sudden malice and a desire to slay--to slay even Donovan Pasha. He did not speak, and Dicky continued negligently: "Prevention is better than cure." The Khedive understood perfectly. He knew that Dicky had circumvented him, and had warned the Bank. Still the Khedive did not speak. Dicky went on. "Kingsley Bey deposited ten thousand pounds--no more. But the gold is not there; only Kingsley Bey's credit." "His slaves shall die to-morrow morning." "Not so, Highness." The Khedive's fingers twisted round the chair-arm savagely. "Who will prevent it?" "Your Highness will. Your Highness could not permit it--the time is far past. Suppose Kingsley Bey gave you his whole fortune, would it save one palace or pay one tithe of your responsibilities? Would it lengthen the chain of safety?" "I am safe." "No, Highness. In peril--here with your own people, in Europe with the nations. Money will not save you." "What then?" "Prestige. Power--the Soudan. Establish yourself in the Soudan with a real army. Let your name be carried to the Abyssinian mountains as the voice of the eagle." "Who will carry it?" He laughed disdainfully, with a bitter, hopeless kind of pride. "Who will carry it?" "Gordon-again." The Khedive started from his chair, and his sullen eye lighted to laughter. He paced excitedly to and fro for a minute, and then broke out: "Thou hast said it! Gordon--Gordon--if he would but come again!--But it shall be so, by the beard of God's prophet, it shall. Thou hast said the thing that has lain in my heart. Have I had honour in the Soudan since his feet were withdrawn? Where is honour and tribute and gold since his hand ruled--alone without an army? It is so--Inshallah! but it is so. He shall come again, and the people's eyes will turn to Khartoum and Darfdr and Kordofan, and the greedy nations will wait. Ah, my friend, but the true inspiration is thine! I will send for Gordon to night--even to-night. Thou shalt go--no, no, not so. Who can tell--I might look for thy return in vain! But who--who, to carry my word to Gordon?" "Your messenger is in the anteroom," said Dicky with a sudden thought. "Who is it, son of the high hills?" "The lady at Assiout--she who is such a friend to Gordon as I am to thee, Highness." "She whose voice and hand are against slavery?" "Even so. It is good that she return to England there to remain. Send her." "Why is she here?" The Khedive looked suspiciously at Dicky, for it seemed that a plot had been laid. Thereupon, Dicky told the Khedive the whole story, and not in years had Ismail's face shown such abandon of humour. "By the will of God, but it shall be!" he said. "She shall marry Kingsley Bey, and he shall go free." "But not till she has seen him and mourned over him in his cell, with the mud floor and the balass of water." The Khedive laughed outright and swore in French. "And the cakes of dourha! I will give her as a parting gift the twenty slaves, and she shall bring her great work to a close in the arms of a slaver. It is worth a fortune." "It is worth exactly ten thousand pounds to your Highness--ten thousand pounds neither more nor less." Ismail questioned. "Kingsley Bey would make last tribute of thus much to your Highness." Ismail would not have declined ten thousand centimes. "Malaish!" he said, and called for coffee, while they planned what should be said to his Ambassadress from Assiout. She came trembling, yet determined, and she left with her eyes full of joyful tears. She was to carry the news of his freedom and the freedom of his slaves to Kingsley Bey, and she--she, was to bear to Gordon, the foe of slavery, the world's benefactor, the message that he was to come and save the Soudan. Her vision was enlarged, and never went from any prince a more grateful supplicant and envoy. Donovan Pasha went with her to the room with the mud floor where Kingsley Bey was confined. "I owe it all to you," she said as they hastened across the sun-swept square. "Ah, but you have atoned! You have done it all at once, after these long years." "Well, well, the time is ripe," said Dicky piously. They found Kingsley Bey reading the last issue of the French newspaper published in Cairo. He was laughing at some article in it abusive of the English, and seemed not very downcast; but at a warning sign and look from Dicky, he became as grave as he was inwardly delighted at seeing the lady of Assiout. As Kingsley Bey and the Ambassadress shook hands, Dicky said to her: "I'll tell him, and then go." Forthwith he said: "Kingsley Bey, son of the desert, and unhappy prisoner, the prison opens its doors. No more for you the cold earth for a bed--relieved though it be by a sleeping- mat. No more the cake of dourha and the balass of Nile water. Inshallah, you are as free as a bird on the mountain top, to soar to far lands and none to say thee nay." Kingsley Bey caught instantly at the meaning lying beneath Dicky's whimsical phrases, and he deported himself accordingly. He looked inquiringly at the Ambassadress, and she responded: "We come from the Khedive, and he bids us carry you his high considerations--" "Yes, 'high considerations,' he said," interjected Dicky with his eye towards a fly on the ceiling. "And to beg your company at dinner to-night." "And the price?" asked Kingsley, feeling his way carefully, for he wished no more mistakes where this lady was concerned. At Assiout he had erred; he had no desire to be deceived at Cairo. He did not know how he stood with her, though her visit gave him audacious hopes. Her face was ruled to quietness now, and only in the eyes resolutely turned away was there any look which gave him assurance. He seemed to hear her talking from the veranda that last day at Assiout; and it made him discreet at least. "Oh, the price!" murmured Dicky, and he seemed to study the sleepy sarraf who pored over his accounts in the garden. "The price is 'England, home, and beauty.' Also to prop up the falling towers of Khedivia--ten thousand pounds! Also, Gordon." Kingsley Bey appeared, as he was, mystified, but he was not inclined to spoil things by too much speaking. He looked inquiry. At that moment an orderly came running towards the door--Dicky had arranged for that. Dicky started, and turned to the lady. "You tell him. This fellow is coming for me. I'll be back in a quarter of an hour." He nodded to them both and went out to the orderly, who followed his footsteps to the palace. "You've forgiven me for everything--for everything at Assiout, I mean?" he asked. "I have no desire to remember," she answered. "About Gordon--what is it?" "Ah, yes, about Gordon!" She drew herself up a little. "I am to go to England--for the Khedive, to ask Gordon to save the Soudan." "Then you've forgiven the Khedive?" he inquired with apparent innocence. "I've no wish to prevent him showing practical repentance," she answered, keenly alive to his suggestion, and a little nettled. "It means no more slavery. Gordon will prevent that." "Will he?" asked Kingsley, again with muffled mockery. "He is the foe of slavery. How many, many letters I have had from him! He will save the Soudan--and Egypt too." "He will be badly paid--the Government will stint him. And he will give away his pay--if he gets any." She did not see his aim, and her face fell. "He will succeed for all that." "He can levy taxes, of course." "But he will not-for himself." "I will give him twenty thousand pounds, if he will take it." "You--you!--will give him--" Her eyes swam with pleasure. "Ah, that is noble! That makes wealth a glory, to give it to those who need it. To save those who are down-trodden, to help those who labour for the good of the world, to--" she stopped short, for all at once she remembered- remembered whence his money came. Her face suffused. She turned to the door. Confusion overmastered her for the moment. Then, anger at herself possessed her. On what enterprise was she now embarked? Where was her conscience? For what was she doing all this? What was the true meaning of her actions? Had it been to circumvent the Khedive? To prevent him from doing an unjust, a despicable, and a dreadful thing? Was it only to help the Soudan? Was it but to serve a high ideal, through an ideal life--through Gordon? It came upon her with embarrassing force. For none of these things was she striving. She was doing all for this man, against whose influence she had laboured, whom she had bitterly condemned, and whose fortune she had called blood-money and worse. And now... She knew the truth, and it filled her heart with joy and also pain. Then she caught at a straw: he was no slave-driver now. He had-- "May I not help you--go with you to England?" he questioned over her shoulder. "Like Alexander Selkirk 'I shall finish my journey alone,'" she said, with sudden but imperfectly assumed acerbity. "Will you not help me, then?" he asked. "We could write a book together." "Oh, a book!" she said. "A book of life," he whispered. "No, no, no--can't you see?--oh, you are playing me like a ball!" "Only to catch you," he said, in a happier tone. "To jest, when I am so unhappy!" she murmured. "My jest is the true word." She made a last rally. "Your fortune was made out of slave labour." "I have given up the slaves." "You have the fortune." "I will give it all to you--to have your will with it. Now it is won, I would give it up and a hundred times as much to hear you say, 'Come to Skaw Fell again."' Did he really mean it? She thought he did. And it seemed the only way out of the difficulty. It broke the impasse. It was not necessary, however, to spend the future in the way first suggested to her mind. They discussed all that at Skaw Fell months later. Human nature is weak and she has become a slavedriver, after all. But he is her only slave, and he hugs his bondage. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: As if our penalties were only paid by ourselves! Credulity, easily transmutable into superstition Paradoxes which make for laughter--and for tears What is crime in one country, is virtue in another Women only admitted to Heaven by the intercession of husbands DONOVAN PASHA AND SOME PEOPLE OF EGYPT By Gilbert Parker Volume 4. A YOUNG LION OF DEDAN HE WOULD NOT BE DENIED THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS A YOUNG LION OF DEDAN Looking from the minaret the Two could see, far off, the Pyramids of Ghizeh and Sakkara, the wells of Helouan, the Mokattam Hills, the tombs of the Caliphs, the Khedive's palace at distant Abbasiyeh. Nearer by, the life of the city was spread out. Little green oases of palms emerged from the noisy desert of white stone and plaster. The roofs of the houses, turned into gardens and promenades, made of the huge superficial city one broken irregular pavement. Minarets of mosques stood up like giant lamp-posts along these vast, meandering streets. Shiftless housewives lolled with unkempt hair on the housetops; women of the harem looked out of the little mushrabieh panels in the clattering, narrow bazaars. Just at their feet was a mosque--one of the thousand nameless mosques of Cairo. It was the season of Ramadan, and a Friday, the Sunday of the Mahommedan--the Ghimah. The "Two" were Donovan Pasha, then English Secretary to the Khedive, generally known as "Little Dicky Donovan," and Captain Renshaw, of the American Consulate. There was no man in Egypt of so much importance as Donovan Pasha. It was an importance which could neither be bought nor sold. Presently Dicky touched the arm of his companion. "There it comes!" he said. His friend followed the nod of Dicky's head, and saw, passing slowly through a street below, a funeral procession. Near a hundred blind men preceded the bier, chanting the death-phrases. The bier was covered by a faded Persian shawl, and it was carried by the poorest of the fellaheen, though in the crowd following were many richly attired merchants of the bazaars. On a cart laden with bread and rice two fellaheen stood and handed, or tossed out, food to the crowd--token of a death in high places. Vast numbers of people rambled behind chanting, and a few women, near the bier, tore their garments, put dust on their heads, and kept crying: "Salem ala ahali!--Remember us to our friends!" Walking immediately behind the bier was one conspicuous figure, and there was a space around him which none invaded. He was dressed in white, like an Arabian Mahommedan, and he wore the green turban of one who has been the pilgrimage to Mecca. At sight of him Dicky straightened himself with a little jerk, and his tongue clicked with satisfaction. "Isn't he, though--isn't he?" he said, after a moment. His lips, pressed together, curled in with a trick they had when he was thinking hard, planning things. The other forbore to question. The notable figure had instantly arrested his attention, and held it until it passed from view. "Isn't he, though, Yankee?" Dicky repeated, and pressed a knuckle into the other's waistcoat. "Isn't he what?" "Isn't he bully--in your own language?" "In figure; but I couldn't see his face distinctly." "You'll see that presently. You could cut a whole Egyptian Ministry out of that face, and have enough left for an American president or the head of the Salvation Army. In all the years I've spent here I've never seen one that could compare with him in nature, character, and force. A few like him in Egypt, and there'd be no need for the money-barbers of Europe." "He seems an ooster here--you know him?" "Do I!" Dicky paused and squinted up at the tall Southerner. "What do you suppose I brought you out from your Consulate for to see--the view from Ebn Mahmoud? And you call yourself a cute Yankee?" "I'm no more a Yankee than you are, as I've told you before," answered the American with a touch of impatience, yet smilingly. "I'm from South Carolina, the first State that seceded." "Anyhow, I'm going to call you Yankee, to keep you nicely disguised. This is the land of disguises." "Then we did not come out to see the view?" the other drawled. There was a quickening of the eye, a drooping of the lid, which betrayed a sudden interest, a sense of adventure. Dicky laid his head back and laughed noiselessly. "My dear Renshaw, with all Europe worrying Ismail, with France in the butler's pantry and England at the front door, do the bowab and the sarraf go out to take air on the housetops, and watch the sun set on the Pyramids and make a rainbow of the desert? I am the bowab and the sarraf, the man-of-all- work, the Jack-of-all-trades, the 'confidential' to the Oriental spendthrift. Am I a dog to bay the moon--have I the soul of a tourist from Liverpool or Poughkeepsie?" The lanky Southerner gripped his arm. "There's a hunting song of the South," he said, "and the last line is, 'The hound that never tires.' You are that, Donovan Pasha--" "I am 'little Dicky Donovan,' so they say," interrupted the other. "You are the weight that steadies things in this shaky Egypt. You are you, and you've brought me out here because there's work of some kind to do, and because--" "And because you're an American, and we speak the same language." "And our Consulate is all right, if needed, whatever it is. You've played a square game in Egypt. You're the only man in office who hasn't got rich out of her, and--" "I'm not in office." "You're the power behind the throne, you're--" "I'm helpless--worse than helpless, Yankee. I've spent years of my life here. I've tried to be of some use, and play a good game for England; and keep a conscience too, but it's been no real good. I've only staved off the crash. I'm helpless, now. That's why I'm here." He leaned forward, and looked out of the minaret and down towards the great locked gates of the empty mosque. Renshaw put his hand on Dicky's shoulder. "It's the man in white yonder you're after?" Dicky nodded. "It was no use as long as she lived. But she's dead--her face was under that old Persian shawl--and I'm going to try it on." "Try what on?" "Last night I heard she was sick. I heard at noon to-day that she was gone; and then I got you to come out and see the view!" "What are you going to do with him?" "Make him come back." "From where?" "From the native quarter and the bazaars. He was for years in Abdin Palace." "What do you want him for?" "It's a little gamble for Egypt. There's no man in Egypt Ismail loves and fears so much--" "Except little Dicky Donovan!" "That's all twaddle. There's no man Ismail fears so much, because he's the idol of the cafes and the bazaars. He's the Egyptian in Egypt to-day. You talk about me? Why, I'm the foreigner, the Turk, the robber, the man that holds the lash over Egypt. I'd go like a wisp of straw if there was an uprising." "Will there be an uprising?" The Southerner's fingers moved as though they were feeling a pistol. "As sure as that pyramid stands. Everything depends on the kind of uprising. I want one kind. There may be another." "That's what you are here for?" "Exactly." "Who is he?" "Wait." "What is his story?" "She was." He nodded towards the funeral procession. "Who was she?" "She was a slave." Then, after a pause, "She was a genius too. She saw what was in him. She was waiting--but death couldn't wait, so . . . Every thing depends. What she asked him to do, he'll do." "But if she didn't ask?" "That's it. She was sick only seventeen hours--sick unto death. If she didn't ask, he may come my way." Again Dicky leaned out of the minaret, and looked down towards the gates of the mosque, where the old gatekeeper lounged half-asleep. The noise of the-procession had died away almost, had then revived, and from beyond the gates of the mosque could be heard the cry of the mourners: "Salem ala ahali!" There came a knocking, and the old porter rose up, shuffled to the great gates, and opened. For a moment he barred the way, but when the bearers pointed to the figure in white he stepped aside and salaamed low. "He is stone-deaf, and hasn't heard, or he'd have let her in fast enough," said Dicky. "It's a new thing for a woman to be of importance in an Oriental country," said Renshaw. "Ah, that's it! That's where her power was. She, with him, could do anything. He, with her, could have done anything. . . . Stand back there, where you can't be seen--quick," added Dicky hurriedly. They both drew into a corner. "I'm afraid it was too late. He saw me," added Dicky. "I'm afraid he did," said Renshaw. "Never mind. It's all in the day's work. He and I are all right. The only danger would lie in the crowd discovering us in this holy spot, where the Muezzin calls to prayer, and giving us what for, before he could interfere." "I'm going down from this 'holy spot,'" said Renshaw, and suited the action to the word. "Me too, Yankee," said Dicky, and they came halfway down the tower. From this point they watched the burial, still well above the heads of the vast crowd, through which the sweetmeat and sherbet sellers ran, calling their wares and jangling their brass cups. "What is his name?" said Renshaw. "Abdalla." "Hers?" "Noor-ala-Noor." "What does that mean?" "Light from the Light." II The burial was over. Hundreds had touched the coffin, taking a last farewell. The blind men had made a circle round the grave, hiding the last act of ritual from the multitude. The needful leaves, the graceful pebbles, had been deposited, the myrtle blooms and flowers had been thrown, and rice, dates, bread, meat, and silver pieces were scattered among the people. Some poor men came near to the chief mourner. "Behold, effendi, may our souls be thy sacrifice, and may God give coolness to thine eyes, speak to us by the will of God!" For a moment the white-robed figure stood looking at them in silence; then he raised his hand and motioned towards the high pulpit, which was almost underneath the place where Dicky and Renshaw stood. Going over, he mounted the steps, and the people followed and crowded upon the pulpit. "A nice jack-pot that," said Renshaw, as he scanned the upturned faces through the opening in the wall. "A pretty one-eyed lot." "Shows how they love their country. Their eyes were put out by their mothers when they were babes, to avoid conscription. . . . Listen, Yankee: Egypt is talking. Now, we'll see!" Dicky's lips were pressed tight together, and he stroked his faint moustache with a thumb-nail meditatively. His eyes were not on the speaker, but on the distant sky, the Mokattam Hills and the forts Napoleon had built there. He was listening intently to Abdalla's high, clear voice, which rang through the courts of the ruined mosque. "In the name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful, children of Egypt, listen. Me ye have known years without number, and ye know that I am of you, as ye are of me. Our feet are in the same shoes, we gather from the same date-palm, of the same goolah we drink. My father's father--now in the bosom of God, praise be to God!--builded this mosque; and my father, whose soul abides in peace with God, he cherished it till evil days came upon this land. 'Be your gifts to this mosque neither of silver nor copper, but of tears and prayers,' said my father, Ebn Abdalla, ere he unrolled his green turban and wound himself in it for his winding-sheet. 'Though it be till the Karadh-gatherers return, yet shall ye replace nor stone nor piece of wood, save in the gates thereof, till good days come once more, and the infidel and the Turk be driven from the land.' Thus spake my father. . . ." There came a stir and a murmuring among the crowd, and cries of "Allahu Akbar!" "Peace, peace!" urged the figure in white. "Nay, make no noise. This is the house of the dead, of one who hath seen God. . . . 'Nothing shall be repaired, save the gates of the mosque of Ebn Mahmoud, the mosque of my father's father,' so said my father. Also said he, 'And one shall stand at the gates and watch, though the walls crumble away, till the day when the land shall again be our land, and the chains of the stranger be forged in every doorway.' . . . But no, ye shall not lift up your voices in anger. This is the abode of peace, and the mosque is my mosque, and the dead my dead." "The dead is our dead, effendi--may God give thee everlasting years!" called a blind man from the crowd. Up in the tower Dicky had listened intently, and as the speech proceeded his features contracted; once he gripped the arm of Renshaw. "It's coming on to blow," he said, in the pause made by the blind man's interruption. "There'll be shipwreck somewhere." "Ye know the way by which I came," continued Abdalla loudly. "Nothing is hid from you. I came near to the person of the Prince, whom God make wise while yet the stars of his life give light! In the palace of Abdin none was preferred before me. I was much in the sun, and mine eyes were dazzled. Yet in season I spake the truth, and for you I laboured. But not as one hath a life to give and seeks to give it. For the dazzle that was in mine eyes hid from me the fulness of your trials. But an end there was to these things. She came to the palace a slave-Noor-ala-Noor. . . . Nay, nay, be silent still, my brothers. Her soul was the soul of one born free. On her lips was wisdom. In her heart was truth like a flaming sword. To the Prince she spoke not as a slave to a slave, but in high level terms. He would have married her, but her life lay in the hollow of her hand, and the hand was a hand to open and shut according as the soul willed. She was ready to close it so that none save Allah might open it again. Then in anger the Prince would have given her to his bowab at the gates, or to the Nile, after the manner of a Turk or a Persian tyrant--may God purge him of his loathsomeness . . . !" He paused, as though choking with passion and grief, and waved a hand over the crowd in agitated command. "Here's the old sore open at last--which way now?" said Dicky in a whisper. "It's the toss of a penny where he'll pull up. As I thought . . . 'Sh!" he added as Renshaw was about to speak. Abdalla continued. "Then did I stretch forth my hand, and, because I loved her, a slave with the freedom of God in her soul and on her face, I said, 'Come with me,' and behold! she came, without a word, for our souls spake to each other, as it was in the olden world, ere the hearts of men were darkened. I, an Egyptian of a despised and down-trodden land, where all men save the rich are slaves, and the rich go in the fear of their lives; she, a woman from afar, of that ancient tribe who conquered Egypt long ago--we went forth from the palace alone and penniless. He, the Prince, dared not follow to do me harm, for my father's father ye knew, and my father ye knew, and me ye knew since I came into the world, and in all that we had ye shared while yet we had to give; yea, and he feared ye. We lived among ye, poor as ye are poor, yet rich for that Egypt was no poorer because of us." He waved his hand as though to still the storm he was raising. . . . "If ye call aloud, I will drive ye from this place of peace, this garden of her who was called Light from the Light. It hath been so until yesterday, when God stooped and drew the veil from her face, and she dropped the garment of life and fled from the world. . . . Go, go hence," he added, his voice thick with sorrow. "But ere ye go, answer me, as ye have souls that desire God and the joys of Paradise, will ye follow where I go, when I come to call ye forth? Will ye obey, if I command?" "By the will of God, thou hast purchased our hearts we will do thy will for ever," was the answer of the throng. "Go then, bring down the infidels that have stood in the minaret above, where the Muezzin calls to prayer;" sharply called Abdalla, and waved an arm towards the tower where Dicky and Renshaw were. An oath broke from the lips of the Southerner; but Dicky smiled. "He's done it in style," he said. "Come along." He bounded down the steps to the doorway before the crowd had blocked the way. "They might toss us out of that minaret," he added, as they both pushed their way into the open. "You take too many risks, effendi," he called up to Abdalla in French, as excited Arabs laid hands upon them, and were shaken off. "Call away these fools!" he added coolly to the motionless figure watching from the pulpit stairs. Cries of "Kill-kill the infidels!" resounded on all sides; but Dicky called up again to Abdalla. "Stop this nonsense, effendi." Then, without awaiting an answer, he shouted to the crowd: "I am Donovan Pasha. Touch me, and you touch Ismail. I haven't come to spy, but to sorrow with you for Noor-ala-Noor, whose soul is with God, praise be to God, and may God give her spirit to you! I have come to weep for him in whom greatness speaks; I have come for love of Abdalla the Egyptian. . . . Is it a sin to stand apart in silence and to weep unseen? Was it a sin against the Moslem faith that in this minaret I prayed God to comfort Abdalla, grandson of Ebn Mahmoud, Egyptian of the Egyptians? Was it not I who held Ismail's hand, when he--being in an anger--would have scoured the bazaars with his horsemen for Abdalla and Noor-ala-Noor? This is known to Abdalla, whom God preserve and exalt. Is not Abdalla friend to Donovan Pasha?" Dicky was known to hundreds present. There was not a merchant from the bazaars but had had reason to appreciate his presence, either by friendly gossip over a cup of coffee, or by biting remarks in Arabic, when they lied to him, or by the sweep of his stick over the mastaba and through the chattels of some vile-mouthed pedlar who insulted English ladies whom he was escorting through the bazaar. They knew his face, his tongue, and the weight and style of his arm; and though they would cheerfully have seen him the sacrifice of the Jehad to the cry of Alldhu Akbar! they respected him for himself, and they feared him because he was near to the person of Ismail. He was the more impressive because in the midst of wealth and splendour he remained poor: he had more than once bought turquoises and opals and horses and saddlery, which he paid for in instalments, like any little merchant. Those, therefore, who knew him, were well inclined to leave him alone, and those who did not know him were impressed by his speech. If it was true that he was friend to Abdalla, then his fate was in the hand of God, not theirs. They all had heard of little Donovan Pasha, whom Ismail counted only less than Gordon Pasha, the mad Englishman, who emptied his pocket for an old servant, gave his coat to a beggar, and rode in the desert so fast that no Arab could overtake him. "Call off your terriers, effendi," said Dicky again in French; for Renshaw was restive under the hands that were laid on his arm, and the naboots that threatened him. "My friend here is American. He stands for the United States in Egypt." Abdalla had not moved a muscle during the disturbance, or during Dicky's speech. He seemed but the impassive spectator, though his silence and the look in his eyes were ominous. It would appear as though he waited to see whether the Englishman and his friend could free themselves from danger. If they could, then it was God's will; if they could not, Malaish! Dicky understood. In this he read Abdalla like a parchment, and though he had occasion to be resentful, he kept his nerves and his tongue in an equable mood. He knew that Abdalla would speak now. The Egyptian raised his hand. "In the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful, go your ways," he said loudly. "It is as Donovan Pasha says, he stayed the hand of Ismail for my sake. Noor-ala-Noor, the Light from the Light, saw into his heart, and it was the honest heart of a fool. And these are the words of the Koran, That the fool is one whom God has made His temple for a season, thereafter withdrawing. None shall injure the temple. Were not your hearts bitter against him, and when he spoke did ye not soften? He hath no inheritance of Paradise, but God shall blot him out in His own time. Bismillah! God cool his resting-place in that day. Donovan Pasha's hand is for Egypt, not against her. We are brothers, though the friendship of man is like the shade of the acacia. Yet while the friendship lives, it lives. When God wills it to die, it dies. . . ." He waved his hand towards the gateway, and came slowly down the steep steps. With a curious look in his eyes, Dicky watched the people go. Another curious look displaced it and stayed, as Abdalla silently touched his forehead, his lips, and his heart three times, and then reached out a hand to Dicky and touched his palm. Three times they touched palms, and then Abdalla saluted Renshaw in the same fashion, making the gestures once only. From the citadel came the boom of the evening gun. Without a word Abdalla left them, and, going apart, he turned his face towards Mecca and began his prayers. The court-yard of the mosque was now empty, save for themselves alone. The two walked apart near the deserted fountain in the middle of the court-yard. "The friendship of man is like the shade of the acacia. Yet while the friendship lives, it lives. When God wills it to die, it dies!" mused Dicky with a significant smile. "Friendship walks on thin ice in the East, Yankee." "See here, Donovan Pasha, I don't like taking this kind of risk without a gun," said Renshaw. "You're an official, a diplomat; you mustn't carry a gun." "It's all very fine, but it was a close shave for both of us. You've got an object--want to get something out of it. But what do I get for my money?" "Perhaps the peace of Europe. Perhaps a page of reminiscences for the 'New York World'. Perhaps some limelight chapters of Egyptian history. Perhaps a little hari-kari. Don't you feel it in the air?" Dicky drew in a sibilant breath. "All this in any other country would make you think you were having a devil of a time. It's on the regular 'menoo' here, and you don't get a thrill." "The peace of Europe--Abdalla has something to do with that?" "Multiply the crowd here a thousand times as much, and that's what he could represent in one day. Give him a month, and every man in Egypt would be collecting his own taxes where he could find 'em. Abdalla there could be prophet and patriot to-morrow, and so he will be soon, and to evil ends, if things don't take a turn. That Egyptian-Arab has a tongue, he has brains, he has sorrow, he loved Noor-ala-Noor. Give a man the egotism of grief, and eloquence, and popularity, and he'll cut as sharp as the khamsin wind. The dust he'll raise will blind more eyes than you can see in a day's march, Yankee. You may take my word for it." Renshaw looked at Dicky thoughtfully. "You're wasting your life here. You'll get nothing out of it. You're a great man, Donovan Pasha, but others'll reap where you sowed." Dicky laughed softly. "I've had more fun for my money than most men of my height and hair--" he stroked his beardless chin humorously. "And the best is to come, Yankee. This show is cracking. The audience are going to rush it." Renshaw laid a hand on his shoulder. "Pasha, to tell you God's truth, I wouldn't have missed this for anything; but what I can't make out is, why you brought me here. You don't do things like that for nothing. You bet you don't. You'd not put another man in danger, unless he was going to get something out of it, or somebody was. It looks so damned useless. You've done your little job by your lonesome, anyhow. I was no use." "Your turn comes," said Dicky, flashing a look of friendly humour at him. "America is putting her hand in the dough--through you. You'll know, and your country'll know, what's going on here in the hum of the dim bazaars. Ismail's got to see how things stand, and you've got to help me tell him. You've got to say I tell the truth, when the French gentlemen, who have their several spokes in the Egyptian wheel, politely say I lie. Is it too much, or too little, Yankee?" Renshaw almost gulped. "By Jerusalem!" was all he could say. "And we wonder why the English swing things as they do!" he growled, when his breath came freely. Abdalla had finished his prayers; he was coming towards them. Dicky went to meet him. "Abdalla, I'm hungry," he said; "so are you. You've eaten nothing since sunset, two days ago." "I am thirsty, saadat el basha," he answered, and his voice was husky. "Come, I will give you to eat, by the goodness of God." It was the time of Ramadan, when no Mahommedan eats food or touches liquid from the rising to the going down of the sun. As the sunset-gun boomed from the citadel, lids had been snatched off millions of cooking- pots throughout the land, and fingers had been thrust into the meat and rice of the evening feast, and their owner had gulped down a bowl of water. The smell of a thousand cooking-pots now came to them over the walls of the mosque. Because of it, Abdalla's command to the crowd to leave had been easier of acceptance. Their hunger had made them dangerous. Danger was in the air. The tax-gatherers had lately gone their rounds, and the agents of the Mouffetish had wielded the kourbash without mercy and to some purpose. It was perhaps lucky that the incident had occurred within smell of the evening feasts and near the sounding of the sunset-gun. III A half-hour later, as Abdalla thrust his fingers into the dish and handed Dicky a succulent cucumber filled with fried meat, the latter said to him: "It is the wish of the Effendina, my friend. It comes as the will of God; for even as Noor-ala-Noor journeyed to the bosom of God by your will, and by your prayers, being descended from Mahomet as you are, even then Ismail, who knew naught of your sorrow, said to me, 'In all Egypt there is one man, and one only, for whom my soul calls to go into the desert with Gordon,' and I answered him and said: 'Inshallah, Effendina, it is Abdalla, the Egyptian.' And he laid his hand upon his head--I have seen him do that for no man since I came into his presence--and said: 'My soul calls for him. Find him and bid him to come. Here is my ring.'" Dicky took from his pocket a signet-ring, which bore a passage from the Koran, and laid it beside Abdalla's drinking-bowl. "What is Ismail to me--or the far tribes of the Soudan! Here are my people," was the reply. Abdalla motioned to the next room, where the blind men ate their evening meal, and out to the dimly lighted streets where thousands of narghilehs and cigarettes made little smoky clouds that floated around white turbans and dark faces. "When they need me, I will speak; when they cry to me, I will unsheathe the sword of Ebn Mahmoud, who fought with Mahomet Ali and saved the land from the Turk." Renshaw watched the game with an eagerness unnoticeable in his manner. He saw how difficult was the task before Dicky. He saw an Oriental conscious of his power, whose heart was bitter, and whose soul, in its solitude, revolted and longed for action. It was not moved by a pure patriotism, but what it was moved by served. That dangerous temper, which would have let Dicky, whom he called friend, and himself go down under the naboots of the funeral multitude, with a "Malaish" on his tongue, was now in leash, ready to spring forth in the inspired hour; and the justification need not be a great one. Some slight incident might set him at the head of a rabble which would sweep Cairo like a storm. Yet Renshaw saw, too, that once immersed in the work his mind determined on, the Egyptian would go forward with relentless force. In the excitement of the moment it seemed to him that Egypt was hanging in the balance. Dicky was eating sweetmeats like a girl. He selected them with great care. Suddenly Abdalla touched his hand. "Speak on. Let all thy thoughts be open--stay not to choose, as thou dost with the sweetmeats. I will choose: do thou offer without fear. I would not listen to Ismail; to thee I am but as a waled to bear thy shoes in my hand." Dicky said nothing for a moment, but appeared to enjoy the comfit he was eating. He rolled it over his tongue, and his eyes dwelt with a remarkable simplicity and childlike friendliness on Abdalla. It was as though there was really nothing vital at stake. . . . Yet he was probing, probing without avail into Abdalla's mind and heart, and was never more at sea in his life. It was not even for Donovan Pasha to read the Oriental thoroughly. This man before him had the duplicity or evasion of the Oriental; delicately in proportion to his great ability, yet it was there--though in less degree than in any Arab he had ever known. It was the more dangerous because so subtle. It held surprise --it was an unknown quantity. The most that Dicky could do was to feel subtly before him a certain cloud of the unexpected. He was not sure that he deceived Abdalla by his simple manner, yet that made little difference. The Oriental would think not less of him for dissimulation, but rather more. He reached over and put a comfit in the hand of Abdalla. "Let us eat together," he said, and dropped a comfit into his own mouth. Abdalla ate, and Dicky dipped his fingers in the basin before them, saying, as he lifted them again: "I will speak as to my brother. Ismail has staked all on the Soudan. If, in the will of God, he is driven from Berber, from Dongola, from Khartoum, from Darfar, from Kassala, his power is gone. Egypt goes down like the sun at evening. Ismail will be like a withered gourd. To establish order and peace and revenue there, he is sending the man his soul loves, whom the nations trust, to the cities of the desert. If it be well with Gordon, it will be well with the desert- cities. But Gordon asks for one man--an Egyptian--who loves the land and is of the people, to speak for him, to counsel with him, to show the desert tribes that Egypt gives her noblest to rule and serve them. There is but one man--Abdalla the Egyptian. A few years yonder in the desert--power, glory, wealth won for Egypt, the strength of thine arms known, the piety of thy spirit proven, thy name upon every tongue--on thy return, who then should fear for Egypt!" Dicky was playing a dangerous game, and Renshaw almost shrank from his words. He was firing the Egyptian's mind, but to what course he knew not. If to the Soudan, well; if to remain, what conflagration might not occur! Dicky staked all. "Here, once more, among thy people, returned from conquest and the years of pilgrimage in the desert, like a prophet of old, thy zeal would lead the people, and once more Egypt should bloom like the rose. Thou wouldst be sirdar, mouffetish, pasha, all things soever. This thou wouldst be and do, thou, Abdalla the Egyptian." Dicky had made his great throw; and he sat back, perhaps a little paler than was his wont, but apparently serene and earnest and steady. The effect upon Abdalla could only be judged by his eyes, which burned like fire as they fixed upon Dicky's face. The suspense was painful, for he did not speak for a long time. Renshaw could have shrieked with excitement. Dicky lighted a cigarette and tossed a comfit at a pariah dog. At last Abdalla rose. Dicky rose with him. "Thou, too, hast a great soul, or mine eyes are liars," Abdalla said. "Thou lovest Egypt also. This Gordon--I am not his friend. I will not go with him. But if thou goest also with Gordon, then I will go with thee. If thou dost mean well by Egypt, and thy words are true, thou also wilt go. As thou speakest, let it be." A mist came before Dicky's eyes--the world seemed falling into space, his soul was in a crucible. The struggle was like that of a man with death, for this must change the course of his life, to what end God only knew. All that he had been to Egypt, all that Egypt had been to him, came to him. But he knew that he must not pause. Now was his moment, and now only. Before the mist had cleared from his eyes he gave his hand into Abdalla's. "In God's name, so be it. I also will go with Gordon, and thou with me," he said. HE WOULD NOT BE DENIED "He was achin' for it--turrible achin' for it--an' he would not be denied!" said Sergeant William Connor, of the Berkshire Regiment, in the sergeants' mess at Suakim, two nights before the attack on McNeill's zeriba at Tofrik. "Serve 'im right. Janders was too bloomin' suddint," skirled Henry Withers of the Sick Horse Depot from the bottom of the table. "Too momentary, I believe you," said Corporal Billy Bagshot. At the Sick Horse Depot Connor had, without good cause, made some disparaging remarks upon the charger ridden by Subadar Goordit Singh at the fight at Dihilbat Hill, which towers over the village of Hashin. Subadar Goordit Singh heard the remarks, and, loving his welted, gibbet- headed charger as William Connor loved any woman who came his way, he spat upon the ground the sergeant's foot covered, and made an evil- smiling remark. Thereupon Connor laid siege to the white-toothed, wild- bearded Sikh with words which suddenly came to renown, and left not a shred of glory to the garment of vanity the hillman wore. He insinuated that the Sikh's horse was wounded at Hashin from behind by backing too far on the Guards' Brigade on one side and on the Royal Mounted Infantry on the other. This was ungenerous and it was not true, for William Connor knew well the reputation of the Sikhs; but William's blood was up, and the smile of the Subadar was hateful in his eyes. The truth was that the Berkshire Regiment had had its chance at Dihilbat Hill and the Sikhs had not. But William Connor refused to make a distinction between two squadrons of Bengal Cavalry which had been driven back upon the Guards' square and the Sikhs who fretted on their bits, as it were. The Berkshire Regiment had done its work in gallant style up the steep slopes of Dihilbat, had cleared the summit of Osman Digna's men, and followed them with a raking fire as they retreated wildly into the mimosa bushes on the plain. The Berkshires were not by nature proud of stomach, but Connor was a popular man, and the incident of the Sick Horse Depot, as reported by Corporal Bagshot, who kept a diary and a dictionary, tickled their imagination, and they went forth and swaggered before the Indian Native Contingent, singing a song made by Bagshot and translated into Irish idiom by William Connor. The song was meant to humiliate the Indian Native Contingent, and the Sikhs writhed under the raillery and looked black-so black that word was carried to McNeill himself, who sent orders to the officers of the Berkshire Regiment to give the offenders a dressing down; for the Sikhs were not fellaheen, to be heckled with impunity. That was why, twenty-four hours after the offending song was made, it was suppressed; and in the sergeants' mess William Connor told the story how, an hour before, he had met Subadar Goordit Singh in the encampment, and the Subadar in a rage at the grin on Connor's face had made a rush at him, which the Irishman met with his foot, spoiling his wind. That had ended the incident for the moment, for the Sikh remembered in time, and William Connor had been escorted "Berkshire way" by Corporal Bagshot and Henry Withers. As the tale was told over and over again, there came softly from the lips of the only other Irishman in the regiment, Jimmy Coolin, a variant verse of the song that the great McNeill had stopped: "Where is the shame of it, Where was the blame of it, William Connor dear?" It was well for Graham, Hunter, McNeill, and their brigades that William Connor and the Berkshires and the Subadar Goordit Singh had no idle time in which to sear their difficulties, for, before another khamsin gorged the day with cutting dust, every department of the Service, from the Commissariat to the Balloon Detachment, was filling marching orders. There was a collision, but it was the agreeable collision of preparation for a fight, for it was ordained that the Berkshires and the Sikhs should go shoulder to shoulder to establish a post in the desert between Suakim and Tamai. "D'ye hear that, William Connor dear?" said Private Coolin when the orders came. "An' y'll have Subadar Goordit Singh with his kahars and his bhistis and his dhooly bearers an' his Lushai dandies an' his bloomin' bullock-carts steppin' on y'r tail as ye travel, Misther Connor!" "Me tail is the tail of a kangaroo; I'm strongest where they tread on me, Coolin," answered Connor. "An' drinkin' the divil's chlorides from the tins of the mangy dhromedairy has turned me insides into a foundry. I'm metal-plated, Coolin." "So ye'll need if ye meet the Subadar betune the wars!" "Go back to y'r condinsation, Coolin. Bring water to the thirsty be gravitation an' a four-inch main, an' shtrengthen the Bowl of the Subadar wid hay-cake, for he'll want it agin the day he laves Tamai behind! Go back to y'r condinsation, Coolin, an' take truth to y'r Bowl that there's many ways to die, an' one o' thim's in the commysariat, Coolin--shame for ye!" Coolin had been drafted into the Commissariat and was now variously employed, but chiefly at the Sandbag Redoubt, where the condensing ship did duty, sometimes at the southeast end of the harbour where the Indian Contingent watered. Coolin hated the duty, and because he was in a bitter mood his tongue was like a leaf of aloe. "I'll be drinkin' condinsed spirits an' 'atin' hay-cake whip the vultures do be peckin' at what's lift uv ye whip the Subadar's done wid ye. I'd a drame about ye last noight, William Connor dear--three times I dramed it." Suddenly Connor's face was clouded. "Whist, thin, Coolin," said he hoarsely. "Hadendowas I've no fear uv, an' Subadars are Injy nagurs anyhow, though fellow-soldiers uv the Queen that's good to shtand befront uv biscuit-boxes or behoind thim; an' wan has no fear of the thing that's widout fear, an' death's iron enters in aisy whip mortial strength's behind it. But drames--I've had enough uv drames in me toime, I have that, Coolin!" He shuddered a little. "What was it ye dramed again, Coolin? Was there anything but the dramin'--anny noise, or sound, or spakin'?" Coolin lied freely, for to disturb William Connor was little enough compensation for being held back at Suakim while the Berkshires and the Sikhs were off for a scrimmage in the desert. "Nothin' saw I wid open eye, an' nothin' heard," he answered; "but I dramed twice that I saw ye lyin' wid y'r head on y'r arm and a hole in y'r jacket. Thin I waked suddin', an' I felt a cold wind goin' over me-- three toimes; an' a hand was laid on me own face, an' it was cold an' smooth-like the hand uv a Sikh, William Connor dear." Connor suddenly caught Coolin's arm. "D'ye say that!" said he. "Shure, I'll tell ye now why the chills rin down me back whin I hear uv y'r drame. Thrue things are drames, as I'll prove to ye--as quare as condinsation an' as thrue, Coolin; fer condinsation comes out uv nothin', and so do drames.. . . There was Mary Haggarty, Coolin--ye'll not be knowin' Mary Haggarty. It was mornin' an' evenin' an' the first day uv the world where she were. That was Mary Haggarty. An' ivery shtep she tuk had the spring uv the first sod of Adin. Shure no, ye didn't know Mary Haggarty, an' ye niver will, Coolin, fer the sod she trod she's lyin' under, an' she'll niver rise up no more." "Fer choice I'll take the sod uv Erin to the sand uv the Soudan," said Coolin. "Ye'll take what ye can get, Coolin; fer wid a splinterin' bullet in y'r gizzard ye lie where ye fall." "But Mary Haggarty, Connor?" "I was drinkin' hard, ye understand, Coolin--drinkin', loike a dhromedairy--ivery day enough to last a wake, an' Mary tryin' to stop me betimes. At last I tuk the pledge--an' her on promise. An' purty, purty she looked thin, an' shtepping light an' fine, an' the weddin' was coming an. But wan day there was a foire, an' the police coort was burned down, an' the gaol was that singed they let the b'ys out, an' we rushed the police an' carried off the b'ys, an'--" "An' ye sweltered in the juice!" broke in Coolin with flashing eyes, proud to have roused Connor to this secret tale, which he would tell to the Berkshires as long as they would listen, that it should go down through a long line of Berkshires, as Coolin's tale of William Connor. "An' I sweltered in the swill," said Connor, his eye with a cast quite shut with emotion, and the other nearly so. "An' wance broke out agin afther tin months' goin' wake and watery, was like a steer in the corn. There was no shtoppin' me, an'--" "Not Mary Haggarty aither?" "Not Mary Haggarty aither." "O, William Connor dear!" "Ye may well say, 'O, William Connor dear!' 'Twas what she said day by day, an' the heart uv me loike Phararyoh's. Thrue it is, Coolin, that the hand uv mortial man has an ugly way uv squazin' a woman's heart dry whin, at last, to his coaxin' she lays it tinder an' onsuspectin' on the inside grip uv it." "But the heart uv Mary Haggarty, Connor?" "'Twas loike a flower under y'r fut, Coolin, an' a heavy fut is to you. She says to me wan day, 'Ye're breakin' me heart, William Connor,' says she. 'Thin I'll sodder it up agin wid the help uv the priest,' says I. 'That ye will not do,' says she; 'wance broken, 'tis broke beyond mendin'.' 'Go an wid ye, Mary Haggarty darlin',' says I, laughin' in her face, 'hivin is y'r home.' 'Yes, I'll be goin' there, William Connor,' says she, 'I'll be goin' there betimes, I hope.' 'How will it be?' says I; 'be fire or wateer, Mary darlin'?' says I. 'Ye shall know whin it comes,' says she, wid a quare look in her eye." "An' ye did?" asked Coolin, open-mouthed and staring; for never had he seen Connor with aught on his face but a devil-may-care smile. "Ordered away we was next avenin', an' sorra the glimpse of Mary Haggarty to me--for Headquarters is a lady that will not be denied. Away we wint overseas. Shlapin' I was wan night in a troop-ship in the Bay uv Biscay; an' I dramed I saw Mary walkin' along the cliff by--well, 'tis no matter, fer ye've niver been there, an 'tis no place to go to unheedin'. Manny an' manny a time I'd walked wid Mary Haggarty there. There's a steep hill betune two pints uv land. If ye go low on't ye're safe enough--if ye go high it crumbles, an' down ye shlip a hunder fut into the say. In me drame I saw Mary onthinkin', or thinkin' maybe about me an' not about the high path or the low--though 'tis only the low that's used these twinty years. Her head was down. I tried to call her. She didn't hear, but wint an an' an. All at wanst I saw the ground give way. She shlipped an' snatched at the spinifex. Wan minnit she held, an' thin slid down, down into the say. An' I woke callin' 'Mary--Mary' in me throat." "Ye dramed it wance only, Connor?" said Coolin, with the insolent grin gone out of his eyes. "I dramed it three times, an' the last time, whin I waked, I felt a cold wind go over me. Thin a hand touched me face--the same as you, Coolin, the same as you. Drames are thrue things, Coolin." "It was thrue, thin, Connor?" A look of shame and a curious look of fear crept into Coolin's face; for though it was not true he had dreamed of the hand on his face and the cold wind blowing over him, it was true he had dreamed he saw Connor lying on the ground with a bullet-hole in his tunic. But Coolin, being industrious at his trencher, often had dreams, and one more or less horrible about Connor had not seemed to him to matter at all. It had sufficed, however, to give him a cue to chaff the man who had knocked the wind out of Subadar Goordit Singh, and who must pay for it one hour or another in due course, as Coolin and the Berkshires knew full well. "It was thrue, thin, William Connor?" repeated Coolin. "As thrue as that yander tripod pump kills wan man out uv ivery fifty. As thrue as that y'r corn-beef from y'r commysariat tins gives William Connor thirst, Coolin." "She was drownded, Connor?" asked Coolin in a whisper. "As I dramed it, an' allowin' fer difference uv time, at the very hour, Coolin. 'Tis five years ago, an' I take it hard that Mary Haggarty spakes to me through you. 'Tis a warnin', Coolin." "'Twas a lie I told you, Connor--'twas a lie!" And Coolin tried to grin. Connor's voice was like a woman's, soft and quiet, as he answered: "Ye'll lie fast enough, Coolin, whin the truth won't sarve; but the truth has sarved its turn this time." "Aw, Connor dear, only wan half's thrue. As I'm a man--only wan half." "Go an to y'r condinsation, Coolin, fer the face uv ye's not fit fer dacint company, wan side paralytic wid lyin', an' the other struck simple wid tellin' the truth. An' see, Coolin, fer the warnin' she give ye fer me, the kit I lave is yours, an' what more, be the will uv God! An' what ye've told me ye'll kape to y'self, Coolin, or hell shall be your portion." "He tuk it fer truth an' a warnin', an' he would not be denied," said Coolin to Henry Withers, of the Sick Horse Depot, two hours afterwards, when the Berkshires and the Sikhs and the Bengalese were on the march towards Tamai. "The bloomin' trick is between the Hadendowas and the Subadar," answered he of the Sick Horse Depot. "Ye take it fer a warnin', thin?" asked Coolin uneasily. "I believe you," answered Henry Withers. As for William Connor, when he left Suakim, his foot was light, his figure straight, and he sent a running fire of laughter through his company by one or two "insinsible remarks," as Coolin called them. Three hours' marching in the Soudan will usually draw off the froth of a man's cheerfulness, but William Connor was as light of heart at Tofrik as at Suakim, and he saw with pleasure two sights--the enemy in the distance and the 15th Sikhs on their right flank, with Subadar Goordit Singh in view. "There's work 'ere to-day for whoever likes it on the 'op!" said Henry Withers, of the Sick Horse Depot, as he dragged his load of mimosa to the zeriba; for he had got leave to come on with his regiment. "You'll find it 'otter still when the vedettes and Cossack Posts come leadin' in the Osnum Digners. If there ain't hoscillations on that rectangle, strike me in the night-lights!" said Corporal Bagshot, with his eye on the Bengalese. "Blyme, if the whole bloomin' parallogram don't shiver," he added; "for them Osnum Digners 'as the needle, and they're ten to one, or I'm a bloater!" "There's Gardner guns fer the inimy an' Lushai dandies fer us," broke in Connor, as he drove a stake in the ground, wet without and dry within--" an' Gardner guns are divils on the randan. Whin they get to work it's like a self-actin' abbatoir." "I 'opes ye like it, Connor. Bloomin' picnic for you when the Osnum Digners eat sand. What ho!" "I have no swarms of conscience there, Billy Bag; shot. For the bones uv me frinds that's lyin' in this haythen land, I'll clane as fur as I can reach. An' I'll have the run uv me belt to-day, an--" he added, then stopped short as the order came from McNeill that the Berkshires should receive dinner by half-battalions. "An' 'igh time," said Corporal Bagshot. "What with marchin' and zeribakin' and the sun upon me tank since four this mornin', I'm dead for food and buried for water. I ain't no bloomin' salamanker to be grilled and say thank-ye, and I ain't no bloomin' camomile to bring up me larder and tap me tank when Coolin's commissaryat hasn't no orders." "Shure ye'll run better impty, Billy boy," said Connor. "An' what fer do ye need food before y'r execution?" he added, with a twist of his mouth. "Before execution, ye turkey-cock--before execution is the time to eat and drink. How shall the bloomin' carnage gore the Libyan sands, if there ain't no refreshment for the vitals and the diagrams?" "Come an wid ye to y'r forage-cake, thin-an' take this to ye," added Connor slyly, as he slipped a little nickel-plated flask into Billy Bagshot's hand. "With a Woking crematory in y'r own throat. See you bloomin' furder!" answered Billy Bagshot. "I'm not drinkin' to-day," answered Connor, with a curious look in the eye that had no cast. "I'm not drinkin', you understand." "Ain't it a bit momentary?" asked Bagshot, as they sat down. "Momentary betimes," answered Connor evasively. "Are you eatin' at this bloomin' swaree, then?" "I'm niver aff me forage-cake," answered Connor, and he ate as if he had had his tooth in nothing for a month. A quarter of an hour later, the Sikhs were passing the Berkshire zeriba, and the Berkshires, filing out, joined them to cut brushwood. A dozen times the Subadar Goordit Singh almost touched shoulders with Connor, but neither spoke, and neither saw directly; for if once they saw each other's eyes the end might come too soon, to the disgrace of two regiments. Suddenly, the forbidden song on William Connor and the Subadar arose among the Berkshires. No one knew who started it, but it probably was Billy Bagshot, who had had more than a double portion of drink, and was seized with a desire to celebrate his thanks to Connor thus. In any case the words ran along the line, and were carried up in a shout amid the crackling of the brushwood: "Where was the shame of it, Where was the blame of it, William Connor dear?" That sort of special providence which seems to shelter the unworthy, gave India and the Berkshires honour that hour when the barometer registered shame; for never was mercury more stormy than shot up in the artery of two men's wills when that song rose over the zeriba at Tofrik. They were not fifty feet apart at the time, and at the lilt of that chorus they swung towards each other like two horses to the bugle on parade. "A guinea to a brown but Janders goes large!" said Billy Bagshot under his breath, his eye on the Subadar and repenting him of the song. But Janders did not go large; for at that very moment there came the bugle-call for the working parties to get into the zeriba, as from the mimosa scrub came hundreds upon hundreds of "Osnum Digners" hard upon the heels of the vedettes. "The Hadendowas 'as the privilege," said Billy Bagshot, as the Berkshires and the Sikhs swung round and made for the zeriba. "What's that ye say?" cried Connor, as the men stood to their arms. "Looked as if the bloomin' hontray was with the Subadar, but the Hadendowas 'as the honour to hinvite sweet William!" "Murther uv man--look--look, ye Berkshire boar! The Bengals is breakin' line!" "Oscillations 'as begun!" said Bagshot, as, disorganised by the vedettes riding through their flank into the zeriba, the Bengalese wavered. "'Tis your turn now--go an to y'r gruel!" said Connor, as Bagshot with his company and others were ordered to move over to the Bengalese and steady them. "An' no bloomin' sugar either," Bagshot called back as he ran. "Here's to ye thin!" shouted Connor, as the enemy poured down on their zeriba on the west and the Bengalese retreated on them from the east, the Billy Bagshot detachment of Berkshires rallying them and firing steadily, the enemy swarming after and stampeding the mules and camels. Over the low bush fence, over the unfinished sand-bag parapet at the southwest salient, spread the shrieking enemy like ants, stabbing and cutting. The Gardner guns, as Connor had said, were "fer the inimy," but the Lushai dandies were for the men that managed them that day; for the enemy came too soon--in shrieking masses to a hand-to-hand melee. What India lost that hour by the Bengalese the Sikhs won back. Side by side with them the Berkshires cursed and raged and had their way; and when the Sikhs drew over and laid themselves along the English lines a wild cheer went up from the Berkshires. Wounded men spluttered their shouts from mouths filled with blood, and to the welcoming roars of the Berkshires the Sikhs showed their teeth in grim smiles, "and done things," as Billy Bagshot said when it was all over. But by consent of every man who fought under McNeill that day, the biggest thing done among the Sikhs happened in the fiercest moment of the rush on the Berkshire zeriba. Billy Bagshot told the story that night, after the Lushai dandies had carried off the wounded and the sands of the desert had taken in the dead. "Tyke it or leave it, 'e 'ad the honours of the day," said Bagshot, "'e and Janders--old Subadar Goordit Singh. It myde me sick to see them Bengalesey, some of 'em 'ookin' it to Suakim, some of 'em retirin' on the seraphim, which is another name for Berkshires. It ain't no sweet levee a-tryin' to rally 'eathen 'ands to do their dooty. So we 'ad to cover 'em back into the zeriba of the seraphim--which is our glorious selves. A bloomin' 'asty puddin' was that tournamong, but it wasn't so bloomin' 'asty that the Subadar and William Connor didn't finish what they started for to do when the day was young." "Did Janders stick the b'y?" asked Coolin, who had just come in from Suakim with the Commissariat camels. "Shure, I hope to God he didn't!" He was pale and wild of eye. "Did a bloomin' sparrow give you 'is brains when you was changed at birth? Stick William Connor--I believe you not! This is what 'appened, me bloomin' sanitary. When I got back be'ind the 'eavenly parapet, there was William Connor in a nice little slaughter-house of 'is own. 'E was doin' of 'isself proud--too busy to talk. All at once 'e spies a flag the Osnum Digners 'ad planted on the 'eavenly parapet. 'E opens 'is mouth and gives one yell, and makes for that bit of cotton. 'E got there, for 'e would not be denied. 'E got there an' 'e couldn't get back. But 'e made a rush for it--" "A divil he was on rushes," broke in Private Coolin, wiping his mouth nervously. "'E's the pride of 'is 'ome and the bloomin' brigade, bar one, which is the Subadar Goordit Singh. For w'en the Subadar sees Connor in 'is 'ole, a cut across 'is jaw, doin' of 'is trick alone, away goes Subadar Goordit Singh and two of 'is company be'ind 'im for to rescue. 'E cut with 'is sword like a bloomin' picture. 'E didn't spare 'is strength, and 'e didn't spare the Osnum Digners. An' 'e comeback, an' he brought with him William Connor--that's all what come back." "How long did William live?" asked Coolin. "He was a good frind to me was Connor, a thrue frind he was to me. How long did the b'y live?" 'E lived long enough to 'ave McNeill shake 'im by the 'and. 'E lived long enough to say to the Subadar Goordit Singh, 'I would take scorn uv me to lave widout askin' y'r pardon, Subadar.' And the Subadar took 'is 'and and salaamed, and showed 'is teeth, which was meant friendly." "What else did Connor say?" asked Coolin, eagerly. "'E said 'is kit was for you that's spoilin' a good name in the condinsation of the Commissaryat, Coolin." "But what else?" urged Coolin. "Nothin' about a drame at all?" "Who's talkin' about dreams!" said Bagshot. 'E wasn't no bloomin' poet. 'E was a man. What 'e said 'e said like a man. 'E said 'e'd got word from Mary--which is proper that a man should do when 'e's a-chuckin' of 'is tent-pegs. If 'e ain't got no mother--an' Connor 'adn't 'is wife or 'is sweetheart 'as the honour." "Oh, blessed God," said Coolin, "I wish I hadn't towld him--I wish I hadn't towld the b'y." "Told 'im wot?" said Bagshot. But Coolin of the Commissariat did not answer; his head was on his arms, and his arms were on his knees. THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK "'E was a flower," said Henry Withers of the Sick Horse Depot. "A floower in front garden!" ironically responded Holgate, the Yorkshire engineer, as he lay on his back on the lower deck of the Osiris, waiting for Fielding Pasha's orders to steam up the river. "'E was the bloomin' flower of the flock," said Henry Withers, with a cross between a yawn and a sigh, and refusing to notice Holgate's sarcasm. "Aw've heerd on 'em, the floowers o' the flock--they coom to a bad end mostwise in Yorkshire--nipped in t' bood loike! Was tha friend nipped untimely?" "I'd give a bloomin' camomile to know!" "Deserted or summat?" "Ow yus, 'e deserted--to Khartoum," answered Withers with a sneer. "The 'owlin' sneak went in 'idin' with Gordon at Khartoum!" "Aye, aw've heerd o' Gordon a bit," said Holgate dubiously, intent to further anger the Beetle, as Henry Withers was called. "Ow yus, ow verily yus! An' y've 'eard o' Julius Caesar, an' Nebucha'nezzar, an' Florence Noightingyle, 'aven't you--you wich is chiefly bellyband and gullet." "Aye, aw've eaten too mooch to-day," rejoined Holgate placidly, refusing to see insult. "Aw don't see what tha friend was doin' at Khartoum wi' Goordon." 'E was makin' Perry Davis' Pain Killer for them at 'ome who wouldn't send Gordon 'elp when the 'eathen was at 'is doors a 'underd to one. 'E was makin' it for them to soothe their bloomin' pains an' sorrers when Gordon an' Macnamara 'ad cried 'elp! for the lawst toime!" "Aw've taken off ma hat to Goordon's nevvy-he be a fine man-head for macheens he has"-Holgate's eyes dwelt on his engine lovingly; "but aw've heerd nowt o' Macnamara-never nowt o' him. Who was Macnamara?" 'E was the bloomin' flower of the flock-'e was my pal as took service in the Leave-me-alone-to-die Regiment at Khartoum." "Aw've never read o' Macnamara. Dost think tha'll ever know how he went?" "I ain't sayin' 'as 'e went, an' I ain't thinkin' as 'e went. I'm waitin' like a bloomin' telegarpher at the end of a wire. 'E was the pick o' fifteen 'underd men was Macnamara." "What sent t' laad to Goordon?" "A-talkin' of 'isself silly to two lydies at onct." "Aye, theer's the floower o' the flock. Breakin' hearts an' spoilin' lives--aw've seen them floowers bloomin'." 'E didn't break no witherin' 'earts, an' 'e didn't spoil no lives. The lydies was both married afore Macnamara got as far as Wady Halfar. 'E break 'earts--not much! 'E went to Khartoum to be quiet." "Aw'm pityin' the laads that married them lasses." "'Ere, keep your bloomin' pity. I wuz one. An' if your pity's 'urtin' yer, think of 'im as 'adn't no wife nor kid to say when 'e's dead, 'Poor Peter Macnamara, 'e is gone."' "A good job too, aw'm thinkin'." "An' a bloornin' 'ard 'eart y' 'ave. Wantin' of a man to die without leavin' 'is mark--'is bleedin' 'all mark on the world. I 'ave two--two kids I 'ave; an' so 'elp me Gawd, things bein' as they are, I wouldn't say nothin' if one of 'em was Macnamara's--wich it ain't--no fear!" "Was Macnamara here you wouldn't say thaat to his faace, aw'm thinkin'." "I'd break 'is 'ulkin' neck first. I ain't puttin' these things on the 'oardins, an' I ain't thinkin' 'em, if 'ee's alive in the clutches of the 'eathen Kalifer at Homdurman. There's them as says 'e is, an' there's them as says 'e was cut down after Gordon. But it's only Gawd-forsaken Arabs as says it, an' they'll lie wichever way you want 'em." "Aye, laad, but what be great foolks doin' at Cairo? They be sendin' goold for Slatin an' Ohrwalder by sooch-like heathen as lie to you. If Macnamara be alive, what be Macnamara doin'? An' what be Wingate an' Kitchener an' great foolks at Cairo doin'?" "They're sayin', 'Macnamara, 'oos 'e? 'E ain't no class. 'Oo wants Macnamara!'" Holgate raised himself on his elbow, a look of interest in his face, which he tried to disguise. "See, laad," he said, "why does tha not send messenger thaself--a troosty messenger?" "'Ere, do you think I'm a bloomin' Crosus? I've done the trick twice-ten pounds o' loot once, an' ten golden shillin's another. Bloomin' thieves both of 'em--said they wuz goin' to Homdurman, and didn't not much! But one of 'em went to 'eaven with cholery, an' one is livin' yet with a crooked leg, with is less than I wuz workin' for." Holgate was sitting bolt upright now. "Didst tha save them ten sooverins to get news o' Macnamara, laad?" "Think I bloomin' well looted 'em--go to 'ell!" said Henry Withers of the Sick Horse Depot, and left the lower deck of the Osiris in a fit of sudden anger. II Up in Omdurman Peter Macnamara knew naught of this. He ran behind his master's horse, he sat on his master's mat, he stood in the sun before his master's door, barefooted and silent and vengeful in his heart, but with a grin on his face. When Khartoum fell he and Slatin had been thrown into the Saier loaded with irons. Then, when the Mahdi died he had been made the slave of the Khalifa's brother, whose vanity was flattered by having a European servant. The Khalifa Abdullah being angry one day with his brother, vented his spite by ordering Macnamara back to prison again. Later the Khalifa gave him to a favourite Emir for a servant; but that service was of short duration, for on a certain morning Macnamara's patience gave way under the brutality of his master, and he refused to help him on his horse. This was in the presence of the Khalifa, and Abdullah was so delighted at the discomfiture of the Emir that he saved the Irishman's life, and gave him to Osman Wad Adam, after he had been in irons three months and looked no better than a dead man. Henceforth things went better, for Osman Wad Adam was an Arab with a sense of humour, very lazy and very licentious, and Macnamara's Arabic was a source of enjoyment to him in those hours when he did nothing but smoke and drink bad coffee. Also Macnamara was an expert with horses, and had taught the waler, which Osman Wad Adam had looted from Khartoum, a number of admired tricks. Macnamara wished many a time that he could take to the desert with the waler; but the ride that he must ride to Wady Halfa was not for a horse. None but a camel could do it. Besides, he must have guides, and how was he to pay guides? More than once he had tried to get a word with Slatin, but that was dangerous for them both--most dangerous for Slatin, who was now the servant of the Khalifa Abdullah himself. Slatin was always suspected, and was therefore watched carefully; but the Khalifa knew that Macnamara had no chance to escape, for he had no friends in Cairo, no money, and no more could have bought a camel than a kingdom. Escaping from the city itself, he could but die in the desert. He had only one Arab friend--little Mahommed Nafar the shoemaker. The shoemaker was friendly to him for a great kindness done in the days when they both lived in Khartoum and ere the Arab deserted to the camp of the Mahdi. But what help could Mahommed Nafar give him unless he had money? With plenty of money the shoemaker might be induced to negotiate with Arab merchants coming from Dongola or Berber into Omdurman to get camels, and arrange an escape down the desert to Wady Halfa; but where was the money to come from? One day, at a great review, when the roar of the drums rivalled the hoarse shouts of the Mahdists, and the Baggaras, for a diversion, looted one quarter of the town, Macnamara was told by his master that Slatin had been given by the Khalifa to Mahommed Sherif, and was going to Darfur. As a kind of farewell barbecue, whether or not intended by the Khalifa as a warning to his departing general, ten prisoners had their feet and hands cut off in the Beit-el-Mal, and five lost their heads as well as their hands and feet. "It makes my blood run cold," said Slatin softly in English, as Macnamara passed him, walking at his master's stirrup. "Mine's boilin', sir!" answered Macnamara. Slatin's eyes took on a more cheerful look than they usually carried, for it was many a day since he had been addressed with respect, and the "sir" touched a mellow chord within him--memory of the days when he was Governor of Darfur. Suddenly he saw the Khalifa's eyes fixed on Macnamara, and the look, for a wonder, was not unfriendly. It came to him that perhaps the Khalifa meant to take Macnamara for his own servant, for it flattered his vanity to have a white man at his stirrup and on his mat. He knew that the Khalifa was only sending himself to Darfur that he might be a check upon Mahommed Sherif. He did not think that Macnamara's position would be greatly bettered, save perhaps in bread and onions, by being taken into the employ of the Khalifa. His life would certainly not be safer. But, if it was to be, perhaps he could do a good turn to Macnamara by warning him, by planting deep in the Khalifa's mind the Irishman's simple-minded trustworthiness. When, therefore, the Khalifa suddenly turned and asked him about Macnamara he chose his words discreetly. The Khalifa, ever suspicious, said that Macnamara had been thrown into prison twice for insubordination. To this Slatin replied: "Sire, what greater proof could be had of the man's simplicity? His life is in your hands, sire. Would he have risked it, had he not been the most simpleminded of men? But you who read men's hearts, sire, as others read a book, you know if I speak truth." Slatin bent his head in humility. The flattery pleased the Khalifa. "Summon Osman Wad Adam and the man to me," he said. In the questioning that followed, Macnamara's Arabic and his understanding of it was so bad that it was necessary for Slatin to ask him questions in English. This was a test of Macnamara, for Slatin said some things in English which were not for the Khalifa's knowing. If Macnamara's face changed, if he started, Abdullah's suspicions, ever ready, would have taken form. But Macnamara's wits were not wool-gathering, and when Slatin said to him, "If I escape, I will try to arrange yours," Macnamara replied, with a respectful but placid stolidity: "Right, sir. Where does the old sinner keep his spoof?" It was now for Slatin to keep a hold on himself, for Macnamara's reply was unexpected. Ruling his face to composure, however, he turned to the Khalifa and said that up to this moment Macnamara had not been willing to become a Mahommedan, but his veneration for the Mahdi's successor was so great that he would embrace the true faith by the mercy of God and the permission of the Khalifa. When the Khalifa replied that he would accept the convert into the true faith at once, Slatin then said to Macnamara: "Come now, my man, I've promised that you will become a Mahommedan--it's your best chance of safety." "I'll see him on the devil's pitchfork first," said Macnamara; but he did not change countenance. "I'm a Protestant and I'll stand be me baptism." "You'll lose your head, man," answered Slatin. "Don't be a fool." "I'm keepin' to what me godfathers and godmothers swore for me," answered Macnamara stubbornly. "You must pretend for a while, or you'll be dead in an hour--and myself too." "You--that's a different nose on me face," answered Macnamara. "But suppose I buck when I get into the mosque--no, begobs, I'll not be doin' it!" "I'll say to him that you'll do it with tears of joy, if you can have a month for preparation." "Make it two an' I'm your man, seein' as you've lied for me, sir. But on wan condition--where does he keep his coin?" "If you try that on, you'll die bit by bit like the men in the Beit-el- Mal to-day," answered Slatin quickly. "I'm carvin' me own mutton, thank ye kindly, sir," answered Macnamara. "I've heard that part of his treasure is under his own room," went on Slatin quickly, for he saw that the Khalifa's eyes had a sinister look- the conversation had been too long. "Speak no more!" said Abdullah sharply. "What is it you say, my son?" he added to Slatin. "He has been telling me that he is without education even in his own faith, and that he cannot learn things quickly. Also he does not understand what to do in the mosque, or how to pray, and needs to be taught. He then asked what was impossible, and I had to argue with him, sire." "What did he ask?" asked the Khalifa, his fierce gaze on Macnamara. "He wished to be taught by yourself, sire. He said that if you taught him he would understand. I said that you were the chosen Emperor of the Faithful, the coming king of the world, but he replied that the prophets of old taught their disciples with their own tongues." It was a bold lie, but the Khalifa was flattered, and made a motion of assent. Slatin, seeing his advantage, added: "I told him that you could not spare the time to teach him, sire; but he said that if you would talk to him for a little while every day for a month, after he had studied Arabic for two months, he would be ready to follow your majesty through life and death." "Approach, my son," said the Khalifa to Macnamara suddenly. Macnamara came near. He understood Arabic better than he had admitted, and he saw in this three months' respite, if it were granted, the chance to carry out a plan that was in his mind. The Khalifa held out a hand to him, and Macnamara, boiling with rage inwardly and his face flushing--which the Khalifa mistook for modesty--kissed it. "You shall have two moons to learn Arabic of a good teacher every day, and then for one moon I myself will instruct you in the truth," said Abdullah. "You shall wait at my door and walk by my stirrup and teach my horse as you have taught the English horse of Osman Wad Adam. Thy faithful service I will reward, and thy unfaithfulness I will punish with torture and death." "I'll cut the price of the kiss on those dirty fingers from a dervish joint," muttered Macnamara to himself, as he took his place that evening at the Khalifa's door. One thing Macnamara was determined on. He would never pray in a Mahommedan mosque, he would never turn Mahommedan even for a day. The time had come when he must make a break for liberty. He must have money. With money Mahommed Nafar, who was now his teacher--Slatin had managed that--would move for him. Under the spur of his purpose Macnamara rapidly acquired Arabic, and steadfastly tried to make Mahommed Nafar his friend, for he liked the little man, and this same little man was the only Arab, save one, from first to last, whom he would not have spitted on a bayonet. At first he chafed under the hourly duplicity necessary in his service to the Khalifa, then he took an interest in it, and at last he wept tears of joy over his dangerous proficiency. Day after day Macnamara waited, in the hope of making sure that the Khalifa's treasure was under the room where he slept. Upon the chance of a successful haul, he had made fervid promises, after the fashion of his race, to the shoemaker Mahommed Nafar. At first the shoemaker would have nothing to do with it: helping prisoners to escape meant torture and decapitation; but then he hated the Khalifa, whose Baggaras had seized his property, and killed his wife and children; and in the end Macnamara prevailed. Mahommed Nafar found some friendly natives from the hills of Gilif, who hated the Khalifa and his tyrannous governments, and at last they agreed to attempt the escape. III A month went by. Lust, robbery, and murder ruled in Omdurman. The river thickened with its pollution, the trees within the walls sickened of its poison, the bones of the unburied dead lay in the moat beyond the gates, and, on the other side of the river, desolate Khartoum crumbled over the streets and paths and gardens where Gordon had walked. The city was a pit of infamy, where struggled, or wallowed, or died to the bellowing of the Khalifa's drum and the hideous mirth of his Baggaras, the victims of Abdullah. But out in the desert--the Bayuda desert--between Omdurman and Old Dongola, there was only peace. Here and there was "a valley of dry bones," but the sand had washed the bones clean, the vultures had had their hour and flown away, the debris of deserted villages had been covered by desert storms, and the clear blue sky and ardent sun were over all, joyous and immaculate. Out in the desert there was only the life- giving air, the opal sands, the plaintive evening sky, the eager morning breeze, the desolated villages, and now and then in the vast expanse, stretching hundreds and hundreds of miles south, an oasis as a gem set in a cloth of faded gold. It would have seemed to any natural man better to die in the desert than to live in Omdurman. So thought a fugitive who fled day and night through the Bayuda desert, into the sandy wastes, beyond whose utmost limits lay Wady Halfa, where the English were. Macnamara had conquered. He had watched his chance when two of the black guard were asleep, and the Khalifa was in a stupor of opium in the harem, had looted Abdullah's treasure, and carried the price of the camels and the pay of the guides to Mahommed Nafar the shoemaker. His great sprawling camel, the best that Mahommed Nafar could buy of Ebn Haraf, the sheikh in the Gilif Hills, swung down the wind with a long, reaching stride, to the point where the sheikh would meet him, and send him on his way with a guide. If he reached the rendezvous safely, there was a fair chance of final escape. Moonlight, and the sand swishing from under the velvet hoofs of the camel, the silence like a filmy cloak, sleep everywhere, save at the eyes of the fugitive. Hour after hour they sprawled down the waste, and for numberless hours they must go on and on, sleepless, tireless, alert, if the man was to be saved at all. As morning broke he turned his eye here and there, fearful of discovery and pursuit. Nothing. He was alone with the sky and the desert and his fate. Another two hours and he would be at the rendezvous, in the cover of the hills, where he would be safe for a moment at least. But he must keep ahead of all pursuit, for if Abdullah's people should get in front of him he would be cut off from all hope. There is little chance to run the blockade of the desert where a man may not hide, where there is neither water, nor feed, nor rest, once in a hundred miles or more. For an hour his eyes were fixed, now on the desert behind him, whence pursuit should come, now on the golden-pink hills before him, where was sanctuary for a moment, at least. . . . Nothing in all the vast space but blue and grey-the sky and the sand, nothing that seemed of the world he had left; nothing save the rank smell of the camel, and the Arab song he sang to hasten the tired beast's footsteps. Mahommed Nafar had taught him the song, saying that it was as good to him as another camel on a long journey. His Arabic, touched off with the soft brogue of Erin, made a little shrill by weariness and peril, was not the Arabic of Abdin Palace, but yet, under the spell, the camel's head ceased swaying nervously, the long neck stretched out bravely, and they came on together to the Gilif Hills, comrades in distress, gallant and unafraid. . . . Now the rider looked back less than before, for the hills were near, he was crossing a ridge which would hide him from sight for a few miles, and he kept his eyes on the opening in the range where a few domtrees marked the rendezvous. His throat was dry, for before the night was half over he had drunk the little water he carried; but the Arab song still came from his lips: "Doos ya lellee! Doos ya lellee! Tread, O joy of my life, tread lightly! Thy feet are the wings of a dove, And thy heart is of fire. On thy wounds I will pour the king's salve. I will hang On thy neck the long chain of wrought gold, When the gates of Bagdad are before us-- Doos ya lellee! Doos ya lellee!" He did not cease singing it until the camel had staggered in beneath the dom-trees where Ebn Mazar waited. Macnamara threw himself on the ground beside the prostrate camel which had carried him so well, and gasped, "Water!" He drank so long from Ebn Haraf's water-bag that the Arab took it from him. Then he lay on the sands hugging the ground close like a dog, till the sheikh roused him with the word that he must mount another camel, this time with a guide, Mahmoud, a kinsman of his own, who must risk his life-at a price. Half the price was paid by Macnamara to the sheikh before they left the shade of the palm-trees, and, striking through the hills, emerged again into the desert farther north. In the open waste the strain and the peril began again, but Mahmoud, though a boy in years, was a man in wisdom and a "brother of eagles" in endurance: and he was the second Arab who won Macnamara's heart. It was Mahmoud's voice now that quavered over the heads of the camels and drove them on; it was his eye which watched the horizon. The hours went by, and no living thing appeared in the desert, save a small cloud of vultures, heavy from feasting on a camel dead in the waste, and a dark- brown snake flitting across their path. Nothing all day save these, and nothing all the sleepless night save a desert wolf stealing down the sands. Macnamara's eyes burned in his head with weariness, his body became numb, but Mahommed Mahmoud would allow no pause. They must get so far ahead the first two days that Abdullah's pursuers might not overtake them, he said. Beyond Dongola, at a place appointed, other camels would await them, if Mahmoud's tribesmen there kept faith. For two days and nights Macnamara had not slept, for forty-six hours he had been constantly in the saddle, but Mahommed Mahmoud allowed him neither sleep nor rest. Dongola came at last, lying far away on their right. With Dongola, fresh camels; and the desert flight began again. Hour after hour, and not a living thing; and then, at last, a group of three Arabs on camels going south, far over to their right. These suddenly turned and rode down on them. "We must fight," said Mahmoud; "for they see you are no Arab." "I'll take the one with the jibbeh," said Macnamara coolly, with a pistol in his left hand and a sword in his right. "I'll take him first. Here's the tap off yer head, me darlin's!" he added as they turned and faced the dervishes. "We must kill them all, or be killed," said Mahmoud, as the dervishes suddenly stopped, and the one with the jibbeh called to Mahmoud: "Whither do you fly with the white Egyptian?" "If you come and see you will know, by the mercy of God!" answered Mahmoud. The next instant the dervishes charged. Macnamara marked his man, and the man with the jibbeh fell from his camel. Mahmoud fired his carbine, missed, and closed with his enemy. Macnamara, late of the 7th Hussars, swung his Arab sword as though it were the regulation blade and he in sword practice at Aldershot, and catching the blade of his desert foe, saved his own neck and gave the chance of a fair hand-to-hand combat. He met the swift strokes of the dervish with a cool certainty. His weariness passed from him; the joy of battle was on him. He was wounded twice-in the shoulder and the head. Now he took the offensive. Once or twice he circled slowly round the dervish, whose eyes blazed, whose mouth was foaming with fury; then he came on him with all the knowledge and the skill he had got in little Indian wars. He came on him, and the dervish fell, his head cut through like a cheese. Then Macnamara turned, to see Mahmoud and the third dervish on the ground, struggling in each other's arms. He started forward, but before he could reach the two, Mahmoud jumped to his feet with a reeking knife, and waved it in the air. "He was a kinsman, but he had to die," said Mahmoud as they mounted. He turned towards the bodies, then looked at the camels flying down the desert towards Dongola. "It is as God wills now," he said. "Their tribesmen will follow when they see the camels. See, my camel is wounded!" he added, with a gasp. IV Two days following, towards evening, two wounded men on foot trudged through the desert haggard and bent. The feet of one--an Arab--had on a pair of red slippers, the feet of the other were bare. Mahmoud and Macnamara were in a bad way. They were in very truth "walking against time." Their tongues were thick in their mouths, their feet were lacerated and bleeding, they carried nothing now save their pistols and their swords, and a small bag of dates hanging at Macnamara's belt. Prepared for the worst, they trudged on with blind hope, eager to die fighting if they must die, rather than to perish of hunger and thirst in the desert. Another day, and they would be beyond the radius of the Khalifa's power: but would they see another day? They thought that question answered, when, out of the evening pink and opal and the golden sand behind them, they saw three Arabs riding. The friends of the slain dervishes were come to take revenge, it seemed. The two men looked at each other, but they did not try to speak. Macnamara took from his shirt a bag of gold and offered it to Mahmoud. It was the balance of the payment promised to Ebn Mazar. Mahmoud salaamed and shook his head, then in a thick voice: "It is my life and thy life. If thou diest, I die. If thou livest, the gold is Ebn Haraf's. At Wady Halfa I will claim it, if it be the will of God." The words were thick and broken, but Macnamara understood him, and they turned and faced their pursuers, ready for life or death, intent to kill --and met the friends of Ebn Haraf, who had been hired to take them on to Wady Halfa! Their rescuers had been pursued, and had made a detour and forced march, thus coming on them before the time appointed. In three days more they were at Wady Halfa. Mahmoud lived to take back to Ebn Mazar the other hundred pounds of the gold Macnamara had looted from the Khalifa; and he also took something for himself from the British officers at Wady Halfa. For him nothing remained of the desperate journey but a couple of scars. It was different with Macnamara. He had to take a longer journey still. He was not glad to do it, for he liked the look of the English faces round him, and he liked what they said to him. Also, he was young enough to "go a-roaming still," as he said to Henry Withers. Besides, it sorely hurt his pride that no woman or child of his would be left behind to lament him. Still, when Henry told him he had to go, he took it like a man. "'Ere, it ain't no use," said Henry to him the day he got to Wady Halfa. "'Ere, old pal, it ain't no use. You 'ave to take your gruel, an' you 'ave to take it alone. What I want to tell yer quiet and friendly, old pal, is that yer drawfted out--all the way out--for good." "'Sh-did ye think I wasn't knowin' it, me b'y?" Macnamara's face clouded. "Did ye think I wasn't knowin' it? Go an' lave me alone," he added quickly. Henry Withers went out pondering, for he was sure it was not mere dying that fretted Macnamara. The next day the end of it all came. Henry Withers had pondered, and his mind was made up to do a certain thing. Towards evening he sat alone in the room where Macnamara lay asleep--almost his very last sleep. All at once Macnamara's eyes opened wide. "Kitty, Kitty, me darlin'," he murmured vaguely. Then he saw Henry Withers. "I'm dyin'," he said, breathing heavily. "Don't call anny one, Hinry," he added brokenly. "Dyin's that aisy--aisy enough, but for wan thing." "'Ere, speak out, Pete." "Sure, there's no wan but you, Withers, not a wife nor a child av me own to say, 'Poor Peter Macnamara, he is gone."' "There's one," said Henry Withers firmly. "There's one, old pal." "Who's that?" said Macnamara huskily. "Kitty." "She's no wife," said Macnamara, shaking his head. "Though she'd ha' been that, if it hadn't been for Mary Malone." "She's mine, an' she 'as the marriage lines," said Henry Withers. "An' there's a kid-wich ain't mine--born six months after! 'Oo says no kid won't remark, 'Poor Peter Macnamara, 'ee is gone, wich'ee was my fader!"' Macnamara trembled; the death-sweat dropped from his forehead as he raised himself up. "Kitty--a kid av mine--and she married to Hinry Withers--an' you saved me, too!--" Macnamara's eyes were wild. Henry Withers took his hand. "'Ere, it's all right, old pal," he said cheerfully. "What's the kid's name?" said Macnamara. "Peter--same as yours." The voice was scarce above a breath. "Sure, I didn't know at all. An' you forgive me, Hinry darlin', you forgive me?" "I've nothing to forgive," said Henry Withers. A smile lighted the blanched face of the dying man. "Give me love to the b'y--to Peter Macnamara," he said, and fell back with a smile on his face. "I'd do it again. Wot's a lie so long as it does good?" said Henry Withers afterwards to Holgate the engineer. "But tell 'er--tell Kitty-- no fear! I ain't no bloomin' fool. 'E's 'appy--that's enough. She'd cut me 'eart out, if she knowed I'd lied that lie." THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS I Dimsdale's prospects had suddenly ceased by the productive marriage of a rich uncle late in life; and then his career began. He went to Egypt at the time when men who knew things had their chance to do things. His information was general and discursive, but he had a real gift for science: an inheritance from a grandfather who received a peerage for abstruse political letters written to the Times and lectures before the Royal Institution. Besides, he had known well and loved inadvertently the Hon. Lucy Gray, who kept a kind of social kindergarten for confiding man, whose wisdom was as accurate as her face was fair, her manners simple, and her tongue demure and biting. Egypt offered an opportunity for a man like Dimsdale, and he always said that his going there was the one inspiration of his life. He did not know that this inspiration came from Lucy Gray. She had purposely thrown him in the way of General Duncan Pasha, who, making a reputation in Egypt, had been rewarded by a good command in England and a K.C.B. After a talk with the General, who had spent his Egyptian days in the agreeable strife with native premiers and hesitating Khedives, Dimsdale rose elated, with his mission in his hand. After the knock-down blow his uncle had given him, he was in a fighting mood. General Duncan's tale had come at the psychological moment, and hot with inspiration he had gone straight off to Lucy Gray with his steamship ticket in his pocket, and told her he was going to spend his life in the service of the pasha and the fellah. When she asked him a little bitingly what form his disciplined energy would take, he promptly answered: "Irrigation." She laughed in his face softly. "What do you know about irrigation?" she asked. "I can learn it--it's the game to play out there, I'm sure of that," he answered. "It doesn't sound distinguished," she remarked drily. Because she smiled satirically at him, and was unresponsive to his enthusiasm, and gave him no chance to tell her of the nobility of the work in which he was going to put his life; of the work of the Pharaohs in their day, the hope of Napoleon in his, and the creed Mahomet Ali held and practised, that the Nile was Egypt and Egypt was irrigation--because of this he became angry, said unkind things, drew acid comments upon himself, and left her with a last good-bye. He did not realise that he had played into the hands of Lucy Gray in a very childish manner. For in scheming that he should go to Egypt she had planned also that he should break with her; for she never had any real intention of marrying him, and yet it was difficult to make him turn his back on her, while at the same time she was too tender of his feelings to turn her back on him. She held that anger was the least injurious of all grounds for separation. In anger there was no humiliation. There was something dignified and brave about a quarrel, while a growing coolness which must end in what the world called "jilting" was humiliating. Besides, people who quarrel and separate may meet again and begin over again: impossible in the other circumstance. II In Egypt Dimsdale made a reputation; not at once, but he did make it. The first two years of his stay he had plenty to do. At the end of the time he could have drawn a map of the Nile from Uganda to the Barrages; he knew the rains in each district from the region of the Sadds to the Little Borillos; there was not a canal, from the small Bahr Shebin to the big Rayeh Menoufieh or the majestic Ibrahimieh, whose slope, mean velocity and discharge he did not know; and he carried in his mind every drainage cut and contour from Tamis to Damanhur, from Cairo to Beltim. He knew neither amusement nor society, for every waking hour was spent in the study of the Nile and what the Nile might do. After one of his journeys up the Nile, Imshi Pasha, the Minister of the Interior, said to him: "Ah, my dear friend, with whom be peace and power, what have you seen as you travel?" "I saw a fellah yesterday who has worked nine months on the corvee-- six months for the Government and three for a Pasha, the friend of the Government. He supplied his own spades and baskets; his lantern was at the service of the Khedive; he got his own food as best he could. He had one feddan of land in his own village, but he had no time to work it or harvest it. Yet he had to pay a house-tax of five piastres, a war-tax of five piastres, a camel-tax of five piastres, a palm-tax of five piastres, a salt-tax of nine piastres, a poll-tax of thirty piastres, a land-tax of ninety piastres. The canal for which he was taxed gave his feddan of land no water, for the Pasha, the friend of the Government, took all the water for his own land." Prince Imshi stifled a yawn. "I have never seen so much at one breath, my friend. And having seen, you feel now that Egypt must be saved--eh?" This Pasha was an Egyptian of the Egyptians--a Turk of the Turks, Oriental in mind with the polish of a Frenchman. He did not like Dimsdale, but he did not say so. He knew it was better to let a man have his fling and come a cropper over his own work than to have him unoccupied, excited, and troublesome, especially when he was an Englishman and knew about what he was talking. Imshi Pasha saw that Dimsdale was a dangerous man, as all enthusiasts are, no matter how right-headed; but it comforted him to think that many a reformer, from Amenhotep down, had, as it were, cut his own throat in the Irrigation Department. Some had tried to distribute water fairly, efficiently and scientifically, but most of them had got lost in the underbush of officialdom, and never got out of the wood again. This wood is called Backsheesh. Reformers like Dimsdale had drawn straight lines of purpose for the salvation of the country, and they had seen these straight lines go crooked under their very eyes, with a devilish smoothness. Therefore Imshi Pasha, being a wise man and a deep-dyed official who had never yet seen the triumph of the reformer and the honest Aryan, took Dimsdale's hands and said suddenly, with a sorrowful break in his voice: "Behold, my friend, to tell the whole truth as God gives it, it is time you have come. Egypt has waited for you--the man who sees and knows. I have watched you for two years. I have waited, but now the time is ripe. You shall stretch your arm over Egypt and it will rise to you. You shall have paper for plans, and men and money for travel and works-cuttings, and pumps, and sand-bags for banks and barrages. You shall be second in your department--but first in fact, for shall not I, your friend, be your chief? And you shall say 'Go there,' and they shall go, and 'Come here,' and they shall come. For my soul is with you for Egypt, O friend of the fellah and saviour of the land. Have I not heard of the great reservoirs you would make in the Fayoum, of the great dam at Assouan? Have I not heard, and waited, and watched? and now . . ." He paused and touched his breast and his forehead in respect. Dimsdale was well-nigh taken off his feet. It seemed too wonderful to be true--a free hand in Egypt, and under Imshi Pasha, the one able Minister of them all, who had, it was said, always before resisted the irrigation schemes of the foreigners, who believed only in the corroee and fate! Dimsdale rejoiced that at the beginning of his career he had so inspired the powerful one with confidence. With something very like emotion he thanked the Minister. "Yes, my dear friend," answered the Pasha, "the love of Egypt has helped us to understand each other. And we shall know each other better still by-and-by -by-and-by. . . . You shall be gazetted to-morrow. Allah preserve you from all error!" III This began the second period of Dimsdale's career. As he went forth from Cairo up the Nile with great designs in his mind, and an approving Ministry behind him, he had the feeling of a hunter with a sure quarry before him. Now he remembered Lucy Gray; and he flushed with a delightful and victorious indignation remembering his last hour with her. He even sentimentally recalled a song he once wrote for her sympathetic voice. The song was called "No Man's Land." He recited two of the verses to himself now, with a kind of unction: "And we have wandered far, my dear, and we have loved apace; A little hut we built upon the sand; The sun without to brighten it-within your golden face: O happy dream, O happy No Man's Land! "The pleasant furniture of spring was set in all the fields, And sweet and wholesome all the herbs and flowers; Our simple cloth, my dear, was spread with all the orchard yields, And frugal only were the passing hours." A wave of feeling passed over him suddenly. Those verses were youth, and youth was gone, with all its flushed and spirited dalliance and reckless expenditure of feeling. Youth was behind him, and love was none of his, nor any cares of home, nor wife nor children; nothing but ambition now, and the vanity of successful labour. Sitting on the deck of the Sefi at El Wasta, he looked round him. In the far distance was the Maydoum Pyramid, "the Imperfect One," unexplored by man these thousands of years, and all round it the soft yellowish desert, with a mirage quivering over it in the distance, a mirage of trees and water and green hills. A caravan lounged its way slowly into the waste. At the waterside, here and there devout Mahommedans were saying their prayers, now standing, now bowing towards the east, now kneeling and touching the ground with the forehead. Then, piercing and painfully musical, came the call of the Muezzin from the turret of the mosque a quarter of a mile away. Near by the fellah worked in his onion-field; and on the khiassas loaded with feddan at the shore, just out of the current, and tied up for the night, sat the riverine folk eating their dourha and drinking black coffee. Now Dimsdale noticed that, nearer still, just below the Sefi, on the shore, sat a singing-girl, an a'l'meh, with a darkfaced Arab beside her, a kemengeh in his lap. Looking down, Dimsdale caught their eyes, nodded to them, and the singing-girl and the kemengeh-player got to their feet and salaamed. The girl's face was in the light of evening. Her dark skin took on a curious reddish radiance, her eyes were lustrous and her figure beautiful. The kemengeh-player stood with his instrument ready, and he lifted it in a kind of appeal. Dimsdale beckoned them up on deck. Lighting a cigarette, he asked the a'l'meh to sing. Her voice had the curious vibrant note of the Arab, and the words were in singular sympathy with Dimsdale's thoughts: "I have a journey to make, and perils are in hiding, Many moons must I travel, many foes meet; A morsel of bread my food, a goolah of water for drinking, Desert sand for my bed, the moonlight my sheet. . . . Come, my love, to the scented palms: Behold, the hour of remembrance!" For the moment Dimsdale ceased to be the practical scientist--he was all sentimentalist. He gave himself the luxury of retrospection, he enjoyed the languorous moment; the music, the voice, the tinkle of the tambourine, the girl herself, sinuous, sensuous. It struck him that he had never seen an a'l'meh so cleanly and so finely dressed, so graceful, so delicate in manner. It struck him also that the kemengeh-player was a better-class Arab than he had ever met. The man's face attracted him, fascinated him. As he looked it seemed familiar. He studied it, he racked his brain to recall it. Suddenly he remembered that it was like the face of a servant of Imshi Pasha--a kind of mouffetish of his household. Now he studied the girl. He had never seen her before; of that he was sure. He ordered them coffee, and handed the girl a goldpiece. As he did so, he noticed that among several paste rings she wore one of value. All at once the suspicion struck him: Imshi Pasha had sent the girl--to try him perhaps, to gain power over him maybe, as women had gained power over strong men before. But why should Imshi Pasha send the girl and his mouffetish on this miserable mission? Was not Imshi Pasha his friend? Quietly smoking his cigarette, he said to the man: "You may go, Mahommed Melik; I have had enough. Take your harem with you," he added quickly. The man scarcely stirred a muscle, the woman flushed deeply. "So be it, effendi," answered the man, rising unmoved, for his sort know not shame. He beckoned to the girl. For an instant she stood hesitating, then with sudden fury she threw on the table beside him the gold-piece Dimsdale had given her. "Magnoon!" she said, with blazing eyes, and ran after the man. "I may be a fool, my dear," Dimsdale said after her; "but you might say the same of the Pasha who sent you here." Dimsdale was angry for a moment, and he said some hard words of Imshi Pasha as he watched the two decoys hurry away into the dusk. He thought it nothing more serious than an attempt to know of what stuff he was made. He went to bed with dreams of vast new areas watered for summer rice, of pumping-stations lifting millions of cubic metres of water per day; of dykes to be protected by bulrushes and birriya weeds; of great desert areas washed free of carbonates and sulphates and selling at twenty pounds an acre; of a green Egypt with three crops, and himself the Regenerator, the Friend of the Fellah. In this way he soon forgot that he had remembered Lucy Gray, and the incident of the girl ceased to trouble. His progress up the river, however, was marked by incidents whose significance he did not at once see. Everywhere his steamer stopped people came with backsheesh in the shape of butter, cream, flour, eggs, fowls, cloths, and a myriad things. Jewels from mummy cases, antichi, donkeys, were offered him: all of which he steadfastly refused, sometimes with contumely. Officials besought his services with indelicate bribes, and by devious hospitalities and attentions more than one governor sought to bring his projects for irrigation in line with their own particular duplicities. "Behold, effendi," said one to whom Dimsdale's honesty was monstrous, "may God preserve you from harm--the thing has not been known, that all men shall fare alike! It is not the will of God." "It is the will of God that water shall be distributed as I am going to distribute it; and that is, according to every man's just claim," answered Dimsdale stubbornly, and he did not understand the vague smile which met his remark. It took him a long time to realise that his plans, approved by Imshi Pasha, were constantly coming to naught; that after three years' work, and extensive invention and travel, and long reports to the Ministry, and encouragement on paper, he had accomplished nothing; and that he had no money with which to accomplish anything. Day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out, when the whole land lay sweltering with the moist heat of flood-time, in the period of the khamsin, in the dry heat which turned the hair grey and chapped the skin like a bitter wind, he slaved and schemed, the unconquerable enthusiast, who built houses which immediately fell down. Fifty times his schemes seemed marching to fulfilment; but something always intervened. He wrote reams of protest, he made many arid journeys to Cairo, he talked himself hoarse; and always he was met by the sympathetic smiling of Imshi Pasha, by his encouraging approval. "Ah, my dear friend, may. Heaven smooth your path! It is coming right. All will be well. Time is man's friend. The dam shall be built. The reservoirs shall be made. But we are in the hands of the nations. Poor Egypt cannot act alone--our Egypt that we love. The Council sits to-morrow--we shall see." This was the fashion of the Pasha's speech. After the sitting of the Council, Dimsdale would be sent away with unfruitful promises. Futility was written over the Temple of Endeavour, and by-and-by Dimsdale lost hope and health and heart. He had Nilotic fever, he had ophthalmia; and hot with indomitable will, he had striven to save one great basin from destruction, for one whole week, without sleeping or resting night and day: working like a navvy, sleeping like a fellah, eating like a Bedouin. Then the end came. He was stricken down, and lay above Assouan in a hut by the shore, from which he could see the Temple of Philoe, and Pharaoh's Bed, and the great rocks, and the swift-flowing Nile. Here lay his greatest hope, the splendid design of his life--the great barrage of Assouan. With it he could add to the wealth of Egypt one-half. He had believed in it, had worked for it and how much else! and his dreams and his working had come to naught. He was sick to death--not with illness alone, but with disappointment and broken hopes and a burden beyond the powers of any one man. He saw all now: all the falsehood and treachery and corruption. He realised that Imshi Pasha had given him his hand that he might ruin himself, that his own schemes might overwhelm him in the end. At every turn he had been frustrated--by Imshi Pasha: three years of underground circumvention, with a superficial approval and a mock support. He lay and looked at the glow, the sunset glow of pink and gold on the Libyan Hills, and his fevered eyes scarcely saw them; they were only a part of this last helpless, senseless dream. Life itself was very far away-practical, generous, hot-blooded life. This distance was so ample and full and quiet, this mystery of the desert and the sky was so immense, the spirit of it so boundless, that in the judgment of his soul nothing mattered now. As he lay in reverie, he heard his servant talking: it was the tale of the Mahdi and British valour and hopeless fighting, and a red martyrdom set like a fixed star in a sunless sky. What did it matter--what did it all matter, in this grave tremendous quiet wherein his soul was hasting on? The voices receded; he was alone with the immeasurable world; he fell asleep. IV When he woke again it was to find at his bedside a kavass from Imshi Pasha at Cairo. He shrank inwardly. The thought of the Pasha merely nauseated him, but to the kavass he said: "What do you want, Mahommed?" The kavass smiled; his look was agreeably mysterious, his manner humbly confidential, his tongue officially deliberate. "Efendina chok yasha--May the great lord live for ever! I bring good news." "Leave of absence, eh?"--rejoined Dimsdale feebly, yet ironically; for that was the thing he expected now of the Minister, who had played him like a ball on a racquet these three years past. The kavass handed him a huge blue envelope, salaaming impressively. "May my life be thy sacrifice, effendi," he said, and salaamed again. "It is my joy to be near you." "We have tasted your absence and found it bitter, Mahommed," Dimsdale answered in kind, with a touch of plaintive humour, letting the envelope fall from his fingers on the bed, so little was he interested in any fresh move of Imshi Pasha. "More tricks," he said to himself between his teeth. "Shall I open it, effendi? It is the word that thy life shall carry large plumes." "What a blitherer you are, Mahommed! Rip it open and let's have it over." The kavass handed him a large letter, pedantically and rhetorically written; and Dimsdale, scarce glancing at it, sleepily said: "Read it out, Mahommed. Skip the flummery in it, if you know how." Two minutes later Dimsdale sat up aghast with a surprise that made his heart thump painfully, made his head go round. For the letter conveyed to him the fact that there had been placed to the credit of his department, subject to his own disposal for irrigation works, the sum of eight hundred thousand pounds; and appended was the copy of a letter from the Caisse de la Dette granting three-fourths of this sum, and authorising its expenditure. Added to all was a short scrawl from Imshi Pasha himself, beginning, "God is with the patient, my dear friend," and ending with the remarkable statement: "Inshallah, we shall now reap the reward of our labours in seeing these great works accomplished at last, in spite of the suffering thrust upon us by our enemies--to whom perdition come." Eight hundred thousand pounds! In a week Dimsdale was at work again. In another month he was at Cairo, and the night after his arrival he attended a ball at the Khedive's Palace. To Fielding Bey he poured out the wonder of his soul at the chance that had been given him at last. He seemed to think it was his own indomitable patience, the work that he had done, and his reports, which had at last shamed the Egyptian Government and the Caisse de la Dette into doing the right thing for the country and to him. He was dumfounded when Fielding replied: "Not much, my Belisarius. As Imshi Pasha always was, so he will be to the end. It wasn't Imshi Pasha, and it wasn't English influence, and it wasn't the Caisse de la Dette, each by its lonesome, or all together by initiative." "What was it--who was it, then?" inquired Dimsdale breathlessly. "Was it you?--I know you've worked for me. It wasn't backsheesh anyhow. But Imshi Pasha didn't turn honest and patriotic for nothing--I know that." Fielding, who had known him all his life, looked at him curiously for a moment, and then, in a far-away, sort of voice, made recitative: "'Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray, And when I crossed the wild, I chanced to see at break of day The solitary child.'" Dimsdale gasped. "Lucy Gray!" he said falteringly. Fielding nodded. "You didn't know, of course. She's been here for six months--has more influence than the whole diplomatic corps. Twists old Imshi Pasha round her little finger. She has played your game handsomely--I've been in her confidence. Wordsworth was wrong when he wrote: "'No mate, no comrade Lucy knew; She dwelt on a wide moor: The sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door--' For my wife's been her comrade. And her mate--would you like to know her mate? She's married, you know." Dimsdale's face was pale. He was about to reply, when a lady came into view, leaning on the arm of an Agency Secretary. At first she did not see Dimsdale, then within a foot or two of him she suddenly stopped. The Secretary felt her hand twitch on his arm; then she clenched the fingers firmly on her fan. "My dear Dimsdale," Fielding said, "you must let me introduce you to Mrs. St. John." Dimsdale behaved very well, the lady perfectly. She held out both her hands to him. "We are old, old friends, Mr. Dimsdale and I. I have kept the next dance for him," she added, turning to Fielding, who smiled placidly and left with the Secretary. For a moment there was silence, then she said quietly: "Let me congratulate you on all you have done. Everybody is talking about you. They say it is wonderful how you have made things come your way. . . . I am very, very glad." Dimsdale was stubborn and indignant and anything a man can be whose amour propre has had a shock. "I know all," he said bluntly. "I know what you've done for me." "Well, are you as sorry I did it as I am to know you know it?" she asked just a little faintly, for she had her own sort of heart, and it worked in its own sort of way. "Why this sudden interest in my affairs? You laughed at me when I made up my mind to come to Egypt." "That was to your face. I sent you to Egypt." "You sent me?" "I made old General Duncan talk to you. The inspiration was mine. I also wrote to Fielding Pasha--and at last he wrote to me to come." "You--why--" "I know more about irrigation than any one in England," she continued illogically. "I've studied it. "I have all your reports. That's why I could help you here. They saw I knew." Dimsdale shook a little. "I didn't understand," he said. "You don't know my husband, I think," she added, rising slowly. "He is coming yonder with Imshi Pasha." "I know of him--as a millionaire," he answered, in a tone of mingled emotions. "I must introduce you," she said, and seemed to make an effort to hold herself firmly. "He will have great power here. Come and see me to-morrow," she added in an even voice. "Please come--Harry." In another minute Dimsdale heard the great financier Arnold St. John say that the name of Dimsdale would be for ever honoured in Egypt. GLOSSARY Aiwa, effendi----Yea, noble sir. Allah----God. Allah-haly 'm alla-haly----A singsong of river-workers. Allah Kerim----God is bountiful. Allshu Akbar----God is most Great. A'l'meh----Female professional singers Antichi----Antiquities. Backsheesh----Tip, douceur, bribe. Balass----Earthen vessel for carrying water. Basha----Pasha. Bersim----Grass. Bimbashi----Major. Bishareen----A native tribe. Bismillah----In the name of God. Bowab----A doorkeeper. Corvee----Forced labour. Dahabeah----A Nile houseboat with large lateen sails. Darabukkeh----A drum made of a skin stretched over an earthenware funnel. Doash----(Literally) Treading. A ceremony performed on the return of the Holy Carpet from Mecca. Dourha----Maize. Effendina----Highness. El aadah----The ordinary. El Azhar----The Arab University at Cairo. Fantasia----Celebration with music, dancing, and processions. Farshoot----The name of a native tribe. Fatihah----The opening chapter of the Koran, recited at weddings, etc. Feddan----The most common measure of land--a little less than an acre. Also dried hay. Fellah (plu. fellaheen)----The Egyptian peasant. Felucca----A small boat, propelled by oars or sails. Fessikh----Salted fish. Ghaffirs----Humble village officials. Ghawdzee----The tribe of public dancing-girls. A female of this tribe is called "Ghazeeyeh," and a man "Ghazee," but the plural Ghawazee is generally understood as applying to the female. Ghimah----The Mahommedan Sunday. Gippy----Colloquial name for an Egyptian soldier. Goolah----Porous water-jar of Nile mud. Hakim----Doctor. Hanouti----Funeral attendants. Hari-kari----An Oriental form of suicide. Hashish----Leaves of hemp. Inshallah----God willing. Jibbeh----Long coat or smock, worn by dervishes. Kavass----An orderly. Kemengeh----A cocoanut fiddle. Khamsin----A hot wind of Egypt and the Soudan. Khedive----The title granted in 1867 by the Sultan of Turkey to the ruler of Egypt. Khiassa----Small boat. Khowagah----Gentleman. Koran----The Scriptures of the Mahommedans. Kourbash----A stick, a whip. La ilaha illa-llah----There is no God but God. Mafish----Nothing. Magnoon----Fool. Malaish----No matter. Mamour----A magistrate. Mankalah----A game. Mastaba----A bench. Mejidieh----A Turkish Order. Mirkaz----District. Moghassils----Washers of the dead. Moufetish----High steward. Mudir----A Governor of a Mudirieh or province. Muezzin----The sheikh of the mosque who calls to prayer. Mushrabieh----Lattice window. Naboot----Quarter staff. Narghileh----The Oriental tobacco-pipe. Nehar-ak koom said----Greeting to you. Omdah----The head of a village. Ooster----One of the best sort. Ramadan----The Mahommedan season of fasting. Reis----Pilot. Saadat el basha----Excellency. Sais----Groom. Sakkia----Persian water-wheel. Salaam----A salutation of the East; an obeisance, performed by bowing very low and placing the right palm on the forehead and on the breast. Sarraf----An accountant. Shadoof----Bucket and pole used by natives for lifting water. Sha'er----A reciter. (The singular of Sho'ara, properly signifying a poet.) Sheikh-el-beled----Head of a village. Shintiyan----Very wide trousers, worn by the women of the middle and higher orders. Sitt----"The Lady." Tarboosh----Fez or native turban. Tarah----A veil for the head. Ulema----Learned men. Waled----A boy. Wekeel----A deputy. Welee----A favourite of Heaven; colloquially a saint. Yashmak----A veil for the lower part of the face. Yelek----A long vest or smock, worn over the shirt and shintiyan. Zeriba----A palisade. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Anger was the least injurious of all grounds for separation Dangerous man, as all enthusiasts are Oriental would think not less of him for dissimulation The friendship of man is like the shade of the acacia Vanity of successful labour ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "DONOVAN PASHA": A look too bright for joy, too intense for despair All the world's mad but thee and me Anger was the least injurious of all grounds for separation As if our penalties were only paid by ourselves! Credulity, easily transmutable into superstition Dangerous man, as all enthusiasts are He had tasted freedom; he was near to license His gift for lying was inexpressible One favour is always the promise of another Oriental would think not less of him for dissimulation Paradoxes which make for laughter--and for tears The friendship of man is like the shade of the acacia Vanity of successful labour What is crime in one country, is virtue in another Women only admitted to Heaven by the intercession of husbands THE WEAVERS By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS BOOK I I. AS THE SPIRIT MOVED II. THE GATES OF THE WORLD III. BANISHED IV. THE CALL BOOK II V. THE WIDER WAY VI. "HAST THOU NEVER BILLED A MANY" VII. THE COMPACT VIII. FOR HIS SOUL'S SAKE AND THE LAND'S SAKE IX. THE LETTER, THE NIGHT, AND THE WOMAN X. THE FOUR WHO KNEW XI. AGAINST THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT XII. THE JEHAD AND THE LIONS XIII. ACHMET THE ROPEMAKER STRIKES XIV. BEYOND THE PALE BOOK III XV. SOOLSBY'S HAND UPON THE CURTAIN XVI. THE DEBT AND THE ACCOUNTING XVII. THE WOMAN OF THE CROSS-ROADS XVIII. TIME, THE IDOL-BREAKER XIX. SHARPER THAN A SWORD XX. EACH AFTER HIS OWN ORDER XXI. "THERE IS NOTHING HIDDEN WHICH SHALL NOT BE REVEALED" XXII. AS IN A GLASS DARKLY XXIII. THE TENTS OF CUSHAN XXIV. THE QUESTIONER XXV. THE VOICE THROUGH THE DOOR XXVI. "I OWE YOU NOTHING" XXVII. THE AWAKENING BOOK IV XXVIII. NAHOUM TURNS THE SCREW XXIX. THE RECOIL XXX. LACEY MOVES XXXI. THE STRUGGLE IN THE DESERT XXXII. FORTY STRIPES SAVE ONE XXXIII. THE DARK INDENTURE XXXIV. NAHOUM DROPS THE MASK BOOK V XXXV. THE FLIGHT OF THE WOUNDED XXXVI. "IS IT ALWAYS SO-IN LIFE?" XXXVII. THE FLYING SHUTTLE XXXVIII. JASPER KIMBER SPEAKS XXXIX. FAITH JOURNEYS TO LONDON BOOK VI XL. HYLDA SEEKS NAHOUM XLI. IN THE LAND OF SHINAR XLII. THE LOOM OF DESTINY INTRODUCTION When I turn over the hundreds of pages of this book, I have a feeling that I am looking upon something for which I have no particular responsibility, though it has a strange contour of familiarity. It is as though one looks upon a scene in which one had lived and moved, with the friendly yet half-distant feeling that it once was one's own possession but is so no longer. I should think the feeling to be much like that of the old man whose sons, gone to distant places, have created their own plantations of life and have themselves become the masters of possessions. Also I suppose that when I read the story through again from the first page to the last, I shall recreate the feeling in which I lived when I wrote it, and it will become a part of my own identity again. That distance between himself and his work, however, which immediately begins to grow as soon as a book leaves the author's hands for those of the public, is a thing which, I suppose, must come to one who produces a work of the imagination. It is no doubt due to the fact that every piece of art which has individuality and real likeness to the scenes and character it is intended to depict is done in a kind of trance. The author, in effect, self-hypnotises himself, has created an atmosphere which is separate and apart from that of his daily surroundings, and by virtue of his imagination becomes absorbed in that atmosphere. When the book is finished and it goes forth, when the imagination is relaxed and the concentration of mind is withdrawn, the atmosphere disappears, and then. One experiences what I feel when I take up 'The Weavers' and, in a sense, wonder how it was done, such as it is. The frontispiece of the English edition represents a scene in the House of Commons, and this brings to my mind a warning which was given me similar to that on my entering new fields outside the one in which I first made a reputation in fiction. When, in a certain year, I determined that I would enter the House of Commons I had many friends who, in effect, wailed and gnashed their teeth. They said that it would be the death of my imaginative faculties; that I should never write anything any more; that all the qualities which make literature living and compelling would disappear. I thought this was all wrong then, and I know it is all wrong now. Political life does certainly interfere with the amount of work which an author may produce. He certainly cannot write a book every year and do political work as well, but if he does not attempt to do the two things on the same days, as it were, but in blocks of time devoted to each separately and respectively, he will only find, as I have found, that public life the conflict of it, the accompanying attrition of mind, the searching for the things which will solve the problems of national life, the multitudinous variations of character with which one comes in contact, the big issues suddenly sprung upon the congregation of responsible politicians, all are stimulating to the imagination, invigorating to the mind, and marvellously freshening to every literary instinct. No danger to the writer lies in doing political work, if it does not sap his strength and destroy his health. Apart from that, he should not suffer. The very spirit of statesmanship is imagination, vision; and the same quality which enables an author to realise humanity for a book is necessary for him to realise humanity in the crowded chamber of a Parliament. So far as I can remember, whatever was written of The Weavers, no critic said that it lacked imagination. Some critics said it was too crowded with incident; that there was enough incident in it for two novels; some said that the sweep was too wide, but no critic of authority declared that the book lacked vision or the vivacity of a living narrative. It is not likely that I shall ever write again a novel of Egypt, but I have made my contribution to Anglo-Egyptian literature, and I do not think I failed completely in showing the greatness of soul which enabled one man to keep the torch of civilisation, of truth, justice, and wholesome love alight in surroundings as offensive to civilisation as was Egypt in the last days of Ismail Pasha--a time which could be well typified by the words put by Bulwer Lytton in the mouth of Cardinal Richelieu: "I found France rent asunder, Sloth in the mart and schism in the temple; Broils festering to rebellion; and weak laws Rotting away with rust in antique sheaths. I have re-created France; and, from the ashes Of the old feudal and decrepit carcase, Civilisation on her luminous wings Soars, phoenix-like, to Jove!" Critics and readers have endeavoured to identify the main characteristics of The Weavers with figures in Anglo-Egyptian and official public life. David Claridge was, however, a creature of the imagination. It has been said that he was drawn from General Gordon. I am not conscious of having taken Gordon for David's prototype, though, as I was saturated with all that had been written about Gordon, there is no doubt that something of that great man may have found its way into the character of David Claridge. The true origin of David Claridge, however, may be found in a short story called 'All the World's Mad', in Donovan Pasha, which was originally published by Lady Randolph Churchill in an ambitious but defunct magazine called 'The Anglo-Saxon Review'. The truth is that David Claridge had his origin in a fairly close understanding of, and interest in, Quaker life. I had Quaker relatives through the marriage of a connection of my mother, and the original of Benn Claridge, the uncle of David, is still alive, a very old man, who in my boyhood days wore the broad brim and the straight preacher-like coat of the old-fashioned Quaker. The grandmother of my wife was also a Quaker, and used the "thee" and "thou" until the day of her death. Here let me say that criticism came to me from several quarters both in England and America on the use of these words thee and thou, and statements were made that the kind of speech which I put into David Claridge's mouth was not Quaker speech. For instance, they would not have it that a Quaker would say, "Thee will go with me"--as though they were ashamed of the sweet inaccuracy of the objective pronoun being used in the nominative; but hundreds of times I have myself heard Quakers use "thee" in just such a way in England and America. The facts are, however, that Quakers differ extensively in their habits, and there grew up in England among the Quakers in certain districts a sense of shame for false grammar which, to say the least, was very childish. To be deliberately and boldly ungrammatical, when you serve both euphony and simplicity, is merely to give archaic charm, not to be guilty of an offence. I have friends in Derbyshire who still say "Thee thinks," etc., and I must confess that the picture of a Quaker rampant over my deliberate use of this well-authenticated form of speech produced to my mind only the effect of an infuriated sheep, when I remembered the peaceful attribute of Quaker life and character. From another quarter came the assurance that I was wrong when I set up a tombstone with a name upon it in a Quaker graveyard. I received a sarcastic letter from a lady on the borders of Sussex and Surrey upon this point, and I immediately sent her a first-class railway ticket to enable her to visit the Quaker churchyard at Croydon, in Surrey, where dead and gone Quakers have tombstones by the score, and inscriptions on them also. It is a good thing to be accurate; it is desperately essential in a novel. The average reader, in his triumph at discovering some slight error of detail, would consign a masterpiece of imagination, knowledge of life and character to the rubbish-heap. I believe that 'The Weavers' represents a wider outlook of life, closer understanding of the problems which perplex society, and a clearer view of the verities than any previous book written by me, whatever its popularity may have been. It appealed to the British public rather more than 'The Right of Way', and the great public of America and the Oversea Dominions gave it a welcome which enabled it to take its place beside 'The Right of Way', the success of which was unusual. NOTE This book is not intended to be an historical novel, nor are its characters meant to be identified with well-known persons connected with the history of England or of Egypt; but all that is essential in the tale is based upon, and drawn from, the life of both countries. Though Egypt has greatly changed during the past generation, away from Cairo and the commercial centres the wheels of social progress have turned but slowly, and much remains as it was in the days of which this book is a record in the spirit of the life, at least. G. P. "Dost thou spread the sail, throw the spear, swing the axe, lay thy hand upon the plough, attend the furnace door, shepherd the sheep upon the hills, gather corn from the field, or smite the rock in the quarry? Yet, whatever thy task, thou art even as one who twists the thread and throws the shuttle, weaving the web of Life. Ye are all weavers, and Allah the Merciful, does He not watch beside the loom?" BOOK I CHAPTER I AS THE SPIRIT MOVED The village lay in a valley which had been the bed of a great river in the far-off days when Ireland, Wales and Brittany were joined together and the Thames flowed into the Seine. The place had never known turmoil or stir. For generations it had lived serenely. Three buildings in the village stood out insistently, more by the authority of their appearance and position than by their size. One was a square, red-brick mansion in the centre of the village, surrounded by a high, redbrick wall enclosing a garden. Another was a big, low, graceful building with wings. It had once been a monastery. It was covered with ivy, which grew thick and hungry upon it, and it was called the Cloistered House. The last of the three was of wood, and of no great size--a severely plain but dignified structure, looking like some council-hall of a past era. Its heavy oak doors and windows with diamond panes, and its air of order, cleanliness and serenity, gave it a commanding influence in the picture. It was the key to the history of the village--a Quaker Meeting-house. Involuntarily the village had built itself in such a way that it made a wide avenue from the common at one end to the Meeting-house on the gorse- grown upland at the other. With a demure resistance to the will of its makers the village had made itself decorative. The people were unconscious of any attractiveness in themselves or in their village. There were, however, a few who felt the beauty stirring around them. These few, for their knowledge and for the pleasure which it brought, paid the accustomed price. The records of their lives were the only notable history of the place since the days when their forefathers suffered for the faith. One of these was a girl--for she was still but a child when she died; and she had lived in the Red Mansion with the tall porch, the wide garden behind, and the wall of apricots and peaches and clustering grapes. Her story was not to cease when she was laid away in the stiff graveyard behind the Meeting-house. It was to go on in the life of her son, whom to bring into the world she had suffered undeserved, and loved with a passion more in keeping with the beauty of the vale in which she lived than with the piety found on the high-backed seats in the Quaker Meeting- house. The name given her on the register of death was Mercy Claridge, and a line beneath said that she was the daughter of Luke Claridge, that her age at passing was nineteen years, and that "her soul was with the Lord." Another whose life had given pages to the village history was one of noble birth, the Earl of Eglington. He had died twenty years after the time when Luke Claridge, against the then custom of the Quakers, set up a tombstone to Mercy Claridge's memory behind the Meeting-house. Only thrice in those twenty years had he slept in a room of the Cloistered House. One of those occasions was the day on which Luke Claridge put up the grey stone in the graveyard, three years after his daughter's death. On the night of that day these two men met face to face in the garden of the Cloistered House. It was said by a passer-by, who had involuntarily overheard, that Luke Claridge had used harsh and profane words to Lord Eglington, though he had no inkling of the subject of the bitter talk. He supposed, however, that Luke had gone to reprove the other for a wasteful and wandering existence; for desertion of that Quaker religion to which his grandfather, the third Earl of Eglington, had turned in the second half of his life, never visiting his estates in Ireland, and residing here among his new friends to his last day. This listener--John Fairley was his name--kept his own counsel. On two other occasions had Lord Eglington visited the Cloistered House in the years that passed, and remained many months. Once he brought his wife and child. The former was a cold, blue-eyed Saxon of an old family, who smiled distantly upon the Quaker village; the latter, a round-headed, warm-faced youth, with a bold, menacing eye, who probed into this and that, rushed here and there as did his father; now built a miniature mill; now experimented at some peril in the laboratory which had been arranged in the Cloistered House for scientific experiments; now shot partridges in the fields where partridges had not been shot for years; and was as little in the picture as his adventurous father, though he wore a broad-brimmed hat, smiling the while at the pain it gave to the simple folk around him. And yet once more the owner of the Cloistered House returned alone. The blue-eyed lady was gone to her grave; the youth was abroad. This time he came to die. He was found lying on the floor of his laboratory with a broken retort in fragments beside him. With his servant, Luke Claridge was the first to look upon him lying in the wreck of his last experiment, a spirit-lamp still burning above him, in the grey light of a winter's morning. Luke Claridge closed the eyes, straightened the body, and crossed the hands over the breast which had been the laboratory of many conflicting passions of life. The dead man had left instructions that his body should be buried in the Quaker graveyard, but Luke Claridge and the Elders prevented that--he had no right to the privileges of a Friend; and, as the only son was afar, and no near relatives pressed the late Earl's wishes, the ancient family tomb in Ireland received all that was left of the owner of the Cloistered House, which, with the estates in Ireland and the title, passed to the wandering son. CHAPTER II THE GATES OF THE WORLD Stillness in the Meeting-house, save for the light swish of one graveyard-tree against the window-pane, and the slow breathing of the Quaker folk who filled every corner. On the long bench at the upper end of the room the Elders sat motionless, their hands on their knees, wearing their hats; the women in their poke-bonnets kept their gaze upon their laps. The heads of all save three were averted, and they were Luke Claridge, his only living daughter, called Faith, and his dead daughter's son David, who kept his eyes fixed on the window where the twig flicked against the pane. The eyes of Faith, who sat on a bench at one side, travelled from David to her father constantly; and if, once or twice, the plain rebuke of Luke Claridge's look compelled her eyes upon her folded hands, still she was watchful and waiting, and seemed demurely to defy the convention of unblinking silence. As time went on, others of her sex stole glances at Mercy's son from the depths of their bonnets; and at last, after over an hour, they and all were drawn to look steadily at the young man upon whose business this Meeting of Discipline had been called. The air grew warmer and warmer, but no one became restless; all seemed as cool of face and body as the grey gowns and coats with grey steel buttons which they wore. At last a shrill voice broke the stillness. Raising his head, one of the Elders said: "Thee will stand up, friend." He looked at David. With a slight gesture of relief the young man stood up. He was good to look at-clean-shaven, broad of brow, fine of figure, composed of carriage, though it was not the composure of the people by whom he was surrounded. They were dignified, he was graceful; they were consistently slow of movement, but at times his quick gestures showed that he had not been able to train his spirit to that passiveness by which he lived surrounded. Their eyes were slow and quiet, more meditative than observant; his were changeful in expression, now abstracted, now dark and shining as though some inner fire was burning. The head, too, had a habit of coming up quickly with an almost wilful gesture, and with an air which, in others, might have been called pride. "What is thy name?" said another owl-like Elder to him. A gentle, half-amused smile flickered at the young man's lips for an instant, then, "David Claridge--still," he answered. His last word stirred the meeting. A sort of ruffle went through the atmosphere, and now every eye was fixed and inquiring. The word was ominous. He was there on his trial, and for discipline; and it was thought by all that, as many days had passed since his offence was committed, meditation and prayer should have done their work. Now, however, in the tone of his voice, as it clothed the last word, there was something of defiance. On the ear of his grandfather, Luke Claridge, it fell heavily. The old man's lips closed tightly, he clasped his hands between his knees with apparent self-repression. The second Elder who had spoken was he who had once heard Luke Claridge use profane words in the Cloistered House. Feeling trouble ahead, and liking the young man and his brother Elder, Luke Claridge, John Fairley sought now to take the case into his own hands. "Thee shall never find a better name, David," he said, "if thee live a hundred years. It hath served well in England. This thee didst do. While the young Earl of Eglington was being brought home, with noise and brawling, after his return to Parliament, thee mingled among the brawlers; and because some evil words were said of thy hat and thy apparel, thee laid about thee, bringing one to the dust, so that his life was in peril for some hours to come. Jasper Kimber was his name." "Were it not that the smitten man forgave thee, thee would now be in a prison cell," shrilly piped the Elder who had asked his name. "The fight was fair," was the young man's reply. "Though I am a Friend, the man was English." "Thee was that day a son of Belial," rejoined the shrill Elder. "Thee did use thy hands like any heathen sailor--is it not the truth?" "I struck the man. I punished him--why enlarge?" "Thee is guilty?" "I did the thing." "That is one charge against thee. There are others. Thee was seen to drink of spirits in a public-house at Heddington that day. Twice-- thrice, like any drunken collier." "Twice," was the prompt correction. There was a moment's pause, in which some women sighed and others folded and unfolded their hands on their laps; the men frowned. "Thee has been a dark deceiver," said the shrill Elder again, and with a ring of acrid triumph; "thee has hid these things from our eyes many years, but in one day thee has uncovered all. Thee--" "Thee is charged," interposed Elder Fairley, "with visiting a play this same day, and with seeing a dance of Spain following upon it." "I did not disdain the music," said the young man drily; "the flute, of all instruments, has a mellow sound." Suddenly his eyes darkened, he became abstracted, and gazed at the window where the twig flicked softly against the pane, and the heat of summer palpitated in the air. "It has good grace to my ear," he added slowly. Luke Claridge looked at him intently. He began to realize that there were forces stirring in his grandson which had no beginning in Claridge blood, and were not nurtured in the garden with the fruited wall. He was not used to problems; he had only a code, which he had rigidly kept. He had now a glimmer of something beyond code or creed. He saw that the shrill Elder was going to speak. He intervened. "Thee is charged, David," he said coldly, "with kissing a woman--a stranger and a wanton--where the four roads meet 'twixt here and yonder town." He motioned towards the hills. "In the open day," added the shrill Elder, a red spot burning on each withered cheek. "The woman was comely," said the young man, with a tone of irony, recovering an impassive look. A strange silence fell, the women looked down; yet they seemed not so confounded as the men. After a moment they watched the young man with quicker flashes of the eye. "The answer is shameless," said the shrill Elder. "Thy life is that of a carnal hypocrite." The young man said nothing. His face had become very pale, his lips were set, and presently he sat down and folded his arms. "Thee is guilty of all?" asked John Fairley. His kindly eye was troubled, for he had spent numberless hours in this young man's company, and together they had read books of travel and history, and even the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe, though drama was anathema to the Society of Friends--they did not realize it in the life around them. That which was drama was either the visitation of God or the dark deeds of man, from which they must avert their eyes. Their own tragedies they hid beneath their grey coats and bodices; their dirty linen they never washed in public, save in the scandal such as this where the Society must intervene. Then the linen was not only washed, but duly starched, sprinkled, and ironed. "I have answered all. Judge by my words," said David gravely. "Has repentance come to thee? Is it thy will to suffer that which we may decide for thy correction?" It was Elder Fairley who spoke. He was determined to control the meeting and to influence its judgment. He loved the young man. David made no reply; he seemed lost in thought. "Let the discipline proceed--he hath an evil spirit," said the shrill Elder. "His childhood lacked in much," said Elder Fairley patiently. To most minds present the words carried home--to every woman who had a child, to every man who had lost a wife and had a motherless son. This much they knew of David's real history, that Mercy Claridge, his mother, on a visit to the house of an uncle at Portsmouth, her mother's brother, had eloped with and was duly married to the captain of a merchant ship. They also knew that, after some months, Luke Claridge had brought her home; and that before her child was born news came that the ship her husband sailed had gone down with all on board. They knew likewise that she had died soon after David came, and that her father, Luke Claridge, buried her in her maiden name, and brought the boy up as his son, not with his father's name but bearing that name so long honoured in England, and even in the far places of the earth--for had not Benn Claridge, Luke's brother, been a great carpet-merchant, traveller, and explorer in Asia Minor, Egypt, and the Soudan--Benn Claridge of the whimsical speech, the pious life? All this they knew; but none of them, to his or her knowledge, had ever seen David's father. He was legendary; though there was full proof that the girl had been duly married. That had been laid before the Elders by Luke Claridge on an occasion when Benn Claridge, his brother was come among them again from the East. At this moment of trial David was thinking of his uncle, Benn Claridge, and of his last words fifteen years before when going once again to the East, accompanied by the Muslim chief Ebn Ezra, who had come with him to England on the business of his country. These were Benn Claridge's words: "Love God before all, love thy fellow-man, and thy conscience will bring thee safe home, lad." "If he will not repent, there is but one way," said the shrill Elder. "Let there be no haste," said Luke Claridge, in a voice that shook a little in his struggle for self-control. Another heretofore silent Elder, sitting beside John Fairley, exchanged words in a whisper with him, and then addressed them. He was a very small man with a very high stock and spreading collar, a thin face, and large wide eyes. He kept his chin down in his collar, but spoke at the ceiling like one blind, though his eyes were sharp enough on occasion. His name was Meacham. "It is meet there shall be time for sorrow and repentance," he said. "This, I pray you all, be our will: that for three months David live apart, even in the hut where lived the drunken chair-maker ere he disappeared and died, as rumour saith--it hath no tenant. Let it be that after to-morrow night at sunset none shall speak to him till that time be come, the first day of winter. Till that day he shall speak to no man, and shall be despised of the world, and--pray God--of himself. Upon the first day of winter let it be that he come hither again and speak with us." On the long stillness of assent that followed there came a voice across the room, from within a grey-and-white bonnet, which shadowed a delicate face shining with the flame of the spirit within. It was the face of Faith Claridge, the sister of the woman in the graveyard, whose soul was "with the Lord," though she was but one year older and looked much younger than her nephew, David. "Speak, David," she said softly. "Speak now. Doth not the spirit move thee?" She gave him his cue, for he had of purpose held his peace till all had been said; and he had come to say some things which had been churning in his mind too long. He caught the faint cool sarcasm in her tone, and smiled unconsciously at her last words. She, at least, must have reasons for her faith in him, must have grounds for his defence in painful days to come; for painful they must be, whether he stayed to do their will, or went into the fighting world where Quakers were few and life composite of things they never knew in Hamley. He got to his feet and clasped his hands behind his back. After an instant he broke silence. "All those things of which I am accused, I did; and for them is asked repentance. Before that day on which I did these things was there complaint, or cause for it? Was my life evil? Did I think in secret that which might not be done openly? Well, some things I did secretly. Ye shall hear of them. I read where I might, and after my taste, many plays, and found in them beauty and the soul of deep things. Tales I have read, but a few, and John Milton, and Chaucer, and Bacon, and Montaigne, and Arab poets also, whose books my uncle sent me. Was this sin in me?" "It drove to a day of shame for thee," said the shrill Elder. He took no heed, but continued: "When I was a child I listened to the lark as it rose from the meadow; and I hid myself in the hedge that, unseen, I might hear it sing; and at night I waited till I could hear the nightingale. I have heard the river singing, and the music of the trees. At first I thought that this must be sin, since ye condemn the human voice that sings, but I could feel no guilt. I heard men and women sing upon the village green, and I sang also. I heard bands of music. One instrument seemed to me more than all the rest. I bought one like it, and learned to play. It was the flute--its note so soft and pleasant. I learned to play it--years ago--in the woods of Beedon beyond the hill, and I have felt no guilt from then till now. For these things I have no repentance." "Thee has had good practice in deceit," said the shrill Elder. Suddenly David's manner changed. His voice became deeper; his eyes took on that look of brilliance and heat which had given Luke Claridge anxious thoughts. "I did, indeed, as the spirit moved me, even as ye have done." "Blasphemer, did the spirit move thee to brawl and fight, to drink and curse, to kiss a wanton in the open road? What hath come upon thee?" Again it was the voice of the shrill Elder. "Judge me by the truth I speak," he answered. "Save in these things my life has been an unclasped book for all to read." "Speak to the charge of brawling and drink, David," rejoined the little Elder Meacham with the high collar and gaze upon the ceiling. "Shall I not speak when I am moved? Ye have struck swiftly; I will draw the arrow slowly from the wound. But, in truth, ye had good right to wound. Naught but kindness have I had among you all; and I will answer. Straightly have I lived since my birth. Yet betimes a torturing unrest of mind was used to come upon me as I watched the world around us. I saw men generous to their kind, industrious and brave, beloved by their fellows; and I have seen these same men drink and dance and give themselves to coarse, rough play like young dogs in a kennel. Yet, too, I have seen dark things done in drink--the cheerful made morose, the gentle violent. What was the temptation? What the secret? Was it but the low craving of the flesh, or was it some primitive unrest, or craving of the soul, which, clouded and baffled by time and labour and the wear of life, by this means was given the witched medicament--a false freedom, a thrilling forgetfulness? In ancient days the high, the humane, in search of cure for poison, poisoned themselves, and then applied the antidote. He hath little knowledge and less pity for sin who has never sinned. The day came when all these things which other men did in my sight I did--openly. I drank with them in the taverns--twice I drank. I met a lass in the way. I kissed her. I sat beside her at the roadside and she told me her brief, sad, evil story. One she had loved had left her. She was going to London. I gave her what money I had--" "And thy watch," said a whispering voice from the Elders' bench. "Even so. And at the cross-roads I bade her goodbye with sorrow." "There were those who saw," said the shrill voice from the bench. "They saw what I have said--no more. I had never tasted spirits in my life. I had never kissed a woman's lips. Till then I had never struck my fellow-man; but before the sun went down I fought the man who drove the lass in sorrow into the homeless world. I did not choose to fight; but when I begged the man Jasper Kimber for the girl's sake to follow and bring her back, and he railed at me and made to fight me, I took off my hat, and there I laid him in the dust." "No thanks to thee that he did not lie in his grave," observed the shrill Elder. "In truth I hit hard," was the quiet reply. "How came thee expert with thy fists?" asked Elder Fairley, with the shadow of a smile. "A book I bought from London, a sack of corn, a hollow leather ball, and an hour betimes with the drunken chair-maker in the hut by the lime-kiln on the hill. He was once a sailor and a fighting man." A look of blank surprise ran slowly along the faces of the Elders. They were in a fog of misunderstanding and reprobation. "While yet my father"--he looked at Luke Claridge, whom he had ever been taught to call his father--"shared the great business at Heddington, and the ships came from Smyrna and Alexandria, I had some small duties, as is well known. But that ceased, and there was little to do. Sports are forbidden among us here, and my body grew sick, because the mind had no labour. The world of work has thickened round us beyond the hills. The great chimneys rise in a circle as far as eye can see on yonder crests; but we slumber and sleep." "Enough, enough," said a voice from among the women. "Thee has a friend gone to London--thee knows the way. It leads from the cross-roads!" Faith Claridge, who had listened to David's speech, her heart panting, her clear grey eyes--she had her mother's eyes--fixed benignly on him, turned to the quarter whence the voice came. Seeing who it was--a widow who, with no demureness, had tried without avail to bring Luke Claridge to her--her lips pressed together in a bitter smile, and she said to her nephew clearly: "Patience Spielman hath little hope of thee, David. Hope hath died in her." A faint, prim smile passed across the faces of all present, for all knew Faith's allusion, and it relieved the tension of the past half-hour. From the first moment David began to speak he had commanded his hearers. His voice was low and even; but it had also a power which, when put to sudden quiet use, compelled the hearer to an almost breathless silence, not so much to the meaning of the words, but to the tone itself, to the man behind it. His personal force was remarkable. Quiet and pale ordinarily, his clear russet-brown hair falling in a wave over his forehead, when roused, he seemed like some delicate engine made to do great labours. As Faith said to him once, "David, thee looks as though thee could lift great weights lightly." When roused, his eyes lighted like a lamp, the whole man seemed to pulsate. He had shocked, awed, and troubled his listeners. Yet he had held them in his power, and was master of their minds. The interjections had but given him new means to defend himself. After Faith had spoken he looked slowly round. "I am charged with being profane," he said. "I do not remember. But is there none among you who has not secretly used profane words and, neither in secret nor openly, has repented? I am charged with drinking. On one day of my life I drank openly. I did it because something in me kept crying out, 'Taste and see!' I tasted and saw, and know; and I know that oblivion, that brief pitiful respite from trouble, which this evil tincture gives. I drank to know; and I found it lure me into a new careless joy. The sun seemed brighter, men's faces seemed happier, the world sang about me, the blood ran swiftly, thoughts swarmed in my brain. My feet were on the mountains, my hands were on the sails of great ships; I was a conqueror. I understood the drunkard in the first withdrawal begotten of this false stimulant. I drank to know. Is there none among you who has, though it be but once, drunk secretly as I drank openly? If there be none, then I am condemned." "Amen," said Elder Fairley's voice from the bench. "In the open way by the cross-roads I saw a woman. I saw she was in sorrow. I spoke to her. Tears came to her eyes. I took her hand, and we sat down together. Of the rest I have told you. I kissed her--a stranger. She was comely. And this I know, that the matter ended by the cross-roads, and that by and forbidden paths have easy travel. I kissed the woman openly--is there none among you who has kissed secretly, and has kept the matter hidden? For him I struck and injured, it was fair. Shall a man be beaten like a dog? Kimber would have beaten me." "Wherein has it all profited?" asked the shrill Elder querulously. "I have knowledge. None shall do these things hereafter but I shall understand. None shall go venturing, exploring, but I shall pray for him." "Thee will break thy heart and thy life exploring," said Luke Claridge bitterly. Experiment in life he did not understand, and even Benn Claridge's emigration to far lands had ever seemed to him a monstrous and amazing thing, though it ended in the making of a great business in which he himself had prospered, and from which he had now retired. He suddenly realized that a day of trouble was at hand with this youth on whom his heart doted, and it tortured him that he could not understand. "By none of these things shall I break my life," was David's answer now. For a moment he stood still and silent, then all at once he stretched out his hands to them. "All these things I did were against our faith. I desire forgiveness. I did them out of my own will; I will take up your judgment. If there be no more to say, I will make ready to go to old Soolsby's hut on the hill till the set time be passed." There was a long silence. Even the shrill Elder's head was buried in his breast. They were little likely to forego his penalty. There was a gentle inflexibility in their natures born of long restraint and practised determination. He must go out into blank silence and banishment until the first day of winter. Yet, recalcitrant as they held him, their secret hearts were with him, for there was none of them but had had happy commerce with him; and they could think of no more bitter punishment than to be cut off from their own society for three months. They were satisfied he was being trained back to happiness and honour. A new turn was given to events, however. The little wizened Elder Meacham said: "The flute, friend--is it here?" "I have it here," David answered. "Let us have music, then." "To what end?" interjected the shrill Elder. "He hath averred he can play," drily replied the other. "Let us judge whether vanity breeds untruth in him." The furtive brightening of the eyes in the women was represented in the men by an assumed look of abstraction in most; in others by a bland assumption of judicial calm. A few, however, frowned, and would have opposed the suggestion, but that curiosity mastered them. These watched with darkening interest the flute, in three pieces, drawn from an inner pocket and put together swiftly. David raised the instrument to his lips, blew one low note, and then a little run of notes, all smooth and soft. Mellowness and a sober sweetness were in the tone. He paused a moment after this, and seemed questioning what to play. And as he stood, the flute in his hands, his thoughts took flight to his Uncle Benn, whose kindly, shrewd face and sharp brown eyes were as present to him, and more real, than those of Luke Claridge, whom he saw every day. Of late when he had thought of his uncle, however, alternate depression and lightness of spirit had possessed him. Night after night he had troubled sleep, and he had dreamed again and again that his uncle knocked at his door, or came and stood beside his bed and spoke to him. He had wakened suddenly and said "Yes" to a voice which seemed to call to him. Always his dreams and imaginings settled round his Uncle Benn, until he had found himself trying to speak to the little brown man across the thousand leagues of land and sea. He had found, too, in the past that when he seemed to be really speaking to his uncle, when it seemed as though the distance between them had been annihilated, that soon afterwards there came a letter from him. Yet there had not been more than two or three a year. They had been, however, like books of many pages, closely written, in Arabic, in a crabbed characteristic hand, and full of the sorrow and grandeur and misery of the East. How many books on the East David had read he would hardly have been able to say; but something of the East had entered into him, something of the philosophy of Mahomet and Buddha, and the beauty of Omar Khayyam had given a touch of colour and intellect to the narrow faith in which he had been schooled. He had found himself replying to a question asked of him in Heddington, as to how he knew that there was a God, in the words of a Muslim quoted by his uncle: "As I know by the tracks in the sand whether a Man or Beast has passed there, so the heaven with its stars, the earth with its fruits, show me that God has passed." Again, in reply to the same question, the reply of the same Arab sprang to his lips--"Does the Morning want a Light to see it by?" As he stood with his flute--his fingers now and then caressingly rising and falling upon its little caverns, his mind travelled far to those regions he had never seen, where his uncle traded, and explored. Suddenly, the call he had heard in his sleep now came to him in this waking reverie. His eyes withdrew from the tree at the window, as if startled, and he almost called aloud in reply; but he realised where he was. At last, raising the flute to his lips, as the eyes of Luke Claridge closed with very trouble, he began to play. Out in the woods of Beedon he had attuned his flute to the stir of leaves, the murmur of streams, the song of birds, the boom and burden of storm; and it was soft and deep as the throat of the bell-bird of Australian wilds. Now it was mastered by the dreams he had dreamed of the East: the desert skies, high and clear and burning, the desert sunsets, plaintive and peaceful and unvaried--one lovely diffusion, in which day dies without splendour and in a glow of pain. The long velvety tread of the camel, the song of the camel-driver, the monotonous chant of the river-man, with fingers mechanically falling on his little drum, the cry of the eagle of the Libyan Hills, the lap of the heavy waters of the Dead Sea down by Jericho, the battle-call of the Druses beyond Damascus, the lonely gigantic figures at the mouth of the temple of Abou Simbel, looking out with the eternal question to the unanswering desert, the delicate ruins of moonlit Baalbec, with the snow mountains hovering above, the green oases, and the deep wells where the caravans lay down in peace--all these were pouring their influences on his mind in the little Quaker village of Hamley where life was so bare, so grave. The music he played was all his own, was instinctively translated from all other influences into that which they who listened to him could understand. Yet that sensuous beauty which the Quaker Society was so concerned to banish from any part in their life was playing upon them now, making the hearts of the women beat fast, thrilling them, turning meditation into dreams, and giving the sight of the eyes far visions of pleasure. So powerful was this influence that the shrill Elder twice essayed to speak in protest, but was prevented by the wizened Elder Meacham. When it seemed as if the aching, throbbing sweetness must surely bring denunciation, David changed the music to a slow mourning cadence. It was a wail of sorrow, a march to the grave, a benediction, a soft sound of farewell, floating through the room and dying away into the mid-day sun. There came a long silence after, and David sat with unmoving look upon the distant prospect through the window. A woman's sob broke the air. Faith's handkerchief was at her eyes. Only one quick sob, but it had been wrung from her by the premonition suddenly come that the brother-- he was brother more than nephew--over whom her heart had yearned had, indeed, come to the cross-roads, and that their ways would henceforth divide. The punishment or banishment now to be meted out to him was as nothing. It meant a few weeks of disgrace, of ban, of what, in effect, was self-immolation, of that commanding justice of the Society which no one yet save the late Earl of Eglington had defied. David could refuse to bear punishment, but such a possibility had never occurred to her or to any one present. She saw him taking his punishment as surely as though the law of the land had him in its grasp. It was not that which she was fearing. But she saw him moving out of her life. To her this music was the prelude of her tragedy. A moment afterwards Luke Claridge arose and spoke to David in austere tones: "It is our will that thee begone to the chair-maker's but upon the hill till three months be passed, and that none have speech with thee after sunset to-morrow even." "Amen," said all the Elders. "Amen," said David, and put his flute into his pocket, and rose to go. CHAPTER III BANISHED The chair-maker's hut lay upon the north hillside about half-way between the Meeting-house at one end of the village and the common at the other end. It commanded the valley, had no house near it, and was sheltered from the north wind by the hill-top which rose up behind it a hundred feet or more. No road led to it--only a path up from the green of the village, winding past a gulley and the deep cuts of old rivulets now over grown by grass or bracken. It got the sun abundantly, and it was protected from the full sweep of any storm. It had but two rooms, the floor was of sanded earth, but it had windows on three sides, east, west, and south, and the door looked south. Its furniture was a plank bed, a few shelves, a bench, two chairs, some utensils, a fireplace of stone, a picture of the Virgin and Child, and of a cardinal of the Church of Rome with a red hat--for the chair-maker had been a Roman Catholic, the only one of that communion in Hamley. Had he been a Protestant his vices would have made him anathema, but, being what he was, his fellow- villagers had treated him with kindness. After the half-day in which he was permitted to make due preparations, lay in store of provisions, and purchase a few sheep and hens, hither came David Claridge. Here, too, came Faith, who was permitted one hour with him before he began his life of willing isolation. Little was said as they made the journey up the hill, driving the sheep before them, four strong lads following with necessities--flour, rice, potatoes, and suchlike. Arrived, the goods were deposited inside the hut, the lads were dismissed, and David and Faith were left alone. David looked at his watch. They had still a handful of minutes before the parting. These flew fast, and yet, seated inside the door, and looking down at the village which the sun was bathing in the last glowing of evening, they remained silent. Each knew that a great change had come in their hitherto unchanging life, and it was difficult to separate premonition from substantial fact. The present fact did not represent all they felt, though it represented all on which they might speak together now. Looking round the room, at last Faith said: "Thee has all thee needs, David? Thee is sure?" He nodded. "I know not yet how little man may need. I have lived in plenty." At that moment her eyes rested on the Cloistered House. "The Earl of Eglington would not call it plenty." A shade passed over David's face. "I know not how he would measure. Is his own field so wide?" "The spread of a peacock's feather." "What does thee know of him?" David asked the question absently. "I have eyes to see, Davy." The shadows from that seeing were in her eyes as she spoke, but he did not observe them. "Thee sees but with half an eye," she continued. "With both mine I have seen horses and carriages, and tall footmen, and wine and silver, and gilded furniture, and fine pictures, and rolls of new carpet--of Uncle Benn's best carpets, Davy--and a billiard-table, and much else." A cloud slowly gathered over David's face, and he turned to her with an almost troubled surprise. "Thee has seen these things--and how?" "One day--thee was in Devon--one of the women was taken ill. They sent for me because the woman asked it. She was a Papist; but she begged that I should go with her to the hospital, as there was no time to send to Heddington for a nurse. She had seen me once in the house of the toll- gate keeper. Ill as she was, I could have laughed, for, as we went in the Earl's carriage to the hospital-thirty miles it was--she said she felt at home with me, my dress being so like a nun's. It was then I saw the Cloistered House within and learned what was afoot." "In the Earl's carriage indeed--and the Earl?" "He was in Ireland, burrowing among those tarnished baubles, his titles, and stripping the Irish Peter to clothe the English Paul." "He means to make Hamley his home? From Ireland these furnishings come?" "So it seems. Henceforth the Cloistered House will have its doors flung wide. London and all the folk of Parliament will flutter along the dunes of Hamley." "Then the bailiff will sit yonder within a year, for he is but a starved Irish peer." "He lives to-day as though he would be rich tomorrow. He bids for fame and fortune, Davy." "'Tis as though a shirtless man should wear a broadcloth coat over a cotton vest." "The world sees only the broadcloth coat. For the rest--" "For the rest, Faith?" "They see the man's face, and--" His eyes were embarrassed. A thought had flashed into his mind which he considered unworthy, for this girl beside him was little likely to dwell upon the face of a renegade peer, whose living among them was a constant reminder of his father's apostasy. She was too fine, dwelt in such high spheres, that he could not think of her being touched by the glittering adventures of this daring young member of Parliament, whose book of travels had been published, only to herald his understood determination to have office in the Government, not in due time, but in his own time. What could there be in common between the sophisticated Eglington and this sweet, primitively wholesome Quaker girl? Faith read what was passing in his mind. She flushed--slowly flushed until her face--and eyes were one soft glow, then she laid a hand upon his arm and said: "Davy, I feel the truth about him--no more. Nothing of him is for thee or me. His ways are not our ways." She paused, and then said solemnly: "He hath a devil. That I feel. But he hath also a mind, and a cruel will. He will hew a path, or make others hew it for him. He will make or break. Nothing will stand in his way, neither man nor thing, those he loves nor those he hates. He will go on--and to go on, all means, so they be not criminal, will be his. Men will prophesy great things for him--they do so now. But nothing they prophesy, Davy, keeps pace with his resolve." "How does thee know these things?" His question was one of wonder and surprise. He had never before seen in her this sharp discernment and criticism. "How know I, Davy? I know him by studying thee. What thee is not he is. What he is thee is not." The last beams of the sun sent a sudden glint of yellow to the green at their feet from the western hills, rising far over and above the lower hills of the village, making a wide ocean of light, at the bottom of which lay the Meeting-house and the Cloistered House, and the Red Mansion with the fruited wall, and all the others, like dwellings at the bottom of a golden sea. David's eyes were on the distance, and the far-seeing look was in his face which had so deeply impressed Faith in the Meeting-house, by which she had read his future. "And shall I not also go on?" he asked. "How far, who can tell?" There was a plaintive note in her voice--the unavailing and sad protest of the maternal spirit, of the keeper of the nest, who sees the brood fly safely away, looking not back. "What does thee see for me afar, Faith?" His look was eager. "The will of God, which shall be done," she said with a sudden resolution, and stood up. Her hands were lightly clasped before her like those of Titian's Mater Dolorosa among the Rubens and Tintorettos of the Prado, a lonely figure, whose lot it was to spend her life for others. Even as she already had done; for thrice she had refused marriages suitable and possible to her. In each case she had steeled her heart against loving, that she might be all in all to her sister's child and to her father. There is no habit so powerful as the habit of care of others. In Faith it came as near being a passion as passion could have a place in her even-flowing blood, under that cool flesh, governed by a heart as fair as the apricot blossoms on the wall in her father's garden. She had been bitterly hurt in the Meeting-house; as bitterly as is many a woman when her lover has deceived her. David had acknowledged before them all that he had played the flute secretly for years! That he should have played it was nothing; that she should not have shared his secret, and so shared his culpability before them all, was a wound which would take long to heal. She laid her hand upon his shoulder suddenly with a nervous little motion. "And the will of God thee shall do to His honour, though thee is outcast to-day. . . . But, Davy, the music-thee kept it from me." He looked up at her steadily; he read what was in her mind. "I hid it so, because I would not have thy conscience troubled. Thee would go far to smother it for me; and I was not so ungrateful to thee. I did it for good to thee." A smile passed across her lips. Never was woman so grateful, never wound so quickly healed. She shook her head sadly at him, and stilling the proud throbbing of her heart, she said: "But thee played so well, Davy!" He got up and turned his head away, lest he should laugh outright. Her reasoning--though he was not worldly enough to call it feminine, and though it scarce tallied with her argument--seemed to him quite her own. "How long have we?" he said over his shoulder. "The sun is yet five minutes up, or more," she said, a little breathlessly, for she saw his hand inside his coat, and guessed his purpose. "But thee will not dare to play--thee will not dare," she said, but more as an invitation than a rebuke. "Speech was denied me here, but not my music. I find no sin in it." She eagerly watched him adjust the flute. Suddenly she drew to him the chair from the doorway, and beckoned him to sit down. She sat where she could see the sunset. The music floated through the room and down the hillside, a searching sweetness. She kept her face ever on the far hills. It went on and on. At last it stopped. David roused himself, as from a dream. "But it is dark!" he said, startled. "It is past the time thee should be with me. My banishment began at sunset." "Are all the sins to be thine?" she asked calmly. She had purposely let him play beyond the time set for their being together. "Good-night, Davy." She kissed him on the cheek. "I will keep the music for the sin's remembrance," she added, and went out into the night. CHAPTER IV THE CALL "England is in one of those passions so creditable to her moral sense, so illustrative of her unregulated virtues. We are living in the first excitement and horror of the news of the massacre of Christians at Damascus. We are full of righteous and passionate indignation. 'Punish --restore the honour of the Christian nations' is the proud appeal of prelate, prig, and philanthropist, because some hundreds of Christians who knew their danger, yet chose to take up their abode in a fanatical Muslim city of the East, have suffered death." The meeting had been called in answer to an appeal from Exeter Hall. Lord Eglington had been asked to speak, and these were among his closing words. He had seen, as he thought, an opportunity for sensation. Politicians of both sides, the press on all hands, were thundering denunciations upon the city of Damascus, sitting insolent and satiated in its exquisite bloom of pear and nectarine, and the deed itself was fading into that blank past of Eastern life where there "are no birds in last year's nest." If he voyaged with the crowd, his pennant would be lost in the clustering sails! So he would move against the tide, and would startle, even if he did not convince. "Let us not translate an inflamed religious emotion into a war," he continued. "To what good? Would it restore one single life in Damascus? Would it bind one broken heart? Would it give light to one darkened home? Let us have care lest we be called a nation of hypocrites. I will neither support nor oppose the resolution presented; I will content myself with pointing the way to a greater national self-respect." Mechanically, a few people who had scarcely apprehended the full force of his remarks began to applaud; but there came cries of "'Sh! 'Sh!" and the clapping of hands suddenly stopped. For a moment there was absolute silence, in which the chairman adjusted his glasses and fumbled with the agenda paper in his confusion, scarcely knowing what to do. The speaker had been expected to second the resolution, and had not done so. There was an awkward silence. Then, in a loud whisper, some one said: "David, David, do thee speak." It was the voice of Faith Claridge. Perturbed and anxious, she had come to the meeting with her father. They had not slept for nights, for the last news they had had of Benn Claridge was from the city of Damascus, and they were full of painful apprehensions. It was the eve of the first day of winter, and David's banishment was over. Faith had seen David often at a distance--how often had she stood in her window and looked up over the apricot-wall to the chair-maker's hut on the hill! According to his penalty David had never come to Hamley village, but had lived alone, speaking to no one, avoided by all, working out his punishment. Only the day before the meeting he had read of the massacre at Damascus from a newspaper which had been left on his doorstep overnight. Elder Fairley had so far broken the covenant of ostracism and boycott, knowing David's love for his Uncle Benn. All that night David paced the hillside in anxiety and agitation, and saw the sun rise upon a new world--a world of freedom, of home-returning, yet a world which, during the past four months, had changed so greatly that it would never seem the same again. The sun was scarce two hours high when Faith and her father mounted the hill to bring him home again. He had, however, gone to Heddington to learn further news of the massacre. He was thinking of his Uncle Benn- all else could wait. His anxiety was infinitely greater than that of Luke Claridge, for his mind had been disturbed by frequent premonitions; and those sudden calls in his sleep-his uncle's voice--ever seemed to be waking him at night. He had not meant to speak at the meeting, but the last words of the speaker decided him; he was in a flame of indignation. He heard the voice of Faith whisper over the heads of the people. "David, David, do thee speak." Turning, he met her eyes, then rose to his feet, came steadily to the platform, and raised a finger towards the chairman. A great whispering ran through the audience. Very many recognised him, and all had heard of him--the history of his late banishment and self- approving punishment were familiar to them. He climbed the steps of the platform alertly, and the chairman welcomed him with nervous pleasure. Any word from a Quaker, friendly to the feeling of national indignation, would give the meeting the new direction which all desired. Something in the face of the young man, grown thin and very pale during the period of long thought and little food in the lonely and meditative life he had led; something human and mysterious in the strange tale of his one day's mad doings, fascinated them. They had heard of the liquor he had drunk, of the woman he had kissed at the cross-roads, of the man he had fought, of his discipline and sentence. His clean, shapely figure, and the soft austerity of the neat grey suit he wore, his broad- brimmed hat pushed a little back, showing well a square white forehead-- all conspired to send a wave of feeling through the audience, which presently broke into cheering. Beginning with the usual formality, he said: "I am obliged to differ from nearly every sentiment expressed by the Earl of Eglington, the member for Levizes, who has just taken his seat." There was an instant's pause, the audience cheered, and cries of delight came from all parts of the house. "All good counsel has its sting," he continued, "but the good counsel of him who has just spoken is a sting in a wound deeper than the skin. The noble Earl has bidden us to be consistent and reasonable. I have risen here to speak for that to which mere consistency and reason may do cruel violence. I am a man of peace, I am the enemy of war--it is my faith and creed; yet I repudiate the principle put forward by the Earl of Eglington, that you shall not clinch your hand for the cause which is your heart's cause, because, if you smite, the smiting must be paid for." He was interrupted by cheers and laughter, for the late event in his own life came to them to point his argument. "The nation that declines war may be refusing to inflict that just punishment which alone can set the wrong-doers on the better course. It is not the faith of that Society to which I belong to decline correction lest it may seem like war." The point went home significantly, and cheering followed. "The high wall of Tibet, a stark refusal to open the door to the wayfarer, I can understand; but, friend"--he turned to the young peer--"friend, I cannot understand a defence of him who opens the door upon terms of mutual hospitality, and then, in the red blood of him who has so contracted, blots out the just terms upon which they have agreed. Is that thy faith, friend?" The repetition of the word friend was almost like a gibe, though it was not intended as such. There was none present, however, but knew of the defection of the Earl's father from the Society of Friends, and they chose to interpret the reference to a direct challenge. It was a difficult moment for the young Earl, but he only smiled, and cherished anger in his heart. For some minutes David spoke with force and power, and he ended with passionate solemnity. His voice rang out: "The smoke of this burning rises to Heaven, the winds that wail over scattered and homeless dust bear a message of God to us. In the name of Mahomet, whose teaching condemns treachery and murder, in the name of the Prince of Peace, who taught that justice which makes for peace, I say it is England's duty to lay the iron hand of punishment upon this evil city and on the Government in whose orbit it shines with so deathly a light. I fear it is that one of my family and of my humble village lies beaten to death in Damascus. Yet not because of that do I raise my voice here to-day. These many years Benn Claridge carried his life in his hands, and in a good cause it was held like the song of a bird, to be blown from his lips in the day of the Lord. I speak only as an Englishman. I ask you to close your minds against the words of this brilliant politician, who would have you settle a bill of costs written in Christian blood, by a promise to pay, got through a mockery of armed display in those waters on which once looked the eyes of the Captain of our faith. Humanity has been put in the witness-box of the world; let humanity give evidence." Women wept. Men waved their hats and cheered; the whole meeting rose to its feet and gave vent to its feelings. For some moments the tumult lasted, Eglington looking on with face unmoved. As David turned to leave the table, however, he murmured, "Peacemaker! Peacemaker!" and smiled sarcastically. As the audience resumed their seats, two people were observed making their way to the platform. One was Elder Fairley, leading the way to a tall figure in a black robe covering another coloured robe, and wearing a large white turban. Not seeing the new-comers, the chairman was about to put the resolution; but a protesting hand from John Fairley stopped him, and in a strange silence the two new-comers mounted the platform. David rose and advanced to meet them. There flashed into his mind that this stranger in Eastern garb was Ebn Ezra Bey, the old friend of Benn Claridge, of whom his uncle had spoken and written so much. The same instinct drew Ebn Ezra Bey to him--he saw the uncle's look in the nephew's face. In a breathless stillness the Oriental said in perfect English, with a voice monotonously musical: "I came to thy house and found thee not. I have a message for thee from the land where thine uncle sojourned with me." He took from a wallet a piece of paper and passed it to David, adding: "I was thine uncle's friend. He hath put off his sandals and walketh with bare feet!" David read eagerly. "It is time to go, Davy," the paper said. "All that I have is thine. Go to Egypt, and thee shall find it so. Ebn Ezra Bey will bring thee. Trust him as I have done. He is a true man, though the Koran be his faith. They took me from behind, Davy, so that I was spared temptation --I die as I lived, a man of peace. It is too late to think how it might have gone had we met face to face; but the will of God worketh not according to our will. I can write no more. Luke, Faith, and Davy--dear Davy, the night has come, and all's well. Good morrow, Davy. Can you not hear me call? I have called thee so often of late! Good morrow! Good morrow! . . . I doff my hat, Davy--at last--to God!" David's face whitened. All his visions had been true visions, his dreams true dreams. Brave Benn Claridge had called to him at his door--" Good morrow! Good morrow! Good morrow!" Had he not heard the knocking and the voice? Now all was made clear. His path lay open before him--a far land called him, his quiet past was infinite leagues away. Already the staff was in his hands and the cross-roads were sinking into the distance behind. He was dimly conscious of the wan, shocked face of Faith in the crowd beneath him, which seemed blurred and swaying, of the bowed head of Luke Claridge, who, standing up, had taken off his hat in the presence of this news of his brother's death which he saw written in David's face. David stood for a moment before the great throng, numb and speechless. "It is a message from Damascus," he said at last, and could say no more. Ebn Ezra Bey turned a grave face upon the audience. Will you hear me?" he said. "I am an Arab." "Speak--speak!" came from every side. "The Turk hath done his evil work in Damascus," he said. "All the Christians are dead--save one; he hath turned Muslim, and is safe." His voice had a note of scorn. "It fell sudden and swift like a storm in summer. There were no paths to safety. Soldiers and those who led them shared in the slaying. As he and I who had travelled far together these many years sojourned there in the way of business, I felt the air grow colder, I saw the cloud gathering. I entreated, but he would not go. If trouble must come, then he would be with the Christians in their peril. At last he saw with me the truth. He had a plan of escape. There was a Christian weaver with his wife in a far quarter--against my entreaty he went to warn them. The storm broke. He was the first to fall, smitten in 'that street called Straight.' I found him soon after. Thus did he speak to me--even in these words: 'The blood of women and children shed here to-day shall cry from the ground. Unprovoked the host has turned wickedly upon his guest. The storm has been sown, and the whirlwind must be reaped. Out of this evil good shall come. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?' These were his last words to me then. As his life ebbed out, he wrote a letter which I have brought hither to one"--he turned to David--"whom he loved. At the last he took off his hat, and lay with it in his hands, and died. . . . I am a Muslim, but the God of pity, of justice, and of right is my God; and in His name be it said that was a crime of Sheitan the accursed." In a low voice the chairman put the resolution. The Earl of Eglington voted in its favour. Walking the hills homeward with Ebn Ezra Bey, Luke, Faith, and John Fairley, David kept saying over to himself the words of Benn Claridge: "I have called thee so often of late. Good morrow! Good morrow! Good morrow! Can you not hear me call?" ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: There is no habit so powerful as the habit of care of others THE WEAVERS By Gilbert Parker BOOK II. V. THE WIDER WAY VI. "HAST THOU NEVER BILLED A MANY" VII. THE COMPACT VIII. FOR HIS SOUL'S SAKE AND THE LAND'S SAKE IX. THE LETTER, THE NIGHT, AND THE WOMAN X. THE FOUR WHO KNEW XI. AGAINST THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT XII. THE JEHAD AND THE LIONS XIII. ACHMET THE ROPEMAKER STRIKES XIV. BEYOND THE PALE CHAPTER V THE WIDER WAY Some months later the following letter came to David Claridge in Cairo from Faith Claridge in Hamley: David, I write thee from the village and the land of the people which thou didst once love so well. Does thee love them still? They gave thee sour bread to eat ere thy going, but yet thee didst grind the flour for the baking. Thee didst frighten all who knew thee with thy doings that mad midsummer time. The tavern, the theatre, the cross-roads, and the cockpit--was ever such a day! Now, Davy, I must tell of a strange thing. But first, a moment. Thee remembers the man Kimber smitten by thee at the public-house on that day? What think thee has happened? He followed to London the lass kissed by thee, and besought her to return and marry him. This she refused at first with anger; but afterwards she said that, if in three years he was of the same mind, and stayed sober and hard- working meanwhile, she would give him an answer, she would consider. Her head was high. She has become maid to a lady of degree, who has well befriended her. How do I know these things? Even from Jasper Kimber, who, on his return from London, was taken to his bed with fever. Because of the hard blows dealt him by thee, I went to make amends. He welcomed me, and soon opened his whole mind. That mind has generous moments, David, for he took to being thankful for thy knocks. Now for the strange thing I hinted. After visiting Jasper Kimber at Heddington, as I came back over the hill by the path we all took that day after the Meeting--Ebn Ezra Bey, my father, Elder Fairley, and thee and me--I drew near the chairmaker's but where thee lived alone all those sad months. It was late evening; the sun had set. Yet I felt that I must needs go and lay my hand in love upon the door of the empty hut which had been ever as thee left it. So I came down the little path swiftly, and then round the great rock, and up towards the door. But, as I did so, my heart stood still, for I heard voices. The door was open, but I could see no one. Yet there the voices sounded, one sharp and peevish with anger, the other low and rough. I could not hear what was said. At last, a figure came from the door and went quickly down the hillside. Who, think thee, was it? Even "neighbour Eglington." I knew the walk and the forward thrust of the head. Inside the hut all was still. I drew near with a kind of fear, but yet I came to the door and looked in. As I looked into the dusk, my limbs trembled under me, for who should be sitting there, a half-finished chair between his knees, but Soolsby the old chair-maker! Yes, it was he. There he sat looking at me with his staring blue eyes and shock of redgrey hair. "Soolsby! Soolsby!" said I, my heart hammering at my breast; for was not Soolsby dead and buried? His eyes stared at me in fright. "Why do you come?" he said in a hoarse whisper. "Is he dead, then? Has harm come to him?" By now I had recovered myself, for it was no ghost I saw, but a human being more distraught than was myself. "Do you not know me, Soolsby?" I asked. "You are Mercy Claridge from beyond--beyond and away," he answered dazedly. "I am Faith Claridge, Soolsby," answered I. He started, peered forward at me, and for a moment he did not speak; then the fear went from his face. "Ay, Faith Claridge, as I said," he answered, with apparent understanding, his stark mood passing. "No, thee said Mercy Claridge, Soolsby," said I, "and she has been asleep these many years." "Ay, she has slept soundly, thanks be to God!" he replied, and crossed himself. "Why should thee call me by her name?" I inquired. "Ay, is not her tomb in the churchyard?" he answered, and added quickly, "Luke Claridge and I are of an age to a day--which, think you, will go first?" He stopped weaving, and peered over at me with his staring blue eyes, and I felt a sudden quickening of the heart. For, at the question, curtains seemed to drop from all around me, and leave me in the midst of pains and miseries, in a chill air that froze me to the marrow. I saw myself alone--thee in Egypt and I here, and none of our blood and name beside me. For we are the last, Davy, the last of the Claridges. But I said coldly, and with what was near to anger, that he should link his name and fate with that of Luke Claridge: "Which of ye two goes first is God's will, and according to His wisdom. Which, think thee," added I--and now I cannot forgive myself for saying it--"which, think thee, would do least harm in going?" "I know which would do most good," he answered, with a harsh laugh in his throat. Yet his blue eyes looked kindly at me, and now he began to nod pleasantly. I thought him a little mad, but yet his speech had seemed not without dark meaning. "Thee has had a visitor," I said to him presently. He laughed in a snarling way that made me shrink, and answered: "He wanted this and he wanted that--his high-handed, second-best lordship. Ay, and he would have it, because it pleased him to have it--like his father before him. A poor sparrow on a tree-top, if you tell him he must not have it, he will hunt it down the world till it is his, as though it was a bird of paradise. And when he's seen it fall at last, he'll remember but the fun of the chase; and the bird may get to its tree-top again--if it can--if it can--if it can, my lord! That is what his father was, the last Earl, and that is what he is who left my door but now. He came to snatch old Soolsby's palace, his nest on the hill, to use it for a telescope, or such whimsies. He has scientific tricks like his father before him. Now is it astronomy, and now chemistry, and suchlike; and always it is the Eglington mind, which let God A'mighty make it as a favour. He would have old Soolsby's palace for his spy-glass, would he then? It scared him, as though I was the devil himself, to find me here. I had but come back in time--a day later, and he would have sat here and seen me in the Pit below before giving way. Possession's nine points were with me; and here I sat and faced him; and here he stormed, and would do this and should do that; and I went on with my work. Then he would buy my Colisyum, and I wouldn't sell it for all his puffball lordship might offer. Isn't the house of the snail as much to him as the turtle's shell to the turtle? I'll have no upstart spilling his chemicals here, or devilling the stars from a seat on my roof." "Last autumn," said I, "David Claridge was housed here. Thy palace was a prison then." "I know well of that. Haven't I found his records here? And do you think his makeshift lordship did not remind me?" "Records? What records, Soolsby?" asked I, most curious. "Writings of his thoughts which he forgot-- food for mind and body left in the cupboard." "Give them to me upon this instant, Soolsby," said I. "All but one," said he, "and that is my own, for it was his mind upon Soolsby the drunken chair-maker. God save him from the heathen sword that slew his uncle. Two better men never sat upon a chair!" He placed the papers in my hand, all save that one which spoke of him. Ah, David, what with the flute and the pen, banishment was no pain to thee! . . . He placed the papers, save that one, in my hands, and I, womanlike, asked again for all. "Some day," said he, "come, and I will read it to you. Nay, I will give you a taste of it now," he added, as he brought forth the writing. "Thus it reads." Here are thy words, Davy. What think thee of them now? "As I dwell in this house I know Soolsby as I never knew him when he lived, and though, up here, I spent many an hour with him. Men leave their impressions on all around them. The walls which have felt their look and their breath, the floor which has taken their footsteps, the chairs in which they have sat, have something of their presence. I feel Soolsby here at times so sharply that it would seem he came again and was in this room, though he is dead and gone. I ask him how it came he lived here alone; how it came that he made chairs, he, with brains enough to build great houses or great bridges; how it was that drink and he were such friends; and how he, a Catholic, lived here among us Quakers, so singular, uncompanionable, and severe. I think it true, and sadly true, that a man with a vice which he is able to satisfy easily and habitually, even as another satisfies a virtue, may give up the wider actions of the world and the possibilities of his life for the pleasure which his one vice gives him, and neither miss nor desire those greater chances of virtue or ambition which he has lost. The simplicity of a vice may be as real as the simplicity of a virtue." Ah, David, David, I know not what to think of those strange words; but old Soolsby seemed well to understand thee, and he called thee "a first-best gentleman." Is my story long? Well, it was so strange, and it fixed itself upon my mind so deeply, and thy writings at the hut have been so much in my hands and in my mind, that I have put it all down here. When I asked Soolsby how it came he had been rumoured dead, he said that he himself had been the cause of it; but for what purpose he would not say, save that he was going a long voyage, and had made up his mind to return no more. "I had a friend," he said, "and I was set to go and see that friend again. . . . But the years go on, and friends have an end. Life spills faster than the years," he said. And he would say no more, but would walk with me even to my father's door. "May the Blessed Virgin and all the Saints be with you," he said at parting, "if you will have a blessing from them. And tell him who is beyond and away in Egypt that old Soolsby's busy making a chair for him to sit in when the scarlet cloth is spread, and the East and West come to salaam before him. Tell him the old man says his fluting will be heard." And now, David, I have told thee all, nearly. Remains to say that thy one letter did our hearts good. My father reads it over and over, and shakes his head sadly, for, truth is, he has a fear that the world may lay its hand upon thee. One thing I do observe, his heart is hard set against Lord Eglington. In degree it has ever been so; but now it is like a constant frown upon his forehead. I see him at his window looking out towards the Cloistered House; and if our neighbour comes forth, perhaps upon his hunter, or now in his cart, or again with his dogs, he draws his hat down upon his eyes and whispers to himself. I think he is ever setting thee off against Lord Eglington; and that is foolish, for Eglington is but a man of the earth earthy. His is the soul of the adventurer. Now what more to be set down? I must ask thee how is thy friend Ebn Ezra Bey? I am glad thee did find all he said was true, and that in Damascus thee was able to set a mark by my uncle's grave. But that the Prince Pasha of Egypt has set up a claim against my uncle's property is evil news; though, thanks be to God, as my father says, we have enough to keep us fed and clothed and housed. But do thee keep enough of thy inheritance to bring thee safe home again to those who love thee. England is ever grey, Davy, but without thee it is grizzled--all one "Quaker drab," as says the Philistine. But it is a comely and a good land, and here we wait for thee. In love and remembrance. I am thy mother's sister, thy most loving friend. FAITH. David received this letter as he was mounting a huge white Syrian donkey to ride to the Mokattam Hills, which rise sharply behind Cairo, burning and lonely and large. The cities of the dead Khalifas and Mamelukes separated them from the living city where the fellah toiled, and Arab, Bedouin, Copt strove together to intercept the fruits of his toiling, as it passed in the form of taxes to the Palace of the Prince Pasha; while in the dark corners crouched, waiting, the cormorant usurers--Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians, a hideous salvage corps, who saved the house of a man that they might at last walk off with his shirt and the cloth under which he was carried to his grave. In a thousand narrow streets and lanes, in the warm glow of the bazaars, in earth-damp huts, by blistering quays, on the myriad ghiassas on the river, from long before sunrise till the sunset-gun boomed from the citadel rising beside the great mosque whose pinnacles seem to touch the blue, the slaves of the city of Prince Kaid ground out their lives like corn between the millstones. David had been long enough in Egypt to know what sort of toiling it was. A man's labour was not his own. The fellah gave labour and taxes and backsheesh and life to the State, and the long line of tyrants above him, under the sting of the kourbash; the high officials gave backsheesh to the Prince Pasha, or to his Mouffetish, or to his Chief Eunuch, or to his barber, or to some slave who had his ear. But all the time the bright, unclouded sun looked down on a smiling land, and in Cairo streets the din of the hammers, the voices of the boys driving heavily laden donkeys, the call of the camel-drivers leading their caravans into the great squares, the clang of the brasses of the sherbet-sellers, the song of the vendor of sweetmeats, the drone of the merchant praising his wares, went on amid scenes of wealth and luxury, and the city glowed with colour and gleamed with light. Dark faces grinned over the steaming pot at the door of the cafes, idlers on the benches smoked hasheesh, female street-dancers bared their faces shamelessly to the men, and indolent musicians beat on their tiny drums, and sang the song of "O Seyyid," or of "Antar"; and the reciter gave his sing-song tale from a bench above his fellows. Here a devout Muslim, indifferent to the presence of strangers, turned his face to the East, touched his forehead to the ground, and said his prayers. There, hung to a tree by a deserted mosque near by, the body of one who was with them all an hour before, and who had paid the penalty for some real or imaginary crime; while his fellows blessed Allah that the storm had passed them by. Guilt or innocence did not weigh with them; and the dead criminal, if such he were, who had drunk his glass of water and prayed to Allah, was, in their sight, only fortunate and not disgraced, and had "gone to the bosom of Allah." Now the Muezzin from a minaret called to prayer, and the fellah in his cotton shirt and yelek heard, laid his load aside, and yielded himself to his one dear illusion, which would enable him to meet with apathy his end--it might be to-morrow!--and go forth to that plenteous heaven where wives without number awaited him, where fields would yield harvests without labour, where rich food in gold dishes would be ever at his hand. This was his faith. David had now been in the country six months, rapidly perfecting his knowledge of Arabic, speaking it always to his servant Mahommed Hassan, whom he had picked from the streets. Ebn Ezra Bey had gone upon his own business to Fazougli, the tropical Siberia of Egypt, to liberate, by order of Prince Kaid,--and at a high price--a relative banished there. David had not yet been fortunate with his own business--the settlement of his Uncle Benn's estate--though the last stages of negotiation with the Prince Pasha seemed to have been reached. When he had brought the influence of the British Consulate to bear, promises were made, doors were opened wide, and Pasha and Bey offered him coffee and talked to him sympathetically. They had respect for him more than for most Franks, because the Prince Pasha had honoured him with especial favour. Perhaps because David wore his hat always and the long coat with high collar like a Turk, or because Prince Kaid was an acute judge of human nature, and also because honesty was a thing he greatly desired--in others--and never found near his own person; however it was, he had set David high in his esteem at once. This esteem gave greater certainty that any backsheesh coming from the estate of Benn Claridge would not be sifted through many hands on its way to himself. Of Benn Claridge Prince Kaid had scarcely even heard until he died; and, indeed, it was only within the past few years that the Quaker merchant had extended his business to Egypt and had made his headquarters at Assiout, up the river. David's donkey now picked its way carefully through the narrow streets of the Moosky. Arabs and fellaheen squatting at street corners looked at him with furtive interest. A foreigner of this character they had never before seen, with coat buttoned up like an Egyptian official in the presence of his superior, and this wide, droll hat on his head. David knew that he ran risks, that his confidence invited the occasional madness of a fanatical mind, which makes murder of the infidel a passport to heaven; but as a man he took his chances, and as a Christian he believed he would suffer no mortal hurt till his appointed time. He was more Oriental, more fatalist, than he knew. He had also early in his life learned that an honest smile begets confidence; and his face, grave and even a little austere in outline, was usually lighted by a smile. From the Mokattam Hills, where he read Faith's letter again, his back against one of the forts which Napoleon had built in his Egyptian days, he scanned the distance. At his feet lay the great mosque, and the citadel, whose guns controlled the city, could pour into it a lava stream of shot and shell. The Nile wound its way through the green plains, stretching as far to the north as eye could see between the opal and mauve and gold of the Libyan Hills. Far over in the western vista a long line of trees, twining through an oasis flanking the city, led out to a point where the desert abruptly raised its hills of yellow sand. Here, enormous, lonely, and cynical, the pyramids which Cheops had built, the stone sphinx of Ghizeh, kept faith with the desert in the glow of rainless land-reminders ever that the East, the mother of knowledge, will by knowledge prevail; that: "The thousand years of thy insolence The thousand years of thy faith, Will be paid in fiery recompense, And a thousand years of bitter death." "The sword--for ever the sword," David said to himself, as he looked: "Rameses and David and Mahomet and Constantine, and how many conquests have been made in the name of God! But after other conquests there have been peace and order and law. Here in Egypt it is ever the sword, the survival of the strongest." As he made his way down the hillside again he fell to thinking upon all Faith had written. The return of the drunken chair-maker made a deep impression on him--almost as deep as the waking dreams he had had of his uncle calling him. "Soolsby and me--what is there between Soolsby and me?" he asked himself now as he made his way past the tombs of the Mamelukes. "He and I are as far apart as the poles, and yet it comes to me now, with a strange conviction, that somehow my life will be linked with that of the drunken Romish chair-maker. To what end?" Then he fell to thinking of his Uncle Benn. The East was calling him. "Something works within me to hold me here, a work to do." From the ramparts of the citadel he watched the sun go down, bathing the pyramids in a purple and golden light, throwing a glamour over all the western plain, and making heavenly the far hills with a plaintive colour, which spoke of peace and rest, but not of hope. As he stood watching, he was conscious of people approaching. Voices mingled, there was light laughter, little bursts of admiration, then lower tones, and then he was roused by a voice calling. He turned round. A group of people were moving towards the exit from the ramparts, and near himself stood a man waving an adieu. "Well, give my love to the girls," said the man cheerily. Merry faces looked back and nodded, and in a moment they were gone. The man turned round, and looked at David, then he jerked his head in a friendly sort of way and motioned towards the sunset. "Good enough, eh?" "Surely, for me," answered David. On the instant he liked the red, wholesome face, and the keen, round, blue eyes, the rather opulent figure, the shrewd, whimsical smile, all aglow now with beaming sentimentality, which had from its softest corner called out: "Well, give my love to the girls." "Quaker, or I never saw Germantown and Philadelphy," he continued, with a friendly manner quite without offence. "I put my money on Quakers every time." "But not from Germantown or Philadelphia," answered David, declining a cigar which his new acquaintance offered. "Bet you, I know that all right. But I never saw Quakers anywhere else, and I meant the tribe and not the tent. English, I bet? Of course, or you wouldn't be talking the English language--though I've heard they talk it better in Boston than they do in England, and in Chicago they're making new English every day and improving on the patent. If Chicago can't have the newest thing, she won't have anything. 'High hopes that burn like stars sublime,' has Chicago. She won't let Shakespeare or Milton be standards much longer. She won't have it--simply won't have England swaggering over the English language. Oh, she's dizzy, is Chicago--simply dizzy. I was born there. Parents, one Philadelphy, one New York, one Pawtucket--the Pawtucket one was the step-mother. Father liked his wives from the original States; but I was born in Chicago. My name is Lacey--Thomas Tilman Lacey of Chicago." "I thank thee," said David. "And you, sir?" "David Claridge." "Of--?" "Of Hamley." "Mr. Claridge of Hamley. Mr. Claridge, I am glad to meet you." They shook hands. "Been here long, Mr. Claridge?" "A few months only." "Queer place--gilt-edged dust-bin; get anything you like here, from a fresh gutter-snipe to old Haroun-al-Raschid. It's the biggest jack-pot on earth. Barnum's the man for this place--P. T. Barnum. Golly, how the whole thing glitters and stews! Out of Shoobra his High Jinks Pasha kennels with his lions and lives with his cellars of gold, as if he was going to take them with him where he's going--and he's going fast. Here --down here, the people, the real people, sweat and drudge between a cake of dourha, an onion, and a balass of water at one end of the day, and a hemp collar and their feet off the ground at the other." "You have seen much of Egypt?" asked David, feeling a strange confidence in the garrulous man, whose frankness was united to shrewdness and a quick, observant eye. "How much of Egypt I've seen, the Egypt where more men get lost, strayed, and stolen than die in their beds every day, the Egypt where a eunuch is more powerful than a minister, where an official will toss away a life as I'd toss this cigar down there where the last Mameluke captain made his great jump, where women--Lord A'mighty! where women are divorced by one evil husband, by the dozen, for nothing they ever did or left undone, and yet 'd be cut to pieces by their own fathers if they learned that 'To step aside is human--' Mr. Claridge, of that Egypt I don't know much more'n would entitle me to say, How d'ye do. But it's enough for me. You've seen something--eh?" "A little. It is not civilised life here. Yet--yet a few strong patriotic men--" Lacey looked quizzically at David. "Say," he said, "I thought that about Mexico once. I said Manana-- this Manana is the curse of Mexico. It's always to-morrow--to-morrow --to-morrow. Let's teach 'em to do things to-day. Let's show 'em what business means. Two million dollars went into that experiment, but Manana won. We had good hands, but it had the joker. After five years I left, with a bald head at twenty-nine, and a little book of noble thoughts--Tips for the Tired, or Things you can say To-day on what you can do to-morrow. I lost my hair worrying, but I learned to be patient. The Dagos wanted to live in their own way, and they did. It's one thing to be a missionary and say the little word in season; it's another to run your soft red head against a hard stone wall. I went to Mexico a conquistador, I left it a child of time, who had learned to smile; and I left some millions behind me, too. I said to an old Padre down there that I knew--we used to meet in the Cafe Manrique and drink chocolate-- I said to him, 'Padre, the Lord's Prayer is a mistake down here.' 'Si, senor,' he said, and smiled his far-away smile at me. 'Yes,' said I, 'for you say in the Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread."' 'Si, senor,' he says, 'but we do not expect it till to-morrow!' The Padre knew from the start, but I learned at great expense, and went out of business--closed up shop for ever, with a bald head and my Tips for the Tired. Well, I've had more out of it all, I guess, than if I'd trebled the millions and wiped Manana off the Mexican coat of arms." "You think it would be like that here?" David asked abstractedly. Lacey whistled. "There the Government was all right and the people all wrong. Here the people are all right and the Government all wrong. Say, it makes my eyes water sometimes to see the fellah slogging away. He's a Jim-dandy--works all day and half the night, and if the tax-gatherer isn't at the door, wakes up laughing. I saw one"--his light blue eyes took on a sudden hardness--"laughing on the other side of his mouth one morning. They were 'kourbashing' his feet; I landed on them as the soles came away. I hit out." His face became grave, he turned the cigar round in his mouth. "It made me feel better, but I had a close call. Lucky for me that in Mexico I got into the habit of carrying a pop-gun. It saved me then. But it isn't any use going on these special missions. We Americans think a lot of ourselves. We want every land to do as we do; and we want to make 'em do it. But a strong man here at the head, with a sword in his hand, peace in his heart, who'd be just and poor--how can you make officials honest when you take all you can get yourself--! But, no, I guess it's no good. This is a rotten cotton show." Lacey had talked so much, not because he was garrulous only, but because the inquiry in David's eyes was an encouragement to talk. Whatever his misfortunes in Mexico had been, his forty years sat lightly on him, and his expansive temperament, his childlike sentimentality, gave him an appearance of beaming, sophisticated youth. David was slowly apprehending these things as he talked--subconsciously, as it were; for he was seeing pictures of the things he himself had observed, through the lens of another mind, as primitive in some regards as his own, but influenced by different experiences. "Say, you're the best listener I ever saw," added Lacey, with a laugh. David held out his hand. "Thee sees things clearly," he answered. Lacey grasped his hand. At that moment an orderly advanced towards them. "He's after us--one of the Palace cavalry," said Lacey. "Effendi--Claridge Effendi! May his grave be not made till the karadh- gatherers return," said the orderly to David. "My name is Claridge," answered David. "To the hotel, effendi, first, then to the Mokattam Hills after thee, then here--from the Effendina, on whom be God's peace, this letter for thee." David took the letter. "I thank thee, friend," he said. As he read it, Lacey said to the orderly in Arabic "How didst thou know he was here?" The orderly grinned wickedly. "Always it is known what place the effendi honours. It is not dark where he uncovers his face." Lacey gave a low whistle. "Say, you've got a pull in this show," he said, as David folded up the letter and put it in his pocket. "In Egypt, if the master smiles on you, the servant puts his nose in the dust." "The Prince Pasha bids me to dinner at the Palace to-night. I have no clothes for such affairs. Yet--" His mind was asking itself if this was a door opening, which he had no right to shut with his own hand. There was no reason why he should not go; therefore there might be a reason why he should go. It might be, it no doubt was, in the way of facilitating his business. He dismissed the orderly with an affirmative and ceremonial message to Prince Kaid--and a piece of gold. "You've learned the custom of the place," said Lacey, as he saw the gold piece glitter in the brown palm of the orderly. "I suppose the man's only pay is in such service," rejoined David. "It is a land of backsheesh. The fault is not with the people; it is with the rulers. I am not sorry to share my goods with the poor." "You'll have a big going concern here in no time," observed Lacey. "Now, if I had those millions I left in Mexico--" Suddenly he stopped. "Is it you that's trying to settle up an estate here--at Assiout--belonged to an uncle?" David inclined his head. "They say that you and Prince Kaid are doing the thing yourselves, and that the pashas and judges and all the high-mogul sharks of the Medjidie think that the end of the world has come. Is that so?" "It is so, if not completely so. There are the poor men and humble--the pashas and judges and the others of the Medjidie, as thee said, are not poor. But such as the orderly yonder--" He paused meditatively. Lacey looked at David with profound respect. "You make the poorest your partners, your friends. I see, I see. Jerusalem, that's masterly! I admire you. It's a new way in this country." Then, after a moment: "It'll do--by golly, it'll do! Not a bit more costly, and you do some good with it. Yes--it--will--do." "I have given no man money save in charity and for proper service done openly," said David, a little severely. "Say--of course. And that's just what isn't done here. Everything goes to him who hath, and from him who hath not is taken away even that which he hath. One does the work and another gets paid--that's the way here. But you, Mr. Claridge, you clinch with the strong man at the top, and, down below, you've got as your partners the poor man, whose name is Legion. If you get a fall out of the man at the top, you're solid with the Legion. And if the man at the top gets up again and salaams and strokes your hand, and says, 'Be my brother,' then it's a full Nile, and the fig-tree putteth forth its tender branches, and the date-palm flourisheth, and at the village pond the thanksgiving turkey gobbles and is glad. 'Selah'!" The sunset gun boomed out from the citadel. David turned to go, and Lacey added: "I'm waiting for a pasha who's taking toll of the officers inside there --Achmet Pasha. They call him the Ropemaker, because so many pass through his hands to the Nile. The Old Muslin I call him, because he's so diaphanous. Thinks nobody can see through him, and there's nobody that can't. If you stay long in Egypt, you'll find that Achmet is the worst, and Nahoum the Armenian the deepest, pasha in all this sickening land. Achmet is cruel as a tiger to any one that stands in his way; Nahoum, the whale, only opens out to swallow now and then; but when Nahoum does open out, down goes Jonah, and never comes up again. He's a deep one, and a great artist is Nahoum. I'll bet a dollar you'll see them both to-night at the Palace--if Kaid doesn't throw them to the lions for their dinner before yours is served. Here one shark is swallowed by another bigger, till at last the only and original sea-serpent swallows 'em all." As David wound his way down the hills, Lacey waved a hand after him. "Well, give my love to the girls," he said. CHAPTER VI "HAST THOU NEVER KILLED A MAN?" "Claridge Effendi!" As David moved forward, his mind was embarrassed by many impressions. He was not confused, but the glitter and splendour, the Oriental gorgeousness of the picture into which he stepped, excited his eye, roused some new sense in him. He was a curious figure in those surroundings. The consuls and agents of all the nations save one were in brilliant uniform, and pashas, generals, and great officials were splendid in gold braid and lace, and wore flashing Orders on their breasts. David had been asked for half-past eight o'clock, and he was there on the instant; yet here was every one assembled, the Prince Pasha included. As he walked up the room he suddenly realised this fact, and, for a moment, he thought he had made a mistake; but again he remembered distinctly that the letter said half-past eight, and he wondered now if this had been arranged by the Prince--for what purpose? To afford amusement to the assembled company? He drew himself up with dignity, his face became graver. He had come in a Quaker suit of black broadcloth, with grey steel buttons, and a plain white stock; and he wore his broad-brimmed hat--to the consternation of the British Consul-General and the Europeans present, to the amazement of the Turkish and native officials, who eyed him keenly. They themselves wore red tarbooshes, as did the Prince; yet all of them knew that the European custom of showing respect was by doffing the hat. The Prince Pasha had settled that with David, however, at their first meeting, when David had kept on his hat and offered Kaid his hand. Now, with amusement in his eyes, Prince Kaid watched David coming up the great hall. What his object was in summoning David for an hour when all the court and all the official Europeans should be already present, remained to be seen. As David entered, Kaid was busy receiving salaams, and returning greeting, but with an eye to the singularly boyish yet gallant figure approaching. By the time David had reached the group, the Prince Pasha was ready to receive him. "Friend, I am glad to welcome thee," said the Effendina, sly humour lurking at the corner of his eye. Conscious of the amazement of all present, he held out his hand to David. "May thy coming be as the morning dew, friend," he added, taking David's willing hand. "And thy feet, Kaid, wall in goodly paths, by the grace of God the compassionate and merciful." As a wind, unfelt, stirs the leaves of a forest, making it rustle delicately, a whisper swept through the room. Official Egypt was dumfounded. Many had heard of David, a few had seen him, and now all eyed with inquisitive interest one who defied so many of the customs of his countrymen; who kept on his hat; who used a Mahommedan salutation like a true believer; whom the Effendina honoured--and presently honoured in an unusual degree by seating him at table opposite himself, where his Chief Chamberlain was used to sit. During dinner Kaid addressed his conversation again and again to David, asking questions put to disconcert the consuls and other official folk present, confident in the naive reply which would be returned. For there was a keen truthfulness in the young man's words which, however suave and carefully balanced, however gravely simple and tactful, left no doubt as to their meaning. There was nothing in them which could be challenged, could be construed into active criticism of men or things; and yet much he said was horrifying. It made Achmet Pasha sit up aghast, and Nahoum Pasha, the astute Armenian, for a long time past the confidant and favourite of the Prince Pasha, laugh in his throat; for, if there was a man in Egypt who enjoyed the thrust of a word or the bite of a phrase, it was Nahoum. Christian though he was, he was, nevertheless, Oriental to his farthermost corner, and had the culture of a French savant. He had also the primitive view of life, and the morals of a race who, in the clash of East and West, set against Western character and directness, and loyalty to the terms of a bargain, the demoralised cunning of the desert folk; the circuitous tactics of those who believed that no man spoke the truth directly, that it must ever be found beneath devious and misleading words, to be tracked like a panther, as an Antipodean bushman once said, "through the sinuosities of the underbrush." Nahoum Pasha had also a rich sense of grim humour. Perhaps that was why he had lived so near the person of the Prince, had held office so long. There were no Grand Viziers in Egypt; but he was as much like one as possible, and he had one uncommon virtue, he was greatly generous. If he took with his right hand he gave with his left; and Mahommedan as well as Copt and Armenian, and beggars of every race and creed, hung about his doors each morning to receive the food and alms he gave freely. After one of David's answers to Kaid, which had had the effect of causing his Highness to turn a sharp corner of conversation by addressing himself to the French consul, Nahoum said suavely: "And so, monsieur, you think that we hold life lightly in the East--that it is a characteristic of civilisation to make life more sacred, to cherish it more fondly?" He was sitting beside David, and though he asked the question casually, and with apparent intention only of keeping talk going, there was a lurking inquisition in his eye. He had seen enough to-night to make him sure that Kaid had once more got the idea of making a European his confidant and adviser; to introduce to his court one of those mad Englishmen who cared nothing for gold--only for power; who loved administration for the sake of administration and the foolish joy of labour. He was now set to see what sort of match this intellect could play, when faced by the inherent contradictions present in all truths or the solutions of all problems. "It is one of the characteristics of that which lies behind civilisation, as thee and me have been taught," answered David. Nahoum was quick in strategy, but he was unprepared for David's knowledge that he was an Armenian Christian, and he had looked for another answer. But he kept his head and rose to the occasion. "Ah, it is high, it is noble, to save life--it is so easy to destroy it," he answered. "I saw his Highness put his life in danger once to save a dog from drowning. To cherish the lives of others, and to be careless of our own; to give that of great value as though it were of no worth--is it not the Great Lesson?" He said it with such an air of sincerity, with such dissimulation, that, for the moment, David was deceived. There was, however, on the face of the listening Kaid a curious, cynical smile. He had heard all, and he knew the sardonic meaning behind Nahoum's words. Fat High Pasha, the Chief Chamberlain, the corrupt and corruptible, intervened. "It is not so hard to be careless when care would be useless," he said, with a chuckle. "When the khamsin blows the dust- storms upon the caravan, the camel-driver hath no care for his camels. 'Malaish!' he says, and buries his face in his yelek." "Life is beautiful and so difficult--to save," observed Nahoum, in a tone meant to tempt David on one hand and to reach the ears of the notorious Achmet Pasha, whose extortions, cruelties, and taxations had built his master's palaces, bribed his harem, given him money to pay the interest on his European loans, and made himself the richest man in Egypt, whose spies were everywhere, whose shadow was across every man's path. Kaid might slay, might toss a pasha or a slave into the Nile now and then, might invite a Bey to visit him, and stroke his beard and call him brother and put diamond-dust in the coffee he drank, so that he died before two suns came and went again, "of inflammation and a natural death"; but he, Achmet Pasha, was the dark Inquisitor who tortured every day, for whose death all men prayed, and whom some would have slain, but that another worse than himself might succeed him. At Nahoum's words the dusky brown of Achmet's face turned as black as the sudden dilation of the pupil of an eye deepens its hue, and he said with a guttural accent: "Every man hath a time to die." "But not his own time," answered Nahoum maliciously. "It would appear that in Egypt he hath not always the choice of the fashion or the time," remarked David calmly. He had read the malice behind their words, and there had flashed into his own mind tales told him, with every circumstance of accuracy, of deaths within and without the Palace. Also he was now aware that Nahoum had mocked him. He was concerned to make it clear that he was not wholly beguiled. "Is there, then, for a man choice of fashion or time in England, effendi?" asked Nahoum, with assumed innocence. "In England it is a matter between the Giver and Taker of life and himself--save where murder does its work," said David. "And here it is between man and man--is it that you would say?" asked Nahoum. "There seem wider privileges here," answered David drily. "Accidents will happen, privileges or no," rejoined Nahoum, with lowering eyelids. The Prince intervened. "Thy own faith forbids the sword, forbids war, or--punishment." "The Prophet I follow was called the Prince of Peace, friend," answered David, bowing gravely across the table. "Hast thou never killed a man?" asked Kaid, with interest in his eyes. He asked the question as a man might ask another if he had never visited Paris. "Never, by the goodness of God, never," answered David. "Neither in punishment nor in battle?" "I am neither judge nor soldier, friend." "Inshallah, thou hast yet far to go! Thou art young yet. Who can tell?" "I have never so far to go as that, friend," said David, in a voice that rang a little. "To-morrow is no man's gift." David was about to answer, but chancing to raise his eyes above the Prince Pasha's head, his glance was arrested and startled by seeing a face--the face of a woman-looking out of a panel in a mooshrabieh screen in a gallery above. He would not have dwelt upon the incident, he would have set it down to the curiosity of a woman of the harem, but that the face looking out was that of an English girl, and peering over her shoulder was the dark, handsome face of an Egyptian or a Turk. Self-control was the habit of his life, the training of his faith, and, as a rule, his face gave little evidence of inner excitement. Demonstration was discouraged, if not forbidden, among the Quakers, and if, to others, it gave a cold and austere manner, in David it tempered to a warm stillness the powerful impulses in him, the rivers of feeling which sometimes roared through his veins. Only Nahoum Pasha had noticed his arrested look, so motionless did he sit; and now, without replying, he bowed gravely and deferentially to Kaid, who rose from the table. He followed with the rest. Presently the Prince sent Higli Pasha to ask his nearer presence. The Prince made a motion of his hand, and the circle withdrew. He waved David to a seat. "To-morrow thy business shall be settled," said the Prince suavely, "and on such terms as will not startle. Death-tribute is no new thing in the East. It is fortunate for thee that the tribute is from thy hand to my hand, and not through many others to mine." "I am conscious I have been treated with favour, friend," said David. "I would that I might show thee kindness. Though how may a man of no account make return to a great Prince?" "By the beard of my father, it is easily done, if thy kindness is a real thing, and not that which makes me poorer the more I have of it--as though one should be given a herd of horses which must not be sold but still must be fed." "I have given thee truth. Is not truth cheaper than falsehood?" "It is the most expensive thing in Egypt; so that I despair of buying thee. Yet I would buy thee to remain here--here at my court; here by my hand which will give thee the labour thou lovest, and will defend thee if defence be needed. Thou hast not greed, thou hast no thirst for honour, yet thou hast wisdom beyond thy years. Kaid has never besought men, but he beseeches thee. Once there was in Egypt, Joseph, a wise youth, who served a Pharaoh, and was his chief counsellor, and it was well with the land. Thy name is a good name; well-being may follow thee. The ages have gone, and the rest of the world has changed, but Egypt is the same Egypt, the Nile rises and falls, and the old lean years and fat years come and go. Though I am in truth a Turk, and those who serve and rob me here are Turks, yet the fellah is the same as he was five thousand years ago. What Joseph the Israelite did, thou canst do; for I am no more unjust than was that Rameses whom Joseph served. Wilt thou stay with me?" David looked at Kaid as though he would read in his face the reply that he must make, but he did not see Kaid; he saw, rather, the face of one he had loved more than Jonathan had been loved by the young shepherd-prince of Israel. In his ears he heard the voice that had called him in his sleep-the voice of Benn Claridge; and, at the same instant, there flashed into his mind a picture of himself fighting outside the tavern beyond Hamley and bidding farewell to the girl at the crossroads. "Friend, I cannot answer thee now," he said, in a troubled voice. Kaid rose. "I will give thee an hour to think upon it. Come with me." He stepped forward. "To-morrow I will answer thee, Kaid." "To-morrow there is work for thee to do. Come." David followed him. The eyes that followed the Prince and the Quaker were not friendly. What Kaid had long foreshadowed seemed at hand: the coming of a European counsellor and confidant. They realised that in the man who had just left the room with Kaid there were characteristics unlike those they had ever met before in Europeans. "A madman," whispered High Pasha to Achmet the Ropemaker. "Then his will be the fate of the swine of Gadarene," said Nahoum Pasha, who had heard. "At least one need not argue with a madman." The face of Achmet the Ropemaker was not more pleasant than his dark words. "It is not the madman with whom you have to deal, but his keeper," rejoined Nahoum. Nahoum's face was heavier than usual. Going to weight, he was still muscular and well groomed. His light brown beard and hair and blue eyes gave him a look almost Saxon, and bland power spoke in his face and in every gesture. He was seldom without the string of beads so many Orientals love to carry, and, Armenian Christian as he was, the act seemed almost religious. It was to him, however, like a ground-wire in telegraphy-- it carried off the nervous force tingling in him and driving him to impulsive action, while his reputation called for a constant outward urbanity, a philosophical apathy. He had had his great fight for place and power, alien as he was in religion, though he had lived in Egypt since a child. Bar to progress as his religion had been at first, it had been an advantage afterwards; for, through it, he could exclude himself from complications with the Wakfs, the religious court of the Muslim creed, which had lands to administer, and controlled the laws of marriage and inheritance. He could shrug his shoulders and play with his beads, and urbanely explain his own helplessness and ineligibility when his influence was summoned, or it was sought to entangle him in warring interests. Oriental through and through, the basis of his creed was similar to that of a Muslim: Mahomet was a prophet and Christ was a prophet. It was a case of rival prophets--all else was obscured into a legend, and he saw the strife of race in the difference of creed. For the rest, he flourished the salutations and language of the Arab as though they were his own, and he spoke Arabic as perfectly as he did French and English. He was the second son of his father. The first son, who was but a year older, and was as dark as he was fair, had inherited--had seized--all his father's wealth. He had lived abroad for some years in France and England. In the latter place he had been one of the Turkish Embassy, and, having none of the outward characteristics of the Turk, and being in appearance more of a Spaniard than an Oriental, he had, by his gifts, his address and personal appearance, won the good-will of the Duchess of Middlesex, and had had that success all too flattering to the soul of a libertine. It had, however, been the means of his premature retirement from England, for his chief at the Embassy had a preference for an Oriental entourage. He was called Foorgat Bey. Sitting at table, Nahoum alone of all present had caught David's arrested look, and, glancing up, had seen the girl's face at the panel of mooshrabieh, and had seen also over her shoulder the face of his brother, Foorgat Bey. He had been even more astonished than David, and far more disturbed. He knew his brother's abilities; he knew his insinuating address--had he not influenced their father to give him wealth while he was yet alive? He was aware also that his brother had visited the Palace often of late. It would seem as though the Prince Pasha was ready to make him, as well as David, a favourite. But the face of the girl--it was an English face! Familiar with the Palace, and bribing when it was necessary to bribe, Foorgat Bey had evidently brought her to see the function, there where all women were forbidden. He could little imagine Foorgat doing this from mere courtesy; he could not imagine any woman, save one wholly sophisticated, or one entirely innocent, trusting herself with him--and in such a place. The girl's face, though not that of one in her teens, had seemed to him a very flower of innocence. But, as he stood telling his beads, abstractedly listening to the scandal talked by Achmet and Higli, he was not thinking of his brother, but of the two who had just left the chamber. He was speculating as to which room they were likely to enter. They had not gone by the door convenient to passage to Kaid's own apartments. He would give much to hear the conversation between Kaid and the stranger; he was all too conscious of its purport. As he stood thinking, Kaid returned. After looking round the room for a moment, the Prince came slowly over to Nahoum, and, stretching out a hand, stroked his beard. "Oh, brother of all the wise, may thy sun never pass its noon!" said Kaid, in a low, friendly voice. Despite his will, a shudder passed through Nahoum Pasha's frame. How often in Egypt this gesture and such words were the prelude to assassination, from which there was no escape save by death itself. Into Nahoum's mind there flashed the words of an Arab teacher, "There is no refuge from God but God Himself," and he found himself blindly wondering, even as he felt Kaid's hand upon his beard and listened to the honeyed words, what manner of death was now preparing for him, and what death of his own contriving should intervene. Escape, he knew, there was none, if his death was determined on; for spies were everywhere, and slaves in the pay of Kaid were everywhere, and such as were not could be bought or compelled, even if he took refuge in the house of a foreign consul. The lean, invisible, ghastly arm of death could find him, if Kaid willed, though he delved in the bowels of the Cairene earth, or climbed to an eagle's eyrie in the Libyan Hills. Whether it was diamond-dust or Achmet's thin thong that stopped the breath, it mattered not; it was sure. Yet he was not of the breed to tremble under the descending sword, and he had long accustomed himself to the chance of "sudden demise." It had been chief among the chances he had taken when he entered the high and perilous service of Kaid. Now, as he felt the secret joy of these dark spirits surrounding him--Achmet, and High Pasha, who kept saying beneath his breath in thankfulness that it was not his turn, Praise be to God!--as he, felt their secret self-gratulations, and their evil joy over his prospective downfall, he settled himself steadily, made a low salutation to Kaid, and calmly awaited further speech. It came soon enough. "It is written upon a cucumber leaf--does not the world read it?--that Nahoum Pasha's form shall cast a longer shadow than the trees; so that every man in Egypt shall, thinking on him, be as covetous as Ashaah, who knew but one thing more covetous than himself--the sheep that mistook the rainbow for a rope of hay, and, jumping for it, broke his neck." Kaid laughed softly at his own words. With his eye meeting Kaid's again, after a low salaam, Nahoum made answer: "I would that the lance of my fame might sheathe itself in the breasts of thy enemies, Effendina." "Thy tongue does that office well," was the reply. Once more Kaid laid a gentle hand upon Nahoum's beard. Then, with a gesture towards the consuls and Europeans, he said to them in French: "If I might but beg your presence for yet a little time!" Then he turned and walked away. He left by a door leading to his own apartments. When he had gone, Nahoum swung slowly round and faced the agitated groups. "He who sleeps with one eye open sees the sun rise first," he said, with a sarcastic laugh. "He who goes blindfold never sees it set." Then, with a complacent look upon them all, he slowly left the room by the door out of which David and Kaid had first passed. Outside the room his face did not change. His manner had not been bravado. It was as natural to him as David's manner was to himself. Each had trained himself in his own way to the mastery of his will, and the will in each was stronger than any passion of emotion in them. So far at least it had been so. In David it was the outcome of his faith, in Nahoum it was the outcome of his philosophy, a simple, fearless fatalism. David had been left by Kaid in a small room, little more than an alcove, next to a larger room richly furnished. Both rooms belonged to a spacious suite which lay between the harem and the major portion of the Palace. It had its own entrance and exits from the Palace, opening on the square at the front, at the back opening on its own garden, which also had its own exits to the public road. The quarters of the Chief Eunuch separated the suite from the harem, and Mizraim, the present Chief Eunuch, was a man of power in the Palace, knew more secrets, was more courted, and was richer than some of the princes. Nahoum had an office in the Palace, also, which gave him the freedom of the place, and brought him often in touch with the Chief Eunuch. He had made Mizraim a fast friend ever since the day he had, by an able device, saved the Chief Eunuch from determined robbery by the former Prince Pasha, with whom he had suddenly come out of favour. When Nahoum left the great salon, he directed his steps towards the quarters of the Chief Eunuch, thinking of David, with a vague desire for pursuit and conflict. He was too much of a philosopher to seek to do David physical injury--a futile act; for it could do him no good in the end, could not mend his own fortunes; and, merciless as he could be on occasion, he had no love of bloodshed. Besides, the game afoot was not of his making, and he was ready to await the finish, the more so because he was sure that to-morrow would bring forth momentous things. There was a crisis in the Soudan, there was trouble in the army, there was dark conspiracy of which he knew the heart, and anything might happen to-morrow! He had yet some cards to play, and Achmet and Higli--and another very high and great--might be delivered over to Kaid's deadly purposes rather than himself tomorrow. What he knew Kaid did not know. He had not meant to act yet; but new facts faced him, and he must make one struggle for his life. But as he went towards Mizraim's quarters he saw no sure escape from the stage of those untoward events, save by the exit which is for all in some appointed hour. He was not, however, more perplexed and troubled than David, who, in the little room where he had been brought and left alone with coffee and cigarettes, served by a slave from some distant portion of the Palace, sat facing his future. David looked round the little room. Upon the walls hung weapons of every kind--from a polished dagger of Toledo to a Damascus blade, suits of chain armour, long-handled, two-edged Arab swords, pistols which had been used in the Syrian wars of Ibrahim, lances which had been taken from the Druses at Palmyra, rude battle-axes from the tribes of the Soudan, and neboots of dom-wood which had done service against Napoleon at Damietta. The cushions among which he sat had come from Constantinople, the rug at his feet from Tiflis, the prayer-rug on the wall from Mecca. All that he saw was as unlike what he had known in past years as though he had come to Mars or Jupiter. All that he had heard recalled to him his first readings in the Old Testament--the story of Nebuchadnezzar, of Belshazzar, of Ahasuerus--of Ahasuerus! He suddenly remembered the face he had seen looking down at the Prince's table from the panel of mooshrabieh. That English face--where was it? Why was it there? Who was the man with her? Whose the dark face peering scornfully over her shoulder? The face of an English girl in that place dedicated to sombre intrigue, to the dark effacement of women, to the darker effacement of life, as he well knew, all too often! In looking at this prospect for good work in the cause of civilisation, he was not deceived, he was not allured. He knew into what subterranean ways he must walk, through what mazes of treachery and falsehood he must find his way; and though he did not know to the full the corruption which it was his duty to Kaid to turn to incorruption, he knew enough to give his spirit pause. What would be --what could be--the end? Would he not prove to be as much out of place as was the face of that English girl? The English girl! England rushed back upon him--the love of those at home; of his father, the only father he had ever known; of Faith, the only mother or sister he had ever known; of old John Fairley; the love of the woods and the hills where he had wandered came upon him. There was work to do in England, work too little done--the memory of the great meeting at Heddington flashed upon him. Could his labour and his skill, if he had any, not be used there? Ah, the green fields, the soft grey skies, the quiet vale, the brave, self- respecting, toiling millions, the beautiful sense of law and order and goodness! Could his gifts and labours not be used there? Could not-- He was suddenly startled by a smothered cry, then a call of distress. It was the voice of a woman. He started up. The voice seemed to come from a room at his right; not that from which he had entered, but one still beyond this where he was. He sprang towards the wall and examined it swiftly. Finding a division in the tapestry, he ran his fingers quickly and heavily down the crack between. It came upon the button of a spring. He pressed it, the door yielded, and, throwing it back, he stepped into the room-to see a woman struggling to resist the embraces and kisses of a man. The face was that of the girl who had looked out of the panel in the mooshrabieh screen. Then it was beautiful in its mirth and animation, now it was pale and terror-stricken, as with one free hand she fiercely beat the face pressed to hers. The girl only had seen David enter. The man was not conscious of his presence till he was seized and flung against the wall. The violence of the impact brought down at his feet two weapons from the wall above him. He seized one-a dagger-and sprang to his feet. Before he could move forward or raise his arm, however, David struck him a blow in the neck which flung him upon a square marble pedestal intended for a statue. In falling his head struck violently a sharp corner of the pedestal. He lurched, rolled over on the floor, and lay still. The girl gave a choking cry. David quickly stooped and turned the body over. There was a cut where the hair met the temple. He opened the waistcoat and thrust his hand inside the shirt. Then he felt the pulse of the limp wrist. For a moment he looked at the face steadily, almost contemplatively it might have seemed, and then drew both arms close to the body. Foorgat Bey, the brother of Nahoum Pasha, was dead. Rising, David turned, as if in a dream, to the girl. He made a motion of the hand towards the body. She understood. Dismay was in her face, but the look of horror and desperation was gone. She seemed not to realise, as did David, the awful position in which they were placed, the deed which David had done, the significance of the thing that lay at their feet. "Where are thy people?" said David. "Come, we will go to them." "I have no people here," she said, in a whisper. "Who brought thee?" She made a motion behind her towards the body. David glanced down. The eyes of the dead man were open. He stooped and closed them gently. The collar and tie were disarranged; he straightened them, then turned again to her. "I must take thee away," he said calmly. "But it must be secretly." He looked around, perplexed. "We came secretly. My maid is outside the garden--in a carriage. Oh, come, let us go, let us escape. They will kill you--!" Terror came into her face again. "Thee, not me, is in danger--name, goodness, future, all. . . . Which way did thee come?" "Here--through many rooms--" She made a gesture to curtains beyond. "But we first entered through doors with sphinxes on either side, with a room where was a statue of Mehemet Ali." It was the room through which David had come with Kaid. He took her hand. "Come quickly. I know the way. It is here," he said, pointing to the panel-door by which he had entered. Holding her hand still, as though she were a child, he led her quickly from the room, and shut the panel behind them. As they passed through, a hand drew aside the curtains on the other side of the room which they were leaving. Presently the face of Nahoum Pasha followed the hand. A swift glance to the floor, then he ran forward, stooped down, and laid a hand on his brother's breast. The slight wound on the forehead answered his rapid scrutiny. He realised the situation as plainly as if it had been written down for him--he knew his brother well. Noiselessly he moved forward and touched the spring of the door through which the two had gone. It yielded, and he passed through, closed the door again and stealthily listened, then stole a look into the farther chamber. It was empty. He heard the outer doors close. For a moment he listened, then went forward and passed through into the hall. Softly turning the handle of the big wooden doors which faced him, he opened them an inch or so, and listened. He could hear swiftly retreating footsteps. Presently he heard the faint noise of a gate shutting. He nodded his head, and was about to close the doors and turn away, when his quick ear detected footsteps again in the garden. Some one--the man, of course--was returning. "May fire burn his eyes for ever! He would talk with Kald, then go again among them all, and so pass out unsuspected and safe. For who but I--who but I could say he did it? And I--what is my proof? Only the words which I speak." A scornful, fateful smile passed over his face. "'Hast thou never killed a man?' said Kaid. 'Never,' said he--'by the goodness of God, never!' The voice of Him of Galilee, the hand of Cain, the craft of Jael. But God is with the patient." He went hastily and noiselessly-his footfall was light for so heavy a man-through the large room to the farther side from that by which David and Kaid had first entered. Drawing behind a clump of palms near a door opening to a passage leading to Mizraim's quarters, he waited. He saw David enter quickly, yet without any air of secrecy, and pass into the little room where Kaid had left him. For a long time there was silence. The reasons were clear in Nahoum's mind why he should not act yet. A new factor had changed the equation which had presented itself a short half hour ago. A new factor had also entered into the equation which had been presented to David by Kaid with so flattering an insistence. He sat in the place where Kaid had left him, his face drawn and white, his eyes burning, but with no other "sign of agitation. He was frozen and still. His look was fastened now upon the door by which the Prince Pasha would enter, now upon the door through which he had passed to the rescue of the English girl, whom he had seen drive off safely with her maid. In their swift passage from the Palace to the carriage, a thing had been done of even greater moment than the killing of the sensualist in the next room. In the journey to the gateway the girl David served had begged him to escape with her. This he had almost sharply declined; it would be no escape, he had said. She had urged that no one knew. He had replied that Kaid would come again for him, and suspicion would be aroused if he were gone. "Thee has safety," he had said. "I will go back. I will say that I killed him. I have taken a life, I will pay for it as is the law." Excited as she was, she had seen the inflexibility of his purpose. She had seen the issue also clearly. He would give himself up, and the whole story would be the scandal of Europe. "You have no right to save me only to kill me," she had said desperately. "You would give your life, but you would destroy that which is more than life to me. You did not intend to kill him. It was no murder, it was punishment." Her voice had got harder. "He would have killed my life because he was evil. Will you kill it because you are good? Will you be brave, quixotic, but not pitiful? . . . No, no, no!" she had said, as his hand was upon the gate, "I will not go unless you promise that you will hide the truth, if you can." She had laid her hand upon his shoulder with an agonised impulse. "You will hide it for a girl who will cherish your memory her whole life long. Ah--God bless you!" She had felt that she conquered before he spoke as, indeed, he did not speak, but nodded his head and murmured something indistinctly. But that did not matter, for she had won; she had a feeling that all would be well. Then he had placed her in her carriage, and she was driven swiftly away, saying to herself half hysterically: "I am safe, I am safe. He will keep his word." Her safety and his promise were the new factor which changed the equation for which Kaid would presently ask the satisfaction. David's life had suddenly come upon problems for which his whole past was no preparation. Conscience, which had been his guide in every situation, was now disarmed, disabled, and routed. It had come to terms. In going quickly through the room, they had disarranged a table. The girl's cloak had swept over it, and a piece of brie-a-brae had been thrown upon the floor. He got up and replaced it with an attentive air. He rearranged the other pieces on the table mechanically, seeing, feeling another scene, another inanimate thing which must be for ever and for ever a picture burning in his memory. Yet he appeared to be casually doing a trivial and necessary act. He did not definitely realise his actions; but long afterwards he could have drawn an accurate plan of the table, could have reproduced upon it each article in its exact place as correctly as though it had been photographed. There were one or two spots of dust or dirt on the floor, brought in by his boots from the garden. He flicked them aside with his handkerchief. How still it was! Or was it his life which had become so still? It seemed as if the world must be noiseless, for not a sound of the life in other parts of the Palace came to him, not an echo or vibration of the city which stirred beyond the great gateway. Was it the chilly hand of death passing over everything, and smothering all the activities? His pulses, which, but a few minutes past, were throbbing and pounding like drums in his ears, seemed now to flow and beat in very quiet. Was this, then, the way that murderers felt, that men felt who took human life--so frozen, so little a part of their surroundings? Did they move as dead men among the living, devitalised, vacuous calm? His life had been suddenly twisted out of recognition. All that his habit, his code, his morals, his religion, had imposed upon him had been overturned in one moment. To take a human life, even in battle, was against the code by which he had ever been governed, yet he had taken life secretly, and was hiding it from the world. Accident? But had it been necessary to strike at all? His presence alone would have been enough to save the girl from further molestation; but, he had thrown himself upon the man like a tiger. Yet, somehow, he felt no sorrow for that. He knew that if again and yet again he were placed in the same position he would do even as he had done--even as he had done with the man Kimber by the Fox and Goose tavern beyond Hamley. He knew that the blow he had given then was inevitable, and he had never felt real repentance. Thinking of that blow, he saw its sequel in the blow he had given now. Thus was that day linked with the present, thus had a blow struck in punishment of the wrong done the woman at the crossroads been repeated in the wrong done the girl who had just left him. A sound now broke the stillness. It was a door shutting not far off. Kaid was coming. David turned his face towards the room where Foorgat Bey was lying dead. He lifted his arms with a sudden passionate gesture. The blood came rushing through his veins again. His life, which had seemed suspended, was set free; and an exaltation of sorrow, of pain, of action, possessed him. "I have taken a life, O my God!" he murmured. "Accept mine in service for this land. What I have done in secret, let me atone for in secret, for this land--for this poor land, for Christ's sake!" Footsteps were approaching quickly. With a great effort of the will he ruled himself to quietness again. Kaid entered, and stood before him in silence. David rose. He looked Kaid steadily in the eyes. "Well?" said Kaid placidly. "For Egypt's sake I will serve thee," was the reply. He held out his hand. Kaid took it, but said, in smiling comment on the action: "As the Viceroy's servant there is another way!" "I will salaam to-morrow, Kaid," answered David. "It is the only custom of the place I will require of thee, effendi. Come." A few moments later they were standing among the consuls and officials in the salon. "Where is Nahoum?" asked Kaid, looking round on the agitated throng. No one answered. Smiling, Kaid whispered in David's ear. CHAPTER VII THE COMPACT One by one the lights went out in the Palace. The excited guests were now knocking at the doors of Cairene notables, bent upon gossip of the night's events, or were scouring the bazaars for ears into which to pour the tale of how David was exalted and Nahoum was brought low; how, before them all, Kaid had commanded Nahoum to appear at the Palace in the morning at eleven, and the Inglesi, as they had named David, at ten. But they declared to all who crowded upon their words that the Inglesi left the Palace with a face frozen white, as though it was he that had met debacle, while Nahoum had been as urbane and cynical as though he had come to the fulness of his power. Some, on hearing this, said: "Beware Nahoum!" But those who had been at the Palace said: "Beware the Inglesi!" This still Quaker, with the white shining face and pontifical hat, with his address of "thee" and "thou," and his forms of speech almost Oriental in their imagery and simplicity, himself an archaism, had impressed them with a sense of power. He had prompted old Diaz Pasha to speak of him as a reincarnation, so separate and withdrawn he seemed at the end of the evening, yet with an uncanny mastery in his dark brown eyes. One of the Ulema, or holy men, present had said in reply to Diaz: "It is the look of one who hath walked with Death and bought and sold with Sheitan the accursed." To Nahoum Pasha, Dim had said, as the former left the Palace, a cigarette between his fingers: "Sleep not nor slumber, Nahoum. The world was never lost by one earthquake." And Nahoum had replied with a smooth friendliness: "The world is not reaped in one harvest." "The day is at hand--the East against the West," murmured old Diaz, as he passed on. "The day is far spent," answered Nahoum, in a voice unheard by Diaz; and, with a word to his coachman, who drove off quickly, he disappeared in the shrubbery. A few minutes later he was tapping at the door of Mizraim, the Chief Eunuch. Three times he tapped in the same way. Presently the door opened, and he stepped inside. The lean, dark figure of Mizraim bowed low; the long, slow fingers touched the forehead, the breast, and the lips. "May God preserve thy head from harm, excellency, and the night give thee sleep," said Mizraim. He looked inquiringly at Nahoum. "May thy head know neither heat nor cold, and thy joys increase," responded Nahoum mechanically, and sat down. To an European it would have seemed a shameless mockery to have wished joy to this lean, hateful dweller in the between-worlds; to Nahoum it was part of a life which was all ritual and intrigue, gabbling superstition and innate fatalism, decorated falsehood and a brave philosophy. "I have work for thee at last, Mizraim," said Nahoum. "At last?" "Thou hast but played before. To-night I must see the sweat of thy brow." Mizraim's cold fingers again threw themselves against his breast, forehead, and lips, and he said: "As a woman swims in a fountain, so shall I bathe in sweat for thee, who hath given with one hand and hath never taken with the other." "I did thee service once, Mizraim--eh?" "I was as a bird buffeted by the wind; upon thy masts my feet found rest. Behold, I build my nest in thy sails, excellency." "There are no birds in last year's nest, Mizraim, thou dove," said Nahoum, with a cynical smile. "When I build, I build. Where I swear by the stone of the corner, there am I from dark to dark and from dawn to dawn, pasha." Suddenly he swept his hand low to the ground and a ghastly sort of smile crossed over his face. "Speak--I am thy servant. Shall I not hear? I will put my hand in the entrails of Egypt, and wrench them forth for thee." He made a gesture so cruelly, so darkly, suggestive that Nahoum turned his head away. There flashed before his mind the scene of death in which his own father had lain, butchered like a beast in the shambles, a victim to the rage of Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Mehemet Ali. "Then listen, and learn why I have need of thee to-night." First, Nahoum told the story of David's coming, and Kaid's treatment of himself, the foreshadowing of his own doom. Then of David and the girl, and the dead body he had seen; of the escape of the girl, of David's return with Kaid--all exactly as it had happened, save that he did; not mention the name of the dead man. It did not astonish Mizraim that Nahoum had kept all this secret. That crime should be followed by secrecy and further crime, if need be, seems natural to the Oriental mind. Mizraim had seen removal follow upon removal, and the dark Nile flowed on gloomily, silently, faithful to the helpless ones tossed into its bosom. It would much have astonished him if Nahoum had not shown a gaping darkness somewhere in his tale, and he felt for the key to the mystery. "And he who lies dead, excellency?" "My brother." "Foorgat Bey!" "Even he, Mizraim. He lured the girl here--a mad man ever. The other madman was in the next room. He struck--come, and thou shalt see." Together they felt their way through the passages and rooms, and presently entered the room where Foorgat Bey was lying. Nahoum struck a light, and, as he held the candle, Mizraim knelt and examined the body closely. He found the slight wound on the temple, then took the candle from Nahoum and held it close to the corner of the marble pedestal. A faint stain of blood was there. Again he examined the body, and ran his fingers over the face and neck. Suddenly he stopped, and held the light close to the skin beneath the right jaw. He motioned, and Nahoum laid his fingers also on the spot. There was a slight swelling. "A blow with the fist, excellency--skilful, and English." He looked inquiringly at Nahoum. "As a weasel hath a rabbit by the throat, so is the Inglesi in thy hands." Nahoum shook his head. "And if I went to Kaid, and said, 'This is the work of the Inglesi,' would he believe? Kaid would hang me for the lie-- would it be truth to him? What proof have I, save the testimony of mine own eyes? Egypt would laugh at that. Is it the time, while yet the singers are beneath the windows, to assail the bride? All bridegrooms are mad. It is all sunshine and morning with the favourite, the Inglesi. Only when the shadows lengthen may he be stricken. Not now." "Why dost thou hide this from Kaid, O thou brother of the eagle?" "For my gain and thine, keeper of the gate. To-night I am weak, because I am poor. To-morrow I shall be rich and, it may be, strong. If Kaid knew of this tonight, I should be a prisoner before cockcrow. What claims has a prisoner? Kaid would be in my brother's house at dawn, seizing all that is there and elsewhere, and I on my way to Fazougli, to be strangled or drowned." "O wise and far-seeing! Thine eye pierces the earth. What is there to do? What is my gain--what thine?" "Thy gain? The payment of thy debt to me." Mizraim's face lengthened. His was a loathsome sort of gratitude. He was willing to pay in kind; but what Oriental ever paid a debt without a gift in return, even as a bartering Irishman demands his lucky penny. "So be it, excellency, and my life is thine to spill upon the ground, a scarlet cloth for thy feet. And backsheesh?" Nahoum smiled grimly. "For backsheesh, thy turban full of gold." Mizraim's eyes glittered-the dull black shine of a mongrel terrier's. He caught the sleeve of Nahoum's coat and kissed it, then kissed his hand. Thus was their bargain made over the dead body; and Mizraim had an almost superstitious reverence for the fulfilment of a bond, the one virtue rarely found in the Oriental. Nothing else had he, but of all men in Egypt he was the best instrument Nahoum could have chosen; and of all men in Egypt he was the one man who could surely help him. "What is there now to do, excellency?" "My coachman is with the carriage at the gate by which the English girl left. It is open still. The key is in Foorgat's pocket, no doubt; stolen by him, no doubt also. . . . This is my design. Thou wilt drive him"--he pointed to the body--"to his palace, seated in the carriage as though he were alive. There is a secret entrance. The bowab of the gate will show the way; I know it not. But who will deny thee? Thou comest from high places--from Kaid. Who will speak of this? Will the bowab? In the morning Foorgat will be found dead in his bed! The slight bruise thou canst heal--thou canst?" Mizraim nodded. "I can smooth it from the sharpest eye." "At dawn he will be found dead; but at dawn I shall be knocking at his gates. Before the world knows I shall be in possession. All that is his shall be mine, for at once the men of law shall be summoned, and my inheritance secured before Kaid shall even know of his death. I shall take my chances for my life." "And the coachman, and the bowab, and others it may be?" "Shall not these be with thee--thou, Kaid's keeper of the harem, the lion at the door of his garden of women? Would it be strange that Foorgat, who ever flew at fruit above his head, perilous to get or keep, should be found on forbidden ground, or in design upon it? Would it be strange to the bowab or the slave that he should return with thee stark and still? They would but count it mercy of Kaid that he was not given to the serpents of the Nile. A word from thee--would one open his mouth? Would not the shadow of thy hand, of the swift doom, be over them? Would not a handful of gold bind them to me? Is not the man dead? Are they not mine--mine to bind or break as I will?" "So be it! Wisdom is of thee as the breath of man is his life. I will drive Foorgat Bey to his home." A few moments later all that was left of Foorgat Bey was sitting in his carriage beside Mizraim the Chief Eunuch--sitting upright, stony, and still, and in such wise was driven swiftly to his palace. CHAPTER VIII FOR HIS SOUL'S SAKE AND THE LAND'S SAKE David came to know a startling piece of news the next morning-that Foorgat Bey had died of heart-disease in his bed, and was so found by his servants. He at once surmised that Foorgat's body had been carried out of the Palace; no doubt that it might not be thought he had come to his death by command of Kaid. His mind became easier. Death, murder, crime in Egypt was not a nine days' wonder; it scarce outlived one day. When a man was gone none troubled. The dead man was in the bosom of Allah; then why should the living be beset or troubled? If there was foul play, why make things worse by sending another life after the life gone, even in the way of justice? The girl David saved had told him her own name, and had given him the name of the hotel at which she was staying. He had an early breakfast, and prepared to go to her hotel, wishing to see her once more. There were things to be said for the first and last time and then be buried for ever. She must leave the country at once. In this sick, mad land, in this whirlpool of secret murder and conspiracy, no one could tell what plot was hatching, what deeds were forward; and he could not yet be sure that no one save himself and herself knew who had killed Foorgat Bey. Her perfect safety lay in instant flight. It was his duty to see that she went, and at once--this very day. He would go and see her. He went to the hotel. There he learned that, with her aunt, she had left that morning for Alexandria en route to England. He approved her wisdom, he applauded her decision. Yet--yet, somehow, as he bent his footsteps towards his lodgings again he had a sense of disappointment, of revelation. What might happen to him--evidently that had not occurred to her. How could she know but that his life might be in danger; that, after all, they might have been seen leaving the fatal room? Well, she had gone, and with all his heart he was glad that she was safe. His judgment upon last night's event was not coloured by a single direct criticism upon the girl. But he could not prevent the suggestion suddenly flashing into his mind that she had thought of herself first and last. Well, she had gone; and he was here to face the future, unencumbered by aught save the weight of his own conscience. Yet, the weight of his conscience! His feet were still free--free for one short hour before he went to Kaid; but his soul was in chains. As he turned his course to the Nile, and crossed over the great bridge, there went clanking by in chains a hundred conscripts, torn from their homes in the Fayoum, bidding farewell for ever to their friends, receiving their last offerings, for they had no hope of return. He looked at their haggard and dusty faces, at their excoriated ankles, and his eyes closed in pain. All they felt he felt. What their homes were to them, these fellaheen, dragged forth to defend their country, to go into the desert and waste their lives under leaders tyrannous, cruel, and incompetent, his old open life, his innocence, his integrity, his truthfulness and character, were to him. By an impulsive act, by a rash blow, he had asserted his humanity; but he had killed his fellow-man in anger. He knew that as that fatal blow had been delivered, there was no thought of punishment--it was blind anger and hatred: it was the ancient virus working which had filled the world with war, and armed it at the expense, the bitter and oppressive expense, of the toilers and the poor. The taxes for wars were wrung out of the sons of labour and sorrow. These poor fellaheen had paid taxes on everything they possessed. Taxes, taxes, nothing but taxes from the cradle! Their lands, houses, and palm- trees would be taxed still, when they would reap no more. And having given all save their lives, these lives they must now give under the whip and the chain and the sword. As David looked at them in their single blue calico coverings, in which they had lived and slept-shivering in the cold night air upon the bare ground--these thoughts came to him; and he had a sudden longing to follow them and put the chains upon his own arms and legs, and go forth and suffer with them, and fight and die? To die were easy. To fight?. . . . Was it then come to that? He was no longer a man of peace, but a man of the sword; no longer a man of the palm and the evangel, but a man of blood and of crime! He shrank back out of the glare of the sun; for it suddenly seemed to him that there was written upon his fore head, "This is a brother of Cain." For the first time in his life he had a shrinking from the light, and from the sun which he had loved like a Persian, had, in a sense, unconsciously worshipped. He was scarcely aware where he was. He had wandered on until he had come to the end of the bridge and into the great groups of traffickers who, at this place, made a market of their wares. Here sat a seller of sugar cane; there wandered, clanking his brasses, a merchant of sweet waters; there shouted a cheap-jack of the Nile the virtues of a knife from Sheffield. Yonder a camel-driver squatted and counted his earnings; and a sheepdealer haggled with the owner of a ghiassa bound for the sands of the North. The curious came about him and looked at him, but he did not see or hear. He sat upon a stone, his gaze upon the river, following with his eyes, yet without consciously observing, the dark riverine population whose ways are hidden, who know only the law of the river and spend their lives in eluding itpirates and brigands now, and yet again the peaceful porters of commerce. To his mind, never a criminal in this land but less a criminal than he! For their standard was a standard of might the only right; but he--his whole life had been nurtured in an atmosphere of right and justice, had been a spiritual demonstration against force. He was with out fear, as he was without an undue love of life. The laying down of his life had never been presented to him; and yet, now that his conscience was his only judge, and it condemned him, he would gladly have given his life to pay the price of blood. That was impossible. His life was not his own to give, save by suicide; and that would be the unpardonable insult to God and humanity. He had given his word to the woman, and he would keep it. In those brief moments she must have suffered more than most men suffer in a long life. Not her hand, however, but his, had committed the deed. And yet a sudden wave of pity for her rushed over him, because the conviction seized him that she would also in her heart take upon herself the burden of his guilt as though it were her own. He had seen it in the look of her face last night. For the sake of her future it was her duty to shield herself from any imputation which might as unjustly as scandalously arise, if the facts of that black hour ever became known. Ever became known? The thought that there might be some human eye which had seen, which knew, sent a shiver through him. "I would give my life a thousand times rather than that," he said aloud to the swift-flowing river. His head sank on his breast. His lips murmured in prayer: "But be merciful to me, Thou just Judge of Israel, for Thou hast made me, and Thou knowest whereof I am made. Here will I dedicate my life to Thee for the land's sake. Not for my soul's sake, O my God! If it be Thy will, let my soul be cast away; but for the soul of him whose body I slew, and for his land, let my life be the long sacrifice." Dreams he had had the night before--terrible dreams, which he could never forget; dreams of a fugitive being hunted through the world, escaping and eluding, only to be hemmed in once more; on and on till he grew grey and gaunt, and the hunt suddenly ended in a great morass, into which he plunged with the howling world behind him. The grey, dank mists came down on him, his footsteps sank deeper and deeper, and ever the cries, as of damned spirits, grew in his ears. Mocking shapes flitted past him, the wings of obscene birds buffeted him, the morass grew up about him; and now it was all a red moving mass like a dead sea heaving about him. With a moan of agony he felt the dolorous flood above his shoulders, and then a cry pierced the gloom and the loathsome misery, and a voice he knew called to him, "David, David, I am coming!" and he had awaked with the old hallucination of his uncle's voice calling to him in the dawn. It came to him now as he sat by the water-side, and he raised his face to the sun and to the world. The idlers had left him alone; none were staring at him now. They were all intent on their own business, each man labouring after his kind. He heard the voice of a riverman as he toiled at a rope standing on the corn that filled his ghiassa from end to end, from keel to gunwale. The man was singing a wild chant of cheerful labour, the soul of the hard-smitten of the earth rising above the rack and burden of the body: "O, the garden where to-day we sow and to-morrow we reap! O, the sakkia turning by the garden walls; O, the onion-field and the date-tree growing, And my hand on the plough-by the blessing of God; Strength of my soul, O my brother, all's well!" The meaning of the song got into his heart. He pressed his hand to his breast with a sudden gesture. It touched something hard. It was his flute. Mechanically he had put it in his pocket when he dressed in the morning. He took it out and looked at it lovingly. Into it he had poured his soul in the old days--days, centuries away, it seemed now. It should still be the link with the old life. He rose and walked towards his home again. The future spread clearly before him. Rapine, murder, tyranny, oppression, were round him on every side, and the ruler of the land called him to his counsels. Here a great duty lay--his life for this land, his life, and his love, and his faith. He would expiate his crime and his sin, the crime of homicide for which he alone was responsible, the sin of secrecy for which he and another were responsible. And that other? If only there had been but one word of understanding between them before she left! At the door of his house stood the American whom he had met at the citadel yesterday-it seemed a hundred years ago. "I've got a letter for you," Lacey said. "The lady's aunt and herself are cousins of mine more or less removed, and originally at home in the U. S. A. a generation ago. Her mother was an American. She didn't know your name--Miss Hylda Maryon, I mean. I told her, but there wasn't time to put it on." He handed over the unaddressed envelope. David opened the letter, and read: "I have seen the papers. I do not understand what has happened, but I know that all is well. If it were not so, I would not go. That is the truth. Grateful I am, oh, believe me! So grateful that I do not yet know what is the return which I must make. But the return will be made. I hear of what has come to you--how easily I might have destroyed all! My thoughts blind me. You are great and good; you will know at least that I go because it is the only thing to do. I fly from the storm with a broken wing. Take now my promise to pay what I owe in the hour Fate wills--or in the hour of your need. You can trust him who brings this to you; he is a distant cousin of my own. Do not judge him by his odd and foolish words. They hide a good character, and he has a strong nature. He wants work to do. Can you give it? Farewell." David put the letter in his pocket, a strange quietness about his heart. He scarcely realised what Lacey was saying. "Great girl that. Troubled about something in England, I guess. Going straight back." David thanked him for the letter. Lacey became red in the face. He tried to say something, but failed. "Thee wishes to say something to me, friend?" asked David. "I'm full up; I can't speak. But, say--" "I am going to the Palace now. Come back at noon if you will." He wrung David's hand in gratitude. "You're going to do it. You're going to do it. I see it. It's a great game--like Abe Lincoln's. Say, let me black your boots while you're doing it, will you?" David pressed his hand. CHAPTER IX THE LETTER, THE NIGHT, AND THE WOMAN "To-day has come the fulfilment of my dream, Faith. I am given to my appointed task; I am set on a road of life in which there is no looking back. My dreams of the past are here begun in very truth and fact. When, in the night, I heard Uncle Benn calling, when in the Meeting-house voices said, 'Come away, come away, and labour, thou art idle,' I could hear my heart beat in the ardour to be off. Yet I knew not whither. Now I know. "Last night the Prince Pasha called me to his Council, made me adviser, confidant, as one who has the ear of his captain--after he had come to terms with me upon that which Uncle Benn left of land and gold. Think not that he tempted me. "Last night I saw favourites look upon me with hate because of Kaid's favour, though the great hall was filled with show of cheerful splendour, and men smiled and feasted. To-day I know that in the Palace where I was summoned to my first: duty with the Prince, every step I took was shadowed, every motion recorded, every look or word noted and set down. I have no fear of them. They are not subtle enough for the unexpected acts of honesty in the life of a true man. Yet I do not wonder men fail to keep honest in the midst of this splendour, where all is strife as to who shall have the Prince's favour; who shall enjoy the fruits of bribery, backsheesh, and monopoly; who shall wring from the slave and the toil-ridden fellah the coin his poor body mints at the corvee, in his own taxed fields of dourha and cucumbers. "Is this like anything we ever dreamed at Hamley, Faith? Yet here am I set, and here shall I stay till the skein be ravelled out. Soon I shall go into the desert upon a mission to the cities of the South, to Dongola, Khartoum, and Darfur and beyond; for there is trouble yonder, and war is near, unless it is given to me to bring peace. So I must bend to my study of Arabic, which I am thankful I learned long ago. And I must not forget to say that I shall take with me on my journey that faithful Muslim Ebn Ezra. Others I shall take also, but of them I shall write hereafter. "I shall henceforth be moving in the midst of things which I was taught to hate. I pray that I may not hate them less as time goes on. To-morrow I shall breathe the air of intrigue, shall hear footsteps of spies behind me wherever I go; shall know that even the roses in the garden have ears; that the ground under my feet will telegraph my thoughts. Shall I be true? Shall I at last whisper, and follow, and evade, believe in no one, much less in myself, steal in and out of men's confidences to use them for my own purposes? Does any human being know what he can bear of temptation or of the daily pressure of the life around him? what powers of resistance are in his soul? how long the vital energy will continue to throw off the never-ending seduction, the freshening force of evil? Therein lies the power of evil, that it is ever new, ever fortified by continuous conquest and achievements. It has the rare fire of aggression; is ever more upon the offence than upon the defence; has, withal, the false lure of freedom from restraint, the throbbing force of sympathy. "Such things I dreamed not of in Soolsby's but upon the hill, Faith, though, indeed, that seemed a time of trial and sore-heartedness. How large do small issues seem till we have faced the momentous things! It is true that the larger life has pleasures and expanding capacities; but it is truer still that it has perils, events which try the soul as it is never tried in the smaller life--unless, indeed, the soul be that of the Epicurean. The Epicurean I well understand, and in his way I might have walked with a wicked grace. I have in me some hidden depths of luxury, a secret heart of pleasure, an understanding for the forbidden thing. I could have walked the broad way with a laughing heart, though, in truth, habit of mind and desire have kept me in the better path. But offences must come, and woe to him from whom the offence cometh! I have begun now, and only now, to feel the storms that shake us to our farthest cells of life. I begin to see how near good is to evil; how near faith is to unfaith; and how difficult it is to judge from actions only; how little we can know to-day what we shall feel tomorrow. Yet one must learn to see deeper, to find motive, not in acts that shake the faith, but in character which needs no explanation, which--" He paused, disturbed. Then he raised his head, as though not conscious of what was breaking the course of his thoughts. Presently he realised a low, hurried knocking at his door. He threw a hand over his eyes, and sprang up. An instant later the figure of a woman, deeply veiled, stood within the room, beside the table where he had been writing. There was silence as they faced each other, his back against the door. "Oh, do you not know me?" she said at last, and sank into the chair where he had been sitting. The question was unnecessary, and she knew it was so; but she could not bear the strain of the silence. She seemed to have risen out of the letter he had been writing; and had he not been writing of her--of what concerned them both? How mean and small-hearted he had been, to have thought for an instant that she had not the highest courage, though in going she had done the discreeter, safer thing. But she had come--she had come! All this was in his eyes, though his face was pale and still. He was almost rigid with emotion, for the ancient habit of repose and self- command of the Quaker people was upon him. "Can you not see--do you not know?" she repeated, her back upon him now, her face still veiled, her hands making a swift motion of distress. "Has thee found in the past that thee is so soon forgotten?" "Oh, do not blame me!" She raised her veil suddenly, and showed a face as pale as his own, and in the eyes a fiery brightness. "I did not know. It was so hard to come--do not blame me. I went to Alexandria--I felt that I must fly; the air around me seemed full of voices crying out. Did you not understand why I went?" "I understand," he said, coming forward slowly. "Thee should not have returned. In the way I go now the watchers go also." "If I had not come, you would never have understood," she answered quickly. "I am not sorry I went. I was so frightened, so shaken. My only thought was to get away from the terrible Thing. But I should have been sorry all my life long had I not come back to tell you what I feel, and that I shall never forget. All my life I shall be grateful. You have saved me from a thousand deaths. Ah, if I could give you but one life! Yet--yet--oh, do not think but that I would tell you the whole truth, though I am not wholly truthful. See, I love my place in the world more than I love my life; and but for you I should have lost all." He made a protesting motion. "The debt is mine, in truth. But for you I should never have known what, perhaps--" He paused. His eyes were on hers, gravely speaking what his tongue faltered to say. She looked and looked, but did not understand. She only saw troubled depths, lighted by a soul of kindling purpose. "Tell me," she said, awed. "Through you I have come to know--" He paused again. What he was going to say, truthful though it was, must hurt her, and she had been sorely hurt already. He put his thoughts more gently, more vaguely. "By what happened I have come to see what matters in life. I was behind the hedge. I have broken through upon the road. I know my goal now. The highway is before me." She felt the tragedy in his words, and her voice shook as she spoke. "I wish I knew life better. Then I could make a better answer. You are on the road, you say. But I feel that it is a hard and cruel road--oh, I understand that at least! Tell me, please, tell me the whole truth. You are hiding from me what you feel. I have upset your life, have I not? You are a Quaker, and Quakers are better than all other Christian people, are they not? Their faith is peace, and for me, you--" She covered her face with her hands for an instant, but turned quickly and looked him in the eyes: "For me you put your hand upon the clock of a man's life, and stopped it." She got to her feet with a passionate gesture, but he put a hand gently upon her arm, and she sank back again. "Oh, it was not you; it was I who did it!" she said. "You did what any man of honour would have done, what a brother would have done." "What I did is a matter for myself only," he responded quickly. "Had I never seen your face again it would have been the same. You were the occasion; the thing I did had only one source, my own heart and mind. There might have been another way; but for that way, or for the way I did take, you could not be responsible." "How generous you are!" Her eyes swam with tears; she leaned over the table where he had been writing, and the tears dropped upon his letter. Presently she realised this, and drew back, then made as though to dry the tears from the paper with her handkerchief. As she did so the words that he had written met her eye: "'But offences must come, and woe to him from whom the offence cometh!' I have begun now, and only now, to feel the storms that shake us to our farthest cells of life." She became very still. He touched her arm and said heavily: "Come away, come away." She pointed to the words she had read. "I could not help but see, and now I know what this must mean to you." "Thee must go at once," he urged. "Thee should not have come. Thee was safe--none knew. A few hours and it would all have been far behind. We might never have met again." Suddenly she gave a low, hysterical laugh. "You think you hide the real thing from me. I know I'm ignorant and selfish and feeble-minded, but I can see farther than you think. You want to tell the truth about--about it, because you are honest and hate hiding things, because you want to be punished, and so pay the price. Oh, I can understand! If it were not for me you would not. . . . " With a sudden wild impulse she got to her feet. "And you shall not," she cried. "I will not have it." Colour came rushing to her cheeks. "I will not have it. I will not put myself so much in your debt. I will not demand so much of you. I will face it all. I will stand alone." There was a touch of indignation in her voice. Somehow she seemed moved to anger against him. Her hands were clasped at her side rigidly, her pulses throbbing. He stood looking at her fixedly, as though trying to realise her. His silence agitated her still further, and she spoke excitedly: "I could have, would have, killed him myself without a moment's regret. He had planned, planned--ah, God, can you not see it all! I would have taken his life without a thought. I was mad to go upon such an adventure, but I meant no ill. I had not one thought that I could not have cried out from the housetops, and he had in his heart--he had what you saw. But you repent that you killed him--by accident, it was by accident. Do you realise how many times others have been trapped by him as was I? Do you not see what he was--as I see now? Did he not say as much to me before you came, when I was dumb with terror? Did he not make me understand what his whole life had been? Did I not see in a flash the women whose lives he had spoiled and killed? Would I have had pity? Would I have had remorse? No, no, no! I was frightened when it was done, I was horrified, but I was not sorry; and I am not sorry. It was to be. It was thetrue end to his vileness. Ah!" She shuddered, and buried her face in her hands for a moment, then went on: "I can never forgive myself for going to the Palace with him. I was mad for experience, for mystery; I wanted more than the ordinary share of knowledge. I wanted to probe things. Yet I meant no wrong. I thought then nothing of which I shall ever be ashamed. But I shall always be ashamed because I knew him, because he thought that I--oh, if I were a man, I should be glad that I had killed him, for the sake of all honest women!" He remained silent. His look was not upon her, he seemed lost in a dream; but his face was fixed in trouble. She misunderstood his silence. "You had the courage, the impulse to--to do it," she said keenly; "you have not the courage to justify it. I will not have it so. "I will tell the truth to all the world. I will not shrink I shrank yesterday because I was afraid of the world; to-day I will face it, I will--" She stopped suddenly, and another look flashed into her face. Presently she spoke in a different tone; a new light had come upon her mind. "But I see," she added. "To tell all is to make you the victim, too, of what he did. It is in your hands; it is all in your hands; and I cannot speak unless--unless you are ready also." There was an unintended touch of scorn in her voice. She had been troubled and tried beyond bearing, and her impulsive nature revolted at his silence. She misunderstood him, or, if she did not wholly misunderstand him, she was angry at what she thought was a needless remorse or sensitiveness. Did not the man deserve his end? "There is only one course to pursue," he rejoined quietly, "and that is the course we entered upon last night. I neither doubted yourself nor your courage. Thee must not turn back now. Thee must not alter the course which was your own making, and the only course which thee could, or I should, take. I have planned my life according to the word I gave you. I could not turn back now. We are strangers, and we must remain so. Thee will go from here now, and we must not meet again. I am--" "I know who you are," she broke in. "I know what your religion is; that fighting and war and bloodshed is a sin to you." "I am of no family or place in England," he went on calmly. "I come of yeoman and trading stock; I have nothing in common with people of rank. Our lines of life will not cross. It is well that it should be so. As to what happened--that which I may feel has nothing to do with whether I was justified or no. But if thee has thought that I have repented doing what I did, let that pass for ever from your mind. I know that I should do the same, yes, even a hundred times. I did according to my nature. Thee must not now be punished cruelly for a thing thee did not do. Silence is the only way of safety or of justice. We must not speak of this again. We must each go our own way." Her eyes were moist. She reached out a hand to him timidly. "Oh, forgive me," she added brokenly, "I am so vain, so selfish, and that makes one blind to the truth. It is all clearer now. You have shown me that I was right in my first impulse, and that is all I can say for myself. I shall pray all my life that it will do you no harm in the end." She remained silent, for a moment adjusting her veil, preparing to go. Presently she spoke again: "I shall always want to know about you--what is happening to you. How could it be otherwise?" She was half realising one of the deepest things in existence, that the closest bond between two human beings is a bond of secrecy upon a thing which vitally, fatally concerns both or either. It is a power at once malevolent and beautiful. A secret like that of David and Hylda will do in a day what a score of years could not accomplish, will insinuate confidences which might never be given to the nearest or dearest. In neither was any feeling of the heart begotten by their experiences; and yet they had gone deeper in each other's lives than any one either had known in a lifetime. They had struck a deeper note than love or friendship. They had touched the chord of a secret and mutual experience which had gone so far that their lives would be influenced by it for ever after. Each understood this in a different way. Hylda looked towards the letter lying on the table. It had raised in her mind, not a doubt, but an undefined, undefinable anxiety. He saw the glance, and said: "I was writing to one who has been as a sister to me. She was my mother's sister though she is almost as young as I. Her name is Faith. There is nothing there of what concerns thee and me, though it would make no difference if she knew." Suddenly a thought seemed to strike him. "The secret is of thee and me. There is safety. If it became another's, there might be peril. The thing shall be between us only, for ever?" "Do you think that I--" "My instinct tells me a woman of sensitive mind might one day, out of an unmerciful honesty, tell her husband--" "I am not married-" "But one day--" She interrupted him. "Sentimental egotism will not rule me. Tell me," she added, "tell me one thing before I go. You said that your course was set. What is it?" "I remain here," he answered quietly. "I remain in the service of Prince Kaid." "It is a dreadful government, an awful service--" "That is why I stay." "You are going to try and change things here--you alone?" "I hope not alone, in time." "You are going to leave England, your friends, your family, your place-- in Hamley, was it not? My aunt has read of you--my cousin--" she paused. "I had no place in Hamley. Here is my place. Distance has little to do with understanding or affection. I had an uncle here in the East for twenty-five years, yet I knew him better than all others in the world. Space is nothing if minds are in sympathy. My uncle talked to me over seas and lands. I felt him, heard him speak." "You think that minds can speak to minds, no matter what the distance-- real and definite things?" "If I were parted from one very dear to me, I would try to say to him or her what was in my mind, not by written word only, but by the flying thought." She sat down suddenly, as though overwhelmed. "Oh, if that were possible!" she said. "If only one could send a thought like that!" Then with an impulse, and the flicker of a sad smile, she reached out a hand. "If ever in the years to come you want to speak to me, will you try to make me understand, as your uncle did with you?" "I cannot tell," he answered. "That which is deepest within us obeys only the laws of its need. By instinct it turns to where help lies, as a wild deer, fleeing, from captivity, makes for the veldt and the watercourse." She got to her feet again. "I want to pay my debt," she said solemnly. "It is a debt that one day must be paid--so awful--so awful!" A swift change passed over her. She shuddered, and grew white. "I said brave words just now," she added in a hoarse whisper, "but now I see him lying there cold and still, and you stooping over him. I see you touch his breast, his pulse. I see you close his eyes. One instant full of the pulse of life, the next struck out into infinite space. Oh, I shall never--how can I ever-forget!" She turned her head away from him, then composed herself again, and said quietly, with anxious eyes: "Why was nothing said or done? Perhaps they are only waiting. Perhaps they know. Why was it announced that he died in his bed at home?" "I cannot tell. When a man in high places dies in Egypt, it may be one death or another. No one inquires too closely. He died in Kaid Pasha's Palace, where other men have died, and none has inquired too closely. To-day they told me at the Palace that his carriage was seen to leave with himself and Mizraim the Chief Eunuch. Whatever the object, he was secretly taken to his house from the Palace, and his brother Nahoum seized upon his estate in the early morning. "I think that no one knows the truth. But it is all in the hands of God. We can do nothing more. Thee must go. Thee should not have come. In England thee will forget, as thee should forget. In Egypt I shall remember, as I should remember." "Thee," she repeated softly. "I love the Quaker thee. My grandmother was an American Quaker. She always spoke like that. Will you not use thee and thou in speaking to me, always?" "We are not likely to speak together in any language in the future," he answered. "But now thee must go, and I will--" "My cousin, Mr. Lacey, is waiting for me in the garden," she answered. "I shall be safe with him." She moved towards the door. He caught the handle to turn it, when there came the noise of loud talking, and the sound of footsteps in the court-yard. He opened the door slightly and looked out, then closed it quickly. "It is Nahoum Pasha," he said. "Please, the other room," he added, and pointed to a curtain. "There is a window leading on a garden. The garden-gate opens on a street leading to the Ezbekiah Square and your hotel." "But, no, I shall stay here," she said. She drew down her veil, then taking from her pocket another, arranged it also, so that her face was hidden. "Thee must go," he said--"go quickly." Again he pointed. "I will remain," she rejoined, with determination, and seated herself in a chair. CHAPTER X THE FOUR WHO KNEW There was a knocking at the door. David opened it. Nahoum Pasha stepped inside, and stood still a moment looking at Hylda. Then he made low salutation to her, touched his hand to his lips and breast saluting David, and waited. "What is thy business, pasha?" asked David quietly, and motioned towards a chair. "May thy path be on the high hills, Saadat-el-basha. I come for a favour at thy hands." Nahoum sat down. "What favour is mine to give to Nahoum Pasha?" "The Prince has given thee supreme place--it was mine but yesterday. It is well. To the deserving be the fruits of deserving." "Is merit, then, so truly rewarded here?" asked David quietly. "The Prince saw merit at last when he chose your Excellency for councillor." "How shall I show merit, then, in the eyes of Nahoum Pasha?" "Even by urging the Prince to give me place under him again. Not as heretofore--that is thy place--yet where it may be. I have capacity. I can aid thee in the great task. Thou wouldst remake our Egypt--and my heart is with you. I would rescue, not destroy. In years gone by I tried to do good to this land, and I failed. I was alone. I had not the strength to fight the forces around me. I was overcome. I had too little faith. But my heart was with the right--I am an Armenian and a Christian of the ancient faith. I am in sorrow. Death has humbled me. My brother Foorgat Bey--may flowers bloom for ever on his grave!--he is dead,"--his eyes were fixed on those of David, as with a perfectly assured candour--"and my heart is like an empty house. But man must not be idle and live--if Kaid lets me live. I have riches. Are not Foorgat's riches mine, his Palace, his gardens, his cattle, and his plantations, are they not mine? I may sit in the court-yard and hear the singers, may listen to the tale-tellers by the light of the moon; I may hear the tales of Al-Raschid chanted by one whose tongue never falters, and whose voice is like music; after the manner of the East I may give bread and meat to the poor at sunset; I may call the dancers to the feast. But what comfort shall it give? I am no longer a youth. I would work. I would labour for the land of Egypt, for by work shall we fulfil ourselves, redeem ourselves. Saadat, I would labour, but my master has taken away from me the anvil, the fire, and the hammer, and I sit without the door like an armless beggar. What work to do in Egypt save to help the land, and how shall one help, save in the Prince's service? There can be no reform from outside. If I laboured for better things outside Kaid's Palace, how long dost thou think I should escape the Nile, or the diamond-dust in my coffee? The work which I did, is it not so that it, with much more, falls now to thy hands, Saadat, with a confidence from Kaid that never was mine?" "I sought not the office." "Have I a word of blame? I come to ask for work to do with thee. Do I not know Prince Kaid? He had come to distrust us all. As stale water were we in his taste. He had no pleasure in us, and in our deeds he found only stones of stumbling. He knew not whom to trust. One by one we all had yielded to ceaseless intrigue and common distrust of each other, until no honest man was left; till all were intent to save their lives by holding power; for in this land to lose power is to lose life. No man who has been in high place, has had the secrets of the Palace and the ear of the Prince, lives after he has lost favour. The Prince, for his safety, must ensure silence, and the only silence in Egypt is the grave. In thee, Saadat, Kaid has found an honest man. Men will call thee mad, if thou remainest honest, but that is within thine own bosom and with fate. For me, thou hast taken my place, and more. Malaish, it is the decree of fate, and I have no anger. I come to ask thee to save my life, and then to give me work." "How shall I save thy life?" "By reconciling the Effendina to my living, and then by giving me service, where I shall be near to thee; where I can share with thee, though it be as the ant beside the beaver, the work of salvation in Egypt. I am rich since my brother was--" He paused; no covert look was in his eyes, no sign of knowledge, nothing but meditation and sorrowful frankness--"since Foorgat passed away in peace, praise be to God! He lay on his bed in the morning, when one came to wake him, like a sleeping child, no sign of the struggle of death upon him." A gasping sound came from the chair where Hylda sat; but he took no notice. He appeared to be unconscious of David's pain-drawn face, as he sat with hands upon his knees, his head bent forward listening, as though lost to the world. "So did Foorgat, my brother, die while yet in the fulness of his manhood, life beating high in his veins, with years before him to waste. He was a pleasure-lover, alas! he laid up no treasure of work accomplished; and so it was meet that he should die as he lived, in a moment of ease. And already he is forgotten. It is the custom here. He might have died by diamond-dust, and men would have set down their coffee-cups in surprise, and then would have forgotten; or he might have been struck down by the hand of an assassin, and, unless it was in the Palace, none would have paused to note it. And so the sands sweep over his steps upon the shore of time." After the first exclamation of horror, Hylda had sat rigid, listening as though under a spell. Through her veil she gazed at Nahoum with a cramping pain at her heart, for he seemed ever on the verge of the truth she dreaded; and when he spoke the truth, as though unconsciously, she felt she must cry out and rush from the room. He recalled to her the scene in the little tapestried room as vividly as though it was there before her eyes, and it had for the moment all the effect of a hideous nightmare. At last, however, she met David's eyes, and they guided her, for in them was a steady strength and force which gave her confidence. At first he also had been overcome inwardly, but his nerves were cool, his head was clear, and he listened to Nahoum, thinking out his course meanwhile. He owed this man much. He had taken his place, and by so doing had placed his life in danger. He had killed the brother upon the same day that he had dispossessed the favourite of office; and the debt was heavy. In office Nahoum had done after his kind, after the custom of the place and the people; and yet, as it would seem, the man had had stirrings within him towards a higher path. He, at any rate, had not amassed riches out of his position, and so much could not be said of any other servant of the Prince Pasha. Much he had heard of Nahoum's powerful will, hidden under a genial exterior, and behind his friendly, smiling blue eyes. He had heard also of cruelty--of banishment, and of enemies removed from his path suddenly, never to be seen again; but, on the whole, men spoke with more admiration of him than of any other public servant, Armenian Christian in a Mahommedan country though he was. That very day Kaid had said that if Nahoum had been less eager to control the State, he might still have held his place. Besides, the man was a Christian--of a mystic, half-legendary, obscure Christianity; yet having in his mind the old faith, its essence and its meaning, perhaps. Might not this Oriental mind, with that faith, be a power to redeem the land? It was a wonderful dream, in which he found the way, as he thought, to atone somewhat to this man for a dark injury done. When Nahoum stopped speaking David said: "But if I would have it, if it were well that it should be, I doubt I have the power to make it so." "Saadat-el-bdsha, Kaid believes in thee to-day; he will not believe to-morrow if thou dost remain without initiative. Action, however startling, will be proof of fitness. His Highness shakes a long spear. Those who ride with him must do battle with the same valour. Excellency, I have now great riches--since Death smote Foorgat Bey in the forehead" --still his eyes conveyed no meaning, though Hylda shrank back--"and I would use them for the good thou wouldst do here. Money will be needed, and sufficient will not be at thy hand-not till new ledgers be opened, new balances struck." He turned to Hylda quietly, and with a continued air of innocence said: "Shall it not be so-madame? Thou, I doubt not, are of his kin. It would seem so, though I ask pardon if it be not so--wilt thou not urge his Excellency to restore me to Kaid's favour? I know little of the English, though I know them humane and honest; but my brother, Foorgat Bey, he was much among them, lived much in England, was a friend to many great English. Indeed, on the evening that he died I saw him in the gallery of the banquet-room with an English lady--can one be mistaken in an English face? Perhaps he cared for her; perhaps that was why he smiled as he lay upon his bed, never to move again. Madame, perhaps in England thou mayst have known my brother. If that is so, I ask thee to speak for me to his Excellency. My life is in danger, and I am too young to go as my brother went. I do not wish to die in middle age, as my brother died." He had gone too far. In David's mind there was no suspicion that Nahoum knew the truth. The suggestion in his words had seemed natural; but, from the first, a sharp suspicion was in the mind of Hylda, and his last words had convinced her that if Nahoum did not surely know the truth, he suspected it all too well. Her instinct had pierced far; and as she realised his suspicions, perhaps his certainty, and heard his words of covert insult, which, as she saw, David did not appreciate, anger and determination grew in her. Yet she felt that caution must mark her words, and that nothing but danger lay in resentment. She felt the everlasting indignity behind the quiet, youthful eyes, the determined power of the man; but she saw also that, for the present, the course Nahoum suggested was the only course to take. And David must not even feel the suspicion in her own mind, that Nahoum knew or suspected the truth. If David thought that Nahoum knew, the end of all would come at once. It was clear, however, that Nahoum meant to be silent, or he would have taken another course of action. Danger lay in every direction, but, to her mind, the least danger lay in following Nahoum's wish. She slowly raised her veil, showing a face very still now, with eyes as steady as David's. David started at her action, he thought it rash; but the courage of it pleased him, too. "You are not mistaken," she said slowly in French; "your brother was known to me. I had met him in England. It will be a relief to all his friends to know that he passed away peacefully." She looked him in the eyes determinedly. "Monsieur Claridge is not my kinsman, but he is my fellow-countryman. If you mean well by monsieur, your knowledge and your riches should help him on his way. But your past is no guarantee of good faith, as you will acknowledge." He looked her in the eyes with a far meaning. "But I am giving guarantees of good faith now," he said softly. "Will you--not?" She understood. It was clear that he meant peace, for the moment at least. "If I had influence I would advise him to reconcile you to Prince Kaid," she said quietly, then turned to David with an appeal in her eyes. David stood up. "I will do what I can," he said. "If thee means as well by Egypt as I mean by thee, all may be well for all." "Saadat! Saadat!" said Nahoum, with show of assumed feeling, and made salutation. Then to Hylda, making lower salutation still, he said: "Thou hast lifted from my neck the yoke. Thou hast saved me from the shadow and the dust. I am thy slave." His eyes were like a child's, wide and confiding. He turned towards the door, and was about to open it, when there came a knocking, and he stepped back. Hylda drew down her veil. David opened the door cautiously and admitted Mizraim the Chief Eunuch. Mizraim's eyes searched the room, and found Nahoum. "Pasha," he said to Nahoum, "may thy bones never return to dust, nor the light of thine eyes darken! There is danger." Nahoum nodded, but did not speak. "Shall I speak, then?" He paused and made low salutation to David, saying, "Excellency, I am thine ox to be slain." "Speak, son of the flowering oak," said Nahoum, with a sneer in his voice. "What blessing dost thou bring?" "The Effendina has sent for thee." Nahoum's eyes flashed. "By thee, lion of Abdin?" The lean, ghastly being smiled. "He has sent a company of soldiers and Achmet Pasha." "Achmet! Is it so? They are here, Mizraim, watcher of the morning?" "They are at thy palace--I am here, light of Egypt." "How knewest thou I was here?" Mizraim salaamed. "A watch was set upon thee this morning early. The watcher was of my slaves. He brought the word to me that thou wast here now. A watcher also was set upon thee, Excellency"--he turned to David. "He also was of my slaves. Word was delivered to his Highness that thou" --he turned to Nahoum again--"wast in thy palace, and Achmet Pasha went thither. He found thee not. Now the city is full of watchers, and Achmet goes from bazaar to bazaar, from house to house which thou was wont to frequent--and thou art here." "What wouldst thou have me do, Mizraim?" "Thou art here; is it the house of a friend or a foe?" Nahoum did not answer. His eyes were fixed in thought upon the floor, but he was smiling. He seemed without fear. "But if this be the house of a friend, is he safe here?" asked David. "For this night, it may be," answered Mizraim, "till other watchers be set, who are no slaves of mine. Tonight, here, of all places in Cairo, he is safe; for who could look to find him where thou art who hast taken from him his place and office, Excellency--on whom the stars shine for ever! But in another day, if my lord Nahoum be not forgiven by the Effendina, a hundred watchers will pierce the darkest corner of the bazaar, the smallest room in Cairo." David turned to Nahoum. "Peace be to thee, friend. Abide here till to-morrow, when I will speak for thee to his Highness, and, I trust, bring thee pardon. It shall be so--but I shall prevail," he added, with slow decision; "I shall prevail with him. My reasons shall convince his Highness." "I can help thee with great reasons, Saadat," said Nahoum. "Thou shalt prevail. I can tell thee that which will convince Kaid." While they were speaking, Hylda had sat motionless watching. At first it seemed to her that a trap had been set, and that David was to be the victim of Oriental duplicity; but revolt, as she did, from the miserable creature before them, she saw at last that he spoke the truth. "Thee will remain under this roof to-night, pasha?" asked David. "I will stay if thy goodness will have it so," answered Nahoum slowly. "It is not my way to hide, but when the storm comes it is well to shelter." Salaaming low, Mizraim withdrew, his last glance being thrown towards Hylda, who met his look with a repugnance which made her face rigid. She rose and put on her gloves. Nahoum rose also, and stood watching her respectfully. "Thee will go?" asked David, with a movement towards her. She inclined her head. "We have finished our business, and it is late," she answered. David looked at Nahoum. "Thee will rest here, pasha, in peace. In a moment I will return." He took up his hat. There was a sudden flash of Nahoum's eyes, as though he saw an outcome of the intention which pleased him, but Hylda, saw the flash, and her senses were at once alarmed. "There is no need to accompany me," she said. "My cousin waits for me." David opened the door leading into the court-yard. It was dark, save for the light of a brazier of coals. A short distance away, near the outer gate, glowed a star of red light, and the fragrance of a strong cigar came over. "Say, looking for me?" said a voice, and a figure moved towards David. "Yours to command, pasha, yours to command." Lacey from Chicago held out his hand. "Thee is welcome, friend," said David. "She's ready, I suppose. Wonderful person, that. Stands on her own feet every time. She don't seem as though she came of the same stock as me, does she?" "I will bring her if thee will wait, friend." "I'm waiting." Lacey drew back to the gateway again and leaned against the wall, his cigar blazing in the dusk. A moment later David appeared in the garden again, with the slim, graceful figure of the girl who stood "upon her own feet." David drew her aside for a moment. "Thee is going at once to England?" he asked. "To-morrow to Alexandria. There is a steamer next day for Marseilles. In a fortnight more I shall be in England." "Thee must forget Egypt," he said. "Remembrance is not a thing of the will," she answered. "It is thy duty to forget. Thee is young, and it is spring with thee. Spring should be in thy heart. Thee has seen a shadow; but let it not fright thee." "My only fear is that I may forget," she answered. "Yet thee will forget." With a motion towards Lacey he moved to the gate. Suddenly she turned to him and touched his arm. "You will be a great man herein Egypt," she said. "You will have enemies without number. The worst of your enemies always will be your guest to-night." He did not, for a moment, understand. "Nahoum?" he asked. "I take his place. It would not be strange; but I will win him to me." "You will never win him," she answered. "Oh, trust my instinct in this! Watch him. Beware of him." David smiled slightly. "I shall have need to beware of many. I am sure thee does well to caution me. Farewell," he added. "If it should be that I can ever help you--" she said, and paused. "Thee has helped me," he replied. "The world is a desert. Caravans from all quarters of the sun meet at the cross-roads. One gives the other food or drink or medicine, and they move on again. And all grows dim with time. And the camel-drivers are forgotten; but the cross-roads remain, and the food and the drink and the medicine and the cattle helped each caravan upon the way. Is it not enough?" She placed her hand in his. It lay there for a moment. "God be with thee, friend," he said. The next instant Thomas Tilman Lacey's drawling voice broke the silence. "There's something catching about these nights in Egypt. I suppose it's the air. No wind--just the stars, and the ultramarine, and the nothing to do but lay me down and sleep. It doesn't give you the jim-jumps like Mexico. It makes you forget the world, doesn't it? You'd do things here that you wouldn't do anywhere else." The gate was opened by the bowab, and the two passed through. David was standing by the brazier, his hand held unconsciously over the coals, his eyes turned towards them. The reddish flame from the fire lit up his face under the broad-brimmed hat. His head, slightly bowed, was thrust forward to the dusk. Hylda looked at him steadily for a moment. Their eyes met, though hers were in the shade. Again Lacey spoke. "Don't be anxious. I'll see her safe back. Good-bye. Give my love to the girls." David stood looking at the closed gate with eyes full of thought and wonder and trouble. He was not thinking of the girl. There was no sentimental reverie in his look. Already his mind was engaged in scrutiny of the circumstances in which he was set. He realised fully his situation. The idealism which had been born with him had met its reward in a labour herculean at the least, and the infinite drudgery of the practical issues came in a terrible pressure of conviction to his mind. The mind did not shrink from any thought of the dangers in which he would be placed, from any vision of the struggle he must have with intrigue, and treachery and vileness. In a dim, half-realised way he felt that honesty and truth would be invincible weapons with a people who did not know them. They would be embarrassed, if not baffled, by a formula of life and conduct which they could not understand. It was not these matters that vexed him now, but the underlying forces of life set in motion by the blow which killed a fellow-man. This fact had driven him to an act of redemption unparalleled in its intensity and scope; but he could not tell--and this was the thought that shook his being--how far this act itself, inspiring him to a dangerous and immense work in life, would sap the best that was in him, since it must remain a secret crime, for which he could not openly atone. He asked himself as he stood by the brazier, the bowab apathetically rolling cigarettes at his feet, whether, in the flow of circumstance, the fact that he could not make open restitution, or take punishment for his unlawful act, would undermine the structure of his character. He was on the threshold of his career: action had not yet begun; he was standing like a swimmer on a high shore, looking into depths beneath which have never been plumbed by mortal man, wondering what currents, what rocks, lay beneath the surface of the blue. Would his strength, his knowledge, his skill, be equal to the enterprise? Would he emerge safe and successful, or be carried away by some strong undercurrent, be battered on unseen rocks? He turned with a calm face to the door behind which sat the displaced favourite of the Prince, his mind at rest, the trouble gone out of his eyes. "Uncle Benn! Uncle Benn!" he said to himself, with a warmth at his heart as he opened the door and stepped inside. Nahoum sat sipping coffee. A cigarette was between his fingers. He touched his hand to his forehead and his breast as David closed the door and hung his hat upon a nail. David's servant, Mahommed Hassan, whom he had had since first he came to Egypt, was gliding from the room--a large, square-shouldered fellow of over six feet, dressed in a plain blue yelek, but on his head the green turban of one who had done a pilgrimage to Mecca. Nahoum waved a hand after Mahommed and said: "Whence came thy servant sadat?" "He was my guide to Cairo. I picked him from the street." Nahoum smiled. There was no malice in the smile, only, as it might seem, a frank humour. "Ah, your Excellency used independent judgment. Thou art a judge of men. But does it make any difference that the man is a thief and a murderer--a murderer?" David's eyes darkened, as they were wont to do when he was moved or shocked. "Shall one only deal, then, with those who have neither stolen nor slain --is that the rule of the just in Egypt?" Nahoum raised his eyes to the ceiling as though in amiable inquiry, and began to finger a string of beads as a nun might tell her paternosters. "If that were the rule," he answered, after a moment, "how should any man be served in Egypt? Hereabouts is a man's life held cheap, else I had not been thy guest to-night; and Kaid's Palace itself would be empty, if every man in it must be honest. But it is the custom of the place for political errors to be punished by a hidden hand; we do not call it murder." "What is murder, friend?" "It is such a crime as that of Mahommed yonder, who killed--" David interposed. "I do not wish to know his crime. That is no affair between thee and me." Nahoum fingered his beads meditatively. "It was an affair of the housetops in his town of Manfaloot. I have only mentioned it because I know what view the English take of killing, and how set thou art to have thy household above reproach, as is meet in a Christian home. So, I took it, would be thy mind--which Heaven fill with light for Egypt's sake!-- that thou wouldst have none about thee who were not above reproach, neither liars, nor thieves, nor murderers." "But thee would serve with me, friend," rejoined David quietly. "Thee has men's lives against thy account." "Else had mine been against their account." "Was it not so with Mahommed? If so, according to the custom of the land, then Mahommed is as immune as thou art." "Saadat, like thee I am a Christian, yet am I also Oriental, and what is crime with one race is none with another. At the Palace two days past thou saidst thou hadst never killed a man; and I know that thy religion condemns killing even in war. Yet in Egypt thou wilt kill, or thou shalt thyself be killed, and thy aims will come to naught. When, as thou wouldst say, thou hast sinned, hast taken a man's life, then thou wilt understand. Thou wilt keep this fellow Mahommed, then?" "I understand, and I will keep him." "Surely thy heart is large and thy mind great. It moveth above small things. Thou dost not seek riches here?" "I have enough; my wants are few." "There is no precedent for one in office to withhold his hand from profit and backsheesh." "Shall we not try to make a precedent?" "Truthfulness will be desolate--like a bird blown to sea, beating 'gainst its doom." "Truth will find an island in the sea." "If Egypt is that sea, Saadat, there is no island." David came over close to Nahoum, and looked him in the eyes. "Surely I can speak to thee, friend, as to one understanding. Thou art a Christian--of the ancient fold. Out of the East came the light. Thy Church has preserved the faith. It is still like a lamp in the mist and the cloud in the East. Thou saidst but now that thy heart was with my purpose. Shall the truth that I would practise here not find an island in this sea--and shall it not be the soul of Nahoum Pasha?" "Have I not given my word? Nay, then, I swear it by the tomb of my brother, whom Death met in the highway, and because he loved the sun, and the talk of men, and the ways of women, rashly smote him out of the garden of life into the void. Even by his tomb I swear it." "Hast thou, then, such malice against Death? These things cannot happen save by the will of God." "And by the hand of man. But I have no cause for revenge. Foorgat died in his sleep like a child. Yet if it had been the hand of man, Prince Kaid or any other, I would not have held my hand until I had a life for his." "Thou art a Christian, yet thou wouldst meet one wrong by another?" "I am an Oriental." Then, with a sudden change of manner, he added: "But thou hast a Christianity the like of which I have never seen. I will learn of thee, Saadat, and thou shalt learn of me also many things which I know. They will help thee to understand Egypt and the place where thou wilt be set--if so be my life is saved, and by thy hand." Mahommed entered, and came to David. "Where wilt thou sleep, Saadat?" he asked. "The pasha will sleep yonder," David replied, pointing to another room. "I will sleep here." He laid a hand upon the couch where he sat. Nahoum rose and, salaaming, followed Mahommed to the other room. In a few moments the house was still, and remained so for hours. Just before dawn the curtain of Nahoum's room was drawn aside, the Armenian entered stealthily, and moved a step towards the couch where David lay. Suddenly he was stopped by a sound. He glanced towards a corner near David's feet. There sat Mahommed watching, a neboot of dom-wood across his knees. Their eyes remained fixed upon each other for a moment. Then Nahoum passed back into his bedroom as stealthily as he had come. Mahommed looked closely at David. He lay with an arm thrown over his head, resting softly, a moisture on his forehead as on that of a sleeping child. "Saadat! Saadat!" said Mahommed softly to the sleeping figure, scarcely above his breath, and then with his eyes upon the curtained room opposite, began to whisper words from the Koran: "In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful--" CHAPTER XI AGAINST THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT Achmet the Ropemaker was ill at ease. He had been set a task in which he had failed. The bright Cairene sun starkly glittering on the French chandeliers and Viennese mirrors, and beating on the brass trays and braziers by the window, irritated him. He watched the flies on the wall abstractedly; he listened to the early peripatetic salesmen crying their wares in the streets leading to the Palace; he stroked his cadaverous cheek with yellow fingers; he listened anxiously for a footstep. Presently he straightened himself up, and his fingers ran down the front of his coat to make sure that it was buttoned from top to bottom. He grew a little paler. He was less stoical and apathetic than most Egyptians. Also he was absurdly vain, and he knew that his vanity would receive rough usage. Now the door swung open, and a portly figure entered quickly. For so large a man Prince Kaid was light and subtle in his movements. His face was mobile, his eye keen and human. Achmet salaamed low. "The gardens of the First Heaven be thine, and the uttermost joy, Effendina," he said elaborately. "A thousand colours to the rainbow of thy happiness," answered Kaid mechanically, and seated himself cross-legged on a divan, taking a narghileh from the black slave who had glided ghostlike behind him. "What hour didst thou find him? Where hast thou placed him?" he added, after a moment. Achmet salaamed once more. "I have burrowed without ceasing, but the holes are empty, Effendina," he returned, abjectly and nervously. He had need to be concerned. The reply was full of amazement and anger. "Thou hast not found him? Thou hast not brought Nahoum to me?" Kaid's eyes were growing reddish; no good sign for those around him, for any that crossed him or his purposes. "A hundred eyes failed to search him out. Ten thousand piastres did not find him; the kourbash did not reveal him." Kaid's frown grew heavier. "Thou shalt bring Nahoum to me by midnight to-morrow!" "But if he has escaped, Effendina?" Achmet asked desperately. He had a peasant's blood; fear of power was ingrained. "What was thy business but to prevent escape? Son of a Nile crocodile, if he has escaped, thou too shalt escape from Egypt--into Fazougli. Fool, Nahoum is no coward. He would remain. He is in Egypt." "If he be in Egypt, I will find him, Effendina. Have I ever failed? When thou hast pointed, have I not brought? Have there not been many, Effendina? Should I not bring Nahoum, who has held over our heads the rod?" Kaid looked at him meditatively, and gave no answer to the question. "He reached too far," he muttered. "Egypt has one master only." The door opened softly and the black slave stole in. His lips moved, but scarce a sound travelled across the room. Kaid understood, and made a gesture. An instant afterwards the vast figure of Higli Pasha bulked into the room. Again there were elaborate salutations and salaams, and Kaid presently said: "Foorgat?" "Effendina," answered High, "it is not known how he died. He was in this Palace alive at night. In the morning he was found in bed at his own home." "There was no wound?" "None, Effendina." "The thong?" "There was no mark, Effendina." "Poison?" "There was no sign, Effendina." "Diamond-dust?" "Impossible, Effendina. There was not time. He was alive and well here at the Palace at eleven, and--" Kaid made an impatient gesture. "By the stone in the Kaabah, but it is not reasonable that Foorgat should die in his bed like a babe and sleep himself into heaven! Fate meant him for a violent end; but ere that came there was work to do for me. He had a gift for scenting treason--and he had treasure." His eyes shut and opened again with a look not pleasant to see. "But since it was that he must die so soon, then the loan he promised must now be a gift from the dead, if he be dead, if he be not shamming. Foorgat was a dire jester." "But now it is no jest, Effendina. He is in his grave." "In his grave! Bismillah! In his grave, dost thou say?" High's voice quavered. "Yesterday before sunset, Effendina. By Nahoum's orders." "I ordered the burial for to-day. By the gates of hell, but who shall disobey me!" "He was already buried when the Effendina's orders came," High pleaded anxiously. "Nahoum should have been taken yesterday," he rejoined, with malice in his eyes. "If I had received the orders of the Effendina on the night when the Effendina dismissed Nahoum--" Achmet said softly, and broke off. "A curse upon thine eyes that did not see thy duty!" Kaid replied gloomily. Then he turned to High. "My seal has been put upon Foorgat's doors? His treasure-places have been found? The courts have been commanded as to his estate, the banks--" "It was too late, Effendina," replied High hopelessly. Kaid got to his feet slowly, rage possessing him. "Too late! Who makes it too late when I command?" "When Foorgat was found dead, Nahoum at once seized the palace and the treasures. Then he went to the courts and to the holy men, and claimed succession. That was while it was yet early morning. Then he instructed the banks. The banks hold Foorgat's fortune against us, Effendina." "Foorgat had turned Mahommedan. Nahoum is a Christian. My will is law. Shall a Christian dog inherit from a true believer? The courts, the Wakfs shall obey me. And thou, son of a burnt father, shalt find Nahoum! Kaid shall not be cheated. Foorgat pledged the loan. It is mine. Allah scorch thine eyes!" he added fiercely to Achmet, "but thou shalt find this Christian gentleman, Nahoum." Suddenly, with a motion of disgust, he sat down, and taking the stem of the narghileh, puffed vigorously in silence. Presently in a red fury he cried: "Go--go--go, and bring me back by midnight Nahoum, and Foorgat's treasures, to the last piastre. Let every soldier be a spy, if thine own spies fail." As they turned to go, the door opened again, the black slave appeared, and ushered David into the room. David salaamed, but not low, and stood still. On the instant Kaid changed, The rage left his face. He leaned forward eagerly, the cruel and ugly look faded slowly from his eyes. "May thy days of life be as a river with sands of gold, effendi," he said gently. He had a voice like music. "May the sun shine in thy heart and fruits of wisdom flourish there, Effendina," answered David quietly. He saluted the others gravely, and his eyes rested upon Achmet in a way which Higli Pasha noted for subsequent gossip. Kaid pulled at his narghileh for a moment, mumbling good-humouredly to himself and watching the smoke reel away; then, with half-shut eyes, he said to David: "Am I master in Egypt or no, effendi?" "In ruling this people the Prince of Egypt stands alone," answered David. "There is no one between him and the people. There is no Parliament." "It is in my hand, then, to give or to withhold, to make or to break?" Kaid chuckled to have this tribute, as he thought, from a Christian, who did not blink at Oriental facts, and was honest. David bowed his head to Kaid's words. "Then if it be my hand that lifts up or casts down, that rewards or that punishes, shall my arm not stretch into the darkest corner of Egypt to bring forth a traitor? Shall it not be so?" "It belongs to thy power," answered David. "It is the ancient custom of princes here. Custom is law, while it is yet the custom." Kaid looked at him enigmatically for a moment, then smiled grimly--he saw the course of the lance which David had thrown. He bent his look fiercely on Achmet and Higli. "Ye have heard. Truth is on his lips. I have stretched out my arm. Ye are my arm, to reach for and gather in Nahoum and all that is his." He turned quickly to David again. "I have given this hawk, Achmet, till to-morrow night to bring Nahoum to me," he explained. "And if he fails--a penalty? He will lose his place?" asked David, with cold humour. "More than his place," Kaid rejoined, with a cruel smile. "Then is his place mine, Effendina," rejoined David, with a look which could give Achmet no comfort. "Thou will bring Nahoum--thou?" asked Kaid, in amazement. "I have brought him," answered David. "Is it not my duty to know the will of the Effendina and to do it, when it is just and right?" "Where is he--where does he wait?" questioned Kaid eagerly. "Within the Palace--here," replied David. "He awaits his fate in thine own dwelling, Effendina." Kaid glowered upon Achmet. "In the years which Time, the Scytheman, will cut from thy life, think, as thou fastest at Ramadan or feastest at Beiram, how Kaid filled thy plate when thou wast a beggar, and made thee from a dog of a fellah into a pasha. Go to thy dwelling, and come here no more," he added sharply. "I am sick of thy yellow, sinful face." Achmet made no reply, but, as he passed beyond the door with Higli, he said in a whisper: "Come--to Harrik and the army! He shall be deposed. The hour is at hand." High answered him faintly, however. He had not the courage of the true conspirator, traitor though he was. As they disappeared, Kaid made a wide gesture of friendliness to David, and motioned to a seat, then to a narghileh. David seated himself, took the stem of a narghileh in his mouth for an instant, then laid it down again and waited. "Nahoum--I do not understand," Kaid said presently, his eyes gloating. "He comes of his own will, Effendina." "Wherefore?" Kaid could not realise the truth. This truth was not Oriental on the face of it. "Effendina, he comes to place his life in thy hands. He would speak with thee." "How is it thou dost bring him?" "He sought me to plead for him with thee, and because I knew his peril, I kept him with me and brought him hither but now." "Nahoum went to thee?" Kaid's eyes peered abstractedly into the distance between the almost shut lids. That Nahoum should seek David, who had displaced him from his high office, was scarcely Oriental, when his every cue was to have revenge on his rival. This was a natural sequence to his downfall. It was understandable. But here was David safe and sound. Was it, then, some deeper scheme of future vengeance? The Oriental instinctively pierced the mind of the Oriental. He could have realised fully the fierce, blinding passion for revenge which had almost overcome Nahoum's calculating mind in the dark night, with his foe in the next room, which had driven him suddenly from his bed to fall upon David, only to find Mahommed Hassan watching--also with the instinct of the Oriental. Some future scheme of revenge? Kaid's eyes gleamed red. There would be no future for Nahoum. "Why did Nahoum go to thee?" he asked again presently. "That I might beg his life of thee, Highness, as I said," David replied. "I have not ordered his death." David looked meditatively at him. "It was agreed between us yesterday that I should speak plainly--is it not so?" Kaid nodded, and leaned back among the cushions. "If what the Effendina intends is fulfilled, there is no other way but death for Nahoum," added David. "What is my intention, effendi?" "To confiscate the fortune left by Foorgat Bey. Is it not so?" "I had a pledge from Foorgat--a loan." "That is the merit of the case, Effendina. I am otherwise concerned. There is the law. Nahoum inherits. Shouldst thou send him to Fazougli, he would still inherit." "He is a traitor." "Highness, where is the proof?" "I know. My friends have disappeared one by one--Nahoum. Lands have been alienated from me--Nahoum. My income has declined--Nahoum. I have given orders and they have not been fulfilled--Nahoum. Always, always some rumour of assassination, or of conspiracy, or the influence and secret agents of the Sultan--all Nahoum. He is a traitor. He has grown rich while I borrow from Europe to pay my army and to meet the demands of the Sultan." "What man can offer evidence in this save the Effendina who would profit by his death?" "I speak of what I know. I satisfy myself. It is enough." "Highness, there is a better way; to satisfy the people, for whom thee lives. None should stand between. Is not the Effendina a father to them?" "The people! Would they not say Nahoum had got his due if he were blotted from their sight?" "None has been so generous to the poor, so it is said by all. His hand has been upon the rich only. Now, Effendina, he has brought hither the full amount of all he has received and acquired in thy service. He would offer it in tribute." Kaid smiled sardonically. "It is a thin jest. When a traitor dies the State confiscates his goods!" "Thee calls him traitor. Does thee believe he has ever conspired against thy life?" Kaid shrugged his shoulders. "Let me answer for thee, Effendina. Again and again he has defeated conspiracy. He has blotted it out--by the sword and other means. He has been a faithful servant to his Prince at least. If he has done after the manner of all others in power here, the fault is in the system, not in the man alone. He has been a friend to thee, Kaid." "I hope to find in thee a better." "Why should he not live?" "Thou hast taken his place." "Is it, then, the custom to destroy those who have served thee, when they cease to serve?" David rose to his feet quickly. His face was shining with a strange excitement. It gave him a look of exaltation, his lips quivered with indignation. "Does thee kill because there is silence in the grave?" Kaid blew a cloud of smoke slowly. "Silence in the grave is a fact beyond dispute," he said cynically. "Highness, thee changes servants not seldom," rejoined David meaningly. "It may be that my service will be short. When I go, will the long arm reach out for me in the burrows where I shall hide?" Kaid looked at him with ill-concealed admiration. "Thou art an Englishman, not an Egyptian, a guest, not a subject, and under no law save my friendship." Then he added scornfully: "When an Englishman in England leaves office, no matter how unfaithful, though he be a friend of any country save his own, they send him to the House of Lords--or so I was told in France when I was there. What does it matter to thee what chances to Nahoum? Thou hast his place with me. My secrets are thine. They shall all be thine--for years I have sought an honest man. Thou art safe whether to go or to stay." "It may be so. I heed it not. My life is as that of a gull--if the wind carry it out to sea, it is lost. As my uncle went I shall go one day. Thee will never do me ill; but do I not know that I shall have foes at every corner, behind every mooshrabieh screen, on every mastaba, in the pasha's court-yard, by every mosque? Do I not know in what peril I serve Egypt?" "Yet thou wouldst keep alive Nahoum! He will dig thy grave deep, and wait long." "He will work with me for Egypt, Effendina." Kaid's face darkened. "What is thy meaning?" "I ask Nahoum's life that he may serve under me, to do those things thou and I planned yesterday--the land, taxation, the army, agriculture, the Soudan. Together we will make Egypt better and greater and richer--the poor richer, even though the rich be poorer." "And Kaid--poorer?" "When Egypt is richer, the Prince is richer, too. Is not the Prince Egypt? Highness, yesterday--yesterday thee gave me my commission. If thee will not take Nahoum again into service to aid me, I must not remain. I cannot work alone." "Thou must have this Christian Oriental to work with thee?" He looked at David closely, then smiled sardonically, but with friendliness to David in his eyes. "Nahoum has prayed to work with thee, to be a slave where he was master? He says to thee that he would lay his heart upon the altar of Egypt?" Mordant, questioning humour was in his voice. David inclined his head. "He would give up all that is his?" "It is so, Effendina." "All save Foorgat's heritage?" "It belonged to their father. It is a due inheritance." Kaid laughed sarcastically. "It was got in Mehemet Ali's service." "Nathless, it is a heritage, Effendina. He would give that fortune back again to Egypt in work with me, as I shall give of what is mine, and of what I am, in the name of God, the all-merciful!" The smile faded out of Kaid's face, and wonder settled on it. What manner of man was this? His life, his fortune for Egypt, a country alien to him, which he had never seen till six months ago! What kind of being was behind the dark, fiery eyes and the pale, impassioned face? Was he some new prophet? If so, why should he not have cast a spell upon Nahoum? Had he not bewitched himself, Kaid, one of the ablest princes since Alexander or Amenhotep? Had Nahoum, then, been mastered and won? Was ever such power? In how many ways had it not been shown! He had fought for his uncle's fortune, and had got it at last yesterday without a penny of backsheesh. Having got his will, he was now ready to give that same fortune to the good of Egypt--but not to beys and pashas and eunuchs (and that he should have escaped Mizraim was the marvel beyond all others!), or even to the Prince Pasha; but to that which would make "Egypt better and greater and richer--the poor richer, even though the rich be poorer!" Kaid chuckled to himself at that. To make the rich poorer would suit him well, so long as he remained rich. And, if riches could be got, as this pale Frank proposed, by less extortion from the fellah and less kourbash, so much the happier for all. He was capable of patriotism, and this Quaker dreamer had stirred it in him a little. Egypt, industrial in a real sense; Egypt, paying her own way without tyranny and loans: Egypt, without corvee, and with an army hired from a full public purse; Egypt, grown strong and able to resist the suzerainty and cruel tribute--that touched his native goodness of heart, so long, in disguise; it appealed to the sense of leadership in him; to the love of the soil deep in his bones; to regard for the common people--for was not his mother a slave? Some distant nobleness trembled in him, while yet the arid humour of the situation flashed into his eyes, and, getting to his feet, he said to David: "Where is Nahoum?" David told him, and he clapped his hands. The black slave entered, received an order, and disappeared. Neither spoke, but Kaid's face was full of cheerfulness. Presently Nahoum entered and salaamed low, then put his hand upon his turban. There was submission, but no cringing or servility in his manner. His blue eyes looked fearlessly before him. His face was not paler than its wont. He waited for Kaid to speak. "Peace be to thee," Kaid murmured mechanically. "And to thee, peace, O Prince," answered Nahoum. "May the feet of Time linger by thee, and Death pass thy house forgetful." There was silence for a moment, and then Kaid spoke again. "What are thy properties and treasure?" he asked sternly. Nahoum drew forth a paper from his sleeve, and handed it to Kaid without a word. Kaid glanced at it hurriedly, then said: "This is but nothing. What hast thou hidden from me?" "It is all I have got in thy service, Highness," he answered boldly. "All else I have given to the poor; also to spies--and to the army." "To spies--and to the army?" asked Kaid slowly, incredulously. "Wilt thou come with me to the window, Effendina?" Kaid, wondering, went to the great windows which looked on to the Palace square. There, drawn up, were a thousand mounted men as black as ebony, wearing shining white metal helmets and fine chain-armour and swords and lances like medieval crusaders. The horses, too, were black, and the mass made a barbaric display belonging more to another period in the world's history. This regiment of Nubians Kaid had recruited from the far south, and had maintained at his own expense. When they saw him at the window now, their swords clashed on their thighs and across their breasts, and they raised a great shout of greeting. "Well?" asked Kaid, with a ring to the voice. "They are loyal, Effendina, every man. But the army otherwise is honeycombed with treason. Effendina, my money has been busy in the army paying and bribing officers, and my spies were costly. There has been sedition-- conspiracy; but until I could get the full proofs I waited; I could but bribe and wait. Were it not for the money I had spent, there might have been another Prince of Egypt." Kald's face darkened. He was startled, too. He had been taken unawares. "My brother Harrik--!" "And I should have lost my place, lost all for which I cared. I had no love for money; it was but a means. I spent it for the State--for the Effendina, and to keep my place. I lost my place, however, in another way." "Proofs! Proofs!" Kaid's voice was hoarse with feeling. "I have no proofs against Prince Harrik, no word upon paper. But there are proofs that the army is seditious, that, at any moment, it may revolt." "Thou hast kept this secret?" questioned Kaid darkly and suspiciously. "The time had not come. Read, Effendina," he added, handing some papers over. "But it is the whole army!" said Kaid aghast, as he read. He was convinced. "There is only one guilty," returned Nahoum. Their eyes met. Oriental fatalism met inveterate Oriental distrust and then instinctively Kaid's eyes turned to David. In the eyes of the Inglesi was a different thing. The test of the new relationship had come. Ferocity was in his heart, a vitriolic note was in his voice as he said to David, "If this be true-- the army rotten, the officers disloyal, treachery under every tunic-- bismillah, speak!" "Shall it not be one thing at a time, Effendina?" asked David. He made a gesture towards Nahoum. Kaid motioned to a door. "Wait yonder," he said darkly to Nahoum. As the door opened, and Nahoum disappeared leisurely and composedly, David caught a glimpse of a guard of armed Nubians in leopard-skins filed against the white wall of the other room. "What is thy intention towards Nahoum, Effendina?" David asked presently. Kaid's voice was impatient. "Thou hast asked his life--take it; it is thine; but if I find him within these walls again until I give him leave, he shall go as Foorgat went." "What was the manner of Foorgat's going?" asked David quietly. "As a wind blows through a court-yard, and the lamp goes out, so he went --in the night. Who can say? Wherefore speculate? He is gone. It is enough. Were it not for thee, Egypt should see Nahoum no more." David sighed, and his eyes closed for an instant. "Effendina, Nahoum has proved his faith--is it not so?" He pointed to the documents in Kaid's hands. A grim smile passed over Kaid's face. Distrust of humanity, incredulity, cold cynicism, were in it. "Wheels within wheels, proofs within proofs," he said. "Thou hast yet to learn the Eastern heart. When thou seest white in the East, call it black, for in an instant it will be black. Malaish, it is the East! Have I not trusted--did I not mean well by all? Did I not deal justly? Yet my justice was but darkness of purpose, the hidden terror to them all. So did I become what thou findest me and dost believe me--a tyrant, in whose name a thousand do evil things of which I neither hear nor know. Proof! When a woman lies in your arms, it is not the moment to prove her fidelity. Nahoum has crawled back to my feet with these things, and by the beard of the Prophet they are true!" He looked at the papers with loathing. "But what his purpose was when he spied upon and bribed my army I know not. Yet, it shall be said, he has held Harrik back--Harrik, my brother. Son of Sheitan and slime of the Nile, have I not spared Harrik all these years!" "Hast thou proof, Effendina?" "I have proof enough; I shall have more soon. To save their lives, these, these will tell. I have their names here." He tapped the papers. "There are ways to make them tell. Now, speak, effendi, and tell me what I shall do to Harrik." "Wouldst thou proclaim to Egypt, to the Sultan, to the world that the army is disloyal? If these guilty men are seized, can the army be trusted? Will it not break away in fear? Yonder Nubians are not enough --a handful lost in the melee. Prove the guilt of him who perverted the army and sought to destroy thee. Punish him." "How shall there be proof save through those whom he has perverted? There is no writing." "There is proof," answered David calmly. "Where shall I find it?" Kaid laughed contemptuously. "I have the proof," answered David gravely. "Against Harrik?" "Against Prince Harrik Pasha." "Thou--what dost thou know?" "A woman of the Prince heard him give instructions for thy disposal, Effendina, when the Citadel should turns its guns upon Cairo and the Palace. She was once of thy harem. Thou didst give her in marriage, and she came to the harem of Prince Harrik at last. A woman from without who sang to her--a singing girl, an al'mah--she trusted with the paper to warn thee, Effendina, in her name. Her heart had remembrance of thee. Her foster-brother Mahommed Hassan is my servant. Him she told, and Mahommed laid the matter before me this morning. Here is a sign by which thee will remember her, so she said. Zaida she was called here." He handed over an amulet which had one red gem in the centre. Kaid's face had set into fierce resolution, but as he took the amulet his eyes softened. "Zaida. Inshallah! Zaida, she was called. She has the truth almost of the English. She could not lie ever. My heart smote me concerning her, and I gave her in marriage." Then his face darkened again, and his teeth showed in malice. A demon was roused in him. He might long ago have banished the handsome and insinuating Harrik, but he had allowed him wealth and safety--and now . . . His intention was unmistakable. "He shall die the death," he said. "Is it not so?" he added fiercely to David, and gazed at him fixedly. Would this man of peace plead for the traitor, the would-be fratricide? "He is a traitor; he must die," answered David slowly. Kald's eyes showed burning satisfaction. "If he were thy brother, thou wouldst kill him?" "I would give a traitor to death for the country's sake. There is no other way." "To-night he shall die." "But with due trial, Effendina?" "Trial--is not the proof sufficient?" "But if he confess, and give evidence himself, and so offer himself to die?" "Is Harrik a fool?" answered Kaid, with scorn. If there be a trial and sentence is given, the truth concerning the army must appear. Is that well? Egypt will shake to its foundations--to the joy of its enemies." "Then he shall die secretly." "The Prince Pasha of Egypt will be called a murderer." Kaid shrugged his shoulders. "The Sultan--Europe--is it well?" "I will tell the truth," Kaid rejoined angrily. "If the Effendina will trust me, Prince Harrik shall confess his crime and pay the penalty also." "What is thy purpose?" "I will go to his palace and speak with him." "Seize him?" "I have no power to seize him, Effendina." "I will give it. My Nubians shall go also." "Effendina, I will go alone. It is the only way. There is great danger to the throne. Who can tell what a night will bring forth?" "If Harrik should escape--" "If I were an Egyptian and permitted Harrik to escape, my life would pay for my failure. If I failed, thou wouldst not succeed. If I am to serve Egypt, there must be trust in me from thee, or it were better to pause now. If I go, as I shall go, alone, I put my life in danger--is it not so?" Suddenly Kaid sat down again among his cushions. "Inshallah! In the name of God, be it so. Thou art not as other men. There is something in thee above my thinking. But I will not sleep till I see thee again." "I shall see thee at midnight, Effendina. Give me the ring from thy finger." Kaid passed it over, and David put it in his pocket. Then he turned to go. "Nahoum?" he asked. "Take him hence. Let him serve thee if it be thy will. Yet I cannot understand it. The play is dark. Is he not an Oriental?" "He is a Christian." Kaid laughed sourly, and clapped his hands for the slave. In a moment David and Nahoum were gone. "Nahoum, a Christian! Bismillah!" murmured Kaid scornfully, then fell to pondering darkly over the evil things he had heard. Meanwhile the Nubians in their glittering armour waited without in the blistering square. CHAPTER XII THE JEHAD AND THE LIONS "Allah hu Achbar! Allah hu Achbar! Ashhadu an la illaha illalla!" The sweetly piercing, resonant voice of the Muezzin rang far and commandingly on the clear evening air, and from bazaar and crowded street the faithful silently hurried to the mosques, leaving their slippers at the door, while others knelt where the call found them, and touched their foreheads to the ground. In his palace by the Nile, Harrik, the half-brother of the Prince Pasha, heard it, and breaking off from conversation with two urgent visitors, passed to an alcove near, dropping a curtain behind him. Kneeling reverently on the solitary furniture of the room--a prayer-rug from Medina--he lost himself as completely in his devotions as though his life were an even current of unforbidden acts and motives. Cross-legged on the great divan of the room he had left, his less pious visitors, unable to turn their thoughts from the dark business on which they had come, smoked their cigarettes, talking to each other in tones so low as would not have been heard by a European, and with apparent listlessness. Their manner would not have indicated that they were weighing matters of life and death, of treason and infamy, of massacre and national shame. Only the sombre, smouldering fire of their eyes was evidence of the lighted fuse of conspiracy burning towards the magazine. One look of surprise had been exchanged when Harrik Pasha left them suddenly--time was short for what they meant to do; but they were Muslims, and they resigned themselves. "The Inglesi must be the first to go; shall a Christian dog rule over us?" It was Achmet the Ropemaker who spoke, his yellow face wrinkling with malice, though his voice but murmured hoarsely. "Nahoum will kill him." Higli Pasha laughed low--it was like the gurgle of water in the narghileh--a voice of good nature and persuasiveness from a heart that knew no virtue. "Bismillah! Who shall read the meaning of it? Why has he not already killed?" "Nahoum would choose his own time--after he has saved his life by the white carrion. Kaid will give him his life if the Inglesi asks. The Inglesi, he is mad. If he were not mad, he would see to it that Nahoum was now drying his bones in the sands." "What each has failed to do for the other shall be done for them," answered Achmet, a hateful leer on his immobile features. "To-night many things shall be made right. To-morrow there will be places empty and places filled. Egypt shall begin again to-morrow." "Kaid?" Achmet stopped smoking for a moment. "When the khamsin comes, when the camels stampede, and the children of the storm fall upon the caravan, can it be foretold in what way Fate shall do her work? So but the end be the same--malaish! We shall be content tomorrow." Now he turned and looked at his companion as though his mind had chanced on a discovery. "To him who first brings word to a prince who inherits, that the reigning prince is dead, belong honour and place," he said. "Then shall it be between us twain," said High, and laid his hot palm against the cold, snaky palm of the other. "And he to whom the honour falls shall help the other." "Aiwa, but it shall be so," answered Achmet, and then they spoke in lower tones still, their eyes on the curtain behind which Harrik prayed. Presently Harrik entered, impassive, yet alert, his slight, handsome figure in sharp contrast to the men lounging in the cushions before him, who salaamed as he came forward. The features were finely chiselled, the forehead white and high, the lips sensuous, the eyes fanatical, the look concentrated yet abstracted. He took a seat among the cushions, and, after a moment, said to Achmet, in a voice abnormally deep and powerful: "Diaz--there is no doubt of Diaz?" "He awaits the signal. The hawk flies not swifter than Diaz will act." "The people--the bazaars--the markets?" "As the air stirs a moment before the hurricane comes, so the whisper has stirred them. From one lip to another, from one street to another, from one quarter to another, the word has been passed--'Nahoum was a Christian, but Nahoum was an Egyptian whose heart was Muslim. The stranger is a Christian and an Inglesi. Reason has fled from the Prince Pasha, the Inglesi has bewitched him. But the hour of deliverance draweth nigh. Be ready! To-night!' So has the whisper gone." Harrik's eyes burned. "God is great," he said. "The time has come. The Christians spoil us. From France, from England, from Austria--it is enough. Kaid has handed us over to the Greek usurers, the Inglesi and the Frank are everywhere. And now this new-comer who would rule Kaid, and lay his hand upon Egypt like Joseph of old, and bring back Nahoum, to the shame of every Muslim--behold, the spark is to the tinder, it shall burn." "And the hour, Effendina?" "At midnight. The guns to be trained on the Citadel, the Palace surrounded. Kaid's Nubians?" "A hundred will be there, Effendina, the rest a mile away at their barracks." Achmet rubbed his cold palms together in satisfaction. "And Prince Kaid, Effendina?" asked Higli cautiously. The fanatical eyes turned away. "The question is foolish--have ye no brains?" he said impatiently. A look of malignant triumph flashed from Achmet to High, and he said, scarce above a whisper: "May thy footsteps be as the wings of the eagle, Effendina. The heart of the pomegranate is not redder than our hearts are red for thee. Cut deep into our hearts, and thou shalt find the last beat is for thee--and for the Jehad!" "The Jehad--ay, the Jehad! The time is at hand," answered Harrik, glowering at the two. "The sword shall not be sheathed till we have redeemed Egypt. Go your ways, effendis, and peace be on you and on all the righteous worshippers of God!" As High and Achmet left the palace, the voice of a holy man--admitted everywhere and treated with reverence--chanting the Koran, came somnolently through the court-yard: "Bismillah hirrahmah, nirraheem. Elhamdu lillahi sabbila!" Rocking his body backwards and forwards and dwelling sonorously on each vowel, the holy man seemed the incarnation of Muslim piety; but as the two conspirators passed him with scarce a glance, and made their way to a small gate leading into the great garden bordering on the Nile, his eyes watched them sharply. When they had passed through, he turned towards the windows of the harem, still chanting. For a long time he chanted. An occasional servant came and went, but his voice ceased not, and he kept his eyes fixed ever on the harem windows. At last his watching had its reward. Something fluttered from a window to the ground. Still chanting, he rose and began walking round the great court-yard. Twice he went round, still chanting, but the third time he stooped to pick up a little strip of linen which had fallen from the window, and concealed it in his sleeve. Presently he seated himself again, and, still chanting, spread out the linen in his palm and read the characters upon it. For an instant there was a jerkiness to the voice, and then it droned on resonantly again. Now the eyes of the holy man were fixed on the great gates through which strangers entered, and he was seated in the way which any one must take who came to the palace doors. It was almost dark, when he saw the bowab, after repeated knocking, sleepily and grudgingly open the gates to admit a visitor. There seemed to be a moment's hesitation on the bowab's part, but he was presently assured by something the visitor showed him, and the latter made his way deliberately to the palace doors. As the visitor neared the holy man, who chanted on monotonously, he was suddenly startled to hear between the long-drawn syllables the quick words in Arabic: "Beware, Saadat! See, I am Mahommed Hassan, thy servant! At midnight they surround Kaid's palace--Achmet and Higli--and kill the Prince Pasha. Return, Saadat. Harrik will kill thee." David made no sign, but with a swift word to the faithful Mahommed Hassan, passed on, and was presently admitted to the palace. As the doors closed behind him, he would hear the voice of the holy man still chanting: "Waladalleen--Ameen-Ameen! Waladalleen--Ameen!" The voice followed him, fainter and fainter, as he passed through the great bare corridors with the thick carpets on which the footsteps made no sound, until it came, soft and undefined, as it were from a great distance. Then suddenly there fell upon him a sense of the peril of his enterprise. He had been left alone in the vast dim hall while a slave, made obsequious by the sight of the ring of the Prince Pasha, sought his master. As he waited he was conscious that people were moving about behind the great screens of mooshrabieh which separated this room from others, and that eyes were following his every motion. He had gained easy ingress to this place; but egress was a matter of some speculation. The doors which had closed behind him might swing one way only! He had voluntarily put himself in the power of a man whose fatal secret he knew. He only felt a moment's apprehension, however. He had been moved to come from a whisper in his soul; and he had the sure conviction of the predestinarian that he was not to be the victim of "The Scytheman" before his appointed time. His mind resumed its composure, and he watchfully waited the return of the slave. Suddenly he was conscious of some one behind him, though he had heard no one approach. He swung round and was met by the passive face of the black slave in personal attendance on Harrik. The slave did not speak, but motioned towards a screen at the end of the room, and moved towards it. David followed. As they reached it, a broad panel opened, and they passed through, between a line of black slaves. Then there was a sudden darkness, and a moment later David was ushered into a room blazing with light. Every inch of the walls was hung with red curtains. No door was visible. He was conscious of this as the panel clicked behind him, and the folds of the red velvet caught his shoulder in falling. Now he saw sitting on a divan on the opposite side of the room Prince Harrik. David had never before seen him, and his imagination had fashioned a different personality. Here was a combination of intellect, refinement, and savagery. The red, sullen lips stamped the delicate, fanatical face with cruelty and barbaric indulgence, while yet there was an intensity in the eyes that showed the man was possessed of an idea which mastered him --a root-thought. David was at once conscious of a complex personality, of a man in whom two natures fought. He understood it. By instinct the man was a Mahdi, by heredity he was a voluptuary, that strange commingling of the religious and the evil found in so many criminals. In some far corner of his nature David felt something akin. The rebellion in his own blood against the fine instinct of his Quaker faith and upbringing made him grasp the personality before him. Had he himself been born in these surroundings, under these influences! The thought flashed through his mind like lightning, even as he bowed before Harrik, who salaamed and said: "Peace be unto thee!" and motioned him to a seat on a divan near and facing him. "What is thy business with me, effendi?" asked Harrik. "I come on the business of the Prince Pasha," answered David. Harrik touched his fez mechanically, then his breast and lips, and a cruel smile lurked at the corners of his mouth as he rejoined: "The feet of them who wear the ring of their Prince wait at no man's door. The carpet is spread for them. They go and they come as the feet of the doe in the desert. Who shall say, They shall not come; who shall say, They shall not return!" Though the words were spoken with an air of ingenuous welcome, David felt the malignity in the last phrase, and knew that now was come the most fateful moment of his life. In his inner being he heard the dreadful challenge of Fate. If he failed in his purpose with this man, he would never begin his work in Egypt. Of his life he did not think--his life was his purpose, and the one was nothing without the other. No other man would have undertaken so Quixotic an enterprise, none would have exposed himself so recklessly to the dreadful accidents of circumstance. There had been other ways to overcome this crisis, but he had rejected them for a course fantastic and fatal when looked at in the light of ordinary reason. A struggle between the East and the West was here to be fought out between two wills; between an intellectual libertine steeped in Oriental guilt and cruelty and self-indulgence, and a being selfless, human, and in an agony of remorse for a life lost by his hand. Involuntarily David's eyes ran round the room before he replied. How many slaves and retainers waited behind those velvet curtains? Harrik saw the glance and interpreted it correctly. With a look of dark triumph he clapped his hands. As if by magic fifty black slaves appeared, armed with daggers. They folded their arms and waited like statues. David made no sign of discomposure, but said slowly: "Dost thou think I did not know my danger, Eminence? Do I seem to thee such a fool? I came alone as one would come to the tent of a Bedouin chief whose son one had slain, and ask for food and safety. A thousand men were mine to command, but I came alone. Is thy guest imbecile? Let them go. I have that to say which is for Prince Harrik's ear alone." An instant's hesitation, and Harrik motioned the slaves away. "What is the private word for my ear?" he asked presently, fingering the stem of the narghileh. "To do right by Egypt, the land of thy fathers and thy land; to do right by the Prince Pasha, thy brother." "What is Egypt to thee? Why shouldst thou bring thine insolence here? Couldst thou not preach in thine own bazaars beyond the sea?" David showed no resentment. His reply was composed and quiet. "I am come to save Egypt from the work of thy hands." "Dog of an unbeliever, what hast thou to do with me, or the work of my hands?" David held up Kaid's ring, which had lain in his hand. "I come from the master of Egypt--master of thee, and of thy life, and of all that is thine." "What is Kaid's message to me?" Harrik asked, with an effort at unconcern, for David's boldness had in it something chilling to his fierce passion and pride. "The word of the Effendina is to do right by Egypt, to give thyself to justice and to peace." "Have done with parables. To do right by Egypt wherein, wherefore?" The eyes glinted at David like bits of fiery steel. "I will interpret to thee, Eminence." "Interpret." Harrik muttered to himself in rage. His heart was dark, he thirsted for the life of this arrogant Inglesi. Did the fool not see his end? Midnight was at hand! He smiled grimly. "This is the interpretation, O Prince! Prince Harrik has conspired against his brother the Prince Pasha, has treacherously seduced officers of the army, has planned to seize Cairo, to surround the Palace and take the life of the Prince of Egypt. For months, Prince, thee has done this: and the end of it is that thee shall do right ere it be too late. Thee is a traitor to thy country and thy lawful lord." Harrik's face turned pale; the stem of the narghileh shook in his fingers. All had been discovered, then! But there was a thing of dark magic here. It was not a half-hour since he had given the word to strike at midnight, to surround the Palace, and to seize the Prince Pasha. Achmet--Higli, had betrayed him, then! Who other? No one else knew save Zaida, and Zaida was in the harem. Perhaps even now his own palace was surrounded. If it was so, then, come what might, this masterful Inglesi should pay the price. He thought of the den of lions hard by, of the cage of tigers-the menagerie not a thousand feet away. He could hear the distant roaring now, and his eyes glittered. The Christian to the wild beasts! That at least before the end. A Muslim would win heaven by sending a Christian to hell. Achmet--Higli! No others knew. The light of a fateful fanaticism was in his eyes. David read him as an open book, and saw the madness come upon him. "Neither Higli, nor Achmet, nor any of thy fellow-conspirators has betrayed thee," David said. "God has other voices to whisper the truth than those who share thy crimes. I have ears, and the air is full of voices." Harrik stared at him. Was this Inglesi, then, with the grey coat, buttoned to the chin, and the broad black hat which remained on his head unlike the custom of the English--was he one of those who saw visions and dreamed dreams, even as himself! Had he not heard last night a voice whisper through the dark "Harrik, Harrik, flee to the desert! The lions are loosed upon thee!" Had he not risen with the voice still in his ears and fled to the harem, seeking Zaida, she who had never cringed before him, whose beauty he had conquered, but whose face turned from him when he would lay his lips on hers? And, as he fled, had he not heard, as it were, footsteps lightly following him--or were they going before him? Finding Zaida, had he not told her of the voice, and had she not said: "In the desert all men are safe--safe from themselves and safe from others; from their own acts and from the acts of others"? Were the lions, then, loosed upon him? Had he been betrayed? Suddenly the thought flashed into his mind that his challenger would not have thrust himself into danger, given himself to the mouth of the Pit, if violence were intended. There was that inside his robe, than which lightning would not be more quick to slay. Had he not been a hunter of repute? Had he not been in deadly peril with wild beasts, and was he not quicker than they? This man before him was like no other he had ever met. Did voices speak to him? Were there, then, among the Christians such holy men as among the Muslims, who saw things before they happened, and read the human mind? Were there sorcerers among them, as among the Arabs? In any case his treason was known. What were to be the consequences? Diamond-dust in his coffee? To be dropped into the Nile like a dog? To be smothered in his sleep?--For who could be trusted among all his slaves and retainers when it was known he was disgraced, and that the Prince Pasha would be happier if Harrik were quiet for ever? Mechanically he drew out his watch and looked at it. It was nine o'clock. In three hours more would have fallen the coup. But from this man's words he knew that the stroke was now with the Prince Pasha. Yet, if this pale Inglesi, this Christian sorcerer, knew the truth in a vision only, and had not declared it to Kaid, there might still be a chance of escape. The lions were near--it would be a joy to give a Christian to the lions to celebrate the capture of Cairo and the throne. He listened intently to the distant rumble of the lions. There was one cage dedicated to vengeance. Five human beings on whom his terrible anger fell in times past had been thrust into it alive. Two were slaves, one was an enemy, one an invader of his harem, and one was a woman, his wife, his favourite, the darling of his heart. When his chief eunuch accused her of a guilty love, he had given her paramour and herself to that awful death. A stroke of the vast paw, a smothered roar as the teeth gave into the neck of the beautiful Fatima, and then--no more. Fanaticism had caught a note of savage music that tuned it to its height. "Why art thou here? For what hast thou come? Do the spirit voices give thee that counsel?" he snarled. "I am come to ask Prince Harrik to repair the wrong he has done. When the Prince Pasha came to know of thy treason--" Harrik started. "Kaid believes thy tale of treason?" he burst out. "Prince Kaid knows the truth," answered David quietly. "He might have surrounded this palace with his Nubians, and had thee shot against the palace walls. That would have meant a scandal in Egypt and in Europe. I besought him otherwise. It may be the scandal must come, but in another way, and--" "That I, Harrik, must die?" Harrik's voice seemed far away. In his own ears it sounded strange and unusual. All at once the world seemed to be a vast vacuum in which his brain strove for air, and all his senses were numbed and overpowered. Distempered and vague, his soul seemed spinning in an aching chaos. It was being overpowered by vast elements, and life and being were atrophied in a deadly smother. The awful forces behind visible being hung him in the middle space between consciousness and dissolution. He heard David's voice, at first dimly, then understandingly. "There is no other way. Thou art a traitor. Thou wouldst have been a fratricide. Thou wouldst have put back the clock in Egypt by a hundred years, even to the days of the Mamelukes--a race of slaves and murderers. God ordained that thy guilt should be known in time. Prince, thou art guilty. It is now but a question how thou shalt pay the debt of treason." In David's calm voice was the ring of destiny. It was dispassionate, judicial; it had neither hatred nor pity. It fell on Harrik's ear as though from some far height. Destiny, the controller--who could escape it? Had he not heard the voices in the night--"The lions are loosed upon thee"? He did not answer David now, but murmured to himself like one in a dream. David saw his mood, and pursued the startled mind into the pit of confusion. "If it become known to Europe that the army is disloyal, that its officers are traitors like thee, what shall we find? England, France, Turkey, will land an army of occupation. Who shall gainsay Turkey if she chooses to bring an army here and recover control, remove thy family from Egypt, and seize upon its lands and goods? Dost thou not see that the hand of God has been against thee? He has spoken, and thy evil is discovered." He paused. Still Harrik did not reply, but looked at him with dilated, fascinated eyes. Death had hypnotised him, and against death and destiny who could struggle? Had not a past Prince Pasha of Egypt safeguarded himself from assassination all his life, and, in the end, had he not been smothered in his sleep by slaves? "There are two ways only," David continued--"to be tried and die publicly for thy crimes, to the shame of Egypt, its present peril, and lasting injury; or to send a message to those who conspired with thee, commanding them to return to their allegiance, and another to the Prince Pasha, acknowledging thy fault, and exonerating all others. Else, how many of thy dupes shall die! Thy choice is not life or death, but how thou shalt die, and what thou shalt do for Egypt as thou diest. Thou didst love Egypt, Eminence?" David's voice dropped low, and his last words had a suggestion which went like an arrow to the source of all Harrik's crimes, and that also which redeemed him in a little. It got into his inner being. He roused himself and spoke, but at first his speech was broken and smothered. "Day by day I saw Egypt given over to the Christians," he said. "The Greek, the Italian, the Frenchman, the Englishman, everywhere they reached out, their hands and took from us our own. They defiled our mosques; they corrupted our life; they ravaged our trade, they stole our customers, they crowded us from the streets where once the faithful lived alone. Such as thou had the ear of the Prince, and such as Nahoum, also an infidel, who favoured the infidels of Europe. And now thou hast come, the most dangerous of them all! Day by day the Muslim has loosed his hold on Cairo, and Alexandria, and the cities of Egypt. Street upon street knows him no more. My heart burned within me. I conspired for Egypt's sake. I would have made her Muslim once again. I would have fought the Turk and the Frank, as did Mehemet Ali; and if the infidels came, I would have turned them back; or if they would not go, I would have destroyed them here. Such as thou should have been stayed at the door. In my own house I would have been master. We seek not to take up our abode in other nations and in the cities of the infidel. Shall we give place to them on our own mastaba, in our own court-yard--hand to them the keys of our harems? I would have raised the Jehad if they vexed me with their envoys and their armies." He paused, panting. "It would not have availed," was David's quiet answer. "This land may not be as Tibet--a prison for its own people. If the door opens outward, then must it open inward also. Egypt is the bridge between the East and the West. Upon it the peoples of all nations pass and repass. Thy plan was folly, thy hope madness, thy means to achieve horrible. Thy dream is done. The army will not revolt, the Prince will not be slain. Now only remains what thou shalt do for Egypt--" "And thou--thou wilt be left here to lay thy will upon Egypt. Kaid's ear will be in thy hand--thou hast the sorcerer's eye. I know thy meaning. Thou wouldst have me absolve all, even Achmet, and Higli, and Diaz, and the rest, and at thy bidding go out into the desert"--he paused--"or into the grave." "Not into the desert," rejoined David firmly. "Thou wouldst not rest. There, in the desert, thou wouldst be a Mahdi. Since thou must die, wilt thou not order it after thine own choice? It is to die for Egypt." "Is this the will of Kaid?" asked Harrik, his voice thick with wonder, his brain still dulled by the blow of Fate. "It was not the Effendina's will, but it hath his assent. Wilt thou write the word to the army and also to the Prince?" He had conquered. There was a moment's hesitation, then Harrik picked up paper and ink that lay near, and said: "I will write to Kaid. I will have naught to do with the army." "It shall be the whole, not the part," answered David determinedly. "The truth is known. It can serve no end to withhold the writing to the army. Remember what I have said to thee. The disloyalty of the army must not be known. Canst thou not act after the will of Allah, the all-powerful, the all-just, the all-merciful?" There was an instant's pause, and then suddenly Harrik placed the paper in his palm and wrote swiftly and at some length to Kaid. Laying it down, he took another and wrote but a few words--to Achmet and Diaz. This message said in brief, "Do not strike. It is the will of Allah. The army shall keep faithful until the day of the Mahdi be come. I spoke before the time. I go to the bosom of my Lord Mahomet." He threw the papers on the floor before David, who picked them up, read them, and put them into his pocket. "It is well," he said. "Egypt shall have peace. And thou, Eminence?" "Who shall escape Fate? What I have written I have written." David rose and salaamed. Harrik rose also. "Thou wouldst go, having accomplished thy will?" Harrik asked, a thought flashing to his mind again, in keeping with his earlier purpose. Why should this man be left to trouble Egypt? David touched his breast. "I must bear thy words to the Palace and the Citadel." "Are there not slaves for messengers?" Involuntarily Harrik turned his eyes to the velvet curtains. No fear possessed David, but he felt the keenness of the struggle, and prepared for the last critical moment of fanaticism. "It were a foolish thing to attempt my death," he said calmly. "I have been thy friend to urge thee to do that which saves thee from public shame, and Egypt from peril. I came alone, because I had no fear that thou wouldst go to thy death shaming hospitality." "Thou wast sure I would give myself to death?" "Even as that I breathe. Thou wert mistaken; a madness possessed thee; but thou, I knew, wouldst choose the way of honour. I too have had dreams--and of Egypt. If it were for her good, I would die for her." "Thou art mad. But the mad are in the hands of God, and--" Suddenly Harrik stopped. There came to his ears two distant sounds--the faint click of horses' hoofs and that dull rumble they had heard as they talked, a sound he loved, the roar of his lions. He clapped his hands twice, the curtains parted opposite, and a slave slid silently forward. "Quick! The horses! What are they? Bring me word," he said. The slave vanished. For a moment there was silence. The eyes of the two men met. In the minds of both was the same thing. "Kaid! The Nubians!" Harrik said, at last. David made no response. The slave returned, and his voice murmured softly, as though the matter were of no concern: "The Nubians--from the Palace." In an instant he was gone again. "Kaid had not faith in thee," Harrik said grimly. "But see, infidel though thou art, thou trustest me, and thou shalt go thy way. Take them with thee, yonder jackals of the desert. I will not go with them. I did not choose to live; others chose for me; but I will die after my own choice. Thou hast heard a voice, even as I. It is too late to flee to the desert. Fate tricks me. 'The lions are loosed on thee'--so the voice said to me in the night. Hark! dost thou not hear them--the lions, Harrik's lions, got out of the uttermost desert?" David could hear the distant roar, for the menagerie was even part of the palace itself. "Go in peace," continued Harrik soberly and with dignity, "and when Egypt is given to the infidel and Muslims are their slaves, remember that Harrik would have saved it for his Lord Mahomet, the Prophet of God." He clapped his hands, and fifty slaves slid from behind the velvet curtains. "I have thy word by the tomb of thy mother that thou wilt take the Nubians hence, and leave me in peace?" he asked. David raised a hand above his head. "As I have trusted thee, trust thou me, Harrik, son of Mahomet." Harrik made a gesture of dismissal, and David salaamed and turned to go. As the curtains parted for his exit, he faced Harrik again. "Peace be to thee," he said. But, seated in his cushions, the haggard, fanatical face of Harrik was turned from him, the black, flaring eyes fixed on vacancy. The curtain dropped behind David, and through the dim rooms and corridors he passed, the slaves gliding beside him, before him, and behind him, until they reached the great doors. As they swung open and the cool night breeze blew in his face, a great suspiration of relief passed from him. What he had set out to do would be accomplished in all. Harrik would keep his word. It was the only way. As he emerged from the doorway some one fell at his feet, caught his sleeve and kissed it. It was Mahommed Hassan. Behind Mahommed was a little group of officers and a hundred stalwart Nubians. David motioned them towards the great gates, and, without speaking, passed swiftly down the pathway and emerged upon the road without. A moment later he was riding towards the Citadel with Harrik's message to Achmet. In the red- curtained room Harrik sat alone, listening until he heard the far clatter of hoofs, and knew that the Nubians were gone. Then the other distant sound which had captured his ear came to him again. In his fancy it grew louder and louder. With it came the voice that called him in the night, the voice of a woman--of the wife he had given to the lions for a crime against him which she did not commit, which had haunted him all the years. He had seen her thrown to the king of them all, killed in one swift instant, and dragged about the den by her warm white neck--this slave wife from Albania, his adored Fatima. And when, afterwards, he came to know the truth, and of her innocence, from the chief eunuch who with his last breath cleared her name, a terrible anger and despair had come upon him. Time and intrigue and conspiracy had distracted his mind, and the Jehad became the fixed aim and end of his life. Now this was gone. Destiny had tripped him up. Kaid and the infidel Inglesi had won. As the one great passion went out like smoke, the woman he loved, whom he had given to the lions, the memory of her, some haunting part of her, possessed him, overcame him. In truth, he had heard a voice in the night, but not the voice of a spirit. It was the voice of Zaida, who, preying upon his superstitious mind--she knew the hallucination which possessed him concerning her he had cast to the lions--and having given the terrible secret to Kaid, whom she had ever loved, would still save Harrik from the sure vengeance which must fall upon him. Her design had worked, but not as she intended. She had put a spell of superstition on him, and the end would be accomplished, but not by flight to the desert. Harrik chose the other way. He had been a hunter. He was without fear. The voice of the woman he loved called him. It came to him through the distant roar of the lions as clear as when, with one cry of "Harrik !" she had fallen beneath the lion's paw. He knew now why he had kept the great beast until this hour, though tempted again and again to slay him. Like one in a dream, he drew a dagger from the cushions where he sat, and rose to his feet. Leaving the room and passing dark groups of waiting slaves, he travelled empty chambers and long corridors, the voices of the lions growing nearer and nearer. He sped faster now, and presently came to two great doors, on which he knocked thrice. The doors opened, and two slaves held up lights for him to enter. Taking a torch from one of them, he bade them retire, and the doors clanged behind them. Harrik held up the torch and came nearer. In the centre of the room was a cage in which one great lion paced to and fro in fury. It roared at him savagely. It was his roar which had come to Harrik through the distance and the night. He it was who had carried Fatima, the beloved, about his cage by that neck in which Harrik had laid his face so often. The hot flush of conflict and the long anger of the years were on him. Since he must die, since Destiny had befooled him, left him the victim of the avengers, he would end it here. Here, against the thing of savage hate which had drunk of the veins and crushed the bones of his fair wife, he would strike one blow deep and strong and shed the blood of sacrifice before his own was shed. He thrust the torch into the ground, and, with the dagger grasped tightly, carefully opened the cage and stepped inside. The door clicked behind him. The lion was silent now, and in a far corner prepared to spring, crouching low. "Fatima!" Harrik cried, and sprang forward as the wild beast rose at him. He struck deep, drew forth the dagger--and was still. CHAPTER XIII ACHMET THE ROPEMAKER STRIKES War! War! The chains of the conscripts clanked in the river villages; the wailing of the women affrighted the pigeons in a thousand dovecotes on the Nile; the dust of despair was heaped upon the heads of the old, who knew that their young would no more return, and that the fields of dourha would go ungathered, the water-channels go unattended, and the onion-fields be bare. War! War! War! The strong, the broad-shouldered --Aka, Mahmoud, Raschid, Selim, they with the bodies of Seti and the faces of Rameses, in their blue yeleks and unsandalled feet--would go into the desert as their forefathers did for the Shepherd Kings. But there would be no spoil for them--no slaves with swelling breasts and lips of honey; no straight-limbed servants of their pleasure to wait on them with caressing fingers; no rich spoils carried back from the fields of war to the mud hut, the earth oven, and the thatched roof; no rings of soft gold and necklaces of amber snatched from the fingers and bosoms of the captive and the dead. Those days were no more. No vision of loot or luxury allured these. They saw only the yellow sand, the ever-receding oasis, the brackish, undrinkable water, the withered and fruitless date- tree, handfuls of dourha for their food by day, and the keen, sharp night to chill their half-dead bodies in a half-waking sleep. And then the savage struggle for life--with all the gain to the pashas and the beys, and those who ruled over them; while their own wounds grew foul, and, in the torturing noon-day heat of the white waste, Death reached out and dragged them from the drooping lines to die. Fighting because they must fight--not patriot love, nor understanding, nor sacrifice in their hearts. War! War! War! War! David had been too late to stop it. It had grown to a head with revolution and conspiracy. For months before he came conscripts had been gathered in the Nile country from Rosetta to Assouan, and here and there, far south, tribes had revolted. He had come to power too late to devise another course. One day, when this war was over, he would go alone, save for a faithful few, to deal with these tribes and peoples upon another plane than war; but here and now the only course was that which had been planned by Kaid and those who counselled him. Troubled by a deep danger drawing near, Kaid had drawn him into his tough service, half-blindly catching at his help, with a strange, almost superstitious belief that luck and good would come from the alliance; seeing in him a protection against wholesale robbery and debt--were not the English masters of finance, and was not this Englishman honest, and with a brain of fire and an eye that pierced things? David had accepted the inevitable. The war had its value. It would draw off to the south--he would see that it was so--Achmet and Higli and Diaz and the rest, who were ever a danger. Not to himself: he did not think of that; but to Kaid and to Egypt. They had been out-manoeuvred, beaten, foiled, knew who had foiled them and what they had escaped; congratulated themselves, but had no gratitude to him, and still plotted his destruction. More than once his death had been planned, but the dark design had come to light--now from the workers of the bazaars, whose wires of intelligence pierced everywhere; now from some hungry fellah whose yelek he had filled with cakes of dourha beside a bread-shop; now from Mahommed Hassan, who was for him a thousand eyes and feet and hands, who cooked his food, and gathered round him fellaheen or Copts or Soudanese or Nubians whom he himself had tested and found true, and ruled them with a hand of plenty and a rod of iron. Also, from Nahoum's spies he learned of plots and counterplots, chiefly on Achmet's part; and these he hid from Kaid, while he trusted Nahoum--and not without reason, as yet. The day of Nahoum's wrath and revenge was not yet come; it was his deep design to lay the foundation for his own dark actions strong on a rock of apparent confidence and devotion. A long torture and a great over- whelming was his design. He knew himself to be in the scheme of a master-workman, and by-and-by he would blunt the chisel and bend the saw; but not yet. Meanwhile, he hated, admired, schemed, and got a sweet taste on his tongue from aiding David to foil Achmet--Higli and Diaz were of little account; only the injury they felt in seeing the sluices being closed on the stream of bribery and corruption kept them in the toils of Achmet's conspiracy. They had saved their heads, but they had not learned their lesson yet; and Achmet, blinded by rage, not at all. Achmet did not understand clemency. One by one his plots had failed, until the day came when David advised Kaid to send him and his friends into the Soudan, with the punitive expedition under loyal generals. It was David's dream that, in the field of war, a better spirit might enter into Achmet and his friends; that patriotism might stir in them. The day was approaching when the army must leave. Achmet threw dice once more. Evening was drawing down. Over the plaintive pink and golden glow of sunset was slowly being drawn a pervasive silver veil of moonlight. A caravan of camels hunched alone in the middle distance, making for the western desert. Near by, village life manifested itself in heavily laden donkeys; in wolfish curs stealing away with refuse into the waste; in women, upright and modest, bearing jars of water on their heads; in evening fires, where the cover of the pot clattered over the boiling mass within; in the voice of the Muezzin calling to prayer. Returning from Alexandria to Cairo in the special train which Kaid had sent for him, David watched the scene with grave and friendly interest. There was far, to go before those mud huts of the thousand years would give place to rational modern homes; and as he saw a solitary horseman spread his sheepskin on the ground and kneel to say his evening prayer, as Mahomet had done in his flight between Mecca and Medina, the distance between the Egypt of his desire and the ancient Egypt that moved round him sharply impressed his mind, and the magnitude of his task settled heavily on his spirit. "But it is the beginning--the beginning," he said aloud to himself, looking out upon the green expanses of dourha and Lucerne, and eyeing lovingly the cotton-fields here and there, the origin of the industrial movement he foresaw--"and some one had to begin. The rest is as it must be--" There was a touch of Oriental philosophy in his mind--was it not Galilee and the Nazarene, that Oriental source from which Mahomet also drew? But he added to the "as it must be" the words, "and as God wills." He was alone in the compartment with Lacey, whose natural garrulity had had a severe discipline in the months that had passed since he had asked to be allowed to black David's boots. He could now sit for an hour silent, talking to himself, carrying on unheard conversations. Seeing David's mood, he had not spoken twice on this journey, but had made notes in a little "Book of Experience,"--as once he had done in Mexico. At last, however, he raised his head, and looked eagerly out of the window as David did, and sniffed. "The Nile again," he said, and smiled. The attraction of the Nile was upon him, as it grows on every one who lives in Egypt. The Nile and Egypt--Egypt and the Nile--its mystery, its greatness, its benevolence, its life-giving power, without which Egypt is as the Sahara, it conquers the mind of every man at last. "The Nile, yes," rejoined David, and smiled also. "We shall cross it presently." Again they relapsed into silence, broken only by the clang, clang of the metal on the rails, and then presently another, more hollow sound--the engine was upon the bridge. Lacey got up and put his head out of the window. Suddenly there was a cry of fear and horror over his head, a warning voice shrieking: "The bridge is open--we are lost. Effendi--master--Allah!" It was the voice of Mahommed Hassan, who had been perched on the roof of the car. Like lightning Lacey realised the danger, and saw the only way of escape. He swung open the door, even as the engine touched the edge of the abyss and shrieked its complaint under the hand of the terror-stricken driver, caught David's shoulder, and cried: "Jump-jump into the river-- quick!" As the engine toppled, David jumped--there was no time to think, obedience was the only way. After him sprang, far down into the grey- blue water, Lacey and Mahommed. When they came again to the surface, the little train with its handful of human freight had disappeared. Two people had seen the train plunge to destruction--the solitary horseman whom David had watched kneel upon his sheepskin, and who now from a far hill had seen the disaster, but had not seen the three jump for their lives, and a fisherman on the bank, who ran shouting towards a village standing back from the river. As the fisherman sped shrieking and beckoning to the villagers, David, Lacey, and Mahommed fought for their lives in the swift current, swimming at an angle upstream towards the shore; for, as Mahommed warned them, there were rocks below. Lacey was a good swimmer, but he was heavy, and David was a better, but Mahommed had proved his merit in the past on many an occasion when the laws of the river were reaching out strong hands for him. Now, as Mahommed swam, he kept moaning to himself, cursing his father and his father's son, as though he himself were to blame for the crime which had been committed. Here was a plot, and he had discovered more plots than one against his master. The bridge-opener--when he found him he would take him into the desert and flay him alive; and find him he would. His watchful eyes were on the hut by the bridge where this man should be. No one was visible. He cursed the man and all his ancestry and all his posterity, sleeping and waking, until the day when he, Mahommed, would pinch his flesh with red hot irons. But now he had other and nearer things to occupy him, for in the fierce struggle towards the shore Lacey found himself failing, and falling down the stream. Presently both Mahommed and David were beside him, Lacey angrily protesting to David that he must save himself. "Say, think of Egypt and all the rest. You've got to save yourself--let me splash along!" he spluttered, breathing hard, his shoulders low in the water, his mouth almost submerged. But David and Mahommed fought along beside him, each determined that it must be all or none; and presently the terror-stricken fisherman who had roused the village, still shrieking deliriously, came upon them in a flat-bottomed boat manned by four stalwart fellaheen, and the tragedy of the bridge was over. But not the tragedy of Achmet the Ropemaker. CHAPTER XIV BEYOND THE PALE Mahommed Hassan had vowed a vow in the river, and he kept it in so far as was seemly. His soul hungered for the face of the bridge-opener, and the hunger grew. He was scarce passed from the shivering Nile into a dry yelek, had hardly taken a juicy piece from the cooking-pot at the house of the village sheikh, before he began to cultivate friends who could help him, including the sheikh himself; for what money Mahommed lacked was supplied by Lacey, who had a reasoned confidence in him, and by the fiercely indignant Kaid himself, to whom Lacey and Mahommed went secretly, hiding their purpose from David. So, there were a score of villages where every sheikh, eager for gold, listened for the whisper of the doorways, and every slave and villager listened at the sheikh's door. But neither to sheikh nor to villager was it given to find the man. But one evening there came a knocking at the door of the house which Mahommed still kept in the lowest Muslim quarter of the town, a woman who hid her face and was of more graceful figure than was familiar in those dark purlieus. The door was at once opened, and Mahommed, with a cry, drew her inside. "Zaida--the peace of God be upon thee," he said, and gazed lovingly yet sadly upon her, for she had greatly changed. "And upon thee peace, Mahommed," she answered, and sat upon the floor, her head upon her breast. "Thou hast trouble at," he said, and put some cakes of dourha and a meated cucumber beside her. She touched the food with her fingers, but did not eat. "Is thy grief, then, for thy prince who gave himself to the lions?" he asked. "Inshallah! Harrik is in the bosom of Allah. He is with Fatima in the fields of heaven--was I as Fatima to him? Nay, the dead have done with hurting." "Since that night thou hast been lost, even since Harrik went. I searched for thee, but thou wert hid. Surely, thou knewest mine eyes were aching and my heart was cast down--did not thou and I feed at the same breast?" "I was dead, and am come forth from the grave; but I shall go again into the dark where all shall forget, even I myself; but there is that which I would do, which thou must do for me, even as I shall do good to thee, that which is the desire of my heart." "Speak, light of the morning and blessing of thy mother's soul," he said, and crowded into his mouth a roll of meat and cucumber. "Against thy feddan shall be set my date-tree; it hath been so ever." "Listen then, and by the stone of the Kaabah, keep the faith which has been throe and mine since my mother, dying, gave me to thy mother, whose milk gave me health and, in my youth, beauty--and, in my youth, beauty!" Suddenly she buried her face in her veil, and her body shook with sobs which had no voice. Presently she continued: "Listen, and by Abraham and Christ and all the Prophets, and by Mahomet the true revealer, give me thine aid. When Harrik gave his life to the lions, I fled to her whom I had loved in the house of Kaid--Laka the Syrian, afterwards the wife of Achmet Pasha. By Harrik's death I was free--no more a slave. Once Laka had been the joy of Achmet's heart, but, because she had no child, she was despised and forgotten. Was it not meet I should fly to her whose sorrow would hide my loneliness? And so it was--I was hidden in the harem of Achmet. But miserable tongues--may God wither them!--told Achmet of my presence. And though I was free, and not a bondswoman, he broke upon my sleep. . . ." Mahommed's eyes blazed, his dark skin blackened like a coal, and he muttered maledictions between his teeth. ". . . In the morning there was a horror upon me, for which there is no name. But I laughed also when I took a dagger and stole from the harem to find him in the quarters beyond the women's gate. I found him, but I held my hand, for one was with him who spake with a tone of anger and of death, and I listened. Then, indeed, I rejoiced for thee, for I have found thee a road to honour and fortune. The man was a bridge-opener--" "Ah!--O, light of a thousand eyes, fruit of the tree of Eden!" cried Mahommed, and fell on his knees at her feet, and would have kissed them, but that, with a cry, she said: "Nay, nay, touch me not. But listen. . . . Ay, it was Achmet who sought to drown thy Pasha in the Nile. Thou shalt find the man in the little street called Singat in the Moosky, at the house of Haleel the date-seller." Mahommed rocked backwards and forwards in his delight. "Oh, now art thou like a lamp of Paradise, even as a star which leadeth an army of stars, beloved," he said. He rubbed his hands together. "Thy witness and his shall send Achmet to a hell of scorpions, and I shall slay the bridge- opener with my own hand--hath not the Effendina secretly said so to me, knowing that my Pasha, the Inglesi, upon whom be peace for ever and forever, would forgive him. Ah, thou blossom of the tree of trees--" She rose hastily, and when he would have kissed her hand she drew back to the wall. "Touch me not--nay, then, Mahommed, touch me not--" "Why should I not pay thee honour, thou princess among women? Hast thou not the brain of a man, and thy beauty, like thy heart, is it not--" She put out both her hands and spoke sharply. "Enough, my brother," she said. "Thou hast thy way to great honour. Thou shalt yet have a thousand feddans of well-watered land and slaves to wait upon thee. Get thee to the house of Haleel. There shall the blow fall on the head of Achmet, the blow which was mine to strike, but that Allah stayed my hand that I might do thee and thy Pasha good, and to give the soul-slayer and the body-slayer into the hands of Kaid, upon whom be everlasting peace!" Her voice dropped low. "Thou saidst but now that I had beauty. Is there yet any beauty in my face?" She lowered her yashmak and looked at him with burning eyes. "Thou art altogether beautiful," he answered, "but there is a strangeness to thy beauty like none I have seen; as if upon the face of an angel there fell a mist--nay, I have not words to make it plain to thee." With a great sigh, and yet with the tenseness gone from her eyes, she slowly drew the veil up again till only her eyes were visible. "It is well," she answered. "Now, I have heard that to-morrow night Prince Kaid will sit in the small court-yard of the blue tiles by the harem to feast with his friends, ere the army goes into the desert at the next sunrise. Achmet is bidden to the feast." "It is so, O beloved!" "There will be dancers and singers to make the feast worthy?" "At such a time it will be so." "Then this thou shalt do. See to it that I shall be among the singers, and when all have danced and sung, that I shall sing, and be brought before Kaid." "Inshallah! It shall be so. Thou dost desire to see Kaid--in truth, thou hast memory, beloved." She made a gesture of despair. "Go upon thy business. Dost thou not desire the blood of Achmet and the bridge-opener?" Mahommed laughed, and joyfully beat his breast, with whispered exclamations, and made ready to go. "And thou?" he asked. "Am I not welcome here?" she replied wearily. "O, my sister, thou art the master of my life and all that I have," he exclaimed, and a moment afterwards he was speeding towards Kaid's Palace. For the first time since the day of his banishment Achmet the Ropemaker was invited to Kaid's Palace. Coming, he was received with careless consideration by the Prince. Behind his long, harsh face and sullen eyes a devil was raging, because of all his plans that had gone awry, and because the man he had sought to kill still served the Effendina, putting a blight upon Egypt. To-morrow he, Achmet, must go into the desert with the army, and this hated Inglesi would remain behind to have his will with Kaid. The one drop of comfort in his cup was the fact that the displeasure of the Effendina against himself was removed, and that he had, therefore, his foot once more inside the Palace. When he came back from the war he would win his way to power again. Meanwhile, he cursed the man who had eluded the death he had prepared for him. With his own eyes had he not seen, from the hill top, the train plunge to destruction, and had he not once more got off his horse and knelt upon his sheepskin and given thanks to Allah--a devout Arab obeying the sunset call to prayer, as David had observed from the train? One by one, two by two, group by group, the unveiled dancers came and went; the singers sang behind the screen provided for them, so that none might see their faces, after the custom. At last, however, Kaid and his guests grew listless, and smoked and talked idly. Yet there was in the eyes of Kaid a watchfulness unseen by any save a fellah who squatted in a corner eating sweetmeats, and a hidden singer waiting until she should be called before the Prince Pasha. The singer's glances continually flashed between Kaid and Achmet. At last, with gleaming eyes, she saw six Nubian slaves steal silently behind Achmet. One, also, of great strength, came suddenly and stood before him. In his hands was a leathern thong. Achmet saw, felt the presence of the slaves behind him, and shrank back numbed and appalled. A mist came before his eyes; the voice he heard summoning him to stand up seemed to come from infinite distances. The hand of doom had fallen like a thunderbolt. The leathern thong in the hands of the slave was the token of instant death. There was no chance of escape. The Nubians had him at their mercy. As his brain struggled to regain its understanding, he saw, as in a dream, David enter the court-yard and come towards Kaid. Suddenly David stopped in amazement, seeing Achmet. Inquiringly he looked at Kaid, who spoke earnestly to him in a low tone. Whereupon David turned his head away, but after a moment fixed his eyes on Achmet. Kaid motioned all his startled guests to come nearer. Then in strong, unmerciful voice he laid Achmet's crime before them, and told the story of the bridge-opener, who had that day expiated his crime in the desert by the hands of Mahommed--but not with torture, as Mahommed had hoped might be. "What shall be his punishment--so foul, so wolfish?" Kaid asked of them all. A dozen voices answered, some one terrible thing, some another. "Mercy!" moaned Achmet aghast. "Mercy, Saadat!" he cried to David. David looked at him calmly. There was little mercy in his eyes as he answered: "Thy crimes sent to their death in the Nile those who never injured thee. Dost thou quarrel with justice? Compose thy soul, and I pray only the Effendina to give thee that seemly death thou didst deny thy victims." He bowed respectfully to Kaid. Kaid frowned. "The ways of Egypt are the ways of Egypt, and not of the land once thine," he answered shortly. Then, under the spell of that influence which he had never yet been able to resist, he added to the slaves: "Take him aside. I will think upon it. But he shall die at sunrise ere the army goes. Shall not justice be the gift of Kaid for an example and a warning? Take him away a little. I will decide." As Achmet and the slaves disappeared into a dark corner of the court- yard, Kaid rose to his feet, and, upon the hint, his guests, murmuring praises of his justice and his mercy and his wisdom, slowly melted from the court-yard; but once outside they hastened to proclaim in the four quarters of Cairo how yet again the English Pasha had picked from the Tree of Life an apple of fortune. The court-yard was now empty, save for the servants of the Prince, David and Mahommed, and two officers in whom David had advised Kaid to put trust. Presently one of these officers said: "There is another singer, and the last. Is it the Effendina's pleasure?" Kaid made a gesture of assent, sat down, and took the stem of a narghileh between his lips. For a moment there was silence, and then, out upon the sweet, perfumed night, over which the stars hung brilliant and soft and near, a voice at first quietly, then fully, and palpitating with feeling, poured forth an Eastern love song: "Take thou thy flight, O soul! Thou hast no more The gladness of the morning! Ah, the perfumed roses My love laid on my bosom as I slept! How did he wake me with his lips upon mine eyes, How did the singers carol--the singers of my soul That nest among the thoughts of my beloved! . . . All silent now, the choruses are gone, The windows of my soul are closed; no more Mine eyes look gladly out to see my lover come. There is no more to do, no more to say: Take flight, my soul, my love returns no more!" At the first note Kaid started, and his eyes fastened upon the screen behind which sat the singer. Then, as the voice, in sweet anguish, filled the court-yard, entrancing them all, rose higher and higher, fell and died away, he got to his feet, and called out hoarsely: "Come--come forth!" Slowly a graceful, veiled figure came from behind the great screen. He took a step forward. "Zaida! Zaida!" he said gently, amazedly. She salaamed low. "Forgive me, O my lord!" she said, in a whispering voice, drawing her veil about her head. "It was my soul's desire to look upon thy face once more." "Whither didst thou go at Harrik's death? I sent to find thee, and give thee safety; but thou wert gone, none knew where." "O my lord, what was I but a mote in thy sun, that thou shouldst seek me?" Kaid's eyes fell, and he murmured to himself a moment, then he said slowly: "Thou didst save Egypt, thou and my friend"--he gestured towards David"--and my life also, and all else that is worth. Therefore bounty, and safety, and all thy desires were thy due. Kaid is no ingrate--no, by the hand of Moses that smote at Sinai!" She made a pathetic motion of her hands. "By Harrik's death I am free, a slave no longer. O my lord, where I go bounty and famine are the same." Kaid took a step forward. "Let me see thy face," he said, something strange in her tone moving him with awe. She lowered her veil and looked him in the eyes. Her wan beauty smote him, conquered him, the exquisite pain in her face filled Kaid's eyes with foreboding, and pierced his heart. "O cursed day that saw thee leave these walls! I did it for thy good-- thou wert so young; thy life was all before thee! But now--come, Zaida, here in Kaid's Palace thou shalt have a home, and be at peace, for I see that thou hast suffered. Surely it shall be said that Kaid honours thee." He reached out to take her hand. She had listened like one in a dream, but, as he was about to touch her, she suddenly drew back, veiled her face, save for the eyes, and said in a voice of agony: "Unclean, unclean! My lord, I am a leper!" An awed and awful silence fell upon them all. Kaid drew back as though smitten by a blow. Presently, upon the silence, her voice sharp with agony said: "I am a leper, and I go to that desert place which my lord has set apart for lepers, where, dead to the world, I shall watch the dreadful years come and go. Behold, I would die, but that I have a sister there these many years, and her sick soul lives in loneliness. O my lord, forgive me! Here was I happy; here of old I did sing to thee, and I came to sing to thee once more a death-song. Also, I came to see thee do justice, ere I went from thy face for ever." Kaid's head was lowered on his breast. He shuddered. "Thou art so beautiful--thy voice, all! Thou wouldst see justice--speak! Justice shall be made plain before thee." Twice she essayed to speak, and could not; but from his sweetmeats and the shadows Mahommed crept forward, kissed the ground before Kaid, and said: "Effendina, thou knowest me as the servant of thy high servant, Claridge Pasha." "I know thee--proceed." "Behold, she whom God has smitten, man smote first. I am her foster- brother--from the same breast we drew the food of life. Thou wouldst do justice, O Effendina; but canst thou do double justice--ay, a thousandfold? Then"--his voice raised almost shrilly--"then do it upon Achmet Pasha. She--Zaida--told me where I should find the bridge- opener." "Zaida once more!" Kaid murmured. "She had learned all in Achmet's harem--hearing speech between Achmet and the man whom thou didst deliver to my hands yesterday." "Zaida-in Achmet's harem?" Kaid turned upon her. Swiftly she told her dreadful tale, how, after Achmet had murdered all of her except her body, she rose up to kill herself; but fainting, fell upon a burning brazier, and her hand thrust accidentally in the live coals felt no pain. "And behold, O my lord, I knew I was a leper; and I remembered my sister and lived on." So she ended, in a voice numbed and tuneless. Kaid trembled with rage, and he cried in a loud voice: "Bring Achmet forth." As the slave sped upon the errand, David laid a hand on Kaid's arm, and whispered to him earnestly. Kaid's savage frown cleared away, and his rage calmed down; but an inflexible look came into his face, a look which petrified the ruined Achmet as he salaamed before him. "Know thy punishment, son of a dog with a dog's heart, and prepare for a daily death," said Kaid. "This woman thou didst so foully wrong, even when thou didst wrong her, she was a leper." A low cry broke from Achmet, for now when death came he must go unclean to the after-world, forbidden Allah's presence. Broken and abject he listened. "She knew not, till thou wert gone," continued Kaid. She is innocent before the law. But thou--beast of the slime--hear thy sentence. There is in the far desert a place where lepers live. There, once a year, one caravan comes, and, at the outskirts of the place unclean, leaves food and needful things for another year, and returns again to Egypt after many days. From that place there is no escape--the desert is as the sea, and upon that sea there is no ghiassa to sail to a farther shore. It is the leper land. Thither thou shalt go to wait upon this woman thou hast savagely wronged, and upon her kind, till thou diest. It shall be so." "Mercy! Mercy!" Achmet cried, horror-stricken, and turned to David. "Thou art merciful. Speak for me, Saadat." "When didst thou have mercy?" asked David. "Thy crimes are against humanity." Kaid made a motion, and, with dragging feet, Achmet passed from the haunts of familiar faces. For a moment Kaid stood and looked at Zaida, rigid and stricken in that awful isolation which is the leper's doom. Her eyes were closed, but her head was high. "Wilt thou not die?" Kaid asked her gently. She shook her head slowly, and her hands folded on her breast. "My sister is there," she said at last. There was an instant's stillness, then Kaid added with a voice of grief: "Peace be upon thee, Zaida. Life is but a spark. If death comes not to-day, it will tomorrow, for thee-- for me. Inshallah, peace be upon thee!" She opened her eyes and looked at him. Seeing what was in his face, they lighted with a great light for a moment. "And upon thee peace, O my lord, for ever and for ever!" she said softly, and, turning, left the court-yard, followed at a distance by Mahommed Hassan. Kaid remained motionless looking after her. David broke in on his abstraction. "The army at sunrise--thou wilt speak to it, Effendina?" Kaid roused himself. "What shall I say?" he asked anxiously. "Tell them they shall be clothed and fed, and to every man or his family three hundred piastres at the end." "Who will do this?" asked Kaid incredulously. "Thou, Effendina--Egypt and thou and I." "So be it," answered Kaid. As they left the court-yard, he said suddenly to an officer behind him: "The caravan to the Place of Lepers--add to the stores fifty camel-loads this year, and each year hereafter. Have heed to it. Ere it starts, come to me. I would see all with mine own eyes." ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Begin to see how near good is to evil But the years go on, and friends have an end Does any human being know what he can bear of temptation Heaven where wives without number awaited him Honesty was a thing he greatly desired--in others How little we can know to-day what we shall feel tomorrow How many conquests have been made in the name of God One does the work and another gets paid To-morrow is no man's gift We want every land to do as we do; and we want to make 'em do it THE WEAVERS By Gilbert Parker BOOK III. XV. SOOLSBY'S HAND UPON THE CURTAIN XVI. THE DEBT AND THE ACCOUNTING XVII. THE WOMAN OF THE CROSS-ROADS XVIII. TIME, THE IDOL-BREAKER XIX. SHARPER THAN A SWORD XX. EACH AFTER HIS OWN ORDER XXI. "THERE IS NOTHING HIDDEN WHICH SHALL NOT BE REVEALED" XXII. AS IN A GLASS DARKLY XXIII. THE TENTS OF CUSHAN XXIV. THE QUESTIONER XXV. THE VOICE THROUGH THE DOOR XXVI. "I OWE YOU NOTHING" XXVII. THE AWAKENING CHAPTER XV SOOLSBY'S HAND UPON THE CURTAIN Faith raised her eyes from the paper before her and poised her head meditatively. "How long is it, friend, since--" "Since he went to Egypt?" "Nay, since thee--" "Since I went to Mass?" he grumbled humorously. She laughed whimsically. "Nay, then, since thee made the promise--" "That I would drink no more till his return--ay, that was my bargain; till then and no longer! I am not to be held back then, unless I change my mind when I see him. Well, 'tis three years since--" "Three years! Time hasn't flown. Is it not like an old memory, his living here in this house, Soolsby, and all that happened then?" Soolsby looked at her over his glasses, resting his chin on the back of the chair he was caning, and his lips worked in and out with a suppressed smile. "Time's got naught to do with you. He's afeard of you," he continued. "He lets you be." "Friend, thee knows I am almost an old woman now." She made marks abstractedly upon the corner of a piece of paper. "Unless my hair turns grey presently I must bleach it, for 'twill seem improper it should remain so brown." She smoothed it back with her hand. Try as she would to keep it trim after the manner of her people, it still waved loosely on her forehead and over her ears. And the grey bonnet she wore but added piquancy to its luxuriance, gave a sweet gravity to the demure beauty of the face it sheltered. "I am thirty now," she murmured, with a sigh, and went on writing. The old man's fingers moved quickly among the strips of cane, and, after a silence, without raising his head, he said: "Thirty, it means naught." "To those without understanding," she rejoined drily. "'Tis tough understanding why there's no wedding-ring on yonder finger. There's been many a man that's wanted it, that's true--the Squire's son from Bridgley, the lord of Axwood Manor, the long soldier from Shipley Wood, and doctors, and such folk aplenty. There's where understanding fails." Faith's face flushed, then it became pale, and her eyes, suffused, dropped upon the paper before her. At first it seemed as though she must resent his boldness; but she had made a friend of him these years past, and she knew he meant no rudeness. In the past they had talked of things deeper and more intimate still. Yet there was that in his words which touched a sensitive corner of her nature. "Why should I be marrying?" she asked presently. "There was my sister's son all those years. I had to care for him." "Ay, older than him by a thimbleful!" he rejoined. "Nay, till he came to live in this hut alone older by many a year. Since then he is older than me by fifty. I had not thought of marriage before he went away. Squire's son, soldier, or pillman, what were they to me! He needed me. They came, did they? Well, and if they came?" "And since the Egyptian went?" A sort of sob came into her throat. "He does not need me, but he may--he will one day; and then I shall be ready. But now--" Old Soolsby's face turned away. His house overlooked every house in the valley beneath: he could see nearly every garden; he could even recognise many in the far streets. Besides, there hung along two nails on the wall a telescope, relic of days when he sailed the main. The grounds of the Cloistered House and the fruit-decked garden-wall of the Red Mansion were ever within his vision. Once, twice, thrice, he had seen what he had seen, and dark feelings, harsh emotions, had been roused in him. "He will need us both--the Egyptian will need us both one day," he answered now; "you more than any, me because I can help him, too--ay, I can help him. But married or single you could help him; so why waste your days here?" "Is it wasting my days to stay with my father? He is lonely, most lonely since our Davy went away; and troubled, too, for the dangers of that life yonder. His voice used to shake when he prayed, in those days when Davy was away in the desert, down at Darfur and elsewhere among the rebel tribes. He frightened me then, he was so stern and still. Ah, but that day when we knew he was safe, I was eighteen, and no more!" she added, smiling. "But, think you, I could marry while my life is so tied to him and to our Egyptian?" No one looking at her limpid, shining blue eyes but would have set her down for twenty-three or twenty-four, for not a line showed on her smooth face; she was exquisite of limb and feature, and had the lissomeness of a girl of fifteen. There was in her eyes, however, an unquiet sadness; she had abstracted moments when her mind seemed fixed on some vexing problem. Such a mood suddenly came upon her now. The pen lay by the paper untouched, her hands folded in her lap, and a long silence fell upon them, broken only by the twanging of the strips of cane in Soolsby's hands. At last, however, even this sound ceased; and the two scarce moved as the sun drew towards the middle afternoon. At last they were roused by the sound of a horn, and, looking down, they saw a four-in-hand drawing smartly down the road to the village over the gorse-spread common, till it stopped at the Cloistered House. As Faith looked, her face slightly flushed. She bent forward till she saw one figure get down and, waving a hand to the party on the coach as it moved on, disappear into the gateway of the Cloistered House. "What is the office they have given him?" asked Soolsby, disapproval in his tone, his eyes fixed on the disappearing figure. "They have made Lord Eglington Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs," she answered. "And what means that to a common mind?" "That what his Government does in Egypt will mean good or bad to our Egyptian," she returned. "That he can do our man good or ill?" Soolsby asked sharply--"that he, yonder, can do that?" She inclined her head. "When I see him doing ill--well, when I see him doing that"--he snatched up a piece of wood from the floor--"then I will break him, so!" He snapped the stick across his knee, and threw the pieces on the ground. He was excited. He got to his feet and walked up and down the little room, his lips shut tight, his round eyes flaring. Faith watched him in astonishment. In the past she had seen his face cloud over, his eyes grow sulky, at the mention of Lord Eglington's name; she knew that Soolsby hated him; but his aversion now was more definite and violent than he had before shown, save on that night long ago when David went first to Egypt, and she had heard hard words between them in this same hut. She supposed it one of those antipathies which often grow in inverse ratio to the social position of those concerned. She replied in a soothing voice: "Then we shall hope that he will do our Davy only good." "You would not wish me to break his lordship? You would not wish it?" He came over to her, and looked sharply at her. "You would not wish it?" he repeated meaningly. She evaded his question. "Lord Eglington will be a great man one day perhaps," she answered. "He has made his way quickly. How high he has climbed in three years--how high!" Soolsby's anger was not lessened. "Pooh! Pooh! He is an Earl. An Earl has all with him at the start--name, place, and all. But look at our Egyptian! Look at Egyptian David--what had he but his head and an honest mind? What is he? He is the great man of Egypt. Tell me, who helped Egyptian David? That second-best lordship yonder, he crept about coaxing this one and wheedling that. I know him--I know him. He wheedles and wheedles. No matter whether 'tis a babe or an old woman, he'll talk, and talk, and talk, till they believe in him, poor folks! No one's too small for his net. There's Martha Higham yonder. She's forty five. If he sees her, as sure as eggs he'll make love to her, and fill her ears with words she'd never heard before, and 'd never hear at all if not from him. Ay, there's no man too sour and no woman too old that he'll not blandish, if he gets the chance." As he spoke Faith shut her eyes, and her fingers clasped tightly together--beautiful long, tapering fingers, like those in Romney's pictures. When he stopped, her eyes opened slowly, and she gazed before her down towards that garden by the Red Mansion where her lifetime had been spent. "Thee says hard words, Soolsby," she rejoined gently. "But maybe thee is right." Then a flash of humour passed over her face. "Suppose we ask Martha Higham if the Earl has 'blandished' her. If the Earl has blandished Martha, he is the very captain of deceit. Why, he has himself but twenty-eight years. Will a man speak so to one older than himself, save in mockery? So, if thee is right in this, then--then if he speak well to deceive and to serve his turn, he will also speak ill; and he will do ill when it may serve his turn; and so he may do our Davy ill, as thee says, Soolsby." She rose to her feet and made as if to go, but she kept her face from him. Presently, however, she turned and looked at him. "If he does ill to Davy, there will be those like thee, Soolsby, who will not spare him." His fingers opened and shut maliciously, he nodded dour assent. After an instant, while he watched her, she added: "Thee has not heard my lord is to marry?" "Marry--who is the blind lass?" "Her name is Maryon, Miss Hylda Maryon: and she has a great fortune. But within a month it is to be." "Thee remembers the woman of the cross-roads, her that our Davy--" "Her the Egyptian kissed, and put his watch in her belt--ay, Kate Heaver!" "She is now maid to her Lord Eglington will wed. She is to spend to-night with us." "Where is her lad that was, that the Egyptian rolled like dough in a trough?" "Jasper Kimber? He is at Sheffield. He has been up and down, now sober for a year, now drunken for a month, now in, now out of a place, until this past year. But for this whole year he has been sober, and he may keep his pledge. He is working in the trades-unions. Among his fellow- workers he is called a politician--if loud speaking and boasting can make one. Yet if these doings give him stimulant instead of drink, who shall complain?" Soolsby's head was down. He was looking out over the far hills, while the strips of cane were idle in his hands. "Ay, 'tis true--'tis true," he nodded. "Give a man an idee which keeps him cogitating, makes him think he's greater than he is, and sets his pulses beating, why, that's the cure to drink. Drink is friendship and good company and big thoughts while it lasts; and it's lonely without it, if you've been used to it. Ay, but Kimber's way is best. Get an idee in your noddle, to do a thing that's more to you than work or food or bed, and 'twill be more than drink, too." He nodded to himself, then began weaving the strips of cane furiously. Presently he stopped again, and threw his head back with a chuckle. "Now, wouldn't it be a joke, a reg'lar first-class joke, if Kimber and me both had the same idee, if we was both workin' for the same thing-- an' didn't know it? I reckon it might be so." "What end is thee working for, friend? If the public prints speak true, Kimber is working to stand for Parliament against Lord Eglington." Soolsby grunted and laughed in his throat. "Now, is that the game of Mister Kimber? Against my Lord Eglington! Hey, but that's a joke, my lord!" "And what is thee working for, Soolsby?" "What do I be working for? To get the Egyptian back to England--what else?" "That is no joke." "Ay, but 'tis a joke." The old man chuckled. "'Tis the best joke in the boilin'." He shook his head and moved his body backwards and forwards with glee. "Me and Kimber! Me and Kimber!" he roared, "and neither of us drunk for a year--not drunk for a whole year. Me and Kimber--and him!" Faith put her hand on his shoulder. "Indeed, I see no joke, but only that which makes my heart thankful, Soolsby." "Ay, you will be thankful, you will be thankful, by-and-by," he said, still chuckling, and stood up respectfully to show her out. CHAPTER XVI THE DEBT AND THE ACCOUNTING His forehead frowning, but his eyes full of friendliness, Soolsby watched Faith go down the hillside and until she reached the main road. Here, instead of going to the Red Mansion, she hesitated a moment, and then passed along a wooded path leading to the Meetinghouse, and the graveyard. It was a perfect day of early summer, the gorse was in full bloom, and the may and the hawthorn were alive with colour. The path she had taken led through a narrow lane, overhung with blossoms and greenery. By bearing away to the left into another path, and making a detour, she could reach the Meeting-house through a narrow lane leading past a now disused mill and a small, strong stream flowing from the hill above. As she came down the hill, other eyes than Soolsby's watched her. From his laboratory--the laboratory in which his father had worked, in which he had lost his life--Eglington had seen the trim, graceful figure. He watched it till it moved into the wooded path. Then he left his garden, and, moving across a field, came into the path ahead of her. Walking swiftly, he reached the old mill, and waited. She came slowly, now and again stooping to pick a flower and place it in her belt. Her bonnet was slung on her arm, her hair had broken a little loose and made a sort of hood round the face, so still, so composed, into which the light of steady, soft, apprehending eyes threw a gentle radiance. It was a face to haunt a man when the storm of life was round him. It had, too, a courage which might easily become a delicate stubbornness, a sense of duty which might become sternness, if roused by a sense of wrong to herself or others. She reached the mill and stood and listened towards the stream and the waterfall. She came here often. The scene quieted her in moods of restlessness which came from a feeling that her mission was interrupted, that half her life's work had been suddenly taken from her. When David went, her life had seemed to shrivel; for with him she had developed as he had developed; and when her busy care of him was withdrawn, she had felt a sort of paralysis which, in a sense, had never left her. Then suitors had come--the soldier from Shipley Wood, the lord of Axwood Manor, and others, and, in a way, a new sense was born in her, though she was alive to the fact that the fifteen thousand pounds inherited from her Uncle Benn had served to warm the air about her into a wider circle. Yet it was neither to soldier, nor squire, nor civil engineer, nor surgeon that the new sense stirring in her was due. The spring was too far beneath to be found by them. When, at last, she raised her head, Lord Eglington was in the path, looking at her with a half-smile. She did not start, but her face turned white, and a mist came before her eyes. Quickly, however, as though fearful lest he should think he could trouble her composure, she laid a hand upon herself. He came near to her and held out his hand. "It has been a long six months since we met here," he said. She made no motion to take his hand. "I find days grow shorter as I grow older," she rejoined steadily, and smoothed her hair with her hand, making ready to put on her bonnet. "Ah, do not put it on," he urged quickly, with a gesture. "It becomes you so--on your arm." She had regained her self-possession. Pride, the best weapon of a woman, the best tonic, came to her resource. "Thee loves to please thee at any cost," she replied. She fastened the grey strings beneath her chin. "Would it be costly to keep the bonnet on your arm?" "It is my pleasure to have it on my head, and my pleasure has some value to myself." "A moment ago," he rejoined laughing, "it was your pleasure to have it on your arm." "Are all to be monotonous except Lord Eglington? Is he to have the only patent of change?" "Do I change?" He smiled at her with a sense of inquisition, with an air that seemed to say, "I have lifted the veil of this woman's heart; I am the master of the situation." She did not answer to the obvious meaning of his words, but said: "Thee has done little else but change, so far as eye can see. Thee and thy family were once of Quaker faith, but thee is a High Churchman now. Yet they said a year ago thee was a sceptic or an infidel." "There is force in what you say," he replied. "I have an inquiring mind; I am ever open to reason. Confucius said: 'It is only the supremely wise or the deeply ignorant who never alter.'" "Thee has changed politics. Thee made a 'sensation, but that was not enough. Thee that was a rebel became a deserter." He laughed. "Ah, I was open to conviction! I took my life in my hands, defied consequences." He laughed again. "It brought office." "I am Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs," he murmured complacently. "Change is a policy with thee, I think. It has paid thee well, so it would seem." "Only a fair rate of interest for the capital invested and the risks I've taken," he answered with an amused look. "I do not think that interest will increase. Thee has climbed quickly, but fast climbing is not always safe climbing." His mood changed. His voice quickened, his face lowered. "You think I will fail? You wish me to fail?" "In so far as thee acts uprightly, I wish thee well. But if, out of office, thee disregards justice and conscience and the rights of others, can thee be just and faithful in office? Subtlety will not always avail. The strong man takes the straight course. Subtlety is not intellect." He flushed. She had gone to the weakest point in his defences. His vanity was being hurt. She had an advantage now. "You are wrong," he protested. "You do not understand public life, here in a silly Quaker village." "Does thee think that all that happens in 'public life' is of consequence? That is not sensible. Thee is in the midst of a thousand immaterial things, though they have importance for the moment. But the chief things that matter to all, does thee not know that a 'silly Quaker village' may realise them to the full--more fully because we see them apart from the thousand little things that do not matter? I remember a thing in political life that mattered. It was at Heddington after the massacre at Damascus. Does thee think that we did not know thee spoke without principle then, and only to draw notice?" "You would make me into a demagogue," he said irritably. "Thee is a demagogue," she answered candidly. "Why did you never say all this to me long ago? Years have passed since then, and since then you and I have--have been friends. You have--" He paused, for she made a protesting motion, and a fire sprang into her eyes. Her voice got colder. "Thee made me believe--ah, how many times did we speak together? Six times it was, not more. Thee made me believe that what I thought or said helped thee to see things better. Thee said I saw things truly like a child, with the wisdom of a woman. Thee remembers that?" "It was so," he put in hastily. "No, not for a moment so, though I was blinded to think for an instant that it was. Thee subtly took the one way which could have made me listen to thee. Thee wanted help, thee said; and if a word of mine could help thee now and then, should I withhold it, so long as I thought thee honest?" "Do you think I was not honest in wanting your friendship?" "Nay, it was not friendship thee wanted, for friendship means a giving and a getting. Thee was bent on getting what was, indeed, of but little value save to the giver; but thee gave nothing; thee remembered nothing of what was given thee." "It is not so, it is not so," he urged eagerly, nervously. "I gave, and I still give." "In those old days, I did not understand," she went on, "what it was thee wanted. I know now. It was to know the heart and mind of a woman--of a woman older than thee. So that thee should have such sort of experience, though I was but a foolish choice of the experiment. They say thee has a gift for chemistry like thy father; but if thee experiments no more wisely in the laboratory than with me, thee will not reach distinction." "Your father hated my father and did not believe in him, I know not why, and you are now hating and disbelieving me." "I do not know why my father held the late Earl in abhorrence; I know he has no faith in thee; and I did ill in listening to thee, in believing for one moment there was truth in thee. But no, no, I think I never believed it. I think that even when thee said most, at heart I believed least." "You doubt that? You doubt all I said to you?" he urged softly, coming close to her. She drew aside slightly. She had steeled herself for this inevitable interview, and there was no weakening of her defences; but a great sadness came into her eyes, and spread over her face, and to this was added, after a moment, a pity which showed the distance she was from him, the safety in which she stood. "I remember that the garden was beautiful, and that thee spoke as though thee was part of the garden. Thee remembers that, at our meeting in the Cloistered House, when the woman was ill, I had no faith in thee; but thee spoke with grace, and turned common things round about, so that they seemed different to the ear from any past hearing; and I listened. I did not know, and I do not know now, why it is my duty to shun any of thy name, and above all thyself; but it has been so commanded by my father all my life; and though what he says may be in a little wrong, in much it must ever be right." "And so, from a hatred handed down, your mind has been tuned to shun even when your heart was learning to give me a home--Faith?" She straightened herself. "Friend, thee will do me the courtesy to forget to use my Christian name. I am not a child-indeed, I am well on in years"--he smiled--"and thee has no friendship or kinship for warrant. If my mind was tuned to shun thee, I gave proof that it was willing to take thee at thine own worth, even against the will of my father, against the desire of David, who knew thee better than I--he gauged thee at first glance." "You have become a philosopher and a statesman," he said ironically. "Has your nephew, the new Joseph in Egypt, been giving you instructions in high politics? Has he been writing the Epistles of David to the Quakers?" "Thee will leave his name apart," she answered with dignity. "I have studied neither high politics nor statesmanship, though in the days when thee did flatter me thee said I had a gift for such things. Thee did not speak the truth. And now I will say that I do not respect thee. No matter how high thee may climb, still I shall not respect thee; for thee will ever gain ends by flattery, by subtlety, and by using every man and every woman for selfish ends. Thee cannot be true-not even to that which by nature is greatest in thee.". He withered under her words. "And what is greatest in me?" he asked abruptly, his coolness and self- possession striving to hold their own. "That which will ruin thee in the end." Her eyes looked beyond his into the distance, rapt and shining; she seemed scarcely aware of his presence. "That which will bring thee down--thy hungry spirit of discovery. It will serve thee no better than it served the late Earl. But thee it will lead into paths ending in a gulf of darkness." "Deborah!" he answered, with a rasping laugh. "Continuez! Forewarned is forearmed." "No, do not think I shall be glad," she answered, still like one in a dream. "I shall lament it as I lament--as I lament now. All else fades away into the end which I see for thee. Thee will live alone without a near and true friend, and thee will die alone, never having had a true friend. Thee will never be a true friend, thee will never love truly man or woman, and thee will never find man or woman who will love thee truly, or will be with thee to aid thee in the dark and falling days." "Then," he broke in sharply, querulously, "then, I will stand alone. I shall never come whining that I have been ill-used, to fate or fortune, to men or to the Almighty." "That I believe. Pride will build up in thee a strength which will be like water in the end. Oh, my lord," she added, with a sudden change in her voice and manner, "if thee could only be true--thee who never has been true to any one!" "Why does a woman always judge a man after her own personal experience with him, or what she thinks is her own personal experience?" A robin hopped upon the path before her. She watched it for a moment intently, then lifted her head as the sound of a bell came through the wood to her. She looked up at the sun, which was slanting towards evening. She seemed about to speak, but with second thought, moved on slowly past the mill and towards the Meeting-house. He stepped on beside her. She kept her eyes fixed in front of her, as though oblivious of his presence. "You shall hear me speak. You shall listen to what I have to say, though it is for the last time," he urged stubbornly. "You think ill of me. Are you sure you are not pharisaical?" "I am honest enough to say that which hurts me in the saying. I do not forget that to believe thee what I think is to take all truth from what thee said to me last year, and again this spring when the tulips first came and there was good news from Egypt." "I said," he rejoined boldly, "that I was happier with you than with any one else alive. I said that what you thought of me meant more to me than what any one else in the world thought; and that I say now, and will always say it." The old look of pity came into her face. "I am older than thee by two years," she answered quaintly, "and I know more of real life, though I have lived always here. I have made the most of the little I have seen; thee has made little of the much that thee has seen. Thee does not know the truth concerning thee. Is it not, in truth, vanity which would have me believe in thee? If thee was happier with me than with any one alive, why then did thee make choice of a wife even in the days thee was speaking to me as no man shall ever speak again? Nothing can explain so base a fact. No, no, no, thee said to me what thee said to others, and will say again without shame. But--but see, I will forgive; yes, I will follow thee with good wishes, if thee will promise to help David, whom thee has ever disliked, as, in the place held by thee, thee can do now. Will thee offer this one proof, in spite of all else that disproves, that thee spoke any words of truth to me in the Cloistered House, in the garden by my father's house, by yonder mill, and hard by the Meeting-house yonder-near to my sister's grave by the willow-tree? Will thee do that for me?" He was about to reply, when there appeared in the path before them Luke Claridge. His back was upon them, but he heard their footsteps and swung round. As though turned to stone, he waited for them. As they approached, his lips, dry and pale, essayed to speak, but no sound came. A fire was in his eyes which boded no good. Amazement, horror, deadly anger, were all there, but, after a moment, the will behind the tumult commanded it, the wild light died away, and he stood calm and still awaiting them. Faith was as pale as when she had met Eglington. As she came nearer, Luke Claridge said, in a low voice: "How do I find thee in this company, Faith?" There was reproach unutterable in his voice, in his face. He seemed humiliated and shamed, though all the while a violent spirit in him was struggling for the mastery. "As I came this way to visit my sister's grave I met my lord by the mill. He spoke to me, and, as I wished a favour of him, I walked with him thither--but a little way. I was going to visit my sister's grave." "Thy sister's grave!" The fire flamed up again, but the masterful will chilled it down, and he answered: "What secret business can thee have with any of that name which I have cast out of knowledge or notice?" Ignorant as he was of the old man's cause for quarrel or dislike, Eglington felt himself aggrieved, and, therefore, with an advantage. "You had differences with my father, sir," he said. "I do not know what they were, but they lasted his lifetime, and all my life you have treated me with aversion. I am not a pestilence. I have never wronged you. I have lived your peaceful neighbour under great provocation, for your treatment would have done me harm if my place were less secure. I think I have cause for complaint." "I have never acted in haste concerning thee, or those who went before thee. What business had thee with him, Faith?" he asked again. His voice was dry and hard. Her impulse was to tell the truth, and so for ever have her conscience clear, for there would never be any more need for secrecy. The wheel of understanding between Eglington and herself had come full circle, and there was an end. But to tell the truth would be to wound her father, to vex him against Eglington even as he had never yet been vexed. Besides, it was hard, while Eglington was there, to tell what, after all, was the sole affair of her own life. In one literal sense, Eglington was not guilty of deceit. Never in so many words had he said to her: "I love you;" never had he made any promise to her or exacted one; he had done no more than lure her to feel one thing, and then to call it another thing. Also there was no direct and vital injury, for she had never loved him; though how far she had travelled towards that land of light and trial she could never now declare. These thoughts flashed through her mind as she stood looking at her father. Her tongue seemed imprisoned, yet her soft and candid eyes conquered the austerity in the old man's gaze. Eglington spoke for her. "Permit me to answer, neighbour," he said. "I wished to speak with your daughter, because I am to be married soon, and my wife will, at intervals, come here to live. I wished that she should not be shunned by you and yours as I have been. She would not understand, as I do not. Yours is a constant call to war, while all your religion is an appeal for peace. I wished to ask your daughter to influence you to make it possible for me and mine to live in friendship among you. My wife will have some claims upon you. Her mother was an American, of a Quaker family from Derbyshire. She has done nothing to merit your aversion." Faith listened astonished and baffled. Nothing of this had he said to her. Had he meant to say it to her? Had it been in his mind? Or was it only a swift adaptation to circumstances, an adroit means of working upon the sympathies of her father, who, she could see, was in a quandary? Eglington had indeed touched the old man as he had not been touched in thirty years and more by one of his name. For a moment the insinuating quality of the appeal submerged the fixed idea in a mind to which the name of Eglington was anathema. Eglington saw his advantage. He had felt his way carefully, and he pursued it quickly. "For the rest, your daughter asked what I was ready to offer--such help as, in my new official position, I can give to Claridge Pasha in Egypt. As a neighbour, as Minister in the Government, I will do what I can to aid him." Silent and embarrassed, the old man tried to find his way. Presently he said tentatively: "David Claridge has a title to the esteem of all civilised people." Eglington was quick with his reply. "If he succeeds, his title will become a concrete fact. There is no honour the Crown would not confer for such remarkable service." The other's face darkened. "I did not speak, I did not think, of handles to his name. I find no good in them, but only means for deceiving and deluding the world. Such honours as might make him baronet, or duke, would add not a cubit to his stature. If he had such a thing by right" --his voice hardened, his eyes grew angry once again--"I would wish it sunk into the sea." "You are hard on us, sir, who did not give ourselves our titles, but took them with our birth as a matter of course. There was nothing inspiring in them. We became at once distinguished and respectable by patent." He laughed good-humouredly. Then suddenly he changed, and his eyes took on a far-off look which Faith had seen so often in the eyes of David, but in David's more intense and meaning, and so different. With what deftness and diplomacy had he worked upon her father! He had crossed a stream which seemed impassable by adroit, insincere diplomacy. She saw that it was time to go, while yet Eglington's disparagement of rank and aristocracy was ringing in the old man's ears; though she knew there was nothing in Eglington's equipment he valued more than his title and the place it gave him. Grateful, however, for his successful intervention, Faith now held out her hand. "I must take my father away, or it will be sunset before we reach the Meeting-house," she said. "Goodbye-friend," she added gently. For an instant Luke Claridge stared at her, scarce comprehending that his movements were being directed by any one save himself. Truth was, Faith had come to her cross-roads in life. For the first time in her memory she had seen her father speak to an Eglington without harshness; and, as he weakened for a moment, she moved to take command of that weakness, though she meant it to seem like leading. While loving her and David profoundly, her father had ever been quietly imperious. If she could but gain ascendency even in a little, it might lead to a more open book of life for them both. Eglington held out his hand to the old man. "I have kept you too long, sir. Good-bye--if you will." The offered hand was not taken, but Faith slid hers into the old man's palm, and pressed it, and he said quietly to Eglington: "Good evening, friend." "And when I bring my wife, sir?" Eglington added, with a smile. "When thee brings the lady, there will be occasion to consider--there will be occasion then." Eglington raised his hat, and turned back upon the path he and Faith had travelled. The old man stood watching him until he was out of view. Then he seemed more himself. Still holding Faith's hand, he walked with her on the gorse-covered hill towards the graveyard. "Was it his heart spoke or his tongue--is there any truth in him?" he asked at last. Faith pressed his hand. "If he help Davy, father--" "If he help Davy; ay, if he help Davy! Nay, I cannot go to the graveyard, Faith. Take me home," he said with emotion. His hand remained in hers. She had conquered. She was set upon a new path of influence. Her hand was upon the door of his heart. "Thee is good to me, Faith," he said, as they entered the door of the Red Mansion. She glanced over towards the Cloistered House. Smoke was coming from the little chimney of the laboratory. CHAPTER XVII THE WOMAN OF THE CROSS-ROADS The night came down slowly. There was no moon, the stars were few, but a mellow warmth was in the air. At the window of her little sitting-room up-stairs Faith sat looking out into the stillness. Beneath was the garden with its profusion of flowers and fruit; away to the left was the common; and beyond-far beyond--was a glow in the sky, a suffused light, of a delicate orange, merging away into a grey-blueness, deepening into a darker blue; and then a purple depth, palpable and heavy with a comforting silence. There was something alluring and suggestive in the soft, smothered radiance. It had all the glamour of some distant place of pleasure and quiet joy, of happiness and ethereal being. It was, in fact, the far-off mirror of the flaming furnace of the great Heddington factories. The light of the sky above was a soft radiance, as of a happy Arcadian land; the fire of the toil beneath was the output of human striving, an intricate interweaving of vital forces which, like some Titanic machine, wrought out in pain--a vast destiny. As Faith looked, she thought of the thousands beneath struggling and striving, none with all desires satisfied, some in an agony of want and penury, all straining for the elusive Enough; like Sisyphus ever rolling the rock of labour up a hill too steep for them. Her mind flew to the man Kimber and his task of organising labour for its own advance. What a life-work for a man! Here might David have spent his days, here among his own countrymen, instead of in that far-off land where all the forces of centuries were fighting against him. Here the forces would have been fighting for him; the trend was towards the elevation of the standards of living and the wider rights of labour, to the amelioration of hard conditions of life among the poor. David's mind, with its equity, its balance, and its fire--what might it not have accomplished in shepherding such a cause, guiding its activity? The gate of the garden clicked. Kate Heaver had arrived. Faith got to her feet and left the room. A few minutes later the woman of the cross-roads was seated opposite Faith at the window. She had changed greatly since the day David had sent her on her way to London and into the unknown. Then there had been recklessness, something of coarseness, in the fine face. Now it was strong and quiet, marked by purpose and self-reliance. Ignorance had been her only peril in the past, as it had been the cause of her unhappy connection with Jasper Kimber. The atmosphere in which she was raised had been unmoral; it had not been consciously immoral. Her temper and her indignation against her man for drinking had been the means of driving them apart. He would have married her in those days, if she had given the word, for her will was stronger than his own; but she had broken from him in an agony of rage and regret and despised love. She was now, again, as she had been in those first days before she went with Jasper Kimber; when she was the rose-red angel of the quarters; when children were lured by the touch of her large, shapely hands; when she had been counted a great nurse among her neighbours. The old simple untutored sympathy was in her face. They sat for a long time in silence, and at length Faith said: "Thee is happy now with her who is to marry Lord Eglington?" Kate nodded, smiling. "Who could help but be happy with her! Yet a temper, too--so quick, and then all over in a second. Ah, she is one that'd break her heart if she was treated bad; but I'd be sorry for him that did it. For the like of her goes mad with hurting, and the mad cut with a big scythe." "Has thee seen Lord Eglington?" "Once before I left these parts and often in London." Her voice was constrained; she seemed not to wish to speak of him. "Is it true that Jasper Kimber is to stand against him for Parliament?" "I do not know. They say my lord has to do with foreign lands now. If he helps Mr. Claridge there, then it would be a foolish thing for Jasper to fight him; and so I've told him. You've got to stand by those that stand by you. Lord Eglington has his own way of doing things. There's not a servant in my lady's house that he hasn't made his friend. He's one that's bound to have his will. I heard my lady say he talks better than any one in England, and there's none she doesn't know from duchesses down." "She is beautiful?" asked Faith, with hesitation. "Taller than you, but not so beautiful." Faith sighed, and was silent for a moment, then she laid a hand upon the other's shoulder. "Thee has never said what happened when thee first got to London. Does thee care to say?" "It seems so long ago," was the reply. . . . "No need to tell of the journey to London. When I got there it frightened me at first. My head went round. But somehow it came to me what I should do. I asked my way to a hospital. I'd helped a many that was hurt at Heddington and thereabouts, and doctors said I was as good as them that was trained. I found a hospital at last, and asked for work, but they laughed at me-- it was the porter at the door. I was not to be put down, and asked to see some one that had rights to say yes or no. So he opened the door and told me to go. I said he was no man to treat a woman so, and I would not go. Then a fine white-haired gentleman came forward. He had heard all we had said, standing in a little room at one side. He spoke a kind word or two, and asked me to go into the little room. Before I had time to think, he came to me with the matron, and left me with her. I told her the whole truth, and she looked at first as if she'd turn me out. But the end of it was I stayed there for the night, and in the morning the old gentleman came again, and with him his lady, as kind and sharp of tongue as himself, and as big as three. Some things she said made my tongue ache to speak back to her; but I choked it down. I went to her to be a sort of nurse and maid. She taught me how to do a hundred things, and by-and-by I couldn't be too thankful she had taken me in. I was with her till she died. Then, six months ago I went to Miss Maryon, who knew about me long before from her that died. With her I've been ever since-- and so that's all." "Surely God has been kind to thee." "I'd have gone down--down--down, if it hadn't been for Mr. Claridge at the cross-roads." "Does thee think I shall like her that will live yonder?" She nodded towards the Cloistered House. "There's none but likes her. She will want a friend, I'm thinking. She'll be lonely by-and-by. Surely, she will be lonely." Faith looked at her closely, and at last leaned over, and again laid a soft hand on her shoulder. "Thee thinks that--why?" "He cares only what matters to himself. She will be naught to him but one that belongs. He'll never try to do her good. Doing good to any but himself never comes to his mind." "How does thee know him, to speak so surely?" "When, at the first, he gave me a letter for her one day, and slipped a sovereign into my hand, and nodded, and smiled at me, I knew him right enough. He never could be true to aught." "Did thee keep the sovereign?" Faith asked anxiously. "Ay, that I did. If he was for giving his money away, I'd take it fast enough. The gold gave father boots for a year. Why should I mind?" Faith's face suffused. How low was Eglington's estimate of humanity! In the silence that followed the door of her room opened, and her father entered. He held in one hand a paper, in the other a candle. His face was passive, but his eyes were burning. "David--David is coming," he cried, in a voice that rang. "Does thee hear, Faith? Davy is coming home!" A woman laughed exultantly. It was not Faith. But still two years passed before David came. CHAPTER XVIII TIME, THE IDOL-BREAKER Lord Windlehurst looked meditatively round the crowded and brilliant salon. His host, the Foreign Minister, had gathered in the vast golden chamber the most notable people of a most notable season, and in as critical a period of the world's politics as had been known for a quarter of a century. After a moment's survey, the ex-Prime-Minister turned to answer the frank and caustic words addressed to him by the Duchess of Snowdon concerning the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Presently he said: "But there is method in his haste, dear lady. He is good at his dangerous game. He plays high, he plunges; but, somehow, he makes it do. I've been in Parliament a generation or so, and I've never known an amateur more daring and skilful. I should have given him office had I remained in power. Look at him, and tell me if he wouldn't have been worth the backing." As Lord Windlehurst uttered the last word with an arid smile, he looked quizzically at the central figure of a group of people gaily talking. The Duchess impatiently tapped her knee with a fan. "Be thankful you haven't got him on your conscience," she rejoined. "I call Eglington unscrupulous and unreliable. He has but one god--getting on; and he has got on, with a vengeance. Whenever I look at that dear thing he's married, I feel there's no trusting Providence, who seems to make the deserving a footstool for the undeserving. I've known Hylda since she was ten, and I've known him since the minute he came into the world, and I've got the measure of both. She is the finest essence the middle class can distil, and he, oh, he's paraffin-vin ordinaire, if you like it better, a selfish, calculating adventurer!" Lord Windlehurst chuckled mordantly. "Adventurer! That's what they called me--with more reason. I spotted him as soon as he spoke in the House. There was devilry in him, and unscrupulousness, as you say; but, I confess, I thought it would give way to the more profitable habit of integrity, and that some cause would seize him, make him sincere and mistaken, and give him a few falls. But in that he was more original than I thought. He is superior to convictions. You don't think he married yonder Queen of Hearts from conviction, do you?" He nodded towards a corner where Hylda, under a great palm, and backed by a bank of flowers, stood surrounded by a group of people palpably amused and interested; for she had a reputation for wit--a wit that never hurt, and irony that was only whimsical. "No, there you are wrong," the Duchess answered. "He married from conviction, if ever a man did. Look at her beauty, look at her fortune, listen to her tongue. Don't you think conviction was easy?" Lord Windlehurst looked at Hylda approvingly. She has the real gift-- little information, but much knowledge, the primary gift of public life. Information is full of traps; knowledge avoids them, it reads men; and politics is men--and foreign affairs, perhaps! She is remarkable. I've made some hay in the political world, not so much as the babblers think, but I hadn't her ability at twenty-five." "Why didn't she see through Eglington?" "My dear Betty, he didn't give her time. He carried her off her feet. You know how he can talk." "That's the trouble. She was clever, and liked a clever man, and he--!" "Quite so. He'd disprove his own honest parentage, if it would help him on--as you say." "I didn't say it. Now don't repeat that as from me. I'm not clever enough to think of such things. But that Eglington lot--I knew his father and his grandfather. Old Broadbrim they called his grandfather after he turned Quaker, and he didn't do that till he had had his fling, so my father used to say. And Old Broadbrim's father was called I-want- to-know. He was always poking his nose into things, and playing at being a chemist-like this one and the one before. They all fly off. This one's father used to disappear for two or three years at a time. This one will fly off, too. You'll see! "He is too keen on Number One for that, I fancy. He calculates like a mathematician. As cool as a cracksman of fame and fancy." The Duchess dropped the fan in her lap. "My dear, I've said nothing as bad as that about him. And there he is at the Foreign Office!" "Yet, what has he done, Betty, after all? He has never cheated at cards, or forged a cheque, or run away with his neighbour's wife." "There's no credit in not doing what you don't want to do. There's no virtue in not falling, when you're not tempted. Neighbour's wife! He hasn't enough feeling to face it. Oh no, he'll not break the heart of his neighbour's wife. That's melodrama, and he's a cold-blooded artist. He will torture that sweet child over there until she poisons him, or runs away." "Isn't he too clever for that? She has a million!" "He'll not realise it till it's all over. He's too selfish to see--how I hate him!" Lord Windlehurst smiled indulgently at her. "Ah, you never hated any one--not even the Duke." "I will not have you take away my character. Of course I've hated, or I wouldn't be worth a button. I'm not the silly thing you've always thought me." His face became gentler. "I've always thought you one of the wisest women of this world--adventurous, but wise. If it weren't too late, if my day weren't over, I'd ask the one great favour, Betty, and--" She tapped his arm sharply with her fan. "What a humbug you are--the Great Pretender! But tell me, am I not right about Eglington?" Windlehurst became grave. "Yes, you are right--but I admire him, too. He is determined to test himself to the full. His ambition is boundless and ruthless, but his mind has a scientific turn--the obligation of energy to apply itself, of intelligence to engage itself to the farthest limit. But service to humanity--" "Service to humanity!" she sniffed. "Of course he would think it 'flap-doodle'--except in a speech; but I repeat, I admire him. Think of it all. He was a poor Irish peer, with no wide circle of acquaintance, come of a family none too popular. He strikes out a course for himself--a course which had its dangers, because it was original. He determines to become celebrated--by becoming notorious first. He uses his title as a weapon for advancement as though he were a butter merchant. He plans carefully and adroitly. He writes a book of travel. It is impudent, and it traverses the observations of authorities, and the scientific geographers prance with rage. That was what he wished. He writes a novel. It sets London laughing at me, his political chief. He knew me well enough to be sure I would not resent it. He would have lampooned his grandmother, if he was sure she would not, or could not, hurt him. Then he becomes more audacious. He publishes a monograph on the painters of Spain, artificial, confident, rhetorical, acute: as fascinating as a hide-and-seek drawing-room play-- he is so cleverly escaping from his ignorance and indiscretions all the while. Connoisseurs laugh, students of art shriek a little, and Ruskin writes a scathing letter, which was what he had played for. He had got something for nothing cheaply. The few who knew and despised him did not matter, for they were able and learned and obscure, and, in the world where he moves, most people are superficial, mediocre, and 'tuppence coloured.' It was all very brilliant. He pursued his notoriety, and got it." "Industrious Eglington!" "But, yes, he is industrious. It is all business. It was an enormous risk, rebelling against his party, and leaving me, and going over; but his temerity justified itself, and it didn't matter to him that people said he went over to get office as we were going out. He got the office- and people forget so soon. Then, what does he do--" "He brings out another book, and marries a wife, and abuses his old friends--and you." "Abuse? With his tongue in his cheek, hoping that I should reply. Dev'lishly ingenious! But on that book of Electricity and Disease he scored. In most other things he's a barber-shop philosopher, but in science he has got a flare, a real talent. So he moves modestly in this thing, for which he had a fine natural gift and more knowledge than he ever had before in any department, whose boundaries his impertinent and ignorant mind had invaded. That book gave him a place. It wasn't full of new things, but it crystallised the discoveries, suggestions, and expectations of others; and, meanwhile, he had got a name at no cost. He is so various. Look at it dispassionately, and you will see much to admire in his skill. He pleases, he amuses, he startles, he baffles, he mystifies." The Duchess made an impatient exclamation. "The silly newspapers call him a 'remarkable man, a personality.' Now, believe me, Windlehurst, he will overreach himself one of these days, and he'll come down like a stick." "There you are on solid ground. He thinks that Fate is with him, and that, in taking risks, he is infallible. But the best system breaks at political roulette sooner or later. You have got to work for something outside yourself, something that is bigger than the game, or the end is sickening." "Eglington hasn't far to go, if that's the truth." "Well, well, when it comes, we must help him--we must help him up again." The Duchess nervously adjusted her wig, with ludicrously tiny fingers for one so ample, and said petulantly: "You are incomprehensible. He has been a traitor to you and to your party, he has thrown mud at you, he has played with principles as my terrier plays with his rubber ball, and yet you'll run and pick him up when he falls, and--" "'And kiss the spot to make it well,'" he laughed softly, then added with a sigh: "Able men in public life are few; 'far too few, for half our tasks; we can spare not one.' Besides, my dear Betty, there is his pretty lass o' London." The Duchess was mollified at once. "I wish she had been my girl," she said, in a voice a little tremulous. "She never needed looking after. Look at the position she has made for herself. Her father wouldn't go into society, her mother knew a mere handful of people, and--" "She knew you, Betty." "Well, suppose I did help her a little--I was only a kind of reference. She did the rest. She's set a half-dozen fashions herself--pure genius. She was born to lead. Her turnouts were always a little smarter, her horses travelled a little faster, than other people's. She took risks, too, but she didn't play a game; she only wanted to do things well. We all gasped when she brought Adelaide to recite from 'Romeo and Juliet' at an evening party, but all London did the same the week after." "She discovered, and the Duchess of Snowdon applied the science. Ah, Betty, don't think I don't agree. She has the gift. She has temperament. No woman should have temperament. She hasn't scope enough to wear it out in some passion for a cause. Men are saved in spite of themselves by the law of work. Forty comes to a man of temperament, and then a passion for a cause seizes him, and he is safe. A woman of temperament at forty is apt to cut across the bows of iron-clad convention and go down. She has temperament, has my lady yonder, and I don't like the look of her eyes sometimes. There's dark fire smouldering in them. She should have a cause; but a cause to a woman now-a-days means 'too little of pleasure, too much of pain,' for others." "What was your real cause, Windlehurst? You had one, I suppose, for you've never had a fall." "My cause? You ask that? Behold the barren figtree! A lifetime in my country's service, and you who have driven me home from the House in your own brougham, and told me that you understood--oh, Betty!" She laughed. "You'll say something funny as you're dying, Windlehurst." "Perhaps. But it will be funny to know that presently I'll have a secret that none of you know, who watch me 'launch my pinnace into the dark.' But causes? There are hundreds, and all worth while. I've come here to-night for a cause--no, don't start, it's not you, Betty, though you are worth any sacrifice. I've come here to-night to see a modern Paladin, a real crusader: "'Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken.'" "Yes, that's poetry, Windlehurst, and you know I love it-I've always kept yours. But who's the man--the planet?" "Egyptian Claridge." "Ah, he is in England?" "He will be here to-night; you shall see him." "Really! What is his origin?" He told her briefly, adding: "I've watched the rise of Claridge Pasha. I've watched his cause grow, and now I shall see the man--ah, but here comes our lass o' London!" The eyes of both brightened, and a whimsical pleasure came to the mask- like face of Lord Windlehurst. There was an eager and delighted look in Hylda's face also as she quickly came to them, her cavaliers following. The five years that had passed since that tragic night in Cairo had been more than kind to her. She was lissome, radiant, and dignified, her face was alive with expression, and a delicate grace was in every movement. The dark lashes seemed to have grown longer, the brown hair fuller, the smile softer and more alluring. "She is an invaluable asset to the Government," Lord Windlehurst murmured as she came. "No wonder the party helped the marriage on. London conspired for it, her feet got tangled in the web--and he gave her no time to think. Thinking had saved her till he came." By instinct Lord Windlehurst knew. During the first year after the catastrophe at Kaid's Palace Hylda could scarcely endure the advances made by her many admirers, the greatly eligible and the eager ineligible, all with as real an appreciation of her wealth as of her personal attributes. But she took her place in London life with more than the old will to make for herself, with the help of her aunt Conyngham, an individual position. The second year after her visit to Egypt she was less haunted by the dark episode of the Palace, memory tortured her less; she came to think of David and the part he had played with less agitation. At first the thought of him had moved her alternately to sympathy and to revolt. His chivalry had filled her with admiration, with a sense of confidence, of dependence, of touching and vital obligation; but there was, too, another overmastering feeling. He had seen her life naked, as it were, stripped of all independence, with the knowledge of a dangerous indiscretion which, to say the least, was a deformity; and she inwardly resented it, as one would resent the exposure of a long-hidden physical deformity, even by the surgeon who saved one's life. It was not a very lofty attitude of mind, but it was human--and feminine. These moods had been always dissipated, however, when she recalled, as she did so often, David as he stood before Nahoum Pasha, his soul fighting in him to make of his enemy--of the man whose brother he had killed--a fellow-worker in the path of altruism he had mapped out for himself. David's name had been continually mentioned in telegraphic reports and journalistic correspondence from Egypt; and from this source she had learned that Nahoum Pasha was again high in the service of Prince Kaid. When the news of David's southern expedition to the revolting slave-dealing tribes began to appear, she was deeply roused. Her agitation was the more intense because she never permitted herself to talk of him to others, even when his name was discussed at dinner-tables, accompanied by strange legends of his origin and stranger romances regarding his call to power by Kaid. She had surrounded him with romance; he seemed more a hero of history than of her own real and living world, a being apart. Even when there came rumblings of disaster, dark dangers to be conquered by the Quaker crusader, it all was still as of another life. True it was, that when his safe return to Cairo was announced she had cried with joy and relief; but there was nothing emotional or passionate in her feeling; it was the love of the lower for the higher, the hero-worship of an idealist in passionate gratitude. And, amid it all, her mind scarcely realised that they would surely meet again. At the end of the second year the thought had receded into an almost indefinite past. She was beginning to feel that she had lived two lives, and that this life had no direct or vital bearing upon her previous existence, in which David had moved. Yet now and then the perfume of the Egyptian garden, through which she had fled to escape from tragedy, swept over her senses, clouded her eyes in the daytime, made them burn at night. At last she had come to meet and know Eglington. From the first moment they met he had directed his course towards marriage. He was the man of the moment. His ambition seemed but patriotism, his ardent and overwhelming courtship the impulse of a powerful nature. As Lord Windlehurst had said, he carried her off her feet, and, on a wave of devotion and popular encouragement, he had swept her to the altar, The Duchess held both her hands for a moment, admiring her, and, presently, with a playful remark upon her unselfishness, left her alone with Lord Windlehurst. As they talked, his mask-like face became lighted from the brilliant fire in the inquisitorial eyes, his lips played with topics of the moment in a mordant fashion, which drew from her flashing replies. Looking at her, he was conscious of the mingled qualities of three races in her--English, Welsh, and American-Dutch of the Knickerbocker strain; and he contrasted her keen perception and her exquisite sensitiveness with the purebred Englishwomen round him, stately, kindly, handsome, and monotonously intelligent. "Now I often wonder," he said, conscious of, but indifferent to, the knowledge that he and the brilliant person beside him were objects of general attention--"I often wonder, when I look at a gathering like this, how many undiscovered crimes there are playing about among us. They never do tell--or shall I say, we never do tell?" All day, she knew not why, Hylda had been nervous and excited. Without reason his words startled her. Now there flashed before her eyes a room in a Palace at Cairo, and a man lying dead before her. The light slowly faded out of her eyes, leaving them almost lustreless, but her face was calm, and the smile on her lips stayed. She fanned herself slowly, and answered nonchalantly: "Crime is a word of many meanings. I read in the papers of political crimes--it is a common phrase; yet the criminals appear to go unpunished." "There you are wrong," he answered cynically. "The punishment is, that political virtue goes unrewarded, and in due course crime is the only refuge to most. Yet in politics the temptation to be virtuous is great." She laughed now with a sense of relief. The intellectual stimulant had brought back the light to her face. "How is it, then, with you-- inveterate habit or the strain of the ages? For they say you have not had your due reward." He smiled grimly. "Ah, no, with me virtue is the act of an inquiring mind--to discover where it will lead me. I began with political crime-- I was understood! I practise political virtue: it embarrasses the world, it fogs them, it seems original, because so unnecessary. Mine is the scientific life. Experiment in old substances gives new--well, say, new precipitations. But you are scientific, too. You have a laboratory, and have much to do--with retorts." "No, you are thinking of my husband. The laboratory is his." "But the retorts are yours." "The precipitations are his." "Ah, well, at least you help him to fuse the constituents! . . . But now, be quite confidential to an old man who has experimented too. Is your husband really an amateur scientist, or is he a scientific amateur? Is it a pose or a taste? I fiddled once--and wrote sonnets; one was a pose, the other a taste." It was mere persiflage, but it was a jest which made an unintended wound. Hylda became conscious of a sudden sharp inquiry going on in her mind. There flashed into it the question, Does Eglington's heart ever really throb for love of any object or any cause? Even in moments of greatest intimacy, soon after marriage, when he was most demonstrative towards her, he had seemed preoccupied, except when speaking about himself and what he meant to do. Then he made her heart throb in response to his confident, ardent words--concerning himself. But his own heart, did it throb? Or was it only his brain that throbbed? Suddenly, with an exclamation, she involuntarily laid a hand upon Windlehurst's arm. She was looking down the room straight before her to a group of people towards which other groups were now converging, attracted by one who seemed to be a centre of interest. Presently the eager onlookers drew aside, and Lord Windlehurst observed moving up the room a figure he had never seen before. The new-comer was dressed in a grey and blue official dress, unrelieved save by silver braid at the collar and at the wrists. There was no decoration, but on the head was a red fez, which gave prominence to the white, broad forehead, with the dark hair waving away behind the ears. Lord Windlehurst held his eye-glass to his eye in interested scrutiny. "H'm," he said, with lips pursed out, "a most notable figure, a most remarkable face! My dear, there's a fortune in that face. It's a national asset." He saw the flush, the dumb amazement, the poignant look in Lady Eglington's face, and registered it in his mind. "Poor thing," he said to himself, "I wonder what it is all about--I wonder. I thought she had no unregulated moments. She gave promise of better things." The Foreign Minister was bringing his guest towards them. The new-comer did not look at them till within a few steps of where they stood. Then his eyes met those of Lady Eglington. For an instant his steps were arrested. A swift light came into his face, softening its quiet austerity and strength. It was David. CHAPTER XIX SHARPER THAN A SWORD A glance of the eye was the only sign of recognition between David and Hylda; nothing that others saw could have suggested that they had ever met before. Lord Windlehurst at once engaged David in conversation. At first when Hylda had come back from Egypt, those five years ago, she had often wondered what she would think or do if she ever were to see this man again; whether, indeed, she could bear it. Well, the moment and the man had come. Her eyes had gone blind for an instant; it had seemed for one sharp, crucial moment as though she could not bear it; then the gulf of agitation was passed, and she had herself in hand. While her mind was engaged subconsciously with what Lord Windlehurst and David said, comprehending it all, and, when Lord Windlehurst appealed to her, offering by a word contribution to the 'pourparler', she was studying David as steadily as her heated senses would permit her. He seemed to her to have put on twenty years in the steady force of his personality--in the composure of his bearing, in the self-reliance of his look, though his face and form were singularly youthful. The face was handsome and alight, the look was that of one who weighed things; yet she was conscious of a great change. The old delicate quality of the features was not so marked, though there was nothing material in the look, and the head had not a sordid line, while the hand that he now and again raised, brushing his forehead meditatively, had gained much in strength and force. Yet there was something--something different, that brought a slight cloud into her eyes. It came to her now, a certain melancholy in the bearing of the figure, erect and well-balanced as it was. Once the feeling came, the certainty grew. And presently she found a strange sadness in the eyes, something that lurked behind all that he did and all that he was, some shadow over the spirit. It was even more apparent when he smiled. As she was conscious of this new reading of him, a motion arrested her glance, a quick lifting of the head to one side, as though the mind had suddenly been struck by an idea, the glance flying upward in abstracted questioning. This she had seen in her husband, too, the same brisk lifting of the head, the same quick smiling. Yet this face, unlike Eglington's, expressed a perfect single-mindedness; it wore the look of a self-effacing man of luminous force, a concentrated battery of energy. Since she had last seen him every sign of the provincial had vanished. He was now the well-modulated man of affairs, elegant in his simplicity of dress, with the dignified air of the intellectual, yet with the decision of a man who knew his mind. Lord Windlehurst was leaving. Now David and she were alone. Without a word they moved on together through the throng, the eyes of all following them, until they reached a quiet room at one end of the salon, where were only a few people watching the crowd pass the doorway. "You will be glad to sit," he said, motioning her to a chair beside some palms. Then, with a change of tone, he added: "Thee is not sorry I am come?" Thee--the old-fashioned simple Quaker word! She put her fingers to her eyes. Her senses were swimming with a distant memory. The East was in her brain, the glow of the skies, the gleam of the desert, the swish of the Nile, the cry of the sweet-seller, the song of the dance-girl, the strain of the darabukkeh, the call of the skis. She saw again the ghiassas drifting down the great river, laden with dourha; she saw the mosque of the blue tiles with its placid fountain, and its handful of worshippers praying by the olive-tree. She watched the moon rise above the immobile Sphinx, she looked down on the banqueters in the Palace, David among them, and Foorgat Bey beside her. She saw Foorgat Bey again lying dead at her feet. She heard the stir of the leaves; she caught the smell of the lime-trees in the Palace garden as she fled. She recalled her reckless return to Cairo from Alexandria. She remembered the little room where she and David, Nahoum and Mizraim, crossed a bridge over a chasm, and stood upon ground which had held good till now--till this hour, when the man who had played a most vital part in her life had come again out of a land which, by some forced obliquity of mind and stubbornness of will, she had assured herself she would never see again. She withdrew her hand from her eyes, and saw him looking at her calmly, though his face was alight. "Thee is fatigued," he said. "This is labour which wears away the strength." He made a motion towards the crowd. She smiled a very little, and said: "You do not care for such things as this, I know. Your life has its share of it, however, I suppose." He looked out over the throng before he answered. "It seems an eddy of purposeless waters. Yet there is great depth beneath, or there were no eddy; and where there is depth and the eddy there is danger--always." As he spoke she became almost herself again. "You think that deep natures have most perils?" "Thee knows it is so. Human nature is like the earth: the deeper the plough goes into the soil unploughed before, the more evil substance is turned up--evil that becomes alive as soon as the sun and the air fall upon it." "Then, women like me who pursue a flippant life, who ride in this merry- go-round"--she made a gesture towards the crowd beyond--"who have no depth, we are safest, we live upon the surface." Her gaiety was forced; her words were feigned. "Thee has passed the point of danger, thee is safe," he answered meaningly. "Is that because I am not deep, or because the plough has been at work?" she asked. "In neither case I am not sure you are right." "Thee is happily married," he said reflectively; "and the prospect is fair." "I think you know my husband," she said in answer, and yet not in answer. "I was born in Hamley where he has a place--thee has been there?" he asked eagerly. "Not yet. We are to go next Sunday, for the first time to the Cloistered House. I had not heard that my husband knew you, until I saw in the paper a few days ago that your home was in Hamley. Then I asked Eglington, and he told me that your family and his had been neighbours for generations." "His father was a Quaker," David rejoined, "but he forsook the faith." "I did not know," she answered, with some hesitation. There was no reason why, when she and Eglington had talked of Hamley, he should not have said his own father had once been a Quaker; yet she had dwelt so upon the fact that she herself had Quaker blood, and he had laughed so much over it, with the amusement of the superior person, that his silence on this one point struck her now with a sense of confusion. "You are going to Hamley--we shall meet there?" she continued. "To-day I should have gone, but I have business at the Foreign Office to-morrow. One needs time to learn that all 'private interests and partial affections' must be sacrificed to public duty." "But you are going soon? You will be there on Sunday?" "I shall be there to-morrow night, and Sunday, and for one long week at least. Hamley is the centre of the world, the axle of the universe--you shall see. You doubt it?" he added, with a whimsical smile. "I shall dispute most of what you say, and all that you think, if you do not continue to use the Quaker 'thee' and 'thou'--ungrammatical as you are so often." "Thee is now the only person in London, or in England, with whom I use 'thee' and 'thou.' I am no longer my own master, I am a public servant, and so I must follow custom." "It is destructive of personality. The 'thee' and 'thou' belong to you. I wonder if the people of Hamley will say 'thee' and 'thou' to me. I hope, I do hope they will." "Thee may be sure they will. They are no respecters of persons there. They called your husband's father Robert--his name was Robert. Friend Robert they called him, and afterwards they called him Robert Denton till he died." "Will they call me Hylda?" she asked, with a smile. "More like they will call thee Friend Hylda; it sounds simple and strong," he replied. "As they call Claridge Pasha Friend David," she answered, with a smile. "David is a good name for a strong man." "That David threw a stone from a sling and smote a giant in the forehead. The stone from this David's sling falls into the ocean and is lost beneath the surface." His voice had taken on a somewhat sombre tone, his eyes looked away into the distance; yet he smiled too, and a hand upon his knee suddenly closed in sympathy with an inward determination. A light of understanding came into her face. They had been keeping things upon the surface, and, while it lasted, he seemed a lesser man than she had thought him these past years. But now--now there was the old unschooled simplicity, the unique and lonely personality, the homely soul and body bending to one root-idea, losing themselves in a wave of duty. Again he was to her, once more, the dreamer, the worker, the conqueror--the conqueror of her own imagination. She had in herself the soul of altruism, the heart of the crusader. Touched by the fire of a great idea, she was of those who could have gone out into the world without wallet or scrip, to work passionately for some great end. And she had married the Earl of Eglington! She leaned towards David, and said eagerly: "But you are satisfied--you are satisfied with your work for poor Egypt?" "Thee says 'poor Egypt,'" he answered, "and thee says well. Even now she is not far from the day of Rameses and Joseph. Thee thinks perhaps thee knows Egypt--none knows her." "You know her--now?" He shook his head slowly. "It is like putting one's ear to the mouth of the Sphinx. Yet sometimes, almost in despair, when I have lain down in the desert beside my camel, set about with enemies, I have got a message from the barren desert, the wide silence, and the stars." He paused. "What is the message that comes?" she asked softly. "It is always the same: Work on! Seek not to know too much, nor think that what you do is of vast value. Work, because it is yours to be adjusting the machinery in your own little workshop of life to the wide mechanism of the universe and time. One wheel set right, one flying belt adjusted, and there is a step forward to the final harmony--ah, but how I preach!" he added hastily. His eyes were fixed on hers with a great sincerity, and they were clear and shining, yet his lips were smiling--what a trick they had of smiling! He looked as though he should apologise for such words in such a place. She rose to her feet with a great suspiration, with a light in her eyes and a trembling smile. "But no, no, no, you inspire one. Thee inspires me," she said, with a little laugh, in which there was a note of sadness. "I may use 'thee,' may I not, when I will? I am a little a Quaker also, am I not? My people came from Derbyshire, my American people, that is--and only forty years ago. Almost thee persuades me to be a Quaker now," she added. "And perhaps I shall be, too," she went on, her eyes fixed on the crowd passing by, Eglington among them. David saw Eglington also, and moved forward with her. "We shall meet in Hamley," she said composedly, as she saw her husband leave the crush and come towards her. As Eglington noticed David, a curious enigmatical glance flashed from his eyes. He came forward, however, with outstretched hand. "I am sorry I was not at the Foreign Office when you called to-day. Welcome back to England, home--and beauty." He laughed in a rather mirthless way, but with a certain empressement, conscious, as he always was, of the onlookers. "You have had a busy time in Egypt?" he continued cheerfully, and laughed again. David laughed slightly, also, and Hylda noticed that it had a certain resemblance in its quick naturalness to that of her husband. "I am not sure that we are so busy there as we ought to be," David answered. "I have no real standards. I am but an amateur, and have known nothing of public life. But you should come and see." "It has been in my mind. An ounce of eyesight is worth a ton of print. My lady was there once, I believe"--he turned towards her--"but before your time, I think. Or did you meet there, perhaps?" He glanced at both curiously. He scarcely knew why a thought flashed into his mind--as though by some telepathic sense; for it had never been there before, and there was no reason for its being there now. Hylda saw what David was about to answer, and she knew instinctively that he would say they had never met. It shamed her. She intervened as she saw he was about to speak. "We were introduced for the first time to-night," she said; "but Claridge Pasha is part of my education in the world. It is a miracle that Hamley should produce two such men," she added gaily, and laid her fan upon her husband's arm lightly. "You should have been a Quaker, Harry, and then you two would have been--" "Two Quaker Don Quixotes," interrupted Eglington ironically. "I should not have called you a Don Quixote," his wife lightly rejoined, relieved at the turn things had taken. "I cannot imagine you tilting at wind-mills--" "Or saving maidens in distress? Well, perhaps not; but you do not suggest that Claridge Pasha tilts at windmills either--or saves maidens in distress. Though, now I come to think, there was an episode." He laughed maliciously. "Some time ago it was--a lass of the cross-roads. I think I heard of such an adventure, which did credit to Claridge Pasha's heart, though it shocked Hamley at the time. But I wonder, was the maiden really saved?" Lady Eglington's face became rigid. "Well, yes," she said slowly, "the maiden was saved. She is now my maid. Hamley may have been shocked, but Claridge Pasha has every reason to be glad that he helped a fellow-being in trouble." "Your maid--Heaver?" asked Eglington in surprise, a swift shadow crossing his face. "Yes; she only told me this morning. Perhaps she had seen that Claridge Pasha was coming to England. I had not, however. At any rate, Quixotism saved her." David smiled. "It is better than I dared to hope," he remarked quietly. "But that is not all," continued Hylda. "There is more. She had been used badly by a man who now wants to marry her--has tried to do so for years. Now, be prepared for a surprise, for it concerns you rather closely, Eglington. Fate is a whimsical jade. Whom do you think it is? Well, since you could never guess, it was Jasper Kimber." Eglington's eyes opened wide. "This is nothing but a coarse and impossible stage coincidence," he laughed. "It is one of those tricks played by Fact to discredit the imagination. Life is laughing at us again. The longer I live, the more I am conscious of being an object of derision by the scene-shifters in the wings of the stage. What a cynical comedy life is at the best!" "It all seems natural enough," rejoined David. "It is all paradox." "Isn't it all inevitable law? I have no belief in 'antic Fate.'" Hylda realised, with a new and poignant understanding, the difference of outlook on life between the two men. She suddenly remembered the words of Confucius, which she had set down in her little book of daily life: "By nature we approximate, it is only experience that drives us apart." David would have been content to live in the desert all his life for the sake of a cause, making no calculations as to reward. Eglington must ever have the counters for the game. "Well, if you do not believe in 'antic Fate,' you must be greatly puzzled as you go on," he rejoined, laughing; "especially in Egypt, where the East and the West collide, race against race, religion against religion, Oriental mind against Occidental intellect. You have an unusual quantity of Quaker composure, to see in it all 'inevitable law.' And it must be dull. But you always were, so they say in Hamley, a monument of seriousness." "I believe they made one or two exceptions," answered David drily. "I had assurances." Eglington laughed boyishly. "You are right. You achieved a name for humour in a day--'a glass, a kick, and a kiss,' it was. Do you have such days in Egypt?" "You must come and see," David answered lightly, declining to notice the insolence. "These are critical days there. The problems are worthy of your care. Will you not come?" Eglington was conscious of a peculiar persuasive influence over himself that he had never felt before. In proportion, however, as he felt its compelling quality, there came a jealousy of the man who was its cause. The old antagonism, which had had its sharpest expression the last time they had met on the platform at Heddington, came back. It was one strong will resenting another--as though there was not room enough in the wide world of being for these two atoms of life, sparks from the ceaseless wheel, one making a little brighter flash than the other for the moment, and then presently darkness, and the whirring wheel which threw them off, throwing off millions of others again. On the moment Eglington had a temptation to say something with an edge, which would show David that his success in Egypt hung upon the course that he himself and the weak Foreign Minister, under whom he served, would take. And this course would be his own course largely, since he had been appointed to be a force and strength in the Foreign Office which his chief did not supply. He refrained, however, and, on the moment, remembered the promise he had given to Faith to help David. A wave of feeling passed over him. His wife was beautiful, a creature of various charms, a centre of attraction. Yet he had never really loved her--so many sordid elements had entered into the thought of marriage with her, lowering the character of his affection. With a perversity which only such men know, such heart as he had turned to the unknown Quaker girl who had rebuked him, scathed him, laid bare his soul before himself, as no one ever had done. To Eglington it was a relief that there was one human being--he thought there was only one--who read him through and through; and that knowledge was in itself as powerful an influence as was the secret between David and Hylda. It was a kind of confessional, comforting to a nature not self-contained. Now he restrained his cynical intention to deal David a side-thrust, and quietly said: "We shall meet at Hamley, shall we not? Let us talk there, and not at the Foreign Office. You would care to go to Egypt, Hylda?" She forced a smile. "Let us talk it over at Hamley." With a smile to David she turned away to some friends. Eglington offered to introduce David to some notable people, but he said that he must go--he was fatigued after his journey. He had no wish to be lionised. As he left the salon, the band was playing a tune that made him close his eyes, as though against something he would not see. The band in Kaid's Palace had played it that night when he had killed Foorgat Bey. CHAPTER XX EACH AFTER HIS OWN ORDER With the passing years new feelings had grown up in the heart of Luke Claridge. Once David's destiny and career were his own peculiar and self-assumed responsibility. "Inwardly convicted," he had wrenched the lad away from the natural circumstances of his life, and created a scheme of existence for him out of his own conscience--a pious egoist. After David went to Egypt, however, his mind involuntarily formed the resolution that "Davy and God should work it out together." He had grown very old in appearance, and his quiet face was almost painfully white; but the eyes burned with more fire than in the past. As the day approached when David should arrive in England, he walked by himself continuously, oblivious of the world round him. He spoke to no one, save the wizened Elder Meacham, and to John Fairley, who rightly felt that he had a share in the making of Claridge Pasha. With head perched in the air, and face half hidden in his great white collar, the wizened Elder, stopping Luke Claridge in the street one day, said: "Does thee think the lad will ride in Pharaoh's chariot here?" There were sly lines of humour about the mouth of the wizened Elder as he spoke, but Luke Claridge did not see. "Pride is far from his heart," he answered portentously. "He will ride in no chariot. He has written that he will walk here from Heddington, and none is to meet him." "He will come by the cross-roads, perhaps," rejoined the other piously. "Well, well, memory is a flower or a rod, as John Fox said, and the cross-roads have memories for him." Again flashes of humour crossed his face, for he had a wide humanity, of insufficient exercise. "He has made full atonement, and thee does ill to recall the past, Reuben," rejoined the other sternly. "If he has done no more that needs atonement than he did that day at the cross-roads, then has his history been worthy of Hamley," rejoined the wizened Elder, eyes shut and head buried in his collar. "Hamley made him--Hamley made him. We did not spare advice, or example, or any correction that came to our minds--indeed, it was almost a luxury. Think you, does he still play the flute--an instrument none too grave, Luke?" But, to this, Luke Claridge exclaimed impatiently and hastened on; and the little wizened Elder chuckled to himself all the way to the house of John Fairley. None in Hamley took such pride in David as did these two old men, who had loved him from a child, but had discreetly hidden their favour, save to each other. Many times they had met and prayed together in the weeks when his life was in notorious danger in the Soudan. As David walked through the streets of Heddington making for the open country, he was conscious of a new feeling regarding the place. It was familiar, but in a new sense. Its grimy, narrow streets, unlovely houses, with shut windows, summer though it was, and no softening influences anywhere, save here and there a box of sickly geraniums in the windows, all struck his mind in a way they had never done before. A mile away were the green fields, the woods, the roadsides gay with flowers and shrubs-loveliness was but over the wall, as it were; yet here the barrack-like houses, the grey, harsh streets, seemed like prison walls, and the people in them prisoners who, with every legal right to call themselves free, were as much captives as the criminal on some small island in a dangerous sea. Escape--where? Into the gulf of no work and degradation? They never lifted their eyes above the day's labour. They were scarce conscious of anything beyond. What were their pleasures? They had imitations of pleasures. To them a funeral or a wedding, a riot or a vociferous band, a dog-fight or a strike, were alike in this, that they quickened feelings which carried them out of themselves, gave them a sense of intoxication. Intoxication? David remembered the far-off day of his own wild rebellion in Hamley. From that day forward he had better realised that in the hearts of so many of the human race there was a passion to forget themselves; to blot out, if for a moment only, the troubles of life and time; or, by creating a false air of exaltation, to rise above them. Once in the desert, when men were dying round him of fever and dysentery, he had been obliged, exhausted and ill, scarce able to drag himself from his bed, to resort to an opiate to allay his own sufferings, that he might minister to others. He remembered how, in the atmosphere it had created--an intoxication, a soothing exhilaration and pervasive thrill-- he had saved so many of his followers. Since then the temptation had come upon him often when trouble weighed or difficulties surrounded him --accompanied always by recurrence of fever--to resort to the insidious medicine. Though he had fought the temptation with every inch of his strength, he could too well understand those who sought for "surcease of pain" "Seeking for surcease of pain, Pilgrim to Lethe I came; Drank not, for pride was too keen, Stung by the sound of a name!" As the plough of action had gone deep into his life and laid bare his nature to the light, there had been exposed things which struggled for life and power in him, with the fiery strength which only evil has. The western heavens were aglow. On every hand the gorse and the may were in bloom, the lilacs were coming to their end, but wild rhododendrons were glowing in the bracken, as he stepped along the road towards the place where he was born. Though every tree and roadmark was familiar, yet he was conscious of a new outlook. He had left these quiet scenes inexperienced and untravelled, to be thrust suddenly into the thick of a struggle of nations over a sick land. He had worked in a vortex of debilitating local intrigue. All who had to do with Egypt gained except herself, and if she moved in revolt or agony, they threatened her. Once when resisting the pressure and the threats of war of a foreign diplomatist, he had, after a trying hour, written to Faith in a burst of passionate complaint, and his letter had ended with these words. "In your onward march, O men, White of face, in promise whiter, You unsheath the sword, and then Blame the wronged as the fighter. "Time, ah, Time, rolls onward o'er All these foetid fields of evil, While hard at the nation's core Eats the burning rust and weevill "Nathless, out beyond the stars Reigns the Wiser and the Stronger, Seeing in all strifes and wars Who the wronged, who the wronger." Privately he had spoken thus, but before the world he had given way to no impulse, in silence finding safety from the temptation to diplomatic evasion. Looking back over five years, he felt now that the sum of his accomplishment had been small. He did not realise the truth. When his hand was almost upon the object for which he had toiled and striven--whether pacifying a tribe, meeting a loan by honest means, building a barrage, irrigating the land, financing a new industry, or experimenting in cotton--it suddenly eluded him. Nahoum had snatched it away by subterranean wires. On such occasions Nahoum would shrug his shoulders, and say with a sigh, "Ah, my friend, let us begin again. We are both young; time is with us; and we will flourish palms in the face of Europe yet. We have our course set by a bright star. We will continue." Yet, withal, David was the true altruist. Even now as he walked this road which led to his old home, dear to him beyond all else, his thoughts kept flying to the Nile and to the desert. Suddenly he stopped. He was at the cross-roads. Here he had met Kate Heaver, here he had shamed his neighbours--and begun his work in life. He stood for a moment, smiling, as he looked at the stone where he had sat those years ago, his hand feeling instinctively for his flute. Presently he turned to the dusty road again. Walking quickly away, he swung into the path of the wood which would bring him by a short cut to Hamley, past Soolsby's cottage. Here was the old peace, the old joy of solitude among the healing trees. Experience had broadened his life, had given him a vast theatre of work; but the smell of the woods, the touch of the turf, the whispering of the trees, the song of the birds, had the ancient entry to his heart. At last he emerged on the hill where Soolsby lived. He had not meant, if he could help it, to speak to any one until he had entered the garden of the Red Mansion, but he had inadvertently come upon this place where he had spent the most momentous days of his life, and a feeling stronger than he cared to resist drew him to the open doorway. The afternoon sun was beating in over the threshold as he reached it, and, at his footstep, a figure started forward from the shadow of a corner. It was Kate Heaver. Surprise, then pain showed in her face; she flushed, was agitated. "I am sorry. It's too bad--it's hard on him you should see," she said in a breath, and turned her head away for an instant; but presently looked him in the face again, all trembling and eager. "He'll be sorry enough to-morrow," she added solicitously, and drew away from something, she had been trying to hide. Then David saw. On a bench against a wall lay old Soolsby--drunk. A cloud passed across his face and left it pale. "Of course," he said simply, and went over and touched the heaving shoulders reflectively. "Poor Soolsby!" "He's been sober four years--over four," she said eagerly. "When he knew you'd come again, he got wild, and he would have the drink in spite of all. Walking from Heddington, I saw him at the tavern, and brought him home." "At the tavern--" David said reflectively. "The Fox and Goose, sir." She turned her face away again, and David's head came up with a quick motion. There it was, five years ago, that he had drunk at the bar, and had fought Jasper Kimber. "Poor fellow!" he said again, and listened to Soolsby's stertorous breathing, as a physician looks at a patient whose case he cannot control, does not wholly understand. The hand of the sleeping man was suddenly raised, his head gave a jerk, and he said mumblingly: "Claridge for ever!" Kate nervously intervened. "It fair beat him, your coming back, sir. It's awful temptation, the drink. I lived in it for years, and it's cruel hard to fight it when you're worked up either way, sorrow or joy. There's a real pleasure in being drunk, I'm sure. While it lasts you're rich, and you're young, and you don't care what happens. It's kind of you to take it like this, sir, seeing you've never been tempted and mightn't understand." David shook his head sadly, and looked at Soolsby in silence. "I don't suppose he took a quarter what he used to take, but it made him drunk. 'Twas but a minute of madness. You've saved him right enough." "I was not blaming him. I understand--I understand." He looked at her clearly. She was healthy and fine-looking, with large, eloquent eyes. Her dress was severe and quiet, as became her occupation --a plain, dark grey, but the shapely fulness of the figure gave softness to the outlines. It was no wonder Jasper Kimber wished to marry her; and, if he did, the future of the man was sure. She had a temperament which might have made her an adventuress--or an opera-singer. She had been touched in time, and she had never looked back. "You are with Lady Eglington now, I have heard?" he asked. She nodded. "It was hard for you in London at first?" She met his look steadily. "It was easy in a way. I could see round me what was the right thing to do. Oh, that was what was so awful in the old life over there at Heddington,"--she pointed beyond the hill, "we didn't know what was good and what was bad. The poor people in big working-places like Heddington ain't much better than heathens, leastways as to most things that matter. They haven't got a sensible religion, not one that gets down into what they do. The parson doesn't reach them--he talks about church and the sacraments, and they don't get at what good it's going to do them. And the chapel preachers ain't much better. They talk and sing and pray, when what the people want is light, and hot water, and soap, and being shown how to live, and how to bring up children healthy and strong, and decent-cooked food. I'd have food- hospitals if I could, and I'd give the children in the schools one good meal a day. I'm sure the children of the poor go wrong and bad more through the way they live than anything. If only they was taught right --not as though they was paupers! Give me enough nurses of the right sort, and enough good, plain cooks, and meat three times a week, and milk and bread and rice and porridge every day, and I'd make a new place of any town in England in a year. I'd--" She stopped all at once, however, and flushing, said: "I didn't stop to think I was talking to you, sir." "I am glad you speak to me so," he answered gently. "You and I are both reformers at heart." "Me? I've done nothing, sir, not any good to anybody or anything." "Not to Jasper Kimber?" "You did that, sir; he says so; he says you made him." A quick laugh passed David's lips. "Men are not made so easily. I think I know the trowel and the mortar that built that wall! Thee will marry him, friend?" Her eyes burned as she looked at him. She had been eternally dispossessed of what every woman has the right to have--one memory possessing the elements of beauty. Even if it remain but for the moment, yet that moment is hers by right of her sex, which is denied the wider rights of those they love and serve. She had tasted the cup of bitterness and drunk of the waters of sacrifice. Married life had no lure for her. She wanted none of it. The seed of service had, however, taken root in a nature full of fire and light and power, undisciplined and undeveloped as it was. She wished to do something--the spirit of toil, the first habit of the life of the poor, the natural medium for the good that may be in them, had possession of her. This man was to her the symbol of work. To have cared for his home, to have looked after his daily needs, to have sheltered him humbly from little things, would have been her one true happiness. And this was denied her. Had she been a man, it would have been so easy. She could have offered to be his servant; could have done those things which she could do better than any, since hers would be a heart-service. But even as she looked at him now, she had a flash of insight and prescience. She had, from little things said or done, from newspapers marked and a hundred small indications, made up her mind that her mistress's mind dwelt much upon "the Egyptian." The thought flashed now that she might serve this man, after all; that a day might come when she could say that she had played a part in his happiness, in return for all he had done for her. Life had its chances--and strange things had happened. In her own mind she had decided that her mistress was not happy, and who could tell what might happen? Men did not live for ever! The thought came and went, but it left behind a determination to answer David as she felt. "I will not marry Jasper," she answered slowly. "I want work, not marriage." "There would be both," he urged. "With women there is the one or the other, not both." "Thee could help him. He has done credit to himself, and he can do good work for England. Thee can help him." "I want work alone, not marriage, sir." "He would pay thee his debt." "He owes me nothing. What happened was no fault of his, but of the life we were born in. He tired of me, and left me. Husbands tire of their wives, but stay on and beat them." "He drove thee mad almost, I remember." "Wives go mad and are never cured, so many of them. I've seen them die, poor things, and leave the little ones behind. I had the luck wi' me. I took the right turning at the cross-roads yonder." "Thee must be Jasper's wife if he asks thee again," he urged. "He will come when I call, but I will not call," she answered. "But still thee will marry him when the heart is ready," he persisted. "It shall be ready soon. He needs thee. Good-bye, friend. Leave Soolsby alone. He will be safe. And do not tell him that I have seen him so." He stooped over and touched the old man's shoulder gently. He held out his hand to her. She took it, then suddenly leaned over and kissed it. She could not speak. He stepped to the door and looked out. Behind the Red Mansion the sun was setting, and the far garden looked cool and sweet. He gave a happy sigh, and stepped out and down. As he disappeared, the woman dropped into a chair, her arms upon a table. Her body shook with sobs. She sat there for an hour, and then, when the sun was setting, she left the drunken man sleeping, and made her way down the hill to the Cloistered House. Entering, she was summoned to her mistress's room. "I did not expect my lady so soon," she said, surprised. "No; we came sooner than we expected. Where have you been?" "At Soolsby's hut on the hill, my lady." "Who is Soolsby?" Kate told her all she knew, and of what had happened that afternoon--but not all. CHAPTER XXI "THERE IS NOTHING HIDDEN WHICH SHALL NOT BE REVEALED" A fortnight had passed since they had come to Hamley--David, Eglington, and Hylda--and they had all travelled a long distance in mutual understanding during that time, too far, thought Luke Claridge, who remained neutral and silent. He would not let Faith go to the Cloistered House, though he made no protest against David going; because he recognised in these visits the duty of diplomacy and the business of the nation--more particularly David's business, which, in his eyes, swallowed all. Three times David had gone to the Cloistered House; once Hylda and he had met in the road leading to the old mill, and once at Soolsby's hut. Twice, also, in the garden of his old home he had seen her, when she came to visit Faith, who had captured her heart at once. Eglington and Faith had not met, however. He was either busy in his laboratory, or with his books, or riding over the common and through the woods, and their courses lay apart. But there came an afternoon when Hylda and David were a long hour together at the Cloistered House. They talked freely of his work in Egypt. At last she said: "And Nahoum Pasha?" "He has kept faith." "He is in high place again?" "He is a good administrator." "You put him there!" "Thee remembers what I said to him, that night in Cairo?" Hylda closed her eyes and drew in a long breath. Had there been a word spoken that night when she and David and Nahoum met which had not bitten into her soul! That David had done so much in Egypt without ruin or death was a tribute to his power. Nevertheless, though Nahoum had not struck yet, she was certain he would one day. All that David now told her of the vicissitudes of his plans, and Nahoum's sympathy and help, only deepened this conviction. She could well believe that Nahoum gave David money from his own pocket, which he replaced by extortion from other sources, while gaining credit with David for co-operation. Armenian Christian Nahoum might be, but he was ranged with the East against the West, with the reactionary and corrupt against advance, against civilisation and freedom and equality. Nahoum's Christianity was permeated with Orientalism, the Christian belief obscured by the theism of the Muslim. David was in a deadlier struggle than he knew. Yet it could serve no good end to attempt to warn him now. He had outlived peril so far; might it not be that, after all, he would win? So far she had avoided Nahoum's name in talks with David. She could scarcely tell why she did, save that it opened a door better closed, as it were; but the restraint had given way at last. "Thee remembers what I said that night?" David repeated slowly. "I remember--I understand. You devise your course and you never change. It is like building on a rock. That is why nothing happens to you as bad as might happen." "Nothing bad ever happens to me." "The philosophy of the desert," she commented smiling. "You are living in the desert even when you are here. This is a dream; the desert and Egypt only are real. "That is true, I think. I seem sometimes like a sojourner here, like a spirit 'revisiting the scenes of life and time.'" He laughed boyishly. "Yet you are happy here. I understand now why and how you are what you are. Even I that have been here so short a time feel the influence upon me. I breathe an air that, somehow, seems a native air. The spirit of my Quaker grandmother revives in me. Sometimes I sit hours thinking, scarcely stirring; and I believe I know now how people might speak to each other without words. Your Uncle Benn and you--it was so with you, was it not? You heard his voice speaking to you sometimes; you understood what he meant to say to you? You told me so long ago." David inclined his head. "I heard him speak as one might speak through a closed door. Sometimes, too, in the desert I have heard Faith speak to me." "And your grandfather?" "Never my grandfather--never. It would seem as though, in my thoughts, I could never reach him; as though masses of opaque things lay between. Yet he and I--there is love between us. I don't know why I never hear him." "Tell me of your childhood, of your mother. I have seen her grave under the ash by the Meeting-house, but I want to know of her from you." "Has not Faith told you?" "We have only talked of the present. I could not ask her; but I can ask you. I want to know of your mother and you together." "We were never together. When I opened my eyes she closed hers. It was so little to get for the life she gave. See, was it not a good face?" He drew from his pocket a little locket which Faith had given him years ago, and opened it before her. Hylda looked long. "She was exquisite," she said, "exquisite." "My father I never knew either. He was a captain of a merchant ship. He married her secretly while she was staying with an aunt at Portsmouth. He sailed away, my mother told my grandfather all, and he brought her home here. The marriage was regular, of course, but my grandfather, after announcing it, and bringing it before the Elders, declared that she should never see her husband again. She never did, for she died a few months after, when I came, and my father died very soon, also. I never saw him, and I do not know if he ever tried to see me. I never had any feeling about it. My grandfather was the only father I ever knew, and Faith, who was born a year before me, became like a sister to me, though she soon made other pretensions!" He laughed again, almost happily. "To gain an end she exercised authority as my aunt!" "What was your father's name?" "Fetherdon--James Fetherdon." "Fetherdon--James Fetherdon !" Involuntarily Hylda repeated the name after him. Where had she heard the name before--or where had she seen it? It kept flashing before her eyes. Where had she seen it? For days she had been rummaging among old papers in the library of the Cloistered House, and in an old box full of correspondence and papers of the late countess, who had died suddenly. Was it among them that she had seen the name? She could not tell. It was all vague, but that she had seen it or heard it she was sure. "Your father's people, you never knew them?" He shook his head. "Nor of them. Here was my home--I had no desire to discover them. We draw in upon ourselves here." "There is great force in such a life and such a people," she answered. "If the same concentration of mind could be carried into the wide life of the world, we might revolutionise civilisation; or vitalise and advance it, I mean--as you are doing in Egypt." "I have done nothing in Egypt. I have sounded the bugle--I have not had my fight." "That is true in a sense," she replied. "Your real struggle is before you. I do not know why I say it, but I do say it; I feel it. Something here"--she pressed her hand to her heart--"something here tells me that your day of battle is yet to come." Her eyes were brimming and full of excitement. "We must all help you." She gained courage with each word. "You must not fight alone. You work for civilisation; you must have civilisation behind you." Her hands clasped nervously; there was a catch in her throat. "You remember then, that I said I would call to you one day, as your Uncle Benn did, and you should hear and answer me. It shall not be that I will call. You--you will call, and I will help you if I can. I will help, no matter what may seem to prevent, if there is anything I can do. I, surely I, of all the world owe it to you to do what I can, always. "I owe so much--you did so much. Oh, how it haunts me! Sometimes in the night I wake with a start and see it all--all!" The flood which had been dyked back these years past had broken loose in her heart. Out of the stir and sweep of social life and duty, of official and political ambition-heart-hungry, for she had no child; heart-lonely, though she had scarce recognised it in the duties and excitements round her--she had floated suddenly into this backwater of a motionless life in Hamley. Its quiet had settled upon her, the shackles of her spirit had been loosed, and dropped from her; she had suddenly bathed her heart and soul in a freer atmosphere than they had ever known before. And David and Hamley had come together. The old impulses, dominated by a divine altruism, were swinging her out upon a course leading she knew not, reeked not, whither--for the moment reeked not. This man's career, the work he was set to do, the ideal before him, the vision of a land redeemed, captured her, carried her panting into a resolve which, however she might modify her speech or action, must be an influence in her life hereafter. Must the penance and the redemption be his only? This life he lived had come from what had happened to her and to him in Egypt. In a deep sense her life was linked with his. In a flash David now felt the deep significance of their relations. A curtain seemed suddenly to have been drawn aside. He was blinded for a moment. Her sympathy, her desire to help, gave him a new sense of hope and confidence, but--but there was no room in his crusade for any woman; the dear egotism of a life-dream was masterful in him, possessed him. Yet, if ever his heart might have dwelt upon a woman with thought of the future, this being before him--he drew himself up with a start! . . . He was going to Egypt again in a few days; they might probably never meet again--would not, no doubt--should not. He had pressed her husband to go to Egypt, but now he would not encourage it; he must "finish his journey alone." He looked again in her eyes, and their light and beauty held him. His own eyes swam. The exaltation of a great idea was upon them, was a bond of fate between them. It was a moment of peril not fully realised by either. David did realise, however, that she was beautiful beyond all women he had ever seen--or was he now for the first time really aware of the beauty of woman? She had an expression, a light of eye and face, finely alluring beyond mere outline of feature. Yet the features were there, too, regular and fine; and her brown hair waving away from her broad, white forehead over eyes a greyish violet in colour gave her a classic distinction. In the quietness of the face there was that strain of the Quaker, descending to her through three generations, yet enlivened by a mind of impulse and genius. They stood looking at each other for a moment, in which both had taken a long step forward in life's experience. But presently his eyes looked beyond her, as though at something that fascinated them. "Of what are you thinking? What do you see?" she asked. "You, leaving the garden of my house in Cairo, I standing by the fire," he answered, closing his eyes for an instant. "It is what I saw also," she said breathlessly. "It is what I saw and was thinking of that instant." When, as though she must break away from the cords of feeling drawing her nearer and nearer to him, she said, with a little laugh, "Tell me again of my Chicago cousin? I have not had a letter for a year." "Lacey, he is with me always. I should have done little had it not been for him. He has remarkable resource; he is never cast down. He has but one fault." "What is that?" "He is no respecter of persons. His humour cuts deep. He has a wide heart for your sex. When leaving the court of the King of Abyssinia he said to his Majesty: 'Well, good-bye, King. Give my love to the girls.'" She laughed again. "How absurd and childish he is! But he is true and able. And how glad you should be that you are able to make true friends, without an effort. Yesterday I met neighbour Fairley, and another little old Elder who keeps his chin in his collar and his eyes on the sky. They did little else but sing your praises. One might have thought that you had invented the world-or Hamley." "Yet they would chafe if I were to appear among them without these." He glanced down at the Quaker clothes he wore, and made a gesture towards the broadbrimmed hat reposing on a footstool near by. "It is good to see that you are not changed, not spoiled at all," she remarked, smiling. "Though, indeed, how could you be, who always work for others and never for yourself? All I envy you is your friends. You make them and keep them so." She sighed, and a shadow came into her eyes suddenly. She was thinking of Eglington. Did he make friends--true friends? In London--was there one she knew who would cleave to him for love of him? In England--had she ever seen one? In Hamley, where his people had been for so many generations, had she found one? Herself? Yes, she was his true friend. She would do what would she not do to help him, to serve his interests? What had she not done since she married Her fortune, it was his; her every waking hour had been filled with something devised to help him on his way. Had he ever said to her: "Hylda, you are a help to me"? He had admired her--but was he singular in that? Before she married there were many--since, there had been many --who had shown, some with tact and carefulness, others with a crudeness making her shudder, that they admired her; and, if they might, would have given their admiration another name with other manifestations. Had she repelled it all? She had been too sure of herself to draw her skirts about her; she was too proud to let any man put her at any disadvantage. She had been safe, because her heart had been untouched. The Duchess of Snowdon, once beautiful, but now with a face like a mask, enamelled and rouged and lifeless, had said to her once: "My dear, I ought to have died at thirty. When I was twenty-three I wanted to squeeze the orange dry in a handful of years, and then go out suddenly, and let the dust of forgetfulness cover my bones. I had one child, a boy, and would have no more; and I squeezed the orange! But I didn't go at thirty, and yet the orange was dry. My boy died; and you see what I am--a fright, I know it; and I dress like a child of twenty; and I can't help it." There had been moments, once, when Hylda, too, had wished to squeeze the orange dry, but something behind, calling to her, had held her back. She had dropped her anchor in perilous seas, but it had never dragged. "Tell me how to make friends--and keep them," she added gaily. "If it be true I make friends, thee taught me how," he answered, "for thee made me a friend, and I forget not the lesson." She smiled. "Thee has learnt another lesson too well," she answered brightly. "Thee must not flatter. It is not that which makes thee keep friends. Thee sees I also am speaking as they do in Hamley--am I not bold? I love the grammarless speech." "Then use it freely to-day, for this is farewell," he answered, not looking at her. "This--is--farewell," she said slowly, vaguely. Why should it startle her so? "You are going so soon--where?" "To-morrow to London, next week to Egypt." She laid a hand upon herself, for her heart was beating violently. "Thee is not fair to give no warning--there is so much to say," she said, in so low a tone that he could scarcely hear her. "There is the future, your work, what we are to do here to help. What I am to do. "Thee will always be a friend to Egypt, I know," he answered. "She needs friends. Thee has a place where thee can help." "Will not right be done without my voice?" she asked, her eyes half closing. "There is the Foreign Office, and English policy, and the ministers, and--and Eglington. What need of me?" He saw the thought had flashed into her mind that he did not trust her husband. "Thee knows and cares for Egypt, and knowing and caring make policy easier to frame," he rejoined. Suddenly a wave of feeling went over her. He whose life had been flung into this field of labour by an act of her own, who should help him but herself? But it all baffled her, hurt her, shook her. She was not free to help as she wished. Her life belonged to another; and he exacted the payment of tribute to the uttermost farthing. She was blinded by the thought. Yet she must speak. "I will come to Egypt--we will come to Egypt," she said quickly. "Eglington shall know, too; he shall understand. You shall have his help. You shall not work alone." "Thee can work here," he said. "It may not be easy for Lord Eglington to come." "You pressed it on him." Their eyes met. She suddenly saw what was in his mind. "You know best what will help you most," she added gently. "You will not come?" he asked. "I will not say I will not come--not ever," she answered firmly. "It may be I should have to come." Resolution was in her eyes. She was thinking of Nahoum. "I may have to come," she added after a pause, "to do right by you." He read her meaning. "Thee will never come," he continued confidently. He held out his hand. "Perhaps I shall see you in town," she rejoined, as her hand rested in his, and she looked away. "When do you start for Egypt?" "To-morrow week, I think," he answered. "There is much to do." "Perhaps we shall meet in town," she repeated. But they both knew they would not. "Farewell," he said, and picked up his hat. As he turned again, the look in her eyes brought the blood to his face, then it became pale. A new force had come into his life. "God be good to thee," he said, and turned away. She watched him leave the room and pass through the garden. "David! David!" she said softly after him. At the other end of the room her husband, who had just entered, watched her. He heard her voice, but did not hear what she said. "Come, Hylda, and have some music," he said brusquely. She scrutinised him calmly. His face showed nothing. His look was enigmatical. "Chopin is the thing for me," he said, and opened the piano. CHAPTER XXII AS IN A GLASS DARKLY It was very quiet and cool in the Quaker Meeting-house, though outside there was the rustle of leaves, the low din of the bees, the whistle of a bird, or the even tread of horses' hoofs as they journeyed on the London road. The place was full. For a half-hour the worshippers had sat voiceless. They were waiting for the spirit to move some one to speak. As they waited, a lady entered and glided into a seat. Few saw, and these gave no indication of surprise, though they were little used to strangers, and none of the name borne by this lady had entered the building for many years. It was Hylda. At last the silence was broken. The wizened Elder, with eyes upon the ceiling and his long white chin like ivory on his great collar, began to pray, sitting where he was, his hands upon his knees. He prayed for all who wandered "into by and forbidden paths." He prayed for one whose work was as that of Joseph, son of Jacob; whose footsteps were now upon the sea, and now upon the desert; whose way was set among strange gods and divers heresies--"'For there must also be heresies, that they which are approved may be made manifest among the weak.'" A moment more, and then he added: "He hath been tried beyond his years; do Thou uphold his hands. Once with a goad did we urge him on, when in ease and sloth he was among us, but now he spurreth on his spirit and body in too great haste. O put Thy hand upon the bridle, Lord, that He ride soberly upon Thy business." There was a longer silence now, but at last came the voice of Luke Claridge. "Father of the fatherless," he said, "my days are as the sands in the hour-glass hastening to their rest; and my place will soon be empty. He goeth far, and I may not go with him. He fighteth alone, like him that strove with wild beasts at Ephesus; do Thou uphold him that he may bring a nation captive. And if a viper fasten on his hand, as chanced to Paul of old, give him grace to strike it off without hurt. O Lord, he is to me, Thy servant, as the one ewe lamb; let him be Thine when Thou gatherest for Thy vineyard!" "And if a viper fasten on his hand--" David passed his hand across his forehead and closed his eyes. The beasts at Ephesus he had fought, and he would fight them again--there was fighting enough to do in the land of Egypt. And the viper would fasten on his hand--it had fastened on his hand, and he had struck it off; but it would come again, the dark thing against which he had fought in the desert. Their prayers had unnerved him, had got into that corner of his nature where youth and its irresponsibility loitered yet. For a moment he was shaken, and then, looking into the faces of the Elders, said: "Friends, I go again upon paths that lead into the wilderness. I know not if I ever shall return. Howsoe'er that may be, I shall walk with firmer step because of all ye do for me." He closed his eyes and prayed: "O God, I go into the land of ancient plagues and present pestilence. If it be Thy will, bring me home to this good land, when my task is done. If not, by Thy goodness let me be as a stone set by the wayside for others who come after; and save me from the beast and from the viper. 'Thou art faithful, who wilt not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able; but wilt with the temptation also make a way of escape, that we may be able to bear it!'" He sat down, and all grew silent again; but suddenly some one sobbed aloud-sobbed, and strove to stay the sobbing, and could not, and, getting up, hastened towards the door. It was Faith. David heard, and came quickly after her. As he took her arm gently, his eyes met those of Hylda. She rose and came out also. "Will thee take her home?" he said huskily. "I can bear no more." Hylda placed her arm round Faith, and led her out under the trees and into the wood. As they went, Faith looked back. "Oh, forgive me, forgive me, Davy," she said softly. Three lights burned in Hamley: one in the Red Mansion, one in the Cloistered House, and one in Soolsby's hut upon the hill. In the Red Mansion old Luke Claridge, his face pale with feeling, his white hair tumbling about, his head thrust forward, his eyes shining, sat listening, as Faith read aloud letters which Benn Claridge had written from the East many years before. One letter, written from Bagdad, he made her read twice. The faded sheet had in it the glow and glamour of the East; it was like a heart beating with life; emotion rose and fell in it like the waves of the sea. Once the old man interrupted Faith. "Davy--it is as though Davy spoke. It is like Davy--both Claridge, both Claridge," he said. "But is it not like Davy? Davy is doing what it was in Benn's heart to do. Benn showed the way; Benn called, and Davy came." He laid both hands upon his knees and raised his eyes. "O Lord, I have sought to do according to Thy will," he whispered. He was thinking of a thing he had long hidden. Through many years he had no doubt, no qualm; but, since David had gone to Egypt, some spirit of unquiet had worked in him. He had acted against the prayer of his own wife, lying in her grave--a quiet-faced woman, who had never crossed him, who had never shown a note of passion in all her life, save in one thing concerning David. Upon it, like some prophetess, she had flamed out. With the insight which only women have where children are concerned, she had told him that he would live to repent of what he had done. She had died soon after, and was laid beside the deserted young mother, whose days had budded and blossomed, and fallen like petals to the ground, while yet it was the spring. Luke Claridge had understood neither, not his wife when she had said: "Thee should let the Lord do His own work, Luke," nor his dying daughter Mercy, whose last words had been: "With love and sorrow I have sowed; he shall reap rejoicing--my babe. Thee will set him in the garden in the sun, where God may find him--God will not pass him by. He will take him by the hand and lead him home." The old man had thought her touched by delirium then, though her words were but the parable of a mind fed by the poetry of life, by a shy spirit, to which meditation gave fancy and farseeing. David had come by his idealism honestly. The half-mystical spirit of his Uncle Benn had flowed on to another generation through the filter of a woman's sad soul. It had come to David a pure force, a constructive and practical idealism. Now, as Faith read, there were ringing in the old man's ears the words which David's mother had said before she closed her eyes and passed away: "Set him in the garden in the sun, where God may find him--God will not pass him by." They seemed to weave themselves into the symbolism of Benn Claridge's letter, written from the hills of Bagdad. "But," the letter continued, "the Governor passed by with his suite, the buckles of the harness of his horses all silver, his carriage shining with inlay of gold, his turban full of precious stones. When he had passed, I said to a shepherd standing by, 'If thou hadst all his wealth, shepherd, what wouldst thou do?' and he answered, 'If I had his wealth, I would sit on the south side of my house in the sun all day and every day.' To a messenger of the Palace, who must ever be ready night and day to run at his master's order, I asked the same. He replied, 'If I had all the Effendina's wealth, I would sleep till I died.' To a blind beggar, shaking the copper in his cup in the highways, pleading dumbly to those who passed, I made similar inquisition, and he replied 'If the wealth of the exalted one were mine, I would sit on the mastaba by the bake-house, and eat three times a day, save at Ramadan, when I would bless Allah the compassionate and merciful, and breakfast at sunset with the flesh of a kid and a dish of dates.' To a woman at the door of a tomb hung with relics of hundreds of poor souls in misery, who besought the buried saint to intercede for her with Allah, I made the same catechism, and she answered, 'Oh, effendi, if his wealth were mine, I would give my son what he has lost.' 'What has he lost, woman?' said I; and she answered: 'A little house with a garden, and a flock of ten goats, a cow and a dovecote, his inheritance of which he has been despoiled by one who carried a false debt 'gainst his dead father.' And I said to her: 'But if thy wealth were as that of the ruler of the city, thy son would have no need of the little house and garden and the flock of goats, and a cow and a dovecote.' Whereupon she turned upon me in bitterness, and said: 'Were they not his own as the seed of his father? Shall not one cherish that which is his own, which cometh from seed to seed? Is it not the law?' 'But,' said I, 'if his wealth were thine, there would be herds of cattle, and flocks of sheep, and carpets spread, and the banquet-tables, and great orchards.' But she stubbornly shook her head. 'Where the eagle built shall not the young eagle nest? How should God meet me in the way and bless him who stood not by his birth right? The plot of ground was the lad's, and all that is thereon. I pray thee, mock me not.' God knows I did not mock her, for her words were wisdom. So did it work upon me that, after many days, I got for the lad his own again, and there he is happier, and his mother happier, than the Governor in his palace. Later I did learn some truths from the shepherd, the messenger, and the beggar, and the woman with the child; but chiefly from the woman and the child. The material value has no relation to the value each sets upon that which is his own. Behind this feeling lies the strength of the world. Here on this hill of Bagdad I am thinking these things. And, Luke, I would have thee also think on my story of the woman and the child. There is in it a lesson for thee." When Luke Claridge first read this letter years before, he had put it from him sternly. Now he heard it with a soft emotion. He took the letter from Faith at last and put it in his pocket. With no apparent relevancy, and laying his hand on Faith's shoulder, he said: "We have done according to our conscience by Davy--God is our witness, so!" She leaned her cheek against his hand, but did not speak. In Soolsby's hut upon the hill David sat talking to the old chair-maker. Since his return he had visited the place several times, only to find Soolsby absent. The old man, on awaking from his drunken sleep, had been visited by a terrible remorse, and, whenever he had seen David coming, had fled into the woods. This evening, however, David came in the dark, and Soolsby was caught. When David entered first, the old man broke down. He could not speak, but leaned upon the back of a chair, and though his lips moved, no sound came forth. But David took him by the shoulders and set him down, and laughed gently in his face, and at last Soolsby got voice and said: "Egyptian! O Egyptian!" Then his tongue was loosened and his eye glistened, and he poured out question after question, many pertinent, some whimsical, all frankly answered by David. But suddenly he stopped short, and his eyes sank before the other, who had laid a hand upon his knee. "But don't, Egyptian, don't! Don't have aught to do with me. I'm only a drunken swine. I kept sober four years, as she knows--as the Angel down yonder in the Red Mansion knows; but the day you came, going out to meet you, I got drunk--blind drunk. I had only been pretending all the time. I was being coaxed along--made believe I was a real man, I suppose. But I wasn't. I was a pillar of sand. When pressure came I just broke down --broke down, Egyptian. Don't be surprised if you hear me grunt. It's my natural speech. I'm a hog, a drink-swilling hog. I wasn't decent enough to stay sober till you had said 'Good day,' and 'How goes it, Soolsby?' I tried it on; it was no good. I began to live like a man, but I've slipped back into the ditch. You didn't know that, did you?" David let him have his say, and then in a low voice said: "Yes, I knew thee had been drinking, Soolsby." He started. "She told you--Kate Heaver--" "She did not tell me. I came and found you here with her. You were asleep." "A drunken sweep!" He spat upon the ground in disgust at himself. "I ought never have comeback here," he added. "It was no place for me. But it drew me. I didn't belong; but it drew me." "Thee belongs to Hamley. Thee is an honour to Hamley, Soolsby." Soolsby's eyes widened; the blurred look of rage and self-reproach in them began to fade away. "Thee has made a fight, Soolsby, to conquer a thing that has had thee by the throat. There's no fighting like it. It means a watching every hour, every minute--thee can never take the eye off it. Some days it's easy, some days it's hard, but it's never so easy that you can say, 'There is no need to watch.' In sleep it whispers and wakes you; in the morning, when there are no shadows, it casts a shadow on the path. It comes between you and your work; you see it looking out of the eyes of a friend. And one day, when you think it has been conquered, that you have worn it down into oblivion and the dust, and you close your eyes and say, 'I am master,' up it springs with fury from nowhere you can see, and catches you by the throat; and the fight begins again. But you sit stronger, and the fight becomes shorter; and after many battles, and you have learned never to be off guard, to know by instinct where every ambush is, then at last the victory is yours. It is hard, it is bitter, and sometimes it seems hardly worth the struggle. But it is--it is worth the struggle, dear old man." Soolsby dropped on his knees and caught David by the arms. "How did you know-how did you know?" he asked hoarsely. "It's been just as you say. You've watched some one fighting?" "I have watched some one fighting--fighting," answered David clearly, but his eyes were moist. "With drink, the same as me?" "No, with opium--laudanum." "Oh, I've heard that's worse, that it makes you mad, the wanting it." "I have seen it so." "Did the man break down like me?" "Only once, but the fight is not yet over with him." "Was he--an Englishman?" David inclined his head. "It's a great thing to have a temptation to fight, Soolsby. Then we can understand others." "It's not always true, Egyptian, for you have never had temptation to fight. Yet you know it all." "God has been good to me," David answered, putting a hand on the old man's shoulder. "And thee is a credit to Hamley, friend. Thee will never fall again." "You know that--you say that to me! Then, by Mary the mother of God, I never will be a swine again," he said, getting to his feet. "Well, good-bye, Soolsby. I go to-morrow," David said presently. Soolsby frowned; his lips worked. "When will you come back?" he asked eagerly. David smiled. "There is so much to do, they may not let me come--not soon. I am going into the desert again." Soolsby was shaking. He spoke huskily. "Here is your place," he said. "You shall come back--Oh, but you shall come back, here, where you belong." David shook his head and smiled, and clasped the strong hand again. A moment later he was gone. From the door of the but Soolsby muttered to himself: "I will bring you back. If Luke Claridge doesn't, then I will bring you back. If he dies, I will bring you--no, by the love of God, I will bring you back while he lives!" ........................... Two thousand miles away, in a Nile village, women sat wailing in dark doorways, dust on their heads, black mantles covering their faces. By the pond where all the people drank, performed their ablutions, bathed their bodies and rinsed their mouths, sat the sheikh-el-beled, the village chief, taking counsel in sorrow with the barber, the holy man, and others. Now speaking, now rocking their bodies to and fro, in the evening sunlight, they sat and watched the Nile in flood covering the wide wastes of the Fayoum, spreading over the land rich deposits of earth from the mountains of Abyssinia. When that flood subsided there would be fields to be planted with dourha and onions and sugar-cane; but they whose strong arms should plough and sow and wield the sickle, the youth, the upstanding ones, had been carried off in chains to serve in the army of Egypt, destined for the far Soudan, for hardship, misery, and death, never to see their kindred any more. Twice during three months had the dread servant of the Palace come and driven off their best like sheep to the slaughter. The brave, the stalwart, the bread-winners, were gone; and yet the tax-gatherer would come and press for every impost--on the onion-field, the date-palm, the dourha-field, and the clump of sugar- cane, as though the young men, the toilers, were still there. The old and infirm, the children, the women, must now double and treble their labour. The old men must go to the corvee, and mend the banks of the Nile for the Prince and his pashas, providing their own food, their own tools, their own housing, if housing there would be--if it was more than sleeping under a bush by the riverside, or crawling into a hole in the ground, their yeleks their clothes by day, their only covering at night. They sat like men without hope, yet with the proud, bitter mien of those who had known good and had lost it, had seen content and now were desolate. Presently one--a lad--the youngest of them, lifted up his voice and began to chant a recitative, while another took a small drum and beat it in unison. He was but just recovered from an illness, or he had gone also in chains to die for he knew not what, leaving behind without hope all that he loved: "How has the cloud fallen, and the leaf withered on the tree, The lemon-tree, that standeth by the door. The melon and the date have gone bitter to the taste, The weevil, it has eaten at the core The core of my heart, the mildew findeth it. My music, it is but the drip of tears, The garner empty standeth, the oven hath no fire, Night filleth me with fears. O Nile that floweth deeply, hast thou not heard his voice? His footsteps hast thou covered with thy flood? He was as one who lifteth up the yoke, He was as one who taketh off the chain, As one who sheltereth from the rain, As one who scattereth bread to the pigeons flying. His purse was at his side, his mantle was for me, For any who passeth were his mantle and his purse, And now like a gourd is he withered from our eyes. His friendship, it was like a shady wood Whither has he gone?--Who shall speak for us? Who shall save us from the kourbash and the stripes? Who shall proclaim us in the palace? Who shall contend for us in the gate? The sakkia turneth no more; the oxen they are gone; The young go forth in chains, the old waken in the night, They waken and weep, for the wheel turns backward, And the dark days are come again upon us-- Will he return no more? His friendship was like a shady wood, O Nile that floweth deeply, hast thou not heard his voice? Hast thou covered up his footsteps with thy flood? The core of my heart, the mildew findeth it!" Another-an old man-took up the strain, as the drum kept time to the beat of the voice with its undulating call and refrain: "When his footsteps were among us there was peace; War entered not the village, nor the call of war. Now our homes are as those that have no roofs. As a nest decayed, as a cave forsaken, As a ship that lieth broken on the beach, Is the house where we were born. Out in the desert did we bury our gold, We buried it where no man robbed us, for his arm was strong. Now are the jars empty, gold did not avail To save our young men, to keep them from the chains. God hath swallowed his voice, or the sea hath drowned it, Or the Nile hath covered him with its flood; Else would he come when our voices call. His word was honey in the prince's ear Will he return no more?" And now the sheikh-el-beled spoke. "It hath been so since Nahoum Pasha passed this way four months agone. He hath changed all. War will not avail. David Pasha, he will come again. His word is as the centre of the world. Ye have no hope, because ye see the hawks among the starving sheep. But the shepherd will return from behind the hill, and the hawks will flee away. ". . . Behold, once was I in the desert. Listen, for mine are the words of one who hath travelled far--was I not at Damascus and Palmyra and Bagdad, and at Medina by the tomb of Mahomet?" Reverently he touched the green turban on his head, evidence of his journey to Mahomet's tomb. "Once in the desert I saw afar off an oasis of wood and water, and flying things, and houses where a man might rest. And I got me down from my camel, and knelt upon my sheepskin, and gave thanks in the name of Allah. Thereupon I mounted again and rode on towards that goodly place. But as I rode it vanished from my sight. Then did I mourn. Yet once again I saw the trees, and flocks of pigeons and waving fields, and I was hungry and thirsty, and longed exceedingly. Yet got I down, and, upon my sheep-skin, once more gave thanks to Allah. And I mounted thereafter in haste and rode on; but once again was I mocked. Then I cried aloud in my despair. It was in my heart to die upon the sheep-skin where I had prayed; for I was burned up within, and there seemed naught to do but say malaish, and go hence. But that goodly sight came again. My heart rebelled that I should be so mocked. I bent down my head upon my camel that I might not see, yet once more I loosed the sheep-skin. Lifting up my heart, I looked again, and again I took hope and rode on. Farther and farther I rode, and lo! I was no longer mocked; for I came to a goodly place of water and trees, and was saved. So shall it be with us. We have looked for his coming again, and our hearts have fallen and been as ashes, for that he has not come. Yet there be mirages, and one day soon David Pasha will come hither, and our pains shall be eased." "Aiwa, aiwa--yes, yes," cried the lad who had sung to them. "Aiwa, aiwa," rang softly over the pond, where naked children stooped to drink. The smell of the cooking-pots floated out from the mud-houses near by. "Malaish," said one after another, "I am hungry. He will come again- perhaps to-morrow." So they moved towards the houses over the way. One cursed his woman for wailing in the doorway; one snatched the lid from a cooking-pot; one drew from an oven cakes of dourha, and gave them to those who had none; one knelt and bowed his forehead to the ground in prayer; one shouted the name of him whose coming they desired. So was David missed in Egypt. CHAPTER XXIII THE TENTS OF CUSHAN "I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction, and the curtains of the Land of Midian did tremble." A Hurdy-Gurdy was standing at the corner, playing with shrill insistence a medley of Scottish airs. Now "Loch Lomond" pleaded for pennies from the upper windows: "For you'll tak' the high road, and I'll tak' the low road, And I'll be in Scotland before ye: But I and my true love will never meet again, On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond!" The hurdy-gurdy was strident and insistent, but for a long time no response came. At last, however, as the strains of "Loch Lomond" ceased, a lady appeared on the balcony of a drawing-room, and, leaning over a little forest of flowers and plants, threw a half-crown to the sorry street-musician. She watched the grotesque thing trundle away, then entering the house again, took a 'cello from the corner of the room and tuned the instrument tenderly. It was Hylda. Something of the peace of Hamley had followed her to London, but the poignant pain of it had come also. Like Melisande, she had looked into the quiet pool of life and had seen her own face, its story and its foreshadowings. Since then she had been "apart." She had watched life move on rather than shared in its movement. Things stood still for her. That apathy of soul was upon her which follows the inward struggle that exhausts the throb and fret of inward emotions, leaving the mind dominant, the will in abeyance. She had become conscious that her fate and future were suspended over a chasm, as, on the trapeze of a balloon, an adventurous aeronaut hangs uncertain over the hungry sea, waiting for the coming wind which will either blow the hazardous vessel to its doom or to safe refuge on the land. She had not seen David after he left Hamley. Their last words had been spoken at the Meeting-house, when he gave Faith to her care. That scene came back to her now, and a flush crept slowly over her face and faded away again. She was recalling, too, the afternoon of that day when she and David had parted in the drawing-room of the Cloistered House, and Eglington had asked her to sing. She thought of the hours with Eglington that followed, first at the piano and afterwards in the laboratory, where in his long blue smock he made experiments. Had she not been conscious of something enigmatical in his gaiety that afternoon, in his cheerful yet cheerless words, she would have been deeply impressed by his appreciation of her playing, and his keen reflections on the merits of the composers; by his still keener attention to his subsequent experiments, and his amusing comments upon them. But, somehow, that very cheerless cheerfulness seemed to proclaim him superficial. Though she had no knowledge of science, she instinctively doubted his earnestness even in this work, which certainly was not pursued for effect. She had put the feeling from her, but it kept returning. She felt that in nothing did he touch the depths. Nothing could possess him wholly; nothing inherent could make him self-effacing. Yet she wondered, too, if she was right, when she saw his fox-terrier watching him, ever watching him with his big brown eyes as he buoyantly worked, and saw him stoop to pat its head. Or was this, after all, mere animalism, mere superficial vitality, love of health and being? She shuddered, and shut her eyes, for it came home to her that to him she was just such a being of health, vitality and comeliness, on a little higher plane. She put the thought from her, but it had had its birth, and it would not down. He had immense vitality, he was tireless, and abundant in work and industry; he went from one thing to another with ease and swiftly changing eagerness. Was it all mere force--mere man and mind? Was there no soul behind it? There in the laboratory she had laid her hand on the terrier, and prayed in her heart that she might understand him for her own good, her own happiness, and his. Above all else she wanted to love him truly, and to be loved truly, and duty was to her a daily sacrifice, a constant memorial. She realised to the full that there lay before her a long race unilluminated by the sacred lamp which, lighted at the altar, should still be burning beside the grave. Now, as she thought of him, she kept saying to herself: "We should have worked out his life together. Work together would have brought peace. He shuts me out--he shuts me out." At last she drew the bow across the instrument, once, twice, and then she began to play, forgetful of the world. She had a contralto voice, and she sang with a depth of feeling and a delicate form worthy of a professional; on the piano she was effective and charming, but into the 'cello she poured her soul. For quite an hour she played with scarce an interruption. At last, with a sigh, she laid the instrument against her knee and gazed out of the window. As she sat lost in her dream--a dream of the desert--a servant entered with letters. One caught her eye. It was from Egypt--from her cousin Lacey. Her heart throbbed violently, yet she opened the official- looking envelope with steady fingers. She would not admit even to her self that news from the desert could move her so. She began to read slowly, but presently, with a little cry, she hastened through the pages. It ran: THE SOUDAN. DEAR LADY COUSIN, I'm still not certain how I ought to style you, but I thought I'd compromise as per above. Anyway, it's a sure thing that I haven't bothered you much with country-cousin letters. I figure, however, that you've put some money in Egypt, so to speak, and what happens to this sandy-eyed foundling of the Nile you would like to know. So I've studied the only "complete letter-writer" I could find between the tropic of Capricorn and Khartoum, and this is the contemptible result, as the dagos in Mexico say. This is a hot place by reason of the sun that shines above us, and likewise it is hot because of the niggers that swarm around us. I figure, if we get out of this portion of the African continent inside our skins, that we will have put up a pretty good bluff, and pulled off a ticklish proposition. It's a sort of early Christian business. You see, David the Saadat is great on moral suasion--he's a master of it; and he's never failed yet--not altogether; though there have been minutes by a stop-watch when I've thought it wouldn't stand the strain. Like the Mississippi steamboat which was so weak that when the whistle blew the engines stopped! When those frozen minutes have come to us, I've tried to remember the correct religious etiquette, but I've not had much practise since I stayed with Aunt Melissa, and lived on skim-milk and early piety. When things were looking as bad as they did for Dives, "Now I lay me down to sleep," and "For what we are about to receive," was all that I could think of. But the Saadat, he's a wonder from Wondertown. With a little stick, or maybe his flute under his arm, he'll smile and string these heathen along, when you'd think they weren't waiting for anybody. A spear took off his fez yesterday. He never blinked--he's a jim-dandy at keeping cool; and when a hundred mounted heathens made a rush down on him the other day, spears sticking out like quills on a porcupine--2.5 on the shell-road the chargers were going--did he stir? Say, he watched 'em as if they were playing for his benefit. And sure enough, he was right. They parted either side of him when they were ten feet away, and there he was quite safe, a blessing in the storm, a little rock island in the rapids--but I couldn't remember a proper hymn of praise to say. There's no getting away from the fact that he's got a will or something, a sort of force different from most of us, or perhaps any of us. These heathen feel it, and keep their hands off him. They say he's mad, but they've got great respect for mad people, for they think that God has got their souls above with Him, and that what's left behind on earth is sacred. He talks to'em, too, like a father in Israel; tells 'em they must stop buying and selling slaves, and that if they don't he will have to punish them! And I sit holding my sides, for we're only two white men and forty "friendlies" altogether, and two revolvers among us; and I've got the two! And they listen to his blarneying, and say, "Aiwa, Saadat! aiwa, Saadat!" as if he had an army of fifty thousand behind him. Sometimes I've sort of hinted that his canoe was carrying a lot of sail; but my! he believes in it all as if there wasn't a spear or a battle-axe or a rifle within a hundred miles of him. We've been at this for two months now, and a lot of ground we covered till we got here. I've ridden the gentle camel at the rate of sixty and seventy miles a day--sort of sweeping through the land, making treaties, giving presents, freeing slaves, appointing governors and sheikhs- el-beled, doing it as if we owned the continent. He mesmerised 'em, simply mesmerised 'em-till we got here. I don't know what happened then. Now we're distinctly rating low, the laugh is on us somehow. But he--mind it? He goes about talking to the sheikhs as though we were all eating off the same corn-cob, and it seems to stupefy them; they don't grasp it. He goes on arranging for a post here and a station there, and it never occurs to him that it ain't really actual. He doesn't tell me, and I don't ask him, for I came along to wipe his stirrups, so to speak. I put my money on him, and I'm not going to worry him. He's so dead certain in what he does, and what he is, that I don't lose any sleep guessing about him. It will be funny if we do win out on this proposition--funnier than anything. Now, there's one curious thing about it all which ought to be whispered, for I'm only guessing, and I'm not a good guesser; I guessed too much in Mexico about three railways and two silvermines. The first two days after we came here, everything was all right. Then there came an Egyptian, Halim Bey, with a handful of niggers from Cairo, and letters for Claridge Pasha. From that minute there was trouble. I figure it out this way: Halim was sent by Nahoum Pasha to bring letters that said one thing to the Saadat, and, when quite convenient, to say other things to Mustafa, the boss-sheikh of this settlement. Halim Bey has gone again, but he has left his tale behind him. I'd stake all I lost, and more than I ever expect to get out of Mexico on that, and maybe I'll get a hatful out of Mexico yet. I had some good mining propositions down there. The Saadat believes in Nahoum, and has made Nahoum what he is; and on the surface Nahoum pretends to help him; but he is running underground all the time. I'd like to help give him a villa at Fazougli. When the Saadat was in England there was a bad time in Egypt. I was in Cairo; I know. It was the same bad old game--the corvee, the kourbash, conscription, a war manufactured to fill the pockets of a few, while the poor starved and died. It didn't come off, because the Saadat wasn't gone long enough, and he stopped it when he came back. But Nahoumhe laid the blame on others, and the Saadat took his word for it, and, instead of a war, there came this expedition of his own. Ten days later.--Things have happened. First, there's been awful sickness among the natives, and the Saadat has had his chance. His medicine-chest was loaded, he had a special camel for it--and he has fired it off. Night and day he has worked, never resting, never sleeping, curing most, burying a few. He looks like a ghost now, but it's no use saying or doing anything. He says: "Sink your own will; let it be subject to a higher, and you need take no thought." It's eating away his life and strength, but it has given us our return tickets, I guess. They hang about him as if he was Moses in the wilderness smiting the rock. It's his luck. Just when I get scared to death, and run down and want a tonic, and it looks as if there'd be no need to put out next week's washing, then his luck steps in, and we get another run. But it takes a heap out of a man, getting scared. Whenever I look on a lot of green trees and cattle and horses, and the sun, to say nothing of women and children, and listen to music, or feel a horse eating up the ground under me, 2.10 in the sand, I hate to think of leaving it, and I try to prevent it. Besides, I don't like the proposition of going, I don't know where. That's why I get seared. But he says that it's no more than turning down the light and turning it up again. They used to call me a dreamer in Mexico, because I kept seeing things that no one else had thought of, and laid out railways and tapped mines for the future; but I was nothing to him. I'm a high-and-dry hedge-clipper alongside. I'm betting on him all the time; but no one seems to be working to make his dreams come true, except himself. I don't count; I'm no good, no real good. I'm only fit to run the commissariat, and see that he gets enough to eat, and has a safe camel, and so on. Why doesn't some one else help him? He's working for humanity. Give him half a chance, and Haroun-al-Raschid won't be in it. Kaid trusts him, depends on him, stands by him, but doesn't seem to know how to help him when help would do most good. The Saadat does it all himself; and if it wasn't that the poor devil of a fellah sees what he's doing, and cottons to him, and the dervishes and Arabs feel he's right, he might as well leave. But it's just there he counts. There's something about him, something that's Quaker in him, primitive, silent, and perceptive--if that's a real word--which makes them feel that he's honest, and isn't after anything for himself. Arabs don't talk much; they make each other understand without many words. They think with all their might on one thing at a time, and they think things into happening--and so does he. He's a thousand years old, which is about as old-fashioned as I mean, and as wise, and as plain to read as though you'd write the letters of words as big as a date-palm. That's where he makes the running with them, and they can read their title clear to mansions in the skies! You should hear him talk with Ebn Ezra Bey--perhaps you don't know of Ezra? He was a friend of his Uncle Benn, and brought the news of his massacre to England, and came back with the Saadat. Well, three days ago Ebn Ezra came, and there came with him, too, Halim Bey, the Egyptian, who had brought the letters to us from Cairo. Elm Ezra found him down the river deserted by his niggers, and sick with this new sort of fever, which the Saadat is knocking out of time. And there he lies, the Saadat caring for him as though he was his brother. But that's his way; though, now I come to think of it, the Saadat doesn't suspect what I suspect, that Halim Bey brought word from Nahoum to our sheikhs here to keep us here, or lose us, or do away with us. Old Ebn Ezra doesn't say much himself, doesn't say anything about that; but he's guessing the same as me. And the Saadat looks as though he was ready for his grave, but keeps going, going, going. He never seems to sleep. What keeps him alive I don't know. Sometimes I feel clean knocked out myself with the little I do, but he's a travelling hospital all by his lonesome. Later.--I had to stop writing, for things have been going on-- several. I can see that Ebn Ezra has told the Saadat things that make him want to get away to Cairo as soon as possible. That it's Nahoum Pasha and others--oh, plenty of others, of course--I'm certain; but what the particular game is I don't know. Perhaps you know over in England, for you're nearer Cairo than we are by a few miles, and you've got the telegraph. Perhaps there's a revolution, perhaps there's been a massacre of Europeans, perhaps Turkey is kicking up a dust, perhaps Europe is interfering--all of it, all at once. Later still.--I've found out it's a little of all, and the Saadat is ready to go. I guess he can go now pretty soon, for the worst of the fever is over. But something has happened that's upset him- knocked him stony for a minute. Halim Bey was killed last night--by order of the sheikhs, I'm told; but the sheikhs won't give it away. When the Saadat went to them, his eyes blazing, his face pale as a sheet, and as good as swore at them, and treated them as though he'd string them up the next minute, they only put their hands on their heads, and said they were "the fallen leaves for his foot to scatter," the "snow on the hill for his breath to melt"; but they wouldn't give him any satisfaction. So he came back and shut himself up in his tent, and he sits there like a ghost all shrivelled up for want of sleep, and his eyes like a lime-kiln burning; for now he knows this at least, that Halim Bey had brought some word from Kaid's Palace that set these Arabs against him, and nearly stopped my correspondence. You see, there's a widow in Cairo--she's a sister of the American consul, and I've promised to take her with a party camping in the Fayoum--cute as she can be, and plays the guitar. But it's all right now, except that the Saadat is running too close and fine. If he has any real friends in England among the Government people, or among those who can make the Government people sit up, and think what's coming to Egypt and to him, they'll help him now when he needs it. He'll need help real bad when he gets back to Cairo--if we get that far. It isn't yet a sure thing, for we've got to fight in the next day or two--I forgot to tell you that sooner. There's a bull-Arab on the rampage with five thousand men, and he's got a claim out on our sheikh, Mustafa, for ivory he has here, and there's going to be a scrimmage. We've got to make for a better position to-morrow, and meet Abdullah, the bull-Arab, further down the river. That's one reason why Mustafa and all our friends here are so sweet on us now. They look on the Saadat as a kind of mascot, and they think that he can wipe out the enemy with his flute, which they believe is a witch-stick to work wonders. He's just sent for me to come, and I must stop soon. Say, he hasn't had sleep for a fortnight. It's too much; he can't stand it. I tried it, and couldn't. It wore me down. He's killing himself for others. I can't manage him; but I guess you could. I apologise, dear Lady Cousin. I'm only a hayseed, and a failure, but I guess you'll understand that I haven't thought only of myself as I wrote this letter. The higher you go in life the more you'll understand; that's your nature. I'll get this letter off by a nigger to-morrow, with those the Saadat is sending through to Cairo by some friendlies. It's only a chance; but everything's chance here now. Anyhow, it's safer than leaving it till the scrimmage. If you get this, won't you try and make the British Government stand by the Saadat? Your husband, the lord, could pull it off, if he tried; and if you ask him, I guess he'd try. I must be off now. David Pasha will be waiting. Well, give my love to the girls! Your affectionate cousin, TOM LACEY. P. S.--I've got a first-class camel for our scrimmage day after to-morrow. Mustafa sent it to me this morning. I had a fight on mules once, down at Oaxaca, but that was child's play. This will be "slaughter in the pan," if the Saadat doesn't stop it somehow. Perhaps he will. If I wasn't so scared I'd wish he couldn't stop it, for it will be a way-up Barbarian scrap, the tongs and the kettle, a bully panjandrum. It gets mighty dull in the desert when you're not moving. But "it makes to think," as the French say. Since I came out here I've had several real centre thoughts, sort of main principles-key-thoughts, that's it. What I want now is a sort of safety-ring to string 'em on and keep 'em safe; for I haven't a good memory, and I get mighty rattled sometimes. Thoughts like these are like the secret of a combination lock; they let you into the place where the gold and securities and title-deeds of life are. Trouble is, I haven't got a safety-ring, and I'm certain to lose them. I haven't got what you'd call an intellectual memory. Things come in flashes to me out of experiences, and pull me up short, and I say, "Yes, that's it--that's it; I understand." I see why it's so, and what it means, and where it leads, and how far it spreads. It's five thousand years old. Adam thought it after Cain killed Abel, or Abel thought it just before he died, or Eve learned it from Lilith, or it struck Abraham when he went to sacrifice Isaac. Sometimes things hit me deep like that here in the desert. Then I feel I can see just over on the horizon the tents of Moab in the wilderness; that yesterday and to-day are the same; that I've crossed the prairies of the everlasting years, and am playing about with Ishmael in the wild hills, or fighting with Ahab. Then the world and time seem pretty small potatoes. You see how it is. I never was trained to think, and I get stunned by thoughts that strike me as being dug right out of the centre. Sometimes I'd like to write them down; but I can't write; I can only talk as I'm talking to you. If you weren't so high up, and so much cleverer than I am, and such a thinker, I'd like you to be my safety-ring, if you would. I could tell the key-thoughts to you when they came to me, before I forgot them with all their bearings; and by-and-by they'd do me a lot of good when I got away from this influence, and back into the machinery of the Western world again. If you could come out here, if you could feel what I feel here--and you would feel a thousand times as much--I don't know what you wouldn't do. It's pretty wonderful. The nights with the stars so white and glittering, and so near that you'd think you could reach up and hand them down; the dark, deep, blue beyond; such a width of life all round you, a sort of never-ending space, that everything you ever saw or did seems little, and God so great in a kind of hovering sense like a pair of wings; and all the secrets of time coming out of it all, and sort of touching your face like a velvet wind. I expect you'll think me sentimental, a first-class squash out of the pumpkin-garden; but it's in the desert, and it gets into you and saturates you, till you feel that this is a kind of middle space between the world of cities, and factories, and railways, and tenement-houses, and the quiet world to come--a place where they think out things for the benefit of future generations, and convey them through incarnations, or through the desert. Say, your ladyship, I'm a chatterer, I'm a two-cent philosopher, I'm a baby; but you are too much like your grandmother, who was the daughter of a Quaker like David Pasha, to laugh at me. I've got a suit of fine chain-armour which I bought of an Arab down by Darfur. I'm wondering if it would be too cowardly to wear it in the scrap that's coming. I don't know, though, but what I'll wear it, I get so scared. But it will be a frightful hot thing under my clothes, and it's hot enough without that, so I'm not sure. It depends how much my teeth chatter when I see "the dawn of battle." I've got one more thing before I stop. I'm going to send you a piece of poetry which the Saadat wrote, and tore in two, and threw away. He was working off his imagination, I guess, as you have to do out here. I collected it and copied it, and put in the punctuation--he didn't bother about that. Perhaps he can't punctuate. I don't understand quite what the poetry means, but maybe you will. Anyway, you'll see that it's a real desert piece. Here it is: "THE DESERT ROAD "In the sands I lived in a hut of palm, There was never a garden to see; There was never a path through the desert calm, Nor a way through its storms for me. "Tenant was I of a lone domain; The far pale caravans wound To the rim of the sky, and vanished again; My call in the waste was drowned. "The vultures came and hovered and fled; And once there stole to my door A white gazelle, but its eyes were dread With the hurt of the wounds it bore. "It passed in the dusk with a foot of fear, And the white cold mists rolled in; "And my heart was the heart of a stricken deer, Of a soul in the snare of sin. "My days they withered like rootless things, And the sands rolled on, rolled wide; Like a pelican I, with broken wings, Like a drifting barque on the tide. "But at last, in the light of a rose-red day, In the windless glow of the morn, From over the hills and from far away, You came--ah, the joy of the morn! "And wherever your footsteps fell, there crept A path--it was fair and wide: A desert road which no sands have swept, Where never a hope has died. "I followed you forth, and your beauty held My heart like an ancient song; By that desert road to the blossoming plains I came-and the way was long! "So I set my course by the light of your eyes; I care not what fate may send; On the road I tread shine the love-starred skies-- The road with never an end." Not many men can do things like that, and the other things, too, that he does. Perhaps he will win through, by himself, but is it fair to have him run the risk? If he ever did you a good turn, as you once said to me he did, won't you help him now? You are on the inside of political things, and if you make up your mind to help, nothing will stop you--that was your grandmother's way. He ought to get his backing pretty soon, or it won't be any good. . . . I hear him at his flute. I expect he's tired waiting for me. Well, give my love to the girls! T. L. As Hylda read, she passed through phases of feeling begotten of new understanding which shook her composure. She had seen David and all that David was doing; Egypt, and all that was threatening the land through the eyes of another who told the whole truth--except about his own cowardice, which was untrue. She felt the issues at stake. While the mention of David's personal danger left her sick for a moment, she saw the wider peril also to the work he had set out to do. What was the thing without the man? It could not exist--it had no meaning. Where was he now? What had been the end of the battle? He had saved others, had he saved himself? The most charmed life must be pierced by the shaft of doom sooner or later; but he was little more than a youth yet, he had only just begun! "And the Saadat looks as though he was ready for his grave--but keeps going, going, going.!" The words kept ringing in her ears. Again: "And he sits there like a ghost all shrivelled up for want of sleep, and his eyes like a lime-kiln burning. . . . He hasn't had sleep for a fortnight. . . . He's killing himself for others." Her own eyes were shining with a dry, hot light, her lips were quivering, but her hands upon the letter were steady and firm. What could she do? She went to a table, picked up the papers, and scanned them hurriedly. Not a word about Egypt. She thought for a moment, then left the drawing- room. Passing up a flight of stairs to her husband's study, she knocked and entered. It was empty; but Eglington was in the house, for a red despatch-box lay open on his table. Instinctively she glanced at the papers exposed in the box, and at the letters beside it. The document on the top of the pile in the box related to Cyprus--the name caught her eye. Another document was half-exposed beneath it. Her hand went to her heart. She saw the words, "Soudan" and "Claridge Pasha." She reached for it, then drew back her hand, and her eyes closed as though to shut it out from her sight. Why should she not see it? They were her husband's papers, husband and wife were one. Husband and wife one! She shrank back. Were they one? An overmastering desire was on her. It seemed terrible to wait, when here before her was news of David, of life or death. Suddenly she put out her hand and drew the Cyprus paper over the Egyptian document, so that she might not see it. As she did so the door opened on her, and Eglington entered. He had seen the swift motion of her hand, and again a look peculiar to him crossed his face, enigmatical, cynical, not pleasant to see. She turned on him slowly, and he was aware of her inward distress to some degree, though her face was ruled to quietness. He nodded at her and smiled. She shrank, for she saw in his nod and his smile that suggestion of knowing all about everything and everybody, and thinking the worst, which had chilled her so often. Even in their short married life it had chilled those confidences which she would gladly have poured out before him, if he had been a man with an open soul. Had there been joined to his intellect and temperament a heart capable of true convictions and abiding love, what a man he might have been! But his intellect was superficial, and his temperament was dangerous, because there were not the experiences of a soul of truth to give the deeper hold upon the meaning of life. She shrank now, as, with a little laugh and glancing suggestively at the despatch-box, he said: "And what do you think of it all?" She felt as though something was crushing her heart within its grasp, and her eyes took on a new look of pain. "I did not read the papers," she answered quietly. "I saw them in your fingers. What creatures women are--so dishonourable in little things," he said ironically. She laid a hand on his. "I did not read them, Harry," she urged. He smiled and patted her arm. "There, there, it doesn't matter," he laughed. He watched her narrowly. "It matters greatly," she answered gently, though his words had cut her like a knife. "I did not read the papers. I only saw the word 'Cyprus' on the first paper, and I pushed it over the paper which had the word 'Egypt' on it 'Egypt' and 'Claridge,' lest I should read it. I did not wish to read it. I am not dishonourable, Harry." He had hurt her more than he had ever done; and only the great matter at stake had prevented the lesser part of her from bursting forth in indignation, from saying things which she did not wish to say. She had given him devotion--such devotion, such self-effacement in his career as few women ever gave. Her wealth--that was so little in comparison with the richness of her nature--had been his; and yet his vast egotism took it all as his right, and she was repaid in a kind of tyranny, the more galling and cruel because it was wielded by a man of intellect and culture, and ancient name and tradition. If he had been warned that he was losing his wife's love, he would have scouted the idea, his self- assurance was so strong, his vanity complete. If, however, he had been told that another man was thinking of his wife, he would have believed it, as he believed now that David had done; and he cherished that belief, and let resentment grow. He was the Earl of Eglington, and no matter what reputation David had reached, he was still a member of a Quaker trader's family, with an origin slightly touched with scandal. Another resentment, however, was steadily rising in him. It galled him that Hylda should take so powerful an interest in David's work in Egypt; and he knew now that she had always done so. It did not ease his vexed spirit to know that thousands of others of his fellow-countrymen did the same. They might do so, but she was his wife, and his own work was the sun round which her mind and interest should revolve. "Why should you be so keen about Egypt and Claridge Pasha?" he said to her now. Her face hardened a little. Had he the right to torture her so? To suspect her? She could read it in his eyes. Her conscience was clear. She was no man's slave. She would not be any man's slave. She was master of her own soul. What right had he to catechise her--as though she were a servant or a criminal? But she checked the answer on her tongue, because she was hurt deeper than words could express, and she said, composedly: "I have here a letter from my cousin Lacey, who is with Claridge Pasha. It has news of him, of events in the Soudan. He had fever, there was to be a fight, and I wished to know if you had any later news. I thought that document there might contain news, but I did not read it. I realised that it was not yours, that it belonged to the Government, that I had no right. Perhaps you will tell me if you have news. Will you?" She leaned against the table wearily, holding her letter. "Let me read your letter first," he said wilfully. A mist seemed to come before her eyes; but she was schooled to self- command, and he did not see he had given her a shock. Her first impulse was to hand the letter over at once; then there came the remembrance of all it contained, all it suggested. Would he see all it suggested? She recalled the words Lacey had used regarding a service which David had once done her. If Eglington asked, what could she say? It was not her secret alone, it was another's. Would she have the right, even if she wished it, to tell the truth, or part of the truth? Or, would she be entitled to relate some immaterial incident which would evade the real truth? What good could it do to tell the dark story? What could it serve? Eglington would horribly misunderstand it--that she knew. There were the verses also. They were more suggestive than anything else, though, indeed, they might have referred to another woman, or were merely impersonal; but she felt that was not so. And there was Eglington's innate unbelief in man and woman! Her first impulse held, however. She would act honestly. She would face whatever there was to face. She would not shelter herself; she would not give him the right in the future to say she had not dealt fairly by him, had evaded any inquest of her life or mind which he might make. She gave him the letter, her heart standing still, but she was filled with a regnant determination to defend herself, to defend David against any attack, or from any consequences. All her life and hopes seemed hanging in the balance, as he began to read the letter. With fear she saw his face cloud over, heard an impatient exclamation pass his lips. She closed her eyes to gather strength for the conflict which was upon her. He spoke, and she vaguely wondered what passage in the letter had fixed his attention. His voice seemed very far away. She scarcely understood. But presently it pierced the clouds of numbness between them, and she realised what he was saying: "Vulgar fellow--I can't congratulate you upon your American cousin. So, the Saadat is great on moral suasion, master of it--never failed yet--not altogether--and Aunt Melissa and skim-milk and early piety!' And 'the Saadat is a wonder from Wondertown'--like a side-show to a circus, a marvel on the flying trapeze! Perhaps you can give me the sense of the letter, if there is any sense in it. I can't read his writing, and it seems interminable. Would you mind?" A sigh of relief broke from her. A weight slipped away from her heart and brain. It was as though one in armour awaited the impact of a heavy, cruel, overwhelming foe, who suddenly disappeared, and the armour fell from the shoulders, and breath came easily once again. "Would you mind?" he repeated drily, as he folded up the letter slowly. He handed it back to her, the note of sarcasm in his voice pricking her like the point of a dagger. She felt angered with herself that he could rouse her temper by such small mean irony. She had a sense of bitter disappointment in him--or was it a deep hurt?--that she had not made him love her, truly love her. If he had only meant the love that he swore before they had married! Why had he deceived her? It had all been in his hands, her fate and future; but almost before the bridal flowers had faded, she had come to know two bitter things: that he had married with a sordid mind; that he was incapable of the love which transmutes the half- comprehending, half-developed affection of the maid into the absorbing, understanding, beautiful passion of the woman. She had married not knowing what love and passion were; uncomprehending, and innocent because uncomprehending; with a fine affection, but capable of loving wholly. One thing had purified her motives and her life--the desire to share with Eglington his public duty and private hopes, to be his confidante, his friend, his coadjutor, proud of him, eager for him, determined to help him. But he had blocked the path to all inner companionship. He did no more than let her share the obvious and outer responsibilities of his life. From the vital things, if there were vital things, she was shut out. What would she not give for one day of simple tenderness and quiet affection, a true day with a true love! She was now perfectly composed. She told him the substance of the letter, of David's plight, of the fever, of the intended fight, of Nahoum Pasha, of the peril to David's work. He continued to interrogate her, while she could have shrieked out the question, "What is in yonder document? What do you know? Have you news of his safety?" Would he never stop his questioning? It was trying her strength and patience beyond endurance. At last he drew the document slowly from the despatch- box, and glanced up and down it musingly. "I fancy he won the battle," he said slowly, "for they have news of him much farther down the river. But from this letter I take it he is not yet within the zone of safety-- so Nahoum Pasha says." He flicked the document upwards with his thumb. "What is our Government doing to help him?" she asked, checking her eagerness. His heart had gradually hardened towards Egypt. Power had emphasised a certain smallness in him. Personal considerations informed the policy of the moment. He was not going to be dragged at the chariot-wheels of the Quaker. To be passive, when David in Egypt had asked for active interest; to delay, when urgency was important to Claridge Pasha; to speak coldly on Egyptian affairs to his chief, the weak Foreign Secretary, this was the policy he had begun. So he answered now: "It is the duty of the Egyptian Government to help him--of Prince Kaid, of Nahoum Pasha, who is acting for him in his absence, who governs finance, and therefore the army. Egypt does not belong to England." "Nahoum Pasha is his enemy. He will do nothing to help, unless you force him." "Why do you say that?" "Because I know Nahoum Pasha." "When did you know Nahoum?" "In Egypt, years ago." "Your acquaintance is more varied than I thought," he said sarcastically. "Oh, do not speak to me like that!" she returned, in a low, indignant voice. "Do not patronise me; do not be sarcastic." "Do not be so sensitive," he answered unemotionally. "You surely do not mean that you--that the Government will not help him? He is doing the work of Europe, of civilisation, of Christianity there. He is sacrificing himself for the world. Do you not see it? Oh, but you do! You would realise his work if you knew Egypt as I have seen it." "Expediency must govern the policy of nations," he answered critically. "But, if through your expediency he is killed like a rat in a trap, and his work goes to pieces--all undone! Is there no right in the matter?" "In affairs of state other circumstances than absolute 'right' enter. Here and there the individual is sacrificed who otherwise would be saved --if it were expedient." "Oh, Eglington! He is of your own county, of your own village, is your neighbour, a man of whom all England should be proud. You can intervene if you will be just, and say you will. I know that intervention has been discussed in the Cabinet." "You say he is of my county. So are many people, and yet they are not county people. A neighbour he was, but more in a Scriptural than social sense." He was hurting her purposely. She made a protesting motion of her hand. "No, no, no, do not be so small. This is a great matter. Do a great thing now; help it to be done for your own honour, for England's honour--for a good man's sake, for your country's sake." There came a knock at the door. An instant afterwards a secretary entered. "A message from the Prime Minister, sir." He handed over a paper. "Will you excuse me?" he asked Hylda suavely, in his eyes the enigmatical look that had chilled her so often before. She felt that her appeal had been useless. She prepared to leave the room. He took her hand, kissed it gallantly, and showed her out. It was his way--too civil to be real. Blindly she made her way to her room. Inside, she suddenly swayed and sank fainting to the ground, as Kate Heaver ran forward to her. Kate saw the letter in the clinched hand. Loosening it, she read two or three sentences with a gasp. They contained Tom Lacey's appeal for David. She lifted Hylda's head to her shoulder with endearing words, and chafed the cold hands, murmuring to herself the while. CHAPTER XXIV THE QUESTIONER "What has thee come to say?" Sitting in his high-backed chair, Luke Claridge seemed a part of its dignified severity. In the sparsely furnished room with its uncarpeted floor, its plain teak table, its high wainscoting and undecorated walls, the old man had the look of one who belonged to some ancient consistory, a judge whose piety would march with an austerity that would save a human soul by destroying the body, if need be. A crisis had come, vaguely foreseen, sombrely eluded. A questioner was before him who, poor, unheeded, an ancient victim of vice, could yet wield a weapon whose sweep of wounds would be wide. Stern and masterful as he looked in his arid isolation, beneath all was a shaking anxiety. He knew well what the old chair-maker had come to say, but, in the prologue of the struggle before him, he was unwittingly manoeuvring for position. "Speak," he added presently, as Soolsby fumbled in his great loose pockets, and drew forth a paper. "What has thee to say?" Without a word, Soolsby handed over the paper, but the other would not take it. "What is it?" he asked, his lips growing pale. "Read--if thee can read." The gibe in the last words made the colour leap into Soolsby's face, and a fighting look came. He too had staved off this inevitable hour, had dreaded it, but now his courage shot up high. "Doost think I have forgotten how to read since the day I put my hand to a writing you've hid so long from them it most concerns? Ay, I can read, and I can write, and I will prove that I can speak too before I've done." "Read--read," rejoined the old man hoarsely, his hands tightly gripping the chair-arm. "The fever caught him at Shendy--that is the place--" "He is not dead--David is not dead?" came the sharp, pained interruption. The old man's head strained forward, his eyes were misty and dazed. Soolsby's face showed no pity for the other's anxiety; it had a kind of triumph in it. "Nay, he is living," he answered. "He got well of the fever, and came to Cairo, but he's off again into the desert. It's the third time. You can't be tempting Providence for ever. This paper here says it's too big a job for one man--like throwing a good life away. Here in England is his place, it says. And so say I; and so I have come to say, and to hear you say so, too. What is he there? One man against a million. What put it in his head that he thinks he can do it?" His voice became lower; he fixed his eyes meaningly on the other. "When a man's life got a twist at the start, no wonder it flies off madlike to do the thing that isn't to be done, and leave undone the thing that's here for it to do. Doost think a straight line could come from the crooked line you drew for him?" "He is safe--he is well and strong again?" asked the old man painfully. Suddenly he reached out a hand for the paper. "Let me read," he said, in a voice scarce above a whisper. He essayed to take the paper calmly, but it trembled in his hands. He spread it out and fumbled for his glasses, but could not find them, and he gazed helplessly at the page before him. Soolsby took the paper from him and read slowly: ". . . Claridge Pasha has done good work in Egypt, but he is a generation too soon, it may be two or three too soon. We can but regard this fresh enterprise as a temptation to Fate to take from our race one of the most promising spirits and vital personalities which this generation has produced. It is a forlorn hope. Most Englishmen familiar with Claridge Pasha's life and aims will ask--" An exclamation broke from the old man. In the pause which followed he said: "It was none of my doing. He went to Egypt against my will." "Ay, so many a man's said that's not wanted to look his own acts straight in the face. If Our Man had been started different, if he'd started in the path where God A'mighty dropped him, and not in the path Luke Claridge chose, would he have been in Egypt to-day wearing out his life? He's not making carpets there, he's only beating them." The homely illustration drawn from the business in which he had been interested so many years went home to Claridge's mind. He shrank back, and sat rigid, his brows drawing over the eyes, till they seemed sunk in caverns of the head. Suddenly Soolsby's voice rose angrily. Luke Claridge seemed so remorseless and unyielding, so set in his vanity and self-will! Soolsby misread the rigid look in the face, the pale sternness. He did not know that there had suddenly come upon Luke Claridge the full consciousness of an agonising truth--that all he had done where David was concerned had been a mistake. The hard look, the sternness, were the signals of a soul challenging itself. "Ay, you've had your own will," cried Soolsby mercilessly. "You've said to God A'mighty that He wasn't able to work out to a good end what He'd let happen; and so you'd do His work for Him. You kept the lad hid away from the people that belonged to him, you kept him out of his own, and let others take his birthright. You put a shame upon him, hiding who his father and his father's people were, and you put a shame upon her that lies in the graveyard--as sweet a lass, as good, as ever lived on earth. Ay, a shame and a scandal! For your eyes were shut always to the sidelong looks, your ears never heard the things people said--'A good- for-nothing ship-captain, a scamp and a ne'er-do-weel, one that had a lass at every port, and, maybe, wives too; one that none knew or ever had seen--a pirate maybe, or a slave-dealer, or a jail-bird, for all they knew! Married--oh yes, married right enough, but nothing else--not even a home. Just a ring on the finger, and then, beyond and away!' Around her life that brought into the world our lad yonder you let a cloud draw down; and you let it draw round his, too, for he didn't even bear his father's name--much less knew who his father was--or live in his father's home, or come by his own in the end. You gave the lad shame and scandal. Do you think, he didn't feel it, was it much or little? He wasn't walking in the sun, but--" "Mercy! Mercy!" broke in the old man, his hand before his eyes. He was thinking of Mercy, his daughter, of the words she had said to him when she died, "Set him in the sun, father, where God can find him," and her name now broke from his lips. Soolsby misunderstood. "Ay, there'll be mercy when right's been done Our Man, and not till then. I've held my tongue for half a lifetime, but I'll speak now and bring him back. Ay, he shall come back and take the place that is his, and all that belongs to him. That lordship yonder-- let him go out into the world and make his place as the Egyptian did. He's had his chance to help Our Man, and he has only hurt, not helped him. We've had enough of his second-best lordship and his ways." The old man's face was painful in its stricken stillness now. He had regained control of himself, his brain had recovered greatly from its first suffusion of excitement. "How does thee know my lord yonder has hurt and not helped him?" he asked in an even voice, his lips tightening, however. "How does thee know it surely?" "From Kate Heaver, my lady's maid. My lady's illness--what was it? Because she would help Our Man, and, out of his hatred, yonder second son said that to her which no woman can bear that's a true woman; and then, what with a chill and fever, she's been yonder ailing these weeks past. She did what she could for him, and her husband did what he could against him." The old man settled back in his chair again. "Thee has kept silent all these years? Thee has never told any that lives?" "I gave my word to her that died--to our Egyptian's mother--that I would never speak unless you gave me leave to speak, or if you should die before me. It was but a day before the lad was born. So have I kept my word. But now you shall speak. Ay, then, but you shall speak, or I'll break my word to her, to do right by her son. She herself would speak if she was here, and I'll answer her, if ever I see her after Purgatory, for speaking now." The old man drew himself up in his chair as though in pain, and said very slowly, almost thickly: "I shall answer also for all I did. The spirit moved me. He is of my blood--his mother was dead--in his veins is the blood that runs in mine. His father--aristocrat, spendthrift, adventurer, renegade, who married her in secret, and left her, bidding her return to me, until he came again, and she to bear him a child--was he fit to bring up the boy?" He breathed heavily, his face became wan and haggard, as he continued: "Restless on land or sea, for ever seeking some new thing, and when he found it, and saw what was therein, he turned away forgetful. God put it into my heart to abjure him and the life around him. The Voice made me rescue the child from a life empty and bare and heartless and proud. When he returned, and my child was in her grave, he came to me in secret; he claimed the child of that honest lass whom he had married under a false name. I held my hand lest I should kill him, man of peace as I am. Even his father--Quaker though he once became--did we not know ere the end that he had no part or lot with us, that he but experimented with his soul, as with all else? Experiment--experiment--experiment, until at last an Eglington went exploring in my child's heart, and sent her to her grave--the God of Israel be her rest and refuge! What should such high- placed folk do stooping out of their sphere to us who walk in plain paths? What have we in common with them? My soul would have none of them--masks of men, the slaves of riches and titles, and tyrants over the poor." His voice grew hoarse and high, and his head bent forward. He spoke as though forgetful of Soolsby's presence: "As the East is from the West, so were we separate from these lovers of this world, the self-indulgent, the hard-hearted, the proud. I chose for the child that he should stay with me and not go to him, to remain among his own people and his own class. He was a sinister, an evil man. Was the child to be trusted with him?" "The child was his own child," broke in Soolsby. "Your daughter was his lady--the Countess of Eglington! Not all the Quakers in heaven or earth could alter that. His first-born son is Earl of Eglington, and has been so these years past; and you, nor his second-best lordship there, nor all the courts in England can alter that. . . . Ay, I've kept my peace, but I will speak out now. I was with the Earl--James Fetherdon he called himself--when he married her that's gone to heaven, if any ever went to heaven; and I can prove all. There's proof aplenty, and 'tis a pity, ay, God's pity! that 'twas not used long ago. Well I knew, as the years passed, that the Earl's heart was with David, but he had not the courage to face it all, so worn away was the man in him. Ah, if the lad had always been with him--who can tell?--he might have been different! Whether so or not, it was the lad's right to take his place his mother gave him, let be whatever his father was. 'Twas a cruel thing done to him. His own was his own, to run his race as God A'mighty had laid the hurdles, not as Luke Claridge willed. I'm sick of seeing yonder fellow in Our Man's place, he that will not give him help, when he may; he that would see him die like a dog in the desert, brother or no brother--" "He does not know--Lord Eglington does not know the truth?" interposed the old man in a heavy whisper. "He does not know, but, if he knew, would it matter to him! So much the more would he see Our Man die yonder in the sands. I know the breed. I know him yonder, the skim-milk lord. There is no blood of justice, no milk of kindness in him. Do you think his father that I friended in this thing--did he ever give me a penny, or aught save that hut on the hill that was not worth a pound a year? Did he ever do aught to show that he remembered?--Like father like son. I wanted naught. I held my peace, not for him, but for her--for the promise I made her when she smiled at me and said: 'If I shouldn't be seeing thee again, Soolsby, remember; and if thee can ever prove a friend to the child that is to be, prove it.' And I will prove it now. He must come back to his own. Right's right, and I will have it so. More brains you may have, and wealth you have, but not more common sense than any common man like me. If the spirit moved you to hold your peace, it moves me to make you speak. With all your meek face you've been a hard, stiff- necked man, a tyrant too, and as much an aristocrat to such as me as any lord in the land. But I've drunk the mug of silence to the bottom. I've--" He stopped short, seeing a strange look come over the other's face, then stepped forward quickly as the old man half rose from his chair, murmuring thickly: "Mercy--David, my lord, come--!" he muttered, and staggered, and fell into Soolsby's arms. His head dropped forward on his breast, and with a great sigh he sank into unconsciousness. Soolsby laid him on a couch, and ran to the door and called aloud for help. .......................... The man of silence was silent indeed now. In the room where paralysis had fallen on him a bed was brought, and he lay nerveless on the verge of a still deeper silence. The hours went by. His eyes opened, he saw and recognised them all, but his look rested only on Faith and Soolsby; and, as time went on, these were the only faces to which he gave an answering look of understanding. Days wore away, but he neither spoke nor moved. People came and went softly, and he gave no heed. There was ever a trouble in his eyes when they were open. Only when Soolsby came did it seem to lessen. Faith saw this, and urged Soolsby to sit by him. She had questioned much concerning what had happened before the stroke fell, but Soolsby said only that the old man had been greatly troubled about David. Once Lady Eglington, frail and gentle and sympathetic, came, but the trouble deepened in his eyes, and the lids closed over them, so that he might not see her face. When she had gone, Soolsby, who had been present and had interpreted the old man's look according to a knowledge all his own, came over to the bed, leaned down and whispered: "I will speak now." Then the eyes opened, and a smile faintly flickered at the mouth. "I will speak now," Soolsby said again into the old man's ear. CHAPTER XXV THE VOICE THROUGH THE DOOR That night Soolsby tapped at the door of the lighted laboratory of the Cloistered House where Lord Eglington was at work; opened it, peered in, and stepped inside. With a glass retort in his hand Eglington faced him. "What's this--what do you want?" he demanded. "I want to try an experiment," answered Soolsby grimly. "Ah, a scientific turn!" rejoined Eglington coolly--looking at him narrowly, however. He was conscious of danger of some kind. Then for a minute neither spoke. Now that Soolsby had come to the moment for which he had waited for so many ,years, the situation was not what he had so often prefigured. The words he had chosen long ago were gone from his memory; in his ignorance of what had been a commonplace to Soolsby's dark reflection so long, the man he had meant to bring low stood up before him on his own ground, powerful and unabashed. Eglington wore a blue smock, and over his eyes was a green shade to protect them from the light, but they peered sharply out at the chair- maker, and were boldly alive to the unexpected. He was no physical coward, and, in any case, what reason had he for physical fear in the presence of this man weakened by vice and age? Yet ever since he was a boy there had existed between them an antagonism which had shown itself in many ways. There had ever been something sinister in Soolsby's attitude to his father and himself. Eglington vaguely knew that now he was to face some trial of mind and nerve, but with great deliberation he continued dropping liquid from a bottle into the glass retort he carried, his eyes, however, watchful of his visitor, who involuntarily stared around the laboratory. It was fifteen years since Soolsby had been in this room; and then he had faced this man's father with a challenge on his tongue such as he meant to speak now. The smell of the chemicals, the carboys filled with acids, the queer, tapering glasses with engraved measurements showing against the coloured liquids, the great blue bottles, the mortars and pestles, the microscopic instruments--all brought back the far-off, acrid scene between the late Earl and himself. Nothing had changed, except that now there were wires which gave out hissing sparks, electrical instruments invented since the earlier day; except that this man, gently dropping acids into the round white bottle upon a crystal which gave off musty fumes, was bolder, stronger, had more at stake than the other. Slowly Eglington moved back to put the retort on a long table against the wall, and Soolsby stepped forward till he stood where the electric sparks were gently hissing about him. Now Eglington leaned against the table, poured some alcohol on his fingers to cleanse the acid from them, and wiped them with a piece of linen, while he looked inquiringly at Soolsby. Still, Soolsby did not speak. Eglington lit a cigarette, and took away the shade from his eyes. "Well, now, what is your experiment?" he asked, "and why bring it here? Didn't you know the way to the stables or the scullery?" "I knew my way better here," answered Soolsby, steadying himself. "Ah, you've been here often?" asked Eglington nonchalantly, yet feeling for the cause of this midnight visit. "It is fifteen years since I was here, my lord. Then I came to see the Earl of Eglington." "And so history repeats itself every fifteen years! You came to see the Earl of Eglington then; you come to see the Earl of Eglington again-- after fifteen years!" "I come to speak with him that's called the Earl of Eglington." Eglington's eyes half closed, as though the light hurt them. "That sounds communistic, or is it pure Quakerism? I believe they used to call my father Friend Robert till he backslided. But you are not a Quaker, Soolsby, so why be too familiar? Or is it merely the way of the old family friend?" "I knew your father before you were born, my lord--he troosted me then." "So long? And fifteen years ago--here?" He felt a menace, vague and penetrating. His eyes were hard and cruel. "It wasn't a question of troost then; 'twas one of right or wrong--naught else." "Ah--and who was right, and what was wrong?" At that moment there came a tap at the door leading into the living part of the house, and the butler entered. "The doctor--he has used up all his oxygen, my lord. He begs to know if you can give him some for Mr. Claridge. Mr. Claridge is bad to-night." A sinister smile passed over Eglington's face. "Who brings the message, Garry?" "A servant--Miss Claridge's, my lord." An ironical look came into Eglington's eyes; then they softened a little. In a moment he placed a jar of oxygen in the butler's hands. "My compliments to Miss Claridge, and I am happy to find my laboratory of use at last to my neighbours," he said, and the door closed upon the man. Then he came back thoughtfully. Soolsby had not moved. "Do you know what oxygen's for, Soolsby?" he asked quizzically. "No, my lord, I've never heerd tell of it." "Well, if you brought the top of Ben Lomond to the bottom of a coal-mine --breath to the breathless--that's it. "You've been doing that to Mr. Claridge, my lord?" "A little oxygen more or less makes all the difference to a man--it probably will to neighbour Claridge, Soolsby; and so I've done him a good turn." A grim look passed over Soolsby's face. "It's the first, I'm thinking, my lord, and none too soon; and it'll be the last, I'm thinking, too. It's many a year since this house was neighbourly to that." Eglington's eyes almost closed, as he studied the other's face; then he said: "I asked you a little while ago who was right and what was wrong when you came to see my father here fifteen years ago. Well?" Suddenly a thought flashed into his eyes, and it seemed to course through his veins like some anaesthetic, for he grew very still, and a minute passed before he added quietly: "Was it a thing between my father and Luke Claridge? There was trouble--well, what was it?" All at once he seemed to rise above the vague anxiety that possessed him, and he fingered inquiringly a long tapering glass of acids on the bench beside him. "There's been so much mystery, and I suppose it was nothing, after all. What was it all about? Or do you know--eh? Fifteen years ago you came to see my father, and now you have come to see me--all in the light o' the moon, as it were; like a villain in a play. Ah, yes, you said it was to make an experiment--yet you didn't know what oxygen was! It's foolish making experiments, unless you know what you are playing with, Soolsby. See, here are two glasses." He held them up. "If I poured one into the other, we'd have an experiment--and you and I would be picked up in fragments and carried away in a basket. And that wouldn't be a successful experiment, Soolsby." "I'm not so sure of that, my lord. Some things would be put right then." "H'm, there would be a new Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and--" "And Claridge Pasha would come back from Egypt, my lord," was the sharp interjection. Suddenly Soolsby's anger flared up, his hands twitched. "You had your chance to be a friend to him, my lord. You promised her yonder at the Red Mansion that you would help him--him that never wronged you, him you always wronged, and you haven't lifted hand to help him in his danger. A moment since you asked me who was right and what was wrong. You shall know. If you had treated him right, I'd have held my peace, and kept my word to her that's gone these thirty-odd years. I'll hold it no more, and so I told Luke Claridge. I've been silent, but not for your father's sake or yours, for he was as cruel as you, with no heart, and a conscience like a pin's head, not big enough for use. . . Ay, you shall know. You are no more the Earl of Eglington than me. "The Earl of Eglington is your elder brother, called David Claridge." As Soolsby's words poured forth passionately, weighty, Eglington listened like one in a dream. Since this man entered the laboratory fifty reasons for his coming had flashed across his mind; he had prepared himself at many corners for defence, he had rallied every mental resource, he had imagined a dozen dangerous events which his father and Luke Claridge shared--with the balance against his father; but this thing was beyond all speculation. Yet on the instant the words were said he had a conviction of their inevitable truth. Even as they were uttered, kaleidoscopic memories rushed in, and David's face, figure, personal characteristics, flashed before him. He saw, he felt, the likeness to his father and himself; a thousand things were explained that could only be explained by this fatal fact launched at him without warning. It was as though, fully armed for his battle of life, he had suddenly been stripped of armour and every weapon, and left naked on the field. But he had the mind of the gamester, and the true gamester's self-control. He had taken chances so often that the tornado of ill-luck left him standing. "What proof have you?" he asked quietly. Soolsby's explicit answer left no ground for doubt. He had not asked the question with any idea of finding gaps in the evidence, but rather to find if there were a chance for resistance, of escape, anywhere. The marriage certificate existed; identification of James Fetherdon with his father could be established by Soolsby and Luke Claridge. Soolsby and Luke Claridge! Luke Claridge--he could not help but smile cynically, for he was composed and calculating now. A few minutes ago he had sent a jar of oxygen to keep Luke Claridge alive! But for it one enemy to his career, to his future, would be gone. He did not shrink from the thought. Born a gentleman, there were in him some degenerate characteristics which heart could not drown or temperament refine. Selfishness was inwoven with every fibre of his nature. Now, as he stood with eyes fixed on Soolsby, the world seemed to narrow down to this laboratory. It was a vacuum where sensation was suspended, and the million facts of ordinary existence disappeared into inactivity. There was a fine sense of proportion in it all. Only the bare essential things that concerned him remained: David Claridge was the Earl of Eglington, this man before him knew, Luke Claridge knew; and there was one thing yet to know! When he spoke his voice showed no excitement--the tones were even, colourless. "Does he know?" In these words he acknowledged that he believed the tale told him. Soolsby had expected a different attitude; he was not easier in mind because his story had not been challenged. He blindly felt working in the man before him a powerful mind, more powerful because it faced the truth unflinchingly; but he knew that this did not mean calm acceptance of the consequences. He, not Eglington, was dazed and embarrassed, was not equal to the situation. He moved uneasily, changed his position. "Does he know?" Eglington questioned again quietly. There was no need for Eglington to explain who he was. "Of course he does not know--I said so. If he knew, do you think he'd be in Egypt and you here, my lord?" Eglington was very quiet. His intellect more than his passions were now at work. "I am not sure. You never can tell. This might not mean much to him. He has got his work cut out; he wasn't brought up to this. What he has done is in line with the life he has lived as a pious Quaker. What good would it do to bring him back? I have been brought up to it; I am used to it; I have worked things out 'according to the state of life to which I was called.' Take what I've always had away from me, and I am crippled; give him what he never had, and it doesn't work into his scheme. It would do him no good and me harm--Where's the use? Besides, I am still my father's son. Don't you see how unreasonable you are? Luke Claridge was right. He knew that he and his belonged to a different sphere. He didn't speak. Why do you speak now after all these years when we are all set in our grooves? It's silly to disturb us, Soolsby." The voice was low, persuasive, and searching; the mind was working as it had never worked before, to achieve an end by peaceful means, when war seemed against him. And all the time he was fascinated by the fact that Soolsby's hand was within a few inches of a live electric wire, which, if he touched, would probably complete "the experiment" he had come to make; and what had been the silence of a generation would continue indefinitely. It was as though Fate had deliberately tempted him and arranged the necessary conditions, for Soolsby's feet were in a little pool of liquid which had been spilled on the floor--the experiment was exact and real. For minutes he had watched Soolsby's hand near the wire-had watched as he talked, and his talk was his argument for non-interference against warning the man who had come to destroy him and his career. Why had Fate placed that hand so near the wire there, and provided the other perfect conditions for tragedy? Why should he intervene? It would never have crossed his mind to do Soolsby harm, yet here, as the man's arm was stretched out to strike him, Fate offered an escape. Luke Claridge was stricken with paralysis, no doubt would die; Soolsby alone stood in his way. "You see, Soolsby, it has gone on too long," he added, in a low, penetrating tone. "It would be a crime to alter things now. Give him the earldom and the estates, and his work in Egypt goes to pieces; he will be spoiled for all he wants to do. I've got my faults, but, on the whole, I'm useful, and I play my part here, as I was born to it, as well as most. Anyhow, it's no robbery for me to have what has been mine by every right except the accident of being born after him. I think you'll see that you will do a good thing to let it all be. Luke Claridge, if he was up and well, wouldn't thank you for it--have you got any right to give him trouble, too? Besides, I've saved his life to-night, and. . . . and perhaps I might save yours, Soolsby, if it was in danger." Soolsby's hand had moved slightly. It was only an inch from the wire. For an instant the room was terribly still. An instant, and it might be too late. An instant, and Soolsby would be gone. Eglington watched the hand which had been resting on the table turn slowly over to the wire. Why should he intervene? Was it his business? This thing was not his doing. Destiny had laid the train of circumstance and accident, and who was stronger than Destiny? In spite of himself his eyes fixed themselves on Soolsby's hand. It was but a hair's breadth from the wire. The end would come now. Suddenly a voice was heard outside the door. "Eglington!" it called. Soolsby started, his hand drew spasmodically away from the wire, and he stepped back quickly. The door opened, and Hylda entered. "Mr. Claridge is dead, Eglington," she said. Destiny had decided. CHAPTER XXVI "I OWE YOU NOTHING" Beside the grave under the willow-tree another grave had been made. It was sprinkled with the fallen leaves of autumn. In the Red Mansion Faith's delicate figure moved forlornly among relics of an austere, beloved figure vanished from the apricot-garden and the primitive simplicity of wealth combined with narrow thought. Since her father's death, the bereaved girl had been occupied by matters of law and business, by affairs of the estate; but the first pressure was over, long letters had been written to David which might never reach him; and now, when the strain was withdrawn, the gentle mind was lost in a grey mist of quiet suffering. In Hamley there were but two in whom she had any real comfort and help--Lady Eglington and the old chair-maker. Of an afternoon or evening one or the other was to be seen in the long high-wainscoted room, where a great fire burned, or in the fruitless garden where the breeze stirred the bare branches. Almost as deep a quiet brooded in the Cloistered House as in the home where mourning enjoined movement in a minor key. Hylda had not recovered wholly from the illness which had stricken her down on that day in London when she had sought news of David from Eglington, at such cost to her peace and health and happiness. Then had come her slow convalescence in Hamley, and long days of loneliness, in which Eglington seemed to retreat farther and farther from her inner life. Inquiries had poured in from friends in town, many had asked to come and see her; flowers came from one or two who loved her benignly, like Lord Windlehurst; and now and then she had some cheerful friend with her who cared for music or could sing; and then the old home rang; but she was mostly alone, and Eglington was kept in town by official business the greater part of each week. She did not gain strength as quickly as she ought to have done, and this was what brought the Duchess of Snowdon down on a special mission one day of early November. Ever since the night she had announced Luke Claridge's death to Eglington, had discovered Soolsby with him, had seen the look in her husband's face and caught the tension of the moment on which she had broken, she had been haunted by a hovering sense of trouble. What had Soolsby been doing in the laboratory at that time of night? What was the cause of this secret meeting? All Hamley knew--she had long known--how Luke Claridge had held the Cloistered House in abhorrence, and she knew also that Soolsby worshipped David and Faith, and, whatever the cause of the family antipathy, championed it. She was conscious of a shadow somewhere, and behind it all was the name of David's father, James Fetherdon. That last afternoon when she had talked with him, and he had told her of his life, she had recalled the name as one she had seen or heard, and it had floated into her mind at last that she had seen it among the papers and letters of the late Countess of Eglington. As the look in Eglington's face the night she came upon him and Soolsby in the laboratory haunted her, so the look in her own face had haunted Soolsby. Her voice announcing Luke Claridge's death had suddenly opened up a new situation to him. It stunned him; and afterwards, as he saw Hylda with Faith in the apricot-garden, or walking in the grounds of the Cloistered House hour after hour alone or with her maid, he became vexed by a problem greater than had yet perplexed him. It was one thing to turn Eglington out of his lands and home and title; it was another thing to strike this beautiful being, whose smile had won him from the first, whose voice, had he but known, had saved his life. Perhaps the truth in some dim way was conveyed to him, for he came to think of her a little as he thought of Faith. Since the moment when he had left the laboratory and made his way to the Red Mansion, he and Eglington had never met face to face; and he avoided a meeting. He was not a blackmailer, he had no personal wrongs to avenge, he had not sprung the bolt of secrecy for evil ends; and when he saw the possible results of his disclosure, he was unnerved. His mind had seen one thing only, the rights of "Our Man," the wrong that had been done him and his mother; but now he saw how the sword of justice, which he had kept by his hand these many years, would cut both ways. His mind was troubled, too, that he had spoken while yet Luke Claridge lived, and so broken his word to Mercy Claridge. If he had but waited till the old man died--but one brief half-hour--his pledge would have been kept. Nothing had worked out wholly as he expected. The heavens had not fallen. The "second-best lordship" still came and went, the wheels went round as usual. There was no change; yet, as he sat in his hut and looked down into the grounds of the Cloistered House, he kept saying to himself. "It had to be told. It's for my lord now. He knows the truth. I'll wait and see. It's for him to do right by Our Man that's beyond and away." The logic and fairness of this position, reached after much thinking, comforted him. He had done his duty so far. If, in the end, the "second-best lordship" failed to do his part, hid the truth from the world, refused to do right by his half-brother, the true Earl, then would be time to act again. Also he waited for word out of Egypt; and he had a superstitious belief that David would return, that any day might see him entering the door of the Red Mansion. Eglington himself was haunted by a spectre which touched his elbow by day, and said: "You are not the Earl of Eglington," and at night laid a clammy finger on his forehead, waking him, and whispering in his ear: "If Soolsby had touched the wire, all would now be well!" And as deep as thought and feeling in him lay, he felt that Fate had tricked him--Fate and Hylda. If Hylda had not come at that crucial instant, the chairmaker's but on the hill would be empty. Why had not Soolsby told the world the truth since? Was the man waiting to see what course he himself would take? Had the old chair-maker perhaps written the truth to the Egyptian--to his brother David. His brother! The thought irritated every nerve in him. No note of kindness or kinship or blood stirred in him. If, before, he had had innate antagonism and a dark, hovering jealousy, he had a black repugnance now--the antipathy of the lesser to the greater nature, of the man in the wrong to the man in the right. And behind it all was the belief that his wife had set David above him-- by how much or in what fashion he did not stop to consider; but it made him desire that death and the desert would swallow up his father's son and leave no trace behind. Policy? His work in the Foreign Office now had but one policy so far as Egypt was concerned. The active sophistry in him made him advocate non- intervention in Egyptian affairs as diplomatic wisdom, though it was but personal purpose; and he almost convinced himself that he was acting from a national stand-point. Kaid and Claridge Pasha pursued their course of civilisation in the Soudan, and who could tell what danger might not bring forth? If only Soolsby held his peace yet a while! Did Faith know? Luke Claridge was gone without speaking, but had Soolsby told Faith? How closely had he watched the faces round him at Luke Claridge's funeral, to see if they betrayed any knowledge! Anxious days had followed that night in the laboratory. His boundless egotism had widened the chasm between Hylda and himself, which had been made on the day when she fell ill in London, with Lacey's letter in her hand. It had not grown less in the weeks that followed. He nursed a grievance which had, so far as he knew, no foundation in fact; he was vaguely jealous of a man--his brother--thousands of miles away; he was not certain how far Hylda had pierced the disguise of sincerity which he himself had always worn, or how far she understood him. He thought that she shrank from what she had seen of his real self, much or little, and he was conscious of so many gifts and abilities and attractive personal qualities that he felt a sense of injury. Yet what would his position be without her? Suppose David should return and take the estates and titles, and suppose that she should close her hand upon her fortune and leave him, where would he be? He thought of all this as he sat in his room at the Foreign Office and looked over St. James's Park, his day's work done. He was suddenly seized by a new-born anxiety, for he had been so long used to the open purse and the unchecked stream of gold, had taken it so much as a matter of course, as not to realise the possibility of its being withdrawn. He was conscious of a kind of meanness and ugly sordidness in the suggestion; but the stake--his future, his career, his position in the world--was too high to allow him to be too chivalrous. His sense of the real facts was perverted. He said to himself that he must be practical. Moved by the new thought, he seized a time-table and looked up the trains. He had been ten days in town, receiving every morning a little note from Hylda telling of what she had done each day; a calm, dutiful note, written without pretence, and out of a womanly affection with which she surrounded the man who, it seemed once--such a little while ago--must be all in all to her. She had no element of pretence in her. What she could give she gave freely, and it was just what it appeared to be. He had taken it all as his due, with an underlying belief that, if he chose to make love to her again, he could blind her to all else in the world. Hurt vanity and egotism and jealousy had prevented him from luring her back to that fine atmosphere in which he had hypnotised her so few years ago. But suddenly, as he watched the swans swimming in the pond below, a new sense of approaching loss, all that Hylda had meant in his march and progress, came upon him; and he hastened to return to Hamley. Getting out of the train at Heddington, he made up his mind to walk home by the road that David had taken on his return from Egypt, and he left word at the station that he would send for his luggage. His first objective was Soolsby's hut, and, long before he reached it, darkness had fallen. From a light shining through the crack of the blind he knew that Soolsby was at home. He opened the door and entered without knocking. Soolsby was seated at a table, a map and a newspaper spread out before him. Egypt and David, always David and Egypt! Soolsby got to his feet slowly, his eyes fixed inquiringly on his visitor. "I didn't knock," said Eglington, taking off his greatcoat and reaching for a chair; then added, as he seated himself: "Better sit down, Soolsby." After a moment he continued: "Do you mind my smoking?" Soolsby did not reply, but sat down again. He watched Eglington light a cigar and stretch out his hands to the wood fire with an air of comfort. A silence followed. Eglington appeared to forget the other's presence, and to occupy himself with thoughts that glimmered in the fire. At last Soolsby said moodily: "What have you come for, my lord?" "Oh, I am my lord still, am I?" Eglington returned lazily. "Is it a genealogical tree you are studying there?" He pointed to the map. "I've studied your family tree with care, as you should know, my lord; and a map of Egypt"--he tapped the parchment before him--"goes well with it. And see, my lord, Egypt concerns you too. Lord Eglington is there, and 'tis time he was returning-ay, 'tis time." There was a baleful look in Soolsby's eyes. Whatever he might think, whatever considerations might arise at other times, a sinister feeling came upon him when Eglington was with him. "And, my lord," he went on, "I'd be glad to know that you've sent for him, and told him the truth." "Have you?" Eglington flicked the ash from his cigar, speaking coolly. Soolsby looked at him with his honest blue eyes aflame, and answered deliberately: "I was not for taking your place, my lord. 'Twas my duty to tell you, but the rest was between you and the Earl of Eglington." "That was thoughtful of you, Soolsby. And Miss Claridge?" "I told you that night, my lord, that only her father and myself knew; and what was then is now." A look of relief stole across Eglington's face. "Of course--of course. These things need a lot of thought, Soolsby. One must act with care-- no haste, no flurry, no mistakes." "I would not wait too long, my lord, or be too careful." There was menace in the tone. "But if you go at things blind, you're likely to hurt where you don't mean to hurt. When you're mowing in a field by a school-house, you must look out for the children asleep in the grass. Sometimes the longest way round is the shortest way home." "Do you mean to do it or not, my lord? I've left it to you as a gentleman." "It's going to upset more than you think, Soolsby. Suppose he, out there in Egypt"--he pointed again to the map--"doesn't thank me for the information. Suppose he says no, and--" "Right's right. Give him the chance, my lord. How can you know, unless you tell him the truth?" "Do you like living, Soolsby?" "Do you want to kill me, my lord?" There was a dark look in Eglington's face. "But answer me, do you want to live?" "I want to live long enough to see the Earl of Eglington in his own house." "Well, I've made that possible. The other night when you were telling me your little story, you were near sending yourself into eternity--as near as I am knocking this ash off my cigar." His little finger almost touched the ash. "Your hand was as near touching a wire charged with death. I saw it. It would have been better for me if you had gone; but I shut off the electricity. Suppose I hadn't, could I have been blamed? It would have been an accident. Providence did not intervene; I did. You owe me something, Soolsby." Soolsby stared at him almost blindly for a moment. A mist was before his eyes; but through the mist, though he saw nothing of this scene in which he now was, he saw the laboratory, and himself and Eglington, and Eglington's face as it peered at him, and, just before the voice called outside, Eglington's eyes fastened on his hand. It all flashed upon him now, and he saw himself starting back at the sound of the voice. Slowly he got up now, went to the door, and opened it. "My lord, it is not true," he said. "You have not spoken like a gentleman. It was my lady's voice that saved me. This is my castle, my lord--you lodge yonder." He pointed down into the darkness where the lights of the village shone. "I owe you nothing. I pay my debts. Pay yours, my lord, to him that's beyond and away." Eglington kept his countenance as he drew on his great-coat and slowly passed from the house. "I ought to have let you die, Soolsby. Y'ou'll think better of this soon. But it's quite right to leave the matter to me. It may take a little time, but everything will come right. Justice shall be done. Well, good night, Soolsby. You live too much alone, and imagination is a bad thing for the lonely. Good night-good night." Going down the hill quickly, he said to himself: "A sort of second sight he had about that wire. But time is on my side, time and the Soudan-- and 'The heathen in his blindness. . . .' I will keep what is mine. I will keep it!" CHAPTER XXVII THE AWAKENING In her heart of hearts Hylda had not greatly welcomed the Duchess of Snowdon to Hamley. There was no one whose friendship she prized more; but she was passing through a phase of her life when she felt that she was better apart, finding her own path by those intuitions and perceptions which belonged to her own personal experience. She vaguely felt, what all realise sooner or later, that we must live our dark hours alone. Yet the frank downright nature of the once beautiful, now faded, Duchess, the humorous glimmer in the pale-blue eyes, the droll irony and dry truth of her speech, appealed to Hylda, made her smile a warm greeting when she would rather have been alone. For, a few days before, she had begun a quest which had absorbed her, fascinated her. The miner, finding his way across the gap of a reef to pick up the vein of quartz at some distant and uncertain point, could not have been more lost to the world than was the young wife searching for a family skeleton, indefinitely embodied in her imagination by the name, James Fetherdon. Pile after pile of papers and letters of the late Earl and his Countess had passed through her hands from chaos to order. As she had read, hour after hour, the diaries of the cold, blue-eyed woman, Sybil Eglington, who had lived without love of either husband or son, as they, in turn, lived without love of each other, she had been overwhelmed by the revelation of a human heart, whose powers of expression were smothered by a shy and awkward temperament. The late Countess's letters were the unclothing of a heart which had never expanded to the eyes of those whose love would have broken up a natural reserve, which became at last a proud coldness, and gave her a reputation for lack of feeling that she carried to her grave. In the diaries which Hylda unearthed--the Countess had died suddenly-- was the muffled cry of a soul tortured through different degrees of misunderstanding; from the vague pain of suffered indifference, of being left out of her husband's calculations, to the blank neglect narrowing her life down to a tiny stream of duty, which was finally lost in the sands. She had died abroad, and alone, save for her faithful maid, who, knowing the chasm that lay between her mistress and her lord, had brought her letters and papers back to the Cloistered House, and locked them away with all the other papers and correspondence which the Countess had accumulated. Among these papers was a letter to the late Lord Eglington written the day before she died. In the haste and confusion ensuing on her death, the maid had not seen it. It had never reached his hands, but lay in a pocket of the dead woman's writing-portfolio, which Hylda had explored without discovering. Only a few hours, however, before the Duchess of Snowdon came, Hylda had found again an empty envelope on which was written the name, James Fetherdon. The writing on the envelope was that of Sybil Lady Eglington. When she discovered the envelope, a sense of mystery and premonition possessed her. What was the association between the Countess of Eglington and James Fetherdon, the father of David Claridge? In vain she searched among the voluminous letters and papers, for it would seem that the dead woman had saved every letter she received, and kept copies of numberless letters she had written. But she had searched without avail. Even the diaries, curiously frank and without reserve, never mentioned the name, so far as she could find, though here and there were strange allusive references, hints of a trouble that weighed her down, phrases of exasperation and defiance. One phrase, or the idea in it, was, however, much repeated in the diaries during the course of years, and towards the last almost feverishly emphasised--"Why should I bear it for one who would bear nothing for me, for his sake, who would do nothing for my sake? Is it only the mother in me, not the love in me?" These words were haunting Hylda's brain when the telegram from the Duchess of Snowdon came. They followed her to Heddington, whither she went in the carriage to bring her visitor to Hamley, and kept repeating themselves at the back of her mind through the cheerful rallying of the Duchess, who spread out the wings of good-humour and motherly freedom over her. After all, it was an agreeable thing to be taken possession of, and "put in her proper place," as the Duchess said; made to understand that her own affairs were not so important, after all; and that it was far more essential to hear the charming gossip about the new and most popular Princess of Wales, or the quarrel between Dickens and Thackeray. Yet, after dinner, in the little sitting-room, where the Duchess, in a white gown with great pink bows, fitter for a girl fresh from Confirmation, and her cheeks with their fixed colour, which changed only at the discretion of her maid, babbled of nothing that mattered, Hylda's mind kept turning to the book of life an unhappy woman had left behind her. The sitting- room had been that of the late Countess also, and on the wall was an oil- painting of her, stately and distant and not very alluring, though the mouth had a sweetness which seemed unable to break into a smile. "What was she really like--that wasn't her quite, was it?" asked Hylda, at last, leaning her chin on the hand which held the 'cello she had been playing. "Oh, yes, it's Sybil Eglington, my dear, but done in wood; and she wasn't the graven image that makes her out to be. That's as most people saw her; as the fellow that painted her saw her; but she had another side to her. She disapproved of me rather, because I was squeezing the orange dry, and trying to find yesterday's roses in to-morrow's garden. But she didn't shut her door in my face--it's hard to do that to a Duchess; which is one of the few advantages of living naked in the street, as it were, with only the strawberry leaves to clothe you. No, Sybil Eglington was a woman who never had her chance. Your husband's forbears were difficult, my dear. They didn't exactly draw you out. She needed drawing out; and her husband drove her back into her corner, where she sulked rather till she died--died alone at Wiesbaden, with a German doctor, a stray curate, and a stuttering maid to wish her bon voyage. Yet I fancy she went glad enough, for she had no memories, not even an affaire to repent of, and to cherish. La, la! she wasn't so stupid, Sybil there, and she was an ornament to her own sex and the despair of the other. His Serene Highness Heinrich of Saxe-Gunden fancied the task of breaking that ice, and he was an adept and an Apollo, but it broke his reputation instead. "No doubt she is happy now. I shall probably never see!" In spite of the poignant nature of the talk, Hylda could not but smile at the last words. "Don't despair," she rejoined; "one star differeth from another star in glory, but that is no reason why they should not be on visiting terms." "My dear, you may laugh--you may laugh, but I am sixty-five, and I am not laughing at the idea of what company I may be obliged to keep presently. In any case I'm sure I shall not be comfortable. If I'm where she is, I shall be dull; if I'm where her husband is, I'll have no reputation; and if there is one thing I want, it is a spotless reputation--sometime." Hylda laughed--the manner and the voice were so droll--but her face saddened too, and her big eyes with the drooping lashes looked up pensively at the portrait of her husband's mother. "Was it ever a happy family, or a lucky family?" she asked. "It's lucky now, and it ought to be happy now," was the meaning reply. Hylda made no answer, but caught the strings of the 'cello lightly, and shook her head reprovingly, with a smile meant to be playful. For a moment she played, humming to herself, and then the Duchess touched the hand that was drawing the bow softly across the strings. She had behind her garishness a gift for sympathy and a keen intuition, delicacy, and allusiveness. She knew what to say and what to leave unsaid, when her heart was moved. "My darling," she said now, "you are not quite happy; but that is because you don't allow yourself to get well. You've never recovered from your attack last summer; and you won't, until you come out into the world again and see people. This autumn you ought to have been at Homburg or at Aix, where you'd take a little cure of waters and a great deal of cure of people. You were born to bask in friendship and the sun, and to draw from the world as much as you deserve, a little from many, for all you give in return. Because, dearest, you are a very agreeable person, with enough wit and humanity to make it worth the world's while to conspire to make you do what will give it most pleasure, and let yourself get most-- and that's why I've come." "What a person of importance I am!" answered Hylda, with a laugh that was far from mirthful, though she caught the plump, wrinkled little hand of the Duchess and pressed it. "But really I'm getting well here fast. I'm very strong again. It is so restful, and one's days go by so quietly." "Yet, I'm not sure that it's rest you want. I don't think it is. You want tonics--men and women and things. Monte Carlo would do you a world of good--I'd go with you. Eglington gambles here"--she watched Hylda closely--"why shouldn't you gamble there?" "Eglington gambles?" Hylda's face took on a frightened look, then it cleared again, and she smiled. "Oh, of course, with international affairs, you mean. Well, I must stay here and be the croupier." "Nonsense! Eglington is his own croupier. Besides, he is so much in London, and you so much here. You sit with the distaff; he throws the dice." Hylda's lips tightened a little. Her own inner life, what Eglington was to her or she to Eglington, was for the ears of no human being, however friendly. She had seen little of him of late, but in one sense that had been a relief, though she would have done anything to make that feeling impossible. His rather precise courtesy and consideration, when he was with her, emphasised the distance between "the first fine careless rapture" and this grey quiet. And, strange to say, though in the first five years after the Cairo days and deeds, Egypt seemed an infinite space away, and David a distant, almost legendary figure, now Egypt seemed but beyond the door--as though, opening it, she would stand near him who represented the best of all that she might be capable of thinking. Yet all the time she longed for Eglington to come and say one word, which would be like touching the lever of the sluice-gates of her heart, to let loose the flood. As the space grew between her and Eglington, her spirit trembled, she shrank back, because she saw that sea towards which she was drifting. As she did not answer the last words of the Duchess, the latter said presently: "When do you expect Eglington?" "Not till the week-end; it is a busy week with him," Hylda answered; then added hastily, though she had not thought of it till this moment: "I shall probably go up to town with you to-morrow." She did not know that Eglington was already in the house, and had given orders to the butler that she was not to be informed of his arrival for the present. "Well, if you get that far, will you come with me to the Riviera, or to Florence, or Sicily--or Cairo?" the other asked, adjusting her gold- brown wig with her babyish hands. Cairo! Cairo! A light shot up into Hylda's eyes. The Duchess had spoken without thought, but, as she spoke, she watched the sudden change in Hylda. What did it mean? Cairo--why should Cairo have waked her so? Suddenly she recalled certain vague references of Lord Windlehurst, and, for the first time, she associated Hylda with Claridge Pasha in a way which might mean much, account for much, in this life she was leading. "Perhaps! Perhaps!" answered Hylda abstractedly, after a moment. The Duchess got to her feet. She had made progress. She would let her medicine work. "I'm going to bed, my dear. I'm sixty-five, and I take my sleep when I can get it. Think it over, Sicily--Cairo!" She left the room, saying to herself that Eglington was a fool, and that danger was ahead. "But I hold a red light--poor darling!" she said aloud, as she went up the staircase. She did not know that Eglington, standing in a deep doorway, heard her, and seized upon the words eagerly and suspiciously, and turned them over in his mind. Below, at the desk where Eglington's mother used to write, Hylda sat with a bundle of letters before her. For some moments she opened, glanced through them, and put them aside. Presently she sat back in her chair, thinking--her mind was invaded by the last words of the Duchess; and somehow they kept repeating themselves with the words in the late Countess's diary: "Is it only the mother in me, not the love in me?" Mechanically her hand moved over the portfolio of the late Countess, and it involuntarily felt in one of its many pockets. Her hand came upon a letter. This had remained when the others had been taken out. It was addressed to the late Earl, and was open. She hesitated a moment, then, with a strange premonition and a tightening of her heart-strings, she spread it out and read it. At first she could scarcely see because of the mist in her eyes; but presently her sight cleared, and she read quickly, her cheeks burning with excitement, her heart throbbing violently. The letter was the last expression of a disappointed and barren life. The slow, stammering tongue of an almost silent existence had found the fulness of speech. The fountains of the deep had been broken up, and Sybil Eglington's repressed emotions, undeveloped passions, tortured by mortal sufferings, and refined and vitalised by the atmosphere blown in upon her last hours from the Hereafter, were set free, given voice and power at last. The letter reviewed the life she had lived with her husband during twenty-odd years, reproved herself for not speaking out and telling him his faults at the beginning, and for drawing in upon herself, when she might have compelled him to a truer understanding; and, when all that was said, called him to such an account as only the dying might make--the irrevocable, disillusionising truth which may not be altered, the poignant record of failure and its causes. ". . . I could not talk well, I never could, as a girl," the letter ran; "and you could talk like one inspired, and so speciously, so overwhelmingly, that I felt I could say nothing in disagreement, not anything but assent; while all the time I felt how hollow was so much you said--a cloak of words to cover up the real thought behind. Before I knew the truth, I felt the shadow of secrecy in your life. When you talked most, I felt you most secretive, and the feeling slowly closed the door upon all frankness and sympathy and open speech between us. I was always shy and self- conscious and self-centred, and thought little of myself; and I needed deep love and confidence and encouragement to give out what was in me. I gave nothing out, nothing to you that you wanted, or sought for, or needed. You were complete, self-contained. Harry, my beloved babe Harry, helped at first; but, as the years went on, he too began to despise me for my little intellect and slow intelligence, and he grew to be like you in all things--and secretive also, though I tried so hard to be to him what a mother should be. Oh, Bobby, Bobby--I used to call you that in the days before we were married, and I will call you that now when all is over and done--why did you not tell me all? Why did you not tell me that my boy, my baby Harry, was not your only child, that there had been another wife, and that your eldest son was alive? "I know all. I have known all for years. The clergyman who married you to Mercy Claridge was a distant relative of my mother's, and before he died he told me. When you married her, he knew you only as James Fetherdon, but, years afterwards, he saw and recognised you. He held his peace then, but at last he came to me. And I did not speak. I was not strong enough, nor good enough, to face the trouble of it all. I could not endure the scandal, to see my own son take the second place--he is so brilliant and able and unscrupulous, like yourself; but, oh, so sure of winning a great place in the world, surer than yourself ever was, he is so calculating and determined and ambitious! And though he loves me little, as he loves you little, too, yet he is my son, and for what he is we are both responsible, one way or another; and I had not the courage to give him the second place, and the Quaker, David Claridge, the first place. Why Luke Claridge, his grandfather, chose the course he did, does not concern me, no more than why you chose secrecy, and kept your own firstborn legitimate son, of whom you might well be proud, a stranger to you and his rights all these years. Ah, Eglington, you never knew what love was, you never had a heart--experiment, subterfuge, secrecy, 'reaping where you had not sowed, and gathering where you had not strawed.' Always, experiment, experiment, experiment! "I shall be gone in a few hours--I feel it, but before I go I must try to do right, and to warn you. I have had such bad dreams about you and Harry--they haunt me--that I am sure you will suffer terribly, will have some awful tragedy, unless you undo what was done long ago, and tell the truth to the world, and give your titles and estates where they truly belong. Near to death, seeing how little life is, and how much right is in the end, I am sure that I was wrong in holding my peace; for Harry cannot prosper with this black thing behind him, and you cannot die happy if you smother up the truth. Night after night I have dreamed of you in your laboratory, a vague, dark, terrifying dream of you in that laboratory which I have hated so. It has always seemed to me the place where some native evil and cruelty in your blood worked out its will. I know I am an ignorant woman, with no brain, but God has given me clear sight at the last, and the things I see are true things, and I must warn you. Remember that. . . ." The letter ended there. She had been interrupted or seized with illness, and had never finished it, and had died a few hours afterwards; and the letter was now, for the first time, read by her whom it most concerned, into whose heart and soul the words sank with an immitigable pain and agonised amazement. A few moments with this death-document had transformed Hylda's life. Her husband and--and David, were sons of the same father; and the name she bore, the home in which she was living, the estates the title carried, were not her husband's, but another's--David's. She fell back in her chair, white and faint, but, with a great effort, she conquered the swimming weakness which blinded her. Sons of the same father! The past flashed before her, the strange likeness she had observed, the trick of the head, the laugh, the swift gesture, the something in the voice. She shuddered as she had done in reading the letter. But they were related only in name, in some distant, irreconcilable way--in a way which did not warrant the sudden scarlet flush that flooded her face. Presently she recovered herself. She--what did she suffer, compared with her who wrote this revelation of a lifetime of pain, of bitter and torturing knowledge! She looked up at the picture on the wall, at the still, proud, emotionless face, the conventional, uninspired personality, behind which no one had seen, which had agonised alone till the last. With what tender yet pitiless hand had she laid bare the lives of her husband and her son! How had the neglected mother told the bitter truth of him to whom she had given birth! "So brilliant and able, and unscrupulous, like yourself; but, oh, sure of winning a great place in the world . . . so calculating and determined and ambitious. . . . That laboratory which I have hated so. It has always seemed to me the place where some native evil and cruelty in your blood worked out its will. . . ." With a deep-drawn sigh Hylda said to herself: "If I were dying to-morrow, would I say that? She loved them so--at first must have loved them so; and yet this at the last! And I--oh, no, no, no!" She looked at a portrait of Eglington on the table near, touched it caressingly, and added, with a sob in her voice: "Oh, Harry, no, it is not true! It is not native evil and cruelty in your blood. It has all been a mistake. You will do right. We will do right, Harry. You will suffer, it will hurt, the lesson will be hard--to give up what has meant so much to you; but we will work it out together, you and I, my very dear. Oh, say that we shall, that.... " She suddenly grew silent. A tremor ran through her, she became conscious of his presence near her, and turned, as though he were behind her. There was nothing. Yet she felt him near, and, as she did so, the soul-deep feeling with which she had spoken to the portrait fled. Why was it that, so often, when absent from him, her imagination helped her to make excuses for him, inspired her to press the real truth out of sight, and to make believe that he was worthy of a love which, but through some inner fault of her own, might be his altogether, and all the love of which he was capable might be hers? She felt him near her, and the feelings possessing her a moment before slowly chilled and sank away. Instinctively her eyes glanced towards the door. She saw the handle turn, and she slipped the letter inside the portfolio again. The door opened briskly now, and Eglington entered with what his enemies in the newspaper press had called his "professional smile"--a criticism which had angered his wife, chiefly because it was so near the truth. He smiled. Smiling was part of his equipment, and was for any one at any time that suited him. Her eyes met his, and he noted in her something that he had never seen before. Something had happened. The Duchess of Snowdon was in the house; had it anything to do with her? Had she made trouble? There was trouble enough without her. He came forward, took Hylda's hand and kissed it, then kissed her on the cheek. As he did so, she laid a hand on his arm with a sudden impulse, and pressed it. Though his presence had chilled the high emotions of a few moments before, yet she had to break to him a truth which would hurt him, dismay him, rob his life of so much that helped it; and a sudden protective, maternal sense was roused in her, reached out to shelter him as he faced his loss and the call of duty. "You have just come?" she said, in a voice that, to herself, seemed far away. "I have been here some hours," he answered. Secrecy again--always the thing that had chilled the dead woman, and laid a cold hand upon herself --"I felt the shadow of secrecy in your life. When you talked most I felt you most secretive, and the feeling slowly closed the door upon all frankness and sympathy and open speech between us." "Why did you not see me--dine with me?" she asked. "What can the servants think?" Even in such a crisis the little things had place-- habit struck its note in the presence of her tragedy. "You had the Duchess of Snowdon, and we are not precisely congenial; besides, I had much to do in the laboratory. I'm working for that new explosive of which I told you. There's fame and fortune in it, and I'm on the way. I feel it coming"--his eyes sparkled a little. "I made it right with the servants; so don't be apprehensive." "I have not seen you for nearly a week. It doesn't seem--friendly." "Politics and science are stern masters," he answered gaily. "They leave little time for your mistress," she rejoined meaningly. "Who is my mistress?" "Well, I am not greatly your wife," she replied. "I have the dregs of your life. I help you--I am allowed to help you--so little, to share so little in the things that matter to you." "Now, that's imagination and misunderstanding," he rejoined. "It has helped immensely your being such a figure in society, and entertaining so much, and being so popular, at any rate until very lately." "I do not misunderstand," she answered gravely. "I do not share your real life. I do not help you where your brain works, in the plans and purposes and hopes that lie behind all that you do--oh, yes, I know your ambitions and what positions you are aiming for; but there is something more than that. There is the object of it all, the pulse of it, the machinery down, down deep in your being that drives it all. Oh, I am not a child! I have some intellect, and I want--I want that we should work it out together." In spite of all that had come and gone, in spite of the dead mother's words and all her own convictions, seeing trouble coming upon him, she wanted to make one last effort for what might save their lives--her life- -from shipwreck in the end. If she failed now, she foresaw a bitter, cynical figure working out his life with a narrowing soul, a hard spirit unrelieved by the softening influence of a great love--even yet the woman in her had a far-off hope that, where the law had made them one by book and scrip, the love which should consecrate such a union, lift it above an almost offensive relation, might be theirs. She did not know how much of her heart, of her being, was wandering over the distant sands of Egypt, looking for its oasis. Eglington had never needed or wanted more than she had given him--her fortune, her person, her charm, her ability to play an express and definite part in his career. It was this material use to which she was so largely assigned, almost involuntarily but none the less truly, that had destroyed all of the finer, dearer, more delicate intimacy invading his mind sometimes, more or less vaguely, where Faith was concerned. So extreme was his egotism that it had never occurred to him, as it had done to the Duchess of Snowdon and Lord Windlehurst, that he might lose Hylda herself as well as her fortune; that the day might come when her high spirit could bear it no longer. As the Duchess of Snowdon had said: "It would all depend upon the other man, whoever he might be." So he answered her with superficial cheerfulness now; he had not the depth of soul to see that they were at a crisis, and that she could bear no longer the old method of treating her as though she were a child, to be humoured or to be dominated. "Well, you see all there is," he answered; "you are so imaginative, crying for some moon there never was in any sky." In part he had spoken the truth. He had no high objects or ends or purposes. He wanted only success somehow or another, and there was no nobility of mind or aspiration behind it. In her heart of hearts she knew it; but it was the last cry of her soul to him, seeking, though in vain, for what she had never had, could never have. "What have you been doing?" he added, looking at the desk where she had sat, glancing round the room. "Has the Duchess left any rags on the multitude of her acquaintances? I wonder that you can make yourself contented here with nothing to do. You don't look much stronger. I'm sure you ought to have a change. My mother was never well here; though, for the matter of that, she was never very well anywhere. I suppose it's the laboratory that attracts me here, as it did my father, playing with the ancient forces of the world in these Arcadian surroundings--Arcady without beauty or Arcadians." He glanced up at his mother's picture. "No, she never liked it--a very silent woman, secretive almost." Suddenly her eyes flared up. Anger possessed her. She choked it down. Secretive--the poor bruised soul who had gone to her grave with a broken heart! "She secretive? No, Eglington," she rejoined gravely, "she was congealed. She lived in too cold an air. She was not secretive, but yet she kept a secret--another's." Again Eglington had the feeling which possessed him when he entered the room. She had changed. There was something in her tone, a meaning, he had never heard before. He was startled. He recalled the words of the Duchess as she went up the staircase. What was it all about? "Whose secrets did she keep?" he asked, calmly enough. "Your father's, yours, mine," she replied, in a whisper almost. "Secret? What secret? Good Lord, such mystery!" He laughed mirthlessly. She came close to him. "I am sorry--sorry, Harry," she said with difficulty. "It will hurt you, shock you so. It will be a blow to you, but you must bear it." She tried to speak further, but her heart was beating so violently that she could not. She turned quickly to the portfolio on the desk, drew forth the fatal letter, and, turning to the page which contained the truth concerning David, handed it to him. "It is there," she said. He had great self-control. Before looking at the page to which she had directed his attention, he turned the letter over slowly, fingering the pages one by one. "My mother to my father," he remarked. Instinctively he knew what it contained. "You have been reading my mother's correspondence," he added in cold reproof. "Do you forget that you asked me to arrange her papers?" she retorted, stung by his suggestion. "Your imagination is vivid," he exclaimed. Then he bethought himself that, after all, he might sorely need all she could give, if things went against him, and that she was the last person he could afford to alienate; "but I do remember that I asked you that," he added--"no doubt foolishly." "Read what is there," she broke in, "and you will see that it was not foolish, that it was meant to be." He felt a cold dead hand reaching out from the past to strike him; but he nerved himself, and his eyes searched the paper with assumed coolness-even with her he must still be acting. The first words he saw were: "Why did you not tell me that my boy, my baby Harry, was not your only child, and that your eldest son was alive?" So that was it, after all. Even his mother knew. Master of his nerves as he was, it blinded him for a moment. Presently he read on--the whole page--and lingered upon the words, that he might have time to think what he must say to Hylda. Nothing of the tragedy of his mother touched him, though he was faintly conscious of a revelation of a woman he had never known, whose hungering caresses had made him, as a child, rather peevish, when a fit of affection was not on him. Suddenly, as he read the lines touching himself, "Brilliant and able and unscrupulous.... and though he loves me little, as he loves you little too," his eye lighted up with anger, his face became pale--yet he had borne the same truths from Faith without resentment, in the wood by the mill that other year. For a moment he stood infuriated, then, going to the fireplace, he dropped the letter on the coals, as Hylda, in horror, started forward to arrest his hand. "Oh, Eglington--but no--no! It is not honourable. It is proof of all!" He turned upon her slowly, his face rigid, a strange, cold light in his eyes. "If there is no more proof than that, you need not vex your mind," he said, commanding his voice to evenness. A bitter anger was on him. His mother had read him through and through-- he had not deceived her even; and she had given evidence against him to Hylda, who, he had ever thought, believed in him completely. Now there was added to the miserable tale, that first marriage, and the rights of David--David, the man who, he was convinced, had captured her imagination. Hurt vanity played a disproportionate part in this crisis. The effect on him had been different from what Hylda had anticipated. She had pictured him stricken and dumfounded by the blow. It had never occurred to her, it did not now, that he had known the truth; for, of course, to know the truth was to speak, to restore to David his own, to step down into the second and unconsidered place. After all, to her mind, there was no disgrace. The late Earl had married secretly, but he had been duly married, and he did not marry again until Mercy Claridge was dead. The only wrong was to David, whose grandfather had been even more to blame than his own father. She had looked to help Eglington in this moment, and now there seemed nothing for her to do. He was superior to the situation, though it was apparent in his pale face and rigid manner that he had been struck hard. She came near to him, but there was no encouragement to her to play that part which is a woman's deepest right and joy and pain in one--to comfort her man in trouble, sorrow, or evil. Always, always, he stood alone, whatever the moment might be, leaving her nothing to do--" playing his own game with his own weapons," as he had once put it. Yet there was strength in it too, and this came to her mind now, as though in excuse for whatever else there was in the situation which, against her will, repelled her. "I am so sorry for you," she said at last. "What do you mean?" he asked. "To lose all that has been yours so long." This was their great moment. The response to this must be the touchstone of their lives. A--half dozen words might alter all the future, might be the watch word to the end of all things. Involuntarily her heart fashioned the response he ought to give--"I shall have you left, Hylda." The air seemed to grow oppressive, and the instant's silence a torture, and, when he spoke, his words struck a chill to her heart--rough notes of pain. "I have not lost yet," were his words. She shrank. "You will not hide it. You will do right by--by him," she said with difficulty. "Let him establish his claim to the last item of fact," he said with savage hate. "Luke Claridge knew. The proofs are but just across the way, no doubt," she answered, almost coldly, so had his words congealed her heart. Their great moment had passed. It was as though a cord had snapped that held her to him, and in the recoil she had been thrown far off from him. Swift as his mind worked, it had not seen his opportunity to win her to his cause, to asphyxiate her high senses, her quixotic justice, by that old flood of eloquence and compelling persuasion of the emotions with which he had swept her to the altar--an altar of sacrifice. He had not even done what he had left London to do--make sure of her, by an alluring flattery and devotion, no difficult duty with one so beautiful and desirable; though neither love of beauty nor great desire was strong enough in him to divert him from his course for an hour, save by his own initiative. His mother's letter had changed it all. A few hours before he had had a struggle with Soolsby, and now another struggle on the same theme was here. Fate had dealt illy with him, who had ever been its spoiled child and favourite. He had not learned yet the arts of defence against adversity. "Luke Claridge is dead," he answered sharply. "But you will tell--him, you will write to Egypt and tell your brother?" she said, the conviction slowly coming to her that he would not. "It is not my duty to displace myself, to furnish evidence against myself--" "You have destroyed the evidence," she intervened, a little scornfully. "If there were no more than that--" He shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "Do you know there is more?" she asked searchingly. "In whose interests are you speaking?" he rejoined, with a sneer. A sudden fury possessed him. Claridge Pasha--she was thinking of him! "In yours--your conscience, your honour." "There is over thirty years' possession on my side," he rejoined. "It is not as if it were going from your family," she argued. "Family--what is he to me!" "What is any one to you?" she returned bitterly. "I am not going to unravel a mystery in order to facilitate the cutting of my own throat." "It might be worth while to do something once for another's sake than your own--it would break the monotony," she retorted, all her sense tortured by his words, and even more so by his manner. Long ago Faith had said in Soolsby's but that he "blandished" all with whom he came in contact; but Hylda realised with a lacerated heart that he had ceased to blandish her. Possession had altered that. Yet how had he vowed to her in those sweet tempestuous days of his courtship when the wind of his passion blew so hard! Had one of the vows been kept? Even as she looked at him now, words she had read some days before flashed through her mind--they had burnt themselves into her brain: "Broken faith is the crown of evils, Broken vows are the knotted thongs Set in the hands of laughing devils, To scourge us for deep wrongs. "Broken hearts, when all is ended, Bear the better all after-stings; Bruised once, the citadel mended, Standeth through all things." Suddenly he turned upon her with aggrieved petulance. "Why are you so eager for proof?" "Oh, I have," she said, with a sudden flood of tears in her voice, though her eyes were dry--"I have the feeling your mother had, that nothing will be well until you undo the wrong your father did. I know it was not your fault. I feel for you--oh, believe me, I feel as I have never felt, could never feel, for myself. It was brought on you by your father, but you must be the more innocent because he was so guilty. You have had much out of it, it has helped you on your way. It does not mean so much now. By-and-by another--an English-peerage may be yours by your own achievement. Let it go. There is so much left, Harry. It is a small thing in a world of work. It means nothing to me." Once again, even when she had given up all hope, seeing what was the bent of his mind-- once again she made essay to win him out of his selfishness. If he would only say, "I have you left," how she would strive to shut all else out of her life! He was exasperated. His usual prescience and prudence forsook him. It angered him that she should press him to an act of sacrifice for the man who had so great an influence upon her. Perversity possessed him. Lifelong egotism was too strong for wisdom, or discretion. Suddenly he caught her hands in both of his and said hoarsely: "Do you love me--answer me, do you love me with all your heart and soul? The truth now, as though it were your last word on earth." Always self. She had asked, if not in so many words, for a little love, something for herself to feed on in the darkening days for him, for her, for both; and he was thinking only of himself. She shrank, but her hands lay passive in his. "No, not with all my heart and soul--but, oh--!" He flung her hands from him. "No, not with all your heart and soul-- I know! You are willing to sacrifice me for him, and you think I do not understand." She drew herself up, with burning cheeks and flashing eyes. "You understand nothing--nothing. If you had ever understood me, or any human being, or any human heart, you would not have ruined all that might have given you an undying love, something that would have followed you through fire and flood to the grave. You cannot love. You do not understand love. Self--self, always self. Oh, you are mad, mad, to have thrown it all away, all that might have given happiness! All that I have, all that I am, has been at your service; everything has been bent and tuned to your pleasure, for your good. All has been done for you, with thought of you and your position and your advancement, and now--now, when you have killed all that might have been yours, you cry out in anger that it is dying, and you insinuate what you should kill another for insinuating. Oh, the wicked, cruel folly of it all! You suggest--you dare! I never heard a word from David Claridge that might not be written on the hoardings. His honour is deeper than that which might attach to the title of Earl of Eglington." She seemed to tower above him. For an instant she looked him in the eyes with frigid dignity, but a great scorn in her face. Then she went to the door--he hastened to open it for her. "You will be very sorry for this," he said stubbornly. He was too dumfounded to be discreet, too suddenly embarrassed by the turn affairs had taken. He realised too late that he had made a mistake, that he had lost his hold upon her. As she passed through, there suddenly flashed before her mind the scene in the laboratory with the chairmaker. She felt the meaning of it now. "You do not intend to tell him--perhaps Soolsby has done so," she said keenly, and moved on to the staircase. He was thunderstruck at her intuition. "Why do you want to rob yourself?" he asked after her vaguely. She turned back. "Think of your mother's letter that you destroyed," she rejoined solemnly and quietly. "Was it right?" He shut the door, and threw himself into a chair. "I will put it straight with her to-morrow," he said helplessly. He sat for a half-hour silent, planning his course. At last there came a tap at the door, and the butler appeared. "Some one from the Foreign Office, my lord," he said. A moment afterwards a young official, his subordinate, entered. "There's the deuce to pay in Egypt, sir; I've brought the despatch," he said. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: A cloak of words to cover up the real thought behind Antipathy of the lesser to the greater nature Antipathy of the man in the wrong to the man in the right Friendship means a giving and a getting He's a barber-shop philosopher Monotonously intelligent No virtue in not falling, when you're not tempted Of course I've hated, or I wouldn't be worth a button Only the supremely wise or the deeply ignorant who never alter Passion to forget themselves Political virtue goes unrewarded She knew what to say and what to leave unsaid Smiling was part of his equipment Sometimes the longest way round is the shortest way home Soul tortured through different degrees of misunderstanding The vague pain of suffered indifference There's no credit in not doing what you don't want to do Tricks played by Fact to discredit the imagination We must live our dark hours alone Woman's deepest right and joy and pain in one--to comfort THE WEAVERS By Gilbert Parker BOOK IV. XXVIII. NAHOUM TURNS THE SCREW XXIX. THE RECOIL XXX. LACEY MOVES XXXI. THE STRUGGLE IN THE DESERT XXXII. FORTY STRIPES SAVE ONE XXXIII. THE DARK INDENTURE XXXIV. NAHOUM DROPS THE MASK CHAPTER XXVIII NAHOUM TURNS THE SCREW Laughing to himself, Higli Pasha sat with the stem of a narghileh in his mouth. His big shoulders kept time to the quivering of his fat stomach. He was sitting in a small court-yard of Nahoum Pasha's palace, waiting for its owner to appear. Meanwhile he exercised a hilarious patience. The years had changed him little since he had been sent on that expedition against the southern tribes which followed hard on David's appointment to office. As David had expected, few of the traitorous officers returned. Diaz had ignominiously died of the bite of a tarantula before a blow had been struck, but Higli had gratefully received a slight wound in the first encounter, which enabled him to beat a safe retreat to Cairo. He alone of the chief of the old conspirators was left. Achmet was still at the Place of Lepers, and the old nest of traitors was scattered for ever. Only Nahoum and Higli were left, and between these two there had never been partnership or understanding. Nahoum was not the man to trust to confederates, and Higli Pasha was too contemptible a coadjutor. Nahoum had faith in no one save Mizraim the Chief Eunuch, but Mizraim alone was better than a thousand; and he was secret--and terrible. Yet Higli had a conviction that Nahoum's alliance with David was a sham, and that David would pay the price of misplaced confidence one day. More than once when David's plans had had a set-back, Higli had contrived a meeting with Nahoum, to judge for himself the true position. For his visit to-day he had invented a reason--a matter of finance; but his real reason was concealed behind the malevolent merriment by which he was now seized. So absorbed was he that he did not heed the approach of another visitor down an angle of the court-yard. He was roused by a voice. "Well, what's tickling you so, pasha?" The voice was drawling, and quite gentle; but at the sound of it, Higli's laugh stopped short, and the muscles of his face contracted. If there was one man of whom he had a wholesome fear--why, he could not tell--it was this round-faced, abrupt, imperturbable American, Claridge Pasha's right-hand man. Legends of resourcefulness and bravery had gathered round his name. "Who's been stroking your chin with a feather, pasha?" he continued, his eye piercing the other like a gimlet. "It was an amusing tale I heard at Assiout, effendi," was Higli's abashed and surly reply. "Oh, at Assiout!" rejoined Lacey. "Yes, they tell funny stories at Assiout. And when were you at Assiout, pasha?" "Two days ago, effendi." "And so you thought you'd tell the funny little story to Nahoum as quick as could be, eh? He likes funny stories, same as you--damn, nice, funny little stories, eh?" There was something chilly in Lacey's voice now, which Higli did not like; something much too menacing and contemptuous for a mere man-of-all- work to the Inglesi. Higli bridled up, his eyes glared sulkily. "It is but my own business if I laugh or if I curse, effendi," he replied, his hand shaking a little on the stem of the narghileh. "Precisely, my diaphanous polyandrist; but it isn't quite your own affair what you laugh at--not if I know it!" "Does the effendi think I was laughing at him?" "The effendi thinks not. The effendi knows that the descendant of a hundred tigers was laughing at the funny little story, of how the two cotton-mills that Claridge Pasha built were burned down all in one night, and one of his steamers sent down the cataract at Assouan. A knock-down blow for Claridge Pasha, eh? That's all you thought of, wasn't it? And it doesn't matter to you that the cotton-mills made thousands better off, and started new industries in Egypt. No, it only matters to you that Claridge Pasha loses half his fortune, and that you think his feet are in the quicksands, and 'll be sucked in, to make an Egyptian holiday. Anything to discredit him here, eh? I'm not sure what else you know; but I'll find out, my noble pasha, and if you've had your hand in it--but no, you ain't game-cock enough for that! But if you were, if you had a hand in the making of your funny little story, there's a nutcracker that 'd break the shell of that joke--" He turned round quickly, seeing a shadow and hearing a movement. Nahoum was but a few feet away. There was a bland smile on his face, a look of innocence in his magnificent blue eye. As he met Lacey's look, the smile left his lips, a grave sympathy appeared to possess them, and he spoke softly: "I know the thing that burns thy heart, effendi, to whom be the flowers of hope and the fruits of merit. It is even so, a great blow has fallen. Two hours since I heard. I went at once to see Claridge Pasha, but found him not. Does he know, think you?" he added sadly. "May your heart never be harder than it is, pasha, and when I left the Saadat an hour ago, he did not know. His messenger hadn't a steamer like Higli Pasha there. But he was coming to see you; and that's why I'm here. I've been brushing the flies off this sore on the hump of Egypt while waiting." He glanced with disdain at Higli. A smile rose like liquid in the eye of Nahoum and subsided, then he turned to Higli inquiringly. "I have come on business, Excellency; the railway to Rosetta, and--" "To-morrow--or the next day," responded Nahoum irritably, and turned again to Lacey. As Higli's huge frame disappeared through a gateway, Nahoum motioned Lacey to a divan, and summoned a slave for cooling drinks. Lacey's eyes now watched him with an innocence nearly as childlike as his own. Lacey well knew that here was a foe worthy of the best steel. That he was a foe, and a malignant foe, he had no doubt whatever; he had settled the point in his mind long ago; and two letters he had received from Lady Eglington, in which she had said in so many words, "Watch Nahoum!" had made him vigilant and intuitive. He knew, meanwhile, that he was following the trail of a master-hunter who covered up his tracks. Lacey was as certain as though he had the book of Nahoum's mind open in his hand, that David's work had been torn down again--and this time with dire effect--by this Armenian, whom David trusted like a brother. But the black doors that closed on the truth on every side only made him more determined to unlock them; and, when he faltered as to his own powers, he trusted Mahommed Hassan, whose devotion to David had given him eyes that pierced dark places. "Surely the God of Israel has smitten Claridge Pasha sorely. My heart will mourn to look upon his face. The day is insulting in its brightness," continued Nahoum with a sigh, his eyes bent upon Lacey, dejection in his shoulders. Lacey started. "The God of Israel!" How blasphemous it sounded from the lips of Nahoum, Oriental of Orientals, Christian though he was also! "I think, perhaps, you'll get over it, pasha. Man is born to trouble, and you've got a lot of courage. I guess you could see other people bear a pile of suffering, and never flinch." Nahoum appeared not to notice the gibe. "It is a land of suffering, effendi," he sighed, "and one sees what one sees." "Have you any idea, any real sensible idea, how those cotton-mills got afire?" Lacey's eyes were fixed on Nahoum's face. The other met his gaze calmly. "Who can tell! An accident, perhaps, or--" "Or some one set the mills on fire in several places at once--they say the buildings flamed out in every corner; and it was the only time in a month they hadn't been running night and day. Funny, isn't it?" "It looks like the work of an enemy, effendi." Nahoum shook his head gravely. "A fortune destroyed in an hour, as it were. But we shall get the dog. We shall find him. There is no hole deep enough to hide him from us." "Well, I wouldn't go looking in holes for him, pasha. "He isn't any cave-dweller, that incendiary; he's an artist--no palace is too unlikely for him. No, I wouldn't go poking in mud-huts to find him." "Thou dost not think that Higli Pasha--" Nahoum seemed startled out of equanimity by the thought. Lacey eyed him meditatively, and said reflectively: "Say, you're an artist, pasha. You are a guesser of the first rank. But I'd guess again. Higli Pasha would have done it, if it had ever occurred to him; and he'd had the pluck. But it didn't, and he hadn't. What I can't understand is that the artist that did it should have done it before Claridge Pasha left for the Soudan. Here we were just about to start; and if we'd got away south, the job would have done more harm, and the Saadat would have been out of the way. No, I can't understand why the firebug didn't let us get clean away; for if the Saadat stays here, he'll be where he can stop the underground mining." Nahoum's self-control did not desert him, though he fully realised that this man suspected him. On the surface Lacey was right. It would have seemed better to let David go, and destroy his work afterwards, but he had been moved by other considerations, and his design was deep. His own emissaries were in the Soudan, announcing David's determination to abolish slavery, secretly stirring up feeling against him, preparing for the final blow to be delivered, when he went again among the southern tribes. He had waited and waited, and now the time was come. Had he, Nahoum, not agreed with David that the time had come for the slave-trade to go? Had he not encouraged him to take this bold step, in the sure belief that it would overwhelm him, and bring him an ignominious death, embittered by total failure of all he had tried to do? For years he had secretly loosened the foundations of David's work, and the triumph of Oriental duplicity over Western civilisation and integrity was sweet in his mouth. And now there was reason to believe that, at last, Kaid was turning against the Inglesi. Everything would come at once. If all that he had planned was successful, even this man before him should aid in his master's destruction. "If it was all done by an enemy," he said, in answer to Lacey, at last, "would it all be reasoned out like that? Is hatred so logical? Dost thou think Claridge Pasha will not go now? The troops are ready at Wady- Halfa, everything is in order; the last load of equipment has gone. Will not Claridge Pasha find the money somehow? I will do what I can. My heart is moved to aid him." "Yes, you'd do what you could, pasha," Lacey rejoined enigmatically, "but whether it would set the Saadat on his expedition or not is a question. But I guess, after all, he's got to go. He willed it so. People may try to stop him, and they may tear down what he does, but he does at last what he starts to do, and no one can prevent him--not any one. Yes, he's going on this expedition; and he'll have the money, too." There was a strange, abstracted look in his face, as though he saw something which held him fascinated. Presently, as if with an effort, he rose to his feet, took the red fez from his head, and fanned himself with it for a moment. "Don't you forget it, pasha; the Saadat will win. He can't be beaten, not in a thousand years. Here he comes." Nahoum got to his feet, as David came quickly through the small gateway of the court-yard, his head erect, his lips smiling, his eyes sweeping the place. He came forward briskly to them. It was plain he had not heard the evil news. "Peace be to thee, Saadat, and may thy life be fenced about with safety!" said Nahoum. David laid a hand on Lacey's arm and squeezed it, smiling at him with such friendship that Lacey's eyes moistened, and he turned his head away. There was a quiet elation in David's look. "We are ready at last," he said, looking from one to the other. "Well, well," he added, almost boyishly, "has thee nothing to say, Nahoum?" Nahoum turned his head away as though overcome. David's face grew instantly grave. He turned to Lacey. Never before had he seen Lacey's face with a look like this. He grasped Lacey's arm. "What is it?" he asked quietly. "What does thee want to say to me?" But Lacey could not speak, and David turned again to Nahoum. "What is there to say to me?" he asked. "Something has happened--what is it? . . . Come, many things have happened before. This can be no worse. Do thee speak," he urged gently. "Saadat," said Nahoum, as though under the stress of feeling, "the cotton-mills at Tashah and Mini are gone--burned to the ground." For a moment David looked at him without sight in his eyes, and his face grew very pale. "Excellency, all in one night, the besom of destruction was abroad," he heard Nahoum say, as though from great depths below him. He slowly turned his head to look at Lacey. "Is this true?" he asked at last in an unsteady voice. Lacey could not speak, but inclined his head. David's figure seemed to shrink for a moment, his face had a withered look, and his head fell forward in a mood of terrible dejection. "Saadat! Oh, my God, Saadat, don't take it so!" said Lacey brokenly, and stepped between David and Nahoum. He could not bear that the stricken face and figure should be seen by Nahoum, whom he believed to be secretly gloating. "Saadat," he said brokenly, "God has always been with you; He hasn't forgotten you now. "The work of years," David murmured, and seemed not to hear. "When God permits, shall man despair?" interposed Nahoum, in a voice that lingered on the words. Nahoum accomplished what Lacey had failed to do. His voice had pierced to some remote corner in David's nature, and roused him. Was it that doubt, suspicion, had been wakened at last? Was some sensitive nerve touched, that this Oriental should offer Christian comfort to him in his need--to him who had seen the greater light? Or was it that some unreality in the words struck a note which excited a new and subconscious understanding? Perhaps it was a little of all three. He did not stop to inquire. In crises such as that through which he was passing, the mind and body act without reason, rather by the primal instinct, the certain call of the things that were before reason was. "God is with the patient," continued Nahoum; and Lacey set his teeth to bear this insult to all things. But Nahoum accomplished what he had not anticipated. David straightened himself up, and clasped his hands behind him. By a supreme effort of the will he controlled himself, and the colour came back faintly to his face. "God's will be done," he said, and looked Nahoum calmly in the eyes. "It was no accident," he added with conviction. "It was an enemy of Egypt." Suddenly the thing rushed over him again, going through his veins like a poisonous ether, and clamping his heart as with iron. "All to do over again!" he said brokenly, and again he caught Lacey's arm. With an uncontrollable impulse Lacey took David's hand in his own warm, human grasp. "Once I thought I lost everything in Mexico, Saadat, and I understand what you feel. But all wasn't lost in Mexico, as I found at last, and I got something, too, that I didn't put in. Say, let us go from here. God is backing you, Saadat. Isn't it all right--same as ever?" David was himself again. "Thee is a good man," he said, and through the sadness of his eyes there stole a smile. "Let us go," he said. Then he added in a businesslike way: "To-morrow at seven, Nahoum. There is much to do." He turned towards the gate with Lacey, where the horses waited. Mahommed Hassan met them as they prepared to mount. He handed David a letter. It was from Faith, and contained the news of Luke Claridge's death. Everything had come at once. He stumbled into the saddle with a moan. "At last I have drawn blood," said Nahoum to himself with grim satisfaction, as they disappeared. "It is the beginning of the end. It will crush him-I saw it in his eyes. God of Israel, I shall rule again in Egypt!" CHAPTER XXIX THE RECOIL It was a great day in the Muslim year. The Mahmal, or Sacred Carpet, was leaving Cairo on its long pilgrimage of thirty-seven days to Mecca and Mahomet's tomb. Great guns boomed from the Citadel, as the gorgeous procession, forming itself beneath the Mokattam Hills, began its slow march to where, seated in the shade of an ornate pavilion, Prince Kaid awaited its approach to pay devout homage. Thousands looked down at the scene from the ramparts of the Citadel, from the overhanging cliffs, and from the tops of the houses that hung on the ledges of rock rising abruptly from the level ground, to which the last of the famed Mamelukes leaped to their destruction. Now to Prince Kaid's ears there came from hundreds of hoarse throats the cry: "Allah! Allah! May thy journey be with safety to Arafat!" mingling with the harsh music of the fifes and drums. Kaid looked upon the scene with drawn face and lowering brows. His retinue watched him with alarm. A whisper had passed that, two nights before, the Effendina had sent in haste for a famous Italian physician lately come to Cairo, and that since his visit Kaid had been sullen and depressed. It was also the gossip of the bazaars that he had suddenly shown favour to those of the Royal House and to other reactionaries, who had been enemies to the influence of Claridge Pasha. This rumour had been followed by an official proclamation that no Europeans or Christians would be admitted to the ceremony of the Sacred Carpet. Thus it was that Kaid looked out on a vast multitude of Muslims, in which not one European face showed, and from lip to lip there passed the word, "Harrik--Harrik--remember Harrik! Kaid turns from the infidel!" They crowded near the great pavilion--as near as the mounted Nubians would permit--to see Kaid's face; while he, with eyes wandering over the vast assemblage, was lost in dark reflections. For a year he had struggled against a growing conviction that some obscure disease was sapping his strength. He had hid it from every one, until, at last, distress and pain had overcome him. The verdict of the Italian expert was that possible, but by no means certain, cure might come from an operation which must be delayed for a month or more. Suddenly, the world had grown unfamiliar to him; he saw it from afar; but his subconscious self involuntarily registered impressions, and he moved mechanically through the ceremonies and duties of the immediate present. Thrown back upon himself, to fight his own fight, with the instinct of primary life his mind involuntarily drew for refuge to the habits and predispositions of youth; and for two days he had shut himself away from the activities with which David and Nahoum were associated. Being deeply engaged with the details of the expedition to the Soudan, David had not gone to the Palace; and he was unaware of the turn which things had taken. Three times, with slow and stately steps, the procession wound in a circle in the great square, before it approached the pavilion where the Effendina sat, the splendid camels carrying the embroidered tent wherein the Carpet rested, and that which bore the Emir of the pilgrims, moving gracefully like ships at sea. Naked swordsmen, with upright and shining blades, were followed by men on camels bearing kettle-drums. After them came Arab riders with fresh green branches fastened to the saddles like plumes, while others carried flags and banners emblazoned with texts and symbols. Troops of horsemen in white woollen cloaks, sheikhs and Bedouins with flowing robes and huge turbans, religious chiefs of the great sects, imperturbable and statuesque, were in strange contrast to the shouting dervishes and camel-drivers and eager pilgrims. At last the great camel with its sacred burden stopped in front of Kaid for his prayer and blessing. As he held the tassels, lifted the gold- fringed curtain, and invoked Allah's blessing, a half-naked sheikh ran forward, and, raising his hand high above his head, cried shrilly: "Kaid, Kaid, hearken!" Rough hands caught him away, but Kaid commanded them to desist; and the man called a blessing on him; and cried aloud: "Listen, O Kaid, son of the stars and the light of day. God hath exalted thee. Thou art the Egyptian of all the Egyptians. In thy hand is power. But thou art mortal even as I. Behold, O Kaid, in the hour that I was born thou wast born, I in the dust without thy Palace wall, thou amid the splendid things. But thy star is my star. Behold, as God ordains, the Tree of Life was shaken on the night when all men pray and cry aloud to God--even the Night of the Falling Leaves. And I watched the falling leaves; and I saw my leaf, and it was withered, but only a little withered, and so I live yet a little. But I looked for thy leaf, thou who wert born in that moment when I waked to the world. I looked long, but I found no leaf, neither green nor withered. But I looked again upon my leaf, and then I saw that thy name now was also upon my leaf, and that it was neither green nor withered; but was a leaf that drooped as when an evil wind has passed and drunk its life. Listen, O Kaid! Upon the tomb of Mahomet I will set my lips, and it may be that the leaf of my life will come fresh and green again. But thou--wilt thou not come also to the lord Mahomet's tomb? Or"--he paused and raised his voice--"or wilt thou stay and lay thy lips upon the cross of the infidel? Wilt thou--" He could say no more, for Kaid's face now darkened with anger. He made a gesture, and, in an instant, the man was gagged and bound, while a sullen silence fell upon the crowd. Kaid suddenly became aware of this change of feeling, and looked round him. Presently his old prudence and subtlety came back, his face cleared a little, and he called aloud, "Unloose the man, and let him come to me." An instant after, the man was on his knees, silent before him. "What is thy name?" Kaid asked. "Kaid Ibrahim, Effendina," was the reply. "Thou hast misinterpreted thy dream, Kaid Ibrahim," answered the Effendina. "The drooping leaf was token of the danger in which thy life should be, and my name upon thy leaf was token that I should save thee from death. Behold, I save thee. Inshallah, go in peace! There is no God but God, and the Cross is the sign of a false prophet. Thou art mad. God give thee a new mind. Go." The man was presently lost in the sweltering, half-frenzied crowd; but he had done his work, and his words rang in the ears of Kaid as he rode away. A few hours afterwards, bitter and rebellious, murmuring to himself, Kaid sat in a darkened room of his Nile Palace beyond the city. So few years on the throne, so young, so much on which to lay the hand of pleasure, so many millions to command; and yet the slave at his door had a surer hold on life and all its joys and lures than he, Prince Kaid, ruler of Egypt! There was on him that barbaric despair which has taken dreadful toll of life for the decree of destiny. Across the record of this day, as across the history of many an Eastern and pagan tyrant, was written: "He would not die alone." That the world should go on when he was gone, that men should buy and sell and laugh and drink, and flaunt it in the sun, while he, Prince Kaid, would be done with it all. He was roused by the rustling of a robe. Before him stood the Arab physician, Sharif Bey, who had been in his father's house and his own for a lifetime. It was many a year since his ministrations to Kaid had ceased; but he had remained on in the Palace, doing service to those who received him, and--it was said by the evil-tongued--granting certificates of death out of harmony with dark facts, a sinister and useful figure. His beard was white, his face was friendly, almost benevolent, but his eyes had a light caught from no celestial flame. His look was confident now, as his eyes bent on Kaid. He had lived long, he had seen much, he had heard of the peril that had been foreshadowed by the infidel physician; and, by a sure instinct, he knew that his own opportunity had come. He knew that Kaid would snatch at any offered comfort, would cherish any alleviating lie, would steal back from science and civilisation and the modern palace to the superstition of the fellah's hut. Were not all men alike when the neboot of Fate struck them down into the terrible loneliness of doom, numbing their minds? Luck would be with him that offered first succour in that dark hour. Sharif had come at the right moment for Sharif. Kaid looked at him with dull yet anxious eyes. "Did I not command that none should enter?" he asked presently in a thick voice. "Am I not thy physician, Effendina, to whom be the undying years? When the Effendina is sick, shall I not heal? Have I not waited like a dog at thy door these many years, till that time would come when none could heal thee save Sharif?" "What canst thou give me?" "What the infidel physician gave thee not--I can give thee hope. Hast thou done well, oh, Effendina, to turn from thine own people? Did not thine own father, and did not Mehemet Ali, live to a good age? Who were their physicians? My father and I, and my father's father, and his father's father." "Thou canst cure me altogether?" asked Kaid hesitatingly. "Wilt thou not have faith in one of thine own race? Will the infidel love thee as do we, who are thy children and thy brothers, who are to thee as a nail driven in the wall, not to be moved? Thou shalt live-- Inshallah, thou shalt have healing and length of days!" He paused at a gesture from Kaid, for a slave had entered and stood waiting. "What dost thou here? Wert thou not commanded?" asked Kaid. "Effendina, Claridge Pasha is waiting," was the reply. Kaid frowned, hesitated; then, with a sudden resolve, made a gesture of dismissal to Sharif Bey, and nodded David's admittance to the slave. As David entered, he passed Sharif Bey, and something in the look on the Arab physician's face--a secret malignancy and triumph--struck him strangely. And now a fresh anxiety and apprehension rose in his mind as he glanced at Kaid. The eye was heavy and gloomy, the face was clouded, the lips once so ready to smile at him were sullen and smileless now. David stood still, waiting. "I did not expect thee till to-morrow, Saadat," said Kaid moodily at last. "The business is urgent?" "Effendina," said David, with every nerve at tension, yet with outward self-control, "I have to report--" He paused, agitated; then, in a firm voice, he told of the disaster which had befallen the cotton-mills and the steamer. As David spoke, Kaid's face grew darker, his fingers fumbled vaguely with the linen of the loose white robe he wore. When the tale was finished he sat for a moment apparently stunned by the news, then he burst out fiercely: "Bismillah, am I to hear only black words to-day? Hast thou naught to say but this--the fortune of Egypt burned to ashes!" David held back the quick retort that came to his tongue. "Half my fortune is in the ashes," he answered with dignity. "The rest came from savings never made before by this Government. Is the work less worthy in thy sight, Effendina, because it has been destroyed? Would thy life be less great and useful because a blow took thee from behind?" Kaid's face turned black. David had bruised an open wound. "What is my life to thee--what is thy work to me?" "Thy life is dear to Egypt, Effendina," urged David soothingly, "and my labour for Egypt has been pleasant in thine eyes till now." "Egypt cannot be saved against her will," was the moody response. "What has come of the Western hand upon the Eastern plough?" His face grew blacker; his heart was feeding on itself. "Thou, the friend of Egypt, hast come of it, Effendina." "Harrik was right, Harrik was right," Kaid answered, with stubborn gloom and anger. "Better to die in our own way, if we must die, than live in the way of another. Thou wouldst make of Egypt another England; thou wouldst civilise the Soudan--bismillah, it is folly!" "That is not the way Mehemet Ali thought, nor Ibrahim. Nor dost thou think so, Effendina," David answered gravely. "A dark spirit is on thee. Wouldst thou have me understand that what we have done together, thou and I, was ill done, that the old bad days were better?" "Go back to thine own land," was the surly answer. "Nation after nation ravaged Egypt, sowed their legions here, but the Egyptian has lived them down. The faces of the fellaheen are the faces of Thotmes and Seti. Go back. Egypt will travel her own path. We are of the East; we are Muslim. What is right to you is wrong to us. Ye would make us over-- give us cotton beds and wooden floors and fine flour of the mill, and cleanse the cholera-hut with disinfectants, but are these things all? How many of your civilised millions would die for their prophet Christ? Yet all Egypt would rise up from the mud-floor, the dourha-field and the mud-hut, and would come out to die for Mahomet and Allah--ay, as Harrik knew, as Harrik knew! Ye steal into corners, and hide behind the curtains of your beds to pray; we pray where the hour of prayer finds us --in the street, in the market-place, where the house is building, the horse being shod, or the money-changers are. Ye hear the call of civilisation, but we heap the Muezzin--" He stopped, and searched mechanically for his watch. "It is the hour the Muezzin calls," said David gently. "It is almost sunset. Shall I open the windows that the call may come to us?" he added. While Kaid stared at him, his breast heaving with passion, David went to a window and opened the shutters wide. The Palace faced the Nile, which showed like a tortuous band of blue and silver a mile or so away. Nothing lay between but the brown sand, and here and there a handful of dark figures gliding towards the river, or a little train of camels making for the bare grey hills from the ghiassas which had given them their desert loads. The course of the Nile was marked by a wide fringe of palms showing blue and purple, friendly and ancient and solitary. Beyond the river and the palms lay the grey-brown desert, faintly touched with red. So clear was the sweet evening air that the irregular surface of the desert showed for a score of miles as plainly as though it were but a step away. Hummocks of sand--tombs and fallen monuments gave a feeling as of forgotten and buried peoples; and the two vast pyramids of Sakkarah stood up in the plaintive glow of the evening skies, majestic and solemn, faithful to the dissolved and absorbed races who had built them. Curtains of mauve and saffron-red were hung behind them, and through a break of cloud fringing the horizon a yellow glow poured, to touch the tips of the pyramids with poignant splendour. But farther over to the right, where Cairo lay, there hung a bluish mist, palpable and delicate, out of which emerged the vast pyramids of Cheops; and beside it the smiling inscrutable Sphinx faced the changeless centuries. Beyond the pyramids the mist deepened into a vast deep cloud of blue and purple, which seemed the end to some mystic highway untravelled by the sons of men. Suddenly there swept over David a wave of feeling such as had passed over Kaid, though of a different nature. Those who had built the pyramids were gone, Cheops and Thotmes and Amenhotep and Chefron and the rest. There had been reformers in those lost races; one age had sought to better the last, one man had toiled to save--yet there only remained offensive bundles of mummied flesh and bone and a handful of relics in tombs fifty centuries old. Was it all, then, futile? Did it matter, then, whether one man laboured or a race aspired? Only for a moment these thoughts passed through his mind; and then, as the glow through the broken cloud on the opposite horizon suddenly faded, and veils of melancholy fell over the desert and the river and the palms, there rose a call, sweetly shrill, undoubtingly insistent. Sunset had come, and, with it, the Muezzin's call to prayer from the minaret of a mosque hard by. David was conscious of a movement behind him--that Kaid was praying with hands uplifted; and out on the sands between the window and the river he saw kneeling figures here and there, saw the camel-drivers halt their trains, and face the East with hands uplifted. The call went on--"La ilaha illa-llah !" It called David, too. The force and searching energy and fire in it stole through his veins, and drove from him the sense of futility and despondency which had so deeply added to his trouble. There was something for him, too, in that which held infatuated the minds of so many millions. A moment later Kaid and he faced each other again. "Effendina," he said, "thou wilt not desert our work now?" "Money--for this expedition? Thou hast it?" Kaid asked ironically. "I have but little money, and it must go to rebuild the mills, Effendina. I must have it of thee." "Let them remain in their ashes." "But thousands will have no work." "They had work before they were built, they will have work now they are gone." "Effendina, I stayed in Egypt at thy request. The work is thy work. Wilt thou desert it?" "The West lured me--by things that seemed. Now I know things as they are." "They will lure thee again to-morrow," said David firmly, but with a weight on his spirit. His eyes sought and held Kaid's. "It is too late to go back; we must go forward or we shall lose the Soudan, and a Mahdi and his men will be in Cairo in ten years." For an instant Kaid was startled. The old look of energy and purpose leaped up into his eye; but it faded quickly again. If, as the Italian physician more than hinted, his life hung by a thread, did it matter whether the barbarian came to Cairo? That was the business of those who came after. If Sharif was right, and his life was saved, there would be time enough to set things right. "I will not pour water on the sands to make an ocean," he answered. "Will a ship sail on the Sahara? Bismillah, it is all a dream! Harrik was right. But dost thou think to do with me as thou didst with Harrik?" he sneered. "Is it in thy mind?" David's patience broke down under the long provocation. "Know then, Effendina," he said angrily, "that I am not thy subject, nor one beholden to thee, nor thy slave. Upon terms well understood, I have laboured here. I have kept my obligations, and it is thy duty to keep thy obligations, though the hand of death were on thee. I know not what has poisoned thy mind, and driven thee from reason and from justice. I know that, Prince Pasha of Egypt as thou art, thou art as bound to me as any fellah that agrees to tend my door or row my boat. Thy compact with me is a compact with England, and it shall be kept, if thou art an honest man. Thou mayst find thousands in Egypt who will serve thee at any price, and bear thee in any mood. I have but one price. It is well known to thee. I will not be the target for thy black temper. This is not the middle ages; I am an Englishman, not a helot. The bond must be kept; thou shalt not play fast and loose. Money must be found; the expedition must go. But if thy purpose is now Harrik's purpose, then Europe should know, and Egypt also should know. I have been thy right hand, Effendina; I will not be thy old shoe, to be cast aside at thy will." In all the days of his life David had never flamed out as he did now. Passionate as his words were, his manner was strangely quiet, but his white and glistening face and his burning eyes showed how deep was his anger. As he spoke, Kaid sank upon the divan. Never had he been challenged so. With his own people he had ever been used to cringing and abasement, and he had played the tyrant, and struck hard and cruelly, and he had been feared; but here, behind David's courteous attitude, there was a scathing arraignment of his conduct which took no count of consequence. In other circumstances his vanity would have shrunk under this whip of words, but his native reason and his quick humour would have justified David. In this black distemper possessing him, however, only outraged egotism prevailed. His hands clenched and unclenched, his lips were drawn back on his teeth in rage. When David had finished, Kaid suddenly got to his feet and took a step forward with a malediction, but a faintness seized him and he staggered back. When he raised his head again David was gone. CHAPTER XXX LACEY MOVES If there was one glistening bead of sweat on the bald pate of Lacey of Chicago there were a thousand; and the smile on his face was not less shining and unlimited. He burst into the rooms of the palace where David had residence, calling: "Oyez! Oyez! Saadat! Oh, Pasha of the Thousand Tails! Oyez! Oyez!" Getting no answer, he began to perform a dance round the room, which in modern days is known as the negro cake-walk. It was not dignified, but it would have been less dignified still performed by any other living man of forty-five with a bald head and a waist-band ten inches too large. Round the room three times he went, and then he dropped on a divan. He gasped, and mopped his face and forehead, leaving a little island of moisture on the top of his head untouched. After a moment, he gained breath and settled down a little. Then he burst out: "Are you coming to my party, O effendi? There'll be high jinks, there'll be welcome, there'll be room; For to-morrow we are pulling stakes for Shendy. Are you coming to my party, O Nahoum?" "Say, I guess that's pretty good on the spur of the moment," he wheezed, and, taking his inseparable note book from his pocket, wrote the impromptu down. "I guess She'll like that-it rings spontaneous. She'll be tickled, tickled to death, when she knows what's behind it." He repeated it with gusto. "She'll dote on it," he added--the person to whom he referred being the sister of the American Consul, the little widow, "cute as she can be," of whom he had written to Hylda in the letter which had brought a crisis in her life. As he returned the note- book to his pocket a door opened. Mahommed Hassan slid forward into the room, and stood still, impassive and gloomy. Lacey beckoned, and said grotesquely: "'Come hither, come hither, my little daughter, And do not tremble so!'" A sort of scornful patience was in Mahommed's look, but he came nearer and waited. "Squat on the ground, and smile a smile of mirth, Mahommed," Lacey said riotously. "'For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May!'" Mahommed's face grew resentful. "O effendi, shall the camel-driver laugh when the camels are lost in the khamsin and the water-bottle is empty?" "Certainly not, O son of the spreading palm; but this is not a desert, nor a gaudy caravan. This is a feast of all angels. This is the day when Nahoum the Nefarious is to be buckled up like a belt, and ridden in a ring. Where is the Saadat?" "He is gone, effendi! Like a mist on the face of the running water, so was his face; like eyes that did not see, so was his look. 'Peace be to thee, Mahommed, thou art faithful as Zaida,' he said, and he mounted and rode into the desert. I ran after till he was come to the edge of the desert; but he sent me back, saying that I must wait for thee; and this word I was to say, that Prince Kaid had turned his face darkly from him, and that the finger of Sharif--" "That fanatical old quack--Harrik's friend!" "--that the finger of Sharif was on his pulse; but the end of all was in the hands of God." "Oh yes, exactly, the finger of Sharif on his pulse! The old story-the return to the mother's milk, throwing back to all the Pharaohs. Well, what then?" he added cheerfully, his smile breaking out again. "Where has he gone, our Saadat?" "To Ebn Ezra Bey at the Coptic Monastery by the Etl Tree, where your prophet Christ slept when a child." Lacey hummed to himself meditatively. "A sort of last powwow--Rome before the fall. Everything wrong, eh? Kaid turned fanatic, Nahoum on the tiles watching for the Saadat to fall, things trembling for want of hard cash. That's it, isn't it, Mahommed?" Mahommed nodded, but his look was now alert, and less sombre. He had caught at something vital and confident in Lacey's tone. He drew nearer, and listened closely. "Well, now, my gentle gazelle, listen unto me," continued Lacey. He suddenly leaned forward, and spoke in subdued but rapid tones. "Say, Mahommed, once upon a time there was an American man, with a shock of red hair, and a nature like a spring-lock. He went down to Mexico, with a million or two of his own money got honestly by an undisputed will from an undisputed father--you don't understand that, but it doesn't matter-- and with a few millions of other people's money, for to gamble in mines and railways and banks and steamship companies--all to do with Mexico what the Saadat has tried to do in Egypt with less money; but not for the love of Allah, same as him. This American was going to conquer like Cortez, but his name was Thomas Tilman Lacey, and he had a lot of gall. After years of earnest effort, he lost his hair and the millions of the Infatuated Conquistadores. And by-and-by he came to Cairo with a thimbleful of income, and began to live again. There was a civil war going on in his own country, but he thought that one out of forty millions would not be strictly missed. So he stayed in Egypt; and the tale of his days in Egypt, is it not written with a neboot of domwood in the book of Mahommed Hassan the scribe?" He paused and beamed upon the watchful Mahommed, who, if he did not understand all that had been said, was in no difficulty as to the drift and meaning of the story. "Aiwa, effendi," he urged impatiently. "It is a long ride to the Etl Tree, and the day is far spent." "Inshallah, you shall hear, my turtle-dove! One day there came to Cairo, in great haste, a man from Mexico, looking for the foolish one called T. T. Lacey, bearing glad news. And the man from Mexico blew his trumpet, and straightway T. T. Lacey fell down dismayed. The trumpet said that a million once lost in Mexico was returned, with a small flock of other millions; for a mine, in which it was sunk, had burst forth with a stony stream of silver. And behold! Thomas Tilman Lacey, the despised waster of his patrimony and of other people's treasure, is now, O son of the fig-flower, richer than Kaid Pasha and all his eunuchs." Suddenly Mahommed Hassan leaned forward, then backward, and, after the fashion of desert folk, gave a shrill, sweet ululation that seemed to fill the palace. "Say, that's A1," Lacey said, when Mahommed's voice sank to a whisper of wild harmony. "Yes, you can lick my boots, my noble sheikh of Manfaloot," he added, as Mahommed caught his feet and bent his head upon them. "I wanted to do something like that myself. Kiss 'em, honey; it'll do you good." After a moment, Mahommed drew back and squatted before him in an attitude of peace and satisfaction. "The Saadat--you will help him? You will give him money?" "Let's put it in this way, Mahommed: I'll invest in an expedition out of which I expect to get something worth while--concessions for mines and railways, et cetera." He winked a round, blue eye. "Business is business, and the way to get at the Saadat is to talk business; but you can make up your mind that, "'To-morrow, we are pulling stakes for Shendy! Are you coming to my party, O Nahoum?'" "By the prophet Abraham, but the news is great news," said Mahommed with a grin. "But the Effendina?" "Well, I'll try and square the Effendina," answered Lacey. "Perhaps the days of backsheesh aren't done in Egypt, after all." "And Nahoum Pasha?" asked Mahommed, with a sinister look. "Well, we'll try and square him, too, but in another way." "The money, it is in Egypt?" queried Mahommed, whose idea was that money to be real must be seen. "Something that's as handy and as marketable," answered Lacey. "I can raise half a million to-morrow; and that will do a lot of what we want. How long will it take to ride to the monastery?" Mahommed told him. Lacey was about to leave the room, when he heard a voice outside. "Nahoum!" he said, and sat down again on the divan. "He has come to see the Saadat, I suppose; but it'll do him good to see me, perhaps. Open the sluices, Mahommed." Yes, Nahoum would be glad to see the effendi, since Claridge Pasha was not in Cairo. When would Claridge Pasha return? If, then, the effendi expected to see the Saadat before his return to Cairo, perhaps he would convey a message. He could not urge his presence on the Saadat, since he had not been honoured with any communication since yesterday. "Well, that's good-mannered, anyhow, pasha," said Lacey with cheerful nonchalance. "People don't always know when they're wanted or not wanted." Nahoum looked at him guardedly, sighed and sat down. "Things have grown worse since yesterday," he said. "Prince Kaid received the news badly." He shook his head. "He has not the gift of perfect friendship. That is a Christian characteristic; the Muslim does not possess it. It was too strong to last, maybe--my poor beloved friend, the Saadat." "Oh, it will last all right," rejoined Lacey coolly. "Prince Kaid has got a touch of jaundice, I guess. He knows a thing when he finds it, even if he hasn't the gift of 'perfect friendship,' same as Christians like you and me. But even you and me don't push our perfections too far --I haven't noticed you going out of your way to do things for your 'poor beloved friend, the Saadat'." "I have given him time, energy, experience--money." Lacey nodded. "True. And I've often wondered why, when I've seen the things you didn't give and the things you took away." Nahoum's eyes half closed. Lacey was getting to close quarters with suspicion and allusion; but it was not his cue to resent them yet. "I had come now to offer him help; to advance him enough to carry through his expedition." "Well, that sounds generous, but I guess he would get on without it, pasha. He would not want to be under any more obligations to you." "He is without money. He must be helped." "Just so." "He cannot go to the treasury, and Prince Kaid has refused. Why should he decline help from his friend?" Suddenly Lacey changed his tactics. He had caught a look in Nahoum's eyes which gave him a new thought. "Well, if you've any proposition, pasha, I'll take it to him. I'll be seeing him to-night." "I can give him fifty thousand pounds." "It isn't enough to save the situation, pasha." "It will help him over the first zareba." "Are there any conditions?" "There are no conditions, effendi." "And interest?" "There would be no interest in money." "Other considerations?" "Yes, other considerations, effendi." "If they were granted, would there be enough still in the stocking to help him over a second zareba--or a third, perhaps?" "That would be possible, even likely, I think. Of course we speak in confidence, effendi." "The confidence of the 'perfect friendship.'" "There may be difficulty, because the Saadat is sensitive; but it is the only way to help him. I can get the money from but one source; and to get it involves an agreement." "You think his Excellency would not just jump at it--that it might hurt some of his prejudices, eh?" "So, effendi." "And me--where am I in it, pasha?" "Thou hast great influence with his Excellency." "I am his servant--I don't meddle with his prejudices, pasha." "But if it were for his own good, to save his work here." Lacey yawned almost ostentatiously. "I guess if he can't save it himself it can't be saved, not even when you reach out the hand of perfect friendship. You've been reaching out for a long time, pasha, and it didn't save the steamer or the cotton-mills; and it didn't save us when we were down by Sobat a while ago, and you sent Halim Bey to teach us to be patient. We got out of that nasty corner by sleight of hand, but not your sleight of hand, pasha. Your hand is a quick hand, but a sharp eye can see the trick, and then it's no good, not worth a button." There was something savage behind Nahoum's eyes, but they did not show it; they blinked with earnest kindness and interest. The time would come when Lacey would go as his master should go, and the occasion was not far off now; but it must not be forced. Besides, was this fat, amorous- looking factotum of Claridge Pasha's as Spartan-minded as his master? Would he be superior to the lure of gold? He would see. He spoke seriously, with apparent solicitude. "Thou dost not understand, effendi. Claridge Pasha must have money. Prestige is everything in Egypt, it is everything with Kaid. If Claridge Pasha rides on as though nothing has happened--and money is the only horse that can carry him--Kaid will not interfere, and his black mood may pass; but any halting now and the game is done." "And you want the game to go on right bad, don't you? Well, I guess you're right. Money is the only winner in this race. He's got to have money, sure. How much can you raise? Oh, yes, you told me! Well, I don't think it's enough; he's got to have three times that; and if he can't get it from the Government, or from Kaid, it's a bad lookout. What's the bargain you have in your mind?" "That the slave-trade continue, effendi." Lacey did not wink, but he had a shock of surprise. On the instant he saw the trap--for the Saadat and for himself. "He would not do it--not for money, pasha." "He would not be doing it for money. The time is not ripe for it, it is too dangerous. There is a time for all things. If he will but wait!" "I wouldn't like to be the man that'd name the thing to him. As you say, he's got his prejudices. They're stronger than in most men." "It need not be named to him. Thou canst accept the money for him, and when thou art in the Soudan, and he is going to do it, thou canst prevent it." "Tell him that I've taken the money and that he's used it, and he oughtn't to go back on the bargain I made for him? So that he'll be bound by what I did?" "It is the best way, effendi." "He'd be annoyed," said Lacey with a patient sigh. "He has a great soul; but sometimes he forgets that expediency is the true policy." "Yet he's done a lot of things without it. He's never failed in what he set out to do. What he's done has been kicked over, but he's done it all right, somehow, at last." "He will not be able to do this, effendi, except with my help--and thine." "He's had quite a lot of things almost finished, too," said Lacey reflectively, "and then a hand reached out in the dark and cut the wires --cut them when he was sleeping, and he didn't know; cut them when he was waking, and he wouldn't understand; cut them under his own eyes, and he wouldn't see; because the hand that cut them was the hand of the perfect friend." He got slowly to his feet, as a cloud of colour drew over the face of Nahoum and his eyes darkened with astonishment and anger. Lacey put his hands in his pockets and waited till Nahoum also rose. Then he gathered the other's eyes to his, and said with drawling scorn: "So, you thought I didn't understand! You thought I'd got a brain like a peanut, and wouldn't drop onto your game or the trap you've set. You'd advance money--got from the slave-dealers to prevent the slave-trade being stopped! If Claridge Pasha took it and used it, he could never stop the slave-trade. If I took it and used it for him on the same terms, he couldn't stop the slave-trade, though he might know no more about the bargain than a babe unborn. And if he didn't stand by the bargain I made, and did prohibit slave-dealing, nothing'd stop the tribes till they marched into Cairo. He's been safe so far, because they believed in him, and because he'd rather die a million deaths than go crooked. Say, I've been among the Dagos before--down in Mexico--and I'm onto you. I've been onto you for a good while; though there was nothing I could spot certain; but now I've got you, and I'll break the 'perfect friendship' or I'll eat my shirt. I'll--" He paused, realising the crisis in which David was moving, and that perils were thick around their footsteps. But, even as he thought of them, he remembered David's own frank, fearless audacity in danger and difficulty, and he threw discretion to the winds. He flung his flag wide, and believed with a belief as daring as David's that all would be well. "Well, what wilt thou do?" asked Nahoum with cool and deadly menace. "Thou wilt need to do it quickly, because, if it is a challenge, within forty-eight hours Claridge Pasha and thyself will be gone from Egypt--or I shall be in the Nile." "I'll take my chances, pasha," answered Lacey, with equal coolness. "You think you'll win. It's not the first time I've had to tackle men like you--they've got the breed in Mexico. They beat me there, but I learned the game, and I've learned a lot from you, too. I never knew what your game was here. I only know that the Saadat saved your life, and got you started again with Kaid. I only know that you called yourself a Christian, and worked on him till he believed in you, and Hell might crackle round you, but he'd believe, till he saw your contract signed with the Devil--and then he'd think the signature forged. But he's got to know now. We are not going out of Egypt, though you may be going to the Nile; but we are going to the Soudan, and with Kaid's blessing, too. You've put up the bluff, and I take it. Be sure you've got Kaid solid, for, if you haven't, he'll be glad to know where you keep the money you got from the slave-dealers." Nahoum shrugged his shoulders. "Who has seen the money? Where is the proof? Kaid would know my reasons. It is not the first time virtue has been tested in Egypt, or the first time that it has fallen." In spite of himself Lacey laughed. "Say, that's worthy of a great Christian intellect. You are a bright particular star, pasha. I take it back--they'd learn a lot from you in Mexico. But the only trouble with lying is, that the demand becomes so great you can't keep all the cards in your head, and then the one you forget does you. The man that isn't lying has the pull in the long run. You are out against us, pasha, and we'll see how we stand in forty-eight hours. You have some cards up your sleeve, I suppose; but--well, I'm taking you on. I'm taking you on with a lot of joy, and some sorrow, too, for we might have pulled off a big thing together, you and Claridge Pasha, with me to hold the stirrups. Now it's got to be war. You've made it so. It's a pity, for when we grip there'll be a heavy fall." "For a poor man thou hast a proud stomach." "Well, I'll admit the stomach, pasha. It's proud; and it's strong, too; it's stood a lot in Egypt; it's standing a lot to-day." "We'll ease the strain, perhaps," sneered Nahoum. He made a perfunctory salutation and walked briskly from the room. Mahommed Hassan crept in, a malicious grin on his face. Danger and conflict were as meat and drink to him. "Effendi, God hath given thee a wasp's sting to thy tongue. It is well. Nahoum Pasha hath Mizraim: the Saadat hath thee and me." "There's the Effendina," said Lacey reflectively. "Thou saidst thou would 'square' him, effendi." "I say a lot," answered Lacey rather ruefully. "Come, Mahommed, the Saadat first, and the sooner the better." CHAPTER XXXI THE STRUGGLE IN THE DESERT "And His mercy is on them that fear Him throughout all generations." On the clear, still evening air the words rang out over the desert, sonorous, imposing, peaceful. As the notes of the verse died away the answer came from other voices in deep, appealing antiphonal: "He hath showed strength with His arm, He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts." Beyond the limits of the monastery there was not a sign of life; neither beast nor bird, nor blade of grass, nor any green thing; only the perfect immemorial blue, and in the east a misty moon, striving in vain to offer light which the earth as yet rejected for the brooding radiance of the descending sun. But at the great door of the monastery there grew a stately palm, and near by an ancient acacia-tree; and beyond the stone chapel there was a garden of struggling shrubs and green things, with one rose-tree which scattered its pink leaves from year to year upon the loam, since no man gathered bud or blossom. The triumphant call of the Magnificat, however beautiful, seemed strangely out of place in this lonely island in a sea of sand. It was the song of a bannered army, marching over the battle-field with conquering voices, and swords as yet unsheathed and red, carrying the spoils of conquest behind the laurelled captain of the host. The crumbling and ancient walls were surrounded by a moat which a stranger's foot crossed hardly from moon to moon, which the desert wayfarer sought rarely, since it was out of the track of caravans, and because food was scant in the refectory of this Coptic brotherhood. It was scarce five hours' ride from the Palace of the Prince Pasha: but it might have been a thousand miles away, so profoundly separate was it from the world of vital things and deeds of men. As the chant rang out, confident, majestic, and serene, carried by voices of power and shrill sweetness, which only the desert can produce, it might have seemed to any listener that this monastery was all that remained of some ancient kingdom of brimming, active cities, now lying beneath the obliterating sand, itself the monument and memorial of a breath of mercy of the Destroyer, the last refuge of a few surviving captains of a departed greatness. Hidden by the grey, massive walls, built as it were to resist the onset of a ravaging foe, the swelling voices might well have been those of some ancient order of valiant knights, whose banners hung above them, the 'riclame' of their deeds. But they were voices and voices only; for they who sang were as unkempt and forceless as the lonely wall which shut them in from the insistent soul of the desert. Desolation? The desert was not desolate. Its face was bare and burning, it slaked no man's thirst, gave no man food, save where scattered oases were like the breasts of a vast mother eluding the aching lips of her parched children; but the soul of the desert was living and inspiring, beating with vitality. It was life that burned like flame. If the water-skin was dry and the date-bag empty it smothered and destroyed; but it was life; and to those who ventured into its embrace, obeying the conditions of the sharp adventure, it gave what neither sea, nor green plain, nor high mountain, nor verdant valley could give--a consuming sense of power, which found its way to the deepest recesses of being. Out upon the vast sea of sand, where the descending sun was spreading a note of incandescent colour, there floated the grateful words: "He remembering His mercy hath holpen His servant Israel; as He promised to our forefathers, Abraham, and his seed for ever." Then the antiphonal ceased; and together the voices of all within the place swelled out in the Gloria and the Amen, and seemed to pass away in ever-receding vibrations upon the desert, till it was lost in the comforting sunset. As the last note died away, a voice from beneath the palm-tree near the door, deeper than any that had come from within, said reverently: "Ameen- Ameen !" He who spoke was a man well over sixty years, with a grey beard, lofty benign forehead, and the eyes of a scholar and a dreamer. As he uttered the words of spiritual assent, alike to the Muslim and the Christian religion, he rose to his feet, showing the figure of a man of action, alert, well-knit, authoritative. Presently he turned towards the East and stretched a robe upon the ground, and with stately beauty of gesture he spread out his hands, standing for a moment in the attitude of aspiration. Then, kneeling, he touched his turbaned head to the ground three times, and as the sun drew down behind the sharp, bright line of sand that marked the horizon, he prayed devoutly and long. It was Ebn Ezra Bey. Muslim though he was, he had visited this monastery many times, to study the ancient Christian books which lay in disordered heaps in an ill-kept chamber, books which predated the Hegira, and were as near to the life of the Early Church as the Scriptures themselves--or were so reputed. Student and pious Muslim as he was, renowned at El Azhar and at every Muslim university in the Eastern world, he swore by the name of Christ as by that of Abraham, Isaac, and all the prophets, though to him Mahomet was the last expression of Heaven's will to mankind. At first received at the monastery with unconcealed aversion, and not without danger to himself, he had at last won to him the fanatical monks, who, in spirit, kept this ancient foundation as rigid to their faith as though it were in mediaeval times. And though their discipline was lax, and their daily duties orderless, this was Oriental rather than degenerate. Here Ebn Ezra had stayed for weeks at a time in the past, not without some religious scandal, long since forgotten. His prayers ended, he rose up slowly, once more spread out his hands in ascription, and was about to enter the monastery, when, glancing towards the west, he saw a horseman approaching. An instinct told him who it was before he could clearly distinguish the figure, and his face lighted with a gentle and expectant smile. Then his look changed. "He is in trouble," he murmured. "As it was with his uncle in Damascus, so will it be with him. Malaish, we are in the will of God!" The hand that David laid in Ebn Ezra's was hot and nervous, the eyes that drank in the friendship of the face which had seen two Claridges emptying out their lives in the East were burning and famished by long fasting of the spirit, forced abstinence from the pleasures of success and fruition-haunting, desiring eyes, where flamed a spirit which consumed the body and the indomitable mind. The lips, however, had their old trick of smiling, though the smile which greeted Ebn Ezra Bey had a melancholy which touched the desert-worn, life-spent old Arab as he had not been touched since a smile, just like this, flashed up at him from the weather-stained, dying face of quaint Benn Claridge in a street of Damascus. The natural duplicity of the Oriental had been abashed and inactive before the simple and astounding honesty of these two Quaker folk. He saw crisis written on every feature of the face before him. Yet the scanty meal they ate with the monks in the ancient room was enlivened by the eager yet quiet questioning of David, to whom the monks responded with more spirit than had been often seen in this arid retreat. The single torch which spluttered from the wall as they drank their coffee lighted up faces as strange, withdrawn, and unconsciously secretive as ever gathered to greet a guest. Dim tales had reached them of this Christian reformer and administrator, scraps of legend from stray camel- drivers, a letter from the Patriarch commanding them to pray blessings on his labours--who could tell what advantage might not come to the Coptic Church through him, a Christian! On the dull, torpid faces, light seemed struggling to live for a moment, as David talked. It was as though something in their meagre lives, which belonged to undeveloped feelings, was fighting for existence--a light struggling to break through murky veils of inexperience. Later, in the still night, however--still, though air vibrated everywhere, as though the desert breathed an ether which was to fill men's veins with that which quieted the fret and fever of life's disillusions and forgeries and failures--David's speech with Ebn Ezra Bey was of a different sort. If, as it seems ever in the desert, an invisible host of beings, once mortal, now immortal, but suspensive and understanding, listened to the tale he unfolded, some glow of pity must have possessed them; for it was an Iliad of herculean struggle against absolute disaster, ending with the bitter news of his grandfather's death. It was the story of AEdipus overcome by events too strong for soul to bear. In return, as the stars wheeled on, and the moon stole to the zenith, majestic and slow, Ebn Ezra offered to his troubled friend only the philosophy of the predestinarian, mingled with the calm of the stoic. But something antagonistic to his own dejection, to the Muslim's fatalism, emerged from David's own altruism, to nerve him to hope and effort still. His unconquerable optimism rose determinedly to the surface, even as he summed up and related the forces working against him. "They have all come at once," he said; "all the activities opposing me, just as though they had all been started long ago at different points, with a fixed course to run, and to meet and give me a fall in the hour when I could least resist. You call it Fate. I call it what it proves itself to be. But here it is a hub of danger and trouble, and the spokes of disaster are flying to it from all over the compass, to make the wheel that will grind me; and all the old troop of Palace intriguers and despoilers are waiting to heat the tire and fasten it on the machine of torture. Kaid has involved himself in loans which press, in foolish experiments in industry without due care; and now from ill-health and bad temper comes a reaction towards the old sinister rule, when the Prince shuts his eyes and his agents ruin and destroy. Three nations who have intrigued against my work see their chance, and are at Kaid's elbow. The fate of the Soudan is in the balance. It is all as the shake of a feather. I can save it if I go; but, just as I am ready, my mills burn down, my treasury dries up, Kaid turns his back on me, and the toil of years is swept away in a night. Thee sees it is terrible, friend?" Ebn Ezra looked at him seriously and sadly for a moment, and then said: "Is it given one man to do all? If many men had done these things, then there had been one blow for each. Now all falls on thee, Saadat. Is it the will of God that one man should fling the lance, fire the cannon, dig the trenches, gather food for the army, drive the horses on to battle, and bury the dead? Canst thou do all?" David's eyes brightened to the challenge. "There was the work to do, and there were not the many to do it. My hand was ready; the call came; I answered. I plunged into the river of work alone." "Thou didst not know the strength of the currents, the eddies and the whirlpools, the hidden rocks--and the shore is far off, Saadat." "It is not so far but that, if I could get breath to gather strength, I should reach the land in time. Money--ah, but enough for this expedition! That over, order, quiet yonder, my own chosen men as governors, and I could"--he pointed towards the southern horizon-- "I could plant my foot in Cairo, and from the centre control the great machinery--with Kaid's help; and God's help. A sixth of a million, and Kaid's hand behind me, and the boat would lunge free of the sand-banks and churn on, and churn on. . . . Friend," he added, with the winning insistence that few found it possible to resist, "if all be well, and we go thither, wilt thou become the governor-general yonder? With thee to rule justly where there is most need of justice, the end would be sure-- if it be the will of God." Ebn Ezra Bey sat for a moment looking into the worn, eager face, indistinct in the moonlight, then answered slowly: "I am seventy, and the years smite hard as they pass, and there or here, it little matters when I go, as I must go; and whether it be to bend the lance, or bear the flag before thee, or rule a Mudirieh, what does it matter! I will go with thee," he added hastily; "but it is better thou shouldst not go. Within the last three days I have news from the South. All that thou hast done there is in danger now. The word for revolt has passed from tribe to tribe. A tongue hath spoken, and a hand hath signalled "--his voice lowered--" and I think I know the tongue and the hand!" He paused; then, as David did not speak, continued: "Thou who art wise in most things, dost decline to seek for thy foe in him who eateth from the same dish with thee. Only when it is too late thou wilt defend thyself and all who keep faith with thee." David's face clouded. "Nahoum, thou dost mean Nahoum? But thou dost not understand, and there is no proof." "As a camel knows the coming storm while yet the sky is clear, by that which the eye does not see, so do I feel Nahoum. The evils thou hast suffered, Saadat, are from his hand, if from any hand in Egypt--" Suddenly he leaned over and touched David's arm. "Saadat, it is of no avail. There is none in Egypt that desires good; thy task is too great. All men will deceive thee; if not now, yet in time. If Kaid favours thee once more, and if it is made possible for thee to go to the Soudan, yet I pray thee to stay here. Better be smitten here, where thou canst get help from thine own country, if need be, than yonder, where they but wait to spoil thy work and kill thee. Thou art young; wilt thou throw thy life away? Art thou not needed here as there? For me it is nothing, whether it be now or in a few benumbing years; but for thee--is there no one whom thou lovest so well that thou wouldst not shelter thy life to spare that life sorrow? Is there none that thou lovest so, and that will love thee to mortal sorrow, if thou goest without care to thy end too soon?" As a warm wind suddenly sweeps across the cool air of a summer evening for an instant, suffocating and unnerving, so Ebn Ezra's last words swept across David's spirit. His breath came quicker, his eyes half closed. "Is there none that thou lovest so, and that will love thee to mortal sorrow, if--" As a hand secretly and swiftly slips the lever that opens the sluice- gates of a dike, while the watchman turns away for a moment to look at the fields which the waters enrich and the homes of poor folk whom the gates defend, so, in a moment, when off his guard, worn with watching and fending, as it were, Ebn Ezra had sprung the lever, and a flood of feeling swept over David, drowned him in its impulse and pent-up force. "Is there none that thou lovest so--" Of what use had been all his struggle and his pain since that last day in Hamley--his dark fighting days in the desert with Lacey and Mahommed, and his handful of faithful followers, hemmed in by dangers, the sands swarming with Arabs who feathered now to his safety, now to his doom, and his heart had hungered for what he had denied it with a will that would not be conquered? Wasted by toil and fever and the tension of danger and the care of others dependent on him, he had also fought a foe which was ever at his elbow, ever whispered its comfort and seduction in his ear, the insidious and peace-giving, exalting opiate that had tided him over some black places, and then had sought for mastery of him when he was back again in the world of normal business and duty, where it appealed not as a medicine, but as a perilous luxury. And fighting this foe, which had a voice so soothing, and words like the sound of murmuring waters, and a cool and comforting hand that sought to lead him into gardens of stillness and passive being, where he could no more hear the clangour and vexing noises of a world that angered and agonised, there had also been the lure of another passion of the heart, which was too perilously dear to contemplate. Eyes that were beautiful, and their beauty was not for him; a spirit that was bright and glowing, but the brightness and the glow might not renew his days. It was hard to fight alone. Alone he was, for only to one may the doors within doors be opened-only to one so dear that all else is everlastingly distant may the true tale of the life beneath life be told. And it was not for him--nothing of this; not even the thought of it; for to think of it was to desire it, and to desire it was to reach out towards it; and to reach out towards it was the end of all. There had been moments of abandonment to the alluring dream, such as when he wrote the verses which Lacey had sent to Hylda from the desert; but they were few. Oft-repeated, they would have filled him with an agitated melancholy impossible to be borne in the life which must be his. So it had been. The deeper into life and its labours and experiences he had gone, the greater had been his temptations, born of two passions, one of the body and its craving, the other of the heart and its desires: and he had fought on--towards the morning. "Is there none that thou lovest so, and that will love thee to mortal sorrow, if thou goest without care to thy end too soon?" The desert, the dark monastery, the acacia tree, the ancient palm, the ruinous garden, disappeared. He only saw a face which smiled at him, as it had done 'by the brazier in the garden at Cairo, that night when she and Nahoum and himself and Mizraim had met in the room of his house by the Ezbekieh gardens, and she had gone out to her old life in England, and he had taken up the burden of the East--that long six years ago. His head dropped in his hands, and all that was beneath the Quaker life he had led so many years, packed under the crust of form and habit, and regulated thought, and controlled emotion, broke forth now, and had its way with him. He turned away staggering and self-reproachful from the first question, only to face the other--"And that will love thee to mortal sorrow, if thou goest without care to thy end too soon." It was a thought he had never let himself dwell on for an instant in all the days since they had last met. He had driven it back to its covert, even before he could recognise its face. It was disloyal to her, an offence against all that she was, an affront to his manhood to let the thought have place in his mind even for one swift moment. She was Lord Eglington's wife--there could be no sharing of soul and mind and body and the exquisite devotion of a life too dear for thought. Nothing that she was to Eglington could be divided with another, not for an hour, not by one act of impulse; or else she must be less, she that might have been, if there had been no Eglington-- An exclamation broke from him, and, as one crying out in one's sleep wakes himself, so the sharp cry of his misery woke him from the trance of memory that had been upon him, and he slowly became conscious of Ebn Ezra standing before him. Their eyes met, and Ebn Ezra spoke: "The will of Allah be thy will, Saadat. If it be to go to the Soudan, I am thine; if it be to stay, I am thy servant and thy brother. But whether it be life or death, thou must sleep, for the young are like water without sleep. Thou canst not live in strength nor die with fortitude without it. For the old, malaish, old age is between a sleeping and a waking! Come, Saadat! Forget not, thou must ride again to Cairo at dawn." David got slowly to his feet and turned towards the monastery. The figure of a monk stood in the doorway with a torch to light him to his room. He turned to Ebn Ezra again. "Does thee think that I have aught of his courage--my Uncle Benn? Thou knowest me--shall I face it out as did he?" "Saadat," the old man answered, pointing, "yonder acacia, that was he, quick to grow and short to live; but thou art as this date-palm, which giveth food to the hungry, and liveth through generations. Peace be upon thee," he added at the doorway, as the torch flickered towards the room where David was to lie. "And upon thee, peace!" answered David gently, and followed the smoky light to an inner chamber. The room in which David found himself was lofty and large, but was furnished with only a rough wooden bed, a rug, and a brazier. Left alone, he sat down on the edge of the bed, and, for a few moments, his mind strayed almost vaguely from one object to another. From two windows far up in the wall the moonlight streamed in, making bars of light aslant the darkness. Not a sound broke the stillness. Yet, to his sensitive nerves, the air seemed tingling with sensation, stirring with unseen activities. Here the spirit of the desert seemed more insistent in its piercing vitality, because it was shut in by four stone walls. Mechanically he took off his coat, and was about to fold and lay it on the rug beside the bed, when something hard in one of the pockets knocked against his knee. Searching, he found and drew forth a small bottle which, for many a month past, had lain in the drawer of a table where he had placed it on his return from the Soudan. It was an evil spirit which sent this tiny phial to his hand at a moment when he had paid out of the full treasury of his strength and will its accumulated deposit, leaving him with a balance on which no heavy draft could be made. His pulse quickened, then his body stiffened with the effort at self-control. Who placed this evil elixir in his pocket? What any enemy of his work had done was nothing to what might be achieved by the secret foe, who had placed this anodyne within his reach at this the most critical moment of his life. He remembered the last time he had used it--in the desert: two days of forgetfulness to the world, when it all moved by him, the swarming Arabs, the train of camels, the loads of ivory, the slimy crocodile on the sandbanks, the vultures hovering above unburied carcasses, the kourbash descending on shining black shoulders, corrugating bare brown bodies into cloven skin and lacerated flesh, a fight between champions of two tribes who clasped and smote and struggled and rained blows, and, both mortally wounded, still writhed in last conflict upon the ground--and Mahommed Hassan ever at the tent door or by his side, towering, watchful, sullen to all faces without, smiling to his own, with dog-like look waiting for any motion of his hand or any word.... Ah, Mahommed Hassan, it was he! Mahommed had put this phial in his pocket. His bitter secret was not hidden from Mahommed. And this was an act of supreme devotion--to put at his hand the lulling, inspiring draught. Did this fellah servant know what it meant--the sin of it, the temptation, the terrible joy, the blessed quiet; and then, the agonising remorse, the withering self-hatred and torturing penitence? No, Mahommed only knew that when the Saadat was gone beyond his strength, when the sleepless nights and feverish days came in the past, in their great troubles, when men were dying and only the Saadat could save, that this cordial lifted him out of misery and storm into calm. Yet Mahommed must have divined that it was a thing against which his soul revolted, or he would have given it to him openly. In the heart and mind of the giant murderer, however, must have been the thought that now when trouble was upon his master again, trouble which might end all, this supreme destroyer of pain and dark memory and present misery, would give him the comfort he needed--and that he would take it. If he had not seen it, this sudden craving would not have seized him for this eager beguiling, this soothing benevolence. Yet here it was in his hand; and even as it lay in his cold fingers--how cold they were, and his head how burning!--the desire for it surged up in him. And, as though the thing itself had the magical power to summon up his troubles, that it might offer the apathy and stimulus in one--even as it lured him, his dangers, his anxieties, the black uncertainties massed, multiplied and aggressive, rose before him, buffeted him, caught at his throat, dragged down his shoulders, clutched at his heart. Now, with a cry of agony, he threw the phial on the ground, and, sinking on the bed, buried his face in his hands and moaned, and fought for freedom from the cords tightening round him. It was for him to realise now how deep are the depths to which the human soul can sink, even while labouring to climb. Once more the sense of awful futility was on him: of wasted toil and blenched force, veins of energy drained of their blood, hope smitten in the way, and every dear dream shattered. Was it, then, all ended? Was his work indeed fallen, and all his love undone? Was his own redemption made impossible? He had offered up his life to this land to atone for a life taken when she--when she first looked up with eyes of gratitude, eyes that haunted him. Was it, then, unacceptable? Was it so that he must turn his back upon this long, heart-breaking but beloved work, this panacea for his soul, without which he could not pay the price of blood? Go back to England--to Hamley where all had changed, where the old man he loved no longer ruled in the Red Mansion, where all that had been could be no more? Go to some other land, and there begin again another such a work? Were there not vast fields of human effort, effort such as his, where he could ease the sorrow of living by the joy of a divine altruism? Go back to Hamley? Ah, no, a million times, no! That life was dead, it was a cycle of years behind him. There could be no return. He was in a maelstrom of agony, his veins were afire, his lips were parched. He sprang from his bed, knelt down, and felt for the little phial he had flung aside. After a moment his hand caught it, clutched it. But, even at the crest of the wave of temptation, words that he had heard one night in Hamley, that last night of all, flashed into his mind--the words of old Luke Claridge's prayer, "And if a viper fasten on his hand, O Lord--" Suddenly he paused. That scene in the old Meetinghouse swam before his eyes, got into his brain. He remembered the words of his own prayer, and how he had then retreated upon the Power that gave him power, for a draught of the one true tincture which braced the heart to throw itself upon the spears of trial. Now the trial had come, and that which was in him as deep as being, the habit of youth, the mother-fibre and predisposition, responded to the draught he had drunk then. As a body freed from the quivering, unrelenting grasp of an electric battery subsides into a cool quiet, so, through his veins seemed to pass an ether which stilled the tumult, the dark desire to drink the potion in his hand, and escape into that irresponsible, artificial world, where he had before loosened his hold on activity. The phial slipped from his fingers to the floor. He sank upon the side of the bed, and, placing his hands on his knees, he whispered a few broken words that none on earth was meant to hear. Then he passed into a strange and moveless quiet of mind and body. Many a time in days gone by--far-off days--had he sat as he was doing now, feeling his mind pass into a soft, comforting quiet, absorbed in a sensation of existence, as it were between waking and sleeping, where doors opened to new experience and understanding, where the mind seemed to loose itself from the bonds of human necessity and find a freer air. Now, as he sat as still as the stone in the walls around him, he was conscious of a vision forming itself before his eyes. At first it was indefinite, vague, without clear form, but at last it became a room dimly outlined, delicately veiled, as it were. Then it seemed, not that the mist cleared, but that his eyes became stronger, and saw through the delicate haze; and now the room became wholly, concretely visible. It was the room in which he had said good-bye to Hylda. As he gazed like one entranced, he saw a figure rise from a couch, pale, agitated, and beautiful, and come forward, as it were, towards him. But suddenly the mist closed in again upon the scene, a depth of darkness passed his eyes, and he heard a voice say: "Speak--speak to me!" He heard her voice as distinctly as though she were beside him--as, indeed, she had stood before him but an instant ago. Getting slowly to his feet, into the night he sent an answer to the call. Would she hear? She had said long ago that she would speak to him so. Perhaps she had tried before. But now at last he had heard and answered. Had she heard? Time might tell--if ever they met again. But how good, and quiet, and serene was the night! He composed himself to sleep, but, as he lay waiting for that coverlet of forgetfulness to be drawn over him, he heard the sound of bells soft and clear. Just such bells he had heard upon the common at Hamley. Was it, then, the outcome of his vision--a sweet hallucination? He leaned upon his elbow and listened. CHAPTER XXXII FORTY STRIPES SAVE ONE The bells that rang were not the bells of Hamley; they were part of no vision or hallucination, and they drew David out of his chamber into the night. A little group of three stood sharply silhouetted against the moonlight, and towering above them was the spare, commanding form of Ebn Ezra Bey. Three camels crouched near, and beside them stood a Nubian lad singing to himself the song of the camel-driver: "Fleet is thy foot: thou shalt rest by the Etl tree; Water shalt thou drink from the blue-deep well; Allah send His gard'ner with the green bersim, For thy comfort, fleet one, by the Etl tree. As the stars fly, have thy footsteps flown Deep is the well, drink, and be still once more; Till the pursuing winds panting have found thee And, defeated, sink still beside thee-- By the well and the Etl tree." For a moment David stood in the doorway listening to the low song of the camel-driver. Then he came forward. As he did so, one of the two who stood with Ebn Ezra moved towards the monastery door slowly. It was a monk with a face which, even in this dim light, showed a deathly weariness. The eyes looked straight before him, as though they saw nothing of the world, only a goal to make, an object to be accomplished. The look of the face went to David's heart--the kinship of pain was theirs. "Peace be to thee," David said gently, as the other passed him. There was an instant's pause, and then the monk faced him with fingers uplifted. "The grace of God be upon thee, David," he said, and his eyes, drawn back from the world where they had been exploring, met the other's keenly. Then he wheeled and entered the monastery. "The grace of God be upon thee, David!" How strange it sounded, this Christian blessing in response to his own Oriental greeting, out in this Eastern waste. His own name, too. It was as though he had been transported to the ancient world where "Brethren" were so few that they called each other by their "Christian" names--even as they did in Hamley to-day. In Hamley to-day! He closed his eyes, a tremor running through his body; and then, with an effort which stilled him to peace again, he moved forward, and was greeted by Ebn Ezra, from whom the third member of the little group had now drawn apart nearer to the acacia-tree, and was seated on a rock that jutted from the sand. "What is it?" David asked. "Wouldst thou not sleep, Saadat? Sleep is more to thee now than aught thou mayst hear from any man. To all thou art kind save thyself." "I have rested," David answered, with a measured calmness, revealing to his friend the change which had come since they parted an hour before. They seated themselves under the palm-tree, and were silent for a moment, then Ebn Ezra said: "These come from the Place of Lepers." David started slightly. "Zaida?" he asked, with a sigh of pity. "The monk who passed thee but now goes every year to the Place of Lepers with the caravan, for a brother of this order stays yonder with the afflicted, seeing no more the faces of this world which he has left behind. Afar off from each other they stand--as far as eye can see--and after the manner of their faith they pray to Allah, and he who has just left us finds a paper fastened with a stone upon the sand at a certain place where he waits. He touches it not, but reads it as it lies, and, having read, heaps sand upon it. And the message which the paper gives is for me." "For thee? Hast thou there one who--" "There was one, my father's son, though we were of different mothers; and in other days, so many years ago, he did great wrong to me, and not to me alone,"--the grey head bowed in sorrow--"but to one dearer to me than life. I hated him, and would have slain him, but the mind of Allah is not the mind of man; and he escaped me. Then he was stricken with leprosy, and was carried to the place from whence no leper returns. At first my heart rejoiced; then, at last, I forgave him, Saadat--was he not my father's son, and was the woman not gone to the bosom of Allah, where is peace? So I forgave and sorrowed for him--who shall say what miseries are those which, minute to minute, day after day, and year upon year, repeat themselves, till it is an endless flaying of the body and burning of the soul! Every year I send a message to him, and every year now this Christian monk--there is no Sheikh-el-Islam yonder--brings back the written message which he finds in the sand." "And thee has had a message to-night?" "The last that may come--God be praised, he goeth to his long home. It was written in his last hour. There was no hope; he is gone. And so, one more reason showeth why I should go where thou goest, Saadat." Casting his eyes toward the figure by the acacia-tree, his face clouded and he pondered anxiously, looking at David the while. Twice he essayed to speak, but paused. David's eyes followed his look. "What is it? Who is he--yonder?" The other rose to his feet. "Come and see, Saadat," he replied. "Seeing, thou wilt know what to do." "Zaida--is it of Zaida?" David asked. "The man will answer for himself, Saadat." Coming within a few feet of the figure crouched upon the rock, Ebn Ezra paused and stretched out a hand. "A moment, Saadat. Dost thou not see, dost thou not recognise him?" David intently studied the figure, which seemed unconscious of their presence. The shoulders were stooping and relaxed as though from great fatigue, but David could see that the figure was that of a tall man. The head was averted, but a rough beard covered the face, and, in the light of the fire, one hand that clutched it showed long and skinny and yellow and cruel. The hand fascinated David's eyes. Where had he seen it? It flashed upon him--a hand clutching a robe, in a frenzy of fear, in the court-yard of the blue tiles, in Kaid's Palace--Achmet the Ropemaker! He drew back a step. "Achmet," he said in a low voice. The figure stirred, the hand dropped from the beard and clutched the knee; but the head was not raised, and the body remained crouching and listless. "He escaped?" David said, turning to Ebn Ezra Bey. "I know not by what means--a camel-driver bribed, perhaps, and a camel left behind for him. After the caravan had travelled a day's journey he joined it. None knew what to do. He was not a leper, and he was armed." "Leave him with me," said David. Ebn Ezra hesitated. "He is armed; he was thy foe--" "I am armed also," David answered enigmatically, and indicated by a gesture that he wished to be left alone. Ebn Ezra drew away towards the palm-tree, and stood at this distance watching anxiously, for he knew what dark passions seize upon the Oriental--and Achmet had many things for which to take vengeance. David stood for a moment, pondering, his eyes upon the deserter. "God greet thee as thou goest, and His goodness befriend thee," he said evenly. There was silence, and no movement. "Rise and speak," he added sternly. "Dost thou not hear? Rise, Achmet Pasha!" Achmet Pasha! The head of the desolate wretch lifted, the eyes glared at David for an instant, as though to see whether he was being mocked, and then the spare figure stretched itself, and the outcast stood up. The old lank straightness was gone, the shoulders were bent, the head was thrust forward, as though the long habit of looking into dark places had bowed it out of all manhood. "May grass spring under thy footstep, Saadat," he said, in a thick voice, and salaamed awkwardly--he had been so long absent from life's formularies. "What dost thou here, pasha?" asked David formally. "Thy sentence had no limit." "I could not die there," said the hollow voice, and the head sank farther forward. "Year after year I lived there, but I could not die among them. I was no leper; I am no leper. My penalty was my penalty, and I paid it to the full, piastre by piastre of my body and my mind. It was not one death, it was death every hour, every day I stayed. I had no mind. I could not think. Mummy-cloths were round my brain; but the fire burned underneath and would not die. There was the desert, but my limbs were like rushes. I had no will, and I could not flee. I was chained to the evil place. If I stayed it was death, if I went it was death." "Thou art armed now," said David suggestively. Achmet laid a hand fiercely upon a dagger under his robe. "I hid it. I was afraid. I could not die--my hand was like a withered leaf; it could not strike; my heart poured out like water. Once I struck a leper, that he might strike and kill me; but he lay upon the ground and wept, for all his anger, which had been great, died in him at last. There was none other given to anger there. The leper has neither anger, nor mirth, nor violence, nor peace. It is all the black silent shame--and I was no leper." "Why didst thou come? What is there but death for thee here, or anywhere thou goest! Kaid's arm will find thee; a thousand hands wait to strike thee." "I could not die there--Dost thou think that I repent?" he added with sudden fierceness. "Is it that which would make me repent? Was I worse than thousands of others? I have come out to die--to fight and die. Aiwa, I have come to thee, whom I hated, because thou canst give me death as I desire it. My mother was an Arab slave from Senaar, and she was got by war, and all her people. War and fighting were their portion--as they ate, as they drank and slept. In the black years behind me among the Unclean, there was naught to fight--could one fight the dead, and the agony of death, and the poison of the agony! Life, it is done for me-- am I not accursed? But to die fighting--ay, fighting for Egypt, since it must be, and fighting for thee, since it must be; to strike, and strike, and strike, and earn death! Must the dog, because he is a dog, die in the slime? Shall he not be driven from the village to die in the clean sand? Saadat, who will see in me Achmet Pasha, who did with Egypt what he willed, and was swept away by the besom in thy hand? Is there in me aught of that Achmet that any should know?" "None would know thee for that Achmet," answered David. "I know, it matters not how--at last a letter found me, and the way of escape--that thou goest again to the Soudan. There will be fighting there--" "Not by my will," interrupted David. "Then by the will of Sheitan the accursed; but there will be fighting-- am I not an Arab, do I not know? Thou hast not conquered yet. Bid me go where thou wilt, do what thou wilt, so that I may be among the fighters, and in the battle forget what I have seen. Since I am unclean, and am denied the bosom of Allah, shall I not go as a warrior to Hell, where men will fear me? Speak, Saadat, canst thou deny me this?" Nothing of repentance, so far as he knew, moved the dark soul; but, like some evil spirit, he would choose the way to his own doom, the place and the manner of it: a sullen, cruel, evil being, unyielding in his evil, unmoved by remorse--so far as he knew. Yet he would die fighting, and for Egypt "and for thee, if it must be so. To strike, to strike, to strike, and earn death!" What Achmet did not see, David saw, the glimmer of light breaking through the cloud of shame and evil and doom. Yonder in the Soudan more problems than one would be solved, more lives than one be put to the extreme test. He did not answer Achmet's question yet. "Zaida--?" he said in a low voice. The pathos of her doom had been a dark memory. Achmet's voice dropped lower as he answered. "She lived till the day her sister died. I never saw her face; but I was sent to bear each day to her door the food she ate and a balass of water; and I did according to my sentence. Yet I heard her voice. And once, at last, the day she died, she spoke to me, and said from inside the hut: 'Thy work is done, Achmet. Go in peace.' And that night she lay down on her sister's grave, and in the morning she was found dead upon it." David's eyes were blinded with tears. "It was too long," he said at last, as though to himself. "That day," continued Achmet, "there fell ill with leprosy the Christian priest from this place who had served in that black service so long; and then a fire leapt up in me. Zaida was gone--I had brought food and a balass of water to her door those many times; there was naught to do, since she was gone--" Suddenly David took a step nearer to him and looked into the sullen and drooping eyes. "Thou shalt go with me, Achmet. I will do this unlawful act for thee. At daybreak I will give thee orders. Thou shalt join me far from here--if I go to the Soudan," he added, with a sudden remembrance of his position; and he turned away slowly. After a moment, with muttered words, Achmet sank down upon the stone again, drew a cake of dourha from his inner robe, and began to eat. The camel-boy had lighted a fire, and he sat beside it warming his hands at the blaze and still singing to himself: "The bed of my love I will sprinkle with attar of roses, The face of my love I will touch with the balm With the balm of the tree from the farthermost wood, From the wood without end, in the world without end. My love holds the cup to my lips, and I drink of the cup, And the attar of roses I sprinkle will soothe like the evening dew, And the balm will be healing and sleep, and the cup I will drink, I will drink of the cup my love holds to my lips--" David stood listening. What power was there in desert life that could make this poor camel-driver, at the end of a long day of weariness and toil and little food and drink, sing a song of content and cheerfulness? The little needed, the little granted, and no thought beyond--save the vision of one who waited in the hut by the onion-field. He gathered himself together and tuned his mind to the scene through which he had just passed, and then to the interview he would have with Kaid on the morrow. A few hours ago he had seen no way out of it all--he had had no real hope that Kaid would turn to him again; but the last two hours had changed all that. Hope was alive in him. He had fought a desperate fight with himself, and he had conquered. Then had come Achmet, unrepentant, degraded still, but with the spirit of Something glowing-- Achmet to die for a cause, driven by that Something deep beneath the degradation and the crime. He had hope, and, as the camel-driver's voice died away, and he lay down with a sheep-skin over him and went instantly to sleep, David drew to the fire and sat down beside it. Presently Ebn Ezra came to urge him to go to bed, but he would not. He had slept, he said; he had slept and rested, and the night was good--he would wait. Then the other brought rugs and blankets, and gave David some, and lay down beside the fire, and watched and waited for he knew not what. Ever and ever his eyes were on David, and far back under the acacia-tree Achmet slept as he had not slept since his doom fell on him. At last Ebn Ezra Bey also slept; but David was awake with the night and the benevolent moon and the marching stars. The spirit of the desert was on him, filling him with its voiceless music. From the infinite stretches of sand to the south came the irresistible call of life, as soft as the leaves in a garden of roses, as deep as the sea. This world was still, yet there seemed a low, delicate humming, as of multitudinous looms at a distance so great that the ear but faintly caught it--the sound of the weavers of life and destiny and eternal love, the hands of the toilers of all the ages spinning and spinning on; and he was part of it, not abashed or dismayed because he was but one of the illimitable throng. The hours wore on, but still he sat there, peace in all his heart, energy tingling softly through every vein, the wings of hope fluttering at his ear. At length the morning came, and, from the west, with the rising sun, came a traveller swiftly, making for where he was. The sleepers stirred around him and waked and rose. The little camp became alive. As the traveller neared the fresh-made fire, David saw that it was Lacey. He went eagerly to meet him. "Thee has news," he said. "I see it is so." He held Lacey's hand in his. "Say, you are going on that expedition, Saadat. You wanted money. Will a quarter of a million do?" David's eyes caught fire. From the monastery there came the voices of the monks: "O be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness, and come before His presence with a song." CHAPTER XXXIII THE DARK INDENTURE Nahoum had forgotten one very important thing: that what affected David as a Christian in Egypt would tell equally against himself. If, in his ill-health and dejection, Kaid drank deep of the cup of Mahomet, the red eyes of fanaticism would be turned upon the Armenian, as upon the European Christian. He had forgotten it for the moment, but when, coming into Kaid's Palace, a little knot of loiterers spat upon the ground and snarled, "Infidel--Nazarene!" with contempt and hatred, the significance of the position came home to him. He made his way to a far quarter of the Palace, thoughtfully weighing the circumstances, and was met by Mizraim. Mizraim salaamed. "The height of thy renown be as the cedar of Lebanon, Excellency." "May thy feet tread the corn of everlasting fortune, son of Mahomet." They entered the room together. Nahoum looked at Mizraim curiously. He was not satisfied with what he saw. Mizraim's impassive face had little expression, but the eyes were furtively eager and sinister. "Well, so it is, and if it is, what then?" asked Nahoum coolly. "Ki di, so it is," answered Mizraim, and a ghastly smile came to his lips. This infidel pasha, Nahoum, had a mind that pierced to the meaning of words ere they were spoken. Mizraim's hand touched his forehead, his breast, his lips, and, clasping and unclasping his long, snakelike fingers, he began the story he had come to tell. "The Inglesi, whom Allah confound, the Effendina hath blackened by a look, his words have smitten him in the vital parts--" "Mizraim, thou dove, speak to the purpose!" Mizraim showed a dark pleasure at the interruption. Nahoum was impatient, anxious; that made the tale better worth telling. "Sharif and the discontented ones who dare not act, like the vultures, they flee the living man, but swoop upon the corpse. The consuls of those countries who love not England or Claridge Pasha, and the holy men, and the Cadi, all scatter smouldering fires. There is a spirit in the Palace and beyond which is blowing fast to a great flame." "Then, so it is, great one, and what bodes it?" "It may kill the Inglesi; but it will also sweep thee from the fields of life where thou dost flourish." "It is not against the foreigner, but against the Christian, Mizraim?" "Thy tongue hath wisdom, Excellency." "Thou art a Muslim--" "Why do I warn thee? For service done to me; and because there is none other worth serving in Egypt. Behold, it is my destiny to rule others, to serve thee." "Once more thy turban full of gold, Mizraim, if thou dost service now that hath meaning and is not a belching of wind and words. Thou hast a thing to say--say it, and see if Nahoum hath lost his wit, or hath a palsied arm." "Then behold, pasha. Are not my spies in all the Palace? Is not my scourge heavier than the whip of the horned horse? Ki di, so it is. This I have found. Sharif hath, with others, made a plot which hath enough powder in it to shake Egypt, and toss thee from thy high place into the depths. There is a Christian--an Armenian, as it chances; but he was chosen because he was a Christian, and for that only. His name is Rahib. He is a tent-maker. He had three sons. They did kill an effendi who had cheated them of their land. Two of them were hanged last week; the other, caught but a few days since, is to hang within three days. To-day Kaid goes to the Mosque of Mahmoud, as is the custom at this festival. The old man hath been persuaded to attempt the life of Kaid, upon condition that his son--his Benjamin--is set free. It will be but an attempt at Kaid's life, no more; but the cry will go forth that a Christian did the thing; and the Muslim flame will leap high." "And the tent-maker?" asked Nahoum musingly, though he was turning over the tale in his mind, seeing behind it and its far consequences. "Malaish, what does it matter! But he is to escape, and they are to hang another Christian in his stead for the attempt on Kaid. It hath no skill, but it would suffice. With the dervishes gone malboos, and the faithful drunk with piety--canst thou not see the issue, pasha? Blood will be shed." "The Jews of Europe would be angry," said Nahoum grimly but evenly. "The loans have been many, and Kaid has given a lien by the new canal at Suez. The Jews will be angry," he repeated, "and for every drop of Christian blood shed there would be a lanced vein here. But that would not bring back Nahoum Pasha," he continued cynically. "Well, this is thy story, Mizraim; this is what they would do. Now what hast thou done to stop their doing?" "Am I not a Muslim? Shall I give Sharif to the Nile?" Nahoum smiled darkly. "There is a simpler way. Thy mind ever runs on the bowstring and the sword. These are great, but there is a greater. It is the mocking finger. At midnight, when Kaid goes to the Mosque Mahmoud, a finger will mock the plotters till they are buried in confusion. Thou knowest the governor of the prisons--has he not need of something? Hath he never sought favours of thee?" "Bismillah, but a week ago!" "Then, listen, thou shepherd of the sheep--" He paused, as there came a tap at the door, and a slave entered hurriedly and addressed Nahoum. "The effendi, Ebn Ezra Bey, whom thou didst set me to watch, he hath entered the Palace, and asks for the Effendina." Nahoum started, and his face clouded, but his eyes flashed fire. He tossed the slave a coin. "Thou hast done well. Where is he now?" "He waits in the hall, where is the statue of Mehemet Ali and the lions." "In an hour, Mizraim, thou shalt hear what I intend. Peace be to thee!" "And on thee, peace!" answered Mizraim, as Nahoum passed from the room, and walked hastily towards the hall where he should find Ebn Ezra Bey. Nearing the spot, he brought his step to a deliberate slowness, and appeared not to notice the stately Arab till almost upon him. "Salaam, effendi," he said smoothly, yet with inquisition in his eye, with malice in his tone. "Salaam, Excellency." "Thou art come on the business of thy master?" "Who is my master, Excellency?" "Till yesterday it was Claridge Pasha. Hast thou then forsaken him in his trouble--the rat from the sinking ship?" A flush passed over Ebn Ezra Bey's face, and his mouth opened with a gasp of anger. Oriental though he was, he was not as astute as this Armenian Christian, who was purposely insulting him, that he might, in a moment of heat, snatch from him the business he meant to lay before Kaid. Nahoum had not miscalculated. "I have but one master, Excellency," Ebn Ezra answered quietly at last, "and I have served him straightly. Hast thou done likewise?" "What is straight to thee might well be crooked to me, effendi." "Thou art crooked as the finger of a paralytic." "Yet I have worked in peace with Claridge Pasha for these years past, even until yesterday, when thou didst leave him to his fate." "His ship will sail when thine is crumbling on the sands, and all thou art is like a forsaken cockatrice's nest." "Is it this thou hast come to say to the Effendina?" "What I have come to say to the Effendina is for the world to know after it hath reached his ears. I know thee, Nahoum Pasha. Thou art a traitor. Claridge Pasha would abolish slavery, and thou dost receive great sums of gold from the slave-dealers to prevent it." "Is it this thou wilt tell Kaid?" Nahoum asked with a sneer. "And hast thou proofs?" "Even this day they have come to my hands from the south." "Yet I think the proofs thou hast will not avail; and I think that thou wilt not show them to Kaid. The gift of second thinking is a great gift. Thou must find greater reason for seeking the Effendina." "That too shall be. Gold thou hadst to pay the wages of the soldiers of the south. Thou didst keep the gold and order the slave-hunt; and the soldiers of the Effendina have been paid in human flesh and blood--ten thousand slaves since Claridge Pasha left the Soudan, and three thousand dead upon the desert sands, abandoned by those who hunted them when water grew scarce and food failed. To-day shall see thy fall." At his first words Nahoum had felt a shock, from which his spirit reeled; but an inspiration came to him on the moment; and he listened with a saturnine coolness to the passionate words of the indignant figure towering above him. When Ebn Ezra had finished, he replied quietly: "It is even as thou sayest, effendi. The soldiers were paid in slaves got in the slave-hunt; and I have gold from the slave-dealers. I needed it, for the hour is come when I must do more for Egypt than I have ever done." With a gesture of contempt Ebn Ezra made to leave, seeing an official of the Palace in the distance. Nahoum stopped him. "But, one moment ere thou dost thrust thy hand into the cockatrice's den. Thou dost measure thyself against Nahoum? In patience and with care have I trained myself for the battle. The bulls of Bashan may roar, yet my feet are shod with safety. Thou wouldst go to Kaid and tell him thy affrighted tale. I tell thee, thou wilt not go. Thou hast reason yet, though thy blood is hot. Thou art to Claridge Pasha like a brother--as to his uncle before him, who furnished my father's palace with carpets. The carpets still soften the fall of my feet in my father's palace, as they did soften the fall of my brother's feet, the feet of Foorgat Bey." He paused, looking at Ebn Ezra with quiet triumph, though his eyes had ever that smiling innocence which had won David in days gone by. He was turning his words over on the tongue with a relish born of long waiting. "Come," he said presently--"come, and I will give thee reason why thou wilt not speak with Kaid to-day. This way, effendi." He led the other into a little room hung about with rugs and tapestry, and, going to the wall, he touched a spring. "One moment here, effendi," he added quietly. The room was as it had been since David last stood within it. "In this room, effendi," Nahoum said with cold deliberation, "Claridge Pasha killed my brother, Foorgat Bey." Ebn Ezra fell back as though he had been struck. Swiftly Nahoum told him the whole truth--even to the picture of the brougham, and the rigid, upright figure passing through the night to Foorgat's palace, the gaunt Mizraim piloting the equipage of death. "I have held my peace for my own reasons, effendi. Wilt thou then force me to speak? If thou dost still cherish Claridge Pasha, wilt thou see him ruined? Naught but ruin could follow the telling of the tale at this moment--his work, his life, all done. The scandal, the law, vengeance! But as it is now, Kaid may turn to him again; his work may yet go on--he has had the luck of angels, and Kaid is fickle. Who can tell?" Abashed and overwhelmed, Ebn Ezra Bey looked at him keenly. "To tell of Foorgat Bey would ruin thee also," he said. "That thou knowest. The trick--would Kaid forgive it? Claridge Pasha would not be ruined alone." "Be it so. If thou goest to Kaid with thy story, I go to Egypt with mine. Choose." Ebn Ezra turned to go. "The high God judge between him and thee," he said, and, with bowed head, left the Palace. CHAPTER XXXIV NAHOUM DROPS THE MASK "CLARIDGE PASHA!" At the sound of the words, announced in a loud voice, hundreds of heads were turned towards the entrance of the vast salon, resplendent with gilded mirrors, great candelabra and chandeliers, golden hangings, and divans glowing with robes of yellow silk. It was the anniversary of Kaid's succession, and all entitled to come poured into the splendid chamber. The showy livery of the officials, the loose, spacious, gorgeous uniforms of the officers, with the curved jewelled scimitars and white turbans, the rich silk robes of the Ulema, robe over robe of coloured silk with flowing sleeves and sumptuous silken vests, the ample dignity of noble-looking Arabs in immense white turbans, the dark straight Stambouli coat of the officials, made a picture of striking variety and colour and interest. About the centre of the room, laying palm to palm again and yet again, touching lips and forehead and breast, speaking with slow, leisurely, voices, were two Arab sheikhs from the far Soudan. One of these showed a singular interest in the movements of Nahoum Pasha as he entered the chamber, and an even greater interest in David when he was announced; but as David, in his journey up the chamber, must pass near him, he drew behind a little group of officials, who whispered to each other excitedly as David came on. More than once before this same Sheikh Abdullah had seen David, and once they had met, and had made a treaty of amity, and Abdullah had agreed to deal in slaves no more; and yet within three months had sent to Cairo two hundred of the best that could be found between Khartoum and Senaar. His business, of which Ebn Ezra Bey had due knowledge, had now been with Nahoum. The business of the other Arab, a noble-looking and wiry Bedouin from the South, had been with Ebn Ezra Bey, and each hid his business from his friend. Abdullah murmured to himself as David passed--a murmur of admiration and astonishment. He had heard of the disfavour in which the Inglesi was; but, as he looked at David's face with its quiet smile, the influence which he felt in the desert long ago came over him again. "By Allah," he said aloud abstractedly, "it is a face that will not hide when the khamsin blows! Who shall gainsay it? If he were not an infidel he would be a Mahdi." To this his Bedouin friend replied: "As the depths of the pool at Ghebel Farik, so are his eyes. You shall dip deep and you shall not find the bottom. Bismillah, I would fight Kaid's Nubians, but not this infidel pasha!" Never had David appeared to such advantage. The victory over himself the night before, the message of hope that had reached him at the monastery in the desert, the coming of Lacey, had given him a certain quiet masterfulness not reassuring to his foes. As he entered the chamber but now, there flashed into his mind the scene six years ago when, an absolute stranger, he had stepped into this Eastern salon, and had heard his name called out to the great throng: "Claridge efendi!" He addressed no one, but he bowed to the group of foreign consuls- general, looking them steadily in the eyes. He knew their devices and what had been going on of late, he was aware that his fall would mean a blow to British prestige, and the calmness of his gaze expressed a fortitude which had a disconcerting effect upon the group. The British Consul-General stood near by. David advanced to him, and, as he did so, the few who surrounded the Consul-General fell back. David held out his hand. Somewhat abashed and ill at ease, the Consul-General took it. "Have you good news from Downing Street?" asked David quietly. The Consul-General hesitated for an instant, and then said: "There is no help to be had for you or for what you are doing in that quarter." He lowered his voice. "I fear Lord Eglington does not favour you; and he controls the Foreign Minister. I am very sorry. I have done my best, but my colleagues, the other consuls, are busy--with Lord Eglington." David turned his head away for an instant. Strange how that name sent a thrill through him, stirred his blood! He did not answer the Consul- General, and the latter continued: "Is there any hope? Is the breach with Kaid complete?" David smiled gravely. "We shall see presently. I have made no change in my plans on the basis of a breach." At that moment he caught sight of Nahoum some distance away and moved towards him. Out of the corner of his eye Nahoum saw David coming, and edged away towards that point where Kaid would enter, and where the crowd was greater. As he did so Kaid appeared. A thrill went through the chamber. Contrary to his custom, he was dressed in the old native military dress of Mehemet Ali. At his side was a jewelled scimitar, and in his turban flashed a great diamond. In his hand he carried a snuff- box, covered with brilliants, and on his breast were glittering orders. The eyes of the reactionaries flashed with sinister pleasure when they saw Kaid. This outward display of Orientalism could only be a reflex of the mind. It was the outer symbol of Kaid's return to the spirit of the old days, before the influence of the Inglesi came upon him. Every corrupt and intriguing mind had a palpitation of excitement. In Nahoum the sight of Kaid produced mixed feelings. If, indeed, this display meant reaction towards an entourage purely Arab, Egyptian, and Muslim, then it was no good omen for his Christian self. He drew near, and placed himself where Kaid could see him. Kaid's manner was cheerful, but his face showed the effect of suffering, physical and mental. Presently there entered behind him Sharif Bey, whose appearance was the signal for a fresh demonstration. Now, indeed, there could be no doubt as to Kaid's reaction. Yet if Sharif had seen Mizraim's face evilly gloating near by he would have been less confident. David was standing where Kaid must see him, but the Effendina gave no sign of recognition. This was so significant that the enemies of David rejoiced anew. The day of the Inglesi was over. Again and again did Kaid's eye wander over David's head. David remained calm and watchful, neither avoiding nor yet seeking the circle in which Kaid moved. The spirit with which he had entered the room, however, remained with him, even when he saw Kaid summon to him some of the most fanatical members of the court circle, and engage them in talk for a moment. But as this attention grew more marked, a cloud slowly gathered in the far skies of his mind. There was one person in the great assembly, however, who seemed to be unduly confident. It was an ample, perspiring person in evening dress, who now and again mopped a prematurely bald head, and who said to himself, as Kaid talked to the reactionaries: "Say, Kald's overdoing it. He's putting potted chicken on the butter. But it's working all right-r-i-g-h-t. It's worth the backsheesh!" At this moment Kaid fastened David with his look, and spoke in a tone so loud that people standing at some distance were startled. "Claridge Pasha!" In the hush that followed David stepped forward. "May the bounty of the years be thine, Saadat," Kaid said in a tone none could misunderstand. "May no tree in thy orchard wither, Effendina," answered David in a firm voice. Kaid beckoned him near, and again he spoke loudly: "I have proved thee, and found thee as gold tried seven times by the fire, Saadat. In the treasury of my heart shall I store thee up. Thou art going to the Soudan to finish the work Mehemet Ali began. I commend thee to Allah, and will bid thee farewell at sunrise--I and all who love Egypt." There was a sinister smile on his lips, as his eyes wandered over the faces of the foreign consuls-general. The look he turned on the intriguers of the Palace was repellent; he reserved for Sharif a moody, threatening glance, and the desperate hakim shrank back confounded from it. His first impulse was to flee from the Palace and from Cairo; but he bethought himself of the assault to be made on Kaid by the tent-maker, as he passed to the mosque a few hours later, and he determined to await the issue of that event. Exchanging glances with confederates, he disappeared, as Kaid laid a hand on David's arm and drew him aside. After viewing the great throng cynically for a moment Kaid said: "To- morrow thou goest. A month hence the hakim's knife will find the thing that eats away my life. It may be they will destroy it and save me; if not, we shall meet no more." David looked into his eyes. "Not in a month shall thy work be completed, Effendina. Thou shalt live. God and thy strong will shall make it so." A light stole over the superstitious face. "No device or hatred, or plot, has prevailed against thee," Kaid said eagerly. "Thou hast defeated all--even when I turned against thee in the black blood of despair. Thou hast conquered me even as thou didst Harrik." "Thou dost live," returned David drily. "Thou dost live for Egypt's sake, even as Harrik died for Egypt's sake, and as others shall die." "Death hath tracked thee down how often! Yet with a wave of the hand thou hast blinded him, and his blow falls on the air. Thou art beset by a thousand dangers, yet thou comest safe through all. Thou art an honest man. For that I besought thee to stay with me. Never didst thou lie to me. Good luck hath followed thee. Kismet! Stay with me, and it may be I shall be safe also. This thought came to me in the night, and in the morning was my reward, for Lacey effendi came to me and said, even as I say now, that thou wilt bring me good luck; and even in that hour, by the mercy of God, a loan much needed was negotiated. Allah be praised!" A glint of humour shot into David's eyes. Lacey--a loan--he read it all! Lacey had eased the Prince Pasha's immediate and pressing financial needs--and, "Allah be praised!" Poor human nature--backsheesh to a Prince regnant! "Effendina," he said presently, "thou didst speak of Harrik. One there was who saved thee then--" "Zaida!" A change passed over Kaid's face. "Speak! Thou hast news of her? She is gone?" Briefly David told him how Zaida was found upon her sister's grave. Kaid's face was turned away as he listened. "She spoke no word of me?" Kaid said at last. "To whom should she speak?" David asked gently. "But the amulet thou gavest her, set with one red jewel, it was clasped in her hand in death." Suddenly Kaid's anger blazed. "Now shall Achmet die," he burst out. "His hands and feet shall be burnt off, and he shall be thrown to the vultures." "The Place of the Lepers is sacred even from thee, Effendina," answered David gravely. "Yet Achmet shall die even as Harrik died. He shall die for Egypt and for thee, Effendina." Swiftly he drew the picture of Achmet at the monastery in the desert. "I have done the unlawful thing, Effendina," he said at last, "but thou wilt make it lawful. He hath died a thousand deaths--all save one." "Be it so," answered Kaid gloomily, after a moment; then his face lighted with cynical pleasure as he scanned once more the faces of the crowd before him. At last his eyes fastened on Nahoum. He turned to David. "Thou dost still desire Nahoum in his office?" he asked keenly. A troubled look came into David's eyes, then it cleared away, and he said firmly: "For six years we have worked together, Effendina. I am surety for his loyalty to thee." "And his loyalty to thee?" A pained look crossed over David's face again, but he said with a will that fought all suspicion down: "The years bear witness." Kaid shrugged his shoulders slightly. "The years have perjured themselves ere this. Yet, as thou sayest, Nahoum is a Christian," he added, with irony scarcely veiled. Now he moved forward with David towards the waiting court. David searched the groups of faces for Nahoum in vain. There were things to be said to Nahoum before he left on the morrow, last suggestions to be given. Nahoum could not be seen. Nahoum was gone, as were also Sharif and his confederates, and in the lofty Mosque of Mahmoud soft lights were hovering, while the Sheikh-el- Islam waited with Koran and scimitar for the ruler of Egypt to pray to God and salute the Lord Mahomet. At the great gateway in the Street of the Tent Makers Kaid paused on his way to the Mosque Mahmoud. The Gate was studded with thousands of nails, which fastened to its massive timbers relics of the faithful, bits of silk and cloth, and hair and leather; and here from time immemorial a holy man had sat and prayed. At the gateway Kaid salaamed humbly, and spoke to the holy man, who, as he passed, raised his voice shrilly in an appeal to Allah, commending Kaid to mercy and everlasting favour. On every side eyes burned with religious zeal, and excited faces were turned towards the Effendina. At a certain point there were little groups of men with faces more set than excited. They had a look of suppressed expectancy. Kald neared them, passed them, and, as he did so, they looked at each other in consternation. They were Sharif's confederates, fanatics carefully chosen. The attempt on Kaid's life should have been made opposite the spot where they stood. They craned their necks in effort to find the Christian tent-maker, but in vain. Suddenly they heard a cry, a loud voice calling. It was Rahib the tent- maker. He was beside Kaid's stirrups, but no weapon was in his hand; and his voice was calling blessings down on the Effendina's head for having pardoned and saved from death his one remaining son, the joy of his old age. In all the world there was no prince like Kaid, said the tent- maker; none so bountiful and merciful and beautiful in the eyes of men. God grant him everlasting days, the beloved friend of his people, just to all and greatly to be praised. As the soldiers drove the old man away with kindly insistence--for Kaid had thrown him a handful of gold--Mizraim, the Chief Eunuch, laughed wickedly. As Nahoum had said, the greatest of all weapons was the mocking finger. He and Mizraim had had their way with the governor of the prisons, and the murderer had gone in safety, while the father stayed to bless Kaid. Rahib the tent-maker had fooled the plotters. They were mad in derision. They did not know that Kaid was as innocent as themselves of having pardoned the tent-maker's son. Their moment had passed; they could not overtake it; the match had spluttered and gone out at the fuel laid for the fire of fanaticism. The morning of David's departure came. While yet it was dark he had risen, and had made his last preparations. When he came into the open air and mounted, it was not yet sunrise, and in that spectral early light, which is all Egypt's own, Cairo looked like some dream-city in a forgotten world. The Mokattam Hills were like vast dun barriers guarding and shutting in the ghostly place, and, high above all, the minarets of the huge mosque upon the lofty rocks were impalpable fingers pointing an endless flight. The very trees seemed so little real and substantial that they gave the eye the impression that they might rise and float away. The Nile was hung with mist, a trailing cloud unwound from the breast of the Nile-mother. At last the sun touched the minarets of the splendid mosque with shafts of light, and over at Ghizeh and Sakkarah the great pyramids, lifting their heads from the wall of rolling blue mist below, took the morning's crimson radiance with the dignity of four thousand years. On the decks of the little steamer which was to carry them south David, Ebn Ezra, Lacey, and Mahommed waited. Presently Kaid came, accompanied by his faithful Nubians, their armour glowing in the first warm light of the rising sun, and crowds of people, who had suddenly emerged, ran shrilling to the waterside behind him. Kaid's pale face had all last night's friendliness, as he bade David farewell with great honour, and commended him to the care of Allah; and the swords of the Nubians clashed against their breasts and on their shields in salaam. But there was another farewell to make; and it was made as David's foot touched the deck of the steamer. Once again David looked at Nahoum as he had done six years ago, in the little room where they had made their bond together. There was the same straight look in Nahoum's eyes. Was he not to be trusted? Was it not his own duty to trust? He clasped Nahoum's hand in farewell, and turned away. But as he gave the signal to start, and the vessel began to move, Nahoum came back. He leaned over the widening space and said in a low tone, as David again drew near: "There is still an account which should be settled, Saadat. It has waited long; but God is with the patient. There is the account of Foorgat Bey." The light fled from David's eyes and his heart stopped beating for a moment. When his eyes saw the shore again Nahoum was gone with Kaid. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Cherish any alleviating lie Triumph of Oriental duplicity over Western civilisation When God permits, shall man despair? THE WEAVERS By Gilbert Parker BOOK V. XXXV. THE FLIGHT OF THE WOUNDED XXXVI. "IS IT ALWAYS SO-IN LIFE?" XXXVII. THE FLYING SHUTTLE XXXVIII. JASPER KIMBER SPEAKS XXXIX. FAITH JOURNEYS TO LONDON CHAPTER XXXV THE FLIGHT OF THE WOUNDED "And Mario can soothe with a tenor note The souls in purgatory." "Non ti scordar di mi!" The voice rang out with passionate stealthy sweetness, finding its way into far recesses of human feeling. Women of perfect poise and with the confident look of luxury and social fame dropped their eyes abstractedly on the opera-glasses lying in their laps, or the programmes they mechanically fingered, and recalled, they knew not why--for what had it to do with this musical narration of a tragic Italian tale!--the days when, in the first flush of their wedded life, they had set a seal of devotion and loyalty and love upon their arms, which, long ago, had gone to the limbo of lost jewels, with the chaste, fresh desires of worshipping hearts. Young egotists, supremely happy and defiant in the pride of the fact that they loved each other, and that it mattered little what the rest of the world enjoyed, suffered, and endured--these were suddenly arrested in their buoyant and solitary flight, and stirred restlessly in their seats. Old men whose days of work were over; who no longer marshalled their legions, or moved at a nod great ships upon the waters in masterful manoeuvres; whose voices were heard no more in chambers of legislation, lashing partisan feeling to a height of cruelty or lulling a storm among rebellious followers; whose intellects no longer devised vast schemes of finance, or applied secrets of science to transform industry--these heard the enthralling cry of a soul with the darkness of eternal loss gathering upon it, and drew back within themselves; for they too had cried like this one time or another in their lives. Stricken, they had cried out, and ambition had fled away, leaving behind only the habit of living, and of work and duty. As Hylda, in the Duchess of Snowdon's box, listened with a face which showed nothing of what she felt, and looking straight at the stage before her, the words of a poem she had learned but yesterday came to her mind, and wove themselves into the music thrilling from the voice in the stage prison: "And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonised? Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence? Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?" "And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence? Was it then so? The long weeks which had passed since that night at Hamley, when she had told Eglington the truth about so many things, had brought no peace, no understanding, no good news from anywhere. The morning after she had spoken with heart laid bare. Eglington had essayed to have a reconciliation; but he had come as the martyr, as one injured. His egotism at such a time, joined to his attempt to make light of things, of treating what had happened as a mere "moment of exasperation," as "one of those episodes inseparable from the lives of the high-spirited," only made her heart sink and grow cold, almost as insensible as the flesh under a spray of ether. He had been neither wise nor patient. She had not slept after that bitter, terrible scene, and the morning had found her like one battered by winter seas, every nerve desperately alert to pain, yet tears swimming at her heart and ready to spring to her eyes at a touch of the real thing, the true note--and she knew so well what the true thing was! Their great moment had passed, had left her withdrawn into herself, firmly, yet without heart, performing the daily duties of life, gay before the world, the delightful hostess, the necessary and graceful figure at so many functions. Even as Soolsby had done, who went no further than to tell Eglington his dark tale, and told no one else, withholding it from "Our Man"; as Sybil Lady Eglington had shrunk when she had been faced by her obvious duty, so Hylda hesitated, but from better reason than either. To do right in the matter was to strike her husband--it must be a blow now, since her voice had failed. To do right was to put in the ancient home and house of Eglington one whom he--with anger and without any apparent desire to have her altogether for himself, all the riches of her life and love--had dared to say commanded her sympathy and interest, not because he was a man dispossessed of his rights, but because he was a man possessed of that to which he had no right. The insult had stung her, had driven her back into a reserve, out of which she seemed unable to emerge. How could she compel Eglington to do right in this thing--do right by his own father's son? Meanwhile, that father's son was once more imperilling his life, once more putting England's prestige in the balance in the Soudan, from which he had already been delivered twice as though by miracles. Since he had gone, months before, there had been little news; but there had been much public anxiety; and she knew only too well that there had been 'pourparlers' with foreign ministers, from which no action came safe- guarding David. Many a human being has realised the apathy, the partial paralysis of the will, succeeding a great struggle, which has exhausted the vital forces. Many a general who has fought a desperate and victorious fight after a long campaign, and amid all the anxieties and miseries of war, has failed to follow up his advantage, from a sudden lesion of the power for action in him. He has stepped from the iron routine of daily effort into a sudden freedom, and his faculties have failed him, the iron of his will has vanished. So it was with Hylda. She waited for she knew not what. Was it some dim hope that Eglington might see the right as she saw it? That he might realise how unreal was this life they were living, outwardly peaceful and understanding, deluding the world, but inwardly a place of tears. How she dreaded the night and its recurrent tears, and the hours when she could not sleep, and waited for the joyless morning, as one lost on the moor, blanched with cold, waits for the sun-rise! Night after night at a certain hour--the hour when she went to bed at last after that poignant revelation to Eglington--she wept, as she had wept then, heart-broken tears of disappointment, disillusion, loneliness; tears for the bitter pity of it all; for the wasting and wasted opportunities; for the common aim never understood or planned together; for the precious hours lived in an air of artificial happiness and social excitement; for a perfect understanding missed; for the touch which no longer thrilled. But the end of it all must come. She was looking frail and delicate, and her beauty, newly refined, and with a fresh charm, as of mystery or pain, was touched by feverishness. An old impatience once hers was vanished, and Kate Heaver would have given a month's wages for one of those flashes of petulance of other days ever followed by a smile. Now the smile was all too often there, the patient smile which comes to those who have suffered. Hardness she felt at times, where Eglington was concerned, for he seemed to need her now not at all, to be self-contained, self- dependent--almost arrogantly so; but she did not show it, and she was outwardly patient. In his heart of hearts Eglington believed that she loved him, that her interest in David was only part of her idealistic temperament--the admiration of a woman for a man of altruistic aims; but his hatred of David, of what David was, and of his irrefutable claims, reacted on her. Perverseness and his unhealthy belief that he would master her in the end, that she would one day break down and come to him, willing to take his view in all things, and to be his slave--all this drove him farther and farther on a fatal, ever-broadening path. Success had spoiled him. He applied his gifts in politics, daringly unscrupulous, superficially persuasive, intellectually insinuating, to his wife; and she, who had been captured once by all these things, was not to be captured again. She knew what alone could capture her; and, as she sat and watched the singers on the stage now, the divine notes of that searching melody still lingering in her heart, there came a sudden wonder whether Eglington's heart could not be wakened. She knew that it never had been, that he had never known love, the transfiguring and reclaiming passion. No, no, surely it could not be too late--her marriage with him had only come too soon! He had ridden over her without mercy; he had robbed her of her rightful share of the beautiful and the good; he had never loved her; but if love came to him, if he could but once realise how much there was of what he had missed! If he did not save himself--and her--what would be the end? She felt the cords drawing her elsewhere; the lure of a voice she had heard in an Egyptian garden was in her ears. One night at Hamley, in an abandonment of grief-life hurt her so--she had remembered the prophecy she had once made that she would speak to David, and that he would hear; and she had risen from her seat, impelled by a strange new feeling, and had cried: "Speak! speak to me!" As plainly as she had ever heard anything in her life, she had heard his voice speak to her a message that sank into the innermost recesses of her being, and she had been more patient afterwards. She had no doubt whatever; she had spoken to him, and he had answered; but the answer was one which all the world might have heard. Down deep in her nature was an inalienable loyalty, was a simple, old-fashioned feeling that "they two," she and Eglington, should cleave unto each other till death should part. He had done much to shatter that feeling; but now, as she listened to Mario's voice, centuries of predisposition worked in her, and a great pity awoke in her heart. Could she not save him, win him, wake him, cure him of the disease of Self? The thought brought a light to her eyes which had not been there for many a day. Out of the deeps of her soul this mist of a pure selflessness rose, the spirit of that idealism which was the real chord of sympathy between her and Egypt. Yes, she would, this once again, try to win the heart of this man; and so reach what was deeper than heart, and so also give him that without which his life must be a failure in the end, as Sybil Eglington had said. How often had those bitter anguished words of his mother rung in her ears-- "So brilliant and unscrupulous, like yourself; but, oh, so sure of winning a great place in the world . . . so calculating and determined and ambitious !" They came to her now, flashed between the eager solicitous eyes of her mind and the scene of a perfect and everlasting reconciliation which it conjured up--flashed and were gone; for her will rose up and blurred them into mist; and other words of that true palimpsest of Sybil Eglington's broken life came instead: "And though he loves me little, as he loves you little too, yet he is my son, and for what he is we are both responsible one way or another." As the mother, so the wife. She said to herself now in sad paraphrase, "And though he loves me little, yet he is my husband, and for what he is it may be that I am in some sense responsible." Yet he is my husband! All that it was came to her; the closed door, the drawn blinds; the intimacy which shut them away from all the world; the things said which can only be said without desecration between two honest souls who love each other; and that sweet isolation which makes marriage a separate world, with its own sacred revelation. This she had known; this had been; and though the image of the sacred thing had been defaced, yet the shrine was not destroyed. For she believed that each had kept the letter of the law; that, whatever his faults, he had turned his face to no other woman. If she had not made his heart captive and drawn him by an ever-shortening cord of attraction, yet she was sure that none other had any influence over him, that, as he had looked at her in those short-lived days of his first devotion, he looked at no other. The way was clear yet. There was nothing irretrievable, nothing irrevocable, which would for ever stain the memory and tarnish the gold of life when the perfect love should be minted. Whatever faults of mind or disposition or character were his-- or hers--there were no sins against the pledges they had made, nor the bond into which they had entered. Life would need no sponge. Memory might still live on without a wound or a cowl of shame. It was all part of the music to which she listened, and she was almost oblivious of the brilliant throng, the crowded boxes, or of the Duchess of Snowdon sitting near her strangely still, now and again scanning the beautiful face beside her with a reflective look. The Duchess loved the girl--she was but a girl, after all--as she had never loved any of her sex; it had come to be the last real interest of her life. To her eyes, dimmed with much seeing, blurred by a garish kaleidoscope of fashionable life, there had come a look which was like the ghost of a look she had, how many decades ago. Presently, as she saw Hylda's eyes withdraw from the stage, and look at her with a strange, soft moisture and a new light in them, she laid her fan confidently on her friend's knee, and said in her abrupt whimsical voice: "You like it, my darling; your eyes are as big as saucers. You look as if you'd been seeing things, not things on that silly stage, but what Verdi felt when he wrote the piece, or something of more account than that." "Yes, I've been seeing things," Hylda answered with a smile which came from a new-born purpose, the dream of an idealist. "I've been seeing things that Verdi did not see, and of more account, too. . . . Do you suppose the House is up yet?" A strange look flashed into the Duchess's eyes, which had been watching her with as much pity as interest. Hylda had not been near the House of Commons this session, though she had read the reports with her usual care. She had shunned the place. "Why, did you expect Eglington?" the Duchess asked idly, yet she was watchful too, alert for every movement in this life where the footsteps of happiness were falling by the edge of a precipice, over which she would not allow herself to look. She knew that Hylda did not expect Eglington, for the decision to come to the opera was taken at the last moment. "Of course not--he doesn't know we are here. But if it wasn't too late, I thought I'd go down and drive him home." The Duchess veiled her look. Here was some new development in the history which had been torturing her old eyes, which had given her and Lord Windlehurst as many anxious moments as they had known in many a day, and had formed them into a vigilance committee of two, who waited for the critical hour when they should be needed. "We'll go at once if you like," she replied. "The opera will be over soon. We sent word to Windlehurst to join us, you remember, but he won't come now; it's too late. So, we'll go, if you like." She half rose, but the door of the box opened, and Lord Windlehurst looked in quizzically. There was a smile on his face. "I'm late, I know; but you'll forgive me--you'll forgive me, dear lady," he added to Hylda, "for I've been listening to your husband making a smashing speech for a bad cause." Hylda smiled. "Then I must go and congratulate him," she answered, and withdrew her hand from that of Lord Windlehurst, who seemed to hold it longer than usual, and pressed it in a fatherly way. "I'm afraid the House is up," he rejoined, as Hylda turned for her opera- cloak; "and I saw Eglington leave Palace Yard as I came away." He gave a swift, ominous glance towards the Duchess, which Hylda caught, and she looked at each keenly. "It's seldom I sit in the Peers' Gallery," continued Windlehurst; "I don't like going back to the old place much. It seems empty and hollow. But I wouldn't have missed Eglington's fighting speech for a good deal." "What was it about?" asked Hylda as they left the box. She had a sudden throb of the heart. Was it the one great question, that which had been like a gulf of fire between them? "Oh, Turkey--the unpardonable Turk," answered Windlehurst. "As good a defence of a bad case as I ever heard." "Yes, Eglington would do that well," said the Duchess enigmatically, drawing her cloak around her and adjusting her hair. Hylda looked at her sharply, and Lord Windlehurst slyly, but the Duchess seemed oblivious of having said anything out of the way, and added: "It's a gift seeing all that can be said for a bad cause, and saying it, and so making the other side make their case so strong that the verdict has to be just." "Dear Duchess, it doesn't always work out that way," rejoined Windlehurst with a dry laugh. "Sometimes the devil's advocate wins." "You are not very complimentary to my husband," retorted Hylda, looking him in the eyes, for she was not always sure when he was trying to baffle her. "I'm not so sure of that. He hasn't won his case yet. He has only staved off the great attack. It's coming--soon." "What is the great attack? What has the Government, or the Foreign Office, done or left undone?" "Well, my dear--" Suddenly Lord Windlehurst remembered himself, stopped, put up his eyeglass, and with great interest seemed to watch a gay group of people opposite; for the subject of attack was Egypt and the Government's conduct in not helping David, in view not alone of his present danger, but of the position of England in the country, on which depended the security of her highway to the East. Windlehurst was a good actor, and he had broken off his words as though the group he was now watching had suddenly claimed his attention. "Well, well, Duchess," he said reflectively, "I see a new nine days' wonder yonder." Then, in response to a reminder from Hylda, he continued: "Ah, yes, the attack! Oh, Persia--Persia, and our feeble diplomacy, my dear lady, though you mustn't take that as my opinion, opponent as I am. That's the charge, Persia--and her cats." The Duchess breathed a sigh of relief; for she knew what Windlehurst had been going to say, and she shrank from seeing what she felt she would see, if Egypt and Claridge Pasha's name were mentioned. That night at Harnley had burnt a thought into her mind which she did not like. Not that she had any pity for Eglington; her thought was all for this girl she loved. No happiness lay in the land of Egypt for her, whatever her unhappiness here; and she knew that Hylda must be more unhappy still before she was ever happy again, if that might be. There was that concerning Eglington which Hylda did not know, yet which she must know one day--and then! But why were Hylda's eyes so much brighter and softer and deeper to-night? There was something expectant, hopeful, brooding in them. They belonged not to the life moving round her, but were shining in a land of their own, a land of promise. By an instinct in each of them they stood listening for a moment to the last strains of the opera. The light leaped higher in Hylda's eyes. "Beautiful--oh, so beautiful!" she said, her hand touching the Duchess's arm. The Duchess gave the slim warm fingers a spasmodic little squeeze. "Yes, darling, beautiful," she rejoined; and then the crowd began to pour out behind them. Their carriages were at the door. Lord Windlehurst put Hylda in. "The House is up," he said. "You are going on somewhere?" "No--home," she said, and smiled into his old, kind, questioning eyes. "Home!" "Home!" he murmured significantly as he turned towards the Duchess and her carriage. "Home!" he repeated, and shook his head sadly. "Shall I drive you to your house?" the Duchess asked. "No, I'll go with you to your door, and walk back to my cell. Home!" he growled to the footman, with a sardonic note in the voice. As they drove away, the Duchess turned to him abruptly. "What did you mean by your look when you said you had seen Eglington drive away from the House?" "Well, my dear Betty, she--the fly-away--drives him home now. It has come to that." "To her house--Windlehurst, oh, Windlehurst!" She sank back in the cushions, and gave what was as near a sob as she had given in many a day. Windlehurst took her hand. "No, not so bad as that yet. She drove him to his club. Don't fret, my dear Betty." Home! Hylda watched the shops, the houses, the squares, as she passed westward, her mind dwelling almost happily on the new determination to which she had come. It was not love that was moving her, not love for him, but a deeper thing. He had brutally killed love--the full life of it--those months ago; but there was a deep thing working in her which was as near nobility as the human mind can feel. Not in a long time had she neared her home with such expectation and longing. Often on the doorstep she had shut her eyes to the light and warmth and elegance of it, because of that which she did not see. Now, with a thrill of pleasure, she saw its doors open. It was possible Eglington might have come home already. Lord Windlehurst had said that he had left the House. She did not ask if he was in--it had not been her custom for a long time--and servants were curious people; but she looked at the hall-table. Yes, there was a hat which had evidently just been placed there, and gloves, and a stick. He was at home, then. She hurried to her room, dropped her opera-cloak on a chair, looked at herself in the glass, a little fluttered and critical, and then crossed the hallway to Eglington's bedroom. She listened for a moment. There was no sound. She turned the handle of the door softly, and opened it. A light was burning low, but the room was empty. It was as she thought, he was in his study, where he spent hours sometimes after he came home, reading official papers. She went up the stairs, at first swiftly, then more slowly, then with almost lagging feet. Why did she hesitate? Why should a woman falter in going to her husband--to her own one man of all the world? Was it not, should it not be, ever the open door between them? Confidence--confidence--could she not have it, could she not get it now at last? She had paused; but now she moved on with quicker step, purpose in her face, her eyes softly lighted. Suddenly she saw on the floor an opened letter. She picked it up, and, as she did so, involuntarily observed the writing. Almost mechanically she glanced at the contents. Her heart stood still. The first words scorched her eyes. "Eglington--Harry, dearest," it said, "you shall not go to sleep to-night without a word from me. This will make you think of me when . . . " Frozen, struck as by a mortal blow, Hylda looked at the signature. She knew it--the cleverest, the most beautiful adventuress which the aristocracy and society had produced. She trembled from head to foot, and for a moment it seemed that she must fall. But she steadied herself and walked firmly to Eglington's door. Turning the handle softly, she stepped inside. He did not hear her. He was leaning over a box of papers, and they rustled loudly under his hand. He was humming to himself that song she heard an hour ago in Il Trovatore, that song of passion and love and tragedy. It sent a wave of fresh feeling over her. She could not go on--could not face him, and say what she must say. She turned and passed swiftly from the room, leaving the door open, and hurried down the staircase. Eglington heard now, and wheeled round. He saw the open door, listened to the rustle of her skirts, knew that she had been there. He smiled, and said to himself: "She came to me, as I said she would. I shall master her--the full surrender, and then--life will be easy then." Hylda hurried down the staircase to her room, saw Kate Heaver waiting, beckoned to her, caught up her opera-cloak, and together they passed down the staircase to the front door. Heaver rang a bell, a footman appeared, and, at a word, called a cab. A minute later they were ready: "Snowdon House," Hylda said; and they passed into the night. CHAPTER XXXVI "IS IT ALWAYS SO--IN LIFE?" The Duchess and her brother, an ex-diplomatist, now deaf and patiently amiable and garrulous, had met on the doorstep of Snowdon House, and together they insisted on Lord Windlehurst coming in for a talk. The two men had not met for a long time, and the retired official had been one of Lord Windlehurst's own best appointments in other days. The Duchess had the carriage wait in consequence. The ex-official could hear little, but he had cultivated the habit of talking constantly and well. There were some voices, however, which he could hear more distinctly than others, and Lord Windlehurst's was one of them--clear, well-modulated, and penetrating. Sipping brandy and water, Lord Windlehurst gave his latest quip. They were all laughing heartily, when the butler entered the room and said, "Lady Eglington is here, and wishes to see your Grace." As the butler left the room, the Duchess turned despairingly to Windlehurst, who had risen, and was paler than the Duchess. "It has come," she said, "oh, it has come! I can't face it." "But it doesn't matter about you facing it," Lord Windlehurst rejoined. "Go to her and help her, Betty. You know what to do--the one thing." He took her hand and pressed it. She dashed the tears from her eyes and drew herself together, while her brother watched her benevolently. He had not heard what was said. Betty had always been impulsive, he thought to himself, and here was some one in trouble--they all came to her, and kept her poor. "Go to bed, Dick," the Duchess said to him, and hurried from the room. She did not hesitate now. Windlehurst had put the matter in the right way. Her pain was nothing, mere moral cowardice; but Hylda--! She entered the other room as quickly as rheumatic limbs would permit. Hylda stood waiting, erect, her eyes gazing blankly before her and rimmed by dark circles, her face haggard and despairing. Before the Duchess could reach her, she said in a hoarse whisper: "I have left him--I have left him. I have come to you." With a cry of pity the Duchess would have taken the stricken girl in her arms, but Hylda held out a shaking hand with the letter in it which had brought this new woe and this crisis foreseen by Lord Windlehurst. "There--there it is. He goes from me to her--to that!" She thrust the letter into the Duchess's fingers. "You knew--you knew! I saw the look that passed between you and Windlehurst at the opera. I understand all now. He left the House of Commons with her--and you knew, oh, you knew! All the world knows--every one knew but me." She threw up her hands. "But I've left him--I've left him, for ever." Now the Duchess had her in her arms, and almost forcibly drew her to a sofa. "Darling, my darling," she said, "you must not give way. It is not so bad as you think. You must let me help to make you understand." Hylda laughed hysterically. "Not so bad as I think! Read--read it," she said, taking the letter from the Duchess's fingers and holding it before her face. "I found it on the staircase. I could not help but read it." She sat and clasped and unclasped her hands in utter misery. "Oh, the shame of it, the bitter shame of it! Have I not been a good wife to him? Have I not had reason to break my heart? But I waited, and I wanted to be good and to do right. And to-night I was going to try once more--I felt it in the opera. I was going to make one last effort for his sake. It was for his sake I meant to make it, for I thought him only hard and selfish, and that he had never loved; and if he only loved, I thought--" She broke off, wringing her hands and staring into space, the ghost of the beautiful figure that had left the Opera House with shining eyes. The Duchess caught the cold hands. "Yes, yes, darling, I know. I understand. So does Windlehurst. He loves you as much as I do. We know there isn't much to be got out of life; but we always hoped you would get more than anybody else." Hylda shrank, then raised her head, and looked at the Duchess with an infinite pathos. "Oh, is it always so--in life? Is no one true? Is every one betrayed sometime? I would die--yes, a thousand times yes, I would rather die than bear this. What do I care for life--it has cheated me! I meant well, and I tried to do well, and I was true to him in word and deed even when I suffered most, even when--" The Duchess laid a cheek against the burning head. "I understand, my own dear. I understand--altogether." "But you cannot know," the broken girl replied; "but through everything I was true; and I have been tempted too when my heart was aching so, when the days were so empty, the nights so long, and my heart hurt--hurt me. But now, it is over, everything is done. You will keep me here--ah, say you will keep me here till everything can be settled, and I can go away --far away--far--!" She stopped with a gasping cry, and her eyes suddenly strained into the distance, as though a vision of some mysterious thing hung before her. The Duchess realised that that temptation, which has come to so many disillusioned mortals, to end it all, to find quiet somehow, somewhere out in the dark, was upon her. She became resourceful and persuasively commanding. "But no, my darling," she said, "you are going nowhere. Here in London is your place now. And you must not stay here in my house. You must go back to your home. Your place is there. For the present, at any rate, there must be no scandal. Suspicion is nothing, talk is nothing, and the world forgets--" "Oh, I do not care for the world or its forgetting!" the wounded girl replied. "What is the world to me! I wanted my own world, the world of my four walls, quiet and happy, and free from scandal and shame. I wanted love and peace there, and now . . . !" "You must be guided by those who love you. You are too young to decide what is best for yourself. You must let Windlehurst and me think for you; and, oh, my darling, you cannot know how much I care for your best good!" "I cannot, will not, bear the humiliation and the shame. This letter here--you see!" "It is the letter of a woman who has had more affaires than any man in London. She is preternaturally clever, my dear--Windlehurst would tell you so. The brilliant and unscrupulous, the beautiful and the bad, have a great advantage in this world. Eglington was curious, that is all. It is in the breed of the Eglingtons to go exploring, to experiment." Hylda started. Words from the letter Sybil Lady Eglington had left behind her rushed into her mind: "Experiment, subterfuge, secrecy. 'Reaping where you had not sowed, and gathering where you had not strawed.' Always experiment, experiment, experiment!" "I have only been married three years," she moaned. "Yes, yes, my darling; but much may happen after three days of married life, and love may come after twenty years. The human heart is a strange thing." "I was patient--I gave him every chance. He has been false and shameless. I will not go on." The Duchess pressed both hands hard, and made a last effort, looking into the deep troubled eyes with her own grown almost beautiful with feeling --the faded world-worn eyes. "You will go back to-night-at once," she said firmly. "To-morrow you will stay in bed till noon-at any rate, till I come. I promise you that you shall not be treated with further indignity. Your friends will stand by you, the world will be with you, if you do nothing rash, nothing that forces it to babble and scold. But you must play its game, my dearest. I'll swear that the worst has not happened. She drove him to his club, and, after a man has had a triumph, a woman will not drive him to his club if--my darling, you must trust me! If there must be the great smash, let it be done in a way that will prevent you being smashed also in the world's eyes. You can live, and you will live. Is there nothing for you to do? Is there no one for whom you would do something, who would be heart-broken if you--if you went mad now?" Suddenly a great change passed over Hylda. "Is there no one for whom you would do something?" Just as in the desert a question like this had lifted a man out of a terrible and destroying apathy, so this searching appeal roused in Hylda a memory and a pledge. "Is there no one for whom you would do something?" Was life, then, all over? Was her own great grief all? Was her bitter shame the end? She got to her feet tremblingly. "I will go back," she said slowly and softly. "Windlehurst will take you home," the Duchess rejoined eagerly. "My carriage is at the door." A moment afterwards Lord Windlehurst took Hylda's hands in his and held them long. His old, querulous eyes were like lamps of safety; his smile had now none of that cynicism with which he had aroused and chastened the world. The pitiful understanding of life was there and a consummate gentleness. He gave her his arm, and they stepped out into the moonlit night. "So peaceful, so bright!" he said, looking round. "I will come at noon to-morrow," called the Duchess from the doorway. A light was still shining in Eglington's study when the carriage drove up. With a latch-key Hylda admitted herself and her maid. The storm had broken, the flood had come. The storm was over, but the flood swept far and wide. CHAPTER XXXVII THE FLYING SHUTTLE Hour after hour of sleeplessness. The silver-tongued clock remorselessly tinkled the quarters, and Hylda lay and waited for them with a hopeless strained attention. In vain she tried devices to produce that monotony of thought which sometimes brings sleep. Again and again, as she felt that sleep was coming at last, the thought of the letter she had found flashed through her mind with words of fire, and it seemed as if there had been poured through every vein a subtle irritant. Just such a surging, thrilling flood she had felt in the surgeon's chair when she was a girl and an anesthetic had been given. But this wave of sensation led to no oblivion, no last soothing intoxication. Its current beat against her heart until she could have cried out from the mere physical pain, the clamping grip of her trouble. She withered and grew cold under the torture of it all--the ruthless spoliation of everything which made life worth while or the past endurable. About an hour after she had gone to bed she heard Eglington's step. It paused at her door. She trembled with apprehension lest he should enter. It was many a day since he had done so, but also she had not heard his step pause at her door for many a day. She could not bear to face it all now; she must have time to think, to plan her course--the last course of all. For she knew that the next step must be the last step in her old life, and towards a new life, whatever that might be. A great sigh of relief broke from her as she heard his door open and shut, and silence fell on everything, that palpable silence which seems to press upon the night-watcher with merciless, smothering weight. How terribly active her brain was! Pictures--it was all vivid pictures, that awful visualisation of sorrow which, if it continues, breaks the heart or wrests the mind from its sanity. If only she did not see! But she did see Eglington and the Woman together, saw him look into her eyes, take her hands, put his arm round her, draw her face to his! Her heart seemed as if it must burst, her lips cried out. With a great effort of the will she tried to hide from these agonies of the imagination, and again she would approach those happy confines of sleep, which are the only refuge to the lacerated heart; and then the weapon of time on the mantelpiece would clash on the shield of the past, and she was wide awake again. At last, in desperation, she got out of bed, hurried to the fireplace, caught the little sharp-tongued recorder in a nervous grasp, and stopped it. As she was about to get into bed again, she saw a pile of letters lying on the table near her pillow. In her agitation she had not noticed them, and the devoted Heaver had not drawn her attention to them. Now, however, with a strange premonition, she quickly glanced at the envelopes. The last one of all was less aristocratic-looking than the others; the paper of the envelope was of the poorest, and it had a foreign look. She caught it up with an exclamation. The handwriting was that of her cousin Lacey. She got into bed with a mind suddenly swept into a new atmosphere, and opened the flimsy cover. Shutting her eyes, she lay still for a moment --still and vague; she was only conscious of one thing, that a curtain had dropped on the terrible pictures she had seen, and that her mind was in a comforting quiet. Presently she roused herself, and turned the letter over in her hand. It was not long--was that because its news was bad news? The first chronicles of disaster were usually brief! She smoothed the paper out-it had been crumpled and was a little soiled-and read it swiftly. It ran: DEAR LADY COUSIN--As the poet says, "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward," and in Egypt the sparks set the stacks on fire oftener than anywhere else, I guess. She outclasses Mexico as a "precious example" in this respect. You needn't go looking for trouble in Mexico; it's waiting for you kindly. If it doesn't find you to-day, well, manana. But here it comes running like a native to his cooking-pot at sunset in Ramadan. Well, there have been "hard trials" for the Saadat. His cotton-mills were set on fire- can't you guess who did it? And now, down in Cairo, Nahoum runs Egypt; for a messenger that got through the tribes worrying us tells us that Kaid is sick, and Nahoum the Armenian says, you shall, and you shan't, now. Which is another way of saying, that between us and the front door of our happy homes there are rattlesnakes that can sting--Nahoum's arm is long, and his traitors are crawling under the canvas of our tents! I'm not complaining for myself. I asked for what I've got, and, dear Lady Cousin, I put up some cash for it, too, as a man should. No, I don't mind for myself, fond as I am of loafing, sort of pottering round where the streets are in the hands of a pure police; for I've seen more, done more, thought more, up here, than in all my life before; and I've felt a country heaving under the touch of one of God's men--it gives you minutes that lift you out of the dust and away from the crawlers. And I'd do it all over a thousand times for him, and for what I've got out of it. I've lived. But, to speak right out plain, I don't know how long this machine will run. There's been a plant of the worst kind. Tribes we left friendly under a year ago are out against us; cities that were faithful have gone under to rebels. Nahoum has sowed the land with the tale that the Saadat means to abolish slavery, to take away the powers of the great sheikhs, and to hand the country over to the Turk. Ebn Ezra Bey has proofs of the whole thing, and now at last the Saadat knows too late that his work has been spoiled by the only man who could spoil it. The Saadat knows it, but does he rave and tear his hair? He says nothing. He stands up like a rock before the riot of treachery and bad luck and all the terrible burden he has to carry here. If he wasn't a Quaker I'd say he had the pride of an archangel. You can bend him, but you can't break him; and it takes a lot to bend him. Men desert, but he says others will come to take their place. And so they do. It's wonderful, in spite of the holy war that's being preached, and all the lies about him sprinkled over this part of Africa, how they all fear him, and find it hard to be out on the war-path against him. We should be gorging the vultures if he wasn't the wonder he is. We need boats. Does he sit down and wring his hands? No, he organises, and builds them--out of scraps. Hasn't he enough food for a long siege? He goes himself to the tribes that have stored food in their cities, and haven't yet declared against him, and he puts a hand on their hard hearts, and takes the sulkiness out of their eyes, and a fleet of ghiassas comes down to us loaded with dourha. The defences of this place are nothing. Does he fold his hands like a man of peace that he is, and say, 'Thy will be done'? Not the Saadat. He gets two soldier- engineers, one an Italian who murdered his wife in Italy twenty years ago, and one a British officer that cheated at cards and had to go, and we've got defences that'll take some negotiating. That's the kind of man he is; smiling to cheer others when their hearts are in their boots, stern like a commander-in-chief when he's got to punish, and then he does it like steel; but I've seen him afterwards in his tent with a face that looks sixty, and he's got to travel a while yet before he's forty. None of us dares be as afraid as we could be, because a look at him would make us so ashamed we'd have to commit suicide. He hopes when no one else would ever hope. The other day I went to his tent to wait for him, and I saw his Bible open on the table. A passage was marked. It was this: "Behold, I have taken out of thy hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again: "But I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee; which have said to thy soul, Bow down, that we may go over; and thou hast laid thy body as the ground, and as the street, to them that went over. I'd like to see Nahoum with that cup of trembling in his hand, and I've got an idea, too, that it will be there yet. I don't know how it is, but I never can believe the worst will happen to the Saadat. Reading those verses put hope into me. That's why I'm writing to you, on the chance of this getting through by a native who is stealing down the river with a letter from the Saadat to Nahoum, and one to Kaid, and one to the Foreign Minister in London, and one to your husband. If they reach the hands they're meant for, it may be we shall pan out here yet. But there must be display of power; an army must be sent, without delay, to show the traitors that the game is up. Five thousand men from Cairo under a good general would do it. Will Nahoum send them? Does Kaid, the sick man, know? I'm not banking on Kaid. I think he's on his last legs. Unless pressure is put on him, unless some one takes him by the throat and says: If you don't relieve Claridge Pasha and the people with him, you will go to the crocodiles, Nahoum won't stir. So, I am writing to you. England can do it. The lord, your husband, can do it. England will have a nasty stain on her flag if she sees this man go down without a hand lifted to save him. He is worth another Alma to her prestige. She can't afford to see him slaughtered here, where he's fighting the fight of civilisation. You see right through this thing, I know, and I don't need to palaver any more about it. It doesn't matter about me. I've had a lot for my money, and I'm no use--or I wouldn't be, if anything happened to the Saadat. No one would drop a knife and fork at the breakfast-table when my obit was read out--well, yes, there's one, cute as she can be, but she's lost two husbands already, and you can't be hurt so bad twice in the same place. But the Saadat, back him, Hylda--I'll call you that at this distance. Make Nahoum move. Send four or five thousand men before the day comes when famine does its work and they draw the bowstring tight. Salaam and salaam, and the post is going out, and there's nothing in the morning paper; and, as Aunt Melissa used to say: "Well, so much for so much!" One thing I forgot. I'm lucky to be writing to you at all. If the Saadat was an old-fashioned overlord, I shouldn't be here. I got into a bad corner three days ago with a dozen Arabs-- I'd been doing a little work with a friendly tribe all on my own, and I almost got caught by this loose lot of fanatics. I shot three, and galloped for it. I knew the way through the mines outside, and just escaped by the skin of my teeth. Did the Saadat, as a matter of discipline, have me shot for cowardice? Cousin Hylda, my heart was in my mouth as I heard them yelling behind me-- and I never enjoyed a dinner so much in my life. Would the Saadat have run from them? Say, he'd have stayed and saved his life too. Well, give my love to the girls! Your affectionate cousin, Tom LACEY. P.S.-There's no use writing to me. The letter service is bad. Send a few thousand men by military parcel-post, prepaid, with some red seals--majors and colonels from Aldershot will do. They'll give the step to the Gyppies. T. Hylda closed her eyes. A fever had passed from her veins. Here lay her duty before her--the redemption of the pledge she had made. Whatever her own sorrow, there was work before her; a supreme effort must be made for another. Even now it might be too late. She must have strength for what she meant to do. She put the room in darkness, and resolutely banished thought from her mind. The sun had been up for hours before she waked. Eglington had gone to the Foreign Office. The morning papers were full of sensational reports concerning Claridge Pasha and the Soudan. A Times leader sternly admonished the Government. CHAPTER XXXVIII JASPER KIMBER SPEAKS That day the adjournment of the House of Commons was moved "To call attention to an urgent matter of public importance"--the position of Claridge Pasha in the Soudan. Flushed with the success of last night's performance, stung by the attacks of the Opposition morning papers, confident in the big majority behind, which had cheered him a few hours before, viciously resenting the letter he had received from David that morning, Eglington returned such replies to the questions put to him that a fire of angry mutterings came from the forces against him. He might have softened the growing resentment by a change of manner, but his intellectual arrogance had control of him for the moment; and he said to himself that he had mastered the House before, and he would do so now. Apart from his deadly antipathy to his half-brother, and the gain to himself--to his credit, the latter weighed with him not so much, so set was he on a stubborn course--if David disappeared for ever, there was at bottom a spirit of anti-expansion, of reaction against England's world- wide responsibilities. He had no largeness of heart or view concerning humanity. He had no inherent greatness, no breadth of policy. With less responsibility taken, there would be less trouble, national and international--that was his point of view; that had been his view long ago at the meeting at Heddington; and his weak chief had taken it, knowing nothing of the personal elements behind. The disconcerting factor in the present bitter questioning in the House was, that it originated on his own side. It was Jasper Kimber who had launched the questions, who moved the motion for adjournment. Jasper had had a letter from Kate Heaver that morning early, which sent him to her, and he had gone to the House to do what he thought to be his duty. He did it boldly, to the joy of the Opposition, and with a somewhat sullen support from many on his own side. Now appeared Jasper's own inner disdain of the man who had turned his coat for office. It gave a lead to a latent feeling among members of the ministerial party, of distrust, and of suspicion that they were the dupes of a mind of abnormal cleverness which, at bottom, despised them. With flashing eyes and set lips, vigilant and resourceful, Eglington listened to Jasper Kimber's opening remarks. By unremitting industry Jasper had made a place for himself in the House. The humour and vitality of his speeches, and his convincing advocacy of the cause of the "factory folk," had gained him a hearing. Thickset, under middle size, with an arm like a giant and a throat like a bull, he had strong common sense, and he gave the impression that he would wear his heart out for a good friend or a great cause, but that if he chose to be an enemy he would be narrow, unrelenting, and persistent. For some time the House had been aware that he had more than a gift for criticism of the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. His speech began almost stumblingly, his h's ran loose, and his grammar became involved, but it was seen that he meant business, that he had that to say which would give anxiety to the Government, that he had a case wherein were the elements of popular interest and appeal, and that he was thinking and speaking as thousands outside the House would think and speak. He had waited for this hour. Indirectly he owed to Claridge Pasha all that he had become. The day in which David knocked him down saw the depths of his degradation reached, and, when he got up, it was to start on a new life uncertainly, vaguely at first, but a new life for all that. He knew, from a true source, of Eglington's personal hatred of Claridge Pasha, though he did not guess their relationship; and all his interest was enlisted for the man who had, as he knew, urged Kate Heaver to marry himself--and Kate was his great ambition now. Above and beyond these personal considerations was a real sense of England's duty to the man who was weaving the destiny of a new land. "It isn't England's business?" he retorted, in answer to an interjection from a faithful soul behind the ministerial Front Bench. "Well, it wasn't the business of the Good Samaritan to help the man that had been robbed and left for dead by the wayside; but he did it. As to David Claridge's work, some have said that--I've no doubt it's been said in the Cabinet, and it is the thing the Under-Secretary would say as naturally as he would flick a fly from his boots--that it's a generation too soon. Who knows that? I suppose there was those that thought John the Baptist was baptising too soon, that Luther preached too soon, and Savonarola was in too great a hurry, all because he met his death and his enemies triumphed--and Galileo and Hampden and Cromwell and John Howard were all too soon. Who's to be judge of that? God Almighty puts it into some men's minds to work for a thing that's a great, and maybe an impossible, thing, so far as the success of the moment is concerned. Well, for a thing that has got to be done some time, the seed has to be sown, and it's always sown by men like Claridge Pasha, who has shown millions of people--barbarians and half-civilised alike--what a true lover of the world can do. God knows, I think he might have stayed and found a cause in England, but he elected to go to the ravaging Soudan, and he is England there, the best of it. And I know Claridge Pasha--from his youth up I have seen him, and I stand here to bear witness of what the working men of England will say to-morrow. Right well the noble lord yonder knows that what I say is true. He has known it for years. Claridge Pasha would never have been in his present position, if the noble lord had not listened to the enemies of Claridge Pasha and of this country, in preference to those who know and hold the truth as I tell it here to-day. I don't know whether the noble lord has repented or not; but I do say that his Government will rue it, if his answer is not the one word 'Intervention!' Mistaken, rash or not, dreamer if you like, Claridge Pasha should be relieved now, and his policy discussed afterwards. I don't envy the man who holds a contrary opinion; he'll be ashamed of it some day. But"--he pointed towards Eglington--"but there sits the minister in whose hands his fate has been. Let us hope that this speech of mine needn't have been made, and that I've done injustice to his patriotism and to the policy he will announce." "A set-back, a sharp set-back," said Lord Windlehurst, in the Peers' Gallery, as the cheers of the Opposition and of a good number of ministerialists sounded through the Chamber. There were those on the Treasury Bench who saw danger ahead. There was an attempt at a conference, but Kimber's seconder only said a half-dozen words, and sat down, and Eglington had to rise before any definite confidences could be exchanged. One word only he heard behind him as he got up. It was the word, "Temporise," and it came from the Prime Minister. Eglington was in no mood for temporising. Attack only nerved him. He was a good and ruthless fighter; and last night's intoxication of success was still in his brain. He did not temporise. He did not leave a way of retreat open for the Prime Minister, who would probably wind up the debate. He fought with skill, but he fought without gloves, and the House needed gentle handling. He had the gift of effective speech to a rare degree, and when he liked he could be insinuating and witty, but he had not genuine humour or good feeling, and the House knew it. In debate he was biting, resourceful, and unscrupulous. He made the fatal mistake of thinking that intellect and gifts of fence, followed by a brilliant peroration, in which he treated the commonplaces of experienced minds as though they were new discoveries and he was their Columbus, could accomplish anything. He had never had a political crisis, but one had come now. In his reply he first resorted to arguments of high politics, historical, informative, and, in a sense, commanding; indeed, the House became restless under what seemed a piece of intellectual dragooning. Signs of impatience appeared on his own side, and, when he ventured on a solemn warning about hampering ministers who alone knew the difficulties of diplomacy and the danger of wounding the susceptibilities of foreign and friendly countries, the silence was broken by a voice that said sneeringly, "The kid-glove Government!" Then he began to lose place with the Chamber. He was conscious of it, and shifted his ground, pointing out the dangers of doing what the other nations interested in Egypt were not prepared to do. "Have you asked them? Have you pressed them?" was shouted across the House. Eglington ignored the interjections. "Answer! Answer!" was called out angrily, but he shrugged a shoulder and continued his argument. If a man insisted on using a flying-machine before the principle was fully mastered and applied--if it could be mastered and applied--it must not be surprising if he was killed. Amateurs sometimes took preposterous risks without the advice of the experts. If Claridge Pasha had asked the advice of the English Government, or of any of the Chancellories of Europe, as to his incursions into the Soudan and his premature attempts at reform, he would have received expert advice that civilisation had not advanced to that stage in this portion of the world which would warrant his experiments. It was all very well for one man to run vast risks and attempt quixotic enterprises, but neither he nor his countrymen had any right to expect Europe to embroil itself on his particular account. At this point he was met by angry cries of dissent, which did not come from the Opposition alone. His lips set, he would not yield. The Government could not hold itself responsible for Claridge Pasha's relief, nor in any sense for his present position. However, from motives of humanity, it would make representations in the hope that the Egyptian Government would act; but it was not improbable, in view of past experiences of Claridge Pasha, that he would extricate himself from his present position, perhaps had done so already. Sympathy and sentiment were natural and proper manifestations of human society, but governments were, of necessity, ruled by sterner considerations. The House must realise that the Government could not act as though it were wholly a free agent, or as if its every move would not be matched by another move on the part of another Power or Powers. Then followed a brilliant and effective appeal to his own party to trust the Government, to credit it with feeling and with a due regard for English prestige and the honour brought to it by Claridge Pasha's personal qualities, whatever might be thought of his crusading enterprises. The party must not fall into the trap of playing the game of the Opposition. Then, with some supercilious praise of the "worthy sentiments" of Jasper Kimber's speech and a curt depreciation of its reasoning, he declared that: "No Government can be ruled by clamour. The path to be trodden by this Government will be lighted by principles of progress and civilisation, humanity and peace, the urbane power of reason, and the persuasive influence of just consideration for the rights of others, rather than the thunder and the threat of the cannon and the sword!" He sat down amid the cheers of a large portion of his party, for the end of his speech had been full of effective if meretricious appeal. But the debate that followed showed that the speech had been a failure. He had not uttered one warm or human word concerning Claridge Pasha, and it was felt and said, that no pledge had been given to insure the relief of the man who had caught the imagination of England. The debate was fierce and prolonged. Eglington would not agree to any modification of his speech, to any temporising. Arrogant and insistent, he had his way, and, on a division, the Government was saved by a mere handful of votes--votes to save the party, not to indorse Eglington's speech or policy. Exasperated and with jaw set, but with a defiant smile, Eglington drove straight home after the House rose. He found Hylda in the library with an evening paper in her hands. She had read and reread his speech, and had steeled herself for "the inevitable hour," to this talk which would decide for ever their fate and future. Eglington entered the room smiling. He remembered the incident of the night before, when she came to his study and then hurriedly retreated. He had been defiant and proudly disdainful at the House and on the way home; but in his heart of hearts he was conscious of having failed to have his own way; and, like such men, he wanted assurance that he could not err, and he wanted sympathy. Almost any one could have given it to him, and he had a temptation to seek that society which was his the evening before; but he remembered that she was occupied where he could not reach her, and here was Hylda, from whom he had been estranged, but who must surely have seen by now that at Hamley she had been unreasonable, and that she must trust his judgment. So absorbed was he with self and the failure of his speech, that, for a moment, he forgot the subject of it, and what that subject meant to them both. "What do you think of my speech, Hylda?" he asked, as he threw himself into a chair. "I see you have been reading it. Is it a full report?" She handed the paper over. "Quite full," she answered evenly. He glanced down the columns. "Sentimentalists!" he said as his eye caught an interjection. "Cant!" he added. Then he looked at Hylda, and remembered once again on whom and what his speech had been made. He saw that her face was very pale. "What do you think of my speech?" he repeated stubbornly. "If you think an answer necessary, I regard it as wicked and unpatriotic," she answered firmly. "Yes, I suppose you would," he rejoined bitingly. She got to her feet slowly, a flush passing over her face. "If you think I would, did you not think that a great many other people would think so too, and for the same reason?" she asked, still evenly, but very slowly. "Not for the same reason," he rejoined in a low, savage voice. "You do not treat me well," she said, with a voice that betrayed no hurt, no indignation. It seemed to state a fact deliberately; that was all. "No, please," she added quickly, as she saw him rise to his feet with anger trembling at his lips. "Do not say what is on your tongue to say. Let us speak quietly to-night. It is better; and I am tired of strife, spoken and unspoken. I have got beyond that. But I want to speak of what you did to-day in Parliament." "Well, you have said it was wicked and unpatriotic," he rejoined, sitting down again and lighting a cigar, in an attempt to be composed. "What you said was that; but I am concerned with what you did. Did your speech mean that you would not press the Egyptian Government to relieve Claridge Pasha at once?" "Is that the conclusion you draw from my words?" he asked. "Yes; but I wish to know beyond doubt if that is what you mean the country to believe?" "It is what I mean you to believe, my dear." She shrank from the last two words, but still went on quietly, though her eyes burned and she shivered. "If you mean that you will do nothing, it will ruin you and your Government," she answered. "Kimber was right, and--" "Kimber was inspired from here," he interjected sharply. She put her hand upon herself. "Do you think I would intrigue against you? Do you think I would stoop to intrigue?" she asked, a hand clasping and unclasping a bracelet on her wrist, her eyes averted, for very shame that he should think the thought he had uttered. "It came from this house--the influence," he rejoined. "I cannot say. It is possible," she answered; "but you cannot think that I connive with my maid against you. I think Kimber has reasons of his own for acting as he did to-day. He speaks for many besides himself; and he spoke patriotically this afternoon. He did his duty." "And I did not? Do you think I act alone?" "You did not do your duty, and I think that you are not alone responsible. That is why I hope the Government will be influenced by public feeling." She came a step nearer to him. "I ask you to relieve Claridge Pasha at any cost. He is your father's son. If you do not, when all the truth is known, you will find no shelter from the storm that will break over you." "You will tell--the truth?" "I do not know yet what I shall do," she answered. "It will depend on you; but it is your duty to tell the truth, not mine. That does not concern me; but to save Claridge Pasha does concern me." "So I have known." Her heart panted for a moment with a wild indignation; but she quieted herself, and answered almost calmly: "If you refuse to do that which is honourable--and human, then I shall try to do it for you while yet I bear your name. If you will not care for your family honour, then I shall try to do so. If you will not do your duty, then I will try to do it for you." She looked him determinedly in the eyes. "Through you I have lost nearly all I cared to keep in the world. I should like to feel that in this one thing you acted honourably." He sprang to his feet, bursting with anger, in spite of the inward admonition that much that he prized was in danger, that any breach with Hylda would be disastrous. But self-will and his native arrogance overruled the monitor within, and he said: "Don't preach to me, don't play the martyr. You will do this and you will do that! You will save my honour and the family name! You will relieve Claridge Pasha, you will do what Governments choose not to do; you will do what your husband chooses not to do--Well, I say that you will do what your husband chooses to do, or take the consequences." "I think I will take the consequences," she answered. "I will save Claridge Pasha, if it is possible. It is no boast. I will do it, if it can be done at all, if it is God's will that it should be done; and in doing it I shall be conscious that you and I will do nothing together again--never! But that will not stop me; it will make me do it, the last right thing, before the end." She was so quiet, so curiously quiet. Her words had a strange solemnity, a tragic apathy. What did it mean? He had gone too far, as he had done before. He had blundered viciously, as he had blundered before. She spoke again before he could collect his thoughts and make reply. "I did not ask for too much, I think, and I could have forgiven and forgotten all the hurts you have given me, if it were not for one thing. You have been unjust, hard, selfish, and suspicious. Suspicious--of me! No one else in all the world ever thought of me what you have thought. I have done all I could. I have honourably kept the faith. But you have spoiled it all. I have no memory that I care to keep. It is stained. My eyes can never bear to look upon the past again, the past with you-- never." She turned to leave the room. He caught her arm. "You will wait till you hear what I have to say," he cried in anger. Her last words had stung him so, her manner was so pitilessly scornful. It was as though she looked down on him from a height. His old arrogance fought for mastery over his apprehension. What did she know? What did she mean? In any case he must face it out, be strong--and merciful and affectionate afterwards. "Wait, Hylda," he said. "We must talk this out." She freed her arm. "There is nothing to talk out," she answered. "So far as our relations are concerned, all reason for talk is gone." She drew the fatal letter from the sash at her waist. "You will think so too when you read this letter again." She laid it on the table beside him, and, as he opened and glanced at it, she left the room. He stood with the letter in his hand, dumfounded. "Good God!" he said, and sank into a chair. CHAPTER XXXIX FAITH JOURNEYS TO LONDON Faith withdrew her eyes from Hylda's face, and they wandered helplessly over the room. They saw, yet did not see; and even in her trouble there was some subconscious sense softly commenting on the exquisite refinement and gentle beauty which seemed to fill the room; but the only definite objects which the eyes registered at the moment were the flowers filling every corner. Hylda had been lightly adjusting a clump of roses when she entered; and she had vaguely noticed how pale was the face that bent over the flowers, how pale and yet how composed--as she had seen a Quaker face, after some sorrow had passed over it, and left it like a quiet sea in the sun, when wreck and ruin were done. It was only a swift impression, for she could think of but one thing, David and his safety. She had come to Hylda, she said, because of Lord Eglington's position, and she could not believe that the Government would see David's work undone and David killed by the slave-dealers of Africa. Hylda's reply had given her no hope that Eglington would keep the promise he had made that evening long ago when her father had come upon them by the old mill, and because of which promise she had forgiven Eglington so much that was hard to forgive. Hylda had spoken with sorrowful decision, and then this pause had come, in which Faith tried to gain composure and strength. There was something strangely still in the two women. From the far past, through Quaker ancestors, there had come to Hylda now this grey mist of endurance and self-control and austere reserve. Yet behind it all, beneath it all, a wild heart was beating. Presently, as they looked into each other's eyes, and Faith dimly apprehended something of Hylda's distress and its cause, Hylda leaned over and spasmodically pressed her hand. "It is so, Faith," she said. "They will do nothing. International influences are too strong." She paused. "The Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs will do nothing; but yet we must hope. Claridge Pasha has saved himself in the past; and he may do so now, even though it is all ten times worse. Then, there is another way. Nahoum Pasha can save him, if he can be saved. And I am going to Egypt--to Nahoum." Faith's face blanched. Something of the stark truth swept into her brain. She herself had suffered--her own life had been maimed, it had had its secret bitterness. Her love for her sister's son was that of a mother, sister, friend combined, and he was all she had in life. That he lived, that she might cherish the thought of him living, was the one thing she had; and David must be saved, if that might be; but this girl --was she not a girl, ten years younger than herself?--to go to Egypt to do--what? She herself lived out of the world, but she knew the world! To go to Egypt, and--"Thee will not go to Egypt. What can thee do?" she pleaded, something very like a sob in her voice. "Thee is but a woman, and David would not be saved at such a price, and I would not have him saved so. Thee will not go. Say thee will not. He is all God has left to me in life; but thee to go--ah, no! It is a bitter world--and what could thee do?" Hylda looked at her reflectively. Should she tell Faith all, and take her to Egypt? No, she could not take her without telling her all, and that was impossible now. There might come a time when this wise and tender soul might be taken into the innermost chambers, when all the truth might be known; but the secret of David's parentage was Eglington's concern most of all, and she would not speak now; and what was between Nahoum and David was David's concern; and she had kept his secret all these years. No, Faith might not know now, and might not come with her. On this mission she must go alone. Hylda rose to her feet, still keeping hold of Faith's hand. "Go back to Hamley and wait there," she said, in a colourless voice. "You can do nothing; it may be I can do much. Whatever can be done I can do, since England will not act. Pray for his safety. It is all you can do. It is given to some to work, to others to pray. I must work now." She led Faith towards the door; she could not endure more; she must hold herself firm for the journey and the struggle before her. If she broke down now she could not go forward; and Faith's presence roused in her an emotion almost beyond control. At the door she took both of Faith's hands in hers, and kissed her cheek. "It is your place to stay; you will see that it is best. Good-bye," she added hurriedly, and her eyes were so blurred that she could scarcely see the graceful, demure figure pass into the sunlit street. That afternoon Lord Windlehurst entered the Duchess of Snowdon's presence hurried and excited. She started on seeing his face. "What has happened?" she asked breathlessly. "She is gone," he answered. "Our girl has gone to Egypt." The Duchess almost staggered to her feet. "Windlehurst--gone!" she gasped. "I called to see her. Her ladyship had gone into the country, the footman said. I saw the butler, a faithful soul, who would die--or clean the area steps--for her. He was discreet; but he knew what you and I are to her. It was he got the tickets--for Marseilles and Egypt." The Duchess began to cry silently. Big tears ran down a face from which the glow of feeling had long fled, but her eyes were sad enough. "Gone--gone! It is the end!" was all she could say. Lord Windlehurst frowned, though his eyes were moist. "We must act at once. You must go to Egypt, Betty. You must catch her at Marseilles. Her boat does not sail for three days. She thought it went sooner, as it was advertised to do. It is delayed--I've found that out. You can start to-night, and-- and save the situation. You will do it, Betty?" "I will do anything you say, as I have always done." She dried her eyes. "She is a good girl. We must do all we can. I'll arrange everything for you myself. I've written this paragraph to go into the papers to-morrow morning: 'The Duchess of Snowdon, accompanied by Lady Eglington, left London last night for the Mediterranean via Calais, to be gone for two months or more.' That is simple and natural. I'll see Eglington. He must make no fuss. He thinks she has gone to Hamley, so the butler says. There, it's all clear. Your work is cut out, Betty, and I know you will do it as no one else can." "Oh, Windlehurst," she answered, with a hand clutching at his arm, "if we fail, it will kill me." "If she fails, it will kill her," he answered, "and she is very young. What is in her mind, who can tell? But she thinks she can help Claridge somehow. We must save her, Betty." "I used to think you had no real feeling, Windlehurst. You didn't show it," she said in a low voice. "Ah, that was because you had too much," he answered. "I had to wait till you had less." He took out his watch. THE WEAVERS By Gilbert Parker BOOK VI. XL. HYLDA SEEKS NAHOUM XLI. IN THE LAND OF SHINAR XLII. THE LOOM OF DESTINY CHAPTER XL HYLDA SEEKS NAHOUM It was as though she had gone to sleep the night before, and waked again upon this scene unchanged, brilliant, full of colour, a chaos of decoration--confluences of noisy, garish streams of life, eddies of petty labour. Craftsmen crowded one upon the other in dark bazaars; merchants chattered and haggled on their benches; hawkers clattered and cried their wares. It was a people that lived upon the streets, for all the houses seemed empty and forsaken. The sais ran before the Pasha's carriage, the donkey-boys shrieked for their right of way, a train of camels calmly forced its passage through the swirling crowds, supercilious and heavy- laden. It seemed but yesterday since she had watched with amused eyes the sherbet-sellers clanking their brass saucers, the carriers streaming the water from the bulging goatskins into the earthen bottles, crying, "Allah be praised, here is coolness for thy throat for ever!" the idle singer chanting to the soft kanoon, the chess-players in the shade of a high wall, lost to the world, the dancing-girls with unveiled, shameless faces, posturing for evil eyes. Nothing had changed these past six years. Yet everything had changed. She saw it all as in a dream, for her mind had no time for reverie or retrospect; it was set on one thing only. Yet behind the one idea possessing her there was a subconscious self taking note of all these sights and sounds, and bringing moisture to her eyes. Passing the house which David had occupied on that night when he and she and Nahoum and Mizraim had met, the mist of feeling almost blinded her; for there at the gate sat the bowab who had admitted her then, and with apathetic eyes had watched her go, in the hour when it seemed that she and David Claridge had bidden farewell for ever, two driftwood spars that touched and parted in the everlasting sea. Here again in the Palace square were Kaid's Nubians in their glittering armour as of silver and gold, drawn up as she had seen them drawn then, to be reviewed by their overlord. She swept swiftly through the streets and bazaars on her mission to Nahoum. "Lady Eglington" had asked for an interview, and Nahoum had granted it without delay. He did not associate her with the girl for whom David Claridge had killed Foorgat Pey, and he sent his own carriage to bring her to the Palace. No time had been lost, for it was less than twenty-four hours since she had arrived in Cairo, and very soon she would know the worst or the best. She had put her past away for the moment, and the Duchess of Snowdon had found at Marseilles a silent, determined, yet gentle-tongued woman, who refused to look back, or to discuss anything vital to herself and Eglington, until what she had come to Egypt to do was accomplished. Nor would she speak of the future, until the present had been fully declared and she knew the fate of David Claridge. In Cairo there were only varying rumours: that he was still holding out; that he was lost; that he had broken through; that he was a prisoner--all without foundation upon which she could rely. As she neared the Palace entrance, a female fortune-teller ran forward, thrusting towards her a gazelle's skin, filled with the instruments of her mystic craft, and crying out: "I divine-I reveal! What is present I manifest! What is absent I declare! What is future I show! Beautiful one, hear me. It is all written. To thee is greatness, and thy heart's desire. Hear all! See! Wait for the revealing. Thou comest from afar, but thy fortune is near. Hear and see. I divine--I reveal. Beautiful one, what is future I show." Hylda's eyes looked at the poor creature eagerly, pathetically. If it could only be, if she could but see one step ahead! If the veil could but be lifted! She dropped some silver into the folds of the gazelle- skin and waved the Gipsy away. "There is darkness, it is all dark, beautiful one," cried the woman after her, "but it shall be light. I show--I reveal!" Inside these Palace walls there was a revealer of more merit, as she so well and bitterly knew. He could raise the veil--a dark and dangerous necromancer, with a flinty heart and a hand that had waited long to strike. Had it struck its last blow? Outside Nahoum's door she had a moment of utter weakness, when her knees smote together, and her throat became parched; but before the door had swung wide and her eyes swept the cool and shadowed room, she was as composed as on that night long ago when she had faced the man who knew. Nahoum was standing in a waiting and respectful attitude as she entered. He advanced towards her and bowed low, but stopped dumfounded, as he saw who she was. Presently he recovered himself; but he offered no further greeting than to place a chair for her where her face was in the shadow and his in the light--time of crisis as it was, she noticed this and marvelled at him. His face was as she had seen it those years ago. It showed no change whatever. The eyes looked at her calmly, openly, with no ulterior thought behind, as it might seem. The high, smooth forehead, the full but firm lips, the brown, well-groomed beard, were all indicative of a nature benevolent and refined. Where did the duplicity lie? Her mind answered its own question on the instant; it lay in the brain and the tongue. Both were masterly weapons, an armament so complete that it controlled the face and eyes and outward man into a fair semblance of honesty. The tongue--she remembered its insinuating and adroit power, and how it had deceived the man she had come to try and save. She must not be misled by it. She felt it was to be a struggle between them, and she must be alert and persuasive, and match him word for word, move for move. "I am happy to welcome you here, madame," he said in English. "It is years since we met; yet time has passed you by." She flushed ever so slightly--compliment from Nahoum Pasha! Yet she must not resent anything to-day; she must get what she came for, if it was possible. What had Lacey said? "A few thousand men by parcel-post, and some red seals-British officers." "We meet under different circumstances," she replied meaningly. "You were asking a great favour then." "Ah, but of you, madame?" "I think you appealed to me when you were doubtful of the result." "Well, madame, it may be so--but, yes, you are right; I thought you were Claridge Pasha's kinswoman, I remember." "Excellency, you said you thought I was Claridge Pasha's kinswoman." "And you are not?" he asked reflectively. He did not understand the slight change that passed over her face. His kinswoman--Claridge Pasha's kinswoman! "I was not his kinswoman," she answered calmly. "You came to ask a favour then of Claridge Pasha; your life-work to do under him. I remember your words: 'I can aid thee in thy great task. Thou wouldst remake our Egypt, and my heart is with you. I would rescue, not destroy. . . . I would labour, but my master has taken away from me the anvil, the fire, and the hammer, and I sit without the door like an armless beggar.' Those were your words, and Claridge Pasha listened and believed, and saved your life and gave you work; and now again you have power greater than all others in Egypt." "Madame, I congratulate you on a useful memory. May it serve you as the hill-fountain the garden in the city! Those indeed were my words. I hear myself from your lips, and yet recognise myself, if that be not vanity. But, madame, why have you sought me? What is it you wish to know--to hear?" He looked at her innocently, as though he did not know her errand; as though beyond, in the desert, there was no tragedy approaching--or come. "Excellency, you are aware that I have come to ask for news of Claridge Pasha." She leaned forward slightly, but, apart from her tightly interlaced fingers, it would not have been possible to know that she was under any strain. "You come to me instead of to the Effendina. May I ask why, madame? Your husband's position--I did not know you were Lord Eglington's wife-- would entitle you to the highest consideration." "I knew that Nahoum Pasha would have the whole knowledge, while the Effendina would have part only. Excellency, will you not tell me what news You have? Is Claridge Pasha alive?" "Madame, I do not know. He is in the desert. He was surrounded. For over a month there has been no word-none. He is in danger. His way by the river was blocked. He stayed too long. He might have escaped, but he would insist on saving the loyal natives, on remaining with them, since he could not bring them across the desert; and the river and the desert are silent. Nothing comes out of that furnace yonder. Nothing comes." He bent his eyes upon her complacently. Her own dropped. She could not bear that he should see the misery in them. "You have come to try and save him, madame. What did you expect to do? Your Government did not strengthen my hands; your husband did nothing-- nothing that could make it possible for me to act. There are many nations here, alas! Your husband does not take so great an interest in the fate of Claridge Pasha as yourself, madame." She ignored the insult. She had determined to endure everything, if she might but induce this man to do the thing that could be done--if it was not too late. Before she could frame a reply, he said urbanely: "But that is not to be expected. There was that between Claridge Pasha and yourself which would induce you to do all you might do for him, to be anxious for his welfare. Gratitude is a rare thing--as rare as the flower of the century--aloe; but you have it, madame." There was no chance to misunderstand him. Foorgat Bey--he knew the truth, and had known it all these years. "Excellency," she said, "if through me, Claridge Pasha--" "One moment, madame," he interrupted, and, opening a drawer, took out a letter. "I think that what you would say may be found here, with much else that you will care to know. It is the last news of Claridge Pasha-- a letter from him. I understand all you would say to me; but he who has most at stake has said it, and, if he failed, do you think, madame, that you could succeed?" He handed her the letter with a respectful salutation. "In the hour he left, madame, he came to know that the name of Foorgat Bey was not blotted from the book of Time, nor from Fate's reckoning." After all these years! Her instinct had been true, then, that night so long ago. The hand that took the letter trembled slightly in spite of her will, but it was not the disclosure Nahoum had made which caused her agitation. This letter she held was in David Claridge's hand, the first she had ever seen, and, maybe, the last that he had ever written, or that any one would ever see, a document of tears. But no, there were no tears in this letter! As Hylda read it the trembling passed from her fingers, and a great thrilling pride possessed her. If tragedy had come, then it had fallen like a fire from heaven, not like a pestilence rising from the earth. Here indeed was that which justified all she had done, what she was doing now, what she meant to do when she had read the last word of it and the firm, clear signature beneath. "Excellency [the letter began in English], I came into the desert and into the perils I find here, with your last words in my ear, 'There is the matter of Foorgat Bey.' The time you chose to speak was chosen well for your purpose, but ill for me. I could not turn back, I must go on. Had I returned, of what avail? What could I do but say what I say here, that my hand killed Foorgat Bey; that I had not meant to kill him, though at the moment I struck I took no heed whether he lived or died. Since you know of my sorrowful deed, you also know why Foorgat Bey was struck down. When, as I left the bank of the Nile, your words blinded my eyes, my mind said in its misery: 'Now, I see!' The curtains fell away from between you and me, and I saw all that you had done for vengeance and revenge. You knew all on that night when you sought your life of me and the way back to Kaid's forgiveness. I see all as though you spoke it in my ear. You had reason to hurt me, but you had no reason for hurting Egypt, as you have done. I did not value my life, as you know well, for it has been flung into the midst of dangers for Egypt's sake, how often! It was not cowardice which made me hide from you and all the world the killing of Foorgat Bey. I desired to face the penalty, for did not my act deny all that I had held fast from my youth up? But there was another concerned--a girl, but a child in years, as innocent and true a being as God has ever set among the dangers of this life, and, by her very innocence and unsuspecting nature, so much more in peril before such unscrupulous wiles as were used by Foorgat Bey. "I have known you many years, Nahoum, and dark and cruel as your acts have been against the work I gave my life to do, yet I think that there was ever in you, too, the root of goodness. Men would call your acts treacherous if they knew what you had done; and so indeed they were; but yet I have seen you do things to others--not to me--which could rise only from the fountain of pure waters. Was it partly because I killed Foorgat and partly because I came to place and influence and power, that you used me so, and all that I did? Or was it the East at war with the West, the immemorial feud and foray? "This last I will believe; for then it will seem to be something beyond yourself--centuries of predisposition, the long stain of the indelible--that drove you to those acts of matricide. Ay, it is that! For, Armenian as you are, this land is your native land, and in pulling down what I have built up--with you, Nahoum, with you-- you have plunged the knife into the bosom of your mother. Did it never seem to you that the work which you did with me was a good work--the reduction of the corvee, the decrease of conscription, the lessening of taxes of the fellah, the bridges built, the canals dug, the seed distributed, the plague stayed, the better dwellings for the poor in the Delta, the destruction of brigandage, the slow blotting-out of exaction and tyranny under the kourbash, the quiet growth of law and justice, the new industries started--did not all these seem good to you, as you served the land with me, your great genius for finance, ay, and your own purse, helping on the things that were dear to me, for Egypt's sake? Giving with one hand freely, did your soul not misgive you when you took away with the other? "When you tore down my work, you were tearing down your own; for, more than the material help I thought you gave in planning and shaping reforms, ay, far more than all, was the feeling in me which helped me over many a dark place, that I had you with me, that I was not alone. I trusted you, Nahoum. A life for a life you might have had for the asking; but a long torture and a daily weaving of the web of treachery--that has taken more than my life; it has taken your own, for you have killed the best part of yourself, that which you did with me; and here in an ever-narrowing circle of death I say to you that you will die with me. Power you have, but it will wither in your grasp. Kaid will turn against you; for with my failure will come a dark reaction in his mind, which feels the cloud of doom drawing over it. Without me, with my work falling about his ears, he will, as he did so short a time ago, turn to Sharif and Higli and the rest; and the only comfort you will have will be that you destroyed the life of him who killed your brother. Did you love your brother? Nay, not more than did I, for I sent his soul into the void, and I would gladly have gone after it to ask God for the pardon of all his sins--and mine. Think: I hid the truth, but why? Because a woman would suffer an unmerited scandal and shame. Nothing could recall Foorgat Bey; but for that silence I gave my life, for the land which was his land. Do you betray it, then? "And now, Nahoum, the gulf in which you sought to plunge me when you had ruined all I did is here before me. The long deception has nearly done its work. I know from Ebn Ezra Bey what passed between you. They are out against me--the slave-dealers--from Senaar to where I am. The dominion of Egypt is over here. Yet I could restore it with a thousand men and a handful of European officers, had I but a show of authority from Cairo, which they think has deserted me. "I am shut up here with a handful of men who can fight and thousands who cannot fight, and food grows scarcer, and my garrison is worn and famished; but each day I hearten them with the hope that you will send me a thousand men from Cairo. One steamer pounding here from the north with men who bring commands from the Effendina, and those thousands out yonder beyond my mines and moats and guns will begin to melt away. Nahoum, think not that you shall triumph over David Claridge. If it be God's will that I shall die here, my work undone, then, smiling, I shall go with step that does not falter, to live once more; and another day the work that I began will rise again in spite of you or any man. "Nahoum, the killing of Foorgat Bey has been like a cloud upon all my past. You know me, and you know I do not lie. Yet I do not grieve that I hid the thing--it was not mine only; and if ever you knew a good woman, and in dark moments have turned to her, glad that she was yours, think what you would have done for her, how you would have sheltered her against aught that might injure her, against those things women are not made to bear. Then think that I hid the deed for one who was a stranger to me, whose life must ever lay far from mine, and see clearly that I did it for a woman's sake, and not for this woman's sake; for I had never seen her till the moment I struck Foorgat Bey into silence and the tomb. Will you not understand, Nahoum? "Yonder, I see the tribes that harry me. The great guns firing make the day a burden, the nights are ever fretted by the dangers of surprise, and there is scarce time to bury the dead whom sickness and the sword destroy. From the midst of it all my eyes turn to you in Cairo, whose forgiveness I ask for the one injury I did you; while I pray that you will seek pardon for all that you have done to me and to those who will pass with me, if our circle is broken. Friend, Achmet the Ropemaker is here fighting for Egypt. Art thou less, then, than Achmet? So, God be with thee. "DAVID CLARIDGE." Without a pause Hylda had read the letter from the first word to the last. She was too proud to let this conspirator and traitor see what David's words could do to her. When she read the lines concerning herself, she became cold from head to foot, but she knew that Nahoum never took his eyes from her face, and she gave no outward sign of what was passing within. When she had finished it, she folded it up calmly, her eyes dwelt for a moment on the address upon the envelope, and then she handed it back to Nahoum without a word. She looked him in the eyes and spoke. "He saved your life, he gave you all you had lost. It was not his fault that Prince Kaid chose him for his chief counsellor. You would be lying where your brother lies, were it not for Claridge Pasha." "It may be; but the luck was with me; and I have my way." She drew herself together to say what was hard to say. "Excellency, the man who was killed deserved to die. Only by lies, only by subterfuge, only because I was curious to see the inside of the Palace, and because I had known him in London, did I, without a thought of indiscretion, give myself to his care to come here. I was so young; I did not know life, or men--or Egyptians." The last word was uttered with low scorn. He glanced up quickly, and for the first time she saw a gleam of malice in his eyes. She could not feel sorry she had said it, yet she must remove the impression if possible. "What Claridge Pasha did, any man would have done, Excellency. He struck, and death was an accident. Foorgat's temple struck the corner of a pedestal. "His death was instant. He would have killed Claridge Pasha if it had been possible--he tried to do so. But, Excellency, if you have a daughter, if you ever had a child, what would you have done if any man had--" "In the East daughters are more discreet; they tempt men less," he answered quietly, and fingered the string of beads he carried. "Yet you would have done as Claridge Pasha did. That it was your brother was an accident, and--" "It was an accident that the penalty must fall on Claridge Pasha, and on you, madame. I did not choose the objects of penalty. Destiny chose them, as Destiny chose Claridge Pasha as the man who should supplant me, who should attempt to do these mad things for Egypt against the judgment of the world--against the judgment of your husband. Shall I have better judgment than the chancellories of Europe and England--and Lord Eglington?" "Excellency, you know what moves other nations; but it is for Egypt to act for herself. You ask me why I did not go to the Effendina. I come to you because I know that you could circumvent the Effendina, even if he sent ten thousand men. It is the way in Egypt." "Madame, you have insight--will you not look farther still, and see that, however good Claridge Pasha's work might be some day in the far future, it is not good to-day. It is too soon. At the beginning of the twentieth century, perhaps. Men pay the penalty of their mistakes. A man's life"--he watched her closely with his wide, benevolent eyes--"is neither here nor there, nor a few thousands, in the destiny of a nation. A man who ventures into a lion's den must not be surprised if he goes as Harrik went--ah, perhaps you do not know how Harrik went! A man who tears at the foundations of a house must not be surprised if the timbers fall on him and on his workmen. It is Destiny that Claridge Pasha should be the slayer of my brother, and a danger to Egypt, and one whose life is so dear to you, madame. You would have it otherwise, and so would I, but we must take things as they are--and you see that letter. It is seven weeks since then, and it may be that the circle has been broken. Yet it may not be so. The circle may be smaller, but not broken." She felt how he was tempting her from word to word with a merciless ingenuity; yet she kept to her purpose; and however hopeless it seemed, she would struggle on. "Excellency," she said in a low, pleading tone, "has he not suffered enough? Has he not paid the price of that life which you would not bring back if you could? No, in those places of your mind where no one can see lies the thought that you would not bring back Foorgat Bey. It is not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth that has moved you; it has not been love of Foorgat Bey; it has been the hatred of the East for the West. And yet you are a Christian! Has Claridge Pasha not suffered enough, Excellency? Have you not had your fill of revenge? Have you not done enough to hurt a man whose only crime was that he killed a man to save a woman, and had not meant to kill?" "Yet he says in his letter that the thought of killing would not have stopped him." "Does one think at such a moment? Did he think? There was no time. It was the work of an instant. Ah, Fate was not kind, Excellency! If it had been, I should have been permitted to kill Foorgat Bey with my own hands." "I should have found it hard to exact the penalty from you, madame." The words were uttered in so neutral a way that they were enigmatical, and she could not take offence or be sure of his meaning. "Think, Excellency. Have you ever known one so selfless, so good, so true? For humanity's sake, would you not keep alive such a man? If there were a feud as old as Adam between your race and his, would you not before this life of sacrifice lay down the sword and the bitter challenge? He gave you his hand in faith and trust, because your God was his God, your prophet and lord his prophet and lord. Such faith should melt your heart. Can you not see that he tried to make compensation for Foorgat's death, by giving you your life and setting you where you are now, with power to save or kill him?" "You call him great; yet I am here in safety, and he is--where he is. Have you not heard of the strife of minds and wills? He represented the West, I the East. He was a Christian, so was I; the ground of our battle was a fair one, and--and I have won." "The ground of battle fair!" she protested bitterly. "He did not know that there was strife between you. He did not fight you. I think that he always loved you, Excellency. He would have given his life for you, if it had been in danger. Is there in that letter one word that any man could wish unwritten when the world was all ended for all men? But no, there was no strife between you--there was only hatred on your part. He was so much greater than you that you should feel no rivalry, no strife. The sword he carries cuts as wide as Time. You are of a petty day in a petty land. Your mouth will soon be filled with dust, and you will be forgotten. He will live in the history of the world. Excellency, I plead for him because I owe him so much: he killed a man and brought upon himself a lifelong misery for me. It is all I can do, plead to you who know the truth about him--yes, you know the truth--to make an effort to save him. It may be too late; but yet God may be waiting for you to lift your hand. You said the circle may be smaller, but it may be unbroken still. Will you not do a great thing once, and win a woman's gratitude, and the thanks of the world, by trying to save one who makes us think better of humanity? Will you not have the name of Nahoum Pasha linked with his--with his who thought you were his friend? Will you not save him?" He got slowly to his feet, a strange look in his eyes. "Your words are useless. I will not save him for your sake; I will not save him for the world's sake; I will not save him--" A cry of pain and grief broke from her, and she buried her face in her hands. "--I will not save him for any other sake than his own." He paused. Slowly, as dazed as though she had received a blow, Hylda raised her face and her hands dropped in her lap. "For any other sake than his own!" Her eyes gazed at him in a bewildered, piteous way. What did he mean? His voice seemed to come from afar off. "Did you think that you could save him? That I would listen to you, if I did not listen to him? No, no, madame. Not even did he conquer me; but something greater than himself within himself, it conquered me." She got to her feet gasping, her hands stretched out. "Oh, is it true-- is it true?" she cried. "The West has conquered," he answered. "You will help him--you will try to save him?" "When, a month ago, I read the letter you have read, I tried to save him. I sent secretly four thousand men who were at Wady Halfa to relieve him--if it could be done; five hundred to push forward on the quickest of the armed steamers, the rest to follow as fast as possible. I did my best. That was a month ago, and I am waiting--waiting and hoping, madame." Suddenly she broke down. Tears streamed from her eyes. She sank into the chair, and sobs shook her from head to foot. "Be patient, be composed, madame," Nahoum said gently. "I have tried you greatly--forgive me. Nay, do not weep. I have hope. We may hear from him at any moment now," he added softly, and there was a new look in his wide blue eyes as they were bent on her. CHAPTER XLI IN THE LAND OF SHINAR "Then I said to the angel that talked with me, Whither do these bear the Ephah? "And he said unto me, To build it an house in the land of Shinar; and it shall be established, and set there upon her own base." David raised his head from the paper he was studying. He looked at Lacey sharply. "And how many rounds of ammunition?" he asked. "Ten thousand, Saadat." "How many shells?" he continued, making notes upon the paper before him. "Three hundred, Saadat." "How many hundredweight of dourha?" "Eighty--about." "And how many mouths to feed?" "Five thousand." "How many fighters go with the mouths?" "Nine hundred and eighty-of a kind." "And of the best?' "Well, say, five hundred." "Thee said six hundred three days ago, Lacey." "Sixty were killed or wounded on Sunday, and forty I reckon in the others, Saadat." The dark eyes flashed, the lips set. "The fire was sickening--they fell back?" "Well, Saadat, they reflected--at the wrong time." "They ran?" "Not back--they were slow in getting on." "But they fought it out?" "They had to--root hog, or die. You see, Saadat, in that five hundred I'm only counting the invincibles, the up-and-at-'ems, the blind-goers that 'd open the lid of Hell and jump in after the enemy." The pale face lighted. "So many! I would not have put the estimate half so high. Not bad for a dark race fighting for they know not what!" "They know that all right; they are fighting for you, Saadat." David seemed not to hear. "Five hundred--so many, and the enemy so near, the temptation so great." "The deserters are all gone to Ali Wad Hei, Saadat. For a month there have been only the deserted." A hardness crept into the dark eyes. "Only the deserted!" He looked out to where the Nile lost itself in the northern distance. "I asked Nahoum for one thousand men, I asked England for the word which would send them. I asked for a thousand, but even two hundred would turn the scale--the sign that the Inglesi had behind him Cairo and London. Twenty weeks, and nothing comes!" He got to his feet slowly and walked up and down the room for a moment, glancing out occasionally towards the clump of palms which marked the disappearance of the Nile into the desert beyond his vision. At intervals a cannon-shot crashed upon the rarefied air, as scores of thousands had done for months past, torturing to ear and sense and nerve. The confused and dulled roar of voices came from the distance also; and, looking out to the landward side, David saw a series of movements of the besieging forces, under the Arab leader, Ali Wad Hei. Here a loosely formed body of lancers and light cavalry cantered away towards the south, converging upon the Nile; there a troop of heavy cavalry in glistening mail moved nearer to the northern defences; and between, battalions of infantry took up new positions, while batteries of guns moved nearer to the river, curving upon the palace north and south. Suddenly David's eyes flashed fire. He turned to Lacey eagerly. Lacey was watching with eyes screwed up shrewdly, his forehead shining with sweat. "Saadat," he said suddenly, "this isn't the usual set of quadrilles. It's the real thing. They're watching the river--waiting." "But south!" was David's laconic response. At the same moment he struck a gong. An orderly entered. Giving swift instructions, he turned to Lacey again. "Not Cairo--Darfur," he added. "Ebn Ezra Bey coming! Ali Wad Hei's got word from up the Nile, I guess." David nodded, and his face clouded. "We should have had word also," he said sharply. There was a knock at the door, and Mahommed Hassan entered, supporting an Arab, down whose haggard face blood trickled from a wound in the head, while an arm hung limp at his side. "Behold, Saadat--from Ebn Ezra Bey," Mahommed said. The man drooped beside him. David caught a tin cup from a shelf, poured some liquor into it, and held it to the lips of the fainting man. "Drink," he said. The Arab drank greedily, and, when he had finished, gave a long sigh of satisfaction. "Let him sit," David added. When the man was seated on a sheepskin, the huge Mahommed squatting behind like a sentinel, David questioned him. "What is thy name--thy news?" he asked in Arabic. "I am called Feroog. I come from Ebn Ezra Bey, to whom be peace!" he answered. "Thy messenger, Saadat, behold he died of hunger and thirst, and his work became mine. Ebn Ezra Bey came by the river. . . ." "He is near?" asked David impatiently. "He is twenty miles away." "Thou camest by the desert?" "By the desert, Saadat, as Ebn Ezra effendi comes." "By the desert! But thou saidst he came by the river." "Saadat, yonder, forty miles from where we are, the river makes a great curve. There the effendi landed in the night with four hundred men to march hither. But he commanded that the boats should come on slowly and receive the attack in the river, while he came in from the desert." David's eye flashed. "A great device. They will be here by midnight, then, perhaps?" "At midnight, Saadat, by the blessing of God." "How wert thou wounded?" "I came upon two of the enemy. They were mounted. I fought them. Upon the horse of one I came here." "The other?" "God is merciful, Saadat. He is in the bosom of God." "How many men come by the river?" "But fifty, Saadat," was the answer, "but they have sworn by the stone in the Kaabah not to surrender." "And those who come with the effendi, with Ebn Ezra Bey, are they as those who will not surrender?" "Half of them are so. They were with thee, as was I, Saadat, when the great sickness fell upon us, and were healed by thee, and afterwards fought with thee." David nodded abstractedly, and motioned to Mahommed to take the man away; then he said to Lacey: "How long do you think we can hold out?" "We shall have more men, but also more rifles to fire, and more mouths to fill, if Ebn Ezra gets in, Saadat." David raised his head. "But with more rifles to fire away your ten thousand rounds"--he tapped the paper on the table--"and eat the eighty hundredweight of dourha, how long can we last?" "If they are to fight, and with full stomachs, and to stake everything on that one fight, then we can last two days. No more, I reckon." "I make it one day," answered David. "In three days we shall have no food, and unless help comes from Cairo, we must die or surrender. It is not well to starve on the chance of help coming, and then die fighting with weak arms and broken spirit. Therefore, we must fight to morrow, if Ebn Ezra gets in to-night. I think we shall fight well," he added. "You think so?" "You are a born fighter, Saadat." A shadow fell on David's face, and his lips tightened. "I was not born a fighter, Lacey. The day we met first no man had ever died by my hand or by my will." "There are three who must die at sunset--an hour from now-by thy will, Saadat." A startled look came into David's face. "Who?" he asked. "The Three Pashas, Saadat. They have been recaptured." "Recaptured!" rejoined David mechanically. "Achmet Pasha got them from under the very noses of the sheikhs before sunrise this morning." "Achmet--Achmet Pasha!" A light came into David's face again. "You will keep faith with Achmet, Saadat. He risked his life to get them. They betrayed you, and betrayed three hundred good men to death. If they do not die, those who fight for you will say that it doesn't matter whether men fight for you or betray you, they get the same stuff off the same plate. If we are going to fight to-morrow, it ought to be with a clean bill of health." "They served me well so long--ate at my table, fought with me. But--but traitors must die, even as Harrik died." A stern look came into his face. He looked round the great room slowly. "We have done our best," he said. "I need not have failed, if there had been no treachery. . . ." "If it hadn't been for Nahoum!" David raised his head. Supreme purpose came into his bearing. A grave smile played at his lips, as he gave that quick toss of the head which had been a characteristic of both Eglington and himself. His eyes shone- a steady, indomitable light. "I will not give in. I still have hope. We are few and they are many, but the end of a battle has never been sure. We may not fail even now. Help may come from Cairo even to- morrow." "Say, somehow you've always pulled through before, Saadat. When I've been most frightened I've perked up and stiffened my backbone, remembering your luck. I've seen a blue funk evaporate by thinking of how things always come your way just when the worst seems at the worst." David smiled as he caught up a small cane and prepared to go. Looking out of a window, he stroked his thin, clean-shaven face with a lean finger. Presently a movement in the desert arrested his attention. He put a field-glass to his eyes, and scanned the field of operations closely once more. "Good-good!" he burst out cheerfully. "Achmet has done the one thing possible. The way to the north will be still open. He has flung his men between the Nile and the enemy, and now the batteries are at work." Opening the door, they passed out. "He has anticipated my orders," he added. "Come, Lacey, it will be an anxious night. The moon is full, and Ebn Ezra Bey has his work cut out--sharp work for all of us, and . . ." Lacey could not hear the rest of his words in the roar of the artillery. David's steamers in the river were pouring shot into the desert where the enemy lay, and Achmet's "friendlies" and the Egyptians were making good their new position. As David and Lacey, fearlessly exposing themselves to rifle fire, and taking the shortest and most dangerous route to where Achmet fought, rode swiftly from the palace, Ebn Ezra's three steamers appeared up the river, and came slowly down to where David's gunboats lay. Their appearance was greeted by desperate discharges of artillery from the forces under Ali Wad Hei, who had received word of their coming two hours before, and had accordingly redisposed his attacking forces. But for Achmet's sharp initiative, the boldness of the attempt to cut off the way north and south would have succeeded, and the circle of fire and sword would have been complete. Achmet's new position had not been occupied before, for men were too few, and the position he had just left was now exposed to attack. Never since the siege began had the foe shown such initiative and audacity. They had relied on the pressure of famine and decimation by sickness, the steady effects of sorties, with consequent fatalities and desertions, to bring the Liberator of the Slaves to his knees. Ebn Ezra Bey had sought to keep quiet the sheikhs far south, but he had been shut up in Darffur for months, and had been in as bad a plight as David. He had, however, broken through at last. His ruse in leaving the steamers in the night and marching across the desert was as courageous as it was perilous, for, if discovered before he reached the beleaguered place, nothing could save his little force from destruction. There was one way in from the desert to the walled town, and it was through that space which Achmet and his men had occupied, and on which Ali Wad Hei might now, at any moment, throw his troops. David's heart sank as he saw the danger. From the palace he had sent an orderly with a command to an officer to move forward and secure the position, but still the gap was open, and the men he had ordered to advance remained where they were. Every minute had its crisis. As Lacey and himself left the town the misery of the place smote him in the eyes. Filth, refuse, debris filled the streets. Sick and dying men called to him from dark doorways, children and women begged for bread, carcasses lay unburied, vultures hovering above them--his tireless efforts had not been sufficient to cope with the daily horrors of the siege. But there was no sign of hostility to him. Voices called blessings on him from dark doorways, lips blanching in death commended him to Allah, and now and then a shrill call told of a fighter who had been laid low, but who had a spirit still unbeaten. Old men and women stood over their cooking-pots waiting for the moment of sunset; for it was Ramadan, and the faithful fasted during the day--as though every day was not a fast. Sunset was almost come, as David left the city and galloped away to send forces to stop the gap of danger before it was filled by the foe. Sunset--the Three Pashas were to die at sunset! They were with Achmet, and in a few moments they would be dead. As David and Lacey rode hard, they suddenly saw a movement of men on foot at a distant point of the field, and then a small mounted troop, fifty at most, detach themselves from the larger force and, in close formation, gallop fiercely down on the position which Achmet had left. David felt a shiver of anxiety and apprehension as he saw this sharp, sweeping advance. Even fifty men, well intrenched, could hold the position until the main body of Ali Wad Hei's infantry came on. They rode hard, but harder still rode Ali Wad Hei's troop of daring Arabs. Nearer and nearer they came. Suddenly from the trenches, which they had thought deserted, David saw jets of smoke rise, and a half-dozen of the advancing troop fell from their saddles, their riderless horses galloping on. David's heart leaped: Achmet had, then, left men behind, hidden from view; and these were now defending the position. Again came the jets of smoke, and again more Arabs dropped from their saddles. But the others still came on. A thousand feet away others fell. Twenty-two of the fifty had already gone. The rest fired their rifles as they galloped. But now, to David's relief, his own forces, which should have moved half an hour before, were coming swiftly down to cut off the approach of Ali Wad Hei's infantry, and he turned his horse upon the position where a handful of men were still emptying the saddles of the impetuous enemy. But now all that were left of the fifty were upon the trenches. Then came the flash of swords, puffs of smoke, the thrust of lances, and figures falling from the screaming, rearing horses. Lacey's pistol was in his hand, David's sword was gripped tight, as they rushed upon the melee. Lacey's pistol snapped, and an Arab fell; again, and another swayed in his saddle. David's sword swept down, and a turbaned head was gashed by a mortal stroke. As he swung towards another horseman, who had struck down a defender of the trenches, an Arab raised himself in his saddle and flung a lance with a cry of terrible malice; but, even as he did so, a bullet from Lacey's pistol pierced his shoulder. The shot had been too late to stop the lance, but sufficient to divert its course. It caught David in the flesh of the body under the arm--a slight wound only. A few inches to the right, however, and his day would have been done. The remaining Arabs turned and fled. The fight was over. As David, dismounting, stood with dripping sword in his hand, in imagination, he heard the voice of Kaid say to him, as it said that night when he killed Foorgat Bey: "Hast thou never killed a man?" For an instant it blinded him, then he was conscious that, on the ground at his feet, lay one of the Three Pashas who were to die at sunset. It was sunset now, and the man was dead. Another of the Three sat upon the ground winding his thigh with the folds of a dead Arab's turban, blood streaming from his gashed face. The last of the trio stood before David, stoical and attentive. For a moment David looked at the Three, the dead man and the two living men, and then suddenly turned to where the opposing forces were advancing. His own men were now between the position and Ali Wad Hei's shouting fanatics. They would be able to reach and defend the post in time. He turned and gave orders. There were only twenty men besides the two pashas, whom his commands also comprised. Two small guns were in place. He had them trained on that portion of the advancing infantry of Ali Wad Hei not yet covered by his own forces. Years of work and responsibility had made him master of many things, and long ago he had learned the work of an artilleryman. In a moment a shot, well directed, made a gap in the ranks of the advancing foe. An instant afterwards a shot from the other gun fired by the unwounded pasha, who, in his youth, had been an officer of artillery, added to the confusion in the swerving ranks, and the force hesitated; and now from Ebn Ezra Bey's river steamers, which had just arrived, there came a flank fire. The force wavered. From David's gun another shot made havoc. They turned and fell back quickly. The situation was saved. As if by magic the attack of the enemy all over the field ceased. By sunset they had meant to finish this enterprise, which was to put the besieged wholly in their hands, and then to feast after the day's fasting. Sunset had come, and they had been foiled; but hunger demanded the feast. The order to cease firing and retreat sounded, and three thousand men hurried back to the cooking-pot, the sack of dourha, and the prayer mat. Malaish, if the infidel Inglesi was not conquered to-day, he should be beaten and captured and should die to-morrow! And yet there were those among them who had a well-grounded apprehension that the "Inglesi" would win in the end. By the trenches, where five men had died so bravely, and a traitorous pasha had paid the full penalty of a crime and won a soldier's death, David spoke to his living comrades. As he prepared to return to the city, he said to the unwounded pasha: "Thou wert to die at sunset; it was thy sentence." And the pasha answered: "Saadat, as for death--I am ready to die, but have I not fought for thee?" David turned to the wounded pasha. "Why did Achmet Pasha spare thee?" "He did not spare us, Saadat. Those who fought with us but now were to shoot us at sunset, and remain here till other troops came. Before sunset we saw the danger, since no help came. Therefore we fought to save this place for thee." David looked them in the eyes. "Ye were traitors," he said, "and for an example it was meet that ye should die. But this that ye have done shall be told to all who fight to-morrow, and men will know why it is I pardon treachery. Ye shall fight again, if need be, betwixt this hour and morning, and ye shall die, if need be. Ye are willing?" Both men touched their foreheads, their lips, and their breasts. "Whether it be death or it be life, Inshallah, we are true to thee, Saadat!" one said, and the other repeated the words after him. As they salaamed David left them, and rode forward to the advancing forces. Upon the roof of the palace Mahommed Hassan watched and waited, his eyes scanning sharply the desert to the south, his ears strained to catch that stir of life which his accustomed ears had so often detected in the desert, when no footsteps, marching, or noises could be heard. Below, now in the palace, now in the defences, his master, the Saadat, planned for the last day's effort on the morrow, gave directions to the officers, sent commands to Achmet Pasha, arranged for the disposition of his forces, with as strange a band of adherents and subordinates as ever men had--adventurers, to whom adventure in their own land had brought no profit; members of that legion of the non-reputable, to whom Cairo offered no home; Levantines, who had fled from that underground world where every coin of reputation is falsely minted, refugees from the storm of the world's disapproval. There were Greeks with Austrian names; Armenians, speaking Italian as their native tongue; Italians of astonishing military skill, whose services were no longer required by their offended country; French Pizarros with a romantic outlook, even in misery, intent to find new El Dorados; Englishmen, who had cheated at cards and had left the Horse Guards for ever behind; Egyptian intriguers, who had been banished for being less successful than greater intriguers; but also a band of good gallant men of every nation. Upon all these, during the siege, Mahommed Hassan had been a self- appointed spy, and had indirectly added to that knowledge which made David's decisive actions to circumvent intrigue and its consequences seem almost supernatural. In his way Mahommed was a great man. He knew that David would endure no spying, and it was creditable to his subtlety and skill that he was able to warn his master, without being himself suspected of getting information by dark means. On the palace roof Mahommed was happy to-night. Tomorrow would be a great day, and, since the Saadat was to control its destiny, what other end could there be but happiness? Had not the Saadat always ridden over all that had been in his way? Had not he, Mahommed, ever had plenty to eat and drink, and money to send to Manfaloot to his father there, and to bribe when bribing was needed? Truly, life was a boon! With a neboot of dom-wood across his knees he sat in the still, moonlit night, peering into that distance whence Ebn Ezra Bey and his men must come, the moon above tranquil and pleasant and alluring, and the desert beneath, covered as it was with the outrages and terrors of war, breathing softly its ancient music, that delicate vibrant humming of the latent activities. In his uncivilised soul Mahommed Hassan felt this murmur, and even as he sat waiting to know whether a little army would steal out of the south like phantoms into this circle the Saadat had drawn round him, he kept humming to himself-- had he not been, was he not now, an Apollo to numberless houris who had looked down at him from behind mooshrabieh screens, or waited for him in the palm-grove or the cane-field? The words of his song were not uttered aloud, but yet he sang them silently-- "Every night long and all night my spirit is moaning and crying O dear gazelle, that has taken away my peace! Ah! if my beloved come not, my eyes will be blinded with weeping Moon of my joy, come to me, hark to the call of my soul!" Over and over he kept chanting the song. Suddenly, however, he leaned farther forward and strained his ears. Yes, at last, away to the south- east, there was life stirring, men moving--moving quickly. He got to his feet slowly, still listening, stood for a moment motionless, then, with a cry of satisfaction, dimly saw a moving mass in the white moonlight far over by the river. Ebn Ezra Bey and his men were coming. He started below, and met David on the way up. He waited till David had mounted the roof, then he pointed. "Now, Saadat!" he said. "They have stolen in?" David peered into the misty whiteness. They are almost in, Saadat. Nothing can stop them now." "It is well done. Go and ask Ebn Ezra effendi to come hither," he said. Suddenly a shot was fired, then a hoarse shout came over the desert, then there was silence again. "They are in, Saadat," said Mahommed Hassan. ....................... Day broke over a hazy plain. On both sides of the Nile the river mist spread wide, and the army of Ali Wad Hei and the defending forces were alike veiled from each other and from the desert world beyond. Down the river for scores of miles the mist was heavy, and those who moved within it and on the waters of the Nile could not see fifty feet ahead. Yet through this heavy veil there broke gently a little fleet of phantom vessels, the noise of the paddle-wheels and their propellers muffled as they moved slowly on. Never had vessels taken such risks on the Nile before, never had pilots trusted so to instinct, for there were sand- banks and ugly drifts of rock here and there. A safe journey for phantom ships; but these armed vessels, filled by men with white, eager faces and others with dark Egyptian features, were no phantoms. They bristled with weapons, and armed men crowded every corner of space. For full two hours from the first streak of light they had travelled swiftly, taking chances not to be taken save in some desperate moment. The moment was desperate enough, if not for them. They were going to the relief of besieged men, with a message from Nahoum Pasha to Claridge Pasha, and with succour. They had looked for a struggle up this river as they neared the beleaguered city; but, as they came nearer and nearer, not a gun fired at them from the forts on the banks out of the mists. If they were heard they still were safe from the guns, for they could not be seen, and those on shore could not know whether they were friend or foe. Like ghostly vessels they passed on, until at last they could hear the stir and murmur of life along the banks of the stream. Boom! boom! boom! Through the mist the guns of the city were pouring shot and shell out into Ali Wad Hei's camp, and Ali Wad Hei laughed contemptuously. Surely now the Inglesi was altogether mad, and to-day, this day after prayers at noon, he should be shot like a mad dog, for yesterday's defeat had turned some of his own adherent sheikhs into angry critics. He would not wait for starvation to compel the infidel to surrender. He would win freedom to deal in human flesh and blood, and make slave-markets where he willed, and win glory for the Lord Mahomet, by putting this place to the sword; and, when it was over, he would have the Inglesi's head carried on a pole through the city for the faithful to mock at, a target for the filth of the streets. So, by the will of Allah, it should be done! Boom! boom! boom! The Inglesi was certainly mad, for never had there been so much firing in any long day in all the siege as in this brief hour this morning. It was the act of a fool, to fire his shot and shell into the mist without aim, without a clear target. Ali Wad Hei scorned to make any reply with his guns, but sat in desultory counsel with his sheikhs, planning what should be done when the mists had cleared away. But yesterday evening the Arab chief had offered to give the Inglesi life if he would surrender and become a Muslim, and swear by the Lord Mahomet; but late in the night he had received a reply which left only one choice, and that was to disembowel the infidel, and carry his head aloft on a spear. The letter he had received ran thus in Arabic: "To Ali Wad Hei and All with Him: "We are here to live or to die as God wills, and not as ye will. I have set my feet on the rock, and not by threats of any man shall I be moved. But I say that for all the blood that ye have shed here there will be punishment, and for the slaves which ye have slain or sold there will be high price paid. Ye have threatened the city and me--take us if ye can. Ye are seven to one. Why falter all these months? If ye will not come to us, we shall come to you, rebellious ones, who have drawn the sword against your lawful ruler, the Effendina. "CLARIDGE PASHA" It was a rhetorical document couched in the phraseology they best understood; and if it begat derision, it also begat anger; and the challenge David had delivered would be met when the mists had lifted from the river and the plain. But when the first thinning of the mists began, when the sun began to dissipate the rolling haze, Ali Wad Hei and his rebel sheikhs were suddenly startled by rifle-fire at close quarters, by confused noises, and the jar and roar of battle. Now the reason for the firing of the great guns was plain. The noise was meant to cover the advance of David's men. The little garrison, which had done no more than issue in sorties, was now throwing its full force on the enemy in a last desperate endeavour. It was either success or absolute destruction. David was staking all, with the last of his food, the last of his ammunition, the last of his hopes. All round the field the movement was forward, till the circle had widened to the enemy's lines; while at the old defences were only handfuls of men. With scarce a cry David's men fell on the unprepared foe; and he himself, on a grey Arab, a mark for any lance or spear and rifle, rode upon that point where Ali Wad Hei's tent was set. But after the first onset, in which hundreds were killed, there began the real noise of battle--fierce shouting, the shrill cries of wounded and maddened horses as they struck with their feet, and bit as fiercely at the fighting foe as did their masters. The mist cleared slowly, and, when it had wholly lifted, the fight was spread over every part of the field of siege. Ali Wad Hei's men had gathered themselves together after the first deadly onslaught, and were fighting fiercely, shouting the Muslim battle-cry, "Allah hu achbar!" Able to bring up reinforcements, the great losses at first sustained were soon made up, and the sheer weight of numbers gave them courage and advantage. By rushes with lance and sword and rifle they were able, at last, to drive David's men back upon their old defences with loss. Then charge upon charge ensued, and each charge, if it cost them much, cost the besieged more, by reason of their fewer numbers. At one point, however, the besieged became again the attacking party. This was where Achmet Pasha had command. His men on one side of the circle, as Ebn Ezra Bey's men on the other, fought with a valour as desperate as the desert ever saw. But David, galloping here and there to order, to encourage, to prevent retreat at one point, or to urge attack at another, saw that the doom of his gallant force was certain; for the enemy were still four to one, in spite of the carnage of the first attack. Bullets hissed past him. One carried away a button, one caught the tip of his ear, one pierced the fez he wore; but he felt nothing of this, saw nothing. He was buried in the storm of battle preparing for the end, for the final grim defence, when his men would retreat upon the one last strong fort, and there await their fate. From this absorption he was roused by Lacey, who came galloping towards him. "They've come, Saadat, they've come at last! We're saved--oh, my God, you bet we're all right now! See! See, Saadat!" David saw. Five steamers carrying the Egyptian flag were bearing around the point where the river curved below the town, and converging upon David's small fleet. Presently the steamers opened fire, to encourage the besieged, who replied with frenzied shouts of joy, and soon there poured upon the sands hundreds of men in the uniform of the Effendina. These came forward at the double, and, with a courage which nothing could withstand, the whole circle spread out again upon the discomfited tribes of Ali Wad Hei. Dismay, confusion, possessed the Arabs. Their river- watchers had failed them, God had hidden His face from them; and when Ali Wad Hei and three of his emirs turned and rode into the desert, their forces broke and ran also, pursued by the relentless men who had suffered the tortures of siege so long. The chase was short, however, for they were desert folk, and they returned to loot the camp which had menaced them so long. Only the new-comers, Nahoum's men, carried the hunt far; and they brought back with them a body which their leader commanded to be brought to a great room of the palace. Towards sunset David and Ebn Ezra Bey and Lacey came together to this room. The folds of loose linen were lifted from the face, and all three looked at it long in silence. At last Lacey spoke: "He got what he wanted; the luck was with him. It's better than Leperland." "In the bosom of Allah there is peace," said Ebn Ezra. "It is well with Achmet." With misty eyes David stooped and took the dead man's hand in his for a moment. Then he rose to his feet and turned away. "And Nahoum also--and Nahoum," he said presently. "Read this," he added, and put a letter from Nahoum into Ebn Ezra's hand. Lacey reverently covered Achmet's face. "Say, he got what he wanted," he said again. CHAPTER XLII THE LOOM OF DESTINY It was many a day since the Duchess of Snowdon had seen a sunrise, and the one on which she now gazed from the deck of the dahabieh Nefert, filled her with a strange new sense of discovery and revelation. Her perceptions were arrested and a little confused, and yet the undercurrent of feeling was one of delight and rejuvenation. Why did this sunrise bring back, all at once, the day when her one lost child was born, and she looked out of the windows of Snowdon Hall, as she lay still and nerveless, and thought how wonderful and sweet and green was the world she saw and the sky that walled it round? Sunrise over the Greek Temple of Philae and the splendid ruins of a farther time towering beside it! In her sight were the wide, islanded Nile, where Cleopatra loitered with Antony, the foaming, crashing cataracts above, the great quarries from which ancient temples had been hewed, unfinished obelisks and vast blocks of stone left where bygone workmen had forsaken them, when the invader came and another dynasty disappeared into that partial oblivion from which the Egyptian still emerges triumphant over all his conquerors, unchanged in form and feature. Something of its meaning got into her mind. "I wonder what Windlehurst would think of it. He always had an eye for things like that," she murmured; and then caught her breath, as she added: "He always liked beauty." She looked at her wrinkled, childish hands. "But sunsets never grow old," she continued, with no apparent relevance. "La, la, we were young once!" Her eyes were lost again in the pinkish glow spreading over the grey- brown sand of the desert, over the palm-covered island near. "And now it's others' turn, or ought to be," she murmured. She looked to where, not far away, Hylda stood leaning over the railing of the dahabieh, her eyes fixed in reverie on the farthest horizon line of the unpeopled, untravelled plain of sand. "No, poor thing, it's not her turn," she added, as Hylda, with a long sigh, turned and went below. Tears gathered in her pale blue eyes. "Not yet--with Eglington alive. And perhaps it would be best if the other never came back. I could have made the world better worth living in if I had had the chance--and I wouldn't have been a duchess! La! La!" She relapsed into reverie, an uncommon experience for her; and her mind floated indefinitely from one thing to another, while she was half conscious of the smell of coffee permeating the air, and of the low resonant notes of the Nubian boys, as, with locked shoulders, they scrubbed the decks of a dahabieh near by with hempshod feet. Presently, however, she was conscious of another sound--the soft clip of oars, joined to the guttural, explosive song of native rowers; and, leaning over the rail, she saw a boat draw alongside the Nefert. From it came the figure of Nahoum Pasha, who stepped briskly on deck, in his handsome face a light which flashed an instant meaning to her. "I know--I know! Claridge Pasha--you have heard?" she said excitedly, as he came to her. He smiled and nodded. "A messenger has arrived. Within a few hours he should be here." "Then it was all false that he was wounded--ah, that horrible story of his death!" "Bismillah, it was not all false! The night before the great battle he was slightly wounded in the side. He neglected it, and fever came on; but he survived. His first messengers to us were killed, and that is why the news of the relief came so late. But all is well at last. I have come to say so to Lady Eglington--even before I went to the Effendina." He made a gesture towards a huge and gaily-caparisoned dahabieh not far away. "Kaid was right about coming here. His health is better. He never doubted Claridge Pasha's return; it was une idee fixe. He believes a magic hand protects the Saadat, and that, adhering to him, he himself will carry high the flower of good fortune and live for ever. Kismet! I will not wait to see Lady Eglington. I beg to offer to her my congratulations on the triumph of her countryman." His words had no ulterior note; but there was a shadow in his eyes which in one not an Oriental would have seemed sympathy. "Pasha, Pasha!" the Duchess called after him, as he turned to leave; "tell me, is there any news from England--from the Government?" "From Lord Eglington? No," Nahoum answered meaningly. "I wrote to him. Did the English Government desire to send a message to Claridge Pasha, if the relief was accomplished? That is what I asked. But there is no word. Malaish, Egypt will welcome him!" She followed his eyes. Two score of dahabiehs lay along the banks of the Nile, and on the shore were encampments of soldiers, while flags were flying everywhere. Egypt had followed the lead of the Effendina. Claridge Pasha's star was in its zenith. As Nahoum's boat was rowed away, Hylda came on deck again, and the Duchess hastened to her. Hylda caught the look in her face. "What has happened? Is there news? Who has been here?" she asked. The Duchess took her hands. "Nahoum has gone to tell Prince Kaid. He came to you with the good news first," she said with a flutter. She felt Hylda's hands turn cold. A kind of mist filled the dark eyes, and the slim, beautiful figure swayed slightly. An instant only, and then the lips smiled, and Hylda said in a quavering voice: "They will be so glad in England." "Yes, yes, my darling, that is what Nahoum said." She gave Nahoum's message to her. "Now they'll make him a peer, I suppose, after having deserted him. So English!" She did not understand why Hylda's hands trembled so, why so strange a look came into her face, but, in an instant, the rare and appealing eyes shone again with a light of agitated joy, and suddenly Hylda leaned over and kissed her cheek. "Smell the coffee," she said with assumed gaiety. "Doesn't fair-and- sixty want her breakfast? Sunrise is a splendid tonic." She laughed feverishly. "My darling, I hadn't seen the sun rise in thirty years, not since the night I first met Windlehurst at a Foreign Office ball." "You have always been great friends?" Hylda stole a look at her. "That's the queer part of it; I was so stupid, and he so clever. But Windlehurst has a way of letting himself down to your level. He always called me Betty after my boy died, just as if I was his equal. La, la, but I was proud when he first called me that--the Prime Minister of England. I'm going to watch the sun rise again to-morrow, my darling. I didn't know it was so beautiful, and gave one such an appetite." She broke a piece of bread, and, not waiting to butter it, almost stuffed it into her mouth. Hylda leaned over and pressed her arm. "What a good mother Betty it is!" she said tenderly. Presently they were startled by the shrill screaming of a steamer whistle, followed by the churning of the paddles, as she drove past and drew to the bank near them. "It is a steamer from Cairo, with letters, no doubt," said Hylda; and the Duchess nodded assent, and covertly noted her look, for she knew that no letters had arrived from Eglington since Hylda had left England. A half-hour later, as the Duchess sat on deck, a great straw hat tied under her chin with pale-blue ribbons, like a child of twelve, she was startled by seeing the figure of a farmer-looking person with a shock of grey-red hair, a red face, and with great blue eyes, appear before her in the charge of Hylda's dragoman. "This has come to speak with my lady," the dragoman said, "but my lady is riding into the desert there." He pointed to the sands. The Duchess motioned the dragoman away, and scanned the face of the new- comer shrewdly. Where had she seen this strange-looking English peasant, with the rolling walk of a sailor? "What is your name, and where do you come from?" she asked, not without anxiety, for there was something ominous and suggestive in the old man's face. "I come from Hamley, in England, and my name is Soolsby, your grace. I come to see my Lady Eglington." Now she remembered him. She had seen him in Hamley more than once. "You have come far; have you important news for her ladyship? Is there anything wrong?" she asked with apparent composure, but with heavy premonition. "Ay, news that counts, I bring," answered Soolsby, "or I hadn't come this long way. 'Tis a long way at sixty-five." "Well, yes, at our age it is a long way," rejoined the Duchess in a friendly voice, suddenly waving away the intervening air of class, for she was half a peasant at heart. "Ay, and we both come for the same end, I suppose," Soolsby added; "and a costly business it is. But what matters, so be that you help her ladyship and I help Our Man." "And who is 'Our Man'?" was the rejoinder. "Him that's coming safe here from the South--David Claridge," he answered. "Ay, 'twas the first thing I heard when I landed here, me that be come all these thousand miles to see him, if so be he was alive." Just then he caught sight of Kate Heaver climbing the stair to the deck where they were. His face flushed; he hurried forward and gripped her by the arm, as her feet touched the upper deck. "Kate-ay, 'tis Kate!" he cried. Then he let go her arm and caught a hand in both of his and fondled it. "Ay, ay, 'tis Kate!" "What is it brings you, Soolsby?" Kate asked anxiously. "'Tis not Jasper, and 'tis not the drink-ay, I've been sober since, ever since, Kate, lass," he answered stoutly. "Quick, quick, tell me what it is!" she said, frowning. "You've not come here for naught, Soolsby." Still holding her hand, he leaned over and whispered in her ear. For an instant she stood as though transfixed, and then, with a curious muffled cry, broke away from him and turned to go below. "Keep your mouth shut, lass, till proper time," he called after her, as she descended the steps hastily again. Then he came slowly back to the Duchess. He looked her in the face--he was so little like a peasant, so much more like a sailor here with his feet on the deck of a floating thing. "Your grace is a good friend to her ladyship," he said at last deliberately, "and 'tis well that you tell her ladyship. As good a friend to her you've been, I doubt not, as that I've been to him that's coming from beyond and away." "Go on, man, go on. I want to know what startled Heaver yonder, what you have come to say." "I beg pardon, your grace. One doesn't keep good news waiting, and 'tis not good news for her ladyship I bring, even if it be for Claridge Pasha, for there was no love lost 'twixt him and second-best lordship that's gone." "Speak, man, speak it out, and no more riddles," she interrupted sharply. "Then, he that was my Lord Eglington is gone foreign--he is dead," he said slowly. The Duchess fell back in her chair. For an instant the desert, the temples, the palms, the Nile waters faded, and she was in some middle world, in which Soolsby's voice seemed coming muffled and deep across a dark flood; then she recovered herself, and gave a little cry, not unlike that which Kate gave a few moments before, partly of pain, partly of relief. "Ay, he's dead and buried, too, and in the Quaker churchyard. Miss Claridge would have it so. And none in Hamley said nay, not one." The Duchess murmured to herself. Eglington was dead--Eglington was dead --Eglington was dead! And David Claridge was coming out of the desert, was coming to-day-now! "How did it happen?" she asked, faintly, at last. "Things went wrong wi' him--bad wrong in Parliament and everywhere, and he didn't take it well. He stood the world off like-ay, he had no temper for black days. He shut himself up at Hamley in his chemical place, like his father, like his father before him. When the week-end came, there he was all day and night among his bottles and jars and wires. He was after summat big in experiment for explosives, so the papers said, and so he said himself before he died, to Miss Claridge--ay, 'twas her he deceived and treated cruel, that come to him when he was shattered by his experimenting. No patience, he had at last--and reckless in his chemical place, and didn't realise what his hands was doing. 'Twas so he told her, that forgave him all his deceit, and held him in her arms when he died. Not many words he had to speak; but he did say that he had never done any good to any one--ay, I was standing near behind his bed and heard all, for I was thinking of her alone with him, and so I would be with her, and she would have it so. Ay, and he said that he had misused cruel her that had loved him, her ladyship, that's here. He said he had misused her because he had never loved her truly, only pride and vainglory being in his heart. Then he spoke summat to her that was there to forgive him and help him over the stile 'twixt this field and it that's Beyond and Away, which made her cry out in pain and say that he must fix his thoughts on other things. And she prayed out loud for him, for he would have no parson there. She prayed and prayed as never priest or parson prayed, and at last he got quiet and still, and, when she stopped praying, he did not speak or open his eyes for a longish while. But when the old clock on the stable was striking twelve, he opened his eyes wide, and when it had stopped, he said: 'It is always twelve by the clock that stops at noon. I've done no good. I've earned my end.' He looked as though he was waiting for the clock to go on striking, half raising himself up in bed, with Miss Faith's arm under his head. He whispered to her then--he couldn't speak by this time. 'It's twelve o'clock,' he said. Then there came some words I've heard the priest say at Mass, 'Vanitas, Vanitatum,'--that was what he said. And her he'd lied to, there with him, laying his head down on the pillow, as if he was her child going to sleep. So, too, she had him buried by her father, in the Quaker burying-ground--ay, she is a saint on earth, I warrant." For a moment after he had stopped the Duchess did not speak, but kept untying and tying the blue ribbons under her chin, her faded eyes still fastened on him, burning with the flame of an emotion which made them dark and young again. "So, it's all over," she said, as though to herself. "They were all alike, from old Broadbrim, the grandfather, down to this one, and back to William the Conqueror." "Like as peas in a pod," exclaimed Soolsby--"all but one, all but one, and never satisfied with what was in their own garden, but peeking, peeking beyond the hedge, and climbing and getting a fall. That's what they've always been evermore." His words aroused the Duchess, and the air became a little colder about her-after all, the division between the classes and the masses must be kept, and the Eglingtons were no upstarts. "You will say nothing about this till I give you leave to speak," she commanded. "I must tell her ladyship." Soolsby drew himself up a little, nettled at her tone. "It is your grace's place to tell her ladyship," he responded; "but I've taken ten years' savings to come to Egypt, and not to do any one harm, but good, if so be I might." The Duchess relented at once. She got to her feet as quickly as she could, and held out her hand to him. "You are a good man, and a friend worth having, I know, and I shall like you to be my friend, Mr. Soolsby," she said impulsively. He took her hand and shook it awkwardly, his lips working. "Your grace, I understand. I've got naught to live for except my friends. Money's naught, naught's naught, if there isn't a friend to feel a crunch at his heart when summat bad happens to you. I'd take my affydavy that there's no better friend in the world than your grace." She smiled at him. "And so we are friends, aren't we? And I am to tell her ladyship, and you are to say 'naught.' "But to the Egyptian, to him, your grace, it is my place to speak--to Claridge Pasha, when he comes." The Duchess looked at him quizzically. "How does Lord Eglington's death concern Claridge Pasha?" she asked rather anxiously. Had there been gossip about Hylda? Had the public got a hint of the true story of her flight, in spite of all Windlehurst had done? Was Hylda's name smirched, now, when all would be set right? Had everything come too late, as it were? "There's two ways that his lordship's death concerns Claridge Pasha," answered Soolsby shrewdly, for though he guessed the truth concerning Hylda and David, his was not a leaking tongue. "There's two ways it touches him. There'll be a new man in the Foreign Office--Lord Eglington was always against Claridge Pasha; and there's matters of land betwixt the two estates--matters of land that's got to be settled now," he continued, with determined and successful evasion. The Duchess was deceived. "But you will not tell Claridge Pasha until I have told her ladyship and I give you leave? Promise that," she urged. "I will not tell him until then," he answered. "Look, look, your grace," he added, suddenly pointing towards the southern horizon, "there he comes! Ay, 'tis Our Man, I doubt not--Our Man evermore!" Miles away there appeared on the horizon a dozen camels being ridden towards Assouan. "Our Man evermore," repeated the Duchess, with a trembling smile. "Yes, it is surely he. See, the soldiers are moving. They're going to ride out to meet him." She made a gesture towards the far shore where Kaid's men were saddling their horses, and to Nahoum's and Kaid's dahabiehs, where there was a great stir. "There's one from Hamley will meet them first," Soolsby said, and pointed to where Hylda, in the desert, was riding towards the camels coming out of the south. The Duchess threw up her hands. "Dear me, dear me," she said in distress, "if she only knew!" "There's thousands of women that'd ride out mad to meet him," said Soolsby carefully; "women that likes to see an Englishman that's done his duty--ay, women and men, that'd ride hard to welcome him back from the grave. Her ladyship's as good a patriot as any," he added, watching the Duchess out of the corners of his eyes, his face turned to the desert. The Duchess looked at him quizzically, and was satisfied with her scrutiny. "You're a man of sense," she replied brusquely, and gathered up her skirts. "Find me a horse or a donkey, and I'll go too," she added whimsically. "Patriotism is such a nice sentiment." For David and Lacey the morning had broken upon a new earth. Whatever of toil and tribulation the future held in store, this day marked a step forward in the work to which David had set his life. A way had been cloven through the bloody palisades of barbarism, and though the dark races might seek to hold back the forces which drain the fens, and build the bridges, and make the desert blossom as the rose, which give liberty and preserve life, the good end was sure and near, whatever of rebellion and disorder and treachery intervened. This was the larger, graver issue; but they felt a spring in the blood, and their hearts were leaping, because of the thought that soon they would clasp hands again with all from which they had been exiled. "Say, Saadat, think of it: a bed with four feet, and linen sheets, and sleeping till any time in the morning, and, If you please, sir, breakfast's on the table.' Say, it's great, and we're in it!" David smiled. "Thee did very well, friend, without such luxuries. Thee is not skin and bone." Lacey mopped his forehead. "Well, I've put on a layer or two since the relief. It's being scared that takes the flesh off me. I never was intended for the 'stricken field.' Poetry and the hearth-stone was my real vocation--and a bit of silver mining to blow off steam with," he added with a chuckle. David laughed and tapped his arm. "That is an old story now, thy cowardice. Thee should be more original. "It's worth not being original, Saadat, to hear you thee and thou me as you used to do. It's like old times--the oldest, first times. You've changed a lot, Saadat." "Not in anything that matters, I hope." "Not in anything that matters to any one that matters. To me it's the same as it ever was, only more so. It isn't that, for you are you. But you've had disappointment, trouble, hard nuts to crack, and all you could do to escape the rocks being rolled down the Egyptian hill onto you; and it's left its mark." "Am I grown so different?" Lacey's face shone under the look that was turned towards him. "Say, Saadat, you're the same old red sandstone; but I missed the thee and thou. I sort of hankered after it; it gets me where I'm at home with myself." David laughed drily. "Well, perhaps I've missed something in you. Thee never says now--not since thee went south a year ago, 'Well, give my love to the girls.' Something has left its mark, friend," he added teasingly; for his spirits were boyish to-day; he was living in the present. There had gone from his eyes and from the lines of his figure the melancholy which Hylda had remarked when he was in England. "Well, now, I never noticed," rejoined Lacey. "That's got me. Looks as if I wasn't as friendly as I used to be, doesn't it? But I am--I am, Saadat." "I thought that the widow in Cairo, perhaps--" Lacey chuckled. "Say, perhaps it was--cute as she can be, maybe, wouldn't like it, might be prejudiced." Suddenly David turned sharply to Lacey. "Thee spoke of silver mining just now. I owe thee something like two hundred thousand pounds, I think--Egypt and I." Lacey winked whimsically at himself under the rim of his helmet. "Are you drawing back from those concessions, Saadat?" he asked with apparent ruefulness. "Drawing back? No! But does thee think they are worth--" Lacey assumed an injured air. "If a man that's made as much money as me can't be trusted to look after a business proposition--" "Oh, well, then!" "Say, Saadat, I don't want you to think I've taken a mean advantage of you; and if--" David hastened to put the matter right. "No, no; thee must be the judge!" He smiled sceptically. "In any case, thee has done a good deed in a great way, and it will do thee no harm in the end. In one way the investment will pay a long interest, as long as the history of Egypt runs. Ah, see, the houses of Assouan, the palms, the river, the masts of the dahabiehs!" Lacey quickened his camel's steps, and stretched out a hand to the inviting distance. "'My, it's great," he said, and his eyes were blinking with tears. Presently he pointed. "There's a woman riding to meet us, Saa dat. Golly, can't she ride! She means to be in it--to salute the returning brave." He did not glance at David. If he had done so, he would have seen that David's face had taken on a strange look, just such a look as it wore that night in the monastery when he saw Hylda in a vision and heard her say: "Speak, speak to me!" There had shot into David's mind the conviction that the woman riding towards them was Hylda. Hylda, the first to welcome him back, Hylda-- Lady Eglington! Suddenly his face appeared to tighten and grow thin. It was all joy and torture at once. He had fought this fight out with himself--had he not done so? Had he not closed his heart to all but duty and Egypt? Yet there she was riding out of the old life, out of Hamley, and England, and all that had happened in Cairo, to meet him. Nearer and nearer she came. He could not see the face, but yet he knew. He quickened his camel and drew ahead of Lacey. Lacey did not understand, he did not recognise Hylda as yet; but he knew by instinct the Saadat's wishes, and he motioned the others to ride more slowly, while he and they watched horsemen coming out from Assouan towards them. David urged his camel on. Presently he could distinguish the features of the woman riding towards him. It was Hylda. His presentiment, his instinct had been right. His heart beat tumultuously, his hand trembled, he grew suddenly weak; but he summoned up his will, and ruled himself to something like composure. This, then, was his home-coming from the far miseries and trials and battle-fields--to see her face before all others, to hear her voice first. What miracle had brought this thing to pass, this beautiful, bitter, forbidden thing? Forbidden! Whatever the cause of her coming, she must not see what he felt for her. He must deal fairly by her and by Eglington; he must be true to that real self which had emerged from the fiery trial in the monastery. Bronzed as he was, his face showed no paleness; but, as he drew near her, it grew pinched and wan from the effort at self-control. He set his lips and rode on, until he could see her eyes looking into his--eyes full of that which he had never seen in any eyes in all the world. What had been her feelings during that ride in the desert? She had not meant to go out to meet him. After she heard that he was coming, her desire was to get away from all the rest of the world, and be alone with her thoughts. He was coming, he was safe, and her work was done. What she had set out to do was accomplished--to bring him back, if it was God's will, out of the jaws of death, for England's sake, for the world's sake, for his sake, for her own sake. For her own sake? Yes, yes, in spite of all, for her own sake. Whatever lay before, now, for this one hour, for this moment of meeting he should be hers. But meet him, where? Before all the world, with a smile of conventional welcome on her lips, with the same hand-clasp that any friend and lover of humanity would give him? The desert air blew on her face, keen, sweet, vibrant, thrilling. What he had heard that night at the monastery, the humming life of the land of white fire--the desert, the million looms of all the weavers of the world weaving, this she heard in the sunlight, with the sand rising like surf behind her horse's heels. The misery and the tyranny and the unrequited love were all behind her, the disillusion and the loss and the undeserved insult to her womanhood--all, all were sunk away into the unredeemable past. Here, in Egypt, where she had first felt the stir of life's passion and pain and penalty, here, now, she lost herself in a beautiful, buoyant dream. She was riding out to meet the one man of all men, hero, crusader, rescuer--ah, that dreadful night in the Palace, and Foorgat's face! But he was coming, who had made her live, to whom she had called, to whom her soul had spoken in its grief and misery. Had she ever done aught to shame the best that was in herself--and had she not been sorely tempted? Had she not striven to love Eglington even when the worst was come, not alone at her own soul's command, but because she knew that this man would have it so? Broken by her own sorrow, she had left England, Eglington--all, to keep her pledge to help him in his hour of need, to try and save him to the world, if that might be. So she had come to Nahoum, who was binding him down on the bed of torture and of death. And yet, alas! not herself had conquered Nahoum, but David, as Nahoum had said. She herself had not done this one thing which would have compensated for all that she had suffered. This had not been permitted; but it remained that she had come here to do it, and perhaps he would understand when he saw her. Yes, she knew he would understand! She flung up her head to the sun and the pulse-stirring air, and, as she did so, she saw his cavalcade approaching. She was sure it was he, even when he was far off, by the same sure instinct that convinced him. For an instant she hesitated. She would turn back, and meet him with the crowd. Then she looked around. The desert was deserted by all save herself and himself and those who were with him. No. Her mind was made up. She would ride forward. She would be the first to welcome him back to life and the world. He and she would meet alone in the desert. For one minute they would be alone, they two, with the world afar, they two, to meet, to greet--and to part. Out of all that Fate had to give of sorrow and loss, this one delectable moment, no matter what came after. "David!" she cried with beating heart, and rode on, harder and harder. Now she saw him ride ahead of the others. Ah, he knew that it was she, though he could not see her face! Nearer and nearer. Now they looked into each other's eyes. She saw him stop his camel and make it kneel for the dismounting. She stopped her horse also, and slid to the ground, and stood waiting, one hand upon the horse's neck. He hastened forward, then stood still, a few feet away, his eyes on hers, his helmet off, his brown hair, brown as when she first saw it--peril and hardship had not thinned or greyed it. For a moment they stood so, for a moment of revealing and understanding, but speechless; and then, suddenly, and with a smile infinitely touching, she said, as he had heard her say in the monastery--the very words: "Speak--speak to me!" He took her hand in his. "There is no need--I have said all," he answered, happiness and trouble at once in his eyes. Then his face grew calmer. "Thee has made it worth while living on," he added. She was gaining control of herself also. "I said that I would come when I was needed," she answered less, tremblingly. "Thee came alone?" he asked gently. "From Assouan, yes," she said in a voice still unsteady. "I was riding out to be by myself, and then I saw you coming, and I rode on. I thought I should like to be the first to say: 'Well done,' and 'God bless you!'" He drew in a long breath, then looked at her keenly. "Lord Eglington is in Egypt also?" he asked. Her face did not change. She looked him in the eyes. "No, Eglington would not come to help you. I came to Nahoum, as I said I would." "Thee has a good memory," he rejoined simply. "I am a good friend," she answered, then suddenly her face flushed up, her breast panted, her eyes shone with a brightness almost intolerable to him, and he said in a low, shaking voice: "It is all fighting, all fighting. We have done our best; and thee has made all possible." "David!" she said in a voice scarce above a whisper. "Thee and me have far to go," he said in a voice not louder than her own, "but our ways may not be the same." She understood, and a newer life leaped up in her. She knew that he loved her--that was sufficient; the rest would be easier now. Sacrifice, all, would be easier. To part, yes, and for evermore; but to know that she had been truly loved--who could rob her of that? "See," she said lightly, "your people are waiting--and there, why, there is my cousin Lacey. Tom, oh, Cousin Tom!" she called eagerly. Lacey rode down on them. "I swan, but I'm glad," he said, as he dropped from his horse. "Cousin Hylda, I'm blest if I don't feel as if I could sing like Aunt Melissa." "You may kiss me, Cousin Tom," she said, as she took his hands in hers. He flushed, was embarrassed, then snatched a kiss from her cheek. "Say, I'm in it, ain't I? And you were in it first, eh, Cousin Hylda? The rest are nowhere--there they come from Assouan, Kaid, Nahoum, and the Nubians. Look at 'em glisten!" A hundred of Kaid's Nubians in their glittering armour made three sides of a quickly moving square, in the centre of which, and a little ahead, rode Kaid and Nahoum, while behind the square-in parade and gala dress- trooped hundreds of soldiers and Egyptians and natives. Swiftly the two cavalcades approached each other, the desert ringing with the cries of the Bedouins, the Nubians, and the fellaheen. They met on an upland of sand, from which the wide valley of the Nile and its wild cataracts could be seen. As men meet who parted yesterday, Kaid, Nahoum, and David met, but Kaid's first quiet words to David had behind them a world of meaning: "I also have come back, Saadat, to whom be the bread that never moulds and the water that never stales!" he said, with a look in his face which had not been there for many a day. Superstition had set its mark on him --on Claridge Pasha's safety depended his own, that was his belief; and the look of this thin, bronzed face, with its living fire, gave him vital assurance of length of days. And David answered: "May thy life be the nursling of Time, Effendina. I bring the tribute of the rebel lions once more to thy hand. What was thine, and was lost, is thine once more. Peace and salaam!" Between Nahoum and David there were no words at first at all. They shook hands like Englishmen, looking into each other's eyes, and with pride of what Nahoum, once, in his duplicity, had called "perfect friendship." Lacey thought of this now as he looked on; and not without a sense of irony, he said under his breath, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian!" But in Hylda's look, as it met Nahoum's, there was no doubt--what woman doubts the convert whom she thinks she has helped to make? Meanwhile, the Nubians smote their mailed breasts with their swords in honour of David and Kaid. Under the gleaming moon, the exquisite temple of Philae perched on its high rock above the river, the fires on the shore, the masts of the dahabiehs twinkling with lights, and the barbarous songs floating across the water, gave the feeling of past centuries to the scene. From the splendid boat which Kaid had placed at his disposal David looked out upon it all, with emotions not yet wholly mastered by the true estimate of what this day had brought to him. With a mind unsettled he listened to the natives in the forepart of the boat and on the shore, beating the darabukkeh and playing the kemengeh. Yet it was moving in a mist and on a flood of greater happiness than he had ever known. He did not know as yet that Eglington was gone for ever. He did not know that the winds of time had already swept away all traces of the house of ambition which Eglington had sought to build; and that his nimble tongue and untrustworthy mind would never more delude and charm, and wanton with truth. He did not know, but within the past hour Hylda knew; and now out of the night Soolsby came to tell him. He was roused from his reverie by Soolsby's voice saying: "Hast nowt to say to me, Egyptian?" It startled him, sounded ghostly in the moonlight; for why should he hear Soolsby's voice on the confines of Egypt? But Soolsby came nearer, and stood where the moonlight fell upon him, hat in hand, a rustic modern figure in this Oriental world. David sprang to his feet and grasped the old man by the shoulders. "Soolsby, Soolsby," he said, with a strange plaintive-note in his voice, yet gladly, too. "Soolsby, thee is come here to welcome me! But has she not come--Miss Claridge, Soolsby?" He longed for that true heart which had never failed him, the simple soul whose life had been filled by thought and care of him, and whose every act had for its background the love of sister for brother--for that was their relation in every usual meaning--who, too frail and broken to come to him now, waited for him by the old hearthstone. And so Soolsby, in his own way, made him understand; for who knew them both better than this old man, who had shared in David's destiny since the fatal day when Lord Eglington had married Mercy Claridge in secret, had set in motion a long line of tragic happenings? "Ay, she would have come, she would have come," Soolsby answered, "but she was not fit for the journey, and there was little time, my lord." "Why did thee come, Soolsby? Only to welcome me back?" "I come to bring you back to England, to your duty there, my lord." The first time Soolsby had used the words "my lord," David had scarcely noticed it, but its repetition struck him strangely. "Here, sometimes they call me Pasha and Saadat, but I am not 'my lord,'" he said. "Ay, but you are my lord, Egyptian, as sure as I've kept my word to you that I'd drink no more, ay, on my sacred honour. So you are my lord; you are Lord Eglington, my lord." David stood rigid and almost unblinking as Soolsby told his tale, beginning with the story of Eglington's death, and going back all the years to the day of Mercy Claridge's marriage. "And him that never was Lord Eglington, your own father's son, is dead and gone, my lord; and you are come into your rights at last." This was the end of the tale. For a long time David stood looking into the sparkling night before him, speechless and unmoving, his hands clasped behind him, his head bent forward, as though in a dream. How, all in an instant, had life changed for him! How had Soolsby's tale of Eglington's death filled him with a pity deeper than he had ever felt- the futile, bitter, unaccomplished life, the audacious, brilliant genius quenched, a genius got from the same source as his own resistless energy and imagination, from the same wild spring. Gone--all gone, with only pity to cover him, unloved, unloving, unbemoaned, save by the Quaker girl whose true spirit he had hurt, save by the wife whom he had cruelly wronged and tortured; and pity was the thing that moved them both, unfathomable and almost maternal, in that sense of motherhood which, in spite of love or passion, is behind both, behind all, in every true woman's life. At last David spoke. "Who knows of all this--of who I am, Soolsby?" "Lady Eglington and myself, my lord." "Only she and you?" "Only us two, Egyptian." "Then let it be so--for ever." Soolsby was startled, dumfounded. "But you will take your title and estates, my lord; you will take the place which is your own." "And prove my grandfather wrong? Had he not enough sorrow? And change my life, all to please thee, Soolsby?" He took the old man's shoulders in his hands again. "Thee has done thy duty as few in this world, Soolsby, and given friendship such as few give. But thee must be content. I am David Claridge, and so shall remain ever." "Then, since he has no male kin, the title dies, and all that's his will go to her ladyship," Soolsby rejoined sourly. "Does thee grudge her ladyship what was his?" "I grudge her what is yours, my lord--" Suddenly Soolsby paused, as though a new thought had come to him, and he nodded to himself in satisfaction. "Well, since you will have it so, it will be so, Egyptian; but it is a queer fuddle, all of it; and where's the way out, tell me that, my lord?" David spoke impatiently. "Call me 'my lord' no more. . . . But I will go back to England to her that's waiting at the Red Mansion, and you will remember, Soolsby--" Slowly the great flotilla of dahabiehs floated with the strong current down towards Cairo, the great sails swelling to the breeze that blew from the Libyan Hills. Along the bank of the Nile thousands of Arabs and fellaheen crowded to welcome "the Saadat," bringing gifts of dates and eggs and fowls and dourha and sweetmeats, and linen cloth; and even in the darkness and in the trouble that was on her, and the harrowing regret that she had not been with Eglington in his last hour--she little knew what Eglington had said to Faith in that last hour--Hylda's heart was soothed by the long, loud tribute paid to David. As she sat in the evening light, David and Lacey came, and were received by the Duchess of Snowdon, who could only say to David, as she held his hand, "Windlehurst sent his regards to you, his loving regards. He was sure you would come home--come home. He wished he were in power for your sake." So, for a few moments she talked vaguely, and said at last: "But Lady Eglington, she will be glad to see you, such old friends as you are, though not so old as Windlehurst and me--thirty years, over thirty la, la!" They turned to go to Hylda, and came face to face with Kate Heaver. Kate looked at David as one would look who saw a lost friend return from the dead. His eyes lighted, he held out his hand to her. "It is good to see thee here," he said gently. "And 'tis the cross-roads once again, sir," she rejoined. "Thee means thee will marry Jasper?" "Ay, I will marry Jasper now," she answered. "It has been a long waiting." "It could not be till now," she responded. David looked at her reflectively, and said: "By devious ways the human heart comes home. One can only stand in the door and wait. He has been patient." "I have been patient, too," she answered. As the Duchess disappeared with David, a swift change came over Lacey. He spun round on one toe, and, like a boy of ten, careered around the deck to the tune of a negro song. "Say, things are all right in there with them two, and it's my turn now," he said. "Cute as she can be, and knows the game! Twice a widow, and knows the game! Waiting, she is down in Cairo, where the orange blossom blows. I'm in it; we're all in it--every one of us. Cousin Hylda's free now, and I've got no past worth speaking of; and, anyhow, she'll understand, down there in Cairo. Cute as she can be--" Suddenly he swung himself down to the deck below. "The desert's the place for me to-night," he said. Stepping ashore, he turned to where the Duchess stood on the deck, gazing out into the night. "Well, give my love to the girls," he called, waving a hand upwards, as it were to the wide world, and disappeared into the alluring whiteness. "I've got to get a key-thought," he muttered to himself, as he walked swiftly on, till only faint sounds came to him from the riverside. In the letter he had written to Hylda, which was the turning-point of all for her, he had spoken of these "key-thoughts." With all the childishness he showed at times, he had wisely felt his way into spheres where life had depth and meaning. The desert had justified him to himself and before the spirits of departed peoples, who wandered over the sands, until at last they became sand also, and were blown hither and thither, to make beds for thousands of desert wayfarers, or paths for camels' feet, or a blinding storm to overwhelm the traveller and the caravan; Life giving and taking, and absorbing and destroying, and destroying and absorbing, till the circle of human existence wheel to the full, and the task of Time be accomplished. On the gorse-grown common above Hamley, David and Faith, and David's mother Mercy, had felt the same soul of things stirring--in the green things of green England, in the arid wastes of the Libyan desert, on the bosom of the Nile, where Mahommed Hassan now lay in a nugger singing a song of passion, Nature, with burning voice, murmuring down the unquiet world its message of the Final Peace through the innumerable years. GLOSSARY Aiwa----Yes. Allah hu Achbar----God is most Great. Al'mah----Female professional singers, signifying "a learned female." Ardab----A measure equivalent to five English bushels. Backsheesh----Tip, douceur. Balass----Earthen vessel for carrying water. Bdsha----Pasha. Bersim----Clover. Bismillah----In the name of God. Bowdb----A doorkeeper. Dahabieh----A Nile houseboat with large lateen sails. Darabukkeh----A drum made of a skin stretched over an earthenware funnel. Dourha----Maize. Effendina----Most noble. El Azhar----The Arab University at Cairo. Fedddn----A measure of land representing about an acre. Fellah----The Egyptian peasant. Ghiassa----Small boat. Hakim----Doctor. Hasheesh----Leaves of hemp. Inshallah----God willing. Kdnoon----A musical instrument like a dulcimer. Kavass----An orderly. Kemengeh----A cocoanut fiddle. Khamsin----A hot wind of Egypt and the Soudan. Kourbash----A whip, often made of rhinoceros hide. La ilaha illa-llah----There is no deity but God. Malaish----No matter. Malboos----Demented. Mastaba----A bench. Medjidie----A Turkish Order. Mooshrabieh----Lattice window. Moufettish----High Steward. Mudir----The Governor of a Mudirieh, or province. Muezzin----The sheikh of the mosque who calls to prayer. Narghileh----A Persian pipe. Nebool----A quarter-staff. Ramadan----The Mahommedan season of fasting. Saadat-el-bdsha----Excellency Pasha. Sdis----Groom. Sakkia----The Persian water-wheel. Salaam----Eastern salutation. Sheikh-el-beled----Head of a village. Tarboosh----A Turkish turban. Ulema----Learned men. Wakf----Mahommedan Court dealing with succession, etc. Welee----A holy man or saint. Yashmak----A veil for the lower part of the face. Yelek----A long vest or smock. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "WEAVERS": A cloak of words to cover up the real thought behind Antipathy of the man in the wrong to the man in the right Antipathy of the lesser to the greater nature Begin to see how near good is to evil But the years go on, and friends have an end Cherish any alleviating lie Does any human being know what he can bear of temptation Friendship means a giving and a getting He's a barber-shop philosopher Heaven where wives without number awaited him Honesty was a thing he greatly desired--in others How little we can know to-day what we shall feel tomorrow How many conquests have been made in the name of God Monotonously intelligent No virtue in not falling, when you're not tempted Of course I've hated, or I wouldn't be worth a button One does the work and another gets paid Only the supremely wise or the deeply ignorant who never alter Passion to forget themselves Political virtue goes unrewarded She knew what to say and what to leave unsaid Smiling was part of his equipment Sometimes the longest way round is the shortest way home Soul tortured through different degrees of misunderstanding The vague pain of suffered indifference There is no habit so powerful as the habit of care of others There's no credit in not doing what you don't want to do To-morrow is no man's gift Tricks played by Fact to discredit the imagination Triumph of Oriental duplicity over Western civilisation We want every land to do as we do; and we want to make 'em do it We must live our dark hours alone When God permits, shall man despair? Woman's deepest right and joy and pain in one--to comfort EMBERS, Complete By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS Volume 1. EMBERS ROSLEEN WILL YOU COME BACK HOME? MARY CALLAGHAN AND ME KILDARE YOU'LL TRAVEL FAR AND WIDE FARCALLADEN RISE GIVE ME THE LIGHT HEART WHERE SHALL WE BETAKE US? NO MAN'S LAND AT SEA ATHENIAN EYES LIKE THE SEA UNDER THE CLIFF OPEN TRY GATE SUMMER IS COME O FLOWER OF ALL THE WORLD WAS IT SOME GOLDEN STAR? I HEARD THE DESERT CALLING THE FORGOTTEN WORD WHAT WILL IT MATTER? THE COURIER STAR CONTENTS CONTENTS THE WORLD IN MAKING HEW O SON OF MAN AT THE END OF THE WORLD WAYFARERS THE RED PATROL THE YELLOW SWAN THE HEART OF THE PIONEER THE NORTH TRAIL ALONE THE SCARLET HILLS THE WOODSMAN LOVER QUI VIVE THE LITTLE HOUSE SPINNING FLY AWAY, MY HEART SUZON MY LITTLE TENDER HEART THE MEN OF THE NORTH THE CROWNING CLOSE UP W. E. H. WHEN BLOWS THE WIND Volume 2. DOLLY LIFE'S SWEET WAGES TO THE VALLEY THE LILY FLOWER LOVE IN HER COLD GRAVE LIES GRANADA, GRANADA THE NEW APHRODITE AN ANCIENT PLEDGE THE TRIBUTE OF KING HATH THERE IS AN ORCHARD HEART OF THE WORLD EPITAPHS THE BEGGAR THE MAID THE FOOL THE FIGHTER THE SEA-REAPERS THE WATCHER THE WAKING WHEN ONE FORGETS ALOES AND MYRRH IN WASTE PLACES LAST OF ALL AFTER REMEDIAL THE TWILIGHT OF LOVE IRREVOCABLE THE LAST DREAM WAITING IN MAYTIME INSIDE THE BAR THE CHILDREN LITTLE GARAINE TO A LITTLE CHILD L'EMPEREUR, MORT PHYLLIS BAIRNIE Volume 3. IN CAMDEN TOWN JEAN A MEMORY IN CAMP AT JUNIPER COVE JUNIPER COVE TWENTY YEARS AFTER LISTENING NEVERTHELESS ISHMAEL OVER THE HILLS THE DELIVERER THE DESERT ROAD A SON OF THE NILE A FAREWELL FROM THE HAREM AN ARAB LOVE SONG THE CAMEL-DRIVER TO HIS CAMEL THE TALL DABOON THERE IS SORROW ON THE SEA THE AUSTRALIAN STOCKRIDER THE BRIDGE OF THE HUNDRED SPANS NELL LATORE INTRODUCTION I had not intended that Embers should ever be given to the public, but friends whose judgment I respect have urged me to include it in the subscription edition at least, and with real reluctance I have consented. It was a pleasure to me to have one piece of work of mine which made no bid for pence or praise; but if that is a kind of selfishness, perhaps unnecessary, since no one may wish to read the verses, I will now free myself from any chance of reproach. This much I will say to soothe away my own compunctions, that the book will only make the bid for popularity or consideration with near a score of others, and not separately, and that my responsibility is thus modified. The preface to Embers says all that need be said about a collection which is, on the whole, merely a book of youth and memory and impressionism in verse. At least it was all spontaneous; it was not made to order on any page of it, and it is the handful left from very many handfuls destroyed. Since the first edition (intended only for my personal friends) was published I have written "Rosleen," "Where Shall We Betake Us?" "Granada," "Mary Callaghan and Me," "The Crowning" (on the Coronation of King Edward VII), the fragment "Kildare" and "I Heard the Desert Calling"; and I have also included others like "The Tall Dakoon" and "The Red Patrol," written over twenty years ago. "Mary Callaghan and Me" has been set to music by Mr. Max Muller, and has made many friends, and "The Crowning" was the Coronation ode of 'The People', which gave a prize, too ample I think, for the best musical setting of the lines. Many of the other pieces in 'Embers' have been set to music by distinguished composers like Sir Edward Elgar, who has made a song-cycle of several, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Mr. Arthur Foote, Mrs. Amy Woodforde Finden, Robert Somerville, and others. The first to have musical setting was "You'll Travel Far and Wide," to which in 1895 Mr. Arthur Foote gave fame as "An Irish Folk Song." Like "O Flower of All the World," by Mrs. Amy Woodforde Finden, it has had a world of admirers, and such singers as Mrs. Henschel helped to make Mr. Foote's music loved by thousands, and conferred something more than an ephemeral acceptance of the author's words. When thou comest to the safe tent of the good comrade, abide there till thy going forth with a stedfast mind; and if, at the hospitable fire, thou hast learned the secret of a heart, thou shalt keep it holy, as the North Wind the trouble of the Stars. PROEM And the Angel said: "What hast thou for all thy travail-- what dost thou bring with thee out of the dust of the world?" And the man answered: "Behold, I bring one perfect yesterday!" And the Angel questioned: "Hast thou then no to-morrow? Hast thou no hope?" And the man replied: "Who am I that I should hope! Out of all my life I have been granted one sheaf of memory." And the Angel said: "Is this all!" And the man answered: "Of all else was I robbed by the way: but Memory was hidden safely in my heart--the world found it not." ROSLEEN "She's the darlin' of the parish, she's the pride of Inniskillen; 'Twould make your heart lep up to see her trippin' down the glen; There's not a lad of life and fame that wouldn't take her shillin' And inlist inside her service-did ye hear her laugh- in' then? Did ye see her with her hand in mine the day that Clancy married? Ah, darlin', how we footed it-the grass it was so green! And when the neighbours wandered home, I was the guest that tarried, An hour plucked from Paradise--come back to me, Rosleen! Across the seas, beyand the hills, by lovely Inniskillen, The rigiment come marchin'--I hear the call once more Shure, a woman's but a woman--so I took the Ser- geant's shillin', For the pride o' me was hurted--shall I never see her more? She turned her face away from me, and black as night the land became; Her eyes were jewels of the sky, the finest iver seen; She left me for another lad, he was a lad of life and fame, And the heart of me was hurted--but there's none that's like Rosleen!" WILL YOU COME BACK HOME? Will you come back home, where the young larks are singin'? The door is open wide, and the bells of Lynn are ringin'; There's a little lake I know, And a boat you used to row To the shore beyond that's quiet--will you come back home? Will you come back, darlin'? Never heed the pain and blightin', Never trouble that you're wounded, that you bear the scars of fightin'; Here's the luck o' Heaven to you, Here's the hand of love will brew you The cup of peace--ah, darlin', will you come back home? MARY CALLAGHAN AND ME It was as fine a churchful as you ever clapt an eye on; Oh, the bells was ringin' gaily, and the sun was shinin' free; There was singers, there was clargy--"Bless ye both," says Father Tryon-- They was weddin' Mary Callaghan and me. There was gatherin' of women, there was hush upon the stairway, There was whisperin' and smilin', but it was no place for me; A little ship was comin' into harbour through the fair- way-- It belongs to Mary Callaghan and me. Shure, the longest day has endin', and the wildest storm has fallin'-- There's a young gossoon in yander, and he sits upon my knee; There's a churchful for the christenin'--do you hear the imp a-callin'? He's the pride of Mary Callaghan and me. KILDARE He's the man that killed Black Care, He's the pride of all Kildare; Shure the devil takes his hat off whin he comes: 'Tis the clargy bow before him, 'Tis the women they adore him, And the Lord Lieutenant orders out the drums-- For his hangin', all the drums, All the drums! YOU'LL TRAVEL FAR AND WIDE You'll travel far and wide, dear, but you'll come back again, You'll come back to your father and your mother in the glen, Although we should be lyin' 'neath the heather grasses then-- You'll be comin' back, my darlin'! You'll see the icebergs sailin' along the wintry foam, The white hair of the breakers, and the wild swans as they roam; But you'll not forget the rowan beside your father's home You'll be comin' back, my darlin'! New friends will clasp your hand, dear, new faces on you smile; You'll bide with them and love them, but you'll long for us the while; For the word across the water, and the farewell by the stile-- For the true heart's here, my darlin'! You'll hear the wild birds singin' beneath a brighter sky, The roof-tree of your home, dear, it will be grand and high; But you'll hunger for the hearthstone where, a child, you used to lie-- You'll be comin' back, my darlin'! And when your foot is weary, and when your heart is sore, And you come back to the moor that spreads beyand your father's door, There'll be many an ancient comrade to greet you on the shore-- At your comin' back, my darlin' ! Ah, the hillock cannot cover, and the grass it cannot hide The love that never changeth, whatever wind or tide; And though you'll not be seein', we'll be standin' by your side-- You'll be comin' back, my darlin'! O, there's no home like the old home, there's no pillow like the breast You slumbered on in childhood, like a young bird in the nest: We are livin' still and waitin', and we're hopin' for the best-- Ah, you're comin' back, my darlin'--comin' back! FARCALLADEN RISE Oh, it's down the long side of Farcalladen Rise, With the knees pressing hard to the saddle, my men; With the sparks from the hoofs giving light to the eyes, And our hearts beating hard as we rode to the glen! And it's back with the ring of the chain and the spur, And it's back with the sun on the hill and the moor, And it's back is the thought sets my pulses astir,-- But I'll never go back to Farcalladen more! Oh, it's down the long side of Farcalladen Rise, And it's swift as an arrow and straight as a spear, And it's keen as the frost when the summer-time dies, That we rode to the glen, and with never a fear. And it's hey for the hedge, and it's hey for the wall, And it's over the stream with an echoing cry; And there's three fled for ever from old Donegal, And there's two that have shown how bold Irishmen die! For it's rest when the gallop is over, my men, And it's here's to the lads that have ridden their last; And it's here's to the lasses we leave in the glen, With a smile for the future, a sigh for the past! GIVE ME THE LIGHT HEART Give, me the light heart, Heaven above! Give me the hand of a friend, Give me one high fine spirit to love, I'll abide my fate to the end: I will help where I can, I will cherish my own, Nor walk the steep way of the world alone. WHERE SHALL WE BETAKE US? "Where shall we betake us when the day's work is over? (Ah, red is the rose-bush in the lane.) Happy is the maid that knows the footstep of her lover-- (Sing the song, the Eden song, again.) Who shall listen to us when black sorrow comes a-reaping? (See the young lark falling from the sky.) Happy is the man that has a true heart in his keeping-- True hearts flourish when the roses die." NO MAN'S LAND Oh, we have been a-maying, dear, beyond the city gates, The little city set upon a hill; And we have seen the jocund smile upon the lips of Fate, And we have known the splendours of our will. Oh, we have wandered far, my dear, and we have loved apace; A little hut we built upon the sand, The sun without to lighten it, within, your golden face,-- O happy dream, O happy No Man's Land! The pleasant furniture of spring was set in all the fields, And gay and wholesome were the herbs and flowers; Our simple cloth of love was spread with all that nature yields, And frugal only were the passing hours. Oh, we have been a-maying, dear, we've left the world behind, We've sung and danced and gossiped as we strayed; And when within our little but your fingers draw the blind, We'll loiter by the fire that love has made. AT SEA Through the round window above, the deep palpable blue, The wan bright moon, and the sweet stinging breath of the sea; And below, in the shadows, thine eyes like stars, And Love brooding low, and the warm white glory of thee. Oh, soft was the song in my soul, and soft beyond thought were thy lips, And thou wert mine own, and Eden reconquered was mine And the way that I go is the way of thy feet, and the breath that I breathe, It hath being from thee and life from the life that is thine! ATHENIAN Your voice I knew, its cadences and thrill; It stilled the tumult and the overthrow When Athens trembled to the people's will; I knew it--'twas a thousand years ago. I see the fountains, and the gardens where You sang the fury from the Satrap's brow; I feel the quiver in the raptured air, I heard it in the Athenian grove--I hear you now. EYES LIKE THE SEA Eyes like the sea, look up, the beacons brighten, Home comes the sailor, home across the tide! Back drifts the cloud, behold the heavens whiten, The port of Love is open, he anchors at thy side. UNDER THE CLIFF The sands and the sea, and the white gulls fleeting, The mist on the island, the cloud on the hill; The song in my heart, and the old hope beating Its life 'gainst the bars of thy will. OPEN THY GATE Here in the highway without thy garden wall, Here in the babel and the glare, Sick for thy haven, O Sweet, to thee I call: Open thy gate unto my prayer-- Open thy gate. Cool is thy garden-plot, pleasant thy shade, All things commend thee in thy place; Dwelling on thy perfectness, O Sweet, I am afraid, But, fearing, long to look upon thy face-- Open thy gate. Over the ample globe, searching for thee, Thee and thy garden have I come; Ended my questing: no more, no more for me, O Sweet, the pilgrim's sandals, call me home-- Open thy gate. SUMMER IS COME Summer is come; the corn is in the ear, The haze is swimming where the beeches stand; Summer is come, though winter months be here-- My love is summer passing through the land. Summer is come; I hear the skylarks sing, The honeysuckle flaunts it to the bees; Summer is come, and 'tis not yet the spring-- My love is summer blessing all she sees. Summer is come; I see an open door, A sweet hand beckons, and I know That, winter or summer, I shall go forth no more-- My heart is homing where her summer-roses grow. O FLOWER OF ALL THE WORLD O flower of all the world, O flower of all, The garden where thou dwellest is so fair, Thou art so goodly, and so queenly tall, Thy sweetness scatters sweetness everywhere, O flower of all! O flower of all the years, O flower of all, A day beside thee is a day of days; Thy voice is softer than the throstle's call, There is not song enough to sing thy praise, O flower of all! O flower of all the years, O flower of all, I seek thee in thy garden, and I dare To love thee; and though my deserts be small, Thou art the only flower I would wear, O flower of all! WAS IT SOME GOLDEN STAR? Once in another land, Ages ago, You were a queen, and I, I loved you so: Where was it that we loved-- Ah, do you know? Was it some golden star Hot with romance? Was it in Malabar, Italy, France? Did we know Charlemagne, Dido, perchance? But you were a queen, and I Fought for you then: How did you honour me-- More than all men! Kissed me upon the lips; Kiss me again. Have you forgotten it, All that we said? I still remember though Ages have fled. Whisper the word of life,-- "Love is not dead." I HEARD THE DESERT CALLING I heard the desert calling, and my heart stood still-- There was winter in my world and in my heart; A breath came from the mesa, and a message stirred my will, And my soul and I arose up to depart. I heard the desert calling, and I knew that over there In an olive-sheltered garden where the mesquite grows, Was a woman of the sunrise with the star-shine in her hair And a beauty that the almond-blossom blows. In the night-time when the ghost-trees glimmered in the moon, Where the mesa by the water-course was spanned, Her loveliness enwrapped me like the blessedness of June, And all my life was thrilling in her hand. I hear the desert calling, and my heart stands still-- There is summer in my world, and in my heart; A breath comes from the mesa, and a will beyond my will Binds my footsteps as I rise up to depart. THE FORGOTTEN WORD Once in the twilight of the Austrian hills, A word came to me, wonderful and good; If I had spoken it--that message of the stars-- Love would have filled thy blood; Love would have sent thee pulsing to my arms, Laughing with joy, thy heart a nestling bird An instant passed--it fled; and now I seek in vain For that forgotten word. WHAT WILL IT MATTER? What will this matter, dear, when you and I Have left our sad world for some fairer sky? What will it matter, dear, when, far apart, We miss the touch of hand and beat of heart; When one's at peace, while unto one is given With lonely feet to walk the hills at even? What will it matter that one fault more now Brings clouds upon one eager mortal brow, That one grace less is given to one poor soul, When both drink from the last immortal bowl? For fault and grace, dear love, when we go hence Will find the same Eternal recompense. THE COURIER STAR Into a New World wandered I, A strong vast realm afar; And down the white peaks of its sky, Beckoned my courier star. It hailed me to mine ancient North,-- The meadows of the Pole; It whistled my gay hunters forth, It bugled in my soul. On plateaux of the constant snow I heard the meteors whir; I saw the red wolves nor'ward go From my low huts of fir. The dun moose ran the deep ravine, The musk-ox ranged the plain; The hunter's song dripped in between In notes of scarlet rain. The land was mine: its lonely pride, Its distant deep desires; And I abode, as hunters bide, With joy beside its fires. Into a New World wandered I, A world austere, sublime; And unseen feet came sauntering by; A voice with ardent chime Rang down the idle lanes of sleep; I waked: the night was still; I saw my star its sentry keep Along a southern hill. O flaming star! my courier star! My herald, fine and tall! You gestured from your opal car, I answered to that call. I rose; the flumes of snow I trod, I trailed to southward then; I left behind the camps of God, And sought the tents of men. And where a princely face looked through The curtains of the play Of life, O star, you paused; I knew The comrade of my day. And good the trails that I have trod, My courier star before; And good the nor'land camps of God: And though I lodge no more Where stalwart deeds and dreams rejoice, And gallant hunters roam, Where I can hear your voice, your voice, I drive the tent-peg home. THE WORLD IN MAKING When God was making the world, (Swift was the wind and white was the fire) The feet of His people danced the stars; There was laughter and swinging bells, And clanging iron and breaking breath, The hammers of heaven making the hills, The vales, on the anvils of God. (Wild is the fire and low is the wind) When God had finished the world, (Bright was the fire and sweet was the wind) Up from the valleys came song, To answer the morning stars; And the hand of man on the anvil rang, His breath was big in his breast, his life Beat strong 'gainst the walls of the world. (Glad is the wind and tall is the fire) HEW None shall stand in the way of the lord, The Lord of the Earth--of the rivers and trees, Of the cattle and fields and vines: Hew! Here shall I build me my cedar home, A city with gates, a road to the sea-- For I am the lord of the Earth: Hew! Hew! Hew and hew, and the sap of the tree Shall be yours, and your bones shall be strong, Shall be yours, and your heart shall rejoice, Shall be yours, and the city be yours, And the key of its gates be the key Of the home where your little ones dwell. Hew and be strong! Hew and rejoice! For man is the lord of the Earth, And God is the Lord over all. O SON OF MAN "Son of man, stand upon thy feet and I will speak to thee." O son of man, behold If thou shouldst stumble on the nameless trail, The trail that no man rides, Lift up thy heart, Behold, O son of man, thou hast a helper near! O son of man, take heed If thou shouldst fall upon the vacant plain, The plain that no man loves, Reach out thy hand, Take heed, O son of man, strength shall be given thee! O son of man, rejoice: If thou art blinded even at the door, The door of the Safe Tent, Sing in thy heart, Rejoice, O son of man, thy pilot leads thee home! AT THE END OF THE WORLD In the lodge of the Mother of Men, In the land of Desire, Are the embers of fire, Are the ashes of those who return. Who return to the world; Who flame at the breath Of the Mockers of Death. O Sweet, we will voyage again To the camp of Love's fire, Nevermore to return! O love, by the light of thine eyes We will fare over-sea; We will be As the silver-winged herons that rest By the shallows, The shallows of sapphire stone; No more shall we wander alone. As the foam to the shore Is my spirit to thine, And God's serfs as they fly,-- The Mockers of Death- They will breathe on the embers of fire We shall live by that breath. Sweet, thy heart to my heart, As we journey afar, No more, nevermore, to return! WAYFARERS War does the fire no longer burn? (I am so lonely) Why does the tent-door swing outward? (I have no home) Oh, let me breathe hard in your face! (I am so lonely) Oh, why do you shut your eyes to me? (I have no home) Let us make friends with the stars; (I am so lonely) Give me your hand, I will hold it; (I have no home) Let us go hunting together: (I am so lonely) We will sleep at God's camp to-night. (I have no home) THE RED PATROL He stands in the porch of the World-- (Why should the door be shut?) The grey wolf waits at his heel, (Why is the window barred?) Wild is the trail from the Kimash Hills, The blight has fallen on bush and tree, The choking earth has swallowed the streams, 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?) He waits at the threshold stone-- (Why should the key-hole rust?) The eagle broods at his side, (Why should the blind be drawn?) Long has he watched and far has he called-- The lonely sentinel of the North-- "Who goes there?" to the wandering soul Heavy of heart is the Red Patrol-- (Why should the key-hole rust?) The Scarlet Hunter is sick for home, (Why should the blind be drawn?) Heavy of heart is the Red Patrol-- (Why should the key-hole rust?) The Scarlet Hunter is sick for home, (Why should the blind be drawn?) 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?) THE YELLOW SWAN In the flash of the singing dawn, At the door of the Great One, The joy of his lodge knelt down, Knelt down, and her hair in the sun Shone like showering dust, And her eyes were as eyes of the fawn. And she cried to her lord, "O my lord, O my life, From the desert I come; From the hills of the Dawn." And he lifted the curtain and said, "Hast thou seen It, the Yellow Swan?" And she lifted her head, and her eyes Were as lights in the dark, And her hands folded slow on her breast, And her face was as one who has seen The gods and the place where they dwell; And she said, "Is it meet that I kneel, That I kneel as I speak to my lord?" And he answered her, "Nay, but to stand, And to sit by my side; But speak: thou has followed the trail, Hast thou found It, the Yellow Swan?" And she stood as a queen, and her voice Was as one who hath seen the Hills, The Hills of the Mighty Men, And hath heard them cry in the night, Hath heard them call in the dawn, Hath seen It, the Yellow Swan. And she said, "It is not for my lord"; And she murmured, "I cannot tell; But my lord must go as I went, And my lord must come as I came, And my lord shall be wise." And he cried in his wrath, "What is thine, it is mine, And thine eyes are my eyes, Thou shalt speak of the Yellow Swan." But she answered him, "Nay, though I die. I have lain in the nest of the Swan, I have heard, I have known; When thine eyes too have seen, When thine ears too have heard, Thou shalt do with me then as thou wilt." And he lifted his hand to strike, And he straightened his spear to slay; But a great light struck on his eyes, And he heard the rushing of wings, And his long spear fell from his hand, And a terrible stillness came: And when the spell passed from his eyes He stood in his doorway alone, And gone was the queen of his soul And gone was the Yellow Swan. THE HEART OF THE PIONEER My dear love, she waits for me, None other my world is adorning; My true love I come to thee, My dear, the white star of the morning. Eagles, spread out your wings,-- Behold where the red dawn is breaking! Hark, 'tis my darling sings, The flowers, the song-birds, awaking-- See, where she comes to me, My love, ah, my dear love! THE NORTH TRAIL "Oh, where did you get them, the bonny, bonny roses That blossom in your cheeks, and the morning in your eyes?" "I got them on the North Trail, the road that never closes, That widens to the seven gold gates of Paradise." "O come, let us camp in the North Trail together, With the night-fires lit and the tent-pegs down." ALONE O, O, the winter wind, the North wind-- My snow-bird, where art thou gone? O, O the wailing wind, the night wind-- The cold nest; I am alone. O, O my snow-bird! O, O, the waving sky, the white sky-- My snow-bird, thou fliest far; O, O the eagle's cry, the wild cry-- My lost love, my lonely star. O, O my snow-bird! THE SCARLET HILLS Brothers, we go to the Scarlet Hills-- (Little gold sun, come out of the dawn.) There we will meet in the cedar groves-- (Shining white dew, come down.) There is a bed where you sleep so sound, The little good folk of the Hills will guard, Till the morning wakes and your love comes home-- (Fly away, heart, to the Scarlet Hills.) THE WOODSMAN LOVER High in a nest of the tam'rac tree, Swing under, so free, and swing over; Swing under the sun and swing over the world, My snow-bird, my gay little lover- My gay little lover, don, don! . . . don, don! When the winter is done I will come back home, To the nest swinging under and over, Swinging under and over and waiting for me, Your rover, my snow-bird, your lover-- My lover and rover, don, don! . . . don, don! QUI VIVE Qui vive! Who is it cries in the dawn, Cries when the stars go down? Who is it comes through the mist, The mist that is fine like lawn, The mist like an angel's gown? Who is it comes in the dawn? Qui vive! Qui vive! in the dawn. Qui vive! Who is it passeth us by, Still in the dawn and the mist-- Tall seigneur of the dawn, A two-edged sword at his thigh, A shield of gold at his wrist? Who is it hurrieth by? Qui vive! Qui vive! in the dawn. Qui vive! Who saileth into the morn, Out of the wind of the dawn? "Follow, oh, follow me on!" Calleth a distant horn. He is here--he is there--he is gone, Tall seigneur of the dawn! Qui vive! Qui vive! in the dawn. THE LITTLE HOUSE I Children, the house is empty, The house behind the tall hill; Lonely and still is the empty house. There is no face in the doorway, There is no fire in the chimney-- Come and gather beside the gate, Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills. Where has the wild dog vanished? Where has the swift foot gone? Where is the hand that found the good fruit, That made a garret of wholesome herbs? Where is the voice that awoke the morn, The tongue that defied the terrible beasts? Come and listen beside the door, Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills. II Sorrowful is the little house, The little house by the winding stream; All the laughter has died away Out of the little house. But down there come from the lofty hills Footsteps and eyes agleam, Bringing the laughter of yesterday Into the little house, By the winding stream and the hills. Di ron, di ron, di ron-don! III What is there like to the cry of the bird That sings in its nest in the lilac tree? A voice the sweetest you ever have heard; It is there, it is here, ci, ci! It is there, it is here, it must roam and roam, And wander from shore to shore, Till I travel the hills and bring it home, And enter and close my door-- Row along, row along home, ci, ci! What is there like to the laughing star, Far up from the lilac tree? A face that's brighter and finer far; It laughs and it shines, ci, ci! It laughs and it shines, it must roam and roam, And travel from shore to shore, Till I get me forth and bring it home, And house it within my door-- Row along, row along home, ci, ci! SPINNING Spin, spin, belle Mergaton! The moon wheels full, and the tide flows high, And your wedding-gown you must put it on Ere the night hath no moon in the sky Gigoton, Mergaton, spin! Spin, spin, belle Mergaton! Your gown shall be stitched ere the old moon fade: The age of a moon shall your hands spin on, Or a wife in her shroud shall be laid-- Gigoton, Mergaton, spin! Spin, spin, belle Mergaton! The Little Good Folk the spell they have cast; By your work well done while the moon hath shone, Ye shall cleave unto joy at last-- Gigoton, Mergaton, spin! FLY AWAY, MY HEART "O traveller, see where the red sparks rise," (Fly away, my heart, fly away) But dark is the mist in the traveller's eyes. (Fly away, my heart, fly away) "O traveller, see far down the gorge, The crimson light from my father's forge-" (Fly away, my heart, fly away) "O traveller, hear how the anvils ring"; (Fly away, my heart, fly away) But the traveller heard, ah, never a thing: (Fly away, my heart, fly away) "O traveller, loud do the bellows roar, And my father waits by the smithy door-" (Fly away, my heart, fly away) "O traveller, see you thy true love's grace," (Fly away, my heart, fly away) And now there is joy in the traveller's face: (Fly away, my heart, fly away) Oh, wild does he ride through the rain and mire, To greet his love by the smithy fire-- (Fly away, my heart, fly away) SUZON O mealman white, give me your daughter, Oh, give her to me, your sweet Suzon! O mealman dear, you can do no better, For I have a chateau at Malmaison. Black charcoalman, you shall not have her She shall not marry you, my Suzon-- A bag of meal, and a sack of carbon! Non, non, non, non, non, non, non, non Go look at your face, my fanfaron, For my daughter and you would be night and day. Non, non, non, non, non, non, non, non, Not for your chateau at Malmaison; Non, non, non, non, non, non, non, non, You shall not marry her, my Suzon. MY LITTLE TENDER HEART My little tender heart, O gai, vive le roi! My little tender heart, O gai, vive le roi! 'Tis for a grand baron, Vive le roi, la reine! 'Tis for a grand baron, Vive Napoleon! My mother promised it, O gai, vive le roi! My mother promised it, O gai, vive le roi! To a gentleman of the king, Vive le roi, la reine! To a gentleman of the king, Vive Napoleon! Oh, say, where goes your love? O gai, vive le roi! Oh, say, where goes your love? O gai, vive le roi! He rides on a white horse, Vive le roi, la reine! He wears a silver sword, Vive Napoleon! Oh, grand to the war he goes, O gai, vive le roi! Oh, grand to the war he goes, O gai, vive le roi! Gold and silver he will bring, Vive le roi, la reine! And eke the daughter of a king-- Vive Napoleon! THE MEN OF THE NORTH They have wrestled their thews with the Arctic bear, With tireless moose they've trod; They have drained heel-deep of a fighting air, And breasted the winds of God. They have stretched their beds in the hummocked snow, They have set their teeth to the Pole; With Death they have gamed it, throw for throw, And drunk with him bowl for bowl-- They are all for thee, O England! In their birch canoes they have run cloud-high, On the crest of a nor'land storm; They have soaked the sea, and have braved the sky, And laughed at the Conqueror Worm. They reck not beast and they fear no man, They have trailed where the panther glides; On the edge of a mountain barbican, They have tracked where the reindeer hides-- And these are for thee, O England! They have freed your flag where the white Pole-Star Hangs out its auroral flame; Where the bones of your Franklin's heroes are They have honoured your ancient name. And, iron in blood and giant in girth, They have stood for your title-deed Of the infinite North, and your lordly worth, And your pride and your ancient greed-- And for love of thee, O England! THE CROWNING A thousand years of power, A thousand marches done, Lands beyond lands our dower, Flag with no setting sun-- Now to the new King's sealing, Come from the farthest seas, Sons of the croft and sheiling, Sons of the moor and leas-- Those that went from us, daring The wastes and the wilds and the wood: Hither they come to us, sharing Our glory, the call of the blood; Hither they come to the sealing-- They or the seed of them come, Bring the new King the revealing Of continents yesterday dumb. Out on the veldt, in the pineland, Camped by the spring or the hill, Pressing the grapes of the vineland, Grinding the wheat at the mill, Oracles whispered the message Meant for the ear of the King-- Joyous and splendid the presage, Lofty the vision they bring! Each for his new land--he made it; Each for the Old Land which gave Treasure, that none should invade it, Blood its high altars to lave; Each for the brotherhood nations, All of the nations for each: Here giving thanks and oblations, One in our blood and our speech, Pledging our love and alliance, Faith upon faith for the King, Making no oath in defiance, Crying, "No challenge we fling," Yet for the peace of all people, Yet for the good of our own, Here, with our prayers and oblations, Pledge we our lives to the throne! CLOSE UP You heard the bugles calling, comrades, brothers,-- "Close up! Close up!" You mounted to go forth, You answered "We are coming," and you gathered, And paraded with your Captains in the North. From here you came, from there you came, your voices All flashing with your joy as flash the stars, You waited, watched, until, the last one riding Out of the night, came roll-call after wars. Unsling your swords, off with your knapsacks, brothers! We'll mess here at headquarters once again; Drink and forget the scars; drink and remember The joy of fighting and the pride of pain. We will forget: the great game rustles by us, The furtive world may whistle at the door, We'll not go forth; we'll furlough here together-- Close up! Close up! 'Tis comrades evermore! And Captains, our dear Captains, standing steady, Aged with battle, but ever young with love, Tramping the zones round, high have we hung your virtues, Like shields along the wall of life, like armaments above: Like shields your love, our Captains, like armaments your virtues, No rebel lives among us, we are yours; The old command still holds us, the old flag is our one flag, We answer to a watchword that endures! Close up, close up, my brothers! Lift your glasses, Drink to our Captains, pledging ere we roam, Far from the good land, the dear familiar faces, The love of the old regiment at home! W. E. H. "Henley is dead!" Ah, but the sound and the sight of him, Buoyant, commanding, and strong, suffering, noble in mind! Gone, and no more shall we have any discourse or delight of him, Wearing his pain like a song, casting his troubles behind. Gallant and fair! Feeling the soul and the ruth of things, Probing the wounds of the world, healing he brought and surcease-- Laughter he gave, beauty to teach us the truth of things, Music to march to the fight, ballads for hours of peace. Now it is done! Fearless the soul of him strove for us, Viking in blood and in soul, baring his face to the rain, Facing the storm he fared on, singing for England and love of us, On to the last corral where now he lies beaten and slain. Beaten and slain! Yes, but England hath heed of him, Singer of high degree, master of thought and of word-- She shall bear witness with tears, of the pride and the loss and the need of him; We shall measure the years by the voice and the song unheard. WHEN BLOWS THE WIND When blows the wind and drives the sleet, And all the trees droop down; When all the world is sad, 'tis meet Good company be known: And, in my heart, good company Sits by the fire and sings to me. When warriors return, and one That went returns no more; When dusty is the road we run, And garners have no store; One ingle-nook right warm shall be Where my heart hath good company. When man shall flee and woman fail, And folly mock and hope deceive, Let cowards beat the breast and wail, I'll homeward hie; I will not grieve: I'll curtains draw, I'll there set free My heart's beloved boon company. When kings shall favour, ladies call My service to their side; When roses grow upon the wall Of life, and love inside; I'll get me home with joy to be In my heart's own good company! EMBERS By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. CONTENTS: DOLLY LIFE'S SWEET WAGES TO THE VALLEY THE LILY FLOWER LOVE IN HER COLD GRAVE LIES GRANADA, GRANADA THE NEW APHRODITE AN ANCIENT PLEDGE THE TRIBUTE OF KING HATH THERE IS AN ORCHARD HEART OF THE WORLD EPITAPHS THE BEGGAR THE MAID THE FOOL THE FIGHTER THE SEA-REAPERS THE WATCHER THE WAKING WHEN ONE FORGETS ALOES AND MYRRH IN WASTE PLACES LAST OF ALL AFTER REMEDIAL THE TWILIGHT OF LOVE IRREVOCABLE THE LAST DREAM WAITING IN MAYTIME INSIDE THE BAR THE CHILDREN LITTLE GARAINE TO A LITTLE CHILD DOLLY King Rufus he did hunt the deer, With a hey ho, come and kiss me, Dolly! It was the spring-time of the year-- Hey ho, Dolly shut her eyes! King Rufus was a bully boy, He hunted all the day for joy, Sweet Dolly she was ever coy: And who would e'er be wise That looked in Dolly's eyes? King Rufus he did have his day, With a hey ho, come and kiss me, Dolly! So get ye forth where dun deer play-- Hey ho, Dolly comes again! The greenwood is the place for me, For that is where the dun deer be, And who would stay at home, That might with Dolly roam? Sing hey ho, come and kiss me, Dolly! LIFE'S SWEET WAGES Who would lie down and close his eyes While yet the lark sings o'er the dale? Who would to Love make no replies, Nor drink the nut-brown ale, While throbs the pulse, and full's the purse And all the world's for sale? Though wintry blasts may prove unkind, When winter's past we do forget; Love's breast in summer-time is kind, And all's well while life's with us yet. Hey ho, now the lark is mating-- Life's sweet wages are in waiting! TO THE VALLEY Come hither, oh come hither, There's a bride upon her bed; They have strewn her o'er with roses, There are roses 'neath her head: Life is love and tears and laughter, But the laughter it is dead-- Sing the way to the Valley, to the Valley- Hey, but the roses they are red! THE LILY FLOWER Oh, love, it is a lily flower, (Sing, my captain, sing, my lady!) The sword shall cleave it, Life shall leave it-- Who shall know the hour? (Sing, my lady, still!) LOVE IN HER COLD GRAVE LIES Love in her cold grave lies, But that is not my love: My love hath constant eyes, My love her life doth prove; That love, the poorer, dies-- Ah, that is not my love! Love in her cold grave lies, But she will wake again; With trembling feet will rise, Will call this love in vain, That she doth now despise Ah, love shall wake again! GRANADA, GRANADA Granada, Granada, thy gardens are gay, And bright are thy stars, the high stars above; But as flowers that fade and are grey, But as dusk at the end of the day Are ye to the light in the eyes of my love-- In the eyes, in the soul, of my love. Granada, Granada, oh, when shall I see My love in thy garden, there waiting for me! Beloved, beloved, have pity and make Not the sun shut its eyes, its hot envious eyes; And the world in the darkness of night, Be debtor to thee for its light. Turn thy face, turn thy face from the skies To the love, to the pain in my eyes. Granada, Granada, oh, when shall I see My love in thy garden, there waiting for me! THE NEW APHRODITE What though the gods of the eld be dead, Here are the mountains of azure and snow, Here are the valleys where loves are wed, And lilies in blow. Here are the hands that are lucid, sweet, Wound at the wrist with an amber beading, Folds of the seafoam to cover the feet, Mortals misleading. Down to the opaline lips of the sea Wander the lost ones, fallen but mighty, Stretching out hands, crying, "Turn unto me, O Aphrodite!" See where they lift up their faces and scan, Over the wave-heaps, thy coming; despite thee, Thou canst not fetter the soul of a man, O Aphrodite! Nay, but our bodies we bend, and we give All that the heart hath, loving, not knowing Whether the best is to die or to live, Coming or going. We shall be taken, but thou shalt live on, Swallowed in sea-drifts that never affright thee; Smiling, thou'lt lift up thy sweet hands alone, Ah, Aphrodite! Over thy face is a veil of white sea-mist, Only thine eyes shine like stars; bless or blight me, I will hold close to the leash at thy wrist, O Aphrodite! Rosy and proud are the skies of the East, Love-dowered moons to enswathe thee, delight thee: Thy days and our days--are thine then the least, O Aphrodite? Thou in the East and I here in the West, Under our newer skies purple and pleasant: Who shall decide which is better, attest, Saga or peasant? Thou with Serapis, Osiris, and Isis, I with Jehovah, in vapours and shadows; Thou with the gods' joy-enhancing devices, Sweet-smelling meadows. What is there given us?--Food and some raiment, Toiling to reach to a Patmian haven, Giving up all for uncertain repayment, Feeding the raven. Striving to peer through the infinite azure, Alternate turning to earthward and falling, Measuring life with Damastian measure, Finite, appalling. What does it matter! They passed who with Homer Poured out the wine at the feet of their idols: Passing, what found they? To-come a misnomer, It and their idols? Who knows, ah, who knows! Here in this garden, Heliotrope, hyacinth, soft suns to light me, Leaning out, peering, thou, thou art my warden- Thou, Aphrodite! Up from the future of all things there come, Marching abreast in their stately endeavour, Races unborn, to the beat of the drum, Of the Forever. Resting not, beating down all the old traces, Falls the light step of the new-coming nations, Burning on altars of our loved graces, Their new oblations. What shall we know of it, we who have lifted Up the dark veil, done sowing and reaping; What shall we care if our burdens be shifted, Waking or sleeping? Sacristan, acolyte, player or preacher, Each to his office, but who holds the key? Death, only death, thou, the ultimate teacher, Will show it to me. I am, Thou art, and the strong-speaking Jesus, One in the end of an infinite truth?-- Eyes of a prophet or sphinx may deceive us, Bearing us ruth, But when the forts and the barriers fall, Shall we not find One, the true, the almighty, Wisely to speak with the worst of us all, O Aphrodite? Waiting, I turn from the futile, the human, Gone is the life of me, laughing with youth; Steals to learn all in the face of a woman, Mendicant Truth. AN ANCIENT PLEDGE Fair be the garden where their loves may dwell, Safe be the highway where their feet may go; Rich be the meadows where their hands may toil, The fountains many where the good wines flow; Full be their harvest bins with corn and oil, And quick their hearts all wise delights to know; To sorrow may their humour be a foil, Tardy their footsteps to the gate Farewell. Deep be your cups. Our hearts the gods make light: Drink, that their joy may never know good-night! THE TRIBUTE OF KING HATH Oh, bring to me a cup of gold, And bring a platter fair, And summon forth my Captain old, Who keeps the royal stair. And fetch a stoup of that rare wine That hailed my father's fame; And bear some white bread from the shrine Built to my mother's name. Then, good my gentlemen, bring down My robe of soft samite; And let the royal horn be blown, For we ride far to-night. Within the pleasant Vale of Loe Beside the Sea of Var, The Daughter of our ancient foe Dwells where her people are. Tribute her fathers paid to mine-- Young prince to elder crown; But for a jest 'twixt bread and wine, They struck our banner down. And we had foes from Blymar Hills, From Gathan and Dagost, And pirates from Bagol that spills Its refuse on our coast. And we were girded South and North; And there beyond the Var, They drove our goodly fighters forth, And dimmed our ancient star. Now they have passed us, home for home, And matched us town for town; Their daughters to our sons now come-- Our feud it weareth down. Between their cups, the hill-men cry, "The Lady of the Loe!" The sea-kings swing their flags peak-high Where'er her galleons go. Once when the forge of battle sang 'Tween Varan and Thogeel; And when ten thousand stirrups rang 'Twixt girth and bloody heel, I saw her ride 'mid mirk and fire, Unfearing din and death, Her eyes upflaming like a pyre, Her fearless smile beneath. Nor'land 'gainst Southland then she drove, A million serfs to free; The reeking shuttle lifeward wove, Through death from land to sea. And perched upon the Hill of Zoom, My gentlemen beside, I saw the weft shake in the loom, The revel blazon wide, Until a thousand companies-- Serf-lords from out Thogeel Their broadswords brake across their knees, Good captives to her steel. And then I sware by name and crown, And by the Holy Ghost, When Peace should ride with pennon blown, From Gathan to Dagost, Unto her kingdom I should get, And come not back again, Until a queen's hand I had set Upon my bridle rein. Our ships now nestle at Her coast, Her corn our garner fills; And all is quiet at Dagost, And on the Blymar Hills. And I will do a deed to bind An ancient love once more; My gentlemen shall ride behind, My Captain on before; And we will journey forth to-night Towards the Sea of Var, Until the vale shall come in sight, Where Her great cities are. And to the Daughter of that land, Which once was kin to mine, My Captain, he shall bear in hand This sacred bread and wine. And he shall show her soft and fair This peace-spread sacrament: Her banner it shall ride the air Upon my Captain's tent. And if the wine to lip she raise, With morsel of my bread; Then as we loved in ancient days, These lands of ours shall wed. But mine the tribute. I will bring My homage to her door, My gentlemen behind their king, My Captain on before. And we aslant will set our spears, Our good swords dipping free; And we will ravel back the years For love of her and me. And I will prove my faith in this As never king was proved-- For kings may fight for what they kiss, And die for what they loved! But I will bring my court afar, My throne to hers shall go; And I will reign beside the Var, And in the Vale of Loe. The younger kingdom, it shall be The keeper of my crown; And she, my queen, shall reign with me Within her own good town. And men shall speak me kind, shall tell Her graces day and night So bring my steed that serves me well, My robe of soft samite, And bring me here the cup of gold, And bring the platter fair, And summon me my Captain old, That keeps the royal stair. For well know I the way I go; I follow but my star: My home is in the Vale of Loe, And by the Sea of Var. THERE IS AN ORCHARD There is an orchard beyond the sea, And high is the orchard wall; And ripe is the fruit in the orchard tree-- Oh, my love is fair and tall! There is an orchard beyond the sea, And joy to its haven hies; And a white hand opens its gate to me-- Oh, deep are my true love's eyes! There is an orchard beyond the sea, Its flowers the brown bee sips; But the stateliest flower is all for me-- Oh, sweet are my true love's lips! There is an orchard beyond the sea, Where the soft delights do roam; To the Great Delight I have bent my knee-- Oh, good is my true love's home! There is an orchard beyond the sea, With a nest where the linnets hide; Oh, warm is the nest that is built for me- In my true love's heart I bide! HEART OF THE WORLD Heart of the World give heed, Tongues of the World be still! The richest grapes of the vine shall bleed Till the greeting-cup shall spill; The kine shall pause in the pleasant mead, The eagle upon the hill-- Heart of the World give heed! Heart of the World break forth, Tongues of the World proclaim! There cometh a voice from out the North And a face of living flame-- A man's soul crying, Behold what worth Was life till her sweet soul came-- Heart of the World break forth! Heart of the World be strong, Tongues of the World be wise! The White North glows with a morning song Or ever the red sun dies; For Love is summer and Love is long, And the good God 's in his skies-- Heart of the World be strong! EPITAPHS THE BEGGAR Poor as a sparrow was I, But I was saved like a king; I heard the death-bells ring, Yet I saw a light in the sky: And now to my Father I wing. THE MAID A little while I saw the world go by-- A little doorway that I called my own, A loaf, a cup of water, and a bed had I, A shrine of Jesus, where I knelt alone And now, alone, I bid the world good-bye. THE FOOL I was a fool; nothing had I to know Of men, and naught to men had I to give. God gave me nothing; now to God I go, Now ask for pain, for bread, Life for my brain: dead, By God's love I shall then begin to live. THE FIGHTER Blows I have struck, and blows a-many taken, Wrestling I've fallen, and I've rose up again; Mostly I've stood-- I've had good bone and blood; Others went down though fighting might and main. Now Death steps in, Death the price of sin: The fall it will be his; and though I strive and strain, One blow will close my eyes, and I shall never waken. THE SEA-REAPERS When the Four Winds, the Wrestlers, strive with the Sun, When the Sun is slain in the dark; When the stars burn out, and the night cries To the blind sea-reapers, and they rise, And the water-ways are stark-- God save us when the reapers reap! When the ships sweep in with the tide to the shore, And the little white boats return no more; When the reapers reap, Lord, give Thy sailors sleep, If Thou cast us not upon the shore, To bless Thee evermore To walk in Thy sight as heretofore, Though the way of the Lord be steep! By Thy grace, Show Thy face, Lord of the land and the deep! THE WATCHER As the wave to the shore, as the dew to the leaf, As the breeze to the flower, As the scent of a rose to the heart of a child, As the rain to the dusty land-- My heart goeth out unto Thee--unto Thee! The night is far spent and the day is at hand. As the song of a bird to the call of a star, As the sun to the eye, As the anvil of man to the hammers of God, As the snow to the earth-- Is my word unto Thy word--to Thy word! The night is far spent and the day is at hand THE WAKING To be young is to dream, and I dreamed no more; I had smothered my heart as the fighter can: I toiled, and I looked not behind or before-- I was stone; but I waked with the heart of a man. By the soul at her lips, by the light of her eyes, I dreamed a new dream as the sleeper can, That the heavenly folly of youth was wise-- I was stone; but I waked with the heart of a man. She came like a song, she will go like a star: I shall tread the hills as the hunter can, Mine eyes to the hunt, and my soul afar- I was stone; but I waked with the heart of a man. WHEN ONE FORGETS When one forgets, the old things are as dead things; The grey leaves fall, and eyes that saw their May Turn from them now, and voices that have said things Wherein Life joyed, alas! are still to-day-- When one forgets. The world was noble, now its sordid casement Glows but with garish folly, and the plains Of rich achievement lie in mean abasement-- Ah, Hope is only midwife to our pains! When one forgets, but maimed rites come after: To mourn, be priest, be sexton, bear the pall, Remembrance-robed, the while a distant laughter Proclaims Love's ghost--what wonder skies should fall, When one forgets! ALOES AND MYRRH Dead, with the dew on your brow, Dead, with the may in your face, Dead: and here, true to my vow, I, who have won in the race, Weave you a chaplet of song Wet with the spray and the rime Blown from your love that was strong-- Stronger than Time. August it was, and the sun Streamed through the pines of the west; There were two then--there is one; Flown is the bird from the nest; And it is August again, But, from this uttermost sea, Rises the mist of my pain-- You are set free. "Tell him I see the tall pines, Out through the door as I lie-- Red where the setting sun shines-- Waving their hands in good-bye; Tell him I hold to my breast, Dying, the flowers he gave; Glad as I go I shall rest Well in my grave." This is the message they send, Warm with your ultimate breath; Saying, "And this is the end; She is the bride but of death." Is death the worst of all things? What but a bursting of bands, Then to the First of All Things Stretching out hands! Under the grass and the snow You will sleep well till I come; And you will feel me, I know, Though you are motionless, dumb. I shall speak low overhead-- You were so eager to hear-- And even though you are dead, You will be near. Dead, with the dew on your brow, Dead, with the May in your face, Dead: and here, true to my vow, I, who have won in the race, Weave you a chaplet of song Wet with the spray and the rime Blown from your love that was strong-- Stronger than Time. IN WASTE PLACES The new life is fief to the old life, And giveth back pangs at the last; The new strife is like to the old strife A token and tear of the Past. We change, but the changes are only New forms of the old forms again, We die and some spaces are lonely, But men live in lives of new men. We hate, and old wrongs lift their faces, To fill up the ranks of the new; We love, and the early love's graces Are signs of the false and the true; We clasp the white hands that are given To greet us in devious ways, But meet the old sins, all unshriven, To sadden the burden of days. Though we lose the green leaves of the first days, Though the vineyards be trampled and red, We know, in the gloom of our worst days, That the dead are not evermore dead: December is only December, A space, not the infinite whole; Though the hearthstone bear but the one ember, There still is the fire of the soul. The end comes as came the beginning, And shadows fail into the past; And the goal, is it not worth the winning, If it brings us but home at the last? While over the pain of waste places We tread, 'tis a blossoming rod That drives us to grace from disgraces, From the plains to the Gardens of God. LAST OF ALL Wave, walls to seaward, Storm-clouds to leeward, Beaten and blown by the winds of the West, Sail we encumbered Past isles unnumbered, But never to greet the green island of Rest. Lips that now tremble, Do you dissemble When you deny that the human is best? Love, the evangel, Finds the Archangel-- Is that a truth when this may be a jest? Star-drifts that glimmer Dimmer and dimmer, What do ye know of my weal or my woe? Was I born under The sun or the thunder? What do I come from, and where do I go? Rest, shall it ever Come? Is endeavour Still a vain twining and twisting of cords? Is faith but treason; Reason, unreason, But a mechanical weaving of words? What is the token, Ever unbroken, Swept down the spaces of querulous years,-- Weeping or singing-- That the Beginning Of all things is with us, and sees us, and hears? What is the token? Bruised and broken, Bend I my life to a blossoming rod? Shall then the worst things Come to the first things, Finding the best of all, last of all, God? AFTER Bands broken, cords loosened, and all Set free. Well, I know That I turned my cold face to the wall, Was silent, strove, gasped, then there fell A numbness, a faintness, a spell Of blindness, hung as a pall, On me, falling low, And a far fading sound of a knell. Then a fierce stretching of hands In gloom; and my feet, Treading tremulous over hard sands; A wind that wailed wearily slow, A plashing of waters below, A twilight on bleak lone lands, Spread out; and a sheet Of the moaning sea shallows aflow. Then a steep highway that leads Somewhere, cold, austere; And I follow a shadow that heeds My coming, and points, not in wrath, Out over: we tread the sere path Up to the summit; recedes All gloom; and at last The beauty a flower-land hath. REMEDIAL Well it has come and has gone, I have some pride, you the same; You will scarce put willow on, I will have buried a name. A stone, "Hic Jacet"--no more; Let the world wonder at will; You have the key to the door, I have the cenotaph still. A tear--one tear, is it much, Dropped on a desert of pain? Had you one passionate touch Of Nature there had been rain. Purpose, oh no, there was none! You could not know if you would; You were the innocent one. Malice? Nay, you were too good. Hearts should not be in your way, You must pass on, and you did; Ah, did I hurt you? you say: Hurt me? Why, Heaven forbid! Inquisitorial ways Might have hurt, truly, but this, Done in these wise latter days, It was too sudden, I wis. "Painless and pleasing," this is No bad advertisement, true; Painless extinction was his, And it was pleasing-to you. Still, when the surgery's done (That is the technical term), Which has lost most, which has won? Rise now, and truly affirm. You carry still what we call (Poets are dreamy we know) A heart, well, 'tis yours after all, And time hath its wonders, I trow. You may look back with your eyes Turned to the dead of the Past, And find with a sad surprise, That yours is the dead at the last. Seeing afar in the sands, Gardens grown green, at what cost! You may reach upward your hands, Praying for what you have lost. THE TWILIGHT OF LOVE Adieu! and the sun goes awearily down, The mist creeps up o'er the sleepy town, The white sails bend to the shuddering mere, And the reapers have reaped, and the night is here. Adieu! and the years are a broken song, The right grows weak in the strife with wrong, The lilies of love have a crimson stain, And the old days never will come again. Adieu! where the mountains afar are dim 'Neath the tremulous tread of the seraphim, Shall not our querulous hearts prevail, That have prayed for the peace of the Holy Grail? Adieu! Some time shall the veil between The things that are, and that might have been Be folded back for our eyes to see, And the meaning of all be clear to me. IRREVOCABLE What you have done may never be undone By day or night, What I have seen may never be unseen In my sad sight. The days swing on, the sun glows and is gone, From span to span; The tides sweep scornfully the shore, as when The tides began. What we have known is but a bitter pledge Of Ignorance, The human tribute to an ageless dream, A timeless trance. Through what great cycles hath this circumstance Swept on and on, Known not by thee or me, till it should come, A vision wan, To our two lives, and yours would seem to me The hand that kills, Though you have wept to strike, and but have cried, "The mad Fate wills!" You could not, if you would, give what had been Peace, not distress; Some warping cords of destiny had held You in duress. Nay, not the Fates, look higher; is God blind? Doth He not well? Our eyes see but a little space behind, If it befell, That they saw but a little space before, Shall we then say, Unkind is the Eternal, if He knew This from alway, And called us into being but to give To mother Earth Two blasted lives, to make the watered land A place of dearth? The life that feeds upon itself is mad-- Is it not thus? Have I not held but one poor broken reed For both of us? Keep but your place and simply meet The needs of life; Mine is the sorrow, mine the prayerless pain: The world is rife With spectres seen and spectres all unseen By human eyes, Who stand upon the threshold, at the gates, Of Paradise. Well do they who have felt the spectres' hands Upon their hearts, And have not fled, but with firm faith have borne Their brothers' parts, Upheld the weary head, or fanned the brow Of some sick soul, Pointed the way for tired pilgrim eyes To their far goal. So let it be with us: perchance will come In after days, The benison of happiness for us Always, always. THE LAST DREAM One more dream in the slow night watches, One more sleep when the world is dumb, And his soul leans out to the sweet wild snatches Of song that up from dreamland come. Pale, pale face with a golden setting, Deep, deep glow of stedfast eyes; Form of one there is no forgetting, Wandering out of Paradise. Breath of balm, and a languor falling Out of the gleam of a sunset sky; Peace, deep peace and a seraph's calling, Folded hands and a pleading cry. One more dream for the patient singer, Weary with songs he loved so well; Sleeping now--will the vision bring her? Hark, 'tis the sound of the passing bell! WAITING When shall I see thee again? Weary the years and so long; When shall be buried the wrong, Phantom-like rising between? Seeking for surcease of pain, Pilgrim to Lethe I came; Drank not, for pride was too keen-- Stung by the sound of a name. Soft, ardent skies of my youth Come to me over the sea, Come in a vision to me, Come with your shimmer and song; Ye have known all of the truth, Witness to both shall ye bear; Read me the riddle of wrong, Solve me the cords of the snare. Love is not won in a breath, Idle, impassioned and sure; Why should not love then endure, Challenging doubt to the last? True love is true till the death, Though it bear aloes and myrrh; Try me and judge me, O Past, Have I been true unto her? What should I say if we met, Knowing not which should forbear? E'en if I plead would she care?-- Sweet is the refuge of scorn. Close by my side, O Regret Long we have watched for the light! Watchman, what of the morn? Well do we know of the night. IN MAYTIME The apple blossoms glisten Within the crowned trees; The meadow grasses listen The din of busy bees; The wayward, woodland singer Carols along the leas, Not loth to be the bringer Of summer fantasies. But you and I who never Meet now but for regret, Forever and forever, Though flower-bonds were set In Maytime, if you wonder That falling leaves are ours, Yours was it cast asunder, Mine are the faded flowers. The fluted wren is sobbing Beneath the mossy eaves; The throstle's chord is throbbing In coronal of leaves; The home of love is lilies, And rose-hearts, flaming red, Red roses and white lilies-- Lo, thus the gods were wed! But we weep on, unheeding The earth's joys spread for us; And ever, far receding, Our fair land fades from us: One waited, patient, broken, High-hearted but opprest, One lightly took the token-- The mad Fates took the rest. High mountains and low valleys, And shreds of silver seas, The lone brook's sudden sallies, And all the joys of these,-- These were, but now the fire Volcanic seeks the sea, And dark wave walls retire Tyrannic seeking me. Spirit of dreams, a vision Well hast thou wrought for us; Fold high the veil Elysian, The past held naught for us; Years, what are they but spaces Set in a day for me? Lo, here are lilied places-- My love comes back to me! INSIDE THE BAR I knows a town, an' it's a fine town, And many a brig goes sailin' to its quay; I knows an inn, an' it's a fine inn, An' a lass that's fair to see. I knows a town, an' it's a fine town; I knows an inn, an' it's a fine inn-- But Oh my lass, an' Oh the gay gown, Which I have seen my pretty in! I knows a port, an' it's a good port, An' many a brig is ridin' easy there; I knows a home, an' it's a good home, An' a lass that's sweet an' fair. I knows a port, an' it's a good port, I knows a home, an' it's a good home-- But Oh the pretty that is my sort, What's wearyin' till I come! I knows a day, an' it's a fine day, The day a sailor man comes back to town; I knows a tide, an' it's a good tide, The tide that gets you quick to anchors down. I knows a day, an' it's a fine day, I knows a tide, an' it's a good tide-- And God help the lubber, I say, What's stole the sailor man's bride! THE CHILDREN Mark the faces of the children Flooded with sweet innocence! God's smile on their foreheads glisten Ere their heart-strings have grown tense. And they know not of the sadness, Of the palpitating pain Drawn through arid veins of manhood, Or the lusts that life disdain. Little reek they of the shadows Fallen through the steep world's space God hath touched them with His chrism And their sunlight is His grace. And the green grooves of the meadows They are fair to look upon; And the silver thrush and robin Sing most sweetly on and on. But the faces of the children- They are fairer far than these; And the songs they sing are sweeter Than the thrushes' in the trees. Little hands, our God has given All the flower-bloom for you; Gather violets in the meadows, Trailing your sweet fingers through. The swift tears that sometimes glisten On their faces dashed with pain Weave a rosy bow of promise, Like the afterglow of rain. The soft, verdant fields of childhood, Certes, are the softer for The dissolving dew of morning, Noon's elate ambassador. Looking skyward, do they wonder-- They, the children palm to palm- What is out beyond the azure In the infinite of calm? Though they murmur soft "Our Father," Angel wings to speed it on Past the bright wheels of the Pleiads, Have they thought of benison? Nay! the undefiled children Say it bound by ignorance; But the saying is the merit, And the loving bans mischance. Oh the mountain heights of childhood, And the waterfalls of dreams, And the sleeping in the shadows Of the willows by the streams! Toss your gleaming hair, O children, Back in waving of the wind! Flash the starlight 'heath your eyelids From the sunlight of the mind! See, we strain you to our bosoms, And we kiss your lip and brow; Human hearts must have some idols, And we shrine you idols now. Time, the ruthless idol-breaker, Smileless, cold iconoclast, Though he rob us of our altars, Cannot rob us of the past. Dull and dead the gods' bright nectar, Disencrowned of its foam; Duller, deader far the empty, Barren hearthstone of a home. Smile out to our age and give us, Children, of the dawn's desire; We have passed morn's gold and opal, We have lost life's early fire. LITTLE GARAINE "Where do the stars grow, little Garaine? The garden of moons, is it far away? The orchard of suns, my little Garaine, Will you take us there some day?" "If you shut your eyes," quoth little Garaine, "I will show you the way to go To the orchard of suns and the garden of moons And the field where the stars do grow. "But you must speak soft," quoth little Garaine, "And still must your footsteps be, For a great bear prowls in the field of the stars, And the moons they have men to see. "And the suns have the Children of Signs to guard, And they have no pity at all-- You must not stumble, you must not speak, When you come to the orchard wall. "The gates are locked," quoth little Garaine, "But the way I am going to tell-- The key of your heart it will open them all: And there's where the darlings dwell!" TO A LITTLE CHILD (M. H.) When you were born, my dear, when you were born, A glorious Voice came singing from the sun, An Ariel with roses of the morn, And through the vales of Arcady danced one All golden as the corn. These were the happy couriers of God, Bearing your gifts: a magic all your own, And Beauty with her tall divining rod; While tiny star-smiths, bending to your throne, Your feet with summer shod. Into my heart, my dear, you flashed your way, Your rosy, golden way: a fairy horn Proclaimed you dancing light and roundelay;-- I thank my generous Fates that you were born One lofty joyous day. L'EMPEREUR, MORT (M. H., AGED FIVE) My dear, I was thy lover, A man of spring-time years; I sang thee songs, gave gifts and songs most poor, But they were signs; and now, for evermore, Thou farest forth! My heart is full of tears, My dear, my very dear. My dear, I was thy lover, I wrote thee on my shield, I cried thy name in goodly fealty, Thy champion I. And now, no more for me Thy face, thy smile: thou goest far afield, My dear, my very dear. My dear, I am thy lover: Afield thy spirit goes, And thou shalt find that Inn of God's delight, Where thou wilt wait for us who say good night, To thy sweet soul. The rest--the rest, God knows, My dear, my dear! PHYLLIS Phyllis, I knew you once when I was young, And travelled to your land of Arcady. Do you, of all the songs, wild songs, before you flung, Remember mine--its buoyant melody, Its hope, its pride; do you remember it? It was the song that makes the world go round; I bought it of a Boy: in scars I paid for it, Phyllis, to you who jested at my wound. BAIRNIE Did ye see the white cloud in the glint o' the sun? That's the brow and the eye o' my bairnie. Did ye ken the red bloom at the bend o' the crag? That's the rose in the cheek o' my bairnie. Did ye hear the gay lilt o' the lark by the burn? That's the voice of my bairnie, my dearie. Did ye smell the wild scent in the green o' the wood? That's the breath o' my ain, o' my bairnie. Sae I'll gang awa' hame, to the shine o' the fire, To the cot where I lie wi' my bairnie. EMBERS By Gilbert Parker Volume 3. CONTENTS IN CAMDEN TOWN JEAN A MEMORY IN CAMP AT JUNIPER COVE JUNIPER COVE TWENTY YEARS AFTER LISTENING NEVERTHELESS ISHMAEL OVER THE HILLS THE DELIVERER THE DESERT ROAD A SON OF THE NILE A FAREWELL FROM THE HAREM AN ARAB LOVE SONG THE CAMEL-DRIVER TO HIS CAMEL THE TALL DABOON THERE IS SORROW ON THE SEA THE AUSTRALIAN STOCBRIDER THE BRIDGE OF THE HUNDRED SPANS NELL LATORE IN CAMDEN TOWN How many years of sun and snow Have come to Camden Town, Since through its streets and in its shade, I wandered up and down. Not many more than to you here These verses hapless flung, Yet of the Long Ago they seem To me who am yet young. We strive to measure life by Time, And con the seasons o'er, To find, alas! that days are years, And years for evermore. The joys that thrill, the ill that thralls, Pressed down on heart and brain- These are the only horologues, The Age's loss or gain. And I am old in all of these, And wonder if I know The man begotten of the boy, Who loved that long ago. A lilac bush close to the gate, A locust at the door, A low, wide window flower-filled, With ivy covered o'er. A face--O love of childhood dreams, Lily in form and name-- It comes back now in these day-dreams, The same yet not the same. My childhood's friend! Well gathered are The sheaves of many days, But this one sheaf is garnered in, Bound by my love always. Where have you wandered, child, since when Together merrily, We gathered cups of columbine By lazy Rapanee? The green spears of the flagflower, Down by the old mill-race, Are weapons now for other hands, Who mimic warfare chase. You were so tender, yet so strong, So gentle, yet so free, Your every word, whenever heard, Seemed wondrous wise to me. You marvelled if the dead could hear Our steps, that passed at will Their low green houses in the elm- Crowned churchyard on the hill. And I, whom your sweet childhood's trust, Esteemed as most profound, Thought that they heard, as in a dream, The shadow of a sound. We drew the long, rank grass away From tombstones mossy grown, To read the verses crude and quaint, And make the words our own. One tottering marble, willow-spread, I well remember yet, With only this engraved thereon, "By Joseph to Jeanette." It held us wondering oft, as we Peeped through the pickets old: There was some mystery, we knew, Some history untold. Well, better far those simple words, Where weeping phrase is not, Than burdened tablet, and the rest Forgetting and forgot. And Lily Minden, do you lie In some forgotten grave, Where only strangers' feet pass o'er Your temple's architrave? Or, by some hearthstone, have you learned The worst and best of life, And found sweet greetings in the name Of mother and of wife? I cannot tell: I know you but As bee the clover bloom, That sips content, and straightway builds Its mansion and its tomb. So took I in child-innocence, So build the House of Life, And in low tone to thee alone, As dead or maid or wife, I sing this song, borne all along A space of wasted breath; And build me on from room to room Unto the House of Death, Where portals swing forever in To weary pilgrim guest, And hearts that here were inly dear Shall find a Room of Rest. JEAN Three times round has the sun gone, Jean, Since on your lips I pressed Mute farewells; if that pain was keen Fair were you in your nest. Smiling, sweetheart, I left you there; You had no word to say; One last touch to your brow and hair, Then I went on my way. Time it was when the leaves were grown Your rose-colour, my queen; Ere the birds to the south had flown, While yet the grass was green. Eyes demure, do you ever yearn, Bird-wise to summer lands? Is it to meet your look I turn, Saying, "She understands," Saying, "She waits in her quiet place Patient till I shall come, The old sweet grace in her dreaming face That made a Heav'n her home"? No! She is there 'neath Northern skies, And no word does she send; But near to my heart her image lies, And shall lie there to the end. Come what will I am not bereft Of the memory of that time, When in her hands my heart I left There, in a colder clime. And to my eyes no face is fair, For one face comes between; And if a song has a low sweet air, Through it there whispers, "Jean." Better for me the world would say, If I had broke the charm, Set in the circle she one day Made by her round white arm. Never a king in days of eld Gathered about his throat Such a circlet; no queen e'er held Necklace so clear of mote. It sufficeth the charm was set; And if it chance that one Still remembers, though one forget, Then is the worst thing done-- Done, and I still can say "Let be; I have no word of blame; Though her heart is no more for me, Mine shall be still the same." I have my life to live and she-- Well, if it be so--so; She may welcome or banish me And if I go, I go. Friend, I pray you repress those tears, Comfort from this derive: I am a score--and more-of years And Jean is only five. A MEMORY From buckwheat fields the summer sun Drew honeyed breezes over The lanes where happy children run With bare feet in the clover. The schoolhouse stood with pines about Upon the hill, and ever A creek, where hid the speckled trout, Ran past it to the river. And rosy faces gathered there, With rustic good around them; With breath of balm blown everywhere, Pure, ere the world had found them. Behind sweet purple ambuscades Of lilacs, laws were broken; And here a desk with knives was frayed, There passed forbidden token. One slipped a butternut between His pearly teeth; a maiden Dove-eyed, caressed her cheek; 'twas e'en With maple sugar laden-- A flock that caught at wiles, because The shepherd's hand that drove them, Reached little toward wise human laws, And less to God above them. With eyebrows bent and surly look He only saw before him, The rule, the lesson, and the book, Not nature brooding o'er him. One day through drone of locusts fell The wood-bird's fitful tapping, And in his chair at "dinner-spell," The teacher grim sat napping. An urchin creeping in beholds The tyrant slumber-smitten, And in his pocket's ample folds He thrusts the school-yard kitten. At length the master waked, and clanged His bell with anger fitting; His sleep had made it double-fanged, And crossed like needles knitting. Slow to their seats the children file, And wait "Prepare for classes," A score of lads across the aisle From twice a score of lasses. But two within the throng betray A mirth suppressed; the sinner, And Rafe Ridall, the chief at play, At books the easy winner: The wildest boy in all the school, In mischief first and ever, His daily seat the penance-stool, Disgraced for weeks together. Just sound of bone and strong of heart, Staunch friend and noble foeman; In life to play the kingly part, True both to man and woman. Joe's secret now he holds; a deed With just enough of danger, To win his--ah, what's that? 'Tis freed, The pocket-prisoned stranger! A moment's riot laughter-filled, Then fear, white-visaged, follows; And through the silence there is trilled The shrill note of the swallows. And now a fierce form fronts them all, Two fierce eyes search their faces, Then flash their fire on Rafe Ridall, Whose mirth no peril chases. "You did it, sir!" "Not I!" "You did!" "No!" "You've one chance for showing Who in my coat the kitten hid, Or be well thrashed for knowing." The master paused, the birch he grasped Against his trousers flicking; Rafe said, with hands behind him clasped, "I'd rather take the licking." Full many a year has passed since then, The lilacs still are blooming, Awaiting childish hands again, But they are long in coming. Now wandering swallows build their nests Where doors and roofs decaying, No more shut in the master's zest, Nor out the children's playing. All, all are gone who gathered there; Some toil among the masses, Some, overworn with pain and care, Wait Death's "Prepare for classes." And some--the sighing pines sway on Above them, dreamless lying; And 'mong them sleeps the master, gone His anger and their crying. And Rafe Ridall, brave then, brave now, Amid the jarring courses Of man's misrule, still takes the blow For those of weaker forces. IN CAMP AT JUNIPER COVE A little brown sparrow came tripping Across the green grass at my feet; A kingfisher poised, and was peering Where current and calm water meet; The clouds hung in passionless clusters Above the green hills of the south; A bobolink fluttered to leeward With a twinkle of bells in its mouth. Ah, the morning was silver with glory As I lay by my tent on the shore; And the soft air was drunken with odours, And my soul lifted up to adore. Is there wonder I took me to dreaming Of the gardens of Greece and old Rome, Of the fair watered meadows of Ida, And the hills where the gods made their home? Of the Argonauts sung to by Sirens, Of Andromache, Helen of Troy, Of Proserpine, Iphigenia, And the Fates that build up and destroy? Of the phantom isle, green Theresea, And the Naiads and Dryads that give To the soul of the poet, the dreamer, The visions of fancy that live In the lives and the language of mortals Unconscious, but sure as the sea, And that make for great losses repayment To wandering singers like me? But a little brown sparrow came tripping Across the green grass at my feet; And a kingfisher poised, and was peering Where current and calm water meet; And Alice, sweet Alice, my neighbour, Stands musing beneath the pine tree; And her look says--"I have a lover Who sails on the turbulent sea: Does he dream as I dream night and daytime Of a face that is tender and true; Will he come to me e'en as he left me?" Yes, Alice, sweet Alice, for you, Is the sunlight, and not the drear shadow, The gentle and fortunate peace: But he who thus revels in rhyming Has shadows that never shall cease. JUNIPER COVE TWENTY YEARS AFTER The bay gleams softly in the sun, The morning widens o'er the world: The bluebird's song is just begun, And down the skies white clouds are furled. The boat lies idly by the shore, The shed I built with happy care Is fallen; and I see no more The white tents in the eager air. The goldenrod holds up its plumes In the long stretch of meadow grass, The briarrose shakes its sweet perfumes, In coverts where the sparrows pass. Far off, above, the sapphire gleams, Far off, below, the sapphire flows, And this, my place of morning dreams, The bank where my vain visions rose! Sweet Alice, he came back again, Across the waste of summer sea, What time the fields were full of grain, But not to thee; but not to thee. She comes no more when evening falls, To watch the stars wheel up the sky; Then love and light were over all; Alas! that light and love should die. I feel her hand upon my arm, I see her eyes shine through the mist; Her life was passionate and warm As the red jewels at her wrist. Hearts do not break, the world has said, Though love lie stark and light be flown; But still it counts its lost and dead, And in the solitudes makes moan. We school our lips to make our hearts Seem other than in truth they are; Before the lights we play our part, And paint the flesh to hide the scar. Masquers and mummers all, and yet The slaves of some dead passion's fires, Of hopes the soul can ne'er forget Still sobbing in life's trembling wires. Fate puts our dear desires in pawn, Youth passes, unredeemed they lie; The leaves drop from our rose of dawn, And storms fall from the mocking sky. I shall come back no more; my ship Waits for me by the sundering sea; A prayer for her is on my lip-- And the old life is dead to me. LISTENING I have lain beneath the pine trees just to hear the thrush's calling, I have waited for the throstle where the harvest fields were brown, I have caught the lark's sweet trilling from the depths of cloud-land falling And the piping of the linnet through the willow branches blown. But you have some singing graces, you who sing because you love it, That are higher than the throstle, or the linnet, or the lark; And, however far my soul may reach, your song is far above it; And I falter while I follow as a child does in the dark. In elder days, when all the world was silent save the beating Of the tempest-gathered ocean 'gainst the grey volcanic walls, When the light had met the darkness and the mountains sent their greeting To each other in sharp flashes as the vivid lightning falls, Then the high gods said, "In token that we love the earth we fashioned, We will set the white stars singing, and teach man the art of song": And there rose up from the valleys sounds of love and life impassioned, Till men cried, with arms uplifted, "Now from henceforth we are strong!" Adown the ages there have come the sounds of that first singing, Lifting up the weary-hearted in the fever of the time; And I, who wait and wander far, felt all my soul upspringing, To but touch those ancient forces and the energies sublime, When I heard you who had heard it--that first song--perhaps in dreaming, Till it filled you with fine fervour and the hopes of its refrain; And I knew that God was gracious and had led me in the gleaming Of a song-shine that is holy and that quiets all my pain. Though the birds sing in the meadows and fill all the air with sweetness, They sing only in the present, and they sing because they must; They are wanton in their pureness, and in all their fine completeness, They trill out their lives forgotten to the silence of the dust. But if you should pass to-morrow where your songs could never reach us, There would still be throbbing through us all the music of your voice; And your spirit would speak through the chords, as though it would beseech us To remember that the noblest ends have ever noblest choice. NEVERTHELESS In your onward march, O men, White of face, in promise whiter, You unsheathe the sword, and then Blame the wronged as the fighter. Time, ah, Time, rolls onward o'er All these foetid fields of evil, While hard at the nation's core Eat the burning rust and weevil! Nathless, out beyond the stars Reigns the Wiser and the Stronger, Seeing in all strifes and wars Who the wronged, who the wronger. ISHMAEL "No man cared for my soul." Blind, Lord, so blind! I wander far From Thee among the haunts of men, Most like some lone, faint, flickering star Gone from its place, nor knoweth when The sun shall give it shining dole Lord! no man careth for my soul. Blind, Lord, so blind! In loneliness By crowded mart or busy street, I fold my hands and feel how less Am I to any one I meet, Than to Thee one lost billow's roll: Lord! no man careth for my soul. Blind, Lord, so blind! And I have knelt 'Mong myriads in Thy house of prayer; And still sad desolation felt, Though heavy freighted was the air With litanies of love: one ghoul Cried, "No man careth for thy soul!" Blind, Lord, so blind! The world is blind; It feeds me, fainting, with a stone: I cry for bread. Before, behind, Are hurrying feet; yet all alone I walk, and no one points the goal Lord! no man careth for my soul. Blind, Lord, Oh very blind am I! If sin of mine sets up the wall Between my poor sight and Thy sky, O Friend of man, Who cares for all, Send sweet peace ere the last bell toll-- Yea, Lord, Thou carest for my soul! OVER THE HILLS Over the hills they are waiting to greet us, They who have scanned all the ultimate places, Fathomed the world and the things that defeat us-- Evils and graces. They have no thought for the toiling or spinning, Striving for bread that is dust in the gaining, They have won all that is well worth the winning-- Past all distaining. Now they have done with the pain and the error, Nevermore here shall the dark things assail them, Void man's devices and dreams have no terror-- Shall we bewail them? They have cast off all the strife and derision, They have put on all the joy of our yearning; We falter feebly from vision to vision, Never discerning. Faint light before us, and shadows to grope in, Stretching out hands to the starbeams to guide us, Finding no place but our life's loves to hope in, Doubt to deride us-- So we climb upward with eyes growing dimmer, Looking back only to sigh through our smiling, Wondering still if the palpitant glimmer Leads past defiling. They whom we loved have gone over the mountains, Hands beckon to us like wings of the swallow, Voices we knew from delectable fountains Cry to us, "Follow!" Some were so young when they left us, that morning Seemed to have flashed and then died into gloaming, Leaving us wearier 'neath the world's scorning, Blinder in roaming. Some, in the time when the manhood is bravest, Strongest to bear and the hands to endeavour, When all the life is the firmest and gravest, Left us for ever. Some, when the Springtime had grown to December, Said, "It is done: now the last thing befall me; I shall sleep well--ah! dear hearts but remember: Farewell, they call me!" So the tale runs, and the end, who shall fear it? Is it not better to sleep than to sorrow? Tokens will come from the bourne as we near it-- Time's peace, to-morrow. THE DELIVERER How has the cloud fallen, and the leaf withered on the tree, The lemontree, that standeth by the door? The melon and the date have gone bitter to the taste, The weevil, it has eaten at the core-- The core of my heart, the mildew findeth it; My music, it is but the drip of tears, The garner empty standeth, the oven hath no fire, Night filleth me with fears. O Nile that floweth deeply, hast thou not heard his voice? His footsteps hast thou covered with thy flood? He was as one who lifteth up the yoke, He was as one who taketh off the chain, As one who sheltereth from the rain, As one who scattereth bread to the pigeons flying. His purse was at his side, his mantle was for me, For any who passeth were his mantle and his purse, And now like a gourd is he withered from our eyes. His friendship, it was like a shady wood-- Whither has he gone?--Who shall speak for us? Who shall save us from the kourbash and the stripes? Who shall proclaim us in the palace? Who shall contend for us in the gate? The sakkia turneth no more; the oxen they are gone; The young go forth in chains, the old waken in the night, They waken and weep, for the wheel turns backward, And the dark days are come again upon us-- Will he return no more? His friendship was like a shady wood, O Nile that floweth deeply, hast thou not heard his voice? Hast thou covered up his footsteps with thy flood? The core of my heart, the mildew findeth it! When his footsteps were among us there was peace; War entered not the village, nor the call of war: Now our homes are as those that have no roofs. As a nest decayed, as a cave forsaken, As a ship that lieth broken on the beach, Is the house where we were born. Out in the desert did we bury our gold, We buried it where no man robbed us, for his arm was strong. Now are the jars empty, gold did not avail To save our young men, to keep them from the chains. God hath swallowed his voice, or the sea hath drowned it, Or the Nile hath covered him with its flood; Else would he come when our voices call. His word was honey in the prince's ear-- Will he return no more? THE DESERT ROAD In the sands I lived in a hut of palm, There was never a garden to see; There was never a path through the desert calm, Nor a way through its storms for me. Tenant was I of a lone domain; The far pale caravans wound To the rim of the sky, and vanished again; My call in the waste was drowned. The vultures came and hovered and fled; And once there stole to my door A white gazelle, but its eyes were dread With the hurt of the wounds it bore. It passed in the dusk with a foot of fear, And the white cold mists rolled in; And my heart was the heart of a stricken deer, Of a soul in the snare of sin. My days they withered like rootless things, And the sands rolled on, rolled wide; Like a pelican I, with broken wings, Like a drifting barque on the tide. But at last, in the light of a rose-red day, In the windless glow of the morn, From over the hills and from far away, You came-ah, the joy of the morn! And wherever your footsteps fell there crept A path--it was fair and wide; A desert road which no sands have swept, Where never a hope has died. I followed you forth, and your beauty held My heart like an ancient song, By that desert road to the blossoming plains I came, and the way was long. So, I set my course by the light of your eyes; I care not what fate may send; On the road I tread shine the love-starred skies, The road with never an end. A SON OF THE NILE Oh, the garden where to-day we, sow and to-morrow we reap; Oh, the sakkia turning by the garden walls; Oh, the onion-field and the date-tree growing, And my hand on the plough--by the blessing of God; Strength of my soul, O my brother, all's well! A FAREWELL FROM THE HAREM Take thou thy flight, O soul! Thou hast no more The gladness of the morning: ah, the perfumed roses My love laid on my bosom as I slept! How did he wake me with his lips upon mine eyes, How did the singers carol, the singers of my soul, That nest among the thoughts of my beloved! All silent now, the choruses are gone, The windows of my soul are closed; no more Mine eyes look gladly out to see my lover come. There is no more to do, no more to say Take flight, my soul, my love returns no more! AN ARAB LOVE SONG The bed of my love I will sprinkle with attar of roses, The face of my love I will touch with the balm, With the balm of the tree from the farthermost wood, From the wood without end, in the world without end. My love holds the cup to my lips, and I drink of the cup, And the attar of roses I sprinkle will soothe like the evening dew, And the balm will be healing and sleep, and the cup I will drink, I will drink of the cup my love holds to my lips. THE CAMEL-DRIVER TO HIS CAMEL Fleet is thy foot: thou shalt rest by the etl tree; Water shalt thou drink from the blue-deep well; Allah send his gard'ner with the green bersim, For thy comfort, fleet one, by the etl tree. As the stars fly, have thy footsteps flown-- Deep is the well, drink, and be still once more; Till the pursuing winds, panting, have found thee And, defeated, sink still beside thee-- By the well and the etl tree. THE TALL DAKOON The Tall Dakoon, the bridle rein he shook, and called aloud, His Arab steed sprang down the mists which wrapped them like a shroud; But up there rang the clash of steel, the clanking silver chain, The war-cry of the Tall Dakoon, the moaning of the slain. And long they fought--the Tall Dakoon, the children of the mist, But he was swift with lance and shield, and supple of the wrist, Yet if he rose, or if he fell, no man hath proof to show-- And wide the world beyond the mists, and deep the vales below! For when a man, because of love, hath wrecked and burned his ships, And when a man for hate of love hath curses on his lips, Though he should be the peasant born, or be the Tall Dakoon, What matters then, of hap, or place, the mist comes none too soon! THERE IS SORROW ON THE SEA Our ship is a beautiful lady, Friendly and ready and fine; She runs her race with the storm in her face, Like a sea-bird over the brine. In her household work no hand does shirk,-- No need of belaying-pins,-- And the captain dear and the engineer, They both look after the Twins: The Twins that drive her to do her best Where the Roaring Forties rage From the Fastnet Height to the Liberty Light, And the Customs landing-stage. Where the crank-shafts pitch in the iron ditch, Where the main-shaft swims and glides, Where the boilers keep, in the sullen deep, A master-hand on the Tides; Where the reeking shuttle and booming bar Keep time in the hum of the toiling hive,-- The men of the deep, while the travellers sleep, Their steel-clad coursers drive. And Davy Jones' locker is full Of the labour that moves the world; And brave they be who serve the sea To keep our flags unfurled: The Union Jack and the Stripes and Stars, Gallant and free and true, In a world-wide trade, and a fame well made, And humanity's work to do. Now list, ye landsmen, as ye roam, To the voice of the men offshore, Who've sailed in the old ship Never Return, With the great First Commodore. They fitted foreign (God keeps the sea), They stepped aboard (God breaks the wind). And the babe that held by his father's knee, He leaves, with his lass, behind. And the lad will sail as his father sailed, And a lass she will wait again; And he'll get his scrip in his father's ship, And he'll sail to the Southern Main; And he'll sail to the North, and he'll make to the East, And he'll overhaul the West; And he'll pass outspent as his father went From his landbirds in the nest. There are hearts that bleed, there are mouths to feed, (Now one and all, ye landsmen, list) And the rent's to pay on the quarter-day-- (What ye give will never be missed) And you'll never regret, as your whistle you wet, In Avenue Number Five, That you gave your "quid" to the lonely kid And the widow, to keep 'em alive. So out with your golden shilling, my lad, And your bright bank-note, my dear! We are safe to-night near the Liberty Light, And the mariner says, What Cheer! THE AUSTRALIAN STOCKRIDER I ride to the tramp and shuffle of hoofs Away to the wild waste land, I can see the sun on the station roofs, And a stretch of the shifting sand; The forest of horns is a shaking sea, Where white waves tumble and pass; The cockatoo screams in the myall-tree, And the adder-head gleams in the grass. The clouds swing out from beyond the hills And valance the face of the sky, And the Spirit of Winds creeps up and fills The plains with a plaintive cry; A boundary-rider on lonely beat Creeps round the horizon's rim; He has little to do, and plenty to eat, And the world is a blank to him. His friends are his pipe, and dog, and tea, His wants, they are soon supplied; And his mind, like the weeping myall-tree, May droop on his weary ride, But he lives his life in his quiet way, Forgetting,--perhaps forgot,-- Till another rider will come some day, And he will have ridden, God wot! To the Wider Plains with the measureless bounds: And I know, if I had my choice, I would rather ride in those pleasant grounds, Than to sit 'neath the spell of the voice Of the sweetest seraph that you could find In all the celestial place; And I hope that the Father, whose heart is kind, When I speak to Him face to face, Will give me something to do up there Among all the folks that have died, That will give me freedom and change of air, If it's only to boundary ride: For I somehow think, in the Great Stampede, When the world crowds up to the Bar, The unluckiest mortals will be decreed To camp on the luckiest star. THE BRIDGE OF THE HUNDRED SPANS It was the time that the Long Divide Blooms and glows like an hour-old bride; It was the days when the cattle come Back from their winter wand'rings home; Time when the Kicking Horse shows its teeth, Snarls and foams with a demon's breath; When the sun with a million levers lifts Abodes of snow from the rocky rifts; When the line-man's eyes, like the lynx's, scans The lofty Bridge of the Hundred Spans. Round a curve, down a sharp incline, If the red-eyed lantern made no sign, Swept the train, and upon the bridge That binds a canon from ridge to ridge. Never a watchman like old Carew; Knew his duty, and did it, too; Good at scouting when scouting paid, Saved a post from an Indian raid-- Trapper, miner, and mountain guide, Less one arm in a lumber slide; Walked the line like a panther's guard, Like a maverick penned in a branding-yard. "Right as rain," said the engineers, "With the old man working his eyes and ears." "Safe with Carew on the mountain wall," Was how they put it, in Montreal. Right and safe was it East and West Till a demon rose on the mountain crest, And drove at its shoulders angry spears, That it rose from its sleep of a thousand years, That its heaving breast broke free the cords Of imprisoned snow as with flaming swords; And, like a star from its frozen height, An avalanche leaped one spring-tide night; Leaped with a power not God's or man's To smite the Bridge of the Hundred Spans. It smote a score of the spans; it slew With its icy squadrons old Carew. Asleep he lay in his snow-bound grave, While the train drew on that he could not save; It would drop, doom-deep, through the trap of death, From the light above, to the dark beneath; And town and village both far and near Would mourn the tragedy ended here. One more hap in a hapless world, One more wreck where the tide is swirled, One more heap in a waste of sand, One more clasp of a palsied hand, One more cry to a soundless Word, One more flight of a wingless bird; The ceaseless falling, the countless groan, The waft of a leaf and the fall of a stone; Ever the cry that a Hand will save, Ever the end in a fast-closed grave; Ever and ever the useless prayer, Beating the walls of a mute despair. Doom, all doom--nay then, not all doom! Rises a hope from the fast-closed tomb. Write not "Lost," with its grinding bans, On life, or the Bridge of the Hundred Spans. See, on the canon's western ridge, There stands a girl! She beholds the bridge Smitten and broken; she sees the need For a warning swift, and a daring deed. See then the act of a simple girl; Learn from it, thinker, and priest, and churl. See her, the lantern between her teeth, Crossing the quivering trap of death. Hand over hand on a swaying rail, Sharp in her ears and her heart the wail Of a hundred lives; and she has no fear Save that her prayer be not granted her. Cold is the snow on the rail, and chill The wind that comes from the frozen hill. Her hair blows free and her eyes are full Of the look that makes Heaven merciful-- Merciful, ah! quick, shut your eyes, Lest you wish to see how a brave girl dies! Dies--not yet; for her firm hands clasped The solid bridge, as the breach out-gasped, And the rail that had held her downward swept, Where old Carew in his snow-grave slept. Now up and over the steep incline, She speeds with the red light for a sign; She hears the cry of the coming train, it trembles like lanceheads through her brain; And round the curve, with a foot as fleet As a sinner's that flees from the Judgment-seat, She flies; and the signal swings, and then She knows no more; but the enginemen Lifted her, bore her, where women brought The flush to her cheek, and with kisses caught The warm breath back to her pallid lips, The life from lives that were near eclipse; Blessed her, and praised her, and begged her name That all of their kindred should know her fame; Should tell how a girl from a cattle-ranche That night defeated an avalanche. Where is the wonder the engineer Of the train she saved, in half a year Had wooed her and won her? And here they are For their homeward trip in a parlour car! Which goes to show that Old Nature's plans Were wrecked with the Bridge of the Hundred Spans. NELL LATORE Rebel? . . . I grant you,--my comrades then Were called Old Pascal Dubois' Men Half-breeds all of us . . . I, a scamp, The best long-shot in the Touchwood Camp; Muscle and nerve like strings of steel, Sound in the game of bit and heel-- There's your guide-book. . . . But, Jeanne Amray, Telegraph-clerk at Sturgeon Bay, French and thoroughbred, proud and sweet, Sunshine down to her glancing feet, Sang one song 'neath the northern moon That changed God's world to a tropic noon; And Love burned up on its golden floor Years of passion for Nell Latore-- Nell Latore with her tawny hair, Glowing eyes and her reckless air; Lithe as an alder, straight and tall-- Pride and sorrow of Rise-and-Fall! Indian blood in her veins ran wild, And a Saxon father called her child; Women feared her, and men soon found When they trod on forbidden ground. Ride! there's never a cayuse knew Saddle slip of her; pistols, too, Seemed to learn in her hands a knack How to travel a dead-sure track. Something in both alike maybe, Something kindred in ancestry, Some warm touch of an ancient pride Drew my feet to her willing side. My comrade, she, in the Touchwood Camp, To ride, hunt, trail by the fire-fly lamp; To track the moose to his moose-yard; pass The bustard's doom through the prairie grass; To hark at night to the crying loon Beat idle wings on the still lagoon; To hide from death in the drifting snow, To slay the last of the buffalo. . . . Ah, well, I speak of the days that were; And I swear to you, I was kind to her. I lost her. How are the best friends lost? The lightning lines of our souls got crossed-- Crossed, and could never again be free Till Death should call from his midnight sea. One spring brought me my wedding day, Brought me my bright-eyed Jeanne Amray; Brought that night to our cabin door My old, lost comrade, Nell Latore. Her eyes swam fire, and her cheek was red, Her full breast heaved as she darkly said: "The coyote hides from the wind and rain, The wild horse flies from the hurricane, But who can flee from the half-breed's hate, That rises soon and that watches late?" Then went; and I laughed Jeanne's fears afar, But I thought that wench was our evil star. Be sure, when a woman's heart gets hard, It works up war like a navy yard. Half-breed and Indian troubles came-- The same old story--land and game; And Dubois' Men were the first to feel The bullet-sting and the clip of steel; And last in battle 'gainst thousands sent, With Gatling guns for our punishment. Every cause has its traitor; then How should it fare with Dubois' Men! Beaten their cause was, and hunted down, Like to a moose in the chase full blown, Panting they stood; and a Judas sold Their hiding-place for a piece of gold. And while scouts searched for us night and day Jeanne telegraphed on at Sturgeon Bay. Picture her there as she stands alone, Cold, in the glow of the afternoon; Picture, I ask you, that patient wife, Numb with fear for her husband's life, When a sharp click-click awakes her brain To life, with the needle-points of pain. A message it was to Camp Pousette-- One that the half-breeds think on yet: "Dubois' gang are in Rocky Glen, Take a hundred and fifty men; Go by the next express," it said, "Bring them up here, alive or dead!" . . . "Go by the next express!" and she, Standing there by the silent key, Said it over and over again, Thinking of one of Dubois' Men Thinking in anguish, heart and head, Of him, brought up there alive or dead. Save him, and perish to save him, yes! But three hours more, and that next express Would thunder by her, and she, alas! Must stand there still and let it pass. Duty was duty, and hers was clear; God seemed far off, and no friend near. But the truest friend and the swiftest horse Must ride that ride on a breakneck course; And with truest horse and swiftest friend, To the fast express was the winning end! And as if one pang was needed more, There stood in the doorway, Nell Latore-- Nell Latore, with her mocking face, Restless eyes, and her evil grace; Quick to read in the wife's sad eyes, The deep, strange woe, and the hurt surprise. Slow she said, with piercing breath, "Rebel fighter dies rebel death!" Said, and paused; for she seemed to see Far through the other's misery, Something that stilled her; triumph fled Shamed and fast, as the young wife said-- "He keeps his faith with an oath he swore, For the half-breed's freedom, Nell Latore; And, did he lie here, eyes death-dim, You, if you spoke but truth of him, Truth, truth only, should stand and say, 'He never wronged me, Jeanne Amray.'" Then, for a moment, standing there, Hushed and cold as a dead man's prayer, Nell Latore, with the woman now, Scorching the past from her eyes and brow "Trust me," she said, like an angel-call, "Tell me his danger, tell me all." Quick resolve to a quick-told tale-- Nell Latore, to the glistening rail Fled, and on it a hand-car drew, Seized the handles, and backward threw One swift, farewell look, and said, "You shall have him alive, not dead!" Ah, well for her that her arms were strong, And cord and nerve like a knotted thong, And well for Jeanne in her sharp distress, That Nell was racing the fast express Her whole life bent to this one deed, And, like a soul from its prison freed, Rising, dilating, reached across Hills of conquest from plains of loss. Gorges echoed as she passed by, Wild fowl rose with a plaintive cry; On she sped; and the white steel rang-- "Save him--save him for her!" it sang. Once, a lad at a worn-out mine Strove to warn her with awe-struck sign-- Turned she neither to left nor right, Strained till the Rock Hills came in sight; "But two miles more," to herself she said, "Then she shall have him alive, not dead!" The merciful gods that moment heard Her promise, and helped her to keep her word; For, when the wheels of the fast express Slowed through the gates of that wilderness, Round a headland and far away Sailed the husband of Jeanne Amray. While all that hundred-and-fifty then, Hot on the trail of the Dubois Men, Knew, as they stood by the pine-girt store, The girl that had foiled them--Nell Latore. Slow she moved from among them, turned Where the sky to the westward burned; Gazed for a moment, set her hands Over her brow, so! drew the strands Loose and rich of her tawny hair, Once through her fingers, standing there; Then again to the rail she passed. One more look to the West she cast, And into the East she drew away: Backwards and forwards her brown arms play, Forwards and backwards, till far and dim, She grew one with the night's dun rim; Backwards and forwards, and then, was gone Into I know not what . . . alone. She came not back, she may never come; But a young wife lives in a cabin home, Who prays each night that, alive or dead, Come God's own rest for her lonely head: And I--shall I see her then no more, My comrade, my old love, Nell Latore? A LOVER'S DIARY, Complete By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS Volume 1. THE VISION ABOVE THE DIN LOVE'S COURAGE LOVE'S LANGUAGE ASPIRATION THE MEETING THE NEST PISGAH LOVE IS ENOUGH AT THE PLAY SO CALM THE WORLD THE WELCOME THE SHRINE THE TORCH IN ARMOUR IN THEE MY ART DENIAL TESTAMENT CAPTIVITY O MYSTIC WINGS WAS IT THY FACE? A WOMAN'S HAND ONE FACE I SEE MOTHER WHEN FIRST I SAW THEE THE FATES LAUGH AS ONE WHO WAITETH THE SEALING THE PLEDGE LOVE'S TRIBUTARIES THE CHOICE RECOGNITION THE WAY OF DREAMS THE ACCOLADE FALLEN IDOLS TENNYSON THE ANOINTED Volume 2. DREAMS THE BRIDE THE WRAITH SURRENDER THE CITADEL MALFEASANCE ANNUNCIATION VANISHED DREAMS INTO THY LAND DIVIDED WE MUST LIVE ON YET LIFE IS SWEET LOST FOOTSTEPS THE CLOSED DOOR THE CHALICE MIO DESTINO I HAVE BEHELD TOO SOON AWAY THE TREASURE DAHIN LOVE'S USURY THE DECREE 'TIS MORNING NOW SACRIFICE SHINE ON SO, THOU ART GONE THE THOUSAND THINGS ONES THE SEA THE CHART REVEALING OVERCOMING WHITHER NOW ARARAT AS LIGHT LEAPS UP THE DARKENED WAY REUNITED SONG WAS GONE FROM ME GOOD WAS THE FIGHT UNCHANGED ABSOLVO TE BENEDICTUS THE MESSAGE UNAVAILING YOU SHALL LIVE ON "VEX NOT THIS GHOST" THE MEMORY THE PASSING ENVOY INTRODUCTION 'A Lover's Diary' has not the same modest history as 'Embers'. As far back as 1894 it was given to the public without any apology or excuse, but I have been apologising for it ever since, in one way--without avail. I wished that at least one-fifth of it had not been published; but my apology was never heard till now as I withdraw from this edition of A Lover's Diary some twenty-five sonnets representing fully one-fifth of the original edition. As it now stands the faint thread of narrative is more distinct, and redundancy of sentiment and words is modified to some extent at any rate. Such material story as there is, apart from the spiritual history embodied in the sonnets, seems more visible now, and the reader has a clearer revelation of a young, aspiring, candid mind shadowed by stern conventions of thought, dogma, and formula, but breaking loose from the environment which smothered it. The price it pays for the revelation is a hopeless love informed by temptation, but lifted away from ruinous elements by self-renunciation, to end with the inevitable parting, poignant and permanent, a task of the soul finished and the toll of the journey of understanding paid. The six sonnets in italics, beginning with 'The Bride', and ending with 'Annunciation', have nothing to do with the story further than to show two phases of the youth's mind before it was shaken by speculation, plunged into the sadness of doubt and apprehension, and before it had found the love which was to reveal it to itself, transform the character, and give new impulse and direction to personal force and individual sense. These were written when I was twenty and twenty-one years of age, and the sonnet sequence of 'A Lover's Diary' was begun when I was twenty- three. They were continued over seven years in varying quantity. Sometimes two or three were written in a week, and then no more would be written for several weeks or maybe months, and it is clearly to be seen from the text, from the change in style, and above all in the nature of the thought that between 'The Darkened Way', which ends one epoch, and 'Reunited', which begins another and the last epoch, were intervening years. The sonnet which begins the book and particularly that which ends the book have been very widely quoted, and 'Envoy' has been set to music by more than one celebrated musician. Whatever the monotony of a sonnet sequence (and it is a form which I should not have chosen if I had been older and wiser) there has been a continuous, if limited, demand for the little book. As Edmund Clarence Stedman said in a review, it was a book which had to be written. It was an impulse, a vision, and a revealing, and, in his own words in a letter to me, "It was to be done whether you willed it or no, and there it is a truthful thing of which you shall be glad in spite of what you say." These last words of the great critic were in response to the sudden repentance and despair I felt after Messrs. Stone and Kimball had published the book in exquisite form with a beautiful frontispiece by Will H. Low. In any case, it is now too late to try and disabuse the minds of those who care for the little piece of artistry, and since 1894, when it was published, I have matured sufficiently in life's academy not to be too unduly sensitive either as to the merit or demerit of my work. There is, after all, an unlovable kind of vanity in acute self-criticism --as though it mattered deeply to the world whether one ever wrote anything; or, having written, as though it mattered to the world enough to stir it in its course by one vibration. The world has drunk deep of wonderful literature, and all that I can do is make a small brew with a little flavour of my own; but it still could get on very well indeed with the old staple and matured vintages were I never to write at all. The King--Whence art thou, sir? Gilfaron--My Lord, I know not well. Indeed, I am a townsman of the world. For once my mother told me that she saw The Angel of the Cross Roads lead me out, And point to every corner of the sky, And say, "Thy feet shall follow in the trail Of every tribe; and thou shalt pitch thy tent Wherever thou shalt see a human face Which hath thereon the alphabet of life; Yea, thou shalt spell it out e'en as a child: And therein wisdom find." The King--Art thou wise? Gilfaron--Only according to the Signs. The King--What signs? Gilfaron--The first--the language of the Garden, sire, When man spoke with the naked searching thought, Unlacquered of the world. The King--Speak so forthwith; come, show us to be wise. Gilfaron--The Angel of the Cross Roads to me said: "And wisdom comes by looking eye to eye, Each seeing his own soul as in a glass; For ye shall find the Lodges of the Wise, The farthest Camp of the Delightful Fires, By marching two by two, not one by one." --The King's Daughter. THE VISION As one would stand who saw a sudden light Flood down the world, and so encompass him And in that world illumined Seraphim Brooded above and gladdened to his sight; So stand I in the flame of one great thought, That broadens to my soul from where she waits, Who, yesterday, drew wide the inner gates Of all my being to the hopes I sought. Her words come to me like a summer-song, Blown from the throat of some sweet nightingale; I stand within her light the whole day long, And think upon her till the white stars fail: I lift my head towards all that makes life wise, And see no farther than my lady's eyes. ABOVE THE DIN Silence sits often on me as I touch Her presence; I am like a bird that hears A note diviner than it knows, and fears To share the larger harmony too much. My soul leaps up, as to a sudden sound A long-lost traveller, when, by her grace, I learn of her life's sweetness face to face, And sweep the chords of sympathies profound. Her regal nature calmly holds its height Above life's din, while moving in its maze. Unworthy thoughts would die within her sight, And mean deeds creep to darkness from her gaze. Yet only in my dreams can I set down The word that gives her nobleness a crown. LOVE'S COURAGE Courage have I to face all bitter things, That start out darkly from the rugged path, Leading to life's achievement; not God's wrath Would sit so heavy when my lady sings. I did not know what life meant till I felt Her hand clasp mine in compact to the end; Till her dear voice said, "See, I am your friend!" And at her feet, amazed, my spirit knelt. And yet I spoke but hoarsely then my thought, I groped amid a thousand forces there; Her understanding all my meaning caught, It was illumined in her atmosphere. She read it line by line, and then there fell The curtain on the shrine-and it is well. LOVE'S LANGUAGE Just now a wave of perfume floated up To greet my senses as I broke the seal Of her short letter; and I still can feel It stir me as a saint the holy cup. The missive lies there,--but a few plain words: A thought about a song, a note of praise, And social duties such as fill the days Of women; then a thing that undergirds The phrases like a psalm: a line that reads- "I wish that you were coming!" Why, it lies Upon my heart like blossoms on the skies, Like breath of balm upon the clover meads. The perfumed words soothe me into a dream; My thoughts float to her on the scented stream. ASPIRATION None ever climbed to mountain heights of song, But felt the touch of some good woman's palm; None ever reached God's altitude of calm, But heard one voice cry, "Follow!" from the throng. I would not place her as an image high Above my reach, cold, in some dim recess, Where never she should feel a warm caress Of this my hand that serves her till I die. I would not set her higher than my heart,-- Though she is nobler than I e'er can be; Because she placed me from the crowd apart, And with her tenderness she honoured me. Because of this, I hold me worthier To be her kinsman, while I worship her. THE MEETING O marvel of our nature, that one life Strikes through the thousand lives that fold it round, To find another, even as a sound Sweeps to a song through elemental strife! Through cycles infinite the forces wait, Which destiny has set for union here; No circumstance can warp them from their sphere; They meet sometime; and this is God and Fate. And God is Law, and Fate is Law in use, And we are acted on by some deep cause, Which sanctifies "I will" and "I refuse," When Love speaks--Love, the peaceful end of Laws. And I, from many conflicts over-past, Find here Love, Law, and God, at last. THE NEST High as the eagle builds his lonely nest Above the sea, above the paths of man, And makes the elements his barbican, That none may break the mother-eagle's rest; So build I far above all human eyes My nest of love; Heaven's face alone bends down To give it sunlight, starlight; while is blown A wind upon it out of Paradise. None shall affright, no harm may come to her, Whom I have set there in that lofty home: Love's eye is sleepless; I could feel the stir E'en of God's cohorts, if they chanced to come. I am her shield; I would that I might prove How dear I hold the lady of my love. WHEN thou makest a voyage to the stars, go thou blindfolded; and carry not a sword, but the sandals of thy youth. --Egyptian Proverb. SEEK thou the Angel of the Cross Roads ere thou goest upon a journey, and she will give thee wisdom at the Four Corners. --Egyptian Proverb. PISGAH Behold, now, I have touched the highest point In my existence. When I turn my eyes Backward to scan my outlived agonies, I feel God's finger touch me, to anoint With this sweet Present the ungenerous Past, With love the wounds that struck stark in my soul; With hope life's aching restlessness and dole; To show me place to anchor in at last. Like to a mother bending o'er the bed Where sleeps, death-silent, one that left her side Ere he had reached the flow of manhood's tide, So stood I by my life whence Life had fled. But Life came back at Love's clear trumpet-call, And at Love's feet I cast the useless pall. LOVE IS ENOUGH It is enough that in this burdened time The soul sees all its purposes aright. The rest--what does it matter? Soon the night Will come to whelm us, then the morning chime. What does it matter, if but in the way One hand clasps ours, one heart believes us true; One understands the work we try to do, And strives through Love to teach us what to say? Between me and the chilly outer air Which blows in from the world, there standeth one Who draws Love's curtains closely everywhere, As God folds down the banners of the sun. Warm is my place about me, and above Where was the raven, I behold the dove. AT THE PLAY I felt her fan my shoulder touch to-night. Soft act, faint touch, no meaning did it bear To any save myself, who felt the air Of a new feeling cross my soul's clear sight. To me what matter that the players played! They grew upon the instant like the toys Which dance before the sight of idle boys; I could not hear the laughter that they made. Swept was I on that breath her hand had drawn, Through the dull air, into a mountain-space, Where shafts of the bright sun-god interlace, Making the promise of a golden dawn. And straightway crying, "O my heart, rejoice!" It found its music in my lady's voice. SO CALM THE WORLD Far up the sky the sunset glamour spreads, Far off the city lies in golden mist; The sea grows calm, the waves the sun has kissed Strike white hands softly 'gainst the rocky heads. So calm the world, so still the city lies, So warm the haze that spreads o'er everything; And yet where, there, Peace sits as Lord and King, Havoc will reign when next the sun shall rise. The wheels pause only for a little space, And in the pause they gather strength again. 'Tis but the veil drawn over Labour's face, O'er strife, derision, and the sin of men. My heart with a sweet inner joy o'erflows To nature's peace, and a kind silence knows. THE WELCOME But see: my lady comes. I hear her feet Upon the sward; she standeth by my side. Just such a face Raphael had deified, If in his day they two had chanced to meet. And I, tossed by the tide of circumstance, Lifting weak hands against a host of swords, Paused suddenly to hear her gentle words Making powerless the lightnings of mischance. I, who was but a maker of poor songs, That one might sing behind his prison bars, I, who it seemed fate singled out for wrongs-- She smiled on me as smile the nearest stars. From her deep soul I draw my peace, and thus, One wreath of rhyme I weave for both of us. THE SHRINE Were I but as the master souls who move In their high place, immortal on the earth, My song might be a thing to crown her worth,-- 'Tis but a pathway for the feet of Love. But since she walks where I am fain to sing, Since she has said, "I listen, O my friend!" There is a glory lent the song I send, And I am proud, yes, prouder than a king. I grow to nobler use beneath her eyes-- Eyes that smile on me so serenely, will They smile a welcome though my best hope dies, And greet me at the summit of the hill? Will she, for whom my heart has built a shrine, Take from me all that makes this world divine? THE TORCH Art's use what is it but to touch the springs Of nature? But to hold a torch up for Humanity in Life's large corridor, To guide the feet of peasants and of kings! What is it but to carry union through Thoughts alien to thoughts kindred, and to merge The lines of colour that should not diverge, And give the sun a window to shine through! What is it but to make the world have heed For what its dull eyes else would hardly scan, To draw in a stark light a shameless deed, And show the fashion of a kingly man! To cherish honour, and to smite all shame, To lend hearts voices, and give thoughts a name! IN ARMOUR, But wherein shall Art work? Shall beauty lead It captive, and set kisses on its mouth? Shall it be strained unto the breast of youth, And in a garden live where grows no weed? Shall it, in dalliance with the flaunting world, Play but soft airs, sing but sweet-tempered songs? Veer lightly from the stress of all great wrongs, And lisp of peace 'mid battle-flags unfurled? Shall it but pluck the sleeve of wantonness, And gently chide the folly of our time? But wave its golden wand at sin's duress, And say, "Ah me! ah me!" to fallow crime? Nay, Art serves Truth, and Truth with Titan blows, Strikes fearless at all evil that it knows. IN THEE MY ART In thee is all my art; from thee I draw The substance of my dreams, the waking plan Of practised thought; I can no measure scan, But thou work'st in me like eternal law. If I were rich in goodly title deeds Of broad estate, won from posterity; If from decaying Time I snatched a see Richer than prelates pray for with their beads; If some should bring before me frankincense, And make a pleasant fire to greet mine eyes; If there were given me for recompense Gifts fairer than a seraph could devise: I would, my sovereign, kneel to thee and say, "It all is thine; thou showedst me the way." DENIAL But is it so that I must never kiss Thee on the brow, or smooth thy silken hair? Never close down thine eyelids with Love's prayer, Or fold my arms about my new-found bliss? Must I unto the courses of my age Worship afar, lest haply I profane The temple that is now my holy fane, For which my song is given as a gage? Shall I who cry to all, "Come not within The bounds where I my lady have enshrined; I am her cavalier"; shall I not win One dear caress, the rich exchequer find Of thy soft cheek? If thou command, my lips Shall find surcease but at thy fingertips. TESTAMENT Why do I love thee? Shall my answer run: Because that thou hast beauty, noble place, Because of some sweet glamour in thy face, And eyes that shame the clear light of the sun? Shall I exclaim upon thy snow-white hands, Challenge the world to show a gentler mien, Call down the seraphs to attest, the sheen Upon thy brow is borrowed from their lands? Shall I trace out a map of all thy worth, Parcel thy virtues, say, "For this and this I learned to love her; here new charms had birth; I in this territory caught a bliss"? Shall I make inventory of thy grace, And crowd the total into common space? CAPTIVITY Nay, lady, though I love thee, I make pause Before thy question, and know naught to say; Art cannot teach me to define the way, Love led me, nor e'en register Love's cause. It can but blazon in this verse of mine What love does for me; what from Love it gains; What is its quickening; but it refrains From divination where thy merits shine. Canst thou, indeed, not tell what wrought in thee To bring me as a captive to thy feet? Canst thou not say, "'Twas this that made decree Of conquest; here thy soul with mine did meet?" Or is it that both stand amazed before The shrine where thou hast blessed and I adore? O MYSTIC WINGS O mystic wings, upbear me lightly now, Beyond life's faithful labour to a seat Where I can feel the end of things complete, Where no hot breath of ill can scorch the brow. O mystic wings of Art, about thee Truth Makes atmosphere of purity and power; 'Tis man's breath kills the spring's soft-petaled flower-- Ye give a refuge for the heart of youth. Ye give a value for all loss in age, When feebled eyes search for forgotten springs; Ye fan the breeze that turns the moulded page, And carry back the soul to ardent things. Poor payment can I give, but here engage I thee to be Love's airy equipage. WAS IT THY FACE? Was it thy face I saw when, as a child, Night after night I watched one quiet star Shine 'tween my curtain and the window-bar Until I slept, and made my sleep more mild? Was it thy influence outreaching then To me, o'er untrod years, o'er varying days, To give me courage, as from phase to phase Of youth's desires I passed to deeds of men? Was it because the star was hid awhile, That I in blindness wandered from my path; That I wooed Folly with her mumming smile, And sought for Lethe in a cup of wrath? Another hand touched mine with sadness there, And saved me till I saw thy face appear. A WOMAN'S HAND A woman's hand. Lo, I am thankful now That with its touch I have walked all my days; Rising from fateful and forbidden ways, To find a woman's hand upon my brow; Soft as a pad of rose-leaves, and as pure As upraised palms of angels, seen in dreams: And soothed by it, to stand as it beseems A man who strives to conquer and endure. A woman's hand!--there is no better thing Of all things human; it is half divine; It hath been more to this lame life of mine, When faith was weakness, and despair was king. Man more than all men, Thou wast glad to bless A woman's sacrifice and tenderness. ONE FACE I SEE One face I see by thine whene'er I hold Converse with things that are or things that were; Whene'er I seek life's hidden folds to stir, And watch the inner to the outer rolled. Dost thou not know her, O beloved one? Hast thou not felt her sunshine on thy face? In me hast thou not learned some signs to trace Of that dear soul who calleth me her son? Such as I was that in thy countenance Found favour, from her it was gathered most. To my mad youth her gentle surveillance Was like a watch-fire on a rock-bound coast. She drew about me motherhood, and thou Hast with Love's holy chrism touched my brow. MOTHER She gave me courage when I weakly said, "O see how drifting, derelict, am I! The tide runs counter, and the wind is high; I see no channel through the rocks ahead. My arm is impotent; what worth to trim The bending sails! Look, I shall quaff a cup To Fate, while the wild ocean swallows up The shipwrecked youth, the man who lives in him." She said: "But thou hast valour, dear, too much For such as this; thou hast grave embassy, Given with thy birth; would'st thou thine honour smutch With coward failing? Dear son, breast the sea." Firm-purposed from that hour, through wind and wave, I brought my message till thou shelter gave. WHEN FIRST I SAW THEE When first I saw thee, lady, straightway came The thought that somehow, somewhere, destiny, Through blinding paths of happiness or blame, Would bend my way of life, my soul to thee. But then I put it from me: was not I A wanderer? To-morrow I should be In other lands-beside another sea; Nay, you were but a star-gleam in my sky. And so I came not in your sight awhile, You gave no thought, and I passed not away; But like some traveller in a deep defile I walked in darkness even through the day: Until at last the hands of Circumstance Pointed the hour that waked me from my trance. THE FATES LAUGH I did not will this thing. I set my face Towards duty and my art; I was alone. How knew I thou shouldst roll away the stone From hopes long buried, by thy tender grace? What does it matter that we make resolve? The Fates laugh at us as they sit and spin; We cannot tell what Good is, or what Sin, Or why old faiths in mist of pain dissolve. We only can stand watchful in the way, Waiting with patient hands on shield and sword, Ready to meet disaster in the fray, Till Time has struck the letters of one word-- Word of such high-born worth: triumphant Love, Give me thy canopy where'er I rove. AS ONE WHO WAITETH As one who waiteth for the signet ring Of his dear sovereign, that his embassy May have clear passport over land and sea, And make the subject sacred as his king; As waits the warrior for a pontiff's palm, Upraised in blessing o'er his high emprise; And bows his mailed forehead prayerful-wise, Sinking his turbulency in deep calm: So waited I for one seal to be set Upon my full commission, for a sign That should make impotent man's "I forget," And make God's "I remember" more divine: Which should command at need the homage of The armed squadrons of all loyal love. THE SEALING But yestermorn my marshalled hopes were held Upon the verge of august pilgrimage; To-day I am as birds that leave the cage To seek green fastnesses they knew of eld; To-day I am as one who hides his face Within his golden beaver, and whose hand Clenches with pride his tried and conquering brand, Ay, as a hunter mounted for the chase. For, see: upon my lips I carry now A touch that speaks reveille to my soul; I have a dispensation large enow To enfold the world and circumscribe each pole. Slow let me speak it: From her lips and brow I took the gifts she only could endow. THE PLEDGE O gifts divine as any ever knew The noble spirits of an antique time; As any poets fashion in their rhyme, Or angels whisper down the shadeless blue! The priceless gifts of holy confidence, That speak through quivering lips from heart to heart; That unto life new energies impart, And open up the gates of prescience. O dear my love, I unto thee have given Pledge that I am thy vassal evermore; I stand within the zenith of my Heaven, On either hand a starred eternal shore I have come nearer to thy greater worth, For thou hast raised me from the common earth. LOVE'S TRIBUTARIES I can say now, "There was the confluence Of all Love's tributaries; there the sea Of Love spread out towards eternity; And there my coarser touched her finer sense. Poor though I am in my own sight, I know That thou hast winnowed, sweet, what best I am; Upon my restlessness thy ample calm Hath fallen as on frost-bound earth the snow. It hideth the harsh furrows that the wheels Of heavy trials made in Life's champaign; Upon its pure unfolding sunshine steals, And there is promise of the spring again. Here make I proclamation of my faith, And poise my fealty o'er the head of Death." THE CHOICE If Death should come to me to-night, and say: "I weigh thy destiny; behold, I give One little day with this thy love to live, Then, my embrace; or, leave her for alway, And thou shalt walk a full array of years; Upon thee shall the world's large honours fall, And praises clamorous shall make for all Thy strivings rich amends." If in my ears Thou saidst, "I love thee!" I would straightway cry, "A thousand years upon this barren earth Is death without her: for that day I die, And count my life for it of poorest worth." Love's reckoning is too noble to be told By Time's slow fingers on its sands of gold. RECOGNITION As in a foreign land one threads his way 'Mid alien scenes, knowing no face he meets; And, hearing his name spoken, turns and greets With wondering joy a friend of other days; As in the pause that comes between the sound And recognition, all the finer sense Is swathed in a melodious eloquence, Which makes his name seem in its sweetness drowned So stood I, by an atmosphere beguiled Of glad surprise, when first thy lips let fall The name I lightly carried when a child, That I shall rise to at the judgment call. The music of thy nature folded round Its barrenness a majesty of sound. THE WAY OF DREAMS Since I rose out of child-oblivion I have walked in a world of many dreams, And noble souls beside the shining streams Of fancy have with beckonings led me on. Their faces oft, mayhap, I could not see, Only their waving hands and noble forms. Sometimes there sprang between quick-gathered storms, But always they came back again to me. Women with smiling eyes and star-spun hair Spake gentle things, bade me look back to view The deeds of the great souls who climbed the stair Immortal, and for whom God's manna grew: Dante, Anacreon, Euripides, And all who set rich wine upon the lees. THE ACCOLADE Men of brave stature came and placed their hands Upon my head, and, lifting shining swords, Drew through the air signs mightier than words, And vanished in the sun upon the sands. Glimpses I caught of faces that have come Through crowding ages; whisperings of songs; And prayers for the redress of human wrongs From voices that upon the earth are dumb. They were but shadows, but they lent me joy; They gave me reverence for all who pace The world with hands raised, evil to destroy, Who live but for the honour of their race. They taught me to strike at no idol raised, Worshipped a space, then left to be dispraised. FALLEN IDOLS Stedfastness, shall we find it, then, at all? Is it that as the winds blow north and south, So must be praises from the loud world's mouth, Which on its heroes in their glory fall? Because the voice grows stiller, or the arm No longer can beat evils back; because The shoulders sink beneath new-rising cause, And the fine thought has lost its moving charm; Because of these shall puny sages shake Their heads, and haste to mock the failing one, Who in his strength could make the nations quake; Prophet like Daniel, King like Solomon! In this full time we have seen mockers run About the throne of such as Tennyson. TENNYSON Who saith thy hand is weak, King Tennyson? Who crieth, See, the monarch is grown old, His sceptre falls? Oh, carpers rude and bold, You who have fed upon the gracious benison Scattered unstinted by him, do you now Dispraise the sweet-strung harp, grown tremulous 'Neath fingers overworn for all of us? You cannot tear the laurels from his brow. He lives above your idle vaunts and fears, Enthroned where all master souls stand up In their high place, and fill the golden cup, God-blest for kings, with wine of endless years, And greet him one with them. O brotherhood Of envious dullards, ye are wroth with good. THE ANOINTED ONES Why, let them rail! God's full anointed ones Have heard the world exclaim, "We know you not." They who by their souls' travailing have brought Us nearer to the wonder of the suns. Yet, who can stay the passage of the stars? Who can prevail against the thunder-sound? The wire that flashes lightning to the ground Diverts, but not its potency debars. So, men may strike quick stabs at Caesar's worth,-- They only make his life an endless force, 'Scaped from its penthouse, flashing through the earth, And 'whelming those who railed about his Gorse. Men's moods disturb not those born truly great: They know their end; they can afford to wait. A LOVER'S DIARY By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. CONTENTS: DREAMS THE BRIDE THE WRAITH SURRENDER THE CITADEL MALFEASANCE ANNUNCIATION VANISHED DREAMS INTO THY LAND DIVIDED WE MUST LIVE ON YET LIFE IS SWEET LOST FOOTSTEPS THE CLOSED DOOR THE CHALICE MIO DESTINO I HAVE BEHELD TOO SOON AWAY THE TREASURE DAHIN LOVE'S USURY THE DECREE 'TIS MORNING NOW SACRIFICE SHINE ON SO, THOU ART GONE THE THOUSAND THINGS ONES THE SEA THE CHART REVEALING OVERCOMING WHITHER NOW ARARAT AS LIGHT LEAPS UP THE DARKENED WAY REUNITED SONG WAS GONE FROM ME GOOD WAS THE FIGHT UNCHANGED ABSOLVO TE BENEDICTUS THE MESSAGE UNAVAILING YOU SHALL LIVE ON "VEX NOT THIS GHOST" THE MEMORY THE PASSING ENVOY DREAMS And so life passed. I lived from year to year With shadows, the strong warders of desire; I learned through them to seek the golden fire That hides itself in Song's bright hemisphere. Through them I grew full of imaginings, I made strange pictures, conjured images From my deep longings; wrote the passages Of life inwrought with half-glad wonderings. For who can know a majesty of peace, That wanders, ever waiting for a voice To say to him, "Behold, at last surcease Of thy unrest has come, therefore, rejoice"? Here set I down some dreams that come again, Almost forgotten in my higher gain. THE BRIDE A ship at sea; a port to anchor in; Not far a starry light upon the shore. The sheeted lightning, like a golden door, Swings to and fro to let earth-angels in. Most bravely has she sailed o'er every sea, Withstood the storm-rack, spurned the sullen reef; Cherished her strength; and held her guerdon fief To him who saith, "My ship comes back to me! Behold, I sent her forth a stately thing, To be my messenger to farthest lands, To Fortunate Isles, and where the silver sands Girdle a summer sea; that she might bring My bride, who wist not that I loved her so-- This is no bitter day for me, I trow!" THE WRAITH A ship in port; well-crossed the harbour-bar; The hawser swung, the grinding helm at rest; Hands clasping hands, and eyes with eager zest Seeking the loved, returning from afar. And he, the master, holding little reck Of all, save but the idol of his soul, Seeks not his loving ardour to control. Mark how he proudly treads the whitened deck! "My bride, my bride, my lone soul's best beloved, Come forth, come forth! Where art thou, Isobel?-- Pallid, and wan! Lord, hath it thus befell This is but dust; where has the spirit roved? O death-cold bride! for this, then, have I strove? O phantom ship, O loveless wraith of Love!" SURRENDER A day of sunshine in a land of snow, And a soft-curtained room, where ruddy flakes Of fame fall free, in liquid light that slakes The soft desire of one cold, paleface: lo, Close-pressed sweet lips, and eyes of violet, That are filled up as with a sudden fear-- A storm's prelude upon the expectant mere. Yet deep behind what never they forget, Who ever see in life's chance or mischance. And he who saw, what could he do but say, "Fold up the tents; the camp is struck; away! Vain victor who rides not in rest his lance!" Beside the hearthstone where the flame-flakes fell, There lay the cold keys of the citadel. THE CITADEL A night wind-swept and bound about with blee Of Erebus; all light and cheer within; White restless hands that falter, then begin To weave a music-voiced fantasy. And life, and death, and love, and weariness, And unrequital, thrid the maze of sound; And one voice saith, "Behold, the lost is found!" And saith not any more for joyfulness. Out of the night there comes a wanderer, Who waits upon the threshold, and is still; And listens, and bows down his head, until His grief-drawn breath startles the heart of her. The victor vanquished, at her feet he fell, A prisoner in his conquered citadel. MALFEASANCE Two of one name; they standing where the sun Makes shadows in the orchard-bloom of spring; She holding in her palm a jewelled ring, He speaking on what evil it had done. "Raise thy pale face and wondrous eyes to mine; Let not thy poor lips quiver in such pain; Too young and blindly thou hast drunk the wine Crushed from the lees of love. Be strong again. Trail back thy golden hair from thy broad brow, And raise thy lily neck like some tall tower, That recks not any strife nor any hour, So it but holds its height, heeding not how. The noblest find their way o'er paths of ire To the clear summit of God's full desire." ANNUNCIATION I think in that far time when Gabriel came And gave short speech to Mary sweet and wise, That when the faint fear faded from her eyes, And they were filled up with a sudden flame Of joy bewildering and wonderment; With reverence the angel in her palm Laid one white lily, dewy with the balm Of the Lord's garden; saying: "This is sent For thine espousal, thou the undefiled; And it shall bloom till all be consummate." Lo, then he passed. She, musing where she sate, Felt all her being moved in manner wondrous mild; Then, laying 'gainst her bosom the white flower, She bowed her head, and said, "It is God's dower." VANISHED DREAMS Dreams, only dreams. They sprang from loneliness Of outer life; from innermost desire To reach the soul that now in golden fire Of cherished song I pray for and caress. I wandered through the world with longing gaze, To find her who was my hope's parallel, That to her I might all my gospel tell Of changeless love, and bid her make appraise. I knew that some day I should look within The ever-deepening distance of her eyes; For, in my dreams, from veiled Seraphim Came one, as if in answer to my cries: And passing near me, pointed down the road That led me at the last to thy abode. INTO THY LAND Into thy land of sunlight I have come, And live within thy presence, as a ray Of light lives in the brightness of the day; And find in thee my heaven and my home. Yet what am I that thou shouldst ope the gate Of thy most sweet completeness; and should spend Rich values of thy life on me thy friend, For which I have no worthy duplicate! Nay, lady, I no riches have to give; I have no name of honour, or the pride Of place, to priv'lege me to sit beside Thee in thy kingdom, where thy graces live. Wilt thou not one day whisper, "You have climbed Beyond your merits; pray you, fall behind"? Wish thy friend joy of his journey, but pray in secret that he have no joy, for then may he return quickly to thee. --Egyptian Proverb. DIVIDED Divided by no act of thine or mine, Forever parted by a fatal deed, A fatal feud. Alas! when fathers bleed, The children shall fulfil the wild design. A Montague hath killed a Capulet, A Capulet hath slain a Montague,-- Twin graves, twin sorrows, and oh, mad to-do Of vengeance! oh, dread entail of regret! There lie they in their dark, self-chosen graves, And from them cries Hate's everlasting ghost,-- "Blood hath been shed, and Love and ye are slaves, Time wrecks, and freedom drifts upon life's coast." Yet not for us the relish of that doom Which found a throne upon a Juliet's tomb. WE MUST LIVE ON We must live on; a deeper tragedy: To see, to touch, to know, and to desire; To feel in every vein the glorious fire Of Eden, and to cry, "Oh, to be free!" To cry, "Oh, wipe the gloomy stain away, Thou who first raised the sword, Who gave the hilt Into the hand of man. This blood they spilt-- Our fathers--oh, blot out the bitter day! Erase the hour from out Thy calendar, Turn back the hands upon the clock of Time, Oh, Artificer of destroying War-- Their righteous hate who bore us in our crime!" "Upon the children!"--'Tis the cold reply Of Him who makes to those who must not die. YET LIFE IS SWEET Yet life is sweet. Thy soul hath breathed along, Thine eyes have cast their glory on the earth, Thy foot hath touched it, and thine hour of birth Didst give a new pulse to the veins of song. Better to stand amid the toppling towers Of every valiant hope; a Samson's dream, Than the deep indolence of Lethe's stream, The loneliness of slow submerging hours. Better, oh, better thus to see the wreck, And to have rocked to motion of the spheres; Better, oh, better to have trod the deck Of hope, and sailed the unmanageable years- Ay, better to have paid the price, and known, Than never felt this tyrannous Alone! LOST FOOTSTEPS Upon the disc of Love's bright planet fell A darkness yestereve, and from your lips I heard cold words; then came a swift eclipse Of joy at meeting on hope's it-is-well. And if I spoke with sadness and with fear; If from your gentle coldness I drew back, And felt that I had lost the flowery track That led to peace in Love's sweet atmosphere: It was because a woful dread possessed. My aching heart--the dread some evil star Had crossed the warm affection in your breast, Had bade me stand apart from where you are. The world seemed breaking on my life; I heard The crash of sorrows in that chiding word. THE CLOSED DOOR It is not so, and so for evermore, That thou and I must live our lives apart; I with a patient smother at my heart, And thy hand resting on a closed door? What couldst thou ever ask me that I should Not bend me to achieve thy high behest? What cannot men achieve with lance in rest Who carry noble valour in their blood? And some nobility of high emprise, Lady, couldst thou make possible in me; If living 'neath the pureness of thy eyes, I found the key to inner majesty; And reaching outward, heart-strong, from thy hand, Set here and there a beacon in the land. THE CHALICE Not by my power alone, but thou and I Together thinking, working, loving on Achievement-wards, as all brave souls have gone, Perchance should find new star-drifts in the sky That curves above humanity, and set Some new interpretation on life's page; Should serve the strivings of a widening age, And fashion wisdom from the social fret. Deep did Time's lances go; thou pluck'st them forth, And on my sullen woundings laid the balm Of thy life's sweetness. Oh, let my love be worth The keeping. My head beneath thy palm, Once more I lift Love's chalice to thine eyes: Not till thou blessest me will I arise. MIO DESTINO Here, making count, at every step I see Something in her, like to a hidden thought Within my life, that long time I had sought, But never found till her soul spoke to me. And if she said a thousand times, "I did Not call thee, thou cam'st seeking; not my voice Was it thou heard'st; thy love was not my choice!" I should straightway reply, "That of thee hid, Even from thyself, lest it should startle thee, Hath called me, made me slave and king in one; And when the mists of Time shall rise, and we Stand forth, it shall be said, Since Time begun Ye two were called as one from that high hill, Where the creating Master hath His will." I HAVE BEHELD I have beheld a multitude stand still In such deep silence that a sudden pain Struck through the heart in sharing the tense strain, And all the world seemed bounded by one will. But when precipitated on the sea Of human feeling was the incident That caught their wonder; then the skies were rent With quivering sound, with passion's liberty. So have I stood before this parting day, With chilly fingers pressed upon my breast, That my heart burst not fleshen bands away, And my sharp cry break through my lady's rest. I have shut burning eyelids on the sight Of this dread time that scorches my sad night. TOO SOON AWAY Have I then found thee but to lose thee, friend? But touched thee ere thou vanished from my gaze? And when my soul is struggling from the maze Of many conflicts, must our converse end? Across the empty space that now shall spread Between us, shall I never go to thee? Or thou, beloved, never come to me, Save but to whisper prayers above the dead? Ah, cruel thought! Shall not Hope's convoy bear To thee the reinforcements of my love? Shall I not on thy white hand drop a tear Of crowned joy, one day, where thou dost move In thy place regally; even as now I place my farewell token on thy brow? THE TREASURE And now when from the shore goes out the ship Wherein is set the treasure that I hold Closer than miser all his hidden gold, Dearer than wine Zeus carried to his lip; My aching heart cries from its pent-up pain,-- "O Love, O Life, O more than life to me, How can I live without the surety Of thy sweet presence till we meet again!" So like a wounded deer I came to thee, The arrow of mischance piercing my side; And through thy sorrow-healing ministry I rose with strength, like giants in their pride. But now--but now--how shall I stand alone, Knowing the light, the hope of me is gone? DAHIN O brow, so fronted with a stately calm, O full completeness of true womanhood, O counsel, pleader for all highest good, Thou hast upon my sorrow poured thy balm! Poor soldier he who did not raise his sword, And, touching with his lips the hilt-cross, swear In war or peace the livery to wear Of one that blessed him with her queenly word. Most base crusader, who at night and morn Crying Dahin, thought not of her again From whose sweet power was his knighthood born, For whom he quells the valiant Saracen. Shall I not, then, in the tumultuous place Of my life's warfare ever seek thy face? LOVE'S USURY Here count I over all the gentle deeds Which thou hast done; here summon I thy words, Sweeter to me than sweetest song of birds; That came like grace immortal to my needs. Love's usury has reckoned such a sum Of my indebtedness, that I can make No lien large enough to overtake Its value--and before it I am dumb! Yet, O my gracious, most kind creditor, I would not owe to thee one item less We cannot give the sun requital for Its liberal light; our office is to bless. If blessings could be compassed by my prayer, High heaven should set star-gems in thy hair. THE DECREE Last night I saw the warm white Southern moon Sail upward through a smoky amber sea; Orion stood in silver majesty Where the gold-girdled sun takes rest at noon. I slept; I dreamed. Against a sunset sky I saw thee stand all garmented in white; With hand stretched to me, and there in thy sight I went to meet thee; but I heard thee cry: "We stand apart as sun from shining sun; Thou hast thy place; there rolleth far and near A sea between; until life's all be done Thou canst not come, nor I go to thee, dear." Methought I bowed my head to thy decree, And donned the mantle of my misery. 'TIS MORNING NOW 'Tis morning now, and dreams and fears are gone, And sleep has calmed the fever in my veins, And I am strong to drink the cup that drains The last drop through my lips, and make no moan. Strength I have borrowed from the outward show Of spiritual puissance thou dost wear. Shall I not thy high domination share Over the shock of feeling? Shall I grow More fearful than the soldier, when between The smoke of hostile cannon lies his way; To carry far the colours of his queen, While her bright eyes behold him in the fray? Here do I smile between the warring hosts Of sad farewells; and reek not what it costs. SACRIFICE And O most noble, and yet once again Most noble spirit, if I ever did Aught that thy goodness frowns on, be it hid Forever, and deep-buried. Let the rain Of coming springs fall on the quiet grave. Perchance some violets will grow to tell That I, when uttering this last farewell, Built up a sacrificial architrave; That I, who worship thee, have love so great, To live in the horizon thou may'st set; To stand but in the shadow of the gate, Faithful, when coward promptings cry, "Forget." Ah, lady, when I gave my heart to thee, It passed into thy lifelong regency. SHINE ON Shine on, O sun! Sing on, O birds of song! And in her light my heart fashions a tune Not wholly sad, most like a tender rune Sung by some knight in days gone overlong, When he with minstrel eyes in Syrian grove Looked out towards his England, and then drew From a sweet instrument a sound that grew From twilight unto morning of his love. Go, then, beloved, bearing as you go These songs that have more sunlight far than cloud; More summer flowers than dead leaves 'neath the snow; That tell of hopes from which you raised the shroud. My lady, bright benignant star, shine on-- I lift to thee my low Trisagion! HE that hath pleasant dreams is more fortunate than one who hath a cup-bearer. --Egyptian Proverb. SO, THOU ART GONE So, thou art gone; and I am left to wear Thy memory as a golden amulet Upon my breast, to sing a chansonnette Of winter tones, when summer time is here. And yet, my heart arises from the dark, Where it fell back in silence when you went To seaward, and a sprite malevolent Sat laughing in the white sails of thy barque. 'Twas not moth-wings dashing against the flame, Burning in love's areanum; 'twas a cry Struck from soul-crossing chords, that, separate, frame Life's holy calm, or wasting agony. But now between the warring strings there grows A space of peace, as 'tween truce-honoured foes. THE THOUSAND THINGS Here one by one come back the thousand things Which made divinely sweet our intercourse; Love summons them here straightway to divorce The heart from melancholy wanderings. "Here laid she her white hand upon my arm; To this place came she with slow-gliding grace; Here smiled she up serenely in my face; And these sweet notes she sang me for a charm." I treasure up her words, and say them o'er With close-shut eyes; with her again I float Upon the Loire; I see the gems she wore, The ruby shining at her queenly throat; I climb with her again the Pyrenees, And hear her laughter ringing through the trees. THE SEA I in my childhood never saw the sea Save in my dreams. There it was vast and lone, Splendid in power, breaking against the stone Walls of the world in thunder symphony. From it arose mists growing into mists Making a cool white curtain for the sun, And melting mornward when the day was done, A moving sphere where spirits kept their trysts. A ceaseless swinging with the swinging earth, A never-tiring ebbing to and fro, Trenching eternal fastnesses; a girth Round mountains in their everlasting snow. It was a vast emotion, fibre-drawn From all the elements since the first dawn. THE CHART Then came in further years the virgin sight Of the live sea; the sea that marches down, With sunny phalanxes and flags of foam, To match its puissance with earth's awful might. Far off the purple mist drew into mist, As thought melts into endless thought, and round The rim of the sheer world was heard a sound, Floating through palpitating amethyst. And through the varying waste of elements There passed a sail, which caught the opposing wind, Triumphant, as an army in its tents Beholds the foe it, conquering, left behind. "And Life," I said,--"Life is but like the sea; And what shall guide us to our destiny?" REVEALING The prescience of dreams struck walls away From mortal fact, and mortal fact revealed, With myriad voices, potencies concealed In the dim birth-place of a coming day. Even as a blind man's fingers wander o'er His harpstrings, led by sound to dreams of sound, Till in his soul an eloquence profound Rises above the petulance and roar Of the great globe: as in a rush of song From feathered throats, one, in a mighty wood, 'Mid sweet interpositions moves along The avenues of some predestined good; So I, dream-nurtured, standing by the sea, Made levy on the wonders that should be. OVERCOMING And God is good, I said, and Art is good, And labour hath its rich reward of sleep; And recompense will come for all who keep Dishonour's ill contagion from the blood. And over us there curves the infinite Blue heaven as a shield, and at the end We shall find One who loveth to befriend E'en those who faint for shame within His sight. And down the awful passes of the sky There comes the voice that circumvents the gale; That makes the avalanche to pass us by, And saith, "I overcome" to man's "I fail." "And peradventure now," said I, "the zest Of all existence waits on His behest." WHITHER NOW But man's deliverances intervene Between the soul's swift speech and God's high will; That saith to tempests of the thought, "Be still!" And in life's lazaretto maketh clean The leprous sense. Ah, who can find his way Among the many altars? Who can call Out perfect peace from any ritual, Or shelter find in systems of a day? As one sees on some ancient urn, upthrown From out a tomb, records that none may read With like interpretation, and the stone Retains its graven fealty to the dead: So, on the great palimpsest men have writ Such lines o'ercrossed that none interprets it. ARARAT What marvel that the soul of youth should cry, "Man builds his temples 'tween me and the face Of Him whom I would seek; I cannot trace His purpose in their shadow, nor descry The wisdom absolute?" What marvel that, With yearning impotent, ay, impotent Beyond all measure! his full faith was spent, And for his soul there rose no Ararat? Yet out upon the sun-drawn sensate sea Of elemental pain, there came a word As if from Him who travelled Galilee, As fair as any Zion ever heard. The voice of Love spoke; Love, that writes its name On Life and Death-and then my lady came. AS LIGHT LEAPS UP As light leaps up from star to star, so mounts Faith from one soul unto another; so The lower to the higher; till the flow Of knowledge rises from creation's founts; Until from human love we come to know The august presence of the Love Divine; And feel the light unutterable shine Upon half-lights that we were wont to show, Absorbing them. 'Tis Love that beckons us From low desires, from restlessness and sin, To heights that else we had not reached; and thus We find the Heaven we dared not hope to win. How clearer seem designs immortal when Our lives are fed on Love's fine regimen THE DARKENED WAY "It is no matter;"--thus the noble Dane, About his heart more ill than one could tell; Sad augury, that like a funeral bell Against his soul struck solemn notes of pain. So 'gainst the deadly smother he could press With calm his lofty manhood; interpose Purpose divine, and at the last disclose For life's great shift a regnant readiness. To-day I bought some matches in the street From one whose eyes had long since lost their sight. Trembling with palsy was he to his feet. "Father," I said, "how fare you in the night?" "In body ill, but 'tis no matter, friend, Strong is my soul to keep me to the end." DISTRUST not a woman nor a king--it availeth nothing. --Egyptian Proverb. WHEN thou journeyest into the shadows, take not sweetmeats with thee, but a seed of corn and a bottle of tears and wine; that thou mayst have a garden in the land whither thou goeat. --Egyptian Proverb. REUNITED Once more, once more! That golden eventide! Golden within, without all cold and grey, Slowly you came forth from the troubled day, Singing my heart--you glided to my side; You glided in; the same grave, quiet face, The same deep look, the never-ending light In your proud eyes, eyes shining through the night, That night of absence--distance--from your place. Calm words, slow touch of hand, but, oh, the cry, The long, long cry of passion and of joy Within my heart; the star-burst in the sky-- The world--our world--which time may not destroy! Your world and mine, unutterably sweet: Dearest, once more, the old song at thy feet. SONG WAS GONE FROM ME Dearest, once more! This I could tell and tell Till life turned drowsy with the ceaseless note; Dearest, once more! The words throb in my throat, My heart beats to them like a muffled bell. Change--Time and Change! O Change and Time, you come Not knocking at my door, knowing me gone; Here have I dwelt within my heart alone, Watching and waiting, while my muse was dumb Song was gone from me--sweet, I could not sing, Save as men sing upon the lonely hills; Under my hand the old chord ceased to ring, Hushed by the grinding of the high gods' mills. Dearest, once more. Those mad mills had their way-- Now is mine hour. To every man his day. GOOD WAS THE FIGHT How have I toiled, how have I set my face Fair to the swords! No man could say I quailed; Ne'er did I falter; I dare not to have failed, I dare not to have dropped from out the race. Good was the fight--good, till a piteous dream Crept from some direful covert of despair; Showed me your look, that look so true and fair, Distant and bleak; for me no more to gleam. Then was I driven back upon my soul, Then came dark moments; lady, then I drew Forth from its place the round unfathomed bowl Of sorrow, and from it I quaffed to you; Speaking as men speak who have lost Their hearts' last prize--and dare not count the cost. UNCHANGED But you are here unchanged. You say not so In words, but when you placed your hands in mine; But when I saw the same old glory shine Within your eyes, I read it; and I know. And when those hands ran up along my arm, And rested on my shoulder for a space, A sacred inquisition in your face, To read my heart, how could I doubt that charm, That truth ineffable!--I set my soul In hazard to a farthing, that you kept The faith, with pride unspeakable, the whole Course of those years in which communion slept. Your soul flamed in your look; you read; I knew How little worth was I, how heavenly you. ABSOLVO TE I read your truth. You read--What did you read? Did you read all, and, reading all, forgive? How I--O little dwarf of conscience sieve My soul; bare all before her bare indeed! And, looking on the remnant and the waste, Can you absolve me,--me, the doubter, one Who challenged what God spent His genius on, His genius and His pride; so fair, so chaste? I am ashamed. . . . And when I told my dreams, Shaken and humble,--"Dear, there was no cause," Your words; proud, sorrowful, as it beseems Such as thou art. There never was a cause Why you should honour me. Ashamed am I. And you forgive me, bless me, for reply. BENEDICTUS You bless me, then you turn away your head-- "Never again, dear. I have blessed you so, My lips upon your lips; between must flow The river--Oh the river!" Thus you said. The river--Oh the river, and the sun; Stream that we may not cross, sun that is joy: Flow as thou must; shine on in full employ-- Shine through her eyes thou; let the river run. O lady, to your liegeman speak. You say: "Dream no more dreams; yourself be as am I" Your hands clasped to your face, so shutting out the day. An instant, then to me, your low good-bye-- Good-night, good-bye; and then the social reign, The lights, the songs, the flowers--and the pain. THE MESSAGE "Oh, hush!" you said; "oh, hush!" The twilight hung Between us and the world; but in your face, Flooding with warm inner light, the sovereign grace Of one who rests the brooding trees among-- Of one who steps down from a lofty throne, Seeking that peace the sceptre cannot call; And leaving courtier, page, and seneschal, Goes down the lane of sycamores alone; And, going, listens to the notes that swell From golden throats--stories of ardent days, And lovers in fair vales; and homing bell: And the sweet theme unbearable, she prays The song-bird cease! So, on the tale I dare, Your "hush!" your wistful "hush!" broke like prayer. UNAVAILING "Never," you said, "never this side the grave, And what shall come hereafter, who may know? Whether we e'en shall guess the way we go, Passing beneath Death's mystic architrave Silence or song, dumb sleep or cheerful hours?" O lady, you have questioned, answer too. You--you to die--silence and gloom for you: Dead song, dead lights, dead graces, and dead flowers? It is not so: the foolish trivial end, The inconsequent paltry Nothing--gone--gone all; The genius of the ageless Something spend Itself within this little earthly wall: The commonplace conception, that we reap Reward of drudge and ploughman--idle sleep! YOU SHALL LIVE ON You shall live on triumphant, you shall take Your place among the peerless, fearless ones; And those who loved you here shall tell their sons To honour every woman for your sake. And those your Peers shall say, "Others are pure, Others are noble, others too have vowed, And for a vow have suffered; but she bowed Her own soul and another's to endure. She smote the being more to her than all,-- Her own soul and the world,--a truth to hold, Faith with the dead; and hung a heavy pall 'Tween her and love and life. The world is old, It hath sent here none queenlier. Of the few, The royal few is she, martyred and true." "VEX NOT THIS GHOST" Upon the rack of this tough world I hear, As when Cordelia's glories all dissever- "Never--never--never--never--never,--" That wild moan of the dispossessed Lear. O world, vex not this ghost, yea, let it pass, The Spirit of these songs. The fool hath mocked, The fool our woe upon us hath unlocked From where the soul holds to our lips the glass, To see what breath of life. O fool, poor fool, Well, we have laughed together, you and I. O fond insulter, in the healing pool Of your deep poignant raillery I lie. Let us be grand again, my fool. The throne Is gone; but see, the coronation stone! THE MEMORY Know you where I, my royal fool, was crowned? A rock within the great Egean? Where A strong flood hurrieth on Finistere? Where at the Pole our valiant men were drowned? Where the soft creamy wash of Indian seas Spreads palmward? Where the sunset glides to dawn, No night between? Where all the tides are drawn To greet their Sun and bathe their Idol's knees? Where was I crowned? Dear fool, upon a stone That standeth where Earth's arches make but one, Where all the banners of her soul were flown, And trumpeted the legions of the sun. The stone is left: 'tis here against the door Of throne and kingdom. . . . Pray you, mock no more. THE PASSING A time will come when we again shall rail-- Not yet, not yet. The flood comes on apace, That deep dividing river, and her face Grows dimmer as it widens--pale, so pale. Have we not railed and laughed these many days, Mummers before the lights? Dear fool, your hand Upon your lips--Oh let us once be grand, Grand as we were when treading royal ways. Lo, there she moves beyond the river. Gone-- Gone is the sun-lo, starlight in her eyes. See, how she standeth silent and alone-- Oh, hush! let us not vex her with our cries. Proud as of old, unto my throne I go. . . . Cordelia's gone...... Hush, draw the curtain--so. ENVOY When you and I have played the little hour, Have seen the tall subaltern Life to Death Yield up his sword; and, smiling, draw the breath, The first long breath of freedom; when the flower Of Recompense has fluttered to our feet, As to an actor's; and the curtain down, We turn to face each other all alone-- Alone, we two, who never yet did meet, Alone, and absolute, and free: oh, then, Oh, then, most dear, how shall be told the tale? Clasped hands, pressed lips, and so clasped hands again; No words. But as the proud wind fills the sail, My love to yours shall reach, then one deep moan Of joy; and then our infinite Alone. THE MONEY MASTER, Complete By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS EPOCH THE FIRST I. THE GRAND TOUR OF JEAN JACQUES BARBILLE II. THE REST OF THE STORY "TO-MORROW" III. "TO-MORROW" EPOCH THE SECOND IV. THIRTEEN YEARS AFTER AND THE CLERK OF THE COURT TELLS A STORY V. THE CLERK OF THE COURT ENDS HIS STORY VI. JEAN JACQUES HAD HAD A GREAT DAY VII. JEAN JACQUES AWAKES FROM SLEEP VIII. THE GATE IN THE WALL IX. "MOI-JE SUIS PHILOSOPHE" X. "QUIEN SABE"--WHO KNOWS! XI. THE CLERK OF THE COURT KEEPS A PROMISE XII. THE MASTER-CARPENTER HAS A PROBLEM EPOCH THE THIRD XIII. THE MAN FROM OUTSIDE XIV. "I DO NOT WANT TO GO" XV. BON MARCHE EPOCH THE FOURTH XVI. MISFORTUNES COME NOT SINGLY XVII. HIS GREATEST ASSET XVIII. JEAN JACQUES HAS AN OFFER XIX. SEBASTIAN DOLORES DOES NOT SLEEP XX. "AU 'VOIR, M'SIEU' JEAN JACQUES" XXI. IF SHE HAD KNOWN IN TIME EPOCH THE FIFTH XXII. BELLS OF MEMORY XXIII. JEAN JACQUES HAS WORK TO DO XXIV. JEAN JACQUES ENCAMPED. XXV. WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE EPILOGUE INTRODUCTION This book is in a place by itself among the novels I have written. Many critics said that it was a welcome return to Canada, where I had made my first success in the field of fiction. This statement was only meagrely accurate, because since 'The Right of Way' was published in 1901 I had written, and given to the public, 'Northern Lights', a book of short stories, 'You Never Know Your Luck', a short novel, and 'The World for Sale', though all of these dealt with life in Western Canada, and not with the life of the French Canadians, in which field I had made my first firm impression upon the public. In any case, The Money Master was favourably received by the press and public both in England and America, and my friends were justified in thinking, and in saying, that I was at home in French Canada and gave the impression of mastery of my material. If mastery of material means a knowledge of the life, and a sympathy with it, then my friends are justified; for I have always had an intense sympathy with, and admiration for, French Canadian life. I think the French Canadian one of the most individual, original, and distinctive beings of the modern world. He has kept his place, with his own customs, his own Gallic views of life, and his religious habits, with an assiduity and firmness none too common. He is essentially a man of the home, of the soil, and of the stream; he has by nature instinctive philosophy and temperamental logic. As a lover of the soil of Canada he is not surpassed by any of the other citizens of the country, English or otherwise. It would almost seem as though the pageantry of past French Canadian history, and the beauty and vigour of the topographical surroundings of French Canadian life, had produced an hereditary pride and exaltation-- perhaps an excessive pride and a strenuous exaltation, but, in any case, there it was, and is. The French Canadian lives a more secluded life on the whole than any other citizen of Canada, though the native, adventurous spirit has sent him to the Eastern States of the American Union for work in the mills and factories, or up to the farthest reaches of the St. Lawrence, Ottawa, and their tributaries in the wood and timber trade. Domestically he is perhaps the most productive son of the North American continent. Families of twenty, or even twenty-five, are not unknown, and, when a man has had more than one wife, it has even exceeded that. Life itself is full of camaraderie and good spirit, marked by religious traits and sacerdotal influence. The French Canadian is on the whole sober and industrious; but when he breaks away from sobriety and industry he becomes a vicious element in the general organism. Yet his vices are of the surface, and do not destroy the foundations of his social and domestic scheme. A French Canadian pony used to be considered the most virile and lasting stock on the continent, and it is fair to say that the French Canadians themselves are genuinely hardy, long-lived, virile, and enduring. It was among such people that the hero of The Money Master, Jean Jacques Barbille, lived. He was the symbol or pattern of their virtues and of their weaknesses. By nature a poet, a philosopher, a farmer and an adventurer, his life was a sacrifice to prepossession and race instinct; to temperament more powerful than logic or common sense, though he was almost professionally the exponent of both. There is no man so simply sincere, or so extraordinarily prejudiced as the French Canadian. He is at once modest and vain; he is even lyrical in his enthusiasms; he is a child in the intrigues and inventions of life; but he has imagination, he has a heart, he has a love of tradition, and is the slave of legend. To him domestic life is the summum bonum of being. His four walls are the best thing which the world has to offer, except the cheerful and sacred communion of the Mass, and his dismissal from life itself under the blessing of his priest and with the promise of a good immortality. Jean Jacques Barbille had the French Canadian life of pageant, pomp, and place extraordinarily developed. His love of history and tradition was abnormal. A genius, he was, within an inch, a tragedy to the last button. Probably the adventurous spirit of his forefathers played a greater part in his development and in the story of his days than anything else. He was wide-eyed, and he had a big soul. He trained himself to believe in himself and to follow his own judgment; therefore, he invited loss upon loss, he made mistake upon mistake, he heaped financial adventure upon financial adventure, he ran great risks; and it is possible that his vast belief in himself kept him going when other men would have dropped by the wayside. He loved his wife and daughter, and he lost them both. He loved his farms, his mills and his manor, and they disappeared from his control. It must be remembered that the story of The Money Master really runs for a generation, and it says something for Jean Jacques Barbille that he could travel through scenes, many of them depressing, for long years, and still, in the end, provoke no disparagement, by marrying the woman who had once out of the goodness of her heart offered him everything-- herself, her home, her honour; and it was to Jean Jacques's credit that he took neither until the death of his wife made him free; but the tremendous gift offered him produced a powerful impression upon his mind and heart. One of the most distinguished men of the world to-day wrote me in praise and protest concerning The Money Master. He declared that the first half of the book was as good as anything that had been done by anybody, and then he bemoaned the fact, which he believed, that the author had sacrificed his two heroines without real cause and because he was tired of them. There he was wrong. In the author's mind the story was planned exactly as it worked out. He was never tired; he was resolute. He was intent to produce, if possible, a figure which would breed and develop its own disasters, which would suffer profoundly for its own mistakes; but which, in the end, would triumph over the disasters of life and time. It was all deliberate in the main intention and plan. Any failures that exist in the book are due to the faults of the author, and to nothing else. Some critics have been good enough to call 'The Money Master' a beautiful book, and there are many who said that it was real, true, and faithful. Personally I think it is real and true, and as time goes on, and we get older, that is what seems to matter to those who love life and wish to see it well harvested. I do not know what the future of the book may be; what the future of any work of mine will be; but I can say this, that no one has had the pleasure in reading my books which I have had in making them. They have been ground out of the raw material of the soul. I have a hope that they will outlast my brief day, but, in any case, it will not matter. They have given me a chance of showing to the world life as I have seen it, and indirectly, and perhaps indistinctly, my own ideas of that life. 'The Money Master' is a vivid and somewhat emotional part of it. EPOCH THE FIRST CHAPTER I THE GRAND TOUR OF JEAN JACQUES BARBILLE "Peace and plenty, peace and plenty"--that was the phrase M. Jean Jacques Barbille, miller and moneymaster, applied to his home-scene, when he was at the height of his career. Both winter and summer the place had a look of content and comfort, even a kind of opulence. There is nothing like a grove of pines to give a sense of warmth in winter and an air of coolness in summer, so does the slightest breeze make the pine-needles swish like the freshening sea. But to this scene, where pines made a friendly background, there were added oak, ash, and hickory trees, though in less quantity on the side of the river where were Jean Jacques Barbille's house and mills. They flourished chiefly on the opposite side of the Beau Cheval, whose waters flowed so waywardly--now with a rush, now silently away through long reaches of country. Here the land was rugged and bold, while farther on it became gentle and spacious, and was flecked or striped with farms on which low, white houses with dormer-windows and big stoops flashed to the passer-by the message of the pioneer, "It is mine. I triumph." At the Manor Cartier, not far from the town of Vilray, where Jean Jacques was master, and above it and below it, there had been battles and the ravages of war. At the time of the Conquest the stubborn habitants, refusing to accept the yielding of Quebec as the end of French power in their proud province, had remained in arms and active, and had only yielded when the musket and the torch had done their work, and smoking ruins marked the places where homes had been. They took their fortune with something of the heroic calm of men to whom an idea was more than aught else. Jean Jacques' father, grandfather, and great-great- grandfather had lived here, no one of them rising far, but none worthless or unnoticeable. They all had had "a way of their own," as their neighbours said, and had been provident on the whole. Thus it was that when Jean Jacques' father died, and he came into his own, he found himself at thirty a man of substance, unmarried, who "could have had the pick of the province." This was what the Old Cure said in despair, when Jean Jacques did the incomprehensible thing, and married l'Espagnole, or "the Spanische," as the lady was always called in the English of the habitant. When she came it was spring-time, and all the world was budding, exuding joy and hope, with the sun dancing over all. It was the time between the sowing and the hay-time, and there was a feeling of alertness in everything that had life, while even the rocks and solid earth seemed to stir. The air was filled with the long happy drone of the mill-stones as they ground the grain; and from farther away came the soft, stinging cry of a saw-mill. Its keen buzzing complaint was harmonious with the grumble of the mill-stones, as though a supreme maker of music had tuned it. So said a master-musician and his friend, a philosopher from Nantes, who came to St. Saviour's in the summer just before the marriage, and lodged with Jean Jacques. Jean Jacques, having spent a year at Laval University at Quebec, had almost a gift of thought, or thinking; and he never ceased to ply the visiting philosopher and musician with questions which he proceeded to answer himself before they could do so; his quaint, sentimental, meretricious observations on life saddening while they amused his guests. They saddened the musician more than the other because he knew life, while the philosopher only thought it and saw it. But even the musician would probably have smiled in hope that day when the young "Spanische" came driving up the river-road from the steamboat- landing miles away. She arrived just when the clock struck noon in the big living-room of the Manor. As she reached the open doorway and the wide windows of the house which gaped with shady coolness, she heard the bell summoning the workers in the mills and on the farm--yes, M. Barbille was a farmer, too--for the welcome home to "M'sieu' Jean Jacques," as he was called by everyone. That the wedding had taken place far down in Gaspe and not in St. Saviour's was a reproach and almost a scandal; and certainly it was unpatriotic. It was bad enough to marry the Spanische, but to marry outside one's own parish, and so deprive that parish and its young people of the week's gaiety, which a wedding and the consequent procession and tour through the parish brings, was little less than treason. But there it was; and Jean Jacques was a man who had power to hurt, to hinder, or to help; for the miller and the baker are nearer to the hearthstone of every man than any other, and credit is a good thing when the oven is empty and hard times are abroad. The wedding in Gaspe had not been attended by the usual functions, for it had all been hurriedly arranged, as the romantic circumstances of the wooing required. Romance indeed it was; so remarkable that the master-musician might easily have found a theme for a comedy--or tragedy--and the philosopher would have shaken his head at the defiance it offered to the logic of things. Now this is the true narrative, though in the parish of St. Saviour's it is more highly decorated and has many legends hanging to it like tassels to a curtain. Even the Cure of to-day, who ought to know all the truth, finds it hard to present it in its bare elements; for the history of Jean Jacques Barbille affected the history of many a man in St. Saviour's; and all that befel him, whether of good or evil, ran through the parish in a thousand invisible threads. ....................... What had happened was this. After the visit of the musician and the philosopher, Jean Jacques, to sustain his reputation and to increase it, had decided to visit that Normandy from which his people had come at the time of Frontenac. He set forth with much 'eclat' and a little innocent posturing and ritual, in which a cornet and a violin figured, together with a farewell oration by the Cure. In Paris Jean Jacques had found himself bewildered and engulfed. He had no idea that life could be so overbearing, and he was inclined to resent his own insignificance. However, in Normandy, when he read the names on the tombstones and saw the records in the baptismal register of other Jean Jacques Barbilles, who had come and gone generations before, his self-respect was somewhat restored. This pleasure was dashed, however, by the quizzical attitude of the natives of his ancestral parish, who walked round about inspecting him as though he were a zoological specimen, and who criticized his accent--he who had been at Laval for one whole term; who had had special instruction before that time from the Old Cure and a Jesuit brother; and who had been the friend of musicians and philosophers! His cheerful, kindly self-assurance stood the test with difficulty, but it became a kind of ceremonial with him, whenever he was discomfited, to read some pages of a little dun-coloured book of philosophy, picked up on the quay at Quebec just before he sailed, and called, "Meditations in Philosophy." He had been warned by the bookseller that the Church had no love for philosophy; but while at Laval he had met the independent minds that, at eighteen to twenty-two, frequent academic groves; and he was not to be put off by the pious bookseller--had he not also had a philosopher in his house the year before, and was he not going to Nantes to see this same savant before returning to his beloved St. Saviour's parish. But Paris and Nantes and Rouen and Havre abashed and discomfited him, played havoc with his self-esteem, confused his brain, and vexed him by formality, and, more than all, by their indifference to himself. He admired, yet he wished to be admired; he was humble, but he wished all people and things to be humble with him. When he halted he wanted the world to halt; when he entered a cathedral--Notre Dame or any other; or a great building--the Law Courts at Rouen or any other; he simply wanted people to say, wanted the cathedral, or at least the cloister, to whisper to itself, "Here comes Jean Jacques Barbille." That was all he wanted, and that would have sufficed. He would not have had them whisper about his philosophy and his intellect, or the mills and the ash-factory which he meant to build, the lime-kilns he had started even before he left, and the general store he intended to open when he returned to St. Saviour's. Not even his modesty was recognized; and, in his grand tour, no one was impressed by all that he was, except once. An ancestor, a grandmother of his, had come from the Basque country; and so down to St. Jean Pied de Port he went; for he came of a race who set great store by mothers and grandmothers. At St. Jean Pied de Port he was more at home. He was, in a sense, a foreigner among foreigners there, and the people were not quizzical, since he was an outsider in any case and not a native returned, as he had been in Normandy. He learned to play pelota, the Basque game taken from the Spaniards, and he even allowed himself a little of that oratory which, as they say, has its habitat chiefly in Gascony. And because he had found an audience at last, he became a liberal host, and spent freely of his dollars, as he had never done either in Normandy, Paris, or elsewhere. So freely did he spend, that when he again embarked at Bordeaux for Quebec, he had only enough cash left to see him through the remainder of his journey in the great world. Yet he left France with his self-respect restored, and he even waved her a fond adieu, as the creaking Antoine broke heavily into the waters of the Bay of Biscay, while he cried: "My little ship, It bears me far From lights of home To alien star. O vierge Marie, Pour moi priez Dieu! Adieu, dear land, Provence, adieu." Then a further wave of sentiment swept over him, and he was vaguely conscious of a desire to share the pains of parting which he saw in labour around him--children from parents, lovers from loved. He could not imagine the parting from a parent, for both of his were in the bosom of heaven, having followed his five brothers, all of whom had died in infancy, to his good fortune, for otherwise his estate would now be only one-sixth of what it was. But he could imagine a parting with some sweet daughter of France, and he added another verse to the thrilling of the heart of Casimir Delavigne: "Beloved Isaure, Her hand makes sign-- No more, no more, To rest in mine. O vierge Marie, Pour moi priez Dieu! Adieu, dear land, Isaure, adieu!" As he murmured with limpid eye the last words, he saw in the forecastle not far from him a girl looking at him. There was unmistakable sadness in her glance of interest. In truth she was thinking of just such a man as Jean Jacques, whom she could never see any more, for he had paid with his life the penalty of the conspiracy in which her father, standing now behind her on the leaky Antoine, had been a tool, and an evil tool. Here in Jean Jacques was the same ruddy brown face, black restless eye, and young, silken, brown beard. Also there was an air of certainty and universal comprehension, and though assertion and vanity were apparent, there was no self-consciousness. The girl's dead and gone conspirator had not the same honesty of face, the same curve of the ideal in the broad forehead, the same poetry of rich wavy brown hair, the same goodness of mind and body so characteristic of Jean Jacques--he was but Jean Jacques gone wrong at the start; but the girl was of a nature that could see little difference between things which were alike superficially, and in the young provincial she only saw one who looked like the man she had loved. True, his moustaches did not curl upwards at the ends as did those of Carvillho Gonzales, and he did not look out of the corner of his eyes and smoke black cigarettes; but there he was, her Carvillho with a difference--only such a difference that made him to her Carvillho II., and not the ghost of Carvillho I. She was a maiden who might have been as good as need be for all life, so far as appearances went. She had a wonderful skin, a smooth, velvety cheek, where faint red roses came and went, as it might seem at will; with a deep brown eye; and eh, but she was grandly tall--so Jean Jacques thought, while he drew himself up to his full five feet, six and a half with a determined air. Even at his best, however, Jean Jacques could not reach within three inches of her height. Yet he did not regard her as at all overdone because of that. He thought her hair very fine, as it waved away from her low forehead in a grace which reminded him of the pictures of the Empress Eugenie, and of the sister of that monsieur le duc who had come fishing to St. Saviour's a few years before. He thought that if her hair was let down it would probably reach to her waist, and maybe to her ankles. She had none of the plump, mellow softness of the beauties he had seen in the Basque country. She was a slim and long limbed Diana, with fine lines and a bosom of extreme youth, though she must have been twenty-one her last birthday. The gown she wore was a dark green well-worn velvet, which seemed of too good a make and quality for her class; and there was no decoration about her anywhere, save at the ears, where two drops of gold hung on little links an inch and a half long. Jean Jacques Barbille's eyes took it all in with that observation of which he was so proud and confident, and rested finally on the drops of gold at her ears. Instinctively he fingered the heavy gold watch-chain he had bought in Paris to replace the silver chain with a little crucifix dangling, which his father and even his great-grandfather had worn before him. He had kept the watch, however--the great fat-bellied thing which had never run down in a hundred years. It was his mascot. To lose that watch would be like losing his share in the promises of the Church. So his fingers ran along the new gold-fourteen-carat-chain, to the watch at the end of it; and he took it out a little ostentatiously, since he saw that the eyes of the girl were on him. Involuntarily he wished to impress her. He might have saved himself the trouble. She was impressed. It was quite another matter however, whether he would have been pleased to know that the impression was due to his resemblance to a Spanish conspirator, whose object was to destroy the Monarchy and the Church, as had been the object of the middle-aged conspirator--the girl's father--who had the good fortune to escape from justice. It is probable that if Jean Jacques had known these facts, his story would never have been written, and he would have died in course of time with twenty children and a seat in the legislature; for, in spite of his ardent devotion to philosophy and its accompanying rationalism, he was a devout monarchist and a child of the Church. Sad enough it was that, as he shifted his glance from the watch, which ticked loud enough to wake a farmhand in the middle of the day, he found those Spanish eyes which had been so lost in studying him. In the glow and glisten of the evening sun setting on the shores of Bordeaux, and flashing reflected golden light to the girl's face, he saw that they were shining with tears, and though looking at him, appeared not to see him. In that moment the scrutiny of the little man's mind was volatilized, and the Spanische, as she was ultimately called, began her career in the life of the money-master of St. Saviour's. It began by his immediately resenting the fact that she should be travelling in the forecastle. His mind imagined misfortune and a lost home through political troubles, for he quickly came to know that the girl and her father were Spanish; and to him, Spain was a place of martyrs and criminals. Criminals these could not be--one had but to look at the girl's face; while the face of her worthless father might have been that of a friend of Philip IV. in the Escorial, so quiet and oppressed it seemed. Nobility was written on the placid, apathetic countenance, except when it was not under observation, and then the look of Cain took its place. Jean Jacques, however, was not likely to see that look; since Sebastian Dolores--that was his name--had observed from the first how the master-miller was impressed by his daughter, and he was set to turn it to account. Not that the father entered into an understanding with the girl. He knew her too well for that. He had a wholesome respect, not to say fear, of her; for when all else had failed, it was she who had arranged his escape from Spain, and who almost saved Carvillho Gonzales from being shot. She could have saved Gonzales, might have saved him, would have saved him, had she not been obliged to save her father. In the circumstances she could not save both. Before the week was out Jean Jacques was possessed of as fine a tale of political persecution as mind could conceive, and, told as it was by Sebastian Dolores, his daughter did not seek to alter it, for she had her own purposes, and they were mixed. These refugees needed a friend, for they would land in Canada with only a few dollars, and Carmen Dolores loved her father well enough not to wish to see him again in such distress as he had endured in Cadiz. Also, Jean Jacques, the young, verdant, impressionable French Catholic, was like her Carvillho Gonzales, and she had loved her Carvillho in her own way very passionately, and-- this much to her credit--quite chastely. So that she had no compunction in drawing the young money-master to her side, and keeping him there by such arts as such a woman possesses. These are remarkable after their kind. They are combined of a frankness as to the emotions, and such outer concessions to physical sensations, as make a painful combination against a mere man's caution; even when that caution has a Norman origin. More than once Jean Jacques was moved to tears, as the Ananias of Cadiz told his stories of persecution. So that one day, in sudden generosity, he paid the captain the necessary sum to transfer the refugees from the forecastle to his own select portion of the steamer, where he was so conspicuous a figure among a handful of lower-level merchant folk and others of little mark who were going to Quebec. To these latter Jean Jacques was a gift of heaven, for he knew so much, and seemed to know so much more, and could give them the information they desired. His importance lured him to pose as a seigneur, though he had no claim to the title. He did not call himself Seigneur in so many words, but when others referred to him as the Seigneur, and it came to his ears, he did not correct it; and when he was addressed as such he did not reprove. Thus, when he brought the two refugees from the forecastle and assured his fellow-passengers that they were Spanish folk of good family exiled by persecution, his generosity was acclaimed, even while all saw he was enamoured of Carmen. Once among the first-class passengers, father and daughter maintained reserve, and though there were a few who saw that they were not very far removed above peasants, still the dress of the girl, which was good--she had been a maid in a great nobleman's family --was evidence in favour of the father's story. Sebastian Dolores explained his own workman's dress as having been necessary for his escape. Only one person gave Jean Jacques any warning. This was the captain of the Antoine. He was a Basque, he knew the Spanish people well--the types, the character, the idiosyncrasies; and he was sure that Sebastian Dolores and his daughter belonged to the lower clerical or higher working class, and he greatly inclined towards the former. In that he was right, because Dolores, and his father before him, had been employed in the office of a great commercial firm in Cadiz, and had repaid much consideration by stirring up strife and disloyalty in the establishment. But before the anarchist subtracted himself from his occupation, he had appropriated certain sums of money, and these had helped to carry him on, when he attached himself to the revolutionaries. It was on his daughter's savings that he was now travelling, with the only thing he had saved from the downfall, which was his head. It was of sufficient personal value to make him quite cheerful as the Antoine plunged and shivered on her way to the country where he could have no steady work as a revolutionist. With reserve and caution the Basque captain felt it his duty to tell Jean Jacques of his suspicions, warning him that the Spaniards were the choicest liars in the world, and were not ashamed of it; but had the same pride in it as had their greatest rivals, the Arabs and the Egyptians. His discreet confidences, however, were of no avail; he was not discreet enough. If he had challenged the bona fides of Sebastian Dolores only, he might have been convincing, but he used the word "they" constantly, and that roused the chivalry of Jean Jacques. That the comely, careful Carmen should be party to an imposture was intolerable. Everything about her gave it the lie. Her body was so perfect and complete, so finely contrived and balanced, so cunningly curved with every line filled in; her eye was so full of lustre and half-melancholy too; her voice had such a melodious monotone; her mouth was so ripe and yet so distant in its luxury, that imposture was out of the question. Ah, but Jean Jacques was a champion worth while! He did nothing by halves. He was of the breed of men who grow more intense, more convinced, more thorough, as they talk. One adjective begets another, one warm allusion gives birth to a warmer, one flashing impulse evokes a brighter confidence, till the atmosphere is flaming with conviction. If Jean Jacques started with faint doubt regarding anything, and allowed himself betimes the flush of a declaration of belief, there could be but one end. He gathered fire as he moved, impulse expanded into momentum, and momentum became an Ariel fleeing before the dark. He would start by offering a finger to be pricked, and would end by presenting his own head on a charger. He was of those who hypnotize themselves, who glow with self-creation, who flower and bloom without pollen. His rejection of the captain's confidence even had a dignity. He took out his watch which represented so many laborious hours of other Barbilles, and with a decision in which the strong pulse of chivalry was beating hard, he said: "I can never speak well till I have ate. That is my hobby. Well, so it is. And I like good company. So that is why I sit beside Senor and Senorita Dolores at table--the one on the right, the other on the left, myself between, like this, like that. It is dinner-time now here, and my friends--my dear friends of Cadiz--they wait me. Have you heard the Senorita sing the song of Spain, m'sieu'? What it must be with the guitar, I know not; but with voice alone it is ravishing. I have learned it also. The Senorita has taught me. It is a song of Aragon. It is sung in high places. It belongs to the nobility. Ah, then, you have not heard it--but it is not too late! The Senorita, the unhappy ma'm'selle, driven from her ancestral home by persecution, she will sing it to you as she has sung it to me. It is your due. You are the master of the ship. But, yes, she shall of her kindness and of her grace sing it to you. You do not know how it runs? Well, it is like this--listen and tell me if it does not speak of things that belong to the old regime, the ancient noblesse--listen, m'sieu' le captaanne, how it runs: "Have you not heard of mad Murcie? Granada gay and And'lousie? There's where you'll see the joyous rout, When patios pour their beauties out; Come, children, come, the night gains fast, And Time's a jade too fair to last. My flower of Spain, my Juanetta, Away, away to gay Jota! Come forth, my sweet, away, my queen, Though daybreak scorns, the night's between. The Fete's afoot--ah! ah! ah! ah! De la Jota Ar'gonesa. Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! De la Jota Ar'gonesa." Before he had finished, the captain was more than ready to go, for he had no patience with such credulity, simplicity and sentimentalism. He was Basque, and to be Basque is to lack sentiment and feel none, to play ever for the safe thing, to get without giving, and to mind your own business. It had only been an excessive sense of duty which had made the captain move in this, for he liked Jean Jacques as everyone aboard his Antoine did; and he was convinced that the Spaniards would play the "Seigneur" to the brink of disaster at least, though it would have been hard to detect any element of intrigue or coquetry in Carmen Dolores. That was due partly to the fact that she was still in grief for her Gonzales, whose heart had been perforated by almost as many bullets as the arrows of Cupid had perforated it in his short, gay life of adventure and anarchy; also partly because there was no coquetry needed to interest Jean Jacques. If he was interested it was not necessary to interest anyone else, nor was it expedient to do so, for the biggest fish in the net on the Antoine was the money-master of St. Saviour's. Carmen had made up her mind from the first to marry Jean Jacques, and she deported herself accordingly--with modesty, circumspection and skill. It would be the easiest way out of all their difficulties. Since her heart, such as it was, fluttered, a mournful ghost, over the Place d'Armes, where her Gonzales was shot, it might better go to Jean Jacques than anyone else; for he was a man of parts, of money, and of looks, and she loved these all; and to her credit she loved his looks better than all the rest. She had no real cupidity, and she was not greatly enamoured of brains. She had some real philosophy of life learned in a hard school; and it was infinitely better founded than the smattering of conventional philosophy got by Jean Jacques from his compendium picked up on the quay at Quebec. Yet Jean Jacques' cruiser of life was not wholly unarmed. From his Norman forebears he had, beneath all, a shrewdness and an elementary alertness not submerged by his vain, kind nature. He was quite a good business man, and had proved himself so before his father died--very quick to see a chance, and even quicker to see where the distant, sharp corners in the road were; though not so quick to see the pitfalls, for his head was ever in the air. And here on the Antoine, there crossed his mind often the vision of Carmen Dolores and himself in the parish of St. Saviour's, with the daily life of the Beau Cheval revolving about him. Flashes of danger warned him now and then, just at the beginning of the journey, as it were; just before he had found it necessary to become her champion against the captain and his calumnies; but they were of the instant only. But champion as he became, and worshipping as his manner seemed, it all might easily have been put down to a warm, chivalrous, and spontaneous nature, which had not been bitted or bridled, and he might have landed at Quebec without committing himself, were it not for the fact that he was not to land at Quebec. That was the fact which controlled his destiny. He had spent many, many hours with the Dona Dolores, talking, talking, as he loved to talk, and only saving himself from the betise of boring her by the fact that his enthusiasm had in it so fresh a quality, and because he was so like her Gonzales that she could always endure him. Besides, quick of intelligence as she was, she was by nature more material than she looked, and there was certainly something physically attractive in him--some curious magnetism. She had a well of sensuousness which might one day become sensuality; she had a richness of feeling and a contour in harmony with it, which might expand into voluptuousness, if given too much sun, or if untamed by the normal restraints of a happy married life. There was an earthquake zone in her being which might shake down the whole structure of her existence. She was unsafe, not because she was deceiving Jean Jacques now as to her origin and as to her feelings for him; she was unsafe because of the natural strain of the light of love in her, joined to a passion for comfort and warmth and to a natural self- indulgence. She was determined to make Jean Jacques offer himself before they landed at Quebec. But they did not land at Quebec. CHAPTER II "THE REST OF THE STORY TO-MORROW" The journey wore on to the coast of Canada. Gaspe was not far off when, still held back by the constitutional tendency of the Norman not to close a bargain till compelled to do so, Jean Jacques sat with Carmen far forward on the deck, where the groaning Antoine broke the waters into sullen foam. There they silently watched the sunset, golden, purple and splendid--and ominous, as the captain knew. "Look, the end of life--like that!" said Jean Jacques oratorically with a wave of the hand towards the prismatic radiance. "All the way round, the whole circle--no, it would be too much," Carmen replied sadly. "Better to go at noon--or soon after. Then the only memory of life would be of the gallop. No crawling into the night for me, if I can help it. Mother of Heaven, no! Let me go at the top of the flight." "It is all the same to me," responded Jean Jacques, "I want to know it all--to gallop, to trot, to walk, to crawl. Me, I'm a philosopher. I wait." "But I thought you were a Catholic," she replied, with a kindly, lurking smile, which might easily have hardened into scoffing. "First and last," he answered firmly. "A Catholic and a philosopher--together in one?" She shrugged a shoulder to incite him to argument, for he was interesting when excited; when spurting out little geysers of other people's cheap wisdom and philosophy, poured through the kind distortion of his own intelligence. He gave a toss of his head. "Ah, that is my hobby--I reconcile, I unite, I adapt! It is all the nature of the mind, the far-look, the all-round sight of the man. I have it all. I see." He gazed eloquently into the sunset, he swept the horizon with his hand. "I have the all-round look. I say the Man of Calvary, He is before all, the sun; but I say Socrates, Plato, Jean Jacques--that is my name, and it is not for nothing, that--Jean Jacques Rousseau, Descartes, Locke, they are stars that go round the sun. It is the same light, but not the same sound. I reconcile. In me all comes together like the spokes to the hub of a wheel. Me--I am a Christian, I am philosophe, also. In St. Saviour's, my home in Quebec, if the crops are good, what do men say? 'C'est le bon Dieu--it is the good God,' that is what they say. If the crops are bad, what do they say? 'It is the good God'--that is what they say. It is the good God that makes crops good or bad, and it is the good God that makes men say, 'C'est le bon Dieu.' The good God makes the philosophy. It is all one." She appeared to grow agitated, and her voice shook as she spoke. "Tsh, it is only a fool that says the good God does it, when the thing that is done breaks you or that which you love all to pieces. No, no, no, it is not religion, it is not philosophy that makes one raise the head when the heart is bowed down, when everything is snatched away that was all in all. That the good God does it is a lie. Santa Maria, what a lie!" "Why 'Santa Maria,' then, if it is a lie?" he asked triumphantly. He did not observe how her breast was heaving, how her hands were clenched; for she was really busy with thoughts of her dead Carvillho Gonzales; but for the moment he could only see the point of an argument. She made a gesture of despair. "So--that's it. Habit in us is so strong. It comes through the veins of our mothers to us. We say that God is a lie one minute, and then the next minute we say, 'God guard you!' Always--always calling to something, for something outside ourselves. That is why I said Santa Maria, why I ask her to pray for the soul of my friend, to pray to the God that breaks me and mine, and sends us over the seas, beggars without a home." Now she had him back out of the vanities of his philosophy. He was up, inflamed, looking at her with an excitement on which she depended for her future. She knew the caution of his nature, she realized how he would take one step forward and another step back, and maybe get nowhere in the end, and she wanted him--for a home, for her father's sake, for what he could do for them both. She had no compunctions. She thought herself too good for him, in a way, for in her day men of place and mark had taken notice of her; and if it had not been for her Gonzales she would no doubt have listened to one of them sometime or another. She knew she had ability, even though she was indolent, and she thought she could do as much for him as any other girl. If she gave him a handsome wife and handsome children, and made men envious of him, and filled him with good things, for she could cook more than tortillas-she felt he would have no right to complain. She meant him to marry her--and Quebec was very near! "A beggar in a strange land, without a home, without a friend--oh, my broken life!" she whispered wistfully to the sunset. It was not all acting, for the past reached out and swept over her, throwing waves of its troubles upon the future. She was that saddest of human beings, a victim of dual forces which so fought for mastery with each other that, while the struggle went on, the soul had no firm foothold anywhere. That, indeed, was why her Carvillho Gonzales, who also had been dual in nature, said to himself so often, "I am a devil," and nearly as often, "I have the heart of an angel." "Tell me all about your life, my friend," Jean Jacques said eagerly. Now his eyes no longer hurried here and there, but fastened on hers and stayed thereabouts--ah, her face surely was like pictures he had seen in the Louvre that day when he had ambled through the aisles of great men's glories with the feeling that he could not see too much for nothing in an hour. "My life? Ah, m'sieu', has not my father told you of it?" she asked. He waved a hand in explanation, he cocked his head quizzically. "Scraps --like the buttons on a coat here and there--that's all," he answered. "Born in Andalusia, lived in Cadiz, plenty of money, a beautiful home," --Carmen's eyes drooped, and her face flushed slightly--"no brothers or sisters--visits to Madrid on political business--you at school--then the going of your mother, and you at home at the head of the house. So much on the young shoulders, the kitchen, the parlour, the market, the shop, society--and so on. That is the way it was, so he said, except in the last sad times, when your father, for the sake of Don Carlos and his rights, near lost his life--ah, I can understand that: to stand by the thing you have sworn to! France is a republic, but I would give my life to put a Napoleon or a Bourbon on the throne. It is my hobby to stand by the old ship, not sign on to a new captain every port." She raised her head and looked at him calmly now. The flush had gone from her face, and a light of determination was in her eyes. To that was added suddenly a certain tinge of recklessness and abandon in carriage and manner, as one flings the body loose from the restraints of clothes, and it expands in a free, careless, defiant joy. Jean Jacques' recital of her father's tale had confused her for a moment, it was so true yet so untrue, so full of lies and yet so solid in fact. "The head of the house--visits to Madrid on political business--the parlour, the market, society--all that!" It suggested the picture of the life of a child of a great house; it made her a lady, and not a superior servant as she had been; it adorned her with a credit which was not hers; and for a moment she was ashamed. Yet from the first she had lent herself to the general imposture that they had fled from Spain for political reasons, having lost all and suffered greatly; and it was true while yet it was a lie. She had suffered, both her father and herself had suffered; she had been in danger, in agony, in sorrow, in despair-- it was only untrue that they were of good birth and blood, and had had position and comfort and much money. Well, what harm did that do anybody? What harm did it do this little brown seigneur from Quebec? Perhaps he too had made himself out to be more than he was. Perhaps he was no seigneur at all, she thought. When one is in distant seas and in danger of his life, one will hoist any flag, sail to any port, pay homage to any king. So would she. Anyhow, she was as good as this provincial, with his ancient silver watch, his plump little hands, and his book of philosophy. What did it matter, so all came right in the end! She would justify herself, if she had the chance. She was sick of conspiracy, and danger, and chicanery--and blood. She wanted her chance. She had been badly shaken in the last days in Spain, and she shrank from more worry and misery. She wanted to have a home and not to wander. And here was a chance--how good a chance she was not sure; but it was a chance. She would not hesitate to make it hers. After all, self-preservation was the thing which mattered. She wanted a bright fire, a good table, a horse, a cow, and all such simple things. She wanted a roof over her and a warm bed at night. She wanted a warm bed at night--but a warm bed at night alone. It was the price she would have to pay for her imposture, that if she had all these things, she could not be alone in the sleep-time. She had not thought of this in the days when she looked forward to a home with her Gonzales. To be near him was everything; but that was all dead and done for; and now--it was at this point that, shrinking, she suddenly threw off all restraining thoughts. With abandon of the mind came a recklessness of body, which gave her, all at once, a voluptuousness more in keeping with the typical maid of Andalusia. It got into the eyes and senses of Jean Jacques, in a way which had nothing to do with the philosophy of Descartes, or Kant, or Aristotle, or Hegel. "It was beautiful in much--my childhood," she said in a low voice, dropping her eyes before his ardent gaze, "as my father said. My mother was lovely to see, but not bigger than I was at twelve--so petite, and yet so perfect in form--like a lark or a canary. Yes, and she could sing--anything. Not like me with a voice which has the note of a drum or an organ--" "Of a flute, bright Senorita," interposed Jean Jacques. "But high, and with the trills in the skies, and all like a laugh with a tear in it. When she went to the river to wash--" She was going to say "wash the clothes," but she stopped in time and said instead, "wash her spaniel and her pony"--her face was flushed again with shame, for to lie about one's mother is a sickening thing, and her mother never had a spaniel or a pony--" the women on the shore wringing their clothes, used to beg her to sing. To the hum of the river she would make the music which they loved--" "La Manola and such?" interjected Jean Jacques eagerly. "That's a fine song as you sing it." "Not La Manola, but others of a different sort--The Love of Isabella, The Flight of Bobadil, Saragosse, My Little Banderillero, and so on, and all so sweet that the women used to cry. Always, always she was singing till the time when my father became a rebel. Then she used to cry too; and she would sing no more; and when my father was put against a wall to be shot, and fell in the dust when the rifles rang out, she came at the moment, and seeing him lying there, she threw up her hands, and fell down beside him dead--" "The poor little senora, dead too--" "Not dead too--that was the pity of it. You see my father was not dead. The officer"--she did not say sergeant--"who commanded the firing squad, he was what is called a compadre of my father--" "Yes, I understand--a made-brother, sealed with an oath, which binds closer than a blood-brother. It is that, is it not?" "So--like that. Well, the compadre had put blank cartridges in their rifles, and my father pretended to fall dead; and the soldiers were marched away; and my father, with my mother, was carried to his home, still pretending to be dead. It had been all arranged except the awful thing, my mother's death. Who could foresee that? She ought to have been told; but who could guess that she would hear of it all, and come at the moment like that? So, that was the way she went, and I was left alone with my father." She had told the truth in all, except in conveying that her mother was not of the lower orders, and that she went to the river to wash her spaniel and her pony instead of her clothes. "Your father--did they not arrest him again? Did they not know?" She shrugged her shoulders. That is not the way in Spain. He was shot, as the orders were, with his back to the wall by a squad of soldiers with regulation bullets. If he chose to come to life again, that was his own affair. The Government would take no notice of him after he was dead. He could bury himself, or he could come alive--it was all the same to them. So he came alive again." "That is a story which would make a man's name if he wrote it down," said Jean Jacques eloquently. "And the poor little senora, but my heart bleeds for her! To go like that in such pain, and not to know--If she had been my wife I think I would have gone after her to tell her it was all right, and to be with her--" He paused confused, for that seemed like a reflection on her father's chivalry, and for a man who had risked his life for his banished king-- what would he have thought if he had been told that Sebastian Dolores was an anarchist who loathed kings!--it was an insult to suggest that he did not know the right thing to do, or, knowing, had not done it. She saw the weakness of his case at once. "There was his duty to the living," she said indignantly. "Ah, forgive me--what a fool I am!" Jean Jacques said repentantly at once. "There was his little girl, his beloved child, his Carmen Dolores, so beautiful, with the voice like a flute, and--" He drew nearer to her, his hand was outstretched to take hers; his eyes were full of the passion of the moment; pity was drowning all caution, all the Norman shrewdness in him, when the Antoine suddenly stopped almost dead with a sudden jolt and shock, then plunged sideways, jerked, and trembled. "We've struck a sunk iceberg--the rest of the story to-morrow, Senorita," he cried, as they both sprang to their feet. "The rest of the story to-morrow," she repeated, angry at the stroke of fate which had so interrupted the course of her fortune. She said it with a voice also charged with fear; for she was by nature a landfarer, not a sea-farer, though on the rivers of Spain she had lived almost as much as on land, and she was a good swimmer. "The rest to-morrow," she repeated, controlling herself. CHAPTER III "TO-MORROW" The rest came to-morrow. When the Antoine struck the sunken iceberg she was not more than one hundred and twenty miles from the coast of Gaspe. She had not struck it full on, or she would have crumpled up, but had struck and glanced, mounting the berg, and sliding away with a small gaping wound in her side, broken internally where she had been weakest. Her condition was one of extreme danger, and the captain was by no means sure that he could make the land. If a storm or a heavy sea came on, they were doomed. As it was, with all hands at the pumps the water gained on her, and she moaned and creaked and ached her way into the night with no surety that she would show a funnel to the light of another day. Passengers and crew alike worked, and the few boats were got ready to lower away when the worst should come to the worst. Below, with the crew, the little moneymaster of St. Saviour's worked with an energy which had behind it some generations of hardy qualities; and all the time he refused to be downcast. There was something in his nature or in his philosophy after all. He had not much of a voice, but it was lusty and full of good feeling; and when cursing began, when a sailor even dared to curse his baptism--the crime of crimes to a Catholic mind--Jean Jacques began to sing a cheery song with which the habitants make vocal their labours or their playtimes: "A Saint-Malo, beau port de mer, Trois gros navir's sont arrives, Trois gros navir's sont arrives Charges d'avoin', charges de ble. Charges d'avoin', charges de ble: Trois dam's s'en vont les marchander." And so on through many verses, with a heartiness that was a good antidote to melancholy, even though it was no specific for a shipwreck. It played its part, however; and when Jean Jacques finished it, he plunged into that other outburst of the habitant's gay spirits, 'Bal chez Boule': "Bal chez Boule, bal chez Boule, The vespers o'er, we'll away to that; With our hearts so light, and our feet so gay, We'll dance to the tune of 'The Cardinal's Hat' The better the deed, the better the day Bal chez Boule, bal chez Boule!" And while Jean Jacques worked "like a little French pony," as they say in Canada of every man with the courage to do hard things in him, he did not stop to think that the scanty life-belts had all been taken, and that he was a very poor swimmer indeed: for, as a child, he had been subject to cramp, and so had made the Beau Cheval River less his friend than would have been useful now. He realized it, however, soon after daybreak, when, within a few hundred yards of the shores of Gaspe, to which the good Basque captain had been slowly driving the Antoine all night, there came the cry, "All hands on deck!" and "Lower the boats!" for the Antoine's time had come, and within a hand-reach of shore almost she found the end of her rickety life. Not more than three-fourths of the passengers and crew were got into the boats. Jean Jacques was not one of these; but he saw Carmen Dolores and her father safely bestowed, though in different boats. To the girl's appeal to him to come he gave a nod of assent, and said he would get in at the last moment; but this he did not do, pushing into the boat instead a crying lad of fifteen, who said he was afraid to die. So it was that Jean Jacques took to the water side by side with the Basque captain, when the Antoine groaned and shook, and then grew still, and presently, with some dignity, dipped her nose into the shallow sea and went down. "The rest of the story to-morrow," Jean Jacques had said when the vessel struck the iceberg the night before; and so it was. The boat in which Carmen had been placed was swamped not far from shore, but she managed to lay hold of a piece of drifting wreckage, and began to fight steadily and easily landward. Presently she was aware, however, of a man struggling hard some little distance away to the left of her, and from the tousled hair shaking in the water she was sure that it was Jean Jacques. So it proved to be; and thus it was that, at his last gasp almost, when he felt he could keep up no longer, the wooden seat to which Carmen clung came to his hand, and a word of cheer from her drew his head up with what was almost a laugh. "To think of this!" he said presently when he was safe, with her swimming beside him without support, for the wooden seat would not sustain the weight of two. "To think that it is you who saves me!" he again declared eloquently, as they made the shore in comparative ease, for she was a fine swimmer. "It is the rest of the story," he said with great cheerfulness and aplomb as they stood on the shore in the morning sun, shoeless, coatless, but safe: and she understood. There was nothing else for him to do. The usual process of romance had been reversed. He had not saved her life, she had saved his. The least that he could do was to give her shelter at the Manor Cartier yonder at St. Saviour's, her and, if need be, her father. Human gratitude must have play. It was so strong in this case that it alone could have overcome the Norman caution of Jean Jacques, and all his worldly wisdom (so much in his own eyes). Added thereto was the thing which had been greatly stirred in him at the instant the Antoine struck; and now he kept picturing Carmen in the big living-room and the big bedroom of the house by the mill, where was the comfortable four-poster which had come from the mansion of the last Baron of Beaugard down by St. Laurent. Three days after the shipwreck of the Antoine, and as soon as sufficient finery could be got in Quebec, it was accomplished, the fate of Jean Jacques. How proud he was to open his cheque-book before the young Spanish maid, and write in cramped, characteristic hand a cheque for a hundred dollars or so at a time! A moiety of this money was given to Sebastian Dolores, who could scarcely believe his good fortune. A situation was got for him by the help of a good abbe at Quebec, who was touched by the tale of the wreck of the Antoine, and by the no less wonderful tale of the refugees of Spain, who naturally belonged to the true faith which "feared God and honoured the King." Sebastian Dolores was grateful for the post offered him, though he would rather have gone to St. Saviour's with his daughter, for he had lost the gift of work, and he desired peace after war. In other words, he had that fatal trait of those who strive to make the world better by talk and violence, the vice of indolence. But when Jean Jacques and his handsome bride started for St. Saviour's, the new father-in-law did not despair of following soon. He would greatly have enjoyed the festivities which, after all, did follow the home-coming of Jean Jacques Barbille and his Spanische; for while they lacked enthusiasm because Carmen was a foreigner, the romance of the story gave the whole proceedings a spirit and interest which spread into adjoining parishes: so that people came to mass from forty miles away to see the pair who had been saved from the sea. And when the Quebec newspapers found their way into the parish, with a thrilling account of the last hours of the Antoine; and of Jean Jacques' chivalrous act in refusing to enter a boat to save himself, though he was such a bad swimmer and was in danger of cramp; and how he sang Bal chez Boule while the men worked at the pumps; they permitted the apres noces of M'sieu' and Madame Jean Jacques Barbille to be as brilliant as could be, with the help of lively improvisation. Even speech-making occurred again in an address of welcome some days later. This was followed by a feast of Spanish cakes and meats made by the hands of Carmen Dolores, "the lady saved from the sea"--as they called her; not knowing that she had saved herself, and saved Jean Jacques as well. It was not quite to Jean Jacques' credit that he did not set this error right, and tell the world the whole exact truth. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Air of certainty and universal comprehension Always calling to something, for something outside ourselves Came of a race who set great store by mothers and grandmothers Grove of pines to give a sense of warmth in winter Grow more intense, more convinced, more thorough, as they talk He admired, yet he wished to be admired Inclined to resent his own insignificance Lyrical in his enthusiasms No man so simply sincere, or so extraordinarily prejudiced Of those who hypnotize themselves, who glow with self-creation Spurting out little geysers of other people's cheap wisdom Untamed by the normal restraints of a happy married life THE MONEY MASTER By Gilbert Parker EPOCH THE SECOND IV. THIRTEEN YEARS AFTER AND THE CLERK OF THE COURT TELLS A STORY V. THE CLERK OF THE COURT ENDS HIS STORY VI. JEAN JACQUES HAD HAD A GREAT DAY VII. JEAN JACQUES AWAKES FROM SLEEP VIII. THE GATE IN THE WALL IX. "MOI-JE SUIS PHILOSOPHE" X. "QUIEN SABE"--WHO KNOWS! XI. THE CLERK OF THE COURT KEEPS A PROMISE XII. THE MASTER-CARPENTER HAS A PROBLEM CHAPTER IV THIRTEEN YEARS AFTER AND THE CLERK OF THE COURT TELLS A STORY It was hard to say which was the more important person in the parish, the New Cure or M'sieu' Jean Jacques Barbille. When the Old Cure was alive Jean Jacques was a lesser light, and he accepted his degree of illumination with content. But when Pere Langon was gathered to his fathers, and thousands had turned away from the graveyard, where he who had baptised them, confirmed them, blessed them, comforted them, and firmly led them was laid to rest, they did not turn at once to his successor with confidence and affection. The new cure, M. Savry, was young; the Old Cure had lived to be eighty-five, bearing wherever he went a lamp of wisdom at which the people lighted their small souls. The New Cure could command their obedience, but he could not command their love and confidence until he had earned them. So it was that, for a time, Jean Jacques took the place of the Old Cure in the human side of the life of the district, though in a vastly lesser degree. Up to the death of M. Langon, Jean Jacques had done very well in life, as things go in out-of-the-way places of the world. His mill, which ground good flour, brought him increasing pence; his saw-mill more than paid its way; his farms made a small profit, in spite of a cousin who worked one on halves, but who had a spendthrift wife; the ash-factory which his own initiative had started made no money, but the loss was only small; and he had even made profit out of his lime-kilns, although Sebastian Dolores, Carmen's father, had at one time mismanaged them--but of that anon. Jean Jacques himself managed the business of money-lending and horse-dealing; and he also was agent for fire insurance and a dealer in lightning rods. In the thirteen years since he married he had been able to keep a good many irons in the fire, and also keep them more or less hot. Many people in his and neighbouring parishes were indebted to him, and it was worth their while to stand well with him. If he insisted on debts being paid, he was never exacting or cruel. If he lent money, he never demanded more than eight per cent.; and he never pressed his debtors unduly. His cheerfulness seldom deserted him, and he was notably kind to the poor. Not seldom in the winter time a poor man, here and there in the parish, would find dumped down outside his door in the early morning a half-cord of wood or a bag of flour. It could not be said that Jean Jacques did not enjoy his own generosity. His vanity, however, did not come from an increasing admiration of his own personal appearance, a weakness which often belongs to middle age; but from the study of his so-called philosophy, which in time became an obsession with him. In vain the occasional college professors, who spent summer months at St. Saviour's, sought to interest him in science and history, for his philosophy had large areas of boredom; but science marched over too jagged a road for his tender intellectual feet; the wild places where it led dismayed him. History also meant numberless dates and facts. Perhaps he could have managed the dates, for he was quick at figures, but the facts were like bees in their hive,--he could scarcely tell one from another by looking at them. So it was that Jean Jacques kept turning his eyes, as he thought, to the everlasting meaning of things, to "the laws of Life and the decrees of Destiny." He was one of those who had found, as he thought, what he could do, and was sensible enough to do it. Let the poor fellows, who gave themselves to science, trouble their twisted minds with trigonometry and the formula of some grotesque chemical combination; let the dull people rub their noses in the ink of Greek and Latin, which was no use for everyday consumption; let the heads of historians ache with the warring facts of the lives of nations; it all made for sleep. But philosophy--ah, there was a field where a man could always use knowledge got from books or sorted out of his own experiences! It happened, therefore, that Jean Jacques, who not too vaguely realized that there was reputation to be got from being thought a philosopher, always carried about with him his little compendium from the quay at Quebec, which he had brought ashore inside his redflannel shirt, with the antique silver watch, when the Antoine went down. Thus also it was that when a lawyer in court at Vilray, four miles from St. Saviour's, asked him one day, when he stepped into the witness-box, what he was, meaning what was his occupation, his reply was, "Moi-je suis M'sieu' Jean Jacques, philosophe--(Me--I am M'sieu' Jean Jacques, philosopher)." A little later outside the court-house, the Judge who had tried the case --M. Carcasson--said to the Clerk of the Court: "A curious, interesting little man, that Monsieur Jean Jacques. What's his history?" "A character, a character, monsieur le juge," was the reply of M. Amand Fille. "His family has been here since Frontenac's time. He is a figure in the district, with a hand in everything. He does enough foolish things to ruin any man, yet swims along--swims along. He has many kinds of business--mills, stores, farms, lime-kilns, and all that, and keeps them all going; and as if he hadn't enough to do, and wasn't risking enough, he's now organizing a cheese-factory on the co-operative principle, as in Upper Canada among the English." "He has a touch of originality, that's sure," was the reply of the Judge. The Clerk of the Court nodded and sighed. "Monseigneur Giron of Laval, the greatest scholar in Quebec, he said to me once that M'sieu' Jean Jacques missed being a genius by an inch. But, monsieur le juge, not to have that inch is worse than to be an ignoramus." Judge Carcasson nodded. "Ah, surely! Your Jean Jacques lacks a balance- wheel. He has brains, but not enough. He has vision, but it is not steady; he has argument, but it breaks down just where it should be most cohesive. He interested me. I took note of every turn of his mind as he gave evidence. He will go on for a time, pulling his strings, doing this and doing that, and then, all at once, when he has got a train of complications, his brain will not be big enough to see the way out. Tell me, has he a balance-wheel in his home--a sensible wife, perhaps?" The Clerk of the Court shook his head mournfully and seemed to hesitate. Then he said, "Comme ci, comme ca--but no, I will speak the truth about it. She is a Spaniard--the Spanische she is called by the neighbours. I will tell you all about that, and you will wonder that he has carried on as well as he has, with his vanity and his philosophy." "He'll have need of his philosophy before he's done, or I don't know human nature; he'll get a bad fall one of these days," responded the Judge. "'Moi-je suis M'sieu' Jean Jacques, philosophe'--that is what he said. Bumptious little man, and yet--and yet there's something in him. There's a sense of things which everyone doesn't have--a glimmer of life beyond his own orbit, a catching at the biggest elements of being, a hovering on the confines of deep understanding, as it were. Somehow I feel almost sorry for him, though he annoyed me while he was in the witness-box, in spite of myself. He was as the English say, so 'damn sure.'" "So damn sure always," agreed the Clerk of the Court, with a sense of pleasure that his great man, this wonderful aged little judge, should have shown himself so human as to use such a phrase. "But, no doubt, the sureness has been a good servant in his business," returned the Judge. "Confidence in a weak world gets unearned profit often. But tell me about his wife--the Spanische. Tell me the how and why, and everything. I'd like to trace our little money-man wise to his source." Again M. Fille was sensibly agitated. "She is handsome, and she has great, good gifts when she likes to use them," he answered. "She can do as much in an hour as most women can do in two; but then she will not keep at it. Her life is but fits and starts. Yet she has a good head for business, yes, very good. She can see through things. Still, there it is--she will not hold fast from day to day." "Yes, yes, but where did she come from? What was the field where she grew?" "To be sure, monsieur. It was like this," responded the other. Thereupon M. Fille proceeded to tell the history, musical with legend, of Jean Jacques' Grand Tour, of the wreck of the Antoine, of the marriage of the "seigneur," the home-coming, and the life that followed, so far as rumour, observation, and a mind with a gift for narrative, which was not to be incomplete for lack of imagination, could make it. It was only when he offered his own reflections on Carmen Dolores, now Carmen Barbille, and on women generally, that Judge Carcasson pulled him up. "So, so, I see. She has temperament and so on, but she's unsteady, and regarded by her neighbours not quite as one that belongs. Bah, the conceit of every race! They are all the same. The English are the worst--as though the good God was English. But the child--so beautiful, you say, and yet more like the father than the mother. He is not handsome, that Jean Jacques, but I can understand that the little one should be like him and yet beautiful too. I should like to see the child." Suddenly the Clerk of the Court stopped and touched the arm of his distinguished friend and patron. "That is very easy, monsieur," he said eagerly, "for there she is in the red wagon yonder, waiting for her father. She adores him, and that makes trouble sometimes. Then the mother gets fits, and makes things hard at the Manor Cartier. It is not all a bed of roses for our Jean Jacques. But there it is. He is very busy all the time. Something doing always, never still, except when you will find him by the road-side, or in a tavern with all the people round him, talking, jesting, and he himself going into a trance with his book of philosophy. It is very strange that everlasting going, going, going, and yet that love of his book. I sometimes think it is all pretence, and that he is all vanity--or almost so. Heaven forgive me for my want of charity!" The little round judge cocked his head astutely. "But you say he is kind to the poor, that he does not treat men hardly who are in debt to him, and that he will take his coat off his back to give to a tramp--is it so?" "As so, as so, monsieur." "Then he is not all vanity, and because of that he will feel the blow when it comes--alas, so much he will feel it!" "What blow, monsieur le juge?--but ah, look, monsieur!" He pointed eagerly. "There she is, going to the red wagon--Madame Jean Jacques. Is she not a figure of a woman? See the walk of her--is it not distinguished? She is half a hand-breadth taller than Jean Jacques. And her face, most sure it is a face to see. If Jean Jacques was not so busy with his farms and his mills and his kilns and his usury, he would see what a woman he has got. It is his good fortune that she has such sense in business. When Jean Jacques listens to her, he goes right. She herself did not want her father to manage the lime-kilns--the old Sebastian Dolores. She was for him staying at Mirimachi, where he kept the books of the lumber firm. But no, Jean Jacques said that he could make her happy by having her father near her, and he would not believe she meant what she said. He does not understand her; that is the trouble. He knows as much of women or men as I know of--" "Of the law--hein?" laughed the great man. "Monsieur--ah, that is your little joke! I laugh, yes, but I laugh," responded the Clerk of the Court a little uncertainly. "Now once when she told him that the lime-kilns--" The Judge, who had retraced his steps down the street of the town--it was little more than a large village, but because it had a court-house and a marketplace it was called a town--that he might have a good look at Madame Jean Jacques and her child before he passed them, suddenly said: "How is it you know so much about it all, Maitre Fille--as to what she says and of the inner secrets of the household? Ah, ha, my little Lothario, I have caught you--a bachelor too, with time on his hands, and the right side of seventy as well! The evidence you have given of a close knowledge of the household of our Jean Jacques does not have its basis in hearsay, but in acute personal observation. Tut-tut! Fie-fie! my little gay Clerk of the Court. Fie! Fie!" M. Fille was greatly disconcerted. He had never been a Lothario. In forty years he had never had an episode with one of "the other sex," but it was not because he was impervious to the softer emotions. An intolerable shyness had ever possessed him when in the presence of women, and even small girl children had frightened him, till he had made friends with little Zoe Barbille, the daughter of Jean Jacques. Yet even with Zoe, who was so simple and companionable and the very soul of childish confidence, he used to blush and falter till she made him talk. Then he became composed, and his tongue was like a running stream, and on that stream any craft could sail. On it he became at ease with madame the Spanische, and he even went so far as to look her full in the eyes on more than one occasion. "Answer me--ah, you cannot answer!" teasingly added the Judge, who loved his Clerk of the Court, and had great amusement out of his discomfiture. "You are convicted. At an age when a man should be settling down, you are gallivanting with the wife of a philosopher." "Monsieur--monsieur le juge!" protested M. Fille with slowly heightening colour. "I am innocent, yes, altogether. There is nothing, believe me. It is the child, the little Zoe--but a maid of charm and kindness. She brings me cakes and the toffy made by her own hands; and if I go to the Manor Cartier, as I often do, it is to be polite and neighbourly. If Madame says things to me, and if I see what I see, and hear what I hear, it is no crime; it is no misdemeanour; it is within the law--the perfect law." Suddenly the Judge linked his arm within that of the other, for he also was little, and he was fat and round and ruddy, and even smaller than M. Fille, who was thin, angular and pale. "Ah, my little Confucius," he said gently, "have you seen and heard me so seldom that you do not know me yet, or what I really think? Of course it is within the law--the perfect law--to visit at m'sieu' the philosopher's house and talk at length also to m'sieu' the philosopher's wife; while to make the position regular by friendship with the philosopher's child is a wisdom which I can only ascribe to"--his voice was charged with humour and malicious badinage "to an extended acquaintance with the devices of human nature, as seen in those episodes of the courts with which you have been long familiar." "Oh, monsieur, dear monsieur!" protested the Clerk of the Court, "you always make me your butt." "My friend," said the Judge, squeezing his arm, "if I could have you no other way, I would make you my butler!" Then they both laughed at the inexpensive joke, and the Clerk of the Court was in high spirits, for on either side of the street were people with whom he lived every day, and they could see the doyen of the Bench, the great Judge Carcasson, who had refused to be knighted, arm in arm with him. Aye, and better than all, and more than all, here was Zoe Barbille drawing her mother's attention to him almost in the embrace of the magnificent jurist. The Judge, with his small, round, quizzical eyes which missed nothing, saw too; and his attention was strangely arrested by the faces of both the mother and the child. His first glance at the woman's face made him flash an inward light on the memory of Jean Jacques' face in the witness- box, and a look of reflective irony came into his own. The face of Carmen Dolores, wife of the philosophic miller and money-master, did not belong to the world where she was placed--not because she was so unlike the habitant women, or even the wives of the big farmers, or the sister of the Cure, or the ladies of the military and commercial exiles who lived in that portion of the province; but because of an alien something in her look--a lonely, distant sense of isolation, a something which might hide a companionship and sympathy of a rare kind, or might be but the mask of a furtive, soulless nature. In the child's face was nothing of this. It was open as the day, bright with the cheerfulness of her father's countenance, alive with a humour which that countenance did not possess. The contour was like that of Jean Jacques, but with a fineness and delicacy to its fulness absent from his own; and her eyes were a deep and lustrous brown, under a forehead which had a boldness of gentle dignity possessed by neither father nor mother. Her hair was thick, brown and very full, like that of her father, and in all respects, save one, she had an advantage over both her parents. Her mouth had a sweetness which might not unfairly be called weakness, though that was balanced by a chin of commendable strength. But the Judge's eyes found at once this vulnerable point in her character as he had found that of her mother. Delightful the child was, and alert and companionable, with no remarkable gifts, but with a rare charm and sympathy. Her face was the mirror of her mind, and it had no ulterior thought. Her mother's face, the Judge had noted, was the foreground of a landscape which had lonely shadows. It was a face of some distinction and suited to surroundings more notable, though the rural life Carmen had led since the Antoine went down and her fortunes came up, had coarsened her beauty a very little. "There's something stirring in the coverts," said the Judge to himself as he was introduced to the mother and child. By a hasty gesture Zoe gave a command to M. Fille to help her down. With a hand on his shoulder she dropped to the ground. Her object was at once apparent. She made a pretty old-fashioned curtsey to the Judge, then held out her hand, as though to reassert her democratic equality. As the Judge looked at Madame Barbille, he was involuntarily, but none the less industriously, noting her characteristics; and the sum of his reflections, after a few moments' talk, was that dangers he had seen ahead of Jean Jacques, would not be averted by his wife, indeed might easily have their origin in her. "I wonder it has gone on as long as it has," he said to himself; though it seemed unreasonable that his few moments with her, and the story told him by the Clerk of the Court, should enable him to come to any definite conclusion. But at eighty-odd Judge Carcasson was a Solon and a Solomon in one. He had seen life from all angles, and he was not prepared to give any virtue or the possession of any virtue too much rope; while nothing in life surprised him. "How would you like to be a judge?" he asked of Zoe, suddenly taking her hand in his. A kinship had been at once established between them, so little has age, position, and intellect to do with the natural gravitations of human nature. She did not answer direct, and that pleased him. "If I were a judge I should have no jails," she said. "What would you do with the bad people?" he asked. "I would put them alone on a desert island, or out at sea in a little boat, or out on the prairies without a horse, so that they'd have to work for their lives." "Oh, I see! If M. Fille here set fire to a house, you would drop him on the prairie far away from everything and everybody and let him 'root hog or die'?" "Don't you think it would kill him or cure him?" she asked whimsically. The Judge laughed, his eyes twinkling. "That's what they did when the world was young, dear ma'm'selle. There was no time to build jails. Alone on the prairie--a separate prairie for every criminal--that would take a lot of space; but the idea is all right. It mightn't provide the proper degree of punishment, however. But that is being too particular. Alone on the prairie for punishment--well, I should like to see it tried." He remembered that saying of his long after, while yet he was alive, and a tale came to him from the prairies which made his eyes turn more intently towards a land that is far off, where the miserable miscalculations and mistakes of this world are readjusted. Now he was only conscious of a primitive imagination looking out of a young girl's face, and making a bridge between her understanding and his own. "What else would you do if you were a judge?" he asked presently. "I would make my father be a miller," she replied. "But he is a miller, I hear." "But he is so many other things--so many. If he was only a miller we should have more of him. He is at home only a little. If I get up early enough in the morning, or if I am let stay up at night late enough, I see him; but that is not enough--is it, mother?" she added with a sudden sense that she had gone too far, that she ought not to say this perhaps. The woman's face had darkened for an instant, and irritation showed in her eyes, but by an effort of the will she controlled herself. "Your father knows best what he can do and can't do," she said evenly. "But you would not let a man judge for himself, would you, ma'm'selle?" asked the old inquisitor. "You would judge for the man what was best for him to do?" "I would judge for my father," she replied. "He is too good a man to judge for himself." "Well, there's a lot of sense in that, ma'm'selle philosophe," answered Judge Carcasson. "You would make the good idle, and make the bad work. The good you would put in a mill to watch the stones grind, and the bad you would put on a prairie alone to make the grist for the grinding. Ma'm'selle, we must be friends--is it not so?" "Haven't we always been friends?" the young girl asked with the look of a visionary suddenly springing up in her eyes. Here was temperament indeed. She pleased Judge Carcasson greatly. "But yes, always, and always, and always," he replied. Inwardly he said to himself, "I did not see that at first. It is her father in her. "Zoe!" said her mother reprovingly. CHAPTER V THE CLERK OF THE COURT ENDS HIS STORY A moment afterwards the Judge, as he walked down the street still arm in arm with the Clerk of the Court, said: "That child must have good luck, or she will not have her share of happiness. She has depths that are not deep enough." Presently he added, "Tell me, my Clerk, the man--Jean Jacques--he is so much away--has there never been any talk about--about." "About--monsieur le juge?" asked M. Fille rather stiffly. "For instance --about what?" "For instance, about a man--not Jean Jacques." The lips of the Clerk of the Court tightened. "Never at any time--till now, monsieur le juge." "Ah--till now!" The Clerk of the Court blushed. What he was about to say was difficult, but he alone of all the world guessed at the tragedy which was hovering over Jean Jacques' home. By chance he had seen something on an afternoon of three days before, and he had fled from it as a child would fly from a demon. He was a purist at law, but he was a purist in life also, and not because the flush of youth had gone and his feet were on the path which leads into the autumn of a man's days. The thing he had seen had been terribly on his mind, and he had felt that his own judgment was not sufficient for the situation, that he ought to tell someone. The Cure was the only person who had come to his mind when he became troubled to the point of actual mental agony. But the new curb, M. Savry, was not like the Old Cure, and, besides, was it not stepping between the woman and her confessional? Yet he felt that something ought to be done. It never occurred to him to speak to Jean Jacques. That would have seemed so brutal to the woman. It came to him to speak to Carmen, but he knew that he dared not do so. He could not say to a woman that which must shame her before him, she who had kept her head so arrogantly high--not so much to him, however, as to the rest of the world. He had not the courage; and yet he had fear lest some awful thing would at any moment now befall the Manor Cartier. If it did, he would feel himself to blame had he done nothing to stay the peril. So far he was the only person who could do so, for he was the only person who knew! The Judge could feel his friend's arm tremble with emotion, and he said: "Come, now, my Plato, what is it? A man has come to disturb the peace of Jean Jacques, our philosophe, eh?" "That is it, monsieur--a man of a kind." "Oh, of course, my bambino, of course, a man 'of a kind,' or there would be no peace disturbed. You want to tell me, I see. Proceed then; there is no reason why you should not. I am secret. I have seen much. I have no prejudices. As you will, however; but I can see it would relieve your mind to tell me. In truth I felt there was something when I saw you look at her first, when you spoke to her, when she talked with me. She is a fine figure of a woman, and Jean Jacques, as you say, is much away from home. In fact he neglects her--is it not so?" "He means it not, but it is so. His life is full of--" "Yes, yes, of stores and ash-factories and debtors and lightning-rods and lime-kilns, and mortgaged farms, and the price of wheat--but certainly, I understand it all, my Fille. She is too much alone, and if she has travelled by the compass all these thirteen years without losing the track, it is something to the credit of human nature." "Ah, monsieur, a vow before the good God--!" The Judge interrupted sharply. "Tut, tut--these vows! Do you not know that a vow may be a thing that ruins past redemption? A vow is sacred. Well, a poor mortal in one moment of weakness breaks it. Then there is a sense of awful shame of being lost, of never being able to put right the breaking of the vow, though the rest can be put right by sorrow and repentance! I would have no vows. They haunt like ghosts when they are broken, they torture like fire then. Don't talk to me of vows. It is not vows that keep the world right, but the prayer of a man's soul from day to day." The Judge's words sounded almost blasphemous to M. Fille. A vow not keep the world right! Then why the vows of the Church at baptism, at confirmation, at marriage? Why the vows of the priests, of the nuns, of those who had given themselves to eternal service? Monsieur had spoken terrible things. And yet he had said at the last: "It is not vows that keep the world right, but the prayer of a man's soul from day to day." That was not heretical, or atheistic, or blasphemous. It sounded logical and true and good. He was about to say that, to some people, vows were the only way of keeping them to their duty--and especially women--but the Judge added gently: "I would not for the world hurt your sensibilities, my little Clerk, and we are not nearly so far apart as you think at the minute. Thank God, I keep the faith that is behind all faith--the speech of a man's soul with God. . . . But there, if you can, let us hear what man it is who disturbs the home of the philosopher. It is not my Fille, that's sure." He could not resist teasing, this judge who had a mind of the most rare uprightness; and he was not always sorry when his teasing hurt; for, to his mind, men should be lashed into strength, when they drooped over the tasks of life; and what so sharp a lash as ridicule or satire! "Proceed, my friend," he urged brusquely, not waiting for the gasp of pained surprise of the little Clerk to end. He was glad to see the figure beside him presently straighten itself, as though to be braced for a task of difficulty. Indignation and resentment were good things to stiffen a man's back. "It was three days ago," said M. Fille. "I saw it with my own eyes. I had come to the Manor Cartier by the road, down the hill--Mont Violet-- behind the house. I could see into the windows of the house. There was no reason why I should not see--there never has been a reason," he added, as though to justify himself. "Of course, of course, my friend. One's eyes are open, and one sees what one sees, without looking for it. Proceed." "As I looked down I saw Madame with a man's arms round her, and his lips to hers. It was not Jean Jacques." "Of course, of course. Proceed. What did you do?" "I stopped. I fell back--" "Of course. Behind a tree?" "Behind some elderberry bushes." "Of course. Elderberry bushes--that's better than a tree. I am very fond of elderberry wine when it is new. Proceed." The Clerk of the Court shrank. What did it matter whether or no the Judge liked elderberry wine, when the world was falling down for Jean Jacques and his Zoe--and his wife. But with a sigh he continued: "There is nothing more. I stayed there for awhile, and then crept up the hill again, and came back to my home and locked myself in." "What had you done that you should lock yourself in?" "Ah, monsieur, how can I explain such things? Perhaps I was ashamed that I had seen things I should not have seen. I do not blush that I wept for the child, who is--but you saw her, monsieur le juge." "Yes, yes, the little Zoe, and the little philosopher. Proceed." "What more is there to tell!" "A trifle perhaps, as you will think," remarked the Judge ironically, but as one who, finding a crime, must needs find the criminal too. "I must ask you to inform the Court who was the too polite friend of Madame." "Monsieur, pardon me. I forgot. It is essential, of course. You must know that there is a flume, a great wooden channel--" "Yes, yes. I comprehend. Once I had a case of a flume. It was fifteen feet deep and it let in the water of the river to the mill-wheels. A flume regulates, concentrates, and controls the water power. I comprehend perfectly. Well?" "So. This flume for Jean Jacques' mill was also fifteen feet deep or more. It was out of repair, and Jean Jacques called in a master- carpenter from Laplatte, Masson by name--George Masson--to put the flume right." "How long ago was that?" "A month ago. But Masson was not here all the time. It was his workmen who did the repairs, but he came over to see--to superintend. At first he came twice in the week. Then he came every day." "Ah, then he came every day! How do you know that?" "It was my custom to walk to the mill every day--to watch the work on the flume. It was only four miles away across the fields and through the woods, making a walk of much charm--especially in the autumn, when the colours of the foliage are so fine, and the air has a touch of pensiveness, so that one is induced to reflection." There was the slightest tinge of impatience in the Judge's response. "Yes, yes, I understand. You walked to study life and to reflect and to enjoy your intimacy with nature, but also to see our friend Zoe and her home. And I do not wonder. She has a charm which makes me sad-- for her." "So I have felt, so I have felt for her, monsieur. When she is gayest, and when, as it might seem, I am quite happy, talking to her, or picnicking, or idling on the river, or helping her with her lessons, I have sadness, I know not why." The Judge pressed his friend's arm firmly. His voice grew more insistent. "Now, Maitre Fille, I think I understand the story, but there are lacunee which you must fill. You say the thing happened three days ago--now, when will the work be finished?" "The work will be finished to-morrow, monsieur. Only one workman is left, and he will be quit of his task to-night." "So the thing--the comedy or tragedy will come to an end to-morrow?" remarked the Judge seriously. "How did you find out that the workmen go tomorrow, maitre?" "Jean Jacques--he told me yesterday." "Then it all ends to-morrow," responded the Judge. The puzzled subordinate stood almost still, and looked at the Judge in wonder. Why should it all end to-morrow simply because the work was finished at the flume? At last he spoke. "It is only twelve miles to Laplatte where George Masson lives, and he has, besides, another contract near here, but three miles from the Manor Cartier. Also besides, how can we know what she will do--Jean Jacques' wife. How can we tell but that she will perhaps go and leave the beloved Zoe alone!" "And leave our little philosopher--miller also alone?" remarked the Judge quizzically, yet with solemnity. M. Fille was agitated; he made a protesting gesture. "Jean Jacques can find comfort, but the child--ah, no, it is too terrible! Someone should speak. I tried to do it--to Madame Carmen, to Jean Jacques; but it was no use. How could I betray her to him, how could I tell her that I knew her shame!" The Judge turned brusquely and caught his friend by the shoulders, fastening him with the eyes which had made many a witness forget to lie. "If you were an avocat in practice I would ruin your reputation, Fille," he said. "A fool would tell Jean Jacques, or speak to the woman, and spoil all; for women go mad when they are in danger, and they do the impossible things. But did it not occur to you that the one person to have in a quiet room with the doors shut, with the light of the sun in his face, with the book of the law open on your desk and the damages to be got by an injured husband, in a Catholic province with a Catholic Judge, written down on a piece of paper, to hand over at the right moment--did it not strike you that that person was your George Masson?" M. Fille's head dropped before the disdainful eyes of M. Carcasson. He who prided himself in keeping the court right on points of procedure, who was looked upon almost with the respect given the position of the Judge himself, that he should fail in thinking of the obvious thing was humiliating, and alas! so disconcerting. "I am a fool, an imbecile," he responded, in great dejection. "This much must be said, my imbecile, that every man some time or other makes just such a fool of his intelligence," was the soft reply. A thin hand made a gesture of dissent. "Not you, monsieur. Never!" "If it is any comfort to you, know then, my Solon, that I have done so publicly in my time, while you have only done it privately. But let us see. That Masson must be struck of a heap. What sort of a man is he to look at? Apart from his morals, what class of creature is he?" "He is a man of strength, of force in his way, monsieur. He made himself from an apprentice without a cent, and he has now thirty men at work." "Then he does not drink or gamble?" "Neither, monsieur." "Has he a family?" "No, monsieur." "How old is he?" "Forty or thereabouts, monsieur." The Judge cogitated for a moment, then said: "Ah, that's bad--unmarried and forty, and no vices except this. It gives him few escape-valves. Is he good-looking? What is his appearance?" "Nor short, nor tall, and square shoulders. His face like the yellow brown of a peach, hair that curls close to his head, blue eyes that see everything, and a big hand that knows what it is doing." The Judge nodded. "Ah, you have watched him, maitre. . . . When? Since then?" "No, no, monsieur, not since. If I had watched him since, I should perhaps have thought of the right thing to do. But I did not. I used to study him while the work was going on, when he first came, but I have known him some time from a distance. If a man makes himself what he is, you look at him, of course." "Truly. His temper--his disposition, what is it?" M. Fille was very much alive now. He replied briskly. "Like the snap of a whip. He flies into anger and flies out. He has a laugh that makes men say, 'How he enjoys himself !' and his mind is very quick and sure." The Judge nodded with satisfaction. "Well done! Well done! I have got him in my eye. He will not be so easy to handle; but, if he has brains, he will see that you have the right end of the stick; and he will kiss and ride away. It will not be easy, but the game is in your hands, my Fille. In a quiet room, with the book of the law open, and figures of damages given by a Catholic court and Judge--I think that will do it; and then the course of true philosophy will not long be interrupted in the house of Jean Jacques Barbille." "Monsieur--monsieur le juge, you mean that I shall do this, shall see George Masson and warn him--me?" "Who else? You are a friend of the family. You are a public officer, to whom the good name of your parish is dear. As all are aware, no doubt, you are the trusted ancient comrade of the daughter of the woman--I speak legally--Carmen Barbille nee Dolores, a name of charm to the ear. Who but you then to do it?" "There is yourself, monsieur." "Dismiss me from your mind. I go to Quebec to-night, as you know, and there is not time; but even if there were, I should not be the best person to do this. I am known to few; you are known to all. I have no locus standi. You have. No, no, it would not be for me." Suddenly, in his desperation, the Clerk of the Court sought release for himself from this solemn and frightening duty. "Monsieur," he said eagerly, "there is another. I had forgotten. It is Madame Carmen's father, Sebastian Dolores." "Ah, a father! Yes, I had forgotten to ask about him; so we are one in our imbecility, my little Aristotle. This Sebastian Dolores, where is he?" "In the next parish, Beauharnais, keeping books for a lumber-firm. Ah, monsieur, that is the way to deal with the matter--through Sebastian Dolores, her father!" "What sort is he?" The other shook his head and did not answer. "Ah, not of the best? Drinks?" M. Fille nodded. "Has a weak character?" Again M. Fille nodded. "Has no good reputation hereabouts?" The nod was repeated. "He has never been steady He goes here and there, but always he comes back to get Jean Jacques' help. He and his daughter are not close friends, and yet he likes to be near her. She can endure him at least. He can command her interest. He is a stranger in a strange land, and he drifts back to where she is always. But that is all." "Then he is out of the question, and he would be always out of the question except as a last resort; for sooner or later he would tell his daughter, and challenge our George Masson too; and that is what you do not wish, eh?" "Precisely so," remarked M. Fille, dropping back again into gloom. "To be quite honest, monsieur, even though it gives me a task which I abhor, I do not think that M. Dolores could do what is needed without mistakes which could not be mended. At least I can--" He stopped. The Judge interposed at once, well pleased with the way things were going for this "case." "Assuredly. You can as can no other, my Solon. The secret of success in such things is a good heart, a right mind, a clear intelligence and some astuteness, and you have it all. It is your task and yours only." The little man's self-respect seemed restored. He preened himself somewhat and bowed to the Judge. "I take your commands, monsieur, to obey them as heaven gives me power so to do. Shall it be tomorrow?" The Judge reflected a moment, then said: "Tonight would be better, but--" "I can do it better to-morrow morning," interposed M. Fille, "for George Masson has a meeting here at Vilray with the avocat Prideaux at ten o'clock to sign a contract, and I can ask him to step into my office on a little affair of business. He will not guess, and I shall be armed"--the Judge frowned--"with the book of the law on such misdemeanours, and the figures of the damages,"--the Judge smiled--"and I think perhaps I can frighten him as he has never been frightened before." A courage and confidence had now taken possession of the Clerk in strange contrast to his timidity and childlike manner of a few minutes before. He was now as he appeared in court, clothed with an austere authority which gave him a vicarious strength and dignity. The Judge had done his work well, and he was of those folk in the world who are not content to do even the smallest thing ill. Arm in arm they passed into the garden which fronted the vine-covered house, where Maitre Fille lived alone with his sister, a tiny edition of himself, who whispered and smiled her way through life. She smiled and whispered now in welcome to the Judge; and as she did so, the three saw Jean Jacques, laughing, and cracking his whip, drive past with his daughter beside him, chirruping to the horses; while, moody and abstracted, his wife sat silent on the backseat of the red wagon. CHAPTER VI JEAN JACQUES HAD HAD A GREAT DAY Jean Jacques was in great good humour as he drove away to the Manor Cartier. The day, which was not yet aged, had been satisfactory from every point of view. He had impressed the Court, he had got a chance to pose in the witness-box; he had been able to repeat in evidence the numerous businesses in which he was engaged; had referred to his acquaintance with the Lieutenant-Governor and a Cardinal; to his Grand Tour (this had been hard to do in the cross-examination to which he was subjected, but he had done it); and had been able to say at the very start in reply as to what was his occupation--"Moi je suis M'sieu' Jean Jacques, philosophe." Also he had, during the day, collected a debt long since wiped off his books; he had traded a poor horse for a good cow; he had bought all the wheat of a Vilray farmer below market-price, because the poor fellow needed ready money; he had issued an insurance policy; his wife and daughter had conversed in the public streets with the great judge who was the doyen of the provincial Bench; and his daughter had been kissed by the same judge in the presence of at least a dozen people. He was, in fact, very proud of his Carmen and his Carmencita, as he called the two who sat in the red wagon sharing his glory--so proud that he did not extol them to others; and he was quite sure they were both very proud of him. The world saw what his prizes of life were, and there was no need to praise or brag. Dignity and pride were both sustained by silence and a wave of the hand, which in fact said to the world, "Look you, my masters, they belong to Jean Jacques. Take heed." There his domestic scheme practically ended. He was so busy that he took his joys by snatches, in moments of suspension of actual life, as it were. His real life was in the eddy of his many interests, in the field of his superficial culture, in the eyes of the world. The worst of him was on the surface. He showed what other men hid, that was all. Their vanity was concealed, he wore it in his cap. They put on a manner as they put on their clothes, and wore it out in the world, or took it off in their own homes-behind the door of life; but he was the same vain, frank, cocksure fellow in his home as in the street. There was no difference at all. He was vain, but he had no conceit; and therefore he did not deceive, and was not tyrannous or dictatorial; in truth, if you but estimated him at his own value, he was the least insistent man alive. Many a debtor knew this; and, by asking Jean Jacques' advice, making an appeal to his logic, as it were--and it was always worth listening to, even when wrong or sadly obvious, because of the glow with which he declared things this or that--found his situation immediately eased. Many a hard-up countryman, casting about for a five-dollar bill, could get it of Jean Jacques by telling him what agreeable thing some important person had said about him; or by writing to a great newspaper in Montreal a letter, saying that the next candidate for the provincial legislature should be M. Jean Jacques Barbille, of St. Saviour's. This never failed to draw a substantial "bill" from the wad which Jean Jacques always carried in his pocket-loose, not tied up in a leather roll, as so many lesser men freighted the burdens of their wealth. He had changed since the day he left Bordeaux on the Antoine; since he had first caught the flash of interest in Carmen Dolores' eyes--an interest roused from his likeness to a conspirator who had been shot for his country's good. He was no stouter in body, for he was of the kind that wear away the flesh by much doing and thinking; but there were occasional streaks of grey in his bushy hair, and his eye roamed less than it did once. In the days when he first brought Carmen home, his eye was like a bead of brown light on a swivel. It flickered and flamed; it saw here, saw there; it twinkled, and it pierced into life's mysteries; and all the while it was a good eye. Its whites never showed, as it were. As an animal, his eye showed a nature free from vice. In some respects he was easy to live with, for he never found fault with what was given him to eat, or the way the house was managed; and he never interfered with the "kitchen people," or refused a dollar or ten dollars to Carmen for finery. In fact, he was in a sense too lavish, for he used at one time to bring her home presents of silks and clothes and toilet things and stockings and hats, which were not in accord with her taste, and only vexed her. Indeed, she resented wearing them, and could hardly bring herself to thank him for them. At last, however, she induced him to let her buy what she wanted with the presents of money which he might give her. On the whole Carmen fared pretty well, for he would sometimes give her a handful of bills from his pocket, bidding her take ten dollars, and she would coolly take twenty, while he shrugged his shoulders and declared she would be his ruin. He had never repented of marrying her, in spite of the fact that she did not always keep house as his mother and grandmother had kept it; that she was gravely remiss in going to mass; and that she quarrelled with more than one of her neighbours, who had an idea that Spain was an inferior country because it was south of France, just as the habitants regarded the United States as a low and inferior country because it was south of Quebec. You went north towards heaven and south towards hell, in their view; but when they went so far as to patronize or slander Carmen, she drove her verbal stilettos home without a button; so that on one occasion there would have been a law-suit for libel if the Old Cure had not intervened. To Jean Jacques' credit, be it said, he took his wife's part on this occasion, though in his heart he knew that she was in the wrong. He certainly was not always in the right himself. If he had been told that he neglected his wife he would have been justly indignant. Also, it never occurred to him that a woman did not always want to talk philosophy or discuss the price of wheat or the cost of flour-barrels; and that for a man to be stupidly and foolishly fond was dearer to a woman than anything else. How should he know--yet he ought to have done so, if he really was a philosopher--that a woman would want the cleverest man in the world to be a boy and play the fool sometimes; that she would rather, if she was a healthy woman, go to a circus than to a revelation of the mysteries of the mind from an altar of culture, if her own beloved man was with her. Carmen had been left too much alone, as M. Fille had said to Judge Carcasson. Her spirits had moments of great dullness, when she was ready to fling herself into the river--or the arms of the schoolmaster or the farrier. When she first came to St. Saviour's, the necessity of adapting herself to the new conditions, of keeping faith with herself, which she had planned on the Antoine, and making a good wife to the man who was to solve all her problems for her, prevailed. She did not at first miss so much the life of excitement, of danger, of intrigue, of romance, of colour and variety, which she had left behind in Spain. When her child was born, she became passionately fond of it; her maternal spirit smothered it. It gave the needed excitement in the routine of life at St. Saviour's. Yet the interest was not permanent. There came a time when she resented the fact that Jean Jacques made more of the child than he did of herself. That was a bad day for all concerned, for dissimulation presently became necessary, and the home of Jean Jacques was a home of mystery which no philosophy could interpret. There had never been but the one child. She was not less handsome than when Jean Jacques married her and brought her home, though the bloom of maiden youthfulness was no longer there; and she certainly was a cut far above the habitant women or even the others of a higher social class, in a circle which had an area equal to a principality in Europe. The old cure, M. Langon, had had much influence over her, for few could resist the amazing personal influence which his rare pure soul secured over the worst. It was a sad day to her when he went to his long home; and inwardly she felt a greater loss than she had ever felt, save that once when her Carvillho Gonzales went the way of the traitor. Memories of her past life far behind in Madrid did not grow fainter; indeed, they grew more distinct as the years went on. They seemed to vivify, as her discontent and restlessness grew. Once, when there had come to St. Saviour's a middle-aged baron from Paris who had heard the fishing was good at St. Saviour's, and talked to her of Madrid and Barcelona, of Cordova and Toledo, as one who had seen and known and (he declared) loved them; who painted for her in splashing impressionist pictures the life that still eddied in the plazas and dreamed in the patios, she had been almost carried off her feet with longing; and she nearly gave that longing an expression which would have brought a tragedy, while still her Zoe was only eight years old. But M. Langon, the wise priest whose eyes saw and whose heart understood, had intervened in time; and she never knew that the sudden disappearance of the Baron, who still owed fifty dollars to Jean Jacques, was due to the practical wisdom of a great soul which had worked out its own destiny in a little back garden of the world. When this good priest was alive she felt she had a friend who was as large of heart as he was just, and who would not scorn the fool according to his folly, or chastise the erring after his deserts. In his greatness of soul Pere Langon had shut his eyes to things that pained him more than they shocked him, for he had seen life in its most various and demoralized forms, and indeed had had his own temptations when he lived in Belgium and France, before he had finally decided to become a priest. He had protected Carmen with a quiet persistency since her first day in the parish, and had had a saving influence over her. Pere Langon reproved those who criticized her and even slandered her, for it was evident to all that she would rather have men talk to her than women; and any summer visitor who came to fish, gave her an attention never given even to the youngest and brightest in the district; and the eyes of the habitant lass can be very bright at twenty. Yet whatever Carmen's coquetry and her sport with fire had been, her own emotions had never been really involved till now. The new cure, M. Savry, would have said they were involved now because she never came to confession, and indeed, since the Old Cure died, she had seldom gone to mass. Yet when, with accumulated reproof on his tongue, M. Savry did come to the Manor Cartier, he felt the inherent supremacy of beauty, not the less commanding because it had not the refinement of the duchess or the margravine. Once M. Savry ventured to do what the Old Cure would never have done--he spoke to Jean Jacques concerning Carmen's neglect of mass and confession, and he received a rebuff which was almost au seigneur; for in Jean Jacques' eyes he was now the figure in St. Saviour's; and this was an occasion when he could assert his position as premier of the secular world outside the walls of the parish church. He did it in good style for a man who had had no particular training in the social arts. This is how he did it and what he said: "There have been times when I myself have thought it would be a good thing to have a rest from the duties of a Catholic, m'sieu' le cure," he remarked to M. Savry, when the latter had ended his criticism. He said it with an air of conflict, and with full intent to make his supremacy complete. "No Catholic should speak like that," returned the shocked priest. "No priest should speak to me as you have done," rejoined Jean Jacques. "What do you know of the reasons for the abstention of madame? The soul must enjoy rest as well as the body, and madame has a--mind which can judge for itself. I have a body that is always going, and it gets too little rest, and that keeps my soul in a flutter too. It must be getting to mass and getting to confession, and saying aves and doing penance, it is such a busy little soul of mine; but we are not all alike, and madame's body goes in a more stately way. I am like a comet, she is like the sun steady, steady, round and round, with plenty of sleep and the comfortable darkness. Sometimes madame goes hard; so does the sun in summer-shines, shines, shines like a furnace. Madame's body goes like that--at the dairy, in the garden, with the loom, among the fowls, growing her strawberries, keeping the women at the beating of the flax; and then again it is all still and idle like the sun on a cloudy day; and it rests. So it is with the human soul--I am a philosopher--I think the soul goes hard the same as the body, churning, churning away in the heat of the sun; and then it gets quiet and goes to sleep in the cloudy day, when the body is sick of its bouncing, and it has a rest--the soul has a rest, which is good for it, m'sieu'. I have worked it all out so. Besides, the soul of madame is her own. I have not made any claim upon it, and I will not expect you to do more, m'sieu' le cure." "It is my duty to speak," protested the good priest. "Her soul is God's, and I am God's vicar--" Jean Jacques waved a hand. "T'sh, you are not the Pope. You are not even an abbe. You were only a deacon a few years ago. You did not know how to hold a baby for the christening when you came to St. Saviour's first. For the mass, you have some right to speak; it is your duty perhaps; but the confession, that is another thing; that is the will of every soul to do or not to do. What do you know of a woman's soul-well, perhaps, you know what they have told you; but madame's soul--" "Madame has never been to confession to me," interjected M. Savry indignantly. Jean Jacques chuckled. He had his New Cure now for sure. "Confession is for those who have sinned. Is it that you say one must go to confession, and in order to go to confession it is needful to sin?" M. Savry shivered with pious indignation. He had a sudden desire to rend this philosophic Catholic--to put him under the thumb-screw for the glory of the Lord, and to justify the Church; but the little Catholic miller- magnate gave freely to St. Saviour's; he was popular; he had a position; he was good to the poor; and every Christmas-time he sent a half-dozen bags of flour to the presbytery! All Pere Savry ventured to say in reply was: "Upon your head be it, M. Jean Jacques. I have done my duty. I shall hope to see madame at mass next Sunday." Jean Jacques had chuckled over that episode, for he had conquered; he had shown M. Savry that he was master in his own household and outside it. That much his philosophy had done for him. No other man in the parish would have dared to speak to the Cure like that. He had never scolded Carmen when she had not gone to church. Besides, there was Carmen's little daughter always at his side at mass; and Carmen always insisted on Zoe going with him, and even seemed anxious for them to be off at the first sound of the bells of St. Saviour's. Their souls were busy, hers wanted rest; that was clear. He was glad he had worked it out so cleverly to the Cure--and to his own mind. His philosophy surely had vindicated itself. But Jean Jacques was far from thinking of these things as he drove back from Vilray and from his episode in Court to the Manor Cartier. He was indeed just praising himself, his wife, his child, and everything that belonged to him. He was planning, planning, as he talked, the new things to do--the cheese-factory, the purchase of a steam-plough and a steam- thresher which he could hire out to his neighbours. Only once during the drive did he turn round to Carmen, and then it was to ask her if she had seen her father of late. "Not for ten months," was her reply. "Why do you ask?" "Wouldn't he like to be nearer you and Zoe? It's twelve miles to Beauharnais," he replied. "Are you thinking of offering him another place at the Manor?" she asked sharply. "Well, there is the new cheese-factory--not to manage, but to keep the books! He's doing them all right for the lumber-firm. I hear that he--" "I don't want it. No good comes from relatives working together. Look at the Latouche farm where your cousin makes his mess. My father is well enough where he is." "But you'd like to see him oftener--I was only thinking of that," said Jean Jacques in a mollifying voice. It was the kind of thing in which he showed at once the weakness and the kindness of his nature. He was in fact not a philosopher, but a sentimentalist. "If mother doesn't think it's sensible, why do it, father?" asked Zoe anxiously, looking up into her father's face. She had seen the look in her mother's eyes, and also she had no love for her grandfather. Her instinct had at one time wavered regarding him; but she had seen an incident with a vanished female cook, and though she had not understood, a prejudice had been created in her mind. She was always contrasting him with M. Fille, who, to her mind, was what a grandfather ought to be. "I won't have him beholden to you," said Carmen, almost passionately. "He is of my family," said Jean Jacques firmly and chivalrously. "There is no question of being beholden." "Let well enough alone," was the gloomy reply. With a sigh, Jean Jacques turned back to the study of the road before him, to gossip with Zoe, and to keep on planning subconsciously the new things he must do. Carmen sighed too, or rather she gave a gasp of agitation and annoyance. Her father? She had lost whatever illusion once existed regarding him. For years he had clung to her--to her pocket. He was given to drinking in past years, and he still had his sprees. Like the rest of the world, she had not in earlier years seen the furtiveness in his handsome face; but at last, as his natural viciousness became stereotyped, and bad habits matured and emphasized, she saw beneath his mask of low-class comeliness. When at last she had found it necessary to dismiss the best cook she ever had, because of him, they saw little of each other. This was coincident with his failure at the ash-factory, where he mismanaged and even robbed Jean Jacques right and left; and she had firmly insisted on Jean Jacques evicting him, on the ground that it was not Sebastian Dolores' bent to manage a business. This little episode, as they drove home from Vilray, had an unreasonable effect upon her. It was like the touch of a finger which launches a boat balancing in the ways onto the deep. It tossed her on a sea of agitation. She was swept away on a flood of morbid reflection. Her husband and her daughter, laughing and talking in the front seat of the red wagon, seemed quite oblivious of her, and if ever there was a time when their influence was needed it was now. George Masson was coming over late this afternoon to inspect the work he had been doing; and she was trembling with an agitation which, however, did not show upon the surface. She had not seen him for two days--since the day after the Clerk of the Court had discovered her in the arms of a man who was not her husband; but he was coming this evening, and he was coming to-morrow for the last time; for the repair work on the flume of the dam would all be finished then. But would the work he had been doing all be finished then? As she thought of that incident of three days ago and of its repetition on the following day, she remembered what he had said to her as she snatched herself almost violently from his arms, in a sudden access of remorse. He had said that it had to be, that there was no escape now; and at his words she had felt every pulse in her body throbbing, every vein expanding with a hot life which thrilled and tortured her. Life had been so meagre and so dull, and the man who had worshipped her on the Antoine now worshipped himself only, and also Zoe, the child, maybe; or so she thought; while the man who had once possessed her whole mind and whole heart, and never her body, back there in Spain, he, Carvillho Gonzales, would have loved her to the end, in scenes where life had colour and passion and danger and delightful movement. She was one of those happy mortals who believe that the dead and gone lover was perfect, and that in losing him she was losing all that life had in store; but the bare, hard truth was that her Gonzales could have been true neither to her nor to any woman in the world for longer than one lingering year, perhaps one lunar month. It did not console her-- she did not think of it-that the little man on the seat of the red wagon, chirruping with their daughter, had been, would always be, true to her. Of what good was fidelity if he that was faithful desired no longer as he once did? A keen observer would have seen in the glowing, unrestful look, in the hot cheek, in the interlacing fingers, that a contest was going on in the woman's soul, as she drove homeward with all that was her own in the world. The laughter of her husband and child grated painfully on her ears. Why should they be mirthful while her life was being swept by a storm of doubt, temptation, and dark passion? Why was it? Yet she smiled at Jean Jacques when he lifted her down from the red wagon at the door of the Manor Cartier, even though he lifted his daughter down first. Did she smile at Jean Jacques because, as they came toward the Manor, she saw George Masson in the distance by the flume, and in that moment decided to keep her promise and meet him at a secluded point on the river-bank at sunset after supper? CHAPTER VII JEAN JACQUES AWAKES FROM SLEEP The pensiveness of a summer evening on the Beau Cheval was like a veil hung over all the world. While yet the sun was shining, there was the tremor of life in the sadness; but when the last glint of amethyst and gold died away behind Mont Violet, and the melancholy swish of the river against the osiered banks rose out of the windless dusk, all the region around Manor Cartier, with its cypresses, its firs, its beeches, and its elms, became gently triste. Even the weather-vane on the Manor--the gold Cock of Beaugard, as it was called--did not move; and the stamping of a horse in the stable was like the thunderous knock of a traveller from Beyond. The white mill and the grey manor stood out with ghostly vividness in the light of the rising moon. Yet there were times innumerable when they looked like cool retreats for those who wanted rest; when, in the summer solstice, they offered the pleasant peace of the happy fireside. How often had Jean Jacques stood off from it all of a summer night and said to himself: "Look at that, my Jean Jacques. It is all yours, Manor and mills and farms and factory--all." "Growing, growing, fattening, while I drone in my feather bed," he had as often said, with the delighted observation of the philosopher. "And me but a young man yet--but a mere boy," he would add. "I have piled it up--I have piled it up, and it keeps on growing, first one thing and then another." Could such a man be unhappy? Finding within himself his satisfaction, his fountain of appeasement, why should not his days be days of pleasantness and peace? So it appeared to him during that summer, just passed, when he had surveyed the World and his world within the World, and it seemed to his innocent mind that he himself had made it all. There he was, not far beyond forty, and eligible to become a member of Parliament, or even a count of the Holy Roman Empire! He had thought of both these honours, but there was so much to occupy him--he never had a moment to himself, except at night; and then there was planning and accounting to do, his foremen to see, or some knotty thing to disentangle. But when the big clock in the Manor struck ten, and he took out his great antique silver watch, to see if the two marched to the second, he would go to the door, look out into the night, say, "All's well, thank the good God," and would go to bed, very often forgetting to kiss Carmen, and even forgetting his darling little Zoe. After all, a mind has to be very big and to have very many tentacles to hold so many things all at once, and also to remember to do the right thing at the right moment every time. He would even forget to ask Carmen to play on the guitar, which in the first days of their married life was the recreation of every evening. Seldom with the later years had he asked her to sing, because he was so busy; and somehow his ear had not that keenness of sound once belonging to it. There was a time when he himself was wont to sing, when he taught his little Zoe the tunes of the Chansons Canadiennes; but even that had dropped away, except at rare intervals, when he would sing Le Petit Roger Bontemps, with Petite Fleur de Bois, and a dozen others; but most he would sing--indeed there was never a sing-song in the Manor Cartier but he would burst forth with A la Claire Fontaine and its haunting refrain: "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime, Jamais je ne t'oublierai." But this very summer, when he had sung it on the birthday of the little Zoe, his voice had seemed out of tune. At first he had thought that Carmen was playing his accompaniment badly on the guitar, but she had sharply protested against that, and had appealed to M. Fille, who was present at the pretty festivity. He had told the truth, as a Clerk of the Court should. He said that Jean Jacques' voice was not as he had so often heard it; but he would also frankly admit that he did not think madame played the song as he had heard her play it aforetime, and that covered indeed twelve years or more--in fact, since the birth of the renowned Zoe. M. Fille had wondered much that night of June at the listless manner and listless playing of Carmen Barbille. For a woman of such spirit and fire it would seem as though she must be in ill-health to play like that. Yet when he looked at her he saw only the comeliness of a woman whom the life of the haut habitant had not destroyed or, indeed, dimmed. Her skin was smooth, she had no wrinkles, and her neck was a pillar of softly moulded white flesh, around which a man might well string unset jewels, if he had them; for the tint and purity of her skin would be a better setting than platinum or fine gold. But the Clerk of the Court was really unsophisticated, or he would have seen that Carmen played the guitar badly because she was not interested in Jean Jacques' singing. He would have known that she had come to that stage in her married life when the tenure is pitifully insecure. He would have seen that the crisis was near. If he had had any real observation he would have noticed that Carmen's eyes at once kindled, and that the guitar became a different thing, when M. Colombin, the young schoolmaster, one of the guests, caught up the refrain of A la Claire Fontaine, and in a soft tenor voice sang it with Jean Jacques to the end, and then sang it again with Zoe. Then Carmen's dark eyes deepened with the gathering light in them, her body seemed to vibrate and thrill with emotion; and when M. Colombin and Zoe ceased, with her eyes fixed on the distance, and as though unconscious of them all, she began to sing a song of Cadiz which she had not sung since boarding the Antoine at Bordeaux. Her mind had, suddenly flown back out of her dark discontent to the days when all life was before her, and, with her Gonzales, she had moved in an atmosphere of romance, adventure and passion. In a second she was transformed from the wife of the brown money-master to the girl she was when she came to St. Saviour's from the plaza, where her Carvillho Gonzales was shot, with love behind her and memory blazoned in the red of martyrdom. She sang now as she had not sung for some years. Her guitar seemed to leap into life, her face shone with the hot passion of memory, her voice rang with the pain of a disappointed life: "Granada, Granada, thy gardens are gay, And bright are thy stars, the high stars above; But as flowers that fade and are gray, But as dusk at the end of the day, Are ye to the light in the eyes of my love In the eyes, in the soul, of my love. "Granada, Granada, oh, when shall I see My love in thy gardens, there waiting for me? "Beloved, beloved, have pity, and make Not the sun shut its eyes, its hot, envious eyes, And the world in the darkness of night Be debtor to thee for its light. Turn thy face, turn thy face from the skies To the love, to the pain in my eyes. "Granada, Granada, oh, when shall I see My love in thy gardens, there waiting for me!" From that night forward she had been restless and petulant and like one watching and waiting. It seemed to her that she must fly from the life which was choking her. It was all so petty and so small. People went about sneaking into other people's homes like detectives; they turned yellow and grew scrofulous from too much salt pork, green tea, native tobacco, and the heat of feather beds. The making of a rag carpet was an event, the birth of a baby every year till the woman was forty-five was a commonplace; but the exit of a youth to a seminary to become a priest, or the entrance to the novitiate of a young girl, were matters as important as a battle to Napoleon the Great. How had she gone through it all so long, she asked herself? The presence of Jean Jacques had become almost unbearable when, the day done, he retired to the feather bed which she loathed, though he would have looked upon discarding it like the abdication of his social position. A feather bed was a sign of social position; it was as much the dais to his honour as is the woolsack to the Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords. She was waiting for something. There was a restless, vagrant spirit alive in her now. She had been so long inactive, tied by the leg, with wings clipped; now her mind roamed into pleasant places of the imagination where life had freedom, where she could renew the impulses of youth. A true philosopher-a man of the world-would have known for what she was waiting with that vague, disordered expectancy and yearning; but there was no man of the world to watch and guide her this fateful summer, when things began to go irretrievably wrong. Then George Masson came. He was a man of the world in his way; he saw and knew better than the philosopher of the Manor Cartier. He grasped the situation with the mind of an artist in his own sphere, and with the knowledge got by experience. Thus there had been the thing which the Clerk of the Court saw from Mont Violet behind the Manor; and so it was that as Jean Jacques helped Carmen down from the red wagon on their return from Vilray, she gave him a smile which was meant to deceive; for though given to him it was really given to another man in her mind's eye. At sunset she gave it again to George Masson on the river-bank, only warmer and brighter still, with eyes that were burning, with hands that trembled, and with an agitated bosom more delicately ample than it was on the day the Antoine was wrecked. Neither of these two adventurers into a wild world of feeling noticed that a man was sitting on a little knoll under a tree, not far away from their meeting-place, busy with pencil and paper. It was Jean Jacques, who had also come to the river-bank to work out a business problem which must be settled on the morrow. He had stolen out immediately after supper from neighbours who wished to see him, and had come here by a roundabout way, because he wished to be alone. George Masson and Carmen were together for a few moments only, but Jean Jacques heard his wife say, "Yes, to-morrow--for sure," and then he saw her kiss the master-carpenter--kiss him twice, thrice. After which they vanished, she in one direction, and the invader and marauder in another. If either of these two had seen the face of the man with a pencil and paper under the spreading beechtree, they would not have been so impatient for tomorrow, and Carmen would not have said "for sure." Jean Jacques was awake at last, man as well as philosopher. CHAPTER VIII THE GATE IN THE WALL Jean Jacques was not without originality of a kind, and not without initiative; but there were also the elements of the very old Adam in him, and the strain of the obvious. If he had been a real genius, rather than a mere lively variation of the commonplace--a chicken that could never burst its shell, a bird which could not quite break into song--he might have made his biographer guess hard and futilely, as to what he would do after having seen his wife's arms around the neck of another man than himself--a man little more than a manual labourer, while he, Jean Jacques Barbille, had come of the people of the Old Regime. As it was, this magnate of St. Saviour's, who yesterday posed so sympathetically and effectively in the Court at Vilray as a figure of note, did the quite obvious thing: he determined to kill the master-carpenter from Laplatte. There was no genius in that. When, from under the spreading beech-tree, Jean Jacques saw his wife footing it back to her house with a light, wayward step; when he watched the master-carpenter vault over a stone fence five feet high with a smile of triumph mingled with doubt on his face, he was too stunned at first to move or speak. If a sledge-hammer strikes you on the skull, though your skull is of such a hardness that it does not break, still the shock numbs activity for awhile, at any rate. The sledge-hammer had descended on Jean Jacques' head, and also had struck him between the eyes; and it is in the credit balance of his ledger of life, that he refrained from useless outcry at the moment. Such a stroke kills some men, either at once, or by lengthened torture; others it sends mad, so that they make a clamour which draws the attention of the astonished and not sympathetic world; but it only paralysed Jean Jacques. For a time he sat fascinated by the ferocity of the event, his eyes following the hurrying wife and the jaunty, swaggering master-carpenter with a strange, animal-like dismay and apprehension. They remained fixed with a kind of blank horror and distraction on the landscape for some time after both had disappeared. At last, however, he seemed to recover his senses, and to come back from the place where he had been struck by the hammer of treachery. He seemed to realize again that he was still a part of the common world, not a human being swung through the universe on his heart-strings by a Gorgon. The paper and pencil in his hand brought him back from the far Gehenna where he had been, to the world again--how stony and stormy a world it was, with the air gone as heavy as lead, with his feet so loaded down with chains that he could not stir! He had had great joy of this his world; he had found it a place where every day were problems to be solved by an astute mind, problems which gave way before the master-thinker. There was of course unhappiness in his world. There was death, there was accident occasionally--had his own people not gone down under the scythe of time? But in going they had left behind in real estate and other things good compensation for their loss. There was occasional suffering and poverty and trouble in his little kingdom; but a cord of wood here, a barrel of flour there, a side of beef elsewhere, a little debt remitted, a bag of dried apples, or an Indian blanket--these he gave, and had great pleasure in giving; and so the world was not a place where men should hang their heads, but a place where the busy man got more than the worth of his money. It had never occurred to him that he was ever translating the world into terms of himself, that he went on his way saying in effect, "I am coming. I am Jean Jacques Barbille. You have heard of me. You know me. Wave a hand to me, duck your head to me, crack the whip or nod when I pass. I am M'sieu' Jean Jacques, philosopher." And all the while he had only been vaguely, not really, conscious of his wife and child. He did not know that he had only made of his wife an incident in his life, in spite of the fact that he thought he loved her; that he had been proud of her splendid personality; and that, with passionate chivalry, he had resented any criticism of her. He thought still, as he did on the Antoine, that Carmen's figure had the lines of the Venus of Milo, that her head would have been a model either for a Madonna, or for Joan of Arc, or the famous Isabella of Aragon. Having visited the Louvre and the Luxembourg all in one day, he felt he was entitled to make such comparisons, and that in making them he was on sure ground. He had loved to kiss Carmen in the neck, it was so full and soft and round; and when she went about the garden with her dress shortened, and he saw her ankles, even after he had been married thirteen years, and she was thirty-four, he still admired, he still thought that the world was a good place when it produced such a woman. And even when she had lashed him with her tongue, as she did sometimes, he still laughed--after the smart was over--because he liked spirit. He would never have a horse that had not some blood, and he had never driven a sluggard in his life more than once. But wife and child and world, and all that therein was, existed largely because they were necessary to Jean Jacques. That is the way it had been; and it was as though the firmament had been rolled up before his eyes, exposing the everlasting mysteries, when he saw his wife in the arms of the master-carpenter. It was like some frightening dream. The paper and pencil waked him to reality. He looked towards his house, he looked the way George Masson had gone, and he knew that what he had seen was real life and not a dream. The paper fell from his hand. He did not pick it up. Its fall represented the tumbling walls of life, was the earthquake which shook his world into chaos. He ground the sheet into the gravel with his heel. There would be no cheese-factory built at St. Saviour's for many a year to come. The man of initiative, the man of the hundred irons would not have the hundred and one, or keep the hundred hot any more; because he would be so busy with the iron which had entered into his soul. When the paper had been made one with the earth, a problem buried for ever, Jean Jacques pulled himself up to his full height, as though facing a great thing which he must do. "Well, of course!" he said firmly. That was what his honour, Judge Carcasson, had said a few hours before, when the little Clerk of the Court had remarked an obvious thing about the case of Jean Jacques. And Jean Jacques said only the obvious thing when he made up his mind to do the obvious thing--to kill George Masson, the master-carpenter. This was evidence that he was no genius. Anybody could think of killing a man who had injured him, as the master-carpenter had done Jean Jacques. It is the solution of the problem of the Patagonian. It is old as Rameses. Yet in his own way Jean Jacques did what he felt he had to do. The thing he was going to do was hopelessly obvious, but the doing of it was Jean Jacques' own; and it was not obvious; and that perhaps was genius after all. There are certain inevitable things to do, and for all men to do; and they have been doing them from the beginning of time; but the way it is done--is not that genius? There is no new story in the world; all the things that happen have happened for untold centuries; but the man who tells the story in a new way, that is genius, so the great men say. If, then, Jean Jacques did the thing he had to do with a turn of his own, he would justify to some degree the opinion he had formed of himself. As he walked back to his desecrated home he set himself to think. How should it be done? There was the rifle with which he had killed deer in the woods beyond the Saguenay and bear beyond the Chicoutimi. That was simple--and it was obvious; and it could be done at once. He could soon overtake the man who had spoiled the world for him. Yet he was a Norman, and the Norman thinks before he acts. He is the soul of caution; he wants to get the best he can out of his bargain. He will throw nothing away that is to his advantage. There should be other ways than the gun with which to take a man's life--ways which might give a Norman a chance to sacrifice only one life; to secure punishment where it was due, but also escape from punishment for doing the obvious thing. Poison? That was too stupid even to think of once. A pitch-fork and a dung-heap? That had its merits; but again there was the risk of more than one life. All the way to his house, Jean Jacques, with something of the rage of passion and the glaze of horror gone from his eyes, and his face not now so ghastly, still brooded over how, after he had had his say, he was to put George Masson out of the world. But it did not come at once. All makers of life-stories find their difficulty at times. Tirelessly they grope along a wall, day in, day out, and then suddenly a great gate swings open, as though to the touch of a spring, and the whole way is clear to the goal. Jean Jacques went on thinking in a strange, new, intense abstraction. His restless eyes were steadier than they had ever been; his wife noticed that as he entered the house after the Revelation. She noticed also his paleness and his abstraction. For an instant she was frightened; but no, Jean Jacques could not know anything. Yet--yet he had come from the direction of the river! "What is it, Jean Jacques?" she asked. "Aren't you well?" He put his hand to his head, but did not look her in the eyes. His gesture helped him to avoid that. "I have a head--la, such a head! I have been thinking, thinking-it is my hobby. I have been planning the cheese-factory, and all at once it comes on-the ache in my head. I will go to bed. Yes, I will go at once." Suddenly he turned at the door leading to the bedroom. "The little Zoe--is she well?" "Of course. Why should she not be well? She has gone to the top of the hill. Of course, she's well, Jean Jacques." "Good-good!" he remarked. Somehow it seemed strange to him that Zoe should be well. Was there not a terrible sickness in his house, and had not that woman, his wife, her mother, brought the infection? Was he himself not stricken by it? Carmen was calm enough again. "Go to bed, Jean Jacques," she said, "and I'll bring you a sleeping posset. I know those headaches. You had one when the ash-factory was burned." He nodded without looking at her, and closed the door behind him. When she came to the bedroom a half-hour later, his face was turned to the wall. She spoke, but he did not answer. She thought he was asleep. He was not asleep. He was only thinking how to do the thing which was not obvious, which was also safe for himself. That should be his triumph, if he could but achieve it. When she came to bed he did not stir, and he did not answer her when she spoke. "The poor Jean Jacques!" he heard her say, and if there had not been on him the same courage that possessed him the night when the Antoine was wrecked, he would have sobbed. He did not stir. He kept thinking; and all the time her words, "The poor Jean Jacques!" kept weaving themselves through his vague designs. Why had she said that--she who had deceived, betrayed him? Had he then seen what he had seen? She did not sleep for a long time, and when she did it was uneasily. But the bed was an immense one, and she was not near him. There was no sleep for him--not even for an hour. Once, in exhaustion, he almost rolled over into the poppies of unconsciousness; but he came back with a start and a groan to sentient life again, and kept feeling, feeling along the wall of purpose for a masterly way to kill. At dawn it came, suddenly spreading out before him like a picture. He saw himself standing at the head of the flume out there by the Mill Cartier with his hand on the lever. Below him in the empty flume was the master-carpenter giving a last inspection to the repairs. Beyond the master-carpenter--far beyond--was the great mill-wheel! Behind himself, Jean Jacques, was the river held back by the dam; and if the lever was opened,--the river would sweep through the raised gates down the flume to the millwheel--with the man. And then the wheel would turn and turn, and the man would be in the wheel. It was not obvious; it was original; and it looked safe for Jean Jacques. How easily could such an "accident" occur! CHAPTER IX "MOI-JE SUIS PHILOSOPHE" The air was like a mellow wine, and the light on the landscape was full of wistfulness. It was a thing so exquisite that a man of sentiment like Jean Jacques in his younger days would have wept to see. And the feeling was as palpable as the seeing; as in the early spring the new life which is being born in the year, produces a febrile kind of sorrow in the mind. But the glow of Indian summer, that compromise, that after-thought of real summer, which brings her back for another good-bye ere she vanishes for ever--its sadness is of a different kind. Its longing has a sharper edge; there stir in it the pangs of discontent; and the mind and body yearn for solace. It is a dangerous time, even more dangerous than spring for those who have passed the days of youth. It had proved dangerous to Carmen Barbille. The melancholy of the gorgeously tinted trees, the flights of the birds to the south, the smell of the fallow field, the wind with the touch of the coming rains--these had given to a growing discontent with her monotonous life the desire born of self-pity. In spite of all she could do she was turning to the life she had left behind in Cadiz long ago. It seemed to her that Jean Jacques had ceased to care for the charms which once he had so proudly proclaimed. There was in her the strain of the religion of Epicurus. She desired always that her visible corporeal self should be admired and desired, that men should say, "What a splendid creature!" It was in her veins, an undefined philosophy of life; and she had ever measured the love of Jean Jacques by his caresses. She had no other vital standard. This she could measure, she could grasp it and say, "Here I have a hold; it is so much harvested." But if some one had written her a poem a thousand verses long, she would have said, "Yes, all very fine, but let me see what it means; let me feel that it is so." She had an inherent love of luxury and pleasure, which was far more active in her now than when she married Jean Jacques. For a Spanish woman she had matured late; and that was because, in her youth, she had been active and athletic, unlike most Spanish girls; and the microbes of a sensuous life, or what might have become a sensual life, had not good chance to breed. It all came, however, in the dullness of the winter days and nights, in the time of deep snows, when they could go abroad but very little. Then her body and her mind seemed to long for the indolent sun-spaces of Spain. The artificial heat of the big stoves in the rooms with the low ceilings only irritated her, and she felt herself growing more ample from lassitude of the flesh. This particular autumn it seemed to her that she could not get through another winter without something going wrong, without a crisis of some sort. She felt the need of excitement, of change. She had the desire for pleasures undefined. Then George Masson came, and the undefined took form almost at once. It was no case of the hunter pursuing his prey with all the craft and subtlety of his trade. She had answered his look with spontaneity, due to the fact that she had been surprised into the candour of her feelings by the appearance of one who had the boldness of a brigand, the health of a Hercules, and the intelligence of a primitive Jesuit. He had not hesitated; he had yielded himself to the sumptuous attraction, and the fire in his eyes was only the window of the furnace within him. He had gone headlong to the conquest, and by sheer force of temperament and weight of passion he had swept her off her feet. He had now come to the last day of his duty at the Mill Cartier, when all he had to do was to inspect the work done, give assurance and guarantee that it was all right, and receive his cheque from Jean Jacques. He had come early, because he had been unable to sleep well, and also he had much to do before keeping his tryst with Carmen Barbille in the afternoon. As he passed the Manor Cartier this fateful morning, he saw her at the window, and he waved his hat at her with a cheery salutation which she did not hear. He knew that she did not hear or see. "My beauty!" he said aloud. "My splendid girl, my charmer of Cadiz! My wonder of the Alhambra, my Moorish maid! My bird of freedom--hand of Charlemagne, your lips are sweet, yes, sweet as one-and-twenty!" His lips grew redder at the thought of the kisses he had taken, his cheek flushed with the thought of those he meant to take; and he laughed greedily as he lowered himself into the flume by a ladder, just under the lever that opened the gates, to begin his inspection. It was not a perfunctory inspection, for he was a good craftsman, and he had pride in what his workmen did. "Ah!" It was a sound of dumbfounded amazement, a hoarse cry of horror which was not in tune with the beauty of the morning. "Ah!" It came from his throat like the groan of a trapped and wounded lion. George Masson had almost finished his inspection, when he heard a noise behind him. He turned and looked back. There stood Jean Jacques with his hand on the lever. The noise he had heard was the fourteen-foot ladder being dropped, after Jean Jacques had drawn it up softly out of the flume. "Ah! Nom de Dieu!" George Masson exclaimed again in helpless fury and with horror in his eyes. By instinct he understood that Carmen's husband knew all. He realized what Jean Jacques meant to do. He knew that the lever locking the mill- wheel had been opened, and that Jean Jacques had his hand on the lever which raised the gate of the flume. By instinct--for there was no time for thought--he did the only thing which could help him, he made a swift gesture to Jean Jacques, a gesture that bade him wait. Time was his only friend in this--one minute, two minutes, three minutes, anything. For if the gates were opened, he would be swept into the millwheel, and there would be the end--the everlasting end. "Wait!" he called out after his gesture. "One second!" He ran forward till he was about thirty feet from Jean Jacques standing there above him, with the set face and the dark malicious, half-insane eyes. Even in his fear and ghastly anxiety, the subconscious mind of George Masson was saying, "He looks like the Baron of Beaugard--like the Baron of Beaugard that killed the man who abused his wife." It was so. Great-great-grand-nephew of the Baron of Beaugard as he was, Jean Jacques looked like the portrait of him which hung in the Manor Cartier. "Wait--but wait one minute!" exclaimed George Masson; and now, all at once, he had grown cool and determined, and his brain was at work again with an activity and a clearness it had never known. He had gained one minute of time, he might be able to gain more. In any case, no one could save him except himself. There was Jean Jacques with his hand on the lever--one turn and the thing was done for ever. If a rescuer was even within one foot of Jean Jacques, the deed could still be done. It was so much easier opening than shutting the gates of the flume! "Why should I wait, devil and rogue?" The words came from Jean Jacques' lips with a snarl. "I am going to kill you. It will do you no good to whine--cochon!" To call a man a pig is the worst insult which could be offered by one man to another in the parish of St. Saviour's. To be called a pig as you are going to die, is an offensive business indeed. "I know you are going to kill me--that you can kill me, and I can do nothing," was the master-carpenter's reply. "There it is--a turn of the lever, and I am done. Bien sur, I know how easy! I do not want to die, but I will not squeal even if I am a pig. One can only die once. And once is enough . . . No, don't--not yet ! Give me a minute till I tell you something; then you can open the gates. You will have a long time to live--yes, yes, you are the kind that live long. Well, a minute or two is not much to ask. If you want to murder, you will open the gates at once; but if it is punishment, if you are an executioner, you will give me time to pray." Jean Jacques did not soften. His voice was harsh and grim. "Well, get on with your praying, but don't talk. You are going to die," he added, his hands gripping the lever tighter. The master-carpenter had had the true inspiration in his hour of danger. He had touched his appeal with logic, he had offered an argument. Jean Jacques was a logician, a philosopher! That point made about the difference between a murder and an execution was a good one. Beside it was an acknowledgment, by inference, from his victim, that he was getting what he deserved. "Pray quick and have it over, pig of an adulterer!" added Jean Jacques. The master-carpenter raised a protesting hand. "There you are mistaken; but it is no matter. At the end of to-day I would have been an adulterer, if you hadn't found out. I don't complain of the word. But see, as a philosopher"--Jean Jacques jerked a haughty assent--"as a philosopher you will want to know how and why it is. Carmen will never tell you--a woman never tells the truth about such things, because she does not know how. She does not know the truth ever, exactly, about anything. It is because she is a woman. But I would like to tell you the exact truth; and I can, because I am a man. For what she did you are as much to blame as she . . . no, no--not yet!" Jean Jacques' hand had spasmodically tightened on the lever as though he would wrench the gates open, and a snarl came from his lips. "Figure de Christ, but it is true, as true as death! Listen, M'sieu' Jean Jacques. You are going to kill me, but listen so that you will know how to speak to her afterwards, understanding what I said as I died." "Get on--quick!" growled Jean Jacques with white wrinkled lips and the sun in his agonized eyes. George Masson continued his pleading. "You were always a man of mind"--Jean Jacques' fierce agitation visibly subsided, and a surly sort of vanity crept into his face--"and you married a girl who cared more for what you did than what you thought-- that is sure, for I know women. I am not married, and I have had much to do with many of them. I will tell you the truth. I left the West because of a woman--of two women. I had a good business, but I could not keep out of trouble with women. They made it too easy for me." "Peacock-pig!" exclaimed Jean Jacques with an ugly sneer. "Let a man when he is dying tell all the truth, to ease his mind," said the master-carpenter with a machiavellian pretence and cunning. "It was vanity, it was, as you say; it was the peacock in me made me be the friend of many women and not the husband of one. I came down here to Quebec from the Far West to get away from consequences. It was expensive. I had to sacrifice. Well, here I am in trouble again--my last trouble, and with the wife of a man that I respect and admire, not enough to keep my hands off his wife, but still that I admire. It is my weakness that I could not be, as a man, honourable to Jean Jacques Barbille. And so I pay the price; so I have to go without time to make my will. Bless heaven above, I have no wife--" "If you had a wife you would not be dying now. You would not then meddle with the home of Jean Jacques Barbille," sneered Jean Jacques. The note was savage yet. "Ah, for sure, for sure! It is so. And if I lived I would marry at once." Desperate as his condition was, the master-carpenter could almost have laughed at the idea of marriage preventing him from following the bent of his nature. He was the born lover. If he had been as high as the Czar, or as low as the ditcher, he would have been the same; but it would be madness to admit that to Jean Jacques now. "But, as you say, let me get on. My time has come--" Jean Jacques jerked his head angrily. "Enough of this. You keep on saying 'Wait a little,' but your time has come. Now take it so, and don't repeat." "A man must get used to the idea of dying, or he will die hard," replied the master-carpenter, for he saw that Jean Jacques' hands were not so tightly clenched on the lever now; and time was everything. He had already been near five minutes, and every minute was a step to a chance of escape--somehow. "I said you were to blame," he continued. "Listen, Jean Jacques Barbille. You, a man of mind, married a girl who cared more for a touch of your hand than a bucketful of your knowledge, which every man in the province knows is great. At first you were almost always thinking of her and what a fine woman she was, and because everyone admired her, you played the peacock, too. I am not the only peacock. You are a good man --no one ever said anything against your character. But always, always, you think most of yourself. It is everywhere you go as if you say, 'Look out. I am coming. I am Jean Jacques Barbille. "'Make way for Jean Jacques. I am from the Manor Cartier. You have heard of me.' . . . That is the way you say things in your mind. But all the time the people say, 'That is Jean Jacques Barbille, but you should see his wife. She is a wonder. She is at home at the Manor with the cows and the geese. Jean Jacques travels alone through the parish to Quebec, to Three Rivers, to Tadousac, to the great exhibition at Montreal, but madame, she stays at home. M'sieu' Jean Jacques is nothing beside her'--that is what the people say. They admire you for your brains, but they would have fallen down before your wife, if you had given her half a chance." "Ah, that's bosh--what do you know!" exclaimed Jean Jacques fiercely, but he was fascinated too by the argument of the man whose life he was going to take. "I know the truth, my money-man. Do you think she'd have looked at me if you'd been to her what she thought I might be? No, bien sur! Did you take her where she could see the world? No. Did you bring her presents? No. Did you say, 'Come along, we will make a little journey to see the world?' No. Do you think that a woman can sit and darn your socks, and tidy your room, and bake you pancakes in the morning while you roast your toes, and be satisfied with just that, and not long for something outside?" Jean Jacques was silent. He did not move. He was being hypnotized by a mind of subtle strength, by the logic of which he was so great a lover. The master-carpenter pressed his logic home. "No, she must sit in your shadow always. She must wait till you come. And when you come, it was 'Here am I, your Jean Jacques. Fall down and worship me. I am your husband.' Did you ever say, 'Heavens, there you are, the woman of all the world, the rising and the setting sun, the star that shines, the garden where all the flowers of love grow'? Did you ever do that? But no, there was only one person in the world--there was only you, Jean Jacques. You were the only pig in the sty." It was a bold stroke, but if Jean Jacques could stand that, he could stand anything. There was a savage start on the part of Jean Jacques, and the lever almost moved. "Stop one second!" cried the master-carpenter, sharply now, for in spite of the sudden savagery on Jean Jacques' part, he felt he had an advantage, and now he would play his biggest card. "You can kill me. It is there in your hand. No one can stop you. But will that give you anything? What is my life? If you take it away, will you be happier? It is happiness you want. Your wife--she will love you, if you give her a chance. If you kill me, I will have my revenge in death, for it is the end of all things for you. You lose your wife for ever. You need not do so. She would have gone with me, not because of me, but because I was a man who she thought would treat her like a friend, like a comrade; who would love her--sacre, what husband could help make love to such a woman, unless he was in love with himself instead of her!" Jean Jacques rocked to and fro over the lever in his agitation, yet he made no motion to move it. He was under a spell. Straight home drove the master-carpenter's reasoning now. "Kill me, and you lose her for ever. Kill me, and she will hate you. You think she will not find out? Then see: as I die I will shriek out so loud that she can hear me, and she will understand. She will go mad, and give you over to the law. And then--and then! Did you ever think what will become of your child, of your Zoe, if you go to the gallows? That would be your legacy and your blessing to her--the death of a murderer; and she would be left alone with the woman that would hate you in death! Voila--do you not see?" Jean Jacques saw. The terrific logic of the thing smote him. His wife hating him, himself on the scaffold, his little Zoe disgraced and dishonoured all her life; and himself out of it all, unable to help her, and bringing irremediable trouble on her! As a chemical clears a muddy liquid, leaving it pure and atomless, so there seemed to pass over Jean Jacques' face a thought like a revelation. He took his hand from the lever. For a moment he stood like one awakened out of a sleep. He put his hands to his eyes, then shook his head as though to free it of some hateful burden. An instant later he stooped, lifted up the ladder beside him, and let it down to the floor of the flume. "There, go--for ever," he said. Then he turned away with bowed head. He staggered as he stepped down from the bridge of the flume, where the lever was. He swayed from side to side. Then he raised his head and looked towards his house. His child lived there--his Zoe. "Moi je suis philosophe !" he said brokenly. After a moment or two, as he stumbled on, he said it again--"Me, I am a philosopher!" CHAPTER X "QUIEN SABE"--WHO KNOWS! This much must be said for George Masson, that after the terrible incident at the flume he would have gone straight to the Manor Cartier to warn Carmen, if it had been possible, though perhaps she already knew. But there was Jean Jacques on his way back to the Manor, and nothing remained but to proceed to Laplatte, and give the woman up for ever. He had no wish to pull up stakes again and begin life afresh, though he was only forty, and he had plenty of initiative left. But if he had to go, he would want to go alone, as he had done before. Yes, he would have liked to tell Carmen that Jean Jacques knew everything; but it was impossible. She would have to face the full shock from Jean Jacques' own battery. But then again perhaps she knew already. He hoped she did. At the very moment that Masson was thinking this, while he went to the main road where he had left his horse and buggy tied up, Carmen came to know. Carmen had not seen her husband that morning until now. She had waked late, and when she was dressed and went into the dining-room to look for him, with an apprehension which was the reflection of the bad dreams of the night, she found that he had had his breakfast earlier than usual and had gone to the mill. She also learned that he had eaten very little, and that he had sent a man into Vilray for something or other. Try as she would to stifle her anxiety, it obtruded itself, and she could eat no breakfast. She kept her eyes on the door and the window, watching for Jean Jacques. Yet she reproved herself for her stupid concern, for Jean Jacques would have spoken last night, if he had discovered anything. He was not the man to hold his tongue when he had a chance of talking. He would be sure to make the most of any opportunity for display of intellectual emotion, and he would have burst his buttons if he had known. That was the way she put it in a vernacular which was not Andalusian. Such men love a grievance, because it gives them an opportunity to talk--with a good case and to some point, not into the air at imaginary things, as she had so often seen Jean Jacques do. She knew her Jean Jacques. That is, she thought she knew her Jean Jacques after living with him for over thirteen years; but hers was a very common mistake. It is not time which gives revelation, or which turns a character inside out, and exposes a new and amazing, maybe revolting side to it. She had never really seen Jean Jacques, and he had never really seen himself, as he was, but only as circumstances made him seem to be. What he had showed of his nature all these forty odd years was only the ferment of a more or less shallow life, in spite of its many interests: but here now at last was life, with the crust broken over a deep well of experience and tragedy. She knew as little what he would do in such a case as he himself knew beforehand. As the incident of the flume just now showed, he knew little indeed, for he had done exactly the opposite of what he meant to do. It was possible that Carmen would also do exactly the opposite of what she meant to do in her own crisis. Her test was to come. Would she, after all, go off with the master- carpenter, leaving behind her the pretty, clever, volatile Zoe. . . . Zoe--ah, where was Zoe? Carmen became anxious about Zoe, she knew not why. Was it the revival of the maternal instinct? She was told that Zoe had gone off on her pony to take a basket of good things to a poor old woman down the river three miles away. She would be gone all morning. By so much, fate was favouring her; for the child's presence would but heighten the emotion of her exit from that place where her youth had been wasted. Already the few things she had meant to take away were secreted in a safe place some distance from the house, beside the path she meant to take when she left Jean Jacques for ever. George Masson wanted her, they were to meet to-day, and she was going--going somewhere out of this intolerable dullness and discontent. When she pushed her coffee-cup aside and rose from the table without eating, she went straight to her looking-glass and surveyed herself with a searching eye. Certainly she was young enough (she said to herself) to draw the eyes of those who cared for youth and beauty. There was not a grey hair in the dark brown of her head, there was not a wrinkle--yes, there were two at the corners of her mouth, which told the story of her restlessness, of her hunger for the excitement of which she had been deprived all these years. To go back to Cadiz?--oh, anywhere, anywhere, so that her blood could beat faster; so that she could feel the stir of life which had made her spirit flourish even in the dangers of the far- off day when Gonzales was by her side. She looked at her guitar. She was sorry she could not take that away with her. But Jean Jacques would, no doubt, send it after her with his curse. She would love to play it once again with the old thrill; with the thrill she had felt on the night of Zoe's birthday a little while ago, when she was back again with her lover and the birds in the gardens of Granada. She would sing to someone who cared to hear her, and to someone who would make her care to sing, which was far more important. She would sing to the master-carpenter. Though he had not asked her to go with him--only to meet in a secret place in the hills--she meant to do so, just as she once meant to marry Jean Jacques, and had done so. It was true she would probably not have married Jean Jacques, if it had not been for the wreck of the Antoine; but the wreck had occurred, and she had married him, and that was done and over so far as she was concerned. She had determined to go away with the master-carpenter, and though he might feel the same hesitation as that which Jean Jacques had shown--she had read her Norman aright aboard the Antoine--yet, still, George Masson should take her away. A catastrophe had thrown Jean Jacques into her arms; it would not be a catastrophe which would throw the master- carpenter into her arms. It would be that they wanted each other. The mirror gave her a look of dominance--was it her regular features and her classic head? Does beauty in itself express authority, just because it has the transcendent thing in it? Does the perfect form convey something of the same thing that physical force--an army in arms, a battleship--conveys? In any case it was there, that inherent masterfulness, though not in its highest form. She was not an aristocrat, she was no daughter of kings, no duchess of Castile, no dona of Segovia; and her beauty belonged to more primary manifestations; but it was above the lower forms, even if it did not reach to the highest. "A handsome even splendid woman of her class" would have been the judgment of the connoisseur. As she looked in the glass at her clear skin, at the wonderful throat showing so soft and palpable and tower-like under the black velvet ribbon brightened by a paste ornament; as she saw the smooth breadth of brow, the fulness of the lips, the limpid lustre of the large eyes, the well- curved ear, so small and so like ivory, it came home to her, as it had never done before, that she was wasted in this obscure parish of St. Saviour's. There was not a more restless soul or body in all the hemisphere than the soul and body of Carmen Barbille, as she went from this to that on the morning when Jean Jacques had refrained from killing the soul-disturber, the master-carpenter, who had with such skill destroyed the walls and foundations of his home. Carmen was pointlessly busy as she watched for the return of Jean Jacques. At last she saw him coming from the flume of the mill! She saw that he stumbled as he walked, and that, every now and then, he lifted his head with an effort and threw it back, and threw his shoulders back also, as though to assert his physical manhood. He wore no hat, his hands were making involuntary gestures of helplessness. But presently he seemed to assert authority over his fumbling body and to come erect. His hands clenched at his sides, his head came up stiffly and stayed, and with quickened footsteps he marched rigidly forward towards the Manor. Then she guessed at the truth, and as soon as she saw his face she was sure beyond peradventure that he knew. His figure darkened the doorway. Her first thought was to turn and flee, not because she was frightened of what he would do, but because she did not wish to hear what he would say. She shrank from the uprolling of the curtain of the last thirteen years, from the grim exposure of the nakedness of their life together. Her indolent nature in repose wanted the dust of existence swept into a corner out of sight; yet when she was roused, and there were no corners into which the dust could be swept, she could be as bold as any better woman. She hesitated till it was too late to go, and then as he entered the house from the staring sunlight and the peace of the morning, she straightened herself, and a sulky, stubborn look came into her eyes. He might try to kill her, but she had seen death in many forms far away in Spain, and she would not be afraid till there was cause. Imagination would not take away her courage. She picked up a half-knitted stocking which lay upon the table, and standing there, while he came into the middle of the room, she began to ply the needles. He stood still. Her face was bent over her knitting. She did not look at him. "Well, why don't you look at me?" he asked in a voice husky with passion. She raised her head and looked straight into his dark, distracted eyes. "Good morning," she said calmly. A kind of snarling laugh came to his lips. "I said good morning to my wife yesterday, but I will not say it to-day. What is the use of saying good morning, when the morning is not good!" "That's logical, anyhow," she said, her needles going faster now. She was getting control of them--and of herself. "Why isn't the morning good? Speak. Why isn't it good, Carmen?" "Quien sabe--who knows!" she replied with exasperating coolness. "I know--I know all; and it is enough for a lifetime," he challenged. "What do you know--what is the 'all'?" Her voice had lost timbre. It was suddenly weak, but from suspense and excitement rather than from fear. "I saw you last night with him, by the river. I saw what you did. I heard you say, 'Yes, to-morrow, for sure.' I saw what you did." Her eyes were busy with the knitting now. She did not know what to say. Then, he had known all since the night before! He knew it when he pretended that his head ached--knew it as he lay by her side all night. He knew it, and said nothing! But what had he done--what had he done? She waited for she knew not what. George Masson was to come and inspect the flume early that morning. Had he come? She had not seen him. But the river was flowing through the flume: she could hear the mill-wheel turning--she could hear the mill-wheel turning! As she did not speak, with a curious husky shrillness to his voice he said: "There he was down in the flume, there was I at the lever above, there was the mill-wheel unlocked. There it was. I gripped the lever, and--" Her great eyes stared with horror. The knitting-needles stopped; a pallor swept across her face. She felt as she did when she heard the court-martial sentence Carvillho Gonzales to death. The mill-wheel sounded louder and louder in her ears. "You let in the river!" she cried. "You drove him into the wheel--you killed him!" "What else was there to do?" he demanded. "It had to be done, and it was the safest way. It would be an accident. Such a thing might easily happen." "You have murdered him!" she gasped with a wild look. "To call it murder!" he sneered. "Surely my wife would not call it murder." "Fiend--not to have the courage to fight him!" she flung back at him. "To crawl like a snake and let loose a river on a man! In any other country, he'd have been given a chance." This was his act in a new light. He had had only one idea in his mind when he planned the act, and that was punishment. What rights had a man who had stolen what was nearer and dearer than a man's own flesh, and for which he would have given his own flesh fifty times? Was it that Carmen would now have him believe he ought to have fought the man, who had spoiled his life and ruined a woman's whole existence. "What chance had I when he robbed me in the dark of what is worth fifty times my own life to me?" he asked savagely. "Murderer--murderer!" she cried hoarsely. "You shall pay for this." "You will tell--you will give me up?" Her eyes were on the mill and the river . . . "Where--where is he? Has he gone down the river? Did you kill him and let him go--like that!" She made a flinging gesture, as one would toss a stone. He stared at her. He had never seen her face like that--so strained and haggard. George Masson was right when he said that she would give him up; that his life would be in danger, and that his child's life would be spoiled. "Murderer!" she repeated. "And when you go to the gallows, your child's life--you did not think of that, eh? To have your revenge on the man who was no more to blame than I, thinking only of yourself, you killed him; but you did not think of your child." Ah, yes, surely George Masson was right! That was what he had said about his child, Zoe. What a good thing it was he had not killed the ravager of his home! But suddenly his logic came to his aid. In terrible misery as he was, he was almost pleased that he could reason. "And you would give me over to the law? You would send me to the gallows--and spoil your child's life?" he retorted. She threw the knitting down and flung her hands up. "I have no husband. I have no child. Take your life. Take it. I will go and find his body," she said, and she moved swiftly towards the door. "He has gone down the river--I will find him!" "He has gone up the river," he exclaimed. "Up the river, I say!" She stopped short and looked at him blankly. Then his meaning became clear to her. "You did not kill him?" she asked scarce above a whisper. "I let him go," he replied. "You did not fight him--why?" There was scorn in her tone. "And if I had killed him that way?" he asked with terrible logic, as he thought. "There was little chance of that," she replied scornfully, and steadied herself against a chair; for, now that the suspense was over, she felt as though she had been passed between stones which ground the strength out of her. A flush of fierce resentment crossed over his face. "It is not everything to be big," he rejoined. "The greatest men in the world have been small like me, but they have brought the giant things to their feet." She waved a hand disdainfully. "What are you going to do now?" she asked. He drew himself up. He seemed to rearrange the motions of his mind with a little of the old vanity, which was at once grotesque and piteous. "I am going to forgive you and to try to put things right," he said. "I have had my faults. You were not to blame altogether. I have left you too much alone. I did not understand everything all through. I had never studied women. If I had I should have done the right thing always. I must begin to study women." The drawn look was going a little from his face, the ghastly pain was fading from his eyes; his heart was speaking for her, while his vain intellect hunted the solution of his problem. She could scarcely believe her ears. No Spaniard would ever have acted as this man was doing. She had come from a land of No Forgiveness. Carvillho Gonzales would have killed her, if she had been untrue to him; and she would have expected it and understood it. But Jean Jacques was going to forgive her--going to study women, and so understand her and understand women, as he understood philosophy! This was too fantastic for human reason. She stared at him, unable to say a word, and the distracted look in her face did not lessen. Forgiveness did not solve her problem. "I am going to take you to Montreal--and then out to Winnipeg, when I've got the cheese-factory going," he said with a wise look in his face, and with tenderness even coming into his eyes. "I know what mistakes I've made"--had not George Masson the despoiler told him of them?--"and I know what a scoundrel that fellow is, and what tricks of the tongue he has. Also he is as sleek to look at as a bull, and so he got a hold on you. I grasp things now. Soon we will start away together again as we did at Gaspe." He came close to her. "Carmen!" he said, and made as though he would embrace her. "Wait--wait a little. Give me time to think," she said with dry lips, her heart beating hard. Then she added with a flattery which she knew would tell, "I cannot think quick as you do. I am slow. I must have time. I want to work it all out. Wait till to-night," she urged. "Then we can--" "Good, we will make it all up to-night," he said, and he patted her shoulder as one would that of a child. It had the slight flavour of the superior and the paternal. She almost shrank from his touch. If he had kissed her she would have felt that she must push him away; and yet she also knew how good a man he was. CHAPTER XI THE CLERK OF THE COURT KEEPS A PROMISE "Well, what is it, M'sieu' Fille? What do you want with me? I've got a lot to do before sundown, and it isn't far off. Out with it." George Masson was in no good humour; from the look on the face of the little Clerk of the Court he had no idea that he would disclose any good news. It was probably some stupid business about "money not being paid into the Court," which had been left over from cases tried and lost; and he had had a number of cases that summer. His head was not so clear to-day as usual, but he had had little difficulties with M'sieu' Fille before, and he was sure that there was something wrong now. "Do you want to make me a present?" he added with humorous impatience, for though he was not in a good temper, he liked the Clerk of the Court, who was such a figure at Vilray. The opening for his purpose did not escape M. Fille. He had been at a loss to begin, but here was a natural opportunity for him. "Well, good advice is not always a present, but I should like mine to be taken as such, monsieur," he said a little oracularly. "Oh, advice--to give me advice--that's why you've brought me in here, when I've so much to do I can't breathe! Time is money with me, old 'un." "Mine is advice which may be money in your pocket, monsieur," remarked the Clerk of the Court with meaning. "Money saved is money earned." "How do you mean to save me money--by getting the Judge to give decisions in my favour? That would be money in my pocket for sure. The Court has been running against my interests this year. When I think I was never so right in my life--bang goes the judgment of the Court against me, and into my pocket goes my hand. I don't only need to save money, I need to make it; so if you can help me in that way I'm your man, M'sieu' la Fillette?" The little man bristled at the misuse of his name, and he flushed slightly also; but there was always something engaging in the pleasure- loving master-carpenter. He had such an eloquent and warm temperament, the atmosphere of his personality was so genial, that his impertinence was insulated. Certainly the master-carpenter was not unpopular, and people could not easily resist the grip of his physical influence, while mentally he was far indeed from being deficient. He looked as little like a villain as a man could, and yet--and yet--a nature like that of George Masson (even the little Clerk could see that) was not capable of being true beyond the minute in which he took his oath of fidelity. While the fit of willingness was on him he would be true; yet in reality there was no truth at all--only self-indulgence unmarked by duty or honour. "Give me a judgment for defamation of character. Give me a thousand dollars or so for that, m'sieu', and you'll do a good turn to a deserving fellow-citizen and admirer--one little thousand, that's all, m'sieu'. Then I'll dance at your wedding and weep at your tomb--so there!" How easy he made the way for the little Clerk of the Court! "Defamation of character"--could there possibly be a better opening for what he had promised Judge Carcasson he would say! "Ah, Monsieur Masson," very officially and decorously replied M. Fille, "but is it defamation of character? If the thing is true, then what is the judgment? It goes against you--so there!" There was irony in the last words. "If what thing is true?" sharply asked the mastercarpenter, catching at the fringe of the idea in M. Fille's mind. "What thing?" "Ah, but it is true, for I saw it! Yes, alas! I saw it with my own eyes. By accident of course; but there it was--absolute, uncompromising, deadly and complete." It was a happy moment for the little Clerk of the Court when he could, in such an impromptu way, coin a phrase, or a set of adjectives, which would bear inspection of purists of the language. He loved to talk, though he did not talk a great deal, but he made innumerable conversations in his mind, and that gave him facility when he did speak. He had made conversations with George Masson in his mind since yesterday, when he gave his promise to Judge Carcasson; but none of them was like the real conversation now taking place. It was all the impression of the moment, while the phrases in his mind had been wonderfully logical things which, from an intellectual standpoint, would have delighted the man whose cause he was now engaged in defending. "You saw what, M'sieu' la Fillette? Out with it, and don't use such big adjectives. I'm only a carpenter. 'Absolute, uncompromising, deadly, complete'--that's a mouthful of grammar, my lords! Come, my sprig of jurisprudence, tell us what you saw." There was an apparent nervousness in Masson's manner now. Indeed he showed more agitation than when, a few hours before, Jean Jacques had stood with his hand on the lever of the gates of the flume, and the life of the master-carpenter at his feet, to be kicked into eternity. "Four days ago at five o'clock in the afternoon"--in a voice formal and exact, the little Clerk of the Court seemed to be reading from a paper, since he kept his eyes fixed on the blotter before him, as he did in Court--"I was coming down the hill behind the Manor Cartier, when my attention--by accident--was drawn to a scene below me in the Manor. I stopped short, of course, and--" "Diable! You stopped short 'of course' before what you saw! Spit it out--what did you see?" George Masson had had a trying day, and there was danger of losing control of himself. There was a whiteness growing round the eyes, and eating up the warmth of the cheek; his admirably smooth brow was contracted into heavy wrinkles, and a foot shifted uneasily on the floor with a scraping sole. This drew the attention of M. Fille, who raised his head reprovingly--he could not get rid of the feeling that he was in court, and that a case was being tried; and the severity of a Judge is naught compared with the severity of a Clerk of the Court, particularly if he is small and unmarried, and has no one to beat him into manageable humanity. M. Fille's voice was almost querulous. "If you will but be patient, monsieur! I saw a man with a woman in his arms, and I fear that I must mention the name of the man. It is not necessary to give the name of the woman, but I have it written here"-- he tapped the paper--"and there is no mistake in the identity. The man's name is George Masson, master-carpenter, of the town of Laplatte in the province of Quebec." George Masson was as one hit between the eyes. He made a motion as though to ward off a blow. "Name of Peter, old cock!" he exclaimed abruptly. "You saw enough certainly, if you saw that, and you needn't mention the lady's name, as you say. The evidence is not merely circumstantial. You saw it with your own eyes, and you are an official of the Court, and have the ear of the Judge, and you look like a saint to a jury. Well for sure, I can't prove defamation of character, as you say. But what then--what do you want?" "What I want I hope you may be able to grant without demur, monsieur. I want you to give your pledge on the Book"--he laid his hand on a Testament lying on the table--"that you will hold no further communication with the lady." "Where do you come inhere? What's your standing in the business?" Masson jerked out his words now. The Clerk of the Court made a reproving gesture. "Knowing what I did, what I had seen, it was clear that I must approach one or other of the parties concerned. Out of regard for the lady I could not approach her husband, and so betray her; out of regard for the husband I could not approach himself and destroy his peace; out of regard for all concerned I could not approach the lady's father, for then--" Masson interrupted with an oath. "That old reprobate of Cadiz--well no, bagosh! "And so you whisked me into your office with the talk of urgent business and--" "Is not the business urgent, monsieur?" "Not at all," was the sharp reply of the culprit. "Monsieur, you shock me. Do you consider that your conduct is not criminal? I have here"--he placed his hand on a book--"the Statutes of Victoria, and it lays down with wholesome severity the law concerning the theft of the affection of a wife, with the accompanying penalty, going as high as twenty thousand dollars." George Masson gasped. Here was a new turn of affairs. But he set his teeth. "Twenty thousand dollars--think of that!" he sneered angrily. "That is what I said, monsieur. I said I could save you money, and money saved is money earned. I am your benefactor, if you will but permit me to be so, monsieur. I would save you from the law, and from the damages which the law gives. Can you not guess what would be given in a court of the Catholic province of Quebec, against the violation of a good man's home? Do you not see that the business is urgent?" "Not at all," curtly replied the master-carpenter. M. Fille bridled up, and his spare figure seemed to gain courage and dignity. "If you think I will hold my peace unless you give your sacred pledge, you are mistaken, monsieur. I am no meddler, but I have had much kindness at the hands of Monsieur and Madame Barbille, and I will do what I can to protect them and their daughter--that good and sweet daughter, from the machinations, corruptions and malfeasance--" "Three damn good words for the Court, bagosh!" exclaimed Masson with a jeer. "No, with a man devoid of honour, I shall not hesitate, for the Manor Cartier has been the home of domestic peace, and madame, who came to us a stranger, deserves well of the people of that ancient abode of chivalry- the chivalry of France." "When we are wound up, what a humming we can make!" laughed George Masson sourly. "Have you quite finished, m'sieu'?" "The matter is urgent, you will admit, monsieur?" again demanded M. Fille with austerity. "Not at all." The master-carpenter was defiant and insolent, yet there was a devilish kind of humour in his tone as in his attitude. "You will not heed the warning I give?" The little Clerk pointed to the open page of the Victorian statutes before him. "Not at all." "Then I shall, with profound regret--" Suddenly George Masson thrust his face forward near that of M. Fille, who did not draw back. "You will inform the Court that the prisoner refuses to incriminate himself, eh?" he interjected. "No, monsieur, I will inform Monsieur Barbille of what I saw. I will do this without delay. It is the one thing left me to do." In quite a grand kind of way he stood up and bowed, as though to dismiss his visitor. As George Masson did not move, the other went to the door and opened it. "It is the only thing left to do," he repeated, as he made a gentle gesture of dismissal. "Not at all, my legal bombardier. Not at all, I say. All you know Jean Jacques knows, and a good deal more--what he has seen with his own eyes, and understood with his own mind, without legal help. So, you see, you've kept me here talking when there's no need and while my business waits. It is urgent, M'sieu' la Fillette--your business is stale. It belongs to last session of the Court." He laughed at his joke. "M'sieu' Jean Jacques and I understand each other." He laughed grimly now. "We know each other like a book, and the Clerk of the Court couldn't get in an adjective that would make the sense of it all clearer." Slowly M. Fille shut the door, and very slowly he came back. Almost blindly, as it might seem, and with a moan, he dropped into his chair. His eyes fixed themselves on George Masson. "Ah--that!" he said helplessly. "That! The little Zoe--dear God, the little Zoe, and the poor madame!" His voice was aching with pain and repugnance. "If you were not such an icicle naturally, I'd be thinking your interest in the child was paternal," said the master-carpenter roughly, for the virtuous horror of the other's face annoyed him. He had had a vexing day. The Clerk of the Court was on his feet in a second. "Monsieur, you dare!" he exclaimed. "You dare to multiply your crimes in that shameless way. Begone! There are those who can make you respect decency. I am not without my friends, and we all stand by each other in our love of home--of sacred home, monsieur." There was something right in the master-carpenter at the bottom, with all his villainy. It was not alone that he knew there were fifty men in the Parish of St. Saviour's who would man-handle him for such a suggestion, and for what he had done at the Manor Cartier, if they were roused; but he also had a sudden remorse for insulting the man who, after all, had tried to do him a service. His amende was instant. "I take it back with humble apology--all I can hold in both hands, m'sieu'," he said at once. "I would not insult you so, much less Madame Barbille. If she'd been like what I've hinted at, I wouldn't have gone her way, for the promiscuous is not for me. I'll tell you the whole truth of what happened to-day this morning. Last night I met her at the river, and--"Then briefly he told all that had happened to the moment when Jean Jacques had left him at the flume with the words, "Moi, je suis philosophe!" And at the last he said: "I give you my word--my oath on this"--he laid his hand on the Testament on the table--"that beyond what you saw, and what Jean Jacques saw, there has been nothing." He held up a hand as though taking an oath. "Name of God, is it not enough what there has been?" whispered the little Clerk. "Oh, as you think, and as you say! It is quite enough for me after to- day. I'm a teetotaller, but I'm not so fond of water as to want to take my eternal bath in it." He shuddered slightly. "Bien sur, I've had my fill of the Manor Cartier for one day, my Clerk of the Court." "Bien sur, it was enough to set you thinking, monsieur," was the dry comment of M. Fille, who was now recovering his composure. At that moment there came a knock at the door, and another followed quickly; then there entered without waiting for a reply--Carmen Barbille. CHAPTER XII THE MASTER-CARPENTER HAS A PROBLEM The Clerk of the Court came to his feet with a startled "Merci!" and the master-carpenter fell back with a smothered exclamation. Both men stared confusedly at the woman as she shut the door slowly and, as it might seem, carefully, before she faced them. "Here I am, George," she said, her face alive with vital adventure. His face was instantly swept by a storm of feeling for her, his nature responded to the sound of her voice and the passion of her face. "Carmen--ah !" he said, and took a step forward, then stopped. The hoarse feeling in his voice made her eyes flash gratitude and triumph, and she waited for him to take her in his arms; but she suddenly remembered M. Fille. She turned to him. "I am sorry to intrude, m'sieu'," she said. "I beg your pardon. They told me at the office of avocat Prideaux that M'sieu' Masson was here. So I came; but be sure I would not interrupt you if there was not cause." M. Fille came forward and took her hand respectfully. "Madame, it is the first time you have honoured me here. I am very glad to receive you. Monsieur and Mademoiselle Zoe, they are with you? They will also come in perhaps?" M. Fille was courteous and kind, yet he felt that a duty was devolving on him, imposed by his superior officer, Judge Carcasson, and by his own conscience, and with courage he faced the field of trouble which his simple question opened up. George Masson had but now said there had been nothing more than he himself had seen from the hill behind the Manor; and he had further said, in effect, that all was ended between Carmen Barbille and himself; yet here they were together, when they ought to be a hundred miles apart for many a day. Besides, there was the look in the woman's face, and that intense look also in the face of the master- carpenter! The Clerk of the Court, from sheer habit of his profession, watched human faces as other people watch the weather, or the rise or fall in the price of wheat and potatoes. He was an archaic little official, and apparently quite unsophisticated; yet there was hidden behind his ascetic face a quiet astuteness which would have been a valuable asset to a worldly-minded and ambitious man. Besides, affection sharpens the wits. Through it the hovering, protecting sense becomes instinctive, and prescience takes on uncanny certainty. He had a real and deep affection for Jean Jacques and his Carmen, and a deeper one still for the child Zoe; and the danger to the home at the Manor Cartier now became again as sharp as the knife of the guillotine. His eyes ran from the woman to the man, and back again, and then with great courage he repeated his question: "Monsieur and mademoiselle, they are well--they are with you, I hope, madame?" She looked at him in the eyes without flinching, and on the instant she was aware that he knew all, and that there had been talk with George Masson. She knew the little man to be as good as ever can be, but she resented the fact that he knew. It was clear George Masson had told him --else how could he know; unless, perhaps, all the world knew! "You know well enough that I have come alone, my friend," she answered. "It is no place for Zoe; and it is no place for my husband and him together "she made a motion of the head towards the mastercarpenter. "Santa Maria, you know it very well indeed!" The Clerk of the Court bowed, but made no reply. What was there to say to a remark like that! It was clear that the problem must be worked out alone between these two people, though he was not quite sure what the problem was. The man had said the thing was over; but the woman had come, and the look of both showed that it was not all over. What would the man do? What was it the woman wished to do? The master- carpenter had said that Jean Jacques had spared him, and meant to forgive his wife. No doubt he had done so, for Jean Jacques was a man of sentiment and chivalry, and there was no proof that there had been anything more than a few mad caresses between the two misdemeanants; yet here was the woman with the man for whom she had imperilled her future and that of her husband and child! As though Carmen understood what was going on in his mind, she said: "Since you know everything, you can understand that I want a few words with M'sieu' George here alone." "Madame, I beg of you," the Clerk of the Court answered instantly, his voice trembling a little--"I beg that you will not be alone with him. As I believe, your husband is willing to let bygones be bygones, and to begin to-morrow as though there was no to-day. In such case you should not see Monsieur Masson here alone. It is bad enough to see him here in the office of the Clerk of the Court, but to see him alone--what would Monsieur Jean Jacques say? Also, outside there in the street, if our neighbours should come to know of the trouble, what would they say? I wish not to be tiresome, but as a friend, a true friend of your whole family, madame--yes, in spite of all, your whole family--I hope you will realize that I must remain here. I owe it to a past made happy by kindness which is to me like life itself. Monsieur Masson, is it not so?" he added, turning to the master-carpenter. More flushed and agitated than when he had faced Jean Jacques in the flume, the master- carpenter said: "If she wants a few words-of farewell--alone with me, she must have it, M'sieu' Fille. The other room--eh? Outside there"--he jerked a finger towards the street--"they won't know that you are not with us; and as for Jean Jacques, isn't it possible for a Clerk of the Court to stretch the truth a little? Isn't the Clerk of the Court a man as well as a mummy? I'd do as much for you, little lawyer, any time. A word to say farewell, you understand!" He looked M. Fille squarely in the eye. "If I had to answer M. Jean Jacques on such a matter--and so much at stake--" Masson interrupted. "Well, if you like we'll bind your eyes and put wads in your ears, and you can stay, so that you'll have been in the room all the time, and yet have heard and seen nothing at all. How is that, m'sieu'? It's all right, isn't it?" M. Fille stood petrified for a moment at the audacity of the proposition. For him, the Clerk of the Court, to be blinded and made ridiculous with wads in his ears-impossible! "Grace of Heaven, I would prefer to lie!" he answered quickly. "I will go into the next room, but I beg that you be brief, monsieur and madame. You owe it to yourselves and to the situation to be brief, and, if I may say so, you owe it to me. I am not a practised Ananias." "As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, m'sieu'," returned Masson. "I must beg that you will make your farewells of a minute and no more," replied the Clerk of the Court firmly. He took out his watch. "It is six o'clock. I will come again at three minutes past six. That is long enough for any farewell--even on the gallows." Not daring to look at the face of the woman, he softly disappeared into the other room, and shut the door without a sound. "Too good for this world," remarked the master-carpenter when the door closed tight. He said it after the disappearing figure and not to Carmen. "I don't suppose he ever kissed a real grown-up woman in his life. It would have shattered his frail little carcass if, if"--he turned to his companion--"if you had kissed him, Carmen. He's made of tissue-paper,--not tissue--and apple-jelly. Yes, but a stiff little backbone, too, or he'd not have faced me down." Masson talked as though he were trying to gain time. "He said three minutes," she returned with a look of death in her face. As George Masson had talked with the Clerk of the Court, she had come to see, in so far as agitation would permit, that he was not the same as when he left her by the river the evening before. "There's no time to waste," she continued. "You spoke of farewells-- twice you spoke, and three times he spoke of farewells between us. Farewells--farewells--George--!" With sudden emotion she held out her arms, and her face flushed with passion and longing. The tempest which shook her shook him also, and he swayed from side to side like an animal uncertain if the moment had come to try its strength with its foe; and in truth the man was fighting with himself. His moments with Jean Jacques at the flume had expanded him in a curious kind of way. His own arguments while he was fighting for his life had, in a way, convinced himself. She was a rare creature, and she was alluring-- more alluring than she had ever been; for a tragic sense had made her thinner, had refined the boldness of her beauty, had given a wonderful lustre to her eyes; and suffering has its own attraction to the degenerate. But he, George Masson, had had a great shock, and he had come out of the jaws of death by the skin of his teeth. It had been the nearest thing he had ever known; for though once he had had a pistol pointed at him, there was the chance that it might miss at half-a-dozen yards, while there was no chance of the lever of the flume going wrong; and water and a mill-wheel were as absolute as the rope of the gallows. In a sense he had saved himself by his cleverness, but if Jean Jacques had not been just the man he was, he could not have saved himself. It did not occur to him that Jean Jacques had acted weakly. He would not have done what Jean Jacques had done, had Jean Jacques spoiled his home. He would have sprung the lever; but he was not so mean as to despise Jean Jacques because he had foregone his revenge. This master-carpenter had certain gifts, or he could not have caused so much trouble in the world. There is a kind of subtlety necessary to allure or delude even the humblest of women, if she is not naturally bad; and Masson had had experiences with the humblest, and also with those a little higher up. This much had to be said for him, that he did not think Jean Jacques contemptible because he had been merciful, or degraded because he had chosen to forgive his wife. The sight of the woman, as she stood with arms outstretched, had made his pulses pound in his veins, but the heat was suddenly chilled by the wave of tragedy which had passed over him. When he had climbed out of the flume, and opened the lever for the river to rush through, he had felt as though ice--cold liquid flowed in his veins, not blood; and all day he had been like that. He had moved much as one in a dream, and he had felt for the first time in his life that he was not ready to bluff creation. He had always faced things down, as long as it could be done; and when it could not, he had retreated, with the comment that no man was wise who took gruel when he needn't. He was now face to face with his greatest problem. One thing was clear--they must either part for ever, or go together, and part no more. There could be no half measures. She was a remarkable woman in her way, with a will of her own, and a kind of madness in her; and there could be no backing and filling. They only had three minutes to talk together alone, and two of them were up. Her arms were held out to him, but he stood still, and before the fire of her eyes his own eyes dropped. "No, not yet!" he exclaimed. "It's been a day--heaven and hell, what a day it's been! He had me like that!" He opened and shut his hand with fierce, spasmodic strength. "And he let me go--oh, let me go like a fox out of a trap! I've had enough for one day --blood of St. Peter, enough, enough!" The flame of desire in her eyes suddenly turned to fury. "It is farewell, then, that you wish," she said hoarsely. "It is no more and farewell then? You said it to him"--she pointed to the other room--"you said it to Jean Jacques, and you say it to me--to me that's given you all I have. Ah, what a beast you are, George Masson!" "No, Carmen, you have not given me all. If you had, there would be no farewell. I would stand by you to the end of life, if I had taken all." He lied, but that does not matter here. "All--all!" she cried. "What is all? Is it but the one thing that the world says must part husband and wife? Caramba! Is that all? I have given everything--I have had your arms around me--" "Yes, the Clerk of the Court saw that," he interrupted. "He saw from the hill behind the Manor on Tuesday last." There was a tap at the door of the other room; it slowly opened, and the figure of the Clerk appeared. "Two minutes--just two minutes more, old trump!" said the master-carpenter, stretching out a hand. "One minute will be enough," said Carmen, who was suffering the greatest humiliation which can come to a woman. The Clerk looked at them both, and he was content. He saw that one minute would certainly be enough. "Very well, monsieur and madame," he said, and closed the door again. Carmen turned fiercely on the man. "M. Fille saw, did he, from Mont Violet? Well, when I came here I did not care who saw. I only thought of you--that you wanted me, and that I wanted you. What the world thought was nothing, if you were as when we parted last night. . . . I could not face Jean Jacques' forgiveness. To stay there, feeling that I must be always grateful, that I must be humble, that I must pretend, that I must kiss Jean Jacques, and lie in his arms, and go to mass and to confession, and--" "There is the child, there is Zoe--" "Oh, it is you that preaches now--you that tempted me, that said I was wasted at the Manor; that the parish did not understand me; that Jean Jacques did not know a jewel of price when he saw it--little did you think of Zoe then!" He made a protesting gesture. "Maybe so, Carmen, but I think now before it is too late." "The child loves her father as she never loved me," she declared. "She is twelve years old. She will soon be old enough to keep house for him, and then to marry--ah, before there is time to think she will marry!" "It would be better then for you to wait till she marries before-- before--" "Before I go away with you!" She gave a shrill, agonized laugh. "So that is the end of it all! What did you think of my child when you forced your way into my life, when you made me think of you--ah, quel bete--what a coward and beast you are!" "No, I am not all coward, though I may be a beast," he answered. "I didn't think of your child when I began to talk to you as I did. I was out for all I could get. I was the hunter. And you were the finest woman that I'd ever met and talked with; you--" "Oh, stop lying!" she cried with a face suddenly grown white and cold. "It isn't lying. You're the sort of woman to drive men mad. I went mad, and I didn't think of your child. But this morning in the flume I saved my life by thinking of her, and I saved your life, too, maybe, by thinking of her; and I owe her something. I'm going to try to pay back by letting her keep her mother. I never felt towards a woman as I've felt towards you; and that's why I want to make things not so bad for you as they might be." In her bitter eagerness she took a step nearer to him. "As things might be, if you were the man you were yesterday, willing to throw up everything for me?" "Like that--if you put it so," he answered. She walked slowly up to him, looking as though she would plunge a knife into his heart. "I wish Jean Jacques had opened the gates," she said. "It would have saved the hangman trouble." Then suddenly, and with a cry, she raised her hand and struck him full in the face with her fist. At that instant came a tap at the door of the other room, and the Clerk of the Court appeared. He saw the blow, and drew back with an exclamation. Carmen turned to him. "Farewell has been said, M'sieu' Fille," she remarked in a voice sombre with rage and despair, and she went to the door leading to the street. Masson had winced at the blow, but he remained silent. He knew not what to say or do. M. Fille hastily followed Carmen to the door. "You are going home, dear madame? Permit me to accompany you," he said gently. "I have to do business with Jean Jacques." A hand upon his chest, she pushed him back. "Where I go I'm going alone," she said. Opening the door she went out, but turning back again she gave George Masson a look that he never forgot. Then the door closed. "Grace of God, she is not going home!" brokenly murmured the Clerk of the Court. With a groan the master-carpenter started forward towards the door, but M. Fille stepped between, laid a hand on his arm, and stopped him. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Confidence in a weak world gets unearned profit often Enjoy his own generosity Had the slight flavour of the superior and the paternal He had only made of his wife an incident in his life He was in fact not a philosopher, but a sentimentalist He was not always sorry when his teasing hurt Lacks a balance-wheel. He has brains, but not enough Man who tells the story in a new way, that is genius Missed being a genius by an inch Not content to do even the smallest thing ill You went north towards heaven and south towards hell THE MONEY MASTER By Gilbert Parker EPOCH THE THIRD XIII. THE MAN FROM OUTSIDE XIV. "I DO NOT WANT TO GO" XV. BON MARCHE CHAPTER XIII THE MAN FROM OUTSIDE "Oh, who will walk the wood with me, I fear to walk alone; So young am I, as you may see; No dangers have I known. So young, so small--ah, yes, m'sieu', I'll walk the wood with you!" In the last note of the song applause came instantaneously, almost impatiently, as it might seem. With cries of "Encore! Encore!" it lasted some time, while the happy singer looked around with frank pleasure on the little group encircling her in the Manor Cartier. "Did you like it so much?" she asked in a general way, and not looking at any particular person. A particular person, however, replied, and she had addressed the question to him, although not looking at him. He was the Man from Outside, and he sat near the bright wood-fire; for though it was almost June the night was cool and he was delicate. "Ah, but splendid, but splendid--it got into every corner of every one of us," the Man from Outside responded, speaking his fluent French with a slight English accent, which had a pleasant piquancy--at least to the ears of the pretty singer, Mdlle. Zoe Barbille. He was a man of about thirty-three, clean-shaven, dark-haired, with an expression of cleverness; yet with an irresponsible something about him which M. Fille had reflected upon with concern. For this slim, eager, talkative, half- invalid visitor to St. Saviour's had of late shown a marked liking for the presence and person of Zoe Barbille; and Zoe was as dear to M. Fille as though she were his own daughter. He it was who, in sarcasm, had spoken of this young stranger as "The Man from Outside." Ever since Zoe's mother had vanished--alone--seven years before from the Manor Cartier, or rather from his office at Vilray, M. Fille had been as much like a maiden aunt or a very elder brother to the Spanische's daughter as a man could be. Of M. Fille's influence over his daughter and her love of his companionship, Jean Jacques had no jealousy whatever. Very often indeed, when he felt incompetent to do for his child all that he wished--philosophers are often stupid in human affairs--he thought it was a blessing Zoe had a friend like M. Fille. Since the terrible day when he found that his wife had gone from him--not with the master- carpenter who only made his exit from Laplatte some years afterwards--he had had no desire to have a woman at the Manor to fill her place, even as housekeeper. He had never swerved from that. He had had a hard row to hoe, but he had hoed it with a will not affected by domestic accidents or inconveniences. The one woman from outside whom he permitted to go and come at will--and she did not come often, because she and M. Fille agreed it would be best not to do so--was the sister of the Cure. To be sure there was Seraphe Corniche, the old cook, but she was buried in her kitchen, and Jean Jacques treated her like a man. When Zoe was confirmed, and had come back from Montreal, having spent two years in a convent there--the only time she had been away from her father in seven years--having had her education chiefly from a Catholic "brother," the situation developed in a new way. Zoe at once became as conspicuous in the country-side as her father had been over so many years. She was fresh, volatile, without affectation or pride, and had a temperament responsive to every phase of life's simple interests. She took the attention of the young men a little bit as her due, but yet without conceit. The gallants had come about her like bees, for there was Jean Jacques' many businesses and his reputation for wealth; and there was her own charm, concerning which there could be far less doubt than about Jean Jacques' magnificent solvency. Zoe had gone heart-whole and with no especial preference for any young man, until the particular person came, the Man from Outside. His name was Gerard Fynes, and his business was mumming. He was a young lawyer turned actor, and he had lived in Montreal before he went on the stage. He was English--that was a misfortune; he was an actor--that was a greater misfortune, for it suggested vagabondage of morals as well as of profession; and he was a Protestant, which was the greatest misfortune of all. But he was only at St. Saviour's for his convalescence after a so-called attack of congestion of the lungs; and as he still had a slight cough and looked none too robust, and as, more than all, he was simple in his ways, enjoying the life of the parish with greater zest than the residents, he found popularity. Undoubtedly he had a taking way with him. He was lodging with Louis Charron, a small farmer and kinsman of Jean Jacques, who sold whisky--"white whisky"--without a license. It was a Charron family habit to sell liquor illegally, and Louis pursued the career with all an amateur's enthusiasm. He had a sovereign balm for "colds," composed of camomile flowers, boneset, liquorice, pennyroyal and gentian root, which he sold to all comers; and it was not unnatural that a visitor with weak lungs should lodge with him. Louis and his wife had only good things to say about Gerard Fynes; for the young man lived their life as though he was born to it. He ate the slap-jacks, the buttermilk-pop, the pork and beans, the Indian corn on the cob, the pea-soup, and the bread baked in the roadside oven, with a relish which was not all pretence; for indeed he was as primitive as he was subtle. He himself could not have told how much of him was true and how much was make-believe. But he was certainly lovable, and he was not bad by nature. Since coming to St. Saviour's he had been constant to one attraction, and he had not risked his chances with Zoe by response to the shy invitations of dark eyes, young and not so young, which met his own here and there in the parish. Only M. Fille and Jean Jacques himself had feelings of real antagonism to him. Jean Jacques, though not naturally suspicious, had, however, seen an understanding look pass between his Zoe and this stranger--this Protestant English stranger from the outer world, to which Jean Jacques went less frequently since his fruitless search for his vanished Carmen. The Clerk of the Court saw that Jean Jacques had observed the intimate glances of the two young people, and their eyes met in understanding. It was just before Zoe had sung so charmingly, 'Oh, Who Will Walk the Wood With Me'. At first after Carmen's going Jean Jacques had found it hard to endure singing in his house. Zoe's trilling was torture to him, though he had never forbidden her to sing, and she had sung on to her heart's content. By a subtle instinct, however, and because of the unspoken sorrow in her own heart, she never sang the songs like 'La Manola'. Never after the day Carmen went did Zoe speak of her mother to anyone at all. It was worse than death; it was annihilation, so far as speech was concerned. The world at large only knew that Carmen Barbille had run away, and that even Sebastian Dolores her father did not know where she was. The old man had not heard from her, and he seldom visited at the Manor Cartier or saw his grand-daughter. His own career of late years had been marked by long sojourns in Quebec, Montreal and even New York; yet he always came back to St. Saviour's when he was penniless, and was there started afresh by Jean Jacques. Some said that Carmen had gone back to Spain, but others discredited that, for, if she had done so, certainly old Sebastian Dolores would have gone also. Others continued to insist that she had gone off with a man; but there was George Masson at Laplatte living alone, and never going twenty miles away from home, and he was the only person under suspicion. Others again averred that since her flight Carmen had become a loose woman in Montreal; but the New Cure came down on that with a blow which no one was tempted to invite again. M. Savry's method of punishing was of a kind to make men shrink. If Carmen Barbille had become a loose woman in Montreal, how did any member of his flock know that it was the case? What company had he kept in Montreal that he could say that? Did he see the woman--or did he hear about her? And if he heard, what sort of company was he keeping when he went to Montreal without his wife to hear such things? That was final, and the slanderer was under a cloud for a time, by reason of the anger of his own wife. It was about this time that the good priest preached from the text, "Judge not that ye be not judged," and said that there were only ten commandments on the tables of stone; but that the ten included all the commandments which the Church made for every man, and which every man, knowing his own weakness, must also make for himself. His flock understood, though they did refrain, every one, from looking towards the place where Jean Jacques sat with Ma'm'selle--she was always called that, as though she was a great lady; or else she was called "the little Ma'm'selle Zoe," even when she had grown almost as tall as her mother had been. Though no one looked towards the place where Jean Jacques and his daughter sat when this sermon was preached, and although Zoe seemed not to apprehend personal reference in the priest's words, when she reached home, after talking to her father about casual things all the way, she flew to her room, and, locking the door, flung herself on her bed and cried till her body felt as though it had been beaten by rods. Then she suddenly got up and, from a drawer, took out two things--an old photograph of her mother at the time of her marriage, and Carmen's guitar, which she had made her own on the day after the flight, and had kept hidden ever since. She lay on the bed with her cheek pressed to the guitar, and her eyes hungrily feeding on the face of a woman whose beauty belonged to spheres other than where she had spent the thirteen years of her married life. Zoe had understood more even at the time of the crisis than they thought she did, child though she was; and as the years had gone on she had grasped the meaning of it all more clearly perhaps than anyone at all except her adored friends Judge Carcasson, at whose home she had visited in Montreal, and M. Fille. The thing last rumoured about her mother in the parish was that she had become an actress. To this Zoe made no protest in her mind. It was better than many other possibilities, and she fixed her mind on it, so saving herself from other agonizing speculations. In a fixed imagination lay safety. In her soul she knew that, no matter what happened, her mother would never return to the Manor Cartier. The years had not deepened confidence between father and daughter. A shadow hung between them. They laughed and talked together, were even boisterous in their fun sometimes, and yet in the eyes of both was the forbidden thing--the deserted city into which they could not enter. He could not speak to the child of the shame of her mother; she could not speak of that in him which had contributed to that mother's shame--the neglect which existed to some degree in her own life with him. This was chiefly so because his enterprises had grown to such a number and height, that he seemed ever to be counting them, ever struggling to the height, while none of his ventures ever reached that state of success when it "ran itself", although as years passed men called him rich, and he spent and loaned money so freely that they called him the Money Master, or the Money Man Wise, in deference to his philosophy. Zoe was not beautiful, but there was a wondrous charm in her deep brown eyes and in the expression of her pretty, if irregular, features. Sometimes her face seemed as small as that of a young child, and alive with eerie fancies; and always behind her laughter was something which got into her eyes, giving them a haunting melancholy. She had no signs of hysteria, though now and then there came heart-breaking little outbursts of emotion which had this proof that they were not hysteria-- they were never seen by others. They were sacred to her own solitude. While in Montreal she had tasted for the first time the joys of the theatre, and had then secretly read numbers of plays, which she bought from an old bookseller, who was wise enough to choose them for her. She became possessed of a love for the stage even before Gerard Fynes came upon the scene. The beginning of it all was the rumour that her mother was now an actress; yet the root-cause was far down in a temperament responsive to all artistic things. The coming of the Man from Outside acted on the confined elements of her nature like the shutter of a camera. It let in a world of light upon unexplored places, it set free elements of being which had not before been active. She had been instantly drawn to Gerard Fynes. He had the distance from her own life which provoked interest, and in that distance was the mother whom perhaps it was her duty to forget, yet for whom she had a longing which grew greater as the years went on. Gerard Fynes could talk well, and his vivid pictures of his short play- acting career absorbed her; and all the time she was vigilant for some name, for the description of some actress which would seem to be a clue to the lost spirit of her life. This clue never came, but before she gave up hope of it, the man had got nearer to her than any man had ever done. After meeting him she awoke to the fact that there was a difference between men, that it was not the same thing to be young as to be old; that the reason why she could kiss the old Judge and the little Clerk of the Court, and not kiss, say, the young manager of the great lumber firm who came every year for a fortnight's fishing at St. Saviour's, was one which had an understandable cause and was not a mere matter of individual taste. She had been good friends with this young manager, who was only thirty years of age, and was married, but when he had wanted to kiss her on saying good-bye one recent summer, she had said, "Oh, no, oh, no, that would spoil it all!" Yet when he had asked her why, and what she meant, she could not tell him. She did not know; but by the end of the first week after Gerard Fynes had been brought to the Manor Cartier by Louis Charron, she knew. She had then been suddenly awakened from mere girlhood. Judge Carcasson saw the difference in her on a half-hour's visit as he passed westward, and he had said to M. Fille, "Who is the man, my keeper of the treasure?" The reply had been of such a sort that the Judge was startled: "Tut, tut," he had exclaimed, "an actor--an actor once a lawyer! That's serious. She's at an age--and with a temperament like hers she'll believe anything, if once her affections are roused. She has a flair for the romantic, for the thing that's out of reach--the bird on the highest branch, the bird in the sky beyond ours, the song that was lost before time was, the light that never was on sea or land. Why, damn it, damn it all, my Solon, here's the beginning of a case in Court unless we can lay the fellow by the heels! How long is he here for?" When M. Fille had told him that he would stay for another month for certain, and no doubt much longer, if there seemed a prospect of winning the heiress of the Manor Cartier, the Judge gave a groan. "We must get him away, somehow," he said. "Where does he stay?" "At the house of Louis Charron," was the reply. "Louis Charron--isn't he the fellow that sells whisky without a license?" "It is so, monsieur." The Judge moved his head from side to side like a bear in a cage. "It is that, is it, my Fille? By the thumb of the devil, isn't it time then that Louis Charron was arrested for breaking the law? Also how do we know but that the interloping fellow Fynes is an agent for a whisky firm perhaps? Couldn't he, then, on suspicion, be arrested with--" The Clerk of the Court shook his head mournfully. His Judge was surely becoming childish in his old age. He looked again closely at the great man, and saw a glimmer of moisture in the grey eyes. It was clear that Judge Carcasson felt deeply the dangers of the crisis, and that the futile outburst had merely been the agitated protest of the helpless. "The man is what he says he is--an actor; and it would be folly to arrest him. If our Zoe is really fond of him, it would only make a martyr of him." As he made this reply M. Fille looked furtively at the other--out of the corner of his eye, as it were. The reply of the Judge was impatient, almost peevish and rough. "Did you think I was in earnest, my punchinello? Surely I don't look so young as all that. I am over sixty- five, and am therefore mentally developed!" M. Fille was exactly sixty-five years of age, and the blow was a shrewd one. He drew himself up with rigid dignity. "You must feel sorry sometimes for those who suffered when your mind was undeveloped, monsieur," he answered. "You were a judge at forty-nine, and you defended poor prisoners for twenty years before that." The Judge was conquered, and he was never the man to pretend he was not beaten when he was. He admired skill too much for that. He squeezed M. Fille's arm and said: "I've been quick with my tongue myself, but I feel sure now, that it's through long and close association with my Clerk of the Court." "Ah, monsieur, you are so difficult to understand!" was the reply. "I have known you all these years, and yet--" "And yet you did not know how much of the woman there was in me! . . . But yes, it is that. It is that which I fear with our Zoe. Women break out--they break out, and then there is the devil to pay. Look at her mother. She broke out. It was not inevitable. It was the curse of opportunity, the wrong thing popping up to drive her mad at the wrong moment. Had the wrong thing come at the right time for her, when she was quite sane, she would be yonder now with our philosopher. Perhaps she would not be contented if she were there, but she would be there; and as time goes on, to be where we were in all things which concern the affections, that is the great matter." "Ah, yes, ah, yes," was the bright-eyed reply of that Clerk, "there is no doubt of that! My sister and I there, we are fifty years together, never with the wrong thing at the wrong time, always the thing as it was, always to be where we were." The Judge shook his head. "There is an eternity of difference, Fille, between the sister and brother and the husband and wife. The sacredness of isolation is the thing which holds the brother and sister together. The familiarity of--but never mind what it is that so often forces husband and wife apart. It is there, and it breaks out in rebellion as it did with the wife of Jean Jacques Barbille. As she was a strong woman in her way, it spoiled her life, and his too when it broke out." M. Fille's face lighted with memory and feeling. "Ah, a woman of powerful emotions, monsieur, that is so! I think I never told you, but at the last, in my office, when she went, she struck George Masson in the face. It was a blow that--but there it was; I have never liked to think of it. When I do, I shudder. She was a woman who might have been in other circumstances--but there!" The Judge suddenly stopped in his walk and faced round on his friend. "Did you ever know, my Solon," he said, "that it was not Jean Jacques who saved Carmen at the wreck of the Antoine, but it was she who saved him; and yet she never breathed of it in all the years. One who was saved from the Antoine told me of it. Jean Jacques was going down. Carmen gave him her piece of wreckage to hang on to, and swam ashore without help. He never gave her the credit. There was something big in the woman, but it did not come out right." M. Fille threw up his hands. "Grace de Dieu, is it so that she saved Jean Jacques? Then he would not be here if it had not been for her?" "That is the obvious deduction, Maitre Fille," replied the Judge. The Clerk of the Court seemed moved. "He did not treat her ill. I know that he would take her back to-morrow if he could. He has never forgotten. I saw him weeping one day--it was where she used to sing to the flax-beaters by the Beau Cheval. I put my hand on his shoulder, and said, 'I know, I comprehend; but be a philosopher, Jean Jacques.'" "What did he say?" asked the Judge. "He drew himself up. 'In my mind, in my soul, I am philosopher always,' he said, 'but my eyes are the windows of my heart, m'sieu'. They look out and see the sorrow of one I loved. It is for her sorrow that I weep, not for my own. I have my child, I have money; the world says to me, "How goes it, my friend?" I have a home--a home; but where is she, and what does the world say to her?'" The Judge shook his head sadly. "I used to think I knew life, but I come to the belief in the end that I know nothing. Who could have guessed that he would have spoken like that!" "He forgave her, monsieur." The Judge nodded mournfully. "Yes, yes, but I used to think it is such men who forgive one day and kill the next. You never can tell where they will explode, philosophy or no philosophy." The Judge was right. After all the years that had passed since his wife had left him, Jean Jacques did explode. It was the night of his birthday party at which was present the Man from Outside. It was in the hour when he first saw what the Clerk of the Court had seen some time before--the understanding between Zoe and Gerard Fynes. It had never occurred to him that there was any danger. Zoe had been so indifferent to the young men of St. Saviour's and beyond, had always been so much his friend and the friend of those much older than himself, like Judge Carcasson and M. Fille, that he had not yet thought of her electing to go and leave him alone. To leave him alone! To be left alone--it had never become a possibility to his mind. It did not break upon him with its full force all at once. He first got the glimmer of it, then the glimmer grew to a glow, and the glow to a great red light, in which his brain became drunk, and all his philosophy was burned up like wood-shavings in a fiery furnace. "Did you like it so much?" Zoe had asked when her song was finished, and the Man from Outside had replied, "Ah, but splendid, splendid! It got into every corner of every one of us." "Into the senses--why not into the heart? Songs are meant for the heart," said Zoe. "Yes, yes, certainly," was the young man's reply, "but it depends upon the song whether it touches the heart more than the senses. Won't you sing that perfect thing, 'La Claire Fontaine'?" he added, with eyes as bright as passion and the hectic fires of his lung-trouble could make them. She nodded and was about to sing, for she loved the song, and it had been ringing in her head all day; but at that point M. Fille rose, and with his glass raised high--for at that moment Seraphe Corniche and another carried round native wine and cider to the company--he said: "To Monsieur Jean Jacques Barbille, and his fifty years, good health-- bonne sante! This is his birthday. To a hundred years for Jean Jacques!" Instantly everyone was up with glass raised, and Zoe ran and threw her arms round her father's neck. "Kiss me before you drink," she said. With a touch almost solemn in its tenderness Jean Jacques drew her head to his shoulder and kissed her hair, then her forehead. "My blessed one --my angel," he whispered; but there was a look in his eyes which only M. Fille had seen there before. It was the look which had been in his eyes at the flax-beaters' place by the river. "Sing--father, you must sing," said Zoe, and motioned to the fiddler. "Sing It's Fifty Years," she cried eagerly. They all repeated her request, and he could but obey. Jean Jacques' voice was rather rough, but he had some fine resonant notes in it, and presently, with eyes fastened on the distance, and with free gesture and much expression, he sang the first verse of the haunting ballad of the man who had reached his fifty years: "Wherefore these flowers? This fete for me? Ah, no, it is not fifty years, Since in my eyes the light you see First shone upon life's joys and tears! How fast the heedless days have flown Too late to wail the misspent hours, To mourn the vanished friends I've known, To kneel beside love's ruined bowers. Ah, have I then seen fifty years, With all their joys and hopes and fears!" Through all the verses he ranged, his voice improving with each phrase, growing more resonant, till at last it rang out with a ragged richness which went home to the hearts of all. He was possessed. All at once he was conscious that the beginning of the end of things was come for him; and that now, at fifty, in no sphere had he absolutely "arrived," neither in home nor fortune, nor--but yes, there was one sphere of success; there was his fatherhood. There was his daughter, his wonderful Zoe. He drew his eyes from the distance, and saw that her ardent look was not towards him, but towards one whom she had known but a few weeks. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of a verse, and broke forward with his arms outstretched, laughing. He felt that he must laugh, or he would cry; and that would be a humiliating thing to do. "Come, come, my friends, my children, enough of that!" he cried. "We'll have no more maundering. Fifty years--what are fifty years! Think of Methuselah! It's summer in the world still, and it's only spring at St. Saviour's. It's the time of the first flowers. Let's dance--no, no, never mind the Cure to-night! He will not mind. I'll settle it with him. We'll dance the gay quadrille." He caught the hands of the two youngest girls present, and nodded at the fiddler, who at once began to tune his violin afresh. One of the joyous young girls, however, began to plead with him. "Ah, no, let us dance, but at the last--not yet, M'sieu' Jean Jacques! There is Zoe's song, we must have that, and then we must have charades. Here is M'sieu' Fynes--he can make splendid charades for us. Then the dance at the last--ah, yes, yes, M'sieu' Jean Jacques! Let it be like that. We all planned it, and though it is your birthday, it's us are making the fete." "As you will then, as you will, little ones," Jean Jacques acquiesced with a half-sigh; but he did not look at his daughter. Somehow, suddenly, a strange constraint possessed him where Zoe was concerned. "Then let us have Zoe's song; let us have 'La Claire Fontaine'," cried the black-eyed young madcap who held Jean Jacques' arms. But Zoe interrupted. "No, no," she protested, "the singing spell is broken. We will have the song after the charades--after the charades." "Good, good--after the charades!" they all cried, for there would be charades like none which had ever been played before, with a real actor to help them, to carry them through as they did on the stage. To them the stage was compounded of mystery, gaiety and the forbidden. So, for the next half-hour they were all at the disposal of the Man from Outside, who worked as though it was a real stage, and they were real players, and there were great audiences to see them. It was all quite wonderful, and it involved certain posings, attitudes, mimicry and pantomime, for they were really ingenious charades. So it happened that Zoe's fingers often came in touch with those of the stage-manager, that his hands touched her shoulders, that his cheek brushed against her dark hair once, and that she had sensations never experienced before. Why was it that she thrilled when she came near to him, that her whole body throbbed and her heart fluttered when their shoulders or arms touched? Her childlike nature, with all its warmth and vibration of life, had never till now felt the stir of sex in its vital sense. All men had in one way been the same to her; but now she realized that there was a world-wide difference between her Judge Carcasson, her little Clerk of the Court, and this young man whose eyes drank hers. She had often been excited, even wildly agitated, had been like a sprite let loose in quiet ways; but that was mere spirit. Here was body and senses too; here was her whole being alive to a music, which had an aching sweetness and a harmony coaxing every sense into delight. "To-morrow evening, by the flume, where the beechtrees are--come--at six. I want to speak with you. Will you come?" Thus whispered the maker of this music of the senses, who directed the charades, but who was also directing the course of another life than his own. "Yes, if I can," was Zoe's whispered reply, and the words shook as she said them; for she felt that their meeting in the beech-trees by the flume would be of consequence beyond imagination. Judge Carcasson had always said that Zoe had judgment beyond her years; M. Fille had remarked often that she had both prudence and shrewdness as well as a sympathetic spirit; but M. Fille's little whispering sister, who could never be tempted away from her home to any house, to whom the market and the church were like pilgrimages to distant wilds, had said to her brother: "Wait, Armand--wait till Zoe is waked, and then prudence and wisdom will be but accident. If all goes well, you will see prudence and wisdom; but if it does not, you will see--ah, but just Zoe!" The now alert Jean Jacques had seen the whispering of the two, though he did not know what had been said. It was, however, something secret, and if it was secret, then it was--yes, it was love; and love between his daughter and that waif of the world--the world of the stage--in which men and women were only grown-up children, and bad grown-up children at that --it was not to be endured. One thing was sure, the man should come to the Manor Cartier no more. He would see to that to-morrow. There would be no faltering or paltering on his part. His home had been shaken to its foundations once, and he was determined that it should not fall about his ears a second time. An Englishman, an actor, a Protestant, and a renegade lawyer! It was not to be endured. The charade now being played was the best of the evening. One of the madcap friends of Zoe was to be a singing-girl. She was supposed to carry a tambourine. When her turn to enter came, with a look of mischief and a gay dancing step, she ran into the room. In her hands was a guitar, not a tambourine. When Zoe saw the guitar she gave a cry. "Where did you get that?" she asked in a low, shocked, indignant voice. "In your room--your bedroom," was the half-frightened answer. "I saw it on the dresser, and I took it." "Come, come, let's get on with the charade," urged the Man from Outside. On the instant's pause, in which Zoe looked at her lover almost involuntarily, and without fully understanding what he said, someone else started forward with a smothered exclamation--of anger, of horror, of dismay. It was Jean Jacques. He was suddenly transformed. His eyes were darkened by hideous memory, his face alight with passion. He caught from the girl's hands the guitar--Carmen's forgotten guitar which he had not seen for seven years--how well he knew it! With both hands he broke it across his knee. The strings, as they snapped, gave a shrill, wailing cry, like a voice stopped suddenly by death. Stepping jerkily to the fireplace he thrust it into the flame. "Ah, there!" he said savagely. "There--there!" When he turned round slowly again, his face--which he had never sought to control before he had his great Accident seven years ago--was under his command. A strange, ironic-almost sardonic-smile was on his lips. "It's in the play," he said. "No, it's not in the charade, Monsieur Barbille," said the Man from Outside fretfully. "That is the way I read it, m'sieu'," retorted Jean Jacques, and he made a motion to the fiddler. "The dance! The dance!" he exclaimed. But yet he looked little like a man who wished to dance, save upon a grave. CHAPTER XIV "I DO NOT WANT TO GO" It is a bad thing to call down a crisis in the night-time. A "scene" at midnight is a savage enemy of ultimate understanding, and that Devil, called Estrangement, laughs as he observes the objects of his attention in conflict when the midnight candle burns. He should have been seized with a fit of remorse, however, at the sight he saw in the Manor Cartier at midnight of the day when Jean Jacques Barbille had reached his fiftieth year. There is nothing which, for pathos and for tragedy, can compare with a struggle between the young and the old. The Devil of Estrangement when he sees it, may go away and indulge himself in sleep; for there will be no sleep for those who, one young and the other old, break their hearts on each other's anvils, when the lights are low and it is long till morning. When Jean Jacques had broken the forgotten guitar which his daughter had retrieved from her mother's life at the Manor Cartier (all else he had had packed and stored away in the flour-mill out of sight) and thrown it in the fire, there had begun a revolt in the girl's heart, founded on a sense of injustice, but which itself became injustice also; and that is a dark thing to come between those who love--even as parent and child. After her first exclamation of dismay and pain, Zoe had regained her composure, and during the rest of the evening she was full of feverish gaiety. Indeed her spirits and playful hospitality made the evening a success in spite of the skeleton at the feast. Jean Jacques had also roused himself, and, when the dance began, he joined in with spirit, though his face was worn and haggard even when lighted by his smile. But though the evening came to the conventional height of hilarity, there was a note running through it which made even the youngest look at each other, as though to say, "Now, what's going to happen next!" Three people at any rate knew that something was going to happen. They were Zoe, the Man from Outside and M. Fille. Zoe had had more than one revelation that night, and she felt again as she did one day, seven years before, when, coming home from over the hills, she had stepped into a house where Horror brooded as palpably as though it sat beside the fire, or hung above the family table. She had felt something as soon as she had entered the door that far-off day, though the house seemed empty. It was an emptiness which was filled with a torturing presence or torturing presenes. It had stilled her young heart. What was it? She had learned the truth soon enough. Out of the sunset had come her father with a face twisted with misery, and as she ran to him, he had caught her by both shoulders, looked through her eyes to something far beyond, and hoarsely said: "She is gone--gone from us! She has run away from home! Curse her baptism--curse it, curse it!" Zoe could never forget these last words she had ever heard her father speak of Carmen. They were words which would make any Catholic shudder to hear. It was a pity he had used them, for they made her think at last that her mother had been treated with injustice. This, in spite of the fact that in the days, now so far away, when her mother was with them she had ever been nearer to her father, and that, after first childhood, she and her mother were not so close as they had been, when she went to sleep to the humming of a chanson of Cadiz. Her own latent motherhood, however, kept stealing up out of the dim distances of childhood's ignorance and, with modesty and allusiveness, whispering knowledge in her ear. So it was that now she looked back pensively to the years she had spent within sight and sound of her handsome mother, and out of the hunger of her own spirit she had come to idealize her memory. It was good to have a loving father; but he was a man, and he was so busy just when she wanted--when she wanted she knew not what, but at least to go and lay her head on a heart that would understand what was her sorrow, her joy, or her longing. And now here at last was come Crisis, which showed its thunderous head in the gay dance, and shook his war-locks in the fire, where her mother's guitar had shrieked in its last agony. When all the guests had gone, when the bolts had been shot home, and old Seraphe Corniche had gone to bed, father and daughter came face to face. There was a moment's pause, as the two looked at each other, and then Zoe came up to Jean Jacques to kiss him good-night. It was her way of facing the issue. Instinctively she knew that he would draw back, and that the struggle would begin. It might almost seem that she had invited it; for she had let the Man from Outside hold her hand for far longer than courtesy required, while her father looked on with fretful eyes--even with a murmuring which was not a benediction. Indeed, he had evaded shaking hands with his hated visitor by suddenly offering him a cigar, and then in the doorway itself handing a lighted match. "His eminence, Cardinal Christophe, gave these cigars to me when he passed through St. Saviour's five years ago," Jean Jacques had remarked loftily, "and I always smoke one on my birthday. I am a good Catholic, and his eminence rested here for a whole day." He had had a grim pleasure in avoiding the handshake, and in having the Protestant outsider smoke the Catholic cigar! In his anger it seemed to him that he had done something worthy almost of the Vatican, indeed of the great Cardinal Christophe himself. Even in his moments of crisis, in his hours of real tragedy, in the times when he was shaken to the centre, Jean Jacques fancied himself more than a little. It was as the master- carpenter had remarked seven years before, he was always involuntarily saying, "Here I come--look at me. I am Jean Jacques Barbille!" When Zoe reached out a hand to touch his arm, and raised her face as though to kiss him good-night, Jean Jacques drew back. "Not yet, Zoe," he said. "There are some things--What is all this between you and that man? . . . I have seen. You must not forget who you are--the daughter of Jean Jacques Barbille, of the Manor Cartier, whose name is known in the whole province, who was asked to stand for the legislature. You are Zoe Barbille--Mademoiselle Zoe Barbille. We do not put on airs. We are kind to our neighbours, but I am descended from the Baron of Beaugard. I have a place--yes, a place in society; and it is for you to respect it. You comprehend?" Zoe flushed, but there was no hesitation whatever in her reply. "I am what I have always been, and it is not my fault that I am the daughter of M. Jean Jacques Barbille! I have never done anything which was not good enough for the Manor Cartier." She held her head firmly as she said it. Now Jean Jacques flushed, and he did hesitate in his reply. He hated irony in anyone else, though he loved it in himself, when heaven gave him inspiration thereto. He was in a state of tension, and was ready to break out, to be a force let loose--that is the way he would have expressed it; and he was faced by a new spirit in his daughter which would surely spring the mine, unless he secured peace by strategy. He had sense enough to feel the danger. He did not see, however, any course for diplomacy here, for she had given him his cue in her last words. As a pure logician he was bound to take it, though it might lead to drama of a kind painful to them both. "It is not good enough for the Manor Cartier that you go falling in love with a nobody from nowhere," he responded. "I am not falling in love," she rejoined. "What did you mean, then, by looking at him as you did; by whispering together; by letting him hold your hand when he left, and him looking at you as though he'd eat you up--without sugar!" "I said I was not falling in love," she persisted, quietly, but with characteristic boldness. "I am in love." "You are in love with him--with that interloper! Heaven of heavens, do you speak the truth? Answer me, Zoe Barbille." She bridled. "Certainly I will answer. Did you think I would let a man look at me as he did, that I would look at a man as I looked at him, that I would let him hold my hand as I did, if I did not love him? Have you ever seen me do it before?" Her voice was even and quiet--as though she had made up her mind on a course, and meant to carry it through to the end. "No, I never saw you look at a man like that, and everything is as you say, but--" his voice suddenly became uneven and higher--pitched and a little hoarse, "but he is English, he is an actor--only that; and he is a Protestant." "Only that?" she asked, for the tone of his voice was such as one would use in speaking of a toad or vermin, and she could not bear it. "Is it a disgrace to be any one of those things?" "The Barbilles have been here for two hundred years; they have been French Catholics since the time of"--he was not quite sure--"since the time of Louis XI.," he added at a venture, and then paused, overcome by his own rashness. "Yes, that is a long time," she said, "but what difference does it make? We are just what we are now, and as if there never had been a Baron of Beaugard. What is there against Gerard except that he is an actor, that he is English, and that he is a Protestant? Is there anything?" "Sacre, is it not enough? An actor, what is that--to pretend to be someone else and not to be yourself!" "It would be better for a great many people to be someone else rather than themselves--for nothing; and he does it for money." "For money! What money has he got? You don't know. None of us know. Besides, he's a Protestant, and he's English, and that ends it. There never has been an Englishman or a Protestant in the Barbille family, and it shan't begin at the Manor Cartier." Jean Jacques' voice was rising in proportion as he perceived her quiet determination. Here was something of the woman who had left him seven years ago--left this comfortable home of his to go to disgrace and exile, and God only knew what else! Here in this very room--yes, here where they now were, father and daughter, stood husband and wife that morning when he had his hand on the lever prepared to destroy the man who had invaded his home; who had cast a blight upon it, which remained after all the years; after he had done all a man could do to keep the home and the woman too. The woman had gone; the home remained with his daughter in it, and now again there was a fight for home and the woman. Memory reproduced the picture of the mother standing just where the daughter now stood, Carmen quiet and well in hand, and himself all shaken with weakness, and with all power gone out of him-- even the power which rage and a murderous soul give. But yet this was different. There was no such shame here as had fallen on him seven years ago. But there was a shame after its kind; and if it were not averted, there was the end of the home, of the prestige, the pride and the hope of "M'sieu' Jean Jacques, philosophe." "What shall not begin here at the Manor Cartier?" she asked with burning cheek. "The shame--it shall not begin here." "What shame, father?" "Of marriage with a Protestant and an actor." "You will not let me marry him?" she persisted stubbornly. Her words seemed to shake him all to pieces. It was as though he was going through the older tragedy all over again. It had possessed him ever since the sight of Carmen's guitar had driven him mad three hours ago. He swayed to and fro, even as he did when his hand left the lever and he let the master-carpenter go free. It was indeed a philosopher under torture, a spirit rocking on its anchor. Just now she had put into words herself what, even in his fear, he had hoped had no place in her mind--marriage with the man. He did not know this daughter of his very well. There was that in her which was far beyond his ken. Thousands of miles away in Spain it had origin, and the stream of tendency came down through long generations, by courses unknown to him. "Marry him--you want to marry him!" he gasped. "You, my Zoe, want to marry that tramp of a Protestant!" Her eyes blazed in anger. Tramp--the man with the air of a young Alexander, with a voice like the low notes of the guitar thrown to the flames! Tramp! "If I love him I ought to marry him," she answered with a kind of calmness, however, though all her body was quivering. Suddenly she came close to her father, a great sympathy welled up in her eyes, and her voice shook. "I do not want to leave you, father, and I never meant to do so. I never thought of it as possible; but now it is different. I want to stay with you; but I want to go with him too." Presently as she seemed to weaken before him, he hardened. "You can't have both," he declared with as much sternness as was possible to him, and with a Norman wilfulness which was not strength. "You shall not marry an actor and a Protestant. You shall not marry a man like that-- never--never--never. If you do, you will never have a penny of mine, and I will never--" "Oh, hush--Mother of Heaven, hush!" she cried. "You shall not put a curse on me too." "What curse?" he burst forth, passion shaking him. "You cursed my mother's baptism. It would be a curse to be told that you would see me no more, that I should be no more part of this home. There has been enough of that curse here. . . . Ah, why--why--" she added with a sudden rush of indignation, "why did you destroy the only thing I had of hers? It was all that was left--her guitar. I loved it so." All at once, with a cry of pain, she turned and ran to the door--entering on the staircase which led to her room. In the doorway she turned. "I can't help it. I can't help it, father. I love him--but I love you too," she cried. "I don't want to go--oh, I don't want to go! Why do you--?" her voice choked; she did not finish the sentence; or if she did, he could not hear. Then she opened the door wide, and disappeared into the darkness of the unlighted stairway, murmuring, "Pity--have pity on me, holy Mother, Vierge Marie!" Then the door closed behind her almost with a bang. After a moment of stupefied inaction Jean Jacques hurried over and threw open the door she had closed. "Zoe--little Zoe, come back and say good- night," he called. But she did not hear, for, with a burst of crying, she had hurried into her own room and shut and locked the door. It was a pity, a measureless pity, as Mary the Mother must have seen, if she could see mortal life at all, that Zoe did not hear him. It might have altered the future. As it was, the Devil of Estrangement might well be content with his night's work. CHAPTER XV BON MARCHE Vilray was having its market day, and everyone was either going to or coming from market, or buying and selling in the little square by the Court House. It was the time when the fruits were coming in, when vegetables were in full yield, when fish from the Beau Cheval were to be had in plenty--from mud-cats and suckers, pike and perch, to rock-bass, sturgeon and even maskinonge. Also it was the time of year when butter and eggs, chickens and ducks were so cheap that it was a humiliation not to buy. There were other things on sale also, not for eating and drinking, but for wear and household use--from pots and pans to rag- carpets and table-linen, from woollen yarn to pictures of the Virgin and little calvaries. These were side by side with dried apples, bottled fruits, jars of maple syrup, and cordials of so generous and penetrating a nature that the currant and elderberry wine by which they were flanked were tipple for babes beside them. Indeed, when a man wanted to forget himself quickly he drank one of these cordials, in preference to the white whisky so commonly imbibed in the parishes. But the cordials being expensive, they were chiefly bought for festive occasions like a wedding, a funeral, a confirmation, or the going away of some young man or young woman to the monastery or the convent to forget the world. Meanwhile, if these spiritual argonauts drank it, they were likely to forget the world on the way to their voluntary prisons. It was very seldom that a man or woman bought the cordials for ordinary consumption, and when that was done, it would almost make a parish talk! Yet cordials of nice brown, of delicate green, of an enticing yellow colour, were here for sale at Vilray market on the morning after the painful scene at the Manor Cartier between Zoe and her father. The market-place was full--fuller than it had been for many a day. A great many people were come in as much to "make fete" as to buy and sell. It was a saint's day, and the bell of St. Monica's had been ringing away cheerfully twice that morning. To it the bell of the Court House had made reply, for a big case was being tried in the court. It was a river- driving and lumber case for which many witnesses had been called; and there were all kinds of stray people in the place--red-shirted river- drivers, a black-coated Methodist minister from Chalfonte, clerks from lumber-firms, and foremen of lumber-yards; and among these was one who greatly loved such a day as this when he could be free from work, and celebrate himself! Other people might celebrate saints dead and gone, and drink to 'La Patrie', and cry "Vive Napoleon!" or "Vive la Republique!" or "Vive la Reine!" though this last toast of the Empire was none too common--but he could only drink with real sincerity to the health of Sebastian Dolores, which was himself. Sebastian Dolores was the pure anarchist, the most complete of monomaniacs. "Here comes the father of the Spanische," remarked Mere Langlois, who presided over a heap of household necessities, chiefly dried fruits, preserves and pickles, as Sebastian Dolores appeared not far away. "Good-for-nothing villain! I pity the poor priest that confesses him." "Who is the Spanische?" asked a young woman from her own stall or stand very near, as she involuntarily arranged her hair and adjusted her waist- belt; for the rakish-looking reprobate, with the air of having been somewhere, was making towards them; and she was young enough to care how she looked when a man, who took notice, was near. Her own husband had been a horse-doctor, farmer, and sportsman of a kind, and she herself was now a farmer of a kind; and she had only resided in the parish during the three years since she had been married to, and buried, Palass Poucette. Old Mere Langlois looked at her companion in merchanting irritably, then she remembered that Virginie Poucette was a stranger, in a way, and was therefore deserving of pity, and she said with compassionate patronage: "Newcomer you--I'd forgotten. Look you then, the Spanische was the wife of my third cousin, M'sieu' Jean Jacques, and--" Virginie Poucette nodded, and the slight frown cleared from her low yet shapely forehead. "Yes, yes, of course I know. I've heard enough. What a fool she was, and M'sieu' Jean Jacques so rich and kind and good- looking! So this is her father--well, well, well!" Palass Poucette's widow leaned forward, and looked intently at Sebastian Dolores, who had stopped near by, and facing a couple of barrels on which were exposed some bottles of cordial and home-made wine. He was addressing himself with cheerful words to the dame that owned the merchandise. "I suppose you think it's a pity Jean Jacques can't get a divorce," said Mere Langlois, rather spitefully to Virginie, for she had her sex's aversion to widows who had had their share of mankind, and were afterwards free to have someone else's share as well. But suddenly repenting, for Virginie was a hard-working widow who had behaved very well for an outsider--having come from Chalfonte beyond the Beau Chevalshe added: "But if he was a Protestant and could get a divorce, and you did marry him, you'd make him have more sense than he's got; for you've a quiet sensible way, and you've worked hard since Palass Poucette died." "Where doesn't he show sense, that M'sieu' Jean Jacques?" the younger woman asked. "Where? Why, with his girl--with Ma'm'selle." "Everybody I ever heard speaks well of Ma'm'selle Zoe," returned the other warmly, for she had a very generous mind and a truthful, sentimental heart. Mere Langlois sniffed, and put her hands on her hips, for she had a daughter of her own; also she was a relation of Jean Jacques, and therefore resented in one way the difference in their social position, while yet she plumed herself on being kin. "Then you'll learn something now you never knew before," she said. "She's been carrying on--there's no other word for it--with an actor fellow--" "Yes, yes, I did hear about him--a Protestant and an Englishman." "Well, then, why do you pretend you don't know--only to hear me talk, is it? Take my word, I'd teach cousin Zoe a lesson with all her education and her two years at the convent. Wasn't it enough that her mother should spoil everything for Jean Jacques, and make the Manor Cartier a place to point the finger at, without her bringing disgrace on the parish too! What happened last night--didn't I hear this morning before I had my breakfast! Didn't I--" She then proceeded to describe the scene in which Jean Jacques had thrown the wrecked guitar of his vanished spouse into the fire. Before she had finished, however, something occurred which swept them into another act of the famous history of Jean Jacques Barbille and his house. She had arrived at the point where Zoe had cried aloud in pain at her father's incendiary act, when there was a great stir at the Court House door which opened on the market-place, and vagrant cheers arose. These were presently followed by a more disciplined fusillade; which presently, in turn, was met by hisses and some raucous cries of resentment. These increased as a man appeared on the steps of the Court House, looked round for a moment in a dazed kind of way, then seeing some friends below who were swarming towards him, gave a ribald cry, and scrambled down the steps towards them. He was the prisoner whose release had suddenly been secured by a piece of evidence which had come as a thunder-clap on judge and jury. Immediately after giving this remarkable evidence the witness--Sebastian Dolores-- had left the court-room. He was now engaged in buying cordials in the market-place--in buying and drinking them; for he had pulled the cork out of a bottle filled with a rich yellow liquid, and had drained half the bottle at a gulp. Presently he offered the remainder to a passing carter, who made a gesture of contempt and passed on, for, to him, white whisky was the only drink worth while. Besides, he disliked Sebastian Dolores. Then, with a flourish, the Spaniard tendered the bottle to Madame Langlois and Palass Poucette's widow, at whose corner of merchandise he had now arrived. Surely there never was a more benign villain and perjurer in the world than Sebastian Dolores! His evidence, given a half-hour before, with every sign of truthfulness, was false. The man--Rocque Valescure--for whom he gave it was no friend of his; but he owned a tavern called "The Red Eagle," a few miles from the works where the Spaniard was employed; also Rocque Valescure's wife set a good table, and Sebastian Dolores was a very liberal feeder; when he was not hungry he was always thirsty. The appeasement of hunger and thirst was now become a problem to him, for his employers at Beauharnais had given him a month's notice because of certain irregularities which had come to their knowledge. Like a wise man Sebastian Dolores had said nothing about this abroad, but had enlarged his credit in every direction, and had then planned this piece of friendly perjury for Rocque Valescure, who was now descending the steps of the Court House to the arms of his friends and amid the execrations of his foes. What the alleged crime was does not matter. It has no vital significance in the history of Jean Jacques Barbille, though it has its place as a swivel on which the future swung. Sebastian Dolores had saved Rocque Valescure from at least three years in jail, and possibly a very heavy fine as well; and this service must have its due reward. Something for nothing was not the motto of Sebastian Dolores; and he confidently looked forward to having a home at "The Red Eagle" and a banker in its landlord. He was no longer certain that he could rely on help from Jean Jacques, to whom he already owed so much. That was why he wanted to make Rocque Valescure his debtor. It was not his way to perjure his soul for nothing. He had done so in Spain--yet not for nothing either. He had saved his head, which was now doing useful work for himself and for a needy fellow-creature. No one could doubt that he had helped a neighbour in great need, and had done it at some expense to his own nerve and brain. None but an expert could have lied as he had done in the witness-box. Also he had upheld his lies with a striking narrative of circumstantiality. He made things fit in "like mortised blocks" as the Clerk of the Court said to Judge Carcasson, when they discussed the infamy afterwards with clear conviction that it was perjury of a shameless kind; for one who would perjure himself to save a man from jail, would also swear a man into the gallows-rope. But Judge Carcasson had not been able to charge the jury in that sense, for there was no effective evidence to rebut the untruthful attestation of the Spaniard. It had to be taken for what it was worth, since the prosecuting attorney could not shake it; and yet to the Court itself it was manifestly false witness. Sebastian Dolores was too wise to throw himself into the arms of his released tavern-keeper here immediately after the trial, or to allow Rocque Valescure a like indiscretion and luxury; for there was a strong law against perjury, and right well Sebastian Dolores knew that old Judge Carcasson would have little mercy on him, in spite of the fact that he was the grandfather of Zoe Barbille. The Judge would probably think that safe custody for his wayward character would be the kindest thing he could do for Zoe. Therefore it was that Sebastian Dolores paid no attention to the progress of the released landlord of "The Red Eagle," though, by a glance out of the corner of his eyes, he made sure that the footsteps of liberated guilt were marching at a tangent from where he was--even to the nearest tavern. It was enough for Dolores that he should watch the result of his good deed from the isolated area where he now was, in the company of two virtuous representatives of domesticity. His time with liberated guilt would come! He chuckled to think how he had provided himself with a refuge against his hour of trouble. That very day he had left his employment, meaning to return no more, securing his full wages through having suddenly become resentful and troublesome, neglectful--and imperative. To avoid further unpleasantness the firm had paid him all his wages; and he had straightway come to Vilray to earn his bed and board by other means than through a pen, a ledger and a gift for figures. It would not be a permanent security against the future, but it would suffice for the moment. It was a rest-place on the road. If the worst came to the worst, there was his grand-daughter and his dear son-in-law whom he so seldom saw--blood was thicker than water, and he would see to it that it was not thinned by neglect. Meanwhile he ogled Palass Poucette's widow with one eye, and talked softly with his tongue to Mere Langlois, as he importuned Madame to "Sip the good cordial in the name of charity to all and malice towards none." "You're a bad man--you, and I want none of your cordials," was Mere Langlois's response. "Malice towards none, indeed! If you and the devil started business in the same street, you'd make him close up shop in a year. I've got your measure, for sure; I have you certain as an arm and a pair of stirrups." "I go about doing good--only good," returned the old sinner with a leer at the young widow, whose fingers he managed to press unseen, as he swung the little bottle of cordial before the eyes of Mere Langlois. He was not wholly surprised when Palass Poucette's widow did not show abrupt displeasure at his bold familiarity. A wild thought flashed into his mind. Might there not be another refuge here--here in Palass Poucette's widow! He was sixty-three, it was true, and she was only thirty-two; but for her to be an old man's darling who had no doubt been a young man's slave, that would surely have its weight with her. Also she owned the farm where she lived; and she was pleasant pasturage--that was the phrase he used in his own mind, even as his eye swept from Mere Langlois to hers in swift, hungry inquiry. He seemed in earnest when he spoke--but that was his way; it had done him service often. "I do good whenever it comes my way to do it," he continued. "I left my work this morning"--he lied of course--"and hired a buggy to bring me over here, all at my own cost, to save a fellow-man. There in the Court House he was sure of prison, with a wife and three small children weeping in 'The Red Eagle'; and there I come at great expense and trouble to tell the truth--before all to tell the truth--and save him and set him free. Yonder he is in the tavern, the work of my hands, a gift to the world from an honest man with a good heart and a sense of justice. But for me there would be a wife and three children in the bondage of shame, sorrow, poverty and misery"--his eyes again ravished the brown eyes of Palass Poucette's widow--"and here again I drink to my own health and to that of all good people--with charity to all and malice towards none!" The little bottle of golden cordial was raised towards Mere Langlois. The fingers of one hand, however, were again seeking those of the comely young widow who was half behind him, when he felt them caught spasmodically away. Before he had time to turn round he heard a voice, saying: "I should have thought that 'With malice to all and charity towards none,' was your motto, Dolores." He knew that voice well enough. He had always had a lurking fear that he would hear it say something devastating to him, from the great chair where its owner sat and dispensed what justice a jury would permit him to do. That devastating something would be agony to one who loved liberty and freedom--had not that ever been his watchword, liberty and freedom to do what he pleased in the world and with the world? Yes, he well knew Judge Carcasson's voice. He would have recognized it in the dark--or under the black cap. "M'sieu' le juge !" he said, even before he turned round and saw the faces of the tiny Judge and his Clerk of the Court. There was a kind of quivering about his mouth, and a startled look in his eyes as he faced the two. But there was the widow of Palass Poucette, and, if he was to pursue and frequent her, something must be done to keep him decently figured in her eye and mind. "It cost me three dollars to come here and save a man from jail to-day, m'sieu' le juge," he added firmly. The Judge pressed the point of his cane against the stomach of the hypocrite and perjurer. "If the Devil and you meet, he will take off his hat to you, my escaped anarchist"-- Dolores started almost violently now--"for you can teach him much, and Ananias was the merest aboriginal to you. But we'll get you--we'll get you, Dolores. You saved that guilty fellow by a careful and remarkable perjury to-day. In a long experience I have never seen a better performance--have you, monsieur?" he added to M. Fille. "But once," was the pointed and deliberate reply. "Ah, when was that?" asked Judge Carcasson, interested. "The year monsieur le juge was ill, and Judge Blaquiere took your place. It was in Vilray at the Court House here." "Ah--ah, and who was the phenomenon--the perfect liar?" asked the Judge with the eagerness of the expert. "His name was Sebastian Dolores," meditatively replied M. Fille. "It was even a finer performance than that of to-day." The Judge gave a little grunt of surprise. "Twice, eh?" he asked. "Yet this was good enough to break any record," he added. He fastened the young widow's eyes. "Madame, you are young, and you have an eye of intelligence. Be sure of this: you can protect yourself against almost anyone except a liar--eh, madame?" he added to Mere Langlois. "I am sure your experience of life and your good sense--" "My good sense would make me think purgatory was hell if I saw him"-- she nodded savagely at Dolores as she said it, for she had seen that last effort of his to take the fingers of Palass Poucette's widow--"if I saw him there, m'sieu' le juge." "We'll have you yet--we'll have you yet, Dolores," said the Judge, as the Spaniard prepared to move on. But, as Dolores went, he again caught the eyes of the young widow. This made him suddenly bold. "'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour,'--that is the commandment, is it not, m'sieu' le juge? You are doing against me what I didn't do in Court to-day. I saved a man from your malice." The crook of the Judge's cane caught the Spaniard's arm, and held him gently. "You're possessed of a devil, Dolores," he said, "and I hope I'll never have to administer justice in your case. I might be more man than judge. But you will come to no good end. You will certainly--" He got no further, for the attention of all was suddenly arrested by a wagon driving furiously round the corner of the Court House. It was a red wagon. In it was Jean Jacques Barbille. His face was white and set; his head was thrust forward, as though looking at something far ahead of him; the pony stallions he was driving were white with sweat, and he had an air of tragic helplessness and panic. Suddenly a child ran across the roadway in front of the ponies, and the wild cry of the mother roused Jean Jacques out of his agonized trance. He sprang to his feet, wrenching the horses backward and aside with deftness and presence of mind. The margin of safety was not more than a foot, but the child was saved. The philosopher of the Manor Cartier seemed to come out of a dream as men and women applauded, and cries arose of "Bravo, M'sieu' Jean Jacques!" At any other time this would have made Jean Jacques nod and smile, or wave a hand, or exclaim in good fellowship. Now, however, his eyes were full of trouble, and the glassiness of the semi-trance leaving them, they shifted restlessly here and there. Suddenly they fastened on the little group of which Judge Carcasson was the centre. He had stopped his horses almost beside them. "Ah!" he said, "ah!" as his eyes rested on the Judge. "Ah!" he again exclaimed, as the glance ran from the Judge to Sebastian Dolores. "Ah, mercy of God!" he added, in a voice which had both a low note and a high note-deep misery and shrill protest in one. Then he seemed to choke, and words would not come, but he kept looking, looking at Sebastian Dolores, as though fascinated and tortured by the sight of him. "What is it, Jean Jacques?" asked the little Clerk of the Court gently, coming forward and laying a hand on the steaming flank of a spent and trembling pony. As though he could not withdraw his gaze from Sebastian Dolores, Jean Jacques did not look at M. Fil1e; but he thrust out the long whip he carried towards the father of his vanished Carmen and his Zoe's grandfather, and with the deliberation of one to whom speaking was like the laceration of a nerve he said: "Zoe's run away--gone--gone!" At that moment Louis Charron, his cousin, at whose house Gerard Fynes had lodged, came down the street galloping his horse. Seeing the red wagon, he made for it, and drew rein. "It's no good, Jean Jacques," he called. "They're married and gone to Montreal--married right under our noses by the Protestant minister at Terrebasse Junction. I've got the telegram here from the stationmaster at Terrebasse. . . . Ah, the villain to steal away like that--only a child--from her own father! Here it is--the telegram. But believe me, an actor, a Protestant and a foreigner--what a devil's mess!" He waved the telegram towards Jean Jacques. "Did he owe you anything, Louis?" asked old Mere Langlois, whose practical mind was alert to find the material status of things. "Not a sou. Well, but he was honest, I'll say that for the rogue and seducer." "Seducer--ah, God choke you with your own tongue!" cried Jean Jacques, turning on Louis Charron with a savage jerk of the whip he held. "She is as pure--" "It is no marriage, of course!" squeaked a voice from the crowd. "It'll be all right among the English, won't it, monsieur le juge?" asked the gentle widow of Palass Poucette, whom the scene seemed to rouse out of her natural shyness. "Most sure, madame, most sure," answered the Judge. "It will be all right among the English, and it is all right among the French so far as the law is concerned. As for the Church, that is another matter. But-- but see," he added addressing Louis Charron, "does the station-master say what place they took tickets for?" "Montreal and Winnipeg," was the reply. "Here it is in the telegram. Winnipeg--that's as English as London." "Winnipeg--a thousand miles!" moaned Jean Jacques. With the finality which the tickets for Winnipeg signified, the shrill panic emotion seemed to pass from him. In its mumbling, deadening force it was like a sentence on a prisoner. As many eyes were on Sebastian Dolores as on Jean Jacques. "It's the bad blood that was in her," said a farmer with a significant gesture towards Sebastian Dolores. "A little bad blood let out would be a good thing," remarked a truculent river-driver, who had given evidence directly contrary to that given by Sebastian Dolores in the trial just concluded. There was a savage look in his eye. Sebastian Dolores heard, and he was not the man to invite trouble. He could do no good where he was, and he turned to leave the market-place; but in doing so he sought the eye of Virginie Poucette, who, however, kept her face at an angle from him, as she saw Mere Langlois sharply watching her. "Grandfather, mother and daughter, all of a piece!" said a spiteful woman, as Sebastian Dolores passed her. The look he gave her was not the same as that he had given to Palass Poucette's widow. If it had been given by a Spanish inquisitor to a heretic, little hope would have remained in the heretic's heart. Yet there was a sad patient look on his face, as though he was a martyr. He had no wish to be a martyr; but he had a feeling that for want of other means of expressing their sympathy with Jean Jacques, these rough people might tar and feather him at least; though it was only his misfortune that those sprung from his loins had such adventurous spirits! Sebastian Dolores was not without a real instinct regarding things. What was in his mind was also passing through that of the river-driver and a few of his friends, and they carefully watched the route he was taking. Jean Jacques prepared to depart. He had ever loved to be the centre of a picture, but here was a time when to be in the centre was torture. Eyes of morbid curiosity were looking at the open wounds of his heart-ragged wounds made by the shrapnel of tragedy and treachery, not the clean wounds got in a fair fight, easily healed. For the moment at least the little egoist was a mere suffering soul--an epitome of shame, misery and disappointment. He must straightway flee the place where he was tied to the stake of public curiosity and scorn. He drew the reins tighter, and the horses straightened to depart. Then it was that old Judge Carcasson laid a hand on his knee. "Come, come," he said to the dejected and broken little man, "where is your philosophy?" Jean Jacques looked at the Judge, as though with a new-born suspicion that henceforth the world would laugh at him, and that Judge Carcasson was setting the fashion; but seeing a pitying moisture in the other's eyes, he drew himself up, set his jaw, and calling on all the forces at his command, he said: "Moi je suis philosophe!" His voice frayed a little on the last word, but his head was up now. The Clerk of the Court would have asked to accompany him to the Manor Cartier, but he was not sure that Jean Jacques would like it. He had a feeling that Jean Jacques would wish to have his dark hour alone. So he remained silent, and Jean Jacques touched his horses with the whip. After starting, however, and having been followed for a hundred yards or so by the pitying murmurs and a few I-told-you-so's and revilings for having married as he did, Jean Jacques stopped the ponies. Standing up in the red wagon he looked round for someone whom, for a moment, he did not see in the slowly shifting crowd. Philosophy was all very well, and he had courageously given his allegiance to it, or a formula of it, a moment before; but there was something deeper and rarer still in the little man's soul. His heart hungered for the two women who had been the joy and pride of his life, even when he had been lost in the business of the material world. They were more to him than he had ever known; they were parts of himself which had slowly developed, as the features and characteristics of ancestors gradually emerge and are emphasized in a descendant as his years increase. Carmen and Zoe were more a part of himself now than they had ever been. They were gone, the living spirits of his home. Anything that reminded him of them, despite the pain of the reminder, was dear to him. Love was greater than the vengeful desire of injured human nature. His eyes wandered over the people, over the market. At last he saw what he was looking for. He called. A man turned. Jean Jacques beckoned to him. He came eagerly, he hurried to the red wagon. "Come home with me," said Jean Jacques. The words were addressed to Sebastian Dolores, who said to himself that this was a refuge surer than "The Red Eagle," or the home of the widow Poucette. He climbed in beside Jean Jacques with a sigh of content. "Ah, but that--but that is the end of our philosopher," said Judge Carcasson sadly to the Clerk of the Court, as with amazement he saw this catastrophe. "Alas! if I had only asked to go with him, as I wished to do!" responded M. Fille. "There, but a minute ago, it was in my mind," he added with a look of pain. "You missed your chance, falterer," said the Judge severely. "If you have a good thought, act on it--that is the golden rule. You missed your chance. It will never come again. He has taken the wrong turning, our unhappy Jean Jacques." "Monsieur--oh, monsieur, do not shut the door in the face of God like that!" said the shocked little master of the law. "Those two together --it may be only for a moment." "Ah, no, my little owl, Jean Jacques will wind the boa-constrictor round his neck like a collar, all for love of those he has lost," answered the Judge with emotion; and he caught M. Fille's arm in the companionship of sorrow. In silence these two watched the red wagon till it was out of sight. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: He hated irony in anyone else I said I was not falling in love--I am in love If you have a good thought, act on it Philosophers are often stupid in human affairs The beginning of the end of things was come for him THE MONEY MASTER By Gilbert Parker EPOCH THE FOURTH XVI. MISFORTUNES COME NOT SINGLY XVII. HIS GREATEST ASSET XVIII. JEAN JACQUES HAS AN OFFER XIX. SEBASTIAN DOLORES DOES NOT SLEEP XX. "AU 'VOIR, M'SIEU' JEAN JACQUES" XXI. IF SHE HAD KNOWN IN TIME CHAPTER XVI MISFORTUNES COME NOT SINGLY Judge Carcasson was right. For a year after Zoe's flight Jean Jacques wrapped Sebastian Dolores round his neck like a collar, and it choked him like a boaconstrictor. But not Sebastian Dolores alone did that. When things begin to go wrong in the life of a man whose hands have held too many things, the disorder flutters through all the radii of his affairs, and presently they rattle away from the hub of his control. So it was with Jean Jacques. To take his reprobate father-in-law to his lonely home would have brought him trouble in any case; but as things were, the Spaniard became only the last straw which broke his camel's back. And what a burden his camel carried--flour-mill, saw-mill, ash- factory, farms, a general store, lime-kilns, agency for lightning-rods and insurance, cattle-dealing, the project for the new cheese-factory, and money-lending! Money-lending? It seemed strange that Jean Jacques should be able to lend money, since he himself had to borrow, and mortgage also, from time to time. When things began to go really wrong with him financially, he mortgaged his farms, his flour-mill, and saw-mill, and then lent money on other mortgages. This he did because he had always lent money, and it was a habit so associated with his prestige, that he tied himself up in borrowing and lending and counter-mortgaging till, as the saying is, "a Philadelphia lawyer" could not have unravelled his affairs without having been born again in the law. That he was able to manipulate his tangled affairs, while keeping the confidence of those from whom he borrowed, and the admiration of those to whom he lent, was evidence of his capacity. "Genius of a kind" was what his biggest creditor called it later. After a personal visit to St. Saviour's, this biggest creditor and financial potentate--M. Mornay--said that if Jean Jacques had been started right and trained right, he would have been a "general in the financial field, winning big battles." M. Mornay chanced to be a friend of Judge Carcasson, and when he visited Vilray he remembered that the Judge had spoken often of his humble but learned friend, the Clerk of the Court, and of his sister. So M. Mornay made his way from the office of the firm of avocats whom he had instructed in his affairs with Jean Jacques, to that of M. Fille. Here he was soon engaged in comment on the master-miller and philosopher. "He has had much trouble, and no doubt his affairs have suffered," remarked M. Fille cautiously, when the ice had been broken and the Big Financier had referred casually to the difficulties among which Jean Jacques was trying to maintain equilibrium; "but he is a man who can do things too hard for other men." The Big Financier lighted another cigar and blew away several clouds of smoke before he said in reply, "Yes, I know he has had family trouble again, but that is a year ago, and he has had a chance to get another grip of things." "He did not sit down and mope," explained M. Fille. "He was at work the next day after his daughter's flight just the same as before. He is a man of great courage. Misfortune does not paralyse him." M. Mornay's speech was of a kind which came in spurts, with pauses of thought between, and the pause now was longer than usual. "Paralysis--certainly not," he said at last. "Physical activity is one of the manifestations of mental, moral, and even physical shock and injury. I've seen a man with a bullet in him run a half-mile--anywhere; I've seen a man ripped up by a crosscut-saw hold himself together, and walk--anywhere--till he dropped. Physical and nervous activity is one of the forms which shattered force takes. I expect that your 'M'sieu' Jean Jacques' has been busier this last year than ever before in his life. He'd have to be; for a man who has as many irons in the fire as he has, must keep running from bellows to bellows when misfortune starts to damp him down." The Clerk of the Court sighed. He realized the significance of what his visitor was saying. Ever Since Zoe had gone, Jean Jacques had been for ever on the move, for ever making hay on which the sun did not shine. Jean Jacques' face these days was lined and changeful. It looked unstable and tired--as though disturbing forces were working up to the surface out of control. The brown eyes, too, were far more restless than they had ever been since the Antoine was wrecked, and their owner returned with Carmen to the Manor Cartier. But the new restlessness of the eyes was different from the old. That was a mobility impelled by an active, inquisitive soul, trying to observe what was going on in the world, and to make sure that its possessor was being seen by the world. This activity was that of a mind essentially concerned to find how many ways it could see for escape from a maze of things; while his vanity was taking new forms. It was always anxious to discover if the world was trying to know how he was taking the blows of fate and fortune. He had been determined that, whatever came, it should not see him paralysed or broken. As M. Fille only nodded his head in sorrowful assent, the Big Financier became more explicit. He was determined to lose nothing by Jean Jacques, and he was prepared to take instant action when it was required; but he was also interested in the man who might have done really powerful things in the world, had he gone about them in the right way. "M. Barbille has had some lawsuits this year, is it not so?" he asked. "Two of importance, monsieur, and one is not yet decided," answered M. Fille. "He lost those suits of importance?" "That is so, monsieur." "And they cost him six thousand dollars--and over?" The Big Financier seemed to be pressing towards a point. "Something over that amount, monsieur." "And he may lose the suit now before the Courts?" "Who can tell, monsieur!" vaguely commented the little learned official. M. Mornay was not to be evaded. "Yes, yes, but the case as it stands-- to you who are wise in experience of legal affairs, does it seem at all a sure thing for him?" "I wish I could say it was, monsieur," sadly answered the other. The Big Financier nodded vigorously. "Exactly. Nothing is so unproductive as the law. It is expensive whether you win or lose, and it is murderously expensive when you do lose. You will observe, I know, that your Jean Jacques is a man who can only be killed once--eh?" "Monsieur?" M. Fille really did not grasp this remark. M. Mornay's voice became precise. "I will explain. He has never created; he has only developed what has been created. He inherited much of what he has or has had. His designs were always affected by the fact that he had never built from the very bottom. When he goes to pieces--" "Monsieur--to pieces!" exclaimed the Clerk of the Court painfully. "Well, put it another way. If he is broken financially, he will never come up again. Not because of his age--I lost a second fortune at fifty, and have a third ready to lose at sixty--but because the primary initiative won't be in him. He'll say he has lost, and that there's an end to it all. His philosophy will come into play--just at the last. It will help him in one way and harm him in another." "Ah, then you know about his philosophy, monsieur?" queried M. Fille. Was Jean Jacques' philosophy, after all, to be a real concrete asset of his life sooner or later? The Big Financier smiled, and turned some coins over in his pocket rather loudly. Presently he said: "The first time I ever saw him he treated me to a page of Descartes. It cost him one per cent. I always charge a man for talking sentiment to me in business hours. I had to listen to him, and he had to pay me for listening. I've no doubt his general yearly expenditure has been increased for the same reason--eh, Maitre Fille? He has done it with others--yes?" M. Fille waved a hand in deprecation, and his voice had a little acidity as he replied: "Ah, monsieur, what can we poor provincials do--any of us--in dealing with men like you, philosophy or no philosophy? You get us between the upper and the nether mill stones. You are cosmopolitan; M. Jean Jacques Barbille is a provincial; and you, because he has soul enough to forget business for a moment and to speak of things that matter more than money and business, you grind him into powder." M. Mornay shook his head and lighted his cigar again. "There you are wrong, Maitre Fille. It is bad policy to grind to powder, or grind at all, men out of whom you are making money. It is better to keep them from between the upper and nether mill-stones. "I have done so with your Barbille. I could give him such trouble as would bring things crashing down upon him at once, if I wanted to be merely vicious in getting my own; but that would make it impossible for me to meet at dinner my friend Judge Carcasson. So, as long as I can, I will not press him. But I tell you that the margin of safety on which he is moving now is too narrow--scarce a foot-hold. He has too much under construction in the business of his life, and if one stone slips out, down may come the whole pile. He has stopped building the cheese- factory--that represents sheer loss. The ash-factory is to close next week, the saw-mill is only paying its way, and the flour-mill and the farms, which have to sustain the call of his many interests, can't stand the drain. Also, he has several people heavily indebted to him, and if they go down--well, it depends on the soundness of the security he holds. If they listened to him talk philosophy, encouraged him to do it, and told him they liked it, when the bargain was being made, the chances are the security is inadequate." The Clerk of the Court bridled up. "Monsieur, you are very hard on a man who for twenty-five years has been a figure and a power in this part of the province. You sneer at one who has been a benefactor to the place where he lives; who has given with the right hand and the left; whose enterprise has been a source of profit to many; and who has got a savage reward for the acts of a blameless and generous life. You know his troubles, monsieur, and we who have seen him bear them with fortitude and Christian philosophy, we resent--" "You need resent nothing, Maitre Fille," interrupted the Big Financier, not unkindly. "What I have said has been said to his friend and the friend of my own great friend, Judge Carcasson; and I am only anxious that he should be warned by someone whose opinions count with him; whom he can trust--" "But, monsieur, alas!" broke in the Clerk of the Court, "that is the trouble; he does not select those he can trust. He is too confiding. He believes those who flatter him, who impose on his good heart. It has always been so." "I judge it is so still in the case of Monsieur Dolores, his daughter's grandfather?" the Big Financier asked quizzically. "It is so, monsieur," replied M. Fille. "The loss of his daughter shook him even more than the flight of his wife; and it is as though he could not live without that scoundrel near him--a vicious man, who makes trouble wherever he goes. He was a cause of loss to M. Barbille years ago when he managed the ash-factory; he is very dangerous to women--even now he is a danger to the future of a young widow" (he meant the widow of Palass Poucette); "and he has caused a scandal by perjury as a witness, and by the consequences--but I need not speak of that here. He will do Jean Jacques great harm in the end, of that I am sure. The very day Mademoiselle Zoe left the Manor Cartier to marry the English actor, Jean Jacques took that Spanish bad-lot to his home; and there he stays, and the old friends go--the old friends go; and he does not seem to miss them." There was something like a sob in M. Fille's voice. He had loved Zoe in a way that in a mother would have meant martyrdom, if necessary, and in a father would have meant sacrifice when needed; and indeed he had sacrificed both time and money to find Zoe. He had even gone as far as Winnipeg on the chance of finding her, making that first big journey in the world, which was as much to him in all ways as a journey to Bagdad would mean to most people of M. Mornay's world. Also he had spent money since in corresponding with lawyers in the West whom he engaged to search for her; but Zoe had never been found. She had never written but one letter to Jean Jacques since her flight. This letter said, in effect, that she would come back when her husband was no longer "a beggar" as her father had called him, and not till then. It was written en route to Winnipeg, at the dictation of Gerard Fynes, who had a romantic view of life and a mistaken pride, but some courage too--the courage of love. "He thinks his daughter will come back--yes?" asked M. Mornay. "Once he said to me that he was sorry there was no lady to welcome me at the Manor Cartier, but that he hoped his daughter would yet have the honour. His talk is quite spacious and lofty at times, as you know." "So--that is so, monsieur . . . Mademoiselle Zoe's room is always ready for her. At time of Noel he sent cards to all the families of the parish who had been his friends, as from his daughter and himself; and when people came to visit at the Manor on New Year's Day, he said to each and all that his daughter regretted she could not arrive in time from the West to receive them; but that next year she would certainly have the pleasure." "Like the light in the window for the unreturning sailor," somewhat cynically remarked the Big Financier. "Did many come to the Manor on that New Year's Day?" "But yes, many, monsieur. Some came from kindness, and some because they were curious--" "And Monsieur Dolores?" The lips of the Clerk of the Court curled, "He went about with a manner as soft as that of a young cure. Butter would not melt in his mouth. Some of the women were sorry for him, until they knew he had given one of Jean Jacques' best bear-skin rugs to Madame Palass Poucette for a New Year's gift." The Big Financier laughed cheerfully. "It's an old way to popularity-- being generous with other people's money. That is why I am here. The people that spend your Jean Jacques' money will be spending mine too, if I don't take care." M. Fille noted the hard look which now settled in M. Mornay's face, and it disturbed him. He rose and leaned over the table towards his visitor anxiously. "Tell me, if you please, monsieur, is there any real and immediate danger of the financial collapse of Jean Jacques?" The other regarded M. Fille with a look of consideration. He liked this Clerk of the Court, but he liked Jean Jacques for the matter of that, and away now from the big financial arena where he usually worked, his natural instincts had play. He had come to St. Saviour's with a bigger thing in his mind than Jean Jacques and his affairs; he had come on the matter of a railway, and had taken Jean Jacques on the way, as it were. The scheme for the railway looked very promising to him, and he was in good humour; so that all he said about Jean Jacques was free from that general irritation of spirit which has sacrificed many a small man on a big man's altar. He saw the agitation he had caused, and he almost repented of what he had already said; yet he had acted with a view to getting M. Fille to warn Jean Jacques. "I repeat what I said," he now replied. "Monsieur Jean Jacques' affairs are too nicely balanced. A little shove one way or another and over goes the whole caboose. If anyone here has influence over him, it would be a kindness to use it. That case before the Court of Appeal, for instance; he'd be better advised to settle it, if there is still time. One or two of the mortgages he holds ought to be foreclosed, so that he may get out of them all the law will let him. He ought to pouch the money that's owing him; he ought to shave away his insurance, his lightning-rod, and his horsedealing business; and he ought to sell his farms and his store, and concentrate on the flour-mill and the saw-mill. He has had his warnings generally from my lawyers, but what he wants most is the gentle hand to lead him; and I should think that yours, M. Fille, is the hand the Almighty would choose if He was concerned with what happens at St. Saviour's and wanted an agent." The Clerk of the Court blushed greatly. This was a very big man indeed in the great commercial world, and flattery from him had unusual significance; but he threw out his hands with a gesture of helplessness, and said: "Monsieur, if I could be of use I would; but he has ceased to listen to me; he--" He got no further, for there was a sharp knock at the street door of the outer office, and M. Fille hastened to the other room. After a moment he came back, a familiar voice following him. "It is Monsieur Barbille, monsieur," M. Fille said quietly, but with apprehensive eyes. "Well--he wants to see me?" asked M. Mornay. "No, no, monsieur. It would be better if he did not see you. He is in some agitation." "Fille! Maitre Fille--be quick now," called Jean Jacques' voice from the other room. "What did I say, monsieur?" asked the Big Financier. "The mind that's received a blow must be moving--moving; the man with the many irons must be flying from bellows to bellows!" "Come, come, there's no time to lose," came Jean Jacques' voice again, and the handle of the door of their room turned. M. Fille's hand caught the handle. "Excuse me, Monsieur Barbille, --a minute please," he persisted almost querulously. "Be good enough to keep your manners . . . monsieur!" he added to the Financier, "if you do not wish to speak with him, there is a door"--he pointed--"which will let you into the side-street." "What is his trouble?" asked M. Mornay. M. Fille hesitated, then said reflectively: "He has lost his case in the Appeal Court, monsieur; also, his cousin, Auguste Charron, who has been working the Latouche farm, has flitted, leaving--" "Leaving Jean Jacques to pay unexpected debts?" "So, monsieur." "Then I can be of no use, I fear," remarked M. Mornay dryly. "Fille! Fille !" came the voice of Jean Jacques insistently from the room. "And so I will say au revoir, Monsieur Fille," continued the Big Financier. A moment later the great man was gone, and M. Fille was alone with the philosopher of the Manor Cartier. "Well, well, why do you keep me waiting! Who was it in there--anyone that's concerned with my affairs?" asked Jean Jacques. In these days he was sensitive when there was no cause, and he was credulous where he ought to be suspicious. The fact that the little man had held the door against him made him sure that M. Fille had not wished him to see the departed visitor. "Come, out with it--who was it making fresh trouble for me?" persisted Jean Jacques. "No one making trouble for you, my friend," answered the Clerk of the Court, "but someone who was trying to do you a good turn." "He must have been a stranger then," returned Jean Jacques bitterly. "Who was it?" M. Fille, after an instant's further hesitation, told him. "Oh, him--M. Momay !" exclaimed Jean Jacques, with a look of relief, his face lighting. "That's a big man with a most capable and far-reaching mind. He takes a thing in as the ocean mouths a river. If I had had men like that to deal with all my life, what a different ledger I'd be balancing now! Descartes, Kant, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Hegel--he has an ear for them all. That is the intellectual side of him; and in business"--he threw up a hand--"there he views the landscape from the mountain-top. He has vision, strategy, executive. He is Napoleon and Anacreon in one. He is of the builders on the one hand, of the Illuminati and the Encyclopedistes on the other." Even the Clerk of the Court, with his circumscribed range of thought and experience, in that moment saw Jean Jacques as he really was. Here was a man whose house of life was beginning to sway from an earthquake; who had been smitten in several deadly ways, and was about to receive buffetings beyond aught he had yet experienced, philosophizing on the tight-rope-- Blondin and Plato in one. Yet sardonically piteous as it was, the incident had shown Jean Jacques with the germ of something big in him. He had recognized in M. Mornay, who could level him to the dust tomorrow financially, a master of the world's affairs, a prospector of life's fields, who would march fearlessly beyond the farthest frontiers into the unknown. Jean Jacques' admiration of the lion who could, and would, slay him was the best tribute to his own character. M. Fille's eyes moistened as he realized it; and he knew that nothing he could say or do would make this man accommodate his actions to the hard rules of the business of life; he must for ever be applying to them conceptions of a half-developed mind. "Quite so, quite so, Jean Jacques," M. Fille responded gently, "but" --here came a firmer note to his voice, for he had taken to heart the lesson M. Mornay had taught him, and he was determined to do his duty now when the opportunity was in his hand--"but you have got to deal with things as they are; not as they might have been. If you cannot have the great men you have to deal with the little men like me. You have to prove yourself bigger than the rest of us by doing things better. A man doesn't fail only because of others, but also because of himself. You were warned that the chances were all against you in the case that's just been decided, yet you would go on; you were warned that your cousin, Auguste Charron, was in debt, and that his wife was mad to get away from the farm and go West, yet you would take no notice. Now he has gone, and you have to pay, and your case has gone against you in the Appellate Court besides. . . . I will tell you the truth, my friend, even if it cuts me to the heart. You have not kept your judgment in hand; you have gone ahead like a bull at a gate; and you pay the price. You listen to those who flatter, and on those who would go through fire and water for you, you turn your back--on those who would help you in your hour of trouble, in your dark day." Jean Jacques drew himself up with a gesture, impatient, masterful and forbidding. "I have fought my fight alone in the dark day; I have not asked for any one's help," he answered. "I have wept on no man's shoulder. I have been mauled by the claws of injury and shame, and I have not flinched. I have healed my own wounds, and I wear my scars without--" He stopped, for there came a sharp rat-tat-tat at the door which opened into the street. Somehow the commonplace, trivial interruption produced on both a strange, even startling effect. It suddenly produced in their minds a feeling of apprehension, as though there was whispered in their ears, "Something is going to happen--beware!" Rat-tat-tat! The two men looked at each other. The same thought was in the mind of both. Jean Jacques clutched at his beard nervously, then with an effort he controlled himself. He took off his hat as though he was about to greet some important person, or to receive sentence in a court. Instinctively he felt the little book of philosophy which he always carried now in his breast-pocket, as a pietist would finger his beads in moments of fear or anxiety. The Clerk of the Court passed his thin hand over his hair, as he was wont to do in court when the Judge began his charge to the Jury, and then with an action more impulsive than was usual with him, he held out his hand, and Jean Jacques grasped it. Something was bringing them together just when it seemed that, in the storm of Jean Jacques' indignation, they were about to fall apart. M. Fille's eyes said as plainly as words could do, "Courage, my friend!" Rat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat! The knocking was sharp and imperative now. The Clerk of the Court went quickly forward and threw open the door. There stepped inside the widow of Palass Poucette. She had a letter in her hand. "M'sieu', pardon, if I intrude," she said to M. Fille; "but I heard that M'sieu' Jean Jacques was here. I have news for him." "News!" repeated Jean Jacques, and he looked like a man who was waiting for what he feared to hear. "They told me at the post-office that you were here. I got the letter only a quarter of an hour ago, and I thought I would go at once to the Manor Cartier and tell M'sieu' Jean Jacques what the letter says. I wanted to go to the Manor Cartier for something else as well, but I will speak of that by and by. It is the letter now." She pulled off first one glove and then the other, still holding the letter, as though she was about to perform some ceremony. "It was a good thing I found out that M'sieu' Jean Jacques was here. It saves a four- mile drive," she remarked. "The news--ah, nom de Dieu, the slowness of the woman--like a river going uphill!" exclaimed Jean Jacques, who was finding it hard to still the trembling of his limbs. The widow of Palass Poucette flushed, but she had some sense in her head, and she realized that Jean Jacques was a little unbalanced at the moment. Indeed, Jean Jacques was not so old that she would have found it difficult to take a well-defined and warm interest in him, were circumstances propitious. She held out the letter to him at once. "It is from my sister in the West--at Shilah," she explained. "There is nothing in it you can't read, and most of it concerns you." Jean Jacques took the letter, but he could not bring himself to read it, for Virginie Poucette's manner was not suggestive of happy tidings. After an instant's hesitation he handed the letter to M. Fille, who pressed his lips with an air of determination, and put on his glasses. Jean Jacques saw the face of the Clerk of the Court flush and then turn pale as he read the letter. "There, be quick!" he said before M. Fille had turned the first page. Then the widow of Palass Poucette came to him and, in a simple harmless way she had, free from coquetry or guile, stood beside him, took his hand and held it. He seemed almost unconscious of her act, but his fingers convulsively tightened on hers; while she reflected that here was one who needed help sorely; here was a good, warm-hearted man on whom a woman could empty out affection like rain and get a good harvest. She really was as simple as a child, was Virginie Poucette, and even in her acquaintance with Sebastian Dolores, there had only been working in her the natural desire of a primitive woman to have a man saying that which would keep alive in her the things that make her sing as she toils; and certainly Virginie toiled late and early on her farm. She really was concerned for Jean Jacques. Both wife and daughter had taken flight, and he was alone and in trouble. At this moment she felt she would like to be a sister to him--she was young enough to be his daughter almost. Her heart was kind. "Now!" said Jean Jacques at last, as the Clerk of the Court's eyes reached the end of the last page. "Now, speak! It is--it is my Zoe?" "It is our Zoe," answered M. Fille. "Figure de Christ, what do you wait for--she is not dead?" exclaimed Jean Jacques with a courage which made him set his feet squarely. The Clerk of the Court shook his head and began. "She is alive. Madame Poucette's sister saw her by chance. Zoe was on her way up the Saskatchewan River to the Peace River country with her husband. Her husband's health was bad. He had to leave the stage in the United States where he had gone after Winnipeg. The doctors said he must live the open-air life. He and Zoe were going north, to take a farm somewhere." "Somewhere! Somewhere!" murmured Jean Jacques. The farther away from Jean Jacques the better--that is what she thinks." "No, you are wrong, my friend," rejoined M. Fille. "She said to Madame Poucette's sister"--he held up the letter--"that when they had proved they could live without anybody's help they would come back to see you. Zoe thought that, having taken her life in her own hands, she ought to justify herself before she asked your forgiveness and a place at your table. She felt that you could only love her and be glad of her, if her man was independent of you. It is a proud and sensitive soul--but there it is!" "It is romance, it is quixotism--ah, heart of God, what quixotism!" exclaimed Jean Jacques. "She gets her romance and quixotism from Jean Jacques Barbille," retorted the Clerk of the Court. "She does more feeling than thinking--like you." Jean Jacques' heart was bleeding, but he drew himself up proudly, and caught his hand away from the warm palm of Poucette's widow. As his affairs crumbled his pride grew more insistent. M. Fille had challenged his intellect--his intellect! "My life has been a procession of practical things," he declared oracularly. "I have been a man of business who designs. I am no dreamer. I think. I act. I suffer. I have been the victim of romance, not its interpreter. Mercy of God, what has broken my life, what but romance--romance, first with one and then with another! More feeling than thinking, Maitre Fille--you say that? Why the Barbilles have ever in the past built up life on a basis of thought and action, and I have added philosophy--the science of thought and act. Jean Jacques Barbille has been the man of design and the man of action also. Don Quixote was a fool, a dreamer, but Jean Jacques is no Don Quixote. He is a man who has done things, but also he is a man who has been broken on the wheel of life. He is a man whose heart-strings have been torn--" He had worked himself up into a fit of eloquence and revolt. He was touched by the rod of desperation, which makes the soul protest that it is right when it knows that it is wrong. Suddenly, breaking off his speech, he threw up his hands and made for the door. "I will fight it out alone!" he declared with rough emotion, and at the door he turned towards them again. He looked at them both as though he would dare them to contradict him. The restless fire of his eyes seemed to dart from one to the other. "That's the way it is," said the widow of Palass Poucette coming quickly forward to him. "It's always the way. We must fight our battles alone, but we don't have to bear the wounds alone. In the battle you are alone, but the hand to heal the wounds may be another's. You are a philosopher --well, what I speak is true, isn't it?" Virginie had said the one thing which could have stayed the tide of Jean Jacques' pessimism and broken his cloud of gloom. She appealed to him in the tune of an old song. The years and the curses of years had not dispelled the illusion that he was a philosopher. He stopped with his hand on the door. "That's so, without doubt that's so," he said. "You have stumbled on a truth of life, madame." Suddenly there came into his look something of the yearning and hunger which the lonely and forsaken feel when they are not on the full tide of doing. It was as though he must have companionship, in spite of his brave announcement that he must fight his fight alone. He had been wounded in the battle, and here was one who held out the hand of healing to him. Never since his wife had left him the long lonely years ago had a woman meant anything to him except as one of a race; but in this moment here a woman had held his hand, and he could feel still the warm palm which had comforted his own agitated fingers. Virginie Poucette saw, and she understood what was passing in his mind. Yet she did not see and understand all by any means; and it is hard to tell what further show of fire there might have been, but that the Clerk of the Court was there, saying harshly under his breath, "The huzzy! The crafty huzzy!" The Clerk of the Court was wrong. Virginie was merely sentimental, not intriguing or deceitful; for Jean Jacques was not a widower--and she was an honest woman and genuinely tender-hearted. "I'm coming to the Manor Cartier to-morrow," Virginie continued. "I have a rug of yours. By mistake it was left at my house by M'sieu' Dolores." "You needn't do that. I will call at your place tomorrow for it," replied Jean Jacques almost eagerly. "I told M'sieu' Dolores to-day never to enter my house again. I didn't know it was your rug. It was giving away your property, not his own," she hurriedly explained, and her face flushed. "That is the Spanish of it," said Jean Jacques bitterly. His eyes were being opened in many directions to-day. M. Fille was in distress. Jean Jacques had had a warning about Sebastian Dolores, but here was another pit into which he might fall, the pit digged by a widow, who, no doubt, would not hesitate to marry a divorced Catholic philosopher, if he could get a divorce by hook or by crook. Jean Jacques had said that he was going to Virginie Poucette's place the next day. That was as bad as it could be; yet there was this to the good, that it was to-morrow and not to-day; and who could tell what might happen between to-day and to-morrow! A moment later the three were standing outside the office in the street. As Jean Jacques climbed into his red wagon, Virginie Poucette's eyes were attracted to the northern sky where a reddish glow appeared, and she gave an exclamation of surprise. "That must be a fire," she said, pointing. "A bit of pine-land probably," said M. Fille--with anxiety, however, for the red glow lay in the direction of St. Saviour's where were the Manor Cartier and Jean Jacques' mills. Maitre Fille was possessed of a superstition that all the things which threaten a man's life to wreck it, operate awhile in their many fields before they converge like an army in one field to deliver the last attack on their victim. It would not have seemed strange to him, if out of the night a voice of the unseen had said that the glow in the sky came from the Manor Cartier. This very day three things had smitten Jean Jacques, and, if three, why not four or five, or fifty! With a strange fascination Jean Jacques' eyes were fastened on the glow. He clucked to his horses, and they started jerkily away. M. Fille and the widow Poucette said good-bye to him, but he did not hear, or if he heard, he did not heed. His look was set upon the red reflection which widened in the sky and seemed to grow nearer and nearer. The horses quickened their pace. He touched them with the whip, and they went faster. The glow increased as he left Vilray behind. He gave the horses the whip again sharply, and they broke into a gallop. Yet his eyes scarcely left the sky. The crimson glow drew him, held him, till his brain was afire also. Jean Jacques had a premonition and a conviction which was even deeper than the imagination of M. Fille. In Vilray, behind him, the telegraph clerk was in the street shouting to someone to summon the local fire-brigade to go to St. Saviour's. "What is it--what is it?" asked M. Fille of the telegraph clerk in marked agitation. "It's M'sieu' Jean Jacques' flour-mill," was the reply. Wagons and buggies and carts began to take the road to the Manor Cartier; and Maitre Fille went also with the widow of Palass Poucette. CHAPTER XVII HIS GREATEST ASSET Jean Jacques did not go to the house of the widow of Palass Poucette "next day" as he had proposed: and she did not expect him. She had seen his flour-mill burned to the ground on the-evening when they met in the office of the Clerk of the evening Court, when Jean Jacques had learned that his Zoe had gone into farther and farther places away from him. Perhaps Virginie Poucette never had shed as many tears in any whole year of her life as she did that night, not excepting the year Palass Poucette died, and left her his farm and seven horses, more or less sound, and a threshing-machine in good condition. The woman had a rare heart and there was that about Jean Jacques which made her want to help him. She had no clear idea as to how that could be done, but she had held his hand at any rate, and he had seemed the better for it. Virginie had only an objective view of things; and if she was not material, still she could best express herself through the medium of the senses. There were others besides her who shed tears also--those who saw Jean Jacques' chief asset suddenly disappear in flame and smoke and all his other assets become thereby liabilities of a kind; and there were many who would be the poorer in the end because of it. If Jean Jacques went down, he probably would not go alone. Jean Jacques had done a good fire- insurance business over a course of years, but somehow he had not insured himself as heavily as he ought to have done; and in any case the fire- policy for the mill was not in his own hands. It was in the safe-keeping of M. Mornay at Montreal, who had warned M. Fille of the crisis in the money-master's affairs on the very day that the crisis came. No one ever knew how it was that the mill took fire, but there was one man who had more than a shrewd suspicion, though there was no occasion for mentioning it. This was Sebastian Dolores. He had not set the mill afire. That would have been profitable from no standpoint, and he had no grudge against Jean Jacques. Why should he have a grudge? Jean Jacques' good fortune, as things were, made his own good fortune; for he ate and drank and slept and was clothed at his son-in-law's expense. But he guessed accurately who had set the mill on fire, and that it was done accidentally. He remembered that a man who smoked bad tobacco which had to be lighted over and over again, threw a burning match down after applying it to his pipe. He remembered that there was a heap of flour- bags near where the man stood when the match was thrown down; and that some loose strings for tying were also in a pile beside the bags. So it was easy for the thing to have happened if the man did not turn round after he threw the match down, but went swaying on out of the mill, and over to the Manor Cartier, and up staggering to bed; for he had been drinking potato-brandy, and he had been brought up on the mild wines of Spain! In other words, the man who threw down the lighted match which did the mischief was Sebastian Dolores himself. He regretted it quite as much as he had ever regretted anything; and on the night of the fire there were tears in his large brown eyes which deceived the New Cure and others; though they did not deceive the widow of Palass Poucette, who had found him out, and who now had no pleasure at all in his aged gallantries. But the regret Dolores experienced would not prevent him from doing Jean Jacques still greater injury if, and when, the chance occurred, should it be to his own advantage. Jean Jacques shed no tears on the night that his beloved flour-mill became a blackened ruin, and his saw-mill had a narrow escape. He was like one in a dream, scarcely realizing that men were saying kind things to him; that the New Cure held his hand and spoke to him more like a brother than one whose profession it was to be good to those who suffered. In his eyes was the same half-rapt, intense, distant look which came into them when, at Vilray, he saw that red reflection in the sky over against St. Saviour's, and urged his horses onward. The world knew that the burning of the mill was a blow to Jean Jacques, but it did not know how great and heavy the blow was. First one and then another of his friends said he was insured, and that in another six months the mill-wheel would be turning again. They said so to Jean Jacques when he stood with his eyes fixed on the burning fabric, which nothing could save; but he showed no desire to speak. He only nodded and kept on staring at the fire with that curious underglow in his eyes. Some chemistry of the soul had taken place in him in the hour when he drove to the Manor Cartier from Vilray, and it produced a strange fire, which merged into the reflection of the sky above the burning mill. Later, came things which were strange and eventful in his life, but that under-glow was for ever afterwards in his eyes. It was in singular contrast to the snapping fire which had been theirs all the days of his life till now--the snapping fire of action, will and design. It still was there when they said to him suddenly that the wind had changed, and that the flame and sparks were now blowing toward the saw-mill. Even when he gave orders, and set to work to defend the saw-mill, arranging a line of men with buckets on its roof, and so saving it, this look remained. It was something spiritual and unmaterial, something, maybe, which had to do with the philosophy he had preached, thought and practised over long years. It did not disappear when at last, after midnight, everyone had gone, and the smouldering ruins of his greatest asset lay mournful in the wan light of the moon. Kind and good friends like the Clerk of the Court and the New Cure had seen him to his bedroom at midnight, leaving him there with a promise that they would come on the morrow; and he had said goodnight evenly, and had shut the door upon them with a sort of smile. But long after they had gone, when Sebastian Dolores and Seraphe Corniche were asleep, he had got up again and left the house, to gaze at the spot where the big white mill with the red roof had been-the mill which had been there in the days of the Baron of Beaugard, and to which time had only added size and adornment. The gold-cock weathervane of the mill, so long the admiration of people living and dead, and indeed the symbol of himself, as he had been told, being so full of life and pride, courage and vigour-it lay among the ruins, a blackened relic of the Barbilles. He had said in M. Fille's office not many hours before, "I will fight it all out alone," and here in the tragic quiet of the night he made his resolve a reality. In appearance he was not now like the "Seigneur" who sang to the sailors on the Antoine when she was fighting for the shore of Gaspe; nevertheless there was that in him which would keep him much the same man to the end. Indeed, as he got into bed that fateful night he said aloud: "They shall see that I am not beaten. If they give me time up there in Montreal I'll keep the place till Zoe comes back--till Zoe comes home." As he lay and tried to sleep, he kept saying over to himself, "Till Zoe comes home." He thought that if he could but have Zoe back, it all would not matter so much. She would keep looking at him and saying, "There's the man that never flinched when things went wrong; there's the man that was a friend to everyone." At last a thought came to him--the key to the situation as it seemed, the one thing necessary to meet the financial situation. He would sell the biggest farm he owned, which had been to him in its importance like the flour-mill itself. He had had an offer for it that very day, and a bigger offer still a week before. It was mortgaged to within eight thousand dollars of what it could be sold for but, if he could gain time, that eight thousand dollars would build the mill again. M. Mornay, the Big Financier, would certainly see that this was his due--to get his chance to pull things straight. Yes, he would certainly sell the Barbille farm to-morrow. With this thought in his mind he went to sleep at last, and he did not wake till the sun was high. It was a sun of the most wonderful brightness and warmth. Yesterday it would have made the Manor Cartier and all around it look like Arcady. But as it shone upon the ruins of the mill, when Jean Jacques went out into the working world again, it made so gaunt and hideous a picture that, in spite of himself, a cry of misery came from his lips. Through all the misfortunes which had come to him the outward semblance of things had remained, and when he went in and out of the plantation of the Manor Cartier, there was no physical change in the surroundings, which betrayed the troubles and disasters fallen upon its overlord. There it all was just as it had ever been, and seeming to deny that anything had changed in the lives of those who made the place other than a dead or deserted world. When Carmen went, when Zoe fled, when his cousin Auguste Charron took his flight, when defeats at law abashed him, the house and mills, and stores and offices, and goodly trees, and well- kept yards and barns and cattle-sheds all looked the same. Thus it was that he had been fortified. In one sense his miseries had seemed unreal, because all was the same in the outward scene. It was as though it all said to him: "It is a dream that those you love have vanished, that ill- fortune sits by your fireside. One night you will go to bed thinking that wife and child have gone, that your treasury is nearly empty; and in the morning you will wake up and find your loved ones sitting in their accustomed places, and your treasury will be full to overflowing as of old." So it was while the picture of his home scene remained unbroken and serene; but the hideous mass of last night's holocaust was now before his eyes, with little streams of smoke rising from the cindered pile, and a hundred things with which his eyes had been familiar lay distorted, excoriated and useless. He realized with sudden completeness that a terrible change bad come in his life, that a cyclone had ruined the face of his created world. This picture did more to open up Jean Jacques' eyes to his real position in life than anything he had experienced, than any sorrow he had suffered. He had been in torment in the past, but he had refused to see that he was in Hades. Now it was as though he had been led through the streets of Hell by some dark spirit, while in vain he looked round for his old friends Kant and Hegel, Voltaire and Rousseau and Rochefoucauld, Plato and Aristotle. While gazing at the dismal scene, however, and unheeding the idlers who poked about among the ruins, and watched him as one who was the centre of a drama, he suddenly caught sight of the gold Cock of Beaugard, which had stood on the top of the mill, in the very centre of the ruins. Yes, there it was, the crested golden cock which had typified his own life, as he went head high, body erect, spurs giving warning, and a clarion in his throat ready to blare forth at any moment. There was the golden Cock of Beaugard in the cinders, the ashes and the dust. His chin dropped on his breast, and a cloud like a fog on the coast of Gaspe settled round him. Yet even as his head drooped, something else happened--one of those trivial things which yet may be the pivot of great things. A cock crowed--almost in his very ear, it seemed. He lifted his head quickly, and a superstitious look flashed into his face. His eyes fastened on the burnished head of the Cock among the ruins. To his excited imagination it was as though the ancient symbol of the Barbilles had spoken to him in its own language of good cheer and defiance. Yes, there it was, half covered by the ruins, but its head was erect in the midst of fire and disaster. Brought low, it was still alert above the wreckage. The child, the dreamer, the optimist, the egoist, and the man alive in Jean Jacques sprang into vigour again. It was as though the Cock of Beaugard had really summoned him to action, and the crowing had not been that of a barnyard bantam not a hundred feet away from him. Jean Jacques' head went up too. "Me--I am what I always was, nothing can change me," he exclaimed defiantly. "I will sell the Barbille farm and build the mill again." So it was that by hook or by crook, and because the Big Financier had more heart than he even acknowledged to his own wife, Jean Jacques did sell the Barbille farm, and got in cash--in good hard cash-eight thousand dollars after the mortgage was paid. M. Mornay was even willing to take the inadequate indemnity of the insurance policy on the mill, and lose the rest, in order that Jean Jacques should have the eight thousand dollars to rebuild. This he did because Jean Jacques showed such amazing courage after the burning of the mill, and spread himself out in a greater activity than his career had yet shown. He shaved through this financial crisis, in spite of the blow he had received by the loss of his lawsuits, the flitting of his cousin, Auguste Charron, and the farm debts of this same cousin. It all meant a series of manipulations made possible by the apparent confidence reposed in him by M. Mornay. On the day he sold his farm he was by no means out of danger of absolute insolvency--he was in fact ruined; but he was not yet the victim of those processes which would make him legally insolvent. The vultures were hovering, but they had not yet swooped, and there was the Manor saw-mill going night and day; for by the strangest good luck Jean Jacques received an order for M. Mornay's new railway (Judge Carcasson was behind that) which would keep his saw-mill working twenty-four hours in the day for six months. "I like his pluck, but still, ten to one, he loses," remarked M. Mornay to Judge Carcasson. "He is an unlucky man, and I agree with Napoleon that you oughtn't to be partner with an unlucky man." "Yet you have had to do with Monsieur Jean Jacques," responded the aged Judge. M. Mornay nodded indulgently. "Yes, without risk, up to the burning of the mill. Now I take my chances, simply because I'm a fool too, in spite of all the wisdom I see in history and in life's experiences. I ought to have closed him up, but I've let him go on, you see." "You will not regret it," remarked the Judge. "He really is worth it." "But I think I will regret it financially. I think that this is the last flare of the ambition and energy of your Jean Jacques. That often happens--a man summons up all his reserves for one last effort. It's partly pride, partly the undefeated thing in him, partly the gambling spirit which seizes men when nothing is left but one great spectacular success or else be blotted out. That's the case with your philosopher; and I'm not sure that I won't lose twenty thousand dollars by him yet." "You've lost more with less justification," retorted the Judge, who, in his ninetieth year, was still as alive as his friend at sixty. M. Mornay waved a hand in acknowledgment, and rolled his cigar from corner to corner of his mouth. "Oh, I've lost a lot more in my time, Judge, but with a squint in my eye! But I'm doing this with no astigmatism. I've got the focus." The aged Judge gave a conciliatory murmur-he had a fine persuasive voice. "You would never be sorry for what you have done if you had known his daughter--his Zoe. It's the thought of her that keeps him going. He wants the place to be just as she left it when she comes back." "Well, well, let's hope it will. I'm giving him a chance," replied M. Mornay with his wineglass raised. "He's got eight thousand dollars in cash to build his mill again; and I hope he'll keep a tight hand on it till the mill is up." Keep a tight hand on it? That is what Jean Jacques meant to do; but if a man wants to keep a tight hand on money he should not carry it about in his pocket in cold, hard cash. It was a foolish whim of Jean Jacques that he must have the eight thousand dollars in cash--in hundred-dollar bills--and not in the form of a cheque; but there was something childlike in him. When, as he thought, he had saved himself from complete ruin, he wanted to keep and gloat over the trophy of victory, and his trophy was the eight thousand dollars got from the Barbille farm. He would have to pay out two thousand dollars in cash to the contractors for the rebuilding of the mill at once,--they were more than usually cautious--but he would have six thousand left, which he would put in the bank after he had let people see that he was well fortified with cash. The child in him liked the idea of pulling out of his pocket a few thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. He had always carried a good deal of money loose in his pocket, and now that his resources were so limited he would still make a gallant show. After a week or two he would deposit six thousand dollars in the bank; but he was so eager to begin building the mill, that he paid over the stipulated two thousand dollars to the contractors on the very day he received the eight thousand. A few days later the remaining six thousand were housed in a cupboard with an iron door in the wall of his office at the Manor Cartier. "There, that will keep me in heart and promise," said Jean Jacques as he turned the key in the lock. CHAPTER XVIII JEAN JACQUES HAS AN OFFER The day after Jean Jacques had got a new lease of life and become his own banker, he treated himself to one of those interludes of pleasure from which he had emerged in the past like a hermit from his cave. He sat on the hill above his lime-kilns, reading the little hand-book of philosophy which had played so big a part in his life. Whatever else had disturbed his mind and diverted him from his course, nothing had weaned him from this obsession. He still interlarded all his conversation with quotations from brilliant poseurs like Chateaubriand and Rochefoucauld, and from missionaries of thought like Hume and Hegel. His real joy, however, was in withdrawing for what might be called a seance of meditation from the world's business. Some men make celebration in wine, sport and adventure; but Jean Jacques made it in flooding his mind with streams of human thought which often tried to run uphill, which were frequently choked with weeds, but still were like the pool of Siloam to his vain mind. They bathed that vain mind in the illusion that it could see into the secret springs of experience. So, on as bright a day as ever the New World offered, Jean Jacques sat reciting to himself a spectacular bit of logic from one of his idols, wedged between a piece of Aristotle quartz and Plato marble. The sound of it was good in his ears. He mouthed it as greedily and happily as though he was not sitting on the edge of a volcano instead of the moss- grown limestone on a hill above his own manor. "The course of events in the life of a man, whatever their gravity or levity, are only to be valued and measured by the value and measure of his own soul. Thus, what in its own intrinsic origin and material should in all outer reason be a tragedy, does not of itself shake the foundations or make a fissure in the superstructure. Again--" Thus his oracle, but Jean Jacques' voice suddenly died down, for, as he sat there, the face of a woman made a vivid call of recognition. He slowly awakened from his self-hypnotism, to hear a woman speaking to him; to see two dark eyes looking at him from under heavy black brows with bright, intent friendliness. "They said at the Manor you had come this way, so I thought I'd not have my drive for nothing, and here I am. I wanted to say something to you, M'sieu' Jean Jacques." It was the widow of Palass Poucette. She looked very fresh and friendly indeed, and she was the very acme of neatness. If she was not handsome, she certainly had a true and sweet comeliness of her own, due to the deep rose-colour of her cheeks, the ivory whiteness round the lustrous brown eyes, the regular shining teeth which showed so much when she smiled, and the look half laughing, half sentimental which dominated all. Before she had finished speaking Jean Jacques was on his feet with his hat off. Somehow she seemed to be a part of that abstraction, that intoxication, in which he had just been drowning his accumulated anxieties. Not that Virginie Poucette was logical or philosophical, or a child of thought, for she was wholly the opposite-practical, sensuous, emotional, a child of nature and of Eve. But neither was Jean Jacques a real child of thought, though he made unconscious pretence of it. He also was a child of nature--and Adam. He thought he had the courage of his convictions, but it was only the courage of his emotions. His philosophy was but the bent or inclination of a mind with a capacity to feel things rather than to think them. He had feeling, the first essential of the philosopher, but there he stayed, an undeveloped chrysalis. His look was abstracted still as he took the hand of the widow of Palass Poucette; but he spoke cheerfully. "It is a pleasure, madame, to welcome you among my friends," he said. He made a little flourish with the book which had so long been his bosom friend, and added: "But I hope you are in no trouble that you come to me --so many come to me in their troubles," he continued with an air of satisfaction. "Come to you--why, you have enough troubles of your own!" she made answer. "It's because you have your own troubles that I'm here." "Why you are here," he remarked vaguely. There was something very direct and childlike in Virginie Poucette. She could not pretend; she wore her heart on her sleeve. She travelled a long distance in a little while. "I've got no trouble myself," she responded. "But, yes, I have," she added. "I've got one trouble--it's yours. It's that you've been having hard times--the flour-mill, your cousin Auguste Charron, the lawsuits, and all the rest. They say at Vilray that you have all you can do to keep out of the Bankruptcy Court, and that--" Jean Jacques started, flushed, and seemed about to get angry; but she put things right at once. "People talk more than they know, but there's always some fire where there's smoke," she hastened to explain. "Besides, your father-in-law babbles more than is good for him or for you. I thought at first that M. Dolores was a first-class kind of man, that he had had hard times too, and I let him come and see me; but I found him out, and that was the end of it, you may be sure. If you like him, I don't want to say anything more, but I'm sure that he's no real friend to you-or to anybody. If that man went to confession--but there, that's not what I've come for. I've come to say to you that I never felt so sorry for anyone in my life as I do for you. I cried all night after your beautiful mill was burned down. You were coming to see me next day--you remember what you said in M. Fille's office--but of course you couldn't. Of course, there was no reason why you should come to see me really--I've 'only got two hundred acres and the house. It's a good house, though--Palass saw to that--and it's insured; but still I know you'd have come just the same if I'd had only two acres. I know. There's hosts of people you've been good to here, and they're sorry for you; and I'm sorrier than any, for I'm alone, and you're alone, too, except for the old Dolores, and he's no good to either of us--mark my words, no good to you! I'm sorry for you, M'sieu' Jean Jacques, and I've come to say that I'm ready to lend you two thousand dollars, if that's any help. I could make it more if I had time; but sometimes money on the spot is worth a lot more than what's just crawling to you--snailing along while you eat your heart out. Two thousand dollars is two thousand dollars--I know what it's worth to me, though it mayn't be much to you; but I didn't earn it. It belonged to a first-class man, and he worked for it, and he died and left it to me. It's not come easy, go easy with me. I like to feel I've got two thousand cash without having to mortgage for it. But it belonged to a number-one man, a man of brains--I've got no brains, only some sense --and I want another good man to use it and make the world easier for himself." It was a long speech, and she delivered it in little gasps of oratory which were brightened by her wonderfully kind smile and the heart--not to say sentiment--which showed in her face. The sentiment, however, did not prejudice Jean Jacques against her, for he was a sentimentalist himself. His feelings were very quick, and before she had spoken fifty words the underglow of his eyes was flooded by something which might have been mistaken for tears. It was, however, only the moisture of gratitude and the soul's good feeling. "Well there, well there," he said when she had finished, "I've never had anything like this in my life before. It's the biggest thing in the art of being a neighbour I've ever seen. You've only been in the parish three years, and yet you've shown me a confidence immense, inspiring! It is as the Greek philosopher said, 'To conceive the human mind aright is the greatest gift from the gods.' And to you, who never read a line of philosophy, without doubt, you have done the thing that is greatest. It says, 'I teach neighbourliness and life's exchange.' Madame, your house ought to be called Neighbourhood House. It is the epitome of the spirit, it is the shrine of--" He was working himself up to a point where he could forget all the things that trouble humanity, in the inebriation of an idealistic soul which had a casing of passion, but the passion of the mind and not of the body; for Jean Jacques had not a sensual drift in his organism. If there had been a sensual drift, probably Carmen would still have been the lady of his manor, and he would still have been a magnate and not a potential bankrupt; for in her way Carmen had been a kind of balance to his judgment in the business of life, in spite of her own material and (at the very last) sensual strain. It was a godsend to Jean Jacques to have such an inspiration as Virginie Poucette had given him. He could not in these days, somehow, get the fires of his soul lighted, as he was wont to do in the old times, and he loved talking--how he loved talking of great things! He was really going hard, galloping strong, when Virginie interrupted him, first by an exclamation, then, as insistently he repeated the words, "It is the epitome of the spirit, the shrine of--" She put out a hand, interrupting him, and said: "Yes, yes, M'sieu' Jean Jacques, that's as good as Moliere, I s'pose, or the Archbishop at Quebec, but are you going to take it, the two thousand dollars? I made a long speech, I know, but that was to tell you why I come with the money" --she drew out a pocketbook--"with the order on my lawyer to hand the cash over to you. As a woman I had to explain to you, there being lots of ideas about what a woman should do and what she shouldn't do; but there's nothing at all for you to explain, and Mere Langlois and a lot of others would think I'm vain enough now without your compliments. I'm a neighbour if you like, and I offer you a loan. Will you take it--that's all?" He held out his hand in silence and took the paper from her. Putting his head a little on one side, he read it. At first he seemed hardly to get the formal language clear in his mind; however, or maybe his mind was still away in that abstraction into which he had whisked it when he began his reply to her fine offer; but he read it out aloud, first quickly, then very slowly, and he looked at the signature with a deeply meditative air. "Virginie Poucette--that's a good name," he remarked; "and also good for two thousand dollars!" He paused to smile contentedly over his own joke. "And good for a great deal more than that too," he added with a nod. "Yes, ten times as much as that," she responded quickly, her eyes fixed on his face. She scarcely knew herself what she was thinking when she said it; but most people who read this history will think she was hinting that her assets might be united with his, and so enable him to wipe out his liabilities and do a good deal more besides. Yet, how could that be, since Carmen Dolores was still his wife if she was alive; and also they both were Catholics, and Catholics did not recognize divorce! Truth is, Virginie Poucette's mind did not define her feelings at all clearly, or express exactly what she wanted. Her actions said one thing certainly; but if the question had been put to her, whether she was doing this thing because of a wish to take the place of Carmen Dolores in Jean Jacques' life she would have said no at once. She had not come to that --yet. She was simply moved by a sentiment of pity for Jean Jacques, and as she had no child, or husband, or sister, or brother, or father, or mother, but only relatives who tried to impose upon her, she needed an objective for the emotions of her nature, for the overflow of her unused affection and her unsatisfied maternal spirit. Here, then, was the most obvious opportunity--a man in trouble who had not deserved the bitter bad luck which had come to him. Even old Mere Langlois in the market-place at Vilray had admitted that, and had said the same later on in Virginie's home. For an instant Jean Jacques was fascinated by the sudden prospect which opened out before him. If he asked her, this woman would probably loan him five thousand dollars--and she had mentioned nothing about security! "What security do you want?" he asked in a husky voice. "Security? I don't understand about that," she replied. "I'd not offer you the money if I didn't think you were an honest man, and an honest man would pay me back. A dishonest man wouldn't pay me back, security or no security." "He'd have to pay you back if the security was right to start with," Jean Jacques insisted. "But you don't want security, because you think I'm an honest man! Well, for sure you're right. I am honest. I never took a cent that wasn't mine; but that's not everything. If you lend you ought to have security. I've lost a good deal from not having enough security at the start. You are willing to lend me money without security--that's enough to make me feel thirty again, and I'm fifty--I'm fifty," he added, as though with an attempt to show her that she could not think of him in any emotional way; though the day when his flour-mill was burned he had felt the touch of her fingers comforting and thrilling. "You think Jean Jacques Barbille's word as good as his bond?" he continued. "So it is; but I'm going to pull this thing through alone. That's what I said to you and Maitre Fille at his office. I meant it too --help of God, it is the truth!" He had forgotten that if M. Mornay had not made it easy for him, and had not refrained from insisting on his pound of flesh, he would now be insolvent and with no roof over him. Like many another man Jean Jacques was the occasional slave of formula, and also the victim of phases of his own temperament. In truth he had not realized how big a thing M. Mornay had done for him. He had accepted the chance given him as the tribute to his own courage and enterprise and integrity, and as though it was to the advantage of his greatest creditor to give him another start; though in reality it had made no difference to the Big Financier, who knew his man and, with wide-open eyes, did what he had done. Virginie was not subtle. She did not understand, was never satisfied with allusions, and she had no gift for catching the drift of things. She could endure no peradventure in her conversation. She wanted plain speaking and to be literally sure. "Are you going to take it?" she asked abruptly. He could not bear to be checked in his course. He waved a hand and smiled at her. Then his eyes seemed to travel away into the distance, the look of the dreamer in them; but behind all was that strange, ruddy underglow of revelation which kept emerging from shadows, retreating and emerging, yet always there now, in much or in little, since the burning of the mill. "I've lent a good deal of money without security in my time," he reflected, "but the only people who ever paid me back were a deaf and dumb man and a flyaway--a woman that was tired of selling herself, and started straight and right with the money I lent her. She had been the wife of a man who studied with me at Laval. She paid me back every penny, too, year by year for five years. The rest I lent money to never paid; but they paid, the dummy and the harlot that was, they paid! But they paid for the rest also! If I had refused these two because of the others, I'd not be fit to visit at Neighbourhood House where Virginie Poucette lives." He looked closely at the order she had given him again, as though to let it sink in his mind and be registered for ever. "I'm going to do without any further use of your two thousand dollars," he continued cheer fully. "It has done its work. You've lent it to me, I've used it"--he put the hand holding it on his breast--"and I'm paying it back to you, but without interest." He gave the order to her. "I don't see what you mean," she said helplessly, and she looked at the paper, as though it had undergone some change while it was in his hand. "That you would lend it me is worth ten times two thousand to me, Virginie Poucette," he explained. "It gives me, not a kick from behind --I've not had much else lately--but it holds a light in front of me. It calls me. It says, 'March on, Jean Jacques--climb the mountain.' It summons me to dispose my forces for the campaign which will restore the Manor Cartier to what it has ever been since the days of the Baron of Beaugard. It quickens the blood at my heart. It restores--" Virginie would not allow him to go on. "You won't let me help you? Suppose I do lose the money--I didn't earn it; it was earned by Palass Poucette, and he'd understand, if he knew. I can live without the money, if I have to, but you would pay it back, I know. You oughtn't to take any extra risks. If your daughter should come back and not find you here, if she returned to the Manor Cartier, and--" He made an insistent gesture. "Hush! Be still, my friend--as good a friend as a man could have. If my Zoe came back I'd like to feel--I'd like to feel that I had saved things alone; that no woman's money made me safe. If Zoe or if--" He was going to say, "If Carmen came back," for his mind was moving in past scenes; but he stopped short and looked around helplessly. Then presently, as though by an effort, he added with a bravura note in his voice: "The world has been full of trouble for a long time, but there have always been men to say to trouble, 'I am master, I have the mind to get above it all.' Well, I am one of them." There was no note of vanity or bombast in his voice as he said this, and in his eyes that new underglow deepened and shone. Perhaps in this instant he saw more of his future than he would speak of to anyone on earth. Perhaps prevision was given him, and it was as the Big Financier had said to Maitre Fille, that his philosophy was now, at the last, to be of use to him. When his wife had betrayed him, and his wife and child had left him, he had said, "Moi je suis philosophe!" but he was a man of wealth in those days, and money soothes hurts of that kind in rare degree. Would he still say, whatever was yet to come, that he was a philosopher? "Well, I've done what I thought would help you, and I can't say more than that," Virginie remarked with a sigh, and there was despondency in her eyes. Her face became flushed, her bosom showed agitation; she looked at him as she had done in Maitre Fille's office, and a wave of feeling passed over him now, as it did then, and he remembered, in response to her look, the thrill of his fingers in her palm. His face now flushed also, and he had an impulse to ask her to sit down beside him. He put it away from him, however, for the present, at any rate-who could tell what to-morrow might bring forth!--and then he held out his hand to her. His voice shook a little when he spoke; but it cleared, and began to ring, before he had said a dozen words. "I'll never forget what you've said and done this morning, Virginie Poucette," he declared; "and if I break the back of the trouble that's in my way, and come out cock o' the walk again"--the gold Cock of Beaugard in the ruins near and the clarion of the bantam of his barnyard were in his mind and ears--"it'll be partly because of you. I hug that thought to me." "I could do a good deal more than that," she ventured, with a tremulous voice, and then she took her warm hand from his nervous grasp, and turned sharply into the path which led back towards the Manor. She did not turn around, and she walked quickly away. There was confusion in her eyes and in her mind. It would take some time to make the confusion into order, and she was now hot, now cold, in all her frame, when at last she climbed into her wagon. This physical unrest imparted itself to all she did that day. First her horses were driven almost at a gallop; then they were held down to a slow walk; then they were stopped altogether, and she sat in the shade of the trees on the road to her home, pondering--whispering to herself and pondering. As her horses were at a standstill she saw a wagon approaching. Instantly she touched her pair with the whip, and moved on. Before the approaching wagon came alongside, she knew from the grey and the darkbrown horses who was driving them, and she made a strong effort for composure. She succeeded indifferently, but her friend, Mere Langlois, did not notice this fact as her wagon drew near. There was excitement in Mere Langlois' face. "There's been a shindy at the 'Red Eagle' tavern," she said. "That father-in-law of M'sieu' Jean Jacques and Rocque Valescure, the landlord, they got at each other's throats. Dolores hit Valescure on the head with a bottle." "He didn't kill Valescure, did he?" "Not that--no. But Valescure is hurt bad--as bad. It was six to one and half a dozen to the other--both no good at all. But of course they'll arrest the old man--your great friend! He'll not give you any more fur- robes, that's sure. He got away from the tavern, though, and he's hiding somewhere. M'sieu' Jean Jacques can't protect him now; he isn't what he once was in the parish. He's done for, and old Dolores will have to go to trial. They'll make it hot for him when they catch him. No more fur- robes from your Spanish friend, Virginie ! You'll have to look somewhere else for your beaux, though to be sure there are enough that'd be glad to get you with that farm of yours, and your thrifty ways, if you keep your character." Virginie was quite quiet now. The asperity and suggestiveness of the other's speech produced a cooling effect upon her. "Better hurry, Mere Langlois, or everybody won't hear your story before sundown. If your throat gets tired, there's Brown's Bronchial Troches--" She pointed to an advertisement on the fence near by. "M. Fille's cook says they cure a rasping throat." With that shot, Virginie Poucette whipped up her horses and drove on. She did not hear what Mere Langlois called after her, for Mere Langlois had been slow to recover from the unexpected violence dealt by one whom she had always bullied. "Poor Jean Jacques!" said Virginie Poucette to herself as her horses ate up the ground. "That's another bit of bad luck. He'll not sleep to- night. Ah, the poor Jean Jacques--and all alone--not a hand to hold; no one to rumple that shaggy head of his or pat him on the back! His wife and Ma'm'selle Zoe, they didn't know a good thing when they had it. No, he'll not sleep to-night-ah, my dear Jean Jacques!" CHAPTER XIX SEBASTIAN DOLORES DOES NOT SLEEP But Jean Jacques did sleep well that night; though it would have been better for him if he had not done so. The contractor's workmen had arrived in the early afternoon, he had seen the first ton of debris removed from the ruins of the historic mill, and it was crowned by the gold Cock of Beaugard, all grimy with the fire, but jaunty as of yore. The cheerfulness of the workmen, who sang gaily an old chanson of mill- life as they tugged at the timbers and stones, gave a fillip to the spirits of Jean Jacques, to whom had come a red-letter day. Like Mirza on the high hill of Bagdad he had had his philosophic meditations; his good talk with Virginie Poucette had followed; and the woman of her lingered in the feeling of his hand all day, as something kind and homelike and true. Also in the evening had come M. Fille, who brought him a message from Judge Carcasson, that he must make the world sing for himself again. Contrary to what Mere Langlois had thought, he had not been perturbed by the parish noise about the savage incident at "The Red Eagle," and the desperate affair which would cause the arrest of his father-in-law. He was at last well inclined to be rid of Sebastian Dolores, who had ceased to be a comfort to him, and who brought him hateful and not kindly memories of his lost women, and the happy hours of the past they represented. M. Fille had come to the Manor in much alarm, lest the news of the miserable episode at "The Red Eagle" should bring Jean Jacques down again to the depths. He was infinitely relieved, however, to find that the lord of the Manor Cartier seemed only to be grateful that Sebastian Dolores did not return, and nodded emphatically when M. Fille remarked that perhaps it would be just as well if he never did return. As M. Fille sat with his host at the table in the sunset light, Jean Jacques seemed quieter and steadier of body and mind than he had been for a long, long time. He even drank three glasses of the cordial which Mere Langlois had left for him, with the idea that it might comfort him when he got the bad news about Sebastian Dolores; and parting with M. Fille at the door, he waved a hand and said: "Well, good-night, master of the laws. Safe journey! I'm off to bed, and I'll sleep without rocking, that's very sure and sweet." He stood and waved his hand several times to M. Fille--till he was out of sight indeed; and the Clerk of the Court smiled to himself long afterwards, recalling Jean Jacques' cheerful face as he had seen it at their parting in the gathering dusk. As for Jean Jacques, when he locked up the house at ten o'clock, with Dolores still absent, he had the air of a man from whose shoulders great weights had fallen. "Now I've shut the door on him, it'll stay shut," he said firmly. "Let him go back to work. He's no good here to me, to himself, or to anyone. And that business of the fur-robe and Virginie Poucette--ah, that!" He shook his head angrily, then seeing the bottle of cordial still uncorked on the sideboard, he poured some out and drank it very slowly, till his eyes were on the ceiling above him and every drop had gone home. Presently, with the bedroom lamp in his hand, he went upstairs, humming to himself the chanson the workmen had sung that afternoon as they raised again the walls of the mill: "Distaff of flax flowing behind her Margatton goes to the mill On the old grey ass she goes, The flour of love it will blind her Ah, the grist the devil will grind her, When Margatton goes to the mill! On the old grey ass she goes, And the old grey ass, he knows!" He liked the sound of his own voice this night of his Reconstruction Period--or such it seemed to him; and he thought that no one heard his singing save himself. There, however, he was mistaken. Someone was hidden in the house--in the big kitchen-bunk which served as a bed or a seat, as needed. This someone had stolen in while Jean Jacques and M. Fille were at supper. His name was Dolores, and he had a horse just over the hill near by, to serve him when his work was done, and he could get away. The constables of Vilray had twice visited the Manor to arrest him that day, but they had been led in another direction by a clue which he had provided; and afterwards in the dusk he had doubled back and hid himself under Jean Jacques' roof. He had very important business at the Manor Cartier. Jean Jacques' voice ceased one song, and then, after a silence, it took up another, not so melodious. Sebastian Dolores had impatiently waited for this later "musicale" to begin--he had heard it often before; and when it was at last a regular succession of nasal explosions, he crawled out and began to do the business which had brought him to the Manor Cartier. He did it all alone and with much skill; for when he was an anarchist in Spain, those long years ago, he had learned how to use tools with expert understanding. Of late, Spain had been much in his mind. He wanted to go back there. Nostalgia had possessed him ever since he had come again to the Manor Cartier after Zoe had left. He thought much of Spain, and but little of his daughter. Memory of her was only poignant, in so far as it was associated with the days preceding the wreck of the Antoine. He had had far more than enough of the respectable working life of the New World; but there never was sufficient money to take him back to Europe, even were it safe to go. Of late, however, he felt sure that he might venture, if he could only get cash for the journey. He wanted to drift back to the idleness and adventure and the "easy money" of the old anarchist days in Cadiz and Madrid. He was sick for the patio and the plaza, for the bull-fight, for the siesta in the sun, for the lazy glamour of the gardens and the red wine of Valladolid, for the redolent cigarette of the roadside tavern. This cold iron land had spoiled him, and he would strive to get himself home again before it was too late. In Spain there would always be some woman whom he could cajole; some comrade whom he could betray; some priest whom he could deceive, whose pocket he could empty by the recital of his troubles. But if, peradventure, he returned to Spain with money to spare in his pocket, how easy indeed it would all be, and how happy he would find himself amid old surroundings and old friends! The way had suddenly opened up to him when Jean Jacques had brought home in hard cash, and had locked away in the iron-doored cupboard in the officewall, his last, his cherished, eight thousand dollars. Six thousand of that eight were still left, and it was concern for this six thousand which had brought Dolores to the Manor this night when Jean Jacques snored so loudly. The events of the day at "The Red Eagle" had brought things to a crisis in the affairs of Carmen's father. It was a foolish business that at the tavern--so, at any rate, he thought, when it was all over, and he was awake to the fact that he must fly or go to jail. From the time he had, with a bottle of gin, laid Valescure low, Spain was the word which went ringing through his head, and the way to Spain was by the Six Thousand Dollar Route, the New World terminal of which was the cupboard in the wall at the Manor Cartier. Little cared Sebastian Dolores that the theft of the money would mean the end of all things for Jean Jacques Barbille-for his own daughter's husband. He was thinking of himself, as he had always done. He worked for two whole hours before he succeeded in quietly forcing open the iron door in the wall; but it was done at last. Curiously enough, Jean Jacques' snoring stopped on the instant that Sebastian Dolores' fingers clutched the money; but it began cheerfully again when the door in the wall closed once more. Five minutes after Dolores had thrust the six thousand dollars into his pocket, his horse was galloping away over the hills towards the River St. Lawrence. If he had luck, he would reach it by the morning. As it happened, he had the luck. Behind him, in the Manor Cartier, the man who had had no luck and much philosophy, snored on till morning in unconscious content. It was a whole day before Jean Jacques discovered his loss. When he had finished his lonely supper the next evening, he went to the cupboard in his office to cheer himself with the sight of the six thousand dollars. He felt that he must revive his spirits. They had been drooping all day, he knew not why. When he saw the empty pigeon-hole in the cupboard, his sight swam. It was some time before it cleared, but, when it did, and he knew beyond peradventure the crushing, everlasting truth, not a sound escaped him. His heart stood still. His face filled with a panic confusion. He seemed like one bereft of understanding. CHAPTER XX "AU 'VOIR, M'SIEU' JEAN JACQUES" It is seldom that Justice travels as swiftly as Crime, and it is also seldom that the luck is more with the law than with the criminal. It took the parish of St. Saviour's so long to make up its mind who stole Jean Jacques' six thousand dollars, that when the hounds got the scent at last the quarry had reached the water--in other words, Sebastian Dolores had achieved the St. Lawrence. The criminal had had near a day's start before a telegram was sent to the police at Montreal, Quebec, and other places to look out for the picaroon who had left his mark on the parish of St. Saviour's. The telegram would not even then have been sent had it not been for M. Fille, who, suspecting Sebastian Dolores, still refrained from instant action. This he did because he thought Jean Jacques would not wish his beloved Zoe's grandfather sent to prison. But when other people at last declared that it must have been Dolores, M. Fille insisted on telegrams being sent by the magistrate at Vilray without Jean Jacques' consent. He had even urged the magistrate to "rush" the wire, because it came home to him with stunning force that, if the money was not recovered, Jean Jacques would be a beggar. It was better to jail the father-in-law, than for the little money-master to take to the road a pauper, or stay on at St. Saviour's as an underling where he had been overlord. As for Jean Jacques, in his heart of hearts he knew who had robbed him. He realized that it was one of the radii of the comedy-tragedy which began on the Antoine, so many years before; and it had settled in his mind at last that Sebastian Dolores was but part of the dark machinery of fate, and that what was now had to be. For one whole day after the robbery he was like a man paralysed-- dispossessed of active being; but when his creditors began to swarm, when M. Mornay sent his man of business down to foreclose his mortgages before others could take action, Jean Jacques waked from his apathy. He began an imitation of his old restlessness, and made essay again to pull the strings of his affairs. They were, however, so confused that a pull at one string tangled them all. When the constables and others came to him, and said that they were on the trail of the robber, and that the rogue would be caught, he nodded his head encouragingly; but he was sure in his own mind that the flight of Dolores would be as successful as that of Carmen and Zoe. This is the way he put it: "That man--we will just miss finding him, as I missed Zoe at the railroad junction when she went away, as I missed catching Carmen at St. Chrisanthine. When you are at the shore, he will be on the river; when you are getting into the train, he will be getting out. It is the custom of the family. At Bordeaux, the Spanish detectives were on the shore gnashing their teeth, when he was a hundred yards away at sea on the Antoine. They missed him like that; and we'll miss him too. What is the good! It was not his fault--that was the way of his bringing up beyond there at Cadiz, where they think more of a toreador than of John the Baptist. It was my fault. I ought to have banked the money. I ought not to have kept it to look at like a gamin with his marbles. There it was in the wall; and there was Dolores a long way from home and wanting to get back. He found the way by a gift of the tools; and I wish I had the same gift now; for I've got no other gift that'll earn anything for me." These were the last dark or pessimistic words spoken at St. Saviour's by Jean Jacques; and they were said to the Clerk of the Court, who could not deny the truth of them; but he wrung the hand of Jean Jacques nevertheless, and would not leave him night or day. M. Fille was like a little cruiser protecting a fort when gunboats swarm near, not daring to attack till their battleship heaves in sight. The battleship was the Big Financier, who saw that a wreck was now inevitable, and was only concerned that there should be a fair distribution of the assets. That meant, of course, that he should be served first, and then that those below the salt should get a share. Revelation after revelation had been Jean Jacques' lot of late years, but the final revelation of his own impotence was overwhelming. When he began to stir about among his affairs, he was faced by the fact that the law stood in his way. He realized with inward horror his shattered egotism and natural vanity; he saw that he might just as well be in jail; that he had no freedom; that he could do nothing at all in regard to anything he owned; that he was, in effect, a prisoner of war where he had been the general commanding an army. Yet the old pride intervened, and it was associated with some innate nobility; for from the hour in which it was known that Sebastian Dolores had escaped in a steamer bound for France, and could not be overhauled, and the chances were that he would never have to yield up the six thousand dollars, Jean Jacques bustled about cheerfully, and as though he had still great affairs of business to order and regulate. It was a make-believe which few treated with scorn. Even the workmen at the mill humoured him, as he came several times every day to inspect the work of rebuilding; and they took his orders, though they did not carry them out. No one really carried out any of his orders except Seraphe Corniche, who, weeping from morning till night, protested that there never was so good a man as M'sieu' Jean Jacques; and she cooked his favourite dishes, giving him no peace until he had eaten them. The days, the weeks went on, with Jean Jacques growing thinner and thinner, but going about with his head up like the gold Cock of Beaugard, and even crowing now and then, as he had done of yore. He faced the inevitable with something of his old smiling volubility; treating nothing of his disaster as though it really existed; signing off this asset and that; disposing of this thing and that; stripping himself bare of all the properties on his life's stage, in such a manner as might have been his had he been receiving gifts and not yielding up all he owned. He chatted as his belongings were, figuratively speaking, being carried away--as though they were mechanical, formal things to be done as he had done them every day of a fairly long life; as a clerk would check off the boxes or parcels carried past him by the porters. M. Fille could hardly bear to see him in this mood, and the New Cure hovered round him with a mournful and harmlessly deceptive kindness. But the end had to come, and practically all the parish was present when it came. That was on the day when the contents of the Manor were sold at auction by order of the Court. One thing Jean Jacques refused absolutely and irrevocably to do from the first--refused it at last in anger and even with an oath: he would not go through the Bankruptcy Court. No persuasion had any effect. The very suggestion seemed to smirch his honour. His lawyer pleaded with him, said he would be able to save something out of the wreck, and that his creditors would be willing that he should take advantage of the privileges of that court; but he only said in reply: "Thank you, thank you altogether, monsieur, but it is impossible--'non possumus, non possumus, my son,' as the Pope said to Bonaparte. I owe and I will pay what I can; and what I can't pay now I will try to pay in the future, by the cent, by the dollar, till all is paid to the last copper. It is the way with the Barbilles. They have paid their way and their debts in honour, and it is in the bond with all the Barbilles of the past that I do as they do. If I can't do it, then that I have tried to do it will be endorsed on the foot of the bill." No one could move him, not even Judge Carcasson, who from his armchair in Montreal wrote a feeble-handed letter begging him to believe that it was "well within his rights as a gentleman"--this he put in at the request of M. Mornay--to take advantage of the privileges of the Bankruptcy Court. Even then Jean Jacques had only a few moments' hesitation. What the Judge said made a deep impression; but he had determined to drink the cup of his misfortune to the dregs. He was set upon complete renunciation; on going forth like a pilgrim from the place of his troubles and sorrows, taking no gifts, no mercies save those which heaven accorded him. When the day of the auction came everything went. Even his best suit of clothes was sold to a blacksmith, while his fur-coat was bought by a horse-doctor for fifteen dollars. Things that had been part of his life for a generation found their way into hands where he would least have wished them to go--of those who had been envious of him, who had cheated or deceived him, of people with whom he had had nothing in common. The red wagon and the pair of little longtailed stallions, which he had driven for six years, were bought by the owner of a rival flour-mill in the parish of Vilray; but his best sleigh, with its coon-skin robes, was bought by the widow of Palass Poucette, who bought also the famous bearskin which Dolores had given her at Jean Jacques' expense, and had been returned by her to its proper owner. The silver fruitdish, once (it was said) the property of the Baron of Beaugard, which each generation of Barbilles had displayed with as much ceremony as though it was a chalice given by the Pope, went to Virginie Poucette. Virginie also bought the furniture from Zoe's bedroom as it stood, together with the little upright piano on which she used to play. The Cure bought Jean Jacques' writing-desk, and M. Fille purchased his armchair, in which had sat at least six Barbilles as owners of the Manor. The beaver-hat which Jean Jacques wore on state occasions, as his grandfather had done, together with the bonnet rouge of the habitant, donned by him in his younger days --they fell to the nod of Mere Langlois, who declared that, as she was a cousin, she would keep the things in the family. Mere Langlois would have bought the fruit-dish also if she could have afforded to bid against Virginie Poucette; but the latter would have had the dish if it had cost her two hundred dollars. The only time she had broken bread in Jean Jacques' house, she had eaten cake from this fruit-dish; and to her, as to the parish generally, the dish so beautifully shaped, with its graceful depth and its fine-chased handles, was symbol of the social caste of the Barbilles, as the gold Cock of Beaugard was sign of their civic and commercial glory. Jean Jacques, who had moved about all day with an almost voluble affability, seeming not to realize the tragedy going on, or, if he realized it, rising superior to it, was noticed to stand still suddenly when the auctioneer put up the fruit-dish for sale. Then the smile left his face, and the reddish glow in his eyes, which had been there since the burning of the mill, fled, and a touch of amazement and confusion took its place. All in a moment he was like a fluttered dweller of the wilds to whom comes some tremor of danger. His mouth opened as though he would forbid the selling of the heirloom; but it closed again, because he knew he had no right to withhold it from the hammer; and he took on a look like that which comes to the eyes of a child when it faces humiliating denial. Quickly as it came, however, it vanished, for he remembered that he could buy the dish himself. He could buy it himself and keep it. . . . Yet what could he do with it? Even so, he could keep it. It could still be his till better days came. The auctioneer's voice told off the value of the fruitdish--"As an heirloom, as an antique; as a piece of workmanship impossible of duplication in these days of no handicraft; as good pure silver, bearing the head of Louis Quinze--beautiful, marvellous, historic, honourable," and Jean Jacques made ready to bid. Then he remembered he had no money-- he who all his life had been able to take a roll of bills from his pocket as another man took a packet of letters. His glance fell in shame, and the words died on his lips, even as M. Manotel, the auctioneer, was about to add another five-dollar bid to the price, which already was standing at forty dollars. It was at this moment Jean Jacques heard a woman's voice bidding, then two women's voices. Looking up he saw that one of the women was Mere Langlois and the other was Virginie Poucette, who had made the first bid. For a moment they contended, and then Mere Langlois fell out of the contest, and Virginie continued it with an ambitious farmer from the next county, who was about to become a Member of Parliament. Presently the owner of a river pleasure-steamer entered into the costly emulation also, but he soon fell away; and Virginie Poucette stubbornly raised the bidding by five dollars each time, till the silver symbol of the Barbilles' pride had reached one hundred dollars. Then she raised the price by ten dollars, and her rival, seeing that he was face to face with a woman who would now bid till her last dollar was at stake, withdrew; and Virginie was left triumphant with the heirloom. At the moment when Virginie turned away with the handsome dish from M. Manotel, and the crowd cheered her gaily, she caught Jean-Jacques' eye, and she came straight towards him. She wanted to give the dish to him then and there; but she knew that this would provide annoying gossip for many a day, and besides, she thought he would refuse. More than that, she had in her mind another alternative which might in the end secure the heirloom to him, in spite of all. As she passed him, she said: "At least we keep it in the parish. If you don't have it, well, then..." She paused, for she did not quite know what to say unless she spoke what was really in her mind, and she dared not do that. "But you ought to have an heirloom," she added, leaving unsaid what was her real thought and hope. With sudden inspiration, for he saw she was trying to make it easy for him, he drew the great silver-watch from his pocket, which the head of the Barbilles had worn for generations, and said: "I have the only heirloom I could carry about with me. It will keep time for me as long as I'll last. The Manor clock strikes the time for the world, and this watch is set by the Manor clock." "Well said--well and truly said, M'sieu' Jean Jacques," remarked the lean watchmaker and so-called jeweller of Vilray, who stood near. "It is a watch which couldn't miss the stroke of Judgment Day." It was at that moment, in the sunset hour, when the sale had drawn to a close, and the people had begun to disperse, that the avocat of Vilray who represented the Big Financier came to Jean Jacques and said: "M'sieu', I have to say that there is due to you three hundred and fifty dollars from the settlement, excluding this sale, which will just do what was expected of it. I am instructed to give it to you from the creditors. Here it is." He took out a roll of bills and offered it to Jean Jacques. "What creditors?" asked Jean Jacques. "All the creditors," responded the other, and he produced a receipt for Jean Jacques to sign. "A formal statement will be sent you, and if there is any more due to you, it will be added then. But now--well, there it is, the creditors think there is no reason for you to wait." Jean Jacques did not yet take the roll of bills. "They come from M. Mornay?" he asked with an air of resistance, for he did not wish to be under further obligations to the man who would lose most by him. The lawyer was prepared. M. Mornay had foreseen the timidity and sensitiveness of Jean Jacques, had anticipated his mistaken chivalry--for how could a man decline to take advantage of the Bankruptcy Court unless he was another Don Quixote! He had therefore arranged with all the creditors for them to take responsibility with 'himself, though he provided the cash which manipulated this settlement. "No, M'sieu' Jean Jacques," the lawyer replied, this comes from all the creditors, as the sum due to you from all the transactions, so far as can be seen as yet. Further adjustment may be necessary, but this is the interim settlement." Jean Jacques was far from being ignorant of business, but so bemused was his judgment and his intelligence now, that he did not see there was no balance which could possibly be his, since his liabilities vastly exceeded his assets. Yet with a wave of the hand he accepted the roll of bills, and signed the receipt with an air which said, "These forms must be observed, I suppose." What he would have done if the three hundred and fifty dollars had not been given him, it would be hard to say, for with gentle asperity he had declined a loan from his friend M. Fille, and he had but one silver dollar in his pocket, or in the world. Indeed, Jean Jacques was living in a dream in these dark days--a dream of renunciation and sacrifice, and in the spirit of one who gives up all to some great cause. He was not yet even face to face with the fulness of his disaster. Only at moments had the real significance of it all come to him, and then he had shivered as before some terror menacing his path. Also, as M. Mornay had said, his philosophy was now in his bones and marrow rather than in his words. It had, after all, tinctured his blood and impregnated his mind. He had babbled and been the egotist, and played cock o' the walk; and now at last his philosophy was giving some foundation for his feet. Yet at this auction-sale he looked a distracted, if smiling, whimsical, rather bustling figure of misfortune, with a tragic air of exile, of isolation from all by which he was surrounded. A profound and wayworn loneliness showed in his figure, in his face, in his eyes. The crowd thinned in time, and yet very many lingered to see the last of this drama of lost fortunes. A few of the riff-raff, who invariably attend these public scenes, were now rather the worse for drink, from the indifferent liquor provided by the auctioneer, and they were inclined to horseplay and coarse chaff. More than one ribald reference to Jean Jacques had been checked by his chivalrous fellow-citizens; indeed, M. Fille had almost laid himself open to a charge of assault in his own court by raising his stick at a loafer, who made insulting references to Jean Jacques. But as the sale drew to a close, an air of rollicking humour among the younger men would not be suppressed, and it looked as though Jean Jacques' exit would be attended by the elements of farce and satire. In this world, however, things do not happen logically, and Jean Jacques made his exit in a wholly unexpected manner. He was going away by the train which left a new railway junction a few miles off, having gently yet firmly declined M. Fille's invitation, and also the invitations of others--including the Cure and Mere Langlois--to spend the night with them and start off the next day. He elected to go on to Montreal that very night, and before the sale was quite finished he prepared to start. His carpet-bag containing a few clothes and necessaries had been sent on to the junction, and he meant to walk to the station in the cool of the evening. M. Manotel, the auctioneer, hoarse with his heavy day's work, was announcing that there were only a few more things to sell, and no doubt they could be had at a bargain, when Jean Jacques began a tour of the Manor. There was something inexpressibly mournful in this lonely pilgrimage of the dismantled mansion. Yet there was no show of cheap emotion by Jean Jacques; and a wave of the hand prevented any one from following him in his dry-eyed progress to say farewell to these haunts of childhood, manhood, family, and home. There was a strange numbness in his mind and body, and he had a feeling that he moved immense and reflective among material things. Only tragedy can produce that feeling. Happiness makes the universe infinite and stupendous, despair makes it small and even trivial. It was when he had reached the little office where he had done the business of his life--a kind of neutral place where he had ever isolated himself from the domestic scene--that the final sensation, save one, of his existence at the Manor came to him. Virginie Poucette had divined his purpose when he began the tour of the house, and going by a roundabout way, she had placed herself where she could speak with him alone before he left the place for ever--if that was to be. She was not sure that his exit was really inevitable--not yet. When Jean Jacques saw Virginie standing beside the table in his office where he lead worked over so many years, now marked Sold, and waiting to be taken away by its new owner, he started and drew back, but she held out her hand and said: "But one word, M'sieu' Jean Jacques; only one word from a friend--indeed a friend." "A friend of friends," he answered, still in abstraction, his eyes having that burnished light which belonged to the night of the fire; but yet realizing that she was a sympathetic soul who had offered to lend him money without security. "Oh, indeed yes, as good a friend as you can ever have!" she added. Something had waked the bigger part of her, which had never been awake in the days of Palass Poucette. Jean Jacques was much older than she, but what she felt had nothing to do with age, or place or station. It had only to do with understanding, with the call of nature and of a motherhood crying for expression. Her heart ached for him. "Well, good-bye, my friend," he said, and held out his hand. "I must be going now." "Wait," she said, and there was something insistent and yet pleading in her voice. "I've got something to say. You must hear it. . . . Why should you go? There is my farm--it needs to be worked right. It has got good chances. It has water-power and wood and the best flax in the province--they want to start a flax-mill on it--I've had letters from big men in Montreal. Well, why shouldn't you do it instead? There it is, the farm, and there am I a woman alone. I need help. I've got no head. I have to work at a sum of figures all night to get it straight. . . . Ah, m'sieu', it is a need both sides! You want someone to look after you; you want a chance again to do things; but you want someone to look after you, and it is all waiting there on the farm. Palass Poucette left behind him seven sound horses, and cows and sheep, and a threshing- machine and a fanning-mill, and no debts, and two thousand dollars in the bank. You will never do anything away from here. You must stay here, where--where I can look after you, Jean Jacques." The light in his eyes flamed up, died down, flamed up again, and presently it covered all his face, as he grasped what she meant. "Wonder of God, do you forget?" he asked. "I am married--married still, Virginie Poucette. There is no divorce in the Catholic Church--no, none at all. It is for ever and ever." "I said nothing about marriage," she said bravely, though her face suffused. "Hand of Heaven, what do you mean? You mean to say you would do that for me in spite of the Cure and--and everybody and everything?" "You ought to be taken care of," she protested. "You ought to have your chance again. No one here is free to do it all but me. You are alone. Your wife that was--maybe she is dead. I am alone, and I'm not afraid of what the good God will say. I will settle with Him myself. Well, then, do you think I'd care what--what Mere Langlois or the rest of the world would say? . . . I can't bear to think of you going away with nothing, with nobody, when here is something and somebody--somebody who would be good to you. Everybody knows that you've been badly used-- everybody. I'm young enough to make things bright and warm in your life, and the place is big enough for two, even if it isn't the Manor Cartier." "Figure de Christ, do you think I'd let you do it--me?" declared Jean Jacques, with lips trembling now and his shoulders heaving. Misfortune and pain and penalty he could stand, but sacrifice like this and--and whatever else it was, were too much for him. They brought him back to the dusty road and everyday life again; they subtracted him from his big dream, in which he had been detached from the details of his catastrophe. "No, no, no," he added. "You go look another way, Virginie. Turn your face to the young spring, not to the dead winter. To-morrow I'll be gone to find what I've got to find. I've finished here, but there's many a good man waiting for you--men who'll bring you something worth while besides themselves. Make no mistake, I've finished. I've done my term of life. I'm only out on ticket-of-leave now--but there, enough, I shall always want to think of you. I wish I had something to give you--but yes, here is something." He drew from his pocket a silver napkin-ring. "I've had that since I was five years old. My uncle Stefan gave it to me. I've always used it. I don't know why I put it in my pocket this morning, but I did. Take it. It's more than money. It's got something of Jean Jacques about it. You've got the Barbille fruit-dish-that is a thing I'll remember. I'm glad you've got it, and--" "I meant we should both eat from it," she said helplessly. "It would cost too much to eat from it with you, Virginie--" He stopped short, choked, then his face cleared, and his eyes became steady. "Well then, good-bye, Virginie," he said, holding out his hand. "You don't think I'd say to any other living man what I've said to you?" she asked. He nodded understandingly. "That's the best part of it. It was for me of all the world," he answered. "When I look back, I'll see the light in your window--the light you lit for the lost one--for Jean Jacques Barbille." Suddenly, with eyes that did not see and hands held out before him, he turned, felt for the door and left the room. She leaned helplessly against the table. "The poor Jean Jacques--the poor Jean Jacques!" she murmured. "Cure or no Cure, I'd have done it," she declared, with a ring to her voice. "Ah, but Jean Jacques, come with me!" she added with a hungry and compassionate gesture, speaking into space. "I could make life worth while for us both." A moment later Virginie was outside, watching the last act in the career of Jean Jacques in the parish of St. Saviour's. This was what she saw. The auctioneer was holding up a bird-cage containing a canary-Carmen's bird-cage, and Zoe's canary which had remained to be a vocal memory of her in her old home. "Here," said the rhetorical, inflammable auctioneer, "here is the choicest lot left to the last. I put it away in the bakery, meaning to sell it at noon, when everybody was eating-food for the soul and food for the body. I forgot it. But here it is, worth anything you like to anybody that loves the beautiful, the good, and the harmonious. What do I hear for this lovely saffron singer from the Elysian fields? What did the immortal poet of France say of the bird in his garret, in 'L'Oiseau de Mon Crenier'? What did he say: 'Sing me a song of the bygone hour, A song of the stream and the sun; Sing of my love in her bosky bower, When my heart it was twenty-one.' "Come now, who will renew his age or regale her youth with the divine notes of nature's minstrel? Who will make me an offer for this vestal virgin of song--the joy of the morning and the benediction of the evening? What do I hear? The best of the wine to the last of the feast! What do I hear?--five dollars--seven dollars--nine dollars--going at nine dollars--ten dollars--Well, ladies and gentlemen, the bird can sing--ah, voila !" He stopped short for a moment, for as the evening sun swept its veil of rainbow radiance over the scene, the bird began to sing. Its little throat swelled, it chirruped, it trilled, it called, it soared, it lost itself in a flood of ecstasy. In the applausive silence, the emotional recess of the sale, as it were, the man to whom the bird and the song meant most, pushed his way up to the stand where M. Manotel stood. When the people saw who it was, they fell back, for there was that in his face which needed no interpretation. It filled them with a kind of awe. He reached up a brown, eager, affectionate hand--it had always been that --fat and small, but rather fine and certainly emotional, though not material or sensual. "Go on with your bidding," he said. He was going to buy the thing which had belonged to his daughter, was beloved by her--the living oracle of the morning, the muezzin of his mosque of home. It had been to the girl who had gone as another such a bird had been to the mother of the girl, the voice that sang, "Praise God," in the short summer of that bygone happiness of his. Even this cage and its homebird were not his; they belonged to the creditors. "Go on. I buy--I bid," Jean Jacques said in a voice that rang. It had no blur of emotion. It had resonance. The hammer that struck the bell of his voice was the hammer of memory, and if it was plaintive it also was clear, and it was also vibrant with the silver of lost hopes. M. Manotel humoured him, while the bird still sang. "Four dollars--five dollars: do I hear no more than five dollars?--going once, going twice, going three times--gone!" he cried, for no one had made a further bid; and indeed M. Manotel would not have heard another voice than Jean Jacques' if it had been as loud as the falls of the Saguenay. He was a kind of poet in his way, was M. Manotel. He had been married four times, and he would be married again if he had the chance; also he wrote verses for tombstones in the churchyard at St. Saviour's, and couplets for fetes and weddings. He handed the cage to Jean Jacques, who put it down on the ground at his feet, and in an instant had handed up five dollars for one of the idols of his own altar. Anyone else than M. Manotel, or perhaps M. Fille or the New Cure, would have hesitated to take the five dollars, or, if they had done so, would have handed it back; but they had souls to understand this Jean Jacques, and they would not deny him his insistent independence. And so, in a moment, he was making his way out of the crowd with the cage in his hand, the bird silent now. As he went, some one touched his arm and slipped a book into his hand. It was M. Fille, and the book was his little compendium of philosophy which his friend had retrieved from his bedroom in the early morning. "You weren't going to forget it, Jean Jacques?" M. Fille said reproachfully. "It is an old friend. It would not be happy with any one else." Jean Jacques looked M. Fille in the eyes. "Moi--je suis philosophe," he said without any of the old insistence and pride and egotism, but as one would make an affirmation or repeat a creed. "Yes, yes, to be sure, always, as of old," answered M. Fille firmly; for, from that formula might come strength, when it was most needed, in a sense other and deeper far than it had been or was now. "You will remember that you will always know where to find us--eh?" added the little Clerk of the Court. The going of Jean Jacques was inevitable; all persuasion had failed to induce him to stay--even that of Virginie; and M. Fille now treated it as though it was the beginning of a new career for Jean Jacques, whatever that career might be. It might be he would come back some day, but not to things as they were, not ever again, nor as the same man. "You will move on with the world outside there," continued M. Fille, "but we shall be turning on the same swivel here always; and whenever you come--there, you understand. With us it is semper fidelis, always the same." Jean Jacques looked at M. Fille again as though to ask him a question, but presently he shook his head in negation to his thought. "Well, good-bye," he said cheerfully--"A la bonne heure!" By that M. Fille knew that Jean Jacques did not wish for company as he went--not even the company of his old friend who had loved the bright whimsical emotional Zoe; who had hovered around his life like a protecting spirit. "A bi'tot," responded M. Fille, declining upon the homely patois. But as Jean Jacques walked away with his little book of philosophy in his pocket, and the bird-cage in his hand, someone sobbed. M. Fille turned and saw. It was Virginie Poucette. Fortunately for Virginie other women did the same, not for the same reason, but out of a sympathy which was part of the scene. It had been the intention of some friends of Jean Jacques to give him a cheer when he left, and even his sullen local creditors, now that the worst had come, were disposed to give him a good send-off; but the incident of the canary in its cage gave a turn to the feeling of the crowd which could not be resisted. They were not a people who could cut and dry their sentiments; they were all impulse and simplicity, with an obvious cocksure shrewdness too, like that of Jean Jacques--of the old Jean Jacques. He had been the epitome of all their faults and all their virtues. No one cheered. Only one person called, "Au 'voir, M'sieu' Jean Jacques!" and no one followed him--a curious, assertive, feebly-brisk, shock-headed figure in the brown velveteen jacket, which he had bought in Paris on his Grand Tour. "What a ridiculous little man!" said a woman from Chalfonte over the water, who had been buying freely all day for her new "Manor," her husband being a member of the provincial legislature. The words were no sooner out of her mouth than two women faced her threateningly. "For two pins I'd slap your face," said old Mere Langlois, her great breast heaving. "Popinjay--you, that ought to be in a cage like his canary." But Virginie Poucette also was there in front of the offender, and she also had come from Chalfonte--was born in that parish; and she knew what she was facing. "Better carry a bird-cage and a book than carry swill to swine," she said; and madame from Chalfonte turned white, for it had been said that her father was once a swine-herd, and that she had tried her best to forget it when, with her coarse beauty, she married the well-to-do farmer who was now in the legislature. "Hold your tongues, all of you, and look at that," said M. Manotel, who had joined the agitated group. He was pointing towards the departing Jean Jacques, who was now away upon his road. Jean Jacques had raised the cage on a level with his face, and was evidently speaking to the bird in the way birds love--that soft kissing sound to which they reply with song. Presently there came a chirp or two, and then the bird thrust up its head, and out came the full blessedness of its song, exultant, home-like, intimate. Jean Jacques walked on, the bird singing by his side; and he did not look back. CHAPTER XXI IF SHE HAD KNOWN IN TIME Nothing stops when we stop for a time, or for all time, except ourselves. Everything else goes on--not in the same way; but it does go on. Life did not stop at St. Saviour's after Jean Jacques made his exit. Slowly the ruined mill rose up again, and very slowly indeed the widow of Palass Poucette recovered her spirits, though she remained a widow in spite of all appeals; but M. Fille and his sister never were the same after they lost their friend. They had great comfort in the dog which Jean Jacques had given to them, and they roused themselves to a malicious pleasure when Bobon, as he had been called by Zoe, rushed out at the heels of an importunate local creditor who had greatly worried Jean Jacques at the last. They waited in vain for a letter from Jean Jacques, but none came; nor did they hear anything from him, or of him, for a long, long time. Jean Jacques did not mean that they should. When he went away with his book of philosophy and his canary he had but one thing in his mind, and that was to find Zoe and make her understand that he knew he had been in the wrong. He had illusions about starting life again, in which he probably did not believe; but the make-believe was good for him. Long before the crash came, in Zoe's name--not his own--he had bought from the Government three hundred and twenty acres of land out near the Rockies and had spent five hundred dollars in improvements on it. There it was in the West, one remaining asset still his own--or rather Zoe's--but worth little if he or she did not develop it. As he left St. Saviour's, however, he kept fixing his mind on that "last domain," as he called it to himself. If this was done intentionally, that he might be saved from distraction and despair, it was well done; if it was a real illusion--the old self-deception which had been his bane so often in the past--it still could only do him good at the present. It prevented him from noticing the attention he attracted on the railway journey from St. Saviour's to Montreal, cherishing his canary and his book as he went. He was not so self-conscious now as in the days when he was surprised that Paris did not stop to say, "Bless us, here is that fine fellow, Jean Jacques Barbille of St. Saviour's!" He could concentrate himself more now on things that did not concern the impression he was making on the world. At present he could only think of Zoe and of her future. When a patronizing and aggressive commercial traveller in the little hotel on a side-street where he had taken a room in Montreal said to him, "Bien, mon vieux" (which is to say, "Well, old cock"), "aren't you a long way from home?" something of a new dignity came into Jean Jacques' bearing, very different from the assurance of the old days, and in reply he said: "Not so far that I need be careless about my company." This made the landlady of the little hotel laugh quite hard, for she did not like the braggart "drummer" who had treated her with great condescension for a number of years. Also Madame Glozel liked Jean Jacques because of his canary. She thought there must be some sentimental reason for a man of fifty or more carrying a bird about with him; and she did not rest until she had drawn from Jean Jacques that he was taking the bird to his daughter in the West. There, however, madame was stayed in her search for information. Jean Jacques closed up, and did but smile when she adroitly set traps for him, and at last asked him outright where his daughter was. Why he waited in Montreal it would be hard to say, save that it was a kind of middle place between the old life and the new, and also because he must decide what was to be his plan of search. First the West--first Winnipeg, but where after that? He had at last secured information of where Zoe and Gerard Fynes had stayed while in Montreal; and now he followed clues which would bring him in touch with folk who knew them. He came to know one or two people who were with Zoe and Gerard in the last days they spent in the metropolis, and he turned over and over in his mind every word said about his girl, as a child turns a sweetmeat in its mouth. This made him eager to be off; but on the very day he decided to start at once for the West, something strange happened. It was towards the late afternoon of a Saturday, when the streets were full of people going to and from the shops in a marketing quarter, that Madame Glozel came to him and said: "M'sieu', I have an idea, and you will not think it strange, for you have a kind heart. There is a woman--look you, it is a sad, sad story hers. She is ill and dying in a room a little way down the street. But yes, I am sure she is dying--of heart disease it is. She came here first when the illness took her, but she could not afford to stay. She went to those cheaper lodgings down the street. She used to be on the stage over in the States, and then she came back here, and there was a man-- married to him or not I do not know, and I will not think. Well, the man--the brute--he left her when she got ill--but yes, forsook her absolutely! He was a land-agent or something like that, and all very fine to your face, to promise and to pretend--just make-believe. When her sickness got worse, off he went with 'Au revoir, my dear--I will be back to supper.' Supper! If she'd waited for her supper till he came back, she'd have waited as long as I've done for the fortune the gipsy promised me forty years ago. Away he went, the rogue, without a thought of her, and with another woman. That's what hurt her most of all. Straight from her that could hardly drag herself about--ah, yes, and has been as handsome a woman as ever was!--straight from her he went to a slut. She was a slut, m'sieu'--did I not know her? Did Ma'm'selle Slut not wait at table in this house and lead the men a dance here night and day-day and night till I found it out! Well, off he went with the slut, and left the lady behind. . . . You men, you treat women so." Jean Jacques put out a hand as though to argue with her. "Sometimes it is the other way," he retorted. "Most of us have seen it like that." "Well, for sure, you're right enough there, m'sieu'," was the response. "I've got nothing to say to that, except that it's a man that runs away with a woman, or that gets her to leave her husband when she does go. There's always a man that says, 'Come along, I'm the better chap for you.'" Jean Jacques wearily turned his head away towards the cage where his canary was beginning to pipe its evening lay. "It all comes to the same thing in the end," he said pensively; and then he who had been so quiet since he came to the little hotel--Glozel's, it was called--began to move about the room excitedly, running his fingers through his still bushy hair, which, to his credit, was always as clean as could be, burnished and shiny even at his mid-century period. He began murmuring to himself, and a frown settled on his fore head. Mme. Glozel saw that she had perturbed him, and that no doubt she had roused some memories which made sombre the sunny little room where the canary sang; where, to ravish the eyes of the pessimist, was a picture of Louis XVI. going to heaven in the arms of St. Peter. When started, however, the good woman could no more "slow down" than her French pony would stop when its head was turned homewards from market. So she kept on with the history of the woman down the street. "Heart disease," she said, nodding with assurance and finality; "and we know what that is--a start, a shock, a fall, a strain, and pht! off the poor thing goes. Yes, heart disease, and sometimes with such awful pain. But so; and yesterday she told me she had only a hundred dollars left. 'Enough to last me through,' she said to me. Poor thing, she lifted up her eyes with a way she has, as if looking for something she couldn't find, and she says, as simple as though she was asking about the price of a bed-tick, 'It won't cost more than fifty dollars to bury me, I s'pose?' Well, that made me squeamish, for the poor dear's plight came home to me so clear, and she young enough yet to get plenty out of life, if she had the chance. So I asked her again about her people--whether I couldn't send for someone belonging to her. 'There's none that belongs to me,' she says, 'and there's no one I belong to.' "I thought very likely she didn't want to tell me about herself; perhaps because she had done wrong, and her family had not been good to her. Yet it was right I should try and get her folks to come, if she had any folks. So I said to her, 'Where was your home?' And now, what do you think she answered, m'sieu'?' 'Look there,' she said to me, with her big eyes standing out of her head almost--for that's what comes to her sometimes when she is in pain, and she looks more handsome then than at any other time--'Look there,' she said to me, 'it was in heaven, that's where--my home was; but I didn't know it. I hadn't been taught to know the place when I saw it.' "Well, I felt my skin go goosey, for I saw what was going on in her mind, and how she was remembering what had happened to her some time, somewhere; but there wasn't a tear in her eyes, and I never saw her cry- never once, m'sieu'--well, but as brave as brave. Her eyes are always dry--burning. They're like two furnaces scorching up her face. So I never found out her history, and she won't have the priest. I believe that's because she wants to die unknown, and doesn't want to confess. I never saw a woman I was sorrier for, though I think she wasn't married to the man that left her. But whatever she was, there's good in her--I haven't known hundreds of women and had seven sisters for nothing. Well, there she is--not a friend near her at the last; for it's coming soon, the end--no one to speak to her, except the woman she pays to come in and look after her and nurse her a bit. Of course there's the landlady too, Madame Popincourt, a kind enough little cricket of a woman, but with no sense and no head for business. And so the poor sick thing has not a single pleasure in the world. She can't read, because it makes her head ache, she says; and she never writes to any one. One day she tried to sing a little, but it seemed to hurt her, and she stopped before she had begun almost. Yes, m'sieu', there she is without a single pleasure in the long hours when she doesn't sleep." "There's my canary--that would cheer her up," eagerly said Jean Jacques, who, as the story of the chirruping landlady continued, became master of his agitation, and listened as though to the tale of some life for which he had concern. "Yes, take my canary to her, madame. It picked me up when I was down. It'll help her--such a bird it is! It's the best singer in the world. It's got in its throat the music of Malibran and Jenny Lind and Grisi, and all the stars in heaven that sang together. Also, to be sure, it doesn't charge anything, but just as long as there's daylight it sings and sings, as you know." "M'sieu'--oh, m'sieu', it was what I wanted to ask you, and I didn't dare!" gushingly declared madame. "I never heard a bird sing like that --just as if it knew how much good it was doing, and with all the airs of a grand seigneur. It's a prince of birds, that. If you mean it, m'sieu', you'll do as good a thing as you have ever done." "It would have to be much better, or it wouldn't be any use," remarked Jean Jacques. The woman made a motion of friendliness with both hands. "I don't believe that. You may be queer, but you've got a kind eye. It won't be for long she'll need the canary, and it will cheer her. There certainly was never a bird so little tied to one note. Now this note, now that, and so amusing. At times it's as though he was laughing at you." "That's because, with me for his master, he has had good reason to laugh," remarked Jean Jacques, who had come at last to take a despondent view of himself. "That's bosh," rejoined Mme. Glozel; "I've seen several people odder than you." She went over to the cage eagerly, and was about to take it away. "Excuse me," interposed Jean Jacques, "I will carry the cage to the house. Then you will go in with the bird, and I'll wait outside and see if the little rascal sings." "This minute?" asked madame. "For sure, this very minute. Why should the poor lady wait? It's a lonely time of day, this, the evening, when the long night's ahead." A moment later the two were walking along the street to the door of Mme. Popincourt's lodgings, and people turned to look at the pair, one carrying something covered with a white cloth, evidently a savoury dish of some kind--the other with a cage in which a handsome canary hopped about, well pleased with the world. At Mme. Popincourt's door Mme. Glozel took the cage and went upstairs. Jean Jacques, left behind, paced backwards and forwards in front of the house waiting and looking up, for Mme. Glozel had said that behind the front window on the third floor was where the sick woman lived. He had not long to wait. The setting sun shining full on the window had roused the bird, and he began to pour out a flood of delicious melody which flowed on and on, causing the people in the street to stay their steps and look up. Jean Jacques' face, as he listened, had something very like a smile. There was that in the smile belonging to the old pride, which in days gone by had made him say when he looked at his domains at the Manor Cartier--his houses, his mills, his store, his buildings and his lands--"It is all mine. It all belongs to Jean Jacques Barbille." Suddenly, however, there came a sharp pause in the singing, and after that a cry--a faint, startled cry. Then Mme. Glozel's head was thrust out of the window three floors up, and she called to Jean Jacques to come quickly. As she bade him come, some strange premonition flashed to Jean Jacques, and with thumping heart he hastened up the staircase. Outside a bedroom door, Mme. Glozel met him. She was so excited she could only whisper. "Be very quiet," she said. "There is something strange. When the bird sang as it did--you heard it--she sat like one in a trance. Then her face took on a look glad and frightened too, and she stared hard at the cage. 'Bring that cage to me,' she said. I brought it. She looked sharp at it, then she gave a cry and fell back. As I took the cage away I saw what she had been looking at--a writing at the bottom of the cage. It was the name Carmen." With a stifled cry Jean Jacques pushed her aside and entered the room. As he did so, the sick woman in the big armchair, so pale yet so splendid in her death-beauty, raised herself up. With eyes that Francesca might have turned to the vision of her fate, she looked at the opening door, as though to learn if he who came was one she had wished to see through long, relentless days. "Jean Jacques--ah, my beautiful Jean Jacques!" she cried out presently in a voice like a wisp of sound, for she had little breath; and then with a smile she sank back, too late to hear, but not too late to know, what Jean Jacques said to her. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Being generous with other people's money I had to listen to him, and he had to pay me for listening Law. It is expensive whether you win or lose Protest that it is right when it knows that it is wrong THE MONEY MASTER By Gilbert Parker EPOCH THE FIFTH XXII. BELLS OF MEMORY XXIII. JEAN JACQUES HAS WORK TO DO XXIV. JEAN JACQUES ENCAMPED. XXV. WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE EPILOGUE CHAPTER XXII BELLS OF MEMORY However far Jean Jacques went, however long the day since leaving the Manor Cartier, he could not escape the signals from his past. He heard more than once the bells of memory ringing at the touch of the invisible hand of Destiny which accepts no philosophy save its own. At Montreal, for one hallowed instant, he had regained his lost Carmen, but he had turned from her grave--the only mourners being himself, Mme. Glozel and Mme. Popincourt, together with a barber who had coiffed her wonderful hair once a week--with a strange burning at his heart. That iceberg which most mourners carry in their breasts was not his, as he walked down the mountainside from Carmen's grave. Behind him trotted Mme. Glozel and Mme. Popincourt, like little magpies, attendants on this eagle of sorrow whose life-love had been laid to rest, her heart-troubles over. Passion or ennui would no more vex her. She had had a soul, had Carmen Dolores, though she had never known it till her days closed in on her, and from the dusk she looked out of the casements of life to such a glowing as Jean Jacques had seen when his burning mill beatified the evening sky. She had known passion and vivid life in the days when she went hand-in-hand with Carvillho Gonzales through the gardens of Granada; she had known the smothering home- sickness which does not alone mean being sick for a distant home, but a sickness of the home that is; and she had known what George Masson gave her for one thrilling hour, and then--then the man who left her in her death-year, taking not only the last thread of hope which held her to life. This vulture had taken also little things dear to her daily life, such as the ring Carvillho Gonzales had given her long ago in Cadiz, also another ring, a gift of Jean Jacques, and things less valuable to her, such as money, for which she knew surely she would have no long use. As she lay waiting for the day when she must go from the garish scene, she unconsciously took stock of life in her own way. There intruded on her sight the stages of the theatres where she had played and danced, and she heard again the music of the paloma and those other Spanish airs which had made the world dance under her girl's feet long ago. At first she kept seeing the faces of thousands looking up at her from the stalls, down at her from the gallery, over at her from the boxes; and the hot breath of that excitement smote her face with a drunken odour that sent her mad. Then, alas! somehow, as disease took hold of her, there were the colder lights, the colder breath from the few who applauded so little. And always the man who had left her in her day of direst need; who had had the last warm fires of her life, the last brief outrush of her soul, eager as it was for a joy which would prove she had not lost all when she fled from the Manor Cartier--a joy which would make her forget! What she really did feel in this last adventure of passion only made her remember the more when she was alone now, her life at the Manor Cartier. She was wont to wake up suddenly in the morning--the very early morning --with the imagined sound of the gold Cock of Beaugard crowing in her ears. Memory, memory, memory--yet never a word, and never a hearsay of what had happened at the Manor Cartier since she had left it! Then there came a time when she longed intensely to see Jean Jacques before she died, though she could not bring herself to send word to him. She dreaded what the answer might be-not Jean Jacques' answer, but the answer of Life. Jean Jacques and her child, her Zoe--more his than hers in years gone by--one or both might be dead! She dared not write, but she cherished a desire long denied. Then one day she saw everything in her life more clearly than she had ever done. She found an old book of French verse, once belonging to Mme. Popincourt's husband, who had been a professor. Some lines therein opened up a chamber of her being never before unlocked. At first only the feeling of the thing came, then slowly the spiritual meaning possessed her. She learnt it by heart and let it sing to her as she lay half-sleeping and half-waking, half-living and half-dying: "There is a World; men compass it through tears, Dare doom for joy of it; it called me o'er the foam; I found it down the track of sundering years, Beyond the long island where the sea steals home. "A land that triumphs over shame and pain, Penitence and passion and the parting breath, Over the former and the latter rain, The birth-morn fire and the frost of death. "From its safe shores the white boats ride away, Salving the wreckage of the portless ships The light desires of the amorous day, The wayward, wanton wastage of the lips. "Star-mist and music and the pensive moon These when I harboured at that perfumed shore; And then, how soon! the radiance of noon, And faces of dear children at the door. "Land of the Greater Love--men call it this; No light-o'-love sets here an ambuscade; No tender torture of the secret kiss Makes sick the spirit and the soul afraid. "Bright bowers and the anthems of the free, The lovers absolute--ah, hear the call! Beyond the long island and the sheltering sea, That World I found which holds my world in thrall. "There is a World; men compass it through tears, Dare doom for joy of it; it called me o'er the foam; I found it down the track of sundering years, Beyond the long island where the sea steals home." At last the inner thought of it got into her heart, and then it was in reply to Mme. Glozel, who asked her where her home was, she said: "In Heaven, but I did not know it!" And thus it was, too, that at the very last, when Jean Jacques followed the singing bird into her death-chamber, she cried out, "Ah, my beautiful Jean Jacques!" And because Jean Jacques knew that, at the last, she had been his, soul and body, he went down from the mountain-side, the two black magpies fluttering mournfully and yet hopefully behind him, with more warmth at his heart than he had known for years. It never occurred to him that the two elderly magpies would jointly or severally have given the rest of their lives and their scant fortunes to have him with them either as husband, or as one who honourably hires a home at so much a day. Though Jean Jacques did not know this last fact, when he fared forth again he left behind his canary with Mme. Glozel; also all Carmen's clothes, except the dress she died in, he gave to Mme. Popincourt, on condition that she did not wear them till he had gone. The dress in which Carmen died he wrapped up carefully, with her few jewels and her wedding-ring, and gave the parcel to Mme. Glozel to care for till he should send for it or come again. "The bird--take him on my birthday to sing at her grave," he said to Mme. Glozel just before he went West. "It is in summer, my birthday, and you shall hear how he will sing there," he added in a low voice at the very door. Then he took out a ten-dollar bill, and would have given it to her to do this thing for him; but she would have none of his money. She only wiped her eyes and deplored his going, and said that if ever he wanted a home, and she was alive, he would know where to find it. It sounded and looked sentimental, yet Jean Jacques was never less sentimental in a very sentimental life. This particular morning he was very quiet and grave, and not in the least agitated; he spoke like one from a friendly, sun- bright distance to Mme. Glozel, and also to Mme. Popincourt as he passed her at the door of her house. Jean Jacques had no elation as he took the Western trail; there was not much hope in his voice; but there was purpose and there was a little stream of peace flowing through his being--and also, mark, a stream of anger tumbling over rough places. He had read two letters addressed to Carmen by the man--Hugo Stolphe--who had left her to her fate; and there was a grim devouring thing in him which would break loose, if ever the man crossed his path. He would not go hunting him, but if he passed him or met him on the way--! Still he would go hunting--to find his Carmencita, his little Carmen, his Zoe whom he had unwittingly, God knew! driven forth into the far world of the millions of acres--a wide, wide hunting-ground in good sooth. So he left his beloved province where he no longer had a home, and though no letters came to him from St. Saviour's, from Vilray or the Manor Cartier, yet he heard the bells of memory when the Hand Invisible arrested his footsteps. One day these bells rang so loud that he would have heard them were he sunk in the world's deepest well of shame; but, as it was, he now marched on hills far higher than the passes through the mountains which his patchwork philosophy had ever provided. It was in the town of Shilah on the Watloon River that the bells boomed out--not because he had encountered one he had ever known far down by the Beau Cheval, or in his glorious province, not because he had found his Zoe, but because a man, the man--not George Masson, but the other--met him in the way. Shilah was a place to which, almost unconsciously, he had deviated his course, because once Virginie Poucette had read him a letter from there. That was in the office of the little Clerk of the Court at Vilray. The letter was from Virginie's sister at Shilah, and told him that Zoe and her husband had gone away into farther fields of homelessness. Thus it was that Shilah ever seemed to him, as he worked West, a goal in his quest--not the last goal perhaps, but a goal. He had been far past it by another route, up, up and out into the more scattered settlements, and now at last he had come to it again, having completed a kind of circle. As he entered it, the past crowded on to him with a hundred pictures. Shilah--it was where Virginie Poucette's sister lived; and Virginie had been a part of the great revelation of his life at St. Saviour's. As he was walking by the riverside at Shilah, a woman spoke to him, touching his arm as she did so. He was in a deep dream as she spoke, but there certainly was a look in her face that reminded him of someone belonging to the old life. For an instant he could not remember. For a moment he did not even realize that he was at Shilah. His meditation had almost been a trance, and it took him time to adjust himself to the knowledge of the conscious mind. His subconsciousness was very powerfully alive in these days. There was not the same ceaselessly active eye, nor the vibration of the impatient body which belonged to the money-master and miller of the Manor Cartier. Yet the eye had more depth and force, and the body was more powerful and vigorous than it had ever been. The long tramping, the everlasting trail on false scents, the mental battling with troubles past and present, had given a fortitude and vigour to the body beyond what it had ever known. In spite of his homelessness and pilgrim equipment he looked as though he had a home-- far off. The eyes did not smile; but the lips showed the goodness of his heart--and its hardness too. Hardness had never been there in the old days. It was, however, the hardness of resentment, and not of cruelty. It was not his wife's or his daughter's flight that he resented, nor yet the loss of all he had, nor the injury done him by Sebastian Dolores. No, his resentment was against one he had never seen, but was now soon to see. As his mind came back from the far places where it had been, and his eyes returned to the concrete world, he saw what the woman recalled to him. It was--yes, it was Virginie Poucette--the kind and beautiful Virginie--for her goodness had made him remember her as beautiful, though indeed she was but comely, like this woman who stayed him as he walked by the river. "You are M'sieu' Jean Jacques Barbille?" she said questioningly. "How did you know?" he asked. . . . "Is Virginie Poucette here?" "Ah, you knew me from her?" she asked. "There was something about her--and you have it also--and the look in the eyes, and then the lips!" he replied. Certainly they were quite wonderful, luxurious lips, and so shapely too --like those of Virginie. "But how did you know I was Jean Jacques Barbille?" he repeated. "Well, then it is quite easy," she replied with a laugh almost like a giggle, for she was quite as simple and primitive as her sister. "There is a photographer at Vilray, and Virginie got one of your pictures there, and sent, it to me. 'He may come your way,' said Virginie to me, 'and if he does, do not forget that he is my friend.'" "That she is my friend," corrected Jean Jacques. "And what a friend-- merci, what a friend!" Suddenly he caught the woman's arm. "You once wrote to your sister about my Zoe, my daughter, that married and ran away--" "That ran away and got married," she interrupted. "Is there any more news--tell me, do you know-?" But Virginie's sister shook her head. "Only once since I wrote Virginie have I heard, and then the two poor children--but how helpless they were, clinging to each other so! Well, then, once I heard from Faragay, but that was much more than a year ago. Nothing since, and they were going on--on to Fort Providence to spend the winter--for his health--his lungs." "What to do--on what to live?" moaned Jean Jacques. "His grandmother sent him a thousand dollars, so your Madame Zoe wrote me." Jean Jacques raised a hand with a gesture of emotion. "Ah, the blessed woman! May there be no purgatory for her, but Heaven at once and always!" "Come home with me--where are your things?" she asked. "I have only a knapsack," he replied. "It is not far from here. But I cannot stay with you. I have no claim. No, I will not, for--" "As to that, we keep a tavern," she returned. "You can come the same as the rest of the world. The company is mixed, but there it is. You needn't eat off the same plate, as they say in Quebec." Quebec! He looked at her with the face of one who saw a vision. How like Virginie Poucette--the brave, generous Virginie--how like she was! In silence now he went with her, and seeing his mood she did not talk to him. People stared as they walked along, for his dress was curious and his head was bare, and his hair like the coat of a young lion. Besides, this woman was, in her way, as brave and as generous as Virginie Poucette. In the very doorway of the tavern by the river a man jostled them. He did not apologize. He only leered. It made his foreign- looking, coarsely handsome face detestable. "Pig!" exclaimed Virginie Poucette's sister. "That's a man--well, look out! There's trouble brewing for him. If he only knew! If suspicion comes out right and it's proved--well, there, he'll jostle the door-jamb of a jail." Jean Jacques stared after the man, and somehow every nerve in his body became angry. He had all at once a sense of hatred. He shook the shoulder against which the man had collided. He remembered the leer on the insolent, handsome face. "I'd like to see him thrown into the river," said Virginie Poucette's sister. "We have a nice girl here--come from Ireland--as good as can be. Well, last night--but there, she oughtn't to have let him speak to her. 'A kiss is nothing,' he said. Well, if he kissed me I would kill him--if I didn't vomit myself to death first. He's a mongrel--a South American mongrel with nigger blood." Jean Jacques kept looking after the man. "Why don't you turn him out?" he asked sharply. "He's going away to-morrow anyhow," she replied. "Besides, the girl, she's so ashamed--and she doesn't want anyone to know. 'Who'd want to kiss me after him' she said, and so he stays till to-morrow. He's not in the tavern itself, but in the little annex next door-there, where he's going now. He's only had his meals here, though the annex belongs to us as well. He's alone there on his dung-hill." She brought Jean Jacques into a room that overlooked the river--which, indeed, hung on its very brink. From the steps at its river-door, a little ferry-boat took people to the other side of the Watloon, and very near--just a few hand-breadths away--was the annex where was the man who had jostled Jean Jacques. CHAPTER XXIII JEAN JACQUES HAS WORK TO DO A single lighted lamp, turned low, was suspended from the ceiling of the raftered room, and through the open doorway which gave on to a little wooden piazza with a slight railing and small, shaky gate came the swish of the Watloon River. No moon was visible, but the stars were radiant and alive--trembling with life. There was something soothing, something endlessly soothing in the sound of the river. It suggested the ceaseless movement of life to the final fulness thereof. So still was the room that it might have seemed to be without life, were it not for a faint sound of breathing. The bed, however, was empty, and no chair was occupied; but on a settle in a corner beside an unused fireplace sat a man, now with hands clasped between his knees, again with arms folded across his breast; but with his head always in a listening attitude. The whole figure suggested suspense, vigilance and preparedness. The man had taken off his boots and stockings, and his bare feet seemed to grip the floor; also the sleeves of his jacket were rolled up a little. It was not a figure you would wish to see in your room at midnight unasked. Once or twice he sighed heavily, as he listened to the river slishing past and looked out to the sparkle of the skies. It was as though the infinite had drawn near to the man, or else that the man had drawn near to the infinite. Now and again he brought his fists down on his knees with a savage, though noiseless, force. The peace of the river and the night could not contend successfully against a dark spirit working in him. When, during his vigil, he shook his shaggy head and his lips opened on his set teeth, he seemed like one who would take toll at a gateway of forbidden things. He started to his feet at last, hearing footsteps outside upon the stairs. Then he settled back again, drawing near to the chimney-wall, so that he should not be easily seen by anyone entering. Presently there was the click of a latch, then the door opened and shut, and cigar-smoke invaded the room. An instant later a hand went up to the suspended oil- lamp and twisted the wick into brighter flame. As it did so, there was a slight noise, then the click of a lock. Turning sharply, the man under the lamp saw at the door the man who had been sitting in the corner. The man had a key in his hand. Exit now could only be had through the door opening on to the river. "Who are you? What the hell do you want here?" asked the fellow under the lamp, his swarthy face drawn with fear and yet frowning with anger. "Me--I am Jean Jacques Barbille," said the other in French, putting the key of the door in his pocket. The other replied in French, with a Spanish-English accent. "Barbille--Carmen's husband! Well, who would have thought--!" He ended with a laugh not pleasant to hear, for it was coarse with sardonic mirth; yet it had also an unreasonable apprehension; for why should he fear the husband of the woman who had done that husband such an injury! "She treated you pretty bad, didn't she--not much heart, had Carmen!" he added. "Sit down. I want to talk to you," said Jean Jacques, motioning to two chairs by a table at the side of the room. This table was in the middle of the room when the man under the lamp-Hugo Stolphe was his name--had left it last. Why had the table been moved? "Why should I sit down, and what are you doing here?--I want to know that," Stolphe demanded. Jean Jacques' hands were opening and shutting. "Because I want to talk to you. If you don't sit down, I'll give you no chance at all. . . . Sit down!" Jean Jacques was smaller than Stolphe, but he was all whipcord and leather; the other was sleek and soft, but powerful too; and he had one of those savage natures which go blind with hatred, and which fight like beasts. He glanced swiftly round the room. "There is no weapon here," said Jean Jacques, nodding. "I have put everything away--so you could not hurt me if you wanted. . . . Sit down!" To gain time Stolphe sat down, for he had a fear that Jean Jacques was armed, and might be a madman armed--there were his feet bare on the brown painted boards. They looked so strange, so uncanny. He surely must be a madman if he wanted to do harm to Hugo Stolphe; for Hugo Stolphe had only "kept" the woman who had left her husband, not because of himself, but because of another man altogether--one George Masson. Had not Carmen herself told him that before she and he lived together? What grudge could Carmen's husband have against Hugo Stolphe? Jean Jacques sat down also, and, leaning on the table said: "Once I was a fool and let the other man escape-George Masson it was. Because of what he did, my wife left me." His voice became husky, but he shook his throat, as it were, cleared it, and went on. "I won't let you go. I was going to kill George Masson--I had him like that!" He opened and shut his hand with a gesture of fierce possession. "But I did not kill him. I let him go. He was so clever-- cleverer than you will know how to be. She said to me--my wife said to me, when she thought I had killed him, 'Why did you not fight him? Any man would have fought him.' That was her view. She was right--not to kill without fighting. That is why I did not kill you at once when I knew." "When you knew what?" Stolphe was staring at the madman. "When I knew you were you. First I saw that ring--that ring on your hand. It was my wife's. I gave it to her the first New Year after we married. I saw it on your hand when you were drinking at the bar next door. Then I asked them your name. I knew it. I had read your letters to my wife--" "Your wife once on a time!" Jean Jacques' eyes swam red. "My wife always and always--and at the last there in my arms." Stolphe temporized. "I never knew you. She did not leave you because of me. She came to me because--because I was there for her to come to, and you weren't there. Why do you want to do me any harm?" He still must be careful, for undoubtedly the man was mad--his eyes were too bright. "You were the death of her," answered Jean Jacques, leaning forward. "She was most ill-ah, who would not have been sorry for her! She was poor. She had been to you--but to live with a woman day by day, but to be by her side when the days are done, and then one morning to say, 'Au revoir till supper' and then go and never come back, and to take money and rings that belonged to her! . . . That was her death--that was the end of Carmen Barbille; and it was your fault." "You would do me harm and not hurt her! Look how she treated you--and others." Jean Jacques half rose from his seat in sudden rage, but he restrained himself, and sat down again. "She had one husband--only one. It was Jean Jacques Barbille. She could only treat one as she treated me--me, her husband. But you, what had you to do with that! You used her--so!" He made a motion as though to stamp out an insect with his foot. "Beautiful, a genius, sick and alone--no husband, no child, and you used her so! That is why I shall kill you to-night. We will fight for it." Yes, but surely the man was mad, and the thing to do was to humour him, to gain time. To humour a madman--that is what one always advised, therefore Stolphe would make the pourparler, as the French say. "Well, that's all right," he rejoined, "but how is it going to be done? Have you got a pistol?" He thought he was very clever, and that he would now see whether Jean Jacques Barbille was armed. If he was not armed, well, then, there would be the chances in his favour; it wasn't easy to kill with hands alone. Jean Jacques ignored the question, however. He waved a hand impatiently, as though to dismiss it. "She was beautiful and splendid; she had been a queen down there in Quebec. You lied to her, and she was blind at first --I can see it all. She believed so easily--but yes, always! There she was what she was, and you were what you are, not a Frenchman, not Catholic, and an American--no, not an American--a South American. But no, not quite a South American, for there was the Portuguese nigger in you--Sit down!" Jean Jacques was on his feet bending over the enraged mongrel. He had spoken the truth, and Carmen's last lover had been stung as though a serpent's tooth was in his flesh. Of all things that could be said about him, that which Jean Jacques said was the worst--that he was not all white, that he had nigger blood! Yet it was true; and he realized that Jean Jacques must have got his information in Shilah itself where he had been charged with it. Yet, raging as he was, and ready to take the Johnny Crapaud--that is the name by which he had always called Carmen's husband--by the throat, he was not yet sure that Jean Jacques was unarmed. He sat still under an anger greater than his own, for there was in it that fanaticism which only the love or hate of a woman could breed in a man's mind. Suddenly Stolphe laughed outright, a crackling, mirthless, ironical laugh; for it really was absurdity made sublime that this man, who had been abandoned by his wife, should now want to kill one who had abandoned her! This outdid Don Quixote over and over. "Well, what do you want?" he asked. "I want you to fight," said Jean Jacques. "That is the way. That was Carmen's view. You shall have your chance to live, but I shall throw you in the river, and you can then fight the river. The current is swift, the banks are steep and high as a house down below there. Now, I am ready. . . . !" He had need to be, for Stolphe was quick, kicking the chair from beneath him, and throwing himself heavily on Jean Jacques. He had had his day at that in South America, and as Jean Jacques Barbille had said, the water was swift and deep, and the banks of the Watloon high and steep! But Jean Jacques was unconscious of everything save a debt to be collected for a woman he had loved, a compensation which must be taken in flesh and blood. Perhaps at the moment, as Stolphe had said to himself, he was a little mad, for all his past, all his plundered, squandered, spoiled life was crying out at him like a hundred ghosts, and he was fighting with beasts at Ephesus. An exaltation possessed him. Not since the day when his hand was on the lever of the flume with George Masson below; not since the day he had turned his back for ever on the Manor Cartier had he been so young and so much his old self-an egotist, with all the blind confidence of his kind; a dreamer inflamed into action with all a mad dreamer's wild power. He was not fifty-two years of age, but thirty-two at this moment, and all the knowledge got of the wrestling river-drivers of his boyhood, when he had spent hours by the river struggling with river-champions, came back to him. It was a relief to his sick soul to wrench and strain, and propel and twist and force onward, step by step, to the door opening on the river, this creature who had left his Carmen to die alone. "No, you don't--not yet. The jail before the river!" called a cool, sharp, sour voice; and on the edge of the trembling platform overhanging the river, Hugo Stolphe was dragged back from the plunge downward he was about to take, with Jean Jacques' hand at his throat. Stolphe had heard the door of the bedroom forced, but Jean Jacques had not heard it; he was only conscious of hands dragging him back just at the moment of Stolphe's deadly peril. "What is it?" asked Jean Jacques, seeing Stolphe in the hands of two men, and hearing the snap of steel. "Wanted for firing a house for insurance--wanted for falsifying the accounts of a Land Company--wanted for his own good, Mr. Hugo Stolphe, C.O.D.--collect on delivery!" said the officer of the law. "And collected just in time!" "We didn't mean to take him till to-morrow," the officer added, "but out on the river one of us saw this gladiator business here in the red-light zone, and there wasn't any time to lose. . . . I don't know what your business with him was," the long-moustached detective said to Jean Jacques, "but whatever the grudge is, if you don't want to appear in court in the morning, the walking's good out of town night or day--so long!" He hustled his prisoner out. Jean Jacques did not want to appear in court, and as the walking was officially good at dawn, he said good-bye to Virginie Poucette's sister through the crack of a door, and was gone before she could restrain him. "Well, things happen that way," he said, as he turned back to look at Shilah before it disappeared from view. "Ah, the poor, handsome vaurien!" the woman at the tavern kept saying to her husband all that day; and she could not rest till she had written to Virginie how Jean Jacques came to Shilah in the evening, and went with the dawn. CHAPTER XXIV JEAN JACQUES ENCAMPED The Young Doctor of Askatoon had a good heart, and he was exercising it honourably one winter's day near three years after Jean Jacques had left St. Saviour's. "There are many French Canadians working on the railway now, and a good many habitant farmers live hereabouts, and they have plenty of children --why not stay here and teach school? You are a Catholic, of course, monsieur?" This is what the Young Doctor said to one who had been under his anxious care for a few, vivid days. The little brown-bearded man with the grey- brown hair nodded in reply, but his gaze was on the billowing waste of snow, which stretched as far as eye could see to the pine-hills in the far distance. He nodded assent, but it was plain to be seen that the Young Doctor's suggestion was not in tune with his thought. His nod only acknowledged the reasonableness of the proposal. In his eyes, however, was the wanderlust which had possessed him for three long years, in which he had been searching for what to him was more than Eldorado, for it was hope and home. Hope was all he had left of the assets which had made him so great a figure--as he once thought--in his native parish of St. Saviour's. It was his fixed idea--une idee fixe, as he himself said. Lands, mills, manor, lime-kilns, factories, store, all were gone, and his wife Carmen also was gone. He had buried her with simple magnificence in Montreal--Mme. Glozel had said to her neighbours afterwards that the funeral cost over seventy-five dollars--and had set up a stone to her memory on which was carved, "Chez nous autrefois, et chez Dieu maintenant"--which was to say, "Our home once, and God's Home now." That done, with a sorrow which still had the peace of finality in his mind, he had turned his face to the West. His long, long sojourning had brought him to Shilah where a new chapter of his life was closed, and at last to Askatoon, where another chapter still closed an epoch in his life, and gave finality to all. There he had been taken down with congestion of the lungs, and, fainting at the door of a drug-store, had been taken possession of by the Young Doctor, who would not send him to the hospital. He would not send him there because he found inside the waistcoat of this cleanest tramp--if he was a tramp--that he had ever seen, a book of philosophy, the daguerreotype photo of a beautiful foreign-looking woman, and some verses in a child's handwriting. The book of philosophy was underlined and interlined on every page, and every margin had comment which showed a mind of the most singular simplicity, searching wisdom, and hopeless confusion, all in one. The Young Doctor was a man of decision, and he had whisked the little brown-grey sufferer to his own home, and tended him there like a brother till the danger disappeared; and behold he was rewarded for his humanity by as quaint an experience as he had ever known. He had not succeeded-- though he tried hard--in getting at the history of his patient's life; but he did succeed in reading the fascinating story of a mind; for Jean Jacques, if not so voluble as of yore, had still moments when he seemed to hypnotize himself, and his thoughts were alive in an atmosphere of intellectual passion ill in accord with his condition. Presently the little brown man withdrew his eyes from the window of the Young Doctor's office and the snowy waste beyond. They had a curious red underglow which had first come to them an evening long ago, when they caught from the sky the reflection of a burning mill. There was distance and the far thing in that underglow of his eyes. It had to do with the horizon, not with the place where his feet were. It said, "Out there, beyond, is what I go to seek, what I must find, what will be home to me." "Well, I must be getting on," he said in a low voice to the Young Doctor, ignoring the question which had been asked. "If you want work, there's work to be had here, as I said," responded the Young Doctor. "You are a man of education--" "How do you know that?" asked Jean Jacques. "I hear you speak," answered the other, and then Jean Jacques drew himself up and threw back his head. He had ever loved appreciation, not to say flattery, and he had had very little of it lately. "I was at Laval," he remarked with a flash of pride. "No degree, but a year there, and travel abroad--the Grand Tour, and in good style, with plenty to do it with. Oh, certainly, no thought for sous, hardly for francs! It was gold louis abroad and silver dollars at home--that was the standard." "The dollars are much scarcer now, eh?" asked the Young Doctor quizzically. "I should think I had just enough to pay you," said the other, bridling up suddenly; for it seemed to him the Young Doctor had become ironical and mocking; and though he had been mocked much in his day, there were times when it was not easy to endure it. The truth is the Young Doctor was somewhat of an expert in human nature, and he deeply wanted to know the history of this wandering habitant, because he had a great compassionate liking for him. If he could get the little man excited, he might be able to find out what he wanted. During the days in which the wanderer had been in his house, he had been far from silent, for he joked at his own suffering and kept the housekeeper laughing at his whimsical remarks; while he won her heart by the extraordinary cleanliness of his threadbare clothes, and the perfect order of his scantily-furnished knapsack. It had the exactness of one who was set upon a far course and would carry it out on scientific calculation. He had been full of mocking quips and sallies at himself, but from first to last he never talked. The things he said were nothing more than surface sounds, as it were--the ejaculations of a mind, not its language or its meanings. "He's had some strange history, this queer little man," said the housekeeper to the Young Doctor; "and I'd like to know what it is. Why, we don't even know his name." "So would I," rejoined the Young Doctor, "and I'll have a good try for it." He had had his try more than once, but it had not succeeded. Perhaps a little torture would do it, he thought; and so he had made the rather tactless remark about the scarcity of dollars. Also his look was incredulous when Jean Jacques protested that he had enough to pay the fee. "When you searched me you forgot to look in the right place," continued Jean Jacques; and he drew from the lining of the hat he held in his hand a little bundle of ten-dollar bills. "Here--take your pay from them," he said, and held out the roll of bills. "I suppose it won't be more than four dollars a day; and there's enough, I think. I can't pay you for your kindness to me, and I don't want to. I'd like to owe you that; and it's a good thing for a man himself to be owed kindness. He remembers it when he gets older. It helps him to forgive himself more or less for what he's sorry for in life. I've enough in this bunch to pay for board and professional attendance, or else the price has gone up since I had a doctor before." He laughed now, and the laugh was half-ironical, half-protesting. It seemed to come from the well of a hidden past; and no past that is hidden has ever been a happy past. The Young Doctor took the bills, looked at them as though they were curios, and then returned them with the remark that they were of a kind and denomination of no use to him. There was a twinkle in his eye as he said it. Then he added: "I agree with you that it's a good thing for a man to lay up a little credit of kindness here and there for his old age. Well, anything I did for you was meant for kindness and nothing else. You weren't a bit of trouble, and it was simply your good constitution and a warm room and a few fly-blisters that pulled you through. It wasn't any skill of mine. Go and thank my housekeeper if you like. She did it all." "I did my best to thank her," answered Jean Jacques. "I said she reminded me of Virginie Palass Poucette, and I could say nothing better than that, except one thing; and I'm not saying that to anybody." The Young Doctor had a thrill. Here was a very unusual man, with mystery and tragedy, and yet something above both, in his eyes. "Who was Virginie Palass Poucette?" he asked. Jean Jacques threw out a hand as though to say, "Attend--here is a great thing," and he began, "Virginie Poucette--ah, there . . . !" Then he paused, for suddenly there spread out before him that past, now so far away, in which he had lived--and died. Strange that when he had mentioned Virginie's name to the housekeeper he had no such feeling as possessed him now. It had been on the surface, and he had used her name without any deep stir of the waters far down in his soul. But the Young Doctor was fingering the doors of his inner life--all at once this conviction came to him--and the past rushed upon him with all its disarray and ignominy, its sorrow, joy, elation and loss. Not since he had left the scene of his defeat, not since the farewell to his dead Carmen, that sweet summer day when he had put the lovely, ruined being away with her words, "Jean Jacques--ah, my beautiful Jean Jacques," ringing in his ears, had he ever told anyone his story. He had had a feeling that, as Carmen had been restored to him without his crying out, or vexing others with his sad history, so would Zoe also come back to him. Patience and silence was his motto. Yet how was it that here and now there came an overpowering feeling, that he must tell this healer of sick bodies the story of an invalid soul? This man with the piercing dark-blue eyes before him, who looked so resolute, who had the air of one who could say, "This is the way to go," because he knew and was sure; he was not to be denied. "Who was Virginie Poucette?" repeated the Young Doctor insistently, yet ever so gently. "Was she such a prize among women? What did she do?" A flood of feeling passed over Jean Jacques' face. He looked at his hat and his knapsack lying in a chair, with a desire to seize them and fly from the inquisitor; then a sense of fatalism came upon him. As though he had received an order from within his soul, he said helplessly: "Well, if it must be, it must." Then he swept the knapsack and his hat from the chair to the floor, and sat down. "I will begin at the beginning," he said with his eyes fixed on those of the Young Doctor, yet looking beyond him to far-off things. "I will start from the time when I used to watch the gold Cock of Beaugard turning on the mill, when I sat in the doorway of the Manor Cartier in my pinafore. I don't know why I tell you, but maybe it was meant I should. I obey conviction. While you are able to keep logic and conviction hand in hand then everything is all right. I have found that out. Logic, philosophy are the props of life, but still you must obey the impulse of the soul--oh, absolutely! You must--" He stopped short. "But it will seem strange to you," he added after a moment, in which the Young Doctor gestured to him to proceed, "to hear me talk like this--a wayfarer--a vagabond you may think. But in other days I was in places--" The Young Doctor interjected with abrupt friendliness that there was no need to say he had been in high places. It would still be apparent, if he were in rags. "Then, there, I will speak freely," rejoined Jean Jacques, and he took the cherry-brandy which the other offered him, and drank it off with gusto. "Ah, that--that," he said, "is like the cordials Mere Langlois used to sell at Vilray. She and Virginie Poucette had a place together on the market--none better than Mere Langlois except Virginie Poucette, and she was like a drink of water in the desert. . . . Well, there, I will begin. Now my father was--" It was lucky there were no calls for the Young Doctor that particular early morning, else the course of Jean Jacques' life might have been greatly different from what it became. He was able to tell his story from the very first to the last. Had it been interrupted or unfinished one name might not have been mentioned. When Jean Jacques used it, the Young Doctor sat up and leaned forward eagerly, while a light came into his face-a light of surprise, of revelation and understanding. When Jean Jacques came to that portion of his life when manifest tragedy began--it began of course on the Antoine, but then it was not manifest-- when his Carmen left him after the terrible scene with George Masson, he paused and said: "I don't know why I tell you this, for it is not easy to tell; but you saved my life, and you have a right to know what it is you have saved, no matter how hard it is to put it all before you." It was at this point that he mentioned Zoe's name--he had hitherto only spoken of her as "my daughter"; and here it was the Young Doctor showed startled interest, and repeated the name after Jean Jacques. "Zoe! Zoe! --ah!" he said, and became silent again. Jean Jacques had not noticed the Young Doctor's pregnant interruption, he was so busy with his own memories of the past; and he brought the tale to the day when he turned his face to the West to look for Zoe. Then he paused. "And then?" the Young Doctor asked. "There is more--there is the search for Zoe ever since." "What is there to say?" continued Jean Jacques. "I have searched till now, and have not found." "How have you lived?" asked the other. "Keeping books in shops and factories, collecting accounts for storekeepers, when they saw they could trust me, working at threshings and harvests, teaching school here and there. Once I made fifty dollars at a railway camp telling French Canadian tales and singing chansons Canadiennes. I have been insurance agent, sold lightning-rods, and been foreman of a gang building a mill--but I could not bear that. Every time I looked up I could see the Cock of Beaugard where the roof should be. And so on, so on, first one thing and then another till now--till I came to Askatoon and fell down by the drug-store, and you played the good Samaritan. So it goes, and I step on from here again, looking--looking." "Wait till spring," said the Young Doctor. "What is the good of going on now! You can only tramp to the next town, and--" "And the next," interposed Jean Jacques. "But so it is my orders." He put his hand on his heart, and gathered up his hat and knapsack. "But you haven't searched here at Askatoon." "Ah? . . . Ah-well, surely that is so," answered Jean Jacques wistfully. "I had forgotten that. Perhaps you can tell me, you who know all. Have you any news about my Zoe for me? Do you know--was she ever here? Madame Gerard Fynes would be her name. My name is Jean Jacques Barbille." "Madame Zoe was here, but she has gone," quietly answered the Young Doctor. Jean Jacques dropped the hat and the knapsack. His eyes had a glad, yet staring and frightened look, for the Young Doctor's face was not the bearer of good tidings. "Zoe--my Zoe! You are sure? . . . When was she here?" he added huskily. "A month ago." "When did she go?" Jean Jacques' voice was almost a whisper. "A month ago." "Where did she go?" asked Jean Jacques, holding himself steady, for he had a strange dreadful premonition. "Out of all care at last," answered the Young Doctor, and took a step towards the little man, who staggered, then recovered himself. "She--my Zoe is dead! How?" questioned Jean Jacques in a ghostly sort of voice, but there was a steadiness and control unlike what he had shown in other tragic moments. "It was a blizzard. She was bringing her husband's body in a sleigh to the railway here. He had died of consumption. She and the driver of the sleigh went down in the blizzard. Her body covered the child and saved it. The driver was lost also." "Her child--Zoe's child?" quavered Jean Jacques. "A little girl--Zoe. The name was on her clothes. There were letters. One to her father-- to you. Your name is Jean Jacques Barbille, is it not? I have that letter to you. We buried her and her husband in the graveyard yonder." He pointed. "Everybody was there--even when they knew it was to be a Catholic funeral." "Ah! she was buried a Catholic?" Jean Jacques' voice was not quite so blurred now. "Yes. Her husband had become Catholic too. A priest who had met them in the Peace River Country was here at the time." At that, with a moan, Jean Jacques collapsed. He shed no tears, but he sat with his hands between his knees, whispering his child's name. The Young Doctor laid a hand on his shoulder gently, but presently went out, shutting the door after him. As he left the room, however, he turned and said, "Courage, Monsieur Jean Jacques! Courage!" When the Young Doctor came back a half-hour later he had in his hand the letters found in Zoe's pocket. "Monsieur Jean Jacques," he said gently to the bowed figure still sitting as he left him. Jean Jacques got up slowly and looked at him as though scarce understanding where he was. "The child--the child--where is my Zoe's child? Where is Zoe's Zoe?" he asked in agitation. His whole body seemed to palpitate. His eyes were all red fire. CHAPTER XXV WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE? The Young Doctor did not answer Jean Jacques at once. As he looked at this wayworn fugitive he knew that another, and perhaps the final crisis of his life, was come to Jean Jacques Barbille, and the human pity in him shrank from the possible end to it all. It was an old-world figure this, with the face of a peasant troubadour and the carriage of an aboriginal-- or an aristocrat. Indeed, the ruin, the lonely wandering which had been Jean Jacques' portion, had given him that dignity which often comes to those who defy destiny and the blows of angry fate. Once there had been in his carriage something jaunty. This was merely life and energy and a little vain confidence; now there was the look of courage which awaits the worst the world can do. The life which, according to the world's logic, should have made Jean Jacques a miserable figure, an ill-nourished vagabond, had given him a physical grace never before possessed by him. The face, however, showed the ravages which loss and sorrow had made. It was lined and shadowed with dark reflection, yet the forehead had a strange smoothness and serenity little in accord with the rest of the countenance. It was like the snow-summit of a mountain below which are the ragged escarpments of trees and rocks, making a look of storm and warfare. "Where is she--the child of my Zoe?" Jean Jacques repeated with an almost angry emphasis; as though the Young Doctor were hiding her from him. "She is with the wife of Nolan Doyle, my partner in horse-breeding, not very far from here. Norah Doyle was married five years, and she had no child. This was a grief to her, even more than to Nolan, who, like her, came of a stock that was prolific. It was Nolan who found your daughter on the prairie--the driver dead, but she just alive when found. To give her ease of mind, Nolan said he would make the child his own. When he said that, she smiled and tried to speak, but it was too late, and she was gone." In sudden agony Jean Jacques threw up his hands. "So young and so soon to be gone!" he exclaimed. "But a child she was and had scarce tasted the world. The mercy of God--what is it!" "You can't take time as the measure of life," rejoined the Young Doctor with a compassionate gesture. "Perhaps she had her share of happiness-- as much as most of us get, maybe, in a longer course." "Share! She was worth a hundred years of happiness!" bitterly retorted Jean Jacques. "Perhaps she knew her child would have it?" gently remarked the Young Doctor. "Ah, that--that ! . . . Do you think that possible, m'sieu'? Tell me, do you think that was in her mind--to have loved, and been a mother, and given her life for the child, and then the bosom of God. Answer that to me, m'sieu'?" There was intense, poignant inquiry in Jean Jacques' face, and a light seemed to play over it. The Young Doctor heeded the look and all that was in the face. It was his mission to heal, and he knew that to heal the mind was often more necessary than to heal the body. Here he would try to heal the mind, if only in a little. "That might well have been in her thought," he answered. "I saw her face. It had a wonderful look of peace, and a smile that would reconcile anyone she loved to her going. I thought of that when I looked at her. I recall it now. It was the smile of understanding." He had said the only thing which could have comforted Jean Jacques at that moment. Perhaps it was meant to be that Zoe's child should represent to him all that he had lost--home, fortune, place, Carmen and Zoe. Perhaps she would be home again for him and all that home should mean--be the promise of a day when home would again include that fled from Carmen, and himself, and Carmen's child. Maybe it was sentiment in him, maybe it was sentimentality--and maybe it was not. "Come, m'sieu'," Jean Jacques said impatiently: "let us go to the house of that M'sieu' Doyle. But first, mark this: I have in the West here some land--three hundred and twenty acres. It may yet be to me a home, where I shall begin once more with my Zoe's child--with my Zoe of Zoe-- the home-life I lost down by the Beau Cheval. . . . Let us go at once." "Yes, at once," answered the Young Doctor. Yet his feet were laggard, for he was not so sure that there would be another home for Jean Jacques with his grandchild as its star. He was thinking of Norah, to whom a waif of the prairie had made home what home should be for herself and Nolan Doyle. "Read these letters first," he said, and he put the letters found on Zoe in Jean Jacques' eager hands. A half-hour later, at the horse-breeding ranch, the Young Doctor introduced Jean Jacques to Norah Doyle, and instantly left the house. He had no wish to hear the interview which must take place between the two. Nolan Doyle was not at home, but in the room where they were shown to Norah was a cradle. Norah was rocking it with one foot while, standing by the table, she busied herself with sewing. The introduction was of the briefest. "Monsieur Barbille wishes a word with you, Mrs. Doyle," said the Young Doctor. "It's a matter that doesn't need me. Monsieur has been in my care, as you know. . . . Well, there, I hope Nolan is all right. Tell him I'd like to see him to-morrow about the bay stallion and the roans. I've had an offer for them. Good-bye--good-bye, Mrs. Doyle"--he was at the door--"I hope you and Monsieur Barbille will decide what's best for the child without difficulty." The door opened quickly and shut again, and Jean Jacques was alone with the woman and the child. "What's best for the child!" That was what the Young Doctor had said. Norah stopped rocking the cradle and stared at the closed door. What had this man before her, this tramp habitant of whom she had heard, of course, to do with little Zoe in the cradle--her little Zoe who had come just when she was most needed; who had brought her man and herself close together again after an estrangement which neither had seemed able to prevent. "What's best for the child!" How did the child in the cradle concern this man? Then suddenly his name almost shrieked in her brain. Barbille--that was the name on the letter found on the body of the woman who died and left Zoe behind--M. Jean Jacques Barbille. Yes, that was the name. What was going to happen? Did the man intend to try and take Zoe from her? "What is your name--all of it?" she asked sharply. She had a very fine set of teeth, as Jean Jacques saw mechanically; and subconsciously he said to himself that they seemed cruel, they were so white and regular-- and cruel. The cruelty was evident to him as she bit in two the thread for the waistcoat she was mending, and then plied her needle again. Also the needle in her fingers might have been intended to sew up his shroud, so angry did it appear at the moment. But her teeth had something almost savage about them. If he had seen them when she was smiling, he would have thought them merely beautiful and rare, atoning for her plain face and flat breast--not so flat as it had been; for since the child had come into her life, her figure, strangely enough, had rounded out, and lines never before seen in her contour appeared. He braced himself for the contest he knew was at hand, and replied to her. "My name is Jean Jacques Barbille. I was of the Manor Cartier, in St. Saviour's parish, Quebec. The mother of the child Zoe, there, was born at the Manor Cartier. I was her father. I am the grandfather of this Zoe." He motioned towards the cradle. Then, with an impulse he could not check and did not seek to check--why should he? was not the child his own by every right?--he went to the cradle and looked down at the tiny face on its white pillow. There could be no mistake about it; here was the face of his lost Zoe, with something, too, of Carmen, and also the forehead of the Barbilles. As though the child knew, it opened its eyes wide-big, brown eyes like those of Carmen Dolores. "Ah, the beautiful, beloved thing!" he exclaimed in a low-voice, ere Norah stepped between and almost pushed him back. An outstretched arm in front of her prevented him from stooping to kiss the child. "Stand back. The child must not be waked," she said. "It must sleep another hour. It has its milk at twelve o'clock. Stand aside. I won't have my child disturbed." "Have my child disturbed"--that was what she had said, and Jean Jacques realized what he had to overbear. Here was the thing which must be fought out at once. "The child is not yours, but mine," he declared. "Here is proof--the letter found on my Zoe when she died--addressed to me. The doctor knew. There is no mistake." He held out the letter for her to see. "As you can read here, my daughter was on her way back to the Manor Cartier, to her old home at St. Saviour's. She was on her way back when she died. If she had lived I should have had them both; but one is left, according to the will of God. And so I will take her--this flower of the prairie--and begin life again." The face Norah turned on him had that look which is in the face of an animal, when its young is being forced from it--fierce, hungering, furtive, vicious. "The child is mine," she exclaimed--"mine and no other's. The prairie gave it to me. It came to me out of the storm. 'Tis mine-mine only. I was barren and wantin', and my man was slippin' from me, because there was only two of us in our home. I was older than him, and yonder was a girl with hair like a sheaf of wheat in the sun, and she kept lookin' at him, and he kept goin' to her. 'Twas a man she wanted, 'twas a child he wanted, and there they were wantin', and me atin' my heart out with passion and pride and shame and sorrow. There was he wantin' a child, and the girl wantin' a man, and I only wantin' what God should grant all women that give themselves to a man's arms after the priest has blessed them. And whin all was at the worst, and it looked as if he was away with her--the girl yonder--then two things happened. A man--he was me own brother and a millionaire if I do say it--he took her and married her; and then, too, Heaven's will sent this child's mother to her last end and the child itself to my Nolan's arms. To my husband's arms first it came, you understand; and he give the child to me, as it should be, and said he, 'We'll make believe it is our own.' But I said to him, 'There's no make-believe. 'Tis mine. 'Tis mine. It came to me out of the storm from the hand of God.' And so it was and is; and all's well here in the home, praise be to God. And listen to me: you'll not come here to take the child away from me. It can't be done. I'll not have it. Yes, you can let that sink down into you--I'll not have it." During her passionate and defiant appeal Jean Jacques was restless with the old unrest of years ago, and his face twitched with emotion; but before she had finished he had himself in some sort of control. "You--madame, you are only thinking of yourself in this. You are only thinking what you want, what you and your man need. But it's not to be looked at that way only, and--" "Well, then it isn't to be looked at that way only," she interrupted. "As you say, it isn't Nolan and me alone to be considered. There's--" "There's me," he interrupted sharply. "The child is bone of my bone. It is bone of all the Barbilles back to the time of Louis XI."--he had said that long ago to Zoe first, and it was now becoming a fact in his mind. "It is linked up in the chain of the history of the Barbilles. It is one with the generations of noblesse and honour and virtue. It is--" "It's one with Abel the son of Adam, if it comes to that, and so am I," Norah bitingly interjected, while her eyes flashed fire, and she rocked the cradle more swiftly than was good for the child's sleep. Jean Jacques flared up. "There were sons and daughters of the family of Adam that had names, but there were plenty others you whistled to as you would to a four-footer, and they'd come. The Barbilles had names--always names of their own back to Adam. The child is a Barbille--Don't rock the cradle so fast," he suddenly added with an irritable gesture, breaking off from his argument. "Don't you know better than that when a child's asleep? Do you want it to wake up and cry?" She flushed to the roots of her hair, for he had said something for which she had no reply. She had undoubtedly disturbed the child. It stirred in its sleep, then opened its eyes, and at once began to cry. "There," said Jean Jacques, "what did I tell you? Any one that had ever had children would know better than that." Norah paid no attention to his mocking words, to the undoubted-truth of his complaint. Stooping over, she gently lifted the child up. With hungry tenderness she laid it against her breast and pressed its cheek to her own, murmuring and crooning to it. "Acushla! Acushla! Ah, the pretty bird--mother's sweet--mother's angel!" she said softly. She rocked backwards and forwards. Her eyes, though looking at Jean Jacques as she crooned and coaxed and made lullaby, apparently did not see him. She was as concentrated as though it were a matter of life and death. She was like some ancient nurse of a sovereign-child, plainly dressed, while the dainty white clothes of the babe in her arms--ah, hadn't she raided the hoard she had begun when first married, in the hope of a child of her own, to provide this orphan with clothes good enough for a royal princess! The flow of the long, white dress of the waif on the dark blue of Norah's gown, which so matched the deep sapphire of her eyes, caught Jean Jacques' glance, allured his mind. It was the symbol of youth and innocence and home. Suddenly he had a vision of the day when his own Zoe had been given to the cradle for the first time, and he had done exactly what Norah had done--rocked too fast and too hard, and waked his little one; and Carmen had taken her up in her long white draperies, and had rocked to and fro, just like this, singing a lullaby. That lullaby he had himself sung often afterwards; and now, with his grandchild in Norah's arms there before him--with this other Zoe--the refrain of it kept lilting in his brain. In the pause ensuing, when Norah stooped to put the pacified child again in its nest, he also stooped over the cradle and began to hum the words of the lullaby: "Sing, little bird, of the whispering leaves, Sing a song of the harvest sheaves; Sing a song to my Fanchonette, Sing a song to my Fanchonette! Over her eyes, over her eyes, over her eyes of violet, See the web that the weaver weaves, The web of sleep that the weaver weaves-- Weaves, weaves, weaves! Over those eyes of violet, Over those eyes of my Fanchonette, Weaves, weaves, weaves-- See the web that the weaver weaves!" For quite two minutes Jean Jacques and Norah Doyle stooped over the cradle, looking at Zoe's rosy, healthy, pretty face, as though unconscious of each other, and only conscious of the child. When Jean Jacques had finished the long first verse of the chanson, and would have begun another, Norah made a protesting gesture. "She's asleep, and there's no more need," she said. "Wasn't it a good lullaby, madame?" Jean Jacques asked. "So, so," she replied, on her defence again. "It was good enough for her mother," he replied, pointing to the cradle. "It's French and fanciful," she retorted--"both music and words." "The child's French--what would you have?" asked Jean Jacques indignantly. "The child's father was English, and she's goin' to be English, the darlin', from now on and on and on. That's settled. There's manny an English and Irish lullaby that'll be sung to her hence and onward; and there's manny an English song she'll sing when she's got her voice, and is big enough. Well, I think she'll sing like a canary." "Do the birds sing in English?" exclaimed Jean Jacques, with anger in his face now. Was there ever any vanity like the vanity of these people who had made the conquest of Quebec, when sixteen Barbilles lost their lives, one of them being aide-de-camp to M. Vaudreuil, the governor! "All the canaries I ever heard sung in English," she returned stubbornly. "How do Frenchmen understand their singing, then?" irritably questioned Jean Jacques. "Well, in translation only," she retorted, and with her sharp white teeth she again bit the black thread of her needle, tied the end into a little knot, and began to mend the waistcoat which she had laid down in the first moments of the interview. "I want the child," Jean Jacques insisted abruptly. "I'll wait till she wakes, and then I'll wrap her up and take her away." "Didn't you hear me say she was to be brought up English?" asked Norah, with a slowness which clothed her fiercest impulses. "Name of God, do you think I'll let you have her!" returned Jean Jacques with asperity and decision. "You say you are alone, you and your M'sieu' Nolan. Well, I am alone--all alone in the world, and I need her--Mother of God, I need her more than I ever needed anything in my life! You have each other, but I have only myself, and it is not good company. Besides, the child is mine, a Barbille of Barbilles, une legitime--a rightful child of marriage. But if it was a love-child only it would still be mine, being my daughter's child. Look you, it is no such thing. It is of those who can claim inheritance back to Louis XI. She will be to me the gift of God in return for the robbery of death." He leaned over the cradle, and his look was like that of one who had found a treasure in the earth. Now she struck hard. Yet very subtly too did she attack him. "You--you are thinking of yourself, m'sieu', only of yourself. Aren't you going to think of the child at all? It isn't yourself that counts so much. You've had your day, or the part of it that matters most. But her time is not yet even begun. It's all--all--before her. You say you'll take her away--well, to what? To what will you take her? What have you got to give her? What--" "I have the three hundred and twenty acres out there"--he pointed westward--"and I will make a home and begin again with her." "Three hundred and twenty acres--'out there'!" she exclaimed in scorn. "Any one can have a farm here for the askin'. What is that? Is it a home? What have you got to start a home with? Do you deny you are no better than a tramp? Have you got a hundred dollars in the world? Have you got a roof over your head? Have you got a trade? You'll take her where--to what? Even if you had a home, what then? You would have to get someone to look after her--some old crone, a wench maybe, who'd be as fit to bring up a child as I would be to--" she paused and looked round in helpless quest for a simile, when, in despair, she caught sight of Jean Jacques' watch-chain--"as I would be to make a watch!" she added. Instinctively Jean Jacques drew out the ancient timepiece he had worn on the Grand Tour; which had gone down with the Antoine and come up with himself. It gave him courage to make the fight for his own. "The good God would see that--" he began. "The good God doesn't interfere in bringing up babies," she retorted. "That's the work for the fathers and mothers, or godfathers and godmothers." "You are neither," exclaimed Jean Jacques. "You have no rights at all." "I have no rights--eh? I have no rights! Look at the child. Look at the way she's clothed. Look at the cradle in which it lies. It cost fifteen dollars; and the clothes--what they cost would keep a family half a year. I have no rights, is it?--I who stepped in and took the child without question, without bein' asked, and made it my own, and treated it as if it was me own. No, by the love of God, I treated it far, far better than if it had been me own. Because a child was denied me, the hunger of the years made me love the child as a mother would on a desert island with one child at her knees." "You can get another-one not your own, as this isn't," argued Jean Jacques fiercely. She was not to be forced to answer his arguments directly. She chose her own course to convince. "Nolan loves this child as if it was his," she declared, her eyes all afire, "but he mightn't love another--men are queer creatures. Then where would I be? and what would the home be but what it was before--as cold, as cold and bitter! It was the hand of God brought the child to the door of two people who had no child and who prayed for one. Do you deny it was the hand of God that brought your daughter here away, that put the child in my arms? Not its mother, am I not? But I love her better than twenty mothers could. It's the hunger--the hunger--the hunger in me. She's made a woman of me. She has a home where everything is hers--everything. To see Nolan play with her, tossin' her up and down in his arms as if he'd done it all his life--as natural as natural! To take her away from that--all the comfort here where she can have annything she wants! With my old mother to care for her, if so be I was away to market or whereabouts--one that brought up six children, a millionaire among them, praise be to God as my mother did--to take this delicate little thing away from here, what a sin and crime 'twould be! She herself 'd never forgive you for it, if ever she grew up--though that's not likely, things bein' as they are with you, and you bein' what you are. Ah, there--there she is awake and smilin', and kickin' up her pretty toes this minute! There she is, the lovely little Zoe, with eyes like black pearls. . . . See now--see now which she'll come to--to you or me, m'sieu'. There, put out your arms to her, and I'll put out mine, and see which she'll take. I'll stand by that--I'll stand by that. Let the child decide. Hold out your arms, and so will I" With an impassioned word Jean Jacques reached down his arms to the child, which lay laughing up at them and kicking its pink toes into the air, and Norah Doyle did the same, murmuring an Irish love-name for a child. Jean Jacques was silent, but in his face was the longing of a soul sick for home, of one who desires the end of a toilsome road. The laughing child crooned and spluttered and shook its head, as though it was playing some happy game. It looked first at Norah, then at Jean Jacques, then at Norah again, and then, with a little gurgle of pleasure, stretched out its arms to her and half-raised itself from the pillow. With a glad cry Norah gathered it to her bosom, and triumph shone in her face. "Ah, there, you see!" she said, as she lifted her face from the blossom at her breast. "There it is," said Jean Jacques with shaking voice. "You have nothing to give her--I have everything," she urged. "My rights are that I would die for the child--oh, fifty times! . . . What are you going to do, m'sieu'?" Jean Jacques slowly turned and picked up his hat. He moved with the dignity of a hero who marches towards a wall to meet the bullets of a firing-squad. "You are going?" Norah whispered, and in her eyes was a great relief and the light of victory. The golden link binding Nolan and herself was in her arms, over her heart. Jean Jacques did not speak a word in reply, though his lips moved. She held out the little one to him for a good-bye, but he shook his head. If he did that--if he once held her in his arms--he would not be able to give her up. Gravely and solemnly, however, he stooped over and kissed the lips of the child lying against Norah's breast. As he did so, with a quick, mothering instinct Norah impulsively kissed his shaggy head, and her eyes filled with tears. She smiled too, and Jean Jacques saw how beautiful her teeth were--cruel no longer. He moved away slowly. At the door he turned, and looked back at the two --a long, lingering look he gave. Then he faced away from them again. "Moi je suis philosophe," he said gently, and opened the door and stepped out and away into the frozen world. EPILOGUE Change might lay its hand on the parish of St. Saviour's, and it did so on the beautiful sentient living thing, as on the thing material and man- made; but there was no change in the sheltering friendship of Mont Violet or the flow of the illustrious Beau Cheval. The autumns also changed not at all. They cast their pensive canopies over the home-scene which Jean Jacques loved so well, before he was exhaled from its bosom. One autumn when the hillsides were in those colours which none but a rainbow of the moon ever had, so delicately sad, so tenderly assuring, a traveller came back to St. Saviour's after a long journey. He came by boat to the landing at the Manor Cartier, rather than by train to the railway-station, from which there was a drive of several miles to Vilray. At the landing he was met by a woman, as much a miniature of the days of Orleanist France as himself. She wore lace mits which covered the hands but not the fingers, and her gown showed the outline of a meek crinoline. "Ah, Fille--ah, dear Fille!" said the little fragment of an antique day, as the Clerk of the Court--rather, he that had been for so many years Clerk of the Court--stepped from the boat. "I can scarce believe that you are here once more. Have you good news?" "It was to come back with good news that I went," her brother answered smiling, his face lighted by an inner exaltation. "Dear, dear Fille!" She always called him that now, and not by his Christian name, as though he was a peer. She had done so ever since the Government had made him a magistrate, and Laval University had honoured him with the degree of doctor of laws. She was leading him to the pony-carriage in which she had come to meet him, when he said: "Do you think you could walk the distance, my dear? . . . It would be like old times," he added gently. "I could walk twice as far to-day," she answered, and at once gave directions for the young coachman to put "His Honour's" bag into the carriage. In spite of Fille's reproofs she insisted in calling him that to the servants. They had two servants now, thanks to the legacy left them by the late Judge Carcasson. Presently M. Fille took her by the hand. "Before we start--one look yonder," he murmured, pointing towards the mill which had once belonged to Jean Jacques, now rebuilt and looking almost as of old. "I promised Jean Jacques that I would come and salute it in his name, before I did aught else, and so now I do salute it." He waved a hand and made a bow to the gold Cock of Beaugard, the pride of all the vanished Barbilles. "Jean Jacques Barbille says that his head is up like yours, M. le Coq, and he wishes you many, many winds to come," he recited quite seriously, and as though it was not out of tune with the modern world. The gold Cock of Beaugard seemed to understand, for it swung to the left, and now a little to the right, and then stood still, as if looking at the little pair of exiles from an ancient world--of which the only vestiges remaining may be found in old Quebec. This ceremony over, they walked towards Mont Violet, averting their heads as they passed the Manor Cartier, in a kind of tribute to its departed master--as a Stuart Legitimist might pass the big palace at the end of the Mall in London. In the wood-path, Fille took his sister's hand. "I will tell you what you are so trembling to hear," he said. "There they are at peace, Jean Jacques and Virginie--that best of best women." "To think--married to Virginie Poucette--to think of that!" His sister's voice fluttered as she spoke. "But entirely. There was nothing in the way--and she meant to have him, the dear soul! I do not blame her, for at bottom he is as good a man as lives. Our Judge called him 'That dear fool, Jean Jacques, a man of men in his way, after all,' and our Judge was always right--but yes, nearly always right." After a moment of contented meditation he resumed. "Well, when Virginie sold her place here and went to live with her sister out at Shilah in the West, she said, 'If Jean Jacques is alive, he will be on the land which was Zoe's, which he bought for her. If he is alive--then!' So it was, and by one of the strange accidents which chance or women like Virginie, who have plenty of courage in their simpleness, arrange, they met on that three hundred and sixty acres. It was like the genius of Jean Jacques to have done that one right thing which would save him in the end--a thing which came out of his love for his child--the emotion of an hour. Indeed, that three hundred and sixty acres was his salvation after he learned of Zoe's death, and the other little Zoe, his grandchild, was denied to him--to close his heart against what seemed that last hope, was it not courage? And so, and so he has the reward of his own soul--a home at last once more." "With Virginie Poucette--Fille, Fille, how things come round!" exclaimed the little lady in the tiny bonnet with the mauve strings. "More than Virginie came round," he replied almost oracularly. "Who, think you, brought him the news that coal was found on his acres--who but the husband of Virginie's sister! Then came Virginie. On the day Jean Jacques saw her again, he said to her, 'What you would have given me at such cost, now let me pay for with the rest of my life. It is the great thought which was in your heart that I will pay for with the days left to me.'" A flickering smile brightened the sensitive ascetic face, and humour was in the eyes. "What do you think Virginie said to that? Her sister told me. Virginie said to that, 'You will have more days left, Jean Jacques, if you have a better cook. What do you like best for supper?' And Jean Jacques laughed much at that. Years ago he would have made a speech at it!" "Then he is no more a philosopher?" "Oh always, always, but in his heart, and not with his tongue. I cried, and so did he, when we met and when we parted. I think I am getting old, for indeed I could not help it: yet there was peace in his eyes--peace." "His eyes used to rustle so." "Rustle--that is the word. Now, that is what, he has learned in life-- the way to peace. When I left him, it was with Virginie close beside him, and when I said to him, 'Will you come back to us one day, Jean Jacques?' he said, 'But no, Fille, my friend; it is too far. I see it-- it is a million miles away--too great a journey to go with the feet, but with the soul I will visit it. The soul is a great traveller. I see it always--the clouds and the burnings and the pitfalls gone--out of sight-- in memory as it was when I was a child. Well, there it is, everything has changed, except the child-memory. I have had, and I have had not; and there it is. I am not the same man--but yes, in my love just the same, with all the rest--' He did not go on, so I said, 'If not the same, then what are you, Jean Jacques?'" "Ah, Fille, in the old days he would have said that he was a philosopher" --said his sister interrupting. "Yes, yes, one knows--he said it often enough and had need enough to say it. Well, said he to me, 'Me, I am a' --then he stopped, shook his head, and so I could scarcely hear him, murmured, 'Me--I am a man who has been a long journey with a pack on his back, and has got home again.' Then he took Virginie's hand in his." The old man's fingers touched the corner of his eye as though to find something there; then continued. "'Ah, a pedlar!' said I to him, to hear what he would answer. 'Follies to sell for sous of wisdom,' he answered. Then he put his arm around Virginie, and she gave him his pipe." "I wish M. Carcasson knew," the little grey lady remarked. "But of course he knows," said the Clerk of the Court, with his face turned to the sunset. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Courage which awaits the worst the world can do Good thing for a man himself to be owed kindness I can't pay you for your kindness to me, and I don't want to No past that is hidden has ever been a happy past She was not to be forced to answer his arguments directly That iceberg which most mourners carry in their breasts The soul is a great traveller You can't take time as the measure of life ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR "THE MONEY MASTER", COMPLETE: Air of certainty and universal comprehension Always calling to something, for something outside ourselves Being generous with other people's money Came of a race who set great store by mothers and grandmothers Confidence in a weak world gets unearned profit often Courage which awaits the worst the world can do Enjoy his own generosity Good thing for a man himself to be owed kindness Grove of pines to give a sense of warmth in winter Grow more intense, more convinced, more thorough, as they talk Had the slight flavour of the superior and the paternal He had only made of his wife an incident in his life He was in fact not a philosopher, but a sentimentalist He was not always sorry when his teasing hurt He admired, yet he wished to be admired He hated irony in anyone else I had to listen to him, and he had to pay me for listening I can't pay you for your kindness to me, and I don't want to I said I was not falling in love--I am in love If you have a good thought, act on it Inclined to resent his own insignificance Lacks a balance-wheel. He has brains, but not enough Law. It is expensive whether you win or lose Lyrical in his enthusiasms Man who tells the story in a new way, that is genius Missed being a genius by an inch No past that is hidden has ever been a happy past No man so simply sincere, or so extraordinarily prejudiced Not content to do even the smallest thing ill Of those who hypnotize themselves, who glow with self-creation Philosophers are often stupid in human affairs Protest that it is right when it knows that it is wrong She was not to be forced to answer his arguments directly Spurting out little geysers of other people's cheap wisdom That iceberg which most mourners carry in their breasts The beginning of the end of things was come for him The soul is a great traveller Untamed by the normal restraints of a happy married life You can't take time as the measure of life You went north towards heaven and south towards hell THE WORLD FOR SALE By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS: PRELUDE BOOK I I. "THE DRUSES ARE UP!" II. THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND III. CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS IV. THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE V. "BY THE RIVER STARZKE....IT WAS SO DONE" VI. THE UNGUARDED FIRES VII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE BOOK II VIII. THE SULTAN IX. MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MEN X. FOR LUCK XI. THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN XII. "LET THERE BE LIGHT" XIII. THE CHAIN OF THE PAST XIV. SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE XV. THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER XVI. THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE XVII. THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD XVIII. THE BEACONS XIX. THE BEEPER OF THE BRIDGE BOOK III XX. TWO LIFE PIECES XXI. THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER XXII. THE SECRET MAN XXIII. THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS XXIV. AT LONG LAST XXV. MAN PROPOSES XXVI. THE SLEEPER XXVII. THE WORLD FOR SALE INTRODUCTION 'The World for Sale' is a tale of the primitive and lonely West and North, but the primitiveness and loneliness is not like that to be found in 'Pierre and His People'. Pierre's wanderings took place in a period when civilization had made but scant marks upon the broad bosom of the prairie land, and towns and villages were few and far scattered. The Lebanon and Manitou of this story had no existence in the time of Pierre, except that where Manitou stands there was a Hudson's Bay Company's post at which Indians, half-breeds, and chance settlers occasionally gathered for trade and exchange-furs, groceries, clothing, blankets, tobacco, and other things; and in the long winters the post was as isolated as an oasis in the Sahara. That old life was lonely and primitive, but it had its compensating balance of bright sun, wild animal life, and an air as vivid and virile as ever stirred the veins of man. Sometimes the still, bright cold was broken by a terrific storm, which ravaged, smothered, and entombed the stray traveller in ravines of death. That was in winter; but in summer, what had been called, fifty years ago, an alkali desert was an everlasting stretch of untilled soil, with unsown crops, and here and there herds of buffalo, which were stalked by alert Red Indians, half- breeds, and white pioneer hunters. The stories in 'Pierre and His People' were true to the life of that time; the incidents in 'The World for Sale', and the whole narrative, are true to the life of a very few years ago. Railways have pierced and opened up lonely regions of the Sagalae, and there are two thriving towns where, in the days of Pierre, only stood a Hudson's Bay Company's post with its store. Now, as far as eye can see, vast fields of grain greet the eye, and houses and barns speckle the greenish brown or Tuscan yellow of the crop-covered lands, while towns like Lebanon and Manitou provide for the modern settler all the modern conveniences which science has given to civilized municipalities. Today the motor-car and the telephone are as common in such places as they are in a thriving town of the United Kingdom. After the first few days of settlement two things always appear--a school-house and a church. Probably there is no country in the world where elementary education commands the devotion and the cash of the people as in English Canada; that is why the towns of Lebanon and Manitou had from the first divergent views. Lebanon was English, progressive, and brazenly modern; Manitou was slow, reactionary, more or less indifferent to education, and strenuously Catholic, and was thus opposed to the militant Protestantism of Lebanon. It was my idea to picture a situation in the big new West where destiny is being worked out in the making of a nation and the peopling of the wastes. I selected a very modern and unusual type of man as the central figure of my story. He was highly educated, well born, and carefully brought up. He possessed all the best elements of a young man in a new country--intelligent self-dependence, skill, daring, vision. He had an original turn of mind, and, as men are obliged to do in new countries, he looked far ahead. Yet he had to face what pioneers and reformers in old countries have to face, namely the disturbance of rooted interests. Certainly rooted interests in towns but a generation old cannot be extensive or remarkable, but if they are associated with habits and principles, they may be as deadly as those which test the qualities and wreck the careers of men in towns as old as London. The difference, however, between the old European town and the new Western town is that differences in the Western town are more likely to take physical form, as was the case in the life of Ingolby. In order to accentuate the primitive and yet highly civilized nature of the life I chose my heroine from a race and condition more unsettled and more primitive than that of Lebanon or Manitou at any time. I chose a heroine from the gipsy race, and to heighten the picture of the primitive life from which she had come I made her a convert to the settled life of civilization. I had known such a woman, older, but with the same characteristics, the same struggles, temptations, and suffering the same restriction of her life and movements by the prejudice in her veins--the prejudice of racial predilection. Looking at the story now after its publication, I am inclined to think that the introduction of the gipsy element was too bold, yet I believe it was carefully worked out in construction, and was a legitimate, intellectual enterprise. The danger of it was that it might detract from the reality and vividness of the narrative as a picture of Western life. Most American critics of the book seem not to have been struck by this doubt which has occurred to me. They realize perhaps more faithfully than some of the English critics have done that these mad contrasts are by no means uncommon in the primitive and virile life of the West and North. Just as California in the old days, just as Ballaret in Australia drew the oddest people from every corner of the world, so Western towns, with new railways, brought strange conglomerations into the life. For instance, a town like Winnipeg has sections which represent the life of nearly every race of Europe, and towns like Lebanon and Manitou, with English and French characteristics controlling them mainly, are still as subject to outside racial influences as to inside racial antagonisms. I believe The World for Sale shows as plainly as anything can show the vexed and conglomerate life of a Western town. It shows how racial characteristics may clash, disturb, and destroy, and yet how wisdom, tact, and lucky incident may overcome almost impossible situations. The antagonisms between Lebanon and Manitou were unwillingly and unjustly deepened by the very man who had set out to bring them together, as one of the ideals of his life, and as one of the factors of his success. Ingolby, who had everything to gain by careful going, almost wrecked his own life, and he injured the life of the two towns by impulsive acts. The descriptions of life in the two towns are true, and the chief characters in the book are lifted out of the life as one has seen it. Men like Osterhaut and Jowett, Indians like Tekewani, doctors like Rockwell, priests like Monseigneur Fabre, ministers like Mr. Tripple, and ne'er-do-weels like Marchand may be found in many a town of the West and North. Naturally the book must lack in something of that magnetic picturesqueness and atmosphere which belongs to the people in the Province of Quebec. Western and Northern life has little of the settled charm which belongs to the old civilization of the French province. The only way to recapture that charm is to place Frenchmen in the West, and have them act and live--or try to act and live--as they do in old Quebec. That is what I did with Pierre in my first book of fiction, Pierre and His People, but with the exception of Monseigneur Fabre there is no Frenchman in this book who fulfils, or could fulfil, the temperamental place which I have indicated. Men like Monseigneur Fabre have lived in the West, and worked and slaved like him, blest and beloved by all classes, creeds, and races. Father Lacombe was one of them. The part he played in the life of Western Canada will be written some day by one who understands how such men, celibate, and dedicated to religious life, may play a stupendous part in the development of civilization. Something of him is to be found in my description of Monseigneur Fabre. NOTE This book was begun in 1911 and finished in 1913, a year before war broke out. It was published serially in the year 1915 and the beginning of 1916. It must, therefore, go to the public on the basis of its merits alone, and as a picture of the peace-life of the great North West. PRELUDE Harvest-time was almost come, and the great new land was resting under coverlets of gold. From the rise above the town of Lebanon, there stretched out ungarnered wheat in the ear as far as sight could reach, and the place itself and the neighbouring town of Manitou on the other side of the Sagalac River were like islands washed by a topaz sea. Standing upon the Rise, lost in the prospect, was an old, white-haired man in the cassock of a priest, with grey beard reaching nearly to the waist. For long he surveyed the scene, and his eyes had a rapt look. At last he spoke aloud: "There shall be an heap of corn in the earth, high upon the hills; his fruit shall shake like Libanus, and shall be green in the city like grass upon the earth." A smile came to his lips--a rare, benevolent smile. He had seen this expanse of teeming life when it was thought to be an alkali desert, fit only to be invaded by the Blackfeet and the Cree and the Blood Indians on a foray for food and furs. Here he had come fifty years before, and had gone West and North into the mountains in the Summer season, when the land was tremulous with light and vibrating to the hoofs of herds of buffalo as they stampeded from the hunters; and also in the Winter time, when frost was master and blizzard and drift its malignant servants. Even yet his work was not done. In the town of Manitou he still said mass now and then, and heard the sorrows and sins of men and women, and gave them "ghostly comfort," while priests younger than himself took the burden of parish-work from his shoulders. For a lifetime he had laboured among the Indians and the few whites and squaw-men and half-breeds, with neither settlement nor progress. Then, all at once, the railway; and people coming from all the world, and cities springing up! Now once more he was living the life of civilization, exchanging raw flesh of fish and animals and a meal of tallow or pemmican for the wheaten loaf; the Indian tepee for the warm house with the mansard roof; the crude mass beneath the trees for the refinements of a chancel and an altar covered with lace and white linen. A flock of geese went honking over his head. His eyes smiled in memory of the countless times he had watched such flights, had seen thousands of wild ducks hurrying down a valley, had watched a family of herons stretching away to some lonely water-home. And then another sound greeted his ear. It was shrill, sharp and insistent. A great serpent was stealing out of the East and moving down upon Lebanon. It gave out puffs of smoke from its ungainly head. It shrieked in triumph as it came. It was the daily train from the East, arriving at the Sagalac River. "These things must be," he said aloud as he looked. While he lost himself again in reminiscence, a young man came driving across the plains, passing beneath where he stood. The young man's face and figure suggested power. In his buggy was a fishing-rod. His hat was pulled down over his eyes, but he was humming cheerfully to himself. When he saw the priest, he raised his hat respectfully, yet with an air of equality. "Good day, Monseigneur" (this honour of the Church had come at last to the aged missionary), he said warmly. "Good day--good day!" The priest raised his hat and murmured the name, "Ingolby." As the distance grew between them, he said sadly: "These are the men who change the West, who seize it, and divide it, and make it their own-- "'I will rejoice, and divide Sichem: and mete out the valley of Succoth.' "Hush! Hush!" he said to himself in reproach. "These things must be. The country must be opened up. That is why I came--to bring the Truth before the trader." Now another traveller came riding out of Lebanon towards him, galloping his horse up-hill and down. He also was young, but nothing about him suggested power, only self-indulgence. He, too, raised his hat, or rather swung it from his head in a devil-may-care way, and overdid his salutation. He did not speak. The priest's face was very grave, if not a little resentful. His salutation was reserved. "The tyranny of gold," he murmured, "and without the mind or energy that created it. Felix was no name for him. Ingolby is a builder, perhaps a jerry-builder; but he builds." He looked across the prairie towards the young man in the buggy. "Sure, he is a builder. He has the Cortez eye. He sees far off, and plans big things. But Felix Marchand there--" He stopped short. "Such men must be, perhaps," he added. Then, after a moment, as he gazed round again upon the land of promise which he had loved so long, he murmured as one murmurs a prayer: "Thou suferedst men to ride over our heads: we went through fire and water, and Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place." BOOK I I. "THE DRUSES ARE UP!" II. THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND III. CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS IV. THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE V. "BY THE RIVER STARZKE....IT WAS SO DONE" VI. THE UNGUARDED FIRES VII. IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE CHAPTER I "THE DRUSES ARE UP!" "Great Scott, look at her! She's goin' to try and take 'em !" exclaimed Osterhaut, the Jack-of-all-trades at Lebanon. "She ain't such a fool as all that. Why, no one ever done it alone. Low water, too, when every rock's got its chance at the canoe. But, my gracious, she is goin' to ride 'em!" Jowett, the horse-dealer, had a sportsman's joy in a daring thing. "See, old Injun Tekewani's after her! He's calling at her from the bank. He knows. He done it himself years ago when there was rips in the tribe an' he had to sew up the tears. He run them Rapids in his canoe--" "Just as the Druse girl there is doin'--" "An' he's done what he liked with the Blackfeet ever since." "But she ain't a chief--what's the use of her doin' it? She's goin' straight for them. She can't turn back now. She couldn't make the bank if she wanted to. She's got to run 'em. Holy smoke, see her wavin' the paddle at Tekewani! Osterhaut, she's the limit, that petticoat--so quiet and shy and don't-look-at-me, too, with eyes like brown diamonds." "Oh, get out, Jowett; she's all right! She'll make this country sit up some day-by gorry, she'll make Manitou and Lebanon sit up to-day if she runs the Carillon Rapids safe!" "She's runnin' 'em all right, son. She's--by jee, well done, Miss Druse! Well done, I say--well done!" exclaimed Jowett, dancing about and waving his arms towards the adventurous girl. The girl had reached the angry, thrashing waters where the rocks rent and tore into white ribbons the onrushing current, and her first trial had come on the instant the spitting, raging panthers of foam struck the bow of her canoe. The waters were so low that this course, which she had made once before with her friend Tekewani the Blackfeet chief, had perils not met on that desperate journey. Her canoe struck a rock slantwise, shuddered and swung round, but by a dexterous stroke she freed the frail craft. It righted and plunged forward again into fresh death-traps. It was these new dangers which had made Tekewani try to warn her from the shore--he and the dozen braves with him: but it was characteristic of his race that, after the first warning, when she must play out the game to the bitter end, he made no further attempt to stop her. The Indians ran down the river-bank, however, with eyes intent on her headlong progress, grunting approval as she plunged safely from danger to danger. Osterhaut and Jowett became silent, too, and, like the Indians, ran as fast as they could, over fences, through the trees, stumbling and occasionally cursing, but watching with fascinated eyes this adventuress of the North, taking chances which not one coureur-de-bois or river- driver in a thousand would take, with a five thousand-dollar prize as the lure. Why should she do it? "Women folks are sick darn fools when they git goin'," gasped Osterhaut as he ran. "They don't care a split pea what happens when they've got the pip. Look at her--my hair's bleachin'." "She's got the pip all right," stuttered Jowett as he plunged along; "but she's foreign, and they've all got the pip, foreign men and women both-- but the women go crazy." "She keeps pretty cool for a crazy loon, that girl. If I owned her, I'd--" Jowett interrupted impatiently. "You'd do what old man Druse does--you'd let her be, Osterhaut. What's the good of havin' your own way with one that's the apple of your eye, if it turns her agin you? You want her to kiss you on the high cheek-bone, but if you go to play the cat-o'-nine- tails round her, the high cheek-bone gets froze. Gol blast it, look at her, son! What are the wild waves saying? They're sayin', 'This is a surprise, Miss Druse. Not quite ready for ye, Miss Druse.' My, ain't she got the luck of the old devil!" It seemed so. More than once the canoe half jammed between the rocks, and the stern lifted up by the force of the wild current, but again the paddle made swift play, and again the cockle-shell swung clear. But now Fleda Druse was no longer on her feet. She knelt, her strong, slim brown arms bared to the shoulder, her hair blown about her forehead, her daring eyes flashing to left and right, memory of her course at work under such a strain as few can endure without chaos of mind in the end. A hundred times since the day she had run these Rapids with Tekewani, she had gone over the course in her mind, asleep and awake, forcing her brain to see again every yard of that watery way; because she knew that the day must come when she would make the journey alone. Why she would make it she did not know; she only knew that she would do it some day; and the day had come. For long it had been an obsession with her--as though some spirit whispered in her ear--"Do you hear the bells ringing at Carillon? Do you hear the river singing towards Carillon? Do you see the wild birds flying towards Carillon? Do you hear the Rapids calling--the Rapids of Carillon?" Night and day since she had braved death with Tekewani, giving him a gun, a meerschaum pipe, and ten pounds of beautiful brown "plug" tobacco as a token of her gratitude--night and day she had heard this spirit murmuring in her ear, and always the refrain was, "Down the stream to Carillon! Shoot the Rapids of Carillon!" Why? How should she know? Wherefore should she know? This was of the things beyond the why of the human mind. Sometimes all our lives, if we keep our souls young, and see the world as we first saw it with eyes and heart unsoiled, we hear the murmuring of the Other Self, that Self from which we separated when we entered this mortal sphere, but which followed us, invisible yet whispering inspiration to us. But sometimes we only hear It, our own soul's oracle, while yet our years are few, and we have not passed that frontier between innocence and experience, reality and pretence. Pretence it is which drives the Other Self away with wailing on its lips. Then we hear It cry in the night when, because of the trouble of life, we cannot sleep; or at the play when we are caught away from ourselves into another air than ours; when music pours around us like a soft wind from a garden of pomegranates; or when a child asks a question which brings us back to the land where everything is so true that it can be shouted from the tree-tops. Why was Fleda Druse tempting death in the Carillon Rapids? She had heard a whisper as she wandered among the pine-trees there at Manitou, and it said simply the one word, "Now!" She knew that she must do it; she had driven her canoe out into the resistless current to ride the Rapids of Carillon. Her Other Self had whispered to her. Yonder, thousands of miles away in Syria, there were the Hills of Lebanon; and there was one phrase which made every Syrian heart beat faster, if he were on the march. It was, "The Druses are up!" When that wild tribe took to the saddle to war upon the Caravans and against authority, from Lebanon to Palmyra, from Jerusalem to Damascus men looked anxiously about them and rode hard to refuge. And here also in the Far North where the River Sagalac ran a wild race to Carillon, leaving behind the new towns of Lebanon and Manitou, "the Druses were up." The daughter of Gabriel Druse, the giant, was riding the Rapids of the Sagalac. The suspense to her and to those who watched her course--to Tekewani and his braves, to Osterhaut and Jowett--could not be long. It was a matter of minutes only, in which every second was a miracle and might be a catastrophe. From rock to rock, from wild white water to wild white water she sped, now tossing to death as it seemed, now shooting on safely to the next test of skill and courage--on, on, till at last there was only one passage to make before the canoe would plunge into the smooth water running with great swiftness till it almost reached Carillon. Suddenly, as she neared the last dangerous point, round which she must swing between jagged and unseen barriers of rock, her sight became for an instant dimmed, as though a cloud passed over her eyes. She had never fainted in her life, but it seemed to her now that she was hovering on unconsciousness. Commending the will and energy left, she fought the weakness down. It was as though she forced a way through tossing, buffeting shadows; as though she was shaking off from her shoulders shadowy hands which sought to detain her; as though smothering things kept choking back her breath, and darkness like clouds of wool gathered about her face. She was fighting for her life, and for years it seemed to be; though indeed it was only seconds before her will reasserted itself, and light broke again upon her way. Even on the verge of the last ambushed passage her senses came back; but they came with a stark realization of the peril ahead: it looked out of her eyes as a face shows itself at the window of a burning building. Memory shook itself free. It pierced the tumult of waters, found the ambushed rocks, and guided the lithe brown arms and hands, so that the swift paddle drove the canoe straight onward, as a fish drives itself through a flume of dragon's teeth beneath the flood. The canoe quivered for an instant at the last cataract, then responding to Memory and Will, sped through the hidden chasm, tossed by spray and water, and swept into the swift current of smooth water below. Fleda Druse had run the Rapids of Carillon. She could hear the bells ringing for evening service in the Catholic Church of Carillon, and bells-soft, booming bells-were ringing in her own brain. Like muffled silver these brain-bells were, and she was as one who enters into a deep forest, and hears far away in the boscage the mystic summons of forest deities. Voices from the banks of the river behind called to her-- hilarious, approving, agitated voices of her Indian friends, and of Osterhaut and Jowett, those wild spectators of her adventure: but they were not wholly real. Only those soft, booming bells in her brain were real. Shooting the Rapids of Carillon was the bridge by which she passed from the world she had left to this other. Her girlhood was ended--wondering, hovering, unrealizing girlhood. This adventure was the outward sign, the rite in the Lodge of Life which passed her from one degree of being to another. She was safe; but now as her canoe shot onward to the town of Carillon, her senses again grew faint. Again she felt the buffeting mist, again her face was muffled in smothering folds; again great hands reached out towards her; again her eyes were drawn into a stupefying darkness; but now there was no will to fight, no energy to resist. The paddle lay inert in her fingers, her head drooped. She slowly raised her head once, twice, as though the call of the exhausted will was heard, but suddenly it fell heavily upon her breast. For a moment so, and then as the canoe shot forward on a fresh current, the lithe body sank backwards in the canoe, and lay face upward to the evening sky. The canoe sped on, but presently it swung round and lay athwart the current, dipping and rolling. From the banks on either side, the Indians of the Manitou Reservation and the two men from Lebanon called out and hastened on, for they saw that the girl had collapsed, and they knew only too well that her danger was not yet past. The canoe might strike against the piers of the bridge at Carillon and overturn, or it might be carried to the second cataract below the town. They were too far away to save her, but they kept shouting as they ran. None responded to their call, but that defiance of the last cataract of the Rapids of Carillon had been seen by one who, below an eddy on the Lebanon side of the river, was steadily stringing upon maple-twigs black bass and long-nosed pike. As he sat in the shade of the trees, he had seen the plunge of the canoe into the chasm, and had held his breath in wonder and admiration. Even at that distance he knew who it was. He had seen Fleda only a few times before, for she was little abroad; but when he had seen her he had asked himself what such a face and form were doing in the Far North. It belonged to Andalusia, to the Carpathians, to Syrian villages. "The pluck of the very devil!" he had exclaimed, as Fleda's canoe swept into the smooth current, free of the dragon's teeth; and as he had something of the devil in himself, she seemed much nearer to him than the hundreds of yards of water intervening. Presently, however, he saw her droop and sink away out of sight. For an instant he did not realize what had happened, and then, with angry self-reproach, he flung the oars into the rowlocks of his skiff and drove down and athwart the stream with long, powerful strokes. "That's like a woman!" he said to himself as he bent to the oars, and now and then turned his head to make sure that the canoe was still safe. "Do the trick better than a man, and then collapse like a rabbit." He was Max Ingolby, the financier, contractor, manager of great interests, disturber of the peace of slow minds, who had come to Lebanon with the avowed object of amalgamating three railways, of making the place the swivel of all the trade and interests of the Western North; but also with the declared intention of uniting Lebanon and Manitou in one municipality, one centre of commercial and industrial power. Men said he had bitten off more than he could chew, but he had replied that his teeth were good, and he would masticate the meal or know the reason why. He was only thirty-three, but his will was like nothing the West had seen as yet. It was sublime in its confidence, it was free from conceit, and it knew not the word despair, though once or twice it had known defeat. Men cheered him from the shore as his skiff leaped through the water. "It's that blessed Ingolby," said Jowett, who had tried to "do" the financier in a horsedeal, and had been done instead, and was now a devout admirer and adherent of the Master Man. "I saw him driving down there this morning from Lebanon. He's been fishing at Seely's Eddy." "When Ingolby goes fishing, there's trouble goin' on somewhere and he's stalkin' it," rejoined Osterhaut. "But, by gol, he's goin' to do this trump trick first; he's goin' to overhaul her before she gits to the bridge. Look at him swing! Hell, ain't it pretty! There you go, old Ingolby. You're right on it, even when you're fishing." On the other-the Manitou-shore Tekewani and his braves were less talkative, but they were more concerned in the incident than Osterhaut and Jowett. They knew little or nothing of Ingolby the hustler, but they knew more of Fleda Druse and her father than all the people of Lebanon and Manitou put together. Fleda had won old Tekewani's heart when she had asked him to take her down the Rapids, for the days of adventure for him and his tribe were over. The adventure shared with this girl had brought back to the chief the old days when Indian women tanned bearskins and deerskins day in, day out, and made pemmican of the buffalo-meat; when the years were filled with hunting and war and migrant journeyings to fresh game-grounds and pastures new. Danger faced was the one thing which could restore Tekewani's self- respect, after he had been checked and rebuked before his tribe by the Indian Commissioner for being drunk. Danger faced had restored it, and Fleda Druse had brought the danger to him as a gift. If the canoe should crash against the piers of the bridge, if it should drift to the cataract below, if anything should happen to this white girl whom he worshipped in his heathen way, nothing could preserve his self- respect; he would pour ashes on his head and firewater down his throat. Suddenly he and his braves stood still. They watched as one would watch an enemy a hundred times stronger than one's self. The white man's skiff was near the derelict canoe; the bridge was near also. Carillon now lined the bank of the river with its people. They ran upon the bridge, but not so fast as to reach the place where, in the nick of time, Ingolby got possession of the rolling canoe; where Fleda Druse lay waiting like a princess to be waked by the kiss of destiny. Only five hundred yards below the bridge was the second cataract, and she would never have waked if she had been carried into it. To Ingolby she was as beautiful as a human being could be as she lay with white face upturned, the paddle still in her hand. "Drowning isn't good enough for her," he said, as he fastened her canoe to his skiff. "It's been a full day's work," he added; and even in this human crisis he thought of the fish he had caught, of "the big trouble," he had been thinking out as Osterhaut had said, as well as of the girl that he was saving. "I always have luck when I go fishing," he added presently. "I can take her back to Lebanon," he continued with a quickening look. "She'll be all right in a jiffy. I've got room for her in my buggy--and room for her in any place that belongs to me," he hastened to reflect with a curious, bashful smile. "It's like a thing in a book," he murmured, as he neared the waiting people on the banks of Carillon, and the ringing of the vesper bells came out to him on the evening air. "Is she dead?" some one whispered, as eager hands reached out to secure his skiff to the bank. "As dead as I am," he answered with a laugh, and drew Fleda's canoe up alongside his skiff. He had a strange sensation of new life, as, with delicacy and gentleness, he lifted her up in his strong arms and stepped ashore. CHAPTER II THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND Ingolby had a will of his own, but it had never been really tried against a woman's will. It was, however, tried sorely when Fleda came to consciousness again in his arms and realized that a man's face was nearer to hers than any man's had ever been except that of her own father. Her eyes opened slowly, and for the instant she did not understand, but when she did, the blood stole swiftly back to her neck and face and forehead, and she started in dismay. "Put me down," she whispered faintly. "I'm taking you to my buggy," he replied. "I'll drive you back to Lebanon." He spoke as calmly as he could, for there was a strange fluttering of his nerves, and the crowd was pressing him. "Put me down at once," she said peremptorily. She trembled on her feet, and swayed, and would have fallen but that Ingolby and a woman in black, who had pushed her way through the crowd with white, anxious face, caught her. "Give her air, and stand back!" called the sharp voice of the constable of Carillon, and he heaved the people back with his powerful shoulders. A space was cleared round the place where Fleda sat with her head against the shoulder of the stately woman in black who had come to her assistance. A dipper of water was brought, and when she had drunk it she raised her head slowly and her eyes sought those of Ingolby. "One cannot pay for such things," she said to him, meeting his look firmly and steeling herself to thank him. Though deeply grateful, it was a trial beyond telling to be obliged to owe the debt of a life to any one, and in particular to a man of the sort to whom material gifts could not be given. "Such things are paid for just by accepting them," he answered quickly, trying to feel that he had never held her in his arms, as she evidently desired him to feel. He had intuition, if not enough of it, for the regions where the mind of Fleda Druse dwelt. "I couldn't very well decline, could I?" she rejoined, quick humour shooting into her eyes. "I was helpless. I never fainted before in my life." "I am sure you will never faint again," he remarked. "We only do such things when we are very young." She was about to reply, but paused reflectively. Her half-opened lips did not frame the words she had been impelled to speak. Admiration was alive in his eyes. He had never seen this type of womanhood before--such energy and grace, so amply yet so lithely framed; such darkness and fairness in one living composition; such individuality, yet such intimate simplicity. Her hair was a very light brown, sweeping over a broad, low forehead, and lying, as though with a sense of modesty, on the tips of the ears, veiling them slightly. The forehead was classic in its intellectual fulness; but the skin was so fresh, even when pale as now, and with such an underglow of vitality, that the woman in her, sex and the possibilities of sex, cast a glamour over the intellect and temperament showing in every line of her contour. In contrast to the light brown of the hair was the very dark brown of the eyes and the still darker brown of the eyelashes. The face shone, the eyes burned, and the piquancy of the contrast between the soft illuminating whiteness of the skin and the flame in the eyes had fascinated many more than Ingolby. Her figure was straight yet supple, somewhat fuller than is modern beauty, with hints of Juno-like stateliness to come; and the curves of her bust, the long lines of her limbs, were not obscured by her absolutely plain gown of soft, light-brown linen. She was tall, but not too commanding, and, as her hand was raised to fasten back a wisp of hair, there was the motion of as small a wrist and as tapering a bare arm as ever made prisoner of a man's neck. Impulse was written in every feature, in the passionate eagerness of her body; yet the line from the forehead to the chin, and the firm shapeliness of the chin itself, gave promise of great strength of will. From the glory of the crown of hair to the curve of the high instep of a slim foot it was altogether a personality which hinted at history--at tragedy, maybe. "She'll have a history," Madame Bulteel, who now stood beside the girl, herself a figure out of a picture by Velasquez, had said of her sadly; for she saw in Fleda's rare qualities, in her strange beauty, happenings which had nothing to do with the life she was living. So this duenna of Gabriel Druse's household, this aristocratic, silent woman was ever on the watch for some sudden revelation of a being which had not found itself, and which must find itself through perils and convulsions. That was why, to-day, she had hesitated to leave Fleda alone and come to Carillon, to be at the bedside of a dying, friendless woman whom by chance she had come to know. In the street she had heard of what was happening on the river, and had come in time to receive Fleda from the arms of her rescuer. "How did you get here?" Fleda asked her. "How am I always with you when I am needed, truant?" said the other with a reproachful look. "Did you fly? You are so light, so thin, you could breathe yourself here," rejoined the girl, with a gentle, quizzical smile. "But, no," she added, "I remember, you were to be here at Carillon." "Are you able to walk now?" asked Madame Bulteel. "To Manitou--but of course," Fleda answered almost sharply. After the first few minutes the crowd had fallen back. They watched her with respectful admiration from a decent distance. They had the chivalry towards woman so characteristic of the West. There was no vulgarity in their curiosity, though most of them had never seen her before. All, however, had heard of her and her father, the giant greybeard who moved and lived in an air of mystery, and apparently secret wealth, for more than once he had given large sums--large in the eyes of folks of moderate means, when charity was needed; as in the case of the floods the year before, and in the prairie-fire the year before that, when so many people were made homeless, and also when fifty men had been injured in one railway accident. On these occasions he gave disproportionately to his mode of life. Now, when they saw that Fleda was about to move away, they drew just a little nearer, and presently one of the crowd could contain his admiration no longer. He raised a cheer. "Three cheers for Her," he shouted, and loud hurrahs followed. "Three cheers for Ingolby," another cried, and the noise was boisterous but not so general. "Who shot Carillon Rapids?" another called in the formula of the West. "She shot the Rapids," was the choral reply. "Who is she?" came the antiphon. "Druse is her name," was the gay response. "What did she do?" "She shot Carillon Rapids--shot 'em dead. Hooray!" In the middle of the cheering, Osterhaut and Jowett arrived in a wagon which they had commandeered, and, about the same time, from across the bridge, came running Tekewani and his braves. "She done it like a kingfisher," cried Osterhaut. "Manitou's got the belt." Fleda Druse's friendly eyes were given only for one instant to Osterhaut and his friend. Her gaze became fixed on Tekewani who, silent, and with immobile face, stole towards her. In spite of the civilization which controlled him, he wore Indian moccasins and deerskin breeches, though his coat was rather like a shortened workman's blouse. He did not belong to the life about him; he was a being apart, the spirit of vanished and vanishing days. "Tekewani--ah, Tekewani, you have come," the girl said, and her eyes smiled at him as they had not smiled at Ingolby or even at the woman in black beside her. "How!" the chief replied, and looked at her with searching, worshipping eyes. "Don't look at me that way, Tekewani," she said, coming close to him. "I had to do it, and I did it." "The teeth of rock everywhere!" he rejoined reproachfully, with a gesture of awe. "I remembered all--all. You were my master, Tekewani." "But only once with me it was, Summer Song," he persisted. Summer Song was his name for her. "I saw it--saw it, every foot of the way," she insisted. "I thought hard, oh, hard as the soul thinks. And I saw it all." There was something singularly akin in the nature of the girl and the Indian. She spoke to him as she never spoke to any other. "Too much seeing, it is death," he answered. "Men die with too much seeing. I have seen them die. To look hard through deerskin curtains, to see through the rock, to behold the water beneath the earth, and the rocks beneath the black waters, it is for man to see if he has a soul, but the seeing--behold, so those die who should live!" "I live, Tekewani, though I saw the teeth of rocks beneath the black water," she urged gently. "Yet the half-death came--" "I fainted, but I was not to die--it was not my time." He shook his head gloomily. "Once it may be, but the evil spirits tempt us to death. It matters not what comes to Tekewani; he is as the leaf that falls from the stem; but for Summer Song that has far to go, it is the madness from beyond the Hills of Life." She took his hand. "I will not do it again, Tekewani." "How!" he said, with hand upraised, as one who greets the great in this world. "I don't know why I did it," she added meaningly. "It was selfish. I feel that now." The woman in black pressed her hand timidly. "It is so for ever with the great," Tekewani answered. "It comes, also, from beyond the Hills--the will to do it. It is the spirit that whispers over the earth out of the Other Earth. No one hears it but the great. The whisper only is for this one here and that one there who is of the Few. It whispers, and the whisper must be obeyed. So it was from the beginning." "Yes, you understand, Tekewani," she answered softly. "I did it because something whispered from the Other Earth to me." Her head drooped a little, her eyes had a sudden shadow. "He will understand," answered the Indian; "your father will understand," as though reading her thoughts. He had clearly read her thought, this dispossessed, illiterate Indian chieftain. Yet, was he so illiterate? Had he not read in books which so few have learned to read? His life had been broken on the rock of civilization, but his simple soul had learned some elemental truths--not many, but the essential ones, without which there is no philosophy, no understanding. He knew Fleda Druse was thinking of her father, wondering if he would understand, half-fearing, hardly hoping, dreading the moment when she must meet him face to face. She knew she had been selfish, but would Gabriel Druse understand? She raised her eyes in gratitude to the Blackfeet chief. "I must go home," she said. She turned to go, but as she did so, a man came swaggering down the street, broke through the crowd, and made towards her with an arm raised, a hand waving, and a leer on his face. He was a thin, rather handsome, dissolute-looking fellow of middle height and about forty, in dandified dress. His glossy black hair fell carelessly over his smooth forehead from under a soft, wide-awake hat. "Manitou for ever!" he cried, with a flourish of his hand. "I salute the brave. I escort the brave to the gates of Manitou. I escort the brave. I escort the brave. Salut! Salut! Salut! Well done, Beauty Beauty--Beauty--Beauty, well done again!" He held out his hand to Fleda, but she drew back with disgust. Felix Marchand, the son of old Hector Marchand, money-lender and capitalist of Manitou, had pressed his attentions upon her during the last year since he had returned from the East, bringing dissoluteness and vulgar pride with him. Women had spoiled him, money had corrupted and degraded him. "Come, beautiful brave, it's Salut! Salut! Salut!" he said, bending towards her familiarly. Her face flushed with anger. "Let me pass, monsieur," she said sharply. "Pride of Manitou--" he apostrophized, but got no farther. Ingolby caught him by the shoulders, wheeled him round, and then flung him at the feet of Tekewani and his braves. At this moment Tekewani's eyes had such a fire as might burn in Wotan's smithy. He was ready enough to defy the penalty of the law for assaulting a white man, but Felix Marchand was in the dust, and that would do for the moment. With grim face Ingolby stood over the begrimed figure. "There's the river if you want more," he said. "Tekewani knows where the water's deepest." Then he turned and followed Fleda and the woman in black. Felix Marchand's face was twisted with hate as he got slowly to his feet. "You'll eat dust before I'm done," he called after Ingolby. Then, amid the jeers of the crowd, he went back to the tavern where he had been carousing. CHAPTER III CONCERNING INGOLBY AND THE TWO TOWNS A word about Max Ingolby. He was the second son of four sons, with a father who had been a failure; but with a mother of imagination and great natural strength of brain, yet whose life had been so harried in bringing up a family on nothing at all, that there only emerged from her possibilities a great will to do the impossible things. From her had come the spirit which would not be denied. In his boyhood Max could not have those things which lads prize--fishing- rods, cricket-bats and sleds, and all such things; but he could take most prizes at school open to competition; he could win in the running-jump, the high-jump, and the five hundred yards' race; and he could organize a picnic, or the sports of the school or town--at no cost to himself. His finance in even this limited field had been brilliant. Other people paid, and he did the work; and he did it with such ease that the others intriguing to crowd him out, suffered failure and came to him in the end to put things right. He became the village doctor's assistant and dispenser at seventeen and induced his master to start a drug-store. He made the drug-store a success within two years, and meanwhile he studied Latin and Greek and mathematics in every spare hour he had--getting up at five in the morning, and doing as much before breakfast as others did in a whole day. His doctor loved him and helped him; a venerable Archdeacon, an Oxford graduate, gave him many hours of coaching, and he went to the University with three scholarships. These were sufficient to carry him through in three years, and there was enough profit-sharing from the drug-business he had founded on terms to shelter his mother and his younger brothers, while he took honours at the University. There he organized all that students organize, and was called in at last by the Bursar of his college to reorganize the commissariat, which he did with such success that the college saved five thousand dollars a year. He had genius, the college people said, and after he had taken his degree with honours in classics and mathematics they offered him a professorship at two thousand dollars a year. He laughed ironically, but yet with satisfaction, when the professorship was offered. It was all so different from what was in his mind for the future. As he looked out of the oriel window in the sweet gothic building, to the green grass and the maples and elms which made the college grounds like an old-world park, he had a vision of himself permanently in these surroundings of refinement growing venerable with years, seeing pass under his influence thousands of young men directed, developed and inspired by him. He had, however, shaken himself free of this modest vision. He knew that such a life would act like a narcotic to his real individuality. He thirsted for contest, for the control of brain and will; he wanted to construct; he was filled with the idea of simplifying things, of economizing strength; he saw how futile was much competition, and how the big brain could command and control with ease, wasting no force, saving labour, making the things controlled bigger and better. So it came that his face was seen no more in the oriel window. With a mere handful of dollars, and some debts, he left the world of scholarship and superior pedagogy, and went where the head offices of railways were. Railways were the symbol of progress in his mind. The railhead was the advance post of civilization. It was like Cortez and his Conquistadores overhauling and appropriating the treasures of long generations. So where should he go if not to the Railway? His first act, when he got to his feet inside the offices of the President of a big railway, was to show the great man how two "outside" proposed lines could be made one, and then further merged into the company controlled by the millionaire in whose office he sat. He got his chance by his very audacity--the President liked audacity. In attempting this merger, however, he had his first failure, but he showed that he could think for himself, and he was made increasingly responsible. After a few years of notable service, he was offered the task of building a branch line of railway from Lebanon and Manitou north, and northwest, and on to the Coast; and he had accepted it, at the same time planning to merge certain outside lines competing with that which he had in hand. For over four years he worked night and day, steadily advancing towards his goal, breaking down opposition, manoeuvring, conciliating, fighting. Most men loved his whimsical turn of mind, even those who were the agents of the financial clique which had fought him in their efforts to get control of the commercial, industrial, transport and banking resources of the junction city of Lebanon. In the days when vast markets would be established for Canadian wheat in Shanghai and Tokio, then these two towns of Manitou and Lebanon on the Sagalac would be like the swivel to the organization of trade of a continent. Ingolby had worked with this end in view. In doing so he had tried to get what he wanted without trickery; to reach his goal by playing the game according to the rules, and this policy nonplussed his rivals and associates. They expected secret moves, and he laid his cards on the table. Sharp, quick, resolute and ruthless he was, however, if he knew that he was being tricked. Then he struck, and struck hard. The war of business was war and not "gollyfoxing," as he said. Selfish, stubborn and self-centred he was in much, but he had great joy in the natural and sincere, and he had a passionate love of Nature. To him the flat prairie was never ugly. Its very monotony had its own individuality. The Sagalac, even when muddy, had its own deep interest, and when it was full of logs drifting down to the sawmills, for which he had found the money by interesting capitalists in the East, he sniffed the stinging smell of the pines with elation. As the great saws in the mills, for which he had secured the capital, throwing off the spray of mangled wood, hummed and buzzed and sang, his mouth twisted in the droll smile it always wore when he talked with such as Jowett and Osterhaut, whose idiosyncrasies were like a meal to him; as he described it once to some of the big men from the East who had been behind his schemes, yet who cavilled at his ways. He was never diverted from his course by such men, and while he was loyal to those who had backed him, he vowed that he would be independent of these wooden souls in the end. They and the great bankers behind them were for monopoly; he was for organization and for economic prudence. So far they were necessary to all he did; but it was his intention to shake himself free of all monopoly in good time. One or two of his colleagues saw the drift of his policy and would have thrown him over if they could have replaced him by a man as capable, who would, at the time, consent to grow rich on their terms. They could not understand a man who would stand for a half-hour watching a sunset, or a morning sky dappled with all the colours that shake from a prism; they were suspicious of a business-mind which could gloat over the light falling on snow-peaked mountains, while it planned a great bridge across a gorge in the same hour; of a man who would quote a verse of poetry while a flock of wild pigeons went whirring down a pine-girt valley in the shimmer of the sun. On the occasion when he had quoted a verse of poetry to them, one of them said to him with a sidelong glance: "You seem to be dead-struck on Nature, Ingolby." To that, with a sly quirk of the mouth, and meaning to mystify his wooden-headed questioner still more, he answered: "Dead-struck? Dead- drunk, you mean. I'm a Nature's dipsomaniac--as you can see," he added with a sly note of irony. Then instantly he had drawn the little circle of experts into a discussion upon technical questions of railway-building and finance, which made demands upon all their resources and knowledge. In that conference he gave especial attention to the snub-souled financier who had sneered at his love of Nature. He tied his critic up in knots of self-assertion and bad logic which presently he deftly, deliberately and skilfully untied, to the delight of all the group. "He's got as much in his ten years in the business as we've got out of half a life-time," said the chief of his admirers. This was the President who had first welcomed him into business, and introduced him to his colleagues in enterprise. "I shouldn't be surprised if the belt flew off the wheel some day," savagely said Ingolby's snub-souled critic, whose enmity was held in check by the fact that on Ingolby, for the moment, depended the safety of the hard cash he had invested. But the qualities which alienated an expert here and there caught the imagination of the pioneer spirits of Lebanon. Except those who, for financial reasons, were opposed to him, and must therefore pit themselves against him, as the representatives of bigger forces behind them, he was a leader of whom Lebanon was combatively proud. At last he came to the point where his merger was practically accomplished, and a problem arising out of it had to be solved. It was a problem which taxed every quality of an able mind. The situation had at last become acute, and Time, the solvent of most complications, had not quite eased the strain. Indeed, on the day that Fleda Druse had made her journey down the Carillon Rapids, Time's influence had not availed. So he had gone fishing, with millions at stake--to the despair of those who were risking all on his skill and judgment. But that was Ingolby. Thinking was the essence of his business, not Time. As fishing was the friend of thinking, therefore he fished in Seely's Eddy, saw Fleda Druse run the Carillon Rapids, saved her from drowning, and would have brought her in pride and peace to her own home, but that she decreed otherwise. CHAPTER IV THE COMING OF JETHRO FAWE Gabriel Druse's house stood on a little knoll on the outskirts of the town of Manitou, backed by a grove of pines. Its front windows faced the Sagalac, and the windows behind looked into cool coverts where in old days many Indian tribes had camped; where Hudson's Bay Company's men had pitched their tents to buy the red man's furs. But the red man no longer set up his tepee in these secluded groves; the wapiti and red deer had fled to the north never to return, the snarling wolf had stolen into regions more barren; the ceremonial of the ancient people no longer made weird the lonely nights; the medicine-man's incantations, the harvest- dance, the green-corn-dance, the sun-dance had gone. The braves, their women, and their tepees had been shifted to reservations where Governments solemnly tried to teach them to till the field, and grow corn, and drive the cart to market; while yet they remembered the herds of buffalo which had pounded down the prairie like storm-clouds and given their hides for the tepee; and the swift deer whose skins made the wigwam luxurious. Originally Manitou had been the home of Icelanders, Mennonites, and Doukhobors; settlers from lands where the conditions of earlier centuries prevailed, who, simple as they were in habits and in life, were ignorant, primitive, coarse, and none too cleanly. They had formed an unprogressive polyglot settlement, and the place assumed a still more primeval character when the Indian Reservation was formed near by. When French Canadian settlers arrived, however, the place became less discordant to the life of a new democracy, though they did little to make it modern in the sense that Lebanon, across the river, where Ingolby lived, was modern from the day the first shack was thrown up. Manitou showed itself antagonistic to progress; it was old-fashioned, and primitively agricultural. It looked with suspicion on the factories built after Ingolby came and on the mining propositions, which circled the place with speculation. Unlike other towns of the West, it was insanitary and uneducated; it was also given to nepotism and a primitive kind of jobbery; but, on the whole, it was honest. It was a settlement twenty years before Lebanon had a house, though the latter exceeded the population of Manitou in five years, and became the home of all adventuring spirits--land agents, company promoters, mining prospectors, railway men, politicians, saloon keepers, and up to-date dissenting preachers. Manitou was, however, full of back-water people, religious fanatics, little farmers, guides, trappers, old coureurs-de-bois, Hudson's Bay Company factors and ex-factors, half-breeds; and all the rest. The real feud between the two towns began about the time of the arrival of Gabriel Druse, his daughter, and Madame Bulteel, the woman in black, and it had grown with great rapidity and increasing intensity. Manitou condemned the sacrilegiousness of the Protestants, whose meeting-houses were used for "socials," "tea-meetings," "strawberry festivals," and entertainments of many kinds; while comic songs were sung at the table where the solemn Love Feast was held at the quarterly meetings. At last when attempts were made to elect to Parliament an Irish lawyer who added to his impecuniousness, eloquence, a half-finished University education, and an Orangeman's prejudices of the best brand of Belfast or Derry, inter-civic strife took the form of physical violence. The great bridge built by Ingolby between the two towns might have been ten thousand yards long, so deep was the estrangement between the two places. They had only one thing in common--a curious compromise--in the person of Nathan Rockwell, an agnostic doctor, who had arrived in Lebanon with a reputation for morality somewhat clouded; though, where his patients in Manitou and Lebanon were concerned, he had been the "pink of propriety." Rockwell had arrived in Lebanon early in its career, and had remained unimportant until a railway accident occurred at Manitou and the resident doctors were driven from the field of battle, one by death, and one by illness. Then it was that the silent, smiling, dark-skinned, cool-headed and cool-handed Rockwell stepped in, and won for himself the gratitude of all--from Monseigneur Lourde, the beloved Catholic priest, to Tekewani, the chief. This accident was followed by an epidemic. That was at the time, also, when Fleda Druse returned from Winnipeg where she had been at school for one memorable and terrible six months, pining for her father, defying rules, and crying the night through for "the open world," as she called it. So it was that, to her father's dismay and joy in one, she had fled from school, leaving all her things behind her; and had reached home with only the clothes on her back and a few cents in her pocket. Instantly on her return she had gone among the stricken people as fearlessly as Rockwell had done, but chiefly among the women and children; and it was said that the herbal medicine she administered was marvellous in its effect--so much so that Rockwell asked for the prescription, which she declined to give. Thus it was that the French Canadian mothers with daughters of their own, bright-eyed brunettes, ready for the man-market, regarded with toleration the girl who took their children away for picnics down the river or into the woods, and brought them back safe and sound at the end of the day. Not that they failed to be shocked sometimes, when, on her wild Indian pony, Fleda swept through Manitou like a wind and out into the prairie, riding, as it were, to the end of the world. Try as they would, these grateful mothers of Manitou, they could not get as near to Fleda Druse as their children did, and they were vast distances from her father. "There, there, look at him," said old Madame Thibadeau to her neighbour Christine Brisson--"look at him with his great grey-beard, and his eyes like black fires, and that head of hair like a bundle of burnt flax! He comes from the place no man ever saw, that's sure." "Ah, surelee, men don't grow so tall in any Christian country," announced Christine Brisson, her head nodding sagely. "I've seen the pictures in the books, and there's nobody so tall and that looks like him--not anywhere since Adam." "Nom de pipe, sometimes-trulee, sometimes, I look up there at where he lives, and I think I see a thousand men on horses ride out of the woods behind his house and down here to gobble us all up. That's the way I feel. It's fancy, but I can't help that." Dame Thibadeau rested her hands--on her huge stomach as though the idea had its origin there. "I've seen a lot of fancies come to pass," gloomily returned her friend. "It's a funny world. I don't know what to make of its sometimes." "And that girl of his, the strangest creature, as proud as a peacock, but then as kind as kind to the children--of a good heart, surelee. They say she has plenty of gold rings and pearls and bracelets, and all like that. Babette Courton, she saw them when she went to sew. Why doesn't Ma'm'selle wear them?" Christine looked wise and smoothed out her apron as though it was a parchment. "With such queer ones, who knows? But, yes, as you say, she has a kind heart. The children, well, they follow her everywhere." "Not the children only," sagely added the other. "From Lebanon they come, the men, and plenty here, too; and there's that Felix Marchand, the worst of all in Manitou or anywhere." "I'd look sharp if Felix Marchand followed me," remarked Christine. "There are more papooses at the Reservation since he come back, and over in Lebanon--!" She whispered darkly to her friend, and they nodded knowingly. "If he plays pranks in Manitou he'll get his throat cut, for sure. Even with Protes'ants and Injuns it's bad enough," remarked Dame Thibadeau, panting with the thought of it. "He doesn't even leave the Doukhobors alone. There's--" Again Christine whispered, and again that ugly look came to their faces which belongs to the thought of forbidden things. "Felix Marchand'll have much money--bad penny as he is," continued Christine in her normal voice. "He'll have more money than he can put in all the trouser legs he has. Old Hector, his father, has enough for a gover'ment. But that M'sieu' Felix will get his throat cut if he follows Ma'm'selle Druse about too much. She hates him--I've seen when they met. Old man Druse'll make trouble. He don't look as he does for nothing." "Ah, that's so. One day, we shall see what we shall see," murmured Christine, and waved a hand to a friend in the street. This conversation happened on the evening of the day that Fleda Druse shot the Carillon Rapids alone. An hour after the two gossips had had their say Gabriel Druse paced up and down the veranda of his house, stopping now and then to view the tumbling, hurrying Sagalac, or to dwell upon the sunset which crimsoned and bronzed the western sky. His walk had an air of impatience; he seemed disturbed of mind and restless of body. He gave an impression of great force. He would have been picked out of a multitude, not alone because of his remarkable height, but because he had an air of command and the aloofness which shows a man sufficient unto himself. As he stood gazing reflectively into the sunset, a strange, plaintive, birdlike note pierced the still evening air. His head lifted quickly, yet he did not look in the direction of the sound, which came from the woods behind the house. He did not stir, and his eyes half-closed, as though he hesitated what to do. The call was not that of a bird familiar to the Western world. It had a melancholy softness like that of the bell-bird of the Australian bush. Yet, in the insistence of the note, it was, too, a challenge or a summons. Three times during the past week he had heard it--once as he went by the market-place of Manitou; once as he returned in the dusk from Tekewani's Reservation, and once at dawn from the woods behind the house. His present restlessness and suppressed agitation had been the result. It was a call he knew well. It was like a voice from a dead world. It asked, he knew, for an answering call, yet he had not given it. It was seven days since he first heard it in the market-place, and in that seven days he had realized that nothing in this world which has ever been, really ceases to be. Presently, the call was repeated. On the three former occasions there had been no repetition. The call had trembled in the air but once and had died away into unbroken silence. Now, however, it rang out with an added poignancy. It was like a bird calling to its vanished mate. With sudden resolution Druse turned. Leaving the veranda, he walked slowly behind the house into the woods and stood still under the branches of a great cedar. Raising his head, a strange, solemn note came from his lips; but the voice died away in a sharp broken sound which was more human than birdlike, which had the shrill insistence of authority. The call to him had been almost ventriloquial in its nature. His lips had not moved at all. There was silence for a moment after he had called into the void, as it were, and then there appeared suddenly from behind a clump of juniper, a young man of dark face and upright bearing. He made a slow obeisance with a gesture suggestive of the Oriental world, yet not like the usual gesture of the East Indian, the Turk or the Persian; it was composite of all. He could not have been more than twenty-five years of age. He was so sparely made, and his face being clean-shaven, he looked even younger. His clothes were the clothes of the Western man; and yet there was a manner of wearing them, there were touches which were evidence to the watchful observer that he was of other spheres. His wide, felt, Western hat had a droop on one side and a broken treatment of the crown, which of itself was enough to show him a stranger to the prairie, while his brown velveteen jacket, held by its two lowest buttons, was reminiscent of an un-English life. His eyes alone would have announced him as of some foreign race, though he was like none of the foreigners who had been the pioneers of Manitou. Unlike as he and Gabriel Druse were in height, build, and movement, still there was something akin in them both. After a short silence evidently disconcerting to him, "Blessing and hail, my Ry," he said in a low tone. He spoke in a strange language and with a voice rougher than his looks would have suggested. The old man made a haughty gesture of impatience. "What do you want with me, my Romany 'chal'?" he asked sharply.--[A glossary of Romany words will be found at the end of the book.] The young man replied hastily. He seemed to speak by rote. His manner was too eager to suit the impressiveness of his words. "The sheep are without a shepherd," he said. "The young men marry among the Gorgios, or they are lost in the cities and return no more to the tents and the fields and the road. There is disorder in all the world among the Romanys. The ancient ways are forgotten. Our people gather and settle upon the land and live as the Gorgios live. They forget the way beneath the trees, they lose their skill in horses. If the fountain is choked, how shall the water run?" A cold sneer came to the face of Gabriel Druse. "The way beneath the trees!" he growled. "The way of the open road is enough. The way beneath the trees is the way of the thief, and the skill of the horse is the skill to cheat." "There is no other way. It has been the way of the Romany since the time of Timur Beg and centuries beyond Timur, so it is told. One man and all men must do as the tribe has done since the beginning." The old man pulled at his beard angrily. "You do not talk like a Romany, but like a Gorgio of the schools." The young man's manner became more confident as he replied. "Thinking on what was to come to me, I read in the books as the Gorgio reads. I sat in my tent and worked with a pen; I saw in the printed sheets what the world was doing every day. This I did because of what was to come." "And have you read of me in the printed sheets? Did they tell you where I was to be found?" Gabriel Druse's eyes were angry, his manner was authoritative. The young man stretched out his hands eloquently. "Hail and blessing, my Ry, was there need of printed pages to tell me that? Is not everything known of the Ry to the Romany people without the written or printed thing? How does the wind go? How does the star sweep across the sky? Does not the whisper pass as the lightning flashes? Have you forgotten all, my Ry? Is there a Romany camp at Scutari? Shall it not know what is the news of the Bailies of Scotland and the Caravans by the Tagus? It is known always where my lord is. All the Romanys everywhere know it, and many hundreds have come hither from overseas. They are east, they are south, they are west." He made gesture towards these three points of the compass. A dark frown came upon the old man's forehead. "I ordered that none should seek to follow, that I be left in peace till my pilgrimage was done. Even as the first pilgrims of our people in the days of Timur Beg in India, so I have come forth from among you all till the time be fulfilled." There was a crafty look in the old man's eyes as he spoke, and ages of dubious reasoning and purpose showed in their velvet depths. "No one has sought me but you in all these years," he continued. "Who are you that you should come? I did not call, and there was my command that none should call to me." A bolder look grew in the other's face. His carriage gained in ease. "There is trouble everywhere--in Italy, in Spain, in France, in England, in Russia, in mother India"--he made a gesture of salutation and bowed low--"and our rites and mysteries are like water spilt upon the ground. If the hand be cut off, how shall the body move? That is how it is. You are vanished, my lord, and the body dies." The old man plucked his beard again fiercely and his words came with guttural force. "That is fool's talk. In the past I was never everywhere at once. When I was in Russia, I was not in Greece; when I was in England, I was not in Portugal. I was always 'vanished' from one place to another, yet the body lived." "But your word was passed along the roads everywhere, my Ry. Your tongue was not still from sunrise to the end of the day. Your call was heard always, now here, now there, and the Romanys were one; they held together." The old man's face darkened still more and his eyes flashed fire. "These are lies you are telling, and they will choke you, my Romany 'chal'. Am I deceived, I who have known more liars than any man under the sky? Am I to be fooled, who have seen so many fools in their folly? There is roguery in you, or I have never seen roguery." "I am a true Romany, my Ry," the other answered with an air of courage and a little defiance also. "You are a rogue and a liar, that is sure. These wailings are your own. The Romany goes on his way as he has gone these hundreds of years. If I am silent, my people will wait until I speak again; if they see me not they will wait till I enter their camps once more. Why are you here? Speak, rogue and liar." The wrathful old man, sure in his reading of the youth, towered above him commandingly. It almost seemed as though he would do him bodily harm, so threatening was his attitude, but the young Romany raised his head, and with a note of triumph said: "I have come for my own, as it is my right." "What is your own?" "What has been yours until now, my Ry." A grey look stole slowly up the strong face of the exiled leader, for his mind suddenly read the truth behind the young man's confident words. "What is mine is always mine," he answered roughly. "Speak! What is it I have that you come for?" The young man braced himself and put a hand upon his lips. "I come for your daughter, my Ry." The old man suddenly regained his composure, and authority spoke in his bearing and his words. "What have you to do with my daughter?" "She was married to me when I was seven years of age, as my Ry knows. I am the son of Lemuel Fawe--Jethro Fawe is my name. For three thousand pounds it was so arranged. On his death-bed three thousand pounds did my father give to you for this betrothal. I was but a child, yet I remembered, and my kinsmen remembered, for it is their honour also. I am the son of Lemuel Fawe, the husband of Fleda, daughter of Gabriel Druse, King and Duke and Earl of all the Romanys; and I come for my own." Something very like a sigh of relief came from Gabriel Druse's lips, but the anger in his face did not pass, and a rigid pride made the distance between them endless. He looked like a patriarch giving judgment as he raised his hand and pointed with a menacing finger at Jethro Fawe, his Romany subject--and, according to the laws of the Romany tribes, his son- in-law. It did not matter that the girl--but three years of age when it happened--had no memory of the day when the chiefs and great people assembled outside the tent of Lemuel Fawe when he lay dying, and, by the simple act of stepping over a branch of hazel, the two children were married: if Romany law and custom were to abide, then the two now were man and wife. Did not Lemuel Fawe, the old-time rival of Gabriel Druse for the kinship of the Romanys, the claimant whose family had been rulers of the Romanys for generations before the Druses gained ascendancy--did not Fawe, dying, seek to secure for his son by marriage what he had failed to get for himself by other means? All these things had at one time been part of Gabriel Druse's covenant of life, until one year in England, when Fleda, at twelve years of age, was taken ill and would have died, but that a great lady descended upon their camp, took the girl to her own house, and there nursed and tended her, giving her the best medical aid the world could produce, so that the girl lived, and with her passionate nature loved the Lady Barrowdale as she might have loved her own mother, had that mother lived and she had ever known her. And when the Lady Barrowdale sickened and died of the same sickness which had nearly been her own death, the promise she made then overrode all other covenants made for her. She had promised the great lady who had given her own widowed, childless life for her own, that she would not remain a Gipsy, that she would not marry a Gipsy, but that if ever she gave herself to any man it would be to a Gorgio, a European, who travelled oftenest "the open road" leading to his own door. The years which had passed since those tragic days in Gloucestershire had seen the shadows of that dark episode pass, but the pledge had remained; and Gabriel Druse had kept his word to the dead, because of the vow made to the woman who had given her life for the life of a Romany lass. The Romany tribes of all the nations did not know why their Ry had hidden himself in the New World; they did not know that the girl had for ever forsworn their race, and would never become head of all the Romanys, solving the problem of the rival dynasties by linking her life with that of Jethro Fawe. But Jethro Fawe had come to claim his own. Now Gabriel Druse's eyes followed his own menacing finger with sharp insistence. In the past such a look had been in his eyes when he had sentenced men to death. They had not died by the gallows or the sword or the bullet, but they had died as commanded, and none had questioned his decree. None asked where or how the thing was done when a fire sprang up in a field, or a quarry, or on a lonely heath or hill-top, and on the pyre were all the belongings of the condemned, being resolved into dust as their owner had been made earth again. "Son of Lemuel Fawe," the old man said, his voice rough with authority, "but that you are of the Blood, you should die now for this disobedience. When the time is fulfilled, I will return. Until then, my daughter and I are as those who have no people. Begone! Nothing that is here belongs to you. Begone, and come no more!" "I have come for my own--for my Romany 'chi', and I will not go without her. I am blood of the Blood, and she is mine." "You have not seen her," said the old man craftily, and fighting hard against the wrath consuming him, though he liked the young man's spirit. "She has changed. She is no longer Romany." "I have seen her, and her beauty is like the rose and the palm." "When have you seen her since the day before the tent of Lemuel Fawe now seventeen years ago?" There was an uneasy note in the commanding tone. "I have seen her three times of late, and the last time I saw her was an hour or so since, when she rode the Rapids of Carillon." The old man started, his lips parted, but for a moment he did not speak. At last words came. "The Rapids--speak. What have you heard, Jethro, son of Lemuel?" "I did not hear, I saw her shoot the Rapids. I ran to follow. At Carillon I saw her arrive. She was in the arms of a Gorgio of Lebanon-- Ingolby is his name." A malediction burst from Gabriel Druse's lips, words sharp and terrible in their intensity. For the first time since they had met the young man blanched. The savage was alive in the giant. "Speak. Tell all," Druse said, with hands clenching. Swiftly the young man told all he had seen, and described how he had run all the way--four miles--from Carillon, arriving before Fleda and her Indian escort. He had hardly finished his tale, shrinking, as he told it, from the fierceness of his chief, when a voice called from the direction of the house. "Father--father," it cried. A change passed over the old man's face. It cleared as the face of the sun clears when a cloud drives past and is gone. The transformation was startling. Without further glance at his companion, he moved swiftly towards the house. Once more Fleda's voice called, and before he could answer they were face to face. She stood radiant and elate, and seemed not apprehensive of disfavour or reproach. Behind her was Tekewani and his braves. "You have heard?" she asked reading her father's face. "I have heard. Have you no heart?" he answered. "If the Rapids had drowned you!" She came close to him and ran her fingers through his beard tenderly. "I was not born to be drowned," she said softly. Now that she was a long distance from Ingolby, the fact that a man had held her in his arms left no shadow on her face. Ingolby was now only part of her triumph of the Rapids. She tossed a hand affectionately towards Tekewani and his braves. "How!" said Gabriel Druse, and made a gesture of salutation to the Indian chief. "How!" answered Tekewani, and raised his arm high in response. An instant afterwards Tekewani and his followers were gone their ways. Suddenly Fleda's eyes rested on the young Romany who was now standing at a little distance away. Apprehension came to her face. She felt her heart stand still and her hands grow cold, she knew not why. But she saw that the man was a Romany. Her father turned sharply. A storm gathered in his face once more, and a murderous look came into his eyes. "Who is he?" Fleda asked, scarce above a whisper, and she noted the insistent, amorous look of the stranger. "He says he is your husband," answered her father harshly. CHAPTER V "BY THE RIVER STARZKE . . . IT WAS SO DONE" There was absolute silence for a moment. The two men fixed their gaze upon the girl. The fear which had first come to her face passed suddenly, and a will, new-born and fearless, possessed it. Yesterday this will had been only a trembling, undisciplined force, but since then she had been passed through the tests which her own soul, or Destiny, had set for her, and she had emerged a woman, confident and understanding, if tremulous. In days gone by her adventurous, lonely spirit had driven her to the prairies, savagely riding her Indian pony through the streets of Manitou and out on the North Trail, or south through coulees, or westward into the great woods, looking for what: she never found. Her spirit was no longer the vague thing driving here and there with pleasant torture. It had found freedom and light; what the Romany folk call its own 'tan', its home, though it be but home of each day's trek. That wild spirit was now a force which understood itself in a new if uncompleted way. It was a sword free from its scabbard. The adventure of the Carillon Rapids had been a kind of deliverance of an unborn thing which, desiring the overworld, had found it. A few hours ago the face of Ingolby, as she waked to consciousness in his arms, had taught her something suddenly; and the face of Felix Marchand had taught her even more. Something new and strange had happened to her, and her father's uncouth but piercing mind saw the change in her. Her quick, fluttering moods, her careless, undirected energy, her wistful waywardness, had of late troubled and vexed him, called on capacities in him which he did not possess; but now he was suddenly aware that she had emerged from passionate inconsistencies and in some good sense had found herself. Like a wind she had swept out of childhood into a woman's world where the eyes saw things unseen before, a world how many thousand leagues in the future; and here in a flash, also, she was swept like a wind back again to a time before there was even conscious childhood--a dim, distant time when she lived and ate and slept for ever in the field or the vale, in the quarry, beside the hedge, or on the edge of harvest-fields; when she was carried in strong arms, or sat in the shelter of a man's breast as a horse cantered down a glade, under an ardent sky, amid blooms never seen since then. She was whisked back into that distant, unreal world by the figure of a young Romany standing beside a spruce-tree, and by her father's voice which uttered the startling words: "He says he is your husband!" Indignation and a bitter pride looked out of her eyes, as she heard the preposterous claim--as though she were some wild dweller of the jungle being called by her savage mate back to the lair she had forsaken. "Since when were you my husband?" she asked Jethro Fawe composedly. Her quiet scorn brought a quiver to his spirit; for he was of a people to whom anger and passion were part of every relationship of life, its stimulus and its recreation, its expression of the individual. His eyelids trembled, but he drew himself together. "Seventeen years ago by the River Starzke in the Roumelian country, it was so done," he replied stubbornly. "You were sealed to me, as my Ry here knows, and as you will remember, if you fix your mind upon it. It was beyond the city of Starzke three leagues, under the brown scarp of the Dragbad Hills. It was in the morning when the sun was by a quarter of its course. It happened before my father's tent, the tent of Lemuel Fawe. There you and I were sealed before our Romany folk. For three thousand pounds which my father gave to your father, you--" With a swift gesture she stopped him. Walking close up to him, she looked him full in the eyes. There was a contemptuous pride in her face which forced him to lower his eyelids sulkily. He would have understood a torrent of words--to him that would have regulated the true value of the situation; but this disdainful composure embarrassed him. He had come prepared for trouble and difficulty, but he had rather more determination than most of his class and people, and his spirit of adventure was high. Now that he had seen the girl who was his own according to Romany law, he felt he had been a hundred times justified in demanding her from her father, according to the pledge and bond of so many years ago. He had nothing to lose but his life, and he had risked that before. This old man, the head of the Romany folk, had the bulk of the fortune which had been his own father's and he had the logic of lucre which is the most convincing of all logic. Yet with the girl holding his eyes commandingly, he was conscious that he was asking more than a Romany lass to share his 'tan', to go wandering from Romany people to Romany people, king and queen of them all when Gabriel Druse had passed away. Fleda Druse would be a queen of queens, but there was that queenliness in her now which was not Romany--something which was Gorgio, which was caste, which made a shivering distance between them. As he had spoken, she saw it all as he described it. Vaguely, cloudily, the scene passed before her. Now and again in the passing years had filmy impressions floated before her mind of a swift-flowing river and high crags, and wooded hills and tents and horsemen and shouting, and a lad that held her hand, and banners waved over their heads, and galloping and shouting, and then a sudden quiet, and many men and women gathered about a tent, and a wailing thereafter. After which, in her faint remembrance, there seemed to fall a mist, and a space of blankness, and then a starting up from a bed, and looking out of the doors of a tent, where many people gathered about a great fire, whose flames licked the heavens, and seemed to devour a Romany tent standing alone with a Romany wagon full of its household things. As Jethro Fawe had spoken, the misty, elusive visions had become living memories, and she knew that he had spoken the truth, and that these fleeting things were pictures of her sealing to Jethro Fawe and the death of Lemuel Fawe, and the burning of all that belonged to him in that last ritual of Romany farewell to the dead. She knew now that she had been bargained for like any slave--for three thousand pounds. How far away it all seemed, how barbaric and revolting! Yet here it all was rolling up like a flood to her feet, to bear her away into a past with its sordidness and vagabondage, however gilded and graded above the lowest vagabondage. Here at Manitou she had tasted a free life which was not vagabondage, the passion of the open road which was not an elaborate and furtive evasion of the law and a defiance of social ostracism. Here she and her father moved in an atmosphere of esteem touched by mystery, but not by suspicion; here civilization in its most elastic organization and flexible conventions, had laid its hold upon her, had done in this expansive, loosely knitted social system what could never have been accomplished in a great city--in London, Vienna, Rome, or New York. She had had here the old free life of the road, so full of the scent of deep woods--the song of rivers, the carol of birds, the murmuring of trees, the mysterious and devout whisperings of the night, the happy communings of stray peoples meeting and passing, the gaiety and gossip of the market-place, the sound of church bells across a valley, the storms and wild lightnings and rushing torrents, the cries of frightened beasts, the wash and rush of rain, the sharp pain of frost, and the agonies of some lost traveller rescued from the wide inclemency, the soft starlight after, the balm of the purged air, and "rosy-fingered morn" blinking blithely at the world. The old life of the open road she had had here without anything of its shame, its stigma, and its separateness, its discordance with the stationary forces of law and organized community. Wild moments there had been of late years when she longed for the faces of Romany folk gathered about the fire, while some Romany 'pral' drew all hearts with the violin or the dulcimer. When Ambrose or Gilderoy or Christo responded to the pleadings of some sentimental lass, and sang to the harpist's strings: "Cold blows the wind over my true love, Cold blow the drops of rain; I never, never had but one sweetheart; In the green wood he was slain," and to cries of "Again! 'Ay bor'! again!" the blackeyed lover, hypnotizing himself into an ecstasy, poured out race and passion and war with the law, in the true Gipsy rant which is sung from Transylvania to Yetholm or Carnarvon or Vancouver: "Time was I went to my true love, Time was she came to me--" The sharp passion which moved her now as she stood before Jethro Fawe would not have been so acute yesterday; but to-day--she had lain in a Gorgio's arms to-day; and though he was nothing to her, he was still a Gorgio of Gorgios; and this man before her--her husband--was at best but a man of the hedges and the byre and the clay-pit, the quarry and the wood; a nomad with no home, nothing that belonged to what she was now a part of--organized, collective existence, the life of the house-dweller, not the life of the 'tan', the 'koppa', and the 'vellgouris'--the tent, the blanket, and the fair. "I was never bought, and I was never sold," she said to Jethro Fawe at last "not for three thousand pounds, not in three thousand years. Look at me well, and see whether you think it was so, or ever could be so. Look at me well, Jethro Fawe." "You are mine--it was so done seventeen years ago," he answered, defiantly and tenaciously. "I was three years old, seventeen years ago," she returned quietly, but her eyes forced his to look at her, when they turned away as though their light hurt him. "It is no matter," he rejoined. "It is the way of our people. It has been so, and it will be so while there is a Romany tent standing or moving on." In his rage Gabriel Druse could keep silence no longer. "Rogue, what have you to say of such things?" he growled. "I am the head of all. I pass the word, and things are so and so. By long and by last, if I pass the word that you shall sleep the sleep, it will be so, my Romany 'chal'." His daughter stretched out her hand to stop further speech from her father--"Hush!" she said maliciously, "he has come a long way for naught. It will be longer going back. Let him have his say. It is his capital. He has only breath and beauty." Jethro shrank from the sharp irony of her tongue as he would not have shrunk before her father's violence. Biting rejection was in her tones. He knew dimly that the thing he shrank from belonged to nothing Romany in her, but to that scornful pride of the Gorgios which had kept the Romany outside the social pale. "Only breath and beauty!" she had said, and that she could laugh at his handsomeness was certain proof that it was not wilfulness which rejected his claims. Now there was rage in his heart greater than had been in that of Gabriel Druse. "I have come a long way for a good thing," he said with head thrown back, "and if 'breath and beauty' is all I bring, yet that is because what my father had in his purse has made my 'Ry' rich"--he flung a hand out towards Gabriel Druse--"and because I keep to the open road as my father did, true to my Romany blood. The wind and the sun and the fatness of the field have made me what I am, and never in my life had I an ache or a pain. You have the breath and the beauty, too, but you have the gold also; and what you are and what you have is mine by the Romany law, and it will come to me, by long and by last." Fleda turned quietly to her father. "If it is true concerning the three thousand pounds, give it to him and let him go. It will buy him what he would never get by what he is." The old man flashed a look of anger upon her. "He came empty, he shall go empty. Against my commands, his insolence has brought him here. And let him keep his eyes skinned, or he shall have no breath with which to return. I am Gabriel Druse, lord over all the Romany people in all the world from Teheran to San Diego, and across the seas and back again; and my will shall be done." He paused, reflecting for a moment, though his fingers opened and shut in anger. "This much I will do," he added. "When I return to my people I will deal with this matter in the place where Lemuel Fawe died. By the place called Starzke, I will come to reckoning, and then and then only." "When?" asked the young man eagerly. Gabriel Druse's eyes flashed. "When I return as I will to return." Then suddenly he added: "This much I will say, it shall be before--" The girl stopped him. "It shall be when it shall be. Am I a chattel to be bartered by any will except my own? I will have naught to do with any Romany law. Not by Starzke shall the matter be dealt with, but here by the River Sagalac. This Romany has no claim upon me. My will is my own; I myself and no other shall choose my husband, and he will never be a Romany." The young man's eyes suddenly took on a dreaming, subtle look, submerging the sulkiness which had filled him. Twice he essayed to speak, but faltered. At last, with an air, he said: "For seventeen years I have kept the faith. I was sealed to you, and I hold by the sealing. Wherever you went, it was known to me. In my thoughts I followed. I read the Gorgio books; I made ready for this day. I saw you as you were that day by Starzke, like the young bird in the nest; and the thought of it was with me always. I knew that when I saw you again the brown eyes would be browner, the words at the lips would be sweeter--and so it is. All is as I dreamed for these long years. I was ever faithful. By night and day I saw you as you were when Romany law made you mine for ever. I looked forward to the day when I would take you to my 'tan', and there we two would--" A flush sprang suddenly to Fleda Druse's face, then slowly faded, leaving it pale and indignant. Sharply she interrupted him. "They should have called you Ananias," she said scornfully. "My father has called you a rogue, and now I know you are one. I have not heard, but I know--I know that you have had a hundred loves, and been true to none. The red scarfs you have given to the Romany and the Gorgio fly- aways would make a tent for all the Fawes in all the world." At first he flung up his head in astonishment at her words, then, as she proceeded, a flush swept across his face and his eyes filled up again with sullenness. She had read the real truth concerning him. He had gone too far. He had been convincing while he had said what was true, but her instinct had suddenly told her what he was. Her perception had pierced to the core of his life--a vagabondage, a little more gilded than was common among his fellows, made possible by his position as the successor to her father, and by the money of Lemuel Fawe which he had dissipated. He had come when all his gold was gone to do the one bold thing which might at once restore his fortunes. He had brains, and he knew now that his adventure was in grave peril. He laughed in his anger. "Is only the Gorgio to embrace the Romany lass? One fondled mine to-day in his arms down there at Carillon. That's the way it goes! The old song tells the end of it: "'But the Gorgio lies 'neath the beech-wood tree; He'll broach my tan no more; And my love she sleeps afar from me, But near to the churchyard door. 'Time was I went to my true love, Time was she came to me--'" He got no farther. Gabriel Druse was on him, gripping his arms so tight to his body that his swift motion to draw a weapon was frustrated. The old man put out all his strength, a strength which in his younger days was greater than any two men in any Romany camp, and the "breath and beauty" of Jethro Fawe grew less and less. His face became purple and distorted, his body convulsed, then limp, and presently he lay on the ground with a knee on his chest and fierce, bony hands at his throat. "Don't kill him--father, don't!" cried the girl, laying restraining hands on the old man's shoulders. He withdrew his hands and released the body from his knee. Jethro Fawe lay still. "Is he dead?" she whispered, awestricken. "Dead?" The old man felt the breast of the unconscious man. He smiled grimly. "He is lucky not to be dead." "What shall we do?" the girl asked again with a white face. The old man stooped and lifted the unconscious form in his arms as though it was that of a child. "Where are you going?" she asked anxiously, as he moved away. "To the hut in the juniper wood," he answered. She watched till he had disappeared with his limp burden into the depths of the trees. Then she turned and went slowly towards the house. CHAPTER VI THE UNGUARDED FIRES The public knew well that Ingolby had solved his biggest business problem, because three offices of three railways--one big and two small-- suddenly became merged under his control. At which there was rejoicing at Lebanon, followed by dismay and indignation at Manitou, for one of the smaller merged railways had its offices there, and it was now removed to Lebanon; while several of the staff, having proved cantankerous, were promptly retired. As they were French Canadians, their retirement became a public matter in Manitou and begot fresh quarrel between the rival towns. Ingolby had made a tactical mistake in at once removing the office of the merged railway from Manitou, and he saw it quickly. It was not possible to put the matter right at once, however. There had already been collision between his own railway-men and the rivermen from Manitou, whom Felix Marchand had bribed to cause trouble: two Manitou men had been seriously hurt, and feeling ran high. Ingolby's eyes opened wide when he saw Marchand's ugly game. He loathed the dissolute fellow, but he realized now that his foe was a factor to be reckoned with, for Marchand had plenty of money as well as a bad nature. He saw he was in for a big fight with Manitou, and he had to think it out. So this time he went pigeon-shooting. He got his pigeons, and the slaughter did him good. As though in keeping with the situation, he shot on both sides of the Sagalac with great good luck, and in the late afternoon sent his Indian lad on ahead to Lebanon with the day's spoil, while he loitered through the woods, a gun slung in the hollow of his arm. He had walked many miles, but there was still a spring to his step and he hummed an air with his shoulders thrown back and his hat on the back of his head. He had had his shooting, he had done his thinking, and he was pleased with himself. He had shaped his homeward course so that it would bring him near to Gabriel Druse's house. He had seen Fleda only twice since the episode at Carillon, and met her only once, and that was but for a moment at a Fete for the hospital at Manitou, and with other people present--people who lay in wait for crumbs of gossip. Since the running of the Rapids, Fleda had filled a larger place in the eyes of Manitou and Lebanon. She had appealed to the Western mind: she had done a brave physical thing. Wherever she went she was made conscious of a new attitude towards herself, a more understanding feeling. At the Fete when she and Ingolby met face to face, people had immediately drawn round them curious and excited. These could not understand why the two talked so little, and had such an every-day manner with each other. Only old Mother Thibadeau, who had a heart that sees, caught a look in Fleda's eyes, a warm deepening of colour, a sudden embarrassment, which she knew how to interpret. "See now, monseigneur," she said to Monseigneur Lourde, nodding towards Fleda and Ingolby, "there would be work here soon for you or Father Bidette if they were not two heretics." "Is she a heretic, then, madame?" asked the old white-headed priest, his eyes quizzically following Fleda. She is not a Catholic, and she must be a heretic, that's certain," was the reply. "I'm not so sure," mused the priest. Smiling, he raised his hat as he caught Fleda's eyes. He made as if to go towards her, but something in her look held him back. He realized that Fleda did not wish to speak with him, and that she was even hurrying away from her father, who lumbered through the crowd as though unconscious of them all. Presently Monseigneur Lourde saw Fleda leave the Fete and take the road towards home. There was a sense of excitement in her motions, and he also had seen that tremulous, embarrassed look in her eyes. 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. Bending his head in thought for a moment, he stood still, cogitating. "The dear old fellow was right," he said presently aloud with uplifted head. "I struck camp, but I didn't put out the fires. There's a lot of that in life." That is what had happened also to Gabriel Druse and his daughter. They had struck camp, but had not put out the camp-fires. That which had been done by the River Starzke came again in its appointed time. The untended, unguarded fire may spread devastation and ruin, following with angry freedom the marching feet of those who builded it. "Yes, you've got to put out your fires when you quit the bivouac," continued Ingolby aloud, as he gazed ahead of him through the opening greenery, beyond which lay Gabriel Druse's home. Where he was the woods were thick, and here and there on either side it was almost impenetrable. Few people ever came through this wood. It belonged in greater part to Gabriel Druse, and in lesser part to the Hudson's Bay Company and the Government; and as the land was not valuable till it was cleared, and there was plenty of prairie land to be had, from which neither stick nor stump must be removed, these woods were very lonely. Occasionally a trapper or a sportsman wandered through them, but just here where Ingolby was none ever loitered. It was too thick for game, there was no roadway leading anywhere, but only an overgrown path, used in the old days by Indians. It was this path which Ingolby trod with eager steps. Presently, as he stood still at sight of a ground-hog making for its hiding-place, he saw a shadow fall across the light breaking through the trees some distance in front of him. It was Fleda. She had not seen him, and she came hurrying towards where he was with head bent, a brightly-ribboned hat swinging in her fingers. She seemed part of the woods, its wild simplicity, its depth, its colour-already Autumn was crimsoning the leaves, touching them with amber tints, making the woodland warm and kind. She wore a dress of golden brown which matched her hair, and at her throat was a black velvet ribbon with a brooch of antique paste which flashed the light like diamonds, but more softly. Suddenly, as she came on, she stopped and raised her head in a listening attitude, her eyes opening wide as if listening, too--it was as though she heard with them as well; alive to catch sounds which evaded capture. She was like some creature of an ancient wood with its own secret and immemorial history which the world could never know. There was that in her face which did not belong to civilization or to that fighting world of which Ingolby was so eager a factor. All the generations of the wood and road, the combe and the river, the quarry and the secluded boscage were in her look. There was that about her which was at once elusive and primevally real. She was not of those who would be lost in the dust of futility. Whatever she was, she was an independent atom in the mass of the world's breeding. Perhaps it was consciousness of the dynamic quality in the girl, her nearness to naked nature, which made Madame Bulteel say that she would "have a history." If she got twisted as she came wayfaring, if her mind became possessed of a false passion or purpose which she thought a true one, then tragedy would await her. Yet in this quiet wood so near to the centuries that were before Adam was, she looked like a spirit of comedy listening till the Spirit of the Wood should break the silence. Ingolby felt his blood beat faster. He had a feeling that he was looking at a wood-nymph who might flash out of his vision as a mere fantasy of the mind. There shot through him the strangest feeling that if she were his, he would be linked with something alien to the world of which he was. Yet, recalling the day at Carillon when her cheek lay on his shoulder and her warm breast was pressed unresistingly against him, as he lifted her from his boat, he knew that he would have to make the hardest fight of his life if he meant not to have more of her than this brief acquaintance, so touched by sensation and romance. He was, maybe, somewhat sensational; his career had, even in its present restricted compass, been spectacular; but romance, with its reveries and its moonshinings, its impulses and its blind adventures, had not been any part of his existence. Hers were not the first red lips which, voluntarily or involuntarily, had invited him; nor hers the first eyes which had sparkled to his glances; and this triumphant Titian head of hers was not the only one he had seen. When he had taken her hand at the Hospital Fete, her fingers, long and warm and fine, had folded round his own with a singular confidence, an involuntary enclosing friendliness; and now as he watched her listening --did she hear something?--he saw her hand stretch out as though commanding silence, the "hush!" of an alluring gesture. This assuredly was not the girl who had run the Carillon Rapids, for that adventuress was full of a vital force like a man's, and this girl had the evanishing charm of a dryad. Suddenly a change passed over her. She was as one who had listened and had caught the note of song for which she waited; but her face clouded, and the rapt look gave way to an immediate distress. The fantasy of the wood-nymph underwent translation in Ingolby's mind; she was now like a mortal, who, having been transformed, at immortal dictate was returning to mortal state again. To heighten the illusion, he thought he heard faint singing in the depths of the wood. He put his hands to his ears for a moment, and took them away again to make sure that it was really singing and not his imagination; and when he saw Fleda's face again, there was fresh evidence that his senses had not deceived him. After all, it was not strange that some one should be singing in that deepest wood beyond. Now Fleda moved forward towards where he stood, quickening her footsteps as though remembering something she must do. He stepped out into the path and came to meet her. She heard his footsteps, saw him, and stood still abruptly. She did not make a sound, but a hand went to her bosom quickly, as though to quiet her heart or to steady herself. He had broken suddenly upon her intent thoughts, he had startled her as she had been seldom startled, for all her childhood training had been towards self-possession before surprise and danger. "This is not your side of the Sagalac," she said with a half-smile, regaining composure. "That is in dispute," he answered gaily. "I want to belong to both sides of the Sagalac, I want both sides to belong to each other so that either side shall not be my side or your side, or--" "Or Monsieur Felix Marchand's side," she interrupted meaningly. "Oh, he's on the outside!" snapped the fighter, with a hardening mouth. She did not reply at once, but put her hat on, and tied the ribbons loosely under her chin, looking thoughtfully into the distance. "Is that the Western slang for saying he belongs nowhere?" she asked. "Nowhere here," he answered with a grim twist to the corner of his mouth, his eyes half-closing with sulky meaning. "Won't you sit down?" he added quickly, in a more sprightly tone, for he saw she was about to move on. He motioned towards a log lying beside the path and kicked some branches out of the way. After slight hesitation she sat down, burying her shoes in the fallen leaves. "You don't like Felix Marchand?" she remarked presently. "No. Do you?" She met his eyes squarely--so squarely that his own rather lost their courage, and he blinked more quickly than is needed with a healthy eye. He had been audacious, but he had not surprised the garrison. "I have no deep reason for liking or disliking him, and you have," she answered firmly; yet her colour rose slightly, and he thought he had never seen skin that looked so like velvet-creamy, pink velvet. "You seemed to think differently at Carillon not long ago," he returned. "That was an accident," she answered calmly. "He was drunk, and that is for forgetting--always." "Always! Have you seen many men drunk?" he asked quickly. He did not mean to be quizzical, but his voice sounded so, and she detected it. "Yes, many," she answered with a little ring of defiance in her tone-- "many, often." "Where?" he queried recklessly. "In Lebanon," she retorted. "In Lebanon--your side." How different she seemed from a few moments ago when she stood listening like a nymph for the song of the Spirit of the Wood! Now she was gay, buoyant, with a chamois-like alertness and a beaming vigour. "Now I know what 'blind drunk' means," he replied musingly. "In Manitou when men get drunk, the people get astigmatism and can't see the tangledfooted stagger." "It means that the pines of Manitou are straighter than the cedars of Lebanon," she remarked. "And the pines of Manitou have needles," he rejoined, meaning to give her the victory. "Is my tongue as sharp as that?" she asked, amusement in her eyes. "So sharp I can feel the point when I can't see it," he retorted. "I'm glad of that," she replied with an affectation of conceit. "Of course if you live in Lebanon you need surgery to make you feel a point." "I give in--you have me," he remarked. "You give in to Manitou?" she asked provokingly. "Certainly not--only to you. I said, 'You have me.'" "Ah, you give in to that which won't hurt you--" "Wouldn't you hurt me?" he asked in a softening tone. "You only play with words," she answered with sudden gravity. "Hurt you? I owe you what I can not pay back. I owe you my life; but as nothing can be given in exchange for a life, I cannot pay you." "But like may be given for like," he rejoined in a tone suddenly full of meaning. "Again you are playing with words--and with me," she answered brusquely, and a little light of anger dawned in her eyes. Did he think that he could say a thing of that sort to her--when he pleased? Did he think that because he had done her a great service, he could say casually what belonged only to the sacred moments of existence? She looked at him with rising indignation, but there suddenly came to her the conviction that he had not spoken with affronting gallantry, but that for him the moment had a gravity not to be marred by the place or the circumstance. "I beg your pardon if I spoke hastily," he answered presently. "Yet there's many a true word spoken in jest." There was a moment's silence. She realized that he was drawn to her, and that the attraction was not alone due to his having saved her at Carillon; that he was not taking advantage of the thing which must ever be a bond between them, whatever came of life. When she had seen him at the Hospital Fete, a feeling had rushed over her that he had got nearer to her than any man had ever done. Then--even then, she felt the thing which all lovers, actual, or in the making, feel--that they must do something for the being who to them is more than all else and all others. She was not in love with Ingolby. How could she be in love with this man she had seen but a few times--this Gorgio. Why was it that even as they talked together now, she felt the real, true distance between them--of race, of origin, of history, of life, of circumstance? The hut in the wood where Gabriel Druse had carried Jethro Fawe was not three hundred yards away. She sighed, stirred, and a wild look came in her eyes--a look of rebellion or of protest. Presently she recovered herself. She was a creature of sudden moods. "What is it you want to do with Manitou and Lebanon?" she asked after a pause in which the thoughts of both had travelled far. "You really wish to know--you don't know?" he asked with sudden intensity. She regarded him frankly, smiled, then she laughed outright, showing her teeth very white and regular and handsome. The boyish eagerness of his look, the whimsical twist of his mouth, which always showed when he was keenly roused--as though everything that really meant anything was part of a comet-like comedy--had caused her merriment. All the hidden things in his face seemed to open out into a swift shrewdness and dry candour when he was in his mood of "laying all the cards upon the table." "I don't know," she answered quietly. "I have heard things, but I should like to learn the truth from you. What are your plans?" Her eyes were burning with inquiry. She was suddenly brought to the gateways of a new world. Plans--what had she or her people to do with plans! What Romany ever constructed anything? What did the building of a city or a country mean to a Romany 'chal' or a Romany 'chi', they who lived from field to field, from common to moor, from barn to city wall. A Romany tent or a Romany camp, with its families, was the whole territory of their enterprise, designs and patriotism. They saw the thousand places where cities could be made, and built their fires on the sites of them, and camped a day, and were gone, leaving them waiting and barren as before. They travelled through the new lands in America from the fringe of the Arctic to Patagonia, but they raised no roof-tree; they tilled no acre, opened no market, set up no tabernacle: they had neither home nor country. Fleda was the heir of all this, the product of generations of such vagabondage. Had the last few years given her the civic sense, the home sense? From the influence of the Englishwoman, who had made her forsake the Romany life, had there come habits of mind in tune with the women of the Sagalac, who were helping to build so much more than their homes? Since the incident of the Carillon Rapids she had changed, but what the change meant was yet in her unopened Book of Revelations. Yet something stirred in her which she had never felt before. She had come of a race of wayfarers, but the spirit of the builders touched her now. "What are my plans?" Ingolby drew along breath of satisfaction. "Well, just here where we are will be seen a great thing. There's the Yukon and all its gold; there's the Peace River country and all its unploughed wheat-fields; there's the whole valley of the Sagalac, which alone can maintain twenty millions of people; there's the East and the British people overseas who must have bread; there's China and Japan going to give up rice, and eat the wheaten loaf; there's the U. S. A. with its hundred millions of people--it'll be that in a few years--and its exhausted wheat-fields; and here, right here, is the bread-basket for all the hungry peoples; and Manitou and Lebanon are the centre of it. They will be the distributing centre. I want to see the base laid right. I'm not going to stay here till it all happens, but I want to plan it all so that it will happen, then I'll go on and do a bigger thing somewhere else. These two towns have got to come together; they must play one big game. I want to lay the wires for it. That's why I've got capitalists to start paper-works, engineering works, a foundry, and a sash-door-and- blind factory--just the beginning. That's why I've put two factories on one side of the river and two on the other." "Was it really you who started those factories?" she asked incredulously. "Of course! It was part of my plans. I wasn't foolish enough to build and run them myself. I looked for the right people that had the money and the brains, and I let them sweat--let them sweat it out. I'm not a manufacturer; I'm an inventor and a builder. I built the bridge over the river; and--" She nodded. "Yes, the bridge is good; but they say you are a schemer," she added suggestively. "Certainly. But if I have schemes which'll do good, I ought to be supported. I don't mind what they call me, so long as they don't call me too late for dinner." They both laughed. It was seldom he talked like this, and never had he talked to such a listener before. "The merging of the three railways was a good scheme, and I was the schemer," he continued. "It might mean monopoly, but it won't work out that way. It will simply concentrate energy and: save elbow-grease. It will set free capital and capacity for other things." "They say there will be fewer men at work, not only in the offices but on the whole railway system, and they don't like that in Manitou--ah, no, they don't!" she urged. "They're right in a sense," he answered. "But the men will be employed at other things, which won't represent waste and capital overlapping. Overlapping capital hits everybody in the end. But who says all that? Who raises the cry of 'wolf' in Manitou?" "A good many people say it now," she answered, "but I think Felix Marchand said it first. He is against you, and he is dangerous." He shrugged a shoulder. "Oh, if any fool said it, it would be the same!" he answered. "That's a fire easily lighted; though it sometimes burns long and hard." He frowned, and a fighting look came into his face. "Then you know all that is working against you in Manitou--working harder than ever before?" "I think I do, but I probably don't know all. Have you any special news about it?" "Felix Marchand is spending money among the men. They are going on strike on your railways and in the mills." "What mills--in Manitou?" he asked abruptly. "In both towns." He laughed harshly. "That's a tall order," he said sharply. "Both towns--I don't think so, not yet." "A sympathetic strike is what he calls it," she rejoined. "Yes, a row over some imagined grievance on the railway, and all the men in all the factories to strike--that's the new game of the modern labour agitator! Marchand has been travelling in France," he added disdainfully, "but he has brought his goods to the wrong shop. What do the priests--what does Monseigneur Lourde say to it all?" "I am not a Catholic," she replied gravely. "I've heard, though, that Monseigneur is trying to stop the trouble. But--" She paused. "Yes--but?" he asked. "What were you going to say?" "But there are many roughs in Manitou, and Felix Marchand makes friends with them. I don't think the priests will be able to help much in the end, and if it is to be Manitou against Lebanon, you can't expect a great deal." "I never expect more than I get--generally less," he answered grimly; and he moved the gun about on his knees restlessly, fingering the lock and the trigger softly. "I am sure Felix Marchand means you harm," she persisted. "Personal harm?" "Yes." He laughed sarcastically again. "We are not in Bulgaria or Sicily," he rejoined, his jaw hardening; "and I can take care of myself. What makes you say he means personal harm? Have you heard anything?" "No, nothing, but I feel it is so. That day at the Hospital Fete he looked at you in a way that told me. I think such instincts are given to some people and some races. You read books--I read people. I wanted to warn you, and I do so. This has been lucky in a way, this meeting. Please don't treat what I've said lightly. Your plans are in danger and you also." Was the psychic and fortune-telling instinct of the Romany alive in her and working involuntarily, doing that faithfully which her people did so faithlessly? The darkness which comes from intense feeling had gathered underneath her eyes, and gave them a look of pensiveness not in keeping with the glow of her perfect health, the velvet of her cheek. "Would you mind telling me where you got your information?" he asked presently. "My father heard here and there, and I, also, and some I got from old Madame Thibadeau, who is a friend of mine. I talk with her more than with any one else in Manitou. First she taught me how to crochet, but she teaches me many other things, too." "I know the old girl by sight. She is a character. She would know a lot, that woman." He paused, seemed about to speak, hesitated, then after a moment hastily said: "A minute ago you spoke of having the instinct of your race, or something like that. What is your race? Is it Irish, or--do you mind my asking? Your English is perfect, but there is something--something--" She turned away her head, a flush spreading over her face. She was unprepared for the question. No one had ever asked it directly of her since they had come to Manitou. Whatever speculation there had been, she had never been obliged to tell any one of what race she was. She spoke English with no perceptible accent, as she spoke Spanish, Italian, French, Hungarian and Greek; and there was nothing in her speech marking her as different from the ordinary Western woman. Certainly she would have been considered pure English among the polyglot population of Manitou. What must she say? What was it her duty to say? She was living the life of a British woman, she was as much a Gorgio in her daily existence as this man be side her. Manitou was as much home--nay, it was a thousand times more home--than the shifting habitat of the days when they wandered from the Caspians to John o' Groat's. For years all traces of the past had been removed as completely as though the tide had washed over them; for years it had been so, until the fateful day when she ran the Carillon Rapids. That day saw her whole horizon alter; that day saw this man beside her enter on the stage of her life. And on that very day, also, came Jethro Fawe out of the Past and demanded her return. That had been a day of Destiny. The old, panting, unrealized, tempestuous longing was gone. She was as one who saw danger and faced it, who had a fight to make and would make it. What would happen if she told this man that she was a Gipsy--the daughter of a Gipsy ruler, which was no more than being head of a clan of the world's transients, the leader of the world's nomads. Money--her father had that, at least--much money; got in ways that could not bear the light at times, yet, as the world counts things, not dishonestly; for more than one great minister in a notable country in Europe had commissioned him, more than one ruler and crowned head had used him when "there was trouble in the Balkans," or the "sick man of Europe" was worse, or the Russian Bear came prowling. His service had ever been secret service, when he lived the life of the caravan and the open highway. He had no stable place among the men of all nations, and yet secret rites and mysteries and a language which was known from Bokhara to Wandsworth, and from Waikiki to Valparaiso, gave him dignity of a kind, clothed him with importance. Yet she wanted to tell this man beside her the whole truth, and see what he would do. Would he turn his face away in disgust? What had she a right to tell? She knew well that her father would wish her to keep to that secrecy which so far had sheltered them--at least until Jethro Fawe's coming. At last she turned and looked him in the eyes, the flush gone from her face. "I'm not Irish--do I look Irish?" she asked quietly, though her heart was beating unevenly. "You look more Irish than anything else, except, maybe, Slav or Hungarian--or Gipsy," he said admiringly and unwittingly. "I have Gipsy blood in me," she answered slowly, "but no Irish or Hungarian blood." "Gipsy--is that so?" he said spontaneously, as she watched him so intently that the pulses throbbed at her temples. A short time ago Fleda might have announced her origin defiantly, now her courage failed her. She did not wish him to be prejudiced against her. "Well, well," he added, "I only just guessed at it, because there's something unusual and strong in you, not because your eyes are so dark and your hair so brown." "Not because of my 'wild beauty'--I thought you were going to say that," she added ironically and a little defiantly. "I got some verses by post the other day from one of your friends in Lebanon--a stock-rider I think he was, and they said I had a 'wild beauty' and a 'savage sweetness.'" He laughed, yet he suddenly saw her sensitive vigilance, and by instinct he felt that she was watching for some sign of shock or disdain on his part; yet in truth he cared no more whether she had Gipsy blood in her than he would have done if she had said she was a daughter of the Czar. "Men do write that kind of thing," he added cheerfully, "but it's quite harmless. There was a disease at college we called adjectivitis. Your poet friend had it. He could have left out the 'wild' and 'savage' and he'd have been pleasant, and truthful too--no, I apologize." He had seen her face darken under the compliment, and he hastened to put it right. "I loved a Gipsy once," he added whimsically to divert attention from his mistake, and with so genuine a sympathy in his voice that she was disarmed. "I was ten and she was fifty at least. Oh, a wonderful woman! I had a boy friend, a fat, happy, little joker he was; his name was Charley Long. Well, this woman was his aunt. When she moved through the town people looked twice. She was tall and splendidly made, and her manner--oh, as if she owned the place. She did own a lot--she had more money than any one else thereabouts, anyhow. It was the tallest kind of a holiday when Charley and I walked out to the big white house-golly, but it was white--to visit her! We didn't eat much the day before we went to see her; and we didn't eat much the day after, either. She used to feed us--I wish I could eat like that now! I can see her brown eyes following us about, full of fire, but soft and kind, too. She had a great temper, they said, but everybody liked her, and some loved her. She'd had one girl, but she died of consumption, got camping out in bad weather. Aunt Cynthy--that was what we called her, her name being Cynthia--never got over her girl's death. She blamed herself for it. She had had those fits of going back to the open-for weeks at a time. The girl oughtn't to have been taken to camp out. She was never strong, and it was the wrong place and the wrong time of year--all right in August and all wrong in October. "Well, always after her girl's death Aunt Cynthy was as I knew her, being good to us youngsters as no one else ever was, or could be. Her tea-table was a sight; and the rest of the meals were banquets. The first time I ever ate hedgehog was at her place. A little while ago, just before you came, I thought of her. A hedgehog crossed the path here, and it brought those days back to me--Charley Long and Aunt Cynthy and all. Yes, the first time I ever ate hedgehog; was in Aunt Cynthy's house. Hi-yi, as old Tekewani says, but it was good!" "What is the Romany word for hedgehog?" Fleda asked in a low tone. "Hotchewitchi," he replied instantly. "That's right, isn't it?" "Yes, it is right," she answered, and her eyes had a far-away look, but there was a kind of trouble at her mouth. "Do you speak Romany?" she added a little breathlessly. "No, no. I only picked up words I heard Aunt Cynthy use now and then when she was in the mood." "What was the history of Aunt Cynthy?" "I only know what Charley Long told me. Aunt Cynthy was the daughter of a Gipsy--they say the only Gipsy in that part of the country at the time--who used to buy and sell horses, and travel in a big van as comfortable as a house. The old man suddenly died on the farm of Charley's uncle. In a month the uncle married the girl. She brought him thirty thousand dollars." Fleda knew that this man who had fired her spirit for the first time had told his childhood story to show her the view he took of her origin; but she did not like him less for that, though she seemed to feel a chasm between them still. The new things moving in her were like breezes that stir the trees, not like the wind turning the windmill which grinds the corn. She had scarcely yet begun to grind the corn of life. She did not know where she was going, what she would find, or where the new trail would lead her. The Past dogged her footsteps, hung round her like the folds of a garment. Even as she rejected it, it asserted its power, troubled her, angered her, humiliated her, called to her. She was glad of this meeting with Ingolby. It had helped her. She had set out to do a thing she dreaded, and it was easier now than it would have been if they had not met. She had been on her way to the Hut in the Wood, and now the dread of the visit to Jethro Fawe had diminished. The last voice she would hear before she entered Jethro Fawe's prison was that of the man who represented to her, however vaguely, the life which must be her future--the settled life, the life of Society and not of the Saracen. After he had told his boyhood story they sat in silence for a moment or two, then she rose, and, turning to him, was about to speak. At that instant there came distinctly through the wood a faint, trilling sound. Her face paled a little, and the words died upon her lips. Ingolby, having turned his head as though to listen, did not see the change in her face, and she quickly regained her self-control. "I heard that sound before," he said, "and I thought from your look you heard it, too. It's funny. It is singing, isn't it?" "Yes, it's singing," she answered. "Who is it--some of the heathen from the Reservation?" "Yes, some of the heathen," she answered. "Has Tekewani got a lodge about here?" "He had one here in the old days." "And his people go to it still-was that where you were going when I broke in on you?" "Yes, I was going there. I am a heathen, also, you know." "Well, I'll be a heathen, too, if you'll show me how; if you think I'd pass for one. I've done a lot of heathen things in my time." She gave him her hand to say good-bye. "Mayn't I go with you?" he asked. "'I must finish my journey alone,'" she answered slowly, repeating a line from the first English book she had ever read. "That's English enough," he responded with a laugh. "Well, if I mustn't go with you I mustn't, but my respects to Robinson Crusoe." He slung the gun into the hollow of his arm. "I'd like much to go with you," he urged. "Not to-day," she answered firmly. Again the voice came through the woods, a little louder now. "It sounds like a call," he remarked. "It is a call," she answered--"the call of the heathen." An instant after she had gone on, with a look half-smiling, half- forbidding, thrown over her shoulder at him. "I've a notion to follow her," he said eagerly, and he took a step in her direction. Suddenly she turned and came back to him. "Your plans are in danger-- don't forget Felix Marchand," she said, and then turned from him again. "Oh, I'll not forget," he answered, and waved his cap after her. "No, I'll not forget monsieur," he added sharply, and he stepped out with a light of battle in his eyes. CHAPTER VII IN WHICH THE PRISONER GOES FREE As Fleda wound her way through the deeper wood, remembering the things which had just been said between herself and Ingolby, the colour came and went in her face. To no man had she ever talked so long and intimately, not even in the far-off days when she lived the Romany life. Then, as daughter of the head of all the Romanys, she had her place apart; and the Romany lads had been few who had talked with her even as a child. Her father had jealously guarded her until the time when she fell under the spell and influence of Lady Barrowdale. Here, by the Sagalac, she had moved among this polyglot people with an assurance of her own separateness which was the position of every girl in the West, but developed in her own case to the nth degree. Never before had she come so near--not to a man, but to what concerned a man; and never had a man come so near to her or what concerned her inmost life. It was not a question of opportunity or temptation--these always attend the footsteps of those who would adventure; but for long she had fenced herself round with restrictions of her own making; and the secrecy and strangeness of her father's course had made this not only possible, but in a sense imperative. The end to that had come. Gaiety, daring, passion, elation, depression, were alive in her now, and in a sense had found an outlet in a handful of days--indeed since the day when Jethro Fawe and Max Ingolby had come into her life, each in his own way, for good or for evil. If Ingolby came for good, then Jethro Fawe came for evil. She would have revolted at the suggestion that Jethro Fawe came for good. Yet, during the last few days, she had been drawn again and again towards the hut in the wood. It was as though a power stronger than herself had ordered her not to wander far from where the Romany claimant of herself awaited his fate. As though Jethro knew she was drawn towards him, he had sung the Gipsy songs which she and Ingolby had heard in the distance. He might have shouted for relief in the hope of attracting the attention of some passer-by, and so found release and brought confusion and perhaps punishment to Gabriel Druse; but that was not possible to him. First and last he was a Romany, good or bad; and it was his duty to obey his Ry of Rys, the only rule which the Romany acknowledged. "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him," he would have said, if he had ever heard the phrase; but in his stubborn way he made the meaning of the phrase the pivot of his own action. If he could but see Fleda face to face, he made no doubt that something would accrue to his advantage. He would not give up the hunt without a struggle. Twice a day Gabriel Druse had placed food and water inside the door of the hut and locked him fast again, but had not spoken to him save once, and then but to say that his fate had not yet been determined. Jethro's reply had been that he was in no haste, that he could wait for what he came to get; that it was his own--'ay bor'! it was his own, and God or devil could not prevent the thing meant to be from the beginning of the world. He did not hear Fleda approach the hut; he was singing to himself a song he had learned in Montenegro. There the Romany was held in high regard, because of the help his own father had given to the Montenegrin people, fighting for their independence, by admirable weapons of Gipsy workmanship, setting all the Gipsies in that part of the Balkans at work to supply them. This was the song he sang "He gave his soul for a thousand days, The sun was his in the sky, His feet were on the neck of the world He loved his Romany chi. "He sold his soul for a thousand days, By her side to walk, in her arms to lie; His soul might burn, but her lips were his, And the heart of his Romany chi." He repeated the last two lines into a rising note of exultation: "His soul might burn, but her lips were his, And the heart of his Romany chi." The key suddenly turned in the lock, the door opened on the last words of the refrain, and, without hesitation, Fleda stepped inside, closing the door behind her. "'Mi Duvel', but who would think--ah, did you hear me call then?" he asked, rising from the plank couch where he had been sitting. He showed his teeth in a smile which was meant to be a welcome, but it had an involuntary malice. "I heard you singing," she answered composedly, "but I do not come here because I'm called." "But I do," he rejoined. "You called me from over the seas, and I came. I was in the Balkans; there was trouble--Servia, Montenegro, and Austria were rattling the fire-irons again, and there was I as my father was before me. But I heard you calling, and I came." "You never heard me call, Jethro Fawe," she returned quietly. "My calling of you is as silent as the singing of the stars, where you are concerned. And the stars do not sing." "But the stars do sing, and you call just the same," he responded with a twist to his moustache, and posing against the wall. "I've heard the stars sing. What's the noise they make in the heart, if it's not singing? You don't hear with the ears only. The heart hears. It's only a manner of speaking, this talk about the senses. One sense can do the same as all can do and a Romany ought to know how to use one or all. When your heart called I heard it, and across the seas I came. And by long and by last, but I was right in coming." His impudence at once irritated her and provoked her admiration. She knew by instinct how false he was, and how a lie was as common with him as the truth; but his submission to her father, his indifference to his imprisonment, forced her interest, even as she was humiliated by the fact that he was sib to her, bound by ties of clan and blood apart from his monstrous claim of marriage. He was indeed such a man as a brainless or sensual woman could yield to with ease. He had an insinuating animal grace, that physical handsomeness which marks so many of the Tziganies who fill the red coats of a Gipsy musical sextette! He was not distinguished, yet there was an intelligence in his face, a daring at his lips and chin, which, in the discipline and conventions of organized society, would have made him superior. Now, with all his sleek handsomeness, he looked a cross between a splendid peasant and a chevalier of industry. She compared him instinctively with Ingolby the Gorgio, as she looked at him. What was it made the difference between the two? It was the world in a man--personality, knowledge of life, the culture of the thousand things which make up civilization: it was personality got from life and power in contest with the ordered world. Yet was this so after all? Tekewani was only an Indian brave who lived on the bounty of a government, and yet he had presence and an air of command. Tekewani had been a nomad; he had not been bound to one place, settled in one city, held subservient to one flag. But, no, she was wrong: Tekewani had been the servant and child of a system which was as fixed and historical as that of Russia or Spain. He belonged to a people who had traditions and laws of their own; organized communities moving here and there, but carrying with them their system, their laws and their national feeling. There was the difference. This Romany was the child of irresponsibility, the being that fed upon life, that did not feed life; that left one place in the world to escape into another; that squeezed one day dry, threw it away, and then went seeking another day to bleed; for ever fleeing from yesterday, and using to-day only as a camping-ground. Suddenly, however, she came to a stop in her reflections. Her father, Gabriel Druse, was of the same race as this man, the same unorganized, irresponsible, useless race, with no weight of civic or social duty upon its shoulders--where did he stand? Was he no better than such as Jethro Fawe? Was he inferior to such as Ingolby, or even Tekewani? She realized that in her father's face there was the look of one who had no place in the ambitious designs of men, who was not a builder, but a wayfarer. She had seen the look often of late, and had never read it until now, when Jethro Fawe stared at her with the boldness of possession, with the insolence of a soul of lust which had had its victories. She read his look, and while one part of her shrank from him as from some noisome thing, another part of her--to her dismay and anger--understood him, and did not resent him. It was the Past dragging at her life. It was inherited predisposition, the unregulated passions of her forebears, the mating of the fields, the generated dominance of the body, which was not to be commanded into obscurity, but must taunt and tempt her while her soul sickened. She put a hand on herself. She must make this man realize once and for all that they were as far apart as Adam and Cagliostro. "I never called to you," she said at last. "I did not know of your existence, and, if I had, then I certainly shouldn't have called." "The Gorgios have taken away your mind, or you'd understand," he replied coolly. "Your soul calls and those that understand come. It isn't that you know who hears or who is coming--till he comes." "A call to all creation!" she answered disdainfully. "Do you think you can impress me by saying things like that?" "Why not? It's true. Wherever you went in all these years the memory of you kept calling me, my little 'rinkne rakli'--my pretty little girl, made mine by the River Starzke over in the Roumelian country." "You heard what my father said--" "I heard what the Duke Gabriel said--'Mi Duvel', I heard enough what he said, and I felt enough what he did!" He laughed, and began to roll a cigarette mechanically, keeping his eyes fixed on her, however. "You heard what my father said and what I said, and you will learn that it is true, if you live long enough," she added meaningly. A look of startled perception flashed into his eyes. If I live long enough, I'll turn you, my mad wife, into my Romany queen and the blessing of my 'tan'." "Don't mistake what I mean," she urged. "I shall never be ruler of the Romanys. I shall never hear--" "You'll hear the bosh played-fiddle, they call it in these heathen places--at your second wedding with Jethro Fawe," he rejoined insolently, lighting his cigarette. "Home you'll come with me soon--'ay bor'!" "Listen to me," she answered with anger tingling in every nerve and fibre. "I come of your race, I was what you are, a child of the hedge and the wood and the road; but that is all done. Home, you say! Home-- in a tent by the roadside or--" "As your mother lived--where you were bornwell, well, but here's a Romany lass that's forgot her cradle!" "I have forgotten nothing. I have only moved on. I have only seen that there is a better road to walk than that where people, always looking behind lest they be followed, and always looking in front to find refuge, drop the patrin in the dust or the grass or the bushes for others to follow after--always going on and on because they dare not go back." Suddenly he threw his cigarette on the ground, and put his heel upon it in fury real or assumed. "Great Heaven and Hell," he exclaimed, "here's a Romany has sold her blood to the devil! And this is the daughter of Gabriel Druse, King and Duke of all the Romanys, him with ancestor King Panuel, Duke of Little Egypt, who had Sigismund, and Charles the Great, and all the kings for friends. By long and by last, but this is a tale to tell to the Romanys of the world!" For reply she went to the door and opened it wide. "Then go and tell it, Jethro Fawe, to all the world. Tell them I am the renegade daughter of Gabriel Druse, ruler of them all. Tell them there is no fault in him, and that he will return to his own people in his own time, but that I, Fleda Druse, will never return-- never! Now, get you gone from here." The sunlight broke through the trees, and fell in a narrow path of light upon the doorway. A little grey bird fluttered into the radiance and came tripping across the threshold; a whippoorwill called in the ashtrees; and the sweet smell of the thick woodland, of the bracken and fern, crept into the room. The balm of a perfect evening of Summer was upon the face of nature. The world seemed untroubled and serene; but in this hidden but two stormy spirits broke the peace to which the place and the time were all entitled. After Fleda's scornful words of release and dismissal, Jethro stood for a moment confounded and dismayed. He had not reckoned with this. During their talk it had come to him how simple it would be to overpower any check to his exit, how devilishly easy to put the girl at a disadvantage; but he drove the thought from him. In the first place, he was by no means sure that escape was what he wanted--not yet, at any rate; in the second place, if Gabriel Druse passed the word along the subterranean wires of the Romany world that Jethro Fawe should vanish, he would not long cumber the ground. Yet it was not cowardice or fear of consequences which had held him back; it was a staggering admiration for this girl who had been given to him in marriage so many years ago. He had fared far and wide in his adventures and amours when he had gold in plenty; and he had swung more than one Gorgio woman in the wild dance of sentiment, dazzling them by the splendour of his passion. The fire gleaming in his dark eyes lighted a face which would have made memorable a picture by Guido. He had fared far and wide, but he had never seen a woman who had seized his imagination as this girl was doing; who roused in him, not the old hot desire, but the hungry will to have a 'tan' of his own, and go travelling down the world with one who alone could satisfy him for all his days. As he sat in this improvised woodland prison he had had visions of a hundred glades and valleys through which he had passed in days gone by-- in England, in Spain, in Italy, in Roumania, in Austria, in Australia, in India--where his camp-fires had burned. In his visions he had seen her--Fleda Fawe, not Fleda Druse--laying the cloth and bringing out the silver cups, or stretching the Turkey rugs upon the ground to make a couch for two bright-eyed lovers to whom the night was as the day, radiant and full of joy. He had shut his eyes and beheld hillsides where abandoned castles stood, and the fox and the squirrel and the hawk gave shade and welcome to the dusty pilgrims of the road; or, when the wild winds blew in winter, gave shelter and wood for the fire, and a sense of homeliness among the companionable trees. He had seen himself and this beautiful Romany 'chi' at some village fair, while the lesser Romany folk told fortunes, or bought and sold horses, and the lesser still tinkered or worked in gold or brass; he had seen them both in a great wagon with bright furnishings and brass-girt harness on their horses, lording it over all, rich, dominant and admired. In his visions he had even seen a Romany babe carried in his arms to a Christian church and there baptized in grandeur as became the child of the head of the people. His imagination had also seen his own tombstone in some Christian churchyard near to the church porch, where he would not be lonely when he was dead, but could hear the gossip of the people as they went in and out of church; and on the tombstone some such inscription as he had seen once at Pforzheim--"To the high-born Lord Johann, Earl of Little Egypt, to whose soul God be gracious and merciful." To be sure, it was a strange thing for a Romany to be buried in a Gorgio churchyard; but it was what had chanced to many great men of the Romanys, such as the high-born Lord Panuel at Steinbrock, and Peter of Kleinschild at Mantua--all of whom had great emblazoned monuments in Christian churches, just to show that in all-levelling death they condescended from high estate to mingle their ashes with the dust of the Gorgio. He had sought out his chieftain here in the new world in a spirit of adventure, cupidity and desire. He had come like one who betrays, but he acknowledged to a higher force than his own and to superior rights when Gabriel Druse's strong arm brought him low; and, waking to life and consciousness again, he was aware that another force also had levelled him to the earth. That force was this woman's spirit which now gave him his freedom so scornfully; who bade him begone and tell their people everywhere that she was no longer a Romany, while she would go, no doubt --a thousand times without doubt unless he prevented it--to the swaggering Gorgio who had saved her on the Sagalac. She stood waiting for him to go, as though he could not refuse his freedom. As a bone is tossed to a dog, she gave it to him. "You have no right to set me free," he said coolly now. "I am not your prisoner. You tell me to take that word to the Romany people--that you leave them for ever. I will not do it. You are a Romany, and a Romany you must stay. You belong nowhere else. If you married a Gorgio, you would still sigh for the camp beneath the stars, for the tambourine and the dance--" "And the fortune-telling," she interjected sharply, "and the snail-soup, and the dirty blanket under the hedge, and the constable on the road behind, always just behind, watching, waiting, and--" "The hedge is as clean as the dirty houses where the low-class Gorgios sleep. In faith, you are a long way from the River Starzke!" he added. "But you are my mad wife, and I must wait till you've got sense again." He sat down on the plank couch, and began to roll a cigarette once more. "You come fitted out like a Gorgio lass now, and you look like a Gorgio countess, and you have the manners of an Archduchess; but that's nothing; it will peel off like a blister when it's pricked. Underneath is the Romany. It's there, and it will show red and angry when we've stripped off the Gorgio. It's the way with a woman, always acting, always imagining herself something else than what she is--if she's a beggar fancying herself a princess; if she's a princess fancying herself a flower-girl. 'Mi Duvel', but I know you all!" Every word he said went home. She knew that there was truth in what he said, and that beneath all was the Romany blood; but she meant to conquer it. She had made her vow to one in England that she loved, and she would not change. Whatever happened, she had finished with Romany life, and to go back would only mean black tragedy in the end. A month ago it was a vow and an inner desire which made her determined; to-day it was the vow and a man--a Gorgio whom she had but now left in the woods, gazing after her with the look which a woman so well interprets. "You mean you won't go free from here? Because I was a Romany, and wish you no harm, I have come here to-day to let you go where you will--to go back to the place where the patrins show where your people travel. I set you free, and you say what you think will hurt and shame me. You have a cruel soul. You would torture any woman till she died. You shall not torture me. You are as far from me as the River Starzke. I could have let you stay here for my father to deal with, but I have set you free. I open the door for you, though you are nothing to me, and I am no more to you than one of the women you have fooled and left to eat the vile bread of the forsaken. You have been, you are a wolf--a wolf." He got to his feet again, and the blood rushed to his face, so that it seemed almost black. A torrent of mad words gathered in his throat, but they choked him, and in the pause his will asserted itself. He became cool and deliberate. "You are right, my girl, I have sucked the orange and thrown the skin away, and I've picked flowers and cast them by, but that was before the first day I saw you as you now are. You were standing by the Sagalac looking out to the west where the pack-trains were travelling into the sun over the mountains, and you had your hand on the neck of your pony. I was not ten feet away from you, behind a juniper-bush. I looked at you, and I wished that I had never seen a woman before and could look at the world as you did then--it was like water from a spring, that look. You are right in what you say. By long and by last I had a hard hand, and when I left what I'd struck down I never looked back. But I saw you, and I wished I had never seen a woman before. You have been here alone with me with that door shut. Have I said or done anything that a Gorgio duke wouldn't do? Ah, God's love, but you were bold to come! I married you by the River Starzke; I looked upon you as my wife; and here you were alone with me! I had my rights, and I had been trampled underfoot by your father--" "By your Chief." "'Ay bor', by my Chief! I had my wrongs, and I had my rights, and you were mine by Romany law. It was for me here to claim you--here where a Romany and his wife were alone together!" His eyes were fixed searchingly on hers, as though he would read the effect of his words before he replied, and his voice had a curious, rough note, as though with difficulty he quelled the tempest within him. "I have my rights, and you had spat upon me," he said with ferocious softness. She did not blench, but looked him steadily in the eyes. "I knew what would be in your mind," she answered, "but that did not keep me from coming. You would not bite the hand that set you free." "You called me a wolf a minute ago." "But a wolf would not bite the hand that freed it from the trap. Yet if such shame could be, I still would have had no fear, for I should have shot you as wolves are shot that come too near the fold." He looked at her piercingly, and the pupils of his eyes narrowed to a pin-point. "You would have shot me--you are armed?" he questioned. "Am I the only woman that has armed herself against you and such as you? Do you not see?" "Mi Duvel, but I do see now with a thousand eyes!" he said hoarsely. His senses were reeling. Down beneath everything had been the thought that, as he had prevailed with other women, he could prevail with her; that she would come to him in the end. He had felt, but he had declined to see, the significance of her bearing, of her dress, of her speech, of her present mode of life, of its comparative luxury, its social distinction of a kind which lifted her above even the Gorgios by whom she was surrounded. A fatuous belief in himself and in his personal powers had deluded him. He had told the truth when he said that no woman had ever appealed to him as she did; that she had blotted out all other women from the book of his adventurous and dissolute life; and he had dreamed a dream of conquest of her when Fortune should hand out to him the key of the situation. Did not the beautiful Russian countess on the Volga flee from her liege lord and share his 'tan'? When he played his fiddle to the Austrian princess, did she not give him a key to the garden where she walked of an evening? And this was a Romany lass, daughter of his Chieftain, as he was son of a great Romany chief; and what marvel could there be that she who had been made his child wife, should be conquered as others had been! "'Mi Duvel', but I see!" he repeated in a husky fierceness. "I am your husband, but you would have killed me if I had taken a kiss from your lips, sealed to me by all our tribes and by your father and mine." "My lips are my own, my life is my own, and when I marry, I shall marry a man of my own choosing, and he will not be a Romany," she replied with a look of resolution which her beating heart belied. "I'm not a pedlar's basket." "'Kek! Kek'! That's plain," he retorted. "But the 'wolf' is no lamb either! I said I would not go till your father set me free, since you had no right to do so, but a wife should save her husband, and her husband should set himself free for his wife's sake"--his voice rose in fierce irony--"and so I will now go free. But I will not take the word to the Romany people that you are no more of them. I am a true Romany. I disobeyed my 'Ry' in coming here because my wife was here, and I wanted her. I am a true Romany husband who will not betray his wife to her people; but I will have my way, and no Gorgio shall take her to his home. She belongs to my tent, and I will take her there." Her gesture of contempt, anger and negation infuriated him. "If I do not take you to my 'tan', it will be because I'm dead," he said, and his white teeth showed fiercely. "I have set you free. You had better go," she rejoined quietly. Suddenly he turned at the doorway. A look of passion burned in his eyes. His voice became soft and persuasive. "I would put the past behind me, and be true to you, my girl," he said. "I shall be chief over all the Romany people when Duke Gabriel dies. We are sib; give me what is mine. I am yours--and I hold to my troth. Come, beloved, let us go together." A sigh broke from her lips, for she saw that, bad as he was, there was a moment's truth in his words. "Go while you can," she said. "You are nothing to me." For an instant he hesitated, then, with a muttered oath, sprang out into the bracken, and was presently lost among the trees. For a long time she sat in the doorway, and again and again her eyes filled with tears. She felt a cloud of trouble closing in upon her. At last there was the sound of footsteps, and a moment later Gabriel Druse came through the trees towards her. His eyes were sullen and brooding. "You have set him free?" he asked. She nodded. "It was madness keeping him here," she said. "It is madness letting him go," he answered morosely. "He will do harm. 'Ay bor', he will! I might have known--women are chicken-hearted. I ought to have put him out of the way, but I have no heart any more--no heart; I have the soul of a rabbit." ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Saw how futile was much competition When you strike your camp, put out the fires THE WORLD FOR SALE By Gilbert Parker BOOK II VIII. THE SULTAN IX. MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MEN X. FOR LUCK XI. THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN XII. "LET THERE BE LIGHT" XIII. THE CHAIN OF THE PAST XIV. SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE XV. THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER XVI. THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE XVII. THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD XVIII. THE BEACONS XIX. THE BEEPER OF THE BRIDGE CHAPTER VIII THE SULTAN Ingolby's square head jerked forwards in stern inquiry and his eyes fastened those of Jowett, the horsedealer. "Take care what you're saying, Jowett," he said. "It's a penitentiary job, if it can be proved. Are you sure you got it right?" Jowett had unusual shrewdness, some vanity and a humorous tongue. He was a favourite in both towns, and had had the better of both in horse- dealing a score of times. That did not make him less popular. However, it was said he liked low company, and it was true that though he had "money in the bank," and owned a corner lot or so, he seemed to care little what his company was. His most constant companion was Fabian Osterhaut, who was the common property of both towns, doing a little of everything for a living, from bill-posting to the solicitation of an insurance agent. For any casual work connected with public functions Osterhaut was indispensable, and he would serve as a doctor's assistant and help cut off a leg, be the majordomo for a Sunday-school picnic, or arrange a soiree at a meeting-house with equal impartiality. He had been known to attend a temperance meeting and a wake in the same evening. Yet no one ever questioned his bona fides, and if he had attended mass at Manitou in the morning, joined a heathen dance in Tekewani's Reserve in the afternoon, and listened to the oleaginous Rev. Reuben Tripple in the evening, it would have been taken as a matter of course. He was at times profane and impecunious, and he had been shifted from one boarding-house to another till at last, having exhausted credit in Lebanon, he had found a room in the house of old Madame Thibadeau in Manitou. She had taken him in because, in years gone by, he had nursed her only son through an attack of smallpox on the Siwash River, and somehow Osterhaut had always paid his bills to her. He was curiously exact where she was concerned. If he had not enough for his week's board and lodging, he borrowed it, chiefly of Jowett, who used him profitably at times to pass the word about a horse, or bring news of a possible deal. "It's a penitentiary job, Jowett," Ingolby repeated. "I didn't think Marchand would be so mad as that." "Say, it's all straight enough, Chief," answered Jowett, sucking his unlighted cigar. "Osterhaut got wind of it--he's staying at old Mother Thibadeau's, as you know. He moves round a lot, and he put me on to it. I took on the job at once. I got in with the French toughs over at Manitou, at Barbazon's Tavern, and I gave them gin--we made it a gin night. It struck their fancy--gin, all gin! 'Course there's nothing in gin different from any other spirit; but it fixed their minds, and took away suspicion. "I got drunk--oh, yes, of course, blind drunk, didn't I? Kissed me, half a dozen of the Quebec boys did--said I was 'bully boy' and 'hell-fellow'; said I was 'bon enfant'; and I said likewise in my best patois. They liked that. I've got a pretty good stock of monkey-French, and I let it go. They laughed till they cried at some of my mistakes, but they weren't no mistakes, not on your life. It was all done a-purpose. They said I was the only man from Lebanon they wouldn't have cut up and boiled, and they was going to have the blood of the Lebanon lot before they'd done. I pretended to get mad, and I talked wild. I said that Lebanon would get them first, that Lebanon wouldn't wait, but'd have it out; and I took off my coat and staggered about--blind-fair blind boozy. I tripped over some fool's foot purposely, just beside a bench against the wall, and I come down on that bench hard. They laughed--Lord, how they laughed! They didn't mind my givin' 'em fits--all except one or two. That was what I expected. The one or two was mad. They begun raging towards me, but there I was asleep on the bench-stony blind, and then they only spit fire a bit. Some one threw my coat over me. I hadn't any cash in the pockets, not much--I knew better than that--and I snored like a sow. Then it happened what I thought would happen. They talked. And here it is. They're going to have a strike in the mills, and you're to get a toss into the river. That's to be on Friday. But the other thing--well, they all cleared away but two. They were the two that wanted to have it out with me. They stayed behind. There was I snoring like a locomotive, but my ears open all right. "Well, they give the thing away. One of 'em had just come from Felix Marchand and he was full of it. What was it? Why, the second night of the strike your new bridge over the river was to be blown up. Marchand was to give these two toughs three hundred dollars each for doing it." "Blown up with what?" Ingolby asked sharply. "Dynamite." "Where would they get it?" "Some left from blasting below the mills." "All right! Go on." "There wasn't much more. Old Barbazon, the landlord, come in and they quit talking about it; but they said enough to send 'em to gaol for ten years." Ingolby blinked at Jowett reflectively, and his mouth gave a twist that lent to his face an almost droll look. "What good would it do if they got ten years--or one year, if the bridge was blown up? If they got skinned alive, and if Marchand was handed over to a barnful of hungry rats to be gnawed to death, it wouldn't help. I've heard and seen a lot of hellish things, but there's nothing to equal that. To blow up the bridge--for what? To spite Lebanon, and to hurt me; to knock the spokes out of my wheel. He's the dregs, is Marchand." "I guess he's a shyster by nature, that fellow," interposed Jowett. "He was boilin' hot when he was fifteen. He spoiled a girl I knew when he was twenty-two, not fourteen she was--Lil Sarnia; and he got her away before--well, he got her away East; and she's in a dive in Winnipeg now. As nice a girl--as nice a little girl she was, and could ride any broncho that ever bucked. What she saw in him--but there, she was only a child, just the mind of a child she had, and didn't understand. He'd ha' been tarred and feathered if it'd been known. But old Mick Sarnia said hush, for his wife's sake, and so we hushed, and Sarnia's wife doesn't know even now. I thought a lot of Lil, as much almost as if she'd been my own; and lots o' times, when I think of it, I sit up straight, and the thing freezes me; and I want to get Marchand by the scruff of the neck. I got a horse, the worst that ever was--so bad I haven't had the heart to ride him or sell him. He's so bad he makes me laugh. There's nothing he won't do, from biting to bolting. Well, I'd like to tie Mr. Felix Marchand, Esquire, to his back, and let him loose on the prairie, and pray the Lord to save him if he thought fit. I fancy I know what the Lord would do. And Lil Sarnia's only one. Since he come back from the States, he's the limit, oh, the damnedest limit. He's a pest all round- and now, this!" Ingolby kept blinking reflectively as Jowett talked. He was doing two things at once with a facility quite his own. He was understanding all Jowett was saying, but he was also weighing the whole situation. His mind was gone fishing, figuratively speaking. He was essentially a man of action, but his action was the bullet of his mind; he had to be quiet physically when he was really thinking. Then he was as one in a dream where all physical motion was mechanical, and his body was acting automatically. His concentration, and therefore his abstraction, was phenomenal. Jowett's reminiscences at a time so critical did not disturb him--did not, indeed, seem to be irrelevant. It was as though Felix Marchand was being passed in review before him in a series of aspects. He nodded encouragement to Jowett to go on. "It's because Marchand hates you, Chief. The bump he got when you dropped him on the ground that day at Carillon hurts still. It's a chronic inflammation. Closing them railway offices at Manitou, and dislodging the officials give him his first good chance. The feud between the towns is worse now than it's ever been. Make no mistake. There's a whole lot of toughs in Manitou. Then there's religion, and there's race, and there's a want-to-stand-still and leave-me-alone- feeling. They don't want to get on. They don't want progress. They want to throw the slops out of the top windows into the street; they want their cesspools at the front door; they think that everybody's got to have smallpox some time or another, and the sooner they have it the better; they want to be bribed; and they think that if a vote's worth having it's worth paying for--and yet there's a bridge between these two towns! A bridge--why, they're as far apart as the Yukon and Patagonia." "What'd buy Felix Marchand?" Ingolby asked meditatively. "What's his price?" Jowett shifted with impatience. "Say, Chief, I don't know what you're thinking about. Do you think you could make a deal with Felix Marchand? Not much. You've got the cinch on him. You could send him to quod, and I'd send him there as quick as lightning. I'd hang him, if I could, for what he done to Lil Sarnia. Years ago when he was a boy he offered me a gold watch for a mare I had. The watch looked as right as could be-- solid fourteen-carat, he said it was. He got my horse, and I got his watch. It wasn't any more gold than he was. It was filled--just plated with nine-carat gold. It was worth about ten dollars." "What was the mare worth?" asked Ingolby, his mouth twisting again with quizzical meaning. "That mare--she was all right." "Yes, but what was the matter with her?" "Oh, a spavin--she was all right when she got wound up--go like Dexter or Maud S." "But if you were buying her what would you have paid for her, Jowett? Come now, man to man, as they say. How much did you pay for her?" "About what she was worth, Chief, within a dollar or two." "And what was she worth?" "What I paid for her-ten dollars." Then the two men looked at each other full in the eyes, and Jowett threw back his head and laughed outright--laughed loud and hard. "Well, you got me, Chief, right under the guard," he observed. Ingolby did not laugh outright, but there was a bubble of humour in his eyes. "What happened to the watch?" he asked. "I got rid of it." "In a horse-trade?" "No, I got a town lot with it." "In Lebanon?" "Well, sort of in Lebanon's back-yard." "What's the lot worth now?" "About two thousand dollars!" "Was it your first town lot?" "The first lot of Mother Earth I ever owned." "Then you got a vote on it?" "Yes, my first vote." "And the vote let you be a town-councillor?" "It and my good looks." "Indirectly, therefore, you are a landowner, a citizen, a public servant, and an instrument of progress because of Felix Marchand. If you hadn't had the watch you wouldn't have had that town lot." "Well, mebbe, not that lot." Suddenly Ingolby got to his feet and squared himself, and his face became alight with purpose. His mind had come back from fishing, and he was ready now for action. His plans were formed. He was in for a fight, and he had made up his mind how, with the new information to his hand, he would develop his campaign further. "You didn't make a fuss about the watch, Jowett. You might have gone to Felix Marchand or to his father and proved him a liar, and got even that way. You didn't; you got a corner lot with it. That's what I'm going to do. I can have Felix Marchand put in the jug, and make his old father, Hector Marchand, sick; but I like old Hector Marchand, and I think he's bred as bad a pup as ever was. I'm going to try and do with this business as you did with that watch. I'm going to try and turn it to account and profit in the end. Felix Marchand's profiting by a mistake of mine--a mistake in policy. It gives him his springboard; and there's enough dry grass in both towns to get a big blaze with a very little match. I know that things are seething. The Chief Constable keeps me posted as to what's going on here, and pretty fairly as to what's going on in Manitou. The police in Manitou are straight enough. That's one comfort. I've done Felix Marchand there. I guess that the Chief Constable of Manitou and Monseigneur Lourde and old Mother Thibadeau are about the only people that Marchand can't bribe. I see I've got to face a scrimmage before I can get what I want." "What you want you'll have, I bet," was the admiring response. "I'm going to have a good try. I want these two towns to be one. That'll be good for your town lots, Jowett," he added whimsically. "If my policy is carried out, my town lot'll be worth a pocketful of gold- plated watches or a stud of spavined mares." He chuckled to himself, and his fingers reached towards a bell on the table, but he paused. "When was it they said the strike would begin?" he asked. "Friday." "Did they say what hour?" "Eleven in the morning." "Third of a day's work and a whole day's pay," he mused. "Jowett," he added, "I want you to have faith. I'm going to do Marchand, and I'm going to do him in a way that'll be best in the end. You can help as much if not more than anybody--you and Osterhaut. And if I succeed, it'll be worth your while." "I ain't followin' you because it's worth while, but because I want to, Chief." "I know; but a man--every man--likes the counters for the game." He turned to the table, opened a drawer, and took out a folded paper. He looked it through carefully, wrote a name on it, and handed it to Jowett. "There's a hundred shares in the Northwest Railway, with my regards, Jowett. Some of the counters of the game." Jowett handed it back at once with a shake of the head. "I don't live in Manitou," he said. "I'm almost white, Chief. I've never made a deal with you, and don't want to. I'm your man for the fun of it, and because I'd give my life to have your head on my shoulders for one year." "I'd feel better if you'd take the shares, Jowett. You've helped me, and I can't let you do it for nothing." "Then I can't do it at all. I'm discharged." Suddenly, however, a humorous, eager look shot into Jowett's face. "Will you toss for it?" he blurted out. "Certainly, if you like," was the reply. "Heads I win, tails it's yours?" "Good." Ingolby took a silver dollar from his pocket, and tossed. It came down tails. Ingolby had won. "My corner lot against double the shares?" Jowett asked sharply, his face flushed with eager pleasure. He was a born gambler. "As you like," answered Ingolby with a smile. Ingolby tossed, and they stooped over to look at the dollar on the floor. It had come up heads. "You win," said Ingolby, and turning to the table, took out another hundred shares. In a moment they were handed over. "You're a wonder, Jowett," he said. "You risked a lot of money. Are you satisfied?" "You bet, Chief. I come by these shares honestly now." He picked up the silver dollar from the floor, and was about to put it in his pocket. "Wait--that's my dollar," said Ingolby. "By gracious, so it is!" said Jowett, and handed it over reluctantly. Ingolby pocketed it with satisfaction. Neither dwelt on the humour of the situation. They were only concerned for the rules of the game, and both were gamesters in their way. After a few brief instructions to Jowett, and a message for Osterhaut concerning a suit of workman's clothes, Ingolby left his offices and walked down the main street of the town with his normal rapidity, responding cheerfully to the passers-by, but not encouraging evident desire for talk with him. Men half-started forward to him, but he held them back with a restraining eye. They knew his ways. He was responsive in a brusque, inquisitive, but good-humoured and sometimes very droll way; but there were times when men said to themselves that he was to be left alone; and he was so much master of the place that, as Osterhaut and Jowett frequently remarked, "What he says goes!" It went even with those whom he had passed in the race of power. He had had his struggles to be understood in his first days in Lebanon. He had fought intrigue and even treachery, had defeated groups which were the forces at work before he came to Lebanon, and had compelled the submission of others. All these had vowed to "get back at him," but when it became a question of Lebanon against Manitou they swung over to his side and acknowledged him as leader. The physical collision between the rougher elements of the two towns had brought matters to a head, and nearly every man in Lebanon felt that his honour was at stake, and was ready "to have it out with Manitou." As he walked along the main street after his interview with Jowett, his eyes wandered over the buildings rising everywhere; and his mind reviewed as in a picture the same thinly inhabited street five years ago when he first came. Now farmers' wagons clacked and rumbled through the prairie dust, small herds of cattle jerked and shuffled their way to the slaughter-yard, or out to the open prairie, and caravans of settlers with their effects moved sturdily forward to the trails which led to a new life beckoning from three points of the compass. That point which did not beckon was behind them. Flaxen-haired Swedes and Norwegians; square- jawed, round-headed North Germans; square-shouldered, loose-jointed Russians with heavy contemplative eyes and long hair, looked curiously at each other and nodded understandingly. Jostling them all, with a jeer and an oblique joke here and there, and crude chaff on each other and everybody, the settler from the United States asserted himself. He invariably obtruded himself, with quizzical inquiry, half contempt and half respect, on the young Englishman, who gazed round with phlegm upon his fellow adventurers, and made up to the sandy-faced Scot or the cheerful Irishman with his hat on the back of his head, who showed in the throng here and there. This was one of the days when the emigrant and settlers' trains arrived both from the East and from "the States," and Front Street in Lebanon had, from early morning, been alive with the children of hope and adventure. With hands plunged deep in the capacious pockets of his grey jacket, Ingolby walked on, seeing everything; yet with his mind occupied intently, too, on the trouble which must be faced before Lebanon and Manitou would be the reciprocating engines of his policy. Coming to a spot where a great gap of vacant land showed in the street-land which he had bought for the new offices of his railway combine--he stood and looked at it abstractedly. Beyond it, a few blocks away, was the Sagalac, and beyond the Sagalac was Manitou, and a little way to the right was the bridge which was the symbol of his policy. His eyes gazed almost unconsciously on the people and the horses and wagons coming and going upon the bridge. Then they were lifted to the tall chimneys rising at two or three points on the outskirts of Manitou. "They don't know a good thing when they get it," he said to himself. "A strike--why, wages are double what they are in Quebec, where most of 'em come from! Marchand--" A hand touched his arm. "Have you got a minute to spare, kind sir?" a voice asked. Ingolby turned and saw Nathan Rockwell, the doctor. "Ah, Rockwell," he responded cheerfully, "two minutes and a half, if you like! What is it?" The Boss Doctor, as he was familiarly called by every one, to identify him from the newer importations of medical men, drew from his pocket a newspaper. "There's an infernal lie here about me," he replied. "They say that I--" He proceeded to explain the misstatement, as Ingolby studied the paper carefully, for Rockwell was a man worth any amount of friendship. "It's a lie, of course," Ingolby said firmly as he finished the paragraph. "Well?" "Well, I've got to deal with it." "You mean you're going to deny it in the papers?" "Exactly." "I wouldn't, Rockwell." "You wouldn't?" "No. You never can really overtake a newspaper lie. Lots of the people who read the lie don't see the denial. Your truth doesn't overtake the lie--it's a scarlet runner." "I don't see that. When you're lied about, when a lie like that--" "You can't overtake it, Boss. It's no use. It's sensational, it runs too fast. Truth's slow-footed. When a newspaper tells a lie about you, don't try to overtake it, tell another." He blinked with quizzical good-humour. Rockwell could not resist the audacity. "I don't believe you'd do it just the same," he retorted decisively, and laughing. "I don't try the overtaking anyhow; I get something spectacular in my own favour to counteract the newspaper lie." "In what way?" "For instance, if they said I couldn't ride a moke at a village steeplechase, I'd at once publish the fact that, with a jack-knife, I'd killed two pumas that were after me. Both things would be lies, but the one would neutralize the other. If I said I could ride a moke, nobody would see it, and if it were seen it wouldn't make any impression; but to say I killed two mountain-lions with a jack-knife on the edge of a precipice, with the sun standing still to look at it, is as good as the original lie and better; and I score. My reputation increases." Nathan Rockwell's equilibrium was restored. "You're certainly a wonder," he declared. "That's why you've succeeded." "Have I succeeded?" "Thirty-three-and what you are!" "What am I?" "Pretty well master here." "Rockwell, that'd do me a lot of harm if it was published. Don't say it again. This is a democratic country. They'd kick at my being called master of anything, and I'd have to tell a lie to counteract it." "But it's the truth, and it hasn't to be overtaken." A grim look came into Ingolby's face. "I'd like to be master-boss of life and death, holder of the sword and balances, the Sultan, here just for one week. I'd change some things. I'd gag some people that are doing terrible harm. It's a real bad business. The scratch-your-face period is over, and we're in the cut-your-throat epoch." Rockwell nodded assent, opened the paper again, and pointed to a column. "I expect you haven't seen that. To my mind, in the present state of things, it's dynamite." Ingolby read the column hastily. It was the report of a sermon delivered the evening before by the Rev. Reuben Tripple, the evangelical minister of Lebanon. It was a paean of the Scriptures accompanied by a crazy charge that the Roman Church forbade the reading of the Bible. It had a tirade also about the Scarlet Woman and Popish idolatry. Ingolby made a savage gesture. "The insatiable Christian beast!" he growled in anger. "There's no telling what this may do. You know what those fellows are over in Manitou. The place is full of them going to the woods, besides the toughs at the mills and in the taverns. They're not psalm-singing, and they don't keep the Ten Commandments, but they're savagely fanatical, and--" "And there's the funeral of an Orangeman tomorrow. The Orange Lodge attends in regalia." Ingolby started and looked at the paper again. "The sneaking, praying liar," he said, his jaw setting grimly. "This thing's a call to riot. There's an element in Lebanon as well that'd rather fight than eat. It's the kind of lie that--" "That you can't overtake," said the Boss Doctor appositely; "and I don't know that even you can tell another that'll neutralize it. Your prescription won't work here." An acknowledging smile played at Ingolby's mouth. "We've got to have a try. We've got to draw off the bull with a red rag somehow." "I don't see how myself. That Orange funeral will bring a row on to us. I can just see the toughs at Manitou when they read this stuff, and know about that funeral." "It's announced?" "Yes, here's an invitation in the Budget to Orangemen to attend the funeral of a brother sometime of the banks of the Boyne!" "Who's the Master of the Lodge?" asked Ingolby. Rockwell told him, urging at the same time that he see the Chief Constable as well, and Monseigneur Lourde at Manitou. "That's exactly what I mean to do--with a number of other things. Between ourselves, Rockwell, I'd have plenty of lint and bandages ready for emergencies if I were you." "I'll see to it. That collision the other day was serious enough, and it's gradually becoming a vendetta. Last night one of the Lebanon champions lost his nose." "His nose--how?" "A French river-driver bit a third of it off." Ingolby made a gesture of disgust. "And this is the twentieth century!" They had moved along the street until they reached a barber-shop, from which proceeded the sound of a violin. "I'm going in here," Ingolby said. "I've got some business with Berry, the barber. You'll keep me posted as to anything important?" "You don't need to say it. Shall I see the Master of the Orange Lodge or the Chief Constable for you?" Ingolby thought for a minute. "No, I'll tackle them myself, but you get in touch with Monseigneur Lourde. He's grasped the situation, and though he'd like to have Tripple boiled in oil, he doesn't want broken heads and bloodshed." "And Tripple?" "I'll deal with him at once. I've got a hold on him. I never wanted to use it, but I will now without compunction. I have the means in my pocket. They've been there for three days, waiting for the chance." "It doesn't look like war, does it?" said Rockwell, looking up the street and out towards the prairie where the day bloomed like a flower. Blue above--a deep, joyous blue, against which a white cloud rested or slowly travelled westward; a sky down whose vast cerulean bowl flocks of wild geese sailed, white and grey and black, while the woods across the Sagalac were glowing with a hundred colours, giving tender magnificence to the scene. The busy eagerness of a pioneer life was still a quiet, orderly thing, so immense was the theatre for effort and movement. In these wide streets, almost as wide as a London square, there was room to move; nothing seemed huddled, pushing, or inconvenient. Even the disorder of building lost its ugly crudity in the space and the sunlight. "The only time I get frightened in life is when things look like that," Ingolby answered. "I go round with a life-preserver on me when it seems as if 'all's right with the world.'" The violin inside the barber-shop kept scraping out its cheap music--a coon-song of the day. "Old Berry hasn't much business this morning," remarked Rockwell. "He's in keeping with this surface peace." "Old Berry never misses anything. What we're thinking, he's thinking. I go fishing when I'm in trouble; Berry plays his fiddle. He's a philosopher and a friend." "You don't make friends as other people do." "I make friends of all kinds. I don't know why, but I've always had a kind of kinship with the roughs, the no-accounts, and the rogues." "As well as the others--I hope I don't intrude!" Ingolby laughed. "You? Oh, I wish all the others were like you. It's the highly respectable members of the community I've always had to watch." The fiddle-song came squeaking out upon the sunny atmosphere. It arrested the attention of a man on the other side of the street-- a stranger in strange Lebanon. He wore a suit of Western clothes as a military man wears mufti, if not awkwardly, yet with a manner not wholly natural--the coat too tight across the chest, too short in the body. However, the man was handsome and unusual in his leopard way, with his brown curling hair and well-cared-for moustache. It was Jethro Fawe. Attracted by the sound of the violin, he stayed his steps and smiled scornfully. Then his look fell on the two figures at the door of the barber-shop, and his eyes flashed. Here was the man he wished to see--Max Ingolby, the man who stood between him and his Romany lass. Here was a chance of speaking face to face with the man who was robbing him. What he should do when they met must be according to circumstances. That did not matter. There was the impulse storming in his brain, and it drove him across the street as the Boss Doctor walked away, and Ingolby entered the shop. All Jethro realized was that the man who stood in his way, the big, rich, masterful Gorgio was there. He entered the shop after Ingolby, and stood for an instant unseen. The old negro barber with his curly white head, slave-black face, and large, shrewd, meditative eyes was standing in a corner with a violin under his chin, his cheek lovingly resting against it, as he drew his bow through the last bars of the melody. He had smiled in welcome as Ingolby entered, instantly rising from his stool, but continuing to play. He would not have stopped in the middle of a tune for an emperor, and he put Ingolby higher than an emperor. For one who had been born a slave, and had still the scars of the overseer's whip on his back, he was very independent. He cut everybody's hair as he wanted to cut it, trimmed each beard as he wished to trim it, regardless of its owner's wishes. If there was dissent, then his customer need not come again, that was all. There were other barbers in the place, but Berry was the master barber. To have your head massaged by him was never to be forgotten, especially if you found your hat too small for your head in the morning. Also he singed the hair with a skill and care, which had filled many a thinly covered scalp with luxuriant growth, and his hair-tonic, known as "Smilax," gave a pleasant odour to every meeting-house or church or public hall where the people gathered. Berry was an institution even in this new Western town. He kept his place and he forced the white man, whoever he was, to keep his place. When he saw Jethro Fawe enter the shop he did not stop playing, but his eyes searched the newcomer. Following his glance, Ingolby turned round and saw the Romany. His first impression was one of admiration, but suspicion was quickly added. He was a good judge of men, and there was something secluded about the man which repelled him. Yet he was interested. The dark face had a striking racial peculiarity. The music died away, and old Berry lowered the fiddle from his chin and gave his attention to the Romany. "Yeth-'ir?" he said questioningly. For an instant Jethro was confused. When he entered the shop he had not made up his mind what he should do. It had been mere impulse and the fever of his brain. As old Berry spoke, however, his course opened out. "I heard. I am a stranger. My fiddle is not here. My fingers itch for the cat-gut. Eh?" The look in old Berry's face softened a little. His instinct had been against his visitor, and he had been prepared to send him to another shop-besides, not every day could he talk to the greatest man in the West. "If you can play, there it is," he said after a slight pause, and handed the fiddle over. It was true that Jethro Fawe loved the fiddle. He had played it in many lands. Twice, in order to get inside the palace of a monarch for a purpose--once in Berlin and once in London--he had played the second violin in a Tzigany orchestra. He turned the fiddle slowly round, looking at it with mechanical intentness. Through the passion of emotion the sure sense of the musician was burning. His fingers smoothed the oval brown breast of the instrument with affection. His eyes found joy in the colour of the wood, which had all the graded, merging tints of Autumn leaves. "It is old--and strange," he said, his eyes going from Berry to Ingolby and back again with a veiled look, as though he had drawn down blinds before his inmost thoughts. "It was not made by a professional." "It was made in the cotton-field by a slave," observed old Berry sharply, yet with a content which overrode antipathy to his visitor. Jethro put the fiddle to his chin, and drew the bow twice or thrice sweepingly across the strings. Such a sound had never come from Berry's violin before. It was the touch of a born musician who certainly had skill, but who had infinitely more of musical passion. "Made by a slave in the cotton-fields!" Jethro said with a veiled look, and as though he was thinking of something else: "'Dordi', I'd like to meet a slave like that!" At the Romany exclamation Ingolby swept the man with a searching look. He had heard the Romany wife of Ruliff Zaphe use the word many years ago when he and Charley Long visited the big white house on the hill. Was the man a Romany, and, if so, what was he doing here? Had it anything to do with Gabriel Druse and his daughter? But no--what was there strange in the man being a Romany and playing the fiddle? Here and there in the West during the last two years, he had seen what he took to be Romany faces. He looked to see the effect of the stranger's remark on old Berry. "I was a slave, and I was like that. My father made that fiddle in the cotton-fields of Georgia," the aged barber said. The son of a race which for centuries had never known country or flag or any habitat, whose freedom was the soul of its existence, if it had a soul; a freedom defying all the usual laws of social order--the son of that race looked at the negro barber with something akin to awe. Here was a man who had lived a life which was the staring antithesis of his own, under the whip as a boy, confined to compounds; whose vision was constricted to the limits of an estate; who was at the will of one man, to be sold and trafficked with like a barrel of herrings, to be worked at another's will--and at no price! This was beyond the understanding of Jethro Fawe. But awe has the outward look of respect, and old Berry who had his own form of vanity, saw that he had had a rare effect on the fellow, who evidently knew all about fiddles. Certainly that was a wonderful sound he had produced from his own cotton-field fiddle. In the pause Ingolby said to Jethro Fawe, "Play something, won't you? I've got business here with Mr. Berry, but five minutes of good music won't matter. We'd like to hear him play--wouldn't we, Berry?" The old man nodded assent. "There's plenty of music in the thing," he said, "and a lot could come out in five minutes, if the right man played it." His words were almost like a challenge, and it reached to Jethro's innermost nature. He would show this Gorgio robber what a Romany could do, and do as easily as the birds sing. The Gorgio was a money-master, they said, but he would find that a Romany was a master, too, in his own way. He thought of one of the first pieces he had ever heard, a rhapsody which had grown and grown, since it was first improvised by a Tzigany in Hungary. He had once played it to an English lady at the Amphitryon Club in London, and she had swooned in the arms of her husband's best friend. He had seen men and women avert their heads when he had played it, daring not to look into each other's eyes. He would play it now--a little of it. He would play it to her--to the girl who had set him free in the Sagalac woods, to the ravishing deserter from her people, to the only woman who had told him the truth in all his life, and who insulated his magnetism as a ground-wire insulates lightning. He would summon her here by his imagination, and tell her to note how his soul had caught the music of the spheres. He would surround himself with an atmosphere of his own. His rage, his love, and his malignant hate, his tenderness and his lust should fill the barber's shop with a flood which would drown the Gorgio raider. He laughed to himself, almost unconsciously. Then suddenly he leaned his cheek to the instrument and drew the bow across the strings with a savage softness. The old cottonfield fiddle cried out with a thrilling, exquisite pain, but muffled, as a hand at the lips turns agony into a tender moan. Some one--some spirit--in the fiddle was calling for its own. Five minutes later-a five minutes in which people gathered at the door of the shop, and heads were thrust inside in ravished wonder--the palpitating Romany lowered the fiddle from his chin, and stood for a minute looking into space, as though he saw a vision. He was roused by old Berry's voice. "Das a fiddle I wouldn't sell for a t'ousand dollars. If I could play like dat I wouldn't sell it for ten t'ousand. You kin play a fiddle to make it worth a lot--you." The Romany handed back the instrument. "It's got something inside it that makes it better than it is. It's not a good fiddle, but it has something--ah, man alive, it has something!" It was as though he was talking to himself. Berry made a quick, eager gesture. "It's got the cotton-fields and the slave days in it. It's got the whip and the stocks in it; it's got the cry of the old man that'd never see his children ag'in. That's what the fiddle's got in it." Suddenly, in an apparent outburst of anger, he swept down on the front door and drove the gathering crowd away. "Dis is a barber-shop," he said with an angry wave of his hand; "it ain't a circuse." One man protested. "I want a shave," he said. He tried to come inside, but was driven back. "I ain't got a razor that'd cut the bristle off your face," the old barber declared peremptorily; "and, if I had, it wouldn't be busy on you. I got two customers, and that's all I'm going to take befo' I have my dinner. So you git away. There ain't goin' to be no more music." The crowd drew off, for none of them cared to offend this autocrat of the shears and razor. Ingolby had listened to the music with a sense of being swayed by a wind which blew from all quarters of the compass at once. He loved music; it acted as a clearing-house to his mind; and he played the piano himself with the enthusiasm of a wilful amateur, who took liberties with every piece he essayed. There was something in this fellow's playing which the great masters, such as Paganini, must have had. As the music ceased, he did not speak, but remained leaning against the great red-plush barber's chair looking reflectively at the Romany. Berry, however, said to the still absorbed musician: "Where did you learn to play?" The Romany started, and a flush crossed his face. "Everywhere," he answered sullenly. "You've got the thing Sarasate had," Ingolby observed. "I only heard him play but once--in London years ago: but there's the same something in it. I bought a fiddle of Sarasate. I've got it now." "Here in Lebanon?" The eyes of the Romany were burning. An idea had just come into his brain. Was it through his fiddling that he was going to find a way to deal with this Gorgio, who had come between him and his own? "Only a week ago it came," Ingolby replied. "They actually charged me Customs duty on it. I'd seen it advertised, and I made an offer and got it at last." "You have it here--at your house here?" asked old Berry in surprise. "It's the only place I've got. Did you think I'd put it in a museum? I can't play it, but there it is for any one that can play. How would you like to try it?" he added to Jethro in a friendly tone. "I'd give a good deal to see it under your chin for an hour. Anyhow, I'd like to show it to you. Will you come?" It was like him to bring matters to a head so quickly. The Romany's eyes glistened. "To play the Sarasate alone to you?" he asked. "That's it-at nine o'clock to-night, if you can." "I will come--yes, I will come," Jethro answered, the lids drooping over his eyes in which were the shadows of the first murder of the created world. "Here is my address, then." Ingolby wrote something on his visiting- card. "My man'll let you in, if you show that. Well, good-bye." The Romany took the card, and turned to leave. He had been dismissed by the swaggering Gorgio, as though he was a servant, and he had not even been asked his name, of so little account was he! He could come and play on the Sarasate to the masterful Gorgio at the hour which the masterful Gorgio fixed--think of that! He could be--a servant to the pleasure of the man who was stealing from him the wife sealed to him in the Roumelian country. But perhaps it was all for the best--yes, he would make it all for the best! As he left the shop, however, and passed down the street his mind remained in the barber-shop. He saw in imagination the masterful Gorgio in the red-plush chair, and the negro barber bending over him, with black fingers holding the Gorgio's chin, and an open razor in the right hand lightly grasped. A flash of malicious desire came into his eyes as the vision shaped itself in his imagination, and he saw himself, instead of the negro barber, holding the Gorgio chin and looking down at the Gorgio throat with the razor, not lightly, but firmly grasped in his right hand. How was it that more throats were not cut in that way? How was it that while the scissors passed through the beard of a man's face the points did not suddenly slip up and stab the light from helpless eyes? How was it that men did not use their chances? He went lightly down the street, absorbed in a vision which was not like the reality; but it was evidence that his visit to Max Ingolby's house was not the visit of a virtuoso alone, but of an evil spirit. As the Romany disappeared, Max Ingolby had his hand on the old barber's shoulder. "I want one of the wigs you made for that theatrical performance of the Mounted Police, Berry," he said. "Never mind what it's for. I want it at once--one with the long hair of a French-Canadian coureur-de-bois. Have you got one?" "Suh, I'll send it round-no, I'll bring it round as I come from dinner. Want the clothes, too?" "No. I'm arranging for them with Osterhaut. I've sent word by Jowett." "You want me to know what it's for?" "You can know anything I know--almost, Berry. You're a friend of the right sort, and I can trust you." "Yeth-'ir, I bin some use to you, onct or twict, I guess." "You'll have a chance to be of use more than ever presently." "Suh, there's gain' to be a bust-up, but I know who's comin' out on the top. That Felix Marchand and his roughs can't down you. I hear and see a lot, and there's two or three things I was goin' to put befo' you; yeth-'ir." He unloaded his secret information to his friend, and was rewarded by Ingolby suddenly shaking his hand warmly. "That's the line," Ingolby said decisively. "When do you go over to Manitou again to cut old Hector Marchand's hair? Soon?" "To-day is his day--this evening," was the reply. "Good. You wanted to know what the wig and the habitant's clothes are for, Berry--well, for me to wear in Manitou. In disguise I'm going there tonight among them all, among the roughs and toughs. I want to find out things for myself. I can speak French as good as most of 'em, and I can chew tobacco and swear with the best." "You suhly are a wonder," said the old man admiringly. "How you fin' the time I got no idee." "Everything in its place, Berry, and everything in its time. I've got a lot to do to-day, but it's in hand, and I don't have to fuss. You'll not forget the wig--you'll bring it round yourself?" "Suh. No snoopin' into the parcel then. But if you go to Manitou to-night, how can you have that fiddler?" "He comes at nine o'clock. I'll go to Manitou later. Everything in its own time." He was about to leave the shop when some one came bustling in. Berry was between Ingolby and the door, and for an instant he did not see who it was. Presently he heard an unctuous voice: "Ah, good day, good day, Mr. Berry. I want to have my hair cut, if you please," it said. Ingolby smiled. The luck was with him to-day so far. The voice belonged to the Rev. Reuben Tripple, and he would be saved a journey to the manse. Accidental meetings were better than planned interviews. Old Berry's grizzled beard was bristling with repugnance, and he was about to refuse Mr. Tripple the hospitality of the shears when Ingolby said: "You won't mind my having a word with Mr. Tripple first, will you, Berry? May we use your back parlour?" A significant look from Ingolby's eyes gave Berry his cue. "Suh, Mr. Ingolby. I'm proud." He opened the door of another room. Mr. Tripple had not seen Ingolby when he entered, and he recognized him now with a little shock of surprise. There was no reason why he should not care to meet the Master Man, but he always had an uncanny feeling when his eye met that of Ingolby. His apprehension had no foundation in any knowledge, yet he had felt that Ingolby had no love for him, and this disturbed the egregious vanity of a narrow nature. His slouching, corpulent figure made an effort to resist the gesture with which Ingolby drew him to the door, but his will succumbed, and he shuffled importantly into the other room. Ingolby shut the door quietly behind him, and motioned the minister to a chair beside the table. Tripple sank down, mechanically smiling, placed his hat on the floor, and rested his hands on the table. Ingolby could not help but notice how coarse the hands were--with fingers suddenly ending as though they had been cut off, and puffy, yellowish skin that suggested fat foods, or worse. Ingolby came to grips at once. "You preached a sermon last night which no doubt was meant to do good, but will only do harm," he said abruptly. The flabby minister flushed, and then made an effort to hold his own. "I speak as I am moved," he said, puffing out his lips. "You spoke on this occasion before you were moved--just a little while before," answered Ingolby grimly. "The speaking was last night, the moving comes today." "I don't get your meaning," was the thick rejoinder. The man had a feeling that there was some real danger ahead. "You preached a sermon last night which might bring riot and bloodshed between these two towns, though you knew the mess that's brewing." "My conscience is my own. I am responsible to my Lord for words which I speak in His name, not to you." "Your conscience belongs to yourself, but your acts belong to all of us. If there is trouble at the Orange funeral to-morrow it will be your fault. The blame will lie at your door." "The sword of the Spirit--" "Oh, you want the sword, do you? You want the sword, eh?" Ingolby's jaw was set now like a millstone. "Well, you can have it, and have it now. If you had taken what I said in the right way, I would not have done what I'm going to do. I'm going to send you out of Lebanon. You're a bad and dangerous element here. You must go." "Who are you to tell me I must go?" The fat hands quivered on the table with anger and emotion, but also with fear of something. "You may be a rich man and own railways, but--" "But I am not rich and I don't own railways. Lately bad feeling has been growing on the Sagalac, and only a spark was needed to fire the ricks. You struck the spark in your sermon last night. I don't see the end of it all. One thing is sure--you're not going to take the funeral service to-morrow." The slack red lips of the man of God were gone dry with excitement, the loose body swayed with the struggle to fight it out. "I'll take no orders from you," the husky voice protested. "My conscience alone will guide me. I'll speak the truth as I feel it, and the people will stand by me." "In that case you WILL take orders from me. I'm going to save the town from what hurts it, if I can. I've got no legal rights over you, but I have moral rights, and I mean to enforce them. You gabble of conscience and truth, but isn't it a new passion with you--conscience and truth?" He leaned over the table and fastened the minister's eyes with his own. "Had you the same love of conscience and truth at Radley?" A whiteness passed over the flabby face, and the beady eyes took on a glazed look. Fight suddenly died out of them. "You went on a missionary tour on the Ottawa River. At Radley you toiled and rested from your toil--and feasted. The girl had no father or brother, but her uncle was a railway-man. He heard where you were, and he hired with my company to come out here as a foreman. He came to drop on you. The day after he came he had a bad accident. I went to see him. He told me all; his nerves were unstrung, you observe. He meant to ruin you, as you ruined the girl. He had proofs enough. The girl herself is in Winnipeg. Well, I know life, and I know man and man's follies and temptations. I thought it a pity that a career and a life like yours should be ruined--" A groan broke from the twitching lips before him, and a heavy sweat stood out on the round, rolling forehead. "If the man spoke, I knew it would be all up with you, for the world is very hard on men of God who fall. I've seen men ruined before this, because of an hour's passion and folly. I said to myself that you were only human, and that maybe you had paid heavy in remorse and fear. Then there was the honour of the town of Lebanon. I couldn't let the thing take its course. I got the doctor to tell the man that he must go for special treatment to a hospital in Montreal, and I--well, I bought him off on his promising to keep his mouth shut. He was a bit stiff in terms, because he said the girl needed the money. The child died, luckily for you. Anyhow I bought him off, and he went. That was a year ago. I've got all the proofs in my pocket, even to the three silly letters you wrote her when your senses were stronger than your judgment. I was going to see you about them to-day." He took from his pocket a small packet, and held them before the other's face. "Have a good look at your own handwriting, and see if you recognize it," Ingolby continued. But the glazed, shocked eyes did not see. Reuben Tripple had passed the several stages of horror during Ingolby's merciless arraignment, and he had nearly collapsed before he heard the end of the matter. When he knew that Ingolby had saved him, his strength gave way, and he trembled violently. Ingolby looked round and saw a jug of water. Pouring out a glassful, he thrust it into the fat, wrinkled fingers. "Drink and pull yourself together," he said sternly. The shaken figure straightened itself, and the water was gulped down. "I thank you," he said in a husky voice. "You see I treated you fairly, and that you've been a fool?" Ingolby asked with no lessened determination. "I have tried to atone, and--" "No, you haven't had the right spirit to atone. You were fat with vanity and self-conceit. I've watched you." "In future I will--" "Well, that rests with yourself, but your health is bad, and you're not going to take the funeral tomorrow. You've had a sudden breakdown, and you're going to get a call from some church in the East--as far East as Yokohama or Bagdad, I hope; and leave here in a few weeks. You understand? I've thought the thing out, and you've got to go. You'll do no good to yourself or others here. Take my advice, and wherever you go, walk six miles a day at least, work in a garden, eat half as much as you do, and be good to your wife. It's bad enough for any woman to be a parson's wife, but to be a parson's wife and your wife, too, wants a lot of fortitude." The heavy figure lurched to the upright, and steadied itself with a force which had not yet been apparent. "I'll do my best--so help me God!" he said and looked Ingolby squarely in the face for the first time. "All right, see you keep your word," Ingolby replied, and nodded good- bye. The other went to the door, and laid a hand on the knob. Suddenly Ingolby stopped him, and thrust a little bundle of bills into his hand. "There's a hundred dollars for your wife. It'll pay the expense of moving," he said. A look of wonder, revelation and gratitude crept into Tripple's face. "I will keep my word, so help me God!" he said again. "All right, good-bye," responded Ingolby abruptly, and turned away. A moment afterwards the door closed behind the Rev. Reuben Tripple and his influence in Lebanon. "I couldn't shake hands with him," said Ingolby to himself, "but I'm glad he didn't sniffle. There's some stuff in him--if it only has a chance." "I've done a good piece of business, Berry," he said cheerfully as he passed through the barber-shop. "Suh, if you say so," said the barber, and they left the shop together. CHAPTER IX MATTER AND MIND AND TWO MEN Promptly at nine o'clock Jethro Fawe knocked at Ingolby's door, and was admitted by the mulatto man-servant Jim Beadle, who was to Ingolby like his right hand. It was Jim who took command of his house, "bossed" his two female servants, arranged his railway tours, superintended his kitchen--with a view to his own individual tastes; valeted him, kept his cigars within a certain prescribed limit by a firm actuarial principle which transferred any surplus to his own use; gave him good advice, weighed up his friends and his enemies with shrewd sense; and protected him from bores and cranks, borrowers and "dead-beats." Jim was accustomed to take a good deal of responsibility, and had more than once sent people to the right-about who had designs on his master, even though they came accredited. On such occasions he did not lie to protect himself when called to account, but told the truth pertinaciously. He was obstinate in his vanity, and carried off his mistakes with aplomb. When asked by Ingolby what he called the Governor General when he took His Excellency over the new railway in Ingolby's private car, he said, "I called him what everybody called him. I called him 'Succelency.'" And "Succelency" for ever after the Governor General was called in the West. Jim's phonetic mouthful gave the West a roar of laughter and a new word to the language. On another occasion Jim gave the West a new phrase to its vocabulary which remains to this day. Having to take the wife of a high personage of the neighbouring Republic over the line in the private car, he had astounded his master by presenting a bill for finger-bowls before the journey began. Ingolby said to him, "Jim, what the devil is this--finger-bowls in my private car? We've never had finger-bowls before, and we've had everybody as was anybody to travel with us." Jim's reply was final. "Say," he replied, "we got to have 'em. Soon's I set my eyes on that lady I said: 'She's a finger-bowl lady.'" "'Finger-bowl lady' be hanged, Jim, we don't--" Ingolby protested, but Jim waved him down. "Say," he said decisively, "she'll ask for them finger-bowls--she'll ask for 'em, and what'd I do if we hadn't got 'em." She did ask for them; and henceforth the West said of any woman who put on airs and wanted what she wasn't born to: "She's a finger-bowl lady." It was Jim who opened the door to Jethro Fawe, and his first glance was one of prejudice. His quick perception saw that the Romany wore clothes not natural to him. He felt the artificial element, the quality of disguise. He was prepared to turn the visitor away, no matter what he wanted, but Ingolby's card handed to him by the Romany made him pause. He had never known his master give a card like that more than once or twice in the years they had been together. He fingered the card, scrutinized it carefully, turned it over, looked heavenward reflectively, as though the final permission for the visit remained with him, and finally admitted the visitor. "Mr. Ingolby ain't in," he said. "He went out a little while back. You got to wait," he added sulkily, as he showed the Romany into Ingolby's working-room. As Jim did so, he saw lying on a chair a suit of clothes on top of which were a wig and false beard and moustache. Instantly he got between the visitor and the make-up. The parcel was closed when he was in the room a half-hour before. Ingolby had opened it since, had been called out, and had forgotten to cover the things up or put them away. "Sit down," Jim said to the Romany, still covering the disguise. Then he raised them in his arms, and passed with them into another room, muttering angrily to himself. The Romany had seen, however. They were the first things on which his eyes had fallen when he entered the room. A wig, a false beard, and workman's clothes! What were they for? Were these disguises for the Master Gorgio? Was he to wear them? If so, he--Jethro Fawe--would watch and follow him wherever he went. Had these disguises to do with Fleda-- with his Romany lass? His pulses throbbed; he was in an overwrought mood. He was ready for any illusion, susceptible to any vagary of the imagination. He looked round the room. So this was the way the swaggering, masterful Gorgio lived? Here were pictures and engravings which did not seem to belong to a new town in a new land, where everything was useful or spectacular. Here was a sense of culture and refinement. Here were finished and unfinished water-colours done by Ingolby's own hand or bought by him from some hard- up artist earning his way mile by mile, as it were. Here were books, not many, but well-bound and important-looking, covering fields in which Jethro Fawe had never browsed, into which, indeed, he had never entered. If he had opened them he would have seen a profusion of marginal notes in pencil, and slips of paper stuck in the pages to mark important passages. He turned from them to the welcome array of weapons on the walls-rifles, shotguns, Indian bows, arrows and spears, daggers, and great sheath- knives such as are used from the Yukon to Bolivia, and a sabre with a faded ribbon of silk tied to the handle. This was all that Max Ingolby had inherited from his father--that artillery sabre which he had worn in the Crimea and in the Indian Mutiny. Jethro's eyes wandered eagerly over the weapons, and, in imagination, he had each one in his hand. From the pained, angry confusion he felt when he looked at the books had emerged a feeling of fanaticism, of feud and war, in which his spirit regained its own kind of self-respect. In looking at the weapons he was as good a man as any Gorgio. Brains and books were one thing, but the strong arm, the quick eye, and the deft lunge home with the sword or dagger were better; they were of a man's own skill, not the acquired skill of another's brains which books give. He straightened his shoulders till he looked like a modern actor playing the hero in a romantic drama, and with quick vain motions he stroked and twisted his brown moustache, and ran his fingers through his curling hair. In truth he was no coward; and his conceit would not lessen his courage when the test of it came. As his eyes brightened from gloom and sullenness to valiant enmity, they suddenly fell on a table in a corner where lay a black coffin-shaped thing of wood. In this case, he knew, was the Sarasate violin. Sarasate--once he had paid ten lira to hear Sarasate play the fiddle in Turin, and the memory of it was like the sun on the clouds to him now. In music such of him as was real found a home. It fed everything in him --his passion, his vanity; his vagabond taste, his emotions, his self- indulgence, his lust. It was the means whereby he raised himself to adventure and to pilgrimage, to love and license and loot and spying and secret service here and there in the east of Europe. It was the flagellation of these senses which excited him to do all that man may do and more. He was going to play to the masterful Gorgio, and he would play as he had never played before. He would pour the soul of his purpose into the music--to win back or steal back, the lass sealed to him by the Starzke River. "Kismet!" he said aloud, and he rose from the chair to go to the violin, but as he did so the door opened and Ingolby entered. "Oh, you're here, and longing to get at it," he said pleasantly. He had seen the look in the eyes of the Romany as he entered, and noted which way his footsteps were tending. "Well, we needn't lose any time, but will you have a drink and a smoke first?" he added. He threw his hat in a corner, and opened a spirittable where shone a half dozen cut-glass, tumblers and several well-filled bottles, while boxes of cigars and cigarettes flanked them. It was the height of modern luxury imported from New York, and Jethro eyed it with envious inward comment. The Gorgio had the world on his key-chain! Every door would open to him --that was written on his face--unless Fate stepped in and closed all doors! The door of Fleda's heart had already been opened, but he had not yet made his bed in it, and there was still time to help Fate, if her mystic finger beckoned. Jethro nodded in response to Ingolby's invitation to drink. "But I do not drink much when I play," he remarked. "There's enough liquor in the head when the fiddle's in the hand. 'Dadia', I do not need the spirit to make the pulses go!" "As little as you like then, if you'll only play as well as you did this afternoon," Ingolby said cheerily. "I will play better," was the reply. "On Sarasate's violin--well, of course." "Not only because it is Sarasate's violin, 'Kowadji'!" "Kowadji! Oh, come now, you may be a Gipsy, but that doesn't mean that you're an Egyptian or an Arab. Why Arabic--why 'kowadji'?" The other shrugged his shoulders. "Who can tell I speak many languages. I do not like the Mister. It is ugly in the ear. Monsieur, signor, effendi, kowadji, they have some respect in them." "You wanted to pay me respect, eh?" "You have Sarasate's violin!" "I have a lot of things I could do without." "Could you do without the Sarasate?" "Long enough to hear you play it, Mr.--what is your name, may I ask?" "My name is Jethro Fawe." "Well, Jethro Fawe, my Romany 'chal', you shall show me what a violin can do." "You know the Romany lingo?" Jethro asked, as Ingolby went over to the violin-case. "A little--just a little." "When did you learn it?" There was a sudden savage rage in Jethro's heart, for he imagined Fleda had taught Ingolby. "Many a year ago when I could learn anything and remember anything and forget anything." Ingolby sighed. "But that doesn't matter, for I know only a dozen words or so, and they won't carry me far." He turned the violin over in his hands. "This ought to do a bit more than the cotton-field fiddle," he said dryly. He snapped the strings, looking at it with the love of the natural connoisseur. "Finish your drink and your cigarette. I can wait," he added graciously. "If you like the cigarettes, you must take some away with you. You don't drink much, that's clear, therefore you must smoke. Every man has some vice or other, if it's only hanging on to virtue too tight." He laughed eagerly. Strange that he should have a feeling of greater companionship for a vagabond like this than for most people he met. Was it some temperamental thing in him? "Dago," as he called the Romany inwardly, there was still a bond between them. They understood the glory of a little instrument like this, and could forget the world in the light on a great picture. There was something in the air they breathed which gave them easier understanding of each other and of the world. Suddenly with a toss Jethro drained the glass of spirit, though he had not meant to do so. He puffed the cigarette an instant longer, then threw it on the floor, and was about to put his foot on it, when Ingolby stopped him. "I'm a slave," he said. "I've got a master. It's Jim. Jim's a hard master, too. He'd give me fits if we ground our cigarette ashes into the carpet." He threw the refuse into a flower-pot. "That squares Jim. Now let's turn the world inside out," he proceeded. He handed the fiddle over. "Here's the little thing that'll let you do the trick. Isn't it a beauty, Jethro Fawe?" The Romany took it, his eyes glistening with mingled feelings. Hatred was in his soul, and it showed in the sidelong glance as Ingolby turned to place a chair where he could hear and see comfortably; yet he had the musician's love of the perfect instrument, and the woods and the streams and the sounds of night and the whisperings of trees and the ghosts that walked in lonely places and called across the glens--all were pouring into his brain memories which made his pulses move far quicker than the liquor he had drunk could do. "What do you wish?" he asked as he tuned the fiddle. Ingolby laughed good-humouredly. "Something Eastern; something you'd play for yourself if you were out by the Caspian Sea. Something that has life in it." Jethro continued to tune the fiddle carefully and abstractedly. His eyes were half-closed, giving them a sulky look, and his head was averted. He made no reply to Ingolby, but his head swayed from side to side in that sensuous state produced by self-hypnotism, so common among the half- Eastern races. By an effort of the will they send through the nerves a flood of feeling which is half-anaesthetic, half-intoxicant. Carried into its fullest expression it drives a man amok or makes of him a howling dervish, a fanatic, or a Shakir. In lesser intensity it produces the musician of the purely sensuous order, or the dancer that performs prodigies of abandoned grace. Suddenly the sensuous exaltation had come upon Jethro Fawe. It was as though he had discharged into his system from some cells of his brain a flood which coursed like a stream of soft fire. In the pleasurable pain of such a mood he drew his bow across the strings with a sweeping stroke, and then, for an instant, he ran hither and thither on the strings testing the quality and finding the range and capacity of the instrument. It was a scamper of hieroglyphics which could only mean anything to a musician. "Well, what do you think of him?" Ingolby asked as the Romany lowered the bow. "Paganini--Joachim--Sarasate--any one, it is good enough," was the half-abstracted reply. "It is good enough for you--almost, eh?" Ingolby meant his question as a compliment, but an evil look shot into the Romany's face, and the bow twitched in his hand. He was not Paganini or Sarasate, but that was no reason why he should be insulted. Ingolby's quick perception saw, however, what his words had done, and he hastened to add: "I believe you can get more out of that fiddle than Sarasate ever could, in your own sort of music anyhow. I've never heard any one play half so well the kind of piece you played this afternoon. I'm glad I didn't make a fool of myself buying the fiddle. I didn't, did I? I gave five thousand dollars for it." "It's worth anything to the man that loves it," was the Romany's response. He was mollified by the praise he had received. He raised the fiddle slowly to his chin, his eyes wandering round the room, then projecting themselves into space, from which they only returned to fix themselves on Ingolby with the veiled look which sees but does not see--such a look as an oracle, or a death-god, or a soulless monster of some between-world, half-Pagan god would wear. Just such a look as Watts's "Minotaur" wears in the Tate Gallery in London. In an instant he was away in a world which was as far off from this world as Jupiter is from Mars. It was the world of his soul's origin--a place of beautiful and yet of noisome creations also; of white mountains and green hills, and yet of tarns in which crawled evil things; a place of vagrant, hurricanes and tidal-waves and cloud-bursts, of forests alive with quarrelling! and affrighted beasts. It was a place where birds sang divinely, yet where obscene fowls of prey hovered in the blue or waited by the dying denizens of the desert or the plain; where dark-eyed women heard, with sidelong triumph, the whispers of passion; where sweet- faced children fled in fear from terrors undefined; where harpies and witch-women and evil souls waited in ambush; or scurried through the coverts where men brought things to die; or where they fled for futile refuge from armed foes. It was a world of unbridled will, this, where the soul of Jethro Fawe had its origin; and to it his senses fled involuntarily when he put Sarasate's fiddle to his chin this Autumn evening. From that well of the First Things--the first things of his own life, the fount from which his forebears drew, backwards through the centuries, Jethro Fawe quickly drank his fill; and then into the violin he poured his own story--no improvisation, but musical legends and classic fantasies and folk-breathings and histories of anguished or joyous haters or lovers of life; treated by the impressionist who made that which had been in other scenes to other men the thing of the present and for the men who are. That which had happened by the Starzke River was now of the Sagalac River. The passions and wild love and irresponsible deeds of the life he had lived in years gone by were here. It was impossible for Ingolby to resist the spell of the music. Such abandonment he had never seen in any musician, such riot of musical meaning he had never heard. He was conscious of the savagery and the bestial soul of vengeance which spoke through the music, and drowned the joy and radiance and almost ghostly and grotesque frivolity of the earlier passages; but it had no personal meaning to him, though at times it seemed when the Romany came near and bent over him with the ecstatic attack of the music, as though there was a look in the black eyes like that of a man who kills. It had, of course, nothing to do with him; it was the abandonment of a highly emotional nature, he thought. It was only after he had been playing, practically without ceasing, for three-quarters of an hour, that there came to Ingolby the true interpretation of the Romany mutterings through the man's white, wolf- like teeth. He did not shrink, however, but kept his head and watched. Once, as the musician flung his body round in a sweep of passion, Ingolby saw the black eyes flash to the weapons on the wall with a malign look which did not belong to the music alone, and he took a swift estimate of the situation. Why the man should have any intentions against him, he could not guess, except that he might be one of the madmen who have a vendetta against the capitalist. Or was he a tool of Felix Marchand? It did not seem possible, and yet if the man was penniless and an anarchist maybe, there was the possibility. Or--the blood rushed to his face--or it might be that the Gipsy's presence here, this display of devilish antipathy, as though it were all part of the music, was due, somehow, to Fleda Druse. The music swelled to a swirling storm, crashed and flooded the feelings with a sense of shipwreck and chaos, through which a voice seemed to cry- the quiver and delicate shrillness of one isolated string--and then fell a sudden silence, as though the end of all things had come; and on the silence the trembling and attenuated note which had quivered on the lonely string, rising, rising, piercing the infinite distance and sinking into silence again. In the pause which followed the Romany stood panting, his eyes fixed on Ingolby with an evil exaltation which made him seem taller and bigger than he was, but gave him, too, a look of debauchery like that on the face of a satyr. Generations of unbridled emotion, of license of the fields and the covert showed in his unguarded features. "What did the single cry--the motif--express?" Ingolby asked coolly. "I know there was catastrophe, the tumblings of avalanches, but the voice that cried-the soul of a lover, was it?" The Romany's lips showed an ugly grimace. "It was the soul of one that betrayed a lover, going to eternal tortures." Ingolby laughed carelessly. "It was a fine bit of work. Sarasate would have been proud of his fiddle if he could have heard. Anyhow he couldn't have played that. Is it Gipsy music?" "It is the music of a 'Gipsy,' as you call it." "Well, it's worth a year's work to hear," Ingolby replied admiringly, yet acutely conscious of danger. "Are you a musician by trade?" he asked. "I have no trade." The glowing eyes kept scanning the wall where the weapons hung, and as though without purpose other than to get a pipe from the rack on the wall, Ingolby moved to where he could be prepared for any rush. It seemed absurd that there should be such a possibility; but the world was full of strange things. "What brought you to the West?" he asked as he filled a pipe, his back almost against the wall. "I came to get what belonged to me." Ingolby laughed ironically. "Most of us are here for that purpose. We think the world owes us such a lot." "I know what is my own." Ingolby lit his pipe, his eyes reflectively scanning the other. "Have you got it again out here--your own?" "Not yet, but I will." Ingolby took out his watch, and looked at it. "I haven't found it easy getting all that belongs to me." "You have found it easier getting what belongs to some one else," was the snarling response. Ingolby's jaw hardened. What did the fellow mean? Did he refer to money, or--was it Fleda Druse? "See here," he said, "there's no need to say things like that. I never took anything that didn't belong to me, that I didn't win, or earn or pay for--market price or 'founder's shares'"--he smiled grimly. "You've given me the best treat I've had in many a day. I'd walk fifty miles to hear you play my Sarasate--or even old Berry's cotton-field fiddle. I'm as grateful as I can be, and I'd like to pay you for it; but as you're not a professional, and it's one gentleman to another as it were, I can only thank you--or maybe help you to get what's your own, if you're really trying to get it out here. Meanwhile, have a cigar and a drink." He was still between the Romany and the wall, and by a movement forward sought to turn Jethro to the spirit-table. Probably this manoeuvring was all nonsense, that he was wholly misreading the man; but he had always trusted his instincts, and he would not let his reason rule him entirely in such a situation. He could also ring the bell for Jim, or call to him, for while he was in the house Jim was sure to be near by; but he felt he must deal with the business alone. The Romany did not move towards the spirit-table, and Ingolby became increasingly vigilant. "No, I can't pay you anything, that's clear," he said; "but to get your own--I've got some influence out here--what can I do? A stranger is up against all kinds of things if he isn't a native, and you're not. Your home and country's a good way from here, eh?" Suddenly the Romany faced him. "Yes. I come from places far from here. Where is the Romany's home? It is everywhere in the world, but it is everywhere inside his tent. Because his country is everywhere and nowhere, his home is more to him than it is to any other. He is alone with his wife, and with his own people. Yes, and by long and by last, he will make the man pay who spoils his home. It is all he has. Good or bad, it is all he has. It is his own." Ingolby had a strange, disturbing premonition that he was about to hear what would startle him, but he persisted. "You said you had come here to get your own--is your home here?" For a moment the Romany did not answer. He had worked himself into a great passion. He had hypnotized himself, he had acted for a while as though he was one of life's realities; but suddenly there passed through his veins the chilling sense of the unreal, that he was only acting a part, as he had ever done in his life, and that the man before him could, with a wave of the hand, raise the curtain on all his disguises and pretences. It was only for an instant, however, for there swept through him the feeling that Fleda had roused in him--the first real passion, the first true love--if what such as he felt can be love--that he had ever known; and he saw her again as she was in the but in the wood defying him, ready to defend herself against him. All his erotic anger and melodramatic fervour were alive in him once more. He was again a man with a wrong, a lover dispossessed. On the instant his veins filled with passionate blood. The Roscian strain in him had its own tragic force and reality. "My home is where my own is, and you, have taken my own from me, as I said," he burst out. "There was all the world for you, but I had only my music and my wife, and you have taken my wife from me. 'Mi Duvel', you have taken, but you shall give back again, or there will be only one of us in the world! The music I have played for you--that has told you all: the thing that was music from the beginning of Time, the will of the First of All. Fleda Druse, she was mine, she is my wife, and you, the Gorgio, come between, and she will not return to me." A sudden savage desire came to Ingolby to strike the man in the face-- this Gipsy vagabond the husband of Fleda Druse! It was too monstrous. It was an evil lie, and yet she had said she was a Romany, and had said it with apparent shame or anxiety. She had given him no promise, had pledged no faith, had admitted no love, and yet already in his heart of hearts he thought upon her as his own. Ever since the day he had held her in his arms at the Carillon Rapids her voice had sounded in his ears, and a warmth was in his heart which had never been there in all his days. This waif of barbarism even to talk of Fleda Druse as though he was of the same sphere as herself invited punishment-but to claim her as his wife! It was shameless. An ugly mood came on him, the force that had made him what he was filled all his senses. He straightened himself; contempt of the Ishmael showed at his lips. "I think you lie, Jethro Fawe," he said quietly, and his eyes were hard and piercing. "Gabriel Druse's daughter is not--never was--any wife of yours. She never called you husband. She does not belong to the refuse of the world." The Romany made a sudden rush towards the wall where the weapons hung, but two arms of iron were flung out and caught him, and he was hurled across the room. He crashed against a table, swayed, missed a chair where rested the Sarasate violin, then fell to the floor; but he staggered to his feet again, all his senses in chaos. "You almost fell on the fiddle. If you had hurt it I'd have hurt you, Mr. Fawe," Ingolby said with a grim smile. "That fiddle's got too much in it to waste it." "Mi Duvel! Mi Duvel!" gasped the Romany in his fury. "You can say that as much as you like, but if you play any more of your monkey tricks here, my Paganini, I will wring your neck," Ingolby returned, his six feet of solid flesh making a movement of menace. "And look," he added, "since you are here, and I said what I meant, that I'd help you to get your own, I'll keep my word. But don't talk in damned riddles. Talk white men's language. You said that Gabriel Druse's daughter was your wife. Explain what you meant, and no nonsense." The Romany made a gesture of acquiescence. "She was made mine according to Romany law by the River Starzke seventeen years ago. I was the son of Lemuel Fawe, rightful King of all the Romanys. Gabriel Druse seized the headship, and my father gave him three thousand pounds that we should marry, she and I, and so bring the headship to the Fawes again when Gabriel Druse should die; and so it was done by the River Starzke in the Roumelian country." Ingolby winced, for the man's words rang true. A cloud came over his face, but he said nothing. Jethro saw the momentary advantage. "You did not know?" he asked. "She did not tell you she was made my wife those years ago? She did not tell you she was the daughter of the Romany King? So it is, you see, she is afraid to tell the truth." Ingolby's knitted bulk heaved with desire to injure. "Your wife--you melodious sinner! Do you think such tomfoolery has any effect in this civilized country? She is about as much your wife as I am your brother. Don't talk your heathenish rot here. I said I'd help you to get your own, because you played the fiddle as few men can play it, and I owe you a lot for that hour's music; but there's nothing belonging to Gabriel Druse that belongs to you, and his daughter least of all. Look out-- don't sit on the fiddle, damn you!" The Romany had made a motion as if to sit down on the chair where the fiddle was, but stopped short at Ingolby's warning. For an instant Jethro had an inclination to seize the fiddle and break it across his knees. It would be an exquisite thing to destroy five thousand dollars' worth of this man's property at a single wrench and blow. But the spirit of the musician asserted itself before the vengeful lover could carry out his purpose; as Ingolby felt sure it would. Ingolby had purposely given the warning about the fiddle, in the belief that it might break the unwelcome intensity of the scene. He detested melodrama, and the scene came precious near to it. Men had been killed before his eyes more than once, but there had been no rodomontade even when there had been a woman in the case. This Romany lover, however, seemed anxious to make a Sicilian drama out of his preposterous claim, and it sickened him. Who was the fellow that he should appear in the guise of a rival to himself! It was humiliating and offensive. Ingolby had his own kind of pride and vanity, and they were both hurt now. He would have been less irritable if this rival had been as good a man as himself or better. He was so much a gamester that he would have said, "Let the best man win," and have taken his chances. His involuntary strategy triumphed for the moment. The Romany looked at the fiddle for an instant with murderous eyes, but the cool, quiet voice of Ingolby again speaking sprayed his hot virulence. "You can make a good musician quite often, but a good fiddle is a prize- packet from the skies," Ingolby said. "When you get a good musician and a good fiddle together it's a day for a salute of a hundred guns." Half-dazed with unregulated emotion, Jethro acted with indecision for a moment, and the fiddle was safe. But he had suffered the indignity of being flung like a bag of bones across the room, and the microbe of insane revenge was in him. It was not to be killed by the cold humour of the man who had worsted him. He returned to the attack. "She is mine, and her father knows it is so. I have waited all these years, and the hour has come. I will--" Ingolby's eyes became hard and merciless again. "Don't talk your Gipsy rhetoric. I've had enough. No hour has come that makes a woman do what she doesn't want to do in a free country. The lady is free to do what she pleases here within British law, and British law takes no heed of Romany law or any other law. You'll do well to go back to your Roumelian country or whatever it is. The lady will marry whom she likes." "She will never marry you," the Romany said huskily and menacingly. "I have never asked her, but if I do, and she said yes, no one could prevent it." "I would prevent it." "How?" "She is a Romany: she belongs to the Romany people; I will find a way." Ingolby had a flash of intuition. "You know well that if Gabriel Druse passed the word, your life wouldn't be worth a day's purchase. The Camorra would not be more certain or more deadly. If you do anything to hurt the daughter of Gabriel Druse, you will pay the full price, and you know it. The Romanys don't love you better than their rightful chief." "I am their rightful chief." "Maybe, but if they don't say so, too, you might as well be their rightful slave. You are a genius in your way. Take my advice and return to the trail of the Gipsy. Or, there's many an orchestra would give you a good salary as leader. You've got no standing in this country. You can't do anything to hurt me except try to kill me, and I'll take my chance of that. You'd better have a drink now and go quietly home to bed. Try and understand that this is a British town, and we don't settle our affairs by jumping from a violin rhapsody to a knife or a gun." He jerked his head backwards towards the wall. "Those things are for ornament, not for use. Come, Fawe, have a drink and go home like a good citizen for one night only." The Romany hesitated, then shook his head and muttered chaotically. "Very well," was the decisive reply. Ingolby pressed a bell, and, in an instant, Jim Beadle was in the room. He had evidently been at the keyhole. "Jim," he said, "show the gentleman out." But suddenly he caught up a box of cigars from the table and thrust it into the Romany's hands. "They're the best to be got this side of Havana," he said cheerily. "They'll help you put more fancy still into your playing. Good night. You never played better than you've done during the last hour, I'll stake my life on that. Good night. Show Mr. Fawe out, Jim." The Romany had not time to thrust back the cigars upon his host, and dazed by the strategy of the thing, by the superior force and mind of the man who a moment ago he would have killed, he took the box and turned towards the door, taking his hat dazedly from Jim. At the door, however, catching sight of the sly grin on the mulatto servant's face, his rage and understanding returned to him, and he faced the masterful Gorgio once again. "By God, I'll have none of it!" he exclaimed roughly and threw the box of cigars on the floor of the room. Ingolby was not perturbed. "Don't forget there's an east-bound train every day," he said menacingly, and turned his back as the door closed. In another minute Jim entered the room. "Get the clothes and the wig and things, Jim. I must be off," he said. "The toughs don't get going till about this time over at Manitou," responded Jim. Then he told his master about the clothes having been exposed in the room when the Romany arrived. "But I don't think he seen them," Jim added with approval of his own conduct. "I got 'em out quick as lightning. I covered 'em like a blanket." "All right, Jim; it doesn't matter. That fellow's got other things to think of than that." He was wrong, however. The Romany was waiting outside in the darkness not far away--watching and waiting. CHAPTER X FOR LUCK Felix Marchand was in the highest spirits. His clean-shaven face was wrinkled with smiles and sneers. His black hair was flung in waves of triumph over his heavily-lined forehead; one hand was on his hip with brave satisfaction, the other with lighted cigarette was tossed upwards in exultation. "I've got him. I've got him--like that!" he said transferring the cigarette to his mouth, and clenching his right hand as though it could not be loosed by an earthquake. "For sure, it's a thing finished as the solder of a pannikin--like that." He caught up a tin quart-pot from the bar-counter and showed the soldered bottom of it. He was alone in the bar of Barbazon's Hotel except for one person--the youngest of the officials who had been retired from the offices of the railways when Ingolby had merged them. This was a man who had got his position originally by nepotism, and represented the worst elements of a national life where the spoils system is rooted in the popular mind. He had, however, a little residue of that discipline which, working in a great industrial organization, begets qualms as to extreme courses. He looked reflectively at the leaden pot and said in reply: "I'd never believe in anything where that Ingolby is concerned till I had it in the palm of my hand. He's as deep as a well, and when he's quietest it's good to look out. He takes a lot of skinning, that badger." "He's skinned this time all right," was Marchand's reply. "To-morrow'll be the biggest day Manitou's had since the Indian lifted his wigwam and the white man put down his store. Listen--hear them! They're coming!" He raised a hand for silence, and a rumbling, ragged roar of voices could be heard without. "The crowd have gone the rounds," he continued. "They started at Barbazon's and they're winding up at Barbazon's. They're drunk enough to-night to want to do anything, and to-morrow when they've got sore heads they'll do anything. They'll make that funeral look like a squeezed orange; they'll show Lebanon and Master Ingolby that we're to be bosses of our own show. The strike'll be on after the funeral, and after the strike's begun there'll be--eh, bien sur!" He paused sharply, as though he had gone too far. "There'll be what?" whispered the other; but Marchand made no reply, save to make a warning gesture, for Barbazon, the landlord, had entered behind the bar. "They're coming back, Barbazon," Marchand said to the landlord, jerking his head towards the front door. The noise of the crowd was increasing, the raucous shouts were so loud that the three had to raise their voices. "You'll do a land-office business to-night," he declared. Barbazon had an evil face. There were rumours that he had been in gaol in Quebec for robbery, and that after he had served his time he had dug up the money he had stolen and come West. He had started the first saloon at Manitou, and had grown with the place in more senses than one. He was heavy and thick-set, with huge shoulders, big hands, and beady eyes that looked out of a stolid face where long hours, greed and vices other than drink had left their mark. He never drank spirits, and was therefore ready to take advantage of those who did drink. More than one horse and canoe and cow and ox, and acre of land, in the days when land was cheap, had come to him across the bar-counter. He could be bought, could Barbazon, and he sold more than wine and spirits. He had a wife who had left him twice because of his misdemeanours, but had returned and straightened out his house and affairs once again; and even when she went off with Lick Baldwin, a cattle-dealer, she was welcomed back without reproaches by Barbazon, chiefly because he had no morals, and her abilities were of more value to him than her virtue. On the whole, Gros Barbazon was a bad lot. At Marchand's words Barbazon shrugged his shoulders. "The more spent to-night, the less to spend to-morrow," he growled. "But there's going to be spending for a long time," Marchand answered. "There's going to be a riot to-morrow, and there's going to be a strike the next day, and after that there's going to be something else." "What else?" Barbazon asked, his beady eyes fastened on Marchand's face. "Something worth while-better than all the rest." Barbazon's low forehead seemed to disappear almost, as he drew the grizzled shock of hair down, by wrinkling his forehead with a heavy frown. "It's no damn good, m'sieu'," he growled. "Am I a fool? They'll spend money to-night, and tomorrow, and the next day, and when the row is on; and the more they spend then, the less they'll have to spend by-and-by. It's no good. The steady trade for me--all the time. That is my idee. And the something else--what? You think there's something else that'll be good for me? Nom de Dieu, there's nothing you're doing, or mean to do, but'll hurt me and everybody." "That's your view, is it, Barbazon?" exclaimed Marchand loudly, for the crowd was now almost at the door. "You're a nice Frenchman and patriot. That crowd'll be glad to hear you think they're fools. Suppose they took it into their heads to wreck the place?" Barbazon's muddy face got paler, but his eyes sharpened, and he leaned over the bar-counter, and said with a snarl: "Go to hell, and say what you like; and then I'll have something to say about something else, m'sieu'." Marchand was about to reply angrily, but he instantly changed his mind, and before Barbazon could stop him, he sprang over the counter and disappeared into the office behind the bar. "I won't steal anything, Barbazon," he said over his shoulder as he closed the door behind him. "I'll see to that," Barbazon muttered stolidly, but with malicious eyes. The front door was flung open now, and the crowd poured into the room, boisterous, reckless, though some were only sullen, watchful and angry. These last were mostly men above middle age, and of a fanatical and racially bitter type. They were not many, but in one sense they were the backbone and force of the crowd, probably the less intelligent but the more tenacious and consistent. They were black spots of gathering storm in an electric atmosphere. All converged upon the bar. Two assistants rushed the drinks along the counter with flourishes, while Barbazon took in the cash and sharply checked the rougher element, who were inclined to treat the bar as a place for looting. Most of them, however, had a wholesome fear of Barbazon, and also most of them wished to stand well with him--credit was a good thing, even in a saloon. For a little time the room was packed, then some of the more restless spirits, their thirst assuaged, sallied forth to taste the lager and old rye elsewhere, and "raise Cain" in the streets. When they went, it became possible to move about more freely in the big bar-room, at the end of which was a billiard-table. It was notable, however, that the more sullen elements stayed. Some of them were strangers to each other. Manitou was a distributing point for all radiations of the compass, and men were thrown together in its streets who only saw one another once or twice a year-when they went to the woods in the Fall or worked the rivers in the Summer. Some were Mennonites, Doukhobors and Finlanders, some Swedes, Norwegians and Icelanders. Others again were birds of passage who would probably never see Manitou in the future, but they were mostly French, and mostly Catholic, and enemies of the Orange Lodges wherever they were, east or west or north or south. They all had a common ground of unity--half-savage coureurs-de-bois, river-drivers, railway-men, factory hands, cattlemen, farmers, labourers; they had a gift for prejudice, and taking sides on something or other was as the breath of the nostrils to them. The greater number of the crowd were, however, excitable, good-natured men, who were by instinct friendly, save when their prejudices were excited; and their oaths and exclamations were marvels of droll ingenuity. Most of them were still too good-humoured with drink to be dangerous, but all hoped for trouble at the Orange funeral on principle, and the anticipated strike had elements of "thrill." They were of a class, however, who would swing from what was good-humour to deadly anger in a minute, and turn a wind of mere prejudice into a hurricane of life and death with the tick of a clock. They would all probably go to the Orange funeral to-morrow in a savage spirit. Some of them were loud in denunciation of Ingolby and "the Lebanon gang"; they joked coarsely over the dead Orangeman, but their cheerful violence had not yet the appearance of reality. One man suddenly changed all that. He was a river-driver of stalwart proportions, with a red handkerchief round his neck, and with loose corded trousers tucked into his boots. He had a face of natural ugliness made almost repulsive by marks of smallpox. Red, flabby lips and an overhanging brow made him a figure which men would avoid on a dark night. "Let's go over to Lebanon to-night and have it out," he said in French. "That Ingolby--let's go break his windows and give him a dip in the river. He's the curse of this city. Holy, once Manitou was a place to live in, now it's a place to die in! The factories, the mills, they're full of Protes'ants and atheists and shysters; the railway office is gone to Lebanon. Ingolby took it there. Manitou was the best town in the West; it's no good now. Who's the cause? Ingolby's the cause. Name of God, if he was here I'd get him by the throat as quick as winkin'." He opened and shut his fingers with spasmodic malice, and glared round the room. "He's going to lock us out if we strike," he added. "He's going to take the bread out of our mouths; he's going to put his heel on Manitou, and grind her down till he makes her knuckle to Lebanon--to a lot of infidels, Protes'ants, and thieves. Who's going to stand it? I say-bagosh, I say, who's going to stand it!" "He's a friend of the Monseigneur," ventured a factory-hand, who had a wife and children to support, and however partisan, was little ready for that which would stop his supplies. "Sacre bapteme! That's part of his game," roared the big river-driver in reply. "I'll take the word of Felix Marchand about that. Look at him! That Felix Marchand doesn't try to take the bread out of people's mouths. He gives money here, he gives it there. He wants the old town to stay as it is and not be swallowed up." "Three cheers for Felix Marchand !" cried some one in the throng. All cheered loudly save one old man with grizzled hair and beard, who leaned against the wall half-way down the room smoking a corncob pipe. He was a French Canadian in dress and appearance, and he spat on the floor like a navvy--he had filled his pipe with the strongest tobacco that one man ever offered to another. As the crowd cheered for Felix Marchand, he made his way up towards the bar slowly. He must have been tall when he was young; now he was stooped, yet there was still something very sinewy about him. "Who's for Lebanon?" cried the big river-driver with an oath. "Who's for giving Lebanon hell, and ducking Ingolby in the river?" "I am--I am--I am--all of us!" shouted the crowd. "It's no good waiting for to-morrow. Let's get the Lebs by the scruff to-night. Let's break Ingolby's windows and soak him in the Sagalac. Allons--allons gai!" Uproar and broken sentences, threats, oaths, and objurgations sounded through the room. There was a sudden movement towards the door, but the exit of the crowd was stopped by a slow but clear voice speaking in French. "Wait a minute, my friends!" it cried. "Wait a minute. Let's ask a few questions first." "Who's he?" asked a dozen voices. "What's he going to say?" The mob moved again towards the bar. The big river-driver turned on the grizzled old man beside the bar- counter with bent shoulders and lazy, drawling speech. "What've you got to say about it, son?" he asked threateningly. "Well, to ask a few questions first--that's all," the old man replied. "You don't belong here, old cock," the other said roughly. "A good many of us don't belong here," the old man replied quietly. "It always is so. This isn't the first time I've been to Manitou. You're a river-driver, and you don't live here either," he continued. "What've you got to say about it? I've been coming and going here for ten years. I belong--bagosh, what do you want to ask? Hurry up. We've got work to do. We're going to raise hell in Lebanon." "And give hell to Ingolby," shouted some one in the crowd. "Suppose Ingolby isn't there?" questioned the old man. "Oh, that's one of your questions, is it?" sneered the big river-driver. "Well, if you knew him as we do, you'd know that it's at night-time he sits studyin' how he'll cut Lebanon's throat. He's home, all right. He's in Lebanon anyhow, and we'll find him." "Well, but wait a minute--be quiet a bit," said the old man, his eyes blinking slowly at the big riverdriver. "I've been 'round a good deal, and I've had some experience in the world. Did you ever give that Ingolby a chance to tell you what his plans were? Did you ever get close to him and try to figure what he was driving at? There's no chance of getting at the truth if you don't let a man state his case--but no. If he can't make you see his case then is the time to jib, not before." "Oh, get out!" cried a rowdy English road-maker in the crowd. "We know all right what Ingolby's after." "Eh, well, what is he after?" asked the old man looking the other in the eye. "What's he after? Oof-oof-oof, that's what he's after. He's for his own pocket, he's for being boss of all the woolly West. He's after keeping us poor and making himself rich. He's after getting the cinch on two towns and three railways, and doing what he likes with it all; and we're after not having him do it, you bet. That's how it is, old hoss." The other stroked his beard with hands which, somehow, gave little indication of age, and then, with a sudden jerk forward of his head, he said: "Oh, it's like that, eh? Is that what M'sieu' Marchand told you? That's what he said, is it?" The big river-driver, eager to maintain his supreme place as leader, lunged forward a step, and growled a challenge. "Who said it? What does it matter if M'sieu' Marchand said it--it's true. If I said it, it's true. All of us in this room say it, and it's true. Young Marchand says what Manitou says." The old man's eyes grew brighter--they were exceedingly sharp for one so old, and he said quite gently now: "M. Marchand said it first, and you all say it afterwards--ah, bah! But listen to me; I know Max Ingolby that you think is such a villain; I know him well. I knew him when he was a little boy and--" "You was his nurse, I suppose!" cried the Englishman's voice amid a roar of laughter. "Taught him his A-B-C-was his dear, kind teacher, eh?" hilariously cried another. The old man appeared not to hear. "I have known him all the years since. He has only been in the West a few years, but he has lived in the world exactly thirty-three years. He never willingly did anybody harm--never. Since he came West, since he came to the Sagalac, he's brought work to Lebanon and to Manitou. There are hundreds more workmen in both the towns than there were when he came. It was he made others come with much money and build the factories and the mills. Work means money, money means bread, bread means life--so." The big river-driver, seeing the effect of the old man's words upon the crowd, turned to them with an angry gesture and a sneer. "I s'pose Ingolby has paid this old skeesicks for talking this swash. We know all right what Ingolby is, and what he's done. He's made war between the two towns--there's hell to pay now on both sides of the Sagalac. He took away the railway offices from here, and threw men out of work. He's done harm to Manitou--he's against Manitou every time." Murmurs of approval ran through the crowd, though some were silent, looking curiously at the forceful and confident old man. Even his bent shoulders seemed to suggest driving power rather than the weight of years. He suddenly stretched out a hand in command as it were. "Comrades, comrades," he said, "every man makes mistakes. Even if it was a mistake for Ingolby to take away the offices from Manitou, he's done a big thing for both cities by combining the three railways." "Monopoly," growled a voice from the crowd. "Not monopoly," the old man replied with a ring to his voice, which made it younger, fresher. "Not monopoly, but better management of the railways, with more wages, more money to spend on things to eat and drink and wear, more dollars in the pocket of everybody that works in Manitou and Lebanon. Ingolby works, he doesn't loaf." "Oh, gosh all hell, he's a dynamo," shouted a voice from the crowd. "He's a dynamo running the whole show-eh!" The old man seemed to grow shorter, but as he thrust his shoulders forward, it was like a machine gathering energy and power. "I'll tell you, friends, what Ingolby is trying to do," he said in a low voice vibrating with that force which belongs neither to age nor youth, but is the permanent activity uniting all ages of a man. "Of course, Ingolby is ambitious and he wants power. He tries to do the big things in the world because there is the big thing to do--for sure. Without such men the big things are never done, and other men have less work to do, and less money and poorer homes. They discover and construct and design and invent and organize and give opportunities. I am a working man, but I know what Ingolby thinks. I know what men think who try to do the big things. I have tried to do them." The crowd were absolutely still now, but the big river-driver shook himself free of the eloquence, which somehow swayed them all, and said: "You--you look as if you'd tried to do big things, you do, old skeesicks. I bet you never earned a hundred dollars in your life." He turned to the crowd with fierce gestures. "Let's go to Lebanon and make the place sing," he roared. "Let's get Ingolby out to talk for himself, if he wants to talk. We know what we want to do, and we're not going to be bossed. He's for Lebanon and we're for Manitou. Lebanon means to boss us, Lebanon wants to sit on us because we're Catholics, because we're French, because we're honest." Again a wave of revolution swept through the crowd. The big river-driver represented their natural instincts, their native fanaticism, their prejudices. But the old man spoke once more. "Ingolby wants Lebanon and Manitou to come together, not to fall apart," he declared. "He wants peace. If he gets rich here he won't get rich alone. He's working for both towns. If he brings money from outside, that's good for both towns. If he--" "Shut your mouth, let Ingolby speak for himself," snarled the big river- driver. "Take his dollars out of your pocket and put them on the bar, the dollars Ingolby gives you to say all this. Put them dollars of Ingolby's up for drinks, or we'll give you a jar that'll shake you, old wart-hog." At that instant a figure forced itself through the crowd, and broke into the packed circle which was drawing closer upon the old man. It was Jethro Fawe. He flung a hand out towards the old man. "You want Ingolby--well, that's Ingolby," he shouted. Like lightning the old man straightened himself, snatched the wig and beard away from his head and face, and with quiet fearlessness said: "Yes, I am Ingolby." For an instant there was absolute silence, in which Ingolby weighed his chances. He was among enemies. He had meant only to move among the crowd to discover their attitude, to find things out for himself. He had succeeded, and his belief that Manitou could be swayed in the right direction if properly handled, was correct. Beneath the fanaticism and the racial spirit was human nature; and until Jethro Fawe had appeared, he had hoped to prevent violence and the collision at to-morrow's funeral. Now the situation was all changed. It was hard to tell what sharp turn things might take. He was about to speak, but suddenly from the crowd there was spat out at him the words, "Spy! Sneak! Spy!" Instantly the wave of feeling ran against him. He smiled frankly, however, with that droll twist of his mouth which had won so many, and the raillery of his eyes was more friendly than any appeal. "Spy, if you like, my friends," he said firmly and clearly. "Moses sent spies down into the Land of Promise, and they brought back big bunches of grapes. Well, I've come down into a land of promise. I wanted to know just how you all feel without being told it by some one else. I knew if I came here as Max Ingolby I shouldn't hear the whole truth; I wouldn't see exactly how you see, so I came as one of you, and you must admit, my French is as good as yours almost." He laughed and nodded at them. "There wasn't one of you that knew I wasn't a Frenchman. That's in my favour. If I know the French language as I do, and can talk to you in French as I've done, do you think I don't understand the French people, and what you want and how you feel? I'm one of the few men in the West that can talk your language. I learned it when I was a boy, so that I might know my French fellow-countrymen under the same flag, with the same King and the same national hope. As for your religion, God knows, I wish I was as good a Protestant as lots of you are good Catholics. And I tell you this, I'd be glad to have a minister that I could follow and respect and love as I respect and love Monseigneur Lourde of Manitou. I want to bring these two towns together, to make them a sign of what this country is, and what it can do; to make hundreds like ourselves in Manitou and Lebanon work together towards health, wealth, comfort and happiness. Can't you see, my friends, what I'm driving at? I'm for peace and work and wealth and power--not power for myself alone, but power that belongs to all of us. If I can show I'm a good man at my job, maybe better than others, then I have a right to ask you to follow me. If I can't, then throw me out. I tell you I'm your friend--Max Ingolby is your friend." "Spy! Spy! Spy!" cried a new voice. It came from behind the bar. An instant after, the owner of the voice leaped up on the counter. It was Felix Marchand. He had entered by the door behind the bar into Barbazon's office. "When I was in India," Marchand cried, "I found a snake in the bed. I killed it before it stung me. There's a snake in the bed of Manitou-- what are you going to do with it?" The men swayed, murmured, and shrill shouts of "Marchand! Marchand! Marchand !" went up. The crowd heaved upon Ingolby. "One minute!" he called with outstretched arm and commanding voice. They paused. Something in him made him master of them even then. At that moment two men were fiercely fighting their way through the crowd towards where Ingolby was. They were Jowett and Osterhaut. Ingolby saw them coming. "Go back--go back!" he called to them. Suddenly a drunken navvy standing on a table in front of and to the left of Ingolby seized a horseshoe hanging on the wall, and flung it with an oath. It caught Ingolby in the forehead, and he fell to the floor without a sound. A minute afterwards the bar was empty, save for Osterhaut, Jowett, old Barbazon, and his assistants. Barbazon and Jowett lifted the motionless figure in their arms, and carried it into a little room. Then Osterhaut picked up the horseshoe tied with its gay blue ribbons, now stained with blood, and put it in his pocket. "For luck," he said. CHAPTER XI THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN Fleda waked suddenly, but without motion; just a wide opening of the eyes upon the darkness, and a swift beating of the heart, but not the movement of a muscle. It was as though some inward monitor, some gnome of the hidden life had whispered of danger to her slumbering spirit. The waking was a complete emergence, a vigilant and searching attention. There was something on her breast weighing it down, yet with a pressure which was not weight alone, and maybe was not weight at all as weight is understood. Instantly there flashed through her mind the primitive belief that a cat will lie upon the breasts of children and suck their breath away. Strange and even absurd as it was, it seemed to her that a cat was pressing and pressing down upon her breast. There could be no mistaking the feline presence. Now with a sudden energy of the body, she threw the Thing from her, and heard it drop, with the softness of feline feet, on the Indian rug upon the floor. Then she sprang out of bed, and, feeling for the matches, lit a candle on the small table beside her bed, and moved it round searching for what she thought to be a cat. It was not to be seen. She looked under the bed; it was not there: under the washstand, under the chest of drawers, under the improvised dressing-table; and no cat was to be found. She 173 looked under the chair over which hung her clothes, even behind the dresses and the Indian deerskin cape hanging on the door. There was no life of any kind save her own in the room, so far as she could see. She laughed nervously, though her heart was still beating hard. That it should beat hard was absurd, for what had she to fear--she who had lived the wild open-air life of many lands, had slept among hills infested by animals the enemy of man, and who when a little girl had faced beasts of prey alone. Yet here in her own safe room on the Sagalac, with its four walls, but its unlocked doors--for Gabriel Druse said that he could not bear that last sign of his exile--here in the fortress of the town-dweller there was a strange trembling of her pulses in the presence of a mere hallucination or nightmare--the first she had had ever. Her dreams in the past had always been happy and without the black fancies of nightmare. On the night that Jethro Fawe had first confronted her father and herself, and he had been carried to the hut in the Wood, her sleep had been disturbed and restless, but dreamless; in her sleep on the night of the day of his release, she had been tossed upon vague clouds of mental unrest; but that was the first really disordered sleep she had ever known. Holding the candle above her head, she looked in the mirror on her dressing-table, and laughed nervously at the shocked look in her eyes, at the hand pressed upon the bosom whose agitations troubled the delicate linen at her breast. The pale light of the candle, the reflection from the white muslin of her dressing-table and her nightwear, the strange, deep darkness of her eyes, the ungathered tawny hair falling to her shoulders, gave an unusual paleness to her face. "What a ninny I am!" she said aloud as she looked at herself, her tongue chiding her apprehensive eyes, her laugh contemptuously adding its comment on her tremulousness. "It was a real nightmare--a waking nightmare, that's what it was." She searched the room once more, however-every corner, under the bed, the chest of drawers and the dressing-table, before she got into bed again, her feet icily cold. And yet again before settling down she looked round, perplexed and inquiring. Placing the matches beside the candlestick, she blew out the light. Then, half-turning on her side with her face to the wall, she composed herself to sleep. Resolutely putting from her mind any sense of the supernatural, she shut her eyes with confidence of coming sleep. While she was, however, still within the borders of wakefulness, and wholly conscious, she felt the Thing jump from the floor upon her legs, and crouch there with that deadening pressure which was not weight. Now with a start of anger she raised herself, and shot out a determined hand to seize the Thing, whatever it was. Her hand grasped nothing, and again she distinctly heard a soft thud as of something jumping on the floor. Exasperated, she drew herself out of bed, lit the candle again, and began another search. Nothing was to be seen; but she had now the curious sense of an unseen presence. She went to the door, opened it, and looked out into the narrow hall. Nothing was to be seen there. Then she closed the door again, and stood looking at it meditatively for a moment. It had a lock and key; yet it had never been locked in the years they had lived on the Sagalac. She did not know whether the key would turn in the lock. After a moment's hesitation, she shrugged her shoulders and turned the key. It rasped, proved stubborn, but at last came home with a click. Then she turned to the window. It was open about three inches at the bottom. She closed it tight, and fastened it, then stood for a moment in the middle of the room looking at both door and window. She was conscious of a sense of suffocation. Never in her life had she slept with door or window or tentflap entirely closed. Never before had she been shut in all night behind closed doors and sealed windows. Now, as the sense of imprisonment was felt, her body protested; her spirit resented the funereal embrace of security. It panted for the freedom which gives the challenge to danger and the courage to face it. She went to the window and opened it slightly at the top, and then sought her bed again; but even as she lay down, something whispered to her mind that it was folly to lock the door and yet leave the window open, if it was but an inch. With an exclamation of self-reproach, and a vague indignation at something, she got up and closed the window once more. Again she composed herself to sleep, lying now with her face turned to the window and the door. She was still sure that she had been the victim of a hallucination which, emerging from her sleep, had invaded the borders of wakefulness, and then had reproduced itself in a waking illusion--an imitation of its original existence. Resolved to conquer any superstitious feeling, she invoked sleep, and was on its borders once more when she was startled more violently than before. The Thing had sprung again upon her feet and was crouched there. Wide awake, she waited for a moment to make sure that she was not mad, or that she was not asleep or in a half-dream. In the pause, she felt the Thing draw up towards her knees, dragging its body along with tiger-like closeness, and with that strange pressure which was not weight but power. With a cry which was no longer doubt, but agonized apprehension, she threw the Thing from her with a motion of both hands and feet; and, as she did so, she felt a horrible cold air breathing from a bloodless body, chill her hand. In another instant she was on her feet again. With shaking fingers she lighted the candle yet once more, after which she lighted a lamp standing upon the chest of drawers. The room was almost brilliantly bright now. With a gesture of incredulity she looked round. The doors and windows were sealed tight, and there was nothing to be seen; yet she was more than ever conscious of a presence grown more manifest. For a moment she stood staring straight before her at the place where it seemed to be. She realized its malice and its hatred, and an intense anger and hatred took possession of her. She had always laughed at such things even when thrilled by wonder and manufactured terrors. But now there was a sense of conflict, of evil, of the indefinable things in which so many believed. Suddenly she remembered an ancient Sage of her tribe, who, proficient in mysteries and secret rites gathered from nations as old as Phoenicia and Egypt and as modern as Switzerland, held the Romanys of the world in awe, for his fame had travelled where he could not follow. To Fleda in her earliest days he had been like one inspired, and as she now stood facing the intangible Thing, she recalled an exorcism which the Sage had recited to her, when he had sufficiently startled her senses by tales of the Between World. This exorcism was, as he had told her, more powerful than that which the Christian exorcists used, and the symbol of exorcism was not unlike the sign of the Cross, to which was added genuflection of Assyrian origin. At any other time Fleda would have laughed at the idea of using the exorcism; but all the ancient superstition of the Romany people latent in her now broke forth and held her captive. Standing with candle raised above her head, her eyes piercing the space before her, she recalled every word of the exorcism which had caught the drippings from the fountains of Chaldean, Phoenician, and Egyptian mystery. Solemnly and slowly the exorcism came from her lips, and at the end her right hand made the cabalistic sign; then she stood like one transfixed with her arm extended towards the Thing she could not see. Presently there passed from her a sense of oppression. The air seemed to grow lighter, restored self-possession came; there was a gentle breathing in the room like that of a sleeping child. It was a moment before she realized that the breathing was her own, and she looked round her like one who had come out of a trance. "It is gone," she said aloud. "It is gone." A great sigh came from her. Mechanically she put down the candle, smoothed the pillows of her bed, adjusted the coverings, and prepared to lie down; but, with a sudden impulse, she turned to the window and the door. "It is gone," she said again. With a little laugh of hushed triumph, she turned and made again the cabalistic sign at the bed, where the Thing had first assaulted her, and then at that point in the room near the door where she had felt it crouching. "Oh, Ewie Gal," she added, speaking to that Romany Sage long since laid to rest in the Roumelian country, "you did not talk to me for nothing. You were right--yes, you were right, old Ewie Gal. It was there,"--she looked again at the place where the Thing had been--"and your curse drove it away." With confidence she went to the door and unlocked it. Going to the window she opened it also, but she compromised sufficiently to open it at the top instead of at the bottom. Presently she laid her head on her pillow with a sigh of content. Once again she composed herself to sleep in the darkness. But now there came other invasions, other disturbers of the night. In her imagination a man came who had held her in his arms one day on the Sagalac River, who had looked into her eyes with a masterful but respectful tenderness. As she neared the confines of sleep, he was somehow mingled with visions of things which her childhood had known--moonlit passes in the Bosnian, Roumelian, and Roumanian hills, green fields by the Danube, with peasant voices drowsing in song before the lights went out; a gallop after dun deer far away up the Caspian mountains, over waste places, carpeted with flowers after a benevolent rain; mornings in Egypt, when the camels thudded and slid with melancholy ease through the sands of the desert, while the Arab drivers called shrilly for Allah to curse or bless; a tender sunset in England seen from the top of a castle when all the western sky was lightly draped with saffron, gold and mauve and delicate green and purple. Now she slept again, with the murmur of the Sagalac in her ears, and there was a smile at her lips. If one could have seen her through the darkness, one would have said that she was like some wild creature of a virgin world, whom sleep had captured and tamed; for, behind the refinement which education and the vigilant influence with which Madame Bulteel had surrounded her, there was in her the spirit of primitive things: of the open road and the wilderness, of the undisciplined and vagrant life, however marked by such luxury as the ruler of all the Romanys could buy and use in pilgrimage. There was that in her which would drag at her footsteps in this new life. For a full hour or more she slept, then there crept through the fantasies of sleep something that did not belong to sleep--again something from the wakeful world, strange, alien, troubling. At first it was only as though a wind stirred the air of dreams, then it was like the sounds that gather behind the coming rage of a storm, and again it was as though a night- prowler plucked at the sleeve of a home-goer. Presently, with a stir of fright and a smothered cry, she waked to a sound which was not of the supernatural or of the mind's illusions, but no less dreadful to her because of that. In some cryptic way it was associated with the direful experience through which she had just passed. What she heard in the darkness was a voice which sang there by her window--at it or beneath it--the words of a Romany song. It was a song of violence, which she had heard but a short time before in the trees behind her father's house, when a Romany claimed her as his wife: "Time was I went to my true love, Time was she came to me--" Only one man would sing that song at her window, or anywhere in this Western world. This was no illusion of her overwrought senses. There, outside her window, was Jethro Fawe. She sat up and listened, leaning on one arm, and staring into the half- darkness beyond the window, the blind of which she had not drawn down. There was no moon, but the stars were shining brightly, relieving the intensity of the dark. Through the whispering of the trees, and hushing the melancholy of a night-bird's song, came the wild low note of the Romany epic of vengeance. It had a thrill of exultation. Something in the voice, insistent, vibrating, personal, made every note a thrust of victory. In spite of her indignation at the insolent serenade, she thrilled; for the strain of the Past was in her, and it had been fighting with her all night, breaking in upon the Present, tugging at the cords of youth. The man's daring roused her admiration, even as her anger mounted. If her father heard the singing, there could be no doubt that Jethro Fawe's doom would be sealed. Gabriel Druse would resent this insolence to the daughter of the Ry of Rys. Word would be passed as silently as the electric spark flies, and one day Jethro Fawe would be found dead, with no clue to his slayer, and maybe no sign of violence upon him; for while the Romany people had remedies as old as Buddha, they had poisons as old as Sekhet. Suddenly the song ceased, and for a moment there was silence save for the whispering trees and the night-bird's song. Fleda rose from her bed, and was about to put on her dressing-gown, when she was startled by a voice loudly whispering her name at her window, as it seemed. "Daughter of the Ry of Rys !" it called. In anger she started forward to the window, then, realizing that she was in her nightgown, caught up her red dressing-gown and put it on. As she did so she understood why the voice had sounded so near. Not thirty feet from her window there was a solitary oak-tree among the pines, in which was a seat among the branches, and, looking out, she could see a figure that blackened the starlit duskiness. "Fleda--daughter of the Ry of Rys," the voice called again. She gathered her dressing-gown tight about her, and, going to the window, raised it high and leaned out. "What do you want?" she asked sharply. "Wife of Jethro Fawe, I bring you news," the voice said, and she saw a hat waved with mock courtesy. In spite of herself, Fleda felt a shiver of premonition pass through her. The Thing which had threatened her in the night seemed to her now like the soul of this dark spirit in the trees. Resentment seized her. "I have news for you, Jethro Fawe," she replied. "I set you free, and I gave my word that no harm should come to you, if you went your ways and did not come again. You have come, and I shall do nothing now to save you from the Ry's anger. Go at once, or I will wake him." "Will a wife betray her husband?" he asked in soft derision. Stung by his insolence, "I would not throw a rope to you, if you were drowning," she declared. "I am a Gorgio, and the thing that was done by the Starzke River is nothing to me. Now, go." "You have forgotten my news," he said: "It is bad news for the Gorgio daughter of the Romany Ry." She was silent in apprehension. He waited, but she did not speak. "The Gorgio of Gorgios of the Sagalac has had a fall," he said. Her heart beat fast for an instant, and then the presentiment came to her that the man spoke the truth. In the presence of the accomplished thing, she became calm. "What has happened?" she asked quietly. "He went prowling in Manitou, and in Barbazon's Tavern they struck him down." "Who struck him down?" she asked. It seemed to her that the night-bird sang so loud that she could scarcely hear her own voice. "A drunken Gorgio," he replied. "The horseshoe is for luck all the world over, and it brought its luck to Manitou to-night. It struck down a young Master Gorgio who in white beard and long grey hair went spying." She knew in her heart that he spoke the truth. "He is dead?" she asked in a voice that had a strange quietness. "Not yet," he answered. "There is time to wish him luck." She heard the ribald laugh with a sense of horror and loathing. "The hand that brought him down may have been the hand of a Gorgio, but behind the hand was Jethro Fawe," she said in a voice grown passionate again. "Where is he?" she added. "At his own house. I watched them take him there. It is a nice house-- good enough for a Gorgio house-dweller. I know it well. Last night I played his Sarasate fiddle for him there, and I told him all about you and me, and what happened at Starzke, and then--" "You told him I was a Romany, that I was married to you?" she asked in a low voice. "I told him that, and asked him why he thought you had deceived him, had held from him the truth. He was angry and tried to kill me." "That is a lie," she answered. "If he had tried to kill you he would have done so." Suddenly she realized the situation as it was--that she was standing at her window in the night, scantily robed, talking to a man in a tree opposite her window; and that the man had done a thing which belonged to the wild places which she had left so far behind. It flashed into her mind--what would Max Ingolby think of such a thing? She flushed. The new Gorgio self of her flushed, and yet the old Romany self, the child of race and heredity had taken no exact account of the strangeness of this situation. It had not seemed unnatural. Even if he had been in her room itself, she would have felt no tithe of the shame that she felt now in asking herself what the Master Gorgio would think, if he knew. It was not that she had less modesty, that any stir of sex was in her veins where the Romany chal was concerned; but in the life she had once lived less delicate cognizance was taken of such things, and something of it stayed. "Listen," Jethro said with sudden lowering of the voice, and imparting into his tones an emotion which was in part an actor's gift, but also in large degree a passion now eating at his heart, "you are my wife by all the laws of our people. Nothing can change it. I have waited for you, and I will wait, but you shall be mine in the end. You see to-night-- 'Mi Duvel', you see that fate is with me! The Gorgio has bewitched you. He goes down to-night in that tavern there by the hand of a Gorgio, and the Romany has his revenge. Fate is always with me, and I will be the gift of the gods to the woman that takes me. The luck is mine always. It will be always with me. I am poor to-day, I shall be rich to-morrow. I was rich, and I lost it all; and I was poor, and became rich again. Ah, yes, there are ways! Sometimes it is a Government, sometimes a prince that wants to know, and Jethro Fawe, the Romany, finds it out, and money fills his pockets. I am here, poor, because last year when I lost all, I said, 'It is because my Romany lass is not with me. I have not brought her to my tan, but when she comes then the gold will be here as before, and more when it is wanted.' So, I came, and I hear the road calling, and all the camping places over all the world, and I see the patrins in every lane, and my heart is lifted up. I am glad. I rejoice. My heart burns with love. I will forget everything, and be true to the queen of my soul. Men die, and Gabriel Druse, he will die one day, and when the time comes, then it would be that you and I would beckon, and all the world would come to us." He stretched out a hand to her in the half-darkness. "I send the blood of my heart to you," he continued. "I am a son of kings. Fleda, daughter of the Ry of Rys, come to me. I have been bad, but I can be good. I have killed, but I will live at peace. I have cursed, but I will speak the word of blessing. I have trespassed, but I will keep to my own, if you will come to me." Suddenly he dropped to the ground, lighting on his feet like an animal with a soft rebound. Stretching up his arms, he made soft murmuring of endearment. She had listened, fascinated in spite of herself by the fire and meaning of his words. She felt that in most part it was true, that it was meant; and, whatever he was, he was yet a man offering his heart and life, offering a love that she despised, and yet which was love and passion of a kind. It was a passion natural to the people from whom she came, and to such as Jethro Fawe it was something more than sensual longing and the aboriginal desire of possession. She realized it, and was not wholly revolted by it, even while her mind was fleeing to where the Master Gorgio lay wounded, it might be unto death; even while she knew that this man before her, by some means, had laid Ingolby low. She was all at once a human being torn by contending forces. Jethro's drop to the ground broke the sudden trance into which his words had thrown her. She shook herself as with an effort of control. Then leaning over the window-sill, and, looking down at him, now grown so distinct that she could see his features, her eyes having become used to the half-light of the approaching dawn, she said with something almost like gentleness: "Once more I say, you must go and come no more. You are too far off from me. You belong to that which is for the ignorant, or the low, the vicious and the bad. Behind the free life of the Romany is only the thing that the beasts of the field have. I have done with it for ever. Find a Romany who will marry you. As for me, I would rather die than do so, and I should die before it could come to pass. If you stay here longer I will call the Ry." Presently the feeling that he had been responsible for the disaster to Ingolby came upon her with great force, and as suddenly as she had softened towards this man she hardened again. "Go, before there comes to you the death you deserve," she added, and turned away. At that moment footsteps sounded near, and almost instantly there emerged from a pathway which made a short cut to the house, the figure of old Gabriel Druse. They had not heard him till he was within a few feet of where Jethro Fawe stood. His walking had been muffled in the dust of the pathway. The Ry started when he saw Jethro Fawe; then he made a motion as though he would seize the intruder, who was too dumbfounded to flee; but he recovered himself, and gazed up at the open window. "Fleda!" he called. She came to the window again. "Has this man come here against your will?" he asked, not as though seeking information, but confirmation of his own understanding. "He is not here by my will," she answered. "He came to sing the Song of Hate under my window, to tell me that he had--" "That I had brought the Master Gorgio to the ground," said Jethro, who now stood with sullen passiveness looking at Gabriel Druse. "From the Master Gorgio, as you call him, I have just come," returned the old man. "When I heard the news, I went to him. It was you who betrayed him to the mob, and--" "Wait, wait," Fleda cried in agitation. "Is--is he dead?" "He is alive, but terribly hurt; and he may die," was the reply. Then the old man turned to the Romany with a great anger and determination in his face. He stretched out an arm, making a sign as cabalistic as that which Fleda had used against her invisible foe in the bedroom. "Go, Jethro Fawe of all the Fawes," he said. "Go, and may no patrins mark your road!" Jethro Fawe shrank back, and half raised his arm, as though to fend himself from a blow. The patrin is the clue which Gipsies leave behind them on the road they go, that other Gipsies who travel in it may know they have gone before. It may be a piece of string, a thread of wool, a twig, or in the dust the ancient cross of the Romany, which preceded the Christian cross and belonged to the Assyrian or Phoenician world. The invocation that no patrins shall mark the road of a Romany is to make him an outcast, and for the Ry of Rys to utter the curse is sentence of death upon a Romany, for thenceforward every hand of his race is against him, free to do him harm. It was that which made Jethro Fawe shrink and cower for a moment. Fleda raised her hand suddenly in protest to Gabriel Druse. "No, no, not that," Fleda murmured brokenly to her father, with eyes that looked the pain and horror she felt. Though she repudiated the bond by which the barbarian had dared to call her wife, she heard an inner voice that said to her: "What was done by the Starzke River was the seal of blood and race, and this man must be nearer than the stranger, dearer than the kinsman, forgiven of his crimes like a brother, saved from shame, danger or death when she who was sealed to him can save him." She shuddered as she heard the inner voice. She felt that this Other Self of her, the inner-seeing soul which had the secret of the far paths, had spoken truly. Even as she begged her father to withdraw the sentence, it flashed into her mind that the grim Thing of the night was the dark spirit of hatred between Jethro Fawe and the Master Gorgio seeking embodiment, as though Jethro's evil soul detached itself from his body to persecute her. At her appeal, Jethro raised his head. His courage came back, the old insolent self-possession took hold of him again. The sentence which the Ry had passed was worse than death (and it meant death, too), for it made him an outcast from his people, and to be outcast was to be thrown into the abyss. It was as though a man without race or country was banished into desolate space. In a vague way he felt its full significance, and the shadow of it fell on him. "No, no, no," Fleda repeated hoarsely, with that new sense of responsibility where Jethro was concerned. Jethro's eyes were turned upon her now. In the starlit night, just yielding to the dawn, she could faintly see his burning look, could feel, as it were, his hands reach out to claim her; and she felt that while he lived she was not wholly free. She realized that the hand of nomad, disorderly barbarism was dragging her with a force which was inhuman, or, maybe, superhuman. Gabriel Druse could know nothing of the elements fighting in his daughter's soul; he only knew that her interest in the Master Gorgio was one he had never seen before, and that she abhorred the Romany who had brought Ingolby low. He had shut his eyes to the man's unruliness and his daughter's intervention to free him; but now he was without pity. He had come from Ingolby's bedside, and had been told a thing which shook his rugged nature to its centre--a thing sad as death itself, which he must tell his daughter. To Fleda's appeal he turned a stony face. There was none of that rage in his words which had marked the scene when Jethro Fawe first came to claim what he could not have. There was something in him now more deadly and inevitable. It made him like some figure of mythology, implacable, fateful. His great height, his bushy beard and stormy forehead, the eyes over which shaggy eyebrows hung like the shrubs on a cliff-edge, his face lined and set like a thing in bronze--all were signs of a power which, in passion, would be like that of OEdipus: in the moment of justice or doom would, with unblinking eyes, slay and cast aside as debris is tossed upon the dust-heap. As he spoke now his voice was toneless. His mind was flint, and his tongue was but the flash of the flint. He looked at his daughter for a moment with no light of fatherhood in his face, then turned from her to Jethro Fawe with slow decision and a gesture of authority. His eyes fastened on the face of the son of Lemuel Fawe, as though it was that old enemy himself. "I have said what I have said, and there is no more to be spoken. The rule of the Ry will be as water for ever after if these things may be done to him and his. For generations have the Rys of all the Rys been like the trees that bend only to the whirlwind; and when they speak there is no more to be said. When it ceases to be so, then the Rys will vanish from the world, and be as stubble of the field ready for the burning. I have spoken. Go! And no patrins shall lie upon your road." A look of savage obedience and sullen acquiescence came into Jethro Fawe's face, and he took off his hat as one who stands in the presence of his master. The strain of generations, the tradition of the race without a country was stronger than the revolt in his soul. He was young, his blood was hot and brawling in his veins, he was all carnal, with the superior intelligence of the trained animal, but custom was stronger than all. He knew now that whatever he might do, some time, not far, his doom would fall upon him suddenly, as a wind shoots up a ravine from the desert, or a nightbird rises from the dark. He set his feet stubbornly, and raised his sullen face and fanatical eyes. The light of morning was creeping through the starshine, and his features showed plainly. "I am your daughter's husband," he said. "Nothing can change that. It was done by the River Starzke, and it was the word of the Ry of Rys. It stands for ever. There is no divorce except death for the Romany." "The patrins cease to mark the way," returned the old man with a swift gesture. "The divorce of death will come." Jethro's face grew still paler, and he opened his lips to speak, but paused, seeing Fleda, with a backward look of pity and of horror, draw back into the darkness of her room. He made a motion of passion and despair. His voice was almost shrill when he spoke. "Till that divorce comes, the daughter of the Ry of Rys is mine!" he cried sharply. "I will not give my wife to a Gorgio thief. His hands shall not caress her, his eyes shall not feed upon her--" "His eyes will not feed upon her," interrupted the old man, "So cease the prattle which can alter nothing. Begone." For a moment Jethro Fawe stood like one who did not understand what was said to him, but suddenly a look of triumph and malice came into his face, and his eyes lighted with a reckless fire. He threw back his head, and laughed with a strange, offensive softness. Then, waving a hand to the window from which Fleda had gone, he swung his cap on his head and plunged into the trees. A moment afterwards his voice came back exultingly, through the morning air: "But a Gorgio sleeps 'neath the greenwood tree He'll broach my tan no more: And my love, she sleeps afar from me But near to the churchyard door." As the old man turned heavily towards the house, and opened the outer door, Fleda met him. "What did you mean when you said that Ingolby's eyes would not feed upon me?" she asked in a low tone of fear. A look of compassion came into the old man's face. He took her hand. "Come and I will tell you," he said. CHAPTER XII "LET THERE BE LIGHT" In Ingolby's bedroom, on the night of the business at Barbazon's Tavern, Dr. Rockwell received a shock. His face, naturally colourless, was almost white, and his eyes were moist. He had what the West called nerve. That the crisis through which he had passed was that of a friend's life did not lessen the poignancy of the experience. He had a singularly reserved manner and a rare economy of words; also, he had the refinement and distinction of one who had, oforetime, moved on the higher ranges of social life. He was always simply and comfortably and in a sense fashionably dressed, yet there was nothing of the dude about him, and his black satin tie gave him an air of old-worldishness which somehow compelled an extra amount of respect. This, in spite of the fact that he had been known as one who had left the East and come into the wilds because of a woman not his wife. It was not, however, strictly true to say that he had come West because of a woman, for it was on account of three women, who by sudden coincidence or collusion sprang a situation from which the only relief was flight. In that he took refuge, not because he was a coward, but because it was folly to fight a woman, or three women, and because it was the only real solution of an ungovernable situation. At first he had drifted from one town to another, dissolute and reckless, apparently unable to settle down, or to forget the unwholesome three. But one day there was a terrible railway accident on a construction train, and Lebanon and Manitou made a call upon his skill, and held him in bondage to his profession for one whole month. During this time he performed two operations which the surgeons who had been sent out by the Railway Directors at Montreal declared were masterpieces. When that month was up he was a changed man, and he opened an office in Lebanon. Men trusted him despite his past, and women learned that there was never a moment when his pulses beat unevenly in their presence. Nathan Rockwell had had his lesson and it was not necessary to learn it again. To him, woman, save as a subject of his skill, was a closed book. He regarded them as he regarded himself, with a kindly cynicism. He never forgot that his own trouble could and would have been avoided had it not been for woman's vanity and consequent cruelty. The unwholesome three had shared his moral lapse with wide-open eyes, and were in no sense victims of his; but, disregarding their responsibility, they had, from sheer jealousy, wrecked his past, and, to their own surprise, had wrecked themselves as well. They were of those who act first and then think--too late. Thus it was that both men and women called Rockwell a handsome man, but thought of him as having only a crater of exhausted fires in place of a heart. They came to him with their troubles--even the women of Manitou who ought to have gone to the priest. He moved about Lebanon as one who had authority, and desired not to use it; as one to whom life was like a case in surgery to be treated with scientific, coolness, with humanity, but not with undue sympathy; yet the early morning of the day after Ingolby had had his accident at Barbazon's Hotel found him the slave of an emotion which shook him from head to foot. He had saved his friend's life by a most skilful operation, but he had been shocked beyond control when, an hour after the operation was over, and consciousness returned to the patient in the brilliantly lighted room, Ingolby said: "Why don't you turn on the light?" It was thus Rockwell knew that the Master Man, the friend of Lebanon and Manitou, was stone blind. When Ingolby's voice ceased, a horrified silence filled the room for a moment. Even Jim Beadle, his servant, standing at the foot of the bed, clapped a hand to his mouth to stop a cry, and the nurse turned as white as the apron she wore. Dumbfounded as Rockwell was, with instant professional presence of mind he said: "No, Ingolby, you must be kept in darkness a while yet." Then he whipped out a silk handkerchief from his pocket. "We will have light," he continued, "but we must bandage you first to keep out the glare and prevent pain. The nerves of the eyes have been injured." Hastily and tenderly he bound the handkerchief round the sightless eyes. Having done so, he said to the nurse with unintentional quotation from the Gospel of St. John, and a sad irony: "Let there be light." It all gave him time to pull himself together and prepare for the moment when he must tell Ingolby the truth. In one sense the sooner it was told the better, lest Ingolby should suddenly discover it for himself. Surprise and shock must be avoided. So now he talked in his low, soothing voice, telling Ingolby that the operation had put him out of danger, that the pain now felt came chiefly from the nerves of the eye, and that quiet and darkness were necessary. He insisted on Ingolby keeping silent, and he gave a mild opiate which induced several hours' sleep. During this time Rockwell prepared himself for the ordeal which must be passed as soon as possible; gave all needed directions, and had a conference with the assistant Chief Constable to whom he confided the truth. He suggested plans for preserving order in excited Lebanon, which was determined to revenge itself on Manitou; and he gave some careful and specific instructions to Jowett the horse-dealer. Also, he had conferred with Gabriel Druse, who had helped bear the injured man to his own home. He had noted with admiration the strange gentleness of the giant Romany as he, alone, carried Ingolby in his arms, and laid him on the bed from which he was to rise with all that he had fought for overthrown, himself the blind victim of a hard fate. He had noticed the old man straighten himself with a spring and stand as though petrified when Ingolby said: "Why don't you turn on the light?" As he looked round in that instant of ghastly silence he had observed almost mechanically that the old man's lips were murmuring something. Then the thought of Fleda Druse shot into Rockwell's mind, and it harassed him during the hours Ingolby slept, and after the giant Gipsy had taken his departure just before the dawn. "I'm afraid it will mean more there than anywhere else," he said sadly to himself. "There was evidently something between those two; and she isn't the kind to take it philosophically. Poor girl! Poor girl! It's a bitter dose, if there was anything in it," he added. He watched beside the sick-bed till the dawn stared in and his patient stirred and waked, then he took Ingolby's hand, grown a little cooler, in both his own. "How are you feeling, old man?" he asked cheerfully. "You've had a good sleep-nearly three and a half hours. Is the pain in the head less?" "Better, Sawbones, better," Ingolby replied cheerfully. "They've loosened the tie that binds--begad, it did stretch the nerves. I had gripes of colic once, but the pain I had in my head was twenty times worse, till you gave the opiate." "That's the eyes," said Rockwell. "I had to lift a bit of bone, and the eyes saw it and felt it, and cried out-shrieked, you might say. They've got a sensitiveness all their own, have the eyes." "It's odd there aren't more accidents to them," answered Ingolby--"just a little ball of iridescent pulp with strings tied to the brain." "And what hurts the head may destroy the eyes sometimes," Rockwell answered cautiously. "We know so little of the delicate union between them, that we can't be sure we can put the eyes right again when, because of some blow to the head, the ricochet puts the eyes out of commission." "That's what's the matter with me, then?" asked Ingolby, feeling the bandage on his eyes feverishly, and stirring in his bed with a sense of weariness. "Yes, the ricochet got them, and has put them out of commission," replied Rockwell, carefully dwelling upon each word, and giving a note of meaning to his tone. Ingolby raised himself in bed, but Rockwell gently forced him down again. "Will my eyes have to be kept bandaged long? Shall I have to give up work for any length of time?" Ingolby asked. "Longer than you'll like," was the enigmatical reply. "It's the devil's own business," was the weary answer. "Every minute's valuable to me now. I ought to be on deck morning, noon, and night. There's all the trouble between the two towns; there's the strike on hand; there's that business of the Orange funeral, and more than all a thousand times, there's--" he paused. He was going to say, "There's that devil Marchand's designs on my bridge," but he thought better of it and stopped. It had been his intention to deal with Marchand directly, to get a settlement of their differences without resort to the law, to prevent the criminal act without deepening a feud which might keep the two towns apart for years. Bad as Marchand was, to prevent his crime was far better than punishing him for it afterwards. To have Marchand arrested for conspiracy to commit a crime was a business which would gravely interfere with his freedom of motion in the near future, would create complications which might cripple his own purposes in indirect ways. That was why he had declared to Jowett that even Felix Marchand had his price, and that he would try negotiations first. But what troubled him now, as he lay with eyes bandaged and a knowledge that to-morrow was the day fixed for the destruction of the bridge, was his own incapacity. It was unlikely that his head or his eyes would be right by to-morrow, or that Rockwell would allow him to get up. He felt in his own mind that the injury he had received was a serious one, and that the lucky horseshoe had done Maxchand's work for him all too well. This thought shook him. Rockwell could see his chest heave with an excitement gravely injurious to his condition; yet he must be told the worst, or the shock of discovery by himself that he was blind might give him brain fever. Rockwell felt that he must hasten the crisis. "Rockwell," Ingolby suddenly asked, "is there any chance of my discarding this and getting out to-morrow?" He touched the handkerchief round his eyes. "It doesn't matter about the head bandages, but the eyes--can't I slough the wraps to-morrow? I feel scarcely any pain now." "Yes, you can get rid of the bandages to-morrow--you can get rid of them to-day, if you really wish," Rockwell answered, closing in on the last defence. "But I don't mind being in the dark to-day if it'll make me fitter for to-morrow and get me right sooner. I'm not a fool. There's too much carelessness about such things. People often don't give themselves a chance to get right by being in too big a hurry. So, keep me in darkness to-day, if you want to, old man. For a hustler I'm not in too big a hurry, you see. I'm for holding back to get a bigger jump." "You can't be in a big hurry, even if you want to, Ingolby," rejoined Rockwell, gripping the wrist of the sick man, and leaning over him. Ingolby grew suddenly very still. It was as though vague fear had seized him and held him in a vice. "What is it? What do you want to say to me?" he asked in a low, nerveless tone. "You've been hit hard, Chief. The ricochet has done you up for some time. The head will soon get well, but I'm far from sure about your eyes. You've got to have a specialist about them. You're in the dark, and as for making you see, so am I. Your eyes and you are out of commission for some time, anyhow." He leaned over hastily, but softly and deftly undid the bandages over the eyes and took them off. "It's seven in the morning, and the sun's up, Chief, but it doesn't do you much good, you see." The last two words were the purest accident, but it was a strange, mournful irony, and Rockwell flushed at the thought of it. He saw Ingolby's face turn grey, and then become white as death itself. "I see," came from the bluish-white lips, as the stricken man made call on all the will and vital strength in him. For a long minute Rockwell held the cold hand in the grasp of one who loves and grieves, but even so the physician and surgeon in him were uppermost, as they should be, in the hour when his friend was standing on the brink of despair, maybe of catastrophe irremediable. He did not say a word yet, however. In such moments the vocal are dumb and the blind see. Ingolby heaved himself in the bed and threw up his arms, wresting them from Rockwell's grasp. "My God--oh, my God-blind!" he cried in agony. Rockwell drew the head with the sightless eyes to his shoulder. For a moment he laid one hand on the heart, that, suddenly still, now went leaping under his fingers. "Steady," he said firmly. "Steady. It may be only temporary. Keep your head up to the storm. We'll have a specialist, and you must not get mired till then. Steady, Chief." "Chief! Chief!" murmured Ingolby. "Dear God, what a chief! I risked everything, and I've lost everything by my own vanity. Barbazon's--the horseshoe--among the wolves, just to show I could do things better than any one else--as if I had the patent for setting the world right. And now--now--" The thought of the bridge, of Marchand's devilish design, shot into his mind, and once more he was shaken. "The bridge! Blind! Mother!" he called in a voice twisted in an agony which only those can feel to whom life's purposes are even more than life itself. Then, with a moan, he became unconscious, and his head rolled over against Rockwell's cheek. The damp of his brow was as the damp of death as Rockwell's lips touched it. "Old boy, old boy!" Rockwell said tenderly, "I wish it had been me instead. Life means so much to you--and so little to me. I've seen too much, and you've only just begun to see." Laying him gently down, Rockwell summoned the nurse and Jim Beadle and spoke to them in low tones. "He knows now, and it has hit him hard, but not so hard that he won't stiffen to it. It might have been worse." He gave instructions as to the care that should be taken, and replaced the bandages on the eyes. It was, however, long before Ingolby was restored to consciousness, and when it came, Rockwell put to his lips a cooling drink containing a powerful opiate. Ingolby drank it without protest and in silence. He was like one whose sense of life was automatic and of an inner rather than an outer understanding. But when he lay back on the pillow again, he said slowly: "I want the Chief Constable to come here to-night at eight o'clock. It will be dark then. He must come. It is important. Will you see to it, Rockwell?" He thrust out a hand as though to find Rockwell's, and there was a gratitude and an appeal in the pressure of his fingers which went to Rockwell's heart. "All right, Chief. I'll have him here," Rockwell answered briskly, but with tears standing in his eyes. Ingolby had, as it were, been stricken out of the active, sentient, companionable world into a world where he was alone, detached, solitary. His being seemed suspended in an atmosphere of misery and helplessness. "Blind! I am blind!" That was the phrase which kept beating with the pulses in Ingolby's veins, that throbbed, and throbbed, and throbbed like engines in a creaking ship which the storm was shaking and pounding in the vast seas between the worlds. Here was the one incomprehensible, stupefying fact: nothing else mattered. Every plan he had ever had, every design which he had made his own by an originality that even his foes acknowledged, were passing before his brain in swift procession, shining, magnified, and magnificent, and in that sudden clear-seeing of his soul he beheld their full value, their exact concrete force and ultimate effect. Yet he knew himself detached from them, inactive, incapable, because he could not see with the eyes of the body. The great essential thing to him was that one thing he had lost. A man might be a cripple and still direct the great concerns of life and the business of life. He might be shorn of limb and scarred of body, but with eye sight still direct the courses of great schemes, in whatever sphere of life his purposes were at work. He might be deaf to every sound and forever dumb, but seeing enabled him still to carry forward every enterprise. In darkness, however, those things were naught, because judgment must depend on the eyes and senses of others. The report might be true or false, the deputy might deceive, and his blind chief might never know the truth unless some other spectator of his schemes should report it; and the truth could not surely be checked, save by some one, perhaps, whose life was joined to his, by one that truly loved him, whose fate was his. His brain was afire. By one that truly loved him! Who was there that loved him? Who was there at one with him in all his deep designs, in all he had done and meant to do? Neither brother, nor sister, nor friend, nor any other. None of his blood was there who could share with him the constructive work he had set out to do. There was no friend whose fate was part of his own. There was the Boss Doctor: but Rockwell was tied to his own responsibilities, and he could not give up, of course, would not give up his life to the schemes of another. There were a dozen men whom he had helped to forge ahead by his own schemes, but their destinies were not linked with his. Only one whose life was linked with his could be trusted to be his eyes, to be the true reporter of all he did, had done, or planned to do. Only one who loved him. But even one who loved him could not carry through his incompleted work against the assaults of his enemies, who were powerful, watchful, astute, and merciless; who had a greed which set money higher than all else in the world. They were of the new order of things in the New World. The business of life was to them not a system of barter and exchange, a giving something of value to get something of value, with a margin of profit for each, and a sense of human equity behind; it was a cockpit where one man sought to get what another man had--and get it almost anyhow. It was the work of the faro-bank man, whose sleight of hand deceived the man that carried the gun. All the old humanity and good-fellowship of the trader, the man who exchanged, as it was in the olden days of the world and continued in greater or less degree till the present generation--all that was gone. It was held in contempt. It had prevailed when men were open robbers and filibusters and warriors, giving their lives, if need be, to get what they wanted, making force their god. It had triumphed over the violence and robbery of the open road until the dying years of one century and the young years of a new century. Then the day of the trickster came--and men laughed at the idea of fair exchange and strove to give an illusive value for a thing of real value--the remorseless sleight of hand which the law could not reach. The desire to get profit by honest toiling was dying down to ashes. Against such men had Ingolby worked--the tricksters, the manipulators. At the basis of his schemes was organization and the economy which concentrated and conserved energy begets, together with its profit. He had been the enemy of waste, the apostle of frugality and thrift; and it was that which had enabled him, in his short career, to win the confidence of the big men behind him in Montreal, to make good every step of the way. He had worked for profit out of legitimate product and industry and enterprise, out of the elimination of waste. It was his theory (and his practice) that no bit of old iron, no bolt or screw, no scrap of paper should be thrown away; that the cinders of the engines could and should be utilized for that which they would make; and that was why there was a paper-mill and foundry on the Sagalac at Manitou. That was why and how, so far, he had beaten the tricksters. But while his schemes flashed before his mind, as the opiate suspended him in the middle heaven between sleep and waking, the tricksters and manipulators came hurrying after him like marauders that waited for the moment when they could rush the camp in the watches of the night. His disordered imagination saw the ruin and wreck of his work, the seizure of what was his own--the place of control on his railways, the place of the Master Man who cared infinitely more to see his designs accomplished than for the profit they would bring to himself. Yesterday he had been just at the top of the hill. The key in his fingers was turning in the lock which would make safe the securities of his life and career, when it snapped, and the world grew dark as the black curtain fell and shut out the lighted room from the wayfarer in the gloom. Then, it was, came the opaque blackness which could be felt, and his voice calling in despair: "Blind! I am blind!" He did not know that he had taken an opiate, that his friend had mercifully atrophied his rebellious nerves. These visions he was seeing were terribly true, but they somehow gave him no physical torture. It was as though one saw an operation performed upon one's body with the nerves stilled and deadened by ether. Yet he was cruelly conscious of the disaster which had come to him. For a time at least. Then his mind seemed less acute, the visions came, then without seeing them go, they went. And others came in broken patches, shreds, and dreams, phantasmagoria of the brain, and at last all were mingled and confused; but as they passed they seemed to burn his sight. How he longed for a cool bandage over his eyes, for a soft linen which would shut out the cumuli of broken hopes and designs, life's goals obliterated! He had had enough of the black procession of futile things. His longing was not denied, for even as he roused himself from the oblivion coming on him, as though by a last effort to remember his dire misfortune, maybe his everlasting tragedy, something soothing and soft like linen dipped in dew was laid upon his forehead. A cool, delicious hand covered his eyes caressingly; a voice from spheres so far away that worlds were the echoing points of the sound, came whispering to him like a stir of wings in a singing grove. With a last effort to remain in the waking world, he raised his head so very little, but fell gently back again with one sighing word on his lips: "Fleda!" It was no illusion. Fleda had come from her own night of trouble to his motherless, wifeless home, and would not be denied admittance by the nurse. It was Jim Beadle who admitted her. "He'd be mad if he knew we wouldn't let her come," Jim had said to the nurse. It was Fleda who had warned Ingolby of the dangers that surrounded him --the physical as well as business dangers. She came now to serve the blind victim of that Fate which she had seen hovering over him. The renegade daughter of the Romanys, as Jethro Fawe had called her, was, for the first time, in the house of her master Gorgio. CHAPTER XIII THE CHAIN OF THE PAST For once in its career, Lebanon was absolutely united. The blow that had brought down the Master Man had also struck the town between the eyes, and there was no one--friend or foe of Ingolby--who did not regard it as an insult and a challenge. It was now known that the roughs of Manitou, led by the big river-driver, were about to start on a raid upon Lebanon and upon Ingolby at the very moment the horseshoe did its work. All night there were groups of men waiting outside Ingolby's house. They were of all classes-carters, railway workers, bartenders, lawyers, engineers, bankers, accountants, merchants, ranchmen, carpenters, insurance agents, manufacturers, millers, horse-dealers, and so on. Some prayed for Ingolby's life, others swore viciously; and those who swore had no contempt for those who prayed, while those who prayed were tolerant of those who swore. It was a union of incongruous elements. Men who had nothing in common were one in the spirit of faction; and all were determined that the Orangeman, whose funeral was fixed for this memorable Saturday, should be carried safely to his grave. Civic pride had almost become civic fanaticism in Lebanon. One of the men beaten by Ingolby in the recent struggle for control of the railways said to the others shivering in the grey dawn: "They were bound to get him in the back. They're dagos, the lot of 'em. Skunks are skunks, even when you skin 'em." When, just before dawn, old Gabriel Druse issued from the house into which he had carried Ingolby the night before, they questioned him eagerly. He had been a figure apart from both Lebanon and Manitou, and they did not regard him as a dago, particularly as it was more than whispered that Ingolby "had a lien" on his daughter. In the grey light, with his long grizzled beard and iron-grey, shaggy hair, Druse looked like a mystic figure of the days when the gods moved among men like mortals. His great height, vast proportions, and silent ways gave him a place apart, and added to the superstitious feeling by which he was surrounded. "How is he?" they asked whisperingly, as they crowded round him. "The danger is over," was the slow, heavy reply. He will live, but he has bad days to face." "What was the danger?" they asked. "Fever--maybe brain fever," he replied. "We'll see him through," someone said. "Well, he cannot see himself through," rejoined the old man solemnly. The enigmatical words made them feel there was something behind. "Why can't he see himself through?" asked Osterhaut the universal, who had just arrived from the City Hall. "He can't see himself through because he is blind," was the heavy answer. There was a moment of shock, of hushed surprise, and then a voice burst forth: "Blind--they've blinded him, boys! The dagos have killed his sight. He's blind, boys!" A profane and angry muttering ran through the crowd, who were thirsty, hungry, and weary with watching. Osterhaut held up the horseshoe which had brought Ingolby down. "Here it is, the thing that done it. It's tied with a blue ribbon-for luck," he added ironically. "It's got his blood on it. I'm keeping it till Manitou's paid the price of it. Then I'll give it to Lebanon for keeps." "That's the thing that did it, but where's the man behind the thing?" snarled a voice. Again there was a moment's silence, and then Billy Kyle, the veteran stage-driver, said: "He's in the jug, but a gaol has doors, and doors'll open with or without keys. I'm for opening the door, boys." "What for?" asked a man who knew the answer, but who wanted the thing said. "I spent four years in Arizona, same as Jowett," Billy Kyle answered, "and I got in the way of thinking as they do there, and acting just as quick as you think. I drove stage down in the Verde Valley. Sometimes there wasn't time to bring a prisoner all the way to a judge and jury, and people was busy, and hadn't time to wait for the wagon; so they done what was right, and there was always a tree that would carry that kind o' fruit for the sake of humanity. It's the best way, boys." "This isn't Arizona or any other lyncher's country," said Halliday, the lawyer, making his way to the front. "It isn't the law, and in this country it's the law that counts. It's the Gover'ment's right to attend to that drunken dago that threw the horseshoe, and we've got to let the Gover'ment do it. No lynching on my plate, thank you. If Ingolby could speak to us, you can bet your boots it's what he'd say." "What's your opinion, boss?" asked Billy Kyle of Gabriel Druse, who had stood listening, his chin on his breast, his sombre eyes fixed on them abstractedly. At Kyle's question his eyes lighted up with a fire that was struck from a flint in other spheres, and he answered: "It is for the ruler to take life, not the subject. If it is a man that rules, it is for him; if it is the law that rules, it is for the law. Here, it is the law. Then it is not for the subject, and it is not for you." "If he was your son?" asked Billy Kyle. "If he was my son, I should be the ruler, not the law," was the grim, enigmatic reply, and the old man stalked away from them towards the bridge. "I'd bet he'd settle the dago's hash that done to his son what the Manitou dagos done to Ingolby--and settle it quick," remarked Lick Farrelly, the tinsmith. "I bet he's been a ruler or something somewhere," remarked Billy Kyle. "I bet I'm going home to breakfast," interposed Halliday, the lawyer. "There's a straight day's work before us, gentlemen," he added, "and we can't do anything here. Orangemen, let's hoof it." Twenty Orangemen stepped out from the crowd. Halliday was a past master of their lodge, and they all meant what he meant. They marched away in procession--to breakfast and to a meeting of the lodge. Others straggled after, but a few waited for the appearance of the doctor. When the sun came up and Rockwell, pale and downcast, issued forth, they gathered round him, and walked with him through the town, questioning, listening and threatening. A few still remained behind at Ingolby's house. They were of the devoted slaves of Ingolby who would follow him to the gates of Hades and back again, or not back if need be. The nigger barber, Berry, was one; another was the Jack-of-all-trades, Osterhaut, a kind of municipal odd-man, with the well-known red hair, the face that constantly needed shaving, the blue serge shirt with a scarf for a collar, the suit of canvas in the summer and of Irish frieze in the winter; the pair of hands which were always in his own pocket, never in any one else's; the grey eye, doglike in its mildness, and the long nose which gave him the name of Snorty. Of the same devoted class also was Jowett who, on a higher plane, was as wise and discerning a scout as any leader ever had. While old Berry and Osterhaut and all the others were waiting at Ingolby's house, Jowett was scouting among the Manitou roughs for the Chief Constable of Lebanon, to find out what was forward. What he had found was not reassuring, because Manitou, conscious of being in the wrong, realized that Lebanon would try to make her understand her wrong- doing; and that was intolerable. It was clear to Jowett that, in spite of all, there would be trouble at the Orange funeral, and that the threatened strike would take place at the same time in spite of Ingolby's catastrophe. Already in the early morning revengeful spirits from Lebanon had invaded the outer portions of Manitou and had taken satisfaction out of an equal number of "Dogans," as they called the Roman Catholic labourers, one of whom was carried to the hospital with an elbow out of joint and a badly injured back. With as much information as he needed, Jowett made his way back to Lebanon, when, at the approach to the bridge, he met Fleda hurrying with bent head and pale, distressed face in his own direction. Of all Western men none had a better appreciation of the sex that takes its toll of every traveller after his kind than Aaron Jowett. He had been a real buck in his day among those of his own class, and though the storm of his romances had become but a faint stirring of leaves which had tinges of days that are sear, he still had an eye unmatched for female beauty. The sun which makes that northern land a paradise in summer caught the gold- brown hair of Gabriel Druse's daughter, and made it glint and shine. It coquetted with the umber of her eyes and they grew luminous as a jewel; it struck lightly across the pale russet of her cheek and made it like an apple that one's lips touch lovingly, when one calls it "too good to eat." It made an atmosphere of half-silver and half-gold with a touch of sunrise crimson for her to walk in, translating her form into melting lines of grace. Jowett knew that Druse's daughter was on her way to the man who had looked once, looked twice, looked thrice into her eyes and had seen there his own image; and that she had done the same; and that the man, it might be, would never look into their dark depths again. He might speak once, he might speak twice, he might speak thrice, but would it ever be the same as the look that needed no words? When he crossed Fleda Druse's pathway she stopped short. She knew that Jowett was Ingolby's true friend. She had seen him often, and he was intimately associated with that day when she had run the Carillon Rapids and had lain (for how long she never dared to think) in Ingolby's arms in the sight of all the world. First among those who crowded round her at Carillon that day were Jowett and Osterhaut, who had tried to warn her. "You are going to him?" she said now with confidence in her eyes, and by the intimacy of the phrase (as though she could speak of Ingolby only as him) their own understanding was complete. "To see how he is and then to do other things," Jowett answered. There was silence for a moment in which they moved slowly forward, and then she said: "You were at Barbazon's last night?" "When that Gipsy son of a dog gave him away!" he assented. "I never heard anything like the speech Ingolby made. He had them in the throat. The Gipsy would have had nothing out of it, if it hadn't been for the horseshoe. But in spite of the giveaway, Ingolby was getting them where they were soft-fairly drugging them with good news. You never heard such dope. My, he was smooth! The golden, velvet truth it was, too. That's the only kind he has in stock; and they were sort of stupefied and locoed as they chewed his word-plant. Cicero must have been a saucy singer of the dictionary, and Paul the Apostle had a dope of his own you couldn't buy, but the gay gamut that Ingolby run gives them all the cold good- bye." She held herself very still as he spoke. There was, however, a strange, lonely look in her eyes. The man lying asleep in the darkness of body and mind yonder was not really her lover, for he had said no word direct of love to her, and she knew him so little, how could she love him? Yet there was something between them which had its authority over their lives, overcoming even that maiden modesty which was in contrast to the bold, physical thing she had done in running the Carillon Rapids those centuries ago when she was young and glad-wistfully glad. So much had come since that day, she had travelled so far on the highway of Fate, that she looked back from peak to peak of happening to an almost invisible horizon. So much had occurred and she felt so old this morning; and yet there was in her heart the undefined feeling that she must keep her radiant Spring of life for the blind Gorgio if he needed it-if he needed it. Would he need it, robbed of sight and with his life- work murdered? She shuddered as she thought of what it meant to him. If a man is to work, he must have eyes to see. Yet what had she to do with it, after all? She had no right to go to him even as she was going. Yet had she not the right of common humanity? This Gorgio was her friend. Did not the world know that he had saved her life? As they came to the Lebanon end of the bridge, Fleda turned to Jowett and, commenting on his description of the scene at Barbazon, said: "He is a great man, but he trusts too much and risks too much. That was no place for him." "Big men like him think they can do anything," Jowett replied, a little ironically, subtly trying to force a confession of her preference for Ingolby. He succeeded. Her eye lighted with indignation. She herself might challenge him, but she would not allow another to do so. "It is not the truth," she rejoined sharply. "He does not measure himself against the world so. He is like--like a child," she added. "It seems to me all big men are like that," Jowett rejoined; "and he's the biggest man the West has seen. He knows about every man's business as though it was his own. I can get a margin off most any man in the West on a horse-trade, but I'd look shy about doing a trade with him. You can't dope a horse so he won't know. He's on to it, sees it-sees it like as if it was in glass. Sees anything and everything, and--" He stopped short. The Master Gorgio could no longer see, and his henchman flushed like a girl at his "break"; though, as a horse-dealer, he had in his time listened without shame to wilder, angrier reproaches than most men living. She glanced at him, saw his confusion, forgave and understood him. "It was not the horseshoe, it was not the Gipsy," she returned. "They did not set it going. It would not have happened but for one man." "Yes, it's Marchand, right enough," answered Jowett, "but we'll get him yet. We'll get him with the branding-iron hot." "That will not put things right if--" she paused, then with a great effort she added: "Does the doctor think he will get it back and that--" She stopped suddenly in an agitation he did not care to see and he turned away his head. "Doctor doesn't know," he answered. "There's got to be an expert. It'll take time before he gets here, but--" he could not help but say it, seeing how great her distress was--"but it's going to come back. I've seen cases--I saw one down on the Border"--how easily he lied!--"just like his. It was blasting that done it--the shock. But the sight come back all right, and quick too--like as I've seen a paralizite get up all at once and walk as though he'd never been locoed. Why, God Almighty don't let men like Ingolby be done like that by reptiles same's Marchand." "You believe in God Almighty?" she said half-wonderingly, yet with gratitude in her tone. "You understand about God?" "I've seen too many things not to try and deal fair with Him and not try to cheat Him," he answered. "I see things lots of times that wasn't ever born on the prairie or in any house. I've seen--I've seen enough," he said abruptly, and stopped. "What have you seen?" she asked eagerly. "Was it good or bad?" "Both," he answered quickly. "I was stalked once--stalked I was by night and often in the open day, by some sickly, loathsome thing, that even made me fight it with my hands--a thing I couldn't see. I used to fire buckshot at it, enough to kill an army, till I near went mad. I was really and truly getting loony. Then I took to prayin' to the best woman I ever knowed. I never had a mother, but she looked after me--my sister, Sara, it was. She brought me up, and then died and left me without anything to hang on to. I didn't know all I'd lost till she was gone. But I guess she knew what I thought of her; for she come back--after I'd prayed till I couldn't see. She come back into my room one night when the cursed 'haunt' was prowling round me, and as plain as I see you, I saw her. 'Be at peace,' she said, and I spoke to her, and said, 'Sara- why, Sara' and she smiled, and went away into nothing--like a bit o' cloud in the sun." He stopped, and was looking straight before him as though he saw a vision. "It went?" she asked breathlessly. "It went like that--" He made a swift, outward gesture. "It went and it never came back; and she didn't either--not ever. My idee is," he added, "that there's evil things that mebbe are the ghost-shapes of living men that want to do us harm; though, mebbe, too, they're the ghost-shapes of men that's dead, but that can't get on Over There. So they try to get back to us here; and they can make life Hell while they're stalking us." "I am sure you are right," she said. She was thinking of the loathsome thing which haunted her room last night. Was it the embodied second self of Jethro Fawe, doing the evil that Jethro Fawe, the visible corporeal man, wished to do? She shuddered, then bent her head and fixed her mind on Ingolby, whose house was not far away. She felt strangely, miserably alone this morning. She was in that fluttering state which follows a girl's discovery that she is a woman, and the feeling dawns that she must complete herself by joining her own life with the life of another. She showed no agitation, but her repression gave an almost statuesque character to her face and figure. The adventurous nature of her early life had given her a power to meet shock and danger with coolness, and though the news of Ingolby's tragedy had seemed to freeze the vital forces in her, and all the world became blank for a moment, she had controlled herself and had set forth to go to him, come what might. As she entered the street where Ingolby lived, she suddenly realized the difficulty before her. She might go to him, but by only one right could she stay and nurse him, and that right she did not possess. He would, she knew, understand her, no matter how the world babbled. Why should the world babble? What woman could have designs upon a blind man? Was not humanity alone sufficient warrant for staying by his side? Yet would he wish it? Suddenly her heart sank; but again she remembered their last parting, and once more she was sure he would be glad to have her with him. It flashed upon her how different it would have been, if he and she had been Romanys, and this thing had happened over there in the far lands she knew so well. Who would have hinted at shame, if she had taken him to her father's tan or gone to his tan and tended him as a man might tend a man? Humanity would have been the only convention; there would have been no sex, no false modesty, no babble, no reproach. If it had been a man as old as the oldest or as young as Jethro Fawe it would have made no difference. As young as Jethro Fawe! Why was it that now she could never think of the lost and abandoned Romany life without thinking also of Jethro Fawe? Why should she hate him, despise him, revolt against him, and yet feel that, as it were by invisible cords, he drew her back to that which she had forsworn, to the Past which dragged at her feet? The Romany was not dead in her; her real struggle was yet to come; and in a vague but prophetic way she realized it. She was not yet one with the settled western world. As they came close to Ingolby's house she heard marching footsteps, and in the near distance she saw fourscore or more men tramping in military order. "Who are they?" she asked of Jowett. "Men that are going to see law and order kept in Lebanon," he answered. CHAPTER XIV SUCH THINGS MAY NOT BE A few hours later Fleda slowly made her way homeward through the woods on the Manitou side of the Sagalac. Leaving Ingolby's house, she had seen men from the ranches and farms and mines beyond Lebanon driving or riding into the town, as though to a fair or fete-day. Word of anticipated troubles had sped through the countryside, and the innate curiosity of a race who greatly love a row brought in sensation-lovers. Some were skimming along in one-horse gigs, a small bag of oats dangling beneath like the pendulum of a great clock. Others were in double or triple- seated light wagons--"democrats" they were called. Women had a bit of colour in their hats or at their throats, and the men had on clean white collars and suits of "store-clothes"--a sign of being on pleasure bent. Young men and girls on rough but serviceable mounts cantered past, laughing and joking, and their loud talking grated on the ear of the girl who had seen a Napoleon in the streets of his Moscow. Presently there crossed her path a gruesomely ugly hearse, with glass sides and cheap imitation ostrich plumes drawn by gorged ravens of horses with egregiously long tails, and driven by an undertaker's assistant, who, with a natural gaiety of soul, displayed an idiotic solemnity by dragging down the corners of the mouth. She turned away in loathing. Her mind fled to a scene far away in the land of the Volga when she was a child, where she had seen buried two men, who had fought for their insulted honour till both had died of their wounds. She remembered the white and red sashes and the gay scarfs worn by the women at the burial, the jackets with great silver buttons worn by the men, and the silver- mounted pistols and bright steel knives in the garish belts. She saw again the bodies of the two gladiators, covered with crimson robes, carried shoulder-high on a soft bed of interlaced branches to the graves beneath the trees. There, covered with flowers and sprigs and evergreens, ribbons and favours, the kindly earth hid them, cloaked for their long sleep, while women wept, and men praised the dead, and went back to the open road again cheerily, as the dead would have them do. If he had died--the man she had just left behind in that torpid sleep which opiates bring--his body would have been carried to his last home in just such a hideous equipage as this hearse. A shiver of revolt went through her frame, and her mind went to him as she had seen him lying between the white sheets of his bed, his hands, as they had lain upon the coverlet, compact of power and grace, knit and muscular and vital--not the hand for a violin but the hand for a sword. As she had laid her hand upon his hot forehead and over his eyes, he had unconsciously spoken her name. That had told her more of what really was between them than she had ever known. In the presence of the catastrophe that must endanger, if not destroy the work he had done, the career he had made, he thought of her, spoke her name. What could she do to prevent his ruin? She must do something, else she had no right to think of him. As though her thoughts had summoned him, she came suddenly upon Felix Marchand at a point where her path resolved itself into two, one leading to Manitou, the other to her own home. There was a malicious glint in the greenish eyes of the dissolute demagogue as he saw her. His hat made a half-circle before it found his head again. "You pay early visits, mademoiselle," he said, his teeth showing rat- like. "And you late ones?" she asked meaningly. "Not so late that I can't get up early to see what's going on," he rejoined in a sour voice. "Is it that those who beat you have to get up early?" she asked ironically. "No one has got up earlier than me lately," he sneered. "All the days are not begun," she remarked calmly. "You have picked up quite an education since you left the road and the tan," he said with the look of one who delivers a smashing blow. "I am not yet educated enough to know how you get other people to commit your crimes for you," she retorted. "Who commits my crimes for me?" His voice was sharp and even anxious. "The man who told you I was once a Gipsy--Jethro Fawe." Her instinct had told her this was so. But had Jethro told all? She thought not. It would need some catastrophe which threw him off his balance to make him speak to a Gorgio of the inner things of Romany life; and child--marriage was one of them. He scoffed. "Once a Gipsy always a Gipsy. Race is race, and you can't put it off and on like--your stocking." He was going to say chemise, but race was race, and vestiges of native French chivalry stayed the gross simile on the lips of the degenerate. Fleda's eyes, however, took on a dark and brooding look which, more than anything else, showed the Romany in her. With a murky flood of resentment rising in her veins, she strove to fight back the half-savage instincts of a bygone life. She felt as though she could willingly sentence this man to death as her father had done Jethro Fawe that very morning. Another thought, however, was working and fighting in her--that Marchand was better as a friend than an enemy; and that while Ingolby's fate was in the balance, while yet the Orange funeral had not taken place and the strikes had not yet come, it might be that he could be won over to Ingolby. Her mind was thus involuntarily reproducing Ingolby's policy, as he had declared it to Jowett and Rockwell. It was to find Felix Marchand's price, and to buy off his enmity--not by money, for Marchand did not need that, but by those other coins of value which are individual to each man's desires, passions and needs. "Once a Frenchman isn't always a Frenchman," she replied coolly, disregarding the coarse insolence of his last utterance. "You yourself do not now swear faith to the tricolour or the fleur-de-lis." He flushed. She had touched a tender nerve. "I am a Frenchman always," he rejoined angrily. "I hate the English. I spit on the English flag." "Yes, I've heard you are an anarchist," she rejoined. "A man with no country and with a flag that belongs to no country--quelle affaire et quelle drolerie!" She laughed. Taken aback in spite of his anger, he stared at her. How good her French accent was! If she would only speak altogether in that beloved language, he could smother much malice. She was beautiful and-- well, who could tell? Ingolby was wounded and blind, maybe for ever, and women are always with the top dog--that was his theory. Perhaps her apparent dislike of him was only a mood. Many women that he had conquered had been just like that. They had begun by disliking him--from Lil Sarnia down--and had ended by being his. This girl would never be his in the way that the others had been, but--who could tell?--perhaps he would think enough of her to marry her? Anyway, it was worth while making such a beauty care for him. The other kind of women were easy enough to get, and it would be a piquant thing to have one irreproachable affaire. He had never had one; he was not sure that any girl or woman he had ever known had ever loved him, and he was certain that he had never loved any girl or woman. To be in love would be a new and piquant experience for him. He did not know love, but he knew what passion was. He had ever been the hunter. This trail might be dangerous, too, but he would take his chances. He had seen her dislike of him whenever they had met in the past, and he had never tried to soften her attitude towards him. He had certainly whistled, but she had not come. Well, he would whistle again--a different tune. "You speak French much?" he asked almost eagerly, the insolence gone from his tone. "Why didn't I know that?" "I speak French in Manitou," she replied, "but nearly all the French speak English there, and so I speak more English than French." "Yes, that's it," he rejoined almost angrily again. "The English will not learn French, will not speak French. They make us learn English, and--" "If you don't like the flag and the country, why don't you leave it?" she interrupted, hardening, though she had meant to try and win him over to Ingolby's side. His eyes blazed. There was something almost real in the man after all. "The English can kill us, they can grind us to the dust," he rejoined in French, "but we will not leave the land which has always been ours. We settled it; our fathers gave their lives for it in a thousand places. The Indians killed them, the rivers and the storms, the plague and the fire, the sickness and the cold wiped them out. They were burned alive at the stake, they were flayed; their bones were broken to pieces by stones--but they blazed trails with their blood in the wilderness from New Orleans to Hudson's Bay. They paid for the land with their lives. Then the English came and took it, and since that time--one hundred and fifty years--we have been slaves." "You do not look like a slave," she answered, "and you have not acted like a slave. If you were to do the things in France that you've done here, you wouldn't be free as you are to-day." "What have I done?" he asked darkly. "You were the cause of what happened at Barbazon's last night,"--he smiled evilly--"you are egging on the roughs to break up the Orange funeral to-day; and there is all the rest you know so well." "What is the rest I know so well?" He looked closely at her, his long, mongrel eyes half-closing with covert scrutiny. "Whatever it is, it is all bad and it is all yours." "Not all," he retorted coolly. "You forget your Gipsy friend. He did his part last night, and he's still free." They had entered the last little stretch of wood in which her home lay, and she slackened her footsteps slightly. She felt that she had been unwise in challenging him; that she ought to try persistently to win him over. It was repugnant to her, still it must be done even yet. She mastered herself for Ingolby's sake and changed her tactics. "As you glory in what you have done, you won't mind being responsible for all that's happened," she replied in a more friendly tone. She made an impulsive gesture towards him. "You have shown what power you have--isn't that enough?" she asked. "You have made the crowd shout, 'Vive Marchand !' You can make everything as peaceful as it is now upset. If you don't do so, there will be much misery. If peace must be got by force, then the force of government will get it in the end. You have the gift of getting hold of the worst men here, and you have done it; but won't you now master them again in the other way? You have money and brains; why not use them to become a leader of those who will win at last, no matter what the game may be?" He came close to her. She shrank inwardly, but she did not move. His greenish eyes were wide open in the fulness of eloquence and desire. "You have a tongue like none I ever heard," he said impulsively. "You've got a mind that thinks, you've got dash and can take risks. You took risks that day on the Carillon Rapids. It was only the day before that I'd met you by the old ford of the Sagalac, and made up to you. You choked me off as though I was a wolf or a devil on the loose. The next day when I saw Ingolby hand you out to the crowd from his arms, I got nasty--I have fits like that sometimes, when I've had a little too much liquor. I felt it more because you're the only kind of woman that could ever get a real hold on me. It was you made me get the boys rampaging and set the toughs moving. As you say, I can get hold of a crowd. It's not hard--with money and drink. You can buy human nature cheap. Every man has his price they say--and every woman too--bien sur! The thing is to find out what is the price, and then how to buy. You can't buy everyone in the same way, even if you use a different price. You've got to find out how they want the price--whether it's to be handed over the counter, so to speak, or to be kept on the window-sill, or left in a pocket, or dropped in a path, or dug up like a potato, with a funny make- believe that fools nobody, but just plays to the hypocrite in everyone everywhere. I'm saying this to you because you've seen more of the world, I bet, than one in a million, even though you're so young. I don't see why we can't come together. I'm to be bought. I don't say that my price isn't high. You've got your price, too. You wouldn't fuss yourself about things here in Manitou and Lebanon, if there wasn't something you wanted to get. Tout ca! Well, isn't it worth while making the bargain? You've got such gift of speech that I'm just as if I'd been drugged, and all round, face, figure, eyes, hair, foot, and girdle, you're worth giving up a lot for. I've seen plenty of your sex, and I've heard crowds of them talk, but they never had anything for me beyond the minute. You've got the real thing. You're my fancy. You've been thinking and dreaming of Ingolby. He's done. He's a back number. There's nothing he's done that isn't on the tumble since last night. The financial gang that he downed are out already against him. They'll have his economic blood. He made a splash while he was at it, but the alligator's got him. It's 'Exit Ingolby,' now." She made a passionate gesture, and seemed about to speak, but he went on: "No, don't say anything. I know how you feel. You've had your face turned his way, and you can't look elsewhere all at once. But Time cures quick, if you're a good healthy human being. Ingolby was the kind likely to draw a girl. He's a six-footer and over; he spangled a lot, and he smiled pretty--comme le printemps, and was sharp enough to keep clear of women that could hurt him. That was his strongest point after all, for a little, sly sprat of a woman that's made eyes at you and led you on, till you sent her a note in a hurry some time with some loose hot words in it, and she got what she'd wanted, will make you pay a hundred times for the goods you get. Ingolby was sharp enough to walk shy, until you came his way, and then he lost his underpinning. But last night got him in the vitals--hit him between the eyes; and his stock's not worth ten cents in the dollar to-day. But though the pumas are out, and he's done, and'll never see his way out of the hole he's in"--he laughed at his grisly joke"--it's natural to let him down easy. You've looked his way; he did you a good turn at the Carillon Rapids, and you'd do one for him if you could. I'm the only one can stop the worst from happening. You want to pay your debt to him. Good. I can help you do it. I can stop the strikes on the railways and in the mills. I can stop the row at the Orange funeral. I can stop the run on his bank and the drop in his stock. I can fight the gang that's against him--I know how. I'm the man that can bring things to pass." He paused with a sly, mean smile of self-approval and conceit, and his tongue licked the corners of his mouth in a way that drunkards have in the early morning when the effect of last night's drinking has worn off. He spread out his hands with the air of a man who had unpacked his soul, but the chief characteristic of his manner was egregious belief in himself. At first, in her desire to find a way to meet the needs of Ingolby, Fleda had listened to him with fortitude and even without revolt. But as he began to speak of women, and to refer to herself with a look of gloating which men of his breed cannot hide, her angry pulses beat hard. She did not quite know where he was leading, but she was sure he meant to say something which would vex her beyond bearing. At one moment she meant to cut short his narrative, but he prevented her, and when at last he ended, she was almost choking with agitation. It had been borne in upon her as his monologue proceeded, that she would rather die than accept anything from this man--anything of any kind. To fight him was the only thing. Nothing else could prevail in the end. His was the service of the unpenitent thief. "And what is it you want to buy from me?" she asked evenly. He did not notice, and he could not realize that ominous thing in her voice and face. "I want to be friends with you. I want to see you here in the woods, to meet you as you met Ingolby. I want to talk with you, to hear you talk; to learn things from you I never learned before; to--" She interrupted him with a swift gesture. "And then--after that? What do you want at the end of it all? One cannot spend one's time talking and wandering in the woods and teaching and learning. After that, what?" "I have a house in Montreal," he said evasively. "I don't want to live there alone." He laughed. "It's big enough for two, and at the end it might be us two, if--" With sharp anger, yet with coolness and dignity, she broke in on his words. "Might be us two!" she exclaimed. "I have never thought of making my home in a sewer. Do you think--but, no, it isn't any use talking! You don't know how to deal with man or woman. You are perverted." "I did not mean what you mean; I meant that I should want to marry you," he protested. "You think the worst of me. Someone has poisoned your mind against me." "Everyone has poisoned my mind against you," she returned, "and yourself most of all. I know you will try to injure Mr. Ingolby; and I know that you will try to injure me; but you will not succeed." She turned and moved away from him quickly, taking the path towards her own front door. He called something after her, but she did not or would not hear. As she entered the open space in front of the house, she heard footsteps behind her and turned quickly, not without apprehension. A woman came hurrying towards her. She was pale, agitated, haggard with fatigue. "May I speak with you?" she asked in French. "Surely," replied Fleda. CHAPTER XV THE WOMAN FROM WIND RIVER "What is it?" asked Fleda, opening the door of the house. "I want to speak to you about m'sieu'," replied the sad-faced woman. She made a motion of her head backwards towards the wood. "About M'sieu' Marchand." Fleda's face hardened; she had had more than enough of "M'sieu' Marchand." She was bitterly ashamed that she had, even for a moment, thought of using diplomacy with him. But this woman's face was so forlorn, apart, and lonely, that the old spirit of the Open Road worked its will. In far-off days she had never seen a human being turned away from a Romany tent, or driven from a Romany camp. She opened the door and stood aside to admit the wayfarer. A few moments later, the woman, tidied and freshened, sat at the ample breakfast which was characteristic of Romany home-life. The woman's plate was bountifully supplied by Fleda, and her cup filled more than once by Madame Bulteel, while old Gabriel Druse bulked friendly over all. His face now showed none of the passion and sternness which had been present when he passed the Sentence of the Patrin upon Jethro Fawe; nothing of the gloom filling his eyes as he left Ingolby's house. The gracious, bountiful look of the patriarch, of the head of the clan, was upon him. The husband of one wife, the father of one child, yet the Ry of Rys had still the overlooking, protective sense of one who had the care of great numbers of people. His keen eyes foresaw more of the story the woman was to tell presently than either of the women of his household. He had seen many such women as this, and had inflexibly judged between them and those who had wronged them. "Where have you come from?" he asked, as the meal drew to a close. "From Wind River and under Elk Mountain," the woman answered with a look of relief. Her face was of those who no longer can bear the soul's secrets. There was silence while the breakfast things were cleared away, and the window was thrown wide to the full morning sun. It broke through the branches of pine and cedar and juniper; it made translucent the leaves of the maples; it shimmered on Fleda's brown hair as she pulled a rose from the bush at the window, and gave it to the forlorn creature in the grey "linsey-woolsey" dress and the loose blue flannel jacket, whose skin was coarsened by outdoor life, but who had something of real beauty in the intense blue of her eyes. She had been a very comely figure in her best days, for her waist was small, her bosom gently and firmly rounded, and her hands were finer than those of most who live and work much in the open air. "You said there was something you wished to tell me," said Fleda, at last. The woman gazed slowly round at the three, as though with puzzled appeal. There was the look of the Outlander in her face; of one who had been exiled from familiar things and places. In manner she was like a child. Her glance wandered over the faces of the two women, then her eyes met those of the Ry, and stayed there. "I am old and I have seen many sorrows," said Gabriel Druse, divining what was in her mind. "I will try to understand." "I have known all the bitterness of life," interposed the low, soft voice of Madame Bulteel. "All ears are the same here," Fleda added, looking the woman in the eyes. "I will tell everything," was the instant reply. Her fingers twined and untwined in her lap with a nervousness shown by neither face nor body. Her face was almost apathetic in its despair, but her body had an upright courage. She sighed heavily and began. "My name is Arabella Stone. I was married from my home over against Wind River by the Jumping Sandhills. "My father was a lumberman. He was always captain of the gang in the woods, and captain of the river in the summer. My mother was deaf and dumb. It was very lonely at times when my father was away. I loved a boy--a good boy, and he was killed breaking horses. When I was twenty- one years old my mother died. It was not good for me to be alone, my father said, so he must either give up the woods and the river, or he or I must marry. Well, I saw he would not marry, for my mother's face was one a man could not forget." The old man stirred in his seat. "I have seen such," he said in his deep voice. "So it was I said to myself I would marry," she continued, "though I had loved the Boy that died under the hoofs of the black stallion. There weren't many girls at the Jumping Sandhills, and so there were men, now one, now another, to say things to me which did not touch my heart; but I did not laugh, because I understood that they were lonely. Yet I liked one of them more than all the others. "So, for my father's sake, I came nearer to Dennis, and at last it seemed I could bear to look at him any time of the day or night he came to me. He was built like a pine-tree, and had a playful tongue, and also he was a ranchman like the Boy that was gone. It all came about on the day he rode in from the range the wild wicked black stallion which all range- riders had tried for years to capture. It was like a brother of the horse which had killed my Boy, only bigger. When Dennis mastered him and rode him to my door I made up my mind, and when he whispered to me over the dipper of buttermilk I gave him, I said, 'Yes.' I was proud of him. He did things that a woman likes, and said the things a woman loves to hear, though they be the same thing said over and over again." Madame Bulteel nodded her head as though in a dream, and the Ry of Rys sat with his two great hands on the chair-arm and his chin dropped on his chest. Fleda's hands were clasped in her lap, and her big eyes never left the woman's face. "Before a month was gone I had married him," the, low, tired voice went on. "It was a gay wedding; and my father was very happy, for he thought I had got the desire of a woman's life--a home of her own. For a time all went well. Dennis was gay and careless and wilful, but he was easy to live with, too, except when he came back from the town where he sold his horses. Then he was different, because of the drink, and he was quarrelsome with me--and cruel, too. "At last when he came home with the drink upon him, he would sleep on the floor and not beside me. This wore upon my heart. I thought that if I could only put my hand on his shoulder and whisper in his ear, he would get better of his bad feeling; but he was sulky, and he would not bear with me. Though I never loved him as I loved my Boy, still I tried to be a good wife to him, and never turned my eyes to any other man." Suddenly she stopped as though the pain of speaking was too great. Madame Bulteel murmured something, but the only word that reached the ears of the others was the Arabic word 'mafish'. Her pale face was suffused as she said it. Two or three times the woman essayed to speak again, but could not. At last, however, she overcame her emotion and said: "So it was when M'sieu' Felix Marchand came up from the Sagalac." The old man started and muttered harshly, but Fleda had foreseen the entrance of the dissolute Frenchman into the tale, and gave no sign of surprise. "M'sieu' Marchand bought horses," the sad voice trailed on. "One day he bought the mining-claims Dennis had been holding till he could develop them or sell them for good money. When Dennis went to town again he brought me back a present of a belt with silver clasps; but yet again that night he slept upon the floor alone. So it went on. M. Marchand, he goes on to the mountains and comes back; and he buys more horses, and Dennis takes them to Yargo, and M. Marchand goes with him, but comes back before Dennis does. It was then M'sieu' begun to talk to me; to say things that soothe a woman when she is hurt. I knew now Dennis did not want me as when he first married me. He was that kind of man--quick to care and quicker to forget. He was weak, he could not fasten where he stood. It pleased him to be gay and friendly with me when he was sober, but there was nothing behind it--nothing, nothing at all. At last I began to cry when I thought of it, for it went on and on, and I was too much alone. I looked at myself in the glass, and I saw I was not old or lean. I sang in the trees beside the brook, and my voice was even a little better than in the days when Dennis first came to my father's house. I looked to my cooking, and I knew that it was as good as ever. I thought of my clothes, and how I did my hair, and asked myself if I was as fresh to see as when Dennis first came to me. I could see no difference. There was a clear pool not far away under the little hills where the springs came together. I used to bathe in it every morning and dry myself in the sun; and my body was like a child's. That being so, should my own man turn his head away from me day or night? What had I done to be used so, less than two years after I had married!" She paused and hung her head, weeping gently. "Shame stings a woman like nothing else," Madame Bulteel said with a sigh. "It was so with me," continued Dennis's wife. "Then at last the thought came that there was another woman. And all the time M. Marchand kept coming and going, at first when Dennis was there, and always with some good reason for coming--horses, cattle, shooting, or furs bought of the Indians. When Dennis was not there, he came at first for an hour or two, as if by chance, then for a whole day, because he said he knew I was lonely. One day, I was sitting by the pool--it was in the evening. I was crying because of the thought that followed me of another woman somewhere, who made Dennis turn from me. Then it was M'sieu' came and put a hand on my shoulder--he came so quietly that I did not hear him till he touched me. He said he knew why I cried, and it saddened his soul." "His soul--the jackal!" growled the old man in his beard. The woman nodded wearily and went on. "For all of ten days I had been alone, except for the cattlemen camping a mile away and an old Indian helper who slept in his tepee within call. Loneliness makes you weak when there's something tearing at the heart. So I let M'sieu' Marchand talk to me. At last he told me that there was a woman at Yargo--that Dennis did not go there for business, but to her. Everyone knew it except me, he said. He told me to ask old Throw Hard, the Indian helper, if he had spoken the truth. I was shamed, and angry and crazy, too, I think, so I went to old Throw Hard and asked him. He said he could not tell the truth, and that he would not lie to me. So I knew it was all true. "How do I know what was in my mind? Is a woman not mad at such a time! There I was, tossed aside for a flyaway, who was for any man that would come her way. Yes, I think I was mad. The pride in me was hurt--as only a woman can understand." She paused and looked at the two women who listened to her. Fleda's eyes were on the world beyond the window of the room. "Surely we understand," whispered Madame Bulteel. The woman's courage returned, and she continued: "I could not go to my father, for he was riding the river scores of miles away. I was terribly alone. It was then that M'sieu' Marchand, who had bribed the woman to draw Dennis away, begged me to go away with him. He swore I should marry him as soon as I could be free of Dennis. I scarcely knew what I said or thought; but the place I had loved was hateful to me, so I went away with him." A sharp, pained exclamation broke from the lips of Madame Bulteel, but presently she reached out and laid a hand upon the woman's arm. "Of course you went with him," she said. "You could not stay where you were and face the return of Dennis. There was no child to keep you, and the man that tempted you said he adored you?" The woman looked gratefully at her. "That was what he said," she answered. "He said he was tired of wandering, and that he wanted a home- and there was a big house in Montreal." She stopped suddenly upon an angry, smothered word from Fleda's lips. A big house in Montreal! Fleda's first impulse was to break in upon the woman's story and tell her father what had happened just now outside their own house; but she waited. "Yes, there was a big house in Montreal?" said Fleda, her eyes now resting sadly upon the woman. "He said it should be mine. But that did not count. To be far away from all that had been was more than all else. I was not thinking of the man, or caring for him, I was flying from my shame. I did not see then the shame to which I was going. I was a fool, and I was mad and bad also. When I waked--and it was soon--there was quick understanding between us. The big house in Montreal--that was never meant for me. He was already married." The old man stretched heavily to his feet, leaned both hands on the table, and looked at the woman with glowering eyes, while Fleda's heart seemed to stop beating. "Married!" growled Gabriel Druse, with a blur of passion in his voice. He knew that Felix Marchand had followed his daughter as though he were a single man. Fleda saw what was working in his mind. Since her father suspected, he should know all. "He almost offered me the big house in Montreal this morning," she said evenly and coldly. A malediction broke from the old man's lips. "He almost thought he wanted me to marry him," Fleda added scornfully. "And what did you say?" Druse asked. "There could only be one thing to say. I told him I had never thought of making my home in a sewer." A grim smile broke over the old man's face, and he sat down again. "Because I saw him with you I wanted to warn you," the woman continued. "Yesterday, I came to warn him of his danger, and he laughed at me. From Madame Thibadeau I heard he had said he would make you sing his song. When I came to tell you, there he was with you. But when he left you I was sure there was no need to speak. Still I felt I must tell you-- perhaps because you are rich and strong, and will stop him from doing more harm." "How do you know we are rich?" asked Druse in a rough tone. "It is what the world says," was the reply. "Is there harm in that? In any case it was right to tell you all; so that one who had herded with a woman like me should not be friends with you." "I have seen worse women than you," murmured the old man. "What danger did you come to warn M. Marchand about?" asked Fleda. "To his life," answered the woman. "Do you want to save his life?" asked the old man. "Ah, is it not always so?" intervened Madame Bulteel in a low, sad voice. "To be wronged like that does not make a woman just." "I am just," answered the woman. "He deserves to die, but I want to save the man that will kill him when they meet." "Who will kill him?" asked Fleda. "Dennis--he will kill Marchand if he can." The old man leaned forward with puzzled, gloomy interest. "Why? Dennis left you for another. You say he had grown cold. Was that not what he wanted--that you should leave him?" The woman looked at him with tearful eyes. "If I had known Dennis better, I should have waited. What he did is of the moment only. A man may fall and rise again, but it is not so with a woman. She thinks and thinks upon the scar that shows where she wounded herself; and she never forgets, and so her life becomes nothing--nothing." No one saw that Madame Bulteel held herself rigidly, and was so white that even the sunlight was gold beside her look. Yet the strangest, saddest smile played about her lips; and presently, as the eyes of the others fastened on the woman and did not leave her, she regained her usual composure. The woman kept looking at Gabriel Druse. "When Dennis found that I had gone, and knew why--for I left word on a sheet of paper--he went mad like me. Trailing to the south, to find M'sieu' Marchand, he had an accident, and was laid up in a shack for weeks on the Tanguishene River, and they could not move him. But at last a ranchman wrote to me, and the letter found me on the very day I left M'sieu'. When I got that letter begging me to go to the Tanguishene River, to nurse Dennis who loved me still, my heart sank. I said to myself I could not go; and Dennis and I must be apart always to the end of time. But then I thought again. He was ill, and his body was as broken as his mind. Well, since I could do his mind no good, I would try to help his body. I could do that much for him. So I went. But the letter to me had been long on the way, and when I got to the Tanguishene River he was almost well." She paused and rocked her body to and fro for a moment as though in pain. "He wanted me to go back to him then. He said he had never cared for the woman at Yargo, and that what he felt for me now was different from what it had ever been. When he had settled accounts we could go back to the ranch and be at peace. I knew what he meant by settling accounts, and it frightened me. That is why I am here. I came to warn the man, Marchand, for if Dennis kills him, then they will hang Dennis. Do you not see? This is a country of law. I saw that Dennis had the madness in his brain, and so I left him again in the evening of the day I found him, and came here--it is a long way. Yesterday, M'sieu' Marchand laughed at me when I warned him. He said he could take care of himself. But such men as Dennis stop at nothing; there will be killing, if M'sieu' stays here." "You will go back to Dennis?" asked Fleda gently. "Some other woman will make him happy when he forgets me," was the cheerless, grey reply. The old man got up and, coming over, laid a hand upon her shoulder. "Where did you think of going from here?" he asked. "Anywhere--I don't know," was the reply. "Is there no work here for her?" he asked, turning to Madame Bulteel. "Yes, plenty," was the reply. "And room also?" he asked again. "Was ever a tent too full, when the lost traveller stumbled into camp in the old days?" rejoined Fleda. The woman trembled to her feet, a glad look in her eyes. "I ought to go, but I am tired and I will gladly stay," she said and swayed against the table. Madame Bulteel and Fleda put their arms round her, steadying her. "This is not the way to act," said Fleda with a touch of sharp reproof. Had she not her own trouble to face? The stricken woman drew herself up and looked Fleda in the eyes. "I will find the right way, if I can," she said with courage. A half-hour later, as the old man sat alone in the room where he had breakfasted, a rifle-shot rang out in the distance. "The trouble begins," he said, as he rose and hastened into the hallway. Another shot rang out. He caught up his wide felt hat, reached for a great walking-stick in the corner, and left the house hurriedly. CHAPTER XVI THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE It was a false alarm which had startled Gabriel Druse, but it had significance. The Orange funeral was not to take place until eleven o'clock, and it was only eight o'clock when the Ry left his home. A rifle-shot had, however, been fired across the Sagalac from the Manitou side, and it had been promptly acknowledged from Lebanon. There was a short pause, and then came another from the Lebanon side. It was merely a warning and a challenge. The only man who could have controlled the position was blind and helpless. As Druse walked rapidly towards the bridge, he met Jowett. Jowett was one of the few men in either town for whom the Ry had regard, and the friendliness had had its origin in Jowett's knowledge of horseflesh. This was a field in which the Ry was himself a master. He had ever been too high-placed among his own people to trade and barter horses except when, sending a score of Romanys on a hunt for wild ponies on the hills of Eastern Europe, he had afterwards sold the tamed herd to the highest bidders in some Balkan town; but he had an infallible eye for a horse. It was a curious anomaly also that the one man in Lebanon who would not have been expected to love and pursue horse-flesh was the Reverend Reuben Tripple to whom Ingolby had given his conge, but who loved a horse as he loved himself. He was indeed a greater expert in horses than in souls. One of the sights of Lebanon had been the appearance in the field of the "Reverend Tripple," who owned a great, raw-boned bay mare of lank proportions, the winner of a certain great trotting-race which had delighted the mockers. For two years Jowett had eyed Mr. Tripple's rawbone with a piratical eye. Though it had won only a single great race, that, in Jowett's view, was its master's fault. As the Arabs say, however, Allah is with the patient; and so it was that on the evening of the day in which Ingolby met disaster, Mr. Tripple informed Jowett that he was willing to sell his rawbone. He was mounted on the gawky roadster when he met Gabriel Druse making for the bridge. Their greeting was as cordial as hasty. Anxious as was the Ry to learn what was going on in the towns, Jowett's mount caught his eye. It was but a little time since they had met at Ingolby's house, and they were both full of the grave events afoot, but here was a horse-deal of consequence, and the bridle-rein was looseflung. "Yes, I got it," said Jowett, with a chuckle, interpreting the old man's look. "I got it for good--a wonder from Wonderville. Damned queer- looking critter, but there, I guess we know what I've got. Outside like a crinoline, inside like a pair of ankles of the Lady Jane Plantagenet. Yes, I got it, Mr. Druse, got it dead-on!" "How?" asked the Ry, feeling the clean fetlocks with affectionate approval. "He's off East, so he says," was the joyous reply; "sudden but sure, and I dunno why. Anyway, he's got the door-handle offered, and he's off without his camel." He stroked the neck of the bay lovingly. "How much?" Jowett held up his fingers. The old man lifted his eyebrows quizzically. "That-h'm! Does he preach as well as that?" he asked. Jowett chuckled. "He knows the horse-country better than the New Jerusalem, I guess; and I wasn't off my feed, nor hadn't lost my head neither. I wanted that dust-hawk, and he knew it; but I got in on him with the harness and the sulky. The bridle he got from a Mexican that come up here a year ago, and went broke and then went dead; and there being no padre, Tripple did the burying, and he took the bridle as his fee, I s'pose. It had twenty dollars' worth of silver on it--look at these conchs." He trifled with the big beautiful buttons on the head-stall. "The sulky's as good as new, and so's the harness almost; and there's the nose-bag and the blankets, and a saddle and a monkey-wrench and two bottles of horse-liniment, and odds and ends. I only paid that"--and he held up his fingers again as though it was a sacred rite--"for the lot. Not bad, I want to say. Isn't he good for all day, this one?" The old man nodded, then turned towards the bridge. "The gun-shots-- what?" he asked, setting forward at a walk which taxed the rawbone's stride. "An invite--come to the wedding; that's all. Only it's a funeral this time, and, if something good doesn't happen, there'll be more than one funeral on the Sagalac to-morrow. I've had my try, but I dunno how it'll come out. He's not a man of much dictionary is the Monseenoor." "The Monseigneur Lourde? What does he say?" "He says what we all say, that he is sorry. 'But why have the Orange funeral while things are as they are?' he says, and he asks for the red flag not to be shook in the face of the bull." "That is not the talk of a fool, as most priests are," growled the other. "Sure. But it wants a real wind-warbler to make them see it in Lebanon. They've got the needle. They'll pray to-day with the taste of blood in their mouths. It's gone too far. Only a miracle can keep things right. The Mayor has wired for the mounted police--our own battalion of militia wouldn't serve, and there'd be no use ordering them out--but the Riders can't get here in time. The train's due the very time the funeral's to start, but that train's always late, though they say the ingine-driver is an Orangeman! And the funeral will start at the time fixed, or I don't know the boys that belong to the lodge. So it's up to We, Us & Co. to see the thing through, or go bust. It don't suit me. It wouldn't have been like this, if it hadn't been for what happened to the Chief last night. There's no holding the boys in. One thing's sure, the Gipsy that give Ingolby away has got to lie low if he hasn't got away, or there'll be one less of his tribe to eat the juicy hedgehog. Yes, sir-ee!" To the last words of Jowett the Ry seemed to pay no attention, though his lips shut tight and a menacing look came into his eyes. They were now upon the bridge, and could see what was forward on both sides of the Sagalac. There was unusual bustle and activity in the streets and on the river-bank of both towns. It was noticeable also that though the mills were running in Manitou, there were fewer chimneys smoking, and far more men in the streets than usual. Tied up to the Manitou shore were a half- dozen cribs or rafts of timber which should be floating eastward down the Sagalac. "If the Monseenoor can't, or don't, step in, we're bound for a shindy over a corpse," continued Jowett after a moment. "Can the Monseigneur cast a spell over them all?" remarked the Ry ironically, for he had little faith in priests, though he had for this particular one great respect. "He's a big man, that preelate," answered Jowett quickly and forcibly. "He kept the Crees quiet when they was going to rise. If they'd got up, there'd have been hundreds of settlers massacreed. He risked his life to do that--went right into the camp in face of levelled rifles, and sat down and begun to talk. A minute afterwards all the chiefs was squatting, too. Then the tussle begun between a man with a soul and a heathen gang that eat dog, kill their old folks, their cripples and their deformed children, and run sticks of wood through their bleeding chests, just to show that they're heathens. But he won out, this Jesueete friend o' man. That's why I'm putting my horses and my land and my pants and my shirt and the buff that's underneath on the little preelate." Gabriel Druse's face did not indicate the same confidence. "It is not an age of miracles; the priest is not enough," he said sceptically. By twos, by threes, by tens, men from Manitou came sauntering across the bridge into Lebanon, until a goodly number were scattered at different points through the town. They seemed to distribute themselves by a preconceived plan, and they were all habitants. There were no Russians, Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, or Germans among them. They were low-browed, sturdy men, dressed in red or blue serge shirts, some with sashes around their waists, some with ear-rings in their ears, some in knee-boots, and some with the heavy spiked boots of the river-driver. None appeared to carry any weapon that would shoot, yet in their belts was the sheath- knife, the invariable equipment of their class. It would have seemed more suspicious if they had not carried them. The railwaymen, miners, carters, mill-hands, however, appeared to carry nothing save their strong arms and hairy hands, and some were as hairy as animals. These backwoodsmen also could, without weapons, turn a town into a general hospital. In battle they fought not only with hands but also with teeth and hoofs like wild stallions. Teeth tore off an ear or sliced away a nose, hands smote like hammers or gouged out eyes, and their nailed boots were weapons of as savage a kind as could be invented. They could spring and strike an opponent with one foot in the chest or in the face, and spoil the face for many a day, or for ever. It was a gift of the backwoods and the lumber-camps, practised in hours of stark monotony when the devils which haunt places of isolation devoid of family life, where men herd together like dogs in a kennel, break loose. There the man that dips his fingers "friendly-like" in the dish of his neighbour one minute wants the eye of that neighbour the next not so much in innate or momentary hatred, as in innate savagery and the primeval sense of combat, the war which was in the blood of the first man. The unarmed appearance of these men did not deceive the pioneer folk of Lebanon. To them the time had come when the reactionary forces of Manitou must receive a check. Even those who thought the funeral fanatical and provocative were ready to defend it. The person who liked the whole business least was Rockwell. He was subject to the same weariness of the flesh and fatigue of the spirit as all men; yet it was expected of him that at any hour he should be at the disposal of suffering humanity--of criminal or idiotic humanity--patient, devoted, calm, nervestrung, complete. He was the one person in the community who was the universal necessity, and yet for whom the community had no mercy in its troubles or out of them. There were three doctors in Lebanon, but none was an institution, none had prestige save Rockwell, and he often wished that he had less prestige, since he cared nothing for popularity. He had made his preparations for possible "accidents" in no happy mood. Fresh from the bedside of Ingolby, having had no sleep, and with many sick people on his list, he inwardly damned the foolishness of both towns. He even sharply rebuked the Mayor, who urged surgical preparations upon him, for not sending sooner to the Government for a force which could preserve order or prevent the procession. It was while he was doing so that Jowett appeared with Gabriel Druse to interview the Mayor. "It's like this," said Jowett. "In another hour the funeral will start. There's a lot of Manitou huskies in Lebanon now, and their feet is loaded, if their guns ain't. They're comin' by driblets, and by-and-bye, when they've all distributed themselves, there'll be a marching column of them from Manitou. It's all arranged to make trouble and break the law. It's the first real organized set-to we've had between the towns, and it'll be nasty. If the preelate doesn't dope them, there'll be pertikler hell to pay." He then gave the story of his visit to Monseigneur Lourde, and the details of what was going forward in Manitou so far as he had learned. Also the ubiquitous Osterhaut had not been idle, and his bulletin had just been handed to Jowett. "There's one thing ought to be done and has got to be done," Jowett added, "if the Monseenoor don't pull if off. The leaders have to be arrested, and it had better be done by one that, in a way, don't belong to either Lebanon or Manitou." The Mayor shook his head. "I don't see how I can authorize Marchand's arrest--not till he breaks the law, in any case." "It's against the law to conspire to break the law," replied Jowett. "You've been making a lot of special constables. Make Mr. Gabriel Druse here a special constable, then if the law's broke, he can have a right to take a hand in." The giant Ry had stood apart, watchful and ruminant, but he now stepped forward, as the Mayor turned to him and stretched out a hand. "I am for peace," the old man said. "To keep the peace the law must be strong." In spite of the gravity of the situation the Mayor smiled. "You wouldn't need much disguise to stand for the law, Mr. Druse," he remarked. "When the law is seven feet high, it stands well up." The Ry did not smile. "Make me the head of the constables, and I will keep the peace," he said. There was a sudden silence. The proposal had come so quietly, and it was so startling, that even the calm Rockwell was taken aback. But his eye and the eye of the Mayor met, and the look in both their faces was the same. "That's bold play," the Mayor said, "but I guess it goes. Yesterday it couldn't be done. To-day it can. The Chief Constable's down with smallpox. Got it from an Injun prisoner days ago. He's been bad for three days, but hung on. Now he's down, and there's no Chief. I was going to act myself, but the trouble was, if anything happened to me, there'd be no head of anything. It's better to have two strings to your bow. It's a go-it's a straight go, Mr. Druse. Seven foot of Chief Constable ought to have its weight with the roughnecks." A look of hopefulness came into his face. This sage, huge, commanding figure would have a good moral effect on the rude elements of disorder. "I'll have you read the Riot Act instead of doing it myself," added the Mayor. "It'll be a good introduction for you, and as you live in Manitou, it'll be a knock-out blow to the toughs. Sometimes one man is as good as a hundred. Come on to the Courthouse with me," he continued cheerfully. "We'll fix the whole thing. All the special constables are waiting there with the regular police. An extra foot on a captain's shoulders is as good as a battery of guns." "You're sure it's according to Hoyle?" asked Jowett quizzically. He was so delighted that he felt he must "make the Mayor show off self," as he put it afterwards. He did not miscalculate; the Mayor rose to his challenge. "I'm boss of this show," he said, "and I can go it alone if necessary when the town's in danger and the law's being hustled. I've had a meeting of the Council and I've got the sailing-orders I want. I'm boss of the place, and Mr. Druse is my--" he stopped, because there was a look in the eyes of the Ry which demanded consideration--"And Mr. Druse is lawboss," he added. The old ineradicable look of command shone in the eyes of Gabriel Druse. Leadership was written all over him. Power spoke in every motion. The square, unbowed shoulders, the heavily lined face, with the patriarchal beard, the gnarled hands, the rough-hewn limbs, the eye of bright, brooding force proclaimed authority. Indeed in that moment there came into the face of the old Nomad the look it had not worn for many a day. The self-exiled ruler had paid a heavy price for his daughter's vow, though he had never acknowledged it to himself. His self-ordained impotency, in a camp that was never moved, within walls which never rose with the sunset and fell with the morning; where his feet trod the same roadway day after day; where no man asked for justice or sought his counsel or fell back on his protection; where he drank from the same spring and tethered his horse in the same paddock from morn to morn: all these things had eaten at his heart and bowed his spirit in spite of himself. He was not now of the Romany world, and he was not of the Gorgio world; but here at last was the old thing come back to him in a new way, and his bones rejoiced. He would entitle his daughter to her place among the Gorgios. Perhaps also it would be given him, in the name of the law, to deal with a man he hated. "We've got Mister Marchand now," said Jowett softly to the old chieftain. The Ry's eyes lighted and his jaw set. He did not speak, but his hands clenched, opened and clenched again. Jowett saw and grinned. "The Mayor and the law-boss'll win out, I guess," he said to himself. CHAPTER XVII THE MONSEIGNEUR AND THE NOMAD Even more than Dr. Rockwell, Berry, the barber, was the most troubled man in Lebanon on the day of the Orange funeral. Berry was a good example of an unreasoning infatuation. The accident which had come to his idol, with the certain fall of his fortunes, hit him so hard, that, for the first time since he became a barber, his razor nipped the flesh of more than one who sat in his red-upholstered chair. In his position, Berry was likely to hear whatever gossip was going. Who shall have perfect self-control with a giant bib under the chin, tipped back on a chair that cannot be regulated, with a face covered by lather, and two plantation fingers holding the nose? In these circumstances, with much diplomacy, Berry corkscrewed his way into confidence, and when he dipped a white cloth in bay-rum and eau-de-cologne, and laid it over the face of the victim, with the finality of a satisfied inquisitor, it was like giving the last smother to human individuality. An artist after his kind, he no sooner got what he wanted than he carefully coaxed his victim away from thoughts of the disclosures into the vague distance of casual gossip once more. Gradually and slowly he shepherded his patient back to the realms of self-respect and individual personality. The border-line was at the point where the fingers of his customer fluttered at a collar-button; for Berry, who realized the power that lies in making a man look ridiculous, never allowed a customer to be shaved or have his hair cut with a collar on. When his customers had corns, off came the boots also, and then Berry's triumph over the white man was complete. To call attention to an exaggerated bunion when the odorous towel lay upon the hidden features of what once was a "human," was the last act in the drama of the Unmaking of Man. Only when the client had felt in his pocket for the price of the flaying, and laid it, with a ten-cent fee, on the ledge beneath the mirror, where all the implements of the inquisition and the restoration were assembled, did he feel manhood restored. If, however, he tried to keep a vow of silence in the chair of execution, he paid a heavy price; for Berry had his own methods of punishment. A little tighter grasp of the nose; a little rougher scrape of the razor, and some sharp, stinging liquid suddenly slapped with a cold palm on the excoriated spot, with the devilish hypocrisy of healing it; a longer smothering-period under the towel, when the corners of it were tucked behind the ears and a crease of it in the mouth-all these soon induced vocal expression again, and Berry started on his inquisition with gentle certainty. When at last he dusted the face with a little fine flour of oatmeal, "to heal the cuticle and 'manoor' the roots," and smelled with content the hands which had embalmed the hair in verbena-scented oil, a man left his presence feeling that he was ready for the wrath to come. Such was Berry when he had under his razor one of Ingolby's business foes of Manitou, who had of late been in touch with Felix Marchand. Both were working for the same end, but with different intentions. Marchand worked with that inherent devilishness which sometimes takes possession of low minds; but the other worked as he would have done against his own brother, for his own business success; and it was his view that one man could only succeed by taking the place of another, as though the Age of Expansion had ceased and the Age of Smother had begun. From this client while in a state of abject subjection, Berry, whose heart was hard that day, but whose diplomacy was impeccable, discovered a thing of moment. There was to be a procession of strikers from two factories in Manitou, who would throw down their tools or leave their machines at a certain moment. Falling into line these strikers would march across the bridge between the towns at such time as would bring them into touch with the line of the Orange funeral--two processions meeting at right angles. If neither procession gave way, the Orange funeral could be broken up, ostensibly not from religious fanaticism, but from the "unhappy accident" of two straight lines colliding. It was a juicy plot; and in a few minutes the Mayor and Gabriel Druse knew of it from the faithful Berry. The bell of the meeting-house began to toll as the Orangeman whose death had caused such commotion was carried to the waiting carriage where he would ride alone. Almost simultaneously with the starting of the gaudy yet sombre Orange cortege, with its yellow scarfs, glaring banners, charcoal plumes and black clothes, the labour procession approached the Manitou end of the Sagalac bridge. The strikers carried only three or four banners, but they had a band of seven pieces, with a drum and a pair of cymbals. With frequent discord, but with much spirit, the Bleaters, as these musicians were called in Lebanon, inspired the steps of the Manitou fanatics and toughs. As they came upon the bridge they were playing a gross paraphrase of The Marseillaise. At the head of the Orange procession was a silver-cornet band which the enterprise of Lebanon had made possible. Its leader was a ne'er-do-well young Welshman, who had been dismissed from leadership after leadership of bands in the East till at last he had drifted into Lebanon. Here, strange to say, he had never been drunk but once; and that was the night before he married the widow of a local publican, who had a nice little block of stock in one of Ingolby's railways, which yielded her seven per cent., and who knew how to handle the citizens of the City of Booze. When she married Tom Straker, her first husband, he drank on an average twenty whiskies a day. She got him down to one; and then he died and had as fine a funeral as a judge. There were those who said that if Tom's whiskies hadn't been cut down so--but there it was: Tom was in the bosom of Abraham, and William Jones, who was never called anything else than Willy Welsh, had been cut down from his unrecorded bibulations to none at all; but he smoked twenty-cent cigars at the ex-widow's expense. To-day Willy Welsh played with heart and courage, "I'm Going Home to Glory," at the head of the Orange procession; for who that has faced such a widow as was his for one whole year could fear the onset of faction fighters! Besides, as the natives of the South Seas will never eat a Chinaman, so a Western man will never kill a musician. Senators, magistrates, sheriffs, police, gamblers, horse-stealers, bankers, and broncho-riders all die unnatural deaths at times, but a musician in the West is immune from all except the hand of Fate. Not one can be spared. Even a tough convicted of cheating at cards, or breaking a boom on a river, has escaped punishment because he played the concertina. The discord and jangle between the two bands was the first collision of this fateful day. While yet there was a space between the two processions, the bands broke into furious contest. It was then that, through the long funeral line, men with hard-set faces came closer up together, and forty, detaching themselves from the well-kept run of marching lodgemen, closed up around the horses and the hearse, making a solid flanking force. At stated intervals also, outside the lodgemen in the lines, were special constables, many of whom had been the stage- drivers, hunters, cattlemen, prospectors, and pioneers of the early days. Most of them had come of good religious stock-Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Unitarians; and though they had little piety, and had never been able to regain the religious customs and habits of their childhood, they "Stood for the Thing the Old Folks stand for." They were in a mood which would tear cotton, as the saying was. There was not one of them but expected that broken heads and bloodshed would be the order of the day, and they were stonily, fearlessly prepared for the worst. Since the appearance of Gabriel Druse on the scene, the feeling had grown that the luck would be with them. When he started at the head of the cortege, they could scarce forbear to cheer. Such a champion in appearance had never been seen in the West, and, the night before, he had proved his right to the title by shaking a knot of toughs into spots of disconcerted humanity. As they approached the crossroads of the bridge, his voice, clear and sonorous, could be heard commanding the Orange band to cease playing. When the head of the funeral procession was opposite the bridge--the band, the hearse, the bodyguard of the hearse--Gabriel Druse stood aside, and took his place at the point where the lines of the two processions would intersect. It was at this moment that the collision came. There were only about sixty feet of space between the two processions, when a voice rang out in a challenge so offensive, that the men of Manitou got their cue for attack without creating it themselves. Every Orangeman of the Lodge of Lebanon afterwards denied that he had raised the cry; and the chances are that every one spoke the truth. It was like Felix Marchand to arrange for just such an episode, and so throw the burden of responsibility on the Orangemen. "To hell with the Pope! To hell with the Pope!" the voice rang out, and it had hardly ceased before the Manitou procession made a rush forward. The apparent leader of the Manitou roughs was a blackbearded man of middle height, who spoke raucously to the crowd behind him. Suddenly a powerful voice rang out. "Halt, in the name of the Queen!" it called. Surprise is the very essence of successful war. The roughs of Manitou had not looked for this. They had foreseen the appearance of the official Chief Constable of Lebanon; they had expected his challenge and warning in the vernacular; but here was something which struck them with consternation --first, the giant of Manitou in the post of command, looking like some berserker; and then the formal reading of that stately document in the name of the Queen. Far back in the minds of every French habitant present was the old monarchical sense. He makes, at worst, a poor anarchist, though he is a good revolutionist; and the French colonials had never been divorced from monarchical France. In the eyes of the most forward of those on the Sagalac bridge, there was a sudden wonderment and confusion. To the dramatic French mind, ceremonial is ever welcome; and for a moment it had them in its grip, as old Gabriel Druse read out in his ringing voice, the trenchant royal summons. It was a strange and dramatic scene--the Orange funeral standing still, garish yet solemn, with hundreds of men, rough and coarse, quiet and refined, dissolute and careless, sober and puritanic, broad and tolerant, sharp and fanatical; the labour procession, polyglot in appearance, but with Gallic features and looseness of dress predominating; excitable, brutish, generous, cruel; without intellect, but with an intelligence which in the lowest was acute, and with temperaments responsive to drama. As Druse read, his eyes now and then flashed, at first he knew not why, to the slim, bearded figure of the apparent leader. At length he caught the feverish eye of the man, and held it for a moment. It was familiar, but it eluded him; he could not place it. He heard, however, Jowett's voice say to him, scarce above a whisper: "It's Felix Marchand, boss!" Jowett also had been puzzled at first by the bearded figure, but it suddenly flashed upon him that the beard and wig were a disguise, that Marchand had resorted to Ingolby's device. It might prove as dangerous a stratagem with him as it had to Ingolby. There was a moment's hesitation after Druse had finished reading--as though the men of Manitou had not quite recovered from their surprise-- then the man with the black beard said something to those nearest him. There was a start forward, and someone cried, "Down with the Orangemen --et bas l'Orange!" Like a well-disciplined battalion the Orangemen rolled up quickly into a compact mass, showing that they had planned their defence well, and the moment was black with danger, when, suddenly, Druse strode forward. Flinging right and left two or three river-drivers, he caught the man with the black beard, snatched him out from among the oncoming crowd, and tore off the black beard and wig. Felix Marchand stood exposed. A cry of fury rang out from the Orangemen behind, and a dozen men rushed forward, but Gabriel Druse acted with the instant decision of a real commander. Seeing that it would be a mistake to arrest Marchand at that moment, he raised the struggling figure of the wrecker above his head and, with Herculean effort, threw him up over the heads of the Frenchmen in front of him. So extraordinary was the sight that, as if fascinated, the crowd before and behind followed the action with staring eyes and tense bodies. The faces of all the contending forces were as concentrated for the instant, as though the sun were falling out of the sky. It was so great a feat, one so much in consonance with the spirit of the frontier world, that gasps of praise broke from both crowds. As though it were a thunderbolt, the Manitou roughs standing where Marchand was like to fall, instead of trying to catch him, broke away from beneath the bundle of falling humanity, and Marchand fell on the dusty cement of the bridge with a dull thud, like a bag of bones. For a moment there was no motion on the part of either procession. Banners drooped and swayed as the men holding them were lost in the excitement. Time had only been gained, however. There was no reason to think that the trouble was over, or that the special constables who had gathered close behind Gabriel Druse would not have to strike heavy blows for the cause of peace. The sudden appearance of a new figure in the narrow, open space between the factions in that momentary paralysis was not a coincidence. It was what Jowett had planned for, the factor for peace in which he most believed. A small, spare man in a scarlet cassock, white chasuble, and black biretta, suddenly stole out from the crowd on the Lebanon side of the bridge, carrying the elements of the Mass. His face was shining white, and in the eyes was an almost unearthly fire. It was the beloved Monseigneur Lourde. Raising the elements before him toward his own people on the bridge, he cried in a high, searching voice: "I prayed with you, I begged you to preserve the peace. Last night I asked you in God's name to give up your disorderly purposes. I thought then I had done my whole duty; but the voice of God has spoken to me. An hour ago I carried the elements to a dying woman here in Lebanon, and gave her peace. As I did so the funeral bell rang out, and it came to me, as though the One above had spoken, that peace would be slain and His name insulted by all of you--by all of you, Catholic and Protestant. God's voice bade me come to you from the bed of one who has gone hence from peace to Peace. In the name of Christ, peace, I say! Peace, in the name of Christ!" He raised the sacred vessel high above his head, so that his eyes looked through the walls of his uplifted arms. "Kneel!" he called in a clear, ringing voice which yet quavered with age. There was an instant's hush, and then great numbers of the crowd in front of him, toughs and wreckers, blasphemers, turbulent ones and evil-livers, yet Catholics all, with the ancient root of the Great Thing in them, sank down; and the banners of the labour societies drooped before the symbol of peace won by sacrifice. Even the Orangemen bared their heads in the presence of that Popery which was anathema to them, which they existed to combat, and had been taught to hate. Some, no doubt, would rather have fought than have had peace at the price; but they could not free their minds from the sacred force which had brought most of the crowd of faction-fighters to their knees. With a wave of the hand, Gabriel Druse ordered the cortege forward, and silently the procession with its yellow banners and its sable, drooping plumes moved on. Once on its way again, Willy Welsh and his silver-cornet band struck up the hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light." It was the one real coincidence of the day that this moving hymn was written by a cardinal of the Catholic Church. It was also an irony that, as the crowd of sullen Frenchmen turned back to Manitou, the train bearing the Mounted Police, for whom the Mayor had sent to the capital, steamed noisily in, and redcoats showed at its windows and on the steps of the cars. The only casualty that the day saw was the broken arm and badly bruised body of Felix Marchand, who was gloomily helped back to his home across the Sagalac. CHAPTER XVIII THE BEACONS There were few lights showing in Lebanon or Manitou; but here and there along the Sagalac was the fading glimmer of a camp-fire, and in Tekewani's reservation one light glowed softly like a star. It came from a finely-made and chased safety-lantern given to Tekewani by the Government, as a symbol of honour for having kept the braves quiet when an Indian and half-breed rising was threatened; and to the powerless chief it had become a token of his authority, the sign of the Great White Mother's approval. By day a spray of eagle's feathers waved over his tepee, but the gleam of the brass lantern every night was like a sentry at the doorway of a monarch. It was a solace to his wounded spirit; it allayed the smart of subjection; made him feel himself a ruler in retirement, even as Gabriel Druse was a self-ordained exile. These two men, representing the primitive nomad life, had been drawn together in friendship. So much so, that to Tekewani alone of all the West, Druse gave his confidence and told his story. It came in the springtime, when the blood of the young bucks was simmering and, the ancient spell was working. There had preceded them generations of hunters who had slain their thousands and their tens of thousands of wild animals and the fowls of the air; had killed their enemies in battle; had seized the comely women of their foes and made them their own. No thrill of the hunter's trail now drew off the overflow of desire. In the days of rising sap, there were only the young maidens or wives of their own tribe to pursue, and it lacked in glory. Also in the springtime, Tekewani himself had his own trials, for in his blood the old medicine stirred. His face turned towards the prairie North and the mountain West where yet remained the hunter's quarry; and he longed to be away with rifle and gun, with his squaw and the papooses trailing after like camp- followers, to eat the fruits of victory. But that could not be; he must remain in the place the Great White Mother had reserved for him; he and his braves must assemble, and draw their rations at the appointed times and seasons, and grunt thanks to those who ruled over them. It was on one of these virginal days, when there was a restless stirring among the young bucks, who smelled the wide waters, the pines and the wild shrubs; who heard the cry of the loon on the lonely lake and the whir of the wild duck's wings, who answered to the phantom cry of ancient war; it was on such a day that the two chiefs opened their hearts to each other. Near to the boscage on a little hill overlooking the great river, Gabriel Druse had come upon Tekewani seated in the pine-dust, rocking to and fro, and chanting a low, sorrowful refrain, with eyes fixed on the setting sun. And the Ry of Rys understood, with the understanding which only those have who live close to the earth, and also near to the heavens of their own gods. He sat down beside the forlorn chief, and in the silence their souls spoke to each other. There swept into the veins of the Romany ruler something of the immitigable sadness of the Indian chief; and, with a sudden premonition that he also was come to the sunset of his life, his big nomad eyes sought the westering rim of the heavens, and his breast heaved. In that hour the two men declared themselves to each other, and Gabriel Druse told Tekewani all that he had hidden from the people of the Sagalac, and was answered in kind. It seemed to them that they were as brothers who were one and who had parted in ages long gone; and having met were to part and disappear once more, beginning still another trail in an endless reincarnation. "Brother," said Tekewani, "it was while there was a bridge of land between the continents at the North that we met. Again I see it. I forgot it, but again I see. There was war, and you went upon one path and I upon another, and we met no more under all the moons till now." "'Dordi', so it was and at such a time," answered the Ry of Rys. "And once more we will follow after the fire-flies which give no light to the safe places but only lead farther into the night." Tekewani rocked to and fro again, muttering to himself, but presently he said: "We eat from the hands of those who have driven away the buffalo, the deer, and the beaver; and the young bucks do naught to earn the joy of women. They are but as lusting sheep, not as the wild-goat that chases its mate over the places of death, till it comes upon her at last, and calls in triumph over her as she kneels at his feet. So it is. Like tame beasts we eat from the hand of the white man, and the white man leaves his own camp where his own women are, and prowls in our camps, so that not even our own women are left to us." It was then that Gabriel Druse learned of the hatred of Tekewani for Felix Marchand, because of what he had done in the reservation, prowling at night like a fox or a coyote in the folds. They parted that hour, believing that the epoch of life in which they were and the fortunes of time which had been or were to come, were but turns of a wheel that still went on turning; and that whatever chanced of good or bad fortune in the one span of being, might be repaired in the next span, or the next, or the next; so, through their creed of reincarnation, taking courage to face the failure of the life they now lived. Not by logic or the teaching of any school had they reached this revelation, but through an inner sense. They were not hopeful and wondering and timid; they were only sure. Their philosophy, their religion, whether heathen or human, was inborn. They had comfort in it and in each other. After that day Gabriel Druse always set a light in his window which burned all night, answering to the lantern-light at the door of Tekewani's home--the lights of exile and of an alliance which had behind it the secret influences of past ages and vanished peoples. There came a night, however, when the light at the door of Tekewani's tepee did not burn. At sunset it was lighted, but long before midnight it was extinguished. Looking out from the doorway of his home (it was the night after the Orange funeral), Gabriel Druse, returned from his new duties at Lebanon, saw no light in the Indian reservation. With anxiety, he set forth in the shine of the moon to visit it. Arrived at the chief's tepee, he saw that the lantern of honour was gone, and waking Tekewani, he brought him out to see. When the old Indian knew his loss, he gave a harsh cry and stooped, and, gathering a handful of dust from the ground, sprinkled it on his head. Then with arms outstretched he cursed the thief who had robbed him of what had been to him like a never-fading mirage, an illusion blinding his eyes to the bitter facts of his condition. To his mind all the troubles come to Lebanon and Manitou had had one source; and now the malign spirit had stretched its hand to spoil those already dispossessed of all but the right to live. One name was upon the lips of both men, as they stood in the moonlight by Tekewani's tepee. "There shall be an end of this," growled the Romany. "I will have my own," said Tekewani, with malediction on the thief who had so shamed him. Black anger was in the heart of Gabriel Druse as he turned again towards his own home, and he was glad of what he had done to Felix Marchand at the Orange funeral. CHAPTER XIX THE KEEPER OF THE BRIDGE "Like the darkness of the grave, which is darkness itself--" Most of those who break out of the zareba of life, who lay violent hands upon themselves, do so with a complete reasoning, which in itself is proof of their insanity. It may be domestic tragedy, or ill-health, or crime, or broken faith, or shame, or insomnia, or betrayed trust-- whatever it is, many a one who suffers from such things, tries to end it all with that deliberation, that strategy, and that cunning which belong only to the abnormal. A mind which has known a score or more of sleepless nights acquires an invincible clearness of its own, seeing an end which is without peradventure. It finds a hundred perfect reasons for not going on, every one of which is in itself sufficient; every one of which knits into the other ninety and nine with inevitable affinity. To the mind of Ingolby came a hundred such reasons for breaking out of life's enclosure, as the effect of the opiate Rockwell had given him wore off, and he regained consciousness. As he did so, someone in the room was telling of that intervention of Gabriel Druse and the Monseigneur at the Orange funeral, which had saved the situation. At first he listened to what was said--it was the nurse talking to Jim Beadle with no sharp perception of the significance of the story; though it slowly pierced the lethargy of his senses, and he turned over in the bed to face the watchers. "What time is it, Jim?" he asked heavily. They told him it was sunset. "Is it quiet in both towns?" he asked after a pause. They told him that it was. "Any telegrams for me?" he asked. There was an instant's hesitation. They had had no instructions on this point, and they hardly knew what to say; but Jim's mind had its own logic, and the truth seemed best to him now. He answered that there were several wires, but that they "didn't amount to nothin'." "Have they been opened?" Ingolby asked with a frown, half-raising himself. It was hard to resign the old masterfulness and self-will. "I'd like to see anybody open 'em 'thout my pe'mision," answered Jim imperiously. "When you's asleep, Chief, I'm awake; and I take care of you' things, same as ever I done. There ain't no wires been opened, and there ain't goin' to be whiles I'm runnin' the show for you." "Open and read them to me," commanded Ingolby. Again Ingolby was conscious of hesitation on Jim's part. Already the acuteness of the blind was possessing him, sharpening the senses left unimpaired. Although Jim moved, presumably, towards the place where the telegrams lay, Ingolby realized that his own authority was being crossed by that of the doctor and the nurse. "You will leave the room for a moment, nurse," he said with a brassy vibration in the voice--a sign of nervous strain. With a smothered protest the nurse left, and Jim stood beside the bed with the telegrams. "Read them to me, Jim," Ingolby repeated irritably. "Be quick." They were not wires which Ingolby should have heard at the time, when his wound was still inflamed, when he was still on the outer circle of that artificial sleep which the opiates had secured. They were from Montreal and New York, and, resolved from their half-hidden suggestion into bare elements, they meant that henceforth others would do the work he had done. They meant, in effect, that save for the few scores of thousand dollars he had made, he was now where he was when he came West. When Jim had finished reading them, Ingolby sank back on the pillows and said quietly: "All right, Jim. Put them in the drawer of the table and I'll answer them to-morrow. I want to get a little more sleep, so give me a drink, and then leave me alone--both nurse and you--till I ring the bell. There's a bell on the table, isn't there?" He stretched out a hand towards the table beside the bed, and Jim softly pushed the bell under his fingers. "That's right," he added. "Now, I'm not to be disturbed unless the doctor comes. I'm all right, and I want to be alone and quiet. No one at all in the room is what I want. You understand, Jim?" "My head's just as good to get at what you want as ever it was, and you goin' have what you want, I guess, while I'm on deck," was Jim's reply. Jim put a glass of water into his hand. He drank very slowly, was indeed only mechanically conscious that he was drinking, for his mind was far away. After he had put the glass down, Jim still stood beside the bed, looking at him. "Why don't you go, as I tell you, Jim?" Ingolby asked wearily. "I'm goin'"--Jim tucked the bedclothes in carefully--"I'm goin', but, boss, I jes' want to say dat dis thing goin' to come out all right bime- by. There ain't no doubt 'bout dat. You goin' see everything, come jes' like what you want--suh!" Ingolby did not reply. He held out his hand, and black fingers shot over and took it. A moment later the blind man was alone in the room. The light of day vanished, and the stars came out. There was no moon, but it was one of those nights of the West when millions of stars glimmer in the blue vault above, and every planet and every star and cluster of stars are so near that it might almost seem they could be caught by an expert human hand. The air was very still, and a mantle of peace was spread over the tender scene. The window and the glass doors that gave from Ingolby's room upon the veranda on the south side of the house, were open, and the air was warm as in Midsummer. Now and then the note of a night-bird broke the stillness, but nothing more. It was such a night as Ingolby loved; it was such a night as often found him out in the restful gloom of the trees, thinking and brooding, planning, revelling in memories of books he had read, and in dreaming of books he might write-if there were time. Such a night insulated the dark moods which possessed him occasionally almost as effectively as fishing did; and that was saying much. But the darkest mood of all his days was upon him now. When Rockwell came, soon after Jim and the nurse left him, he simulated sleep, for he had no mind to talk; and the doctor, deceived by his even breathing, had left, contented. At last he was wholly alone with his own thoughts, as he desired. From the moment Jim had read him the wires, which were the real revelation of the situation to which he had come, he had been travelling hard on the road leading to a cul-de-sac, from which there was no egress save by breaking through the wall. Never, it might have seemed, had his mind been clearer, but it was a clearness belonging to the abnormal. It was a straight line of thought which, in its intensity, gathered all other thoughts into its wake, reduced them to the control of an obsession. It was borne in on his mind that his day was done, that nothing could right the disorder which had strewn his path with broken hopes and shattered ambitions. No life-work left, no schemes to accomplish, no construction to achieve, no wealth to gain, no public good to be won, no home to be his, no woman, his very own, to be his counsellor and guide in the natural way! As myriad thoughts drove through his brain on this Indian-summer night, they all merged into the one obsession that he could no longer stay. The irresistible logic of the brain stretched to an abnormal tenuity, and an intolerable brightness was with him. He was in the throes of that intense visualization which comes with insomnia, when one is awake yet apart from the waking world, where nothing is really real and nothing normal. He had a call to go hence, and he must go. Minute after minute passed, hours passed, and the fight of the soul to maintain itself against the disordered mind went on. All his past seemed but part of a desert, lonely and barren and strange. In the previous year he had made a journey to Arizona with Jowett, to see some railway construction there, and at a ranch he had visited he came upon some verses which had haunted his mind ever since. They fastened upon his senses now. They were like a lonesome monotone which at length gave calm to his torturing reflections. In his darkness the verses kept repeating themselves: "I heard the desert calling, and my heart stood still There was Winter in my world and in my heart: A breath came from the mesa and a message stirred my will, And my soul and I arose up to depart. I heard the desert calling; and I knew that over there, In an olive-sheltered garden where the mesquite grows, Was a woman of the sunrise, with the starshine in her hair, And a beauty that the almond-blossom blows. In the night-time when the ghost-trees glimmered in the moon, Where the mesa by the watercourse was spanned, Her loveliness enwrapped me like the blessedness of June, And all my life was thrilling in her hand. I hear the desert calling, and my heart stands still; There is Summer in my world and in my heart; A breath comes from the mesa, and a will beyond my will Binds my footsteps as I rise up to depart." This strange, half-mystic song of the mesa and the olive-groves, of the ghost-trees and the moon, kept playing upon his own heated senses like the spray from a cooling stream, and at last it quieted him. The dark spirit of self-destruction loosened its hold. His brain had been strained beyond the normal, almost unconsciously his fingers had fastened on the pistol in the drawer of the table by his bed. It had been there since the day when he had travelled down from Alaska-- loaded as it had been when he had carried it down the southern trail. But as his fingers tightened on the little engine of death, from the words which had been ringing in his brain came the flash of a revelation: ". . . And a will beyond my will Binds my footsteps as I rise up to depart." A will beyond his will! It was as though Fleda's fingers were laid upon his own; as though she whispered in his ear and her breath swept his cheek; as though she was there in the room beside him, making the darkness light, tempering the wind of chastisement to his naked soul. In the overstrain of his nervous system the illusion was powerful. He thought he heard her voice. The pistol slipped from his fingers, and he fell back on the pillow with a sigh. The will beyond his will bound his footsteps. Who can tell? The grim, malign experience of Fleda in her bedroom with the Thing she thought was from beyond the bounds of her own life; the voice that spoke to Ingolby, and the breath that swept over his cheek were, perhaps, as real in a sense as would have been the corporeal presence of Jethro Fawe in one case and of Fleda Druse in the other. It may be that in very truth Fleda Druse's spirit with its poignant solicitude controlled his will as he "rose up to depart." But if it was only an illusion, it was not less a miracle. Some power of suggestion bound his fleeing footsteps, drew him back from the Brink. He slept. Once the nurse came and looked at him and returned to the other room; and twice Jim stole in silently for a moment and retired again to his own chamber. The stars shone in at the doors that opened out from the quiet room into the night, the watch beside the bed ticked on, the fox-terrier which always slept on a mat at the foot of the bed sighed in content, while his master breathed heavily in a sleep full of dreams that hurried past like phantasmagoria--of a hundred things that had been in his life, and that had never been; of people he had known, distorted, ridiculous and tremendous. There were dreams of fiddlers and barbers, of crowds writhing in passion in a room where there was a billiard-table and a lucky horseshoe on the wall. There were dreams that tossed and mingled in one whirlpool vision; and then at last came a dream which was so cruel and clear that it froze his senses. It was the dream of a great bridge over a swiftflowing river; of his own bridge over the Sagalacof that bridge being destroyed by men who crept through the night with dynamite in their hands. With a hoarse, smothered cry he awoke. His eyes opened wide. His heart was beating like a hammer against his side. Only the terrier at his feet heard the muttered agony. With an instinct all its own, it slipped to the floor. It watched its master get out of bed, cross the room and feel for a coat along the wall--an overcoat which he used as a dressing-gown at times. Putting it on hastily, with outstretched hands Ingolby felt his way to the glass doors opening on the veranda. The dog, as though to let him know he was there, rubbed against his legs. Ingolby murmured a soft, unintelligible word, and, in his bare feet, passed out on to the veranda, and from there to the garden and towards the gate at the front of the house. The nurse heard the gate click lightly, but she was only half-awake, and as all was quiet in the next room, she composed herself in her chair again with the vain idea that she was not sleeping. And Jim the faithful one, as though under a narcotic of fate, was snoring softly beside the vacant room. The streets were still. No lights burned anywhere so far as eye could see. But now and then, in the stillness through which the river flowed on, murmuring and rhythmic, there rose the distant sounds of disorderly voices. Ingolby was in a state which was neither sleep nor waking, which was in part delirium, in part oblivion to all things in the world save one--an obsession so complete, that he moved automatically through the street in which he lived towards that which led to the bridge. His terrier, as though realizing exactly what he wished, seemed to guide him by rubbing against his legs, and even pressing hard against them when he was in any danger of losing the middle of the road, or swerving towards a ditch or some obstruction. Only once did they pass any human being, and that was when they came upon a camp of road-builders, where a red light burned, and two men slept in the open by a dying fire. One of them raised his head when Ingolby passed, but being more than half- asleep, and seeing only a man and a dog, thought nothing of it, and dropped back again upon his rough pillow. He was a stranger to Lebanon, and there was little chance of his recognizing Ingolby in the semi- darkness. As they neared the river, Ingolby became deeply agitated. He moved with his hands outstretched. Had it not been for his dog he would probably have walked into the Sagalac; for though he seemed to have an instinct that was extra-natural, he swayed and staggered in the delirium driving him on. There was one dreadful moment when, having swerved from the road leading on to the bridge, he was within a foot of the river-bank. One step farther, and he would have plunged down thirty feet into the stream, to be swept to the Rapids below. But for the first time the terrier made a sound. He gave a whining bark almost human in its meaning, and threw himself at the legs of his master, pushing him backwards and over towards the road leading upon the bridge, as a collie guides sheep. Presently Ingolby felt the floor of the bridge under his feet; and now he hastened on, with outstretched arms and head bent forward, listening intently, the dog trotting beside, with what knowledge working in him Heaven alone knew. The roar of the Rapids below was a sonorous accompaniment to Ingolby's wild thoughts. One thing only he felt, one thing only heard--the men in Barbazon's Tavern saying that the bridge should be blown up on the Saturday night; and this was Saturday night--the night of the day following that of the Orange funeral. He had heard the criminal hireling of Felix Marchand say that it should be done at midnight, and that the explosive should be laid under that part of the bridge which joined the Manitou bank of the Sagalac. As though in very truth he saw with his eyes, he stopped short not far from the point where the bridge joined the land, and stood still, listening. For several minutes he was motionless, intent, as an animal waiting for its foe. At last his newly-sensitive ears heard footsteps approaching and low voices. The footsteps came nearer, the voices, though so low, became more distinct. They were now not fifty feet away, but to the delirious Ingolby they were as near as death had been when his fingers closed on the pistol in his room. He took a step forward, and with passionate voice and arms outstretched, he cried: "You shall not do it-by God, you shall not touch my bridge! I built it. You shall not touch it. Back, you devils-back!" The terrier barked loudly. The two men in the semi-darkness in front of him cowered at the sight of this weird figure holding the bridge they had come to destroy. His words, uttered in so strange and unnatural a voice, shook their nerves. They shrank away from the ghostly form with the outstretched arms. In the minute's pause following on his words, a giant figure suddenly appeared behind the dynamiters. It was the temporary Chief Constable of Lebanon, returning from his visit to Tekewani. He had heard Ingolby's wild words, and he realized the situation. "Ingolby--steady there, Ingolby !" he called. "Steady! Steady! Gabriel Druse is here. It's all right." At the first sound of Druse's voice the two wreckers turned and ran. As they did so, Ingolby's hands fell to his side, and he staggered forward. "Druse--Fleda," he murmured, then swayed, trembled and fell. With words that stuck in his throat Gabriel Druse stooped and lifted him up in his arms. At first he turned towards the bridge, as though to cross over to Lebanon, but the last word Ingolby had uttered rang in his ears, and he carried him away into the trees towards his own house, the faithful terrier following. "Druse--Fleda !" They were the words of one who had suddenly emerged from the obsession of delirium into sanity, and then had fallen into as sudden unconsciousness. "Fleda! Fleda!" called Gabriel Druse outside the door of his house a quarter of an hour later, and her voice in reply was that of one who knew that the feet of Fate were at her threshold. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: They think that if a vote's worth having it's worth paying for You never can really overtake a newspaper lie THE WORLD FOR SALE By Gilbert Parker BOOK III XX. TWO LIFE PIECES XXI. THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER XXII. THE SECRET MAN XXIII. THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS XXIV. AT LONG LAST XXV. MAN PROPOSES XXVI. THE SLEEPER XXVII. THE WORLD FOR SALE CHAPTER XX TWO LIFE PIECES "It's a fine day." "Yes, it's beautiful." Fleda wanted to ask how he knew, but hesitated from feelings of delicacy. Ingolby seemed to understand. A faint reflection of the old whimsical smile touched his lips, and his hands swept over the coverlet as though smoothing out a wrinkled map. "The blind man gets new senses," he said dreamily. "I feel things where I used to see them. How did I know it was a fine day? Simple enough. When the door opened there was only the lightest breath of wind, and the air was fresh and crisp, and I could smell the sun. One sense less, more degree of power to the other senses. The sun warms the air, gives it a flavour, and between it and the light frost, which showed that it was dry outside, I got the smell of a fine Fall day. Also, I heard the cry of the wild fowl going South, and they wouldn't have made a sound if it hadn't been a fine day. And also, and likewise, and besides, and howsomever, I heard Jim singing, and that nigger never sings in bad weather. Jim's a fair-weather raven, and this morning he was singing like a 'lav'rock in the glen.'" Being blind, he could not see that, suddenly, a storm of emotion swept over her face. His cheerfulness, his boylike simplicity, his indomitable spirit, which had survived so much, and must still face so much, his almost childlike ways, and the naive description of a blind man's perception, waked in her an almost intolerable yearning. It was not the yearning of a maid for a man. It was the uncontrollable woman in her, the mother-thing, belonging to the first woman that ever was-protection of the weak, hovering love for the suffering, the ministering spirit. Since Ingolby had been brought to the house in the pines, Madame Bulteel and herself, with Jim, had nursed him through the Valley of the Shadow. They had nursed him through brain-fever, through agonies which could not have been borne with consciousness. The tempest of the mind and the pains of misfortune went on from hour to hour, from day to day, almost without ceasing, until at last, a shadow of his former self, but with a wonderful light on his face which came from something within, he waited patiently for returning strength, propped up with pillows in the bed which had been Fleda's own, in the room outside which Jethro Fawe had sung his heathen serenade. It was the room of the house which, catching the morning sun, was best suited for an invalid. So she had given it to him with an eagerness behind which was the feeling that somehow it made him more of the inner circle of her own life; for apart from every other feeling she had, there was in her a deep spirit of comradeship belonging to far-off times when her life was that of the open road, the hillside and the vale. In those days no man was a stranger; all belonged. To meet, and greet, and pass was the hourly event, but the meeting and the greeting had in it the familiarity of a common wandering, the sympathy of the homeless. Had Ingolby been less to her than he was, there would still have been the comradeship which made her the great creature she was fast becoming. It was odd that, as Ingolby became thinner and thinner, and ever more wan, she, in spite of her ceaseless nursing, appeared to thrive physically. She had even slightly increased the fulness of her figure. The velvet of her cheeks had grown richer, and her eyes deeper with warm fire. It was as though she flourished on giving: as though a hundred nerves of being and feeling had opened up within her and had expanded her life like some fine flower. Gazing at Ingolby now there was a great hungering desire in her heart. She looked at the sightless eyes, and a passionate protest sprang to her lips which, in spite of herself, broke forth in a sort of moan. "What is it?" Ingolby asked, with startled face. "Nothing," she answered, "nothing. I pricked my finger badly, that's all." And, indeed, she had done so, but that would not have brought the moan to her lips. "Well, it didn't sound like a pricked finger complaint," he remarked. "It was the kind of groan I'd give if I had a bad pain inside." "Ah, but you're a man!" she remarked lightly, though two tears fell down her cheeks. With an effort she recovered herself. "It's time for your tonic," she added, and she busied herself with giving it to him. "As soon as you have taken it, I'm going for a walk, so you must make up your mind to have some sleep." "Am I to be left alone?" he asked, with an assumed grievance in his voice. "Madame Bulteel will stay with you," she replied. "Do you need a walk so very badly?" he asked presently. "I don't suppose I need it, but I want it," she answered. "My feet and the earth are very friendly." "Where do you walk?" he asked. "Just anywhere," was her reply. "Sometimes up the river, sometimes down, sometimes miles away in the woods." "Do you never take a gun with you?" "Of course," she answered, nodding, as though he could see. "I get wild pigeons and sometimes a wild duck or a prairie-hen." "That's right," he remarked; "that's right." "I don't believe in walking just for the sake of walking," she continued. "It doesn't do you any good, but if you go for something and get it, that's what puts the mind and the body right." Suddenly his face grew grave. "Yes, that's it," he remarked. "To go for something you want, a long way off. You don't feel the fag when you're thinking of the thing at the end; but you've got to have the thing at the end, to keep making for it, or there's no good going--none at all. That's life; that's how it is. It's no good only walking-- you've got to walk somewhere. It's no good simply going--you've got to go somewhere. You've got to fight for something. That's why, when they take the something you fight for away--when they break you and cripple you, and you can't go anywhere for what you want badly, life isn't worth living." An anxious look came into her face. This was the first time, since recovering consciousness, that he had referred, even indirectly, to all that had happened. She understood him well--ah, terribly well! It was the tragedy of the man stopped in his course because of one mistake, though he had done ten thousand wise things. The power taken from his hands, the interrupted life, the dark future, the beginning again, if ever his sight came back: it was sickening, heartbreaking. She saw it all in his face, but as if some inward voice had spoken to him, his face cleared, the swift-moving hands clasped in front of him, and he said quietly: "But because it's life, there it is. You have to take it as it comes." He stopped a moment, and in the pause she reached out her hand with a sudden passionate gesture, to touch his shoulder, but she restrained herself in time. He seemed to feel what she was doing, and turned his face towards her, a slight flush coming to his cheeks. He smiled, and then he said: "How wonderful you are! You look--" He checked himself, then added with a quizzical smile: "You are looking very well to-day, Miss Fleda Druse, very well indeed. I like that dark-red dress you're wearing." An almost frightened look came into her eyes. It was as though he could see, for she was wearing a dark-red dress--"wine-coloured," her father called it, "maroon," Madame Bulteel called it. Could he then see, after all? "How did you know it was dark-red?" she asked, her voice shaking. "Guessed it! Guessed it!" he answered almost gleefully. "Was I right? Is it dark-red?" "Yes, dark-red," she answered. "Was it really a guess?" "Ah, but the guessiest kind of a guess," he replied. "But who can tell? I couldn't see it, but is there any reason why the mind shouldn't see when the eyes are no longer working? Come now," he added, "I've a feeling that I can tell things with my mind just as if I saw them. I do see. I'll guess the time now--with my mind's eye." Concentration came into his face. "It's three minutes to twelve o'clock," he said decisively. She took up the watch which lay on the table beside the bed. "Yes, it's just three minutes to twelve," she declared in an awe-struck voice. "That's marvellous--how wonderful you are!" "That's what I said of you a minute ago," he returned. Then, with a swift change of voice and manner, he added, "How long is it?" "You mean, since you came here?" she asked, divining what was in his mind. "Exactly. How long?" "Six weeks," she answered. "Six weeks and three days." "Why don't you add the hour, too," he urged half-plaintively, though he smiled. "Well, it was three o'clock in the morning to the minute," she answered. "Old Father Time ought to make you his chief of staff," he remarked gaily. "Now, I want to know," he added, with a visible effort of determination, "what has happened since three o'clock in the morning, six weeks and three days ago. I want you to tell me what has happened to my concerns--to the railways, and also to the towns. I don't want you to hide anything, because, if you do, I'll have Jim in, and Jim, under proper control, will tell me the whole truth, and perhaps more than the truth. That's the way with Jim. When he gets started he can't stop. Tell me exactly everything." Anxiety drove the colour from her cheeks. She shrank back. "You must tell me," he urged. "I'd rather hear it from you than from Dr. Rockwell, or Jim, or your father. Your telling wouldn't hurt as much as anybody else's, if there has to be any hurt. Don't you understand-- but don't you understand?" he urged. She nodded to herself in the mirror on the wall opposite. "I'll try to understand," she replied presently; "Tell me, then: have they put someone in my place?" "I understand so," she replied. He remained silent for a moment, his face very pale. "Who is running the show?" he asked. She told him. "Oh, him!" he exclaimed. "He's dead against my policy. He'll make a mess." "They say he's doing that," she remarked. He asked her a series of questions which she tried to answer frankly, and he came to know that the trouble between the two towns, which, after the Orange funeral and his own disaster had subsided, was up again; that the railways were in difficulties; that there had been several failures in the town; that one of the banks--the Regent-had closed its doors; that Felix Marchand, having recovered from the injury he had received from Gabriel Druse on the day of the Orange funeral, had gone East for a month and had returned; that the old trouble was reviving in the mills, and that Marchand had linked himself with the enemies of the group controlling the railways hitherto directed by himself. For a moment after she had answered his questions, there was strong emotion in his face, and then it cleared. He reached out a hand towards her. How eagerly she clasped it! It was cold, and hers was so warm and firm and kind. "True friend o' mine!" he said with feeling. "How wonderful it is that somehow it all doesn't seem to matter so much. I wonder why? I wonder-- Tell me about yourself, about your life," he added abruptly, as though it had been a question he had long wished to ask. In the tone was a quiet certainty suggesting that she would not hesitate to answer. "We have both had big breaks in our lives," he went on. "I know that. I've lost everything, in a way, by the break in my life, and I've an idea that you gained everything when the break in yours came. I didn't believe the story Jethro Fawe told me, but still I knew there was some truth in it; something that he twisted to suit himself. I started life feeling I could conquer the world like another Alexander or Napoleon. I don't know that it was all conceit. It was the wish to do, to see how far this thing on my shoulders"--he touched his head--"and this great physical machine"--he touched his breast with a thin hand--"would carry me. I don't believe the main idea was vicious. It was wanting to work a human brain to its last volt of capacity, and to see what it could do. I suppose I became selfish as I forged on. I didn't mean to be, but concentration upon the things I had to do prevented me from being the thing I ought to be. I wanted, as they say, to get there. I had a lot of irons in the fire--too many--but they weren't put there deliberately. One thing led to another, and one thing, as it were, hung upon another, until they all got to be part of the scheme. Once they got there, I had to carry them all on, I couldn't drop any of them; they got to be my life. It didn't matter that it all grew bigger and bigger, and the risks got greater and greater. I thought I could weather it through, and so I could have done, if it hadn't been for a mistake and an accident; but the mistake was mine. That's where the thing nips--the mistake was mine. I took too big a risk. You see, I'd got so used to being lucky, it seemed as if I couldn't go wrong. Everything had come my way. Ever since I began in that Montreal railway office, after leaving college, I hadn't a single setback. I pulled things off. I made money, and I plumped it all into my railways and the Regent Bank; and as you said a minute ago, the Regent Bank has closed down. That cuts me clean out of the game. What was the matter with the bank? The manager?" His voice was almost monotonous in its quietness. It was as though he told the story of something which had passed beyond chance or change. As it unfolded to her understanding, she had seated herself near to his bed. The door of the room was open, and in view outside on the landing sat Madame Bulteel reading. She was not, however, near enough to hear the conversation. Ingolby's voice was low, but it sounded as loud as a waterfall in the ears of the girl, who, in a few weeks, had travelled great distances on the road called Experience, that other name for life. "It was the manager?" he repeated. "Yes, they say so," she answered. "He speculated with bank money." "In what?" "In your railways," she answered hesitatingly. "Curious--I dreamed that," Ingolby remarked quietly, and leaned down and stroked the dog lying at his feet. It had been with him through all his sickness. "It must have been part of my delirium, because, now that I've got my senses back, it's as though someone had told me about it. Speculated in my railways, eh? Chickens come home to roost, don't they? I suppose I ought to be excited over it all," he continued. "I suppose I ought. But the fact is, you only have just the one long, big moment of excitement when great trouble and tragedy come, or else it's all excitement, all the time, and then you go mad. That's the test, I think. When you're struck by Fate, as a hideous war-machine might strike you, and the whole terror of loss and ruin bears down on you, you're either swept away in an excitement that hasn't any end, or you brace yourself, and become master of the shattering thing." "You are a master," she interposed. "You are the Master Man," she repeated admiringly. He waved a hand deprecatingly. "Do you know, when we talked together in the woods soon after you ran the Rapids--you remember the day--if you had said that to me then, I'd have cocked my head and thought I was a jim- dandy, as they say. A Master Man was what I wanted to be. But it's a pretty barren thing to think, or to feel, that you're a Master Man; because, if you are--if you've had a 'scoop' all the way, as Jowett calls it, you can be as sure as anything that no one cares a rap farthing what happens to you. There are plenty who pretend they care, but it's only because they're sailing with the wind, and with your even keel. It's only the Master Man himself that doesn't know in the least he's that who gets anything out of it all." "Aren't you getting anything out of it?" she asked softly. "Aren't you --Chief?" At the familiar word--Jowett always called him Chief--a smile slowly stole across his face. "I really believe I am, thanks to you," he said nodding. He was going to say, "Thanks to you, Fleda," but he restrained himself. He had no right to be familiar, to give an intimate turn to things. His game was over; his journey of ambition was done. He saw this girl with his mind's eye--how much he longed to see her with the eyes of the body --in all her strange beauty; and he knew that even if she cared for him, such a sacrifice as linking her life with his was impossible. Yet her very presence there was like a garden of bloom to him: a garden full of the odour of life, of vital things, of sweet energy and happy being. Somehow, he and she were strangely alike. He knew it. From the time he held her in his arms at Carillon, he knew it. The great adventurous spirit which was in him belonged also to her. That was as sure as light and darkness. "No, there's no master man in me, but I think I know what one could be like," he remarked at last. He straightened himself against the pillows. The old look of power came to a face hardly strong enough to bear it. It was so fine and thin now, and the spirit in him was so prodigious. "No one cares what happens to the man who always succeeds; no one loves him," he continued. "Do you know, in my trouble I've had more out of nigger Jim's affection than I've ever had in my life. Then there's Rockwell, Osterhaut and Jowett, and there's your father. It was worth while living to feel the real thing." His hands went out as though grasping something good and comforting. "I don't suppose every man needs to be struck as hard as I've been to learn what's what, but I've learned it. I give you my word of honour, I've learned it." Her face flushed and her eyes kindled greatly. "Jim, Rockwell, Osterhaut, Jowett, and my father!" she exclaimed. "Of course trouble wouldn't do anything but make them come closer round you. Poor people live so near to misfortune all the time--I mean poor people like Jim, Osterhaut, and Jowett--that changes of fortune are just natural things to them. As for my father, he has had to stretch out his hands so often to those in trouble--" "That he carried me home on his shoulders from the bridge six weeks and three days ago, at three o'clock in the morning," interjected Ingolby with a quizzical smile. "Why did you omit Madame Bulteel and myself when you mentioned those who showed their--friendship?" she asked, hesitating at the last word. "Haven't we done our part?" "I was talking of men," he answered. "One knows what women do. They may leave you in the bright days, not in the dark days. On the majority of them you couldn't rely in prosperity, but in misfortune you couldn't do anything else. They are there with you. They're made that way. The best life can give you in misfortune is a woman. It's the great beginning-of-the-world thing in them. Men can't stand prosperity, but women can stand misfortune. Why, if Jim and Osterhaut and Jowett and all the men of Lebanon and Manitou had deserted me, I shouldn't have been surprised; but I'd have had to recast my philosophy if Fleda Druse had turned her bonny brown head away." It was evident he was making an effort to conquer emotions which were rising in him; that he was playing on the surface to prevent his deep feelings from breaking forth. "Instead of which," he added jubilantly, "here I am, in the nicest room in the world, in a fine bed with springs like an antelope's heels." He laughed, and hunched his back into the mattress. It was the laugh of the mocker, but he was mocking himself. She did not misunderstand. It was a nice room, as he said. He had never seen it with his eyes, but if he had seen it he would have realized how like herself it was--adorably fresh, happily coloured, sumptuous and fine. It had simple curtains, white sheets, and a warm carpet on the floor; and yet with something, too, that struck the note of a life outside. A pennant of many colours hung where two soft pink curtains joined, and at the window and over the door was an ancient cross in bronze and gold. It was not the simple Christian cross of the modern world, but an ancient one which had become a symbol of the Romanys, a sign to mark the highways, the guide of the wayfarers. The pennant had been on the pole of the Ry's tent in far-off days in the Roumelian country. In the girl herself there was that which corresponded to the gorgeous pennant and the bronze cross. It was not in dress or in manner, for there was no sign of garishness, of the unusual anywhere--in manner she was as well controlled as any woman of fashion, in dress singularly reserved--but in the depths of the eyes there was some restless, unsettled thing, some flicker of strange banners akin to the pennant at the joining of the pink curtains. There had been something of the same look in Ingolby's eyes in the past, only with him it was the sense of great adventure, intrepid enterprise, a touch of vision and the beckoning thing. That look was not in his eyes now. Nothing was there; no life, no soul; only darkness. But did that look still inhabit the eyes of the soul? He answered the question himself. "I'd start again in a different way if I could," he said musingly, his face towards the girl. "It's easy to say that, but I would. It isn't only the things you get, it's how you use them. It isn't only the things you do, it's why you do them. But I'll never have a chance now; I'll never have a chance to try the new way. I'm done." Something almost savage leaped into her eyes--a wild, bitter protest, for it was her tragedy, too, if he was not to regain his sight. The great impulse of a nature which had been disciplined into reserve broke forth. "It isn't so," she said with a tremor in her voice. All that he--and she--was in danger of losing came home to her. "It isn't so. You shall get well again. Your sight will come back. To-morrow; perhaps to-day, Hindlip, the great oculist comes from New York. Mr. Warbeck, the Montreal man, holds out hopes. If the New York man says the same, why despair? Perhaps in another month you will be on your feet again, out in the world, fighting, working, mastering, just as you used to do." A sudden stillness seemed to take possession of him. His lips parted; his head was thrust forwards slightly as though he saw something in the distance. He spoke scarcely above a whisper. "I didn't know the New York man was coming. I didn't know there was any hope at all," he said with awe in his tones. "We told you there was," she answered. "Yes, I know. But I thought you were all only trying to make it easier for me, and I heard Warbeck say to Rockwell, when they thought I was asleep, 'It's ten to one against him.'" "Did you hear that?" she said sorrowfully. "I'm so sorry; but Mr. Warbeck said afterwards--only a week ago--that the chances were even. That's the truth. On my soul and honour it's the truth. He said the chances were even. It was he suggested Mr. Hindlip, and Hindlip is coming now. He's on the way. He may be here to-day. Oh, be sure, be sure, be sure, it isn't all over. You said your life was broken. It isn't. You said my life had been broken. It wasn't. It was only the wrench of a great change. Well, it's only the wrench of a great change in your life. You said I gained everything in the great change of my life. I did; and the great change in your life won't be lost, it will be gain, too. I know it; in my heart I know it." With sudden impulse she caught his hand in both of hers, and then with another impulse, which she could not control, she caught his head to her bosom. For one instant her arms wrapped him round, and she murmured something in a language he did not understand--the language of the Roumelian country. It was only one swift instant, and then with shocked exclamation she broke away from him, dropped into a chair, and buried her face in her hands. He blindly reached out his hand towards her as if to touch her. "Mother- girl, dear mother-girl--that's what you are," he said huskily. "What a great, kind heart you've got!" She did not reply, but sat with face hidden in her hands, rocking backwards and forwards. He understood; he tried to help her. There was a great joy in his heart, but he dared not give it utterance. "Please tell me about your life--about that great change in it," he said at last in a low voice. "Perhaps it would help me. Anyhow, I'd like to know, if you feel you can tell me." For a moment she was silent. Then she said to him with an anxious note in her voice: "What do you know about my life-about the 'great change,' as you call it?" He reached out over the coverlet, felt for a sock which he had been learning to knit and, slowly plying the needles, replied: "I only know what Jethro Fawe told me, and he was a promiscuous liar." "I don't think he lied about me," she answered quietly. "He told you I was a Gipsy; he told you that I was married to him. That was true. I was a Gipsy. I was married to him in the Romany way, when I was a child of three, and I never saw him again until here, the other day, on the Sagalac." "You were married to him as much as I am," he interjected scornfully. "That was a farce. It was only a promise to pay on the part of your father. There was nothing in that. Jethro Fawe could not claim on that." "He has tried to do so," she answered, "and if I were still a Gipsy he would have the right to do so from his standpoint." "That sounds silly to me," Ingolby remarked, his fingers moving now more quickly with the needles. "No, it isn't silly," she said, her voice almost as softly monotonous as his had been when he told her of his life a little while before. It was as though she was looking into her own mind and heart and speaking to herself. "It isn't silly," she repeated. "I don't think you understand. Just because a race like the Gipsies have no country and no home, so they must have things that bind them which other people don't need in the same way. Being the vagrants of the earth, so they must have things that hold them tighter than any written laws made by King or Parliament. Unless the Gipsies kept their laws sacred they couldn't hold together at all. They're iron and steel, the Gipsy laws. They can't be stretched, and they can't be twisted. They can only be broken, and then there's no argument about it. When they are broken, there's the penalty, and it has to be met." Ingolby stopped knitting for a moment. "You don't mean that a penalty could touch you?" he asked incredulously. "Not for breaking a law," she answered. "I'm not a Gipsy any more. I gave my word about that, and so did my father; and I'll keep it." "Please tell me about it," he urged. "Tell me, so that I can understand everything." There was a long pause in which Ingolby inspected carefully with his fingers the work which he was doing, but at last Fleda's voice came to him, as it seemed out of a great distance, while she began to tell of her first memories: of her life by the Danube and the Black Sea, and drew for him a picture, so far as she could recall it, of her marriage with Jethro, and of the years that followed. Now and again as she told of some sordid things, of the challenge of the law in different countries, of the coarse vagabondage of the Gipsy people in this place or in that, and some indignity put upon her father, or some humiliating incident, her voice became low and pained. It seemed as if she meant that he should see all she had been in that past, which still must be part of the present and have its place in the future, however far away all that belonged to it would be. She appeared to search her mind to find that which would prejudice him against her. While speaking with slow scorn of the life which she had lived as a Gipsy, yet she tried to make him understand, too, that, in the days when she belonged to it, it all seemed natural to her, and that its sordidness, its vagabondage did not produce repugnance in her mind when she was part of it. Unwittingly she over- coloured the picture, and he knew she did. In spite of herself, however, some aspects of the old life called forth pictures of happy Nature, of busy animal life of wood and glen and stream and footpath which was exquisite in its way. She was in spirit at one with the multitudinous world of nature among which so many men and women lived, without seeing or knowing. It was all undesignedly a part of herself, and she was one of a population in a universal nation whose devout citizen she was. Sometimes, in response to an interjection from Ingolby, deftly made, she told of some incident which revealed as great a poetic as dramatic instinct. As she talked, Ingolby in his imagination pictured her as a girl of ten or twelve, in a dark-red dress, brown curls falling in profusion on her shoulders, with a clear, honest, beautiful eye, and a face that only spoke of a joy of living, in which the small things were the small things and the great things were the great: the perfect proportion of sane life in a sane world. Now and again, carried away by the history of things remembered, she visualized scenes for him with the ardour of an artist and a lover of created things. He realized how powerful a hold the old life still had upon her. She understood it, too, for when at last she told of the great event in England which changed her life, and made her a deserter from Gipsy life; when she came to the giving of the pledge to a dying woman, and how she had kept that pledge, and how her father had kept it, sternly, faithfully, in spite of all it involved, she said to him: "It may seem strange to you, living as I live now in one spot, with everything to make life easy, that I should long sometimes for that old life. I hate it in my heart of hearts, yet there's something about it that belongs to me, that's behind me, if that tells you anything. It's as though there was some other self in me which reached far, far back into centuries, that wills me to do this and wills me to do that. It sounds mad to you of course, but there have been times when I have had a wild longing to go back to it all, to what some Gorgio writers call the pariah world--the Ishmaelites." More than once Ingolby's heart throbbed heavily against his breast as he felt the passion of her nature, its extraordinary truthfulness, making it clear to him by indirect phrases that even Jethro Fawe, whom she despised, still had a hateful fascination for her. It was all at variance to her present self, but it summoned her through the long avenues of ancestry, predisposition; through the secret communion of those who, being dead, yet speak. "It's a great story told in a great way," he said, when she had finished. "It's the most honest thing I ever heard, but it's not the most truthful thing I ever heard. I don't think we can tell the exact truth about ourselves. We try to be honest; we are savagely in earnest about it, and so we exaggerate the bad things we do, and we often show distrust of the good things we do. That's not a fair picture. I believe you've told me the truth as you see it and feel it, but I don't think it's the real truth. In my mind I sometimes see an oriel window in the college where I spent three years. I used to work and think for hours in that oriel window, and in the fights I've been having lately I've looked back and thought I wanted it again; wanted to be there in the peace of it all, with the books, and the lectures, and the drone of history, and the drudgery of examinations; but if I did go back to it, three days'd sicken me, and if you went back to the Gipsy life three days'd sicken you." "Yes, I know. Three hours would sicken me. But what might not happen in those three hours! Can't you understand?" Suddenly she got to her feet with a passionate exclamation, her clenched hands went to her temples in an agony of emotion. "Can't you understand?" she repeated. "It's the going back at all for three days, for three hours, for three minutes that counts. It might spoil everything; it might kill my life." His face flushed, crimsoned, then became pale; his hands ceased moving; the knitting lay still on his knee. "Maybe, but you aren't going back for three minutes, any more than I'm going back to the oriel window for three seconds," he said. "We dreamers have a lot of agony in thinking about the things we're never going to do--just as much agony as in thinking about the things we've done. Every one of us dreamers ought to be insulated. We ought to wear emotional lightning-rods to carry off the brain-waves into the ground. "I've never heard such a wonderful story," he added, after an instant, with an intense longing to hold out his arms to her, and a still more intense will to do no such wrong. A blind man had no right or title to be a slave-owner, for that was what marriage to him would be. A wife would be a victim. He saw himself, felt himself being gradually devitalized, with only the placid brain left, considering only the problem of hourly comfort, and trying to neutralize the penalties of blindness. She must not be sacrificed to that, for apart from all else she had greatness of a kind in her. He knew far better than he had said of the storm of emotion in her, and he knew that she had not exaggerated the temptation which sang in her ears. Jethro Fawe--the thought of the man revolted him; and yet there was something about the fellow, a temperamental power, the glamour and garishness of Nature's gifts, prostituted though they were, finding expression in a striking personality, in a body of athletic grace--a man-beauty. "Have you seen Jethro Fawe lately?" he asked. "Not since"--she was going to say not since the morning her father had passed the sentence of the patrin upon him; but she paused in time. "Not since everything happened to you," she added presently. "He knows the game is up," Ingolby remarked with forced cheerfulness. "He won't be asking for any more." "It's time for your milk and brandy," she said suddenly, emotion subsiding and a look of purpose coming into her face. She poured out the liquid, and gave the glass into his hand. His fingers touched hers. "Your hands are cold," she said to him. "Cold hands, warm heart," he chattered. A curious, wilful, rebellious look came into her eyes. "I shouldn't have thought it in your case," she said, and with sudden resolve turned towards the door. "I'll send Madame Bulteel," she added. "I'm going for a walk." She had betrayed herself so much, had shown so recklessly what she felt, and yet, yet why did he not--she did not know what she wanted him to do. It was all a great confusion. Vaguely she realized what had been working in him, but yet the knowledge was dim indeed. She was a woman. In her heart of hearts she knew that he did care for her, and yet in her heart of hearts she denied that he cared. She was suddenly angry with herself, angry with him, the poor blind man, back from the Valley of the Shadow. She had not reached the door, however, when Madame Bulteel entered the room. "The doctor from New York has come," she said, holding out a note from Dr. Rockwell. "He will be here in a couple of hours." Fleda turned back towards the bed. "Good luck!" she said. "You'll see, it will be all right." "Certainly I'll see if it's all right," he said cheerfully. "Am I tidy? Have I used Pears' soap?" He would have his joke at his own funeral if possible. "There are two hours to get you fit to be seen," she rejoined with raillery, infected by his cheerfulness in spite of herself. "Madame Bulteel is very brave. Nothing is too hard for her!" An instant later she was gone, with her heart telling her to go back to him, not to leave him, but yet with a longing stronger still driving her to the open world, to which she could breathe her trouble in great gasps, as she sped onward through the woods and by the river. To love a blind man was sheer madness, but in her was a superstitious belief that he would see again. It prevailed against the doubts and terrors. It made her resent his own sense of fatality, his own belief that he would be in darkness all his days. In the room where he awaited the verdict of the expert, he kept saying to himself: "She would have made everything else look cheap--if it could have been." CHAPTER XXI THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER The last rays of the setting sun touched the gorgeous Autumn woods with a loving, bright glow, and the day stole pensively away into a purple bed beyond the sight of the eyes. From a lonely spot by the river, Fleda watched the westering gleam until it vanished, her soul alive to the melancholy beauty of it all. Not a human being seemed to be within the restricted circle of her vision. There were only to be seen the deep woods, in myriad tints of bronze and red and saffron, and the swift- flowing river. Overhead was the Northern sky, so clear, so thrilling, and the stars were beginning to sparkle in the incredibly swift twilight which links daytime and nighttime in that Upper Land. Lonely and delicately sad it all looked, but there was no feeling of loneliness among those who lived the life of the Sagalac. Many a man has stood on a wide plain of snow, white to the uttermost horizon, or in the yellow- brown grass of the Summer prairie, empty of all human life so far as eye could see, and yet has felt no solitude. It is as though the air itself is inhabited by a throng of happy comrades whispering in the communion of the invisible world. As a child Fleda had often gazed upon just such scenes, lonely and luminous, but she was only conscious then of a vague and pleasant awe, a kindly confusion, which, like the din of innumerable bees, lulled wonder to sleep. Even as a child, however, something of what it meant had pierced her awe and wonder. Once as she crossed a broken, bare mountain of Roumania she had seen a wild ass perched upon a high summit gazing, as it were, over the wide valley, where beneath, among the rocks, other wild asses wandered. There was something so statue-like in this immovable wild creature that Fleda had watched it till it was hid from her view by a jutting rock. But the thing which made a lasting impression, drawing her nearer to nature-life than all that had chanced since she was born, was the fact that on returning, hours after, the wild ass was still standing upon the summit of the hill, still gazing across the valley. Or was it gazing across the valley? Was there some other vision commanding its sight? So a young wife not yet a mother loses herself for hours together in a vista of unexplored experience. Fleda had passed on, out of sight of the wild ass on the hills, but for ever after the memory of it remained with her and the picture of it sprang to her eye innumerable times. The hypnotized wild thing--hypnotized by its own vague instincts, or by something outside itself-became to her as the Sphinx to the Egyptian, the everlasting question of existence. Now, as she watched the day fleeing, and night with swift stealthiness coming on, that unforgettable picture of the Roumanian hills came to her again. The instinct of those far-off days which had been little removed from the finest animal intelligence had now developed into thought. Brain and soul strove to grasp what it all meant, and what the revelation was between Nature and herself. Nature was so vast; she was so insignificant; changes in its motionless inorganic life were imperceptible save through the telescopes of years; but she, like the wind, the water, and the clouds, was variable, inconstant. Was there any real relation between the vast, imperturbable earth, its seas, its forests, its mountains and its plains, its life of tree and plant and flower and the men and women dotted on its surface? Did they belong to each other, or were mankind only, as it were, vermin infesting the desirable world? Did they belong to each other? It meant so much if they did belong, and she loved to think they did. Many a time she kissed the smooth bole of a maple or whispered to it; or laid her cheek against a mossy rock and murmured a greeting in the spirit of a companionship as old as the making of the world. On the evening of this day of her destiny--carrying the story of her own fate within its twenty-four hours--she was in a mood of detachment from life's routine. As at a great opera, a sensitive spirit loses itself in visions alien to the music and yet born of it, so she, lost in this primeval scene before her, saw visions of things to be. If Ingolby's sight came back! In her abstraction she saw him with sight restored and by her side, and even in that joy her mind felt a hovering sense of invasion, no definite, visible thing, but a presence which made shadow. Suddenly oppressed by it, she turned back into the woods from the river-bank to make for home. She had explored nearly every portion of this river-country for miles up and down, but on this evening, lost in her dreams, she had wandered into less familiar regions. There was no chance of her being lost, so long as she kept near to the river, and indeed by instinct and not by thought or calculation she made her way about at all times. Turned homeward, she walked for about a quarter of a mile, retreading the path by which she had come. It was growing darker, and, being in unfamiliar surroundings, she hurried on, though she knew well what course to take. Following the bank of the river she would have increased her walk greatly, as the stream made a curve at a point above Manitou, and then came back again to its original course; so she cut across the promontory, taking the most direct line homeward. Presently, however, she became conscious of other people in the wood besides herself. She saw no one, but she heard breaking twigs, the stir of leaves, the flutter of a partridge which told of human presence. The underbrush was considerable, darkness was coming on, and she had a sense of being surrounded. It agitated her, but she pulled herself together, stood still and admonished herself. She called herself a fool; she asked herself if she was going to be a coward. She laughed out loud at her own apprehension; but a chill stole into her blood when she heard near by-- there was no doubt about it now--mockery of her own laughter. Then suddenly, before she could organize her senses, a score of men seemed to rise up from the ground around her, to burst out from the bushes, to drop from the trees, and to storm upon her. She had only time to realize that they were Romanys, before scarfs were thrown around her head, bound around her body, and, unconscious, she was carried away into the deep woods. When she regained consciousness Fleda found herself in a tent, set in a kind of prairie amphitheatre valanced by shrubs and trees. Bright fires burned here and there, and dark-featured men squatted upon the ground, cared for their horses, or busied themselves near two large caravans, at the doors or on the steps of which now and again appeared a woman. She had waked without moving, had observed the scene without drawing the attention of a man--a sentry--who sat beside the tent-door. The tent was empty save for herself. There was little in it besides the camp-bed against the tent wall, upon which she lay, and the cushions supporting her head. She had waked carefully, as it were: as though some inward monitor had warned her of impending danger. She realized that she had been kidnapped by Romanys, and that the hand behind the business was that of Jethro Fawe. The adventurous and reckless Fawe family had its many adherents in the Romany world, and Jethro was its head, the hereditary claimant for its leadership. Notwithstanding the Ry of Rys' prohibition, there had drawn nearer and ever nearer to him, from the Romany world he had abandoned, many of his people, never, however, actually coming within his vision till the appearance of Jethro Fawe. Here and there on the prairie, to a point just beyond Gabriel Druse's horizon, they had come from all parts of the world; and Jethro, reckless and defiant under the Sentence, and knowing that the chances against his life were a million to one, had determined on one bold stroke which, if it failed, would make his fate no worse, and, if it succeeded, would give him his wife and, maybe, headship over all the Romany world. For weeks he had planned, watched and waited, filling the woods with his adherents, secretly following Fleda day by day, until, at last, the place, the opportunity, seemed perfect; and here she lay in a Romany tan once more, with the flickering fires outside in the night, and the sentry at her doorway. This watchman was not Jethro Fawe, but she knew well that Jethro was not far off. Through the open door of the tent, for some minutes, her eyes studied the segment of the circle within her vision, and she realized that here was an organized attempt to force her back into the Romany world. If she repudiated the Gorgio life and acknowledged herself a Romany once again, she knew her safety would be secured; but in truth she had no fear for her life, for no one would dare to defy the Ry of Rys so far as to kill his daughter. But she was in danger of another kind--in deep and terrible danger; and she knew it well. As the thought of it took possession of her, her heart seemed almost to burst. Not fear, but anger and emotion possessed her. All the Romany in her stormed back again from the past. It sent her to her feet with a scarcely smothered cry. She was not quicker, however, than was the figure at the tent door, which, with a half-dozen others, sprang up as she appeared. A hand was raised, and, as if by magic, groups of Gipsies, some sitting, some standing, some with the Gipsy fiddle, one or two with flutes, began a Romany chant in a high, victorious key, and women threw upon the fire powders from which flamed up many coloured lights. In a moment the camp was transformed. From the woods around came swarthy-faced men, with great gold rings in their ears and bright scarfs around their necks or waists, some of them handsome, dirty and insolent; others ugly, watchful, and quiet in manner and face; others still most friendly and kind in face and manner. All showed instant respect for Fleda. They raised their hands in a gesture of salutation as a Zulu chief thrusts up a long arm and shouts "Inkoos!" to one whom he honours. Some, however, made the sweeping Oriental gesture of the right hand, palm upward, and almost touching the ground--a sign of obedience and infinite respect. It had all been well arranged. Skilfully managed as it was, however, there was something in it deeper than theatrical display or dramatic purpose. It was clear that many of them were deeply moved at being in the presence of the daughter of the Ry of Rys, who had for so long exiled himself. Racial, family, clan feeling spoke in voice and gesture, in look and attitude; but yet there were small groups of younger men whose salutations were perfunctory, not to say mocking. These were they who resented deeply Fleda's defection, and truthfully felt that she had passed out of their circle for ever; that she despised them, and looked down on them from another sphere. They were all about the age of Jethro Fawe, but were of a less civilized type, and had semi-barbarism written all over them. Unlike Jethro they had never known the world of cities. They repudiated Fleda, because their ambition could not reach to her. They recognized the touch of fashion and of form, of a worldly education, of a convention which lifted her away from the tan and the caravan, from the everlasting itinerary. They had not had Jethro's experiences in fashionable hotels of Europe, at midnight parties, at gay suppers, at garish dances, where Gorgio ladies answered the amorous looks of the ambitious Romany with the fiddle at his chin. Because these young Romanys knew they dare not aspire, they were resentful; but Jethro, the head of the rival family and the son of the dead claimant to the headship, had not such compulsory modesty. He had ranged far and wide, and his expectations were extensive. He was nowhere to be seen in the groups which sang and gestured in the light of the many coloured fires, though once or twice Fleda's quickened ear detected his voice, exulting, in the chorus of song. Presently, as she stood watching, listening, and strangely moved in spite of herself by the sudden dramatic turn which things had taken, a seat was brought to her. It was a handsome stool, looted perhaps from some chateau in the Old World, and over it was thrown a dark-red cloth which gave a semblance of dignity to the seat of authority, which it was meant to be. Fleda did not refuse the honour. She had choked back the indignant words which had rushed to her lips as she left the tent where she had been lying. Prudence had bade her await developments. She could not yet make up her mind what to do. It was clear that a bold and deep purpose lay behind it all, and she could not tell how far-reaching it was, nor what it represented of rebellion against her father's authority. That it did represent rebellion she had no doubt. She was well enough aware of the claims of Jethro's dead father to the leadership, abandoned for three thousand pounds and marriage with herself; and she was also aware that while her father's mysterious isolation might possibly have developed a reverence for him, yet active pressure and calumny might well have done its work. Also, if the marriage was repudiated, Jethro would be justified in resuming the family claim to the leadership. She seated herself upon the scarlet seat with a gesture of thanks, while the salutations and greetings increased; then she awaited events, thrilled by the weird and pleasant music, with its touches of Eastern fantasy. In spite of herself she was moved, as Romanys, men and women, ran forward in excitement with arms raised towards her as though they meant to strike her, then suddenly stopped short, made obeisance, called a greeting, and ran backwards to their places. Presently a group of men began a ceremony or ritual, before which the spectators now and again covered their eyes, or bent their heads low, or turned their backs, and raised their hands in a sort of ascription. As the ceremony neared its end, with its strange genuflections, a woman dressed in white was brought forward, her hands bound behind her, her hair falling over her shoulders, and after a moment of apparent denunciation on the part of the head of the ceremony, she was suddenly thrown to the ground, and the pretence of drawing a knife across her throat was made. As Fleda watched it she shuddered, but presently braced herself, because she knew that this ritual was meant to show what the end must be of those who, like herself, proved traitor to the traditions of race. It was at this point, when fifty knives flashed in the air, with vengeful exclamations, that Jethro Fawe appeared in the midst of the crowd. He was dressed in the well-known clothes which he had worn since the day he first declared himself at Gabriel Druse's home, and, compared with his friends around him, he showed to advantage. There was command in his bearing, and experience of life had given him primitive distinction. For a moment he stood looking at Fleda in undisguised admiration, for she made a remarkable picture. Animal beauty was hers, too. There was a delicate, athletic charm in her body and bearing; but it added to, rather than took away from, the authority of her presence, so differing from Jethro. She had never compared herself with others, and her passionate intelligence would have rebelled against the supremacy of the body. She had no physical vanity, but she had some mental vanity, and it placed mind so far above matter that her beauty played no part in her calculations. At sight of him, Fleda's blood quickened, but in indignation and in no other sense. As he came towards her, however, despising his vanity as she did, she felt how much he was above all those by whom he was surrounded. She realized his talent, and it almost made her forget his cunning and his loathsomeness. As he came near to her he made a slight gesture to someone in the crowd, and a chorus of salutations rose. Composed and still she waited for him to come quite close to her, and the look in her face was like that of one who was scarcely conscious of what was passing around her, whose eyes saw distant things of infinite moment. A few feet away from her he spoke. "Daughter of the Ry of Rys, you are among your own people once again," he said. "From everywhere in the world they have come to show their love for you. You would not have come to them of your own free will, because a madness 'got hold of you, and so they came to you. You cut yourself off from them and told yourself you had become a Gorgio. But that was only your madness; and madness can be cured. We are the Fawes, the ancient Fawes, who ruled the Romany people before the Druses came to power. We are of the ancient blood, yet we are faithful to the Druse that rules over us. His word prevails, although his daughter is mad. Daughter of the Ry of Rys, you have seen us once again. We have sung to you; we have spoken to you; we have told you what is in our hearts; we have shown you how good is the end of those who are faithful, and how terrible is the end of the traitor. Do not forget it. Speak to us." Fleda had a fierce desire to spring to her feet and declare to them all that the sentence of the patrin had been passed upon Jethro Fawe, but she laid a hand upon herself. She knew they were unaware that the Sentence had been passed, else they would not have been with Jethro. In that case none would give him food or shelter or the hand of friendship; none dare show him any kindness; and it was the law that any one against whom he committed an offence, however small, might take his life. The Sentence had been like a cloud upon her mind ever since her father had passed it; she could not endure the thought of it. She could not bring herself to speak of it--to denounce him. Sooner or later the Sentence would reach every Romany everywhere, and Jethro would pass into the darkness of oblivion, not in his own time nor in the time of Fate. The man was abhorrent to her, yet his claim was there. Mad and bad as it was, he made his claim of her upon ancient rights, and she was still enough a Romany to see his point of view. Getting to her feet slowly, she ignored Jethro, looked into the face of the crowd, and said: "I am the daughter of the Ry of Rys still, though I am a Romany no longer. I made a pledge to be no more a Romany and I will keep it; yet you and all Romany people are dear to me because through long generations the Druses have been of you. You have brought me here against my will. Do you think the Ry of Rys will forgive that? In your words you have been kind to me, but yet you have threatened me. Do you think that a Druse has any fear? Did a Druse ever turn his cheek to be smitten? You know what the Druses are. I am a Druse still. I will not talk longer, I have nothing to say to you all except that you must take me back to my father, and I will see that he forgives you. Some of you have done this out of love; some of you have done it out of hate; yet set me free again upon the path to my home, and I shall forget it, and the Ry of Rys will forget it." At that instant there suddenly came forward from the doorway of a tent on the outskirts of the crowd a stalwart woman, with a strong face and a self-reliant manner. She was still young, but her slightly pockmarked countenance showed the wear and tear of sorrow of some kind. She had, indeed, lost her husband and her father in the Montenegrin wars. Hastening forward to Fleda she reached out a hand. "Come with me," she said; "come and sleep in my tent to-night. To-morrow you shall go back to the Ry of Rys, perhaps. Come with me." There was a sudden murmuring in the crowd, which was stilled by a motion of Jethro Fawe's hand, and a moment afterwards Fleda gave her hand to the woman. "I will go with you," Fleda said. Then she turned to Jethro: "I wish to speak to you alone, Jethro Fawe," she added. He laughed triumphantly. "The wife of Jethro Fawe wishes to speak with him," he bombastically cried aloud to the assembled people, and he prepared to follow Fleda. As Fleda entered the woman's tent a black-eyed girl, with tousled hair and a bold, sensual face, ran up to Jethro, and in an undertone of evil suggestion said to him: "To-night is yours, Jethro. You can make tomorrow sure." CHAPTER XXII THE SECRET MAN "You are wasting your time." Fleda said the words with a quiet determination, and yet in the tone was a slight over-emphasis which was like a call upon reserve forces within herself. "Time is nothing to me," was the complete reply, clothed in a tone of soft irony. "I'm young enough to waste it. I've plenty of it in my knapsack." "Have you forgotten the Sentence of the Patrin?" Fleda asked the question in a voice which showed a sudden access of determination. "He will have to wipe it out after to-morrow," replied the other with a gleam of sulky meaning and furtive purpose in his eyes. "If you mean that I will change my mind to-morrow, and be your wife, and return to the Gipsy life, it is the thought of a fool. I asked you to come here to speak with me because I was sure I could make you see things as they truly are. I wanted to explain why I did not tell the Romanys outside there that the Sentence had been passed on you. I did not tell them because I can't forget that your people and my people have been sib for hundreds of years; that you and I were children together; that we were sealed to one another when neither of us could have any say about it. If I had remained a Gipsy, who can tell--my mind might have become like yours! I think there must be something rash and bad in me somewhere, because I tell you frankly now that a chord in my heart rang when you made your wild speeches to me there in the hut in the Wood months ago, even when I hated you, knowing you for what you are." "That was because there was another man," interjected Jethro. She inclined her head. "Yes, it was partly because of another man," she replied. "It is a man who suffers because of you. When he was alone among his foes, a hundred to one, you betrayed him. That itself would have made me despise you to the end of my life, even if the man had been nothing at all to me. "It was a low, cowardly thing to do. You did it; and if you were my brother, I would hate you for it; if you were my father, I should leave your house; if you were my husband, I should kill you. I asked you to speak with me now because I thought that if you would go away--far away-- promising never to cross my father's path, or my path, again, I could get him to withdraw the Sentence. You have kidnapped me. Where do you think you are? In Mesopotamia? You can't break the law of this country and escape as you would there. They don't take count of Romany custom here. Not only you, but every one of the Fawes here will be punished if the law reaches for your throat. I want you to escape, and I tell you to go now. Go back to Europe. I advise you this for your own sake--because you are a Fawe and of the clan." The blood mounted to Jethro's forehead, and he made an angry gesture. "And leave you here for him! 'Mi Duvel!' I can only die once, and I would rather die near you than far away," he exclaimed. His eyes had a sardonic look, there was a savage edge to his tongue, yet his face was flushed with devouring emotion and he was quivering with hope. That which he called love was flooding the field of his feelings, and the mad thing--the toxic impulse which is deep in the brain of Eastern races bled into his brain now. He was reckless, rebellious against fate, insanely wilful, and what she had said concerning Ingolby had roused in him the soul of Cain. She realized it, and she was apprehensive of some desperate act; yet she had no physical fear of him. Something seemed to tell her that, no matter what happened, Ingolby would not wait for her in vain, and that he would yet see her enter to him again with the love-light in her eyes. "But listen to me," Jethro said, with an unnatural shining in his eyes, his voice broken in its passion. "You think you can come it over me with your Gorgio talk and the clever things you've learned in the Gorgio world. You try to look down on me. I'm as well born or as ill born as you. The only difference between us is the way you dress, the way you live and use your tongue. All that belongs to the life of the cities. Anyone can learn it. Anyone well born like you and me, with a little practice, can talk like Gorgio dukes and earls. I've been among them and I know. I've had my friends among them, too. I've got the hang of it all. It's no good to me, and I don't want it. It's all part of a set piece. There's no independence in that life; you live by rule. Diable! I know. I've been in palaces; I've played my fiddle to the women in high places who can't blush. It's no good; it brings nothing in the end. It's all hollow. Look at our people there." He swept a hand to the tent door. "They're tanned and rough, as all out-door things are rough, but they've got their share of happiness, and every day has its pleasures. Listen to them!" he cried with a gesture of exultation. "Listen to that!" The colour slowly left Fleda's face. Outside in the light of the dying fires, under the glittering stars, in the shade of the trees, groups of Romanys were singing the Romany wedding melody, called "The Song of the Sealing." It was not like the ringing of wedding bells alone, it sealed blessing upon the man and the woman. It was a poem in praise of marriage passion; it was a paean proclaiming the accomplishment of life. Crude, primitive, it thrilled with Eastern feeling; a weird charm was showered from its notes. "Listen!" exclaimed Jethro again, a fire burning in his face. "That's for you and me. To them you are my wife, and I am your man. 'Mi Duvel' --it shall be so! I know women. For an hour you will hate me; for a day you will resent me, and then you will begin to love me. You will fight me, but I will conquer. I know you--I know you--all you women. But no, it will not be I that will conquer. It's my love that will do it. It's a den of tigers. When it breaks loose it will have its way. Here it is. Can't you see it in my face? Can't you hear it in my voice? Don't you hear my heart beating? Every throb says, 'Fleda--Fleda--Fleda, come to me.' I have loved you since you were three. I want you now. We can be happy. Every night we will make a new home. The world will be ours; the best that is in it will come to us. We will tap the trees of happiness --they're hid from the Gorgio world. You and I will know where to find them. Every land shall be ours; every gift of paradise within our reach --riches, power, children. Come back to your own people; be a true daughter of the Ry of Rys; live with your Romany chal. You will never be at home anywhere else. It's in your bones; it's in your blood; it's deeper than all. Here, now, come to me--my wife." He flung the flap of the tent door across the opening, shutting out the camp-fires and the people. "Here--now--come. Be mine while they sing." For one swift moment the great passion and eloquence of the man lifted her off her feet; for one instant the Romany in her triumphed, and a thrill of passion passed through her, storming her senses, like a mist shutting out all the rest of the world. This Romany was right; there was in her the wild thing--the everlasting strain of race and years breaking down all the defences which civilized life had built up within her. Just for one instant so--and then there flashed before her a face with two blind eyes. Like a stream of ether playing upon warm flesh, making it icy cold, so something of the ineradicable good in her swept like a frozen spray upon the elements of emotion, and with both hands she made a gesture of repulsion. His eyes with their reddish glow burned nearer and nearer to her. He bulked over her, driving her back against the couch by the tent wall. For an instant like that--and then, with clenched hand, she struck him in the face. Swift as had been the change in her, so a change like a cyclone swept over him. The hysterical passion which had possessed him suddenly passed, and a dark, sullen determination swept into his eyes and over his face. His lips parted in a savage smile. "Hell, so that's what you've learned in the Gorgio world, is it?" he asked malevolently. "Then I'll teach you what they do in the Romany world; and to-morrow you can put the two together and see what they look like." With a Romany expletive, he flung back the curtain of the tent and passed out into the night. For a long time Fleda sat stunned and overcome by the side of the couch, her brain tortured by a thousand thoughts. She knew there was no immediate escape from the encampment. She could only rely upon the hue and cry which would be raised and the certain hunt which would be made for her. But what might not happen before any rescue came? The ancient grudge of the Fawes against the Druses had gained power and activity by the self-imposed exile of Gabriel Druse; and Jethro had worked upon it. The veiled threats which Jethro had made she did not despise. He was a barbarian. He would kill what he loved; he would have his way with what he loved, whether or not it was the way of law or custom or right. Outside, the wedding song still made musical the night. Women's voices, shrill, and with falsetto notes, made the trees ring with it; low, bass voices gave it a kind of solemnity. The view which the encampment took of her captivity was clear. Where was the woman that brought her to the tent--whose tent it was? She seemed kind. Though her face had a hard look, surely she meant to be friendly. Or did she only mean to betray her; to give her a fancied security, and leave her to Jethro--and the night? She looked round for some weapon. There was nothing available save two brass candlesticks. Though the door of the tent was closed, she knew that there were watchers outside; that any break for liberty would only mean defeat, and yet she was determined to save herself. As she tried to take the measure of the situation and plan what she would do, the noise of the music suddenly ceased, and she heard a voice, though low in tone, give some sort of command. Then there was a cry, and what seemed the chaotic noise of a struggle followed; then a voice a little louder speaking, a voice of someone she remembered, though she could not place it. Something vital was happening outside, something punctuated by sharp, angry exclamations; afterwards a voice speaking soothingly, firmly, prevailed; and then there was silence. As she listened there was a footstep at the door of the tent, a voice called to her softly, and a hand drew aside the tent curtain. The woman who had brought her to this place entered. "You are all safe now," she said, reaching out both hands to Fleda. "By long and by last, but it was a close shave! He meant to make you his wife to-night, whether you would or no. I'm a Fawe, but I'd have none of that. I was on my way to your father's house when I met someone--someone that you know. He carries your father's voice in his mouth." She stepped to the tent door and beckoned; and out of the darkness, only faintly lightened by the dying fires, there entered one whom Fleda had seen not more than fifty times in her life, and never but twice since she had ceased to be a Romany. It was her father's secret agent, Rhodo, the Roumelian, now grizzled and gaunt, but with the same vitality which had been his in the days when she was a little child. Here and there in the world went Rhodo, the voice of the Ry of Rys to do his bidding, to say his say. No minister of a Czar was ever more dreaded or loved. His words were ever few, but his deeds had been many. Now, as he looked at Fleda, his old eyes gleamed, and he showed a double row of teeth, not one of which was imperfect, though he was seventy years of age. "Would you like to come?" he asked. "Would you like to come home to the Ry?" With a cry she flung herself upon him. "Rhodo! Rhodo!" she exclaimed, and now the tears broke forth, and her body shook with sobs. A few moments later he said to her: "It's fifteen years since you kissed me last. I thought you were ashamed of old Rhodo." She did not answer, but looked at him with eyes streaming, drawing back from him. Her embrace was astonishing even to herself, for as a child Rhodo had been a figure of awe to her, and the feeling had deepened as the years had gone on, knowing as she did his work throughout the world for the Ry of Rys. In his face was secrecy, knowledge, and some tragic underthing which gave him, apart from his office, a singular loneliness of figure and manner. He was so closely knit in form; there was such concentration in face, bearing and gesture, that the isolation of his position was greatly deepened. "No, you never kissed me after you were old enough to like or dislike," he said with mournful and ironical reflection. There crept into his face a kind of yearning such as one might feel who beheld afar off a promised land, and yet was denied its joys. Rhodo was wifeless, childless, and had been so for forty years. He had had no intimates among the Romany people. His life he lived alone. That the daughter of the Ry of Rys should kiss him was a thing of which he would dream when deeds were done and over and the shadows threatened. "I will kiss you again in another fifteen years," she said half-smiling through her tears. "But tell me--tell me what has happened." "Jethro Fawe has gone," he answered with a sweeping outward gesture. "Where has he gone?" she asked, apprehension seizing her. "A journey into the night," responded the old man with scorn and wrath in his tone, and his lips were set. "Is he going far?" she asked. "The road you might think long would be short to him," he answered. Her hands became cold; her heart seemed to stop beating. "What road is that?" she asked. She knew, but she must ask. "Everybody knows it; everybody goes it some time or another," he answered darkly. "What was it you said to all of them outside?"--she made a gesture towards the doorway. "There were angry cries, and I heard Jethro Fawe's voice." "Yes, he was blaspheming," remarked the old man grimly. "Tell me what it was you said, and tell me what has happened," she persisted. The old man hesitated a moment, then said grimly: "I told them they must go one way and Jethro Fawe another. I told them the Ry of Rys had said no patrins should mark the road Jethro Fawe's feet walked. I had heard of this gathering here, and I was on my way to bid them begone, for in following the Ry they have broken his command. As I came, I met the woman of this tent who has been your friend. She is a good woman; she has suffered. Her people are gone, but she has a heart for others. I met her. She told me of what that rogue and devil had done and would do. He is the head of the Fawes, but the Ry of Rys is the head of all the Romanys of the world. He has spoken the Word against Jethro, and the Word shall prevail. The Word of the Ry when it is given cannot be withdrawn. It is like the rock on which the hill rests." "They did not go with him?" she asked. "It is not the custom," he answered sardonically. "That is a path a Romany walks alone." Her face was white. "But he has not come to the end of the path--has he?" she asked tremulously. "Who can tell? This day, or twenty years from now, or to-morrow, or next moon, he will come to the end of the path. No one knows, he least of all. He will not see the end, because the road is dark. I don't think it will be soon," he added, because he saw how haggard her face had grown. "No, I don't think it will be soon. He is a Fawe, at the head of all the Fawes; so perhaps there will be time for him to think, and no doubt it will not be soon." "Perhaps it will not be at all. My father spoke, but he can withdraw his word," she urged. Suddenly the old Gipsy's face hardened. A look of dark resolve and iron force came into it. "The Ry will not withdraw. He has spoken, and it must be. If he spoke lightly he is not fit to rule. Unless the word of the Ry of Rys is good against breaking, then the Romanys are no more than scattered leaves at the will of the wind. It is the word of the Ry that holds our folk together. It shall not bless, and it shall not curse in vain." Pitying the girl's face, however, and realizing that the Gorgio life had given her a new view of things; angry with her because it was so, but loving her for herself, he added: "But the night road may be long, though it is lonely, and if it should be that the Ry should pass before the end of the road comes to Jethro, then is Jethro freed, since the Word is gone which binds his feet for the pitfall." "He must not die," she insisted. "Then the Ry of Rys must not live," he rejoined sternly. With a kindly gesture, however, he stretched out his hand. "Come, we shall reach the house of the Ry before the morning," he added. "He is not returned from his journey, and so will not be troubled by having missed you. There will be an hour for beauty-sleep before the sun rises," he continued with the same wide smile with which he greeted her first. Then he lifted up the curtain and passed out into the night. Following him, Fleda saw that the Romanys had broken camp, and only a small handful remained, among them the woman who had befriended her. Fleda went up to her: "I will never forget you," she said. "Will you wear this for me?" she added, and she took from her throat a brooch which she had worn ever since her first days in England, after her great illness there. The woman accepted the brooch. "Lady love," she said, "you've lost your sleep to-night, but that's a loss you can make good. If there's a night's sleep owing you, you can collect the debt some time. No, a night's sleep lost in a tent is nothing, if you're the only one in the tent. But if you're not alone, and you lose a night's sleep, someone else may pick it up, and you might never get it again!" A flush slowly stole over Fleda's face, and a look of horror came into her eyes. She read the parable aright. "Will you let me kiss you?" she said to the woman, and now it was the woman's turn to flush. "You are the daughter of the Ry of Rys," she said almost shyly, yet proudly. "I'm a girl with a debt to pay and can never pay it," Fleda answered, putting her arms impulsively around the woman's neck and kissing her. Then she took the brooch from the woman's hand, and pinned it at her throat. "Think of Fleda of the Druses sometimes," she said, and she laid a hand upon the woman's breast. "Lady love--lady love," said the blunt woman with the pockmarked face, "you've had the worst fright to-night that you'll ever have." She caught Fleda's hand and peered into it. "Yes, it's happiness for you now, and on and on," she added exultingly, and with the fortune-teller's air. "You've passed the danger place, and there'll be wealth and a man who's been in danger, too; and there's children, beautiful children--I see them." In confusion, Fleda snatched her hand away. "Good-bye, you fool-woman," she said impatiently, yet gently, too. "You talk such sense and such nonsense. Good-bye," she added brusquely, but yet she smiled at the woman as she turned away. A moment later she was on her way back to Manitou, but she did not get to her father's house before the break of day; and in the doorway she met Madame Bulteel, whose pale, drawn face proclaimed a sleepless night. "Tell me what has happened? Tell me what has happened?" she asked in distress. Fleda took both her hands. "Before I answer, tell me what has happened here," she said breathlessly. "What news?" Madame Bulteel's face lighted. "Good news," she exclaimed eagerly. "He will see--he will see again?" Fleda asked in great agitation. "The Montreal doctor said that the chances were even," answered Madame Bulteel. "This man from the States says it is a sure thing." With a murmur Fleda sank into a chair, and a faintness came over her. "That's not like a Romany," remarked old Rhodo. "No, it's certainly not like a Romany," remarked Madame Bulteel meaningly. CHAPTER XXIII THE RETURN OF BELISARIUS Grey days in the prairie country do not come very often, but they are very depressing when they arrive. The landscape is not of the luscious kind; it has no close correspondence with a picture by Corot or Constable; sunlight is needed to give it the touch of the habitable and the homelike. It was, therefore, unfortunate for the spirits of the Lebanon people that the meeting summoned by local agitators to discuss with asperity affairs on both sides of the Sagalac should, while starting with fitful sunlight in the early morning, have developed to a bleak greyness by three o'clock in the afternoon, the time set for the meeting. Another strike was imminent in the factories at Manitou and in the railway-shops at Lebanon, due to the stupidity of the policy of Ingolby's successor as to the railways and other financial and manufacturing interests. If he had planned a campaign of maladroitness he could not have more happily fulfilled his object. It was not a good time for reducing wages, or for quarrelling with the Town Councils of Manitou and Lebanon concerning assessments and other matters. November and May always found Manitou, as though to say, "upset." In the former month, men were pouring through the place on their way to the shanties for their Winter's work, and generally celebrating their coming internment by "irrigation"; in the latter month, they were returning from their Winter's imprisonment, thirsty for excitement, and with memories of Winter quarrels inciting them to "have it out of someone." And it was in October, when the shantyman was passing through on his way to the woods--a natural revolutionary, loving trouble as a coyote loves his hole--that labour discontent was practically whipped into action, and the Councils of the two towns were stung into bitterness against the new provocative railway policy. Things looked dark enough. The trouble between the two towns and the change of control and policy of the railways, due to Ingolby's downfall, had greatly shaken land and building values in Lebanon, and a black eye, as it were, had been given to the whole district for the moment. So serious had the situation been regarded that the Mayor of Lebanon, with Halliday the lawyer and another notable citizen, all friends of Ingolby, had "gone East"--as a journey to Montreal, Toronto, or Quebec was generally called--to confer with and make appeal to the directorate of the great railways. They went with some elation and hope, for they had arguments of an unexpected kind in their possession, carefully hidden from the rest of the population. They had returned only the day before the meeting which was to be held in the square in front of the Town Hall, to find that a platform had been built at the very steps of the Town Hall with the assent of the Chief Constable, now recovered from illness and returned to duty. To the Deputy Mayor and the Council, the Chief Constable, on the advice of Gabriel Druse, had said that it was far better to have the meeting in front of the Town Hall where he could, on the instant, summon special constables from within if necessary, while the influence of a well-built platform and the orderly arrangement of a regular meeting were better than a mob oration from the tops of ash- barrels. The signs were ominous. In a day of sunshine the rebellious and discontented spirit does not thrive; on a wet day it is apt to take shelter; on a bleak, grey day men are prone to huddle together in their anger with consequent stimulation of their passions. It was a grey enough day at Lebanon, and dark-faced visitors from Manitou felt the need of Winter clothing as they shiveringly crossed the Sagalac by Ingolby's bridge. The air was raw and searching; Nature was sulky. In the sharp wind the trees shook themselves angrily free of leaves. The taverns were greatly frequented, which was not good for Manitou and Lebanon. Up to the time of the meeting, however, the expected strike had not occurred. This was mainly due to the fact that Felix Marchand, the evil genius of Manitou, had not been seen in the town or in the district for over a week. It was not generally known that he was absent because a man by the name of Dennis, whose wife he had wronged, was dogging him with no good intent. Marchand had treated the woman's warning with contempt, but at sight of her injured husband he had himself withdrawn from the scene of his dark enterprises. His malign influence was therefore not at work at the moment. The tactics of the Lebanon Town Council had been careful and wise. So that the meeting should not be composed only of the roughest elements, they privately urged all responsible citizens to attend, and if possible capture the meeting for law and order and legitimate agitation. That was why Osterhaut, the town-crier, went about with a large dinner-bell announcing the hour of the meeting and admonishing all "good folks" to attend. No one had ever seen Osterhaut quite so cheerful--and he had a bonny cheerfulness on occasion--as on this grisly October day when Nature was very sour and the spirit of the winds was in a "scratchy" mood. But Osterhaut was not more cheerful than Jowett who, in a very undignified way, described the state of his feelings, on receiving a certain confidence from Halliday, the lawyer, and Gabriel Druse, by turning a cart-wheel in the Mayor's office; which certainly was an unusual thing in a man of fifty years of age. It was a people's meeting. No local official was on the platform. Under the influence of alien elements who, though their co-operation was directed against the common enemy, were intensely irritating, the meeting became disorderly. One or two wise men, however, were able to secure order long enough to have the resolution passed for forming a Local Interests Committee whose duty it would be to see that the people were not sacrificed to a "soulless plutocracy." While the names of those who were to form the Committee were being selected, in a storm of disorder arising from the Manitou section of the crowd, the sky overhead grew suddenly brighter and the sun came out, bringing an instant change. It was as though a hand, which had hypnotized them into anger, restored them to good-humour once again. At this moment, to the astonishment of all, there appeared at the back of the platform between Jowett and Halliday the lawyer, the man with a tragic history who had been as one buried for weeks past, who had vanished from their calculations. It was their old champion, Ingolby. Slowly a hush came over the vast assembly as, apparently guided by his friends on the platform, he was given a seat on the right of the Chairman's table. A strange sensation, partly pleasure, partly resentment, passed through the crowd. Why did Ingolby come to remind them of better days gone--of his own rashness, of what they had lost through that rashness? Why had he come? They could not say and do all that they wanted with him present. It was like having a row in the presence of a corpse. He had been a hero to all in Lebanon, but he was not in the picture now. His day was done. It was no place for him. Yet it was a pleasant omen that the sun broke clear and shining over the platform as Ingolby took his seat. Presently in the silence he half-turned his head, murmured something to the Chairman, and then got to his feet, stretching out a hand towards the crowd. For one moment there was silence, a little awestricken, a little painful, and then as from one man a great cheer went up. For a moment they had thought him inconsiderate to come among them in this crisis, for he was no longer of their scheme of things, and must be counted out, a beaten, battered, blind bankrupt. Yet the sight of him on his feet was too much for them. Blind he might be, but there was the personality which had conquered them in the past brave, adroit, reckless, renowned. None of them, or very few of them, had seen him since that night at Barbazon's Tavern, yet in spite of his tragedy there seemed little change in him. There was the same quirk at the corner of the mouth, the same humour in the strong face, not so ruddy now; and strangely enough the eyes were neither guarded by spectacles, nor were they shrunken, glazed, or diseased, so far as could be seen. Stretching out a hand, Ingolby gave a crisp laugh and said: "So there's been trouble since I've been gone, has there?" The corner of his mouth quirked, his eyelids drooped in the old quizzical way, and the crowd laughed in spite of themselves. What a spirit he had to take it all that way! "Got a little deeper in the mire, have you, boys?" he added. "They tell me the town's a frost just now, but it seems nice and warm here in the sun. Yes, boys, it's nice and warm here among you all--the same good old crowd that's made the two towns what they are. The same good old crowd," he repeated, "--and up to the same old games!" At this point he could scarcely proceed for laughter. "Like true pioneers," he went on, "not satisfied with what you've got, but wanting such a lot more--if I might say so in the language of the dictionary, a deuce of a lot more." Almost every sentence had been punctuated by cheers. His personality dominated them as aforetime with some new accent to it; his voice was like that of one given up from the dead, yet come back from the wars alive and loving. They never knew what a figure he was until now when they saw and heard him again, and realized that he was one of the few whom the world calls leaders, because they have in them that immeasurable sympathy which is understanding of men and matters. Yet in the old days there never had been the something that was in his voice now, and in his face there was a great friendliness, a sense of companionship, a Jonathan and David something. He was like a comrade talking to a thousand other comrades. There was a new thing in him and they felt it stir them. They thought he had been made softer by his blindness; and they were not wrong. Even the Manitou section were stilled into sympathy with him. Many of them had heard his speech in Barbazon's Tavern just before the horseshoe struck him down, and they heard him now, much simpler in manner and with that something in his voice and face. Yet it made them shrink a little, too, to see his blind eyes looking out straight before him. It was uncanny. Their idea was that the eyes were as before, but seeing nothing-blank to the world. Presently his hand shot out again. "The same old crowd!" he said. "Just the same--after the same old thing, wanting what we all want: these two places, Manitou and Lebanon, to be boosted till they rule the West and dominate the North. It's good to see you all here again"--he spoke very slowly--"to see you all here together looking for trouble--looking for trouble. There you are, Jim Barager; there you are, Bill Riley; there you are, Mr. William John Thomas McLeary." The last named was the butt of every tavern and every street corner. "There you are, Berry--old brown Berry, my barber." At first the crowd did not quite understand, did not realize that he was actually pointing to the people whom he named, but presently, as Berry the barber threw up his hands with a falsetto cry of understanding, there was a simultaneous, wild rush forward to the platform. "He sees, boys--he sees!" they shouted. Ingolby's hand shot up above them with a gesture of command. "Yes, boys, I see--I see you all. I'm cured. My sight's come back, and what's more"--he snatched from his pocket a folded sheet of paper and held it aloft "what's more, I've got my commission to do the old job again; to boss the railways, to help the two towns. The Mayor brought it back from Montreal yesterday; and together, boys, together, we'll make Manitou and Lebanon the fulcrum of the West, the swivel by which to swing prosperity round our centre." The platform swayed with the wild enthusiasm of the crowd storming it to shake hands with him, when suddenly a bell rang out across the river, wildly, clamorously. A bell only rang like that for a fire. Those on the platform could see a horseman galloping across the bridge. A moment later someone shouted, "It's the Catholic church at Manitou on fire!" CHAPTER XXIV AT LONG LAST Originally the Catholic church at Manitou had stood quite by itself, well back from the river, but as the town grew its dignified isolation was invaded and houses kept creeping nearer and nearer to it. So that when it caught fire there was general danger, because the town possessed only a hand fire-engine. Since the first settlement of the place there had been but few fires, and these had had pretty much their own way. When one broke out the plan was to form a long line of men, who passed buckets of water between the nearest pump, well, or river, and the burning building. It had been useful in incipient fires, but it was child's play in a serious outburst. The mournful fact that Manitou had never equipped itself with a first-class fire-engine or a fire-brigade was now to play a great part in the future career of the two towns. Osterhaut put the thing in a nutshell as he slithered up the main street of Lebanon on his way to the manning of the two fire-engines at the Lebanon fire-brigade station. "This thing is going to link up Lebanon and Manitou like a trace-chain," he declared with a chuckle. "Everything's come at the right minute. Here's Ingolby back on the locomotive, running the good old train of Progress, and here's Ingolby's fire-brigade, which cost Lebanon twenty thousand dollars and himself five thousand, going to put out the fires of hate consuming two loving hamulets. Out with Ingolby's fire-brigade! This is the day the doctor ordered! Hooray!" Osterhaut had a gift of being able to do two things at one time. Nothing prevented him from talking, and though it had probably never been tested, it is quite certain he could have talked under water. His words had been addressed to Jowett, who drew to him on all great occasions like the drafts of a regiment to the main body. Jowett was often very critical of Osterhaut's acts, words and views, but on this occasion they were of one mind. "I guess it's Ingolby's day all right," answered Jowett. "When you say 'Hooray!' Osterhaut, I agree, but you've got better breath'n I have. I can't talk like I used to, but I'm going to ride that fire-engine to save the old Monseenoor's church--or bust." Both Jowett and Osterhaut belonged to the Lebanon fire-brigade, which was composed of only a few permanent professionals, helped by capable amateurs. The two cronies had their way, and a few moments later, wearing brass helmets, they were away with the engine and the hose, leaving the less rapid members of the brigade to follow with the ladders. "What did the Chief do?" asked Osterhaut. "Did you see what happened to him?" Jowett snorted. "What do you think Mr. Max Ingolby, Esquire, would do? He commandeered my sulky and that rawbone I bought from the Reverend Tripple, and away he went like greased lightning over the bridge. I don't know why I drove that trotter to-day, nor why I went on that sulky, for I couldn't hear good where I was, on the outskirts of the meeting; but I done it like as if the Lord had told me. The Chief spotted me soon as the fire-bell rung. In a second he bundled me off, straddled the sulky, and was away 'fore you could say snakes." "I don't believe he's strong enough for all this. He ain't got back to where he was before the war," remarked Osterhaut sagely. "War--that business at Barbazon's! You call that war! It wasn't war," declared Jowett spasmodically, grasping the rail of the fire-engine as the wheel struck a stone and nearly shot them from their seats. "It wasn't war. It was terrible low-down treachery. That Gipsy gent, Fawe, pulled the lever, but Marchand built the scaffold." "Heard anything more about Marchand--where he is?" asked Osterhaut, as the hoofs of the horses clattered on the bridge. "Yes, I've heard--there's news," responded Jowett. "He's been lying drunk at Gautry's caboose ever since yesterday morning at five o'clock, when he got off the West-bound train. Nice sort of guy he is. What's the good of being rich, if you can't be decent Some men are born low. They always find their level, no matter what's done for them, and Marchand's level is the ditch." "Gautry's tavern--that joint!" exclaimed Osterhaut with repulsion. "Well, that ranchman, Dennis What's-his-name, is looking for him, and Felix can't go home or to the usual places. I dunno why he comes back at all till this Dennis feller gits out." "Doesn't make any bones about it, does he? Dennis Doane's the name, ain't it? Marchand spoiled his wife-run away with her up along the Wind River, eh?" asked Osterhaut. Jowett nodded: "Yes, that's it, and Mr. Dennis Doane ain't careful; that's the trouble. He's looking for Marchand, and blabbing what he means to do when he finds him. That ain't good for Dennis. If he kills Marchand, it's murder, and even if the lawyers plead unwritten law, and he ain't hung, and his wife ain't a widow, you can't have much married life in gaol. It don't do you any good to be punished for punishing someone else. Jonas George Almighty--look! Look, Osterhaut!" Jowett's hand was pointing towards the Catholic church, from a window of which smoke was rolling. "There's going to be something to do there. It ain't a false alarm, Snorty." "Well, this engine'll do anything you ask it," rejoined Osterhaut. "When did you have a fire last, Billy?" he shouted to the driver of the engine, as the horses' feet caught the dusty road of Manitou. "Six months," was the reply, "but she's working smooth as music. She's as good as anything 'twixt here and the Atlantic." "It ain't time for Winter fires. I wonder what set it going," said Jowett, shaking his head ominously. "Something wrong with the furnace, I s'pose," returned Osterhaut. "Probably trying the first heatup of the Fall." Osterhaut was right. No one had set the church on fire. The sexton had lighted the furnace for the first time to test it for the Winter's working, but had not stayed to see the result. There was a defect in the furnace, the place had caught fire, and some of the wooden flooring had been burnt before the aged Monseigneur Lourde discovered it. It was he who had given the alarm and had rescued the silver altar-vessels from the sacristy. Manitou offered brute force, physical energy, native athletics, muscle and brawn; but it was of no avail. Five hundred men, with five hundred buckets of water would have had no effect upon the fire at St. Michael's Church at Manitou; willing hands and loving Christian hearts would have been helpless to save the building without the scientific aid of the Lebanon fire-brigade. Ingolby, on founding the brigade, had equipped it to the point where it could deal with any ordinary fire. The work it had to do at St. Michael's was critical. If the church could not be saved, then the wooden houses by which it was surrounded would be swept away, and the whole town would be ablaze; for though it was Autumn, everything was dry, and the wind was sufficient to fan and spread the flames. Lebanon took command of the whole situation, and for the first time in the history of the two towns men worked together under one control like brothers. The red-shirted river-driver from Manitou and the lawyer's clerk from Lebanon; the Presbyterian minister and a Christian brother of the Catholic school; a Salvation Army captain and a black-headed Catholic shantyman; the President of the Order of Good Templars and a switchman member of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament slaved together on the hand-engine, to supplement the work of the two splendid engines of the Lebanon fire-brigade; or else they climbed the roofs of houses, side by side, to throw on the burning shingles the buckets of water handed up to them. For some time it seemed as though the church could not be saved. The fire had made good headway with the flooring, and had also made progress in the chancel and the altar. Skill and organization, combined with good luck, conquered, however. Though a portion of the roof was destroyed and the chancel gutted, the church was not beyond repair, and a few thousand dollars would put it right. There was danger, however, among the smaller houses surrounding the church, and there men from both towns worked with great gallantry. By one of those accidents which make fatality, a small wooden house some distance away, with a roof as dry as wool, caught fire from a flying cinder. As everybody had fled from their own homes and shops to the church, this fire was not noticed until it had made headway. Then it was that the cries of Madame Thibadeau, who was confined to her bed in the house opposite, were heard, and the crowd poured down towards the burning building. It was Gautry's "caboose." Gautry himself had been among the crowd at the church. As Gautry came reeling and plunging down the street, someone shouted, "Is there anyone in the house, Gautry?" Gautry was speechless with drink. He threw his hands up in the air with a gesture of maudlin despair, and shouted something which no one understood. The crowd gathered like magic in the wide street before the house--the one wide street in Manitou--from the roof and upper windows of which flames were bursting. Far up the street was heard the noisy approach of the fire-engine, which now would be able to do little more than save adjoining buildings. Gautry, reeling, mumbling and whining, gestured and wept. A man shook him roughly by the shoulder. "Brace up, get steady, you damned old geezer! Is there any body in the house? Do you hear? Is there anybody in the house?" he roared. Madame Thibadeau, who had dragged herself from her bed, was now at the window of the house opposite. Seeing Fleda Druse passing beneath, she called to her. "Ma'mselle, Felix Marchand is in Gautry's house--drunk!" she cried. "He'll burn to death--but yes, burn to death." In agitation Fleda hastened to where the stranger stood shaking old Gautry. "There's a man asleep inside the house," she said to the stranger, and then all at once she realized who he was. It was Dennis Doane, whose wife was staying in Gabriel Druse's home: it was the husband of Marchand's victim. "A man in there, is there?" exclaimed Dennis. "Well, he's got to be saved." He made a rush for the door. Men called to him to come back, that the roof would fall in. In the smoking doorway he looked back. "What floor?" he shouted. From the window opposite, her fat old face lighted by the blazing roof, Madame Thibadeau called out, "Second floor! It's the second floor!" In an instant Dennis was lost in the smoke and flame. One, two, three minutes passed. A fire-engine arrived; in a moment the hose was paid out to the river near by, and as a fireman seized the nozzle to train the water upon the building the roof fell in with a crash. At that instant Dennis stumbled out of the house, blind with smoke, his clothes aflame, carrying a man in his arms. A score of hands caught them, coats smothered Dennis's burning clothes, and the man he had rescued was carried across the street and laid upon the pavement. "Great glory, it's Marchand! It's Felix Marchand!" someone shouted. "Is he dead?" asked another. "Dead drunk," was the comment of Osterhaut, who had helped to carry him across the street. At that moment Ingolby appeared on the scene. "What's all this?" he asked. Then he recognized Marchand. "He's been playing with fire again," he added sarcastically, and there was a look of contempt on his face. As he said it, Dennis broke through the crowd and made for Marchand. Stooping over, he looked into Marchand's face. "Hell and damnation--you!" he growled. "I risked my life to save you!" With a sudden access of rage his hand suddenly went to his hip-pocket, but another hand was quicker. It was that of Fleda Druse. "No--no," she said, her fingers on his wrist. "You have had your revenge. For the rest of his life he will have to bear his punishment --that you have saved him. Leave him alone. It was to be. It is fate." Dennis Doane was not a man of great thinking capacity. If he got a matter into his head it stayed there till it was dislodged, and dislodging was a real business with him. "If you want her to live with you again, you had better let this be as it is," whispered Fleda, for the crowd were surging round and cheering the new hero. "Just escaped the roof falling in," said one. "Got the strength of two, for a drunk man weighs twice as heavy as a sober one!" exclaimed another admiringly. "Marchand's game is up on the Sagalac," declared a third decisively. The excitement was so great, however, that only a very few of them knew what they were saying, and fewer still knew that Dennis Doane had risked his life to save the man he had been stalking for weeks past. Marchand had been lying on his face in the smoke-filled room when Dennis broke into it, and he had been carried down the stairs without his face being seen at all. To Dennis it was as though he had been made a fool of by Fate or Providence, or whatever controlled the destinies of men; as though the dangerous episode had been arranged to trap him into this situation. Ingolby drew near and laid a hand upon Dennis's arm. Fleda's hand was on the other arm. "You can't kill a man and save him too," said Ingolby quietly, and holding the abashed blue eyes of Dennis. "There were two ways to punish him; taking away his life at great cost, or giving it him at great cost. If you'd taken away his life, the cost would probably have been your own life; in giving him his life you only risked your own; you had a chance to save it. You're a bit scorched-hair, eyebrows, moustache, clothes too, but he'll have brimstone inside him. Come along. Your wife would rather have it this way; and so will you, to-morrow. Come along." Dennis suddenly swung round with a gesture of fury. "He spoiled her- treated her like dirt!" he cried huskily. With savage purpose he made a movement towards where Marchand had lain; but Marchand was gone. With foresight Ingolby had quickly and quietly accomplished that while Dennis's back was turned. "You'd be treating her like a brute if you went to prison for killing Marchand," urged Ingolby. "Give her a chance. She's fretting her heart out." "She wants to go back to Elk Mountain with you," pleaded Fleda gently. "She couldn't do that if the law took hold of you." "Ain't there to be any punishment for men like him?" demanded Dennis, stubbornly yet helplessly. "Why didn't I let him burn! I'd have been willing to burn myself to have seen him sizzling. Ain't men like that to be punished at all?" "When he knows who has saved him, he'll sizzle inside for the rest of his life," remarked Ingolby. "Don't think he hasn't got a heart. He's done wrong and gone wrong; he has belonged to the sewer, but he isn't all bad, and maybe this is the turning-point. Drink'll make a man do anything." "His kind are never sorry for what they do," commented Dennis bitterly. "They're sorry for what comes from what they do, but not for the doing of it. I can't think the thing out. It makes me sick. I was hunting for him to kill him; I was watching this town like a lynx, and I've been and gone and saved his body from Hell on earth." "Well, perhaps you've saved his soul from Hell below," said Fleda. "Ah, come! Your face and hands are burned, your hair is scorched--your clothes need mending. Arabella is waiting for you. Come home with me to Arabella." With sudden resolve Dennis squared his shoulders. "All right," he said. "This thing's too much for me. I can't get the hang of it. I've lost my head." "No, I won't come, I can't come now," said Ingolby, in response to an inquiring look from Fleda. "Not now, but before sundown, please." As Fleda and Dennis disappeared, Ingolby looked back towards the fire. "How good it is to see again even a sight like that," he said. "Nothing that the eyes see is so horrible as the pictures that come to the mind when the eyes don't see. As Dennis said, I can't get the hang of it, but I'll try--I'll try." The burning of Gautry's tavern had been conquered, though not before it was a shell; and the houses on either side had been saved. Lebanon had shown itself masterful in organization, but it had also shown that that which makes enemies is not so deep or great a thing as that which makes friends. Jealous, envious, narrow and bitter Manitou had been, but she now saw Lebanon in a new light. It was a strange truth that if Lebanon had saved the whole town of Manitou, it would not have been the same to the people as the saving of the church. Beneath everything in Manitou-- beneath its dirt and its drunkenness, its irresponsibility and the signs of primeval savagery which were part of its life, there was the tradition of religion, the almost fanatical worship of that which was their master, first and last, in spite of all--the Church. Not one of its citizens but would have turned with horror from the man who cursed his baptism; not one but would want the last sacrament when his time came. Lebanon had saved the Catholic church, the temple of their faith, and in an hour was accomplished what years had not wrought. The fire at the church was out. A few houses had been destroyed, and hundreds of others had been saved. The fire-brigade of Lebanon, with its two engines, had performed prodigies of valour. The work done, the men marched back, but with Osterhaut sitting on one fire-engine and Jowett on the other, through crowds of cheering, roaring workmen, rivermen, shantymen, and black-eyed habitants. When Ingolby walked past Barbazon's Tavern arm in arm with Monseigneur Lourde, to the tiny house where the good priest lived, the old man's face beaming with gratitude, and with a piety which was his very life, the jubilant crowd followed them to the very door. There the sainted pioneer expressed the feeling of the moment when he raised his hands in benediction over them and said: "Peace be unto you and the blessings of peace; and the Lord make his face to shine upon you and give you peace now and for ever more." CHAPTER XXV MAN PROPOSES Before sunset, as Ingolby had promised, he made his way towards Gabriel Druse's house. A month had gone since he had left its hospitality behind. What had happened between that time and this day of fate for Lebanon and Manitou? It is not a long story, and needs but a brief backward look. This had happened: The New York expert performed the operation upon Ingolby's eyes, announced it successful, declared that his sight would be restored, and then vanished with a thousand dollars in his pocket. For days thereafter the suspense was almost more than Fleda could bear. She grew suddenly thin and a little worn, and her big eyes had that look of yearning which only comes to those whose sorrow is for another. Old Gabriel Druse was emphatic in his encouragement, but his face reflected the trouble in that of his daughter. He knew well that if Ingolby remained blind he would never marry Fleda, though he also knew well that, with her nature, almost fanatical in its convictions, she would sacrifice herself, if sacrifice was the name for it. The New York expert had prophesied and promised, but who could tell! There was the chance of failure, and the vanished eye-surgeon had the thousand dollars in his pocket. Two people, however, were cheerful; they were Ingolby and Jim. Jim went about the place humming a nigger melody to himself, and twice he brought Berry the barber to play to his Chief on the cottonfield fiddle. Nigger Jim, though it was two generations gone which linked him with the wilds of the Gold Coast, was the slave of fanatical imagination, and in Ingolby's own mind there was the persistent superstition that all would be well, because of a dream he had had. He dreamed he heard his dead mother's voice in the room, where he lay. She had called him by name, and had said: "Look at me, Max," and he had replied, "I cannot see," and she had said again, "Look at me, my son!" Then he thought that he had looked at her, had seen her face clearly, and it was as the last time they parted, shining and sweet and good. She had said to him in days long gone, that if she could ever speak to him across the Void, she would; and he had the fullest belief now that she had done so. So it was that this dreadnought of industry and organization, in dock for repairs, cheerfully awaited the hour when he would be launched again upon the tide of work-healthy, healed and whole. At last there came the day when, for an instant, the bandages could be removed. There were present, Rockwell, Fleda, and Jim--Jim, pale but grinning, at the foot of the bed; Fleda, with her back against the door and her hands clenched behind her as though to shut out the invading world. Never had her heart beat as it beat now, but her eyes were steady and bright. There was in them, however, a kind of pleading look. She could not see Ingolby's face; did not want to see it when the bandages were taken off; but at the critical moment she shut her eyes and her back held the door, as though a thousand were trying to force an entrance. The first words after the bandages were removed came from Ingolby. "Well, Jim, you look all right!" he said. Swaying as she went, Fleda half-blindly moved towards a chair near by and sank into it. She scarcely heard Jim's reply. "Looking all right yourself, Chief. You won't see much change in this here old town." Ingolby's hand was in Rockwell's. "It's all right, isn't it?" he asked. "You can see it is," answered Rockwell with a chuckle in his voice, and then suddenly he put the bandages round Ingolby's eyes again. "That's enough for today," he said. A moment later the bandages were secured and Rockwell stood back from the bed. "In another week you'll see as well as ever you did," Rockwell said. "I'm proud of you." "Well, I hope I'll see a little better than ever I did," remarked Ingolby meaningly. "I was pretty short-sighted before." At that instant he heard Fleda's footstep approaching the bed. His senses had grown very acute since the advent of his blindness. He held out his hand into space. "What a nice room this is!" he said as her fingers slid into his. "It's the nicest room I was ever in. It's too nice for me. In a few days I'll hand the lease over again to its owner, and go back to the pigsty Jim keeps in Stormont Street." "Well, there ain't any pigs in that sty now, Chief; but it's all ready," said Jim, indignant and sarcastic. It was a lucky speech. It broke the spell of emotion which was greatly straining everybody's endurance. "That's one in the eye for somebody," remarked Rockwell drily. "What would you like for lunch?" asked Fleda, letting go Ingolby's hand, but laying her fingers on his arm for a moment. What would he like for lunch! Here was a man back from the Shadows, from broken hopes and shattered career, from the helplessness and eternal patience of the blind; here he was on the hard, bright highroad again, with a procession of restored things coming towards him, with life and love within his grasp; and the woman to whom it mattered most of all, who was worth it all, and more than all where he was concerned, said to him in this moment of revelation, "What would you like for lunch?" With an air as casually friendly as her own, he put another hand on the fingers lying on his arm, patted them, and said gaily, "Anything I can see. As a drover once said to me, 'I can clean as fur as I can reach.'" In just such a temper also they had parted when he went back to his "pigsty" with Jim. To Gabriel Druse he had said all that one man might say to another without excess of feeling; to Madame Bulteel he had given a gold pencil which he had always worn; to Fleda he gave nothing, said little, but the few words he did say told the story, if not the whole story. "It's a nice room," he said, and she had flushed at his words, "and I've had the best time of my life in it. I'd like to buy it, but I know it's not for sale. Love and money couldn't buy it--isn't that so?" Then had--come days in his own home, still with bandaged eyes, but with the bandages removed for increasing hours every day; yet no one at all in the town knowing the truth except the Mayor, Halliday the lawyer, and one or two others who kept the faith until Ingolby gave them the word to speak. Then had come the Mayor's visit to Montreal, the great meeting, the fire at Manitou, and now Ingolby on the way to his tryst with Fleda. They had met twice only since he had left Gabriel Druse's house, and on the last occasion they had looked each other full in the eyes, and Ingolby had said to her in the moment they had had alone: "I'm going to get back, but I can't do it without you." To this her reply had been, "I hope it's not so bad as that," and she had looked provokingly in his eyes. Now she knew beyond peradventure that he cared for her, and she was almost provoked at herself that when he was in such danger of losing his sight for ever she had caught his head to her breast in the passion of the moment. Many a time when he had been asleep, with gentle fingers she had caressed his hands, his head, his face; but that did not count, because he did not know. He did, however, know of that moment when her passionate heart broke over him in tenderness; and she tried to make him think, by things said since, that it was only pity for his sufferings which made her do it. Ingolby thought of all these things, but in a spirit of understanding, as he went to his tryst with her at sunset on the day when Lebanon and Manitou were reconciled. ......................... He met her walking among the trees, very near the place where they had had their first long talk, months before, when Jethro Fawe was a prisoner in the Hut in the Woods. Then it was warm, singing Summer; now, beneath the feet the red and brown leaves rustled, the trees were stretching up gaunt arms to the Winter, the woods were no longer vocal, and the singing birds had fled, though here and there a black squirrel, not yet gone to Winter quarters, was busy and increasing his stores. A hedgehog scuttled across his path. He smiled as he remembered telling Fleda that once, when he was a little boy, he had eaten hedgehog, and she had asked him if he remembered the Gipsy name for hedgehog--hotchewitchi was the word. Now, as the shapeless creature made for its hole, it was significant of the history of his life during the past Summer. How long it seemed since that day when love first peeped forth from their hearts like a young face at the lattice of a sunlit window. Fleda had warned him of trouble, and that trouble had come! In his mind she was a woman like none he had ever known; she could think greatly, act largely, give tremendously. As he stood waiting, the wonderful, ample life of her seemed to come like a wave towards him. In his philosophy, intellect alone had never been the governing influence. Intellect must find its play through the senses, be vitalized by the elements of physical life, or it could not prevail. There was not one sensual strain in him, but with a sensuous mind he loved the vital thing. He was sure that presently Gabriel Druse would disappear, leaving her behind with him. That was what he meant to ask her to-day--to be and stay with him always. He knew that the Romanys were gathering in the prairie. They had been heard of here and there, and some of them had been seen along the Sagalac, though he knew nothing of that dramatic incident in the woods when Fleda was kidnapped and Jethro Fawe vanished from the scene. As Fleda came towards him, under the same trees which had shielded her from the sun months ago--now nearly naked and bare--something in her look and bearing sharply caught his interest. He asked himself what it was. So often a face familiar over half a lifetime perhaps, suddenly at some new angle, or because, by chance, one has looked at it searchingly, shows a new expression, a new contour never before observed, giving fresh significance to the character. There was that in Ingolby's mind, a depth of desire, a resolve to stake two lives against the chances of Fate, which made him look at Fleda now with a revealing intensity. What was the new thing in her carriage which captured his eye? Presently it flashed upon him--memories of Mexico and the Southern United States; native women with jars of water upon their heads; the erect, well- balanced form; the sure, sinuous movement; the step measured, yet free; the dignity come of carrying the head as though it were a pillar of an Athenian temple, one of the beautiful Caryatides yonder by the AEgean Sea. It smote him as a sudden breath of warm air strikes a face in the night coolness of the veldt. His pulses quickened, he flushed with the soft shock of it. There she was, refined, civilized, gowned like other women, with all the manners and details of civilization and social life about her; yet, in spite of it all, she did not belong; there was about her still something remote and alien. It had not to do with appearance alone, though her eyes were so vivid, and her expression so swift and varying; it was to be found in the whole presence--something mountain- like and daring, something Eastern and reserved and secret, something remote--brooding like a Sphinx, and prophetic like a Sibyl. But suppose that in days to come the thing that did not belong, which was of the East, of the tan, of the River Starzke; suppose that it should-- With a great effort he drove apprehension and the instant's confused wonder far away, and when, come close to him, she smiled, showing the perfect white teeth, and her eyes softened to a dreamy regard of him, all he had ever felt for her in the past months seemed concentrated into this one moment. Yet he did not look like a languishing lover; rather like one inflamed with a great idea or stirred to a great resolve. For quite a minute they stood gazing as though they would read the whole truth in each other's eyes. She was all eager, yet timorous; he was resolved; yet now, when the great moment had come, as it were, like a stammerer fearing the sound of his own voice. There was so much to say that he could not speak. She broke the spell. "I am here. Can't you see me?" she asked in a quizzical, playful tone, her lips trembling a little, but with a smile in her eyes which she vainly tried to veil. She had said the one thing which above all others could have lifted the situation to its real significance. A few weeks ago the eyes now looking into hers and telling a great story were sealed with night, and the mind behind was fretted by the thought of a perpetual darkness. All the tragedy of the past rushed into his mind now, and gave all that was between them, or was to be between them, its real meaning. A beautiful woman is dear to man simply as woman, and not as the woman; virtue has slain its thousands, but physical charm has slain its tens of thousands! Whatever Ingolby's defects, however, infinitely more than the girl's beauty, more than the palpitating life in her, than red lips and bright eye, than warm breast and clasping hand, was something beneath all which would last, or should last, when the hand was palsied and the eye was dim. "I am here. Can't you see me?" All that he had regained in life in her little upper room rushed upon him, and with outstretched arms and in a voice choked with feeling, he said: "See you! Dear God--To see you and all the world once more! It is being born again to me. I haven't learned to talk in my new world yet; but I know three words of the language. I love you. Come--I'll be good to you." She drew back from him, and her look said that she would read him to the uttermost word in his life's book, would see the heart of this wonderful thing; and then with a hungry cry, she flung her arms around his neck and pressed her wet eyes against his flushed cheek. A half-hour later, as they wandered back to the house he suddenly stopped, put his hands on her shoulders, looked earnestly in her eyes, and said: "God's good to me. I hope I'll remember that." "You won't be so blind as to forget," she answered, and she wound her fingers in his with a feeling which was more than the simple love of woman for man. "I've got much more to remember than you have," she added. Suddenly she put both hands upon his breast. "You don't understand; you can't understand, but I tell you that I shall have to fight hard if I am to be all you want me to be. I have got a past to forget; you have a past you want to remember--that's the difference. I must tell you the truth: it's in my veins, that old life, in spite of all. Listen. I ought to have told you, and I meant to tell you before this happened, but when I saw you there, and you held out your arms to me, I forgot everything. Yet still I must tell you now, though perhaps you will hate me when you know. The old life--I hate it, but it calls me, and I have an impulse to go back to it even though I hate it. Listen. I'll tell you what happened the other day. It's terrible, but it's true. I was walking in the woods--" Thereupon she told him of her being seized and carried to the Gipsy camp, and of all that happened there to the last detail. She even had the courage to tell of all she felt there; but when she had finished, with a half-frightened look in her eyes, her face pale, and her hands clasped before her, he did not speak for a minute. Suddenly, however, he seemed to tower over her, his two big hands were raised as though they would strike, and then the palms spread out and enclosed her cheeks lovingly, and his eyes fastened upon hers. "I know," he said gently. "I always understood--everything; but you'll never have the same fight again, because I'll be with you. You understand, Fleda--I'll be with you." With an exclamation of gratitude she nestled into his arms. Before the thrill of his embrace had passed from their pulses, they heard the breaking of twigs under a quick footstep, and Rhodo stood before them. "Come," he said to Fleda. His voice was as solemn and strange as his manner. "Come!" he repeated peremptorily. Fleda sprang to his side. "Is it my father? What has happened?" she cried. The old man waved her aside, and pointed toward the house. CHAPTER XXVI THE SLEEPER The Ry of Rys sat in his huge armchair, his broad-brimmed hat on his knee in front of him. One hand rested on the chair-arm, the other clasped the hat as though he would put it on, but his head was fallen forward on his breast. It was a picture of profound repose, but it was the repose of death. It was evident that the Ry had prepared to leave the house, had felt a sudden weakness, and had taken to his chair to recover himself. As was evident from the normal way in which his fingers held his hat, and his hand rested on the chair-arm, death had come as gently as a beam of light. With his stick lying on the table beside him, and his hat on his knee, he was like one who rested a moment before renewing a journey. There could not have been a pang in his passing. He had gone as most men wish to go--in the midst of the business of life, doing the usual things, and so passing into the sphere of Eternity as one would go from this room to that. Only a few days before had he yielded up his temporary position as chief constable, and had spent almost every hour since in conference with Rhodo. What he had planned would never be known to his daughter now. It was Rhodo himself who had found his master with head bowed before the Master of all men. Before Fleda entered the room she knew what awaited her; a merciful intuition had blunted the shock to her senses. Yet when she saw the Ry on his throne of death a moan broke from her lips like that of one who sees for the last time someone indelibly dear, and turns to face strange paths with uncertain feet. She did not go to the giant figure seated in the chair. In what she did there was no panic or hysteria of lacerated heart and shocked sense; she only sank to her knees in the room a few feet away from him, and looked at him. "Father! Oh, Ry! Oh, my Ry!" she whispered in agony and admiration, too, and kept on whispering. Fleda had whispered to him in such awe, not only because he was her father, but because he was so much a man among men, a giant, with a great, lumbering mind, slow to conceive, but moving in a large, impressive way when once conception came. To her he had been more than father; he had been a patriarch, a leader, a viking, capable of the fury of a Scythian lord, but with the tenderness of a peasant father to his first child. "My Ry! My father! Oh, my Ry of Rys!" she kept murmuring to herself. On either side of her, but a few feet behind, stood Rhodo and Ingolby. Presently in a low, firm voice Rhodo spoke. "The Ry of Rys is dead, but his daughter must stand upon her feet, and in his place speak for him. Is it not well with him? He sleeps. Sleep is better than pain. Let his daughter speak." Slowly Fleda arose. Not so much what Rhodo had said as the meaning in his voice, aroused her to a situation which she must face. Rhodo had said that she must speak for her father. What did it mean? "What is it you wish to say to me, Rhodo?" she asked. "What I have to say is for your ears only," was the low reply. "I will go," said Ingolby. "But is it a time for talk?" He made a motion towards the dead man. "There are things to be said which can only be said now, and things to be done which can only be done according to what is said now," grimly remarked Rhodo. "I wish you to remain," said Fleda to Ingolby with resolution in her bearing as she placed herself beside the chair where the dead man sat. "What is it you want to say to me?" she asked Rhodo again. "Must a Romany bare his soul before a stranger?" replied Rhodo. "Must a man who has been the voice of the Ry of Rys for the long years have no words face to face with the Ry's daughter now that he is gone? Must the secret of the dead be spoken before the robber of the dead--" It was plain that some great passion was working in the man, that it was wise and right to humour him, and Ingolby intervened. "I will not remain," he said to Fleda. To Rhodo he added: "I am not a robber of the dead. That's high-faluting talk. What I have of his was given to me by him. She was for me if I could win her. He said so. This is a free country. I will wait outside," he added to Fleda. She made a gesture as though she would detain him, but she realized that the hour of her fate was at hand, and that the old life and the new were face to face, Rhodo standing for one and she for the other. When they were alone, Rhodo's eyes softened, and he came near to her. "You asked me what I wished to tell you," he said. "See then, I want to tell you that it is for you to take the place of the dead Ry. Everywhere in the world where the Romanys wander they will rejoice to hear that a Druse rules us still. The word of the Ry of Rys was law; what he wished to be done was done; what he wished to be undone was undone. Because of you he hid himself from his people; because of you I was for ever wandering, keeping the peace by lies for love of the Ry and for love of you." His voice shook. "Since your mother died--and she was kin of mine--you were to me the soul of the Romany people everywhere. As a barren woman loves a child, so I loved you. I loved you for the sake of your mother. I gave her to the Ry, who was the better man, that she might be great and well placed. So it is I would have you be ruler over us, and I would serve you as I served your father until I, also, fall asleep." "It is too late," Fleda answered, and there was great emotion in her voice now. "I am no longer a Romany. I am my father's daughter, but I have not been a Romany since I was ill in England. I will not go back; I shall go with the man I love, to be his wife, here, in the Gorgio world. You believed my father when he spoke; well, believe me--I speak the truth. It was my father's will that I should be what I am, and do what I am now doing. Nothing can alter me." "If it be that Jethro Fawe is still alive he is free from the Sentence of the Patrin, and he will become the Ry of Rys," said the old man with sudden passion. "It may be so. I hope it is so. He is of the blood, and I pray that Jethro has escaped the sentence which my father passed," answered Fleda. "By the River Starzke it was ordained that he should succeed my father, marrying me. Let him succeed." The old man raised both hands, and made a gesture as though he would drive her from his sight. "My life has been wasted," he said. "I wish I were also in death beside him." He gazed at the dead man with the affection of a clansman for his chief. Fleda came up close to him. "Rhodo! Rhodo!" she said gently and sadly. "Think of him and all he was, and not of me. Suppose I had died in England--think of it in that way. Let me be dead to you and to all Romanys, and then you will think no evil." The old man drew himself up. "Let no more be said," he replied. "Let it end here. The Ry of Rys is dead. His body and all things that are his belong now to his people. Say farewell to him," he added, with authority. "You will take him away?" Fleda asked. Rhodo inclined his head. "When the doctors have testified, we will take him with us. Say your farewells," he added, with gesture of command. A cry of protest rose from Fleda's soul, and yet she knew it was what the Ry would have wished, that he should be buried by his own people where they would. Slowly she drew near to the dead man, and leaned over and kissed his shaggy head. She did not seek to look into the sightless eyes; the illusion of sleep was so great that she wished to keep this picture of him while she lived; but she touched the cold hand which held the hat upon the knee and the other that lay upon the chair-arm. Then, with a mist before her eyes, she passed from the room. CHAPTER XXVII THE WORLD FOR SALE As though by magic, like the pictures of a dream, out of the horizon, in caravans, by train, on horseback, the Romany people gathered to the obsequies of their chief and king. For months, hundreds of them had not been very far away. Unobtrusive, silent, they had waited, watched, till the Ry of Rys should come back home again. Home to them was the open road where Romanys trailed or camped the world over. A clot of blood in the heart had been the verdict of the doctors; and Lebanon and Manitou had watched the Ry of Rys carried by his own people to the open prairie near to Tekewani's reservation. There, in the hours between the midnight and the dawn, all Gabriel Druse's personal belongings--the clothes, the chair in which he sat, the table at which he ate, the bed in which he slept, were brought forth and made into a pyre, as was the Romany way. Nothing personal of his chattels remained behind. The walking-stick which lay beside him in the moment of his death was the last thing placed upon the pyre. Then came the match, and the flames made ashes of all those things which once he called his own. Standing apart, Tekewani and his braves watched the ceremonial of fire with a sympathy born of primitive custom. It was all in tune with the traditions of their race. As dawn broke, and its rosy light valanced the horizon, a great procession moved away from the River Sagalac towards the East, to which all wandering and Oriental peoples turn their eyes. With it, all that was mortal of Gabriel Druse went to its hidden burial. Only to the Romany people would his last resting-place be known; it would be as obscure as the grave of him who was laid: "By Nebo's lonely mountain, On this side Jordan's wave." Many people from Manitou and Lebanon watched the long procession pass, and two remained until the last wagon had disappeared over the crest of the prairie. Behind them were the tents of the Indian reservation; before them was the alert morn and the rising sun; and ever moving on to the rest his body had earned was the great chief lovingly attended by his own Romany folk; while his daughter, forbidden to share in the ceremonial of race, remained with the stranger. With a face as pale and cold as the western sky, the desolation of this last parting and a tragic renunciation giving her a deathly beauty, Fleda stood beside the man who must hereafter be, to her, father, people, and all else. Shuddering with the pain of this hour, yet resolved to begin the new life here and now, as the old life faded before her eyes, she turned to him, and, with the passing of the last Romany over the crest of the hill, she said bravely: "I want to help you do the big things. They will be yours. The world is all for you yet." Ingolby shook his head. He had had his Moscow. His was the true measure of things now; his lesson had been learned; values were got by new standards; he knew in a real sense the things that mattered. "I have you--the world for sale!" he said, with the air of one discarding a useless thing. GLOSSARY OF ROMANY WORDS Bosh----fiddle, noise, music. Bor----an exclamation (literally, a hedge). Chal----lad, fellow. Chi----child, daughter, girl. Dadia----an exclamation. Dordi----an exclamation. Hotchewitchi----hedgehog. Kek----no, none. Koppa----blanket. Mi Duvel----My God. Patrin----small heaps of grass, or leaves, or twigs, or string, laid at cross-roads to indicate the route that must be followed. Pral----brother or friend. Rinkne rakli----pretty girl. Ry----King or ruler. Tan----tent, camp. Vellgouris----fair. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Agony in thinking about the things we're never going to do I don't believe in walking just for the sake of walking It's no good simply going--you've got to go somewhere Most honest thing I ever heard, but it's not the most truthful Women may leave you in the bright days ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "WORLD FOR SALE": Agony in thinking about the things we're never going to do I don't believe in walking just for the sake of walking It's no good simply going--you've got to go somewhere Most honest thing I ever heard, but it's not the most truthful Saw how futile was much competition They think that if a vote's worth having it's worth paying for When you strike your camp, put out the fires Women may leave you in the bright days You never can really overtake a newspaper lie YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK [BEING THE STORY OF A MATRIMONIAL DESERTER] By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS: Volume 1. PROEM I. "PIONEERS, O PIONEERS" II. CLOSING THE DOORS III. THE LOGAN TRIAL AND WHAT CAME OF IT IV. "STRENGTH SHALL BE GIVEN THEE" V. A STORY TO BE TOLD Volume 2. VI. "HERE ENDETH THE FIRST LESSON" VII. A WOMAN'S WAY TO KNOWLEDGE VIII. ALL ABOUT AN UNOPENED LETTER IX. NIGHT SHADE AND MORNING GLORY X. "S. O. S." XI. IN THE CAMP OF THE DESERTER Volume 3. XII. AT THE RECEIPT OF CUSTOM XIII. KITTY SPEAKS HER MIND AGAIN XIV. AWAITING THE VERDICT XV. "MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM" XVI. "'TWAS FOR YOUR PLEASURE YOU CAME HERE, YOU GO BACK FOR MINE" XVII. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT? EPILOGUE INTRODUCTION This volume contains two novels dealing with the life of prairie people in the town of Askatoon in the far West. 'The World for Sale' and the latter portion of 'The Money Master' deal with the same life, and 'The Money Master' contained some of the characters to be found in 'Wild Youth'. 'The World for Sale' also was a picture of prairie country with strife between a modern Anglo-Canadian town and a French-Canadian town in the West. These books are of the same people; but 'You Never Know Your Luck' and 'Wild Youth' have several characters which move prominently through both. In the introduction to 'The World for Sale' in this series, I drew a description of prairie life, and I need not repeat what was said there. 'In You Never Know Your Luck' there is a Proem which describes briefly the look of the prairie and suggests characteristics of the life of the people. The basis of the book has a letter written by a wife to her husband at a critical time in his career when he had broken his promise to her. One or two critics said the situation is impossible, because no man would carry a letter unopened for a long number of years. My reply is: that it is exactly what I myself did. I have still a letter written to me which was delivered at my door sixteen years ago. I have never read it, and my reason for not reading it was that I realised, as I think, what its contents were. I knew that the letter would annoy, and there it lies. The writer of the letter who was then my enemy is now my friend. The chief character in the book, Crozier, was an Irishman, with all the Irishman's cleverness, sensitiveness, audacity, and timidity; for both those latter qualities are characteristic of the Irish race, and as I am half Irish I can understand why I suppressed a letter and why Crozier did. Crozier is the type of man that comes occasionally to the Dominion of Canada; and Kitty Tynan is the sort of girl that the great West breeds. She did an immoral thing in opening the letter that Crozier had suppressed, but she did it in a good cause--for Crozier's sake; she made his wife write another letter, and she placed it again in the envelope for Crozier to open and see. Whatever lack of morality there was in her act was balanced by the good end to the story, though it meant the sacrifice of Kitty's love for Crozier, and the making of his wife happy once more. As for 'Wild Youth' I make no apology for it. It is still fresh in the minds of the American public, and it is true to the life. Some critics frankly called it melodramatic. I do not object to the term. I know nothing more melodramatic than certain of the plots of Shakespeare's plays. Thomas Hardy is melodramatic; Joseph Conrad is melodramatic; Balzac was melodramatic, and so were Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, and Sir Walter Scott. The charge of melodrama is not one that should disturb a writer of fiction. The question is, are the characters melodramatic. Will anyone suggest to me the marriage of a girl of seventeen with a man over sixty is melodramatic. It may be, but I think it tragical, and so it was in this case. As for Orlando Guise, I describe the man as I knew him, and he is still alive. Some comments upon the story suggested that it was impossible for a man to spend the night on the prairie with a woman whom he loved without causing her to forget her marriage vows. It is not sentimental to say that is nonsense. It is a prurient mind that only sees evil in a situation of the sort. Why it should be desirable to make a young man and woman commit a misdemeanor to secure the praise of a critic is beyond imagination. It would be easy enough to do. I did it in The Right of Way. I did it in others of my books. What happens to one man and one woman does not necessarily happen to another. There are men who, for love of a woman, would not take advantage of her insecurity. There are others who would. In my books I have made both classes do their will, and both are true to life. It does not matter what one book is or is not, but it does matter that an author writes his book with a sense of the fitting and the true. Both these books were written to present that side of life in Canada which is not wintry and forbidding. There is warmth of summer in both tales, and thrilling air and the beauty of the wild countryside. As for the cold, it is severe in most parts of Canada, but the air is dry, and the sharpness is not felt as it is in this damper climate of England. Canadians feel the cold of a March or November day in London far more than the cold of a day in Winnipeg, with the thermometer many degrees below zero. Both these books present the summer side of Canada, which is as delightful as that of any climate in the world; both show the modern western life which is greatly changed since the days when Pierre roamed the very fields where these tales take place. It should never be forgotten that British Columbia has a climate like that of England, where, on the Coast, it is never colder than here, and where there is rain instead of snow in winter. There is much humour and good nature in the West, and this also I tried to bring out in these two books; and Askatoon is as cosmopolitan as London. Canada in the West has all races, and it was consistent of me to give a Chinaman of noble birth a part to play in the tragicomedy. I have a great respect for the Chinaman, and he is a good servant and a faithful friend. Such a Chinaman as Li Choo I knew in British Columbia, and all I did was to throw him on the Eastern side of the Rockies, a few miles from the border of the farthest Western province. The Chinaman's death was faithful in its detail, and it was true to his nature. He had to die, and with the old pagan philosophy, still practised in China and Japan, he chose the better way, to his mind. Princes still destroy themselves in old Japan, as recent history proves. YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK Volume 1. PROEM I. "PIONEERS, O PIONEERS" II. CLOSING THE DOORS III. THE LOGAN TRIAL AND WHAT CAME OF IT IV. "STRENGTH SHALL BE GIVEN THEE" V. A STORY TO BE TOLD PROEM Have you ever seen it in reaping-time? A sea of gold it is, with gentle billows telling of sleep and not of storm, which, like regiments afoot, salute the reaper and say, "All is fulfilled in the light of the sun and the way of the earth; let the sharp knife fall." The countless million heads are heavy with fruition, and sun glorifies and breeze cradles them to the hour of harvest. The air-like the tingle of water from a mountain-spring in the throat of the worn wayfarer, bringing a sense of the dust of the world flushed away. Arcady? Look closely. Like islands in the shining yellow sea, are houses--sometimes in a clump of trees, sometimes only like bare-backed domesticity or naked industry in the workfield. Also rising here and there in the expanse, clouds that wind skyward, spreading out in a powdery mist. They look like the rolling smoke of incense, of sacrifice. Sacrifice it is. The vast steam-threshers are mightily devouring what their servants, the monster steam-reapers, have gleaned for them. Soon, when September comes, all that waving sea will be still. What was gold will still be a rusted gold, but near to the earth-the stubble of the corn now lying in vast garners by the railway lines, awaiting transport east and west and south and across the seas. Not Arcady this, but a land of industry in the grip of industrialists, whose determination to achieve riches is, in spite of themselves, chastened by the magnitude and orderly process of nature's travail which is not pain. Here Nature hides her internal striving under a smother of white for many months in every year, when what is now gold in the sun will be a soft--sometimes, too, a hard-shining coverlet like impacted wool. Then, instead of the majestic clouds of incense from the threshers, will rise blue spiral wreaths of smoke from the lonely home. There the farmer rests till spring, comforting himself in the thought that while he waits, far under the snow the wheat is slowly expanding; and as in April, the white frost flies out of the soil into the sun, it will push upward and outward, green and vigorous, greeting his eye with the "What cheer, partner!" of a mate in the scheme of nature. Not Arcady; and yet many of the joys of Arcady are here--bright, singing birds, wide adventurous rivers, innumerable streams, the squirrel in the wood and the bracken, the wildcat stealing through the undergrowth, the lizard glittering by the stone, the fish leaping in the stream, the plaint of the whippoorwill, the call of the bluebird, the golden flash of the oriole, the honk of the wild geese overhead, the whirr of the mallard from the sedge. And, more than all, a human voice declaring by its joy in song that not only God looks upon the world and finds it very good. CHAPTER I "PIONEERS, O PIONEERS" If you had stood on the borders of Askatoon, a prairie town, on the pathway to the Rockies one late August day not many years ago, you would have heard a fresh young human voice singing into the morning, as its possessor looked, from a coat she was brushing, out over the "field of the cloth of gold," which your eye has already been invited to see. With the gift of singing for joy at all, you should be able to sing very joyously at twenty-two. This morning singer was just that age; and if you had looked at the golden carpet of wheat stretching for scores of miles, before you looked at her, you would have thought her curiously in tone with the scene. She was a symphony in gold--nothing less. Her hair, her cheeks, her eyes, her skin, her laugh, her voice they were all gold. Everything about her was so demonstratively golden that you might have had a suspicion it was made and not born; as though it was unreal, and the girl herself a proper subject of suspicion. The eyelashes were so long and so black, the eyes were so topaz, the hair was so like such a cloud of gold as would be found on Joan of Are as seen by a mediaeval painter, that an air of faint artificiality surrounded what was in every other way a remarkable effort of nature to give this region, where she was so very busy, a keynote. Poseurs have said that nature is garish or exaggerated more often than not; but it is a libel. She is aristocratic to the nth degree, and is never over done; courage she has, but no ostentation. There was, however, just a slight touch of over-emphasis in this singing-girl's presentation--that you were bound to say, if you considered her quite apart from her place in this nature-scheme. She was not wholly aristocratic; she was lacking in that high, social refinement which would have made her gold not so golden, her black eyelashes not so black. Being unaristocratic is not always a matter of birth, though it may be a matter of parentage. Her parentage was honest and respectable and not exalted. Her father had been an engineer, who had lost his life on a new railway of the West. His widow had received a pension from the company insufficient to maintain her, and so she kept boarders, the coat of one of whom her daughter was now brushing as she sang. The widow herself was the origin of the girl's slight disqualification for being of that higher circle of selection which nature arranges long before society makes its judicial decision. The father had been a man of high intelligence, which his daughter to a real degree inherited; but the mother, as kind a soul as ever lived, was a product of southern English rural life--a little sumptuous, but wholesome, and for her daughter's sake at least, keeping herself well and safely within the moral pale in the midst of marked temptations. She was forty-five, and it said a good deal for her ample but proper graces that at forty-five she had numerous admirers. The girl was English in appearance, with a touch perhaps of Spanish--why, who can say? Was it because of those Spanish hidalgoes wrecked on the Irish coast long since? Her mind and her tongue, however, were Irish like her father's. You would have liked her, everybody did,--yet you would have thought that nature had failed in self-confidence for once, she was so pointedly designed to express the ancient dame's colour-scheme, even to the delicate auriferous down on her youthful cheek and the purse-proud look of her faintly retrousse nose; though in fact she never had had a purse and scarcely needed one. In any case she had an ample pocket in her dress. This fairly full description of her is given not because she is the most important person in the story, but because the end of the story would have been entirely different had it not been for her; and because she herself was one of those who are so much the sport of circumstances or chance that they express the full meaning of the title of this story. As a line beneath the title explains, the tale concerns a matrimonial deserter. Certainly this girl had never deserted matrimony, though she had on more than one occasion avoided it; and there had been men mean and low enough to imagine they might allure her to the conditions of matrimony without its status. As with her mother the advertisement of her appearance was wholly misleading. A man had once said to her that "she looked too gay to be good," but in all essentials she was as good as she was gay, and indeed rather better. Her mother had not kept boarders for seven years without getting some useful knowledge of the world, or without imparting useful knowledge; and there were men who, having paid their bills on demand, turned from her wiser if not better men. Because they had pursued the old but inglorious profession of hunting tame things, Mrs. Tyndall Tynan had exacted compensation in one way or another--by extras, by occasional and deliberate omission of table luxuries, and by making them pay for their own mending, which she herself only did when her boarders behaved themselves well. She scored in any contest--in spite of her rather small brain, large heart, and ardent appearance. A very clever, shiftless Irish husband had made her develop shrewdness, and she was so busy watching and fending her daughter that she did not need to watch and fend herself to the same extent as she would have done had she been free and childless and thirty. The widow Tynan was practical, and she saw none of those things which made her daughter stand for minutes at a time and look into the distance over the prairie towards the sunset light or the grey- blue foothills. She never sang--she had never sung a note in her life; but this girl of hers, with a man's coat in her hand, and eyes on the joyous scene before her, was for ever humming or singing. She had even sung in the church choir till she declined to do so any longer, because strangers stared at her so; which goes to show that she was not so vain as people of her colouring sometimes are. It was just as bad, however, when she sat in the congregation; for then, too, if she sang, people stared at her. So it was that she seldom went to church at all; but it was not because of this that her ideas of right and wrong were quite individual and not conventional, as the tale of the matrimonial deserter will show. This was not church, however, and briskly applying a light whisk-broom to the coat, she hummed one of the songs her father taught her when he was in his buoyant or in his sentimental moods, and that was a fair proportion of the time. It used to perplex her the thrilling buoyancy and the creepy melancholy which alternately mastered her father; but as a child she had become so inured to it that she was not surprised at the alternate pensive gaiety and the blazing exhilaration of the particular man whose coat she now dusted long after there remained a speck of dust upon it. This was the song she sang: "Whereaway, whereaway goes the lad that once was mine? Hereaway I waited him, hereaway and oft; When I sang my song to him, bright his eyes began to shine-- Hereaway I loved him well, for my heart was soft. "Hereaway my heart was soft; when he kissed my happy eyes, Held my hand, and pressed his cheek warm against my brow, Home I saw upon the earth, heaven stood there in the skies-- 'Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?'" "Whereaway goes my lad--tell me, has he gone alone? Never harsh word did I speak, never hurt I gave; Strong he was and beautiful; like a heron he has flown-- Hereaway, hereaway will I make my grave. "When once more the lad I loved hereaway, hereaway, Comes to lay his hand in mine, kiss me on the brow, I will whisper down the wind, he will weep to hear me say-- 'Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?'" There was a plaintive quality in the voice of this russet maiden in perfect keeping with the music and the words; and though her lips smiled, there was a deep, wistful look in her eyes more in harmony with the coming autumn than with this gorgeous harvest-time. For a moment after she had finished singing she stood motionless, absorbed by the far horizon; then suddenly she gave a little shake of the body and said in a brisk, playfully chiding way: "Kitty Tynan, Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!" There was no one near, so far as eye could see, so it was clear that the words were addressed to herself. She was expressing that wonder which so many people feel at discovering in themselves long-concealed characteristics, or find themselves doing things out of their natural orbit, as they think. If any one had told Kitty Tynan that she had rare imagination, she would have wondered what was meant. If anyone had said to her, "What are you dreaming about, Kitty?" she would have understood, however, for she had had fits of dreaming ever since she was a child, and they had increased during the past few years--since the man came to live with them whose coat she was brushing. Perhaps this was only imitation, because the man had a habit of standing or sitting still and looking into space for minutes--and on Sundays for hours--at a time; and often she had watched him as he lay on his back in the long grass, head on a hillock, hat down over his eyes, while the smoke from his pipe came curling up from beneath the rim. Also she had seen him more than once sitting with a letter before him and gazing at it for many minutes together. She had also noted that it was the same letter on each occasion; that it was a closed letter, and also that it was unstamped. She knew that, because she had seen it in his desk--the desk once belonging to her father, a sloping thing with a green-baize top. Sometimes he kept it locked, but very often he did not; and more than once, when he had asked her to get him something from the desk, not out of meanness, but chiefly because her moral standard had not a multitude of delicate punctilios, she had examined the envelope curiously. The envelope bore a woman's handwriting, and the name on it was not that of the man who owned the coat--and the letter. The name on the envelope was Shiel Crozier, but the name of the man who owned the coat was J. G. Kerry--James Gathorne Kerry, so he said. Kitty Tynan had certainly enough imagination to make her cherish a mystery. She wondered greatly what it all meant. Never in anything else had she been inquisitive or prying where the man was concerned; but she felt that this letter had the heart of a story, and she had made up fifty stories which she thought would fit the case of J. G. Kerry, who for over four years had lived in her mother's house. He had become part of her life, perhaps just because he was a man,--and what home is a real home without a man?--perhaps because he always had a kind, quiet, confidential word for her, or a word of stimulating cheerfulness; indeed, he showed in his manner occasionally almost a boisterous hilarity. He undoubtedly was what her mother called "a queer dick," but also "a pippin with a perfect core," which was her way of saying that he was a man to be trusted with herself and with her daughter; one who would stand loyally by a friend or a woman. He had stood by them both when Augustus Burlingame, the lawyer, who had boarded with them when J. G. Kerry first came, coarsely exceeded the bounds of liberal friendliness which marked the household, and by furtive attempts at intimacy began to make life impossible for both mother and daughter. Burlingame took it into his head, when he received notice that his rooms were needed for another boarder, that J. G. Kerry was the cause of it. Perhaps this was not without reason, since Kerry had seen Kitty Tynan angrily unclasping Burlingame's arm from around her waist, and had used cutting and decisive words to the sensualist afterwards. There had taken the place of Augustus Burlingame a land-agent--Jesse Bulrush--who came and went like a catapult, now in domicile for three days together, now gone for three weeks; a voluble, gaseous, humorous fellow, who covered up a well of commercial evasiveness, honesty and adroitness by a perspiring gaiety natural in its origin and convenient for harmless deceit. He was fifty, and no gallant save in words; and, as a wary bachelor of many years' standing, it was a long time before he showed a tendency to blandish a good-looking middle-aged nurse named Egan who also lodged with Mrs. Tynan; though even a plain-faced nurse in uniform has an advantage over a handsome unprofessional woman. Jesse Bulrush and J. G. Kerry were friends--became indeed such confidential friends to all appearance, though their social origin was evidently so different, that Kitty Tynan, when she wished to have a pleasant conversation which gave her a glow for hours afterwards, talked to the fat man of his lean and aristocratic-looking friend. "Got his head where it ought to be--on his shoulders; and it ain't for playing football with," was the frequent remark of Mr. Bulrush concerning Mr. Kerry. This always made Kitty Tynan want to sing, she could not have told why, save that it seemed to her the equivalent of a long history of the man whose past lay in mists that never lifted, and whom even the inquisitive Burlingame had been unable to "discover" when he lived in the same house. But then Kitty Tynan was as fond of singing as a canary, and relieved her feelings constantly by this virtuous and becoming means, with her good contralto voice. She was indeed a creature of contradictions; for if ever any one should have had a soprano voice it was she. She looked a soprano. What she was thinking of as she sang with Kerry's coat in her hand it would be hard to discover by the process of elimination, as the detectives say when tracking down a criminal. It is, however, of no consequence; but it was clear that the song she sang had moved her, for there was the glint of a tear in her eye as she turned towards the house, the words of the lyric singing themselves over in her brain: "Hereaway my heart was soft; when he kissed my happy eyes, Held my hand, and pressed his cheek warm against my brow, Home I saw upon the hearth, heaven stood there in the skies' Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?"' She knew that no lover had left her; that none was in the habit of laying his warm cheek against her brow; and perhaps that was why she had said aloud to herself, "Kitty Tynan, Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!" Perhaps--and perhaps not. As she stepped forward towards the door she heard a voice within the house, and she quickened her footsteps. The blood in her face, the look in her eye quickened also. And now a figure appeared in the doorway--a figure in shirt-sleeves, which shook a fist at the hurrying girl. "Villain'!" he said gaily, for he was in one of his absurd, ebullient moods--after a long talk with Jesse Bulrush. "Hither with my coat; my spotless coat in a spotted world,--the unbelievable anomaly-- "'For the earth of a dusty to-day Is the dust of an earthy to-morrow.'" When he talked like this she did not understand him, but she thought it was clever beyond thinking--a heavenly jumble. "If it wasn't for me you'd be carted for rubbish," she replied joyously as she helped him on with his coat, though he had made a motion to take it from her. "I heard you singing--what was it?" he asked cheerily, while it could be seen that his mind was preoccupied. The song she had sung, floating through the air, had seemed familiar to him, while he had been greatly engaged with a big business thing he had been planning for a long time, with Jesse Bulrush in the background or foreground, as scout or rear- guard or what you will: "'Whereaway, whereaway goes the lad that once was mine? Hereaway, I waited him, hereaway and oft--'" she hummed with an exaggerated gaiety in her voice, for the song had saddened her, she knew not why. At the words the flaming exhilaration of the man's face vanished and his eyes took on a poignant, distant look. "That--oh, that!" he said, and with a little jerk of the head and a clenching of the hand he moved towards the street. "Your hat!" she called after him, and ran inside the house. An instant later she gave it to him. Now his face was clear and his eyes smiled kindly at her. "'Whereaway, hereaway' is a wonderful song," he said. "We used to sing it when I was a boy--and after, and after. It's an old song--old as the hills. Well, thanks, Kitty Tynan. What a girl you are--to be so kind to a fellow like--me!" "Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!"--these were the very words she had used about herself a little while before. The song--why did it make Mr. Kerry take on such a queer look all at once when he heard it? Kitty watched him striding down the street into the town. Now a voice--a rich, quizzical, kindly voice-called out to her: "Come, come, Miss Tynan, I want to be helped on with my coat," it said. Inside the house a fat, awkward man was struggling, or pretending to struggle, into his coat. "Roll into it, Mr. Rolypoly," she answered cheerily as she entered. "Of course I'm not the star boarder--nothing for me!" he said in affected protest. "A little more to starboard and you'll get it on," she retorted with a glint of her late father's raillery, and she gave the coat a twitch which put it right on the ample shoulders. "Bully! bully!" he cried. "I'll give you the tip for the Askatoon cup." "I'm a Christian. I hate horse-racers and gamblers," she returned mockingly. "I'll turn Christian--I want to be loved," he bleated from the doorway. "Roll on, proud porpoise!" she rejoined, which shows that her conversation was not quite aristocratic at all times. "Golly, but she's a gold dollar in a gold bank," remarked Jesse Bulrush warmly as he lurched into the street. The girl stood still in the middle of the room looking dreamily down the way the two men had gone. The quiet of the late summer day surrounded her. She heard the dizzy din of the bees, the sleepy grinding of the grass hoppers, the sough of the solitary pine at the door, and then behind them all a whizzing, machine- like sound. This particular sound went on and on. She opened the door of the next room. Her mother sat at a sewing-machine intent upon some work, the needle eating up a spreading piece of cloth. "What are you making, mother?" Kitty asked. "New blinds for Mr. Kerry's bedroom-he likes this green colour," the widow added with a slight flush, due to leaning over the sewing-machine, no doubt. "Everybody does everything for him," remarked the girl almost pettishly. "That's a nice spirit, I must say!" replied her mother reprovingly, the machine almost stopping. "If I said it in a different way it would be all right," the other returned with a smile, and she repeated the words with a winning soft inflection, like a born actress. "Kitty-Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!" declared her mother, and she bent smiling over the machine, which presently buzzed on its devouring way. Three people had said the same thing within a few minutes. A look of pleasure stole over the girl's face, and her bosom rose and fell with a happy sigh. Somehow it was quite a wonderful day for her. CHAPTER II CLOSING THE DOORS There are many people who, in some subtle psychological way, are very like their names; as though some one had whispered to "the parents of this child" the name designed for it from the beginning of time. So it was with Shiel Crozier. Does not the name suggest a man lean and flat, sinewy, angular and isolated like a figure in one of El Greco's pictures in the Prado at Madrid? Does not the name suggest a figure of elongated humanity with a touch of ancient mysticism and yet also of the fantastical humour of Don Quixote? In outward appearance Shiel Crozier, otherwise J. G. Kerry, of Askatoon, was like his name for the greater part of the time. Take him in repose, and he looked a lank ascetic who dreamed of a happy land where flagellation was a joy and pain a panacea. In action, however, as when Kitty Tynan helped him on with his coat, he was a pure improvisation of nature. He had a face with a Cromwellian mole, which broke out in emotion like an April day, with eyes changing from a blue-grey to the deepest ultramarine that ever delighted the soul and made the reputation of an Old Master. Even in the prairie town of Askatoon, where every man is so busy that he scarcely knows his own children when he meets them, and almost requires an introduction to his wife when the door closes on them at bedtime, people took a second look at him when he passed. Many who came in much direct contact with him, as Augustus Burlingame the lawyer had done, tried to draw from him all there was to tell about himself; which is a friendly custom of the far West. The native-born greatly desire to tell about themselves. They wear their hearts on their sleeves, and are childlike in the frank recitals of all they were and are and hope to be. This covers up also a good deal of business acumen, shrewdness, and secretiveness which is not so childlike and bland. In this they are in sharp contrast to those not native-born. These come from many places on the earth, and they are seldom garrulously historical. Some of them go to the prairie country to forget they ever lived before, and to begin the world again, having been hurt in life undeservingly; some go to bury their mistakes or worse in pioneer work and adventure; some flee from a wrath that would devour them--the law, society, or a woman. This much must be said at once for Crozier, that he had no crime to hide. It was not because of crime that "He buckles up his talk like the bellyband on a broncho," as Malachi Deely, the exile from Tralee, said of him; and Deely was a man of "horse-sense," no doubt because he was a horse-doctor--"a veterenny surgeon," as his friends called him when they wished to flatter him. Deely supplemented this chaste remark about the broncho with the observation that, "Same as the broncho, you buckle him tightest when you know the divil is stirring in his underbrush." And he added further, "'Tis a woman that's put the mumplaster on his tongue, Sibley, and I bet you a hundred it's another man's wife." Like many a speculator, Malachi Deely would have made no profit out of his bet in the end, for Shiel Crozier had had no trouble with the law, or with another man's wife, nor yet with any single maid--not yet; though there was now Kitty Tynan in his path. Yet he had had trouble. There was hint of it in his occasional profound abstraction; but more than all else in the fact that here he was, a gentleman, having lived his life for over four years past as a sort of horse-expert, overseer, and stud- manager for Terry Brennan, the absentee millionaire. In the opinion of the West, "big-bugs" did not come down to this kind of occupation unless they had been roughly handled by fate or fortune. "Talk? Watch me now, he talks like a testimonial in a frame," said Malachi Deely on the day this tale opens, to John Sibley, the gambling young farmer who, strange to say, did well out of both gambling and farming. "Words to him are like nuts to a monkey. He's an artist, that man is. Been in the circles where the band plays good and soft, where the music smells--fairly smells like parfumery," responded Sibley. "I'd like to get at the bottom of him. There's a real good story under his asbestos vest--something that'd make a man call for the oh-be-joyful, same as I do now." After they had seen the world through the bottom of a tumbler Deely continued the gossip. "Watch me now, been a friend of dukes in England-- and Ireland, that Mr. James Gathorne Kerry, as any one can see; and there he is feelin' the hocks of a filly or openin' the jaws of a stud horse, age-hunting! Why, you needn't tell me--I've had my mind made up ever since the day he broke the temper of Terry Brennan's Inniskillen chestnut, and won the gold cup with her afterwards. He just sort of appeared out of the mist of the marnin', there bein' a divil's lot of excursions and conferences and holy gatherin's in Askatoon that time back, ostensible for the business which their names denote, like the Dioceesan Conference and the Pure White Water Society. That was their bluff; but they'd come herealong for one good pure white dioceesan thing before all, and that was to see the dandiest horse-racing which ever infested the West. Come--he come like that!"--Deely made a motion like a swoop of an aeroplane to earth--"and here he is buckin' about like a rough-neck same as you and me; but yet a gent, a swell, a cream della cream, that's turned his back on a lady--a lady not his own wife, that's my sure and sacred belief." "You certainly have got women on the brain," retorted Sibley. "I ain't ever seen such a man as you. There never was a woman crossing the street on a muddy day that you didn't sprint to get a look at her ankles. Behind everything you see a woman. Horses is your profession, but woman is your practice." "There ain't but one thing worth livin' for, and that's a woman," remarked Deely. "Do you tell Mrs. Deely that?" asked Sibley. "Watch me now, she knows. What woman is there don't know when her husband is what he is! And it's how I know that the trouble with James Gathorne Kerry is a woman. I know the signs. Divils me own, he's got 'em in his face." "He's got in his face what don't belong here and what you don't know much about--never having kept company with that sort," rejoined Sibley. "The way he lives and talks--'No, thank you, I don't care for anny thing,' says he, when you're standin' at the door of a friendly saloon, which is established by law to bespeak peace and goodwill towards men, and you ask him pleasant to step inside. He don't seem to have a single vice. Haven't we tried him? There was Belle Bingley, all frizzy hair and a kicker; we put her on to him. But he give her ten dollars to buy a hat on condition she behaved like a lady in the future--smilin' at her, the divil! And Belle, with temper like dinnemite, took it kneelin' as it were, and smiled back at him--her! Drink, women--nothin' seems to have a hold on him. What's his vice? Sure, then, that's what I say, what's his vice? He's got to have one; anny man as is a man has to have one vice." "Bosh! Look at me," rejoined Sibley. "Drink women--nit! Not for me! I've got no vice. I don't even smoke." "No vice? Begobs, yours has got you like a tire on a wheel! Vice--what do you call gamblin'? It's the biggest vice ever tuk grip of a man. It's like a fever, and it's got you, John, like the nail on your finger." "Well, p'r'aps, he's got that vice too. P'r'aps J. G. Kerry's got that vice same as me." "Annyhow, we'll get to know all we want when he goes into the witness box at the Logan murder trial next week. That's what I'm waitin' for, "Deely returned, with a grin of anticipation. "That drug-eating Gus Burlingame's got a grudge against him somehow, and when a lawyer's got a grudge against you it's just as well to look where y' are goin'. Burlingame don't care what he does to get his way in court. What set him against Kerry I ain't sure, but, bedad, I think it's looks. Burlingame goes in for lookin' like a picture in a frame--gold seals hangin' beyant his vestpocket, broad silk cord to his eye-glass, loose flowin' tie, and long hair-makes him look pretentuous and showy. But your 'Mr. Kerry, sir,' he don't have anny tricks to make him look like a doge from Veenis and all the eyes of the females battin' where'er he goes. Jealousy, John Sibley, me boy, is a cruil thing." "Why is it you ain't jealous of him? There's plenty of women that watch you go down-town--you got a name for it, anyway," remarked Sibley maliciously. Deely nodded sagely. "Watch me now, that's right, me boy. I got a name for it, but I want the game without the name, and that's why I ain't puttin' on anny airs--none at all. I depend on me tongue, not on me looks, which goes against me. I like Mr. J. G. Kerry. I've plenty dealin's with him, naturally, both of us being in the horse business, and I say he's right as a minted dollar as he goes now. Also, and behold, I'd take my oath he never done annything to blush for. His touble's been a woman--wayward woman what stoops to folly! I give up tryin' to pump him just as soon as I made up my mind it was a woman. That shuts a man's mouth like a poor-box. "Next week's fixed for the Logan killin' case, is it?" "Monday comin', for sure. I wouldn't like to be in Mr. Kerry's shoes. Watch me now, if he gives the, evidence they say he can give--the prasecution say it--that M'Mahon Gang behind Logan 'll get him sure as guns, one way or another." "Some one ought to give Mr. Kerry the tip to get out and not give evidence," remarked Sibley sagely. Deely shook his head vigorously. "Begobs, he's had the tip all right, but he's not goin'. He's got as much fear as a canary has whiskers. He doesn't want to give evidence, he says, but he wants to see the "law do its work. Burlingame 'll try to make it out manslaughter; but there's a widow with children to suffer for the manslaughter, just as much as though it was murder, and there isn't a man that doesn't think murder was the game, and the grand joory had that idea too. "Between Gus Burlingame and that M'Mahon bunch of horse-thieves, the stranger in a strange land 'll have to keep his eyes open, I'm thinkin'." "Divils me darlin', his eyes are open all right," returned Deely. "Still, I'd like to jog his elbow," Sibley answered reflectively. "It couldn't do any harm, and it might do good." Deely nodded good-naturedly. "If you want to so bad as that, John, you've got the chance, for he's up at the Sovereign Bank now. I seen him leave the Great Overland Railway Bureau ten minutes ago and get away quick to the bank." "What's he got on at the bank and the railway?" "Some big deal, I guess. I've seen him with Studd Bradley." "The Great North Trust Company boss?" "On it, my boy, on it--the other day as thick as thieves. Studd Bradley doesn't knit up with an outsider from the old country unless there's reason for it--good gold-currency reasons." "A land deal, eh?" ventured Sibley. "What did I say--speculation, that's his vice, same as mine! P'r'aps that's what ruined him. Cards, speculation, what's the difference? And he's got a quiet look, same as me." Deely laughed loudly. "And bursts out same as you! Quiet one hour like a mill-pond or a well, and then--swhish, he's blazin'! He's a volcano in harness, that spalpeen." "He's a volcano that doesn't erupt when there's danger," responded Sibley. "It's when there's just fun on that his volcano gets loose. I'll go wait for him at the bank. I got a fellow-feeling for Mr. Kerry. I'd like to whisper in his ear that he'd better be lookin' sharp for the M'Mahon Gang, and that if he's a man of peace he'd best take a holiday till after next week, or get smallpox or something." The two friends lounged slowly up the street, and presently parted near the door of the bank. As Sibley waited, his attention was drawn to a window on the opposite side of the street at an angle from themselves. The light was such that the room was revealed to its farthest corners, and Sibley noted that three men were evidently carefully watching the bank, and that one of the men was Studd Bradley, the so-called boss. The others were local men of some position commercially and financially in the town. Sibley did not give any sign that he noticed the three men, but he watched carefully from under the rim of his hat. His imagination, however, read a story of consequence in the secretive vigilance of the three, who evidently thought that, standing far back in the room, they could not be seen. Presently the door of the bank opened, and Sibley saw Studd Bradley lean forward eagerly, then draw back and speak hurriedly to his companions, using a gesture of satisfaction. "Something damn funny there!" Sibley said to himself, and stepped forward to Crozier with a friendly exclamation. Crozier turned rather impatiently, for his face was aflame with some exciting reflection. At this moment his eyes were the deepest blue that could be imagined--an almost impossible colour, like that of the Mediterranean when it reflects the perfect sapphire of the sky. There was something almost wonderful in their expression. A woman once said as she looked at a picture of Herschel, whose eyes had the unworldly gaze of the great dreamer looking beyond this sphere, "The stars startled him." Such a look was in Crozier's eyes now, as though he was seeing the bright end of a long road, the desire of his soul. That, indeed, was what he saw. After two years of secret negotiation he had (inspired by information dropped by Jesse Bulrush, his fellow- boarder) made definite arrangements for a big land-deal in connection with the route of a new railway and a town-site, which would mean more to him than any one could know. If it went through, he would, for an investment of ten thousand dollars, have a hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and that would solve an everlasting problem for him. He had reached a critical point in his enterprise. All that was wanted now was ten thousand dollars in cash to enable him to close the great bargain and make his hundred and fifty thousand. But to want ten thousand dollars and to get it in a given space of time, when you have neither securities, cash, nor real estate, is enough to keep you awake at night. Crozier had been so busy with the delicate and difficult negotiations that he had not deeply concerned himself with the absence of the necessary ten thousand dollars. He thought he could get the money at any time, so good was the proposition; and it was best to defer raising it to the last moment lest some one learning the secret should forestall him. He must first have the stake to be played for before he moved to get the cash with which to make the throw. This is not generally thought a good way, but it was his way, and it had yet to be tested. There was no cloud of apprehension, however, in Crozier's eyes as they met those of Sibley. He liked Sibley. At this point it is not necessary to say why. The reason will appear in due time. Sibley's face had always something of that immobility and gravity which Crozier's face had part of the time-paler, less intelligent, with dark lines and secret shadows absent from Crozier's face; but still with some of the El Greco characteristics which marked so powerfully that of the man who passed as J. G. Kerry. "Ah, Sibley," he said, "glad to see you! Anything I can do for you?" "It's the other way if there's any doing at all," was the quick response. "Well, let's walk along together," remarked Crozier a little abstractedly, for he was thinking hard about his great enterprise. "We might be seen," said Sibley, with an obvious undermeaning meant to provoke a question. Crozier caught the undertone of suggestion. "Being about to burgle the bank, it's well not to be seen together--eh?" "No, I'm not in on that business, Mr. Kerry. I'm for breaking banks, not burgling 'em," was the cheerful reply. They laughed, but Crozier knew that the observant gambling farmer was not talking at haphazard. They had met on the highway, as it were, many times since Crozier had come to Askatoon, and Crozier knew his man. "Well, what are we going to do, and who will see us if we do it?" Crozier asked briskly. "Studd Bradley and his secret-service corps have got their eyes on this street--and on you," returned Sibley dryly. Crozier's face sobered and his eyes became less emotional. "I don't see them anywhere," he answered, but looking nowhere. "They're in Gus Burlingame's office. They had you under observation while you were in the bank." "I couldn't run off with the land, could I?" Crozier remarked dryly, yet suggestively, in his desire to see how much Sibley knew. "Well, you said it was a bank. I've no more idea what it is you're tryin' to run off with than I know what an ace is goin' to do when there's a joker in the pack," remarked Sibley; "but I thought I'd tell you that Bradley and his lot are watchin' you gettin' ready to run." Then he hastily told what he had seen. Crozier was reassured. It was natural that Bradley & Co. should take an interest in his movements. They would make a pile of money if he pulled off the deal-far more than he would. It was not strange that they should watch his invasion of the bank. They knew he wanted money, and a bank was the place to get it. That was the way he viewed the matter on the instant. He replied to Sibley cheerfully. "A hundred to one is a lot when you win it," he said enigmatically. "It depends on how much you have on," was Sibley's quiet reply--"a dollar or a thousand dollars. "If you've got a big thing on, and you've got an outsider that you think is goin' to win and beat the favourite, it's just as well to run no risks. Believe me, Mr. Kerry, if you've got anything on that asks for your attention, it'd be sense and saving if you didn't give evidence at the Logan Trial next week. It's pretty well-guessed what you're goin' to say and what you know, and you take it from me, the M'Mahon mob that's behind Logan 'll have it in for you. They're terrors when they get goin', and if your evidence puts one of that lot away, ther'll be trouble for you. I wouldn't do it--honest, I wouldn't. I've been out West here a good many years, and I know the place and the people. It's a good place, and there's lots of first-class people here, but there's a few offscourings that hang like wolves on the edge of the sheepfold, ready to murder and git." "That was what you wanted to see me about, wasn't it?" Crozier asked quietly. "Yes; the other was just a shot on the chance. I don't like to see men sneakin' about and watching. If they do, you can bet there's something wrong. But the other thing, the Logan Trial business, is a dead certainty. You're only a new-comer, in a kind of way, and you don't need to have the same responsibility as the rest. The Law'll get what it wants whether you chip in or not. Let it alone. What's the Law ever done for you that you should run risks for it? It's straight talk, Mr. Kerry. Have a cancer in the bowels next week or go off to see a dyin' brother, but don't give evidence at the Logan Trial--don't do it. I got a feeling--I'm superstitious--all sportsmen are. By following my instincts I've saved myself a whole lot in my time." "Yes; all men that run chances have their superstitions, and they're not to be sneered at," replied Crozier thoughtfully. "If you see black, don't play white; if you see a chestnut crumpled up, put your money on the bay even when the chestnut is a favourite. Of course you're superstitious, Sibley. The tan and the green baize are covered with ghosts that want to help you, if you'll let them." Sibley's mouth opened in amazement. Crozier was speaking with the look of the man who hypnotises himself, who "sees things," who dreams as only the gambler and the plunger on the turf do dream, not even excepting the latter-day Irish poets. "Say, I was right what I said to Deely--I was right," remarked Sibley almost huskily, for it seemed to him as though he had found a long-lost brother. No man except one who had staked all he had again and again could have looked or spoken like that. Crozier looked at the other thoughtfully for a moment, then he said: "I don't know what you said to Deely, but I do know that I'm going to the Logan Trial in spite of the M'Mahon mob. I don't feel about it as you do. I've got a different feeling, Sibley. I'll play the game out. I shall not hedge. I shall not play for safety. It's everything on the favourite this time." "You'll excuse me, but Gus Burlingame is for the defence, and he's got his knife into you," returned Sibley. "Not yet." Crozier smiled sardonically. "Well, I apologise, but what I've said, Mr. Kerry, is said as man to man. You're ridin' game in a tough place, as any man has to do who starts with only his pants and his head on. That's the way you begun here, I guess; and I don't want to see your horse tumble because some one throws a fence-rail at its legs. Your class has enemies always in a new country --jealousy, envy." The lean, aristocratic, angular Crozier, with a musing look on his long face, grown ascetic again, as he held out his hand and gripped that of the other, said warmly: "I'm just as much obliged to you as though I took your advice, Sibley. I am not taking it, but I am taking a pledge to return the compliment to you if ever I get the chance." "Well, most men get chances of that kind," was the gratified reply of the gambling farmer, and then Crozier turned quickly and entered the doorway of the British Bank, the rival of that from which he had turned in brave disappointment a little while before. Left alone in the street, Sibley looked back with the instinct of the hunter. As he expected, he saw a head thrust out from the window where Studd Bradley and his friends had been. There was an hotel opposite the British Bank. He entered and waited. Bradley and one of his companions presently came in and seated themselves far back in the shadow, where they could watch the doorway of the bank. It was quite a half-hour before Shiel Crozier emerged from the bank. His face was set and pale. For an instant he stood as though wondering which way to go, then he moved up the street the way he had come. Sibley heard a low, poisonous laugh of triumph rankle through the hotel office. He turned round. Bradley, the over-fed, over-confident, over- estimated financier, laid a hand on the shoulder of his companion as they moved towards the door. "That's another gate shut," he said. "I guess we can close 'em all with a little care. It's working all right. He's got no chance of raising the cash," he added, as the two passed the chair where Sibley sat--with his hat over his eyes, chewing an unlighted cigar. "I don't know what it is, but it's dirt--and muck at that," John Sibley remarked as he rose from his chair and followed the two into the street. Bradley and his friends were trying steadily to close up the avenues of credit to the man to whom the success of his enterprise meant so much. To crowd him out would mean an extra hundred and fifty thousand dollars for themselves. CHAPTER III THE LOGAN TRIAL AND WHAT CAME OF IT What the case was in which Shiel Crozier was to give evidence is not important; what came from the giving of his testimony is all that matters; and this story would never have been written if he had not entered the witness-box. A court-room at any time seems a little warmer than any other spot to all except the prisoner; but on a July day it is likely to be a punishment for both innocent and guilty. A man had been killed by one of the group of toughs called locally the M'Mahon Gang, and against the charge of murder that of manslaughter had been set up in defence; and manslaughter might mean jail for a year or two or no jail at all. Any evidence which justified the charge of murder would mean not jail, but the rope in due course; for this was not Montana or Idaho, where the law's delays outlasted even the memory of the crime committed. The court-room of Askatoon was crowded to suffocation, for the M'Mahons were detested, and the murdered man had a good reputation in the district. Besides, a widow and three children mourned their loss, and the widow was in court. Also Crozier's evidence was expected to be sensational, and to prove the swivel on which the fate of the accused man would hang. Among those on the inside it was also known that the clever but dissipated Augustus Burlingame, the counsel for the prisoner, had a grudge against Crozier,--no one quite knew why except Kitty Tynan and her mother, and that cross-examination would be pressed mercilessly when Crozier entered the witness-box. As Burlingame came into the court-room he said to the Young Doctor--he was always spoken of as the Young Doctor in Askatoon, though he had been there a good many years and he was no longer as young as he looked--who was also called as a witness, "We'll know more about Mr. J. G. Kerry when this trial is over than will suit his book." It did not occur to Augustus Burlingame that in Crozier, who knew why he had fled the house of the showy but virtuous Mrs. Tynan, he might find a witness of a mental and moral calibre with baffling qualities and some gift of riposte. Crozier entered the witness-box at a stage when excitement was at fever height; for the M'Mahon Gang had given evidence which every one believed to be perjured; and the widow of the slain man was weeping bitterly in her seat because of noxious falsehoods sworn against her honest husband. There was certainly someting credible and prepossessing in the look of Crozier. He might be this or that, but he carried no evil or vice of character in his face. He was in his grave mood this summer afternoon. There he stood with his long face and the very heavy eyebrows, clean- shaven, hard-bitten, as though by wind and weather, composed and forceful, the mole on his chin a kind of challenge to the vertical dimple in his cheek, his high forehead more benevolent than intellectual, his brown hair faintly sprinkled with grey and a bit unmanageable, his fathomless eyes shining. "No man ought to have such eyes," remarked a woman present to the Young Doctor, who abstractedly nodded assent, for, like Malachi Deely and John Sibley, he himself had a theory about Crozier; and he had a fear of what the savage enmity of the morally diseased Burlingame might do. He had made up his mind that so intense a scrupulousness as Crozier had shown since coming to Askatoon had behind it not only character, but the rigidity of a set purpose; and that view was supported by the stern economy of Crozier's daily life, broken only by sudden bursts of generosity for those in need. In the box Crozier kept his eye on the crown attorney, who prosecuted, and on the judge. He appeared not to see any one in the court-room, though Kitty Tynan had so placed herself that he must see her if he looked at the audience at all. Kitty thought him magnificent as he told his story with a simple parsimony but a careful choice of words which made every syllable poignant with effect. She liked him in his grave mood even better than when he was aflame with an internal fire of his own creation, when he was almost wildly vivid with life. "He's two men," she had often said to herself; and she said it now as she looked at him in the witness-box, measuring out his words and measuring off at the same time the span of a murderer's life; for when the crown attorney said to the judge that he had concluded his examination there was no one in the room--not even the graceless Burlingame--who did not think the prisoner guilty. "That is all," the crown attorney said to Crozier as he sank into his chair, greatly pleased with one of the best witnesses who had ever been through his hands--lucid, concentrated, exact, knowing just where he was going and reaching his goal without meandering. Crozier was about to step down when Burlingame rose. "I wish to ask a few questions," he said. Crozier bowed and turned, again grasping the rail of the witness-box with one hand, while with an air of cogitation and suspense he stroked his chin with the long fingers of the other hand. "What is your name?" asked Burlingame in a tone a little louder than he had used hitherto in the trial, indeed even louder than lawyers generally use when they want to bully a witness. In this case it was as though he wished to summon the attention of the court. For a second Crozier's fingers caught his chin almost spasmodically. The real meaning of the question, what lay behind it, flashed to his mind. He saw in lightning illumination the course Burlingame meant to pursue. For a moment his heart seemed to stand still, and he turned slightly pale, but the blue of his eyes took on a new steely look--a look also of striking watchfulness, as of an animal conscious of its danger, yet conscious too of its power when at bay. "What is your name?" Burlingame asked again in a somewhat louder tone, and turned to look at the jury, as if bidding them note the hesitation of the witness; though, indeed, the waiting was so slight that none but a trickster like Burlingame would have taken advantage of it, and only then when there was much behind. For a moment longer Crozier remained silent, getting strength, as it were, and saying to himself, "What does he know?" and then, with a composed look of inquiry at the judge, who appeared to take no notice, he said: "I have already, in evidence, given my name to the court." "Witness, what is your name?" again almost shouted the lawyer, with a note of indignation in his voice, as though here was a dangerous fellow committing a misdemeanour in their very presence. He spread out his hands to the jury, as though bidding them observe, if they would, this witness hesitating in answer to a simple, primary question--a witness who had just sworn a man's life away! "What is your name?" "James Gathorne Kerry, as I have already given it to the court," was the calm reply. "Where do you live?" "In Askatoon, as I have already said in evidence; and if it is necessary to give my domicile, I live at the house of Mrs. Tyndall Tynan, Pearl Street--as you know so well." The tone in which he uttered the last few words was such that even the judge pricked up his ears. A look of hatred came into the decadent but able lawyer's face. "Where do you live when you are at home?" "Mrs. Tynan's house is the only home I have at present." He was outwitting the pursuer so far, but it only gained him time, as he knew; and he knew also that no suggestive hint concerning the episode at Mrs. Tynan's, when Burlingame was asked to leave her house, would be of any avail now. "Where were you born?" "In Ireland." "What part of Ireland?" "County Kerry." "What place--what town or city or village in County Kerry?" "In neither." "What house, then--what estate?" Burlingame was more than nettled; and he sharpened his sword. "The estate of Castlegarry." "What was your name in Ireland?" In the short silence that followed, the quick-drawn breath of many excited and some agitated people could be heard. Among the latter were Mrs. Tynan and her daughter and Malachi Deely; among those who held their breath in suspence were John Sibley, Studd Bradley the financier, and the Young Doctor. The swish of a skirt seemed ridiculously loud in the hush, and the scratching of the judge's quill pen was noisily irritating. "My name in Ireland was James Shiel Gathorne Crozier, commonly called Shiel Crozier," came the even reply from the witness-box. "James Shiel Gathorne Crozier in Ireland, but James Gathorne Kerry here!" Burlingame turned to the jury significantly. "What other name have you been known by in or out of Ireland?" he added sharply to Crozier. "No other name so far as I know." "No other name so far as you know," repeated the lawyer in a sarcastic tone intended to impress the court. "Who was your father?" "John Gathorne Crozier." "Any title?" "He was a baronet." "What was his business?" "He had no profession, though he had business, of course." "Ah, he lived by his wits?" "No, he was not a lawyer! I have said he had no profession. He lived on his money on his estate." The judge waved down the laughter at Burlingame's expense. "In official documents what was his description?" snarled Burlingame. "'Gentleman' was his designation in official documents." "You, then, were the son of a gentleman?" There was a hateful suggestion in the tone. "I was." "A legitimate son?" Nothing in Crozier's face showed what he felt, except his eyes, and they had a look in them which might well have made his questioner shrink. He turned calmly to the judge. "Your honour, does this bear upon the case? Must I answer this legal libertine?" At the word libertine, the judge, the whole court, and the audience started; but it was presently clear the witness meant that the questioner was abusing his legal privileges, though the people present interpreted it another way, and quite rightly. The reply of the judge was in favour of the lawyer. "I do not quite see the full significance of the line of defence, but I think I must allow the question," was the judge's gentle and reluctant reply, for he was greatly impressed by this witness, by his transparent honesty and straightforwardness. "Were you a legitimate son of John Gathorne Crozier and his wife?" asked Burlingame. "Yes, a legitimate son," answered Crozier in an even voice. "Is John Gathorne Crozier still living?" "I said that gentleman was his designation in official documents. I supposed that would convey the fact that he was not living, but I see you do not quickly grasp a point." Burlingame was stung by the laughter in the court and ventured a riposte. "But is once a gentleman always a gentleman an infallible rule?" "I suppose not; I did not mean to convey that; but once a rogue always a bad lawyer holds good in every country," was Crozier's comment in a low, quiet voice which stirred and amused the audience again. "I must ask counsel to put questions which have some relevance even to his own line of defence," remarked the judge sternly. "This is not a corner grocery." Burlingame bowed. He had had a facer, but he had also shown the witness to have been living under an assumed name. That was a good start. He hoped to add to the discredit. He had absolutely no knowledge of Crozier's origin and past; but he was in a position to find it out if Crozier told the truth on oath, and he was sure he would. "Where was your domicile in the old country?" Burlingame asked. "In County Kerry--with a flat in London." "An estate in County Kerry?" "A house and two thousand acres." "Is it your property still?" "It is not." "You sold it?" "No." "If you did not sell, how is it that you do not own it?" "It was sold for me--in spite of me." The judge smiled, the people smiled, the jury smiled. Truly, though a life-history was being exposed with incredible slowness--"like pulling teeth," as the Young Doctor said--it was being touched off with laughter. "You were in debt?" "Quite." "How did you get into debt?" "By spending more than my income." If Askatoon had been proud of its legal talent in the past it had now reason for revising its opinion. Burlingame was frittering away the effect of his inquiry by elaboration of details. What he gained by the main startling fact he lost in the details by which the witness scored. He asked another main question. "Why did you leave Ireland?" "To make money." "You couldn't do it there?" "They were too many for me over there, so I thought I'd come here," slyly answered Crozier, and with a grave face; at which the solemn scene of a prisoner being tried for his life was shaken by a broad smiling, which in some cases became laughter haughtily suppressed by the court attendant. "Have you made money here?" "A little--with expectations." "What was your income in Ireland?" "It began with three thousand pounds--" "Fifteen thousand dollars about?" "About that--about a lawyer's fee for one whisper to a client less than that. It began with that and ended with nothing." "Then you escaped?" "From creditors, lawyers, and other such? No, I found you here." The judge intervened again almost harshly on the laughter of the court, with the remark that a man was being tried for his life; that ribaldry was out of place; and that, unless the course pursued by the counsel was to discredit the reliability of the character of the witness, the examination was in excess of the privilege of counsel. "Your honour has rightly apprehended what my purpose is," Burlingame said deprecatingly. He then turned to Crozier again, and his voice rose as it did when he began the examination. It was as though he was starting all over again. "What was it compelled" (he was boldly venturing) "you to leave Ireland at last? What was the incident which drove you out from the land where you were born--from being the owner of two thousand acres"-- "Partly bog," interposed Crozier. "--From being the owner of two thousand acres to becoming a kind of head- groom on a ranch? What was the cause of your flight?" "Flight! I came in one of the steamers of the Company for which your firm are the agents. Eleven days it took to come from Glasgow to Quebec." Again the court rippled, again the attendant intervened. Burlingame was nonplussed this time, but he gathered himself together. "What was the process of law which forced you to leave your own land?" "None at all." "What were your debts when you left?" "None at all." "How much was the last debt you paid?" "Two thousand five hundred pounds." "What was its nature?" "It was a debt of honour--do you understand?" The subtle challenge of the voice, the sarcasm, was not lost. Again there was a struggle on the part of the audience not to laugh outright, and so be driven from the court as had been threatened. The judge interposed again with the remark, not very severe in tone, that the witness was not in the box to ask questions, but to answer them. At the same time he must remind counsel that the examination must discontinue unless something more relevant immediately appeared in the evidence. There was silence again for a moment, and even Crozier himself seemed to steel himself for a question he felt was coming. "Are you married or single?" asked Burlingame, and he did not need to raise his voice to summon the interest of the court. "I was married." One person in the audience nearly cried out. It was Kitty Tynan. She had never allowed herself to think of that, but even if she had, what difference could it make whether he was married or single, since he was out of her star? "Are you not married now?" "I do not know." "You mean you do not know if you have been divorced?" "No." "You mean your wife is dead?" "No." "What do you mean? That you do not know whether your wife is living or dead?" "Quite so." "Have you heard from her since you saw her last?" "I had one letter." Kitty Tynan thought of the unopened letter in a woman's handwriting in the green baize desk in her mother's house. "No more?" "No more." "Are we to understand that you do not know whether your wife is living or dead?" "I have no information that she is dead." "Why did you leave her?" "I have not said that I left her. Primarily I left Ireland." "Assuming that she is alive, your wife will not live with you?" "Ah, what information have you to that effect?" The judge informed Crozier that he must not ask questions of counsel. "Why is she not with you here?" "As you said, I am only picking up a living here, and even the passage by your own second-class steamship line is expensive." The judge suppressed a smile. He greatly liked the witness. "Do you deny that you parted from your wife in anger?" "When I am asked that question I will try to answer it. Meanwhile, I do not deny what has not been put before me in the usual way." Here the judge sternly rebuked the counsel, who ventured upon one last question. "Have you any children?" "None." "Has your brother, who inherited, any children?" "None that I know of." "Are you the heir-presumptive to the baronetcy?" "I am." "Yet your wife will not live with you?" "Call Mrs. Crozier as a witness and see. Meanwhile, I am not upon my trial." He turned to the judge, who promptly called upon Burlingame to conclude his examination. Burlingame asked two questions more. "Why did you change your name when you came here?" "I wanted to obliterate myself." "I put it to you, that what you want is to avoid the outraged law of your own country." "No--I want to avoid the outrageous lawyers of yours." Again there was a pause in the proceedings, and on a protest from the crown attorney the judge put an end to the cross-examination with the solemn reminder that a man was being tried for his life, and that the present proceedings were a lamentable reflection on the levity of human nature--in Askatoon. Turning with friendly scrutiny to Crozier, he said: "In the early stage of his examination the witness informed the court that he had made a heavy loss through a debt of honour immediately before leaving England. Will he say in what way he incurred the obligation? Are we to assume that it was through gambling-card-playing, or other games of chance?" "Through backing the wrong horse," was Crozier's instant reply. "That phrase is often applied to mining or other unreal flights for fortune," said the judge, with a dry smile. "This was a real horse on a real flight to the winning-post," added Crozier, with a quirk at the corner of his mouth. "Honest contest with man or horse is no crime, but it is tragedy to stake all on the contest and lose," was the judge's grave and pedagogic comment. "We shall now hear from the counsel for defence his reason for conducting his cross-examination on such unusual lines. Latitude of this kind is only permissible if it opens up any weakness in the case against the prisoner." The judge thus did Burlingame a good turn as well as Crozier, by creating an atmosphere of gravity, even of tragedy, in which Burlingame could make his speech in defence of the prisoner. Burlingame started hesitatingly, got into his stride, assembled the points of his defence with the skill of which he really was capable. He made a strong appeal for acquittal, but if not acquittal, then a verdict of manslaughter. He showed that the only real evidence which could convict his man of murder was that of the witness Crozier. If he had been content to discredit evidence of the witness by an adroit but guarded misuse of the facts he had brought out regarding Crozier's past, to emphasise the fact that he was living under an assumed name and that his bona fides was doubtful, he might have impressed the jury to some slight degree. He could not, however, control the malice he felt, and he was smarting from Crozier's retorts. He had a vanity easily lacerated, and he was now too savage to abate the ferocity of his forensic attack. He sat down, however, with a sure sense of failure. Every orator knows when he is beating the air, even when his audience is quiet and apparently attentive. The crown attorney was a man of the serenest method and of cold, unforensic logic. He had a deadly precision of speech, a very remarkable memory, and a great power of organising and assembling his facts. There was little left of Burlingame's appeal when he sat down. He declared that to discredit Crozier's evidence because he chose to use another name than his own, because he was parted from his wife, because he left England practically penniless to earn an honest living--no one had shown it was not--was the last resort of legal desperation. It was an indefensible thing to endeavour to create prejudice against a man because of his own evidence given with great frankness. Not one single word of evidence had the defence brought to discredit Crozier, save by Crozier's own word of mouth; and if Crozier had cared to commit perjury, the defence could not have proved him guilty of it. Even if Crozier had not told the truth as it was, counsel for the defence would have found it impossible to convict him of falsehood. But even if Crozier was a perjurer, justice demanded that his evidence should be weighed as truth from its own inherent probability and supported by surrounding facts. In a long experience he had never seen animus against a witness so recklessly exhibited as by counsel in this case. The judge was not quite so severe in his summing up, but he did say of Crozier that his direct replies to Burlingame's questions, intended to prejudice him in the eyes of the community into which he had come a stranger, bore undoubted evidence of truth; for if he had chosen to say what might have saved him from the suspicions, ill or well founded, of his present fellow-citizens, he might have done so with impunity, save for the reproach of his own conscience. On the whole, the judge summed up powerfully against the prisoner Logan, with the result that the jury were not out for more than a half-hour. Their verdict was, guilty of murder. In the scene which followed, Crozier dropped his head into his hand and sat immovable as the judge put on the black cap and delivered sentence. When the prisoner left the dock, and the crowd began to disperse, satisfied that justice had been done--save in that small circle where the M'Mahons were supreme--Crozier rose with other witnesses to leave. As he looked ahead of him the first face he saw was that of Kitty Tynan, and something in it startled him. Where had he seen that look before? Yes, he remembered. It was when he was twenty-one and had been sent away to Algiers because he was falling in love with a farmer's daughter. As he drove down a lane with his father towards the railway station, those long years ago, he had seen the girl's face looking at him from the window of a labourer's cottage at the crossroads; and its stupefied desolation haunted him for many years, even after the girl had married and gone to live in Scotland--that place of torment for an Irish soul. The look in Kitty Tynan's face reminded him of that farmer's lass in his boyhood's history. He was to blame then--was he to blame now? Certainly not consciously, not by any intended word or act. Now he met her eyes and smiled at her, not gaily, not gravely, but with a kind of whimsical helplessness; for she was the first to remind him that he was leaving the court-room in a different position (if not a different man) from that in which he entered it. He had entered the court-room as James Gathorne Kerry, and he was leaving it as Shiel Crozier; and somehow James Gathorne Kerry had always been to himself a different man from Shiel Crozier, with different views, different feelings, if not different characteristics. He saw faces turned to him, a few with intense curiosity, fewer still with a little furtiveness, some with amusement, and many with unmistakable approval; for one thing was clear, if his own evidence was correct: he was the son of a baronet, he was heir-presumptive to a baronetcy, and he had scored off Augustus Burlingame in a way which delighted a naturally humorous people. He noted, however, that the nod which Studd Bradley, the financier, gave him had in it an enigmatic something which puzzled him. Surely Bradley could not be prejudiced against him because of the evidence he had given. There was nothing criminal in living under an assumed name, which, anyhow, was his own name in three-fourths of it, and in the other part was the name of the county where he was born. "Divils me own, I told you he was up among the dukes," said Malachi Deely to John Sibley as they came out. "And he's from me own county, and I know the name well enough; an' a damn good name it is. The bulls of Castlegarry was famous in the south of Ireland." "I've a warm spot for him. I was right, you see. Backing horses ruined him," said Sibley in reply; and he looked at Crozier admiringly. There is the communion of saints, but nearer and dearer is the communion of sinners; for a common danger is their bond, and that is even more than a common hope. CHAPTER IV "STRENGTH SHALL BE GIVEN THEE" On the evening of the day of the trial, Mrs. Tynan, having fixed the new blind to the window of Shiel Crozier's room, which was on the ground- floor front, was lowering and raising it to see if it worked properly, when out in the moonlit street she saw a wagon approaching her house surrounded and followed by obviously excited men. Once before she had seen just such a group nearing her door. That was when her husband was brought home to die in her arms. She had a sudden conviction, as, holding the blind in her hand, she looked out into the night, that again tragedy was to cross her threshold. Standing for an instant under the fascination of terror, she recovered herself with a shiver, and, stepping down from the chair where she had been fixing the blind, with the instinct of real woman, she ran to the bed of the room where she was, and made it ready. Why did she feel that it was Shiel Crozier's bed which should be made ready? Or did she not feel it? Was it only a dazed, automatic act, not connected with the person who was to lie in the bed? Was she then a fatalist? Were trouble and sorrow so much her portion that to her mind this tragedy, whatever it was, must touch the man nearest to her--and certainly Shiel Crozier was far nearer than Jesse Bulrush. Quite apart from wealth or position, personality plays a part more powerful than all else in the eyes of every woman who has a soul which has substance enough to exist at all. Such men as Crozier have compensations for "whate'er they lack." It never occurred to Mrs. Tynan to go to Jesse Bulrush's room or the room of middle-aged, comely Nurse Egan. She did the instinctive thing, as did the woman who sent a man a rope as a gift, on the ground that the fortune in his hand said that he was born not to be drowned. Mrs. Tynan's instinct was right. By the time she had put the bed into shape, got a bowl of water ready, lighted a lamp, and drawn the bed out from the wall, there was a knocking at the door. In a moment she had opened it, and was faced by John Sibley, whose hat was off as though he were in the presence of death. This gave her a shock, and her eyes strove painfully to see the figure which was being borne feet foremost over her threshold. "It's Mr. Crozier?" she asked. "He was shot coming home here--by the M'Mahon mob, I guess," returned Sibley huskily. "Is--is he dead?" she asked tremblingly. "No. Hurt bad." "The kindest man--it'd break Kitty's heart--and mine," she added hastily, for she might be misunderstood; and John Sibley had shown signs of interest in her daughter. "Where's the Young Doctor?" she asked, catching sight of Crozier's face as they laid him on the bed. "He's done the first aid, and he's off getting what's needed for the operation. He'll be here in a minute or so," said a banker who, a few days before, had refused Crozier credit. "Gently, gently--don't do it that way," said Mrs. Tynan in sharp reproof as they began to take off Crozier's clothes. "Are you going to stay while we do it?" asked a maker of mineral waters, who whined at the prayer meetings of a soul saved and roared at his employees like a soul damned. "Oh, don't be a fool!" was the impatient reply. "I've a grown-up girl and I've had a husband. Don't pull at his vest like that. Go away. You don't know how. I've had experience--my husband . . . There, wait till I cut it away with the scissors. Cover him with the quilt. Now, then, catch hold of his trousers under the quilt, and draw them off slowly. . . . There you are--and nothing to shock the modesty of a grown-up woman or any other when a life's at stake. What does the Young Doctor say?" "Hush! He's coming to," interposed the banker. It was as though the quiet that followed the removal of his clothes and the touch of Mrs. Tynan's hand on his head had called Crozier back from unconsciousness. The first face he saw was that of the banker. In spite of the loss of blood and his pitiable condition, a whimsical expression came to his eyes. "Lucky for you you didn't lend me the money," he said feebly. The banker shook his head. "I'm not thinking of that, Mr. Crozier. God knows, I'm not!" Crozier caught sight of Mrs. Tynan. "It's hard on you to have me brought here," he murmured as she took his hand. "Not so hard as if they hadn't," she replied. "That's what a home's for --not just a place for eating and drinking and sleeping." "It wasn't part of the bargain," he said weakly. "It was my part of the bargain." "Here's Kitty," said the maker of mineral waters, as there was the swish of a skirt at the door. "Who are you calling 'Kitty'?" asked the girl indignantly, as they motioned her back from the bedside. "There's too many people here," she added abruptly to her mother. "We can take care of him"--she nodded towards the bed. "We don't want any help except--except from John Sibley, if he will stay, and you too," she added to the banker. She had not yet looked at the figure on the bed. She felt she could not do so while all these people were in the room. She needed time to adjust herself to the situation. It was as though she was the authority in the household and took control even of her mother. Mrs. Tynan understood. She had a great belief in her daughter and admired her cleverness, and she was always ready to be ruled by her; it was like being "bossed" by the man she had lost. "Yes, you'd all better go," Mrs. Tynan said. "He wants all the air he can get, and I can't make things ready with all of you in the room. Go outdoors for a while, anyway. It's summer and you'll not take cold! The Young Doctor has work to do, and my girl and I and these two will help him plenty." She motioned towards the banker and the gambling farmer. In a moment the room was cleared of all save the four and Crozier, who knew that upon the coming operation depended his life. He had been conscious when the Young Doctor said this was so, and he was thinking, as he lay there watching these two women out of his nearly closed eyes, that he would like to be back in Ireland at Castlegarry with the girl he had married and had left without a good-bye near five years gone. If he had to die he would like to die at home; and that could not be. Kitty had the courage to turn towards him now. As she caught sight of his face for the first time--she had so far kept her head turned away-- she became very pale. Then, suddenly, she gathered herself together. Going over to the bed, she took the limp hand lying on the coverlet. "Courage, soldier," she said in the colloquialism her father often used, and she smiled at Crozier a great-hearted, helpful smile. "You are a brick of bricks, Kitty Tynan," he whispered, and smiled. "Here comes the Young Doctor," said Mrs. Tynan as the door opened unceremoniously. "Well, I have to make an excursion," Crozier said, "and I mayn't come back. If I don't, au revoir, Kitty." "You are coming back all right," she answered firmly. "It'll take more than a horse-thief's bullet to kill you. You've got to come back. You're as tough as nails. And I'll hold your hand all through it--yes, I will!" she added to the Young Doctor, who had patted her shoulder and told her to go to another room. "I'm going to help you, doctor-man, if you please," she said, as he turned to the box of instruments which his assistant held. "There's another--one of my colleagues--coming I hope," the Young Doctor replied. "That's all right, but I am staying to see Mr. Crozier through. I said I'd hold his hand, and I'm going to do it," she added firmly. "Very well; put on a big apron, and see that you go through with us if you start. No nonsense." "There'll be no nonsense from me," she answered quietly. "I want the bed in the middle of the room," the Young Doctor said, and the others gently moved it. CHAPTER V A STORY TO BE TOLD A great surgeon said a few years ago that he was never nervous when performing an operation, though there was sometimes a moment when every resource of character, skill, and brain came into play. That was when, having diagnosed correctly and operated, a new and unexpected seat of trouble and peril was exposed, and instant action had to be taken. The great man naturally rose to the situation and dealt with it coolly; but he paid the price afterwards in his sleep when, night after night, he performed the operation over and over again with the same strain on his subconscious self. So it was with Kitty Tynan in her small way. She had insisted on being allowed to help at the operation, and the Young Doctor, who had a good knowledge of life and knew the stuff in her, consented; and so far as the operation was concerned she justified his faith in her. When the banker had to leave the room at the sight of the carnage, she remained, and she and John Sibley were as cool as the Young Doctor and his fellow- anatomist, till it was all over, and Shiel Crozier was started again on a safe journey back to health. Then a thing, which would have been amusing if it had not been so deeply human, happened. She and John Sibley went out of the house together into the moonlit night, and the reaction seized them both at the same moment. She gave a gulp and burst into tears, and he, though as tall as Crozier, also broke down, and they sat on the stump of a tree together, her hand in his, and cried like two children. "Never since I was a little runt--did I--never cried in thirty years-- and here I am-leaking like a pail!" Thus spoke John Sibley in gasps and squeezing Kitty's hand all the time unconsciously, but spontaneously, and as part of what he felt. He would not, however, have dared to hold her hand on any other occasion, while always wanting to hold it, and wanting her also to share his not wholly reputed, though far from precarious, existence. He had never got so far as to tell her that; but if she had understanding she would realise after to-night what he had in his mind. She, feeling her arm thrill with the magnetism of his very vital palm, had her turn at explanation. "I wouldn't have broke down myself--it was all your fault," she said. "I saw it--yes--in your face as we left the house. I'm so glad it's over safe--no one belonging to him here, and not knowing if he'd wake up alive or not--I just was swamped." He took up the misty excuse and explanation. "I had a feeling for him from the start; and then that Logan Trial to-day, and the way he talked out straight, and told the truth to shame the devil--it's what does a man good! And going bung over a horserace--that's what got me too, where I was young and tender. Swatted that Burlingame every time--one eye, two eyes all black, teeth out, nose flattened--called him an 'outrageous lawyer'--my, that last clip was a good one! You bet he's a sport-- Crozier." Kitty nodded eagerly while still wiping her red eyes. "He made the judge smile--I saw it, not ten minutes before his honour put on the black cap. You couldn't have believed it, if you hadn't seen it-- "Here, let go my hand," she added, suddenly conscious of the enormity John Sibley was committing by squeezing it now. It is perfectly true that she did not quite realise that he had taken her hand--that he had taken her hand. She was conscious in a nice, sympathetic way that her hand had been taken, but it was lost in the abstraction of her emotion. "Oh, here, let it go quick!" she added--"and not because mother's coming, either," she added as the door opened and her mother came out-- not to spy, not to reproach her daughter for sitting with a man in the moonlight at ten o'clock at night, but--good, practical soul--to bring them each a cup of beef-tea. "Here, you two," she said as she hurried to them. "You need something after that business in there, and there isn't time to get supper ready. It's as good for you as supper, anyway. I don't believe in underfeeding. Nothing's too good to swallow." She watched them sip the tea slowly like two schoolchildren. "And when you've drunk it you must go right to bed, Kitty," she added presently. "You've had your own way, and you saw the thing through; but there's always a reaction, and you'll pay for it. It wasn't fit work for a girl of your age; but I'm proud of your nerve, and I'm glad you showed the Young Doctor what you can do. You've got your father's brains and my grit," she added with a sigh of satisfaction. "Come along--bed now, Kitty. If you get too tired you'll have bad dreams." Perhaps she was too tired. In any case she had dreams. Just as the great surgeon performed his operation over and over in his sleep, so Kitty Tynan, through long hours that night, and for many nights afterwards, saw the swift knives, helped to staunch the blood, held the basin, disinfected the instruments which had made an attack on the man of men in her eyes, and saw the wound stitched up--the last act of the business before the Young Doctor turned to her and said, "You'll do wherever you're put in life, Miss Kitty Tynan. You're a great girl. And now get some fresh air and forget all about it." Forget all about it! So, the Young Doctor knew what happened after a terrific experience like that! In truth, he knew only too well. Great surgeons do surgery only and have innumerable operations to give them skill; but a country physician and surgeon must be a sane being to keep his nerve when called on to use the knife, and he must have a more than usual gift for such business. That is what the Young Doctor had; but he knew it was not easy to forget those scenes in which man carved the body of fellow-man, laying bare the very vitals of existence, seeing "the wheels go round." It haunted Kitty Tynan in the night-time, and perhaps it was that which toned down a little the colour of her face--the kind of difference of colouring there is between natural gold and 14-carat. But in the daytime she was quite happy, and though there was haunting, it was Shiel Crozier who, first helpless, then convalescent, was haunted by her presence. It gave him pleasure, but it was a pleasure which brought pain. He was not so blind that he had not caught at her romance, in which he was the central figure--a romance which had not vanished since the day he declared in the court-room that he was married, or had been married. Kitty's eyes told their own story, and it made him uneasy and remorseful. Yet he could not remember when, even for an instant, he had played with her. She had always seemed part of a simple family life for which he and Jesse Bulrush and her mother and the nurse-Nurse Egan-were responsible. What a blessing Nurse Egan had been! Otherwise, all the nursing would have been performed by Kitty and her mother, and it might well have broken them down, for they were determined to nurse him themselves. When, however, Nurse Egan came back, two days after the operation was performed, they included her in the responsibility, as one of the family; and as she had no other important case on at the time, fortunately she could give Crozier almost undivided attention. She had been at first disposed to keep Kitty out of the sick-chamber, as no place for a girl, but she soon abandoned that position, for Kitty was not the girl ever to think of impropriety. She was primitive and she had rather a before-the- flood nature, but she had not the faintest vulgar strain in her. Her mind was essentially pure; nothing material in her had been awakened. Her greatest joy was to do the many things for the patient which a nurse must do--prepare his food, give him drink, adjust his pillows, bathe his face and hands, take his temperature; and on his part he tried hard to disguise from her the apprehension he felt, and to avoid any hint by word or look that he saw anything save the actions of a kind heart. True, her views as to what was proper and improper might possibly be on a different plane from his own. For instance, he had seen girls of her station in the West kiss young men freely--men whom they had no thought of marrying; and that was not the custom of his own class in his home-country. As he got well slowly, and life opened out before him again, he felt he had to pursue a new course, and in that course he must take account of Kitty Tynan, though he could not decide how. He had a deep confidence in the Young Doctor, in his judgment and his character; and it was almost inevitable that he should tell his life-story to the man whose skill had saved him from death in a strange land, with all undone he wanted to do ere he returned to a land which was not strange. The thing happened, as such things do happen, in a quite natural way one day when he and the Young Doctor were discussing the probable verdict against the man who had shot him--the trial was to come on soon, and once again Augustus Burlingame was to be counsel for the defence, and once again Crozier would have to appear in a witness-box. "I think you ought to know, Crozier, that, in view of the trial, Burlingame has written to a firm of lawyers in Kerry to get full information about your past," the Young Doctor said. Crozier gave one of those little jerks of the head characteristic of him and said: "Why, of course; I knew he would do that after I gave my evidence in the Logan Trial." He raised himself on his elbow. "I owe you a great deal," he added feelingly, "and I can't repay you in cash or kindness for what you have done; but it is due you to tell you my whole story, and that is what I propose to do now." "If you think--" "I do think; and also I want both Mrs. Tynan and her daughter to hear my story. Better, truer friends a man could not have; and I want them to know the worst and the best there is, if there is any best. They and you have trusted me, been too good to me, and what I said at the trial is not enough. I want to do what I've never done before. I want to tell everything. It will do me good; and perhaps as I tell it I'll see myself and everything else in a truer light than I've yet seen it all." "You are sure you want Mrs. Tynan and her daughter to hear?" "Absolutely sure." "They are not in your rank in life, you know." "They are my friends, and I owe them more than I can say. There is nothing they cannot or should not hear. I can say that at least." "Shall I ask them to come?" "Yes. Give me a swig of water first. It won't be easy, but--" He held out his hand, and the Young Doctor grasped it. Suddenly the latter said: "You are sure you will not be sorry? That it is not a mood of the moment due to physical weakness?" "Quite sure. I determined on it the day I was shot--and before I was shot." "All right." The Young Doctor disappeared. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Anny man as is a man has to have one vice Her moral standard had not a multitude of delicate punctilios Law's delays outlasted even the memory of the crime committed She looked too gay to be good They had seen the world through the bottom of a tumbler YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK [BEING THE STORY OF A MATRIMONIAL DESERTER] By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. VI. "HERE ENDETH THE FIRST LESSON" VII. A WOMAN'S WAY TO KNOWLEDGE VIII. ALL ABOUT AN UNOPENED LETTER IX. NIGHT SHADE AND MORNING GLORY X. "S. O. S." XI. IN THE CAMP OF THE DESERTER CHAPTER VI "HERE ENDETH THE FIRST LESSON" The stillness of a summer's day in Prairie Land has all the characteristics of music. That is not so paradoxical as it seems. The effect of some music is to produce a divine quiescence of the senses, a suspension of motion and aggressive life; to reduce existence to mere pulsation. It was this kind of feeling which pervaded that region of sentient being when Shiel Crozier told his story. The sounds that sprinkled the general stillness were in themselves sleepy notes of the pervasive music of somnolent nature--the sough of the pine at the door, the murmur of insect life, the low, thudding beat of the steam-thresher out of sight hard by, the purring of the cat in the arms of Kitty Tynan as, with fascinated eyes, she listened to a man tell the tale of a life as distant from that which she lived as she was from Eve. She felt more awed than curious as the tale went on; it even seemed to her she was listening to a theme beyond her sphere, like some shameless eavesdropper at the curtains of a secret ceremonial. Once or twice she looked at her mother and at the Young Doctor, as though to reassure herself that she was not a vulgar intruder. It was far more impressive to her, and to the Young Doctor too, than the scene at the Logan Trial when a man was sentenced to death. It was strangely magnetic, this tale of a man's existence; and the clock which sounded so loud on the mantelpiece, as it mechanically ticked off the time, seemed only part of some mysterious machinery of life. Once a dove swept down upon the window-sill, and, peering in, filled one of the pauses in the recital with its deep contralto note, and then fled like a small blue cloud into the wide and--as it seemed--everlasting peace beyond the doorway. There was nothing at all between themselves and the far sky-line save little clumps of trees here and there, little clusters of buildings and houses--no visible animal life. Everything conspired to give a dignity in keeping with the drama of failure being unfolded in the commonplace home of the widow Tynan. Yet the home too had its dignity. The engineer father had had tastes, and he had insisted on plain, unfigured curtains and wallpaper and carpets, when carpets were used; and though his wife had at first protested against the unfigured carpets as more difficult to keep clean and as showing the dirt too easily, she had come to like the one-colour scheme, and in that respect her home had an individuality rare in her surroundings. That was why Kitty Tynan had always a good background; for what her bright colouring would have been in the midst of gaudy, cheap chintzes and "Axminsters," such as abounded in Askatoon, is better left to the imagination. It was not, therefore, in sordid, mean, or incongruous surroundings that Crozier told his tale; as would no doubt have been arranged by a dramatist, if he had had the making and the setting of the story; and if it were not a true tale told just as it happened. Perhaps the tale was the more impressive because of Crozier's deep baritone voice, capable, as it was, of much modulation, yet, except when. he was excited, having a slight monotone like the note of a violin with the mute upon the strings. This was his tale: "Well, to begin with, I was born at Castlegarry, in Kerry--you know the main facts from what I said in court. As a boy I wasn't so bad a sort. I had one peculiarity. I always wanted 'to have something on,' as John Sibley would say. No matter what it was, I must have something on it. And I was very lucky--worse luck!" They all laughed at the bull. "I feel at home at once," murmured the Young Doctor, for he had come from near Enniskillen years agone, and there is not so much difference between Enniskillen and Kerry when it comes to Irish bulls. "Worse luck, it was," continued Crozier, "because it made me confident of always winning. It's hard to say how early I began to believe I could see things that were going to happen. By the hour I used to shake the dice on the billiard-table at Castlegarry, trying to see with my eyes shut the numbers about to come up. Of course now and then I saw the right numbers; and it deepened the conviction that if I cultivated the gift I'd be able to be right nearly every time. When I went to a horse- race I used to fasten my mind on the signal, and tried to see beforehand the number of the winner. Again sometimes I was very right indeed, and that deepened my confidence in myself. I was always at it. I'd try and guess--try and see--the number of the hymn which was on the paper in the vicar's hand before he gave it out, and I would bet with myself on it. I would bet with myself or with anybody available on any conceivable thing--the minutes late a train would be; the pints of milk a cow would give; the people who would be at a hunt breakfast; the babies that would be christened on a Sunday; the number of eyes in a peck of raw potatoes. I was out against the universe. But it wasn't serious at all--just a boy's mania--till one day my father met me in London when I came down from Oxford, and took me to Thwaite's Club in St. James's Street. There was the thing that finished me. I was twenty-one, and restless-minded, and with eyes wide open. "Well, he took me to Thwaite's where I was to become a member, and after a little while he left me to go and have a long pow-wow with the committee--he was a member of it. He told me to make myself at home, and I did so as soon as his back was turned. Almost the first thing with which I became sociable was a book which, at my first sight of it, had a fascination for me. The binding was very old, and the leather was worn, as you will see the leather of a pocketbook, till it looks and feels like a nice soap. That book brought me here." He paused, and in the silence the Young Doctor pushed a glass of milk and brandy towards him. He sipped the contents. The others were in a state of tension. Kitty Tynan's eyes were fixed on him as though hypnotised, and the Young Doctor was scarcely less interested; while the widow knitted harder and faster than she had ever done, and she could knit very fast indeed. "It was the betting-book of Thwaite's, and it dated back almost to the time of the conquest of Quebec. Great men dead and gone long ago--near a hundred and fifty years ago-had put down their bets in the book, for Thwaite's was then what it is now, the highest and best sporting club in the world." Kitty Tynan's face had a curious look, for there was a club in Askatoon, and it was said that all the "sports" assembled there. She had no idea what Thwaite's Club in St. James's Street would look like; but that did not matter. She supposed it must be as big as the Askatoon Court House at least. "Bets--bets--bets by men whose names were in every history, and the names of their sons and grandsons and great-grandsons; and all betting on the oddest things as well as the most natural things in the world. Some of the bets made were as mad as the bets I made myself. Oh! ridiculous, some of them were; and then again bets on things that stirred the world to the centre, from the loss of America to the beheading of Louis XVI. "It was strange enough to see the half-dozen lines of a bet by a marquis whose great-grandson bet on the Franco-German War; that the Government which imposed the tea-tax in America would be out of power within six months; or that the French Canadians would join the colonists in what is now the United States if they revolted. This would be cheek-by-jowl with a bet that an heir would be born to one new-married pair before another pair. The very last bet made on the day I opened the book was that Queen Victoria would make Lord Salisbury a duke, that a certain gentleman known as S. S. could find his own door in St. James's Square, blindfold, from the club, and that Corsair would win the Derby. "For two long hours I sat forgetful of everything around me, while I read that record--to me the most interesting the world could show. Every line was part of the history of the country, a part of the history of many lives, and it was all part of the ritual of the temple of the great god Chance. I was fascinated, lost in a land of wonders. Men came and went, but silently. At last there entered a gentleman whose picture I had so often seen in the papers--a man as well known in the sporting world as was Chamberlain in the political world. He was dressed spectacularly, but his face oozed good-nature, though his eyes were like bright bits of coal. He bred horses, he raced this, he backed that, he laid against the other; he was one of the greatest plungers, one of the biggest figures on the turf. He had been a kind of god to me--a god in a grey frock-coat, with a grey top-hat and field-glasses slung over his shoulder; or in a hunting-suit of the most picturesque kind--great pockets in a well- fitting coat, splendid striped waistcoat. Well, there, I only mention this because it played so big a part in bringing me to Askatoon. "He came up to the table where I sat in the room with the beautiful Adam's fireplace and the ceiling like an architrave of Valhalla, and said, 'Do you mind--for one minute?' and he reached out a hand for the book. "I made way for him, and I suppose admiration showed in my eyes, because as he hastily wrote--what a generous scrawl it was!--he said to me, 'Haven't we met somewhere before? I seem to remember your face. "Great gentleman, I thought, because it was certain he knew he had never seen me before, and I was overcome by the reflection that he wished to be civil in that way to me. 'It's my father's face you remember, I should think,' I answered. 'He is a member here. I am only a visitor. I haven't been elected yet.' 'Ah, we must see to that!' he said with a smile, and laid a hand on my shoulder as though he'd known me many a year--and I only twenty-one. 'Who is your father?' he asked. When I told him he nodded. 'Yes, yes, I know him--Crozier of Castlegarry; but I knew his father far better, though he was so much older than me, and indeed your grandfather also. Look--in this book is the first bet I ever made here after my election to the club, and it was made with your grandfather. There's no age in the kingdom of sport, dear lad,' he added, laughing--'neither age nor sex nor position nor place. It's the one democratic thing in the modern world. It's a republic inside this old monarchy of ours. Look, here it is, my first bet with your grandfather--and I'm only sixty now!' He smoothed the page with his hand in a manner such as I have seen a dean do with his sermon-paper in a cathedral puplit. 'Here it is, thirty-six years ago.' He read the bet aloud. It was on the Derby, he himself having bet that the Prince of Wale's horse would win. 'Your grandfather, dear lad,' he repeated, 'but you'll find no bets of mine with your father. He didn't inherit that strain, but your grandfather and your great-grandfather had it--sportsmen both, afraid of nothing, with big minds, great eyes for seeing, and a sense for a winner almost uncanny. Have you got it by any chance? Yes, yes, by George and by John, I see you have; you are your grandfather to a hair! His portrait is here in the club--in the next room. Have a look at it. He was only forty when it was done, and you're very like him; the cut of the jib is there.' He took my hand. 'Good-bye, dear lad,' he said; 'we'll meet-yes, we'll meet often enough if you are like your grandfather. And I'll always like to see you,' he added generously. "'I always wanted to meet you,' I answered. 'I've cut your pictures out of the papers to keep them--at Eton and Oxford.' He laughed in great good-humour and pride. 'So so, so so, and I am a hero then, with one follower! Well, well, dear lad, I don't often go wrong, or anyhow I'm oftener right than wrong, and you might do worse than follow me--but no, I don't want that responsibility. Go on your own--go on your own.' "A minute more and he was gone with a wave of the hand, and in excitement I picked up the betting-book. It almost took my breath away. He had staked a thousand pounds that the favourite of the Derby would not win the race, and that one of three outsiders would. As I sat overpowered by the magnitude of the bet the door opened, and he appeared with another man, not one with whose face I was then familiar, though as a duke and owner of great possessions, he was familiar to society. 'I've put it down,' he said. 'Sign it, if it's all in order.' This the duke did, after apologizing for disturbing me. He looked at me keenly as he turned away. 'Not the most elevating literature in the library,' he said, smiling ironically. 'If you haven't got a taste for it beyond control, don't cultivate it.' He nodded kindly, and left; and again, till my father came and found me, I buried myself in that book of fate--to me. I found many entries in my grandfather's name, but not one in my father's name. I have an idea that when a vice or virtue skips one generation, it appears with increased violence or persistence in the next, for, passing over my father into my defenceless breast, the spirit of sport went mad in me--or almost so. No miser ever had a more cheerful and happy hour than I had as I read the betting-book at Thwaites'. "I became a member of Thwaite's soon after I left Oxford. As some men go to the Temple, some to the Stock Exchange, some to Parliament, I went to Thwaite's. It was the centre of my interest, and I took chambers in Park Place, St. James's Street, a few steps away. Here I met again constantly the great sportsman who had noticed me so kindly, and I became his follower, his disciple. I had started with him on a wave of prejudice in his favour; because that day when I read in the betting-book what he had staked against the favourite, I laid all the cash and credit I could get with his outsiders and against the favourite, and I won five hundred pounds. What he won--to my youthful eyes-was fabulous. There's no use saying what you think--you kind friends, who've always done something in life--that I was a good-for-nothing creature to give myself up to the turf, to horses and jockeys, and the janissaries of sport. You must remember that for generations my family had run on a very narrow margin of succession, there seldom, if ever, being more than two born in any generation of the family, so that there was always enough for the younger son or daughter; and to take up a profession was not necessary for livelihood. If my mother, who was an intellectual and able woman, had lived, it's hard to tell what I should have become; for steered aright, given true ideas of what life should mean to a man, I might have become ambitious and forged ahead in one direction or another. But there it was, she died when I was ten, and there was no one to mould me. At Eton, at Oxford-well, they are not preparatory schools to the business of life. And when at twenty-four I inherited the fortune my mother left me, I had only one idea: to live the life of a sporting gentleman. I had a name as a cricketer--" "Ah--I remember, Crozier of Lammis !" interjected the Young Doctor involuntarily. "I'm a north of Ireland man, but I remember--" "Yes, Lammis," the sick man went on. "Castlegarry was my father's place, but my mother left me Lammis. When I got control of it, and of the securities she left, I felt my oats, as they say; and I wasn't long in making a show of courage, not to say rashness, in following my leader. He gave me luck for a time, indeed so great that I could even breed horses of my own. But the luck went against him at last, and then, of course, against me; and I began to feel that suction which, as it draws the cash out of your pocket, the credit out of your bank, seems to draw also the whole internal economy out of your body--a ghastly, empty, collapsing thing." Mrs. Tynan gave a great sigh. She had once put two hundred dollars in a mine--on paper--and it ended in a lawsuit; and on the verdict in the lawsuit depended the two hundred dollars and more. When she read a fatal telegram to her saying that all was lost, she had had that empty, collapsing feeling. Pausing for a moment, in which he sipped some milk, Crozier then continued: "At last my leader died, and the see-saw of fortune began for me; and a good deal of my sound timber was sawed into logs and made into lumber to build some one else's fortune. When things were balancing pretty easily, I married. It wasn't a sordid business to restore my fortunes--I'll say that for myself; but it wasn't the thing to do, for I wasn't secure in my position. I might go on the rocks; but was there ever a gambler who didn't believe that he'd pull it off in a big way next time, and that the turn of the wheel against him was only to tame his spirit? Was there ever a gambler or sportsman of my class who didn't talk about the 'law of chances,' on the basis that if red, as it were, came up three times, black stood a fair chance of coming up the fourth time? A silly enough conclusion; for on the law of chances there's no reason why red shouldn't come up three hundred times; and so I found that your run of bad luck may be so long that you cannot have a chance to recover, and are out of it before the wheel turns in your favour. I oughn't to have married." His voice had changed in tone, his look become most grave, there was something very like reverence in his face, and deprecating submission in his eyes. His fingers fussed with the rug that covered his knees. "God help the man that's afraid of his own wife!" remarked the Young Doctor to himself, not erroneously reading the expression of Crozier's face and the tone of his voice. "There's nothing so unnerving." "No, I oughtn't to have done it," Crozier went on. "But I will say again it wasn't a sordid marriage, though she had great expectations, but not immediate; and she was a girl of great character. She was able and brilliant and splendid and far-seeing, and she knew her own mind, and was radiantly handsome." Kitty Tynan almost sniffed. Through a whole fortnight she had, with a courage and a right-mindedness quite remarkable, fought her infatuation for this man, and as she fought she had imagined a hundred times what his wife was like. She had pictured to herself a gossamer kind of woman, delicate, and in contour like one of the fashion-plate figures she saw in the picture-papers. She had imagined her with a wide, drooping hat, with a soft, clinging gown, and a bodice like a great white handkerchief crossed on her breast, holding a basket of flowers, while a King Charles spaniel gambolled at her feet. This was what she had imagined with a kind of awe; but the few words Crozier had said of her gave the impression of a Juno, commanding, exacting, bullying, sailing on with this man of men in her wake, who was afraid of stepping on her train. Was it strange she should think that? She was only a simple prairie girl who drew her own comparisons according to her kind and from what she knew of life. So she imagined Crozier's wife to have been a sort of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, who swept up the dust of the universe with her skirts, and gave no chance at all to the children of nature like Kitty, who wore skirts scarcely lower than their ankles. She almost sniffed, and she became angry, too, that a man like Crozier, who had faced the offensive Augustus Burlingame in the witness- box as he did; who took the bullet of the assassin with such courage; who broke a horse like a Mexican; who could ride like a leech on a filly's flank, should crumple up at the thought of a woman who, anyhow, couldn't be taller than Crozier himself was, and hadn't a hand like a piece of steel and the skin of an antelope. It was enough to make a cat laugh, or a woman cry with rage. "Able and brilliant and splendid and far-seeing, and radiantly handsome!" There the picture was of a high, haughty, and overbearing woman, in velvet, or brocade, or poplin-yes, something stiff and overbearing, like grey poplin. Kitty looked at herself suddenly in the mirror-the half- length mirror on the opposite wall--and she felt her hands clench and her bosom beat hard under her pretty and inexpensive calico frock, a thing for Chloe, not for Juno. She was very angry with Crozier, for it was absurd, that look of deprecating homage, that "Hush-she-is-coming" in his eyes. What a fool a man was where a woman was concerned! Here she had been fighting herself for a fortnight to conquer a useless passion for her man of all the world, fit to command an array of giants; and she saw him now almost breathless as he spoke of a great wild-cat of a woman who ought to be by his side now. What sort of a woman was she anyhow, who could let him go into exile as he had done and live apart from her all these years, while he "slogged away"--that was the Western phrase which came to her mind--to pull himself level with things again? Her feet shuffled unevenly on the floor, and it would have been a joy to shake the in valid there with the rapt look in his face. Unable to bear the situation without some demonstration, she got to her feet and caught up the glass of brandy and milk with a little exclamation. "Here," she said, holding the glass to his lips, "here, courage, soldier. You don't need to be afraid at a six-thousand-mile range." The Young Doctor started, for she had said what was in his own mind, but what he would not have said for a thousand dollars. It was fortunate that Crozier was scarcely conscious of what she was saying. His mind was far away. Yet, when she took the glass from him again, he touched her arm. "Nothing is good enough for your friends, is it?" he said gratefully. "That wouldn't be an excuse for not getting them the best there was at hand," she answered with a little laugh, and at least the Young Doctor read the meaning of her words. Presently Crozier, with a sigh, continued: "If I had done what my wife wanted from the start, I shouldn't have been here. I'd have saved what was left of a fortune, and I'd have had a home of my own." "Is she earning her living too?" asked Kitty softly, and Crozier did not notice the irony under the question. "She has a home of her own," answered Crozier almost sharply. "Just before the worst came to the worst she inherited her fortune--plenty of it, as I got near the end of mine. One thing after another had gone. I was mortgaged up to the eyes. I knew the money-lenders from Newry to Jewry and Jewry to Jerusalem. Then it was I promised her I'd bet no more--never again: I'd give up the turf; I'd try and start again. Down in my soul I knew I couldn't start again--not just then. But I wanted to please her. She was remarkable in her way; she had one of the most imposing intelligences I have ever known. So I promised. I promised I'd bet no more." The Young Doctor caught Kitty Tynan's eyes by accident, and there was the same look of understanding in both. They both knew that here was the real tragedy of Crozier's life. If he had had less reverence for his wife, less of that obvious prostration of soul, he probably would never have come to Askatoon. "I broke my promise," he murmured. "It was a horse--well, never mind. I was as sure of Flamingo as that the sun would rise by day and set by night. It was a certainty; and it was a certainty. The horse could win, it would win; I had it from a sure source. My judgment was right, too. I bet heavily on Flamingo, intending it for my last fling, and, to save what I had left, to get back what I had lost. I could get big odds on him. It was good enough. From what I knew, it was like picking up a gold-mine. And I was right, right as could be. There was no chance about it. It was being out where the rain fell to get wet. It was just being present when they called the roll of the good people that God wished to be kind to. It meant so much to me. I couldn't bear to have nothing and my wife to have all. I simply couldn't stand--" Again the Young Doctor met the glance of Kitty Tynan, and there was, once more, a new and sudden look of comprehension in the eyes of both. They began to see light where their man was concerned. After a moment of struggle to control himself, Crozier proceeded: "It didn't seem like betting. Besides, I had planned it, that when I showed her what I had won, she would shut her eyes to the broken promise, and I'd make another, and keep it ever after. I put on all the cash there was to put on, all I could raise on what was left of my property." He paused as though to get strength to continue. Then a look of intense excitement suddenly possessed him, and there--passed over him a wave of feeling which transformed him. The naturally grave mediaeval face became fired, the eyes blazed, the skin shone, the mouth almost trembled with agitation. He was the dreamer, the enthusiast, the fanatic almost, with that look which the pioneer, the discoverer, the adventurer has when he sees the end of his quest. His voice rose, vibrated. "It was a day to make you thank Heaven the world was made. Such days only come once in a while in England, but when they do come, what price Arcady or Askatoon! Never had there been so big a Derby. Everybody had the fever of the place at its worst. I was happy. I meant to pouch my winnings and go straight to my wife and say, 'Peccavi,' and I should hear her say to me, 'Go and sin no more.' Yes, I was happy. The sky, the green of the fields, the still, home-like, comforting trees, the mass of glorious colour, the hundreds of horses that weren't running and the scores that were to run, sleek and long, and made like shining silk and steel, it all was like heaven on earth to me-- a horse-race heaven on earth. There you have the state of my mind in those days, the kind of man I was." Sitting up, he gazed straight in front of him as though he saw Epsom Downs before his eyes; as though he was watching the fateful race that bore him down. He was terribly, exhaustingly alive. Something possessed him, and he possessed his hearers. "It was just as I said and knew--my horse, Flamingo, stretched away from the rest at Tattenham Corner and came sailing away home two lengths ahead. It was a sight to last a lifetime, and that was what I meant it to be for me. The race was all Flamingo's own, and the mob was going wild, when all of a sudden a woman--the widow of a racing-man gone suddenly mad--rushed out in front of the horse, snatched at its bridle with a shrill cry and down she came, and down Flamingo and the jockey came, a melee of crushed humanity. And that was how I lost my last two thousand five hundred pounds, as I said at the Logan Trial." "Oh! Oh!" said Kitty Tynan, her face aflame, her eyes like topaz suns, her hands wringing. "Oh, that was--oh, poor Flamingo!" she added. A strange smile shot into Crozier's face, and the dark passion of reminiscence fled from his eyes. "Yes, you are right, little friend," he said. "That was the real tragedy after all. There was the horse doing his best, his most beautiful best, as though he knew so much depended on him, stretching himself with the last ounce of energy he could summon, feeling the psalm of success in his heart--yes, he knows, he knows what he has done, none so well!--and out comes a black, hateful thing against him, and down he goes, his game over, his course run. I felt exactly as you do, and I felt that before everything else when it happened. Then I felt for myself afterwards, and I felt it hard, as you can think." The break went from his voice, but it rang with reflective, remembered misery. "I was ruined. One thing was clear to me. I would not live on my wife's money. I would not eat and drink what her money bought. No, I would not live on my wife. Her brother, a good enough, impulsive lad, with a tongue of his own and too small to thresh, came to me in London the night of the race. He said his sister had been in the country-down at Epsom--and that she bitterly resented my having broken my promise and lost all I had. He said he had never seen her so angry, and he gave me a letter from her. On her return to town she had been obliged to go away at once to see her sister taken suddenly ill. He added, with an unfeeling jibe, that he wouldn't like the reading of the letter himself. If he hadn't been such a chipmunk of a fellow I'd have wrung his neck. I put the letter her letter-in my pocket, and next day gave my lawyer full instructions and a power of attorney. Then I went straight to Glasgow, took steamer for Canada, and here I am. That was near five years ago." "And the letter from your wife?" asked Kitty Tynan demurely and slyly. The Young Doctor looked at Crozier, surprised at her temerity, but Crozier only smiled gently. "It is in the desk there. Bring it to me, please," he said. In a moment Kitty was beside him with the letter. He took it, turned it over, examined it carefully as though seeing it for the first time, and laid it on his knee. "I have never opened it," he said. "There it is, just as it was handed to me." "You don't know what is in it?" asked Kitty in a shocked voice. "Why, it may be that--" "Oh, yes, I know what is in it!" he replied. "Her brother's confidences were enough. I didn't want to read it. I can imagine it all." "It's pretty cowardly," remarked Kitty. "No, I think not. It would only hurt, and the hurting could do no good. I can hear what it says, and I don't want to see it." He held the letter up to his ear whimsically. Then he handed it back to her, and she replaced it in the desk. "So, there it is, and there it is," he sighed. "You have got my story, and it's bad enough, but you can see it's not what Burlingame suggested." "Burlingame--but Burlingame's beneath notice," rejoined Kitty. "Isn't he, mother?" Mrs. Tynan nodded. Then, as though with sudden impulse, Kitty came forward to Crozier and leaned over him. The look of a mother was in her eyes. Somehow she seemed to herself twenty years older than this man with the heart of a boy, who was afraid of his own wife. "It's time for your beef-tea, and when you've had it you must get your sleep," she said, with a hovering solicitude. "I'd like to give him a threshing first, if you don't mind," said the Young Doctor to her. "Please let a little good advice satisfy you," Crozier remarked ruefully. "It will seem like old times," he added rather bitterly. "You are too young to have had 'old times,'" said Kitty with gentle scorn. "I'll like you better when you are older," she added. "Naughty jade," exclaimed the Young Doctor, "you ought to be more respectful to those older than yourself." "Oh, grandpapa!" she retorted. CHAPTER VII A WOMAN'S WAY TO KNOWLEDGE The harvest was over. The grain was cut, the prairie no longer waved like a golden sea, but the smoke of the incense of sacrifice still rose in innumerable spirals in the circle of the eye. The ground appeared bare and ill-treated, like a sheep first shorn; but yet nothing could take away from it the look of plenty, even as the fat sides of the shorn sheep invite the satisfied eye of the expert. The land now, all stubble, still looked good for anything. If bare, it did not seem starved. It was naked and unshaven; it was stripped like a boxer for the rubbing-down after the fight. Not so refined and suggestive and luxurious as when it was clothed with the coat of ripe corn in the ear, it still showed the fibre of its being to no disadvantage. And overhead the joy of the prairie grew apace. September saw the vast prairie spaces around Askatoon shorn and shrivelled of its glory of ripened grain, but with a new life come into the air-sweet, stinging, vibrant life, which had the suggestion of nature recreating her vitality, inflaming herself with Edenic strength, a battery charging itself, to charge the world in turn with force and energy. Morning gave pure elation, as though all created being must strive; noon was the pulse of existence at the top of its activity; evening was glamorous; and all the lower sky was spread with those colours which Titian stole from the joyous horizon that filled his eyes. There was in that evening light, somehow, just a touch of pensiveness-- the triste delicacy of heliotrope, harbinger of the Indian summer soon to come, when the air would make all sensitive souls turn to the past and forget that to-morrow was all in all. Sensitive souls, however, are not so many as to crowd each other unduly in this world, and they were not more numerous in Askatoon than elsewhere. Not everybody was taking joy of sunrises and losing himself in the delicate contentment of the sunset. There were many who took it all without thought, who absorbed it unconsciously, and got something from it; though there were many others who got nothing out of it at all, save the health and comfort brought by a precious climate whose solicitous friend is the sun. These heeded it little, even though a good number of them came from the damp islands lying between the north Atlantic and the German Ocean. From Erin and England and the land o' cakes they came, had a few days of staring bright-eyed happy incredulity as to the permanency of such conditions, and then settled down to take it as it was, endless days of sunshine and stirring vivacious air--as though they had always known it and had it. There were exceptions, and these had joy in what they saw and felt according to the measure of their temperament. Shiel Crozier saw and felt much of it, and probably the Young Doctor saw more of it than any one; stray people here and there who take no part in this veracious tale had it in greater or less degree; fat Jesse Bulrush was so sensitive to it that he, as he himself said, "almost leaked sentimentality" and Kitty Tynan possessed it. She was pulsing with life, as a bird drunken with the air's sweetness sings itself into an abandonment of motion. Before Crozier came she had enjoyed existence as existence, wondering often why it was she wanted to spring up from the ground with the idea that she could fly, if she chose to try. Once when she was quite a little girl she had said to her mother, "I'm going to ile away," and her mother, puzzled, asked her what she meant. Her reply was, "It's in the hymn." Her mother persisted in asking what hymn; and was told with something like scorn that it was the hymn she herself had taught her only child--"I'll away, I'll away to the Promised Land." Kitty had thought that "I'll away" meant some delicious motion which was to ile, and she had visions of something between floating and flying as being that blessed means of transportation. As the years grew, she still wanted to "ile away" whenever the spirit of elation seized her, and it had increased greatly since Shiel Crozier came. Out of her star as he was, she still felt near to him, and as though she understood him and he comprehended her. He had almost at once become to her an admired mystery, which, however, at first she did not dare wish to solve. She had been content to be a kind of handmaiden to a generous and adored master. She knew that where he had been she could in one sense never go, and yet she wanted to be near him just the same. This was intensified after the Logan Trial and the shooting of the man who somehow seemed to have made her live in a new way. As long ago as she could recall she had, in a crude, untutored way, been fond of the things that nature made beautiful; but now she seemed to see them in a new light, but not because any one had deliberately taught her. Indeed, it bored her almost to hear books read as Jesse Bulrush and Nurse Egan, and even her mother, read them to Crozier after his operation, to help him pass away the time. The only time she ever cared to listen-- at school, though quick and clever, she had never cared for the printed page--was when, by chance, poetry or verses were read or recited. Then she would listen eagerly, not attracted by the words, but by the music of the lines, by the rhyme and rhythm, by the underlying feeling; and she got something out of it which had in one sense nothing to do with the verses themselves or with the conception of the poet. Curiously enough, she most liked to hear Jesse Bulrush read. He was a born sentimentalist, and this became by no means subtly apparent to Kitty during Crozier's illness. Whenever Nurse Egan was on duty Jesse contrived to be about, and to make himself useful and ornamental too; for he was a picturesque figure, with a taste for figured waistcoats and clean linen--he always washed his own white trousers and waistcoats, and he had a taste in ties, which he made for himself out of silk bought by the yard. He was, in fact, a clean, wholesome man, with a flair for material things, as he had shown in the land proposal on which Shiel Crozier's fortunes hung, but with no gift for carrying them out, having neither constructive ability nor continuity of purpose. Yet he was an agreeable, humorous, sentimental soul, who at fifty years of age found himself "an old bach," as he called himself, in love at last with a middle-aged nurse with dark brown hair and set figure, keen, intelligent eyes, and a most cheerful, orderly, and soothing way with her. Before Shiel Crozier was taken ill their romance began; but it grew in volume and intensity after the trial and the shooting, when they met by the bedside of the wounded man. Jesse had been away so much in different parts of the country before then that their individual merits never had had a real chance to make permanent impression. By accident, however, his business made it necessary for him to be much in Askatoon at the moment, and it was a propitious time for the growth of the finer feelings. It had given Jesse Bulrush real satisfaction that Kitty Tynan listened to his reading of poetry--Longfellow, Byron, Tennyson, Whyte Melville, and Adam Lindsay Gordon chiefly--with such absorbed interest. His content was the greater because his lovely nurse--he did think she was lovely, as Rubens thought his painted ladies beautiful, though their cordial, ostentatious proportions are not what Raphael regarded as the divine lines--because his lovely nurse listened to his fat, happy voice rising and falling, swelling and receding on the waves of verse; though it meant nothing to her that one who had the gift of pleasant sound was using it on her behalf. This was not apparent to her Bulrush, though Crozier and Kitty understood. Jesse only saw in the blue-garbed, clear-visaged woman a mistress of his heart, who had all the virtues and graces and who did not talk. That, to him, was the best thing of all. She was a superb listener, and he was a prodigious talker--was it not all appropriate? One day he went searching for Kitty at her favourite retreat, a little knoll behind and to the left of the house, where a half-dozen trees made a pleasant resting-place at a fine look-out point. He found her in her usual place, with a look almost pensive on her face. He did not notice that, for he was excited and elated. "I want to read you something I've written," he said, and he drew from his pocket a paper. "If it's another description of the timber-land you have for sale-please, not to me," she answered provokingly, for she guessed well what he held in his hand. She had seen him writing it. She had even seen some of the lines scrawled and re-scrawled on bits of paper, showing careful if not swift and skillful manufacture. One of these crumpled-up bits of paper she had in her pocket now, having recovered it that she might tease him by quoting the lines at a provoking opportunity. "It's not that. It's some verses I've written," he said, with a wave of his hand. "All your own?" she asked with an air of assumed innocent interest, and he did not see the frivolous gleam in her eyes, or notice the touch of aloes on her tongue. "Yes. Yes. I've always written verses more or less--I write a good many advertisements in verse," he added cheerfully. "They are very popular. Not genius, quite, but there it is, the gift; and it has its uses in commerce as in affairs of the heart. But if you'd rather not, if it makes you tired--" "Courage, soldier, bear your burden," she said gaily. "Mount your horse and get galloping," she added, motioning him to sit. A moment later he was pouring out his soul through a pleasing voice, from fat lips, flanked by a high-coloured healthy cheek like a russet apple: "Like jewels of the sky they gleam, Your eyes of light, your eyes of fire; In their dark depths behold the dream Of Life's glad hope and Love's desire. "Above your quiet brow, endowed With Grecian charm to crown your grace, Your hair in one soft Titian cloud Throws heavenly shadows on your face." "Well, I've never had verses written to me before," Kitty remarked demurely, when he had finished and sat looking at her questioningly. "But 'dark depths'--that isn't the right thing to say of my eyes! And Titian cloud of hair--is my hair Titian? I thought Titian hair was bronzy-tawny was what Mr. Burlingame called it when he was spouting," --her upper lip curled in contempt. "It isn't you, and you know it," he replied jerkily. She bridled. "Do you mean to say that you come and read to me without a word of explanation, so that I shouldn't misunderstand, verses written for another? Am I to be told now that my eyes aren't eyes of light and eyes of fire, that I haven't got a Grecian brow? Do you dare to say those verses don't fit me--except for the Titian hair and heavenly shadows? And that I've got no right to think they're meant for me? Is it so, that a man that's lived in my mother's house for years, eating at the same table with the family, and having his clothes mended free, with supper to suit him and no questions asked--is it so, that he reads me poetry, four lines at a stretch, and a rhyme every other line, and then announces it isn't for me!" Her eyes flashed, her bosom palpitated, her hand made passionate gestures, and she really seemed a young fury let loose. For a moment he was deceived by her acting; he did not see the lurking grin in the depths of her eyes. Her voice shook with assumed passion. "Because I didn't show what I felt all these years, and only exposed my real feelings when you read those verses to me, do you think any man who was a gentleman wouldn't in the circumstances say, 'These verses are for you, Kitty Tynan'? You betrayed me into showing you what I felt, and then you tell me your verses are for another girl!" "Girl! Girl! Girl!" he burst out. "Nurse is thirty-seven--she told me so herself, and how could I tell that you--why, it's absurd! I've only thought of you always as a baby in long skirts"--she spasmodically drew her skirts down over her pretty, shapely ankles, while she kept her eyes covered with one hand--"and you've seen me makin' up to her ever since Crozier got the bullet. Ever since he was operated on, I've--" "Yes, yes, that's right," she interrupted. "That's manly! Put the blame on him--him that couldn't help himself, struck by a horse-thief's bullet in the dark; him that's no more to blame for your carryings on while death was prowling about the door there--" "Carryings on! Carryings on!" Jesse Bulrush was thoroughly excited and indignant. The little devil, to put him in a hole like this! "Carryings on! I've acted like a man all through--never anything else in your house, and it's a shame that I've got to listen to things that have never been said of me in all my life. My mother was a good, true woman, and she brought me up--" "Yes, that's it, put it on your mother now, poor woman! who isn't here to stretch out her hand and stop you from playing a double game with two girls so placed they couldn't help themselves--just doing kind acts for a sick man." Suddenly she got to her feet. "I tell you, Jesse Bulrush, that you're a man--you're a man--" But she could keep it up no longer. She burst out laughing, and the false tears of the actress she dashed from her eyes as she added: "That you're a man after my own heart. But you can't have it, even if you are after it, and you are welcome to the thirty-seven-year-old seraph in there!" She tossed a hand towards the house. By this time he was on his feet too, almost bursting. "Well, you wicked little rip--you Ellen Terry at twenty-two, to think you could play it up like that! Why, never on the stage was there such--!" "It's the poetry made me do it. It inspired me," she gurgled. "I felt --why, I felt here"--she pressed her hand to her heart "all the pangs of unrequited love--oh, go away, go back to the house and read that to her! She's in the sitting-room, and my mother's away down-town. Now's your chance, Claude Melnotte." She put both hands on his big, panting chest and pushed him backward towards the house. "You're good enough for anybody, and if I wasn't so young and daren't leave mother till I get my wisdom-teeth cut, and till I'm thirty-seven--oh, oh, oh!" She laughed till the tears came into her eyes. "This is as good as--as a play." "It's the best acted play I ever saw, from 'Ten Nights in a Bar-room' to 'Struck Oil,'" rejoined Jesse Bulrush, with a face still half ashamed yet beaming. "But, tell me, you heartless little woman, are the verses worth anything? Do you think she'll like them?" Kitty grew suddenly serious, and a curious look he could not read deepened in her eyes. "Nurse 'll like them--of course she will," she said gently. "She'll like them because they are you. Read them to her as you read them to me, and she'll only hear your voice, and she'll think them clever and you a wonderful man, even if you are fifty and weigh a thousand pounds. It doesn't matter to a woman what a man's saying or doing, or whether he's so much cleverer than she is, if she knows that under everthing he's saying, 'I love you.' A man isn't that way, but a woman is. Now go." Again she pushed him with a small brown hand. "Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!" he said admiringly. "Then be a father to me," she said teasingly. "I can't marry both your mother and nurse." "P'r'aps you can't marry either," she replied sarcastically, "and I know that in any case you'll never be any relative of mine by marriage. Get going," she said almost impatiently. He turned to go, and she said after him, as he rolled away, "I'll let you hear some of my verses one day when you're more developed and can understand them." "I'll bet they beat mine," he called back. "You'll win your bet," she answered, and stood leaning against a tree with a curious look emerging and receding in her eyes. When he had disappeared, sitting down, she drew from her breast a slip of paper, unfolded it, and laid it on her knee. "It is better," she said. "It's not good poetry, of course, but it's truer, and it's not done according to a pattern like his. Yes, it's real, real, real, and he'll never see it--never see it now, for I've fought it' all out, and I've won." Then she slowly read the verses aloud: "Yes, I've won," she said with determination. So many of her sex have said things just as decisively, and while yet the exhilaration of their decision was inflaming them, have done what they said they would never, never, never do. Still there was a look in the fair face which meant a new force awakened in her character. For a long time she sat brooding, forgetful of the present and of the little comedy of elderly lovers going on inside the house. She was thinking of the way conventions hold and bind us; of the lack of freedom in the lives of all, unless they live in wild places beyond the social pale. Within the past few weeks she had had visions of such a world beyond this active and ordered civilisation, where the will and the conscience of a man or woman was the only law. She was not lawless in mind or spirit. She was only rebelling gainst a situation in which she was bound hand and foot, and could not follow her honest and exclusive desire, if she wished to do so. Here was a man who was married, yet in a real sense who had no wife. Suppose that man cared for her, what a tragedy it would be for them to be kept apart! This man did not love her, and so there was no tragedy for both. Still all was not over yet--yes, all was "over and over and over," she said to herself as she sprang to her feet with a sharp exclamation of disgust--with herself. Her mother was coming hurriedly towards her from the house. There was a quickness in her walk suggesting excitement, yet from the look in her face it was plain that the news she brought was not painful. "He told me you were here, and--" "Who told you I was here?" "Mr. Bulrush." "So it's all settled," she said, with a little quirk of her shoulders. "Yes, he's asked her, and they're going to be married. It's enough to make you die laughing to see the two middle-aged doves cooing in there." "I thought perhaps it would be you. He said he would like to be a father to me." "That would prevent me if nothing else would," answered the widow of Tyndall Tynan. "A stepfather to an unmarried girl, both eyeing each other for a chance to find fault--if you please, no thank you!" "That means you won't get married till I'm out of the way?" asked Kitty, with a look which was as much touched with myrrh as with mirth. "It means I wouldn't get married till you are married, anyway," was the complacent answer. "Is there any one special that--" "Don't talk nonsense. Since your father died I've only thought of his child and mine, and I've not looked where I might. Instead, I've done my best to prove that two women could live and succeed without a man to earn for them; though of course without the pension it couldn't have been done in the style we've done it. We've got our place!" There is a dignity attached to a pension which has an influence quite its own, and in the most primitive communities it has an aristocratic character which commands general respect. In Askatoon people gave Mrs. Tynan a better place socially because of her pension than they would have done if she had earned double the money which the pension brought her. "Everybody has called on us," she added with reflective pride. "Principally since Mr. Crozier came," added Kitty. "It's funny, isn't it, how he made people respect him before they knew who he was?" "He would make Satan stand up and take off his hat, if he paid Hades a visit," said Mrs. Tynan admiringly. "Anybody'd do anything for him." Kitty eyed her mother closely. There was a strange, far-away, brooding look in Mrs. Tynan's eyes, and she seemed for a moment lost in thought. "You're in love with him," said Kitty sharply. "I was, in a way," answered her mother frankly. "I was, in a way, a kind of way, till I knew he was married. But it didn't mean anything. I never thought of it except as a thing that couldn't be." "Why couldn't it be?" asked Kitty, smothering an agitation rising in her breast. "Because I always knew he belonged to where we didn't, and because if he was going to be in love himself, it would be with some girl like you. He's young enough for that, and it's natural he should get as his profit the years of youth that a young woman has yet to live." "As though it was a choice between you and me, for instance!" Mrs. Tynan started, but recovered herself. "Yes. If there had been any choosing, he'd not have hesitated a minute. He'd have taken you, of course. But he never gave either of us a thought that way." "I thought that till--till after he'd told us his story," replied Kitty boldly. "What has happened since then?" asked her mother, with sudden apprehension. "Nothing has happened since. I don't understand it, but it's as though he'd been asleep for a long time and was awake again." Mrs. Tynan gravely regarded her daughter, and a look of fear came into her face. "I knew you kept thinking of him always," she said; "but you had such sense, and he never showed any feeling for you; and young girls get over things. Besides, you always showed you knew he wasn't a possibility. But since he told us that day about his being married and all, has--has he been different towards you?" "Not a thing, not a word," was the reply; "but--but there's a difference with him in a way. I feel it when I go in the room where he is." "You've got to stop thinking of him," insisted the elder woman querulously. "You've got to stop it at once. It's no good. It's bad for you. You've too much sense to go on caring for a man that--" "I'm going to get married," said Kitty firmly. "I've made up my mind. If you have to think about one person, you should stop thinking about another; anyhow, you've got to make yourself stop. So I'm going to marry--and stop." "Who are you going to marry, Kitty? You don't mean to say it's John Sibley !" "P'r'aps. He keeps coming." "That gambling and racing fellow!" "He owns a big farm, and it pays, and he has got an interest in a mine, and--" "I tell you, you shan't," peevishly interjected Mrs. Tynan. "You shan't. He's vicious. He's--oh, you shan't! I'd rather--" "You'd rather I threw myself away--on a married man?" asked Kitty covertly. "My God--oh, Kitty!" said the other, breaking down. "You can't mean it --oh, you can't mean that you'd--" "I've got to work out my case in my own way," broke in Kitty calmly. "I know how I've got to do it. I have to make my own medicine--and take it. You say John Sibley is vicious. He has only got one vice." "Isn't it enough? Gambling--" "That isn't a vice; it's a sport. It's the same as Mr. Crozier had. Mr. Crozier did it with horses only, the other does it with cards and horses. The only vice John Sibley's got is me." "Is you?" asked her mother bewilderedly. "Well, when you've got an idea you can't control and it makes you its slave, it's a vice. I'm John's vice, and I'm thinking of trying to cure him of it--and cure myself too," Kitty added, folding and unfolding the paper in her hand. "Here comes the Young Doctor," said her mother, turning towards the house. "I think you don't mean to marry Sibley, but if you do, make him give up gambling." "I don't know that I want him to give it up," answered Kitty musingly. A moment later she was alone with the Young Doctor. CHAPTER VIII ALL ABOUT AN UNOPENED LETTER "What's this you've been doing?" asked the Young Doctor, with a quizzical smile. "We never can tell where you'll break out." "Kitty Tynan's measles!" she rejoined, swinging her hat by its ribbon. "Mine isn't a one-sided character, is it?" "I know one of the sides quite well," returned the Young Doctor. "Which, please, sir?" The Young Doctor pretended to look wise. "The outside. I read it like a book. It fits the life in which it moves like the paper on the wall. But I'm not sure of the inside. In fact, I don't think I know that at all." "So I couldn't call you in if my character was sick inside, could I?" she asked obliquely. "I might have an operation, and see what's wrong with it," he answered playfully. Suddenly she shivered. "I've had enough of operations to last me awhile," she rejoined. "I thought I could stand anything, but your operation on Mr. Crozier taught me a lesson. I'd never be a doctor's wife if I had to help him cut up human beings." "I'll remember that," the Young Doctor replied mockingly. "But if it would help put things on a right basis, I'd make a bargain that I wasn't to help do the carving," she rejoined wickedly. The Young Doctor always incited her to say daring things. They understood each other well. "So don't let that stand in the way," she added slyly. "The man who marries you will be glad to get you without the anatomy," he returned gallantly. "I wasn't talking of a man; I was talking of a doctor." He threw up a hand and his eyebrows. "Isn't a doctor a man?" "Those I've seen have been mostly fish." "No feelings--eh?" She looked him in the eyes, and he felt a kind of shiver go through him. "Not enough to notice. I never observed you had any," she replied. "If I saw that you had, I'd be so frightened I'd fly. I've seen pictures of an excited whale turning a boat full of men over. No, I couldn't bear to see you show any feeling." The dark eyes of the Young Doctor suddenly took on a look which was a stranger to them. In his relations with women he was singularly impersonal, but he was a man, and he was young enough to feel the Adam stir in him. The hidden or controlled thing suddenly emerged. It was not the look which would be in his eyes if he were speaking to the woman he wanted to marry. Kitty saw it, and she did not understand it, for she had at heart a feeling that she could go to him in any trouble of life and be sure of healing. To her he seemed wonderful; but she thought of him as she would have thought of her father, as a person of authority and knowledge--that operation showed him a great man, she thought, so skillful and precise and splendid; and the whole countryside had such confidence in him. She regarded him as a being apart; but for a moment, an ominous moment, he was almost one with that race of men who feed in strange pastures. She only half saw the reddish glow which came swimming into his eyes, and she did not realise it, for she did not expect to find it there. For an instant, however, he saw with new eyes that primary eloquence of woman life, the unspent splendour of youth, the warm joy of the material being, the mystery of maidenhood in all its efflorescence. It was the emergence of his own youth again, as why should it not be, since he had never married and had never dallied! But in a moment it was gone again--driven away. "What a wicked little flirt you are!" he said, with a shake of the head. "You'll come to a bad end, if you don't change your ways." "Perform an operation, then, if you think you know what's the matter with me," she retorted. "Sometimes in operating for one disease we come on another, and then there's a lot of thinking to be done." The look in her face was quizzical, yet there was a strange, elusive gravity in her eyes, an almost pathetic appealing. "If you were going to operate on me, what would it be for?" she asked more flippantly than her face showed. "Well, it's obscure, and the symptoms are not usual, but I should strike for the cancer love," he answered, with a direct look. She flushed and changed on the instant. "Is love a cancer?" she asked. All at once she felt sure that he read her real story, and something very like anger quickened in her. "Unrequited love is," he answered deliberately. "How do you know it is unrequited?" she asked sharply. "Well, I don't know it," he answered, dismayed by the look in her face. "But I certainly hope I'm right. I do, indeed." "And if you were right, what would you do--as a surgeon?" she questioned, with an undertone of meaning. "I would remove the cause of the disease." She came close and looked him straight in the eyes. "You mean that he should go? You think that would cure the disease? Well, you are not going to interfere. You are not going to manoeuvre anything to get him away--I know doctors' tricks. You'd say he must go away east or west to the sea for change of air to get well. That's nonsense, and it isn't necessary. You are absolutely wrong in your diagnosis--if that's what you call it. He is going to stay here. You aren't going to drive away one of our boarders and take the bread out of our mouths. Anyhow, you're wrong. You think because a girl worships a man's ability that she's in love with him. I adore your ability, but I'd as soon fall in love with a lobster--and be boiled with the lobster in a black pot. Such conceit men have!" He was not convinced. He had a deep-seeing eye, and he saw that she was boldly trying to divert his belief or suspicion. He respected her for it. He might have said he loved her for it--with a kind of love which can be spoken of without blushing or giving cause to blush, or reason for jealousy, anger, or apprehension. He smiled down into her gold-brown eyes, and he thought what a real woman she was. He felt, too, that she would tell him something that would give him further light if he spoke wisely now. "I'd like to see some proof that you are right, if I am wrong," he answered cautiously. "Well, I'm going to be married," she said, with an air of finality. He waved a hand deprecatingly. "Impossible--there's no man worth it. Who is the undeserving wretch?" "I'll tell you to-morrow," she replied. "He doesn't know yet how happy he's going to be. What did you come here for? Why did you want to see me?" she added. "You had something you were going to tell me. Hadn't you?" "That's quite right," he replied. "It's about Crozier. This is my last visit to him professionally. He can go on now without my care. Yours will be sufficient for him. It has been all along the very best care he could have had. It did more for him than all the rest, it--" "You don't mean that," she interrupted, with a flush and a bosom that leaped under her pretty gown. "You don't mean that I was of more use than the nurse--than the future Mrs. Jesse Bulrush?" "I mean just that," he answered. "Nearly every sick person, every sick man, I should say, has his mascot, his ministering angel, as it were. It's a kind of obsession, and it often means life or death, whether the mascot can stand the strain of the situation. I knew an old man--down by Dingley's Flat it was, and he wanted a boy--his grand-nephew-beside him always. He was getting well, but the boy took sick and the old man died the next day. The boy had been his medicine. Sometimes it's a particular nurse that does the trick; but whoever it is, it's a great vital fact. Well, that's the part you played to Mr. Shiel Crozier of Lammis and Castlegarry aforetime. He owes you much." "I am glad of that," she said softly, her eyes on the distance. "She is in love with him in spite of what she says," remarked the Young Doctor to himself. "Well," he continued aloud, "the fact is, Crozier's almost well in a way, but his mind is in a state, and he is not going to get wholly right as things are. Since things came out in court, since he told us his whole story, he has been different. It's as though--" She interrupted him hastily and with suppressed emotion. "Yes, yes, do you think I've not noticed that? He's been asleep in a way for five years, and now he's awake again. He is not James Gathorne Kerry now; he is James Shiel Gathorne Crozier, and--oh, you understand: he's back again where he was before--before he left her." The Young Doctor nodded approvingly. "What a little brazen wonder you are! I declare you see more than--" "Yet you won't have me?" she asked mockingly. "You're too clever for me," he rejoined with spirit. "I'm too conceited. I must marry a girl that'd kneel to me and think me as wise as Socrates. But he's back again, as you say, and, in my view, his wife ought to be back again also." "She ought to be here," was Kitty's swift reply, "though I think mighty little of her--mighty little, I can tell you. Stuckup, great tall stork of a woman, that lords it over a man as though she was a goddess. Wears diamonds in the middle of the day, I suppose, and cold-blooded as--as a fish." "She ought to have married me, according to your opinion of me. You said I was a fish," remarked the Young Doctor, with a laugh. "The whale and the catfish!" "Heavens, what spite!" he rejoined. "Catfish--what do you know about Mrs. Crozier? You may be brutally unjust--waspishly unjust, I should say." "Do I look like a wasp?" she asked half tearfully. She was in a strange mood. "You look like a golden busy bee," he answered. But tell me, how did you come to know enough about her to call her a cat?" "Because, as you say, I was a busy golden bee," she retorted. "That information doesn't get me much further," he answered. "I opened that letter," she replied. "'That letter'--you mean you opened the letter he showed us which he had left sealed as it came to him five years ago?" The Young Doctor's face wore a look of dismay. "I steamed the envelope open--how else could I have done it! I steamed it open, saw what I wanted, and closed it up again." The Young Doctor's face was pale now. This was a terrible revelation. He had a man's view of such conduct. He almost shrank from her, though she stood there as inviting and innocent a specimen of girlhood as the eye could wish to see. She did not look dishonourable. "Do you realise what that means?" he asked in a cold, hard tone. "Oh, come, don't put on that look and don't talk like John the Evangelist," she retorted. "I did it, not out of curiosity, and not to do any one harm, but to do her good--his wife." "It was dishonourable--wicked and dishonourable." "If you talk like that, Mr. Piety, I'm off," she rejoined, and she started away. "Wait--wait," he said, laying firm fingers on her arm. "Of course you did it for a good purpose. I know. You cared enough for him for that." He had said the right thing, and she halted and faced him. "I cared enough to do a good deal more than that if necessary. He has been like a second father to me, and--" Suddenly a light of humour shot into the eyes of both. Sheil Crozier as a "father" to her was too artificial not to provoke their sense of the grotesque. "I wanted to find out his wife's address to write to her and tell her to come quick," she explained. "It was when he was at the worst. And then, too, I wanted to know the kind of woman she was before I wrote to her. So--" "You mean to say you read that letter which he had kept unopened and unread for five long years?" The Young Doctor was certainly disturbed again. "Every word of it," Kitty answered shamelessly, "and I'm not sorry. It was in a good cause. If he had said, 'Courage, soldier,' and opened it five years ago, it would have been good for him. Better to get things like that over." "It was that kind of a letter, was it--a catfish letter?" Kitty laughed a little scornfully. "Yes, just like that, Mr. Easily Shocked. Great, showy, purse-proud creature!" "And you wrote to her?" "Yes--a letter that would make her come if anything would. Talk of tact --I was as smooth as a billiard-ball. But she hasn't come." "The day after the operation I cabled to her," said the Young Doctor. "Then you steamed the letter open and read it too?" asked Kitty sarcastically. "Certainly not. Ladies first-and last," was the equally sarcastic answer. "I cabled to Castlegarry, his father's place, also to Lammis that he mentioned when he told us his story. Crozier of Lammis, he was." "Well, I wrote to the London address in the letter," added Kitty. "I don't think she'll come. I asked her to cable me, and she hasn't. I wrote such a nice letter, too. I did it for his sake." The Young Doctor laid his hands on both her shoulders. "Kitty Tynan, the man who gets you will get what he doesn't deserve," he remarked. "That might mean anything." "It means that Crozier owes you more than he can guess." Her eyes shone with a strange, soft glow. "In spite of opening the letter?" The Young Doctor nodded, then added humorously: "That letter you wrote her--I'm not sure that my cable wouldn't have far more effect than your letter." "Certainly not. You tried to frighten her, but I tried to coax her, to make her feel ashamed. I wrote as though I was fifty." The Young Doctor regarded her dubiously. "What was the sort of thing you said to her?" "For one thing, I said that he had every comfort and attention two loving women and one fond nurse could give him; but that, of course, his legitimate wife would naturally be glad to be beside him when he passed away, and that if she made haste she might be here in time." The Young Doctor leaned against a tree shaking with laughter. "What are you smiling at?" Kitty asked ironically. "Oh, she'll be sure to come--nothing will keep her away after being coaxed like that!" he said, when he could get breath. "Laughing at me as though I was a clown in a circus!" she exclaimed. "Laughing when, as you say yourself, the man that she--the cat--wrote that fiendish letter to is in trouble." "It was a fiendish letter, was it?" he asked, suddenly sobered again. "No, no, don't tell me," he added, with a protesting gesture. "I don't want to hear. I don't want to know. I oughtn't to know. Besides, if she comes, I don't want to be prejudiced against her. He is troubled, poor fellow." "Of course he is. There's the big land deal--his syndicate. He's got a chance of making a fortune, and he can't do it because--but Jesse Bulrush told me in confidence, so I can't explain." "I have an idea, a pretty good idea. Askatoon is small." "And mean sometimes." "Tell me what you know. Perhaps I can help him," urged the Young Doctor. "I have helped more than one good man turn a sharp corner here." She caught his arm. "You are as good as gold." "You are--impossible," he replied. They talked of Crozier's land deal and syndicate as they walked slowly towards the house. Mrs. Tynan met them at the door, a look of excitement in her face. "A telegram for you Kitty," she said. "For me!" exclaimed Kitty eagerly. "It's a year since I had one." She tore open the yellow envelope. A light shot up in her face. She thrust the telegram into the Young Doctor's hands. "She's coming; his wife's coming. She's in Quebec now. It was my letter--my letter, not your cable, that brought her," Kitty added triumphantly. CHAPTER IX NIGHT SHADE AND MORNING GLORY It was as though Crozier had been told of the coming of his wife, for when night came, on the day Kitty had received her telegram, he could not sleep. He was the sport of a consuming restlessness. His brain would not be still. He could not discharge from it the thoughts of the day and make it vacuous. It would not relax. It seized with intentness on each thing in turn, which was part of his life at the moment, and gave it an abnormal significance. In vain he tried to shake himself free of the successive obsessions which stormed down the path of the night, dragging him after them, a slave lashed to the wheels of a chariot of flame. At last it was the land deal and syndicate on which his future depended, and the savage fate which seemed about to snatch his fortune away as it had done so often before; as it had done on the day when Flamingo went down near the post at the Derby with a madwoman dragging at the bridle. He had had a sure thing then, and it was whisked away just when it would have enabled him to pass the crisis of his life. Wife, home, the old fascinating, crowded life--they had all vanished because of that vile trick of destiny; and ever since then he had been wandering in the wilderness through years that brought no fruit of his labours. Yet here was his chance, his great chance, to get back what he had and was in the old misspent days, with new purposes in life to follow and serve; and it was all in cruel danger of being swept away when almost within his grasp. If he could but achieve the big deal, he could return to wife and home, he could be master in his own house, not a dependent on his wife's bounty. That very evening Jesse Bulrush, elated by his own good fortune in capturing Cupid, had told him as sadly as was possible, while his own fortunes were, as he thought, soaring, that every avenue of credit seemed closed; that neither bank nor money-lender, trust nor loan company, would let him have the ten thousand dollars necessary for him to hold his place in the syndicate; while each of the other members of the clique had flatly and cheerfully refused, saying they were busy carrying their own loads. Crozier had commanded Jesse not to approach them, but the fat idealist had an idea that his tongue had a gift of wheedling, and he believed that he could make them "shell out," as he put it. He had failed, and he was obliged to say so, when Crozier, suspecting, brought him to book. "They mean to crowd you out--that's their game," Bulrush had said. "They've closed up all the ways to cash or credit. They're laying to do you out of your share. Unless you put up the cash within the four days left, they'll put it through without you. They told me to tell you that." And Crozier had not even cursed them. He said to Jesse Bulrush that it was an old game to get hold of a patent that made a fortune for a song while the patentee died in the poor-house. Yet that four days was time enough for a live man to do a "flurry of work," and he was fit enough to walk up their backs yet with hobnailed boots, as they said in Kerry when a man was out for war. Over and over again this hovering tragedy drove sleep from his eyes; and in the spaces between there were a hundred fleeting visions of little and big things to torture him--remembrances of incidents when debts and disasters dogged his footsteps; and behind them all, floating among the elves and gnomes of ill-luck and disappointment, was a woman's face. It was not his wife's face, not a face that belonged to the old life, but one which had been part of his daily existence for over four years. It was the first face he saw when he came back from consciousness after the operation which saved his life--the face of Kitty Tynan. And ever since the day when he had told the story of his life this face had kept passing before his eyes with a disturbing persistence. Kitty had said to her mother and to the Young Doctor that he had seemed after he had told his story like one who had awakened; and in a sense it was startlingly true. It was as though, while he was living under an assumed name, the real James Shiel Gathorne Crozier did not exist, or was in the far background of the doings and sayings of J. G. Kerry. His wife and the past had been shadowy in a way, had been as part of a life lived out, which would return in some distant day, but was not vital to the present. Much as he had loved his wife, the violent wrench away from her had seemed almost as complete as death itself; but the resumption of his own name and the telling if his story had produced a complete psychological change in him mentally and bodily. The impersonal feeling which had marked his relations with the two women of this household, and with all women, was suddenly gone. He longed for the arms of a woman round his neck--it was five years since any woman's arms had been there, since he had kissed any woman's lips. Now, in the hour when his fortunes were again in the fatal balance, when he would be started again for a fair race with the wife from whom he had been so long parted, another face came between. All at once the question Burlingame asked him, as to whether his wife was living, came to him. He had never for an instant thought of her as dead, but now a sharp and terrifying anxiety came to him. If his wife was living! Living? Her death had never been even a remote possibility to his mind, though the parting had had the decisiveness of death. Beneath all his shrewdness and ability he was at heart a dreamer, a romancist to whom life was an adventure in a half-real world. It was impossible to sleep. He tossed from side to side. Once he got up in the dark and drank great draughts of water; once again, as he thought of Mona, his wife, as she was in the first days of their married life, a sudden impulse seized him. He sprang from his bed, lit a candle, went to the desk where the unopened letter lay, and took it out. With the feeling that he must destroy this record, this unread but, as he knew, ugly record of their differences, and so clear her memory of any cruelty, of any act of anger, he was about to hold it to the flame of the candle when he thought he heard a sound behind him as of the door of his room gently closing. Laying the letter down, he went to the door and opened it. There was no one stirring. Yet he had a feeling as though some one was there in the darkness. His lips framed the words, "Who is it? Is any one there?" but he did not utter them. A kind of awe possessed him. He was Celtic; he had been fed on the supernatural when he was a child; he had had strange, indefinable experiences or hallucinations in the days when he lived at Castlegarry, and all his life he had been a friend of the mystical. It is hard to tell what he thought as he stood there and peered into the darkness of the other room-the living-room of the house. He was in a state of trance, almost, a victim of the night. But as he closed the door softly the words of the song that Kitty Tynan had sung to him the day when he found her brushing his coat came to him and flooded his brain. The last two verses of the song kept drowning his sense of the actual, and he was swayed by the superstition of bygone ancestors: "Whereaway goes my lad--tell me, has he gone alone? Never harsh word did I speak, never hurt I gave; Strong he was and beautiful; like a heron he has flown Hereaway, hereaway will I make my grave. "When once more the lad I loved hereaway, hereaway, Comes to lay his hand in mine, kiss me on the brow, I will whisper down the wind, he will weep to hear me say-- 'Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?'" He went to bed again, but sleep would not come. The verses of the lament kept singing in his brain. He tossed from side to side, he sought to control himself, but it was of no avail. Suddenly he remembered the bed of boughs he had made for himself at the place where Kitty had had her meeting with the Young Doctor the previous day. Before he was shot he used to sleep in the open in the summer-time. If he could get to sleep anywhere it would be there. Hastily dressing himself in flannel shirt and trousers, and dragging a blanket from the bed, he found his way to the bedroom door, went into the other room, and felt his way to the front door, which would open into the night. All at once he was conscious of another presence in the room, but the folk-song was still beating in his brain, and he reproved himself for succumbing to fantasy. Finding the front door in the dark, he opened it and stepped outside. There was no moon, but there were millions of stars in the blue vault above, and there was enough light for him to make his way to the place where he had slept "hereaway and oft." He knew that the bed of boughs would be dry, but the night would be his, and the good, cool ground, and the soughing of the pines, and the sweet, infinitesimal and innumerable sounds of the breathing, sleeping earth. He found the place and threw himself down. Why, here were green boughs under him, not the dried remains of what he had placed there! Kitty--it was Kitty, dear, gay, joyous, various Kitty, who had done this thing, thinking that he might want to sleep in the open again after his illness. Kitty--it was she who had so thoughtfully served him; Kitty, with the instinct of strong, unselfish womanhood, with the gift of the outdoor life, with the unpurchasable gift of friendship. What a girl she was! How rich she could make the life of a man! "Hereaway my heart was soft; when he kissed my happy eyes, Held my hand, and laid his cheek warm against my brow, Home I saw upon the earth, heaven stood there in the skies Whereaway, whereaway goes my lover now?" How different she was, this child of the West, of Nature, from the woman he had left behind in England, the sophisticated, well-appointed, well- controlled girl; too well-controlled even in the first days of married life; too well-controlled for him who had the rushing impulses of a Celtic warrior of olden days. Delicate, refined, perfectly poised, and Kitty beside her like a sunflower to a sprig of heliotrope! Mona--Kitty, the two names, the two who, so far, had touched his life, each in her own way, as none others had done, they floated before his eyes till sight and feeling grew dim. With a last effort he strove to eject Kitty from his thoughts, for there was the wife he had won in the race of life, and he must stand by her, play the game, ride honestly, even in exile from her, run straight, even with that unopened, bitter, upbraiding letter in the-- He fell asleep, and soon and slowly and ever so dimly the opal light of the prairie dawn crept shyly over the landscape. With it came stealing the figure of a girl towards the group of trees where lay the man of Lammis on the bed of green boughs which she had renewed for him. She had followed him from the dark room, where she had waited near him through the night--near him, to be near him for the last time; alone with him and the kind, holy night before the morrow came which belonged to the other woman, who had written to him as she never could have written to any man in whose arms she ever had lain. And the pity and the tragedy of it was that he loved his wife--the catfish wife. The sharp, pitiless instinct of love told her that the stirring in his veins which had come of late to him, which beat higher, even poignantly, when she was near him now, was only the reflection of what he felt for his wife. She knew the unmerciful truth, but it only deepened what she felt for him, yet what she must put away from herself after to-morrow. Those verses she wrote --they were to show that she had conquered herself. Yet, but a few hours after, here she was kneeling outside his door at night, here she was pursuing him to the place where he slept. The coming of the other woman --she knew well that she was something to this man of men--had roused in her all she had felt, had intensified it. She trembled, but she drew near, accompanied by the heavenly odours of the freshened herbs and foliage and the cool tenderness of the river close by. In her white dress and loosened hair she was like some spirit of a new-born world finding her way to the place she must call home. It was all so dim, so like clouded silver, the trees and the grass and the bushes and the night. Noiselessly she stole over the grass and into the shadows of the trees where he lay. Again and again she paused. What would she do if he was awake and saw her? She did not know. The moment must take care of itself. She longed to find him sleeping. It was so. The hazy light showed his face upward to the skies, his breast rising and falling in a heavy, luxurious sleep. She drew nearer and nearer till she was kneeling beside him. His face was warm with colour even in the night air, warmer than she had ever seen it. One hand lay across his chest and one was thrown back over his head with the abandon of perfect rest. All the anxiety and restlessness which had tortured him had fled, and his manhood showed bold and serene in the brightening dusk. A sob almost broke from her as she gazed her fill, then slowly she leaned over and softly pressed her lips to his--the first time that ever in love they had been given to any man. She had the impulse to throw her arms round him, but she mastered herself. He stirred, but he did not wake. His lips moved as she withdrew hers. "My darling!" he said in the quick, broken way of the dreamer. She rose swiftly and fled away among the trees towards the house. What he had said in his sleep--was it in reality the words of unconsciousness, or was it subconscious knowledge?--they kept ringing in her ears. "My darling!" he had said when she kissed him. There was a light of joy in her eyes now, though she felt that the words were meant for another. Yet it was her kiss, her own kiss, which had made him say it. If--but with happy eyes she stole to her room. CHAPTER X "S. O. S." At breakfast next morning Kitty did not appear. Had it been possible she would have fled into the far prairie and set up a lonely tabernacle there; for with the day came a reaction from the courage possessing her the night before and in the opal wakening of the dawn. When broad daylight came she felt as though her bones were water and her body a wisp of straw. She could not bear to meet Shiel Crozier's eyes, and thus it was she had an early breakfast on the plea that she had ironing to do. She was not, however, prepared to see Jesse Bulrush drive up with a buggy after breakfast and take Crozier away. When she did see them at the gate the impulse came to cry out to Crozier; what to say she did not know, but still to cry out. The cry on her lips was that which she had seen in the newspaper the day before, the cry of the shipwrecked seafarers, the signal of the wireless telegraphy, "S. O. S."--the piteous call, "Save Our Souls!" It sprang to her lips, but it got no farther except in an unconscious whisper. On the instant she felt so weak and shaken and lonely that she wanted to lean upon some one stronger than herself; as she used to lean against her father, while he sat with one arm round her studying his railway problems. She had been self-sufficient enough all her life,--"an independent little bird of freedom," as Crozier had called her; but she was like a boat tossed on mountainous waves now. "S. O. S.!-Save Our Souls!" As though she really had made this poignant call Crozier turned round in the buggy where he sat with Jesse Bulrush, pale but erect; and, with a strange instinct, he looked straight to where she was. When he saw her his face flushed, he could not have told why. Was it that there had passed to him in his sleep the subconscious knowledge of the kiss which Kitty had given him; and, after all, had he said "My darling" to her and not to the wife far away across the seas, as he thought? A strange feeling, as of secret intimacy, never felt before where Kitty was concerned, passed through him now, and he was suddenly conscious that things were not as they had ever been; that the old impersonal comradeship had vanished. It disturbed, it almost shocked him. Whereupon he made a valiant effort to recover the old ground, to get out of the new atmosphere into the old, cheering air. "Come and say good-bye, won't you?" he called to her. "S. O. S.--S. O. S.--S. O. S.!" was the cry in her heart, but she called back to him from her lips, "I can't. I'm too busy. Come back soon, soldier." With a wave of the hand he was gone. "Not a care in the world she has," Crozier said to Jesse Bulrush. "She's the sunniest creature Heaven ever made." "Too skittish for me," responded the other with a sidelong look, for he had caught a note in Crozier's voice which gave him a sudden suspicion. "You want the kind you can drive with an oatstraw and a chirp--eh, my friend?" "Well, I've got what I want," was the reply. "Neither of us 'll kick over the traces." "You are a lucky man," replied Crozier. "You've got a remarkably big prize in the lottery. She is a fine woman, is Nurse Egan, and I owe her a great deal. I only hope things turn out so well that I can give her a good fat wedding-present. But I shan't be able to do anything that's close to my heart if I can't get the cash for my share in the syndicate." "Courage, soldier, as Kitty Tynan says," responded Jesse Bulrush cheerily. "You never know your luck. The cash is waiting for you somewhere, and it'll turn up, be sure of that." "I'm not sure of that. I can see as plain as your nose how Bradley and his clique have blocked me everywhere from getting credit, and I'd give five years of my life to beat them in their dirty game. If I fail to get it at Aspen Vale I'm done. But I'll have a try, a good big try. How far exactly is it? I've never gone by this trail." Bulrush shook his head reprovingly. "It's too long a journey for you to take after your knock-out. You're not fit to travel yet. I don't like it a bit. Lydia said this morning it was a crime against yourself, going off like this, and--" "Lydia?--oh yes, pardonnez-moi, m'sieu'! I did not know her name was Lydia." "I didn't either till after we were engaged." Crozier stared in blank amazement. "You didn't know her name till after you were engaged? What did you call her before that?" "Why, I called her Nurse." answered the fat lover. "We all called her that, and it sounded comfortable and homelike and good for every day. It had a sort of York-shilling confidence, and your life was in her hands --a first-class you-and-me kind of feeling." "Why don't you stick to it, then?" "She doesn't want it. She says it sounds so old, and that I'd be calling her 'mother' next." "And won't you?" asked Crozier slyly. "Everything in season," beamed Jesse, and he shone, and was at once happy and composed. Crozier relapsed into silence, for he was thinking that the lost years had been barren of children. He turned to look at the home they had left. It was some distance away now, but he could see Kitty still at the corner of the house with a small harvest of laundered linen in her hand. "She made that fresh bed of boughs for me--ah, but I had a good sleep last night!" he added aloud. "I feel fit for the fight before me." He drew himself up and began to nod here and there to people who greeted him. In the house behind them at that moment Kitty was saying to her mother, "Where is he going, mother?" "To Aspen Vale," was the reply. "If you'd been at breakfast you'd have heard. He'll be gone two days, perhaps three." Three days! She regretted now that she had not said to herself, "Courage, soldier," and gone to say good-bye to him when he called to her. Perhaps she would not see him again till after the other woman-- till after the wife-came. Then--then the house would be empty; then the house would be so still. And then John Sibley would come and-- CHAPTER XI IN THE CAMP OF THE DESERTER Three days passed, but before they ended there came another telegram from Mrs. Crozier stating the time of her expected arrival at Askatoon. It was addressed to Kitty, and Kitty almost savagely tore it up into little pieces and scattered it to the winds. She did not even wait to show it to the Young Doctor; but he had a subtle instinct as to why she did not; and he was rather more puzzled than usual at what was passing before his eyes. In any case, the coming of the wife must alter all the relations existing in the household of the widow Tynan. The old, unrestrained, careless friendship could not continue. The newcomer would import an element of caste and class which would freeze mother and daughter to the bones. Crozier was the essence of democracy, which in its purest form is akin to the most aristocratic element and is easily affiliated with it. He had no fear of Crozier. Crozier would remain exactly the same; but would not Crozier be whisked away out of Askatoon to a new fate, reconciled to being a receiver of his wife's bounty. "If his wife gets her arms round his neck, and if she wants to get them there, she will, and once there he'll go with her like a gentleman," said the Young Doctor sarcastically. Admiring Crozier as he did, he also had underneath all his knowledge of life an unreasonable apprehension of man's weakness where a woman was concerned. The man who would face a cannon's mouth would falter before the face of a woman whom he could crumple with one hand. The wife arrived before Crozier returned, and the Young Doctor and Kitty met the train. The local operator had not divulged to any one the contents of the telegram to Kitty, and there were no staring spectators on the platform. As the great express stole in almost noiselessly, like a tired serpent, Kitty watched its approach with outward cheerfulness. She had braced herself to this moment, till she looked the most buoyant, joyous thing in the world. It had not come easily. With desperation she had fought a fight during these three lonely days, till at last she had conquered, sleeping each night on Crozier's star-lit bed of boughs and coming in with the silver-grey light of dawn. Now she leaned forward with heart beating fast; but with smiling face and with eyes so bright that she deceived the Young Doctor. There was no sign of inward emotion, of hidden troubles, as she leaned forward to see the great lady step from the train--great in every sense was this lady in her mind; imposing in stature, a Juno, a tragedy queen, a Zenobia, a daughter of the gods who would not stoop to conquer. She looked in vain, however, for the Mrs. Crozier she had imagined made no appearance from the train. She hastened down the platform still with keen eyes scanning the passengers, who were mostly alighting to stretch their legs and get a breath of air. "She's not here," she said at last darkly to the Young Doctor who had followed her. Then suddenly she saw emerge from a little group at the steps of a car a child in a long dress--so it seemed to her, the being was so small and delicate--and come forward, having hastily said good-bye to her fellow- passengers. As the Young Doctor said afterwards, "She wasn't bigger than a fly," and she certainly was as graceful and pretty and piquante as a child-woman could be. Presently, with her alert, rather assertive blue eyes she saw Kitty, and came forward. "Miss Tynan?" she asked, with an encompassing look. Now Kitty was idiomatic in her speech at times, and she occasionally used slang of the best brand, but she avoided those colloquialisms which were of the vocabulary of the uneducated. Indeed, she had had no inclination to use them, for her father had set her a good example, and she liked to hear good English spoken. That was why Crozier's talk had been like music to her; and she had been keen to distinguish between the rhetorical method of Augustus Burlingame, who modelled himself on the orators of all the continents, and was what might be called a synthetic elocutionist. Kitty was as simple and natural as a girl could be, and as a rule had herself in perfect command; but she was so stunned by the sight of this petite person before her that, in reply to Mrs. Crozier's question, she only said abruptly "The same!" Then she came to herself and could have bitten her tongue out for that plunge into the vernacular of the West; and forthwith a great prejudice was set up in her mind against Mona Crozier, in whose eyes she caught a look of quizzical criticism or, as she thought, contemptuous comment. That for one instant she had been caught unawares and so had put herself at a disadvantage angered her; but she had been embarrassed and confounded by this miniature goddess, and her reply was a vague echo of talk she heard around her every day. Also she could have choked the Young Doctor, whom she caught looking at her with wondering humour, as though he was trying to see "what her game was," as he said to her afterwards. It was all due to the fact that from the day of the Logan Trial, and particularly from the day when Shiel Crozier had told his life-story, she had always imagined his wife as a stately Amazonian being with the carriage of a Boadicea. She had looked for an empress in splendid garments, and--and here was a humming-bird of a woman, scarcely bigger, than a child, with the buzzing energy of a bee, but with a queer sort of manfulness too; with a square, slightly-projecting chin, as Kitty came to notice afterwards; together with some small lines about the mouth and at the eyes, which came from trouble endured and suffering undergone. Kitty did not notice that, but the Young Doctor took it in with his embracing glance, as the wife saluted Kitty with her inward comment, which was: "So this is the chit who wrote to me like a mother!" But Mona Crozier did not underestimate Kitty for all that, and she wondered why it was that Kitty had written as she did. One thing was quite clear: Kitty had had good intentions, else why have written at all? All these thoughts had passed through the mind of each, with a good many others, while they were shaking hands; and the Young Doctor summoned his man to carry Mona's hand-luggage to the extra buggy he had brought to the station. One of the many other thoughts that were passing through three active minds was Kitty's unspoken satire: "Just think; this is the woman he talked of as though she was a moving mountain which would fall on you and crush you, if you didn't look out!" No doubt Crozier would have repudiated this description of his talk, but the fact was he had unconsciously spoken of Mona with a sort of hush in his voice; for a woman to him was something outside real understanding. He had a romantic mediaeval view, which translated weakness and beauty into a miracle, and what psychologists call "an inspired control." "She's no bigger than--than a wasp," said Kitty to herself, after the Young Doctor had assured Mrs. Crozier that her husband was almost well again; that he had recovered more quickly than was expected, and had gained strength wonderfully after the crisis was passed. "An elephant can crush you, but a wasp can sting you," was Kitty's further inward comment, "and that's why he was always nervous when he spoke of her." Then, as the Young Doctor had already done, she noticed the tiny lines about the tiny mouth, and the fine-spun webs about the bird-bright eyes. The Young Doctor attributed these lines mostly to anxiety and inward suffering, but Kitty set them down as the outward signs of an inward fretfulness and quarrelsomeness, which was rendered all the more offensive in her eyes by the fact that Mona Crozier was the most, spotless thing she had ever seen, at the end of a journey--and this, a journey across a continent. Orderliness and prim exactness, taste and fastidiousness, tireless tidiness were seen in every turn, in every fold of her dress, in the way everything she wore had been put on, in the decision of every step and gesture. Kitty noticed all this, and she said to herself, "Wound up like a watch, cut like a cameo," and she instinctively felt the little dainty cameo-brooch at her own throat, the only jewellery she ever wore, or had ever worn. "Sensible of her not to bring a maid," commented the Young Doctor inwardly. "That would have thrown Kitty into a fit. Yet how she manages to look like this after six thousand miles of sea and land going is beyond me--and Crozier so rather careless in his ways. Not what you would call two notes in the same key, she and Crozier," he reflected as he told her she need not trouble about her luggage, and took charge of the checks for it. "My husband--is--is he quite better now?" Mrs. Crozier asked with sharp anxiety, as the two-seated "rig" started away with the ladies in the back seat. "Oh, better, thanks to him," was Kitty's reply, nodding towards the Young Doctor. "You have told him I was coming?" "Wasn't it better to have a talk with you first?" asked Kitty meaningly. Mrs. Crozier almost nervously twitched the little jet bag she carried, then she looked Kitty in the eyes. "You will, of course, have reason for thinking so, if you say it," was her enigmatical reply. "And of course you will tell me. You did not let him know that you had written to me, or that the doctor had cabled me?" "Oh, you got his cable?" questioned Kitty with a little ring of triumph in her voice, meant to reach the ears of the Young Doctor. It did reach him, and he replied to the question. "We thought it better not; chiefly because he had in this country planned his life with an exclusiveness, and on a principle which did not, unfortunately, take you into account." The little lady blushed, or flushed. "May I ask how you know this to be so, if it is so?" she asked, and there was the sharpness of the wasp in her tone, as it seemed to Kitty. "The Logan Trial--I mentioned it in my letter to you," interposed Kitty. "He was shot for the evidence he gave at the trial. Well, at the trial a great many questions were asked by a lawyer who wanted to hurt him, and he answered them." "Why did the lawyer want to hurt him?" Mona Crozier asked quickly. "Just mean-hearted envy and spite and devilry," was Kitty's answer. "They were both handsome men, and perhaps that was it." "I never thought my husband handsome, though he was always distinguished looking," was the quiet reply. "Ah, but you haven't seen him at all for so long!" remarked Kitty, a little spitefully. "How do you know that?" Mrs. Crozier was nettled, though she did not show it; but Kitty felt it was so, and was glad. "He said so at the Logan Trial." "Was that the kind of question asked at the trial?" the wife quickly interjected. "Yes, lots of that kind," returned Kitty. "What was the object?" "To make him look not so distinguished--like nothing. If a man isn't handsome, but only distinguished"--Kitty's mood was dangerous--"and you make him look cheap, that's one advantage, and--" Here the Young Doctor, having observed the rising tide of antagonism in the tone of the voices behind him, gently interposed, and made it clear that the purpose was to throw a shadow on the past of her husband in order to discredit his evidence; to which Mrs. Crozier nodded her understanding. She liked the Young Doctor, as who did not who came in contact with him, except those who had fear of him, and who had an idea that he could read their minds as he read their bodies. And even this girl at her side--Mona Crozier realised that the part she had played was evidently an unselfish one, though she felt with piercing intuition that whatever her husband thought of the girl, the girl thought too much of her husband. Somehow, all in a moment, it made her sorry for the girl's sake. The girl had meant well by her husband in sending for his wife, that was certain; and she did not look bad. She was too sedately and reservedly dressed, in spite of her auriferous face and head and her burnished tone, to be bad; too fearless in eye, too concentrated to be the rover in fields where she had no tenure or right. She turned and looked Kitty squarely in the eyes, and a new, softer look came into her own, subduing what to Kitty was the challenging alertness and selfish inquisitiveness. "You have been very good to Shiel--you two kind people," she said, and there came a sudden faint mist to her eyes. That was her lucky moment, and she spoke as she did just in time, for Kitty was beginning to resent her deeply; to dislike her far more than was reasonable, and certainly without any justice. Kitty spoke up quickly. "Well, you see, he was always kind and good to other people, and that was why--" "But that Mr. Burlingame did not like him?" The wife had a strange intuition regarding Mr. Burlingame. She was sure that there was a woman in the case--the girl beside her? "That was because Mr. Burlingame was not kind or good to other people," was Kitty's sedate response. There was an undertone of reflection in the voice which did not escape Mrs. Crozier's senses, and it also caught the ear of the Young Doctor, to whom there came a sudden revelation of the reason why Burlingame had left Mrs. Tynan's house. "Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Crozier enigmatically. Presently, with suppressed excitement as she saw the Young Doctor reining in the horses slowly, she added: "My husband--when have you arranged that I should see him?" "When he gets back--home," Kitty replied, with an accent on the last word. Mrs. Crozier started visibly. "When he gets back home-back from where? He is not here?" she asked in a tone of chagrin. She had come a long way, and she had pictured this meeting at the end of the journey with a hundred variations, but never with this one--that she should not see Shiel at once when the journey was over, if he was alive. Was it hurt pride or disappointed love which spoke in her face, in her words? After all, it was bad enough that her private life and affairs should be dragged out in a court of law; that these two kind strangers, whom she had never seen till a few minutes ago, should be in the inner circle of knowledge of the life of her husband and herself, without her self-esteem being hurt like this. She was very woman, and the look of the thing was not nice to her eyes, while it must belittle her in theirs. Had this girl done it on purpose? Yet why should she--she who had so appealed to her to come to him--have sought to humiliate her? Kitty was not quite sure what she ought to say. "You see, we expected him back before this. He is very exact!" "Very exact?" asked Mrs. Crozier in astonishment. This was a new phase of Shiel Crozier's character. He must, indeed, have changed since he had caused her so much anxiety in days gone by. "Usen't he to be so?" asked Kitty, a little viciously. "He is so very exact now," she added. "He expected to be back home before this"--how she loved to use that word home--"and so we thought he would be here when you arrived. But he has been detained at Aspen Vale. He had a big business deal on--" "A big business deal? Is he--is he in a large way of business?" Mona asked almost incredulously. Shiel Crozier in a large way of business, in a big business deal? It did not seem possible. His had ever been the game of chance. Business--business? "He doesn't talk himself, of course; that wouldn't be like him,"--Kitty had joy in giving this wife the character of her husband," but they say that if he succeeds in what he's trying to do now he will make a great deal of money." "Then he has not made it yet?" asked Mrs. Crozier. "He has always been able to pay his board regularly, with enough left for a pew in church," answered Kitty with dry malice; for she mistook the light in the other's eyes, and thought it was avarice; and the love of money had no place in Kitty's make-up. She herself would never have been influenced by money where a man was concerned. "Here's the house," she quickly added; "our home, where Mr. Crozier lives. He has the best room, so yours won't be quite so good. It's mother's--she's giving it up to you. With your trunks and things, you'll want a room to yourself," Kitty added, not at all unconscious that she was putting a phase of the problem of Crozier and his wife in a very commonplace way; but she did not look into Mrs. Crozier's face as she said it. Mrs. Crozier, however, was fully conscious of the poignancy of the remark, and once again her face flushed slightly, though she kept outward composure. "Mother, mother, are you there?" Kitty called, as she escorted the wife up the garden walk. An instant later Mrs. Tynan cheerfully welcomed the disturber of the peace of the home where Shiel Crozier had been the central figure for so long. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: And I was very lucky--worse luck! God help the man that's afraid of his own wife! Sensitive souls, however, are not so many as to crowd each other YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK [BEING THE STORY OF A MATRIMONIAL DESERTER] By Gilbert Parker Volume 3. XII. AT THE RECEIPT OF CUSTOM XIII. KITTY SPEAKS HER MIND AGAIN XIV. AWAITING THE VERDICT XV. "MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM" XVI. "'TWAS FOR YOUR PLEASURE YOU CAME HERE, YOU GO BACK FOR MINE" XVII. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT? EPILOGUE CHAPTER XII AT THE RECEIPT OF CUSTOM "What are you laughing at, Kitty? You cackle like a young hen with her first egg." So spoke Mrs. Tynan to her daughter, who alternately swung backwards and forwards in a big rocking-chair, silently gazing into the distant sky, or sat still and "cackled" as her mother had said. A person of real observation and astuteness, however, would have noticed that Kitty's laughter told a story which was not joy and gladness-- neither good humour nor the abandonment of a luxurious nature. It was tinged with bitterness and had the smart of the nettle. Her mother's question only made her laugh the more, and at last Mrs. Tynan stooped over her and said, "I could shake you, Kitty. You'd make a snail fidget, and I've got enough to do to keep my senses steady with all the house-work--and now her in there!" She tossed a hand behind her fretfully. Quick with love for her mother, as she always was, Kitty caught the other's trembling hand. "You've always had too much to do, mother; always been slaving for others. You've never had time to think whether you're happy or not, or whether you've got a problem--that's what people call things, when they're got so much time on their hands that they make a play of their inside feelings and work it up till it sets them crazy." Mrs. Tynan's mouth tightened and her brow clouded. "I've had my problems too, but I always made quick work of them. They never had a chance to overlay me like a mother overlays her baby and kills it." "Not 'like a mother overlays,' but 'as a mother overlays,'" returned Kitty with a queer note to her voice. "That's what they taught me at school. The teacher was always picking us up on that kind of thing. I said a thing worse than that when Mrs. Crozier"--her fingers motioned towards another room--"came to-day. I don't know what possessed me. I was off my trolley, I suppose, as John Sibley puts it. Well, when Mrs. James Shiel Gathorne Crozier said--oh, so sweetly and kindly--'You are Miss Tynan?' what do you think I replied? I said to her, 'The same'!" Rather an acidly satisfied smile came to Mrs. Tynan's lips. "That was like the Slatterly girls," she replied. "Your father would have said it was the vernacular of the rail-head. He was a great man for odd words, but he knew always just what he wanted to say and he said it out. You've got his gift. You always say the right thing, and I don't know why you made that break with her--of all people." A meditative look came into Kitty's eyes. "Mr. Crozier says every one has an imp that loves to tease us, and trip us up, and make us appear ridiculous before those we don't want to have any advantage over us." "I don't want Mrs. Crozier to have any advantage over you and me, I can tell you that. Things'll never be the same here again, Kitty dear, and we've all got on so well; with him so considerate of every one, and a good friend always, and just one of us, and his sickness making him seem like our own, and--" "Oh, hush--will you hush, mother!" interposed Kitty sharply. "He's going away with her back to the old country, and we might just as well think about getting other borders, for I suppose Mr. Bulrush and his bonny bride will set up a little bulrush tabernacle on the banks of the Nile"--she nodded in the direction of the river outside--"and they'll find a little Moses and will treat it as their very own." "Kitty, how can you!" Kitty shrugged a shoulder. "It would be ridiculous for that pair to have one of their own. It's only the young mother with a new baby that looks natural to me." "Don't talk that way, Kitty," rejoined her mother sharply. "You aren't fit to judge of such things." "I will be before long," said her daughter. "Anyway, Mrs. Crozier isn't any better able to talk than I am," she added irrelevantly. "She never was a mother." "Don't blame her," said Mrs. Tynan severely. "That's God's business. I'd be sorry for her, so far as that was concerned, if I were you. It's not her fault." "It's an easy way of accounting for good undone," returned Kitty. "P'r'aps it was God's fault, and p'r'aps if she had loved him more--" Mrs. Tynan's face flushed with sudden irritation and that fretful look came to her eyes which accompanies a lack of comprehension. "Upon my word, well, upon my word, of all the vixens that ever lived, and you looking like a yellow pansy and too sweet for daily use! Such thoughts in your head! Who'd have believed that you--!" Kitty made a mocking face at her mother. "I'm more than a girl, I'm a woman, mother, who sees life all around me, from the insect to the mountain, and I know things without being told. I always did. Just life and living tell me things, and maybe, too, the Irish in me that father was." "It's so odd. You're such a mixture of fun and fancy, at least you always have been; but there's something new in you these days. Kitty, you make me afraid--yes, you make your mother afraid. After what you said the other day about Mr. Crozier I've had bad nights, and I get nervous thinking." Kitty suddenly got up, put her arm round her mother and kissed her. "You needn't be afraid of me, mother. If there'd been any real danger, I wouldn't have told you. Mr. Crozier's away, and when he comes back he'll find his wife here, and there's the end of everything. If there'd been danger, it would have been settled the night before he went away. I kissed him that night as he was sleeping out there under the trees." Mrs. Tynan sat down weakly and fanned herself with her apron. "Oh, oh, oh, dear Lord!" she said. "I'm not afraid to tell you anything I ever did, mother," declared Kitty firmly; "though I'm not prepared to tell you everything I've felt. I kissed him as he slept. He didn't wake, he just lay there sleeping--sleeping." A strange, distant, dreaming look came into her eyes. She smiled like one who saw a happy vision, and an eerie expression stole into her face. "I didn't want him to wake," she continued. "I asked God not to let him wake. If he'd waked--oh, I'd have been ashamed enough till the day I died in one way! Still he'd have understood, and he'd have thought no harm. But it wouldn't have been fair to him--and there's his wife in there," she added, breaking off into a different tone. "They're a long way above us--up among the peaks, and we're at the foot of the foothills, mother; but he never made us feel that, did he? The difference between him and most of the men I've ever seen! The difference!" "There's the Young Doctor," said her mother reproachfully. "He-him! He's by himself, with something of every sort in him from the top to the bottom. There's been a ditcher in his family, and there may have been a duke. But Shiel Crozier--Shiel"--she flushed as she said the name like that, but a little touch of defiance came into her face too-- "he is all of one kind. He's not a blend. And he's married to her in there!" "You needn't speak in that tone about her. She's as fine as can be." "She's as fine as a bee," retorted Kitty. Again she laughed that almost mirthless laugh for which her mother had called her to account a moment before. "You asked me a while ago what I was laughing at, mother," she continued. "Why, can't you guess? Mr. Crozier talked of her always as though she was--well, like the pictures you've seen of Britannia, all swelling and spreading, with her hand on a shield and her face saying, 'Look at me and be good,' and her eyes saying, 'Son of man, get upon thy knees!' Why, I expected to see a sort of great--goodness--gracious goddess, that kept him frightened to death of her. Bless you, he never opened her letter, he was so afraid of her; and he used to breathe once or twice hard--like that, when he mentioned her!" She breathed in such mock awe that her mother laughed with a little kindly malice too. "Even her letter," Kitty continued remorselessly, "it was as though she --that little sprite--wrote it with a rod of chastisement, as the Bible says. It--" "What do you know of the inside of that letter?" asked her mother, staring. "What the steam of the tea-kettle could let me see," responded Kitty defiantly; and then, to her shocked mother, she told what she had done, and what the nature of the letter was. "I wanted to help him if I could, and I think I'll be able to do it--I've worked it all out," Kitty added eagerly, with a glint of steel in the gold of her eyes and a fantastic kind of wisdom in her look. "Kitty," said her mother severely and anxiously, "it's madness interfering with other people's affairs--of that kind. It never was any use." "This will be the exception to the rule," returned Kitty. "There she is"--again she flicked a hand towards the other room--"after they've been parted five years. Well, she came after she read my letter to her, and after I'd read that unopened letter to him, which made me know how to put it all to her. I've got intuition--that's Celtic and mad," she added, with her chin thrusting out at her mother, to whom the Irish that her husband had been, which was so deep in her daughter, was ever a mystery to her, and of which she was more or less afraid. "I've got a plan, and I believe--I know--it will work," Kitty continued. "I've been thinking and thinking, and if there's trouble between them; if he says he isn't going on with her till he's made his fortune; if he throws that unopened letter in her face, I'll bring in my invention to deal with the problem, and then you'll see! But all this fuss for a little tiny button of a thing like that in there--pshaw! Mr. Crozier is worth a real queen with the beauty of one of the Rhine maidens. How he used to tell that story of the Rhinegold--do you remember? Wasn't it grand? Well, I am glad now that he's going--yes, whatever trouble there may be, still he is going. I feel it in my heart." She paused, and her eyes took on a sombre tone. Presently, with a slight, husky pain in her voice, like the faint echo of a wail, she went on: "Now that he's going, I'm glad we've had the things he gave us, things that can't be taken away from us. What you have enjoyed is yours for ever and ever. It's memory; and for one moment or for one day or one year of those things you loved, there's fifty years, perhaps, for memory. Don't you remember the verses I cut out of the magazine: "'Time, the ruthless idol-breaker, Smileless, cold iconoclast, Though he rob us of our altars, Cannot rob us of the past.'" "That's the way your father used to talk," replied her mother. "There's a lot of poetry in you, Kitty." "More than there is in her?" asked Kitty, again indicating the region where Mrs. Crozier was. "There's as much poetry in her as there is in--in me. But she can do things; that little bit of a babywoman can do things, Kitty. I know women, and I tell you that if that woman hadn't a penny, she'd set to and earn it; and if her husband hadn't a penny, she'd make his home comfortable just the same somehow, for she's as capable as can be. She had her things unpacked, her room in order herself--she didn't want your help or mine--and herself with a fresh dress on before you could turn round." Kitty's eyes softened still more. "Well, if she'd been poor he would never have left her, and then they wouldn't have lost five years--think of it, five years of life with the man you love lost to you!--and there wouldn't be this tough old knot to untie now." "She has suffered--that little sparrow has suffered, I tell you, Kitty. She has a grip on herself like--like--" "Like Mr. Crozier with a broncho under his hand," interjected Kitty. "She's too neat, too eternally spick and span for me, mother. It's as though the Being that made her said, 'Now I'll try and see if I can produce a model of a grown-up, full-sized piece of my work.' Mrs. Crozier is an exhibition model, and Shiel Crozier's over six feet three, and loose and free, and like a wapiti in his gait. If he was a wapiti he'd carry the finest pair of antlers ever was." "Kitty, you make me laugh," responded the puzzled woman. "I declare, you're the most whimsical creature, and--" At that moment there came a tapping at the door behind them, and a small, silvery voice said, "May I come in?" as the door opened and Mrs. Crozier, very precisely yet prettily dressed, entered. "Please make yourself at home--no need to rap," answered Mrs. Tynan. "Out in the West here we live in the open like. There's no room closed to you, if you can put up with what there is, though it's not what you're used to." "For five months in the year during the past five years I've lived in a house about half as large as this," was Mrs. Crozier's reply. "With my husband away there wasn't the need of much room." "Well, he only has one room here," responded Mrs. Tynan. "He never seemed too crowded in it." "Where is it? Might I see it?" asked the small, dark-eyed, dark-haired wife, with the little touch of nectarine bloom and a little powder also; and though she spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, there was a look of wistfulness in her eyes, a gleam of which Kitty caught ere it passed. "You've been separated, Mrs. Crozier," answered the elder woman, "and I've no right to let you into his room without his consent. You've had no correspondence at all for five years--isn't that so?" "Did he tell you that?" the regal little lady asked composedly, but with an underglow of anger in her eyes. "He told the court that at the Logan Trial," was the reply. "At the murder trial--he told that?" Mrs. Crozier asked almost mechanically, her face gone pale and a little haggard. "He was obliged to answer when that wolf, Gus Burlingame, was after him," interposed Kitty with kindness in her tone, for, suddenly, she saw through the outer walls of the little wife's being into the inner courts. She saw that Mrs. Crozier loved her husband now, whatever she had done in the past. The sight of love does not beget compassion in a loveless heart, but there was love in Kitty's heart; and it was even greater than she would have wished any human being to see; and by it she saw with radium clearness through the veil of the other woman's being. "Surely he could have avoided answering that," urged Mona Crozier bitterly. "Only by telling a lie," Kitty quickly answered, "and I don't believe he ever told a lie in his life. Come," she added, "I will show you his room. My mother needn't do it, and so she won't be responsible. You have your rights as a wife until they're denied you. You mustn't come, mother," she said to Mrs. Tynan, and she put a tender hand on her arm. "This way," she added to the little person in the pale blue, which suited well her very dark hair, blue eyes, and rose-touched cheeks. CHAPTER XIII KITTY SPEAKS HER MIND AGAIN A moment later they stood inside Shiel Crozier's room. The first glance his wife gave took in the walls, the table, the bureau, and the desk which contained her own unopened letter. She was looking for a photograph of herself. There was none in the room, and an arid look came into her face. The glance and its sequel did not escape Kitty's notice. She knew well--as who would not?--what Mona Crozier was hoping to see, and she was human enough to feel a kind of satisfaction in the wife's chagrin and disappointment; for the unopened letter in the baize-covered desk which she had read was sufficient warrant for a punishment and penalty due the little lady, and not the less because it was so long delayed. Had not Shiel Crozier had his draught of bitter herbs to drink over the past five years? Moreover, Kitty was sure beyond any doubt at all that Shiel Crozier's wife, when she wrote the letter, did not love her husband, or at least did not love him in the right or true way. She loved him only so far as her then selfish nature permitted her to do; only in so far as the pride of money which she had, and her husband had not, did not prevent; only in so far as the nature of a tyrant could love--though the tyranny was pink and white and sweetly perfumed and had the lure of youth. In her primitive way Kitty had intuitively apprehended the main truth, and that was enough to justify her in contributing to Mona Crozier's punishment. Kitty's perceptions were true. At the start, Mona was in nature proportionate to her size; and when she married she had not loved Crozier as he had loved her. Maybe that was why--though he may not have admitted it to himself--he could not bear to be beholden to her when his ruin came. Love makes all things possible, and there is no humiliation in taking from one who loves and is loved, that uncapitalised and communal partnership which is not of the earth earthy. Perhaps that was why, though Shiel loved her, he had had a bitterness which galled his soul; why he had a determination to win sufficient wealth to make himself independent of her. Down at the bottom of his chivalrous Irish heart he had learned the truth, that to be dependent on her would beget in her contempt for him, and he would be only her paid paramour and not her husband in the true sense. Quixotic he had been, but under his quixotism there was at least the shadow of a great tragical fact, and it had made him a matrimonial deserter. Whether tragedy or comedy would emerge was all on the knees of the gods. "It's a nice room, isn't it?" asked Kitty when there had passed from Mona Crozier's eyes the glaze or mist--not of tears, but stupefaction-- which had followed her inspection of the walls, the bureau, the table, and the desk. "Most comfortable, and so very clean--quite spotless," the wife answered admiringly, and yet drearily. It made her feel humiliated that her man could live this narrow life of one room without despair, with sufficient resistance to the lure of her hundred and fifty thousand pounds and her own delicate and charming person. Here, it would seem, he was content. One easy-chair, made out of a barrel, a couch, a bed--a very narrow bed, like a soldier's, a bed for himself alone--a small table, a shelf on the wall with a dozen books, a little table, a bureau, and an old-fashioned, sloping-topped, shallow desk covered with green baize, on high legs, so that like a soldier too he could stand as he wrote (Crozier had made that high stand for the desk himself). That was what the room conveyed to her--the spirit of the soldier, bare, clean, strong, sparse: a workshop and a chamber of sleep in one, like the tent of an officer on the march. After the feeling had come to her, to heighten the sensation she espied a little card hung under the small mirror on the wall. There was writing on it, and going nearer, she saw in red pencil the words, "Courage, soldier!" These were the words which Kitty was so fond of using, and the girl had a thrill of triumph now as she saw the woman from whom Crozier had fled looking at the card. She herself had come and looked at it many times since Crozier had gone, for he had only put it there just before he left on his last expedition to Aspen Vale to carry through his deal. It had brought a great joy to Kitty's heart. It had made her feel that she had some share in his life; that, in a way, she had helped him on the march, the vivandiere who carried the water-bag which would give him drink when parched, battle-worn, or wounded. Mona Crozier turned away from the card, sadly reflecting that nothing in the room recalled herself; that she was not here in the very core of his life in even the smallest way. Yet this girl, this sunny creature with the call of youth and passion in her eyes, this Ruth of the wheat-fields, came and went here as though she was a part of it. She did this and that for him, and she was no doubt on such terms of intimacy with him that they were really part of each other's life in a scheme of domesticity unlike any boarding-house organization she had ever known. Here in everything there was the air, the decorum, and the unartificial comfort of home. This was why he could live without his wedded wife and her gold and her brocade, and the silk and the Persian rugs, and the grand piano and the carriages and the high silk hat from Piccadilly. Her husband had had the luxuries of wealth, and here he was living like a Spartan on his hill-- and alone; though he had a wife whom men had beseiged both before and after marriage. A feeling of impotent indignation suddenly took possession of her. Here he was with two women, unattached,--one interesting and good and agreeable and good-looking, and the other almost a beauty,--who were part of the whole rustic scheme in which he lived. They made him comfortable, they did the hundred things that a valet or a fond wife would do; they no doubt hung on every word he uttered--and he could be interesting beyond most men. She had realised terribly how interesting he was after he had fled; when men came about her and talked to her in many ways, with many variations, but always with the one tune behind all they said; always making for the one goal, whatever the point from which they started or however circuitous their route. As time went on she had hungrily longed to see her husband again, and other men had no power to interest her; but still she had not sought to find him. At first it had been offended pride, injured self-esteem, in which the value of her own desirable self and of her very desirable fortune was not lost; then it became the pride of a wife in whom the spirit of the eternal woman was working; and she would have died rather than have sought to find him. Five years--and not a word from him. Five years--and not a letter from him! Her eyes involuntarily fell on the high desk with the greenbaize top. Of all the letters he had written at that desk not one had been addressed to her. Slowly, and with an unintentional solemnity, she went up to it and laid a hand upon it. Her chin only cleared the edge of it-he was a tall man, her husband. "This is the place of secrets, I suppose?" she said, with a bright smile and an attempt at gaiety to Kitty, who had watched her with burning eyes; for she had felt the thrill of the moment. She was as sensitive to atmosphere of this sad play of life as nearly and as vitally as the deserted wife. "I shouldn't think it a place of secrets," Kitty answered after a moment. "He seldom locks it, and when he does I know where the key is." "Indeed?" Mona Crozier stiffened. A look of reproach came into her eyes. It was as though she was looking down from a great height upon a poor creature who did not know the first rudiments of personal honour, the fine elemental customs of life. Kitty saw and understood, but she did not hasten to reply, or to set things right. She met the lofty look unflinchingly, and she had pride and some little malice too--it would do Mrs. Crozier good, she thought-- in saying, as she looked down on the humming-bird trying to be an eagle: "I've had to get things for him-papers and so on, and send them on when he was away, and even when he was at home I've had to act for him; and so even when it was locked I had to know where the key was. He asked me to help him that way." Mona noted the stress laid upon the word home, and for the first time she had a suspicion that this girl knew more than even the Logan Trial had disclosed, and that she was being satirical and suggestive. "Oh, of course," she returned cheerfully in response to Kitty--"you acted as a kind of clerk for him!" There was a note in her voice which she might better not have used. If she but knew it, she needed this girl's friendship very badly. She ought to have remembered that she would not have been here in her husband's room had it not been for the letter Kitty had written--a letter which had made her heart beat so fast when she received it, that she had sunk helpless to the floor on one of those soft rugs, representing the soft comfort which wealth can bring. The reply was like a slap in the face. "I acted for him in any way at all that he wished me to," Kitty answered, with quiet boldness and shining, defiant face. Mona's hand fell away from the green baize desk, and her eyes again lost their sight for a moment. Kitty was not savage by nature. She had been goaded as much by the thought of the letter Crozier's wife had written to him in the hour of his ruin as by the presence of the woman in this house, where things would never be as they had been before. She had struck hard, and now she was immediately sorry for it: for this woman was here in response to her own appeal; and, after all, she might well be jealous of the fact that Crozier had had close to him for so long and in such conditions a girl like herself, younger than his own wife, and prettier--yes, certainly prettier, she admitted to herself. "He is that kind of a man. What he asked for, any good woman could give and not be sorry," Kitty convincingly added when the knife had gone deep enough. "Yes, he was that kind of a man," responded the other gently now, and with a great sigh of relief. Suddenly she came nearer and touched Kitty's arm. "And thank you for saying so," she added. "He and I have been so long parted, and you have seen so much more of him than I have of late years! You know him better--as he is. If I said something sharp just now, please forgive me. I am--indeed, I am grateful to you and your mother." She paused. It was hard for her to say what she felt she must say, for she did not know how her husband would receive her--he had done without her for so long; and she might need this girl and her mother sorely. The girl was a friend in the best sense, or she would not have sent for her. She must remind herself of this continually lest she should take wrong views. Kitty nodded, but for a moment she did not reply. Her hand was on the baize-covered desk. All at once, with determination in her eyes, she said: "You didn't use him right or you'd not have been parted for five years. You were rich and he was poor, he is poor now, though he may be rich any day, and he wouldn't stay with you because he wouldn't take your money to live on. If you had been a real wife to him he wouldn't have seen that he'd be using your money; he'd have taken it as though it was his own, out of the purse always open and belonging to both, just as though you were partners. You must feel--" "Hush, for pity's sake, hush!" interrupted the other. "You are going to see him again," Kitty persisted. "Now, don't you think it just as well to know what the real truth is?" "How do you know what is the truth?" asked the trembling little stranger with a last attempt to hold her position, to conceal from herself the actual facts. "The Young Doctor and my mother and I were with him all the time he was ill after he was shot, and the Trial had only told half the truth. He wanted us, his best friends here, to know the whole truth, so he told us that he left you because he couldn't bear to live on your money. It was you made him feel that, though he didn't say so. All the time he told his story he spoke of you as though you were some goddess, some great queen--" A look of hope, of wonder, of relief came into the tiny creature's eyes. "He spoke like that of me; he said--?" "He said what no one else would have said, probably; but that's the way with people in love--they see what no one else sees, they think what no one else thinks. He talked with a sort of hush in his voice about you till we thought you must be some stately, tall, splendid Helen of Troy with a soul like an ocean, instead of"--she was going to say something that would have seemed unkind, and she stopped herself in time--"instead of a sort of fairy, one of the little folk that never grow up; the same as my father used to tell me about." "You think very badly of me, then?" returned the other with a sigh. Her courage, her pride, her attempt to control the situation had vanished suddenly, and she became for the moment almost the child she looked. "We've only just begun. We're all his friends here, and we'll judge you and think of you according to what happens between you and him. You wrote him that letter!" She suddenly placed her hand on the desk as the inspiration came to her to have this matter of the letter out now, and to have Mrs. Crozier know exactly what the position was, no matter what might be thought of herself. She was only thinking of Shiel Crozier and his future now. "What letter did I write?" There was real surprise and wonder in her tone. "That last letter you wrote to him--the letter in which you gave him fits for breaking his promise, and talked like a proud, angry angel from the top of the stairs." "How do you know of that letter? He, my husband, told you what was in that letter; he showed it to you?" The voice was indignant, low, and almost rough with anger. "Yes, your husband showed me the letter--unopened." "Unopened--I do not understand." Mona steadied herself against the foot of the bed and looked in a helpless way at Kitty. Her composure was gone, though she was very quiet, and she had that look of a vital absorption which possesses human beings in crises of their lives. Suddenly Kitty took from behind a book on the shelf a key, opened the desk, and drew out the letter which Crozier had kept sealed and unopened all the years, which he had never read. "Do you know that?" Kitty asked, and held it out for Mrs. Crozier to see. Two dark blue eyes stared confusedly at the letter--at her own handwriting. Kitty turned it over. "You see it is closed as it was when you sent it to him. He has never opened it. He does not know what is in it." "He has-kept it--five years--unopened," Mona said in broken phrases scarce above a whisper. "He has never opened it, as you see." "Give--give it to me," the wife said, stepping forward to stay Kitty's hand as she opened the lid of the desk to replace the letter. "It's not your letter--no, you shall not," said Kitty firmly as she jerked aside the hand laid upon her wrist, and threw one arm on the lid, holding it down as Mrs. Crozier tried to keep it open. Then with a swift action of the free hand she locked the desk and put the key in her pocket. "If you destroyed this letter he would never believe but that it was worse than it is; and it is bad enough, Heaven knows, for any woman to have written to her husband--or to any one else's husband. You thought you were the centre of the world when you wrote that letter. Without a penny, he would be a great man, with a great future; but you are only a pretty little woman with a fortune, who has thought a great lot of herself, and far too much of herself only, when she wrote that letter." "How do you know what is in it?" There was agony and challenge at once in the other's voice. "Because I read it--oh, don't look so shocked! I'd do it again. I knew just how to act when I'd read it. I steamed it open and closed it up again. Then I wrote to you. I'm not sorry I did it. My motive was a good one. I wanted to help him. I wanted to understand everything, so that I'd know best what to do. Though he's so far above us in birth and position, he seemed in one way like our own. That's the way it is in new countries like this. We don't think of lots of things that you finer people in the old countries do, and we don't think evil till it trips us up. In a new country all are strangers among the pioneers, and they have to come together. This town is only twenty years old, and scarcely anybody knew each other at the start. We had to take each other on trust, and we think the best as long as we can. Mr. Crozier came to live with us, and soon he was just part of our life--not a boarder; not some one staying the night who paid you what he owed you in the morning. He was a friend you could say your prayers with, or eat your meals with, or ride a hundred miles with, and just take it as a matter of course; for he was part of what you were part of, all this out here--don't you understand?" "I am trying hard to do so," was the reply in a hushed voice. Here was a world, here were people of whom Mona Crozier had never dreamed. They were so much of an antique time--far behind the time that her old land represented; not a new world, but the oldest world of all. She began to understand the girl also, and her face took on a comprehending look, as with eyes like bronze suns Kitty continued: "So, though it was wrong--wicked--in one way, I read the letter, to do some good by it, if it could be done. If I hadn't read it you wouldn't be here. Was it worth while?" At that moment there was a knock at the outer door of the other room, or, rather, on the lintel of it. Mona started. Suppose it was her husband --that was her thought. Kitty read the look. "No, it isn't Mr. Crozier. It's the Young Doctor. I know his knock. Will you come and see him?" The wife was trembling, she was very pale, her eyes were rather staring, but she fought to control herself. It was evident that Kitty expected her to do so. It was also quite certain that Kitty meant to settle things now, in so far as it could be done. "He knows as much as you do?" asked Mrs. Crozier. "No, the Young Doctor hasn't read the letter and I haven't told him what's in it; but he knows that I read it, and what he doesn't know he guesses. He is Mr. Crozier's honest, clever friend. I've got an idea-- an invention to put this thing right. It's a good one. You'll see. But I want the Young Doctor to know about it. He never has to think twice. He knows what to do the very first time." A moment later they were in the other room, with the Young Doctor smiling down at "the little spot of a woman," as he called Crozier's wife. CHAPTER XIV AWAITING THE VERDICT "You look quite settled and at home," the Young Doctor remarked, as he offered Mrs. Crozier a chair. She took it, for never in her life had she felt so small physically since coming to the great, new land. The islands where she was born were in themselves so miniature that the minds of their people, however small, were not made to feel insignificant. But her mind, which was, after all, vastly larger in proportion than the body enshrining it, felt suddenly that both were lost in a universe. Her impulse was to let go and sink into the helplessness of tears, to be overwhelmed by an unconquerable loneliness; but the Celtic courage in her, added to that ancient native pride which prevents one woman from giving way before another woman towards whom she bears jealousy, prevented her from showing the weakness she felt. Instead, it roused her vanity and made her choose to sit down, so disguising perceptibly the disparity of height which gave Kitty an advantage over her and made the Young Doctor like some menacing Polynesian god. Both these people had an influence and authority in Mona Crozier's life which now outweighed the advantage wealth gave her. Her wealth had not kept her husband beside her when delicate and perfumed tyranny began to flutter its banners of control over him. Her fortune had driven him forth when her beauty and her love ought to have kept him close to her, whatever fate might bring to their door, or whatever his misfortune or the catastrophe falling on him. It was all deeply humiliating, and the inward dejection made her now feel that her body was the last effort of a failing creative power. So she sat down instead of standing up in a vain effort at retrieval. The Young Doctor sat down also, but Kitty did not, and in her buoyant youth and command of the situation she seemed Amazonian to Mona's eyes. It must be said for Kitty that she remained standing only because a restlessness had seized her which was not present when she was with Mona in Crozier's room. It was now as though something was going to happen which she must face standing; as though something was coming out of the unknown and forbidding future and was making itself felt before its time. Her eyes were almost painfully bright as she moved about the room doing little things. Presently she began to lay a cloth and place dishes silently on the table--long before the proper time, as her mother reminded her when she entered for a moment and then quickly passed on into the kitchen, at a warning glance from Kitty, which said that the Young Doctor and Mona were not to be disturbed. "Well, Askatoon is a place where one feels at home quickly," added the Young Doctor, as Mona did not at once respond to his first remark. "Every one who comes here always feels as though he--or she--owns the place. It's the way the place is made. The trouble with most of us is that we want to put the feeling into practice and take possession of 'all and sundry.' Isn't that true, Miss Tynan?" "As true as most things you say," retorted Kitty, as she flicked the white tablecloth. "If mother and I hadn't such wonderful good health I suppose you'd come often enough here to give you real possession. Do you know, Mrs. Crozier," she added, with her wistful eyes vainly trying to be merely mischievous, "he once charged me five dollars for torturing me like a Red Indian. I had put my elbow out of joint, and he put it in again with his knee and both hands, as though it was the wheel of a wagon and he was trying to put on the tire." "Well, you were running round soon after," answered the Young Doctor. "But as for the five dollars, I only took it to keep you quiet. So long as you had a grievance you would talk and talk and talk, and you never were so astonished in your life as when I took that five dollars." "I've taken care never to dislocate my elbow since." "No, not your elbow," remarked the Young Doctor meaningly, and turned to Mona, who had now regained her composure. "Well, I shan't call you in to reduce the dislocation--that's the medical term, isn't it?" persisted Kitty, with fire in her eyes. "What is the dislocation?" asked Mona, with a subtle, inquiring look but a manner which conveyed interest. The Young Doctor smiled. "It's only her way of saying that my mind is unhinged and that I ought to be sent to a private hospital for two." "No--only one," returned Kitty. "Marriage means common catastrophe, doesn't it?" he asked quizzically. "Generally it means that one only is permanently injured," replied Kitty, lifting a tumbler and looking through it at him as though to see if the glass was properly polished. Mona was mystified. At first she thought there had been oblique references to her husband, but these remarks about marriage would certainly exclude him. Yet, would they exclude him? During the time in which Shiel's history was not known might there not have been--but no, it could not have been so, for it was Kitty who had sent the letter which had brought her to Askatoon. "Are you to be married--soon?" she asked of Kitty, with a friendly yet trembling smile, for her agitation was, despite appearances, troubling every nerve. "I've thought of it quite lately," responded Kitty calmly, seating herself now and looking straight into the eyes of the woman, who was suggesting more truth than she knew. "May I congratulate you? Am I justified on such slight acquaintance? I am sure you have chosen wisely," was the smooth rejoinder. Kitty did not shrink from looking Mona in the eyes. "It isn't quite time for congratulations yet, and I'm not sure I've chosen wisely. My family very strongly disapproves. I can't help that, of course, and I may have to elope and take the consequences." "It takes two to elope," interposed the Young Doctor, who thought that Kitty, in her humorous extravagance, was treading very dangerous ground indeed. He was thinking of Crozier and Kitty; but Kitty was thinking of Crozier, and meaning John Sibley. Somehow she could not help playing with this torturing thing in the presence of the wife of the man who was the real "man in possession" so far as her life was concerned. "Why, he is waiting on the doorstep," replied Kitty boldly and referring only to John Sibley. At that minute there was the crunch of gravel on the pathway and the sound of a quick footstep. Kitty and Mona were on their feet at once. Both recognised the step of Shiel Crozier. Presently the Young Doctor recognised it also, but he rose with more deliberation. At that instant a voice calling from the road arrested Crozier's advance to the open door of the room where they were. It was Jesse Bulrush asking a question. Crozier paused in his progress, and in the moment's time it gave, Kitty, with a swift look of inquiry and with a burst of the real soul in her, caught the hand of Crozier's wife and pressed it warmly. Then, with a face flushed and eyes that looked straight ahead of her, she left the room as the Young Doctor went to the doorway and stepped outside. Within ten feet of the door he met Crozier. "How goes it, patient?" he said, standing in Crozier's way. Being a man who thought much and wisely for other people, he wanted to give the wife time to get herself in control. "Right enough in your sphere of operations," answered Crozier. "And not so right in other fields, eh?" "I've come back after a fruitless hunt. They've got me, the thieves!" said Crozier, with a look which gave his long face an almost tragic austerity. Then suddenly the look changed, the mediaeval remoteness passed, and a thought flashed up into his eves which made his expression alive with humour. "Isn't it wonderful, that just when a man feels he wants a rope to hang himself with, the rope isn't to be had?" he exclaimed. "Before he can lay his hands on it he wants to hang somebody else, and then he has to pause whether he will or no. Did I ever tell you the story of the old Irishwoman who lived down at Kenmare, in Kerry? Well, she used to sit at her doorway and lament the sorrows of the world with a depth of passion that you'd think never could be assuaged. 'Oh, I fale so bad, I am so wake--oh, I do fale so bad,' she used to say. 'I wish some wan would take me by the ear and lade me round to the ould shebeen, and set me down, and fill a noggen of whusky and make me dhrink it--whether I would or no!' Whether I would or no I have to drink the cup of self-denial," Crozier continued, "though Bradley and his gang have closed every door against me here, and I've come back without what I went for at Aspen Vale, for my men were away. I've come back without what I went for, but I must just grin and bear it." He shrugged his shoulders and gave a great sigh. "Perhaps you'll find what you went for here," returned the Young Doctor meaningly. "There's a lot here--enough to make a man think life worth while"--inside the room the wife shrank at the words, for she could hear all--"but just the same I'm not thinking the thing I went to look for is hereabouts." "You never know your luck," was the reply. "'Ask and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.'" The long face blazed up with humour again. "Do you mean that I haven't asked you yet?" Crozier remarked, with a quizzical look, which had still that faint hope against hope which is a painful thing for a good man's eyes to see. The Young Doctor laid a hand on Crozier's arm. "No, I didn't mean that, patient. I'm in that state when every penny I have is out to keep me from getting a fall. I'm in that Starwhon coal-mine down at Bethbridge, and it's like a suction-pump. I couldn't borrow a thousand dollars myself now. I can't do it, or I'd stand in with you, Crozier. No, I can't help you a bit; but step inside. There's a room in this house where you got back your life by the help of a knife. There's another room in there where you may get back your fortune by the help of a wife." Stepping aside he gave the wondering Crozier a slight push forward into the doorway, then left him and hurried round to the back of the house, where he hoped he might see Kitty. The Young Doctor found Kitty pumping water on a pail of potatoes and stirring them with a broom-handle. "A most unscientific way of cleaning potatoes," he said, as Kitty did not look at him. "If you put them in a trough where the water could run off, the dirt would go with the water, and you would'nt waste time and intelligence, and your fingers would be cleaner in the end." The only reply Kitty made was to flick the broomhead at him. It had been dipped in water, and the spray from it slightly spattered his face. "Will you never grow up?" he exclaimed as he applied a handkerchief to his ruddy face. "I'd like you so much better if you were younger--will you never be young?" she asked. "It makes a man old before his time to have to meet you day by day and live near you." "Why don't you try living with me?" she retorted. "Ah, then, you meant me when you said to Mrs. Crozier that you were going to be married? Wasn't that a bit 'momentary'? as my mother's cook used to remark. I think we haven't 'kept company'--you and I" "It's true you haven't been a beau of mine, but I'd rather marry you than be obliged to live with you," was the paradoxical retort. "You have me this time," he said, trying in vain to solve her reply. Kitty tossed her head. "No, I haven't got you this time, thank Heaven, and I don't want you; but I'd rather marry you than live with you, as I said. Isn't it the custom for really nice-minded people to marry to get rid of each other--for five years, or for ever and ever and ever?" "What a girl you are, Kitty Tynan !" he said reprovingly. He saw that she meant Crozier and his wife. Kitty ceased her work for an instant and, looking away from him into the distance, said: "Three people said those same words to me all in one day a thousand years ago. It was Mr. Crozier, Jesse Bulrush, and my mother; and now you've said it a thousand years after; as with your inexpensive education and slow mind you'd be sure to do." "I have an idea that Mrs. Crozier said the same to you also this very day. Did she--come, did she?" "She didn't say, 'What a girl you are!' but in her mind she probably did say, 'What a vixen!"' The Young Doctor nodded satirically. "If you continued as you began when coming from the station, I'm sure she did; and also I'm sure it wasn't wrong of her to say it." "I wanted her to say it. That's why I uttered the too, too utter-things, as the comic opera says. What else was there to do? I had to help cure her." "To cure her of what, miss?" "Of herself, doctor-man." The Young Doctor's look became graver. He wondered greatly at this young girl's sage instinct and penetration. "Of herself? Ah, yes, to think more of some one else than herself! That is--" "Yes, that is love," Kitty answered, her head bent over the pail and stirring the potatoes hard. "I suppose it is," he answered. "I know it is," she returned. "Is that why you are going to be married?" he asked quizzically. "It will probably cure the man I marry of himself," she retorted. "Oh, neither of us know what we are talking about--let's change the subject!" she added impatiently now, with a change of mood, as she poured the water off the potatoes. There was a moment's silence in which they were both thinking of the same thing. "I wonder how it's all going inside there?" he remarked. "I hope all right, but I have my doubts." "I haven't any doubt at all. It isn't going right," she answered ruefully; "but it has to be made go right." "Whom do you think can do that?" Kitty looked him frankly and decisively in the face. Her eyes had the look of a dreaming pietist for the moment. The deep-sea soul of her was awake. "I can do it if they don't break away altogether at once. I helped her more than you think. I told her I had opened that letter." He gasped. "My dear girl--that letter--you told her you had done such a thing, such--!" "Don't dear girl me, if you please. I know what I am doing. I told her that and a great deal more. She won't leave this house the woman she was yesterday. She is having a quick cure--a cure while you wait." "Perhaps he is cured of her," remarked the Young Doctor very gravely. "No, no, the disease might have got headway, but it didn't," Kitty returned, her face turned away. "He became a little better; but he was never cured. That's the way with a man. He can never forget a woman he has once cared for, and he can go back to her half loving her; but it isn't the case with a woman. There's nothing so dead to a woman as a man when she's cured of him. The woman is never dead to the man, no matter what happens." The Young Doctor regarded her with a strange, new interest and a puzzled surprise. "Sappho--Sappho, how did you come to know these things!" he exclaimed. "You are only a girl at best, or something of a boy-girl at worst, and yet you have, or think you have, got into those places which are reserved for the old-timers in life's scramble. You talk like an ancient dame." Kitty smiled, but her eyes had a slumbering look as if she was half dreaming. "That's the mistake most of you make--men and women. There's such a thing as instinct, and there's such a thing as keeping your eyes open." "What did Mrs. Crozier say when you told her about opening that five- year-old letter? Did she hate you?" Kitty nodded with wistful whimsicality. "For a minute she was like an industrious hornet. Then I made her see she wouldn't have been here at all if I hadn't opened it. That made, her come down from the top of her nest on the church-spire, and she said that, considering my opportunities, I was not such an aboriginal after all." "Now, look you, Saphira, prospective wife of Ananias, she didn't say that, of course. Still, it doesn't matter, does it? The point is, suppose he opens that letter now." "If he does, he'll probably not go with her. It was a letter that would send a man out with a scalping-knife. Still, if Mr. Crozier had his land-deal through he might not read the letter as it really is. His brain wouldn't then be grasping what his eyes saw." "He hasn't got his land-deal through. He told me so just now before he saw her." "Then it's ora pro nobis--it's pray for us hard," rejoined Kitty sorrowfully. "Poor man from Kerry!" At that moment Mrs. Tynan came from the house, her face flushed, her manner slightly agitated. "John Sibley is here, Kitty--with two saddle-horses.... He says you promised to ride with him to-day." "I probably did," responded Kitty calmly. "It's a good day for riding too. But John will have to wait. Please tell him to come back at six o'clock. There'll be plenty of time for an hour's ride before sundown." "Are you lame, dear child?" asked her mother ironically. "Because if you're not, perhaps you'll be your own messenger. It's no way to treat a friend--or whatever you like to call him." Kitty smiled tenderly at her mother. "Then would you mind telling him to come here, mother darling? I'm giving this doctor-man a prescription. Ah, please do what I ask you, mother! It is true about the prescription. It's not for himself; it's for the foreign people quarantined inside." She nodded towards the room where Shiel Crozier and his wife were shaping their fate. As her mother disappeared with a gesture of impatience and the remark that she washed her hands of the whole Sibley business, the Young Doctor said to Kitty, "What is your prescription, Ma'm'selle Saphira? Suppose they come out of quarantine with a clean bill of health?" "If they do that you needn't make up the prescription. But if Aspen Vale hasn't given him what he wanted, then Mr. Shiel Crozier will still be an exile from home and the angel in the house." "What is the prescription? Out with your Sibylline leaves!" "It's in that unopened letter. When the letter is opened you'll see it effervesce like a seidlitz powder." "But suppose I am not here when the letter is opened?" "You must be here-you must. You'll stay now, if you please." "I'm afraid I can't. I have patients waiting." Kitty made an impetuous gesture of command. "There are two patients here who are at the crisis of their disease. You may be wanted to save a life any minute now." "I thought that with your prescription you were to be the AEsculapius." "No, I'm only going to save the reputation of AEsculapius by giving him a prescription got from a quack to give to a goose." "Come, come, no names. You are incorrigible. I believe you'd have your joke on your death-bed." "I should if you were there. I should die laughing," Kitty retorted. "There will be no death-bed for you, miss. You'll be translated--no, that's not right; no one could translate you." "God might--or a man I loved well enough not to marry him." There was a note of emotion in her laugh as she uttered the words. It did not escape the ear of the Young Doctor, who regarded her fixedly for a moment before he said: "I'm not sure that even He would be able to translate you. You speak your own language, and it's surely original. I am only just learning its alphabet. No one else speaks it. I have a fear that you'll be terribly lonely as you travel along the trail, Kitty Tynan." A light of pleasure came into Kitty's eyes, though her face was a little drawn. "You really do think I'm original--that I'm myself and not like anybody else?" she asked him with a childlike eagerness. "Almost more than any one I ever met," answered the Young Doctor gently; for he saw that she had her own great troubles, and he also felt now fully what this comedy or tragedy inside the house meant to her. "But you're terribly lonely--and that's why: because you are the only one of your kind." "No, that's why I'm not going to be lonely," she said, nodding towards the corner of the house where John Sibley appeared. Suddenly, with a gesture of confidence and almost of affection, she laid a hand on the Young Doctor's breast. "I've left the trail, doctor-man. I'm cutting across the prairie. Perhaps I shall reach camp and perhaps I shan't; but anyhow I'll know that I met one good man on the way. And I also saw a resthouse that I'd like to have stayed at, but the blinds were drawn and the door was locked." There was a strange, eerie look in her face again as her eyes of soft umber dwelt on his for a moment; then she turned with a gay smile to John Sibley, who had seen her hand on the Young Doctor's chest without dismay; for the joy of Kitty was that she hid nothing; and, anyhow, the Young Doctor had a place of his own; and also, anyhow, Kitty did what she pleased. Once when she had visited the Coast the Governor had talked to her with great gusto and friendliness; and she had even gone so far as to touch his arm while, chuckling at her whimsically, he listened to a story she told him of life at the rail-head. And the Governor had patted her fingers in quite a fatherly way--or not, as the mind of the observer saw it; while subsequently his secretary had written verses to her. "So you've been gambling again--you've broken your promise to me," she said reprovingly to Sibley, but with that wonderful, wistful laughter in her eyes. Sibley looked at her in astonishment. "Who told you?" he asked. It had only happened the night before, and it didn't seem possible she could know. He was quite right. It wasn't possible she could know, and she didn't know. She only divined. "I knew when you made the promise you couldn't keep it; that's why I forgive you now," she added. "Knowing what I did about you, I oughtn't to have let you make it." The Young Doctor saw in her words a meaning that John Sibley could never have understood, for it was a part of the story of Crozier's life reproduced--and with what a different ending! CHAPTER XV "MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM" When Crozier stepped out of the bright sunlight into the shady living- room of the Tynan home, his eyes were clouded by the memory of his conference with Studd Bradley and his financial associates, and by the desolate feeling that the five years since he had left England had brought him nothing--nothing at all except a new manhood. But that he did not count an asset, because he had not himself taken account of this new capital. He had never been an introspective man in the philosophic sense, and he never had thought that he was of much account. He had lived long on his luck, and nothing had come of it--"nothing at all, at all," as he said to himself when he stepped inside the room where, unknown to him, his wife awaited him. So abstracted was he, so disturbed was his gaze (fixed on the inner thing), that he did not see the figure in blue and white over against the wall, her hand on the big arm-chair once belonging to Tyndall Tynan, and now used always by Shiel Crozier, "the white-haired boy of the Tynan sanatorium," as Jesse Bulrush had called him. There was a strange timidity, and a fear not so strange, in Mona's eyes as she saw her husband enter with that quick step which she had so longingly remembered after he had fled from her; but of which she had taken less account when he was with her at Lammis long ago-When Crozier of Lammis was with her long ago. How tall and shapely he was! How large he loomed with the light behind him! How shadowed his face and how distant the look in his eyes. Somehow the room seemed too small for him, and yet he had lived in this very house for four years and more; he had slept in the next room all that time; had eaten at this table and sat in this very chair--Mrs. Tynan had told her that--for this long time, like the master of a household. With that far-away, brooding look in his face, he seemed in one sense as distant from her as when she was in London in those dreary, desolate years with no knowledge of his whereabouts, a widow in every sense save one; but in her acts--that had to be said for her--a wife always and not a widow. She had not turned elsewhere, though there had been temptation enough to do so. Crozier advanced to the centre of the room, even to the table laid for dinner, before he was conscious of some one in the room, of a figure by the chair. For a moment he stood still, startled as if he had seen a vision, and his sight became blurred. When it cleared, Mona had come a step nearer to him, and then he saw her clearly. He caught his breath as though Life had burst upon him with some staggering revelation. If she had been a woman of genius, as in her way Kitty Tynan was, she would have spoken before he had a chance to do so. Instead, she wished to see how he would greet her, to hear what he would say. She was afraid of him now. It was not her gift to do the right thing by perfect instinct; she had to think things out; and so she did now. Still it has to be said for her that she also had a strange, deep sense of apprehension in the presence of the man whose arms had held her fast, and then let her go for so bitter a length of time, in which her pride was lacerated and her heart brought low. She did not know how she was going to be met now, and a womanly shyness held her back. If she had said one word--his name only--it might have made a world of difference to them both at that moment; for he was tortured by failure, and now when hope was gone, here was the woman whom he had left in order to force gifts from fate to bring himself back to her. "You--you here!" he exclaimed hoarsely. He did not open his arms to her or go a step nearer to her. His look was that of blank amazement, of mingled remembrance and stark realisation. This was a turn of affairs for which he had made no calculation. There had ever been the question of his return to her, but never of her coming to him. Yet here she was, debonnaire and fresh and perfectly appointed--and ah, so terribly neat and spectacularly finessed! Here she was with all that expert formality which, in the old days, had been a reproach to his loosely-swung life and person, to his careless, almost slovenly but well-brushed, cleanly, and polished ease--not like his wife, as though he had been poured out of a mould and set up to dry. He was not tailor-made, and she had ever been so exact that it was as though she had been crystallised, clothes and all--a perfect crystal, yet a crystal. It was this very perfection, so charming to see, but in a sense so inhuman, which had ever dismayed him. "What should I be doing in the home of an angel!" he had exclaimed to himself in the old home at Lammis. Truth is, he ought never to have had such a feeling, and he would not have had it, if she had diffused the radiance of love, which would have made her outer perfectness mere slovenliness beside her inner charm and magnetism. Very little of all this passed through Crozier's mind, as with confused vision he looked at her. He had borne the ordeal of the witness-box in the Logan Trial with superb coolness; he had been in physical danger over and over again, and had kept his head; he had never been faced by a human being who embarrassed him--except his own wife. "There is no fear like that of one's own wife," was the saying of an ancient philosopher, and Crozier had proved it true; not because of errors committed, but because he was as sensitive as a girl of sensibility; because he felt that his wife did not understand him, and he was ever in fear of doing the wrong thing, while eager beyond telling to please her. After all, during the past five years, parted from her while loving her, there had still been a feeling of relief unexplainable to himself in not having to think whether he was pleasing her or not, or to reproach himself constantly that he was failing to conform to her standard. "How did you come--why? How did you know?" he asked helplessly, as she made no motion to come nearer; as she kept looking at him with an expression in her eyes wholly unfamiliar to him. Yet it was not wholly unfamiliar, for it belonged to the days when he courted her, when she seemed to have got nearer to him than in the more intimate relations of married life. "Is--is that all you have to say to me, Shiel?" she asked, with a swelling note of feeling in her voice; while there was also emerging in her look an elusive pride which might quickly become sharp indignation. That her deserter should greet her so after five years of such offence to a woman's self-respect, as might entitle her to become a rebel against matrimony, was too cruel to be borne. This feeling suddenly became alive in her, in spite of a joy in her heart different from that which she had ever known; in defiance of the fact that now that they were together once more, what would she not do to prevent their being driven apart again! "After abandoning me for five years, is that all you have to say to me, Shiel? After I have suffered before the world--" He threw up his arms with a passionate gesture. "The world!" he exclaimed--"the devil take the world! I've been out of it for five years, and well out of it. What do I care for the world!" She drew herself up in a spirit of defence. "It isn't what you care for the world, but I had to live in it--alone, and because I was alone, eyebrows were lifted. It has been easy enough for you. You were where no one knew you. You had your freedom"--she advanced to the table, and, as though unconsciously, he did the same, and they gazed at each other over the white linen and its furnishings--"and no one was saying that your wife had left you for this or that, because of her bad conduct or of yours. Either way it was not what was fair and just; yet I had to bear and suffer, not you. There is no pain like it. There I was in misery and--" A bitter smile came to his lips. "A woman can endure a good deal when she has all life's luxuries in her grasp. Did you ever think, Mona, that a man must suffer when he goes out into a world where he knows no one, penniless, with no trade, no profession, nothing except his own helpless self? He might have stayed behind among the luxuries that belonged to another, and eaten from the hand of his wife's charity, but"--(all the pride and pain of the old situation rose up in him, impelled by the brooding of the years of separation, heightened by the fact that he was no nearer to his goal of financial independence of her than he was when he left London five years before)--"but do you think, no matter what I've done, broken a pledge or not, been in the wrong a thousand times as much as I was, that I'd be fed by the hand of one to whom I had given a pledge and broken it? Do you think that I'd give her the chance to say, or not to say, but only think, 'I forgive you; I will give you your food and clothes and board and bed, but if you are not good in the future, I will be very, very angry with you'? Do you think--?" His face was flaming now. The pent-up flood of remorse and resentment and pride and love--the love that tore itself in pieces because it had not the pride and self-respect which independence as to money gives-- broke forth in him, fresh as he was from a brutal interview with the financial clique whom he had given the chance to make much money, and who were now, for a few thousand dollars, trying to cudgel him out of his one opportunity to regain his place in his lost world. "I live--I live like this," he continued, with a gesture that embraced the room where they were, "and I have one room to myself where I have lived over four years"--he pointed towards it. "Do you think I would choose this and all it means--its poverty and its crudeness, its distance from all I ever had and all my people had, if I could have stood the other thing--a pauper taking pennies from his own wife? I had had taste enough of it while I had a little something left; but when I lost everything on Flamingo, and I was a beggar, I knew I could not stand the whole thing. I could not, would not, go under the poor-law and accept you, with the lash of a broken pledge in your hand, as my guardian. So that's why I left, and that's why I stay here, and that's why I'm going to stay here, Mona." He looked at her firmly, though his face had that illumination which the spirit in his eyes--the Celtic fire drawn through the veins of his ancestors--gave to all he did and felt; and now as in a dream he saw little things in her he had never seen before. He saw that a little strand of her beautiful dark hair had broken away from its ordered place and hung prettily against the rosy, fevered skin of her cheek just beside her ear. He saw that there were no rings on her fingers save one, and that was her wedding-ring--and she had always been fond of wearing rings. He noted, involuntarily, that in her agitation the white tulle at her bosom had been disturbed into pretty disarray, and that there was neither brooch nor necklace at her breast or throat. "If you stay, I am going to stay too," she declared in an almost passionate voice, and she spoke with deliberation and a look which left no way open to doubt. She was now a valiant little figure making a fight for happiness. "I can't prevent that," he responded stubbornly. She made a quick, appealing motion of her hands. "Would you prevent it? Aren't you glad to see me? Don't you love me any more? You used to love me. In spite of all, you used to love me. Even though you hated my money, and I hated your gambling--your betting on horses. You used to love me--I was sure you did then. Don't you love me now, Shiel?" A gloomy look passed over his face. Memory of other days was admonishing him. "What is the good of one loving when the other doesn't? And, anyhow, I made up my mind five years ago that I would not live on my wife. I haven't done so, and I don't mean to 'do so. I don't mean to take a penny of your money. I should curse it to damnation if I was living on it. I'm not, and I don't mean to do so." "Then I'll stay here and work too, without it," she urged, with a light in her eyes which they had never known. He laughed mirthlessly. "What could you do--you never did a day's work in your life!" "You could teach me how, Shiel." His jaw jerked in a way it had when he was incredulous. "You used to say I was only--mark you, only a dreamer and a sportsman. Well, I'm no longer a dreamer and a sportsman; I'm a practical man. I've done with dreaming and sportsmanship. I can look at a situation as it is, and--" "You are dreaming--but yes, you are dreaming still," she interjected. "And you are a sportsman still, but it is the sport of a dreamer, and a mad dreamer too. Shiel, in spite of all my faults in the past, I come to you, to stay with you, to live on what you earn if you like, if it's only a loaf of bread a day. I--I don't care about my money. I don't care about the luxuries which money can buy; I can do without them if I have you. Am I not to stay, and won't you--won't you kiss me, Shiel?" She came close to him-came round the table till she stood within a few feet of him. There was one trembling instant when he would have taken her hungrily into his arms, but as if some evil spirit interposed with malign purpose, there came the sound of feet on the gravel outside, and the figure of a man darkened the doorway. It was Augustus Burlingame, whose face as he saw Mona Crozier took on an ironical smile. "Yes--what do you want?" inquired Crozier quietly. "A few words with Mr. Crozier on business, if he is not too much occupied?" "What business?" "I am acting for Messrs. Bradley, Willingden, Baxter, & Simmons." The cloud darkened on Crozier's face. His lips tightened, his face hardened. "I will see you in a moment--wait outside, please," he added, as Burlingame made as though to step inside. "Wait at the gate," he added quietly, but with undisguised contempt. The moment of moments for Mona and himself had passed. All the bitterness of defeat was on him again. All the humiliation of undeserved failure to accomplish what had been the dear desire of five years bore down his spirit now. Suddenly he had a suspicion that his wife had received information of his whereabouts from this very man, Burlingame. Had not the Young Doctor said that Burlingame had written to lawyers in the old land to get information concerning him? Was it not more than likely that he had given his wife the knowledge which had brought her here? When Burlingame had disappeared he turned to Mona. "Who told you I was here? Who wrote to you?" he asked darkly. The light had died away from his face. It was ascetic in its lonely gravity now. "Your doctor cabled to Castlegarry and Miss Tynan wrote to me." A faint flush spread over Crozier's face. "How did Miss Tynan know where to write?" Mona had told the truth at once because she felt it was the only way. Now, however, she was in a position where she must either tell him that Kitty had opened that still sealed letter from herself to him which he had carried all these years, or else tell him an untruth. She had no right to tell him what Kitty had confided to her. There was no other way save to lie. "How should I know? It was enough for me to get her letter," she replied. "At Castlegarry?" What was there to do? She must keep faith with Kitty, who had given her this sight of her husband again. "Forwarded from Lammis," she said. "It reached me before the doctor's cable." So it was Kitty--Kitty Tynan-who had brought his wife to this new home from which he had been trying so hard to get back to the old home. Kitty, the angel of the house. "You wrote me a letter which drove me from home," he said heavily. "No--no--no," she protested. "It was not that. I know it was not that. It was my money--it was that which drove you away. You have just said so." "You wrote me a hateful letter," he persisted. "You didn't want to see me. You sent it to me by your sweet, young brother." Her eyes flashed. "My letter did not drive you away. It couldn't have. You went because you did not love me. It was that and my money, not the letter, not the letter." Somehow she had a curious feeling that the very letter which contained her bitter and hateful reproaches might save her yet. The fact that he had not opened it--well, she must see Kitty again. Her husband was in a dark mood. She must wait. She knew that her fortunate moment had passed when the rogue Burlingame appeared. She must wait for another. "Shall I go now? You want to see that man outside. Shall I go, Shiel?" She was very pale, very quiet, steady and gentle. "I must hear what that fellow has to say. It is business--important," he replied. "It may mean anything--everything, or nothing." As she left the room he had an impulse to call her back, but he conquered it. CHAPTER XVI "'TWAS FOR YOUR PLEASURE YOU CAME HERE, YOU SHALL GO BACK FOR MINE" For a moment Crozier stood looking at the closed doorway through which Mona had gone, with a look of repentant affection in his eyes; but as the thought of his own helpless insolvency and broken hopes flashed across his mind, a look of dark and harassed reflection shadowed his face. He turned to the front doorway with a savage gesture. The mutilated dignity of his manhood, the broken pride of a lifetime, the bitterness in his heart need not be held in check in dealing with the man who waited to give him a last thrust of enmity. He left the house. Burlingame was seated on the stump of a tree which had been made into a seat. "Come to my room if you have business with me," Crozier said sharply. As they went, Crozier swung aside from the front door towards the corner of the house. "The back way?" asked Burlingame with a sneer. "The old familiar way to you," was the smarting reply. "In any case, you are not welcome in Mrs. Tynan's part of the house. My room is my own, however, and I should prefer you within four walls while doing business with you." Burlingame's face changed colour slightly, for the tone of Crozier's voice, the grimness of his manner, suggested an abnormal condition. Burlingame was not a brave man physically. He had never lived the outdoor life, though he had lived so much among outdoor people. He was that rare thing in a new land, a decadent, a connoisseur in vice, a lover of opiates and of liquor. He was young enough yet not to be incapacitated by it. His face and hands were white and a little flabby, and he wore his hair rather long, which, it is said, accounts for the weakness of some men, on the assumption that long hair wastes the strength. But Burlingame quickly remembered the attitude of the lady-- Crozier's wife, he was certain--and of Crozier in the dining-room a few moments before, and to his suspicious eyes it was not characteristic of a happy family party. No doubt this grimness of Crozier was due to domestic trouble and not wholly to his own presence. Still, he felt softly for the tiny pistol he always carried in his big waistcoat pocket, and it comforted him. Beyond the corner of the house Crozier paused and took a key from his pocket. It opened a side door to his own room, seldom used, since it was always so pleasant in this happy home to go through the main living-room, which every one liked so much that, though it was not the dining-room, it was generally used as such, and though it was not the parlour, it was its frequent substitute. Opening the door, Crozier stepped aside to let Burlingame pass. It was two years since Burlingame had been in this room, and then he had entered it without invitation. His inquisitiveness had led him to explore it with no good intent when he lived in the house. Entering now, he gave it quick scrutiny. It was clear he was looking for something in particular. He was, in fact, searching for signs of its occupancy by another than Shiel Crozier--tokens of a woman's presence. There was, however, no sign at all of that, though there were signs of a woman's care and attention in a number of little things--homelike, solicitous, perhaps affectionate care and attention. Certainly the spotless pillows, the pretty curtains, the pincushion, and charmingly valanced bed and shelves, cheap though the material was, showed a woman's very friendly care. When he lived in that house there were no such little attentions paid to him! It was his experience that where such attentions went something else went with them. A sensualist himself, it was not conceivable to him that men and women could be under the same roof without "passages of sympathetic friendship and tokens of affinity." That was a phrase he had frequently used when pursuing his own sort of happiness. His swift scrutiny showed that Crozier's wife had no habitation here, and that gave him his cue for what the French call "the reconstruction of the crime." It certainly was clear that, as he had suggested at the Logan Trial, there was serious trouble in the Crozier family of two, and the offender must naturally be the man who had flown, not the woman who had stayed. Here was circumstantial evidence. His suggestive glance, the look in his eyes, did not escape Crozier, who read it all aright; and a primitive expression of natural antipathy passed across his mediaeval face, making it almost inquisitorial. "Will you care to sit?" he said, however, with the courtesy he could never avoid; and he pointed to a chair beside the little table in the centre of the room. As Burlingame sat down he noticed on the table a crumpled handkerchief. It had lettering in the corner. He spread it out slightly with his fingers, as though abstractedly thinking of what he was about to say. The initial in the corner was K. Kitty had left it on the table while she was talking to Mrs. Crozier a halfhour before. Whatever Burlingame actually thought or believed, he could not now resist picking up the handkerchief and looking at it with a mocking smile. It was too good a chance to waste. He still hugged to his evil heart the humiliating remembrance of his expulsion from this house, the share Crozier had had in it, and the things which Crozier had said to him then. He had his enemy now between the upper and the nether mill-stones, and he meant to grind him to the flour of utter abasement. It was clear that the arrival of Mrs. Crozier had brought him no relief, for Crozier's face was not that of a man who had found and opened a casket of good fortune. "Rather dangerous that, in the bedroom of a family man," he said, picking up the handkerchief and looking suggestively from the lettering in the corner to Crozier. He laid it down again, smiling detestably. Crozier calmly picked up the handkerchief, saw the lettering, then went quietly to the door of the room and called Mrs. Tynan's name. Presently she appeared. Crozier beckoned her into the room. When she entered, he closed the door behind her. "Mrs. Tynan," he said, "this fellow found your daughter's handkerchief on my table, and he has said regarding it, 'Rather dangerous that, in the bedroom of a family man.' What would you like me to do with him?" Mrs. Tynan walked up to Burlingame with the look of a woman of the Commune and said: "If I had a son I would disown him if he didn't mangle you till your wife would never know you again, you loathesome thing. There isn't a man or woman in Askatoon who'd believe your sickening slanders, for every one knows what you are. How dare you enter this house? If the men of Askatoon had any manhood in them they would tar- and-feather you. My girl is as good as any girl that ever lived, and you know it. Now go out of here--now!" Crozier intervened quietly. "Mrs. Tynan, I asked him in here because it is my room. I have some business with him. When it is over, then he shall go, and we will fumigate the place. As for the tar-and-feathers, you might leave that to me. I think I can arrange it. "I'll turn the hose on him as he goes out, if you don't mind," the irate mother exclaimed as she left the room. Crozier nodded. "Well, that would be appropriate, Mrs. Tynan, but it wouldn't cleanse him. He is the original leopard whose spots are there for ever." By this time Burlingame was on his feet, and a look of craft and fear and ugly meaning was in his face. Morally he was a coward, physically he was a coward, but he had in his pocket a weapon which gave him a feeling of superiority in the situation; and after a night of extreme self- indulgence he was in a state of irritation of the nerves which gave him what the searchers after excuses for ungoverned instincts and acts call "brain-storms." He had had sense enough to know that his amorous escapades would get him into trouble one day, and he had always carried the little pistol which was now so convenient to his hand. It gave him a fictitious courage which he would not have had unarmed against almost any man--or woman--in Askatoon. "You get a woman to do your fighting for you," he said hatefully. "You have to drag her in. It was you I meant to challenge, not the poor girl young enough to be your daughter." His hand went to his waistcoat pocket. Crozier saw and understood. Suddenly Crozier's eyes blazed. The abnormal in him--the Celtic strain always at variance with the normal, an almost ultra-natural attendant of it awoke like a tempest in the tropics. His face became transformed, alive with a passion uncanny in its recklessness and purpose. It was a brain-storm indeed, but it had behind it a normal power, a moral force which was not to be resisted. "None of your sickly melodrama here. Take out of your pocket the pistol you carry and give it to me," Crozier growled. "You are not to be trusted. The habit of thinking you would shoot somebody some time-- somebody you had injured--might become too much for you to-day, and then I should have to kill you, and for your wife's sake I don't want to do that. I always feel sorry for a woman with a husband like you. You could never shoot me. You couldn't be quick enough, but you might try. Then I should end you, and there'd be another trial; but the lawyer who defended me would not have to cross-examine any witness about your character. It is too well-known, Burlingame. Out with it--the pistol!" he added, standing menacingly over the other. In a kind of stupor, under the storm that was breaking above him, Burlingame slowly drew out of a capacious waistcoat pocket a tiny but powerful pistol of the most modern make. "Put it in my hand," insisted Crozier, his eyes on the other's. The flabby hand laid the weapon in Crozier's lean and strenuous fingers. Crozier calmly withdrew the cartridges and then tossed the weapon back on the table. "Now we have equality of opportunity," he remarked quietly. "If you think you would like to repeat any slander that's slid off your foul tongue, do it now; and in a moment or two Mrs. Tynan can turn the hose on the floor of this room." "I want to get to business," said Burlingame sullenly, as he took from his pocket a paper. Crozier nodded. "I can imagine your haste," he remarked. "You need all the fees you can get to pay Belle Bingley's bills." Burlingame did not wince. He made no reply to the challenge that he was the chief supporter of a certain wanton thereabouts. "The time for your option to take ten thousand dollars' worth of shares in the syndicate is up," he said; "and I am instructed to inform you that Messrs. Bradley, Willingden, Baxter, & Simmons propose to take over your unpaid shares and to complete the transaction without you." "Who informed Messrs. Bradley, Willingden, Baxter, & Simmons that I am not prepared to pay for my shares?" asked Crozier sharply. "The time is up," surlily replied Burlingame. "It is assumed you can't take up your shares, and that you don't want to do so. The time us up," he added emphatically, and he tapped the paper spread before him on the table. Crozier's eyes half closed in an access of stubbornness and hatred. "You are not to assume anything whatever," he declared. "You are to accommodate yourself to actual facts. The time is not up. It is not up till midnight, and any action taken before then on any other assumption will give grounds for damages." Crozier spoke without passion and with a coldblooded insistence not lost on Burlingame. Taking down a calendar from the wall, he laid it beside the paper on the table before the too eager lawyer. "Examine the dates," he said. "At twelve o'clock tonight Messrs. Bradley, Willingden, Baxter, & Simmons are free to act, if the money is not at the disposal of the syndicate by then; but till then my option is indefeasible. Does that meet the case or not?" "It meets the case," said Burlingame in a morose voice, rising. "If you can produce the money before the stroke of midnight, why can't you produce it now? What's the use of bluffing! It can't do any good in the end. Your credit--" "My credit has been stopped by your friends," interrupted Crozier, "but my resources are current." "Midnight is not far off," viciously remarked Burlingame as he made for the door. Crozier intercepted him. "One word with you on another business before you go," he said. "The tar-and-feathers for which Mrs. Tynan asks will be yours at any moment I raise my hand in Askatoon. There are enough women alone who would do it." "Talk of that after midnight," sneered Burlingame desperately as the door was opened for him by Crozier. "Better not go out by the front gate," remarked Crozier scornfully. "Mrs. Tynan is a woman of her word, and the hose is handy." A moment later, with contemptuous satisfaction, he saw Burlingame climb the picket-fence at the side of the house. Turning back into the room, he threw up his arms. "Midnight--midnight-- my God, where am I to get the money! I must--I must have it . . . It's the only way back." Sitting down at the table, he dropped his head into his hands and shut his eyes in utter dejection. "Mona--by Heaven, no, I'll never take it from her!" he said once, and clenched his hands at his temples and sat on and on unmoving. CHAPTER XVII WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT? For a full half-hour Crozier sat buried in dark reflection, then he slowly raised his head, and for a minute looked round dazedly. His absorption had been so great that for a moment he was like one who had awakened upon unfamiliar things. As when in a dream of the night the history of years will flash past like a ray of light, so for the bad half-hour in which Crozier had given himself up to despair, his mind had travelled through an incongruous series of incidents of his past life, and had also revealed pictures of solution after solution of his present troubles. He had that-gift of visualization which makes life an endless procession of pictures which allure, or which wear the nature into premature old age. The last picture flashing before his eyes, as he sat there alone, was of himself and his elder brother, Garnett, now master of Castlegarry, racing ponies to reach the lodge-gates before they closed for the night, after a day of disobedience and truancy. He remembered how Garnett had given him the better pony of the two, so that the younger brother, who would be more heavily punished if they were locked out, should have the better chance. Garnett, if odd in manner and character, had always been a true sportsman though not a lover of sport. If--if--why had he never thought of Garnett? Garnett could help him, and he would do so. He would let Garnett stand in with him--take one-third of his profits from the syndicate. Yes, he must ask Garnett to see him through. Then it was that he lifted his head from his hands, and his mind awakened out of a dream as real as though he had actually been asleep. Garnett--alas! Garnett was thousands of miles away, and he had not heard from him for five years. Still, he knew the master of Castlegarry was alive, for he had seen him mentioned in a chance number of The Morning Post lately come to his hands. What avail! Garnett was at Castlegarry, and at midnight his chance of fortune and a new life would be gone. Then, penniless, he would have to face Mona again; and what would come of that he could not see, would not try to see. There was an alternative he would not attempt to face until after midnight, when this crisis in his life would be over. Beyond midnight was a darkness which he would not now try to pierce. As his eyes again became used to his surroundings, a look of determination, the determination of the true gambler, came into his face. The real gambler never throws up the sponge till all is gone; never gives up till after the last toss of the last penny of cash or credit; for he has seen such innumerable times the thing come right and good fortune extend a friendly hand with the last hazard of all. Suddenly he remembered--saw--a scene in the gambling rooms at Monte Carlo on the only visit he had ever paid to the place. He had played constantly, and had won more or less each day. Then his fortune turned and he lost and lost each day. At last, one evening, he walked up to a table and said to the croupier, "When was zero up last?" The croupier answered, "Not for an hour." Forthwith he began to stake on zero and on nothing else. For two hours he put his louis at each turn of the wheel on the Lonely Nought. For two hours he lost. Increasing his stake, which had begun at five francs and had risen at length to five louis, he still coaxed the sardonic deity. Finally midnight came, and he was the only person playing at the table. All others had gone or had ceased to play. These stayed to watch the "mad Inglesi," as a foreigner called him, knocking his head against the foot stool of an unresponsive god of chance. The croupiers watched also with somewhat disdainful, somewhat pitying interest, this last representative of a class who have an insane notion that the law of chances is in their favour if they can but stay the course. And how often had they seen the stubborn challenger of a black demon, who would not appear according to the law of chances, leave the table ruined for ever! Smiling, Crozier had played on till he had but ten louis left. Counting them over with cheerful exactness, he rose up, lit a cigarette, placed the ten louis on the fatal spot with cynical precision, and with a gay smile kissed his hand to the refractory Nothing and said, "You've got it all, Zero-good-night! Goodnight, Zero!" Then he had buttoned his coat and turned away to seek the cool air of the Mediterranean. He had gone but a step or two, his head half gaily turned to the table where the dwindling onlookers stood watching the wheel spin round, when suddenly the croupier's cry of "Zero!" fell upon his ears. With cheerful nonchalance he had come back to the table and picked up the many louis he had won--won by his last throw and with his last available coin. As the scene passed before him now he got to his feet and, with that look of the visionary in his eyes, which those only know who have watched the born gamester, said, "I'll back my hand till the last throw." Then it was, as his eyes gazed in front of him dreamily, he saw the card on his mirror bearing the words, "Courage, soldier!" With a deepening flame in his eyes he went over and gazed at it. At length he reached out and touched the writing with a caressing finger. "Kitty--Kitty, how great you are!" he said. Then as he turned to the outer door a softness came into his face, stole up into his brilliant eyes and dimmed them with a tear. "What a hand to hold in the dark--the dark of life!" he said aloud. "Courage, soldier!" he added, as he opened the door by which he had entered, through which Burlingame had gone, and strode away towards the town of Askatoon, feeling somehow in his heart that before midnight his luck would turn. From the dining-room Kitty had watched him go. "Courage, soldier!" she whispered after him, and she laughed; but almost immediately she threw her head up with a gasping sigh, and when it was lowered again two tears were stealing down her cheeks. With an effort she conquered herself, wiped away the tears, and said aloud, with a whimsical but none the less pitiful self-reproach, "Kitty- Kitty Tynan, what a fool you are!" Entering the room Crozier had left, she went to the desk with the green- baize top, opened it, and took out the fateful letter which Mona Crozier had written to her husband five years ago. Putting it into her pocket she returned to the dining-room. She stood there for a moment with her chin in her hands and deep reflection in her eyes, and then, going to the door of her mother's sitting-room, she opened it and beckoned. A moment later Mrs. Crozier and the Young Doctor entered the dining-room and sat down at a motion from her. Presently she said: "Mrs. Crozier, I have here the letter your husband received from you five years ago in London." Mrs. Crozier flushed. She had been masterful by nature and she had had her way very much in life. To be dominated in the most intimate things of her life by this girl was not easy to be borne; but she realised that Kitty had been a friend indeed, even if not conventional. In response to Kitty's remark now she inclined her head. "Well, you have told us that you and your husband haven't made it up. That is so, isn't it?" Kitty continued. "If you wish to put it that way," answered Mona, stiffening a little in spite of herself. "P'r'aps I don't put it very well, but it is the stony fact, isn't it, Mrs. Crozier?" Mona hesitated a moment, then answered: "He is very upset concerning the land syndicate, and he has a quixotic idea that he cannot take money from me to help him carry it through." "I don't quite know what quixotic means," rejoined Kitty dryly. "If it wasn't understood while you lived together that what was one's was the other's, that it was all in one purse, and that you shut your eyes to the name on the purse and took as you wanted, I don't see how you could expect him, after your five years' desertion, to take money from you now." "My five years' desertion!" exclaimed Mona. Surely this girl was more than reckless in her talk. Kitty was not to be put down. "If you don't mind plain speaking, he was always with you, but you weren't always with him in those days. This letter showed that." She tapped it on her thumb-nail. "It was only when he had gone and you saw what you had lost, that you came back to him--in heart, I mean. Well, if you didn't go away with him when he went, and you wouldn't have gone unless he had ordered you to go--and he wouldn't do that--it's clear you deserted him, since you did that which drove him from home, and you stayed there instead of going with him. I've worked it out, and it is certain you deserted him five years ago. Desertion does't mean a sea of water between, it means an ocean of self-will and love-me-first between. If you hadn't deserted him, as this letter shows, he wouldn't have been here. I expect he told you so; and if he did, what did you say to him?" The Young Doctor's eyes were full of decorous mirth and apprehension, for such logic and such impudence as Kitty's was like none he had ever heard. Yet it was commanding too. Kitty caught the look in his eyes and blazed up. "Isn't what I said correct? Isn't it all true and logical? And if it is, why do you sit there looking so superior?" The Young Doctor made a gesture of deprecating apology. "It's all true, and it's logical, too, if you stand on your head when you think it. But whether it is logical or not, it is your conclusion, and as you've taken the thing in hand to set it right, it is up to you now. We can only hold hard and wait." With a shrug of her graceful shoulders Kitty turned again to Mrs. Crozier, who intervened hastily, saying, "I did not have a chance of saying to him all I wished. Of course he could not take my money, but there was his own money! I was going to tell him about that, but just then the lawyer, Mr. Burlingame--" "They all call him 'Gus' Burlingame. He doesn't get the civility of Mr. here in Askatoon," interposed Kitty. Mona made an impatient gesture. "If you will listen, I want to tell you about Mr. Crozier's money. He thinks he has no money, but he has. He has a good deal." She paused, and the Young Doctor and Kitty leaned forward eagerly. "Well, but go on," said Kitty. "If he has money he must have it to-day, and now. Certainly he doesn't know of it. He thinks he is broke,--dead broke,--and there'd be a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for him if he could put up ten thousand dollars to-night. If I were you I wouldn't hide it from him any longer." Mona got to her feet in anger. "If you would give me a chance to explain, I would do so," she said, her lips trembling. "Unfortunately, I am in your hands, but please give me credit for some intelligence--and some heart. In any case I shall not be bullied." The Young Doctor almost laughed outright, despite the danger of the situation. He was not prepared for Kitty's reply and the impulsive act that marched with it. In an instant Kitty had caught Mona Crozier's hand and pressed it warmly. "I was only doing what I've seen lawyers do," she said eagerly. "I've got something that I want you to do, and I've been trying to work up to it. That's all. I'm not as mean and bad mannered as you think me. I really do care what happens to him--to you both," she hastened to add. Struggling to keep back her tears, and in a low voice, Mona rejoined: "I meant to have told him what I'm going to tell you now. I couldn't say anything about the money belonging to him till I had told him how it came to be his." After a moment' pause she continued: "He told you all about the race which Flamingo lost, and about that letter." She pointed to the letter which Kitty still carried in her hand. "Well, that letter was written under the sting of bitter disappointment. I was vain. I was young. I did not understand as I do now. If you were not such good friends-- of his--I could not tell you this. It seemed to me that by breaking his pledge he showed he did not care for me; that he thought he could break a sacred pledge to me, and it didn't matter. I thought it was treating me lightly--to do it so soon after the pledge was given. I was indignant. I felt we weren't as we might be, and I felt, too, that I must be at fault; but I was so proud that I didn't want to admit it, I suppose, when he did give me a grievance. It was all so mixed. I was shocked at his breaking his pledge, I was so vexed that our marriage hadn't been the success it might have been, and I think I was a little mad." "That is not the monopoly of only one of your sex," interposed the Young Doctor dryly. "If I were you I wouldn't apologise for it. You speak to a sister in like distress." Kitty's eyes flamed up, but she turned her head, as though some licensed libertine of speech had had his say, and looked with friendly eyes at Mona. "Yes, yes--please go on," she urged. "When I wrote that letter I had forgotten what I had done the day before the race. I had gone into my husband's room to find some things I needed from the drawer of his dressing-table; and far at the back of a drawer I found a crumpled-up roll of ten-pound notes. It was fifty pounds altogether. I took the notes--" She paused a moment, and the room became very still. Both her listeners were sure that they were nearing a thing of deep importance. In a lower voice Mona continued: "I don't know what possessed me, but perhaps it was that the things he did of which I disapproved most had got a hold on me in spite of myself. I said to myself: 'I am going to the Derby. I will take the fifty pounds, and I'll put it on a horse for Shiel.' He had talked so much to my brother about Flamingo, and I had seen him go wrong so often, that I had a feeling if I put it on a horse that Shiel particularly banned, it would probably win. He had been wrong nearly every time for two years. It was his money, and if it won, it would make him happy; and if it didn't win, well, he didn't know the money existed--I was sure of that; and, anyhow, I could replace it. I put it on a horse he condemned utterly, but of which one or two people spoke well. You know what happened to Flamingo. While at Epsom I heard from friends that Shiel was present at the race, though he had said he would not go. Later I learned that he had lost heavily. Then I saw him in the distance paying out money and giving bills to the bookmakers. It made me very angry. I don't think I was quite sane. Most women are like that at times." "As I said," remarked the Young Doctor, his face mirthfully alive. Here was a situation indeed. "So I wrote him that letter," Mona went on. "I had forgotten all about the money I put on the outsider which won the race. As you know, I was called away to my sick sister that evening, and the money I won with Shiel's fifty pounds was not paid to me till after Shiel had gone." "How much was it?" asked Kitty breathlessly. "Four thousand pounds." Kitty exclaimed so loudly that she smothered her mouth with a hand. "Why, he only needs for the syndicate two thousand pounds--ten thousand dollars," she said excitedly. "But what's the good of it, if he can't lay his hand on it by midnight to-night!" "He can do so," was Mona's quick reply. "I was going to tell him that, but the lawyer came, and--" Kitty sprang up and down in excitement. "I had a plan. It might have worked without this. It was the only way then. But this makes it sure --yes, most beautifully sure. It shows that the thing to do is to follow your convictions. You say you actually have the money, Mrs. Crozier?" Mona took from her pocket an envelope, and out of it she drew four Bank of England notes. "Here it is--here are four one-thousand-pound notes. I had it paid to me that way five years ago, and here--here it is," she added, with almost a touch of hysteria in her voice, for the excitement of it all acted on her like an electric storm. "Well, we'll get to work at once," declared Kitty, looking at the notes admiringly, then taking them from Mona and smoothing them out with tender firmness. "It's just the luck of the wide world, as my father used to say. It actually is. Now you see," she continued, "it's like this. That letter you wrote him"--she addressed herself to Mona--"it has to be changed. You have got to rewrite it, and you must put into it these four bank-notes. Then when you see him again you must have that letter opened at exactly the right moment, and--oh, I wonder if you will do it exactly right!" she added dubiously to Mona. "You don't play your game very well, and it's just possible that, even now, with all the cards in your hands, you will throw them away as you did in the past. I wish that--" Seeing Mona's agitation changing to choler, the Young Doctor intervened. He did not know Kitty was purposely stinging Crozier's unhappy little consort, so that she should be put upon her mettle to do the thing without bungling. "You can trust Mrs. Crozier to act carefully; but what exactly do you mean? I judge that Mrs. Crozier does not see more distinctly than I do," he remarked inquiringly to Kitty, and with admonishment in tone and emphasis. "No, I do not understand quite--will you explain?" interposed Mona with inner resentment at being managed, but feeling that she could not do without Kitty even if she would. "As I said," continued Kitty, "I will open that letter, and you will put in another letter and these bank-notes; and when he repeats what he said about the way you felt and wrote when he broke his pledge, you can blaze up and tell him to open the letter. Then he will be so sorry that he'll get down on his knees, and you will be happy ever after." "But it will be a fraud, and dishonest and dishonourable," protested Mona. Kitty almost sniffed, but she was too agitated to be scornful. "Just leave that to me, please. It won't make me a bit more dishonourable to open the letter again--I've opened it once, and I don't feel any the worse for it. I have no conscience, and things don't weigh on my mind at all. I'm a light-minded person." Looking closely at her, the Young Doctor got a still further insight into the mind and soul of this prairie girl, who used a lid of irony to cover a well of deep feeling. Things did not weigh on her mind! He was sure that pain to the wife of Shiel Crozier would be mortal torture to Kitty Tynan. "But I felt exactly what I wrote that Derby Day when he broke his pledge, and he ought to know me exactly as I was," urged Mona. "I don't want to deceive him, to appear a bit better than I am." "Oh, you'd rather lose him!" said Kitty almost savagely. "Knowing how hard it is to keep a man under the best circumstances, you'd willingly make the circumstances as bad as they can be--is that it? Besides, weren't you sorry afterwards that you wrote that letter?" "Yes, yes, desperately sorry." "And you wished often that your real self had written on Derby Day and not the scratch-cat you were then?" Mona flushed, but answered bravely, "Yes, a thousand times." "What business had you to show him your cat-self, your unreal, not your real self on Derby Day five years ago? Wasn't it your duty to show him your real self?" Mona nodded helplessly. "Yes, I know it was." "Then isn't it your duty to see that your real self speaks in that letter now?" "I want him to know me exactly as I am, and then--" Kitty made a passionate gesture. Was ever such an uncomprehending woman as this diamond-button of a wife? "And then you would be unhappy ever after instead of being happy ever after. What is the good of prejudicing your husband against you by telling the unnecessary truth. He is desperate, and besides, he has been away from you for five years, and we all change somehow--particularly men, when there are so many women in the world, and very pretty women of all ages and kinds and colours and tastes, and dazzling, deceitful hussies too. It isn't wise for any woman to let her husband or any one at all see her exactly as she is; and only the silly ones do it. They tell what they think is the truth about their own wickedness, and it isn't the truth at all, because I suppose women don't know how to tell the exact truth; and they can be just as unfair to themselves as they are to others. Besides, haven't you any sense of humour, Mrs. Crozier? It's as good as a play, this. Just think: after five years of desertion, and trouble without end, and it all put right by a little sleight-of-hand. Shall I open it?" She held the letter up. Mona nodded almost eagerly now, for come of a subtle, social world far away, she still was no match for the subtlety of the wilds--or was it the cunning the wild things know? Kitty left the room, but in a moment afterwards returned with the letter open. "The kettle on the hob is the friend of the family," she said gaily. "Here it is all ready for what there is to do. You go and keep watch for Mr. Crozier," she added to the Young Doctor. "He won't be gone long, I should think, and we don't want him bursting in on us before I've got that letter safe back into his desk. If he comes, you keep him busy for a moment. When we're quite ready I'll come to the front door, and then you will know it is all right." "I'm to go while you make up your prescription--all right!" said the Young Doctor, and with a wave of the hand he left the room. Instantly Kitty brought a lead pencil and paper. "Now sit down and write to him, Mrs. Crozier," she said briskly. "Use discretion; don't gush; slap his face a little for breaking his pledge, and afterwards tell him that you did at the Derby what you had abused him for doing. Then explain to him about this four thousand pounds--twenty thousand dollars --my, what a lot of money, and all got in one day! Tell him that it was all won by his own cash. It's as easy as can be, and it will be a certainty now." So saying, she lit a match. "You--hold this wicked old catfish letter into the flame, please, Mrs. Crozier, and keep praying all the time, and please remember that 'our little hands were never made to tear each other's eyes.'" Mona's small fingers were trembling as she held the fateful letter into the flame, and then in silence both watched it burn to a cinder. A faint, hopeful smile was on Mona's face now. "What isn't never was to those that never knew," said Kitty briskly, and pushed a chair up to the table. "Now sit down and write, please." Mona sat down. Taking up a sheet of notepaper she looked at it dubiously. "Oh, what a fool I am!" said Kitty, understanding the look. "And that's what every criminal does--he forgets something. I forgot the notepaper. Of course you can't use that notepaper. Of course not. He'd know it in a minute. Besides, the sheet we burned had an engraved address on it. I never thought of that--good gracious!" "Wait--wait," said Mona, her face lighting. "I may have some sheets in my writing-case. It's only a chance, but there were some loose sheets in it when I left home. I'll go and see." While she was gone to her bedroom Kitty stood still in the middle of the room lost in reflection, as completely absorbed as though she was seeing things thousands of miles away. In truth, she was seeing things millions of miles away; she was seeing a Promised Land. It was a gift of hers, or a penalty of her life, perhaps, that she could lose herself in reverie at a moment's notice--a reverie as complete as though she was subtracted from life's realities. Now, as she looked out of the door, far over the prairie to a tiny group of pine-trees in the vanishing distance, lines she once read floated through her mind: "Away and beyond the point of pines, In a pleasant land where the glad grapes be, Purple and pendent on verdant vines, I know that my fate is awaiting me." What fate was to be hers? There was no joy in her eyes as she gazed. Mrs. Crozier was beside the table again before she roused herself from her trance. "I've got it--just two sheets, two solitary sheets," said Mona in triumph. "How long they have been in my case I don't know. It is almost uncanny they should be there just when they're most needed." "Providential, we should say out here," was Kitty's response. "Begin, please. Be sure you have the right date. It was--" Mona had already written the date, and she interrupted Kitty with the words, "As though I could forget it!" All at once Kitty put a restraining hand on her arm. "Wait--wait, you mustn't write on that paper yet. Suppose you didn't write the real wise thing--and only two sheets of paper and so much to say?" "How right you always are!" said Mona, and took up one of the blank sheets which Kitty had just brought her. Then she began to write. For a minute she wrote swiftly, nervously, and had nearly finished a page when Kitty said to her, "I think I had better see what you have written. I don't think you are the best judge. You see, I have known him better than you for the last five years, and I am the best judge please, I mean it in the rightest, kindest way," she added, as she saw Mona shrink. It was like hurting a child, and she loved children--so much. She had always a vision of children at her knee. Silently Mrs. Crozier pushed the sheets towards her. Kitty read the page with a strange, eager look in her eyes. "Yes, that's right as far as it goes," she said. "It doesn't gush. It's natural. It's you as you are now, not as you were then, of course." Again Mona bent over the paper and wrote till she had completed a page. Then Kitty looked over her shoulder and read what had been written. "No, no, no, that won't do," she exclaimed. "That won't do at all. It isn't in the way that will accomplish what we want. You've gone quite, quite wrong. I'll do it. I'll dictate it to you. I know exactly what to say, and we mustn't make any mistake. Write, please--you must." Mona scratched out what had been written without a word. "I am waiting," she said submissively. "All right. Now we go on. Write. I'll dictate." "'And look here, dearest,'" she began, but Mona stopped her. "We do not say 'look here' in England. I would have said 'and see.'" "'And see-dearest,'" corrected Kitty, with an accent on the last word, "'while I was mad at you for the moment for breaking your promise--'" "In England we don't say 'mad' in that connection," Mona again interrupted. "We say 'angry' or 'annoyed' or 'vexed.'" There was real distress in her tone. "Now I'll tell you what to do," said Kitty cheerfully. "I'll speak it, and you write it my way of thinking, and then when we've finished you will take out of the letter any words that are not pure, noble, classic English. I know what you mean, and you are quite right. Mr. Crozier never says 'look here' or 'mad,' and he speaks better than any one I ever heard. Now, we certainly must get on." After an instant she began again. "--While I was angry at you a moment for breaking your promise, I cannot reproach you for it, because I, too, bet on the Derby, but I bet on a horse that you had said as much against as you could. I did it because you had very bad luck all this year and lost, and also last year, and I thought--" For several minutes, with greater deliberation than was usual with her, Kitty dictated, and at the end of the letter she said, "I am, dearest, your--" Here Mona sharply interrupted her. "If you don't mind I will say that myself in my own way," she said, flushing. "Oh, I forgot for the moment that I was speaking for you!" responded Kitty, with a lurking, undermeaning in her voice. "I threw myself into it so. Do you think I've done the thing right?" she added. With a direct, honest friendliness Mona looked into Kitty eyes. "You have said the exact right thing as to meaning, I am sure, and I can change an occasional word here and there to make it all conventional English." Kitty nodded. "Don't lose a minute in copying it. We must get the letter back in his desk as soon as possible." As Mona wrote, Kitty sat with the envelope in her hand, alternately looking at it and into the distance beyond the point of pines. She was certain that she had found the solution of the troubles of Shiel and Mona Crozier, for Crozier would now have his fortune, and the return to his wife was a matter of course. Was she altogether sure? But yes, she was altogether sure. She remembered, with a sudden, swift plunge of blood in her veins, that early dawn when she bent over him as he lay beneath the tree, and as she kissed him in his sleep he had murmured, "My darling!" That had not been for her, though it had been her kiss which had stirred his dreaming soul to say the words. If they had only been meant for her, then--oh, then life would be so much easier in the future! If--if she could only kiss him again and he would wake and say-- She got to her feet with an involuntary exclamation. For an instant she had been lost in a world of her own, a world of the impossible. "I almost thought I heard a step in the other room," she said in explanation to Mona. Going to the door of Crozier's room, she appeared to listen for a moment, and then she opened it. "No, it is all right," she said. In another few minutes Mona had finished the letter. "Do you wish to read it again?" she asked Kitty, but not handing it to her. "No, I leave the words to you. It was the right meaning I wanted in it," she replied. Suddenly Mona came to her and laid a hand on her arm. "You are wonderful--a wonderful, wise, beloved girl," she said, and there were tears in her eyes. Kitty gave the tiny fingers a spasmodic clasp, and said: "Quick, we must get them in!" She put the banknotes inside the sheets of paper, then hastily placed both in the envelope and sealed the envelope again. "It's just a tiny bit damp with the steam yet, but it will be all right in five minutes. How soiled the envelope is!" Kitty added. "Five years in and out of the desk, in and out of his pocket--but all so nice and unsoiled and sweet and bonny inside," she added. "To say nothing of the bawbees, as Mr. Crozier calls money. Well, we are ready. It all depends on you now, Mrs. Crozier." "No, not all." "He used to be afraid of you; now you are afraid of him," said Kitty, as though stating a commonplace. There was no more shrewishness left in the little woman to meet this chastisement. The forces against her were too many. Loneliness and the long struggle to face the world without her man; the determination of this masterful young woman who had been so long a part of her husband's life; and, more than all, a new feeling altogether--love, and the dependence a woman feels, the longing to find rest in strong arms, which comes with the first revelation of love, had conquered what Kitty had called her "bossiness." She was now tremulous before the crisis which she must presently face. Pride in her fortune, in her independence, had died down in her. She no longer thought of herself as a woman especially endowed and privileged. She took her fortune now like a man; for she had been taught that a man could set her aside just because she had money, could desert her to be independent of it. It had been a revelation to her, and she was chastened of all the termagancy visible and invisible in her. She stood now before Kitty of "a humble and a contrite heart," and made no reply at all to the implied challenge. Kitty, instantly sorry for what she had said, let it go at that. She was only now aware of how deeply her arrows had gone home. As they stood silent there was a click at the gate. Kitty ran into Crozier's room, thrust the letter into its pigeonhole in the desk, and in a moment was back again. In the garden the Young Doctor was holding Crozier in conversation, but watching the front door. So soon, however, as Kitty had shown herself, as she had promised, at the front door and then vanished, he turned Crozier towards the house again by an adroit word, and left him at the door-step. Seeing who was inside the room Crozier hesitated, and his long face, with paleness added to its asceticism, took on a look which could have given no hope of happiness to Mona. It went to her heart as no look of his had ever gone. Suddenly she had a revelation of how little she had known of what he was, or what any man was or could be, or of those springs of nature lying far below the outer lives which move in orbits of sheltering convention. It is because some men and women are so sheltered from the storms of life by wealth and comfort that these piercing agonies which strike down to the uttermost depths so seldom reach them. Shiel half turned away, not sullen, not morose, but with a strange apathy settled on him. He had once heard a man say, "I feel as though I wanted to crawl into a hole and die." That was the way he felt now, for to be beaten in the game which you have played like a man yourself and have been fouled into an unchallenged defeat, without the voice of the umpire, is a fate which has smothered the soul of better men than Crozier. Mona's voice stopped him. "Do not go, Shiel," she urged gently. "No, you must not go--I want fair-play from you, if nothing else. You must play the game with me. I want justice. I have to say some things I had no chance to say before, and I want to hear some things I have a right to hear. Indeed, you must play the game." He drew himself up. Not to be a sportsman, not to play the game--to accuse him of this would have brought him back from the edge of the grave. "I'm not fit to-day. Let it be to-morrow, Mona," was his hesitating reply; but he did not leave the doorway. She shook her head and made a swift little childlike gesture towards him. "We are sure of to-day; we are not sure of to-morrow. One or the other of us might not be here to-morrow. Let us do to-day the thing that belongs to to-day." That note struck home, for indeed the black spirit which whispers to men in their most despairing hours to end it all had whispered to him. "Let us do to-day the thing that belongs to to-day," she had just said, and, strange to say, there shot into his mind words that belonged to the days when he went to church at Castlegarry and thought of a thousand things other than prayer or praise, but yet heard with the acute ears of the young, and remembered with the persistent memory of youth. "For the night cometh when no man can work," were the words which came to him. He shuddered slightly. Suppose that this indeed was the beginning of the night! As she said, he must play the game--play it as Crozier of Lammis would have played it. He stepped inside the room. "Let it be to-day," he said. "We may be interrupted here," she replied. Courage came to her. "Let us talk in your own room," she added, and going over she opened the door of it and walked in. The matured modesty of a lost five years did not cloak her actions now. She was a woman fighting for happiness, and she had been so beaten by the rods of scorn, so smothered by the dust of humiliation, that there had come to her the courage of those who would rather die fighting than in the lethargy of despair. It was like her old self to take the initiative, but she did it now in so different a way--without masterfulness or assumption. It was rather like saying, "I will do what I know you wish me to do; I will lay all reserve aside for your sake; I will be bold because I love you." He shut the door behind them and motioned her to a chair. "No, I will not sit," she said. "That is too formal. You ask any stranger to sit. I am at home here, Shiel, and I will stand." "What was it you wanted to say, Mona?" he asked, scarcely looking at her. "I should like to think that there was something you wished to hear," she replied. "Don't you want to know all that has happened since you left us--about me, about your brother, about your friends, about Lammis? I bought Lammis at the sale you ordered; it is still ours." She gave emphasis to "ours." "You may not want to hear all that has happened to me since you left, still I must tell you some things that you ought to know, if we are going to part again. You treated me badly. There was no reason why you should have left and placed me in the position you did." His head came up sharply and his voice became a little hard. "I told you I was penniless, and I would not live on you, and I could do nothing in England; I had no trade or profession. If I had said good-bye to you, you would probably have offered me a ticket to Canada. As I was a pauper I preferred to go with what I had out of the wreck--just enough to bring me here. But I've earned my own living since." "Penniless--just enough to bring you out here!" Her voice had a sound of honest amazement. "How can you say such a thing! You had my letter--you said you had my letter?" "Yes, I had your letter," he answered. "Your thoughtful brother brought it to me. You had told him all the dear womanly things you had said or were going to say to your husband, and he passed them on to me with the letter." "Never mind what he said to you, Shiel. It was what I said that mattered." She was getting bolder every minute. The comedy was playing into her hands. "You wrote in your letter the things he said to me," he replied. Her protest sounded indignantly real. "I said nothing in the letter I wrote you that any man would not wish to hear. Is it so unpleasant for a man who thinks he is penniless to be told that he has made the year's income of a cabinet minister?" "I don't understand," he returned helplessly. "You talk as though you had never read my letter. "I never have read your letter," he replied in bewilderment. Her face had the flush of honest anger. "You do not dare to tell me you destroyed my letter without reading it--that you destroyed all that letter contained simply because you no longer cared for your wife; because you wanted to be rid of her, wanted to vanish and never see her any more, and so go and leave no trace of yourself! You have the courage here to my face"--the comedy of the situation gained much from the mock indignation--she no longer had any compunctions--"to say that you destroyed my letter and what it contained--a small fortune it would be out here." "I did not destroy your letter, Mona," was the embarrassed response. "Then what did you do with it? Gave it to some one else to read--to some other woman, perhaps." He was really shocked and greatly pained. "Hush! You shall not say that kind of thing, Mona. I've never had anything to do with any woman but my wife since I married her." "Then what did you do with the letter?" "It's there," he said, pointing to the high desk with the green baize top. "And you say you have never read it?" "Never." She raised her head with dainty haughtiness. "Then if you have still the same sense of honour that made you keep faith with the bookmakers--you didn't run away from them!--read it now, here in my presence. Read it, Shiel. I demand that you read it now. It is my right. You are in honour bound--" It was the only way. She dare not give him time to question, to suspect; she must sweep him along to conviction. She was by no means sure that there wasn't a flaw in the scheme somewhere, something that would betray her; and she could hardly wait till it was over, till he had read the letter. In a moment he was again near her with the letter in his hand. "Yes, that's it--that's the letter," she said, with wondering and reproachful eyes. "I remember the little scratchy blot from the pen on the envelope. There it is, just as I made it five years ago. But how disgracefully soiled the envelope is! I suppose it has been tossed about in your saddle-bag, or with your old clothes, and only kept to remind you day by day that you had a wife you couldn't live with--kept as a warning never to think of her except to say, 'I hate you, Mona, because you are rich and heartless, and not bigger than a pinch of snuff.' That was the kind way you used to speak of her even when you were first married to her--contemptuously always in your heart, no matter what you said out loud. And the end showed it--the end showed it; you deserted her." He was so fascinated by the picture she made of passion and incensed declamation that he did not attempt to open the letter, and he wondered why there was such a difference between the effect of her temper on him now and the effect of it those long years ago. He had no feeling of uneasiness in her presence now, no sense of irritation. In spite of her tirade, he had a feeling that it didn't matter, that she must bluster in her tiny teacup if she wanted to do so. "Open the letter at once," she insisted. "If you don't, I will." She made as though to take the letter from him, but with a sudden twist he tore open the envelope. The bank-notes fell to the floor as he took out the sheet inside. Wondering, he stooped to pick them up. "Four thousand pounds!" he exclaimed, examining them. "What does it mean?" "Read," she commanded. He devoured the letter. His eyes swam; then there rushed into them the flame which always made them illumine his mediaeval face like the light from "the burning bush." He did not question or doubt, because he saw what he wished to see, which is the way of man. It all looked perfectly natural and convincing to him. "Mona--Mona--heaven above and all the gods of hell and Hellas, what a fool, what a fool I've been!" he exclaimed. "Mona--Mona, can you forgive your idiot husband? I didn't read this letter because I thought it was going to slash me on the raw--on the raw flesh of my own lacerating. I simply couldn't bear to read what your brother said was in the letter. Yet I couldn't destroy it, either. It was you. I had to keep it. Mona, am I too big a fool to be your husband?" He held out his arms with a passionate exclamation. "I asked you to kiss me yesterday, and you wouldn't," she protested. "I tried to make you love me yesterday, and you wouldn't. When a woman gets a rebuff like that, when--" She could not bear it any longer. With a cry of joy she was in his arms. After a moment he said, "The best of all was, that you--you vixen, you bet on that Derby and won, and--" "With your money, remember, Shiel." "With my money!" he cried exultingly. "Yes, that's the best of it--the next best of it. It was your betting that was the best of all--the best thing you ever did since we married, except your coming here." "It's in time to help you, too--with your own money, isn't it?" He glanced at his watch. "Hours--I'm hours to the good. That crowd-- that gang of thieves--that bunch of highwaymen! I've got them--got them, and got a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, too, to start again at home, at Lammis, Mona, back on the--but no, I'm not sure that I can live there now after this big life out here." "I'm not so sure, either," Mona replied, with a light of larger understanding in her eyes. "But we'll have to go back and stop the world talking, and put things in shape before we come here to stay." "To stay here--do you mean that?" he asked eagerly. "Somewhere in this big land," she replied softly; "anyhow, to stay here till I've grown up a little. I wasn't only small in body in the old days, I was small in mind, Shiel." "Anyhow, I've done with betting and racing, Mona. I've just got time left--I'm only thirty-nine--to start and really do something with myself." "Well, start now, dear man of Lammis. What is it you have to do before twelve o'clock to-night?" "What is it? Why, I have to pay over two thousand of this,"--he flourished the banknotes--"and even then I'll still have two thousand left. But wait--wait. There was the original fifty pounds. Where is that fifty pounds, little girl alive? Out with it. This is the profit. Where is the fifty you staked?" His voice was gay with raillery. She could look him in the face now and prevaricate without any shame or compunction at all. "That fifty pounds--that! Why, I used it to buy my ticket for Canada. My husband ought to pay my expenses out to him." He laughed greatly. All Ireland was rioting in his veins now. He had no logic or reasoning left. "Well, that's the way to get into your old man's heart, Mona. To think of that! I call it tact divine. Everything has spun my way at last. I was right about that Derby, after all. It was in my bones that I'd make a pot out of it, but I thought I had lost it all when Flamingo went down." "You never know your luck--you used to say that, Shiel." "I say it again. Come, we must tell our friends--Kitty, her mother, and the Young Doctor. You don't know what good friends they have been to me, mavourneen." "Yes, I think I do," said Mona, opening the door to the outer room. Then Crozier called with a great, cheery voice--what Mona used to call his tally-ho voice. Mrs. Tynan appeared, smiling. She knew at a glance what had happened. It was so interesting that she could even forgive Mona. "Where's Kitty?" asked Crozier, almost boisterously. "She has gone for a ride with John Sibley," answered Mrs. Tynan. "Look, there she is!" said Mona, laying a hand on Crozier's arm, and pointing with the other out over the prairie. Crozier looked out towards the northwestern horizon, and in the distance was a woman riding as hard as her horse could go, with a man galloping hard after her. It seemed as though they were riding into the sunset. "She's riding the horse you won that race with years ago when you first came here, Mr. Crozier," said Mrs. Tynan. "John Sibley bought it from Mr. Brennan." Mona did not see the look which came into Crozier's face as, with one hand shading his eyes and the other grasping the banknotes which were to start him in life again, independent and self-respecting, he watched the girl riding on and on, ever ahead of the man. It was at that moment the Young Doctor entered the room, and he distracted Mona's attention for a moment. Going forward to him Mona shook him warmly by the hand. Then she went up to Mrs. Tynan and kissed her. "I would like to kiss your daughter too, Mrs. Tynan," Mona said. . . . "What are you looking at so hard, Shiel?" she presently added to her husband. He did not turn to her. His eyes were still shaded by his hand. "That horse goes well yet," he said in a low voice. "As good as ever-- as good as ever." "He loves horses so," remarked Mona, as though she could tell Mrs. Tynan and the Young Doctor anything about Shiel Crozier which they did not know. "Kitty rides well, doesn't she?" asked Mrs. Tynan of Crozier. "What a pair--girl and horse!" Crozier exclaimed. "Thoroughbred-- absolutely thoroughbred!" Kitty had ridden away with her heart's secret, her very own, as she thought: but Shiel Crozier knew--the man that mattered knew. EPILOGUE Golden, all golden, save where there was a fringe of trees at a watercourse; save where a garden, like a spot of emerald, made a button on the royal garment wrapped across the breast of the prairie. Above, making for the trees of the foothills far away, a golden eagle floated, a prairie-hen sped affrighted from some invisible thing; and in the far distance a railway train slipped down the plain like a serpent making for a covert in the first hills of the first world that ever was. At a casual glance the vast plain seemed uninhabited, yet here and there were men and horses, tiny in the vastness, but conquering. Here and there also--for it was July--a haymaker sharpened his scythe, and the sound came singing through the air radiant and stirring with life. Seated in the shade of a clump of trees a girl sat with her chin in her hands looking out over the prairie, an intense dreaming in her eyes. Her horse was tethered near by, but it scarcely made a sound. It was a horse which had once won a great race, with an Irish gentleman on his back. Long time the girl sat absorbed, her golden colour, her brown-gold hair in harmony with the universal stencil of gold. With her eyes drowned in the distance, she presently murmured something to herself, and as she did so the eyes deepened to a nameless umber tone, deeper than gold, warmer than brown; such a colour as only can be found in a jewel or in a leaf the frost has touched. The frost had touched the soul which gave the colour to the eyes of the girl. Yet she seemed all summer, all glow and youth and gladness. Her voice was golden, too, and the words which fell from her lips were as though tuned to the sound of falling water. The tone of the voice would last when the gold of all else became faded or tarnished. It had its origin in the soul: "Whereaway goes my lad? Tell me, has he gone alone? Never harsh word did I speak; never hurt I gave; Strong he was and beautiful; like a heron he has flown Hereaway, hereaway will I make my grave." The voice lingered on the words till it trailed away into nothing, like the vanishing note of a violin which seems still to pulse faintly after the sound has ceased. "But he did not go alone, and I have not made my grave," the girl said, and raised her head at the sound of footsteps. With an effort she emerged from the half-trance in which she had been, and smiled at a man hastening towards her. "Dear bully, bulbous being--how that word 'bully' would have, made her cringe!" she said as the man ambled nearer. He could not go as fast as his mind urged him. "I've got news--news, news!" he exclaimed, wading through his own perspiration to where she sat. "I can guess what it is," the girl remarked smilingly, as she reached out a hand to him, but remained seated. "It's a real, live baby born to Lydia, wife of Methuselah, the woman also being of goodly years. It is, isn't it." "The fattest, finest, most 'scrumpshus' son of all the ages that ever--" Kitty laughed happily and very whimsically. "Like none since Moses was found among the bulrushes! Where was this one found, and what do you intend to call him--Jesse, after his 'pa'?" "No--nothing so common. He's to be called Shiel--Shiel Crozier Bulrush, that's to be his name." The face of the girl became a shade pensive now. "Oh! And do you think you can guarantee that he will be worth the name? Do you never think what his father is?" "I'm starting him right with that name. I can do so much, anyway," laughed the imperturbable one. "And Mrs. Bulrush, after her great effort--how is she? "Flying--simply flying. Earth not good enough for her. Simply flying. But here--here is more news. Guess what--it's for you. I've just come from the post office, and they said there was an English letter for you, so I brought it." He handed it over. She laid it in her lap and waited as though for him to go. "Can't I hear how he is? He's the best man that ever crossed my path," he said. "It happens to be in his wife's, not his, handwriting--did ever such a scrap of a woman write so sprawling a hand!" she replied, holding the letter up. "But she'll let us know in the letter how Crozier is, won't she?" Kitty had now recovered herself, and slowly she opened the envelope and took out the letter. As she did so something fluttered to the ground. Jesse Bulrush picked it up. "That looks nice," he said, and he whistled in surprise. "It's a money-draft on a bank." Kitty, whose eyes were fixed on the big, important handwriting, answered calmly and without apparently looking, as she took the paper from his hand: "Yes, it's a wedding present--five hundred dollars to buy what I like best for my home. So she says." "Mrs. Crozier, of course." "Of course." "Well, that's magnificent. What will you do with it?" Kitty rose and held out her hand. "Go back to your flying partner, happy man, and ask her what she would do with five hundred dollars if she had it." "She'd buy her lord and master a present with it, of course," he answered. "Good-bye, Mr. Rolypoly," she responded, laughing. "You always could think of things for other people to do; and have never done anything yourself until now. Good-bye, father." When he was gone and out of sight her face changed. With sudden anger she crushed and crumpled up the draft for five hundred in her hand. "'A token of affection from both!'" she exclaimed, quoting from the letter. "One lone leaf of Irish shamrock from him would--" She stopped. "But he will send a message of his own," she continued. "He will--he will. Even if he doesn't, I'll know that he remembers just the same. He does--he does remember." She drew herself up with an effort, and, as it were, shook herself free from the memories which dimmed her eyes. Not far away a man was riding towards the clump of trees where she was. She saw, and hastened to her horse. "If I told John all I feel he'd understand. I believe he always has understood," she added with a far-off look. The draft was still crushed in her hand when she mounted the beloved horse, whose name now was Shiel. Presently she smoothed out the crumpled paper. "Yes, I'll take it; I'll put it by," she murmured. "John will keep on betting. He'll be broke some day and he'll need it, maybe." A moment later she was riding hard to meet the man who, before the wheat- harvest came, would call her wife. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: He saw what he wished to see, which is the way of man Searchers after excuses for ungoverned instincts and acts Telling the unnecessary truth What isn't never was to those that never knew ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK": And I was very lucky--worse luck! Anny man as is a man has to have one vice God help the man that's afraid of his own wife! He saw what he wished to see, which is the way of man Her moral standard had not a multitude of delicate punctilios Law's delays outlasted even the memory of the crime committed Searchers after excuses for ungoverned instincts and acts Sensitive souls, however, are not so many as to crowd each other She looked too gay to be good Telling the unnecessary truth They had seen the world through the bottom of a tumbler What isn't never was to those that never knew WILD YOUTH By Gilbert Parker Volume 1. I. THE MAZARINES TAKE POSSESSION II. "MY NAME IS LOUISE" III. "I HAVE FOUGHT WITH BEASTS AT EPHESUS" IV. TWO SIDES TO A BARGAIN V. ORLANDO HAS AN ADVENTURE VI. "THINGS MUST HAPPEN" VII. "THE ZOOLYOGICAL GARDEN" VIII. THE ORIENTAL WAY OF IT IX. THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES Volume 2. X. THE MOON WAS NOT ALONE XI. LOUISE XII. MAN UNNATURAL XIII. ORLANDO GIVES A WARNING XIV. FILION AND FIONA--ALSO PATSY KERNAGHAN XV. OUTWARD BOUND XVI. AT THE CROSS TRAILS XVII. THE SUPERIOR MAN XVIII. YOUTH HAS ITS WAY WILD YOUTH CHAPTER I THE MAZARINES TAKE POSSESSION From the beginning, Askatoon had had more character and idiosyncrasy than any other town in the West. Perhaps that was because many of its citizens had marked personality, while some were distinctly original--a few so original as to be almost bizarre. The general intelligence was high, and this made the place alert for the new observer. It slept with one eye open; it waked with both eyes wide--as wide as the windows of the world. The virtue of being bright and clever was a doctrine which had never been taught in Askatoon; it was as natural as eating and drinking. Nothing ever really shook the place out of a wholesome control and composure. Now and then, however, the flag of distress was hoisted, and everybody in the place--from Patsy Kernaghan, the casual, at one end of the scale, and the Young Doctor, so called because he was young-looking when he first came to the place, who represented Askatoon in the meridian of its intellect, at the other--had sudden paralysis. That was the outstanding feature of Askatoon. Some places made a noise and flung things about in times of distress; but Askatoon always stood still and fumbled with its collar-buttons, as though to get more air. When it was poignantly moved, it leaned against the wall of its common sense, abashed, but vigilant and careful. That is what it did when Mr. and Mrs. Joel Mazarine arrived at Askatoon to take possession of Tralee, the ranch which Michael Turley, abandoning because he had an unavoidable engagement in another world, left to his next of kin, with a legacy to another kinsman a little farther off. The next of kin had proved to be Joel Mazarine, from one of those stern English counties on the borders of Quebec, where ancient tribal prejudices and religious hatreds give a necessary relief to hard-driven human nature. Michael Turley had lived much to himself on his ranch, but that was because in his latter days he had developed a secret taste for spirituous liquors which he had no wish to share with others. With the assistance of a bad cook and a constant spleen caused by resentment against the intervention of his priest, good Father Roche, he finished his career with great haste and without either becoming a nuisance to his neighbours or ruining his property. The property was clear of mortgage or debt when he set out on his endless journey. When the prophet-bearded, huge, swarthy-faced Joel Mazarine, with a beautiful young girl behind him, stepped from the West-bound train and was greeted by the Mayor, who was one of the executors of Michael Turley's will, a shiver passed through Askatoon, and for one instant animation was suspended; for the jungle-looking newcomer, motioning forward the young girl, said to the Mayor: "Mayor, this is Mrs. Mazarine. Shake hands with the Mayor, Mrs. Mazarine." Mazarine did not speak very loud, but as an animal senses the truth of a danger far off with an unshakable certainty, the crowd at the station seemed to know by instinct what he said. "Hell--that old whale and her!" growled Jonas Billings, the keeper of the livery-stable. At Mazarine's words the Young Doctor, a man of rare gifts, individuality and authority in the place, who had come to the station to see a patient off to the mountains by this train, drew in his breath sharply, as though a spirit of repugnance was in his heart. This happened during the first years of the Young Doctor's career at Askatoon, when he was still alive with human prejudices, although he had a nature well balanced and singularly just. The strife between his prejudices and his sense of justice was what made him always interesting in all the great prairie and foothill country of which Askatoon was the centre. He had got his shock, indeed, before Mazarine had introduced his wife to the Mayor. Not for nothing had he studied the human mind in its relation to the human body, and the expression of that mind speaking through the body. The instant Joel Mazarine and his wife stepped out of the train, he knew they were what they were to each other. That was a real achievement in knowledge, because Mazarine was certainly sixty-five if he was a day, and his wife was a slim, willowy slip of a girl, not more than nineteen years of age, with the most wonderful Irish blue eyes and long dark lashes. There was nothing of the wife or woman about her, save something in the eyes, which seemed to belong to ages past and gone, something so solemnly wise, yet so painfully confused, that there flashed into the Young Doctor's mind at first glance of her the vision of a young bird caught from its thoughtless, sunbright journeyings, its reckless freedom of winged life, into the captivity of a cage. She smiled, this child, as she shook hands with the Mayor, and it had the appeal of one who had learned the value of smiling--as though it answered many a question and took the place of words and the trials of the tongue. It was pitifully mechanical. As the Young Doctor saw, it was the smile of a captive in a strange uncomprehended world, more a dream than a reality. "Mrs. Mazarine, welcome," said the Mayor after an abashed pause. "We're proud of this town, but we'll be prouder still, now you've come." The girl-wife smiled again. At the same time it was as though she glanced apprehensively out of the corner of her eye at the old man by her side, as she said: "Thank you. There seems to be plenty of room for us out here, so we needn't get in each other's way.... I've never been on the prairie before," she added. The Young Doctor realized that her reply had meanings which would escape the understanding of the Mayor, and her apprehensive glance had told him of the gruesome jealousy of this old man at her side. The Mayor's polite words had caused the long, clean-shaven upper lip of the old man with the look of a debauched prophet, to lengthen surlily; and he noticed that a wide, flat foot in a big knee-boot, inside trousers too short, tapped the ground impatiently. "We must be getting on to Tralee," said a voice that seemed to force its way through bronchial obstructions. "Come, Mrs. Mazarine." He laid a big, flat, tropical hand, which gave the impression of being splayed, on the girl's shoulder. The gallant words of the Mayor--a chivalrous mountain man--had set dark elements working. As the new master of Tralee stepped forward, the Young Doctor could not help noticing how large and hairy were the ears that stood far out from the devilish head. It was a huge, steel-twisted, primitive man, who somehow gave the impression of a gorilla. The face was repulsive in its combination of surly smugness, as shown by the long upper lip, by a repellent darkness round the small, furtive eyes, by a hardness in the huge, bearded jaw, and by a mouth of primary animalism. The Mayor caught sight of the Young Doctor, and he stopped the incongruous pair as they moved to the station doorway, the girl in front, as though driven. "Mr. Mazarine, you've got to know the man who counts for more in Askatoon than anybody else; Doctor, you've got to know Mr. Mazarine," said the generous Mayor. Repugnance was in full possession of the Young Doctor, but he was scientific and he was philosophic, if nothing else. He shook hands with Mazarine deliberately. If he could prevent it, there should be, where he was concerned, no jealousy, such as Mazarine had shown towards the Mayor, in connection with this helpless, exquisite creature in the grip of hard fate. Shaking hands with the girl with only a friendly politeness in his glance, he felt a sudden eager, clinging clasp of her fingers. It was like lightning, and gone like lightning, as was the look that flashed between them. Somehow the girl instinctively felt the nature of the man, and in spirit flew to him for protection. No one saw the swift look, and in it there was nothing which spoke of youth or heart, of the feeling of man for woman or woman for man; but only the longing for help on the girl's part, undefined as it was. On the man's part there was a soul whose gift and duty were healing. As the two passed on, the Young Doctor looked around him at the exclaiming crowd, for few had left the station when the train rolled out. Curiosity was an obsession with the people of Askatoon. "Well, I never!" said round-faced Mrs. Skinner, with huge hips and gray curls. "Did you ever see the like?" "I call it a shame," declared an indignant young woman, gripping tighter the hand of her little child, the daughter of a young butcher of twenty- three years of age. "Poor lamb!" another motherly voice said. "She ought to be ashamed of herself--money, I suppose," sneered Ellen Banner, a sour-faced shopkeeper's daughter, who had taught in Sunday school for twenty years and was still single. "Beauty and the beast," remarked the Young Doctor to himself, as he saw the two drive away, Patsy Kernaghan running beside the wagon, evidently trying to make friends with the mastodon of Tralee. CHAPTER II "MY NAME IS LOUISE" Askatoon never included the Mazarines in its social scheme. Certainly Tralee was some distance from the town, but, apart from that, the new- comers remained incongruous, alien and alone. The handsome, inanimate girl-wife never appeared by herself in the streets of Askatoon, but always in the company of her morose husband, whose only human association seemed to be his membership in the Methodist body so prominent in the town. Every Sunday morning he tied his pair of bay horses with the covered buggy to the hitching-post in the church-shed and marched his wife to the very front seat in the Meeting House, having taken possession of it on his first visit, as though it had no other claimants. Subsequently he held it in almost solitary control, because other members of the congregation, feeling his repugnance to companionship, gave him the isolation he wished. As a rule he and his wife left the building before the last hymn was sung, so avoiding conversation. Now and again he stayed to a prayer-meeting and, doing so, invariably "led in prayer," to a very limited chorus of "Amens." For in spite of the position which Tralee conferred on its owner, there was a natural shrinking from "that wild boar," as outspoken Sister Skinner called him in the presence of the puzzled and troubled Minister. This was always a time of pained confusion for the girl-wife. She had never "got religion," and there was something startling to her undeveloped nature in the thunderous apostrophes, in terms of the oldest part of the Old Testament, used by her tyrant when he wrestled with the Lord in prayer. These were perhaps the only times when her face was the mirror of her confused, vague and troubled youth. Captive in a world bounded by a man's will, she simply did not begin to understand this strange and overpowering creature who had taken possession of her body, mind and soul. She trembled and hesitated before every cave of mystery which her daily life with him opened darkly to her abashed eyes. She felt herself going round and round and round in a circle, not forlorn enough to rebel or break away, but dazed and wondering and shrinking. She was like one robbed of will, made mechanical by a stern conformity to imposed rules of life and conduct. There were women in Askatoon who were sorry for her and made efforts to get near her; but whether it was the Methodist Minister or his wife, or the most voluble sister of the prayer-meeting, none got beyond the threshold of Tralee, as it were. The girl-wife abashed them. She was as one who automatically spoke as she was told to speak, did what she was told to do. Yet she always smiled at the visitors when they came, or when she saw them and others at the Meeting House. It was, however, not a smile for an individual, whoever that individual might chance to be. It was only the kindness of her nature expressing itself. Talking seemed like the exercise of a foreign language to her, but her smiling was free and unconstrained, and it belonged to all, without selection. The Young Doctor, looking at her one day as she sat in a buggy while her monster-man was inside the chemist's shop, said to himself: "Sterilized! Absolutely, shamefully sterilized! But suppose she wakes up suddenly out of that dream between life and death--what will happen?" He remembered that curious, sudden, delicate catch of his palm on the day when they first shook hands at the railway-station, and to him it was like the flutter of life in a thing which seemed dead. How often he had noticed it in man and animal on the verge of extinction! He had not mistaken that fluttering appeal of her fingers. He was young enough to translate it into flattering terms of emotion, but he did not do so. He was fancy-free himself, and the time would come when he would do a tremendous thing where a woman was concerned, a woman in something the same position as this poor girl; but that shaking, thrilling thing was still far off from him. For this child he only felt the healer's desire to heal. He was one of those men who never force an issue; he never put forward the hands of the clock. He felt that sooner or later Louise Mazarine--he did not yet know her Christian name--would command his help, as so many had done in that prairie country, and not necessarily for relief of physical pain or the curing of disease. He had helped as many men and women mentally and morally as physically; the spirit of healing was behind everything he did. His world recognized it, and that was why he was never known by his name in all the district--he was only admiringly called "The Young Doctor." He had never been to Tralee since the Mazarines had arrived, though he had passed it often and had sometimes seen Louise in the garden with her dog, her black cat and her bright canary. The combination of the cat and the canary did not seem incongruous where she was concerned; it was as though something in her passionless self neutralized even the antagonisms of natural history. She had made the gloomy black cat and the light- hearted canary to be friends. Perhaps that came from an everlasting patience which her life had bred in her; perhaps it was the powerful gift of one in touch with the remote, primitive things. The Young Doctor had also seen her in the paddock with the horses, bare- headed, lithe and so girlishly slim, with none of the unmistakable if elusive lines belonging to the maturity which marriage brings. He had taken off his hat to her in the distance, but she had never waved a hand in reply. She only stood and gazed at him, and her look followed him long after he passed by. He knew well that in the gaze was nothing of the interest which a woman feels in a man; it was the look of one chained to a rock, who sees a Samaritan in the cheerless distance. In the daily round of her life she was always busy; not restlessly, but constantly, and always silently, busy. She was even more silent than her laconic half-breed hired woman, Rada. There was no talk with her gloating husband which was not monosyllabic. Her canary sang, but no music ever broke from her own lips. She murmured over her lovely yellow companion; she kissed it, pleaded with it for more song, but the only music at her own lips was the occasional music of her voice; and it had a colourless quality which, though gentle, had none of the eloquence and warmth of youth. In form and feature she was one made for emotion and demonstration, and the passionate play of the innocent enterprises of wild youth; but there was nothing of that in her. Gray age had drunk her life and had given her nothing in return--neither companionship nor sympathy nor understanding; only the hunger of a coarse manhood. Her obedience to the supreme will of her jealous jailer gave no ground for scolding or reproach, and that saved her much. She was even quietly cheerful, but it was only the pale reflection of a lost youth which would have been buoyant and gallant, gay and glad, had it been given the natural thing in the natural world. There came a day, however, when the long, unchanging routine, gray with prison grayness, was broken; when the round of household duties and the prison discipline were interrupted. It was as sudden as a storm in the tropics, as final and as fateful as birth or death. That day she was taken suddenly and acutely ill. It was only a temporary malady, an agonizing pain which had its origin in a sudden chill. This chill was due, as the Young Doctor knew when he came, to a vitality which did not renew itself, which got nothing from the life to which it was sealed, which for some reason could not absorb energy from the stinging, vital life of the prairie world in the June-time. In her sudden anguish, and in the absence of Joel Mazarine, she sent for the Young Doctor. That in itself was courageous, because it was impossible to tell what view the master of Tralee would take of her action, ill though she was. She was not supposed to exercise her will. If Joel Mazarine had been at home, he would have sent for wheezy, decrepit old Doctor Gensing, whose practice the Young Doctor had completely absorbed over a series of years. But the Young Doctor came. Rada, the half-breed woman, had undressed Louise and put her to bed; and he found her white as snow at the end of a paroxysm of pain, her long eyelashes lying on a cheek as smooth as a piece of Satsuma ware which has had the loving polish of ten thousand friendly fingers over innumerable years. When he came and stood beside her bed, she put out her hand slowly towards him. As he took it in his firm, reassuring grasp, he felt the same fluttering appeal which had marked their handclasp on the day of their first meeting at the railway- station. Looking at the huge bed and the rancher-farmer's coarse clothes hanging on pegs, the big greased boots against the wall, a sudden savage feeling of disgust and anger took hold of him; but the spirit of healing at once emerged, and he concentrated himself upon the duty before him. For a whole hour he worked with her, and at length subdued the convulsions of pain which distorted the beautiful face and made the childlike body writhe. He had a resentment against the crime which had been committed. Marriage had not made her into a woman; it had driven her back into an arrested youth. It was as though she ought to have worn short skirts and her hair in a long braid down her back. Hers was the body of a young boy. When she was free from pain, and the colour had come back to her cheeks a little, she smiled at him, and was about to put out her hand as a child might to a brother or a father, when suddenly a shadow stole into her eyes and crept across her face, and she drew her clenched hand close to her body. Still, she tried to smile at him. His quiet, impersonal, though friendly look soothed her. "Am I very sick!" she asked. He shook his head and smiled. "You'll be all right to-morrow, I hope." "That's too bad. I would like to be so sick that I couldn't think of anything else. My father used to say that the world was only the size of four walls to a sick person." "I can't promise you so small a world," remarked the Young Doctor with a kind smile, his arm resting on the side of the bed, his chair drawn alongside. "You will have to face the whole universe to-morrow, same as ever." She looked perplexed, and then said to him: "I used to think it was a beautiful world, and they try to make me think it is yet; but it isn't." "Who try to make you?" he asked. "Oh, my bird Richard, and Nigger the black cat, and Jumbo, the dog," she replied. Her eyes closed, then opened strangely wide upon him in an eager, staring appeal. "Don't you want to know about me?" she asked. "I want to tell you-- I want to tell you. I'm tired of telling it all over to myself." The Young Doctor did not want to know. As a doctor he did not want to know. "Not now," he said firmly. "Tell me when I come again." A look of pain came into her face. "But who can tell when you'll come again!" she pleaded. "When I will things to be, they generally happen," he answered in a commonplace tone. "You are my patient now, and I must keep an eye on you. So I'll come." Again, with an almost spasmodical movement towards him, she said: "I must tell you. I wanted to tell you the first day I saw you. You seemed the same kind of man my father was. My name's Louise. It was my mother made me do it. There was a mortgage--I was only sixteen. It's three years ago. He said to my mother he'd tear up the mortgage if I married him. That's why I'm here with him--Mrs. Mazarine. But my name's Louise." "Yes, yes, I know," the Young Doctor answered soothingly. "But you must not talk of it now. I understand perfectly. Tell me all about it another time." "You don't think I should have--" She paused. "Of course. I tell you I understand. Now you must be quiet. Drink this." He got up and poured some liquid into a glass. At that moment there was a noise below in the hall. "That's my husband," the girl-wife said, and the old wan captive-look came into her face. "That's all right," replied the Young Doctor. "He'll find you better." At that moment the half-breed woman entered the room. "He's here," she said, and came towards the bed. "That old woman has sense," the Young Doctor murmured to himself. "She knows her man." A minute later Joel Mazarine was in the room, and he saw the half-breed woman lift his wife's head, while the Young Doctor held a glass to her lips. "What's all this?" Mazarine said roughly. "What?" He stopped suddenly, for the Young Doctor faced him sharply. "She must be left alone," he said firmly and quietly, his eyes fastening the old man's eyes; and there was that in them which would not be gainsaid. "I have just given her medicine. She has been in great pain. "We are not needed here now." He motioned towards the door. "She must be left alone." For an instant it seemed that the old man was going to resist the dictation; but presently, after a scrutinizing look at the still, shrinking figure in the bed, he swung round, left the room and descended the stairs, the Young Doctor following. CHAPTER III "I HAVE FOUGHT WITH BEASTS AT EPHESUS" The old man led the way outside the house, as though to be rid of his visitor as soon as possible. This was so obvious that, for an instant, the Young Doctor was disposed to try conclusions with the old slaver, and summon him back to the dining-room. The Mazarine sort of man always roused fighting, masterful forces in him. He was never averse to a contest of wills, and he had had much of it; it was inseparable from his methods of healing. He knew that nine people out of ten never gave a true history of their physical troubles, never told their whole story: first because they had no gift for reporting, no observation; and also because the physical ailments of many of them were aggravated or induced by mental anxieties. Then it was that he imposed himself; as it were, fought the deceiver and his deceit, or the ignorant one and his ignorance; and numbers of people, under his sympathetic, wordless inquiry, poured their troubles into his ears, as the girl-wife upstairs had tried to do. When the old man turned to face him in the sunlight, his boots soiled with dust and manure, his long upper lip feeling about over the lower lip and its shaggy growth of beard like some sea-monster feeling for its prey, the Young Doctor had a sensation of rancour. His mind flashed to that upstairs room, where a comely captive creature was lying not an arm's length from the coats and trousers and shabby waistcoats of this barbarian. Somehow that row of tenantless clothes, and the top-boots, greased with tallow, standing against the wall, were more characteristic of the situation than the old land-leviathan himself, blinking his beady, greenish eyes at the Young Doctor. That blinking was a repulsive characteristic; it was like serpents gulping live things. "What's the matter with her?" the old man asked, jerking his head towards the upper window. The Young Doctor explained quickly the immediate trouble, and then added: "But it would not have taken hold of her so if she was not run down. She is not in a condition to resist. When her system exhausts, it does not refill, as it were." "What sort of dictionary talk is that? Run down--here?" The old man sniffed the air like an ancient sow. "Run down--in this life, with the best of food, warm weather, and more ozone than a sailor gets at sea! It's an insult to Jehovah, such nonsense." "Mr. Mazarine," rejoined the Young Doctor with ominous determination in his eye, "you know a good deal, I should think, about spring wheat and fall ploughing, about making sows fat, or burning fallow land--that's your trade, and I shouldn't want to challenge you on it all; or you know when to give a horse bran-mash, or a heifer salt-petre, but--well, I know my job in the same way. They will tell you, about here, that I have a kind of hobby for keeping people from digging and crawling into their own graves. That's my business, and the habit of saving human life, because you're paid for it, becomes in time a habit of saving human life for its very own sake. I warn you--and perhaps it's a matter of some concern to you--Mrs. Mazarine is in a bad way." Resentful and incredulous, the old man was about to speak, but the Young Doctor made an arresting gesture, and added: "She has very little strength to go on with. She ought to be plump; her pulses ought to beat hard; her cheeks ought to be rosy; she should walk with a spring and be strong and steady as a soldier on the march; but she is none of these things, can do none of these things. You've got a thousand things to do, and you do them because you want to do them. There is something making new life in you all the time, but Mrs. Mazarine makes no new life as she goes on. Every day is taking something out of her, and there's nothing being renewed. Sometimes neither good food nor ozone is enough; and you've got to take care, or you'll lose Mrs. Mazarine." He could not induce himself to speak of her as "wife." For a moment the unwholesome mouth seemed to be chewing unpleasant herbs, and the beady eyes blinked viciously. "I'm not swallowin' your meaning," Mazarine said at last. "I never studied Greek. If a woman has a disease, there it is, and you can deal with it or not; but if she hasn't no disease, then it's chicanyery-- chicanyery. Doctors talk a lot of gibberish these here days. What I want to know is, has my wife got a disease? I haven't seen any signs. Is it Bright's, or cancer, or the lungs, or the liver, or the kidneys, or the heart, or what's its name?" The Young Doctor had an impulse to flay the heathen, but for the girl- wife's sake he forbore. "I don't think it is any of those troubles," he replied smoothly. "She needs a thorough examination. But one thing is clear: she is wasting; she is losing ground instead of going ahead. There's a malignant influence working. She's standing still, and to stand still in youth is fatal. I can imagine you don't want to lose her, eh?" The Young Doctor's gray-blue eyes endeavoured to hold the blinking beads under the shaggy eyebrows long enough to get control of a mind which had the cunning and cruelty of an animal. He succeeded. The old man would a thousand times rather his wife lived than died. In the first place, to lose her was to sacrifice that which he had paid for dearly--a mortgage of ten thousand dollars torn up. Louise Mazarine represented that to him first-ten thousand dollars. Secondly, she was worth it in every way. He had what hosts of others would be glad to have--men younger and better looking than himself. She represented the triumph of age. He had lived his life; he had buried two wives; he had had children; he had made money; and yet here, when other men of his years were thinking of making wills, and eating porridge, and waiting for the Dark Policeman to come and arrest them for loitering, he was left a magnificent piece of property like Tralee; and he had all the sources of pleasure open to a young man walking the primrose path. He was living right up to the last. Both his wives were gray-headed when they died--it turned them gray to live with him; both had died before they were fifty; and here he was the sole owner of a wonderful young head, with hair that reached to the waist, with lips like cool fruit from an orchard-tree, and the indescribable charm of youth and loveliness which the young themselves never really understood. That was what he used to say to himself; it was only age could appreciate youth and beauty; youth did not understand. Thus the Young Doctor's question roused in him something at once savage and apprehensive. Of course he wanted Louise to live. Why should she not live? "Doesn't any husband want his wife to live!" he answered sullenly. "But I want to know what ails her. What medicine you going to give her?" "I don't know," the Young Doctor replied meditatively. "When she is quite rid of this attack, I'll examine her again and let you know." Suddenly there shot into the greenish old eyes a reddish look of rage; jealousy, horrible, gruesome jealousy, took possession of Joel Mazarine. This young man to come in and go out of his wife's bedroom, to--Why weren't there women doctors? He would get one over from the Coast, or from Winnipeg, or else there was old Doctor Gensing, in Askatoon--who was seventy-five at least. He would call him in and get rid of this offensive young pill-maker. "I don't believe there's anything the matter with her," he declared stubbornly. "She's been healthy as a woman can be, living this life here. What's her disease? I've asked you. What is it?" The other laid a hand on himself, and in the colourless voice of the expert, said: "Old age--that's her trouble, so far as I can see." He paused, foreseeing the ferocious look which swept into the repulsive face, and the clenching of the big hands. Then in a soothing, reflective kind of voice he added: "Senile decay--you know all about that. Well, now, it happens sometimes --not often, but it does happen--that a very young person for some cause or another suffers from senile decay. Some terrible leakage of youth occurs. It has been cured, though, and I've cured one or two cases myself." He was almost prevaricating--but in a good cause. "Mrs. Mazarine's is a case which can be cured, I think," he continued. "As you've remarked, Mr. Mazarine,"--his voice was now persuasive,--"here is fine air, and a good, comfortable home--" Suddenly he broke off, and as though in innocent inquiry said: "Now, has she too much to do? Has she sufficient help in the house for one so young?" "She doesn't do more than's good for her," answered the old man, "and there's the half-breed hired critter--you've seen her--and Li Choo, a Chinaman, too. That ought to be enough," he added scornfully. The Young Doctor seemed to reflect, and his face became urbane, because he saw he must proceed warily, if he was to be of service to his new patient. "Yes," he said emphatically, "she appears to have help enough. I must think over her case and see her again to-morrow." The old man's look suddenly darkened. "Ain't she better:"' he asked. "She's not so much better that there's no danger of her being worse," the Young Doctor replied decisively. "I certainly must see her to-morrow." "Why," the old man remarked, waving his splayed hand up and down in a gesture of emphasis, "she's never been sick. She's in and out of this house all day. She goes about with her animals like as if she hadn't a care or an ache or pain in the world. I've heard of women that fancied they was sick because they hadn't too much to do, and was too well off, and was treated too well. Highsterics, they call it. Lots of women, lots and lots of them, would be glad to have such a home as this, and would stay healthy in it." The Young Docor felt he had made headway, and he let it go at that. It was clear he was to be permitted to come to-morrow. "Yes, it's a fine place," he replied convincingly. "Three thousand acres is a mighty big place when you've got farm-land as well as cattle-grazing." "It's nearly all good farm-land," answered the old man with decision. "I don't believe much in ranching or cattle. I'm for the plough and the wheat. There's more danger from cattle disease than from bad crops. I'm getting rid of my cattle. I expect to sell a lot of 'em to-day." An avaricious smile of satisfaction drew down the corners of his lips. "I've got a good customer. He ought to be on the trail now." He drew out a huge silver watch. "Yes, he's due. The party's a foreigner, I believe. He lives over at Slow Down Ranch--got a French name." "Oh, Giggles!" said the Young Doctor with a quick smile. The old man shook his head: "No, that ain't the name. It's Guise-Orlando Guise is the name." "Same thing," remarked the Young Doctor. "They call him Giggles for short. You've seen him of course?" "No, I've been dealing with him so far through a third party. Why's he called Giggles?" asked the Master of Tralee. "Well, you'll know when you see him. He's not cut according to everybody's measure. If you're dealing with him, don't think him a fool because he chirrups, and don't size him up according to his looks. He's a dude. Some call him The Duke, but mostly he's known as Giggles." "Fools weary me," grumbled the other. "Well, as I said, you mustn't begin dealing with him on the basis of his looks. Looks don't often tell the truth. For instance, you're known as a Christian and a Methodist!" He looked the old man slowly up and down, and in anyone else it would have seemed gross insolence, but the urbane smile at his lips belied the malice of his words. "Well, you know you don't look like a Methodist. You look like,"--innocence showed in his eye; there was no ulterior purpose in his face, "you look like one of the bad McMahon lot of claim-jumpers over there in the foothills. I suppose that seems so, only because ranchman aren't generally pious. Well, in the same way, Giggles doesn't really look like a ranchman; but he's every bit as good a ranchman as you are a Christian and a Methodist!" The Young Doctor looked the old man in the face with such a semblance of honesty that he succeeded in disarming a dangerous suspicion of mockery --dangerous, if he was to continue family physician at Tralee. "Ah," he suddenly remarked, "there comes Orlando now!" He pointed to a spot about half a mile away, where a horseman could be seen cantering slowly towards Tralee. A moment afterwards, from his buggy, the Young Doctor said: "Mrs. Mazarine must be left alone until I see her again. She must not be disturbed. The half-breed woman can look after her. I've told her what to do. You'll keep to another room, of course." "There's a bunk in that room where I could sleep," said the other, with a note of protest. "I'm afraid that, in our patient's interest, you must do what I say," the other insisted, with a friendly smile which caused him a great effort. "If I make her bloom again, that will suit you, won't it?" A look of gloating came into the other's eyes: "Let it go at that," he said. "Mebbe I'll take her over to the sea before the wheat-harvest." Out on the Askatoon trail, the Young Doctor ruminated over what he had seen and heard at Tralee. "That old geezer will get an awful jolt one day," he said to himself. "If that girl should wake! Her eyes--if somebody comes along and draws the curtains! She hasn't the least idea of where she is or what it all means. All she knows is that she's a prisoner in some strange, savage country and doesn't know its language or anybody at all--as though she'd lost her memory. Any fellow, young, handsome and with enough dash and colour to make him romantic could do it. . . . Poor little robin in the snow!" he added, and looked back towards Tralee. As he did so, the man from Slow Down Ranch cantering towards Tralee caught his eye. "Louise-Orlando," he said musingly; then, with a sudden flick of the reins on his horse's back, he added abruptly, almost sternly, "By the great horn spoons, no!" Thus when his prophecy took concrete form, he revolted from it. A grave look came into his face. CHAPTER IV TWO SIDES TO A BARGAIN As the Young Doctor had said, Orlando Guise did not look like a real, simon-pure "cowpuncher." He had the appearance of being dressed for the part, like an actor who has never mounted a cayuse, in a Wild West play. Yet on this particular day,--when the whole prairie country was alive with light, thrilling with elixir from the bottle of old Eden's vintage, and as comfortable as a garden where upon a red wall the peach-vines cling--he seemed far more than usual the close-fitting, soil-touched son of the prairie. His wide felt hat, turned up on one side like a trooper's, was well back on his head; his pinkish brown face was freely taking the sun, and his clear, light-blue eyes gazed ahead unblinking in the strong light. His forehead was unwrinkled--a rare thing in that prairie country where the dry air corrugates the skin; his light-brown hair curled loosely on the brow, graduating back to closer, crisper curls which in their thickness made a kind of furry cap. It was like the coat of a French poodle, so glossy and so companionable was it to the head. A bright handkerchief of scarlet was tied loosely around his throat, which was even a little more bare than was the average ranchman's; and his thick, much-pocketed flannel shirt, worn in place of a waistcoat and coat, was of a shade of red which contrasted and yet harmonized with the scarlet of the neckerchief. He did not wear the sheepskin leggings so common among the ranchmen of the West, but a pair of yellowish corduory riding-breeches, with boots that laced from the ankle to the knee. These boots had that touch of the theatrical which made him more fantastic than original in the eyes of his fellow-citizens. Also he wore a ring with a star-sapphire, which made him incongruous, showy and foppish, and that was a thing not easy of forgiveness in the West. Certainly the West would not have tolerated him as far as it did, had it not been for three things: the extraordinary good nature which made him giggle; the fact that on more than one occasion he had given conclusive evidence that he was brave; and the knowledge that he was at least well-to-do. In a kind of vague way people had come to realize that his giggles belonged to a nature without guile and recklessly frank. "He beats the band," Jonas Billings, the livery-stable keeper, had said of him; while Burlingame, the pernicious lawyer of shady character, had remarked that he had the name of an impostor and the frame of a fop; but he wasn't sure, as a lawyer, that he'd seen all the papers in the case-- which was tantamount to saying that the Orlando nut needed some cracking. It was generally agreed that his name was ridiculous, romantic and unreasonable. It seemed to challenge public opinion. Most names in the West were without any picturesqueness or colour; they were commonplace and almost geometric in their form, more like numbers to represent people than things of character in themselves. There were names semi-scriptural and semi-foreign in Askatoon, but no name like Orlando Guise had ever come that way before, and nothing like the man himself had ever ridden the Askatoon trails. One thing had to be said, however; he rode the trail like a broncho-buster, and he sat his horse as though he had been born in the saddle. --On this particular day, in spite of his garish "get-up," he seemed to belong to the life in which he was lightheartedly whistling a solo from one of Meyerbeer's operas. Meyerbeer was certainly incongruous to the prairie, but it and the whistling were in keeping with the man himself. Over on Slow Down Ranch there lived a curious old lady who wore a bonnet of Sweet Sixteen of the time of the Crimea, and with a sense of colour which would wreck the reputation of a kaleidoscope. She it was who had taught her son Orlando the tunefulness of Meyerbeer and Balfe and Offenbach, and the operatic jingles of that type of composer. Orlando Guise had come by his outward showiness naturally. Yet he was not like his mother, save in this particular. His mother was flighty and had no sense, while he, behind the gaiety of his wardrobe and his giggles, had very much sense of a quite original kind. Even as he whistled Meyerbeer, riding towards Tralee, his eyes had a look of one who was trying to see into things; and his lips, when the whistling ceased, had a cheerful pucker which seemed to show that he had seen what he wanted. "Wonder if I'll get a glimpse of the so-called Mrs. Mazarine," he said aloud. "Bad enough to marry a back-timer, but to marry Mazarine--they don't say she's blind, either! Money--what won't we do for money, Mary? But if she's as young as they say, she could have waited a bit for the oof-bird to fly her way. Lots of men have money as well as looks. Anyhow, I'm ready to take his cattle off his hands on a fair, square deal, and if his girl-missis is what they say, I wouldn't mind--" Having said this, he giggled and giggled again at his unspoken impertinence. He knew he had almost said something fatuous, but the suppressed idea appealed to him, nevertheless; for whatever he did, he always had a vision of doing something else; and wherever he was, he was always fancying himself to be somewhere else. That was the strain of romance in him which came from his mixed ancestry. It was the froth and bubble of a dreamer's legacy, which had made his mother, always unconsciously theatrical, have a vision of a life on the prairies, with the white mountains in the distance, where her beloved son would be master of a vast domain, over which he should ride like one of Cortez' conquistadores. Having "money to burn," she had, at a fortunate moment, bought the ranch which, by accident, had done well from the start, and bade fair, through the giggling astuteness of her spectacular son, to do far better still by design. On the first day of their arrival at Slow Down Ranch, the mother had presented Orlando with a most magnificent Mexican bridle and head-stall covered with silver conchs, and a saddle with stirrups inlaid with silver. Wherefore, it was no wonder that most people stared and wondered, while some sneered and some even hated. On the whole, however, Orlando Guise was in the way of making a place for himself in the West in spite of natural drawbacks. Old Mazarine did not merely sneer as he saw the gay cavalier approach, he snorted; and he would have blasphemed, if he had not been a professing Christian. "Circus rider!" he said to himself. "Wants taking down some, and he's come to the right place to get it." On his part, Orlando Guise showed his dislike of the repellent figure by a brusque giggle, and further expressed what was in his mind by the one word "Turk!" His repugnance, however, was balanced by something possessing the old man still more disagreeable. Like a malignant liquid, there crept up through Joel Mazarine's body to the roots of his hair the ancient virus of Cain. It was jealous, ravenous, grim: old age hating the rich, robust, panting youth of the man be fore him. Was it that being half man, half beast, he had some animal instinct concerning this young rough-rider before him? Did he in some vague, prescient way associate this gaudy newcomer with his girl-wife? He could not himself have said. Primitive passions are corporate of many feelings but of little sight. As Orlando Guise slid from his horse, Joel Mazarine steadied himself and said: "Come about the cattle? Ready to buy and pay cash down?" Orlando Guise giggled. "What are you sniggering at?" snorted the old man. "I thought it was understood that if I liked the bunch I was to pay cash," Orlando replied. "I've got a good report of the beasts, but I want to look them over. My head cattleman told you what I'd do. That's why I smiled. Funny, too: you don't look like a man who'd talk more than was wanted." He giggled again. "Fool--I'll make you laugh on the other side of your mouth!" the Master of Tralee said to himself; and then he motioned to where a bunch of a hundred or so cattle were grazing in a little dip of the country between them and Askatoon. "I'll get my buckboard. It's all hitched up and ready, and we can get down and see them right now," he said aloud. "Won't you find it rough going on the buckboard? Better ride," remarked Orlando Guise. "I don't ever notice rough going," grunted the old man. "Some people ride horses to show themselves off; I ride a buckboard 'cause it suits me." Orlando Guise chirruped. "Say, we mustn't get scrapping," he said gaily. "We've got to make a bargain." In a few moments they were sweeping across the prairie, and sure enough the buckboard bumped, tumbled and plunged into the holes of the gophers and coyotes, but the old man sat the seat with the tenacity of a gorilla clinging to the branch of a tree. In about three-quarters of an hour the two returned to Tralee, and in front of the house the final bargaining took place. There was a difference of five hundred dollars between them, and the old man fought stubbornly for it; and though Orlando giggled, it was clear he was no fool at a bargain, and that he had many resources. At last he threw doubt upon the pedigree of a bull. With a snarl Mazarine strode into the house. He had that pedigree, and it was indisputable. He would show the young swaggerer that he could not be caught anywhere in this game. As Joel Mazarine entered the doorway of the house Orlando giggled again, because he had two or three other useful traps ready, and this was really like baiting a bull. Every thrust made this bull more angry; and Orlando knew that if he became angry enough he could bring things to a head with a device by which the old man would be forced to yield; for he did not want to buy, as much as Mazarine wished to sell. The device, however, was never used, and Orlando ceased giggling suddenly, for chancing to glance up he saw a face at a window, pale, exquisite, delicate, with eyes that stared and stared at him as though he were a creature from some other world. Such a look he had never seen in anybody's eyes; such a look Louise Mazarine had never given in her life before. Something had drawn her out of her bed in spite of herself--a voice which was not that of old Joel Mazarine, but a new, fresh, vibrant voice which broke into little spells of inconsequent laughter. She loved inconsequent laughter, and never heard it at Tralee. She had crept from her bed and to the window, and before he saw her, she had watched him with a look which slowly became an awakening: as though curtains had been drawn aside revealing a new, strange, ecstatic world. Louise Mazarine had seen something she had never seen before, because a feeling had been born in her which she had never felt. She had never fully known what sex was, or in any real sense what man meant. This romantic, picturesque, buoyant figure of youth struck her as the rock was struck by Moses; and for the first time in all her days she was wholly alive. Also, for the first time in his life, Orlando Guise felt a wonder which in spite of the hereditary romance in him had never touched him before. Like Ferdinand and Miranda in The Tempest, "they changed eyes." A heavy step was heard coming through the hallway, and at once the exquisite, staring face at the window vanished-while Orlando Guise turned his back upon the open doorway and walked a few steps towards the gate in an effort to recover himself. When he turned again to meet Mazarine, who had a paper in his hand, there was a flush on his cheek and a new light in his eye. The old man did not notice that, however, for his avaricious soul was fixed upon the paper in his hand. He thrust it before Orlando's eyes. "What you got to say to that, Mister?" he demanded. Orlando appeared to examine the paper carefully, and presently he handed it back and said slowly: "That gives you the extra five hundred. It's a bargain." How suddenly he had capitulated-- "Cash?" asked the old man triumphantly. How should he know by what means Orlando had been conquered! "I've got a cheque in my pocket. I'll fill it in." "A cheque ain't cash," growled the grizzly one. "You can cash it in an hour. Come in to Askatoon, and I'll get you the cash with it now," said Orlando. "I can't. A man's coming for a stallion I want to sell. Give me a hundred dollars cash now to clinch the bargain, and I'll meet you at Askatoon to-morrow and get the whole of it in cash. I don't deal with banks. I pay hard money, and I get hard money. That's my rule." "Well, you're in luck, for I've got a hundred dollars," answered Orlando. "I've just got that, and a dollar besides, in my pocket. To-morrow you go to my lawyer, Burlingame, at Askatoon, and you'll get the rest of the money. It will be there waiting for you." "Cash?" pressed the old man. "Certainly: Government hundred-dollar bills. Give me a receipt for this hundred dollars." "Come inside," said the old man almost cheerfully. He loved having his own way. He was almost insanely self-willed. It did his dark soul good to triumph over this "circus rider." As Joel Mazarine preceded him, Orlando looked up at the window again. For one instant the beautiful, pale face of the girl-wife appeared, and then vanished. At the doorway of the house Orlando Guise stumbled. That was an unusual thing to happen to him. He was too athletic to step carelessly, and yet he stumbled and giggled. It was not a fatuous giggle, however. In it were all kinds of strange things. CHAPTER V ORLANDO HAS AN ADVENTURE Burlingame had the best practice of any lawyer in Askatoon, although his character had its shady side. The prairie standards were not low; but tolerance is natural where the community is ready-made; where people from all points of the compass come together with all sorts of things behind them; where standards have at first no organized sanction. Financially Burlingame was honest enough, his defects being associated with those ancient sources of misconduct, wine and women--and in his case the morphia habit as well. It said much for his physique that, in spite of his indulgences, he not only remained a presentable figure but a lucky and successful lawyer. Being something of a philosopher, the Young Doctor looked upon Burlingame chiefly as one of those inevitable vintages from a vineyard which, according to the favour or disfavour of Heaven, yields from the same soil both good and bad. He had none of that Puritanism which would ruthlessly root out the vines yielding the bad wine. To his mind that could only be done by the axe, the rope or the bullet. It seemed of little use, and very unfair, to drive the wolf out of your own garden into that of your neighbour. Therefore Burlingame must be endured. The day after the Young Doctor had paid his professional visit to Tralee, and Orlando Guise had first seen the girl-wife of, the behemoth, the Young Doctor visited Burlingame's office. Burlingame had only recently returned from England, whither he had gone on important legal business, which he had agreeably balanced by unguarded adventures in forbidden paths. He was in an animated mood. Three things had just happened which had given him great pleasure. In the morning he had gained a verdict of acquittal in the case of one of the McMahon Gang for manslaughter connected with jumping a claim; and this meant increased reputation. He had also got a letter from Orlando Guise, and a cheque for six thousand dollars, with instructions to pay the amount in cash to Joel Mazarine; and this meant a chance of meeting Mazarine and perhaps getting a new client. Likewise he had received a letter of instructions from a client in Montreal, a kinsman and legatee of old Michael Turley, the late owner of Tralee, in connection with a legacy. This would involve some legal proceedings with considerable costs, and also contact with Joel Mazarine, whom he had not yet seen; for Mazarine had come while he was away in England. His interest in Mazarine, however, was really an interest in Mrs. Mazarine, concerning whom he had heard things which stimulated his imagination. To him a woman was the supreme interest of existence, apart from making a necessary living. He was the primitive and pernicious hunter. He had been discreet enough not to question people too closely where Mazarine's wife was concerned, but there was, however, one gossip whom Burlingame questioned with some freedom. This was Patsy Kernaghan. Before the Young Doctor arrived at his office this particular morning, Patsy, who had followed him from the Court-house, was put under a light and skillful cross-examination. He had been of service to Burlingame more than once; and he was regarded as a useful man to do odd jobs for his office, as for other offices in Askatoon. "Aw, him--that murderin' moloch at Tralee!" exclaimed Patsy when the button was pressed. "That Methodys' fella with the face of a pirate! If there wasn't a better Protistan' than him in the world, the Meeting Houses'd be used for kindlin'-wood. Joel, they call him--a dacint prophet's name misused! "I h'ard him praying once, as I stood outside the Meetin' House windys. To hear that holy hyena lift up his voice to the skies! Shure, I've never been the same man since, for the voice of him says wan thing, and the look of him another. Sez I to meself, Mr. Burlingame, y'r anner, the minute I first saw him, sez I, 'Askatoon's no safe place for me.' Whin wan like that gits a footin' in a place, the locks can't be too manny to shut ye in whin ye want to sleep at night. That fella's got no pedigree, and if it wouldn't hurt some dacent woman, maybe, I'd say he was misbegotten. But still, I'll tell ye: out there at Tralee there's what'd have saved Sodom and Gomorrah-aye, that'd have saved Jerusalem, and there wouldn't ha' been a single moan from Jeremiah. Out at Tralee there's as beautiful a little lady as you'd want to see. Just a girl she is, not more than nineteen or twenty years of age. She's got a face that'd make ye want to lift the chorals an' the antiphones to her every marnin'. She's got the figure of one that was never to grow up, an' there she is the wedded wife of that crocodile great-grandfather. "Aw, I know all about it, Mr. Burlingame, y'r anner. How do I know? Didn't Michael Turley tell me before he died what sort o' man his cousin was? Didn't he tell me Joel Mazarine married first whin he was eighteen years of age; an' his daughter was married whin she was seventeen; an' her son was married whin he was eighteen--an' Joel's a great-grandfather now. An' see him out there with her that looks as if the kindergarten was the place for her." "Do you go to Tralee often?" asked Burlingame. "Aw yis. There's a job now and then to do. I'm ridin' an old moke on errands for him whin his hired folks is busy. A man must live, and there's that purty lass with the Irish eyes! Man alive, but it goes to me heart to luk at her." "Well, I think I must have a 'luk' at her then," was Burlingame's half satirical remark. Not long after Patsy Kernaghan had left Burlingame's office, the Young Doctor came. His business was brief, and he was about to leave when Burlingame said: "The Mazarines out at Tralee-you know them? They came while I was away. Queer old goat, isn't he?" "His exact place in natural history I'm not able to select," answered the Young Doctor dryly, "but I know him." "And his wife--you know her?" asked Burlingame casually. The other nodded. "Yes-in a professional way." "Has she been sick?" "She is ill now." "What's the matter?" "What's the truth about that McMahon claim-jumper who was acquitted this morning?" asked the Young Doctor with a quizzical eye and an acid note to his voice. "You've got your verdict, but you know the real truth, and you mustn't and won't tell it. Well?" Burlingame saw. "Well, I'll have to ask the old goat myself," he said. "He's coming here to-day." He took up Orlando Guise's letter from the table, glanced at it smilingly, and threw it down again. "He must be a queer specimen," Burlingame continued. "He wouldn't take Orlando Guise's cheque yesterday. He says he'll only be paid in hard cash. He's coming here this afternoon to get it. He's a crank, whatever else he is. They tell me he doesn't keep a bank account. If he gets a cheque, he has it changed into cash. If he wants to send a cheque away, he buys one for cash from somebody. He pays for everything in cash, if he can. Actually, he hasn't a banking account in the place. Cash--nothing but cash! What do you think of that?" The Young Doctor nodded: "Cash as a habit is useful. Every man must have his hobby, I suppose. Considering the crimes tried at the court in this town, Mazarine's got unusual faith in human nature; or else he feels himself pretty safe at Tralee." "Thieves?" asked Burlingame satirically. "Yes, I believe that's still the name, though judging from some of your talk in the Court-house, it's a word that gives opportunity to take cover. I hope your successful client of to-day, and his brothers, are not familiar with the ways of Mr. Mazarine. I hope they don't know about this six thousand dollars in cold cash." A sneering, sour smile came to Burlingame's lips. The medical man's dry allusions touched him on the raw all too often. "Oh, of course, I told them all about that six thousand dollars! Of course! A lot of people suspect those McMahons of being crooked. Well, it has never been proved. Until it's proved, they're entitled--" Burlingame paused. "To the benefit of the doubt, eh?" "Why not? I've heard you hold the balance pretty fair 'twixt your patients and the undertaker." Quite unmoved, the Young Doctor coolly replied: "In your own happy phrase--of course! I get a commission from the undertaker when the patient's a poor man; when he's a rich man, I keep him alive! It pays. The difference between your friends the criminals and me is that probably nobody will ever be able to catch me out. But the McMahons, we'll get them yet,"--a stern, determined look came into his honest eye,--"yes, we'll get them yet. They're a nasty fringe on the skirts of Askatoon. "But there it is as it is," he continued. "You take their dirty money, and I don't refuse pay when I'm called in to attend the worst man in the West, whoever he may be. Why, Burlingame, as your family physician, I shouldn't hesitate even to present my account against your estate if, in a tussle with the devil, he got you out of my hands." Now a large and friendly smile covered his face. He liked hard hitting, but he also liked to take human nature as it was, and not to quarrel. Burlingame, on his part, had no desire for strife with the Young Doctor. He would make a very dangerous enemy. His return smile was a great effort, however. Ruefulness and exasperation were behind it. The Young Doctor had only been gone a few minutes when Joel Mazarine entered Burlingame's office. "I've come about that six thousand dollars Mr. Guise of Slow Down Ranch owes me," the old man said without any formal salutation. He was evidently not good-humoured. At sight of Mazarine, Burlingame at once accepted the general verdict concerning him. That, however, would not prejudice him greatly. Burlingame had no moral sense. Mazarine's face might revolt him, but not his character. "I've got the cash here for you, and I'll have in a witness and hand the money over at once," he said: "The receipt is ready. I assume you are Joel Mazarine," he added, in a weak attempt at being humorous. "Get on with the business, Mister," said the old man surlily. In a few moments he had the six thousand dollars in good government notes in two inner pockets of his shirt. It made him feel very warm and comfortable. His face almost relaxed into a smile when he bade Burlingame good-day. Burlingame had said nothing about the letter from the late Michael Turley's kinsman in Montreal and the question of the legacy. This was deliberate on his part. He wanted an excuse to visit Tralee and see its mistress with his own eyes. He had attempted to pluck many flowers in his day, and had not been unsuccessful. Out at Tralee was evidently a rare orchid carefully shielded by the gardener. As Mazarine left the lawyer's office, he met in the doorway that member of the McMahon family for whom Burlingame had secured a verdict of acquittal a couple of hours before. As was his custom, Mazarine gave the other a sharp, scrutinizing look, but he saw no one he knew; and he passed on. The furtive smile which had betrayed his content at pocketing the six thousand dollars still lingered at the corners of his mouth. Though he did not know the legally innocent McMahon whom he had just passed, McMahon was not so ignorant. There was no one in all the countryside whom the McMahons did not know. It was their habit--or something else--to be familiar with the history of everybody thereabouts, although they lived secluded lives at Arrowhead Ranch, which adjoined that belonging to Orlando Guise. When Tom McMahon saw Mazarine leave Burlingame's office, his furtive eye lighted. Then it was true, what he had heard from the hired girl at Slow Down Ranch: that old Mazarine was to receive six thousand dollars in cash from Orlando Guise by the hands of Burlingame! Only that very morning, at the moment of his own release from jail, his brother Bill McMahon had told him of the conversation overheard between Orlando and his mother, by Milly Gorst, the hired girl. He turned and watched Mazarine go down the street and enter a barber's shop. If Mazarine was going to have his hair cut, he would be in the barber's shop for some time. With intense reflection in his eyes, McMahon entered Burlingame's office. He had come to settle up accounts for a clever piece of court-room work on the part of Burlingame. It was very well worth paying for liberally. When he entered the office, Burlingame was not there. A clerk, however, informed him that Burlingame would be free within a few moments--and would he take a chair? Thereupon, the clerk left the room. McMahon took a chair--not the one towards which the clerk pointed him, but one beside the desk whereon were lying a number of open letters. The interrogation always in the mind of a natural criminal, prompted McMahon to take a seat near the open letters. As soon as the clerk left the room, a hairy hand reached out for the nearest letter, and a swift glance took in its contents. A grimly cheerful, vicious smile lighted up the heavily bearded face. Placing the letter on the desk again, as soon as it was read, McMahon almost threw himself over to the chair at some distance from the desk, which the clerk had first offered him. There he sat with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands when Burlingame entered the room. Ten minutes later, with a receipted bill in his pocket, Tom McMahon made for the barber's shop which Mazarine had entered. He found it full, but seated in the red-plush chair, tipped back at a convenient angle, was Mazarine undergoing the triple operations of shaving his upper lip, beard-trimming and haircutting. From that moment and for the rest of all the long day and evening, Joel Mazarine commanded the unvarying interest of two members of the McMahon family. Orlando Guise had had a long day, but one that somehow made him whistle or sing to himself most of the time. In a way, half a lifetime had gone since the day before, when he had first seen what he called to himself "the captive maid." He had never been so happy in his life; and yet he knew that he had not the faintest right to be happy. The girl who had so upset his self-control as to make him stumble on her doorstep was the wife of another man. It was, of course, silly to call him "another man," because he seemed a million miles away from any sphere in which Orlando lived. Yet he was another man; and he was also the husband of the girl who had made Orlando feel for the very first time a strange singing in his veins. It actually was as though some wonderful, magnetic thing was making his veins throb and every nerve tingle and sing. "It beats me," he said to himself fifty times that day. He had never been in love. He did not know what it was like, except that he had seen it make men do silly things, just as drink did. He did not know whether he was in love or not. It was absurd that a man should be in love with a face at a window--a face with the beauty of a ghost rather than of a real live woman. Orlando had little evil in his nature; his eyes did not look towards Tralee as did Burlingame's eyes. Nothing furtive stirred in Orlando's intensely blue eyes. Whatever the feeling was, it was an open thing, which had neither motive nor purpose behind it--just a thing almost feminine in its nature. As yet it was like the involuntary adoration which girls at a certain period of their lives feel successively for one hero after another. What it would become, who could tell? What would happen to the young girl adoring the actor, or the hero of the North Pole, the battle-field or the sea, if the adored one was not far off, but very near? Indeed, who could tell? But as it was, in the upper room where Louise sat all day looking out over the prairie, and on the prairie where business carried Orlando from ranch to ranch on this perfect day, no recreant thought or feeling existed. Each was a simple soul, as yet unspoiled and in one sense unsophisticated--the girl, however, with an instinctive caution, such as an animal possesses in the presence of a foe with which it is in truce; the man with an astuteness which belonged to a native instinct for finding a way of doing hard things in the battle of life. All day Orlando wondered when he should see that face again; all day the eyes of Louise pleaded for another look at the ranchman with the dress of a dandy, the laugh of a child, and the face of an Apollo--or so it seemed to her. It was the sort of day which ministers to human emotion, which stirs the sluggish blood, revives the drooping spirit. There was a curious, delicate blueness of the sky over which an infinitely more delicate veil of mist was softly drawn. At many places on the prairie the haymakers were loading the great wagons; here and there a fallow field was burning; yonder a house was building; cattle were being rounded up; and far off, like moving specks, ranchmen were climbing the hills where the wild bronchos were, for a day of the toughest, most thrilling sport which the world knows. Night fell, and found Orlando making for the trail between what was known as the Company's Ranch and Tralee. To reach his own ranch, he had to cross it at an angle near the Tralee homestead. It was dark, with no moon, but the stars were bright. As he crossed the Tralee trail, he suddenly heard a cry for help. Between him and where the sound came from was a fire burning. It was the camp-fire of some prairie pioneer making for a new settlement in the North; and beside it was a tent whose owner was absent in Askatoon. Orlando dug heels into his horse and rode for the point from which the cry for help had come. Something was undoubtedly wrong. The voice was that of one in real trouble--a hoarse, strangled sort of voice. As he galloped through the light of the camp-fire, a pistol-shot rang out, and he felt a sharp, stinging pain in his side. Still urging his horse, he cleared the little circle of light and presently saw a man rapidly mounting a horse, while two others struggled on the ground. He dashed forward. As he did so, one of the men on the ground freed himself, sprang to his feet, mounted his horse, and was away into the night with his companion. Orlando slid to the ground beside the figure which was slowly raising itself from the ground. "What's the matter? Are you all right? Have they hurt you?" he asked, as he stooped over and caught the shoulders of the victim of the two fleeing figures. At that instant there were two more pistol-shots, and a bullet hit the ground beside Orlando. Then he saw dimly the face of the man whom he was helping to his feet. "Mazarine! Good Lord-Mazarine!" he said in an anxious voice. "What have they done to you?" "Nothing--I'm all right. The dogs, the rogues, the thieves--but they didn't get it! It was in the pockets of my shirt." The old man was almost hysterical. "You just come in time, Mr. Guise. You frightened 'em off. They'd have found it, if it hadn't been for you." "Found what?" asked Orlando, as he helped the old man towards the camp- fire, himself in pain, and a dizziness coming over him. "Found your six thousand dollars that Burlingame paid me to-day," gasped the old man, spasmodically; "but it's here-it's here!" He caught at his breast with devouring greed. Somehow the agitated joy of the old man revolted Orlando. He had a sudden rush of repulsion; but he fought it down. "Are you all right?" he asked. "Are you all right?" Somehow the sound of his own voice was very weak. "Yes, I'm all right," Mazarine said, and he called to his horse near by. The horse did not stir, and the old man, whose breath came almost normally now, moved over and caught its bridle. In a dazed kind of way, and with growing unsteadiness, Orlando walked towards the camp-fire. He was leaning against his horse, and opening his coat and waistcoat to find the wound in his side and staunch it with the kerchief from his neck, when Mazarine came up. "What's that on your coat and breeches? Say, you're all bloody!" exclaimed Mazarine. "Why, they shot you!" "Yes, they got me," was Orlando's husky reply, and he gave a funny little laugh. Giggling, people had called it. "How are we going to get you home?" Mazarine asked. "You can't ride." At that moment there was the rumbling jolt of a wagon. It was the pioneer-emigrant returning from Askatoon to his camp. A few minutes later Orlando was lying on some bags in the emigrant's wagon, while Mazarine rode beside it. "It's only a few hundred yards to the house," said the emigrant sympathetically, as he looked down at the now unconscious figure in the wagon. "It's four miles to his house," said Mazarine. "Well, I'm not taking him four miles to his house or any house," said the emigrant. "My horse has had enough to-day, and the sooner the lad's attended to, the better. He's going to the nearest house, and that's Tralee, as they call it, just here." "That's my house," gruffly replied the old man. "Well, that's where you want him to go, ain't it?" asked the pioneer sharply. He could not understand the owner of Tralee. "Yes, that's where I want him to go," replied Mazarine slowly. "Then you ride ahead on the trail, and I'll follow," returned the other decisively. "What's the matter? Who hurt him?" he presently called to Mazarine, riding in front. "I'll tell you when we get to Tralee," answered the old man, with his eyes fixed on two lights in the near distance. One was in the kitchen, where a half-breed woman was giving supper to Li Choo, a faithful Chinaman roustabout; the other was in the room where a young wife sat with hands clasped, wondering why her husband did not return, yet glad that he did not. CHAPTER VI "THINGS MUST HAPPEN" Between two sunrises Louise Mazarine had seen her old world pass in a flash of flame and a new world trembling with a new life spread out before her; had come to know what her old world really was. The eyes with which she looked upon her new world had in them the glimmer not only of awakened feeling but of awakened understanding. To this time she had endured her aged husband as a slave comes to bear the lashes of his master, with pain which will be renewed and renewed, but pain only, and not the deeper torture of the soul; for she had never really grasped what their relations meant. To her it had all been part of the unavoidable misery of life. But on that sunny afternoon when Orlando Guise's voice first sounded in her ears, and his eyes looked into hers as, pale and ill, she gazed at him from the window, a revelation came to her of what the three years of life with Joel Mazarine had really been. From that moment until she heard the pioneer's wagon, escorted by her husband, bringing the unconscious Orlando Guise to her door, she had lived in a dream which seemed like a year of time to her. Since the early morning of that very day, when Joel had leaned over her bed and asked her in his slow, grinding voice how she was, she had lived more than in all the past nineteen years of her life. The Young Doctor had come and gone, amazed at first, but presently with a look of apprehension in his eyes. There was not much trace of yesterday's illness in the alert, eager girl-wife, who twenty-four hours before had been really nearer to the end of all things than her aged husband. The Young Doctor knew all too well what the curious, throbbing light in her eyes meant. He knew that the gay and splendid Orlando Guise had made the sun for this prismatic radiance, and that the story of her life, which Louise had wished to tell him yesterday, would never now be told--for she would have no desire to tell it. The old vague misery, the ancient veiled torture, was behind her, and she was presently to suffer a new torture--but also a joy for which men and women have borne unspeakable things. No, Louise would never tell him the story of her life, because now she knew it was a thing which must not be told. Her mind understood things it had never known before. To be wise is to be secret, and she had learned some wisdom; and the Young Doctor wondered if the greater wisdom she must learn would be drunk from the cup of folly. Before he left her he had said to her with meaning in his voice: "My dear young madam, your recovery is too rapid. It is not a cure: it is a miracle; and miracles are not easily understood. We must, therefore, make them understood; and so you will take regularly three times a day the powerful tonic I will give you." She was about to interrupt him, but he waved a hand reprovingly and added with kindly irony: "Yes, we both know you don't need a tonic out of a bottle; but it's just as well other people should think that the tonic bringing back the colour to your cheeks comes out of a bottle and not out of a health resort, called Slow Down Ranch, about four miles to the north-west of Tralee." As he said this, he looked straight into the eyes which seemed, as it were, to shrink into cover from what he was saying. But when, an instant afterwards, he took her hand and said good-bye, he knew by the trembling clasp of her fingers--even more appealing than they had yet been--that she understood. So it was a few moments later, outside the house, he had said to Joel Mazarine that he had given his wife a powerful tonic, and he hoped to see an almost instant change in her condition; but she must have her room to herself for a time, according to his instructions of the day before, as she was nervous and needed solitude, to induce sleep. He was then about to start for Askatoon when the old man said: "I suppose you won't have to come again, as she's going on all right." To this the Young Doctor had replied firmly: "Yes, I'm coming out to- morrow. She's not fit yet to go to Askatoon, and I must see her once again." "Oh, keep coming--that's right, keep coming!" answered the miserly old man, who still was not so miserly that he did not want his young wife blooming. "Coming to-morrow, eh!" he added, with something very like a sneer. The other had a sudden flash of fury pass through his veins. The old Celtic quickness to resent insult swept over him. The ire of his forefathers waked in him. This outrageous old Caliban, to attempt to sneer at him! For an instant he was Kilkenny let loose, and then the cool, trained brain reasserted its mastery, and he replied: "If there should be a turn for the worse, send for me to-night--not to-morrow! "And he looked the old man in the eyes with a steady, steelly glance which had nothing to do with the words he had just uttered, but was the challenge of a conquering spirit. The Young Doctor had acted with an almost uncanny prescience. It was as though he had foreseen that Orlando Giuse would be carried upstairs to a room nearly opposite that of Louise, and laid unconscious on a bed, till he himself should come again that very night and extract a bullet from Orlando's side; that he would open Orlando's eyes to consciousness, hear Orlando say, "Where am I?" and note his startled look when told he was at Tralee. Once during this visit, while making Orlando safe and comfortable, with the help of Li Choo, the Chinaman, and Rada, the half-breed, he had seen Louise for a moment. The old man had gone to the stables, and as he came out of the room where Orlando was, Louise's door opened softly on him. Dimly, in the half-darkness of her room, in which no light was burning, he saw her. She beckoned to him. Shutting the door of Orlando's bedroom behind him, he came quickly to her side and said: "Go to bed at once, young woman. This will not do." "I'm not sick now," she urged. "Say, I really am well again." "You must not be well again so soon," he replied meaningly. "I want you to understand that you must not," he insisted. There was a pause, which seemed interminable to the Young Doctor, who was listening for the heavy footstep of Joel Mazarine outside the house; and then at last in agitation Louise said to him: "Will he get well? Rada told me he was shot saving Mr. Mazarine. Will he get well?" "Yes, he will get well, and quickly, if--" He broke off, for there was the thud of a heavy footstep for which he had been listening. Joel Mazarine was returning. "Won't they let me help nurse him?" she whispered. The Young Doctor shook his head in negation. "His mother will be here to-morrow," he said quickly. "Be wise, my child." "You understand?" she whispered wistfully. "I have no understanding. Go to bed," he answered sharply. "Shut the door at once." When old Joel Mazarine's footsteps were heard upon the staircase again, Orlando was lying with half-closed eyes, watching, yet too weak to speak; and the Young Doctor was giving directions to Rada and Li Choo for the night-watch in Orlando's room. When Mazarine entered, the Young Doctor gave him a casual nod and went on with his directions. When he had finished, Rada said in her broken English, with an accent half-Indian, half-French: "His mother you send for--yes? She come queeck. Some one must take care him when for me get breakfus and Li Choo do chores." "We'll send for her in the morning," interrupted Joel Mazarine. "Perhaps Mrs. Mazarine would be well enough to help a little in the morning," remarked the Young Doctor in a colourless voice. He knew when to be audacious; or, if he did not know, he had an instinct; and he noticed that the wounded man's eyelids did not even blink when he threw out the hint concerning Louise, while the eyes of the old man took on a sullen flame. "Mrs. Mazarine has to be molly-coddled herself--that's what you've taught her," he snarled. "Well, then, send for Mrs. Guise to-night," commanded the Young Doctor. He thought Joel Mazarine made unnecessary noise as he stamped down the staircase to send a farmhand to Slow Down Ranch; and he also thought that Orlando Guise showed discretion of manner and look in a moment of delicacy and difficulty. He knew, however, that, as the children say, "Things must happen." CHAPTER VII "THE ZOOLYOGICAL GARDEN" Patsy Kernaghan regarded Tralee as a kind of Lost Paradise, for the most part because it had passed from the hands of a son of the Catholic Church into those of the "prayin' Methodys," as he called them, and also because he had a "black heart ag'in" Joel Mazarine. The spark was struck in him with some vigour one day at Tralee. It was caused by the flamboyant entrance of Mrs. Guise into the front garden, as the Young Doctor was getting into his buggy for the return journey to Askatoon, after attending Orlando, whose enforced visit to Tralee had already extended over a week. "Aw, Doctor dear," said Patsy, as Orlando's mother fluttered into the garden like a gorgeous hen with wings outspread, her clothes a riot of contradictory colours, all of them insistently bright, "d'ye know what this place is--this terry firmy on which we stand, that's wan mile wan way, an' half a mile the other? Ye don't? Well, I'll tell ye: it's a zoolyogical gardin. Is it like a human bein' she is, the dear ould wumman there? Isn't she just some gay ould bird from the forests of the Equaytor, wherivir it is? Look at the beautiful little white curls hanging down her cheek, tied with ribbon-pink ribbon too--an' the bonnet on her head! Did ye iver see annything like it outside a zoolyogical gardin? Isn't it like the topknot of some fine old parakeet from Pernambukoko--and oh, Father Rainbow, the maginta dress of her! Now I tell you, Doctor dear, I tell you the truth, what I know! She wears hoops, she does, the same as y'r grandmother used to. An' the bit of rose ribbon round her waist, hanging down behind--now I ask y'r anner, is it like a wumman at all? See the face of her, with the little snappin' eyes an' the yellow beak of a nose, an' the sunset in her cheeks that's put on wid a painter's brush! Look at her trippin' about! Floatin'-- shure, that's what she's doin'! If you listened hard, you'd hear her buzzin'. It's the truth I tell ye. D'ye follow me?" The Young Doctor liked talking to Patsy Kernaghan better than to any other person in Askatoon. He was always sure to be stimulated by a new point of view, but he never failed to provoke Kernaghan by scepticism. "One wild bird from 'Pernambukoko' does not make a zoological garden, Patsy," he said with an air of dissent. "Well, that's true for you, Doctor dear," answered Kernaghan, "but this gardin's got a bunch of specimens for all that. Listen to me now. Did ye ever notice the likeness between the faces of people and of animals an' things that fly? You never did? Well, be thinkin' of it now. Ivry man and wumman here at Tralee looks like an animal or a bird in a zoolyogical gardin. Shure, there's no likeness between anny two of them; it's as if they was gathered from ivry corner of the wide wurruld. There's a Mongolian in the kitchen an' slitherin' about outside, doin' the things that's part for man and part for wumman. Li Choo they call him. Isn't his the face of a bald-headed baboon? An' the half-breed crature--she might ha' come from Patagony. An' the ould man Mazarine-- part rhinoceros and part Methody, he is. An' what do ye be thinkin' of him they call Giggles, that almost guv his life to save the ould behemoth! Doesn't he remind you of the zebra, where the wild Hottentots come from--smart and handsome, but that showy, all stripes and tail and fetlock! D'ye unnerstand what I mean, y'r anner?" "Have you finished calling names, Kernaghan?" asked the Young Doctor in a low tone. "Have you really finished your zoological list?" Kernaghan's eye flashed. "Aw, Doctor dear," said he, "manny's the time in County Inniskillen, where you come from, you've seen a wild thing, bare-footed, springin' from stone to stone on the hillside, wid her hair flyin' behind like the daughter of a witch or somethin' only half human- so belongin' to the hills an' the bogs an' the cromlechs was she. Well, that's the maid that's mistress of Tralee--belongin' as much to the Gardin of Eden as to this place here. There's none of them here that belongs. Every wan of them's been caught away from where he ought to be into this zoolyogical gardin." "Well, there's one good thing about a zoological garden, Patsy Kernaghan," said the Young Doctor; "it's generally a safe place for the birds and animals in it." "But suppose some wan--suppose, now, the Keeper got drunk and let loose the popylashin' of the gardin upon each other, d'ye think would it be a Gardin of Eden?" Suddenly Patsy's manner changed. "Aw, I tell you this, then: I don't like what I see here, an' I like it less an' less ivry day." "What don't you like, Patsy?" asked the other quizzically. "I don't like the way the old fella watches that child he calls his wife. I don't like the young fella bein' the cause of the old man's watchin'." "What has happened? What has he done?" asked the Young Doctor a little anxiously. "Divils me own, it isn't what he's done; it's his bein' here. It's his bein' what he is. It doesn't need doin' to bring wild youth together. Look at her, y'r anner! A week ago she was like wan that 'd be called to the Land of Canaan anny minnit. Wasn't you here tendin' her, as if she was steppin' intil her grave, an' look at her now! She's like a rose in the garden, like a lark's lilt in the air. What has done it? The young man's done it. You'll be tellin' the ould fella it's the tonic you've guv her. Tonic! How long d'ye think he'll belave it?' "But she never sees Mr. Guise, does she, Patsy? Isn't his mother always with him? Hasn't Mazarine forbidden his wife to enter the room?" Kernaghan threw out his hands. "An' you're the man they say's the cleverest steppin' between Winnipeg and the Mountains--an'--an'--you talk to me like that! Is the ould fella always in the house? Is he always upstairs? I ask you now. I'll tell you this, y'r anner--" The Young Doctor interrupted him. "Don't you suppose that there's somebody always watching, Patsy--the half-breed, the Chinaman?" Kernaghan snapped a finger. "Aw, must I be y'r schoolmaster in the days of your dotage! Of course the ould fella has someone to watch, an' I dunno which it is--the Chinaman or the half-breed wumman. But I'll tell you this: they'll take his pay and lie to him about whatever's goin' on inside the house. That girl has them both in the palms of her hands. Let him set what spies he will, she'll do what she wants, if the young man lets her." "His mother--" interjected the Young Doctor. "Her of the plumage--her! Shure, she's not livin' in this wurruld. She's only visitin' it. She's got no responsibility. If iver there was a child of a fairy tale, that wumman's the child. I belave she'd think her son was doin' right if he tied the ould fella up to a tree an' stuck him as full of Ingin arrows as a pin-cushion, an' rode off with the lovely little lady in beyant there. That's my mind about her. It isn't on her you can rely. If ye want the truth, y'r anner, them two young people have had words together and plenty of them, whether it's across the hall--her room from his; or in his room; or through the windy or down the chimney-shure, I don't care! They've spoke. There's that between them wants watchin'. Not that there's wrong in aither of them--divil a bit! I've got me own mind about Mr. Orlando Giggles. As for her, the purty thing, she doesn't know what wrong is--that's the worst of it!" The Young Doctor tapped Kernaghan's head gently with his whip. "Patsy," said he, "you talk a lot. There's no greater talker between here and Donegal. But still I think you know what to say and whom to say it to." Kernaghan's cap came off. He ran his fingers through his hair and looked at the other with a primitive intelligence which showed him to be what the Young Doctor knew him to be--better than his looks, or his place in the world, or his reputation. "Thank you kindly, y'r anner," he said, softly. "I'm troubled about things here, I am. That's why I spoke to ye. I'm afraid of the old fella, for his place is not in the pen wid that young thing, an' he'll break her heart, or kill her, if he gets to know the truth." "What do you mean by 'the truth,' Patsy?" was the sharp query. "I mean nothin' at all, save that in there wild youth is spakin' to wild youth--honest and dacint and true. But there's manny a tragedy comes out of that, y'r anner." "Orlando has been sitting up for two days," said the Young Doctor meditatively, "and in two days more he can be removed. Patsy, you are staying on here.--I know, and I trust you. The girl and the young man have both been my patients. I think as much of both of them as I can think of any man or woman. He's straight and--" "But a girl's mad when the love-song rises in her heart," interjected Kernaghan. "Yes, I know, Patsy, but it isn't so bad as you think. I had a talk with her to-day. Perhaps we can get him away to-morrow. Meanwhile, there can't much happen." "Can't much happen, wid that ould wuman in the garden there, an' the young wife upstairs, an' the fine young fella sittin' alone in his room achin' for the sound of her voice! Shure, they're together at this minnit, p'r'aps." The Young Doctor tapped Kernaghan again on the head with his whip. "You're a wild Irishman still," he said, "but I think none the worse of you for that. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. Keep your head, Patsy." And whipping up his horse, he nodded and drove on. It may be that Kernaghan's instinct was no truer than his own. It may be the Young Doctor knew Kernaghan's instinct to be true; and it also may be that what Kernaghan thought possible, the Young Doctor thought possible; but he also felt that things must be as they must be. In any case Kernaghan was right; for while the little flamboyant lady from Slow Down Ranch was busy in the front garden, Louise Mazarine was with her wounded guest, with the man who had saved her husband's money and perhaps his life. The wounded guest regarded his wound as a blessing almost. Perhaps that was why he did not notice that his host had only been silently grateful. CHAPTER VIII THE ORIENTAL WAY OF IT Orlando Guise's mother was lacking in the caution which mothers generally have where their men-children are concerned. If she had had sense, she would have insisted on removing Orlando to Slow Down Ranch at the earliest possible moment, even at some risk to his physical well-being. She ought to have seen that Joel Mazarine was possessed of a jealousy as unreasoning as that of an animal; she ought to have discouraged Louise's kindnesses. If the kindnesses had been only the ordinary acts of a mistress of a house to a guest who had saved her husband's life--dishes made by her own hand, strengthening drinks, flowers picked and arranged by herself--there could have been no cause for nervousness. Each thing done by Louise, however, came from a personally and emotionally solicitous interest. It was to be seen in the glance of the eye, in the voice a little unsteady, in girlish over-emphasis, in that shining something in the face, which, in Ireland, they call the love-light. So great was Mrs. Guise's vanity, so intense her content in her son, so proud was she of other people's admiration of him, no matter who they were, that she welcomed Louise's attentions. Kernaghan was wrong. Mazarine had not forbidden Louise to enter Orlando's room. That was the contradictory nature of the man. His innate savagery made him brood wickedly over her natural housewifery attentions to the man who had probably saved his own life, and certainly had saved him six thousand dollars; yet it was as though he must see the worst that might happen, must even encourage a danger which he dreaded. When the Methodist minister from Askatoon came to offer prayer for Orlando, Joel joined in it with all the unction of a class-leader, while every word of the prayer trembled in an atmosphere of hatred. As Patsy Kernaghan said, he himself watched, and he paid the Chinaman to watch, in the vain belief that money would secure faithful service. The Young Doctor had told him that his powerful medicine had brought back the bloom to his young wife's cheeks and the light to her eyes, but how much he believed, he could not himself have said. One thing he did know: it was that Orlando seemed quite indifferent to everything except his mother, the state of the crops and the reports on his own cattle. Also Orlando had made a good impression when he resented with a funny little oath and a funnier little giggle, but with some heat in his cheek, Joel's ostentatious proposal to pay the Young Doctor's bill for attendance. The offer had been made when Louise was standing in the doorway; but the old man did not notice that Louise coloured in sympathy with the flush in Orlando's face. It was as though a delicate nerve had been touched in each of them; but it was a nerve that had never been sensitive until they had met each other for the first time. Orlando's mother dealt with the situation in her own way. She said in a somewhat awkward pause, following the old man's proposal, that a doctor's bill was a personal thing, and she would as soon allow some one else to pay it as to pay for her washing. At this Orlando giggled again, and ventured the remark that no doctor could dispense enough medicine in a year to pay her laundry bill for a month--which pleased the old lady greatly and impelled her to swing her skirt kittenishly. It was at this point that Li Choo came knocking at the open door with a message for Mazarine. It related to a horse-accident at what was known as One Mile Spring; and Mazarine, having frowned his wife out of the doorway, made his way downstairs and prepared for his short journey to the Spring. Before he left, however, he called Li Choo aside, and what he said caused Li Choo to answer: "Me get money, me do job. Me keep eyes open. Me tell you." From a window Louise had watched the colloquy, and she knew, as well as though she stood beside them, what was being said. Li Choo had told the truth: he had got the cash, and he would do the job. But not alone from Joel Mazarine did he get money. Only two mornings before, Louise, for all the extra work he had had to do during Orlando's illness and without thought of bribery, had given him a beautiful gold ten-dollar-piece with a hole in it. If the piece had been minus the hole, Li Choo would have returned it to her, for he would have served her for nothing till the end of his days, had it been possible. Because there was a hole in it, however, and he could put a string through it and wear it round his neck inside his waistcoat, he took it, blinking his beady eyes at her; and he said: "Me watch most petic'ler, mlissy. Me tell boss Mazaline ev'lytling me see!" And he giggled almost as Orlando might have done. After which Li Choo slip-slopped away to his work behind the kitchen. When he saw Orlando's mother in the garden and the Young Doctor drive to Askatoon, and Patsy Kernaghan mount an aged cayuse and ride off, he clucked with his tongue and then went into the kitchen and prepared a tray on which he placed several pieces of a fine old set of China, which had belonged to Mazarine's grandmother and was greatly prized by the old man. Then he clucked to the half-breed woman, and she made ready as sumptuous a tea as ever entered the room of a convalescent. Like a waiter at a seaside hotel, Li Choo carried the tray above his head on three fingers to the staircase, and as he mounted to the landing, called out, "Welly good tea me bling gen'l'man." This was his way of warning Orlando Guise, and whoever might be with him, of his coming. He need not have done so, for though Louise was in Orlando's room, she was much nearer to the door than she was to Orlando. She hastened to place a table near to Orlando, for the tray which Li Choo had brought, and, as she did so, remarked with a shock at the cherished china upon the tray. "Li Choo! Li Choo!" she gasped, reprovingly, for it was as though the Ark of the Covenant had been burgled. But Li Choo, clucking, slip- slopped out of the room and down the stairs as happy as an Oriental soul could be. What was in the far recesses of that soul, where these two young people were concerned, must remain unrevealed; but Li Choo and the halfbreed woman in their own language--which was almost without words-- clucked and grunted their understanding. Left alone again, Louise found herself seated with only the table between herself and Orlando, pouring him tea and offering him white frosted cake like that dispensed at weddings; while Orlando chuckled his thanks and thought what a wonderful thing it was that a bullet in a man's side could bring the unexpected to pass and the heart's desire of a man within the touch of his fingers. Their conversation was like that of two children. She talked of her bird Richard, which she had sent to him every morning that it might sing to him; of her black cat Nigger, which sat on his lap for many an hour of the day; of the dog Jumbo, which said its prayers for him to get well, for a piece of sugar-that was a trick Louise had taught it long ago. Orlando talked of his horses and of his mother--who, he declared, was the most unselfish person on the whole continent; how she only thought of him, and spent her money for him, and gave to him, never thinking of herself at all. "She has the youngest heart of anyone in the world," said Orlando. Louise did not even smile at that. No one with a heart that was not infantile could dress and talk as Orlando's mother dressed and talked; and so Louise said softly: "I am sure her heart is a thousand years younger than mine--or younger than mine was." And then she blushed, and Orlando blushed, for he understood what was in her mind--that until they two had met, she was, as the Young Doctor said, a victim to senile decay. That was the nearest they had come as yet to saying anything which, being translated, as it were, through several languages, could mean love- making. Their love-making had only been by an inflection of the voice, by a soft abstraction, by a tuning of their spirits to each other. They were indeed like two children; and yet Li Choo was right when, in his dark soul, he conceived them to be lovers, and thought they would do what lovers do--hold hands and kiss and whisper, with never an end to a sentence, never a beginning. It was not that these things were impossible to them. It was not that their beating pulses, and the throbbing in them, was not the ancient passion which has overturned an empire, or made a little spot of earth as dear as Heaven above. It was that these were forbidden things, and Louise and Orlando accepted that they were forbidden. How long would this position last? What would the future bring? This was only the fluttering approach of two natures, from everlasting distances. The girl had been roused out of sleep; from her understanding the curtains had been flung back so that she might see. How long would it last, this simple, unsoiled story of two lives? Orlando reached out his hand to put his cup back upon the tray. As her own hand was extended to take it, her fingers touched his. Then her face flushed, and a warm cloud seemed to bedim her eyes. There flashed into her mind the deep, overwhelming fact that for three long years a rough, heavy hand had held her captive by day, by night, in a pitiless ownership. She got to her feet suddenly; her breath came quickly, and she turned towards the door as though she meant to go. At that instant Li Choo slid softly into the room, caught up the tray, poised it on his three fingers over his head and said: "Old Mazaline, he come. Be queeck!" They heard the heavy footsteps of Joel Mazarine coming into the hall-way just below. The old man, as though moved by some uncanny instinct, had come back from One Mile Spring by a roundabout trail. As the Chinaman came out upon the landing at the top of the stairs, Joel appeared at the bottom, in the doorway which gave upon the staircase. Two or three steps down shuffled the Chinaman; then, as it were by accident, he stumbled and fell, the tray with the beautiful china crashing down to the feet of Joel Mazarine, followed by the tumbling, chirruping Li Choo. Oriental duplicity had made no wrong reckoning. The old man fell back into the hall-way from the crashing china and tumbling Oriental, who plunged out into the hall-way muttering and begging pardon, cursing his soul in good Chinese and bad English. Looking down on the wreck, Mazarine saw his treasured porcelain shattered. With a growl of rage he stooped and seized Li Choo by the collar, flung him out of the door, and then with his heavy boot kicked him once, twice, thrice, a dozen times, anywhere, everywhere! Li Choo, however, had done his work well. Joel Mazarine never knew the reason for the Chinaman's downfall on the stairway, for, in the turmoil, Louise had slipped away in safety. His rage had vented itself; but, if he had seen Li Choo's face an hour after, as he talked to the half-breed woman in the kitchen, he might have had some qualms for his cruel assault. Passion and hatred in the face of an Oriental are not lovely things to see. CHAPTER IX THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES "It's been a great day--great." Orlando Guise leaned lazily on the neck of the broncho he was riding, peering between its ears, over the lonely prairie, to the sunset which was making beautiful the western sky. It was as though there was a golden fire behind vast hills of mauve and pink, purple and saffron; but the glow was so soft as to suggest a flame which did not burn; which only shed radiance, colour and an ethereal mist. All the width of land and life between was full of peace as far as eye could see. The plains were bountiful with golden harvest, and the activities of men were lost among the corn. Horses and cattle in the distance were as insects, and in the great concave sky stars still wan from the intolerant light of their master, the Sun, looked timidly out to see him burn his way down to the under-world. "Great--but it might have been greater!" added Orlando, gazing intently at the sunset. Yet, as he spoke, his eyes gazed at something infinitely farther away than the sunset-even to the goal of his desire. He was thinking that, great as the day had been, with all he had done and seen, it lacked a glimpse of the face he had not seen for a whole month. The voice, he had not heard it since it softly cried, "Oh, Orlando!" when the Chinaman crashed down the staircase with the tray of cherished porcelain, and had been maltreated by the owner of Tralee. How many times since then had those words rung in his ears! Louise had never called him by name save that once, and then it was the cry of a soul surprised, the wail of one who felt a heart-break coming on, the approach of merciless Fate. It was the companionship of trouble; it was the bird, pursued by a hawk, calling across the lonely valley to its mate. "Oh, Orlando!" He had waked in the morning with the words in his ears to make him face the day with hope and cheerfulness. It had sounded in his ears at night as he sat on the wide stoop watching the moon and listening to the night-birds, or vaguely heard his mother babbling things he did not hear. It is a memorable moment for a man when he hears for the first time his "little name," as the French call it, spoken by the woman he loves. It is as the sound of a bell in the distance, a familiar note with a new meaning, revealing new things of life in the panorama of the mind. By those two words Orlando knew what was in the mind of Louise. They were a prayer for protection and a cry for comradeship. When Louise first clasped hands with the Young Doctor on her arrival at Askatoon, the soft appeal of her fingers had made him understand that loneliness where she lived, and to bear which she sought help. But the "Oh, Orlando!" which was wrung from her, almost unknowingly, was the cry of one who, to loneliness, had added fear and tragedy. Yet behind the fear, tragedy and loneliness there was the revelation of a heart. A courtship is a long or a short ceremonial or convention, a make- believe, by which people pretend that they slowly come to know and love each other; but lovers know that each understands the other by one note or inflection of the voice, by one little act of tenderness. These, or one of these, tell the whole story, the everlasting truth by which men and women learn how good at its worst life is, or speak the lightning-lie by which the bones of a dead world are exposed to the disillusioned soul. This had been a great day, because, in it, physical being had joyously celebrated itself in a wild business of the hills; in air so fresh and sweet that it almost sparkled to the eye; in a sun that was hot, but did not punish; at a sport by which the earliest men in the earliest age of the world made life a rare sensation. The man who has not chased the wild pony in the hills with the lasso on his arm, riding, as they say in the West, "Hell for leather," down the steep hillside, over the rock and the rough land, balancing on his broncho with the dexterity of a bird or a baboon, has failed to find one of life's supreme pleasures. In the foothills, many miles away from Slow Down Ranch and Tralee, there lived a herd of wild ponies, and it had been the ambition of a dozen ranchmen and broncho-busters thereabouts to capture one or many. More than once Orlando had seen a little gray broncho, with legs like the wrists of a lady, with a tail like a comet, frisking among the rocks and the brushwood, or standing alert, moveless and alone upon some promontory, and he had made up his mind that if, and when, there came a day of broncho-busting, he would become a hunter of the little gray mare. When the news came that the ranchmen for miles around were preparing for the drive of the hills, he determined to take part in it, against the commands of the Young Doctor, who said that he would run risk in doing so, for, though his wound was healed, he should still avoid strain and fatigue. There is no fatigue like that of broncho-busting. It is not galloping on the turf; it is being shaken and tossed in a saddle which the knees can never grip, on the back of something gone mad--for the maddest, wisest, carefullest thing on earth is a broncho, which itself was once a wild pony of the hills, and has been hunted down, thrown by the lasso, saddled, bridled and heart-broken all in an hour. When the broncho which was once a wild pony sets out on the chase after its own, there is nothing like it in the world; and so Orlando found. The veteran broncho-busters and ranchmen gave him no vociferous welcome as he appeared among them. Had it not been for the reputation which he already gained for courage, such as he had shown in the recent affair when he had driven off the men who were robbing Joel Mazarine, and also for an idea, steadily spreading, that he was masquerading, and that behind all, was a curly-headed, intrepid, out-door "white man," he would not have had what he called a great day. He could not throw the lasso as well as many another, but he could ride as well as any man that ever rode; and the broncho given him to ride that day was one sufficiently unreliable in character and sure-footed in travel to test him to the utmost. He had endured the test; he had even got his little gray mare, lassoing her like a veteran. He had helped to break her, and had sent her home from the improvised corral by one of his men. He had then parted from the others, who had dispersed to their various ranches with their prizes, and had ridden away on the broncho with which he had done such a good day's work. He had had the thrill of the hunter, riding like any wild Indian through the hills; he had had the throb of conquest in his veins; but while other men had shouted and happily blasphemed as they rode and captured, he had only giggled in excitement. As he looked now into the sunset, he was thinking of the little gray mare, with the legs like the wrists of a lady and the soft, bright, wild eye, which had fought and fought to resist subjection; but which, overpowered by the stronger will of man, had yielded like a lady, and had been ridden away to Slow Down Ranch, its bucking over for ever, captive and subdued. Orlando was picturing the little gray mare with Louise on its back. He had no right to think of Louise; yet there was never an hour in which he did not think of her. And Louise had no right to think of Orlando; yet, sleeping and waking, he was with her. Their homes were four miles apart, although, in one sense, they were a million miles apart by law and the convention which shuts a woman off from the love of men other than her husband; and yet in thought they were as near together always as though they had lain in the same cradle and grown up under the same rooftree. There was something about the gray pony, with the look of a captive in its eye, a wildness in subjection, like the girl at Tralee--the girl suddenly come to be woman, with her free soul born into understanding, yet who was as much a captive as though in prison, and guarded by a warder with a long beard, a carnivorous head, and boots greased with tallow. Since they had parted, the day after Li Choo had averted a domestic "scene" or tragedy, the search had gone on by the Mounted Police-"the Riders of the Plains"--for the men who had attempted to rob Mazarine, and to put Orlando out of action by a bullet. Suspicion had been directed against the McMahons, but Joel Mazarine had declared that it was not the McMahons who had attacked him, although they were masked. There was nothing strange in that, because, as the Inspector of the Riders said "That lot is too fly to do the job themselves; you bet they paid others to do it." Orlando had no wish to see the criminals caught or punished. Somehow, secretly, he looked upon the assault and his wound as a blessing. It had brought him near to his other self, his mate in the scheme of things. There was something almost pagan and primitive, something near to the very beginning of things in what these two felt for each other. It was as though they really belonged to a world of lovers that "lived before the god of Love was born." As Orlando sat watching the sunset, Louise's last words to him, "Oh, Orlando!" kept ringing in his ears. He thought of what had happened that very morning before he started for the hills. Soon after daybreak, Li Choo the Chinaman had come slip-slopping to him at Slow Down Ranch, and had said to him without any preliminaries, or any reason for his coming: "I bling Mlissy Mazaline what you like. She cly. What you want me do, I do. That Mazaline, gloddam! I gloddam Mazaline!" Orlando had no desire for intrigue, but Li Choo stood there waiting, and the devotion the Chinaman had shown made him tear a piece of paper from his pocket-book and write on it the one word "Always." He then folded the paper up until it was no bigger than a waistcoat button, and gave it to Li Choo. Also, he offered a five-dollar bill, which Li Choo refused to take. When he persisted, the Chinaman opened his loose blue jacket and showed a ten-dollar gold-piece on a string around his neck. "Mlissy Mazaline glive me that; it all plenty me," he said. "You want me come, I come. What you say do, I do. I say gloddam Mazaline!" That scene came to Orlando's mind now, and it agitated him as the incident itself had not stirred him when it happened. The broncho he was riding, as though the disturbance in Orlando's breast had passed into its own wilful body, suddenly became restless to be off, and as Orlando gave no encouragement, showed signs of bucking. At that moment Orlando saw in the distance, far north of both Tralee and Slow Down Ranch, a horse, ridden by a woman, galloping on the prairie. Presently as he watched the headlong gallop, the horse came down and the rider was thrown. He watched intently for a moment, and then he saw that the woman did not move, but lay still beside the fallen horse. He dug his heels into the broncho's side, and although it had done its day's work, it reached out upon the trail as though fresh from the corral. It bucked malevolently as it went, but it went. It was apparent that no one else had seen the accident. Orlando had been at a point of vantage on a lonely rise about eighty feet above the level of the prairie. Where horse and rider lay was a good two miles, but within seven minutes he had reached the spot. Flinging the bridle over the broncho's neck, he dismounted. As he did so, a cry broke from him. It was, as it were, an answer to the "Oh, Orlando!" which had been ringing in his ears. There, lying upon the ground beside the horse, with its broken leg caught in a gopher's hole, was Louise. Orlando's ruddy face turned white; something seemed to blind him for an instant, and then he was on his knees beside her, lifting up her head, feeling her heart. Presently the colour came back to his face with a rush. Her heart was beating; her pulse trembled under his fingers; she was only unconscious. But was there other injury? Was arm or leg broken? He called to her. Then with an exclamation of self-reproach, he laid her down again on the ground, ran to his broncho; caught the water- bottle from the saddle, lifted her head, and poured some water between the white lips. Presently her eyes opened, and she stared confusedly at Orlando, unable to realize what had happened. Then memory came back, and with it her very life-blood seemed to flow like water through the opening gates of a flume, with all the weight of the river behind. As her face flooded, she shivered with emotion. She was resting against his knee; her head was upon his arm; his face was very near; and there was that in his eyes which told a story that any woman, loving, would be thrilled at seeing. What restrained him from clasping her to his breast? What kept her arms by her side? The sun was gone, leaving only a glimmer behind; the swift twilight of the prairie was drawing down. Warm currents of air were passing like waves of a sea of breath over the wide plains; the stars were softly stinging the sky, and a bright moon was asserting itself in the growing dusk. Here they were who, without words or acts, had been to each other what Adam and Eve were in the Garden, without furtiveness, and guiltless of secret acts which poison Love. What restrained them was native, childlike camaraderie, intense, unusual and strange. The world would call them romancists, if they believed that this restraint could be. But there was something more. With all their frank childlikeness, there was also a shyness, a reserve, which would not have been, if either had ever eaten of the Fruit of Understanding until they met each other for the first time. "Are you--are you hurt?" he asked, his voice calmer than his spirit, his heart beating terribly hard. "I'm all right," she answered. "I fell soft. You see, I'm very light." "No bones broken? Are you sure?" he asked solicitously. She sat erect, drawing away from his arms and the support of his knee." Don't you see my legs and arms are all right! Help me up, please," she added, and stretched out a hand. Then, all at once, she saw the horse lying near. Again she shivered, and her hand was thrown out in a gesture of pain. "Oh, see-see!" she cried. "His leg is broken." She loved animals far more than human beings. There were good reasons for it. She had fared hard in life at the hands of men and women, because the only ones with whom, in her seclusion, she had had to do, had sacrificed her, all save one-the man beside her. Animal life had something in it akin to her own voiceless being. Her spirit had never been vocal until Orlando came. "Oh, how wicked I've been!" she cried. . . . "I couldn't bear it any longer. He wouldn't let me ride alone, go anywhere alone. I had to do it. I'd never ridden this horse before. My own mare wasn't fit. "See-see. It's my ankle that ought to be broken, not his." Orlando got to his feet. "Look the other way," he said. "Turn round, please. I'll put him out of pain. He bolted with you, and he'd have killed you, if he could; but that doesn't matter. He can't be saved. Turn round, don't look this way." She had been commanded to do things all her life, first by her mother, tyrant-hearted and selfish, and then by her husband, an overlord, with a savage soul; and she had obeyed always, because she always seemed to be in the grasp of something against which no pressure could avail. She was being commanded now, but there was that in the voice which, while commanding her, made her long to do as she was bid. It was an obedience filled with passion, resigning itself to the will of a force which was all gentleness, but oh, so compelling! She buried her face in her hands, and presently Orlando had opened a vein in the chestnut's neck, and its life-blood slowly ebbed away. As he turned towards her again, Orlando was startled by a sudden action on the part of his broncho. Whether it was the smell of blood which frightened it, or death itself, which has its own terrors to animal life, or whether it was as though a naked, shivering animal soul passed by, the broncho started, shied and presently broke into a trot; then, before Orlando could reach it, into a gallop, and was away down the prairie in the direction of Slow Down Ranch. "That's queer," he said, and he gave a nervous little laugh. "It's the worst of luck, and--and we're twelve miles from Tralee," he added slowly. "It's terrible!" Louise said, her fingers twisting together in an effort at self-control. "Don't you see how terrible it is?" she asked, looking into Orlando's troubled face but cheerful eyes. "You couldn't walk that distance, of course," he remarked. She endeavoured to get to her feet, but seemed to give way. He reached out his hands. She took them, and he helped her up. His face was anxious. "Are you sure you're not hurt?" he asked. "There's nothing broken," she answered. "No bones, anyway. But I don't feel--" She swayed. He put an arm around her. "I don't feel as if I could walk even a mile," she continued. "It's shaken me so." "Or else you're hurt badly inside," he said apprehensively. "No, no, I'm sure not," she answered. "It's only the shock." "Can you walk a little?" he asked. "This poor horse--let's get away from it. There's a good place over there--see!" He pointed to a little rise in the ground where were a few stunted trees and some long grass and shrubs. "Can you walk?" "Oh, yes, I'm all right," she answered nervously. "I don't need your arm. I can walk by myself." "I think not--well, not yet, anyhow," he answered soothingly. "Please do as you're told. I'm keeping my arm around you for the present." Always in the past she had obeyed, when commanded by her mother or husband, with an apathy which had smothered her youth. Now her youth seemed to drink eagerly a cup of obedience--as though it were the wine of life itself. She even longed to obey the voice whispering in her soul from ever so far away: "Close--close to him! Home is in his arms." With all her unconscious revelation of herself, however, there was that in her which was pure maidenliness. For, married as she was, she had never in any real sense been a wife, or truly understood what wifedom meant, or heard in her heart the call of the cradle. She had been the victim of possession, which had meant no more to her than to be, as it were, subjected daily to the milder tortures of the Inquisition. Yet she knew and could realize to the full that a power which had her in control, which possessed her by the rights of the law, prevented her--and would prevent her by whatever torture was possible--from friendship, alliance, or whatever it might be, with Orlando. She knew the law: one wife to one husband; and the wife to look neither to the right nor to the left, to the east nor to the west, to the north nor to the south, but to remain, and be constant in remaining, the helpmeet, the housewife, the sole property of her husband, no matter what that husband might be-- vinous, vicious, vagrant, vengeful or any other things, good or bad. "Why don't you look glad when you see me come in?" Joel Mazarine remarked to her suddenly the day before. "If you'd had some husbands, you might have reason for bein' the statue and the dummy you are. Am I a drunkard? Am I a thief? Am I a nighthawk? Do I go off lookin' for other women? Don't I keep the commandments? Ain't you got a home here as good as any in the land? Didn't I take you out of poverty, and make you head of all this, with people to wait on you and all the rest of it?" That was the way he had talked, and somehow she had not seemed able to bear it; and she had said to him, in unexpected revolt, that her tongue was her own, and what was in her mind was her own, even if her body wasn't. Then, in a fury, he had caught his riding-whip from the wall to lash her with it, just when Li Choo the Chinaman appeared with a message which he delivered at the appropriate moment, though he had had it to deliver for some time. It was to the effect that the Clerk of the Court in the neighbouring town of Waterway wished to see him at once on urgent business. The message had been left by a rancher in passing. As Li Choo delivered the word, he managed to put himself between Mazarine and his wife in such a way as to enrage the old man, who struck the Chinaman twice savagely across the shoulders with the whip, and then stamped out of the house, invoking God to punish the rebellious and the heathen, while Li Choo, shrinking still from the cruel blows, clucked in his throat. There was something in the sound which belonged to the abyss dividing the Eastern from the Western races. That night Louise had refused to go to bed; but at last, fearing physical force, had obeyed, and had lain with her face to the wall, close up to it, letting the cold plaster cool her hot palms, for now she burned with a fire which was consuming the debris of an old life--the fire of knowledge, for which she had to pay so heavily. "You couldn't walk even a little of the way to Tralee, could you?" asked Orlando, when they had reached a shrub-covered hillock. "No, I couldn't walk it, I'm so shaken. I'm terribly weak; I tremble all over," she added, as she sat down upon a stone. "But if I don't--if I don't go back--oh, you know!" "Yes, I know," answered Orlando. "He's the sort that would horsewhip a woman." "He started to do it yesterday," she answered, "but Li Choo came in time, and he horsewhipped Li Choo instead." "I wouldn't myself be horsewhipping Chinamen much," said Orlando. "They're a queer lot." Suddenly she got to her feet. "I won't stand it. I won't stand it any longer," she cried. "That is why to-day, although he told me I mustn't ride, I took that new chestnut, and saddled it and rode--I didn't care where I rode. I didn't care how fast the horse went. I didn't care what happened to me. And here I am, and--But oh, I do care what happens to me!" she added, her voice breaking. "I'm--I'm frightened of him--I'm frightened, in spite of myself. . . . He doesn't treat me right," she added. "And I'm terribly frightened." She raised her eyes to Orlando's face in the growing dusk--there is no twilight in that prairie land--and there was that in it which made her feel that she must not give way any further. In Orlando's veins was Southern sap, mixed with Northern blood; in Orlando's eyes was a sudden look belonging to that which defies the law. "Don't--don't look like that," she exclaimed. "Oh, Orlando!" Once more he heard her speak his name, and it was like salve to a wound. He put a hand upon himself. "I'll go to Tralee," he said, "if you don't mind waiting here alone." "I can't. I will not wait alone. If you go, then I'll go too somehow.... It's twelve miles. You couldn't get there till midnight, and you couldn't get back here with a wagon for another couple of hours from that. It would be daylight then. I can't stay here alone. I'm frightened, and I'm cold." "Wait a minute," said Orlando. He ran back to the dead horse, unloosed the saddle from its back, detached from it a rain-coat strapped to the pommel, and brought it to her. "This will keep you warm," he said. "It isn't cold to-night. You only feel cold because you're upset and nervous." "I'm frightened," she answered; "frightened of everything. Listen! Don't you hear something stirring--there!" She peered fearfully into the dusk behind them. "Probably," he answered. "There are lots of prairie dogs and things about. The more you listen, the more you hear on the prairie, especially at night." There was silence for a moment, and then he added: "My broncho'll steer straight for Slow Down Ranch, and that'll bring my men. You can be quite sure there'll be a search-party out from Tralee, too, at the first streak of dawn. You can't make the journey, so the only thing to be done is to wait here. That coat will keep you from getting cold, and I'll cut a lot of long grass and make you a bed here. Also, the grass is warm, and I'll cover you with it and with pine branches." "I can't lie down," she answered. "No, I can't; I'm afraid. It's all so strange, and to-morrow, he--" "There's nothing to be frightened about," he interrupted. "Nothing at all, Louise." It was the first time he had ever addressed her by name, and it made her shiver with a new feeling. It seemed to tell a long, long story without words. "You must do what I ask you to do--whatever I ask you to do," he repeated. "Will you?" "Yes, anything you ask me I'll do," she answered, and then added quickly, "For you won't ask me to do anything I don't want to do. That's the difference. You understand, Orlando." A few minutes later he had found a suitable place to make a kind of bed of grass for her, and had prepared it, with his knife, cutting the branches of small shrubs and grass and the scanty branches of the pine. When it was finished, he came to her and said: "It's all ready. Come and lie down, and I'll cover you up." She got to her feet slowly, for she was in pain greater than she knew, so absorbed was her mind in this new life suddenly enveloping her, and then she said in a low voice: "No, not yet; I can't yet. I want to sit here. I've never felt the night like this before. It's wonderful, and I'm not nearly so cold now. I know I oughtn't to be cold at all, in the middle of summer like this." She paused, and seemed lost in contemplation of the sky. After a moment she added: "I never knew I could feel so far away from all the world as I do tonight. But the sky seems so near, and the moon and the stars so friendly." "You haven't slept out of doors as I have hundreds of times," he answered. "The night and I are brothers; the stars are my little cousins; and the moon"--he giggled in his boyish way--"is my maiden aunt. She's so prudish and so kind and friendly, as you say. She's like an aunt I had--Aunt Samantha. She was my father's sister. I used to love her to visit my mother. She always brought me things, and she gave them to me as if they were on silver dishes--like a ceremony. She was so prim, I used to call her Aunt Primrose. She made me feel as if I could do anything I liked and break any law I pleased. But all the time, like a saint in a stained-glass window, she always seemed to be saying, 'Yes, you'd like to, but you mustn't.' She was just like the moon. I'm well acquainted with the moon, and--" "Hush!" Louise interrupted. "Don't you hear something stirring--there, behind us?" He laughed. "Of course something's always 'stirring behind us' on the prairie, and things you can't hear at all in the day are almost loud at night. There are thousands of sounds that never get to your ears when the sun is busy, but when Aunt Primrose Moon is saying, 'Hush! Hush!' to the naughty children of this world, you can hear a whole new population at work, cracking away like mad. Say, ain't I letting myself go to- night?" he added, giggling again and sitting down beside her. "I'm going to give you just half an hour, and at the end of that half-hour you've got to go to sleep." "I can't--I can't," she said scarcely above a whisper. As though in response to an unspoken thought, he said casually: "I'm going to walk awhile when you've lain down, and then--" He pointed to a spot about twenty yards away. "Do you see the two big stones there? Well, when I've finished my walk and my talk with Aunty Primrose"--he laughed up at the moon--"I'm going to sit down there and snooze till daylight." He pointed again: "Right over there beside those two rocks. That's my bed. Do you see?" She did not reply at once, but a long sigh came from her lips. "You'll be cold," she said. "No, it's a hot night," he answered. "I'm too hot as it is." And he loosened his heavy red shirt at the throat. "If I've got to go to bed in half an hour," she said presently, "tell me more about your Aunt Samantha, and about yourself, and your home before you came out here, and what you did when you were a little boy--tell me everything about yourself." She was forgetting Tralee for the moment, and the man who raised his hand against her yesterday, and the life she had lived. Or was it only that she had grown young during these last two months, and the young can so easily forget! "You want to hear? You really want to hear?" he asked. "Say, it won't be a very interesting story. Better let me tell you about the broncho- busting today." "No, I want to hear about yourself." She looked intently at him for an instant, and then her eyes closed and the long lashes touched her cheek. There was something very wilful in her beauty, and her body too had delicate, melancholy lines strange in one so young. She was not conscious that, in her dreamy abstraction, she was leaning towards him. It was but an instant, though it seemed to him an interminable time, in which he fought the fierce desire to clasp her in his arms, and kiss the lips which, to his ears, said things more wonderful than he had ever dreamed of in his friendship with the night and the primrose moon. He knew, however, that if he did, she would not go back to Tralee to-morrow; that tomorrow she would defy the leviathan; and that tomorrow he would not have the courage to say the things he must say to the evil-hearted master of Tralee, who, he knew, would challenge them with ugly accusations. He must be able to look old Mazarine fearlessly in the face; he would not be the slave of opportunity. He was going to fight clean. She was here beside him in the warm loneliness of the northern world, and he was full-grown in body and brain, with all the human emotions alive in him; yet he would fight clean. Not for a half-hour, but for nearly an hour he told her what she wished to know, while she listened in a happy dream; and when at last she lay down, she refused his coverlet of dry grass, saying that she was quite warm. She declared that she did not even need the coat he had taken from the saddle of the dead horse, but he wrapped it around her, and, saying "Goodnight" almost brusquely, marched away in the light of the dying moon. The night wore on. At first Louise's ears were sensitive to every sound, and there were stirrings in the hillock by which she slept, but she comforted herself with the thought that they were the stirrings of lonely little waifs of nature like herself. Though she dared not let the thought take form, yet she feared, too, the sound of human footsteps. By and by, however, in the sweet quiet of the night and the somnolent light of the moon, sleep captured her. When at last Orlando's footsteps did crush the dry grass, the sound failed to reach her ears, for it was then not very far from daylight, and she had slept for several hours. Sleep had not touched Orlando's eyes when, sitting down by the stones which were to mark his resting-place, he waited for Louise to wake. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Highsterics, they call it World was only the size of four walls to a sick person WILD YOUTH By Gilbert Parker Volume 2. X. THE MOON WAS NOT ALONE XI. LOUISE XII. MAN UNNATURAL XIII. ORLANDO GIVES A WARNING XIV. FILION AND FIONA--ALSO PATSY KERNAGHAN XV. OUTWARD BOUND XVI. AT THE CROSS TRAILS XVII. THE SUPERIOR MAN XVIII. YOUTH HAS ITS WAY CHAPTER X THE MOON WAS NOT ALONE Out on the prairie under the light of the stars a man had fought the first great battle of his life, and had emerged victorious. There are no drawn battles in the struggles of the soul. As Orlando fought, he was tortured by the thought that none would believe the truth to-morrow when it was told; and that there would be penalty though there was no crime. As for Louise, she could have returned, almost blindly defiant, to her world, hand in hand with Orlando; and yet, when morning came, and her eyes opened on the prairie at day-break, with life stirring everywhere, she was glad of the victory--though the shadow of a great trouble to come was showing in her eyes. She knew what she had to face at Tralee, and that she had no proof of her perfect innocence. It was of little use for them to call upon Heaven to witness what the night had been; and Joel Mazarine, who distrusted every man and woman, would distrust her with a sternness which guilt only could effectively defy! Orlando's enforced gaiety as he invited her to a breakfast of a couple of biscuits, left from yesterday's broncho-busting, heartened her; yet both were conscious of the make-believe. They realized they were helpless in the grip of harsh circumstance. It was almost enough to make them take advantage of calumny and the traps set for them by Fate, and join hands for ever. As they looked into each other's eyes, the same hopeless yet reckless thought flickered--flickered, and vanished. Yet as they looked out over the prairie towards Tralee, to which Louise must presently return, a rebellious sort of joy possessed them. ......................... The discord of their thoughts was like music beside what had passed at Tralee. There nothing relieved the black, sullen rage of Joel Mazarine. He had returned to the house where his voice had always been able to summon his slaves, and to know that they would come--Chinaman, half- breed, wife. Now he called, and the wife did not come. On the new chestnut she had ridden away on the prairie, so the halfbreed woman had said, as hard as he could go. He had scanned the prairie till night came, without seeing a sign of her. His black imagination instantly conceived the worst that Louise might do. It was not in him ever to have the decent alternative. He questioned the half-breed woman closely; he savagely interrogated the Chinaman; and then he declared that they lied to him, that they knew more than they said; and when he was unable to bear it any longer, he mounted his horse and galloped over to Slow Down Ranch. As he went, he kept swearing to himself that Louise had flown thither; and anger made his brain malignant. He could scarcely frame his words intelligibly when he arrived at Slow Down Ranch. There he was presently convinced that his worst suspicions were true, for Orlando also had not returned. He saw it all. They had agreed to meet; they had met; they had eloped and were gone! His beady eyes were those of serpents watching for the instant to strike, and his words burst over the head of Orlando's mother like shrapnel. For once, however, the futile, fantastic mother rose higher than herself, and declared that her son had never run away from, or with, anything in his life; that he--Joel Mazarine--had never had anything worth her son's running away with; and that her son, when he came back, would make him ask forgiveness as he had never asked it of his God. Indeed, the gaudy little lady stood in her doorway and chattered her maledictions after him, as he rode back again towards Tralee muttering curses which no class leader in the Methodist Church ought even to quote for pious purposes. Joel Mazarine had flattered himself that he had everything life could give--money, property and a garden of youth in which his old age could loiter and be glad; and that he should be defied suddenly and his garden made desolate, that the lines of his good fortune should be crossed, caused him to rage like any heathen. His monstrous egotism made him like some infuriated bull in the arena, with the banderillos sticking in his hot hide. The two people whom he cursed were in Elysium compared to the place where he tortured himself. There are desert birds that silently surround a rattlesnake, as he sleeps, with little bundles of cactus-heads and their million needles, so that, when the reptile wakes, it cannot escape through the palisade of bristling weapons by which it is surrounded; and in ghoulish anger it strikes its fangs into its own body until it dies. Just such a helpless rage held Joel Mazarine, and his religion did not suggest seeking comfort at that Throne of Grace to which he had so publicly prayed on occasions. Night held him prowling in his own coverts; morning found him yellow and mottled, malicious, but now silent. He somehow felt that he would know the truth and the whole truth soon. He ate his pork and beans for breakfast with the appetite of a ravenous animal. He put pieces of the pork chop in his mouth with his fingers; he gulped his coffee; but all the time he kept his eyes on the open door, as though he expected some messenger to announce that Providence had stricken his rebellious wife by sudden death. It seemed to him that Nature and Jehovah must unite to avenge him. After three hours of further waiting he determined to go into Askatoon. He would have bills printed advertising for Louise as he had done for stray cattle; he would have notices put in the newspapers proclaiming that his wife was strayed or stolen and must be put in pound when discovered. At the moment he decided thus, he caught sight of a wagon approaching from the north. It was near enough for him to see that there was a woman in it; and the eyes of the half-breed hired woman, possessing the Indian far-sight, saw that it was Louise, and told her master so. Ten minutes later Louise stood in front of the Master of Tralee, and the Master of Tralee filled the doorway. "What you want here?" he asked of her with blurred rage in his voice. "I want to go to my room," Louise answered quietly but firmly. "Please stand aside." Now that Louise was face to face with her foe, a new spirit had suddenly possessed her; and standing beside his broncho, a hand on its neck, Orlando almost smiled, for this was Louise with a new nature. There was defiance and courage in her face, not the apprehension which had almost overwhelmed her as they started back to Tralee, having been rescued by the search-party from Slow Down Ranch. The night had done something to Louise which was making itself felt. "You think you can come back here after what you've done--after where you've been--the likes of you!" Mazarine snarled unmoving. "You think you can!" Louise turned swiftly to look at Orlando and the three men, one riding and two in the wagon, as though to call them in evidence of her innocence; but there came to her eyes a sudden fire of courage, and she turned again to Mazarine and said: "I'm your wife by the law--just as much your wife to-day as yesterday. You treat me before strangers as if I were a criminal. I'm not going to be treated that way. I've got my rights. Stand back and let me in-- stand back, Joel Mazarine," she said, and she took a step forward, child though she was, as if she would strike him. Something had transformed her. To Orlando she seemed scarcely real. The shrinking, colourless child of a few weeks had suddenly become a woman--and such a woman! "I'll tell you in my own time where I've been and what I've done," she continued. "I want to go upstairs. Stand out of the doorway." There was a movement behind her. A man in the wagon and the one on his horse seemed to grow angry and threatening. The ranchman dropped from his horse. Only Orlando stood cool, quiet and ominously watchful. Mazarine did not fail to notice the movement of the two men. Presently Orlando's voice said slowly and calmly: "Stand back, Mazarine. Let her go to her room. This is a free country, and she's free in her own house. It's her house until you've proved she's got no right there." Then he added with sharp insistence and menace: "Stand back--damn you, Mazarine!" Orlando did not move as he spoke, but there was a look in his face which an enemy would not care to see. Mazarine, in spite of his rage, quailed before the sharp, menacing voice so little in tune with its reputation for giggling, and stepping back, he let Louise pass. Then he plunged forward out of the doorway. "That's right. Come outside," said Orlando scornfully. "Come out into the open." His voice became lower. There was something deadly in it, boy as he was. "Come out, you hypocrite, and listen to what I've got to say. Listen to the truth I've got to tell you. If you don't listen, I'll horsewhip you, that'd horsewhip a woman, till you can't stand--you loathsome old dog. . . . Yes, he took his horsewhip to her yesterday," he added to the spectators, who muttered angrily, for the West is chivalrous towards women. Something near to madness possessed Orlando. No one had ever seen him as he was at that moment. Down through generations had come to him some iron thing that suddenly revealed itself in him, as something had just suddenly revealed itself in Louise. The other three men--two in the wagon and one beside his horse-stared at him as though they had seen him for the first time. They were unready for the passion that possessed him. Not a muscle of his body appeared to move; he was as motionless as the trunk of a tree. But in his eyes and his voice there was, as one of the ranchers said afterwards, "Hell--and then some more." "Listen to me," he said again, and his voice was low and husky now. "Yesterday I was broncho-busting--" Thereupon he told the whole story of what had happened since he had seen Louise thrown from her chestnut on the prairie. He told how Louise was too shaken and ill to attempt the journey back to Tralee, and how they had camped where they were, near the dead horse. As Orlando talked, the old man was seized by terrible hatred and jealousy. "You needn't tell me the rest," he broke in, his hands savagely opening and shutting. "I guess I understand everything." The words had scarcely left his mouth when from the wagon a man said: "Wait--wait, Mister. I got something to say." He sprang to the ground, and ran between Mazarine and Orlando. "This is where I come in," he said, as Louise's face appeared at an upper window, and she listened. "You don't know me. Well, I know you. Everybody knows you, and nobody likes you. I know what happened last night. I'm a brother of your fellow Christian Rigby, the druggist, over there in Askatoon. He's a Methodist. I'm not. I'm only good. I been a lot o' things, and nothing in the end. Well, you hearken to my tale. "I was tramping with my bundle on my back acrost the prairie to Askatoon from Waterway. I'm a sundowner, as they say in Australia. When the sun goes down, I down to my bed wherever I be on the prairie. I was asleep- I'd been half drunk--when the chestnut threw your wife and broke its leg; but I was awake when he rode up." He pointed to Orlando. "I was awake, and so I watched. I knew who she was; I knew who he was." He pointed to Orlando again. "I guessed I'd see something. I did. "I watched them two people all night. There was a moon. I could see. I wasn't fifteen feet from her all night, and I jined the others when they come to rescue. I guess I got the truth, and I guess if you want any evidence about me you can get it. Lots of people know me out here. I ain't got any house or any home, and I get drunk sometimes, and I ain't got money to buy meals with, lots of times, but nobody ever knowed me lie. That's what ruined me--I been too truthful. Well, I'm not lying now, Mister. I'm telling you the God-help-me truth. He's a gentleman." He pointed again to Orlando. "He's a gentleman from away back in God's country, wherever that is, and she's the best of the best of the very best. "You can bet your greasy old boots and ugly face that you've got a bigger fortune in that wife of yours than you've any right to. Say, she's a queen, Mister, and don't you forget it, and"--he drawled out his words-- "you go inside your house and get down on your knees, same as you do in the Meeting House, and thank the Lord you love so well for all his blessings. As my friend here said a little while back"--he pointed to Orlando again--"'Damn you, Mazarine!' Go and hide yourself." The old man stood for a moment dumbfounded; then, without a word, he turned and hunched inside the house. "He raised his horsewhip ag'in' a woman, did he?" said one of Orlando's ranchmen. "Ain't that a matter we got to take notice of?" "Boys," said Orlando as he motioned them to be off, "Mrs. Mazarine can take care of herself. You'll forget what's happened, if you want to play up to her. If she needs you, she'll be sure to let you know." A moment afterwards they were all on their way on the road leading to Slow Down Ranch. "He didn't giggle much that time," said one of the ranchmen of Orlando, as they moved on. CHAPTER XI LOUISE The Young Doctor had had a trying day. Certain of his cases had given him anxiety; his drives had been long and fatiguing; he had had little sleep for several nights; and he was what Patsy Kernaghan had called "brittle"; for when Patsy was in a vexed condition, he used to say, "I'm so brittle I'll break if you look at me." As the Young Doctor drew his chair up to the supper-table and looked at his food with a critical air, he was very brittle. For one born in Enniskillen he had an even nature, but its evenness was more the result of mental control than temperament. He sighed as he looked at the marrow bones which, as a rule, gave him joy when their turn came in the weekly menu; he eyed askance the baked potatoes; and the salad waiting for his skilled hand only gave him an extra feeling of fatigue. Most men in a like state say, "I don't know what's the matter with me," and yet many a one has been stimulated out of it, away from it, by the soft voice and friendly hand of a woman. There was, however, no woman to distract the overworked Young Doctor by her freshness, drawn from the reservoir of her vitality; and that was a pity, because, as Patsy Kernaghan many a time said: "Aw, Doctor dear, what's the good of a tongue to a wagon if there's only wan horse to draw it! Shure, you'll think a lot more of yourself whin you're able to stand at the head of your own table and say grace for two at least, and thanksgiving for manny, if it's the will of God." The Young Doctor did not know why he was so brittle, but the truth is he was feeding on himself, and that is a poor business. Every dog knows it is good to feed on the knuckle of a goat if he hasn't got a beefbone, and every real man knows--though to know anything at all he must have been married--that any marriage is better than no marriage at all; because whether it's happy or unhappy, it makes you concerned for some one besides yourself, if you have any soul or sense at all. The Young Doctor was under the delusion that he loved his lonely table and the making of a simple salad for a simple man, but then he came from Ireland and had imagination; and that is always a curse when it isn't a blessing, for there is nothing between the two. At the end of his troubled day he almost cursed the salad as it crinkled in the dish just slightly rubbed with garlic. He was turning away in apathy from it--from the bones with the marrow oozing out of the ends, from the bursting baked potatoes, from the beautiful crusts of brown bread, when he heard the door-bell ring. At the sound his face set as though it were mortar. He wanted no patients this night; but from the peremptory sound of the bell he was sure some one had come who needed medicine or the knife, and he could refuse neither; for was he not at everybody's beck and call, the Medicine Man whose door was everybody's door! "Damnation!" he said aloud, and turned towards the door expectantly. Then he bitted himself to wait; and he did not wait long. Presently he heard a voice say, "I must see him," and the door opened wide, and Louise Mazarine stepped into the room. Her face was pale and distraught; her blue eyes, with their long, melancholy lashes, stared at him in appealing apprehension. Her lips were almost white; her hands trembled out towards him. "I've come--I've come!" she said. It had the finality of the last chapter of a book. The Young Doctor closed the door, ignoring for the instant the hands held out to him. After all, he was a very sane Young Doctor, and he had the faculty of keeping his head, and his heart, and his own counsel. Also he knew there was an inquisitive old servant in the hallway. When the door was closed, he turned round on Louise slowly, and then he held out his hands to her, for she was shrinking away, as though he had repulsed her. He pressed her trembling hands in the way that only faithful friendship shows, and said: "Yes, I know you've come, but tell me what you've come for." "I couldn't bear it any longer," she said brokenly. "I'm not made of steel or stone. It's been terrible. He doesn't speak to me except to order me to do this or that. I haven't done anything wrong, and I won't be treated so. I won't! When he made me kneel down by him in the trail and tried to make me pray to be forgiven of my sins, I couldn't stand it. I don't know what my sins are, and I won't be converted if I don't want to. I'm not a slave. I'm of age. I'm twenty." There was no sign of fatigue now in the Young Doctor's face. Something had called him out of himself, and this human need had done what a wife's hand might have done, or the welcome of a child. "No, you're not twenty," he declared, with a friendly smile. "You aren't ten. You are only one. In fact, I think you're only just born!" He did not speak as lightly as the words read. In his voice there was that compassionate irony with which men shield those for whom they care. It means protection and defence. Somehow she seemed to him like a small bird on its first flight from the nest, or, as Patsy Kernaghan would have said, "a tame lamb loose in a zoolyogical gardin." "So because you won't pray and can't bear it any longer, you run away from him, and come to me!" the other remarked with a sorry smile, pouring out a glass of wine from a decanter that stood on the table. "Drink this," he said presently, pushing her down gently into a chair with one hand and holding the glass to her lips. "Drink it every drop. As I said, you've only run away from one master to fall into another master's hands. You're a wicked girl. Drink it--every drop. . . . That's right." He took the empty glass from her, put it on the table, and then stood and looked at her meditatively, fastening her eyes with his own. More than her eyes were fastened, however. Her mind was also under control: but that was because she believed in him so. "Yes, you're a wicked girl," he said decisively. She shuddered and shrank back. In her eyes was a helpless look, very different from that which she had given not so many days before when, with Orlando Guise behind her, she had defied her aged husband in his doorway, and her defiance had moved him from her path. Then she had been inspired by the fact that the man she loved was near her, that she had been wrongfully accused and was ready to fight. Afterwards, however, when she was alone, the sterile presence of Joel Mazarine, his merciless eyes, his hopeless religious tyranny, had worn upon her as his past violence had never done. "Wicked!" Did this man, then, believe her guilty? Did he, of all men, think that the night upon the prairie alone with Orlando had been her undoing? Had not the brother of Rigby the chemist borne witness with his own eyes to her complete innocence? If the Young Doctor disbelieved, then indeed she was undone. "You don't think that of me--of me!" she gasped, her lips all white again. She got to her feet excitedly. "You shall not believe it of me." "No, I did not say I believed that," the other remarked almost casually. "But if I did believe it, I don't know that it would make much difference to me. Fate, or God Almighty, or whatever it was, had stacked the cards against you. When I said it was wicked, I meant you did wrong in rushing away from your husband and coming to me. I suppose you have definitely left your husband--eh? You've 'left' him, as they say?" He had an incorrigible sense of humour, as well as an infinite common sense. He wanted to break this spell of tense emotion which possessed her. So he pursued a new course. "Don't you think it's rather hard on me?" he continued. "I'm a lone man in this house, with only one old woman to protect me, and I'm unmarried. I've a reputation to lose, and there are lots of mothers and daughters hereabouts. Besides, a medical practice is hard to get and not easy to keep. What do you mean by making a refuge of me, when there's nothing for me in it, not even the satisfaction of going into the Divorce Court with you? You wicked Mrs. Mazarine!" "Oh, don't speak like that!" Louise interjected. "Please don't. Don't scold me. I had to come. I was going mad." The Young Doctor had the case well in hand. He had eased the terrible tension; he was slowly reducing her to the normal. It was the only thing to do. "What did Mazarine do or say to you that made you run away? Come now, didn't you first make up your mind to go to Slow Down Ranch--to Orlando?" She flushed. "Yes, but only for a minute. Then I thought of you, because I knew you could help me as no one else could. Everybody believes in you. But then Li Choo--" "Oh, Li Choo! So Li Choo comes into this, eh? So he said fly to Orlando, eh? Well, that's what he would do. But why Li Choo-- a Chinaman? Tell me, what does Li Choo know?" Quickly she told him the story of the day when Joel Mazarine had almost surprised her in Orlando's room; how Li Choo had saved the situation by falling down the staircase with the priceless porcelain, and how Mazarine had kicked him--"manhandled" him, as they say in the West. "Chinamen don't like being kicked, especially Chinamen of Li Choo's station," remarked the Young Doctor meditatively. "You don't know, of course, that Li Choo was a prince or a big bug of some sort in his own country. Why he left China I don't know, but I do chance to know that if another Chinky meets Li Choo carrying a basket on his shoulders, or a package in his hand, he kow-tows, and takes it away from him, and carries it himself. . . . No, I don't know why Li Choo is here in Askatoon, or why he's such a slave to Mrs. Mazarine; but I do know that he's a different-looking man when a Chinky runs up against him than when he's choring at Tralee. A sick Chinaman told me only a week ago that Li Choo was 'once big high boss Chinaman in Pekin.' . . . And so the mandarin advised you to fly to Orlando, did he? I wonder if it's a way they have in China." "But I wouldn't go. I've come to you--Patsy Kernaghan brought me," Louise urged. "Yes, I see you've come to me," remarked the Young Doctor dryly, "and you've stayed about long enough for me to feel your pulse and diagnose your case. And now you're going back with Patsy Kernaghan to your own home." She trembled; then she seemed to strengthen herself in defiance. What a change it was from the child of a few weeks ago--indeed, of a few moments ago! The same passionate determination which seized her when she faced Mazarine with Orlando, possessed her again. With her whole being palpitating, she said: "I will not go back. I will not go back. I will kill myself first." "That would be a useless sacrifice of yourself and others," the Young Doctor answered quietly. Seeing that the new thing in her was not to be conquered in a moment, he quickly made up his mind what to do. "See," he continued, "you needn't go back to Tralee to-night, but you're not going to stay here, dear child. I'll take you over to Nolan Doyle's ranch, to Mrs. Doyle. You'll spend the night there, and we'll think about to-morrow when to-morrow comes. You certainly can't stay here. I'm not going to have it. "Bless you, you're neither so young nor so old as all that!" Suddenly he grasped both her arms and looked her in the face. "My dear young lady," he said gently, "I'm not your only friend, but I'm a stout friend--so stout that there isn't a mount can carry us both together. When you ride, I walk; when I ride, you walk--you understand? We don't walk or ride together. I'm taking care of you. Your life is too good to be ruined by rashness. You're in a 'state,' as my old housekeeper would say, but you'll be all right presently. As soon as I've made a salad, and had a marrowbone, you and I and Patsy Kernaghan are going to Nolan Doyle's ranch. . . . My dear, you must do what I say, and if you do, you'll be happy yet. I don't see how, quite, but it is so; and meanwhile, you mustn't make any mistakes. You must play the game. And now come and have some supper." She waved her hand in protest. "I can't eat," she said. "Indeed, I can't." "Well, you can drink," he answered. "You shall not leave this house alive unless you have a pint of milk with a little dash of what Patsy calls 'oh-be-joyful' in it." He left the room for a moment, while she sat watching the door as a prisoner might watch for the return of a friendly jailer. He had a curious influence over her. It was wholly different from that of Orlando. Presently he returned. "It's all right," he said. "Patsy and you and I will be at Nolan Doyle's ranch in another hour. I've sent word to Mrs. Doyle. I've ordered your milk-punch too, and now I think I'll make my salad. You never saw me make a salad," he added, smiling. "I've done some successful operations in my day; I've played about with bones and sinews, proud of my work sometimes, but the making of a perfect salad is the proud achievement of a master-mind." He laughed like a boy. "'Come hither, come hither, my little daughter, and do not tremble so,'" he said so cheerfully as to be almost jeering. His cheerfulness was not in vain, for a smile stole to her lips, though it only flickered for an instant and was gone. For all that, he knew he had saved the situation, and that another chapter of the life-history of Orlando and Louise had been ended. A fresh chapter would begin tomorrow; but sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof. CHAPTER XII MAN UNNATURAL Mazarine discovered the flight of Louise soon after she had gone. He had not been five hundred yards from the house since she returned with Orlando after the night spent upon the prairie, save when he had been obliged to go in to Askatoon and had taken her with him, dumb and passive. She had been a prisoner, tied to the stirrups of her captor; and he had berated her, had preached at her. As Louise had said, once on the way to Askatoon, he had even tried to make her kneel down in the dust of the trail and plead with Heaven to convict her of sin. On the evening of Louise's flight, however, he had been forced to go to a neighbouring ranch, and had commanded Li Choo to keep a strict watch at the windows of her room to see that she did not attempt escape. She could not escape by the door of the room because he had the key in his pocket. Li Choo was not a stern jailer, however. Mazarine had not been gone three minutes before the Chinaman had touch with Louise. He did more; he threw up into the open window of her room a screw-driver, with which she took the old-fashioned door off its hinges, after half an hour's work. Then, leaving a note on the table of the dining-room, to say that she could not bear it any longer, that she would never come back, and that she meant to be free, she summoned Patsy Kernaghan and fled to the Young Doctor. When Mazarine returned and found her note, he plunged up the stairs to her bedroom, his pious wrath gurgling in his throat, only to find the door locked; for Li Choo had promptly restored it to its hinges after Louise had gone, afterwards dropping from the high window like a cat, without hurt. Li Choo, blinking, opaque, immobile, save for his piercing and mysterious eyes, had no explanation to give. All he said was, "Me no see all sides house same time"; so suggesting that, as the room had windows on all three sides, Louise must have escaped while he made his supposed sentry- go, slip-slopping round the house. Mazarine showed what he thought by spitting in Li Choo's face, and then rushing into the house to get the raw-hide whip with which he had punished the Chinaman before, and with which he had threatened his wife. When he returned a moment afterwards, Li Choo was nowhere to be seen; but in his place were two other Chinamen who had, as it were, fallen from the skies, standing where Li Choo had stood, immobile, blinking and passive like Li Choo, their hands lost in the long sleeves of their coats, their pigtails so tightly braided as, in seeming, to draw their slanting eyelids still to greater incline, and to give a look of petrified intentness to their faces. Something in their attitude gave Mazarine apprehension. It was as though Li Choo had been transformed by some hellish magic into two other Chinamen. The rage of his being seemed to stupefy him; he could not resist the sensation of the unnatural. "What do you want? How did you come here?" he asked of the two in a husky voice. "We want speak Li Choo. We come see Li Choo," answered one of the Chinamen impassively. "He was here a minute ago," answered Mazarine gruffly. Then he turned away, going swiftly toward the kitchen, and calling to Li Choo. As he went, he was conscious of low, cackling laughter, but when he turned to look, the two Chinamen stood where he had left them, blinking and immobile. The uncanny feeling possessing him increased; the thing was unnatural. He lurched on, however, looking for Li Choo. The Chinaman was not to be found in the kitchen, in the woodshed, in the cellar, in the loft, or in his own attic room; and the half-breed, Rada, declared she had not seen him. He could not be at the stables, for they were too far away to be reached in the time; and there were no signs of him between the house and the stables. When Mazarine returned to the front of the house, the two Chinamen also had vanished; there were no signs of them anywhere. Search did not discover them. Mingled anger and fear now possessed Mazarine. He would search no longer. No doubt the other two Chinamen had joined Li Choo in his hiding-place, wherever it was. Why had the Chinamen come? What were they after? It did not matter for the moment. What he wanted was Louise, his bad child-wife, who had broken from her cage and flown from him. Where would she go? Where, but to Slow Down Ranch? Where, but to her lover, the circus-rider, the boy with the head of brown curls, with the ring on his finger and the Cupid mouth! Where would she go but to the man with whom she had spent the night on the prairie! Now he believed altogether that she was guilty, that everybody had conspired to deceive him, that he was in a net of dark deception. Even the two Chinamen, mysteriously coming and going, had laughed at him like two heathen gods, and had vanished suddenly like heathen gods. A weakness came over him, and the skin of his face became creased and clammy like that of a drowned man; his limbs trembled, so desperate was his passion. He stumbled into the house and into the dining-room, where he kept a little black-bound Bible once belonging to his great- grandfather. He had thumbed it well in past years, searching it for passages of violence and denunciation. Now holy superstition seized him in the midst of the work of the devil, surrounding him with an almost medieval instinct. He seized the ancient book, as it were to deliver its incantations against everyone destroying his peace, stealing from him that which he prized beyond all earthly things. Take this woman away from him, this child-wife from his sixty-five years, and what was left for him? She was the garden of spring in which his old age roamed at ease luxuriously. She was the fruit of the tree of pleasure. She was that which made him young again, renewed in him youth and the joys of youth. Take her away, the flower that smelled so sweet and luscious, the thing that he had held so often to his lips and to his breast? Take away what was his, by every holy right, because it was all according to the law of the land and of the Holy Gospel, and what was left? Only old age, the empty house bereft of a fair young mistress, something to smile at and to curse, if need be, since it was his own by the laws of God and man. Take her away, and the two wives that he had buried long years ago, with their gray heads and lank, sour faces, from which the light of youth had fled with the first child come to them--their ghosts would seek him out. They would sit at his table, and taunt him with his vanished Louise, asking him if he thought she was anything more than one of the trolls that tempted men aforetime; one of the devil's wenches that lured him into the secret garden, only at last to leave him scorned and alone. Where had she gone, his troll, with the face of an angel? Where had she gone? Where would she go, except to her devil's lover at Slow Down Ranch? He had just started for Slow Down Ranch armed with his greasy, well- thumbed Bible like a weapon in his pocket, when he heard a voice call him. It was full of the devil's laughter. It was the voice of Burlingame, the lawyer, on his horse. Burlingame had had a weary day and was refreshing himself by a canter on the prairie. "Where are you going?" asked Burlingame, as he cantered up to Mazarine's wagon. "To Slow Down Ranch?" He saw the look of the drowned man in the face of Mazarine, over whom the flood of disaster had passed, and he guessed at once the cause of it; for Burlingame had the philosophy of a Satanic mind, and he knew the things that happen to human nature. "So, she's gone again, has she?" he added deliberately, with intent to put a knife into the old man's feelings and to turn it in the thick of them. He wanted to hurt, because Mazarine had only a short time before dispensed with his services as a lawyer, and had blocked the way to that intimacy which he had hoped to establish with Tralee and its mistress. Besides, his pride as a professional man had been hurt, and he had been deprived of income which now went to his most hated professional rival. Mazarine's jealous soul had cut him off, on coming to know Burlingame's dark reputation. He had not liked the look Burlingame had given Louise when they met. "Gone again, has she?" Burlingame repeated sarcastically. "Well, you needn't go to Slow Down Ranch to find her. She isn't there, and you won't find him there either, for I saw him come by the Lark River Trail into Askatoon as I left, and a lady was with him. He booked this morning for the sleeper of the express going East to-night; so, if I were you, I'd turn my horse's nose to Askatoon, Mr. Mazarine. I don't know why I tell you this, as you're not my client now, but I go about the world doing good, Mr. Mazarine--only doing good." There was a look in Burlingame's face which Heaven would not have accepted as goodness, and there was that in his voice which did not belong to the Courts of the Lord. Malice, though veiled, showed in face and sounded in voice. Even as he spoke, Joel Mazarine turned his horse's head towards Askatoon. "You're sure a woman was with him? You're sure she was with him?" he asked in chaos of passion. "I couldn't see her face; it was too far away," answered Burlingame suggestively, "but you can form your own conclusions--and the express is due in thirty minutes!" He looked at his watch complacently. "What's the good, Mazarine? Why don't you say, 'Go and sin no more?' Or why don't you divorce her with the evidence about that night on the prairie? I could have got you a verdict and damages. Yes, I could have got you plenty of damages. He's rich. You took her back and condoned; you condoned, Mazarine, and now you'll neither have damages nor wife--and the express goes in thirty minutes!" "The express won't take Mrs. Mazarine away tonight," the old man said, a look of jungle fierceness filling his face. Burlingame laughed unpleasantly. "Yes, you'll foul your own nest, Mazarine, and then bring her back to live in it. I know you. It isn't the love of God in your heart, because you'll never forgive her; but you'll bring her back to the nest you fouled, just because you want her --'You damned and luxurious mountain goat,' as Shakespeare called your kind." With another laugh, which somewhat resembled that of the two strange vanished Chinamen, Burlingame flicked his horse and cantered away. A little time afterwards, however, he turned and looked toward Askatoon, and he saw the old man whipping his horse into a gallop to reach Askatoon railway station before the express went East. "It's true, Mazarine," he said aloud. "Orlando booked for the sleeper going East in thirty minutes; but the sleeper was for one only, and that one was his mother, you old hippopotamus. . . . But I wonder where she is--where the divine Louise is? She hasn't levanted with her Orlando. . . . Now, I wonder!" he added. Then, with a sudden impulse, he dug heels into his horse's sides, and galloped back towards Askatoon. He wanted to see what would happen before the express went East. CHAPTER XIII ORLANDO GIVES A WARNING Askatoon had never lost its interest for Mazarine and his wife since the day the Mayor had welcomed them at the railway station. Askatoon was not a petty town. Its career had been chequered and interesting, and it had given haven to a large number of uncommon people. Unusual happenings had been its portion ever since it had been the rail-head of the Great Transcontinental Line, and many enterprising men, instead of moving on with the railway, when it ceased to be the rail-head, settled there and gave the place its character. The town had never been lawless, although some lawless people had sojourned there. It was too busy a place to be fussing about little things, or tearing people's characters to pieces, or gossiping even to the usual degree; yet in its history it had never gossiped so much as it had done since the Mazarines had come. From the first the vast majority of folk had sided with Louise and denounced Mazarine. They knew well she had married too young to be self- seeking or intriguing; and, in any case, no woman in Askatoon or yet in the West, could have conceived of a girl marrying "the ancient one from the jungle," as Burlingame had called him. Burlingame could never have been on the side of the Ten Commandments himself, even with a sure and certain hope of happiness on earth, and in Heaven also, guaranteed to him. Nothing could have condemned Mazarine so utterly as the coalition between the "holy good people," as Burlingame called them, and himself; and between the holy good people and himself were many who in their secret hearts would never have shunned Louise if, after the night on the prairie with Orlando, release had been found for her in the Divorce Court. Jonas Billings had put the matter in a nutshell when he said: "It ain't natural, them two, at Tralee. For marrying her he ought to be tarred and feathered, and for the way he treats her he ought to be let loose in the ha'nts of the grizzlies. What he done to that girl is a crime ag'in' the law. If there was any real spunk in the Methodists, they'd spit him out like pus." That was exactly what the Methodist body had decided to do on the very day that Louise had fled from Tralee and the old man pursued her in the wrong direction. The Methodist body had determined to discipline Mazarine, to eject him from their communion, because he had raised a whip against his wife; because he had maltreated Li Choo; and because he had used language unbecoming a Christian. They had decided that Mazarine had not shown the righteous anger of a Christian man, but of one who had backslided, and who, in the words of Rigby the chemist, "Must be spewed out of the mouth of the righteous into the dust of shame." That was the situation when Joel Mazarine drove furiously into the town and made for the railway station. Men like Jonas Billings, who saw him, and had the scent for sensation, passed the word on downtown, as it is called, that something "was up" with Mazarine, and the railway station was the place where what was up could be seen. Therefore; a quarter of an hour before the arrival of the express which was to carry Orlando Guise's mother to her sick sister three hundred miles down the line, a goodly number of citizens had gathered at the station-far more than usually watched the entrance or exit of the express. Mazarine's wagon and steaming horses were tied up outside the station, and inside on the platform Moses-not-much, as Mazarine had been called by Jonas Billings, marched up and down, his snaky little eyes blinking at the doorway of the station reception-room. People came and some of them nodded to him derisively. Some, with more hardihood, asked him if he was going East; if he was expecting anyone; if he was seeing somebody off. A good many asked him the last question, because, as the minutes had passed, Burlingame had arrived. He had also disclosed his great joke to those who would carry it far and near, together with the news that Louise had taken flight. The last fact, however, was known to several people, because more than one had seen the Young Doctor and Patsy Kernaghan taking Louise to Nolan Doyle's ranch. It was dusk. The lamps of the station were being lighted five minutes before the express arrived, and as the lights flared up, Orlando entered the waiting-room of the station, with a lady on his arm, and presently showed at the platform doorway, smiling and cheerful. He did not blench when Mazarine came towards him. Mazarine had seen the flutter of a blue skirt in the waiting-room, and his wife had worn blue that day! Orlando saw the heavy, offensive figure of Mazarine making for him. He, however, appeared to take no notice, though he watched his outrageous pursuer out of the corner of his eye, as he quietly gave orders to a porter concerning a little heap of luggage. When he had finished this, he turned, as it were casually, to Mazarine. Then he giggled in the face of the Master of Tralee. It was like the matador's waving of the scarlet cloth in the face of the enraged bull. Having thus relieved his feelings, Orlando turned and walked to the door of the reception-room, but was stopped by the old man rushing at him. Swinging round, Orlando almost filled the doorway. "You devil's spawn," Mazarine almost shouted," get out of that doorway. I want my wife. You needn't try to hide her. You thief! You lecherous circus rider! Stand aside--leper!" Orlando coolly stretched out his elbows till they touched the sides of the door, and as the crowd pressed, he said to them mockingly: "Get back, boys. Give him air. Can't you see he's gasping for breath." Then he giggled again. The old man looked round at the crowd, but he saw no sympathy--only aversion and ridicule. Suddenly he snatched his little black-bound Bible from his pocket, and held it up. "What does this Book say?" he thundered. "It says that a wife shall cleave unto her husband until death. For the seducer and the betrayer death is the portion." The whistle of the incoming train was heard in the distance. The old man was desperate. It was clear he meant to assault Orlando. "You will only take her away over my dead body," he ground out in his passion. "The Lord gave, and only the Lord shall take away." He gathered himself together for the attack. Orlando waved a hand at him as one would at a troublesome child. At that instant, his mother stepped up behind him in the reception-room. "Orlando," she said in her mincing, piping little voice, "Orlando, dear, the train is coming. Let me out. I'm not afraid of that bad man. I want to catch my train." Orlando stepped aside, and his mother passed through, to the consternation of Mazarine, who fell back. The old man now realized that Burlingame had tricked him. Laughter went up from the crowd. They had had a great show at no cost. "'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again,' Mr. Mazarine!" called someone from the crowd. "It's the next train she's going by, old Moses-not-much," shouted a friend of Jonas Billings. "She's had enough of you, Joel!" sneered another mocker. "Wouldn't you like to know where she is, yellow-lugs?" queried a fat washerwoman. For an instant Mazarine stood demused, and then, thrusting the Bible into his pocket, he drew himself up in an effort of pride and defiance. "Judases! Jezebels!" he burst out at them all. Then he lunged through the doorway of the reception-room; but at the door opening on the street his courage gave way, and hunched up like one in pain, he ran towards the hitching-post where he had left his horses and wagon. They were not there. With a groan which was also a malediction, he went up the street like a wounded elephant, and made his way to the police-station through a town which had no pity for him. During the hour he remained in the town, Mazarine searched in vain for his horses and wagon. He looked everywhere except the shed behind the Methodist Church. It was there the two wags who had played the trick on him had carefully hitched the horses, and presently they announced in town that they did it because they knew Mazarine would want to go to the prayer-meeting to lay his crimes before the Mercy Seat! It was quite true that it was prayer-meeting night, and as the merciless wags left the shed, the voice of brother Rigby the chemist was narrating for the hundredth time the story of his conversion, when, as he said, "the pains of hell gat hold of him." Brother Rigby loved to relate the tortures of the day when he was convicted of sin; but on this night his ancient story seemed appropriate, as he had dealt with great severity on the doings of the backslider, Joel Mazarine. When the two wags returned to the front street of Askatoon, they were just in time to see the second meeting of Orlando and Mazarine. Mazarine had not been able to find his horses at any hotel or livery stable, or in any street. It was at the moment, when, in his distraction, he had decided to walk back to Tralee, that Orlando, driving up the street, saw him. Orlando reined in his horses dropped from his buggy and approached him. There was a look in Orlando's eyes which was a reflection from a remote past, from ancestors who had settled their troubles with the first weapon and the best opportunity to their hands. "The furrin element in him," as Jonas Billings called it, had been at full flood ever since he had bade his mother good-bye. A storm of anger had been raised in him. As he said to himself, he had had enough; he had been filled up to the chin by the Mazarine business; and his impulsive youth wanted to end it by some smashing act which would be sensational and decisive. So it was that Fate offered the opportunity, as he came up the front street of Askatoon, and found himself face to face with Mazarine, over against the offices of Burlingame. "A word with you, Mr. Mazarine," he said, with the air of a man who wants to ease his mind of its trouble by action. "Back there at the station, I kept my tongue and let you down easy enough, because my mother was present. She is old and sensitive, and she doesn't like to see her son doing the dirty work every man must do some time or other, when there's street cleaning to be done. Now, let me tell you this: you've slandered as good a girl, you've libelled as straight a wife, as the best man in the world ever had. You've made a public scandal of your private home. You've treated the pure thing as if it were the foul thing; and yet, you want to keep the pure thing that you treat like a foul thing, under your rawhide whip, because it's young and beautiful and good. You don't want to save her soul"--he pointed to the Bible, which the old man had snatched from his pocket again--"you don't want to save her soul. You don't care whether she's happy in this world or the next; what you want is what you can see of her, for your life in this world only. You want--" The old man interrupted him with a savage emotion which Jonas Billings said made him look like "a satyre." "I want to save her from the wrath to come," he said. "This here holy Book gives me my rights. It says, 'Thou shalt not steal,' and the trouble I have comes from you that's stole my wife, that's put her soul in jeopardy, robbed my home--" "Robbed your home!" interjected Orlando quietly, but with a voice of suppressed passion. "Robbed your home! Why, the other day you tried to prevent her entering it. You wanted to shut her out. After she had lived with you all those years, you believed she lied to you when she told you the truth about that night on the prairie; but her innocence was proved by one who was there all the time, and for shame's sake you had to let her in. But she couldn't stand it. I don't wonder. A lark wouldn't be at home where a vulture roosted." "And so the lark flies away to the cuckoo," snarled the old man, with flecks of froth gathering at the corners of his mouth; for the sight of this handsome, long-limbed youth enraged him. "Give her back to me. You know where she is," he persisted. "You've got her hid away. That's why you've sent your mother East--so's she wouldn't know, though from what I see, I shouldn't think it'd have made much difference to her." Exclamations broke from the crowd. It was the wild West. It was a country where, not twenty years before, men did justice upon men without the assistance of the law; and the West understood that the dark insult just uttered would in days not far gone have meant death. The onlookers exclaimed, and then became silent, because a subtle sense of tragedy suddenly smothered their voices. Upon the silence there broke a little giggling laugh. It came from lips that were one in paleness with a face grown stony. "I ought to kill you," Orlando said quietly after a moment, yet scarcely above a whisper. "I ought to kill you, Mazarine, but that would only be playing your game, for the law would get hold of me, and the girl that has left you would be sorrowful, for she knows I love her, though I never told her so. She'd be sorry to see the law get at me. She's going to be mine some day, in the right way. I'm not going behind your back to say it; I'm announcing it to all and sundry. I never did a thing to her that couldn't have been seen by all the world, and I never said a thing to her that couldn't be heard by all the world; but I hope she'll never go back to you. You've made a sewer for her to live in, not a home. As I said, I ought to kill you, but that would play your game, so I won't, not now. But I tell you this, Mazarine: if I ever meet you again--and I'm sure to do so--and you don't get off the road I'm travelling on, or the side-walk I'm walking on, when I meet you or when I pass you, I'll let you have what'll send you to hell, before you can wink twice. "As for Louise--as for her: I don't know where she is, but I'll find her. One thing is sure: if I see her, I'll tell her never to go back to you; and she won't. You've drunk at the waters of Canaan for the last time. For a Christian you're pretty filthy. Go and wash in the pool of Siloam and be clean--damn you, Mazarine!" With that he turned, almost unheeding the hands thrust out to grip his, the voices murmuring approval. In a moment he had swung his horses round. He did not go beyond ten yards, however, before someone, running beside his wagon, whispered up to him: "She's out at Nolan Doyle's ranch. She went with the Young Doctor and Patsy Kernaghan." Behind, in the street, a young boy came running through the crowd and shouting: "I know where they are! I know where they are!" He stopped before Mazarine. "Gimme half a dollar, and I'll tell you where your horses are. Gimme half a dollar. Gimme half a dollar, and I'll tell you." An instant later, with the half-dollar in his hand, he said: "They're up to the shed of the Meetin' House." "Yes, go along up to the Meetin' House, Mr. Mazarine," said one of the miscreants who had driven the horses there. "They're holding a post- mortem on you at the prayer meetin'. They say you're dead in trespasses and sins. Get along, Joel." The crowd started to follow him to the shed where his horses were, but after a moment he turned on them and said: "Ain't you heerd and seen enough? Ain't there no law to protect a man?" A hoe was leaning against a fence. He saw it, and with sudden fury, seizing it, swung it round his head as if to throw it into the crowd. At that moment a stalwart constable ran forward, raised a hand towards Mazarine, and then addressed the crowd. "We've had enough of this," he said. "I'll lock up any man that goes a step further towards the Meetin' House. Where do you think you are? This is Askatoon, the place of peace and happiness, and we're going to be happy, if I have to lock up the hull lot of you. I guess you can go right on, Mr. Mazarine," he added. "Go right on and git your wagon." A moment later Mazarine was walking alone towards the Meeting House; but no, not alone, for a hundred devils were with him. CHAPTER XIV FILION AND FIONA--ALSO PATSY KERNAGHAN Patsy Kernaghan was in his element in the garden with which Norah Doyle had decorated the brown bosom of the prairie. It had verdant shrubs, green turf, thick fringes of flowers, and one solitary elmtree in the centre whose branches spread like a cedar of Lebanon. In the moonlight Patsy had the telling of a wonderful story to such an audience as he had never had before in his life, and he had had them from Bundoran to Limerick, from Limerick to the foothills of the Rockies. The seance of love and legend had been Patsy's own idea. At the supper- table spread by Norah Doyle, in spite of the protests of her visitors-- the Young Doctor, Louise and Patsy--Nolan Doyle, who had a fine gift for playful talk, had tried to keep the situation free from melodrama. Yet Patsy had observed that, in spite of all efforts, Louise's eyes now and then filled with tears. Also, he saw that her senses seemed alert for something outside their little circle. It was as though she expected someone to arrive. She was in that state which is not normal and yet not abnormal--a kind of trance in which she did ordinary things in a natural way, yet mechanically, without full consciousness. There was no one at the table who did not realize what, and for whom, she was waiting. To her primitive spirit, now that she was in trouble because of him, it seemed inevitable that Orlando should come. One thing was fixed in her mind: she would never return to Tralee or to the man whose odious presence made her feel as though she was in a cage with an animal. Jonas Billings had called him "The ancient one from the jungle," and that was how at last he appeared to her. His arms and breast were thick with hair; the hair on his face grew almost up to the eyes; the fingers of his splayed hands were blunt and broad; and his hair was like a nest for things of the jungle undergrowth. Since she had been awakened, the memory of his hot breath in her face, of his clumsy fevered embraces was a torment to her; for always in contrast there were the fresh clean-shaven cheeks and chin of a young Berserker with honest, wondering blue eyes, the curly head of a child, and body and limbs like a young lean stag. Orlando's touch was never either clammy or fevered. She could recall every time that he had touched her: when her fingers and his met on the afternoon that Li Choo had thrown himself down the staircase with the priceless porcelain; also the evening of the night spent on the prairie when, after the accident, her hand had been linked into his arm; also when he had clasped her fingers at their meeting in the morning. On each occasion she had felt a thrill like that of music--persuasive, living vibrations passing to remote recesses of her being. No nearer had she ever come to the man she loved, no nearer had he sought to come. Once, the evening after the night spent on the prairie, when old Joel Mazarine had tried to make her pray and ask God's forgiveness, and he had kissed her with the lips of hungry old age, she had suddenly sat up in bed, her heart beating hard, every nerve palpitating, because in imagination she had seen herself in Orlando's arms, with his lips pressed to hers. Poor neophyte in life's mysteries, having served as a slave at false altars of which she did not even know the ritual, it was no wonder that, after all she had suffered, she could not now bring herself into tune with the commonplace intercourse of life. Not that her friends utterly failed to lure her into it. She might well have been the victim of hysterics, but she was only distrait, pensive and gently smiling, with the smile of a good heart. Smiling with her had ever taken the place of conversation. It was an apology for not speaking when she could not speak what she felt. Once during the meal she seemed to start slightly, as though she heard a familiar sound, and for some minutes afterwards she seemed to be listening, as it were, for a knock at the door, which did not come. Immediately after that, Patsy, happy in sitting down to table with "the quality"--for such they were to him--because he saw that Louise must be distracted, and because he had seen story-telling, many a time, draw people away from their troubles even more than music, said: "Did you remember the day it is, anny of you? Shure, it's St. Droid's Day! Aw, then, don't you know who he was? You don't! Well, well, there's no tellin' how ignorant the wurruld can be. St. Droid--aw, he was a good man that brought the two children of Chief Diarmid and Queen Moira together. You didn't know about them two? You niver h'ard of Chief Diarmid and Queen Moira and their two lovely children? Well, there it is, there's no sayin' how ignorant y'are if y'are not Irish. Aw no, they wasn't man and wife. Diarmid was a widower and Moira was a widow. Diarmid's boy was Filion and Moira's girl was Fiona, an' the troubles of the two'd make a book for ivry day of the week, an' two for Sunday. An' the way that St. Droid brought them two together Aw, come outside in the gardin where the moon's to the full, an' it's warm enough for anny man or woman that's got a warm heart, an' I'll tell you the story of Filion and Fiona. You'll not be forgettin' the names of them now, will ye? And while I'm tellin' you, all the time you'll be thinkin' of St. Droid, for it's his day. It was nothin' till him, St. Droid, that he lived in a cave, you understan'? Wasn't his face like the sun comin' up over the lake at Ballinhoe in the month of June! Well, it doesn't matter if you've niver seen Ballinhoe--you understan' what I mean. Well, then come out intil the gardin, darlins. Shure, I'm achin' to tell you the story-- as fine a love-story as iver was told to man and woman." So it was that Louise with eyes alight-for Patsy had a voice that could stir imagination in the dullest--so it was that Louise and the others went out into the moonlit garden, the prairie around them like an endless waste of sea. There they placed themselves in a half circle around Patsy, who sat upon a little bench, with his back to the big spreading elm-tree, which by some special gift had grown alone over the myriad years, defying storm and winter's frost, until it seemed to have an honoured permanence, as stable as the prairie earth itself. As they seated themselves, there was renewed in Louise the feeling she had at supper-time, when she had imagined--or had her senses accurately divined? that Orlando was near, so sure had been the sensation that she had expected Orlando to enter the room where they sat. Now it was on her again, and somehow she felt him there with her. He was Filion and she was Fiona. Since the day she had first seen Orlando, she had awakened to life's realities. There had grown in her an alertness and a delicate sense of things, which, though natural to one born with a soul that cared little for sordid things, was not common, except in Celtic circles where the unseen thing is more real than the seen; where gold and precious stones are only valued in so far as they can purchase freedom, dreams and desire. Louise had not been thrilled without cause. Orlando, the real material Orlando, had driven out to Nolan Doyle's ranch, but having come, could not at first bring himself to enter. Something in him kept saying that it was not fair to her; kept admonishing him to let things take their course; that now was not the time to see her; that it might place her in a false position. Blameless though she was, she might be blamed by the world, if he and she, on the night that she fled from Joel Mazarine should meet, and, above all, meet alone--and what was the good of meeting at all, if they did not meet alone! What could two voiceless people say to each other, people who only spoke with their hearts and souls, when others were staring at them, watching every act, listening for every word. His better sense kept telling him to go back to Slow Down Ranch. But there she was inside Nolan Doyle's house, and he had come deliberately to see her. He stood outside in the garden near the great spreading elm-tree, torn by a sense of duty and a sense of desire; but the desire was to let her see by his presence that he would be a tower of strength to her, no matter what happened. It was not the desire which had possessed him whom Patsy Kernaghan had called the keeper of the "zoolyogical" garden. He had just made up his mind that courage was the right thing: that he must see her in the presence of others for one minute, whatever the issue, when she came out with Patsy Kernaghan, the Young Doctor, and Norah and Nolan Doyle. None saw him, and, as they seated themselves, he stepped noiselessly under the spreading branches of the elm-tree. He would not speak to them yet; he would wait. In the shade made by the drooping branches he could not be seen, yet he could hear and see all. There was silence for a moment, and then Patsy began the tale of St. Droid--"whoever he was," as Patsy said to himself; for he was going to make up out of his head this story of St. Droid and St. Droid's Day, and Queen Moira, Filion and Fiona. It was a bold idea, but it gave Patsy the opportunity of his life. His description of Black Brian, the rich, ruthless King, to whom Queen Moira gave her daughter Fiona, despite the girl's bitter sorrow, was a masterpiece. It was modelled on Joel Mazarine. It was the behemoth transferred to Ireland, to the cromlechs and castles, to the causeways, the caves, and the stony hillsides; to the bogs and the quicksands and the Little Men; but it could not be recognized as a portrait, though everyone felt how wonderful it was that a legend of a thousand years should be so close to the life of Askatoon. Patsy had no knowledge of what the mother of Louise was like, but the likeness between her cruel, material, selfish spirit and Queen Moira, in the sacrifice of their offspring, provoked the admiration of the Young Doctor, whose philosophical mind had soon discovered that Patsy was making up the tale. That did not matter. Having got the thing started, Patsy gave reins to his imagination; and storm, terror, danger, and the capture of Fiona by Filion, from Black Brian's castle in the hills, was told with primitive force and passion. But the most wonderful part of the story described how a strange dwarfed Little Man came out of the hills in the East, across the land, to the Western fastness of Black Brian, and there slew that evil man, because of an ancient feud--slew him in a situation of great indignity, and left him lying on the sands for the tide to wash him out to the deep and hungry sea. Even here Patsy had his inspiration from real life; and yet he disguised it all so well that no one except the Young Doctor even imagined what he meant. Under the tree Orlando listened with strained attention, absorbed and, at times, almost overcome. His long sigh of relief was joined to the sighs of the others when Patsy finished. The Young Doctor rose to go, and the others rose also. "That's a wonderful story, Patsy," said the Young Doctor to him; and he added quizzically: "You tell it so well because you've told it so often before, I suppose?" "Aw, well, that's it, I expect," answered the Irishman coolly. "I thought so," responded the Young Doctor. "Now, how many times do you think you've told that story before, Patsy?" "About a hundred, I should think; or no--I should think about two hundred times," answered Patsy shamelessly. "I thought so," said the Young Doctor, but before turning to go into the house, he leaned and whispered in his ear: "Patsy, you're the most beautiful liar that ever come out of Ireland." "Aw, Doctor dear!" said Patsy softly. They all moved towards the house, save Louise. "Please, I want to stay behind a minute or two," she said, as she held out a hand to the Young Doctor. "Don't wait for me. I want to be alone a little while." Once more the Young Doctor felt the trembling appeal of her palm as on the first day they met, and he gripped her hand warmly. "It will all come right. Good-night, my dear," he said cheerfully. "Have a good sleep on it." Louise remained in the garden alone, the moon shining on her face lifted to the sky. For a moment she stood so, wrapped in the peace of the night, but her body was almost panting from the thrill of the legend which Patsy Kernaghan had told. As he had meant it to do, it gave her hope; although before her eyes was the picture that Patsy had drawn of Black Brian with his great sword beside him lying on the sands, waiting for the hungry sea to claim him. Presently there stole through the warm air of the night the sound of her own name. She did not start. It seemed to her part of the dream in which she was. Her hand went to her heart, however. Again in Orlando's voice came the word "Louise," a little louder now. She turned towards the tree, and there beside it stood Orlando. For an instant there was a sense of unreality, of ghostliness, and then she gave a little cry of pain and joy. As she ran towards him, with sudden impulse, his arms spread out and he caught her to his breast. His lips swept her hair. "Louise! Louise!" he whispered passionately. For an instant they stood so, and then he gently pressed her away from him. "I had to come," he said. "I want you to know that whatever happens, you may depend on me. When you call, I will come. I must go now. For your sake I must not stay. I had to see you, I had to tell you what I had never told you." "You've always told me," she murmured. He stretched out his hand to clasp hers. He did not dare to open his arms again. The lips which he had never kissed were very near, and ah, so sweet! She must not come to him now. One swift clasp of the hand, and then he vaulted over the fence and was gone. A few moments afterwards she heard the rumble of his wagon on the prairie--he had tied up his horses some distance from the house. As the Young Doctor drove homeward with Patsy Kernaghan, he also heard the rumble of the wagon not far in front of him. Then he began to wonder why Louise had waited behind in the garden. He put the thought away from him, however. There was no deceit in Louise; he was sure of that. CHAPTER XV OUTWARD BOUND Joel Mazarine did not take the trail to Tralee immediately after he found his wagon and horses in the shed of the Methodist Meeting House. As he drove through the main street of Askatoon again, his lawyer--Burlingame's rival--waved a hand towards him in greeting. An idea suddenly possessed the old man, and he stopped the horses and beckoned. "Get in and come to your office with me," he said to the lawyer. "There's some business to do right off." The unpopularity of a client in no way affects a lawyer. Indeed, the most notorious criminal is the greatest legal advertisement, and the fortunate part of the business is that no lawyer is ever identified with the morals, crimes or virtues of his client, yet has particular advantage from his crimes. So it was that Mazarine's lawyer enjoyed the public attention given to his drive through the town with Mazarine. He could hear this man say, "Hello, what's up!" or another remark that the Law and the Gospel were out for war. Just as they were about to enter the office, however, Jonas Billings, who had a faculty for being everywhere at the interesting moment, said, so as to be heard by Mazarine and his lawyer, and all others standing near. "Goin' to leave his property away from his wife! Makin' a new will--eh? That's it, stamp on a girl when she's down! When you can't win the woman, keep the cash. Woe is me, Willy, but the wild one rageth!" Jonas' drawling, nasal, high-pitched sarcasm reached Mazarine's ears and stung him. He lurched round, and with beady eyes blinking with malice, said roughly: "The fool is known by his folly." "You don't need to label yourself, Mr. Mazarine," retorted Jonas with a grin. The crowd laughed in approval. The loose lower lip of the Master of Tralee quivered. The leviathan was being tortured by the little sharks. Presently the door of the lawyer's office slammed on the street, and Mazarine proceeded to make a new will, which should leave everything away from Louise. After he had slowly dictated the terms of the will, with a glutinous solemnity he said: "There; that's what comes of breaking the laws of God and man. That's what a woman loses who doesn't do her duty by the man that can give her everything, and that's give her everything, while she plays the Jezebel." "I'll complete this for you, and you can sign it now," remarked the lawyer evasively, not without shrinking; "but it won't stand as it is, or as you want it to stand, because Mrs. Mazarine has her legal claims in spite of it! She's got a wife's dower-rights according to the law. That's one-third of your property. It's the law of the land, and you can't sign it away from her, Mr. Mazarine." The old man's face darkened still more; his crooked fingers twisted in his beard. "I see you forgot that," added the lawyer. "There's only one way to dispossess her, and that's to put her through Divorce--if you think you can. Of course this document'll stand as far as it goes, and it's perfectly legal, but it isn't what you intend, and she'd get her one- third in spite of it." "I'll come back to-morrow," said the old man, rising to his feet. "You make it out, and I'll come back and sign it to-morrow. I'll make a sure thing of so much, anyway. The divorce'll settle the rest. You have it ready at noon to-morrow, and you can start divorce proceedings to-morrow too. There's plenty of evidence. She run away from me to go to him. She stayed with him a whole night on the prairie. I want the divorce, and I can get the evidence. Everybody knows. This is the Lord's business, and I mean to see it through. Shame has come to the house of a servant of the Lord, and there must be purging. In the days of David she would have been stoned to death, and not so far back as that, either." A moment afterwards he was gone, slamming the door behind him. His blood was up-a turgid, angry flood almost bursting his veins. He now made his way to the house of the Methodist minister. There he announced that if he was disciplined at Quarterly Meeting, as was talked about in the streets, he would go to law against every class-leader for defamation of character. By the time this was done the evening was well advanced. He did not leave Askatoon until the moment which coincided with that in which Orlando left Nolan Doyle's garden and took the trail to Slow Down Ranch. Orlando would strike the trail from Askatoon to Tralee at a point where another trail also joined. Mazarine drove fast through the town, as though eager to put it behind him, but when he reached the trail on the prairie he slackened his pace, and drove steadily homewards, lost in the darkest reflections he had ever known; and that was saying much. The reins lay loose in his fingers, and he became so absorbed that he was conscious of nothing save movement. The heart of Black Brian, the King, of whom Patsy Kernaghan told his mythical story in Nolan Doyle's garden, had never housed more repulsive thoughts than were in Mazarine's heart in this unfortunate hour of his own making. No single feeling of kindness was in his spirit. He heard nothing, was conscious of nothing, save his own grim, fantastic imaginings. A jealousy and hatred as terrible as ever possessed a man were on him. An egregious self-will, a dreadful spirit of unholy old age in him, was turned hatefully upon the youth long since gone from himself--the youth which, in its wild, innocent ardours, had brought two young people together, one of them his own captive for years. The peace of the prairie, the shining, infant moon, the kindly darkness, were all at variance with the soul of the man, whose only possession was what money could buy; and what money had bought in the way of human flesh and blood, beauty and sweet youth he had not been able to hold. To his mind, what was the good of having riches and power, if you could not also have love, licence and the loot of the conqueror! He had wrestled with the Lord in prayer; he had been a class-leader and a lay-preacher; he had exhorted and denounced; he had pleaded and proscribed; yet never in all his days of professed religion had a heart for others really moved Joel Mazarine. He had given now and then of gold and silver, because of the glow of mind which the upraised hands of admiration brought him, mistaking it for the real thing; but his life had been barren because it had not emptied itself for others, at any time, or anywhere. He had been a professed Christian, not because of Olivet, but because of Sinai. It was the stormy authority of the sword of the Lord of Gideon of the Old Testament which had drawn him into the fold of religion. It was some strain of heredity, his upbringing, the life into which he was born, pious, pedantic and preposterously prayerful, which had made him a professional Christian, as he was a professional farmer, rancher and money-maker. For such a man there never could be peace. In his own world of wanton inhumanity, oblivious of all except his torturing thoughts, he did not know that, as he neared the Cross Trails on his way homewards, something shadowy, stooping, sprang up from the roadside and slip-slopped after his wagon--slip-slopped--slip-slopped-- catching the thud of the horses' hoofs, and making its footsteps coincide. All at once the shadowy figure swung itself up softly and remained for an instant, half-kneeling, in the body of the wagon. Then suddenly, noiselessly, it rose up, leaned over the absorbed Joel Mazarine, and with long, hooked, steely fingers caught the throat of the Master of Tralee under the grayish beard. They clenched there with a power like that of three men; for this was the kind of grip which, far away in the country of the Yang-tse-kiang, Li Choo had learned in the days when he had made youth a thing to be remembered. No convulsive effort on the part of the victim could loosen that terrible grip; but the horses, responding to the first jerk of the reins following the attack, stood still, while a human soul was being wrenched out of the world behind them. No word was spoken. From the moment the fingers clutched his throat Joel Mazarine could not speak, and Li Choo did his swift work in grim and ghastly silence. It did not take long. When the vain struggles had ceased and the fingers were loosened, Li Choo's tongue clucked in his mouth, once, twice, thrice; and that was all. It was a ghastly sort of mirth, and it had in it a multitude of things. Among them was vengeance and wild justice, and the thing that comes down through innumerable years in the Oriental mind --that the East is greater than the West; that now and then the East must prove itself against the West with all the cruelty of the world's prime. For a moment Li Choo stood and looked at the motionless figure, with the head fallen on the breast; then he put the reins carefully in the hands of the dead man, placed the fallen hat on his head, climbed down from the wagon, patted a horse as he slip-slopped by, and disappeared towards Tralee into the night, leaving what was left of Joel Mazarine in his wagon at the crossing of the trails. As Li Choo stole swiftly away, he met two other figures, silent and shadowy, and somehow strangely unreal, like his own. After a moment's whisperings, they all three turned their faces again towards Tralee. Once they stopped and listened. There was the sound of wagons. One was coming from the north--that is, from the direction of Tralee; the other was coming from the south-east-that is, Nolan Doyle's ranch. Li Choo's tongue clucked in his mouth; then he made an exclamation in Chinese, at which the others clucked also, and then they moved on again. CHAPTER XVI THE CROSS TRAILS Like Joel Mazarine on his journey from Askatoon, Orlando, on his journey from Nolan Doyle's ranch, was absorbed, but his reflections were as different from those of the Master of Tralee as sunrise is from midnight; indeed, so bright was the light within Orlando's spirit that the very prairie around him seemed aflame. The moment with Louise in the garden lighted by the dim moon, the passing instant of perfect understanding, the touch of her hair upon his lips, her supple form yielding to his as he clasped her in his arms, had dropped like a curtain between him and the fateful episode in the main street of Askatoon. That wonderful elation of youth on its first excursion into perfumed meads of Love possessed him. He had never had flutterings of the heart for any woman until his eyes met the eyes of Louise at their first meeting, and a new world had been opened up to him. He had been as naive and native a human being with all his apparent foppishness, as had ever moved among men. What seemed his vanity had nothing to do with thoughts of womankind. It had been a decorative sense come honestly from picturesque forebears, and indeed from his own mother. In truth, until the day he had met Louise, or rather until the day of the broncho-busting, and the fateful night on the prairie, he had never grown up. He was wise with the wisdom of a child--sheer instinct, rightness of mind, real decision of character. His giggling laugh had been the undisciplined simplicity of the child, which, when he had reached manhood, had never been formalized by conventions. Something indefinite had marked him until Louise had come, and now he was definite, determined, alive with a new feeling which made his spirit sing--his spirit and his lips; for, as he came from Nolan Doyle's ranch to the Cross Trails, he kept humming to himself, between moments of silence in which he visualized Louise in a hundred attitudes, as he had seen her. There had come to him, without the asking even, that which Joel Mazarine, had he been as rich as any man alive or dead, could not have bought. That was why he hummed to himself in happiness. Youth answering to youth had claimed its own; love springing from the dawn, brave and bright-eyed, had waved its wand towards that good country called Home. Never from the first had any thought come into the minds of either of these two that was not linked with the idea of home. Nothing of the jungle had been in their thoughts, though they had been tempted, and love and the moment's despair had stung them to take revenge in each other's arms; yet they had kept the narrow path. There was in their love something primeval, that belonged to the beginning of the world. Orlando had almost reached the Cross Trails before he saw Mazarine's wagon standing in the way. At first he did not recognize the horses, and he called to the driver sitting motionless to move aside. He thought it to be some drunken ranchman. Presently, however, coming nearer, he recognized the horses and the man. Standing up, Orlando was about to call out again in peremptory tones, when, suddenly, the spirit of death touched his senses, and his heart stood still for an instant. As he looked at the motionless figure, he was only subconsciously aware of the thud of horses' hoofs coming down one of the side-trails. Springing to the ground, he approached Mazarine's wagon. The horses neighed; it was a curious, lonely sound. For a moment he stood with his hand on the wheel looking at the still figure; then he reached out and touched Mazarine's knee. "Hi, there!" he said. There was no reply. He mounted the wagon, touched the dead man's shoulder, and then, with one hand, loosened the waistcoat and felt the heart. It was still. He examined the body. There was no wound. He peered into the face, and saw the distortion there. "Dead--dead!" he said in an awed voice. The husband of Louise was dead. How he died, in one sense, did not matter. Louise's husband was dead; he would torture her no more. Louise was free! Slowly he got down from the wagon, vaguely wondering what to do, so had the tragedy confused his brain for the moment. As he did so, he was conscious of another wagon and horses a few yards away. "Who goes there?" called the voice of the newcomer. "A friend," answered Orlando mechanically. Presently the new-comer sprang down from his wagon and came over to Orlando. "What is it, Mr. Guise?" he asked. "What's the trouble? . . . Who's that?" he added, pointing to the dead body. "It's Mazarine. He's dead," answered Orlando quietly. "Oh, good God!" said the other. He was an insurance agent of the town of Askatoon, who, that very evening, had heard Orlando threaten the Master of Tralee--that if ever he passed him or met him, and Mazarine did not get out of the way, it would be the worse for him. Well, here in the trail were Orlando and Mazarine --and Mazarine was dead! "Good God!" the new-comer repeated. Scarsdale was his name. Then Orlando explained. "It's not what you think," he said. Then he told the story--such as there was to tell--of what had happened during the last few moments. Scarsdale climbed up into the wagon, struck a light, looked at the body of Mazarine, at his face, and then lifted up the beard and examined the neck. There were finger-marks in the flesh. "So, that's it," he said. "Strangled! He seems to have took it easy, sittin' there like that," he added as he climbed down. "I don't understand it," remarked Orlando. "As you say, it's weird, his sitting there like that with the reins in his hands. I don't understand it!" "I saw you getting down from the wagon," remarked Scarsdale meaningly. "Say, do you really believe--?" began Orlando without agitation, but with a sudden sense of his own false position. "It ain't a matter of belief," the other declared. "If there's an inquest, I've got to tell what I've seen. You know that, don't you?" "That's all right," replied Orlando. "You've got to tell what you've seen, and so have I. I guess the truth will out. Come, let's move him on to Tralee. We'll lay him down in the bottom of the wagon, and I'll lead his horses with a halter. . . . No," he added, changing his mind, "you lead my horses, and I'll drive him home." A moment afterwards, as the procession made its way to Tralee, Scarsdale said to himself: "He must have nerves like iron to drive Mazarine home, if he killed him. Well, he's got them, and still they call him Giggles as if he was a silly girl!" CHAPTER XVII THE SUPERIOR MAN Students of life have noticed constantly that moral distinctions are not matters of principle but of certain peremptory rules found on nice calculations of the social mind. In the field of crime, responsibility is most often calculated, not upon the crime itself, but upon how the thing is done. In Askatoon, no one would have been greatly shocked if, when Orlando Guise and Joel Mazarine met at the railway-station or in the main street, Orlando had killed Mazarine. Mazarine would have been dead in either case; and he would have been killed by another hand in either case; but the attitude of the public would not have been the same in either case. The public would have considered the killing of Mazarine before the eyes of the world as justifiable homicide; its dislike of the man would have induced it to add the word justifiable. But that Joel Mazarine should be killed by night without an audience, secretly--however righteously--shocked the people of Askatoon. Had they seen the thing done, there would have been sensation, but no mystery; but night, secrecy, distance, mystery, all begot, not a reaction in Mazarine's favour, but a protest against the thing being done under cover, as it were, unhelped by popular observation. Also, to the Askatoon mind, that one man should kill another in open quarrel was courageous, or might be courageous,--but for one man to kill another, whoever that other was, in a hidden way, was a barbarian business. It seemed impossible to have any doubt as to who killed the man, though Orlando had not waited a moment after the body had been brought to Tralee, but had gone straight to the police, and told what had happened, so far as he knew it. He stated the exact facts. The insurance man, Scarsdale, would not open his mouth until the inquest, which took place on the afternoon after the crime had been committed. It was held at Tralee. Great crowds surrounded the house, but only a few found entrance to the inquest room. Immediately on opening the inquest, Orlando was called to tell his story. Every eye was fixed upon him intently; every ear was strained as he described his coming upon the isolated wagon and the dead man with the reins in his hands. It is hard to say if all believed his story, but the Coroner did, and Burlingame, his lawyer, also did. Burlingame was present, not to defend Orlando, because it was not a trial, but to watch his interests in the face of staggering circumstantial evidence. To Burlingame's mind Orlando was not the man to kill another by strangling him to death. It was not in keeping with his character. It was too aboriginal. The Coroner believed the story solely because Orlando's frankness and straightforwardness filled him with confidence. Also men of rude sense, like Jonas Billings, were willing to take bets, five to one, that Orlando was innocent. The Young Doctor had not an instant's doubt, but he could not at first fix his suspicions in a likely quarter. He had examined the body, and there were no marks save bruises at the throat. In his evidence he said that enormous strength of hands had been necessary to kill so quickly, for it was clear the attack was so overpowering that there was little struggle. The Coroner here interposed a question as to whether it would have been possible for anyone but a man to commit the crime. At his words everybody moved impatiently. It was certain he was referring to the absent wife. The idea of Louise committing such a crime, or being able to commit it, was ridiculous. The Coroner presently stated that he had only asked the question so as to remove this possibility from consideration. The Young Doctor immediately said that probably no woman in the hemisphere could have committed the crime, which needed enormous strength of hands. The Coroner looked round the room. "The widow, Mrs. Mazarine, is not here?" he said questioningly. Nolan Doyle interposed. "Mrs. Mazarine is at my ranch. She came there yesterday evening at eight o'clock and remained with my wife and myself until twelve o'clock. The murder was committed before twelve o'clock. Mrs. Mazarine does not even know that her husband is dead. She is not well to-day, and we have kept the knowledge from her." "Is she under medical care?" asked the Coroner. Nolan Doyle nodded towards the Young Doctor, who said: "I saw Mrs. Mazarine at the house of Mr. Doyle last evening between the hours of eight and ten o'clock. To- day at noon also I visited her. She has a slight illness, and is not fit to take part in these proceedings." At this point, Scarsdale, who had come upon Orlando and the dead man at the Cross Trails the night before, told his story. He did it with evident reluctance. He spoke with hesitation, yet firmly and straightforwardly. He described how he saw Orlando climb down from the wagon where the dead man was. He added, however, that he had seen no struggle of any kind, though he had seen Orlando close to the corpse. Questioned by the Coroner, he described the scenes between Orlando and Mazarine in the main street of Askatoon and at the railway-station, both of which he had seen. He repeated Orlando's threat to Mazarine. He was pressed as to whether Orlando showed agitation at the Cross Trails. He replied that Orlando seemed stunned but not agitated. He was asked whether Orlando had shown the greater agitation at the Cross Trails or in the town when he threatened Mazarine. The answer was that he showed agitation only in the town. He was asked to repeat what Orlando had said to him. This he did accurately. He was then asked by counsel whether he had arrived at any conclusion, when at the Cross Trails or afterwards, as to who committed the crime; but the Coroner would not permit the question. The Coroner added that it was only the duty of the witness to state what he had seen. Opinions were not permissible as evidence. The facts were in possession of the Court, and the Court could form its own judgment. It was clear to everyone that the jury must return a verdict of wilful murder, and it was equally clear that the evidence was sufficient to fix suspicion upon Orlando, which must lead to his arrest. Two constables were in close attendance, and were ready to take charge of the man who, above all others, or so it was thought, had most reason to wish Mazarine out of the way. Indeed, Orlando had resigned himself to the situation, having realized how all the evidence was against him. Recalling Orlando, the Coroner asked if it was the case that the death of Mazarine might be an advantage to him in any way. Orlando replied that it might be an advantage to him, but he was not sure. He added, however, that if, as the Coroner seemed to suggest, he himself was under suspicion, it ought to appear to all that to have murdered Mazarine in the circumstances would have put in jeopardy any possible advantage. That seemed logical enough, but it was presently pointed out to the Coroner that the same consideration had existed when Orlando had threatened Mazarine in the streets of Askatoon. Presently the Coroner said: "There's a half-breed woman and a Chinaman, servants of the late Mr. Mazarine. Have the woman called." It was at this moment that the Young Doctor and Orlando also were suddenly seized with a suspicion of their own. Orlando remembered how Mazarine had horsewhipped and maltreated Li Choo. The Young Doctor fixed his eyes intently on the body, and presently went to it again, raised the beard and looked at the neck. Coming back to his place, he nodded to himself. He had a clue. Now he understood about the enormous strength which had killed Mazarine practically without a struggle. He had noticed more than once the sinewy fingers of the Chinaman. As the inquest went on, he had again and again looked at the hands and arms of Orlando, and it had seemed impossible that, strong as he was, his fingers had the particular strength which could have done this thing. The Coroner stood waiting for Rada to come, when suddenly the door opened and a Chinaman entered--one of the two who had appeared so strangely on the scene the day before. He advanced to the Coroner with both hands loosely hanging in the great sleeves of his blue padded coat, his eyes blinking slowly underneath the brown forehead and the little black skullcap, and after making salutation with his arms, in curious, monotonous English with a quaint accent he said: "Li Choo--Li Choo--he speak. He have to say. He send." Holding up a piece of paper, he handed it to the Coroner and then stood blinking and immobile. A few moments afterwards, the Coroner said: "I have received this note from Li Choo the Chinaman, sometime employed by the deceased Joel Mazarine. I will read it to you." Slowly he read: "I say gloddam. That Orlando he not kill Mazaline. I say gloddam Mazaline. That Mazaline he Chlistian. He says Chlist his brother. Chlist not save him when Li Choo's fingers had Mazaline's thloat. That gloddam Mazaline I kill. That Mazaline kicked me, hit me with whip; where he kick, I sick all time. I not sleep no more since then. That Louise, it no good she stay with Mazaline. Confucius speak like this: 'Young woman go to young man; young bird is for green leaves, not dry branch.' That Louise good woman; that Orlando hell-fellow good. I kill Mazaline--gloddam, with my hands I kill. You want know all why Li Choo kill? You want kill Li Choo? You come!" As the Coroner stopped reading, amid gasps of excitement, the Chinaman who had brought the notewith brown skin polished like a kettle, expressionless, save for the twinkling mystery of the brown eyesmade three motions of obeisance up and down with his hands clasped in the great sleeves, and then said: "He not come you; you come him. He gleat man. He speak all--come. I show where." "Where is he?" asked the Coroner. The Chinaman did not reply for a moment. Then he said: "He sacrifice before you take him. He gleat man--come." He slip-slopped towards the door as though confident he would be followed. Two minutes afterwards the Coroner, Orlando, the Young Doctor, Nolan Doyle and the rest stood at the low doorway of what looked like a great grave. It was, however, a big root-house used for storing vegetables in the winter-time. It had not been used since Mazarine arrived at Tralee. Into this place, nor far from the house, Li Choo and his two fellow countrymen had gone the day before, when Mazarine, in his rage, had come forth with the horsewhip to punish the "Chinky," as Li Choo was familiarly known on the ranch. As they arrived at the vault-like place in the ground, which would hold many tons of roots, another Chinaman came to the doorway. He was one of the two who, in their sudden coming and going, had seemed like magic people to Mazarine the day before. He made upward and downward motions of respect with clasped hands in the blue sleeves, and presently, in perfect English, he said: "In one minute Li Choo will receive you. It is the moment of sacrifice. You wish him to die for the death of Mazarine. So be it. It is right for him to die. You will hang him; that is your law. He will not prevent you. He has told the truth, but he is making the sacrifice. When that is done you will enter and take him to prison." The two constables standing beside the Coroner made a move forward, as though to show they meant to enforce the law without any palaver. The Chinaman raised the palms of both hands at them. "Not yet," he said. Then he looked at the Coroner. "You are master. Will you not prevent them?" The Coroner motioned the constables back. "All right," he said. "You seem to speak good English." "I come from England-from Oxford University," answered the Chinaman with dignity. "I have learned English for many years. I am the son of Duke Ki. I came to see my uncle, the brother of Duke Ki. He is making sacrifice before you take him." "Well, I'm blasted," said Jonas Billings from the crowd. "Chinese dukes, eh! What's it all about?" "Reg'lar hocus-pocus," remarked the vagabond brother of Rigby the chemist. At that moment little coloured lights suddenly showed in the darkness of the root-house, and there was the tinkling of a bell. Then a voice seemed calling, but softly, with a long, monotonous, thrilling note. "Many may not come," said the Chinaman at the door to the Coroner, as he turned and entered the low doorway. A minute afterwards the two constables held back the crowd from the doorway of the root-house, from the threshold of which a few wooden steps descended to the ground inside. A strange sight greeted the eyes of those permitted to enter. The root-house had been transformed. What had been a semi-underground place composed of scantlings, branches of trees and mother earth, with a kind of vaulted roof, had been made into a sort of Chinese temple. All round the walls were hung curtains of black and yellow, decorated with dragons in gold, and above, suspended by cords at the four corners, was a rug or banner of white ornamented with a great tortoise--the sacred animal of Chinese religion--with gold eyes and claws. All round the side of the room were set coloured lights, shaded and dim. Coming from the bright outer sunlight, the place in its shadowed state seemed half- sepulchral. When the Coroner, Orlando, the Young Doctor and the others had accustomed themselves to the dimness, they saw at the end of the chamber--for such, in effect, it had been made with its trappings and decorations--a figure seated upon the ground. Near by the figure, on either hand, there were standards bearing banners, and the staffs holding the banners were, bound in white silk, with long streamers hanging down. Half enclosing the banners were fanlike screens. Along the walls also were flags with toothed edges. The figure was seated on a mat of fine bamboo in the midst of this strange scheme of decoration. Behind him, and drawn straight across the chamber, was a sheet of fine white cloth, embroidered with strange designs. He was clothed in a rich jacket of blue, and a pair of sandal-like shoes was placed neatly in front of the bamboo mat. On either side and in front of all, raised a little from the ground, were bowls or calabashes containing fruit, grain and dried and pickled meats. It was all orderly, circumspect, weird, and even stately though the place was small. Finally, in front of the motionless figure was a tiny brazier in which was a small fire. Before the spectators had taken in the whole picture, the Chinaman who had entered with them came and stood on the right of the space occupied by the mat, near to the banners and the screens, and under a yellow light which hung from the vaulted roof. The figure on the fine bamboo mat was Li Choo, but not the Li Choo which Tralee and Askatoon had known. He was seated with legs crossed in Oriental fashion and with head slightly bowed. His face was calm and dignified. It had an impassiveness which made an interminable distance between him and those who had till now looked upon him as a poor Chinky, doing a roustabout's work on a ranch, the handy-man, the Jack-of-all- trades. Yet in spite of the menial work which he had done, it was now to be seen that the despised Li Choo had still lived his own life, removed by centuries and innumerable leagues from his daily slavery. As they looked at him, brooding, immobile, strange, he lifted his head, and the excessive brightness of his black eyes struck with a sense of awe all who saw. It was absurd that Li Choo, the hireling, "Yellowphiz," as he had also been called, should here command a situation with the authority of one who ruled. Presently he spoke, not in broken English, but in Chinese. It was interpreted by the Chinaman standing on the right by the screens, in well cadenced, cultured English. "I have to tell you," said Li Choo--the other's voice repeated the words after him--"that I am the son of greatness, of a ruler in my own land. It was by the Yang-tze-kiang, and there were riches and pleasant things in the days of my youth. In the hunt, at the tavern, I was first amongst them all. I had great strength. I once killed a bear with my bare hands. My hands had fame. "I had office in the city where my cousin ruled. He was a bad man, and was soon forgotten, though his children mourn for him as is the custom. I killed him. He gave counsel concerning the city when there was war, but his counsel was that of a traitor, and the city was lost. Now behold, it is written that he who has given counsel about the country or its capital should perish with it when it comes into peril. He would not die--so I killed him; but not before he had heaped upon me baseness and shame. So I killed him. "Yet it is written that when a minister kills his ruler, all who are in office with him shall without mercy kill him who did the deed. That is the law. It was the word of the Son of Heaven that this should be. But those who were in office with me would not kill me, because they approved of what I did. Yet they must kill me, since it was the law. What was there to do but in the night to flee, so that they who should kill me might not obey the law? Had I remained, and they had not obeyed the law, they also would have been slain." He paused for a moment and then went on. "So I fled, and it is many years since by the Yang-tze-kiang I killed my ruler and saved my friends. Yet I had not been faithful to the ancient law, and so through the long years I have done low work among a low people. This was for atonement, for long ago by the Yang-tzekiang I should have died, and behold, I have lived until now. To save my friends from the pain of killing me I fled and lived; but at last here at this place I said to myself that I must die. So, secretly, I made this cellar into a temple. "That was a year ago, and I sent to my brother the Duke Ki to speak to him what was in my mind, so that he might send my kinsmen to me, that when I came to die, it should be after the manner ordained by the Son of Heaven; that my body should be clothed according to the ancient rites by my own people, my mouth filled with rice, and the meats, and grains and fruits of sacrifice be placed on a mat at the east of my body when I died; that the curtain should be hung before my corpse; that I should be laid upon a mat of fine bamboo, and dressed, and prepared for my grave, and put into a noble coffin as becomes a superior man. Did not the Son of Heaven say that we speak of the end of a superior man, but we speak of the death of a small man? I was a superior man, but I have lived as a small man these many days; and now, behold, I am drawing near to my end as a superior man. "I wished that nothing should be forgotten; that all should be done when I, of the house of the Duke Ki, came to my superior end. So, these my kinsmen came, these of my family, to be with me at my going, to call my spirit back from the roof-top with face turned to the north, to leap before my death-mat, to wail and bare the shoulders and bind the sackcloth about the head. "I have served among the low people doing low things, and now I would die, but in the correct way. Once to the listeners Confucius said: 'The great mountain must crumble; the strong beam must break; the wise man must wither away like a plant.' So it is. It is my duty to go to my end, for the time is far spent, and I should do what my friends must have done had I stayed in my ancestral city." Again he paused, and now he rocked his body backwards and forwards for a moment; then presently he continued: "Yet I would not go without doing good. There should be some act among the low people by which I should be remembered. So, once again, I killed a man. He could not withstand the strength of my fingers--they were like steel upon his throat. As a young man my fingers were like those of three men. "Shall a man treat his wife as she, Louise, was treated? Shall a man raise his hand against his wife, and live? also, was he to live--the low man--that struck a high man like me with his hands, with the whip, with his feet, stamping upon me on the ground? Was that to be, and he live? Were the young that should have but one nest to be parted, to have only sorrow, if Joel lived? So I killed him with my hands" (he slightly raised his clasped hands, as though to emphasize what he said, but the gesture was grave and quiet)"--so I killed him, and so I must die. "It was the duty of my friends to kill me by the Yang-tze-kiang. It is your duty, you of the low people, to kill me who has killed a low man; but my friends by the Yang-tze-kiang were glad that the ruler died, and you of the low people are glad that Joel is dead. Yet it is your duty to kill me. . . . But it shall not be." He quickly reached out his hands and drew the burning brazier close to his feet; then, suddenly, from a sleeve of his robe he took a little box of the sacred tortoise-shell, pressed his lips to it, opened it, poured its contents upon the flame, leaned over with his face close to the brazier and inhaled the little puff of smoke that came from it. So for a few seconds--and then he raised himself and sat still with eyes closed and hands clasped in his long sleeves. Presently his head fell forward on his breast. A pungent smell passed through the chamber. It produced for the moment dizziness in all present. Then the sensation cleared away. The Chinaman at the right of Li Choo looked steadfastly at him; then, all at once, he bared his shoulders and quickly bound a piece of sackcloth round his head. This done, he raised his voice and cried out with a monotonous ululation, and at once a second voice cried out in a long wailing call. Outside Li Choo's kinsman, with his face turned to the north, was calling his spirit back, though he knew it would not come. At the first sound of the voice crying outside, the Chinaman beside Li Choo leaped thrice in front of the brazier, the mat and the moveless body. At that moment the Young Doctor came forward. He who had leaped stood between him and the body of Li Choo. "You must not come. Li Choo, the superior man, is dead," he protested. "I am a doctor," was the reply. "If he is dead, the law will not touch him, and you shall be alone with him, but the law must know that he is dead. That is the way that prevails among the 'low people,'" he added ironically. The Chinaman stood aside, and the Young Doctor stooped, felt the pulse, touched the heart and lifted up the head and looked into Li Choo's sightless eyes. "He is dead," he said, and he came back again to the Coroner and the others. "Let's get out of this," he added. "He is beyond our reach now. No need for an inquest here. He has killed himself." Then he caught Orlando's hand in a warm grip. As they left the chamber, the kinsman of Li Choo was gently laying the body down upon the bamboo mat. At the doorway the other son of the Duke Ki was still monotonously calling back the departed spirit. The inquest on Joel Mazarine was ended presently, and Nolan Doyle and the Young Doctor set out to tell Louise that a "low man," once her husband, had paid a high price for all that he had bought of the fruits of life out of due season. CHAPTER XVIII YOUTH HAS ITS WAY "Aw, Doctor dear, there's manny that's less use in the wurruld than Chinamen, and I'd like to see more o' them here-away," remarked Patsy Kernaghan to the Young Doctor in the springtime of another year. "Stren'th of mind is all right, but stren'th of fingers is better still." "You're a bloodthirsty pagan, Patsy," returned the Young Doctor. "Hell to me sowl, then, didn't Li Choo pull things straight? I'm not much of a murd'ring man meself--I haven't the stren'th with me fingers, but there's manny a time I'd like to do what Li Choo done. . . . Shure, I don't want to be sp'akin' ill of the dead, but look at it now. There was ould Mazarine, breakin' the poor child's heart, as fine a fella as iver trod the wurruld achin' for her, and his life bein' spoilt by the goin's on at Tralee. Then in steps the Chinky and with stren'th of mind and stren'th of fingers puts things right." "No, no, Patsy, you've got bad logic and worse morals in your head. As you say, things were put right, but trouble enough came of it." "Divils me darlin', Doctor, it was bound to come all right some time. Shure, wasn't it natural the child should be all crumpled up like and lose her head for a while? Wasn't it natural she should fight out agin' takin' the property the leviathin left her, whin she knew there was another will he'd spoke on a paper to the lawyer the night he died, though he hadn't signed it? And isn't it so that yourself it was talked her round!" The Young Doctor waved a hand reprovingly, but Patsy continued: "Now, lookin' back on it, don't ye think it was clever enough what you said till her? 'Do justice to yourself and to others, little lady,' sez you. 'Be just--divide the place up; give two-thirds of it away to the children of Joel's first two wives and keep one-third, which is yours by law in anny case. For why should it be that you should give iverythin' and get nothin'? He had the best of you-of your girlhood and your youth,' sez you. 'Shure y'are entitled to bread and meat, and a roof over you, as a wife, and as one that got nothin' from your married life of what ought to be got by honest girls like you, or by anny woman, if it comes to that,' sez you. Aw, shure then, I know you said it, because, didn't she tell it all to Norah Doyle, and didn't Norah tell Nolan, and me sittin' by and glad enough that the cleverest man betune here and the other side of the wurruld talked her round! Aw, how you talk, y'r anner! Shure, isn't it the wonder that you don't talk the dead back to the wurruld out of which you help them? I might ha' been a great man meself" --he grinned--"if I'd had your eddication, but here I am, a 'low man' as Li Choo said, takin' me place simple as a babe." "Patsy, you save my life," remarked the Young Doctor. "You save my life daily. That's why I'm glad you're getting a good home at last." "At Slow Down Ranch, with her that's to be its queen! Well, isn't that like her to be thinkin' of others? As a rule the rich is so busy lookin' afther what they've got that they're not worryin' about the poor; but she thought of me, didn't she?" The Young Doctor nodded, and Patsy pursued his tale. "Haven't I see her day in, day out, at Nolan Doyle's ranch, and don't I understan' why it is she's not set foot in Tralee since the ould one left it feet foremost, for his new seven-foot home, housed in a bit of wood-him that had had the run of the wurruld? She'll set no foot in Tralee at all anny time, if she can help it--that's the breed of her. "Well, it is as it is, and what's goin' to be will plaze every mother's son in Askatoon. Giggles they called him! A bit of a girl they thought him! What's he turned out to be, though he's giggling still? Why, a man that's got the double cinch on Askatoon. Even that fella Burlingame had nothin' to say ag'in' him; and when Burlingame hasn't anny mud to throw, then you must stop and look hard. Shure, the blessed Virgin, or the Almighty himself, couldn't escape the tongue of Augustus Burlingame--not even you." The Young Doctor burst out laughing. "'The Blessed Mary, or the Almighty himself--not even you!' Well, Patsy, you're a wonder," he said. "Aw, you're not goin' to get off by scoffin' at me," remarked Patsy. "Shure, what did Augustus Burlingame say of you?--well now, what did he say?" "Yes, Patsy, what was it?" urged the other. "Shure, he criticized you. He called you 'Squills,' and said you'd helped more people intil the wurruld than out of it." "You call that criticism. Patsy?" "Whichever way you look at it, hasn't it an ugly face? Is it a kindness to man to bring him into the wurruld? That's wan way of lookin' at it. But suppose he meant the other thing, that not being married, you--" "Patsy Kernaghan," interjected the Young Doctor sternly, "you're not fit company. Take care, or there'll be no Slow Down Ranch for you. An evil mind----" Now it was Patsy's turn to interrupt: "Watch me now, I think that wan of the most beautiful things I iver saw was them two young people comin' together. Five long months it was, afther Mazarine was put away before she spoke with him. It was in the gardin at Nolan's ranch, and even then it wasn't aisy till her. Not that she didn't want to see him all the time; not, I'll be bound, that she didn't say, when you and Nolan first told her the mastodon was dead, 'Thank God, I'm free!' But, there he was, flung out of the wurruld without a minute's notice, and with the black thing in his heart. Shure you'll be understandin' it a thousand times better than meself, y'r anner." He took a pinch of snuff from a little box, offered it to the Young Doctor and continued his story. "Well, as I said, whin five months had gone by they met. By chanct I saw the meetin'. Watch me now, I'll tell you how it was. She was sittin' on a bench in the gardin, lookin' in front of her and seein' nothin' but what was in her mind's eye, and who can tell what she would be seein'! There she sat sweet as a saint, very straight up, the palms of her hands laid on the bench on either side, as though they was supporfin' her--like a statue she looked. I watched her manny a minute, but she niver moved. Well, there she was, lookin'--lookin' in front o' her, whin round the big tree in the middle of the gardin he come and stood forninst her. They just looked and looked at each other without a word. Like months it seemed. They looked, and looked, as though they was tryin' to read some story in each other's eyes, and then she give a kind of joyful moan, and intil his arms she went like a nestlin' bird. "He raised up her head, and-well, now, y'r anner, I niver saw anything I liked better. There niver had been a girl in his life, and there niver was a man in hers--not one that mattered, till they two took up with each other, and it's a thing--well, y'r anner, I'd be a proud man if I could write it down. It's a story that'd take its place beside the ancient ones." The Young Doctor looked at Patsy meditatively. "Patsy," said he, "the difference between the north and the south of Ireland is that in the south they are all poets--" He paused. "Well, you haven't finished, y 'r anner," said Kernaghan. "And in the north they think they are," continued the Young Doctor. "I'd like to see those two as your eyes in front of your mind saw them, Patsy." "Aw, well then, you couldn't do it, Doctor dear, for you've niver been in love. Shure, there's no heart till ye!" answered the Irishman, and took another pinch of snuff with a flourish. ........................ Flamingo-like in her bright-coloured, figured gown, with a wild flower in her hair and her gray curls dancing gently at her temples, a little old lady trotted up and down the big sitting-room of Slow Down Ranch, talking volubly and insistently. One ironically minded would have said she chirruped, for her words came out in not unmusical, if staccato, notes, and she shook her shrivelled, ringed fingers reprovingly at a stalwart young man. Once or twice, as she seemed to threaten him with what the poet called "The slow, unmoving finger of scorn," he giggled. It was evident that he was at once amused and troubled. This voice had cherished and chided him all his life, and he could measure accurately what was behind it. It was a wilful voice. It had the insistance which power gives, and to a woman --or to most women--power is either money or beauty, since, in the world as it is, office and authority are denied them. Beauty was gone from the face of the ancient dame, but she still had much money, and, on rare occasions, it gave her a little arrogance. It did so now as she admonished her beloved son, who at any time would have renounced fortune, or hope of fortune, for some wilful idea of his own. A less sordid modern did not exist. He was not very effective in the contest of tongue between his mother and himself. As the talk went on he foresaw that he was to be beaten; yet he persisted, for he loved a joy-wrangle, as he called it, with his mother. He had argued with her many a time, just to see her in a harmless passion, and note how the youth of her came back, giving high colour to the wrinkled face, and how the eyes shone with a brightness which had been constant in them long ago. They were now quarrelling over that ever-fruitful cause of antagonism--the second woman in the life of a man. Yet, strange to say, the flamingo-like Eugenie Guise, was fighting for the second woman, not against her. "I'll say it all again and again and again till you have sense, Orlando," she declared. "Your old mother hasn't lived all these years for nothing. I'm not thinking of you; I'm thinking of her." She pointed towards the door of another room, from which came sounds of laughter--happy laughter --in which a man's and a woman's voices sounded. "On the day she comes into this house--and that's the day after to-morrow--I shall go. I'll stand at the door and welcome you, and see you have a good wedding- breakfast and that it all goes off grand, then I shall vanish." Orlando made a helpless gesture of the hand. "Well, mother, as I said, it will make us both unhappy--Louise as much as me. You and I have never been parted except for a few weeks at a time, and I'm sure I don't know how I could stand it." "Rather late to think about it," the other returned. "You can't have two women spoiling you in one house and being jealous of each other--oh, you needn't toss your fingers! Even two women that love each other can't bear the competition. Just because I love her and want her to be happy, off I go to your Aunt Amelia to live with her. She's poor, and I'll still have someone to boss as I've bossed you. I never knew how much I loved Amelia till she got sick last year when everything terrible was happening here. I'm going, Orlando-- Two birds hopping on one branch Would kill the joy of Slow Down Ranch-- "There, I made that up on the moment. It's true, even if it is poetry." "It isn't poetry, mother," was the reply, and there was an ironical look in Orlando's eyes. "Poetry's the truth of life," he hastened to add carefully, "and it's not poetry to say that you could be a kill-joy." The little lady tossed her head. "Well, you'll never have a chance to prove it, for I'm taking the express east on the night of your wedding. That's settled. Amelia needs me, and I'm going to her. . . . Your wedding present will be the ranch and a hundred thousand dollars," she added. "You're the sun-dried fruit of Paradise, Mother," Orlando said, taking her by the arms. "I heard the Young Doctor call me a bird of Paradise once," she returned. "People don't know how sharp my ears are. . . . But I never stored it up against him. Taste is born in you, and if people haven't got it in the cradle, they never have it. I suppose his mother went around in a black alpaca and wore her hair like a wardress in a jail. I'm sorry for him--that's all." "Suppose I should get homesick for you and run away from her!" remarked Orlando slyly. "Run away with her to me," chirruped Eugenie, with a vain little laugh. Suddenly her manner changed, and she looked at her son with dreamy intensity. "You are so wonderfully young, my dear," she said, "and I am very old. I had much happiness with your father while he lived. He was such a wise man. Always he gave in to me in the little things, and I gave in to him in all the big things. He almost made me a sensible woman." There was a strange wistfulness in her face. Through all the years, down beneath everything, there had been the helpless knowledge in her own small, garish mind that she had little sense; now she realized that she was given a chance to atone for all her pettiness by doing one great sensible thing. Orlando was about to embrace her, but she briskly, turned away. She could not endure that. If he did it, the pent-up motherhood would break forth, and her courage would take flight. She was something more than the "parokeet of Pernambukoko," as Patsy Kernaghan had called her. She went to the door of the other room. "I want to talk to the Young Doctor about Amelia," she said. "He's clever, and perhaps he could give her a good prescription. I'll send Louise to you. It's nicer courting in this room where you can see the garden and the grand hills. You're going to give Louise the little gray mare you lassooed last year, aren't you? I always think of Louise when I look at that gray mare. You had to break the pony's heart before she could be what she is--the nicest little thing that ever was broken by a man's hand; and Louise, she had to have her heart broken too. Your father and I were almost of an age--he was two years older, and we had our youth together. And you and Louise are so wonderfully young, too. Be good to her, son. She's never been married. She was only in prison with that old lizard. What a horrible mouth he had! It's shut now," she added remorselessly. Opening the door of the other room, she disappeared. A moment later, Louise entered upon Orlando. The vanished months had worked wonders in her. She was like the young summer beyond the open windows, alive to her finger-tips, shyly radiant, with shining eyes, yet in their depths an alluring pensiveness never to leave them altogether. Knowledge had come to her; an apprehending soul was speaking in her face. The sweetness of her smile, as she looked at the man before her, was such as could only be distilled from the bitter herbs of the desert. "Oh, Orlando!" she said joyously, as she came forward. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "WILD YOUTH": Highsterics, they call it World was only the size of four walls to a sick person NO DEFENSE By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS BOOK I. I. THE TWO MEET II. THE COMING OF A MESSENGER III. THE QUARREL IV. THE DUEL V. THE KILLING OF ERRIS BOYNE VI. DYCK IN PRISON VII. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER VIII. DYCK'S FATHER VISITS HIM IX. A LETTER FROM SHEILA BOOK II X. DYCK CALHOUN ENTERS THE WORLD AGAIN XI. WHITHER NOW? XII. THE HOUR BEFORE THE MUTINY XIII. TO THE WEST INDIES XIV. IN THE NICK OF TIME XV. THE ADMIRAL HAS HIS SAY BOOK III XVI. A LETTER XVII. STRANGERS ARRIVE XVIII. AT SALEM XIX. LORD MALLOW INTERVENES XX. OUT OF THE HANDS OF THE PHILISTINES XXI. THE CLASH OF RACE XXII. SHEILA HAS HER SAY XXIII. THE COMING OF NOREEN XXIV. WITH THE GOVERNOR XXV. THEN WHAT HAPPENED BOOK I CHAPTER I THE TWO MEET "Well, good-bye, Dyck. I'll meet you at the sessions, or before that at the assizes." It was only the impulsive, cheery, warning exclamation of a wild young Irish spirit to his friend Dyck Calhoun, but it had behind it the humour and incongruity of Irish life. The man, Dyck Calhoun, after whom were sent the daring words about the sessions and the assizes, was a year or two older than his friend, and, as Michael Clones, his servant and friend, said, "the worst and best scamp of them all"--just up to any harmless deviltry. Influenced by no traditions or customs, under control of no stern records of society, Calhoun had caused some trouble in his time by the harmless deeds of a scapegrace, but morally--that is, in all relations of life affected by the ten commandments--he was above reproach. Yet he was of the sort who, in days of agitation, then common in Ireland, might possibly commit some act which would bring him to the sessions or the assizes. There never was in Ireland a cheerier, braver, handsomer fellow, nor one with such variety of mind and complexity of purpose. He was the only child of a high-placed gentleman; he spent all the money that came his way, and occasionally loaded himself with debt, which his angry father paid. Yet there never was a gayer heart, a more generous spirit, nor an easier-tempered man; though, after all, he was only twenty-five when the words with which the tale opens were said to him. He had been successful--yet none too successful--at school and Trinity College, Dublin. He had taken a pass degree, when he might have captured the highest honours. He had interested people of place in the country, but he never used promptly the interest he excited. A pretty face, a fishing or a shooting expedition, a carouse in some secluded tavern, were parts of his daily life. At the time the story opens he was a figure of note among those who spent their time in criticizing the government and damning the Irish Parliament. He even became a friend of some young hare-brained rebels of the time; yet no one suspected him of anything except irresponsibility. His record was clean; Dublin Castle was not after him. When his young friend made the remark about the sessions and assizes, Calhoun was making his way up the rocky hillside to take the homeward path to his father's place, Playmore. With the challenge and the monstrous good-bye, a stone came flying up the hill after him and stopped almost at his feet. He made no reply, however, but waved a hand downhill, and in his heart said: "Well, maybe he's right. I'm a damned dangerous fellow, there's no doubt about that. Perhaps I'll kill a rebel some day, and then they'll take me to the sessions and the assizes. Well, well, there's many a worse fate than that, so there is." After a minute he added: "So there is, dear lad, so there is. But if I ever kill, I'd like it to be in open fight on the hills like this--like this, under the bright sun, in the soft morning, with all the moor and valleys still, and the larks singing--the larks singing! Hooray, but it's a fine day, one of the best that ever was!" He laughed, and patted his gun gently. "Not a feather, not a bird killed, not a shot fired; but the looking was the thing--stalking the things that never turned up, the white heels we never saw, for I'm not killing larks, God love you!" He raised his head, looking up into the sky at some larks singing above him in the heavens. "Lord love you, little dears," he added aloud. "I wish I might die with your singing in my ears, but do you know what makes Ireland what it is? Look at it now. Years ago, just when the cotton-mills and the linen- mills were doing well, they came over with their English legislation, and made it hard going. When we begin to get something, over the English come and take the something away. What have we done, we Irish people, that we shouldn't have a chance in our own country? Lord knows, we deserve a chance, for it's hard paying the duties these days. What with France in revolution and reaching out her hand to Ireland to coax her into rebellion; what with defeat in America and drink in Scotland; what with Fox and Pitt at each other's throats, and the lord-lieutenant a danger to the peace; what with poverty, and the cow and children and father and mother living all in one room, with the chickens roosting in the rafters; what with pointing the potato at the dried fish and gulping it down as if it was fish itself; what with the smell and the dirt and the poverty of Dublin and Derry, Limerick and Cork--ah, well!" He threw his eyes up again. "Ah, well, my little love, sing on! You're a blessing among a lot of curses; but never mind, it's a fine world, and Ireland's the best part of it. Heaven knows it--and on this hill, how beautiful it is!" He was now on the top of a hill where he could look out towards the bog and in towards the mellow, waving hills. He could drink in the yellowish green, with here and there in the distance a little house; and about two miles away smoke stealing up from the midst of the plantation where Playmore was--Playmore, his father's house--to be his own one day. How good it was! There, within his sight, was the great escarpment of rock known as the Devil's Ledge, and away to the east was the black spot in the combe known as the Cave of Mary. Still farther away, towards the south, was the great cattle-pasture, where, as he looked, a thousand cattle roamed. Here and there in the wide prospect were plantations where Irish landlords lived, and paid a heavy price for living. Men did not pay their rents. Crops were spoiled, markets were bad, money was scarce, yet-- "Please God, it will be better next year!" Michael Clones said, and there never was a man with a more hopeful heart than Michael Clones. Dyck Calhoun had a soul of character, originality, and wayward distinction. He had all the impulses and enthusiasms of a poet, all the thirst for excitement of the adventurer, all the latent patriotism of the true Celt; but his life was undisciplined, and he had not ordered his spirit into compartments of faith and hope. He had gifts. They were gifts only to be borne by those who had ambitions. Now, as he looked out upon the scene where nature was showing herself at her best, some glimmer of a great future came to him. He did not know which way his feet were destined to travel in the business of life. It was too late to join the navy; but there was still time enough to be a soldier, or to learn to be a lawyer. As he gazed upon the scene, his wonderful deep blue eyes, his dark brown hair thick upon his head, waving and luxuriant like a fine mattress, his tall, slender, alert figure, his bony, capable hands, which neither sun nor wind ever browned, his nervous yet interesting mouth, and his long Roman nose, set in a complexion rich in its pink-and-cream hardness and health--all this made him a figure good to see. Suddenly, as he listened to the lark singing overhead, with his face lifted to the sky, he heard a human voice singing; and presently there ran up a little declivity to his left a girl--an Irish girl of about seventeen years of age. Her hat was hanging on her arm by a green ribbon. Her head was covered with the most wonderful brown, waving hair. She had a broad, low forehead, Greek in its proportions and lines. The eyes were bluer even than his own, and were shaded by lashes of great length, which slightly modified the firm lines of the face, with its admirable chin, and mouth somewhat large with a cupid's bow. In spite of its ardent and luscious look, it was the mouth of one who knew her own mind and could sustain her own course. It was open when Dyck first saw it, because she was singing little bits of wild lyrics of the hills, little tragedies of Celtic life--just bursts of the Celtic soul, as it were, cheerful yet sad, buoyant and passionate, eager yet melancholy. She was singing in Irish too. They were the words of songs taught her by her mother's maid. She had been tramping over the hills for a couple of hours, virile, beautiful, and alone. She wore a gown of dark gold, with little green ribbons here and there. The gown was short, and her ankles showed. In spite of the strong boots she wore they were alert, delicate, and shapely, and all her beauty had the slender fullness of a quail. When she saw Dyck, she stopped suddenly, her mouth slightly open. She gave him a sidelong glance of wonder, interest, and speculation. Then she threw her head slightly back, and all the curls gathered in a bunch and shook like bronze flowers. It was a head of grace and power, of charm and allurement--of danger. Dyck was lost in admiration. He looked at her as one might look at a beautiful thing in a dream. He did not speak; he only smiled as he gazed into her eyes. She was the first to speak. "Well, who are you?" she asked with a slightly southern accent in her voice, delicate and entrancing. Her head gave a little modest toss, her fine white teeth caught her lower lip with a little quirk of humour; for she could see that he was a gentleman, and that she was safe from anything that might trouble her. He replied to her question with the words: "My name? Why, it's Dyck Calhoun. That's all." Her eyes brightened. "Isn't that enough?" she asked gently. She knew of his family. She was only visiting in the district with her mother, but she had lately heard of old Miles Calhoun and his wayward boy, Dyck; and here was Dyck, with a humour in his eyes and a touch of melancholy at his lips. Somehow her heart went out to him. Presently he said to her: "And what's your name?" "I'm only Sheila Llyn, the daughter of my mother, a widow, visiting at Loyland Towers. Yes, I'm only Sheila!" She laughed. "Well, just be 'only Sheila,"' he answered admiringly, and he held out a hand to her. "I wouldn't have you be anything else, though it's none of my business." For one swift instant she hesitated; then she laid her hand in his. "There's no reason why we should not," she said. "Your father's respectable." She looked at him again with a sidelong glance, and with a whimsical, reserved smile at her lips. "Yes, he's respectable, I agree, but he's dull," answered Dyck. "For an Irishman, he's dull--and he's a tyrant, too. I suppose I deserve that, for I'm a handful." "I think you are, and a big handful too!" "Which way are you going?" he asked presently. "And you?" "Oh, I'm bound for home." He pointed across the valley. "Do you see that smoke coming up from the plantation over there?" "Yes, I know," she answered. "I know. That's Playmore, your father's place. Loyland Towers is between here and there. Which way were you going there?" "Round to the left," he said, puzzled, but agreeable. "Then we must say good-bye, because I go to the right. That's my nearest way." "Well, if that's your nearest way, I'm going with you," he said, "because--well, because--because--" "If you won't talk very much!" she rejoined with a little air of instinctive coquetry. "I don't want to talk. I'd like to listen. Shall we start?" A half-hour later they suddenly came upon an incident of the road. It was, alas, no uncommon incident. An aged peasant, in a sudden fit of weakness, had stumbled on the road, and, in falling, had struck his head on a stone and had lost consciousness. He was an old peasant of the usual Irish type, coarsely but cleanly dressed. Lying beside him was a leather bag, within which were odds and ends of food and some small books of legend and ritual. He was a peasant of a superior class, however. In falling, he had thrown over on his back, and his haggard face was exposed to the sun and sky. At sight of him Dyck and Sheila ran forward. Dyck dropped on one knee and placed a hand on the stricken man's heart. "He's alive, all right," Dyck said. "He's a figure in these parts. His name's Christopher Dogan." "Where does he live?" "Live? Well, not three hundred yards from here, when he's at home, but he's generally on the go. He's what the American Indians would call a medicine-man." "He needs his own medicine now." "He's over eighty, and he must have gone dizzy, stumbled, fallen, and struck a stone. There's the mark on his temple. He's been lying here unconscious ever since; but his pulse is all right, and we'll soon have him fit again." So saying, Dyck whipped out a horn containing spirit, and, while Sheila lifted the injured head, he bathed the old man's face with the spirit, then opened the mouth and let some liquor trickle down. "He's the cleanest peasant I ever saw," remarked Sheila; "and he's coming to. Look at him!" Yes, he was coming to. There was a slight tremor of the eyelids, and presently they slowly opened. They were eyes of remarkable poignancy and brightness--black, deep-set, direct, full of native intelligence. For an instant they stared as if they had no knowledge, then understanding came to them. "Oh, it's you, sir," his voice said tremblingly, looking at Dyck. "And very kind it is of ye !" Then he looked at Sheila. "I don't know ye," he said whisperingly, for his voice seemed suddenly to fail. "I don't know ye," he repeated, "but you look all right." "Well, I'm Sheila Llyn," the girl said, taking her hand from the old man's shoulder. "I'm Sheila Llyn, and I'm all right in a way, perhaps." The troubled, piercing eyes glanced from one to the other. "No relation?" "No--never met till a half-hour ago," remarked Dyck. The old man drew himself to a sitting posture, then swayed slightly. The hands of the girl and Dyck went out behind his back. As they touched his back, their fingers met, and Dyck's covered the girl's. Their eyes met, too, and the story told by Dyck in that moment was the beginning of a lifetime of experience, comedy, and tragedy. He thought her fingers were wonderfully soft, warm, and full of life; and she thought that his was the hand of a master-of a master in the field of human effort. That is, if she thought at all, for Dyck's warm, powerful touch almost hypnotized her. The old peasant understood, however. He was standing on his feet now. He was pale and uncertain. He lifted up his bag, and threw it over his shoulder. "Well, I'm not needing you any more, thank God!" he said. "So Heaven's blessing on ye, and I bid ye good-bye. You've been kind to me, and I won't forget either of ye. If ever I can do ye a good turn, I'll do it." "No, we're not going to leave you until you're inside your home," said Dyck. The old man looked at Sheila in meditation. He knew her name and her history. Behind the girl's life was a long prospect of mystery. Llyn was her mother's maiden name. Sheila had never known her father. Never to her knowledge had she seen him, because when she was yet an infant her mother had divorced him by Act of Parliament, against the wishes of her church, and had resumed her maiden name. Sheila's father's name was Erris Boyne, and he had been debauched, drunken, and faithless; so at a time of unendurable hurt his wife had freed herself. Then, under her maiden name, she had brought up her daughter without any knowledge of her father; had made her believe he was dead; had hidden her tragedy with a skilful hand. Only now, when Sheila was released from a governess, had she moved out of the little wild area of the County Limerick where she lived; only now had she come to visit an uncle whose hospitality she had for so many years denied herself. Sheila was two years old when her father disappeared, and fifteen years had gone since then. One on either side of the old man, they went with him up the hillside for about three hundred yards, to the door of his house, which was little more than a cave in a sudden lift of the hill. He swayed as he walked, but by the time they reached his cave-house he was alert again. The house had two windows, one on either side of the unlocked doorway; and when the old man slowly swung the door open, there was shown an interior of humble character, but neat and well-ordered. The floor was earth, dry and clean. There was a bed to the right, also wholesome and dry, with horse-blankets for cover. At the back, opposite the doorway, was a fireplace of some size, and in it stood a kettle, a pot, and a few small pans, together with a covered saucepan. On either side of the fireplace was a three-legged stool, and about the middle of the left-hand wall of the room was a chair which had been made out of a barrel, some of the staves having been sawn away to make a seat. Once inside the house, Christopher Dogan laid his bag on the bed and waved his hands in a formula of welcome. "Well, I'm honoured," he said, "for no one has set foot inside this place that I'd rather have here than the two of ye; and it's wonderful to me, Mr. Calhoun, that ye've never been inside it before, because there's been times when I've had food and drink in plenty. I could have made ye comfortable then and stroked ye all down yer gullet. As for you, Miss Llyn, you're as welcome as the shining of the stars of a night when there's no moon. I'm glad you're here, though I've nothing to give ye, not a bite nor sup. Ah, yes--but yes," he suddenly cried, touching his head. "Faith, then, I have! I have a drap of somethin' that's as good as annything dhrunk by the ancient kings of Ireland. It's a wee cordial that come from the cellars of the Bishop of Dunlany, when I cured his cook of the evil-stone that was killing her. Ah, thank God!" He went into a corner on the left of the fireplace, opened an old jar, thrust his arm down, and drew out a squat little bottle of cordial. The bottle was beautifully made. It was round and hunched, and of glass, with an old label from which the writing had faded. With eyes bright now, Christopher uncorked the bottle and smelled the contents. As he did so, a smile crinkled his face. "Thank the Lord! There's enough for the two of ye--two fine tablespoonfuls of the cordial that'd do anny man good, no matter how bad he was, and turn an angel of a woman into an archangel. Bless yer Bowl!" When Christopher turned to lift down two pewter pots, Calhoun reached up swiftly and took them from the shelf. He placed them in the hands of the old man, who drew a clean towel of coarse linen from a small cupboard in the wall above his head. She and Dyck held the pots for the old man to pour the cordial into them. As he said, there was only a good porridge-spoon of liqueur for each. He divided it with anxious care. "There's manny a man," he said, "and manny and manny a lady, too, born in the purple, that'd be glad of a dhrink of this cordial from the cellar of the bishop. "Alpha, beta, gamma, delta is the code, and with the word delta," he continued, "dhrink every drop of it, as if it was the last thing you were dhrinking on earth; as if the Lord stooped down to give ye a cup of blessing from His great flagon of eternal happiness. Ye've got two kind hearts, but there's manny a day of throuble will come between ye and the end; and yet the end'll be right, God love ye! Now-alpha, beta, gamma, delta!" With a merry laugh Dyck Calhoun turned up his cup and drained the liquid to the last drop. With a laugh not quite so merry, Sheila raised her mug and slowly drained the green happiness away. "Isn't it good--isn't it like the love of God?" asked the old man. "Ain't I glad I had it for ye? Why I said I hadn't annything for ye to dhrink or eat, Lord only knows. There's nothing to eat, and there's only this to dhrink, and I hide it away under the bedclothes of time, as one might say. Ah, ye know, it's been there for three years, and I'd almost forgot it. It was a little angel from heaven whispered it to me whir ye stepped inside this house. I dunno why I kep' the stuff. Manny's the time I was tempted to dhrink it myself, and manny's the time something said to me, 'Not yet.' The Lord be praised, for I've had out of it more than I deserve!" He took the mugs from their hands, and for a minute stood like some ancient priest who had performed a noble ritual. As Sheila looked at him, she kept saying to herself: "He's a spirit; he isn't a man!" Dyck's eye met that of Sheila, and he saw with the same feeling what was working in her heart. "Well, we must be going," he said to Christopher Dogan. "We must get homeward, and we've had a good drink--the best I ever tasted. We're proud to pay our respects to you in your own house; and goodbye to you till we meet again." His hand went out to the shoulder of the peasant and rested there for a second in friendly feeling. Then the girl stretched out her hand also. The old man took the two cups in one hand, and, reaching out the other, let Sheila's fingers fall upon his own. He slowly crooked his neck, and kissed her fingers with that distinction mostly to be found among those few good people who live on the highest or the lowest social levels, or in native tents. "Ah, please God we meet again! and that I be let to serve you, Miss Sheila Llyn. I have no doubt you could do with a little help some time or another, the same as the rest of us. For all that's come between us three, may it be given me, humble and poor, to help ye both that's helped me so!" Dyck turned to go, and as he did so a thought came to him. "If you hadn't food and drink for us, what have you for yourself, Christopher?" he asked. "Have you food to eat?" "Ah, well--well, do ye think I'm no provider? There was no food cooked was what I was thinking; but come and let me show you." He took the cover off a jar standing in a corner. "Here's good flour, and there's water, and there's manny a wild shrub and plant on the hillside to make soup, and what more does a man want? With the scone cooked and inside ye, don't ye feel as well as though ye'd had a pound of beef or a rasher of bacon? Sure, ye do. I know where there's clumps of wild radishes, and with a little salt they're good--the best. God bless ye!" A few moments later, as he stood in his doorway and looked along the road, he saw two figures, the girl's head hardly higher than the man's shoulder. They walked as if they had much to get and were ready for it. "Well, I dunno," he said to himself. "I dunno about you, Dyck Calhoun. You're wild, and ye have too manny mad friends, but you'll come all right in the end; and that pretty girl--God save her!--she'll come with a smile into your arms by and by, dear lad. But ye have far to go and much to do before that." His head fell, his eyes stared out into the shining distance. "I see for ye manny and manny a stroke of bad luck, and manny a wrong thing said of ye, and she not believing wan of them. But oh, my God, but oh!"--his clenched hands went to his eyes. "I wouldn't like to travel the path that's before ye--no!" Down the long road the two young people travelled, gossiping much, both of them touched by something sad and mysterious, neither knowing why; both of them happy, too, for somehow they had come nearer together than years of ordinary life might have made possible. They thought of the old man and his hut, and then broke away into talk of their own countryside, of the war with France, of the growing rebellious spirit in Ireland, of riots in Dublin town, of trouble at Limerick, Cork, and Sligo. At the gate of the mansion where Sheila was visiting, Dyck put into her hands the wild flowers he had picked as they passed, and said: "Well, it's been a great day. I've never had a greater. Let's meet again, and soon! I'm almost every day upon the hill with my gun, and it'd be worth a lot to see you very soon." "Oh, you'll be forgetting me by to-morrow," the girl said with a little wistfulness at her lips, for she had a feeling they would not meet on the morrow. Suddenly she picked from the bunch of wild flowers he had given her a little sprig of heather. "Well, if we don't meet--wear that," she said, and, laughing over her shoulder, turned and ran into the grounds of Loyland Towers. CHAPTER II THE COMING OF A MESSENGER When Dyck entered the library of Playmore, the first words he heard were these: "Howe has downed the French at Brest. He's smashed the French fleet and dealt a sharp blow to the revolution. Hurrah!" The words were used by Miles Calhoun, Dyck's father, as a greeting to him on his return from the day's sport. Now, if there was a man in Ireland who had a narrow view and kept his toes pointed to the front, it was Miles Calhoun. His people had lived in Connemara for hundreds of years; and he himself had only one passion in life, which was the Protestant passion of prejudice. He had ever been a follower of Burke--a passionate follower, one who believed the French Revolution was a crime against humanity, a danger to the future of civilization. He had resisted more vigorously than most men the progress of revolutionary sentiments in Ireland. He was aware that his son had far less rigid opinions than himself; that he even defended Wolfe Tone and Thomas Emmet against abuse and damnation. That was why he had delight in slapping his son in the face, whenever possible, with the hot pennant of victory for British power. He was a man of irascible temperament and stern views, given to fits of exasperation. He was small of stature, with a round face, eyes that suddenly went red with feeling, and with none of the handsomeness of his son, who resembled his mother's family. The mother herself had been a beautiful and remarkable woman. Dyck was, in a sense, a reproduction of her in body and mind, for a more cheerful and impetuous person never made a household happier or more imperfect than she made hers. Her beauty and continual cheerfulness had always been the joy of Dyck's life, and because his mother had married his father--she was a woman of sense, with all her lightsome ways--he tried to regard his father with profound respect. Since his wife's death, however, Miles Calhoun had deteriorated; he had become unreasonable. As the elder Calhoun made his announcement about the battle of Brest and the English victory, a triumphant smile lighted his flushed face, and under his heavy grey brows his eyes danced with malicious joy. "Howe's a wonder!" he said. "He'll make those mad, red republicans hunt their holes. Eh, isn't that your view, Ivy?" he asked of a naval captain who had evidently brought the news. Captain Ivy nodded. "Yes, it's a heavy blow for the French bloodsuckers. If their ideas creep through Europe and get hold of England, God only knows what the end will be! In their view, to alter everything is the only way to put things right. No doubt they'll invent a new way to be born before they've finished." "Well, that wouldn't be a bad idea," remarked Dyck. "The present way has its demerits." "Yes, it throws responsibility upon the man, and gives a heap of trouble to the woman," said Captain Ivy with a laugh; "but they'll change it all, you'll see." Dyck poured himself a glass of port, held it up, sniffed the aroma, and looked through the beautiful red tinge of the wine with a happy and critical eye. "Well, the world could be remade in a lot of ways," he declared. "I shouldn't mind seeing a bit of a revolution in Ireland--but in England first," he hastened to add. "They're a more outcast folk than the Irish." His father scoffed. "Look out, Dyck, or they'll drop you in jail if you talk like that!" he chided, his red face growing redder, his fingers nervously feeling the buttons on his picturesque silk waistcoat. "There's conspiracy in Ireland, and you never truly know if the man that serves you at your table, or brings you your horse, or puts a spade into your ground, isn't a traitor." At that moment the door opened, and a servant entered the room. In his hand he carried a letter which, with marked excitement, he brought to Miles Calhoun. "Sure, he's waiting, sir," he said. "And who's he?" asked his master, turning the letter over, as though to find out by looking at the seal. "Oh, a man of consequence, if we're to judge by the way he's clothed." "Fit company, then?" his master asked, as he opened the heavily sealed letter. "Well, I'm not saying that, for there's no company good enough for us," answered the higgledy-piggledy butler, with a quirk of the mouth; "but, as messengers go, I never seen one with more style and point." "Well, bring him to me," said Miles Calhoun. "Bring him to me, and I'll form my own judgment--though I have some confidence in yours." "You could go further and fare worse, as the Papists say about purgatory," answered the old man with respectful familiarity. Captain Ivy and Dyck grinned, but the head of the house seemed none too pleased at the freedom of the old butler. "Bring him as he is," said Miles Calhoun. "Good God!" he added, for he just realized that the stamp of the seal was that of the Attorney-General of Ireland. Then he read the letter and a flush swept over his face, making its red almost purple. "Eternal damnation--eternal damnation!" he declared, holding the paper at arm's length a moment, inspecting it. He then handed it to Dyck. "Read that, lad. Then pack your bag, for we start for Dublin by daylight or before." Dyck read the brief document and whistled softly to himself. "Well, well, you've got to obey orders like that, I suppose," Dyck said. "They want to question us as to the state of the country here." "I think we can tell them something. I wonder if they know how wide your travel is, how many people you see; and if they know, how did they come to know? There's spies all over the place. How do I know but the man who's just left this room isn't a spy, isn't the enemy of all of us here?" "I'd suspect Michael Clones," remarked Dyck, "just as soon as Mulvaney." "Michael Clones," said his father, and he turned to Captain Ivy, "Michael Clones I'd trust as I'd trust His blessed Majesty, George III. He's a rare scamp, is Michael Clones! He's no thicker than a cardboard, but he draws the pain out of your hurt like a mustard plaster. A man of better sense and greater roguery I've never met. You must see him, Captain Ivy. He's only about twelve years older than my son, but, like my son, there's no holding him, there's no control of him that's any good. He does what he wants to do in his own way--talks when he wants to talk, fights when he wants to fight. He's a man of men, is Michael Clones." At that moment the door opened and the butler entered, followed by a tall, thin, Don Quixote sort of figure. "His excellency," said Mulvaney, with a look slightly malevolent, for the visitor had refused his name. Then he turned and left the room. At Mulvaney's words, an ironical smile crossed the face of the newcomer. Then he advanced to Miles Calhoun. Before speaking, however, he glanced sharply at Captain Ivy, threw an inquisitive look at Dyck, and said: "I seem to have hurt the feelings of your butler, sir, but that cannot be helped. I have come from the Attorney-General. My name is Leonard Mallow--I'm the eldest son of Lord Mallow. I've been doing business in Limerick, and I bring a message from the Attorney-General to ask you to attend his office at the earliest moment." Dyck Calhoun, noting his glance at a bottle of port, poured out a glass of the good wine and handed it over, saying: "It'll taste better to you because you've been travelling hard, but it's good wine anyhow. It's been in the cellar for forty years, and that's something in a land like this." Mallow accepted the glass of port, raised it with a little gesture of respect, and said: "Long life to the King, and cursed be his enemies!" So saying he flung the wine down his throat--which seemed to gulp it like a well--wiped his lips with a handkerchief, and turned to Miles Calhoun again. "Yes, it's good wine," he said; "as good as you'd get in the cellars of the Viceroy. I've seen strange things as I came. I've seen lights on the hills, and drunken rioters in the roads and behind hedges, and once a shot was fired at me; but here I am, safe and sound, carrying out my orders. What time will you start?" he added. He took it for granted that the summons did not admit of rejection, and he was right. The document contained these words: Trouble is brewing; indeed, it is at hand. Come, please, at once to Dublin, and give the Lord-Lieutenant and the Government a report upon your district. We do not hear altogether well of it, but no one has the knowledge you possess. In the name of His Majesty you are to present yourself at once at these offices in Dublin, and be assured that the Lord-Lieutenant will give you warm welcome through me. Your own loyalty gives much satisfaction here. I am, sir, Your obedient servant, JOHN MCNOWELL. "You have confidence in the people's loyalty here?" asked Mallow. "As great as in my own," answered Dyck cheerily. "Well, you ought to know what that is. At the same time, I've heard you're a friend of one or two dark spirits in the land." "I hold no friendships that would do hurt to my country," answered Dyck sharply. Mallow smiled satirically. "As we're starting at daylight, I suppose, I think I'll go to bed, if it may be you can put me up." "Oh, Lord, yes! We can put you up, Mr. Mallow," said the old man. "You shall have as good a bed as you can find outside the Viceregal Lodge--a fourposter, wide and long. It's been slept in by many a man of place and power. But, Mr. Mallow, you haven't said you've had no dinner, and you'll not be going to bed in this house without your food. Did you shoot anything to-day, Dyck?" he asked his son. "I didn't bring home a feather. There were no birds to-day, but there are the ducks I shot yesterday, and the quail." "Oh, yes," said his father, "and there's the little roast pig, too. This is a day when we celebrate the anniversary of Irish power and life." "What's that?" asked Mallow. "That's the battle of the Boyne," answered his host with a little ostentation. "Oh, you're one of the Peep-o'-Day Boys, then," remarked Mallow. "I'm not saying that," answered the old man. "I'm not an Ulsterman, but I celebrate the coming of William to the Boyne. Things were done that day that'll be remembered when Ireland is whisked away into the Kingdom of Heaven. So you'll not go to bed till you've had dinner, Mr. Mallow! By me soul, I think I smell the little porker now. Dinner at five, to bed at eight, up before daylight, and off to Dublin when the light breaks. That's the course!" He turned to Captain Ivy. "I'm sorry, captain, but there's naught else to do, and you were going to-morrow at noon, anyhow, so it won't make much difference to you." "No difference whatever," replied the sailorman. "I have to go to Dublin, too, and from there to Queenstown to join my ship, and from Queenstown to the coast of France to do some fighting." "Please God!" remarked Miles Calhoun. "So be it!" declared Mallow. "Amen!" said Dyck. Once again Dyck looked the visitor straight in the eyes, and back in the horizon of Mallow's life-sky there shone the light of an evil star. "There's the call to dinner," remarked Miles Calhoun, as a bell began ringing in the tower outside. "Come with me, Mr. Mallow, and I'll show you your room. You've had your horse put up, I hope?" "Yes, and my bag brought in." "Well, come along, then. There's no time to lose. I can smell the porker crawling from the oven." "You're a master of tempting thoughts," remarked Mallow enthusiastically. "Sheila--Sheila!" said Dyck Calhoun to himself where he stood. CHAPTER III THE QUARREL The journey to Dublin was made by the Calhouns, their two guests, and Michael Clones, without incident of note. Arrived there, Miles Calhoun gave himself to examination by Government officials and to assisting the designs of the Peep-o'-Day Boys; and indeed he was present at the formation of the first Orange Lodge. His narrow nature, his petty craft and malevolence, were useful in a time of anxiety for the State. Yet he had not enough ability to develop his position by the chances offered him. He had not a touch of genius; he had only bursts of Celtic passion, which he had not mind enough to control. Indeed, as days, weeks and months went on, his position became less valuable to himself, and his financial affairs suffered from his own and his agent's bad management. In his particular district he was a power; in Dublin he soon showed the weaker side of his nature. He had a bad habit of making foes where he could easily have made friends. In his personal habits he was sober, but erratic. Dyck had not his father's abstention from the luxuries of life. He drank, he gamed, he went where temptation was, and fell into it. He steadily diminished his powers of resistance to self-indulgence until one day, at a tavern, he met a man who made a great impression upon him. This man was brilliant, ebullient, full of humour, character and life, knowing apparently all the lower world of Dublin, and moving with an assured step. It was Erris Boyne, the divorced husband of Mrs. Llyn and the father of Sheila Llyn; but this fact was not known to Dyck. There was also a chance of its not becoming known, because so many years had passed since Erris Boyne was divorced. One day Erris Boyne said to Dyck: "There's a supper to-night at the Breakneck Club. Come along and have a skinful. You'll meet people worth knowing. They're a damned fine lot of fellows for you to meet, Calhoun !" "The Breakneck Club isn't a good name for a first-class institution," remarked Dyck, with a pause and a laugh; "but I'll come, if you'll fetch me." Erris Boyne, who was eighteen years older than Dyck, laughed, flicked a little pinch of snuff at his nose with his finger. "Dear lad, of course I'll come and fetch you," he said. "There's many a man has done worse than lead a gay stripling like you into pleasant ways. Bring along any loose change you have, for it may be a night of nights." "Oh, they play cards, do they, at the Breakneck Club?" said Dyck, alive with interest. "Well, call it what you like, but men must do something when they get together, and we can't be talking all the time. So pocket your shillings." "Are they all the right sort?" asked Dyck, with a little touch of malice. "I mean, are they loyal and true?" Erris Boyne laid a hand on Dyck's arm. "Come and find out. Do you think I'd lead you into bad company? Of course Emmet and Wolfe Tone won't be there, nor any of that lot; but there'll be some men of the right stamp." He watched Dyck carefully out of the corner of his eye. "It's funny," he added, "that in Ireland the word loyal always means being true to the Union Jack, standing by King George and his crowd." "Well, what would you have?" said Dyck. "For this is a day and age when being loyal to the King is more than aught else in all the Irish world. We're never two days alike, we Irish. There are the United Irishmen and the Defenders on one side, and the Peepo'-Day Boys, or Orangemen, on the other--Catholic and Protestant, at each other's throats. Then there's a hand thrust in, and up goes the sword, and the rifles, pikes, and bayonets; and those that were ready to mutilate or kill each other fall into each other's arms." Erris Boyne laughed. "Well, there'll soon be an end to that. The Irish Parliament is slipping into disrepute. It wouldn't surprise me if the astute English bribe them into a union, to the ruin of Irish Independence. Yet maybe, before that comes, the French will have a try for power here. And upon my word, if I have to live under foreign rule, I'd as leave have a French whip over me as an English!" He came a step nearer, his voice lowered a little. "Have you heard the latest news from France? They're coming with a good-sized fleet down to the south coast. Have you heard it?" "Oh, there's plenty one hears one doesn't believe is gospel," answered Dyck, his eyes half closing. "I'm not believing all I hear, as if it was a prayer-meeting. Anything may happen here; Ireland's a woman--very uncertain." Dyck flicked some dust from his waistcoat, and dropped his eyes, because he was thinking of two women he had known; one of them an angel now in company of her sister angels--his mother; the other a girl he had met on the hills of Connemara, a wonderfully pretty girl of seventeen. How should he know that the girl was Erris Boyne's daughter?--although there were times when some gesture of Boyne, some quick look, some lifting of the eyebrows, brought back the memory of Sheila Llyn, as it did now. Since Dyck left his old home he had seen her twice; once at Loyland Towers, and once at her home in Limerick. The time he had spent with her had been very brief, but full of life, interest, and character. She was like some piquant child, bold, beautiful, uncertain, caressing in her manner one instant, and distant at another. She had said radiant things, had rallied him, had shown him where a twenty-nine-pound salmon had been caught in a stream, and had fired at and brought down a pheasant outside the covert at Loyland Towers. Whether at Loyland Towers, or at her mother's house in Limerick, there was no touch of forwardness in her, or in anything she said or did. She was the most natural being, the freest from affectation, he had ever known. As Erris Boyne talked to him, the memory of Sheila flooded his mind, and on the flood his senses swam like swans. He had not her careful composure. He was just as real, but he had the wilfulness of man. She influenced him as no woman had ever yet done; but he saw no happy ending to the dream. He was too poor to marry; he had no trade or profession; his father's affairs were in a bad way. He could not bring himself to join the army or the navy; and yet, as an Irishman moved by political ideals, with views at once critical and yet devoted to the crown, he was not in a state to settle down. He did not know that Erris Boyne was set to capture him for the rebel cause. How could he know that Boyne was an agent of the most evil forces in Ireland--an agent of skill and address, prepossessing, with the face of a Celtic poet and the eye of an assassin? Boyne's object was to bring about the downfall of Dyck Calhoun--that is, his downfall as a patriot. At the Breakneck Club this bad business began. Dyck had seen many people, representing the gaiety and deviltry of life; but it was as though many doubtful people, many reckless ones, all those with purposes, fads, and fancies, were there. Here was an irresponsible member of a Government department; there an officer of His Majesty's troops; beyond, a profligate bachelor whose reputation for traitorous diplomacy was known and feared. Yet everywhere were men known in the sporting, gaming, or political world, in sea life or land life, most of whom had a character untouched by criticism. It was at this club that Dyck again met that tall, ascetic messenger from the Attorney-General, who had brought the message to Miles Calhoun. It was with this man--Leonard Mallow, eldest son of Lord Mallow--that Dyck, with three others, played cards one afternoon. The instinctive antipathy which had marked their first introduction was carried on to this later meeting. Dyck distrusted Mallow, and allowed his distrust exercise. It was unfortunate that Mallow won from him three-fourths of the money he had brought to the club, and won it with a smile not easy to forgive. Dyck had at last secured sudden success in a scheme of his cards when Mallow asked with a sneer: "Did you learn that at your home in heaven?" "Don't they teach it where you live in hell?" was Dyck's reply. At this Mallow flicked Dyck across the face with his handkerchief. "That's what they teach where I belong." "Well, it's easy to learn, and we'll do the sum at any time or place you please." After a moment Dyck continued: "I wouldn't make a fuss over it. Let's finish the game. There's no good prancing till the sport's ready; so I'll sit and learn more of what they teach in hell!" Dyck had been drinking, or he would not have spoken so; and when he was drunk daring was strong in him. He hated profoundly this man-so self- satisfied and satanic. He kept a perfect coolness, however. Leonard Mallow should not see that he was upset. His wanton wordiness came to his rescue, and until the end of the game he played with sang-froid, daring, and skill. He loved cards; he loved the strife of skill against skill, of trick against trick, of hand against hand. He had never fought a duel in his life, but he had no fear of doing so. At length, having won back nearly all he had lost, he rose to his feet and looked round. "Is there any one here from whom I can ask a favour?" Several stepped forward. Dyck nodded. One of them he knew. It was Sir Almeric Foyle. "Thank you, Sir Almeric," he said; "thank you. Shall it be swords or pistols?" he asked his enemy, coolly. "Swords, if you please," remarked Mallow grimly, for he had a gift with the sword. Dyck nodded again. "As you will. As you will!" CHAPTER IV THE DUEL It was a morning such as could only be brought into existence by the Maker of mornings in Ireland. It was a day such as Dublin placed away carefully into the pantechnicon of famous archives. The city of Dublin was not always clean, but in the bright, gorgeous sun her natural filth was no menace to the eye, no repulse to the senses. Above the Liffey, even at so early an hour, the heat shimmers like a silver mist. The bells of churches were ringing, and the great cathedral bells boomed in thrilling monotony over the peaceful city. Here and there in the shabby yet renowned streets, horsemen moved along; now and then the costermonger raised his cry of fresh fruit, flowers, and "distinguished vegetables." People moved into church doorways on their way to mass or confession-- some bright and rather gorgeous beings, some in deep mourning, shy, reserved, and obscure. Here and there, also, in certain streets--where officials lived or worked--were soldiers afoot; soldiers with carbines and long bayonets, with tall, slightly peaked hats, smart red coats, belts crossing their breasts, knee-breeches and leggings, and all with epaulets shining. They were in marked contrast to the peasant folk with the high-peaked soft hat, knee-breeches, rough tail-coat, and stockings, some with rifles, some with pikes, some with powder-horns slung under their arms or in the small of the back. Besides this show of foot-soldiers--that is, regulars and irregulars of the Cornwallis Regiment, and men of the Defenders and the Peep-o'-Day Boys--there were little groups of cavalry making their way to the parade- ground, the castle, the barracks, or the courts. Beyond these there was the jaunting-car trundling over the rough cobblestone street, or bumping in and out of dangerous holes. Whips cracked, and the loud voices of jarveys shouted blatant humour and Irish fun at horse and passenger. Here and there, also, some stately coach, bedizened with arms of the quality, made its way through the chief streets, or across the bridges of the Liffey. Then came the general population, moving cheerfully in the inspiriting sun; for Irishmen move so much in a moist atmosphere that on a sunshiny day all tristesse of life seems changed, as in a flash, into high spirits and much activity. Not that the country, at its worst, is slow-footed or depressed; for wit is always at the elbow of want. Never in all Ireland's years had she a more beautiful day than that in which Dyck Calhoun and the Hon. Leonard Mallow met to settle their account in a secluded corner of Phoenix Park. It was not the usual place for duels. The seconds had taken care to keep the locale from the knowledge of the public; especially as many who had come to know of the event at the Breakneck Club were eager to be present. The affair began an hour after sunrise. Neither Dyck nor Leonard Mallow slept at home the night before, but in separate taverns near Phoenix Park. Mallow came almost jauntily to the obscure spot. Both men had sensitiveness, and both entered the grounds with a certain sense of pleasure. Dyck moved and spoke like a man charged with some fluid which had abstracted him from life's monotonous routine. He had to consider the chance of never leaving the grounds alive; yet as he entered the place, where smooth grass between the trees made good footing for the work to be done, the thrill of the greenery, the sound of the birds, the flick of a lizard across the path, and the distant gay leap of a young deer, brought to his senses a gust of joyous feeling. "I never smelled such air!" he said to one of the seconds. "I never saw the sun so beautiful!" He sniffed the air and turned his face towards the sun. "Well, it's a day for Ireland," he added, in response to a gravely playful remark of Sir Almeric Foyle. "Ireland never was so sweet. Nature's provoking us!" "Yes, it's a pity," said Sir Almeric. "But I'm not thinking of bad luck for you, Calhoun." Dyck's smile seemed to come from infinite distance. He was not normal; he was submerged. He was in the great, consuming atmosphere of the bigger world, and the greater life. He even did not hate Mallow at the moment. The thing about to be done was to him a test of manhood. It was a call upon the courage of the soul, a challenge of life, strength, and will. As Mallow entered the grounds, the thought of Sheila Llyn crossed Dyck's mind, and the mental sight of her gladdened the eyes of his soul. For one brief instant he stood lost in the mind's look; then he stepped forward, saluted, shook hands with Mallow, and doffed his coat and waistcoat. As he did so, he was conscious of a curious coldness, even of dampness, in the hand which had shaken that of Mallow. Mallow's hand had a clammy touch--clammy, but firm and sure. There was no tremor in the long, thin fingers nor at the lips--the thin, ascetic lips, as of a secret-service man--but in his eyes was a dark fire of purpose. The morning had touched him, but not as it had thrown over Dyck its mantle of peace. Mallow also had enjoyed the smell and feeling of it all, but with this difference--it had filled him with such material joy that he could not bear the thought of leaving it. It gave him strength of will, which would add security to his arm and wrist. Yet, as he looked at Dyck, he saw that his work was cut out for him; for in all his days he had never seen a man so well- possessed, so surely in hand. Dyck had learned swordsmanship with as skilled a master as Ireland had known, and he had shown, in getting knowledge of the weapon, a natural instinct and a capacity worthy of the highest purpose. He had handled the sword since he was six, and his play was better than that of most men; but this was, in fact, his first real duel. In the troubled state of Ireland, with internal discord, challenge, and attack, he had more than once fought, and with success; but that was in the rough-and-tumble of life's chances, as it were, with no deliberate plan to fight according to the rules. Many times, of course, in the process of his training, he had fought as men fight in duels, but with this difference--that now he was permitted to disable or kill his foe. It was clear that one or the other would not leave this ground--this verdant, beautiful piece of mother earth--exactly as he entered it. He would leave it wounded, incapable, or dead. Indeed, both might leave it wounded, and the chances of success were with the older man, Mallow, whose experience would give him an advantage. Physically, there was not a vast deal to choose between the two men. Mallow was lank and tall, nervously self-contained, finely concentrated, and vigorous. Dyck was broad of shoulder, well set up, muscular, and with a steadier eye than that of his foe. Also, as the combat developed, it was clear that he had a hand as steady as his eye. What was more, his wrist had superb strength and flexibility; it was as enduring and vital as the forefoot and ankle of a tiger. As a pair they were certainly notable, and would give a good account of themselves. No one of temperament who observed the scene could ever forget it. The light was perfect--evenly distributed, clear enough to permit accuracy of distance in a stroke. The air was still, gently bracing, and, like most Irish air, adorably sweet. The spot chosen for the fight was a sort of avenue between great trees, whose broad leaves warded off the direct sun, and whose shade had as yet no black shadows. The turf was as elastic to the foot as a firm mattress. In the trees, birds were singing with liveliness; in the distance, horned cattle browsed, and a pair of horses stood gazing at the combatants, startled, no doubt, by this invasion of their pasturage. From the distance came the faint, mellow booming of church-bells. The two men fighting had almost the air of gladiators. Their coats were off, and the white linen of their shirts looked gracious; while the upraised left hand of the fighters balancing the sword-thrust and the weight of the body had an almost singular beauty. Of the two, Dyck was the more graceful, the steadier, the quicker in his motions. Vigilant Dyck was, but not reckless. He had made the first attack, on the ground that the aggressor gains by boldness, if that boldness is joined to skill; and Dyck's skill was of the best. His heart was warm. His momentary vision of Sheila Llyn remained with him--not as a vision, rather as a warmth in his inmost being, something which made him intensely alert, cheerful, defiant, exactly skilful. He had need of all his skill, for Mallow was set to win the fight. He felt instinctively what was working in Dyck's mind. He had fought a number of duels, and with a certain trick or art he had given the end to the lives of several. He became conscious, however, that Dyck had a particular stroke in mind, which he himself was preventing by masterful methods. It might be one thing or another, but in view of Dyck's training it would perhaps be the Enniscorthy touch. Again and again Dyck pressed his antagonist backward, seeking to muddle his defence and to clear an opening for his own deadly stroke; but the other man also was a master, and parried successfully. Presently, with a quick move, Mallow took the offensive, and tried to unsettle Dyck's poise and disorganize his battle-plan. For an instant the tempestuous action, the brilliant, swift play of the sword, the quivering flippancy of the steel, gave Dyck that which almost disconcerted him. Yet he had a grip of himself, and preserved his defence intact; though once his enemy's steel caught his left shoulder, making it bleed. The seconds, however, decided that the thrust was not serious, and made no attempt to interrupt the combat. Dyck kept singularly cool. As Mallow's face grew flushed, his own grew paler, but it was the paleness of intensity and not of fear. Each man's remarkable skill in defence was a good guarantee against disaster due to carelessness. Seldom have men fought so long and accomplished so little in the way of blood-letting. At length, however, Dyck's tactics changed. Once again he became aggressive, and he drove his foe to a point where the skill of both men was tried to the uttermost. It was clear the time had come for something definite. Suddenly Dyck threw himself back with an agile step, lunged slightly to one side, and then in a gallant foray got the steel point into the sword-arm of his enemy. That was the Enniscorthy stroke, which had been taught him by William Tandy, the expert swordsman, and had been made famous by Lord Welling, of Enniscorthy. It succeeded, and it gave Dyck the victory, for Mallow's sword dropped from his hand. A fatigued smile came to Mallow's lips. He clasped the wounded arm with his left hand as the surgeon came forward. "Well, you got it home," he said to Dyck; "and it's deftly done." "I did my best," answered Dyck. "Give me your hand, if you will." With a wry look Mallow, now seated on the old stump of a tree, held out his left hand. It was covered with blood. "I think we'll have to forego that courtesy, Calhoun," he said. "Look at the state of my hand! It's good blood," he added grimly. "It's damned good blood, but--but it won't do, you see." "I'm glad it was no worse," said Dyck, not touching the bloody hand. "It's a clean thrust, and you'll be better from it soon. These great men"--he smiled towards the surgeons--"will soon put you right. I got my chance with the stroke, and took it, because I knew if I didn't you'd have me presently." "You'll have a great reputation in Dublin town now, and you'll deserve it," Mallow added adroitly, the great paleness of his features, however, made ghastly by the hatred in his eyes. Dyck did not see this look, but he felt a note of malice--a distant note --in Mallow's voice. He saw that what Mallow had said was fresh evidence of the man's arrogant character. It did not offend him, however, for he was victor, and could enter the Breakneck Club or Dublin society with a tranquil eye. Again Mallow's voice was heard. "I'd have seen you damned to hell, Calhoun, before I'd have apologized at the Breakneck Club; but after a fight with one of the best swordsmen in Ireland I've learned a lot, and I'll apologize now--completely." The surgeon had bound up the slight wound in Dyck's shoulder, had stopped the bleeding, and was now helping him on with his coat. The operation had not been without pain, but this demonstration from his foe was too much for him. It drove the look of pain from his face; it brought a smile to his lips. He came a step nearer. "I'm as obliged to you as if you'd paid for my board and lodging, Mallow," he said; "and that's saying a good deal in these days. I'll never have a bigger fight. You're a greater swordsman than your reputation. I must have provoked you beyond reason," he went on gallantly. "I think we'd better forget the whole thing." "I'm a Loyalist," Mallow replied. "I'm a Loyalist, and if you're one, too, what reason should there be for our not being friends?" A black cloud flooded Calhoun's face. "If--if I'm a Loyalist, you say! Have you any doubt of it? If you have--" "You wish your sword had gone into my heart instead of my arm, eh?" interrupted Mallow. "How easily I am misunderstood! I meant nothing by that 'if.'" He smiled, and the smile had a touch of wickedness. "I meant nothing by it-nothing at all. As we are both Loyalists, we must be friends. Good-bye, Calhoun!" Dyck's face cleared very slowly. Mallow was maddening, but the look of the face was not that of a foe. "Well, let us be friends," Dyck answered with a cordial smile. "Good-bye," he added. "I'm damned sorry we had to fight at all. Good-bye!" CHAPTER V THE KILLING OF ERRIS BOYNE "There's many a government has made a mess of things in Ireland," said Erris Boyne; "but since the day of Cromwell the Accursed this is the worst. Is there a man in Ireland that believes in it, or trusts it? There are men that support it, that are served by it, that fill their pockets out of it; but by Joseph and by Mary, there's none thinks there couldn't be a better! Have a little more marsala, Calhoun?" With these words, Boyne filled up the long glass out of which Dyck Calhoun had been drinking--drinking too much. Shortly before Dyck had lost all his cash at the card-table. He had turned from it penniless and discomfited to see Boyne, smiling, and gay with wine, in front of him. Boyne took him by the arm. "Come with me," said he. "There's no luck for you at the tables to-day. Let's go where we can forget the world, where we can lift the banner of freedom and beat the drums of purpose. Come along, lad!" Boyne had ceased to have his earlier allurement for Dyck Calhoun, but his smile was friendly, his manner was hospitable, and he was on the spot. The time was critical for Dyck--critical and dangerous. He had lost money heavily; he had even exhausted his mother's legacy. Of late he had seen little of his father, and the little he had seen was not fortunate. They had quarrelled over Dyck's wayward doings. Miles Calhoun had said some hard things to him, and Dyck had replied that he would cut out his own course, trim his own path, walk his own way. He had angered his father terribly, and Miles, in a burst of temper, had disclosed the fact that his own property was in peril. They had been, estranged ever since; but the time had come when Dyck must at least secure the credit of his father's name at his bank to find the means of living. It was with this staring him in the face that Erris Boyne's company seemed to offer at least a recovery of his good spirits. Dissipated as Boyne's look was, he had a natural handsomeness which, with good care of himself personally, well-appointed clothes, a cheerful manner, and witty talk, made him palatable to careless-living Dublin. This Dublin knew little of Boyne's present domestic life. It did not know that he had injured his second wife as badly as he had wronged his first--with this difference, however, that his first wife was a lady, while his second wife, Noreen, was a beautiful, quick-tempered, lovable eighteen-year-old girl, a graduate of the kitchen and dairy, when he took her to himself. He had married her in a mad moment after his first wife --Mrs. Llyn, as she was now called--had divorced him; and after the first thrill of married life was over, nothing remained with Boyne except regret that he had sold his freedom for what he might, perhaps, have had without marriage. Then began a process of domestic torture which alienated Noreen from him, and roused in her the worst passions of human nature. She came to know of his infidelities, and they maddened her. They had no children, and in the end he had threatened her with desertion. When she had retorted in strong words, he slapped her face, and left her with an ugly smile. The house where they lived was outside Dublin, in a secluded spot, yet not far from stores and shops. There was this to be said for Noreen-- that she kept her home spotlessly clean, even with two indifferent servants. She had a gift for housewifery, which, at its best, was as good as anything in the world, and far better than could be found in most parts of Ireland. Of visitors they had few, if any, and the young wife was left alone to brood upon her wrongs. Erris Boyne had slapped her face on the morning of the day when he met Dyck Calhoun in the hour of his bad luck. He did not see the look in her face as he left the house. Ruthless as he was, he realized the time had come when by bold effort he might get young Calhoun wholly into his power. He began by getting Dyck into the street. Then he took him by an indirect route to what was, reputedly, a tavern of consequence. There choice spirits met on occasion, and dark souls, like Boyne, planned adventures. Outwardly it was a tavern of the old class, superficially sedate, and called the Harp and Crown. None save a very few conspirators knew how great a part it played in the plan to break the government of Ireland and to ruin England's position in the land. The entrance was by two doors--one the ordinary public entrance, the other at the side of the house, which was on a corner. This could be opened by a skeleton key owned by Erris Boyne. He and Dyck entered, however, by the general entrance, because Boyne had forgotten his key. They passed through the bar-parlour, nodding to one or two habitues, and presently were bestowed in a room, not large, but well furnished. It was quiet and alluring on this day when the world seemed disconcerting. So pleasantly did the place affect Dyck's spirits that, as he sat down in the room which had often housed worse men than himself, he gave a sigh of relief. They played cards, and Dyck won. He won five times what he had lost at the club. This made him companionable. "It's a poor business-cards," he said at last. "It puts one up in the clouds and down in the ditch all at the same time. I tell you this, Boyne--I'm going to stop. No man ought to play cards who hasn't a fortune; and my fortune, I'm sorry to say, is only my face!" He laughed bitterly. "And your sword--you've forgotten that, Calhoun. You've a lot of luck in your sword." "Well, I've made no money out of it so far," Dyck retorted cynically. "Yet you've put men with reputations out of the running, men like Mallow." "Oh, that was a bit of luck and a few tricks I've learned. I can't start a banking-account on that." "But you can put yourself in the way of winning what can't be bought." "No--no English army for me, thank you--if that's what you mean." "It isn't what I mean. In the English army a man's a slave. He can neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep without being under command. He has to do a lot of dirty work without having voice in the policy. He's a child of discipline and order." "And a damned good thing that would be for most of us!" retorted Dyck. "But I'm not one of the most." "I know that. Try a little more of this marsala, Calhoun. It's the best in the place, and it's got a lot of good stuff. I've been coming to the Harp and Crown for many years, and I've never had a bad drink all that time. The old landlord is a genius. He doesn't put on airs. He's a good man, is old Swinton, and there's nothing good in the drink of France that you can't get here." "Well, if that's true, how does it happen?" asked Dyck, with a little flash of interest. "Why should this little twopenny, one-horse place-- I mean in size and furnishments--have such luck as to get the best there is in France? It means a lot of trouble, eh?" "It means some trouble. But let me tell you"--he leaned over the table and laid a hand on Dyck's, which was a little nervous--"let me speak as an old friend to you, if I may. Here are the facts. For many a year, you know as well as I do, ships have been coming from France to Ireland with the very best wines and liquors, and taking back the very best wool- -smuggled, of course. Well, our little landlord here is the damnedest rogue of all. The customs never touch him. From the coast the stuff comes up to Dublin without a check, and, as he's a special favourite, he gets the best to be had in la belle France." "Why is he such a favourite?" asked Dyck. Erris Boyne laughed, not loudly, but suggestively. "When a lady kisses a man on the lips, of her own free will, and puts her arm around his neck, is it done, do you think, because it's her duty to do it or die? No, it's because she likes the man; because the man is a good friend to her; because it's money in her pocket. That's the case with old Swinton. France kisses him, as it were, because"--he paused, as though debating what to say--"because France knows he'd rather be under her own revolutionary government than under the monarchy of England." His voice had resonance, and, as he said these words, it had insistence. "Do you know, Calhoun, I think old Swinton is right. We suffer here because monarchy, with its cruel hand of iron, mistrusts us, brutalizes us." He did not see enlightenment come into the half-drunken eyes of Dyck. He only realized that Dyck was very still, and strangely, deeply interested. "I tell you, Calhoun, we need in Ireland something of the spirit that's alive in France to-day. They've cleaned out the kings--Louis's and Marie's heads have dropped into the basket. They're sweeping the dirt out of France; they're cleaning the dark places; they're whitewashing Versailles and sawdusting the Tuileries; they're purging the aristocratic guts of France; they're starting for the world a reformation which will make it clean. Not America alone, but England, and all Europe, will become republics." "England?" asked Dyck in a low, penetrating voice. "Aye, England, through Ireland. Ireland will come first, then Wales, Scotland, and England. Dear lad, the great day is come--the greatest the world has ever known. France, the spirit of it, is alive. It will purge and cleanse the universe!" The suspicious, alert look passed from Dyck's eyes, but his face had become flushed. He reached out and poured himself another glass of wine. "What you say may be true, Boyne. It may be true, but I wouldn't put faith in it--not for one icy minute. I don't want to see here in Ireland the horrors and savagery of France. I don't want to see the guillotine up on St. Stephen's Green." Boyne felt that he must march carefully. He was sure of his game; but there were difficulties, and he must not throw his chances away. Dyck was in a position where, with his inflammable nature, he could be captured. "Well, I'll tell you, Calhoun. I don't know which is worse--Ireland bloody with shootings and hangings, Ulster up in the north and Cork in the south, from the Giant's Causeway to Tralee; no two sets of feet dancing alike, with the bloody hand of England stretching out over the Irish Parliament like death itself; or France ruling us. How does the English government live here? Only by bribery and purchases. It buys its way. Isn't that true?" Dyck nodded. "Yes, it's true in a way," he replied. "It's so, because we're what we are. We've never been properly put in our places. The heel on our necks--that's the way to do it." Boyne looked at the flushed, angry face. In spite of Dyck's words, he felt that his medicine was working well. "Listen to me, Calhoun," he said softly. "You've got to do something. You're living an idle life. You're in debt. You've ruined your independent fortune at the tables. There are but two courses open to you. One is to join the British forces--to be a lieutenant, a captain, a major, a colonel, or a general, in time; to shoot and cut and hang and quarter, and rule with a heavy rod. That's one way." "So you think I'm fit for nothing but the sword, eh?" asked Dyck with irony. "You think I've got no brains for anything except the army." Boyne laughed. "Have another drink, Calhoun." He poured out more wine. "Oh, no, not the army alone; there's the navy--and there's the French navy! It's the best navy in the world, the freest and the greatest, and with Bonaparte going at us, England will have enough to do--too much, I'm thinking. So there's a career in the French navy open. And listen-- before you and I are two months older, the French navy will be in the harbours of Ireland, and the French army will land here." He reached out and grasped Dyck's arm. "There's no liberty of freedom under the Union Jack. What do you think of the tricolour? It's a great flag, and under it the world is going to be ruled--England, Spain, Italy, Holland, Prussia, Austria, and Russia--all of them. The time is ripe. You've got your chance. Take it on, dear lad, take it on." Dyck did not raise his head. He was leaning forward with both arms on the table, supporting himself firmly; his head was bowed as though with deep interest in what Boyne said. And, indeed, his interest was great-- so great that all his manhood, vigour, all his citizenship, were vitally alive. Yet he did not lift his head. "What's that you say about French ships in the harbours of Ireland?" he said in a tone that showed interest. "Of course, I know there's been a lot of talk of a French raid on Ireland, but I didn't know it was to be so soon." "Oh, it's near enough! It's all been arranged," replied Boyne. "There'll be ships-war-ships, commanded by Hoche. They'll have orders to land on the coast, to join the Irish patriots, to take control of the operations, and then to march on--" He was going to say "march on Dublin," but he stopped. He was playing a daring game. If he had not been sure of his man, he would not have been so frank and fearless. He did not, however, mislead Dyck greatly. Dyck had been drinking a good deal, but this knowledge of a French invasion, and a sense of what Boyne was trying to do, steadied his shaken emotions; held him firmly in the grip of practical common sense. He laughed, hiccuped a little, as though he was very drunk, and said: "Of course the French would like to come to Ireland; they'd like to seize it and hold it. Why, of course they would! Don't we know all that's been and gone? Aren't Irishmen in France grown rich in industry there after having lost every penny of their property here? Aren't there Irishmen there, always conniving to put England at defiance here by breaking her laws, cheating her officers, seducing her patriots? Of course; but what astounds me is that a man of your standing should believe the French are coming here now to Ireland. No, no, Boyne; I'm not taking your word for any of these things. You're a gossip; you're a damned, pertinacious, preposterous gossip, and I'll say it as often as you like." "So it's proof you want, is it? Well, then, here it is." Boyne drew from his pocket a small leather-bound case and took from it a letter, which he laid on the table in front of Dyck. Dyck looked at the document, then said: "Ah, that's what you are, eh?--a captain in the French artillery! Well, that'd be a surprise in Ireland if it were told." "It isn't going to be told unless you tell it, Calhoun, and you're too much of a sportsman for that. Besides: "Why shouldn't you have one of these if you want it--if you want it!" "What'd be the good of my wanting it? I could get a commission here in the army of George III, if I wanted it, but I don't want it; and any man that offers it to me, I'll hand it back with thanks and be damned to you!" "Listen to me, then, Calhoun," remarked Boyne, reaching out a hand to lay it on Dyck's arm. Dyck saw the motion, however, and carefully drew back in his chair. "I'm not an adventurer," he said; "but if I were, what would there be in it for me?" Boyne misunderstood the look on Dyck's face. He did not grasp the meaning behind the words, and he said to him: "Oh, a good salary--as good as that of a general, with a commission and the spoils of war! That's the thing in the French army that counts for so much--spoils of war. When they're out on a country like this, they let their officers loose--their officers and men. Did you ever hear tell of a French army being pinched for fodder, or going thirsty for drink, or losing its head for poverty or indigence?" "No, I never did." "Well, then, take the advice of an officer of the French army resident now in Dublin," continued Boyne, laughing, "who has the honour of being received as the friend of Mr. Dyck Calhoun of Playmore! Take your hand in the game that's going on! For a man as young as you, with brains and ambition, there's no height he mightn't reach in this country. Think of it--Ireland free from English control; Ireland, with all her dreams, living her own life, fearless, independent, as it was in days of yore. Why, what's to prevent you, Dyck Calhoun, from being president of the Irish Republic? You have brains, looks, skill, and a wonderful tongue. None but a young man could take on the job, for it will require boldness, skill, and the recklessness of perfect courage. Isn't it good enough for you?" "What's the way to do it?" asked Dyck, still holding on to his old self grimly. "How is it to be done?" He spoke a little thickly, for, in spite of himself, the wine was clogging his senses. It had been artistically drugged by Boyne. "Listen to me, Calhoun," continued Boyne. "I've known you now some time. We've come in and gone out together. This day was inevitable. You were bound to come to it one way or another. Man, you have a heart of iron; you have the courage of Caesar or Alexander; you have the chance of doing what no Englishman could ever do--Cromwell, or any other. Well, then, don't you see the fateful moment has come in Irish life and history? Strife everywhere! Alone, what can we do? Alone, if we try to shake off the yoke that binds us we shall be shattered, and our last end be worse than our first. But with French ships, French officers and soldiers, French guns and ammunition, with the trained men of the French army to take control here, what amelioration of our weakness, what confidence and skill on our side! Can you doubt what the end will be? Answer me, man, don't you see it all? Isn't it clear to you? Doesn't such a cause enlist you?" With a sudden burst of primitive anger, Dyck got to his feet, staggering a little, but grasping the fatal meaning of the whole thing. He looked Erris Boyne in the eyes. His own were bloodshot and dissipated, but there was a look in them of which Boyne might well take heed. Boyne had not counted on Dyck's refusal; or, if it had occurred to him, the remedy, an ancient one, was ready to his fingers. The wine was drugged. He had watched the decline of Dyck's fortunes with an eye of appreciation; he had seen the clouds of poverty and anxiety closing in. He had known of old Miles Calhoun's financial difficulties. He had observed Dyck's wayside loitering with revolutionists, and he had taken it with too much seriousness. He knew the condition of Dyck's purse. He was not prepared for Dyck's indignant outburst. "I tell you this, Erris Boyne, there's none has ever tried me as you have done! What do you think I am--a thing of the dirty street-corner, something to be swept up and cast into the furnace of treason? Look you, after to-day you and I will never break bread or drink wine together. No--by Heaven, no! I don't know whether you've told me the truth or not, but I think you have. There's this to say--I shall go from this place to Dublin Castle, and shall tell them there--without mentioning your name-- what you've told about the French raid. Now, by God, you're a traitor! You oughtn't to live, and if you'll send your seconds to me I'll try and do with you as I did with Leonard Mallow. Only mark me, Erris Boyne, I'll put my sword into your heart. You understand--into your filthy heart!" At that moment the door of the room opened, and a face looked in for an instant-the face of old Swinton, the landlord of the Harp and Crown. Suddenly Boyne's look changed. He burst into a laugh, and brought his fists down on the table between them with a bang. "By Joseph and by Mary, but you're a patriot, Calhoun! I was trying to test you. I was searching to find the innermost soul of you. The French fleet, my commission in the French army, and my story about the landlord are all bosh. If I meant what I told you, do you think I'd have been so mad as to tell you so much, damn it? Have you no sense, man? I wanted to find out exactly how you stood-faithful or unfaithful to the crown-- and I've found out. Sit down, sit down, Calhoun, dear lad. Take your hand off your sword. Remember, these are terrible days. Everything I said about Ireland is true. What I said about France is false. Sit down, man, and if you're going to join the king's army--as I hope and trust you will--then here's something to help you face the time between." He threw on the table a packet of notes. "They're good and healthy, and will buy you what you need. There's not much. There's only a hundred pounds, but I give it to you with all my heart, and you can pay it back when the king's money comes to you, or when you marry a rich woman." He said it all with a smile on his face. It was done so cleverly, with so much simulated sincerity, that Dyck, in his state of semi-drunkenness, could not, at the instant, place him in his true light. Besides, there was something handsome and virile in Boyne's face--and untrue; but the untruth Dyck did not at the moment see. Never in his life had Boyne performed such prodigies of dissimulation. He was suddenly like a schoolboy disclosing the deeds of some adventurous knight. He realized to the full the dangers he had run in disclosing the truth; for it was the truth that he had told. So serious was the situation, to his mind, that one thing seemed inevitable. Dyck must be kidnapped at once and carried out of Ireland. It would be simple. A little more drugged wine, and he would be asleep and powerless--it had already tugged at him. With the help of his confreres in the tavern, Dyck could be carried out, put on a lugger, and sent away to France. There was nothing else to do. Boyne had said truly that the French fleet meant to come soon. Dyck must not be able to give the thing away before it happened. The chief thing now was to prime him with the drugged wine till he lost consciousness, and then carry him away to the land of the guillotine. Dyck's tempestuous nature, the poetry and imagination of him, would quickly respond to French culture, to the new orders of the new day in France. Meanwhile, he must be soaked in drugged drink. Already the wine had played havoc with him; already stupefaction was coming over his senses. With a good-natured, ribald laugh, Boyne poured out another glass of marsala and pushed it gently over to Dyck's fingers. "My gin to your marsala," he said, and he raised his own glass of gin, looking playfully over the top to Dyck. With a sudden loosening of all the fibres of his nature, Dyck raised the glass of marsala to his lips and drained it off almost at a gulp. "You're a prodigious liar, Boyne," he said. "I didn't think any one could lie so completely." "I'll teach you how, Calhoun. It's not hard. I'll teach you how." He passed a long cigar over the table to Dyck, who, however, did not light it, but held it in his fingers. Boyne struck a light and held it out across the small table. Dyck leaned forward, but, as he did so, the wine took possession of his senses. His head fell forward in sleep, and the cigar dropped from his fingers. "Ah, well--ah, well, we must do some business now!" remarked Boyne. He leaned over Dyck for a moment. "Yes, sound asleep," he said, and laughed scornfully to himself. "Well, when it's dark we must get him away. He'll sleep for four or five hours, and by that time he'll be out on the way to France, and the rest is easy." He was about to go to the door that led into the business part of the house, when the door leading into the street opened softly, and a woman stepped inside. She had used the key which Boyne had forgotten at his house. At first he did not hear her. Then, when he did turn round, it was too late. The knife she carried under her skirt flashed out and into Boyne's heart. He collapsed on the floor without a sound, save only a deep sigh. Stooping over, Noreen drew the knife out with a little gurgling cry--a smothered exclamation. Then she opened the door again--the side-door leading into the street-closed it softly, and was gone. Two hours afterwards the landlord opened the door. Erris Boyne lay in his silence, stark and still. At the table, with his head sunk in his arms, sat Dyck Calhoun, snoring stertorously, his drawn sword by his side. With a cry the old man knelt on the floor beside the body of Erris Boyne. CHAPTER VI DYCK IN PRISON When Dyck Calhoun waked, he was in the hands of the king's constables, arrested for the murder of Erris Boyne. It was hard to protest his innocence, for the landlord was ready to swear concerning a quarrel he had seen when he opened the door for a moment. Dyck, with sudden caution, only said he would make all clear at the trial. Dublin and Ireland were shocked and thrilled; England imagined she had come upon one of the most violent episodes of Irish history. One journal protested that it was not possible to believe in Dyck Calhoun's guilt; that his outward habits were known to all, and were above suspicion, although he had collogued--though never secretly, so far as the world knew--with some of the advanced revolutionary spirits. None of the loyal papers seemed aware of Erris Boyne's treachery; and while none spoke of him with approval, all condemned his ugly death. Driven through the streets of Dublin in a jaunting-car between two of the king's police, Dyck was a mark for abuse by tongue, but was here and there cheered by partizans of the ultra-loyal group to which his father adhered. The effect of his potations was still upon him, and his mind was bemused. He remembered the quarrel, Boyne's explanation, and the subsequent drinking, but he could recall nothing further. He was sure the wine had been drugged, but he realized that Swinton, the landlord, would have made away with any signs of foul play, as he was himself an agent of active disloyalty and a friend of Erris Boyne. Dyck could not believe he had killed Boyne; yet Boyne had been found with a wound in his heart, and his own naked sword lying beside him on the table. The trouble was he could not absolutely swear innocence of the crime. The situation was not eased by his stay in jail. It began with a revelation terribly repugnant to him. He had not long been lodged in the cell when there came a visit from Michael Clones, who stretched out his hands in an agony of humiliation. "Ah, you didn't do it--you didn't do it, sir!" he cried. "I'm sure you never killed him. It wasn't your way. He was for doing you harm if he could. An evil man he was, as all the world knows. But there's one thing that'll be worse than anything else to you. You never knew it, and I never knew it till an hour ago. Did you know who Erris Boyne was? Well, I'll tell you. He was the father of Miss Sheila Llyn. He was divorced by Mrs. Llyn many years ago, for having to do with other women. She took to her maiden name, and he married again. "Good God! Good God!" Dyck Calhoun made a gesture of horror. "He Sheila Llyn's father! Good God!" Suddenly a passion of remorse roused him out of his semi-stupefaction. "Michael, Michael!" he said, his voice hoarse, broken. "Don't say such a thing! Are you sure?" Michael nodded. "I'm sure. I got it from one that's known Erris Boyne and his first wife and girl--one that was a servant to them both in past days. He's been down to Limerick to see Mrs. Llyn and the beautiful daughter. I met him an hour ago, and he told me. He told me more. He told me Mrs. Llyn spoke to him of your friendship with Erris Boyne, and how she meant to tell you who and what he was. She said her daughter didn't even know her father's name. She had been kept in ignorance." Dyck seated himself on the rough bed of the cell, and stared at Michael, his hands between his knees, his eyes perturbed. "Michael," he said at last, "if it's true--what you've told me--I don't see my way. Every step in front of me is black. To tell the whole truth is to bring fresh shame upon Mrs. Llyn and her daughter, and not to tell the whole truth is to take away my one chance of getting out of this trouble. I see that!" "I don't know what you mean, sir, but I'll tell you this--none that knows you would believe you'd murder Erris Boyne or anny other man." Dyck wiped the sweat from his forehead. "I suppose you speak the truth, Michael, but it isn't people who've known me that'll try me; and I can't tell all." "Why not, if it'll help you?" "I can't--of course I can't. It would be disgrace eternal." "Why? Tell me why, sir!" Dyck looked closely, firmly, at the old servant and friend. Should he tell the truth--that Boyne had tried to induce him to sell himself to the French, to invoke his aid against the English government, to share in treason? If he could have told it to anybody, he would have done so to Michael; but if it was true that in his drunken blindness he had killed Boyne, he would not seek to escape by proving Boyne a traitor. He believed Boyne was a servant of the French; but unless the facts came out in the trial, they should not have sure origin in himself. He would not add to his crime in killing the father of the only girl who had ever touched his heart, the shame of proving that father to be one who should have been shot as a traitor. He had courage and daring, but not sufficient to carry him through that dark chapter. He would not try to save himself by turning public opinion against Erris Boyne. The man had been killed by some one, perhaps--and the thing ached in his heart--by himself; but that was no reason why the man's death should not be full punishment for all the wrong he had done. Dyck had a foolish strain in him, after all. Romance was his deadly foe; it made him do a stupid, if chivalrous, thing. Meanwhile he would warn the government at once about the projected French naval raid. "Michael," said Dyck, rising again, "see my father, but you're not to say I didn't kill Boyne, for, to tell the truth, I don't know. My head"-- he put his hand to it with a gesture of despair--"my head's a mass of contradictions. It seems a thousand years since I entered that tavern! I can't get myself level with all that's happened. That Erris Boyne should be the father of the sweet girl at Limerick shakes me. Don't you see what it means? If I killed him, it spoils everything--everything. If I didn't kill him, I can only help myself by blackening still more the life of one who gave being to--" "Aye, to a young queen!" interrupted Michael. "God knows, there's none like her in Ireland, or in any other country at all!" Suddenly Dyck regained his composure; and it was the composure of one who had opened the door of hell and had realized that in time--perhaps not far off--he also would dwell in the infernal place. "Michael, I have no money, but I'm my father's heir. My father will not see me starve in prison, nor want for defence, though my attitude shall be 'no defence.' So bring me decent food and some clothes, and send to me here Will McCormick, the lawyer. He's as able a man as there is in Dublin. Listen, Michael, you're not to speak of Mrs. Llyn and Miss Llyn as related to Erris Boyne. What will come of what you and I know and don't know, Heaven only has knowledge; but I'll see it through. I've spoiled as good chances as ever a young man had that wants to make his way; but drink and cards, Michael, and the flare of this damned life at the centre--it got hold of me. It muddled, drowned the best that was in me. It's the witch's kitchen, is Dublin. Ireland's the only place in the world where they make saints of criminals and pray to them; where they lose track of time and think they're in eternity; where emotion is saturnine logic and death is the touchstone of life. Michael, I don't see any way to safety. Those fellows down at the tavern were friends of Erris Boyne. They're against me. They'll hang me if they can!" "I don't believe they can do it, master. Dublin and Ireland think more of you than they did of Erris Boyne. There's nothing behind you except the wildness of youth--nothing at all. If anny one had said to me at Playmore that you'd do the things you've done with drink and cards since you come to Dublin, "I'd have swore they were liars. Yet when all's said and done, I'd give my last drop of blood as guarantee you didn't kill Erris Boyne!" Dyck smiled. "You've a lot of faith in me, Michael--but I'll tell you this--I never was so thirsty in my life. My mouth's like a red-hot iron. Send me some water. Give the warder sixpence, if you've got it, and send me some water. Then go to Will McCormick, and after that to my father." Michael shook his head dolefully. "Mr. McCormick's aisy--oh, aisy enough," he said. "He'll lep up at the idea of defendin' you, but I'm not takin' pleasure in goin' to Miles Calhoun, for he's a hard man these days. Aw, Mr. Dyck, he's had a lot of trouble. Things has been goin' wrong with Playmore. 'Pon honour, I don't know whether anny of it'll last as long as Miles Calhoun lasts. There'll be little left for you, Mr. Dyck. That's what troubles me. I tell you it'd break my heart if that place should be lost to your father and you. I was born on it. I'd give the best years of the life that's left me to make sure the old house could stay in the hands of the Calhouns. I say to you that while I live all I am is yours, fair and foul, good and bad." He touched his breast with his right hand. "In here is the soul of Ireland that leps up for the things that matter. There's a song--but never mind about a song; this is no place for songs. It's a prison-house, and you're a prisoner charged--" "Not charged yet, not charged," interrupted Dyck; "but suspected of and arrested for a crime. I'll fight--before God, I'll fight to the last! Good-bye, Michael; bring me food and clothes, and send me cold water at once." When the door closed softly behind Michael Clones, Dyck sat down on the bed where many a criminal patriot had lain. He looked round the small room, bare, unfurnished, severe-terribly severe; he looked at the blank walls and the barred window, high up; he looked at the floor--it was discoloured and damp. He reached out and touched it with his hand. He looked at the solitary chair, the basin and pail, and he shuddered. "How awful--how awful!" he murmured. "But if it was her father, and if I killed him"--his head sank low--"if I killed her father!" "Water, sir." He looked up. It was the guard with a tin of water and a dipper. CHAPTER VII MOTHER AND DAUGHTER "I don't believe he's guilty, mother." The girl's fine eyes shone with feeling--with protest, indignation, anguish. As she spoke, she thrust her head forward with the vigour of a passionate counsel. Sheila Llyn was a champion who would fight to the last gasp for any cause she loved. A few moments before, she had found her mother, horror-stricken, gazing at a newspaper paragraph sent from Dublin. Sheila at once thought this to be the cause of her mother's agitation, and she reached out a hand for it. Her mother hesitated, then handed the clipping to her. Fortunately it contained no statement save the bare facts connected with the killing of Erris Boyne, and no reference to the earlier life of the dead man. It said no more than that Dyck Calhoun must take his trial at the sessions. It also stated that Dyck, though he pleaded "not guilty," declared frankly, through Will McCormick, the lawyer, that he had no memory of aught that happened after he had drunk wine given him by Erris Boyne. He said that he and Boyne had quarrelled, but had become reconciled again, and that the drink was a pledge of their understanding. From the time he had taken the drink until he waked in the hands of the king's constables, he had no memory; but he was sure he had not killed Boyne. The fact that there was no blood on his sword was evidence. Nevertheless, he had been committed for trial. Mrs. Llyn was sorely troubled. She knew of her daughter's interest in Dyck Calhoun, and of Dyck's regard for Sheila. She had even looked forward to marriage, and she wished for Sheila no better fate, because nearly all she knew of Dyck was to his credit. She was unaware that his life in Dublin had been dissipated. If Dyck was guilty--though she could not believe it--there would be an end of romance between him and Sheila, and their friendship must be severed for ever. Her daughter did not know that Erris Boyne was her father, and she must not know--in any case not yet; but if Dyck was condemned, it was almost sure he would be hanged. She wondered about Boyne's widow, whose name did not appear in the paragraph she had seen. She knew that Noreen was beautiful, but that he had married far beneath him socially. She had imagined Erris Boyne living in suburban quiet, not drawing his wife into his social scheme. That is what had happened. The woman had lived apart from the daily experiences of her husband's life in Dublin; and it had deepened her bitterness against him. When she had learned that Erris Boyne was no more faithful to her than he had been to his previous wife, she had gone mad; and Dyck Calhoun was paying the price of her madness. Mrs. Llyn did not know this. She was a woman of distinguished bearing, though small, with a wan, sad look in her eyes always, but with a cheerful smile. She was not poor, but well-to-do, and it was not necessary to deny herself or her daughter ordinary comforts, and even many of the luxuries of life. Her hair was darker than her daughter's, black and wavy, with here and there streaks of grey. These, however, only added dignity to a head beautifully balanced, finely moulded, and, in the language of the day, most genteelly hung. She was slender, buoyant in movement yet composed, and her voice was like her daughter's, clear, gentle, thrilling. Her mind and heart were given up to Sheila and Sheila's future. That was why a knowledge of the tragedy that had come to Dyck Calhoun troubled her as she had not been troubled since the day she first learned of Erris Boyne's infidelity to herself. "Let us go to Dublin, mother," said Sheila with a determined air, after reading the clipping. "Why, my dear?" The woman's eyes, with their long lashes, looked searchingly into her daughter's face. She felt, as the years went on, that Sheila had gifts granted to few. She realized that the girl had resources which would make her a governing influence in whatever sphere of life she should be set. Quietly, Sheila was taking control of their movements, and indeed of her own daily life. The girl had a dominating skill which came in part from herself, and also to a degree from her father; but her disposition was not her father's-it was her mother's. Mrs. Llyn had never known Sheila to lie or twist the truth in all her days. No one was more obedient to wise argument; and her mother had a feeling that now, perhaps, the time had come when they two must have a struggle for mastery. There was every reason why they should not go to Dublin. There Sheila might discover that Erris Boyne was her father, and might learn the story of her mother's life. Sheila had been told by her mother that her father had passed away abroad when she was a little child. She had never seen her father's picture, and her mother had given her the impression that their last days together had not been happy. She had always felt that it was better not to inquire too closely into her father's life. The years had gone on and then had come the happy visit to Loyland Towers, where she had met Dyck Calhoun. Her life at that moment had been free from troublesome emotions; but since the time she had met Dyck at the top of the hill, a new set of feelings worked in her. She was as bonny a lass as ever the old world produced--lithe, with a body like that of a boy, strong and pleasant of face, with a haunting beauty in the eyes, a majesty of the neck and chin, and a carriage which had made Michael Clones call her a queen. She saw Dyck only as, a happy, wild son of the hilltop. To her he was a man of mettle and worth, and irresponsible because he had been given no responsibility. He was a country gentleman of Ireland, with all the interest and peril of the life of a country gentleman. "Yes, we ought to go to Dublin, mother. We could help him, perhaps," Sheila insisted. The mother shook her head mournfully. "My child, we could do him no good at all--none whatever. Besides, I can't afford to visit Dublin now. It's an expensive journey, and the repairs we've been doing here have run me close." A look of indignation, almost of scorn, came into the girl's face. "Well, if I were being tried for my life, as Dyck Calhoun is going to be, and if I knew that friends of mine were standing off because of a few pounds, shillings, and pence, I think I'd be a real murderer!" The mother took her daughter's hand. She found it cold. "My dear," she said, clasping it gently, "you never saw him but three times, and I've never seen him but twice except in the distance; but I would do anything in my power to help him, if I could, for I like him. The thing for us to do--" "Yes, I know--sit here, twist our thumbs, and do nothing!" "What more could we do if we went to Dublin, except listen to gossip, read the papers and be jarred every moment? My dear, our best place is here. If the spending of money could be of any use to him, I'd spend it --indeed I would; but since it can't be of any use, we must stay in our own home. Of one thing I'm sure--if Dyck Calhoun killed Erris Boyne, Boyne deserved it. Of one thing I'm certain beyond all else--it was no murder. Mr. Calhoun wasn't a man to murder any one. I don't believe"-- her voice became passionate--"he murdered, and I don't believe he will be hanged." The girl looked at her mother with surprise. "Oh, dearest, dearest!" she said. "I believe you do care for him. Is it because he has no mother, and you have no son." "It may be so, beloved." Sheila swept her arms around her mother's neck and drew the fine head to her breast. At that moment they heard the clatter of hoofs, and presently they saw a horse and rider pass the window. "It's a government messenger, mother," Sheila said. As Sheila said, it was a government messenger, bearing a packet to Mrs. Llyn--a letter from her brother in America, whom she had not seen for many years. The brother, Bryan Llyn, had gone out there as a young man before the Revolutionary War. He had prospered, taking sides against England in the war, and become a man of importance in the schemes of the new republican government. Only occasionally had letters come from him to his sister, and for nearly eleven years she had not had a single word from him. When she opened the packet now, she felt it would help to solve--she knew not how--the trouble between herself and her daughter. The letter had been sent to a firm in Dublin with which Bryan Llyn had done business, with instructions that it should be forwarded to his sister. It had reached the hands of a government official, who was a brother of a member of the firm, and he had used the government messenger, who was going upon other business to Limerick, to forward it with a friendly covering note, which ended with the words: The recent tragedy you have no doubt seen in the papers must have shocked you; but to those who know the inside the end was inevitable, though there are many who do not think Calhoun is guilty. I am one of them. Nevertheless, it will go hard with him, as the evidence is strong against him. He comes from your part of the country, and you will be concerned, of course. Sheila watched her mother reading, and saw that great emotion possessed her, though the girl could not know the cause. Presently, however, Mrs. Llyn, who had read the letter from her brother, made a joyful exclamation. "What is it, mother dear?" Sheila asked eagerly. "Tell me!" The mother made a passionate gesture of astonishment and joy; then she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, with the letter--which was closely written, in old-fashioned punctiliousness--in her hands. "Oh, my dear, my dear!" she said. "How strange it all is! Your Uncle Bryan is immensely rich. He has no children and no family; his health is failing." She seemed able to get no further. "Well, what is it, mother?" asked Sheila again. For an instant Mrs. Llyn hesitated; then she put the letter into Sheila's hands. "Read it, my child," she said. "It's for you as much as for me--indeed, more for you than for me." Sheila took the letter. It ran as follows: DEAREST SISTER: It is eleven years since I wrote to you, and yet, though it may seem strange, there have not been eleven days in all that time in which I have not wished you and Sheila were here. Sheila--why, she is a young woman! She's about the age you were when I left Ireland, and you were one of the most beautiful and charming creatures God ever gave life to. The last picture I have of you was a drawing made soon after your marriage--sad, bad, unhappy incident. I have kept it by me always. It warms my heart in winter; it cools my eyes in summer. My estate is neither North nor South, but farther South than North. In a sense it is always summer, but winter on my place would be like summer in Norway--just bitingly fresh, happily alert. I'm writing in the summer now. I look out of the window and see hundreds of acres of cotton-fields, with hundreds upon hundreds of negroes at work. I hear the songs they sing, faint echoes of them, even as I write. Yes, my black folk do sing, because they are well treated. Not that we haven't our troubles here. You can't administer thousands of acres, control hundreds of slaves, and run an estate like a piece of clockwork without creaks in the machinery. I've built it all up out of next to nothing. I landed in this country with my little fortune of two thousand pounds. This estate is worth at least a quarter of a million now. I've an estate in Jamaica, too. I took it for a debt. What it'll be worth in another twenty years I don't know. I shan't be here to see. I'm not the man I was physically, and that's one of the reasons why I'm writing to you to-day. I've often wished to write and say what I'm going to say now; but I've held back, because I wanted you to finish your girl's education before I said it What I say is this: I want you and Sheila to come here to me, to make my home your home, to take control of my household, and to let me see faces I love about me as the shadows enfold me. Like your married life, mine was unsuccessful, but not for the same reason. The woman I married did not understand--probably could not understand. She gave me no children. We are born this way, or that. To understand is pain and joy in one; to misconceive is to scatter broken glass for bare feet. Yet when I laid her away, a few years ago, I had terrible pangs of regret, which must come to the heart that has striven in vain. I did my best; I tried to make her understand, but she never did. I used at first to feel angry; then I became patient. But I waked up again, and went smiling along, active, vigorous, getting pleasure out of the infinitely small things, and happy in perfecting my organization. This place, which I have called Moira, is to be yours--or, rather, Sheila's. So, in any case, you will want to come and see the home I have made this old colonial mansion, with its Corinthian pillars and verandah, high steps, hard-wood floors polished like a pan, every room hung in dimity and chintz, and the smell of fruit and flowers everywhere. You will want to see it all, and you'll want to live here. There's little rain here, so it's not like Ireland, and the green is not so green; but the flowers are marvellously bright, and the birds sing almost as well as they sing in Ireland, though there's no lark. Strange it is, but true, the only things that draw me back to Ireland in my soul are you, and Sheila, whom I've never seen, and the lark singing as he rises until he becomes a grey-blue speck, and then vanishing in the sky. Well, you and the lark have sung in my heart these many days, and now you must come to me, because I need you. I have placed to your credit in the Bank of Ireland a thousand pounds. That will be the means of bringing you here--you and Sheila--to my door, to Moira. Let nothing save death prevent your coming. As far as Sheila's eye can see-north, south, east, and west--the land will be hers when I'm gone. Dearest sister, sell all things that are yours, and come to me. You'll not forget Ireland here. Whoever has breathed her air can never forget the hills and dells, the valleys and bogs, the mountains, with their mists of rain, the wild girls, with their bare ankles, their red petticoats, and their beautiful, reckless air. None who has ever breathed the air of Ireland can breathe in another land without memory of the ancient harp of Ireland. But it is as a memory-deep, wonderful, and abiding, yet a memory. I sometimes think I have forgotten, and then I hear coming through this Virginia the notes of some old Irish melody, the song of some wayfarer of Mayo or Connemara, and I know then that Ireland is persuasive and perpetual; but only as a memory, because it speaks in every pulse and beats in every nerve. Oh, believe me, I speak of what I know! I have been away from Ireland for a long time, and I'm never going back, but I'll bring Ireland to me. Come here, colleen, come to Virginia. Write to me, on the day you get this letter, that you're coming soon. Let it be soon, because I feel the cords binding me to my beloved fields growing thinner. They'll soon crack, but, please God, they won't crack before you come here. Now with my love to you and Sheila I stretch out my hand to you. Take it. All that it is has worked for is yours; all that it wants is you. Your loving brother, BRYAN. As Sheila read, the tears started from her eyes; and at last she could read no longer, so her mother took the letter and read the rest of it aloud. When she had finished, there was silence--a long warm silence; then, at last, Mrs. Llyn rose to her feet. "Sheila, when shall we go?" With frightened eyes Sheila sprang up. "I said we must go to Dublin!" she murmured. "Yes, we will go to Dublin, Sheila, but it will be on our way to Uncle Bryan's home." Sheila caught her mother's hands. "Mother," she said, after a moment of hesitation, "I must obey you." "It is the one way, my child-the one thing to do. Some one in prison calls--perhaps; some one far away who loves you, and needs us, calls-- that we know. Tell me, am I not right? I ask you, where shall we go?" "To Virginia, mother." The girl's head dropped, and her eyes filled with tears. CHAPTER VIII DYCK'S FATHER VISITS HIM In vain Dyck's lawyer, Will McCormick, urged him to deny absolutely the killing of Erris Boyne. Dyck would not do so. He had, however, immediately on being jailed, written to the government, telling of the projected invasion of Ireland by the French fleet, and saying that it had come to him from a sure source. The government had at once taken action. Regarding the death of Boyne, the only thing in his favour was that his own sword-point was free from stain. His lawyer made the utmost of this, but to no avail. The impression in the court was that both men had been drinking; that they had quarrelled, and that without a duel being fought Dyck had killed his enemy. That there had been no duel was clear from the fact that Erris Boyne's sword was undrawn. The charge, however, on the instigation of the Attorney-General, who was grateful for the information about France, had been changed from murder to manslaughter; though it seemed clear that Boyne had been ruthlessly killed by a man whom he had befriended. On one of the days of the trial, Dyck's father, bowed, morose, and obstinate, came to see him. That Dyck and Boyne had quarrelled had been stated in evidence by the landlord, Swinton, and Dyck had admitted it. Miles Calhoun was bent upon finding what the story of the quarrel was; for his own lawyer had told him that Dyck's refusal to give the cause of the dispute would affect the jury adversely, and might bring him imprisonment for life. After the formalities of their meeting, Miles Calhoun said: "My son, things are black, but they're not so black they can't be brightened. If you killed Erris Boyne, he deserved it. He was a bad man, as the world knows. That isn't the point. Now, there's only one kind of quarrel that warrants non-disclosure." "You mean about a woman?" remarked Dyck coldly. The old man took a pinch of snuff nervously. "That's what I mean. Boyne was older than you, and perhaps you cut him out with a woman." A wry smile wrinkled the corners of Dyck's mouth. "You mean his wife?" he asked with irony. "Wife--no!" retorted the old man. "Damn it, no! He wasn't the man to remain true to his wife." "So I understand," remarked Dyck; "but I don't know his wife. I never saw her, except at the trial, and I was so sorry for her I ceased to be sorry for my self. She had a beautiful, strange, isolated face." "But that wouldn't influence Boyne," was the reply. "His first wife had a beautiful and interesting face, but it didn't hold him. He went marauding elsewhere, and she divorced him by act of parliament. I don't think you knew it, but his first wife was one of your acquaintances-- Mrs. Llyn, whose daughter you saw just before we left Playmore. He wasn't particular where he made love--a barmaid or a housekeeper, it was all the same to him." "I hope the daughter doesn't know that Erris Boyne was her father," said Dyck. "There's plenty can tell her, and she'll hear it sooner or later." Miles Calhoun looked at his son with dejection. His eyes wandered over the grimly furnished cell. His nose smelled the damp of it, and suddenly the whole soul of him burst forth. "You don't give yourself a chance of escape, Dyck You know what Irish juries are. Why don't you tell the truth about the quarrel? What's the good of keeping your mouth shut, when there's many that would profit by your telling it?" "Who would profit?" asked Dyck. "Who would profit!" snarled the old man. "Well, you would profit first, for it might break the dark chain of circumstantial evidence. Also, your father would profit. I'd be saved shame, perhaps; I'd get relief from this disgrace. Oh, man, think of others beside yourself! "Think of others!" said Dyck, and a queer smile lighted his haggard face. "I'd save myself if I honourably could." "The law must prove you guilty," the old man went on. "It's not for you to prove yourself innocent. They haven't proved you guilty yet." The old man fumbled with a waistcoat button. His eyes blinked hard. "You don't see," he continued, "the one thing that's plain to my eyes, and it's this--that your only chance of escape is to tell the truth about the quarrel. If the truth were told, whatever it is, I believe it would be to your credit--I'll say that for you. If it was to your credit, even if they believe you guilty of killing Erris Boyne, they'd touch you lightly. Ah, in the name of the mother you loved, I ask you to tell the truth about that quarrel! Give it into the hands of the jury, and let them decide. Haven't you got a heart in you? In the name of God--" "Don't speak to me like that," interrupted Dyck, with emotion. "I've thought of all those things. I hold my peace because--because I hold my peace. To speak would be to hurt some one I love with all my soul." "And you won't speak to save me--your father--because you don't love me with all your soul! Is that it?" asked Miles Calhoun. "It's different--it's different." "Ah, it's a woman!" "Never mind what it is. I will not tell. There are things more shameful than death." "Yes," snarled the other. "Rather than save yourself, you bring dishonour upon him who gave you birth." Dyck's face was submerged in colour. "Father," said he, "on my honour I wouldn't hurt you if I could help it, but I'll not tell the world of the quarrel between that man and myself. My silence may hurt you, but some one else would be hurt far more if I told." "By God, I think you're some mad dreamer slipped out of the ancient fold! Do you know where you are? You're in jail. If you're found guilty, you'll be sent to prison at least for the years that'll spoil the making of your life; and you do it because you think you'll spare somebody. Well, I ask you to spare me. I don't want the man that's going to inherit my name, when my time comes, to bring foulness on it. We've been a rough race, we Calhouns; we've done mad, bad things, perhaps, but none has shamed us before the world--none but you." "I have never shamed you, Miles Calhoun," replied his son sharply. "As the ancients said, 'alis volat propriis'--I will fly with my own wings. Come weal, come woe, come dark, come light, I have fixed my mind, and nothing shall change it. You loved my mother better than the rest of the world. You would have thought it no shame to have said so to your own father. Well, I say it to you--I'll stand by what my conscience and my soul have dictated to me. You call me a dreamer. Let it be so. I'm Irish; I'm a Celt. I've drunk deep of all that Ireland means. All that's behind me is my own, back to the shadowy kings of Ireland, who lost life and gave it because they believed in what they did. So will I. If I'm to walk the hills no more on the estate where you are master, let it be so. I have no fear; I want no favour. If it is to be prison, then it shall be prison. If it is to be shame, then let it be shame. These are days when men must suffer if they make mistakes. Well, I will suffer, fearlessly if helplessly, but I will not break the oath which I have taken. And so I will not do it--never--never--never!" He picked up the cloak which the old man had dropped on the floor, and handed it to him. "There is no good in staying longer. I must go into court again to-morrow. I have to think how my lawyer shall answer the evidence given." "But of one thing have you thought?" asked his father. "You will not tell the cause of the quarrel, for the reason that you might hurt somebody. If you don't tell the cause, and you are condemned, won't that hurt somebody even more?" For a moment Dyck stood silent, absorbed. His face looked pinched, his whole appearance shrivelled. Then, with deliberation, he said: "This is not a matter of expediency, but of principle. My heart tells me what to do, and my heart has always been right." There was silence for a long time. At last the old man drew the cloak about his shoulders and turned towards the door. "Wait a minute, father," said Dyck. "Don't go like that. You'd better not come and see me again. If I'm condemned, go back to Playmore; if I'm set free, go back to Playmore. That's the place for you to be. You've got your own troubles there." "And you--if you're acquitted?" "If I'm acquitted, I'll take to the high seas--till I'm cured." A moment later, without further words, Dyck was alone. He heard the door clang. He sat for some time on the edge of his bed, buried in dejection. Presently, however, the door opened. "A letter for you, sir," said the jailer. CHAPTER IX A LETTER FROM SHEILA The light of the cell was dim, but Dyck managed to read the letter without great difficulty, for the writing was almost as precise as print. The sight of it caught his heart like a warm hand and pressed it. This was the substance of the letter: MY DEAR FRIEND: I have wanted to visit you in prison, but my mother has forbidden it, and so, even if I could be let to enter, I must not disobey her. I have not read the papers giving an account of your trial. I only know you are charged with killing a bad man, notorious in Dublin life, and that many think he got his just deserts in being killed. I saw Christopher Dogan only a week ago, before we came to Dublin. His eyes, as he talked of you, shone like the secret hill-fires where the peasants make illegal drink. "Look you," he said to me, "I care not what a jury decides. I know my man; and I also know that if the fellow Boyne died by his hand, it was in fair fight. I have read Dyck Calhoun's story in the stars; and I know what his end will be. It will be fair, not foul; good, not bad; great, not low. Tell him that from me, miss," was what he said. I also will not believe that your fate is an evil one, that the law will grind you between the millstones of guilt and dishonour; but if the law should call you guilty, I still will not believe. Far away I will think of you, and believe in you, dear, masterful, madman friend. Yes, you are a madman, for Michael Clones told me--faith, he loves you well!--that you've been living a gay life in Dublin since you came here, and that the man you are accused of killing was in great part the cause of it. I think I never saw my mother so troubled in spirit as she is at this time. Of course, she could not feel as I do about you. It isn't that which makes her sad and haggard; it is that we are leaving Ireland behind. Yes, she and I are saying good-bye to Ireland. That's why I think she might have let me see you before we went; but since it must not be, well, then, it must not. But we shall meet again. In my soul I know that on the hills somewhere far off, as on the first day we met, we shall meet each other once more. Where are we going? Oh, very far! We are going to my Uncle Bryan--Bryan Llyn, in Virginia. A letter has come from him urging us to make our home with him. You see, my friend-- Then followed the story which Bryan Llyn had told her mother and herself, and she wrote of her mother's decision to go out to the new, great home which her uncle had made among the cotton-fields of the South. When she had finished that part of the tale, she went on as follows: We shall know your fate only through the letters that will follow us, but I will not believe in your bad luck. Listen to me--why don't you come to America also? Oh, think it over! Don't believe the worst will come. When they release you from prison, innocent and acquitted, cross the ocean and set up your tent under the Stars and Stripes. Think of it! Nearly all those men in America who fought under Washington and won were born in these islands. They took with them to that far land the memory and love of these old homes. You and I would have fought for England and with the British troops, because we detest revolution. Here, in Ireland, we have seen its evils; and yet if we had fought for the Union Jack beyond the mountains of Maine and in the lonely woods, we should, I believe, in the end have said that the freedom fought for by the American States was well won. So keep this matter in your mind, for my mother and I will soon be gone. She would not let me come to you,--I think I have never seen her so disturbed as when I asked her, and she forbade me to write to you; but I disobey her. Well, this is a sad business. I know my mother has suffered. I know her married life was unhappy, and that her husband--my father-died many a year ago, leaving a dark trail of regret behind him; but, you see, I never knew my father. That was all long ago, and it is a hundred times best forgotten. Our ship sails for Virginia in three days, and I must go. I will keep looking back to the prison where lies, charged with an evil crime, of which he is not guilty, a young man for whom I shall always carry the spirit of good friendship. Do not believe all will not go well. Let us keep the courage of our hearts and the faith of our souls--and I hope I always shall! I believe in you, and, believing, I say good-bye. I say farewell in the great hope that somehow, somewhere, we shall help each other on the way of life. God be with you! I am your friend, SHEILA LLYN. P. S.--I beg you to remember that America is a good place for a young man to live in and succeed. Dyck read the letter with a wonderful slowness. He realized that by happy accident--it could be nothing else--Mrs. Llyn had been able to keep from her daughter the fact that the man who had been killed in the tavern by the river was her father. It was clear that the girl was kept much to herself, read no newspapers, and saw few people, and that those whom she saw had been careful to hold their peace about her close relationship to Erris Boyne. None but the evil-minded would recall the fact to her. Sheila's ignorance must not be broken by himself. He had done the right thing--he had held his peace for the girl's sake, and he would hold it to the end. Slowly he folded up the letter, pressed it to his lips, and put it in the pocket over his heart. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Beginning of a lifetime of experience, comedy, and tragedy Wit is always at the elbow of want NO DEFENSE By Gilbert Parker BOOK II X. DYCK CALHOUN ENTERS THE WORLD AGAIN XI. WHITHER NOW? XII. THE HOUR BEFORE THE MUTINY XIII. TO THE WEST INDIES XIV. IN THE NICK OF TIME XV. THE ADMIRAL HAS HIS SAY CHAPTER X DYCK CALHOUN ENTERS THE WORLD AGAIN "Is it near the time?" asked Michael Clones of his friend, as they stood in front of the prison. His companion, who was seated on a stone, wrapped in dark-green coverings faded and worn, and looking pinched with cold in the dour November day, said, without lifting his head: "Seven minutes, an' he'll be out, God bless him!" "And save him and protect him!" said Michael. "He deserved punishment no more than I did, and it's broke him. I've seen the grey gather at his temples, though he's only been in prison four years. He was condemned to eight, but they've let him free, I don't know why. Perhaps it was because of what he told the government about the French navy. I've seen the joy of life sob itself down to the sour earth. When I took him the news of his father's death, and told him the creditors were swallowing what was left of Playmore, what do you think he did?" Old Christopher Dogan smiled; his eyes twinkled with a mirth which had more pain than gaiety. "God love you, I know what he did. He flung out his hands, and said: 'Let it go! It's nothing to me.' Michael, have I said true?" Michael nodded. "Almost his very words you've used, and he flung out his hands, as you said. "Aye, he'll be changed; but they've kept the clothes he had when he went to prison, and he'll come out in them, I'm thinking--" "Ah, no!" interrupted Michael. "That can't be, for his clothes was stole. Only a week ago he sent to me for a suit of my own. I wouldn't have him wear my clothes--he a gentleman! It wasn't fitting. So I sent him a suit I bought from a shop, but he wouldn't have it. He would leave prison a poor man, as a peasant in peasant's clothes. So he wrote to me. Here is the letter." He drew from his pocket a sheet of paper, and spread it out. "See-read it. Ah, well, never mind," he added, as old Christopher shook his head. "Never mind, I'll read it to you!" Thereupon he read the note, and added: "We'll see him of the Calhouns risin' high beyant poverty and misfortune some day." Old Christopher nodded. "I'm glad Miles Calhoun was buried on the hilltop above Playmore. He had his day; he lived his life. Things went wrong with him, and he paid the price we all must pay for work ill-done." "There you're right, Christopher Dogan, and I remember the day the downfall began. It was when him that's now Lord Mallow, Governor of Jamaica, came to summon Miles Calhoun to Dublin. Things were never the same after that; but I well remember one talk I had with Miles Calhoun just before his death. 'Michael,' he said to me, 'my family have had many ups and downs, and some that bear my name have been in prison before this, but never for killing a man out of fair fight.' 'One of your name may be in prison, sir,' said I, 'but not for killing a man out of fair fight. If you believe he did, there's no death bad enough for you!' He was silent for a while; then at last he whispered Mr. Dyck's name, and said to me: 'Tell him that as a Calhoun I love him, and as his father I love him ten times more. For look you, Michael, though we never ran together, but quarrelled and took our own paths, yet we are both Calhouns, and my heart is warm to him. If my son were a thousand times a criminal, nevertheless I would ache to take him by the hand.'" "Hush! Look at the prison gate," said his companion, and stood up. As the gates of the prison opened, the sun broke through the clouds and gave a brilliant phase to the scene. Out of the gates there came slowly, yet firmly, dressed in peasant clothes, the stalwart but faded figure of Dyck Calhoun. Terribly changed he was. He had entered prison with the flush upon his cheek, the lilt of young manhood in his eyes, with hair black and hands slender and handsome. There was no look of youth in his face now. It was the face of a middle-aged man from which the dew of youth had vanished, into which life's storms had come and gone. Though the body was held erect, yet the head was thrust slightly forward, and the heavy eyebrows were like a pent-house. The eyes were slightly feverish, and round the mouth there crept a smile, half-cynical but a little happy. All freshness was gone from his hands. One hung at his side, listless, corded; the other doffed his hat in reply to the salute of his two humble friends. As the gates closed behind him he looked gravely at the two men, who were standing not a foot apart. There swept slowly into his eyes, enlarging, brightening them, the glamour of the Celtic soul. Of all Ireland, or all who had ever known him, these two were the only ones welcoming him into the world again! Michael Clones, with his oval red face, big nose, steely eye, and steadfast bearing, had in him the soul of great kings. His hat was set firmly on his head. His knee-breeches were neat, if coarse; his stockings were clean. His feet were well shod, his coat worn, and he had still the look that belongs to the well-to-do peasant. He was a figure of courage and endurance. Dyck's hand went out to him, and a warm smile crept to his lips. "Michael--ever--faithful Michael!" A moisture came to Michael's eyes. He did not speak as he clasped the hand Dyck offered him. Presently Dyck turned to old Christopher with a kindly laugh. "Well, old friend! You, too, come to see the stag set loose again? You're not many, that's sure." A grim, hard look came into his face, but both hands went out and caught the old man's shoulders affectionately. "This is no day for you to be waiting at prison's gates, Christopher; but there are two men who believe in me--two in all the world. It isn't the killing," he added after a moment's silence--"it isn't the killing that hurts so. If it's true that I killed Erris Boyne, what hurts most is the reason why I killed him." "One way or another--does it matter now?" asked Christopher gently. "Is it that you think nothing matters since I've paid the price, sunk myself in shame, lost my friends, and come out with not a penny left?" asked Dyck. "But yes," he added with a smile, wry and twisted, "yes, I have a little left!" He drew from his pocket four small pieces of gold, and gazed ironically at them in his palm. "Look at them!" He held out his hand, so that the two men could see the little coins. "Those were taken from me when I entered prison. They've been in the hands of the head of the jail ever since. They give them to me now--all that's left of what I was." "No, not all, sir," declared Michael. "There's something left from Playmore--there's ninety pounds, and it's in my pocket. It was got from the sale of your sporting-kit. There was the boat upon the lake, the gun, and all kinds of riffraff stuff not sold with Playmore." Dyck nodded and smiled. "Good Michael!" Then he drew himself up stiffly, and blew in and out his breath as if with the joy of living. For four hard years he had been denied the free air of free men. Even when walking in the prison-yard, on cold or fair days, when the air was like a knife or when it had the sun of summer in it, it still had seemed to choke him. In prison he had read, thought, and worked much. They had at least done that for him. The Attorney-General had given him freedom to work with his hands, and to slave in the workshop like one whose living depended on it. Some philanthropic official had started the idea of a workshop, and the officials had given the best of the prisoners a chance to learn trades and make a little money before they went out into the world. All that Dyck had earned went to purchase things he needed, and to help his fellow prisoners or their families. Where was he now? The gap between the old life of nonchalance, frivolity, fantasy, and excitement was as great as that between heaven and hell. Here he was, after four years of prison, walking the highway with two of the humblest creatures of Ireland, and yet, as his soul said, two of the best. Stalking along in thought, he suddenly became conscious that Michael and Christopher had fallen behind. He turned round. "Come on. Come on with me." But the two shook their heads. "It's not fitting, you a Calhoun of Playmore!" Christopher answered. "Well, then, list to me," said Dyck, for he saw the men could not bear his new democracy. "I'm hungry. In four years I haven't had a meal that came from the right place or went to the right spot. Is the little tavern, the Hen and Chickens, on the Liffeyside, still going? I mean the place where the seamen and the merchant-ship officers visit." Michael nodded. "Well, look you, Michael--get you both there, and order me as good a meal of fish and chops and baked pudding as can be bought for money. Aye, and I'll have a bottle of red French wine, and you two will have what you like best. Mark me, we'll sit together there, for we're one of a kind. I've got to take to a life that fits me, an ex-jailbird, a man that's been in prison for killing!" "There's the king's army," said Michael. "They make good officers in it." A strange, half-sore smile came to Dyck's thin lips. "Michael," said he, "give up these vain illusions. I was condemned for killing a man not in fair fight. "I can't enter the army as an officer, and you should know it. The king himself could set me up again; but the distance between him and me is ten times round the world and back again!" But then Dyck nodded kindly. It was as if suddenly the martyr spirit had lifted him out of rigid, painful isolation, and he was speaking from a hilltop. "No, my friends, what is in my mind now is that I'm hungry. For four years I've eaten the bread of prison, and it's soured my mouth and galled my belly. Go you to that inn and make ready a good meal." The two men started to leave, but old Christopher turned and stretched a hand up and out. "Son of Ireland, bright and black and black and bright may be the picture of your life, but I see for you brightness and sweet faces, and music and song. It's not Irish music, and it's not Irish song, but the soul of the thing is Irish. Grim things await you, but you will conquer where the eagle sways to the shore, where the white mist flees from the hills, where heroes meet, where the hand of Moira stirs the blue and the witches flee from the voice of God. There is honour coming to you in the world." Having said his say, with hand outstretched, having thrilled the air with the voice of one who had the soul of a prophet, the old man turned. Head bent forward, he shuffled away with Michael Clones along the stony street. Dyck watched them go, his heart beating hard, his spirit overwhelmed. It was not far to the Castle, yet every footstep had a history. Now and again he met people who knew him. Some bowed a little too profoundly, some nodded; but not one stopped to speak to him, though a few among them were people he had known well in days gone by. Was it the clothes he wore, or was it that his star had sunk so low that none could keep it company? He laughed to himself in scorn, and yet there kept ringing through his brain all the time the bells of St. Anselm's, which he was hearing: "Oh, God, who is the sinner's friend, Make clean my soul once more!" When he arrived at the Castle walls he stood and looked long at them. "No, I won't go in. I won't try to see him," he said at last. "God, how strange Ireland is to me! The soil of it, the trees of it, the grass of it, are dearer than ever, but--I'll have no more of Ireland. I'll ask for nothing. I'll get to England. What's Ireland to me? I must make my way somewhere. There's one in there"--he nodded towards the Castle-- "that owes me money at cards. He should open his pockets to me, and see me safe on a ship for Australia; but I've had my fill of every one in Ireland. There's nothing here for me but shame. Well, back I'll go to the Hen and Chickens, to find a good dinner there." He turned and went back slowly along the streets by which he had come, looking not to right nor left, thinking only of where he should go and what he should do outside of Ireland. At the door of the inn he sniffed the dinner Michael had ordered. "Man alive!" he said as he entered the place and saw the two men with their hands against the bright fire. "There's only one way to live, and that's the way I'm going to try." "Well, you'll not try it alone, sir, if you please," said Michael. "I'll be with you, if I may." "And I'll bless you as you go," said Christopher Dogan. CHAPTER XI WHITHER NOW? England was in a state of unrest. She had, as yet, been none too successful in the war with France. From the king's castle to the poorest slum in Seven Dials there was a temper bordering on despair. Ministries came and went; statesmen rose and fell. The army was indifferently recruited and badly paid. England's battles were fought by men of whom many were only mercenaries, with no stake in England's rise or fall. In the army and navy there were protests, many and powerful, against the smallness of the pay, while the cost of living had vastly increased. In more than one engagement on land England had had setbacks of a serious kind, and there were those who saw in the blind-eyed naval policy, in the general disregard of the seamen's position, in the means used for recruiting, the omens of disaster. The police courts furnished the navy with the worst citizens of the country. Quota men, the output of the Irish prisons--seditious, conspiring, dangerous--were drafted for the king's service. The admiralty pursued its course of seizing men of the mercantile marine, taking them aboard ships, keeping them away for months from the harbours of the kingdom, and then, when their ships returned, denying them the right of visiting their homes. The press-gangs did not confine their activities to the men of the mercantile marine. From the streets after dusk they caught and brought in, often after ill-treatment, torn from their wives and sweethearts, knocked on the head for resisting, tradesmen with businesses, young men studying for the professions, idlers, debtors, out-of-work men. The marvel is that the British fleets fought as well as they did. Poverty and sorrow, loss and bereavement, were in every street, peeped mournfully out of every window, lurked at street corners. From all parts of the world adventurers came to renew their fortunes in the turmoil of London, and every street was a kaleidoscope of faces and clothes and colours, not British, not patriot, not national. Among these outlanders were Dyck Calhoun and Michael Clones. They had left Ireland together in the late autumn, leaving behind them the stirrings of the coming revolution, and plunging into another revolt which was to prove the test and trial of English character. Dyck had left Ireland with ninety pounds in his pocket and many tons' weight of misery in his heart. In his bones he felt tragedies on foot in Ireland which concession and good government could not prevent. He had fled from it all. When he set his face to Holyhead, he felt that he would never live in Ireland again. Yet his courage was firm as he made his way to London, with Michael Clones--faithful, devoted, a friend and yet a servant, treated like a comrade, yet always with a little dominance. The journey to London had been without event, yet as the coach rolled through country where frost silvered the trees; where, in the early morning, the grass was shining with dew; where the everlasting green hedges and the red roofs of villages made a picture which pleased the eye and stirred the soul, Dyck Calhoun kept wondering what would be his future. He had no profession, no trade, no skill except with his sword; and as he neared London Town--when they left Hendon--he saw the smoke rising in the early winter morning and the business of life spread out before him, brave and buoyant. As from the heights of Hampstead he looked down on the multitudinous area called London, something throbbed at his heart which seemed like hope; for what he saw was indeed inspiring. When at last, in the Edgware Road, he drew near to living London, he turned to Michael Clones and said: "Michael, my lad, I think perhaps we'll find a footing here." So they reached London, and quartered themselves in simple lodgings in Soho. Dyck walked the streets, and now and then he paid a visit to the barracks where soldiers were, to satisfy the thought that perhaps in the life of the common soldier he might, after all, find his future. It was, however, borne in upon him by a chance remark of Michael one day--"I'm not young enough to be a recruit, and you wouldn't go alone without me, would you?"--that this way to a livelihood was not open to him. His faithful companion's remark had fixed Dyck's mind against entering the army, and then, towards the end of the winter, a fateful thing happened. His purse containing what was left of the ninety pounds--two- fifths of it--disappeared. It had been stolen, and in all the bitter days to come, when poverty and misery ground them down, no hint of the thief, no sign of the robber, was ever revealed. Then, at last, a day when a letter came from Ireland. It was from the firm in which Bryan Llyn of Virginia had been interested, for the letter had been sent to their care, and Dyck had given them his address in London on this very chance. It reached Dyck's hands on the day after the last penny had been paid out for their lodgings, and they faced the streets, penniless, foodless--one was going to say friendless. The handwriting was that of Sheila Llyn. At a street corner, by a chemist's shop where a red light burned, Dyck opened and read the letter. This is what Sheila had written to him. MY DEAR FRIEND: The time is near (I understand by a late letter to my mother from an official) when you will be freed from prison and will face the world again. I have not written you since your trial, but I have never forgotten and never shall. I have been forbidden to write to you or think of you, but I will take my own way about you. I have known all that has happened since we left Ireland, through the letters my mother has received. I know that Playmore has been sold, and I am sorry. Now that your day of release is near, and you are to be again a free man, have you decided about your future? Is it to be in Ireland? No, I think not. Ireland is no place for a sane and level man to fight for honour, fame, and name. I hear that things are worse there in every way than they have been in our lifetime. After what has happened in any case, it is not a field that offers you a chance. Listen to me. Ireland and England are not the only places in the world. My uncle came here to Virginia a poor man. He is now immensely rich. He had little to begin with, but he was young like you--indeed, a little older than you--when he first came. He invested wisely, worked bravely, and his wealth grew fast. No man needs a fortune to start the business of life in this country. He can get plenty of land for almost nothing; he can get credit for planting and furnishing his land, and, if he has friends, the credit is sure. All America is ready for "the likes of you." Think it over, and meanwhile please know there has been placed with the firm in Dublin money enough to bring you here with comfort. You must not refuse it. Take it as a loan, for I know you will not take it as a gift. I do not know the story of the killing, even as it was told in court. Well, some one killed the man, but not you, and the truth will out in time. If one should come to me out of the courts of heaven, and say that there it was declared you were a rogue, I should say heaven was no place for me. No, of one thing I am sure-- you never killed an undefended man. Wayward, wanton, reckless, dissipated you may have been, but you were never depraved--never! When you are free, lift up your shoulders to all the threats of time, then go straight to the old firm where the money is, draw it, take ship, and come here. If you let me know you are coming, I will be there to meet you when you step ashore, to give you a firm hand- clasp; to tell you that in this land there is a good place for you, if you will win it. Here there is little crime, though the perils of life are many. There is Indian fighting; there are Indian depredations; and not a dozen miles from where I sit men have been shot for crimes committed. The woods are full of fighters, and pirates harry the coast. On the wall of the room where I write there are carbines that have done service in Indian wars and in the Revolutionary War; and here out of the window I can see hundreds of black heads-slaves, brought from Africa and the Indies, slaves whose devotion to my uncle is very great. I hear them singing now; over the white-tipped cotton-fields there flows the sound of it. This plantation has none of the vices that belong to slavery. Here life is complete. The plantation is one great workshop where trades are learned and carried out-shoeing, blacksmithing, building, working in wood and metal. I am learning here--you see I am quite old, for I am twenty-one now --the art of management. They tell me that when my uncle's day is done--I grieve to think it is not far off--I must take the rod of control. I work very, very hard. I have to learn figures and finance; I have to see how all the work is done, so that I shall know it is done right. I have had to discipline the supervisors and bookkeepers, inspect and check the output, superintend the packing, and arrange for the sale of the crop-yes, I arranged for the sale of this year's crop myself. So I live the practical life, and when I say that you could make your home here and win success, I do it with some knowledge. I beg you take ship for the Virginian coast. Enter upon the new life here with faith and courage. Have no fear. Heaven that has thus far helped you will guide you to the end. I write without my mother's permission, but my uncle knows, and though he does not approve, he does not condemn. Once more good-bye, my dear friend, and God be with you. SHEILA LLYN. P. S.--I wonder where you will read this letter. I hope it will find you before your release. Please remember that she who wrote it summons you from the darkness where you are to light and freedom here. Slowly Dyck folded up the letter, when he had read it, and put it in his pocket. Then he turned with pale face and gaunt look to Michael Clones. "Michael," said he, "that letter is from a lady. It comes from her new home in Virginia." Michael nodded. "Aye, aye, sir, I understand you," he said. "Then she doesn't know the truth about her father?" Dyck sighed heavily. "No, Michael, she doesn't know the truth." "I don't believe it would make any difference to her if she did know." "It would make all the difference to me, Michael. She says she wishes to help me. She tells me that money's been sent to the big firm in Dublin- money to take me across the sea to Virginia." Michael's face clouded. "Yes, sir. To Virginia--and what then?" "Michael, we haven't a penny in the world, you and I, but if I took one farthing of that money I should hope you would kill me. I'm hungry; we've had nothing to eat since yesterday; but if I could put my hands upon that money here and now I wouldn't touch it. Michael, it looks as if we shall have to take to the trade of the footpad." CHAPTER XII THE HOUR BEFORE THE MUTINY In the days when Dyck Calhoun was on the verge of starvation in London, evil naval rumours were abroad. Newspapers reported, one with apprehension, another with tyrannous comment, mutinous troubles in the fleet. At first the only demand at Spithead and the Nore had been for an increase of pay, which had not been made since the days of Charles II. Then the sailors' wages were enough for comfortable support; but in 1797 through the rise in the cost of living, and with an advance of thirty per cent. on slops, their families could barely maintain themselves. It was said in the streets, and with truth, that seamen who had fought with unconquerable gallantry under Howe, Collingwood, Nelson, and the other big sea-captains, who had borne suffering and wounds, and had been in the shadow of death--that even these men damned a system which, in its stern withdrawal of their class for long spaces of time from their own womenfolk, brought evil results to the forecastle. The soldier was always in touch with his own social world, and he had leave sufficient to enable him to break the back of monotony. He drank, gambled, and orated; but his indulgences were little compared with the debauches of able-bodied seamen when, after months of sea-life, they reached port again. A ship in port at such a time was not a scene of evangelical habits. Women of loose class, flower-girls, fruit-sellers, and costermongers turned the forecastle into a pleasure-house where the pleasures were not always secret; where native modesty suffered no affright, and physical good cheer, with ribald paraphrase, was notable everywhere. "How did it happen, Michael?" As he spoke, Dyck looked round the forecastle of the Ariadne with a restless and inquisitive expression. Michael was seated a few feet away, his head bent forward, his hands clasped around his knees. "Well, it don't matter one way or 'nother," he replied; "but it was like this. The night you got a letter from Virginia we was penniless; so at last I went with my watch to the pawnbroker's. You said you'd wait till I got back, though you knew not where I was goin'. When I got back, you were still broodin'. You were seated on a horse-block by the chemist's lamp where you had read the letter. It's not for me to say of what you were thinkin'; but I could guess. You'd been struck hard, and there had come to you a letter from one who meant more to you than all the rest of the world; and you couldn't answer it because things weren't right. As I stood lookin' at you, wonderin' what to do, though, I had twelve shillin's in my pocket from the watch I'd pawned, there came four men, and I knew from their looks they were recruitin' officers of the navy. I saw what was in their eyes. They knew--as why shouldn't they, when they saw a gentleman like you in peasant clothes?--that luck had been agin' us. "What the end would have been I don't know. It was you that solved the problem, not them. You looked at the first man of them hard. Then you got to your feet. "'Michael,' says you quietly, 'I'm goin' to sea. England's at war, and there's work to do. So let's make for a king's ship, and have done with misery and poverty.' "Then you waved a hand to the man in command of the recruitin' gang, and presently stepped up to him and his friends. "'Sir,' I said to you, 'I'm not going to be pressed into the navy.' "'There's no pressin', Michael,' you answered. 'We'll be quota men. We'll do it for cash--for forty pounds each, and no other. You let them have you as you are. But if you don't want to come,' you added, 'it's all the same to me.' "Faith, I knew that was only talk. I knew you wanted me. Also I knew the king's navy needed me, for men are hard to get. So, when they'd paid us the cash--forty pounds apiece--I stepped in behind you, and here we are--here we are! Forty pounds apiece--equal to three years' wages of an ordinary recruit of the army. It ain't bad, but we're here for three years, and no escape from it. Yes, here we are!" Dyck laughed. "Aye, here we're likely to remain, Michael. There's only this to be said--we'll be fighting the French soon, and it's easy to die in the midst of a great fight. If we don't die, Michael, something else will turn up, maybe." "That's true, sir! They'll make an officer of you, once they see you fight. This is no place for you, among the common herd. It's the dregs o' the world that comes to the ship's bottom in time of peace or war." "Well, I'm the dregs of the world, Michael. I'm the supreme dregs." Somehow the letter from Virginia had decided Dyck Calhoun's fate for him. Here he was--at sea, a common sailor in the navy. He and Michael Clones had eaten and drunk as sailors do, and they had realized that, as they ate and drank on the River Thames, they would not eat and drink on the watery fairway. They had seen the tank foul with age, from which water was drawn for men who could not live without it, and the smell of it had revolted Dyck's senses. They had seen the kegs of pickled meat, and they had been told of the evil rations given to the sailors at sea. The Ariadne had been a flag-ship in her day, the home of an admiral and his staff. She carried seventy-four guns, was easily obedient to her swift sail, and had a reputation for gallantry. From the first hour on board, Dyck Calhoun had fitted in; with a discerning eye he had understood the seamen's needs and the weaknesses of the system. The months he had spent between his exit from prison and his entrance into the Ariadne had roughened, though not coarsened, his outward appearance. From his first appearance among the seamen he had set himself to become their leader. His enlistment was for three years, and he meant that these three should prove the final success of this naval enterprise, or the stark period in a calendar of tragedy. The life of the sailor, with its coarseness and drudgery, its inadequate pay, its evil-smelling food, its maggoty bread, its beer drawn from casks that once had held oil or fish, its stinking salt-meat barrels, the hideous stench of the bilge-water--all this could in one sense be no worse than his sufferings in jail. In spite of self-control, jail had been to him the degradation of his hopes, the humiliation of his manhood. He had suffered cold, dampness, fever, and indigestion there, and it had sapped the fresh fibre of life in him. His days in London had been cruel. He had sought work in great commercial concerns, and had almost been grateful when rejected. When his money was stolen, there seemed nothing to do, as he said to Michael Clones, but to become a footpad or a pirate. Then the stormy doors of the navy had opened wide to him; and as many a man is tempted into folly or crime by tempestuous nature, so he, forlorn, spiritually unkempt, but physically and mentally well-composed, in a spirit of bravado, flung himself into the bowels of the fleet. From the moment Dyck arrived on board the Ariadne he was a marked man. Ferens, a disfranchised solicitor, who knew his story, spread the unwholesome truth about him among the ship's people, and he received attentions at once offensive and flattering. The best-educated of the ship's hands approached him on the grievances with which the whole navy was stirring. Something had put a new spirit into the life of his majesty's ships; it was, in a sense, the reflection of the French Revolution and Tom Paine's Age of Reason. What the Americans had done in establishing a republic, what France was doing by her revolution, got into the veins and minds of some men in England, but it got into the veins and minds of the sailor first; for, however low his origin, he had intercourse not given to the average landsman. He visited foreign ports, he came in touch with other elements than those of British life and character. Of all the ships in the navy the Ariadne was the best that Dyck Calhoun could have entered. Her officers were humane and friendly, yet firm; and it was quite certain that if mutiny came they would be treated well. The agitation on the Ariadne in support of the grievances of the sailors was so moderate that, from the first, Dyck threw in his lot with it. Ferens, the former solicitor, first came to him with a list of proposals, which only repeated the demands made by the agitators at Spithead. "You're new among us," said Ferens to Dyck. "You don't quite know what we've been doing, I suppose. Some of us have been in the navy for two years, and some for ten. There are men on this ship who could tell you stories that would make your blood run cold--take my word for it. There's a lot of things goin' on that oughtn't to be goin' on. The time has come for reform. Have a look at this paper, and tell me what you think." Dyck looked at the pockmarked face of Ferens, whose record in the courts was a bad one, and what he saw did not disgust him. It was as though Ferens had stumbled and been badly hit in his fall, but there were no signs of permanent evil in his countenance. He was square-headed, close-cropped, clear-eyed, though his face was yellow where it was not red, and his tongue was soft in his head. Dyck read the paper slowly and carefully. Then he handed it back without a word. "Well, what have you got to say?" asked Ferens. "Nothing? Don't you think that's a strong list of grievances and wrongs?" Dyck nodded. "Yes, it's pretty strong," he said, and he held up his hand. "Number One, wages and cost of living. I'm sure we're right there. Cost of living was down in King Charles's time, and wages were down accordingly. Everything's gone up, and wages should go up. Number Two, the prize-money scandal. I'm with you there. I don't see why an officer should get two thousand five hundred times as much as a seaman. There ought to be a difference, but not so much. Number Three, the food ought to be better; the water ought to be better. We can't live on rum, maggoty bread, and foul water--that's sure. The rum's all right; it's powerful natural stuff, but we ought to have meat that doesn't stink, and bread that isn't alive. What's more, we ought to have lots of lime- juice, or there's no protection for us when we're out at sea with the best meat taken by the officers and the worst left to us; and with foul water and rotten food, there's no hope or help. But, if we're going in for this sort of thing, we ought to do it decently. We can't slap a government in the mouth, and we can't kick an admiral without paying heavy for it in the end. If it's wholesome petitioning you're up to, I'm with you; but I'm not if there's to be knuckle-dusting." Ferens shrugged a shoulder. "Things are movin', and we've got to take our stand now when the time is ripe for it, or else lose it for ever. Over at Spithead they're gettin' their own way. The government are goin' to send the Admiralty Board down here, because our admiral say to them that it won't be safe goin' unless they do." "And what are we going to do here?" asked Dyck. "What's the game of the fleet at the Nore?" Ferens replied in a low voice: "Our men are goin' to send out petitions--to the Admiralty and to the House of Commons." "Why don't you try Lord Howe?" "He's not in command of a fleet now. Besides, petitions have been sent him, and he's taken no notice." "Howe? No notice--the best admiral we ever had! I don't believe it," declared Dyck savagely. "Why, the whole navy believes in Howe. They haven't forgotten what he did in '94. He's as near to the seaman as the seaman is to his mother. Who sent the petitions to him?" "They weren't signed by names--they were anonymous." Dyck laughed. "Yes, and all written by the same hand, I suppose." Ferens nodded. "I think that's so." "Can you wonder, then, that Lord Howe didn't acknowledge them? But I'm still sure he acted promptly. He's a big enough friend of the sailor to waste no time before doing his turn." Ferens shook his head morosely. "That may be," he said; "but the petitions were sent weeks ago, and there's no sign from Lord Howe. He was at Bath for gout. My idea is he referred them to the admiral commanding at Portsmouth, and was told that behind the whole thing is conspiracy--French socialism and English politics. I give you my word there's no French agent in the fleet, and if there were, it wouldn't have any effect. Our men's grievances are not new. They're as old as Cromwell." Suddenly a light of suspicion flashed into Ferens's face. "You're with us, aren't you? You see the wrongs we've suffered, and how bad it all is! Yet you haven't been on a voyage with us. You've only tasted the life in harbour. Good God, this life is heaven to what we have at sea! We don't mind the fightin'. We'd rather fight than eat." An evil grin covered his face for a minute. "Yes, we'd rather fight than eat, for the stuff we get to eat is hell's broil, God knows! Did you ever think what the life of the sailor is, that swings at the top of a mast with the frost freezin' his very soul, and because he's slow, owin' to the cold, gets twenty lashes for not bein' quicker? Well, I've seen that, and a bad sight it is. Did you ever see a man flogged? It ain't a pretty sight. First the back takes the click of the whip like a damned washboard, and you see the ridges rise and go purple and red, and the man has his breath knocked clean out of him with every blow. Nearly every stroke takes off the skin and draws the blood, and a dozen will make the back a ditch of murder. Then the whipper stops, looks at the lashes, feels them tender like, and out and down it comes again. When all the back is ridged and scarred, the flesh, that looked clean and beautiful, becomes a bloody mass. Some men get a hundred lashes, and that's torture and death. "A man I knew was flogged told me once that the first blow made his flesh quiver in every nerve from his toe-nails to his finger-nails, and stung his heart as if a knife had gone through his body. There was agony in his lungs, and the time between each stroke was terrible, and yet the next came too soon. He choked with the blood from his tongue, lacerated with his teeth, and from his lungs, and went black in the face. I saw his back. It looked like roasted meat; yet he had only had eighty strokes. "The punishments are bad. Runnin' the gauntlet is one of them. Each member of the crew is armed with three tarry rope-yarns, knotted at the ends. Then between the master-at-arms with a drawn sword and two corporals with drawn swords behind, the thief, stripped to the waist, is placed. The thing is started by a boatswain's mate givin' him a dozen lashes. Then he's slowly marched down the double line of men, who flog him as he passes, and at the end of the line he receives another dose of the cat from the boatswain's mate. The poor devil's body and head are flayed, and he's sent to hospital and rubbed with brine till he's healed. "But the most horrible of all is flogging through the fleet. That's given for strikin' an officer, or tryin' to escape. It's a sickenin' thing. The victim is lashed by his wrists to a capstan-bar in the ship's long-boat, and all the ship's boats are lowered also, and each ship in harbour sends a boat manned by marines to attend. Then, with the master- at-arms and the ship's surgeon, the boat is cast off. The boatswain's mate begins the floggin', and the boat rows away to the half-minute bell, the drummer beatin' the rogue's march. From ship to ship the long-boat goes, and the punishment of floggin' is repeated. If he faints, he gets wine or rum, or is taken back to his ship to recover. When his back is healed he goes out to get the rest of his sentence. Very few ever live through it, or if they do it's only for a short time. They'd better have taken the hangin' that was the alternative. Even a corpse with its back bare of flesh to the bone has received the last lashes of a sentence, and was then buried in the mud of the shore with no religious ceremony. "Mind you, there's many a man gets fifty lashes that don't deserve them. There's many men in the fleet that's stirred to anger at ill-treatment, until now, in these days, the whole lot is ready to see the thing through--to see the thing through--by heaven and by hell!" The pockmarked face had taken on an almost ghastly fervour, until it looked like a distorted cartoon-vindictive, fanatical; but Dyck, on the edge of the river of tragedy, was not ready to lose himself in the stream of it. As he looked round the ship he felt a stir of excitement like nothing he had ever known, though he had been brought up in a country where men were by nature revolutionists, and where the sword was as often outside as inside the scabbard. There was something terrible in a shipboard agitation not to be found in a land-rising. On land there were a thousand miles of open country, with woods and houses, caves and cliffs, to which men could flee for hiding; and the danger of rebellion was less dominant. At sea, a rebellion was like some beastly struggle in one room, beyond the walls of which was everlasting nothingness. The thing had to be fought out, as it were, man to man within four walls, and God help the weaker! "How many ships in the fleet are sworn to this agitation?" Dyck asked presently. "Every one. It's been like a spread of infection; it's entered at every door, looked out of every window. All the ships are in it, from the twenty-six-hundred-tonners to the little five-hundred-and-fifty-tonners. Besides, there are the Delegates." He lowered his voice as he used these last words. "Yes, I know," Dyck answered, though he did not really know. "But who is at the head?" "Why, as bold a man as can be--Richard Parker, an Irishman. He was once a junior naval officer, and left the navy and went into business; now he is a quotaman, and leads the mutiny. Let me tell you that unless there's a good round answer to what we demand, the Nore fleet'll have it out with the government. He's a man of character, is Richard Parker, and the fleet'll stand by him." "How long has he been at it?" asked Dyck. "Oh, weeks and weeks! It doesn't all come at once, the grip of the thing. It began at Spithead, and it worked right there; and now it's workin' at the Nore, and it'll work and work until there isn't a ship and there isn't a man that won't be behind the Delegates. Look. Half the seamen on this ship have tasted the inside of a jail; and the rest come from the press-gang, and what's left are just the ragged ends of street corners. But"--and here the man drew himself up with a flush--"but there's none of us that wouldn't fight to the last gasp of breath for the navy that since the days of Elizabeth has sailed at the head of all the world. Don't think we mean harm to the fleet. We mean to do it good. All we want is that its masters shall remember we're human flesh and blood; that we're as much entitled to good food and drink on sea as on land; and that, if we risk our lives and shed our blood, we ought to have some share in the spoils. We're a great country and we're a great people, but, by God, we're not good to our own! Look at them there." He turned and waved a hand to the bowels of the ship where sailors traded with the slop-sellers, or chaffered with women, or sat in groups and sang, or played rough games which had no vital meaning; while here and there in groups, with hands gesticulating, some fanatics declared their principles. And the principles of every man in the Nore fleet so far were embraced in the four words--wages, food, drink, prize-money. Presently Ferens stopped short. "Listen!" he said. There was a cry from the ship's side not far away, and then came little bursts of cheering. "By Heaven, it's the Delegates comin' here!" he said. He held up a warning palm, as though commanding silence, while he listened intently. "Yes, it's the Delegates. Now look at that crowd of seamen!" He swung his hand towards the bowels of the ship. Scores of men were springing to their feet. Presently there came a great shouting and cheers, and then four new faces appeared on deck. They were faces of intelligence, but one of them had the enlightened look of leadership. "By Judas, it's our leader, Richard Parker!" declared Ferens. What Dyck now saw was good evidence of the progress of the agitation. There were officers of the Ariadne to be seen, but they wisely took no notice of the breaches of regulation which followed the arrival of the Delegates. Dyck saw Ferens speak to Richard Parker after the men had been in conference with Parker and the Delegates, and then turn towards himself. Richard Parker came to him. "We are fellow countrymen," he said genially. "I know your history. We are out to make the navy better--to get the men their rights. I understand you are with us?" Dyck bowed. "I will do all possible to get reforms in wages and food put through, sir." "That's good," said Parker. "There are some petitions you can draft, and some letters also to the Admiralty and to the Houses of Lords and Commons." "I am at your service," said Dyck. He saw his chance to secure influence on the Ariadne, and also to do good to the service. Besides, he felt he might be able to check the worst excesses of the agitation, if he got power under Parker. He was free from any wish for mutiny, but he was the friend of an agitation which might end as successfully as the trouble at Spithead. CHAPTER XIII TO THE WEST INDIES A fortnight later the mutiny at the Nore shook and bewildered the British Isles. In the public journals and in Parliament it was declared that this outbreak, like that at Spithead, was due partly to political strife, but more extensively to agents of revolution from France and Ireland. The day after Richard Parker visited the Ariadne the fleet had been put under the control of the seamen's Delegates, who were men of standing in the ships, and of personal popularity. Their first act was to declare that the fleet should not leave port until the men's demands were satisfied. The King, Prime Minister, and government had received a shock greater than that which had come with the announcement of American independence. The government had armed the forts at Sheerness, had sent troops and guns to Gravesend and Tilbury, and had declared war upon the rebellious fleet. At the head of the Delegates, Richard Parker, with an officer's knowledge, became a kind of bogus admiral, who, in interview with the real admirals and the representatives of the Admiralty Board, talked like one who, having power, meant to use it ruthlessly. The government had yielded to the Spithead mutineers, giving pardon to all except the ringleaders, and granting demands for increased wages and better food, with a promise to consider the question of prize-money; but the Nore mutineers refused to accept that agreement, and enlarged the Spithead demands. Admiral Buckner arrived on board his flag-ship, the Sandwich, without the deference due to an admiral, and then had to wait three hours for Parker and the Delegates on the quarter-deck. At the interview that followed, while apologizing to the admiral for his discourtesy, Parker wore his hat as quasi-admiral of the fleet. The demands of the Delegates were met by reasoning on the part of Buckner, but without effect: for the seamen of the Nore believed that what Spithead could get by obstinacy the Nore could increase by contumacy; and it was their firm will to bring the Lords of the Admiralty to their knees. The demands of the Nore Delegates, however, were rejected by the Admiralty, and with the rejection two regiments of militia came from Canterbury to reinforce the Sheerness garrison. The mutineers were allowed to parade the town, so long as their conduct was decent, as Admiral Buckner admitted it to be; but Parker declared that the presence of the militia was an insult to the seamen in the Nore fleet. Then ensued the beginning of the terror. When Buckner presented the Admiralty's refusal to deal with the Delegates, there came quick response. The reply of the mutineers was to row into Sheerness harbour and take away with them eight gunboats lying there, each of which fired a shot at the fort, as if to announce that the mutineers were now the avowed enemies of the government. Thereupon the rebels ordered all their ships together at the Great Nore, ranging them into two crescents, with the newly acquired gunboats at the flanks. The attitude of the authorities gave the violent mutineers their opportunity. Buckner's flag was struck from the mainmast-head of the Sandwich, and the red flag was hoisted in its place. The Delegates would not accept an official pardon for their mutiny through Buckner. They demanded a deputation from the Admiralty, Parker saying that no accommodation could occur without the appearance of the Lords of the Admiralty at the Nore. Then followed threatening arrangements, and the Delegates decided to blockade the Thames and the Medway. It was at this time that Dyck Calhoun--who, by consent of Richard Parker, had taken control of the Ariadne--took action which was to alter the course of his own life and that of many others. Since the beginning of the mutiny he had acted with decision, judgment, and strength. He had agreed to the Ariadne joining the mutinous ships, and he had skilfully constructed petitions to the Admiralty, the House of Commons, and the King. His habit of thought, his knowledge of life, made him a power. He believed that the main demands of the seamen were just, and he made a useful organization to enforce them. It was only when he saw the mutineers would not accept the terms granted to the Spithead rebels that a new spirit influenced him. He had determined to get control of the Ariadne. His gift as a speaker had conquered his fellow-sailors, and the fact that he was an ex-convict gave them confidence that he was no friend of the government. One of the first things he did, after securing his own pre-eminence on the ship, was to get the captain and officers safely ashore. This he did with skill, and the crew of the ship even cheered them as they left. None of the regular officers of the Ariadne were left upon her, except Greenock, the master of the ship, whose rank was below that of lieutenant, and whose duties were many and varied under the orders of the captain. Greenock chose to stay, though Dyck said he could go if he wished. Greenock's reply was that it was his duty to stay, if the ship was going to remain at sea, for no one else could perform his duties or do his work. Then, by vote, Dyck became captain of the ship. He did not, however, wear a captain's uniform--blue coat, with white cuffs, flat gold buttons; with lace at the neck, a white-sleeved waistcoat, knee-breeches, white silk stockings, and a three-cornered black hat edged with gold lace and ornamented with a cockade; with a black cravat, a straight dress sword, a powdered cue tied with a black-silk ribbon, and epaulets of heavy gold stuff completing the equipment. Dyck, to the end of his career at sea, wore only the common seaman's uniform. Dyck would not have accepted the doubtful honour had he not had long purposes in view. With Ferens, Michael Clones, and two others whom Ferens could trust, a plan was arranged which Dyck explained to his fellow-seamen on the Ariadne. "We've come to the parting of the ways, brothers," he said. "We've all become liable to death for mutiny. The pardon offered by the King has been refused, and fresh demands are made. There, I think, a real wrong has been done by our people. The Ariadne is well supplied with food and water. It is the only ship with sufficiency. And why? Because at the beginning we got provisions from the shore in time; also we got permission from Richard Parker to fill our holds from two stopped merchant-ships. Well, the rest of the fleet know what our food and drink fitment is. They know how safe we are, and to-day orders have come to yield our provisions to the rest of the fleet. That is, we, who have taken time by the forelock, must yield up our good gettings to bad receivers. I am not prepared to do it. "On shore the Admiralty have stopped the supply of provisions to us and to all the fleet. Our men have been arrested at Gravesend, Tilbury, and Sheerness. The fleet could not sail now if it wished; but one ship can sail, and it is ours. The fleet hasn't the food to sail. On Richard Parker's ship, the Sandwich, there is food only for a week. The others are almost as bad. We are in danger of being attacked. Sir Erasmus Gower, of the Neptune, has a fleet of warships, gunboats, and amateur armed vessels getting ready to attack us. The North Sea fleet has come to help us, but that doesn't save us. I'll say this--we are loyal men in this fleet, otherwise our ships would have joined the enemy in the waters of France or Holland. They can't go now, in any case. The men have lost heart. Confidence in our cause has declined. The government sent Lords of the Admiralty here, and they offered pardon if we accepted the terms of the Spithead settlement. We declined the terms. That was a bad day for us, and put every one of our heads in a noose. "For the moment we have a majority in men and ships; but we can't renew our food or drink, or ammunition. The end is sure against us. Our original agitation was just; our present obduracy is madness. This ship is suspected. It is believed by the rest of the fleet--by ships like the Invincible--that we're weak-kneed, selfish, and lacking in fidelity to the cause. That's not true; but we have either to fight or to run, and perhaps to do both. "Make no mistake. The government are not cowards; the Admiralty are gentlemen of determination. If men like Admiral Howe support the Admiralty--Howe, one of the best friends the seaman ever had--what do you think the end will be? Have you heard what happened at Spithead? The seamen chivvied Admiral Alan Gardner and his colleagues aboard a ship. He caught hold of a seaman Delegate by the collar and shook him. They closed in on him. They handled him roughly. He sprang on the hammock- nettings, put the noose of the hanging-rope round his neck, and said to the men who advanced menacingly: "'If you will return to your duty, you may hang me at the yard-arm!' "That's the kind of stuff our admirals are made of. We have no quarrel with the majority of our officers. They're straight, they're honest, and they're true to their game. Our quarrel is with Parliament and the Admiralty; our struggle is with the people of the kingdom, who have not seen to it that our wrongs are put right, that we have food to eat, water to drink, and money to spend." He waved a hand, as though to sweep away the criticisms he felt must be rising against him. "Don't think because I've spent four years in prison under the sternest discipline the world offers, and have never been a seaman before, that I'm not fitted to espouse your cause. By heaven, I am--I am--I am-- I know the wrongs you've suffered. I've smelled the water you drink. I've tasted the rotten meat. I've seen the honest seaman who has been for years upon the main--I've seen the scars upon his back got from a brutal officer who gave him too big a job to do, and flogged him for not doing it. I know of men who, fevered with bad food, have fallen, from the mainmast-head, or have slipped overboard, glad to go, because of the wrongs they'd suffered. "I'll tell you what our fate will be, and then I'll put a question to you. We must either give up our stock of provisions or run for it. Parker and the other Delegates proclaim their comradeship; yet they have hidden from us the king's proclamation and the friendly resolutions of the London merchants. I say our only hope is to escape from the Thames. I know that skill will be needed, but if we escape, what then? I say if we escape, because, as we sail out, orders will be given for the other mutiny ships to attack us. We shall be fired on; we shall risk our lives. You've done that before, however, and will do it again. "We have to work out our own problem and fight our own fight. Well, what I want to know is this--are we to give in to the government, or do we stand to be hammered by Sir Erasmus Gower? Remember what that means. It means that if we fight the government ships, we must either die in battle, or die with the ropes round our necks. There is another way. I'm not inclined to surrender, or to stand by men who have botched our business for us. I'm for making for the sea, and, when I get there, I'm for striking for the West Indies, where there's a British fleet fighting Britain's enemies, and for joining in and fighting with them. I'm for getting out of this river and away from England. It's a bold plan, but it's a good one. I want to know if you're with me. Remember, there's danger getting out, and there's danger when and if we get out. The other ships may pursue us. The Portsmouth fleet may nab us. We may be caught, and, if we are, we must take the dose prepared for us; but I'm for making a strong rush, going without fear, and asking no favour. I won't surrender here; it's too cowardly. I want to know, will you come to the open sea with me?" There were many shouts of assent from the crowd, though here and there came a growl of dissent. "Not all of you are willing to come with me," Dyck continued vigorously. "Tell me, what is it you expect to get by staying here? You're famished when you're not poisoned; you're badly clothed and badly fed; you're kept together by flogging; you're treated worse than a convict in jail or a victim in a plague hospital. You're not paid as well as your grandfathers were, and you're punished worse. Here, on the Ariadne, we're not skulkers. We don't fear our duty; we are loyal men. Many of you, on past voyages, fighting the enemy, lived on burgoo and molasses only, with rum and foul water to drink. On the other ships there have been terrible cruelty and offence. Surgeons have neglected and ill- treated sick men and embezzled provisions and drinks intended for the invalids. Many a man has died because of the neglect of the ship's surgeons; many have been kicked about the head and beaten, and haven't dared to go on the sick list for fear of their officers. The Victualling Board gets money to supply us with food and drink according to measure. They get the money for a full pound and a full gallon, and we get fourteen ounces of food and seven pints of liquor, or less. Well, what do you say, friends, to being our own Victualling Board out in the open sea, if we can get there? "We may have to fight when we get out; but I'm for taking the Ariadne into the great world battle when we can find it. This I want to ask-- isn't it worth while making a great fight in our own way, and showing that British seamen can at once be mutineers and patriots? We have a pilot who knows the river. We can go to the West Indian Islands, to the British fleet there. It's doom and death to stay here; and it may be doom and death to go. If we try to break free, and are fired on, the Admiralty may approve of us, because we've broken away from the rest. See now, isn't that the thing to do? I'm for getting out. Who's coming with me?" Suddenly a burly sailor pushed forward. He had the head of a viking. His eyes were strong with enterprise. He had a hand like a ham, with long, hairy fingers. "Captain," said he, "you've put the thing so there can be only one answer to it. As for me, I'm sick of the way this mutiny has been bungled from first to last. There's been one good thing about it only--we've got order without cruelty, we've rebelled without ravagement; but we've missed the way, and we didn't deal with the Admiralty commissioners as we ought. So I'm for joining up with the captain here"--he waved a hand towards Dyck--"and making for open sea. As sure as God's above, they'll try to hammer us; but it's the only way." He held a handkerchief-a dirty, red silk thing. "See," he continued, "the wind is right to take us out. The other ships won't know what we're going to do until we start. I'm for getting off. I'm a pressed man. I haven't seen my girl for five years, and they won't let me free in port to go and see her. Nothing can be worse than what we have to suffer now, so let's make a break for it. That's what I say. Come, now, lads, three cheers for Captain Calhoun!" A half-hour later, on the captain's deck, Dyck gave the order to pass eastward. It was sunset when they started, and they had not gone a thousand yards before some of the mutineering ships opened fire on the Ariadne. The breeze was good, however, and she sailed bravely through the leaden storm. Once twice--thrice she was hit, but she sped on. Two men were killed and several were wounded. Sails were torn, and the high bulkheads were broken; but, without firing a shot in reply, the Ariadne swung clear at last of the hostile ships and reached safe water. On the edge of the open sea Dyck took stock of the position. The Ariadne had been hit several times, and the injury done her was marked. Before morning the dead seamen were sunk in watery graves, and the wounded were started back to health again. By daylight the Ariadne was well away from the land. The first thing Dyck had done, after escaping from the river, was to study the wants of the Ariadne and make an estimate for the future with Greenock, the master. He calculated they had food and water enough to last for three months, even with liberal provisioning. Going among the crew, he realized there was no depression among them; that they seemed to care little where they were going. It was, however, quite clear they wished to fight--to fight the foes of England. He knew his task was a hard one, and that all efforts at discipline would have dangers. He knew, also, that he could have no authority, save personality and success. He set himself, therefore, to win the confidence of Greenock and the crew, and he began discipline at once. He knew that a reaction must come; that the crew, loose upon their own trail, would come to regret the absence of official command. He realized that many of them would wish to return to the fleet at the Nore, but while the weather was good he did not fear serious trouble. The danger would come in rough weather or on a becalmed sea. They had passed Beachy Head in the mist. They had seen no battle-ship, and had sighted no danger, as they made their way westward through the Channel. There had been one moment of anxiety. That was when they passed Portsmouth, and had seen in the far distance, to the right of them, the mastheads of Admiral Gardner's fleet. It was here that Dyck's orderly, Michael Clones, was useful. He brought word of murmuring among the more brutish of the crew, that some of them wished to join Gardner's fleet. At this news, Dyck went down among the men. It was an unusual thing to do, but it brought matters to an issue. Among the few dissatisfied sailors was one Nick Swaine, who had been the cause of more trouble on the Ariadne than any other. He had a quarrelsome mind; he had been influenced by the writings of Wolfe Tone, the Irish rebel. One of the secrets of Dyck's control of the crew was the fact that he was a gentleman, and was born in the ruling class, and this was anathema to Nick Swaine. His view of democracy was ignorance controlling ignorance. By nature he was insolent, but under the system of control pursued by the officers of the Ariadne, previous to the mutiny, he had not been able to do much. The system had bound him down. He had been the slave of habit, custom, and daily duty. His record, therefore, was fairly clean until two days after the escape from the Thames and the sighting of the Portsmouth fleet. Then all his revolutionary spirit ran riot in him. Besides, the woman to whom he had become attached at the Nore had been put ashore on the day Dyck gained control. It roused his enmity now. When Dyck came down, he had the gunners called to him, admonishing them that drill must go on steadily, and promising them good work to do. Then he turned to the ordinary seamen. At this moment Nick Swaine strode forward within a dozen feet of Dyck. "Look there!" he said, and he jerked a finger towards the distant Portsmouth fleet. "Look there! You've passed that." Dyck shrugged a shoulder. "I meant to pass it," he said quietly. "Give orders to make for it," said Nick with a sullen eye. "I shall not. And look you, my man, keep a civil tongue to me, who command this ship, or I'll have you put in irons." "Have me put in irons!" Swaine cried hotly. "This isn't Dublin jail. You can't do what you like here. Who made you captain of this ship?" "Those who made me captain will see my orders carried out. Now, get you back with the rest, or I'll see if they still hold good." Dyck waved a hand. "Get back when I tell you, Swaine !" "When you've turned the ship to the Portsmouth fleet I'll get back, and not till then." Dyck made a motion of the hand to some boatswains standing by. Before they could arrest him, Swaine flung himself towards Dyck with a knife in his hand. Dyck's hand was quicker, however. His pistol flung out, a shot was fired, and the knife dropped from the battered fingers of Nick Swaine. "Have his wounds dressed, then put him in irons," Dyck commanded. From that moment, in good order and in good weather, the Ariadne sped on her way westward and southward. CHAPTER XIV IN THE NICK OF TIME Perhaps no mutineer in the history of the world ever succeeded, as did Dyck Calhoun, in holding control over fellow-mutineers on the journey from the English Channel to the Caribbean Sea. As a boy, Dyck had been an expert sailor, had studied the machinery of a man-of-war, and his love of the sea was innate and deep-seated; but his present success was based upon more than experience. Quite apart from the honour of his nature, prison had deepened in him the hatred of injustice. In soul he was bitter; in body he was healthy, powerful, and sane. Slowly, sternly, yet tactfully, he had broken down the many customs of ship life injurious to the welfare of the men. Under his system the sailors had good coffee for breakfast, instead of a horrible mixture made of burnt biscuits cooked in foul water. He gave the men pea-soup and rice instead of burgoo and the wretched oatmeal mess which was the staple thing for breakfast. He saw to it that the meat was no longer a hateful, repulsive mass, two-thirds bone and gristle, and before it came into the cook's hands capable of being polished like mahogany. He threatened the cook with punishment if he found the meals ill-cooked. In all the journey to the West Indian seas there had been only three formal floggings. His attitude was not that of the commander who declared: "I will see the man's backbone, by God!" He wished to secure discipline without cruelty. His greatest difficulty, at the start, was in making lieutenants. That he overcame by appointing senior midshipmen before the Ariadne was out of the Channel. He offered a lieutenancy to Ferens, who had the courage to decline it. "Make me purser," remarked Ferens. "Make me purser, and I'll do the job justly." As the purser of the Ariadne had been sent to the sick-bay and was likely to die (and did die subsequently), Ferens was put into his uniform-three- cornered cocked hat, white knee-breeches, and white stockings. The purser of a man-of-war was generally a friend of the captain, going with him from ship to ship. Of the common sailors, on the whole, Dyck had little doubt. He had informed them that, whatever happened, they should not be in danger; that the ship should not join the West Indian fleet unless every man except himself received amnesty. If the amnesty was not granted, then one of two things should happen--the ship must make for a South American port, or she must fight. Fighting would not frighten these men. It was rather among the midshipmen that Dyck looked for trouble. Sometimes, with only two years' training at Gosport, a youngster became a midshipman on first going to sea, and he could begin as early as eleven years of age. A second-rate ship like the Ariadne carried eighteen midshipmen; and as six lieutenants were appointed from them, only twelve remained. From these twelve, in the dingy after-cockpit, where the superficial area was not more than twelve square feet; where the air was foul, and the bilges reeked with a pestilential stench; where the purser's store-room near gave out the smell of rancid butter and poisonous cheese; where the musty taint of old ropes came to them, there was a spirit of danger. Dyck was right in thinking that in the midshipmen's dismal berth the first flowers of revolt to his rule would bloom. Sailors, even as low as the pig-sty men, had some idea of fair play; and as the weeks that had passed since they left the Thames had given them better food and drink, and lessened the severity of those above them, real obedience had come. It was not strange that the ship ran well, for all the officers under the new conditions, except Dyck himself, had had previous experience. The old lieutenants had gone, but midshipmen, who in any case were trained, had taken their places. The rest of the ship's staff were the same, except the captain; and as Dyck had made a friend of Greenock the master, a man of glumness, the days were peaceful enough during the voyage to the Caribbean Sea. The majority saw that every act of Dyck had proved him just and capable. He had rigidly insisted on gun practice; he had keyed up the marines to a better spirit, and churlishness had been promptly punished. He was, in effect, what the sailors called a "rogue," or a "taut one"--seldom smiling, gaunt of face but fearless of eye, and with a body free from fatigue. As the weather grew warmer and the days longer, and they drew near to the coast of Jamaica, a stir of excitement was shown. "You'd like to know what I'm going to do, Michael, I suppose?" said Dyck one morning, as he drank his coffee and watched the sun creeping up the sky. "Well, in three days we shall know what's to become of us, and I have no doubt or fear. This ship's a rebel, but it's returning to duty. We've shown them how a ship can be run with good food and drink and fair dealing, and, please God, we'll have some work to do now that belongs to a man-of-war!" "Sir, I know what you mean to do," replied Michael. "You mean to get all of us off by giving yourself up." "Well, some one has to pay for what we've done, Michael." A dark, ruthless light came into Dyck's eyes. "Some one's got to pay." A grim smile crossed his face. "We've done the forbidden thing; we've mutinied and taken to the open sea. We were fired on by the other mutiny ships, and that will help our sailors, but it won't help me. I'm the leader. We ought, of course, to have taken refuge with the nearest squadron of the king's ships. Well, I've run my luck, and I'll have to pay." He scratched his chin with a thumb-nail-a permanent physical trait. "You see, the government has pardoned all the sailors, and will hang only the leaders. I expect Parker is hung already. Well, I'm the leader on the Ariadne. I'm taking this ship straight to his majesty's West Indian fleet, in thorough discipline, and I'll hand it over well-found, well- manned, well-officered, on condition that all go free except myself. I came aboard a common sailor, a quota man, a prison-bird, penniless. Well, have I shown that I can run a ship? Have I learned the game of control? During the weeks we've been at sea, bursting along, have I proved myself?" Michael smiled. "What did I say to you the first night on board, sir? Didn't I say they'd make an officer of you when they found out what brains you had? By St. Patrick, you've made yourself captain with the good-will of all, and your iron hand has held the thing together. You've got a great head, too, sir." Dyck looked at him with a face in which the far future showed. "Michael, I've been lucky. I've had good men about me. God only knows what would have happened to me if the master hadn't been what he is--a gentleman who knows his job-aye, a gentleman through and through! If he had gone against me, Michael"--he flicked a finger to the sky--"well, that much for my chances! I'd have been dropped overboard, or stabbed in my cabin, as was that famous Captain Pigot, son of an admiral, who had as much soul as you'd find in a stone-quarry. When two men had dropped from the masts, hurrying to get down because of his threat that the last man should be thrashed--when the two men lay smashed to pieces at his feet, Pigot said: 'Heave the lubbers overboard.' That night, Michael, the seamen rose, crept to his cabin, stabbed him to death, pitched his body overboard, put his lieutenants to sea in open boats, and then ran away to South America. Well, I've escaped that fate, because this was a good ship, and all the officers knew their business, and did it without cruelty. I've been well served. It was a great thing making the new lieutenants from the midshipmen. There never was a better lot on board a ship." Michael's face clouded. "Sir, that's true. The new lieutenants have done their work well, but them that's left behind in the midshipmen's berth--do you think they're content? No, sir. The only spot on board this ship where there lurks an active spirit against you is in the midshipmen's berth. Mischief's there, and that's what's brought me to you now." Dyck smiled. "I know that. I've had my eye on the midshipmen. I've never trusted them. They're a hard lot; but if the rest of the ship is with me, I'll deal with them promptly. They're not clever or bold enough to do their job skilfully. They've got some old hands down there-- hammock-men, old stagers of the sea that act as servants to them. What line do they take?" Michael laughed softly. "What I know I've got from two of them, and it is this--the young gentlemen'll try to get control of the ship." The cynicism deepened in Dyck's face. "Get control of the ship, eh? Well, it'll be a new situation on a king's ship if midshipmen succeed where the rest dare not try. Now, mark what I'm going to do." He called, and a marine showed himself. "The captain's compliments to the master, and his presence here at once. Michael," he continued presently, "what fools they are! They're scarcely a baker's dozen, and none of them has skill to lead. Why, the humblest sailor would have more sense than to start a revolt, the success of which depends upon his personal influence, and the failure of which must end in his own ruin. Does any one think they're the kind to lead a mutiny within a mutiny? Listen to me I'm not cruel, but I'll put an end to this plot. We're seven hundred on this ship, and she's a first-class sailer. I warrant no ship ever swam the seas that looks better going than she does. So we've got to see that her, record is kept clean as a mutineer." At that moment the master appeared. He saluted. "Greenock," said Dyck, "I wonder if you've noticed the wind blowing chilly from the midshipmen's berth." A lurking devilish humour shot from Greenock's eyes. "Aye, I've smelled that wind." "Greenock, we're near the West Indian Islands. Before we eat many meals we'll see land. We may pass French ships, and we may have to fight. Well, we've had a good running, master; so I'll tell you what I mean to do." He then briefly repeated what he had said to Michael, and added "Greenock, in this last to-do, I shall be the only man in danger. The king's amnesty covers every one except the leaders--that lets you off. The Delegate of the Ariadne is aboard the Invincible, if he's not been hanged. I'm the only one left on the Ariadne. I've had a good time, Greenock--thanks to you, chiefly. I think the men are ready for anything that'll come; but I also think we should guard against a revolt of the midshipmen by healthy discipline now. Therefore I'll instruct the lieutenants to spread-eagle every midshipman for twelve hours. There's a stiff wind; there's a good stout spray, and the wind and spray should cool their hot souls. Meanwhile, though without food, they shall have water as they need it. If at the end of the twelve hours any still seems to be difficult, give him another twelve. Look!" He stretched out a hand to the porthole on his right. "Far away in front are islands. You cannot see them yet, but those little thickening mists in the distance mean land. Those are the islands in front of the Windward Passage. I think it would be a good lesson for the young gentlemen to be spread-eagled against the mists of their future. It shall be' done at once; and pass the word why it's done." An hour later there was laughter in every portion of the ship, for the least popular members of the whole personnel were being dragooned into discipline. The sailors had seen individual midshipmen spread-eagled and mastheaded, while all save those they could bribe were forbidden to bring them drink or food; but here was a whole body of junior officers, punished en masse, as it were, lashed to the rigging and taking the wind and the spray in their teeth. Before the day was over, the whole ship was alive with anticipation, for, in the far distance, could be seen the dark blue and purplish shadows which told of land; and this brought the minds of all to the end of their journey, with thoughts of the crisis near. Word had been passed that all on board were considered safe--all except the captain who had manoeuvred them to the entrance of the Caribbean Sea. Had he been of their own origin, they would not have placed so much credence in the rumour; but coming as he did of an ancient Irish family, although he had been in jail for killing, the traditional respect for the word of a gentleman influenced them. When a man like Ferens, on the one hand, and the mutineer whose fingers had been mutilated by Dyck in the Channel, on the other--when these agreed to bend themselves to the rule of a usurper, some idea of Calhoun's power may be got. On this day, with the glimmer of land in the far distance, the charges of all the guns were renewed. Also word was passed that at any moment the ship must be cleared for action. Down in the cockpit the tables were got ready by the surgeon and the loblolly-boys; the magazines were opened, and the guards were put on duty. Orders were issued that none should be allowed to escape active share in the coming battle; that none should retreat to the orlop deck or the lower deck; that the boys should carry the cartridge-cases handed to them from the magazine under the cover of their coats, running hard to the guns. The twenty-four-pounders-the largest guns in use at the time-the eighteen-pounders, and the twelve-pounder guns were all in good order. The bags of iron balls called grape-shot-the worst of all--varying in size from sixteen to nine balls in a bag, were prepared. Then the canister, which produced ghastly murder, chain-shot to bring down masts and spars, langrel to fire at masts and rigging, and the dismantling shot to tear off sails, were all made ready. The muskets for the marines, the musketoons, the pistols, the cutlasses, the boarding-pikes, the axes or tomahawks, the bayonets and sailors' knives, were placed conveniently for use. A bevy of men were kept busy cleaning the round shot of rust, and there was not a man on the ship who did not look with pride at the guns, in their paint of grey-blue steel, with a scarlet band round the muzzle. To the right of the Ariadne was the coast of Cuba; to the left was the coast of Haiti, both invisible to the eye. Although the knowledge that they were nearing land had already given the officers and men a feeling of elation, the feeling was greatly intensified as they came through the Turk Island Passage, which is a kind of gateway to the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti. The glory of the sunny, tropical world was upon the ship and upon the sea; it crept into the blood of every man, and the sweet summer weather gave confidence to their minds. It was a day which only those who know tropical and semitropical seas can understand. It had the sense of soaking luxury. In his cabin, with the ship's chart on the table before him, Dyck Calhoun studied the course of the Ariadne. The wind was fair and good, the sea- birds hovered overhead. From a distant part of the ship came the sound of men's voices in song. They were singing "Spanish Ladies": "We hove our ship to when the wind was sou'west, boys, We hove our ship to for to strike soundings clear; Then we filled our main tops'l and bore right away, boys, And right up the Channel our course did we steer. "We'll rant and we'll roar like true British sailors, We'll range and we'll roam over all the salt seas, Until we strike soundings in the Channel of old England From Ushant to Scilly 'tis thirty-five leagues." Dyck raised his head, and a smile came to his lips. "Yes, you sing of a Channel, my lads, but it's a long way there, as you'll find. I hope to God they give us some fighting! . . . Well, what is it?" he asked of a marine who appeared in his doorway. "The master of the ship begs to see you, sir," was the reply. A moment afterwards Greenock entered. He asked Dyck several questions concerning the possible fighting, the disposition of ammunition and all that, and said at last: "I think we shall be of use, sir. The ship's all right now." "As right as anything human can be. I've got faith in my star, master." A light came into the other man's dour face. "I wish you'd get into uniform, sir." "Uniform? No, Greenock! No, I use the borrowed power, but not the borrowed clothes. I'm a common sailor, and I wear the common sailor's clothes. You've earned your uniform, and it suits you. Stick to it; and when I've earned a captain's uniform I'll wear it. I owe you the success of this voyage so far, and my heart is full of it, up to the brim. Hark, what's that?" "By God, it's guns, sir! There's fighting on!" "Fighting!" Dyck stood for a minute with head thrust forward, eyes fixed upon the distant mists ahead. The rumble of the guns came faintly through the air. An exultant look came into his face. "Master, the game's with us--it is fighting! I know the difference between the two sets of guns, English and French. Listen--that quick, spasmodic firing is French; the steady-as-thunder is English. Well, we've got all sail on. Now, make ready the ship for fighting." "She's almost ready, sir." An hour later the light mist had risen, and almost suddenly the Ariadne seemed to come into the field of battle. Dyck Calhoun could see the struggle going on. The two sets of enemy ships had come to close quarters, and some were locked in deadly conflict. Other ships, still apart, fired at point-blank range, and all the horrors of slaughter were in full swing. From the square blue flag at the mizzen top gallant masthead of one of the British ships engaged, Dyck saw that the admiral's own craft was in some peril. The way lay open for the Ariadne to bear down upon the French ship, engaged with the admiral's smaller ship, and help to end the struggle successfully for the British cause. While still too far away for point-blank range, the Ariadne's guns began upon the French ships distinguishable by their shape and their colours. Before the first shot was fired, however, Dyck made a tour of the decks and gave some word of cheer to the men, The Ariadne lost no time in getting into the thick of the fight. The seamen were stripped to the waist, and black silk handkerchiefs were tightly bound round their heads and over their ears. What the French thought of the coming of the Ariadne was shown by the reply they made presently to her firing. The number of French ships in action was greater than the British by six, and the Ariadne arrived just when she could be of greatest service. The boldness of her seamanship, and the favour of the wind, gave her an advantage which good fortune helped to justify. As she drew in upon the action, she gave herself up to great danger; she was coming in upon the rear of the French ships, and was subject to fierce attack. To the French she seemed like a fugitive warrior returning to his camp just when he was most needed, as was indeed the case. Two of her shots settled one of the enemy's vessels; and before the others could converge upon her, she had crawled slowly up against the off side of the French admiral's ship, which was closely engaged with the Beatitude, the British flagship, on the other side. The canister, chain-shot, and langrel of the French foe had caused much injury to the Ariadne, and her canvas was in a sore plight. Fifty of her seamen had been killed, and a hundred and fifty were wounded by the time she reached the starboard side of the Aquitaine. She would have lost many more were it not that her onset demoralized the French gunners, while the cheers of the British sailors aboard the Beatitude gave confidence to their mutineer comrades. On his own deck, Dyck watched the progress of the battle with the joy of a natural fighter. He had carried the thing to an almost impossible success. There had only been this in his favour, that his was an unexpected entrance--a fact which had been worth another ship at least. He saw his boarders struggle for the Aquitaine. He saw them discharge their pistols, and then resort to the cutlass and the dagger; and the marines bringing down their victims from the masts of the French flag- ship. Presently he heard the savagely buoyant shouts of the Beatitude men, and he realized that, by his coming, the admiral of the French fleet had been obliged to yield up his sword, and to signal to his ships--such as could --to get away. That half of them succeeded in doing so was because the British fleet had been heavily handled in the fight, and would have been defeated had it not been for the arrival of the Ariadne. Never, perhaps, in the history of the navy had British ships clamped the enemy as the Aquitaine was clamped by the Beatitude and the Ariadne. Certain it is that no admiral of the British fleet had ever to perform two such acts in one day as receiving the submission of a French admiral and offering thanks to the captain of a British man-of-war whom, while thanking, he must at once place under arrest as a mutineer. What might have chanced further to Dyck's disadvantage can never be known, because there appeared on the deck of the Beatitude, as its captain under the rear-admiral, Captain Ivy, who, five years before, had visited Dyck and his father at Playmore, and had gone with them to Dublin. The admiral had sent word to the Ariadne for its captain to come to the Beatitude. When the captain's gig arrived, and a man in seaman's clothes essayed to climb the side of the flag-ship, he was at first prevented. Captain Ivy, however, immediately gave orders for Dyck to be admitted, but without honours. On the deck of the Beatitude, Dyck looked into the eyes of Captain Ivy. He saluted; but the captain held out a friendly hand. "You're a mutineer, Calhoun, but your ship has given us victory. I'd like to shake hands with one that's done so good a stroke for England." A queer smile played about Calhoun's lips. "I've brought the Ariadne back to the fleet, Captain Ivy. The men have fought as well as men ever did since Britain had a navy. I've brought her back to the king's fleet to be pardoned." "But you must be placed under arrest, Calhoun. Those are the orders-- that wherever the Ariadne should be found she should be seized, and that you should be tried by court-martial." Dyck nodded. "I understand. When did you get word?" "About forty-eight hours ago. The king's mail came by a fast frigate." "We took our time, but we came straight from the Channel to find this fleet. At the mouth of the Thames we willed to find it, and to fight with it--and by good luck so we have done." "Let me take you to the admiral," said Captain Ivy. He walked beside Dyck to the admiral's cabin. "You've made a terrible mess of things, Calhoun, but you've put a lot right to-day," he said at the entrance to the cabin. "Tell me one thing honestly before we part now--did you kill Erris Boyne?" Dyck looked at him long and hard. "I don't know--on my honour I don't know! I don't remember--I was drunk and drugged." "Calhoun, I don't believe you did; but if you did, you've paid the price --and the price of mutiny, too." In the clear blue eyes of Captain Ivy there was a look of friendliness. "I notice you don't wear uniform, Calhoun," he added. "I mean a captain's uniform." Dyck smiled. "I never have." The next moment the door of the admiral's cabin was opened. "Mr. Dyck Calhoun of the Ariadne, sir," said Captain Ivy. CHAPTER XV THE ADMIRAL HAS HIS SAY The admiral's face was naturally vigorous and cheerful, but, as he looked at Dyck Calhoun, a steely hardness came into it, and gave a cynical twist to the lips. He was a short man, and spare, but his bearing had dignity and every motion significance. He had had his high moment with the French admiral, had given his commands to the fleet and had arranged the disposition of the captured French ships. He was in good spirits, and the wreckage in the fleet seemed not to shake his nerve, for he had lost in men far less than the enemy, and had captured many ships--a good day's work, due finally to the man in sailor's clothes standing there with Captain Ivy. The admiral took in the dress of Calhoun at a glance--the trousers of blue cloth, the sheath-knife belt, the stockings of white silk, the white shirt with the horizontal stripes, the loose, unstarched, collar, the fine black silk handkerchief at the throat, the waistcoat of red kerseymere, the shoes like dancing-pumps, and the short, round blue jacket, with the flat gold buttons--a seaman complete. He smiled broadly; he liked this mutineer and ex-convict. "Captain Calhoun, eh!" he remarked mockingly, and bowed satirically. "Well, you've played a strong game, and you've plunged us into great difficulty." Dyck did not lose his opportunity. "Happily, I've done what I planned to do when we left the Thames, admiral," he said. "We came to get the chance of doing what, by favour of fate, we have accomplished. Now, sir, as I'm under arrest, and the ship which I controlled has done good service, may I beg that the Ariadne's personnel shall have amnesty, and that I alone be made to pay--if that must be--for the mutiny at the Nore." The admiral nodded. "We know of your breaking away from the mutinous fleet, and of their firing on you as you passed, and that is in your favour. I can also say this: that bringing the ship here was masterly work, for I understand there were no officers on the Ariadne. She always had the reputation of being one of the best-trained ships in the navy, and she has splendidly upheld that reputation. How did you manage it, Mr. Calhoun?" Dyck briefly told how the lieutenants were made, and how he himself had been enormously indebted to Greenock, the master of the ship, and all the subordinate officers. The admiral smiled sourly. "I have little power until I get instructions from the Admiralty, and that will take some time. Meanwhile, the Ariadne shall go on as she is, and as if she were--and had been from the first, a member of my own squadron." Dyck bowed, explained what reforms he had created in the food and provisions of the Ariadne, and expressed a hope that nothing should be altered. He said the ship had proved herself, chiefly because of his reforms. "Besides, she's been badly hammered. She's got great numbers of wounded and dead, and for many a day the men will be busy with repairs." "For a man without naval experience, for a mutineer, an ex-convict and a usurper, you've done quite well, Mr. Calhoun; but my instructions were, if I captured your ship, and you fell into my hands, to try you, and hang you." At this point Captain Ivy intervened. "Sir," he said, "the instructions you received were general. They could not anticipate the special service which the Ariadne has rendered to the king's fleet. I have known Mr. Calhoun; I have visited at his father's house; I was with him on his journey to Dublin, which was the beginning of his bad luck. I would beg of you, sir, to give Mr. Calhoun his parole on sea and land until word comes from the Admiralty as to what, in the circumstances, his fate shall be." "To be kept on the Beatitude on parole!" exclaimed the admiral. "Land or sea, Captain Ivy said. I'm as well-born as any man in the king's fleet," declared Dyck. "I've as clean a record as any officer in his majesty's navy, save for the dark fact that I was put in prison for killing a man; and I will say here, in the secrecy of an admiral's cabin, that the man I killed--or was supposed to kill--was a traitor. If I did kill him, he deserved death by whatever hand it came. I care not what you do with me"--his hands clenched, his shoulders drew up, his eyes blackened with the dark fire of his soul--"whether you put me on parole, or try me by court-martial, or hang me from the yard-arm. I've done a piece of work of which I'm not ashamed. I've brought a mutinous ship out of mutiny, sailed her down the seas for many weeks, disciplined her, drilled her, trained her, fought her; helped to give the admiral of the West Indian squadron his victory. I enlisted; I was a quota man. I became a common sailor--I and my servant and friend, Michael Clones. I shared the feelings of the sailors who mutinied. I wrote petitions and appeals for them. I mutinied with them. Then at last, having been made leader of the ship, with the captain and the lieutenants sent safely ashore, and disagreeing with the policy of the Delegates in not accepting the terms offered, I brought the ship out, commanding it from the captain's cabin, and have so continued until to-day. If I'm put ashore at Jamaica, I'll keep my parole; if I stay a prisoner here, I'll keep my parole. If I've done you service, admiral, be sure of this, it was done with clear intent. My object was to save the men who, having mutinied and fled from Admiralty control, are subject to capital punishment." "Your thinking came late. You should have thought before you mutinied," was the sharp reply. "As a common sailor I acted on my conscience, and what we asked for the Admiralty has granted. Only by mutiny did the Admiralty yield to our demands. What I did I would do again! We took our risks in the Thames against the guns that were levelled at us; we've taken our risks down here against the French to help save your squadron, and we've done it. The men have done it, because they've been loyal to the flag, and from first to last set to make the Admiralty and the people know they have rights which must be cherished. If all your men were as faithful to the Crown as are the men on the Ariadne, then they deserve well of the King. But will you put for me on paper the written word that every man now aboard the Ariadne shall be held guiltless in the eyes of the admiral of this fleet; that the present officers shall remain officers, that the reforms I have made shall become permanent? For myself, I care not; but for the men who have fought under me, I want their amnesty. And I want Michael Clones to be kept with me, and Greenock, the master, and Ferens, the purser, to be kept where they are. Admiral, I think you know my demands are just. Over there on the Ariadne are a hundred and fifty wounded at least, and fifty have been killed. Let the living not suffer." "You want it all on the nail, don't you?" "I want it at this moment when the men who have fought under me have helped to win your battle, sir." There was something so set in Dyck's voice that the admiral had a sudden revulsion against him, yet, after a moment of thought, he made a sign to Captain Ivy. Then he dictated the terms which Dyck had asked, except as to the reforms he had made, which was not in his power to do, save for the present. When the document had been signed by the admiral, Dyck read the contents aloud. It embodied nearly all he had asked. "Now I ask permission for one more thing only, sir--for the new captain of the Ariadne to go with me to her, and there I will read this paper to the crew. I will give a copy of it to the new captain, whoever he may be." The admiral stood for a moment in thought. Then he said: "Ivy, I transfer you to the Ariadne. It's better that some one who understands, as you do, should be in control after Calhoun has gone. Go with him now, and have your belongings sent to you. I appoint you temporary captain of the Ariadne, because I think no one could deal with the situation there so wisely. Ivy, every ship in the squadron must treat the Ariadne respectfully. Within two days, Mr. Calhoun, you shall be landed at Jamaica, there to await the Admiralty decree. I will say this: that as the sure victory of our fleet has come through you, you shall not suffer in my report. Fighting is not an easy trade, and to fight according to the rules is a very hard trade. Let me ask you to conduct yourself as a prisoner of war on parole." NO DEFENSE By Gilbert Parker BOOK III XVI. A LETTER XVII. STRANGERS ARRIVE XVIII. AT SALEM XIX. LORD MALLOW INTERVENES XX. OUT OF THE HANDS OF THE PHILISTINES XXI. THE CLASH OF RACE XXII. SHEILA HAS HER SAY XXIII. THE COMING OF NOREEN XXIV. WITH THE GOVERNOR XXV. THEN WHAT HAPPENED CHAPTER XVI A LETTER With a deep sigh, the planter raised his head from the table where he was writing, and looked out upon the lands he had made his own. They lay on the Thomas River, a few hours' horseback travelling from Spanish Town, the capital, and they had the advantage of a plateau formation, with mountains in the far distance and ravines everywhere. It was Christmas Day, and he had done his duty to his slaves and the folk on his plantation. He had given presents, had attended a seven o'clock breakfast of his people, had seen festivities of his negroes, and the feast given by his manager in Creole style to all who came--planting attorneys, buccras, overseers, bookkeepers, the subordinates of the local provost-marshal, small planters, and a few junior officers of the army and navy. He had turned away with cynicism from the overladen table, with its shoulder of stewed wild boar in the centre; with its chocolate, coffee, tea, spruce-beer, cassava-cakes, pigeon-pies, tongues, round of beef, barbecued hog, fried conchs, black crab pepper-pod, mountain mullet, and acid fruits. It was so unlike what his past had known, so "damnable luxurious!" Now his eyes wandered over the space where were the grandilla, with its blossom like a passion-flower, the black Tahiti plum, with its bright pink tassel-blossom, and the fine mango trees, loaded half with fruit and half with bud. In the distance were the guinea cornfields of brownish hue, the cotton-fields, the long ranges of negro houses like thatched cottages, the penguin hedges, with their beautiful red, blue, and white convolvuluses; the lime, logwood, and breadfruit trees, the avocado-pear, the feathery bamboo, and the jack-fruit tree; and between the mountains and his own sugar-estates, negro settlements and pens. He heard the flight of parrots chattering, he watched the floating humming-bird, and at last he fixed his eyes upon the cabbage tree down in the garden, and he had an instant desire for it. It was a natural and human taste--the cabbage from the tree-top boiled for a simple yet sumptuous meal. He liked simplicity. He did not, as so many did in Jamaica, drink claret or punch at breakfast soon after sunrise. In a land where all were bon- vivants, where the lowest tradesmen drank wine after dinner, and rum, brandy and water, or sangaree in the forenoon, a somewhat lightsome view of table-virtues might have been expected of the young unmarried planter. For such was he who, from the windows of his "castle," saw his domain shimmering in the sun of a hot December day. It was Dyck Calhoun. With an impatient air he took up the sheets that he had been reading. Christmas Day was on his nerves. The whole town of Kingston, with its twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants, had but one church. If he entered it, even to-day, he would have seen no more than a hundred and fifty to two hundred people; mostly mulattoes--"bronze ornaments"--and peasants in shag trousers, jackets of coarse blue cloth, and no waistcoats, with one or two magistrates, a dozen gentlemen or so, and probably twice that number of ladies. It was not an island given over to piety, or to religious habits. Not that this troubled Dyck Calhoun; nor, indeed, was he shocked by the fact that nearly every unmarried white man in the island, and many married white men, had black mistresses and families born to the black women, and that the girls had no married future. They would become the temporary wives of white men, to whom they were on the whole faithful and devoted. It did not even vex him that a wretched mulatto might be whipped in the market-square for laying his hands upon a white man, and that if he was a negro-slave he could be shot for the same liberty. It all belonged to the abnormal conditions of an island where black and white were in relations impossible in the countries from which the white man had come. It did not even startle Dyck that all the planters, and the people generally in the island, from the chief justice and custos rotulorum down to the deckswabber, cultivated amplitude of living. But let Dyck tell his own story. The papers he held were sheets of a letter he was writing to one from whom he had heard nothing since the night he enlisted in the navy, and that was nearly three years before. This was the letter: MY DEAR FRIEND: You will see I address you as you have done me in the two letters I have had from you in the past. You will never read this letter, but I write it as if you would. For you must know I may never hope for personal intercourse with you. I was imprisoned for killing your father, Erris Boyne, and that separates us like an abysss. It matters little whether I killed him or not; the law says I did, and the law has taken its toll of me. I was in prison for four years, and when freed I enlisted in the king's navy, a quota man, with my servant-friend, Michael Clones. That was the beginning of painful and wonderful days for me. I was one of the mutineers of the Nore, and-- Here followed a description of the days he had spent on the Ariadne and before, and of all that happened down to the time when he was arrested by the admiral in the West Indian Sea. He told how he was sent over to the Ariadne with Captain Ivy to read the admiral's letter to the seamen, and then, by consent of the admiral, to leave again with Michael Clones for Jamaica, where he was set ashore with twenty pounds in his pocket--and not on parole, by the admiral's command. Here the letter shall again take up the story, and be a narrative of Dyck Calhoun's life from that time until this Christmas Day. What to do was the question. I knew no one in Jamaica--no one at all except the governor, Lord Mallow, and him I had fought with swords in Phoenix Park five years before. I had not known he was governor here. I came to know it when I first saw him riding over the unpaved street into Kingston from Spanish Town with his suite, ornate with his governorship. He was a startling figure in scarlet, with huge epaulets on his lieutenant-general's uniform, as big a pot as ever boiled on any fire-chancellor, head of the government and of the army, master of the legislature, judging like one o'clock in the court of chancery, controller of the affairs of civil life, and maker of a policy of which he alone can judge who knows what interests clash in the West Indies. English, French, Spanish, and Dutch are all hereabout. All struggle for place above the other in the world of commerce and society, though chiefly it is the English versus the French in these days; and the policy of the governor is the policy of the country. He never knows whether there will be a French naval descent or whether the blacks in his own island will do as the blacks in St. Domingo did--massacre the white people in thousands. Or whether the free blacks, the Maroons, who got their freedom by treaty with Governor Trelawney, when the British commander changed hats with Cudjoe, the Maroon chief, as the sealing of the bargain--whether they will rise again, as they before have risen, and bring terror into the white settlement; and whether, in that case, all negro-slaves will join them, and Jamaica become a land of revolution. Of what good, then, will be the laws lately passed regulating the control of slaves, securing them rights never given before, even forbidding lashes beyond forty-nine! Of what use, then, the punishment of owners who have ill-used the slaves? The local councils who have power to punish never proceed against white men with rigour; and to preserve a fair balance between the white man up above and the black down below is the responsibility of the fair- minded governor. If, like Mallow, he is not fair-minded, then is the lash the heavier, and the governor has burdens greater than could easily be borne in lands where the climate is more friendly. Lord Mallow did not see me when I passed him in the street, but he soon came to know of me from the admiral and Captain Ivy, who told him all my story since I was freed from jail. Then he said I should be confined in a narrow space near to Kingston, and should have no freedom; but the admiral had his way, and I was given freedom of the whole island till word should come from the Admiralty what should be done with me. To the governor's mind it was dangerous allowing me freedom, a man convicted of crime, who had been imprisoned, had been a mutineer, had stolen one of his majesty's ships, and had fled to the Caribbean Sea. He thought I should well be at the bottom of the ocean, where he would soon have put me, I make no doubt, if it had not been for the admiral, and Captain Ivy--you do not know him, I think--who played a good part to me, when men once close friends have deserted me. Well, we had, Michael and I, but twenty pounds between us; and if there was not plenty of free food in the island, God knows what would have become of us! But there it was, fresh in every field, by every wayside, at every doorway. We could not starve, or die of thirst, or faint for lack of sleep, since every bush was a bed in spite of the garapatos or wood-ticks, the snore of the tree-toad, the hoarse shriek of the macaw, and the shrill gird of the guinea- fowl. Every bed was thus free, and there was land to be got for a song, enough to grow what would suffice for two men's daily wants. But we did not rest long upon the land--I have it still, land which cost me five pounds out of the twenty, and for the rest there was an old but on the little place--five acres it was, and good land too, where you could grow anything at all. Heaven knows what we might have become in that tiny plantation, for I was sick of life, and the mosquitos and flying ants, and the chattering parroquets, the grim gallinazo, and the quatre, or native bed--a wooden frame and canvas; but one day at Kingston I met a man, one Cassandro Biatt, who had an obsession for adventure, and he spoke to me privately. He said he knew me from people's talk, and would I listen to him? What was there to do? He was a clean-cut rogue, if ever there was one, but a rogue of parts, as he proved; and I lent an ear. Now, what think you was his story? Well, but this--that off the coast of Haiti, there was a ship which had been sunk with every man on board, and with the ship was treasure without counting-jewels belonging once to a Spaniard of high place, who was taking them to Paris. His box had been kept in the captain's cabin, and it could be found, no doubt, and brought to the surface. Even if that were not possible, there was plenty of gold on the ship, and every piece of it was good money. There had been searching for the ship, but none had found it; but he, Cassandro Biatt, had sure knowledge, got from an obi-man, of the place where it lay. It would not be an expensive business, but, cheap as it was, he had no means of raising cash for the purpose; while I could, no doubt, raise the needed money if I set about it. That was how he put it to me. Would I do it? It was not with me a case of "no shots left in the locker, no copper to tinkle on a tombstone." I was not down to my last macaroni, or quarter-dollar; but I drank some sangaree and set about to do it. I got my courage from a look towards Rodney's statue in its temple--Rodney did a great work for Jamaica against Admiral de Grasse. Why should I tell Biatt the truth about myself? He knew it. Cassandro was an accomplished liar, and a man of merit of his kind. This obi-man's story I have never believed; yet how Biatt came to know where that treasure-ship was I do not know now. Yes, out we went through the harbour of Kingston, beyond the splendid defences of Port Royal and the men-of-war there, past the Palisadoes and Rock Fort, and away to the place of treasure-trove. We found it--that lost galleon; and we found the treasure-box of the captain's cabin. We found gold too; but the treasure-box was the chief thing; and we made it ours after many a hard day. Three months it was from the day Biatt first spoke to me to the day when, with an expert diver, we brought the box to the surface and opened it. How I induced one of the big men of Jamaica to be banker and skipper for us need not be told; but he is one of whom men have dark sayings--chiefly, I take it, because he does bold, incomprehensible things. That business paid him well, for when the rent of the ship was met, and the few men on it paid--slaves they were chiefly--he pocketed ten thousand pounds, while Biatt and I each pouched forty thousand, and Michael two thousand. Aye, to be sure, Michael was in it! He is in all I do, and is as good as men of ten times his birth and history. Michael will be a rich man one day. In two years his two thousand have grown to four, and he misses no chance. But those days when Biatt and I went treasure-ship hunting were not without their trials. If we had failed, then no more could this land have been home or resting-place for us. We should only have been sojourners with no name, in debt, in disgrace, a pair of braggart adventurers, who had worked a master-man of the island for a ship, and money and men, and had lost all except the ship! Though to be sure, the money was not a big thing--a, few hundred pounds; but the ship was no flea-bite. It was a biggish thing, for it could be rented to carry sugar--it was, in truth, a sugar-ship of four hundred tons--but it never carried so big a cargo of sugar as it did on the day when that treasure-box was brought to the surface of the sea. I'm bound to say this--one of the straightest men I ever met, liar withal, was Cassandro Biatt. He took his jewels and vanished up the seas in a flourish. He would not even have another try at the gold in the bowels of the ship. "I've got plenty to fill my paunch, and I'll go while I've enough. It's the men not going in time that get left in the end"--that's what he said. And he was right; for other men went after the gold and got some of it, and were caught by French and South American pirates and lost all they had gained. Still another group went and brought away ten thousand pounds, and lost it in fighting with Spanish buccaneers. So Biatt was right, and went away content, while I stayed here-- because I must--and bought the land and house where I have my great sugar-plantation. It is an enterprise of volume, and all would be well if I were normal in mind and body; but I am not. I have a past that stinks to heaven, as Shakespeare says, and I am an outlaw of the one land which has all my soul and name and heritage. Yes, that is what they have done to me--made a convict, an outlaw of me. I may live--but not in the British Isles; and if any man kills me, he is not liable to the law. Men do not treat me badly here, for I have property and money, and this is a land where these two things mean more than anywhere else, even more than in a republic like that where you live. Here men live according to the law of the knife, fork, and bottle, yet nowhere in the world is there deeper national morality or wider faith or endurance. It is a land where the sea is master, where naval might is the chief factor, and weighs down all else. Here the navies of the great powers meet and settle their disputes, and every being in the island knows that life is only worth what a hundred-ton brig-of-war permits. I have seen here in Jamaica the off-scourings of the French and Spanish fleets on parole; have seen them entering King's House like loyal citizens; have even known of French prisoners being used as guards at the entrance of King's House, and I have informed the chief justice of dismal facts which ought to have moved him. But what can you expect of a chief justice who need not be a lawyer, as this one is not, and has other means of earning income which, though not disloyal, are lowering to the status of a chief justice? And not the chief justice alone. I have seen French officers entertained at Government House who were guilty of shocking inhumanities and cruelties. The governor, Lord Mallow, is much to blame. On him lies the responsibility; to him must go the discredit. For myself, I feel his enmity on every hand. I suffer from his suggestions; I am the victim of his dark moods. If I want a concession from a local council, his hand is at work against me; if I see him in the street, I get a courtesy tossed, as you would toss a bone to a dog. If I appear at the king's ball, which is open to all on the island who are respectable, I am treated with such disdain by the viceroy of the king that all the island is agog. I went one day to the king's ball the same as the rest of the world, and I went purposely in dress contrary to the regulations. Here was the announcement of the affair in the Royal Gazette, which was reproduced in the Chronicle, the one important newspaper in the island: KING'S HOUSE, October 27th, 1797. KING'S BALL. There will be a Ball given by His Honour the Lieutenant- Governor, on Tuesday evening, the 6th day of December next, in honour of HIS MAJESTY'S BIRTHDAY. To prevent confusion, Ladies and Gentlemen are requested to order their carriages to come by the Old Court House, and go off by the Long Room. N.B.--No gentlemen can possibly be admitted in boots, or otherwise improperly dressed. Well, in a spirit of mutiny--in which I am, in a sense, an expert-- I went in boots and otherwise "improperly dressed," for I wore my hair in a queue, like a peasant. What is more, I danced with a negress in the great quadrille, and thereby offended the governor and his lady aunt, who presides at his palace. It matters naught to me. On my own estate it was popular enough, and that meant more to me than this goodwill of Lord Mallow. He does not spare me in his recitals to his friends, who carry his speech abroad. His rancour against me is the greater, I know, because of the wealth I got in the treasure-ship, to prevent which he tried to prohibit my leaving the island, through the withholding of a leave-ticket to me. His argument to the local authorities was that I had no rights, that I am a murderer and a mutineer, and confined to the island, though not on parole. He almost succeeded; but the man to whom I went, the big rich man intervened, successfully--how I know not--and I was let go with my permit- ticket. What big things hang on small issues! If my Lord Mallow had prevented me leaving the island, I shouldn't now own a great plantation and three hundred negroes. I shouldn't be able to pay my creditors in good gold Portuguese half-johannes and Spanish doubloons, and be free of Spanish silver, and give no heed to the bitt, which, as you perhaps know, is equal to fivepence in British money, such as you and I used to spend when you were Queen of Ireland and I was your slave. Then I worshipped you as few women have been worshipped in all the days of the world--oh, cursed spite of life and time that I should have been jailed for killing your bad father! Aye, he was a bad man, and he is better in his grave than out of it, but it puts a gulf between you and me which nothing will ever bridge--unless it should some day be known I did not kill him, and then, no doubt, it will be too late. On my soul, I don't believe I put my sword into him; but if I did, he well deserved it, for he was worse than faithless to your mother, he was faithless to his country--he was a traitor! I did not tell that story of his treachery in court--I did not tell it because of you. You did not deserve such infamy, and the truth came not out at the trial. I, in my view, dared not, lest it might injure you, and you had suffered enough--nay, more than enough--through him. I wonder how you are, and if you have changed--I mean in appearance. I am sure you are not married; I should have felt it in my bones, if you were. No, no, my sweet lass, you are not married. But think--it is more than seven long years since we met on the hills above Playmore, and you put your hand in mine and said we should be friends for all time. It is near three years since a letter came to me from you, and in the time I have made progress. I did not go to the United States, as you asked me to do. Is it not plain I could not? My only course was to avoid you. You see, your mother knows the truth--knows that I was jailed for killing your father and her divorced husband. Therefore, the only way to do was as I did. I could not go where you were. There should be hid from you the fact that Erris Boyne was a traitor. This is your right, in my mind. Looking back, I feel sure I could have escaped jail if I had told what I knew of Erris Boyne; and perhaps it would have been better, for I should, no doubt, have been acquitted. Yet I could not have gone to you, for I am not sure I did not kill him. So it is best as it is. We are as we are, and nothing can make all different for us. I am a dissolute planter of Jamaica who has snatched from destiny a living and some riches. I have a bad name in the world. Yet by saving the king's navy from defeat out here I did a good turn for my country and the empire. So much to the good. It brought me freedom from the rope and pardon for my chief offence. Then, in company with a rogue, I got wealth from the depths of the sea, and here I am in the bottom of my luxury, drunken and obscene--yes, obscene, for I permit my overseers and my manager to keep black women and have children by them. That I do not do so myself is no virtue on my part, but the virtue of a girl whom I knew in Connemara. I fill myself with drink. I have a bottle of madeira or port every night, and pints of beer or claret. I am a creature of low habits, a man sodden with self-indulgence. And when I am in drink, no slaver can be more cruel and ruthless. Yet I am moderate in eating. The meals that people devour here almost revolt me. They eat like cormorants and drink like dry ground; but at my table I am careful, save with the bottle. This is a land of wonderful fruits, and I eat in quantities pineapple, tamarind, papaw, guava, sweet-sop, star-apple, granadilla, hog-plum, Spanish-gooseberry, and pindal-nut. These are native, but there are also the orange, lemon, lime, shaddock, melon, fig, pomegranate, cinnamon, and mango, brought chiefly from the Spanish lands of South America. The fruit-market here is good, Heaven knows, and I have my run of it. Perhaps that is why my drink does not fatten me greatly. Yes, I am thin--thinner even than when you saw me last. How wonderful a day it was! You remember it, I'm sure. We stood on the high hills, you and I, looking to the west. It was a true Irish day. A little in front of us, in the sky, were great clusters of clouds, and beyond them, as far as eye could see, were hills so delicately green, so spotted with settlements, so misty and full of glamour, and so cheerful with the western light. And the storm broke--do you remember it? It broke, but not on us. It fell on the middle of the prospect before us, and we saw beyond it the bright area of sunny country where men work and prophesy and slave, and pray to the ancient gods and acclaim the saints, and die and fructify the mould; where such as Christopher Dogan live, and men a thousand times lower than he. Christopher came to the jail the day I was released--with Michael Clones he came. He read me my bill of life's health--what was to become of me--the black and the white of it, the good and the bad, the fair and the foul. Even the good fortune of the treasure from the sea he foresaw, and much else that has not come to me, and, as I think, will never come; for it is too full a cup for me so little worthy of it. It seems strange to me that I am as near to the United States here in Jamaica, or almost as near, as one in London is to one in Dublin; and yet one might as well be ten thousand leagues distant for all it means to her one loves in the United States. Yes, dear Sheila, I love you, and I would tear out the heart of the world for you. I bathe my whole being in your beauty and your charm. I hunger for you--to stand beside you, to listen to your voice, to dip my prison fingers into the pure cauldron of your soul and feel my own soul expand. I wonder why it is that to-day I feel more than I ever felt before the rare splendour of your person. I have always admired you and loved you, always heard you calling me, as if from some sacred corner of a perfect world. Is it that yesterday's dissipation--yes, I was drunk yesternight, drunk in a new way. I was drunk with the thought of you, the longing for you. I picked a big handful of roses, and in my mind gave them into your hands. And I thought you smiled and said: "Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter Paradise." So I followed you to your home there in the Virginian country. It was a dream, all except the roses, and those I laid in front of the box where I keep your letters and a sketch I made of you when we were young and glad--when I was young and glad. For I am an old man, Sheila, in all that makes men old. My step is quick still, my eye is sharp, and my brain beats fast, but my heart is ancient. I am an ancient of days, without hope or pleasure, save what pleasure comes in thinking of one whom I worship, yet must ever worship from afar. I wonder why I seem to feel you very near to-day! Perhaps it's because 'tis Christmas Day. I am not a religious man but Christmas is a day of memories. Is it because of the past in Ireland? Am I only--God, am I only to be what I am for the rest of my days, a planter denied the pleasure of home by his own acts! Am I only a helpless fragment of a world of lost things? I have no friends--but yes, I have. I have Michael Clones and Captain Ivy, though he's far away-aye, he's a friend of friends, is Captain Ivy. These naval folk have had so much of the world, have got the bearings of so many seas, that they lose all littleness, and form their own minds. They are not like the people who knew me in Ireland--the governor here is one of them--and who believe the worst of me. The governor--faugh, he was made for bigger and better things! He is one of the best swordsmen in the world, and he is out against me here as if I was a man of importance, and not a commonplace planter on an obscure river. I have no social home life, and yet I live in what is called a castle. A Jamaica castle has none of the marks of antiquity, chivalry, and distinction which castles that you and I know in the old land possess. What is my castle like? Well, it is a squarish building, of bungalow type, set on a hill. It has stories and an attic, with a jutting dormer-window in the front of the roof; and above the lowest story there is a great verandah, on which the livingrooms and bedrooms open. It is commodious, and yet from a broad standpoint it is without style or distinction. It has none of those Corinthian pillars which your homesteads in America have. Yet there is in it a simple elegance. It has no carpets, but a shining mahogany floor, for there are few carpets in this land of heat. It is a place where music and mirth and family voices would be fitting; but there are no family voices here, save such as speak with a negro lisp and oracularly. I can hear music at this moment, and inside my castle. It comes from the irrepressible throats of my cook and my housemaid, who have more joy in the language of the plantation than you could have in the songs of St. Angelus. The only person in this castle out of spirits is its owner. My castle is embowered in a loose grove of palms and acacias, pimento shrubs, spendid star-apples, and bully-trees, with wild lemon, mahogany, dogwood, Jerusalem-thorn, and the waving plumes of bamboo canes. There is nothing British in it--nothing at all. It stands on brick pillars, is reached by a stair of marble slabs, and has a great piazza on the front. You enter a fine, big hall, dark- you will understand that, though it is not so hot in Virginia, for the darkness makes for coolness. From the hall the bedrooms open all round. We are not so barbaric here as you might think, for my dining-room, which lies beyond the hall, with jalousies or movable blinds, exposed to all the winds, is comfortable, even ornate. There you shall see waxlights on the table, and finger-glasses with green leaves, and fine linen and napkins, and plenty of silver--even silver wine-coolers, and beakers of fame and beauty, and flowers, flowers everywhere, and fruit of exquisite charm. I have to live in outward seeming as do my neighbours, even to keeping a black footman, gorgeously dressed, with bare legs. Here at my window grows a wild aloe, and it is in flower. Once only in fifty years does this aloe flower, and I pick its sweet verdure now and offer it to you. There it lies, beside this letter that I am writing. It is typical of myself, for only once has my heart flowered, and it will be only once in fifty years. The perfume of the flower is like an everlasting bud from the last tree of Time. See, my Sheila, your drunken, reckless lover pulls this sweet offering from his garden and offers it to you. He has no virtues; and yet he would have been a thousand times worse, if you had not come into his life. He had in him the seeds of trouble, the sproutings of shame, for even in the first days of his love there in Dublin he would not restrain himself. He drank, he played cards, he fought and went with bad company--not women, never that; but he kept the company of those through whom he came at last to punishment for manslaughter. Yet, without you, who can tell what he might have been? He might have fallen so low that not the wealth of ten thousand treasure- boxes could give him even the appearance of honesty. And now he offers you what you cannot accept--can never accept--a love as deep as the life from which he came; a love that would throttle the world for you, that would force the doors of hell to bring you what you want. What do you want? I know not. Perhaps you have inherited the vast property to which you were the heir. If you have, what can you want that you have not means to procure? Ah, I have learned one thing, my friend 'one can get nearly everything with money. It is the hidden machinery which makes the world of success go round. With brains, you say? Yes, money and brains, but without the money brains seldom win alone. Do not I know? When I was in prison, with estate vanished and home gone and my father in his grave, who was concerned about me? Only the humblest of all God's Irish people; but with them I have somehow managed to win back lost ground. I am a stronger man than I was in all that men count of value in the world. I have an estate where I work like any youth who has everything before him. I have nothing before me, yet I shall go on working to the end. Why? Because I have some faculties which are more than bread and butter, and I must give them opportunity. Yet I am not always sane. Sometimes I feel I could march out and sweep into the sea one of the towns that dot the coast of this island. I have the bloody thirst, as said the great Spanish conquistador. I would like--yes, sometimes I would like to sweep to a watery grave one of the towns that are a glory to this island, as Savanna la Mar was swept to oblivion in the year 1780 by a hurricane. You can still see the ruins of the town at the bottom of the sea--I have sailed over it in what is now the harbour, and there beneath, on the deep sands, lost to time and trouble, is the slain and tortured town of Savanna la Mar. Was the Master of the World angry that day when, with a besom of wind and a tidal wave, He swept the place into the sea? Or was it some devil's work while the Lord of All slept? As the Spanish say, Quien sabe? Then there was that other enormous incident which made a man to be swallowed by an earthquake, then belched out again into the sea and picked up and restored to life again, and to live for many years. Indeed, yes, it is so. His tombstone may be seen even at this day at Green Bay, Kingston. His name was Lewis Galdy, and he is held in high repute in this land. I feel sometimes as Beelzebub may feel, and I long to do what Beelzebub might do as part of his mission. Sometimes a madness of revolt comes over me, and I long to ravage all the places I see, all the people I know--or nearly all. Why I do not have negroes thrashed and mutilated, as some do, I know not. Over against the southern shore in the parish of St. Elizabeth is an estate called Salem, owned, it is said, by an American, where the manager does such things. I am told that savageries are found there. There are too many absentee owners of land in this island, and the wrongs done by agents who have no personal honour at stake are all too plentiful. If I could, I would have no slavery, would set all the blacks free, making full compensation to the owners, and less to the absentee owners. I look out on a world of summer beauty and of heat. I see the sheep in hundreds on the far hills of pasturage--sheep with short hair, small and sweet as any that ever came from the South Downs. I see the natives in their Madras handkerchiefs. I see upon the road some planter in his ketureen--a sort of sedan chair; I see a negro funeral, with its strange ceremony and its gumbies of African drums. I see yam-fed planters, on their horses, making for the burning, sandy streets of the capital. I see the Scots grass growing five and six feet high, food unsurpassed for horses--all the foliage too --beautiful tropical trees and shrubs, and here and there a huge breeding-farm. Yet I know that out beyond my sight there is the region known as Trelawney, and Trelawney Town, the headquarters of the Maroons, the free negroes--they who fled after the Spanish had been conquered and the British came, and who were later freed and secured by the Trelawney Treaty. I know that now they are ready to rise, that they are working among the slaves; and if they rise the danger is great to the white population of the island, who are outnumbered ten to one. The governor has been warned, but he gives no heed, or treats it all lightly, pointing out how few the Maroons are. He forgets that a few determined men can demoralize a whole state, can fight and murder and fly to dark coverts in the tropical woods, where they cannot be tracked down and destroyed; and, if they have made supporters of the slaves, what consequences may not follow! What do the Maroons look like? They are ferocious and isolated, they are proud and overbearing, they are horribly cruel, but they are potent, and are difficult to reach. They are not small and meagre, but are big, brawny fellows, clothed in wide duck trousers and shirts, and they are well-armed--cutlass, powder-horn, haversack, sling, shot-gun, and pouch for ball. They dress as the country requires, and they are strong fighters against our soldiers who are burdened with heavy muskets, and who defy the climate, with their stuffed coats, their weighty caps, and their tight cross- belts. The Maroons are not to be despised. They have brains, the insolence of freedom among natives who are not free, and vast cruelty. They can be mastered and kept in subjection, can be made allies, if properly handled; but Lord Mallow goes the wrong way about it all. He permits things that inflame the Maroons. One thing is clear to me--only by hounds can these people be defeated. So sure am I upon this point, that I have sent to Cuba for sixty hounds, with which, when the trouble comes--and it is not far off--we shall be able to hunt the Maroons with the only weapon they really fear--the dog's sharp tooth. It may be the governor may intervene on the arrival of the dogs; but I have made friends with the provost-marshal-general and some members of the Jamaica legislature; also I have a friend in the deputy of the provost- marshal-general in my parish of Clarendon here, and I will make a good bet that the dogs will be let come into the island, governor or no governor. When one sets oneself against the Crown one must be sure of one's ground, and fear no foe, however great and high. Well, I have won so far, and I shall win in the end. Mallow should have some respect for one that beat him at Phoenix Park with the sword; that beat him when he would have me imprisoned here; that beat him in the matter of the ship for Haiti, and that will beat him on every hazard he sets, unless he stoops to underhand acts, which he will not do. That much must be said for him. He plays his part in no small way, and he is more a bigot and a fanatic loyalist than a rogue. Suppose--but no, I will not suppose. I will lay my plans, I will keep faith with people here who trust me, and who know that if I am stern I am also just, and I will play according to the rules made by better men than myself. But what is this I see? Michael Clones--in his white jean waistcoat, white neckcloth and trousers, and blue coat--is coming up the drive in hot haste, bearing a letter. He rides too hard. He has never carried himself easily in this climate. He treats it as if it was Ireland. He will not protect himself, and, if penalty followed folly, should now be in his grave. I like you, Michael. You are a boon, but-- CHAPTER XVII STRANGERS ARRIVE Dyck Calhoun's letter was never ended. It was only a relic of the years spent in Jamaica, only a sign of his well-being, though it gave no real picture of himself. He did not know how like a tyrant he had become in some small ways, while in the large things he remained generous, urbane, and resourceful. He was in appearance thin, dark-favoured, buoyant in manner, and stern of face, with splendid eyes. Had he dwelt on Olympus, he might have been summoned to judge and chastise the sons of men. When Michael Clones came to the doorway, Dyck laid down his quill-pen and eyed the flushed servant in disapproval. "What is it, Michael? Wherefore this starkness? Is some one come from heaven?" "Not precisely from heaven, y'r honour, but--" "But--yes, Michael! Have done with but-ing, and come to the real matter." "Well, sir, they've come from Virginia." Dyck Calhoun slowly got to his feet, his face paling, his body stiffening. From Virginia! Who should be come from Virginia, save she to whom he had just been writing? "Who has come from Virginia?" He knew, but he wanted it said. "Sure, you knew a vessel came from America last night. Well, in her was one that was called the Queen of Ireland long ago." "Queen of Ireland--well, what then?" Dyck's voice was tuneless, his manner rigid, his eyes burning. "Well, she--Miss Sheila Llyn and her mother are going to the Salem Plantation, down by the Essex Valley Mountain. It is her plantation now. It belonged to her uncle, Bryan Llyn. He got it in payment of a debt. He's dead now, and all his lands and wealth have come to her. Her mother, Mrs. Llyn, is with her, and they start to-morrow or the next day for Salem. There'll be different doings at Salem henceforward, y'r honour. She's not the woman to see slaves treated as the manager at Salem treated 'em." Dyck Calhoun made an impatient gesture at this last remark. "Yes, yes, Michael. Where are they now?" "They're at Charlotte Bedford's lodgings in Spanish Town. The governor waited on them this morning. The governor sent them flowers and--" "Flowers--Lord Mallow sent them flowers! Hell's fiend, man, suppose he did?" "There are better flowers here than in any Spanish Town." "Well, take them, Michael; but if you do, come here again no more while you live, for I'll have none of you. Do you think I'm entering the lists against the king's governor?" "You've done it before, sir, and there's no harm in doing it again. One good turn deserves another. I've also to tell you, sir, that Lord Mallow has asked them to stay at King's House." "Lord Mallow has asked Americans to stay at King's House!" "But they're Irish, and he knew them in Ireland, y 'r honour." "Well, he knew me in Ireland, and I'm proscribed!" "Ah, that's different, as you know. There's no war on now, and they're only good American citizens who own land in this dominion of the king; so why shouldn't he give them courtesy?" "From whom do you get your information?" asked Dyck Calhoun with an air of suspicion. "From Darius Boland, y'r honour," answered Michael, with a smile. "Who is Darius Boland, you're askin' in y'r mind? Well, he's the new manager come from the Llyn plantations in Virginia; and right good stuff he is, with a tongue that's as dry as cut-wheat in August. And there's humour in him, plenty-aye, plenty. When did I see him, and how? Well, I saw him this mornin', on the quay at Kingston. He was orderin' the porters about with an air--oh, bedad, an air! I saw the name upon the parcels-- Miss Sheila Llyn, of Moira, Virginia, and so I spoke to him. The rest was aisy. He looked me up and down in a flash, like a searchlight playin' on an enemy ship, and then he smiled. 'Well,' said he, 'who might you be? For there's queer folks in Jamaica, I'm told.' So I said I was Michael Clones, and at that he doffed his hat and held out a hand. 'Well, here's luck,' said he. 'Luck at the very start! I've heard of you from my mistress. You're servant to Mr. Dyck Calhoun--ain't that it?' And I nodded, and he smiled again--a smile that'd cost money annywhere else than in Jamaica. He smiled again, and give a slow hitch to his breeches as though they was fallin' down. Why, sir, he's the longest bit of man you ever saw, with a pointed beard, and a nose that's as long as a midshipman's tongue-dry, lean, and elastic. He's quick and slow all at once. His small eyes twinkle like stars beatin' up against bad weather, and his skin's the colour of Scots grass in the dead of summer-yaller, he'd call it if he called it anything, and yaller was what he called the look of the sky above the hills. Queer way of talk he has, that man, as queer as--" "I understand, Michael. But what else? How did you come to talk about the affairs of Mrs. and Miss Llyn? He didn't just spit it out, did he?" "Sure, not so quick and free as spittin', y'r honour; but when he'd sorted me out, as it were, he said Miss Llyn had come out here to take charge of Salem; her own estate in Virginia bein' in such good runnin' order, and her mind bein' active. Word had come of the trouble with the manager here, and one of the provost-marshal's deputies had written accounts of the flogging and ill-treatment of slaves, and that's why she come--to put things right at Salem!" "To put things wrong in Jamaica, Michael, that's why she's come. To loose the ball of confusion and free the flood of tragedy--that's why she's come! Man, Michael, you know her history--who she was and what happened to her father. Well, do you think there's no tragedy in her coming here? I killed her father, they say, Michael. I was punished for it. I came here to be free of all those things--lifted out and away from them all. I longed to forget the past, which is only shame and torture; and here it is all spread out at my door again like a mat, which I must see as I go in and out. Essex Valley--why, it's less than a day's ride from here, far less than a day's ride! It can be ridden in four or five hours at a trot. Michael, it's all a damnable business. And here she is in Jamaica with her Darius Boland! There was no talk on Boland's part of their coming here, was there Michael?" "None at all, sir, but there was that in the man's eye, and that in his tone, which made me sure he thought Miss Llyn and you would meet." "That would be strange, wouldn't it, in this immense continent!" Dyck remarked cynically. "She knew I was here before she came?" "Aye, she knew. She had seen your name in the papers--English and Jamaican. She knew you had regained your life and place, and was a man of mark here." "A marked man, you mean, Michael--a man whom the king has had to pardon of a crime because of an act done that served the State. I am forbidden to return to the British Isles or to the land of my birth, forbidden free traffic as a citizen, hammered out of recognition by the strokes of enmity. A man of mark, indeed! Aye, with the broad arrow on me, with the shame of prison and mutiny on my name!" "But if she don't believe?" "If she don't believe! Well, she must be told the truth at last. I wonder her mother let her come here. Her mother knew part of the truth. She hid it all from the girl--and now they are here! I must see it through, but it's a wretched fate, Michael." "Perhaps her mother didn't know you were here, sir." Dyck laughed grimly. "Michael, you've a lawyer's mind. Perhaps you're right. The girl may have hid from her mother all newspapers referring to me. That may well be; but it's not the way that will bring understanding." "I think it's the truth, sir, for Darius Boland spoke naught of the mother--indeed, he said only what would make me think the girl came with her own ends in view. Faith, I'm sure the mother did not know." "She will know now. Your Darius Boland will tell her." "By St. Peter, it doesn't matter who tells her, sir. The business must be faced." "Michael, order my horse, and I will go to Spanish Town. This matter must be brought to a head. The truth must be told. Order my horse!" "It is the very heat of the day, sir." "Then at five o'clock, after dinner, have my horse here." "Am I to ride with you, sir?" Dyck nodded. "Yes, Michael. There's only one thing to do--face all the facts with all the evidence, and you are fact and evidence too. You know more of the truth than any one else." Several hours later, when the sun was abating its force a little, after travelling the burning roads through yams and cocoa, grenadillas and all kinds of herbs and roots and vagrant trees, Dyck Calhoun and Michael Clones came into Spanish Town. Dyck rode the unpaved streets on his horse with its high demipicque Spanish saddle, with its silver stirrups and heavy bit, and made his way towards Charlotte Bedford's lodgings. Dyck looked round upon the town with new eyes. He saw it like one for the first time visiting it. He saw the people passing through the wide verandahs of the houses, like a vast colonnade, down the street, to be happily sheltered from the fierce sun. As he had come down from the hills he thought he had never seen the houses look more beautiful in their gardens of wild tamarinds, kennips, cocoa-nuts, pimentos, and palms, backed by negro huts. He had seen all sorts of people at the draw-wells of the houses-British, Spanish, French, South American, Creoles, and here and there a Maroon, and the everlasting negro who sang as he worked: "Come along o' me, my buccra brave, You see de shild de Lord he gave: You drink de sangaree, I make de frichassee--" Here a face peeped out from the glazed sash of the jalousies of the balconies above--a face that could never be said to be white, though it had only a tinge of black in its coaxing beauty. There a workman with long hair and shag trousers painted the prevailing two-storied house the prevailing colour, white and green. There was a young naval officer in full dress, gold-buckled shoes, white trousers, short jacket with gold swab on shoulders, dress-sword and smart gait making for supper at King's House. A long-legged "son of a gun" of a Yankee had a "clapper-claw," or handshake, with a planting attorney in a kind of four-posted gig, canopied in leather and curtained clumsily. The Yankee laughed at the heavy straight shafts and the mule that drew the volante, as the gig was called, and the vehicle creaked and cried as it rolled along over the road, which was like a dry river-bed. There a French officer in Hessian boots, white trousers, blue uniform, and much-embroidered scarlet cuffs watched with amusement a slave carrying a goglet, or earthen jar, upon his head like an Egyptian, untouched by the hand, so adding dignity to carriage. He was holding a "round-aboutation" with an old hag who was telling his fortune. As they passed King's House, they saw troops of the viceroy's guests issuing from the palace-officers of the king's navy and army, officers and men of the Jamaica militia, pale-faced, big-eyed men of the Creole class, mulattoes, quadroons and octoroons, Samboes with their wives in loose skirts, white stockings, and pinnacle hats. There also passed, in the streets, black servants with tin cases on their heads, or carrying parcels in their arms, and here and there processions of servants, each with something that belonged to their mistresses, who would presently be attending the king's ball. Snatches of song were heard, and voices of men who had had a full meal and had "taken observations"--as looking through the bottom of a glass of liquor was called by people with naval spirit--were mixed in careless carousal. All this jarred on Dyck Calhoun and gave revolt to his senses. Yet he was only half-conscious of the great sensuousness of the scene as he passed through it. Now and then some one doffed a hat to him, and very occasionally some half-drunken citizen tossed at him a remark meant to wound; but he took no notice, and let things pleasant and provocative pass down the long ranges of indifference. All was brought to focus at last, however, by their arrival at Charlotte Bedford's lodgings, which, like most houses in the town, had a lookout or belfry fitted with green blinds and a telescope, and had a green-painted wooden railing round it. At the very entrance, inside the gate, in the garden, they saw Sheila Llyn, her mother, and Darius Boland, who seemed to be enduring from the mother some sharp reprimand, to the amusement of the daughter. As the gate closed behind Dyck and Michael, the three from Virginia turned round and faced them. As Dyck came forward, Sheila flushed and trembled. She was no longer a young girl, but her slim straightness and the soft lines of her figure, gave her a dignity and charm which made her young womanhood distinguished--for she was now twenty-five, and had a carriage of which a princess might have been proud. Yet it was plain that the entrance of Dyck at this moment was disturbing. It was not what she had foreseen. She showed no hesitation, however, but came forward to meet her visitor, while Michael fell back, as also did Darius Boland. Both these seemed to realize that the less they saw and heard the better; and they presently got together in another part of the garden, as Dyck Calhoun came near enough almost to touch Sheila. Surely, he thought, she was supreme in appearance and design. She was like some rare flower of the field, alert, gentle, strong, intrepid, with buoyant face, brown hair, blue eyes and cream-like skin. She was touched by a rose on each cheek and made womanly by firm and yet generous breasts, tenderly imprisoned by the white chiffon of her blouse in which was one bright sprig of the buds of a cherry-tree-a touch of modest luxuriance on a person sparsely ornamented. It was not tropical, this picture of Sheila Llyn; it was a flick of northern life in a summer sky. It was at once cheerful and apart. It had no August in it; no oil and wine. It was the little twig that grew by a running spring. It was fresh, dominant and serene. It was Connemara on the Amazon! It was Sheila herself, whom time had enriched with far more than years and experience. It was a personality which would anywhere have taken place and held it. It was undefeatable, persistent and permanent; it was the spirit of Ireland loose in a world that was as far apart from Ireland as she was from her dead, dishonoured father. And Dyck? At first she felt she must fly to him--yes, in spite of the fact that he had suffered prison for manslaughter. But a nearer look at him stopped the impulse at its birth. Here was the Dyck Calhoun she had known in days gone by, but not the Dyck she had looked to see; for this man was like one who had come from a hanging, who had seen his dearest swinging at the end of a rope. His face was set in coldness; his hair was streaked with grey; his forehead had a line in the middle; his manner was rigid, almost frigid, indeed. Only in his eyes was there that which denied all that his face and manner said--a hungry, absorbing, hopeless look, the look of one who searches for a friend in the denying desert. Somehow, when he bowed low to her, and looked her in the eyes as no one in all her life had ever done, she had an almost agonized understanding of what a man feels who has been imprisoned--that is, never the same again. He was an ex-convict, and yet she did not feel repelled by him. She did not believe he had killed Erris Boyne. As for the later crime of mutiny, that did not concern her much. She was Irish; but, more than that, she was in sympathy with the mutineers. She understood why Dyck Calhoun, enlisting as a common sailor, should take up their cause and run risk to advance it. That he had advanced it was known to all the world; that he had paid the price of his mutiny by saving the king's navy with a stolen ship had brought him pardon for his theft of a ship and mutiny; and that he had won wealth was but another proof of the man's power. "You would not come to America, so I came here, and--" She paused, her voice trembling slightly. "There is much to do at Salem," he added calmly, and yet with his heart beating, as it had not beaten since the day he had first met her at Playmore. "You would not take the money I sent to Dublin for you--the gift of a believing friend, and you would not come to America!" "I shall have to tell you why one day," he answered slowly, "but I'll pay my respects to your mother now." So saying he went forward and bowed low to Mrs. Llyn. Unlike her daughter, Mrs. Llyn did not offer her hand. She was pale, distraught, troubled--and vexed. She, however, murmured his name and bowed. "You did not expect to see me here in Jamaica," he said boldly. "Frankly, I did not, Mr. Calhoun," she said. "You resent my coming here to see you? You think it bold, at least." She looked at him closely and firmly. "You know why I cannot welcome you." "Yet I have paid the account demanded by the law. And you had no regard for him. You divorced him." Sheila had drawn near, and Dyck made a gesture in her direction. "She does not know," he said, "and she should not hear what we say now?" Mrs. Llyn nodded, and in a low tone told Sheila that she wished to be alone with Dyck for a little while. In Dyck's eyes, as he watched Sheila go, was a thing deeper than he had ever known or shown before. In her white gown, and with her light step, Sheila seemed to float away--a picture graceful, stately, buoyant, "keen and small." As she was about to pass beyond a clump of pimento bushes, she turned her head towards the two, and there was that in her eyes which few ever see and seeing are afterwards the same. It was a look of inquiry, or revelation, of emotion which went to Dyck's heart. "No, she does not know the truth," Mrs. Llyn said. "But it has been hard hiding it from her. One never knew whether some chance remark, some allusion in the papers, would tell her you had killed her father." "Did I kill her father?" asked Dyck helplessly. "Did I? I was found guilty of it, but on my honour, Mrs. Llyn, I do not know, and I do not think I did. I have no memory of it. We quarrelled. I drew my sword on him, then he made an explanation and I madly, stupidly drank drugged wine in reconciliation with him, and then I remember nothing more--nothing at all." "What was the cause of your quarrel?" Dyck looked at her long before answering. "I hid that from my father even, and hid it from the world--did not even mention it in court at the trial. If I had, perhaps I should not have gone to jail. If I had, perhaps I should not be here in Jamaica. If I had--" He paused, a flood of reflection drowning his face, making his eyes shine with black sorrow. "Well, if you had! . . . Why did you not? Wasn't it your duty to save yourself and save your friends, if you could? Wasn't that your plain duty?" "Yes, and that was why I did not tell what the quarrel was. If I had, even had I killed Erris Boyne, the jury would not have convicted me. Of that I am sure. It was a loyalist jury." "Then why did you not?" "Isn't it strange that now after all these years, when I have settled the account with judge and jury, with state and law--that now I feel I must tell you the truth. Madam, your ex-husband, Erris Boyne, was a traitor. He was an officer in the French army, and he offered to make me an officer also and pay me well in French Government money, if I would break my allegiance and serve the French cause--Ah, don't start! He knew I was on my last legs financially. He knew I had acquaintance with young rebel leaders like Emmet, and he felt I could be won. So he made his proposal. Because of your daughter I held my peace, for she could bear it less than you. I did not tell the cause of the quarrel. If I had, there would have been for her the double shame. That was why I held my peace--a fool, but so it was!" The woman seemed almost robbed of understanding. His story overwhelmed her. Yet what the man had done was so quixotic, so Celtic, that her senses were almost paralysed. "So mad--so mad and bad and wild you were," she said. "Could you not see it was your duty to tell all, no matter what the consequences. The man was a villain. But what madness you were guilty of, what cruel madness! Only you could have done a thing like that. Erris Boyne deserved death --I care not who killed him--you or another. He deserved death, and it was right he should die. But that you should kill him, apart from all else--why, indeed, oh, indeed, it is a tragedy, for you loved my daughter, and the killing made a gulf between you! There could be no marriage in such a case. She could not bear it, nor could you. But please know this, Mr. Calhoun, that she never believed you killed Erris Boyne. She has said so again and again. You are the only man who has ever touched her mind or her senses, though many have sought her. Wherever she goes men try to win her, but she has no thought for any. Her mind goes back to you. Just when you entered the garden I learned-- and only then-that you were here. She hid it from me, but Darius Boland knew, and he had seen your man, Michael Clones, and she had then made him tell me. I was incensed. I was her mother, and yet she had hid the thing from me. I thought she came to this island for the sake of Salem, and I found that she came not for Salem, but for you. . . . Ah, Mr. Calhoun, she deserves what you did to save her, but you should not have done it." "She deserves all that any better man might do. Why don't you marry her to some great man in your Republic? It would settle my trouble for me and free her mind from anxiety. Mrs. Llyn, we are not children, you and I. You know life, and so do I, and--" She interrupted him. "Be sure of this, Mr. Calhoun, she knows life even better than either of us. She is, and has always been, a girl of sense and judgment. When she was a child she was my master, even in Ireland. Yet she was obedient and faithful, and kept her head in all vexed things. She will have her way, and she will have it as she wants it, and in no other manner. She is one of the world's great women. She is unique. Child as she is, she still understands all that men do, and does it. Under her hands the estates in Virginia have developed even more than under the hands of my brother. She controls like another Elizabeth. She has made those estates run like a spool of thread, and she will do the same here with Salem. Be sure of that." "Why does she not marry? Is there no man she can bear? She could have the highest, that's sure." He spoke with passion and insistence. If she were married his trouble would be over. The worst would have come to him--like death. His eyes were only two dark fires in a face that was as near to tragic pain crystallized as any the world has seen. Yet there was in it some big commanding thing, that gave it a ghastly handsomeness almost; that bathed his look in dignity and power, albeit a reckless power, a thing that would not be stayed by any blandishments. He had the look of a lost angel, one who fell with Belial in the first days of sin. "There is no man she can bear--except here in Jamaica. It is no use. Your governor, Lord Mallow, whom she knew in Ireland, who is distant kin of mine, he has already made advances here to her, as he did in Ireland --you did not know that. Even before we left for Virginia he came to see us, and brought her books and flowers, and here, on our arrival, he brought her choicest blooms of his garden. She is rich, and he would be glad of an estate that brings in scores of thousands of pounds yearly. He has asked us to stay at King's House, but we have declined. We start for Salem in a few hours. She wants her hand on the wheel." "Lord Mallow--he courts her, does he?" His face grew grimmer. "Well, she might do worse, though if she were one of my family I would rather see her in her grave than wedded to him. For he is selfish--aye, as few men are! He would eat and keep his apple too. His theory is that life is but a game, and it must be played with steel. He would squeeze the life out of a flower, and give the flower to his dog to eat. He thinks first and always of himself. He would--but there, he would make a good husband as husbands go for some women, but not for this woman! It is not because he is my enemy I say this. It is because there is only one woman like your daughter, and that is herself; and I would rather see her married to a hedger that really loved her than to Lord Mallow, who loves only one being on earth--himself. But see, Mrs. Llyn, now that you know all, now that we three have met again, and this island is small and tragedy is at our doors, don't you think your daughter should be told the truth. It will end everything for me. But it would be better so. It is now only cruelty to hide the truth, harsh to continue a friendship which will only appal her in the end. If we had not met again like this, then silence might have been best; but as she is not cured of her tender friendship made upon the hills at Playmore, isn't it well to end it all? Your conscience will be clearer, and so will mine. We shall have done the right thing at last. Why did you not tell her who her father was? Then why blame me! You held your peace to save your daughter, as you thought. I held my tongue for the same reason; but she is so much a woman now, that she will understand, as she could not have understood years ago in Limerick. In God's name, let us speak. One of us should tell her, and I think it should be you. And see, though I know I did right in withholding the facts about the quarrel with Erris Boyne, yet I favour telling her that he was a traitor. The whole truth now, or nothing. That is my view." He saw how lined and sunken was her face, he noted the weakness of her carriage, he realized the task he was putting on her, and his heart relented. "No, I will do it," he added, with sudden will, "and I will do it now, if I may." "Oh, not to-day-not to-day!" she said with a piteous look. "Let it not be to-day. It is our first day here, and we are due at King's House to-night, even in an hour from now." "You want her at her glorious best, is that it?" It seemed too strange that the pure feminine should show at a time of crisis like this, but there it was. It was this woman's way. But he added presently: "When she asks you what we have talked about, what will you say?" "Is it not easy? I am a mother," she said meaningly. "And I am an ex-convict, and a mutineer--is that it?" She inclined her head. "It should not be difficult to explain. When you came I was speaking as I felt, and she will not think it strange if I give that as my reason." "But is it wise? Isn't it better to end it all now? Suppose Lord Mallow tells her." "He did not before. He is not likely now," was the vexed reply. "Is it a thing a gentleman will speak of to a lady?" "But you do not know Mallow. If he thought she had seen me to-day, he would not hesitate. What would you do if you were Lord Mallow?" "No, not to-day," she persisted. "It is all so many years ago. It can hurt naught to wait a little longer." "When and where shall it be?" he asked gloomily. "At Salem--at Salem. We shall be settled then--and steady. There is every reason why you should consider me. I have suffered as few women have suffered, and I do not hate you. I am only sorry." Far down at the other end of the garden he saw Sheila. Her face was in profile--an exquisite silhouette. She moved slowly among the pimento bushes. "As you wish," he said with a heavy sigh. The sight of the girl anguished his soul. CHAPTER XVIII AT SALEM The plantation of Salem was in a region below the Pedro Plains in the parish of St. Elizabeth, where grow the aloe, and torch-thistle, and clumps of wood which alter the appearance of the plain from the South Downs of England, but where thousands of cattle and horses even in those days were maintained. The air of the district was dry and elastic, and it filtered down to the valleys near like that where Salem was with its clusters of negro huts and offices, its mills and distilleries where sugar and rum were made. Salem was situated on the Black River, accessible by boats and canoes. The huts of negro slaves were near the sugar mills, without regard to order, but in clusters of banana, avocado- pear, limes and oranges, and with the cultivated land round their huts made an effective picture. One day every fortnight was allowed the negroes to cultivate their crops, and give them a chance to manufacture mats for beds, bark-ropes, wicker- chairs and baskets, earthen jars, pans, and that kind of thing. The huts themselves were primitive to a degree, the floor being earth, the roof, of palm-thatch or the leaves of the cocoa-nut tree, the sides hard-posts driven in the ground and interlaced with wattle and plaster, and inside scarcely high enough for its owner to walk upright. The furniture was scant--a quatre, or bed, made of a platform of boards, with a mat and a blanket, some low stools, a small table, an earthen water-jar, and some smaller ones, a pail and an iron pot, and calabashes which did duty for plates, dishes and bowls. In one of the two rooms making the hut, there were always the ashes of the night-fire, without which negroes could not sleep in comfort. These were the huts of the lowest grade of negro-slaves of the fields. The small merchants and the domestics had larger houses with boarded floors, some even with linen sheets and mosquito nets, and shelves with plates and dishes of good ware. Every negro received a yearly allowance of Osnaburgh linen, woollen, baize and checks for clothes, and some planters also gave them hats and handkerchiefs, knives, needles and thread, and so on. Every plantation had a surgeon who received a small sum for attendance on every slave, while special cases of midwifery, inoculation, etc., had a particular allowance. The surgeon had to attend to about four hundred to five hundred negroes, on an income of L150 per annum, and board and lodging and washing, besides what he made from his practice with the whites. Salem was no worse than some other plantations on the island, but it was far behind such plantations as that owned by Dyck Calhoun, and had been notorious for the cruelties committed on it. To such an estate a lady like Sheila Llyn would be a boon. She was not on the place a day before she started reforms which would turn the plantation into a model scheme. Houses, food, treatment of the negroes, became at once a study to her, and her experience in Virginia was invaluable. She had learned there not to work the slaves too hard in the warm period of the day; and she showed her interest by having served at her own table the favourite olio the slaves made of plantains, bananas, yams, calalue, eddoes, cassavi, and sweet potatoes boiled with salt fish and flavoured with cayenne pepper. This, with the unripe roasted plantain as bread, was a native relish and health-giving food. Ever since the day when she had seen Dyck Calhoun at Spanish Town she had been disturbed in mind. Dyck had shown a reserve which she felt was not wholly due to his having been imprisoned for manslaughter. In one way he looked little older. His physique was as good, or better than when she first saw him on the hills of Playmore. It was athletic, strenuous, elastic. Yet there was about it the abandonment of despair--at least of recklessness. The face was older, the head more powerful, the hair slightly touched with grey-rather there was one spot in the hair almost pure white; a strand of winter in the foliage of summer. It gave a touch of the bizarre to a distinguished head, it lent an air of the singular to a personality which had flare and force--an almost devilish force. That much was to be said for him, that he had not sought to influence her to his own advantage. She was so surrounded in America by men who knew her wealth and prized her beauty, she was so much a figure in Virginia, that any reserve with regard to herself was noticeable. She was enough feminine to have pleasure in the fact that she was thought desirable by men; yet it played an insignificant part in her life. It did not give her conceit. It was only like a frill on the skirts of life. It did not play any part in her character. Certainly Dyck Calhoun had not flattered her. That one to whom she had written, as she had done, should remove himself so from the place of the deserving friend, one whom she had not deserted while he was in jail as a criminal --that he should treat her so, gave every nerve a thrill of protest. Sometimes she trembled in indignation, and then afterwards gave herself to the work on the estate or in the household--its reform and its rearrangement; though the house was like most in Jamaica, had adequate plate, linen, glass and furniture. At the lodgings in Spanish Town, after Dyck Calhoun had left, her mother had briefly said that she had told Dyck he could not expect the conditions of the Playmore friendship should be renewed; that, in effect, she had warned him off. To this Sheila had said that the killing of a man whose life was bad might be punishable. In any case, that was in another land, under abnormal conditions; and, with lack of logic, she saw no reason why he should be socially punished in Jamaica for what he had been legally punished for in Ireland. As for the mutiny, he had done what any honest man of spirit would do; also, he had by great bravery and skill brought victory to the king's fleet in West Indian waters. Then it was she told her mother how she had always disobeyed her commands where Dyck was concerned, that she had written to him while he was in jail; that she had come to Jamaica more to see him than to reform Salem; that she had the old Celtic spirit of brotherhood, and she would not be driven from it. In a sudden burst of anger her mother had charged her with deceit; but the girl said she had followed her conscience, and she dismissed it all with a gesture as emphatic as her mother's anger. That night they had dined with Lord Mallow, and she saw that his attentions had behind them the deep purpose of marriage. She had not been overcome by the splendour of his retinue and table, or by the magnificence of his guests; though the military commander-in-chief and the temporary admiral on the station did their utmost to entertain her, and some of the local big-wigs were pompous. Lord Mallow had ability and knew how to use it; and he was never so brilliant as on this afternoon, for they dined while it was still daylight and hardly evening. He told her of the customs of the country, of the people; and slyly and effectively he satirized some of his grandiloquent guests. Not unduly, for one of them, the most renowned in the island, came to him after dinner as he sat talking to Sheila, and said: "I'm very sorry, your honour, but good Almighty God, I must go home and cool coppers." Then he gave Sheila a hot yet clammy hand, and bade her welcome as a citizen to the island, "alien but respected, beautiful but capable!" Sheila had seen a few of the Creole ladies present at their best-large-eyed, simple, not to say primitive in speech, and very unaffected in manner. She had learned also that the way to the Jamaican heart was by a full table and a little flattery. One incident at dinner had impressed her greatly. Not far away from her was a young lady, beautiful in face and person, and she had seen a scorpion suddenly shoot into her sleeve and ruthlessly strike and strike the arm of the girl, who gave one cry only and then was still. Sheila saw the man next to the girl--he was a native officer--secure the scorpion, and then whip from his pocket a little bag of indigo, dip it in water, and apply the bag to the wounded arm, immediately easing the wound. This had all been done so quickly that it was over before the table had been upset, almost. "That is the kind of thing we have here," said Lord Mallow. "There is a lady present who has seen in one day a favourite black child bitten by a congereel, a large centipede in her nursery, a snake crawl from under her child's pillow, and her son nearly die from a bite of the black spider with the red spot on its tail. It is a life that has its trials--and its compensations." "I saw a man's head on a pole on my way to King's House. You have to use firm methods here," Sheila said in reply. "It is not all a rose-garden. You have to apply force." Lord Mallow smiled grimly. "C'est la force morale toujours." "Ah, I should not have thought it was moral force always," was the ironical reply. "We have criminals here," declared the governor with aplomb, "and they need some handling, I assure you. We have in this island one of the worst criminals in the British Empire." "Ah, I thought he was in the United States!" answered the girl sedately. "You mean General George Washington," remarked the governor. "No, it is one who was a friend and fellow-countryman of yours before he took to killing unarmed men." "You refer to Mr. Dyck Calhoun, I doubt not, sir? Well, he is still a friend of mine, and I saw him today--this afternoon, before I came here. I understood that the Crown had pardoned his mutiny." The governor started. He was plainly annoyed. "The crime is there just the same," he replied. "He mutinied, and he stole a king's ship, and took command of it, and brought it out here." "And saved you and your island, I understand." "Ah, he said that, did he?" "He said nothing at all to me about it. I have been reading the Jamaica Cornwall Chronicle the last three years." "He is ever a source of anxiety to me," declared the governor. "I knew he was once in Phoenix Park years ago," was the demure yet sharp reply, "but I thought he was a good citizen here--a good and well-to-do citizen." Lord Mallow flushed slightly. "Phoenix Park--ah, he was a capable fellow with the sword! I said so always, and I'd back him now against a champion; but many a bad man has been a good swordsman." "So, that's what good swordsmanship does, is it? I wondered what it was that did it. I hear you fight him still--but with a bludgeon, and he dodges it." "I do not understand," declared Lord Mallow tartly. "Ah, wasn't there some difference over his going for the treasure to Haiti? Some one told me, I think, that you were not in favour of his getting his ticket-of- leave, or whatever it is called, and that the provost-marshal gave it to him, as he had the right to do." "You have wide sources of information in this case. I wonder--" "No, your honour need not wonder. I was told that by a gentleman on the steamer coming here. He was a native of the island, I think--or perhaps it was the captain, or the mate, or the boatswain. I can't recall. Or maybe it came to me from my manager, Darius Boland, who hears things wherever he is, one doesn't know how; but he hears them. He is to me what your aide-de-camp is to you," she nodded towards a young man near by at the table. "And do you dress your Darius Boland as I dress my aide in scarlet, with blue facings and golden embroidery, and put a stiff hat with a feather on his head?" "But no, he does not need such things. I am a Republican now. I am a citizen of the United States, where men have no need of uniform to tell the world what they are. You shall see my Darius Boland--indeed, you have seen him. He was there to-day when you gave me the distinction of your presence." "That dry, lean, cartridge of a fellow, that pair of pincers with a face!" "And a tongue, your honour. If you did not hear it yet, you will hear it. He is to be my manager here. So he will be under your control-- if I permit him." "If you permit him, mistress?" "If I permit him, yes. You are a power, but you are not stronger than the laws and rules you make. For instance, there was the case of Mr. Dyck Calhoun. When he came, you were for tying him up in one little corner of this island--the hottest part, I know, near to Kingston, where it averages ninety degrees in the shade at any time of the year. But the King you represent had not restricted his liberties so, and you being the King, that is, yourself, were forced to abide by your own regulations. So it may be the same with Darius Boland. He may want something, and you, high up, looking down, will say, "What devilry is here!" and decline. He will then turn to your chief-justice or provost-marshal- general, or a deputy of the provost-marshal, and they will say that Darius Boland shall have what he wants, because it is the will of the will you represent." Almost the last words the governor used to her were these: "Those only live at peace here who are at peace with me"; and her reply had been: "But Mr. Dyck Calhoun lives at peace, does he not, your honour?" To that he had replied: "No man is at peace while he has yet desires." He paused a minute and then added: "That Erris Boyne killed by Dyck Calhoun--did you ever see him that you remember?" "Not that I remember," she replied quickly. "I never lived in Dublin." "That may be. But did you never know his history?" She shook her head in negation. His eyes searched her face carefully, and he was astonished when he saw no sign of confusion there. "Good God, she doesn't know. She's never been told!" he said to himself. "This is too startling. I'll speak to the mother." A little later he turned from the mother with astonishment. "It's madness," he remarked to himself. "She will find out. Some one will tell her. . . . By heaven, I'll tell her first," he hastily said. "When she knows the truth, Calhoun will have no chance on earth. Yes, I'll tell her myself. But I'll tell no one else," he added; for he felt that Sheila, once she knew the truth, would resent his having told abroad the true story of the Erris Boyne affair. So Sheila and her mother had gone to their lodgings with depression, but each with a clear purpose in her mind. Mrs. Llyn was determined to tell her daughter what she ought to have known long before; and Sheila was firm to make the one man who had ever interested her understand that he was losing much that was worth while keeping. Then had followed the journey to Salem. Yet all the while for Sheila one dark thought kept hovering over everything. Why should life be so complicated? Why should this one man who seemed capable and had the temperament of the Irish hills and vales be the victim of punishment and shame--why should he shame her? Suddenly, without her mother's knowledge, she sent Darius Boland through the hills in the early morning to Enniskillen, Dyck Calhoun's place, with a letter which said only this: "Is it not time that you came to wish us well in our new home? We shall expect you to-morrow." When Dyck read this note he thought it was written by Sheila, but inspired by the mother; and he lost no time in making his way down across the country to Salem, which he reached a few hours after sunrise. At the doorway of the house he met Mrs. Llyn. "Have you told her?" he asked in anxiety. Astonished at his presence she could make no reply for a moment. "I have told her nothing," she answered. "I meant to do so this morning. I meant to do it--I must." "She sent me a letter asking if it was not time I came to wish you well in your house, and you and she would expect me to-day." "I knew naught of her writing you," was the reply--"naught at all. But now that you are here, will you not tell her all?" Dyck smiled grimly. "Where is she?" he asked. "I will tell her." The mother pointed down the garden. "Yonder by the clump of palms I saw her a moment ago. If you go that way you will find her." In another moment Dyck Calhoun was on his way to the clump of palms, and before he reached it, the girl came out into the path. She was dressed in a black silk skirt with a white bodice and lace, as he had seen her on her arrival in Kingston, and at her throat was a sprig of the wild pear- tree. When she saw him, she gave a slight start, then stood still, and he came to her. "I have your letter," he said, "and I came to say what I ought to say about your living here: you will bring blessings to the place." She looked at him steadfastly. "Shall we talk here," she said, "or inside the house? There is a little shelter here in the trees"-- pointing to the right--"a shelter built by the late manager. It has the covering of a hut, but it is open at two sides. Will you come?" As she went on ahead, he could not fail to notice how slim and trim she was, how perfectly her figure seemed to fit her gown-as though she had been poured into it; and yet the folds of her skirt waved and floated like silky clouds around her! Under cover of the shelter, she turned and smiled at him. "You have seen my mother?" "I have just come from her," he answered. "She bade me tell you what ought to have been told long ago, and you were not, for there seemed no reason that you should. You were young and ignorant and happy. You had no cares, no sorrows. The sorrows that had come to your mother belonged to days when you were scarce out of the cradle. But you did not know. You were not aware that your mother had divorced your father for crime against marital fidelity and great cruelty. You did not know even who that father was. Well, I must tell you. Your father was a handsome man, a friend of mine until I knew the truth about him, and then he died--I killed him, so the court said." Her face became ghastly pale. After a moment of anguished bewilderment, she said: "You mean that Erris Boyne was my father?" "Yes, I mean that. They say I killed him. They say that he was found with no sword drawn, but that my open sword lay on the table beside me while I was asleep, and that it had let out his life-blood." "Why was he killed?" she asked, horror-stricken and with pale lips. "I do not know, but if I killed him, it was because I revolted from the proposals he made to me. I--" He paused, for the look on her face was painful to see, and her body was as that of one who had been struck by lightning. It had a crumpled, stricken look, and all force seemed to be driven from it. It had the look of crushed vitality. Her face was set in paleness, her eyes were frightened, her whole person was, as it were, in ghastly captivity. His heart smote him, and he pulled himself together to tell her all. "Go on," she said. "I want to hear. I want--to know all. I ought to have known--long ago; but that can't be helped now. Continue--please." Her words had come slowly, in gasps almost, and her voice was so frayed he could scarcely recognize it. All the pride of her nature seemed shattered. "If I killed him," he said presently, "it was because he tried to tempt me from my allegiance to the Crown to become a servant of France, to--" He stopped short, for a cry came from her lips which appalled him. "My God--my God!" she said with bloodless lips, her eyes fastened on his face, her every look and motion the inflection of despair. "Go on--tell all," she added presently with more composure. Swiftly he described what happened in the little room at the traitor's tavern, of the momentary reconciliation and the wine that he drank, drugged wine poured out but not drunk by Erris Boyne, and of his later unconsciousness. At last he paused. "Why did these things not come out at the trial?" she asked in hushed tones. He made a helpless gesture. "I did not speak of them because I thought of you. I hid it--I did not want you to know what your father was." Something like a smile gathered at her pale lips. "You saved me for the moment, and condemned yourself for ever," she said in a voice of torture. "If you had told what he was--if you had told that, the jury would not have condemned you, they would not have sent you to prison." "I believe I did the right thing," he said. "If I killed your father, prison was my proper punishment. But I can't remember. There was no other clue, no other guide to judgment. So the law said I killed him, and--he had evidently not drawn his sword. It was clear he was killed defenceless." "You killed a defenceless man!" Her voice was sharp with agony. "That was mentioned at the trial--but I did not believe it then--in that long ago." She trembled to her feet from the bench where she was sitting. "And I do not believe it now--no, on my soul, I do not." "But it makes no difference, you see. I was condemned for killing your father, and the world knows that Erris Boyne was your father, and here Lord Mallow, the governor, knows it; and there is no chance of friendship between you and me. Since the day he was found dead in the room, there was no hope for our friendship, for anything at all between us that I had wished to be there. You dare not be friends with me--" Her face suddenly suffused and she held herself upright with an effort. She was about to say, "I dare, Dyck--I do dare!" but he stopped her with a reproving gesture. "No, no, you dare not, and I would not let you if you would. I am an ex-convict. They say I killed your father, and the way to understanding between us is closed." She made a protesting gesture. "Closed! Closed!--But is it closed? No, no, some one else killed him, not you. You couldn't have done it. You would have fought him--fought him as you did Lord Mallow, and in fighting you might have killed him, but your sword never let out his life when he was defenceless--never." A look of intense relief, almost of happiness, came to Dyck's face. "That is like you, Sheila, but it does not cure the trouble. You and I are as far apart as noon and midnight. The law has said the only thing that can be said upon it." She sank down again upon the wooden bench. "Oh, how mad you were, not to tell the whole truth long ago! You would not have been condemned, and then--" She paused overcome, and his self-control almost deserted him. With strong feeling he burst out: "And then, we might have come together? No, your mother--your friends, myself, could not have let that be. See, Sheila, I will tell you the whole truth now--aye, the whole absolute truth. I have loved you since the first day I saw you on the hills when you and I rescued Christopher Dogan. Not a day has passed since then when you were not more to me than any other woman in all the world." A new light came into her face, the shadows left her eyes, and the pallor fled from her lips. "You loved me?" she said in a voice grown soft- husky still, but soft as the light in a summer heaven. "You loved me --and have always loved me since we first met?" Her look was so appealing, so passionate and so womanly, that he longed to reach out his arms to her, and say, "Come--come home, Sheila," but the situation did not permit that, and only his eyes told the story of what was in his mind. "I have always loved you, Sheila, and shall do so while I have breath and life. I have always given you the best that is in me, tried to do what was good for us both, since my misfortune--crime, Lord Mallow calls it, as does the world. Never a sunrise that does not find you in the forefront of all the lighted world; never a flower have I seen that does not seem sweeter--it brings thoughts of you; never a crime that does not deepen its shame because you are in the world. In prison, when I used to mop my floor and clean down the walls; when I swept the dust from the corners; when I folded up my convict clothes; when I ate the prison food and sang the prison hymns; when I placed myself beside the bench in the workshop to make things that would bring cash to my fellow-prisoners in their need; when I saw a minister of religion or heard the Litany; when I counted up the days, first that I had spent in jail and then the days I had still to spend in jail; when I read the books from the prison library of the land where you had gone, and of the struggle there; when I saw you, in my mind's eye, in the cotton-fields or on the verandah of your house in Virginia--I had but one thought, and that was the look in your face at Playmore and Limerick, the sound of your voice as you came singing up the hill just before I first met you, the joyous beauty of your body." "And at sea?" she whispered with a gesture at once beautiful and pathetic, for it had the motion of helplessness and hopelessness. What she had heard had stirred her soul, and she wanted to hear more--or was it that she wished to drain the cup now that it was held to her lips? -drain it to the last drop of feeling. "At sea," he answered, with his eyes full of intense feeling--"at sea, I was free at last, doomed as I thought, anguished in spirit, and yet with a wild hope that out of it would come deliverance. I expected to lose my life, and I lived each day as though it would be my last. I was chief rogue in a shipful of rogues, chief sinner in a hell of sinners, and yet I had no remorse and no regret. I had done all with an honest purpose, with the good of the sailors in my mind; and so I lived in daily touch with death, honour, and dishonour. Yet I never saw a sailor in the shrouds, or heard the night watch call 'All's well!' in the midst of night and mutiny, that I did not long for a word from you that would take away the sting of death. Those days at sea for ten long weeks were never free from anxiety, not anxiety for myself, only for the men who had put me where I was, had given me captain's rank, had--" Suddenly he stopped, and took from his pocket the letter he was writing on the very day she landed in Jamaica. He opened it and studied it for a moment with a dark look in his face. "This I wrote even as you were landing in Jamaica, and I knew naught of your coming. It was an outbreak of my soul. It was the truth written to you and for you, and yet with the feeling that you would never see it. I was still writing it when Michael Clones came up the drive to tell me you and your mother were here. Now, I know not what Christopher Dogan would say of it, but I say it is amazing that in the hour you were first come to this land I should be moved to tell you the story of my life since I left prison; since, on receiving your letter in London, forwarded from Dublin, I joined the navy. But here it is with all the truth and terror in it.--Aye, there was terror, for it gave the soul of my life to one I never thought to see again; and, if seeing, should be compelled to do what I have done--tell her the whole truth at once and so have it over. "But do not think that in telling it now I repent of my secrecy. I repent of nothing; I would not alter anything. What was to be is, and what is has its place in the book of destiny. No, I repent nothing, yet here now I give you this to read while still my story of the days of which you know is in your ears. Here it is. It will tell the whole story; for when you have read it and do understand, then we part to meet no more as friends. You will go back to Virginia, and I will stay here. You will forgive the unwilling wrong I have done you, but you will make your place in life without thought of me. You will marry some one--not worthy of you, for that could not be; but you will take to yourself some man from among the men of this world. You will set him apart from all other men as yours, and he will be happy, having been blessed beyond deserving. You will not regret coming here; but you will desire our friendship to cease; and what has been to be no more, while the tincture of life is in your veins. Sheila, read this thing, for it is the rest of the story until now." He handed her the papers, and she took them with an inclination of the head which said: "Give it to me. I will read it now while my eyes can still bear to read it. I have laid on my heart the nettle of shame, and while it is still burning there I will read all that you have to teach me." "I will go out in the garden while you read it," he said. "In a half- hour I will come back, and then we can say good-bye," he added, with pain in his voice, but firmly. "No, do not go," she urged. "Sit here on the bench--at the end of it here," she said, motioning with her hand. He shook his head in negation. "No, I will go and say to your mother that I have told you, and ease her mind, for I know she herself meant to tell you." As he went he looked at her face closely. It was so young, so pathetic, so pale, yet so strangely beautiful, and her forehead was serene. That was one of her characteristics. In all her life, her forehead remained untroubled and unlined. Only at her mouth and in her eyes did misery or sorrow show. He looked into her eyes now, and he was pleased with what he saw; for they had in them the glow of understanding and the note of will which said: "You and I are parted, but I believe in you, and I will not show I am a weak woman by futile horror. We shall meet no more, but I shall remember you." That was what he saw, and it was what he wished to see. He knew her character would stand the test of any trial, and it had done so. Horror had struck her, but had not overwhelmed her. She had cried out in her agony, but she had not been swept out into chaos. She had no weak passions and no futilities. But as he turned away now, it was with the sharp conviction that he had dealt a blow from which the girl would recover, but would never be the same again. She was rich "beyond the dreams of avarice," but that would not console her. She had resources within herself, had what would keep her steady. Her real power and force, her real hope, were in her regnant soul which was not to be cajoled by life's subterfuges. Her lips opened now, as though she would say something, but nothing came from them. She only shook her head sadly, as if to say: "You understand. Go, and when you come again, it will be for us to part in peace--at least in peace." Out in the garden he found her mother. After the first agitated greeting-agitated on her part, he said: "The story has been told, and she is now reading--" He told her the story of the manuscript, and added that Sheila had carried herself with courage. Presently the woman said to him: "She never believed you killed Erris Boyne. Well, it may not help the situation, but I say too, that I do not believe you did. I cannot understand why you did not deny having killed him." "I could not deny. In any case, the law punished me for it, and the book is closed for ever." "Have you never thought that some one--" "Yes, I have thought, but who is there? The crowd at the Dublin hotel where the thing was done were secret, and they would lie the apron off a bishop. No, there is no light, and, to tell the truth, I care not now." "But if you are not guilty--it is not too late; there is my girl! If the real criminal should appear--can you not see?" The poor woman, distressedly pale, her hair still abundant, her eyes still bright, her pulses aglow, as they had ever been, made a gesture of appeal with hands that were worn and thin. She had charm still, in a way as great as her daughter's. "I can see--but, Mrs. Llyn, I have no hope. I am a man whom some men fear--" "Lord Mallow!" she interjected. "He does not fear me. Why do you say that?" "I speak with a woman's intuition. I don't know what he fears, but he does fear you. You are a son of history; you had a duel with him, and beat him; you have always beaten him, even here where he has been supreme as governor--from first to last, you have beaten him." "I hope I shall be even with him at the last--at the very last," was Dyck Calhoun's reply. "We were made to be foes. We were from the first. I felt it when I saw him at Playmore. Nothing has changed since then. He will try to destroy me here, but I will see it through. I will try and turn his rapier-points. I will not be the target of his arrows without making some play against him. The man is a fool. I could help him here, but he will have none of it, and he is running great risks. He has been warned that the Maroons are restive, that the black slaves will rise if the Maroons have any initial success, and he will listen to no advice. He would not listen to me, but, knowing that, I got the provost-marshal to approach him, and when he knew my hand was in it, he stiffened. He would have naught to do with it, and so no preparations are made. And up there"--he turned and pointed--"up there in Trelawney the Maroons are plotting and planning, and any day an explosion may occur. If it occurs no one will be safe, especially if the blacks rise too--I mean the black slaves. There will be no safety then for any one." "For us as well, you mean?" "For you as well as all others, and you are nearer to Trelawney than most others. You are in their path. So be wise, Mrs. Llyn, and get back to Virginia as soon as may be. It is a better place than this." "My daughter is mistress here," was the sorrowful reply. "She will have her own way." "Your daughter will not care to stay here now," he answered firmly. "She will do what she thinks her duty in spite of her own feelings, or yours, or mine. It is her way, and it has always been her way." "I will tell her what I fear, and she may change her mind." "But the governor may want her to stay," answered Mrs. Llyn none too sagely, but with that in her mind which seemed to justify her. "Lord Mallow--oh, if you think there is any influence in him to keep her, that is another question," said Dyck with a grim smile. "But, nevertheless, I think you should leave here and go back to Virginia. It is no safe place for two ladies, in all senses. Whatever Lord Mallow thinks or does, this is no place for you. This place is your daughter's for her to do what she chooses with it, and I think she ought to sell it. There would be no trouble in getting a purchaser. It is a fine property." "But the governor might not think as you do; he might not wish it sold." Mrs. Llyn was playing a bold, indeed a reckless game. She wanted to show Dyck there were others who would interest themselves in Sheila even if he, Dyck, were blotted from the equation; that the girl could look high, if her mind turned towards marriage. Also she felt that Dyck should know the facts before any one else, so that he would not be shocked in the future, if anything happened. Yet in her deepest heart she wished him well. She liked him as she had never liked any of Sheila's admirers, and if the problem of Erris Boyne had been solved, she would gladly have seen him wedded to Sheila. "What has the governor to do with it!" he declared. "It is your daughter's own property, and she is free to hold or to part with it. There is no Crown consent to ask, no vice-regal approval needed." Suddenly he became angry, almost excited. His blood pounded in his veins. Was this man, Mallow, to come between his and her fate always, come into his problem at the most critical moment? "God in heaven!" he said in a burst of passion, "is this a land of the British Empire or is it not? Why should that man break in on every crisis? Why should he do this or that--say yea or nay, give or take away! He is the king's representative, but he is bound by laws as rigid as any that bind you or me. What has he to do with your daughter or what concerns her? Is there not enough trouble in the world without bringing in Lord Mallow? If he--" He stopped short, for he saw coming from the summerhouse, Sheila with his paper in her hand. She walked slowly and with dignity. She carried her head high and firmly, and the skin of her face was shining with light as she came on. Dyck noticed how her wide skirts flicked against the flowers that bordered the path, and how her feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground as she walked--a spirit, a regnant spirit of summer she seemed. But in her face there was no summer, there was only autumn and winter, only the bright frost of purpose. As she came, her mother turned as though to leave Dyck Calhoun. She called to her to wait, and Mrs. Llyn stood still, anxious. As Sheila came near she kept her eyes fixed on Dyck. When she reached them, she held out the paper to him. "It is wonderful," she said quietly, "that which you have written, but it does not tell all; it does not say that you did not kill my father. You are punished for the crime, and we must abide by it, even though you did not kill Erris Boyne. It is the law that has done it, and we cannot abash the law." "We shall meet no more then!" said Dyck with decision. Her lips tightened, her face paled. "There are some things one may not do, and one of them is to be openly your friend--at present." He put the letter carefully away in his pocket, his hand shaking, then flicking an insect from the collar of his coat, he said gently, yet with an air of warning: "I have been telling Mrs. Llyn about the Maroons up there"--he pointed towards Trelawney--"and I have advised your going back to Virginia. The Maroons may rise at any moment, and no care is being taken by Lord Mallow to meet the danger. If they rise, you, here, would be in their way, and I could not guarantee your safety. Besides, Virginia is a better place--a safer place than this," he added with meaning. "You wish to frighten me out of Jamaica," she replied with pain in her voice. "Well, I will not go till I have put this place in order and brought discipline and good living here. I shall stay here in Jamaica till I have done my task. There is no reason why we should meet. This place is not so large as Ireland or America, but it is large enough to give assurance we shall not meet. And if we meet, there is no reason why we should talk. As for the Maroons, when the trouble comes, I shall not be unprepared." She smiled sadly. "The governor may not take your advice, but I shall. And remember that I come from a land not without its dangers. We have Red Indians and black men there, and I can shoot." He waved a hand abruptly and then made a gesture--such as an ascetic might make-of reflection, of submission. "I shall remember every word you have said, and every note of your voice will be with me in all the lonely years to come. Good-bye--but no, let me say this before I go: I did not know that Erris Boyne was your father until after he was dead. So, if I killed him, it was in complete ignorance. I did not know. But we have outlived our friendship, and we must put strangeness in its place. Good-bye--God protect you!" he added, looking into Sheila's eyes. She looked at him with sorrow. Her lips opened but no words came forth. He passed on out of the garden, and presently they heard his horse's hoofs on the sand. "He is a great gentleman," said Mrs. Llyn. Her daughter's eyes were dry and fevered. Her lips were drawn. "We must begin the world again," she said brokenly. Then suddenly she sank upon the ground. "My God--oh, my God!" she said. CHAPTER XIX LORD MALLOW INTERVENES Two months went by. In that time Sheila and Dyck did not meet, though Dyck saw her more than once in the distance at Kingston. Yet they had never met since that wonderful day at Salem, when they had parted, as it might seem, for ever. Dyck had had news of her, however, for Darius Boland had come and gone between the two plantations, and had won Michael Clones' confidence. He knew more perhaps than he ever conveyed to Dyck, who saw him and talked with him, gave him advice as to the customs of Jamaica, and let him see the details in the management of Enniskillen. Yet Dyck made no inquiries as to how Mrs. Llyn and Sheila were; first because he chose not to do so, and also because Darius Boland, at one time or another, would of his own accord tell what Mrs. Llyn and Sheila were doing. One day Boland brought word that the governor had, more than once, visited Salem with his suite; that he had sat in judgment on a case in Kingston concerning the estate of Salem, and had given decision in its favour; and that Mrs. Llyn and Sheila visited him at Spanish Town and were entertained at King's House at second breakfast and dinner--in short, that Lord Mallow was making hay in Salem Plantation. This was no surprise to Dyck. He had full intuition of the foray the governor would make on Sheila, her estate and wealth. Lord Mallow had acted with discretion, and yet with sufficient passion to warrant some success. He was trying to make for himself a future which might mean the control of a greater colony even. If he had wealth, that would be almost a certainty, and he counted Sheila's gold as a guarantee of power. He knew well how great effect could be produced at Westminster and at the Royal Palace by a discreet display of wealth. He was also aware that no scandal could be made through an alliance with Sheila, for she had inherited long after the revolutionary war and with her skirts free from responsibility. England certainly would welcome wealth got through an Irish girl inheriting her American uncle's estates. So, steadily and happily, he pressed his suit. At his dinner-parties he gave her first place nearly always, and even broke the code controlling precedence when his secretary could be overruled. Thus Sheila was given honour when she did not covet it, and so it was that one day at Salem when the governor came to court her she was able to help Dyck Calhoun. "Then you go to Enniskillen?" Lord Mallow said to Darius Boland, as he entered the plantation, being met by the astute American. "Sometimes, your honour," was the careful reply. "I suppose you know what Mr. Calhoun's career has been, eh?" "Oh, in a way, your honour. They tell me he is a good swordsman." The governor flushed. "He told you that, did he?" "No, no, your honour, never. He told me naught. He does not boast. He's as modest as a man from Virginia. He does not brag at all." "Who told you, then?" "Ah, well, I heard it in the town! They speak of him there. They all know that Kingston and Spanish Town, and all the other places, would have been French by now, if it hadn't been for him. Oh, they talk a lot about him in Kingston and thereabouts!" "What swordsmanship do they speak of that was remarkable?" "Has your honour forgotten, then? Sure, seven years is a poor limit for a good memory." The blow was a shrewd one, for Darius Boland knew that Phoenix Park must be a galling memory to his honour. But Darius did not care. He guessed why the governor was coming to Salem, and he could not shirk having his hand in it. He had no fear of the results. "Aye, seven years is a poor limit," he repeated. The governor showed no feeling. He had been hit, and he took it as part of the game. "Ah, you mean the affair in Phoenix Park?" he said with no apparent feeling. Darius tossed his head a little. "Wasn't it a clever bit of work? Didn't he get fame there by defeating one of the best swordsmen--in Ireland?" Lord Mallow nodded. "He got fame, which he lost in time," he answered. "You mean he put the sword that had done such good work against a champion into a man's bowels, without 'by your leave,' or 'will you draw and fight'?" "Something like that," answered the governor sagely. "Is it true you believed he'd strike a man that wasn't armed, sir?" The governor winced, but showed nothing. "He'd been drinking--he is a heavy drinker. Do you never drink with him?" Darius Boland's face took on a strange look. Here was an intended insult to Dyck Calhoun. Right well the governor knew their relative social positions. Darius pulled at the hair on his chin reflectively. "Yes, I've drunk his liquor, but not as you mean, your honour. He'd drink with any man at all: he has no nasty pride. But he doesn't drink with me." "Modest enough he is to be a good republican, eh, Boland?" "Since your honour puts it so, it must stand. I'll not dispute it, me being what I am and employed by whom I am." Darius Boland had a gift of saying the right thing in the right way, and he had said it now. The governor was not so dense as to put this man against him, for women were curious folk. They often attach importance to the opinion of a faithful servant and let it weigh against great men. He had once lost a possible fortune by spurning a little terrier of the daughter of the Earl of Shallow, and the lesson had sunk deep into his mind. He was high-placed, but not so high as to be sure of success where a woman was concerned, and he had made up his mind to capture Sheila Llyn, if so be she could be caught flying, or settled, or sleeping. "Ah, well, he has drunk with worse men than republicans. Boland. He was a common sailor. He drank what was given him with whom it chanced in the fo'castle." Darius sniffed a little, and kept his head. "But he changed all that, your honour, and gave sailormen better drink than they ever had, I hear. In Jamaica he treats his slaves as though they were men and not Mohicans." "Well, he'll have less freedom in future, Boland, for word has come from London that he's to keep to his estate and never leave it." Darius looked concerned, and his dry face wrinkled still more. "Ah, and when was this word come, your honour?" "But yesterday, Boland, and he'll do well to obey, for I have no choice but to take him in hand if he goes gallivanting." "Gallivanting--here, in Jamaica! Does your honour remember where we are?" "Not in a bishop's close, Boland." "No, not in a bishop's close, nor in an archdeacon's garden. For of all places on earth where they defy religion, this is the worst, your honour. There's as much religion here as you'll find in a last year's bird's- nest. Gallivanting--where should he gallivant?" The governor waved a contemptuous hand. "It doesn't need ingenuity to find a place, for some do it on their own estate. I have seen it." Darius spoke sharply. "Your honour, there's naught on Mr. Calhoun's estate that's got the taint, and he's not the man to go hunting for it. Drink--well, suppose a gentleman does take his quartern, is it a crime? I ask your honour, is that a crime in Jamaica?" "It's no crime, Boland; nevertheless, your Mr. Calhoun will have to take his fill on his own land from the day I send him the command of the London Government." "And what day will that be, your honour?" To be questioned by one who had been a revolutionary was distasteful to the governor. "That day will be when I find the occasion opportune, my brave Boland," he said sourly. "Why 'brave,' your honour?" There was an ominous light in Darius' eye. "Did you not fight with George Washington against the King of England-- against King George? And if you did, was that not brave?" "It was true, your honour," came the firm reply. "It was the one right good thing to do, as we proved it by the victory we had. We did what we set out to do. But see, if you will let a poor man speak his mind, if I were you I'd not impose the command on Mr. Calhoun." "Why, Boland?" Darius spoke courageously. "Your honour, he has many friends in Jamaica, and they won't stand it. Besides, he won't stand it. And if he contests your honour, the island will be with him." "Is he popular here as all that?" asked the governor with a shrug of the shoulders. "They don't give their faith and confidence to order, your honour," answered Darius with a dry inflection. The burr in the voice did not escape the other's attentive ear. He swung a glance sharply at Darius. "What is the secret of his popularity--how has it been made?" he asked morosely. Darius' face took on a caustic look. "He's only been in the island a short time, your honour, and I don't know that I'm a good judge, but I'll say the people here have great respect for bravery and character." "Character! Character!" sniffed the governor. "Where did he get that?" "Well, I don't know his age, but it's as old as he is--his character. Say, I'm afraid I'm talking too much, your honour. We speak our minds in Virginia; we never count the cost." The governor waved a deprecating hand. "You'll find the measure of your speech in good time, Boland, I've no doubt. Meanwhile, you've got the pleasure of hunting it. Character, you say. Well, that isn't what the judge and jury said." Darius took courage again. Couldn't Lord Mallow have any decency? "Judge and jury be damned, your honour," he answered boldly. "It was an Irish verdict. It had no sense. It was a bit of ballyhack. He did not kill an unarmed man. It isn't his way. Why, he didn't kill you when he had you at his mercy in Phoenix Park, now, did he, governor?" A flush stole up the governor's face from his chin. Then he turned to Boland and looked him straight in the eyes. "That's true. He had me at his mercy, and he did not take my life." "Then, why do you head the cabal against him? Why do you take joy in commanding him to stay on his estate? Is that grateful, your honour?" The governor winced, but he said: "It's what I am ordered to do, my man. I'm a servant of the Crown, and the Crown has ordained it." Again Darius grew stronger in speech. "But why do you have pleasure in it? Is nothing left to your judgment? Do you say to me that if he keeps the freedom such as he has enjoyed, you'd punish him? Must the governor be as ruthless as his master? Look, your honour, I wouldn't impose that command--not till I'd taken his advice about the Maroons anyway. There's trouble brewing, and Mr. Calhoun knows it. He has warned you through the provost-marshal. I'd heed his warning, your honour, or it may injure your reputation as a ruler. No, I'd see myself in nethermost hell before I'd meddle with Mr. Calhoun. He's a dangerous man, when he's moved." "Boland, you'll succeed as a schoolmaster, when all else fails. You teach persistently." "Your honour is clever enough to know what's what, but I'd like to see the Maroons dealt with. This is not my country, but I've got interests here, or my mistress has, and that's the same to me. . . . Does your honour travel often without a suite?" The governor waved a hand behind him. "I left them at the last plantation, and rode on alone. I felt safe enough till I saw you, Boland." He smiled grimly, and a grimmer smile stole to the lean lips of the manager of Salem. "Fear is a good thing for forward minds, your honour," he said with respect in the tone of his voice and challenge in the words. "I'll say this, Boland, your mistress has been fortunate in her staff. You have a ready tongue." "Oh, I'm readier in other things, your honour, as you'd find on occasion. But I thank you for the compliment in a land where compliments are few. For a planter's country it has few who speak as well as they entertain. I'll say this for the land you govern, the hospitality is rich and rare." "In what way, Boland?" "Why, your honour, it is the custom for a man and his whole family to go on a visit to a neighbour, perhaps twenty or forty miles away, bring their servants--maybe a dozen or more--and sit down on their neighbour's hearthstone. There they eat his food, drink his wine, exhaust his fowl- yard and debilitate his cook--till all the resources of the place are played out; then with both hands round his friend's neck the man and his people will say adieu, and go back to their own accumulated larder and await the return visit. The wonder is Jamaica is so rich, for truly the waste is harmful. We have the door open in Virginia, but not in that way. We welcome, but we don't debauch." The governor smiled. "As you haven't old friends here, you should make your life a success--ah, there is the open door, Boland, and your mistress standing in it. But I come without my family, and with no fell purposes. I will not debilitate the cook; I will not exhaust the fowl- yard. A roasted plantain is good enough for me." Darius' looks quickened, and he jerked his chin up. "So, your honour, so. But might I ask that you weigh carefully the warning of Mr. Calhoun. There's trouble at Trelawny. I have it from good sources, and Mr. Calhoun has made preparations against the sure risings. I'd take heed of what he says. He knows. Your honour, it is not my mistress in the doorway, it is Mrs. Llyn; she is shorter than my mistress." The governor shaded his brow with his hands. Then he touched up his horse. "Yes, you are right, Boland. It is Mrs. Llyn. And look you, Boland, I'll think over what you've said about the Maroons and Mr. Calhoun. He's doing no harm as he is, that's sure. So why shouldn't he go on as he is? That's your argument, isn't it?" Boland nodded. "It's part of my argument, not all of it. Of course he's doing no harm; he's doing good every day. He's got a stiff hand for the shirker and the wanton, but he's a man that knows his mind, and that's a good thing in Jamaica." "Does he come here-ever?" "He has been here only once since our arrival. There are reasons why he does not come, as your honour kens, knowing the history of Erris Boyne." A quarter of an hour later Darius Boland said to Sheila: "He's got an order from England to keep Mr. Calhoun to his estate and to punish him, if he infringes the order." Sheila started. "He will infringe the order if it's made, Boland. But the governor will be unwise to try and impose it. I will tell him so." "But, mistress, he should not be told that this news comes from me." "No, he should not, Boland. I can tempt him to speak of it, I think. He hates Mr. Calhoun, and will not need much prompting." Sheila had changed since she saw Dyck Calhoun last. Her face was thinner, but her form was even fuller than it was when she had bade him good-bye, as it seemed to him for ever, and as it at first seemed to her. Through anxious days and nights she had fought with the old passion; and at last it seemed the only way to escape from the torture was by making all thought of him impossible. How could this be done? Well, Lord Mallow would offer a way. Lord Mallow was a man of ancient Irish family, was a governor, had ability, was distinguished-looking in a curious lean way; and he had a real gift with his tongue. He stood high in the opinion of the big folk at Westminster, and had a future. He had a winning way with women--a subtle, perniciously attractive way with her sex, and to herself he had been delicately persuasive. He had the ancient gift of picturesqueness without ornamentation. He had a strong will and a healthy imagination. He was a man of mettle and decision. Of all who had entered her field outside of Dyck Calhoun he was the most attractive; he was the nearest to the possible husband which she must one day take. And if at any day at all, why not now when she needed a man as she had never done--when she needed to forget? The sardonic critic might ask why she did not seek forgetfulness in flight; why she remained in Jamaica where was what she wished to forget. There was no valid reason, save a business one, why she should remain in Jamaica, and she was in a quandary when she put the question. There were, however, other reasons which she used when all else failed to satisfy her exigeant mind. There was the question of vessels to Virginia or New York. They were few and not good, and in any case they could have no comfortable journey to the United States for several weeks at least, for, since the revolutionary war, commerce with the United States was sparse. Also, there was the question of Salem. She did not feel she ought to waste the property which her Uncle Bryan had nurtured with care. In justice to his memory, and in fairness to Darius Boland, she felt she ought to stay--for a time. It did not occur to her that these reasons would vanish like mist--that a wilful woman would sweep them into the basket of forgetfulness, and do what she wished in spite of reason: that all else would be sacrificed, if the spirit so possessed her. Truth was that, far back in her consciousness, there was a vision of better days and things. It was as though some angel touched the elbow of her spirit and said: "Stay on, for things will be better than they seem. You will find your destiny here. Stay on." So she had stayed. She was deluding herself to believe that what she was doing was all for the best; that the clouds were rising; that her fate had fairer aspects than had seemed possible when Dyck Calhoun told her the terrible tale of the death of her father, Erris Boyne. Yet memory gave a touch of misery and bitterness to all she thought and did. For twenty-five years she had lived in ignorance as to her paternity. It surely was futile that her mother should have suffered all those years, with little to cheer her, while her daughter should be radiant in health and with a mind free from care or sadness. Yet the bitterest thing of all was the thought that her father was a traitor, and had died sacrificing another man. When Dyck had told her first, she had shivered with anger and shame--but anger and shame had gone. Only one thing gave her any comfort--the man who knew Erris Boyne was a traitor, and could profit by telling it, held his tongue for her own sake, kept his own counsel, and went to prison for four years as the price of his silence. He was now her neighbour and he loved her, and, if the shadow of a grave was not between them, would offer himself in marriage to her. This she knew beyond all doubt. He had given all a man can give--had saved her and killed her father--in ignorance had killed her father; in love had saved herself. What was to be done? In a strange spirit Sheila entered the room where the governor sat with her mother. She had reached the limit of her powers of suffering. Soon after her mother had left the room, the governor said: "Why do you think I have come here to-day?" He added to the words a note of sympathy, even of passion in his voice. "It was to visit my mother and myself, and to see how Salem looks after our stay on it, was it not?" "Yes, to see your mother and yourself, but chiefly the latter. As for Salem, it looks as though a mastermind had been at work, I see it in everything. The slaves are singing. Listen!" He held up a finger as though to indicate attention and direction. "One, two, three, All de same; Black, white, brown, All de same; All de same. One, two, three--" They could hear the words indistinctly. "What do the words mean?" asked Sheila. "I don't understand them." "No more do I, but I think they refer to the march of pestilence or plague. Numbers, colour, race, nothing matters, the plague sweeps all away. Ah, then, I was right," he added. "There is the story in other words. Listen again." To clapping of hands in unison, the following words were sung: "New-come buckra, He get sick, He tak fever, He be die; He be die. New-come buckra--" "Well, it may be a chant of the plague, but it's lacking in poetry," she remarked. "Doesn't it seem so to you?" "No, I certainly shouldn't go so far as that. Think of how much of a story is crowded into those few words. No waste, nothing thrown away. It's all epic, or that's my view, anyhow," said the governor. "If you look out on those who are singing it, you'd see they are resting from their labours; that they are fighting the ennui which most of us feel when we rest from our labours. Let us look at them." The governor stood up and came to the open French windows that faced the fields of sugar-cane. In the near distance were clumps of fruit trees, of hedges of lime and flowering shrubs, rows of orange trees, mangoes, red and purple, forbidden-fruit and grapefruit, the large scarlet fruit of the acqui, the avocado-pear, the feathering bamboo, and the Jack-fruit tree, with its enormous fruit like pumpkins. Parrots were chattering in the acacia and in the Otaheite plum tree, with its bright pink blossoms like tassels, and flanking the negro huts by the river were bowers of grenadilla fruit. Around the negro huts were small individual plantations kept by the slaves, for which they had one day a fortnight, besides Sundays, free to work on their own account. Here and there also were patches of "ground-fruit," as the underground vegetables were called, while there passed by on their way to the open road leading to Kingston wains loaded with sugar-casks, drawn by oxen, and in two cases by sumpter mules. "Is there anything finer than that in Virginia?" asked the governor. "I have never been in Virginia, but I take this to be in some ways like that state. Is it?" "In some ways only. We have not the same profusion of wild fruits and trees, but we have our share--and it is not so hot as here. It is a better country, though." "In what way is it better?" the governor asked almost acidly. "It is better governed." "What do you mean by that? Isn't Jamaica well governed?" "Not so well that it couldn't be improved," was Sheila's reply. "What improvements would you suggest?" Lord Mallow asked urbanely, for he was set to play his cards carefully to-day. "More wisdom in the governor," was the cheerful and bright reply. "Is he lacking in wisdom?" "In some ways, yes." "Will you mind specifying some of the things?" "I think he is careless." "Careless--as to what?" Sheila smiled. "He is indifferent to good advice. He has been told of trouble among the Maroons, that they mean to rise; he has been advised to make preparations, and he makes none, and he is deceived by a show of loyalty on the part of the slaves. Lord Mallow, if the free Maroons rise, why should not the black slaves rise at the same time? Why do you not act?" "Is everybody whose good opinion is worth having mad?" answered the governor. "I have sent my inspectors to Trelawney. I have had reports from them. I have used every care--what would you have me do?" "Used every care? Why don't you ensure the Maroons peaceableness by advancing on them? Why don't you take them prisoners? They are enraged that two of their herdsmen should be whipped by a negro-slave under the order of one of your captains. They are angry and disturbed and have ambushed the roads to Trelawney, so I'm told." "Did Mr. Calhoun tell you that when he was here?" "It was not that which Mr. Calhoun told me the only time he came here. But who Erris Boyne was. I never knew till, in his honour, he told me, coming here for that purpose. I never knew who my father was till he told me. My mother had kept it from me all my life." The governor looked alert. "And you have not seen him since that day?" "I have seen him, but I have not spoken to him. It was in the distance only." "I understand your manager, Mr. Boland, sees him." "My manager does not share my private interests--or troubles. He is free to go where he will, to speak to whom he chooses. He visits Enniskillen, I suppose--it is a well-managed plantation on Jamaican lines, and its owner is a man of mark." Sheila spoke without agitation of any kind; her face was firm and calm, her manner composed, her voice even. As she talked, she seemed to be probing the centre of a flower which she had caught from a basket at the window, and her whole personality was alight and vivifying, her good temper and spirit complete. As he looked at her, he had an overmastering desire to make her his own--his wife. She was worth hundreds of thousands of pounds; she had beauty, ability and authority. She was the acme of charm and good bearing. With her he could climb high on the ladder of life. He might be a really great figure in the British world- if she gave her will to help him, to hold up his hands. It had never occurred to him that Dyck Calhoun could be a rival, till he had heard of Dyck's visit to Sheila and her mother, till he had heard Sheila praise him at the first dinner he had given to the two ladies on Christmas Day. On that day it was clear Sheila did not know who her father was; but stranger things had happened than that she should take up with, and even marry, a man imprisoned for killing another, even one who had been condemned as a mutineer, and had won freedom by saving the king's navy. But now that Sheila knew the truth there could be no danger! Dyck Calhoun would be relegated to his proper place in the scheme of things. Who was there to stand between him and his desire? What was there to stay the great event? He himself was a peer and high-placed, for it was a time when the West Indian Islands were a centre of the world's fighting, where men like Rodney had made everlasting fame; where the currents of world-controversy challenged, met and fought for control. The West Indies was as much a cock-pit of the fighting powers as ever Belgium was; and in those islands there was wealth and the power which wealth buys; the clash of white and black and coloured peoples; the naval contests on the sea; the horrible massacres and enslavement of free white peoples, as in St. Domingo and Grenada; the dominating attacks of people fighting for control--peoples of old empires like France and Spain, and new empires like that of Britain. These were a centre of colonial life as important as had been the life in Virginia and New York and the New England States and Canada--indeed, more important than Canada in one sense, for the West Indies brought wealth to the British Isles, and had a big export trade. He lost no time in bringing matters to an issue. He got to his feet and came near to her. His eyes were inflamed with passion, his manner was impressive. He had a distinguished face, become more distinguished since his assumption of governorship, and authority had increased his personality. "A man of mark!" he said. "You mean a marked man. Let me tell you I have an order from the British Government to confine him to his estate; not to permit him to leave it; and, if he does, to arrest him. That is my commanded duty. You approve, do you not? Or are you like most women, soft at heart to bold criminals?" Sheila did not reply at once. The news was no news to her, for Darius Boland had told her; but she thought it well to let the governor think he had made a new, sensational statement. "No," she said at last, looking him calmly in the eyes. "I have no soft feelings for criminals as criminals, none at all. And there is every reason why I should be adamant to this man, Dyck Calhoun. But, Lord Mallow, I would go carefully about this, if I were you. He is a man who takes no heed of people, high or low, and has no fear of consequences. Have you thought of the consequences to yourself? Suppose he resists, what will you do?" "If he resists I will attack him with due force." "You mean you will send your military and police to attack him?" The gibe was covered, but it found the governor's breast. He knew what she was meaning. "You would not expect me to do police work, would you? Is that what your president does? What your great George Washington does? Does he make the state arrests with his own hand?" "I have no doubt he would if the circumstances were such as to warrant it. He has no small vices, and no false feelings. He has proved himself," she answered boldly. "Well, in that case," responded Lord Mallow irritably, "the event will be as is due. The man is condemned by my masters, and he must submit to my authority. He is twice a criminal, and--" "And yet a hero and a good swordsman, and as honest as men are made in a dishonest world. Your Admiralty and your government first pardoned the man, and then gave him freedom on the island which you tried to prevent; and now they turn round and confine him to his acres. Is that pardon in a real sense? Did you write to the government and say he ought not to be free to roam, lest he should discover more treasure-chests and buy another estate? Was it you?" The governor shook his head. "No, not I. I told the government in careful and unrhetorical language the incident of his coming here, and what I did, and my reasons for doing it--that was all." "And you being governor they took your advice. See, my lord, if this thing is done to him it will be to your own discomfiture. It will hurt you in the public service." "Why, to hear you speak, mistress, it would almost seem you had a fondness for the man who killed your father, who went to jail for it, and--" "And became a mutineer," intervened the girl flushing. "Why not say all? Why not catalogue his offences? Fondness for the man who killed my father, you say! Yes, I had a deep and sincere fondness for him ever since I met him at Playmore over seven years ago. Yes, a fondness which only his crime makes impossible. But in all that really matters I am still his friend. He did not know he was killing my father, who had no claims upon me, none at all, except that through him I have life and being; but it is enough to separate us for ever in the eyes of the world, and in my eyes. Not morally, of course, but legally and actually. He and I are as far apart as winter and summer; we are parted for ever and ever and ever." Now at last she was inflamed. Every nerve in her was alive. All she had ever felt for Dyck Calhoun came rushing to the surface, demanding recognition, reasserting itself. As she used the words, "ever and ever and ever," it was like a Cordelia bidding farewell to Lear, her father, for ever, for there was that in her voice which said: "It is final separation, it is the judgment of Jehovah, and I must submit. It is the last word." Lord Mallow saw his opportunity, and did not hesitate. "No, you are wrong, wholly wrong," he said. "I did not bias what I said in my report --a report I was bound to make--by any covert prejudice against Mr. Calhoun. I guarded myself especially"--there he lied, but he was an incomparable liar--"lest it should be used against him. It would appear, however, that the new admiral's report with mine were laid together, and the government came to its conclusion accordingly. So I am bound to do my duty." "If you--oh, if you did your duty, you would not obey the command of the government. Are there not times when to obey is a crime, and is not this one of them? Lord Mallow, you would be doing as great a crime as Mr. Dyck Calhoun ever committed, or could commit, if you put this order into actual fact. You are governor here, and your judgment would be accepted --remember it is an eight weeks' journey to London at the least, and what might not happen in that time! Are you not given discretion?" The governor nodded. "Yes, I am given discretion, but this is an order." "An order!" she commented. "Then if it should not be fulfilled, break it and take the consequences. The principle should be--Do what is right, and have no fear." "I will think it over," answered the governor. "What you say has immense weight with me--more even than I have words to say. Yes, I will think it over--I promise you. You are a genius--you prevail." Her face softened, a new something came into her manner. "You do truly mean it?" she asked with lips that almost trembled. It seemed to her that to do this thing for Dyck Calhoun was the least that was possible, and it was perhaps the last thing she might ever be able to do. She realized how terrible it would be for him to be shorn of the liberty he had always had; how dangerous it might be in many ways; and how the people of the island might become excited by it--and troublesome. "Yes, I mean it," answered Lord Mallow. "I mean it exactly as I say it." She smiled. "Well, that should recommend you for promotion," she said happily. "I am sure you will decide not to enforce the order, if you think about it. You shall be promoted, your honour, to a better place," she repeated, half-satirically. "Shall I then?" he asked with a warm smile and drawing close to her. "Shall I? Then it can only be by your recommendation. Ah, my dear, my beautiful dear one," he hastened to add, "my life is possible henceforward only through you. You have taught me by your life and person, by your beauty and truth, by your nobility of mind and character how life should be lived. I have not always deserved your good opinion nor that of others. I have fought duels and killed men; I have aspired to place; I have connived at appointment; I have been vain, overbearing and insistent on my rights or privileges; I have played the dictator here in Jamaica; I have not been satisfied save to get my own way; but you have altered all that. Your coming here has given me a new outlook. Sheila, you have changed me, and you can change me infinitely more. I who have been a master wish to become your slave. I want you--beloved, I want you for my wife." He reached out as though to take her hand, but she drew back from him. His thrilling words had touched her, as she had seldom been touched, as she had never been touched by any one save the man that must never be hers; she was submerged for the moment in the flood of his eloquence, and his yielding to her on the point of Dyck's imprisonment gave fresh accent to his words. Yet she could not, she dared not yet say yes to his demand. "My lord," she said, "oh, you have stirred me! Yet I dare not reply to you as you wish. Life is hard as it is, and you have suddenly made it harder. What is more, I do not, I cannot, believe you. You have loved many. Your life has been a covert menace. Oh, I know what they said of you in Ireland. I know not of your life here. I suppose it is circumspect now; but in Ireland it was declared you were notorious with women." "It is a lie," he answered. "I was not notorious. I was no better and no worse than many another man. I played, I danced attendance, I said soft nothings, but I was tied to no woman in all Ireland. I was frolicsome and adventurous, but no more. There is no woman who can say I used her ill or took from her what I did not--" "Atone for, Lord Mallow?" "Atone--no. What I did not give return for, was what I was going to say." The situation was intense. She was in a place from which there was no escape except by flight or refusal. She did not really wish to refuse. Somehow, there had come upon her the desire to put all thought of Dyck Calhoun out of her mind by making it impossible for her to think of him; and marriage was the one sure and complete way--marriage with this man, was it possible? He held high position, he was her fellow countryman and an Irish peer, and she was the daughter of an evil man, who was, above all else, a traitor to his country, though Lord Mallow did not know that. The only one she knew possessed of the facts was the man she desired to save herself from in final way--Dyck Calhoun. Her heart was for the moment soft to Lord Mallow, in spite of his hatred of Dyck Calhoun. The governor was a man of charm in conversation. He was born with rare faculties. Besides, he had knowledge of humanity and of women. He knew how women could be touched. He had appealed to Sheila more by ability than by aught else. His concessions to her were discretion in a way. They opened the route to her affections, as his place and title could not do. "No, no, no, believe me, Sheila, I was a man who had too many temptations --that was all. But I did not spoil my life by them, and I am here a trusted servant of the government. I am a better governor than your first words to me would make you seem to think." Her eyes were shining, her face was troubled, her tongue was silent. She knew not what to say. She felt she could not say yes--yet she wanted to escape from him. Her good fortune did not desert her. Suddenly the door of the room opened and her mother entered. "There is a member of your suite here, your honour, asking for you. It is of most grave importance. It is urgent. What shall I say?" "Say nothing. I am coming," said the governor. "I am coming now." CHAPTER XX OUT OF THE HANDS OF THE PHILISTINES That night the Maroons broke loose upon Jamaica, and began murder and depredation against which the governor's activities were no check. Estates were invaded, and men, women and children killed, or carried into the mountains and held as hostages. In the middle and western part of the island the ruinous movements went on without being stayed; planters and people generally railed at the governor, and said that through his neglect these dark things were happening. It was said he had failed to punish offences by the Maroons, and this had given them confidence, filling them with defiance. They had one advantage not possessed by the government troops and militia--they were masters of every square rod of land in the middle and west of the island. Their plan was to raid, to ambush, to kill and to excite the slaves to rebel. The first assault and repulse took place not far from Enniskillen, Dyck Calhoun's plantation, and Michael Clones captured a Maroon who was slightly wounded. Michael challenged him thus: "Come now, my blitherin' friend, tell us your trouble--why are you risin'? You don't do this without cause-- what's the cause?" The black man, naked except for a cloth about his loins, and with a small bag at his hip, slung from a cord over his shoulder, showed his teeth in a stark grimace. "You're a newcomer here, massa, or you'd know we're treated bad," he answered. "We're robbed and trod on and there's no word kept with us. We asked the governor for more land and he moved us off. We warned him against having one of our head young men flogged by a slave in the presence of slaves--for we are free men, and he laughs. So, knowing a few strong men can bring many weak men to their knees, we rose. I say this--there's plenty weak men in Jamaica, men who don't know right when they see it. So we rose, massa, and we'll make Jamaica sick before we've done. They can't beat us, for we can ambush here, and shoot those that come after us. We hide, one behind this rock and one behind that, two or three together, and we're safe. But the white soldiers come all together and beat drums and blow horns, and we know where they are, and so we catch 'em and kill 'em. You'll see, we'll capture captains and generals, and we'll cut their heads off and bury them in their own guts." He made an ugly grimace, and a loathsome gesture, and Michael Clones felt the man ought to die. He half drew his sword, but, thinking better of it, he took the Maroon to the Castle and locked him up in a slave's hut, having first bound him and put him in the charge of one he could trust. But as he put the man away, he said: "You talk of your people hiding, and men not being able to find you; but did you never hear of bloodhounds, that can hunt you down, and chew you up? Did you never hear of them?" The man's face wrinkled like a rag, for there is one thing the native fears more than all else, and that is the tooth of the hound. But he gathered courage, and said: "The governor has no hounds. There ain't none in Jamaica. We know dat--all of us know dat--all of us know dat, massa." Michael Clones laughed, and it was not pleasant to hear. "It may be the governor has no bloodhounds, and would not permit their being brought into the island, but my master is bringing them in himself--a lot with their drivers from Cuba, and you Maroons will have all you can do to hide. Sure, d'ye think every wan in the island is as foolish as the governor? If you do, y'are mistaken, and that's all there is to say." "The hounds not here--in de island, massa!" declared the Maroon questioningly. "They'll be here within the next few hours, and then where will you and your pals be? You'll be caught between sharp teeth--nice, red, sharp, bloody teeth; and you'll make good steak-better than your best olio." The native gave a moan--it was the lament of one whose crime was come tete-a-tete with its own punishment. "That's the game to play," said Michael to himself as he fastened the door tight. "The hounds will settle this fool-rebellion quicker than aught else. Mr. Calhoun's a wise man, and he ought to be governor here. Criminal? As much as the angel Gabriel! He must put down this rebellion--no wan else can. They're stronger, the Maroons, than ever they've been. They've planned this with skill, and they'll need a lot of handlin'. We're safe enough here, but down there at Salem--well, they may be caught in the bloody net. Bedad, that's sure." A few moments afterwards he met Dyck Calhoun. "Michael," said Dyck, "things are safe enough here, but we've prepared! The overseers, bookkeepers and drivers are loyal enough. But there are others not so safe. I'm going to Salem-riding as hard as I can, with six of our best men. They're not so daft at Salem as we are, Michael. They won't know how to act or what to do. Darius Boland is a good man, but he's only had Virginian experience, and this is different. A hundred Maroons are as good as a thousand white soldiers in the way the Maroons fight. There are a thousand of them, and they can lay waste this island, if they get going. So I shall stop them. The hounds are outside the harbour now, Michael. The ship Vincent, bringing them, was sighted by a sloop two days ago, making slowly for Kingston. She should be here before we've time to turn round. Michael, the game is in our hands, if we play it well. Do you go down to Kingston and--" He detailed what Michael was to do on landing the hounds, and laid out plans for the immediate future. "They're in danger at Salem, Michael, so we must help them. The hounds will settle this whole wretched business." Michael told him of his prisoner, and what effect the threat about the hounds had had. A look of purpose came into Dyck's face. "A hound is as fair as a gun, and hounds shall be used here in Jamaica. The governor can't refuse their landing now. The people would kill him if he did. It was I proposed it all." "Look, sir--who's that?" asked Michael, as they saw a figure riding under the palms not far away. It was very early morning, and the light was dim yet, but there was sufficient to make even far sight easy. Dyck shaded his forehead with his hand. "It's not one of our people, Michael. It's a stranger." As the rider came on he was stopped by two of the drivers of the estate. Dyck and Michael saw him hold up a letter, and a moment later he was on his way to Dyck, galloping hard. Arrived, he dropped to the ground, and saluted Dyck. "A letter from Salem, sir," he said, and handed it over to Dyck. Dyck nodded, broke the seal of the letter and read it quickly. Then he nodded again and bade the man eat a hearty breakfast and return with him on one of the Enniskillen horses, as his own would be exhausted. "We'll help protect Salem, my man," said Dyck. The man grinned. "That's good," he answered. "They knew naught of the rising when I left. But the governor was there yesterday, and he'd protect us." "Nonsense, fellow, the governor would go straight to Spanish Town where he belongs, when there is trouble." When the man had gone, Dyck turned to his servant. "Michael," he said, "the news in the letter came from Darius Boland. He says the governor told him he had orders from England to confine me here at Enniskillen, and he meant to do it. We'll see how he does it. If he sends his marshals, we'll make Gadarene swine of them." There was a smile at his lips, and it was contemptuous, and the lines of his forehead told of resolve. "Michael," he added, "we'll hunt Lord Mallow with the hounds of our good fortune, for this war is our war. They can't win it without me, and they shan't. Without the hounds it may be a two years' war--with the hounds it can't go beyond a week or so." "If the hounds get here, sir! But if they don't?" Dyck laid his hand upon the sword at his side. "If they don't get here, Michael, still the war will be ours, for we understand fighting, and the governor does not. Confine me here, will he? If he does, he'll be a better man than I have ever known him, Michael. In a few hours I shall be at Salem, to do what he could not, and would not, do if he could. His love is as deep as water on a roof, no deeper. He'll think first of himself, and afterwards of the owner of Salem or any other. Let me show you what I mean to do once we've Salem free from danger. Come and have a look at my chart." Some hours later Dyck Calhoun, with his six horsemen, was within a mile or so of Salem. They had ridden hard in the heat and were tired, but there was high spirit in the men, for they were behind a trusted leader --a man who ate little, but who did not disdain a bottle of Madeira or a glass of brandy, and who made good every step of the way he went-- watchful, alert, careful, determined. They cared little what his past had been. Jamaica was not a heaven for the good, but it was a haven for many who had been ill-used elsewhere; where each man, as though he were really in a new world, was judged by his daily actions and not by any history of a hidden or an open past. As they came across country, Dyck always ahead, they saw how he responded to every sign of life in the bush, how he moved always with discretion where ambush seemed possible. They knew how on his own estate he never made mistakes of judgment; that he held the balance carefully, and that his violences, rare and tremendous, were not outbursts of an unregulated nature. "You can't fool Calhoun," was a common phrase in the language of Enniskillen, and there were few in the surrounding country who would not have upheld its truth. Now, to-day, he was almost moodily silent, reserved and watchful. None knew the eddies of life which struggled for mastery in him, nor of his horrible disappointments. None knew of his love for Sheila. Yet all knew that he had killed--or was punished for killing--Erris Boyne. None of them had seen Sheila, but all had heard of her, and the governor's courtship of her, and all wondered why Dyck Calhoun should be doing what clearly the governor should do. Somehow, in spite of the criminal record with which Calhoun's life was stained, they had a respect for him they did not have for Lord Mallow. Dyck's life in Jamaica was clean; and his progress as a planter had been free from black spots. He even kept no mistress, and none had ever known him to have to do with women, black, brown, or white. He had never gone a-Maying, as the saying was, and his only weakness or fault--if it was a fault--was a fondness for the bottle of good wine which was ever open on his table, and for tobacco in the smoking-leaf. To-day he smoked incessantly and carefully. He threw no loose ends of burning tobacco from cigar or pipe into the loose dry leaves and stiff-cut ground. Yet they knew the small clouds floating away from his head did not check his observation. That was proved beyond peradventure when they were within sight of the homestead of Salem on an upland well-wooded. It was in apparently happy circumstances, for they could see no commotion about the homestead; they saw men with muskets, evidently keeping guard--yet too openly keeping guard, and so some said to each other. Presently Dyck reined his horse. Each man listened attentively, and eyed the wood ahead of them, for it was clear Dyck suspected danger there. For a moment there seemed doubt in Dyck's mind what to do, but presently he had decided. "Ride slow for Salem," he said. "It's Maroons there in the bush. They are waiting for night. They won't attack us now. They're in ambush--of that I'm sure. If they want to capture Salem, they'll not give alarm by firing on us, so if we ride on they'll think we haven't sensed them. If they do attack us, we'll know they are in good numbers, for they'll be facing us as well as the garrison of Salem. But keep your muskets ready. Have a drink," he added, and handed his horn of liquor. "If they see us drink, and they will, they'll think we've only stopped to refresh, and we'll be safe. In any case, if they attack, fire your muskets at them and ride like the devil. Don't dismount and don't try to find them in the rocks. They'll catch us that way, as they've caught others. It's a poor game fighting hidden men. I want to get them into the open down below, and that's where they'll be before we're many hours older." With this he rode on slightly ahead, and presently put his horse at a gentle canter which he did not increase as they neared the place where the black men ambushed. Every man of the group behaved well. None showed nervousness, even when one of the horses, conscious of hidden Maroons in the wood, gave a snort and made a sharp movement out of the track, in an attempt to get greater speed. That was only for an instant, however. Yet every man's heart beat faster as they came to the place where the ambush was. Indeed, Dyck saw a bush move, and had a glimpse of a black, hideous face which quickly disappeared. Dyck's imperturbable coolness kept them steady. They even gossiped of idle things loud enough for the hidden Maroons to hear. No face showed suspicion or alarm, as they passed, while all felt the presence of many men in the underbrush. Only when they had passed the place, did they realize the fulness of the danger through which they had gone. Dyck talked to them presently without turning round, for that might have roused suspicion, and while they were out of danger now, there was the future and Dyck's plan which he now unfolded. "They'll come down into the open before it's dark," he said quietly, "and when they do that, we'll have 'em. They've no chance to ambush in the cane-fields now. We'll get them in the open, and wipe them out. Don't look round. Keep steady, and we'll ride a little more quickly soon." A little later they cantered to the front door of the Salem homestead. The first face they saw there was that of Darius Boland. It had a look of trouble. Dyck explained. "We thought you might not have heard of the rise of the Maroons. We have no ladies at Enniskillen. We prepared, and we're safe enough there, as things are. Your ladies must go at once to Spanish Town, unless--" "Unless they stay here! Well, they would not be unwise, for though the slaves under the old management might have joined the Maroons, they will not do so now. We have got them that far. But, Mr. Calhoun, the ladies aren't here. They rode away into the hills this morning, and they've not come back. "I was just sending a search party for them. I did not know of the rise of the Maroons." "In what direction did they go?" asked Dyck with anxiety, though his tone was even. Darius Boland pointed. "They went slightly northwest, and if they go as I think they meant to do, they would come back the way you came in." "They were armed?" Dyck asked sharply. "Yes, they were armed," was the reply. "Miss Llyn had a small pistol. She learned to carry one in Virginia, and she has done so ever since we came here." "Listen, Boland," said Dyck with anxiety. "Up there in the hills by which we came are Maroons hidden, and they will invade this place to- night. We were ready to fight them, of course, as we came, but it's a risky business, and we wanted to get them all if possible. We couldn't if we had charged them there, for they were well-ambushed. My idea was to let them get into the open between there and here, and catch them as they came. It would save our own men, and it would probably do for them. If Mrs. and Miss Llyn come back that way, they will be in greater danger than were we, for the Maroons were coming here to capture the ladies and hold them as hostages; and they would not let them pass. In any case, the risk is immense. The ladies must be got to Spanish Town, for the Maroons are desperate. They know we have no ships of the navy here now, and they rely on their raiding powers and the governor's weakness. They have placed their men in every part of the middle and western country, and they came upon my place last evening and were defeated. Several were killed and one taken prisoner. They can't be marched upon like an army. Their powers of ambush are too great. They must be run down by bloodhounds. It's the only way." "Bloodhounds--there are no bloodhounds here!" said Darius Boland. "And if there were, wouldn't pious England make a fuss?" Dyck Calhoun was about to speak sharply, but he caught sarcasm in Darius Boland's face, and he said: "I have the bloodhounds. They're outside the harbour now, and I intend to use them." "If the governor allows you!" remarked Darius Boland ironically. "He does not like you or your bloodhounds. He has his orders, so he says." Dyck made an impatient gesture. "I will not submit to his orders. I have earned my place in this is land, and he shall not have his way. The ladies must be brought to Spanish Town, and placed where the governor's men can protect them." "The governor's men! Indeed. They might as well stay here; we can surely protect them." "Perhaps, for you have skill, Boland, and you are cautious, but is it fair for ladies to stay in this isolated spot with murderers about? When the ladies come back, they must be sent at once to Spanish Town. Can't you see?" Darius Boland bowed. "What you say goes always," he remarked, "but tell me, sir, who will take the ladies to Spanish Town?" Dyck Calhoun read the inner meaning of Darius Boland's words. They did not put him out of self-control. It was not a time to dwell on such things. It was his primary duty to save the ladies. "Come, Boland," he said sharply, "I shall start now. We must find the ladies. What sort of a country is it through which they pass?" He pointed. "Bad enough in some ways. There's an old monastery of the days of the Spaniards up there"--he pointed or the ruins of one, and it is a pleasant place to rest. I doubt not they rested there, if--" "If they reached it!" remarked Dyck with crisp inflection. "Yes, they would rest there--and it would be a good place for ambush by the Maroons, eh?" "Good enough from the standpoint of the Maroons," was the reply, the voice slightly choked. "Then we must go there. It's a damnable predicament--no, you must not come with me! You must keep command here." He hastily described the course to be followed by those of his own men who stayed to defend, and then said: "Our horses are fagged. If you loan us four I'll see they are well cared for, and returned in kind or cash. I'll take three of my men only, and loan you three of the best. We'll fill our knapsacks and get away, Boland." A few moments later, Calhoun and his three men, with a guide added by Boland, had started away up the road which had been ridden by Mrs. Llyn and Sheila. One thing was clear, the Maroons on the hill did not know of the absence of Sheila and her mother, or they would not be waiting. He did not like the long absence of the ladies. It was ominous at such a time. Dyck and his small escort got away by a road unseen from where the Maroons were, and when well away put their horses to a canter and got into the hills. Once in the woods, however, they rode alertly, and Dyck's eyes were everywhere. He was quick to see a bush move, to observe the flick of a branch, to catch the faintest sound of an animal origin. He was obsessed with anxiety, for he had a dark fear that some ill had happened to the two. His blood almost dried in his veins when he thought of the fate which had followed the capture of ladies in other islands like Haiti or Grenada. It did not seem possible that these beautiful women should have fallen into the outrageous hands of savages. He knew the girl was armed, and that before harm might come to her she would end her own life and her mother's also; but if she was caught from behind, and the opportunity of suicide should not be hers--what then? Yet he showed no agitation to his followers. His eyes were, however, intensely busy, and every nerve was keen to feel. Life in the open had developed in him the physical astuteness of the wild man, and he had all the gifts that make a supreme open-air fighter. He sensed things; but with him it was feeling, and not scent or hearing; his senses were such perfect listeners. He had the intense perception of a delicate plant, those wonderful warnings which only come to those who live close to nature, who study from feeling the thousand moods and tenses of living vegetables and animal life. He was a born hunter, and it was not easy to surprise him when every nerve was sharp with premonition. He saw the marks of the hoofs of Sheila's and her mother's horses in the road, knowing them by the freshness of the indentations. An hour, two hours passed, and they then approached the monasterial ruin of which Boland had spoken. Here, suddenly, Dyck dropped to the ground, for he saw unmistakable signs of fright or flurry in the hoofmarks. He quickly made examination, and there were signs of women's feet and also a bare native foot, but no signs of struggle or disturbance. The footprints, both native and white, were firmly placed, but the horses' hoof-prints showed agitation. Presently the hoofmarks became more composed again. Suddenly one of Dyck's supporters exclaimed he had picked up a small piece of ribbon, evidently dropped to guide those who might come searching. Presently another token was found in a loose bit of buckle from a shoe. Then, suddenly, upon the middle of the road was a little pool of blood and signs that a body had lain in the dust. "She shot a native here," said Dyck to his men coolly. "There are no signs of a struggle," remarked the most observant. "We must go carefully here, for they may have been imprisoned in the ruin. You stay here, and I'll go forward," he added, with a hand on his sword. "I've an idea they're here. We have one chance, my lads, and let's keep our heads. If anything should happen to me, have a try yourselves, and see what you can do. The ladies must be freed, if they're there. There's not one of you that won't stand by to the last, but I want your oath upon it. By the heads or graves of your mothers, lads, you'll see it through? Up with your hands!" Their hands went up. "By our mothers' heads or graves!" they said in low tones. "Good!" he replied. "I'll go on ahead. If you hear a call, or a shot fired, forward swiftly." An instant later he plunged into the woods to the right of the road, by which he would come upon the ruins from the rear. He held a pistol as he stole carefully yet quickly forward. He was anxious there should be no delay, but he must not be rash. Without meeting anyone he came near the ruins. They showed serene in the shade of the trees. Then suddenly came from the ruin a Maroon of fierce, yet not cruel appearance, who laid a hand behind his ear, and looked steadfastly towards that part of the wood where Dyck was. It was clear he had heard something. Dyck did not know how many Maroons there might be in the ruins, or near it, and he did not attack. It was essential he should know the strength of his foe; and he remained quiet. Presently the native turned as though to go back into the ruins, but changed his mind, and began to tour the stony, ruined building. Dyck waited, and presently saw more natives come from the ruins, and after a moment another three. These last were having an argument of some stress, for they pulled at each other's arms and even caught at the long cloths of their headdresses. "They've got the ladies there," thought Dyck, "but they've done them no harm yet." He waited moments longer to see if more natives were coming out, then said to himself: "I'll make a try for it now. It won't do to run the risk of going back to bring my fellows up. It's a fair risk, but it's worth taking." With that he ran softly to the entrance from which he had seen the men emerge. Looking in he saw only darkness. Then suddenly he gave a soft call, the call of an Irish bird-note which all people in Ireland--in the west and south of Ireland--know. If Sheila was alive and in the place she would answer it, he was sure. He waited a moment, and there was no answer. Then he called again, and in an instant, as though from a great distance, there came the reply of the same note, clearer and more bell- like than his own. "She's there!" he said, and boldly entered the place. It was dark and damp, but ahead was a break in the solid monotony of ruined wall, and he saw a clear stream of light beyond. He stole ahead, got over the stone obstructions, and came on to a biggish room which once had been a refectory. Looking round it he saw three doors--one evidently led into the kitchen, one into a pantry, and one into a hall. It was clear the women were alone, or some one would have come in answer to his call. Who could tell when they would come? There was no time to be lost. With an instinct, which proved correct, he opened the door leading into the old kitchen, and there, tied, and with pale faces, but in no other sense disordered, were Sheila and her mother. He put his fingers to his lips, then hastily cut them loose from the ropes of bamboo, and helped them to their feet. "Can you walk?" he whispered to Mrs. Llyn. She nodded assent, and braced herself. "Then here," he said, "is a pistol. Come quickly. We may have to fight our way out. Don't be afraid to fire, but take good aim first. I have some men in the wood beyond where you shot the native," he added to Sheila. "They'll come at once if I call, or a shot is fired. Keep your heads, and we shall be all right. They're a dangerous crew, but we'll beat them this time. Come quickly." Presently they were in the refectory, and a moment after that they were over the stones, and near the entrance, and then a native appeared, armed. Without an instant's hesitation Dyck ran forward, and as he entered, put his sword into the man's vitals, and he fell, calling out as he fell. "The rest will be on us now," said Dyck, "and we must keep going." Three more natives appeared, and he shot two. Catching a pistol from Sheila he aimed at the third native and wounded him, but did not kill him. The man ran into the wood. Presently more Maroons came--a dozen or more, and rushed for the entrance. They were met by Dyck's fire, and now also Sheila fired and brought down her man. Dyck wounded another, and in great skill loaded again, but at that moment three of the Maroons rushed down into the ruins. They were astonished to see Dyck there, and more astonished to receive-- first one and then another--his iron in their bowels. The third man made a stroke at Dyck with his lance, and only gashed Dyck's left arm. Then he turned and fled out into the open, and was met by a half-dozen others. They all were about to rush the entrance when suddenly four shots behind them brought three of them down, and the rest fled into the wood shouting. In another moment Dyck and the ladies were in the open, and making for the woods, the women in front, the men behind, loading their muskets as they ran, and alive to the risks of the moment. The dresses of the ladies were stained and soiled with dust and damp, but otherwise they seemed little the worse for the adventure, save that Mrs. Llyn was shaken, and her face was pale. "How did you know where we were, and why did you come?" she said, after they had got under way, having secured the horses which Sheila and her mother had ridden. Briefly Dyck explained how as soon as he had dealt with the revolt of the Maroons at his own place he came straight to Salem. "I knew you were unused to the ways of the country and to our sort of native here, and I felt sure you would not refuse to take help--even mine at a pinch. But what happened to you?" he added, turning to Sheila. It was only yesterday Sheila had determined to cut him wholly out of her life by assenting to marry Lord Mallow. Yet here he was, and she could scarcely bear to look into his face. He was shut off from her by every fact of human reason. These were days when the traditions of family life were more intense than now; when to kill one's own father was not so bad as to embrace, as it were, him or her who had killed that father. Sheila felt if she were normal she ought to feel abhorrence against Dyck; yet she felt none at all, and his saving them had given a new colour to their relations. If he had killed her father, the traitor, he had saved themselves from death or freed them from a shameful captivity which might have ended in black disaster. She kept herself in hand, and did not show confusion. "We had not heard of the rising of the Maroons," she said. "The governor was at Salem yesterday and a message came from his staff to say would he come at once. His staff were not at Salem, but at the next plantation nearer to Spanish Town. Lord Mallow went. If he suspected the real trouble he said naught, but was gone before you could realize it. The hours went by, night came and passed, then my mother and I, this morning, resolved to ride to the monastery, and then round by the road you travelled back to Salem." "There are Maroons now on that hill above your place. They were in ambush when we passed, but we took no notice. It was not wise to invite trouble. Some of us would have been killed, but--" He then told what had been in his mind, and what might be the outcome-- the killing or capture of the whole group, and safety for all at Salem. When he had finished, she continued her story. "We rode for an hour unchallenged, and then came the Maroons. At first I knew not what to do. We were surrounded before we could act. I had my pistol ready, and there was the chance of escape--the faint chance--if we drove our horses on; but there was also the danger of being fired at from behind! So we sat still on our horses, and I asked them how they dared attack white ladies. I asked them if they had never thought what vengeance the governor would take. They did not understand my words, but they grasped the meaning, and one of them, the leader, who understood English, was inclined to have reason. As it was, we stopped what might have been our murder by saying it would be wiser to hold us as hostages, and that we were Americans. That man was killed--by you. A shot from your pistol brought him down as he rushed forward to enter the ruins. But he took care of us as we went forward, and when I shot one of his followers for laying his hand upon me in the saddle--he caught me by the leg under my skirt--he would allow no retaliation. I knew boldness was the safe part to play. "But in the end we were bound with ropes as you found us, while they waited for more of their people to come, those, no doubt, you found ambushed on the hill. As we lay, bound as you saw us, the leader said to us we should be safe if he could have his way, but there were bad elements among the Maroons, and he could not guarantee it. Yet he knew the government would pay for our release, would perhaps give the land for which they had asked with no avail. We must, therefore, remain prisoners. If we made no efforts to escape, it would be better in the end. "Keep your head steady, missy, try no tricks, and all may go well; but I have bad lot, and they may fly at you." That was the way he spoke. It made our blood run cold, for he was one man, with fair mind, and he had around him men, savage and irresponsible. Black and ruthless, they would stop at nothing except the sword at their throats or the teeth in their flesh." "The teeth in their flesh!" said Dyck with a grim smile. "Yes, that is the only way with them. Naught can put the fear of God into them except bloodhounds, and that Lord Mallow will not have. He has been set against it until now. But this business will teach him. He may change his mind now, since what he cares for is in danger--his place and his ladies!" Mrs. Llyn roused herself to say: "No, no, Mr. Calhoun, you must not say that of him. His place may be in danger, but not his ladies. He has no promise of that. . . . And see, Mr. Calhoun, I want to say that, in any case, you have paid your debt, if you owe one to us. For a life taken you have given two lives--to me and my girl. I speak as one who has a right to say it! Erris Boyne was naught to me at all, but he was my daughter's father, and that made everything difficult. I could make him cease to be my husband, and I did; but I could not make him cease to be her father." "I had no love for Erris Boyne," said Sheila. Misery was heavy on her. "None at all, but he was my father." "See, all's well still at Salem," said Dyck waving a hand as though to change the talk. "All's as we left it." There in the near distance lay Salem, serene. All tropical life about seemed throbbing with life and soaking with leisure. "We were in time," he added. "The Maroons are still in ambush. The sun is beginning to set though, and the trouble may begin. We shall get there about sundown--safe, thank God!" "Safe, thank God--and you," said Sheila's mother. CHAPTER XXI THE CLASH OF RACE In the King's House at Spanish Town the governor was troubled. All his plans and prophecies had come to naught. He had been sure there would be no rebellion of the Maroons, and he was equally sure that his career would be made hugely successful by marriage with Sheila Llyn--but the Maroons had revolted, and the marriage was not settled! Messages had been coming from the provost-marshal-general of reports from the counties of Middlesex and Cornwall, that the Maroons were ravaging everywhere and that bands of slaves had joined them with serious disasters to the plantation people. Planters, their wives and children had been murdered, and in some districts the natives were in full possession and had destroyed, robbed and ravaged. He had summoned his commander of the militia forces, had created special constables, and armed them, and had sent a ship to the Bahamas to summon a small British fleet there. He had also mapped out a campaign against the Maroons, which had one grave demerit--it was planned on a basis of ordinary warfare and not with Jamaica conditions in mind. The provost-marshal warned him of the futility of these plans, but he had persisted in them. He had later been shocked, however, by news that the best of his colonels had been ambushed and killed, and that others had been made prisoners and treated with barbarity. From everywhere, except one, had come either news of defeat or set-back. One good thing he immediately did: he threw open King's House to the wounded, and set the surgeons to work, thereby checking bitter criticism and blocking the movement rising against him. For it was well known he had rejected all warnings, had persisted in his view that trust in the Maroons and fair treatment of themselves and the slaves were all that was needed. As he walked in the great salon or hall of audience where the wounded lay--over seventy feet long and thirty wide, with great height, to which beds and conveniences had been hastily brought--it seemed to him that he was saving, if barely saving, his name and career. Standing beside one of the Doric pillars which divided the salon from an upper and lower gallery of communications, he received the Custos of Kingston. As the Custos told his news the governor's eyes were running along the line of busts of ancient and modern philosophers on the gilt brackets between the Doric pilasters. They were all in bronze, and his mind had the doleful imagination of brown slave heroes placed there in honour for services given to the country. The doors at the south end of the great salon opened now and then into the council chambers beyond, and he could see the surgeons operating on the cases returned from the plantations. "Your honour," said the Custos, "things have suddenly improved. The hounds have come from Cuba and in the charge of ten men--ten men with sixty hounds. That is the situation at the moment. All the people at Kingston are overjoyed. They see the end of the revolt." "The hounds!" exclaimed the governor. "What hounds?" "The hounds sent for by Dyck Calhoun--surely your honour remembers!" Surely his honour did, and recalled also that he forbade the importation of the hounds; but he could not press that prohibition now. "The mutineer and murderer, Dyck Calhoun!" he exclaimed. "And they have come!" "Yes, your honour, and gone with Calhoun's man, Michael Clones, to Salem." "To Salem--why Salem?" "Because Calhoun is there fighting the Maroons in that district. The Maroons first captured the ladies of Salem as they rode in the woods. They were beaten at that game by Calhoun and four men; the ladies then were freed and taken back to Salem. Then the storm burst on Salem-- burst, but did not overwhelm. Calhoun saved the situation there; and when his hounds arrive at Salem he will range over the whole country. It is against the ideas of the people of England, but it does our work in Jamaica as nothing else could. It was a stroke of genius, the hounds, your honour!" Lord Mallow was at once relieved and nonplussed. No doubt the policy of the hounds was useful, and it might save his own goose, but it was, in a sense, un-English to hunt the wild man with hounds. Yet was it un- English? What was the difference between a sword and a good sharp tooth save that the sword struck and let go and the tooth struck and held on? It had been said in England that to hunt negroes with hounds was barbarous and cowardly; but criminals were hunted with bloodhounds in all civilized countries; and as for cowardice, the man who had sent for these hounds was as brave as any old crusader! No, Dyck Calhoun could not be charged with cowardice, and his policy of the hounds might save the island and the administration in the end. They had arrived in the very hour of Jamaica's and Lord Mallow's greatest peril. They had gone on to the man who had been sane enough to send for them. "Tell me about the landing of the hounds," said Lord Mallow. "It was last night about dusk that word came from the pilot's station at Port Royal that the vessel Vincent was making for port, and that she. came from Cuba. Presently Michael Clones, the servant of Dyck Calhoun, came also to say that the Vincent was the ship bringing Calhoun's hounds from Cuba, and asking permit for delivery. This he did because he thought you were opposed to the landing. In the light of our position here, we granted the delivery. "When the vessel came to anchor, the hounds with their drivers were landed. The landing was the signal for a great display on the part of the people and the militia--yes, the militia shared in the applause, your honour! They had had a taste of war with the Maroons and the slaves, and they were well inclined to let the hounds have their chance. Resolutions were then passed to approach your honour and ask that full powers be given to Calhoun to pursue the war without thought of military precedent or of Calhoun's position. He has no official place in the public life here, but he is powerful with the masses. It is rumoured you have an order to confine him to his plantation; but to apply it would bring revolution in Jamaica. There are great numbers of people who love his courage, what he did for the King's navy, and for his commercial success here, and they would resent harsh treatment of him. They are aware, your honour, that he and you knew each other in Ireland, and they think you are hard on him. People judge not from all the facts, but from what they see and hear." During the Custos' narrative, Lord Mallow was perturbed. He had the common sense to know that Dyck Calhoun, ex-convict and mutineer as he was, had personal power in the island, which he as governor had not been able to get, and Dyck had not abused that power. He realized that Dyck's premonition of an outbreak and sending for the hounds was a stroke of genius. He recalled with anger Dyck's appearance, in spite of regulations, in trousers at the King's ball and his dancing with a black woman, and he also realized that it was a cool insult to himself. It was then he had given the home authorities information which would poison their mind against Dyck, and from that had come the order to confine him to his plantation. Yet he felt the time had come when he might use Dyck for his own purposes. That Dyck should be at Salem was a bitter dose, but that could amount to nothing, for Sheila could never marry the man who had killed her father, however bad and mad her father was. Yet it gravelled his soul that Dyck should be doing service for the lady to whom he had offered his own hand and heart, and from whom he had had no word of assent. It angered him against himself that he had not at once sent soldiers to Salem to protect it. He wished to set himself right with Sheila and with the island people, and how to do so was the question. First, clearly, he must not apply the order to confine Dyck to his plantation; also he must give Dyck authority to use the hounds in hunting down the Maroons and slaves who were committing awful crimes. He forthwith decided to write, asking Dyck to send him outline of his scheme against the rebels. That he must do, for the game was with Dyck. "How long will it take the hounds to get to Salem?" he asked the Custos presently in his office, with deepset lines in his face and a determined look in his eyes. He was an arrogant man, but he was not insane, and he wished to succeed. It could only be success if he dragged Jamaica out of this rebellion with flying colours, and his one possible weapon was the man whom he detested. "Why, your honour, as we sent them by wagons and good horses they should be in Dyck Calhoun's hands this evening. They should be there by now almost, for they've been going for hours, and the distance is not great." The governor nodded, and began to write. A halfhour later he handed to the Custos what he had written. "See what you think of that, Custos," he said. "Does it, in your mind, cover the ground as it should?" The Custos read it all over slowly and carefully, weighing every word. Presently he handed back the paper. "Your honour, it is complete and masterly," he said. "It puts the crushing of the revolt into the hands of Mr. Calhoun, and nothing could be wiser. He has the gifts of a leader, and he will do the job with no mistake, and in a time of crisis like this, that is essential. You have given him the right to order the militia to obey him, and nothing could be better. He will organize like a master. We haven't forgotten his fight on the Ariadne. Didn't the admiral tell the story at the dinner we gave him of how this ex-convict and mutineer, by sheer genius, broke the power of the French at the critical moment and saved our fleet, though it was only three-fourths that of the French?" "You don't think the French will get us some day?" asked the governor with a smile. "I certainly don't since our defences have been improved. Look at the sixty big cannon on Fort Augusta! They'd be knocked to smithereens before they could get into the quiet waters of the harbour. Don't forget the narrows, your honour. Then there's the Apostle's Battery with its huge shot, and the guns of Fort Royal would give them a cross-fire that would make them sick. Besides, we could stop them within the shoals and reefs and narrow channels before they got near the inner circle. It would only be the hand of God that would get them in, and it doesn't work for Frenchmen these days, I observe. No, this place is safe, and King's House will be the home of British governors for many a century." "Ah, that's your gallant faith, and no doubt you are right, but go on with your tale of the hounds," said Lord Mallow. "Your honour, as the hounds went away with Michael Clones there was greater applause than I have ever seen in the island except when Rodney defeated De Grasse. Imagine a little sloop in the wash of the seas and the buccaneers piling down on him, and no chance of escape, and then a great British battleship appearing, and the situation saved--that was how we were placed here till the hounds arrived. "Your honour, this morning's--this early morning's exit of the hounds was like a procession of veterans to Walhalla. There was the sun breaking over the tops of the hills, a crimsonish, greyish, opaline touch of soft sprays or mists breaking away from the onset of the sunrise; and all the trees with night-lips wet sucking in the sun and drinking up the light like an overseer at a Christmas breakfast; and you know what that is. And all the shore, rocky and sandy, rough and smooth, happy and homely, shimmering in the radiance. And hundreds of Creoles and coloured folk beating the ground in agitation, and slaves a-plenty carrying boxes to the ships that are leaving, and white folk crowding the streets, and bugles blowing, and the tramp of the militia, and the rattle of carts on the cobble-stones, and the voices of the officers giving orders, and turmoil everywhere. "Then, suddenly, the sharp sound of a long whip and a voice calling, and there rises out of the landing place the procession--the sixty dogs in three wagons, their ten drivers with their whips, but keeping order by the sound of their voices, low, soft, and peculiar, and then the horses starting into a quick trot which presently would become a canter--and the hounds were off to Salem! There could be no fear with the hounds loose to do the hunting." "But suppose when they get to Salem their owner is no more." The Custos laughed. "Him, your honour--him no more! Isn't he the man of whom the black folk say: "Lucky buckra--morning, lucky new-comer!" If that's his reputation, and the coming of his hounds just when the island most needed them is good proof of it, do you think he'll be killed by a lot of dirty Maroons! Ah, Calhoun's a man with the luck of the devil, your honour! He has the pull--as sure as heaven's above he'll make success. If you command your staff to have this posted as a proclamation throughout the island, it will do as much good as a thousand soldiers. The military officers will not object, they know how big a man he is, and they have had enough. The news is not good from all over the island, for there are bad planters and bad overseers, and they've poisoned large fields of men in many quarters of the island, and things are wrong. "But this proclamation will put things right. It will stop the slaves from revolting; it will squelch the Maroons, and I'm certain sure Calhoun will have Maroons ready to fight for us, not against us, before this thing is over. I tell you, your honour, it means the way out--that's what it means. So, if you'll give me your order, keeping a copy of it for the provost-marshal, I'll see it's delivered to Dyck Calhoun before morning--perhaps by midnight. It's not more than a six hours' journey in the ordinary way." At that moment an aide-de-camp entered, and with grave face presented to the governor the last report from the provost-marshal-general. Then he watched the governor read the report. "Ten more killed and twenty wounded!" said the governor. "It must be stopped." He gave the Custos the letter to Dyck Calhoun, and a few moments later handed the proclamation to his aide-de-camp. "That will settle the business, your honour," said the aide-de-camp as he read the proclamation. CHAPTER XXII SHEILA HAS HER SAY "Then, tell me please, what you know of the story," said the governor to Sheila at King's House one afternoon two weeks later. "I only get meagre reports from the general commanding. But you close to the intimate source of the events must know all." Sheila shrank at the suggestion in the governor's voice, but she did not resent it. She had purposes which she must carry out, and she steeled herself. She wanted to get from Lord Mallow a pledge concerning Dyck Calhoun, and she must be patient. "I know nothing direct from Mr. Calhoun, your honour!" she said, "but only through his servant, Michael Clones, who is a friend of my Darius Boland, and they have met often since the first outbreak. You know, of course, what happened at Port Louise--how the Maroons seized and murdered the garrison, how families were butchered when they armed first, how barbarism broke loose and made all men combine to fight the rebels. Even before Mr. Calhoun came they had had record of a sack of human ears, cut from the dead rebel-slaves, when they had been killed by faithful slaves, and good progress was made. But the revolters fixed their camps on high rocks, and by blowing of shells brought many fresh recruits to the struggle. It was only when Mr. Calhoun came with his hounds that anything decisive was done. For the rebels--Maroons and slaves--were hid, well entrenched and cautious, and the danger was becoming greater every day. On Mr. Calhoun's arrival, he was almost caught in ambush, being misled, and saved himself only by splendid markmanship. He was attacked by six rebels of whom he killed four, and riding his wounded horse over the other two he escaped. Then he set the hounds to work and the rebellion in that district was soon over." "It was gathering strength with increasing tragedy elsewhere," remarked the governor. "Some took refuge in hidden places, and came out only to steal, rob, and murder--and worse. In one place, after a noted slave, well known for his treachery, had been killed--Khoftet was his name-- his head was cut off by slaves friendly to us and his heart roasted and eaten. There is but one way to deal with these people. No gaming or drinking must be allowed, blowing of shells or beating of drums must be forbidden, and every free negro or mulatto must wear on his arm a sign-- perhaps a cross in blue or red." "Slavery is doomed," said Sheila firmly. "Its end is not far off." "Well, they still keep slaves in the land of Washington and Alexander Hamilton. They are better off here at any rate than in their own country, where they were like animals among whom they lived. Here they are safe from poverty, cared for in sickness, and have no fear of being handed over to the keepers of carrion, or being the food of the gallinaso. They can feed their fill on fricasees of macaca worms and steal without punishment teal or ring-tailed pigeons and black crabs from the massa." "But they are not free. They are atoms in heaps of dust. They have no rights--no liberties." Sheila was agitated, but she showed no excitement. She seemed to Lord Mallow like one who had perfect control of herself, and was not the victim of anticipation. She seemed, save for her dark searching eyes, like one who had gone through experience which had disciplined her to control. Only her hands were demonstrative--yet quietly so. Any one watching her closely would have seen that her hands were sensitive, expressed even more markedly than her eyes or lips what were her feelings. Her tragedy had altered her in one sense. She was paler and thinner than ever she had been, but there was enough of her, and that delicately made, which gave the governor a thrill of desire to make her his own for the rest of his life or hers. He had also gone through much since they had last met, and he had seen his own position in the balance--uncertain, troubled, insecure. He realized that he had lost reputation, which had scarcely been regained by his consent to the use of the hounds and giving Dyck Calhoun a free hand, as temporary head of the militia. He could not put him over the regular troops, but as the general commanding was, in effect, the slave of Dyck Calhoun, there was no need for anxiety. Dyck Calhoun had smashed the rebellion, had quieted the island, had risen above all the dark disturbances of revolt like a master. He had established barracks and forts at many points in the island, and had stationed troops in them; he had subdued Maroons and slaves by the hounds. Yet he had punished only the chief of those who had been in actual rebellion, and had repressed the violent punishments of the earlier part of the conflict. He had forbidden any one to be burned alive, and had ordered that no one should be executed without his first judging--with the consent of the governor!--the facts of the case. Dyck had built up for himself a reputation as no one in all the history of the island had been able to do. He commanded by more than official authority--by personality and achievement. There was no one in the island but knew they had been saved by his prudence, foresight and skill. It was to their minds stupendous and romantic. Fortunately they showed no strong feeling against Lord Mallow. By placing King's House at disposal as a hospital, and by gifts of food and money to wives and children of soldiers and civilians, the governor had a little eradicated his record of neglect. Lord Mallow had a way with him when he chose to use it. He was not without the gift for popularity, and he saw now that he could best attain it by treating Dyck Calhoun well. He saw troops come and go, he listened to grievances, he corrected abuses, he devised a scheme for nursing, he planned security for the future, he gave permission for buccaneer trading with the United States, he had by legislative order given the Creoles a better place in the civic organism. This was a time for broad policy-- for distribution of cassavi bread, yams and papaws, for big, and maybe rough, display of power and generosity. He was not blind to the fact that he might by discreet courses impress favourably his visitor. All he did was affected by that thought. He could not but think that Sheila would judge of him by what he did as much as by what he said. He looked at her now with interest and longing. He loved to hear her talk, and she had information which was no doubt truer than most he received--was closer to the brine, as it were. "What more can you tell me of Mr. Calhoun and his doings?" he asked presently. "He is lucky in having so perfect a narrator of his histories--yet so unexpected a narrator." A flush stole slowly up Sheila's face, and gave a glow even to the roots of her hair. She could not endure these references to the dark gulf between her and Dyck Calhoun. "My lord," she said sharply, "it is not meet that you should say such things. Mr. Calhoun was jailed for killing my father--let it be at that. The last time you saw me you offered me your hand and heart. Well, do you know I had almost made up my mind to accept your hand, when the news of this trouble was brought to you, and you left us--to ourselves and our dangers!" The governor started. "You are as unfriendly as a 'terral garamighty,' you make me draw my breath thick as the blackamoors, as they say. I did what I thought best," he said. "I did not think you would be in any danger. I had not heard of the Maroons being so far south as Salem." "Yet it is the man who foresees chances that succeeds, as you should know by now, your honour. I was greatly touched by the offer you made me-- indeed, yes," she added, seeing the rapt eager look in his face. "I had been told what had upset me, that Dyck Calhoun was guilty of killing my father, and all the world seemed dreadful. Yes, in the reaction, it was almost on my tongue to say yes to you, for you are a good talker, you had skill in much that you did, and with honest advice from a wife might do much more. So I was in a mind to say yes. I had had much to try me, indeed, so very much. Ever since I first saw Dyck Calhoun he had been the one man who had ever influenced me. He was for ever in my mind even when he was in prison--oh, what is prison, what is guilt even to a girl when she loves! Yes, I loved him. There it was. He was ever in my mind, and I came here to Jamaica--he was here--for what else? Salem could have been restored by Darius Boland or others, or I could have sold it. I came to Jamaica to find him here--unwomanly, perhaps, you will say." "Unusual only with a genius--like you." "Then you do not speak what is in your mind, your honour. You say what you feel is the right thing to say--the slave of circumstances. I will be wholly frank with you. I came here to see Dyck Calhoun, for I knew he would not come to see me. Yes, there it was, a real thing in his heart. If he had been a lesser man than he is, he would have come to America when he was freed from prison. But he did not, would not, come. He knew he had been found guilty of killing my father, and that for him and me there could be no marriage--indeed he never asked me to marry him. "Yet I know he would have done so if he could. When I came to know what he was jailed for doing, I felt there was no place for him and me together in the world. Yet my heart kept crying out to him, and I felt there was but one thing left for me to do, and that was to make it impossible for me to think of him even, or for him to think of me. Then you came and offered me your hand. It was a hand most women might have been glad to accept from the standpoint of material things. And you were Irish like myself, and like the boy I loved. I was sick of the robberies of life and time, and I wanted to be out of it all in some secure place. What place so secure from the sorrow that was eating at my heart as marriage! It said no to every stir of feeling that was vexing me, to every show of love or remembrance. So I listened to you. It was not because you were a governor or a peer--no, not that! For even in Virginia I had offers from one higher than yourself--and younger, and a peer also. No, it was not material things that influenced me, but your own intellectual eminence; for you have more brains than most men, as you know so well." The governor interrupted her with a gesture. "No, no, I am not so vain as you think. If I were I should have seen at Salem that you meant to say yes." "Yet you know well you have gifts, though you have made sad mistakes here. Do not think it was your personality, your looks that induced me to think of you, to listen to you. When Mr. Calhoun told me the truth, and gave me a letter he had written to me--" "A letter--to you?" There was surprise in the governor's voice--surprise and chagrin, for the thing had moved him powerfully. "Yes, a letter to me which he never meant me to have. It was a kind of diary of his heart, and it was written even while I was landing on the island on Christmas Day. It was the most terribly truthful thing, opening his whole soul to the girl whom he had always loved, but from whom he was separated by a thing not the less tragical because it was merely technical. He gave it me to read, and when I read it I saw there was no place for me in the world except a convent or marriage. The convent could not be, for I was no Catholic, and marriage seemed the only thing possible. That day you came I saw only one thing to do--one mad, hopeless thing to do." "Mad and hopeless!" burst out Lord Mallow. "How so? Your very reason shows that it was sane, well founded in the philosophy of the heart." He was eager to win her yet, and he did not see the end at which she aimed. He felt he must tell her all the passion and love he felt. But her look gave no encouragement, her eyes were uninviting. Sheila smiled painfully. "Yes, mad and hopeless, for be sure of this: we cannot kill in one day the growth of years. I could not cure myself of loving him by marrying you. There had to be some other cure for that. I never knew and never loved my father. But he was my father, and if Mr. Calhoun killed him, I could not marry him. But at last I came to know that your love and affection could not make me forget him-- no, never. I realize that now. He and I can never come together, but I owe him so much--I owe him my life, for he saved it; he must ever have a place in my heart, be to me more than any one else can be. I want you to do something for him." "What do you wish?" "I want you to have removed from him the sentence of the British Government. I want him to be free to come and go anywhere in the world --to return to England if he wishes it, to be a free man, and not a victim Off Outlawry. I want that, and you ought to give it to him." "Why?" Indignation filled her eyes. "You ask why. He has saved your administration and the island from defeat and horrible loss. He has prevented most of the slaves from revolting, and he conquered the Maroons. The empire is his debtor. Will you do this for one who has done so much for you?" Lord Mallow was disconcerted, but he did not show it. "I can do no more than I have done. I have not confined him to his plantation as the Government commanded; I cannot go beyond that." "You can put his case from the standpoint of a patriot." For a moment the governor hesitated, then he said: "Because you ask me--" "I want it done for his sake, not for mine," she returned with decision. "You owe it to yourself to see that it is done. Gratitude is not dead in you, is it?" Lord Mallow flushed. "You press his case too hard. You forget what he is--a mutineer and a murderer, and no one should remember that as you should." "He has atoned for both, and you know it well. Besides, he was not a murderer. Even the courts did not say he was. They only said he was guilty of manslaughter. Oh, your honour, be as gallant as your name and place warrant." He looked at her for a moment with strange feelings in his heart. Then he said: "I will give you an answer in twenty-four hours. Will that do, sweet persuader?" "It might do," she answered, and, strange to say, she had a sure feeling that he would say yes, in spite of her knowledge that, in his heart of hearts, he hated Calhoun. As she left the room, Lord Mallow stood for a moment looking after her. "She loves the rogue in spite of all!" he said bitterly. "But she must come with me. They are apart as the poles. Yet I shall do as she wishes if I am to win her." CHAPTER XXIII THE COMING OF NOREEN The next day came a new element in the situation: a ship arrived from England. On it was one who had come to Jamaica to act as governess to two children of the officer commanding the regular troops in the island. She had been ill for a week before nearing Kingston, and when the Regent reached the harbour she was in a bad way. The ship's doctor was despondent about her; but he was a second-rate man, and felt that perhaps an island doctor might give her some hope. When she was carried ashore she was at once removed to the home of the general commanding at Spanish Town, and there a local doctor saw her. "What is her history?" he asked, after he had seen the haggard face of the woman. The ship's doctor did not know; and the general commanding was in the interior at the head of his troops. There was no wife in the general's house, as he was a widower; and his daughters, of twelve and fourteen, under a faithful old housekeeper, had no knowledge of the woman's life. When she was taken to the general's house she was in great dejection, and her face had a look of ennui and despair. She was thin and worn, and her eyes only told of the struggle going on between life and death. "What is her name?" asked the resident doctor. "Noreen Balfe," was the reply of the ship's doctor. "A good old Irish name, though you can see she comes of the lower ranks of life." "Married?" The ship's doctor pointed to her hand which had a wedding-ring. "Ah, yes, certainly . . . what hope have you of her?" "I don't know what to say. The fever is high. She isn't trying to live; she's got some mental trouble, I believe. But you and I would be of no use in that kind of thing." "I don't take to new-fangled ideas of mental cure," said the ship's doctor. "Cure the body and the mind will cure itself." A cold smile stole to the lips of the resident doctor. Those were days of little scientific medical skill, and no West Indian doctor had knowledge enough to control a discussion of the kind. "But I'd like to see some one with brains take an interest in her," he remarked. "I leave her in your hands," was the reply. "I'm a ship's medico, and she's now ashore." "It's a pity," said the resident doctor reflectively, as he watched a servant doing necessary work at the bedside. "She hasn't long to go as she is, yet I've seen such cases recover." As they left the room together they met Sheila and one of the daughters of the house. "I've come to see the sick woman from the ship, if I may," Sheila said. "I've just heard about her, and I'd like to be of use." The resident doctor looked at her with admiration. She was the most conspicuous figure in the island, and her beauty was a fine support to her wealth and reputation. It was like her to be kind in this frank way. "You can be of great use if you will," he said. "The fever is not infectious, I'm glad to say. So you need have no fear of being with her --on account of others." "I have no fear," responded Sheila with a friendly smile, "and I will go to her now--no, if you don't mind, I'd prefer to go alone," she added as she saw the doctor was coming with her. The other bowed and nodded approvingly. "The fewer the better," he said. "I think you ought to go in alone--quite alone," he said with gentle firmness, for he saw the girl with Sheila was also going with her. So it was that Sheila entered alone, and came to the bed and looked at the woman in the extreme depression of fever. "Prepare some lime-juice, please," she said to the servant on the other side of the bed. "Keep it always beside the bed--I know what these cases are." The servant disappeared, and the eyes of the sick woman opened and looked at Sheila. There shot into them a look of horror and relief in one, if such a thing might be. A sudden energy inspired her, and she drew herself up in bed, her face gone ghastly. "You are Sheila Boyne, aren't you?" she asked in a low half-guttural note. "I am Sheila Llyn," was the astonished reply. "It's the same thing," came the response. "You are the daughter of Erris Boyne." Sheila turned pale. Who was this woman that knew her and her history? "What is your name?" she asked--"your real name--what is it?" "My name is Noreen Balfe; it was Noreen Boyne." For a moment Sheila could not get her bearings. The heavy scent of the flowers coming in at the window almost suffocated her. She seemed to lose a grip of herself. Presently she made an effort at composure. "Noreen Boyne! You were then the second wife of Erris Boyne?" "I was his second wife. His first wife was your mother--you are like your mother!" Noreen said in agitation. The meaning was clear. Sheila laid a sharp hand on herself. "Don't get excited," she urged with kindly feeling. "He is dead and gone." "Yes, he is dead and gone." For a moment Noreen seemed to fight for mastery of her emotion, and Sheila said: "Lie still. It is all over. He cannot hurt us now." The other shook her head in protest. "I came here to forget, and I find you--his daughter." "You find more than his daughter; you find his first wife, and you find the one that killed him." "The one that killed him!" said the woman greatly troubled. "How did you know that?" "All the world knows it. He was in prison four years, and since then he has been a mutineer, a treasure-hunter, a planter, and a saviour of these islands!" The sick woman fell back in exhaustion. At that moment the servant entered with a pitcher of lime-juice. Sheila took it from her and motioned her out of the room; then she held a glass of the liquid to the stark lips. "Drink," she said in a low, kind voice, and she poured slowly into the patient's mouth the cooling draught. A moment later Noreen raised herself up again. "Mr. Dyck Calhoun is here?" she asked. "He is here, and none to-day holds so high a place in the minds of all who live here. He has saved the island." "All are here that matter," said Noreen. "And I came to forget!" "What do you remember?" asked Sheila. "I remember all--how he died!" Suddenly Sheila had a desire to shriek aloud. This woman--did this woman then see Erris Boyne die? Was she present when the deed was done? If so, why was she not called to give evidence at the trial. But yes, she was called to give evidence. She remembered it now, and the evidence had been that she was in her own home when the killing took place. "How did he die?" she asked in a whisper. "One stroke did it--only one, and he fell like a log." She made a motion as of striking, and shuddered, covering her eyes with trembling hands. "You tell me you saw Dyck Calhoun do this to an undefended man--you tell me this!" Sheila's anger was justified in her mind. That Dyck Calhoun should "I did not see Dyck Calhoun strike him," gasped the woman. "I did not say that. Dyck Calhoun did not kill Erris Boyne!" "My God!--oh, my God!" said Sheila with ashen lips, but a great light breaking in her eyes. "Dyck Calhoun did not kill Erris Boyne! Then who killed him?" There was a moment's pause, then--"I killed him," said the woman in agony. "I killed him." A terrible repugnance seized Sheila. After a moment she said in agitation: "You killed him--you struck him down! Yet you let an innocent man go to prison, and be kept there for years, and his father go to his grave with shame, with estates ruined and home lost--and you were the guilty one--you--all the time." "It was part of my madness. I was a coward and I thought then there were reasons why I should feel no pity for Dyck Calhoun. His father injured mine--oh, badly! But I was a coward, and I've paid the price." A kinder feeling now took hold of Sheila. After all, what this woman had done gave happiness into her--Sheila's-hands. It relieved Dyck Calhoun of shame and disgrace. A jail-bird he was still, but an innocent jail- bird. He had not killed Erris Boyne. Besides, it wiped out forever the barrier between them. All her blind devotion to the man was now justified. His name and fame were clear. Her repugnance of the woman was as nothing beside her splendid feeling of relief. It was as though the gates of hell had been closed and the curtains of heaven drawn for the eyes to see. Six years of horrible shame wiped out, and a new world was before her eyes. This woman who had killed Erris Boyne must now suffer. She must bear the ignominy which had been heaped upon Dyck Calhoun's head. Yet all at once there came to her mind a softening feeling. Erris Boyne had been rightly killed by a woman he had wronged, for he was a traitor as well as an adulterer--one who could use no woman well, who broke faith with all civilized tradition, and reverted to the savage. Surely the woman's crime was not a dark one; it was injured innocence smiting depravity, tyranny and lust. Suddenly, as she looked at the woman who had done this thing, she, whose hand had rid the world of a traitor and a beast, fell back on the pillow in a faint. With an exclamation Sheila lifted up the head. If the woman was dead, then there was no hope for Dyck Calhoun; any story that she-- Sheila--might tell would be of no use. Yet she was no longer agitated in her body. Hands and fingers were steady, and she felt for the heart with firm fingers. Yes, the heart was still beating, and the pulse was slightly drumming. Thank God, the woman was alive! She rang a bell and lifted up the head of the sick woman. A moment later the servant was in the room. Sheila gave her orders quickly, and snatched up a pencil from the table. Then, on a piece of paper, she wrote the words: "I, not Dyck Calhoun, killed Erris Boyne." A few moments later, Noreen's eyes opened, and Sheila spoke to her. "I have written these words. Here they are--see them. Sign them." She read the words, and put a pencil in the trembling fingers, and, on the cover of a book Noreen's fingers traced her name slowly but clearly. Then Sheila thrust the paper in her bosom, and an instant later a nurse, sent by the resident doctor, entered. "They cannot hang me or banish me, for my end has come," whispered Noreen before Sheila left. In the street of Spanish Town almost the first person Sheila saw was Dyck Calhoun. With pale, radiant look she went to him. He gazed at her strangely, for there was that in her face he could not understand. There was in it all the faith of years, all the truth of womanhood, all the splendour of discovery, all that which a man can see but once in a human face and be himself. "Come with me," she said, and she moved towards King's House. He obeyed. For some moments they walked in silence, then all at once under a magnolia tree she stopped. "I want you to read what a woman wrote who has just arrived in the island from England. She is ill at the house of the general commanding." Taking from her breast the slip of paper, she handed it to him. He read it with eyes and senses that at first could hardly understand. "God in heaven--oh, merciful God!" he said in great emotion, yet with a strange physical quiet. "This woman was his wife," Sheila said. He handed the paper back. He conquered his agitation. The years of suffering rolled away. "They'll put her in jail," he said with a strange regret. He had a great heart. "No, I think not," was the reply. Yet she was touched by his compassion and thoughtfulness. "Why?" "Because she is going to die--and there is no time to lose. Come, we will go to Lord Mallow." "Mallow!" A look of bitter triumph came into Dyck's face. "Mallow--at last!" he said. CHAPTER XXIV WITH THE GOVERNOR Lord Mallow frowned on his secretary. "Mr. Calhoun to see me! What's his business?" "One can guess, your honour. He's been fighting for the island." "Why should he see me? There is the general commanding." The secretary did not reply, he knew his chief; and, after a moment, Lord Mallow said: "Show him in." When Dyck Calhoun entered the governor gave him a wintry smile of welcome, but did not offer to shake hands. "Will you sit down?" he said, with a slow gesture. Calhoun made a dissenting motion. "I prefer to stand, your honour." This was the first time the two men had met alone since Dyck had arrived in Jamaica, or since his trial. Calhoun was dressed in planter's costume, and the governor was in an officer's uniform. They were in striking contrast in face and figure--the governor long, lanky, ascetic in appearance, very intellectual save for the riotous mouth, and very spick and span--as though he had just stepped out of Almack's; while Calhoun was tough and virile, and with the air of a thorough outdoor man. There was in his face the firm fighting look of one who had done things and could tackle big affairs--and something more; there was in it quiet exultation. Here he was now at last alone with the man who had done him great harm, and for whom he had done so much; who had sought to wipe him off the slate of life and being; who had tried to win the girl from whom he himself had been parted. In spite of it all--of his life in jail, of his stark mutiny, of the oppression of the governor, he had not been beaten down, but had prospered in spite of all. He had by his will, wisdom and military skill, saved the island in its hour of peril, saved its governor from condemnation; and here he was facing the worst enemy of his life with the cards of success in his hands. "You have done the island and England great service, Mr. Calhoun," said the governor at last. "It is the least I could do for the land where I have made my home, where I have reaped more than I have sown." "We know your merit, sir." A sharp satirical look came into Calhoun's face and his voice rang out with vigour. "And because you knew my merit you advised the crown to confine me to my estate, and you would have had me shot if you could. I am what I am because there was a juster man than yourself in Jamaica. Through him I got away and found treasure, and I bought land and have helped to save this island and your place. What do I owe you, your honour? Nothing that I can see--nothing at all." "You are a mutineer, and but that you showed your courage would have been hung at the yard-arm, as many of your comrades in England were." A cold smile played at Calhoun's lips. "My luck was as great as my courage, I know. I have the luck of Enniscorthy!" At the last words the governor winced, for it was by that touch Calhoun had defeated him in the duel long ago. It galled him that this man whom he detested could say such things to him with truth. Yet in his heart of hearts he had for Calhoun a great respect. Calhoun's invincible will had conquered the worst in Mallow's nature, had, in spite of himself, created a new feeling in him. There was in Mallow the glimmer of greatness, and only his supreme selfishness had made him what he was. He laid a hand on himself now, though it was not easy to do so. "It was not the luck of Enniscorthy that sent Erris Boyne to his doom," he said, however, with anger in his mind, for Dyck's calm boldness stirred the worst in him. He thought he saw in him an exultancy which could only come from his late experiences in the field. It was as though he had come to triumph over the governor. Mallow said what he had said with malice. He looked to see rage in the face of Dyck Calhoun, and was nonplussed to find that it had only a stern sort of pleasure. The eyes of Calhoun met his with no trace of gloom, but with a valour worthy of a high cause--their clear blue facing his own with a constant penetration. Their intense sincerity gave him a feeling which did not belong to authority. It was not the look of a criminal, whatever the man might be- -mutineer and murderer. As for mutineer, all that Calhoun had fought for had been at last admitted by the British Government, and reforms had been made that were due to the mutiny at the Nore. Only the technical crime had been done by Calhoun, and he had won pardon by his bravery in the battle at sea. Yes, he was a man of mark, even though a murderer. Calhoun spoke slowly. "Your honour, you have said what you have a right to say to a man who killed Erris Boyne. But this man you accuse did not do it." The governor smiled, for the assumption was ridiculous. He shrugged a shoulder and a sardonic curl came to his lip. "Who did it then?" "If you will come to the house of the general commanding you will see." The governor was in a great quandary. He gasped. "The general commanding--did he kill Erris Boyne, then?" "Not he, yet the person that did it is in this house. Listen, your honour. I have borne the name of killing Erris Boyne, and I ought to have killed him, for he was a traitor. I had proofs of it; but I did not kill him, and I did not betray him, for he had alive a wife and daughter, and something was due to them. He was a traitor, and was in league with the French. It does not matter that I tell you now, for his daughter knows the truth. I ought to have told it long ago, and if I had I should not have been imprisoned." "You were a brave man, but a fool--always a fool," said the governor sharply. "Not so great a fool that I can't recover from it," was the calm reply. "Perhaps it was the best thing that ever happened to me, for now I can look the world in the face. It's made a man of me. It was a woman killed him," was Calhoun's added comment. "Will your honour come with me and see her?" The governor was thunderstruck. "Where is she?" "As I have told you-in the house of the general commanding." The governor rose abashed. "Well, I can go there now. Come." "Perhaps you would prefer I should not go with you in the street. The world knows me as a mutineer, thinks of me as a murderer! Is it fair to your honour?" Something in Calhoun's voice roused the rage of Lord Mallow, but he controlled it, and said calmly: "Don't talk nonsense, sir; we shall walk together, if you will." At the entrance to the house of the general, the man to whom this visit meant so much stopped and took a piece of paper from his pocket. "Your honour, here is the name of the slayer of Erris Boyne. I give it to you now to see, so you may not be astonished when you see her." The governor stared at the paper. "Boyne's wife, eh?" he said in a strange mood. "Boyne's wife--what is she doing here?" Calhoun told him briefly as he took the paper back, and added: "It was accident that brought us all together here, your honour, but the hand of God is in it." "Is she very ill?" "She will not live, I think." "To whom did she tell her story?" "To Miss Sheila Llyn." The governor was nettled. "Oh, to Miss Llyn When did you see her?" "Just before I came to you." "What did the woman look like--this Noreen Boyne?" "I do not know; I have not seen her." "Then how came you by the paper with her signature?" "Miss Llyn gave it to me." Anger filled Lord Mallow's mind. Sheila--why now the way would be open to Calhoun to win--to marry her! It angered him, but he held himself steadily. "Where is Miss Llyn?" "She is here, I think. She came back when she left me at your door." "Oh, she left you at my door, did she? . . . But let me see the woman that's come so far to put the world right." A few moments later they stood in the bedroom of Noreen Boyne, they two and Sheila Llyn, the nurse having been sent out. Lord Mallow looked down on the haggard, dying woman with no emotion. Only a sense of duty moved him. "What is it you wished to say to me?" he asked the patient. "Who are you?" came the response in a frayed tone. "I am the governor of the island--Lord Mallow." "Then I want to tell you that I killed Erris Boyne--with this hand I killed him." She raised her skinny hand up, and her eyes became glazed. "He had used me vilely and I struck him down. He was a bad man." "You let an innocent man bear punishment, you struck at one who did you no harm, and you spoiled his life for him. You can see that, can't you?" The woman's eyes sought the face of Dyck Calhoun, and Calhoun said: "No, you did not spoil my life, Noreen Boyne. You have made it. Not that I should have chosen the way of making it, but there it is, as God's in heaven, I forgive you." Noreen's face lost some of its gloom. "That makes it easier," she said brokenly. "I can't atone by any word or act, but I'm sorry. I've kept you from being happy, and you were born to be happy. Your father had hurt mine, had turned him out of our house for debt, and I tried to pay it all back. When they suspected you I held my peace. I was a coward; I could not say you were innocent without telling the truth, and that I could not do then. But now I'll tell it--I think I'd have told it whether I was dying or not, though. Yes, if I'd seen you here I'd have told it, I'm sure. I'm not all bad." Sheila leaned over the bed. "Never mind about the past. You can help a man back to the good opinion of the world now." "I hurt you too," said Noreen with hopeless pain. "You were his friend." "I believed in him always--even when he did not deny the crime," was the quiet reply. "There's no good going on with that," said the governor sharply. "We must take down her statement in writing, and then--" "Look, she is sinking!" said Calhoun sharply. The woman's head had dropped forward, her chin was on her breast, and her hands became clenched. "The doctor at once-bring in the nurse," said Calhoun. "She's dying." An instant later, the nurse entered with Sheila, and in a short time the doctor came. When later the doctor saw Lord Mallow alone he said: "She can't live more than two days." "That's good for her in a way," answered the governor, and in reply to the doctor's question why, he said: "Because she'd be in prison." "In prison--has she broken the law?" "She is now under arrest, though she doesn't know it. "What was her crime, your honour?" "She killed a man." "What man?" "Him for whom Dyck Calhoun was sent to prison--Erris Boyne." "Mr. Calhoun was not guilty, then?" "No. As soon as the woman is dead, I mean to announce the truth." "Not till then, your honour?" "Not till then." "It's hard on Calhoun." "Is it? It's years since he was tried and condemned. Two days cannot matter now." "Perhaps not. Last night the woman said to me: 'I'm glad I'm going to die.'" Then he added: "Calhoun will be more popular than ever now." The governor winced. CHAPTER XXV THEN WHAT HAPPENED An hour after Noreen Boyne had been laid in her grave, there was a special issue of the principal paper telling all the true facts of the death of Erris Boyne. Thus the people of Jamaica came to know that Dyck Calhoun was innocent of the crime of killing Erris Boyne, and he was made the object of splashing admiration, and was almost mobbed by admirers in the street. It all vexed Lord Mallow; but he steeled himself to urbanity, and he played his part well. He was clever enough to see it would pay him to be outwardly gracious to Calhoun. So it was he made a speech in the capital on the return of the general commanding and the troops from subduing the Maroons, in which he said: "No one in all the King's dominions had showed greater patriotism and military skill than their friend Mr. Dyck Calhoun, who had been harshly treated by a mistaken Government." A few hours later, in the sweet garden of the house where Sheila and her mother lodged, Calhoun came upon the girl whose gentle dignity and beauty seemed to glow. At first all she said to him was, "Welcome, old friend," and at last she said, "Now you can come to the United States, Dyck, and make a new life there." Presently he said: "I ought to go where you wish me to go, for you came to me here when I was rejected of men. I owe you whatever I am that's worth while, if anything I am is worth while. Your faith kept me alive in my darkest days--even when I thought I had wronged you." "Then you will come to Virginia with me--as my husband, Dyck?" She blushed and laughed. "You see I have to propose to you, for you've never asked me to marry you. I'm throwing myself at your head, sir, you observe!" He gave an honest smile of adoration. "I came to-day to ask you to be my wife--for that reason only. I could not do it till the governor had declared my innocence. The earth is sweeter to-day than it has been since time began." He held out his arms, and an instant later the flowers she carried were crushed to her breast, with her lips given to his. A little later she drew from her pocket a letter. "You must read that," she said. "It is from the great Alexander Hamilton--yes, he will be great, he will play a wondrous part in the life of my new country. Read it Dyck." After he had read it, he said: "He was born a British subject here in these islands, and he goes to help Americans live according to British principles. With all my sane fellow-countrymen I am glad the Americans succeeded. Do you go to your Virginia, and I will come as soon as I have put my affairs in order." "I will not go without you--no, I will not go," she persisted. "Then we shall be married at once," he declared. And so it was, and all the island was en fete, and when Sheila came to Dyck's plantation the very earth seemed to rejoice. The slaves went wild with joy, and ate and drank their fill, and from every field there came the song: "Hold up yo hands, Hold up yo hands, Bress de Lord for de milk and honey! De big bees is a singin', My heart is held up and de bells is a ringin'; Hold up yo hands, Hold up yo hands!" And sweetly solitary the two lived their lives, till one day, three months later, there came to the plantation the governor and his suite. When they had dismounted, Lord Mallow said: "I bring you the pay of the British Government for something of what you have suffered, sir, and what will give your lady pleasure too, I hope. I come with a baronetcy given by the King. News of it came to me only this morning." Calhoun smiled. "Your honour, I can take no title, receive no honour. I have ended my life under the British flag. I go to live under the Stars and Stripes." The governor was astounded. "Your lady, sir, do you forget your lady?" But Sheila answered: "The life of the new world has honours which have naught to do with titles." "I sail for Virginia by the first ship that goes," said Calhoun. "It is good here, but I shall go to a place where things are better, and where I shall have work to do. I must decline the baronetcy, your honour. I go to a land where the field of life is larger, where Britain shall remake herself." "It will take some time," said the governor tartly. "They'll be long apart." "But they will come together at last--for the world's sake." There was silence for a moment, and through it came the joy-chant from the fields: "Hold up yo hands, Hold up yo hands, Bress de Lord for de milk and honey." ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Without the money brains seldom win alone ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "NO DEFENSE": Beginning of a lifetime of experience, comedy, and tragedy Wit is always at the elbow of want Without the money brains seldom win alone CARNAC'S FOLLY By Gilbert Parker CONTENTS: BOOK I I. IN THE DAYS OF CHILDHOOD II. ELEVEN YEARS PASS III. CARNAC'S RETURN IV. THE HOUSE ON THE HILL V. CARNAC AS MANAGER VI. LUKE TARBOE HAS AN OFFER VII. "AT OUR PRICE" VIII. JOHN GRIER MAKES ANOTHER OFFER IX. THE PUZZLE X. DENZIL TELLS HIS STORY XI. CARNAC'S TALK WITH HIS MOTHER XII. CARNAC SAYS GOOD-BYE BOOK II XIII. CARNAC'S RETURN XIV. THE HOUSE OF THE THREE TREES XV. CARNAC AND JUNTA XVI. JOHN GRIER MAKES A JOURNEY XVII. THE READING OF THE WILL BOOK III XVIII. A GREAT DECISION XIX. CARNAC BECOMES A CANDIDATE XX. JUNIA AND TARBOE HEAR THE NEWS XXI. THE SECRET MEETING XXII. POINT TO POINT XXIII. THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT XXIV. THE BLUE PAPER XXV. DENZIL TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME XXVI. THE CHALLENGE XXVII. EXIT XXVIII. A WOMAN WRITES A LETTER XXIX. CARNAC AND HIS MOTHER XXX. TARBOE HAS A DREAM XXXI. THIS WAY HOME XXXII. 'HALVES, PARDNER, HALVES' BOOK I CHAPTER I IN THE DAYS OF CHILDHOOD "Carnac! Carnac! Come and catch me, Carnac!" It was a day of perfect summer and hope and happiness in the sweet, wild world behind the near woods and the far circle of sky and pine and hemlock. The voice that called was young and vibrant, and had in it the simple, true soul of things. It had the clearness of a bugle-call-ample and full of life and all life's possibilities. It laughed; it challenged; it decoyed. Carnac heard the summons and did his best to catch the girl in the wood by the tumbling stream, where he had for many an hour emptied out his wayward heart; where he had seen his father's logs and timbers caught in jams, hunched up on rocky ledges, held by the prong of a rock, where man's purpose could, apparently, avail so little. Then he had watched the black-bearded river-drivers with their pike-poles and their levers loose the key-logs of the bunch, and the tumbling citizens of the woods and streams toss away down the current to the wider waters below. He was only a lad of fourteen, and the girl was only eight, but she--Junia--was as spry and graceful a being as ever woke the echoes of a forest. He was only fourteen, but already he had visions and dreamed dreams. His father--John Grier--was the great lumber-king of Canada, and Junia was the child of a lawyer who had done little with his life, but had had great joy of his two daughters, who were dear to him beyond telling. Carnac was one of Nature's freaks or accidents. He was physically strong and daring, but, as a boy, mentally he lacked concentration and decision, though very clever. He was led from thing to thing like a ray of errant light, and he did not put a hand on himself, as old Denzil, the partly deformed servant of Junia's home, said of him on occasion; and Denzil was a man of parts. Denzil was not far from the two when Junia made her appeal and challenge. He loved the girl exceedingly, and he loved Carnac little less, though in a different way. Denzil was French of the French, with habit of mind and character wholly his own. Denzil's head was squat upon his shoulders, and his long, handsome body was also squat, because his legs were as short, proportionately, as his mind was long. His face was covered by a well-cared-for beard of dark brown, streaked with grey; his features were rugged and fine; and his eyes were like two coals burning under a gnarled headland; for his forehead, ample and full, had lines which were not lines of age, but of concentration. In his motions he was quiet and free, yet always there was a kind of stealthiness in his movements, which made him seem less frank than he really was. For a time, with salient sympathy in his eyes, he watched the two children playing. The whisking of their forms among the trees and over the rocks was fine, gracious, and full of life-life without alarm. At length he saw the girl falter slightly, then make a swift deceptive movement to avoid the boy who pursued her. The movement did not delude the boy. He had quickness of anticipation. An instant later the girl was in his arms. As Denzil gazed, it seemed she was in his arms too long, and a sudden anxiety took hold of him. That anxiety was deepened when he saw the boy kiss the girl on the cheek. This act seemed to discompose the girl, but not enough to make drama out of an innocent, yet sensuous thing. The boy had meant nothing more than he had shown, and Denzil traced the act to a native sense of luxury in his nature. Knowing the boy's father and mother as he did, it seemed strange that Carnac should have such demonstration in his character. Of all the women he knew, Carnac's mother was the most exact and careful, though now and again he thought of her as being shrouded, or apart; while the boy's father, the great lumber-king, cantankerous, passionate, perspicuous, seemed to have but one passion, and that was his business. It was strange to Denzil that the lumber-king, short, thin, careless in his clothes but singularly clean in his person, should have a son so little like himself, and also so little like his mother. He, Denzil, was a Catholic, and he could not understand a man like John Grier who, being a member of the Episcopal Church, so seldom went to service and so defied rules of conduct suitable to his place in the world. As for the girl, to him she was the seventh wonder of the earth. Wantonly alive, dexterously alert to all that came her way, sportive, indifferent, joyous, she had all the boy's sprightliness, but none of his weaknesses. She was a born tease; she loved bright and beautiful things; she was a keen judge of human nature, and she had buoyant spirits, which, however, were counterbalanced by moments of extreme timidity, or, rather, reserve and shyness. On a day like this, when everything in life was singing, she must sing too. Not a mile away was a hut by the river where her father had brought his family for the summer's fishing; not a half- mile away was a tent which Carnac Grier's father had set up as he passed northward on his tour of inspection. This particular river, and this particular part of the river, were trying to the river-man and his clans. It needed a dam, and the great lumber-king was planning to make one not three hundred yards from where they were. The boy and the girl resting idly upon a great warm rock had their own business to consider. The boy kept looking at his boots with the brass- tipped toes. He hated them. The girl was quick to understand. "Why don't you like your boots?" she asked. A whimsical, exasperated look came into his face. "I don't know why they brass a boy's toes like that, but when I marry I won't wear them--that's all," he replied. "Why do you wear them now?" she asked, smiling. "You don't know my father." "He's got plenty of money, hasn't he?" she urged. "Plenty; and that's what I can't understand about him! There's a lot of waste in river- driving, timber-making, out in the shanties and on the river, but he don't seem to mind that. He's got fads, though, about how we are to live, and this is one of them." He looked at the brass-tipped boots carefully. A sudden resolve came into his face. He turned to the girl and flushed as he spoke. "Look here," he added, "this is the last day I'm going to wear these boots. He's got to buy me a pair without any brass clips on them, or I'll kick." "No, it isn't the last day you're going to wear them, Carnac." "It is. I wonder if all boys feel towards their father as I do to mine. He don't treat me right. He--" "Oh, look," interrupted Junia. "Look-Carnac!" She pointed in dismay. Carnac saw a portion of the bank of the river disappear with Denzil. He ran over to the bank and looked down. In another moment he had made his way to a descending path which led him swiftly to the river's edge. The girl remained at the top. The boy had said to her: "You stay there. I'll tell you what to do." "Is-is he killed?" she called with emotion. "Killed! No. He's all right," he called back to her. "I can see him move. Don't be frightened. He's not in the water. It was only about a thirty-foot fall. You stay there, and I'll tell you what to do," he added. A few moments later, the boy called up: "He's all right, but his leg is broken. You go to my father's camp--it's near. People are sure to be there, and maybe father too. You bring them along." In an instant the girl was gone. The boy, left behind, busied himself in relieving the deformed broken-legged habitant. He brought some water in his straw hat to refresh him. He removed the rocks and dirt, and dragged the little man out. "It was a close call--bien sur," said Denzil, breathing hard. "I always said that place wasn't safe, but I went on it myself. That's the way in life. We do what we forbid ourselves to do; we suffer the shames we damn in others--but yes." There was a pause, then he added: "That's what you'll do in your life, M'sieu' Carnac. That's what you'll do." "Always?" "Well, you never can tell--but no." "But you always can tell," remarked the boy. "The thing is, do what you feel you've got to do, and never mind what happens." "I wish I could walk," remarked the little man, "but this leg of mine is broke--ah, bah, it is!" "Yes, you mustn't try to walk. Be still," answered the boy. "They'll be here soon." Slowly and carefully he took off the boot and sock from the broken leg, and, with his penknife, opened the seam of the corduroy trouser. "I believe I could set that leg myself," he added. "I think you could--bagosh," answered Denzil heavily. "They'll bring a rope to haul me up?" "Junia has a lot of sense, she won't forget anything." "And if your father's there, he'll not forget anything," remarked Denzil. "He'll forget to make me wear these boots tomorrow," said the boy stubbornly, his chin in his hands, his eyes fixed gloomily on the brass- headed toes. There was a long silence. At last from the stricken Denzil came the words: "You'll have your own way about the boots." Carnac murmured, and presently said: "Lucky you fell where you did. Otherwise, you'd have been in the water, and then I couldn't have been of any use." "I hear them coming--holy, yes!" Carnac strained his ears. "Yes, you're right. I hear them too." A few moments later, Carnac's father came sliding down the bank, a rope in his hands, some workmen remaining above. "What's the matter here?" he asked. "A fall, eh! Dang little fool-- now, you are a dang little fool, and you know it, Denzil." He nodded to his boy, then he raised the wounded man's head and shoulders, and slipped the noose over until it caught under his arms. The old lumber-king's movements were swift, sure and exact. A moment later he lifted Denzil in his arms, and carried him over to the steep path up which he was presently dragged. At the top, Denzil turned to Carnac's father. "M'sieu', Carnac hates wearing those brass-toed boots," he said boldly. The lumber-king looked at his boy acutely. He blew his nose hard, with a bandana handkerchief. Then he nodded towards the boy. "He can suit himself about that," he said. With accomplished deftness, with some sacking and two poles, a hasty but comfortable ambulance was made under the skilful direction of the river- master. He had the gift of outdoor life. He did not speak as he worked, but kept humming to himself. "That's all right," he said, as he saw Denzil on the stretcher. "We'll get on home now." "Home?" asked his son. "Yes, Montreal--to-night," replied his father. "The leg has to be set." "Why don't you set it?" asked the boy. The river-master gazed at him attentively. "Well, I might, with your help," he said. "Come along." CHAPTER II ELEVEN YEARS PASS Eleven years had passed since Denzil's fall, and in that time much history had been made. Carnac Grier, true to his nature, had travelled from incident to incident, from capacity to capacity, apparently without system, yet actually with the keenest desire to fulfil himself; with an honesty as inveterate as his looks were good and his character filled with dark recesses. In vain had his father endeavoured to induce him to enter the lumber business; to him it seemed too conventional and fixed. Yet, in his way, he knew the business well. By instinct, over the twenty-five years of his life, he had observed and become familiar with the main features of the work. He had once or twice even buried himself in the shanties of the backwoods, there to inhale and repulse the fetid air, to endure the untoward, half-savage life, the clean, strong food, the bitter animosities and the savage friendships. It was a land where sunshine travelled, and in the sun the bright, tuneful birds made lively the responsive world. Sometimes an eagle swooped down the stream; again and again, hawks, and flocks of pigeons which frequented the lonely groves on the river-side, made vocal the world of air; flocks of wild ducks, or geese, went whirring down the long spaces of water between the trees on either bank; and some one with a fiddle or a concertina made musical the evening, while the singing voices of rough habitants rang through the air. It was all spirited; it smelt good; it felt good; but it was not for Carnac. When he had a revolt against anything in life, the grim storm scenes of winter in the shanties under the trees and the snow-swept hills came to his mind's eye. The summer life of the river, and what is called "running the river," had for him great charms. The smell of hundreds of thousands of logs in the river, the crushed bark, the slimy ooze were all suggestive of life in the making. But the savage seclusion of the wild life in winter repelled his senses. Besides, the lumber business meant endless figures and measurements in stuffy offices and he retreated from it all. He had an artistic bent. From a small child he had had it, and it grew with his years. He wanted to paint, and he painted; he wanted to sculp in clay, and he sculped in clay; but all the time he was conscious it was the things he had seen and the life he had lived which made his painting and his sculpture worth while. It was absurd that a man of his great outdoor capacity should be the slave of a temperamental quality, and yet it was so. It was no good for his father to condemn, or his mother to mourn, he went his own way. He had seen much of Junia Shale in these years and had grown fond of her, but she was away much with an aunt in the West, and she was sent to boarding-school, and they saw each other only at intervals. She liked him and showed it, but he was not ready to go farther. As yet his art was everything to him, and he did not think of marriage. He was care- free. He had a little money of his own, left by an uncle of his mother, and he had also an allowance from his mother--none from his father--and he was satisfied with life. His brother, Fabian, being the elder, by five years, had gone into his father's business as a partner, and had remained there. Fabian had at last married an elder sister of Junia Shale and settled down in a house on the hill, and the lumber-king, John Grier, went on building up his splendid business. At last, Carnac, feeling he was making small headway with his painting, determined to go again to New York and Paris. He had already spent a year in each place and it had benefited him greatly. So, with that sudden decision which marked his life, he started for New York. It was immediately after the New Year and the ground was covered with snow. He looked out of the window of the train, and there was only the long line of white country broken by the leafless trees and rail-fences and the mansard-roofs and low cottages with their stoops, built up with earth to keep them warm; and the sheds full of cattle; and here and there a sawmill going hard, and factories pounding away and men in fur coats driving the small Indian ponies; and the sharp calls of the men with the sleigh bringing wood, or meat, or vegetables to market. He was by nature a queer compound of Radical and Conservative, a victim of vision and temperament. He was full of pride, yet fuller of humility of a real kind. As he left Montreal he thought of Junia Shale, and he recalled the day eleven years before when he had worn brass-toed boots, and he had caught Junia in his arms and kissed her, and Denzil had had his accident. Denzil had got unreasonably old since then; but Junia remained as she was the joyous day when boyhood took on the first dreams of manhood. Life was a queer thing, and he had not yet got his bearings in it. He had a desire to reform the world and he wanted to be a great painter or sculptor, or both; and he entered New York with a new sense developed. He was keen to see, to do, and to feel. He wanted to make the world ring with his name and fame, yet he wanted to do the world good also, if he could. It was a curious state of mind for the English boy, who talked French like a native and loved French literature and the French people, and was angry with those English-Canadians who were so selfish they would never learn French. Arrived in New York he took lodgings near old Washington Square, where there were a few studios near the Bohemian restaurants and a life as nearly continental as was possible in a new country. He got in touch with a few artists and began to paint, doing little scenes in the Bowery and of the night-life of New York, and visiting the Hudson River and Long Island for landscape and seascape sketches. One day he was going down Broadway, and near Union Square he saved a girl from being killed by a street-car. She had slipped and fallen on the track and a car was coming. It was impossible for her to get away in time, and Carnac had sprung to her and got her free. She staggered to her feet, and he saw she was beautiful and foreign. He spoke to her in French and her eyes lighted, for she was French. She told him at once that her name was Luzanne Larue. He offered to get a cab and take her home, but she said no, she was fit to walk, so he went with her slowly to her home in one of the poor streets on the East side. They talked as they went, and Carnac saw she was of the lower middle-class, with more refinement than was common in that class, and more charm. She was a fascinating girl with fine black eyes, black hair, a complexion of cream, and a gift of the tongue. Carnac could not see that she was very subtle. She seemed a marvel of guilelessness. She had a wonderful head and neck, and as he was planning a picture of an early female martyr, he decided to ask her to sit to him. Arrived at her humble home, he was asked to enter, and there he met her father, Isel Larue, a French monarchist who had been exiled from Paris for plotting against the Government. He was handsome with snapping black eyes, a cruel mouth and a droll and humorous tongue. He was grateful to Carnac for saving his daughter's life. Coffee and cigarettes were produced, and they chatted and smoked while Carnac took in the surroundings. Everything was plain, but spotlessly clean, and he learned that Larue made his living by doing odd jobs in an electric firm. He was just home from his work. Luzanne was employed every afternoon in a milliner's shop, but her evenings were free after the housework was done at nine o'clock. Carnac in a burst of enthusiasm asked if she would sit to him as a model in the mornings. Her father instantly said, of course she would. This she did for many days, and sat with her hair down and bared neck, as handsome and modest as a female martyr should. Carnac painted her with skill. Sometimes he would walk with her to lunch and make her eat something sustaining, and they talked freely then, though little was said while he was painting her. At last one day the painting was finished, and she looked up at him wistfully when he told her he would not need another sitting. Carnac, overcome by her sadness, put his arms round her and kissed her mouth, her eyes, her neck ravenously. She made only a slight show of resistance. When he stopped she said: "Is that the way you keep your word to my father? I am here alone and you embrace me-- is that fair?" "No, it isn't, and I promise I won't do it again, Luzanne. I am sorry. I wanted our friendship to benefit us both, and now I've spoiled it all." "No, you haven't spoiled it all," said Luzanne with a sigh, and she buttoned up the neck of her blouse, flushing slightly as she did so. Her breast heaved and suddenly she burst into tears. It was evident she wanted Carnac to comfort her, perhaps to kiss her again, but he did not do so. He only stood over her, murmuring penance and asking her to forget it. "I can't forget it--I can't. No man but my father has ever kissed me before. It makes me, oh! so miserable!" but she smiled through her tears. Suddenly she dried her eyes. "Once a man tried to kiss me--and something more. He was rich and he'd put money into Madame Margot's millinery business. He was brilliant, and married, but he had no rules for his morals--all he wanted was money and pleasures which he bought. I was attracted by him, but one day he tried to kiss me. I slapped his face, and then I hated him. So, when you kissed me to-day, I thought of that, and it made me unhappy--but yes." "You did not slap my face, Luzanne?" She blushed and hung her head. "No, I did not; you are not a bad man. He would have spoiled my life. He made it clear I could have all the luxuries money could buy--all except marriage!" She shrugged her shoulders. Carnac was of an impressionable nature, but brought to face the possibility of marriage with Luzanne, he shrank. If ever he married it would be a girl like Junia Shale, beautiful, modest, clever and well educated. No, Luzanne could never be for him. So he forbore doing more than ask her to forgive him, and he would take her to lunch-the last lunch of the picture-if she would. With features in chagrin, she put on her hat, yet when she turned to him, she was smiling. He visited her home occasionally, and Luzanne's father had a friend, Ingot by name, who was sometimes present. This man made himself almost unbearable at first; but Luzanne pulled Ingot up acridly, and he presently behaved well. Ingot disliked all men in better positions than himself, and was a revolutionary of the worst sort--a revolutionary and monarchist. He was only a monarchist because he loved conspiracy and hated the Republican rulers who had imprisoned him--"those bombastics," he called them. It was a constitutional quarrel with the world. However, he became tractable, and then he and Larue formed a plot to make Carnac marry Luzanne. It was hatched by Ingot, approved by Larue, and at length consented to by the girl, for so far as she could love anyone, she loved Carnac; and she made up her mind that if he married her, no matter how, she would make him so happy he would forgive all. About four months after the incident in the studio, a picnic was arranged for the Hudson River. Only the four went. Carnac had just sold a picture at a good price--his Christian Martyr picture--and he was in high spirits. They arrived at the spot arranged for the picnic in time for lunch, and Luzanne prepared it. When the lunch was ready, they sat down. There was much gay talk, compliments to Carnac came from both Larue and Ingot, and Carnac was excited and buoyant. He drank much wine and beer, and told amusing stories of the French-Canadians which delighted them all. He had a gift of mimicry and he let himself go. "You got a pretty fine tongue in your head--but of the best," said Ingot with a burst of applause. "You'd make a good actor, a holy good actor. You got a way with you. Coquelin, Salvini, Bernhardt! Voila, you're just as good! Bagosh, I'd like to see you on the stage." "So would I," said Larue. "I think you could play a house full in no time and make much cash--I think you could. Don't you think so, Luzanne?" Luzanne laughed. "He can act very first-class, I'm sure," she said, and she turned and looked Carnac in the eyes. She was excited, she was handsome, she was slim and graceful, and Carnac felt towards her as he did the day at the studio, as though he'd like to kiss her. He knew it was not real, but it was the man in him and the sex in her. For an hour and a half the lunch went on, all growing gayer, and then at last Ingot said: "Well, I'm going to have a play now here, and Carnac Grier shall act, and we all shall act. We're going to have a wedding ceremony between M'sieu' Grier and Luzanne--but, hush, why not!" he added, when Luzanne shook her finger at him, and said she'd do nothing of the kind, having, however, agreed to it beforehand. "Why not! There's nothing in it. They'll both be married some day and it will be good practice for them. They can learn now how to do it. It's got to be done--but yes. I'll find a Judge in the village. Come now, hands up, those that will do it." With a loud laugh Larue held up his hand, Carnac, who was half-drunk, did the same, and after a little hesitation Luzanne also. "Good--a gay little comedy, that's what it is. I'm off for the Judge," and away went Ingot hard afoot, having already engaged a Judge, called Grimshaw, in the village near to perform the ceremony. When he had gone, Larue went off to smoke and Luzanne and Carnac cleared up the lunch- things and put all away in the baskets. When it was finished, Carnac and Luzanne sat down under a tree and talked cheerfully, and Luzanne was never so effective as she was that day. They laughed over the mock ceremony to be performed. "I'm a Catholic, you know," said Luzanne, "and it isn't legal in my church with no dispensation to be married to a Protestant like you. But as it is, what does it matter!" "Well, that's true," said Carnac. "I suppose I ought to be acting the lover now; I ought to be kissing you, oughtn't I?" "As an actor, yes, but as a man, better not unless others are present. Wait till the others come. Wait for witnesses, so that it can look like the real thing. "See, there they come now." She pointed, and in the near distance Ingot could be seen approaching with a short, clean-shaven, roly-poly sort of man who did not look legal, but was a real magistrate. He came waddling along in good spirits and rather pompously. At that moment Larue appeared. Presently Ingot presented the Judge to the would--be bride and bridegroom. "You wish to be married-you are Mr. Grier?" said Judge Grimshaw. "That's me and I'm ready," said Carnac. "Get on with the show. What's the first thing?" "Well, the regular thing is to sign some forms, stating age, residence, etc., and here they are all ready. Brought 'em along with me. Most unusual form of ceremony, but it'll do. It's all right. Here are the papers to sign." Carnac hastily scratched in the needed information, and Luzanne doing the same, the magistrate pocketed the papers. "Now we can perform the ceremony," said the Judge. "Mr. Larue, you go down there with the young lady and bring her up in form, and Mr. Carnac Grier waits here." Larue went away with Luzanne, and presently turned, and she, with her arm in his, came forward. Carnac stood waiting with a smile on his face, for it seemed good acting. When Luzanne came, her father handed her over, and the marriage ceremony proceeded. Presently it concluded, and Grimshaw, who had had more drink than was good for him, wound up the ceremony with the words: "And may the Lord have mercy on you!" Every one laughed, Carnac kissed the bride, and the Judge handed her the marriage certificate duly signed. It was now Carnac's duty to pay in the usual way for the ceremony, and he handed the Judge ten dollars; and Grimshaw rolled away towards the village, Ingot having also given him ten. "That's as good a piece of acting as I've ever seen," said Larue with a grin. "It beats Coquelin and Henry Irving." "I didn't think there was much in it," said Carnac, laughing, "though it was real enough to cost me ten dollars. One has to pay for one's fun. But I got a wife cheap at the price, and I didn't pay for the wedding ring." "No, the ring was mine," said Larue. "I had it a long time. It was my engagement ring, and I want it back now." Luzanne took it off her finger--it was much too large--and gave it to him. "It's easy enough to get another," she said in a queer voice. "You did the thing in style, young man," said Ingot to Carnac with a nod. "I'll do it better when it's the real thing," said Carnac. "I've had my rehearsal now, and it seemed almost real." "It was almost real," said Ingot, with his head turned away from Carnac, but he winked at Larue and caught a furtive look from Luzanne's eye. "I think we'd better have another hour hereabouts, then get back to New York," said Larue. "There's a circus in the village--let us go to that." At the village, they did the circus, called out praise to the clown, gave the elephant some buns, and at five o'clock started back to New York. Arrived at New York, they went to a hotel off Broadway for dinner, and Carnac signed names in the hotel register as "Mr. and Mrs. Carnac Grier." When he did it, he saw a furtive glance pass from Luzanne's eyes to her father. It was disconcerting to him. Presently the two adjourned to the sitting-room, and there he saw that the table was only laid for two. That opened his eyes. The men had disappeared and he and Luzanne were alone. She was sitting on a sofa near the table, showing to good advantage. She was composed, while Carnac was embarrassed. Carnac began to take a grip on himself. The waiter entered. "When shall I serve dinner, sir?" he said. Carnac realized that the dinner had been ordered by the two men, and he said quietly: "Don't serve it for a half-hour yet--not till I ring, please. Make it ready then. There's no hurry. It's early." The waiter bowed and withdrew with a smile, and Carnac turned to Luzanne. She smiled, got up, came over, laid a hand on his arm, and said: "It's quiet and nice here, Carnac dear," and she looked up ravishingly in his face. "It's too quiet and it's not at all nice," he suddenly replied. "Your father and Ingot have gone. They've left us alone on purpose. This is a dirty game and I'm not going to play it any longer. I've had enough of it. I've had my fill. I'm going now. Come, let's go together." She looked a bit smashed and overdone. "The dinner!" she said in confusion. "I'll pay for that. We won't wait any longer. Come on at once, please." She put on her things coolly, and he noticed a savage stealthiness as she pushed the long pins through her hat and hair. He left the room. Outside the hotel, Carnac held out his hand. "Good night and good-bye, Luzanne," he said huskily. "You can get home alone, can't you?" She laughed a little, then she said: "I guess so. I've lived in New York some years. But you and I are married, Carnac, and you ought to take me to your home." There was something devilish in her smile now. Then the whole truth burst upon Carnac. "Married--married! When did I marry you? Good God!" "You married me this afternoon after lunch at Shipton. I have the certificate and I mean to hold you to it." "You mean to hold me to it--a real marriage to-day at Shipton! You and your father and Ingot tricked me into this." "He was a real Judge, and it was a real marriage." "It is a fraud, and I'll unmask it," Carnac declared in anger. "It would be difficult to prove. You signed our names in the hotel register as Mr. and Mrs. Carnac Grier. I mean to stick to that name-- Mrs. Carnac Grier. I'll make you a good wife, Carnac--do believe it. "I'll believe nothing but the worst of you ever. I'll fight the thing out, by God!" She shook her head and smiled. "I meant you to marry me, when you saved my life from the streetcar. I never saw but one man I wanted to marry, and you are that man, Carnac. You wouldn't ask me, so I made you marry me. You could go farther and fare worse. Come, take me home--take me home, my love. I want you to love me." "You little devil!" Carnac declared. "I'd rather cut my own throat. I'm going to have a divorce. I'm going to teach you and the others a lesson you won't forget." "There isn't a jury in the United States you could convince after what you've done. You've made it impossible. Go to Judge Grimshaw and see what he will say. Go and ask the hotel people and see what they will say. You're my husband, and I mean you shall live with me, and I'll love you better than any woman on earth can love you. . . . Won't you?" She held out her hand. With an angry exclamation, Carnac refused it, and then she suddenly turned on her heel, slipped round a corner and was gone. Carnac was dumbfounded. He did not know what to do. He went dazedly home, and slept little that night. The next day he went out to Shipton and saw Judge Grimshaw and told him the whole tale. The Judge shook his head. "It's too tall a story. Why, you went through the ceremony as if it was the real thing, signed the papers, paid my fee, and kissed the bride. You could not get a divorce on such evidence. I'm sorry for you, if you don't want the girl. She's very nice, and 'd make a good wife. What does she mean to do?" "I don't know. She left me in the street and went back to her home. I won't live with her." "I can't help you anyhow. She has the certificate. You are validly married. If I were you, I'd let the matter stand." So they parted, and Carnac sullenly went back to his apartments. The next day he went to see a lawyer, however. The lawyer opened his eyes at the story. He had never heard anything like it. "It doesn't sound as if you were sober when you did it. Were you, sir? It was a mad prank, anyhow!" "I had been drinking, but I wasn't drunk. I'd been telling them stories and they used them as a means of tempting me to act in the absurd marriage ceremony. Like a fool I consented. Like a fool--but I wasn't drunk." "No, but when you were in your right mind and sober you signed your names as Mr. and Mrs. Carnac Grier in the register of a hotel. I will try to win your case for you, but it won't be easy work. You see the Judge himself told you the same thing. But it would be a triumph to expose a thing of that kind, and I'd like to do it. It wouldn't be cheap, though. You'd have to foot the bill. Are you rich?" "No, but my people are," said Carnac. "I could manage the cash, but suppose I lost!" "Well, you'd have to support the woman. She could sue you for cruelty and desertion, and the damages would be heavy." Carnac shook his head, paid his fee and left the office. He did not go near Luzanne. After a month he went to Paris for eight months, and then back to Montreal. CHAPTER III CARNAC'S RETURN Arrived in Montreal, there were attempts by Carnac to settle down to ordinary life of quiet work at his art, but it was not effective, nor had it been in Paris, though the excitement of working in the great centre had stimulated him. He ever kept saying to himself, "Carnac, you are a married man--a married man, by the tricks of rogues!" In Paris, he could more easily obscure it, but in Montreal, a few hundred miles from the place of his tragedy, pessimism seized him. He now repented he did not fight it out at once. It would have been courageous and perhaps successful. But whether successful or not, he would have put himself right with his own conscience. That was the chief thing. He was straightforward, and back again in Canada, Carnac flung reproaches at himself. He knew himself now to be in love with Junia Shale, and because he was married he could not approach her. It galled him. He was not fond of Fabian, for they had little in common, and he had no intimate friends. Only his mother was always sympathetic to him, and he loved her. He saw much of her, but little of anyone else. He belonged to no clubs, and there were few artists in Montreal. So he lived his own life, and when he met Junia he cavilled at himself for his madness with Luzanne. The curious thing was he had not had a word from her since the day of the mock marriage. Perhaps she had decided to abandon the thing! But that could do no good, for there was the marriage recorded in the registers of New York State. Meanwhile, things were not going well with others. There befell a day when matters came to a crisis in the Grier family. Since Fabian's marriage with Junia Shale's sister, Sybil, he had become discontented with his position in his father's firm. There was little love between him and his father, and that was chiefly the father's fault. One day, the old man stormed at Fabian because of a mistake in the management, and was foolish enough to say that Fabian had lost his grip since his marriage. Fabian, enraged, demanded freedom from the partnership, and offered to sell his share. In a fit of anger, the old man offered him what was at least ten per cent more than the value of Fabian's share. The sombre Fabian had the offer transferred to paper at once, and it was signed by his father--not without compunction, because difficult as Fabian was he might go further and fare worse. As for Fabian's dark-haired, brown- faced, brown-eyed wife, to John Grier's mind, it seemed a good thing to be rid of her. When Fabian left the father alone in his office, however, the stark temper of the old man broke down. He had had enough. He muttered to himself. Presently he was roused by a little knock at the door. It was Junia, brilliant, buoyant, yellow haired, with bright brown eyes, tingling cheeks, and white laughing teeth that showed against her red lips. She held up a finger at him. "I know what you've done, and it's no good at all. You can't live without us, and you mustn't," she said. The old man glowered still, but a reflective smile crawled to his lips. "No, it's finished," he replied. "It had to come, and it's done. It can't be changed. Fabian wouldn't alter it, and I shan't." His face was stern and dour. He tangled his short fingers in the hair on top of his head. "I wouldn't say that, if I were you," she responded cheerily. "Fabian showed me the sum you offered for his share. It's ridiculous. The business isn't worth it." "What do you know about the business?" remarked the other. "Well, whatever it was worth an hour ago, it's worth less now," she answered with suggestion. "It's worth much less now," she added. "What do you mean by that?" he asked sharply, sitting upright, his hands clasping his knees almost violently, his clean-shaven face showing lines of trouble. "I mean he's going to join the enemy," she answered quickly. "Join the enemy!" broke from the old man's lips with a startled accent. "Yes, the firm of Belloc." The old man did not speak, but a curious whiteness stole over his face. "What makes you say that!" he exclaimed, anger in his eyes. "Well, Fabian has to put money into something," she answered, "and the only business he knows is lumber business. Don't you think it's natural he should go to Belloc?" "Did he ever say so?" asked the old man with savage sullenness. "Tell me. Did he ever say so?" The girl shook back her brave head with a laugh. "Of course he never said so, but I know the way he'll go." The old man shook his head. "I don't believe it. He's got no love for Belloc." The girl felt like saying, "He's got no love for you," but she refrained. She knew that Fabian had love for his father, but he had inherited a love for business, and that would overwhelm all other feelings. She therefore said: "Why don't you get Carnac to come in? He's got more sense than Fabian--and he isn't married!" She spoke boldly, for she knew the character of the man. She was only nineteen. She had always come in and gone out of Grier's house and office freely and much more since her sister had married Fabian. A storm gathered between the old man's eyes; his brow knitted. "Carnac's got brains enough, but he goes monkeying about with pictures and statues till he's worth naught in the business of life." "I don't think you understand him," the girl replied. "I've been trying to understand him for twenty-five years," the other said malevolently. "He might have been a big man. He might have bossed this business when I'm gone. It's in him, but he's a fly-away--he's got no sense. The ideas he's got make me sick. He talks like a damn fool sometimes." "But if he's a 'damn fool'--is it strange?" She gaily tossed a kiss at the king of the lumber world. "The difference between you and him is this: he doesn't care about the things of this world, and you do; but he's one of the ablest men in Canada. If Fabian won't come back, why not Carnac?" "We've never hit it off." Suddenly he stood up, his face flushed, his hands outthrust themselves in rage, his fingers opened and shut in abandonment of temper. "Why have I two such sons!" he exclaimed. "I've not been bad. I've squeezed a few; I've struck here and there; I've mauled my enemies, but I've been good to my own. Why can't I run square with my own family?" He was purple to the roots of his hair. Savagery possessed him. Life was testing him to the nth degree. "I've been a good father, and a good husband! Why am I treated like this?" She watched him silently. Presently, however, the storm seemed to pass. He appeared to gain control of himself. "You want me to have in Carnac?" he asked, with a little fleck of foam at the corners of his mouth. "If you could have Fabian back," she remarked, "but you can't! It's been coming for a long time. He's got your I.O.U. and he won't return; but Carnac's got plenty of stuff in him. He never was afraid of anything or anybody, and if he took a notion, he could do this business as well as yourself by and by. It's all a chance, but if he comes in he'll put everything else aside." "Where is he?" the old man asked. "He's with his mother at your home." The old man took his hat from the window-sill. At that moment a clerk appeared with some papers. "What have you got there?" asked Grier sharply. "The Belloc account for the trouble on the river," answered the clerk. "Give it me," Grier said, and he waved the clerk away. Then he glanced at the account, and a grim smile passed over his face. "They can't have all they want, and they won't get it. Are you coming with me?" he asked of the girl, with a set look in his eyes. "No. I'm going back to my sister," she answered. "If he leaves me--if he joins Belloc!" the old man muttered, and again his face flushed. A few moments afterwards the girl watched him till he disappeared up the hill. "I don't believe Carnac will do it," she said to herself. "He's got the sense, the brains, and the energy; but he won't do it." She heard a voice behind her, and turned. It was the deformed but potent Denzil. He was greyer now. His head, a little to one side, seemed sunk in his square shoulders, but his eyes were bright. "It's all a bad scrape--that about Fabian Grier," he said. "You can't ever tell about such things, how they'll go--but no, bagosh!" CHAPTER IV THE HOUSE ON THE HILL John Grier's house had a porch with Corinthian pillars. Its elevation was noble, but it was rather crudely built, and it needed its grove of maples to make it pleasant to the eye. It was large but not too ample, and it had certain rooms with distinct character. Inside the house, John Grier paused a moment before the door of the sitting-room where his wife usually sat. All was silent. He opened the door. A woman rose to meet him. She was dressed in black. Her dark hair, slightly streaked with grey, gave her distinction. Her eyes had soft understanding; her lips had a reflective smile. There was, however, uneasiness in her face; her fingers slightly trembled on the linen she was holding. "You're home early, John," she said in a gentle, reserved voice. He twisted a shoulder. "Yes, I'm home early," he snapped. "Your boy Fabian has left the business, and I've bought his share." He named the sum. "Ghastly, ain't it? But he's gone, and there's no more about it. It's a bad thing to marry a woman that can't play fair." He noted the excessive paleness of his wife's face; the bright eyes stared and stared, and the lips trembled. "Fabian--Fabian gone!" she said brokenly. "Yes, and he ain't coming back." "What's he going to do?" she asked in a bitter voice. "Join Belloc--fight his own father--try to do me in the race," growled the old man. "Who told you that?" "Junia, she told me." "What does she know about it? Who told her that?" asked the woman with faded lips. "She always had sense, that child. I wish she was a man." He suddenly ground his heel, and there was distemper in face and voice; his shoulders hunched; his hands were thrust down in his pockets. He wheeled on her. "Where's your other boy? Where's Carnac?" The woman pointed to the lawn. "He's catching a bit of the city from the hill just beyond the pear-tree." "Painting, eh? I heard he was here. I want to talk to him." "I don't think it will do any good," was the sad reply. "He doesn't think as you do." "You believe he's a genius," snarled the other. "You know he is." "I'll go and find him." She nodded. "I wish you luck," she said, but there was no conviction in her tone. Truth was, she did not wish him luck in this. She watched him leave by the French window and stride across the lawn. A strange, troubled expression was in her face. "They can't pull it off together," she said to herself, and Carnac is too full of independence. He wants nothing from anybody. He needs no one; he follows no one--except me. Yes, he follows--he loves me. She watched her husband till he almost viciously thrust aside the bushes staying his progress, and broke into the space by the pear-tree where Carnac sat with palette and brush, gazing at the distant roofs on which the sun was leaving its last kiss. Carnac got to his feet with a smile, and with a courage in his eye equal to that which had ever been in his father's face--in the face of John Grier. It was strange that the other's presence troubled him, that even as a small child, to be in the same room for any length of time vexed him. Much of that had passed away. The independence of the life he lived, the freedom from resting upon the financial will of the lumber king had given him light, air and confidence. He loved his mother. What he felt for John Grier was respect and admiration. He knew he was not spoken to now with any indolent purpose. They had seen little of each other of late years. His mother had given him the money to go to New York and Paris, which helped out his own limited income. He wondered what should bring his father to him now. There was interested reflection in his eye. With his habit of visualization, he saw behind John Grier, as he came on now, the long procession of logs and timbers which had made his fortune, stretch back on the broad St. Lawrence, from the Mattawan to the Madawaska, from the Richelieu to the Marmora. Yet, what was it John Grier had done? In a narrow field he had organized his life perfectly, had developed his opportunities, had safeguarded his every move. The smiling inquiry in his face was answered by the old man saying abruptly: "Fabian's gone. He's deserted the ship." The young man had the wish to say in reply, "At last, eh!" but he avoided it. "Where has he gone?" "I bought him out to-day, and I hear he's going to join Belloc." "Belloc! Belloc! Who told you that?" asked the young man. "Junia Shale--she told me." Carnac laughed. "She knows a lot, but how did she know that?" "Sheer instinct, and I believe she's right." "Right--right--to fight you, his own father!" was the inflammable reply. "Why, that would be a lowdown business!" "Would it be lower down than your not helping your father, when you can?" Somehow he yearned over his wayward, fantastic son. The wilful, splendid character of the youth overcame the insistence in the other's nature. "You seem to be getting on all right," remarked Carnac with the faint brown moustache, the fine, showy teeth, the clean-shaven cheeks, and auburn hair hanging loosely down. "You're wrong. Things aren't doing as well with me as they might. Belloc and the others make difficult going. I've got too much to do myself. I want help." "You had it in Fabian," remarked Carnac dryly. "Well, I've lost it, and it never was enough. He hadn't vision, sense and decision." "And so you come to me, eh? I always thought you despised me," said Carnac. A half-tender, half-repellent expression came into the old man's face. He spoke bluntly. "I always thought you had three times the brains of your brother. You're not like me, and you're not like your mother; there's something in you that means vision, and seeing things, and doing them. If fifteen thousand dollars a year and a share in the business is any good to you--" For an instant there had been pleasure and wonder in the young man's eyes, but at the sound of the money and the share in the business he shrank back. "I don't think so, father. I'm happy enough. I've got all I want." "What the devil are you talking about!" the other burst out. "You've got all you want! You've no home; you've no wife; you've no children; you've no place. You paint, and you sculp, and what's the good of it all? Have you ever thought of that? What's there in it for you or anyone else? Have you no blood and bones, no sting of life in you? Look what I've done. I started with little, and I've built up a business that, if it goes all right, will be worth millions. I say, if it goes all right, because I've got to carry more than I ought." Carnac shook his head. "I couldn't be any help to you. I'm not a man of action. I think, I devise, but I don't act. I'd be no good in your business no, honestly, I'd be no good. I don't think money is the end of life. I don't think success is compensation for all you've done and still must do. I want to stand out of it. You've had your life; you've lived it where you wanted to live it. I haven't, and I'm trying to find out where my duty and my labour lies. It is Art; no doubt. I don't know for sure." "Good God!" broke in the old man. "You don't know for sure--you're twenty-five years old, and you don't know where you're going!" "Yes, I know where I'm going--to Heaven by and by!" This was his satirical reply. "Oh, fasten down; get hold of something that matters. Now, listen to me. I want you to do one thing--the thing I ought to do and can't. I must stay here now that Fabian's gone. I want you to go to the Madawaska River." "No, I won't go to the Madawaska," replied Carnac after a long pause, "but"--with sudden resolution--"if it's any good to you, I'll stay here in the business, and you can go to the Madawaska. Show me what to do here; tell me how to do it, and I'll try to help you out for a while-- if it can be done," he added hastily. "You go, but I'll stay. Let's talk it over at supper." He sighed, and turned and gazed warmly at the sunset on the roofs of the city; then turned to his father's face, but it was not the same look in his eyes. CHAPTER V CARNAC AS MANAGER Carnac was installed in the office, and John Grier went to the Madawaska. Before he left, however, he was with Carnac for near a week, showing the procedure and the main questions that might arise to be solved. "It's like this," said Grier in their last talk, "you've got to keep a stiff hand over the foremen and overseers, and have strict watch of Belloc & Co. Perhaps there will be trouble when I've gone, but, if it does, keep a stiff upper lip, and don't let the gang do you. You've got a quick mind and you know how to act sudden. Act at once, and damn the consequences! Remember, John Grier's firm has a reputation, and deal justly, but firmly, with opposition. The way it's organized, the business almost runs itself. But that's only when the man at the head keeps his finger on the piston-rod. You savvy, don't you?" "I savvy all right. If the Belloc firm cuts up rusty, I'll think of what you'd do and try to do it in the same way." The old man smiled. He liked the spirit in Carnac. It was the right kind for his business. "I predict this: if you have one fight with the Belloc lot, you'll hate them too. Keep the flag flying. Don't get rattled. It's a big job, and it's worth doing in a big way. "Yes, it's a big job," said Carnac. "I hope I'll pull it off." "You'll pull it off, if you bend your mind to it. But there won't be any time for your little pictures and statues. You'll have to deal with the real men, and they'll lose their glamour. That's the thing about business--it's death to sentimentality." Carnac flushed with indignation. "So you think Titian and Velasquez and Goyot and El Greco and Watteau and Van Dyck and Rembrandt and all the rest were sentimentalists, do you? The biggest men in the world worship them. You aren't just to the greatest intellects. I suppose Shakespeare was a sentimentalist!" The old man laughed and tapped his son on the shoulder. "Don't get excited, Carnac. I'd rather you ran my business well, than be Titian or Rembrandt, whoever they were. If you do this job well, I'll think there's a good chance of our working together." Carnac nodded, but the thought that he could not paint or sculp when he was on this work vexed him, and he only set his teeth to see it through. "All right, we'll see," he said, and his father went away. Then Carnac's time of work and trial began. He was familiar with the routine of the business, he had adaptability, he was a quick worker, and for a fortnight things went swimmingly. There was elation in doing work not his regular job, and he knew the eyes of the commercial and river world were on him. He did his best and it was an effective best. Junia had been in the City of Quebec, but she came back at the end of a fortnight, and went to his office to get a subscription for a local charity. She had a gift in this kind of work. It was a sunny day in the month of June, and as she entered the office a new spirit seemed to enter with her. The place became distinguished. She stood in the doorway for a moment, radiant, smiling, half embarrassed, then she said: "Please may I for a moment, Carnac?" Carnac was delighted. "For many moments, Junia." "I'm not as busy as usual. I'm glad as glad to see you." She said with restraint: "Not for many moments. I'm here on business. It's important. I wanted to get a subscription from John Grier for the Sailors' Hospital which is in a bad way. Will you give something for him?" Carnac looked at the subscription list. "I see you've been to Belloc first and they've given a hundred dollars. Was that wise-going to them first? You know how my father feels about Belloc. And we're the older firm." The girl laughed. "Oh, that's silly! Belloc's money is as good as John Grier's, and it only happened he was asked first because Fabian was present when I took the list, and it's Fabian's writing on the paper there." Carnac nodded. "That's all right with me, for I'm no foe to Belloc, but my father wouldn't have liked it. He wouldn't have given anything in the circumstances." "Oh, yes, he would! He's got sense with all his prejudices. I'll tell you what he'd have done: he'd have given a bigger subscription than Belloc." Carnac laughed. "Well, perhaps you're right; it was clever planning it so." "I didn't plan it. It was accident, but I had to consider everything and I saw how to turn it to account. So, if you are going to give a subscription for John Grier you must do as he would do." Carnac smiled, put the paper on his desk, and took the pen. "Make it measure the hate John Grier has to the Belloc firm," she said ironically. Carnac chuckled and wrote. "Will that do?" He handed her the paper. "One hundred and fifty dollars--oh, quite, quite good!" she said. "But it's only a half hatred after all. I'd have made it a whole one." "You'd have expected John Grier to give two hundred, eh? But that would have been too plain. It looks all right now, and it must go at that." She smiled. "Well, it'll go at that. You're a good business man. I see you've given up your painting and sculping to do this! It will please your father, but are you satisfied?" "Satisfied--of course, I'm not; and you know it. I'm not a money- grabber. I'm an artist if I'm anything, and I'm not doing this permanently. I'm only helping my father while he's in a hole." The girl suddenly grew serious. "You mean you're not going to stick to the business, and take Fabian's place in it? He's been for a week with Belloc and he's never coming back here. You have the brains for it; and you could make your father happy and inherit his fortune--all of it." Carnac flushed indignantly. "I suppose I could, but it isn't big enough for me. I'd rather do one picture that the Luxembourg or the London National Gallery would buy than own this whole business. That's the turn of my mind." "Yes, but if you didn't sell a picture to the Luxembourg or the National Gallery. What then?" "I'd have a good try for it, that's all. Do you want me to give up Art and take to commerce? Is that your view?" "I suggested to John Grier the day that Fabian sold his share that you might take his place; and I still think it a good thing, though, of course, I like your painting. But I felt sorry for your father with none of his own family to help him; and I thought you might stay with him for your family's sake." "You thought I'd be a martyr for love of John Grier--and cold cash, did you? That isn't the way the blood runs in my veins. I think John Grier might get out of the business now, if he's tired, and sell it and let some one else run it. John Grier is not in want. If he were, I'd give up everything to help him, and I'd not think I was a martyr. But I've a right to make my own career. It's making the career one likes which gets one in the marrow. I'd take my chances of success as he did. He has enough to live on, he's had success; let him get down and out, if he's tired." The girl held herself firmly. "Remember John Grier has made a great name for himself--as great in his way as Andrew Carnegie or Pierpont Morgan-- and he's got pride in his name. He wants his son to carry it on, and in a way he's right." "That's good argument," said Carnac, "but if his name isn't strong enough to carry itself, his son can't carry it for him. That's the way of life. How many sons have ever added to their father's fame? The instances are very few. In the modern world, I can only think of the Pitts in England. There's no one else." The girl now smiled again. The best part in her was stirred. She saw. Her mind changed. After a moment she said: "I think you're altogether right about it. Carnac, you have your own career to make, so make it as it best suits yourself. I'm sorry I spoke to your father as I did. I pitied him, and I thought you'd find scope for your talents in the business. It's a big game, but I see now it isn't yours, Carnac." He nodded, smiling. "That's it; that's it, I hate the whole thing." She shook hands. As his hand enclosed her long slim fingers, he felt he wished never to let them go, they were so thrilling; but he did, for the thought of Luzanne came to his mind. "Good-bye, Junia, and don't forget that John Grier's firm is the foe of the Belloc business," he said satirically. She laughed, and went down the hill quickly, and as she went Carnac thought he had never seen so graceful a figure. "What an evil Fate sent Luzanne my way!" he said. Two days later there came an ugly incident on the river. There was a collision between a gang of John Grier's and Belloc's men and one of Grier's men was killed. At the inquest, it was found that the man met his death by his own fault, having first attacked a Belloc man and injured him. The Belloc man showed the injury to the jury, and he was acquitted. Carnac watched the case closely, and instructed his lawyer to contend that the general attack was first made by Belloc's men, which was true; but the jury decided that this did not affect the individual case, and that the John Grier man met his death by his own fault. "A shocking verdict!" he said aloud in the Court when it was given. "Sir," said the Coroner, "it is the verdict of men who use their judgment after hearing the evidence, and your remark is offensive and criminal." "If it is criminal, I apologize," said Carnac. "You must apologize for its offensiveness, or you will be arrested, sir." This nettled Carnac. "I will not apologize for its offensiveness," he said firmly. "Constable, arrest this man," said the Coroner, and the constable did so. "May I be released on bail?" asked Carnac with a smile. "I am a magistrate. Yes, you may be released on bail," said the Coroner. Carnac bowed, and at once a neighbour became security for three thousand dollars. Then Carnac bowed again and left the Court with--it was plain-- the goodwill of most people present. Carnac returned to his office with angry feelings at his heart. The Belloc man ought to have been arrested for manslaughter, he thought. In any case, he had upheld the honour of John Grier's firm by his protest, and the newspapers spoke not unfavourably of him in their reports. They said he was a man of courage to say what he did, though it was improper, from a legal standpoint. But human nature was human nature! The trial took place in five days, and Carnac was fined twenty-five cents, which was in effect a verdict of not guilty; and so the newspapers said. It was decided that the offence was only legally improper, and it was natural that Carnac expressed himself strongly. Junia was present at the trial. After it was over, she saw Carnac for a moment. "I think your firm can just pay the price and exist!" she said. "It's a terrible sum, and it shows how great a criminal you are!" "Not a 'thirty-cent' criminal, anyhow," said Carnac. "It is a moral victory, and tell Fabian so. He's a bit huffy because I got into the trouble, I suppose." "No, he loathed it all. He's sorry it occurred." There was no further talk between them, for a subordinate of Carnac's came hurriedly to him and said something which Junia did not hear. Carnac raised his hat to her, and hurried away. "Well, it's not so easy as painting pictures," she said. "He gets fussed over these things." It was later announced by the manager of the main mill that there was to be a meeting of workers to agitate for a strike for higher pay. A French-Canadian who had worked in the mills of Maine and who was a red- hot socialist was the cause of it. He had only been in the mills for about three months and had spent his spare time inciting well-satisfied workmen to strike. His name was Luc Baste--a shock-haired criminal with a huge chest and a big voice, and a born filibuster. The meeting was held and a deputation was appointed to wait on Carnac at his office. Word was sent to Carnac, and he said he would see them after the work was done for the day. So in the evening about seven o'clock the deputation of six men came, headed by Luc Baste. "Well, what is it?" Carnac asked calmly. Luc Baste began, not a statement of facts, but an oration on the rights of workers, their downtrodden condition and their beggarly wages. He said they had not enough to keep body and soul together, and that right well did their employers know it. He said there should be an increase of a half-dollar a day, or there would be a strike. Carnac dealt with the matter quickly and quietly. He said Luc Baste had not been among them a long time and evidently did not know what was the cost of living in Montreal. He said the men got good wages, and in any case it was not for him to settle a thing of such importance. This was for the head of the firm, John Grier, when he returned. The wages had been raised two years before, and he doubted that John Grier would consent to a further rise. All other men on the river seemed satisfied and he doubted these ought to have a cent more a day. They were getting the full value of the work. He begged all present to think twice before they brought about catastrophe. It would be a catastrophe if John Grier's mills should stop working and Belloc's mills should go on as before. It was not like Grier's men to do this sort of thing. The men seemed impressed, and, presently, after one of them thanking him, the deputation withdrew, Luc Baste talking excitedly as they went. The manager of the main mill, with grave face, said: "No, Mr. Grier, I don't think they'll be satisfied. You said all that could be said, but I think they'll strike after all." "Well, I hope it won't occur before John Grier gets back," said Carnac. That night a strike was declared. Fortunately, only about two-thirds of the men came out, and it could not be called a complete success. The Belloc people were delighted, but they lived in daily fear of a strike in their own yards, for agitators were busy amongst their workmen. But the workers waited to see what would happen to Grier's men. Carnac declined to reconsider. The wages were sufficient and the strike unwarranted! He kept cool, even good-natured, and with only one-third of his men at work, he kept things going, and the business went on with regularity, if with smaller output. The Press unanimously supported him, for it was felt the strike had its origin in foreign influence, and as French Canada had no love for the United States there was journalistic opposition to the strike. Carnac had telegraphed to his father when the strike started, but did not urge him to come back. He knew that Grier could do nothing more than he himself was doing, and he dreaded new influence over the strikers. Grier happened to be in the backwoods and did not get word for nearly a week; then he wired asking Carnac what the present situation was. Carnac replied he was standing firm, that he would not yield a cent increase in wages, and that, so far, all was quiet. It happened, however, that on the day he wired, the strikers tried to prevent the non-strikers from going to work and there was a collision. The police and a local company of volunteers intervened and then the Press condemned unsparingly the whole affair. This outbreak did good, and Luc Baste was arrested for provoking disorder. No one else was arrested, and this was a good thing, for, on the whole, even the men that followed Luc did not trust him. His arrest cleared the air and the strike broke. The next day, all the strikers returned, but Carnac refused their wages for the time they were on strike, and he had triumphed. On that very day John Grier started back to Montreal. He arrived in about four days, and when he came, found everything in order. He went straight from his home to the mill and there found Carnac in control. "Had trouble, eh, Carnac?" he asked with a grin, after a moment of greeting. Carnac shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing. "It's the first strike I ever had in my mills, and I hope it will be the last. I don't believe in knuckling down to labour tyranny, and I'm glad you kept your hand steady. There'll be no more strikes in my mills--I'll see to that!" "They've only just begun, and they'll go on, father. It's the influence of Canucs who have gone to the factories of Maine. They get bitten there with the socialistic craze, and they come back and make trouble. This strike was started by Luc Baste, a French-Canadian, who had been in Maine. You can't stop these things by saying so. There was no strike among Belloc's men!" "No, but did you have no trouble with Belloc's men?" Carnac told him of the death of the Grier man after the collision, of his own arrest and fine of twenty-five cents and of the attitude of the public and the Press. The old man was jubilant. "Say, you did the thing in style. It was the only way to do it. You landed 'em with the protest fair and easy. You're going to be a success in the business, I can see that." Carnac for a moment looked at his father meditatively. Then, seeing the surprise in John Grier's face, he said: "No, I'm not going to be a success in it, for I'm not going on with it. I've had enough. I'm through." "You've had enough--you're through--just when you've proved you can do things as well as I can do them! You ain't going on! Great Jehoshaphat!" "I mean it; I'm not going on. I'm going to quit in another month. I can't stick it. It galls me. It ain't my job. I do it, but it's artificial, it ain't the real thing. My heart isn't in it as yours is, and I'd go mad if I had to do this all my life. It's full of excitement at times, it's hard work, it's stimulating when you're fighting, but other times it's deadly dull and bores me stiff. I feel as though I were pulling a train of cars." Slowly the old man's face reddened with anger. "It bores you stiff, eh? It's deadly dull at times! There's only interest in it when there's a fight on, eh? You're right; you're not fit for the job, never was and never will be while your mind is what it is. Don't take a month to go, don't take a week, or a day, go this morning after I've got your report on what's been done. It ain't the real thing, eh? No, it ain't. It's no place for you. Tell me all there is to tell, and get out; I've had enough too, I've had my fill. 'It bores me stiff'!" John Grier was in a rage, and he would listen to no explanation. "Come now, out with your report." Carnac was not upset. He kept cool. "No need to be so crusty," he said. CHAPTER VI LUKE TARBOE HAS AN OFFER Many a man behind his horses' tails on the countryside has watched the wild reckless life of the water with wonder and admiration. He sees a cluster of logs gather and climb, and still gather and climb, and between him and that cluster is a rolling waste of timber, round and square. Suddenly, a being with a red shirt, with loose prairie kind of hat, knee- boots, having metal clamps, strikes out from the shore, running on the tops of the moving logs till he reaches the jam. Then the pike-pole, or the lever, reaches the heart of the difficulty, and presently the jam breaks, and the logs go tumbling into the main, while the vicious-looking berserker of the water runs back to the shore over the logs, safe and sound. It is a marvel to the spectator, that men should manipulate the river so. To him it is a life apart; not belonging to the life he lives -a passing show. It was a stark surprise of the river which makes this story possible. There was a strike at Bunder's Boom--as it was called--between Bunder and Grier's men. Some foreman of Grier's gang had been needlessly offensive. Bunder had been stupidly resentful. When Grier's men had tried to force his hand also, he had resisted. It chanced that, when an impasse seemed possible to be broken only by force, a telegram came to John Grier at Montreal telling him of the difficulty. He lost no time in making his way northwards. But some one else had come upon the scene. It was Luke Tarboe. He had arrived at a moment when the Belloc river crowd had almost wrecked Bunder's Boom, and when a collision between the two gangs seemed inevitable. What he did remained a river legend. By good temper and adroitness, he reconciled the leaders of the two gangs; he bought the freedom of the river by a present to Bunder's daughter; he won Bunder by four bottles of "Three Star" brandy. When the police from a town a hundred miles away arrived at the same time as John Grier, it was to find the Grier and Belloc gangs peacefully prodding side by side. When the police had gone, John Grier looked Tarboe up and down. The brown face, the clear, strong brown eyes and the brown hatless head rose up eighteen inches above his own, making a gallant summit to a robust stalk. "Well, you've done easier things than that in your time, eh?" John Grier asked. Tarboe nodded. "It was touch and go. I guess it was the hardest thing I ever tried since I've been working for you, but it's come off all right, hasn't it?" He waved a hand to the workmen on the river, to the tumbling rushes of logs and timber. Then he looked far up the stream, with hand shading his brown eyes to where a crib-or raft-was following the eager stream of logs. "It's easy going now," he added, and his face had a look of pleasure. "What's your position, and what's your name?" asked John Grier. "I'm head-foreman of the Skunk Nest's gang--that's this lot, and I got here--just in time! I don't believe you could have done it, Mr. Grier. No master is popular in the real sense with his men. I think they'd have turned you down. So it was lucky I came." A faint smile hovered at his lips, and his eyes brooded upon the busy gangs of men. "Yes, I've had a lot of luck this time. There's nothing like keeping your head cool and your belly free from drink." Now he laughed broadly. "By gosh, it's all good! Do you know, Mr. Grier, I came out here a wreck eight years ago. I left Montreal then with a spot in my lungs, that would kill me, they said. I've never seen Montreal since, but I've had a good time out in the woods, in the shanties in the winters; on the rivers in the summer. I've only been as far East as this in eight years." "What do you do in the winter, then?" "Shanties-shanties all the time. In the summer this; in the Fall taking the men back to the shanties. Bossing the lot; doing it from love of the life that's been given back to me. Yes, this is the life that makes you take things easy. You don't get fussed out here. The job I had took a bit of doing, but it was done, and I'm lucky to have my boss see the end of it." He smiled benignly upon John Grier. He knew he was valuable to the Grier organization; he knew that Grier had heard of him under another name. Now Grier had seen him, and he felt he would like to tell John Grier some things about the river he ought to know. He waved a hand declining the cigar offered him by his great chief. "Thanks, I don't smoke, and I don't drink, and I don't chew; but I eat --by gosh, I eat! Nothing's so good as good food, except good reading." "Good reading!" exclaimed John Grier. "Good reading--on the river!" "Well, it's worked all right, and I read a lot. I get books from Montreal, from the old library at the University." "At what University?" struck in the lumber-king. "Oh, Laval! I wouldn't go to McGill. I wanted to know French, so I went to Laval. There I came to know Father Labasse. He was a great man, Father Labasse. He helped me. I was there three years, and then was told I was going to die. It was Labasse who gave me this tip. He said, 'Go into the woods; put your teeth into the trees; eat the wild herbs, and don't come back till you feel well.' Well, I haven't gone back, and I'm not going back." "What do you do with your wages?" asked the lumber-king. "I bought land. I've got a farm of four hundred acres twenty miles from here. I've got a man on it working it." "Does it pay?" "Of course. Do you suppose I'd keep a farm that didn't pay?" "Who runs it?" "A man that broke his leg on the river. One of Belloc's men. He knows all about farming. He brought his wife and three children up, and there he is--making money, and making the land good. I've made him a partner at last. When it's good enough by and by, I'll probably go and live there myself. Anybody ought to make farming a success, if there's water and proper wood and such things," he added. There was silence for a few moments. Then John Grier looked Tarboe up and down sharply again, noting the splendid physique, the quizzical, mirth-provoking eye, and said: "I can give you a better job if you'll come to Montreal." Tarboe shook his head. "Haven't had a sick day for eight years; I'm as hard as nails; I'm as strong as steel. I love this wild world of the woods and fields and--" "And the shebangs and grog-shops and the dirty, drunken villages?" interrupted the old man. "No, they don't count. I take them in, but they don't count." "Didn't you have hard times when you first came?" asked John Grier. "Did you get right with the men from the start?" "A little bit of care is a good thing in any life. I told them good stories, and they liked that. I used to make the stories up, and they liked that also. When I added some swear words they liked them all the better. I learned how to do it." "Yes, I've heard of you, but not as Tarboe." "You heard of me as Renton, eh?" "Yes, as Renton. I wonder I never came across you till to-day." "I kept out of your way; that was the reason. When you came north, I got farther into the backwoods." "Are you absolutely straight, Tarboe?" asked John Grier eagerly. "Do you do these things in the Garden of Eden way, or can you run a bit crooked when it's worth while?" "If I'd ever seen it worth while, I'd say so. I could run a bit crooked if I was fighting among the big ones, or if we were at war with--Belloc, eh!" A cloud came into the eyes of Tarboe. "If I was fighting Belloc, and he used a weapon to flay me from behind, I'd never turn my back on him!" A grim smile came into Tarboe's face. His jaw set almost viciously, his eyes hardened. "You people don't play your game very well, Mr. Grier. I've seen a lot that wants changing." "Why don't you change it, then?" Tarboe laughed. "If I was boss like you, I'd change it, but I'm not, and I stick to my own job." The old man came close to him, and steadily explored his face and eyes. "I've never met anybody like you before. You're the man can do things and won't do them." "I didn't say that. I said what I meant--that good health is better than everything else in the world, and when you've got it, you should keep it, if you can. I'm going to keep mine." "Well, keep it in Montreal," said John Grier. "There's a lot doing there worth while. Is fighting worth anything to one that's got aught in him? There's war for the big things. I believe in war." He waved a hand. "What's the difference between the kind of thing you've done to-day, and doing it with the Belloc gang--with the Folson gang--with the Longville gang--and all the rest? It's the same thing. I was like you when I was young. I could do things you've done to-day while I laid the base of what I've got. How old are you?" "I'm thirty--almost thirty-one." "You'll be just as well in Montreal to-morrow as you are here to-day, and you'd be twice as clever," said John Grier. His eyes seemed to pierce those of the younger man. "I like you," he continued, suddenly catching Tarboe's arm. "You're all right, and you wouldn't run straight simply because it was the straight thing to do." Tarboe threw back his head and laughed and nodded. The old man's eyes twinkled. "By gracious, we're well met! I never was in a bigger hole in my life. One of my sons has left me. I bought him out, and he's joined my enemy Belloc." "Yes, I know," remarked Tarboe. "My other son, he's no good. He's as strong as a horse--but he's no good. He paints, he sculps. He doesn't care whether I give him money or not. He earns his living as he wants to earn it. When Fabian left me, I tried Carnac. I offered to take him in permanently. He tried it, but he wouldn't go on. He got out. He's twenty-six. The papers are beginning to talk about him. He doesn't care for that, except that it brings in cash for his statues and pictures. What's the good of painting and statuary, if you can't do the big things?" "So you think the things you do are as big as the things that Shakespeare, or Tennyson, or Titian, or Van Dyck, or Watt, or Rodin do --or did?" "Bigger-much bigger," was the reply. The younger man smiled. "Well, that's the way to look at it, I suppose. Think the thing you do is better than what anybody else does, and you're well started." "Come and do it too. You're the only man I've cottoned to in years. Come with me, and I'll give you twelve thousand dollars a year; and I'll take you into my business.--I'll give you the best chance you ever had. You've found your health; come back and keep it. Don't you long for the fight, for your finger at somebody's neck? That's what I felt when I was your age, and I did it, and I'm doing it, but I can't do it as I used to. My veins are leaking somewhere." A strange, sad, faded look came into his eyes. "I don't want my business to be broken by Belloc," he added. "Come and help me save it." "By gosh, I will!" said the young man after a moment, with a sudden thirst in his throat and bite to his teeth. "By gum, yes, I'll go with you." CHAPTER VII "AT OUR PRICE?" West of the city of Montreal were the works and the offices of John Grier. Here it was that a thing was done without which there might have been no real story to tell. It was a night which marked the close of the financial year of the firm. Upon John Grier had come Carnac. He had brought with him a small statue of a riverman with flannel shirt, scarf about the waist, thick defiant trousers and well-weaponed boots. It was a real figure of the river, buoyant, daring, almost vicious. The head was bare; there were plain gold rings in the ears; and the stark, half-malevolent eyes looked out, as though searching for a jam of logs or some peril of the river. In the horny right hand was a defiant pike-pole, its handle thrust forward, its steel spike stabbing the ground. At first glance, Carnac saw that John Grier was getting worn and old. The eyes were not so flashing as they once were; the lips were curled in a half-cynical mood. The old look of activity was fading; something vital had struck soul and body. He had had a great year. He had fought Belloc and his son Fabian successfully; he had laid new plans and strengthened his position. Tarboe coming into the business had made all the difference to him. Tarboe had imagination, skill and decision, he seldom lost his temper; he kept a strong hand upon himself. His control of men was marvellous; his knowledge of finance was instinctive; his capacity for organization was rare, and he had health unbounded and serene. It was hard to tell what were the principles controlling Tarboe--there was always an element of suspicion in his brown and brilliant eyes. Yet he loved work. The wind of energy seemed to blow through his careless hair. His hands were like iron and steel; his lips were quick and friendly, or ruthless, as seemed needed. To John Grier's eyes he was the epitome of civilization--the warrior without a soul. When Carnac came in now with the statue tucked under his arm, smiling and self-contained, it seemed as though something had been done by Fate to flaunt John Grier. With a nod, Carnac put the statue on the table in front of the old man, and said: "It's all right, isn't it? I've lifted that out of the river- life. That's one of the best men you ever had, and he's only one of a thousand. He doesn't belong anywhere. He's a rover, an adventurer, a wanton of the waters. Look at him. He's all right, isn't he?" He asked this again. The timber-man waved the statue aside, and looked at the youth with critical eyes. "I've just been making up the accounts for the year," he said. "It's been the best year I've had in seven. I've taken the starch out of Belloc and Fabian. I've broken the back of their opposition--I've got it like a twig in iron teeth." "Yes, Tarboe's been some use, hasn't he?" was the suggestive response. John Grier's eyes hardened. "You might have done it. You had it in you. The staff of life--courage and daring--were yours, and you wouldn't take it on. What's the result? I've got a man who's worth two of Fabian and Belloc. And you"--he held up a piece of paper--"see that," he broke off. "See that. It's my record. That's what I'm worth. That's what you might have handled!" He took a cigar from his pocket, cut off the blunt end, and continued: "You threw your chance aside." He tapped the paper with the point of the cigar. "That's what Tarboe has helped do. What have you got to show?" He pointed to the statue. "I won't say it ain't good. It's a live man from the river. But what do I want with that, when I can have the original man himself! My boy, the great game of life is to fight hard, and never to give in. If you keep your eyes open, things'll happen that'll bring what you want." He stood up, striking a match to light his cigar. It was dusk, and the light of the match gave a curious, fantastic glimmer to his powerful, weird, haggard face. He was like some remnant of a great life, loose in a careless world. "I tell you," he said, the smoke leaking from his mouth like a drift of snow," the only thing worth doing is making the things that matter in the commerce and politics of the world." "I didn't know you were a politician," said Carnac. "Of course I'm a politician," was the inflammable reply. "What's commerce without politics? It's politics that makes the commerce possible. There's that fellow Barouche--Barode Barouche--he's got no money, but he's a Minister, and he can make you rich or poor by planning legislation at Ottawa that'll benefit or hamper you. That's the kind of business that's worth doing--seeing into the future, fashioning laws that make good men happy and bad men afraid. Don't I know! I'm a master-man in my business; nothing defeats me. To me, a forest of wild wood is the future palace of a Prime Minister. A great river is a pathway to the palace, and all the thousands of men that work the river are the adventurers that bring the booty home--" "That bring 'the palace to Paris,' eh!" interrupted Carnac, laughing. "Paris be damned--that bring the forest to Quebec. How long did it take you to make that?" he added with a nod towards the statue. "Oh, I did it in a day--six hours, I think; and he stood like that for three hours out of the six. He was great, but he'd no more sense of civilization than I have of Heaven." "You don't need to have a sense of Heaven, you need to have a sense of Hell. That prevents you from spoiling your own show. You're playing with life's vital things." "I wonder how much you've got out of it all, father," Carnac remarked with a smile. He lit a cigarette. "You do your job in style. It's been a great career, yours. You've made your big business out of nothing." "I had something to start with. Your grandfather had a business worth not much, but it was a business, and the fundamental thing is to have machinery to work with when you start life. I had that. My father was narrow, contracted and a blunderer, but he made good in a small way." "And you in a big way," said Carnac, with admiration and criticism in his eyes. He realized that John Grier had summed him up fairly when he said he was playing with life's vital things. Somehow, he saw the other had a grip upon essentials lacking in himself; he had his tooth in the orange, as it were, and was sucking the juice of good profit from his labours. Yet he knew how much trickery and vital evasion and harsh aggression there were in his father's business life. As yet he had never seen Tarboe--he had been away in the country the whole year nearly--but he imagined a man of strength, abilities, penetration and deep power. He knew that only a man with savage instincts could work successfully with John Grier; he knew that Grier was without mercy in his business, and that his best year's work had been marked by a mandatory power which only a malevolent policy could produce. Yet, somehow, he had a feeling that Tarboe had a steadying influence on John Grier. The old man was not so uncontrolled as in bygone days. "I'd like to see Tarboe," Carnac said suddenly. "He ain't the same as you," snapped John Grier. "He's bigger, broader, and buskier." A malicious smile crossed over his face. "He's a bandit--that's what he is. He's got a chest like a horse and lungs like the ocean. When he's got a thing, he's got it like a nail in a branch of young elm. He's a dandy, that fellow." Suddenly passion came to his eyes. "You might have done it, you've got the brains, and the sense, but you ain't got the ambition. You keep feeling for a thousand things instead of keeping your grip on one. The man that succeeds fastens hard on what he wants to do-- the one big thing, and he does it, thinking of naught else." "Well, that's good preaching," remarked Carnac coolly. "But it doesn't mean that a man should stick to one thing, if he finds out he's been wrong about it? We all make mistakes. Perhaps some day I'll wish I'd gone with you." Grimness came into the old man's face. Something came into his eyes that was strange and revealing. "Well, I hope you will. But you had your chance with me, and you threw it down like a piece of rotten leather." "I don't cost you anything," returned Carnac. "I've paid my own way a long time--with mother's help." "And you're twenty-six years old, and what have you got? Enough to give you bread from day to day-no more. I was worth seventy thousand dollars when I was your age. I'm worth enough to make a prince rich, and if I'd been treated right by those I brought into the world I'd be worth twice as much. Fabian was good as far as he went, but he was a coward. You"-- a look of fury entered the dark eyes--"you were no coward, but you didn't care a damn. You wanted to paddle about with muck of imagination--" he pointed to the statue on the table. "Why, your business has been great because of your imagination," was the retort. "You saw things ahead with the artist's eye. You planned with the artist's mind; and brought forth what's to your honour and credit-- and the piling up of your bank balance. The only thing that could have induced me to work in your business is the looking ahead and planning, seeing the one thing to be played off against the other, the fighting of strong men, the politics, all the forces which go to make or break your business. Well, I didn't do it, and I'm not sorry. I have a gift which, by training and development, will give me a place among the men who do things, if I have good luck--good luck!" He dwelt upon these last words with an intensity which dreaded something. There was retrospection in his eyes. A cloud seemed to cross his face. A strong step crunching the path stopped the conversation, and presently there appeared the figure of Tarboe. Certainly the new life had not changed Tarboe, had not altered his sturdy, strenuous nature. His brown eyes under the rough thatch of his eyebrow took in the room with lightning glance, and he nodded respectfully, yet with great friendliness, at John Grier. He seemed to have news, and he glanced with doubt at Carnac. John Grier understood. "Go ahead. What's happened?" "Nothing that can't wait till I'm introduced to your son," rejoined Tarboe. With a friendly look, free from all furtiveness, Carnac reached out a hand, small, graceful, firm. As Tarboe grasped it in his own big paw, he was conscious of a strength in the grip which told him that the physical capacity of the "painter-fellow," as he afterwards called Carnac, had points worthy of respect. On the instant, there was admiration on the part of each--admiration and dislike. Carnac liked the new-comer for his healthy bearing, for the iron hardness of his head, and for the intelligence of his dark eyes. He disliked him, however, for something that made him critical of his father, something covert and devilishly alert. Both John Grier and Tarboe were like two old backwoodsmen, eager to reach their goal, and somewhat indifferent to the paths by which they travelled to it. Tarboe, on the other hand, admired the frank, pleasant face of the young man, which carried still the irresponsibility of youth, but which conveyed to the watchful eye a brave independence, a fervid, and perhaps futile, challenge to all the world. Tarboe understood that this young man had a frankness dangerous to the business of life, yet which, properly applied, might bring great results. He disliked Carnac for his uncalculating candour; but he realized that, behind all, was something disturbing to his life. "It's a woman," Tarboe said to himself, "it's a woman. He's made a fool of himself." Tarboe was right. He had done what no one else had done--he had pierced the cloud surrounding Carnac: it was a woman. "I hear you're pulling things off here," remarked Carnac civilly. "He says"--pointing to John Grier--"that you're making the enemy squirm." Tarboe nodded, and a half-stealthy smile crept across his face. "I don't think we've lost anything coming our way," he replied. "We've had good luck--" "And our eyes were open," intervened John Grier. "You push the brush and use the chisel, don't you?" asked Tarboe in spite of himself with slight scorn in his tone. "I push the chisel and use the brush," answered Carnac, smilingly correcting him. "That's a good thing. Is it yours?" asked Tarboe, nodding and pointing to the statue of the riverman. Carnac nodded. "Yes, I did that one day. I'd like to do you, if you'd let me." The young giant waved a brawny hand and laughed. He looked down at his knee-boots, with their muddied soles, and then at the statue again on the table. "I don't mind you're doing me. Turn about is fair play. "I've done you out of your job." Then he added to the old man: "It's good news I've got. I've made the contract with the French firm at our price." "At our price!" remarked the other with a grim smile. "For the lot?" "Yes, for the lot, and I've made the contracts with the ships to carry it." "At our price?" again asked the old man. Tarboe nodded. "Just a little better." "I wouldn't have believed those two things could have been done in the time." Grier rubbed his hands cheerfully. "That's a good day's work. It's the best you've done since you've come." Carnac watched the scene with interest. No envy moved him, his soul was free from malice. Evidently Tarboe was a man of power. Ruthless he might be, ruthless and unsparing, but a man of power. At that instant a clerk entered with a letter in his hand. "Mrs. Grier said to give you this," he remarked to Carnac, handing it to him. Carnac took it and the clerk departed. The letter had an American postmark, and the handwriting on the letter brought trouble to his eyes. He composed himself, however, and tore off the end of the envelope, taking out the letter. It was brief. It contained only a few lines, but as Carnac read them the colour left his face. "Good God!" he said to himself. Then he put the paper in his pocket, and, with a forced smile and nod to his father and Tarboe, left the office. "That's queer. The letter seemed to get him in the vitals," said John Grier with surprise. Tarboe nodded, and said to himself: "It's a woman all right." He smiled to himself also. He had wondered why Carnac and Junia Shale had not come to an understanding. The letter which had turned Carnac pale was the interpretation. "Say, sit down, Tarboe," said John Grier. "I want to talk with you." CHAPTER VIII JOHN GRIER MAKES ANOTHER OFFER "I've been keeping my eye on you, Tarboe," John Grier said presently, his right hand clutching unconsciously the statue which his boy had left with him. "I didn't suppose you'd forget me when I was making or breaking you." "You're a winner, Tarboe. You've got sense and judgment, and you ain't afraid to get your own way by any route." He paused, and gripped the statue closely in his hands. Tarboe nodded. In the backwoods he had been without ambition save to be master of what he was doing and of the men who were part of his world of responsibility. Then John Grier had pulled him back into industry and he had since desired to ascend, to "make good." Also, he had seen Junia often, and for her an aspiration had sprung up in him like a fire in a wild place. When he first saw her, she was standing in the doorway through which Carnac had just passed. The brightness of her face, the wonder of her eyes, the glow of her cheek, had made his pulses throb as they had never throbbed before. He had put the thought of her away from him, but it had come back constantly until he had found himself looking for her in the street, and on the hill that led to John Grier's house. Tarboe realized that the girl was drawn towards Carnac, and that Carnac was drawn towards the girl, but that some dark depths lay between. The letter Carnac had just received seemed to him the plumbline of that abyss. Carnac and the girl were suited to each other--that was clear; and the girl was enticing, provoking and bewildering--that was the modelling fact. He had satisfaction that he had displaced Carnac in this great business, and there was growing in him a desire to take away the chances of the girl from Carnac also. With his nature it was inevitable. Life to him was now a puzzle towards the solution of which he moved with conquering conviction. From John Grier's face now, he realized that something was to be said affecting his whole career. It would, he was sure, alter his foot-steps in the future. He had a profound respect for the little wiry man, with the firm body and shrivelled face. Tarboe watched the revealing expression of the old man's face and the motions of his body. He noticed that the tight grip of the hand on the little statue of the riverman had made the fingers pale. He realized how absorbed was the lumber-king, who had given him more confidence than he had given to anyone else in the world. As near as he could come to anyone, he had come to John Grier. There had been differences between them, but he, Tarboe, fought for his own idea, and, in nine cases out of ten, had conquered. John Grier had even treated Tarboe's solutions as though they were his own. He had a weird faith in the young giant. He saw now Tarboe's eyes fixed on his fingers, and he released his grip. "That's the thing between him and me, Tarboe," he said, nodding towards the virile bronze. "Think of my son doing that when he could do all this!" He swept his arm in a great circle which included the horizon beyond the doors and the windows. "It beats me, and because it beats me, and because he defies me, I've made up my mind what to do." "Don't do anything you'd be sorry for, boss. He ain't a fool because he's not what you are." He nodded towards the statue. "You think that's pottering. I think it's good stuff. It will last, perhaps, when what you and I do is forgotten." There was something big and moving in Tarboe. He was a contradiction. A lover of life, he was also reckless in how he got what he wanted. If it could not be got by the straight means, then it must be by the crooked, and that was where he and Grier lay down together, as it were. Yet he had some knowledge that was denied to John Grier. The soul of the greater things was in him. "Give the boy a chance to work out his life in his own way," he said manfully. "You gave him a chance to do it in your way, and you were turned down. Have faith in him. He'll probably come out all right in the end. "You mean he'll come my way?" asked the old man almost rabidly. "You mean he'll do the things I want him to do here, as you've done?" "I guess so," answered Tarboe, but without conviction in his tone. "I'm not sure whether it will be like that or not, but I know you've got a son as honest as the stars, and the honest man gets his own in the end." There was silence for some time, then the old man began walking up and down the room, softly, noiselessly. "You talk sense," he said. "I care for that boy, but I care for my life's work more. Day in, day out, night in, night out, I've slaved for it, prayed for it, believed in it, and tried to make my wife and my boys feel as I do about it, and none of them cares as I care. Look at Fabian --over with the enemy, fighting his own father; look at Carnac, out in the open, taking his own way." He paused. "And your wife?" asked Tarboe almost furtively, because it seemed to him that the old man was most unhappy in that particular field. "She's been a good wife, but she don't care as I do for success and money." "Perhaps you never taught her," remarked Tarboe with silky irony. "Taught her! What was there to teach? She saw me working; she knew the life I had to live; she was lifted up with me. I was giving her everything in me to give." "You mean money and a big house and servants and comfort," said Tarboe sardonically. "Well, ain't that right?" snapped the other. "Yes, it's all right, but it don't always bring you what you want. It's right, but it's wrong too. Women want more than that, boss. Women want to be loved--sky high." All at once Grier felt himself as far removed from Tarboe as he had ever been from Carnac, or his wife. Why was it? Suddenly Tarboe understood that between him and John Grier there must always be a flood. He realized that there was in Grier some touch of the insane thing; something apart, remote and terrible. He was convinced of it, when he saw Grier suddenly spring up, and pace the room again like a tortured animal. "You've got great influence with me," he said. "I was just going to tell you something that'd give you pleasure, but what you've said about my boy coming back has made me change what I was going to do. I don't need to say I like you. We were born in the same nest almost. We've got the same ideas." "Almost," intervened Tarboe. "Not quite, but almost." "Well, this is what I've got to say. You've got youth, courage, and good sense, and business ability, and what more does a man want in life, I ask you that?" Tarboe nodded, but made no reply. "Well, I don't feel as strong as I used to do. I've been breaking up this last year, just when we've been knitting the cracks in the building. What was in my mind is this--to leave you when I die the whole of my business to keep it a success, and get in the way of Belloc, and pay my wife so much a year to live on." "That wouldn't be fair to your wife or your sons." "As for Carnac, if I left him the business it'd be dead in two years. Nothing could save it. He'd spoil it, because he don't care for it. I bought Fabian out. As for my wife, she couldn't run it, and--" "You could sell it," interrupted Tarboe. "Sell it! Sell it!" said Grier wildly. "Sell it to whom?" "To Belloc," was the malicious reply. The demon of anger seized the old man. "You say that to me--you--that I should sell to Belloc! By hell, I'd rather burn every stick and board and tree I've got--sweep it out of existence, and die a beggar than sell it to Belloc!" Froth gathered at the corners of his mouth, there was tumult in his eyes. "Belloc! Knuckle down to him! Sell out to him!" "Well, if you got a profit of twenty per cent. above what it's worth it might be well. That'd be a triumph, not a defeat." "I see what you mean," said John Grier, the passion slowly going from his eyes. "I see what you mean, but that ain't my way. I want this business to live. I want Grier's business to live long after John Grier has gone. That's why I was going to say to you that in my will I'm going to leave you this business, you to pay my wife every year twenty thousand dollars." "And your son, Carnac?" "Not a sou-not a sou--not a sou--nothing--that's what I meant at first. But I've changed my mind now. I'm going to leave you the business, if you'll make a bargain with me. I want you to run it for three years, and take for yourself all the profits over the twenty thousand dollars a year that goes to my wife. There's a lot of money in it, the way you'd work it." "I don't understand about the three years," said Tarboe, with rising colour. "No, because I haven't told you, but you'll take it in now. I'm going to leave you the business as though you were going to have it for ever, but I'll make another will dated a week later, in which I leave it to Carnac. Something you said makes me think he might come right, and it will be playing fair to him to let him run himself alone, maybe with help from his mother, for three years. That's long enough, and perhaps the thought of what he might have had will work its way with him. If it don't--well, it won't; that's all; but I want you to have the business long enough to baulk Belloc and Fabian the deserter. I want you for three years to fight this fight after I'm gone. In that second secret will, I'll leave you two hundred thousand dollars. Are you game for it? Is it worthwhile?" The old man paused, his head bent forward, his eyes alert and searching, both hands gripping the table. There was a long silence, in which the ticking of the clock upon the wall seemed unduly loud and in which the buzz of cross-cut saws came sounding through the evening air. Yet Tarboe did not reply. "Have you nothing to say?" asked Grier at last. "Won't you do it--eh?" "I'm studying the thing out," answered Tarboe quietly. "I don't quite see about these two wills. Why shouldn't the second will be found first?" "Because you and I will be the only ones that'll know of it. That shows how much I trust you, Tarboe. I'll put it away where nobody can get it except you or me." "But if anything should happen to me?" "Well, I'd leave a letter with my bank, not to be opened for three years, or unless you died, and it would say that the will existed, where it was, and what its terms were." "That sounds all right," but there was a cloud on Tarboe's face. "It's a great business," said Grier, seeing Tarboe's doubt. "It's the biggest thing a man can do--and I'm breaking up." The old man had said the right thing--"It's a great business!" It was the greatness of the thing that had absorbed Tarboe. It was the bigness made him feel life could be worth living, if the huge machinery were always in his fingers. Yet he had never expected it, and life was a problem. Who could tell? Perhaps--perhaps, the business would always be his in spite of the second will! Perhaps, he would have his chance to make good. He got to his feet; he held out his hand. "I'll do it." "Ain't it worth any thanks?" "Not between us," declared Tarboe. "When are you going to do it?" "To-night--now." He drew out some paper and sat down with a pen in his hand. "Now," John Grier repeated. CHAPTER IX THE PUZZLE On his way home, with Luzanne's disturbing letter in his pocket, Carnac met Junia. She was supremely Anglo-Saxon; fresh, fervid and buoyant with an actual buoyancy of the early spring. She had tact and ability, otherwise she could never have preserved peace between the contending factions, Belloc and Fabian, old John Grier, the mother and Carnac. She was as though she sought for nothing, wished nothing but the life in which she lived. Yet her wonderful pliability, her joyful boyishness, had behind all a delicate anxiety which only showed in flashes now and then, fully understood by no one except Carnac's mother and old Denzil. These two having suffered strangely in life had realized that the girl was always waiting for a curtain to rise which did not rise, for a voice to speak which gave no sound. Yet since Carnac's coming back there had appeared a slight change in her, a bountiful, eager alertness, a sense of wonder and experiment, adding new interest to her personality. Carnac was conscious of this increased vitality, was impressed and even provoked by it. Somehow he felt--for he had the telepathic mind--that the girl admired and liked Tarboe. He did not stop to question how or why she should like two people so different as Tarboe and himself. The faint colour of the crimsoning maples was now in her cheek; the light of the autumn evening was in her eyes; the soft vitality of September was in her motions. She was attractively alive. Her hair waved back from her forehead with natural grace; her small feet, with perfect ankles, made her foothold secure and sedately joyous. Her brown hand--yet not so brown after all--held her hat lightly, and was, somehow, like a signal out of a world in which his hopes were lost for the present. She was dearer to him than all the rest of the world; and he had in his hand what kept them apart--a sentence of death, unless he escaped from the wanton calling him to fulfil duties into which he had been tricked. Luzanne Larue had a terrible hold over him. He gripped the letter in his pocket as a Hopi Indian does the body of a poisonous snake. The rosy sunset gave the girl's face a reflected spiritual glamour; it made her, suddenly, a bewildering figure. Somehow, she seemed a great distance from him--as one detached and unfamiliar. He suddenly felt she knew more than it was possible she should know. As she flashed an inquiry into his eyes, it was as though she said: "Why don't you tell me everything, and I will help you?" Or, was it: "Why don't you tell me everything and end it all?" He longed to press her to his breast, as he had once done in the woods when Denzil had been injured, but that was not possible. The thought of that far-off day made him say to her, rather futilely: "How is Denzil? How is Denzil?" There was swift surprise in her face. She seemed dumbfounded, and then she said: "Denzil! He's all right, but he does not like your Mr. Tarboe." "My Mr. Tarboe! Where do I come in?" "Well, he's got what you ought to have had," was the reply. "What you would have had, weren't you a foolish fellow." "I still don't understand how he is my Mr. Tarboe." "Well, he wouldn't have been in your father's life if it weren't for you; if you had done what your father wished you to do, had--" "Had sold myself for gold--my freedom, my health, everything to help my father's business! I don't see why he should expect that what he's doing some one else should do--" "That Belloc would do, that Belloc and Fabian would do," said the girl. "Yes, that's it--what they two would do. There's no genius in it, though my father comes as near being a genius as any man alive. But there's a screw loose somewhere. . . . It wasn't good enough for me. It didn't give me a chance--in things that are of the mind, the spirit-- my particular gifts, whatever they are. They would have chafed against that life." "In other words, you're a genius, which your father isn't," the girl said almost sarcastically. A disturbed look came into Carnac's eyes. "I'd have liked my father to be a genius. Then we'd have hit it off together. I don't ever feel the things he does are the things I want to do; or the things he says are those I'd like to say. He's a strange man. He lives alone. He never was really near Fabian or me. We were his sons, but though Fabian is a little bit like him in appearance, I'm not, and never was. I always feel that--" He paused, and she took up the tale: "That he wasn't the father you'd have made for yourself, eh!" "I suppose that's it. Conceit, ain't it? Perhaps the facts are, I'm one of the most useless people that ever wore a coat. Perhaps the things I do aren't going to live beyond me." "It seems as though your father's business is going to live after him, doesn't it?" the girl asked mockingly. "Where are you going now?" she added. "Well, I'm going to take you home," he said, as he turned and walked by her side down the hill. "Denzil will be glad to see you. He almost thinks I'm a curse." Carnac smiled. "All genius is at once a blessing or a curse. And what does Denzil think of me?" "Oh--a blessing and a curse!" she said whimsically. "I don't honestly think I'm a blessing to anybody in this world. There's no one belonging to me who believes in me." "There's Denzil," she said. "He believes in you." "He doesn't belong to me; he isn't my family." "Who are your family? Is it only those who are bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh? Your family is much wider, because you're a genius. It's worldwide--of all kinds. Denzil belongs to you, because you helped to save him years ago; the Catholic Archbishop belongs to you, because he's got brains and a love of literature and art; Barode Barouche belongs to you, because he's almost a genius too." "Barouche is a politician," said Carnac with slight derision. "That's no reason why he shouldn't be a genius." "He's a Frenchman." "Haven't Frenchmen genius?" asked the girl. Carnac laughed. "Why, of course. Barode Barouche--yes, he's a great one: he can think, he can write, and he can talk; and the talking's the best that he does--though I've not heard him speak, but I've read his speeches." "Doesn't he make good laws at Ottawa?" "He makes laws at Ottawa--whether they're good or not is another question. I shouldn't be a follower of his, if I had my chance though." "That's because you're not French." "Oh yes, I'm as French as can be! I felt at home with the French when I was in France. I was all Gallic. When I'm here I'm more Gallic than Saxon. "I don't understand it. Here am I, with all my blood for generations Saxon, and yet I feel French. If I'd been born in the old country, it would have been in Limerick or Tralee. I'd have been Celtic there." "Yet Barode Barouche is a great man. He gets drunk sometimes, but he's great. He gets hold of men like Denzil." "Denzil has queer tastes." "Yes--he worships you." "That's not queer, it's abnormal," said Carnac with gusto. "Then I'm abnormal," she said with a mocking laugh, and swung her hat on her fingers like a wheel. Something stormy and strange swam in Carnac's eyes. All his trouble rushed back on him; the hand in his pocket crushed the venomous letter he had received, but he said: "No, you don't worship me!" "Who was it said all true intelligence is the slave of genius?" she questioned, a little paler than usual, her eye on the last gleam of the sun. "I don't know who said it, but if that's why you worship me, I know how hollow it all is," he declared sullenly, for she was pouring carbolic acid into a sore. He wanted to drag the letter from his pocket and hand it her to read; to tell her the whole distressful story: but he dared not. He longed for her, and yet he dared not tell her so. He half drew the letter from his pocket, but thrust it back again. Tell this innocent girl the whole ugly story? It could not be done. There was but one thing to do--to go away, to put this world of French Canada behind him, and leave her free to follow her fancy, or some one else's fancy. Or some one else's fancy? There was Tarboe. Tarboe had taken from him the place in the business which should be his; he had displaced him in his father's affections . . . and now Junia! He held out a hand to the girl. "I must go and see my mother." His eyes abashed her. She realized there was trouble in the face of the man who all her life had been strangely near and dear to her. With impulsiveness, she said "You're in trouble, Carnac. Let me help you." For one swift instant he almost yielded. Then he gripped her hand and said: "No-no-no. It can't be done--not yet." "Then let Denzil help you. Here he is," she remarked, and she glanced affectionately at the greyish, tousled head of the habitant who was working in the garden of her father's house. Carnac was master of himself again. "Not a bad idea," he said. "Denzil! Denzil!" he called. The little man looked up. An instant later the figure of the girl fluttered through the doorway of her home, and Carnac stopped beside Denzil in the garden. CHAPTER X DENZIL TELLS HIS STORY "You keep going, Denzil," remarked Carnac as he lighted his pipe and came close to the old servant. The face of the toiler lighted, the eyes gazed kindly, at Carnac. "What else is there to do? We must go on. There's no standing still in the world. We must go on--surelee." "Even when it's hard going, eh?" asked Carnac, not to get an answer so much as to express his own feelings. "Yes, that's right, m'sieu'; that's how it is. We can't stand still even when it's hard going--but, no, bagosh!" He realized that around Carnac there was a shadow which took its toll of light and life. He had the sound instinct of primitive man. Strangely enough in his own eyes was the look in those of Carnac, a past, hovering on the brink of revelation. His appearance was that of one who had suffered; his knotted hands, dark with warm blood, had in them a story of life's sorrows; his broad shoulders were stooped with the inertia of long regret; his feet clung to the ground as though there was a great weight above them. But a smile shimmered at his mouth, giving to his careworn face something almost beautiful, lifting the darkness from his powerful, shaggy forehead. Many men knew Denzil by sight, few knew him in actual being. There was a legend that once he was about to be married, but the girl had suddenly gone mad and drowned herself in the river. No one thought it strange that a month later the eldest son of the Tarboe family had been found dead in the woods with a gun in his hand and a bullet through his heart. No one had ever linked the death of Denzil's loved one with that of Almeric Tarboe. It was unusual for a Frenchman to give up his life to an English family, but that is what he had done, and of late he had watched Junia with new eager solicitude. The day she first saw Tarboe had marked an exciting phase in her life. Denzil had studied her, and he knew vaguely that a fresh interest, disturbing, electrifying, had entered into her. Because it was Tarboe, the fifteen years younger brother of that Almeric Tarboe who had died a month after his own girl had left this world, his soul was fighting-- fighting. As the smoke of Carnac's pipe came curling into the air, Denzil put on his coat, and laid the hoe and rake on his shoulder. "Yes, even when it's hard going we still have to march on--name of God, yes!" he repeated, and he looked at Carnac quizzically. "Where are you going? Don't you want to talk to me?" "I'm going home, m'sieu'. If you'll come with me I'll give you a drink of hard cider, the best was ever made." "I'll come. Denzil, I've never been in your little house. That's strange, when I've known you so many years." "It's not too late to mend, m'sieu'. There ain't much in it, but it's all I need." Carnac stepped with Denzil towards the little house, just in front of three pine-trees on the hill, and behind Junia's home. "I always lock my door--always," said Denzil as he turned a key and opened the door. They entered into the cool shade of a living-room. There was little furniture, yet against the wall was a kind of bunk, comfortable and roomy, on which was stretched the skin of a brown bear. On the wall above it was a crucifix, and on the opposite wall was the photograph of a girl, good-looking, refined, with large, imaginative eyes, and a face that might have been a fortune. Carnac gazed at it for a moment, absorbed. "That was your girl, Denzil, wasn't it?" he asked. Denzil nodded. "The best the world ever had, m'sieu'," he replied, "the very best, but she went queer and drowned herself--ah, but yes!" "She just went queer, eh!" Carnac said, looking Denzil straight in the eyes. "Was there insane blood in her family?" "She wasn't insane," answered Denzil firmly. "She'd been bad used-- terrible." "That didn't come out at the inquest, did it?" "Not likely. She wrote it me. I'm telling you what I've never told anyone." He shut the door, as though to make a confessional. "She wrote it me, and I wasn't telling anyone-but no. She'd been away down at Quebec City, and there a man got hold of her. Almeric Tarboe it was--the older brother of Luke Tarboe at John Grier's." Suddenly the face of the little man went mad with emotion. "I--I--" he paused. Carnac held up his hand. "No-no-no, don't tell me. Tarboe-- I understand, the Unwritten Law. You haven't told me, but I understand. I remember: he was found in the woods with his gun in his hand-dead. I read it all by accident long ago; and that was the story, eh!" "Yes. She was young, full of imagination. She loved me, but he was clever, and he was high up, and she was low down. He talked her blind, and then in the woods it was, in the woods where he died, that he--" Suddenly the little man wrung his fingers like one robbed of reason. "He was a strongman," he went on, "and she was a girl, weak, but not wanton . . . and so she died, telling me, loving me--so she died, and so he died, too, in the woods with his gun in his hand. Yes, 'twas done with his own gun--by accident--by accident! He stumbled, and the gun went off. That was the story at the inquest. No one knew I was there. I was never seen with him and I've never been sorry. He got what he deserved--sacre, yes!" There was something overwhelming in the face of the little resolute, powerful man. His eyes were aflame. He was telling for the first time the story of his lifelong agony and shame. "It had to be done. She was young, so sweet, so good, aye, she was good- in her soul she was good, ah, surelee. That's why she died in the pond. No one knew. The inquest did not bring out anything, but that's why he died; and ever since I've been mourning; life has no rest for me. I'm not sorry for what I did. I've told it you because you saved me years ago when I fell down the bank. You were only fourteen then, but I've never forgotten. And she, that sweet young lady, she--she was there too; and now when I look at this Tarboe, the brother of that man, and see her and know what I know--sacre!" He waved a hand. "No-no-no, don't think there's anything except what's in the soul. That man has touched ma'm'selle--I don't know why, but he has touched her heart. Perhaps by his great bulk, his cleverness, his brains, his way of doing things. In one sense she's his slave, because she doesn't want to think of him, and she does. She wants to think of you--and she does--ah, bagosh, yes!" "Yes, I understand," remarked Carnac morosely. "I understand." "Then why do you let her be under Tarboe's influence? Why don't--" Carnac thrust out a hand that said silence. "Denzil, I'll never forget what you've told me about yourself. Some day you'll have to tell it to the priest, and then--" "I'll never tell it till I'm on my death-bed. Then I'll tell it, sacre bapteme, yes!" "You're a bad Catholic, Denzil," remarked Carnae with emotion, but a smile upon his face. "I may be a bad Catholic, but the man deserved to die, and he died. What's the difference, so far's the world's concerned, whether he died by accident, or died--as he died. It's me that feels the fury of the damned, and want my girl back every hour: and she can't come. But some day I'll go to M'sieu' Luke Tarboe, and tell him the truth, as I've told it you--bagosh, yes!" "I think he'd try and kill you, if you did. That's the kind of man he is." "You think if he knew the truth he'd try and kill me--he!" Carnac paused. He did not like to say everything in his mind. "Do you think he'd say much and do little?" "I dunno, I dunno, but I'll tell him the truth and take my chance." Suddenly he swung round and stretched out appealing hands. "Haven't you got any sense, m'sieu'? Don't you see what you should do? Ma'm'selle Junia cares for you. I know it--I've seen it in her eyes often--often." With sudden vehemence Carnac caught the wrists of the other. "It can't be, Denzil. I can't tell you why yet. I'm going away. If Tarboe wants her--good--good; I must give her a chance." Denzil shrank. "There's something wrong, m'sieu'," he said. Then his eyes fastened on Carnac's. Suddenly, with a strange, shining light in them, he added "It will all come right for you and her. I'll live for that. If you go away, I'll take good care of her." "Even if--" Carnac paused. "Yes, even if he makes love to her. He'll want to marry her, surelee." "Well, that's not strange," remarked Carnac. CHAPTER XI CARNAC'S TALK WITH HIS MOTHER Carnac went slowly towards his father's house on the hill. Fixed, as his mind was, upon all that had just happened, his eye took fondly from the gathering dusk pictures which the artist's mind cherishes--the long roadway, with the maples and pines, the stump fences; behind which lay the garnered fields, where the plough had made ready the way for the Fall wheat; the robins twittering in the scattered trees; the cooing of the wood-pigeon; over all, the sky in its perfect purpling blue, and far down the horizon the evening-star slowly climbing. He noted the lizards slipping through the stones; he saw where the wheel of a wagon had crushed some wild flower-growth; he heard the far call of a milkmaid to the cattle; he caught the sweet breath of decaying verdure, and through all, the fresh, biting air of the new-land autumn, pleasantly stinging his face. Something kept saying to his mind: "It's all good. It's life and light, and all good." But his nerves were being tried; his whole nature was stirred. He took the letter from his pocket again, and read it in the fading light. It was native, naive, brutal, and unconsciously clever--and the girl who had written it was beautiful. It had only a few lines. It asked him why he had deserted her, his wife. It said that he would find American law protected the deluded stranger. It asked if he had so soon forgotten the kisses he had given her, and did he not realize they were married? He felt that, with her, beneath all, there was more than malice; there was a passion which would run risks to secure its end. A few moments later he was in the room where his mother, with her strong, fine, lonely face, sat sewing by the window. The door opened squarely on her, and he saw how refined and sad, yet self-contained, was the woman who had given him birth. The look in her eyes warmly welcomed him. Her own sorrows made her sensitive to those of others, and as Carnac entered she saw something was vexing him. "Dear lad!" she said. He was beside her now, and he kissed her cheek. "Best of all the world," he said; and he did not see that she shrank a little. "Are you in trouble?" she asked, and her hand touched his shoulder. The wrong she had done him long ago vexed her. It was not possible this boy could fit in with a life where, in one sense, he did not belong. It was not part of her sorrow that he had given himself to painting and sculpture. In her soul she believed this might be best for him in the end. She had a surreptitious, an almost anguished, joy in the thought that he and John Grier could not hit it off. It seemed natural that both men, ignorant of their own tragedy, believing themselves to be father and son, should feel for each other the torture of distance, a misunderstanding, which only she and one other human being understood. John Grier was not the boy's father. Carnac was the son of Barode Barouche. After a moment he said: "Mother, I know why I've come to you. It's because I feel when I'm in trouble, I get helped by being with you." "How do I help, my boy?" she asked with a sad smile, for he had said the thing dearest to her heart. "When I'm with you, I seem to get a hold on myself. I've always had a strange feeling about you. I felt when I was a child that you're two people; one that lives on some distant, lonely prairie, silent, shadowy and terribly loving; and the other, a vocal person, affectionate, alert, good and generous." He paused, but she only shook her head. After a moment he continued: "I know you aren't happy, mother, but maybe you once were--at the start." She got to her feet, and drew herself up. "I'm happy in your love, but all the rest--is all the rest. It isn't your father's fault wholly. He was busy; he forgot me. Dear, dear boy, never give up your soul to things only, keep it for people." She was naturally straight and composed; yet as she stood there, she had a certain lonely splendour like some soft metal burning. Among her fellow-citizens she had place and position, but she took no lead; she was always an isolated attachment of local enterprises. It was in her own house where her skill and adaptability had success. She had brought into her soul misery and martyrdom, and all martyrs are lonely and apart. Sharp visions of what she was really flashed through Carnac's mind, and he said: "Mother, there must be something wrong with you and me. You were naturally a great woman, and sometimes I have a feeling I might be a great man, but I don't get started for it. I suppose, you once had an idea you'd play a big part in the world?" "Girls have dreams," she answered with moist eyes, "and at times I thought great things might come to me; but I married and got lost." "You got lost?" asked Carnac anxiously, for there was a curious note in her voice. She tried to change the effect of her words. "Yes, I lost myself in somebody else's ambitions I lost myself in the storm." Carnac laughed. "Father was always a blizzard, wasn't he? Now here, now there, he rushed about making money, humping up his business, and yet why shouldn't you have ranged beside him. I don't understand." "No, that's the bane of life," she replied. "We don't understand each other. I can't understand why you don't marry Junia. You love her. You don't understand why I couldn't play as big a part as your father-- I couldn't. He was always odd--masterful and odd, and I never could do just as he liked." There was yearning sadness in her eyes. "Dear Carnac, John Grier is a whirlwind, but he's also a still pool in which currents are secretly twisting, turning. His imagination, his power is enormous; but he's Oriental, a barbarian." "You mean he might have had twenty wives?" "He might have had twenty, and he'd have been the same to all of them, because they play no part, except to make his home a place where his body can live. That's the kind of thing, when a wife finds it out, that either kills her slowly, or drives her mad." "It didn't kill you, mother," remarked Carnac with a little laugh. "No, it didn't kill me." "And it didn't drive you mad," he continued. She looked at him with burning intensity. "Oh, yes, it did--but I became sane again." She gazed out of the window, down the hillside. "Your father will soon be home. Is there anything you want to say before that?" Carnac wanted to tell his tragic story, but it was difficult. He caught his mother's hand. "What's the matter, Carnac? You are in trouble. I can see it in your eyes--I feel it. Is it money?" she asked. She knew it was not, yet she could not help but ask. He shook his head in negation. "Is it business?" She knew his answer, yet she must make these steps before she said to him: "Is it a woman?" He nodded now. She caught his eyes and held them with her own. All the silence and sorrow, all the remorse and regret of the past twenty-six years gathered in her face. "Yes and no," he answered with emotion. "You've quarrelled with Junia?" "No," he replied. "Why don't you marry her?" she urged. "We all would like it, even your father." "I can't." "Why?" She leant forward with a slight burning of the cheek. "Why, Carnac?" He had determined to keep his own secret, to hide the thing which had vexed his life, but a sudden feeling overcame his purpose. With impulse he drew out the letter he had received in John Grier's office and handed it to her. "Read that, and then I'll tell you all about it--all I can." With whitening face, she took the letter and read its few lines. It was written in French, with savage little flourishes and twists, and the name signed at the end was "Luzanne." At last she handed it back, her fingers trembling. "Who is Luzanne, and what does it mean?" What she had read was startling. He slowly seated himself beside her. "I will tell you." When Carnac had ended his painful story, she said to him: "It's terrible --oh, terrible. But there was divorce." "Yes, but they told me I couldn't get a divorce. Yet I wish now I'd tried for it. I've never heard a word from the girl till I got that letter. It isn't strange she hasn't moved in the thing till now. It was I that should have acted; and she knew that. She means business, that's clear, and it'll be hard to prove I didn't marry her with eyes wide open. It gets between me and my work and my plans for the future; between--" "Between you and Junia," she said mournfully. "Don't you think you ought to get a divorce for Junia's sake, if nothing else?" "Yes, of course. But I'm not sure I could get a divorce--evidence is so strong against me, and it was a year ago! If I can see Luzanne again perhaps I can get her to tear up the marriage-lines--that's what I want. She isn't all bad. I must go again to New York; and Junia can wait. I'm not much, I know--not worth waiting for, maybe, but I'm in earnest where Junia's concerned. I could make a little home for her at once, and a better one as time went on, if she would marry me." After a moment of silence, Carnac added: "I'm going to New York. Don't you think I ought to go?" The gaunt, handsome face of the woman darkened, and then she answered: "Yes." There was silence again for a moment, deep and painful, and then Carnac spoke. "Mother, I don't think father is well. I see a great change in him. He hasn't long to travel, and some day you'll have everything. He might make you run the business, with Tarboe as manager." She shuddered slightly. "With Tarboe--I never thought of that--with Tarboe! . . . Are you going to wait for--your father? He'll be here presently." "No, I'm off. I'll go down the garden, through the bushes," he said.... "Mother, I've got nearer you to-night than in all the rest of my life." She kissed him fondly. "You're going away, but I hope you'll come back in time." He knew she meant Junia. "Yes, I hope I'll come back in time." A moment later he was gone, out of the sidedoor, through the bushes, and down the hill, running like a boy. He had for the first time talked to his mother about the life of their home; the facts she told him stripped away the curtain that hid the secret things of life from his eyes. John Grier almost burst upon his wife. He opened and shut the door noisily; he stamped into the dusky room. "Isn't it time for a light?" he said with a quizzical nod towards her. The short visit of Carnac had straightened her back. "I like the twilight. I don't light up until it's dark, but if you wish--" "You like the twilight; you don't light up until it's dark, but if I wish--ah, that's it! Have your own way.... I'm the breadwinner; I'm the breadwinner; I'm the fighter; I'm the man that makes the machine go; but I don't like the twilight, and I don't like to wait until it's dark before I light up. So there it is!" She said nothing at once, but struck a match, and lit the gas. "It's easy to give you what you want," she answered after a little. "I'm used to it now." There was something animal-like in the thrust forward of his neck, in the anger that mounted to his eyes. When she had drawn down the blinds, he said to her: "Who's been here?" For an instant she hesitated. Then she said: "Carnac's been here, but that has naught to do with what I said. I've lived with you for over thirty years, and I haven't spoken my mind often, but I'm speaking it now." "Never too late to mend, eh!" he gruffly interposed. "So Carnac's been here! Putting up his independent clack, eh? He leaves his old father to struggle as best he may, and doesn't care a damn. That's your son Carnac." How she longed to say to him, "That's not your son Carnac!" but she could not. A greyness crossed over her face. "Is Carnac staying here?" She shook her head in negation. "Well, now I'll tell you about Carnac," he said viciously. "I'm shutting him out of the business of my life. You understand?" "You mean--" She paused. "He's taken his course, let him stick to it. I'm taking my course, and I'll stick to it." She came close and reached out a faltering hand. "John, don't do what you'll be sorry for." "I never have." "When Fabian was born, you remember what you said? You said: 'Life's worth living now.'" "Yes, but what did I say when Carnac was born?" "I didn't hear, John," she answered, her face turning white. "Well, I said naught." CHAPTER XII CARNAC SAYS GOOD-BYE Fabian Grier's house was in a fashionable quarter of a fashionable street, the smallest of all built there; but it was happily placed, rather apart from others, at the very end of the distinguished promenade. Behind it, a little way up the hill, was a Roman Catholic chapel. The surroundings of the house were rural for a city habitation. Behind it were commendable trees, from one of which a swing was hung. In a corner, which seemed to catch the sun, was a bird-cage on a pole, sought by pigeons and doves. In another corner was a target for the bow and arrow-evidence of the vigorous life of the owners of the house. On the morning after Carnac told his mother he was going away, the doors of the house were all open. Midway between breakfast and lunch, the voices of children sang through the dining-room bright with the morning sun. The children were going to the top of the mountain-the two youngsters who made the life of Fabian and his wife so busy. Fabian was a man of little speech. He was slim and dark and quiet, with a black moustache and smoothly brushed hair, with a body lithe and composed, yet with hands broad, strong, stubborn. As Junia stood by the dining-room table and looked at the alert, expectant children, she wished she also was going now to the mountain- top. But that could not be--not yet. Carnac had sent a note saying he wished to see her, and she had replied through Denzil that her morning would be spent with her sister. "What is it?" she remarked to herself. "What is it? There's nothing wrong. Yet I feel everything upside down." Her face turned slowly towards the wide mountain; it caught the light upon the steeple of the Catholic chapel. She shuddered slightly, and an expression came into her shadowed eyes not belonging to her personality, which was always buoyant. As she stood absorbed, her mind in a maze of perplexity, a sigh broke from her lips. She suddenly had a conviction about Carnac; she felt his coming might bring a crisis; that what he might say must influence her whole life. Carnac--she threw back her head. Suddenly a sweet, appealing, intoxicating look crossed her face. Carnac! Yes, there was a man, a man of men. Tarboe got his effects by the impetuous rush of a personality; Carnac by something that haunted, that made him more popular absent than present. Carnac compelled thought. When he was away she wanted him; when he was near she liked to quarrel with him. When they were together, one moment she wanted to take his hands in her hands, and in the next she wanted to push him over some great cliff--he was so maddening. He provoked the devil in her; yet he made her sing the song of Eden. What was it? As she asked the question she heard a firm step on the path. It was Carnac. She turned and stood waiting, leaning against the table, watching the door through which he presently came. He was dressed in grey. His coat was buttoned. He carried a soft grey hat, and somehow his face gave her a feeling that he had come to say good-bye. It startled her; and yet, though she was tempted to grip her breast, she did not. Presently she spoke. "I think you're a very idle man. Why aren't you at work?" "I am at work," Carnac said cheerfully. "Work is not all paint and canvas of course. There has to be the thinking beforehand. Well, of what are you thinking now?" "Of the evening train to New York." His face was turned away from her at the instant, because he did not wish to see the effect of his words. He would have seen that apprehension came to her eyes. Her mouth opened in quick amazement. It was all too startling. He was going--for how long? "Why are you going?" she asked, when she had recovered her poise. "Well, you see I haven't quite learned my painting yet, and I must study in great Art centres where one isn't turned down by one's own judgment." "Ananias!" she said at last. "Ananias!" "Why do you say I'm a liar?" he asked, flushing a little, though there was intense inquiry in his eyes. "Because I think it. It isn't your work only that's taking you away." Suddenly she laughed. "What a fool you are, Carnac! You're not a good actor. You're not going away for work's sake only." "Not for work's sake only--that's true." "Then why do you go?" "I'm in a mess, Junia. I've made some mistakes in my life, and I'm going to try and put one of them right." "Is anybody trying to do you harm?" she asked gently. "Yes, somebody's trying to hurt me." "Hurt him," she rejoined sharply, and her eyes fastened his. He was about to say there was no him in the matter, but reason steadied him, and he said: "I'll do my best, Junia. I wish I could tell you, but I can't. What's to be done must be done by myself alone." "Then it ought to be done well." With an instant's impulse he moved towards her. She went to the window, however, and she said: "Here's Fabian. You'll be glad of that. You'll want to say good-bye to him and Sibyl." She ran from him to the front door. "Fabian--Fabian, here's a bad boy who wants to tell you things he won't tell me." With these words she went into the garden. "I don't think he'll tell me," came Fabian's voice. "Why should he?" A moment afterwards the two men met. "Well, what's the trouble, Carnac?" asked Fabian in a somewhat challenging voice. "I'm going away." "Oh--for how long?" Fabian asked quizzically. "I don't know--a year, perhaps. I want to make myself a better artist, and also free myself." Now his eyes were on Junia in her summer-time recreation, and her voice, humming a light-opera air, was floating to him through the autumn morning. "Has something got you in its grip, then?" "I'm the victim of a reckless past, like you." Something provocative was in his voice and in his words. "Was my past reckless?" asked Fabian with sullen eyes. "Never so reckless as mine. You fought, quarrelled, hit, sold and bought again, and now you're out against your father, fighting him." "I had to come out or be crushed." "I'm not so sure you won't be crushed now you're out. He plays boldly, and he knows his game. One or the other of you must prevail, and I think it won't be you, Fabian. John Grier does as much thinking in an hour as most of us do in a month, and with Tarboe he'll beat you dead. Tarboe is young; he's got the vitality of a rhinoceros. He knows the business from the bark on the tree. He's a flyer, is Tarboe, and you might have been in Tarboe's place and succeeded to the business." Fabian threw out his arms. "But no! Father might live another ten years--though I don't think so--and I couldn't have stood it. He was lapping me in the mud." "He doesn't lap Tarboe in the mud." "No, and he wouldn't have lapped you in the mud, because you've got imagination, and you think wide and long when you want to. But I'm middle-class in business. I've got no genius for the game. He didn't see my steady qualities were what was needed. He wanted me to be like himself, an eagle, and I was only a robin red-breast." Suddenly his eyes flashed and his teeth set. "You couldn't stand him, wouldn't put up with his tyranny. You wanted to live your own life, and you're doing it. When he bought me out, what was there for me to do but go into the only business I knew, with the only big man in the business, besides John Grier. I've as good blood as he's got in his veins. I do business straight. "He didn't want me to do it straight. That's one of the reasons we fell out. John Grier's a big, ruthless trickster. I wasn't. I was for playing the straight game, and I played it." "Well, he's got his own way now. He's got a man who wouldn't blink at throttling his own brother, if it'd do him any good. Tarboe is iron and steel; he's the kind that succeeds. He likes to rule, and he's going to get what he wants mostly." "Is that why you're going away?" asked Fabian. "Don't you think it'll be just as well not to go, if Tarboe is going to get all he wants?" "Does Tarboe come here?" "He's been here twice." "Visiting?" "No. He came on urgent business. There was trouble between our two river-driving camps. He wanted my help to straighten things out, and he got it. He's pretty quick on the move." "He wanted you to let him settle it?" "He settled it, and I agreed. He knows how to handle men; I'll say that for him. He can run reckless on the logs like a river-driver; he can break a jam like an expert. He's not afraid of man, or log, or devil. That's his training. He got that training from John Grier's firm under another name. I used to know him by reputation long before he took my place in the business--my place and yours. You got loose from the business only to get tied up in knots of your own tying," he added. "What it is I don't know, but you say you're in trouble and I believe you." Suddenly a sharp look came to his face. "Is it a woman?" "It's not a man." "Well, you ought to know how to handle a woman. You're popular with women. My wife'll never hear a word against you. I don't know how you do it. We're so little alike, it makes me feel sometimes we're not brothers. I don't know where you get your temperament from." "It doesn't matter where I got it, it's mine. I want to earn my own living, and I'm doing it." Admiration came into Fabian's face. "Yes," he said, "and you don't borrow--" "And don't beg or steal. Mother has given me money, and I'm spending my own little legacy, all but five thousand dollars of it." Fabian came up to his brother slowly. "If you know what's good for you, you'll stay where you are. You're not the only man that ought to be married. Tarboe's a strong man, and he'll be father's partner. He's handsome in his rough way too, is Tarboe. He knows what he wants, and means to have it, and this is a free country. Our girls, they have their own way. Why don't you settle it now? Why don't you marry Junia, and take her away with you--if she'll have you?" "I can't--even if she'll have me." "Why can't you?" "I'm afraid of the law." An uneasy smile hung at Carnac's lips. He suddenly caught Fabian's shoulder in a strong grip. "We've never been close friends, Fabian. We've always been at sixes and sevens, and yet I feel you'd rather do me a good turn than a bad one. Let me ask you this--that you'll not believe anything bad of me till you've heard what I've got to say. Will you do that?" Fabian nodded. "Of course. But if I were you, I wouldn't bet on myself, Carnac. Junia's worth running risks for. She's got more brains than my wife and me together, and she bosses us; but with you, it's different. I think you'd boss her. You're unexpected; you're daring; and you're reckless." "Yes, I certainly am reckless." "Then why aren't you reckless now? You're going away. Why, you haven't even told her you love her. The other man--is here, and--I've seen him look at her? I know by the way she speaks of him how she feels. Besides, he's a great masterful creature. Don't be a fool! Have a try . . . Junia--Junia," he called. The figure in the garden with the flowers turned. There was a flicker of understanding in the rare eyes. The girl held up a bunch of flowers high like a torch. "I'm coming, my children," she called, and, with a laugh, she ran forward through the doorway. "What is it you want, Fabian?" she asked, conscious that in Carnac's face was consternation. "What can I do for you?" she added, with a slight flush. "Nothing for me, but for Carnac--" Fabian stretched out a hand. She laughed brusquely. "Oh, Carnac! Carnac! Well, I've been making him this bouquet." She held it out towards him. "It's a farewell bouquet for his little journey in the world. Take it, Carnac, with everybody's love--with Fabian's love, with Sibyl's love, with my love. Take it, and good-bye." With a laugh she caught up her hat from the table, and a moment later she was in the street making for the mountain-side up which the children had gone. Carnac placed the bouquet upon the table. Then he turned to his brother. "What a damn mess you make of things, Fabian!" ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: All genius is at once a blessing or a curse Do what you feel you've got to do, and never mind what happens Had got unreasonably old How many sons have ever added to their father's fame? Never give up your soul to things only, keep it for people We do what we forbid ourselves to do We suffer the shames we damn in others CARNAC'S FOLLY By Gilbert Parker BOOK II XIII. CARNAC'S RETURN XIV. THE HOUSE OF THE THREE TREES XV. CARNAC AND JUNTA XVI. JOHN GRIER MAKES A JOURNEY XVII. THE READING OF THE WILL CHAPTER XIII CARNAC'S RETURN "Well, what's happened since I've been gone, mother?" asked Carnac. "Is nobody we're interested in married, or going to be married?" It was spring-time eight months after Carnac had vanished from Montreal, and the sun of late April was melting the snow upon the hills, bringing out the smell of the sprouting verdure and the exultant song of the birds. His mother replied sorrowfully: "Junia's been away since last fall. Her aunt in the West was taken ill, and she's been with her ever since. Tell me, dearest, is everything all right now? Are you free to do what you want?" He shook his head morosely. "No, everything's all wrong. I blundered, and I'm paying the price." "You didn't find Luzanne Larue?" "Yes, I found her, but it was no good. I said there was divorce, and she replied I'd done it with my eyes open, and had signed our names in the book of the hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Carnac Grier and divorce would not be possible. Also, I'd let things go for a year, and what jury would give me relief! I consulted a lawyer. He said she had the game in her hands, and that a case could be put up that would discredit me with jury or judge, so there it is. . . . Well, bad as she is, she's fond of me in her way. I don't think she's ever gone loose with any man; this is only a craze, I'm sure. She wanted me, and she meant to have me." His mother protested: "No pure, straight, honest girl would--" Carnac laughed bitterly, and interrupted. "Don't talk that way, mother. The girl was brought up among exiles and political criminals in the purlieu of Montmartre. What's possible in one place is impossible in another. Devil as she is, I want to do her justice." "Did she wear a wedding-ring?" "No, but she used my name as her own: I saw it on the paper door-plate. She said she would wait awhile longer, but if at the end of six months I didn't do my duty, she'd see the thing through here among my own people." "Six months--it's overdue now!" She said in agitation. He nodded helplessly. "I'm in hell as things are. There's only this to be said: She's done naught yet, and she mayn't do aught!" They were roused by the click of the gate. "That's your father--that's John Grier," she said. They heard the front door open and shut, a footstep in the hall, then the door opened and John Grier came into the room. Preoccupation, abstraction, filled his face, as he came forward. It was as though he was looking at something distant that both troubled and pleased him. When he saw Carnac he stopped, his face flushed. For an instant he stood unmoving, and then he held out his hand. "So you've come back, Carnac. When did you get here?" As Carnac released his hand from John Grier's cold clasp, he said: "A couple of hours ago." The old man scrutinized him sharply, carefully. "Getting on--making money?" he asked. "Got your hand in the pocket of the world?" Carnac shook his head. "I don't care much about the pocket of the world, but they like my work in London and New York. I don't get Royal Academy prices, but I do pretty well." "Got some pride, eh?" "I'm always proud when anybody outside Montreal mentions your name! It makes me feel I have a place in the world." "Guess you've made your own place," said the other, pleasure coming to his cheek. "You've got your own shovel and pick to make wealth." "I care little about wealth. All I want is enough to clothe and feed me, and give me a little home." "A little home! Yes, it's time," remarked the other, as he seated himself in his big chair by the table. "Why don't you marry?" The old man's eyes narrowed until there could only be seen a slit of fire between the lids, and a bitter smile came to his lips. He had told his wife a year ago that he had cut Carnac out of all business consideration. So now, he added: "Tarboe's taken your place in the business, Carnac. Look out he doesn't take your little home too." "He's had near a year, and he hasn't done it yet." "Is that through any virtue of yours?" "Probably not," answered Carnac ironically. "But I've been away; he's been here. He's had everything with him. Why hasn't he pulled it off then?" "He pulls off everything he plans. He's never fallen over his own feet since he's been with me, and, if I can help it, he won't have a fall when I'm gone." Suddenly he got to his feet; a fit of passion seized him. "What's Junia to me--nothing! I've every reason to dislike her, but she comes and goes as if the place belonged to her. She comes to my office; she comes to this house; she visits Fabian; she tries to boss everybody. Why don't you regularize it? Why don't you marry her, and then we'll know where we are? She's got more brains than anybody else in our circle. She's got tact and humour. Her sister's a fool; she's done harm. Junia's got sense. What are you waiting for? I wouldn't leave her for Tarboe! Look here, Carnac, I wanted you to do what Tarboe's doing, and you wouldn't. You cheeked me--so I took him in. He's made good every foot of the way. He's a wonder. I'm a millionaire. I'm two times a millionaire, and I got the money honestly. I gave one-third of it to Fabian, and he left us. I paid him in cash, and now he's fighting me." Carnac bristled up: "What else could he do? He might have lived on the interest of the money, and done nothing. You trained him for business, and he's gone on with the business you trained him for. There are other lumber firms. Why don't you quarrel with them? Why do you drop on Fabian as if he was dirt?" "Belloc's a rogue and a liar." "What difference does that make? Isn't it a fair fight? Don't you want anybody to sit down or stand up till you tell them to? Is it your view you shall tyrannize, browbeat, batter, and then that everybody you love, or pretend to love, shall bow down before you as though you were eternal law? I'm glad I didn't. I'm making my own life. You gave me a chance in your business, and I tried it, and declined it. You gave it to some one else, and I approved of it. What more do you want?" Suddenly a new spirit of defiance awoke in him. "What I owe you I don't know, but if you'll make out what you think is due, for what you've done for me in the way of food and clothes and education, I'll see you get it all. Meanwhile, I want to be free to move and do as I will." John Grier sat down in his chair again, cold, merciless, with a scornful smile. "Yes, yes," he said slowly, "you'd have made a great business man if you'd come with me. You refused. I don't understand you--I never did. There's only one thing that's alike in us, and that's a devilish self- respect, self-assertion, self-dependence. There's nothing more to be said between us--nothing that counts. Don't get into a passion, Carnac. It don't become you. Good-night--good-night." Suddenly his mother's face produced a great change in Carnac. Horror, sorrow, remorse, were all there. He looked at John Grier; then at his mother. The spirit of the bigger thing crept into his heart. He put his arm around his mother and kissed her. "Good-night, mother," he said. Then he went to his father and held out a hand. "You don't mind my speaking what I think?" he continued, with a smile. "I've had a lot to try me. Shake hands with me, father. We haven't found the way to walk together yet. Perhaps it will come; I hope so." Again a flash of passion seized John Grier. He got to his feet. "I'll not shake hands with you, not to night. You can't put the knife in and turn it round, and then draw it out and put salve on the wound and say everything's all right. Everything's all wrong. My family's been my curse. First one, then another, and then all against me,--my whole family against me!" He dropped back in his chair sunk in gloomy reflection. "Well, good-night," said Carnac. "It will all come right some day." A moment afterwards he was gone. His mother sat down in her seat by the window; his father sat brooding by the table. Carnac stole down the hillside, his heart burning in him. It had not been a successful day. CHAPTER XIV THE HOUSE OF THE THREE TREES During Carnac's absence, Denzil had lain like an animal, watching, as it were, the doorway out of which Tarboe came and went. His gloom at last became fanaticism. During all the eight months of Carnac's absence he prowled in the precincts of memory. While Junia was at home he had been watchfully determined to save her from Tarboe, if possible. He had an obsession of wrong-mindedness which is always attached to crime. Though Luke Tarboe had done him no wrong, and was entitled, if he could, to win Junia for himself, to the mind of Denzil the stain of his brother's past was on Tarboe's life. He saw Tarboe and Junia meet; he knew Tarboe put himself in her way, and he was right in thinking that the girl, with a mind for comedy and coquetry, was drawn instinctively to danger. Undoubtedly the massive presence of Tarboe, his animal-like, bull-headed persistency, the fun at his big mouth and the light in his bold eye had a kind of charm for her. It was as though she placed herself within the danger zone to try her strength, her will; and she had done it without real loss. More than once, as she waited in the office for old John Grier to come, she had a strange, intuitive feeling that Tarboe might suddenly grip her in his arms. She flushed at the thought of it; it seemed so absurd. Yet that very thought had passed through the mind of the man. He was by nature a hunter; he was self-willed and reckless. No woman had ever moved him in his life until this girl crossed his path, and he reached out towards her with the same will to control that he had used in the business of life. Yet, while this brute force suggested physical control of the girl, it had its immediate reaction. She was so fine, so delicate, and yet so full of summer and the free unfettered life of the New World, so unimpassioned physically, yet so passionate in mind and temperament, that he felt he must atone for the wild moment's passion--the passion of possession, which had made him long to crush her to his breast. There was nothing physically repulsive in it; it was the wild, strong life of conquering man, of which he had due share. For, as he looked at her sitting in his office, her perfect health, her slim boyishness, her exquisite lines and graceful turn of hand, arm and body, or the flower- like turn of the neck, were the very harmony and poetry of life. But she was terribly provoking too; and he realized that she was an unconscious coquette, that her spirit loved mastery as his did. Denzil could not know this, however. It was impossible for him to analyse the natures of these two people. He had instinct, but not enough to judge the whole situation, and so for two months after Carnac disappeared he had lived a life of torture. Again and again he had determined to tell Junia the story of Tarboe's brother, but instinctive delicacy stopped him. He could not tell her the terrible story which had robbed him of all he loved and had made him the avenger of the dead. A half-dozen times after she came back from John Grier's office, with slightly heightening colour, and the bright interest in her eyes, and had gone about the garden fondling the flowers, he had started towards her; but had stopped short before her natural modesty. Besides, why should he tell her? She had her own life to make, her own row to hoe. Yet, as the weeks passed, it seemed he must break upon this dangerous romance; and then suddenly she went to visit her sick aunt in the Far West. Denzil did not know, however, that, in John Grier's office as she had gone over figures of a society in which she was interested, the big hand of Tarboe had suddenly closed upon her fingers, and that his head bent down beside hers for one swift instant, as though he would whisper to her. Then she quickly detached herself, yet smiled at him, as she said reprovingly: "You oughtn't to do that. You'll spoil our friendship." She did not wait longer. As he stretched out his hands to her, his face had gone pale: she vanished through the doorway, and in forty-eight hours was gone to her sick aunt. The autumn had come and the winter and the spring, and the spring was almost gone when she returned; and, with her return, Catastrophe lifted its head in the person of Denzil. Perhaps it was imperative instinct that brought Junia back in an hour coincident with Carnac's return--perhaps. In any case, there it was. They had both returned, as it were, in the self-same hour, each having endured a phase of emotion not easy to put on paper. Denzil told her of Carnac's return, and she went to the house where Carnac's mother lived, and was depressed at what she saw and felt. Mrs. Grier's face was not that of one who had good news. The long arms almost hurt when they embraced her. Yet Carnac was a subject of talk between them--open, clear eyed talk. The woman did not know what to say, except to praise her boy, and the girl asked questions cheerfully, unimportantly as to sound, but with every nerve tingling. There was, however, so much of the comedienne in her, so much coquetry, that only one who knew her well could have seen the things that troubled her behind all. As though to punish herself, she began to speak of Tarboe, and Mrs. Grier's face clouded; she spoke more of Tarboe, and the gloom deepened. Then, with the mask of coquetry still upon her she left Carnac's mother abashed, sorrowful and alone. Tarboe had called in her absence. Entering the garden, he saw Denzil at work. At the click of the gate Denzil turned, and came forward. "She ain't home," he said bluntly. "She's out. She ain't here. She's up at Mr. Grier's house, bien sur." To Tarboe Denzil's words were offensive. It was none of Denzil's business whether he came or went in this house, or what his relations with Junia were. Democrat though he was, he did not let democracy transgress his personal associations. He knew that the Frenchman was less likely to say and do the crude thing than the Britisher. Tarboe knew of the position held by Denzil in the Shale household; and that long years of service had given him authority. All this, however, could not atone for the insolence of Denzil's words, but he had controlled men too long to act rashly. "When will Mademoiselle be back?" he asked, putting a hand on himself. "To-night," answered Denzil, with an antipathetic eye. "Don't be a damn fool. Tell me the hour when you think she will be at home. Before dinner--within the next sixty minutes?" "Ma'm'selle is under no orders. She didn't say when she would be back-- but no!" "Do you think she'll be back for dinner?" asked Tarboe, smothering his anger, but get to get his own way. "I think she'll be back for dinner!" and he drove the spade into the ground. "Then I'll sit down and wait." Tarboe made for the verandah. Denzil presently trotted after and said: "I'd like a word with you." Tarboe turned round. "Well, what have you got to say?" "Better be said in my house, not here," replied Denzil. His face was pale, but there was fire in his eyes. There was no danger of violence, and, if there were, Tarboe could deal with it. Why should there be violence? Why should that semi-insanity in Denzil's eyes disturb him? The one thing to do was to forge ahead. He nodded. "Where are you taking me?" he asked presently, as they passed through the gate. "To my little house by the Three Trees. I've got things I'd like to show you, and there's some things I'd like to say. You are a big hulk of a man, and I'm nobody, but yet I've been close to you and yours in my time --that's so, for sure." "You've been close to me and mine in your time, eh? I didn't know that." "No, you didn't know it. Nobody knew it--I've kept it to myself. Your family wasn't all first-class--but no." They soon reached the plain board-house, with the well-laid foundation of stone, by the big Three Trees. Inside the little spare, undecorated room, Tarboe looked round. It was all quiet and still enough. It was like a lodge in the wilderness. Somehow, the atmosphere of it made him feel apart and lonely. Perhaps that was a little due to the timbered ceiling, to the walls with cedar scantlings showing, to the crude look of everything-the head of a moose, the skins hanging down the sides of the walls, the smell of the cedar, and the swift movement of a tame red squirrel, which ran up the walls and over the floor and along the chimney-piece, for Denzil avoided the iron stove so common in these new cold lands, and remained faithful to a huge old-fashioned mantel. Presently Denzil faced him, having closed the door. "I said I'd been near to your family and you didn't believe me. Sit down, please to, and I'll tell you my story." Seating himself with a little curt laugh, Tarboe waved a hand as though to say: "Go ahead. I'm ready." It was difficult for Denzil to begin. He walked up and down the room, muttering and shaking his head. Presently, however, he made the Sign of the Cross upon himself, and, leaning against the wall, and opposite to Tarboe, he began the story he had told Carnac. His description of his dead fiancee had flashes of poetry and excruciating touches of life: "She had no mother, and there was lots of things she didn't know because of that--ah, plenty! She had to learn, and she brought on her own tragedy by not knowing that men, even when good to look at, can't be trusted; that every place, even in the woods and the fields where every one seems safe to us outdoor people, ain't safe--but no. So she trusted, and then one day--" For the next five minutes the words poured from him in moroseness. He drew a picture of the lonely wood, of the believing credulous girl and the masterful, intellectual, skilful man. In the midst of it Tarboe started. The description of the place and of the man was familiar. He had a vision of a fair young girl encompassed by clanger; he saw her in the man's arms; the man's lips to hers, and-- "Good God--good God!" he said twice, for a glimmer of the truth struck him. He knew what his brother had done. He could conceive the revenge to his brother's amorous hand. He listened till the whole tale was told; till the death of the girl in the pond at home--back in her own little home. Then the rest of the story shook him. "The verdict of the coroner's court was that he was shot by his own hand --by accident," said Denzil. "That was the coroner's verdict, but yes! Well, he was shot by his own gun, but not by his own hand. There was some one who loved the girl, took toll. The world did not know, and does not know, but you know--you--you, the brother of him that spoiled a woman's life! Do you think such a man should live? She was the sweetest girl that ever lived, and she loved me! She told me the truth--and he died by his own gun--in the woods; but it wasn't accident--it wasn't accident--but no! The girl had gone, but behind her was some one that loved her, and he settled it once for all." As he had told the story, Denzil's body seemed to contract; his face took on an insane expression. It was ghastly pale, but his eyes ware aflame. His arms stretched out with grim realism as he told of the death of Almeric Tarboe. "You've got the whole truth, m'sieu'. I've told it you at last. I've never been sorry for killing him--never--never--never. Now, what are you going to do about it--you--his brother--you that come here making love too?" As the truth dawned upon Tarboe, his great figure stretched itself. A black spirit possessed him. When Denzil had finished, Tarboe stood up. There was dementia, cruelty, stark purpose in his eyes, in every movement. "What am I going to do? You killed my brother! Well, I'm going to kill you. God blast your soul--I'm going to kill you!" He suddenly swooped upon Denzil, his fingers clenched about the thick throat, insane rage was on him. At that moment there was a knock at the door, it opened, and Carnac stepped inside. He realized the situation and rushed forward. There was no time to struggle. "Let him go," he cried. "You devil--let him go." Then with all his might, he struck Tarboe in the face. The blow brought understanding back to Tarboe. His fingers loosed from the Frenchman's throat, and Carnac caught Denzil as he fell backwards. "Good God!" said Carnac. "Good God, Tarboe! Wasn't it enough for your brother to take this man's love without your trying to take his life?" Carnac's blow brought conviction to Tarboe, whose terrible rage passed away. He wiped the blood from his face. "Is the little devil all right?" he whispered. Denzil spoke: "Yes. This is the second time M'sieu' Carnac has saved my life." Carnac intervened. "Tell me, Tarboe, what shall you do, now you know the truth?" At last Tarboe thrust out a hand. "I don't know the truth," he said. By this Carnac knew that Denzil was safe from the law. CHAPTER XV CARNAC AND JUNIA Tarboe did not see Junia that evening nor for many evenings, but Carnac and Junia met the next day in her own house. He came on her as she was arranging the table for midday dinner. She had taken up again the threads of housekeeping, cheering her father, helping the old French- woman cook--a huge creature who moved like a small mountain, and was a tyrant in her way to the old cheerful avocat, whose life had been a struggle for existence, yet whose one daughter had married a rich lumberman, and whose other daughter could marry wealth, handsomeness and youth, if she chose. When Carnac saw Junia she was entering the dining-room with flowers and fruit, and he recalled the last time they met, when she had thrust the farewell bouquet of flowers into his hand. That was in the early autumn, and this was in late spring, and the light in her face was as glowing as then. A remembrance of the scene came to the minds of both, and the girl gave a little laugh. "Well, well, Carnac," she said gaily, her cheek flushing, her eyes warm with colour: "well, I sent you away with flowers. Did they bring you luck?" She looked him steadily in the eyes. "Yes, they brought me a perfect remembrance--of one who has always been to me like the balm of Gilead." "Soothing and stimulating, eh?" she asked, as she put the flowers on the table and gave him her hand--no, she suddenly gave him both hands with a rush of old-time friendship, which robbed it of all personal emotion. For a moment he held her hands. He felt them tremble in his warm clasp, the delicate, shivering pulsation of youth, the womanly feeling. It was for an instant only, because she withdrew her fingers. Then she caught up an apple from the dish she had brought in, and tossed it to him. "For a good boy," she said. "You have been a good boy, haven't you?" "I think so, chiefly by remembering a good girl." "That's a pretty compliment--meant for me?" "Yes, meant for you. I think you understand me better than anyone else." He noticed her forehead wrinkle slightly, and a faint, incredulous smile come to her lips. "I shouldn't think I understand you, Carnac," she said, over her shoulder, as she arranged dishes on the sideboard. "I shouldn't think I know you well. There's no Book of Revelations of your life except in your face." She suddenly turned full on him, and held his eyes. "Carnac, I think your face looks honest. I've always thought so, and yet I think you're something of a scamp, a rogue and a thief." There was determination at her lips, through which, though only slightly apart, her beautiful teeth, so straight, so regular, showed. "You don't play fair. What's the good of having a friend if you don't tell your friend your troubles? And you've been in trouble, Carnac, and you're fighting it through alone. Is that wise? You ought to tell some bad man, or some good woman--if they're both clever--what's vexing you. "You see the bad clever man would probably think out something that would have the same effect as the good clever woman. They never would think out the same thing, but each 'd think out what would help you." "But you've just said I'm a bad clever man. Why shouldn't I work out my own trouble?" "Oh, you're bad enough," she answered, "but you're not clever enough." He smiled grimly. "I'm not sure though about the woman. Perhaps I'll tell the good clever woman some day and let her help me, if she can. But I'd warn her it won't be easy." "Then there's another woman in it!" He did not answer. He could not let her know the truth, yet he was sure she would come to know it one way or another. At that moment she leaned over the table and stretched a hand to arrange something. The perfection of her poise, the beauty of her lines, the charm of her face seized Carnac, and, with an impulse, he ran his arm around her waist. "Junia--Junia!" he said in a voice of rash, warm feeling. She was like a wild bird caught in its flight. A sudden stillness held her, and then she turned her head towards him, subdued inquiry in her eyes. For a moment only she looked--and then she said: "Take your arm away, please." The conviction that he ought not to make any sign of love to her broke his sudden passion. He drew back ashamed, yet defiant, rebuked, yet rebellious. It was like a challenge to her. A sarcastic smile crossed her lips. "What a creature of impulses you are, Carnac! When we were children the day you saved Denzil years ago you flung your arms around me and kissed me. I didn't understand anything then, and what's more I don't think you did. You were a wilful, hazardous boy, and went your way taking the flowers in the garden that didn't belong to you. Yet after all these years, with an impulse behind which there is nothing--nothing at all, you repeat that incident." Suddenly passion seemed to possess her. "How dare you trifle with things that mean so much! Have you learned nothing since I saw you last? Can nothing teach you, Carnac? Can you not learn how to play the big part? If you weren't grown up, do you know what I would do? I would slap the face of an insolent, thoughtless, hopeless boy." Then her temper seemed to pass. She caught up an apple again and thrust it into his hand. "Go and eat that, Adam. Perhaps it'll make you wise like the old Adam. He put his faults upon a woman." "So do I," said Carnac. "So do I." "That's what you would do, but you mustn't play that sort of game with a good woman." She burst out laughing. "For a man you're a precious fool! I don't think I want to see you again. You don't improve. You're full of horrid impulses." Her indignation came back. "How dare you put your arm around me!" "It was the impulse of my heart. I can say no more; if I could I would. There's something I should like to tell you, but I mustn't." He put the apple down. "About the other woman, I suppose," she said coldly, the hot indignation gone from her lips. He looked her steadfastly in the eyes. "If you won't trust me--if you won't trust me--" "I've always trusted you," she replied, "but I don't trust you now. Don't you understand that a good girl hates conduct like yours?" Suddenly with anger he turned upon her. "Yes, I understand everything, but you don't understand. Why won't you believe that the reason I won't tell you my trouble is that it's best you shouldn't know? You're a young girl; you don't know life; you haven't seen it as I've seen it--in the sewage, in the ditch, on the road, on the mountain and in the bog. I want you to keep faith with your old friend who doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks, but who wants your confidence. Trust me--don't condemn me. Believe me, I haven't been wanton. Won't you trust me?" The spirit of egotism was alive in her. She knew how much she had denied herself in the past months. She did not know whether she loved him, but injured pride tortured her. Except in a dance and in sports at a picnic or recreation-ground no man had ever put his arms around her. No man except Carnac, and that he had done it was like a lash upon the raw skinless flesh. If she had been asked by the Almighty whether she loved Carnac, she would have said she did not know. This was not a matter of love; but of womanhood, of self-respect, of the pride of one who cannot ask for herself what she wants in the field of love, who must wait to be wooed and won. "You don't think I'm straight," he said in protest. "You think I'm no good, that I'm a fraud. You're wrong. Believe me, that is the truth." He came closer up to her. "Junia, if you'll stand by me, I'm sure I'll come out right. I've been caught in a mesh I can't untangle yet, but it can be untangled, and when it is, you shall know everything, because then you'll understand. I can free myself from the tangle, but it could never be explained--not so the world would believe. I haven't trifled with you. I would believe in you even if I saw, or thought I saw, the signs of wrong in you. I would know that at heart you were good. I put my faith in you long ago--last year I staked all on your friendship, and I haven't been deceived." He smiled at her, his soul in his eyes. There was truth in his smile, and she realized it. After a moment, she put out a hand and pushed him gently from her. "Go away, Carnac, please--now," she said softly. A moment afterwards he was gone. CHAPTER XVI JOHN GRIER MAKES A JOURNEY John Grier's business had beaten all past records. Tarboe was everywhere: on the river, in the saw-mills, in the lumber-yards, in the office. Health and strength and goodwill were with him, and he had the confidence of all men in the lumber-world. It was rumoured that he was a partner of John Grier, and it was a good thing for him as well as for the business. He was no partner, however; he was on a salary with a bonus percentage of the profits; but that increased his vigour. There were times when he longed for the backwoods life; when the smell of the pines and the firs and the juniper got into his nostrils; when he heard, in imagination, the shouts of the river-men as they chopped down the trees, sawed the boles into standard lengths, and plunged the big timbers into the stream, or round the fire at night made call upon the spirit of recreation. In imagination, he felt the timbers creaking and straining under his feet; he smelt the rich soup from the cook's caboose; he drank basins of tea from well-polished metal; he saw the ugly rows in the taverns, where men let loose from river duty tried to regain civilian life by means of liquor and cards; he heard the stern thud of a hard fist against a piece of wood; he saw twenty men spring upon another twenty with rage in their faces; he saw hundreds of men arrived in civilization once again striking for their homes and loved ones, storming with life. He saw the door flung open, and the knee-booted, corduroyed river-man, with red sash around his waist and gold rings in his ears, seize the woman he called wife and swing her to him with a hungry joy; he saw the children pushed gently here, or roughly, but playfully, tossed in the air and caught again; but he also saw the rough spirits of the river march into their homes like tyrants returned, as it were, cursing and banging their way back to their rightful nests. Occasionally he would wish to be in it all again, out in the wild woods and on the river and in the shanty, free and strong and friendly and a bit ferocious. All he had known of the backwoods life filled his veins, tortured him at times. From the day that both wills were made and signed, no word had been spoken concerning them between him and John Grier. He admired certain characteristics of John Grier; some secret charities, some impulsive generosity, some signs of public spirit. The old man was fond of animals, and had given water-troughs to the town; and his own horses and the horses he used in the woods were always well fed. Also, in all his arrangements for the woods, he was generous. He believed in feeding his men well. It was rough food--beans, potatoes, peas, lentils, pork in barrels-salted pork; but there was bread of the best, rich soup, pork well boiled and fried, with good tea, freshly made. This was the regular fare, and men throve on it. One day, however, shortly after Carnac's return home, there came a change in the scene. Things had been going badly for a couple of days and the old man had been seriously overworked. He had not listened to the warnings of Tarboe, or to the hints thrown out by his own punished physique. He was not a man to take hints. Everything that vexed his life roused opposition. This Tarboe knew, but he also knew that the business must suffer, if the old man suffered. When John Grier left the office it was with head bowed and mind depressed. Nothing had happened to cause him grave anxiety, yet he had been below par for several hours. Why was he working so hard? Why was life to him such a concentration? Why did he seek for more money and to get more power? To whom could it go? Not to Fabian; not to his wife. To Tarboe--well, there was not enough in that! This man had only lately come into his life, and was only near to him in a business sense. Carnac was near in every sense that really mattered, and Carnac was out of it all. He was not loved, and in his heart of hearts he knew it, but he had had his own way, and he loved himself. No one seemed to care for him, not even his wife. How many years was it since they had roomed together? Yet as he went towards his own home now, he recalled the day they were married, and for the first time had drawn as near to each other as life could draw. He had thought her wonderful then, refined, and oh! so rich in life's gifts. His love had almost throttled her. She was warm and bountiful and full of temperament. So it went for three years, and then slowly he drew away from her until at last, returning from the backwoods, he had gone to another room, and there had stayed. Very occasionally he had smothered her with affection, but that had passed, until now, middle- aged, she seemed to be not a room away from him, but a thousand rooms away. He saw it with no reproach to himself. He forgot it was he who had left her room, and had set up his own tabernacle, because his hours differed from hers, and because she tossed in her bed at nights, and that made him restless too. Yet, if his love had been the real thing, he would have stayed, because their lives were so similar, and the rules of domestic life in French Canada were so fixed. He had spoiled his own household, destroyed his own peace, forsaken his own nest, outlived his hope and the possibility of further hope, except more business success, more to leave behind him. That was the stern truth. Had he been a different man the devotion his wife had shown would have drawn him back to her; had she been a different woman, unvexed by a horrible remembrance, she would have made his soul her own and her soul his own once again. She had not dared to tell him the truth; afraid more for her boy's sake than for her own. She had been glad that Tarboe had helped to replace the broken link with Fabian, that he had taken the place which Carnac, had he been John Grier's son, ought to have taken. She could not blame Carnac, and she could not blame her husband, but the thing ate into her heart. John Grier found her sitting by her table in the great living-room, patient and grave, and yet she smiled at him, and rose as he came into the room. His troubled face brought her forward quickly. She stretched out a hand appealingly to him. "What's the matter, John? Has anything upset you?" "I'm not upset." "Yes you are," she urged, "but, yes, you are! Something has gone wrong." "Nothing's gone wrong that hasn't been wrong for many a year," he said. "What's been wrong for many a year?" "The boys you brought into this world--your sons!" he burst out. "Why isn't Carnac working with me? There must have been something damned bad in the bringing up of those boys. I've not, got the love of any of you, and I know it. Why should I be thrown over by every one?" "Every one hasn't thrown you over. Mr. Tarboe hasn't. You've been in great spirits about him. What's the matter?" He waved a hand savagely at her, with an almost insane look in his eyes. "What's he to me! He's a man of business. In a business way I like him, but I want my own flesh and blood by me in my business. I wanted Carnac, and he wouldn't come--a few weeks only he came. I had Fabian, and he wouldn't stay. If I'd had a real chance--" He broke off, with an outward savage protest of his hands, his voice falling. "If you'd had your chance, you'd have made your own home happy," she said sadly. "That was your first duty, not your business--your home--your home! You didn't care about it. There were times when for months you forgot me; and then--then--" Suddenly a dreadful suspicion seized his brain. His head bent forward, his shoulders thrust out, he stumbled towards her. "Then--well, what then!" he gasped. "Then--you--forgot--" She realized she had gone too far, saw the storm in his mind. "No--no--no, I didn't forget you, John. Never--but--" She got no farther. Suddenly his hands stretched out as if to seize her shoulders, his face became tortured--he swayed. She caught him. She lowered him to the floor, and put a hassock under his head. Then she rang the bell--rang it--and rang again. When help came, all was too late. John Grier had gone for ever. CHAPTER XVII THE READING OF THE WILL As Tarboe stood in the church alone at the funeral, in a pew behind John Grier's family, sadness held him. He had known, as no one else knew, that the business would pass into his own hands. He suddenly felt his task too big for him, and he looked at Carnac now with sympathy. Carnac had brains, capacity, could almost take his father's place; he was tactful, intuitive, alert. Yet Carnac, at present, was out of the question. He knew the stress of spirit which had turned Carnac from the opportunity lying at his feet. In spite of himself there ran through his mind another thought. Near by, at the left, dressed in mourning also, was Junia. He had made up his mind that Junia should be his, and suddenly the usefulness of the business about to fall into his hands became a weapon in the field of Love. He was physically a finer man than Carnac; he had capacity; he had personality; and he would have money and position--for a time at least. In that time, why should he not win this girl with the wonderful eyes and hair, with the frankness and candour of unspoiled girlhood in her face? Presently he would be in the blare of sensation, in the height of as dramatic an episode as comes to the lives of men; and in the episode he saw advantages which should weigh with any girl. Then had come the reading of the will after the funeral rites were over, and he, with the family, were gathered in the dining-room of the House on the Hill. He was scarcely ready, however, for the prodigious silence following the announcement read by the lawyer. He felt as though life was suspended for many minutes, when it was proclaimed that he, Luke Tarboe, would inherit the property. Although he knew of the contents of the will his heart was thumping like a sledge-hammer. He looked round the room slowly. The only embarrassment to be seen was on the faces of Fabian and his wife. Mrs. Grier and Carnac showed nothing. Carnac did not even move; by neither gesture nor motion of body did he show aught. At the close of it all, he came to Tarboe and held out a hand. "Good luck to you, Tarboe!" he said. "You'll make a success, and that's what he wanted more than anything else. Good luck to you!" he said again and turned away. . . . When John Grier's will was published in the Press consternation filled the minds of all. Tarboe had been in the business for under two years, yet here he was left all the property with uncontracted power. Mrs. John Grier was to be paid during her life a yearly stipend of twenty thousand dollars from the business; she also received a grant of seventy thousand dollars. Beyond that, there were a few gifts to hospitals and for the protection of horses, while to the clergyman of the parish went one thousand dollars. It certainly could not be called a popular will, and, complimentary as the newspapers were to the energy and success of John Grier, few of them called him public-spirited, or a generous-hearted citizen. In his death he paid the price of his egotism. The most surprised person, however, was Junia Shale. To her it was shameful that Carnac should be eliminated from all share in the abundant fortune John Grier had built up. It seemed fantastic that the fortune and the business--and the business was the fortune--should be left to Tarboe. Had she known the contents of the will before John Grier was buried, she would not have gone to the funeral. Egotistic she had known Grier to be, and she imagined the will to be a sudden result of anger. He was dead and buried. The places that knew him knew him no more. All in an hour, as it were, the man Tarboe--that dominant, resourceful figure--had come into wealth and power. After Junia read the substance of the will, she went springing up the mountain-side, as it were to work off her excitement by fatigue. At the mountain-top she gazed over the River St. Lawrence with an eye blind to all except this terrible distortion of life. Yet through her obfuscation, there ran admiration for Tarboe. What a man he was! He had captured John Grier as quickly and as securely as a night fisherman spears a sturgeon in the flare at the bow of the boat. Tarboe's ability was as marked as John Grier's mad policy. It was strange that Tarboe should have bewildered and bamboozled--if that word could be used--the old millowner. It was as curious and thrilling as John Grier's fanaticism. Already the pinch of corruption had nipped his flesh; he was useless, motionless in his narrow house, and yet, unseen but powerful, his influence went on. It shamed a wife and son; it blackened the doors of a home; it penalized a family. Indeed he had been a bad man, and yet she could not reconcile it all with a wonderful something in him, a boldness, a sense of humour, an everlasting energy, an electric power. She had never seen anyone vitalize everything round him as John Grier had done. He threw things from him like an exasperated giant; he drew things to him like an Angel of the Covenant. To him life was less a problem than an experiment, and this last act, this nameless repudiation of the laws of family life, was like the sign of a chemist's activity. As she stood on the mountain-top her breath suddenly came fast, and she caught her bosom with angry hands. "Carnac--poor Carnac!" she exclaimed. What would the world say? There were those, perhaps, who thought Carnac almost a ne'er-do-well, but they were of the commercial world where John Grier had been supreme. At the same moment, Carnac in the garden of his old home beheld the river too and the great expanse of country, saw the grey light of evening on the distant hills, and listened to Fabian who condoled with him. When Fabian had gone, Carnac sat down on a bench and thought over the whole thing. Carnac had no quarrel with his fate. When in the old home on the hill he had heard the will, it had surprised him, but it had not shocked him. He had looked to be the discarded heir, and he knew it now without rebellion. He had never tried to smooth the path to that financial security which his father could give. Yet now that disaster had come, there was a glimmer of remorse, of revolt, because there was some one besides himself who might think he had thrown away his chances. He did not know that over on the mountain-side, vituperating the memory of the dead man, Junia was angry only for Carnac's sake. With the black storm of sudden death roaring in his ears, he had a sense of freedom, almost of licence. Nothing that had been his father's was now his own, or his mother's, except the land and house on which they were. All the great business John Grier had built up was gone into the hands of the usurper, a young, bold, pestilent, powerful, vigorous man. It seemed suddenly horrible that the timber-yards and the woods and the offices, and the buildings of John Grier's commercial business were not under his own direction, or that of his mother, or brother. They had ceased to be factors in the equation; they were 'non est' in the postmortem history of John Grier. How immense a nerve the old man had to make such a will, which outraged every convention of social and family life; which was, in effect, a proclamation that his son Carnac had no place in John Grier's scheme of things, while John Grier's wife was rewarded like some faithful old servant. Yet some newspapers had said he was a man of goodwill, and had appreciation of talent, adding, however, the doubtful suggestion that the appreciation stopped short of the prowess of his son Carnac in the field of Art. It was evident John Grier's act was thought by the conventionalist to be a wicked blunder. As Carnac saw the world where there was not a single material thing that belonged to him, he had a sudden conviction that his life would run in other lines than those within which it had been drawn to the present time. Looking over this wonderful prospect of the St. Lawrence, he had an insistent feeling that he ought to remain in the land where he was born, and give of whatever he was capable to its life. It was all a strenuous problem. For Carnac there was, duly or unduly, fairly or unfairly, a fate better than that of John Grier. If he died suddenly, as his father had died, a handful of people would sorrow with excess of feeling, and the growing world of his patrons would lament his loss. No one really grieved for John Grier's departure, except--strange to say --Tarboe. CARNAC'S FOLLY By Gilbert Parker BOOK III XVIII. A GREAT DECISION XIX. CARNAC BECOMES A CANDIDATE XX. JUNIA AND TARBOE HEAR THE NEWS XXI. THE SECRET MEETING XXII. POINT TO POINT XXIII. THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT XXIV. THE BLUE PAPER XXV. DENZIL TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME XXVI. THE CHALLENGE XXVII. EXIT XXVIII. A WOMAN WRITES A LETTER XXIX. CARNAC AND HIS MOTHER XXX. TARBOE HAS A DREAM XXXI. THIS WAY HOME XXXII. 'HALVES, PARDNER, HALVES' CHAPTER XVIII A GREAT DECISION Months went by. In them Destiny made new drawings. With his mother, Carnac went to paint at a place called Charlemont. Tarboe pursued his work at the mills successfully; Junia saw nothing of Carnac, but she had a letter from him, and it might have been written by a man to his friend, yet with an undercurrent of sadness that troubled her. She might, perhaps, have yielded to the attentions of Tarboe, had not an appealing message come from her aunt, and at an hour's notice went West again on her mission of sick-service. Politically the Province of Quebec was in turmoil. The time was drawing near when the Dominion Government must go to the polls, and in the most secluded cottage on the St. Lawrence, the virtues and defects of the administration were vital questions. Voters knew as much of technical law-making as the average voter everywhere, but no more, and sometimes less. Yet there was in the mind of the French-Canadian an intuition, which was as valuable as the deeper knowledge of a trained politician. The two great parties in the Province were led by Frenchmen. The English people, however, were chiefly identified with the party opposed to Barode Barouche, the Secretary of State. As the agitation began in the late spring, Carnac became suddenly interested in everything political. He realized what John Grier had said concerning politics--that, given other characteristics, the making of laws meant success or failure for every profession or trade, for every interest in the country. He had known a few politicians; though he had never yet met the most dominant figure in the Province--Barode Barouche, who had a singular fascination for him. He seemed a man dominant and plausible, with a right-minded impulsiveness. Things John Grier had said about Barouche rang in his ears. As the autumn drew near excitement increased. Political meetings were being held everywhere. There was one feature more common in Canada than in any other country; opposing candidates met on the same platform and fought their fight out in the hearing of those whom they were wooing. One day Carnac read in a newspaper that Barode Barouche was to speak at St. Annabel. As that was not far from Charlemont he determined to hear Barouche for the first time. He had for him a sympathy which, to himself, seemed a matter of temperament. "Mother," he said, "wouldn't you like to go and hear Barode Barouche at St. Annabel? You know him--I mean personally?" "Yes, I knew him long ago," was the scarcely vocal reply. "He's a great, fine man, isn't he? Wrong-headed, wrong-purposed, but a big fine fellow." "If a man is wrong-headed and wrong-purposed, it isn't easy for him to be fine, is it?" "That depends. A man might want to save his country by making some good law, and be mistaken both as to the result of that law and the right methods in making it. I'd like you to be with me when I hear him for the first time. I've got a feeling he's one of the biggest men of our day. Of course he isn't perfect. A man might want to save another's life, but he might choose the wrong way to do it, and that's wrongheaded; and perhaps he oughtn't to save the man's life, and that's wrong-purposed. There's no crime in either. Let's go and hear Monsieur Barouche." He did not see the flush which suddenly filled her face; and, if he had, he would not have understood. For her a long twenty-seven years rolled back to the day when she was a young neglected wife, full of life's vitalities, out on a junction of the river and the wild woods, with Barode Barouche's fishing-camp near by. She shivered now as she thought of it. It was all so strange, and heart-breaking. For long years she had paid the price of her mistake. She knew how eloquent Barode Barouche could be; she knew how his voice had all the ravishment of silver bells to the unsuspecting. How well she knew him; how deeply she realized the darkness of his nature! Once she had said to him: "Sometimes I think that for duty's sake you would cling like a leech." It was true. For thirty long years he had been in one sense homeless, his wife having lost her reason three years after they were married. In that time he had faithfully visited the place of her confinement every month of his life, sobered, chastened, at first hopeful, defiant. At the bottom of his heart Barode Barouche did not want marital freedom. He had loved the mad woman. He remembered her in the glory of her youth, in the splendour of her beauty. The insane asylum did not destroy his memory. Mrs. Grier remembered too, but in a different way. Her relations with him had been one swift, absorbing fever--a mad dream, a moment of rash impulse, a yielding to the natural feeling which her own husband had aroused: the husband who now neglected her while Barode Barouche treated her so well, until a day when under his beguilement a stormy impulse gave--Carnac. Then the end came, instant and final; she bolted, barred and locked the door against Barode and he had made little effort to open it. So they had parted, and had never clasped hands or kissed again. To him she was a sin of which he never repented. He had watched the growth and development of Carnac with a sharp sympathy. He was not a good man; but in him were seeds of goodness. To her he was the lash searing her flesh, day in day out, year in year out, which kept her sacred to her home. For her children's sake she did not tell her husband, and she had emptied out her heart over Carnac with overwhelming fondness. "Yes, I'll go, Carnac," she said at last, for it seemed the easier way. "I haven't been to a political meeting for many years." "That's right. I like your being with me." The meeting was held in what had been a skating-rink and drill-hall. On the platform in the centre was the chairman, with Barode Barouche on his right. There was some preliminary speech-making from the chairman. A resolution was moved supporting Barouche, his party and policy, and there were little explosions of merriment at strokes of unconscious humour made by the speakers; and especially by one old farmer who made his jokes on the spot, and who now tried to embalm Barouche with praise. He drew attention to Barouche's leonine head and beard, to his alert eyes and quizzical face, and said he was as strong in the field of legislation as he was in body and mind. Carnac noticed that Barouche listened good- naturedly, and now and then cocked his head and looked up at the ceiling as though to find something there. There was a curious familiarity in the action of the head which struck Carnac. He and his mother were seated about five rows back from the front row on the edge of the aisle. As the meeting progressed, Barouche's eyes wandered slowly over the faces of his audience. Presently he saw Carnac and his mother. Mrs. Grier was conscious of a shock upon the mind of Barouche. She saw his eyes go misty with feeling. For him the world was suddenly shut out, and he only saw the woods of a late summer's afternoon, a lonely tent--and a woman. A flush crept up his face. Then he made a spasmodic gesture of the hand, outward, which again Carnac recognized as familiar. It was the kind of thing he did himself. So absorbed was Barode Barouche that he only mechanically heard the chairman announce himself, but when he got to his feet his full senses came back. The sight of the woman to whom he had been so much, and who had been so much to him for one short month, magnetized him; the face of the boy, so like his own as he remembered it thirty years ago, stirred his veins. There before him was his own one unacknowledged child--the only child ever born to him. His heart throbbed. Then he began to speak. Never in all his life had he spoken as he did this day. It was only a rural audience; there was not much intelligence in it; but it had a character all its own. It was alive to its own interests, chiefly of agriculture and the river. It was composed of both parties, and he could stimulate his own side, and, perhaps, win the other. Thus it was that, with the blood pounding through his veins, the inspired sensualist began his speech. It was his duty to map out a policy for the future; to give the people an idea of what his party meant to do; to guide, to inspire, to inflame. As Carnac listened he kept framing the words not yet issued, but which did issue from Barouche's mouth; his quick intelligence correctly imagined the line Barouche would take; again and again Barouche made a gesture, or tossed his head, or swung upon his feet to right and left in harmony with Carnac's own mind. Carnac would say to himself: "Why, that's what I'd have done--that's what I'd have said, if I had his policy." More than once, in some inspired moment of the speech, he caught his mother's hand, and he did not notice that her hand trembled. But as for one of Barouche's chapter of policy Carnac almost sprang to his feet in protest when Barouche declared it. To Carnac it seemed fatal to French Canada, though it was expounded with a taking air; yet as he himself had said it was "wrong-headed and wrong-purposed." When the speech had finished to great cheering, Carnac suddenly turned to his mother: "He's on the wrong track. I know the policy to down his. He's got no opponent. I'm going to stand against him at the polls." She clutched his arm. "Carnac--Carnac! You don't know what you're doing." "Well, I will pretty quick," he replied stoutly. "I'm out after him, if they'll have me." CHAPTER XIX CARNAC BECOMES A CANDIDATE That night Carnac mapped out his course, carefully framed the policy to offset that of Barode Barouche, and wrote a letter to the Chairman of the Opposition at Montreal offering to stand, and putting forward an ingenious policy. He asked also for an interview; and the interview was granted by telegram--almost to his surprise. He was aware, however, of the discontent among the English members of the Opposition, and of the wish of the French members to find a good compromise. He had a hope that his singular position--the notoriety which his father's death and his own financial disfranchisement had caused--would be a fine card in his favour. He was not mistaken. His letter arrived at Headquarters when there were difficulties concerning three candidates who were pressing their claims. Carnac Grier, the disinherited son of the great lumber-king, who had fame as an artist, spoke French as though it were his native tongue, was an element of sensation which, if adroitly used, could be of great service. It might even defeat Barode Barouche. In the first place, Carnac was young, good-looking, personable, and taking in his manner. Barouche was old, experienced, with hosts of enemies and many friends, but with injurious egotism. An interview was, therefore, arranged at Headquarters. On the morning of the day it took place, Carnac's anguished mother went with him to the little railway station of Charlemont. She had slept little the night before; her mind was in an eddy of emotions. It seemed dreadful that Carnac should fight his own father, repeating what Fabian had done in another way. Yet at the bottom of her heart there was a secret joy. Some native revolt in her had joy in the thought that the son might extort a price for her long sorrow and his unknown disgrace. As she had listened to Barouche at the meeting, she realized how sincere yet insincere he was; how gifted and yet how ungracious was his mind. Her youth was over; long pain and regret had chastened her. She was as lonely a creature as ever the world knew; violence was no part of her equipment; and yet terrible memories made her assent to this new phase of Carnac's life. She wondered what Barouche would think. There was some ancient touch of war in her which made her rejoice that after long years the hammer should strike. Somehow the thing's tremendous possibilities thrilled her. Carnac had always been a politician--always. She remembered how, when he was a boy, he had argued with John Grier on national matters, laid down the law with the assurance of an undergraduate, and invented theories impossible of public acceptance. Yet in every stand he had taken, there had been thought, logic and reasoning, wrongly premised, but always based on principles. On paper he was generally right; in practice, generally wrong. His buoyant devotion to an idea was an inspiration and a tonic. The curious thing was that, while still this political matter was hanging fire, he painted with elation. His mother knew he did not see the thousand little things which made public life so wearying; that he only realized the big elements of national policy. She understood how those big things would inspire the artist in him. For, after all, there was the spirit of Art in framing a great policy which would benefit millions in the present and countless millions in the future. So, at the railway station, as they waited for the train, with an agitation outwardly controlled, she said: "The men who have fought before, will want to stand, so don't be surprised if--" "If they reject me, mother?" interrupted Carnac. No, I shan't be surprised, but I feel in my bones that I'm going to fight Barode Barouche into the last corner of the corral." "Don't be too sure of that, my son. Won't the thing that prevents your marrying Junia be a danger in this, if you go on?" Sullen tragedy came into his face, his lips set. The sudden paleness of his cheek, however, was lost in a smile. "Yes, I've thought of that; but if it has to come, better it should come now than later. If the truth must be told, I'll tell it--yes, I'll tell it!" "Be bold, but not reckless, Carnac," his mother urged. Just then the whistling train approached. She longed to put a hand out and hold him back, and yet she ached to let him go. Yet as Carnac mounted the steps of the car, a cry went out from her heart: "My son, stay with me here--don't go." That was only in her heart, however; with her lips she said: "Good luck! God bless you, Carnac!" and then the train rolled away, leaving her alone in the bright, bountiful morning. Before the day was done, Headquarters had accepted Carnac, in part, as the solution of their own difficult problem. The three applicants for the post each hated the other; but all, before the day was over, agreed to Carnac as an effective opponent of Barouche. One thing seemed clear--Carnac's policy had elements of seduction appealing to the selfishness of all sections, and he had an eloquence which would make Barouche uneasy. That eloquence was shown in a speech Carnac made in the late evening to the assembled executive. He spoke for only a quarter of an hour, but it was long enough to leave upon all who heard him an impression of power, pertinacity, picturesqueness and appeal. He might make mistakes, but he had qualities which would ride over errors with success. "I'm not French," he said at last in his speech, "but I used to think and write in French as though I'd been born in Normandy. I'm English by birth and breeding, but I've always gone to French schools and to a French University, and I know what New France means. I stand to my English origin, but I want to see the French develop here as they've developed in France, alive to all new ideas, dreaming good dreams. I believe that Frenchmen in Canada can, and should, be an inspiration to the whole population. Their great qualities should be the fibre in the body of public opinion. I will not pander to the French; I will not be the slave of the English; I will be free, and I hope I shall be successful at the polls." This was a small part of the speech which caused much enthusiasm, and was the beginning of a movement, powerful, and as time went on, impetuous. He went to bed with the blood of battle throbbing in his veins. In the morning he had a reasonable joy in seeing the headlines of his candidature in the papers. At first he was almost appalled, for never since life began had his personality been so displayed. It seemed absurd that before he had struck a blow he should be advertised like a general in the field. Yet common sense told him that in standing against Barouche, he became important in the eyes of those affected by Barouche's policy. He had had luck, and it was for him to justify that luck. Could he do it? His first thought, however, as his eyes fell on the headlines--he flushed with elation so that he scarcely saw--was for the thing itself. Before him there flashed a face, however, which at once sobered his exaltation. It was the face of Junia. "I wonder what she will think," he said to himself, with a little perplexity. He knew in his heart of hearts she would not think it incongruous that he, an artist, should become a politician. Good laws served to make life beautiful, good pictures ministered to beauty; good laws helped to tell the story of human development; good sculpture strengthened the soul; good laws made life's conveniences greater, enlarged activity, lessened the friction of things not yet adjusted; good laws taught their framers how to balance things, how to make new principles apply without disturbing old rights; good pictures increased the well-balanced harmony of the mind of the people. Junia would understand these things. As he sat at his breakfast, with the newspaper spread against the teapot and the milk-pitcher, he felt satisfied he had done the bold and right, if incomprehensible, thing. But in another hotel, at another breakfast, another man read of Carnac's candidature with sickening surprise. It was Barode Barouche. So, after twenty-seven long years, this was to be the issue! His own son, whom he had never known, was to fight him at the polls! Somehow, the day when he had seen Carnac and his mother at the political meeting had given him new emotions. His wife, to whom he had been so faithful in one sense since she had passed into the asylum, had died, and with her going, a new field of life seemed to open up to him. She had died almost on the same day as John Grier. She had been buried secludedly, piteously, and he had gone back to his office with the thought that life had become a preposterous freedom. So it was that, on the day when he spoke at the political meeting, his life's tragedy became a hammer beating every nerve into emotion. He was like one shipwrecked who strikes out with a swimmer's will to reach his goal. All at once, on the platform, as he spoke, when his eyes saw the faces of Carnac and his mother the catastrophe stunned him like a huge engine of war. There had come to him at last a sense of duty where Alma Grier was concerned. She was nearly fifty years of age, and he was fifty-nine; she was a widow with this world's goods; she had been to him how near and dear! for a brief hour, and then--no more. He knew the boy was his son, because he saw his own face, as it had been in his youth, though his mother's look was also there-transforming, illumining. He had a pang as he saw the two at the close of his meeting filtering out into the great retort of the world. Then it was that he had the impulse to go to the woman's home, express his sorrow, and in some small sense wipe out his wrong by offering her marriage. He had not gone. He knew of Carnac's success in the world of Art; and how he had alienated his reputed father by an independence revolting to a slave of convention. He had even bought, not from Carnac, but from a dealer, two of Carnac's pictures and a statue of a riverman. Somehow the years had had their way with him. He had at long last realized that material things were not the great things of life, and that imagination, however productive, should be guided by uprightness of soul. One thing was sure, the boy had never been told who his father was. That Barouche knew. He had the useful gift of reading the minds of people in their faces. From Carnac's face, from Carnac's mother's face, had come to him the real story. He knew that Alma Grier had sinned only once and with him. In the first days after that ill-starred month, he had gone to her, only to be repelled as a woman can repel whose soul has been shocked, whose self-respect has been shamed. It had been as though she thrust out arms of infinite length to push him away, such had been the storm of her remorse, such the revulsion against herself and him. So they had fallen apart, and he had seen his boy grow up independent, original, wilful, capable--a genius. He read the newspaper reports of what had happened the day before with senses greatly alive. After all, politics was unlike everything else. It was a profession recruited from all others. The making of laws was done by all kinds of men. One of the wisest advisers in river-law he had ever known was a priest; one of the best friends of the legislation of the medical profession was a woman; one of the bravest Ministers who had ever quarrelled with and conquered his colleagues had been an insurance agent; one of the sanest authorities on maritime law had been a man with a greater pride in his verses than in his practical capacity; and here was Carnac, who had painted pictures and made statues, plunging into politics with a policy as ingenious as his own, and as capable of logical presentation. This boy, who was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, meant to fight him. He threw back his head and laughed. His boy, his son, meant to fight him, did he? Well, so be it! He got to his feet, and walked up and down the room. "God, what an issue this!" he said. "It would be terrific, if he won. To wipe me out of the life where I have flourished--what a triumph for him! And he would not know how great the triumph would be. She has not told him. Yet she will urge him on. Suppose it was she put the idea into his head!" Then he threw back his head, shaking the long brown hair, browner than Carnac's, from his forehead. "Suppose she did this thing--she who was all mine for one brief moment! Suppose she--" Every nerve tingled; every drop of blood beat hard against his walls of flesh; his every vicious element sprang into life. "But no--but no, she would not do it. She would not teach her son to destroy his own father. But something must have told him to come and listen to me, to challenge me in his own mind, and then--then this thing!" He stared at the paper, leaning over the table, as though it were a document of terror. "I must go on: I must uphold the policy for which I've got the assent of the Government." Suddenly his hands clenched. "I will beat him. He shall not bring me to the dust. I gave him life, and he shall not take my life from me. He's at the beginning; I'm going towards the end. I wronged his mother--yes, I wronged him too! I wronged them both, but he does not know he's wronged. He'll live his own life; he has lived it--" There came a tap at the door. Presently it opened and a servant came in. He had in his hand a half-dozen telegrams. "All about the man that's going to fight you, I expect, m'sieu'," said the servant as he handed the telegrams. Barode Barouche did not reply, but nodded a little scornfully. "A woman has called," continued the servant. "She wants to see you, m'sieu'. It's very important, she says." Barouche shook his head in negation. "No, Gaspard." "It ain't one of the usual kind, I think, m'sieu'," protested Gaspard. "It's about the election. It's got something to do with that--" he pointed to the newspaper propped against the teapot. "It's about that, is it? Well, what about that?" He eyed the servant as though to see whether the woman had given any information. "I don't know. She didn't tell me. She's got a mind of her own. She's even handsome, and she's well-dressed. All she said was: 'Tell m'sieu' I want to see him. It's about the election-about Mr. Grier.'" Barode Barouche's heart stopped. Something about Carnac Grier--something about the election--and a woman! He kept a hand on himself. It must not be seen that he was in any way moved. "Is she English?" "She's French, m'sieu'." "You think I ought to see her, Gaspard?" said Barouche. "Sure," was the confident reply. "I guess she's out against whoever's against you." "You never saw her before." "Not to my sense." "But I haven't finished my breakfast." "Well, if it's anything important that'll help you, m'sieu'. It's like whittling. If you can do things with your hands while you're talking and thinking, it's a great help. You go on eating. I'll show her up!" Barouche smiled maliciously. "Well, show her up, Gaspard." The servant laughed. "Perhaps she'll show herself up after I show her in," he said, and he went out hastily. Presently the door opened again, and Gaspard stepped inside. "A lady to see you, m'sieu'," he said. Barouche rose from the table, but he did not hold out his hand. The woman was young, good looking, she seemed intelligent. There was also a latent cruelty in her face which only a student of human nature could have seen quickly. She was a woman with a grievance--that was sure. He knew the passionate excitement, fairly well controlled; he saw her bitterness at a glance. He motioned her to a chair. "It's an early call," he said with a smile. Smiling was one of his serviceable assets; it was said no man could so palaver the public with his cheerful goodnature. "Yes, it's an early call," she replied, "but I wish not to wait till you go to your office. I wanted you to know something. It has to do with Mr. Carnac Grier." "Oh, that--eh!" "It's something you've got to know. If I give you the sure means to win your election, it would be worth while--eh?" The beating of Barouche's heart was hard, but nothing showed in his face. There he had control. "I like people who know their own minds," he said, "but I don't believe anything till I study what I hear. Is it something to injure Mr. Grier?" "If a married man went about as a single man and stood up for Parliament against you, don't you think you could spoil him?" For a moment Barouche was silent. Here was an impeachment of his own son, but this son was out to bring his own father to the ground. There were two ways to look at it. There was the son's point of view, and there was his own. If he loved his son he ought to know the thing that threatened him; if he hated his son he ought to know. So, after a moment's study of the face with the fiery eyes and a complexion like roses touched with frost, he said slowly: "Well, have I the honour of addressing Carnac Grier's wife?" Barouche had had many rewards in his life, but the sweetest reward of all was now his own. As events proved, he had taken a course which, if he cared for his son, was for that son's well-being, and if he cared for himself most, was essential to his own well-being. Relief crossed the woman's face. "I'll tell you everything," she said. Then Luzanne told her story, avoiding the fact that Carnac had been tricked into the marriage. At last she said: "Now I've come here to make him acknowledge me. He's ruined my life, broken my hopes, and--" "Broken your hopes!" interrupted Barode Barouche. "How is that?" "I might have married some one else. I could have married some one else." "Well, why don't you? There's the Divorce Court. What's to prevent it?" "You ask me that--you a Frenchman and a Roman Catholic! I'm French. I was born in Paris." "When will you let me see your papers?" "When do you want to see them?" "To-day-if possible to-day," he answered. Then he held her eyes. "To whom else here have you told this story?" "No one--no one. I only came last night, and when I took up the paper this morning, I saw. Then I found out where you lived, and here I am, bien sur. I'm here under my maiden name, Ma'm'selle Luzanne Larue." "That's right. That's right. Now, until we meet again, don't speak of this to anyone. Will you give me your word?" "Absolutely," she said, and there was revenge and passion in her eyes. Suddenly a strange expression crept over her face. She was puzzled. "There's something of him about you," she said, and her forehead gathered. "There's some look! Well, there it is, but it's something-- I don't know what." A moment later she was gone. As the door closed, he stretched his hands above his head. "Nom de Dieu, what a situation!" he remarked. CHAPTER XX JUNIA AND TARBOE HEAR THE NEWS To most people Carnac's candidature was a surprise; to some it was a bewilderment, and to one or two it was a shock. To the second class belonged Fabian Grier and his wife; to the third class belonged Luke Tarboe. Only one person seemed to understand it--by intuition: Junia. Somehow, nothing Carnac did changed Junia's views of him, or surprised her, though he made her indignant often enough. To her mind, however, in the big things, his actions always had reasonableness. She had never felt his artist-life was to be the only note of his career. When, therefore, in the West she read a telegram in a newspaper announcing his candidature, she guessed the suddenness of his decision. When she read it, she spread the paper on the table, smoothed it as though it were a beautiful piece of linen, then she stretched out her hands in happy benediction. Like most of her sex, she loved the thrill of warfare. There flashed the feeling, however, that it would be finer sport if Carnac and Tarboe were to be at war, instead of Carnac and Barouche. It was curious she never thought of Carnac but the other man came throbbing into sight--the millionaire, for he was that now. In one way, this last move of Carnac's had the elements of a master- stroke. She knew how strange it would seem to the rest of the world, yet it did not seem strange to her. No man she had ever seen had been so at home in the world of men, and also at home in the secluded field of the chisel and the brush as Carnac. She took the newspaper over to her aunt, holding it up. The big headlines showed like semaphores on the page. As the graceful figure of Junia drew to her aunt--her slim feet, in the brown, well-polished boots, the long, full neck, and then the chin, Grecian, shapely and firm, the straight, sensitive nose, the wonderful eyes under the well-cut, broad forehead, with the brown hair, covering it like a canopy--the old lady reached out and wound her arms round the lissome figure. Situated so, she read the telegram, and then the old arms gripped her tighter. Presently, the whistle of a train sounded. The aunt stretched out an approving finger to the sound. She realized that the figure round which her arms hung trembled, for it was the "through" daily train for Montreal. "I'm going back at once, aunty," Junia said. .......................... "Well, I'm jiggered!" These were Tarboe's words when Carnac's candidature came first to him in the press. "He's 'broke' out in a new place," he added. Tarboe loved the spectacular, and this was indeed spectacular. Yet he had not the mental vision of Junia who saw how close, in one intimate sense, was the relation between the artist life and the political life. To him it was a gigantic break from a green pasture into a red field of war. To her, it was a resolution which, in anyone else's life, would have seemed abnormal; in Carnac's life it had naturalness. Tarboe had been for a few months only the reputed owner of the great business, and he had paid a big price for his headship in the weighty responsibility, the strain of control; but it had got into his blood, and he felt life would not be easy without it now. Besides, there was Junia. To him she was the one being in the world worth struggling for; the bird to be caught on the wing, or coaxed into the nest, or snared into the net; and two of the three things he had tried without avail. The third--the snaring? He would not stop at that, if it would bring him what he wanted. How to snare her! He surveyed himself in the mirror. "A great hulking figure like that!" he said in disapproval. "All bone and muscle and flesh and physical show! It wouldn't weigh with her. She's too fine. It isn't the animal in a man she likes. It's what he can do, and what he is, and where he's going." Then he thought of Carnac's new outburst, and his veins ran cold. "She'll like that--but yes, she'll like that: and if he succeeds she'll think he's great. Well, she'd be right. He'll beat Barouche. He's young and brave, careless and daring. Now where am I in this fight? I belong to Barouche's party and my vote ought to go for him." For some minutes he sat in profound thought. What part should he play? He liked Carnac, he owed him a debt which he could never repay. Carnac had saved him from killing Denzil. If that had happened, he himself might have gone to the gallows. He decided. Sitting down, he wrote Carnac the following letter: DEAR CARNAC GRIER, I see you're beginning a new work. You now belong to a party that I am opposed to, but that doesn't stop me offering you support. It's not your general policy, but it is you, the son of your father, that I mean to work for. If you want financial help for your campaign-- or after it is over--come and get it here--ten thousand or more if you wish. Your father, if he knew--and perhaps he does know--would be pleased that you, who could not be a man of business in his world, are become a man of business in the bigger world of law- making. You may be right or wrong in that policy, but that don't weigh with me. You've taken on as big a job as ever your father did. What's the use of working if you don't try to do the big thing that means a lot to people outside yourself! If you make new good laws, if you do something for the world that's wonderful, it's as much as your father did, or, if he was alive, could do now. Whatever there is here is yours to use. When you come back here to play your part, you'll make it a success--the whole blessed thing. I don't wish you were here now, except that it's yours--all of it-- but I wish you to beat Barode Barouche. Yours to the knife, LUKE TARBOE. He read the letter through, and coming to the words, "When you come back here to play your part, you'll make it a success--the whole blessed thing," he paused, reflecting . . . He wondered what Carnac would think the words meant, and he felt it was bold, and, maybe, dangerous play; but it was not more dangerous than facts he had dealt with often in the last two years. He would let it stand, that phrase of the hidden meaning. He did not post the letter yet. Four days later he put on his wide-brimmed panama hat and went out into the street leading to the centre of the city. There was trouble in the river reaches between his men and those of Belloc-Grier, and he was keeping an appointment with Belloc at Fabian Grier's office, where several such meetings had taken place. He had not gone far, however, when he saw a sprightly figure in light- brown linen cutting into his street from a cross-road. He had not seen that figure for months-scarcely since John Grier's death, and his heart thumped in his breast. It was Junia. How would she greet him? A moment later he met her. Raising his hat, he said: "Back to the firing-line, Miss Shale! It'll make a big difference to every one concerned." "Are you then concerned?" she asked, with a faint smile. "One of the most concerned," he answered with a smile not so composed as her own. "It's the honour of the name that's at stake." "You want to ruin Mr. Grier's chances in the fight?" "I didn't say that. I said, 'the honour of the name,' and the name of my firm is 'Grier's Company of Lumbermen.' So I'm in it with all my might, and here's a letter--I haven't posted it yet--saying to Carnac Grier where I stand. Will you read it? There's no reason why you shouldn't." He tore open the envelope and took the letter out. Junia took it, after hesitation, and read it till she came to the sentence about Carnac returning to the business. She looked up, startled. "What does that mean?" she asked, pointing to the elusive sentence. "He might want to come into the business some day, and I'll give him his chance. Nothing more than that." "Nothing more than that!" she said cynically. "It's bravely said, but how can he be a partner if he can't buy the shares?" "That's a matter to be thought out," he answered with a queer twist to his mouth. "I see you've offered to help him with cash for the election," she said, handing back the letter. "I felt it had to be done. Politics are expensive they sap the purse. That's why." "You never thought of giving him an income which would compensate a little for what his father failed to do for him?" There was asperity in her tone. "He wouldn't take from me what his father didn't give him." Suddenly an idea seized him. "Look here," he said, "you're a friend of the Griers, why don't you help keep things straight between the two concerns? You could do it. You have the art of getting your own way. I've noticed that." "So you'd like me to persuade Fabian Grier to influence Belloc, because I'd make things easy for you!" she said briskly. "Do you forget I've known Fabian since I was a baby, that my sister is his wife, and that his interests are near to me?" He did not knuckle down. "I think it would be helping Fabian's interests. Belloc and Fabian Grier are generally in the wrong, and to keep them right would be good business-policy. When I've trouble with Belloc's firm it's because they act like dogs in the manger. They seem to hate me to live." She laughed--a buoyant, scornful laugh. "So all the fault is in Belloc and Fabian, is it?" She was impressed enormously by his sangfroid and will to rule the roost. "I think you're clever, and that you've got plenty of horse-sense, as they say in the West, but you'll be beaten in the end. How does it feel"--she asked it with provoking candour--"to be the boss of big things?" "I know I'm always settling troubles my business foes make for me. I have to settle one of them now, and I'm glad I've met you, for you can help me. I want some new river-rules made. If Belloc and Grier'll agree to them, we'll do away with this constant trouble between our gangs." "And you'd like me to help you?" He smiled a big riverman's smile down at her, full of good-humour and audacity. "If you could make it clear to Fabian that all I'm after is peace on the river, it'd do a lot of good." "Well, do you know," she said demurely, "I don't think I'll take a hand in this game, chiefly because--" she paused. "Yes: chiefly because--" "Because you'll get your own way without help. You get everything you want," she added with a little savage comment. A flood of feeling came into his eyes, his head jerked like that of a bull-moose. "No, I don't get everything I want. The thing I want most in the world doesn't come to me." His voice grew emotional. She knew what he was trying to say, and as the idea was not new she kept composure. "I'm not as lucky as you think me," he added. "You're pretty lucky. You've done it all as easy as clasping your fingers. If I had your luck--!" she paused. "I don't know about that, but if I could reach out and touch you at any time, as it were, I think it'd bring me permanent good luck. You'll find out one day that my luck is only a bubble the prick of a pin'll destroy. I don't misunderstand it. I've been left John Grier's business by Grier himself, and he's got a son that ought to have it, and maybe will have it, when the time is ripe." Suddenly an angry hand flashed out towards him. "When the time is ripe! Does that mean, when you've made all you want, you'll give up to Carnac what isn't yours but his? Why don't you do it now?" "Well, because, in the first place, I like my job and he doesn't want it; in the second place, I promised his father I'd run the business as he wished it run; and in the third place, Carnac wouldn't know how to use the income the business brings." She laughed in a mocking, challenging way. "Was there ever a man didn't know how to use an income no matter how big it was! You're talking enigmas, and I think we'd better say good-bye. Your way to the Belloc offices is down that street." She pointed. "And you won't help me? You won't say a word to Fabian?" She shrugged a shoulder. "If I were a man like you, who's so big, so lucky, and so dominant, I wouldn't ask a woman to help me. I'd do the job myself. I'd keep faith with my reputation. But there's one nice thing about you: you're going to help Carnac to beat Barode Barouche. You've made a gallant offer. If you'd gone against him, if you'd played Barouche's game, I--" The indignation which came to her face suddenly fled, and she said: "Honestly, I'd never speak to you again, and I always keep my word. Carnac'll see it through. He's a man of mark, Mr. Tarboe, and he'll be Prime Minister of the whole country one day. I don't think you'll like it." "You hit hard, but if I hadn't taken the business, Carnac Grier wouldn't have got it. If it hadn't been me, it would have been some one else." "Well, why don't you live like a rich man and not like a foreman?" "I've been too busy to change my mode of living. I only want enough to eat and drink and wear, and that's not costly." Suddenly an idea came to him. "Now, if that business had been left to you, you'd be building a stone house somewhere; and you'd have horses and carriages, and lots of servants, and you'd swing along like a pretty coloured bird in the springtime, wouldn't you?" "If I had wealth, I'd make it my servant. I'd give it its chance; but as I haven't got it, I live as I do--poor and unknown." "Not unknown. See, you could control what belonged to John Grier, if you would. I need some one to show me how to spend the money coming from the business. What is wealth unless you buy things that give pleasure to life? Do you know--" He got no further. "I don't know anything you're trying to tell me, and anyhow this is not the place--" With that she hastened from him up the street. Tarboe had a pang, and yet her very last words gave him hope. "I may be a bit sharp in business," he said to himself, "but I certainly am a fool in matters of the heart. Yet what she said at last had something in it for me. Every woman has an idea where a man ought to make love to her, and this open road certainly ain't the place. If Carnac wins this game with Barouche I don't know where I'll be with her- maybe I'm a fool to help him." He turned the letter over and over in his hand. "No, I'm not. I ought to do it, and I will." Then he fell to brooding. He remembered about the second hidden will. There came upon him a wild wish to destroy it. He loved controlling John Grier's business. Never had anything absorbed him so. Life seemed a new thing. The idea of disappearing from the place where, with a stroke of his fingers, he moved five thousand men, or swept a forest into the great river, or touched a bell which set going a saw-mill with its many cross- cut saws, or filled a ship to take the pine, cedar, maple, ash or elm boards to Europe, or to the United States, was terrible to him. He loved the smell of the fresh-cut wood. The odour of the sawdust as he passed through a mill was sweeter than a million bunches of violets. Many a time he had caught up a handful of the damp dust and smelt it, as an expert gardener would crumble the fallen flowers of a fruittree and sniff the sweet perfume. To be master of one of the greatest enterprises of the New World for three years, and then to disappear! He felt he could not do it. His feelings shook his big frame. The love of a woman troubled his spirit. Suppose the will were declared and the girl was still free, what would she do? As he set foot in the office of the firm of Belloc, however, he steeled himself to composure. His task well accomplished, he went back to his own office, and spent the day like a racehorse under the lash, restive, defiant, and reckless. When night and the shadows came, he sat alone in his office with drawn blinds, brooding, wondering. CHAPTER XXI THE SECRET MEETING As election affairs progressed, Mrs. Grier kept withdrawn from public ways. She did not seek supporters for her son. As the weeks went on, the strain became intense. Her eyes were aflame with excitement, but she grew thinner, until at last she was like a ghost haunting familiar scenes. Once, and once only, did she have touch with Barode Barouche since the agitation began. This was how it happened: Carnac was at Ottawa, and she was alone, in the late evening. As she sat sewing, she heard a knock at the front door. Her heart stood still. It was a knock she had not heard for over a quarter of a century, but it had an unforgettable touch. She waited a moment, her face pale, her eyes shining with tortured memory. She waited for the servant to answer the knock, but presently she realized that the servant probably had not heard. Laying down her work, she passed into the front hall. There for an instant she paused, then opened the door. It was Barode Barouche. Then the memory of a summer like a terrible dream shook her. She trembled. Some old quiver of the dead days swept through her. How distant and how--bad it all was! For one instant the old thrill repeated itself and then was gone--for ever. "What is it you wish here?" she asked. "Will you not shut the door?" he responded, for her fingers were on the handle. "I cannot speak with the night looking in. Won't you ask me to your sitting-room? I'm not a robber or a rogue." Slowly she closed the door. Then she turned, and, in the dim light, she said: "But you are both a robber and a rogue." He did not answer until they had entered the sittin-groom. "I gave you that which is out against me now. Is he not brilliant, capable and courageous?" There was in her face a stern duty. "It was Fate, monsieur. When he and I went to your political meeting at Charlemont it had no purpose. No blush came to his cheek, because he did not know who his father is. No one in the world knows--no one except myself, that must suffer to the end. Your speech roused in him the native public sense, the ancient fire of the people from whom he did not know he came. His origin has been his bane from the start. He did not know why the man he thought his father seemed almost a stranger to him. He did not understand, and so they fell apart. Yet John Grier would have given more than he had to win the boy to himself. Do you ever think what the boy must have suffered? He does not know. Only you and I know!" She paused. He thrust out a hand as though to stay her speech, but she went on again "Go away from me. You have spoiled my life; you have spoiled my boy's life, and now he fights you. I give him no help save in one direction. I give to him something his reputed father withheld from him. Don't you think it a strange thing"--her voice was thick with feeling--"that he never could bear to take money from John Grier, and that, even as a child, gifts seemed to trouble him. I think he wanted to give back again all that John Grier had ever paid out to him or for him; and now, at last, he fights the man who gave him birth! I wanted to tell John Grier all, but I did not because I knew it would spoil his life and my boy's life. It was nothing to me whether I lived or died. But I could not bear Carnac should know. He was too noble to have his life spoiled." Barode Barouche drew himself together. Here was a deep, significant problem, a situation that needed more expert handling than he had ever shown. As he stood by the table, the dim light throwing haggard reflections on her face, he had a feeling that she was more than normal. He saw her greater than he had ever imagined her. Something in him revolted at a war between his own son and himself. Also, he wanted to tell her of the danger in which Carnac was--how Luzanne had come, and was hidden away in the outskirts of the city, waiting for the moment when the man who rejected her should be sacrificed. Now that Barouche was face to face with Alma Grier, however, he felt the appalling nature of his task. In all the years he had taken no chance to pay tribute to the woman who, in a real sense, had been his mistress of body and mind for one short term of life, and who once, and once only, had yielded to him. They were both advanced in years, and Life and Time had taken toll. She was haggard, yet beautiful in a wan way. He did not believe the vanished years had placed between them an impassable barrier. He put his chances to the test at last. "Yes, I know--I understand. You remained silent because your nature was too generous to injure anyone. Down at the bottom of his heart, cantankerous, tyrannical as he was, John Grier loved you, and I loved you also." She made a protest of her hand. "Oh, no! You never knew what love was-- never! You had passion, you had hunger of the body, but of love you did not know. I know you, Barode Barouche. You have no heart, you have only sentiment and imagination. No--no, you could not be true. You could never know how." Suddenly a tempest of fire seemed to burn in his eyes, in his whole being. His face flushed: his eyes gleamed; his hands were thrust out with passion. "Will you not understand that were I as foul as hell, a woman like you would make me clean again? The wild sin of our youth has eaten into the soul of my life. You think I have been indifferent to you and to our boy. No, never-never! That I left you both to yourselves was the best proof I was not neglectful. I was sorry, with all my soul, that you should have suffered through me. In the first reaction, I felt that nothing could put me right with you or with eternal justice. So I shrank away from you. You thought it was lust satisfied. I tell you it was honour shamed. Good God! You thought me just the brazen roue, who seized what came his way, who ate the fruit within his grasp, who lived to deceive for his own selfish joy. "Did you think that? Then, if you did, I do not wonder you should be glad to see my son fighting me. It would seem the horrible revenge Destiny should take." He took a step nearer to her. His face flamed, his arms stretched out. "I have held you in these arms. I come with repentance in my heart, with--" Her face now was flushed. She interrupted him. "I don't believe in you, Barode Barouche. At least my husband did not go from his hearthstone looking for what belonged to others. No--No--no; however much I suffered, I understood that what he did not feel for me at least he felt for no one else. To him, life was his business, and to the long end business mastered his emotions. I have no faith in you! In the depth of my soul something cries out: 'He is not true. His life is false.' To leave me that was right, but, monsieur, not as you left me. You pick the fruit and eat it and spit upon the ground the fibre and the skin. I am no longer the slave of your false eloquence. It has nothing in it for me now, nothing at all--nothing." "Yet your son--has he naught of me? If your son has genius, I have the right to say a part of it came from me. Why should you say that all that's good in the boy is yours--that the boy, in all he does and says, is yours! No--no. Your long years of suffering have hardened into injustice and wrong." Suddenly he touched her arm. "There are women as young as you were when I wronged you, who would be my wife now--young, beautiful, buoyant; but I come to you because I feel we might still have some years of happiness. Together, where our boy's fate mattered, we two could help him on his way. That is what I feel, my dear." When he touched her arm she did not move, yet there was in his fingers something which stirred ulcers long since healed and scarred. She stepped back from him. "Do not touch me. The past is buried for ever. There can be no resurrection. I know what I should do, and I will do it. For the rest of my life, I shall live for my son. I hope he will defeat you. I don't lift a hand to help him except to give him money, not John Grier's money but my own, always that. You are fighting what is stronger than yourself. One thing is sure, he is nearer to the spirit of your race than you. He will win--but yes, he will win!" Her face suffused with warmth, became alive with a wonderful fire, her whole being had a simple tragedy. Once again, and perhaps for the last time, she had renewed the splendour of her young womanhood. The vital warmth of a great idea had given an expression to her face which had long been absent from it. He fell back from her. Then suddenly passion seized him. The gaunt beauty of her roused a spirit of contest in him. The evil thing in him, which her love for her son had almost conquered, came back upon him. He remembered Luzanne, and now with a spirit alive with anger he said to her: "No--no--no, he cannot win." He stretched out a hand. "I have that which will keep for me the place in Parliament that has been mine; which will send him back to the isolation whence he came. Do you think I don't know how to win an election? Why from east to west, from north to south in this Province of Quebec my name, my fame, have been all-conquering. Suppose he did defeat me, do you think that would end my political life? It would end nothing. I should still go on." A scornful smile came to her lips. "So you think your party would find a seat for you who had been defeated by a young man who never knew what political life meant till he came to this campaign? You think they would find you a seat? I know you are coming to the end of your game, and when he defeats you, it will finish everything for you. You will disappear from public life, and your day will be done. Men will point at you as you pass along the street, and say: 'There goes Barode Barouche. He was a great man in his day. He was defeated by a boy with a painter's brush in his hand.' He will take from you your livelihood. You will go, and he will stay; he will conquer and grow strong. Go from me, Barode Barouche," she cried, thrusting out her hands against him, "go from me. I love my son with all my soul. His father has no place in my heart." There had been upon him the wild passion of revenge. It had mastered him before she spoke, and while she spoke, but, as she finished, the understanding spirit of him conquered. Instead of telling her of Luzanne Larue, and of what he would do if he found things going against him, instead of that he resolved to say naught. He saw he could not conquer her. For a minute after she had ceased speaking, he watched her in silence, and in his eyes was a remorse which would never leave them. She was master. Slowly, and with a sense of defeat, he said to her: "Well, we shall never meet again like this. The fight goes on. I will defeat Carnac. No, do not shake your head. He shall not put me from my place. For you and me there is no future--none; yet I want to say to you before we part for ever now, that you have been deeper in my life than any other woman since I was born." He said no more. Catching up his hat from the chair, and taking his stick, he left the room. He opened the front door, stepped out, shut it behind him and, in a moment, was lost in the night. CHAPTER XXII POINT TO POINT While these things were happening, Carnac was spending all his time in the constituency. Every day was busy to the last minute, every hole in the belt of his equipment was buckled tight. In spite of his enthusiasm he was, however, troubled by the fact that Luzanne might appear. Yet as time went on he gained confidence. There were days, however, when he appeared, mentally, to be watching the street corners. One day at a public meeting he thought the sensation had come. He had just finished his speech in reply to Barode Barouche--eloquent, eager, masterful. Youth's aspirations, with a curious sympathy with the French Canadian people, had idealized his utterances. When he finished there had been cheering, but in the quiet instant that followed the cheering, a habitant got up--a weird, wilful fellow who had a reputation for brag, yet who would not have hurt an enemy save in wild passion. "M'sieu' Carnac Grier," he said, "I'd like to put a question to you. You've been asking for our votes. We're a family people, we Canucs, and we like to know where we're going. Tell me, m'sieu', where's your woman?" Having asked the question, he remained standing. "Where's your woman?" the habitant had asked. Carnac's breath came quick and sharp. There were many hundreds present, and a good number of them were foes. Barode Barouche was on the same platform. Not only Carnac was stirred by the question, for Barouche, who had listened to his foe's speech with admiring anxiety, was startled. "Where's your woman?" was not a phrase to be asked anyhow, or anywhere. Barouche was glad of the incident. Ready as he was to meet challenge, he presently realized that his son had a readiness equally potent. He was even pleased to see the glint of a smile at the lips of the slim young politician, in whom there was more than his own commingling of temperament, wisdom, wantonness and raillery. After a moment, Carnac said: "Isn't that a leading question to an unmarried man?" Barouche laughed inwardly. Surely it was the reply he himself would have made. Carnac had showed himself a born politician. The audience cheered, but the questioner remained standing. He meant to ask another question. "Sit down--sit down, jackass!" shouted some of the more raucous of the crowd, but the man was stubborn. He stretched out an arm towards Carnac. "Bien, look here, my son, you take my advice. Pursue the primrose path into the meadows of matrimony." Again Carnac shrank, but his mind rallied courageously, and he said: "There are other people who want to ask questions, perhaps." He turned to Barode Barouche. "I don't suggest my opponent has planned this heckling, but he can see it does no good. I'm not to be floored by catch-penny tricks. I'm going to win. I run straight. I haven't been long enough in politics to learn how to deceive. Let the accomplished professionals do that. They know how." He waved a hand disdainfully at Barouche. "Let them put forth all that's in them, I will remain; let them exert the last ounce of energy, I will prevail; let them use the thousand devices of elections, I will use no device, but rely upon my policy. I want nothing except my chance in Parliament. My highest ambition is to make good laws. I am for the man who was the first settler on the St. Lawrence and this section of the continent--his history, his tradition, his honour and fame are in the history books of the world. If I should live a hundred years, I should wish nothing better than the honour of having served the men whose forefathers served Frontenac, Cartier, La Salle and Maisonneuve, and all the splendid heroes of that ancient age. What they have done is for all men to do. They have kept the faith. I am for the habitant, for the land of his faith and love, first and last and all the time." He sat down in a tumult of cheering. Many present remarked that no two men they had ever heard spoke so much alike, and kept their attacks so free from personal things. There had been at this public meeting two intense supporters of Carnac, who waited for him at the exit from the main doorway. They were Fabian's wife and Junia. Barode Barouche came out of the hall before Carnac. His quick eye saw the two ladies, and he raised his broad-brimmed hat like a Stuart cavalier, and smiled. "Waiting for your champion, eh?" he asked with cynical friendliness. "Well, work hard, because that will soften his fall." He leaned over, as it were confidentially, to them, while his friends craned their necks to hear what he said: "If I were you I'd prepare him. He's beaten as sure as the sun shines." Junia was tempted to say what was in her mind, but her sister Sibyl, who resented Barouche's patronage, said: "There's an old adage about the slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, Monsieur Barouche. He's young, and he's got a better policy than yours." "And he's unmarried, eh!" Barouche remarked. "He's unmarried, and I suppose that matters!" There was an undercurrent of meaning in his voice which did not escape Junia. "And Monsieur Barouche is also unmarried," she remarked. "So you're even there." "Not quite even. I'm a widower. The women don't work for me as they work for him." "I don't understand," remarked Junia. "The women can't all marry him." "There are a lot of things that can't be understood by just blinking the eyes, but there's romance in the fight of an unmarried man, and women like romance even if it's some one else's. There's sensation in it." Barouche looked to where Carnac was slowly coming down the centre of the hall. Women were waving handkerchiefs and throwing kisses towards him. One little girl was pushed in front of him, and she reached out a hand in which was a wild rose. "That's for luck, m'sieu'," she said. Carnac took the rose, and placed it in his buttonhole; then, stooping down, he kissed the child's cheek. Outside the hall, Barode Barouche winked an eye knowingly. "He's got it all down to a science. Look at him--kissing the young chick. Nevertheless, he's walking into an abyss." Carnac was near enough now for the confidence in his face to be seen. Barouche's eyes suddenly grew resentful. Sometimes he had a feeling of deep affection for his young challenger; sometimes there was a storm of anger in his bosom, a hatred which can be felt only for a member of one's own family. Resentment showed in his face now. This boy was winning friends on every side. Something in the two men, some vibration of temperament, struck the same chord in Junia's life and being. She had noticed similar gestures, similar intonations of voice, and, above all else, a little toss of the head backwards. She knew they were not related, and so she put the whole thing down to Carnac's impressionable nature which led its owner into singular imitations. It had done so in the field of Art. He was young enough to be the imitator without loss to himself. "I'm doing my best to defeat you," she said to Barouche, reaching out a hand for good-bye, "and I shall work harder now than ever. You're so sure you're going to win that I'd disappoint you, monsieur--only to do you good." "Ah, I'm sorry you haven't any real interest in Carnac Grier, if it's only to do me good! Well, goodbye--good-bye," he added, raising his hat, and presently was gone. As Carnac drew near, Fabian's wife stepped forward. "Carnac," she said, "I hope you'll come with us on the river in Fabian's steam-launch. There's work to do there. It's pay-day in the lumber-yards on the Island, so please come. Will you?" Carnac laughed. "Yes, there's no engagement to prevent it." He thanked Junia and Sibyl for all they had done for him, and added: "I'd like a couple of hours among the rivermen. Where's the boat?" Fabian's wife told him, and added: "I've got the roan team here, and you can drive us down, if you will." A few moments afterwards, with the cheers of the crowd behind them, they were being driven by Carnac to the wharf where lay the "Fleur-de-lis." On board was Fabian. "Had a good meeting, Carnac?" Fabian asked. "I should call it first-class. It was like a storm, at sea-wind from one direction, then from another, but I think on the whole we had the best of it. Don't you think so?" he added to Fabian's wife. "Oh, much the best," she answered. "That's so, Junia, isn't it?" "I wouldn't say so positively," answered Junia. "I don't understand Monsieur Barouche. He talked as if he had something up his sleeve." Her face became clouded. "Have you any idea what it is, Carnac?" Carnac laughingly shook his head. "That's his way. He's always bluffing. He does it to make believe the game's his, and to destroy my confidence. He's a man of mark, but he's having the biggest fight he ever had--of that I'm sure. . . . Do you think I'll win?" he asked Junia presently with a laugh, as they made their way down the river. "Have I conquest in my eye?" How seldom did Junia have Carnac to herself in these days! How kind of Fabian to lend his yacht for the purpose of canvassing! But Sibyl had in her mind a deeper thing--she had become a match-maker. She and Fabian, when the boat left the shore, went to one corner of the stern, leaving Carnac and Junia in the bow. Three miles below the city was the Island on which many voters were working in a saw-mill and lumberyard. It had supporters of Barouche chiefly in the yards and mills. Carnac had never visited it, and it was Junia's view that he should ingratiate himself with the workers, a rough- and-ready lot. They were ready to "burst a meeting" or bludgeon a candidate on occasion. When Carnac asked his question Junia smiled up at him. "Yes, I think you'll win, Carnac. You have the tide with you." Presently she added: "I'm not sure that you've got all the cards, though--I don't know why, but I have that fear." "You think that--" She nodded. "I think Monsieur Barouche has some cards he hasn't played yet. What they are I don't know, but he's confident. Tell me, Carnac, is there any card that would defeat you? Have you committed any crime against the law--no, I'm sure you haven't, but I want to hear you say so." She smiled cheerfully at him. "He has no card of any crime of mine, and he can't hit me in a mortal place." "You have the right policy for this province. But tell me, is there anyone who could hurt you, who could spring up in the fight--man or woman?" She looked him straight in the eye, and his own did not waver. "There's no one has a knock-out blow for me--that's sure. I can weather any storm." He paused, however, disconcerted, for the memory of Luzanne came to him, and his spirit became clouded. "Except one--except one," he added. "And you won't tell me who it is?" CHAPTER XXIII THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT "No, I can't tell you--yet," answered Carnac. "You ought to know; though you can't put things right." "Don't forget you are a public man, and what might happen if things went wrong. There are those who would gladly roast you on a gridiron for what you are in politics." "I never forget it. I've no crime to repent of, and I'm afraid of nothing in the last resort. Look, we're nearing the Island." "It's your worst place in the constituency, and I'm not sure of your reception. Oh, but yes, I am," she added hastily. "You always win good feeling. No one really hates you. You're on the way to big success." "I've had some unexpected luck. I've got Tarboe on my side. He's a member of Barouche's party, but he's coming with me." "Did he tell you so?" she asked with apparent interest. "I've had a letter from him, and in it he says he is with me 'to the knife!' That's good. Tarboe has a big hold on rivermen, and he may carry with him some of the opposition. It was a good letter--if puzzling." "How, puzzling?" "He said in one part of it: 'When you come back here to play your part you'll make it a success, the whole blessed thing.' I've no idea what he meant by that. I don't think he wants me as a partner, and I'll give him no chance of it. I don't want now what I could have had when Fabian left. That's all over, Junia." "He meant something by it; he's a very able man," she replied gravely. "He's a huge success." "And women love success more than all else," he remarked a little cynically. "You're unjust, Carnac. Of course, women love success; but they'd not sell their souls for it--not the real women--and you ought to know it." "I ought to know it, I suppose," he answered, and he held her eyes meaningly. He was about to say something vital, but Fabian and his wife came. Fabian said to him: "Don't be surprised if you get a bad reception here, Carnac. It's the worst place on the river, and I've no influence over the men--I don't believe Tarboe could have. They're a difficult lot. There's Eugene Grandois, he's as bad as they make 'em. He's got a grudge against us because of some act of father, and he may break out any time. He's a labour leader too, and we must be vigilant." Carnac nodded. He made no reply in words. They were nearing the little dock, and men were coming to the point where the launch would stop. "There's Grandois now!" said Fabian with a wry smile, for he had a real fear of results. He had, however, no idea how skilfully Carnac would handle the situation--yet he had heard much of his brother's adaptability. He had no psychological sense, and Carnac had big endowment of it. Yet Carnac was not demonstrative. It was his quiet way that played his game for him. He never spoke, if being could do what he wanted. He had the sense of physical speech with out words. He was a bold adventurer, but his methods were those of the subtlest. If a motion of the hand was sufficient, then let it go at that. "You people after our votes never come any other time," sneeringly said Eugene Grandois, as Carnac and Fabian landed. "It's only when you want to use us." "Would you rather I didn't come at all?" asked Carnac with a friendly smile. "You can't have it both ways. If I came here any other time you'd want to know why I didn't stay away, and I come now because it's good you should know if I'm fit to represent you in Parliament." "There's sense, my bonny boy," said an English-Canadian labourer standing near. "What you got to say to that, little skeezicks?" he added teasingly to Eugene Grandois. "He ain't got more gifts than his father had, and we all know what he was--that's so, bagosh!" remarked Grandois viciously. "Well, what sort of a man was he?" asked Carnac cooly, with a warning glance at Fabian, who was resentful. Indeed, Fabian would have struck the man if his brother had not been present, and then been torn to pieces himself. "What sort--don't you know the kind of things he done? If you don't, I do, and there's lots of others know, and don't you forget it, mon vieux." "That's no answer, Monsieur Grandois--none at all. It tells nothing," remarked Carnac cheerily. "You got left out of his will, m'sieu', you talk as if he was all right --that's blither." "My father had a conscience. He gave me chance to become a partner in the business, and I wouldn't, and he threw me over--what else was there to do? I could have owned the business to-day, if I'd played the game as he thought it ought to be played. I didn't, and he left me out--that's all." "Makin' your own way, ain't you?" said the English labourer. "That's hit you where you're tender, Grandois. What you got to say to that?" The intense black eyes of the habitant sparkled wickedly, his jaws set with passion, and his sturdy frame seemed to fasten to the ground. His gnarled hands now shot out fiercely. "What I got to say! Only this: John Grier played the devil's part. He turned me and my family out into the streets in winter-time, and the law upheld him, old beast that he was--sacre diable!" "Beast-devil! Grandois, those are hard words about a man in his son's presence, and they're not true. You think you can say such things because I'm standing for Parliament. Beast, devil, eh? You've got a free tongue, Grandois; you forgot to say that my father paid the doctor's bill for your whole family when they were taken down with smallpox; and he kept them for weeks afterwards. You forgot to recall that when he turned you out for being six months behind with your rent and making no effort to pay up! Who was the devil and beast then, Grandois? Who spat upon his own wife and children then? You haven't a good memory. . . . Come, I think your account with my father is squared; and I want you to vote to put my father's son in Parliament, and to put out Barode Barouche, who's been there too long. Come, come, Grandois, isn't it a bargain? Your tongue's sharp, but your heart's in the right place--is it a bargain?" He held out his hand with applause from the crowd, but Grandois was not to be softened. His anger, however, had behind it some sense of caution, and what Carnac said about the smallpox incident struck him hard. It was the first time he had ever been hit between the eyes where John Grier was concerned. His prestige with the men was now under a shadow, yet he dared not deny the truth of the statement. It could be proved. His braggart hatred of John Grier had come home to roost. Carnac saw that, and he was glad he had challenged the man. He believed that in politics, as in all other departments of life, candour and bold play were best in the long run. Yet he would like to see the man in a different humour, and with joy he heard Junia say to Grandois. "How is the baby boy, and how is madame, Monsieur Grandois?" It came at the right moment, for only two days before had Madame Grandois given her husband the boy for which he had longed. Junia had come to know of it through a neighbour and had sent jellies to the sick woman. As she came forward now, Grandois, taken aback, said: "Alors, they're all right, ma'm'selle, thank you. It was you sent the jellies, eh?" She nodded with a smile. "Yes, I sent them, Grandois. May I come and see madame and the boy to-morrow?" The incident had taken a favourable turn. "It's about even-things between us, Grandois?" asked Carnac, and held out his hand. "My father hit you, but you hit him harder by forgetting about the smallpox and the rent, and also by drinking up the cash that ought to have paid the rent. It doesn't matter now that the rent was never paid, but it does that you recall the smallpox debt. Can't you say a word for me, Grandois? You're a big man here among all the workers. I'm a better Frenchman than the man I'm trying to turn out. Just a word for a good cause. "They're waiting for you, and your hand on it! Here's a place for you on the roost. Come up." The "roost" was an upturned tub lying face down on the ground, and in the passion of the moment, the little man gripped Carnac's hand and stood on the tub to great cheering; for if there was one thing the French- Canadians love, it is sensation, and they were having it. They were mostly Barouche's men, but they were emotional, and melodrama had stirred their feelings. Besides, like the Irish, they had a love of feminine nature, and in all the river-coves Junia was known by sight at least, and was admired. She had the freshness of face and mind which is the heart of success with the habitants. With Eugene Grandois on his feet, she heard a speech which had in it the best spirit of Gallic eloquence, though it was crude. But it was forcible and adroit. "Friends and comrades," said Eugene Grandois, with his hands playing loosely, "there's been misunderstandings between me and the Grier family, and I was out against it, but I see things different since M'sieu' Carnac has spoke--and I'm changing my mind--certainlee. That throwing out of my house hit me and my woman and little ones hard, and I've been resentin' it all these years till now; but I'm weighin' one thing agin another, and I'm willing to forget my wrongs for this young man's sake. He's for us French. Alors, some of you was out to hurt our friend M'sieu' Carnac here, and I didn't say no to it; but you'd better keep your weapons for election day and use them agin Barode Barouche. "I got a change of heart. I've laid my plate on the table with a prayer that I get it filled with good political doctrine, and I've promise that the food I'm to get is what's best for all of us. M'sieu' Carnac Grier's got the right stuff in him, and I'm for him both hands up--both hands way up high, nom de pipe!" At that he raised both hands above his head with a loud cheer, and later Carnac Grier was carried to the launch in the arms of Eugene Grandois' friends. CHAPTER XXIV THE BLUE PAPER "Who are you, ma'm'selle?" It was in the house of Eugene Grandois that this question was asked of Junia. She had followed the experience on the Island by a visit to Grandois' house, carrying delicacies for the sick wife. Denzil had come with her, and was waiting in the street. She had almost ended her visit when the outer door opened and Luzanne Larue entered carrying a dish she placed on the table, eyeing Junia closely. First they bowed to each other, and Junia gave a pleasant smile, but instantly she felt here was a factor in her own life--how, she could not tell. To Luzanne, the face of Junia had no familiar feature, and yet she felt here was one whose life's lines crossed her own. So it was she presently said, "Who are you, ma'm'selle?" in a sharp voice. As Junia did not reply at once, she put the question in another form: "What is your name, ma'm'selle?" "It is Junia Shale," said the other calmly, yet with heart beating hard. Somehow the question foreshadowed painful things, associated with Carnac. Her first glance at Luzanne showed the girl was well dressed, that she had a face of some beauty, that her eyes were full of glamour--black and bold, and, in a challenging way, beautiful. It was a face and figure full of daring. She was not French-Canadian; yet she was French; that was clear from her accent. Yet the voice had an accent of crudity, and the plump whiteness of the skin and waving fulness of the hair gave the girl a look of an adventuress. She was dressed in black with a white collar which, by contrast, seemed to heighten her unusual nature. At first Junia shuddered, for Luzanne's presence made her uneasy; yet the girl must have good qualities, for she had brought comforts to the sick woman, and indeed, within, madame had spoken of the "dear beautiful stranger." That could be no other than this girl. She became composed. Yet she had a feeling that between them was a situation needing all her resources. About what? She would soon know, and she gave her name at last slowly, keeping her eyes on those of Luzanne. At mention of the name, Luzanne's eyes took on prejudice and moroseness. The pupils enlarged, the lids half closed, the face grew sour. "Junia Shale--you are Junia Shale?" The voice was bitter and resentful. Junia nodded, and in her smile was understanding and conflict, for she felt this girl to be her foe. "We must have a talk--that's sure," Luzanne said with decision. "Who are you?" asked Junia calmly. "I am Luzanne Larue." "That makes me no wiser." "Hasn't Carnac Grier spoken of me?" Junia shook her head, and turned her face towards the door of Madame Grandois' room. "Had we not better go somewhere else to talk, after you've seen Madame Grandois and the baby?" she asked with a smile, yet she felt she was about to face an alarming event. "Madame Grandois has spoken pleasantly of you to me," Junia added, for tact was her prompt faculty. "If you'd come where we could talk undisturbed--do you see?" Luzanne made no reply in words, but taking up the dish she went into the sick-room, and Junia heard her in short friendly speech with Madame Grandois. Luzanne appeared again soon and spoke: "Now we can go where I'm boarding. It's only three doors away, and we can be safe there. You'd like to talk with me--ah, yes, surelee!" Her eyes were combative and repellent, but Junia was not dismayed, and she said: "What shall we talk about?" "There's only one thing and one person to talk about, ma'm'selle." "I still don't know what you mean." "Aren't you engaged to Carnac Grier? Don't you think you're going to marry him? . . . Don't you like to tell the truth, then?" she added. Junia raised her eyebrows. "I'm not engaged to Carnac Grier, and he has never asked me to marry him--but what business is it of yours, ma'm'selle?" "Come and I'll tell you." Luzanne moved towards the door. They were speechless till they reached Luzanne's lodgings. "This is the house of Monsieur Marmette, an agent of Monsieur Barouche," said Junia. "I know it." "You'll know it better soon. The agent of M'sieu' Barouche is a man of mark about here, and he'll be more marked soon--but yes!" "You think Monsieur Barouche will be elected, do you?" asked Junia, as they closed the door. "I know he will." "I've been working for Monsieur Grier, and that isn't my opinion." "I'm working for Barode Barouche, and I know the result." They were now in Luzanne's small room, and Junia noted that it had all the characteristics of a habitant dwelling--even to the crucifix at the head of the bed, and the picture of the French-Canadian Premier of the Dominion on the wall. She also saw a rosary on a little hook beside the bed. "How do you know?" "Because I am the wife of Carnac Grier, and I know what will happen to him. . . . You turn pale, ma'm'selle, but your colour isn't going to alter the truth. I'm Carnac Grier's wife by the laws of New York State." "Does Monsieur Grier admit he is your husband?" "He must respect the law by which he married me." "I don't believe he was ever honestly married to you," declared Junia. "Has he ever lived with you--for a single day?" "What difference would that make? I have the marriage certificate here." She touched her bosom. "I'd have thought you were Barode Barouche's wife by the way you act. Isn't it a wife's duty to help her husband--Shouldn't you be fighting against Barode Barouche?" "I mean to be recognized as Carnac Grier's wife--that's why I'm here." "Have you seen him since you've been here? Have you told him how you're working against him? Have you got the certificate with you?" "Of course. I've got my head on like a piece of flesh and blood that belongs to me--bien sur." She suddenly drew from her breast a folded piece of blue paper. "There it is, signed by Judge Grimshaw that married us, and there's the seal; and the whole thing can't be set aside. Look at it, if you like, petite." She held it not far from Junia's face, and Junia could see that it was registration of a marriage of New York State. She could have snatched the paper away, but she meant to conquer Luzanne's savage spirit. "Well, how do you intend to defeat your husband?" "I mean to have the people asked from a platform if they've seen the wife of the candidate, and then a copy of the certificate will be read to all. What do you think will happen after that?" "It will have to be done to-night or to-morrow night," remarked Junia. "Because the election comes the day after to-morrow,--eh "Because of that. And who will read the document?" "Who but the man he's trying to defeat?--tell me that." "You mean Barode Barouche?" "Who else?" "Has he agreed to do it?" Luzanne nodded. "On the day--Carnac became a candidate." "And if Carnac Grier denies it?" "He won't deny it. He never has. He says he was drunk when the thing was done--mais, oui." "Is that all he says?" "No. He says he didn't know it was a real marriage, and--" Luzanne then related Carnac's defence, and added: "Do you think anyone would believe him with the facts as they are? Remember I'm French and he's English, and that marriage to a French girl is life and death; and this is a French province!" "And yet you are a Catholic and French, and were married by a Protestant judge." "That is my own affair, ma'm'selle." "It is not the thing to say to French-Canadians here. What do you get out of it all? If he is your husband, wouldn't it be better to have him successful than your defeated victim. What will be yours if you defeat--" "Revenge--my rights--the law!" was the sharp rejoinder. Junia smiled. "What is there in it all for you? If the man I married did not love me, I'd use the law to be free. What's the good of trying to destroy a husband who doesn't love you, who never loved you--never." "You don't know that," retorted Luzanne sharply. "Yes, I do. He never loved you. He never lived with you for a single day. That's in the power of a doctor to prove. If you are virtuous, then he has taken nothing; if you have given your all, and not to Carnac Grier, what will his mind be about you? Is it money? He has no money except what he earns. His father left him nothing--not a dollar. Why do you hate him so? I've known him all my life, and I've never known him hurt man or animal. When did he ever misuse you, or hurt you? Did he ever treat you badly? How did you come to know him? Answer that." She paused and Luzanne flushed. The first meeting! Why, that was the day Carnac had saved her life, had taken her home safe from danger, and had begun a friendship with behind it only a desire to help her. And how had she repaid the saviour of her life? By tricking him into a marriage, and then by threatening him if he did not take her to his home. Truth is, down beneath her misconduct was a passion for the man which, not satisfied, became a passion to destroy him and his career. It was a characteristic of her blood and breed. It was a relic of ancient dishonour, inherited and searching; it was atavism and the incorrigible thing. Beneath everything was her desire for the man, and the mood in which she had fought for him was the twist of a tortured spirit. She was not so deliberate as her actions had indicated. She had been under the malicious influence of her father and her father's friend. She was like one possessed of a spirit that would not be deterred from its purpose. Junia saw the impression she had made, and set it down to her last words. "Where did you first meet him? What was the way of it?" she added. Suddenly Junia came forward and put her hands on Luzanne's shoulders. "I think you loved Carnac once, and perhaps you love him now, and are only trying to hurt him out of anger. If you destroy him, you will repent of it--so soon! I don't know what is behind these things you are doing, but you'll be sorry for it when it is too late. Yes, I know you have loved Carnac, for I see all the signs--" "Do you love him then, ma'm'selle?" asked Luzanne exasperated. "Do you love him?" "He has never asked me, and I have never told him that; and I don't know, but, if I did, I would move heaven and earth to help him, and if he didn't love me I'd help him just the same. And so, I think, should you. If you ever loved him, then you ought to save him from evil. Tell me, did Carnac ever do you a kind act, one that is worth while in your life?" For a moment Luzanne stood dismayed, then a new expression drove the dark light from her eyes. It was as though she had found a new sense. "He saved my life the day we first met," she said at last under Junia's hypnotic influence. "And now you would strike him when he is trying to do the big thing. You threaten to declare his marriage, in the face of those who can elect him to play a great part for his country." Junia saw the girl was in emotional turmoil, was obsessed by one idea, and she felt her task had vast difficulty. That Carnac should have married the girl was incredible, that he had played an unworthy part seemed sure; yet it was in keeping with his past temperament. The girl was the extreme contrast of himself, with dark--almost piercing-eyes, and a paleness which was physically constitutional--the joy of the artistic spirit. It was the head of a tragedienne or a martyr, and the lean, rather beautiful body was eloquent of life. Presently Junia said: "To try to spoil him would be a crime against his country, and I shall tell him you are here." "He'll do nothing at all." The French girl's words were suddenly biting, malicious and defiant. The moment's softness she had felt was gone, and hardness returned. "If he hasn't moved against me since he married me, he wouldn't dare do so now." "Why hasn't he moved? Because you're a woman, and also he'd believe you'd repent of your conduct. But I believe he will act sternly against you at once. There is much at stake." "You want it for your own sake," said Luzanne sharply. "You think he'd marry you if I gave him up." "Perhaps he'd ask me to marry him, if you weren't in the way, but I'd have my own mind about that, and knowing what you've told me--truth or lie--I'd weigh it all carefully. Besides, he's not the only man. Doesn't that ever strike you? Why try to hold him by a spurious bond when there are other men as good-looking, as clever? Is your world so bare of men--no, I'm sure it isn't," she added, for she saw anger rising in the impulsive girl. "There are many who'd want to marry you, and it's better to marry some one who loves you than to hold to one who doesn't love you at all. Is it hate? He saved your life--and that's how you came to know him first, and now you would destroy him! He's a great man. He would not bend to his father's will, and so he was left without a sou of his father's money. All because he has a conscience, and an independence worthy of the best that ever lived. . . . That's the soul of the man you are trying to hurt. If you had a real soul, there wouldn't be even the thought of this crime. Do you think he wouldn't loathe you, if you do this ghastly thing? Would any real man endure it for an hour? What do you expect to get but ugly revenge on a man who never gave anything except friendship?" "Friendship--friendship-yes, he gave that, but emotion too." "You think that real men marry women for whom they only have emotion. You think that he--Carnac Grier--would marry any woman on that basis? Come, ma'm'selle, the truth! He didn't know he was being married, and when you told him it was a real marriage he left you at once. You and yours tricked him--the man you'd never have known if he hadn't saved your life. You thought that with your beauty--yes, you are beautiful--you'd conquer him, and that he'd give in, and become a real husband in a real home. Come now, isn't that it?" The other did not reply. Her face was alive with memories. The lower things were flying from it, a spirit of womanhood was living in her-- feebly, but truly, living. She was now conscious of the insanity of her pursuit of Carnac. For a few moments she stood silent, and then she said with agitation: "If I give this up"--she took from her breast the blue document--"he'd be safe in his election, and he'd marry you: is it not so, ma'm'selle?" "He'd be safe for his election, but he has never asked me to marry him, and there are others besides him.--She was thinking of Tarboe. "Tell me," she added suddenly, "to whom have you told this thing in Montreal? Did you mean to challenge him yourself?" "I told it only to M'sieu' Barouche, and he said he would use it at the right moment--and the right moment has come," she added. "He asked me for a copy of it last night, and I said I'd give it to him to-day. It's because of him I've been here quiet all these weeks as Ma'm'selle Larue." "He is worse than you, mademoiselle, for he has known Carnac's family, and he has no excuse. If a man can't win his fight fairly, he oughtn't to be in public life." After a few dark moments, with a sudden burst of feeling, Luzanne said: "Well, Carnac won't be out of public life through me!" She took the blue certificate from her breast and was about to tear it up, when Junia stopped her. "Don't do that," Junia said, "don't tear it up yet, give it to me. I'll tear it up at the right moment. Give it to me, my dear." She held out her hand, and the blue certificate was presently in her fingers. She felt a sudden weakness in her knees, for it seemed she held the career of Carnac Grier, and it moved her as she had never been moved. With the yielding of the certificate, Luzanne seemed suddenly to lose self-control. She sank on the bed beside the wall with a cry of distress. "Mon Dieu--oh, Mon Dieu!" Then she sprang to her feet. "Give it back, give it back tome," she cried, with frantic pain. "It's all I have of him--it's all I have." "I won't give it back," declared Junia quietly. "It's a man's career, and you must let it go. It's the right thing to do. Let it stand, mademoiselle." She fully realized the half-insane mind and purpose of the girl, and she wrapped her arms around the stricken figure. "See, my dear," she said, "it's no use. You can't have it back. Your soul is too big for that now. You can be happy in the memory that you gave Carnac back his freedom." "But the record stands," said the girl helplessly. "Tell the truth and have it removed. You owe that to the man who saved your life. Have it done at once at Shipton." "What will you do with the certificate?" She glanced at Junia's bosom where the paper was hidden. "I will give it to Carnac, and he can do what he likes with it." By now the tears were streaming down the face of Luzanne Larue, and hard as it was for Junia, she tried to comfort her, for the girl should be got away at once, and only friendliness could achieve that. She would see Denzil--he was near by, waiting. There would be a train in two hours for New York and the girl must take it-she must. CHAPTER XXV DENZIL TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME Barode Baruche was excited. He had sure hope of defeating Carnac with the help of Luzanne Larue. The woman had remained hidden since her coming, and the game was now in his hands. On the night before the poll he could declare the thing, not easy to be forgiven by the French- Canadian public, which has a strong sense of domestic duty. Carnac Grier was a Protestant, and that was bad, and if there was added an offence against domestic morality, he would be beaten at the polls as sure as the river ran. He had seen Luzanne several times, and though he did not believe in her, he knew the marriage certificate was real. He had no credence in Carnac's lack of honour, yet it was strange he had not fought his wife, if his case was a good one. Day by day he had felt Carnac's power growing, and he feared his triumph unless some sensation stopped it. Well, he had at hand the sufficient sensation. He would produce both the certificate of marriage and the French girl who was the legal wife of Carnac Grier. That Luzanne was French helped greatly, for it would be used by Carnac's foes as an insult to French Canada, and his pulses throbbed as he thought of the possible turmoil in the constituency. Fortunately the girl was handsome, had ability, and spoke English with a French accent, and she was powerful for his purposes. He was out to prevent his own son from driving himself into private life, and he would lose no trick in the game, if he could help it. Sentimental feeling--yes, he had it, but it did not prevent him from saving his own skin. Carnac had come out against him, and he must hit as hard as he could. It was not as though Carnac had been guilty of a real crime and was within the peril of the law. His offence was a personal one, but it would need impossible defence at the moment of election. In any case, if Carnac was legally married, he should assume the responsibilities of married life; and if he had honest reason for not recognizing the marriage, he should stop the woman from pursuing him. If the case kept Carnac out of public life and himself in, then justice would be done; for it was monstrous that a veteran should be driven into obscurity by a boy. In making his announcement he would be fighting his son as though he was a stranger and not of his own blood and bones. He had no personal connection with Carnac in the people's minds. On the afternoon of the day that Junia had had her hour with Luzanne, he started for the house where Luzanne was lodging. He could not travel the streets without being recognized, but it did not matter, for the house where the girl lodged was that of his sub agent, and he was safe in going to it. He did not know, however, that Denzil had been told by Junia to watch the place and learn what he meant to do. Denzil had a popular respect of Barode Barouche as a Minister of the Crown; but he had a far greater love of Carnac. He remained vigilant until after Junia and Luzanne had started in a cab for the railway- station. They left near three-quarters of an hour before the train was to start for New York; and for the first quarter of an hour after they left, Denzil was in apprehension. Then he saw Barouche enter the street and go to the house of his sub- agent. The house stood by itself, with windows open, and Denzil did not scruple to walk near it, and, if possible, listen. Marmette, the subagent, would know of the incident between Junia and Luzanne; and he feared. Barouche might start for the station, overtake Luzanne and prevent her leaving. He drew close and kept his ears open. He was fortunate, he heard voices; Marmette was explaining to Barouche that Junia and Luzanne had gone to the station, as "Ma'm'selle" was bound for New York. Marmette had sent word to M. Barouche by messenger, but the messenger had missed him. Then he heard Barouche in anger say: "You fool--why did you let her leave! It's my bread and butter--and yours too--that's at stake. I wanted to use her against Grier. She was my final weapon of attack. How long ago did she leave?" Marmette told him. Denzil saw Barode Barouche leave the house with grim concern and talking hard to Paul Marmette. He knew the way they would go, so he fell behind a tree, and saw them start for the place where they could order a cab. Then he followed them. Looking at his watch he saw that, if they got a cab, they would get to the station before the train started, and he wondered how he could retard Barouche. A delay of three minutes would be enough, for it was a long way, and the distance could only be covered with good luck in the time. Yet Denzil had hope, for his faith in Junia was great, and he felt sure she would do what she planned. He had to trot along fast, because Barouche and Marmette were going hard, and he could not see his way to be of use yet. He would give his right hand to help Carnac win against the danger Junia had suggested. It could not be aught to Carnac's discredit, or Junia would not have tried to get the danger out of Montreal; he had seen Luzanne, and she might be deadly, if she had a good weapon! Presently, he saw Barouche and his agent stop at the door of a livery- stable, and were told that no cabs were available. There were none in the street, and time was pressing. Not far away, however, was a street with a tram-line, and this tram would take Barouche near the station from which Luzanne would start. So Barouche made hard for this street and had reached it when a phaeton came along, and in it was one whom Barouche knew. Barouche spoke to the occupant, and presently both men were admitted to the phaeton just as a tram-car came near. As the phaeton would make the distance to the station in less time than the car, this seemed the sensible thing to do, and Denzil's spirits fell. There remained enough time for Barouche to reach the station before the New York train started! He got aboard the tram himself, and watched the phaeton moving quickly on ahead. He saw the driver of the phaeton strike his horse with a whip, and the horse, suddenly breaking into a gallop, slipped and fell to the ground on the tramtrack. A moment later the tram came to a stop behind the fallen horse, and Denzil saw the disturbed face of Barode Barouche looking for another trap--in any case, it would take three or four minutes to get the horse up and clear the track for the tram. There was no carriage in sight--only a loaded butcher's cart, a road-cleaner, and a heavily loaded van. These could be of no use to Barouche. In his corner, Denzil saw the play with anxious eyes. It was presently found that the horse had injured a leg in falling and could not be got to its feet, but had presently to be dragged from the tram-lines. It had all taken near five minutes of the time before the train went, and, with despair, Barouche mounted the steps of the tram. He saw Denzil, and shrewdly suspected he was working in the interests of Carnac. He came forward to Denzil. "You're a long way from home, little man," he said in a voice with an acid note. "About the same as you from home, m'sieu'," said Denzil. "I've got business everywhere in this town," remarked Barouche with sarcasm--"and you haven't, have you? You're travelling privately, eh?" "I travel as m'sieu' travels, and on the same business," answered Denzil with a challenging smile. The look Barouche gave him then Denzil never forgot. "I didn't know you were in politics, mon vieux! What are you standing for? When are you going to the polls--who are you fighting, eh?" "I'm fighting you, m'sieu', though I ain't in politics, and I'm going to the polls now," Denzil answered. Denzil had gained in confidence as he saw the arrogance of Barode Barouche. He spoke with more vigour than usual, and he felt his gorge rising, for here was a man trying to injure his political foe through a woman; and Denzil resented it. He did not know the secret of Luzanne Larue, but he did realize there was conflict between Junia Shale and Barouche, and between Barouche and Carnac Grier, and that enlisted his cooperation. By nature he was respectful; but the politician now was playing a dirty game, and he himself might fight without gloves, if needed. That was why his eyes showed defiance at Barouche now. He had said the thing which roused sharp anger in Barouche. It told Barouche that Denzil knew where he was going and why. Anger shook him as he saw Denzil take out his watch. "The poll closes in three minutes, m'sieu'," Denzil added with a dry smile, for it was clear Barouche could not reach the station in time, if the train left promptly. The swiftest horses could not get him there, and these were not the days of motor-cars. Yet it was plain Barouche meant to stick to it, and he promptly said: "You haven't the right time, beetle. The poll closes only when the train leaves, and your watch doesn't show that, so don't put on airs yet." "I'll put on airs if I've won, m'sieu'," Denzil answered quietly, for he saw people in the tram were trying to hear. Barouche had been recognized, and a murmur of cheering began, followed by a hum of disapproval, for Barouche had lost many friends since Carnac had come into the fray. A few folk tried to engage Barouche in talk, but he responded casually; yet he smiled the smile which had done so much for him in public life, and the distance lessened to the station. The tram did not go quite to the station, and as it stopped, the two men hurried to the doors. As they did so, an engine gave a scream, and presently, as they reached the inside of the station, they saw passing out at the far end, the New York train. "She started five minutes late, but she did start," said Denzil, and there was malice in his smile. As he looked at his watch, he saw Junia passing out of a door into the street, but Barode Barouche did not see her--his eyes were fixed on the departing train. For a moment Barouche stood indecisive as to whether he should hire a locomotive and send some one after the train, and so get in touch with Luzanne in that way, or send her a telegram to the first station where the train would stop in its schedule; but presently he gave up both ideas. As he turned towards the exit of the station, he saw Denzil, and he came forward. "I think you've won, mon petit chien," he said with vindictiveness, "but my poll comes to-morrow night, and I shall win." "No game is won till it's all played, m'sieu', and this innings is mine!" "I am fighting a bigger man than you, wasp," snarled Barouche. "As big as yourself and bigger, m'sieu'," said Denzil with a smile. There was that in his tone which made Barouche regard him closely. He saw there was no real knowledge of the relationship of Carnac and himself in Denzil's eyes; but he held out his hand with imitation courtesy, as though to say good-bye. "Give me a love-clasp, spider," he said with a kind of sneer. "I'd like your love as I travel to triumph." A light of hatred came into Denzil's eyes. "Beetledog--wasp--spider" he had been called by this big man-- well, he should see that the wasp could give as good as it got. His big gnarled hand enclosed the hand of Barode Barouche, then he suddenly closed on it tight. He closed on it till he felt it crunching in his own and saw that the face of Barode Barouche was like that of one in a chair of torture. He squeezed, till from Barouche's lips came a gasp of agony, and then he let go. "You've had my love-clasp, m'sieu'," Denzil said with meaning, "and when you want it again let me know. It's what M'sieu' Carnac will do with you to-morrow night. Only he'll not let go, as I did, before the blood comes. Don't be hard on those under you, m'sieu'. Remember wasps and spiders can sting in their own way, and that dogs can bite." "Little black beast," was the short reply, "I'll strip your hide for Hell's gridiron in good time." "Bien, m'sieu', but you'll be in hell waiting, for I'm going to bury you here where you call better men than yourself dogs and wasps and spiders and beetles. And I'll not strip your 'hide,' either. That's for lower men than me." A moment later they parted, Denzil to find Junia, and Barouche to prepare his speech for the evening. Barouche pondered. What should he do-- should he challenge Carnac with his marriage with Luzanne Larue? His heart was beating hard. CHAPTER XXVI THE CHALLENGE The day of the election came. Never had feeling run higher, never had racial lines been so cut across. Barode Barouche fought with vigour, but from the going of Luzanne Larue, there passed from him the confidence he had felt since the first day of Carnac's candidature. He had had temptation to announce to those who heard him the night before the poll what Luzanne had told; but better wisdom guided him, to his subsequent content. He had not played a scurvy trick on his son for his own personal advantage. Indeed, when his meetings were all over, he was thankful for the disappearance of Luzanne. At heart he was not all bad. A madness had been on him. He, therefore, slept heavily from midnight till morning on the eve of the election, and began the day with the smile of one who abides the result with courage. Several times he came upon Carnac in the streets, and they saluted courteously; yet he saw the confidence of Carnac in his bearing. Twice also he came upon Junia and he was startled by the look she gave him. It was part of his punishment that Junia was the source of his undoing where Luzanne was concerned. Junia knew about Luzanne; but if she condemned him now, what would she think if she knew that Carnac was his own son! "A devilish clever girl that," he said to himself. "If he wins, it'll be due to her, and if he wins--no, he can't marry her, for he's already married; but he'll owe it all to her. If he wins! . . . No, he shall not win; I've been in the game too long; I've served too many interests; I've played too big a part." It was then he met his agent, who said: "They're making strong play against us--the strongest since you began politics." "Strong enough to put us in danger?" inquired Barouche. "You've been at the game here for thirty years, and I'd like to know what you think-- quite honestly." His agent was disturbed. "I think you're in danger; he has all your gifts, and he's as clever as Old Nick besides. He's a man that'll make things hum, if he gets in." "If he gets in-you think . . . ?" "He has as good a chance as you, m'sieu'. Here's a list of doubtful ones, and you'll see they're of consequence." "They are indeed," said Barouche, scanning the list. "I'd no idea these would be doubtful." "Luke Tarboe's working like the devil for Carnac. People believe in him. Half the men on that list were affected by Tarboe's turning over. Tarboe is a master-man; he has fought like hell." "Nevertheless, I've been too long at it to miss it now," said the rueful member with a forced smile. "I must win now, or my game is up." The agent nodded, but there was no certainty in his eye. Feeling ran higher and higher, but there was no indication that Barouche's hopes were sure of fulfilment. His face became paler as the day wore on, and his hands freer with those of his late constituents. Yet he noticed that Carnac was still glib with his tongue and freer with his hands. Carnac seemed everywhere, on every corner, in every street, at every polling booth; he laid his trowel against every brick in the wall. Carnac was not as confident as he seemed, but he was nearing the end of the trail; and his feet were free and his head clear. One good thing had happened. The girl who could do him great harm was not in evidence, and it was too late to spoil his chances now, even if she came. What gave him greatest hope was the look on Junia's face as he passed her. It was the sign of the conqueror--something he could not under stand. It was knowledge and victory. Also, he had a new feeling towards Tarboe, who had given him such powerful support. There was, then, in the man the bigger thing, the light of fairness and reason! He had had no talk with Tarboe, and he desired none, but he had seen him at three of his meetings, and he had evidence of arduous effort on his behalf. Tarboe had influenced many people in his favour, men of standing and repute, and the workmen of the Grier firm had come, or were coming, his way. He had always been popular with them, in spite of the strike he had fought, but they voted independently of their employers; and he was glad to know that most of them were with him in the fight. His triumph over Eugene Grandois at the Island had been a good influence, and he had hopes of capturing the majority of the river people. Yet, strange to say, the Church had somewhat reversed its position, and at the last had swung round to Barouche, quietly, though not from the pulpit, supporting him. The old prejudice in favour of a Catholic and a Frenchman was alive again. Carnac was keyed to anxiety, but outwardly seemed moving with brilliant certainty. He walked on air, and he spoke and acted like one who had the key of the situation in his fingers, and the button of decision at his will. It was folly electioneering on the day of the poll, and yet he saw a few labour leaders and moved them to greater work for him. One of these told him that at the Grier big-mill was one man working to defeat him by personal attacks. It had something to do with a so-called secret marriage, and it would be good to get hold of the man, Roudin, as soon as possible. A secret marriage! So the thing had, after all, been bruited and used- what was the source of the information? Who was responsible? He must go to the mill at once, and he started for it. On the way he met Luke Tarboe. "There's trouble down at the mill," Tarboe said. "A fellow called Roudin has been spreading a story that you're married and repudiate your wife. It'd be good to fight it now before it gets going. There's no truth in it, of course," he added with an opposite look in his eye, for he remembered the letter Carnac received one day in the office and his own conclusion then. "It's a lie, and I'll go and see Roudin at once. . . . You've been a good friend to me in the fight, Tarboe, and I'd like a talk when it's all over." "That'll be easy enough, Grier. Don't make any mistake-this is a big thing you're doing; and if a Protestant Britisher can beat a Catholic Frenchman in his own habitant seat, it's the clinching of Confederation. We'll talk it over when you've won." "You think I'm going to win?" asked Carnac with thumping heart, for the stark uncertainty seemed to overpower him, though he smiled. "If the lie doesn't get going too hard, I'm sure you'll pull it off. There's my hand on it. I'd go down with you to the mill, but you should go alone. You've got your own medicine to give. Go it alone, Grier. It's best--and good luck to you!" A few moments later Carnac was in the yard of the mill, and in one corner he saw the man he took to be Roudin talking to a group of workmen. He hurried over, and heard Roudin declaring that he, Carnac, was secretly married to a woman whom he repudiated, and was that the kind of man to have as member of Parliament? Presently Roudin was interrupted by cheers from supporters of Carnac, and he saw it was due to Carnac's arrival. Roudin had courage. He would not say behind a man's back what he would not say to his face. "I was just telling my friends here, m'sieu', that you was married, and you didn't acknowledge your wife. Is that so?" Carnac's first impulse was to say No, but he gained time by challenging. "Why do you say such things to injure me? Is that what Monsieur Barouche tells you to say?" Roudin shook his head protestingly. "If Monsieur Barouche does that he oughtn't to hold the seat, he ought to be sent back to his law offices." "No, I didn't hear it from M'sieu' Barouche. I get it from better hands than his," answered Roudin. "Better hands than his, eh? From the lady herself, perhaps?" "Yes, from the lady herself, m'sieu'." "Then bring the lady here and let us have it out, monsieur. It's a lie. Bring the lady here, if you know her." Roudin shrugged a shoulder. "I know what I know, and I don't have to do what you say--no--no!" "Then you're not honest. You do me harm by a story like that. I challenge you, and you don't respond. You say you know the woman, then produce her--there's no time to be lost. The poll closes in four hours. If you make such statements, prove them. It isn't playing the game-- do you think so, messieurs?" he added to the crowd which had grown in numbers. At that moment a man came running from the en trance towards Carnac. It was Denzil. "A letter for you, an important letter," he kept crying as he came nearer. He got the letter into Carnac's hands. "Read it at once, m'sieu'," Denzil said urgently. Carnac saw the handwriting was Junia's, and he tore open the letter, which held the blue certificate of the marriage with Luzanne. He conquered the sudden dimness of his eyes, and read the letter. It said: DEAR CARNAC, I hear from Mr. Tarboe of the lies being told against you. Here is the proof. She has gone. She told it to Barode Barouche, and he was to have announced it last night, but I saw her first. You can now deny the story. The game is yours. Tell the man Roudin to produce the woman--she is now in New York, if the train was not lost. I will tell you all when you are M.P. JUNIA. With a smile, Carnac placed the certificate in his pocket. How lucky it was he had denied the marriage and demanded that Roudin produce the woman! He was safe now, safe and free. It was no good any woman declaring she was married to him if she could not produce the proof --and the proof was in his pocket and the woman was in New York. "Come, Monsieur Roudin, tell us about the woman, and bring her to the polls. There is yet time, if you're telling the truth. Who is she? Where does she live? What's her name?" "Mrs. Carnac Grier--that's her name," responded Roudin with a snarl, and the crowd laughed, for Carnac's boldness gave them a sense of security. "What was her maiden name?" "Larue," answered the other sharply. "What was her Christian name, since you know so much, monsieur?" He had no fear now, and his question was audacity, but he knew the game was with him, and he took the risks. His courage had reward, for Roudin made no reply. Carnac turned to the crowd. "Here's a man tried to ruin my character by telling a story about a woman whose name he doesn't know. Is that playing the game after the rules-- I ask you?" There were cries from the crowd supporting him, and he grew bolder. "Let the man tell his story and I'll meet it here face to face. I fear nothing. Out with your story, monsieur. Tell us why you haven't brought her into the daylight, why she isn't claiming her husband at the polls. What's the story? Let's have it now." The truth was, Roudin dared not tell what he knew. It was based wholly on a talk he had partly overheard between Barode Barouche and Luzanne in the house where she stayed and where he, Roudin, lodged. It had not been definite, and he had no proofs. He was a sensationalist, and he had had his hour and could say no more, because of Barode Barouche. He could not tell the story of his overhearing, for why had not Barouche told the tale? With an oath he turned away and disappeared. As he went he could hear his friends cheering Carnac. "Carnac Grier lies, but he wins the game," he said. CHAPTER XXVII EXIT "Grier's in--Carnac's in--Carnac's got the seat!" This was the cry heard in the streets at ten-thirty at night when Carnac was found elected by a majority of one hundred and ten. Carnac had not been present at the counting of the votes until the last quarter-hour, and then he was told by his friends of the fluctuations of the counting--how at one time his defeat seemed assured, since Barode Barouche was six hundred ahead, and his own friends had almost given up hope. One of his foes, however, had no assurance of Carnac's defeat. He was too old an agent to believe in returns till all were in, and he knew of the two incidents by which Carnac had got advantage--at the Island over Eugene Grandois, and at the Mill over Roudin the very day of polling; and it was at these points he had hoped to score for Barouche a majority. He watched Barouche, and he deplored the triumph in his eye, for there was no surety of winning; his own was the scientific mind without emotions or passions. He did not "enthuse," and he did not despair; he kept his head. Presently there were fluctuations in favour of Carnac, and the six hundred by which Barouche led were steadily swallowed up; he saw that among the places which gave Carnac a majority were the Island and the Mill. He was also nonplussed by Carnac's coolness. For a man with an artist's temperament, he was well controlled. When he came into the room, he went straight to Barouche and shook hands with him, saying they'd soon offer congratulations to the winner. As the meeting took place the agent did not fail to note how alike in build and manner were the two men, how similar were their gestures. When at last the Returning Officer announced the result, the agent dared not glance at his defeated chief. Yet he saw him go to Carnac and offer a hand. "We've had a straight fight, Grier, and I hope you'll have luck in Parliament. This is no place for me. It's your game, and I'll eat my sour bread alone." He motioned to the window with a balcony, beyond which were the shouting thousands. Then he smiled at Carnac, and in his heart he was glad he had not used the facts about Luzanne before the public. The boy's face was so glowing that his own youth came back, and a better spirit took residence in him. He gave thanks to the Returning Officer, and then, with his agent, left the building by the back door. He did not wait for the announcement of Carnac's triumph, and he knew his work was done for ever in public life. Soon he had said his say at the club where his supporters, discomfited, awaited him. To demands for a speech, he said he owed to his workers what he could never repay, and that the long years they had kept him in Parliament would be the happiest memory of his life. "We'll soon have you back," shouted a voice from the crowd. "It's been a good fight," said Barode Barouche. Somehow the fact he had not beaten his son by the story of his secret marriage was the sole comfort he had. He advised his followers to "play the game" and let the new member have his triumph without belittlement. "It's the best fight I've had in thirty years," he said at last, "and I've been beaten fairly." In another hour he was driving into the country on his way to visit an old ex-Cabinet Minister, who had been his friend through all the years of his Parliamentary life. It did not matter that the hour was late. He knew the veteran would be waiting for him, and unprepared for the bad news he brought. The night was spent in pain of mind, and the comfort the ex-Minister gave him, that a seat would be found for him by the Government, gave him no thrill. He knew he had enemies in the Government, that the Prime Minister was the friend of the successful only, and that there were others, glad of his defeat, who would be looking for his place. Also he was sure he had injured the chances of the Government by the defeat of his policy. As though Creation was in league against him, a heavy storm broke about two o'clock, and he went to bed cursed by torturing thoughts. "Chickens come home to roost--" Why did that ancient phrase keep ringing in his ears when he tried to sleep? Beaten by his illegitimate son at the polls, the victim of his own wrong-doing--the sacrifice of penalty! He knew that his son, inheriting his own political gifts, had done what could have been done by no one else. All the years passed since Carnac was begotten laid their deathly hands upon him, and he knew he could never recover from this defeat. How much better it would have been if he had been struck twenty-seven years ago! Youth, ambition and resolve would have saved him from the worst then. Age has its powers, but it has its defects, and he had no hope that his own defects would be wiped out by luck at the polls. Spirit was gone out of him, longing for the future had no place in his mind; in the world of public work he was dead and buried. How little he had got from all his life! How few friends he had, and how few he was entitled to have! This is one of the punishments that selfishness and wrong-doing brings; it gives no insurance for the hours of defeat and loss. Well, wealth and power, the friends so needed in dark days, had not been made, and Barode Barouche realized he had naught left. He had been too successful from the start; he had had all his own way; and he had taken no pains to make or keep friends. He well knew there was no man in the Cabinet or among his colleagues that would stir to help him--he had stirred to help no man in all the years he had served the public. It was no good only to serve the public, for democracy is a weak stick on which to lean. One must stand by individuals or there is no defence against the malicious foes that follow the path of defeat, that ambush the way. It is the personal friends made in one's own good days that watch the path and clear away the ambushers. It is not big influential friends that are so important --the little unknown man may be as useful as the big boss in the mill of life; and if one stops to measure one's friends by their position, the end is no more sure than if one makes no friends at all. "There's nothing left for me in life--nothing at all," he said as he tossed in bed while the thunder roared and the storm beat down the shrubs. "How futile life is--'Youth's a dream, middle age a delusion, old age a mistake!'" he kept repeating to himself in quotation. "What does one get out of it? Nothing--nothing--nothing! It's all a poor show at the best, and yet--is it? Is it all so bad? Is it all so poor and gaunt and hopeless? Isn't there anything in it for the man who gives and does his best?" Suddenly there came upon him the conviction that life is only futile to the futile, that it is only a failure to those who prove themselves incompetent, selfish and sordid; but to those who live life as it ought to be lived, there is no such thing as failure, or defeat, or penalty, or remorse or punishment. Because the straight man has only good ends to serve, he has no failures; though he may have disappointments, he has no defeats; for the true secret of life is to be content with what is decreed, to earn bread and make store only as conscience directs, and not to set one's heart on material things. He got out of bed soon after daylight, dressed, and went to the stable and hitched his horse to the buggy. The world was washed clean, that was sure. It was muddy under foot, but it was a country where the roads soon dried, and he would suffer little inconvenience from the storm. He bade his host good-bye and drove away intent to reach the city in time for breakfast. He found the roads heavy, and the injury of the storm was everywhere to be seen. Yet it all did not distract him, for he was thinking hard of the things that lay ahead of him to do--the heart- breaking things that his defeat meant to him. At last he approached a bridge across a stream which had been badly swept by the storm. It was one of the covered bridges not uncommon in Canada. It was not long, as the river was narrow, and he did not see that the middle pier of the bridge had been badly injured. Yet as he entered the bridge, his horse still trotting, he was conscious of a hollow, semi- thunderous noise which seemed not to belong to the horse's hoofs and the iron wheels of the carriage. He raised his eyes to see that the other end of the bridge was clear, and at that moment he was conscious of an unsteady motion of the bridge, of a wavering of the roof, and then, before he had time to do aught, he saw the roof and the sides and the floor of the bridge collapse and sink slowly down. With a cry, he sprang from the carriage to retrace his way; but he only climbed up a ladder that grew every instant steeper; and all at once he was plunged downwards after his horse and carriage into the stream. He could swim, and as he swept down this thought came to him--that he might be able to get the shore, as he heard the cries of people on the bank. It was a hope that died at the moment of its birth, however, for he was struck by a falling timber on the head. When, an hour later, he was found in an eddy of the river by the shore, he was dead, and his finders could only compose his limbs decently. But in the afternoon, the papers of Montreal had the following head-lines; DEFEAT AND DEATH OF BARODE BAROUCHE THE END OF A LONG AND GREAT CAREER As soon as Carnac Grier heard the news, he sent a note to his mother telling her all he knew. When she read the letter, she sank to the floor, overcome. Her son had triumphed indeed. CHAPTER XXVIII A WOMAN WRITES A LETTER The whole country rang with the defeat and death of Barode Barouche, and the triumph of the disinherited son of John Grier. Newspapers drew differing lessons from the event, but all admitted that Carnac, as a great fighter, was entitled to success. The Press were friendly to the memory of Barode Barouche, and some unduly praised his work, and only a few disparaged his career. When news of the tragedy came to Mrs. Grier, she was reading in the papers of Carnac's victory, and in her mind was an agonizing triumph, pride in a stern blow struck for punishment. The event was like none she could have imagined. It was at this moment the note came from Carnac telling of Barouche's death, and it dropped from her hand to the floor. The horror of it smote her being, and, like one struck by lightning, she sank to the floor unconscious. The thing had hit her where soul and body were closely knit; and she had realized for the first time how we all must pay to the last penny for every offence we commit against the laws of life and nature. Barode Barouche had paid and she must pay--she also who had sinned with him must pay. But had she not paid? For long she lay unconscious, but at last the servant, unknowing why she was not called to remove the breakfast things, found her huddled on the floor, her face like that of death. The servant felt her heart, saw she was alive, and worked with her till consciousness came back. "That's right, ma'am, keep up heart. I'll send for M'sieu' Carnac at once, and we'll have you all right pretty quick." But Mrs. Grier forbade Carnac to be sent for, and presently in her bed, declined to have the doctor brought. "It's no use," she said. "A doctor can do no good. I need rest, that's all." Then she asked for notepaper and pen and ink, and so she was left alone. She must tell her beloved son why it was there never had been, and never could be, understanding between John Grier and himself. She had arrived at that point where naught was to be gained by further concealment. So through long hours she struggled with her problem, and she was glad Carnac did not come during the vexing day. He had said when he sent her word of his victory, that he feared he would not be able to see her the next day at all, as he had so much to do. She even declined to see Junia when she came, sending word that she was in bed, indisposed. The letter she wrote ran thus: MY BELOVED CARNAC, Your news of the death of Barode Barouche has shocked me. You will understand when I tell you I have lived a life of agony ever since you became a candidate. This is why: you were fighting the man who gave you to the world. Let me tell you how. I loved John Grier when I married him, and longed to make my life fit in with his. But that could not easily be, for his life was wedded to his business, and he did not believe in women. To him they were incapable of the real business of life, and were only meant to be housekeepers to men who make the world go round. So, unintentionally, he neglected me, and I was young and comely then, so the world said, and I was unwise and thoughtless. Else, I should not have listened to Barode Barouche, who, one summer in camp on the St. Lawrence River near our camp, opened up for me new ways of thought, and springs of feeling. He had the gifts that have made you what you are, a figure that all turn twice to see. He had eloquence, he was thoughtful in all the little things which John Grier despised. In the solitude of the camp he wound himself about my life, and roused an emotion for him false to duty. And so one day--one single day, for never but the once was I weak, yet that was enough, God knows. . . . He went away because I would not see him again; because I would not repeat the offence which gave me years of sorrow and remorse. After you became a candidate, he came and offered to marry me, tried to reopen the old emotion; but I would have none of it. He was convinced he would defeat you, and he wanted to avoid fighting you. But when I said, 'Give up the seat to him,' he froze. Of course, his seat belonged to his party and not alone to himself; but that was the test I put him to, and the answer he gave was, 'You want me to destroy my career in politics! That is your proposal, is it?' He was not honest either in life or conduct. I don't think he ever was sorry for me or for you, until perhaps these last few weeks; but I have sorrowed ever since the day you came to me very day, every hour, every minute; and the more because I could not tell John Grier the truth. Perhaps I ought to have told the truth long ago, and faced the consequences. It might seem now that I would have ruined my home life, and yours, and Barode Barouche's, and John Grier's life if I had told the truth; but who knows! There are many outcomes to life's tragedies, and none might have been what I fancied. It is little comfort that Barode Barouche has now given all for payment of his debt. It gives no peace of mind. And it may be you will think I ought not to tell you the truth. I don't know, but I feel you will not misunderstand. I tell you my story, so that you may again consider if it is not better to face the world with the truth about Luzanne. We can live but once, and it is to our good if we refuse the secret way. It is right you should know the truth about your birth, but it is not right you should declare it to all the world now. That was my duty long ago, and I did not do it. It is not your duty, and you must not do it. Barode Barouche is gone; John Grier has gone; and it would only hurt Fabian and his wife and you to tell it now. You inherit Barode Barouche's gifts, and you have his seat, you represent his people--and they are your people too. You have French blood in your veins, and you have a chance to carry on with honour what he did with skill. Forgive me, if you can. Your loving MOTHER. P.S. Do nothing till you see me. CHAPTER XXIX CARNAL AND HIS MOTHER Returning from Barode Barouche's home to his mother's House on the Hill, Carnac was in a cheerless mood. With Barouche's death to Carnac it was as though he himself had put aside for ever the armour of war, for Barouche was the only man in the world who had ever tempted him to fight, or whom he had fought. There was one thing he must do: he must go to Junia, tell her he loved her, and ask her to be his wife. She had given him the fatal blue certificate of his marriage and the marriage could now be ended with Luzanne's consent, for she would not fight the divorce he must win soon. He could now tell the truth, if need be, to his constituents, for there would be time enough to recover his position, if it were endangered, before the next election came, and Junia would be by his side to help him! Junia--would she, after all, marry him now? He would soon know. To-night he must spend with his mother, but to-morrow he would see Junia and learn his fate, and know about Luzanne. Luzanne had been in Montreal, had been ready to destroy his chance at the polls, and Junia had stopped it. How? Well, he should soon know. But now, at first, for his mother. When he entered the House on the Hill, he had a sudden shiver. Somehow, the room where his mother had sat for so many years, and where he had last seen his father, John Grier, had a coldness of the tomb. There was a letter on the centre table standing against the lamp. He saw it was in his mother's handwriting, and addressed to himself. He tore it open, and began to read. Presently his cheeks turned pale. More than once he put it down, for it seemed impossible to go on, but with courage he took it up again and read on to the end. "God--God in Heaven!" he broke out when he had finished it. For a long time he walked the floor, trembling in body and shaking in spirit. "Now I understand everything," he said at last aloud in a husky tone. "Now I see what I could not see--ah yes, I see at last!" For another time of silence and turmoil he paced the floor, then he stopped short. "I'm glad they both are dead," he said wearily. Thinking of Barode Barouche, he had a great bitterness. "To treat any woman so-- how glad I am I fought him! He learned that such vile acts come home at last." Then he thought of John Grier. "I loathed him and loved him always," he said with terrible remorse in his tone. "He used my mother badly, and yet he was himself; he was the soul that he was born, a genius in his own way, a neglecter of all that makes life beautiful--and yet himself, always himself. He never pottered. He was real--a pirate, a plunderer, but he was real. And he cared for me, and would have had me in the business if he could. Perhaps John Grier knows the truth now! . . . I hope he does. For, if he does, he'll see that I was not to blame for what I did, that it was Fate behind me. He was a big man, and if I'd worked with him, we'd have done big things, bigger than he did, and that was big enough." "Do nothing till you see me," his mother had written in a postscript to her letter, and, with a moroseness at his heart and scorn of Barouche at his lips, he went slowly up to his mother's room. At her door he paused. But the woman was his mother, and it must be faced. After all, she had kept faith ever since he was born. He believed that. She had been an honest wife ever since that fatal summer twenty-seven years before. "She has suffered," he said, and knocked at her door. An instant later he was inside the room. There was only a dim light, but his mother was sitting up in her bed, a gaunt and yet beautiful, sad-eyed figure of a woman. For a moment Carnac paused. As he stood motionless, the face of the woman became more drawn and haggard, the eyes more deeply mournful. Her lips opened as though she would speak, but no sound came, and Carnac could hardly bear to look at her. Yet he did look, and all at once there rushed into his heart the love he had ever felt for her. After all, he was her son, and she had not wronged him since his birth. And he who had wronged her and himself was dead, his pathway closed for ever to the deeds of life and time. As he looked, his eyes filled with tears and his lips compressed. At last he came to the bed. Her letter was in his hand. "I have read it, mother." She made no reply, but his face was good for her eyes to see. It had no hatred or repulsion. "I know everything now," he added. "I see it all, and I understand all you have suffered these many years." "Oh, my son, you forgive your mother?" She was trembling with emotion. He leaned over and caught her wonderful head to his shoulder. "I love you, mother," he said gently. "I need you--need you more than I ever did." "I have no heart any more, and I fear for you--" "Why should you fear for me? You wanted me to beat him, didn't you?" His face grew hard, his lips became scornful. "Wasn't it the only way to make him settle his account?" "Yes, the only way. It was not that I fear for you in politics. I was sure you would win the election. It was not that, it was the girl." "That's all finished. I am free at last," he said. He held the blue certificate before her eyes. Her face was deadly pale, her eyes expanded, her breath came sharp and quick. "How was it don how was it done? Was she here in Montreal?" "I don't know how it was done, but she was here, and Junia got this from her. I shan't know how till I've seen Junia." "Junia is the best friend," said the stricken woman gently, "in all the world; she's--" "She's so good a friend she must be told the truth," he said firmly. "Oh, not while I live! I could not bear that--" "How could I ask Junia to marry me and not tell her all the truth-- mother, can't you see?" The woman's face flushed scarlet. "Ah, yes, I see, my boy--I see." "Haven't we had enough of secrecy--in your letter you lamented it! If it was right for you to be secret all these years, is it not a hundred times right now for me to tell you the truth. . . . I have no name--no name," he added, tragedy in his tone. "You have my name. You may say I have no right to it, but it is the only name I can carry; they both are dead, and I must keep it. It wrongs no one living but you, and you have no hatred of me: you think I do not wrong you--isn't that so?" His cheek was hot with feeling. "Yes, that's true," he said. "You must still keep your married name." Then a great melancholy took hold of him, and he could hardly hide it from her. She saw how he was moved, and she tried to comfort him. "You think Junia will resent it all? . . . But that isn't what a girl does when she loves. You have done no wrong; your hands are clean." "But I must tell her all. Tarboe is richer, he has an honest birth, he is a big man and will be bigger still. She likes him, she--" "She will go to you without a penny, my son." "It will be almost without a penny, if you don't live," he said with a faint smile. "I can't paint--for a time anyhow. I can't earn money for a time. I've only my salary as a Member of Parliament and the little that's left of my legacy; therefore, I must draw on you. And I don't seem to mind drawing upon you; I never did." She smiled with an effort. "If I can help you, I shall justify living on." CHAPTER XXX TARBOE HAS A DREAM The day Carnac was elected it was clear to Tarboe that he must win Junia at once, if he was ever to do so, for Carnac's new honours would play a great part in influencing her. In his mind, it was now or never for himself; he must bring affairs to a crisis. Junia's father was poor, but the girl had given their home an air of comfort and an art belonging to larger spheres. The walls were covered with brown paper, and on it were a few of her own water-colour drawings, and a few old engravings of merit. Chintz was the cover on windows and easy chairs, and in a corner of the parlour was a chintz-covered lounge where she read of an evening. So it was that, with Carnac elected and Barode Barouche buried, she sat with one of Disraeli's novels in her hand busy with the future. She saw for Carnac a safe career, for his two chief foes were gone--Luzanne Larue and Barode Barouche. Now she understood why Carnac had never asked her to be his wife. She had had no word with Carnac since his election--only a letter to thank her for the marriage certificate and to say that after M. Barouche was buried he would come to her, if he might. He did say, however, in the letter that he owed her his election. "You've done a great, big thing for me, dearest friend, and I am your ever grateful Carnac"--that was the way he had put it. Twice she had gone to visit his mother, and had been told that Mrs. Grier was too ill to see her--overstrain, the servant had said. She could not understand being denied admittance; but it did not matter, for one day Mrs. Grier should know how she--Junia-had saved her son's career. So she thought, as she gazed before her into space from the chintz- covered lounge on the night of the day Barode Barouche was buried. There was a smell of roses in the room. She had gathered many of them that afternoon. She caught a bud from a bunch on a table, and fastened it in the bosom of her dress. Somehow, as she did it, she had a feeling she would like to clasp a man's head to her breast where the rose was--one of those wild thoughts that come to the sanest woman at times. She was captured by the excitement in which she had moved during the past month --far more now than she had been in all the fight itself. There came a knock at the outer door, and before that of her own room opened, she recognized the step of the visitor. So it was Tarboe had come. He remembered that day in the street when he met Junia, and was shown there were times when a woman could not be approached with emotion. He had waited till the day he knew she was alone, for he had made a friend of her servant by judicious gifts of money. "I hope you're glad to see me," he said with an uncertain smile, as he saw her surprise. "I hope I am," she replied, and motioned him to a seat. He chose a high- backed chair with a wide seat near the lounge. He made a motion of humorous dissent to her remark, and sat down. "Well, we pulled it off somehow, didn't we?" she said. "Carnac Grier is M.P." "And his foe is in his grave," remarked Tarboe dryly. "Providence pays debts that ought to be paid. This election has settled a lot of things," she returned with a smile. "I suppose it has, and I've come here to try and find one of the settlements." "Well, find them," she retorted. "I said one of the settlements only. I have to be accurate in my life." "I'm glad to hear of it. You helped Mr. Grier win his election. It was splendid of you. Think of it, Mr. Tarboe, Carnac Grier is beginning to get even with his foes." "I'm not a foe--if that's what you mean. I've proved it." She smiled provokingly. "You've proved only you're not an absolute devil, that's all. You've not proved yourself a real man--not yet. Do you think it paid your debt to Carnac Grier that you helped get him into Parliament?" His face became a little heated. "I'll prove to you and to the world that I'm not an absolute devil in the Grier interests. I didn't steal the property. I tried to induce John Grier to leave it to Carnac or his mother, for if he'd left it to Mrs. Grier it would have come to Carnac. He did not do it that way, though. He left it to me. Was I to blame for that?" "Perhaps not, but you could have taken Carnac in, or given up the property to him--the rightful owner. You could have done that. But you were thinking of yourself altogether." "Not altogether. In the first place, I am bound to keep my word to John Grier. Besides, if Carnac had inherited, the property would have got into difficulties--there were things only John Grier and I understood, and Carnac would have been floored." "Wouldn't you still have been there?" "Who knows! Who can tell! Maybe not!" "Carnac Grier is a very able man." "But of the ablest. He'll be a success in Parliament. He'll play a big part; he won't puddle about. I meant there was a risk in letting Carnac run the business at the moment, and--" "And there never was with you!" "None. My mind had grasped all John Grier intended, and I have the business at my fingers' ends. There was no risk with me. I've proved it. I've added five per cent to the value of the business since John Grier died. I can double the value of it in twenty years--and easy at that." "If you make up your mind to do it, you will," she said with admiration, for the man was persuasive, and he was playing a game in which he was a master. Her remarks were alive with banter, for Tarboe's humour was a happiness to her. "How did I buy your approval?" he questioned alertly. "By ability to put a bad case in a good light. You had your case, and you have made a real success. If you keep on you may become a Member of Parliament some day!" He laughed. "Your gifts have their own way of stinging. I don't believe I could be elected to Parliament. I haven't the trick of popularity of that kind." Many thoughts flashed through Tarboe's mind. If he married her now, and the truth was told about the wills and the law gave Carnac his rights, she might hate him for not having told her when he proposed. So it was that in his desire for her life as his own, he now determined there should be no second will. In any case, Carnac had enough to live on through his mother. Also, he had capacity to support himself. There was a touch of ruthlessness in Tarboe. No one would ever guess what the second will contained--no one. The bank would have a letter saying where the will was to be found, but if it was not there! He would ask Junia to be his wife now, while she was so friendly. Her eyes were shining, her face was alive with feeling, and he was aware that the best chances of his life had come to win her. If she was not now in the hands of Carnac, his chances were good. Yet there was the tale of the secret marriage--the letter he saw Carnac receive in John Grier's office! The words of the ancient Greek came to him as he looked at her: "He who will not strike when the hour comes shall wither like a flower, and his end be that of the chaff of the field." His face flushed with feeling, his eyes grew bright with longing, his tongue was loosed to the enterprise. "Do you dream, and remember your dreams?" he asked with a thrill in his voice. "Do you?" "I don't dream often, but I sometimes remember my dreams." "I dream much, and one dream I have constantly." "What is it?" she asked with anticipation. "It is the capture of a wild bird in a garden--in a cultivated garden where there are no nests, no coverts for the secret invaders. I dream that I pursue the bird from flower-bed to flower-bed, from bush to bush, along paths and the green-covered walls; and I am not alone in my chase, for there are others pursuing. It is a bitter struggle to win the wild thing. And why? Because there is pursuing one of the pursuers another bird of red plumage. Do you understand?" He paused, and saw her face was full of colour and her eyes had a glow. Every nerve in her was pulsing hard. "Tell me," she said presently, "whom do you mean by the bird of red plumage? Is it a mere figure of speech? Or has it a real meaning?" "It has a real meaning." He rose to his feet, bent over her and spoke hotly. "Junia, the end of my waiting has come. I want you as I never wanted anything in my life. I must know the truth. I love you, Junia. I have loved you from the first moment I saw you, and nothing is worth while with you not in it. Let us work together. It is a big, big game I'm playing." "Yes, it's a big game you're playing," she said with emotion. "It is a big, big game, and, all things considered, you should win it, but I doubt you will. I feel there are matters bigger than the game, or than you, or me, or anyone else. And I do not believe in your bird of red plumage; I don't believe it exists. It may have done so, but it doesn't now." She also got to her feet, and Tarboe was so near her she could feel his hot breath on her cheek. "No, it doesn't exist now," she repeated, "and the pursuer is not pursued. You have more imagination than belongs to a mere man of business--you're an inexperienced poet." He caught her hand and drew it to his breast. "The only poetry I know is the sound of your voice in the wind, the laughter of your lips in the sun, the delight of your body in the heavenly flowers. Yes, I've drunk you in the wild woods; I've trailed you on the river; I've heard you in the grinding storm--always the same, the soul of all beautiful things. Junia, you shall not put me away from you. You shall be mine, and you and I together shall win our way to great ends. We will have opportunity, health, wealth and prosperity. Isn't it worth while?" "Yes," she answered after a moment, "but it cannot be with you, my friend." She withdrew her fingers and stepped back; she made a gesture of friendly repulsion. "You have said all that can be said, you have gifts greater than you yourself believe; and I have been tempted; but it is no use, there are deeper things than luxuries and the magazines of merchandise-- much deeper. No, no, I cannot marry you; if you were as rich as Midas, as powerful as Caesar, I would not marry you--never, never, never." "You love another," he said boldly. "You love Carnac Grier." "I do not love you--isn't that enough?" "Almost--almost enough," he said, embarrassed. CHAPTER XXXI THIS WAY HOME All Junia had ever felt of the soul of things was upon her as she arranged flowers and listened to the church bells ringing. "They seem to be always ringing," she said to herself, as she lightly touched the roses. "It must be a Saint's Day--where's Denzil? Ah, there he is in the garden! I'll ask him." Truth is, she was deceiving herself. She wanted to talk with Denzil about all that had happened of late, and he seemed, somehow, to avoid her. Perhaps he feared she had given her promise to Tarboe who had, as Denzil knew, spent an hour with her the night before. As this came to Denzil's brain, he felt a shiver go through him. Just then he heard Junia's footsteps, and saw her coming towards him. "Why are the bells ringing so much, Denzil? Is it a Saint's Day?" she asked. He took off his hat. "Yes, ma'm'selle, it is a Saint's Day," and he named it. "There were lots of neighbours at early Mass, and some have gone to the Church of St. Anne de Beaupre at Beaupre, them that's got sickness." "Yes, Beaupre is as good as Lourdes, I'm sure. Why didn't you go, Denzil?" "Why should I go, ma'm'selle--I ain't sick--ah, bah!" "I thought you were. You've been in low spirits ever since our election, Denzil." "Nothing strange in that, ma'm'selle. I've been thinking of him that's gone." "You mean Monsieur Barouche, eh?" "Not of M'sieu' Barouche, but of the father to the man that beat M'sieu' Barouche." "Why should you be thinking so much of John Grier these days?" "Isn't it the right time? His son that he threw off without a penny has proved himself as big a man as his father--ah, surelee! M'sieu' left behind him a will that gave all he had to a stranger. His own son was left without a sou. There he is now," he added, nodding towards the street. Junia saw Carnac making his way towards her house. "Well, I'll talk with him," she said, and her face flushed. She knew she must give account of her doings with Luzanne Larue. A few moments later in the house, her hand lay in that of Carnac, and his eyes met hers. "It's all come our way, Junia," he remarked gaily, though there was sadness in his tone. "It's as you wanted it. You won." "Thanks to you, Junia," and he took from his pocket the blue certificate. "That--oh, that was not easy to get," she said with agitation. "She had a bad purpose, that girl." "She meant to announce it?" "Yes, through Barode Barouche. He agreed to that." Carnac flushed. "He agreed to that--you know it?" "Yes. The day you were made candidate she arrived here; and the next morning she went to Barode Barouche and told her story. He bade her remain secret till the time was ripe, and he was to be the judge of that. He was waiting for the night before the election. Then he was going to strike you and win!" "She told you that--Luzanne told you that?" "And much else. Besides, she told me you had saved her life from the street-cars; that you had played fair at the start." "First and last I played fair," he said indignantly. Her eyes were shining. "Not from first to last, Carnac. You ought not to have painted her, or made much of her and then thrown her over. She knew--of course she knew, after a time, that you did not mean to propose to her, and all the evil in her came out. Then she willed to have you in spite of yourself, believing, if you were married, her affection would win you in the end. There it was--and you were to blame." "But why should you defend her, Junia?" Her tongue became bitter now. "Just as you would, if it was some one else and not yourself." His head was sunk on his breast, his eyes were burning. "It was a horrible thing for Barouche to plan." "Why so horrible? If you were hiding a marriage for whatever reason, it should be known to all whose votes you wanted." "Barouche was the last man on earth to challenge me, for he had a most terrible secret." "What was it?" Her voice had alarm, for she had never seen Carnac so disturbed. "He was fighting his own son--and he knew it!" The words came in broken accents. "He was fighting his own son, and he knew it! You mean to say that!" Horror was in her voice. "I mean that the summer before I was born--" He told her the story as his mother had told it to him. Then at last he said: "And now you know Barode Barouche got what he deserved. He ruined my mother's life; he died the easiest death such a man could die. He has also spoiled my life." "Nothing can spoil your life except yourself," she declared firmly, and she laid a hand upon his arm. "Who told you all this--and when?" "My mother in a letter last night. I had a talk with her afterwards." "Who else knows?" "Only you." "And why did you tell me?" "Because I want you to know why our ways must for ever lie apart." "I don't grasp what you mean," she declared in a low voice. "You don't grasp why, loving you, I didn't ask you to marry me long ago; but you found out for yourself from the one who was responsible, and freed me and saved me; and now you know I am an illegitimate son." "And you want to cut me out of your life for a bad man's crime, not your own. . . . Listen, Carnac. Last night I told Mr. Tarboe I could not marry him. He is rich, he has control of a great business, he is a man of mark. Why do you suppose I did it, and for over two years have done the same?--for he has wanted me all that time. Does not a girl know when a real man wants her? And Luke Tarboe is a real man. He knows what he wants, and he goes for it, and little could stop him as he travels. Why do you suppose I did it?" Her face flushed, anger lit her eyes. "Because there was another man; but I've only just discovered he's a sham, with no real love for me. It makes me sorry I ever knew him." "Me--no real love for you! That's not the truth: it's because I have no real name to give you--that's why I've spoken as I have. Never have I cared for anyone except you, Junia, and I could have killed anyone that wronged you--" "Kill yourself then," she flashed. "Have I wronged you, Junia?" "If you kept me waiting and prevented me from marrying a man I could have loved, if I hated you--if you did that, and then at last told me to go my ways, don't you think it wronging me! Don't be a fool, Carnac. You're not the only man on earth a good girl could love. I tell you, again and again I have been moved towards Luke Tarboe, and if he had had understanding of women, I should now be his wife." "You tell me what I have always known," he interposed. "I knew Tarboe had a hold on your heart. I'm not so vain as to think I've always been the one man for you. I lived long in anxious fear, and--" "And now you shut the door in my face! Looked at from any standpoint, it's ugly." "I want you to have your due," he answered with face paler. "You're a great woman--the very greatest, and should have a husband born in honest wedlock." "I'm the best judge of what I want," she declared almost sharply, yet there was a smile at her lips. "Why, I suppose if John Grier had left you his fortune, you'd give it up; you'd say, 'I have no right to it,' and would give it to my brother-in-law, Fabian." "I should." "Yet Fabian had all he deserved from his father. He has all he should have, and he tried to beat his father in business. Carnac, don't be a bigger fool than there's any need to be. What is better than that John Grier's business should be in Tarboe's hands--or in yours? Remember, John Grier might have left it all to your mother, and, if he had, you'd have taken it, if she had left it to you. You'd have taken it even if you meant to give it away afterwards. There are hospitals to build. There are good and costly things to do for the State." Suddenly she saw in his eyes a curious soft understanding, and she put her hand on his shoulder. "Carnac," she said gently, "great, great Carnac, won't you love me?" For an instant he felt he must still put her from him, then he clasped her to his breast. "But I really had to throw myself into your arms!" she said later. CHAPTER XXXII "HALVES, PARDNER, HALVES" It was Thanksgiving Day, and all the people of the Province were en fete. The day was clear, and the air was thrilling with the spirits of the north country; the vibrant sting of oxygen, the blessed resilience of the river and the hills. It was a great day on the St. Lawrence, for men were preparing to go to the backwoods, to the "shanties," and hosts were busy with the crops, storing them; while all in trade and industry were cheerful. There was a real benedicite in the air. In every church. Catholic and Protestant, hands of devoted workers had made beautiful altar and communion table, and lectern and pulpit, and in the Methodist chapel and the Presbyterian kirk, women had made the bare interiors ornate. The bells of all the churches were ringing, French and English; and each priest, clergyman and minister was moving his people in his own way and by his own ritual to bless God and live. In the city itself, the Mayor had arranged a festival in the evening, and there were gathered many people to give thanks. But those most conspicuous were the poor, unsophisticated habitants, who were on good terms with the refreshment provided. Their enthusiasm was partly due to the presence of Carnac Grier. In his speech to the great crowd, among other things the Mayor said: "It is our happiness that we have here one whose name is familiar to all in French-Canada--that of the new Member of Parliament, Monsieur Carnac Grier. In Monsieur Grier we have a man who knows his own mind, and it is filled with the interests of the French as well as the English. He is young, he has power, and he will use his youth and power to advance the good of the whole country. May he live long!" Carnac never spoke better in his life than in his brief reply. When he had finished, some one touched his arm. It was Luke Tarboe. "A good speech, Grier. Can you give me a few moments?" "Here?" asked Carnac, smiling. "Not here, but in the building. There is a room where we can be alone, and I have to tell you something of great importance." "Of great importance? Well, so have I to tell you, Tarboe." A few minutes later they were in the Mayor's private parlour, hung with the portraits of past Governors and Mayors, and carrying over the door the coat-of-arms of the Province. Presently Carnac said: "Let me give you my news first, Tarboe: I am to marry Junia Shale--and soon." Tarboe nodded. "I expected that. She is worth the best the world can offer." There was a ring of honesty in his tone. "All the more reason why I should tell you what my news is, Carnac. I'm going to tell you what oughtn't yet to be told for another two years, but I feel it due you, for you were badly used, and so I break my word to your father." Carnac's hand shot out in protest, but Tarboe took no notice. "I mean to tell you now in the hour of your political triumph that--" "That I can draw on you for ten thousand dollars, perhaps?" shot out Carnac. "Not for ten thousand, but in two years' time--or to-morrow--for a hundred and fifty times that if you want it." Carnac shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know what you're driving at, Tarboe. Two years from now--or to-morrow--I can draw on you for a hundred and fifty times ten thousand dollars! What does that mean? Is it you're tired of the fortune left you by the biggest man industrially French-Canada has ever known?" "I'll tell you the truth--I never had a permanent fortune, and I was never meant to have the permanent fortune, though I inherited by will. That was a matter between John Grier and myself. There was another will made later, which left the business to some one else." "I don't see." "Of course you don't see, and yet you must." Tarboe then told the story of the making of the two wills, doing justice to John Grier. "He never did things like anyone else, and he didn't in dying. He loved you, Carnac. In spite of all he said and did he believed in you. He knew you had the real thing in you, if you cared to use it." "Good God! Good God!" was all Carnac could at first say. "And you agreed to that?" "What rights had I? None at all. I'll come out of it with over a half- million dollars--isn't that enough for a backwoodsman? I get the profits of the working for three years, and two hundred thousand dollars besides. I ought to be satisfied with that." "Who knows of the will besides yourself?" asked Carnac sharply. "No one. There is a letter to the bank simply saying that another will exists and where it is, but that's all. "And you could have destroyed that will in my favour?" "That's so." The voice of Tarboe was rough with feeling, his face grew dark. "More than once I willed to destroy it. It seemed at first I could make better use of the property than you. The temptation was big, but I held my own, and now I've no fear of meeting anyone in Heaven or Hell. I've told you all. . . . "Not quite all. There's one thing more. The thought of Junia Shale made me want to burn the second will, and I almost did it; but I'm glad I didn't." "If you had, and had married her, you wouldn't have been happy. You can't be fooling a wife and be safe." "I guess I know that--just in time. . . . I have a bad heart, Carnac. Your property came to me against my will through your father, but I wanted the girl you're going to marry, and against my will you won her. I fought for her. I thought there was a chance for me, because of the rumour you were secretly married--" "I'll tell you about it, Tarboe, now. It was an ugly business." And he told in a dozen sentences the story of Luzanne and the false marriage. When he had finished, Tarboe held out his hand. "It was a close shave, Carnac." After a few further remarks, Tarboe said: "I thought there was a chance for me with Junia Shale, but there never was a real one, for she was yours from a child. You won her fairly, Carnac. If you'll come to the office to-morrow morning, I'll show you the will." "You'll show me the will?" asked Carnac with an edge to his tone. "What do you mean?" Tarboe did not like the look in the other's eyes. "I mean, what you have you shall keep, and what John Grier leaves me by that will, I will not keep." "You will inherit, and you shall keep." "And turn you out!" remarked Carnac ironically. "I needn't be turned out. I hoped you'd keep me as manager. Few could do it as well, and, as Member of Parliament, you haven't time yourself. I'll stay as manager at twenty thousand dollars a year, if you like." Carnac could not tell him the real reason for declining to inherit, but that did not matter. Yet there flashed into his heart a love, which he had never felt so far in his life, for John Grier. The old man had believed he would come out right in the end, and so had left him the fortune in so odd a way. How Carnac longed to tell Tarboe the whole truth about Barode Barouche, and yet dare not! After a short time of hesitation and doubt, Carnac said firmly: "I'll stand by the will, if you'll be my partner and manager, Tarboe. If you'll take half the business and manage the whole of it, I'll sell the half for a dollar to you, and we can run together to the end." Tarboe's face lighted; there was triumph in his eyes. It was all better than he had dared to hope, for he liked the business, and he loathed the way the world had looked at John Grier's will. "Halves, pardner, halves!" he said, assenting gladly, and held out his hand. They clasped hands warmly. The door opened and Junia appeared. She studied their faces anxiously. When she saw the smiling light in them: "Oh, you two good men!" she said joyously, and held out a hand to each. ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: Don't be a bigger fool than there's any need to be Life is only futile to the futile Youth's a dream, middle age a delusion, old age a mistake ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "CARNAC'S FOLLY": All genius is at once a blessing or a curse Do what you feel you've got to do, and never mind what happens Don't be a bigger fool than there's any need to be Had got unreasonably old How many sons have ever added to their father's fame? Life is only futile to the futile Never give up your soul to things only, keep it for people We suffer the shames we damn in others We do what we forbid ourselves to do Youth's a dream, middle age a delusion, old age a mistake *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMPLETE PG WORKS OF PARKER *** ********** This file should be named 6300.txt or 6300.zip ********** This eBook was produced by David Widger Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, even years after the official publication date. 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